Short Fiction Complete

by Fred Saberhagen

  He clasped his hand. “Oh great lady Je, we are only poor humans . . . mortals . . .”

  “Never mind. In time I will discover the key. What is written anywhere, I can eventually read.”

  Zalazar was aware now of a strong motion underneath his feet. Even to weak human senses it was evident that the whole cloud was now in purposeful and very rapid flight.

  “Where are we going?” Bormanus muttered, as if he were asking the air itself. He was a very handsome youth, with dark and curly hair.

  “We return to the attack, young mortal. If most of our fleet has been destroyed, well, so too are the defenses of Cloudholm nearly worn away. One more assault can bring it into my hands, and set its prisoners free.”

  Zalazar had been about to ask some question, but now a distracting realization made him forget what it was. He had suddenly become aware that there was some guardian presence, sprite or demon he thought, melded with the cloud, driving and controlling it on Je’s commands. It drew for energy on some vast internal store of mana, a treasure trove that Zalazar could only dimly sense.

  Now, in obedience to Je’s unspoken orders, the light inside the room or temple where they stood was taking on a reddish tinge. And the cloud-carvings were disappearing from what Zalazar took to be the forward wall. As Je faced in that direction, pictures began to appear there magically. These were of a cloudscape first, then of an earthly plain seen from a height greater than any mountain’s. Both were passing at fantastic speed.

  Je nodded as if satisfied. “Come,” she said, “and we will try your usefulness in a new way.” With a quick gesture she opened the whiteness to one side, and overhead. A stair took form even as she began to climb it. “We will see if your value lies in reconnoitering the enemy.”

  Clinging to Bormanus’s shoulder for support, Zalazar found that the stairs were not as hard to negotiate as he had feared, even when they shifted form from one step to the next. Then there was a sudden gaping purple openness above their heads. “Fear not,” said Je. “My protection is upon you both, to let you breathe and live.”

  Zalazar and Bormanus mounted higher. Wind shrieked thinly now, not in their faces but around them at some little distance, as if warded by some invisible shield. Then abruptly the climbing stair had no more steps. Zalazar thought that they stood on an open deck of cloud, under a bright sun in a dark sky, in some strange realm of neither day nor night. The prow of the cloudship that he rode upon was just before him; he stood as if on the bridge of some proud ocean vessel, looking out over deck and rounded bow, and a wild vastness of the elements beyond.

  Not that the ship was borne by anything as small and simple as an earthly sea. The whole globe of Earth was already so far below that Zalazar could now begin to see its roundness, and still the cloudship climbed. All natural clouds were far below, clinging near the great curve of Earth, though rising here and there in strong relief. At first Zalazar thought that the star-pierced blackness through which they flew was empty of everything but passing light. But presently—with, as he sensed, Je’s unspoken aid—he began to be able to perceive structure in the thinness of space about him.

  “What do you see now, my sage old man? And you, my clever youth?” Je’s voice pleaded even as it mocked and commanded. Her fear and puzzlement frightened Zalazar again. For the first time now he knew true regret that he had followed his first impulse and climbed a chopped-off mountain. Where now was the good result that prescience had seemed to promise?

  “I see only the night ahead of us,” responded Bormanus. His voice sounded remote, as if he were half asleep.

  “I . . . see,” said Zalazar, and paused with that. Much was coming clear to him, but it was going to be hard to describe. The cloud structures far below, so heavy with their contained water and their own mundane laws, blended almost imperceptibly into the base of something much vaster, finer, and more subtle—something that filled the space around the Earth, from the level of those low clouds up to the vastly greater altitude at which Zalazar now stood. And higher still . . . his eyes, as if ensnared now by those faery lines and arches, followed them upward and outward and ever higher still. The lines girdled the whole round Earth, and rose . . .

  And rose . . .

  Zalazar clutched out for support. Obligingly, a stanchion of cloudstuff grew up and hardened into place to meet his grasp. He did not even look at it. His eyes were fixed up and ahead, looking at Cloudholm.

