“Welcome to hell,” he said, unsmiling.
“Welcome to a spell,” T’sais replied, with a passion that surprised her—and cast Panguirre’s Triumphant Displasms, meaning to bind him to her.
But the Captain merely chuckled and removed one of his eye patches, whereupon the spell bounced back upon her and she felt an overwhelming urge to obey the Captain’s every desire.
“Do not make me remove the other eye patch,” he told her, although not without a certain humor.
Looking him in his one good eye, fighting the spell even as it mastered her, she asked, “Why? Will I die?”
“No,” the Captain said, “but you would be so revolted by what lives in my eye that you would not sit down to dinner with me.”
Soon, beyond the cavern guarded by the now curiously absent Bloat Toad, Whisper Bird came upon the outskirts of the village where the gaun had said he would find his quarry. The space above extended so far that the distant rock ceiling, glowing green from vast and mindless lichens, was little more than a conjecture. Things, though, could be seen moving there, in shapes that made Whisper Bird wary.
The village itself he at first thought had been built among the old bones of long-dead monsters. But he soon came to understand that it was built from those bones. For this site had clearly seen much violence, if violence distant in time. Amid teetering bone houses traveled such inhabitants as dared leave shelter. Too pale they were, and most so long remaining there that through the generations they had become blind, their eye sockets sunken, their ears batlike, their nostrils huge with secret scenting. They walked slowly and made no noise in doing so, trembling with each step in a way Whisper Bird could not decipher, whether from inbreeding or a terror from anticipation at every step of some unknown predator.
In the middle of the village square, an old man sat sightless atop the skull of some grotesque beast with three eyes and oversized fangs. He wore a beard of pale purple lichen, and the hair on his head swayed, made from tendrils of thin white mushrooms. His robes rippled, and Whisper Bird, shuddering, did not like to look upon them for long.
Whisper Bird came up beside him and said, “Do not be afraid. I seek only a man or a woman.” He projected the images into the old man’s mind. “Do you know them?”
The old man laughed. “Do you know who and what I am? With a flick of my fingers I could kill you. With a thought, your life extinguished.”
“Then proceed, certainly, if that is your desire,” Whisper Bird said. “But while we are exchanging useless threats: I could relieve you of the burden you call a life with the same effort it requires to stand here asking, again, do you know this man, this woman?”
“I am adept at sensing the invisible by now, creature,” the man replied, ignoring Whisper Bird. “I can see your outline in my mind, and you are neither man nor bird but some combination of both.”
“Do not call me creature,” Whisper Bird said.
“Well, then, Not-Creature,” the old man said, “did you know that you are a door?’
“Do not call me that, either,” Whisper Bird said. He was tired. His body feasted on sunlight and sunlight existed only in the other world, not here. Here there was only a dull, thick soup of almost-light. His thoughts had become slow and looping on the one half, fast and bright on the other.
“But you are a door, Not-Creature,” the old man said, laughing. “You have forgotten that. Even without my sight, I can see it: Embelyon, shining through you. As whither the Bloat Toad went, until recently the protector of this village.”
“You know of the Bloat Toad?” Whisper Bird asked, caught by surprise.
“A wise man might suspect I am the one who positioned him there as a watchdog against our enemies.”
“My belief in you is not strong,” Whisper Bird said. “In any part of your story.”
The old man ignored Whisper Bird, and said: “If you were to hold still long enough, I could escape this place through you. Leap through your body to the other side and come out breathing Embelyon’s air.”
“Even if what you say is true, old man,” Whisper Bird said, “you would arrive the same size as an ant, and with the same fate. Would you escape only to be stepped on by the first mouse that crossed your path?”
The old man laughed again. “True words. Ah, but for that glimpse of sunlight, for that glimpse of the surface, perhaps a few moments would be enough.”
“I will not hold still long enough, I promise you,” Whisper Bird said. The thought of his body as a door disturbed him more than he could express.
“Is it not painful to live thusly?” the old man asked.
“Next you will see a barbed feather through your heart if you are not careful.”
A fierce chuckle from the old man. “With such unkindly talk as that to spur me on, what choice have I but to use you as a door and then close you.”
Whisper Bird felt a pressure in his head, a ringing and an echo, and though neither he nor the man moved, a great battle went on between their minds. More than usual, he bridged two sides of a widening divide, being forced opened against his will. Armies of thought met on dark plains and the frenzied, purifying fire of war erupted in the space between them.
Dinner did not much resemble T’sais’s expectations of it. Two lieutenants escorted her, still spell-dazed and trapped in thoughts of deep obedience to the Captain, to a cabin lined with shelves of ancient parchments and books. The books had an unkind legacy, having been scavenged from exiled travelers trapped, mad, and dead, upon the broken glass below. (Much later, she would say to him, “You must have knowledge of many spells,” only for him to reply, “not all books are filled with spells, my love. Nor is a man wise to rely overmuch on them.”)
Thick round windows on the left side of the cabin revealed the sky in flashes of deep greens, blues, and purples. There was a hint of spice in the air that came from the moss growing through the hulls. Always, too, there came from above and through the timbers a sound both slow and calm: the measured hum that was the breathing of the mermelant.
