Текст книги "The Wide World's End"

Автор книги: James Enge

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Текущая страница: 25 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

CHAPTER EIGHT

News from Home

The four companions stood at the edge of the world and looked down at the letter.

“A trap, you think?” Morlock asked.

“Certainly,” whispered Deor in mock terror. “If you pick that up, a thousand Sunkillers will rush out from underneath it and begin biting us on the toes!”

“I suppose our friend and harven-kin here,” Ambrosia said, “is not aware that many magical traps are set with a kind of bait, and that picking up or accepting the bait activates the trap.”

“Not his kind of magic,” Morlock agreed.

“Oh,” Deor said, chastened. “Sorry, Ambrosii. How can we tell?”

The Ambrosii looked at the glimmering page, the dark writing on it.

“You’re sure that it’s Aloê’s hand?” Ambrosia said.

“Yes. Aren’t you?”

“I wouldn’t know, brother. She’s never written me a mash note.”

Morlock shouldered off his pack and went through it, pulling out a tablet and stylus. “Show me what you see,” he said.

On the malleable surface, Ambrosia deftly sketched an image of the letter, including the script on its first page.

“That’s what I see,” Morlock said. “It is not an illusion. I see no sign of a physical trigger. Is there a talic presence?”

“The whole bridge is a talic presence, brother.”

“Eh. I’m going to open it.”

“Go ahead. I’ll remember you as you were.”

Morlock crouched down. Pulling his knife from its sheath on his belt, he used its blade to flip over the first crystalline sheet.

Beloved, the letter began, good morning, or whatever time it is when you read this. I have had a bad dream. Unfortunately, it’s not the kind I get to wake up from.

“Aloê wrote this,” Morlock said.

“Good,” Ambrosia said.

“Not really,” Morlock said, and continued reading.

I write you through the agency of the unbeings beyond the northern edge of the world, and at the request of the Graith of Guardians. They ask you to return without attempting the passage of the Soul Bridge or the rescue of the sun.

I’m going to paint you the whole picture. This is going to take a while.

It did. Aloê told him about the conspiracy to murder Earno, and how she had uncovered it, and about Bleys’ defense of himself and his colleagues before the Graith.

The Graith acquitted him, I am ashamed to say, Aloê wrote. At least it was not unanimous: Jordel spoke at length, which is perfectly usual, and quite seriously, which is perfectly unusual and was doubly impressive because of that. Illion pointed out that the Graith has the obligation to defend and avenge its members, and that it is a tactical as well as moral mistake to allow our murders to go unpunished. Gyrla made a powerful case against trusting Bleys under any circumstances whatever. But, in the end, the Guardians were relieved that something was being done, that something could be done, to protect the Wardlands from the impending death of the world, even if it made them complicit in that death. Bleys and Lernaion are summoners again; Naevros and Bavro have sworn off the Graith. The alliance with the unbeings beyond the world has been affirmed, and Noreê and others from New Moorhope are already working on the magics needed to redraw the border of the sky and separate the Wardlands from the dying world.

The Graith’s message to you is this: on pain of exile, you must return and refrain from harming our new allies or interfering with their plot to kill the sun.

My message to you is a little different. Come home now. The greatest danger to the Wardlands is not the dying sun, or the unbeings who would kill it and us, but the Graith itself. There is a cancer in the order, and the great task before us is to cut it out—to break the Graith, if need be, before the freedom of the Wardlands is sacrificed to mere safety. We few who see this need you beside us in that struggle.

Come back to me. I say it like some stupid fisherman’s stupid wife. Come back to me.

With love and urgency, I remain

Aloê Oaij, Vocate to the Graith of Guardians

“I have to think about this,” said Morlock.

“Of course,” said Ambrosia. She opened her mouth to speak, but closed it without saying anything.

Morlock turned away from the others and walked along the ragged edge of the world. The wind from the gulf to the north was cold, but no colder than his thoughts.

