by Greg Bear
Michael had no trouble keeping up with Spart this time; her pace was deliberate, less than brisk. “Use your training now,” she told him. “The coursers are still out.”
“Don’t they know about Alyons?”
Spart didn’t answer. He frowned at her back and shook his head. Even now, she had the ability to exasperate him.
They dodged between the smoldering ruins and piles of brick and within minutes approached the Yard. It, too, had been demolished. Michael peered over the remains of a thick wall. The pits were open to the night air.
In the least damaged section of town, they passed humans running, or standing in a daze; townsfolk with shackles around their ankles, staked to the ground; men and women huddled in corners, the smoke and diminishing flames adding to the glazed light of panic in their eyes. He didn’t see anybody dead, or even seriously injured. Perhaps the Isomage’s threat had restrained the Sidhe enough to spare the town from general massacre.
Spart clambered down stairs leading to a basement beneath a relatively intact two-story warehouse. She walked ahead of Michael in the dark, and he followed her by the sound of her footfalls, using his hands to guide him along one wall.
At the end of the corridor was a room lit by glass-chimneyed oil lamps. The floor was scattered with smashed wicker boxes and furniture. The brick walls seemed to have been sprayed with silvery glitter that sparkled in a way painful to the eyes.
In the middle of the room, shoulders slumped, Savarin sat amidst the litter. He barely glanced up as he heard them. His clothes and face were covered with the sparkling dust. He looked down at the floor, then, as if reminded of something, looked up again and fastened his dull gaze on Michael. “Traitor,” he said. ”You told them.” His voice was flat and lifeless.
“I didn’t tell anybody,” Michael said but Savarin was obviously beyond argument. The teacher smiled in a sickly way, shook his head and resumed his examination of the floor. Spart pointed to the far corner of the basement room at a figure seated away from the glow of the oil lamps. It was Helena, her skin and clothes aglimmer. She sat with knees drawn up on a makeshift wicker piano bench. Before her, smashed into the corner, was the piano.
It had been gutted. Its painstakingly assembled inner works lay warped and twisted a few yards away.
He walked to her and reached out to touch her shoulder, but she pulled away on the bench, making it shake. “I know you didn’t tell,” she said hoarsely, turning her face away. She tightened her arms around her knees and pressed her chin against her wrists, rocking gently. “We didn’t use the dust. They were here a little while ago. I was playing. It was my only chance to play. We used the piano, we played it. But we didn’t use the… what you brought. Here it is.” She handed him the bag. It was empty but for a few grains, the tie loose.
Spart grabbed the bag and pinched it angrily. She took Helena’s hair in one hand and shook loose malevolent glitter. “They turned it, they wasted it.” She chuffed in disgust and pulled him away from Helena. “They are not worth your time,” she said.
Michael looked back at Helena, uncertain what he felt—sadness, perverse satisfaction at his betrayers laid low, horror and anger that people he cared for could be treated thus.
“Isn’t there any more dust?” he asked.
“Not for us, not for them. If they try to cross now, the sani is turned. It will attract every monster on the plain.” She shook her hand and wiped it vigorously, then pulled him up the stairs out of the basement. When he protested that he had to stay and help, her look asked plain as words, What can you do?
Nothing. He followed her.
On the streets, they ran for a short distance, then hid behind the intact corner of a collapsed building as coursers thundered by. “Where are we going?” Michael whispered.
“You are leaving,” Spart said. “With or without the powder. It is your time. You go back with me to the mound, then you go on alone.”
Only now did he remember the book left in the rafters of the hut. He had forgotten it in his haste to leave the Realm.
“Come!” Spart ran ahead. Instinctively, as the pounding of horses grew louder, he threw shadows. Spart became a crowd of people. The horses halted and reared behind them, screaming with excitement. Michael barely heard the curses of the riders.
They ran along the deserted and snow-covered road to Half-town. Mottled starlight fell between broken clouds. The smell of smoke subsided. Spart ran as fast as ever and he had difficulty keeping up.
