This is how it started.
Tetra took a good, long look at the house. It was a ramshackle affair, made of wet, rotting wood, barely able to keep itself from falling over. It was bigger than he expected. The land around the house was barren and empty. It looked like it could have been a farm once, but the sky and seasons had conspired to knock it down, and keep all crops from growing.
He walked up the steps to the secluded house. Any neighbors the owner had were far enough away, and would like it to stay so, if what he heard was true.
Tetra raised a gloved hand and knocked on the rough wooden door. He rubbed his knuckles and waited. The wind ruffled what little hair he had left.
For a few more minutes he stood there, getting colder in the dreary weather. As he turned and took one step off the porch, he heard the door creak open behind him. When he looked, he found one dark eye regarding him. "What is it?" the eye asked. "What do you want?"
"Sir, my name is Tetra Tamiland. I'd like to speak to you."
The eye creased, and narrowed. "Why?"
Tetra nodded, and took a piece of paper out of his pocket. "I represent the Magician's committee. I've heard that you are an unlucky man."
He slipped the piece of paper through the crack in the door, and it was taken from him. The door closed.
Tetra waited for a few minutes, trying to protect himself against the cold. Even through his heavy belly, the chill wind got to him. He was rubbing his back when the door re-opened.
"You can help me?" the eyeball asked. The paper was passed back through.
"Perhaps," Tetra said, taking it. "You are Hades Bringer?"
The eye didn't respond immediately, just stared. "Yes," it said finally. "Unfortunate as it is, that is my name." The door opened fully. Beyond was a thin man wearing ragged clothes. His brows looked eternally puckered above the dark eyes. His face looked loose and weathered.
"And what they say about you--is it true?" Tetra asked.
Hades stood on the other side of the doorway, looking into the distance, behind Tetra. "Where are my manners," he said finally, in a monotonous tone. "Please, come in."
Hades set a small plate of bread and cheese in front of Tetra, and Tetra nodded his thanks. He picked up a piece of bread as Hades sat across from him, on the knotted table nearly blending in with the wood around it.
"So," Tetra said finally, after finishing the small meal with his host. "Those that live around you say you are cursed. Do you agree?"
Hades nodded. Tetra removed a small book from his bag of luggage and opened it to a middle page. He began writing. "I've heard that some people have a name for it." Hades paused. "The Unlucky."
"That's one of the names for it," Tetra said, his pencil scratching on the page. "Others are adhanya, yatsu, and hidden from God." He kept writing, glancing up at Hades. "Why don't you tell me your story?" He looked down, and after a few seconds of silence, looked back up. "Well?"
"Uh...I...alright," Hades sputtered. "What is it you need to know?"
"Just start at the beginning," Tetra said, waiting with his pencil poised.
Hades, feeling very self-conscious, took a breath. "I was the fourth of four children. My parents had hoped for a girl after three boys, but I was born instead. They named me Hades, not knowing what it meant."
Tetra nodded, writing as fast as he could.
Hades took a deep breath. "When I was three, my five-year-old brother Bennet caught a fever and died. I'd loved him, and I wept. Little misfortunes were always happening to me, like getting kicked by our horse, or falling into a bucket of fresh eggs, or getting a cup of ground pepper dropped into my eyes."
"That's happened to me once," Tetra said. "Horrible."
"I agree. The children that lived near me started to avoid me once they found out about everything that was happening to me. When I was eight, I heard my parents talking to a friend of theirs, Father Isaac, a priest. he was telling them that some people are born unlucky, and stay that way their entire lives, until they die alone and unhappy. I knew he was talking about me. My parents didn't believe him." Hades stopped, and Tetra took the chance to flex his cramped wrist. When he looked up, he saw pain in Hades' face. The next words came with old feelings, and hesitation. "The next day, they died. The carriage they'd worked so hard to build was driven into a tree by the same horse that had helped them plant crops and travel to market for ten years. Their corpses were mangled, and their necks snapped."
Hades stopped talking, staring down at the table with dour eyes. Tetra pushed the plate of bread and cheese toward him. "You should eat something, it'll make you feel better."
"Should it?"
"It does for me," Tetra said. He patted his large belly. Hades nodded and took a small bite of bread. "When you're ready."
After a bit, Hades began talking again. "I knew I was a danger to my brothers. I started hoarding pieces of food, tools, and some clothing. It was just a little bit, but my brother Magnus, nine years older than me, found out. He and Jacob, who was five years older than me, persuaded me not to go, that they needed help with the crops. I stayed...but they never knew why I wanted to leave in the first place.
"So I stayed. Three years, filled with long winters, and poor crops, passed. Finally Magnus, twenty years old, came down with a disease. He was cold one night, before we went to sleep, shivering in his bed, and the next morning he was dead. I was eleven, and already too familiar with death."
"Death happens to everyone, Hades," Tetra said. "It's not something we can escape. Continue, if you wish."
"Things went on more or less the same for a year or two after that. Jacob worked hard to support us, and I helped where I could. We were part of a community of farms, so we were given some of the extra from those around us. I'm glad to say that my...affliction...never harmed them."
Hades paused for a moment. "One day, when I was fourteen, I woke up to an empty house. Jacob had simply disappeared. I haven't seen him since, and nobody knows what happened. For the first time in my life I was truly alone. I cried like a child that day, not like a man I nearly was."
Hades' fingers trembled, unable to stay still. "The community held a meeting to decide my fate. I was traded around the farms, helping where I could. This continued until I turned sixteen. A man."
Tetra nodded, writing quickly. After a moment, he looked up. Hades seemed to be waiting for him. "Please, continue."
"I made my decision to leave the area, for fear that something bad would happen to the people who had so kindly taken me in. Many families were glad to see me go, but others wanted to stop me. I wouldn't be stopped, not this time. I gathered what possessions I had, and left. They'd given me gifts, both physical and not. One taught me to read--something I'm thankful for every day." He waved a hand at a corner, and Tetra realized there was a shelf with a pile of books on it. "Others gave me food, one family gave me a crude iron sword, others clothing, and so on. At once my future seemed full, yet bleak."
"Where did you go?" Tetra asked.
Instead of answering, Hades got a candle from a small box. He lit it, and set it in a holder in the middle of the table. Tetra nodded his thanks.
"I went to the closest city, Diah. I didn't have much choice in the matter. My plan was to find a tradesman to take me as an apprentice, hopefully one that would help me avoid my curse. I also wanted to learn more about the curse, or perhaps get it lifted. I went to the one person I knew could tell me about it. My parent's old friend, the Priest.
"When I got to Diah, a place I'd only heard about, I was boggled by the intense number of people. The sounds, the smells, the sights--tall towers, incredible temples, wide streets thronged with people short, tall, fat, thin, yellow hair, black hair, gray hair...red hair."
Hades stopped suddenly, face shadowed in the flickering candlelight. Tetra looked up and found him deep in memory. Finishing his sentence, he rolled his wrist and relaxed his shoulders.
After a few moments, Hades sighed. "I'm sorry. Let's see...I walked around Diah, asking people about the priest. Most people shooed me away, people who did talk to me didn't know who I was talking about. It got dark, and I found a small corner on the street to sleep. I sheltered myself under my cloak, but..."
"Let me guess," Tetra interrupted. "It started raining."
Hades shrugged and nodded. "I didn't get any sleep that night, and when the sun rose and the clouds fled, I continued my search. I had even less luck; out of the hundreds of people I talked to, only a few people weren't repulsed by me. I was dirty, rain-soaked, and poor.
"At long last I spotted a monk, purchasing a large amount of bread. I tugged on his sleeve nervously and asked if he knew the priest. He said nothing for a minute, then told me he could take me to him. I was overjoyed! The monk asked me to help carry the bread, and I eagerly helped, walking carefully to not drop it."
A small smile crept on Hades' face. "The monk's name was Brian. Such a kind man. He had curly dark hair, and was quite short. Well, after a long trek to a corner of the city, we got to a monastery. We went inside, and deposited the bread with another monk. Brian led me to a room, and said that Father Isaac was inside. I went in.
"I felt my old friend. Death had touched my life once more," Hades said. He yawned. "Brian led me from the morgue, telling me how sorry he was. It began to sink in to me that I knew nobody, had nothing. I had no money, no friends, and no luck. A life of misfortune collided inside me, and I...Well, Brian tells me that I went dead in the eyes, sat down on the floor, and couldn't be persuaded to move. He said he had to call other monks to take me to a nearby cell. Eventually, I became aware again, but I felt empty. I exited the room, and sought Brian. I pleaded with him to let me stay at the monastery Brian asked the current father, and the father said yes. I was immediately set to work cleaning, cooking, tending the gardens the monks used, and more. It was good to work. It was better to eat, and have a place to sleep. I worked all day, rising and sleeping with the monks, and sometimes joined them in their services. I became friends with many of them. For several months I felt at great peace."
Hades sighed. "The monastery began to fall on hard times. Donations started declining, accidents began to happen. I was never blamed, but I knew it was my fault. The monks took it in stride. Brian told me that it was the world's attempt to turn us against it, and it should be ignored. I'd never heard such a thing."
Hades waited for Tetra to finish writing. When done, Tetra groaned and massaged his wrist. "I still have quite a bit left," Hades said.
"No problem," Tetra said. "I just need a little breather." He stretched his arms and yawned.
"I began to grow taller, becoming lean and muscled from the work and simple food. I had some small pride in how I looked. I continued to be unlucky, but I remembered Brian's words and tried to ignore it. Then something quite wonderful happened."
Tetra looked up and raised an eyebrow.
"One day, when I was working in the garden, a few people came into the monastery to pray. Most of them were simple workers, like farmers thankful for a good harvest or asking for a good next one. I'd gotten accustomed to these sort of people; their eyes skated over me like I was invisible--a young monk, maybe." He paused. "But...one of them was different. One of the groups was three men and two women. A mother, a father, two sons, and a daughter. They all seemed sad, but the daughter most of all. She was a little bit older than I, tall, lean, with dark red hair, and...big, beautiful eyes. Stunning. I was...intrigued."
Hades smacked his lips, unsure how to continue. "She sounds like quite the beauty," Tetra said.
"She was. One of my good friends, an old monk named Martin, had told me about...the body's natural urges when I asked. You can imagine how embarrassing the conversation was for the both of us. Anyway, that...information came to me when I saw her." Hades blushed. "I'd never thought about it that much, but when I saw her..."
"I was a young man once," Tetra said, nodding knowingly. "I can guess."
"I left my chores. I wanted to see her again. I knew I shouldn't be neglecting my duties, but it was like I was spellbound." Hades stared into a dark corner, not continuing. Tetra waited, head cocked, as Hades took a breath. "I waited until they had finished praying. The mother and father were talking with the Father, and I went and talked to the girl. She said I didn't look like a monk, and I told her I worked at the monastery but that I wasn't a monk. I asked her name, and she said it was Rose. 'A beautiful name for a beautiful girl,' I said, and then I blushed so hard I thought I was going to start on fire. It was the most embarrassing thing I'd ever said. I wanted to kill myself. But, somehow, she giggled and thanked me. I asked her why she was at the monastery
"Sadness washed over her. I apologized immediately, because I knew the look on her face. I'd had it many times before, thinking about a lost life. She told me it was all right--I couldn't have known--and explained with some hesitation that her beloved grandfather had passed away. They had come to the monastery to pray for his soul."
Tetra held up a finger, scrawling heatedly. When he finished, he rolled his neck, locked his fingers together and stretching them out. "There was...an attraction?" he asked, picking his pencil back up.
"Yes. Almost right away, I felt the sadness that had hung over my life get burned. Here, finally, was something to live for. You realize that I had never met many women my age; hadn't met many people in general. She was different from everyone I knew. The only people I knew then were monks. Quiet, solemn, respectable. Boring. She was something else, though. I was sorry to see her go. I didn't know how I would be able to see her again. The sorrow came back, wrapping around me.
"Then, when I'd gone back to the garden, I heard her telling her father about me. They didn't know I was so close, or they might not have said so, but I heard their words anyway. I heard her father say 'You turn down all your eligible suitors, who are good, and smart, and well-off, and instead you spend your time with the pauper servant boy?'" Hades paused. "There were more words, but I bent to my work, trying not to make a sound. I didn't hear them.
"They left, and I kept working, trying not to think about it. I couldn't stop, though. It came into my head again and again. The first real bright glow in my life had been snuffed before I could even enjoy it." Hades shook his head. "Nothing of note happened for several months. The other monks, while not noticing I was tied to any misfortune, began to worry about me. I was depressed, quiet, and seemed weak. I was, in truth, but before they could do anything about it, a storm struck the city. There was widespread destruction, and the monastery was destroyed. There were only a few deaths--Brian was one of them--and many of the monks were taken in by a monastery the next city over. I wasn't made the same offer. The surviving monks prayed for me, and gave me what they could, and left the city, walking in a long train out of the city as I watched, fully...entirely...alone."
