Blade of Tyshalle

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  "All right, all right, I get the picture." Hari circled the bed, sat, and pulled the hardbound Tales of the First Folk off the shelf.

  He skimmed through the chapter, through all the different stories about the Quiet Land and the Blind God; with just a phrase here and there to spark his memory, he found the stories came back to him more powerfully than he'd expected. He hadn't read the book in probably thirty years—not since school. Who'd have guessed this crap would stick with him?

  The Quiet Land read like a version of an Eden myth: a land of peace, where the elves could live without fear of dragons, where there were no savage ogrilloi or krr'x hives, no vampires or demons. All the creatures of the Quiet Land were without speech or magick; the elves used it as a sort of nursery school, a playland for their children, since even the most rudimentary command of magick rendered them godlike by comparison.

  The elves could go to the Quiet Land from Home—T'nnalldion, the "Living Place," the elvish name for Overworld—through dillin, which roughly translates as gates. The dillin apparently were certain hills, certain ponds, some caves, occasionally grottoes or even forest glades where the physical terrain of the two lands was precisely identical; no matter how different the surrounding topography, the dillin matched. The dillin were said to be part of both places at the same time, and in the vicinity of a dil, an elf could still draw upon the Flow of Home.

  In the Quiet Land, the elves found a coarse, brutish race of "wild elves"—short-lived creatures who had no skill with magick, who could not even see the Flow. These ferals, as they were called, became popular pets and work animals; they were very strong, and clever, and could even learn to speak. Though they could become dangerous if badly handled, they were extremely loyal to masters who treated them well. Many were brought back to Home, and inevitably some ran away and formed packs in the wilderness. Because of their brief lives, they were exceptionally fecund, breeding by the million in just a few short centuries; soon the ferals had become powerful in their own right.

  Hari nodded to himself. This was all familiar territory: the elvish myth of how humans came to Overworld.

  He began to come across the references to the Blind God. It was never represented directly; there was never a description of its appearance, or its powers, or its motives. As near as Hari could make out, it seemed to be some kind of shadow force driving everything the ferals did that elves didn't like, from clearing land for farms to building roads, from raising cities to waging war. All this kind of stuff was called "feeding the Blind God."

  It was the Blind God that had chased the elves out of the Quiet Land a millennium ago; as the feral population burgeoned, the Blind God had become a power the elves could not counter. They fled the Quiet Land and closed the dillin. Hari came to the end of the chapter and shrugged. "I don't get it," he said. "This's got nothing to do with HRVP and the Social Police."

  "Yes. It does. If Quiet Land. Is. Earth."

  Hari sighed. "Are you gonna start that shit again?"

  He knew from public records on the net that Duncan had published a monograph just over forty years ago claiming that Overworld was in fact the place that human legends call Faerie, and that the humans of Overworld are descended from changelings. The monograph claimed that Westerling was an Indo-European language derived from Frankish, Middle English, and Old High German; it claimed that the human culture of Overworld so closely mirrors late medieval Europe because it was created by men and women who'd been born there, or who were descended from people who had. That monograph was regarded in academic circles as having been the first overt sign of Duncan's fast-approaching breakdown.

  "Not. Shit. Read. Commentary. Read."

  "Dad—"

  "Read. Stupid. Kid."

  Hari sighed again, and opened the book to Duncan's end-of-chapter commentary.

  Clearly, the "Blind God" is a conscious, deliberately anthropomorphic metaphor for the most threatening facet of human nature: our self-destroying lust to use, to conquer, to enslave every tiniest bit of existence and turn it to our own profit, amplified and synergized by our herd-animal instinct—our perverse greed for tribal homogeneity.

  It is a good metaphor, a powerful metaphor, one that for me makes a certain sense not only of Overworld's history, but of Earth's. It provides a potent symbolic context for the industrial wasteland of modern Europe, for the foul air and toxic deserts that are North America: they are table scraps left behind after the Blind God has fed.

  Structured by the organizing metaprinciple of the "Blind God," the Manifest Destiny madness of humanity makes a kind of sense—it has a certain inevitability, instead of being the pointless, inexplicable waste it has always appeared.

  Hari gave a low whistle. "You published this? I'm surprised Soapy didn't bust you on the spot!'

