The Company of Glass

by Tricia Sullivan

  ‘Istar?’ She could hear Pallo calling her name from somewhere above. A tiny splotch of blue light was visible like a fleck of paint on the general darkness. She didn’t know how to get to it. She stood up again, muscles trembling. Her feet didn’t want to stay under her. I’m going to fall in a minute, she thought – and someone grabbed her foot and dragged her sideways.

  It was Kassien.

  She was lying on a ledge above the sea, half her body draped over the edge. The rope stretched out over the water above her. Kassien’s hand pinned her foot to the rock, and she saw that somehow she had reached the other side, but she was well below the end of the rope where it met the cliff. The others were all standing on that ledge above her; Kassien had a rope around his waist and a precarious hold on the cliff.

  ‘This is a funny place to take a nap,’ he said. ‘You almost fell in. How did you get here? We thought you fell in the water. Nobody could see you.’

  Istar said, ‘Thirsty,’ and licked cracked lips.

  ‘Your face is black,’ Kassien said. ‘Your hands are burned. What have you been up to? I thought Pallo was the pyromaniac among us.’

  The lightness of his tone, meant to reassure her, instead made her feel like an invalid being coaxed to drink soup. She wondered how close she had come to falling.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, and drew her up. ‘Put this rope around you.’

  They had to pull her up; she was too weak to climb at all. Kassien free-climbed after her.

  ‘Show-off,’ she croaked, swigging from Pentar’s water bottle. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Dunno, but I’m starving,’ Pallo said suggestively. They had almost reached the summit of the island, which was rugged and sported ivy and moss among the ruins. It was a logical place to rest before attempting the next bridge. They trooped up a vine-covered staircase that had once been white, curving among reclaimed parts of buildings. Pentar turned to look back and gave a startled cry. He pointed to two of the islands that floated to the south. They hadn’t come near either one, but they could see that a legitimate Everien bridge had been extended between them and the horde of soldiers was passing across it like an army of red and black ants.

  ‘How are they doing that?’ railed Xiriel, pushing Pentar out of the way to get to the highest position on the island. ‘How do they know the way?’

  ‘And why so many?’ Kassien mused. ‘What do they think they’re going to have to fight at Jai Pendu, to bring such a large force? How did they get across?’

  Pallo strained his eyes, bouncing up and down with excitement. ‘Kassien … by Ysse, look carefully. See, there on the mainland? There must be thousands of them. There are horses. There are—’

  ‘Yes, we can see for ourselves,’ Kassien snapped.

  ‘—siege towers!’

  ‘That could be the army Tarquin warned of,’ Istar murmured. She had recovered her voice, but not her energy. ‘But why here?’

  Xiriel called down, ‘Come! Hurry! There’s an intact bridge to the next island!’

  This was all anybody needed to hear; even Istar was able to move forward when offered the incentive of a proper bridge. The next island was taller than the rest, so they could not see what was on top of it. The bridge was a perfect white curve, graceful and strutless. It ended at the mouth of a dark tunnel in the side of the island. They crossed it hurriedly, and when they reached the other side, Xiriel looked everywhere in the tunnel entrance and around the foundation of the bridge, hoping to find some way to block the bridge behind them.

  ‘There’s nothing I can do,’ he said.

  ‘Never mind.’ Kassien pointed to the island they had just escaped. ‘There are figures coming up out of the ruins – I think they’re catching up. Let’s get going while we still have a lead.’

  Xiriel led them under the island. There was very little light, and a powerful wind was blowing from somewhere in the depths; eventually they reached the end of the tunnel, where the wind originated somewhere far below. A panel slammed down behind them. Kassien turned and flung himself against it, but it did not yield. Ahead of them was a chasm of indeterminate depth, out of which roared a deafening wind. At the end of the tunnel loomed a highly decorated wall covered with, among other things, glowing tiles marked by mysterious symbols. Xiriel addressed himself to it; Istar’s esteem of him went up another notch as she observed his total concentration on the task at hand.