"Excuse me," Tetra said, taking out a small knife. He proceeded to sharpen his pencil with it. "Horrible to think all this has happened to you."
"Do you think you'll be able to help me?" Hades asked.
"Perhaps," Tetra said, carefully clipping off pieces of graphite. "I'd like to." He put the knife out of sight. "Please, go on."
Hades nodded. "I remember the day the monks left. I'd found a spot on the city wall to sit and watch the sun set, over Terrin's Hills. I was alone, yes...I didn't know where to go or what to do, but just then, seeing the fire on the clouds and the shadows of the Hills lengthen...I felt warm, and carried suddenly. As If I was being helped to safety. The solitude that had been forced upon me collided with this feeling, and threatened to take it over, but I sat on the wall with my small sack of things from the monastery and drew strength from the quiet. That's why I live out here," Hades said, motioning to the house around the two of them. "The peace."
His shoulders slumped. "Well, the feeling wouldn't last forever. I was forced down from the wall by the guards, and I went back to finding a spot out of the way on the road level. For several days I did that, sleeping alongside the other homeless, trying to find anything to make my situation better. I would wander the city and look for work, or anyone handing out scraps to eat. I had some food left from the monks, but I knew it should be kept safe.
"What happened next...it's strange. All my life, I'd been unlucky, destined to a sorrowful fate...but then I came upon a workshop. It was looking for help, building tools and working with wood. Carpentry in a way, but not in the truest sense. I knew about tools and building things from the farm; most of the things I had to fix had broken while I was using them. I knew I didn't have much of a chance of being given work, but I should at least try."
Hades shook his head. "You should have seen my face when I saw who was running the workshop. It was Rose's father." He chuckled. "I almost ran out as soon as I saw, but when he looked up at me he didn't recognize me. I realized that, while Rose had described me to him, he'd never actually seen me. I asked him about the work, and he said I'd need to use the tools, take directions, work hard, the normal things. All those I'd done all my life, though I needed to re-familiarize myself with a few of the tools. I was hired."
"A strange turn," Tetra said, nose bent to the paper.
"I thought so as well. I was given a small room to myself over the shop, and was told I was also to keep it clean during the night and make sure no one broke in. I started working, happy but unsure how this would go sour. I knew it would." He was silent for a moment, looking off to the side, hand covering his mouth, eyes fixated on nothing. The scratch of Tetra's pencil was the only sound but the wind whistling in through drafty holes in the wooden house. The candle flickered and sent shadows scraping at the edges of their vision. Tetra finished and looked up. Hades was still looking away.
"I met her again after a week," he began. "She didn't usually go to the shop; they had a house elsewhere. She came with her father to help sell; I didn't know she was there until several hours had passed, I was in the back organizing. Her father called me out to help him measure, and we saw each other. We both knew what her father thought of me before, so we tried not to give anything away. We worked in the shop together that day, both nervous and cautious. We were formally introduced to each other by her father." He paused. "I saw the same thing in her eyes as the first time. Light. Joy. A freedom.
"She started coming around the shop more often, and my heart leapt each time I saw her. We would talk, sometimes, just a little bit. Neither of us wanted to let her father know that we knew each other. Our lives went on. I enjoyed my work.
"But..." he began. Tetra looked up and saw his chin trembling. Hades took a breath, squeezing it in and out of his mouth. "One night, she...came to me. After the shop had closed and her father'd gone home. I was cleaning up, and she walked in, smiling. The first time she put her arms around me I could barely think. When she kissed me, I couldn't. I loved her," he said in a thin, breaking voice. He had tears in his eyes. "Later, after...I heard a sound. From the shop. I went downstairs and found someone rooting around, looking for valuables. We'd forgotten to lock the door. I picked up a hammer, and tried to jump him from behind. He was too strong, and threw me off. He brought out a knife. He came at me. There was a fight. I couldn't beat him. He cut me-" Hades revealed a spot on his shoulder "-and I fell, knocking my head on a table." He rubbed his forehead. "There was a lot of blood. As I felt myself slipping away, I saw Rose in the doorway. She'd heard the fight. She tried to stop him, a-and..." There were tears now, slipping down his cheeks. His teeth were clenched tight. "She took his blade in her stomach. She fell, screaming, and I watched her die, immobile and nearly dead myself."
At once he stood, pushing his chair away from the table. "I killed her!" he shouted. "It was my fault! Everything else could have been unlucky or coincidence, but she was only there for me! Only there because she loved me!" he raged, pounding his fist against a wall. "It was as if I held the knife that slit her open!"
"Hades," Tetra said, standing and moving around the table. "You can't blame yourself for this. It wasn't you."
"It was," Hades said. He faced away from Tetra. "My parents, my brothers, Father Isaac, the monastery...even being attacked...it was all chance. Circumstance. The wrong place in the wrong time."
He whirled. Tetra saw a new darkness in his eyes. "Rose was there to see me. If I hadn't been there she would still be alive! She'd have a family now, married to someone that loves her! And not doomed to love someone that would get her killed. Now matter how much he loved her back." He collapsed at the table again. Tetra stood off to the side, nearly pushed back by the other man's despair.
After a minute of silence, during which the candle's low light flickered around the room, Tetra stepped forward, and laid a hand on Hades' shoulder. "Listen to me, young man," Tetra said, kneeling slowly. "Feeling responsibility for the whims of the world will drive a man mad. Trust me; I've seen it happen. These things--tragedies--happened around you, yes...but you are no more responsible for them than a tree that falls on a house due to the wind." He leaned closer. "You are the center of a storm, where the air is calm. It does not control the wind around it, it is simply swept along as the storm causes destruction. Do you understand?"
Hades had his face in his hands. Slowly, he nodded. Tetra leaned away. "Will you finish your story?"
Tetra waited as Hades thought. Then, after a few minutes, Hades took a breath.
"I was asleep for several hours, until her father arrived, frantic. He was looking for her. When he found us, well...I was blamed. He said that I had seduced her, or raped her, and when she tried to fight me I'd killed her." He shook his head, just a little tremor. "I didn't have the strength to fight it, not anymore. He and the rest of Rose's family, and the city, eventually, turned on me. They drove me away. Now I had even less than before--no food, no home, a city that would have my blood. Nothing but the clothes on my back and the knowledge that my friends would die if I could even make them."
He wrapped his arms around his body. "I walked. I managed to get some field work to earn enough money to get this place. I work with the farms around here during the spring and summer and fall, and hope not to starve or freeze during the winter. A traveling scholar brings me books every few months. That was two years ago...already some of the farms are falling on hard times." He looked at the ground between his feet. "I'll need to move on before long. I hope that will keep things from happening."
He looked up at Tetra with a hard expression. "I'm finished. Do you have everything you need?"
Tetra finished the last sentence in his notebook and set his pencil down. "I suppose I do. I have a question for you, however."
He leaned forward, pressing his hands on the table and looking Hades in the eye across the smoke from the candle. "If you could reverse it all...would you?"
Hades had never slept so well. The next morning, he woke up feeling fresh and happy. Tetra, from his bedroll in the center of the main room, looked up at him as Hades entered. "You look well."
Hades managed a weak smile. "I feel well. I had a pleasant night. I suppose it's what you told me about last night."
"Who can guess?" Tetra said, hiding a smile. "We should set out as soon as possible. We have a long distance to go. Do you need to pack?"
Hades was in the process of piling food into a sack. "I don't have much. This is all I'll bring. How far is the Magician's Committee?"
"Several days travel, at the best. It's near the city Tela-ban. We might be able to catch a cart moving in that direction if we're...lucky." Tetra looked over his shoulder at Hades, who said nothing. "Anyway, we should be prepared to walk."
Several minutes later they stood outside the leaning collection of wood bits Hades called a house. Tetra pointed north east, and they started walking. It was a bright morning and, as Hades pointed out, sure to bake them and get them sweating. Tetra simply nodded and kept walking.
"You said you would tell me more in the morning," Hades said as they walked. "Will you?"
"I will," Tetra said, nodding. "I keep my promises." The man was already puffing. "I, and several other people from the committee were sent out to find people like you, the unlucky. It took me five months to even hear about you, and another month to find you. One of the monks, you see, from the monastery on the Hakhan river. He was at the monastery you stayed. We were sent out, because we thought that we had a...a breakthrough, you could say, about you. The unlucky. We...found something."
"What kind of something?" Hades asked. Surely they looked strange, a tall thin young man, barely twenty, next to a short, stout old man.
"You could call it an object, but we've found that it rejects most descriptions." He moped sweat from his forehead. "Do you know about what the metallurgists around Tela-ban have been doing? No, I suppose not. They're working to build something that can produce energy. I'm not sure how it works, leave it for those that want to know. They call it an 'engine.' We think that the device is something like that...it produces something on its own. An engine of fate."
"Incredible."
"It is. We aren't certain that it's the cause of your...misfortune, but...well, we've done some experiments."
"What sort?"
"A good number. I can't tell you about all of them, and out of the rest only a few will make sense, unless you know about magical energies, four-dimensional space, that sort of thing." Hades shook his head. "I thought not. The very first one we did--a man dropped a piece of buttered bread near the machine. It landed face down."
"Well," Hades said, "that always happens."
"Ten times out of ten? Twenty out of twenty?" Tetra asked. "Over and over. With different types of bread, butter, jam, different people dropping the bread?" Tetra shook his head. "Another experiment. We had two men gamble with dice. One man lost every time. We brought in two different men, same result. It would latch on one person and make that person unlucky."
"And you want me to get closer to it?" Hades asked. "I'll probably die!"
"Ah, there's the thing," Tetra said, raising a pudgy finger. "The engine never seems to directly injure the person made unlucky. Tell me, oh unlucky one: how many times have you gotten sick?"
Hades was taken aback. He thought about it.
"Do you remember even one time?" Tetra asked. "Even after all those times the fever swept through your farm, or the plague took a friend, you were spared. What about injuries? Broken bones? Falls from the ladder? Pinched fingers? You must have had a few. You made it seem like you were a clumsy child."
"I-I don't know. I feel like I must have." Hades looked down at Tetra. "But why would my body be spared? If I was truly unlucky I would be sick and weak and covered in sores my entire life!"
"Would you have that," Tetra said, looking up and meeting Hades' eyes, "or be surrounded by the death of others?" Hades looked away, cowed. "I agree, however; it's strange. It's a common point among the stories of the unlucky. They are left unharmed. Your story practically confirms it as truth."
"But...why?"
"The Committee at large believes it is, essentially, the purpose of the engine to create suffering. It will focus on a person--you--and make their lives difficult, sad, full of despair...but it will leave you whole and alive. You will remain unharmed until your natural death at an old age. We think that your sadness, your unhappiness, is what the engine is meant to produce, and in some way uses it for something else." He paused. "We aren't sure about that last part. As far as we can tell, it doesn't do anything else. It certainly seems to produce misfortune...but then, nothing."
"So, what do you plan to do with me?" Hades asked. "Why should I come with you?"
"So far, you're the only unlucky alive," Tetra said, waving his hand. "It's possible that once you were to die, the...Unluckiness...will transfer to a different person, one just being born, or perhaps still in the womb. For maximum despair."
"This is a very dark conversation," Hades muttered.
"True. But, necessary. You won't be doing all that much, to be very honest; we want to see if anything will happen if you were to get into close proximity with the engine, and record the results. Maybe nothing will happen, maybe something. We just want to find out what."
"I could die!" Hades said, stopping and backing away. "You're practically sending me to my death!"
"You're welcome to go back to your house," Tetra said. "And the cycle will continue. When you die, another pour soul will find his or her life to be one misery after another. Tell me, Hades Bringer...wouldn't it be nice to stop that? To help us destroy the engine, perhaps? Reversing what's been done to you is impossible, of course, but to keep it from happening to another, and another, and another."
They stood six feet apart, watching the other, dust from the road in their vision. Hades dropped his eyes down to the ground and nodded. "You're right. I don't want anyone to go through what happened to me."
"I agree," Tetra said, kindly. "That's why I volunteered to find someone like you. Misfortune as the world spins is one thing, to be magically cursed to live a life of death like you have is quite something else. Come now, we have quite a long way to go."
He started walking. After a moment, Hades caught up to him, and they walked in silence for a time.
"I wondered if something like this might happen," Hades said, looking at the three men in the road.
"We'll be all right. They won't hurt us."
"Easy for you to say. You aren't an unlucky." Hades looked at the other three. They had swords and scowls. Two were in front, and one behind. They'd jumped out from behind a rock as Hades and Tetra had passed.
"Yer money," one of the two in front said. "Or me boy Oveland cuts yeh good."
