THE CROOKED LETTER
The First Book of
the Cataclysm
by Sean Williams
"Understand that the daktyloi have no
creation myth, no gods bringing forth the world from darkness and separating
human from beast. Those are human stories, and this is not a human story you
are about to hear.
"The elohim do, however, tell of a time when the realms were as
one. All beings lived under the same sky and on the same land. Their lives came
and went to similar rhythms. They spoke words all could understand.
"Then Ymir, the first dei, took his shadow and gave it breath,
and, naming it the Molek, set it free in the world to bring disharmony. The
Molek spread disease; it sowed dissent; it turned neighbors into enemies and
set the strong against the weak.
"Ymir's subjects saw pain where there had once been peace, unrest
where there had once been unity. As the Molek rampaged unchecked, it seemed to
them as though Ymir had come to love and cherish pain over life itself. Some
allied themselves with the Molek, seeking advancement among the chaos. Others
stayed resolutely at Ymir's side, even though the dei seemed indifferent to
their fate.
"War ensued, fierce and protracted. Ymir and the Molek, maker and
creation, fought long and hard. What one possessed, the other possessed also,
in equal and opposite measure. Total victory was never possible.
"All felt betrayed, in time, by those to whom they had offered
fealty.
"Finally, when all the combatants were spent, a great silence fell
across the universe. Not the silence of death or emptiness, but the silence of
an indrawn breath before someone speaks.
"So the story continues. The names may change, the rules may
change, the nature of the battlefield itself may change--but the story is the
same. Sometimes the light shines. Other times the shadow falls.
"Ymir's legacy, the elohim came to understand, is not death and
mayhem, but change itself."
The Book of Towers, Fragments 152-158
BEFORE
"The Knife"
"Great works
require great sacrifice."
The Book of Towers, Exegesis 13:13
Hadrian forced his
eyes open. The world shimmered in front of him. Seth was an indistinct shape
moving arrow-straight between leafless trees, out of the frigid park. Hadrian
made a sound like a growl and got his legs working. His balance was shot.
Staggering a little at first, then with more determination, he resumed his
chase. Pain fuelled his anger, and anger fuelled his strength. Exhalations
exploded from him in clouds. He didn't know what he planned to do once he
caught up with his brother, but that he did catch up was vitally important. The
rest of his life faded into the background as this single instant loomed in
significance.
His hands curled
into claws. The taste of blood mingled with the iciness of the city on his
exposed teeth, setting them on edge. His breathing sounded like a long,
sustained roar in his ears.
Buildings rose
around him, growing taller and darker as though glaciers were sliding
vertically from trampled soil. His determination grew. Seth was acting like he
was to blame--and that was so ludicrous it almost didn't bear challenging. But
he had to challenge it, or his brother would have things his way again. Hadrian
had spent his entire life in the shadow of someone who didn't play by the
rules. The time had come to stand up for himself.
Seth vanished precipitously
down a flight of steps. Hadrian was about to follow when a hand grabbed his
coat from behind. He jerked to a halt, startled, and rounded to push his
assailant away.
"Hadrian.
Jesus!" It was Ellis. He lowered his hands at the fright in her hazel
eyes. "What the hell's going on? Have you two been fighting?"
"He went down
there." All thoughts had been focused on catching his brother, but her
presence penetrated his obsession. His words were muffled, nasal. He realized
for the first time how he must look to others, with blood all down his face and
T-shirt, running like a madman or a murderer on some horrible mission. He felt
like a monster.
"Jesus."
There was no sympathy in her stare, just alarm. She took his arm, not to
comfort him but to contain him. He was shaking. His eyes felt swollen, full of
hot tears. "He hit you! Did you hit him? Do you want to hit him?"
"I--" What
had seemed so clear a moment ago was falling apart like gossamer. He shook his
head in confusion. "I don't know."
"Fucking
boys." She softened slightly. "I should get you to the hotel, clean
you up. He'll come back when he's ready." Her stare shifted to something
behind him, and her face tightened. "No, let's keep moving. Down
there." She tugged him in the direction Hadrian had gone. "Are you
okay?"
"Yes." He
was far from sure of it. "Do you think we're being followed again?"
he asked, although behind him he saw nothing out of the ordinary.
She pulled him down
the stairs. His legs threatened to buckle, and he kept up as best he could.
Fluorescent lights cast surreal shadows as they hurried underground. Signs in
foreign languages slid by. An escalator whirred at the end of a long tiled
tunnel, and they took it deeper into the earth, to a subway. There, the air was
dank and thick with fumes. People converged on either side of a row of
turnstiles, jostling, blank faced. Hadrian tightened his coat around himself to
hide the blood on his T-shirt, but his nose was still bleeding. Some of the
commuters noticed and their faces came alive for a moment with surprise.
