by Brian Daley
He stopped trying to keep up with their imbibing early in the game, though, not being much of a tippler. They regaled him with stories of their adventures in the Beyonds, each more improbable than the last, nearly all bearing a pointed moral; rules of chivalry and valor and aspirations to glory were fine in Dreambourn, but had a knack of getting a man killed in the Beyonds. It was seldom the case that when a man died among the fluxes of the infinite Realities, word of the circumstances became known. Usually he just failed to show up at one of the periodic rendezvous and couldn’t be located. Thus, whether he’d died bravely, foolishly, or in some cowardly manner made little difference. He was simply and finally missing and presumed dead.
All of that made Crassmor even less at ease with the idea of going into the Beyonds, but it bolstered his determination to survive them, mind his own affairs, and stay out of the way of trouble.
And so the gambling—mostly for markers—and skirt chasing and flagon emptying and carousing went on. It gradually dawned on Crassmor that one or another of the Lost Boys was often absent from the group. He came to realize that, one by one, they’d been slipping off to present themselves to Combard, who was shut away in his private chambers, to offer their condolences. Sandur had been friend to these incorrigibles and had enjoyed their company more than that of many reputable knights. Each of these rascals had some memory of a moment shared with the Outrider, or of a deed he’d done. Each presented it to Combard as a sign that he, too, revered Sandur.
None spoke of it. Crassmor assumed that Combard received them with his usual reserve, but knew that those visits would have tremendous meaning to the old man. Crassmor found himself happy that they’d come; in the end, he felt a little less awful about his exile.
The Lost Boys’ next and final stop was scheduled to be House Comullo. Teerse had always extended them all the hospitality he could, and Willow delighted in their buffoonish company, while they regarded her as a kindred spirit. Hearing that they were bound that way, Crassmor cast about for some way to get a message to her; he’d had no doubt that his father would quickly know of any visit he might make to her, and trusted no one in House Tarrant to keep silent in the matter of delivering a note. But by the time he was aware of their destination the Lost Boys were collecting themselves and such of their number as were no longer ambulatory and calling for their wagons. Lacking writing materials, Crassmor debated taking one of them aside and imploring his help in contacting Willow. But Combard had come down to see the Lost Boys off; it seemed hopeless.
Tarafon Quickhand stepped over to bid Crassmor farewell with a handclasp. “You depart into the Beyonds tomorrow?” he asked. Between one word and the next, the heir’s ring disappeared from Crassmor’s finger.
Before Crassmor could overcome his surprise, old Hoowar Roisterer added, “Alone and with no honor guard, eh? Ummmph, ’tis best; gives a man leeway.” He belched. “Going by the main routes, are you, then?”
Crassmor spared a quick look to where Combard was trading arm-clasps with Pony-Keg. “No, the high roads for me, up through Blue Dell and a last look from Star Scarp.” Tarafon and Hoowar nodded, making no other point about it. Very shortly, the Lost Boys were prepared for leave-taking.
Crassmor pulled on his gauntlets to conceal the absence of the heir’s ring. Combard never even noticed, watching the Lost Boys wave and holler farewell as they left. Then the Lord of House Tarrant returned to his chambers.
When Crassmor had finished his own leave-taking with the rest of the household the next day, Combard reappeared. Crassmor still had the feel of his mother’s sad kiss on his cheek; she had dissolved into racking sobs when he’d gone out the door. There was a last rite to which Crassmor had claim. He presented himself before his father and comrade in the Order of the Circle of Onn. Combard didn’t flinch from the ritual embrace, though Crassmor felt the conflict in the old man’s body as stern reserve yielded to a warmer clasp.
Combard held Crassmor out at arm’s length and repeated, “Go forth, Knight of the Circle. Prove yourself worthy.”
Crassmor stepped out of his father’s grip, burdening what should have been a standard reply with the hurt and resentment he felt.
“At your command.”