  "Before. Your. Birth. Things. Were. Looser." He sagged for a moment, and his eyes drifted closed, as though the effort had exhausted him, but the digivoder's impersonal tone never changed. "Keep. Reading."

  Hari reopened the book.

  The "Blind God" is not a personal god, not a god like Yahweh or Zeus, stomping out the grapes of wrath, hurling thunderbolts at the infidel. The Blind God is a force: like hunger, like ambition.

  It is a mindless groping toward the slightest increase in comfort. It is the greatest good for the greatest number, when the only number that counts is the number of human beings living right now. I think of the Blind God as a tropism, an autonomic response that turns humanity toward destructive expansion the way a plant's leaves turn toward the sun.

  It is the shared will of the human race.

  You can see it everywhere. On the one hand, it creates empires, dams rivers, builds cities—on the other, it clear-cuts forests, sets fires, poisons wetlands. It gives us vandalism: the quintessentially human joy of breaking things.

  Some will say that this is only human nature.

  To which I respond: Yes, it is. But we must wonder why it is.

  Consider: From where does this behavior arise? What is the evolutionary advantage conferred by this instinct? Why is it instinctive for human beings to treat the world like an object?

  We treat our planet as an enemy, to be crushed, slaughtered, plundered. Raped. Everything is opposition—survival of the fittest on the Darwinian battlefield. Whatever isn't our slave is our potential destroyer. We kill and kill and kill and tell ourselves it is self-defense, or even less: that we need the money, we need the jobs that ruthless destruction temporarily provides.

  We even treat each other that way.

  "Holy crap, Dad," Hari said incredulously. "How did I miss this? How did Soapy miss this?"

  "Edited. Out. Not. In netbook. Never. Trust. Electronic. Text." "You got that right."

  The magickal races of Overworld—the primals, the stonebenders, and treetoppers—they can feel their connection to the living structure of their world. This is why they have never developed organized religions in the human sense; their gods are not objects of worship, but only of respect, of kinship. An Overworld god isn't an individual, a unitary Power to be appeased or conjured; it is a limb of the living planet, a knot of consciousness within the Lifemind, just as is each primal or stonebender or treetopper—each sparrow or blade of grass. They are all part of the same Life, and they know it.

  They cannot avoid knowing it; Flow is as essential to their metabolism as is oxygen.

  The tragedy of humanity is that we are as much a part of our living planet as any primal mage is of his. We just don't know it. We can't feel it. The First Folk have a name for our incapacity—for our tragic blindness.

  They call it the Veil of the Blind God, and they pity us.

  Hari closed the book and weighed it in his hand. He felt a little breathless, as though the world pressed in upon his chest. He thought of one of Duncan's sayings, one Duncan must have repeated to him a hundred times when he was a kid:

  A religion that teaches you God is something outside the world—something separate from everything you see, s
mell, taste, touch, and hear—is nothing but a cheap hustle.

  Now, for the first time, he thought he had some clue what Duncan had been talking about. The elves had a different way of looking at things, no question about it—"But all this, it's just a metaphor, right?" Hari said. "I mean, you wrote it yourself: the Blind God is a metaphor."

  Duncan's eyes rolled madly, but the digivoder's voice was relentlessly steady. "Maybe. A powerful. Enough. Metaphor. Grows. Its own. Truth." "Huh," Hari grunted skeptically. "So where do the Social Police fit in?" Duncan made a dry hacking sound that might have been laughter.

  "Inquisition."

  "You mean, like the Spanish Inquisition?"

  Duncan didn't answer. He didn't have to. After what Hari had been through this afternoon, he didn't need much convincing. "So, you're saying this Blind God has like, polished off Earth, and now it's hungry for Overworld?"

  "Studio. Like. Sense organ. Find out. If Overworld. Tastes good." "That's another metaphor, right?" Hari asked. "Right?"

  "Probably."

  Hari sat in that chair by his father's side, weighing the book in his hand, for a long, long time.

  Finally, he said, "But why HRVP? It's kind of a blunt instrument, huh? Why do something that . . . catastrophic?"

  Duncan grunted wordlessly, and the digivoder chanted, "Because. It worked. So well. On Earth."

