Page 13 of Backpacking through Bedlam

“You think, or you know? Because I have more grenades if we need to camp for another night.”

He snorted and let me go, heading for a point toward the edge of the rock and producing a piece of chalk, starting to draw runes all over the stone at his feet. I helped a few people tear down their tents before joining him, and the crowd that had already begun to gather.

His runes were forming a rough oval that was probably meant to be a circle. I didn’t say anything. The shape the runes formed didn’t matter half as much as the runes themselves, which was a good thing, since the man couldn’t draw a perfect circle to save his life, and I didn’t want to find out that we could access dimensions that were antithetical to humanity by bending an angle slightly wrong.

When the last of the runes was drawn, he tucked the chalk into his pocket, stepped back, and raised his hands. That was all. There was no chanting, no mystical gesturing; just a heavily tattooed man standing with his hands up, like he wanted to frame the sunrise between them.

I don’t think a sorcerer can control the sun. That’s a bit arrogant, even for me. But Thomas’s magic has always been most sympathetic to fire, and I had to assume that having a giant ball of flaming plasma rising right in front of him could only make it easier for him to grab hold of this world’s pneuma and pull like he thought his life depended on it.

And maybe it did. All these crossings were starting to wear on him—as well they should. Dimensional membranes aren’t designed for this sort of thing. There’s a reason doors are usually opened by cults, groups of people working together who don’t care if they burn out a few brains in the process. The Johrlac have a slightly more survivable process: they use complicated equations, again worked by multiple people—mathematicians, in their case, instead of cultists or sorcerers—and they still have fatalities. Dimensions like Ithaca, or Empusa, where trade with nearby worlds is common . . . aren’t. They make up about one out of every fifty inhabited dimensions, and most of them don’t last long.

Thomas’s sorcery was capable of grabbing hold of a door and prying it open. With the charms he had from Helen to channel and shape his magic, he could even do it reliably and according to the map they’d given us. What he couldn’t do was keep doing it forever. Sooner or later, he was going to burn himself out. Which was a big part of why we all had to travel together, and not count on him being in any shape to backtrack when we finally found a safe place for everyone to settle.

I just hoped he wouldn’t hurt himself getting us there, and that we’d be someplace near Earth when he finally reached the point of exhaustion. I still had two of the beads I’d received from Naga, personal gateways that would be big enough for me, Thomas, and the mice, if it came down to that. But he wasn’t going to let me leave Sally, and all my grumbling aside, I wasn’t ready to abandon her. Even when we chafed on each other, she was growing on me. It just meant that when we finally did get home, we’d be staying put for a while.

Oh, we’d been planning to do that anyway, for a lot of very good reasons. I just didn’t think we were going to have a choice.

Slowly, the air in front of Thomas turned translucent, like a very thin slice of tomato or watermelon or something else that was as much water as tissue. It looked almost bruised, in a way that seemed antithetical to the world around it. He raised his hands higher. The bruise clarified, until we were looking through a gateway into another world, one that had actual trees and no visible giant guinea pigs.

Thomas took a half-step back, hands still raised, and I fell in behind him, guns drawn, ready to interrupt anything that wanted to disrupt his concentration. Sally began to herd our charges through the gateway, moving them along as fast as she could. If he ever opened a door into an ambush, we’d be screwed, since our process didn’t allow for much scouting. That was part of why we’d stuck so tightly to Helen’s list. She might send us to worlds like this one, where the wildlife was more than happy to suck us down like bonbons, but she wouldn’t intentionally send us into danger.

Ithaca is one of the more experienced dimensions when it comes to cross-world travel. Their economy is partially based on it, and they have the most sophisticated transit methods and maps I’ve ever seen. We could trust Ithacan directions—at least so far.

Sally followed the last of the refugees through, and I stepped in front of Thomas, breaking his line of sight on the portal. “Hey, babe,” I said, as lightly as I could. “How about you drop that and come with me?”

He blinked, looking dazed, but didn’t lower his hands. “Drop what?” he asked, voice a little slurred, like he’d been awake for three days without food or water.

“You’ll see,” I said. I reached up and took his hands, lacing my fingers through his. Then I stepped backward through the opening, pulling him with me.

To anyone watching on the other side, we stepped out of thin air. There was no visible doorway here: just a faint popping sound and the scent of char. Thomas blinked at me, still dazed, and shook his head vigorously from side to side as he let go of my hands. We both turned to see the new world in front of us.

According to Helen’s notes, the locals called this place “Pteracercus,” which seemed like a mouthful to me but wasn’t my decision. They were preindustrial, living in eusocial colonies, and had previous experience with Lilu. They should be open to accepting some of our refugees. Maybe, if we were lucky and no one freaked out at the idea, all of them.

We could be going home soon. Best of all, this dimension was close enough to Earth that we’d be able to get back in two hops—Ithaca, then home.

Dimensions aren’t all mashed together. They’re more like hexes in a hive. Every dimension touches a few other dimensions, and half the trick of travel is learning the best routes between them. It can be difficult to look at two worlds that seem to be right on top of each other and be told that you have to go through six more if you want to cross from one to the other, but you get used to it. Helen’s map had been designed to let us drop off as many of the survivors of the bottle dimension as possible before we reached this point.

And we still had so many that I was starting to despair of ever being finished. I sighed and tried to focus on the landscape around us rather than my frustrations.

We were in what looked like a low valley between a mountain range—several of which were actively smoking, because a volcano is always a good way to improve your day—and a forest wreathed in some sort of odd white cottony substance. Probably a local fungus, unless they grew the spiders real big around here. It was hard to tell for sure what color anything was, since the sky was a remarkable shade of persimmon, and the air smelled like some undefinable spice, something I almost recognized from the markets on Ithaca but couldn’t quite name.

In the distance, what looked like a giant termite mound loomed, dominating the horizon. I frowned.

“Naturally occurring or the locals, do you think?”

“No idea,” said Sally. “Haven’t you been here before?”

“No good pathways off this world that I couldn’t get to from Ithaca or Empusa,” I said, with a small shake of my head. “I was focused on moving as fast as I could so I could cover the most ground. I knew Thomas wasn’t this close to home. Helen had her people watching for him, too, after she found out what I was looking for, and she’d have noticed a human sorcerer cropping up in an adjacent. This is new ground.”

“What do you think?” asked Thomas, putting his hands on my shoulders. “Do we risk it?”

I’ve always been blessed with weird, unpredictable luck. I inherited it from my mother, who everyone says was the same way. And yeah, sometimes it leads me into terrible danger, but most of the time, it means that if I trust my instincts, things will work out basically okay.

“Termites are usually pretty chill,” I said. “If it’s the locals, we’re looking for them, and if it’s termites, we could wind up worse places for the night, and we don’t know how long the local days are, or what time it is here. I say we head for the mound.” I paused. “And steer clear of the forest. It gives me the heebie-jeebies, and that usually means it’s a good idea not to go that way.”

“Right,” said Thomas. He turned to Sally, giving her a sharp nod. She immediately moved to start gathering the group, readying them to move out.

It was less efficient than having Thomas give the orders directly, but it was what these people were accustomed to: back in the bottle world, he’d been playing all-powerful warlord, and he’d rarely given direct orders even to his own people. About half the folks traveling with us had belonged to other groups, and were more comfortable fighting and fearing him than listening to him. Oh, they did as they were told, because they wanted to survive, and it had only taken about an hour outside the bottle world to figure out that life with the undying wizard, his terrifying lieutenant, and his violently cheerful consort was better than life inside the bottle had ever been. Still didn’t mean they wanted to talk to the man.