Chapter 21 – Mission I
With purpose we die,
Shed no tears.
Before you cry,
Recall our years.
I
Taf stretched and glanced to her companion, one she hoped would again feel the same about her as he did before her recent changes. At the moment he seemed to think mostly of home.
For now they were again alone together in their suite, yet not for much longer it would seem. Hura had plans, and those plans included Jorden.
Taf stroked the silver fur that Moonwater had brought to the room that morning, a gift of Hura. The aestri had never before been able to keep one of her coats, the hair usually shed over several days before the final shedding of flesh. “It's beautiful,” she said, showing the expertly tailored overcoat to Jorden. “I wonder how Hura did such a thing. There are thousands of aestri who would give a limb for such a coat.” A gift to be treasured and seldom worn, Taf hanging hers carefully on a hook.
Jorden glanced toward the garment and nodded. “Lovely,” he agreed, yet it was obvious that his mind was elsewhere.
He was at present laying on a bed that was fit for a king, a broad expanse of silky red that was littered with dozens of cushions, still feeling overdressed in the remains of a dark suit Moonwater had insisted he wear on their last outing in the inner sanctum of the castle. Taf was wrapped in a blue skirt and a white blouse that smothered her chest and belly, Hura suggesting that any less covering might bring about the wrath of the castle kaedith.
Taf wandered past the bath toward Jorden. “Thinking of home,” she said quietly, “or perhaps this great duty you have been brought here for.” She sat upon the foot of the bed, dark eyes flashing in the lamplight. Her hair shone like never before, her skin smoother, and her face glowed. The transformation had rejuvenated the aestri, Taf more youthful than ever – as she had once said: those who did not return to their first form seldom lived as long and well. Jorden could believe that. Taf looked younger, and more beautiful than ever. It was hard to think of her as thirty. She still looked younger than himself.
“Both,” he said at last. “I'm wondering what my mother is going to think when I turn up with Hura at my side, especially after all this time. I don't even know if she'll be home, but I'm guessing Hura knows more of what's going on out there than she is saying. And frankly I'm wondering what all of this is about.” He shook his head. “I don't even know why Hura has brought me here...”
Taf smiled. It was a comforting smile of very white and almost human teeth. “I'm sure she will tell you when she is ready. It is important for you to be here, otherwise Hura would not have done such a thing.”
The man frowned. He knew the aestri would not question the ways of the witch-god, a god who had supposedly brought the aestri and burgo out of the animal kingdom and into mainstream society – well, nearly – yet Jorden couldn't help feeling that Hura was not telling all. “I guess,” he said, “but what I don't understand is why Tsarin didn't keep me at her place. If she knew Hura placed the crystal and that I was brought to this world to save it, then why have me locked in the bowels of the Katerina and sailing all over the Domain.”
The aestri shrugged. “The kaedith may not have known all, just that you were wanted by Hura.” Then she sighed. “But it would not have mattered. Tsarin still had her precinct to consider, and she could not have you running about kissing her and thinking evil thoughts, could she! Anyway, if it were not for her then we would not have met!” Taf crawled nearer and stroked Jorden's fabric-clad legs.
Jorden smiled. “And where would I be now?”
Little thought was needed, the aestri answering without pause. “Dead, several times. But I would do it all again. I would die for you, Jorden.”
The aestri had a way of making life difficult.
Jorden was thinking of home; thinking of leaving the Domain forever. Taf was a cat, he reminded himself, a huge toothy thing with razor claws... But she wasn't. Aestri Finesilver was actually a very attractive woman, albeit one that looked quite young, that was slowly crawling up the bed toward him. She was also a woman who had indeed saved the life of Jorden Miles on numerous occasions, putting herself in peril that most friends would have avoided. She had already come very near to dying for him.
And she really did like him, indeed perhaps loved him. There were no others in the whole twisted universe that she even thought of in such a way. Jorden considered what he had offered in return. Nothing. She had fed him and protected him and taught him the way of the land and remained his friend, no matter what, while all he wanted was to get out of the place. Jorden felt suddenly quite guilty.
