There were a couple of trails in the air, but only one that started up here and arced sharply downward and ended at the base of the waterfall. Someone had jumped. It was smooth, so it wasn’t Zax. Was it the Lector? I thought so. I thought, if there’d been a waterfall for me to fling myself into when I emerged from that horrible void of holes, I might have welcomed it.

  In the next world, the trails stopped, and I finally saw Zax again.

  Zaveta Gets Sedated • The Benefits of Faith • The Lineage of the Worm • Breaches • A Message Delayed • Toros Tells a Tale • The Final Solution

  The Trypophile’s people prodded me and Zaveta out of the tent. They shackled Zaveta, but didn’t bother doing that for me, which was both insulting and understandable. Zaveta’s safety was my chain. The cultists led us to their stolen sleepercar – this one was a deep, glittery purple with black accents. One of the cultists was wired up in the back, diadem on her head. “Sit beside her,” the Trypophile ordered. Zaveta sighed and climbed in, awkwardly, with her hands bound behind her. The Tryphophile darted in and stabbed something into Zaveta’s neck. Zaveta started to stand up, then swayed, and fell back into the seat, unmoving.

  “What did you do!” I shouted.

  “Just a sedative, Zaxony,” she soothed. “We can’t have your barbarian awake, thrashing around, biting people and so on. You’ll get your own shot soon enough. You have to travel to the First World under your own power, so you’ll be stuck there properly.”

  That seemed to be true. Zaveta was still breathing. I pointed toward the wired-up cultist and sneered at the Trypophile. I’m not very good at sneering but I did my best. “You don’t have a worm of your own? I thought you were the holiest of holies.”

  “Those who take the sacrament are missionaries,” the Trypophile said. “I am the direct conduit to the Prisoner. I send people on the missions. Get in the front.”

  I climbed in. I wish I could have slammed the dome shut and taken off, but I had no idea how to drive the vehicle – I hadn’t been with the Sleepers long enough to learn. The Trypophile got in and began manipulating the console of lights. The dome slid shut over us. “What’s the point of all this?” I said. “You want to use me to control Minna, but you have to find her first. She doesn’t have your sacrament, so your god can’t spy on her–”

  She sighed. “The Prisoner told you that? Our god does love to talk. It’s true the Prisoner can’t see Minna constantly, the way he can watch you, and all the others who’ve received the sacrament, but he can look into any world where his missionaries have been. Anywhere your trails twist, they create a crack the Prisoner can peer through.” The dome went opaque. “It’s true, the worlds expand exponentially – one world leads to three or four, each of those leads to another three or four, and so on – but think of those expanding worlds as a sort of triangle. We’re near the top, which is the First World, where the range of worlds is still narrow, and manageable. Our missionaries have been to every habitable world nearby, so our god catches glimpses of her often. Minna jumps around a lot, the Prisoner tells me – she seems to have realized that it’s hard to catch her if she keeps moving, and these little ships are good at staying hidden – but once I send out word that we’ve got you, and have my people shout the news in every world they inhabit, Minna will hear. I don’t have to find her. She’ll come to me.”

  “The Prisoner is lying to you,” I said. “He’ll tell you anything to get free. You aren’t the only real creatures in the world–”

  “Oh, yes, I know. We’re all real, my people and all the others. Or we’re all equally figments.” She patted my knee. “I’d never say that where any of my people could hear, of course, but there’s no reason to be circumspect with you. It’s not as if anyone would believe you if you told them.” I couldn’t see her smile behind that awful mask, but I could hear it. “I’m not as credulous as my followers. My grandmother was the first person to explore the First World and speak to the Prisoner, and they worked out a mythology that would appeal to the people back in the second world. Make them feel special, to aid in their zealotry. The truth has been passed down in my line. We are the conduits between our god and his followers. I have a… personal arrangement with the Prisoner. We respect each other. I am content with the truth, and with saving myself and my people. Who cares what it costs others? My followers, though… they need the benefits of faith, and to believe they’re the chosen people, instead of just the people who happened to be close enough to hear the Prisoner whisper. My! It’s refreshing to have someone to talk to about all this. I usually have to keep so quiet about it all.”