Halftown lay empty and quiet before them. Spart slowed and walked him through the town, glancing at the empty buildings, then at Michael, as if to emphasize the solitude.
“Where are they?” Michael asked.
“They will serve Adonna, those who haven’t escaped.” That was the whining-wind sound he had heard—Meteorals sweeping in. The Crane Women’s pact with the Meteorals had been abrogated. Now was certainly not the time to leave, not if he wished to retain any of his self-respect.
“I can’t leave,” he said. “I have to find Eleuth. I have to help.”
“If you stay,” Spart said, “the coursers will take you and imprison you with the others. You will be unable to do anything for them. If you escape, perhaps you can help… from outside.” She was not telling the whole truth—though a few weeks before, he wouldn’t have been able to detect her evasion. And it was Spart who had trained him to be sensitive.
“Besides, you cannot find Eleuth. She is dead.”
The double confirmation—this time from an unimpeachable source—hit him very hard.
“She did her best,” Span said. “She did well, considering.”
There were tears in his eyes as they approached the mound. The Crane Women’s hut was intact, but his own had been knocked over. Biri’s had been removed entirely. Michael searched in the rubble for the book and found it pinned between a shingle and a beam, undamaged. He pocketed it.
Nare and Coom stood behind him. He looked between them, nothing to say, virtually nothing to think.
“Soon, you are empty,” Nare said.
“Ananna,” Coom reiterated. “Ready. Now, never.”
Spart grinned sympathetically. “One more thing, and then you go across the plain, find the Isomage. You must leave your hated parts behind.”
“What?” he asked softly.
“If there is a part of yourself you don’t like, you can be rid of it. You still have too many people inside of you. But that can be an advantage for a while. Sacrifice them. When you are in great danger, make one of the selves you don’t like into a shadow. Send it forth. It will be real, solid. It will die for you.”
“That is something you can do, we cannot,” Nare said. Coom nodded agreement.
“Where do I go after I cross the plain?”
“So positive,” Nare said, lifting her eyes.
“Follow the river to the sea. No matter how far you stray, always the river,” Spart said.
“And what will happen to you three?”
Nare and Coom were gone already. He seemed to remember their leaving, but not clearly. Spart held her hand in front of his eyes. “In-speaking,” she said. “Out-seeing. When you are ready, they are yours. The only outright gifts, man-child. Be grateful. We are never generous.”
Then she was gone, too. He turned to see if they were running from the mound, but there was no sign of them in any direction. The mound was now empty.
Only dust and old sticks, a few stones, a broken mortar and some pieces of glass showed that their hut had ever existed.
Michael was on his own.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The border between the Pact Lands and the Blasted Plain was less well-defined now. Michael suspected the circle of corruption was closing, and that soon the Pact Lands would not exist.
He stood on a ridge not far from the river, looking down at the indistinct smudge of red and gray and brown creeping across the frosted grass. Where the border crossed the half-frozen river, whirlpools of mud and bloody-lo
oking water left pinkish foam on the ice and shore.
With no sani, with no weapon but his stick, he was indeed empty—empty-souled and empty-handed. For a moment, after leaving the Crane Women’s mound, he had hated himself, but even that was gone now. He was a pair of eyes suspended over a vast mental desolation, swept clear of youthful obstructions—but swept clear of youthful ideals as well; of all things beautiful and inhibiting.
He slid down the ridge and across the ambiguous border.
What impressed him most, the deeper into the Blasted Plain he walked, was the silence. There was only the gentle thump of his feet in the dust, raising little puffs. The dust fell back into place, undrifted by the slightest breeze.
Winter had not touched here. The morning light was patchy and orange and vibrated occasionally as if all the air were a plucked string.
Michael walked quickly at first, then broke into a run. He passed brown pools and smoking crevices, skirted a lava pillar and picked up his pace. The pillar crawled with tiny elongated shadows.
