Red reckoning, p.18
Red Reckoning, page 18
“The rest of us?” Ferraro said, confusion evident on her face. “But what about you?”
“That shitheel the Savage Prophet can glimpse the future, and I’m guessing he’s been using that against us. But he’s not the only one who has access to the Tapestry of Fate.” I shot a look a Sir Gal. “I think it’s time you and I paid a little visit to your boss, Lady Wyrd.”
“But Yancy,” Gal said in all seriousness, “you’ve already visited her realm twice.” He stuck two fingers into the air. “No mortal is permitted to visit more than three times and live. One of those big cosmic rules, meant to prevent mortals from unduly intervening in the events of Fate. Maybe it’s best if I go alone.”
I snorted and rolled my eyes. “Yeah, like I’m gonna trust you with that.” I shook my head. “The Lady Fate owes me answers and I intend to collect. Besides, if there’s a better time than now to talk with the Lady who knows everything, I can’t imagine it.”
Gal’s lips pursed into a thin line as he considered my request. “Fine,” he finally conceded. “I’ll take you, but you won’t be able to play this card again.”
Yet another ending, I mused.
“If we don’t get help, I doubt I’ll be alive long enough for that to matter,” I said. “Let’s get our asses in gear and get some answers.”
Lady Wyrd
GAL EXTENDED HIS HAND and I swear to God what looked like a golden eye blinked open from the center of his palm. An unearthly light blossomed in front of us, a thin horizontal razor slit in the fabric of reality that rotated and stretched until a shimmering doorway hung in the air. He wasn’t using a runic transport stone like the one Lady Fate had given to me so long ago—this was some other power, and it was awesome. Lady Luck could do something similar, and I’d seen the Crook of Winter pull off the same trick while in my possession, but that didn’t mean opening a portal like this was commonplace.
Far from it.
“Neat trick,” I said, “especially for someone who isn’t a mage. Care to teach me how that works?”
“You might find out sooner than you think,” Gal replied with a tired smile.
He clapped me on the shoulder and ushered me through the doorway between dimensions and directly into the yawning cave that served as the Wyrd’s personal living room. The walls were gray rock, the stone smooth and polished through eons, and a few pieces of needlework hung in yellowing frames. There was a quaint wooden table with a trio of stools, a well-worn rocking chair in one corner, a closed cupboard, and a great stone fireplace with a tremendous kettle resting over a cold fire. Place looked like the Twilight Zone version of Little House on the Prairie.
The first time I’d paid the Wyrd a visit, she’d been waiting for me in that rocking chair, but this time, like last, she was nowhere to be seen.
“Where is she?” I asked, looking around.
“She almost never uses the entry room,” Gal said as the golden portal snapped shut behind us with a whisper of power. “This place is for theatrics. Most visitors have a certain image of the Wyrd. In their minds she is this ancient deity who deals with matters of fate and prophecy. This whole aesthetic”—he waved at the spartan, rocky cavern—“reinforces that image. It fills people with awe and uncertainty. Puts them on their toes.” He offered me an easy smile filled with perfectly white teeth. “Plus, the Lady Fate has a flair for the dramatic. The reality of everyday life here is very different.”
He headed deeper into the huge cave, walking with the sure confidence of a man who’d been this way a thousand times before. There was a cleft in the far wall, concealed by inky shadow almost indistinguishable from the surrounding rock. Gal slipped into the fissure and was quickly swallowed by the dark. Fortuna had brought me this way once before, but there was still something rather intimidating about wading into the dark, the sound of my heart pounding in my ears, while I felt my way through the snaking passageway, running my hands along the stone.
The tunnel turned and weaved, but after about a minute of steady trekking, the gloom gave way to a spectral cerulean glow. At first the light was faint, but it grew brighter by the step, seeping from the stonework itself, cast by veins of deep blue crystal embedded within the rocky walls. Those branching lines of blue reminded me of actual veins, lying just under the surface of stone skin.
“Shouldn’t be too much further,” Gal called back over his shoulder, boots clicking as he walked.
