by Greg Bear
“What?”
“The Crane Women.”
“I don’t know. Not far, I’m sure.” But he was never sure about the Crane Women.
Three tall figures came out of the mist, approaching the camp. Michael stood quickly. He immediately recognized Alyons’ slender, powerful shape. They passed within five or six paces of Michael and Biri, ignoring them, and stopped just beyond the Sidhe camp. Biri backed up and whispered to Michael. “They followed you here?”
Michael nodded. “Alyons doesn’t like me.”
The Wickmaster spoke in Cascar with the guardian dressed in black. The coursers stood motionless to one side, in casually defensive poses, while the guardians looked upon them with unconcealed distaste.
“He’s asking for a new audience with the Darud,” Biri said.
“Who’s that?”
“The chief of the Maln, the Black order. That’s Tarax—the one in the black sepia. Alyons used to be a member, but he committed some crime. He was punished by being sent to the Pact Lands to oversee humans and breeds.”
“What are they saying now?”
Tarax had half-turned from Alyons and approached one of the coursers. A few words were exchanged and the courser backed away, bowing slightly.
“Tarax has told Alyons to be thankful for what he has. I think Tarax berates the courser for some error in ritual before a member of the Maln.”
Michael watched Tarax closely, fascinated by the movements of the white-haired Sidhe. “Is he older than the others?”
“A human might think so. Age doesn’t matter much to the Sidhe, give or take a few thousand years. Especially here.”
“Well, is he?” Michael persisted.
“I don’t know,” Biri said. As if suddenly aware he was speaking to a human, Biri stiffened and took a step away. Alyons bowed to Tarax and turned, gesturing for his Sidhe to follow him away from the camp. His eye caught Michael’s and held; Alyons’ face showed no expression, but Michael felt a flash of hatred nonetheless.
“He’s very angry now,” Biri said. “I think the Crane Women have been talking with Tarax. Alyons was hoping for leniency. Tarax told him there is no such thing among the Sidhe.”
“Great,” Michael said. “Now he’ll really get down on us.”
“I don’t think so,” Biri said. “Not so long as I’m here. The Crane Women have an honored status, especially when they train a novice. They are no longer just old Breeds. Alyons doesn’t dare displease them.”
“And when you’re gone?”
Coom descended the trunk of a nearby tree and jumped to the ground with a thump. She brushed bits of bark from her clothing and squinted at Alyons and his coursers as they vanished into the fog. Nare walked up behind Michael and Biri, carrying fruit in a newly-plaited grass mat.
“Breakfast,” she said, laying it between them. “Eat well. We cross the border this evening, and it’s best to be nourished, but not full, when we do so. This is our last meal today.”
“Why this evening?” Michael asked. “Isn’t it more dangerous?”
Coom snorted. Nare tossed him a blue fruit similar to the one he had seen in the between-house. He caught the fruit and turned it in his hands. Half of it was furry and soft like a peach, though colored pale sky-blue. The other half was dark blue, apple-hard and shiny. At no point on its surface did it show a stem or other blemish. “Eat,” Spart said, standing a few yards away, near a sapling.
At mid-day, the Sidhe brought their horses forward and mounted. Tarax approached Spart and handed her a packet of sani; there would be no horse to protect them on the return trip. Instead, they would have to rely on Biri’s pure Sidhe magic, undeveloped as it was.
Tarax held his hands out and Biri clasped them. The looks that passed between them was one of long acquaintance, even dedication, but no apparent affection. Tarax broke the clasp first. Before departing, he turned to Michael and surveyed him coldly. “So this is the Flesh Egg’s favored, is it?” he said, his voice deep and level. “To be trained with my Biri, by the oldest of the Breeds.”
Having delivered these few obvious words, Tarax returned to his group and they mounted. The shadows around the trees seemed to double and shift—and horses and Sidhe were gone.
Biri sighed. “You are the first human he has spoken to in centuries. The last one… best not to describe what happened to him.”
