Sephirot, p.9
Sephirot, page 9
A knife blade was laid across his throat, cool and deadly.
“No farther,” the leader said. “Stop. No one moves, or I cut this man’s throat.”
In the night, there was not a sound but Duncan’s panting breaths, and the light hiss of the wind on the sand.
“What do you want with me?” he said, not daring to move.
“Do not play the fool with me,” the leader said, his voice full of good humor. “I do not have the time, and sadly, I fear that you do not, either. I want to know how you came here. You have control of the pathways. We need that knowledge.”
“Why?”
“Let us say that Hod has been slim pickings, of late. We are looking for richer grounds.”
“I’ll tell you,” he said, “as soon as we leave the camp, and Anir and his family are left in peace.”
The jackal-man laughed. “You do not appear to be in a position to negotiate. What power to compel me do you have?”
“That depends on how badly you want to know.”
There was a moment’s silence, and the jackal-man guffawed. “He plays his hand boldly! Very well, then, I will game with you, at least until I tire of it.” He paused. “You bargain with your life, that is not enough for you?”
He cleared his throat, tried to move away from the dagger’s edge, but the man’s grip was like steel bands. “No. I want more.”
“What more do you want?”
Duncan’s mind reached blindly for ideas. He had to try to think like one of them. What would he do, if the situation was reversed?
“I will tell you how to jump, in exchange for these people’s lives, and my own, and a cut of whatever you get from your first raid in another world.”
“What if we come away with nothing?”
“Then you owe me nothing but my freedom.”
“And what if my people are killed on this other world? What then?”
“That’s the risk you take. If you’re not willing to take a risk, then stay home.”
Again, a roar of laughter, both from the leader, and from several of his men. Was he making headway? But the knife was still against his neck.
“Let us be clear, here,” the jackal-man said. “You wish something in payment for your knowledge, which is reasonable. Like a bold ruffian, you ask for more than only your life. But I am no child who can be tricked into bargaining away what I have, and get nothing in return. Before we go further, you will tell me how to create the portals and navigate the paths. Or, better still, create a gateway, here, now.”
Was it that the jackal-man didn’t trust him—or did he know Duncan was lying, and was calling his bluff?
“I don’t want to do that with these people watching,” he said. “Do you want them all to have this knowledge as well?”
The leader snorted with scorn. “They are nothing. I know their kind. If they had the knowledge, they would be afraid to use it. Now,”— his arm tightened around Duncan’s chest— “do it. Either tell me how to create the gate, or show that you can do so. I have enjoyed this conversation, but we have far to go tonight, in this world or in another.”
He didn’t respond, didn’t move.
“Did you not hear me? You spoke readily enough before. Tell me how the gateways are created. I tire of this.”
He said, in a thin voice, “What if I told you I don’t know how?”
The jovial tone in the leader’s voice was gone in an instant. “That would be unfortunate for you. And if we then had to take our frustrations out on your friends, you understand that we could hardly be expected to do otherwise, given the circumstances.”
“He doesn’t know,” came Fatima’s voice, from somewhere nearby.
“Oh?” the leader said, and the knife pressed a little harder against his throat, right over his carotid artery. “Then tell me, woman, how did he arrive here, if he did not know the way himself?”
“He came,” Fatima said, “because I summoned him. I have studied the deep magic, and I called him here.”
The man’s grip relaxed, as doubt struck him. “You summoned…” the leader began, but in that instant, Duncan twisted around like a snake and drove his knee up into the man’s crotch.
The breath went out of him in a great whoosh, and he doubled over, the knife in his hand forgotten for a moment. But it would only be a moment. Even hurt, this man was a killer, and would not lose his prey if he could.
Duncan was still too close to land a punch, but he grabbed the man’s mask, and shoved as hard as he could. The leader took a step back, stumbled, and lost his footing. He went over backwards into the spring with a tremendous splash.