  The other three huddled out of the wind, watching Xiriel. His tall form was bathed in flickering lights of orange and green – weird, unnatural colours such as they had never seen. The wind blew his thin garments so hard against him that they seemed painted on his taunt lineaments. His face was completely still but for the flickering eyes. Sweat beaded on his upper lip.

  ‘Where is all this wind coming from?’ Kassien said in her ear. She cast a concerned glance at him, knowing that he was even less at ease with the Knowledge than she. He looked as though he would bolt if there were anywhere to bolt to.

  Before Istar could answer, the pitch of the wind changed. As one they covered their ears – all except Xiriel, who stood alone in the light, swaying slightly as the air currents pressed him. The wind sang higher. A bass drone slid below the original pitch. The dissonance made Istar’s teeth tingle; then the sound resolved to a chord. A fourth tone came on waveringly, and then a fifth.

  The light went out, leaving them in pitch darkness.

  Kassien stiffened at her side. Pentar gripped her arm and spoke into her ear, but she couldn’t hear anything but the wind, which was now throbbing through the chasm in distinct waves. When the sound hit them it was hard and soft at once, like water under great pressure. Istar experienced the unnerving sensation that the ground had dropped away beneath her and that they were all floating in the sound. She didn’t know if her eyes were closed or open.

  That’s it, she thought hopelessly. That’s the end of us. For she didn’t dare move.

  Then a pencil-thin line of silver drew itself across the darkness, reasserting the presence of matter in a world that had seemed empty; the line of light broadened to outline the entire wall before which Xiriel stood. It was a crack, for the wall slowly began to fall away backwards, admitting a clear blue illumination that rendered Xiriel like an ice sculpture in starlight. And indeed he remained still enough to have frozen.

  Beyond him, in a space the size of ten Fire Houses, something bright and terrible was moving.

  The thing before them was not a beast, but nor was it a mechanical system. It was something less abstract and dismissible than a vision though indisputably a strain and a terror to the already fevered imagination. Istar found herself gaping at a monster with a thousand aspects: some human, some made of fire; some nothing but mouths that spoke unheard languages. There were wheels made of teeth that dripped blood; there were dark, sulking things that rode on the shoulders of merciless gearboxes and gazed soulfully at the travellers before turning tail and disappearing in the hidden cracks between the monster apparatus; there were claws and fins and animal sinew hard up against metal and wire humming with light; and there were hundreds of wings that beat in apparent futility, until one looked at their undersides and saw whole cities writ there in miniature, or large irregular windows leading to star-strewn nights. And then an architecture began to show itself through the horror of displaced body parts and repellent smells, and a disjointed geometry became apparent. This was not a visible structure: its joints and supports could not be seen like the abandoned buildings of the Everiens above. It was not a thing for the wind to blow through, or one on which the shadows might change through the constancy of days and seasons. It was a structure of implied connections, mistaken meanings, cancers of design in which slightly damaged details replicated out of control and through their dumb purposelessness acted deep in the mind to make the skin crawl with revulsion. Mechanisms were firing off without reason. Pieces of the whole changed places and jumped locations without warning, creating a sickening sense of movement. It was, Istar thought,
like looking at a bucket of worms in which some of the worms, on closer inspection, turned out to be people you knew, or songs that had been turned to helpless flesh with no other option than to squirm blindly, bereft of context, or the summer days you most fondly remembered now become nothing more than pieces of tissue whose meaning and memory would have done better to leave them. And just as you were about to turn away or shut your eyes, you saw within the noisome mess a sort of pattern – and the pattern in this case was discernible first to Xiriel, and then slowly, horribly, to the others.

  ‘Look at it carefully,’ he said. ‘It’s a staircase.’

  ‘No it isn’t,’ Kassien said. ‘It’s a nightmare. Close the gates. We’ll find a different way.’

  Istar was inclined to agree with him, but Xiriel said earnestly, ‘This is the only way. You mustn’t be squeamish.’

