The steps ended suddenly and she found herself on the top of a sheer pillar of smooth stone. She turned to take in the view; the stairs could be seen spiralling away below, but the buildings she had passed on the way up were no longer there. The city had rearranged itself when she wasn’t looking. Now there were no obstacles to her view. She was in a lonely place above everything and the wind had begun to blow sunlight ferociously into her eyes. There was nowhere left to go.
She had expected something very different – something more like Jai Khalar: a long and convoluted journey, maybe, through a giant puzzle, or a series of tests, ending in a hall or room where the Artifacts were kept. A room not unlike the Eye Tower, perhaps. All she would have to do (she’d thought) was rise to the occasion. What she hadn’t appreciated, and what began to dawn on her, was the fact that her entire rationale had presupposed that the builders of Jai Pendu had planned it as a test of human pilgrims; as if her quest had been laid out by some higher authority, predestined.
The queasy feeling in her gut was the realization that she had been mistaken about this.
There is no reason to this place, Istar thought. It’s a problem without a solution. How can I defeat an enemy I don’t understand?
The sky was greening with dawn. Earlier she’d been struck by the absence of birds; now when a shadow passed across her, she startled like a rabbit. The wingspan was unmistakable, and the distinctive tail spread identified the seahawk immediately. Her Clan’s namesake was among the largest of the birds of prey to be found anywhere from Pharice all the way up through the Wild Lands. Seahawks were known for their aggression, and they had been seen picking off baby seals on occasion, although their usual diet was ocean fish. There were stories of a single seahawk going on a killing spree in the gull colonies, not eating any of its kills, but simply taking out dozens of birds as if for the joy of it. The seahawks lived under clifftops and on ledges all along the coast, always seen alone once they’d reached adulthood. They were not well understood, and no one hunted them.
The sight of this one, now, created an odd psychological friction, reminding her of the world she had left behind, of which there was nothing now to be seen. Yet her heart could not help but lift: the bird was a majestic sight, cruising effortlessly on the thermals. She could see its head pivoting from side to side, but the only other movement in its body came from the subtle vaning of its wingtips.
For an instant as it began to dive she had the wonderful fantasy that the Animal Magic of legend really was true: that her Clan totem had come to snatch her up and fly away with her, back to a world in which there were no Sekk, no Knowledge, only the hunting tribes and the rough justice of the Wild Lands. But as the bird careered out of the sky it occurred to her that she was far too heavy to be carried and anyway, this bird was full of vicious intent. She threw herself flat on her face just as the hawk pulled out of its dive. Its extended talons raked up her back and she felt the downdraught of its wings as it began to climb again. She sat up, astonished. A pale, downy feather flew past her in the wind. The bird had looped away and was slowly ascending in the distance. The wind died.
‘What in the name of Ysse was that all about?’ Istar yelled after it, and the sound of her own voice made her feel better. She spun on her knees and looked down again.
‘What are they doing? Where are they going?’
She could see knots and curls of darkness where the army worked its way up the white mountain. The spiralline nature of the city meant that they moved in many different directions. Now they passed into the black triangle and vanished. She had taken the wrong door. The army was in there with Tarquin right now, or maybe it had even gone past him. She glanced up for no reason and the hawk was back, circling easily over her head.
She drew her sword and shook it pugnaciously.
‘Come on, you fucking chicken!’ she screamed at it, hopping up and down in frustration. ‘You’ve turned against me, too, have you? Come and taste this!’
Imperturbable, the bird circled. The city below spoke its silence.
‘Calm down, Istar,’ she whispered suddenly, lowering her sword and blinking to clear wind-tears from her eyes. ‘You can’t kill the seahawk. The bird is sacred.’
She looked at the sky again. The sun had cleared the sea and it shot its rays at her. Never before had she associated dawn with violence, but this one seemed torn protesting from the seam of ocean and sky.
The hawk hurtled out of the sky, screaming.
Istar put her sword up.