The jackal-man’s followers roared with anger, and there was the sound of fighting. But Duncan leaped on top of the fallen leader, trying to hold his head under water, as the man struggled and sputtered. He was far more powerfully built than Duncan, and rage and pain gave him even greater strength. He turned, grabbed Duncan by the shoulders, and in seconds Duncan found the tables turned. He was forced under water, his back scraping on wet sandstone, his hands beating ineffectually at his captor’s arms.
There was a tremendous impact, and the jackal-man’s grip slackened. Duncan came up, coughing, taking in huge gulps of air. He saw, in the faint moonlight, the huge man’s shape in front of him. Light glinted on the point of a razor-sharp sword blade protruding outward from between the man’s ribs.
The jackal-man looked downward at the sword point piercing his chest, with a surprised, disbelieving expression. He looked up at Duncan. Beneath the snout of the mask his mouth opened, as if he were going to say something, but all that came out was a gush of black. Then he collapsed to the side, his blood fouling the clear water of the spring.
There was a whisper of noise. Duncan knew what it was immediately from his hunts with Diana. Arrows, more than one, followed by the thud of impact. Fatima lurched once, twice, three times. Then she fell into his arms, and they, too, collapsed into the shallows of the spring.
The sounds of fighting surged around him, but he barely heard it. He struggled forward until they were both on dry land, and cradled her familiar face in his hands. He put his mouth near her ear, and said, his voice pleading, “No. You can’t die.”
She said, “All things die, Duncan Kyle. I can die. It is the easiest thing in the world.” She attempted a smile. “I wonder which world I will go to now, and by what path?” She grimaced. “Stay here. Stay and help my people.”
And her eyes went blank, under the yellow moonlight, as the fighting raged around them.
He laid her on her side, but turned her head so her sightless eyes faced the stars. Then he leaned over, his face covered by his hands. He had thought that the despair he’d experienced in the catacombs of Malkuth, his terror in being the prey of an amoral huntress in Yesod, was powerful. But here, despair like he’d never known welled up through him, a terrible need to put right things that would not be put right until the worlds ended and were rebuilt anew. He let his head drop until his hair was almost touching the ground, put his hands palm downward against the still-warm sand, and crouched, motionless, next to her still body.
“I can’t bear this,” he said, in a half sob. “I can’t. I can’t.”
Grains of sand slithered out from underneath his fingers, as if they were being blown by the wind. But there was no wind, nothing but screams and shouts and the clashing of weapons nearby. He pressed harder, willing himself to be covered up, swallowed in the earth.
And the earth responded. He was sliding, slipping downwards, falling headfirst into an ever-deepening hole in the desert. He heard a voice—it may have been Anir’s—calling, “Duncan Kyle! You must help us! They are slaughtering us!” But sand poured inwards with him, and he tumbled in, the larger rocks scoring long scrapes on his arms and legs. Then the sand was gone, and there was nothing but empty air, but he still did not open his eyes as he fell, his body flailing and limp.
The impact, when it came, took his breath. He lay there for nearly a minute, gasping like a beached fish, unable to sit up, unable even to open his eyes and see what was around him. But when he did, he had the disorienting feeling that one has at waking from a dream, the momentary wondering, Was that real? Where am I?
He lay on his back in a patch of sunlit lawn, closely mown. A rose garden in full bloom, with a neat edging of red brick, was about three feet away. There were large trees swaying in a warm and gentle breeze, and farther away, a clipped hedge of what looked like holly.
He tried to move. He had sand all over his face, sand in his hair, sand inside his robe. He tried to sit up, and failed.
Then he heard a voice, full of concern and distress, calling, “Mr. Duncan! You poor boy! How did you get all the way out here? And in such a state, too. Your parents will be ever so furious at Doctor for letting you escape!”
Chapter 4
Netzach
Duncan squinted up into the face of a rather ugly middle-aged woman wearing a neat, dark servant’s dress and apron. A white bonnet held back her iron-gray curls. She clasped work-hardened hands together, and said, “Oh, dear. Dear me. We need to get you back inside. I do hope Doctor won’t blame me, but it wasn’t my fault, after all.”