He had defied the Graith before and returned to honor in its ranks. The Graith was not an army, with military discipline; it was the duty, as well as privilege, for the vocates called to Station to think for themselves, to act in accordance with those thoughts.

But the Graith was changing. He had noticed it himself, and those changes seemed to have gathered momentum in his absence. Aloê thought there was a real risk that he’d be exiled. He had to trust her judgment. If he tried and failed, his life in the Wardlands would be over. What did that leave? Life in the dying world, or escape across the Sea of Worlds to some place he had never known.

And he would be alone. That was clear to Morlock. She said she wrote as a lovesick fisherman’s wife, but she didn’t, really. She was a Guardian before she was a wife. Her loyalty was to the Wardlands before him.

On the one side, there was a life with Aloê. On the other side was the death of the world.

He thought about the Lacklands and their sparse cannibal denizens, the Vraids on the shores of the Sea of Stones, Danadhar and his Gray Folk in burning Grarby, the master makers under the Blackthorn Range, the frightened, shattered city of Narkunden, all the lands he had seen in Laent, and all the lands he had never seen in and beyond it: all those people, dead in a darkness that would never end.

They would all die someday, it was true, no matter what he did. It was possible that what he was doing was futile anyway. Would he throw away life with Aloê for nothing?

He wondered what he should do. He wondered what he would do.

He looked back at Ambrosia, standing with her head held high on the bridgehead of the Bridge of Souls. It occurred to him that she was afraid; she never bothered to look fearless otherwise.

He walked back to the others. Through the mask, Uthar was staring at him. Deor looked at him and looked away.

“Morlock,” said Ambrosia briskly, “we’ve talked it over while you were off pondering. Of course, I must go across the Soul Bridge instead of you. Except for the fact that your talic self can bear Tyrfing, that was always the better plan, and I see now it was inevitable. I ask only that you wait here and help the others retrieve my spirit if things get rough on the other side. Your Graith can hardly object to that. Is that acceptable to you?”

“No.”

Half a world away, the Graith stood at Station in their domed chamber. Bleys stood at the Witness Stone, bound and interwoven with the un-object of the Sunkillers. His open eyes were glowing in visionary rapture.

“Ambrosius is walking beyond the world on the Soul Bridge,” he said. “Summon our champion. We must aid our allies.”

CHAPTER NINE

Ghosts and Shadows

“The bridge,” Ambrosia said, “is a means for drawing tal out of the world—perhaps from the sun itself. That was why Skellar found it possible to go out but apparently did not make it back once Rulgân abandoned him.”

Morlock grunted. “I’ll say my goodbyes now, then.”

“Shut your stupid face. When you go into vision, wait for me. I’ll establish a rapport with you, and we may be able to sustain contact while you pass beyond the world. If we do, I can draw you back.”

“Then.”

Morlock took Tyrfing in his hand and lay down in the snow. He looked at Skellar’s eyes, still glowing red beneath the lids, and closed his own. He summoned the rapture of vision.

Slowly, he felt himself rise from his body, his talic self a torrent of black and white flames. Tyrfing rose with him.

A non-word impinged on his awareness: he was aware of Ambrosia’s talic presence, a whirlwind of green and gold.

He ascended the Soul Bridge and followed it northward, into and beyond the sky.

Time was hard to gauge, so he didn’t. But the bridge grew more solid under his burning feet with each stride he took. That meant there was less matter, more tal. He saw designs in the stones, too—blocks of tal, they must have been, with a smear of matter.

The edge of the sky was like a curtain of darkness. The bridge went on and Morlock with it.

The tal drawn from the sun, from the sky, was all around him. He felt renewed, euphoric, as if he would live forever. He tried to fight the feeling, but it was stronger than he was. He drifted in it, a fire within the fire.

Then the river of tal was gone. All light was gone. He was beyond the world.

With his inner eye he saw everything but understood nothing. He was like a baby just entering the world. Forms had no meaning.