"I am Tetra Tamiland, a magician for the Committee," Tetra said in a clear voice. "Let us pass."
"Yer money," the man said again. "Can yeh not hear?"
"Oh, I can hear you just fine," Tetra said, reaching one hand into a pocket. He drew out a long gold feather. "Can you? I'll say it again: let us pass."
"Oveland," the man said, and the man next to him advanced, his tooth shining in the sun. Tetra whispered a word with the feather next to his mouth, and, with a quick throw, stabbed it into the ground, where it quivered.
"What are you doing?" Hades asked. He had his hands clenched together under his chin. "They're going to kill us!"
"Maybe," Tetra said. The wind blew. "Or maybe not."
The wind gusted stronger. Tetra's coat blew out to the side. "We'll just have to see."
"Boss!" The man behind them yelled. "Whassat?!"
Hades and Tetra, as well as the two men in front of them, looked at the other man. He was pointing to the north, the direction the wind was coming from. Hades and Tetra spotted a haze of something. "A cloud?" Hades asked.
"No, too low," Tetra responded. "You should cover your face."
"What?" Hades asked as the buzzing began. Why?"
"So that thing with the feather," Hades mentioned an hour later as they walked over a hill. The sun was beginning to set behind them, and gave them long, loping shadows. "What was it exactly you did?"
"I've been studying the unlucky for many years," Tetra said. "I've learned a few things. I've learned that your luck can be manipulated. I was able to cast a quick incantation to make our situation a little easier. Even I wasn't prepared for such a...powerful response."
There were a few moments of silence as both men recalled what had happened to the three bandits. "Too bad about that third one behind us," Hades said. "I wonder if he knew he was allergic."
"I don't think he did. He didn't seem all that worried. Did you get stung?"
"No. I admit, I'm surprised," Hades said, rubbing his arms.
"Neither did I. Looked like big ones, too! We were probably saved a good amount of pain."
"So that incantation, you said...how does one do it?"
"It isn't what you think," Tetra said. "It only affects your luck for a few moments, maybe an hour for the longer ones. Also, it has a diminishing return."
"What does that mean?" Hades asked.
"The more you do it during a certain time period, the less effective it becomes. I haven't done it very many times, so it still worked."
"So what you're saying is..."
"I'm saying that it won't cure your unluckiness. It will alleviate it for a few moments, but there's no way to make it permanent." He glanced at Hades as they walked. "I'm sorry."
"It was a long shot anyway," Hades said, sighing. He watched his feet as he walked. "Would it be possible for me to learn how to do it anyway?"
"If you'd be willing to learn. It took me five years, plus a basic knowledge of magic, to successfully cast one. You could learn, but to what end? A small boost in your luck every once in a while?"
"Yes!" Hades said. "It could change my life! I cast it right before I ask for a job, or during the first snowfall, or when I...when I meet a woman I like. What's the downside?"
"I tried to tell you, it doesn't work like that. Hades, believe me, I know that you'd like to think there's a way to fight being one of the unlucky...but the effect only has a very limited time span. You might be told you could work, yes...but in a week, you'll be living without work again. The first night of snow you'll stay warm and safe...but the next night, drafts will appear to chill you. The woman may love you back...but in a month-"
"Stop." Hades set his mouth, fighting back tears. "I know. I understand. Maybe..." he stopped. "No, nothing. Never mind."
"I wish there was something more I could do, Hades. Truly I do."
Hades didn't answer. He watched his feet move forward one after the other until the sun went down.
It took them a little under a week to reach the Magician's Council, a collection of buildings near the city of Tela-ban. Tetra wasn't forced to use the lucky feather spell any more, even though Hades asked him to. Before they got to the Committee, Tetra pointed out a few things about the tall towers of Tela-ban, and talked a bit about the city's history. After they passed, the buildings of the Committee were only a few hours away.
At Hades' first sight of them, he looked from one structure to the other, trying to take them all in at once. Tetra dragged him toward one building, on the south-west side of the large compound, and finally got him inside.
"We'll meet with my supervisor first, Sorcerer Anderton. I'll hand over my notes, and once he's approved them, we'll be able to see what happens when you get closer to the engine."
"Your notes?"
"The story you told me, plus everything I wrote down before I found you."
In a moment Hades found himself sitting in front of a desk, behind which sat a man with his fingers laced and his eyes scanning the notebook Tetra had handed over.
"There's no way to disprove this," Anderton said finally. "He could very certainly be one of the unlucky. I'll talk to Guyon and see if we can get the experiment going as soon as possible." Anderton stood, followed by Tetra and Hades. "If only we could have met under better circumstance, Hades." He put out his hand, and Hades shook it slowly. "Tetra, have a room prepared for our guest. You two have traveled a long way, and you must want some rest."
"Yes sir," Tetra said as Anderton left the office. Hades followed Tetra into the hall outside. "We'll be able to sleep and eat something before we start the test. And don't worry, it'll certainly be more than what we've had to eat on the way here."
"Last chance," Tetra said to Hades. "You don't have to go in there."
"What else am I supposed to do?" Hades asked. He, and Tetra, had thick gloves and goggles. "I came all this way. I have nothing to go back to. I might as well see what happens."
They stood outside a locked and guarded door inside the same building. They had rested and eaten, and now were ready to introduce Hades to the engine. A man in heavy armor stood behind them, as well as Anderton and the man named Guyon. Everyone was waiting. Hades could see the engine through a window.
"Okay then," Tetra said. "Sir, the key please?" Anderton handed him an iron key, which Tetra fitted into the lock. "Here we go." He turned the key and opened the door.
They entered the dark room, Hades following Tetra with his eyes clamped shut. When nothing happened, he cracked them open and took a look.
Resting on a small table in the center of the room was an item constructed from purple stone. In the dim light of the room--nothing more than two candles set in walls illuminated it--it seemed to glow. "Here we are," Tetra said. "Now Hades. I want you to approach it slowly. Tell me if you feel anything, or see anything, or anything. Please begin."
Hades nodded and took a step forward; nothing changed. He took another, and still nothing. He got up next to the machine. He shook his head, but he was unwilling to take his eyes from it.
"Interesting." Tetra looked out a small window at Anderton and Guyon, who were writing in pads. "Will you touch it?"
Hades lifted a shaking finger and, slowly, brought it down on top of the engine. He leaned away as he did so. Inside the thick gloves he wore, it felt almost cool, but nothing more.
"All right," Tetra said, "you can stop." Despite the inactivity, Hades brought his hand away relieved. "Some tests." Hades was handed a die with six sides. "Try your luck," Tetra said with a small smile. He rolled his die. A four. Hades rolled his and got a three. They rolled more than a dozen times, but Hades never won. Tetra nodded and put away his die. "That's enough. There are a few other things, and-"
"What's this here?" Hades asked. He was inspecting one side of the engine. "These letters?"
"Letters?" Tetra said, stopping in his tracks. "What letters?"
"On the side here. Looks like they spell a word."
After a pause, Tetra hustled around to where Hades stood, and looked. Just as Hades said, five letters were raised on the surface. "I've never seen those before! Do you recognize the word?"
"No. It looks sort of like a name," Hades said. "Casai."
There was a strange, wet pop. Tetra felt something next to him and looked around. To his surprise, two more people had appeared in the room with Hades and himself. To his greater surprise, they appeared to be Hades and himself.
The four of them said nothing, as they all allowed the moment to settle in.
Both Tetra's cleared their throats, and began in unison: "I say-"
They stopped. Both Hades looked from their Tetra, to the other Tetra, and then to each other.
The other Hades lifted a finger. "You appear to be us."
Tetra nodded. "So it seems."
The original Hades said nothing.
The other Tetra asked: "How did you bring us here?"
"We didn't do a thing. You joined us here," Tetra responded. "At least, that's how it appears."
"Strange," the other Tetra said. Both Tetra's glanced at the window, where Guyon was writing like mad. Anderton had disappeared. "Everything else appears the same."
"As for us," Tetra said. "Did the engine do this? Because of that word?"
"Engine? What engine?" the other Hades asked.
"This one," Tetra said, pointing at the purple device near them. "Perhaps...perhaps we've been copied?"
The other Hades smiled at Hades. "This will make living arrangements with Rose rather strange, eh?"
Tetra gasped. Hades was too shocked to say anything. "Hades...are you saying you live with Rose?"
The other Hades shrugged. "Of course."
"Hades-" Tetra began.
"Our parents!" Hades shouted at the other one of him. "Our brothers! Are they alive?"
"What do you mean? Mother is, but Father died in his sixtieth year! And yes, of course our brothers are alive! Why do you ask?"
Hades was breathing quickly. He bent down, putting his hands on his knees. He was white in the face. "Sit, Hades, sit," Tetra commanded, and helped him lower himself to the ground. "Forgive him," he said to the other two. "There seems to be a fundamental difference between the two of you. You see, here, Hades is one of the unlucky."
"Sorry?" Tetra asked. "The what?"
"You...you don't know?" Tetra scratched his chin. "Incredible. You live in another version of our world, one without the unlucky!"
Tetra explained. He explained everything he knew about the unlucky, the discovery of the engine, and, with permission, the sad story of Hades' life. The other two listened without interruption. The other Tetra wrote everything down. The other Hades listened with a sad expression.
When he finished, Tetra sighed. "I assume that, in your world, you grew up, took a trade, and, in some way, met and married Rose?"
The other Hades nodded. "I was given an apprenticeship at her father's shop. I had proved crafty with tools and very diligent. Rose and I met during that time. I also became friends with Father Isaac. It was he that married us. When her father gets too old, I'll take over the shop from him."
"And you, me?" Tetra said. "What is your job? Here, I study the unlucky. What's your place in this?"
"I work at the Committee, in the trans-dimensional magic division."
Tetra scowled. "But we don't have a division by that name in our world. Please, explain it."
"Several years ago, one of our magicians disappeared. We thought that he had been murdered along the road, or perhaps decide to leave his post and settle down without letting us know. As it turns out, neither was true. We found a spot that contained some sort of tunnel, as if made out of air, that led to a world entirely different. Man spanned the skies and the sea, conquering all the world with such machinations it stunned the mind. They could communicate via 'electrics' through the air. Well, we were able to find our magician, currently locked up in a prison for acting insane--at least, as they saw it. I, and another man, masqueraded as his caretakers and were able to bring him back to our world...but questions lingered."
"No doubt!" the original Tetra said.
"We assembled a group to try and uncover what possible worlds existed: an infinite number, it seemed."
This Tetra leaned forward. "Yet we discovered some things. Coincidences that occurred too frequently. Through vigorous testing, and no small amount of luck, we discovered other portals. As we traveled to them--well, the kind of worlds we found are too fantastic to recount. In one, humanity had all but been conquered by beasts from under the ground, and taken refuge in the cold north. In another, rain fell from the sky unendingly. Towns and cities had to built to accommodate this endless water. Posing as visitors, we asked about the rain, and were met with strange looks. It turns out that the rain was a common feature the world over, and had been for over a hundred years."
"Shocking! But the coincidences?"
"They weren't in every world, but a great number of them. Perhaps if we had looked...but I digress. For example, we would commonly meet, or hear of, a person named Isaac."
Hades looked up, and the other Hades nodded. "I thought the same thing," the other said. "Father Isaac. He was important in both our lives, for wildly different reasons."
"It's not an uncommon name here," the other Tetra said. "But in a great number of the worlds we traveled to, we'd hear of him. It was always a man, commonly someone in power, but not always...The names differed in all other aspects. For instance, no one had ever heard of a man named Tetra before. There was one world were the men are given names that begin with consonants, and the woman with vowels...and yet there was a man named Isaac. He was the captain of the guard of the city we visited. People considered his name a strange oddity, but he got respect."
The original Tetra nodded and said nothing.
"Well, about a month ago, I got word of something that could have been another portal. I traveled by myself to where it was supposed to be, and found, to my surprise, a house! Inside," he looked at the other Hades, "Was this man and his wife and child."
Hades gasped. "Child," he said. He lifted his eyes to look at the other Hades. "A girl."
"How did you know?" the other Hades asked. The first didn't answer, but dropped his eyes back to the ground.
The other Tetra cleared his throat. "I asked to investigate after showing my credentials. I looked at the spot--it was small--and said yes, it was a portal."
"And the next thing we know, we're standing next to you two," the other Hades said. "Somewhere I've never been and Tetra had left far behind."
"Quite interesting," Tetra said. "Please excuse me a moment." He left the room and spoke to the magicians outside, and then reentered. "I asked for us to be given a room more comfortable to talk." He glanced at the purple engine resting on the table in the center of the room. "This is not the safest place to be."
"Do you have anything else you can tell us?" the original Tetra asked. They sat at a round table with drinks and food next to them. The dwindling light crept in through several windows along one wall, and candles stood on the table ready to be lit. He didn't realize it at first, but Hades felt much more at ease when away from the engine they'd come to see.
