by Carol Berg
“Let’s go,” I said.
Paulo marshaled my protectors, and we set off again before the anxious, the curious, or the awestruck could prevent us. “No wonder you’d wake the house when you dreamed.”
“It never lasted so long as this,” I said, rubbing my face. Cheeks and nose and lips felt numb. “What happened?”
“You stopped it. As soon as you knelt down, every crack headed straight for you. But before very long, they stopped coming. Closed up. The earthquake, whatever it was, quit like it never happened. Everything stopped. The whole cursed world went black as pitch, so’s I thought we were all dead. But then the world started up again, or I woke up, or whatever. We just couldn’t get you awake for a while. You lay here like you were dead. An hour it’s been.”
“I can’t explain it.”
The stars cast a soft greenish glow on the path. Zanore trotted ahead of us, Vroon and Ob to either side. After a time Paulo nudged me. “Have you noticed? Behind us.”
I glanced backward. For as far as I could see into the gloom stretched a straggling crowd of the misshapen residents of the Breach. Only now that I looked did I notice the constant rustling noise of shuffling feet and excited whispering. The dim air was warm and dry, and the starlight illuminated a sea of oddity. They all caught their breath when I turned to see them better and sighed as one when I shrugged my shoulders and turned back to follow Zanore again. Unless I was sorely mistaken, they would have followed me had I walked off a cliff.
CHAPTER 12
With gestures and shouts, a horrified Vroon tried to shoo the ragtag mob back to their homes. “Begone, begone! The maintainers will see!” But the strange folk shook their heads and stood their ground, and when we started walking again they trailed after us.
“Punishment terrible do they risk for leaving their fastnesses,” said Vroon. “The Guardian did not give them allowing to do so.”
I certainly didn’t know what to do about them. If they had such rules, it was up to them to obey them or take the consequences. “Tell us about the towers,” I said. “These people live in them?”
The firestorm seemed to have left our three companions chastened and ready to answer at least a few of our questions. Each tower housed a single being - a Singlar, Vroon called them. The larger or more elaborate the tower, the longer and more successfully the Singlar had been real. Neither Vroon nor his friends could explain how the Singlars had come to be real, or what they were before they were real. If I understood him correctly - and that was never certain with Vroon - the towers were actually part of the land itself, shaped and nurtured by the thoughts and deeds as well as the hard labor of the residents. That is, they grew.
I looked at the towers differently after that. As we walked through the dark, wet, misshapen land, I wondered if I would observe them changing right in front of me. Of course I didn’t see any such thing. I supposed it was like a person’s growing. You never saw the change happening, not even in yourself. Only the result of it.
No Singlars had names, they told me. A name was the greatest gift one could receive, the culmination of the mysterious process of becoming bounded. But Singlars could not give each other names. I gathered that it would have been something like one loaf of baking bread telling another it was done.
The three admitted, reluctantly, that while traveling the world beyond the moon-door in search of the king, they had come across persons who looked like Singlars and acted like Singlars, and so they had brought them to the Bounded even though they had not been specifically commanded to do so. They promised to introduce me to some of these newcomers, once my business with the Guardian was done.
They didn’t want to talk about the other things they’d done in my world. Vroon said they would do so only at my “royal command.” As I had no intention of encouraging their foolish beliefs in the matter of royalty, I let the matter drop. “We’ll talk more of these things another time.”
“Quietness,” said Ob, nodding sagely and smiling at the other two as he lumbered alongside us.
Vroon smiled and poked Ob’s massive, humped shoulder in a brotherly way, and then leaned close to my shoulder. “Ob has always believed our king will be a quiet person, whose words are deep like his own. One person we found, a noisy, ever-talking one who claimed to be a king already, we took straight to the Guardian, lest perchance we be mistaken. But we always believed that the one we sought would be unmatched in wholeness. As you are.”
