River of Blue Fire

by Tad Williams

  Fredericks caught up with him before a minute had passed, but seemed to have run out of things to say.

  After that, Orlando was determined not to stop again for a while, and they made better time. He needed oxygen, but deep breaths made him cough, so Orlando went back to an RL trick he had developed through numerous bronchial illnesses, breathing shallowly through his nose. He slowed his pace, conceding a little to practicality, but tried to keep his progress steady to make up for it. The moon floated along the horizon and vanished behind a wall of clouds, the first clouds they had seen since reaching this Egypt.

  “Do you think it will rain?” Fredericks asked hopefully.

  “No. Upaut said it hadn’t rained in years in this simworld.”

  When the sky began to lighten they made camp in a jumble of boulders a hundred meters up from the river. Relieved of the need to be as strong as his healthy companion, Orlando collapsed immediately. He barely felt Fredericks pulling the Pithlit-robe over him like a blanket before sleep dragged him down.

  The woman who had urged him to tell Beezle what the agent wanted to hear appeared in the shadow-lands of his dream.

  She wore only a skirt of some transparent material, but even with her small breasts and gently rounded, almost childlike stomach presented unselfconsciously to his view, and despite his own frustrations and longings, her presence was not sexual. Her eyes, thickly outlined in black, seemed to gaze through him rather than at him. She held something against her bosom, but her dark hair, which hung down in long thick plaits, at first obscured it. It was only when she floated close enough that in waking life he could have touched her (but in the dream he seemed quite immobile, a bodiless observer) and extended her hand to him, that he saw she held a feather, an iridescent plume as long as her forearm which was no color he could name.

  Who are you? he asked, or thought he asked.

  I am Ma’at, she said. Goddess of Justice. When your soul is weighed in the final accounting, it is this feather, the weight of Truth, which will be placed in the other balance of the scale. If your soul is heavier, then you will be cast into outer darkness. If your balance rises, you will be taken with the other just and good ones into the barque of Ra, and conveyed to the West to live in bliss.

  She stated this with the kind of calm certainty exhibited by tour guides, or documentary voice-overs. Although he had never seen her before, there was something familiar about her, but his dreaming mind could not summon the memory.

  Why are you telling me all this? asked Orlando.

  Because that is my task. Because I am one of the gods of this place. She paused, and for the first time seemed thrown out of her rhythm, as though Orlando’s question had raised unexpected problems. Because I do not know who you are, but you are wandering in and out of the borderlands, she said finally. Your presence disturbs me.

  Borderlands? Orlando tried to make sense of what she was saying, but the goddess Ma’at was fading into shadow. What borderlands?

  She did not answer. He woke to find the late afternoon sun still blazing in the sky. He was wheezing, and the effort to fill his lungs drove the dream-goddess from his mind.

  Halfway through the fifth night in the desert and the sands showed no signs of ending, or even changing in character. The Nile wound through the empty lands, dwindling into the starlit distance until there was nothing to see but a slack black string. The dimes stretched on and on before them, reshaped by the flurrying wind, constantly changing, constantly the same.

  But something was different.

  Fredericks noticed it, too. “Do you . . . hear something?”

  Orlando, slogging grimly through the ankle-high sands, shook his head. “It’s not a sound.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s not a sound.” He took a deep breath and slowed his pace to an even more deliberate trudge. “I’ve been feeling it for a while. It’s a vibration, kind of, but it’s almost a smell, too. It’s a lot of things, but at first it just seemed like some noise to me. It’s been in front of us for a while, and it’s getting stronger.”

  “Yeah, I’m beginning to see what you mean.” Fredericks winced. “What do you think it is?” He was struggling to keep his voice firmly in the deeper registers.

  “I don’t know. It’s not good, whatever it is.”

  “What do we do?”

  “What can we do? Keep going. We don’t have any other choices, Frederico, remember?”

  The sensation continued to grow and deepen. Soon what once had been no more annoying than a buzzing insect, or the faint whiff of something sour, was beginning to dominate Orlando’s thoughts. It felt as though he had a throbbing headache, but one that was located somewhere out in the distance rather than inside his head.

  Deciding that, whatever it might be, it was definitely the kind of thing they should avoid, if just for their own comfort, they altered their course. The Nile was broad here, the opposite bank invisible even by bright moonlight, so instead of trying to cross the river they swung wide into the western desert. But changing the angle did nothing: however broad their turn, the sensation still seemed to wait just ahead. It filled the night with its presence now, cold and dreadful and inescapable.

  It feels like that death-row simulation, Orlando thought, remembering the days when he sought out such things voluntarily, in the hope of desensitzing himself. Like waiting for them to come get you for execution, and knowing there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.

  “It’s the thing from the Freezer,” he said out loud. “Waiting for us. It’s that thing that you called the devil, the real devil.”

  Fredericks just grunted. He knew.

  Orlando wanted nothing more than to be able to call his parents to come and save him. In fact, he realized, he wanted his mother. At another time, that realization would have shamed him, but not now.