"You're caught up, I'm afraid," the other Tetra replied. "You know everything about how we got here, and we know everything about here. Tell me, though--have you not found any portals to other worlds?"
The first Tetra shook his head. "No such thing. Perhaps we simply haven't discovered them, but...I visited Hades in his home, and he reported no such phenomenon." Hades shook his head. "Nor has anyone else."
The other Tetra stroked his chin, gazing at the upper corner of the room. "Perhaps the world we come from-" he indicated himself and his Hades "-is some sort of hub. We have discovered a great number of the portals, always in secluded places or where there aren't many people. Some even have the ability to travel to more than one world under the correct circumstances. As I mentioned, there has been extensive testing."
"I expect nothing else from a magician of your stature," the first Tetra said. The other, and his accompanying Hades, laughed. "Is it possible for you to give me the locations of the portals, so that we may search for them?"
"Of course. We haven't discovered a world so shockingly similar to our own--save for some unfortunate differences." He nodded in Hades' direction. "It would represent a unique scientific opportunity. To not take advantage of it would be foolish. Do you agree?"
"Of course!" Tetra leaned on the table. "We have to do what we can. Our very interaction is changing the face of our world as we know it! Could you tell me more about some of the worlds you've traveled to? I'd like to know if..."
Hades stopped listening. the two Tetras began discussing things too complicated for him to follow. Excusing himself, he got up and exited the room. There was a guard outside the door with a sword, but he didn't move to stop Hades.
"Um. I'd like to take a walk. Is that all right?" he asked the guard. The guard shrugged.
"May I join you?" he heard behind him. He turned and found him--the other him--exiting the room. "I'd like to talk to you about something."
The guard looked from one Hades to the other, blinking his eyes. Hades nodded, and the two walked towards the building's exit.
Outside was cool and quiet; the sun's bright lines were hiding on the other side of a range of mountains. The wind was strong and fresh, and Hades could taste rain soon. The two of them, identical and different, strolled with eerily similar gaits.
"So what is it?" Hades asked. "What did you want to talk to me about?"
The other Hades, the one who still had his Rose, and their daughter, and family, watched the ground as he walked. "Your story...your life...it could have just as easily been me that lived it, and you mine."
Hades shook his head. "No, the engine is only in my world. Your Tetra said so yourself."
"Maybe not," the other said. The passed around a tall bell tower. "I think it does exist in our world, somehow. I think that we have the same world."
"Yeah, I know. But they're different."
"No! I think they're the same world!" The other Hades stopped and looked at him. "I want you to think. Tetra told us that the first instance of your unlucky nature was your name." He pointed at himself. "Why am I still named Hades?"
Hades didn't answer. His stomach clenched.
"What are the chances that we have the same house?" the other Hades asked. "We don't know for certain, but it almost sounded as if we do. I think that if I went back there, I'd find Rose, and Violet, but you would find nobody--like we are the same person in the same world but we experience different things."
"That can't be possible," Hades said, backing away a step. "You're talking about something that's impossible!"
"More impossible than portals to other worlds?" the other said. He took a step toward Hades.
"Why do you think these things?" Hades asked, trying to keep distance between him and the other.
"Tetra explained what is was like to go from one world to the other. Like being squeezed and stretched at the same time. When we were taken from the spot our house to were you stood, next to the engine...it wasn't like that. Not for me, anyway. It just felt like we'd moved."
"But...not to a different world," Hades muttered. The other one nodded.
"Think about what that means."
"It means that Rose is still alive," Hades said. Looking up at the other. "It means that the terrible things I had to live through...they never happened!" The other nodded.
"Perhaps."
"But...why are there two of us? Could there be more? Why are we so different?" Even as he asked, Hades knew the answer.
"The engine," the other said. "I don't know about these things--maybe the Tetras could explain--but that's the only thing that's different about our worlds. That, and the portals."
"I don't feel good," Hades said. He leaned against the bell tower and covered his eyes. "I feel sick."
"There's a chance that we can do something about it."
Hades looked up at the other version of him. The wind was blowing his hair, slightly longer, around his face. He didn't have a coat, but his loose shirt billowed. "The engine--the engine of fate--has been controlling your life since your birth. Destroy it." Hades stared at him. "I'm surprised the magicians haven't done it yet! It does nothing but cause misfortune. Find something heavy, and crush it!"
The emotion in the other's voice surprised Hades. Then, he imagined a rock, or a hammer, descending toward the engine of fate Tetra thought had caused everything. He looked at the man who lived his life without it, the one who was telling him to bring it to an end. It would end the world that had brought Rose's life to a brutal, crushing end. It might even destroy it.
He pushed off from the wall and passed the other Hades. They headed back to the building they had exited.
For the third time in his life, Hades felt like he had a purpose. The first was when he met Rose, the second when he lay with her--perhaps giving her their version of Violet--and now to destroy the thing responsible for her death.
"I need something heavy," he told the other Hades. "What do you think?"
The Hades thought. "The guards have weapons. If we could find an armory-"
"A hammer." Hades pictured himself grabbing the hammer and attacking the thief, the thing who'd taken Rose from him, late at night in her father's shop. "Get me a hammer."
"I wonder where the Hades' have gone?" one of the Tetras asked.
"They'd probably be quite bored by all this," the other one said. He shook a handful of pages. "These locations you've told me about--we should be sending people tomorrow if we can!"
"I agree of course!" Both Tetras laughed. They'd agreed on a lot of things. "That other information though...we should let the Hadeses know as soon as possible."
"Yes," the original Hades said, rising. They both left the room, stopping at the guard outside. "Two identical men left this room some time ago," Hades said to the guard. "Do you know where they went?"
"I believe they exited the building, sir. Sirs," the guard said, looking from one Hades to the other.
"Thank you Hector," the other Hades said, and they left the guard even more confused. "Perhaps they took a walk around the grounds." He looked out a window near the door. Rain attacked the dirt and grass. "Well, no longer, at least."
"I hope they didn't wander far. It could take us some time to find them, especially in this rain." They stood looking out, until they heard steps behind them.
"Sirs." It was Hector, and another guard was with him. "A commotion's been heard in the armory."
One Tetra looked at the other. "Do you think-"
"Yes. We need to stop him."
"They didn't like that very much," the other Hades said. He trailed behind the original, who held a short maul in both hands. His fingers were bone-white and wrapped around the handle. "We'd better hurry." The first Hades nodded.
They made their way back to the room with the engine of fate, listening to the rain on the walls and ceiling. The halls were empty, and flickered with smoky candlelight. In a minute the Hades' looked in at the purple engine through the window. The other Hades tried the door. "Locked."
Hades licked his lips slowly, then brought the maul behind him. The glass shattered easily, and he climbed in, avoiding the thin lingering daggers. He walked across the glass particles as the other Hades followed him inside.
It seemed bigger, like it had been feeding. It pulsed with odd light, casting shadows behind them the candles in the room couldn't quite dispel. Hades' grip on the maul tightened, but he didn't raise it. Instead, he peered again at the word risen on the exterior, like a bruise on skin.
"Casai," he said, and nothing happened. "I wonder what it means."
"Who cares what it means. Just destroy it!" the other Hades said. "I would, if I'd had to live through it ruining my life! Think about what it did to Rose! To our family, and Father Isaac!"
Hades took deep breaths, remembering.
"Do it, Hades!"
"What will happen?" Hades asked the other. "What do you think will happen when I smash it?"
"I don't think that anything will happen! I think you'll be free to live a life with love! Hades, do it."
Hades nodded, and drew the hammer over his head. He pictured Rose's killer.
"Hades!" they heard, and turned. Both Tetras stood in the smashed window. "Don't!"
"Why not?" Hades asked. "He's right! Destroying this could only be a good thing!"
"Let us tell you what we've discovered first!" The original Tetra unlocked the door to the room, and both of them entered. "Put it down, please, Hades, and we'll talk."
Hades looked at both of them, and then the other Hades, and slowly lowered the maul. "Tell me."
"We talked, the other Tetra and I," the original said. "We discussed the locations of the portals to other worlds, and I noticed something strange. A number of the places that he told me had portals were places you told me about in your sad tale."
Hades blinked. "Like what?"
"'Along side a tree on a country road, surrounded by farms,'" Tetra said. "Like the tree your parents were killed by when they crashed into it. 'The morgue of a monastery in the city of Diah.'"
"Where Father Isaac's body was," Hades said. "And?" he asked, frightened.
"Another in Diah, up on the walls. Do you remember? After the monastery was destroyed? You spent a day there, at some manner of peace." Hades nodded. "We already knew of one! In the very house you live now! Don't you see?" Tetra jabbed a finger at the engine of fate. "It causes the portals! Somehow, when it affects you like this--and perhaps others before you--the portals appear!"
"I...I..."
"There's more going on here than two worlds that are strikingly similar!" the other Tetra said. "Our worlds are tied together somehow!"
"I thought the same thing," the other Hades said. "I told him how being moved here was different from going through a real portal! I told him to destroy the engine to correct it! To fix it!"
"We don't know what will happen if the engine is destroyed," Tetra said. "We can't do it. We have to know exactly what it does."
"I want to destroy it," Hades said. He brought the maul up and clenched it. "What good does it do? The portals are created by taking life, by causing suffering! They're things of evil!"
"Hades, listen!" the other one said. "Rose is still alive! To you, and to your Tetra perhaps, she is dead, but to me she lives! Destroying it will change nothing!"
"I have to!" Hades shouted back. "It will keep draining the joy from lives until someone decides to destroy it!"
"Hades!" Tetra said, standing between him and the engine. "Have sense!"
He opened his mouth again, purple-shadowed and glowing eyes. Instead of the voice Hades had gotten used to, a deep, thrashing echo emerged, and the world went cold and quiet. "Casai."
Hades brought the maul over his head as if dreaming, and pushed Tetra aside with an arm too strong to be his. He let the hammer fall at the engine, and it glowed with triumph.
You are pawns to me. You live your life like you control it, but you do not. I am the being across worlds, and the mind across time. You have powered me, and freed me just as I envisioned.
The worlds got closer--they found ways to one another.
A girl of twenty was walking in her father's garden when an oval opened in the air. On the other side was a pleasant meadow, and beyond a city unlike hers. She got closer, knowing to be careful--a friend of hers had disappeared into a portal like this one ten years ago, but she got too close.
A woman thought insane huddled in her coat against the wind pushing into her tent. With surprise, she saw a tear appear, yet beyond wasn't the cold wastes she and the rest of humanity called their home; instead was a city block, like she remembered before the Tor. Desperate for an escape, she jumped through.
Tetra and Hades hit the hard wooden ground with sudden pops and snaps in the air. For a moment they laid there. Hades sat up as Tetra groaned. "Are you all right?" Hades asked.
Tetra rolled over and pushed himself to his feet. "I think I bruised my knee," the magician said. "Where are we?"
"Back inside my house."
"Are the other two with us?"
Hades looked and shook his head. "I don't think they came with us." They heard sudden footfalls and the door to the room they were in was pushed open.
Red-faced, wide-eyed, and exuberant, Rose stood on the other side. "Hades!" She ran to him. "I was so scared!"
"We're all right, dear," Hades said. "You won't believe what's happened. How long were we gone?"
"A few hours. Somebody-"
"The same time for us," Tetra said. "It looks like we were right. It was the same world the entire time. When the other Hades destroyed the engine...did they disappear?"
"I think so," Hades said, kissing his wife's forehead. "How's Violet?"
"She's in the other room, but I need to get back to her. Your friend doesn't look like he knows much about children."
Hades and Tetra froze. "Friend?" Hades asked.
"He showed up in your room a little while after you left. He said he knew you." She pointed at Tetra. "He said you'd visited."
Tetra looked at Hades and shook his head. Hades led the way to the main room of the house.
Sitting at the table--the same one, in a way, where a different Hades and Tetra sat until the candle had melted down--was a man, armed and armored, bouncing Violet on his knee and smiling as she giggled. He looked up at Hades and Tetra when they entered.
"I don't know you," Tetra said. "Who are you?"
The man handed Violet to her mother and stood. "My name is Jolyon of the Flame," he said, extending his hand.
A young man, whose name meant far more than he knew, stood behind the counter of the bookstore. He tried not to move, and tried not to meet anyone's eye--they might not be real.
Outside the window of the bookstore, two women crossed paths. One of them was wrapped in heavy coats and furs. She was at least forty years old, and could have been older. She reveled in the warmth of the sun, as if she hadn't felt it in years. The other woman was younger, and beautiful, dressed and looking around her like she had been plucked from a fairytale in a long skirt and flowery blouse. Everything she saw seemed to excite and mystify her.
The young man paid them no mind. They were surely hallucinations.