He turned away as quickly as he could from the pain in Combard’s face, which always seemed so ready to change to anger.
It was a relief to be out of House Tarrant, to be on the move, even if that move was into the Beyonds. Crassmor let the war horse find his own pace and considered his lot in life.
This was the beginning of something new, at any rate. More importantly, it was an end to the supreme pain of those last days with Combard in House Tarrant. Riding alone from the bitter memories of the mists of Blue Dell, he turned and found his way up onto Star Scarp. He belabored himself for not having tried once more for reconciliation with his father before leaving, but another, even more vital matter was on his mind. He tried not to think about it and risk too great a disappointment if Willow did not appear.
Star Scarp, a small claimancy of soil between the Singularity and approaches to the Beyonds, lay amid peaks and crags that reared to break the fabulous night sky. The place was carpeted with low, soft moss, golden yellow in the daylight, which by some peculiar property thrived at this extreme elevation. There were small pavilions of tightly joined granite and trellises with twisted vines. There were cooking pits and long slab tables flanked by smooth benches, all cut from single pieces of marble. It had been a place of Tarrant celebration in times gone by, though any excursion out onto Star Scarp risked unkind weather.
The weather tonight was benign and, except for a few tenuous clouds at lower altitudes, clear. Crassmor felt himself suspended under the canopy of the blazing night sky of the Singularity. That sky, influenced by the many Realities, hosting numerous visitors from them, was always brilliant. He gazed up at a rich star broth of radiant planets, chains of multicolored moons, wandering comets, and brief, spectacular meteor showers. The night sky held nebulae, clouds of muted incandescence whose names had never been spoken, and shifting constellations.
He pulled the chilly air into his lungs, finding that, gregarious as he was by nature, recent events had made it more pleasant to be alone.
No—not quite alone. He saw a horse with a sidesaddle tethered near one of the pavilions. His heart banged in his chest; one hand felt the finger where the heir’s ring had been.
A figure stepped out of the shadows. Winds played around Willow. Her gown and robes were fashioned from the plumage of uncounted birds, a bewildering blend of gleaming colors and intricate, shining markings under the night sky.
He was before her in a moment, unsure what to do or say next, letting fall the rein of his horse. The fear of all fears was that she’d come to say good-bye forever.
Willow smiled the smile he could picture by simply shutting his eyes. His fear was unmade. She held out a golden model of the Circle of Onn, the heir’s ring of House Tarrant. His fingers enclosed it.
“How is it that a Knight of Onn rides out without a favor?” Willow asked.
He blinked. Bearing proof of some lady’s affection had never even occurred to him. She took her scarf, a trailing band of crimson silk, from her throat and passed it once around his neck. The act should have been accompanied by an exhortation that he do brave deeds, bring honor to himself and his lady, and uphold the ideals of his Order.
Instead, she bade him, “Come back to me, Crassmor.” He took her into his arms and kissed her, no chaste chivalrous kiss, even at first. It was a lover’s kiss before it was over.
“My single ambition!” he proclaimed when they’d parted for a moment.
She laughed in the way he so adored. Willow brushed the backs of her fingers across his cheek. “My father advised me that there is no thing that cannot change with time, even Combard’s blighted heart.”
He moved to his war horse, worked knots, and took down his thick bedroll. They tethered their horses where they couldn’t be seen from the road, the
n shared the bedroll under the fantastic night sky of the Singularity.
- PART II –
* * *
“BY WHAT ETERNAL STREAMS…”
Chapter 9
RECRUITED
Sir Crassmor would not have become involved in the tavern altercation—which proved far less casual than he’d assumed—and would thus have been spared the acquaintance of the giant of John’s Winch, if he’d been sober. However, he’d had something more than his usually modest evening’s ration of cups, so engrossed was he in chatting with the new barkeep, who was a god.
