The Fall of Neskaya

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  How can you know that? Taniquel wondered as she searched the other woman’s eyes. She felt a feathery brush of fingertips on the back of her wrist.

  “He is gone where none of us can follow.” Amalie’s words were slow, like a funeral chant.

  “Into the Overworld? But you know—you are trained—” Taniquel stammered.

  Amalie shook her head. “We have searched as far as we dare go.”

  “Then you must dare beyond that. Or if you cannot—” Taniquel swallowed. “Once I went into the Overworld because I was desperate, and I knew that only Coryn could help me. Now, he needs me just as much. I have to try. I cannot do any less for him. Will you help me?”

  Gray eyes widened minutely. “You will not succeed.”

  “Why, because I am a woman and therefore weak? Because I have no training, no talent?” Taniquel fumed.

  “No,” Amalie said, raising her hands in a calming gesture. “Because no one can.”

  “But I am not no one!” Taniquel’s words hung in the air like a challenge. She gathered herself, smoothing her voice. “I ask you to help me into the Overworld. I have been there once before. I know how frightening and disorienting it is. You may be right, I may not succeed. I may not even survive.” Tears brimmed, quickly blinked away. “Please. Let me try.”

  After a long moment, Amalie said with a tiny shake of her head, “I must be as mad as Durraman’s donkey to even consider such a thing. But I owe Coryn my life, and if there is any small thing I have not yet done to help him, I will.”

  She returned after a few minutes with an armful of bedding, which she laid out in a pallet alongside Coryn’s. Taniquel was secretly relieved that she would not have to be parted physically from him. She lay down as Amalie folded and tucked blankets under her knees and the small of her back.

  “I will go with you into the known part of the Overworld,” Amalie said. “You know that distance has no meaning there, nor time. We think that Coryn may have strayed—or gone deliberately—into the shadow of the dead.”

  Taniquel nodded, gulping. Amalie adjusted the pillow beneath her head.

  “You may meet people or catch a glimpse of them from afar.”

  The monitor’s lips pressed together, almost bloodless. “Some of them may be dead, wandering shades who have not yet accepted their passing. This is especially true when their deaths were sudden or violent. They may seem frightening, but they have no power over you. They can harm you only if you believe they can. One thing you must not do, no matter who you see, is to run after them. That is the one thing which will truly doom you.”

  “You mean—anyone but Coryn.”

  Amalie shook her head. “Especially Coryn.”

  “I don’t understand.” Taniquel pushed herself up on to her elbows. “If I don’t go to him, how will I ever—” Amalie pushed her back down.

  “I told you that distance is not important in the Overworld, but love is. Truth is. We could not contact him with our minds, no matter how well trained and powerful. You—” with a fingertip laid gentle as butterfly wings on Taniquel’s lips “—you may be the only one who can reach him.”

  43

  Before she closed her eyes, Taniquel reached into the folds of her bodice and closed her fingers around the much-folded handkerchief which Coryn had given her. She had held it like this, close to her heart, many times since Coryn gave it to her in the garden. The fabric had once been very fine, the embroidery done with skill and delicacy. Its age and wear suggested it had come from mother or grandmother. Sometimes she almost caught a hint of a scent, sweet and spicy like strawflowers. But more than that, she sensed—no, she knew, with all the wordless certainty of her empathic laran—that with this scrap of cloth, Coryn had entrusted her with a piece of his soul. There was nowhere he could go that she could not follow him, if only she had the courage.

  Taniquel drifted on Amalie’s rhythmic murmurs and silky touch between her brows. Her body felt heavy, sinking into the cradle of blankets and pillows. At the same time, some other part of her felt light, like a bird eager for flight.

  Amalie’s words became a muffled echo, as if heard through a long tunnel. Taniquel could no longer feel the bedding beneath her, the folds of her gown, the pressure of her boots against toe and arch.