When the shadows of the trees were long and the sky was changing hue, the Crane Women led Biri and Michael from the forest, moving south to cross the border at another point. Michael paced steadily behind Spart as they traversed a brief, emerald-azure savannah. Beyond the high, moist grassland stood an orderly row of waxy brown rocks, shining in the sunset like polished wood. The highest was about thirty feet, the lowest barely a stepping stone. Where the rocks crossed the border, they became blackened and cracked, tumbled to one side or the other. Nare took the giant slabs one by one, climbing to the highest and jumping from rock to rock, the others following until they stood on the border, which plainly divided one boulder about ten feet tall.
Beyond the border, dust piled up on each side of the rocks. Biri crossed first, staying upright as he slid and ran down an incline of dust. Coom and Nare followed. Spart tapped Michael on the shoulder, urging him ahead. He tried to imitate Biri’s grace but ended up sliding down the incline on his butt. They quickly ran ahead to avoid the acrid clouds they had raised.
“Now we move as a group,” Spart said. “Close together.” Biri brought out the bag of sani and sprinkled a little on each of them, muttering something in Cascar as he did so. They walked due west until the dusk settled into darkness, and then halted. Michael looked around at the orange band of fading light on the horizon, at the dust now inky black, at the gluey arches and spires to the north, and shivered.
“Why are we stopping?”
“Because we won’t be able to see much longer,” Spart said. This time it was Biri who removed a wand from his white-and-black checked coat and drew a circle around them. Where the lines joined, he sprinkled more sani, then stepped back.
“Now watch,” Spart said as they gathered and sat in the middle of the circle. “See what even a young Sidhe can do in the Realm.”
Biri reached out with his long, muscle-knotted arms and touched a spot directly before him with his index finger. The muscles in his face tightened and his lips moved silently. The rock began to glow, and presently the cold was dispelled by a steady pulse of heat. Michael was mesmerized by the glowing spot. “Will I ever be able to do that?” he asked Spart in a whisper.
She shook her head, not in definite denial, but as if the question irritated her. Michael leaned back, frowning. Well, will I? he asked himself. He held his hands out to the warmth. He was thirsty—he had swallowed some dust and it tasted like the bitter part of a bad apple—and hungry, but he knew better than to ask about food.
Presently his legs cramped and he unfolded them and lay back. The others remained sitting, staring at the glow. He leaned on his elbow, stretching his legs behind Spart. His eyelids began to droop.
He awoke, his whole body jerking and trembling. His eyes opened and he became aware that he was standing, the toes of his shoes on the edge of the circle Biri had drawn. He faced away from the heat into darkness. Something urged him to cross over the line, but he couldn’t.
In the fixed starglow, Michael made out a purple shape beyond the circle. Each time he blinked, it changed form and appeared closer. The battle between the urges to step over the line and to stay inside the circle jerked him harder now; his legs and arms twitched like marionette limbs in the hands of an inept puppeteer.
The purplish shape was close enough now to stand face to face with him, but it had no face. The shape consisted of smooth rings of varying sizes stacked atop each other, with several more rings gliding up and down the thing’s exterior. Michael blinked and the shape became an assemblage of irregular rounded blobs.
He blinked again, and the shape was his mother, smiling at him and
holding out her arms.
Again, and it was Helena, waving for him to follow her as she stepped back.
“It’s quite obvious, isn’t it?” Biri said, standing beside him. “You haven’t met one of these before?”
Michael shook his head. “What is it?”
“An abortion. A creation too inconsistent to match up with the Realm.”
“One of Adonna’s mistakes?”
“Gods don’t make mistakes,” Biri said. “What are you going to do?”
Michael laughed hysterically. “What should I do?”
“Do you wish to see it as it really is?”
“Should I? I mean no, no.”
“I’ve seen them many times,” Biri said. “They are mostly harmless to a Sidhe, even to capable Breeds. Only humans are susceptible. It was the power of the Isomage that liberated them from their deep tombs. The Blasted Plain has much worse to offer.”
“Can it hurt me?”