Eventually, our strange procession arrived at another cluster of hundreds of towers and wound our way through them to a wide open space paved with stones. A commard, we would call such a place in Leire, suitable for markets or ceremonies or celebrations of thousands of people. Rows of braziers, flame-filled bowls of stone that stood on slender pillars taller than a man, lined three sides of the commard. And on the fourth side, beyond a set of wide steps, stood the largest tower yet, an elongated spiral of pale blue, imposing in its height and sweep, though nowhere wider than five men standing shoulder to shoulder. The tower was the one I’d seen in my dreams.
Our three guides gestured excitedly toward the place. As we ascended the steps, the crowd behind me milled about, people settling themselves on the flagstone paving as if to watch a festival pageant.
“This is the place? The Guardian’s place?” I said, standing on the top step and gawking up at the soaring tower somewhat stupidly. I felt foolish that I couldn’t find a gate to walk through or a door to knock on in the smooth curved flank of the structure.
“No, Majesty, this is your place, formed by many Singlars working as the Source commanded us through the voice of the Guardian. Of course, yes, the Guardian lives here, keeping it for you.” Vroon stood on tiptoe and whispered in my ear. “He will expect your calling out to him.”
I whispered back. “How would I go about doing that properly? I’d like to understand more about the Guardian…” And the towers and this grotesque land and my dreams and a number of other things.
Vroon put a finger to his lips, and pondered the question for a moment. “Mmm. Quite… uh… unimpressed is he with your standing as the Bounded King. He doubts. Willfully, he doubts. Until the king is among us, only the Guardian speaks the Source. When the Bounded King rules, the Guardian’s ears will be closed, and his voice will be very small. But, of course, he dearly wants a name… not that giving it will friendly him completely… ”
“I think I understand,” I said. “Guardian!”
“Who calls?” The words echoed from the stone walls and steps as if the speaker were shouting from out of a barrel.
“A traveler,” I called out. Then, I bent down to Vroon and spoke quietly again. “So do you happen to know a name the Guardian likes?”
“Contemplating Mynoplas was he at my last hearing,” whispered the dwarf, grinning. “A noble name it would be for the Guardian.”
“What seek you here?” echoed the booming voice from the tower.
“Answers. Shelter if the rains come again. Nothing more.” The wind had picked up again and smelled ominously damp as it raced out of the muddy lanes and across the wide commard.‘ I ran my fingers over the blue stone. The surface felt warmer than you might expect and was threaded with tiny veins of purple and silver.
“There are no answers here for you, traveler.”
“But I understand that you have great knowledge, clear authority, high standing in this place. Surely many come to you for answers.”
“Not you.”
“Why not?”
“I await the One Who Makes Us Bounded. Go away.”
Vroon’s estimate of this fellow’s state of mind seemed quite accurate. Exasperating.
“How will you know him - your king?”
“You will not trick me into giving you answers.”
“Then I will take this noble name I carry in my head and spend it elsewhere. Good day, Guardian.”
A very long, straight, and well-proportioned nose poked itself through the curved blue walls, quickly followed by
a prominent brow, a pair of wide lips, and a jaw with a sharp, square edge, grizzled with wiry black hair. One cheekbone bulged grotesquely from the otherwise ordinary face of a man of middle years. His eyes protruded from under the dark brows in a rather belligerent fashion.
“Humph! I knew it. You are but a youth. Bounded perhaps… yes, clearly so… but a mere youth, ignorant of important matters. No surprise that you seek answers. A frivolous person. A child.” His gaze skimmed over me from head to toe, then his protruding eyes settled on my own for a moment before looking quickly away. “Well… perhaps not a child. No. Perhaps not excessively frivolous. What name is it you carry?”
“The name Mynoplas dances on my tongue, but this good friend at my side could use such a sturdy name to good effect, so I might give it to him.” I gripped Paulo’s shoulder with one hand and gestured toward my Singlar companions with the other. I tried to act as if I saw heads protruding through stone walls every day. “Your messengers bear their new names nobly: Vroon, Zanore, and Ob. Come, friends, let’s go.”
“Wait! Singlars, has this traveler truly bestowed names?”
