‘Of course,’ Lan said, but Adena did not want to notice her.
‘May I?’ the girl asked again.
‘Yes, please,’ Ulryk replied.
‘Come on, Ulryk,’ Lan said. ‘I want to get back home. Let’s see if this book of yours is in here.’
Lan entered the doorway…
… and found herself in a woodland glade. What?
A moment later, Ulryk stumbled alongside her, followed by Adena, who seemed to possess more clarity now.
It was night, wherever they were, and thick trunks of trees extended as far as she could see. She could hear the sound of running water in the distance. All around the glade were rocks — no, remains of buildings — smothered with moss. Their torchlight caught the edges of beautiful heart-shaped leaves, and smooth trunks.
She turned round to see where they had come from, and the doorway was still there, without a frame, simply a presence in the air.
‘Where the hell are we?’ she whispered. ‘What is this place?’
Ulryk seemed delighted for some reason. ‘It… it looks precisely like a series of woodcuts I have observed in a primitive Jorsalir text. And also…’ He removed his copy of The Book of Transformations from his satchel and opened it to one of the pages. The drawings were crude, but one page showed a location undeniably similar to the one they were in.
‘A paradise,’ he mentioned, ‘of sorts.’
Lan scanned the page. ‘So we’re probably in the right place. But this book you’re looking for, it could be anywhere here. Does it say in your copy where the other might be?’
Ulryk shook his head and closed the book with a snap. ‘No, but I suggest we follow the river first, then we may have a clearer understanding.’
With the book tucked under Ulryk’s arm, they continued through thick grass towards the heady smell of the river, and soon located it, a column of slow-flowing water, which was around twenty paces wide. Further along the bank, strange lights were floating out of the vegetation before sinking back into the undergrowth. She wasn’t entirely sure, but there seemed to be other people watching them: pairs of eyes glittered from the other bank, fading in and out of her sight.
‘This place doesn’t seem like a paradise,’ Lan whispered. She tuned into her powers then, just to make sure she could tap them — and sure enough, whatever worked in Villjamur and the ghost city worked down here, too.
The girl, Adena, moved out towards the edge of the river and began to walk slowly down the bank, hitching her ragged dress above her knee while she descended into the water. She seemed to be cautious at first and then, when her feet were submerged, she looked up with a smile on her face.
‘I think… I think I can be free now. This is where the others must have come.’ Suddenly she glared at Lan — acknowledging her fully this time. ‘You’d better look after him,’ Adena said.
‘Who?’ Lan replied.
Adena turned away and plunged face-first into the water without a sound.
‘Ulryk, shouldn’t we help her?’ Lan asked, moving to the edge of the bank.
The priest scanned up and down the river, but there was no sign of the girl. ‘It seems there is no one left to assist. And I’m not entirely certain that this is water.’
Lan remained utterly confused. Could ghosts die or pass on elsewhere?
*
Lan and Ulryk continued along what certainly looked like running water for some time, heading towards its source, Lan constantly searching for visual markers to help them on the return journey. She did not want to be abandoned here, wherever it was.
‘This is useless, Ulryk,’ Lan muttered more than once.
In the dark canopy, she heard something rattling, shifting between the leaves. Vines began trailing down, slithering towards her. Skipping from side to side, out of their grasp, she urged Ulryk onwards. And eventually they reached another clearing, this one glowing as if moonlit, but she couldn’t see any of the moons in the sky. There was a macabre ambience to the place. Grass had been flattened in various directions, and in the centre of this wide clearing lay an object.
A book, in fact.
With his torch in one hand, Ulryk rushed forward to see if it was the other copy of The Book of Transformations, but beneath the surface of the grass something began to move, knocking Ulryk backwards. His torch fell to the grass, inert.
Lan dashed towards the priest and helped him to his feet; and, at the periphery of her vision, she saw movement coming from behind the trunks. Creatures began unfolding themselves from behind the trees, gleaming in the dull light, and bulbous things began bulging from beneath the surface of the bark. Not a sound was made as the strange wood constructs began presenting themselves, malicious-looking entities with serrated branches and blades, no two the same.
These things lunged towards them.
Lan could feel Ulryk shivering with fear beside her. ‘Use one of your fucking spells,’ she said, tuning into her powers and beginning to tread air as quickly as she could. She traversed the gaps between the tree-things, and on impact, she drove her heels down into the branches, snapping them, drawing their attention away from the priest.
Eventually the monotone of Ulryk’s chanting became loud.
The tree creatures began combusting, flames taking to the wood and leaves with brutal effect. Lan dropped back to where Ulryk stood chanting and forced a barrier around them both where the flames could not reach. Kneeling, she watched branches tumble to the forest floor, withering and crackling with heat, an alien wail rising from within — and from here it was obvious the woodland wasn’t quite real. The flames emitted a slight purple tinge; there were sparks spitting outwards, too.
A few moments later, once the flames had burned down, she released the forces surrounding them.
Foliage still smouldered, and Ulryk was panting.
‘Are you OK?’ she asked.
‘I have’, Ulryk observed, ‘felt better, but thank you.’ He was still shaking, and there was a burn mark across his robes.
‘There’s no logic to any of this,’ Lan said. ‘It doesn’t seem real. The weather doesn’t seem to exist, the forest seems to act abnormally. I could be in a dream for all I know.’
‘The same could be said for the world above.’
‘Don’t get meta with me. So, do you want your book then?’ Lan gestured to the tome that lay in the grass, untouched and unharmed.
Ulryk stood with a steady dignity and began hobbling towards the book. Something, though, didn’t seem right: half of the sky was black, half of it a distorted grey, and the forest canopy seemed to be… irregular. Instead of the natural curves and edges to the trees and leaves, things were comprised of hundreds of little squares, an abnormal, mosaic forest.
As soon as Ulryk lifted the book from the grass the world fell apart — quite literally. The squares multiplied, sweeping across the forest with a rush of wind, changing from dark browns and greens to the colour of rock, the images distorting.
They found themselves inside a large stone chamber: it had all happened so suddenly.
Ulryk turned around, gasping. He fumbled until the two books he was carrying were safely in his satchel, and then he hurriedly pointed to the hundreds of equations etched deep into the walls, whereupon he began to mouth things in a language she couldn’t quite recognize.
Confused, she turned her attention elsewhere. There was a square doorway, but nothing within the room itself, save for the numbers and letters and lines. Lan moved to the door and poked her head out, confirming that they were in the temple surrounded by skulls.
‘OK…’ Lan said, then back inside to Ulryk. ‘Hey, what the hell just happened?’
‘It was an artificial reality,’ Ulryk marvelled. ‘The lines on the wall, they’re a language that I’ve only seen in a few texts. If you look carefully, there are thousands of minute mirrors constructed within the brick. We passed
