by Sean Wallace
The Dire Stairs branch off, then the branches cross and recombine in a diagonal labyrinth. Isrohim Vey did not know the quickest way to the College of the Seven Saints and had no skill with mazes, but he was patient. He tried every branch and turn, and retraced his steps when he needed to, which was often.
Sometimes the stairs led up to and then down from outcroppings, lookout points. At one of these places he saw the Aureate College collapse in flames. At another he met a howling old man with the corpse of a young woman in his arms; Isrohim Vey noticed that the old man’s eyes were milk-white, and took his arm to guide him along the stairs.
“She’s dead!” screamed the old man. He seemed not to notice the swordsman’s touch. “She’s dead!”
“You’re alive,” said Isrohim Vey.
The old man quieted at once and turned, seeking after the sound. “Your voice,” he whispered. “Are you there? You?”
“Do you know me?”
“I heard your voice, once,” said the old man. “I have echoed it for a long time since.”
Isrohim Vey did not understand this, but he presumed the man was mad.
“This place is not safe. I will guide you away from here.”
“Ah,” said the blind old man. “I know where you’ll lead me.”
“I will lead you to Saints’ College.”
“No. You’ve changed with the years, but not so much.”
“I have nothing to do with this war. I’ve come only to speak with the wise men of Lugbragthoth, who I have heard are philosophers who think and write of life and also of death.”
“Oh, but you, you are Isrohim Vey,” said the blind man. “I know you, better than I know myself. I’ve told tales of you, long years I’ve told the tales. I know you from the inside. You will lead me to death. That’s your tale, and we are every one trapped in empty tales of ourselves told by fools.”
“Would you rather be free?” asked Isrohim Vey. The blind old man took a deep breath.
“I am King of Bards,” he said, “and my one faithful daughter is dead.” He stepped off the stairs, and fell a long way and then died.
There are stories of Isrohim Vey at the Sack of Lugbragthoth and how he led the defense of Saints’ College. How by his skill and strength he threw back the invaders. Some stories say that he slew Ettra, leader of the people of the Non, in single combat, and burned his legendary gryphon-skin armor. Other stories say Ettra was killed before Isrohim Vey arrived, in a chance scuffle in the Lower City. Many of the stories are contradictory, but none has died for lack of telling.
Isrohim Vey learned to read and studied for a while in the Colleges of Lugbragthoth. Then for a time he disappeared from the known lands. Travelers to the deep forests of the stag-headed Ceridvaen races claimed to hear of a silent swordsman haunting the standing stones of an Age gone by. Eventually he was seen in Zimri, that curious city of popes, poisoners, and patrons of the arts, where he was involved in the spate of odd deaths surrounding a curious moonstone icon dedicated to Halja, Matriarch of Keys. After the destruction of the icon by lightning, Isrohim Vey travelled south past the Inheritors of Kesh to Ulvandr-Kathros the Confederate Empire, where the seasons are reversed and the stars different. Following a riot in the slave marts of the Empire’s capital of Carcannum, Isrohim Vey returned to the north of the world and visited the witch-kingdom of Wyrddh, where without explanation he was taken prisoner and bound by a crossroads in a cage of yellow bone and black iron. A Duke of Cats was set to watch him and given Azrael’s Word for a plaything, and so Isrohim Vey was left for dead.
Then Valas came, and he distracted the Duke of Cats with riddles and took the sword and rescued Isrohim Vey.
Valas told Isrohim Vey that the dragon Umbral had burnt most of Kethonin and abducted the Queen Elidora Byth. “I know where the dragon’s lair is,” said Valas. “But Umbral is very powerful. I need your help to kill him.”
“I will help you,” said Isrohim Vey, and they set out.
They went a very long way, across North Ocean to the Cauldron Lands where the savage goblinfolk churn in endless warfare. They crossed fields of ice and snow-storms and passed under curtains of light in the nighttime skies.
The dragon’s lair was a glacier of black ice worked into spires and curves.
Four rivers crusted with half-frozen poisons flowed away from it to every point of the compass. Valas and Isrohim Vey approached as carefully as they could. They passed into a great hall, all of ice, and a chamber of black ice mirrors, and through the empty pathways of the glacier; until at last they descended into the pits below, and discovered Umbral in a fountain arising from the earth, his black scales fouling the waters at their source.
