Page 48

Chapter 48

Paths of Potentiality

It’s a strange thing, to be led through a kaleidoscopic miasma of collapsing possibilities by a nine-year-old boy. I mean, all that chaos and having events that may or may not have already happened whipping me in the face like slender tree branches through a forest at once dark as midnight yet shimmering from a thousand, thousand stars was, to put it mildly, weird. But the more discomfiting sensation was simply being pulled along by someone else’s hand. For all that my life had been one long string of fuck-ups ranging from the merely embarrassing to the nearly cataclysmic, I’d always been in charge of my own destiny.

That sounds laughable right about now, I know, but it’s true. The choices– okay, idiot mistakes– I’d made had been mine, not someone else’s. I was utterly shit at taking orders, which was at least part of the reason I’d left the Justiciars and entirely why I’d skipped over every other possible career to become a mercenary war mage. I’d even ended up leading our little band of emotionally confused wonderists. And yet here I was, being led around by some kid who seemed to think he was in charge.

‘Stop ruminating,’ Hamun said, yanking me to what I thought was the right but when I actually looked at our direction realised was more like forty-five degrees downwards on a perpendicular axis to — You know what? Let’s just pretend we turned right.

‘Ruminating’s kind of my thing, kid.’

He shoved me back all of a sudden, which I thought was the beginnings of a temper tantrum but turned out to be just another change of direction. ‘We’re not just moving through space, Da — Cade, I mean.’

Awkward.

Give the kid credit: he knew how to stare; this one made it clear I’d be better off pretending not to have noticed any slip of the tongue on his part. I wondered whether maybe I’d taught him that. He pointed to the curtains of shimmering strands. Their vibrations were becoming ever more unnerving as possibilities collapsed all around us. ‘This space we’re moving through is made up of potential events constrained by the choices we either have or could make.’

‘And we’re running out of potential outcomes?’

He nodded. ‘We can’t go anywhere our choices couldn’t lead to, which means we have to keep conceiving alternatives other than the ones that already haven’t worked.’

He sounded awfully smart for a kid, but I supposed he’d had a lot of time to think about this stuff. Still, I had to make it clear who was the superior intellect here.

‘So you want me to think happy thoughts?’

Hamun rolled his eyes and gave a martyr’s sigh I recognised all too well as my own. ‘Do you really want to find out what happens when your consciousness is snuffed out because it no longer has a universe in which to exist?’

‘Fine. What do we do?’

The vibrations were speeding up but the strands were shimmering less, their odd emanations of images of various possible existences being replaced by a lifeless, formless grey.

‘For there to still be a gate for us to exit through, there has to be a path beyond.’

‘You mean the Mortal realm on the other side has to not have ended already? Or do you mean I have to not already be dead?’

He grabbed my wrist and pulled me sideways through strands that were shedding their potentialities so fast it was like watching the universe end over and over again. ‘It’s different from that. The two realms are tethered to one another by destiny , not time. You have to make it so the Mortal realm has a destiny that’s more likely than the ones in which it falls to the Aurorals or the Infernals.’

I considered that as we ran headlong through what I could now see were an endless series of cataclysmic disasters.

‘You know, kid, people accuse me of not knowing my limitations, but you are seriously out of — ’

‘There’s no way out, otherwise!’ he shouted at me, and for the first time I could see how scared he was that we wouldn’t make it out of here– scared that I was going to fail him. ‘There has to be a way to force a new destiny into existence,’ he tried to explain. ‘You need to think of a set of choices that don’t end the way my mother thinks they’re going to end!’

We stumbled, which was odd in a place without floor or ground. The greying strands all around us were starting to twist in on themselves now, tying into knots and crumbling into motes of ashes– the stuff of nothingness, I supposed.

‘I’m. . . I’m sorry, kid. There are no other choices left for me to make back on the Mortal realm. There’s no cunning ruse or devious scheme left. I tried everything I could. I think maybe your mother’s right, that every person, every place, inevitably arrives at one of three dooms. I’ve used up all of mine.’

Hamun started to cry, then fought back the tears. ‘My da — The other you. . . He said this might happen. He told me a secret. . . A spell, he called it.’

A deafening crack split the air and I looked up to witness the ceiling of this universe shattering to pieces. Behind it was more of the seamless grey oozing through the fissures of space and even the physical laws that made it possible for space to exist.

‘Okay,’ I said to Hamun, ‘so maybe now’s a good time for that spell.’

‘Kneel,’ he told me.

I wasn’t sure what that would do, but I obeyed. ‘Now what?’ I asked.

Hamun’s lips were moving, but he wasn’t speaking.

‘Kid?’

‘I’m trying to remember the words and somatic gestures.’

‘Seriously? The other me taught you a spell in case everything fell apart and you couldn’t be bothered to memorise it?’

He glared at me, then his eyes widened. ‘I think I remember it now. He told me to say — ’ He slapped me across the face, suddenly, hard as he could, which turned out to be pretty hard, then he got right up in my face and shouted with all the unbridled sanctimony of a nine-year-old boy channelled through the words of a real nasty piece of work, ‘ Cade Ombra, get your fucking shit together, you dumb-arse motherfucker. You think I’m going to let you fail this boy because you can’t figure out how to change his destiny? You found a way to defeat the Seven Brothers and keep the Pandorals from conquering our world. You’ve outsmarted Lords Devilish and banged — ’ Hamun hesitated. ‘What does that word mean?’

‘Nothing, it’s — ’

He slapped me again. ‘ You banged the Presence of the Celestine of Rationality! And if that wasn’t enough, you conjured a kangaroo from an entirely different plane of reality and turned him into a fucking vampire. This should be easy, you lazy prick! Now, get off your arse and save my boy, because I don’t give a shit if our entire existence disappears for ever, I’ll still find a way to come and beat the shit out of you! ’ Hamun stopped, panting for breath, then said, ‘That’s it. That’s all of it.’

‘No, it’s not,’ I told him. ‘You forgot the last part.’

He looked confused. ‘The last part?’

I pointed to my cheek. ‘Pretty sure he told you to end that speech by. . .’

Hamun smiled and slapped me upside the head a third time. Funny how you can feel pain when the universe is collapsing all around you. Funny also how a snot-nosed little kid who’s just slapped you around and insulted you can be so cu —

Oh, there we go.

Hamun saw my expression. He looked around, seeing nothing at first, for all the strands had turned that same formless grey. But then one turned, just a little, and there, in that mostly-but-not-entirely dead strand, was a single gleaming flicker of possibility.

‘How. . . ?’ he asked.

I leaped to my feet, grabbed him up in my arms and raced between curtains of oblivion hard as stone for that one thread, that one possible destiny that we hadn’t seen before because it hadn’t existed.

Because I hadn’t yet made it happen.

Faster and faster I ran, the curtains of this wondrous, deadly plane of existence falling all around us until at last we leaped towards that faint flicker of potentiality that I was going to have to make inevitable so that the boy in my arms could finally meet his mother.