A Vestibule of Aktuaht, a place of spiritual well-being. It was a smallish room, square, no more than twenty feet in length and width, the ceiling low and dirty. The alley door was the only way in or out, and the Vestibule was empty.
‘Strange,’ thought Sycamore.
Wall-mounted candles flickered light onto a floor of hard-packed earth, grey and dusty. The staleness of old smoke hung in the air, along with the kind of stillness that suggested only spiders and insects were watching me. No citizens sat on the single rickety pew, which was positioned before a worn stretch of floor flanked by two rows of four wooden pillars and which led to a large brazier atop a stone pedestal. The ghoul of Clay Hysan was nowhere to be seen, but I could feel he was close, detect his stench.
Intrigued, Sycamore steered me between the pillars towards the brazier. Salabese script had been carved into each one, no doubt telling the fables of the afterlife which my possessor found so ludicrous. The black metal dish of the brazier held a layer of ash. Behind it, a faded and flaking picture had been painted on the wall. It depicted a golden sun in a blue sky, shining down onto a thick and lush forest: a representation of the peace and spiritual harmony that supposedly waited on the other side.
On the floor beside the brazier, a wicker basket had been filled with the little brown wings of sycamore seeds. I dug into them with the knife’s blade, unable to prevent Sycamore’s scoff escaping my mouth. Uncertainty was a key factor in faith, and many believed that these seeds provided nourishment for the dead, food for a spirit when it entered the afterlife and journeyed to Aktuaht.
This offended Sycamore.
Aktuaht: a Salabese word which meant judicature or trial. It was the name of the spiritual realm that lay between the land of the living and the other side. A court, of a kind, where the dead received final judgement from three eternal Gardeners: Truth, Mercy and Wrath, the last knights from the Order of Glass and Words, an ancient sect whose calling was to protect the weak and defend justice.
The three Judges of Aktuaht decided whether a spirit deserved condemnation to Nothing or passage to a paradise they called the Garden in the Sky. I prayed now to the Order of Glass and Words, whispered apologies for my atrocities, begged Truth, Mercy and Wrath to put me on trial. If they could save the last of my spirit from Sycamore, then I’d take my chances that Aktuaht would witness a good soul worthy of heaven, where the sky was blue, the sun golden and the land was not a ruined waste.
‘Aktuaht is a lie,’ Sycamore thought to me. ‘Death is death, the other side is freedom, and there is no judgement in between. As for the Knights of Glass and Words, the truth about their Order is better left unsaid.’
I tried not to listen, but his discourse came through feelings that bled into my drowning consciousness, demanding that I comprehend a stark reality of human existence before my death: false faith was easier than no faith, and the Magicians were very good at providing the lies that made life easier to live. They ran the Vestibules of Aktuaht, where, for a single coin, citizens could buy a blessing, burn a handful of seeds and earn the kind of favour that offered peaceful nights of sleep and promises of the Garden in the Sky.
The ash in the brazier was dead and cold. No seeds had been burned for at least a day or more. The candles were lit, but the light shone for no one but me. Why was the Vestibule empty?
Hissing, Clay Hysan materialised between the wooden pillars. His darkness rose from the floor to form a human shape, oozing and dripping shadows. Something about the stance of his featureless ghoul relayed mournfulness rather than vengeful anger.
‘Well?’ Sycamore said, joining him between the pillars. He shrugged my shoulders. ‘You led me here?’
‘Help me,’ Hysan gurgled. ‘I don’t know what I want.’
An odd thing for him to say, given that if there was anything a ghoul knew, then it was definitely what it wanted.
‘Where is your murderer, Clay Hysan?’
‘This isn’t fair!’ The ghoul made a sound like a man screaming underwater. ‘I deserve my peace!’
To Sycamore’s surprise, Hysan’s darkness split, shredded into oily curls that burst and dissipated like puffs of smoke until all that remained where he had stood was a circular leaf of skin upon which thin lines of scabs formed a magical symbol resembling a barren tree.
‘What is this?’
The leaf burned to dust with a blaze of quick fire. The symbol became wisps of crimson mist and flew at me with such speed that Sycamore had no time to dodge them. Each wisp hit me in the chest, one after the other, but there was no sensation of impact as the crimson magic sank through my clothes and pricked at my skin. Sycamore ripped my shirt open, popping buttons, and discovered that the symbol had re-formed on my bloodied and scarred chest, smoking, reeking, searing my flesh as though I had been branded. And that was when I saw it: the thing I had lost and forgotten.
