by Glen Cook
She and Februaren wanted to reach the dwarf world so they could look for a path from there to Eucereme.
The Raneul Hourlr had shown a flattering interest in Heris from the moment she decided to look. He was afraid at the same time. She was the Godslayer now.
The Old One was forthright in his interest. He was randy. Secretly, he hoped she could get through to his home world. He wanted her to believe that the Old Ones there could help resolve the Twilight, which could end the middle world.
The Ninth Unknown said he exaggerated. The deity had his personal agenda. But Hourlr would not talk to him. Hourlr could not communicate with anyone male. Nor would Heris allow him near Lila or Vali. She knew that light in his eyes. No more Bastards would drop into the middle world.
As if thought alone could conjure a devil Hourlr stepped out of the doorway vacated by the snot-nosed child without having come in from outside. “Still watching over my shoulder.”
“You are endlessly fascinating.”
“He said with a straight face.” She said with a slight blush.
“We cannot help being interested.” Fraught with double meaning.
Heris flashed a nervous smile. Hourlr was a charmer. He made his desires seem so utterly reasonable that you might find yourself making the two-back beast before you realized that he had suggested it.
She told herself she was an old campaigner in a long, tough struggle. She would not succumb. “Of course.”
The Old Ones were all charmers. Even sour old Wife could heat it up when she wanted.
Hourlr asked, “Are you sure you really want to get into the world of the dwarves?”
“Yes.” And he had been feeding the idea.
“Why?” He wanted to know if she had thought this through.
“You know why.”
“Not exactly. No. Unless you have an abiding need to see Khor-ben Jarneyn again.”
“Again said with a straight face.”
“I was not teasing, lady.”
That left Heris nervous. “What are you hinting at?”
“It’s good to be a god.”
“I would think so.” Had his agenda changed?
“You haven’t found a pathway from the middle world to Eucereme.”
“We haven’t. No.” He knew that.
“I’ll gift you with knowledge. That is because no such way has existed since the ascendant trapped the rest of us. The free Raneul did not just close the ways, they destroyed them.”
“With help from the Aelen Kofer. Of course.”
“Of course. The Raneul wouldn’t actually do any work themselves.”
“Which means I’m on the right road.” Heris grinned. “There have to be connections from the world of the dwarves. They wouldn’t let it be any other way.”
Hourlr nodded. “You might be an Instrumentality yourself, Heris Godslayer.” He reeked of charm.
The girls and the Ninth Unknown watched intently, Vali most attentively. A smoldering slow match had appeared in her left hand. Her right clutched a massive handheld falcon, pointed at the floor right now, hidden under a kerchief.
The Instrumentality had begun keeping a wary eye on Vali, unnerved by the fact that his charm had no effect.
Heris said, “We think the rest of the Shining Ones can help us here.”
“If you believe that you are deceiving yourself.”
Heris was startled. “How so?” That was a change.
“They have no reason. You cannot win commitments from them the way you extorted them from us. The ways to Eucereme are closed for a reason. The Raneul plan to evade the Twilight by sitting it out, an avoidance of destiny by abstention. Which I expect not to work.”
The more he said the more she realized that she had considered her choices from no perspective but her own—despite the Ninth Unknown’s similar argument when he tried to talk her out of this adventure.
She avoided Februaren’s eye. Smug old fart.
“I suppose.” It made sense when he said it. “Because I’m me I can’t see the doorway, but I know it’s here.” Hourlr nodded. She added, “I want to see the other world even if we never go there.”
Lila sniffed, moved in little shuffles, palms facing outward.
Februaren grunted suddenly. “What the hell? How did that…?”
“Double Great?”
“We’re about to solve a mystery. On the other side of this gateway.”
“What mystery is that?”
“Open it up. It could be my imagination.”
“Any idea how?”
Lila said, “I’ll do it.” She turned sideways.
Heris squeaked.