Tetra took a good, long look at the house. It was a ramshackle affair, made of wet, rotting wood, barely able to keep itself from falling over. It was bigger than he expected. The land around the house was barren and empty. It looked like it could have been a farm once, but the sky and seasons had conspired to knock it down, and keep all crops from growing.
He walked up the steps to the secluded house. Any neighbors the owner had were far enough away, and would like it to stay so, if what he heard was true.
Tetra raised a gloved hand and knocked on the rough wooden door. He rubbed his knuckles and waited. The wind ruffled what little hair he had left.
For a few more minutes he stood there, getting colder in the dreary weather. As he turned and took one step off the porch, he heard the door creak open behind him. When he looked, he found one dark eye regarding him. "What is it?" the eye asked. "What do you want?"
"Sir, my name is Tetra Tamiland. I'd like to speak to you."
The eye creased, and narrowed. "Why?"
Tetra nodded, and took a piece of paper out of his pocket. "I represent the Magician's committee. I've heard that you are an unlucky man."
He slipped the piece of paper through the crack in the door, and it was taken from him. The door closed.
Tetra waited for a few minutes, trying to protect himself against the cold. Even through his heavy belly, the chill wind got to him. He was rubbing his back when the door re-opened.
"You can help me?" the eyeball asked. The paper was passed back through.
"Perhaps," Tetra said, taking it. "You are Hades Bringer?"
The eye didn't respond immediately, just stared. "Yes," it said finally. "Unfortunate as it is, that is my name." The door opened fully. Beyond was a thin man wearing ragged clothes. His brows looked eternally puckered above the dark eyes. His face looked loose and weathered.
"And what they say about you--is it true?" Tetra asked.
Hades stood on the other side of the doorway, looking into the distance, behind Tetra. "Where are my manners," he said finally, in a monotonous tone. "Please, come in."
Hades set a small plate of bread and cheese in front of Tetra, and Tetra nodded his thanks. He picked up a piece of bread as Hades sat across from him, on the knotted table nearly blending in with the wood around it.
"So," Tetra said finally, after finishing the small meal with his host. "Those that live around you say you are cursed. Do you agree?"
Hades nodded. Tetra removed a small book from his bag of luggage and opened it to a middle page. He began writing. "I've heard that some people have a name for it." Hades paused. "The Unlucky."
"That's one of the names for it," Tetra said, his pencil scratching on the page. "Others are adhanya, yatsu, and hidden from God." He kept writing, glancing up at Hades. "Why don't you tell me your story?" He looked down, and after a few seconds of silence, looked back up. "Well?"
"Uh...I...alright," Hades sputtered. "What is it you need to know?"
"Just start at the beginning," Tetra said, waiting with his pencil poised.
Hades, feeling very self-conscious, took a breath. "I was the fourth of four children. My parents had hoped for a girl after three boys, but I was born instead. They named me Hades, not knowing what it meant."
Tetra nodded, writing as fast as he could.
Hades took a deep breath. "When I was three, my five-year-old brother Bennet caught a fever and died. I'd loved him, and I wept. Little misfortunes were always happening to me, like getting kicked by our horse, or falling into a bucket of fresh eggs, or getting a cup of ground pepper dropped into my eyes."
"That's happened to me once," Tetra said. "Horrible."
"I agree. The children that lived near me started to avoid me once they found out about everything that was happening to me. When I was eight, I heard my parents talking to a friend of theirs, Father Isaac, a priest. he was telling them that some people are born unlucky, and stay that way their entire lives, until they die alone and unhappy. I knew he was talking about me. My parents didn't believe him." Hades stopped, and Tetra took the chance to flex his cramped wrist. When he looked up, he saw pain in Hades' face. The next words came with old feelings, and hesitation. "The next day, they died. The carriage they'd worked so hard to build was driven into a tree by the same horse that had helped them plant crops and travel to market for ten years. Their corpses were mangled, and their necks snapped."
Hades stopped talking, staring down at the table with dour eyes. Tetra pushed the plate of bread and cheese toward him. "You should eat something, it'll make you feel better."
"Should it?"
"It does for me," Tetra said. He patted his large belly. Hades nodded and took a small bite of bread. "When you're ready."
After a bit, Hades began talking again. "I knew I was a danger to my brothers. I started hoarding pieces of food, tools, and some clothing. It was just a little bit, but my brother Magnus, nine years older than me, found out. He and Jacob, who was five years older than me, persuaded me not to go, that they needed help with the crops. I stayed...but they never knew why I wanted to leave in the first place.
"So I stayed. Three years, filled with long winters, and poor crops, passed. Finally Magnus, twenty years old, came down with a disease. He was cold one night, before we went to sleep, shivering in his bed, and the next morning he was dead. I was eleven, and already too familiar with death."
"Death happens to everyone, Hades," Tetra said. "It's not something we can escape. Continue, if you wish."
"Things went on more or less the same for a year or two after that. Jacob worked hard to support us, and I helped where I could. We were part of a community of farms, so we were given some of the extra from those around us. I'm glad to say that my...affliction...never harmed them."
Hades paused for a moment. "One day, when I was fourteen, I woke up to an empty house. Jacob had simply disappeared. I haven't seen him since, and nobody knows what happened. For the first time in my life I was truly alone. I cried like a child that day, not like a man I nearly was."
Hades' fingers trembled, unable to stay still. "The community held a meeting to decide my fate. I was traded around the farms, helping where I could. This continued until I turned sixteen. A man."
Tetra nodded, writing quickly. After a moment, he looked up. Hades seemed to be waiting for him. "Please, continue."
"I made my decision to leave the area, for fear that something bad would happen to the people who had so kindly taken me in. Many families were glad to see me go, but others wanted to stop me. I wouldn't be stopped, not this time. I gathered what possessions I had, and left. They'd given me gifts, both physical and not. One taught me to read--something I'm thankful for every day." He waved a hand at a corner, and Tetra realized there was a shelf with a pile of books on it. "Others gave me food, one family gave me a crude iron sword, others clothing, and so on. At once my future seemed full, yet bleak."
"Where did you go?" Tetra asked.
Instead of answering, Hades got a candle from a small box. He lit it, and set it in a holder in the middle of the table. Tetra nodded his thanks.
"I went to the closest city, Diah. I didn't have much choice in the matter. My plan was to find a tradesman to take me as an apprentice, hopefully one that would help me avoid my curse. I also wanted to learn more about the curse, or perhaps get it lifted. I went to the one person I knew could tell me about it. My parent's old friend, the Priest.
"When I got to Diah, a place I'd only heard about, I was boggled by the intense number of people. The sounds, the smells, the sights--tall towers, incredible temples, wide streets thronged with people short, tall, fat, thin, yellow hair, black hair, gray hair...red hair."
Hades stopped suddenly, face shadowed in the flickering candlelight. Tetra looked up and found him deep in memory. Finishing his sentence, he rolled his wrist and relaxed his shoulders.
After a few moments, Hades sighed. "I'm sorry. Let's see...I walked around Diah, asking people about the priest. Most people shooed me away, people who did talk to me didn't know who I was talking about. It got dark, and I found a small corner on the street to sleep. I sheltered myself under my cloak, but..."
"Let me guess," Tetra interrupted. "It started raining."
Hades shrugged and nodded. "I didn't get any sleep that night, and when the sun rose and the clouds fled, I continued my search. I had even less luck; out of the hundreds of people I talked to, only a few people weren't repulsed by me. I was dirty, rain-soaked, and poor.
"At long last I spotted a monk, purchasing a large amount of bread. I tugged on his sleeve nervously and asked if he knew the priest. He said nothing for a minute, then told me he could take me to him. I was overjoyed! The monk asked me to help carry the bread, and I eagerly helped, walking carefully to not drop it."
A small smile crept on Hades' face. "The monk's name was Brian. Such a kind man. He had curly dark hair, and was quite short. Well, after a long trek to a corner of the city, we got to a monastery. We went inside, and deposited the bread with another monk. Brian led me to a room, and said that Father Isaac was inside. I went in.
"I felt my old friend. Death had touched my life once more," Hades said. He yawned. "Brian led me from the morgue, telling me how sorry he was. It began to sink in to me that I knew nobody, had nothing. I had no money, no friends, and no luck. A life of misfortune collided inside me, and I...Well, Brian tells me that I went dead in the eyes, sat down on the floor, and couldn't be persuaded to move. He said he had to call other monks to take me to a nearby cell. Eventually, I became aware again, but I felt empty. I exited the room, and sought Brian. I pleaded with him to let me stay at the monastery Brian asked the current father, and the father said yes. I was immediately set to work cleaning, cooking, tending the gardens the monks used, and more. It was good to work. It was better to eat, and have a place to sleep. I worked all day, rising and sleeping with the monks, and sometimes joined them in their services. I became friends with many of them. For several months I felt at great peace."
Hades sighed. "The monastery began to fall on hard times. Donations started declining, accidents began to happen. I was never blamed, but I knew it was my fault. The monks took it in stride. Brian told me that it was the world's attempt to turn us against it, and it should be ignored. I'd never heard such a thing."
Hades waited for Tetra to finish writing. When done, Tetra groaned and massaged his wrist. "I still have quite a bit left," Hades said.
"No problem," Tetra said. "I just need a little breather." He stretched his arms and yawned.
"I began to grow taller, becoming lean and muscled from the work and simple food. I had some small pride in how I looked. I continued to be unlucky, but I remembered Brian's words and tried to ignore it. Then something quite wonderful happened."
Tetra looked up and raised an eyebrow.
"One day, when I was working in the garden, a few people came into the monastery to pray. Most of them were simple workers, like farmers thankful for a good harvest or asking for a good next one. I'd gotten accustomed to these sort of people; their eyes skated over me like I was invisible--a young monk, maybe." He paused. "But...one of them was different. One of the groups was three men and two women. A mother, a father, two sons, and a daughter. They all seemed sad, but the daughter most of all. She was a little bit older than I, tall, lean, with dark red hair, and...big, beautiful eyes. Stunning. I was...intrigued."
Hades smacked his lips, unsure how to continue. "She sounds like quite the beauty," Tetra said.
"She was. One of my good friends, an old monk named Martin, had told me about...the body's natural urges when I asked. You can imagine how embarrassing the conversation was for the both of us. Anyway, that...information came to me when I saw her." Hades blushed. "I'd never thought about it that much, but when I saw her..."
"I was a young man once," Tetra said, nodding knowingly. "I can guess."
"I left my chores. I wanted to see her again. I knew I shouldn't be neglecting my duties, but it was like I was spellbound." Hades stared into a dark corner, not continuing. Tetra waited, head cocked, as Hades took a breath. "I waited until they had finished praying. The mother and father were talking with the Father, and I went and talked to the girl. She said I didn't look like a monk, and I told her I worked at the monastery but that I wasn't a monk. I asked her name, and she said it was Rose. 'A beautiful name for a beautiful girl,' I said, and then I blushed so hard I thought I was going to start on fire. It was the most embarrassing thing I'd ever said. I wanted to kill myself. But, somehow, she giggled and thanked me. I asked her why she was at the monastery
"Sadness washed over her. I apologized immediately, because I knew the look on her face. I'd had it many times before, thinking about a lost life. She told me it was all right--I couldn't have known--and explained with some hesitation that her beloved grandfather had passed away. They had come to the monastery to pray for his soul."
Tetra held up a finger, scrawling heatedly. When he finished, he rolled his neck, locked his fingers together and stretching them out. "There was...an attraction?" he asked, picking his pencil back up.
"Yes. Almost right away, I felt the sadness that had hung over my life get burned. Here, finally, was something to live for. You realize that I had never met many women my age; hadn't met many people in general. She was different from everyone I knew. The only people I knew then were monks. Quiet, solemn, respectable. Boring. She was something else, though. I was sorry to see her go. I didn't know how I would be able to see her again. The sorrow came back, wrapping around me.
"Then, when I'd gone back to the garden, I heard her telling her father about me. They didn't know I was so close, or they might not have said so, but I heard their words anyway. I heard her father say 'You turn down all your eligible suitors, who are good, and smart, and well-off, and instead you spend your time with the pauper servant boy?'" Hades paused. "There were more words, but I bent to my work, trying not to make a sound. I didn't hear them.
"They left, and I kept working, trying not to think about it. I couldn't stop, though. It came into my head again and again. The first real bright glow in my life had been snuffed before I could even enjoy it." Hades shook his head. "Nothing of note happened for several months. The other monks, while not noticing I was tied to any misfortune, began to worry about me. I was depressed, quiet, and seemed weak. I was, in truth, but before they could do anything about it, a storm struck the city. There was widespread destruction, and the monastery was destroyed. There were only a few deaths--Brian was one of them--and many of the monks were taken in by a monastery the next city over. I wasn't made the same offer. The surviving monks prayed for me, and gave me what they could, and left the city, walking in a long train out of the city as I watched, fully...entirely...alone."
