‘But why was it so?’ asked Pallo. ‘If Chyko could defeat Quintar, why was he not ranked higher?’
‘Because he was a lawless man,’ Kassien put in from across the camp.
‘And that’s something my mother could never understand,’ Istar said. She gave the sword a final wipe. ‘It is easy to kill with one of these. I wonder how many my father killed, over a woman or an unwise word spoken while drinking.’
‘Ah, but how many did he save?’ Kassien countered. ‘How many Sekk came to grief?’
‘None with this sword,’ Istar said. ‘I have counted the deaths on it with my own hand. There were no others. I got it straight from its forging.’
‘Let’s eat,’ Kassien said. ‘You are all too thoughtful today. We have a long walk ahead of us this evening, up that.’ He indicated a steep ravine winding into the heights, and then bent to take food from their bags. Pallo groaned and immediately sat down on a flat boulder, while Istar passed food from Kassien to Xiriel.
‘We must be almost at the top of the range now,’ she said. ‘The hard part will be getting over that saddle. I don’t like the look of it.’
Istar turned to offer Pallo a handful of dried fruit, only to discover that he wore a face that she had never seen before. His eyes were crossed, and he had sucked in his cheeks with exaggerated horror.
‘It’s all right,’ she reassured him. ‘Your lunges aren’t that bad.’
But his expression remained oddly frozen.
‘They’re getting slightly better, actually,’ she added encouragingly. ‘Here, do you want some raisins?’
‘I can’t get up,’ he whispered. ‘I’m … stuck.’
Kassien laughed. Xiriel looked up from his Carry Eye and frowned.
‘Pallo, I think the altitude has gone to your brain,’ Istar scolded. ‘Come on, take the raisins.’
‘I’m not joking.’ Pallo seemed to be straining to pronounce the words. ‘My hands are stuck to the rock. I can’t move.’
Kassien walked over, grabbed Pallo’s bicep, and gave a jerk to dislodge his arm. Pallo screamed and his hand stayed in place. Kassien exclaimed in surprise and was about to place his hand on Pallo’s when Xiriel let out a yell.
‘Don’t touch him! Back off at once, Kassien. An Assimilator’s got him.’
‘A which?’ Kassien was still smiling as he turned.
‘Pallo, don’t try to move. See the stone by his hand, Kassien? See how shiny it is?’
‘Ye-es, I suppose. What’s happening? What’s an assil …?’
‘Assimilator. It’s a very nasty thing that lives in the rocks and eats things. We’ve got to find its mouth and try to choke it somehow.’
Kassien and Istar looked at one another, sharing their bemusement. Istar forgot about being annoyed with him.
‘I don’t see anything, Xiriel. How can it have a mouth?’
‘I really need to move now,’ Pallo announced. ‘I’m not happy about this. Help. Help.’
‘Shh. Stay still, Pallo, while we think this through.’
‘Think? Think? Get me out of here! Think some other time. Istar!’
‘Kassien, did you see that?’ Istar whispered. Where Pallo’s right shoulder had been there appeared a flash of light, like sea foam, perhaps. Then it was a shoulder again.
‘Uh-oh,’ said Xiriel. He turned and began casting about among the rocks.
Pallo’s face wrenched itself as he tried and failed to speak.
‘What does the mouth look like?’ Istar called. ‘How will we know where it is? How big is this thing? Xiriel!’
‘The mouth will be an area where there’s a timeslip. So if I walk around and talk constantly without ever stopping or pausing I just continue to talk and I want you to listen for a break in my voice and notice where I’m standing when that happens okay do you follow me Istar are you listening anything yet all right I’ll just go over here and maybe—’
‘Stop!’ Istar cried. She and Kassien exchanged glances. ‘Did you hear that?’
Kassien nodded. ‘Your voice dropped away for a second. Right there.’ He pointed with his sword.
‘Now how do we choke it?’ Istar asked.
Xiriel marked the place and moved away from it.
‘They like complicated things. Animals, people, musical instruments, Artifacts, Eyes …’
‘Your Carry Eye!’
