Treachery of Kings

FIFTY-ONE

He had to touch it, then touch it again. And even then he could scarcely believe it was real.

Wait, think, use your head, Finn. Just because you see something, just because you can touch it, doesn't make it real

He closed his eyes, opened them again, lay perfectly still. Not much help. The thing was still there, still chill to the touch. It loomed above him, impossibly far, impossibly high, there was no end to it at all. Only that couldn't be, nothing could be as big as that, certainly not a bell. Where would you cast the damned thing, how could you haul it up here…

Finn squeezed his eyes shut again, took a deep breath. When he let it out, it turned to frost. It was cold, chilling cold, still and cold as a midwinter's eve.

“What am I thinking? Haul it up here, haul it up where? Where is here supposed to be?”

Logic, reason, ordinary common sense. That was the only way to approach this thing. It was all a sorcerer's trick, of course, none of it was real. An illusion could seem real, though. That was the point. That's what a trick, a fake, a fancy was all about.

Somehow, Obern Oberbyght had woven a spell around him, made him imagine he was a gnat, a speck, a mite inside a vast, enormous, inconceivable bell. A Millennial Bell, no less. One of those famous, thousand-year, every Wednesday and Friday sorts of bells.

Finn laughed aloud at the thought, but the sound that came out was empty, hollow and dead, a sound that left him full of fright.

And why not? It was all an illusion. Why should a sound be real when everything else is a sham?

Finn came to his feet, taking it slow and easy, watching every step. What if the magic didn't work unless you were flat on your back? What if you just stepped off into nothing at all?

He shook that thought aside. Magic had its rules, like everything else. Why go to all this trouble if you didn't do it right?

“There's a greater, more frightening question than that,” he said aloud. “What am I doing in here? Why did that fat-faced trickster put me here at all?”

Such a question should have raised the hackles on his neck, set every hair a'tingle, shivered his flesh and all of that. Here, though, on this unearthly plane, those were the ordinary, everyday conditions of life. Aches, shakes, chafing of the skin, distress of every sort, and every breath like a bite of polar ice.

“If I were in the magic trade, what I would do is summer, with some nice trees about, and a comfy place to sit. I surely wouldn't do a place like this.”

He learned, after one or two tries, that looking at the awesome heights above made him terribly sick. Looking down wasn't bad, and that is how he learned there was one way out of the bell.

He had walked nearly halfway around, staying well away from the golden, frost-covered surface of the thing, when he spotted the hole. Not so much a hole as a dip, a cant, a crawlway in the surface of what was really no surface at all, but a piece of imaginary ground, somewhat more solid than the rest of the illusion thereabouts.

He didn't hesitate more than a second and a half. Wherever this hollow, this crawly-hole went, it would take him somewhere else, out of the alarming presence of the bell, and, with any luck at all, out of the illusion as well.

He went headfirst into the hole, sliding on his back, pulling himself along. In an instant he was clear, and peering out the other side…

“Bones and Stones,” Finn gasped, drawing in a breath, “I've gone mad, wiggy, off the deep end. At the very least, I've completely lost my wits!”

Still, though he was shaken, stunned, stupefied at the sight, he could scarcely contain his elation at the wonder, the marvel taking place before his eyes.

The Millennial Bell was a vague and distant blur on the far horizon now, a golden mountain lost in purple deception, hidden in a lavender veil. The sky was not a sky at all, but a lucent, ever-moving machine, a clutter, a mass, a tangle of such complexity that he had to look away before his mind rebelled.

Yet, when he dared to look at the thing again, he saw within this churning, whirling miracle, a simplicity beyond belief, a pure and irreducible sense of order, as if this great device might mirror the intricate works of the cosmos itself.

It struck him, then, that works was indeed the word for this perfection, for here, in their ultimate incarnation, were the cogs, gears, ratchets, pins, springs and wheels- wheels within wheels within wheels-of Mechanics itself, the foundation of the art.

Here was the concept of clocks, grinders, binders, of simple devices such as gut trimmers, lint cutters and pie machines.

And, if he could allow himself the praise, the esteem- and indeed he could-his invention of the lizard was a prime example, in a most sophisticated form.

With this thought came a vision within a visionary world. For a dazzling moment, he saw himself as a single mote of dust, a being on a tiny world in the midst of the vast, incredible workings of Julia Jessica Slagg. He laughed with joy as he saw a mirror of what he had created himself, in a manner he had only dreamed of before. And, for a moment, he listened to the clatter and the rattle and the hammer and the tick, sounds that came together like the hum and the thrum of a bright silver heart

That small moment, scarcely a blink, vanished abruptly as a sudden motion startled him out of his thoughts. As he peered at the marvel overhead, he sensed there was something different in this great convolution, something he hadn't seen before.

A shadow, at first indistinct, had appeared on the far horizon of the cosmic machine. As it neared, it took a more definite form, a bar of darkness stretching from right to left.

Closer, Finn discerned its motion as a shudder, a jolt, a hesitation as it reached one position, then moved on to the next.

Jerk, pause…

Move on again…

Ordered and steady with a pace of its own…

One, two…

One, two…

And then Finn knew…

… knew this enormous illusion was clipping off snippets of time, its shadowy hand measuring out the unthinkable minutes, counting impossible years, here in a place that knew no time, that wasn't even there…

It's a spell, a trick, a great hallucination, what do I care? I'm still in Obern Oberbyght's tower with a bunch of dusty tomes. All this nonsense is only in my head…

The hand, the shadow, moved again, one, two…one, two… and now this motion was more than a quiver, more than a jerk, now it moved with a creak and a groan, with a deep and ponderous moan.

And, as it thundered to a stop, paused, trembled and rumbled on again, Finn felt the great, illusory machine shake as well. Under his boots, the imaginary ground began to shudder and a veil of fanciful dust began to drift down from above.

The deadly shaft moved one eternal moment then the next, its mindless cogs and gears marking off another afternoon, ticking off another thousand years.

This is why Oberbyght saved me from the wrath of Maddigern… this is why I'm here. I pray no one ever does me any favors again!

He remembered the last time the Millennial Bell had awakened the napping dead. Stones had crumbled and floors had cracked in the palace far below. Here, in the very shadow of the thing, he'd be shaken to thornberry jelly. Nothing would remain but a puddle on the floor.

Finn thought of Letitia Louise. He thought of her touch, of her iridescent eyes. He thought it was quite unfair to perish in an illusion, in the midst of a sorcerer's spell.

“If the end has to be,” he said aloud, “it seems only right it should happen somewhere that exists, somewhere that's real. I feel that's really the proper thing to do… “