"Excuse me," Tetra said, taking out a small knife. He proceeded to sharpen his pencil with it. "Horrible to think all this has happened to you."
"Do you think you'll be able to help me?" Hades asked.
"Perhaps," Tetra said, carefully clipping off pieces of graphite. "I'd like to." He put the knife out of sight. "Please, go on."
Hades nodded. "I remember the day the monks left. I'd found a spot on the city wall to sit and watch the sun set, over Terrin's Hills. I was alone, yes...I didn't know where to go or what to do, but just then, seeing the fire on the clouds and the shadows of the Hills lengthen...I felt warm, and carried suddenly. As If I was being helped to safety. The solitude that had been forced upon me collided with this feeling, and threatened to take it over, but I sat on the wall with my small sack of things from the monastery and drew strength from the quiet. That's why I live out here," Hades said, motioning to the house around the two of them. "The peace."
His shoulders slumped. "Well, the feeling wouldn't last forever. I was forced down from the wall by the guards, and I went back to finding a spot out of the way on the road level. For several days I did that, sleeping alongside the other homeless, trying to find anything to make my situation better. I would wander the city and look for work, or anyone handing out scraps to eat. I had some food left from the monks, but I knew it should be kept safe.
"What happened next...it's strange. All my life, I'd been unlucky, destined to a sorrowful fate...but then I came upon a workshop. It was looking for help, building tools and working with wood. Carpentry in a way, but not in the truest sense. I knew about tools and building things from the farm; most of the things I had to fix had broken while I was using them. I knew I didn't have much of a chance of being given work, but I should at least try."
Hades shook his head. "You should have seen my face when I saw who was running the workshop. It was Rose's father." He chuckled. "I almost ran out as soon as I saw, but when he looked up at me he didn't recognize me. I realized that, while Rose had described me to him, he'd never actually seen me. I asked him about the work, and he said I'd need to use the tools, take directions, work hard, the normal things. All those I'd done all my life, though I needed to re-familiarize myself with a few of the tools. I was hired."
"A strange turn," Tetra said, nose bent to the paper.
"I thought so as well. I was given a small room to myself over the shop, and was told I was also to keep it clean during the night and make sure no one broke in. I started working, happy but unsure how this would go sour. I knew it would." He was silent for a moment, looking off to the side, hand covering his mouth, eyes fixated on nothing. The scratch of Tetra's pencil was the only sound but the wind whistling in through drafty holes in the wooden house. The candle flickered and sent shadows scraping at the edges of their vision. Tetra finished and looked up. Hades was still looking away.
"I met her again after a week," he began. "She didn't usually go to the shop; they had a house elsewhere. She came with her father to help sell; I didn't know she was there until several hours had passed, I was in the back organizing. Her father called me out to help him measure, and we saw each other. We both knew what her father thought of me before, so we tried not to give anything away. We worked in the shop together that day, both nervous and cautious. We were formally introduced to each other by her father." He paused. "I saw the same thing in her eyes as the first time. Light. Joy. A freedom.
"She started coming around the shop more often, and my heart leapt each time I saw her. We would talk, sometimes, just a little bit. Neither of us wanted to let her father know that we knew each other. Our lives went on. I enjoyed my work.
"But..." he began. Tetra looked up and saw his chin trembling. Hades took a breath, squeezing it in and out of his mouth. "One night, she...came to me. After the shop had closed and her father'd gone home. I was cleaning up, and she walked in, smiling. The first time she put her arms around me I could barely think. When she kissed me, I couldn't. I loved her," he said in a thin, breaking voice. He had tears in his eyes. "Later, after...I heard a sound. From the shop. I went downstairs and found someone rooting around, looking for valuables. We'd forgotten to lock the door. I picked up a hammer, and tried to jump him from behind. He was too strong, and threw me off. He brought out a knife. He came at me. There was a fight. I couldn't beat him. He cut me-" Hades revealed a spot on his shoulder "-and I fell, knocking my head on a table." He rubbed his forehead. "There was a lot of blood. As I felt myself slipping away, I saw Rose in the doorway. She'd heard the fight. She tried to stop him, a-and..." There were tears now, slipping down his cheeks. His teeth were clenched tight. "She took his blade in her stomach. She fell, screaming, and I watched her die, immobile and nearly dead myself."
At once he stood, pushing his chair away from the table. "I killed her!" he shouted. "It was my fault! Everything else could have been unlucky or coincidence, but she was only there for me! Only there because she loved me!" he raged, pounding his fist against a wall. "It was as if I held the knife that slit her open!"
"Hades," Tetra said, standing and moving around the table. "You can't blame yourself for this. It wasn't you."
"It was," Hades said. He faced away from Tetra. "My parents, my brothers, Father Isaac, the monastery...even being attacked...it was all chance. Circumstance. The wrong place in the wrong time."
He whirled. Tetra saw a new darkness in his eyes. "Rose was there to see me. If I hadn't been there she would still be alive! She'd have a family now, married to someone that loves her! And not doomed to love someone that would get her killed. Now matter how much he loved her back." He collapsed at the table again. Tetra stood off to the side, nearly pushed back by the other man's despair.
After a minute of silence, during which the candle's low light flickered around the room, Tetra stepped forward, and laid a hand on Hades' shoulder. "Listen to me, young man," Tetra said, kneeling slowly. "Feeling responsibility for the whims of the world will drive a man mad. Trust me; I've seen it happen. These things--tragedies--happened around you, yes...but you are no more responsible for them than a tree that falls on a house due to the wind." He leaned closer. "You are the center of a storm, where the air is calm. It does not control the wind around it, it is simply swept along as the storm causes destruction. Do you understand?"
Hades had his face in his hands. Slowly, he nodded. Tetra leaned away. "Will you finish your story?"
Tetra waited as Hades thought. Then, after a few minutes, Hades took a breath.
"I was asleep for several hours, until her father arrived, frantic. He was looking for her. When he found us, well...I was blamed. He said that I had seduced her, or raped her, and when she tried to fight me I'd killed her." He shook his head, just a little tremor. "I didn't have the strength to fight it, not anymore. He and the rest of Rose's family, and the city, eventually, turned on me. They drove me away. Now I had even less than before--no food, no home, a city that would have my blood. Nothing but the clothes on my back and the knowledge that my friends would die if I could even make them."
He wrapped his arms around his body. "I walked. I managed to get some field work to earn enough money to get this place. I work with the farms around here during the spring and summer and fall, and hope not to starve or freeze during the winter. A traveling scholar brings me books every few months. That was two years ago...already some of the farms are falling on hard times." He looked at the ground between his feet. "I'll need to move on before long. I hope that will keep things from happening."
He looked up at Tetra with a hard expression. "I'm finished. Do you have everything you need?"
Tetra finished the last sentence in his notebook and set his pencil down. "I suppose I do. I have a question for you, however."
He leaned forward, pressing his hands on the table and looking Hades in the eye across the smoke from the candle. "If you could reverse it all...would you?"
Hades had never slept so well. The next morning, he woke up feeling fresh and happy. Tetra, from his bedroll in the center of the main room, looked up at him as Hades entered. "You look well."
Hades managed a weak smile. "I feel well. I had a pleasant night. I suppose it's what you told me about last night."
"Who can guess?" Tetra said, hiding a smile. "We should set out as soon as possible. We have a long distance to go. Do you need to pack?"
Hades was in the process of piling food into a sack. "I don't have much. This is all I'll bring. How far is the Magician's Committee?"
"Several days travel, at the best. It's near the city Tela-ban. We might be able to catch a cart moving in that direction if we're...lucky." Tetra looked over his shoulder at Hades, who said nothing. "Anyway, we should be prepared to walk."
Several minutes later they stood outside the leaning collection of wood bits Hades called a house. Tetra pointed north east, and they started walking. It was a bright morning and, as Hades pointed out, sure to bake them and get them sweating. Tetra simply nodded and kept walking.
"You said you would tell me more in the morning," Hades said as they walked. "Will you?"
"I will," Tetra said, nodding. "I keep my promises." The man was already puffing. "I, and several other people from the committee were sent out to find people like you, the unlucky. It took me five months to even hear about you, and another month to find you. One of the monks, you see, from the monastery on the Hakhan river. He was at the monastery you stayed. We were sent out, because we thought that we had a...a breakthrough, you could say, about you. The unlucky. We...found something."
"What kind of something?" Hades asked. Surely they looked strange, a tall thin young man, barely twenty, next to a short, stout old man.
"You could call it an object, but we've found that it rejects most descriptions." He moped sweat from his forehead. "Do you know about what the metallurgists around Tela-ban have been doing? No, I suppose not. They're working to build something that can produce energy. I'm not sure how it works, leave it for those that want to know. They call it an 'engine.' We think that the device is something like that...it produces something on its own. An engine of fate."
"Incredible."
"It is. We aren't certain that it's the cause of your...misfortune, but...well, we've done some experiments."
"What sort?"
"A good number. I can't tell you about all of them, and out of the rest only a few will make sense, unless you know about magical energies, four-dimensional space, that sort of thing." Hades shook his head. "I thought not. The very first one we did--a man dropped a piece of buttered bread near the machine. It landed face down."
"Well," Hades said, "that always happens."
"Ten times out of ten? Twenty out of twenty?" Tetra asked. "Over and over. With different types of bread, butter, jam, different people dropping the bread?" Tetra shook his head. "Another experiment. We had two men gamble with dice. One man lost every time. We brought in two different men, same result. It would latch on one person and make that person unlucky."
"And you want me to get closer to it?" Hades asked. "I'll probably die!"
"Ah, there's the thing," Tetra said, raising a pudgy finger. "The engine never seems to directly injure the person made unlucky. Tell me, oh unlucky one: how many times have you gotten sick?"
Hades was taken aback. He thought about it.
"Do you remember even one time?" Tetra asked. "Even after all those times the fever swept through your farm, or the plague took a friend, you were spared. What about injuries? Broken bones? Falls from the ladder? Pinched fingers? You must have had a few. You made it seem like you were a clumsy child."
"I-I don't know. I feel like I must have." Hades looked down at Tetra. "But why would my body be spared? If I was truly unlucky I would be sick and weak and covered in sores my entire life!"
"Would you have that," Tetra said, looking up and meeting Hades' eyes, "or be surrounded by the death of others?" Hades looked away, cowed. "I agree, however; it's strange. It's a common point among the stories of the unlucky. They are left unharmed. Your story practically confirms it as truth."
"But...why?"
"The Committee at large believes it is, essentially, the purpose of the engine to create suffering. It will focus on a person--you--and make their lives difficult, sad, full of despair...but it will leave you whole and alive. You will remain unharmed until your natural death at an old age. We think that your sadness, your unhappiness, is what the engine is meant to produce, and in some way uses it for something else." He paused. "We aren't sure about that last part. As far as we can tell, it doesn't do anything else. It certainly seems to produce misfortune...but then, nothing."
"So, what do you plan to do with me?" Hades asked. "Why should I come with you?"
"So far, you're the only unlucky alive," Tetra said, waving his hand. "It's possible that once you were to die, the...Unluckiness...will transfer to a different person, one just being born, or perhaps still in the womb. For maximum despair."
"This is a very dark conversation," Hades muttered.
"True. But, necessary. You won't be doing all that much, to be very honest; we want to see if anything will happen if you were to get into close proximity with the engine, and record the results. Maybe nothing will happen, maybe something. We just want to find out what."
"I could die!" Hades said, stopping and backing away. "You're practically sending me to my death!"
"You're welcome to go back to your house," Tetra said. "And the cycle will continue. When you die, another pour soul will find his or her life to be one misery after another. Tell me, Hades Bringer...wouldn't it be nice to stop that? To help us destroy the engine, perhaps? Reversing what's been done to you is impossible, of course, but to keep it from happening to another, and another, and another."
They stood six feet apart, watching the other, dust from the road in their vision. Hades dropped his eyes down to the ground and nodded. "You're right. I don't want anyone to go through what happened to me."
"I agree," Tetra said, kindly. "That's why I volunteered to find someone like you. Misfortune as the world spins is one thing, to be magically cursed to live a life of death like you have is quite something else. Come now, we have quite a long way to go."
He started walking. After a moment, Hades caught up to him, and they walked in silence for a time.
"I wondered if something like this might happen," Hades said, looking at the three men in the road.
"We'll be all right. They won't hurt us."
"Easy for you to say. You aren't an unlucky." Hades looked at the other three. They had swords and scowls. Two were in front, and one behind. They'd jumped out from behind a rock as Hades and Tetra had passed.
"Yer money," one of the two in front said. "Or me boy Oveland cuts yeh good."