He wasn’t a true deity, of course, or at any rate, not any longer. Yet the barkeep boasted a handsome, flashing metallic sheen to his golden skin and was possessed of a head more elephantine than human. He’d been worshipped in his own Reality, but fluxes and anomalous events had deposited him, as they had so many others, here in the Beyonds.
The erstwhile all-powerful was, Crassmor noticed, reverting to a more mundane sort of fellow. The metamorphosis was attributable, the knight supposed, to the nearness of the Singularity. The unique laws that applied there tended, among other things, to dampen the power and efficacy of outside mystical forces, magical energies, and the like. The god, who’d given up the unmanageable appellation “Tsoora-Rin-Voor” in favor of the far more convenient “Bill,” had lost all of his divine powers with the exception of some very passable sleight of hand he’d demonstrated in the course of the evening. Bill’s plummet to mere mortality was graphically pointed up by the fact that the ornate settings on his stubby tusks had been stripped of their gems for subsistence funds.
The two being the only ones in the tiny, drafty, rancid-smelling tavern in the storm-racked mountain village of Toe Hold that night, Crassmor stood a few extra rounds. He was repaid with a tale of ecclesiastical unheaval and religious revisionism. They whiled away the evening, happily leaning on elbows, surrounded by rows of crudely thrown mugs, gouged planks of bar, walls, tables, and benches, deep accumulations of burned grease layering the rafters, and whistling avenues of chilly wind racing through the chinks. Then the trouble started.
This was not to say that Sir Crassmor, who’d come to be known in certain circles as the Reluctant Knight, was any wooer of Dame Combat. He’d tried seeking the heroic role and all he’d gotten was being cast out into the Beyonds. Now he’d resolved to pursue peace and pleasure. His resolution had drawn him to Toe Hold. High in the weather-punished mountains, it was off normal routes and its people practiced the exemplary habit of minding their own business. Even a Knight of Onn could take his ease with little fear of having some risky job of errantry thrust upon him.
As extra insurance, Crassmor still had his right wrist laced into a leather brace to feign disability, though it had in point of fact healed since his previous misadventure. He’d arrived with a not-inconsiderable clutch of money, sufficient to see him through the bitterest of the local storm season if he were prudent. Toe Hold, a precarious jutting of stone buildings joined to steep crags in a marriage of expediency, was no Singularity pleasure city, but neither in all fairness could it be called cheerless. It listed an adequate inn, a well-stocked grog shop, a tolerant religion, and weekly dances. In addition, there were impromptu gatherings of amateur musicians from the village and the general area, a pleasant little public bathhouse, decent food, and cooks who knew how to prepare it. Perhaps as a reaction to their environment, Toe Hold’s residents liked to dress in bright colors and were more gregarious than Crassmor had expected.
He’d taken an ample room at the inn, wangling long-term rates. Ironically, the room cost less because it was high up in the building and at the back of it, rather than overlooking the village’s diminutive marketplace. Thus, he was treated to a spectacular view of vertical cliffs and twisting gorges, lightning-lit peaks and wind-scoured canyons. When the frequent downpours came, runoff created a flume of waterfall which exited the town just under his window to join a score more spouts in the roiling torrent hundreds of feet below. It was a damp place, but the moss, and lichen growing throughout the inn and the smell of mildew all around bothered him not at all. To Crassmor they only spoke of life going about its business unpestered.
When the weather broke, there were the walkways, escarpment paths, and low towers of Toe Hold, where he would pace and think homesick thoughts. When it was inclement, there was his journal to write in and such books, folios, and scrolls as he could buy or borrow in the village. At times he tried to capture land- and skyscapes with a woefully limited collection of pastels. He also renewed his determined plectrum-assaults on his old nemesis, the thirty-stringed zither.
The mountaineers, who knew well the importance of privacy and mutual consideration, hadn’t bothered him with questions and seemed capable of settling all their own problems themselves. He assumed that they knew that he was one of the Lost Boys, but his respite had been undisturbed. He’d spent many hours daydreaming of Willow, and of his homecoming.
