by Tad Williams
“Hoy, bird!” Barrick flung out his hand toward the emptiness inside the door, but pulled back before his fingers passed into it. It was more than shadow, it was nothingness itself, like the black gulf that had taken Captain Vansen . . .
He felt a wind blowing past him, pulling at his hair, his clothes . . . Raemon Beck only had time to tell him, “My lord, I’m afraid . . . !” then everything seemed to tilt up on edge and they both fell out of the world. Barrick couldn’t scream, couldn’t weep, couldn’t think, could do nothing but tumble through the blackness, the cold nothing-at-all that already seemed to go on forever . . .There was only void, without sound or light, without direction, even without meaning. Time itself had deserted this emptiness, if it had ever trespassed here at all. He waited a thousand, thousand years to breathe, and then a thousand more for his heart to beat. He was alive, but he was not living. He was nowhere, forever.
An age passed. He had forgotten everything. His name had gone long ago—his memories, too—and any purpose had vanished long before that. He floated in the between like a dead leaf in a river, without volition or concern and with no motion but what was given to him. The void itself might have rushed and surged like a cataract for all he knew, but because he was in it and of it, he felt nothing. He was a grain of sand on a deserted beach. He was a cold dead star in the farthest corner of the sky. He could barely even think anymore. He was . . . he was . . .
Barrick? Barrick, where are you?
The sounds fell upon his thoughts, stunning in their complexity. They were meaningless to him, of course—clumps of noise stopping and starting, artifacts of intent that could mean nothing to a leaf, a pebble, a cold spark whose light had guttered out. But still, the feeling of it tugged at him, quickened him. What did it mean?
Barrick, where have you gone? Why won’t you speak to me? Why have you left me alone?
He thought of something then, or felt it, a mote of brilliance dancing before his eyes, a bit of light . . . a smear of fire. The brightness finally gave the void shape and as it did it gave him direction as well, up and down, backward, forward . . . The light emanated from a small, slender figure with dark eyes and darker hair—hair almost as black as the void itself but for one gleaming streak, the fiery smear that had caught his attention through the endless nullity. It was a girl.
Barrick? I need you. Where have you gone?
And then it began to come back to him, but in confused pieces, so that for a moment the black-haired girl seemed to be his sister, or maybe his betrothed. Qinnitan? He tried to call to her with all his strength. Qinnitan!
I am so lonely, she cried. Why won’t you come to me anymore? Why have you deserted me?
I’m here! But although it seemed he was almost beside her, he could not make her hear him. I’m here! Qinnitan! She might as well have been on the far side of a thick, distorting window. They were alone in the void together, but they could not touch, could not speak . . .
Why? she cried. Why have you forsaken me . . . ?
Praise the ancestors. Another voice, another thought, suddenly intruded into the emptiness. I have searched and searched. I thought you lost in the Great Between . . .
Qinnitan clearly did not sense this presence any more than she heard or saw Barrick. Her voice was growing fainter. Oh, Barrick, why . . . ?
Come, the new voice said—a male voice. He had heard it before. I will help you, child, but you must cross the gap yourself. It is late now—you must go directly through a dark time . . . Then he could see it, a huge, pale shape on four legs, its head a complication of slender boughs like a young tree.
No, he realized, they were antlers: what stood before him in the endless dark, burning icily bright as a distant star, so that he could barely see Qinnitan beyond it, was a great white stag.
Follow me, it said. The very words seemed to glow with a pale lavender light of their own. Follow—or have you already fallen in love with nothingness? Something seemed to seize him then, a flash of white that lifted him loose from the void and pulled him away from the dark-haired girl.
No! He fought but could not overcome it. Qinnitan, no, I’m here! I’m here!
But she still could not hear him, and he could not fight this new force. A moment later she was slipping away, retreating into greater inclarity as though she sank beneath the surface of a muddy pond; the last he saw of her was a flicker of fire in the great black. Barrick felt as though his heart had been ripped from his breast and he was leaving it behind in the void.
Now he began to spin through alternations of heat and cold and flashes of light that pained and sickened him but did not entirely disperse the darkness. He was falling, he was flying, he was . . . he could not tell. The flashes of light came faster, the pulses of heat more frequently. Soon came sound as well—brief wordless hisses, groans, and then roars, as if the world of life and movement were crashing in on him like ocean waves and then receding just as swiftly.
I want to go back . . . ! But whoever had pulled him away from the dark-haired girl was no longer speaking to him, or at least Barrick could no longer hear his voice.
Qinnitan, I’m so sorry . . .
And then light and sound suddenly broke in like a river overflowing its banks, a flood of sensation that hammered at his thoughts until he could not think, only absorb. Madness surrounded him.
Faces big as mountains—faces that were mountains, vomiting out rockfalls—and faces like swollen thunderheads spitting lightning. Men that were storms and women that were fiery columns. Shadows riding horses that trampled tall trees beneath their hooves. The land itself riven and turned over, gouged into fresh valleys and mountains, the sky blazing with white light or popping and crackling as it filled with falling stars. Barrick could only cringe and whimper as it all thrust in upon him.
