The Doktor's Spyglass

Chapter 22.2

"Here's the thing, Thijis," Kantaris was saying, as Irik's eyes tried to focus on the whirling blur of the new world coalescing around him. "It's been fun, sparring with you—although a bit like teaching a toddler the sword for the first time. But as I said before, we're both out of time. So shut up, look, and listen, and I'll give you a tour of the relevant parts of this business."

They hung in blackness again; Kantaris' voice ran out of the silence like a dinner bell.

"How are you doing this?" Irik asked.

"Training," replied Kantaris. "Years of it. Followed by years of experience. This place is a world unto itself, and it has its own rules. Unfortunately I don't have the time right now to teach many of them to you. But follow my lead and I think you'll see something interesting. Would you care for a body?"

"What?"

Kantaris was silent for a moment, and then Thijis felt a strange sensation growing within the spark of consciousness that was him in this place. The black fabric of the space around him rippled almost imperceptibly and gave him a body: he held up the hands of it in front of his face and looked at them. He was so relieved to find himself incarnate once more that it took him another moment to notice that the hands weren't his. Looking down—his vision suddenly greatly limited by having been reduced to eyeballs rotating in an actual head—he saw what could be nothing other than a set of perky, full breasts protruding from his chest. Farther below, a distinct lack of something. He was a woman. And he was naked.

"What the..."

The old man chuckled. "My apologies. I couldn't resist. Though it can be quite a bit of fun, if you have the time." Kantaris appeared next to him, wearing his own body, Thijis noticed, and waggled his fingers. Irik's own body appeared, dressed approximately as he had been in real life—wherever or whatever that was. He wasn't sure anymore.

"The longer you spend here, the more your own mind will leave behind. It takes time to develop a residual self-image."

"I'll take your word for it."

"Are you ready to begin?" The playful tone was gone from his voice, now. Awe, fear, anger, and utter exhaustion warred within him, but there was only one answer he could give.

"As I'll ever be," he said.

"Good," said Kantaris. He held his hands out in front of him—more for show than anything else, Thijis supposed, as everything he'd done up until now had been without the benefit of a body—and spread his palms apart as if pushing open a set of double doors. The blackness remained, but they seemed to move—or rather, the blackness moved around them, like fabric around a sharp blade.

He saw one of the golden orbs approaching them at a speed he could not reckon. It grew from the size of a coin to a dinner plate to a clocktower, and then continued to get bigger. Distance was just as difficult to reckon as speed, here, but the rate at which it grew suggested that it had been farther away from them than he had imagined. By the time Kantaris stopped their progress, the glowing orb in front of them was the size of a house. It seemed like it was only a matter of feet away, but he could tell by now that it wasn't.

"Would you like to get closer?" asked Kantaris. "It's not strictly necessary, but some sights are worth seeing." Thijis nodded, transfixed by the amber sphere.

With one, sudden jerk, his vision exploded with gold, and he found himself hovering next to a glowing amber plane. He had to turn to see any of the black.

"Perhaps a bit too close," Kantaris murmured, and dragged Thijis back by his arm. At a slightly greater distance, it was easier to get a sense of what he was looking at: the same orb, suddenly inflated to a size almost unimaginable by man. It was larger than the sky, greater than the most impressive vista Thijis had ever laid eyes on. His fall from the Horn seemed like tripping over a pebble in comparison.

"Like a sun," said Kantaris. Thijis nodded. The astronomers at the University claimed that the suns were merely nearby stars, more massive by far than the world on which Thijis and Kantaris made their home. The very sphere of their planet could fall into one and be consumed as easily as the ocean absorbing a stone. This felt like being up close to one, like being drawn in by a god.

There were no words, really. Nothing even Thijis could say to encapsulate the experience.

"It's amazing," Kantaris commented, "the symmetry of things. The way a human mind in the Phiros looks like a star in the coldness of outer space. If we were created, it was by an artist."

Having a mouth again, he found he could gape, and Thijis closed it when he realized it was hanging open. "A human mind?" he asked.

"Yes," said Kantaris. "That's what this is. The aetheric representation of a consciousness—the soul's body in the Phiros, you might say."

"How does a mind appear here?" asked Thijis.

"Everyone's mind appears here," explained Kantaris.

"So that means I've got one of these floating out here somewhere?"

"Indeed. Provided you have a mind."

Thijis gave him a nasty smirk. "I'd like to see it."

"No," said the old man.

"I'm not sure what gave you the impression that you can tell me what to do, my lord, but allow me to disabuse you of the notion. I—"

Kantaris interrupted him. "I can tell you what to do," he said, "because in this place you are like a child playing with fire. You will obey me or I will remove you and prohibit further access to the Phiros." Kantaris had been standing next to him, but now he floated, without moving his legs, out in front of Irik. "Sailing the phirotic seas of your own mind, Mr. Thijis, is one of the most dangerous—and enlightening—things a person can do on this earth. Only the most advanced practitioners even attempt it, and even for them it is a risky proposition. I would not allow you to do it with your current state of expertise any more than I would let that child set fire his parents' house. Now, if you're about finished, please ask your other question."

Thijis opened his mouth to speak, but snapped it shut in annoyance when he realized that he did have another question.

"Whose mind is this?"

"Ahh," said Kantaris. "That is the right question, for now. This is the mind of one Felix Aust."

"The Lord Protector," Thijis said.

"He's hardly worthy of the title, but he holds that office, yes," said Kantaris. "But our story begins within Lord Aust's memories. So here we are." Thijis felt Kantaris touch him, guiding him toward the hazy golden surface of the sphere. "As you approach the sphere," Kantaris continued, guiding Thijis closer, "the surface will begin to solidify."

He could see what the other man meant: the shell of the orb, once hazy and glowing, was tightening into an opaque barrier with every passing inch. By the time they were actually close enough to touch it—several long minutes later, even traveling at what Thijis suspected was an incredible speed—it had become a golden mirror. He could see his and Kantaris's reflections in its surface, next to each other, the older man's hand on his shoulder.

"Now," said Kantaris. "Let's go." He pushed Thijis through, and with a short, curtailed scream, Thijisfelt himself enter a place that was other. 

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