The Mirrored Shard

13 The One Who Waits

AS WE WALKED, I detected a subtle change in the landscape around us. The Deadlands were varied and terrifying in every aspect, but now I sensed a shift in the very fabric of reality itself. My Weird made me sensitive to such things. The trees turned in odd directions, the branches curling into spirals. The ground appeared to shimmer and reappear, first as sand, then water, then back to sand.

I sensed the insidious influence of something, someone, on the landscape, on the very physics that made up this twisted mockery of reality that was the Deadlands.

Tesla had been right. Nylarthotep, if this was him, was powerful beyond anyone I had encountered.

I tried not to let that sink me into a panic as we walked on, the landscape shimmering more and more at the edges.

“So when do we get to the palace?” I asked, more to distract myself than to make conversation. The Faceless wouldn’t answer me anyway.

“There is no palace,” the leader said, surprising me. “There is only the view of the Yellow King, or his absence.”

“All right, then,” I muttered. I thought the Fae had loved to be cryptic, to muck around with people’s heads, but they had nothing on the Faceless. Tremaine could take lessons from them.

“If I’m to have an audience with him,” I said loudly, “I am going to have to actually see him.”

“You’re awfully eager for a mortal,” said the Faceless. “To look upon his visage is to endure madness and pain beyond anything you can imagine.”

I stopped, stared into the black hole beneath the creature’s cowl. “You have no idea what I can imagine. Or endure.”

He wheezed something in a language made of whispers and wind. I think he might have been cursing my stubborn refusal to be scared.

“Come,” he said. “We draw near.”

We walked on until the road disappeared, shimmering into a thousand gently glowing lines that contained stars, supernovas, suns—shreds of the universe peeking through tears in reality.

I winced, and forced myself not to put my hands to my temples. Each of the tears felt like a Gate, and my Weird ached to explore them, control them, bend and shape them until they’d take me anywhere I wished to go.

“This is as far as we go,” the Faceless said. “We are creatures of the dead, and what lies beyond …”

A slight wind came from the rifts, ruffling the capes of the Faceless. It almost appeared that they were scared themselves.

I knew I was.

“What lies beyond is not,” I said. “I get it.”

“I don’t understand the living,” the Faceless said. “Why you would voluntarily subject yourself to such a thing?”

“Because sometimes there are things more important than living,” I said.

I stepped forward, away from the creatures, and knew I was no longer speaking solely about Dean. Tesla had shown me that my coming here was never really about Dean, and Chang before him had made it clear too. It was about my inexorable destiny, both as the bringer of destruction and the only one who could reconstruct reality. Because of my Weird, and my position as Gateminder, that would always be my destiny.

I had made a bad bargain once. I had bargained selfishly—the Old Ones’ return for my mother. I’d been selfish here, too, but there was still time to fix it.

All I had to do was strike a good bargain with the worst creature in all the Lands, and I’d be home free.

“No pressure, Aoife,” I muttered to myself as I took another step forward.

The rifts hummed all around me. There was no sound in space, but the sheer power of the cosmos, the background music of the stars and planets, sang to my Weird, urging me to merge with the universe, become stardust.

I ignored it as best I could.

Nylarthotep had to be somewhere beyond these tears in reality. His power was distorting the Deadlands, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t still standing on solid ground. Controlling reality was a Fae trick—keep your enemy off-balance, keep control of their reactions. It hadn’t worked when I’d been in the Thorn Land, and it wasn’t going to work now.

As I moved between the star roads, I became aware of a faint sound, of black smoke and dust rising all around me.

“Is it her?”

Her.

Her.

The Gateminder.

The destroyer.

The one who walks between worlds.

I flinched. I hated that name, the name the rebel factions in Lovecraft had coined for me after I blew the Engine trying to make a bad deal with Tremaine.

“I want the king,” I said, loud enough that my voice echoed back at me. “I want Nylarthotep.”

She wants the king.

The king.

The watcher.

The planner.

The devourer of minds.

Well, that was encouraging.

“I know you’re here!” I shouted. “Stop playing games with me.”

Games, the smoke hissed at me.

Games and riddles and ciphers.

Secrets.

Lies.

I squinted into the dust, feeling it sting my eyes. A face came into focus here and there, frozen in an expression of torment. They were like the souls and spirits I’d encountered before, but these were torn and shredded, twisted. They were just as affected by the proximity of the rifts as my Weird was.

“What happened to you?” I asked the cloud of souls. “Why are you here?”

We came.

We crossed the barrier.

We saw.

And now we wait.

“Wait for what?” I said, trying to be patient. If souls decayed even in the Deadlands, it must be exponentially faster.

For the end.

The end of Fae and man.

The end of days.

The end of the stars and planets.

The end of all things.

“I want to see Nylarthotep,” I said again. “And I want to see him now.”