"I am Tetra Tamiland, a magician for the Committee," Tetra said in a clear voice. "Let us pass."
"Yer money," the man said again. "Can yeh not hear?"
"Oh, I can hear you just fine," Tetra said, reaching one hand into a pocket. He drew out a long gold feather. "Can you? I'll say it again: let us pass."
"Oveland," the man said, and the man next to him advanced, his tooth shining in the sun. Tetra whispered a word with the feather next to his mouth, and, with a quick throw, stabbed it into the ground, where it quivered.
"What are you doing?" Hades asked. He had his hands clenched together under his chin. "They're going to kill us!"
"Maybe," Tetra said. The wind blew. "Or maybe not."
The wind gusted stronger. Tetra's coat blew out to the side. "We'll just have to see."
"Boss!" The man behind them yelled. "Whassat?!"
Hades and Tetra, as well as the two men in front of them, looked at the other man. He was pointing to the north, the direction the wind was coming from. Hades and Tetra spotted a haze of something. "A cloud?" Hades asked.
"No, too low," Tetra responded. "You should cover your face."
"What?" Hades asked as the buzzing began. Why?"
"So that thing with the feather," Hades mentioned an hour later as they walked over a hill. The sun was beginning to set behind them, and gave them long, loping shadows. "What was it exactly you did?"
"I've been studying the unlucky for many years," Tetra said. "I've learned a few things. I've learned that your luck can be manipulated. I was able to cast a quick incantation to make our situation a little easier. Even I wasn't prepared for such a...powerful response."
There were a few moments of silence as both men recalled what had happened to the three bandits. "Too bad about that third one behind us," Hades said. "I wonder if he knew he was allergic."
"I don't think he did. He didn't seem all that worried. Did you get stung?"
"No. I admit, I'm surprised," Hades said, rubbing his arms.
"Neither did I. Looked like big ones, too! We were probably saved a good amount of pain."
"So that incantation, you said...how does one do it?"
"It isn't what you think," Tetra said. "It only affects your luck for a few moments, maybe an hour for the longer ones. Also, it has a diminishing return."
"What does that mean?" Hades asked.
"The more you do it during a certain time period, the less effective it becomes. I haven't done it very many times, so it still worked."
"So what you're saying is..."
"I'm saying that it won't cure your unluckiness. It will alleviate it for a few moments, but there's no way to make it permanent." He glanced at Hades as they walked. "I'm sorry."
"It was a long shot anyway," Hades said, sighing. He watched his feet as he walked. "Would it be possible for me to learn how to do it anyway?"
"If you'd be willing to learn. It took me five years, plus a basic knowledge of magic, to successfully cast one. You could learn, but to what end? A small boost in your luck every once in a while?"
"Yes!" Hades said. "It could change my life! I cast it right before I ask for a job, or during the first snowfall, or when I...when I meet a woman I like. What's the downside?"
"I tried to tell you, it doesn't work like that. Hades, believe me, I know that you'd like to think there's a way to fight being one of the unlucky...but the effect only has a very limited time span. You might be told you could work, yes...but in a week, you'll be living without work again. The first night of snow you'll stay warm and safe...but the next night, drafts will appear to chill you. The woman may love you back...but in a month-"
"Stop." Hades set his mouth, fighting back tears. "I know. I understand. Maybe..." he stopped. "No, nothing. Never mind."
"I wish there was something more I could do, Hades. Truly I do."
Hades didn't answer. He watched his feet move forward one after the other until the sun went down.
It took them a little under a week to reach the Magician's Council, a collection of buildings near the city of Tela-ban. Tetra wasn't forced to use the lucky feather spell any more, even though Hades asked him to. Before they got to the Committee, Tetra pointed out a few things about the tall towers of Tela-ban, and talked a bit about the city's history. After they passed, the buildings of the Committee were only a few hours away.
At Hades' first sight of them, he looked from one structure to the other, trying to take them all in at once. Tetra dragged him toward one building, on the south-west side of the large compound, and finally got him inside.
"We'll meet with my supervisor first, Sorcerer Anderton. I'll hand over my notes, and once he's approved them, we'll be able to see what happens when you get closer to the engine."
"Your notes?"
"The story you told me, plus everything I wrote down before I found you."
In a moment Hades found himself sitting in front of a desk, behind which sat a man with his fingers laced and his eyes scanning the notebook Tetra had handed over.
"There's no way to disprove this," Anderton said finally. "He could very certainly be one of the unlucky. I'll talk to Guyon and see if we can get the experiment going as soon as possible." Anderton stood, followed by Tetra and Hades. "If only we could have met under better circumstance, Hades." He put out his hand, and Hades shook it slowly. "Tetra, have a room prepared for our guest. You two have traveled a long way, and you must want some rest."
"Yes sir," Tetra said as Anderton left the office. Hades followed Tetra into the hall outside. "We'll be able to sleep and eat something before we start the test. And don't worry, it'll certainly be more than what we've had to eat on the way here."
"Last chance," Tetra said to Hades. "You don't have to go in there."
"What else am I supposed to do?" Hades asked. He, and Tetra, had thick gloves and goggles. "I came all this way. I have nothing to go back to. I might as well see what happens."
They stood outside a locked and guarded door inside the same building. They had rested and eaten, and now were ready to introduce Hades to the engine. A man in heavy armor stood behind them, as well as Anderton and the man named Guyon. Everyone was waiting. Hades could see the engine through a window.
"Okay then," Tetra said. "Sir, the key please?" Anderton handed him an iron key, which Tetra fitted into the lock. "Here we go." He turned the key and opened the door.
They entered the dark room, Hades following Tetra with his eyes clamped shut. When nothing happened, he cracked them open and took a look.
Resting on a small table in the center of the room was an item constructed from purple stone. In the dim light of the room--nothing more than two candles set in walls illuminated it--it seemed to glow. "Here we are," Tetra said. "Now Hades. I want you to approach it slowly. Tell me if you feel anything, or see anything, or anything. Please begin."
Hades nodded and took a step forward; nothing changed. He took another, and still nothing. He got up next to the machine. He shook his head, but he was unwilling to take his eyes from it.
"Interesting." Tetra looked out a small window at Anderton and Guyon, who were writing in pads. "Will you touch it?"
Hades lifted a shaking finger and, slowly, brought it down on top of the engine. He leaned away as he did so. Inside the thick gloves he wore, it felt almost cool, but nothing more.
"All right," Tetra said, "you can stop." Despite the inactivity, Hades brought his hand away relieved. "Some tests." Hades was handed a die with six sides. "Try your luck," Tetra said with a small smile. He rolled his die. A four. Hades rolled his and got a three. They rolled more than a dozen times, but Hades never won. Tetra nodded and put away his die. "That's enough. There are a few other things, and-"
"What's this here?" Hades asked. He was inspecting one side of the engine. "These letters?"
"Letters?" Tetra said, stopping in his tracks. "What letters?"
"On the side here. Looks like they spell a word."
After a pause, Tetra hustled around to where Hades stood, and looked. Just as Hades said, five letters were raised on the surface. "I've never seen those before! Do you recognize the word?"
"No. It looks sort of like a name," Hades said. "Casai."
There was a strange, wet pop. Tetra felt something next to him and looked around. To his surprise, two more people had appeared in the room with Hades and himself. To his greater surprise, they appeared to be Hades and himself.
The four of them said nothing, as they all allowed the moment to settle in.
Both Tetra's cleared their throats, and began in unison: "I say-"
They stopped. Both Hades looked from their Tetra, to the other Tetra, and then to each other.
The other Hades lifted a finger. "You appear to be us."
Tetra nodded. "So it seems."
The original Hades said nothing.
The other Tetra asked: "How did you bring us here?"
"We didn't do a thing. You joined us here," Tetra responded. "At least, that's how it appears."
"Strange," the other Tetra said. Both Tetra's glanced at the window, where Guyon was writing like mad. Anderton had disappeared. "Everything else appears the same."
"As for us," Tetra said. "Did the engine do this? Because of that word?"
"Engine? What engine?" the other Hades asked.
"This one," Tetra said, pointing at the purple device near them. "Perhaps...perhaps we've been copied?"
The other Hades smiled at Hades. "This will make living arrangements with Rose rather strange, eh?"
Tetra gasped. Hades was too shocked to say anything. "Hades...are you saying you live with Rose?"
The other Hades shrugged. "Of course."
"Hades-" Tetra began.
"Our parents!" Hades shouted at the other one of him. "Our brothers! Are they alive?"
"What do you mean? Mother is, but Father died in his sixtieth year! And yes, of course our brothers are alive! Why do you ask?"
Hades was breathing quickly. He bent down, putting his hands on his knees. He was white in the face. "Sit, Hades, sit," Tetra commanded, and helped him lower himself to the ground. "Forgive him," he said to the other two. "There seems to be a fundamental difference between the two of you. You see, here, Hades is one of the unlucky."
"Sorry?" Tetra asked. "The what?"
"You...you don't know?" Tetra scratched his chin. "Incredible. You live in another version of our world, one without the unlucky!"
Tetra explained. He explained everything he knew about the unlucky, the discovery of the engine, and, with permission, the sad story of Hades' life. The other two listened without interruption. The other Tetra wrote everything down. The other Hades listened with a sad expression.
When he finished, Tetra sighed. "I assume that, in your world, you grew up, took a trade, and, in some way, met and married Rose?"
The other Hades nodded. "I was given an apprenticeship at her father's shop. I had proved crafty with tools and very diligent. Rose and I met during that time. I also became friends with Father Isaac. It was he that married us. When her father gets too old, I'll take over the shop from him."
"And you, me?" Tetra said. "What is your job? Here, I study the unlucky. What's your place in this?"
"I work at the Committee, in the trans-dimensional magic division."
Tetra scowled. "But we don't have a division by that name in our world. Please, explain it."
"Several years ago, one of our magicians disappeared. We thought that he had been murdered along the road, or perhaps decide to leave his post and settle down without letting us know. As it turns out, neither was true. We found a spot that contained some sort of tunnel, as if made out of air, that led to a world entirely different. Man spanned the skies and the sea, conquering all the world with such machinations it stunned the mind. They could communicate via 'electrics' through the air. Well, we were able to find our magician, currently locked up in a prison for acting insane--at least, as they saw it. I, and another man, masqueraded as his caretakers and were able to bring him back to our world...but questions lingered."
"No doubt!" the original Tetra said.
"We assembled a group to try and uncover what possible worlds existed: an infinite number, it seemed."
This Tetra leaned forward. "Yet we discovered some things. Coincidences that occurred too frequently. Through vigorous testing, and no small amount of luck, we discovered other portals. As we traveled to them--well, the kind of worlds we found are too fantastic to recount. In one, humanity had all but been conquered by beasts from under the ground, and taken refuge in the cold north. In another, rain fell from the sky unendingly. Towns and cities had to built to accommodate this endless water. Posing as visitors, we asked about the rain, and were met with strange looks. It turns out that the rain was a common feature the world over, and had been for over a hundred years."
"Shocking! But the coincidences?"
"They weren't in every world, but a great number of them. Perhaps if we had looked...but I digress. For example, we would commonly meet, or hear of, a person named Isaac."
Hades looked up, and the other Hades nodded. "I thought the same thing," the other said. "Father Isaac. He was important in both our lives, for wildly different reasons."
"It's not an uncommon name here," the other Tetra said. "But in a great number of the worlds we traveled to, we'd hear of him. It was always a man, commonly someone in power, but not always...The names differed in all other aspects. For instance, no one had ever heard of a man named Tetra before. There was one world were the men are given names that begin with consonants, and the woman with vowels...and yet there was a man named Isaac. He was the captain of the guard of the city we visited. People considered his name a strange oddity, but he got respect."
The original Tetra nodded and said nothing.
"Well, about a month ago, I got word of something that could have been another portal. I traveled by myself to where it was supposed to be, and found, to my surprise, a house! Inside," he looked at the other Hades, "Was this man and his wife and child."
Hades gasped. "Child," he said. He lifted his eyes to look at the other Hades. "A girl."
"How did you know?" the other Hades asked. The first didn't answer, but dropped his eyes back to the ground.
The other Tetra cleared his throat. "I asked to investigate after showing my credentials. I looked at the spot--it was small--and said yes, it was a portal."
"And the next thing we know, we're standing next to you two," the other Hades said. "Somewhere I've never been and Tetra had left far behind."
"Quite interesting," Tetra said. "Please excuse me a moment." He left the room and spoke to the magicians outside, and then reentered. "I asked for us to be given a room more comfortable to talk." He glanced at the purple engine resting on the table in the center of the room. "This is not the safest place to be."
"Do you have anything else you can tell us?" the original Tetra asked. They sat at a round table with drinks and food next to them. The dwindling light crept in through several windows along one wall, and candles stood on the table ready to be lit. He didn't realize it at first, but Hades felt much more at ease when away from the engine they'd come to see.