  Imagine the greatest castle of legend. And then go beyond that, and beyond, till imagination knows itself inadequate. Two aspects dominate: first, an almost invisible delicacy, with the appearance of a fragility to match. Secondly, almost omnipotent power—or, again, its seeming. Size was certainly a component of that power. Zalazar had never tried to, or been able to, imagine anything as high as this. So high that it grew near only slowly, though the cloudship was racing toward it at a speed that Zalazar would have described as almost as fast as thought.

  Then Zalazar saw how, beyond Cloudholm, a thin crescent of moon rose wonderfully higher still; and again, beyond that, burned the blaze of sun, a jewel in black. These sights threw him into a sudden terror of the depths of space. No longer did he marvel so greatly that Je and her allied powers could have been defeated.

  “Great lady,” he asked humbly, “what realm, whose dominion is this?”

  “What I need from you, mortal, are answers, not questions of a kind that I can pose myself.” Je’s broad white hand swung out gently to touch him on the eyes. Her touch felt surprisingly warm. Her voice commanded: “Say what you see.”

  The touch at once allowed him to see more clearly. But he stuttered, groping for words. What he was suddenly able to perceive was that the sun lived at the core of a magnificent, perpetual explosion, the expanding waves of which were as faint as Cloudholm itself, but nonetheless glorious for that. These waves moved in some medium far finer than the air, more tenuous than even the thinning air that had almost ceased to whistle with the cloudship’s passage. And the waves of the continual slow sun-explosion bore with them a myriad of almost infinitesimal particles, particles that were heavy with mana, though they were almost too small to be called solid.

  And there were the lines, as of pure force, in space. In obedience to some elegant system of laws they bore the gossamer outer robes of the sun itself, to wrap the Earth with delicate energy . . . and the mana that flowed outward from the sun—great Zeus but there was such a flood of it!

  The Earth was bathed in warmth and energy—but not in mana, Zalazar suddenly perceived. That flow had been cut off by Cloudholm and its spreading wings. (Yes, Zalazar could see the pinions of enchantment now, raptor-wings extending curved on two sides from the castle itself, as if to embrace the whole Earth—or smother it.) Through them the common sunlight flowed on unimpeded, to make the surface of the world flash blue and ermine white. But all the inner energies of magic were cut off . . .

  Zalazar realized with a start that he was, or just had been, entranced and muttering, that someone with a mighty grip had just shaken his arm, that a voice of divine power was urging him to speak up, to make sense in what he reported of his vision.

  “Tell clearly what you see, old man. The wings, you say, spread out from Cloudholm to enfold the Earth. That much I knew already. Now say what their weakness is. How are they to be torn aside?”

  “I . . . I . . . the wings are very strong. They draw sustaining power from the very flow of mana that they deny the Earth. Some of the particles that hail on them go through—but those are without mana. Many of the particles and waves remain, are trapped by the great wings and drained of mana and of other energies. Then eventually they are let go.”

  “Old fool, what use are you? You tell me nothing I do not already know. Say, where is the weakness of the wings? How can our Earth be fed?”

  “Just at the poles. There is a weakness, sometimes, a drooping of the wings, and there a little more mana than elsewhere can reach the Earth.”

  Suddenly faint, Zalazar
felt himself begin to topple. He was grabbed, and upheld, and shaken again. “Tell more, mortal. What power has created Cloudholm?”

  “What do I know? How can I see? What can I say?”

  He was shaken more violently than before, until in his desperate fear of Je he cried: “Great Apollo himself could not learn more!”

  He was released abruptly, and there was a precipitous silence, as if even Je had been shocked by Zalazar’s free use of that name, the presence of whose owner only his mother Leto and his father Zeus could readily endure. Then Zalazar’s eyes were brushed again by Je’s warm hand, and he came fully to himself.

  Cloudholm was bearing down on them. “And Helios is trapped up there?” Zalazar wondered aloud. “But why, and how?”

