Chapter #27Where The Shadows Lie by: imaj   One month later.
The moon fills the sky, its silver face taking up fully half of the heavens. You float in its comforting light, having arrived here when you started meditating a few moments earlier. The rest of the fields of Arbol glitter opposite Sulva, like diamonds arrayed on a black velvet cloth.
As you bob there gently, you can’t help but contemplate Sulva. It’s been your companion for such a long time. More consistently, more reliably, than anything or anyone else. But you have been without another companion, another ousiarch since Macau. Now it’s time to rectify that.
You drift away from the Moon, speeding away till it is once again its normal size. For a moment it seems as if the moon shimmers, and the face-like arrangement of craters and impacts on its surface flickers. It isn’t just one face, but all of them. Every face you’ve worn since you first made the connection with the ousiarch.
You pick up speed and fly out into the distant reaches of the fields. The perfect blue sphere of Eldibria heaves into view. It too is a mirror, giving nothing away. So you plunge below the surface, sinking deep into the water until the accumulated pressure becomes almost too much to bear.
Dark shapes shift in the gloom as the Kraken comes to mark your visit. It regards you with huge beady eyes. You can sense the longing radiating from it and it occurs to you that Eldibria actually misses you. That it wants you back.
But that isn’t what you want. Soon you are soaring upwards, breaking through the surface and out into the inky blackness again. This time you only travel a short distance before you feel a pull again.
You turn and find the roiling surface of Catilindria. There is no pattern or logic to the constant churn and change you see, save for that every time you focus on a specific part it speeds up. You can feel the ousiarch’s hunger here too. You’ve been using Catilindria of late, relying on it more than you ever did when you first had your second ousiarch cut from you, perhaps it wants to make a more permanent connection.
You don’t want that either, so you pull yourself away and head to the dark spot close to the halls of Glundandra where even the stars go out. There you find yourself in pitch blackness till nine figures step out of the darkness. The nine different versions of you that you saw when you visited here long ago with Charles Brennan.
Your gaze first falls on the Glundandra version of yourself. When you saw her previously, years ago, you had been struck by just how much like Rosalie this doppelganger had looked. Looking again at her, you realise she doesn’t just look like Rosalie, it is Rosalie.
As you check the others their faces blur. Malacandra you shifts to Minnie Fierro, Arbol you becomes Verity Walker and Perelandra you turns into Hélène Verdier. You see Gao Chi, Kal Krammer and even Max, the rogue Viritrilbia from Hyde Park. Only when you stare at Kenandandra and Eldibria do you see yourself. For the former, you see your original Will Prescott self, for the latter you see what must be your Siobhan Connor guise.
None of them hold your interest. Instead you search for a patch of space between them. One that seems somehow darker than the rest of the pitch blackness that surrounds it. As you walk towards it, the other versions of you scatter, fading into shadows.
Another one of your counterparts appears. This one bears a superficial resemblance to Rosalie too, but while she looks like Rosalie it would be impossible to mistake the double for the leader of the Stellae. There’s something about the way she holds herself - contemptuous, arrogant and domineering. It is impossible to imagine the real Rosalie behaving in such a way.
“I’ve been waiting a long time,” says not-Rosalie. “We can do such things together.”
She fades from view to be replaced by the ousiarch she represents. It’s almost impossible to see. Only a faint blue halo of refracted light marks the boundary of the jet black surface of the planet from the sable fields of Arbol.
You open yourself to the connection, tentatively at first like all the other connections you’ve made since Macau. Then you solidify the link, establishing a permanence. The onyx disc of your new ousiarch takes up its place inside you alongside the silver one of Sulva.
Nibiru.
The fields of Arbol slip away as you rouse yourself from your meditation, replaced instead by the thrumming machinery of the hotel laundry room. You unfold your legs and clamber to your feet, leaning on a large dryer. The basement room of the Lovelace hotel in Madrid is nearly empty of other people. Only a lone member of the housekeeping staff is in the room with you, and her head is buried in one of the washing machines at the opposite end of the room.
Well, you have a new ousiarch and perhaps it's time to see what you can do with it. Nibiru leaps eagerly to your fingertips when you call for it. For a few seconds it seems as if nothing is happening, then you catch sight of your shadow in the corner of your eye. It waves and stretches, moving utterly independently from the halogen strip lighting lining the ceiling.
You channel your will at your shadow, directing it to stretch out towards the member of the housekeeping staff. You watch in awe as it creeps across the room, surfing over the washers and dryers towards the unsuspecting woman. She freezes in place when your shadow collides into her own. You feel it too, like a taut thread has been strung between you.
“Stand up,” you call out, driven by some impulse you can’t place. To your surprise the woman obediently withdraws her head from the washer and stands as instructed, but then moves no further. “Turn around, come over here.”
The housekeeper turns silently and walks towards you, giving you a chance to observe her. Her face is lined with premature age. Her eyes rheumy and blank, perhaps even before you worked your new found prodigy on the woman. She comes to a halt just a few steps away from you, her slumped shoulders making her seem even shorter than she is.
“Do you have a key to open all the rooms,” you ask. The housekeeper nods slowly. “Even the penthouse suite,” you add. Another nod. “Give it to me.”
The housekeeper unclips a card from her waist with claw-like hands before giving it to you. As you look at it, and the unflattering picture of the woman on it, you see that it isn’t just a keycard but also her ID. An idea starts to form in your head.
“Were you going to clean the rooms Edie,” you ask, reading her name from the card. She nods again. “The top floors?”
“No Sir,” she explains. “Someone else.”
Not a problem, you think, looking at your shadow. You are sure you can convince whoever is cleaning the top floors to swap easily.
“Can I find any more of those uniforms anywhere,” you ask, pointing at her dress. The woman shrugs uncertainly. “Oh, I guess I can take yours,” you tell her, summoning the knockout sigil to your fingertips as she starts to unbutton her dress.
You think this new prodigy will be very useful indeed.
To stop reminiscing, attend to Fi's reports in "A Short Hop" 
 You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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