Mathew Stover - Test of Metal

Though I had never seen even a depiction of him, I knew he was Kemuel. Knew it. As if I’d known him since the day I was born.

Since the day he was born.

I’d made it.

I really had.

The sensation was remarkably similar to how I’d felt after beating Renn.

Eventually, I registered what Kemuel had said. I got up, trying to swallow a bolus of apprehension that had suddenly decided to claw its way up my throat. “What in the hells do you mean, welcome back?”

Creases appeared on his immense face like erosion scars on a granite cliff. “The Seeker’s Path has brought you here several times, my friend. The question is: What will take you the rest of the way?”

“The rest of what way?” An incalculable weight of exhaustion gathered upon my shoulders, threatening to crush me altogether. I still wasn’t done? “Several times?” I said weakly. “Please tell me you’re not saying what I’m afraid you’re saying.”

The creases continued to deepen around his mouth and at the corners of his eyes, and I realized he was slowly-incrementally, glacially-working himself toward a smile. The old sphinx wore so much etherium, he was practically made of metal. “I can answer any question that won’t help you, Tezzeret. ‘The rest of the way’ means beyond where we are. The several times… well, you reach the Riddle Gate two or three times out of each ten thousand lives. On average.”

I rubbed my face. Ten thousand lives? Reincarnation? The thought of having to live out my current life was nearly more than I could bear. Ten thousand? And then I registered he’d told me that was an average…

Two or three times out of each ten thousand lives.

I was so tired that I wanted to die. But something in my brain heedlessly refuses to stop working, no matter the circumstance, and at that moment it offered a tiny spark of hope. “Wait,” I said. “Not sequential lives. Parallel lives. Different time lines.”

“Yes.”

I stared at him. He was utterly alien but at the same time as familiar as my father’s hovel. “You’re a clockworker.”

“I have the gift, on my father’s side. I don’t use it.”

“Why not?”

Those creases got even deeper, and some looked as if they might start to curve a little, too. “Why would I?”

I looked at him. He looked at me. After a long time looking at each other, I realized I had no answer. I couldn’t even imagine that there might exist an answer that would make sense to him.

Sphinxes and riddles. I was heartily sick of both. “What is this place?”

“You stand in the Riddle Gate, my friend. The end of your journey, or its midpoint; the distinction is yours to make.”

The midpoint. The Riddle Gate. If I’d believed in any gods, I would have been calling upon them to curse him. And me. And themselves, too, while they were at it. “What’s next? Where do I go now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Excuse me?”

“This is as far as you’ve ever come.”

For some reason, I found this encouraging. “So what happens?”

“The way back is closed, Tezzeret. If you do not pass the Riddle Gate, here you will live. Here you will die.”

I looked around. No graves. No bones. No loitering Tezzerets. “What do I usually do?”

“Your reaction to failure varies. Often you take your own life. Sometimes you attack me with such fury that I must kill you. On occasion, you have spent days or weeks-sometimes months-in conversation with me… and then you take your own life, or spend it in futile violence. This is how we have become friends.”

“Would you be offended if I say I don’t want to know you that well?”

“Reality is not what we want, Tezzeret. It’s what is.”

I winced. When that truism had come up before, it had usually been me saying it to someone else; to be on the receiving end was unexpectedly bitter.

“It is not my task to lecture you, Tezzeret. I am not here to puzzle you, nor to impede your Search. I am on your side-even if only to avoid the unpleasantness of disposing of your body.”

“What about my possessions? If you want to help me succeed-”

“I will not help you succeed. I cannot help you succeed. I hope that success will find you, and that you will find it. To aid you is beyond my power.”

“Can you give me my etherium back?”

“It is not your etherium.”

“Yes. Yes, of course,” I said. “The Grand Hegemon’s etherium, loaned to me.”

“It is not hers to loan. All etherium is my father’s. By his grace, some are allowed to borrow its use.”

“Your father’s…” I repeated numbly. That answered one question-but if Crucius was even older than the Hidden One, finding him alive seemed unlikely. “All right. It’s his. But being allowed to, ah, borrow it for a while longer would be-”

“Etherium cannot enter the Riddle Gate.”

“Really? Again, without meaning to give offense,” I said, gesturing at his baroquely layered encrustations, “one must wonder-”

“I did not enter. My father built it around me, when he constructed the Labyrinth.”

“Built it around you,” I repeated, more numb than before. “And you’ve been here, all these centuries? Millennia?”

“It is the task he has given me.”

That crusted mass of etherium must be all that was keeping him alive. On the other hand, if he were to unexpectedly expire…

As if he could read my mind, he piped, “Etherium cannot leave, either. It is as my father has made it: the stricture of the Riddle Gate.”

“So you’re trapped too.”

“No: I linger until the Seeker passes the Gate. It is my task.”

Two or three out of every ten thousand lives. On average. “I hope you’ll forgive me for saying it sounds like a boring job.”

“Boredom is an affliction from which sphinxes do not suffer.”

“Of course.” I would have thought of this before I opened my stupid mouth, if I hadn’t been too tired to worry about playing smart. “Still, you must spend a lot of time alone.”

“I pass my days in learning. I am a sphinx; a creature of questions. The Riddle Gate is a device of answers.” The ancient sphinx lifted a paw, and we were no longer on the grassy sward but instead upon the Cliffs of Ot, looking down upon a sea crowded with refugee ships fleeing Vectis. “Or Cloudheath? Would you enjoy watching Tiln construct the Rampart of Thunder? Perhaps Bant, if you have a particular favorite among their perpetual wars. Or Jund’s Dragonstorm Aeon: dramatic and spectacular together. All of time and space are before us here. The Riddle Gate can show us every answer except the one you’ll need to pass through it.”

I had no interest in sightseeing, nor in history. All of time and space, though… “Can you show me where I can Crucius?” find Kemuel the Ancient fixed me with a remarkably sharp gimlet stare. “You can find my father anywhere you can find yourself.”

“How about this: show me where I will find Crucius,” I said. “Where, as you say, I can find myself.”

The smile stretched until his cracked leather face became an alarmingly hideous leer. “Of course, my friend. But know that every Seeker sees this-yet the vision will become truth for only one. Which is not likely to be you. Any of you.”

I frowned. “There are other Seekers? Beyond multiples of me?”

“There is only one Seeker. But the Seeker is not always you. Nor is their Search identical to yours.”

I rubbed my eyes. Discovering that I mostly understood what he was talking about was profoundly disturbing. The implications were worse. “We’re not looking for the same thing?”

“I don’t know,” Kemuel said impassively. “What are you looking for?”

I stared at him. I didn’t answer.