The Wanderers

by Paula Brandon

  NINE

  The land hardened around them, its soft character giving way to flinty solidity. Stones lay scattered everywhere, their sharp-edged forms armoring the soil in tones of grey, steel blue, cream, and pale rose. Here and there the larger rocks thrust irregular contours out of the ground. The surface was inhospitable, even to well-shod feet, and all the travelers were glad to avail themselves of the smooth arcane way facilitating passage of Innesq Belandor’s wheeled chair.

  Time and distance passed. The stones proliferated, their weight pressing vegetation out of existence. For a while the stubborn green shoots persevered, but eventually seemed to concede defeat, and then there was nothing left but stone austerely clothing the hills and hollows, under skies smudged with the clouds and opalescent springtime mists of the Veiled Isles.

  The larger rocks rising above the sea of pebbles asserted themselves. The most conspicuous among them were composed of some distinctive local stone, veined with green and flecked with glinting crystal. These formations were curious in shape—tall, narrow, emphatically vertical as spires, almost suggesting human construction.

  As the hours wore on, the eccentric stones increased in height, girth, and profusion. They were rearing everywhere, and some of them were losing their perfect verticality. At the summit of the tallest, branching divisions appeared. Time marched, the stone spires grew taller and closer, and now all of them displayed crowning elaborations. The divisions spread, multiplied, met and intertwined overhead to form a forest canopy of stone.

  “What is all of this?” The Magnifico Aureste’s tone conveyed disapproval.

  “It’s the Desert of Trees,” Ojem Pridisso informed him. “Don’t you Faerlonnish even know your own island? No wonder it was so easy to take it away from you.”

  Aureste drew in his breath, prelude to the launch of a corrosive reply, caught his brother’s eye upon him, and clamped down on the words. Averting his eyes with disdain, he let his gaze wander, and soon perceived the sense of Pridisso’s reply. The surrounding stone formations did indeed resemble trees; quite remarkably so. Their trunks were textured with striations akin to bark, while the branching arms overhead replicated the complex structure of crooked limbs and twigs, with myriad small, shield-shaped tablets, translucently fine, suggesting the growth of leaves. He had heard of this place in the distant past. The name harked back to his boyhood schoolroom days. The Desert of Trees—an uninhabited stony expanse of peculiar character, located in the northern wastelands of Faerlonne. Its existence had seemed irrelevant to his own, and he had consigned the shred of knowledge to the mental scrap heap—until now.

  “What are these things?” Aureste wondered aloud. “Natural formations? Petrified trees? Sculptures?”

  “Opinions vary,” Sonnetia Corvestri spoke up.

  He turned his head, glad of the excuse to look at her. In the muted shade of the stone trees, she appeared young as a girl.

  “Everybody seems to agree that they’re the work of human hands,” Sonnetia continued. “But whose? When were they created? And for what purpose? Nobody’s certain. Some chroniclers believe the Desert of Trees to be a vast cemetery, each tree marking a grave, with the design of the branches affording a conduit of communication between the living and the dead. But nobody really knows. I read of this place when I was a girl,” she concluded upon a note of wonder, “but never dreamed that I’d actually see it.”

  Aureste’s thoughts warmed. There were doubtless many such marvelous sights that she had never witnessed. Neither, for that matter, had he. They might view them together, with the fresh, receptive eyes of youth. There were remarkable experiences to share; there was a whole world.

  His sense of hopeful satisfaction dwindled as time passed, and the Desert of Trees engulfed him, its stone canopy excluding much of the sky and light. Gradually, the sharp-edged rocks underfoot gave way to broad, symmetrical blocks; rectangular, regular, unmistakably the work of man. There was no knowing the age of this precisely engineered pavement, but the stones engaged perfectly, while the cement filling the interstices remained intact. Here, no arcane intervention was required to advance Innesq Belandor’s chair. For once, the wheels slid effortlessly over a level surface.

