Finally, though, they had traveled so far and for so long that, even with the distraction of many daily perils, T’sais Prime could not ignore that whenever they began to approach the far eastern cliffs that lined the edge of their world, the Captain would murmur to his first mate, and by the next day those cliffs would be more distant, not less so.
Thus, eventually she asked that terrible yet tiny question, why?, and from the look in the Captain’s eye, she knew that now the Captain would take her there rather than risk lying to her again.
A week later—alone together in a small ship strapped to an infant mermelant—they came to a place where the broken glass below met a cliff that jutted out toward them. Carved upon the crumbling stone, obscured in part by vines, was a face mirroring T’sais Prime’s own.
“What is the meaning of this?” T’sais asked, turning to the Captain.
“She you seek lives here, within the stone house atop the cliff. Know what is real and what is not,” the Captain said.
“Why do you say that?” she asked as she embraced him.
“Some lives are illusion. Some places are more real thanothers,” the Captain replied. Thus saying, he took off his second eye patch and placed it upon her face. “Use it as you will.”
T’sais understood that he was talking past the cliff, past the stone house.
“You have twenty-seven freckles on your back,” the Captain said sadly as she left the ship for the cliff. “Your left wrist has a scar from where you broke it, bucked from a horse. Your hair smells like lavender in the mornings. You do not like the sound of bees but love the taste of honey.”
In the stone house, T’sais Prime found a woman who looked remarkably like her but for the graying of her hair. She sat upon a flaking gold throne in the middle of a great hall made entirely of starkest marble. Surrounding her were the remains of many skeletons sunken in amid many skulls, some still with flesh upon them. The smell in that place was sickly sweet, as of many attempts to rid it of another scent entirely.
With caution, T’sais Prime approached.
The woman looked up and gave her a wicked smile.
“I see myself approach,” she said, “and wonder why the mirror always moves, though I wish it to be still.”
“Are you Vendra?” T’sais asked as she threaded her way through the bones.
“And lo!, the mirror talks,” the woman said. “It tells me my chosen name, not that given to me, although in truth I am always and forever my own reflection. There is no escape for that.”
“Why are there so many bodies here?” T’sais asked of Vendra. She hated the smothering silence, the sense of arriving in the aftermath of something gone terribly wrong.
“Them?” Vendra asked, with a wave of a be-ringed hand. “They escaped the broken glass to worship me—climbed up the cliff—but they bring the glass with them in their minds and they forget to eat and drink and they die all the same.”
“But why?” T’sais asked.
A hungry smile. “Because to look upon me is to look upon the glass itself—I am a memory of the Dying Earth, a living reflection, just like you. But no matter that they die; others follow. That is the way of shadows.”
“A spell?”
Vendra shrugged. “I cannot leave this hell of my own volition, but I have learned a few spells of my own from those who adore me. Spells built this stone mansion. Spells made the face in the cliff: a beacon, a lighthouse. A beacon, a lighthouse. A beacon, a lighthouse. A beacon, a lighthouse…”
But T’sais had sensed the sting behind the nectar and removed the eye patch, so that after several moment T’sais’ urge to lie down and sleep among the corpses faded.
Vendra sighed, and her voice and intonations became normal again, and her gaze directed itself upon T’sais with unnatural intensity.
“I release you from your own spell, and willingly,” T’sais said, “but if you attempt a second, I swear I will throw you off the cliff. It is a long way to fall.”
Vendra took a long and shuddering breath. “Not that I’d kill a man willingly,” Vendra continued as if nothing had happened, unable to look at T’sais. “But you are not a double of a double in your purpose. Why are you here?”
T’sais almost did not tell her. “Sarnod has sent me to bring you back,” she said, although in truth, Vendra horrified her almost as much as the thought of returning to Sarnod as one of his servants.
Vendra laughed bitterly, her amusement like salt upon a wound. “Sarnod is a cruel man, but I suppose he had one kindness within him: he let me choose a name that did not remind me I was a reflection, even if I am now required by my ambition to embrace it.”
“And yet when he created me,” T’sais said, “he named me a reflection but told me naught of my origins, that I might think myself original.”
