The Luck of Madonna 13

THE LUCK OF MADONNA 13 by E. T. Ellison | Chapter 1 (part 3)

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The day of Glendyl's Quest broke open like an egg; first a crack, then a splat. The crack was a bolt of lightning that seemed to have borrowed the sky for the entire morning, it hung so long in her vision. The splat was just the first of a thousand raindrops the size of golf balls plopping against Glendyl's bedroom window. Great weather to start a deathwalk, she thought resolutely.
Glendyl sat up in bed, grabbed her slate off the nightstand and coaxed the sleep out of her eyes with a practiced fingernail. What might the portents have to say this morning? she wondered. With that she began her customary first activity of the day: a Septriq (2) consultation. She expected little encouragement on this particular day, but habit was habit. The seven portals pulsed a portentious red, the standard idle display for chance mode. Glendyl’s thumb went to the spectral to establish her colors for this turn. The seven pie-shaped portals each flicked through the seven colors in random sequence until the counter reached 777.

The colors in the portals were now sequenced clockwise from lightest (yellow) to darkest (black), with black resting in septriq. An unusual lay. And the lightless, dead black in septriq: the muse had already signaled two powers, color and position. Rare, but not bad for a day like today. Still, the pattern seemed auspicious: yellow, orange, red, maroon, green, blue, black. Glendyl could not recall the book’s interpretation and hesitated to inquire; a wriggly feeling in her stomach suggested it might be better not to know. A little more awake now, she continued. Seven spins to go. Thumbing the tot-wheel representation on her slate with her customary flourish, the two seven-sided die spun with vigor. One was a blur of color; the other a blur of numerals. The blurs became perceptible as color and numbers and the muted clicking slowed, stopped: seven and black were revealed. The yellow slice in o disappeared, along with the o itself, replaced by black and another septriq nomenclator. Glendyl’s heart lurched against her ribcage. She swallowed and gave the tot-wheel another vigorous spin. Seven and black again. Glendyl made a face. Black now occupied three portals. A few moments later she was staring at a domat pierced by seven lightless black windows, each tagged with a septriq notation. A highly improbable outcome.

Glendyl frowned, unable to draw any specific meaning from the sequence, but aware that something nearly impossible had just occurred. Then, on its own accord, the slate's image began to change: the black-portaled dome dissolved in a hypnotic whirlpool of interlaced colored spirals, somehow drawing her awareness down into it: deeper, deeper. A powerful un-sound penetrated some part of her auditory nerve-channel; vision wavered and her entire body shook as if afflicted by a deep chill. Glendyl's awareness went elsewhere, to be called back some time later by a knock on her bedroom door.

"Glenny-honey. Time to get up. Your friends will be here in an hour." Glendyl's mother, Polisandra Fenderwell. Her brittle cheeriness was an ice dagger that pierced Glendyl's thin veil of sleep but left no evidence. She shook her head and rolled out of bed, glancing at the slate's empty face.

Before she could get into the shower, there was another interruption: her QPack began pulsing alternating red and green lights. As she approached it, a perfect replica of her mother’s voice spoke from inside: "Pack me, Glenny-honey. And don’t forget extra underwear. And don't forget to read my directions first. Big day, today, Glenny-honey." Then it snickered and was silent.

Just what I need, thought Glendyl: a smartass pack. She was tempted to kick it, but restrained herself and ignored the voice. It would probably retaliate somehow. And why piss it off? Maybe she should just pile dirty clothes on it; would that piss it off too?

A short time later she had packed and showered away every last trace of the green dye she had worn for her late-night pleading to Lucky Madonna, then dressed for the sendoff brunch her parents had hastily assembled for her and a small group of friends. As she pulled on her favorite casual black sheath, she began to think about what she was supposed to be seeking on the Quest: the Last Nevergate. Somewhere in the vicinity of Mt. Funnybone [Mt. Faunibeune, in proper geographic nomenclature] was the last remaining Nevergate. Or so went the tale. Once there had been thousands of Nevergates (3) and the folk of Earth engaged in commerce with strange folk in strange lands on strange planets in strange universes. Then it all collapsed, the Nevergates disappeared and a depopulated planet shrunk in upon itself like a sun-dried tomato.

If she remembered her history correctly, some ancient madman named Exeter closed St. Coriander off from the rest of the planet and made the town send out some poor "lucky" sixteener every year, to try to find the last Nevergate, whatever it might look like and wherever it might be. And if they found the Nevergate, that was no good all by itself, because they would also have to find the Key that opens it. And supposedly, according to somebody or other, the Key and the Nevergate are up around Mt. Funnybone somewhere, which no living person in St. Coriander has ever seen, thanks to Exeter. Find the Nevergate and bring the Key back to St. Coriander. Then something else would happen and old Castle Ommergard would rise again. Hardly possible, thought Glendyl’s rational mind: the huge fanciful thing is still sitting down below Kissever Ridge outside the Township Fence, empty and dead as St. Orwell’s ribcage.(4) She’d seen it herself. How could a thing like that ever fly? It was all a fool’s Quest: some "honor" for the luckiest sixteener in town, she thought blackly.

Thinking about the futility of the Quest brought tears to Glendyl's eyes and wracking sobs to her lithe frame. All she was going to get out of this was having her name engraved on the Quest Memorial at Dunnigans Gate and her image added to the Holarium: more lucky failures for people to forget. Before her frustration and despair could run its course there was a knock on her door.

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2 -- Septriq is still widely consulted as an oracle in St. Coriander, particularly by females, who "play" using only chance mode. An ancient slatetext called The Secret Oracle is the standard guide to interpretation. Males rarely use Septriq, but when so inclined are typically more attracted to its fast paced action modes and deeply hidden “secrets,” which may or may not be more myth and rumor than fact.
The core nomenclature of Septriq is as follows: the domat is the dome form that is visible during "standard" play. Seven triangular portals or windows are cut into the domat at equal intervals. Each portal has a unique name. Clockwise from the seven o’clock position, the portals are o, do, tre, quat, quint, sextim and septriq. See pages 25-26 in Genesis for more.

3 -- Nevergates were a mechanism which made possible travel between a virtually infinite number of parallax universes. The so-called “Nevergate Era” brought humanity more wonders than it could handle. Although the first Nevergate was invented at Dunnetix, almost literally in St. Coriander’s backyard, this masterfully self-absorbed IsoTown appears to have been impervious to the stresses and strains the Nevergate Era wreaked on the rest of the planet.

4 -- The founder of St. Coriander, Merritt Frank Orwell, was accorded sainthood by the Holy Quincunx Church in 2077. See page 15 in Genesis for more.

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