“It can do worse than kill you. Whenever a human child is born, one of these is liberated. The child has no reservoir of waiting souls from which to draw, so its search allows certain patterns within one of these to enter the Pact Lands. The child is branded. The same could happen to you if you slept here and did not have a circle.”
“You mean, I’d be possessed?”
“These are not intelligences. They are abortions. You would be more eaten than possessed. Your soul is a rare thing here, heavily armored within your body. What happens to it when they crack that armor is not explainable in your languages.”
Michael tried to retreat from the edge of the circle, but couldn’t. “I’m stuck.”
“It cannot hurt you in here. You can play with it, in a sense; it can no more leave you than you can back away. So you can learn from it.”
“I don’t want to learn. I want it to go away and leave me alone.”
“A Sidhe uses the abortions to prove his interior—”
“I don’t care!” Michael shouted. “I’m not a Sidhe! Make it go away.”
“I can’t,” Biri said. “Only you can release it.” The novice walked away and squatted near the glowing rock.
“Spart,” Michael said, “help me!”
There was no reply, and he couldn’t turn his head to see the Crane Women. The shape now resembled Eleuth. She looked very sad, as if she had lost something vital and he was responsible. She looked down. She became a cylindrical something, lines of light crawling up its surface like worms, leaving trails of fire behind.
He tried to find a clue within himself. They wouldn’t leave him in this fix (he hoped) if they didn’t believe he had some way of getting out of it. He had to think it through…
No, in an emergency, thought would be too slow. What if humans had something to make up for their lack of magic, something instinctive? He searched, waited, but the necessary remedy wouldn’t come forth.
The cylinder split like a pared cucumber, revealing an interior compounded of offal and tiny, unidentifiable skeletons. The bones of the skeletons linked and spun, churning the fleshy parts into liquid, which streamed through the lengthening slits and spattered on the dark ground. The segments turned into slithering smooth snakes without discernible head or tail. They rolled into spirals and the spirals lifted to vertical positions, then met at their edges.
They flowed into the shape of Arno Waltiri. He sat upright in a coffin, sallow-fleshed, eyes open but dead and sunken. His mouth fell open abruptly and music came out, sharp and painful. Michael’s skin seemed to blister as the music surrounded him. The corpse fell forward, draped over the lower half of the coffin lid, and revealed another body behind it: his own.
“Wait,” Michael protested. It was stealing all these images from inside him. If he could stop the flow…
“Wait,” the ragged Michael in the coffin mimicked, shaking its head from side to side.
“Stop,” Michael said. He shut his eyes and concentrated on doors closing, dams cutting off water at their sluice gates, capping toothpaste tubes, corking bottles. He tightened his mind down until his entire brain seemed to contract. You can’t steal anything more. I’ve put a lock on it. Loose minds must not entwine, must not combine—
Michael opened his eyes and saw nothing but darkness beyond the circle. He relaxed; he was in control again. He backed away and lay down again by the glowing rock, glancing at Biri, who lay on his back, head turned in Michael’s direction.
The Sidhe nodded and closed his eyes.
They spent two days and three nights in the desolation, Spart engaging Michael in endless and repetitive drill with sticks, running him over the sharp boulders until his feet were in agony and his shins and hands were scraped raw. The dust in his wounds stung like acid and left tiny black lines that were slow to fade.
When he wasn’t training, Michael watched Nare and Coom preparing Biri. The young Sidhe endured everything stoically and performed his exercises flawlessly. The most spectacular thing he did was to reduce a boulder nine or ten yards across to rubble by running around it and chanting. When the dust had cleared, Biri stood atop the heap, brushing his clothes down. Nare and Coom walked around him, features blank.
Michael knew they were much more pleased with Biri than they were with him, and it was obvious why.
Despite Biri’s apparent ease with Michael, he was seldom able to engage the Sidhe in any meaningful conversation beyond amenities and occasional advice, which galled Michael even more than silence.
“Why do you even bother with me?” Michael asked Spart.
“You could train the Sidhe to do whatever you want.” Spart agreed and shook her head in despair.