It was a war between gods, a war of giants and monsters, the maddest, strangest war that had ever been. The warriors became animals, became spinning winds or sheets of flame as they struggled with each other before the walls of a bizarre city, a rumpled hedgehog-hide of high, spiky crystalline towers that seemed to both loom and tremble, as though the sky itself pressed down on them. One moment the city seemed taller than any mountain, the next it was dwarfed by those who fought there, by both besiegers and besieged.
A battle was raging. Birds arrowed down from the sky in thousands, attacking a woman who seemed to be made of water, but who grew until she was a fountain higher than the black towers themselves. Bursts of blinding light revealed whole armies of skeletal soldiers that became invisible again when the light died. Stones swirled like windblown leaves, a snake made of bundled lightning squeezed the top from a mountain and set it tumbling down to shatter one of the castle walls. The hole was quickly patched by a swarm of insects all made from metal, huffing steam at every crack and joint.
In the center of everything three massive figures stared down upon the gates, their shapes indistinct even in the brightest glare except for the icy, star-bright gleam of their eyes. One of them held a massive hammer forged from some dull gray metal, but the other two held spears, one spear double-pronged and green as the ocean, the other as black as a hole in the ground.
Barrick knew those three, although it terrified him to admit it, even to himself.
The middle figure raised his hammer and what seemed like a storm of bright shadows rushed forward and flung itself against the walls of the great castle, fiery shapes, glowing shapes, changing shapes, their combined radiance so great that Barrick could scarcely make out what was happening. For a moment it seemed that the city, for all its size and magnificence, must simply burn away like a dry forest in a raging firestorm. Then an even brighter light began to burn like the rising sun and the attackers fell back from the walls in disarray.
Only two shapes came forward from the besieged city, but they drove back the attackers. One was a great sphere of blazing amber light, the other a chilly, blue-white glow that somehow remained visible even beside the greater golden brilliance. The sh
apes of two riders sitting proud and tall atop their mounts could be seen within these two powerful lights, each rider carrying a sword; it was impossible to tell whether the glow came from the figures themselves, from the blades they carried, or from the armor they wore, but faced with the bright radiance of the two the besieging army now scattered in all directions.
The roar in Barrick’s ears became louder, so that his skull boomed and echoed as though a storm beat inside it. He could scarcely see for the blazing light. The three shapes on the hill spurred their mounts forward, rushing down the slope, the hooves of their monstrous horses not even touching the ground. They raised their weapons and the very sky seemed to crack open to bring unending darkness stabbing down at them all.
And then, suddenly, they were all gone—the fire-women, the air-men, the beautiful figures in their terrible anger, all the fighting and all the fighters ended and vanished in an instant. Only the castle itself remained, its pale, shining towers now toppled like trees after a winter storm, broken and scattered so that the pieces gleamed in the muddy ashes like droplets of molten gold on the floor of a forge.
Barrick had only seen the mad beauty that had preceded this ruination for a short moment, but as he stared at the destruction he found himself mourning what had been lost with every nerve of his being.
Then, without warning, he found himself plunging downward. The ruins of the castle were changing even as he rushed toward them: what had been gleaming gold, pale blue-green, or creamy white now grew back black and twisted, and what had been translucent became full of shadow. The castle that had been so marvelous was now only a dusty, deserted cobweb where a shining, rain-shimmering spider’s net had once hung. The beauty was gone, but in some strange way it remained.
It was the same. It was completely different. And Barrick fell into it like wind blowing down a well.
He had only a moment to realize he was lying facedown on a floor of flat, polished, and carefully interlocked black stones. He heard strange skittering noises getting closer, and then, a moment later, the whisper of soft footfalls.
He opened his eyes to a nightmare. The faces pressing down on him were bestial, with rolling, idiot eyes and gaping fanged mouths. Only the shape of their heads was vaguely human. That was the worst part.
“Ah,” said a voice behind him—a cold, unfamiliar voice. “Very good, my dear ones. You have caught a trespasser.”
32
Mysteries and Evasions
“Another tribe of fairies described in Ximander’s Book are the Tricksters, Qar who seem to be the bargain-making fairies of many human legends. Only Ximander and a few other scholars claim to know anything about them, and since Ximander died before his book was read by any others, his sources are unknown and therefore his conclusions are untrustworthy.”
—from “A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand”
“ IN TRUTH, it is not so strange at all,” saidBrother Antimony, warming to his subject. “The tongue the prisoner speaks is much like the old language of the Feldspar Grammars. You may not know this, but the Grammars were written on perfect mica sheets, each one shaped from a single crystal, and they contain stories of the Eldest Days found nowhere else ...”
Vansen cleared his throat, interrupting the enthusiastic young monk. “That’s all very well, Antimony, but we need to know what this fellow is saying now.”
He flushed so deeply that Vansen could see it even in the dim light that Funderlings loved so much. “My apologies ...”
“Just go on, son,” Cinnabar told him. “Talk to the prisoner, if you can.”
