by A. J. Smith
‘I was,’ she replied. ‘Before the Jekkans arrived, before the Volk walked from their stone, while the lands still roiled with chaos. Your Giants were still building their halls when I was sired from the void.’
She spoke of things not known to Utha. He doubted they were known to the highest Blue librarian of the great library in Arnon. Jekkans, Volk – he had a passing understanding of these things, but a time before the Giants?
‘How old are you?’ he asked, unable to conjure any particularly profound questions.
‘Do not try to understand deep time, Utha. It is not measured in years, but in the movement of the earth’s plates and the rising of mountains. I have seen a thousand million creatures come and go, and I find that I am not yet ready to die myself.’
‘Are there others of your kind? Dying somewhere in the lands of men?’
‘There was one other,’ she replied. ‘My insane daughter. You met her. The Queen in Red.’
Utha winced as images of the cracked, hateful old woman flooded his memory. ‘Yeah, we met,’ he whispered, feeling ashamed for something he didn’t truly remember. ‘She’s gone?’
Ruth nodded, but her fists clenched and her eyes were sad. ‘She sought to prolong her life by pledging to a dead god. A dead god who enslaved Atlach-Nacha and slowly ate her. Many of my kind pledged to him long ago. She hoped, like other Gorlan, that she could leach enough of his power to free our mother, not understanding the madness that would infect her. Over time, she thought only for her own survival. She orchestrated the corruption of Jaa’s faith to strengthen Shub-Nillurath.’ She paused, as if remembering things best forgotten. ‘When the Dead God finished consuming my mother, my daughter knew she would die. She did not want to die. As Shub-Nillurath gained strength and she prayed at his Footstep, the Queen in Red believed she kept herself alive.’
‘What?’ he exclaimed. ‘Do you realize what you just said? That the Karesians are destroying Tor Funweir because a fucking Gorlan doesn’t want to die.’
‘Yes. The destruction of the lands of men has been a side effect of my daughter’s misguided belief that Shub-Nillurath cared about her enough to keep her alive.’
‘That’s insane!’ he exclaimed angrily.
‘It is the Long War,’ she replied, as if that made everything okay. ‘You still view it from the point of view of an ant, staring up at an ancient tree. The lives of men are less than nothing to a creature of deep time. My daughter was beyond morality as you know it. Though she was insane; the thought of death had driven her so. She would have seen the world a carpet of blood if she could have been its queen.’
His hand twitched. Somewhere, in another life, Utha the Ghost was on a battlefield, wearing his Black tabard and fighting for the freedom of Tor Funweir. If a hundred things had happened differently, he would still wield his axe, Death’s Embrace, and would be fighting Hounds for the sake of the Ro and for the One God. He’d still be an ant, blind to the ancient tree, swaying above him and viewing things at a pace he could never comprehend.
‘You want me to save you?’ he asked, fighting anger. ‘Why should I?’
A warm smile appeared on her face, a relaxed expression of utter confidence, in sharp contrast to her vulnerable appearance. ‘Because you have no choice,’ she replied. ‘And by entering the tear, so that I could follow, you have already saved my life. But without me, you will never traverse the labyrinth. And what I ask is a small thing.’
‘I don’t even know how my power works,’ he said, now snarling the words. ‘I feel it, like an extra layer of skin giving me strength and knowledge, but it’s primal and unfocused. I could obliterate you as soon as help you.’
She stood, her chair disappearing into the shimmering air. At the base of the staircase, she absently picked a speck of red dust from the shadowy stone and gazed upward into the lightning-filled sky. ‘I am pregnant,’ she stated. ‘Randall of Darkwald will be a long-distance father, but his spawn still grows in my body.’
His anger disappeared in a moment of sudden laughter. Even in the realm of void Randall could bring him back to reality. He glanced behind him, hoping to catch a glimpse of the squire through the tear, but the rift was now empty, with nothing but dense rock on the other side. ‘That’s my boy,’ he said quietly.
Turning back to Ruth, he tried not to show his distain. ‘So, a good, solid man of Ro has given you a full belly. As long as he’s still alive, I couldn’t give a shit what happens to you.’