“We do indeed waste our time,” she admitted. “It’s fortunate we are immortal and can afford to be foolish.”
Only on the last night on the Plain did Biri open up a bit, as they were preparing to cross the border into the Pact Lands. “When I am done here, I have a good thought, and a bad,” he told Michael.
“What are those?” Michael asked, his tone hardly concealing his resentment. If Biri had not answered, he would not have much cared, but the Sidhe pointed across the Plain and said softly, “It is good to go back to the Sidhe territories, but it is less good to fulfill my purpose there.”
“What will you do with the Breeds you’ve had captured?” Michael blurted. “When you’re a priest, I mean.”
For the first time, Michael saw Biri become visibly angry. He advanced on Michael and stood over him. “The Faer do not worship Adonna that way,” he said, his voice cold and crisp.
“Some of the Sidhe do,” Michael said. Spart looked between them curiously, as if anticipating some kind of fight, and perhaps welcoming it.
“Not the Faer,” Biri reiterated, backing away. He glanced at Michael from under his brows and went back to his preparations. Michael took a deep breath.
“Hold it in,” Spart said, continuing to stare at him curiously. Michael held his breath, inwardly fuming at the indignity. “Not your breath, your mind. Hold it in again.”
“I don’t understand,” Michael said.
“Just now. Biri probed you to see what your intentions were. It was a very young thing for him to do, and he didn’t succeed.”
“He tried to read my mind?”
Spart shrugged and took Michael’s hand. “You are indeed a man-child,” she said. No further explanation was offered.
Night had fallen when Nare told them to follow behind her. Michael walked ahead of Spart, who was at the end of the line, and he stumbled less often than he expected. “I’m getting more agile,” he said to no one in particular, enjoying this small accomplishment. And he had to try extra hard for the next few minutes to keep from making himself a liar.
Coom carried a stick which she had caused to glow at one end. The dim yellow luminosity was all they had to travel by. Michael didn’t ask why they couldn’t wait until morning. He felt some trepidation about what they might encounter, with no circle to protect them, but it seemed part of the plan, the test.
They marched down a gully and then followed the long depression. The plain was silent except for the sound of their footsteps. Michael lost himself in the rhythm of putting one foot ahead of the other, keeping up with the circle of light from the glowing stick.
“Ssst,” Nare hissed. Michael looked up and followed the direction of the eyes of those ahead. On the edge of the gully, outlined against the stars, was a giant inverted skull, its blunt jaw poking at the sky.
The group stopped and Coom raised the stick higher. The object was at least thirty feet high. As Michael peered closer, he saw it wasn’t a skull, but a huge shell. The occupant—or occupants—of the shell rose over the rim of the gully, protruding from the “eyes,” long blue-black slug-like things. They joined just beyond the two holes, forming an elongated body which split again near a triplet of heads. The heads were further divided into three stalks, each sporting a mouth like a pair of toothed dinner plates hinged with filamented flesh. The heads and stalks waved above the group, plates opening and closing with faint clacking sounds. Where the skull’s nose would have been, an arm with a triangular cross-section slithered, its end covered with tentacles, each tentacle tipped with a blob of flesh that glowed in the dark. The creature or creatures waved this arm as a watchman would his lantern.
Michael stood his ground only because the others did so. His instinct was to either run or have a heart attack. He could hear the breath in his lungs rasping like a file cutting steel. His pumping blood sounded loud enough to shake the rocks loose. Indeed, a few pebbles clattered down into the gully as the thing slithered on, and it turned its heads to peer after them.
There was a look of awe on Biri’s face, intensely watchful, fascinated.
The monstrosity either didn’t see them or ignored them, passing with cruel slowness. More rocks clattered down, the heads swiveled again, and then it dragged its shell away from the gully with the sound of huge fingernails on acres of sandpaper. Michael shuddered uncontrollably and sat down. Biri looked back at him and made as if to wipe his own brow, a gesture which endeared him to Michael enormously. Spart poked Michael in the ribs to get him moving again.