  The hours passed. The pavement stretched on, and some conception of the size of the place began to impress itself upon Aureste’s mind. The practical implications were clear. A land of stone furnished no fuel. There would be no fires for warmth, cooking, or light. Disagreeable, but no tragedy; the weather was relatively mild, and nobody would freeze. As for cooking, the group could subsist for a time on unheated dried or salted provisions. More vital by far was the question of water. The Veiled Isles were moist to the point of sogginess. Ordinarily, it was all but impossible to walk for a day or two in any direction without encountering a stream, a rivulet, or a pond—some source of fresh water. But here?

  They carried enough water with them to last for two days or so. After that, in the absence of a practical alternative, the arcanists of the party would have to expend a bit more of that jealously hoarded energy of theirs.

  In the shade of the stone forest, night fell early. Seated upon mats spread out on the pavement, the seven of them consumed a glum, cold meal. By the time they were done, the world about them had darkened out of existence. There was nothing to see, and for the moment, nothing to say. In less than companionable silence, they lay themselves down to slumber.

  Aureste did not expect sleep to come easily. The pavement beneath his thin mat was hard and cold. The chill spread, infusing itself into his bones. The darkness was intense. No wink of moon or star filtered down through the stone boughs; no final glow of a dying cookfire lightened the air. But something more added to the peculiar, alien atmosphere of this place. It took him a moment to identify the cause—silence, deep and dead. There was no sigh of breezes through the treetops. The night air was stirring, but the stone branches above never answered. Nor was there any sound of life—no cry of night bird, no stealthy rustlings in the bush, nor even the buzzing of insects—nothing. So it must feel to be buried alive in some cavern underground. The only sounds to be heard in that darkness were human in origin: the soft snuffle of breath, a cough or swallow, the small slap of shifting limbs. Who could sleep in such a place?

  And yet, he did. The sense of oppression faded, and he yielded to the dark. He slept—but not peacefully. In his dreams, It came, more powerful than ever before. Its voice was inside his mind, demanding and commanding. He fought hard to resist, but felt himself sliding toward delicious surrender.

  His sense of self kicked him awake. He sat up in the dark, heart pounding, body bathed in sweat that quickly chilled to clammy misery in the night air. His eyes were wide open, but he could see nothing, and the blindness intensified his uncharacteristic sense of panic. For the return to consciousness had not freed him from the terror of his dreams. The Other was still with him, huge and invincible.

  No. He was the Magnifico Aureste Belandor, ruler of his own mind. He knew how to eject or at least suppress intruders. Accordingly, he flexed the mental muscles and performed the psychic contortions that had served him well in the past. So far, such measures had proved effective.

  They did not prove so now.

  The Other withdrew from the center of his thoughts, but there was no retreat to the uncharted depths of his mind; not this time.

  This time, he could not free himself.

  He whispered into the darkness, too quietly to disturb anyone not already awake. “Innesq?”

  “Yes?” The whispered answer came at once from a few feet away.

  “It’s in my head.” Aureste could see nothing of his brother, but found Innesq’s proximity powerfully heartening. “I can’t get rid of It.”

  “I know.”

  “Do something.”

  There was a ghost of a sigh. The answer came slowly. “I cannot.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “I cannot help you save by large expenditure of energy and time. It would be no
small undertaking. I am sorry. I could teach you certain mental techniques that may offer some fortification.”

  Stifling an angry retort, Aureste managed to reply with adequately good grace, “Very well. In the morning, perhaps.”

  “It is this place, I believe,” Innesq volunteered.

  “What’s that?” Aureste encouraged, surprised.

  “This forest of stone, devoid of living beings, even such small creatures as those normally inhabiting the soil—devoid too of the simplest vegetation—offers no suitable habitation to the Overmind. There is nothing here to fill with Itself. It is for that reason, I believe, that we now draw a disquieting measure of Its attention.”

  “What should we do about it?”

  “It would be well to leave this place behind us, as quickly as may be.”

  In the morning, true to his word, Innesq furnished instruction to the three nonarcane members of the group: Aureste, Sonnetia, and Yvenza. The techniques that he taught were easily assimilated and, perhaps for that reason, indifferently effective. Aureste employed the new methods as directed, and the Other was consigned to a closed-off mental space. But the new equilibrium was precarious at best. The barriers between himself and the intruder were less walls than heavy curtains.