Ellis moved him
quickly through the crowd, pushing through open turnstiles against the flow to
avoid buying a ticket, ignoring complaints leveled in their wake. A train
waited impatiently at the platform, doors open, half-full. She shouldered her
way to the first of the seven carriages and bundled Hadrian in ahead of her. He
didn't protest. There was nowhere else Seth could have gone but onto the train.
Hadrian felt his brother nearby, tugging at him like a caught thread.
Ellis took him into
the carriage without really watching where she was going. Her attention was
outside, on the people on the platform. Hadrian scanned the passengers in the
carriage and, once certain that Seth wasn't among them, lost interest. His
reflection in a window was frightening: skin washed white under fluorescent
light, mouth and chin splattered with blood; stubbled scalp gleaming as though
covered in oil; eyes wide and full of desperation.
Everything had gone
wrong. It seemed inconceivable that, in the space of a few hours, so much could
change. But it had. The world had shattered into a million pieces, and he
didn't know if he could ever put it back together again …
The doors hissed
shut. The floor moved beneath him.
"I have to find
Seth."
"All right, all
right." Ellis looked bedraggled and weary. Her long brown hair, normally
so sleek and tidy, was greasy and tangled. People were staring at them, these
bloody creatures from another world. Hadrian wondered what they would do if he
jumped on a seat and mooned them; for a wild moment, he was seriously tempted.
Ellis's hand was a
rope pulling him back to the real world. He clutched it and fought another
flood of tears as she led him up the aisle. She was still with him. That was
something. They reached the end of the first carriage and passed through
sliding doors and a loud clamor of metal wheels on rails into the second. They
weren't a focus of attention here; the commuters in this section hadn't
witnessed their sudden arrival, and Hadrian had managed to clean up some of the
blood with his shirt. Newspapers stayed up, eyes down. He and Ellis might not
have existed.
There was no sign of
Seth in the second carriage, or the third. The moment they entered the fourth,
Hadrian saw him immediately. His brother was standing in a relatively clear
space by the doors at the far end, steadying himself with one hand against the
swaying of the train.
Hadrian pushed past
Ellis to get at him.
Seth looked up with
red eyes and visibly winced. He turned away and opened the doors to the fifth
carriage. Hadrian lunged after him, stopping the door sliding shut with one
hand and grabbing at his brother's coat with the other. Seth tried to shrug him
off, but Hadrian scrambled with him into the next swaying carriage.
"I told you to
fuck off, Hade."
"You can't get
rid of me that easily."
"Why are you
doing this to me? What do you want?"
"I want--"
Ellie. His throat closed on the word.
She was between
them, forcing them apart. "Will you two calm down? You're acting like a
couple of kids."
"I'm
sorry," said Hadrian, looking at her then down at his feet, genuinely
appalled at the way things were turning out. "This isn't the way it's
supposed to go."
"No?"
Seth's sarcasm was harsh. "This is the way it always goes. If we're acting
like kids it's because you're dragging us down to your level."
"Me? Are you
serious?" Hadrian faced Seth's accusing stare. He could feel his cheeks
reddening. "You're the one who gets us into this shit. You never think.
You just stumble from one disaster to the next."
"I wouldn't
call El a disaster," said Seth.
"She will be,
the way you're handling it."
"And you could
do better, I suppose?"
"If you'd given
me the chance!"
"I'm right
here, you know. Jesus!" Ellis pushed them back into the gap between the
cars. Seth's hate-filled stare didn't leave Hadrian's as the clanking, roaring
sound enclosed them.
"At least I get
something done." Seth had to shout to be heard. "If I hadn't let you
tag along, you'd still be sitting at home on your arse, jerking off over some
deep and meaningful crap."
"You let me tag along?" Hadrian pushed
aside the finger stabbing at his chest. Although he and his brother were the
same height, he felt as though Seth was bearing down on him, trying to
intimidate him into submission. "I'm always cleaning up after you, picking
up your pieces. You wouldn't have lasted a week out here without me."
"And you're
handling things so beautifully, Hadrian. When I saw you with her--"
"What? You
stopped to ask yourself what she was doing with me, if what you have is so
bloody good?"
"Fuck you,
brother." Seth shoved him. "She's only with us at all because of
me."
"Don't
'brother' me." Hadrian shoved back, ignoring Ellis's attempts to keep them
separated. "There's nothing you can give her that I can't!"
"She saw me
first!"
"Right!"
Ellis backed out of the way, and the two brothers came together, startled. She
raised her hands, absolving herself. "That's it. I've had enough. You can
beat each other senseless and spend the rest of your holidays in hospital for
all I care."
She turned away and
crossed back into the carriage they had left. Hadrian gaped after her, startled
out of his anger. He felt Seth against him, an exact mirror image of surprise
and hurt.