Xiriel hesitated. Pallo’s throat bulged as he screamed without opening his mouth. A swarm of bright lights appeared where his left leg had been.
‘Surely Pallo is worth more than a piece of Everien glass.’
‘All my information is stored in it. Also, it’s the only way we have to communicate with Mhani.’
‘I don’t want to communicate with Mhani,’ Istar said immediately.
‘Let me think.’
‘There’s no time to fucking think,’ Kassien snapped. He took two strides and seized the Carry Eye from Xiriel’s hands before the Seer could react. He edged towards the spot they had marked as the mouth and held the Carry Eye out at arm’s length, then dropped it.
Pallo shrieked and propelled himself up and away from the rock, landing in Istar’s arms, unabashed at his own fear.
‘Let’s go!’ he cried. ‘Let’s go let’s go let’s go. Let’s get out of here!’
No one argued. They scurried away, running among the rocks and bushes of the plateau until they came to a scree slope, which they slid down unceremoniously.
At the bottom Xiriel hung back slightly. The others waited for him, coughing in the dust they’d kicked up from the scree.
‘Forget your damn Carry Eye,’ Kassien called back, obviously feeling guilty and making up for it by acting hostile. Xiriel met his eyes without emotion.
‘It troubles me that we have encountered a creature from the Floating Lands so close to Jai Khalar. I did not expect this.’
But the others didn’t want to talk. All they wanted to do was scramble as quickly as they could away from the danger zone. Xiriel picked up his pace and caught up with the rest of the group, but he was still preoccupied.
Xiriel knew they were afraid, and it was not that he was unafraid, in theory anyway; it was simply that he was puzzled. Sighing for the loss of the Carry Eye, he now ransacked his own memory in hope of recalling some of the symbols and memory-images that he had recorded there. It was an old habit of his, storing images for later reflection, and although the Carry Eye was a good tool, Xiriel’s mind itself had been highly trained. The Seer’s mind was never idle; even when he was silent and removed, he was looking over images that he remembered and trying to make sense of them. Some of the memory images were very old, recorded automatically by the Eyes in Jai Khalar in the days before the Water of Glass had been activated. It was a great piece of luck that Xiriel had found among all these dormant images a vision of one of Ysse’s conferences not long before the White Road came for Quintar and his Company. It was this memory that he now found himself studying even as he hastily departed the territory of the Assimilator.
The most accomplished of Everien’s Scholars had gathered in one of the large halls of Jai Khalar to discuss a suitable route to Jai Pendu. The Scholars had been exotic creatures in those days, and no one had dared speak to them personally because they were so greatly revered. But Hanji had been there, also; Quintar and Chyko had come, bringing the restless air of warriors in their prime; and the Scholars themselves made the air electric with their intelligence, or so it seemed to Xiriel, looking on thanks to the Eye that was mounted high in the stonework. Yet none of the current crop of political leaders had been present, not even Lerien or Ajiko, and Mhani had stood in the background, shy, crow-haired, the only female in a room full of men.
And then there was Ysse. Tall and lean, shaven-headed and armour-clad, Ysse resembled neither man nor woman in bearing. The queen stalked the room, eyes steady and cool, presiding over all with an unconscious air of authority. Xiriel knew that she must have been ill by this time with the wasting sickness that had ki
lled her, but in the vision shown by the Eye that recorded the event, she showed no sign of infirmity.
They spoke of many things Xiriel did not understand, but he had attentively taken notes when the Scholars drew maps in the air with their Knowledge, making the Fire of Glass flicker. But none of the maps were of Jai Pendu, and when Ysse perceived that the Scholars were trying to distract her from the fact that they didn’t know the shape of Jai Pendu, her temper flared.
‘This is a waste of time. How can we understand the configuration of the Floating Lands when we cannot see them from above? And Jai Pendu itself? It is impossible not to get lost in the strange pathways of that city, and yet if only we could see it laid out before us, we might come to trace a safe path. Why can you show me nothing? What good are you?’