“Give me back my wife,” Valas demanded of the waiting dragon.
“She’s dead,” said Umbral. “I killed her some time ago.” Valas screamed and drew his sword and Umbral breathed a black flame and killed him. The dragon turned its old head to the other man.
“Why did you take Elidora Byth?” asked Isrohim Vey.
“Perhaps I wanted to bring you to me,” said Umbral. “It worked for Ûr Quis.”
“Ûr Quis is dead.”
“Yes,” said the dragon. Then it leaped at Isrohim Vey, huge as night.
Isrohim Vey drew Azrael’s Word and in a moment the sword was buried in Umbral’s heart.
“This is my death,” said the dragon. “I have known all the Ages of the world; it is enough. I am slain by the Nameless Blade forged by Einik of the Svar; and that too is enough. It is a fitting death. I have made my end.”
Then Umbral died, and Isrohim Vey took back Azrael’s Word and set off for the south.
Traveling to the Dweorgheorte Mountains, Isrohim Vey descended into the subterranean tunnels called Chthonia or Domdaniel. In these tunnels he made his way to the Svar kingdom of Vâlain.
The Svar are half the height of a man, until they choose to be otherwise, when they can grow tall as a giant. They do not eat or drink, and do not age or die unless violence is done to them. Isrohim Vey made his way through their halls under the earth by the light of their eyes, which are burning lamps.
“Where is the smith named Einik?” he asked, and every time he asked he was given the same answer:
“Further down.”
But however far down into Domdaniel Isrohim Vey travelled, he found that Einik was always further, beyond Vâlain itself, in the tunnels of the Deep Dark where only the mad and the visionary among the Svar dared to go.
It was one of these, a prophet, who finally came to Isrohim Vey and promised to lead him to Einik. Isrohim Vey went with the Svar prophet to the Deep Dark, and the prophet led him past great white bats and the cities of the grim peoples under the earth and a seer of the goblinfolk raving of a human boy who would come to be king of Domdaniel and lead his folk to victory over the armies of the surface. Then the Svar stopped and told Isrohim Vey how to proceed and the swordsman walked the last distance to the forge of Einik alone.
Einik, the legendary smith, worked at fashioning a Svar child while Isrohim Vey spoke to him.
“The truth of your sword,” said Einik, “is that it is the product of a deal I made, a very long time ago. I’d realized that whatever I made would, in the end, break. Nothing was perfect. Nothing lasted. I disliked that. I made a deal; I would make a thing, a sword, the greatest thing I would ever make, and that sword would last forever through all the Ages of the world.”
“Who did you make this deal with?” asked Isrohim Vey.
“Father Stone?” suggested the smith. “The One Above All? The Jack-of-all-Ills? I don’t know. I don’t need to know. But it was done.”
“How old is the sword?”
The smith considered this. “Old,” he decided.
“How did it come to the battlefield of Aruvhossin?”
“I don’t know,” said Einik. “I don’t keep track of its where abouts.”
“Why not?”
Einik smiled without looking away from his work. “I don’
t need to,” he said. “It’s perfect. It will last. Somewhere, in the world, is the perfect thing that I made, which will outlive me. That’s enough.”
Isrohim Vey thought about this, too, and watched as Einik finished his work.
“Does the sword have a destiny?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said Einik. “I made it; that’s enough. I suppose either everything has a destiny, or nothing does.”
“I have given it a name,” said Isrohim Vey. “It’s called Azrael’s Word.”
“It’s been called many things,” said Einik. “It outlasts names.” He turned the infant Svar over in his hands. It did not move and its eyes were dark.
“What did you give in exchange for the making of the sword?” asked Isrohim Vey; and then for the first time Einik of the Svar locked eyes with him, and the swordsman saw that a white heat burned in him with a hard gem-like flame.
“I will tell you,” said the smith, “but you must do a thing in exchange.”
Isrohim Vey nodded.
