Dust of Dreams

by Erikson, Steven

  ‘And what is there to do about it?’ Even as she asked, she knew how he would answer. Knew, and wanted to scream.

  ‘Queen, my soldiers will hold the portal.’

  ‘And be slaughtered!’

  He said nothing. Muscles knotted rhythmically beneath his beard.

  ‘Damn you! Damn you!’

  ‘Unveil the Road, my Queen.’

  She spun to her two captains among the ex-prison guards. ‘Pithy. Brevity. Support Yedan Derryg’s soldiers—for as long as you can—but be sure not to get so entangled that your people cannot withdraw—I want you through the gate, do you understand?’

  ‘We shall do as you say, Highness,’ Brevity replied.

  Yan Tovis studied the two women, wondering yet again why the others had elected them as their captains. They’d never been soldiers—anyone could see that. Damned criminals, in fact. Yet they could command. Shaking her head, she faced her brother once more.

  ‘Will you follow us?’

  ‘If we can, my Queen. But we must be certain to hold until we see the portalway failing.’ He paused, and then added with his usual terseness, ‘It will be close.’

  Yan Tovis wanted to tear at her hair. ‘Then I begin—and,’ she hesitated, ‘I will talk to Pully and Skwish. I will—’

  ‘Do not defend what I have done, sister. The time to lead is now. Go, do what must be done.’

  Gods, you pompous idiot.

  Don’t die, damn you. Don’t you dare die!

  She did not know if he heard her sob as she rushed away. He’d dropped his cheek-guards once more. Besides, those helms blunted all but the sharpest sounds.

  The Road to Gallan. The road home. Ever leading me to wonder, why did we leave in the first place? What drove us from Gallan? The first shoreline? What so fouled the water that we could no longer live there?

  She reached the ancient shell midden where she and the witches had sanctified the ground, climbed, achingly, raw with desperation, to join the pair of old witches.

  Their eyes glittered, with madness or terror—she could never tell with these two hags.

  ‘Now?’ asked Pully.

  ‘Yes. Now.’

  And Yan Tovis turned round. From her vantage point, she looked upon her cowering followers. Her people, crowded along the length of beach. Behind them the forest was a wall of fire. Ashes and smoke, a conflagration. This—this is what we leave. Remember that. From where she stood, she could not even see her brother.

  No one need ever ask why we fled this world.

  She whirled round, drawing her blessed daggers. And laid open her forearms. The gift of royal blood. To the shore.

  Pully and Skwish screamed the Words of Sundering, their twisted hands grasping her wrists, soaking in her blood like leeches.

  They should not complain. That but two remain. They will learn, I think, to thank my brother. When they see what royal blood gives them. When they see.

  Darkness yawned. Impenetrable, a portal immune to the water that its lower end carved into.

  The road home.

  Weeping, Yan Tovis, Twilight, Queen of the Shake, pulled her arms loose from the witches’ grip, and lunged forward. Into the cold past.

  Where none could hear her screams of grief.

  The mob hesitated longer than Yedan expected, hundreds of voices crying out upon witnessing the birth of the portal, those cries turning to need and then anger as the Shake and the islanders among them plunged into the gate, vanishing—escaping this madness.

  He stood with his troop, gauging the nearest of the rioters. ‘Captain Brevity,’ he called over a shoulder.

  ‘Watch.’

  ‘Do not tarry here. We will do what needs doing.’

  ‘We got our orders.’

  ‘I said we will hold.’

  ‘Sorry,’ the woman snapped. ‘We ain’t in the mood to watch you go all heroic here.’

  ‘Asides,’ added Pithy, ‘our lads couldn’t live with themselves if they just left you to it.’

  A half-dozen voices loudly objected to her claim, to which both captains laughed.

  Biting back a smile, Yedan said nothing. The mob was moments from rushing them—they were being pushed from behind. It was always this way, he knew. Someone else’s courage, so boisterous in its refuge among walls of flesh, so easy with someone else’s life. He could see, in heaving eddies, the worst of them, and set their details in his mind, to test their courage when at last he came face to face with each one.