  Kassien looked angry, but he shrank back. ‘You’re mad. It’s alive and it’s hostile and I’d rather fight the whole Pharician army barehanded than go one inch closer.’

  As if his words had come to life, two things happened in rapid succession: first, the behemoth of the gates shot a section of itself towards them, something resembling a green and diseased system of genitals that spat a luminous arc of liquid. This struck a section of the landing nearby, eating through it with a sinister hiss of yellowy smoke and revealing a white swirl of water beneath. Second, the chorus of wind ceased all at once, save for a soft and plaintive wail of air beating a wavering melody through some overlooked crack. In the ensuing silence the tramp of many boots could be heard.

  ‘Here they come,’ Xiriel murmured. He sounded in a trance and Istar wanted to strike him.

  Pentar leaned out into the tunnel they’d just left. ‘There must be a better place to fight them than this.’

  ‘I don’t like it, Xiriel,’ Istar said. ‘But if you can lead us to the top, we’ll go. Let them follow if they can.’

  Kassien didn’t look at her, or the others, or the gate-creature. ‘This is suicide,’ he said in a low voice.

  Xiriel grabbed Istar’s hand. ‘Get hold of one another!’ He sprang away just as Istar managed to get a piece of Pentar’s cloak. Pallo was clutching her, and Kassien was somewhere behind them. Istar concentrated on breathing, just to stop herself gagging.

  ‘They’re following us!’ Pallo shouted. Xiriel turned around and Istar saw the whites of his eyes. She closed hers and let herself be drawn forward.

  Terms of Surrender

  ‘Sir? Sir! Wake up! I think I’ve found Kivi!’

  Ajiko spun and looked at the place on the Water where Soren pointed. His eyes slowly focused. It was a bright morning on the sea plain, and Kivi was surrounded by a blur of armoured bodies. Ajiko’s spirits shot up. Lerien must have found the army.

  ‘Kivi! Report!’

  The Seer licked his lips and said, ‘General Ajiko, sir, I am a prisoner. I have been asked to contact you to offer terms of surrender.’

  ‘What!’ Ajiko turned to Soren accusingly.

  ‘It’s a Pharician army, sir,’ whispered Soren.

  ‘Where’s the king?’

  ‘I’m instructed to say that the Pharician commander Tash has declared this entire valley forfeit to Pharice following Pharician losses in the incident at Ristale. King Lerien and his men were last seen on their way to the Floating Lands. We are en route to you and will overrun your land in a matter of days. Tash gives you a choice. Surrender and allow Jai Khalar to be entered, and you will retain your position as steward in the occupied territory.’

  ‘And if we refuse?’

  ‘Then you will be besieged and Tash will take the valley out from under you.’

  ‘Tash presumes much if he believes the Clans will not defend their land.’

  Kivi said, ‘Tash knows you have no army. It has been seen under the dominion of a Sekk Master, marching towards the Floating Lands.’

  Keras

  For a long time, Tarquin couldn’t work out what was going on. He was not in the melee at Ristale any more, though his sword was naked and black with hard-set gore. Night was gone, the woman he knew yet didn’t know was gone, Chyko was gone, and the demon horse was nowhere to be seen – yet his cloak was half-burned as proof it had all truly happened. He was walking along a narrow track in uncut green hay: his eyes came to focus on a small spider hurrying across his path, one of many that moved among the trampled blades of grass.

  This was not Pharice. The grass was different, and he was among mountains, not beside them. It looked more like Snake Country. He was walking north-east up a teardrop-shaped valley set in white peaks. There were two hawks overhead.

  He had been walking for a long time. He deduced this by the blisters on his feet when he stopped to rest and the lack of rations in his pack. And the length of his fingernails, which had not been trimmed for days.

  Even simple inferences like this took time for him to reason out. His mind was utterly battered and spent. Tears of frustration filled his throat. He was lost. He could trust nothing – what he had said to Kivi applied doubly to Tarquin: he especially could not trust himself.