The crevice opened up into a proper tunnelway with dark corridors branching off in every direction. The last time I’d visited, Fortuna had guided me past a variety of rooms that showcased landscapes that existed on no world I was familiar with. Majestic places with sweeping mountain ranges and unnatural jungles filled with hungry monsters and slumbering horrors. This time, however, Gal hooked a right and guided me toward a suite with a more mundane nature. We walked past dreary office spaces, manned by a small platoon of ashen-skinned men and women with huge spidery hands and luminescent green eyes.
Goblins, at least I thought that’s what they were. Although these were dressed in gray suits and pencil skirts. They clacked away on ol’ fashioned typewriters and scurried around, sending messages zipping along through an elaborate series of pneumatic tubes. There were other rooms filled with blinking screens and frazzled looking goblins working furiously away at enormous switchboards. Mostly, they ignored our presence, methodically going about their tasks. A few, strolling through the halls, offered us polite, though eerie smiles and informal bows or curtseys to Gal.
“Don’t worry about them,” Gal said over his shoulder. “The Trow get a bad rep because of how they look, but they are some of the friendliest, hardest working folk I have ever had the privilege of serving with.”
We rounded a corner and Gal’s face lit up when it landed on a sparkplug of a Trow sipping on a cup of joe and chain-smoking cigarettes. He was balding, bleary eyed, and had a small pile of butts accumulating next to him.
“Zachmo!” Gal crowed, angling for the break room with its laminate-topped tables, microwave, and percolating coffee machine.
“You should grab a cup of coffee,” Gal said to me as an aside, waving toward the pot. “The Trow make the meanest cup of coffee you’ve ever tasted.”
“We need it,” the dumpy Goblin, Zachmo, said. “Lady Wyrd has us up for twenty-hour shifts at a time. My guys are this close”—he held up a spidery thumb and forefinger—“to breaking from the workload.” He grunted, shook his head, and took another deep drag of his cigarette. “I’m telling you what, Gal, when this is over and done with, we unionize. I know the fate of the world is in the balance, yada, yada, yada, but I deserve more vacation time, dammit!”
“Zachmo is the head foreman for the Archivists,” Gal explained as I pulled out the pot and poured myself a Styrofoam cup full of piping hot coffee that smelled like jet fuel and Heaven in equal measure. I took a sip and felt a jolt of energy race down my spine and along my limbs like a bolt of lightning.
“Holy crap, what the hell do you guys doctor this stuff with?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow.
“Ground Lamia Talon,” Zachmo replied in all seriousness. “Hits hard, but it’s one helluva pick-me-up.”
I winced and took another swig. Tasted like a combination of hot tar and burning gasoline, but he wasn’t wrong about the extra pep in my step.
“Mind if I bum a cigarette?” I asked.
He sniffed, nodded, and slowly fished a Camel from the pack. Not Reds, but it would do. I popped it into my mouth and conjured a flicker of flame, just above my thumb. A few deep inhales and the cherry was burning like a falling star, filling me up with hope and delicious nicotine.
“Been pretty bad around here, huh?” Gal asked, leaning up against the countertop and folding his arms.
“Bad. Bad is such an insufficient word,” Zachmo replied. “Bad is running late, stubbing your toe, and spilling hot coffee down the front of a clean shirt. This? Oh, this is a grade A clusterfuck. This is running late, pile driving your car into the side of a semi, catapulting through the windshield, and landing in pile of rusty nails.” He humphed and rubbed at his temples. “It’s bullshit is what it is. The whole thing.”
“Man can I relate,” I said, alternating between the cigarette and the joe. “That sounds exactly like my past couple of days.”
“Yeah, no shit,” the grouchy creature growled. “Who do you think is making all the extra work for us, huh? You and your friends, that’s who. The future is flickering like a TV with bad reception.”
“Could be worse,” I said, taking another deep puff.
“Don’t see how,” he replied with a frown.
“Well, you have all your limbs,” I said, thinking of Levi, “so there’s that. And a Vampire Overlord didn’t play surgeon with your guts.”