I sensed a shift, and the spirits drew back. I wondered if they were like me, humans with a Weird trapped by the Gates, or if they’d been tricked by Fae into walking through hexenrings only to end up here, or simply stumbled off the edge of the page, the way people did in the old stories, the ones people furtively passed around when the Proctors couldn’t hear.

It was easy to forget there’d been a world without magic before the first Storm exploded into the human world. A world where these things were just stories for children, distilled from stories for adults, to keep the darkness beyond the campfires out there, where it belonged.

But there had been, and these people were relics of it.

“You’re a rare case,” a voice said. It was textured and cultured, a rich velvet curtain of a voice, far from the rasp or growl I’d expected. “Most men would give up their lives to avoid meeting me face to face.”

“I’m not most,” I told the voice. “And I’m not a man.”

A laugh. Low, like a warm finger dragged across skin. “Then approach, girl who is not like most. Tell me why you seek the favor of the one who waits.”

I took one step, then another. It wasn’t like I could turn around. Reality was so distorted, I wouldn’t be able to find my way back without opening a Gate, and I couldn’t imagine that, in the Deadlands, a new Gate would lead anywhere good.

The distortion grew stronger as I approached, and the rifts fell away. My stomach lurched. I’d never gotten close to another being who could manipulate reality the way Tesla or I could. There was probably a good reason for that, because this was the worst I’d ever felt and still managed to stay conscious.

“Does it bother you?” Nylarthotep asked. He sat in a simple black chair with a high back, a robe similar to the ones the Faceless wore swirling to hide his figure. He wore a cowl emblazoned with the Yellow Sign. It wasn’t embroidered or painted, though—Nylarthotep’s robe was made of the universe, and the Yellow Sign was a slice of a sun, churning and flaming upon his brow.

I felt dizzy looking at him, and it wasn’t just because the vortex of unreality had grabbed me with its iron grip and refused to let go. I’d never seen anything like Nylarthotep up close. He felt like the Old Ones.

Worse, though. The Old Ones were incredibly ancient, but they were neither good nor evil. They simply existed, in the way of planets and the universe, an existence that could no more be denied than sunlight could.

Nylarthotep pulsed with malignance. If you could describe evil and malice as a figure, as a feeling, it would be this. This nausea, this panic, my hindbrain screaming that I was close to something no human was ever meant to see.

“Of course you bother me,” I said. “I’ve been dreading meeting you ever since I decided to come here, back in San Francisco.”

“I do not know this place, San Francisco,” Nylarthotep intoned. He shifted, and the stars in his robe canted and re-sorted themselves into new constellations. “I have no knowledge of the human world. When I was sent here, the Iron Land did not yet exist.”

“I want you to release a soul from your grasp,” I said. “Just one. Surely you can spare that.” I figured getting down to business might stop him from staring at me from beneath his cowl. I could feel his eyes. They felt like a sunburn—inexorable and with the sting of permanent damage.

“That’s interesting,” Nylarthotep said. “But the answer is no. The Deadlands are my domain and the souls within are my property.”

He stood, drawing to nearly seven feet tall. I got the sense that there was something inside Nylarthotep’s physical form, something incredibly large, indescribably ancient and aching to be let free. What I was seeing was the watered-down version, and my Weird kicked and screamed at the proximity of the larger thing.

“Please,” I said. “I’m here asking. Not demanding. All I want is Dean.”

“Hmm?” Nylarthotep cocked his head. “Oh, that’s right. I forget you give each other names. Odd. Like cockroaches naming each other.”

I tried to keep calm. If my heart had a beat, it would have been thudding. “I know you rule the Deadlands. That’s why I’m here. I just want you to give me Dean.”

“Rule the Deadlands?” The laughter came again, louder this time. “Girl, I do not rule this place. When the ancients cast me out, they cast me into a void, a place where all the dead came to their own final rest, be it good or ill. There was no unity, no collecting point for souls. What you see around you? This is a manifestation of my will. Of my boredom, of my wrath. I saw the souls, some happy, and I saw that they were weak and could be controlled.”

My mouth dropped open. It was worse than I had suspected. “You don’t rule,” I repeated, letting it sink in. “You … you made the Deadlands?”

“They sprang from my hand. And when the first soul became entangled, I was curious, so I allowed it to exist rather than snuffing it out. Then another, and another. No more happy deaths or simple endings. All souls continue to exist and act as fuel for my world, my land. And I do with them as I see fit.”

I felt like I would faint. Before that, I’d vomit, and fall to the ground, because this revelation was the worst thing I’d ever heard.

“So there really was just a void before,” I said, “where souls could do as they liked.”

Nylarthotep nodded. “There was nothing of greatness. Until me.”

“Then what harm would it do?” I said. My voice was shaking, but I managed to stay upright, and decided to count that as a victory. “You have all this, by the power of your own mind. What difference would one soul make?”