The young monk turned to the trembling, scowling drow, who clearly thought he had been brought to the refectory to be tortured. Two Funderling warders stood behind the fierce little bearded creature, ready for trouble, but Vansen wasn’t worried. He had seen many men being questioned and this one showed signs of the false, blustery courage that would collapse quickly.
“Ask him why they have attacked us here in our home,” said Vansen.
Antimony uttered a halting string of deep, throaty sounds. Some of the other Funderlings looked bemused, as though it had a familiar ring, but to Vansen it was all noise. The shaggy-bearded drow looked up at the monk, resentment in every dirty line of his face, but did not answer.
“Ask him why they follow the dark lady.” He struggled for a moment to remember the name Gyir had given her. “Ask him why the drows follow Yasammez.”
This time Antimony’s question made the drow stare in surprise. After a moment, he said something—short and clearly reluctantly given, but something.
Antimony cleared his throat. “He says that . . . Lady Porcupine, I think that is the name . . . that she will crush you. That she will have revenge against the Sunlanders. I think that is right.”
Vansen suppressed a smile. Slogans—that was what you got from prisoners who did not actually know why they had been fighting. “I’m going to step to the back of the room, Antimony,” he told the monk. “You and Cinnabar ask him some questions about why drows would take up arms against their brothers—against Funderlings.”
He gestured as if in frustration and walked away. Cinnabar leaned in and began to ask questions, Antimony carefully translating. Vansen noticed that every now and then Cinnabar recognized one of the foreign words and repeated it. Vansen could not help being impressed by the magister’s wits.
Thus he underscores the connection between them—see, drow, he is practically speaking your tongue now!
Vansen stood quietly in the background as Cinnabar continued asking questions, leaning heavily on the idea that the Funderlings were closer relatives to the drows than the Qar leaders they served, but still the prisoner would not tell them anything.
Ah, but if we have created even the smallest bit of sympathy or shame . . . Vansen thought. “Ask him what his name is.”
Antimony looked surprised, but asked. The drow looked shamefaced, but grunted a reply.
“Kronyuul, he says—that is ‘Browncoal’ in the old tongue, I think.”
“Good,” said Vansen, still speaking quietly so as not to draw attention to himself. “Then ask Master Coal why exactly his Lady Porcupine wants our castle. What will she do with it if she gains it? Why does she waste so many drow lives to take this castle?”
After Antimony had translated the drow stared back at him, apparently at a loss for words. At last he began to murmur. It went on for some time. The young monk leaned close to hear, then straightened up.
“He says the dark lady is angry. The king of the Qar would not let her simply slaughter us wicked folk—he calls us something like ‘sun-land-dwellers’—but forced her instead into some kind of a pact. The dark lady did her best to honor that pact, but it failed. Her . . . I do not understand the word he uses . . . her relative, her friend, something—it is a little like our word ‘clansman’ . . . was killed, and so now she says the pact is broken. She blames the fairy-king, but she is also angry because of her kins-man.” Antimony sat back. “That seems to be all he knows—he is only a petty officer of the belowground army ...”
Vansen’s heart was suddenly beating fast. “Perin’s hammer, I don’t believe it. The pact? Did he say pact?”
Antimony shrugged. “Bargain, pact, treaty—the word is not precisely the same as ...”
“Silence! No, I beg your pardon, but do not say anything for a moment, Antimony.” Vansen did his best to remember. Yes, he thought, it all seemed to fit. “Ask him if he knows the name of the lady’s kinsman—the one who was killed. The one whose death ended the pact.”
The young monk, surprised by Vansen’s vehemence, turned and passed the question along to the drow, who was looking less frightened and more puzzled every moment. “He wants to know if you are going to kill him,” Antimony said after listening to the man’s reply. “And he says that he thinks the kinsman’s name was Storm Lantern.”
“I knew it!” Vansen slapped his hand on the stone table, making the prisoner jump. “Tell him no, Ant
imony—no, we are not going to kill him. In fact, he is going to be set free to lead me back to his mistress. Yes, I will go and speak to her. I will tell her the truth about the Storm Lantern and the pact. Because I was there.”
Haltingly, the monk translated Ferras Vansen’s words to the prisoner. The small room fell silent. Vansen looked around. Cinnabar, Brother Antimony, Malachite Copper, even the drow—all were staring at him as though he had utterly lost his mind.
Chaven’s bed still hadn’t been slept in. In fact, there was no sign the physician had even been in his cell.
“He’s not here,” Flint said in his solemn, high-pitched voice.
“I know he’s not,” Chert growled. “We haven’t seen him for days—not since he let you run off when he was supposed to be watching you. But I want to talk to him. Did he say anything to you about going somewhere? ”
“He’s not here,” Flint said again.
“You’re going to make my head cave in, boy.” Chert led him out of the room.
“Captain Vansen isn’t here,” Cinnabar said. “He’s preparing for a trip where he’ll risk his life to do something I don’t quite understand and which seems to have no chance of succeeding in any case.” He sighed. “I hope you have some better news for us.”