  In a heartbeat, she was back in the Overworld. She sensed the place, as clear as the metallic taint in the air before a thunderstorm. She opened her eyes to grayness. Flat, featureless sky and unending horizon greeted her. A day or a century could have passed with no perceptible difference. Only she had changed, although her body and gown looked exactly as they had before.

  “Taniquel.” Amalie stood a few feet away, her hair blown into a solar aureole. She wore a filmy green dress which seemed in constant motion. As Taniquel got to her feet, Amalie pointed behind her.

  Taniquel turned to see a Tower made of glass, barely discernible against the ashen sky. Only a faint rippling, like air rising from the earth on Midsummer Day, indicated anything at all was there.

  “Neskaya Tower,” Amalie said, “or all that’s left of what we created here.” She sounded weary with sadness. “Now it’s more memory than anything else.”

  “Where do I go from here? What do I do?”

  Amalie shook her head. “Go where you are led, or stay here, it makes no difference. I—” her voice caught for an instant, “I wish you success. You are not the only one who loves Coryn, but you are our only hope.” Then she vanished.

  Taniquel shivered, remembering her last foray here and the shadowy figures she had seen before Coryn rescued her. She’d been so frightened then. Now she had some idea what to expect, some warning that distance meant nothing, only intention did. And if she did not find Coryn, if he could not return with her, she was not sure what she would do.

  She held the handkerchief, which had somehow retained its original form. Pressing it between her hands, she called his name and waited.

  At first, nothing seemed to happen. Sky and ground gave no hint of passing time. After a while, she noticed that the Tower had disappeared, or at least gone so invisible, she could no longer make out any hint of its contours. The air turned a shade cooler.

  On the horizon to her right, an ill-defined shape appeared, quickly growing in size as if it rushed toward her. It was, she saw, a group of people. As they drew closer, their number varied, sometimes half a dozen individuals, sometimes four, sometimes twice ten. They wore flowing gray robes and hoods which hid their faces, or perhaps it was her own urgency which muted her sight. Forgetting Amalie’s warning, she called out Coryn’s name again and rushed toward them.

  The faster she ran and the faster the people seemed to come toward her, the farther away they seemed. If she only ran more swiftly, she would surely catch them.

  Just a little longer—

  She could almost feel the wind of their passing. Every muscle strained for more speed. Her hair whipped behind her and her feet skimmed the ground, smooth and cool like a single, unbroken slab of polished slate.

  Suddenly, one of the figures sped past her as if she were standing still. She barely glimpsed it, only enough to make out a woman’s face, eyes white and staring, mouth distended in a soundless howl. The rest—body swathed in shapeless gauze, limbs, hair like rent clouds—blurred.

  The expression of utter despair on the woman’s face shocked Taniquel. She stumbled to a halt, barely keeping her balance. She could not think what the figure was—a dead person, eternally lost in confusion, or a living person like herself? Until that moment, she had not realized the terrible risk of coming here, how ignorant she was of this place and its perils.

  “Oh, Coryn, Coryn . . .”

  His name came like a sob. Taniquel wanted to throw herself down and give herself over to grief. Once he had found her in this eternal gray wilderness. He had come to her rescue. Now it was she who must find him.

  But how? She lifted her head, tightened her grip on the handkerchief, and waited.

  Two more figures appr
oached, one in robes which might have been crimson but were so thin and diaphanous as to be the faintest rose. The face of the man who wore them was all but transparent, yet he seemed to see her. He slowed his pace, eyes searching hers. She did not know him, though he seemed to be pleading for some recognition. Shaking his head, he went on. A few paces behind a woman followed. Her face shone with tears and she lifted her arms toward him. Her lips moved in soundless pleading.

  Now the mass of figures drew visibly closer and more numerous. More of them parted from the group and passed by Taniquel. Many of these gave no sign they even noticed her. One man, though, paused. The colors of his hair and face were stronger than any of the others, as if he burned with an inner fire. He wore a Keeper’s crimson robe, the fabric dusted with soot. When he saw her, his face darkened, brows drawing together over flashing eyes.