He sighed and tried to forget about all those little things that really weren't all that important, like the fact that Taf was a large toothy feline and that Hura had plans for him that could well kill him for all he knew. “You don't have to die for me,” he said. “I couldn't live with myself. I care too much about you.” Indeed the difficulties of her first form were passing, but that just brought new difficulties, like making it harder for him to leave the madhouse of the Domain.
She nodded and smiled. “I know. And I think I have loved you since the day we met, and believe that I always will.” She paused. It was a long difficult pause. “But I will die for you... one day. Suzy has foreseen it, and she would not say such a thing unless it was certain. It will not be soon, I hope. She has promised me that much.”
Jorden had lost his smile, the soft, prophetic words of the aestri more disturbing than any she had uttered before. These were thoughts that she had undoubtedly carried since Saljid. Then she kissed, Jorden backing away momentarily.
“I thought that you were one that liked the touching of lips,” she said, her face close to that of the man.
Jorden was at a loss. His life became more complex all the time.
II
Jorden and Finesilver were still in each others embrace when Moonwater unexpectedly entered the room, yet only Jorden panicked and backed away.
Taf did not seem concerned, and simply smiled. “Embarrassed?” she directed toward Jorden. “Afraid that she might think we have been doing things that man and aestri shouldn't.”
Jorden flicked his gaze toward Moonwater, thinking he caught the hint of a blush and a mouthed apology for entering without warning. He cleared his throat and wiped his face on a sleeve.
“She already knows we are close, silly. Everyone in the inner court knows. And if you should save the Domain then I doubt that any will care. We may be the first of many couples that are of different orders, Jorden.”
He hadn't really thought of the two of them as a couple as yet, Taf looking into a hopeful future that Jorden was avoiding for now. But it was a different way of looking at it, that was true. They may well be trendsetters.
Moonwater approached with the tray of food, her eye first to Taf then to still somewhat uncomfortable Jorden. She tried a feeble smile. “Sorry,” her eye flicked back to the aestri. “If I am disturbing anything...” She glanced back to the door.
“No,” Jorden said unconvincingly, and added “of course not” for good measure. “And we're starving.” That part was truth, but it didn't sound any more so than the rest of Jorden's words.
Taf glanced briefly toward Jorden before returning her gaze, and smile, to her fellow aestri. “Had you come slightly later you may have seen more,” She teased playfully. “For now it was just a kiss.”
Moonwater nodded. It was all a little strange to her, but her curiosity was high. She also noticed the unease of the common man. “Oh, Good,” she said, unsure, and set the tray upon a low table near the bath.
“Jorden is still afraid of what others may think,” Taf went on, “but I don't care any more...”
“Perhaps you can chat about that later, Taf,” Jorden said as he approached the table to review lunch, or dinner, or whatever meal it was supposed to be. Twenty-four hour night made life difficult, and biological clocks went wild. “I'm sure Moonwater wo
uld love to hear all about it, preferably while I'm away.
“And how are you today,” he then directed toward Moonwater.
“I am well,” she said, smiling somewhat easier. “There are few guests within the court, and little work this morning.”
Jorden nodded. “Any news from upstairs?”
“Hura would like to see you after your meal.” Another nod. “Both of you.”
Both? Jorden considered. It was odd that Hura would specify both. Taf usually tagged along anyway. “My last meal, perhaps.” Hura had not mentioned any of the risks of the forthcoming mission, yet neither had she mentioned its ease. In fact she had mentioned very little at all, except that it was something to do with the quakes, and that was a bad sign in Jorden's book. The quakes had been quite severe at times and he recalled the damage they had seen. Anything to do with the quakes was likely to be dangerous.
“Suzy said that your death was not near, silly,” Taf said as she peeked beneath the lid of a silver dish. Moist, fresh meat. “Sit and eat, Moonie, there is more than enough.
The two aestri sat and began the meal, chattering noisily.
Jorden moaned.
III
“I don't understand,” Jorden said at last. There was quite a lot he did not understand, yet one line of thought was presently on his mind, and so he asked about that. “I don't see how you can leave from here. I thought the transition line near Thagul was nearest Tasmania.”