  Inside him, the Overmind stirred, testing the flimsy barriers.

  Travel resumed. They walked for hours, and still the level pavement stretched on before them. The lifeless silence likewise continued, broken only by the thud of footsteps, the slight rattle of Innesq’s moving chair, the occasional terse exchange of words. There was no vegetation, not so much as a speck of moss or mold discoloring the stone. They found no water.

  At midday they paused to eat and rest. The gloom of the lifeless place discouraged conversation; yet that infinity of stone trees was an astonishing spectacle, possessed of its own somber beauty. They spoke very little. Sonnetia wanted to know when the arcanists proposed another attempt to contact the uncommunicative Grix Orlazzu. Ojem Pridisso informed her, in the manner of an adult instructing a child, that any such effort must be postponed until such time as the group reached a more hospitable environment.

  The fellow’s tone was offensive. Longing to respond in kind, Aureste mentally reviewed suitable insults, until such considerations were driven away by a rush of instinctive dread.

  They were not alone.

  He sprang to his feet. Before them hovered two of those incorporeal, endlessly protean manifestations known as plague-wraiths. Aureste studied Them, half in fear, half in fascination. One of the entities was tall and narrow, with a profusion of undulant tentacles fading off into nothingness. The other was apparently composed of countless shreds and rags of vapor. Both seemed to revolve slowly, and both displayed the fathomless dark sockets suggestive of eyes.

  And as he stood marveling, he became aware that the voice of the Other was clear and powerful as never before. A sense of desperation rose up inside him then, and he fought it down with business-like dispatch. The burgeoning power of the voice in his mind coincided with the arrival of the wraiths. Presumably, evasion or destruction of the entities would afford relief. Judging by past experience, destruction was infeasible.

  Tearing his gaze from the visitants, he caught his brother’s eye. Innesq nodded. At once Aureste laid hands upon the wheeled chair and commenced pushing. Pausing only long enough to gather up all belongings, the others followed. Straight forward, due north, directly toward the plague-wraiths, they advanced. As they went, Innesq extended a hand to the side. Nissi grabbed it and held on. Sonnetia and her son were similarly handfasted. Yvenza and Pridisso brought up the rear—he exuding lordly confidence, she a steel-eyed walking weapon.

  Aureste had hoped that the wraiths would give way before them, cowed by a show of strength and resolve. He had hoped that They would evaporate like the morning dew before the encroaching day. They did not. He walked on, and the clamor in his head swelled as he neared Them.

  He wanted to stop and listen. He wanted to understand, accept, succumb. Instead, he quickened his pace. He was close enough now to discern the slivers of emptiness occasionally revealed by the slow shifting of the ragged wraith’s vaporous shreds. Close enough to catch the minute pulses and currents coursing along the tall wraith’s tentacular appendages. Close enough to drown in the depthless void of their eyes.

  The presence of his companions was all that kept him from halting then and there. Before them, he hardly dared display fear.

  The wheeled chair whispered the suggestion of a creak as it rolled over the pavement. Footsteps tapped stone, and some part of Aureste still half expected the wraiths to float off or evaporate at the last moment.

  But They lingered, and the voices swelled to fill him with alien yearnings. The chair encountered floating wisps of visible immateriality, and Innesq Belandor melted into the misty matter of the wraith, along with Nissi, who still clung to his hand. Aureste did not allow himself to pause; he realized that he did not want to pause. He took another two steps, and the world that he knew was no more. He found himself in a place where the muted light bent impossibly, the atmosphere starved his lungs, and the stone pavement underfoot possessed no more solidity than the dim reflection of a dream. The frame of the wheeled chair beneath his hands lost all substantiality; his hands themselves were transparent and unreal.