  ‘Wake up, soldiers,’ he shouted. ‘Here they come.’

  The first task in driving back a charging mob was two quick steps forward, right into the faces of the foremost attackers. Cut them down, pull back a single stride, and hold fast. As the survivors were thrust forward once more, repeat the aggression, messy and brutal, and this time advance into the teeth of the crowd, blades chopping, stabbing, shield rims slamming into bodies, studded heels crunching down on those that fell underfoot.

  The nearest ranks recoiled from the assault.

  Then retaliated, rising like a wave.

  Yedan and his troop delivered fierce slaughter. Held for twenty frantic heartbeats, and then were driven back one step, and then another. Better-armed looters began appearing, thrust to the forefront. The first Letherii soldier fell, stabbed through a thigh. Two of Brevity’s guards hurried forward and pulled the man from the line, a cutter rushing in to staunch the wound with clumps of spider’s web.

  Pithy shouted from a position directly behind Yedan: ‘More than half through, Watch!’

  The armed foes that fell to his soldiers either reeled back or collapsed at their feet. These latter ones gave up the weapons they held to more of the two captains’ guards, who reached through quick as cats to snatch them away before the attackers could recover them. The two women were busy arming others to bolster their rearguard—Yedan could imagine no other reason for the risky—and, truth be told, irritating—tactic.

  His soldiers were tiring—it had been some time since they’d last worn full armour. He’d been slack in keeping them fit. Too much riding, not enough marching. When had any of them last drawn blood? The Edur invasion for most of them.

  They were paying for it now. Ragged gasps, slowing arms, stumbles.

  ‘Back one step!’

  The line edged back—

  ‘Now forward! Hard!’

  The mob had seen that retreat as a victory, the beginnings of a rout. The sudden attack into their faces shocked them, their weapons unreadied, their minds on everything but defence. That front line melted, as did the one behind it, and then a third. Yedan and his soldiers—knowing that this was their last push—fought like snarling beasts.

  And all at once, the hundreds crowding before them suddenly scattered—the rough ranks shattering. Weapons thrown aside, fleeing as fast as legs could carry them, down the strand, out into the shallows. Scores were trampled, driven into mud or stones or water. Fighting broke out in desperate efforts to clear paths through.

  Yedan withdrew his troop. They staggered back to the waiting rearguard—who looked upon them in silence, perhaps disbelieving.

  ‘Attend to the wounded,’ barked Yedan, lifting his cheek grilles to cool his throbbing face, snatching in deep breaths.

  ‘We can get moving now,’ Brevity said, tugging at his shield arm. ‘We can just walk on through to … wherever. You, Watch, you need to be in charge of the Shake army, did you know that?’

  ‘The Shake have no army—’

  ‘They better get one and soon.’

  ‘Besides, I am an outlaw—I slaughtered—’

  ‘We know what you did. You’re an Errant-damned up-the-wall madman, Yedan Derryg. Best kinda commander an army could have.’

  Pithy said, ‘Leave the petitioning to us, sweetie.’ And she smiled.

  He looked round. One wounded. None dead. None dead that counted, anyway. Screams of pain rose from the killing field. He paid that no attention, simply sheathed his sword.

  When Yedan Derry
g walked into the fading portalway—the last of them all—he did not look back. Not once.

  There was great joy in discarding useless words. Although one could not help but measure each day by the sun’s fiery passage through the empty sky, and each night by the rise and set of a haze-shrouded moon and the jade slashes cutting across the starscape, the essential meaning of time had vanished from Badalle’s mind. Days and nights were a tumbling cavort, round and round with no beginning and no end. Jaws to tail. They rolled on and left nothing but a scattering of motionless small figures collapsed on to the plain. Even the ribbers had abandoned them.

