Resolution (5 page)

Confusion whirled inside Tom. Once before, he had picked up Eemur’s Head and kissed her like an automaton, not knowing why he was doing it. While Blight-subsumed soldiers had threatened them, Tom had kissed two sapphire tears from her eyes and gained strange abilities, just for a few moments. For long enough.

But now—

In some fashion, Eemur’s Head had saved his and Elva’s lives. Now, Tom knew he should refuse her request; yet he could not. Deep inside, he did not
want
to refuse.

Eemur.

Tom leaned forward, and then Eemur’s black-and-purple tongue was slithering, slick and icy, inside his mouth. Sucking the warmth from him.

Sapphires sparkled.

What ...?

Cold lightning seared his lips.

Congratulations, my sweet Lord.

Tore his universe apart.

Tom fell
into
that explosion, whorls of brightness flashing past, arced around atoms grown the size of galaxies; fell through the humming strangeness of quarks, the scream of incandescent spacetime whose warp and weave stretched to encompass him.

He dropped through.

Twisting along the Calabi-Yau dimensions, sliding through hyper-geometric crawlspaces beneath the subset revealed to human senses ... he could almost comprehend the mosaic, the eleven-dimensioned tessellae slotting together to form the universe. The human universe, real-space, was just a brane’s width away from ...

Tom slammed into normal size.

He lay on black, gleaming glass, panting hard.

Where the Chaos am I?

It was a cold great metal hall, formed of abstract sculptures: jagged flanges and polygonal sheets of alloy struck odd angles everywhere. Razor-edged obsidian formed angular archways too high and narrow for humans.

Cold...

Overhead, a vertical hanging sheet of bronze crawled with dark-red crystals which spread in fractal trees, blackened into death, then glimmered red once more. Criss-crossed black hawsers webbed the hall; spinning copper disks moved along them.

Interesting place you’ve chosen.

The air felt thick, cold and oily.

‘I’ve
chosen?’ Tom’s words sounded flat. ‘What is this?’

More flanges materialized, sliding into place. A jumble of metallic sheets moved. An angular carapace shifted, and steel eyes opened.

Tom, I think you’d better
...

But Tom was already moving.

Where in Nulapeiron is this?

Stupid question. He ducked behind a sharp-cornered buttress. Had it seen him? He had caught a glimpse of questing pincers which could snip him in half without noticing.

Quickly.

There. A jagged entrance to ... something. Tom pushed away from the buttress, ducked beneath a protrusion which could have taken out his eye, and was into the tunnel.

Things clacked behind him.

Not in Nulapeiron.
This was not his world.

There was a jutting sheet of dull metal which formed a natural hiding place, and he sank down, breathing hard.

‘Where?’ he whispered.

As a boy, Tom had dreamed of leaving the marketplace, perhaps to visit the merchants’ homes in the stratum above ... and now this: another world.

This may be Siganth. Tom, I’m sorry. I followed the link...

Siganth?

‘Don’t be insane.’

I’ve made a mistake, but you have to
—

‘Chaos, Eemur. I believe you.’

Siganth was a distant hellworld out of legend and he could
not
be here, not in any rational universe. Yet Eemur’s silent words rang with truth as well as fear.

‘Eemur? Can you bring me b—?’

The metallic ceiling hinged open, extended black and copper claws, and reached down.

Run, Tom.

He lunged to his feet.

Run fast.

Blades snicked behind him.

~ * ~

4

SIGANTH AD 3423

Scrapes followed him. Clattering filled the air as Tom squeezed between thin flanges which sliced his tunic, drew a dozen scarlet creases along his torso -
Chaos! -
as a series of serrated blades skimmed past his ear. Tom slid through a sharp-edged slot, hauling himself into open air—

No. It can’t be.

—where he hung, blood dripping, fingers hooked onto a corroded flange, and stared down at the streaked metallic cliff-face plunging below. It spread many kilometres to either side, and reared high above. The sky shone purple, streaked with starless black.

A different world.

Or nightmare. But his cuts ached, and they were real.

It was a vast canyon, and the distant opposite wall was chalky and bone-grey, slashed with dull bronze slanted sheets and vanes, each too big to contemplate. In the intervening air, strange, pulsing vortices whirled and broke apart. The breeze which slid across his skin was slick and cold, like frostsnail slime.

Snick-snack
sounded from the shaft behind him.

Time to move.

Changing his grip, crimping hard, Tom swung out onto the exposed metallic cliff-face, squatted into a climber’s frog-position, and boosted himself up.

Movement was odd. Lighter gravity but viscous air ... perhaps. Everything was off-kilter, but there was no time to stop and analyse the differences; he had to keep going.

Tom worked for the climbing moves, used bolt-like protuberances on the metallic cliff to spider his way up. The surface felt rough-smooth, as though covered in fine rust, and when he came to a jutting ledge he stopped, unable to climb further along the blank, sheer face.

Below, a black stalk extended from the shaft he had used, and Tom pulled himself onto the ledge, out of sight.

Did it see me?

There was a steel eye at the stalk’s end. He was almost sure of it.

Eemur. Get me out of this place.

Primeval wails of fear sounded in his mind.