A rectangle of reality, shoulder-high and six feet wide, chunked backward two inches, then slid to the left, vanishing behind reality that did not move. Even the Instrumentality seemed awed.
The panel’s movement revealed Lila squatting in the mouth of a tunnel with a roof barely high enough to clear a tall dwarf’s crown. The rock appeared to be basalt. Basalt did not underlie this region. The light of the middle world, not bright back with the visitors, penetrated only a few yards into the passageway.
Vali observed, “It’s wider than it is tall.”
Lila said, “It’s really dirty, too.” She sneezed. “It would be big-time spider country if it wasn’t for regular traffic.”
The Instrumentality began to glow. That light all flowed into the tunnel, illuminating it for thirty yards. It ran downhill ten degrees, straight, wide, and low, the floor cluttered with dust and stone chips.
Lila sneezed again.
The Ninth Unknown mused, “It really is,” puzzling everyone. He pushed past Lila, bent over briefly, then took a knee and stirred the detritus.
“Aha!” He held up something shiny.
Heris blurted, “Piper’s missing pendant! How did that get in here?”
Meantime, the old man picked up what looked like shreds of silk. Like something a woman might once have worn next to her skin. He seemed baffled as he slipped the shreds inside his shirt.
Heris did not miss that.
She did not mention it. It could mean anything.
The old man, moving a foot at a time, produced other bits that must have gotten tracked in by the dwarves.
Hourlr asked, “Shall we see where the tunnel goes?”
Heris suggested, “You light the way.”
“Of course.”
Lila squeezed aside. The Ninth Unknown did the same. Heris followed the Instrumentality. She told the old man, “Give me that. I’ll get it back to Piper.”
Februaren surrendered the pendant without comment.
The tunnel ended at a wall of oak planks a hundred yards directly ahead. There were gaps between planks but nothing could be seen on the other side. “It’s dark over there,” Februaren said.
“Thus spake the Lord of the Obvious,” Heris said. “How come there aren’t any stars or anything?”
“The sky is overcast,” Hourlr said. “Can’t you feel the rain?”
Cold, damp air pushed through between planks.
Februaren predicted, “She’ll want to go ahead anyway.”
Vali said, “If we left the door open the cold air would cool things off up there … What?”
Even Lila looked at Vali like she wondered how her mind worked.
Hourlr said, “Leaving it open is not an option.”
Heris kicked a plank, hard, by throwing a foot out sideways. Something cracked, evidently not part of her. She kicked again.
Voices came down the tunnel. The Ninth Unknown cocked an ear. “Tribesmen. How long have we been down here?”
“Four minutes,” Heris replied. She kicked again. Nails squeaked. The right end of the plank backed off half a foot.
Hourlr said, “For them it has been an hour. They wonder where we have gotten to. A few are working themselves up to come find out.”
“You can understand them?” Heris asked.
“Some.”
“I thought time matc
hed up between the middle world and the world of the dwarves.” She noted that Hourlr had begun to frown fiercely.
The Instrumentality got hold of the plank she had been kicking, pulled it back into place. “This is a trap. That isn’t Dwarvenholm. It’s the world of the giants. Help me.”
His glow revealed that the nails had been driven from the tunnel side. Heris’s kicks had broken the plank end.
Dawn began on the other side.
The Ninth Unknown said, “Vali, go scare those people away. Lila, work your way up the tunnel and find the way the dwarves really used. We’ll stay here and make sure nothing breaks through.”
There was enough light to reveal some of that world—in particular, that world’s creatures approaching. They did not conform to Heris’s preconception. The nearest pair resembled very large scorpions moving sluggishly in the cold and damp. Farther off, things like giant crabs moved more briskly, headed toward the gateway. The scorpions were a brownish yellow, the crabs pale red.
Hourlr told Heris, “Those are not the giants. Those are their watchdogs. But the giants are coming. We’ll need this sealed completely before they get here. Stand back. Let me work.”