  I doubted the Prisoner respected her – it thought people were insects – but I knew trying to convince her of that would be futile. I had snagged on something else she said anyway. “Your grandmother explored the First World? I thought that’s where you came from?”

  “Oh, I was born on the First World, but my people originally came from the second. The Prisoner hammered on the walls of his prison for so long, he made a little crack between the first world and the second, just big enough for someone to slip through.”

  A breach. Toros had been very concerned about breaches.

  The Trypophile went on. “People disappeared through that crack, occasionally, and couldn’t find their way back, because it narrowed and widened at random. Someone finally marked the spot with standing stones on either side, so people could avoid it. Over time, the crack grew more stable. People knew it was dangerous there, and avoided the spot, knowing the realm beyond was dark and inhospitable. My grandmother, though, was fleeing a… misunderstanding… and the First World was better than getting executed. She slipped through the gap, and followed whispers and intuition to the mountain of fire. In that mountain, in our most sacred place, you can hear the Prisoner’s voice. Actually hear him! My grandmother crept back to the second world and recruited the beginnings of our congregation, gathering others who wanted a life of purpose. They settled on the First World and scratched out a living, growing what crops and keeping what animals we could, and we raided the second world for food and clothes and occasional new members. The Prisoner kept pushing… and soon he opened a crack from the second world to the third. Oh, what rich pickings we found there! That world had technology, weapons, strong materials, soft people.”

  She sighed. “Unfortunately, other cracks opened up there, leading to different worlds – for whatever reason, the third world was especially vulnerable to the Prisoner’s lashings. All sorts of nasty things came through, far worse than us. Those soft people in the third world were smart, though, and when my mother was still high priest, they found a way to seal the cracks and cut off their world from casual trespass. That didn’t matter much, though, because soon after I took on the mantle of Tryphophile, the Prisoner had found a way to reach into the First World more directly, and offer us the sacrament. When our missionaries passed through the third world after that, they always made sure to do some damage, to show them we couldn’t really be stopped. The place was a mess without our help, but still, one must make an effort.”

  She was telling me secrets Toros had been trying to learn for years. I knew the Trypophile was only telling me because she didn’t expect me to live long enough to do anything with the information, and I got the sense that she liked to gloat. “What, does it just… rain worms in your world?”

  “If only!” she said. “There is a cavern wall in the mountain of fire, with a cluster of small holes. The worms wriggle out of the holes. Not often. The Prisoner is still so terribly bound. But a few come each year, and we gather them, and give them to the devoted. Or the worthless, honestly – people we’d just as soon send away, to be useful in their absence. Every worm contains a bit of the Prisoner’s essence – to tear down, to disintegrate, to dissolve. We thought it would take generations and generations to do any substantive damage. Your Minna is going to speed things up nicely.”

  “She won’t help you,” I said. “Your plan won’t work. My friends will stop you.”

  “Your friends are scattered on their outposts, or else huddled in the ruins of their hold. I realize you have faith in them… but I put my faith in an actual god, not a bunch of figments, so I think my faith wins.”

  We traveled through a few worlds. I’d been in a sleepercar before, on the long trip to the Sleeperhold after Ana found me, but the company had been a lot more convivial then. Eventually the Trypophile stopped gloating, and I lost myself in my own thoughts. I was going to be trapped in the First World, but maybe I could escape, do some damage there, disrupt the cult, learn to drive a sleepercar… steal a sleepercar… and a cultist to power it… None of that seemed very likely. I’ve learned not to give up hope, but I wasn’t left with much.

  We finally reached the second world, landing on a moor near a pair of lichen-encrusted standing stones, each more than three meters high. They were carved with screaming faces, blurred by the growth and by time, but still visible. It was a blustery day, and overcast, but this place was infinitely more inviting than the haze-reddened First World.

  There were scores of worm-trails here, all overlapping. If I transitioned from here, I would certainly follow those well-worn paths to the destination the priest had in mind, and then… cul-de-sac. Box canyon. Dead end.

