“I travel to two or three new worlds every day, Ana, so I’m used to seeing new and startling things. But that is different. It’s unnatural. If the cult has found some new way to damage reality…”

  “There’s no sign of the cult here, though – just Zax. We haven’t seen another worm-trail in countless worlds. Zax has gone way beyond areas of known cult activity. We’re in the far frontier here, hundreds of worlds from wherever the worm-lovers call home.”

  “If it’s not the cult, then what is it?” Sorlyn demanded.

  “We don’t know.” I rolled my eyes. He hated it when I did that. “That’s the point. If we go back, Toros will just tell us to ‘investigate the anomalous findings’, so let’s just skip straight to doing that without wasting a bunch of time. What do you say?”

  “If we don’t survive our journey, Toros may never know about this new sort of trail.” Toros chewed his lip. “I don’t know, Ana…”

  “We think we must be getting close to Zax, yes?”

  Now it was his time to roll his eyes. He never used to do that, before he started traveling with me. “Close is relative. We could still be a hundred and fifty worlds behind him. More, if he’s taking a lot of naps.”

  “We’re closer than we’ve been since before I got sick, though, right? So let’s go fast, and find him, and take him and this weird new information back to the Sleeperhold.”

  Sorlyn sighed. “Ana, if I agree with you that we should investigate this – this anomaly – then we’ll have to follow this new trail, and not Zax’s.”

  I opened my mouth to object, then closed it. I’d talked myself into a corner there, hadn’t I? I groaned. “OK. Fine. Let’s get moving. The sooner we figure out what’s going on with this new trail, the sooner we can get back to finding Zax.”

  But that was the weird thing.

  The new trail never diverged from Zax’s. Whenever we followed that strange, straight line into a new world, we found Zax’s raggedy trail nearby. After a dozen worlds, Sorlyn said, “Whatever this is, it’s either traveling with Zax, or chasing him – or Zax is chasing it. The first possibility is strange, and the others are troubling.”

  “It could be coincidence,” I said. “We know the parasite tends to follow a trail that’s already been broken, so maybe it’s just a path-of-least-resistance thing.” The idea of some mysterious figure or force stalking Zax through the multiverse was entirely too horrifying to me. That alone should have told me it was true.

  “You are technically correct,” Sorlyn said, “but it’s a lot safer if we proceed with the assumption of malice, don’t you think?” We stepped up our pace, taking fewer rest stops, and making sketchier notes and briefer surveys of the worlds we passed through, and those two trails were always there, always together, sometimes drifting apart for some distance on any given world, but always reuniting on the next.

  We finally got some answers when we met Winsome, a hundred and fifty worlds or so after the hospital.

  Our transition took us to an interior space, a rarity, but not unheard of. Usually we ended up indoors on worlds that were inhospitable on the outside, but this was no space station or bio-dome – just a big house. A mansion, really.

  The walls were dark wood, and the floors were polished stone in a black-and-white hexagonal pattern, dotted with small red squares that filled out the empty spaces between the corners of the hexagons. The overall impression was one of opulence. The chandelier hanging above us dripped with thousands of crystals, each emitting its own light, and there were life-sized marble statues set into niches, most depicting humanoid figures with the heads of birds or predators, though the first one I saw was a person-sized beetle wearing a bandolier, one forelimb raised in a heroic pose. Zax’s trail moved up a sweeping stairway and out of sight down an upstairs hallway, as did the strange second trail.

  This seemed like the kind of place where people might live, so Sorlyn did his fade-from-view trick, and I put on my shimmersuit, before we debarked from the sleepercar. Something about the dimensions of the immense hall made my head hurt, but Sorlyn was the one who figured out what was wrong.

  “Look at the floor,” he said. “The tiles alternate black and white hexagons. Hexagonal tiles should fit together perfectly, flush on all sides with no gaps, like a honeycomb – that’s one reason hexagons are such an elegant shape. But the edges of these tiles don’t join together perfectly. There’s an empty square at the corner of each hexagon, like you’d see with octagonal tiles.” He kept staring. The floor kept being exactly as it was. “That doesn’t make any sense. It violates basic geometry.”