  She knew that face—

  Rumail! Damian Deslucido’s nedestro brother, the renegade laranzu! For an awful instant, Taniquel wanted to run, to hide. His was the voice which had threatened her outside the Overworld Tramontana, and his had been the mind which probed her when she was a captive in her own home.

  She lifted her chin a fraction higher as she remembered Amalie’s words. The dead had no power to harm her unless she permitted it. Still, she flinched when he spat at her and called her a word so obscene she had never heard it spoken before, not even in the Acosta armory when no one knew she was listening.

  “You!” He made a broad, sweeping gesture to indicate the surroundings and for an instant, Taniquel saw the hazy outlines of rubble. “This is your doing! Upstart chit from an insignificant little dirt-hole! We should have slaughtered you along with your worthless husband, or else tracked you down like an animal. You thought you could stand up to us, to strike back—a rabbit-horn who thinks she’s a dragon! Luck and the Hastur lord have been on your side for the day. But in the end, he too will fall. He cannot stand against us. My brother’s vision will prevail. King Damian—”

  “—King Damian is dead!” she snapped. “Have you not seen his shade wandering here in the Overworld?”

  “You lie, hell-bitch!”

  “I saw him hanged, and his lecher son at his side.”

  Rumail burst out in another round of profanity, then broke off and threw back his head in peals of insane laughter. “I leave you with this curse—the Deslucido curse—that you and yours will never know a moment’s peace. I will take my revenge—”

  “Then you will have to do it from hell!” she cried. “Get you gone, shade of a dead man, to whichever of Zandru’s frozen levels will have you!”

  “Dead? You think I’m dead?” For the merest instant, Rumail looked startled rather than enraged. “I will show you what it is to die!”

  He moved closer, hands raised with fingers spread as if to close around her throat. As he bore down on her, she felt his hot breath on her skin, smelled the rank odor of his sweat. She had not realized the dead could be so vivid.

  He cannot harm me, she repeated to herself, but with each passing instant, her words carried less and less credibility. Just as he was about to grasp her, she broke, whirled, and ran headlong in the opposite direction.

  “Go on, little bitch! You cannot hide from me! And after I hunt you down, I will come for your precious son!”

  Raucous laughter trailed her, escalating in pitch until it no longer sounded human.

  Taniquel ran and ran, sometimes stumbling over her own feet, sometimes rushing so effortlessly that the only thing she was aware of was her own speed. She lost all sense of time passing. The immediate cause of her flight quickly disappeared from view and from mind. She ran, and that was all. Without visible landmarks, even variations of the flat gray sky and ground, one place looked the same as any other. Only the absence of her enemy marked any difference. He might be one mile behind her, or a hundred.

  Her footsteps slowed as she realized that she had also lost sight of the crowd of shadowy figures. Regret slashed through her. She had disobeyed Amalie’s most important instruction and had lost what little bearing she had. Now, as she came to a halt, she looked around, seeing nothing but unchanging grayness in every direction. She was no closer to finding Coryn, and now her chances were even dimmer.

  Yet . . . Amalie had said that distance didn’t matter in the Overworld. Only love did.

  Taniquel held out the spectral handkerchief and pressed it between her breasts.

  Coryn . . . Coryn, wherever you are, hear me! Answer me! She could not tell if she had spoken the words aloud. They reverberated through her mind, through the core of her body.

  Hear me! Answer me!

  No, that was not going to work. He could not answer, he could not come to her. Suddenly, she had an image of him, standing on the other side of a wall of blue flame. Words whispered through her mind, resonant with his voice.

  . . . through fire I must come to you . . .

  Fire! I must find fire! She tightened her grip on the handkerchief and put all her will into the thought. Eyes narrowed in concentration, she scanned the horizon for any trace of brightness. Though at first she saw nothing, she had the sense of flexing an unused muscle, of holding something between imaginary hands—something huge and dense—and drawing it toward her.

