Chapter #36The Man in the Book by: Seuzz   Nash has laid the Libra on the bed. It's an incongruous resting place: centuries-old book of black magic, bound in leather, laying on a chintzy yellow bedspread made of cheap, synthetic fabrics in a twenty-first century hotel room. He's also opened the curtains. The bright Kansas City skyline blocks the horizon and most of the sky, but the Moon will have just risen. It's almost ten-thirty.
You look down at the Libra. Sure enough, spidery, silvery writing has appeared on the normally blank pages at the front of the book. You shiver at the invitation the inscription extends to adepts of Sulva: to "explore within" and make of the Libra a domicile.
You'd felt pleased only a week ago, at the thought that the Libra had come looking for you. How flattering it had felt, how special. Now it feels like a monster that has been stalking you, wanting to devour you.
It's already had you once, and eaten part of you. You no longer have an imago of your own, unless it's the form of a petrified homeless man. It even ate up half of your essentia.
So why are you now planning to dive back into it?
"I'm afraid I've only got looking-glass logic for you, son," Charles had said when you'd asked him that at lunch. "Sulva is a mirror, and Libra is too, of a kind. You went through the looking-glass once, to whatever is on the other side--"
"And got back out again. What if I don't come back, or even less of me comes back? That moon-writing, it talks about the Libra as a 'home'."
"It's not an ordinary book," Charles had replied. "I doubt it's an ordinary mirror. Some magic mirrors are like that. It's a kind of magical pun. You have to go through twice in order to come back once."
"What kind of magic mirrors are out there," you'd asked. Maybe it was curiosity, and maybe it was a desire to change the subject away from a topic that frightened you.
"Oh, various kinds," he'd said. "There was Mr. Vane's mirror, that let him into a world where he met Lilith. He went in and thought he came back out, but he hadn't. He had to go into it again before he could come back out for good." This cryptic little anecdote means nothing to you. "I won't tell you a fairy tale, son," Charles had continued. "You may find it a maze on the inside, as Mr. Vane found in his, and have the devil's own time getting back out again.
If you could have felt even less confidence in the proposed scheme, you would have after the warning about a "maze." But you don't feel any confidence at all.
But it would be impolite to reject Charles Brennan's suggestion out of hand, and you'd just said you'd think about it.
And you had. Your confidence never rose above zero. But back in your hotel room you had taken Joe's mask off and stared at yourself in the mirror. Even if you became trapped in the Libra, could it be worse than being a golem? And exile from reality--a reality that you've cocked up so badly for yourself and for others--might be a fitting punishment.
You remember what it was like being there before. It had seemed blank, and that wasn't so bad. A place of rest. Of meditation. Of penance? Father Ed had suggested your need for such.
You'd sat very quietly in your room, and the numbers on the digital clock had seemed to speed up as you'd thought patiently through things. And at the end you'd gone to Charles and said that you'd hazard it.
"I s'ppose ya jes' lay down onnit," Nash says, and gestures vaguely at the Libra. He tweaks a cigarette from behind his ear, then puts it back. It's a non-smoking room.
"Should I take the mask off?" you ask.
"Prably best," Nash says. "We'd like to keep it, in case--" He doesn't have to finish the sentence.
You take a deep breath. Your last breath in the form of Joe Durras? You don't know whether to hope that it is, or to hope that it isn't. You pull the mask off, and stiffly crouch over the Libra, but before you can turn over to lay on it, Charles grasps you by the arm. His eyes are like deep pools, and though they are still and clear, you can see a universe of emotions in them. Pity and worry are there, as you'd expect. But strength is there, too. And through his grip and into your stony limb you feel a surge of confidence and fearlessness.
For a moment, as you gaze back at him, you no longer see the little old man who welcomed you into Olympia, and who with gentle cheer has carried you along through this unexpected crisis. You see a king: old but hale, and sage. Like a cloak he wraps you in his protection. As you fall back onto the Libra you feel the serene confidence that no harm will come to you, for you are under the care of Glundandra: the King of the Planets.