“One kindness,” Vendra repeated. “One kindness amid so much else.”
“He is much saddened by your absence,” T’sais added, although she did not know the truth of this. In truth, though, Vendra did not seem much like her. This observation made her heart beat faster, made her think of the Captain waiting in his ship. “What will you do?” he had said, and she had replied, “I do not know.”
Vendra’s gaze narrowed. “And Gandreel?” For a moment, Vendra looked younger and without guile.
“Sarnod forgives all. I am here to take you back. Gandreel is also sought.”
Vendra stirred on her rotting throne like something coming back to life. “I would like that,” she said, managing to sound weary and hopeful at the same time. “Even if it is untrue.”
“I have been given the power to send you back,” T’sais Prime said, “but I will not return with you. You can tell Sarnod he would have to kill me first.”
Vendra laughed. “My sad reflection, he wouldn’t kill you. He would just punish you by sending you here.”
After Vendra was gone, T’sais used her last spell to bring the stone house roaring down into dust, to release her own likeness upon the cliff face into faceless oblivion upon the broken glass below.
Then she rejoined the Captain on their ship.
“What does this mean?” he asked.
T’sais Prime smiled, and, handing him his eye patch, said, “You have seventeen scars on your body, four on your left arm, three on your right, two on your chest, three on your back, and the rest on your legs. Seven are from knives, the rest from all manner of spells and other weapons. You wear a beard to disguise your weak chin. You snore in your sleep like a wounded soul. You are as loyal and good as you are stubborn and pig-headed. There is nothing behind your second eye patch but a puckered scar.”
This answer seemed to satisfy the Captain deeply.
The bellowing of The Mouth brought Sarnod startled from a nap on his divan at the top of the tower. He had been dreaming of the cool, deep lake, a vision enhanced by allowing one dry hand to float within the ever-present bowl of water set upon the table next to him.
“They return from the UNDERHIND! They return!”
His heart a nervous patter, Sarnod rose quickly, gathered his green-blue robes about him, and descended to the Seeing Hall, there to stand, waiting, before the two eyes and now-silent Mouth. The sun through the great oval window shed unwelcome heat across the marble floor. The room, so large, felt small and stuffy as a trap.
The Mouth said, “Soon there will be an end to all of this,” in no way reassuring Sarnod.
A sound came as of a screaming across the world.
Up popped his brother Gandreel, looking spry and healthy in white robes, despite the spots on his hands, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.
Gandreel stared at Sarnod with a puzzlement that Sarnod knew must be mirrored on his own face. For now, seeing his brother, Sarnod felt no outpouring of familial love, no lessening of the discomfort from the hook in his heart. Instead, he felt worse, his sense of unease deepening.
And yet, perhaps this was just the shock of first impressions, made worse by the manner in which they h
ad parted company. Thus thinking, Sarnod stepped forward to greet his brother, saying, “Welcome home, dear brother, after what I know has been a time of much sadness, confusion, and long exile.”
Gandreel’s frown deepened, and he flinched away from Sarnod’s embrace, saying, “Difficult enough to now meet the brother who was my brother, but you are not even Sarnod. Who are you then?” His tone hardened, and in his expression, Sarnod saw no hint of even a friend. “By what right do you come to be here?”
From off to Sarnod’s left came Whisper Bird’s voice, infused with unexpected emotion. “If not Sarnod, then to whom have I been enslaved all these long years?”
“Are you both mad?” Sarnod said, “Has the UNDERHIND robbed you of your senses? I am Sarnod. And you, Gandreel, you are my brother, who I admit I wrongly exiled. And, you, Whisper Bird, you must attend me now or risk great harm, for I am your master.”
“I will attend you, but what would you have me do?” Whisper Bird said, suddenly very close to Sarnod.
Before Sarnod could respond, The Mouth said, “Sometimes reflections become shadows.”
“This may be true,” Whisper Bird said, “but, how then is it relevant?”
The sound of shrieking came again. Up popped Vendra from The Mouth, as old now as Gandreel, but still somehow youthful. No familiar trailed behind.