‘Maybe once it would have been possible,’ said Enzetar. ‘There are stories in my Clan of Seahawk masters flying far out to sea and seeing many lands, although none of them spoke of seeing Jai Pendu on its course. At any rate, it could not be done now. The animal bonds are not strong enough any more. In my lifetime there has only ever been one great Sky Master remaining, and that is Eteltar, who is now Taretel the Free. He would be old now, and no one has seen him in years. He had become so close to the birds that none could find him on the heights.’
‘He is dead, surely,’ Ysse said sharply.
‘Probably.’
‘Ay, surely it must be so,’ Ysse said, nodding and turning to the window. Xiriel thought she looked tense and sad. ‘He was not a young man when he taught me sword. I was his last student. He was going to give up the ways of men altogether.’
‘His time had passed,’ Enzetar said. ‘He sensed that. He could not withstand the Knowledge.’
Ysse bristled. ‘He was not interested in the Knowledge. That is all. Do not speak of one you do not understand.’
‘Did you understand him, my queen?’ Enzetar said with a faint air of challenge.
‘No. That is why I never speak of him.’ The hint of a smile flared the corner of her lip; then she turned her back on the room. There was a long, uncertain silence. Ysse turned around, making a sharp gesture towards her eyes. ‘I need to see. The Fire of Glass is tremendously powerful, but except for its use in the Fire Houses, it is undirected. You call yourselves Scholars but you cannot see. My memory serves me better than all your advice.’
No one said anything. Ysse’s anger could be felt like a wave in the air. Finally in a slip of a voice Mhani said, ‘There are globes of glass here in Jai Khalar that sometimes reveal visions. But we have not been able to control them.’
‘That,’ said Ysse, pouncing on this revelation, ‘should be your objective. I have awakened the Knowledge for you. You must find a way to use it, or all my efforts are for nothing.’
The Scholars looked uncomfortable. Ysse turned to Quintar and Chyko. ‘I must send you blind into Jai Pendu. For that I’m sorry. I can’t prepare you for what you will find. I remember every moment of my time there; but it will be different for you.’
This vision had been so real to Xiriel that it seemed to him that the queen had spoken these words directly to him. Strangely, he was not afraid; not yet, anyway. For he had made maps of his own, compiled from the accounts of Impressionists and failed assailants on the Floating Lands, and diagrams found in hidden parts of Jai Khalar, and from recovered documents from the tunnels beneath the Fire Houses at A-vi-Khalar, which had once been a great town. His maps were incomplete, but they were better than anything anybody had ever had. And Xiriel was not easily spooked. Unlike the others, he appreciated that the Knowledge was as much about mathematics and physical principles as it was about spirits, no matter how unnerving it might be when an Impressionist started spouting off in the Everien tongue. Xiriel was not afraid of maths. He did not particularly think it was significant that he was not afraid of anything, that he did not even know what fear really was.
‘No one has ever crossed the Floating Lands,’ Istar stated suddenly, breaking his concentration and recalling him to the present.
‘This is true.’ He wondered whether she possessed the ability to read minds, that she now guessed what he had been thinking about.
‘They all died or disappeared,’ she added after a minute.
‘Not all,’ he corrected. ‘Some were able to return from the first few islands. Without their accounts we would not have any diagrams at all.’
‘True,’ she said. ‘But none ever went all the way to Jai Pendu that way. They all used the White Road. Even my father.’
Xiriel didn’t know how to respond to this. Istar’s obsession with Chyko did her a mixture of harm and good, but he didn’t know how to tell her to forget Chyko and concentrate on her own life. He found people confusing and difficult, and he had no idea how to talk to them about things like feelings. The Knowledge he could find words for, but the emotions that gripped others so powerfully and made them act against themselves and their own interests seemed to find no echo in him. He simply didn’t understand.
‘We are going the right way,’ Xiriel said at last. ‘The White Road is unpredictable. It should have appeared by now.’
‘But what will we find in the Floating Lands? More monsters? Trickery like that of Jai Khalar? How can you guide us through a place you have never been? Are there Eyes in the Floating Lands?’
‘No, but there are codes. And there are things in the Liminal that help me to understand how the Knowledge perhaps functions in the Floating Lands.’
