Crossroads (30 page)

"Why not? Why couldn’t both of us just skedaddle off this island and never look back?"

Silky sighed. "I couldn’t because of this," he said, reaching into his shirt and drawing out a small silver pendant on a silver chain. "This is who I am. It’s part of a commitment I made to Shandan Graves and to a lot of others, forty some odd years ago. And because of that, there’s nowhere I can run, nowhere I can hide, but it wouldn’t matter anyway. All I’m trying to do now is to help Shandan, to maybe buy him and me and you and everyone else just a little more time. That’s all we have, really."

"Time for what, Silky? What is it you think is gonna happen?"

"The end of the world, Clem," said Silky, burying the pick between two heavy stones again and leaning his back into it.

Chapter 39

Kira awakened to the sound of gasps and moans and a man’s voice crooning the name Cynthia over and over. The bald-headed man sat spraddle-legged on the Whinegrass floor, the woman's head in his hands. The Elder knelt beside them cooing something reassuring. Jen knelt by Kira’s side, but Sheila stood alone in the center of the frond-walled enclosure, staring around her in total disbelief. Kira rose slowly to her feet and went to Sheila, placing one hand gently on her arm.

"I’m sorry I had to make you a monster," she said, quietly.

"What?" said Sheila, in a groggy voice.

"When the Grigs came," said Kira. "I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I’m sorry."

Sheila stared at her with raised eyebrows. "You did that?"

Kira nodded.

"Where are we?" asked the prostrate woman as soon as she opened her eyes. "How did we get here?"

"They call this Otherworld," said Kira, "but I’m not sure how you got here. I was dreaming."

"You must have called for Jen," said Sheila.

Kira frowned, nodding.

"And she came," said Sheila. "I guess she brought all of us with her."

"I want to go home," said the woman, her voice becoming fearful. "Max, take me home!"

They all looked at Kira, but she didn’t know how she had gotten them all here, much less how to send any of them home. As usual, this was all her fault, but she didn’t know why or what else she might have done anywhere along the way.

"Where’s my mother?" asked Sheila, glancing around the
room.

"She isn’t here?" asked Kira. "She didn’t come through with you?"

"She was in the repair shop with us," muttered Sheila, in a worried voice. "Then we were here. She must have gotten left behind. I have to go back-"

"She’s a ghost, Sheila," said Kira. "Nothing can hurt her there."

"But she’s all alone-"

"No, she isn’t. You said yourself there were ghosts everywhere."

"None that she knows," argued Sheila. "It’s my fault now that she’s alone. I can’t just leave her like that. If we have to be here, now, why can’t we call her here somehow, send Jen to get her or something?

"A ghost cannot pass this crossroad," said the Elder, rising.

"What?" said Sheila.

The Elder nodded. "In life the crossroads are open. Through dreams mostly. In death they are closed. Your mother is in the world in which she was born. She cannot leave it now."

"I need to go back, then," insisted Sheila. "I can’t leave her there alone."

"I believe you are safer here than where you were," said the Elder. "In any case, your fate is here."

"What do you know about my fate?" said Sheila, bristling.

The Elder shrugged. "I can see into some futures, although darkly. I tell you now, if you return to your mother you may indeed comfort her or yourself, but you have a part to play
here
. In leaving you muddy the waters here, and as it is, already I fear for what comes. Without you my fear doubles."

Sheila frowned. "Me? What possible part could I play in whatever’s going on here?"

"We all play a part in what my beloved has called the Great Game. Now it draws near a conclusion. For good or ill I beg you to remain for at least a time with us."

Sheila looked at Kira and finally sighed, settling to the grassy floor in resignation.

"Who are you?" Max’s wife inquired of the Elder. "Why are we here?"

"Stomper!" called the Elder, and almost immediately the boy appeared. "Take our new guests to another satch where they may rest. Answer any of their questions that you can. I would have a word with Kira."

She nodded toward the group, but Kira shook her head.