“In exchange for making one perfect thing,” said Einik, “I had to accept that every other thing I made would be less than perfect. That I would never again reach the height of the Nameless Sword. Now: reach into my forge and take out a burning coal, and put it in the mouth of the child.”
Isrohim Vey reached into the fire with his left hand and did as the smith demanded. As he screamed, the eyes of the Svar baby lit up.
After leaving the Dweorgheorte Mountains, Isrohim Vey returned to the city of Vilmariy and was caught up in a struggle between two noble houses which resolved itself in a duel by proxy; Isrohim Vey was one proxy, and the other was the greatest fencer in all the Free Cities, Yasleeth Oklenn. Isrohim Vey slew Yasleeth and left Vilmariy, swearing a great oath upon his soul never to return again.
The people of the hamlet of Mun-at-Tor go about their work each day in silence, unsmiling. To the north, east, and south of Mun-at-Tor are quarries of fine stone, and it is to these places that the people go. No one goes west, past the three heavy stone churches, to the high forested hill; no one passes under the old stone arch built over a gully in the hillside, where the greenery grows richest. No one follows the music that comes from the arch at dawn and twilight. At least, no one from Mun-at-Tor; sometimes a wild-eyed traveler comes to the grey quarry town and strides up the hill and through the arch and is, most often, not seen again.
Isrohim Vey came to Mun-at-Tor from Vilmariy and, arriving at dusk, walked under the old stone arch into the Faefair of the Ylvain.
Stalls were scattered across the face of the darkening hillside. The stalls were made of rare white and golden and crimson woods and carved into fantastic shapes, from which sprigs of holly and mistletoe sometimes grew. Pale musicians played inhuman sounds on skin drums and beetle-shell flutes and harps strung with cat’s whiskers. The faerie folk were everywhere, buying and selling, some of them with foxes’ heads, some half-a-foot high, some bent and bony as gargoyles, and some of them of the noble houses of the Ylvain.
Like their enemies the Svar, the Ylvain are immortal; but the Ylvain are tall and fair, and live in magic and forestlands, and their skin is bright as dawn, and in their veins is neither blood nor ichor but fine white mist, and it is their curse that everything they touch turns to beauty.
Isrohim Vey strode into the Faefair. He ignored the slender peddlers in green with pointed brows and wolf’s fangs, selling trinkets like unbreakable chains of flowers and an elixir that was the essence of music. He passed cobblers selling boots that could walk between the moments of the clock; he passed drinking-booths selling beer that tasted of summers past; he passed stalls selling rare fruits, oranges and indigos, passion-fruit and repentancefruit, firstfruits and lastfruits; he passed no blacksmiths or ironmongers. He didn’t know what he was looking for.
He came to a high wagon; doors in the back were open, and inside there was paper: books, scrolls, and maps. More paper than Isrohim Vey had ever seen outside of the libraries of Lugbragthoth or the archives of Tíranin, and both of those were closely guarded. An old man in faded robes sat on a step leading into the wagon, smoking a long-stemmed pipe. He seemed human, but for his eyes, which were moonstones. He nodded to Isrohim Vey as the swordsman stepped into the wagon.
“You’re mortal,” said Isrohim Vey.
“I’m old. That’s near to mortal.”
“I don’t know how old I am,” said Isrohim Vey. “Fifty, I think. Close. Most men in my way of life don’t live as long.”
“What are you looking for at the Faefair? Youth?”
“Truth,” said Isrohim Vey.
“I can sell you truth. But there will be a price.”
“I’ll pay it.”
“So sure? You don’t know what it is.”
Isrohim Vey said nothing.
The old man sighed and refilled his pipe. “This is the truth: fifty years ago, give or take, the Nameless Sword hung above the bed of the Duke of Eblinn. Beneath its point a child was conceived, and nine months later was born. The Nameless Sword had been in the family of the Duke of Eblinn for centuries by this time. At the birth of the boy-child, a Dominie predicted firstly that he would meet death on a field named Aruvhossin; but also that if he evaded this death, he would go on to kill death itself. This boy was named Reivym Shoi. You met him once.”
“Did I?”