After an hour, his way was blocked by a chasm. It was about ninety yards across, the rim separated like book-pages into razor-thin slices of translucent rock. Sand lay flat across the bottom. At regular intervals, conical depressions blemished the sand like the marks of giant bootspikes.
He walked along the edge for a while, hoping to find a way across. It was a drop of about twenty-five feet to the bottom and he didn’t fancy a trek across the sand, but finally impatience and the chasm’s seemingly endless length changed his mind. He experimentally kicked at the rock slices. With moderate impact, they crumpled into shards, and he was able to dig and kick an angled descent to the bottom.
The sand was gritty and hard-packed. He walked quickly and carefully, avoiding the depressions.
Thus far, he had seen none of the Blasted Plain’s inhabitants—unless the worm-shadows of the lava pillar qualified. He was hoping his passage might be easy when a hole directly in front of him enlarged suddenly. He had to scramble to keep from slipping over the edge.
A bulbous protrusion was visible in the center of the pit. Michael backed away, but not far enough to avoid being sprayed with sand as the protrusion burst like a bubble. He wiped his eyes and heard a deep pleasant voice say, “You don’t know what a relief it is to be free of Euterpe.”
Ishmael, the Child who had prophesied in the Yard, climbed out of the pit. He stood before Michael, lank and naked. His long, pale dour face was free of wrinkles but still seemed ancient. He lifted one hand on its thickened wrist. “I’ve been away from my friends much too long.” His thick-jointed finger flicked, and from depressions all around leaped more figures, not all of them as pleasantly shaped as Ishmael. “How may we help you, human?”
“Let me pass,” Michael said. The emptiness inside helped keep his voice steady.
“All pass who will. Would you like guides? These areas can be hazardous, you know.”
“No, thank you.”
Ishmael sucked in his breath and coughed up a laugh, his eyes jerking wide. “We’re the only kin you have here. Don’t take all that propaganda they fed you seriously. We’re not nearly as bad as our parents make us out to be.”
“Perhaps not,” Michael said. “But I’ll manage on my own.” He glanced at the others. There were seven or eight, all with some resemblance to humans, but for at least three the resemblance was passing at best. Their hairless arms hung to the ground or grew into their thighs; their faces were bad parodies. Ishmael approached Michael slowly, arms held out as if to show his good intentions.
“After all that time, we’re in the mood to help,” he said. His tone became more like a radio announcer’s—slick, cultured, less and less believable.
So which part don’t you like? Make ready.
“For so long, our talents have gone unappreciated,” Ishmael said, full of self-pity. “Our emotions have been neglected.”
“Stay back,” Michael said.
“Back, back it is,” Ishmael said, stopping. He knelt down and peered up at Michael from large yellow-green eyes. “Brother. Born of man and woman. Just like us.”
“Quiet,” Michael said.
Ishmael took a deep breath. “Where is your powder, traveler? Only a fool would cross the Blasted Plain without powder or a horse.”
I believe, Michael thought, that I would willingly cast off most of what I once was. Like my foolishness and blindness. Can I cast off those things?
No answer. It was his own decision, his own risk.
Or my reckless defiance. If I had looked at things more closely, and opened my mind to how they might turn out, perhaps Eleuth would still be alive, and Helena—
No, there had been little or no fault in his behavior toward Helena. He couldn’t make a shadow from unpleasant memories.
I wish to cast a shadow of the self that took advantage of Eleuth.
For a moment, two Michael Perrins stood in the same spot on the Blasted Plain. Ishmael opened and closed his long fingers. His mouth opened wider and wider until it seemed he had no jaw; his lips peeled back across flexible but very sharp teeth. His face became all mouth, all teeth, the eyes receding and the tongue darting out thin and silvery like a knife blade.
The skin of the Child’s shoulders split and blood poured down his chest and arms. Rank brown nettles and thorny vines crawled from the split skin and twined around the mourn, then slid down the rest of the body, the thorns piercing and grabbing hold.
“Time to become real,” Ishmael said, his tongue clacking.
The other Children went through their own transformations. Both Michaels remained calm.