  Here, at the very edge of the Glass, there were only the opals—fat carrion beetles migrating in from the blasted, lifeless flanks to either side of the trail. And the diamonds—glittering spiked lizards that sucked blood from the fingertips their jaws clamped tight round every night—diamonds becoming rubies as they grew engorged. And there were the Shards, the devouring locusts sweeping down in glittering storms, stripping children almost where they stood, leaving behind snarls of rags, tufts of hair and pink bones.

  Insects and lizards ruled this scorched realm. Children were interlopers, invaders. Food.

  Rutt had tried to lead them round the Glass, but there was no way around that vast blinding desert. A few of them gathered after the second night. They had been walking south, and at this day’s end they had found a sinkhole filled with bright green water. It tasted of limestone dust and made many children writhe in pain, clutching their stomachs. It made a few of them die.

  Rutt sat holding Held, and to his left crouched Brayderal—the tall bony girl who reminded Badalle of the Quitters. She had pushed her way in, and for that Badalle did not like her, did not trust her, but Rutt turned no one away. Saddic was there as well, a boy who looked upon Badalle with abject adoration. It was disgusting, but he listened best to her poems, her sayings, and he could repeat them back to her, word for word. He said he was collecting them all. To one day make a book. A book of this journey. He believed, therefore, that they were going to survive this, and that made him a fool.

  The four of them had sat, and in the silences that stretched out and round and in and through and sometimes between them all, they pondered what to do next. Words weren’t needed for that kind of conversation. And no one had the strength for gestures, either. Badalle thought that Saddic’s book should hold vast numbers of blank pages, to mark such silences and all they contained. The truths and the lies, the needs and the wants. The nows and the thens, the theres and the heres. If she saw such pages, and could crisp back each one, one after another, she would nod, remembering how it was. How it was.

  It was Brayderal who stained the first blank page. ‘We got to go back.’

  Rutt lifted his bloodshot eyes. He drew Held tighter against his chest. Adjusted the tattered hood, reached in a lone finger to stroke an unseen cheek.

  That was his answer, and Badalle agreed with him. Yes she did. Stupid, dangerous Brayderal.

  Who scratched a bit at the sores encrusting her nostrils. ‘We can’t go round it. We can only cross it. But crossing it means we all die and die bad. I’ve heard of this Glass Desert. Never crossed. No one ever crosses it. It goes on for ever, straight down the throat of the setting sun.’

  Oh, Badalle liked that one. That was a good scene to keep alive in her head. Down the throat, a diamond throat, a throat of glass, sharp, so very sharp glass. And they were the snake. ‘We got thick skin,’ she said, since the page was already ruined. ‘We go down the throat. We go down it, because that’s what snakes do.’

  ‘Then we die.’

  They all gave her silence for that. To say such things! To blot the page that way! They gave her silence. For that.

  Rutt turned his head. Rutt set his eyes upon the Glass Desert. He stared that way a long, long time, as darkness quenched the glittering flats. And then he finished his looking, and he leaned forward and rocked Held to sleep. Rocked and rocked.

  So it was decided. They were going into the Glass Desert.

  Brayderal took a blank page for herself. She had thousands to choose from.

  Badalle crawled off, trailed by Saddic, and she sat staring into the night. She threw away words. There. Here. Then. Now. When. Everybody had to cut what they carried, to cross this desert. Toss away what wasn’t needed. Even poets.

  ‘You have a poem,’ Saddic said, a dark shape beside her. ‘I want to hear it.’

  ‘I am throwing away

  Words. You and me

  Is a good place to start

  Yesterday I woke up

  With five lizards

  Sucking my fingers

  Like tiny pigs or rat pups

  They drank down

  You and me

  I killed two of them

  And ate what they took

  But that wasn’t taking back

  The words stayed gone

  We got to lighten the load

  Cut down on what we carry

  Today I stop carrying

  You

  Tomorrow I stop carrying

  Me.’

  After a time of no words, Saddic stirred. ‘I’ve got it, Badalle.’

  ‘To go with the silent pages.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The blank ones. The ones that hold everything that’s true. The ones that don’t lie about anything. The silent pages, Saddic.’

  ‘Is that another poem?’

