Hallucinations
If anything, the ruined expanse of Gatesmithe looked even worse than what they’d described to Kithri along the way.
The sky was grey and overcast, as though the sun itself didn’t want to look down on this mess. Kithri whistled as she looked around at the broken walls, rotted wood, discolored metal, and piles of stone. Everywhere she looked there was more and more absence of anything that resembled civilization.
Marweg led the other three through the debris, as he seemed to know where Winstead’s old house might be. Kithri kept her eyes open for threats, but the landscape was clear: nothing on the horizon or right in front of them, no sound but the wind streaming through the old houses.
“. . . Nephthys. . . .”‡
Kithri’s pace slowed, and the others widened the gap between them. She strained her ears for a moment, listening intently. The moment stretched on, on. Silence. Stillness.
The crunch of gravel underfoot broke her reverie. Nothing there. Perhaps she’d imagined it. She began to catch up to the others.
“. . . my dear Nephthys, I have missed you so much. . . .”
She stopped. As her body turned to find the sourceless voice the landscape grew faint and pale. Turning around again only helped Gatesmithe disappear faster, and all around her the color faded. For a moment there was only static and monochrome, and then it resolved into crescent white on a darkness that swallowed her whole.
The warehouse was that most functional of shapes for construction, the cube, and was slowly giving away its geometric precision to the ravages of time and neglect. The windows were boarded up. Lichen grew in the expanding cracks. Discoloration variegated the old brick walls, and the wood of the doors looked less than sturdy.
“This is the place?” asked Ward. M. Broche gave a rather noisy snort of disapproval.
Marweg nodded. “This is the spot where she said she lived,” he said. The ribbon creature that had accompanied him at the ceremony had disappeared some time ago, and he appeared far less grand as he stared forlornly at the old building.
“Do you mind if we go in?” Rhea asked Kithri. She didn’t answer, seemingly lost in thought.
Ward looked at Kithri carefully. She’d kept up, if a bit slowly, but she almost seemed like she was sleepwalking. It bothered him.
“I’ll go first.” Marweg said, squaring his shoulders and taking a deep breath. He gingerly took the handle and eased the door open.
At first glance there was little to note. The medium-sized room was mostly empty. The window along the entry wall was boarded, and the wall was uncovered brick. A few wooden crates were carelessly stacked against the right-hand wall, while a tall mirror hung opposite, showing their dingy reflection. A sunken mattress rested off-center on the floor, and a book splayed spine-up on the pillow. Another door nearly opposite the entry stood closed.
Marweg looked the mattress over. Stains of various shades and saturations decorated the material. A hospitable spot for bedbugs, he thought.
He tentatively picked up the book on the pillow. Crime and Punishment, by Dostoevsky.* The humidity of the room began to feel stifling. He felt sweat bead up, and he wiped the moisture from his brow. A faint skittering of small footsteps rustled in leaves behind him. He turned.
The room hadn’t moved, but now foliage had crept over the walls and spread across the floor. The mirror still hung on the wall, but vines and creepers now held it in place. The shrill hooting of a small monkey caused a raucous debate between the birds in the treetops. The mattress seemed spongy, like a fungal outgrowth. The sounds and smells of the jungle surrounded him, and he realized he was completely alone.
The medium-sized room was mostly empty. The window along the entry wall was boarded, and the wall was uncovered brick. A few wooden crates were carelessly stacked against the right-hand wall, while a tall mirror hung opposite, showing their dingy reflection. A sunken mattress sat off-center on the floor, and a book splayed spine-up on the pillow. Another door nearly opposite the entry stood closed.
“Winstead?” Rhea didn’t expect an answer, but it was worth a shot. She stared at the blank room, annoyed by its ordinariness. “I wish I had his fancy compass,” she grumbled as she gave the room an appraising stare. The mirror looked promising but merely reflected her face like any mirror might. Predictable and utterly dull. She picked up the book and began to read the open page, but soon set it down, bored.
Something moved in her periphery. She looked up. The rippling surface of the mirror stilled a moment later.
She walked up to it again and tapped the surface with a pencil. When nothing happened, she pressed her hand against the mirror, staring at her own eyes. Slowly adding pressure, she felt a sudden quiver beneath her palm and a shiver in the space around her. The reflection looked no different. She turned, and started as her gaze traveled down the length of the hall she now stood in.