Then something stabbed him. That had a meaning.

He swung toward the threat and brought Tyrfing to guard. He tried to understand what he was feeling. It wasn’t pain: his body was on the other side of the sky. But it was a kind of suffering, and a kind he had felt before.

Before him he seemed to see a warrior made of light, armed with a sword made of mist. Then he remembered. He remembered the prison without walls in Tychar, the island surrounded by a lake of mist. When he walked into the mist it rendered him down, somehow . . . broke him up into the components of himself until there was no self anymore. It had been agony. He could not feel pain in his vision, but the distress of unbeing was equally bad.

He remembered the anger and shame he had felt as they had dragged him back to the island, to the prison, to himself.

He dropped the point of his sword and stabbed wildly at the shining warrior.

The warrior’s parry was late—perhaps he was surprised. Tyrfing’s point didn’t strike home, but its harsh blazing edge struck the warrior’s bright shoulder and rasped along it.

In his inner ear, Morlock heard a Guardian screaming.

Morlock withdrew to guard and thought.

What was this warrior? Who was this warrior?

He thought he knew. He remembered what Aloê had written in her letter—not to mention the letter itself. The Graith had used their link with the Sunkillers to send her letter to the end of the world, and they must have sent more militant aid by the same route. And who would they send?

It was Naevros—his talic self, anyway—that Morlock was facing.

Morlock held his sword athwart his talic self, then raised it high, then dropped it to guard—a kind of salute.

A fragment of time, and the warrior opposite did the same. He was Naevros. He must be.

And yet. . . . And yet. . . . The shining surface of the warrior, like plate mail forged from glowing glass, was unlike any talic avatar Morlock had ever encountered in vision. And the voice he had heard in his inner ear was not Naevros’. If he had to put a name to it, it would have been Rild of Eastwall.

Were the other Guardians there, in rapport with Naevros, protecting him somehow?

Was Aloê there?

He hoped not, but his choice was made. He dropped his sword to attack; the other parried and riposted with the blade of mist; Morlock circled away from the stroke and stabbed the shining warrior in the side.

A new cry of pain: Vocate Vineion, howling like one of his own dogs. Morlock thought he saw him briefly, peering in pain through the crack on the glowing glass plate.

Naevros spun, struck Tyrfing aside, and lunged. The blade passed through Morlock’s talic self again: he saw the black and white flames of his talic being fade into gray lines where the sword of mist had passed.

Morlock moved back and brought up Tyrfing to guard. Naevros pressed his attack and Morlock contented himself with defense for a while.

They had done the best they could bringing Naevros here. He was the greatest swordsman alive.

And yet. . . . He also thought they had made a mistake. A timeless time ago, when he left the world and came to this place that was and was not a world, he had been utterly bemused.

But a fencing match, a fencing match with Naevros in particular, that was something he understood: a long, coiling argument that ran back and forth with flashing swathes of rhetoric and sharp, pointed periods. He had done this. He could do this. He understood this. And it gave him time to ponder the un-world of these unbeings.

Why hadn’t they attacked him with weapons of their own when he came through the gateway in the sky? He saw them all around him, lattices of tal framing emptiness, moving about the coarse, invisible landscape, staying still, appearing and disappearing in irregular rhythms. He felt their malice and their hate; he heard many more of their thoughts than he understood, but he knew this fight between Guardians was important to them. But they made no move of intention against him, or to help Naevros.

Perhaps they could not. Perhaps the brawling, stabbing, clawing of material survival was so alien to them that they could not participate in it.

They needed Naevros to do their knifework, as Bleys and Lernaion had. Morlock wished he could speak to the man that had been his friend and his enemy, his mentor and his rival. He would have chosen to fight alongside Naevros rather than against him.

Then he remembered that Naevros had killed Earno. Blood for blood, life for life: that was law in the Deep Halls of Thrymhaiam, where he had grown, like a mushroom, in the dark. Naevros had placed his bet; he would have to stand the hazard of the cast.