She stabbed her Clan’s animal, and its momentum took her off-balance. She went to her knees in the rain of feathers and blood. The bird on the end of her sword dragged her arm over the side; its wings made a final thrashing at her head. The sky where the bird had been turned red in the shape of its spread wings and she was dragged into the red hole by the weight of her sword.
There was no sense of landing, no collision of any kind. She was inside a segment of an enormous red crystal, trapped as if frozen in ice. She could only move her eyes. To her left she could see a twisting pathway that rose to the crystal and seemed to pierce it in several places, for the crystal was irregular and spiky in shape. The path below was black with a moving line of soldiers, but empty above her. To her right, in the red light within the crystal, she had an impression of the bristle of many weapons, and movement that did not seem human. The dead seahawk was still attached to her sword; she was disgusted and wanted to fling it off, but she couldn’t move.
The man before her was not Seahawk, but he carried a huge sword on his back. His lithe body resembled the bow he was drawing slowly, thoughtfully. He posed and aimed at her. Crimson reflections shone on his dark scalp and jagged profile, and despite combat erupting all around him, he appeared to be smiling.
She flinched, but the arrow went past her. He drew his sword and dashed straight at her. He was dressed in black Wasp Clan leggings. A scant leather harness bound his torso, holding various darts and poison ampoules, and a blowgun hung around his neck. His face was painted for war and his feet were bare, but he held the sword with a familiarity at odds with his Clan: he held the sword like a Seahawk. His eyes were wide and black and there was blood on his heaving chest. Steam was coming off his body like smoke from a coal. She shrank away in fear, but he didn’t seem to notice her. He hurled himself at the wall of the crystal, and she realized that his target was somewhere outside.
Istar couldn’t take her eyes off him. He was like a spirit.
‘Let us out!’ he screamed savagely, and she realized he was not merely angry – he was desperate. From behind his back there was a roaring, and out of the red smoke and chaos, a shadowy form was looming. It was larger than man or beast, its shape indistinct enough to remain a mystery; yet its threat was felt, even on the edge of visibility. ‘Let us out! Enough of this fighting! Quintar, where have you gone?’
He paused, almost sobbing, gasping for breath, and glanced over his shoulder. He pressed closer to the surface of the crystal, straining to see out. And then, in the movement and shape of his face, she knew him without any doubt.
‘Chyko!’
She flexed her muscles, unable to escape. ‘Chyko, can you hear me? It’s Istar!’
But he was gripped in some rage that she didn’t understand. She was scared. He was screaming out through the red barrier. ‘Quintar, you bastard, come! Don’t leave us! Where are you?’
The shadowy presence behind him was advancing. Istar watched the action of his body as he cut and slashed at the inside surface of the crystal, raining blow after blow. Every muscle flowed perfectly in the action: tendons tightened and breathing exploded. She was witnessing the relentless application of a human being at the very limits of great ability, and the sight transfixed her. Yet it was no good. The shadow-thing was coming closer, and the sphere remained unchanged. War cries had changed to screams of terror; yet Chyko fought. Istar stiffened against the crystal, nails biting at its surface without gripping.
Suddenly Chyko stood still. The sou
nd of his breathing broke through the background noise of fighting. The sword hung in his lax arm. His eyes were vacant, except where pierced by two uncannily bright points.
‘Father,’ she whispered.
Then the wall behind her shattered and she tumbled out, narrowly missing being caught by the backstroke of Tarquin’s sword. A moment later she landed at his feet.
‘Get out of the way, boy!’ Chyko cried hoarsely, and then booted feet were trampling her as snow flew out among the shards of red crystal. She curled up instinctively, wrapping her arms around her head to protect herself, and rolled out of the way.
The Way of the Rose
The middle door was one of those peculiar multidimensional creations of the Knowledge that Tarquin most loathed: it opened three ways. When he tugged on it, the door yielded on one side to the army that had been seeking a way in and on the other side to a spiral pathway that soared up into the light of Jai Pendu, winding around and through the red crystal that floated high in the netting of the centre tower. The crystal had a complicated, inverted geometry that caused it to intersect with the pathway in many points, so that a maze of red light was thrown in various degrees of intensity over everything.