  Out of the corner of her eyes, brightness glimmered. She turned, half-afraid that it would vanish once she faced it, but there it shone, a mote on the horizon like a fallen star. Every fiber urged her to run to it, but somehow she held firm. She could not cross this distance with her own feet. She had summoned the fire with her mind, with the laran she had been told she had so little of. And it was this talent she must use now to bring it even closer.

  Once more, Taniquel imagined herself pulling on that heavy weight, drawing it to her. Again, she had the sensation of solidity, of inertial resistance. But as she pulled, it seemed to slide more smoothly as if, once uprooted, it had no fixed place. She wondered if she were actually moving the fire or somehow folding the space between.

  Within minutes, the flickering grew larger and brighter. Her heart leaped when she made out a figure standing in its heart. For a moment of soaring hope, she forgot everything else. The sense of holding an invisible weight subsided. She had to close her eyes, concentrating, before it became quite solid again. When she opened them again, the fire appeared to be only a few paces away, as high as she could reach and twice as wide.

  A man stood inside.

  Taniquel crossed to the fire with outstretched hands. Her fingers brushed the outermost flames and she drew back, for although the fire gave off no heat from a distance, it burned as hot and fierce as any earthly blaze. She cried out, shoving her singed fingertips into her mouth like a child. Her eyes watered.

  Within the flickering depths, the figure stirred. Somehow she knew that he had felt her pain, heard her cry. The flames thinned in places, becoming more transparent so that she saw Coryn standing there. His pale skin reflected the ghostly blue of the fire. At first, his eyes were white but as she watched, they darkened and she knew that he could see her.

  “Taniquel . . .” His voice was no more than a papery whisper, yet it filled her with a rush of absurd joy. “. . . what are you doing here? Are you . . . have you . . . died, too?”

  She wanted to shout, to dance, to hurl herself into the fire to be with him. “No, I am not dead. And neither are you. My body lies beside yours just outside of what is left of Neskaya Tower. I came to bring you back.” She added, “Amalie helped me.”

  “You should not have come,” he said hollowly. “This is the land of the dead, or as close to it as any in the Overworld.”

  “Amalie warned me I might encounter dead people, but that they could not harm me. She was right on both counts. And if I should not be here, neither should you.”

  He shook his head, slowly, with an infuriating lassitude. When he spoke, she made out only isolated phrases. “I put myself here . . . brought the backlash where it could harm no one . . . anchored . . . sacrifice . . . my responsib
ility.”

  “Coryn,” she said firmly, “you were very noble in what you did, but you serve no one by lingering here. Back—home,” she said, for want of a better word, “your body is on fire from within, and they cannot help without your active participation. I have not come all these miles and waited all these years and given up everything I thought I was—” her words came in a tumble between sobbing gasps, “—everything I had believed in, only to forsake you now.

  “Beloved,” she said the word aloud for the first time, “we may not have much of a life together, but I will not give you up. I will stay here with you. I will find a way to join you in the fire if I must. But do not ask me to leave you. Loving you is who I am.”

  “Oh, sweet gods.” He hung his head so that his hair, dark as clotted blood in the eerie light, fell across his face. “I do not deserve this love.”

  “Coryn, come to me. Through this fire, come to me.”

  “I cannot. The fire—I am what binds it here, where it can do no harm. I cannot let it go, or allow it back into the material world.”

  This is the Overworld, she thought. Towers appear out of thought, space folds on itself at a command. Dead people go rushing about their own business. Anything can happen. Distance doesn’t matter, only love.

  “Then let go of whatever you must,” she said. “Just so the rest of you comes back with me.”

  “It is my laran that holds the fire.”

  She wanted to stamp her foot and scream that she didn’t care about his laran. She had been judged by hers, found wanting, and valued at no more than what bloodlines and alliance she could bring. His love had given her value in her own right.

  “Then leave it,” she said. “I care as much for it as you do for my kingdom.”

  For a long moment, he hesitated. Perhaps he was weighing her words, trying to decide if she meant it. His doubts shivered over her skin. For a laranzu of his rank, such a choice must be agonizing. Who would he be without his Gift? Where would he go? What would he do?