The Street Had No Name

Chapter 19

THE OTHER SIDE, In Its Own Time

The members all stood in quiet awe of it. The single scroll, the fourth in the set and the missing Token was there, for the taking, to allow and facilitate the containment. It was a thing of the greatest magic and a conduit to The Great Powers; something not seen for many thousands of years. Now, here it was, almost too simple in its presentation.

The leader, Olim Candre, turned to his brothers. “Gentlemen, it is truly here. It is able to be reunited, The Tokens made one again and containment realised” his words hung over proceedings like a shroud; nothing being said but all being considered.

“Once again, we will join The Order and control it all” his eyes shone in the light of the room, a certain spirit showing through, one akin to both rapture and desire. The very thought of The Great Powers was euphoric, lifting them all like birds on a thermal.

It had been Candre that had found the source. In fact, with The Order, the whole thing was theirs and his design. The world thrown into confusion at their hands, surreptitious activities leading to the terrorist attacks that had destroyed the electronic fabric of the place, the relentless pursuit of The Keeper, flushing him out, steeling back what had been stolen all those millennia before.

The opening of the gate, something The Order could do but not without considerable effort and the dispatching of the Kefts, those demon animals from the quarter zone, ferocious little creatures, controllable to a point but effective in their errands. A masterstroke of timing and planning, truly the adage of “where there’s confusion there’s profit” never standing a better test.

Now, Olim Candre, Master of the Other Side, stood with his brothers, in keeping of The Fourth Scroll. All that was needed now was for The Order to convene and perform the Conjunction, to reunite The Tokens and then, then it would all be back as it should have always been.

Candre had dispatched the messages. The calls were out and now, time was waiting for their arrival. All the Masters would come, they would move across the fabric to here, each bringing the Token in their keep. The Order had moved each scroll to a different place after the flight of Atrini and never since had they been together.

It was going to happen now.

Candre moved to the glass box. Inside the papyrus sat gently on a blue velvet cushion. A single black tie holding it rolled. The power pulsed from it, flooding into the room, almost humming in its presence. In another place, it would have shone like a floodlight, here it was subdued, albeit the whitest white one could imagine. Its heritage lost in time, even the language written on it as dead to the world as any other thing, only a hand-full of individuals able to keen the symbols and letters.

Candre turned again, the before described look now much more so. He laughed loudly, for all the world sounding like a Keft on the charge. “IT IS OUR’S!”

He turned back, some force now driving him. He lifted the glass cover off the scroll. The brothers, silent, save for the inhale of exclamation performed in perfect harmony. Candre placed the cover to the side and held his hands above the scroll, like he was warming them over a fire. His eyes closed, his body twitching, a thin line of spittle formed at the side of his mouth and dropped from it to the collar of his habit.

Agonising seconds passed, he was still except for a tremor passing over him, looking like an attack of palsy. Save his ecstatic moaning, one would have thought him in a fit.

He dribbled more, his knees buckled and his hands touched it; for the first time. Its transport back to here and subsequent storage performed by the Kefts, now, for the first time in thousands of years, a Master of The Order was to hold The Fourth Scroll; The Scroll taken and lost to them.

His hands wrapped around the paper. His facial features melted into those of complete ecstasy. For long moments his moan was orgasmic, such was the power of the event. Then, it changed.

The moan that just a moment prior was of complete pleasure turned abruptly into one of confusion and then just as quickly abject terror.

From his hands, smoke rose into the room. Tendrils of golden flame leapt from the scroll and ran up his forearms, under the loose sleeves of his habit, following the soft flesh, burning and searing it as it went.

The congregation was unable to move, act; think. It was just happening and they could do nothing. White light formed around the scroll and fired at Candre’s face, finding his eyes and blowing the soft tissue away, entering there. His head seemed to move and pulsate like there were worms under his flesh.

His voice now a scream as blood curdling as any ever heard. Slowly, as the flames licked around him, smoke billowing from the burning flesh and cloth, his screams now sobs lost in the fire, he started to levitate and slowly spin; all the time white light lancing through him, the scroll tightly held in his hands.

As if some switch had been thrown, the others found they could move and speak again. Their cries were those of confused men, faced with unexpected catastrophe, some ran; others stood sobbing.

The question would be whether they sobbed for the event that was happening before them, or in recognition of the fact that the artifact they had waited forever to regain was destroying itself before their eyes; the smoke, a symbol to all the beliefs that had filled their lives and those of their forebears, disappearing there and then.

Candre’s husk floated gently like a piece of blacked paper in the vortex of the flames of the fire and then just disintegrated as a gust of hot air rushed upwards as the flames disappeared as quickly as they had formed.

Black ash sat in a pile on the wooden floor. Save for the remnants of the smoke lazily caressing the ceiling of the tall room, there was no proof that it had ever happened. In the centre of the ash, sitting on the point of the hill that was once The Master of The Other Side sat the scroll; a small dent holding it still and it’s pristine whiteness unmarked; unscathed with the black tie neatly holding it tight.

A breeze blew into the room and dislodged it. It rolled down and across the floor, coming to rest again the leg of a chair over by the far wall. The Fourth Scroll was back with The Order, sitting there, ready for any use they saw fit.