You fall and fall and fall ...
* * * * *
There's a floor beneath you, and you scramble to your feet. The light is pale and soft and shines all about you, as though the air itself is glowing. You look about. There is no ceiling and no walls. You turn this way and that, but there are no features.
The only thing worse than finding yourself lost in a maze, it occurs to you, is finding yourself with no maze to get lost in. For a lack of anything better to do, you start walking.
You've only taken a few dozen steps when something comes into view: a little dot that seems quite far away. But it grows rapidly bigger as you approach. Impossible though it seems, did you choose the right direction after all? Probably you'd find this thing no matter what direction you set off in.
It's a man, sitting in a rough chair, and bent over a tripod. He's dressed in a white surplice and is staring into a bowl balanced on the tip of the tripod. He looks up as you approach. His cheeks have deep folds, and there is a deep crease between his eyebrows. He is bald but for a few strands of white hair atop his scalp.
A thin shadow of a smile appears on his face. "Wanting your clothes back, are you," he says as he straightens up.
Your clothes? But the question dies on the back of your throat. This world, whatever and wherever it is, seems to belong to this man, who even now is limping toward you with his hands clasped behind his back. You feel no compulsion or warning, just the firm certainty that only he has the right to speak here.
He gives no sign as he looks you up and down, and walks around you in a circle. "Yes, the one who sent you knows his business. Best to give him what he expects, then." He has made a full circuit, and looks at you with eyes that are a pale but intense blue. But there is no flicker behind them, no depths, only emptiness, and for a moment you wonder if he is blind. "I pray your pardon, son," he says softly. "I shouldn't speak at all. Be kind when you speak of me."
His expression had been as blank as his eyes up to now, but now a little shadow appears in it: a shadow of amusement, and of melancholy.
The memory seizes you: You saw him before, on your first visit to this place. Before the sigils had appeared. He had risen from his seat and had asked you your name, and with a croak you had given it to him. Why didn't you remember?
The man limps back over to the tripod, and you totter after him. The tripod and its bowl are much larger than they had appeared--or they have gotten larger--for it looms gigantically, and you peer into it, you find yourself gazing down into what seems to be an enormous pool.
At the bottom, under what seems an immense depth of water, is a human body.
It's your body.
You're seized by vertigo, and fall toward it ...
* * * * *
You gasp, as though rising up through deep water, and open your eyes. There's a ceiling here. You're laying on a bed, and something is prodding you in the back.
A hand seizes yours, and you look over to find Charles peering down at you. "Will?" he says with a smile. "Is that you?"
You blink and look down. His hand encloses yours: a hand of flesh and bone. It's connected to a skinny arm. You sit up and look down. You've a body: lanky and pale, with a little bit of baby fat. Feeling no shyness you scramble off the bed with Charles's help; Nash steps out of the way with a grin as you run for the bathroom. You flick on the light and look in the mirror--
It's your face! A huge grin breaks across it. Your hair is a mess, and you've got those thin whiskers at your chin and lip and cheekbones, but it's your own bony, stupid face!
Charles and Nash smile expectantly as you return. "Will Prescott?" Charles asks again.
"That's me, sir!" The fact of your nakedness doesn't bother you in the least.
"Everything where it should be?"
"I think so, sir!" You duck back into the bathroom and give yourself a more careful going over. You push your hair this way and that, and tilt your head around, and flex all your joints. Yes, everything seems to be there and in perfect working order. "Yes sir," you repeat when you re-emerge. "How long was I gone?"
"Not long," Charles says. "I'm pleased to make your acquaintance."
But there is something subdued in his demeanor. "Is something wrong, sir?"
He hesitates, and then shrugs weakly. "I don't know, Will," he says, and his smile turns lopsided. Your heart suddenly pounds. "You look whole and healthy. It seems too good to be true."
Too good to be true?
"We'd like to make shuah, Will," Nash says, and again tweaks the cigarette from behind his ear.  You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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