For a timeless moment, peering past the shining warrior, his enemy, he saw the Sunkillers, appearing and disappearing in the dark lands beyond, and he understood something. They were enacting the passage of a higher dimensional object through a two-dimensional plane. In his mind, the various shapes of the object took solid form. Transfixed by fascination, he was nearly destroyed.

The sword of mist passed under Tyrfing and through the centrality of his self.

Death was near. He knew it, and his enemy knew it. He struck back with all the force his fading will could command, and several of the glass plates shattered in screams of pain. Past them he could see Naevros’ unprotected talic self: a coil of shining, steely lines. Morlock brought back Tyrfing as Naevros twisted the misty blade in his selfhood; he struck through the shattered plates, stabbing at Naevros.

Now it was Naevros’ pain he heard echoing in his mind’s ear. The misty blade withdrew: Naevros backed away.

Morlock watched wearily as the shining plates protecting Naevros began to reform. More Guardians were being drawn into rapport to protect Naevros. How many could they draw on? How many were party to the vile alliance with the Sunkillers? Most of the vocates, by Aloê’s account. He hoped she was not one of them.

He became aware of another being. Not the angular lattices of tal that composed the Sunkillers, and not the shining warrior of the Graith, no part of his own black-and-white talic emanations. This being was more like a rusty, dark stipple on the surface of the darkness, oozing like a serpent among the lifeless stones, nearly as lifeless as the stones themselves . . . but not quite. There was a smear of bloody light there, the merest trace of life.

Native to this place? Impossible. An infection from the world, travelling with the sun’s life along the Soul Bridge? Perhaps. Skellar had done it. . . .

And, of course, this was Skellar! Or what was left of him, not fully alive or dead, body and soul almost untethered, but keeping each other from dying. The way Skellar oozed among the rocks reminded Morlock sharply of how he had groveled in his bed of gold all those years ago, when he had been god-speaker in the town of mandrakes.

Skellar felt his regard, and fled. Or . . . led? The snakelike talic avatar paused at one moment, is if to allow him to pursue it.

Morlock did follow. A thought was in his mind. What was renewing Skellar’s tal? Feeble as it was, it had not been snuffed out, and his body was not sustaining it. He must have a source of tal. Perhaps he was preying on the Sunkillers. Or perhaps he had found the outlet for the river of life, the tal stolen from the sun.

Naevros followed also, striding across the dead, dark world in his suit of light. He was slow at first, surprisingly slow.

Skellar disappeared over a ridge of dead stone. Morlock ascended above it and saw a valley of stars below.

Morlock descended after Skellar, whose rusty tal stood out like a shadow in that life-filled place.

The stars were bulbs of sunlife—smaller in diameter than Tyrfing was long. They seemed to grow from a tangle of thorny tal lattices, hedges of cold unlife caging hot sunlife.

This was what they did with the river of tal that they were stealing from the sun. These things were like jars, or something, restraining the dangerous tal of the sun and keeping in from infecting the un-world with material life.

Morlock wasn’t sure it was working. As he stood there, he saw a new bulb slowly start to take new form among the thorny lattices. Other thorns turned toward it, like flowers turning their faces to the sun. They might not be alive . . . but they looked like they were.

Skellar’s rusty avatar coiled about a low-hanging globe and grew a little brighter. That was how he had stayed alive. His body wasn’t feeding his talic avatar; his talic avatar was sustaining his body with tal bled from the sunglobes.

Morlock became aware of Naevros’ approach and turned Tyrfing toward him. The shining warrior came straight at Morlock—lunged—recovered—parried Morlock’s attack—riposted.

Slow, slow—indefinably slow. How close was the rapport between Naevros and the other Guardians? Was there resistance to his will—misunderstanding of a swordsman’s moves?