  ‘Just don’t put it on a blank page.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  He seemed strangely satisfied, and he curled up tight against her hip, like a ribber when ribbers weren’t ribbers but pets, and he went to sleep. She looked down on him, and thought about eating his arms.

  Chapter Nine

  Down past the wind-groomed grasses

  In the sultry curl of the stream

  There was a pool set aside

  In calm interlude away from the rushes

  Where not even the reeds waver

  Nature takes no time to harbour our needs

  For depthless contemplation

  Every shelter is a shallow thing

  The sly sand grips hard no manner

  Of anchor or even footfall

  Past the bend the currents run thin

  In wet chuckle where a faded tunic

  Drapes the shoulders of a broken branch

  These are the dangers I might see

  Leaning forward if the effort did not prove

  So taxing but that ragged collar

  Covers no pale breast with tapping pulse

  This shirt wears the river in birth foam

  And languid streaming tatters

  Soon I gave up the difficult rest

  And floated down in search of boots

  Filled with pebbles as every man needs

  Somewhere to stand.

  CLOTHES REMAIN

  FISHER

  I

  ’m stuffed,’ said King Tehol, and then, with a glance at his guest, added, ‘Sorry.’

  Captain Shurq Elalle regarded him with her crystal goblet halfway to her well-padded, exquisitely painted lips. ‘Yet another swollen member at my table.’

  ‘Actually,’ observed Bugg, ‘this is the King’s table.’

  ‘I wasn’t being literal,’ she replied.

  ‘Which is a good thing,’ cried Tehol, ‘since my wife happens to be sitting right here beside me. And though she has no need to diet, we’d all best stay figurative.’ And his eyes shifted nervously before he hid himself behind his own goblet.

  ‘Just like old times,’ said Shurq. ‘Barring the awkward pauses, the absurd opulence, and the weight of an entire kingdom pressing down upon us. Remind me to decline the next invitation.’

  ‘Longing for a swaying deck under your feet?’ Tehol asked. ‘Oh, how I miss the sea—’

  ‘How can you miss what you’ve never experienced?’

  ‘Well, good point. I should have been more precise. I miss the false memory of missing a lif
e on the sea. It was, at the risk of being coarse, my gesture of empathy.’

  ‘I don’t really think the captain’s longings should be the subject of conversation, husband,’ Queen Janath said, mostly under her breath.

  Shurq heard her none the less. ‘Highness, this night has made it grossly obvious that you hold to an unreasonable prejudice against the dead. If I was still alive I’d be offended.’

  ‘No you wouldn’t.’

  ‘In a gesture of empathy, indeed I would!’

  ‘Well, I do apologize,’ said the Queen. ‘I just find your, uh, excessively overt invitations to be somewhat off-putting—’

  ‘My excessively overt what? It’s called make-up! And clothes!’

  ‘More like dressing the feast,’ murmured Janath.

  Tehol and Bugg shared a wince.

  Shurq Elalle smirked. ‘Jealousy does not become a queen—’

  ‘Jealousy? Are you mad?’

  The volume of the exchange was escalating. ‘Yes, jealousy! I’m not getting any older and that fact alone—’

  ‘Not any older, true enough, just more and more … putrid.’

  ‘No less putrid than your unseemly bigotry! And all I need do by way of remedy is a bag full of fresh herbs!’

  ‘That’s what you think.’

  ‘Not a single man’s ever complained. I bet you can’t say the same.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  Shurq Elalle then chose the most vicious reply of all. She said nothing. And took another delicate mouthful of wine.

  Janath stared, and then turned on her husband.

  Who flinched.

  In a tight, low voice, Janath asked, ‘Dear husband, do I fail in pleasing you?’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘Am I the subject of private conversations between you and this—this creature?’

  ‘Private? You, her? Not at all!’

  ‘Oh, so what then is the subject of those conversations?’

  ‘No subject—’

  ‘Too busy to talk, then, is it? You two—’

  ‘What? No!’

  ‘Oh, there’s always time for a few explicit instructions. Naturally.’

  ‘I don’t—we don’t—’