The Keep

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 41Josyff woke sharply but did not move. Throughout his discourse he had somehow known himself to be safe in his bed at the Keep and dreaming, but now it took him some time to remember where he was. As he slowly recovered, he levered himself upright and glowered at the clock.

Too early to get up, but he did not feel inclined to go to sleep again.

Time to think, he decided, and lay back again.

He was oddly relaxed. His discussion with — whatever it was — had been deeply strange, but there had been far less of the disturbing disorientation that he had experienced in his previous dreams and in the Archive. And, remarkably, all of it was still there, as clear in his memory as if it had been a routine business meeting — clearer indeed, than many real meetings he’d been to, he reflected ruefully.

What had been a little disturbing was the manifestation of Esyal in the dream. Not her presence — she was, after all, someone currently impinging on his daily life — but the peculiar, not to say downright frightening insight he seemed to have had into her mind: the vivid revelation of an intention to kill Adroyan, the falsity of her lost memory story, her membership of the Rhanen. That must all have been his imagination, of course, he presumed, but this self-reassurance lacked conviction. Perhaps having wilfully invoked his inner problem-solving resources as he went to bed, they were also telling him the meaning of subtle signs he might have picked up from her. All of which left him none the wiser.

For a moment he contemplated telling Esyal he had dreamt of her, but the very prospect of such an admission made him feel like a gawky adolescent and he abandoned it immediately. Nevertheless, whatever the source of his thoughts about her and the reason for them, he would watch her more carefully — there were many questions about her which no one had seriously pursued: how did she come to be wandering alone in the mountains? how could she lose her memory when she showed no signs of injury?

Something made him glance uneasily around the room. Like a shadow in the corner of his eye, there seemed to be something hovering about the edges of his awareness. It was almost as though the figure in his dream was still there, listening, watching... scheming... plotting?

He frowned. The whole thing might have been his own fabrication, but why should he be thinking of a war of all things? The New Order was many things, but it was neither threatened by, nor, as far as he knew, a threat to any neighbouring countries. And even if it were, he would not be able to do anything about it.

“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...”

Your war, your kind — your, plural. Yet the “only you can release us” had been addressed to him personally, he was sure.

The statement had been unfinished, interrupted by the “discovery” of Esyal. Then the voice had turned from him, effectively reducing him to an eavesdropper, while it pursued its conversation with Esyal. Josyff recalled the contained excitement that pervaded everything as Esyal was identified as a warrior. What could it have meant? Even from his limited acquaintance of her, Josyff had little doubt that Esyal would be a problem for anyone who picked on her — but a warrior, a soldier, a fighter? It made no sense.

But what did around here?

The clock clucked at him.

Images of war...

“You and the warrior must make the Destroyer no more. The Enemy has found him and touched him and he is seeking the Focus. Great harm will come to everyone — everything — should he find it.”

Josyff turned over with a growl of irritation as the words reiterated themselves unbidden. Still they made no sense. Then he resorted to what had become his usual solution to the mysteries of this place: do your work, do it well — and quickly — get away from here — back to the city, your wife, even the New Order bureaucrats you have to work with...

Suddenly the room was filled with an intense brightness. Josyff swore violently. His immediate thought was that yet another thing was going wrong with the Keep’s peculiar equipment. Instinctively he turned away, covering his face and head with his arms in anticipation of some form of explosion as whatever was apparently overloading the room’s lamp took its inevitable toll.

But it did not come.

After a moment he cautiously opened his eyes and peered out around his protective arm. The brightness was still there, all around him, throwing deep black shadows into those parts of the room that it could not reach. But it was not emanating from the room’s solitary lamp, which looked dull and grey by comparison, it was floating uncertainly in mid-air between the bed and the door.

Eyes screwed tight and with a shielding hand raised, Josyff peered into it in an attempt to see its source. Is this another dream? he thought, noting, somewhat to his own surprise that he was more curious than afraid.

But the fear was being restrained only temporarily. It began to reassert itself almost immediately, for the light had a baleful, unhealthy tint to it.

Like something rising from some ancient burial swamp, he thought.

His stomach began churning at the sight alone, but worse, far worse, he sensed images forming at the fringes of his mind — foul images. He found himself gritting his teeth and breathing deeply in an attempt to hold them at bay, for he knew that, like vomit, once they began to move they could not be stopped. He knew, too, that his effort would be futile and, like a dark, boiling cloud, they were overwhelming him — sweeping both over and through him. At once fleeting and timeless they possessed him utterly: feral eyes full of cruel knowledge and purposeful malevolence; lank-fingered hands like talons, searching, prying, lusting; black mouths, foetid with decay and necklaced with tearing teeth. But, perhaps worst of all, ancient and primeval desires, scurrying and boiling like maggots on a newly exposed corpse...

His desires, he realized.

He tried to cry out in denial, but could not.

A voice — voices? — like nails down glass rose to mock his denial, hissing out of the horror, cold, venomous and scornful. Josyff felt his skin crawling and then all control leaving him as the words touched him.

{“...measurer...”}

His hands came up again, protectively, as blackness closed about him. Only as it finally engulfed him did he catch a distant note of shrieking frustration in the voice...

...When he opened his eyes, the light was normal again and the room was silent and still, save for the soft steady march of the clock — oddly comforting now.

His mind, though, was still full of echoes of the grasping darkness and, for a moment, he thought he was going to be violently sick. He swung himself upright and round on to the edge of the bed in preparation. The sharp movement made him dizzy and he closed his eyes and pressed his hands down into the bed to steady himself. Again he breathed heavily and deliberately and this time both the nausea and the dizziness passed.

But not the memories...

He glanced at the clock. Scarcely any time had passed since the last time he had looked. Leaning forward he put his head in his hands. He was reluctant to think about what had just happened for fear it might release some other nightmare.