The giants, Heris recalled, were mortal enemies of those who hailed from the Realm of the Gods. She recalled the giant bones scattered down the cliffs below the Great Sky Fortress.
“Done!” Hourlr muttered. “And just in time. Have a look.” Heris squinted through a gap between planks.
A troop of huge beings loomed over a ridgeline half a mile away, barely visible through the drizzle. They advanced with vast, slow strides. The biggest had to be a hundred feet tall. The ground began to tremble.
Heris grumbled, “Why don’t they collapse under their own weight?”
Hourlr said, “That’s a glamour. They are not actually that big. And they are supernatural. The Night frees them from many constraints of the natural realm.”
“Whatever. I find myself moved by an overwhelming disinterest. Let’s get out of here.”
“Not just another pretty face. She’s smart, too.”
“Stuff that.” Heris headed uphill, toward sounds of agitation that must be Vali’s fault.
This time she sensed a change as she neared Lila because she was feeling for it. Lila said, “There’s another tunnel here, sealed the same as the entrance up top. We didn’t notice because it’s on the side and we were in a hurry. Triple Great. Get behind Aunt Heris.” She made a simple gesture after he moved.
This door opened as though on hinges, folding out from its downhill edge, to exactly block the tunnel. There was a click! when it reached a right angle. Solid stone seemed to close the way. Heris wondered if giants coming up would see a similar wall from the other side.
This side felt like rock to the touch. It was rough and cold and growing damp.
Hourlr entered the new tunnel, which ran level and curved to the right. The Instrumentality moved carefully, assessing his surroundings. Heris suspected that he was embarrassed about having a mere mortal girl find what a god had missed.
She hoped that made Lila less interesting.
After ninety degrees of curvature the side tunnel came to another barrier of planks. It was raining on the other side here, too. Heris snarled, “We’re back where we were before.”
Lila disagreed. “There aren’t any giants.”
Hourlr nodded, then slid aside for Cloven Februaren, avoiding contact as though the old man had sprouted cactus spines. He did contrive to brush against Heris, though. She jumped and squeaked. His touch was a sharp shock, not what she expected and not at all exciting.
Februaren peered between planks, grunted twice, once puzzled, once surprised. “This comes out the same place as the gateway in the barge in the Realm of the Gods.”
Heris grumbled, “How can that be?”
Hourlr’s face collapsed into an expression that defined frown. “Aelen Kofer magic,” he muttered, withdrawing inward.
The Ninth Unknown kept thumping the planks. “What are you doing?” Heris demanded.
“Trying to break the latch. It’s a gate. Latched over there because there isn’t anybody on this side who needs to get back.”
A plank gave way. The old man shoved a hand through the gap. Heris demanded, “Do you want to get their attention?”
“Not a problem. They don’t post a guard. You want them underfoot, you have to summon them.” He pulled on something. The plank construct swung away. Cool, damp air rushed into the tunnel. “Interesting, though, that different pathways go to the same place.”
Lila said, “You don’t know that. You know that the two we’ve found go there.”
The old man grumbled but did not argue. She had a point. A scary point, Heris feared.
She had no trouble seeing Iron Eyes make it work that way. The dwarfs had to walk to wherever they wanted to open a gateway home but maybe once they did that they could connect to a central point so no more walking need ever be done.
She asked, “Double Great, can we walk the Construct in and out of there once we’ve been there?”
“Interesting question. Let’s find out. It didn’t work for the Realm of the Gods, though.” He glanced at Hourlr.
The Shining One had no opinion. He focused on the rainy world. Heris thought he was nervous, maybe even afraid.
Februaren said, “Don’t anyone go through before I fix it so we can see the gate from the other side.”
Heris recalled him describing how he had done that before. The gateway would have disappeared if he had not left it plainly marked.
“First thing, then, let’s jam it open.”
Hourlr told Heris, “We should not do this.”
“You don’t want to get home?”
“They will be aware of us as soon as I step through.”
“Then don’t do no stepping. Duh!”