Quickly removing her hand from the mirror, she slowly started down the long hallway. It must once have looked elegant but now smelled musty and disused. Evenly spaced and distant from each other were three mirrors on one wall and three more on the side she had entered from, alternating with geometrical precision. At the far end of the hall stood a closed door with a brass doorknob.
She approached the first of the three mirrors on the other wall, and it reflected her normally. Dismissing it, she came to the next, which had a gilded frame. It also reflected her perfectly, but as she turned away it rippled ever so gently.
She came back to it with a smile. “Hello,” she said, brushing her hand against the glass, “where might you lead?”
“And remember, you’re looking for signs of Winstead or any way back to Gatesmithe from wherever we are now. Explore the area, but please don’t lose sight of me.”‡
The newly summoned Spindlerieve fluttered its ribbons at him and flowed off. Marweg tried to calm his beating heart enough to hear the sounds around him a bit better. The animal calls were oddly tranquil, and he tried to comprehend what they were saying. Hearing nothing threatening, he turned toward a curious rustling. A fractal monkey emerged from the foliage, its limbs branching recursively, its loping gait equally hilarious and evolutionarily doomed. With an expenditure of magical effort, Marweg produced an unknown fruit in his hand, hoping to draw the creature to him.¶
The monkey snatched the fruit and stumbled away. Marweg tried to ask it where it was going, but it just turned around and screamed at him before munching the fruit in a comically tragic way. Then it screamed again as ribbons blew past it.
Spindlerieve returned, billowing. As it gently touched Marweg’s arm, it communicated to him that he was still in Gatesmithe, but there were no signs of Winstead. Something else was there, and not in distress.
The book and the mirror still seemed to be themselves, but everything else around him had morphed into vegetation. Marweg, intrigued by Spindlerieve’s report, followed the monkey’s path. He’d never seen tracks like this in his life before. The hands at the ends of the arms at the ends. . . no, stop right there. The extremities grew so fine that he feared they would break under the monkey’s weight as it traveled. As he moved forward, the trees closed in around and behind him, though never cutting off his retreat. As he emerged out of a large bush he forgot about the monkey completely.
There before him was the strangest creature he’d ever fallen in love with. It had a coat of beautiful light golden brown and white wool, ears that pricked up in curiosity, and two long necks that let it get a good view back at him. The entire creature looked like a llama that had walked halfway through a mirror, looked back at itself, and decided it liked the new look. One head dropped to drink from the pool it knelt beside, while the head on the other end stared at him unblinking.
Marweg had already started mental renovations to his menagerie even as he realized what he was seeing.
“A pushmi-pullyu!” he gasped.*
The medium-sized room was mostly empty. The window along the entry wall was boarded, and the wall was uncovered brick. A few wooden crates were carelessly stacked against the right-hand wall, while a tall mirror hung opposite, showing their dingy reflection. A sunken mattress sat off-center on the floor, and a book splayed spine-up on the pillow. Another door nearly opposite the entry stood closed.
Ward picked up the book with half-hearted curiosity and looked at it.‡
“Yes, yes.” Porfiry couldn’t sit still. “Your attitude to crime is pretty clear to me now, but . . . excuse me for my impertinence (I am really ashamed to be worrying you like this), you see, you’ve removed my anxiety . . .“
“Ah, Dostoevsky,” murmured M. Broche.
“Who? Oh, right, the author.” Ward tried to act as though he’d known all along and put the book down hurriedly.
A loud crackburst behind him, and he jumped to stare at the mirror.
It was unbroken, but the walls and ceiling showed spiderweb cracks all down their surfaces. The fissures shifted, expanded, and parts of the room began to subduct.
A whirring noise near the mirror caught his ear. He approached it.
“Is there something weird about this mirror?” he asked.
“Not at all, it is quite banal,” replied M. Broche.
Ward peered behind the mirror. A gap had grown between the mirror and the wall. Several gears, a latch, and a small lever rewarded his investigation. Cut into the wall next to them were three numbers and a word.
“One five seven, Red? What does that mean?” he asked.