"Ellie,
wait!"
"Come
back!"
Both of them went to
follow her at the same time.
"Stanna!"
The voice came from
behind them, over the roaring of the train. Hadrian turned and grabbed his
brother's arm. Standing with them in the gap between the carriages was the
elderly Swede Seth had confronted in
"Who are
you?" asked Hadrian, his sense of unreality deepening. "What are you
doing here?"
"Tiden har
kommit, Seth och Hadrian Castillo."
"Stay out of
this," said Seth. The use of their names made Hadrian's flesh creep. How
did he know them? How long had he been following them? "It's none of your
business."
The Swede's gray
eyes regarded them coolly. "Tiden har kommitt."
"You can say
that as often as you like but I'm still not going to understand it."
"Your
time," said the man in heavily accented English, "has come."
The door behind them
opened, and Ellis burst back out of the carriage.
"Oh, my
god," she said, seeing the man confronting them.
"Håll
dem." Three people had crowded after Ellis into the swaying space between
the carriages. One grabbed Hadrian's arms from behind him and wrenched them so
he couldn't move. When he tried to break free, it felt as though his shoulders
were being torn apart. Seth cried out in pain as he was similarly restrained.
Ellis kicked back and managed to slip away. With a cry, she pushed past the
Swede and into the next carriage.
"Stopp henne!
Genast!" The Swede's voice cut through the train's thundering with a
commanding edge. Ellis's assailant, a severe-looking woman in a crisp gray
business outfit, went in immediate pursuit.
"What is
this?" gasped Seth, bent almost double by the man who held him--well
dressed, expressionless. "Who are you people?"
The Swede ignored
him. He gestured, and Seth was forced to his knees. The person holding Hadrian
grunted and Hadrian was driven down too.
"We haven't
done anything wrong!" Hadrian gasped.
"Nej." The
Swede shook his head and slid a knife from beneath his coat. The
twenty-centimeter blade was lethally straight, glistening in the dim light. The
train jerked on its tracks, and the man steadied himself against Hadrian's
captor with his empty hand.
Hadrian was unable
to wrench his eyes away from the tip of the blade, bobbing just centimeters from
his chin. It was mesmerizingly sharp.
"Sluta det
nu," said the Swede. A look that might have been regret passed across his
marble features. "Sluta det nu."
"Don't,"
breathed Seth, then, louder: "Don't you touch him!"
The blade swung
aside. Hadrian caught a glimpse of the Swede's thumb and hand as it went,
gripping the black pommel tight. He wasn't wearing gloves. He had no
fingernails.
"Du, då,"
the Swede told Seth.
The blade pulled
back.
"Det gör ingen
skillnad till Yod!"
On the final
syllable, the Swede buried the dagger in Seth's chest, right up to the pommel.
Seth's eyes widened. A noise came from his throat that didn't sound human. His
back arched.
Hadrian howled
wordlessly, filled with primal horror. The old man pulled the knife out of his
brother's chest and a torrent of blood poured from the wound, splashing all of
them. Hadrian had never seen so much blood before. His whole vision seemed to
turn red. He twisted with desperate strength in the grasp of his captor and
almost pulled free. One arm flailed at the Swede, who batted it away as one
would a child. Hands grappled with him, reeled him in, contained him. He
kicked, stamped, writhed, lunged, to no avail.
Beside him, Seth
sagged and fell limply into the spreading pool of his own blood. One hand landed
palm down and clutched at the floor, as though trying to hang on.
"No, no,
no." Ellis sobbed in horror from the doorway of the fourth carriage, where
she was firmly held by her pursuer. Her face twisted into a mask of anguish.
"Seth, no!"
The Swede, slick
with gore, turned to Hadrian. Hadrian twisted to one side, then the other. A
hand went around his throat, pulling him back, exposing his belly. Ellis
screamed. He tried to call her name, but his windpipe was closed tight. He
couldn't make a sound, couldn't breathe. The moment crystallized around him.
The train was rocking on its bogies. He could feel Seth dying on the floor beside him, life's blood ebbing
through the cracks. There was a window leading into the car behind them. Light
shone through from another world. He imagined the other passengers just meters
away, their heads down, consumed by whatever mundane thoughts sustained them on
their journey home.
There would be no
going home for Seth and Hadrian. The Swede nodded and turned away, a look of
satisfaction on his face. Something tore in Hadrian, as though his life had
been ripped in two. Had he been stabbed too? He wondered if he was dying at
that very moment, blissfully unaware of his life's essence gouting from his
suddenly numb body.
Seth!
The last thing he
saw, as darkness fell, was Ellis being dragged away from him and his twin
brother, and the doors of the carriage closing between them.