  It was not his first encounter with the phenomenon known in Vitrisi as a Pocket. It was, however, the first time that the experience excluded revulsion. There was fear, certainly, but also a great wonder, a sense of vast splendor, a longing for deeper knowledge. He was not part of this universe, but he could be. He could stay, and merge with eternity.

  But two recollections of the mundane sphere impinged upon him. There was some sort of tuneless, wordless singing or humming in a light, young voice. That peculiar little thing, Nissi. And there was his brother’s voice:

  “Aureste. Do not tarry here. Move.” The voice reverberated oddly, as if traveling through some unknown medium. He had to strain to make out the sense. “… Move.”

  He gathered that it mattered greatly to Innesq. Very well, then. Anything to oblige Innesq. He resumed walking, and another few paces brought him out of the Pocket, back into the world of solidity, and back to himself. He was dizzy, queasy, and terrified. Almost blindly he stumbled on a little way, seeking to place distance between himself and the seductive horror that had all but conquered him. He hardly dared to glance behind, for fear of discovering Sonnetia’s disappearance. She was a woman, devoid of arcane defenses. She might have given way, she might be lost, as Littri Zovaccio was lost.

  He halted and forced himself to look back. She was there, ashen-faced, leaning for support upon the arm of her son, who was himself pale to the lips. Sonnetia’s eyes were downcast or even closed, their expression impossible to judge, but she was still herself; the strong clasp of her hand on Vinzille’s revealed as much.

  Ojem Pridisso was frowning and muttering to himself, but appeared undamaged. Yvenza’s face was darkly suffused, veins at her temples bulging, jaw clenched. She had successfully resisted the Overmind. Pity.

  The two plague-wraiths were gone; or at least, no longer visible. The Overmind itself was far from gone. Its voice still spoke at the center of his thoughts. And another voice, this one outside of himself, but very close, was likewise making itself heard. Light and high, childish and ageless, wandering and tuneless. Aureste’s eyes jumped to the source: Nissi. She was looking even odder than usual, colorless eyes wide and unseeing, meager little body swaying, strange tuneless music spilling from her lips. It occurred to Aureste then that her marked peculiarity had matured into madness. If so, then her ability to function as an arcanist had surely failed. That would leave only three—one of them a mere youth. And even Aureste could not persuade himself that three would suffice to accomplish their task. For the first time since the journey began, he found himself obliged to contemplate that which did not bear contemplation—failure. He had never before seriously considered the po
ssibility.

  Gently disengaging the hand that she still clutched, Innesq leaned forward in his chair and lightly touched Nissi’s cheek.

  “Child,” he said. “Child.”

  Her eldritch vocalization broke off. Her eyes focused.

  “You have found a way to hide your mind from It?” he inquired.

  She nodded.

  “Could you teach us?”

  She shook her head.

  “Ah. You are not quite certain how you did it, perhaps?”

  Another nod.

  “I understand. It is very natural. But I ask you, my dear, to share your knowledge if and when you can. Will you do so?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  Difficult to fathom Innesq’s interest in such a mooncalf. But then, Aureste reflected, she might prove useful yet, and the arcanists could hardly afford to despise potential power, even stemming from the unlikeliest of sources. Innesq in particular would no doubt welcome all forms of assistance; he looked as if he needed it. He leaned heavily on the arm of his chair, and his face was uncharacteristically flushed with color. He appeared sick, perhaps feverish. He needed fresh, cool water, of which this unspeakable Desert of Trees offered none.

  Best to depart the place as quickly as possible. But Sonnetia was unsteady on her feet, Innesq’s breathing was alarmingly ragged, and Nissi seemed more dazed than usual. A certain period of recovery was indicated.

  Thus they paused, waiting a few minutes for their minds to clear and their assorted terrors to subside. During that time, the wraiths remained unseen, but the voices whispered, pervading the atmosphere, pushing and probing.

  Aureste could hardly judge whether They spoke inside or outside of his head, and the uncertainty maddened him. His impulses were violent, and there was no fit outlet; no tangible foe to attack and destroy. It would have been all too easy to turn the rage upon himself; to beat his head against the nearest tree and drive the discomforted Intruder forth.