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“Then I guess there’s only one way to find out.” Ward grabbed the lever and pulled.‡
A thought kept trying to grab his attention, but Marweg only had eyes for the pushmi-pullyu. He could see himself now, showing Früz and Smick the newest addition to his menagerie, the centerpiece of a pet show in the Marquis Quarter, his acquisitions the envy of fellow collectors, his insights and observations opening the role of lecturer of the Lattice Vitale to him. His body froze as his mind whirled with hopes and imagined successes. It took a minute for him to attend to the doubts underneath.
This is too good to be true. It might not even be real. And weren’t you going to look out for feral animals? No pet is worth getting eaten.
The thought had a point. But Marweg was certain of only one thing: he needed to find out if this was real. He’d never forgive himself if he let this opportunity pass him by.
“Spindlerieve, please tell me this delightful creature is not merely a product of my imagination.”
The ribbons flowed out and away, swirled around the pushmi-pullyu, touched the pool of water, caressed the grass, and snaked back to Marweg. It wrapped gently around his arm.
The land is not real. Dream, hallucination, fantasy. But creature is real. You are real.‡
It was more than Marweg had dared hope.‡ Staring at the pushmi-pullyu, he tried to conjure whatever food it might most desire. A moment later, a purple carrot appeared in his hand. He walked gingerly toward the pushmi-pullyu and held it out.¶
The head that had stared so hard at him dropped and started munching contentedly. The other head swiveled around and regarded him.
“That’s the closest to real food I’ve had in ages. Did you bring that with you? And do you have any more?” it asked.
A giddy smile splashed across Marweg’s face. “I did, and I can get more elsewhere.” He paused, wildly hopeful. “Would you like to come with me?” he asked.
He looked the creature up and down. It seemed in good health, though perhaps a bit lean, as though it hadn’t been feeding very well recently. It began the slow and ridiculous process of getting to its opposing feet.
“Not likely any less interesting than here. Might as well change things up a bit, though it probably won’t be for any better. Roachgoblins and soiled water elsewhere, I shouldn’t wonder.”*
As it lumbered up, Marweg touched the ribbons around him. “Could you find the entrance to Winstead’s hovel from here?” An immediate twinge of guilt coursed through him. “And perhaps look for traces of her while you’re at it?” he added sheepishly.
Spindlerieve acquiesced after a silent tap of Marweg’s wrist. He acknowledged his debt to it for the added service, and then it flowed away down the path on his left.
“Have you seen any other creatures like me around here?” he asked the pushmi-pullyu hopefully. The ribbons flowed past them again, toward the path on the right.¶
One head spat distractedly while the other answered. “I haven’t seen anyone like you in years. Not around here, no-how. Years ago, somewhere else there were plenty. Probably got lost or fell into a hole. Eaten by bears, perhaps?”
Marweg tried not to consider the unpleasant prospects just proposed. He had just begun to ask another question when all four ears pricked up and both heads turned to look down the path to the right. Before he could say “What’s the matter?” it bolted away to the left with the strangest gait he’d ever seen.
A cry of despair broke from him, and he ran after it, pleading with it to come back. But very few moments later, only brush and branch were to be seen.
Her reflection stared back at her from the oval landscape mirror set into the wall. Rhea stood in a baroque hallway with two more mirrors to her sides and two opposite her. None of them reacted to her presence. The hallway opened into a large room with a throne in the center, on which a figure was seated with its back to her. Around it bustled mobile furniture servants, who seemed to be performing tasks on the periphery.
Rhea squinted. She couldn’t quite make out the person sitting there, and every time she looked right at it her eyes slipped off and landed elsewhere. Still, she drew closer and gave as gracious a curtsy as she could manage. It gave no indication that it knew she was even there.
“Sorry, uh, esteemed, I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she began, not quite sure what to say. “I’m looking for a friend of mine who’s lost. Have you seen her?”
The figure turned. Her mind registered skin of deep crimson, but details slipped away before she could register them.
“Well met, pathwalker. It is not yet our time.”
Thoughtform servants in the forms of a hat rack and bookstand trundled up. The entity wrote a few words and gave the missive to the servants, and then rose.