“I suppose,” he admitted begrudgingly. “Though, I gotta say, if you think a Vampire Overlord playing surgeon with your guts is bad, you should probably stop drinking the coffee. Just a word of warning.”
I couldn’t help but grin as I took another slug. “So what exactly do Archivists do?” I asked, eyeing the little critter askew.
“Eh. How to explain.” He grimaced and seesawed his head. “Lady Wyrd, she sees the future, right? But all of them all at once. A great big jumble of shit. She codifies her visions and sends them down to us through the tubes. We catalogue ’em, sort ’em, and search for deviations and flag major variances for the Analysts to deal with. Data entry, but of all the information on the planet, sorted by historic importance and continuity relevance.”
“You’re Google,” I said, ashing my smoke with a flick of my fingers.
“Eh. That’s a close enough explanation for government work. Usually our job is time intensive but straightforward. Not like the Analysts’ or the Agents’. Usually, the future is reliable. Ish. I mean there are deviations, sure, but mostly people follow the loop and go with the flow of history future. The most probable future has a sorta weight to it—it exerts pressure backward that compels people to conform. At least in the big things. But now everything is in flux.” He wobbled a hand back and forth. “You and your pals broke the system. It’s a cataloguing nightmare.”
“Well, we appreciate the work,” Gal said, giving the Trow a nod. “Best if we get out of your hair. Don’t suppose you know where we can find the Lady?”
“Where do you think she is? And Gal? Maybe sort this shit out, huh? I miss watching Monday night football.” He rounded on me, one spidery hand planted on his hip, the other clutching his mug. “You... You stop fucking around with the fate of the world.”
With that he turned and trundled back down the hall, not even offering us a backward glance. Honestly, it was one of the most pleasant interactions I’d ever had with a supernatural entity. Usually they were pretentious, power-tripping assbags, but that guy was no-nonsense and knew the score. I had a pretty limited experience with the Trow, but if Zachmo was in any way representative of the species then maybe they really did get a bad rap.
I killed my joe with one last gulp and tossed the cup along with my spent cigarette butt.
Gal and I set off in the opposite direction of the grumpy Archivist Foreman, passing more workspaces, which slowly gave way to formidable storage facilities filled with just about everything you could think of. Historic furniture. A warehouse filled with cars and motorcycles from every conceivable time period. Everything from the OG Ford Model T to a sleek silver Rolls-Royce Phantom. My steps faltered and I let out a low whistle as my eye drank up the sights. ’65 Porsche 356 Speedster, ’29 Bentley Blower—matte green, spare tire fixed to the side, and a great big ol’ Union Jack on the hood—a sleek cheery-red Mini, a souped-up ’67 GTO.
God, these assholes even had a McLaren. I mean, it was a little flashy for my tastes—nothing like an understated El Camino with a custom camper shell—but it was still a friggin’ McLaren.
“What the hell do you need all these cars for?” I asked as Gal coaxed me back into motion.
“Most of them are for me,” he said, somehow managing to not sound smug about it. “Or for some of the other agents. Never know where in the timeline we’ll have to go to fix things, and we can’t go around hotwiring cars. The Lady takes care of us.”
We passed another warehouse, or maybe, more accurately, an armory, bristling with weapons. All the weapons.
Gleaming blades in every shape and variety neatly lined a wall—Japanese katanas, curved Moorish scimitars, European bastard swords, Roman gladiuses, nimble rapiers with elaborate basket hilts, inward curving falcatas. Next to them sat battle-axes, maces, various polearms, and war hammers. But there was also a huge array of modern armaments. Shelves and shelves full of ’em. Civil War era muzzle-loaded muskets propped up against M4s and AKs. A table full of frag grenades and flash-bangs brushing shoulders with German stalk grenades from WWI. And handguns galore. Enough to arm a battalion of troops.
