The Cracks in the Aether. Robert Reginald
THE HYPATOMANCER’S TALE TRILOGY
The Cracks in the Æther (Book One)
The Pachyderms’ Lament (Book Two)
The Fourth Elephant’s Egg (Book Three)
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 2011 by Robert Reginald
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
DEDICATION
To the memory of my dear friend,
Susan Werner
(December 3, 1966 – May 22, 2009)
Who would have loved it;
And for
Michael R. Collings,
Fellow traveler on the Via Litteraria.
ANNO DOMINI 1622 / ANNO JULIANI 1262
When Adam delved, and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?
CHAPTER ONE
“HELP ME!”
“Help me!”
Just two little words, almost a gnawing at the edge of my consciousness—but I was certain that I’d actually heard something.
I’d been scanning the northern perimeter of the sixty-ninth ley on the fortieth tier of the Quietus, looking for a route to the Otherworlds, when I’d brushed past a presence that shouldn’t have been there.
I had to be careful. There were traps in the æthernet that could easily ensnare the unwary.
“Scooter!” I hissed.
The wherret hunched up next to me.
“Master?” it said.
“I need your help,” I said, and the creature scratched my arm with one of its little paws, just enough to draw a line of blood.
It licked the cut, and then I felt its presence suddenly within me, both alien and comforting at one and the same time. It lent me some of its strength.
I probed the ætherwall once again, more gingerly this time, but couldn’t find whatever it was—whatever it might have been.
Finally I broke the link.
“I know it was there,” I said, slumping back in my chair; and then I explained what I’d felt.
“There are many entities roaming the void,” the creature said. “Perhaps this was one of them, seeking a likely victim in an unpracticed acolyte.”
“No!” I said. “It was a person, of that much I’m certain. I’m not a neomage, to be so easily fooled.”
“Anyone can be fooled,” it said. “You humans are simply more subtle in your lies.”
“And you are the most subtle being I’ve ever known,” I noted.
“I rest my case, Sir,” the wherret said.
Then it coughed: “Ahem. While you were skrying, Master, a message arrived from the Queen. She desires the presence of her Scanner Prime.”
“Does she indeed?” I said, not really paying much attention. “I suppose she wants me to read her fortune again. She doesn’t seem to understand that what I tell her just represents possibilities, not realities.”
“She desires verities,” my companion said. “She wants to encompass her world with the certainty of fixed boundaries. Alas, that the universe fails to function in quite that reasonable a manner.”
I waved my hand over the orb and uttered a word of command, shutting off its power.
“Very well.” I sighed. “Let me go splash something on my face, put on a decent shirt and pantaloons, and then we’ll transit to Paltyrrha.”
I left the wherret to do what wherrets do in such intervals (all of which was fairly disgusting), and wandered back into the living area. The basin still had some water in it, and although it wasn’t clean, I used it just the same, and then stared at myself in the mirror.
The face peering back at me was thin and long, framed by a mop of unruly brown curls. The sideburns on the cheeks were beginning to show a few ragged strands of gray—they looked like little worms trying to claw their way to the light. I shuddered. The shadows under my brown eyes hinted at too many late nights, with small lines highlighting them on either side. It was the visage of a man of five-and-thirty years, perhaps.
No, Morpheús, I told myself, you’re not a neomage.
I wet my hands and ran them back through my tangled locks, trying to smooth them down. They wouldn’t cooperate, of course.
Then I put on my second-best suit, and I was ready to go.
Scooter was waiting for me at my viridaurum, the man-sized mirror of green-gold metal. The wherret ran up my leg and perched at its usual spot on my right shoulder, where it could whisper sweet nillions in my ear.
Wherrets were animorphs, and could become many things in many different sizes, as they willed, but this was my companion’s true shape (or so I believed at the time).
I reached out and through the æther and twisted the leys sideways, and we found ourselves standing in a similarly apportioned alcove in the Royal Palace in Paltyrrha. A gryphon was stationed just outside.
“Pathth?” it hissed at us, its forked tail twitching.
I held up my right hand, all five fingers stretched wide, the open palm facing the creature, and the beast touched my lifeline with the tip of its tongue.
“Morpheuth, Thcanner Primuth,” it stated. “And Thcooter. You may enter.”
The scaly one stepped aside, and we trod a familiar path down the winding, weary corridors of Tighrishály Palace.
CHAPTER TWO
“THE GREEN—OR THE PUCE?”
Her Puissant and Sublime Majesty had embarked upon a massive redecoration project shortly after her accession fifteen years earlier, and the overall result was somewhat less than the rendition of the parts. The grand old tableaux etched in stone had been covered over with ghastly, garish tapestries and paintings harkening back to a time and an art that had never actually existed. I found them, well, distasteful and disrespectful, but most of the minions at Court seemed to think otherwise. Perhaps I was just out-of-touch, or maybe this feeling of growing ennui with my situation derived from some other sphere entirely. Whatever the case, I did not relish the thought of another somnolent session with the Queen.
The Majordomo Baldvín announced us, and then we entered the “Little”—the Crimson—Throne Room.
Queen Evetéria i—long may she reign!—had seated her expansive rear on a padded chair at the left-hand wall, surrounded by long-suffering sycophants and simpering signorinas. Among them I spied the shiny white cowl of Bishop Palladios, her favorite spiritual advisor, bobbing up and down in the mêlée like some bloated maggot, sucking on the hopes and fears of his congregation.
“Morphy!” she screamed, as soon as she spotted me. “Oh, do come here, you silly little thing! I need your help!”
I waved my arms to the right and left, and the masses parted before me. I felt like a modern-day Moses.
The Queen had several swatches of cloth clutched in her crab-like claws.
“Do I go with the green—or the puce?”
She thrust them into my face.
I must confess that I thought neither sample suitable for anything but the garde-robe, but of course I couldn’t say so, not with Scooter present—its sensibilities would have been severely tested.
“The green, Majesty,” I said, dropping to one knee in acknowledgment of her rank.
“Oh,