“Excuse me. The pleasures of the palace are yours to enjoy. We will dine this evening.” It strode down a lush carpet and disappeared through a traveler curtain at the far end of the room, the thoughtforms following.
Rhea looked around. She saw no other exits, so she followed. The curtain was heavy and velvety, with a slit down the middle, though it resisted her passage as she walked through. The drapes embraced and began to smother her, and Rhea pushed forward into darkness.
With a heave Rhea was birthed into a new room. The pungent scent of death took her aback, followed closely by a chill.
She looked around, holding the edge of her shirt against her nose. The bare stone walls were lit only by blue service lights, and there were no doors or entrances to be seen. Hooks hanging from the raised ceiling held carcasses of every description and some that defied description. The floor was covered by a grating for fluids to run through, and her breath faintly clouded before her.
She turned around. A huge beast carcass presented the evisceration wound she had just exited. Rhea reached back inside and reassured herself that the curtain was still there before turning to explore the space.
She backed up and looked around with distaste. The meat swayed gently on the hooks.
“Fine, then,” she muttered with a grimace, “have it your way.”‡‽
Mechanical whirring and clanks filled his ears. All around Ward the cracks in the walls split and turned, folding reality into parcels that shut themselves away. The mattress folded into itself on two different axes but somehow remained intact. The doors rotated across their own middles and disappeared. The boxes packed into each other and then into the wall. As the brick of the room disappeared, every inch of the walls swung out into shelving stuffed with old tomes, cozy like an academic’s happy dream.
The mattress put itself away, and a table unfolded and assembled itself from underneath. It was of a beautiful light wood, and on it, resting on a rehal and open to an illuminated spread, lay a large tome.
The noises died down as the movement subsided, but Ward just stood there, staring at the change in the room with a mixture of shock and delight.
“Maybe next time we don’timmediately pull the lever,” M. Broche said sardonically.
Ward just nodded. Grasping his hands behind his back, he approached the book and looked at the picture.
It appeared to show a hunting party celebrating a successful hunt with a strange ritual. Their hounds looked like tiny semi-bipedal lizards. Their mounts seemed ordinary but were not exactly horses. No features had been drawn on the faces of the hunters, and there was another figure slung over the back of one of their mounts. The more Ward looked at it, the more he felt there was something familiar about the image.
He’d hardly run a minute before a stitch began in his side. Marweg gasped for breath, wincing, and held his torso as he stopped and bent over to catch his breath.
The creature was far gone already. For all the absurdity of its loping gait, it certainly knew the terrain. Marweg sat down just off the path to catch his breath, only to realize that another sound was approaching.
The chorus of screeches and growls gained on him. Marweg backed into the foliage and tried to calm his rising panic.
A pack of feathered bipedal lizards bounded with predatory grace right past his hiding spot. They had barely passed him when the thunder of hooves followed, revealing mounted archers riding in sequence behind. Marweg tried to get a look at them through the twigs and fear.
He immediately regretted this and retreated. Each rider’s face was blank, completely bereft of any features at all.
It took an eternity before the riders moved on. Marweg’s heart was beating faster than the hooves had, and he nearly cried out in panic when something touched his hand.
“Oh, Spindlerieve, thank Visla *, what is it?”
Paths continue. She is not here. Should retreat.
Marweg couldn’t bear to do that, not yet. “Did you see those riders?” he asked. When Spindlerieve signaled assent, he spoke quickly. “They were chasing the pushmi-pullyu, I’m sure of it. Go look, please, see if you can find it, but don’t let yourself be seen no matter what! I’ll follow.”
With a small swirl, it flowed away again. Its presence gave Marweg enough courage to get up and keep walking. I can’t just leave it, he thought. I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t try to help.
He’d walked no more than ten minutes when the ribbons approached him. He knew immediately something was wrong. The ends of the ribbons flared and twisted as though they’d been scrunched together, and they no longer flowed smoothly, instead fighting as though against a headwind to get to him. As it touched Marweg’s hand, its anguish almost overwhelmed him.
He heard animal sounds of huffing and snorting up ahead, as well as more high-pitched reptilian trilling. Marweg squared his shoulders and approached cautiously, keeping to the trees and bushes as much as possible. His stomach sank deeper and deeper as he approached.