“Because it would not be my will,” Nylarthotep said. “I do not grant requests. Everything that happens—the city, the Faceless, the monsters that live in the wilds beyond, even the Walkers—happens at my will. And when this place ceases to amuse me, I will crush it and make it anew, a sculptor at his clay. The void and the dead are mine to use, forever.”

I had to think fast. I could tell he was almost ready to boot me down one of the rifts and dump me into some airless vacuum.

“A bargain, then,” I said. I’d been expecting it.

Nylarthotep grinned. I saw a flash of white teeth shaped like a shark’s under his cowl. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” he said. “Sit, little human, and tell me of your so-called bargain with the Yellow King.”

I watched as another black throne materialized. The Yellow King beckoned me. “Don’t look so shocked, little human. There was a time I could create entire worlds with a flick of my wrist. I was worshipped by the primitives as a god.”

“But you’re not,” I said. “You’re just drifting through the universe like the rest of us.” I didn’t know what possessed me to back-talk something like Nylarthotep. Maybe I was tired of being treated as if I were small, to be wiped off the map as he saw fit.

Nylarthotep sat forward. Where he gripped the arms of his chair, I saw long, blood-encrusted claws. I didn’t know what he’d been using them for, but I drew back as far as I could without seeming like a coward.

“I am not flotsam. I am eternal,” he snarled, and I did flinch then, as if he’d raked me with those claws.

“All right,” I said quietly. “I’m sorry. I was mistaken.”

“Tell me the terms of this bargain or leave before I make you an amusement,” Nylarthotep grumbled, slumping back.

I took a breath and said, “You can have something from me. And in return, you let Dean go. I know you said no soul would escape you, but those are my terms, take it or leave it.”

“Really.” He leaned forward and licked his lips. “Tough talk. I’m intrigued. Be more specific, dear.”

“I have a Weird. I have the gift that you need.” I couldn’t believe I was about to do this again. “I could get you a way out of here.”

Nylarthotep didn’t laugh or mock me this time. He simply tilted his head and considered my words, and that scared me more than anything.

“No, you can’t,” he said. “Tesla couldn’t, and neither can you.”

I sighed. It was my only bargaining chip, but I didn’t want to use it. If Nylarthotep thought I was useless, at least he wouldn’t imprison and torture me.

“But you do have something I want,” he said. “You are a living soul in the Deadlands, and I’ve never come across that before.”

I raised my chin, already not liking where this was going. “I’m listening.”

“I grow weary of this place,” said Nylarthotep. “I grow weary of my own creations. Let me test you. Let me see exactly what the soul of a Gateminder can endure, and then if it pleases me, I’ll let your insignificant little friend fly free.”

This was a bad bargain. I knew it, he knew it. He also knew I didn’t have a choice, and so did I. Though this way, at least I wouldn’t run the risk of setting him free. Because something like Nylarthotep could never be free, not ever. That would truly be the end of the world, the culmination of the second Storm. What I’d started was bad enough, but to let something like this monster into the Iron Land would mean the end of everything, and this time I’d be well and truly to blame.

So I nodded, and said, “I’ll do whatever it takes. I just want to go home.”

I knew now I was beneath the Deadlands, where no one could find me, not Chang’s machine, not even a Gate of my own creation.

“As do we all,” Nylarthotep said. “Come with me.”

He led me to the edge of the swirling space that he lived in, and it resolved itself into a long hallway, industrial as anything in the Iron Land, flickering bulbs caged with wire, and iron doors stretching as far as the eye could see.

I twitched reflexively, waiting for my Fae blood to react with the iron, but it wasn’t real. Nothing stirred in my blood or in my mind. That was a relief. Dealing with a bout of iron poisoning and the associated hallucinations was the last thing I needed right now.

“What’s behind these doors, only you can know,” said Nylarthotep. “Did you know that I used to slip into minds while asleep? That I used to pick apart dreams and nightmares?” He snorted. “Of course, that was before they sent me here and that foul upstart crawled out of the mud and took over the dreams, made them a refuge rather than what they should be.”

“And what’s that?” I said. Screams echoed from behind some of the doors, and even worse sounds, scratching and hissing, from behind others.

“The most terrible thing in all the universe,” the Yellow King said. “Because your own mind is the thing you should fear most. It is the originator of nightmares. Without the fear, things like me would not exist.”

He gave me a small shove forward. His touch sent shivers down my spinal cord and running through my entire body, borne on my own nerves.

“Go on,” he whispered in my ear. “This is what I found in your mind, Aoife. Let’s see what kind of fear lives there.”

I stepped into the hall. Not because I wanted to, but because I didn’t have a choice. If I wanted to get out of here, and with Dean, this was what I had to do.

Knowing it was my only choice didn’t make it any easier to face what was behind the doors. Nylarthotep had been right. I was terrified of what was inside my own mind.

And now I was going to meet it face to face.