  “Why?” The bitterness and soft rage in Je’s voice were worthy of a goddess. “Why, I myself helped first to bind him. Was I made to do that, after opposing him and bringing on a bitter quarrel? I do not know. Are even we deities the playthings of some overriding fate? What was Helios’s sin, for such a punishment? And what was mine?”

  Again Zalazar had to avert his gaze, for Je’s beauty glowed even more terribly than before. And at the same time he had to strive to master himself, hold firm his will against the hubris that rose up in him and urged him to reach for the role of god himself. Such an opportunity existed, would exist, foreknowledge told him, and it was somewhere near at hand. If he only . . .

  His internal struggle was interrupted by the realization that the cloudship no longer moved. Looking carefully, Zalazar could see that it had come to rest upon an almost insubstantial plain.

  Straight ahead of him now, the bases of the walls of Cloudholm rose. And there was a towering gate.

  Je was addressing him almost calmly again. “If your latent power, old mortal, is neither of healing nor of seeing, then perhaps it lies in the realm of war. That is the way we now must pass. Kneel down.”

  Zalazar knelt. The right hand of the goddess closed on his and drew him to his feet again. He arose on lithely muscular legs, and saw that the old clothing in which he had walked the high pasturelands had been transformed. He was clad now in silver cloth, a fabric worked with a fine brocade. His garments hung on him as solidly as chain mail, yet felt as soft and light as silk. They were at once the clothing and the armor of a god.

  In Zalazar’s right hand, grown young and muscular, a short sword had appeared. The weapon was of some metal vastly different from that of his garments, and yet he could feel that its power was at least their equal. On his left arm now hung a shield of dazzling brightness, but seemingly of no more than a bracelet’s weight.

  The front of the cloudship divided and opened a way for the man who had been the old herdsman Zalazar. The thin cloudstuff of the magic plain swirled and rippled round his boots of silver-gray. His feet were firmly planted, and though he could plainly see the sunlit Earth below, he knew no fear that he might fall.

  He glanced behind him once, and saw the cloudship altering, disintegrating, and knew that the nameless demon who had sustained it had come out now at Je’s command, to serve her in some other way.

  Then Zalazar faced ahead. He could see, now, how much damage the great walls of Cloudholm had sustained, and what had caused the damage. Other cloud-ships, their insubstantial wreckage mixed with that of the walls they had assailed, lay scattered across the plain and piled at the feet of those enduring, fragile-looking towers. Nor were the wrecked ships empty. With vision somehow granted him by Je, Zalazar could see that each of them held at least one sleep-bound figure of the stature of a god or demigod. They were male or female, old-looking or young, of diverse attributes. All were caught and held, like Phaeton, by some powerful magic that imposed a quiet, if not always a peaceful, slumber.

  Now, where was Je herself? Zalazar realized suddenly that he could see neither the goddess nor her attendant demon. He called her name aloud.

  Do not seek me, her voice replied, whispering just at his ear. Make your way across the plain, and force the castle gates. With my help you can do it, and I shall be with you when my help is needed.

  Zalazar shrugged his shoulders. With part of his mind he knew that his present feelings of power and confidence were unnatural, given him by the goddess for her own purposes. But at the same time he could not deny those feelings—nor did he really want to. Feeling enormously capable, driven by an urge to prove what this divine weapon in his new right hand could do, he shrugged his shoulders again, loosening tight new muscles for action. Beside him, Bormanus, who had not been changed, was looking about in all directions alertly. With one hand the lad gripped tightly the small lyre at his belt, but he gave no other sign of fear. Then suddenly he raised his other hand and pointed.

  Coming from the gates of Cloudholm, which now stood open, already halfway across the wide plain between, a challenger was treading thin white cloud in great white boots.

  Zalazar, watching, raised his sword a little. Still the goddess was letting him know no fear. He who approached was a red-bearded man, wearing what looked like a winged Nordic helmet, and other equipment to match. He was of no remarkable height for a hero, but as he drew near Zalazar saw that his arms and shoulders, under a tight battle harness, were of enormous thickness. He balanced a monstrous war hammer like a feather in one hand.