He found the mounts first. They blocked his view as they grazed, and he circled around them to find another vantage point. The smell of blood in the air told him the story even before he glimpsed the scene.
The pushmi-pullyu was dead. The tiny raptors fought each other over the skinned carcass on the ground, tearing at the flesh eagerly and bickering over the choicest morsels. Two riders faced each other off to one side, each solemnly holding a severed head. A third rider, fresh red streaks across its smooth visage, stood within a circle of blood, the circumference transected with severed limbs, horrifyingly familiar, marking cardinal directions. The rider wore a cloak of freshly stripped fur, still dripping. Whatever rite they were performing, it seemed to have just begun, and Marweg had walked up right in the middle of it.
He gave an involuntary cry of horror and despair, and then tried to cover his mouth.‡ A head snapped in his direction; an order was barked out. Marweg’s limbs failed him, and he fell flat on his face as he turned to scramble away.
“I say,” said M. Broche, “that figure thrown across the mount looks a great deal like your friend Marweg, doesn’t it?”‡
Rhea’s curiosity overruled her disgust, and she began examining the other carcasses on the racks, marveling at their sizes and lack of bilateral symmetry. Several seemed like large herbivores, but most defied imagination.‡
She passed another that had been cut down its length. Raising her scarf over her nose, she peered inside and saw a dimly lit staircase, drab and ominous, leading down.* Rhea decided to keep looking.
It took two circuits of the room before she found another egress. The cut in the carcass had coalesced but remained visible. Rhea stared at it for only a minute before breaking out her penknife.
The muscle was tougher than she’d anticipated, but with two hands she was able to carve through the coagulated blood and reopen the meat. She glimpsed a small room and a door beyond. Once the opening was wide enough, she put away her penknife, steeled herself, put her fingers in the wound, and began to shove herself through.
It turned out to be a maintenance closet. There were some cleaning cloths on a shelf nearby, and Rhea gratefully used one to wipe the blood from her arms. Picking her way through brooms and equipment, she approached the door and opened it.
This is more like it! Bookshelves stood opposite her, flanking an alcove. She eagerly walked toward it and then frowned when she saw no door. She stared daggers at the wall for having the temerity to bar her access, and then her gaze locked into the middle distance as her ears took over.*
She moved closer to the alcove wall and pressed her ear against its surface. It was muffled and faint, but she caught a voice on the other side.
“. . . do you no end of good.”
She knocked and heard a muffled yelp on the other side.
Marweg had never felt sorrier for himself before in his life. The pushmi-pullyu was dead, Spindlerieve had fled, terrified, and now he lay bound and hooded on the back of a mount with no idea what they intended to do with him.
A figure got up next to him, and the animal began to move. He whimpered but lay still.
I may never see another pushmi-pullyu again! I’ll never be able to observe them, breed them, raise them . . . ifI even get to see my menagerie again, he thought miserably. The hunters spoke, but he couldn’t make out what they said. Am I next? What they’d done to the poor animal was horrifying.
Time elongated and distorted, minutes and seconds giving way to the uncomfortable cadence of the mount. After some time, the cavalcade stopped. Marweg’s face itched horribly, and he couldn’t scratch it. Hands pulled him off the mount, and he kicked instinctively.
He should have spared himself the effort. The hunters merely corralled his legs and set him down on the ground. The hood was pulled off, and Marweg blinked in the unexpected brightness.
He didn’t recognize anything about where he was, but there were fewer trees here than there had been where he was captured. His hands remained bound, but his feet were freed, and his captors gave him some space.
The one with the blood-smeared face approached him. Absent any feature, their body language somehow managed to convey a sense of apology.
“I’m sorry to have put you to such trouble,” they began, “but our rites are not to be interrupted like that. We mean you no harm, and it is our wish that you come with us.”‡
It gestured down the path. “We approach a great temple, and within it is a patron to us named Nyx. We go to bring it tribute.” They bowed their head to Marweg. “It will know what should be done to help you. Whatever your trouble is, I’m sure it will be able to give you aid.”
Marweg’s mouth opened, then closed again. He nodded and silently held up his bound hands.