From a chain around my neck hung two wedding bands. One was mine. The other was my wife’s. I had lost her. She was dead.
The door to the Vestibule opened and Clay Hysan’s murderer entered.
Head bald and dressed in a Magician’s gown, the woman from the vision took a few steps before stopping to consider me with the calculating eyes of a hunter. A beast of a man entered after her. Broad, shaggy-haired, almost seven feet tall, he closed the door and stood guard, his cold expression alive with the threat of violence in the candlelight.
Sycamore considered this an interesting turn of events. I tried in vain to recall my wife’s name.
The woman stepped further into the Vestibule. ‘They say a messenger has come to Old Castle from Aktuaht.’ She spoke in Salabese, her voice smooth with confidence. ‘The dead are calling him Sycamore.’ She stopped where the pillars began and gave me a triumphant smile. Her pupils were dilated; there was magic ready at her fingertips. ‘They say you are eternal, inexorable, but I say you are as weak as the blood and bones you wear.’
A Magician’s trap, and Sycamore had blindly walked into it. A situation that was easily remedied, he decided. I lifted the knife, intending to cut my own throat so the spirit of vengeance could release himself from his host, but the Magician said, ‘No you don’t,’ and cast the spell she was holding.
On the pillars, hiding amidst the Salabese script, small words of magic glowed with rose-coloured radiance. The light scratched at the symbol on my chest and fatigue beset every inch of my body. My fingers opened and the knife thudded to the earthy floor. Sycamore dared not let me take a single step lest I fall over, and had me glare at the Magician instead.
‘Oh.’ She pouted mockingly. ‘Have your sins returned to you?’
Behind her, the beast of a man snorted his amusement.
I swayed on my feet. Sycamore wondered if he had underestimated the humans of this city.
Offended, he said, ‘Who are you to dare cast your spells on me?’
The Magician shook her bald head. ‘I’m led to believe that a name in your hands will result in dire consequences.’
‘That depends on who introduces me to you. What have you done with the ghoul of Clay Hysan?’
‘He is … safely hidden from you.’
My lip curled into a snarl. ‘You are a child playing a dangerous game, Magician.’
‘Ah, but it’s a game that I’m winning nonetheless.’
The words of magic on the pillars flared brightly. The spell on my chest grew, the red lines searing out to cover my stomach and snaking around to my back. There was sensation then, a deep, dull ache that didn’t just belong to me but also to my possessor. I felt stronger, my being more intact. And Sycamore … I felt his incredulity as his control faltered. His consciousness began sinking. Mine rose, piecing its shattered parts back together. Sycamore could do nothing as the spell overcame his possession and I reclaimed my body.
The sudden release from subjugation forced a bellow from my mouth, aimed at the Magician in rage and confusion and heartache. She stepped back from me as though wary of a wild animal.
Instinctively, my hand gripped the wedding bands hanging from my neck and I remembered the name of my wife. ‘Eden!’ I shouted; and then, ‘Fuck!’ as pain from my wounds hit me, mixed with my fatigue, and drove me to my knees.
Hot tears ran down my cheeks. Sycamore despaired as he sank deeper inside me, clutching uselessly for a hold that might allow him to clamber back up and into control. But he couldn’t prevent the Magician’s spell from pushing him down and down until we had switched places and he became the helpless observer, trapped in a flesh prison.
The Magician was breathing heavily, both anxious and excited, surprised that her trap had worked.
‘Let’s get him to the old monster,’ she said to her henchman. ‘Quickly.’
Without a word, the man came for me. He grabbed my collar and yanked me up. I barely had the strength to keep my feet on the floor and hung limp and hopeless … until he prised my hand away from the wedding bands. Until he tried to pull the chain from my neck. Then I closed my eyes and summoned a primal fury. Thrashing, screeching, my teeth clamped on the first thing they could find and bit down, hard. A roar of pain preceded the taste of blood in my mouth and I chewed on something tough and difficult to swallow.
The Magician shouted, ‘Tamara, no!’ but couldn’t prevent me from being punched so hard that nothing mattered any more.