  Later, when I read Zax’s journal, I found out he called this place a “non-Euclidean mansion”. I looked up and pointed at a corner. “Try to follow the line of the wall from the floor to the ceiling.”

  He did, and I did too, but the angles were all wrong, subtly misleading the eye, and when my gaze reached the ceiling, the place where two walls and the ceiling met seemed to protrude outward, creating a pyramidal bulge into the room. My eyes watered when I tried to make sense of what I was seeing.

  Sorlyn squeezed his eyes shut. “There’s nowhere to rest my gaze. I can’t look at the floor, and the walls are strange, and even the ceiling has patterns that aren’t right.”

  “I thought the worlds we visited adhered to the same physical laws?”

  “As far as we can tell, they do,” Sorlyn said. “Toros thinks there are worlds where the constants are different, but that those worlds can’t sustain life, so the parasite doesn’t travel there. But this is a place that can sustain life, despite the… anomalous geometry. Maybe the other adjacent worlds were even worse.”

  “Or maybe this whole building is some weird science experiment.” I shuddered. The sleepercar was too large to navigate these interior corridors (probably, though with the odd curves and angles, who could tell?), so I pointed to the stairs. “Let’s make sure Zax and our mystery guest aren’t still up there, and then move on.”

  We walked up the stairs, which was a lot more difficult than it should have been; a certain points, the steps would invert for a riser or two, and it would briefly become more like rock climbing than walking up stairs. We managed to make it to the landing, though, and continued down a corridor. The passage was lit by brass masks of screaming faces on the wall that emitted light through their empty mouth- and eyeholes. There were paintings on the walls, of humanoids, but their faces were scrambled, with eyes on chins and noses where ears should be. Experimental art, I would have assumed in another place, but here? Maybe they were perfectly representational. I hoped we didn’t run into any of the residents.

  The floor started to tilt, very subtly, toward the right, and looking ahead I could see that the tilt became more extreme, and the passageway corkscrewed completely around until the floor was sideways and then switched places with the ceiling… but gravity seemed to remain oriented to keep our feet on the ground, so we just walked along. Looking back, we seemed level, with the path twisted behind us instead.

  I was getting queasy, and stared at the thankfully patternless dark carpet on the floor. We passed many doors, all shut, and paused to listen to ominous thumpings behind a few. Zax’s path continued, along with the stranger’s, through the corkscrewed part of the passage, and then around a corner – except maybe it was down a shaft? We followed, until we reached a ballroom.

  The space was immense, punctuated by squared-off pillars that didn’t seem quite parallel with one another, with a vaulted ceiling hung with more chandeliers, though chandeliers also hung from some of the walls, sticking out sideways into the room as if enjoying their own special relationship with gravity. The floor was so perfectly polished that it reflected the whole room like a mirror. The floor didn’t reflect us, which startled me, until I remembered we were invisible.

  I have never been so disoriented.

  Sorlyn paused beside me a few steps into the ballroom and said, “Someone is here.”

  I didn’t see anyone, until he pointed at the floor. There was someone in the reflection, but I could only see the bottom of their feet, as if the floor wasn’t a mirror but a transparent pane of glass, with us standing on one surface, and this stranger standing on the opposite side. But… surely the floor was a mirror? Except… Sorlyn wasn’t actually invisible, was he? Not in a bending-light sense, the way I was. He had a psychic ability that made him less noticeable, but would that prevent me from seeing him in a mirror? I knew he had to avoid cameras, because he would show up on video–

  The floor dropped out from underneath us, and we fell, and spun, gravity rearranging itself, and we landed with a thump on the other side of the floor.

  Now I could see the person who’d been upside-down before. They were just under of two meters tall, with eyes that struck me as half a size too large, lending them an air of innocence that was enhanced by long lashes, a snub nose, and a pink rosebud of a mouth. Their face looked like a painting of a face. They wore a red and black tunic with black leggings, and their feet were bare. Their exposed skin was pale silver, and something about the way they moved made me think they weren’t organic, but an android.