The figure shook its head regretfully. “I’m sorry. We may bind but we may not loose. For that, you must wait. Still, you will now have a more pleasant ride, for you will sit comfortably for the rest of the journey. Come, I’ll help you up.” Fingers interlocked, they held them low for Marweg to climb up. The rest mounted their own beasts. “And now,” they bellowed, “to Nyx.”
Marweg held tight like his life depended on it as the mount broke into a canter, and they rode on through the trees toward the temple. ¶
What is this book? wondered Ward. He gingerly turned it to read the spine. Fingerspitzengefühl des Sonnepfad. The words made no sense to him at all.¶
“It translates roughly to ‘An immediate, intuitive sense of sunpaths,’” said M. Broche smugly. “Really, you must begin to make some effort in literature. It’ll do you no end of good.”
A knock behind him drew a startled cry from Ward. He turned around. The bookcase stared back, unmoved.
The knock sounded again. He walked to the shelf and, despite M. Broche’s reproach, began pulling books out and dropping them on the floor. He cleared two entire shelves and then knocked back.
Ward checked his pockets and found the wicked key he’d saved from the last keyfall. Sure enough, it sank into the wall, and something clicked with the turn. He stepped back and watched the bookcase swing out on hinges that hadn’t been present a moment ago. Rhea walked into the room.
“Rhea!” Ward exclaimed, giving her a hug before backing off again quickly, looking sheepish.
Rhea smiled. “I’m so glad to see someone I know again. Is Marweg around?”
Ward gave a grimace. “Kind of, but not really.”
Rhea’s smile faded. “What do you mean?”
“Come take a look.”
Ward showed her the book and the image on the page. Rhea glanced at it and turned another couple of pages. She pointed. “Is this something that happened to him or is happening? Wait, this is a flipbook.” She flipped back a few pages. “I think I see Spindlerieve in here too.”
Ward watched over her shoulder. “I hardly touched the book. I was afraid something might go sideways if I did.”‡
“Look, though, he’s heading toward a temple. And then here”—she flipped the pages quickly to simulate motion—“he’s being presented along with two animal heads to another figure. Now they’re entering a grand room—I know where he is!” she exclaimed excitedly. “I was there not long ago; we can go meet up with him. Follow me!”
She turned and left the room. Ward grabbed the book and followed as M. Broche asked what the devil was going on, but Rhea didn’t answer. She led them through the maintenance closet, into the abattoir (M. Broche being extremely vocal about his disgust at the smell and environment), and finally through the drapes and into the throne room.
There stood a grand table with thoughtforms standing all around it. The hunter figures were also there, and next to them, unbound, sat Marweg. He beamed with relief at the sight of them and waved frantically.
Presiding over it stood the red figure Rhea hadn’t quite seen. This time it stood facing her, and she once again gave a curtsy. “Well met, esteemed,” she said with a smile.
The entity spoke in a voice low and melodious. “Well met, for our time is now. Welcome to my table. Who are your friends?”
‡ Unknowable Truth—Silver Sun
* Marweg uses Psychometry on the book, unsuccessfully.
‡ Incriminating Skull
¶ Exiguous Appeasement
* Inspired by the 1967 film Doctor Dolittle.
‡ Monarch
‡ Conspirator
‡ Raven
‡ Crowded Tomb (Pale magic enhanced, Green magic diminished)
¶ Exiguous Appeasement. Marweg spends Hidden Knowledge. +1 acumen, +1 joy for Marweg.
* Stole the personality from Puddleglum in The Silver Chair.
¶ Animal Husbandry, success
‡ Jackal
‽ Mirrors are Viruses (The Path, 31)
* Visla brief description
‡ Compelling Voice
‡ Invisible Sun, Forbidden Game
‡ Green Sun, Driver
* Led an ossuary in the Pale
* These are the stacks in Miskatonic University, in the Grey Sun.
‡ Grey Sun, Hunter
¶ Marweg earns: 1 joy (discovering the pushmi-pullu); 1 despair (seeing it killed); 1 acumen (arc: New Discovery—Idea); 1 acumen (arc: New Discovery—Trial and Error)
¶ Ward casts [summon mundane object; aims for a magnifying glass, gets an eyepiece]
‡ Pale Sun, Enveloping Darkness