‘You’re not the ant any more, Utha,’ she said, with an audible cough in her throat. ‘You know your responsibility... you can hide behind petty indulgences of mortality, or you can embrace what you are – a demi-god of the void, a true Old Blood of the Shadow Giants.’
He was still sitting down and hadn’t noticed the crackle of divine energy that now crowned him. It rippled across every inch of his body, but was most concentrated around his head. ‘I want to go back,’ he muttered. ‘I want to go back to the lands of men.’ He stood and faced the tear, letting his chair disappear. He peered through the globed barrier, but could see no-one, just rock, as if the cavern had collapsed.
‘That is not possible,’ replied Ruth. ‘Not yet.’
‘Why not? I know I have power. Can I not make my own choices of how to use it?’
She glided from the base of the staircase to stand next to him, looking through the tear to the realm of form beyond. Then she nodded. ‘You can. You could focus all of your power and, through pain and exertion, dig your way back to Oron Kaa.’
For a moment he considered it. The compulsion in his blood to continue was powerful, but his stubbornness was no easy foe to defeat. He gritted his teeth and internally threw a curse at the Shadow Giant. The bastard had died ages before Utha was born, and yet the God’s influence cast its shadow over everything he’d done since. ‘I have free will,’ he snarled. ‘If I want to go back, I can go back.’
‘And do what?’ asked Ruth. ‘You don’t know what’s happened since you’ve been gone.’
He glared at her. ‘Yeah, a lot can happen in ten minutes,’ he replied ironically.
‘Deep time is as chaotic as it is deep. Ten minutes is not a useful concept here. While we’ve been talking, a hundred years could have passed, or no years at all. That is the nature of the void. By stepping through the tear, you are now adrift in time. There is no telling the kind of world you will see if you return now. Turn away from your past, Utha. You could waste centuries just staring at a land now lost to you.’
He tried to slow his breathing and not unleash a torrent of curses at the Gorlan mother. It was a struggle, but he bit his lip and managed to respond without swearing. ‘So, my only road is up the stairs and through the labyrinth? And my only companion is you?’
She slowly swept her arm towards the base of the red-tinged stairs. He followed her movements, taking in the spectacle once again. If the staircase ended, he couldn’t see where. If there was a gap in the charged, blue sky through which he could ascend, it was hidden behind a curtain of lightning and barely glimpsed shapes. ‘And the Guardian?’ he mused. ‘I have to fight it with no weapons?’ His eyes were drawn down to his crackling fingertips.
Ruth turned her back on him and strolled towards the staircase, her footsteps leaving a slight glow in her wake. ‘If you have to fight it we have done something horribly wrong,’ she replied. ‘Are you planning to join me?’
He didn’t want to. He really, really didn’t want to, but he was still a practical man of Ro at heart and knew when he’d exhausted his options. He took a last look through the tear and muttered, ‘So long, Randall of Darkwald. You’re a good lad... and you deserved better than me.’
It was the best he could do. Not quite an apology, but better than a cuff to the back of the head or a barbed insult. As a final statement to a man he trusted above all others, it was fairly weak, but it was truly the best he could do.
***
The red staircase was endless. At least, its end was nowhere in sight and
time had slowed to a tedious crawl. Utha had spent the first hour or so in stunned awe, trying to make sense of the towering structures that appeared, drifting in the void. But even endless vistas of eldritch power could get boring. Especially when you didn’t understand what you were looking at. The bright blue shards of light that cut the sky as lightning were void pathways, travelling in unknowable lines between realms, halls and dark places. Ruth said that they were also adrift in time, and could be the echoes of journeys undertaken a thousand years ago. Utha stopped finding them impressive after an hour or two.
What was the point of the fucking staircase? Was it symbolic, or just designed to kill through tedium? Why not have the labyrinth at ground level? If ground level was a useful concept in the lands beyond. Certainly the slow walk upwards did him good, physically if not mentally. The power returned to his limbs and whatever he’d endured in Oron Kaa was slowly washed away by his divine blood. But his returning power did nothing to soften the boredom. A bit of him wanted a swift spiritual kick to the head, after which he’d suddenly know what it truly meant to be a demi-god. As it was, he was left with the same cynical human edge he’d always had. A distrust of authority, a hatred of being told what to do – and most of all, an abiding pessimism that everything was ultimately fucked up.
