![]() Evelyn had spent the last few days adding wards around the edge – “The good shit. She placed much faith in her own separate additions to the gateway mandala. “Nothing can come through from that side to this, not unless I directly permit.” “It’s fine,” Evelyn said, too hard, either to herself or my fear or Raine’s tension. Had to squeeze my eyes shut, then open them again in sudden fear that something might crawl through the gateway while I wasn’t looking. The size and scale of the distant cliff-face – which I already knew was not a cliff – made my head spin. It was like looking down into a void beneath the Earth’s crust, a dark forgotten place full of half-glimpsed unspeakable creatures and forbidden secrets. I endured a wave of vertigo as I stared into the bleak vision through the doorway. Raine went tense, eyes glued on the other world, the other side, Outside. A sort of cliff or gigantic wall loomed over all, hazy with both distance and gloom.Įvelyn stepped quickly back from the open gateway, half taking shelter behind Praem while pretending she wasn’t doing so. Unlike the otherworldly luminous fog of the Sharrowford Cult’s castle, Carcosa glowed with no clean light, only dank amorphous shadows cast by distant starlight, caught on tumbled mounds of discarded books. The gate didn’t care either, it opened all the same.īlank plaster slid through that mesmerising process of shedding matter, first rippling black and empty, then filling in with shape and shade and shadow – and precious little light or colour. That part of me was very silly, and should have been relieved that my magical best friend was happy to do magecraft in her pajamas. Part of me would have been more comfortable if Evelyn wore midnight black robes, chanted some Latin, and used blood instead of masking tape. Then she used the tip of a black marker pen to connect the various magic circles and esoteric inscriptions over the empty strips of masking tape. What Evelyn actually did was take a few lengths of masking tape and stick Kimberly’s and Lozzie’s corrections over the right places on the cacophonous mandala, which surrounded the door-shaped blank section of plaster in the middle. ‘Activating the gateway’ makes it sound absurdly grand. Heavy sleeper, or sore from the night? I filed that question away for then, too many butterflies in my stomach to concentrate on anything except Lozzie, bouncing on the balls of her feet in excitement, and Evelyn, activating the gateway to the Library of Carcosa. Raine had donned her head-to-toe riot gear just in case, while Zheng had vanished off somewhere – probably to fish the remains of her deer carcass out of the bin and snatch a few more mouthfuls – and Twil was still dozing upstairs, apparently in Evelyn’s bedroom. Myself, Raine, and Evelyn, with Praem standing nearby on silent watch. After the mortifying breakfast during which Raine had insulted and provoked Zheng, after the kitchen had been given a proper clean and we’d all had some time to prepare, we’d gathered in the workshop to watch Lozzie perform a miracle. The experiment itself had gone off without a hitch. Neat, clean, straightforward of course that plan did not survive thirty seconds. Three companions seemed a much more sensible number – Evelyn, to locate the books and navigate the hazards Praem, as muscle and protection and packhorse and Lozzie, guest-starring as an emergency escape button. ![]() Absolute.”Īccording to Evelyn, the classical ideal was a single intrepid mage, plumbing the occult mysteries and risking alchemical transformation of the self luckily for us, Evelyn did not possess her mother’s arrogance, and even if she did, her spinal problems and uneven gait and reliance on a walking stick rather precluded a solo journey, let alone a return trip lugging a sack of books back to reality. “I don’t even want to take Twil along, let alone your giant zombie. “What other variables are there?” Evelyn had grumbled. ![]() “By that, may I assume you mean one of us doing something stupid?” I’d asked. She had explained to me earlier that morning, after we’d completed the initial experiment, that this expedition was probably best carried out with as few people as possible, to avoid both unwanted attention and the ‘proliferation of uncontrolled variables’. ![]() “We stick together,” was the last thing Evelyn said, before all seven of us stepped through the gateway to the Library of Carcosa.
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