"You're caught up, I'm afraid," the other Tetra replied. "You know everything about how we got here, and we know everything about here. Tell me, though--have you not found any portals to other worlds?"
The first Tetra shook his head. "No such thing. Perhaps we simply haven't discovered them, but...I visited Hades in his home, and he reported no such phenomenon." Hades shook his head. "Nor has anyone else."
The other Tetra stroked his chin, gazing at the upper corner of the room. "Perhaps the world we come from-" he indicated himself and his Hades "-is some sort of hub. We have discovered a great number of the portals, always in secluded places or where there aren't many people. Some even have the ability to travel to more than one world under the correct circumstances. As I mentioned, there has been extensive testing."
"I expect nothing else from a magician of your stature," the first Tetra said. The other, and his accompanying Hades, laughed. "Is it possible for you to give me the locations of the portals, so that we may search for them?"
"Of course. We haven't discovered a world so shockingly similar to our own--save for some unfortunate differences." He nodded in Hades' direction. "It would represent a unique scientific opportunity. To not take advantage of it would be foolish. Do you agree?"
"Of course!" Tetra leaned on the table. "We have to do what we can. Our very interaction is changing the face of our world as we know it! Could you tell me more about some of the worlds you've traveled to? I'd like to know if..."
Hades stopped listening. the two Tetras began discussing things too complicated for him to follow. Excusing himself, he got up and exited the room. There was a guard outside the door with a sword, but he didn't move to stop Hades.
"Um. I'd like to take a walk. Is that all right?" he asked the guard. The guard shrugged.
"May I join you?" he heard behind him. He turned and found him--the other him--exiting the room. "I'd like to talk to you about something."
The guard looked from one Hades to the other, blinking his eyes. Hades nodded, and the two walked towards the building's exit.
Outside was cool and quiet; the sun's bright lines were hiding on the other side of a range of mountains. The wind was strong and fresh, and Hades could taste rain soon. The two of them, identical and different, strolled with eerily similar gaits.
"So what is it?" Hades asked. "What did you want to talk to me about?"
The other Hades, the one who still had his Rose, and their daughter, and family, watched the ground as he walked. "Your story...your life...it could have just as easily been me that lived it, and you mine."
Hades shook his head. "No, the engine is only in my world. Your Tetra said so yourself."
"Maybe not," the other said. The passed around a tall bell tower. "I think it does exist in our world, somehow. I think that we have the same world."
"Yeah, I know. But they're different."
"No! I think they're the same world!" The other Hades stopped and looked at him. "I want you to think. Tetra told us that the first instance of your unlucky nature was your name." He pointed at himself. "Why am I still named Hades?"
Hades didn't answer. His stomach clenched.
"What are the chances that we have the same house?" the other Hades asked. "We don't know for certain, but it almost sounded as if we do. I think that if I went back there, I'd find Rose, and Violet, but you would find nobody--like we are the same person in the same world but we experience different things."
"That can't be possible," Hades said, backing away a step. "You're talking about something that's impossible!"
"More impossible than portals to other worlds?" the other said. He took a step toward Hades.
"Why do you think these things?" Hades asked, trying to keep distance between him and the other.
"Tetra explained what is was like to go from one world to the other. Like being squeezed and stretched at the same time. When we were taken from the spot our house to were you stood, next to the engine...it wasn't like that. Not for me, anyway. It just felt like we'd moved."
"But...not to a different world," Hades muttered. The other one nodded.
"Think about what that means."
"It means that Rose is still alive," Hades said. Looking up at the other. "It means that the terrible things I had to live through...they never happened!" The other nodded.
"Perhaps."
"But...why are there two of us? Could there be more? Why are we so different?" Even as he asked, Hades knew the answer.
"The engine," the other said. "I don't know about these things--maybe the Tetras could explain--but that's the only thing that's different about our worlds. That, and the portals."
"I don't feel good," Hades said. He leaned against the bell tower and covered his eyes. "I feel sick."
"There's a chance that we can do something about it."
Hades looked up at the other version of him. The wind was blowing his hair, slightly longer, around his face. He didn't have a coat, but his loose shirt billowed. "The engine--the engine of fate--has been controlling your life since your birth. Destroy it." Hades stared at him. "I'm surprised the magicians haven't done it yet! It does nothing but cause misfortune. Find something heavy, and crush it!"
The emotion in the other's voice surprised Hades. Then, he imagined a rock, or a hammer, descending toward the engine of fate Tetra thought had caused everything. He looked at the man who lived his life without it, the one who was telling him to bring it to an end. It would end the world that had brought Rose's life to a brutal, crushing end. It might even destroy it.
He pushed off from the wall and passed the other Hades. They headed back to the building they had exited.
For the third time in his life, Hades felt like he had a purpose. The first was when he met Rose, the second when he lay with her--perhaps giving her their version of Violet--and now to destroy the thing responsible for her death.
"I need something heavy," he told the other Hades. "What do you think?"
The Hades thought. "The guards have weapons. If we could find an armory-"
"A hammer." Hades pictured himself grabbing the hammer and attacking the thief, the thing who'd taken Rose from him, late at night in her father's shop. "Get me a hammer."
"I wonder where the Hades' have gone?" one of the Tetras asked.
"They'd probably be quite bored by all this," the other one said. He shook a handful of pages. "These locations you've told me about--we should be sending people tomorrow if we can!"
"I agree of course!" Both Tetras laughed. They'd agreed on a lot of things. "That other information though...we should let the Hadeses know as soon as possible."
"Yes," the original Hades said, rising. They both left the room, stopping at the guard outside. "Two identical men left this room some time ago," Hades said to the guard. "Do you know where they went?"
"I believe they exited the building, sir. Sirs," the guard said, looking from one Hades to the other.
"Thank you Hector," the other Hades said, and they left the guard even more confused. "Perhaps they took a walk around the grounds." He looked out a window near the door. Rain attacked the dirt and grass. "Well, no longer, at least."
"I hope they didn't wander far. It could take us some time to find them, especially in this rain." They stood looking out, until they heard steps behind them.
"Sirs." It was Hector, and another guard was with him. "A commotion's been heard in the armory."
One Tetra looked at the other. "Do you think-"
"Yes. We need to stop him."
"They didn't like that very much," the other Hades said. He trailed behind the original, who held a short maul in both hands. His fingers were bone-white and wrapped around the handle. "We'd better hurry." The first Hades nodded.
They made their way back to the room with the engine of fate, listening to the rain on the walls and ceiling. The halls were empty, and flickered with smoky candlelight. In a minute the Hades' looked in at the purple engine through the window. The other Hades tried the door. "Locked."
Hades licked his lips slowly, then brought the maul behind him. The glass shattered easily, and he climbed in, avoiding the thin lingering daggers. He walked across the glass particles as the other Hades followed him inside.
It seemed bigger, like it had been feeding. It pulsed with odd light, casting shadows behind them the candles in the room couldn't quite dispel. Hades' grip on the maul tightened, but he didn't raise it. Instead, he peered again at the word risen on the exterior, like a bruise on skin.
"Casai," he said, and nothing happened. "I wonder what it means."
"Who cares what it means. Just destroy it!" the other Hades said. "I would, if I'd had to live through it ruining my life! Think about what it did to Rose! To our family, and Father Isaac!"
Hades took deep breaths, remembering.
"Do it, Hades!"
"What will happen?" Hades asked the other. "What do you think will happen when I smash it?"
"I don't think that anything will happen! I think you'll be free to live a life with love! Hades, do it."
Hades nodded, and drew the hammer over his head. He pictured Rose's killer.
"Hades!" they heard, and turned. Both Tetras stood in the smashed window. "Don't!"
"Why not?" Hades asked. "He's right! Destroying this could only be a good thing!"
"Let us tell you what we've discovered first!" The original Tetra unlocked the door to the room, and both of them entered. "Put it down, please, Hades, and we'll talk."
Hades looked at both of them, and then the other Hades, and slowly lowered the maul. "Tell me."
"We talked, the other Tetra and I," the original said. "We discussed the locations of the portals to other worlds, and I noticed something strange. A number of the places that he told me had portals were places you told me about in your sad tale."
Hades blinked. "Like what?"
"'Along side a tree on a country road, surrounded by farms,'" Tetra said. "Like the tree your parents were killed by when they crashed into it. 'The morgue of a monastery in the city of Diah.'"
"Where Father Isaac's body was," Hades said. "And?" he asked, frightened.
"Another in Diah, up on the walls. Do you remember? After the monastery was destroyed? You spent a day there, at some manner of peace." Hades nodded. "We already knew of one! In the very house you live now! Don't you see?" Tetra jabbed a finger at the engine of fate. "It causes the portals! Somehow, when it affects you like this--and perhaps others before you--the portals appear!"
"I...I..."
"There's more going on here than two worlds that are strikingly similar!" the other Tetra said. "Our worlds are tied together somehow!"
"I thought the same thing," the other Hades said. "I told him how being moved here was different from going through a real portal! I told him to destroy the engine to correct it! To fix it!"
"We don't know what will happen if the engine is destroyed," Tetra said. "We can't do it. We have to know exactly what it does."
"I want to destroy it," Hades said. He brought the maul up and clenched it. "What good does it do? The portals are created by taking life, by causing suffering! They're things of evil!"
"Hades, listen!" the other one said. "Rose is still alive! To you, and to your Tetra perhaps, she is dead, but to me she lives! Destroying it will change nothing!"
"I have to!" Hades shouted back. "It will keep draining the joy from lives until someone decides to destroy it!"
"Hades!" Tetra said, standing between him and the engine. "Have sense!"
He opened his mouth again, purple-shadowed and glowing eyes. Instead of the voice Hades had gotten used to, a deep, thrashing echo emerged, and the world went cold and quiet. "Casai."
Hades brought the maul over his head as if dreaming, and pushed Tetra aside with an arm too strong to be his. He let the hammer fall at the engine, and it glowed with triumph.
You are pawns to me. You live your life like you control it, but you do not. I am the being across worlds, and the mind across time. You have powered me, and freed me just as I envisioned.
The worlds got closer--they found ways to one another.
A girl of twenty was walking in her father's garden when an oval opened in the air. On the other side was a pleasant meadow, and beyond a city unlike hers. She got closer, knowing to be careful--a friend of hers had disappeared into a portal like this one ten years ago, but she got too close.
A woman thought insane huddled in her coat against the wind pushing into her tent. With surprise, she saw a tear appear, yet beyond wasn't the cold wastes she and the rest of humanity called their home; instead was a city block, like she remembered before the Tor. Desperate for an escape, she jumped through.
Tetra and Hades hit the hard wooden ground with sudden pops and snaps in the air. For a moment they laid there. Hades sat up as Tetra groaned. "Are you all right?" Hades asked.
Tetra rolled over and pushed himself to his feet. "I think I bruised my knee," the magician said. "Where are we?"
"Back inside my house."
"Are the other two with us?"
Hades looked and shook his head. "I don't think they came with us." They heard sudden footfalls and the door to the room they were in was pushed open.
Red-faced, wide-eyed, and exuberant, Rose stood on the other side. "Hades!" She ran to him. "I was so scared!"
"We're all right, dear," Hades said. "You won't believe what's happened. How long were we gone?"
"A few hours. Somebody-"
"The same time for us," Tetra said. "It looks like we were right. It was the same world the entire time. When the other Hades destroyed the engine...did they disappear?"
"I think so," Hades said, kissing his wife's forehead. "How's Violet?"
"She's in the other room, but I need to get back to her. Your friend doesn't look like he knows much about children."
Hades and Tetra froze. "Friend?" Hades asked.
"He showed up in your room a little while after you left. He said he knew you." She pointed at Tetra. "He said you'd visited."
Tetra looked at Hades and shook his head. Hades led the way to the main room of the house.
Sitting at the table--the same one, in a way, where a different Hades and Tetra sat until the candle had melted down--was a man, armed and armored, bouncing Violet on his knee and smiling as she giggled. He looked up at Hades and Tetra when they entered.
"I don't know you," Tetra said. "Who are you?"
The man handed Violet to her mother and stood. "My name is Jolyon of the Flame," he said, extending his hand.
A young man, whose name meant far more than he knew, stood behind the counter of the bookstore. He tried not to move, and tried not to meet anyone's eye--they might not be real.
Outside the window of the bookstore, two women crossed paths. One of them was wrapped in heavy coats and furs. She was at least forty years old, and could have been older. She reveled in the warmth of the sun, as if she hadn't felt it in years. The other woman was younger, and beautiful, dressed and looking around her like she had been plucked from a fairytale in a long skirt and flowery blouse. Everything she saw seemed to excite and mystify her.
The young man paid them no mind. They were surely hallucinations.