Vroon bowed to me first and then to the Guardian. “He is the One Who Makes Us Bounded, Guardian. I feel the wholeness of being Vroon. It is unmatched in glorious truthfulness that I tell you: I am Vroon. I am bounded.”
A rippling murmur swept through the air behind us, surged over us like a whispering tide, then faded into a long sigh.
“Who else…?” The Guardian poked a sinewy neck farther out of the tower and caught sight of the mass of beings sitting quiet and expectant on the commard, their oddness and deformities almost hidden in the shifting pools of light cast by the flaming braziers. “Confound you, disobedient Singlars! Why have you come here? You trespass the law!”
He is the One… the king… the One Who Makes Us Bounded. He ate the white fire in the old one’s cluster. He will save us from the storms. The flurry of words floated on top of the crowd.
I wanted to leave, but we needed shelter.
“No, he is not the king! He is but a boy. Return each to your fastness and wait as you have been commanded. Any who remain outside will be thrown from the Edge.”
I turned and started down the steps.
“Wait, traveler! I shouldn’t - You’re not - But if you’ve given names - Well, come in, then, and I’ll give you hearing. Then we’ll see. Maintainers, herd these unruly Singlars back to where they belong. Whip them if they do not obey.”
Two ranks of thuggish fellows, all wearing elaborately knotted rope belts about their tunics, emerged from the shadows and herded the rapidly dispersing crowd away from the commard. The Guardian popped back into the tower, leaving no clue as to how to follow him. An icy blast of wind curled around the towers and peppered us with sleet.
Vroon grinned up at me, his single purple eye twinkling. “Well done, Majesty.”
“Now, how do I get inside?” Even watching the Guardian’s movements closely, I had missed the door.
“Think of yourself in,” said Vroon. “More in than out. Enclosed, as to say.”
Think of myself in… This world was too odd. But I gave it a try. I considered what might lie on the other side of the curved wall. Then I ran my fingers across it - the smooth blue surface felt like stone - and imagined how it would feel to walk through it. I considered the thwop sound I’d heard for the past hours. No luck.
“In,” said Vroon, quite seriously. “Not through. Not beyond.”
I imagined the curved walls and turned them inside out so they were curved around me instead of away from me. At the same time I brought to mind all the ideas of “in-ness” I could: being under the blankets in my bed, closing a door behind me, walls, clothes, gloves… And then I was in.
No storm raged inside the tower, no wind blew. I saw no dim, gray light or black-and-purple sky or green stars, and certainly I found nothing I might have expected to be inside the narrow, twisting spire of smooth blue stone.
Here I was, gawking again. The chamber in which I stood was large and round, centered by a gracefully spiraling stair that reached toward a simple vaulted dome of pale yellow, almost impossible to see as it was so high. At every one of at least ten levels the tower was ringed by a gallery of sculpted stone. Though this soaring space seemed larger than the outer dimension of the tower could accommodate, I could have accepted that my eyes had been fooled in the uncertain light of the land. But this rotunda was not the whole of the tower’s interior.
Beyond a great open doorway to my left was a chamber that could have enclosed the great hall at Comigor with the ballroom thrown in for good measure, both of them strung together lengthwise and stretched into a chamber that was at least ten times longer than it was wide. To my right was a set of double doors of a size equal to the open doorway on my left, with no hint as to what might lie beyond them. Behind the stair, I glimpsed smaller doors, some open, some closed. The place was immense.
But I didn’t dally to peek into the other rooms, for the Guardian had hurried into the grand hall on my left. I gaped at the vast chamber as I stepped through the doorway.
The vaulted ceilings reached to at least half the height of the rotunda, and the walls, hung with simple rectangles of plain dark green and red fabric, bowed slightly outward. Near the ceiling, far out of casual reach, iron rings held hundreds of burning candles, casting a glow of burnished bronze about the space. The floor was dark green slate, huge, square plates of it, smoothed and set in simple rows.