  The Sleeper in the back seat stirred. “Exalted one, we–”

  “Quiet,” the Trypophile snapped. “We’re leaving again in a moment, so I don’t need you waking all the way up.” She twisted a dial on the console, and the cultist blinked rapidly and then fell asleep. “Out, Zaxony.”

  I climbed out, and the Trypophile followed. “What now–” I began, and then felt the sting. She’d stabbed me in the arm with a needle, and everything went gray at the edges. “See you on the other side.” I couldn’t see her smile behind her mask, but I could hear it in her voice.

  I woke on my back, on rocky soil, looking up at a reddish sky. I turned my head, and there was the volcano, on the far side of the lake, its base shrouded in gouts of steam. I turned my head the other way, and there were buildings, stone and wood and plastic and glass, all with a cobbled-together, slapdash quality. The homes of the cultists were a lot like their outfits: things scavenged and salvaged and mixed together. I got to my feet. I’d expected to be surrounded by guards, but there was no one in sight – the camp seemed deserted.

  The shuttle appeared next to me a moment later, the dome sliding open, and the Trypophile clambered out. She looked around, frowning. “Where are…” Then she glanced at me and stopped talking.

  Anything that bothered her was fine by me. “Were you expecting your loyal subjects to meet you? Maybe they didn’t get the message.”

  “Exalted one,” the cultist said from the back seat. “You must listen–”

  She interrupted. “Get the barbarian out and take her to the holding pen.”

  Zaveta was still unconscious. They’d either given her a stronger dose of sedative, or underestimated the level of tolerance I’d developed to such drugs.

  The Tryphophile continued. “Then take the car to the breach and pick up the Pilgrim – he was going to piggyback to the second world and then walk through, but I don’t want to wait for him to hike all the way to camp. We–”

  “Exalted one, I had a vision, between the worlds, the Prisoner spoke to me–”

  She spun. “To you? Our god spoke to you?”

  The cultist cringed back against the chariot seat, but nodded. “He said it was important, an emergency, intruders–”

  I started to laugh. The Prisoner could see into the worlds, sure, but he was like a general overseeing a battle with no messengers to carry orders! The Prisoner could only tell people what it saw while they were in the void, or if they pressed their ear to a wall in a volcano, and apparently the Trypophile guarded her position as speaker to god jealously.

  “Not in front of the captives,” the Trypophile snapped at the cultist. “Let’s get them locked up, and then you can tell me.”

  “Oh no,” I said. “Are things falling apart on you?”

  She turned on me, hands clenched into fists. “Shut up, or I’ll drug you again. You’ll just be unconscious, then, you won’t go anywhere. How would you like that?”

  “A nap without consequences?” I said. “That would be grand. Plus, then you’d have to drag me and Zaveta wherever you’re taking us, and it doesn’t look like there’s anyone around to help you carry us, so… feel free. It’s probably been a while since you’ve done any real work. It’ll do you good to put your back into something–”

  “Hurry up!” the Trypophile shouted. The cultist tried to lift Zaveta out of the chariot, but my friend outweighed her by probably twenty kilograms, so she wasn’t making much progress. “Ugh.” The Trypophile climbed up too, and together they hauled Zaveta out and dumped her on the ground. “She’s not going anywhere for a while. Let’s secure Delatree, and then you can give me this message.” The Trypophile produced a pistol from beneath her robes and pointed it at me.

  “You won’t kill me,” I said. “You need me as leverage–”

  “Minna will still want to save you even if your knees are destroyed. Don’t test me.”

  Fair enough. They marched me through their camp, which was eerily deserted. I could tell the lack of inhabitants was bothering the Trypophile, and that the cultist was dying to tell what she knew, but they weren’t going to spill any more secrets in front of me. Apparently I wasn’t such a safe audience anymore – not when things were going wrong. I just wish I knew exactly how they were going wrong, so I could help them go even worse.

  The Trypophile shoved me into a cell – chain link and cinderblocks, more like something you’d use to pen up an animal than a person. There wasn’t even a bucket to relieve myself into. “What if I need to go to the bathroom?” I said.