When the door opened, Tarquin inserted himself into the Way of the Rose only a moment’s breadth ahead of the first of the manic Pharician warriors who rushed ahead of Night. He slapped the Pharician down with his sword and ran up the pathway until it was blocked by the crystal, which sliced the ramp with a thin red sheet like the petal of a flower. He could see the other side of the path as it led on upwards, but when he looked at the crystal he could also see something within it.
It was a world full of fire, and things of terror the like of which even the darkest reaches of Everien’s mountains could not have housed. A man was there, fighting a serpent with two flaming axes. Tarquin turned and Night was just behind him with its Glass.
‘No,’ Tarquin said. He did not draw his sword. He stood, arms folded across his chest, blocking the way to the red-lit crystal facet. The Sekk stopped. ‘You cannot take them.’
There were a thousand men pushing into the passage behind Night. The Company ranged ghostly in the front rank, still horsed. Their grim eyes bore into him as they came on.
Tarquin’s sword came out as he spun, teeth bared, eyes blazing. Gripping the sword in both hands, he swung it over his head and down against the crystal wall. The crystal flew apart like ice shattering, but the sound it made was a deep and complex snatch of music that burst up into the tower like a flight of birds. The world beyond was full of fire and terror and the sound of serpents. Out of the smoke leaped Riesel. His cloak was burning and his face was black. He shoved Tarquin aside with the haft of one axe and charged into the crowd of soldiers behind the Sekk. They parted instinctively, one Pharician falling to his knees with a supplicating cry. The ghost warriors had begun to step forward through the ranks, slithering like morning light through mist. Riesel stepped into himself and turned to Tarquin, recognition in his eyes.
Tarquin wanted to throw his arms around Riesel, so great was his pleasure at seeing him again past all hope; but Riesel’s face was hard with fell purpose. He took in Tarquin, acknowledged him for a moment; then he turned and began to kill.
‘Night, release them,’ Tarquin commanded. As Riesel went to work, there was a sound of steel on steel; the thud of bodies; a squealing slaughterhouse scream; and the Sekk drifted over the crystal shards and melting snow, on up the steeply tilting path as though sleepwalking. Even as he was driven backwards up the ramp, Tarquin began to laugh.
‘Have it your way,’ he said, and rushed at the next facet of the crystal. It sang as he hacked it with his sword, his feet leaving the ground with the force of his blow. He spun out of the way a second before Mojise’s whip preceded him into the chamber – and Mojise, too, found himself among the ghosts and came to life. Laughing, Tarquin rampaged up the spiral, eighteen years of pent-up rage releasing themselves along the length of his sword and into the huge, light-soaked crystal. The barriers to the worlds broke. Lyetar and Vorse and Irisel came pounding out of the same facet, and Lyetar’s sword was already blood-blackened. Chyko arrived like a cyclone out of a white world and leaped into himself almost absentmindedly; scarcely bothered by any of the events about him, he scrambled along the underside of the spiral and blew darts into the host. Tarquin almost tripped over Istar as she was carried out with Chyko, but he didn’t stop for her. He didn’t spare more than a glance for each as he freed them, running up the spiral in an excess of physical expression; he began to sing as he cut. He could smell battle, like an old dog in the morning standing and stretching and realizing the miracle in one more day of rabbits and sun and running head down on the trail. Something in Tarquin awakened and stretched and was glad to pit itself against any enemy. He burned for the fight, and his men rallied around him. Each of them was different in some way than the last time he’d seen them: Chyko had a scar on his face, and Lyetar’s hair had burned off; and Vorse had silver teeth that made him look more menacing than ever. There was no time for words or sentiment.
At last he had them back. Tarquin set his teeth and led the Company into the swarm of Enslaved soldiers, and everything fell away.