She reached out a hand, and he took it. She helped him to his feet, and then fussed over him, brushing the sand off his shoulders. “Look at you, Mr. Duncan! Whatever can you have been doing? It looks as if you rolled in the dirt. And in your nice white robe, too! I don’t know if Mrs. Nevins will ever be able to get those stains out.”
He looked down. Instead of the cream-colored cotton garment with blue stitching that Fatima had given him, he was now dressed in an old-fashioned white terry-cloth bathrobe. His leather belt with the silver buckle was gone, replaced by a simple tie made from the same material as the robe.
He looked back up at her, and cleared his throat, wincing a little at the dryness. “Who are you? Where is this?”
The woman’s face crinkled up into a hundred sympathetic creases. “Oh, Mr. Duncan, you poor thing. We’d thought you’d taken a turn for the better this morning, but you’re still feverish.” Her voice took on a condescending tone, as if she were talking to a very small child. “I’m Mrs. Banks. I do your room every day, as I’ve done since you were that little. I’ve helped to care for you since you fell ill, three weeks ago.”
“Ill?”
“Scarlet fever, dear.” She applied gentle pressure to his upper arm. “Now, we must get you back indoors. I’d send you right to bed, which is where Doctor would want you, but you’ll need a bath first. I’ll call Mr. Garrett once you’re comfortable. He’ll see you to your bath.”
“Mr. Garrett?” The world spun around him. The aromatic odor of roses surrounded him, powerful enough to overwhelm the senses. It didn’t look real. The greens and pinks and reds of the garden were almost too bright to look at.
Her brows drew together in sympathy. “Your gentleman,” she said, still in the same patronizing voice. “Don’t you fret yourself, now, Mr. Duncan. Your mind will clear soon enough, now the fever’s broke.”
She conducted him uphill and around the corner of the holly hedge, and ahead was an enormous house built of stone and heavy timbers. A two-story glass-walled conservatory was nearest to them. In the windows were huge potted palm trees, orange trees, and lemon trees, with smaller flowering plants tumbling beside them like a colorful waterfall. They crossed a flagstone patio to the left of the conservatory, on which sat tables and chairs and a large parasol in a wrought-iron stand, then went up three steps and through a sliding glass door into the house.
He had never been in a manor house. His family was solid lower-middle class. Still, he recognized opulence and wealth when he saw it. If the outside of the house and Mrs. Banks’s mention of servants weren’t enough, one glance inside was sufficient to communicate to him that these people had money the likes of which most don’t see in a lifetime. His bare feet made no noise on the cold, polished surface of marble flooring. A huge sunroom, with wicker chairs, a piano, and a long, glass-topped table in the center, opened to the left. Down a hallway the marble gave way to hardwood, burnished to a satin finish and the color of rich copper. Oil paintings of people in ornate, uncomfortable clothing, their expressions remote and grim, lined the walls. He almost stopped to look at one of them. The face had a familiar look, despite the odd setting and odd garments.
Mrs. Banks said, “Come, now, Mr. Duncan, we must get you to your bath,” and gave a little nudge that kept him moving.
The hall ended in a wide foyer, three stories high, with windows all the way up to the ceiling. The sunlight was blinding, reflecting from immaculate white walls. She guided him to turn, and they ascended a curving staircase, the steps covered in a runner made from lush green brocade. More paintings lined the wall, figures dressed in red and blue and royal purple, colors so intensely saturated that Duncan had the incongruous thought, I need sunglasses to look at these, something that had never occurred to him even in the harsh sunlight of Hod.
Mrs. Banks helped him to the second floor landing, then down another hallway, much more dimly lit, and into the open door of a sumptuous bedroom. It had a thick wool carpet, dyed a pale green, polished cherry-wood furnishings including a writing desk, a dresser, two large cabinets, an overstuffed chair upholstered in the same green brocade that had covered the stairs, and a four-poster bed. Here were the first signs of disarray he’d come across in this world—the bedclothes were a twisted mess, half on the floor. One of the pillows lay in the middle of the bed, its pillowcase partly pulled off.
