by Steven Brust
“Because if they can do that, we don’t have a chance against them.”
She laughed. “Ah. I see. I’m not familiar with that logic.”
I shrugged. “Actually, I’m not kidding. That’s one thing I learned in the course of my long and checkered career. If your only chance of living through something is if your enemy isn’t a sorcerer, or doesn’t have a spare dagger, or can’t jump an eleven-foot crevasse, then you assume your enemy isn’t a sorcerer, or doesn’t have a spare dagger, or can’t jump an eleven-foot crevasse.”
“Hmmmm,” said Teldra. “I see. It makes a very practical sort of sense.”
“Yes,” I said, involuntarily remembering the guy who could jump an eleven-foot crevasse, much to my disgust—but I survived that one anyway, because he turned out to be wearing the wrong kind of boots. Long story; never mind.
There was a bit of a breeze coming from my left; not too strong, just enough to tickle the back of the neck. It brought no smells except the sort of sweet scent that seemed to be part of the air here. This reminded me, again, to keep my breathing even and shallow.
“Well,” I said, “Teldra, you must have studied all the old songs and stories, and you must be better read in history than I am, and since I almost never attend the theater, you must attend it more often than I do.”
“Perhaps,” she said.
“Well then? What does one typically do in a situation like this?”
Teldra looked at me.
“I mean, usually when one finds oneself on an entirely different world, barely able to breathe, surrounded by a bizarre environment, beset with enemies with the strength of gods, and with no way home—what are the usual steps?”
She barely cracked a smile.
“Usually,” she said, “one calls for help of one’s patron god, who then assigns one an impossible task in exchange for minimal aid, which aid turns out to be ironically fatal. Or else one discovers a powerful artifact of unknown properties, which, upon use, proves to take over one’s soul, so that, after the rescue, one kills one’s beloved.”
“I see. Well, now you know why I almost never attend the theater.”
Teldra supplied the obligatory chuckle and I looked out once more at the world around us—suddenly taken by the fear that Morrolan and Aliera would not come, and the Jenoine would not come, and we would find no way out; that we would remain here for the rest of our days. Which days, now that I thought of it, wouldn’t be long if we didn’t figure out how we were going to eat. But I knew this fear was groundless. Whatever Morrolan had done in the past, I knew that he would never stop trying to rescue us as long as he was alive. And, of course, things being as they were, death might not manage to stop him either.
I sighed.
“You know, Loiosh, if anyone had told me yesterday at this time that thirty hours later I would have rescued Morrolan and Aliera, nearly killed the Demon Goddess, and found myself trapped in a prison the size of the world, unable to decide if I was hoping to be saved or was hoping not to be saved, I’d have said, ‘Yeah, sounds about right.’”
“You probably would have, Boss.”
“I think this says something about my life choices.”
“Uhhuh.”
I looked around at the world, noticing the perfection of the stream, the hills, the mountains—the general sense that everything had been planned and crafted. I had the sudden irrational (and, I’m sure, wrong) notion that this little part of the world was all there was—that everywhere out of sight was just sort of grey and unfinished; and I was also again reminded of the Paths of the Dead, though I’m not sure why.
Teldra and I began walking. The ground was soft and springy, and we soon reached the banks of the stream, which were only two or three feet above the flow. I leaned over and stared into it, watching it. It hardly seemed to be moving, yet occasionally the crests would break into diminutive whitecaps. It was neither blue nor green nor red, as is most of the water I’ve seen, but sort of an olive; I could not imagine what accounted for this. I couldn’t see the bottom, but it seemed neither shallow nor dirty.
“What is it, Boss?”
“This water.”
“What about it?”
“I don’t know. It’s no more natural than the rest of this place, but ... it isn’t perfect.”
He said nothing; I continued studying it. Teldra reniaim a foot or two behind me, silent, the soul of patience. I stooped, then knelt. I reached out toward the water, then changed my mind, holding my hand motionless. Then I—how shall I put this—extended my senses. It’s hard to describe; it’s sort like the difference between hearing something and intensive listening; or between resting your hand on velvet, and closing your eyes and luxuriating in the feel of it; only with a sense that... oh forget it. It’s a witch thing.
In any case, I reached out, for the water, and—
“Yes,” I said aloud.
“Yes?” echoed Lady Teldra.
“Yes,” I agreed.
She waited.
I turned to her. “The water,” I said. “It isn’t water.”
She waited.
“Boss—”
“I don’t know, Loiosh; I’m working on it.”
Aloud I said, “The water isn’t like the rest of the place. Well, it is and it isn’t. It’s—I don’t know. I want to follow it.”
“All right, Vlad. Upstream or down?”
“Uh ... you ask good questions.”
The source or the result; the theoretical or the practical; find out what it all means, or go straight for where something can be done about it. A moment of sublime indecision, with a chance to learn something deep and important about myself. Or perhaps not; I know that by inclination I’m a source man; I like to understand things as completely as possible, but if I was to do something before things were done to me, I couldn’t take the time.
“Downstream,” I said. “Let’s see where this goes.”
