Oblivion Hand: The Voidal by Adrian Cole

Author:Adrian Cole [Cole, Adrian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, General, heroic fantasy, the voidal, high fantasy, sword and sorcery, fantasy adventure
ISBN: 9781479490066
Google: haT0AAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2012-09-04T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter V

URGE AND DEMIURGE

Just as the omniverse is full of balladeers, informants. gossips, songsters and other purveyors of information, so it is liberally spiced with havens, sanctuaries and boltholes, and it is more often than not in such places that the tongues of the former group loosen most readily. In my own travels, especially those undertaken incognito, I have learned more in an hour in such diverse haunts as Cloudway (of which I shall speak more fully in due course) The Inn at the Edge, Mindsulk and High Crofels than an entire week in the administrative courts of any number of deities and their high priests.

No matter what one’s station, one can always glean something of interest, of value even, in these sequestered places.

Elfloq was a master at extracting information, and I doubt if there were many others who knew so many diffuse and curious agents and points of contact.

Not all of them, of course, were reliable.

—Salecco, sometimes named by his enemies, The Indiscreet

Asylis has been variously described by both mortals and immortals as a squalid city, a den of iniquity, as a sprawling hovel fit only for criminals and as the repository of freaks, delinquents and indiscretions of nature. This is scarcely fair. Asylis is certainly of the proportions of a city, though no one has ever had the time or inclination to attempt to traverse its entire perimeters. The buildings, to be honest, are not pleasing to look upon, being ramshackle and crumpled together, almost as though the gods had taken the indeterminate whole and squeezed—this has led to the houses, inns and storeplaces being very narrow but tall, top-heavy like overhanging trees. As for iniquity—well, there is no more of that here than in any of the other towns and metropolises of the many dimensions of the omniverse. Certainly Asylis is not an evil place. Neither is there a predominance of freaks and hybrids here, although the place was (as the story goes) conceived as a home for those of the gods, demigods and lesser spirits who had at some time failed to maintain the high standards expected of such entities. They may be disgraced, but Asylis is no prison. All are free to come and go as they please, but few leave, preferring to remain in the company of their own kind.

Having been constructed by gods (and admittedly tossed aside somewhat indifferently) Asylis sprawls in no positive dimension. Indeed, those that know how to use its labyrinthine alleys and crumbling gables can enter most of the dimensions from here. Reaching this place, however, is not so easy, and takes peculiar qualities.

There is another realm of Asylis—a bizarre landscape that threads in sooty confusion from roof to roof, garret to garret, spire to spire, for among the tall chimneys and looming towers can be found a vast terrain, quite unlike any other. This remarkable haunt has its own guardian, or rather caretaker, for Loptoc the Gossip would never consider himself capable of even so much as a hint of violence.

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