Sword of Ice and Other Tales of Valdemar v(-100

by Mercedes Lackey

  "But the other people in the village, they don't . . . they don't talk to me. The other children tell me that I'm too big and . . . and ugly, and no one wants to play with a foundling—that's what I am. It makes me feel... feel bad sometimes because I don't know where I came from or ... or anything. So when I finish sweeping at night, I like to dream, even when I'm awake. And if I dream hard enough, the dreams, they sometimes come out of my head and become real. And the people in my dreams, they're always my friends. Except for Gash— you don't want to meet him. He's mean. And he always wants me to tell him what he is. He says that if I can ever do that, if I can tell him what he is, then he'll go away and never come back. I try to guess, but I'm never right, and then he destroys things. Don't be scared, though, because he's never come around these parts."

  Oh, you poor, simple-minded thing, thought Olias. Has the world treated you so wretchedly that even in your dreams you invent one who torments you, who makes you feel so alone and sad and worthless? Gods—did you do so out of choice, or has your heart been so brutalized that you simply think it's natural for someone to abuse you?

  Unable to find the words which would adequately express what he was feeling, Olias reached out and placed his hand on L'lewythi's shoulder.

  Smiling, L'lewythi placed his hand atop Olias' and asked, "Are you ... do you like it here?"

  "Yes, L'lewythi. I think it's very nice. I think it's splendid."

  The boy's face beamed at this mild praise. "Really? Would you like to see more?"

  "Very much so, yes."

  "Are you ... do you want to be ... I—I mean—"

  "Yes," whispered Olias. "I will be your friend."

  He could have swum a hundred raging rivers then on the memory of L'lewythi's smile. How strange it was, to feel an attachment after so many years done; how strange to feel some of the soul-coldness fading away.

  But somehow, here in L'lewythi's odd world-within-a-world, it seemed . . . right.

  How strange, to feel affection for another human being.

  How strange, indeed.

  Dear Father, dear Mother, what would you think of your boy now if you could see him? Lost in a place that doesn't really exist, befriending a simpleton in whose hands his destiny evidently rests?

  What would you think?

  Once over the bridge the land became flat and hard and dusty. As they walked beside one another, Olias and L'lewythi spoke of their childhoods, of games and tales and small wonders, of the animals they'd played with

  and the places they'd seen, and it seemed to Olias that, as they spoke, some part of the world sang a song of rejoicing, of second chances and hope renewed, a Bardic ballad of two lifebonded friends meeting for the first time, and of the simple, untainted glory of learning to trust.

  "I can see why you like it here so much," said Olias. "It must be difficult for you to leave."

  L'lewythi touched his head, then his heart. "I don't leave, ever. It's always here, with me. Even when I'm gone."

  The abstract wisdom in those words caught Olias by surprise. Could it be that L'lewythi was not as dim as people thought?

  They came then to another section of the shoreline. The sea lapped at the edge of their feet, playfully, as if acknowledging their new bond and giving its blessing.

  They came to rest on a large boulder, worn down by time, sea, and the seasons until its shape bore a humorous resemblance to a giant king's throne. Lying back, Olias allowed the sea mist to anoint his face, and felt even more at home.

  "L'lewythi?"

  "Hm?"

  "Could you please tell me what happened to you—I mean, who . . . who hurt you? Who tied you to that horse?"

  L'lewythi stared out at the sea, then looked down at his hands. "I... I don't know why I can do these things. I just know that I can. I play my glass pipe, and the music brings me here. It's so nice here, everyone's so good to me, they're . . . they're happy to see me. No one in Valdemar treats me this way, that's why I come here all the time, that's why I made this place, so I could go somewhere where people would be nice to me."

  "I know, I understand that much, but—"

  "/ didn't mean for it to happen!" he shouted, eyes filling with tears. The sudden violence of his emotion shocked Olias, who was so startled he nearly cried out.

  As L'lewythi spoke, his voice became louder and even

  more childlike. Beneath every word his pain, deeper than Olias had imagined, came snarling to the surface. It was the panicked voice of a child, lost in the night, hands outstretched in hopes that someone kind would take hold of him and protect them from the darkness and pain and make the fear go away, a pain that asked, in its own way: Please, please show a little kindness, a little tenderness.