What I did was not all that bad, said the Michael about to be sacrificed.
But you cannot be all of me, ever again, said the Michael about to escape. You are past.
He stepped aside. The Children moved with astonishing speed toward the shadow Michael, wrapping thorns, teeth, arms, claws and unnamed organs of destruction around him. The shadow screamed and Michael felt a sudden weakness as he ran across the chasm.
Ishmael lifted his mouth from the consuming and wailed, lumbering to his feet to follow, but Michael was already kicking aside the sheets of rock and climbing the opposite cliff. He sliced his hands and lay one shin open from knee to ankle, but made it over the top and stumbled on. The pain didn’t slow him much, once he was back on the powdery flatness. The dust flew up into his wounds and his blood fell back into the dust, beading like tiny rubies.
He clutched the book in his pocket. The book was sanity, words from home, arranged by those who had never been where he was now, who had lived in relative normality and worked in quiet to craft their poems. His fingers rubbed the leather spine through the cloth, and he thought of who and what he had just left behind to perish.
Atonement. Survival.
Yet strangely, the emptiness was less profound now. He had lost; he had gained.
He could see the far border of the Blasted Plain, and beyond, the mist and the tall, snow-dusted tips of trees. The lava pillars had become sparser and smaller, more like vertical stacks of slag doughnuts than pillars.
At the border the mist swirled opaquely, like a spill of milk in water. From where he stood it looked tangible, more spider’s web than fog. He was less than a hundred yards from the border, yet he slowed, then stopped.
Something long and sinuous stretched above the mist and peered down at him. It was the skull-snail, heads and blood-red eyes searching, body dragging the macabre shell behind. Michael tried to judge how slowly it moved and how much chance it had of catching him if he ran across the final stretch.
It emerged from the mist with an audible sucking sound, its body rippling peristaltic. The skull-shell lurched behind, dragging a smooth furrow in the dust.
What did it want? It wasn’t moving so fast he couldn’t outrun it; it didn’t seem to be threatening, as ugly as it was. Its multitude of stalked eyes focused on him, outer edges arterial, inner circle venous. The body glistened like oil on a dirty pu
ddle. Michael half-crouched and held his ground, back prickling at the thought that the Children might have followed him out of the chasm, or were burrowing beneath to pop up in front of him again.
The skull-snail halted, its momentum pushing it a yard or so farther in the dust. The shell changed colors, jagged bands of brown, black and red crossing its surface. The arm which issued from the “nose” cavity rose seven or eight feet higher and formed a very human mouth.
“Take me with you,” the mouth said. The voice was female, unfamiliar to him. “Take me with you,” it repeated more quietly. “I am not what I seem. I do not belong here.”
“What are you?” Michael asked, glancing around quickly to see if he was being decoyed.
“I am what Adonna wills.”
His memory was being tapped, but he didn’t opaque the aura. The skull-snail’s voice sounded like a Sidhe’s and he was curious to know why.
“Who are you?”
“Tonn’s wife,” the skull-snail said. Tonn had been the Sidhe mage mentioned at the Kaeli. “Abandoned. Betrayed. Take me with you!”
Michael walked a wide circle around the creature. It made no further move toward him. “You are a mage. Take me where I might live again. And I will tell you where Kristine is.”
“I’m sorry,” Michael said. “I’m no mage. And I don’t know who Kristine is.”
He passed through the bitter-tasting mist and over the border. The skull-snail raised its eyes higher but fell silent as it watched him go where it could not. He walked two dozen yards into the wintered forest before he began to shudder uncontrollably. The creature’s plea echoed in his head, the voice so lovely—the shape so grotesque, as if a curse had been laid on by a particularly creative and perverse sorcerer.
He lay down on the icy grass in the snow-shadow of a majestic oak and cleansed his hands with rime, then rubbed his face and eyes.
It felt like years had passed since he last slept. He damped his body’s pains, tried to ignore the signs of suppuration in his wounds and relaxed in the now-dripping grass until his eyes closed.
