The Keep

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 39With the image came words. Inaudible yet intelligible they filled Josyff’s mind like those that had come to him when he had been in the Archive and when he had dreamt he was in the courtyard. They shifted and changed, now seemingly from one speaker, if speaker were the appropriate word for such a phenomenon, now from many. And there were so many meanings hovering about them: some straightforward and commonplace, others deeply alien, so much so that he was utterly disorientated when they touched him. Part of him reached out to steady himself...

“Be still, measurer.”

The words were reassuring and calm, reaching deep inside him, but underneath them he could sense a nervousness, fear even, which knew that a mistake — a misjudgement — here would lose something precious.

Just as it had been in the Archive, he thought. It was a human quality and it both intrigued and reassured him.

As did the blankets and the soft comfort of the bed he could feel about him.

Am I awake? Am I drea...

The words intruded.

“You are... elusive, measurer. Now here, now gone, now simple and clear, now tangled beyond all undoing. It is the strangeness you carry with you — you, who should not be — who are so much (smaller? inadequate? incomplete?). You go beyond — to places I (we?) cannot touch (see? hear? know?). It is... unexpected. You... bewilder...”

Josyff had a sensation of complex patterns built from simple shapes repeating over and over and diminishing endlessly, but shifting through impossible geometries. It was gone almost before he could register it. A phrase from the scroll came in its wake and hung there enigmatically — many-faced — but it was almost immediately displaced by an frisson of fear out of which came:

“This is a frightening place you are in (of?), this... nexus... this... knot...”

Nexus, knot — these were the words that Henk said Adroyan had used when the two of them had heard noises — voices? — in the Great Hall. The great knot that bound the Powers!

Josyff felt the fear in the words but it did not affect him — it was as though he were both observing events from some mysterious vantage while at the same time lying safe in his room. What he did feel was a powerful curiosity — a need to question, to inquire into everything that was happening. It tore at him — and he could sense the same urgency hovering about him. Reflection, resonance — the words fluttered about his mind like trapped moths.

Nexus!

“Do you mean the Keep?” Josyff heard his voice speaking softly into the darkness. It stilled the moths.

“How could it come about, this... creation? (monstrosity? impossibility?). How could such a thing be drawn even from the strangeness that the Destroyer carried? So small a thing to bind so much.”

The words were musing, not talking to him.

“Do you mean the Keep?” Josyff pressed. “This building?” Deliberately he visualized such of the Keep as he was familiar with — winding corridors, echoing halls, empty rooms. He thought he sensed a sigh.

“The merest shadow. You cannot see it as it is. It is beyond you.”

Josyff felt challenged. “Show me, then.”

“I (we?) will lose you. You are...”

“Elusive, yes.” Though part of him still felt itself outside and separate from this exchange, another part felt almost excited. “Do not end this. It is important,” it told him.

“Very well,” Josyff conceded. “But tell me who you are.”

There was a long stillness which eventually filled again with disorientating images. They stopped almost immediately, as though sensing his disturbance, leaving only a lingering, “We are.”

Josyff did not pursue his question. Do not end this, it is important!

“What do you want?” he asked instead.

“To be released.”

“What binds you?” Josyff heard himself asking.

He was falling through the dark innards of the clock, grasping at chains which constantly eluded him; he was floating in the blue world with golden threads dancing all about him. But were they chains and threads, or were they... edges? And, pervading all, he could feel the beating of wings reverberating through and around him — a great energy, struggling...

Then all was still and silent.

“This binds us.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No. You are... elusive (small? inadequate?)... it is difficult.”

Unexpectedly, Josyff felt impatient. His years of facing and solving practical problems took over. “It is you who comes to me, distressing me, making me fear for my sanity. I do not know who or what you are, I cannot reach you. Maybe you are no more than a figment of my imagination but if you are not and if you need something from me, explain yourself! Find a way to make it easy!”

Before any reply could be made he grasped for something that was unequivocally real.

“Is it you who’ve closed the drawbridge — trapped us here? Have you done it before?”

“Before? Trapped — bound — yes — the Destroyer — the one whose strangeness had made (shaped?) this impossibility. Bound him as he bound us. Now he is free again.”