‘The Liminal is dangerous,’ Istar said, repeating what she’d always heard. ‘Even Mhani does not go there. Has she told you about it? She doesn’t tell me anything, but I know it scares her.’
‘It is not frightening if you don’t get emotional about it.’
‘You’ve been there? In the Liminal?’
‘No, but I’m going to be.’
‘Stop talking riddles, Xiriel.’
‘Istar. Listen. I am not talking riddles. The Floating Lands were once one place, attached to Jai Pendu and attached to this world. They were shattered by the Liminal and now it penetrates their structure in myriad ways.’
‘But … what’s the Liminal, then? I don’t understand.’
‘Neither do I. That’s why I want to see Jai Pendu for myself.’
‘Are there Everiens in Jai Pendu? Did they flee into the Liminal? And would they help us?’
‘I don’t know. But I’ve read all the accounts of the Floating Lands that the Scholars have ever recorded by those who tried to cross them. I don’t know how accurate their memories were, but apparently there was a system of underground passages within the islands themselves. Some even believed the islands were connected underwater. I have copied the symbols and the diagrams they drew of mechanisms our ancestors encountered in the Floating Lands. I have studied these things, and tried to replicate some of them for myself, and I have decoded some of the Everien language. If we have to go underground, we won’t be completely unprepared.’
All this time, Pallo had said nothing. He had a troubled look on his face. Xiriel observed Istar fall into step with him, probably concerned about failing morale. She said, ‘Don’t worry. Xiriel has studied this problem for years. He’ll find a way.’
Pallo looked startled. ‘What? I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening.’
‘If you weren’t listening, why ever were you looking so miserable just now?’
‘I have a stone in my shoe.’
Istar rolled her eyes and kept walking.
In the Liminal
Mhani was falling. Her question echoed about her: Where is the White Road? Here everything was white, and she was passing through a succession of doors windows parlours awnings bridges corridors rooftops and stairs. She couldn’t control her own movement or her own sight, and terror rushed over her. With a great effort of will, she forced herself to turn and look behind her. And then she saw everything from a great distance, through a foreign self.
It was no different from being a child and watching h
er own hands craft a device she in no way understood, as if she were merely being used. Only now she inhabited the mind that showed her this vision.
This vision of the White Road.
I could See where the road ribboned over the sea. It was real, solid – yet unsupported by any mechanism. The shadows of birds fell on it. Waves splashed and rolled beneath it. The White Road led back toward Everien, past the Floating Lands like predatory teeth soaring from out of the deep, and finally to earth, where it disappeared in the mist of the sea plateau below the mountains of Everien.
Coming towards me up the road’s soft arc was a small group of horsemen.
I did not know the Company then like I know them now. They came into Jai Pendu, and eschewing the Tower called the Way of the Sun that Ysse had already explored, they searched on until they came to the hall that is shaped like a bell, in the Tower called the Way of the Eye. I looked down on them, watched their faces stretch and gawp as they tried to understand the structure of the jewel that is Jai Pendu. A sense of the builder’s personality becomes imbued in any structure, and Jai Pendu should have been no different – yet no person could have created such a place. In all their Clan legends there are no animal protectors who could have conceived of this architecture, and even the Pharician gods would surely have been baffled by the stairs that deliquesced to become ramps and the doors that opened three ways in the space of two.
Their leader was a tall man with a sceptical face. In my Eye I perceived his thoughts. He was thinking that he had stepped out of the world, into a place bigger than itself. He was thinking, I feel like a piece of dust.
They were looking for me, though they did not know it. When they came to the place of Three Doors, I drew them through my door and into my Way. Through halls and palaces and across bridges lit by some unknown means I brought the Company; through palaces all curved and polished after the Everien manner: never the same twice, and always ever so slightly impossible. They came to the Way of the Eye, the place of the Water that connects the worlds, and they began to climb the Tower’s ramp that is like a river, their horses pushing their breasts against its silvery tongue and driving upward with their great furred hooves that were not made for such surfaces.
The Company of Glass Page 12