The room was sparely furnished. On a raised dais at its farthest end stood a simple high-backed chair of smooth light wood, set in front of a heavy gold drapery. A few padded benches stood along the walls, and a long wooden table sat in one corner. Nothing in the way of variety or the gaudy decoration you might see in a Leiran palace marred the simple structures or disrupted the mellow light. But, considering what I’d seen so far of this strange land, it was very fine. Quite pleasing, in fact.
The Guardian hurried toward the far end of the hall and the dais with an irregular, awkward gait. A plain, close-fitting shirt and breeches and a sleeveless gray robe revealed that he was strongly built, thick-chested and wide in the shoulders. His limbs might have been twisted of coarse steel wire. But his joints appeared to be all knobs and knots like his malformed cheek, as if he had three joints everywhere ordinary men had only one. Perhaps that’s what made him so ungainly. Difficult to say how such deformity might affect a man’s fighting abilities.
As I surveyed the room from the doorway, Paulo popped into view beside me, his eyes squeezed shut and his arms thrown over his head. Vroon, Ob, and Zanore were supporting him. “Am I here yet?”
I couldn’t help but smile. “You got here.”
“Cripes. This is the damnedest - I told ‘em I wasn’t no good at imagining. They said they weren’t allowed to come in uninvited, but I said that if they didn’t get me in, I’d unbound their hides and bounce them so hard their new names would fall right off again.” He lowered his arms and craned his neck about as I had done. “Demons, how’d they squeeze all this inside a pile of rock?”
“Come on. We need to talk to this fellow.”
By the time we crossed the length of the hall, the Guardian had taken his seat on the dais, not the simple, fine-looking chair, but a backless stool just beside it. Though his apparel seemed plain for such imposing surroundings, he had set a thin gold circlet on his unruly black hair, and a heavy gold chain hung about his neck. From the chain dangled a gold key, embedded with rubies.
“Who is this person?” said the Guardian, glaring at Paulo.
“My companion,” I said as we approached the dais. “And a defender of justice. He allows no one to harm those he cares for.” I failed to mention that I was no longer included in that number, but the Guardian had no way of knowing that.
“You have no need for protection here. He was not invited to come into my fastness.” The man surveyed Paulo with flared nostrils and a curling lip.
“I’ll judg
e my own needs, sir. And I understand that this fastness is not yours, but was built for this king you are expecting. Is that not the case?”
“I am the Guardian. I hold the King’s Fastness until he comes. You are not he.”
“I make no claims. All I seek is to understand this land and perhaps a place to stay while I hear the story.” And as this person seemed to be the only one with the answers, I needed to stay here. Besides, I’d seen no one else along the road who looked capable of providing much in the way of hospitality.
“About the name you carry… ”
“I couldn’t possibly discuss names until my business is done. Mynoplas is so pleasant on the tongue and sits on the mind so solidly. I’ll try not to forget it. My companion and I are very tired after our long journey.”
“I suppose you wish refreshment.” He didn’t exactly grind his teeth, but he was very close to it.
“That would be very gracious. We’ve traveled a long way with little sustenance. And my new friends, your messengers” - the three of them were still bunched up at the door from the rotunda - “I’d like them taken care of in whatever way they’d prefer. They’ve done good service.”
“If you were the king, you could command me, but you are not. I decide who shares the king’s bounty, and it is not Singlar messengers. They must return to their fastnesses like any other of their kind.”
I didn’t know exactly what prompted the Guardian’s cooperation. Perhaps the anticipation of the mysterious naming ritual, or possibly the secret fear that, despite his assertion and my own, I might truly be the awaited king. But for whatever reason, I was grudgingly accommodated. After commanding a serving man to bring food, he himself led me up the curved staircase to a modest bedchamber.
It might have been a small bedchamber at Comigor: a narrow box-bed piled with blankets, two small square tables and a slightly larger round one, one chair, and two backless stools. On one table stood a washing bowl, and under it a lidded urn that I took for a night jar. Several lamps hung high on the walls, but the room had no hearth. A single slot window opened to the cold and very wet wind, though you couldn’t see out of it worth anything. The wood floor underneath it was damp and puddled.