‘Is there anyone out there I can talk to?’ he shouted to the crackling blue sky, unconcerned by whether or not Ruth thought he’d gone mad. ‘Maybe a reception area, where newcomers are given a guidebook?’
‘Have you gone mad already?’ asked Ruth. ‘I thought you’d last longer.’
‘Do these fucking stairs ever end?’
‘Sometimes,’ she replied.
‘Well, what does that mean? If you’re all I’ve got, you have to stop being so bloody obtuse.’
‘It means that the staircase has no fixed height. I expected you to have stepped from it by now, but you appear content to keep walking upwards. Is it because you find the view calming?’
He hung his head. ‘I’m still thinking as a man, aren’t I?’ He turned from the sky and looked up the endless red stairs. ‘I see a staircase and I walk up it until it stops. I expect to see a door or a landing. But it’s not really here, is it?’
‘It is here,’ she replied. ‘But it is not solid in the way of mortal structures, form versus void. Nothing here is made with stone, wood or metal, even if it appears to be. It is made of will and memory, or sometimes simply raw power. But all is changeable.’
Utha placed a hand on the red stone banister. ‘So, I can—’ He interrupted himself by twisting the banister into a strange new shape, folding it like ethereal clay. ‘But how do I know what to do with it? Do I just imagine a door leading where I want to go?’
‘If you wish,’ she replied. ‘Though it lacks elegance.’
He wove a pattern in the air, displacing the wide staircase.
‘Slowly,’ offered Ruth. ‘We do not want to find ourselves plummeting downwards through void space.’
For a change, her words didn’t annoy him. In fact, they were almost helpful. He concentrated on the area under their feet, making sure the solid, red stone remained. Then, with a flick of his wrists, he sent everything else away. The red turned to blue, then black, and finally grey, as it rushed through the crackling sky like a new structure, perhaps a bridge or a new void path. It appeared to be made of solid blocks of grey stone, a pleasing testament to his previous life in Tor Funweir. The Ro built everything in grey blocks and he nodded in approval when it was done. ‘A good, solid bridge,’ he said with a smile. ‘Now that’s much better than a door.’
‘I said you didn’t need instruction,’ said Ruth, the corner of her mouth curling into the smallest of smiles. ‘Just a pointer here and there.’
Utha swept his arm towards the bridge, mimicking Ruth’s earlier gesture. ‘After you, my lady,’ he said, taking her by surprise with his mock formality.
She frowned at him, but stepped off the red circle and on to the new bridge. Railings appeared under her hand and a high, stone canopy, reminding Utha of the Black chapterhouse in Ro Tiris. It was gratifying that the styles and engineering of Tor Funweir were evident as he forged his first structures from the void.
‘There’ll be a balcony at the end,’ he called after Ruth. ‘We’ll be able to see the labyrinth.’
It was strange to know these things, but they just appeared, as if he’d always known them. He now understood that, if he willed it, it would happen. At least, that was the case when in the void. When in the realm of someone or something else... he didn’t know.
He ventured along his bridge a few paces behind Ruth, and instantly felt better. It looked, felt, even smelled like a castle of Ro. He resolved to use a similar template for anything else he might build. It was a small way to remember who he had been, and the land now lost to him. At the end of the bridge he joined Ruth on the simple balcony and looked out into the realm of another. At first it was hard to see beyond the dense flashes of lightning, but slowly a sprawling grey maze appeared. Crackling black and white clouds rolled across the structures, obscuring any fine detail, but it was unmistakably a labyrinth, criss-crossed by shallow passages and spirals. From above, it looked like the kind of bizarre abstract painting an insane Karesian might paint.
‘Who built it?’ he asked. ‘Jaa?’
Ruth was scanning the maddening lines of the labyrinth, perhaps searching for the exit or a safe route through. ‘I don’t believe so,’ she replied, not looking at him. ‘It would have the reek of fear and malice. No, this was built by something else.’
