Authors: Michael Pryor
His heart began to pound, apparently not convinced.
He got down on his hands and knees again and began
drawing the first of the many-sided figures on the floor.
It was soothing, familiar work, but – despite his confidence
– he felt his nervousness increasing. His throat
grew dry, but his palms were sweaty and the chalk
became slippery in his fingers.
Somewhere between tracing the second and third
interlocking figures, Aubrey's stomach began to knot. It
was like the feeling he had before a performance on
stage, but it gripped more fiercely. He winced.
'You all right?' George asked from his vantage point in
the corner of the room nearest the door.
'Fine, fine,' Aubrey muttered, but vowed to hide any
further discomfort from his friend.
When he had finished, Aubrey stood and dusted his
hands. He slipped the tiny nubbin of chalk into his pocket.
'Done.'
George frowned. 'Looks like some of those mathematical
curvy things . . .'
'Parabolas?'
'They're the ones. You've got a bunch of them trying
to dance with some sort of lopsided stars. And you've
thrown in a few twisty rings for good measure. Very nice.'
'Thanks, George. I'll see if I can get you a spot as one
of the judges for the next school Art Show.' He drew a
breath and tried to slow his racing heart. It felt as if it was
knocking on his ribcage and trying to get out. 'Now, keep
your distance and whatever happens, don't interfere. It's
all perfectly safe, but the focusing figure will confine the
effects of the spell, regardless.'
'That's reassuring,' George muttered. 'Perfectly safe,
you say?'
'Perfectly.'
'As safe as the time you made that set of wings out
of cardboard?'
'That was a long time ago. Now, I need some quiet. I
must concentrate.'
Most of the language for the spell was derived from
ancient Sumerian, but the difficult middle section was a
variation of an Akkadian spell he'd found recorded in an
ancient text lent to him by a friend of the family. The
Akkadian spell was mostly nonsense, but Aubrey had
been excited by what he saw as some extremely useful,
but throat-straining, elements which he couldn't wait to
link with two fragments of Latin spells that dealt with
death magic in an oblique way. He'd found these Latin
spells misfiled under 'Hearth Magic' in the National
Library on one of his frequent research trips to the city.
He rubbed his hands on the legs of his trousers. He
closed his eyes. He took a deep breath. He began his spell.
He spoke firmly, striving for perfect enunciation and
articulation and no hesitation, leaving no room for
uncertainty in constants, variables or the transitions
between them. Each element in the spell had to be
perfect for his manipulation of the magical force to work
as planned. It was like building an arch, where each block
depended on the other. If any was to fail, the whole
structure would collapse.
The unfamiliar syllables twisted in his mouth, as if
they were reluctant to be uttered, but he formed them
and spat them out, one after the other. He could feel
sweat springing from his brow, but he didn't spare time to
wipe it.
He came to the last three elements – one for duration,
one for intensity and the last a 'signature', a unique item
that made the spell his own. He felt a moment of doubt,
but he thrust it aside and pronounced each component
crisply.
As soon as the last element left his lips, Aubrey knew
something had gone wrong. He was plunged into
blackness, utter nothingness, then pain seized him, a shattering,
all-consuming agony that tore a howl from his
lips. His mind reeled. It was a raw, overwhelming shock,
as if he had been flung against something hard, dropped
into ice water, smashed between hot irons, slashed by a
thousand razors, rolled in acid. He felt as if a great beast
was shaking him by the neck, as if he were being
squeezed through a hole the size of a pencil, pummelled,
flayed, burnt alive. It was beyond a simple physical sensation.
He was torn apart and exposed, beyond hope and
beyond help.
With a final wrench which seemed to upend the whole
universe, the pain suddenly stopped. It was replaced by an
insistent tugging sensation. Aubrey was able to see again,
but his mind recoiled from what he saw.
He was looking at his own body, collapsed on the floor.
It took him a giddy moment of denial and confusion,
but he knew that his soul had been separated from his
body.