Worn tables and chairs that had seen long and constant service stood in the middle of the cabin. A map of the dying Earth lay upon one such table, and next to that, another map with much of its surface blank, sketches and notes in the margin. This was a map of the UNDERHIND as the Captain knew it, she would later discover.
A third table held evidence of much industry and preparation in the form of a feast of strange fowl, along with vegetables and mushrooms grown in the ship’s hull. The savory smell nearly distracted her from the object of her unnatural adoration.
Once seated at this third table, the two lieutenants disappearing through an oval wooden door, the Captain released her from the reversed spell. Her heartbeat slowed and she could gaze upon the books, the chairs, the windows, without the need to always return her attention to the Captain.
Replacing his eye patch, the Captain said, “I will not take it off again so long as you never cast a second spell. Should you break this rule, I will have you thrown over the side. It is a long way to fall.”
“So I have been told,” T’sais said, utterly defeated. “I am thankful to you for that kindness.”
To which the Captain nodded, then replied, “And I am thankful you have accepted my invitation to this simple dinner, which now demands my full attention.”
Tucking a napkin into his shirt, the Captain said no more for a time as he availed himself of the pleasures of moist drumsticks and steaming potatoes, of crispy skin and boiled mushrooms. T’sais had to admit to herself that despite being plain it was delicious.
As to what else she should admit, T’sais was unsure. She knew not if she were all prisoner, part prisoner and part guest, or all guest—nor knew how much to tell of her purpose, especially with just one spell left to her name. So instead, she sipped from a wine both bitter and pleasant and watched the Captain unleash the force of his passions upon his meal. He was as different from Sarnod as anyone could be, and having had only knowledge of
Sarnod for many years, the Captain both puzzled and fascinated her. That his men respected him was certain, and yet she had also seen that he laid no hand upon them nor spoke harshly to them.
Finally, the Captain finished to his satisfaction, wiping his mouth and allowing the plates to be cleared away.
“It is not often that we find such a stranger in our midst,” the Captain said. “Those not native to this place are sent here by the wizard Sarnod and driven mad by the glass long before we ever find them. So I am curious, you who have given your name as T’sais Prime, through what manner of intent do you come to us? Armed with spells, upon a sky raft, escorted by no less than four Twk Men. There is much in this that puzzles me. Puzzlement is sometimes my lot, but puzzlement that puts this fleet in danger I do not tolerate. Should I be concerned?”
During this speech, the Captain held her gaze much longer than necessary, in a manner she would come to desire. But in that moment, at that first dinner, she felt under assault. Should she lie? And yet, if she withheld the truth now, what was left for her?
She stared back into the Captain’s good eye and told him, “I seek Vendra, a woman whose appearance I share, and a man named Gandreel. I would show them to you by projecting both into your mind, but this you might believe to be a spell cast upon you.”
A smile from the Captain, a clear need to suppress greater mirth. “This is true—I might indeed consider such an unnatural intrusion to be a spell. Let us leave aside this question of what you seek. Why do you seek? Who, if anyone, compels you to seek?”
Now his regard had become so serious that T’sais, even released from the spell, gave herself over to the full truth.
“Sarnod,” she admitted.
Did his demeanor darken? She could not tell.
“And what will you do when you have found either or both?”
“I am to bring them with me and leave this place.”
“What if I asked you to take me instead?”
The Captain’s presence across the table from her seemed suddenly to have more weight, more need, and she was terrified.
“I could not do so, even if I wished,” she replied. “Any other would die on the journey. Sarnod has said it is so.”
What now would he do to her? And yet the Captain did nothing, except recede into his seat a little, visibly diminished. He sighed. “It is of no import. I could not leave my crew behind; I am all but wedded to them now.”
Her fear revealed as foolish, T’sais became angry, said, “As for questions, how then did you come to lose your eye?”
“Eh?” the Captain said. “I did not lose it. It was taken from me.”
“What replaced it?”
He ignored her, said, “Sarnod took my eye. And banished me with my crew to this place. Over long years now, we have birthed more mermelants and added to the fleet. Sought escape. Although it never comes.” For a moment, he looked old to her.
But she had her answer. Or thought she did. “Then I am now your prisoner.”
The Captain replied with no small amount of weariness. “Revenge is for fools—and revenge by proxy worse foolishness still. You are a tool, T’sais. I am more concerned by the thought of what this means. This life is already dangerous, and we know not where we are or where it ends, though I have pledged the rest of my days to an answer. Perhaps you are part of that answer…or merely more of Sarnod’s trickery.”
Something in those words brought T’sais close to tears, although she fought them.
“I did not mean to distress you without cause,” he said.
“My distress comes entirely from this place,” she said. “Have you not seen all of the likenesses of me in the broken glass?”
“They are difficult to dismiss.”
“They trouble me. I am just a reflection of a reflection, and not truly my self.”
“And yet,” the Captain said with sudden softness, his voice like a silken glove, “they have only made me more curious to encounter the image in the flesh.”
“The kindness of that does not make me the least less troubled,” she said. “But knowledge might. Do you know my lineage?’