There is no noise in battle. How this could be was a mystery to Tarquin but it was one of the few truths in life that he had ever discovered. There is no noise. There is only a series of events, each one perfect as a ripe fruit where it sways from the summer tree; and you can’t predict the order or nature of these things but you recognize them when you see them and you act. You see the blade coming at you and you aren’t there. Your blade – pure as intention, vile as thought – goes singing out to violate your enemy. You kill and that is all.
Inside this simple tune are myriad variations, but if you learn one you recognize all of the others and there’s no noise. There’s only truth. What transpires is not open to debate or interpretation. Blows are sent, blocked, countered; attacks are delivered and gravity drives one opponent backward, the other onward. It is not fire. It is not mind. It is some devil outbreed bastard of life and death that casts itself on the boards like a die in a game, and chance roams the battlefield like a vulture. It will prey on the unwary. You have to assert yourself always, your eyes wide and inclusive, your breathing like it’s your last breath. You are a sinuous line of power and you never give up.
But twenty thousand pushed against thirteen, and the harder the Company fought, the more the mob pressed, still linked to their spirits by the Glass. For Night still held the Glass in the passages and staircases of Jai Pendu; the men of the Clans and of Pharice pressed towards their doom; and Night holding the Company walked through the middle of it all, silent, unscathed, untouched. Resolute.
Tarquin set himself in the path of Night. ‘You cannot have the men of Everien,’ he said. ‘Their spirits belong only to them.’
Yet even as he spoke, he feared that his words were untrue: the Enslaved soldiers had no spirit that he could see. They clamoured for some gratification he could not comprehend; they crowded behind Night like sheep competing for space at the trough. Only the Company was alive, and the single uniting thought that lit the air among them was Kill.
‘Your game is over,’ Tarquin said to Night. ‘I for one have had enough of being your thing. Go back where you came from, you skulking piece of nothingness.’
‘I skulk behind the stars,’ said Night. ‘I live in the centres of your eyes. Hide there and I will surely find you.’
‘Come fight honestly, then,’ said Tarquin, spinning his sword in a glittering eight. Like a horse in the spring when the grass is wet and the light is thick as ambrosia, he wanted to run. He wanted to feel his tendons stretch, his body respond the way the clocks of Jai Khalar could never aspire to respond: with truth and passion. ‘Come fight me, and it will turn out differently this time.’
But Night didn’t like to fight with swords.
‘It is nothing for me to take you,’ it said. ‘The
spark which you feel and call life is as light as a word to me, a word that it’s on the tip of my tongue to say just for the pleasure of the sound of it, and that would be the end of you, of course.’
Tarquin was not daunted. He went forward, and Night spread its arms to welcome him.
He could see her now from afar, but she did not see him. She was sitting in a garden, at an alabaster stone table surrounded by dark foliage threaded with white vines. He was standing among the hawthorns at the gate, shoulders sagging, sword hanging with its tip almost in the dirt, covered in mud, blood, bruises – bone-tired. He was so empty he couldn’t speak. All through the battle, all through the legion pains, irritations, discomforts and frustrations of the journey, he had dreamed of such a stopping place as this. Just to be still and hear the birds and the faint harmonies of falling water, and to smell the flowers that lay like drifted snow on shadowy leaves – it was enough. To look at her was also enough; not more than enough, not too much – but exactly enough. He could have stood that way forever. He could see the breaths move the hollow of her throat. Her red hair was braided simply, but even thus contained it captured the sunlight and did something wondrous to it. It draped her shoulders and snaked down her back, which was left bare and pale by the moss-green tunic she wore. She had been intent on some object on the table, and for those moments while he stood taking in the set of her body, the expression of balance and unforced concentration in her slender arms, her poised back, her legs crossed at the ankle beneath the bench, he thought her perfect. He thought everything perfect.
And then she perceived him. Without turning, she tilted her head slightly, and even this subtle reaction transformed the scene. The set of her eyes changed, and her lips parted slightly, and everything else remained still. Then in one smooth movement she turned and, slipping whatever it was she had been handling into a pocket with a furtive movement, brought her eyes to bear on him, large and steady.
The Company of Glass Page 46