There were several entities in the well lit room high in the tower, mostly common women and perhaps kaedith. Jorden was not sure. Hura was there and so was Taf, The others were not particularly significant as far as Jorden was concerned. In the centre of the room was a relatively small grey stone, small meaning that it was a mere three metres in diameter and two high, and attached to it were hundreds of short brass-coloured rods. Surrounding that were four banks of crystal arrays containing hundreds of huge violet gems that were connected to what looked like thick brown ropes, ropes that disappeared into the ceiling above.
Hura sighed. She was too busy for such idle chat, yet if she expected his aid... “The lines are merely the representations of lowest energy potential, and are therefore the ideal places for transitions, especially ones that are to be set up for some time like the one you came though. They require so little power that a crystalline representation can last for many cycles before dispersal.” She noted the blank stare. “The green crystal.”
Jorden nodded, as did Taf. “Oh,” he said. “Obviously.”
“Transitions from here, however,” the witch went on, “take somewhat more excitement, hence the need for this.” She motioned toward the grey stone. “It may seem like something of a waste, yet the power required for the transition will be negligible compared to what will be require in your world, Jorden Miles.”
“Required for what?” he asked in response. He began to conjure images within his mind that were not altogether pleasant.
Hura smiled. “Nothing that will be noticed... well noticed perhaps, but not out of the ordinary. You will see in time, and will understand some of the difficulties that I have faced. It's a hard world for the likes of myself and Taf, and now it will be for you as well. We three will require this power simply to survive.”
“Taf?” Jorden wondered aloud. “Taf isn't going... She can't exist...”
The words of the outsider to the Domain were drowned by the mechanism, the four crystal arrays thrust inward by four assistants to the witch-god. The room was suddenly filled with a chilling cold, the rumble of continuous thunder echoing from the walls.
Hura again ignored Jorden and left the room.
IV
There was not all that much in the transition room of Hura Ghiana. A square was marked upon the floor, four large green crystals at each corner, and there was an arch above. That was about it, the room essentially bare.
And the time had apparently come.
The three stood outside the square, Jorden feeling very overdressed in the suit Hura had supplied and Moonwater continually insisted he wear. She considered it far more respectable clothing for a common man than the kilt. Hura was again in her jeans, Taf dressed in her blue skirt much as she had always been while within the castle since her transformation. Jorden was still unsure of why Taf was going along, especially since he had been told repeatedly that she could not survive. All he could get from Hura was “trust me.” Taf seemed unworried about any of it, indeed eager for the chance to see another world outside the Domain. “And you are sure my mother is home?” he asked again. “And Taf will be okay?”
Hura simply glared back at him.
Taf eased toward the square, glancing back to Jorden. “There is nothing to fear. Hura would never harm me.”
Jorden remained nervous. “I really would prefer to see my mother alone if possible. This is going to be hard enough to explain without you two there...” He still had no clue what he was going to say, and he was hoping she would be so happy to see him that words wouldn't matter.
Hura shook her head. “She will not see either of us, believe me. Remember this will be a very brief visit, and it will be quite late in the evening. Your mother may well be asleep.”
“Asleep!” Jorden whined. “Can't we at least leave it until morning, What the hell do you expect me to do, leave a note.”
The witch sighed. “I would love to wait until morning, Jorden, but we must go now. This is not an easy task to achieve, and this one transition has taken months to prepare. If it fails then I want to leave myself ample time for other attempts. If your only option is to leave a note, then that is what you will have to do.”
Jorden stared angrily. If it were not for Taf and her confidence in her god... “Well then, what are we waiting for. I have a mother to wake.”
Hura smiled, then moved into the square.
The outsider did not like the smile, but followed anyway, on into the hazy green opening that had formed within the arch. There was a moment of weightlessness and the transition was complete.
It was that quick...
There were several things that came to the immediate attention of Jorden Miles. The first and most notable thing was that the transition had been extremely smooth, as had the transition into the land of Gulliver's fingerlings, another was that it was quite dim, another was that he was standing upon his very own front lawn.
These were not, however, the things that told Jorden something was drastically wrong. He knew that the world about him should not have been tinged in red as it now was, and he knew that it should not have wavered and moved about. Everything was somehow slightly ill defined, like a reflection in a murky pond. It also did not seem right that his arms should glow faintly the way they did, as did Taf and Hura.