She nodded, Loiosh mumbled an agreement into my mind, and we set off. The stream meandered gently, the ground underfoot was soft and springy if uneven; the air still had that sweetness. I was getting used to taking shallow breaths. The scenery didn’t change much, and the water was quieter than the forest streams I’d become used to finding by sound and smell.
After most of a mile, I realized that I was hearing something—a low sort of rumble. It was oddly difficult to localize, but seemed to come from ahead of us.
“Loiosh, you said you couldn’t fly, but—”
“No, I can do it, I think.”
“Then—”
“I’m on my way, Boss.”
He left my shoulder and flew off ahead of me, his flight strong and smooth, mostly gliding, wings flapping now and then, smoothly; quite graceful, actually.
“Gee, thanks, Boss.”
“Oh, shut up. Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I can manage. I just have to glide a lot, and I won’t he able to keep this up very long.”
“You won’t have to. What do you see?”
“I’d say water, only you claim it isn’t water, so ... wait a minute. It’s getting louder. It’s—”
“Yes?
“Well, it’s safe enough. Come ahead.”
“All right.”
The ground rose a little, leaving the water—or whatever it was—about twenty feet below us in a sort of cleft, like a scale model of a river valley, all green and stuff. Loiosh returned to my shoulder as I took the last few steps. The roaring became louder—like, each step noticeably increased the volume; soon we’d have had to shout to be heard, and at about that time we came over a rise and saw it—a waterfall, or it would have been a waterfall if whatever was falling had been water. Certainly, it behaved like water as it went over the lip and struck the bottom, about a hundred or a hundred and twenty feet below; complete with what seemed to be mist springing up from it. The lip was narrower than the stream, I’d say about thirty-five feet. The “water,” for lack of a better word, rushed over it in a trem
endous hurry to reach the bottom. I watched, fascinated the way one sometimes is by nature, though I hesitate to call it “nature”—I didn’t believe this was any more natural than anything else I’d seen since I got here.
It fell majestically. It foamed and swirled in the pool at the bottom, before heading off downstream; I picked out particles and watched them plummet; I watched the mist rise and curl. I wondered what it was.
On my arm, I felt Spellbreaker stir, just a little; a sort of twitch that could almost have been my imagination, but no, it wasn’t.
And then I knew.
Of course, you—who have heard all of my story to this point, and are now sitting back drinking your favorite wine and listening to my voice pour out—you had it figured a long time ago. And, I suppose, I ought to have too. But it is one thing to hear about it, and quite another to be there with it, watching , hearing it, and not really wanting to believe that you’re looking at what you think you’re looking at.
“Amorphia,” I said aloud, naming it, making it real. According to some of the beliefs surrounding the practice of witchcraft, to name it was to give it power; according to others, to name it was to give myself power over it. This felt like the former.
“What?” shouted Teldra.
I leaned over until I was talking into her ear. “Amorphia,” I repeated, making my voice calm, as if I were announcing nothing of any importance. “The stuff of chaos.”
She stared at it, then nodded slowly, leaned over, and spoke into my ear. “Yes,” she said. “You’re right. It is amorphia. Only controlled. Going where the Jenoine wish it to go, and doing what they wish it to do.”
I nodded, and led us back from the brink, just a score or so of paces over the hill so we could speak in normal tones. I said, “I didn’t think amorphia occurred anywhere except at home.”
“Neither did I,” she said.
I grunted. “So, which is scarier—that they have created a river of amorphia, or that they are able to create a river of amorphia? Or, for that matter, the fact that the Jenoine have permitted us to see all of this?”
“I begin to believe,” she said, “that the reason we haven’t been molested is that, quite simply, we are too insignificant to worry about.”
“Insulting,” I said, “but it could be true. It would explain why we’ve been permitted to see this, too—we just don’t matter.”
Teldra exhaled briefly through her nose and watched the scene. I watched with her. She said, “And we were wondering if there was any magic here.”
I listened to chaos splash over the cliff. From where we stood, we could see the rush of the gathered amorphia about to plunge over the falls. Now that I knew—or, perhaps, now that I had admitted to myself what it was—it looked even less like water; the color changed as you tried to focus on it, but now appeared mostly to fluctuate between steely grey and a dark, unhealthy green. And while it almost behaved as water should, it didn’t quite do that, either.
“Well, we’ve certainly learned something,” I remarked into the air.
Amorphia. The stuff of chaos. According to some, the stuff of life; according to others, the basic building block of all matter and energy. I didn’t know; I wasn’t a magical philosopher, and I’d certainly never studied the ancient, illegal, and frightening branch of sorcery devoted to such things.
I’d used amorphia once, and since then had skimmed a couple of Morrolan’s books to pick up useful-looking spells, bur I’d never studied it.
I had used it once.
A long time ago, in the heart of the city, trying to save the life of Morrolan (who was dead at the time; don’t ask), faced by several sorceresses of the Bitch Patrol—the Left Hand of the Jhereg—I had called upon abilities I didn’t know I had, I had hurled something at them they could not have anticipated any more than they could counter it. Yes, I had done it once.