  They spoke, looking – at Sorlyn? Another point in favor of them being a robot; they weren’t likely to be fooled by the whole psychic-obscurity trick. I didn’t understand what they said, of course, and they cycled through seemingly various languages, and then, to my immense shock, said, “I don’t suppose you understand this one either?”

  That was Realmspeech, or something close enough.

  “I understand you!” I blurted.

  They raised one perfectly arched eyebrow. “Oh. I see you, making the air blurry. I thought you were just… one of this place’s little peculiarities.”

  “What are you saying?” Sorlyn said.

  “They speak my language!” Then it dawned on me. “Zax’s language!”

  “Did you just say Zax?” the android said.

  I deactivated my shimmersuit, allowing myself to be seen. “I did. You know Zax? You’re his companion? Is he here?” Zax’s worm-trail was on the other side of the floor now; I hoped we could get back there, not least because that’s where our sleepercar was.

  “How remarkable.” The android clapped their hands in evident delight. “I did travel with Zax, yes, long enough to learn the rudiments of the language you share, but we were separated in this place – the floors did one of their peculiar turns, and since we did not yet understand the rules, such as they are, we became separated. He is gone, I’m afraid. He has been gone… I don’t know how long. My internal chronometer is not trustworthy in this place. Tell me, are you travelers like Zax? Can you take me with you when you go?”

  “Of course.” I spoke quickly to Sorlyn, catching him up, and the taciturn Sleeper nodded in agreement, unimpressed as usual. “We have a vehicle that lets us traverse the multiverse. That is… if we can get back to it.” I tried not to think of what would happen if Sorlyn got too sleepy while we were still lost in this place. This android and I could both cling to him, but then we’d be lost and stranded in the multiverse without a way to return home, just like Zax was.

  “Where did you leave your vessel?” the android said.

  “In a sort of front hall, I think, downstairs, with statues–”

  “That is where we arrived as well. Yes, I can take you back there. I don’t know all the mysteries of this place, or the true extent of its dimensions, but I have learned to navigate in my immediate area. Tell me, are you acquainted with that other chap who came looking for Zax?”

  That was unexpected. “Someone else was trying to find Zax?”

  “Oh, yes. A… while ago. I wish I could be more precise. He was an older man, bellowing, ‘Zaxony, are you here, come out’. I almost spoke to him, but he bore a resemblance to a certain individual that Zax had told me some rather harrowing stories about, so I deemed it best to avoid him.”

  Harrowing stories? “Wait. What individual?”

  “A fellow called the Lector,” the android said. “I do wish I could warn Zax that the Lector is in pursuit. Oh, but I’ve been rude – telling you the name of another visitor before I tell you my own.” They bowed. “I am Winsome. I hail from the Spire of the New Progeny, but I found that place rather dull.”

  I remembered Winsome’s home world – it wasn’t very far back – and it had struck me as civilized and comfortable but a bit stuffy, full of mechanical people who liked things orderly. Winsome’s silver skin was a wild eccentricity by the standards of that place.

  Winsome went on. “I gladly accepted Zax’s offer to explore the worlds beyond my own. I had a lovely time, until we became separated. I didn’t expect to be trapped here, but when one goes looking for adventure, one should not be surprised to encounter inconvenience instead. Oh, how I do go on. They called me chatterbox in the Incubatorium. What are your names?”

  “This is Sorlyn,” I said. “And I’m–”

  Winsome slapped their forehead. “Are you the famous Ana?”

  A peculiar warmth filled my belly. “Zax mentioned me?”

  “My dear, he spoke of you often. Oh, his guilt and regret over losing you! But you are here, and of sound mind? Were the terrors of the void between worlds overstated, then? Zax always told me to power down before we’d transition, in case the effects proved deleterious even for a constructed mind.”

  “No, the void… it’s as bad as he thinks. Worse. It took months of rehabilitation for me to come to my senses.” Assuming I had. I was spending endless months in the multiverse in pursuit of a man I’d met once.

  “Oh, Zax will be so pleased to hear you’re all right.” Winsome stepped forward, took my hands, and gazed into my eyes. Theirs changed color, from green to blue, fading from one into another and back again.

  Sorlyn looked at us with more amusement than confusion. “I can’t wait to hear what all this is about,” he said.