“It was a long time ago. But he was at Aruvhossin, commanding his father’s armies; you were at the same battle, having joined a company of Naranthi mercenaries fighting under the standard of the King of Anoch. Reivym Shoi bore the Nameless Sword in battle, believing that its destiny would keep him safe to pursue his own.”
“What is the destiny of the sword?” asked Isrohim Vey.
“It is a sword. Its destiny is death. More than that no created being has ever been able to tell. Perhaps it will slay all the world. It kept Reivym Shoi safe and living until late on the first day of the battle, when he was attacked from behind by a Panjonrian soldier and left for dead. The Panjonrian took the sword, but was soon slain himself. You took the sword from his dead hand. With it, you survived the rest of the day, and through the night, and through to the end of the battle.”
Isrohim Vey thought about this. Then he nodded, slowly. After some time he asked: “What do I do now?”
“Go forward, as you like. But I will tell you this. If you still wish to see the Angel of Death, then look for Reivym Shoi, who will meet the angel before he dies.”
“Where’s Reivym Shoi?”
“Reivym Shoi has been looking for you. He has gone to the one place you returned to, in all your time of wandering. He has gone to Vilmariy, and he has sworn a great oath upon his soul not to leave until you come a third time to the city.”
Isrohim Vey said nothing. He sat on the step of the wagon and laughed.
The old man watched him.
“Now come with me,” said the old man, “for you promised to pay my price.”
“What must I do?”
“Fight, and kill, and perhaps die.”
The old man took Isrohim Vey to a high tower in the Oneda Mountains that looked out over all the world. “I am the Dominie Segelius,” the old man told Isrohim Vey, “and you are in the Demesne of Starry Wisdom and Golden-Eyed Dawn, which is the true home country of every wizard. Rest; tomorrow you begin to fight.”
On the next day, Isrohim Vey fought and killed a gray-skinned warrior with a dog’s head. The battlefield was a giant’s outstretched palm, a thousand feet above deep forest broken by a single plume of smoke marking out an isolated inn.
The day after that, he fought and killed a pack of feral children. The battlefield was the high side of a cloud, under a sky lit by three full moons and a thousand constellations, each exerting its pull upon human destinies.
The day after that, he fought and killed a troll with three eyes and three mouths; no mouth spoke a comprehensible language, though each gibbered all through the fight. The battlefield was, or appeared to be, the Dire S
tairs.
After each of these battles, and after every battle on every day that followed, Isrohim Vey found himself in the Dominie’s tower, where he healed over the course of a night. On occasion the Dominie Segelius would speak with him.
What the Dominie said might be quite brief, as when he observed “wizardry is to witchcraft as art is to madness”. Or he might speak at length, as when he explained to Isrohim Vey the true nature and relationship of all the gods of every mortal people, from the One Above All and the Jack-of-all-Ills of the Empire Church to the Great Gods of the Holy Dominion to the Twelve Gods and the God Of All Other Things of the Lohr to the Red Gods to the Unwritten Book to the Old Gods to Time, who was worshipped as a god in the far country of Knutherizh; and then on to the hundreds of gods of the Faefolk, and to Father Stone of the Svar, and to the gods of dragons and giantfolk and goblinkin, and how all these gods served to mortal understanding as giving to life a meaning in the face of death.
“Which is not to say,” the Dominie then observed, “that they are unreal, or do not serve other purposes as well; but such purposes remain unknown, as the gods themselves are ultimately unknown. It is only the angels who can mediate between the human and divine spheres, being beyond gods as they are beyond destiny. The Dominion goddess of death, for example, is Halja; but she does not separate the soul from the body. No more does the hand of the One Above All. You know these things.”
Isrohim Vey said nothing to this, and the next day he fought and killed two warriors of the shape-strong race of the Mirator, one of whom took the form of Valas as a youth while the other took the form of Valas as a king. The battlefield was the fountain of Umbral.
It was not so many days later that the battlefield was a deep dungeon, from which Isrohim Vey had to escape by defeating again the King-That-Was-And-Would-Be-Again.
The Dominie Segelius came to the aging swordsman after that fight, and Isrohim Vey asked: “Will I have to fight other figures of my past? Grandfather Hiberius, or Yasleeth Oklenn?”