  "S-s-somet-times, when I'm asleep, sometimes the dreams, they come out of my head and I can't make them do what I want because I'm asleep and I don't know that they've come out I I d-don't mean for it to happen, but it just happens sometimes. It's never been a bad thing before, but the other night ... I was so tired! I'd worked hard and . . . and I was so tired! And when I fell asleep, Gash came out—and he's so mean! He hurt a lot of people in the village. He burned down some of the other stables and killed the horses, and th-th-then he, he started killing everyone. I woke up when I heard the screaming, but it was too late. 7 couldn't stop him from killing everyone because I was asleep! That's never happened to me before. When I woke up, Gash went back into my head, but he'd been so mean by then. And the people, they knew that it was me that had brought Gash into the village because a ... a Herald was there, and he said he sensed that Gash had come from me. He ... he tried to make them all understand, but they didn't. They all came after me and they . . . they hurt me! I mean, I've been hurt before— some of the other stable-boys, they like to hit me and call me names—but this time it w-was different. The Herald tried to stop them but there were too many. They hurt me for so long, and they screamed at me, and some of them even laughed like they were enjoying it. I tried to tell them that I'm not a bad boy, I'm not, I didn't mean for it to happen, but they wouldn't listen to me, they just kept hitting and spitting and then they burned me and ... and .. ." He doubled over, clutching at his stomach, the sobs racking his body—deep, soul-shattering sobs as the grief and fear and confusion dragged rusty steel hooks across his body all over again. Then he fell backward, pulling his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around his knees, convulsing.

  Olias climbed over to him, taking L'lewythi in his arms as the boy wept even harder, his next words coming in broken bursts: "I didn't . . . mean to h-hurt anyone ... I d-didn't ... I didn't. . . ."

  "I know," whispered Olias, stroking L'lewythi's hair. "I know."

  "I j-just wanted them to know ... I wouldn't have ... have done any of it... I wouldn't have dreamed another world l-like this if ... if I could just tell Gash what he is, he'd go away, you see? And th-then m-maybe I could have a friend . . . just one, that's all ... just one friend____"

  "You have one now. I will be your friend for the rest of our days, L'lewythi. There, there, take deep breaths, deep, there you are, hold onto me, that's it, hold on, I won't let go, I won't leave you alone, ever, I swear it on my parents' graves, / swear if! You'll never be lonely again, never—and no one will ever harm you from this day forward, not while I'm around . .. it's all right, shhh, there, there, go on, go on and cry, that's right, let it go, let it go ..."

  He leaned down and kissed L'lewythi's sweat-soaked forehead, then brushed back his hair and held him even tighter, rocking back and forth, feeling strong—and it was good to feel this way for someone after so long. The sudden rush of affection was dizzying, almost overpowering, but he didn't care. He could protect this boy, this sad, gentle boy who wanted nothing more than acceptance, something Olias himself had secretly wished for since the day he buried his mother—but instead of trusting others he had foolishly chosen to hide his loneliness behind a scrim of anger and bitterness.

  It was then that Olias looked behind them and saw
the wall of stone, an ancient ruin nearly overgrown with moist red vines. Sculpted into the wall was a woman's face. Her eye sockets were empty, raven-black ovals, and her mouth, opened as if calling out for some long-lost love, was the entrance to a cave. It was a face which held so much unspoken pain and grief that her expression alone would have been enough to move even the hardest of hearts, but that is not why Olias' eyes began to fill with tears.

  The face was that of his mother.

  Turning away, he stared into the distance and realized that they had walked a straight path since leaving the Barrens. He knew this because he could still see the Keeningwoods from here. As he stared at them, they seemed so much closer—at least in his mind's eye—and his troubled heart grew even heavier, for now all of them wore his father's face—and not the face he'd known as a child, not the robust, labor-reddened, strong face of a hearty man. No, this face was the same one he'd put on the day of his defeat by Gwanwyn and never taken off, even in death. This was the face of a broken-hearted, disgraced man whose value had been diminished even in his own eyes.