Morlock circled around the shining warrior, stabbing and slashing. The warrior, who was Naevros, but only in part, swung about to meet his attacks but could not disguise his lumbering, his failure to attain Naevros’ deadly catlike swiftness.

This was not like every other time Morlock had fought Naevros, half in jest and half in earnest. This was all in earnest, and Naevros’ magic armor was like weights on his hands and feet.

Then, and only then, did Morlock fully realize that he had no hands and feet—not in this fight. His body was on the other side of the sky, at the end of the world. He held Tyrfing by his bond with it and with his will.

Morlock rose from the ground and struck downward. The shining warrior raised his misty sword too slowly and Tyrfing only glanced off it to land squarely on the glassy crown of the warrior’s faceless head. The glass shattered; Tyrfing penetrated deep within it, and Morlock had the satisfaction of hearing both Bleys and Naevros cry out in a harmony of pain.

One for Earno! He would have shouted it if he could. Blood for blood and life for life.

He spun about the shining warrior in midair, stabbing and slashing, shattering plate after plate of the warrior’s armor.

Finally Naevros was moved to take a risky step. He turned the misty blade on his own armor, prying it apart as if he were opening a shellfish. The Guardians sang out, a choir of agony, but then Naevros’ avatar stepped forth, a wiry skeleton of steel, unprotected from Morlock’s sword but unencumbered now.

Naevros flew through the dark air and met Morlock in the empty sky. They circled around each other, striking when they could.

Morlock discovered something: now the advantage of speed belonged to Naevros. Tyrfing was made of matter, at least in part; it took an effort of his mind, and expense of his tal, to move it. Whatever Naevros’ sword was, it was something else: weightless, freighted with death. Naevros could move it as quick as his thoughts. The advantage was slight: just enough to kill Morlock.

Morlock took refuge in the thorny lattices holding the bulbs of sunlife. Naevros’ speed would matter less there, he hoped. Also, Morlock could bask and heal in the tal leaking from the sunbulbs. But so could Naevros, of course. . . .

Naevros’ wiry, shining avatar landed among the thorns and stabbed through them at Morlock.

Morlock vaulted over the thorns and tried to catch Naevros while he was entangled in them.

Naevros slashed with his misty sword and slid through the gap he had made in the wall of thorns.

He swung his sword as Morlock landed, sweeping it through the thorny lattices as if they were dry grass.

Morlock dodged the blow and struggled to bring up Tyrfing in time to parry.

Now a sunglobe was between the two swords, the disruptive blade of mist and glittering unbreakable Tyrfing.

It shattered between them and its light and life and tal were released in a single instant.

The thorny lattices were on fire—actual red fire, as ordinary as bread and water. Another sunglobe burst, and another. Morlock was dazed, exalted, dazzled.

Trapped in the burning lattices, surrounded by exploding sunglobes, Naevros writhed in agony.

The whole valley was exploding. Light was leaping into the lightless sky. The unworld was distorting under it, and Morlock knew he had to flee or die. He left Naevros dying there and arced through the empty sky toward where he thought the gateway to his world might be.

Except the dark sky was no longer empty.

A bright, white eye opened in the dark world. The Sunkillers scattered across the dark plain fell away before its glance, stretching like shadows at sunrise, and Morlock felt the shape of the dark world change around him. Naevros was gone. Skellar’s bitter, rusty ghost was gone. The Soul Bridge was going; he felt/heard it fragmenting behind him in the tide of sudden light.

The eye looked at Morlock, and the monochrome flame of his talic self flared back, back toward the gulf between the worlds.

He raised Tyrfing in defiance and salute. Khai, ynthara! he said or thought. Praise to you, Day. He fell back into a nothingness he feared and hoped was death.

A world away, Naevros syr Tol stood on the Witness Stone and screamed. His eyes filled for a moment with sunlight, and the Guardians looked away, unable to bear the light. His voice trailed off. His hands dropped. His eyes faded. He fell to the floor. By the time they reached him, he was dead, or at least no longer alive.