  He just wanted to be held and told everything would be all right. But the hell of it was, Vivien might be only real inches away, but she was simultaneously on the other side of the universe. It hurt, it hurt.

  Beside him, Fredericks was suffering too, fighting back tears, determined to play the masculine role in just as stupid a way as any boy.

  They changed direction yet again, doing their best to double back on their own tracks, although the sands had shifted and it was hard to tell, but it made no difference. The cloud of dread still hung before them.

  We have to go to it, Orlando realized dully. We don’t have a choice.

  Beside him, Fredericks’ face had lost its usual stolidity; his eyes showed white all around, the stare of an animal at bay. “I don’t want to be here—don’t want to be here,” his friend babbled quietly. “Don’t want to do this . . .”

  Orlando reached out and touched Fredericks’ shoulder, trying to give his friend strength, but his own voice was dense with despair. “We might as well take the direction we were going.” He turned, parallel once more to the flow of the Nile. “It won’t make any difference even if we go all the way back to where we started.”

  Fredericks had no strength to argue; he dropped his head and followed Orlando. Something was actively pulling them forward now, sucking at them as though they were planets fallen into the grip of a dark star. Stiff-legged, fighting for balance, they felt it waiting, but could not stop.

  As they crested a long rise, they finally saw it. To Orlando, just reaching it was like being punched in the stomach, a sickening thump that drove out his breath.

  Nothing about it should have been so terrible. The temple lay nestled in a desert valley, lit more brightly than moonlight alone should have accomplished, surrounded by low cliffs and a vast, uneven ring of broken stones. Along its facade stood an unbroken line of columns, a bleak brown grin like a skull’s that seemed to stretch for miles. Although Orlando and Fredericks looked down on the valley from the top of a tall dune
, some trick of perspective made the temple simultaneously seem to tower above them, as though the night itself had been bent inward, distorted by the temple’s dreadful gravity.

  Orlando had never seen anything that looked so completely dead and deserted as that place, so bleak and empty and lifeless; but at the same time, he knew that something lived within, something they had felt for hours before reaching this place, a life so profoundly wrong that just looking at its den made every cell in Orlando’s body, every electrical impulse of his thought, scream for him to run away. And despite the fact that he knew running would be useless—that any path they took would simply curve through simulation space and bring them back to this high place again—if not for the spell the temple cast, the numbing, paralyzing field of misery that was turning him into unmoving stone, he would still have run away if he could, run until he collapsed, then crawled until his heart stopped.

  At least a minute passed before either of them spoke, but every second was a struggle to resist the valley’s pull.

  “It’s . . . it’s a really bad place,” Fredericks finally rasped, words catching in his dry mouth. “Worse . . . th-than the freezer. Oh, God, Orlando, I want . . . Oh, please, God, I want to go home.”

  Orlando did not respond: he knew he would need every bit of his strength for what he was about to try. He stared at his foot, then leaned against the temple’s compulsive force and watched as his foot slowly lifted free of the sand. He was far, far away, watching something happening on a distant planet through a powerful telescope, and it needed all his concentration to keep that foot (which seemed only faintly his own) moving. He turned it a little to one side, then planted it again. He lifted the other and did the same thing, a painstaking, remote operation. Every second that he resisted the black gravity of the valley felt impossibly tiring.

  As he inched himself away from the temple, he reached out a cement-heavy arm toward Fredericks; when he touched his friend, it seemed to transfer a little energy, a spark of life. Face screwed up in an expression of painful, fearful concentration, Fredericks too began to pivot in a small circle, fighting for every degree. When they had turned far enough that the temple finally disappeared behind them—disappeared from vision, but not from their senses: they could feel it at the end of every quivering nerve they had—the pressure became a little less. Orlando was even able to take a first full step away from the valley, muscles quivering and sweat streaming from every pore.

  He staggered a few more meters, each pace an agony, as though he were detaching himself from some horrible, many-tendriled plant which had sunk fibers into his very cells. Then, when perhaps half the rise lay between him and the view of the temple, he felt the directional pulse begin to shift, as though the whole massive complex and its ghastly aura of attraction were floating free. In this moment the pressures were abruptly equalized, behind and before, but he knew that if he continued on, no matter which direction, he would again find the temple valley and its nameless inhabitant in front of him. Limp, but drawing on a reserve of strength he had not known he had, he dropped and began to dig.

  Fredericks caught up with him, and after a moment tumbled to the sand and began to help, scraping in the clumsy, damaged fashion of an animal that had survived a lightning-strike. When they had dug down a couple of feet into the sand, Orlando let himself roll into the shallow pit. Fredericks crawled in after him, and for a long time they simply lay in a tangled heap, gasping for breath.

  “We’ll never get around that thing.” Fredericks’ voice sounded squeezed, as though something had collapsed his ribcage. “It’s going to pull us in. It’s going to get us.”

  Orlando could not think about it any more. He had used all his strength just to break the circuit for a moment and bring them this temporary respite. Fredericks was right, but Orlando simply could not think about it. Exhaustion was pulling him down as surely as the temple had, but this time he did not resist.