  Hari rubbed his stinging eyes. Any other day, he would have laughed this off and gone to bed. Duncan was crazy; he'd been getting progressively crazier for forty years. Here's crazy for you: he sounded like he really believed this shit. I'd ask him if he does, Hari thought, but what difference would the answer make? He's either crazy and he doesn't believe it, or he's crazy and he does.

  Either way, he's crazy.

  His internal debate was interrupted by the low murmur of the Abbey's house computer, its hidden speakers digitally phased 'to sound like it spoke from just behind his left shoulder. "Hari: perimeter alert. An unauthorized vehicle is landing on the front lawn."

  Hari's stomach dropped like his whole life had gone into freefall. "Abbey: identify unauthorized vehicle. Execute."

  "Hari: the unauthorized vehicle self-identifies as a Social Police.detention van."

  Hari looked at the book in his hand, and flinched like it had burned him. He stuck it back into the bookcase spine-first.

  On the other hand, he thought numbly, being crazy doesn't necessarily make him wrong.

  5

  Hari leaned nervelessly against the jamb of the Abbey's front door, staring blankly out into the sky while the Social Police prepared to load Duncan, traveling bed and all, into the back of the detention van. Bradlee said something from beside him, but Hari couldn't hear him over the roar in his ears: the sound of his life going down in flames. His hand opened, and the crumpled hardcopy of the warrant fluttered to the marble-slab floor.

  He should have seen this coming.

  Fucking Vilo‑

  The bastard had ratted him out.

  He'd turned over Hari's books to the Social Police, the sensitive ones he'd kept in his vault on his Sangre de Cristo estate. As a Leisureman, his affidavit certifying that he'd received the sealed boxes from Hari with no knowledge of their content was weighted heavily enough to be accepted prima facie by a Social Court judge. So Hari now had an added charge of possession of Banned material.

  The secondary effect of this, Vilo probably hadn't even anticipated: it had only taken the Social Police a couple hours to find a judge who would reinstate Duncan's sentence for sedition. Hari couldn't blame Vilo for that; it was no one's fault but his own. He should have burned those fucking books. Duncan wouldn't go to the Buke this time.

  He would go under the yoke.

  The Buchanan Social Camp required upkeep payments for its in-mates, with a hefty deposit. They wouldn't accept Hari's pledge, and he had no credit, no asset he could offer; every goddamn mark he had was tied up in his bail. "How long?" he murmured. "How long do you think he has?"

  Bradlee shook his head. "He probably won't even survive the cyborg conversion."

  "Yeah."

  "If he survives the operation, though, who knows? He can't do anything physical; they'll probably hardwire him for data processing. He might live for years." Bradlee coughed apologetically. "Not that you'd, uh, want him to, y'know. Not like that ..

  "Yeah," Hari said. "Yeah, I know."

  He leaned on the doorjamb, paralyzed. He couldn't decide who to kill first: Shanks, or Vilo, or himself.

  Out on the lawn, Duncan rolled his head toward Hari. He couldn't speak—his digivoder lay in splinters on the floor of his room, crushed under a soapy's boot heel—but he could wave his twisted, crippled hand. He touched it to his head, made a weak patting motion, then he walked his fingers arthritically along the gleaming chrome bedrail. Hari got the message: Keep your head down, and inch toward daylight.

  His vision swam with tears.

  The van's doors closed around Duncan like jaws. The soapies sealed the doors and climbed into the cabin, and the van lifted off Hari watched it shrink to a rippling liquid dot in the night sky. "Good-bye, Dad," he whispered.

  I guess I'm kind of invulnerable, now, he thought numbly. There just isn't anything left for them to take from me, except my life.

  My life? They can have it.

  "I, uh ..." Bradlee began uncomfortably. "Can you give me a few days, a week, to find a place?"

  Hari frowned at him, and Bradlee dropped his gaze uncertainly. "I mean," he said slowly, "I guess I'm kind of out of a job, huh?"

  "Yeah," Hari said. He had no room left in his heart for Bradlee's problems. "I guess you are."

  Head down, Bradlee walked slowly back toward the kitchen.