“Now my attendance is doubled in complexity,” Whisper Bird said to Sarnod, who in Vendra’s presence ignored both him and the fading thought of Gandreel’s insult.
“Perfect, perfect Vendra,” he said, to test the effect of these words from his lips. A surge of panic overtook him, for he still felt nothing, nothing at all. No passion. No hatred.
Vendra, for her part, stared only at Gandreel, whose gaze toward her was as deep and loving as Sarnod’s was not. He took Vendra in his arms, his back to Sarnod, and they became reacquainted while Sarnod watched, hesitating in his intent.
“You are more beautiful than ever,” Gandreel told her.
“You are less handsome than before,” Vendra admitted, “but still more handsome than your brother by far. What shall we do, now that we are free?”
“I can play the lute,” Gandreel replied, with mischief in his eyes. “You can sing. We will return to the court of the lizard king, if he and it still exist.”
Vendra laughed, though she had missed his humor. “My love, would you rather perform for coins or rise powerful with our sorceries? I have learned much in the UNDERHIND, and I would put it to good use.”
Gandreel stared at her for a long moment, as if unsure what to make of her, then said, “What does it matter, so long as we are alive, together, and in the wider world?”, and although she seemed to agree, Sarnod could intuit her unhappiness with this question.
Now Vendra turned her attention to Sarnod, her lips curling into a kind of sneer as she stared at him from Gandreel’s shoulder, her arms wrapped around her lover as if they would never again be apart.
“Sarnod’s servant did not tell me that a stranger now ruled the tower,” she said. “Who are you? You are not Sarnod.”
To hear this denial from Vendra, even as he felt so little for her somehow, terrified Sarnod. He shouted at her, at Gandreel, who had also turned to look at him, “I am Sarnod, and this is my tower, and you will obey me!” Yet even with this said, Sarnod felt like an actor in a play, and underlying his anger was an odd, slippery confusion. As if each time he claimed Sarnod’s name, it became less and less his own.
He would have made to bring a spell down upon them both, but The Mouth said, “There is little use in arguing with one whose mind is already made up.”
“Nor in serving one whose mind is not made up,” Whisper Bird said, to Sarnod’s annoyance.
A shrieking scream announced a third arrival.
Up came a tall and shadowy figure, wreathed in smoke. As the figure walked forward, the smoke fell away, the face was revealed to Sarnod as…Sarnod’s own!
Sarnod felt a lurch and dislocation deep inside. “What manner of trickery is this? Whisper Bird—is this your doing?”
“The only trickery in me is the doubling life I lead,” Whisper Bird replied. “I am not responsible for this.”
“Trickery?” Gandreel said. “Worse than that, to be lured here under promises from one who had no authority to honor them.”
This new Sarnod glanced at Gandreel, then turned burning eyes and an unpleasant flash of sharp white teeth upon old Sarnod. “Oh, there is nothing of trickery here. I am Sarnod and this is just the giant fish I hooked, ensorcelled, and left here in my stead, armed with nearly all my spells and memories, that none might take undue advantage of my absence. A fish. Nothing more. Or less.”
“Still your tongue!” Sarnod cried out. “You are an imposter!”
But this new Sarnod held up his hand, snapped, “Let your own tongue be still, fish, along with the rest of you! Did you think I would allow my own sorcery to be used against me? Or that you would keep your powers upon my return? Now that you have failed me as both guardian and guard, I decree this misspent year of Fish Misrule at an end!”
Sounds died in old Sarnod’s throat, and there he stood motionless, wordless, before them all, observer and observed only. His panic had no voice, his distress no mannerisms. A kind of madness rose up in him, with no release. Desperate searching: What memory is real and which imposed?
Said Whisper Bird, “I am unsure who to now attend, nor why.”
New Sarnod, turning to wary Gandreel and Vendra, now winced with a pain not physical. “I leave to consult on the subject of my errors in creation with others of my ilk, to correct the defects and deviations that led to her, for example”—and he pointed at Vendra—” and yet here I am, summoned back by knowledge of your presence in my domain, confronted once again by villains thought long exiled. Brother betrayer. Lover unconscionable. By what right do you think to escape exile?”