The talk between Crassmor and Bill had turned to the nature of the Singularity. The barkeep was curious about the changes that had overtaken him as he’d drawn closer to it in his wanderings. “My worshippers had weapons of great efficacy; had they but entered your Singularity, they’d soon have ruled it,” he said a bit wistfully.
Sir Crassmor burped. “That’s no less than the whole point, don’t you see? The very substance of the Singularity resists changes like that.”
Bill drew them both another round of the authoritative local stout. The knight went on. “Strange weapons, foreign magics, and the like have found their way into the Charmed Realm from time to time. Events tend to work against them—but not always. Ironwicca’s scholars suggest that it’s some fundamental counterforce that staves off complete chaos, which nature abhors even more than it does a vacuum. That’s no hard and fast rule, though; changes there have been, and radical, at times.” He pulled the mug to him and drank.
Bill’s trunk was now too short for him to imbibe in the traditional pachydermic manner. Instead, he lifted it out of his way and sucked up his stout through a copper tube. Then he said, “And if an army with superior weapons invaded? Would you there in Dreamborn stick to your swords and be slaughtered?”
Crassmor thought of the broken-cross soldiers, annihilated by the darts and lances of the lizard riders. “Events might still work against them. Again, not all the weapons of the Singularity are sword or bow, or even firearms. Enemy weapons have been used, enemy techniques copied in time of need, but people drift back to the things they know and are used to afterward. Reliance on unfamiliar artifacts or alien usages is a rather common way to meet a bad end where I come from.”
Bill belched, rather more impressively than had the knight, so that Crassmor leaned away. “I should think that ideas and inventions and trade would be saner currencies in your Singularity than violence, in any case,” Bill added.
“You’ll get no argument from me,” Crassmor replied. “Yet an invention that functions in one Reality is often totally useless in another. Ideas, philosophies, and religions have themselves a habit of canceling one another out. Trade routes which would lead through the Beyonds are risky business indeed. Roving and a taste for profit or booty go with the sort of folk who are not disinclined to do battle. Also, trade routes have a pesky habit of disappearing or changing. Thinkers and traders and explorers and teachers are for the most part welcome in the Singularity, but it seems to attract a good deal more of the rough-hewn sort.”
The woman entered the room just then, tiredly, shaking rainwater from her long, sheepskin cloak and hanging it in the inglenook. She wore a floor-sweeping gown of thick-patterned amber velvet, its sack sleeves following her hands’ movements gracefully. She took a seat at one of the small tables at the opposite side of the room and asked demurely for a meal. With a majestic jiggling reminiscent, the knight had no doubt, of his former and happier station, the bar-keep bustled off to prepare the food, calling for the place’s single servant boy to see to her horse.
He tried to catch her eye; she spared him no glance. He saw at once that her teeth were prominent and her twisty hair had a will of its own which defied coifing. She was slender, hips and bosom not much wider than waist. Her face held wit, a knowing sort of humor. He was attracted, though he took her for a late bloomer harboring resentments.
Now she met his eye for a moment, inclining her head amicably, bestowing upon him a broad, bright-eyed smile. He upgraded his opinion of her at once; she was by every indication a discerning, desirable lady. The inner Crassmor licked his chops.
At that moment the outer door sprang open with a muffled crash. There were coughs, laughter and spitting, and the tramping of feet in the hall. The inner door swung on creaking hinges and two men in carter’s attire entered, cracking their rain capes and bellowing coarsely for the hospitality of the place. They wore brown homespun, black pigskin vests, and heavy, calf-high boots. Crassmor’s lingering inspection of the lady, and hers of him, were rudely curtailed. One carter spied her, slapped his stomach, and proclaimed, “Ten days now have I been in these cursed mountains without roof or love. Here I find both!” He rolled his eyes and elbowed his partner, who sniggered.