His vantage point seemed to be somewhere near the
ceiling. George had approached the boundary of the
focusing figure and was looking distressed. His mouth
was working, but his words were muffled, unclear. Aubrey
wondered if his hearing had been affected by the spell.
Hovering, he noticed that something was wrong with the
focusing figure, but he couldn't determine exactly what it
was. Something to do with duration, intensity?
In the midst of a sense of dislocation that could be like
no other, Aubrey found time to berate himself – for
heedless bravado, for reckless posturing and for shoddy
preparation. His anger blazed, then he quelled it. He had
other charges, but they'd have to wait. Methodically, he
began to search for a remedy for his stupidity.
His body looked forlorn, crumpled as it was. His dark
hair was obscuring one side of his face and he wanted to
reach out and push it back.
With what?
he wondered. He turned his attention and
discovered what a soul looks like.
He told himself it was a failure of imagination, or
perhaps simply a handy representation using available
materials, but his soul looked just like the body he'd left
crumpled on the floor, down to the tweed jacket and
high-waisted trousers. He found he was actually disappointed
that, apart from a level of insubstantiality, it wasn't
more startling in form.
Interestingly, his soul-self was holding a translucent
golden cord tight in its right hand. It was stretched taut
and was the source of the tugging sensation, which was a
deep, nagging feeling at a most fundamental level, far
below conscious thought. He groped for a comparison
and the nearest he could come was the need to breathe.
Aubrey was doing his best to cope with the sense of
displacement he was experiencing. Terror threatened to
envelop him, but he kept it at bay thinking rationally. If
he could observe things carefully, he was sure he could
work out a solution.
Then he traced where the golden cord led and he felt
like a man whose house had been invaded by assailants,
who had then been kidnapped, stripped, beaten, and
imprisoned, before being told that all his family had died.
It was an almost unbearable shock on top of a series of
almost unbearable shocks.
A void had replaced one of the longer walls of the
room. The other end of the cord disappeared into it.
Pearly-grey tinged with silver, like massy clouds caught
by sunlight, the void was in motion, boiling and turning,
and he was being drawn towards it by the tugging on his
golden cord.
In an instant of complete apprehension, Aubrey knew
that the true death lay on the other side, the place from
where no traveller returns. His current state, this soulself
floating above his erstwhile body, was a halfway stage, a
moment to pause
(for reflection?)
before the final departure.
No
, he thought.
This is not right.
He tried to let go of
the golden cord and found he couldn't. He shook, but his
fingers remained wrapped around the mysterious cord.
He could shift his grip, he could move along it, but otherwise
the cord was as much a part of him as his hand was.
Aubrey twisted, trying to turn away. It felt as if he were
trapped in a river, fighting against a strong current. He
thrashed, struggling to resist the tidal pull of the way that
he'd inadvertently opened, straining to increase the
distance between the void and him.
In his flailings, he came to face downwards, towards his
vacated body. Another golden cord lay in its hand. The
end of this cord was flapping loose, as if it had recently
been severed, between Aubrey's soul-self and his body. It
drifted in the air, but it was losing its vitality and colour.
Even as he watched, Aubrey could see it coiling back on
itself, the loose end falling back to drape over his body
lying on the floor.
Aubrey didn't think. He lunged for the loose end, but
the cord in his right hand pulled back. The pull from the
void was growing stronger. Inch by inch, the void was
drawing him towards it.
Suddenly, the irresistible pull eased. Aubrey jerked
around to see that George had ignored his instructions
and had blundered through the focusing diagram,
scuffing it with his shoes.
Aubrey gathered himself and dived towards the receding
end of the golden cord. He seized it with his left hand,
but nearly let go when he was convulsed with a familiar
pain; it was the wrenching that had marked the separation
of his soul and his body. But having felt it once, this time
he was less overwhelmed by it. Despite being racked by
spasms, he didn't let go of the cord in his left hand.