The old man had the plank gate open. Heris saw the damp meadow clearly and could just make out standing stones in the distance. She saw drag marks in the grass. The Aelen Kofer had brought something heavy through here.
The Ninth Unknown said, “Lila, loan me your duster thing. It will stand out against the green.”
Lila’s outerwear fit no category clearly. It was too long to be a shirt, too light to be a jacket, wide like a serape but not hooded like a poncho. She had created it herself, for travel. It was yellow and red. It was not comfortable in the heat of the middle world but it beat the chill down here.
“I don’t think so. It’ll get all wet.”
“I’m open to suggestions.”
“Have the devil make a magic beacon.”
“That would work,” Hourlr admitted. “And, again, it would alert the Aelen Kofer.”
Heris asked, “Is there any reason to go out at all?” She cringed as her companions glared.
In a flat, controlled voice Lila reminded, “This expedition was your idea, Auntie.”
Her initial reasoning seemed strained. She did want to reach Eucereme and the Instrumentalities there, but …
She was no longer sure what she hoped to accomplish. She talked about helping Piper but that would not withstand logical scrutiny. Piper had help.
Piper was at war with the Night only when the Night got in his way. She, though, was at war with the Night directly. She had become the Godslayer. She had exterminated the oldest and hardest generation. Now she would … what? End the Tyranny of the Night?
Hourlr shifted uncomfortably.
No. She was not at war with his generation. Not with his kin and kind. Absent Ordnan, Red Hammer, Zyr, and the Trickster, the Old Ones were, generally, rather decent.
Cloven Februaren gave up fingering Lila’s cloak thing. “Guess I won’t need this if you just stay standing in the doorway.” He stepped into the drizzle, which was more a falling mist, now. “They had a watch set after all.”
Heris saw squat, wide shapes between her and the standing stones. She recognized Korban Iron Eyes right away.
35. Hypraxium: Interlud
e
Lord Arnmigal’s rush to overtake the Enterprise stuttered when his band reached the heart of the Eastern Empire.
The Emperor, Monestacheus Deleanu, saw in the Enterprise an opportunity to humble old enemies and restore the fortunes of his state. He hoped the westerners would reclaim provinces that al-Prama had nibbled away over the past two centuries. He believed the situation in the Holy Lands would correct itself once his Empire was restored.
Lord Arnmigal had instructions from his Empress. He was to remain polite, agreeable, and, on the surface, amenable. The Enterprise needed Monestacheus Deleanu to maintain its lines of communication.
Lord Arnmigal could not refuse an invitation to visit the Emperor and Hypraxium, nor did he want to miss the wonders of the grandest city in the world. Neither did he want to endure the political weather that such a visit would bring.
He and his senior people were assigned a villa overlooking the westernmost of the Antal Land Bridges. The Phesian Bridge lay on the left hand, facing south. The headwaters harbors of the Agean Reach lay to the right. There were a dozen harbors, large and small, natural and man-made, civilian, commercial, and military, each defended by its own fortifications. The villa was fit for an emperor. It did belong to the Deleanu clan. The comforts included running water, heated baths, and flushable garderobes.
Hecht grumbled, “They mean to seduce us with luxury.”
Titus reported, “I’ve received six more requests for ‘a moment’ of your time and we’re still unloading. How do I refuse without offending anyone?”
Pella suggested, “First, make them come to us. Second, Dad can hold audiences. No private meetings. A lot of them won’t say what they really want if there are witnesses.”
“Listen to that, Titus. Who are these people, anyway?” Hecht was checking a list.
“Some generals. Some priests. Some nobles. A member of the Imperial family who thinks he should be the next Emperor. Monestacheus hasn’t designated a successor. Kalakakian is a merchant from somewhere out east, richer than God Himself. Those two are the factors for the local colonies of Aparion and Dateon. They want to rehash the contracts they made last year. I imagine they think they can twist our arms now that we’re here.”
“Why?”