“No. He must have died, long ago — as did many others — very unpleasantly — you killed them all when you sealed this place.”

“Died? This is to... be... no more?”

“Yes.”

There was a long silence during which Josyff thought he could sense a debate going on beyond his awareness.

“It is difficult. Even your... existence... is difficult (doubtful?). We (I?) draw from the nearer parts of your strangeness to talk (touch? measure? reach?) you. To be no more is as bad for you as for us? Much feared?”

“Yes.”

“And killed is to make no more?”

“Yes.”

“But the Destroyer is here again.”

“No — he is dead — you killed him — made him no more.” Adroyan’s name came to him. “But perhaps there is one here who might be like him.”

“Another?”

“Perhaps.”

There was another silence; shorter this time, but deep and very still.

“Aah. The spiralling ways of your strangeness — shapes within shapes — ever beyond us. They build. So dangerous.”

“Why did you kill him — and all those others?”

Without pause, the words formed about him with an awful clarity.

“Such is the nature of war.”

Josyff shuddered at their touch, they were so laden with emotions: from bitter regret to cold and ruthless determination; from impotent anguish to screaming vengeance. They burned through him.

“War?” he said, suddenly both frightened and furious. “What war? Whose war?”

“The war. The war we fight to defend ourselves from those who would seize all — bind us to their will — take us into the darkness.”

Josyff felt a fear echoing his own.

“In war, you... you kill your own kind. You don’t kill people who have nothing to do with it! Are you intending to do the same again? Kill us all?”

“We must be released.”

“Yes, you’ve told me that, now answer my question.”

“The Destroyer must be made no more — killed — or terrible harm will come to all.”

“And you would kill me — and the others, for this?”

“The Destroyer must be...”

“Enough! Answer my questions. Explain yourselves properly.”

An uneasy silence formed about him. Abruptly, his rage over-mastered his fear and he burst out, “Know this, whoever or whatever you are, if you threaten me — and my companions here — we will resist — we will fight you.” Something in the silence thrust the next into his head. “We will ally ourselves with the one you call the Destroyer. If you drag us into your war you must take the consequences.”

The silence seemed to curl through his mind until it formed the word, “Wait.”

Slowly, in the wake of this... command? request?... awareness of his surroundings seeped back to Josyff — the comfort of his bed, the muffled clucking of the clock.

What was happening? What was he doing, holding this bizarre debate with... who?... what?... himself?

He must be dreaming. Perhaps his inner mind, prompted by his very thoughts about it as he had clambered into bed and abandoned tasks to it, was showing him some manifestation of its efforts. He felt an unexpected twinge of amusement. The circularity of the idea appealed to him.

Carry on, he thought. It’s entertaining if nothing else. The rage he had vented at the unknown... speaker... had felt good. It had been a release — something that the ordinary circumstances of his life did not readily allow, particularly in recent times. It had surprised him too. He thought of himself as being easy-going and practical — dealing with things the way they were rather than fretting about the way they “ought” to be, and he was certainly not given to angry outbursts. But then, he reflected, how was it possible not to be angry at the New Order and its secretive, repressive ways? It took neither paranoia nor great political insight to see that under an insidious aura of subtle fear and deceit they were quietly corroding ancient freedoms, slowly binding the people to the will of the State, relentlessly gathering more and more power to themselves...

Why?

Like his unexpected anger, the question took him by surprise. Either because of an indifference to politics or because he had been too occupied keeping his position — surviving — it had never really occurred to him before. Perhaps he had realized intuitively that it was a dangerous question — not wisely asked and definitely not to be discussed in public. But now, engaged in this silent debate with himself, it had been asked. Why would the New Order — anyone — seek to hold such power? For control of some kind, presumably; but what kind?

Over the years, he had worked with enough people to know that they — like himself — were not easily controlled. Indeed, people in general were downright slippery, with a consummate flare for getting and going their own way, all too readily avoiding, forgetting, postponing, lying, ‘misunderstanding’, ignoring, when put to a task they did not want to do. So much so that those with the skill to manage such control — true leaders — were both rare and memorable.