“Now don’t you worry, Mr. Duncan,” Mrs. Banks said. “I’ll fix that right up for you. You just sit here”—she directed him to the overstuffed chair— “and don’t you move. I’ll go get Mr. Garrett to draw your bath and help you to it, and I’ll see if Doctor can be found. I must let him know you were playing the truant on us but are none the worse for wear, as far as I can tell, and God be praised for that, for we’d never hear the end of it if you’d relapsed because of it.”
He sat in the chair, and Mrs. Banks scuttled off to find the other servant and the doctor. He watched her go, a perplexed expression on his face.
Be on guard. This wasn’t what it appears to be. It was another of the worlds that Anir had told him about… what had he called it, the Sephirot? And the people in these worlds all wanted the same thing—to be able to do what he did. They tried sex, they tried violence, and now they’d try something else. When this world turned on him—as he knew it would—his survival could depend on paying close attention to everything around him.
He stood, cautiously, still feeling the vertigo he’d had earlier. The room didn’t spin too badly as he rose, holding onto the arm of the chair. A little sand crumbled from his robe onto the carpet.
Sand from the deserts of Hod. But where was he now? Mrs. Banks never did answer that question.
He did a slow circuit of the room. There were more paintings, but instead of portraits these were landscapes, vistas of rolling hills and mist-covered mountains and glistening azure lakes. One wall had an inset bookshelf lined with leather-bound volumes with names like Divine Songs and The Gigantick History of the Two Famous Giants and Original Stories from Real Life and A Description of a Set of Prints from Scripture History. He opened one of them. Hymns for the Youth. It turned out to be a child’s sacred songbook set in an archaic-looking font. The children in the illustrations were uniformly cherubic, with rosy cheeks, blond curls, and small, pink, bow-like mouths. The girls were clad in green dresses with pinafores, their heads encircled with lace bonnets, the boys in what looked like sailor suits, topped with round straw hats.
There was a noise behind him, and Mrs. Banks came bustling back in. She gave him an indulgent laugh. “Oh, Mr. Duncan, you did love that book when you were a boy. Brings back memories, don’t it, looking at the sweet pictures? I bet you still know every one of the songs by heart, just as you did when you were in school.”
He didn’t answer, but closed the book and returned it to the shelf. Mrs. Banks turned her attention to the bed, straightening the pillowcases, and then stripping the rest of the sheets, replacing them with a practiced hand with fresh ones retrieved from a cabinet nearby.
Another person entered the room. He turned to see a tall, balding man, dressed in somber attire, carrying a large brass kettle.
“My, that was fast, Mr. Garrett!” Mrs. Banks said. “Shall you go to your bath, Mr. Duncan? You’ll feel ever so much better.”
“The water was already on to boil, Mrs. Banks,” Mr. Garrett said, in an uninflected voice. “I’ve let Doctor know what happened. He’ll be here to see the young master once he’s out of the bath.” Mr. Garrett gave a little nod toward Duncan. “Sir?” He turned toward a door near the bed that was a little ajar.
He followed Mr. Garrett through, and found himself in a tile-floored bathroom containing a porcelain sink with brass fittings, a gilt-framed mirror, and a small, octagonal window. A large claw-footed tub stood to one side, and a toilet with a chain instead of a handle in the corner. Mr. Garrett went to the tub and gave a brass spigot, with only a single tap, a sharp twist. Water flowed in. He added the hot water from the kettle and after a moment tested it with his finger.
“It is still a shade cool,” he said. “If you find it chilly, I shall fetch more hot water from the kitchen. I had Cook put another kettle on.”
“No, I’m sure it’s fine.”
They stared at each other in silence for a moment.
Mr. Garrett cleared his throat, and said, “May I help you with your robe, sir?” in a voice that held traces of indulgence and embarrassment in equal measure.
“Oh. I guess so.” He untied the belt, and pulled it back. Mr. Garrett slipped it from his shoulders, and he went to the tub, and stepped in.