In the driveway ahead was a car that was going nowhere fast, a statement that meant something in reality. Or did it? Jorden looked closer. There were two very well constructed mannequins in the front of the vehicle and a faint cloud hovering behind, and a statue of Jorden's mother waved goodbye on the verandah of his home. Jorden moved closer, finding the glow surrounding him slightly restrictive, and studied the car, a car which crawled from the driveway at the pace of an average snail. It took Jorden several minutes to notice that it moved at all. The people didn't. Attempts to rouse their attention failed miserably.
He turned to Hura, Taf gazing about in wonder at her side. “What the hell have you done,” he said in what voice he could muster, breath somehow inhibited as well.
And by the magic of Hura, the others heard. “Nothing,” the witch said as she approached. “This is your world as it appears to me, although I know it is not really like this for those who live here.”
“Who is that,” Taf pointed toward his mother, Joanne. “She's beautiful.”
Jorden heard Taf, yet had other matters to clear with Hura first. “I want to know what the hell is going on, and I want to know now,” he said angrily. “You've been screwing me around for long enough.” That was an unde
rstatement.
“Everything?” Hura returned, and Jorden nodded. She shrugged. “You know who those people are, the friends of your stepfather that you came to the Domain to avoid. They have come, and now they are leaving. You have been away from home for...” and she paused to think. “A few hours, no more. Your mother hasn't missed you, fool, she thinks you are spending the night elsewhere to avoid these people.” And Hura laughed.
“Bull,” Jorden yelled, but it was true. It was all quite painfully true. He had been living a nightmare for weeks, fallen in love with a cat, been attacked by nearly every order in the Domain, and been lied to by its god – all in a few short hours. He let loose with a string of abuse toward Hura. Nobody would ever believe a word of it; he'd get locked away in minutes.
He calmed himself. A few hours. It was impossible.
The car kept rolling from the drive, yet Jorden doubted he would live long enough to see it back out on to the road to Pyengana. He went instead to stand beside Joanne on the verandah, glazed eyes staring through him as if he wasn't there. “Your mother?” Taf asked as she climbed the stair behind him, a nod received. “She's pretty.”
“I suppose,” Jorden said absently as he touched the face of the woman he had not seen in so long. There was a tingling as he did, and her skin felt like stone. It was her though, it had to be, and this was his home.
“Don't stand too long in front of her,” Hura warned. “She will eventually see a shadow of yourself and it may frighten. Visitors from the shard worlds often frighten those of your world, I fear.”
Jorden shook his head. “I don't understand, I just don't understand any of this. I've been gone for weeks...”
“My world exists in a different time-scale, Jorden, and this one is all but stationary by comparison. That is why time is on my side. That is why time is on your side.”
“Why is everything so red in your world?” Taf asked. “It is so hard to see, even for me...”
“It isn't,” Jorden barked angrily, then calmed as he noticed Taf's frown. “Sorry,” he said more gently. “This is all just too much to handle.”
It was Hura who offered an explanation. “There are a great many difficulties in us being here. We couldn't see the light of this world, or breath its air, or even walk with such ease if it were not the field that surrounds us. Local air has the approximate density of water, Jorden.”
The outsider was sure that everything she said made sense, to another madman, but she did not answer the real questions. “Why the hell am I here? I can hardly do anything like this. I have things that I want to say, explanations to give...”
“Don't be so stupid,” Hura said impatiently. “What exactly do you think you need to do or explain! Don't you get it yet, fool. You have all the time you want. You can live a lifetime within the Domain and return here next month. You can leave a note saying that you've gone off by yourself to think for a few days. Run away from home. Whatever.”
“So I go to your world and get nice and old, then come back just so she can say how badly I've aged.”
The steel grey eyes of Hura Ghiana were fixed upon him. “A man of this world does not age in mine, Jorden, not at any great rate at least. I offer something approaching immortality. What does your world offer?”
Jorden found it difficult to respond, moving inside the house and away from the sight of Hura.
V
Jorden began on the note. It was not an easy task, writing with a brick was never easy. True, the thing within his grasp was not a brick, and it wasn't really as heavy as a brick, but it was just as hard to manoeuvre. It was actually a pencil, a very sluggish pencil Jorden had seen lying next to a notebook on a small table so many weeks ago... or that afternoon depending on one's frame of reference.