Utha knew that stepping from his balcony would place him within the realm of another. Could he still twist its energy to his will? Or would he have to match his power against the Guardian? ‘If you know what guards this place, you’d better tell me now.’
‘All I know is that it was built to defend the tear. The tear was caused by Shub-Nillurath’s footstep... so it follows that nothing less than a Giant would be master here.’
He stepped from his balcony anyway, despite the lack of reassurance from the Gorlan mother. He created some more steps, leading down to the edge of the realm. Standing tall and pushing back his shoulders, Utha entered the labyrinth.
Suddenly the smell of ash and smouldering rocks filled his nostrils. It was hotter than Oron Kaa and he was glad that he wore only a light robe. Anything else and he’d be drenched in sweat within minutes. The walls were moss-covered, and formed of huge, interlocking boulders. At ground level, all he could see was a single corridor, passing beyond sight in both directions. High above, the void sky still crackled with energy, giving a sense of distance unlike anything he could glimpse in the lands of men.
Ruth appeared next to him, travelling into the labyrinth in Utha’s wake. She poked at the dusty stone walls, pulling forth a small, yellow flower. ‘Charming,’ she said. ‘A trifle warm for my tastes.’
‘Not much of a labyrinth,’ he replied. ‘There are only two directions. Or can I change things here?’
She admired the flower, tickling its petals with her fingertips. ‘It is the domain of another. To attempt to alter it means pitting your might against the realm’s master.’
He thought it unwise to try, and decided to simply pick a direction. The way he was facing seemed appropriate enough and, saying nothing more to Ruth, he started walking. It was the first realm he’d visited and even the sparse walls and sprouting weeds held considerable fascination. Had it been willed into being like Utha’s bridge, or meticulously fashioned, an inch at a time? The walls were irregular and the dotted flowers made him think there was a thoughtful mind behind its construction. It didn’t loom over him and there were no disquieting sounds or whistle of wind. Despite its harsh outward appearance, the labyrinth was not a hostile realm.
‘You are interesting,’ said a rumbling voice from far away.
Utha stopped and instinctively reached for a sword that wasn’t there. Ruth joined him, but her face showed that she did not know who or w
hat had spoken.
‘Well, your labyrinth isn’t,’ replied Utha, gritting his teeth and preparing to fight. He didn’t know if he could punch the Guardian, or perhaps wrestle him into submission, but he’d give it a try.
‘Do you not like it?’ asked the voice, booming as a thunderous echo, and coming from all directions at once.
‘I like the flowers,’ offered Ruth. ‘A nice touch.’
‘How nice of you to say.’ The voice brightened, as if the mouth it belonged to was smiling. ‘The flowers are a recent addition. I tired of looking at dark things. I wanted to see something pretty.’
Utha straightened, lowering his clenched fists. He remained in a seemingly endless stone corridor, but he still felt no hostility, from either the realm or its master. If anything, he felt a benign, almost warm, presence, floating over him, like a welcoming blanket. ‘Is this a trick?’ he asked, letting cynicism take over. ‘Are you some kind of sly beast that lulls your prey into complacence?’
Ruth put a hand on his arm, gently suggesting he remain calm. It was perhaps the first time she’d touched him and made Utha think she was just as anxious as him.
‘Do you know what this thing is?’ he whispered.
‘We have reached the limits of my knowledge, I’m afraid. From here on in, you must be my guide.’
The voice rumbled into an immense growl, as if a huge monster was clearing its throat. ‘Am I a sly beast? Yes, I believe that could be said to be correct. However, I do not wish to lull you, and nor are you my prey. You are a visitor, the first visitor to enter my realm from the land of form.’
Utha stood in the middle of the passageway and looked off into the distance. It was impossible to tell how far he was from the Guardian, but he felt that the master of the labyrinth could be wherever he wished; he might be speaking from a few feet away, deciding the fate of the visitors. ‘There’s no fight here, is there?’ asked the Old Blood, almost disappointed.
‘Oh, no,’ replied the rumbling voice. ‘Fighting is largely the province of mortals. Here, life ends through destruction, obliteration, disintegration... fighting is very rarely involved.’