I let that memory play around in my head, remembering the feel of a tavern floor against my face, and a sense of desperation; a desire to do something, anything, and the explosive release of power I had inherited because, once, my soul had been close to the soul of some idiots who played around with that power. That day, I had been an idiot, too, and had been rescued by Aliera before I dissolved myself and a section of Adrilankha into the basic component of all matter and energy, or whatever it was.
I remembered that day, years ago, and separated from me by so many experiences that it might as well have happened to a different person.
Only I wasn’t, really, a different person. And, try as I might, I couldn’t shy away from the implications of that.
“Boss—”
“Not now, Loiosh. Let me work it through on my own; there are too many angles to this thing.”
“All right.”
If anyone asked me if I knew the Elder Sorcery, I could say no with a clear conscience. I didn’t know it, in any meaningful way.
But—
The Elder Sorcery is, perhaps, the most difficult branch of magic, at least until you try to throw them all together and tie them up in some object where you also keep your soul so you get to call yourself a “wizard” for whatever satisfaction that will bring you. I had once harbored illusions about learning sorcery as it was practiced before the Empire, before the Orb, before what I’d call civilization. I had a sort of start, owing to an accidental relationship in my past life. I abandoned the study early on, because not only was it difficult, and scary, but I just had damned much else going on in my life at the time. But I did have a pretty good memory of step one—that is, the first and easiest spell, the one necessary to continue on to the more difficult spells. And this spell, if I could pull it off, just might prove useful.
My brain raced, and worked at a few of the angles until it ran down, by which time I had already opened up my small pouch of witchcraft supplies, and dug around for a bit. I didn’t have a lot of stuff with me, and everything I did have was valuable, but what can you do? I picked out the ceramic bottle of dira juice because it wasn’t too hard to come by, and the main use it had was treating a particular jungle fever that I’d so far managed to avoid. I poured the contents on the ground. I noticed Teldra looking a question at me. I shook my head.
I found a loop of leather and hung it around the neck of the bottle; then I walked over to the bank where the amorphia flowed like water.
Teldra cleared her throat. “I was just wondering,” she said, “how you’re going to keep the bottle from dissolving in the amorphia you’re trying to capture.”
“Oh,” I said. “You’ve known Morrolan a great deal longer than I have; haven’t you read any of his books?”
“Not on the Elder Sorcery. Have you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Oh.” She considered. “And you learned how to do whatever it is you’re doing?”
The questions were a bit intrusive for Teldra, but I couldn’t blame her; hanging around while an incompetent plays around with amorphia is worth at least a couple of innocent questions.
“More or less,” I told her.
She bit her lip and didn’t ask anything else, for which she ought to have received whatever sorts of medals her House gives out.
I started the bottle spinning in a wide, slow loop, directly in front of me, about a foot over the stream. “It really isn’t that difficult,” I said, “if all you want to do is capture some of it. It’s just a question of speed.” As I spoke, I started spinning the bottle a little faster—not much. “Amorphia will take, uh, some measurable fraction of a second before it begins to operate on matter that comes in contact with it. The trick is just to get it before it destroys or alters whatever vessel you’re using to capture it.” I glanced at her. “Move a couple of steps to the right, please.”
She did so, silent.
The other trick is the little matter of the spell.
There isn’t a lot to say about it. It’s a pretty simple spell, really—well described by the book. You just draw the power through your link to the Orb ....
Yeah.
There’s the catch. The whole “link to the Orb” problem. I was currently missing one of those.
To the left, however, there were alternatives, if you were willing to risk interaction with unfettered, raw amorphia. I happened to have a supply of that near to hand.
I stared at the stream.
Do you know how hard it is to look at water? To see it, When it’s flowing past you? You see foam, or swirls, or crests, or whitewaters, or maybe the streambed, or maybe the reflection off the surface, but it is very hard to actually see the water. It is even harder when it isn’t actually water, but amorphia, the quintessence of formlessness; it is hard to see formlessness, because what we see is form. Try it sometime, if you have any raw chaos lying about; it is simultaneously too much and too little to grasp.
But I kept trying, staring at and then past the subtle color shifts, rigorously refusing to believe in the shapes my mind tried to impose on the shapelessness. And at length—I don’t know how long it was—I began to seep into it. Those sorcerers who spend a lot of time working with amorphia say that every such experience is a step closer to madness. Judging from Aliera and Morrolan, I think that is probably true. But fortunately, I didn’t have to go too far, just enough contact for one little spell.
I felt a response within me; something like and yet unlike the first feelings that a spell is working. To the right, I felt as if I were secure and comfortable and relaxed, and to the left I felt as if I were on the edge of a precipice and one small step, or the loss of my balance, would send me hurtling over into insanity.
The balance issue was a good metaphor, and also quite real, because, as I readied the spell, I leaned over the stream. Should I slip in, it would be a quicker death than many that I’ve come near, but it isn’t how I choose to spend my last measurable fraction of a second.
I changed the angle, so instead of spinning parallel to the stream, it was almost perpendicular. I timed the spin—it was just over a second for a full loop. I wished I remembered just what the measurement on that measurable fraction of a second was; at the time, that hadn’t been the sort of detail I was interested in, not being able to imagine being in this situation. Was it around half a second? A little less? I sped up the spin just a trifle, then let my breath out slowly.