“Measurer.”

Josyff jumped as the voice filled his mind. Before he could speak however, he was once again in the eerie world of shifting perspectives where he had watched the... the speaker... the First Comer...? debating with Esyal. As he looked around, the figure he had seen before slowly appeared from the confusion. It was clearer than before but still he could make not out any details save that, at times, it seemed to be an old man, robed, perhaps like a monk.

“You are safe, measurer. As yet they can scarcely reach you.”

Though there was reassurance in the voice, there was a tension beneath it which effectively negated it.

“Scarcely?” Josyff echoed back. He felt his words twisting into the tension as if they had to be reshaped before they could be understood. He thought he sensed a resigned sigh precursing the reply.

“Many things are coming together that should not. The Nexus makes possible what should not be. It is truly an abomination.”

“In the name of sanity, who are you? And what was that that called my name before?” Josyff burst out, before asking the question he knew could not be answered. “Are you real or are you just... imagination...?”

“We are real, measurer. And, we think, so are you, though we cannot understand how that can be, so diminished must you be. But things are as they are and you are as you are. We cannot know what you perceive (see? think? hear? feel? — so many meanings!) but as we can touch you only through your strangeness so it can only be of your own creating.”

“That voice — that awful voice. And those... things... I saw, were nothing of my making,” Josyff exclaimed angrily. But even as he spoke he knew that he was merely blustering and that what he had seen and heard had indeed emerged from some dark, atavistic part of his own being — grotesque fears and fantasies from... childhood? perhaps even earlier — something that was an integral part of him — of everyone. He was appalled. Suddenly it was as though the innumerable tiny bonds that held his life, his whole self, together, were untying themselves, slipping apart to leave... to leave, what?

He made to cry out but the figure, as if sensing his mounting distress, spoke again.

“We are learning — we are all learning. As the chaos mounts so we find the courage — and the skill — to ride it. So must you.”

The voice was clearer, as was the figure, though it was still predominantly a silhouette. It moved immediately from encouragement to instruction.

“You must seek out the Heart of the Nexus and destroy it.” There was a sense of urgency in both the words and the movement of the figure.

Josyff recovered himself enough to say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You will. You are the only one that can find it. The warrior can protect you.”

“Protect? Protect? From what?”

“From the Destroyer.”

“I don’t...”

“Listen, measurer. Listen, learn — know!” The urgency was greater now. “With the drawing to the Nexus of your strangeness — and the warrior’s — and the Destroyer’s — our world will open into yours, the place that hides the Heart will be unfolded and the Destroyer will gain great power, power that does not belong there. The balance there will be disturbed beyond recall and with it the balance here.”

Part of Josyff was screaming, “Wake up! Wake up!” but as though it had heard the cry, the figure leaned forward, extending its hand in denial. So unexpected was the purposeful movement against the swirling and twisting background that Josyff merely gaped and blinked as the hand continued its movement and came to rest on his shoulder.

“Your confusion, your doubts, are understandable. You have not chosen this way. But nor have we. Chance — or some instrument beyond any of our knowing — has made you as you are and circumstance (alignment? congruence? coincidence?) has brought you — and us — here.”

The figure’s touch was oddly gentle and seemed to suffuse through him, filling the words with complex and subtle meanings. Josyff had an almost overpowering sense of a vast, elaborate structure balanced on the slightest of supports and in such delicate equilibrium that the least breath might bring it down. And too, a sense that such a collapse would send repercussions echoing out and out across unknown and unknowable places and times. That it made no sense to him did not lessen the appalling impact of the impression.

He reached up to touch the hand on his shoulder as if for help.

But it was gone.

As was the figure and everything about it. There had been no hiatus, no fading or diminishing, or even a sense of abrupt change. Josyff was simply sat on the edge of his bed, his hand frozen in its journey to his shoulder. He looked round the room slowly. The experience with the figure had been so clear and intense that it seemed to him for a moment that it was the room and the Keep and everything about his being here that was a dream.

The sensation took some time to pass, but even when his sense of present reality had fully returned, Josyff found himself unable to resort to what had become his normal rationalization of such events; it had been a peculiar dream — a mere reaction to his unusual circumstances. Quickly, but thoroughly and more calmly than he might have expected, he rehearsed the events of the past few days. His mind was remarkably clear. Too many things had been observed by others, not least the smashing of the supports to the drawbridge, for him to attribute them to a personal aberration or some form of mass hysteria. But then, what were the implications of such a conclusion? That somewhere, in a place that was... here yet not here... there were sentient creatures waging a great war — a war that the very existence of the Keep had drawn unnaturally into this world — a war in which Adroyan, Esyal and himself played some pivotal role. It defied all logic, but...

Still he could not reject what had just happened. Literally could not. It refused to leave him — refused to be denied.

He put his hands to his head.

What to do...?

For a little while he was motionless, both physically and mentally. Then the momentum of his practical nature carried him forward.

Either all this was true, real and happening, or it was not. If it was not, then he was definitely in the throes of some kind of mental breakdown. If it was,however, then something appalling was happening... somewhere — he shuddered briefly as he recalled the dreadful voice and the fearful images that had briefly come to him — and he might be caught up in it whether he liked it or not.

Given that he had felt no precursors to any kind of mental distress — indeed, despite the unwanted separation from his wife, he had taken his selection for this job as a reassurance that he was as well established with the New Order as anyone could expect to be — it seemed that he must at least accept the possibility that the manifestations he had witnessed were from... outside himself.

Still, whatever the truth, he decided, he could not do nothing. He began to dress, at the same time mulling over how he might learn more about what had happened without drawing ridicule down on himself, or causing the others alarm. It did not take him long to realize that he would have to find some way of broaching the subject with the only other person who might have experienced the same — Esyal.