  He had had another chance to kill the thing that stole his men. The white fragile being that he’d thought he’d left behind in Jai Pendu was the same creature that now controlled the mixed army of Clan and Pharician warriors. It made them Slaves of a kind, and it would be taking them back to Jai Pendu. There was nothing he, Tarquin the Free, could do about it, for he had not destroyed the Sekk in combat and moreover he had not died trying. He had not even been injured! Again he felt like a coward: impotent, unable to perform the act that he had committed his life to perfecting.

  Now he walked along a green path under sunlit summer sky. He remembered how his hand had closed over the Company of Glass and for a moment its power was within his reach; he might have commanded his men then, but the Sekk had touched him and he had somehow become displaced here. Why was he always spared? He could not spit back at the sun that shone on him; he could not help being relieved to be alive and not sucked into the Glass that the Sekk held, as he knew it must have intended. Yet nothing made sense. His throat tightened when he recalled the unexpected meeting with Chyko after all these years. Could Chyko really be alive, unchanged? Or was it all just a cruel trick?

  Chyko had thrived on the irrational; he would have delighted at finding himself in such straits as the ones that had Tarquin trapped right now. But Chyko had never subscribed to the notion of sense – much less practised it. Take Mhani, for example: Chyko had fallen in love with the one woman in Jai Khalar – maybe even in the whole world – who was not taken in by his charms. He had wasted far more time and effort in trying to win her over than she deserved, Tarquin thought. They had nothing in common: she was an intellectual, and he could neither read nor do arithmetic. Her looks were average bordering on plain; he was a stunning piece of manhood, even if his features were exaggerated and bore the marks of many battles. He was a rampant extrovert; she was quiet, even secretive. He had an outrageous sense of humour, and she was serious out of all proportion to her age. Yet in the end she had capitulated and had given him three children in as many years, first Istar and then the twins. And he had paraded her around, pregnant, as if she were a goddess of the jungles of Anaya and he her chosen servant.

  Mhani. He wanted to curse her for setting her daughter on a path of madness; but in thinking about it, he realized that if Istar had even a fingernail of her father in her, Mhani would never have been able to stop her from doing anything. He had told Istar there was no way across the Floating Lands. How badly he had wanted to believe them too damaged to permit crossing – and how wrong he had been. How else could the Sekk have got from Jai Pendu to Everien?

  He startled a deer and her two offspring, and returned to the present. The track topped a slight rise. Where the ground dipped at his feet, a river traversed the valley, passing through a small stand of young trees. Then the grass continued, uninterrupted except for a sizeable piece of woodland about two mi
les away, near the head of the valley. In the distance he saw horses grazing. There was no bridge and he saw no fences, so the horses might be wild; but he thought not when he noticed a thin curl of white smoke rising from the far side of the woodland.

  He forded the river and rested for a few minutes on its farther bank, where he drank and cleaned his sword and stretched wearily. Gossamers glided over the disturbed water and came to rest like golden filigree on the giant ferns that lined the shady part of the banks. When the gossamers sunned themselves a certain way, the sun shot rainbows through their wings. Tarquin was charmed. The slow river, the heat, and the silence recalled him to the summers of his youth spent by the rivers of the Seahawk Clan that led to the ocean, and the long hours with his friends playing war games as they browned in the sun, making slingshots and racing in the water and telling stories.

  Am I now to live only in memory? he wondered, and immediately became annoyed at the sentiment. His mind felt soft, but his body had become like the stuff of the mountains where he’d been spending his time, and he moved off feeling stiff, tough, and hungry. The path left the trees and he began to jog across the rolling, open field. As he drew closer to the larger patch of woods, the grass became shorter, grazed down by the dozen or so horses that roamed it. Still he saw no buildings or fences. The path widened into a general area of mud and then veered off into the trees. He followed it and had just come into the deeper shade of oaks and chestnuts when loud hoofbeats sounded ahead of him. The horse was moving fast; it barrelled around a bend in the track and was upon him before he could do more than turn and try to stand aside. The rider was holding a wicked-looking Pharician spear, which pointed at his belly.