  Why, dear gods; can you tell me why even here our grief haunts us? Can you make me understand why our souls cannot find a measure of peace?

  As if in answer, a great rumbling came from the depths of the dark cave.

  Then the echo of even darker laughter.

  "... Gash . . ." whispered L'lewythi, clutching Olias' arm.

  There was no time to run. Already Olias could see the thing's shape shifting forward from the depths of the earth, moving toward the light, and bringing with it a smell that was at first musty and stale like the odor from a long-closed chest whose lid has suddenly been forced open. The odor grew ever stronger, rancid and sickening, the stench of bloated carcasses rotting under a blazing sun.

  Its step shook the ground, and when it at last emerged from the cave, it had to bend over, it was so tall, thrice the size of the tallest tower.

  It was worse than any nightmare.

  Gash was not one, but two soldier-creatures fused together. The first walked on reed-thin legs while the other grew out of its back, a torso whose head sat far above that of its carrier, with one twisted, grotesquely long arm that reached nearly to the ground, its misshapen bulk held upright by a pulsing black sack growing from between the carrier's shoulders. The shimmering gray skin had the jagged texture of rough stone, though not as dark. Its legs scraped together as it walked, loosing small clouds of chalk dust. The weight of the thing growing from its back forced the carrier to walk hunched over and in obvious pain. The bodies looked to have been once covered in armor that some terrible conflagration had melted to their skin.

  The carrier looked at Olias and smiled, its pulverized lips squirming over rotted needlelike teeth. Its face was an abomination of all nature. Countless boils and leaking, diseased wounds covered its cheeks, and the sunlight reflected against the stone-sized tumors that buried its left eye. Its entire face was covered in a maze of something that looked like a spiderweb of hairless flesh.

  When it spoke, it was in a voice filled with phlegm and corruption.

  "Ah, a brave one," it spat. "I do so like brave ones. They die so well."

  Olias couldn't move. L'lewythi had gone into some form of seizure, his body stone-rigid and still, his eyes rolled back into his head, exposing only the whites.

  Olias thrust out his dagger, the only weapon he had. Against Gash's colossal form, it looked pathetic, a sad joke.

  "You'll not need that if you can tell me what I am."

  Olias gently set L'lewythi aside, then stood. "And if I cannot?"

  Gash tossed back both its heads and released a mad, high-pitched, cackling laugh, then balled one of its hands into a fist and threw forth a fireball that slammed into the sea, hissing. "Then the next one will be for you. Now, look me in the face, boy, and tell me what I am."

  Olias stared, long and hard and unblinkingly.

  It seemed to him that both parts of Gash were as

  familiar as everything else he'd encountered thus far. The carrier—brutal, cold-hearted—could well have been a perverted form of himself, of his soul, of what it might some day become; the other—so blank-eyed and vacant—very easily might be another form of L'lewythi.

  But not one of his choosing, came the thought. No; that is how others have seen him, how they have made him feel inside; hideous and freakish. The boy is Gifted, after all; those Gifts are raw and undisciplined, so he would be susceptible to others' unspoken perceptions. Is it so hard to imagine that some secret part of himself has come to view himself as other have—and not only that, but has done so without his even being consciously aware of it?

  If that is so, then why do you see yourself in the carrier? What is it about that thing, this place, the faces of Mother and Father that—

  —he lowered the dagger to his side—

  —as around him he heard the distant echoes of L'lew-ythi's song, plaintive and sorrowful and simmering with ethereal beauty—

  —and like a seed becoming a root becoming a sprout becoming a blossom, the answer came to him as, one by one, the pieces of L'lewythi's painful puzzle fell into place.

  "I know what you are," said Olias through clenched teeth. "You are loneliness, and grief, and the death of dreams. You are the sickness which taints the spirit, and the helplessness which breaks the heart. You are fear and cold darkness, doubt and regret. You are envy and avarice and the lies we tell ourselves to excuse our cowardice or selfishness. You are every cruel word, every unkind thought and act of violence ever brought into the world. You are the weeping of mothers over the bodies of their children, the blood of soldiers spilled in battle, the last gasp of the starving in the streets. You are this boy's misplaced anger and confusion, and you feed on his sadness. You are my father's disgrace and the thing which swallowed my mother's laughter. You are the blackness of my soul, all of my hate and lust for vengeance come to life, and in your diseased gaze I can see what my spirit might one day become. You are my weakness and failures—all weakness and failure . . . but most of all, you are jealous."