  “Then piss yourself,” the Trypophile snapped. She stalked off, dragging the cultist with her.

  I banged on the fence. “Hello? Guards? Cultists? Prisoner? Anyone?” I kicked savagely at the fence, making it shake and rattle. I yelled and shouted. No one came to investigate, or even look at me.

  OK then. I opened the compartment in my arm and used the last bits of energy in my plasma key to cut the chain that held my gate closed. My key sputtered out before it finished the job, but it weakened the chain enough that a bunch of hard kicks made it give way. Then I pushed my way out and walked back through the camp toward Zaveta.

  I didn’t see anyone, but I saw signs of people – half-eaten bowls of food, pots hanging over cold cook fires, messy cots. Either the inhabitants had left suddenly, or they were slobs. Maybe both.

  The stolen sleepercar was still there, and Zaveta was still sprawled in the dirt beside it. I climbed into the vehicle and retrieved our bags, and Zaveta’s cudgel – good, she would have missed that. I dragged Zaveta away from the camp, toward some rocks where we might be able to hide. It was slow going with both our packs hanging off my body, and I was trying to figure out how I could brush out the drag-marks I was leaving in the dirt, when another sleepercar appeared, this one ivory chased with gold. More cultists? Or, dared I hope, Ana?

  The dome opened and Toros rose up. “Zax? I thought that was you. Have you seen Ana?”

  Did that mean she was still alive? “No, not since the Sleeperhold – what are you doing here?” His arrival was beyond fortuitous.

  “I was checking in on the outpost worlds. Since we lost most of our sleepercars it’s harder for us to communicate, and I discovered one world had been overrun by the cult. I saw them putting people into a chariot, and it looked like one of the prisoners was you, so I followed their trail.”

  “I’m glad you did. We need to get out of here – the Trypophile, their leader, is nearby, and could return any second. Help me with my friend?”

  “Yes, of course.” Toros seemed preoccupied. He came down from the chariot, frowning at his surroundings. “Is this their homeworld?”

  “They call it the First World,” I said.

  He laughed, a slightly unhinged sound. “But… it’s so squalid. I don’t know what I expected. A giant cathedral, statues of worms, a great wet hive full of toothy holes, something, not… this.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I tried to come to this world once before, but I was fired on by autocannons, even in stealth mode. There must be sensors that detect air displacement or something. When I saw them take you, though, I thought, I had to try again…” He pointed to poles I hadn’t really noticed before, spaced around the camp, bristling with sensors and guns. “Maybe they took their weapons offline, so their own chariot wouldn’t trigger them, though you’d think they’d be able to–”

  I understood he was stunned at finding the object of so much effort, but I needed him to focus. “Toros. We can talk about all that later. We have to go.”

  “Ah. Yes.” Toros helped me haul Zaveta into the back seat of the chariot, putting her beside the dozing Sleeper – Durio, I think his name was. I got into the sleepercar as well, but Toros hurried to the Trypophile’s chariot and rummaged around underneath it, removing a cylinder with trailing wires. “They won’t be able to leave without this. It links the traveler’s diadem to the propulsion and navigation system. I just turned their trans-dimensional chariot into an ordinary everyday hover-car.” He grinned and got back into the chariot with me. “I’m glad we found you, Zax,” he said. “But we really need to find Ana. Once we do… we can finally finish this.” The dome closed, and we traveled into the dark.

  Toros told me the Sleeperhold was only a few dozen worlds away – by the direct route they now knew how to follow, anyway – but we didn’t have to go that far, just half a dozen hops. Still, we had some time to catch up in the space between worlds, while Zaveta and Durio snored behind us.

  First, I asked Toros to tell me about the attack on the Sleeperhold – I hadn’t seen much of it – especially who’d lived and who’d died. He knew for sure that Minna and Vicki had escaped in one sleepercar, and Ana and Sorlyn in another. Colubra and Winsome were alive, too, and on the outpost world we were visiting. “I’m afraid the Pilgrim… it seems he…”