  “We are going to find Zax, then?” Winsome said. “You’re looking for him?”

  “It’s… more complicated than that, but, yes. We’re also tracking another trail, someone traveling through the multiverse in pursuit of Zax – this Lector you talked about, maybe?”

  “The Lector is one of Zax’s old companions, yes,” Winsome said. “A scientist. He made Zax’s life much easier… but then he tried to kill our mutual friend.” They glanced around the ballroom. The chandeliers were beginning to slide across the ceiling and walls, slowly, like they were in a stately group dance. “There is a shift coming. It will be faster if we return to the front hall now, rather than later, so perhaps we can continue this discussion in your conveyance?”

  Winsome led us on what seemed a roundabout route – at one point we crawled into a dumbwaiter, which somehow had the proportions of a freight elevator once we got inside – but in the end we emerged from a hidden panel in a wall and the sleepercar was right there. We opened up the dome, Winsome exclaiming over the chariot’s elegance, and we all got inside.

  Sorlyn put on his diadem. “We can’t transition from the point where Zax’s trail ends, but there are only two new adjacent worlds here. There’s an even chance we’ll hit the one Zax went to, and if not, we’ll come back and try the other.”

  We sealed the dome, and Sorlyn went to sleep, and we entered the transitional void. Winsome was in the front seat next to me, and we had twenty-one minutes to just talk.

  Since then I’ve read about the Lector in Zax’s journal, and of course I witnessed some of his megalomaniacal empire-building up close, but that first introduction to his character was chilling enough. Winsome told me about the linguistic virus, and the other enhancements the Lector had provided Zax, making him more physically robust and helping him stay awake longer. They also told me how the Lector became obsessed with gaining Zax’s ability for himself, and how he tried to vivisect Zax, and stole his blood. “It seems the Lector succeeded in duplicating our friend’s ability,” Winsome said. “Though why he’s looking for Zax now is unclear to me. The Lector seemed to consider Zax simply a tool, and once he gained the power of multiversal travel for himself, I don’t see why he needs our dear boy anymore. Unless the Lector wants revenge, perhaps, for being left in that wrecked world?”

  I thought of the hospital, and the cot, and all the chemistry equipment and medical machinery. The Lector’s laboratory. “Maybe he has a limited supply of… whatever he made,” I said. “I saw the place where the Lector did his science, and it looked like he was manufacturing something – maybe a serum of some kind.”

  “Ah, some potion the Lector imbibes that allows him to visit a new world,” Winsome said. “Derived from the blood he took from Zax, perhaps. In which case… he might want more blood. Oh dear.”

  “The parasite does secrete a chemical into the blood that allows the passage to new worlds,” I said, musing aloud. We’d never thought about trying to duplicate the effect back on the Sleeperhold. The very idea was antithetical to everything Toros wanted to achieve,

  “Parasite, you say?”

  I explained what we knew about the worm, and the cult that spreads it. Winsome took everything in, asking occasional questions when we hit vocabulary words they didn’t know – Zax and I don’t speak exactly the same language, after all – and then Winsome said, “The multiverse is far stranger than I realized. We must help Zax. Warn him about the Lector. Protect him from the fiend’s designs.”

  “We will,” I said.

  I really believed it, when I said that.

  Bindings • A Mind Fortress • Enter the Prisoner • Zaxony Dyad Euphony Delatree • Cracks in the Wall • The Message • Let Your Cultist Be Your Guide

  “Zaveta of the Broken Wheel,” I said. “Why aren’t you Zaveta of the Broken Mind?”

  “Tie our captive up with some of that rope and I will explain,” Zaveta said.

  I stood up on the gently swaying deck. The masts, I now realized, were made of immense bones, probably harvested from the same unfortunate creatures that provided the toenails that made up the deck. I stepped carefully – the “boards” were uneven and wanted to snag my shoes – and reached for a coil of rope… woven, I realized almost immediately, from coarse black hair. I tried not to think about the implications, cut away a length with the cultist’s own knife, and bound her ankles. I went around to her front and said in Wormspeech, “Hold out your hands.”