The Armageddon Library

 The entrance hall was marble-floored and the white marble, flecked with red and gold inclusions, glistened as though freshly polished.  Tall stone pillars — not marble as that would have been decadent — held the ceiling aloft in two rows of four pillars each.  Their sides were fluted and their tops were carved to make it seem as though grapes and vines were growing there.  At the far end of the hall were mahogany double doors with brass handles, and along the walls of the hall were paintings; most were landscapes but there were two portraits that flanked the far double doors.

Heather, who had been leading the way until that point, slowed down and then took several steps to the side, stepping out of the colonnaded avenue down the centre of the hall and stopping in front of one of the landscapes.  The painting was rendered in an ochre palette, all earthy browns, deep reds, and a hint here and there of orange.  A single splash of yellow was used to indicate the breaking of sunlight through clouds and illuminating a wide building that looked like a palace of some kind; two storeys high and made of a dark, expensive looking stone.  Part of it was ruined and the walls were shattered and riven; lumps of stone littered the foot of the wall and rooms were partially visible.  A grandfather clock, seemingly untouched by the devastation around it, was located high up in the partial ruin with the time just visible.

“Heather?”  Jacob had reached the double doors and was resting his hand on a handle.

“In a minute,” she said, not turning to look at him.  He looked at the back of her head, admiring her long black hair that fell straight down to her waist, and then at the door.  His fingers tightened on the handle as he made his decision, but the handle refused to turn and the doors refused to move.

“I think these doors need both of us,” he said, tugging on the handle.  The doors were solidly made and didn’t even tremble.  He noticed that the handle was cold beneath his hand and seemed to be chilling his skin instead of being warmed by it.  Puzzled, he pulled his hand away and shook the slowly-growing numbness from it.

“I recognise this,” said Heather, still not turning away from the painting.

“Somewhere you’ve been?”  Jacob stopped shaking his hand and examined the handles on the doors carefully, now not touching them.  One, the one he’d been holding, had a grey layer of condensation covering it but the other was clear. He touched a finger to it, tentatively, and it felt warm to the touch.

“Somewhere I’ll be,” said Heather.  “It’s from a vision.”

“One of those that Yaga gave you?”  Jacob couldn’t keep from sounding faintly skeptical.  Grandmother Yaga was, in his view, a fraud: a con-artist who read tarot cards, cast horoscopes and dabbled in numerology and preyed on the weak-willed and simple-minded.

“She didn’t give me any visions,” said Heather, turning away from the painting at last.  “She gave me a drink that helped me see them more clearly.  I had the visions anyway, every time I tried to sleep.  She helped me see them, and that made them go away so I can sleep properly.”

Jacob opened his mouth and then hesitated.  The dark circles caused by weeks of sleeplessness were still visible on Heather’s face and he’d been kept awake some nights himself listening to her toss and turn and try to sigh as gently and quietly as possible.

“Right,” he said awkwardly.  “Ok, I guess that’s how it worked then.”

“It is,” said Heather.  She took a step forward and then frowned.  Instead of joining Jacob at the door she crossed the hallway to the other side and stared at the painting there.

“This one too!  I will be here in the future.  How strange is that!”

“Well,” said Jacob, trying to rein in his skepticism.  “I guess these are places you want to visit anyway, so maybe it’s not that surprising you were dreaming about them.”

“Visions aren’t dreams, Jacob.  They come on like dreams, but they are glimpses of the future.  It’s still you, just looking through your own eyes at a different time.”

“Seems a bit pointless,” said Jacob.  “What good is seeing it if you can’t do anything about it?”

Heather’s finger brushed lightly over the surface of the painting, feeling the brush strokes permanently imprinted in the oil paint.  It was rough, a little like snakeskin.  “If you remember it,” she said, “you can do something about when the time comes because you can plan what you’re going to do.  It’s like you get an extra chance, time to think about it before it happens.”

“You sound like you’ve done just that.”

“I have,” said Heather.  “Here.”

Jacob decided that standing by the double doors wasn’t encouraging Heather to join him so he walked over to the painting to join her.  His presence normally caused her to back away slightly, so perhaps he could herd her to the double doors like a sheepdog.  To his surprise though, she remained standing where she was and let him get almost close enough to put his arms around her.  He looked at the painting, more to have to something to do than out of curiosity, and almost turned away again.  Then he focused and took in the picture.

“That’s us,” he said, staring.  “Here.  In this room.”

“Yes,” said Heather.  “I had a vision of this room and that painting, only in the vision I came to help you with the door instead of stopping and looking at the art.”

“And?”

“And in my vision we were both killed by what lies beyond the door.”

Jacob was silent for several seconds and then he shivered, a full body shake that made him turn pale and look wild-eyed.  That faded quickly, but the paleness remained.

“What does lie on the other side then?” he asked.  “I thought we were looking for a library.”

“That’s what’s on the other side,” she said as though not realising how annoying that sentence was.  “And there was something else; a snake of ice that lay coiled around the room and guarded the books and breathed out the very cold of Fimbulwinter.  It exhaled, and we died in a freezing gale that torn the heat from our skin and our souls from our flesh.”