  Hari hissed at himself, softly through his teeth. No reason to take this out on the nurse; Bradlee had looked after Duncan for years, had really cared for him. Hari called after him, "Brad—stay as long as you need. I mean, shit, I'd hire you to look after the house, but—" He spread his hands helplessly, and shrugged. "—I just realized I can't pay your salary."

  "Thanks," he said softly. "Thanks, Hari. You sure you don't want something to eat?"

  Hari closed his eyes; the thought of putting food into his mouth clenched his stomach like somebody had reached into his guts and made a fist. "Not tonight. I'm gonna go upstairs and get friendly with a bottle of scotch."

  Bradlee nodded silently and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Hari stood in the Abbey's front hall for a long time, listening to the silence. Bradlee might as well have been already gone; everyone else was. Faith. Duncan. Shanna.

  Caine.

  Cold marble-slab floor, classically austere sweep of stair to the second-floor balcony, rich burgundy runner—everything here he knew so well; he'd dreamed this place for so many years before he'd built it that it was forever graved into his brain. He'd never dreamed it would be so empty.

  It hasn't even been twenty-four hours, he thought in blank awe. A day ago, his worst problems had been a cranky bypass, creaky legs, and a bad attitude.

  My god

  He wondered if his chest would implode into the stark unforgiving lack inside.

  My god, what have I done?

  From behind his left shoulder the Abbey murmured, "Hari: priority screen call."

  Hari walked reflexively to the nearest wallscreen and hit the acknowledge. He never considered refusing the call; he felt a strange, abstract gratitude to whomever this might be, for distracting him from the wreckage of his life.

  It was Tan'elKoth.

  Probably calling to gloat, Hari thought dully.

  The ex-Emperor wore a black sweater, over which gleamed the metalized straps of his ammod harness. "Caine," he said darkly, "you must come to me immediately, here at the Curioseum."

  "This isn't a good time for me."

  "There will be no better time for you. There will be no time at all. Come. Now"

  "I'm telling you ..." Hari let his voice trail off, and he frowned. "Di
d you say, at the Curioseum? If you're at the Curioseum, why are you wearing the ammod harness?"

  "For the same reason that you must come here now. You conscripted me for your war, Caine. I must speak with you before I become its latest casualty—and I have little time."

  "What . . . ? I mean, I don't get it," Hari said. His brain felt like an old rusty engine, groaning as it tried to turn over.

  Tan'elKoth's eyes smoldered darkly. "How much do you want me to say over an open line into your home?"

  Hari thought of the crowd of Social Police and SynTech security that had tramped through here this afternoon, and he nodded. "I understand," he said, "but—"

  "No," Tan'elKoth rumbled. "Come now. It is a matter of life and death. Mine—and Pallas Ril's."

  Hari squeezed his eyes shut and took a long, slow, painful breath. "I'm on my way," he said. "I'll be at the South Gate in ten minutes."

  6

  Starkly sidelit by the emergency lights, the exhibition halls of the Curioseum had become eerie, alien caverns of moon-black shadows and bleaching glare. Tan'elKoth paced ahead of him with the ponderous threat of a hovertank, his thick-soled athletic shoes silent on the polished floor tiles. The only sound was the click of Hari's boot heels, echoing crisply from distant walls of cement and stone. His arms prickled with gooseflesh.

  This shit was creeping him out.

  It gnawed at the pit of his stomach: everything looked so wrong, here. And it wasn't just the stippled wash of emergency lighting through the dirty armorglass panels; it wasn't just that none of the displays activated when they passed through the halls; it wasn't even the blank silence, deeper than you could ever really hear on Earth, left behind by the absence of the ventilation system's constant whisper.

  He'd never seen the inside of the Curioseum from the eye-level of a standing man.

  The simple fact that he could, for the first time in his life, walk through these rooms left him breathless with irrational dread.

  At the South Gate, he hadn't been able to make himself come in. He'd stood in the doorway, shaking his head. Sure, Tan'elKoth said the ON field was off—he said his mindview showed not even the trace amounts of Flow that should have been visible—but Rover was still down in fucking Los Angeles. Shit, the Fancon people had probably already auctioned it off. "Why would the field be off?" Hari had asked. "And what's wrong with the power?"