"What you have to say you can say in front of Sheila and Jen."

The Elder crossed her arms, staring for a long moment into Kira’s eyes.

"All right," she said at last, studying the group again, "but there is no reason for
them
to stay." She pointed toward Max and his wife. "Their future is not with you."

"How do you know that?" asked Sheila. "How can you know any of what you say?"

"Your mother reads fortunes, Sheila," said Kira. "She’s not the only one who can do that."

"Because she’s an Original," said Jen, simply.

Sheila glared at her, but the Elder regarded Jen strangely, as though seeing more there than she expected to.

Max helped his wife to her feet, and when Stomper took her other arm Kira noticed that she smiled at the boy.

"All right," she said, "but Max has to get back to work soon. Don’t you, honey?"

Max nodded, glancing once at Sheila before following Stomper and his wife away through the giant leaves. Kira noticed that the Elder stared after them for a long moment before turning back to her, and the old woman had a curious look on her face.

"Grigs attacked you on the other side?" she said, glancing from face to face for confirmation. "Their power grows with each passing moment."

I can feel your hours slipping through my fingers like sand.

"Why?" asked Kira. "What’s making them smarter? Why are they getting stronger?"

"The Mogul learns to use the Oculets. He has captured almost all of them, and as his power grows so do the powers of his minions. I have been to the mountain this dawn and seen the Encroachment. It spreads like a foul wave across the forest. Soon it will reach the most distant of our enclaves. The Lost have no way of doing battle with such a scourge."

"What’s she talking about, Kira?" asked Sheila, shaking her head. "What is this place?"

"This is Otherworld," said the Elder. "It is the place of dreams, or rather the Dreamtime is. You are now in what is left of the Original forest. All that remains outside the Encroachment, what the Dreamtime has become under the control of the Mogul."

"The
Empty-eyed-man
?" asked Kira.

"One and the same," said the Elder. "Forty of your years ago a few of the Originals escaped. During that time the Mogul has cemented his power here, always working to find a way to grasp the last of the Oculets and wrest control of all of Otherworld and thus control of all."

"Those Originals escaped to our world," said Kira.

"All but two," corrected the Elder. Her expression said that she was surprised they didn’t understand. "Myself and Shandan Graves."

"Why didn’t you and Shandan escape?" asked Sheila.

The Elder shook her head. "Shandan could not. He is the only power that stops the Mogul from crossing with all his power into your world or any other, and I chose to remain with the Lost who had no one else to teach them to fight against the Encroachment. They deserved a mentor who would remain with them until the end."

"This is weirder than any rabbit hole I ever heard of," said Sheila, staring around the satch.

"What happened to you all after I left?" asked Kira.

Sheila told her.

"I’m sorry," said Kira. "I’m sorry I dragged you and your mother into this."

Sheila frowned. "It wasn’t your fault."

"No," said the Elder. "It was not. Fate finds us all."

"I don’t like the way you look at me or Jen," Sheila said to the Elder. "I feel a little like a juicy bit of meat."

Kira nodded. "She looks at me that way sometimes, too."

"I’m sorry if my countenance disturbs you," said the Elder. "I mean no harm nor any disrespect."

And with that she exited the satch.

"I get the feeling we’re in as much trouble here as we were before," muttered Sheila.

All Kira could do was nod.

Chapter 40

Shandan Graves stared around the room that had been his refuge, his home, his cell, his cloister, for forty long years, wondering for the millionth time if there was not some other turning he might have taken, one decision he might have changed which would have led to a different future than the one he sensed crashing down upon them all. There was one and only one he was always forced to return to, but he did not have the power to turn back the clock and change it.

In the eternity of the Dreamtime, before the coming of the Mogul, Shandan had once been a tall, well-built, powerful man. His shoulders were still broad and barely stooped. His hair, though now white, was still full, tied with a leather noose into a tight pony tail. He wore the same heavy wool robe that he had worn ever since the day he had locked himself away within the Hall of Mirrors, and yet it was still white as snow.