Below, Aubrey glimpsed George working frantically on
his motionless body. The golden cord leading from it was
becoming fainter. The one in his right hand was vibrant
and glowing, and still tugging at him. Aubrey's soul was
caught between his body and true death, suspended on
the ultimate brink.
He knew that he couldn't remain like this, in an unnatural
halfway state. The void was urgent, insistent. He
found himself wondering about what lay on the other
side of the opening. Perhaps it was a chance to find out
the answer to the greatest mystery of all.
Later
, he said to himself.
It's not the time for that now
. He
ran through spells in his mind. He wanted something to
spring from all his reading, all his wide research, something
that would save him.
It came to him. It was a humble spell, a piece of
everyday magic that he'd learned so long ago that he'd
forgotten where. It was a spell to splice the ends of a rope
together.
Aubrey ran through the spell in his mind and realised
it wasn't enough. It needed strengthening. He realised,
wryly, that he needed to splice some elements of his
death magic spell into a spell that dealt with splicing.
Even then, it would only be temporary – but a temporary
respite from being taken by the true death would do,
for now.
He lined up all the elements. He inserted the variables.
He organised the limits and specified the parameters.
Aubrey felt as certain about this spell as he had of anything
he'd done. All that remained was to see if a soul
could utter a spell.
Aubrey brought the two ends of the golden cord
together. He pronounced the spell, the short, sharp syllables
marching off his soul-tongue. With a burst of wild,
fierce relief, he saw the two extremities of the golden
cord fuse together, ends interweaving in a way that would
make a sailor proud.
The cord leading from his body began to fill out,
regaining colour, strengthening and tautening even as he
looked at it. He still could not release his grip from it,
however, and he was caught holding the entire cord two-handed,
with the dreadful pull of the open way on his
right.
He refused to be taken. This was premature and he was
not going to let a moment's stupidity be the end of him.
He would save himself. Gone was any thought of complicated
spells. He slipped his left hand along the golden
cord, hauling himself towards his inert body. Then he
dragged his right hand until it met his left. He kept his
head turned away from the awful void, but he could feel
its attraction. It pulled at him with the force of destiny.
No
, Aubrey vowed.
I will not go.
It became a test of his will. Aubrey had to force
himself, inch by inch, away from the other side. Every
infinitesimal gain was achieved against the awful pull
from behind. He dared not look up as he edged his hands
along the golden cord, gripping and releasing, slipping
back and then moving forward, moving away from the
void and towards reuniting his body and soul.
An eternity passed, and another. A thousand times
Aubrey contemplated giving up and a thousand times he
rejected it. Nothing distracted him from his goal and he
promised himself he would maintain his laborious
progress until the end of time if that was what it took.
Finally, he looked up to see that he was close to the
outflung hand of his motionless body. An almighty effort,
a lunge, a horrifying moment when he thought he was
going to fall short, then –
Agony. He felt as if he was putting on a suit of red-hot
armour. Every fibre of his being burned. His nerves
hummed at the farthest extremity of pain. He gasped and
opened his eyes, then realised he'd been able to do both.
He looked up to see George glaring at him.
'George,' he mumbled. He was weak, new-born. The
floor felt hard beneath him. The sharp smell of ozone
hung in the air. Aubrey found himself looking for thunderstorms.'
Remember: interfere whenever you want to.'
George let out a sigh and Aubrey felt his friend's grip
on his shoulders tighten. 'What happened?'
'I died. More or less.'
George looked flummoxed. 'You're better now?'
Good question
, Aubrey thought. He felt bloodless,
feeble, as if he'd been ill for a very long time. He used
his magical senses to examine himself. 'Ah. Well. Not
entirely.'
'What do you mean?'
Aubrey glanced at the focusing figure. Yes, something
was definitely awry there. 'I think I'm still dead, old man.
Technically.'
'Technically dead?'
'My sloppy spell-casting opened the door to my true
death, and it hasn't closed. At the moment, I've brought
my body and soul back together, but the true death is
calling.' He still felt it – a deep-seated inner summoning.