“Bring forth a spell,” Vendra warned, “and I shall condemn you to a worse hell, I swear it. I am not now released only to return to that place.”
Sarnod sneered. “Idle threat from an idle mind.”
“Brother,” Gandreel said, “let it not be this way.”
“The choice is not yours,” Sarnod said, taking a threatening step forward.
“Gandreel, steel yourself. We must kill Sarnod to be free,” Vendra said. “Both of them.” Even through his alarm, not-Sarnod saw how Gandreel extended to her a look as if she were as a stranger.
“We cannot kill them,” Gandreel said. “Sarnod, even in this state, is my brother.”
“Sometimes it’s a better mercy,” Vendra said.
“Enough!” Sarnod said. “Your betrayal is as fresh in my mind as if it were yesterday, and if the fish has one hook in his heart, I’ve two. The punishment for your betrayal,” Sarnod said, turning his full regard upon Gandreel and Vendra as not-Sarnod looked on powerless, “is death, as exile is clearly not permanent enough.”
So saying, Sarnod spoke the spell of Revolving Until Force Destroys and attempted to lift Gandreel into the air at great speed. But Gandreel met the spell with four words and an effort that made the veins in his neck bulge. The force of the spell disappeared through The Mouth, released Elsewhere. Gandreel dropped back to the ground from no small distance.
“Your petty sorceries shall not be enough to save you for long,” Sarnod promised Gandreel, who was ashen and bent to one knee.
Sarnod brought forth the spell of Internal Dissolution, to induce great writhing agony in both Gandreel and Vendra.
Even in the midst of her distress, however, Vendra made a sign, spoke words in a tongue unknown to not-Sarnod, and deflected Sarnod’s malice. The aftershock flung her into a pillar. She rose unsteadily with blood spackling her forehead.
“Stay your hand, brother!” Gandreel pleaded. “For the sake of mercy.”
“Mercy? May Kraan hold your living brains in acid!” Sarnod shrieked. “May dark Thial spike your eyes!” If ever his countenance had been imperious
, now it was beyond imperial. “My mercy is that you should be carrion together, not apart, for animals to feast upon.” If there was any sadness in the look Sarnod gave Gandreel, the fish did not glimpse it.
Thus saying, Sarnod brought forth a third and more terrible spell, the spell of the Prismatic Spring, which would send many-colored stabbing lines at them, and deliver to them a cruel death. The stabbing lines coalesced above Sarnod’s head at the behest of his raised right arm, and began to glow and brighten, Gandreel and Vendra in desperation bringing forth weaker spells that together suspended but could not abate the formation of the lines.
The wizard laughed like a creature long deranged. “Alas, that you are bereft of allies here. For Whisper Bird is mine and so is the fish. And both while you fend off my spell shall I send against you to break this stalemate.”
So saying, Sarnod turned to not-Sarnod and, with a swift-curling motion of his left hand, cried out, “Let this foolish fish return to what it once was!” The hook left the heart of not-Sarnod, a release beyond imagining. He felt his human flesh melt away, replaced and bulwarked and expanded until he was again, as before, a gigantic fish with blue-green scales, balanced on its tail and fins, with gills that, tortured by air, longed for water. Fading human thoughts met old needs. He gasped and thrashed and tried to speak while the others, dwarfed, looked up at him in amazement.
“Now, fish, devour my enemies,” Sarnod said, “and you, Whisper Bird, employ your invisible weapons, and between you both, bring this struggle to a close.”
“As you wish, Sarnod,” Whisper Bird said, “but it may take some time for me to cross the floor from fish to reach the foe.”
Fish-Sarnod, meanwhile, propelled by ever-fading thoughts of life as the mighty wizard, confused and frightened and enraged, bellowed, “I am Sarnod!”
These words startled one and all in the Seeing Hall, even Sarnod. The stabbing lines faltered over his head. Gandreel stared at the fish from one knee. Vendra’s glassy, pain-filled gaze affixed him.
Songs of the Dying Earth Page 25