Not to mention bigger caliber behemoths that I would literally kill to get my hands on. Browning .50 caliber heavy machine guns. Beefy chain guns. A Milkor MGL lightweight automatic grenade launcher. And sitting in the back of the room, like the bad boy in the class, was a M777 Howitzer.
Another room on the right was identical to the armory, but instead filled with body armor ranging from segmented metal Roman lorica to modern tactical Kevlar.
“I’m guessing that goes for all that shit too, huh?” I asked, hooking a thumb toward the armaments.
“What can I say, Lady Wyrd makes sure we have the right equipment for the right job,” he replied with a shrug.
“Yeah, wish someone would’ve let me in on that fact,” I muttered as the room disappeared. “I don’t suppose she would let me take the Rolls out for a spin, huh? Could be wrong, but I think having a Phantom might just be mission critical.”
Gal chuckled. “It’s going to be a hard sell. Lady Wyrd is mostly allowed to influence past and future—so long as it keeps the timeline straight—but her ability to influence the present is limited to mortal champions. She only has so much leeway.”
“Well that sounds like a bunch of bullshit to me.”
“It has to do with free will,” he said, glancing back over one shoulder. “The past already is—that which must be. No free will to subvert. And the future is but a shadow of that which might be. You cannot unduly influence that which is not yet. But the present is the stage where free will plays out, and the White King has firmly decreed that we can only do so much in that arena. It’s part of the reason I have to tread carefully with my involvement. Especially since I’m acting as stand-in for Lady Fortuna.”
“Speaking of,” I said. “Any idea where she is? Or if she’s okay. Seems like a goddess, even a lower one, going missing can’t be a good sign.”
“You’re right there,” he said with a grim nod. “That’s part of the reason things have been so chaotic. As for whether she’s okay...” He spread his hands wide. “We don’t know. Best guess, she’s lost somewhere in the Mists of Fate. Perhaps stranded in a future timeline?”
That explanation didn’t sit easy with me.
Lady Fortuna was tough, she had about two thousand years’ worth of experience to draw from, and she had some serious powers of her own. Not least of which was the ability to influence Luck. As far as I knew, she couldn’t make the improbable happen—that was the arena of Fate itself—but luck was inexplicably intertwined with Fate. A little luck could be the difference between a bullet hitting your shoulder instead of your heart. Luck was a drunk driver zipping through a red light and narrowly missing a kid in the intersection. That was Fortuna’s work at play. Tweaking and influencing the little things.
But I’ve learned through years of harsh experience that enough little things over time can lead to big changes.
“Okay, but what would have the power to hold someone like Lady Fortuna against her will?” I asked more for myself than anyone else. “I mean, have you met her? She is scary good at her job. It would take some sort of major power to tangle with her.”
“Can’t argue with you,” Gal replied, falling into an uneasy silence.
“There’s something you’re not telling me,” I said after a long beat. “I can read you like a book. What is it?”
“Some things are best left unknown,” he said with a tightlipped smile. “We’re here.”
Straight ahead was a drawn gate, preventing us from going further. It was a towering thing of dark wood, ancient brass fixtures, and runic symbols gleaming like radiant moonlight. “Welcome to the Archive proper.”
“Not my first rodeo,” I said with an eye roll, “and we don’t have any more time for the melodrama.” I marched past him without waiting for a reply and walked headlong into the gate. A sizzle like the static from a high energy line washed over me, goosebumps racing along my arms. In an eyeblink, I passed from the hallway and onto a rough stone platform hanging over a massive chasm. An unending abyss stretched out in every direction and huge boulders of craggy stone—some the size of small mountains—hung suspended in the air, completely unsupported. Defying every law of physics.
Running between the boulders like delicate spider webbing was radiant spun silk. The Tapestry of Fate, indecipherable to all save the Spinner of Fate itself, Lady Wyrd the Three-Faced Hag. Well, her and those like the Prophet who could glimpse bits and pieces of the majestic tangle.
“Ah,” came a crooning voice from high above the mass of webs. “One of my wayward children has returned, and not a moment too soon. Welcome, Yancy Lazarus, my Hand of Fate...”