Looking glasses glistened all around him in the room that measured exactly thirty by forty of his own paces. As he wandered for the millionth time down its length-his sandals knocking softly against the polished granite floor-he paid no heed to the
images
as he passed. Another man might have been shocked to notice that opposing mirrors reflected not himself, nor even each other in their endless shrinking corridors, but other rooms, other places, some mundane, some so alien as to make it difficult to decide whether the image might have been distorted in some misunderstood or indecipherable way. And yet there
were
other mirrors
within
the mirrors, long shrinking hallways fading into obscurity in the infinite distance.

Shandan knew that to stare into the mirrors was to view other worlds. Worlds uncounted if one considered that there were more mirrors within
those
worlds, and each mirror was a passageway to another dimension, if one simply had the key. Shandan knew all that because he had created the mirrors and the hall. This was all his handiwork, his masterpiece, his downfall and his ruin.

And the ruin of all.

He was the Creator, and now what the world needed above all else was a destroyer, but unlike the one destroyer that he knew, this required a being with a soul, with a heart. One who could destroy only what needed to be destroyed and yet who might still experience the grief inherent in the necessity.

Until the Mogul, Shandan had never considered that one of his creations might be turned to evil, and until Shandan’s masterpiece was completed he had known nothing of the Mogul’s treachery. Creating the Hall of Mirrors had seemed to be the epitome of his eons of work and study, the fulfillment of a long held vision, to be able to journey physically beyond the borders of Otherworld, to explore the myriad realms from which all the dreamers came. Since the beginning of time Otherworld had been a
destination
for the souls of others, the place where their dreams and sometimes their nightmares lived, and the Originals had existed to mold and manage those infinite dreams, but Otherworlders had no dreams of their own. Sleep to them was just a little death, and since Shandan could not make it otherwise he sought to find a way to travel to those millions of other worlds, to see them in person. If the Originals could never dream, at least they could witness the fruits of their labors by seeing the living persons who had experienced the dreams they helped to create.

Instead he had opened his own world and all the others to an unspeakable horror, and instead of journeying to new worlds he had spent the past forty years trapped within these four walls. He stopped in front of the one mirror that looked out upon Otherworld. Of all the
real
worlds the mirrors had revealed to him, none had compared to the beauty of Otherworld. How ironic that in searching for other universes to explore he had first decimated the paradise among them. At least a few of the Originals had survived all these years. He pictured his granddaughter, Kira, so young and beautiful, and strong, and brave, and a single tear flowed down his cheek. What terrors still awaited her? How might she die? Ripped to shreds by Grigs or tortured and enslaved by the Mogul?

After all the years of torment, the thought was almost more than he could bear.

One chance remained, a die he had cast that had not yet tumbled to a stop.

Jen.

He had spent forty years creating her, and then set her free. She had found her way to Kira just as she was supposed to do, and she had saved Kira even when the Mogul’s shadow and his horrid Grigs overwhelmed and murdered Shandan’s other flesh and blood. But he had failed to give her enough power to truly think on her own, enough strength to make it to the final end. She had not been enough. Attempting to augment his creation from within the confines of the Hall of Mirrors, he had inadvertently unleashed a burst of energy that had nearly killed Silky and buried the one mirror that opened onto the Island.

Time was running out. But was it all drawing to an end for Otherworld and the Originals, or would the Mogul finally overreach himself? It all depended now upon the winds of fate, the staunch strength of his young granddaughter, and the unknowable exigencies of friendship. It was all in the hands of the Great Game.

Shandan smiled, sadly.

It was all a matter of playing the right pieces at the right time. It was always about time.

He stared at the empty frame beside the mirror onto Otherworld and then glanced down at the neat pile of glass dust at his feet. He had carried that mirror into this hall forty years ago and shattered it with clinched fists, then ground the shard into that dust through the mill of his powerful hands, until the mirror was nothing and no being like the Mogul could ever pass through it again, but of course the damage had already been done.