Yet even as these thoughts paraded themselves he realized that this must be precisely why the New Order behaved the way it did. It was not interested in the subtleties of civilized leadership, it was sufficient for its need that people obeyed, and fear in turn was sufficient to ensure this. It was a bleak and disturbing conclusion. Not least because the question “why?” remained unanswered. What were the needs of the New Order?

“Power.”

The words were about him again, as though they had never left.

“It is an end in itself for the likes of the Destroyer — its roots are beyond us — deep in their — your — strangeness.”

Unsettled by both the reply and the implications of eavesdropping, Josyff threw the accusation back immediately. “And it is not for you, also? Why do you fight? Come to that, who do you fight? Who would you have power over?”

There was a hint of defensiveness in the reply.

“We fight to survive. We seek no power over others.”

Still angry, Josyff felt the urge to pursue. “And your enemies? Would they say the same if I asked them?”

“Yes.”

The lack of any hesitation somehow diffused Josyff’s anger. It felt like a good omen.

“And who should I believe?”

“Your belief is irrelevant...” Doubt and fear flooded through the words. “Perhaps you are only a creation of our (my?) own desperation — it is difficult. Your very existence — your reality — is doubtful. But if you are as you seem — and I believe it so — you are but an aspect of us — a shadow — an echo. We are different (complex?) beyond your imagining, measurer — we touch (share? coincide?) only by virtue of this...” Josyff caught again a confusion of words — impossibility, monstrosity, obscenity — mingled with his own images of the Keep. “...but we are as you. Judge us and our enemies as you judge yourself and yours.”

“Well, you needn’t doubt my existence. I am here and real. It is you who are the hallucination — the mirage — part of me talking to myself. As for judging people...”

The doubt and fear were gone, replaced by impatience and a commanding determination.

“The Destroyer is with you, you must make him no more. The harm he will do is truly appalling.”

“What do mean, for mercy’s sake?” Josyff replied, in similar vein. “The only person here who might be this... Destroyer... or his kin, is Adroyan, and...”

Before he could finish, the words reached into him and drew out the image that formed around Adroyan’s name.

“Yes, it is he.”

The fear returned, this time almost palpable, and the impatience became a desperate urgency. “He must be made no more.”

For the first time, Josyff felt afraid. Whatever this conversation was, and it could only be one of his own making... surely...? it was going in a disconcerting direction.

But still he followed it...

“This is nonsense — blistering nonsense. What am I supposed to do? I mightn’t like the man, but I can’t... make him no more — kill him! Even with good cause, I doubt I could do it. I’m no fighter... soldier. I don’t have it in me.”

“It is... in... you, measurer — it is... in... us all.”

“You know nothing about me,” Josyff blasted angrily. “And besides, it’s not my war. Why don’t you do it?” An idea came to him. “Crush him with whatever that... force... was that you used to close the drawbridge.”

A weary feeling washed over him like that of an elderly teacher struggling to explain the inexplicable to a persistent but not very bright child.

“To act thus is too dangerous — it could destroy us all — he, like you, carries strangeness and the consequences would be beyond calculation. Your world (plane? dimension?) is bound (made whole? held together?) by the merest reflection of the force that sustains ourselves. It is truly beyond your comprehension, but such of it as we use to seal you — and the Destroyer — within the... nexus... should not be possible. It is only the existence of the nexus itself that makes it so.”

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” Josyff said. “Nexus, nexus! This is just a building — a heap of bricks and mortar — well, stone and mortar, anyway — and some bits of wood and metal. It’s unusual and it’s in a godforsaken place but that’s still all it is. Are you sure you’ve got the right place? Besides, I can’t do anything about it other than survey it — measure it. And Adroyan’s just my superior — my boss — I can’t do anything about him, either, least of all murder him. I have to do as he tells me. And it’s still not my war!” He was still unhappy about the turn of the conversation but somehow unable to disentangle himself.

“It is the nexus, measurer, and it is your war. Your kind made it and bound us thus, only you can release us. If you do not...”

Something changed.

“There is another with us...”