  It was so preposterous that even the logic of dreams was insulted.

  The matte-black pyramid stretched so high that it had no visible apex, so wide that it was literally impossible to look in another direction. The visible slivers of night sky on either side of it, though lit only by a few faint stars, seemed almost bright blue in comparison to the pyramid’s profound blackness.

  He knew he could not deal with this heart-stopping thing alone, and called for the beetle who had spoken to him in other dreams, but he was afraid to raise his voice, and although he called for a long time, the creature did not answer him. But someone did.

  He cannot come, your servant. I do not feel him here. She said it as someone who carries sad news for which she feels a small responsibility. He is in other dreams, perhaps.

  Orlando turned and found her hovering beside him, a shadow barely distinguishable from the night, the feather still clasped in her hand as though it might be some defense against the impossible black pyramid.

  Can’t you help me? He turned back to the shape which spread so high and so far to either side there seemed nothing else on that side of the world. I can’t get past this thing. We’re going to die here if no one helps us.

  You cannot avoid him, she said, not unkindly. There is no story like that. He is at the center of all of this. He must be faced.

  Is it . . . is it Osiris?

  Her face, although hard to see in darkness, seemed to twist as if in pain. No, she said. No, the one who wants your life is something far stranger than that. He is the Lord Set, the sleeping one who rules the Red Lands. He is the one who dreams—we are his nightmares. He dreams you, too.

  He had heard those words before, somewhere. Who are you? he demanded.

  Ma’at, the goddess of Justice, she said.

  I mean really.

  I am a voice, she said,—a word. I am a moment. It does not matter.

  And suddenly it came to him. You’re the woman from the freezer. Sleeping Beauty. You talked to us before. You told us to find our friends at Priam’s Walls.

  She did not speak, and now her face was entirely veiled in shadow.

  But why don’t you help us? You must be trapped here, like us! If we don’t get around this temple and out of this desert, we’ll die, and so will a lot of other people. And all the children, the lost children!

  She had drifted a little way back, and when more silence followed his plea, he was sure he had lost her. He could see only an outline, a hole in the night sky, the silhouette of an angel.

  Please? He reached out a hand. Please?

  Remember, this is a dream, she told him, but it sounded as though she were the one half-asleep.

  I know you can do something, Orlando said, and suddenly it did not matter whether this was a dream or not. Something important was within his grasp, perhaps for the last time, and he could not afford to let go. You know things. Help us get out of here.

  There are balances you cannot understand, she protested, her voice faint as a wind that did not move even the most powdery sand. Things you do not know . . .

  Please?

  She bowed her head then and raised one hand, showing him her palm, ghost-pale against the darkness. He could see a star right through it. Go forward until you see my sign, she whispered. I pray that I do the right thing. We are too many, and there is no single one to guide us.

  What are you talking about? She seemed willing to help him, but he could make no sense of what she was saying. He felt the chance slipping away. Go forward. . . ?

  Walk into the darkness, she said. You will see my sign. . . .

  Then she was gone, and the great pyramid shredded like smoke, and all that remained was the black sky and a single bright star.

  His cheek pressed flat against the sand, his mouth half-full of grit, Orlando opened his eyes. The star and its dimmer kindred were all that remained to light the night. The moon had gone long ago. The sense of what lay just
the other side of the dune was undiminished: the temple was a whirlpool, and they were already in its vortex. No matter which way they turned, they would not escape it.

  Walk into the darkness . . .

  But she couldn’t have meant . . .

  Walk into the darkness . . .

  Orlando sat up, heart speeding. If he thought about it too long, even in the midst of all this other madness—this virtual universe, this imaginary Egypt, this temple with the awful vitality of a vampire’s secret resting place—he would not be able to believe it. She had come to him in a dream. She had told him what to do. The fact that it was the thing he least wanted to do made it all the more critical he not waste time thinking any longer.

  He shook Fredericks awake.

  “What? What?”

  “Come on. Follow me.” He scrambled up the side of the shallow pit and then stood. Every joint burned like fire and his breath smoldered in his lungs, but he could not afford to think about those things, either. “Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Just come with me. Just . . . follow.”

  Fredericks watched Orlando’s first hobbling steps with astonishment all over his sleepy face, an astonishment which turned swiftly to terror. “What are you doing? That . . . that thing’s over there.”

  “That thing’s everywhere.”

  “Orlando! Come back!”

  He ignored his friend and kept moving forward. The last thing he could afford to do was listen to sense.

  “Gardiner, you’re scaring me! Are you scanbarking beyond the uttermost, or what? Orlando! Come back!”

  One foot in front of the other—left, right, left. He felt the horrible magnetic tug of the temple, and suddenly the struggle was not to limp forward, but to keep from running toward it. Something had its grip on him now, a clutch so powerful that if his legs had fallen off he would have dragged himself ahead with his arms alone. The presence opened before him like a poisonous flower calling to a small crawling thing, offering a voiceless, formless, but virtually irresistible invitation. It wanted him. It wanted his life.