Jacob took a step back from her and, when he realised that he’d taken a step towards the door took another step, further away from both of them.

“It’s gone now,” she said.  “It was always leaving, we just were too fast and startled it.”

“I don’t much like snakes,” said Jacob.  His voice was faint and the paleness wasn’t fading.  “That sounds like a nasty way to die.”

“It’s not how I die,” said Heather.  “At least, not today.  I have seen myself in other visions and other places; I surely won’t die until after then.”

“Must be nice to know,” muttered Jacob. “Anyone can have these visions, can they?”

Heather’s sudden smile startled him and she laid a finger briefly on his lips.  When she withdrew it he licked them.

“Seers see their own deaths,” she said.  “It’s depressing, seriously.  I’ve seen myself die eight times now, and each time I’ve had to figure out how to avoid it.  Sooner or later I’m going to get it wrong, and then the vision of my death is the true one.”

“I can handle that,” said Jacob, but it didn’t sound convincing.  “Can we go in the Library now or are there spiders in there?  Or lions and tigers?”

Heather nodded.  “We can go in.  You can open the doors yourself now, there’s no snake on the other side holding them shut.”

“Good to know,” murmured Jacob.  He returned to the doors trying not to tremble as he reached out for the handles.  This time they stayed warm in his grip.  “I hope the Armageddon Library is worth the trip.”

“So do I,” said Heather.

Inukis

Old men line benches in the square, leaning companionably against each other.  Gnarled hands, all varying shades of sun-weathered brown, grip bottles of beer and cider.  None of them have facial hair; even their eyebrows have been shaved off, and they have a slightly startled look as a result.  Their eyes vary from rheumy, trickles of fluid running down the channels made by wrinkles on their faces, to clear-but-looking-elsewhere, windows into a vacant head.  They drink slowly, though a waiter comes regularly out of a tavern on the corner of the square, a white towel slung over his arm and his tray filled with tall bottles, condensation forming dew-like droplets on the side.  He distributes them evenly, collecting up the empties, and no money changes hands.  He disappears back into the tavern, and the men talk quietly amongst themselves, or stare into the distance in silence.

The square itself is only small; a young boy can run across it in the time it takes his distracted mother to notice and call his name, bringing him up short so that he turns around and sullenly retraces his steps, back to her side.  There is a tree in the centre, protected by a circular iron hoop at waist height that is supported in turn by four iron rods each as thick as a finger, set at compass points.  The tree is not quite as tall as the four-storey buildings that line the square’s sides, and though its trunk is long and smooth for ten feet, its branches eventually splay out so that it shades most of the square.  The men on the benches are in sunlight though, except when the shadow of the buildings they lean against falls over them.

The square is paved with dark grey stone that absorbs the rain when it falls on it and is never slick underfoot or smooth to the touch.  No moss grows in the cracks, no leaves from the tree linger here; they are soon blown away by a neverending breeze that comes from the west.

This is Inukis, city of the soulless.

Behind the square a road leads gently uphill towards the Hotel Abaddon, a name pulled from an archaic religious text by a man who was hoping to acquire authenticity without effort.  The hotel is large, it has over seventy bedrooms for paying guests, a wedding suite and the entire top floor is given over to suites intended for royalty, nobility, and other people who do not have to pay for their stay.  A campanile is set at one end of the hotel, though the bells in it have never rung, and at the other end an otherwise matching tower terminates in an observatory dome from which the gleam of a telescope may be seen on dark nights.

The main doors of the hotel are reached by climbing eighteen steps, the stone for which was looted from Melkempis when the tombs were broken open and the mummies turned out to be burned on pyres.  As the flames licked the sky and soot occluded the moon men with damp cloths wrapped around their heads to soften their breaths and hide their features laboured to haul the stone away to ships waiting in the harbour.  The steps now are rumoured to be haunted; linger too long on any step and a shadowy figure will form out of the nothingness of the air and reach out an imploring hand to you.  Perhaps this is why visitors to the hotel hurry up the steps to enter the hotel, and practically race down them to leave it.  And why the hotel staff prefer the small, mean entrances round the sides and back of the building.

Across the road from the hotel are government offices, and the windows of these buildings are lines with grey glass that drinks light in.  Looking at them shows nothing of the inside, and the reflection of the viewer is softened and wearied so that it seems someone much older looks back.  It is not considered wise to linger here either, for the fear is that the reflection might reach out a longing hand, old, black fingernails might rake across an unwary face, and a switch will take place, freeing the reflection to walk in the world again.

There are many who say that in Inukis there is no way to avoid this, and that it is called the City of the Soulless precisely because of this.  Then there are those who gather at the docks for the departure of every ship, no matter how small, and cry out to the crew, the captains and the passengers, pleading to be taken away with them, pleading for escape.

But there are those, like the old men lining the square, who are happy where they are and have no intention of leaving.