  I should know who this is, Zalazar thought. But then the thought was gone, as quickly as it had come. Je manages her tools too well, he thought again, and then that idea too was swept from his mind.

  The one approaching came to a halt, no more than three quick strides away. “Return to Earth, old Zalazar,” he called out, jovially enough. “My bones already ache with a full age of combat. I yearn to let little brother Hypnos whisper in my ear, so I can lie down and rest. I don’t know why Je bothered to bring you here; the proper time for humans to visit Cloudholm is long gone, and again, is not yet come.”

  “Save your riddles,” Zalazar advised him fearlessly. This, he thought, in a moment of great glory and pride, this is what it is like to be a god. And in his heart he thanked Je for this moment, and cared not what might happen in the next.

  “Oho,” Redbeard remarked good-humoredly. “Well, then, it seems we must.” The sword and hammer leapt together of themselves, with a blare as of all war-trumpets in the world, and a clash as of all arms. It lasted endlessly, and at the same time it seemed to take no time at all. Zalazar thought that he saw Redbeard fall, but when he bent with some intention of dealing a finishing stroke, the figure of his opponent had vanished. Save for Bormanus, who had prudently stepped back from the clash, he was apparently alone.

  Well fought! Je’s voice, from invisible lips, whispered beside his ear. There was new excitement in the words, an undertone of savage triumph.

  Zalazar, triumphant too—and at the same time knowing an undercurrent of dissatisfaction, for these deeds were not his of his own right—moved on toward the open gate. He had gone a dozen strides when something—he thought not Je—urged him to look back. When he did, he could now see Redbeard, hammer still in hand, stretched out upon the cloud. There was no sign of blood or injury. At Redbeard’s ear a winged head was hovering, whispering a compulsion from divine lips. And on the face of the fallen warrior there was peace.

  Why do you pause? Je demanded in her hidden voice. She required no answer, but Zalazar must go on. All Je’s attention, and Zalazar’s, too, was bent now upon the open castle gate. It slammed shut of itself when he was still a hundred strides away. Now he could see that what he had taken for carved dragon heads on either side of the portal were alive, turning fanged jaws toward him.

  Zalazar glanced at the lad who was walking so trustingly at his side, and for the first time since landing on the cloud-plain he knew anxiety. “Lady Je,” he prayed in a whisper, “I crave your protection for my grandson as well as for myself.”

  I give what protection I can, to those I need. And I foresee now that I will need him, later on . . .

  The dragons guarding the gate stretch
ed out their necks when Zalazar came near; fangs like bunched knives drove at him. The shield raised upon his left arm took the blows. The sword flashed left, lashed right.

  Zalazar stepped back, gasping; he looked to see that Bormanus, who had kept clear, was safe. Then Zalazar willed the swordblade at the great cruciform timbers of the gate itself. They splintered, shuddered, and swung back.

  Je’s triumph was a shrill scream, almost soundless, inarticulate.

  Zalazar knew that he must still go forward, now into Cloudholm itself. He balanced the shield upon his left arm, hefted the sword again in his right hand. He drew a deep breath, of ample-seeming air, and entered the palace proper.

  He came to door after door, each taller and more magnificent than the last, and each swung open of itself to let him in. Around him on every hand there towered shapes that should have been terrible, though he could see them only indistinctly. Something told him which way he must go. And he pressed on, through one royal haft and chamber after another . . .

  . . . until he had entered that which he knew must be the greatest hall of all. At the far end of it, very distant from where he stood, Zalazar saw the Throne of the World. It was guarded by a wall of flame, and it was standing vacant.

  As Zalazar’s feet brought him closer to the fire, he saw that it was centered on a plinth of cloud that supported another manlike figure, similar to that of tortured Phaeton but larger still.

  It is Helios, said Je’s disembodied whisper. Full him from the flames, restore him to his throne, and mana will rain upon the Earth again.

  The flame felt very hot. When Zalazar probed it with his sword, it pushed the swordblade back. “But what power is this that imprisons him? Je?”

  Do not ask questions, mortal. Act.