  Gash snarled. "Jealous? Of whom? And why?"

  "You are Pain, and you are jealous of us—not just the boy and me, but any human being who can forget for a while that you are real. You might be a part of our lives, but we can sometimes forget you exist. We can listen to music, or tell our tales, or dance hi the waters as they lap the shoreline, or we can steal from the wealthy, or flee into the night where we meet a new friend. We can drink wine and eat fine food and sleep with chambermaids who pleasure us beyond imagining ... or we can simply lie back and stare into the flames of a campfire and revel in the unadorned glory of the night stars. Ah, yes, we can forget about you and still go on living, but you, Gash, who are Pain and Grief and Loneliness, you can never, for one moment, forget about us! You wish you could, but you can't, no matter how much you try.

  "And that is why you hate us so, and why you are jealous!

  "Go away," said Olias, dismissing the monstrosity with a wave of his hand. "You no longer have any hold over this boy or me."

  "Damn you, thief!"

  "But a thief no more. From this day, I will protect this boy, and I will provide for him as best I can with what meager Bardic and Herald Gifts I possess, with honor and honesty, hurting no one. And if I can somehow make myself worthy, I will travel to Haven and ask the Herald-Mage Savil to teach me discipline so that I in turn might teach it to my friend.

  "And you can be certain, Gash, that neither I nor L'lewythi will think of you very much at all."

  Gash turned around and stormed back toward the cave, but with each step it took, some part of its body fell to dust.

  "I am not the last of my kind," it screamed back at him. "What created me can easily create others. You would do well to remember that, thief!" Then, turning to face him as its legs exploded into rubble, it gave one final, hideous grin, and hissed, "I'll remember you to your mother and father. I have them in my belly."

  "No, you do
n't," said Olias. "But you wish I believed that."

  What remained of Gash froze, unmoving, unspeaking, then cracked, broke apart, and fell to ruin.

  When the sand and dust clouds died down, Olias looked to see that the woman in the wall was gone.

  In the distance, the Keeningwoods were simply trees. No faces, no anguished sounds.

  L'lewythi was still unconscious, but the seizure had passed. Olias knelt down and gently lifted his friend, carrying him as he would a newborn baby, walking slowly along the shoreline toward the bridge which would take them back through the stone city, then to the Barrens and cliffs beyond.

  In his heart, he knew they could not stay here, no matter how much they might wish to. This had been a hiding place, a sanctuary of sorts for their wounded souls. Now that they had each other, neither would ever need it again.

  But the ability that went into the creation of such a place—a world between worlds—that was desperately needed in Valdemar. To think of the suffering such a Gift could erase... !

  Olias leaned down his head, pressing his cheek against L'lewythi's.

  "You'll be safe now," he whispered. "I promise. We've done it, don't you see? In each other, we have found Home."

  And I've not forgotten, dear Father, dear Mother; I've not forgotten how to care, how to love . . . nor how to fondly remember you, without rancor or regret.

  I will make amends, somehow, for all the wrong I've done. I will honor the memory of your lives by living my own as well as I can, and with my friend by my side, I think that may be very well, indeed.

  As the echo of L'lewythi's song found them once again, Olias couldn't help but notice there were two additional tones joining in the glory. One, sharp, loud, and steady, was the sound of a blacksmith's hammer striking down, proudly and confidently shaping steel into blade, and the other, so pure and easy and light, was that of a good woman's laughter, dancing across the heart, leaving warmth and affection in its wake.

  L'lewythi awoke soon after, and with silver threads beckoned his glass pipe come.

  His song—what Olias had thought of as a song for no one's mourning—was even more transcendent than the first time, and when they found themselves back at the campsite where Ranyart and L'lewythi's horse were waiting patiently, it was with renewed hope that they readied themselves for their journeys—for there would be many, of that there was no doubt.