It was all still a little difficult to accept, but then if he couldn't believe his eyes then he was already mad and it didn't really matter what he did. And if Jorden did believe his eyes then all that Hura had said made a lot of sense. He could live with Taf in her world for perhaps years without his mother ever noticing.
The past returned, and Jorden recalled how Tsarin had aged so greatly in the week he had been away from the Domain. When he first stepped into that odd forest, Taf would have been perhaps half her present age. It was all a little hard to take in.
Jorden eventually pushed the pencil aside, and watched as it drifted in space, continuing to write with the much lighter piece of graphite that had just parted from the rest. He glanced to the clock, a useless timepiece that was stuck at five to eleven. It didn't tell him that the note had taken the equivalent of half an hour to write.
He backed from the table and looked toward Hura who now stood nearby. “Immortal, eh? Easy as that.”
Hura shrugged. “Immortal enough. After a few hundred years you tire of life and become sick of watching your friends age and die. You don't want it, believe me. It's a bit of a painful existence.” Words of wisdom from one that knew of such, Jorden assumed. “It's surely enough to know you can remain in the Domain without losing any of your life in this world, although as I have said, the longer you remain in my world, the more difficult the return.
“In less than two cycles you must return, and you would need to remain for at least several days. Stay too long in the Domain and the transition is far from pleasant, and often fatal. But that's after many cycles. Of course there may not be all that many cycles left if these earthquakes are not put to an end.”
“What a nice house,” Taf was saying as she walked about in the kitchen, ignoring the others and wishing there was something that wasn't stone. Even the water had the consistency of hard clay, quite undrinkable even if she could lift the jug within a lifetime.
The earthquakes again, Jorden thought. Hura had been very vague about this mission of hers and the cause of the earthquakes, yet it was clear that Jorden's world was involved. “Okay, so how do you stop earthquakes, or Domainquakes, and how am I suppose to be any help?” He had asked that question before without a satisfactory answer.
Taf tried to dislodge a large red bottle from a shelf, yet no matter how hard she pulled, she succeeded in barely shifting it. She gave up in disgust and lifted a very heavy knife from the surface of the table and watched it float slowly toward the ceiling in awe. It was a really exciting place.
“I need a map to check my bearings,” Hura said, ignoring Jorden's questions. “My own map of the waters of the Bass Strait was not the most accurate, and my last entry wasn't all that great. I was going to try a different approach this time, although it may take a little longer.”
It took some time to retrieve the atlas from the shelf, and quite a while longer to open it at the right page. By that time Taf had managed to coax several dirty dishes and quite a few bottles into motion about the kitchen, and had now progressed to the lounge. There were several interesting items there: a large black box with a glass front that did nothing, a silver box with numerous silver knobs that did nothing, books that were all but stuck to the shelves.
The aestri then tired of such things and watched Jorden and Hura struggle with the atlas.
In time, the witch pointed. “There,” she said. “We will try there.”
Jorden didn't understand, but he nodded.
The car was nearly on the road when they went outside.
VI
Joanne watched her somewhat uncomfortable visitors leave, smiling and waving while she quietly cursed her new husband who had passed out from somewhat too much drink over an hour ago. She disregarded the shadow that passed before her, it was a dark night after all, yet she could not disregard the sounds of violence that suddenly erupted within the house. There was a roar, then the crashing of a large number of dishes, and a deep thumping...
She went to the kitchen and stared in disbelief. There wasn't anyone there, yet the signs were that someone had passed though the kitchen in much the same way as a tornado would pass idly through a town. Dishes were smashed against every wall, bottles of a dozen
sauces and flavourings bled onto the floor, a knife was embedded to the hilt in the ceiling above, and a milk jug that had been left to soak in the sink was shattered.
Bill, she thought... No, he was comatose on the couch. Jorden. It had to be.
It was not until the next morning that she found the extremely badly written and very odd note.
It read:
Dear Mum,
I am starting to think I've gone mad and have been living in another world. I have met a nice girl who is also a cat. You would like her.
Don't worry about me, I will be back soon. I just need clear my head for a while.
Love, Jorden.
Joanne Miles, understandably, did not believe a word of it.