“As it happens, I do,” the Captain said, “from the books that surround us.” He thus proceeded to tell her the story of T’sais and T’sain and all that had happened to them, of Turjan too, and his quest. He was a good storyteller, she thought as she listened, to be horrified and enthralled all at once, to want to know and yet not to know.
When he had finished and they sat once again across from each other and not within the ancient and mysterious world of Embelyon conjured up by the Captain, T’sais said in rising protest, “but I am nothing like what you describe.”
“Are you sure?” That one light-blue eye seemed determined to lay bare her very core with its intensity.
“Certain enough.”
Whereupon the Captain drew a blade from his boot and tossed it past her left ear. To her surprise, she caught it by the hilt as if born to it.
“That was luck,” she said.
Whereupon he hurled an apple at her, which she impaled upon the blade, felt the weight of it held there, red and wounded.
“Yes,” the Captain said. “Luck. If that word has some meaning other than the one I know.”
She frowned. “This I do not want. It is not me,” she said, and realizing it was true dropped the blade, apple bouncing across the floor.
The Captain reached across the table and took her hand in his. He had a callused hand, a rough hand, and she liked the feel of it.
“Sometimes,” he said, “it is enough to know what one has hidden within them. It need not be used to be of use.”
T’sais Prime stared at him as if he had said the one true thing in all the world.
The Captain rose, releasing her.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “you will join our crew and I will assist you in your quest. As you will assist in ours. For, alas, I know where the one you seek can be found.”
As Battle raged, ebbed and flowed, the pressure in Whisper Bird’s mind an intolerable weight, something inside of him began to burn where nothing had burned before, and he flung his voice into the void and cried out in anguish, and wrenched away the man’s influence.
“I am a door for no one!”
The sound of Whisper Bird’s voice was so loud that it made the slow folk around them seek shelter amid the discolored bones.
Before him, the old man slumped forward, sighed, and admitted to defeat. “I have studied much, I have studied long, for what else is there to do here, and yet it is not enough, I think.”
Whisper Bird saw that the conflict had burned off the man’s beard. The cloudy film had left his eyes, and he was staring right at and into Whisper Bird. Only now did Whisper Bird recognize the depth of the disguise.
“How could I not know earlier?”
Gandreel smiled. “Even you sometimes see only that which is visible.”
“Apparently. Or I am not myself.”
“What is it like now, in the tower?” Gandreel asked. “I remember it as a happy place, at times. When Sarnod was gone visiting the far reaches of his domain, Vendra and I would feast with the people of nearby villages. The tower conjured up for us never-ending food and wine. The music was most joyful.”
“It is as it ever was.”
“How is my brother?”
“Your brother has suffered a change of heart. He wishes for you to return with me.”
“Ha, how you jest!” Gandreel said. “I have lost Vendra because of him and been reduced to bending my sad environs to my will. My brother is vengeful and banishment is the least of his trespasses upon the Dying Earth. I have cast about for many ways to leave this place, but why should I return with you?”
Whisper Bird sighed. “I am but an unwilling servant with no special affection for Sarnod, who would avaunt to Embelyon and be whole and reunited with his family.”
“Will your family recognize you now?” Gandreel whispered, although all attempt at stealth se
emed foolish after Whisper Bird’s great cry.
“I will make them recognize me,” Whisper Bird said, and shuddered, for he realized that they might never recognize him, not in the way he wished, or that they might already be dead.
Gandreel looked away, as if Whisper Bird had said something impossibly sad. “I will come with you,” Gandreel said. “And we will meet our fates together. I can see the portal leading back to Sarnod, but am only able to send things through it, not myself. This will not change”
“Was it you then who sent the Nose of Memory?” Whisper Bird asked.
Gandreel nodded. “Yes, in my stead, that it might change Sarnod’s mind. And, perhaps, from what you say, with success.”
“Be that as it may, we must now leave swiftly,” Whisper Bird said, who heard disturbing sounds fast approaching. “I have awakened much from slumber.”
“Yes, this is undeniably true, and more reason still to leave.”
Lurching toward them, from the far-above ceiling, came all the deadly creatures of that place, to which Whisper Bird’s cry had been as loud as the sound of a cliff falling into the sea.
Whisper Bird said the Spell of Unassailable Speed and led Gandreel out of that place.
For three months, two of them as lovers, T’sais Prime and the Captain, who one night whispered his true name to her, traveled across the land of Maddening Glass. For three months, they sought yet never found, with no hint of the woman Vendra but of her essential self always too many; she had only to look down to be aware of ghosts. For three months, she did not guess that the Captain might be delaying their arrival at her destination. There was much to distract her.
Alone together in bed after a frenzied conjoining, her head upon the Captain’s hairy belly, T’sais Prime would ask him, “Why should you have me when there are so many other me’s?”
And he would whisper more quietly than Whisper Bird, “Because you are the only T’sais Prime. This little fuzz upon the back of your neck that I like to kiss is yours alone. That look upon your face of amused puzzlement is yours alone. And this. And this,” and after awhile, again aroused and again satisfied, she would fall into deep sleep contented with the truth of his answers.
Songs of the Dying Earth Page 24