by Janny Wurts
The silence weighed oppressively there, as though the air with its scents of ink and parchments lay impossibly stiller than elsewhere. Stoneworked gryphons supported shelves of scrolls and books; most lacked titles, and the few that did not were stamped in gleaming runes. Ringed by mounting inner terrors, Korendir reminded himself that he offered his lady's only hope. He had pursued obscure knowledge all his life, and since marriage to Ithariel, had spent his winters in study. Only those texts defended by spells lay outside his means to decipher. By morning, surrounded by a jumbled mass of volumes and the sockets of spent candles, he had unravelled what caused the enchanters' affliction. One of the Six Great Banes had slipped its guardian ward. The White Circle had no written name for the evil, as if to assign it identity might lend power to augment its threat. Common language held less scruple. Herb witches called the thing Valjir, intelligence spawned from the void, and given form by a composite mass of purloined souls. One of them was Ithariel.
Korendir shrank from the implications. His madness knotted back on itself like the dreams of the priest-oracles who used drugs to induce ritual insanity. Arisen from the netherspace between existence, the Valjir's recent thefts enabled an emergence into the otherworld of Alhaerie. White Circle enchanters were vulnerable to its call because their craft attuned and directed forces counter to Aerith's reality. Alhaerie afforded the well-spring for their powers, and established within that environment, the Valjir overcame safe-wards and the minds which shaped them with the mundane ease of a hunter trapping sparrows with birdlime.
Korendir pinched out the last candle. He stretched his cramped back and ground his knuckles into stinging eyes. Behind him lay a lifetime of survival against the most dangerous hazards on Aerith; in Alhaerie, that store of experience might make him a powerful wizard, or else a target for destruction. By every account, the untrained mind could not survive without a sorcerer to shield the awareness. Grimly, Korendir arose. He left the library knowing the fact could only be questioned by the attempt.
* * *
The Master of Whitestorm assumed position on the central array of sigils where the bones of Telvallind Archmaster had lain unattended in death. Here, a wizard's gate had once opened to rescue three lives cast adrift into Alhaerie. Prepared with no more than a phrase purloined from a spell book, Korendir prayed he could duplicate the feat. Overtop his tunic he wore the blue-black robe of an adept, filched from Telvallind's wardrobe. On a chain at his neck hung the tallix signet borrowed from the fallen wizard's hand. Denied the particulars of his heritage, the swordsman could not guess that ring and stone had once belonged to High Morien.
The sentiment would hardly have comforted.
All the achievements of his life shrank to insignificance before the deed he presently contemplated; the risk he assumed was unconscionable. But Ithariel's peril eclipsed reason. The jewel held the key to access the otherworld; the clothing, Korendir had added as bait for the Valjir, hoping to lure it with belief that one sorcerer still eluded its control. The only flaw in his masquerade was the left-hand pocket, which he had stripped of its lining to free the blade strapped beneath.
Korendir raised the ring, discarding acknowledgment of the disasters he courted by his actions. A brother he had never met had loosed demons upon Alathir through the opening of an unsanctioned wizard's gate. Korendir could only hope that the sigils beneath his feet held some residual power of warding. Not for the living peace of Aerith could he accept that Ithariel was lost beyond recovery. She was his lady; guilt for her peril whipped him steadily back toward the deep, mindless silence that had engulfed him those early years after the burning and sack of Shan Rannok. For the wife he had unforgivably failed to safeguard, Korendir spoke the phrase of opening. He raised the Archmaster's tallix and brought the ring downward through the dust-still air.
A line scribed through shadow where the crystal passed. Then light flared from the edges and a rift became visible between. Korendir released the jewel to its tether of silver chain. He extended his fingers toward the gap, braced for pain.
Nothing met his touch. His hand encountered no sensation at all, but vanished clean to the wrist.
The wizard's gate was opened through the void. Stripped of protection, woefully short of wisdom, Korendir contemplated the scope of his handiwork. A step would send him across the nether space into the alter-reality of Alhaerie, perhaps never to return. He could become no more frightened; never again since the moment he had wakened to a spring morning, and his beloved had not.
Nothing else in Aerith held meaning for him.
Korendir framed the memory of Ithariel in his mind. For the first time since she had been stolen into thrall by the Valjir, he set fully free the emotions that harrowed his being. If by the bonds of marriage his spirit would follow hers across the barrier of death, perhaps the same attraction would guide him to the horror that imprisoned her. The thinnest smile of irony curved his lips as he made the irrevocable step through the gateway. He would find his lady, either way.
The change was like stepping from dry rock into whirlpool. Sensation became consumed. Korendir trod a spinning, incomprehensible void. His ears were needled by patternless sound, and febrile light eddied round him. The Archmaster's robe was transformed; opaque no longer, the fabric displayed its living history in a tapestry that bewildered the eyes. Summer warmed the powdered wings of silk moths, and the steam from the dyer's vats twined, warp through weft, with the tracings of tailor's chalk and the needle of a willow-thin seamstress. Korendir walked, clothed in alien power that radiated presence like a bonfire.
No White Circle initiate would have dared traverse Alhaerie without first setting spells of concealment. Korendir knew enough not to stop moving, but his unschooled mind could not sort the assault to fleshly perception. Disorientation was immediate, and virulent enough to disable. Already his temples pounded; in time that pressure would mount to a debilitating headache, followed by paralysis and dissolution.
Alhaerie resisted motion like thick syrup. Each footfall roused whorls of light which oozed and spilled like flourishes in marbling before fading slowly away. The eye had no reference to measure distance. Uncertainty harrowed Korendir's nerves, and he longed for a firm and recognizable path.
A crackle of sound answered his wish. His body felt momentarily dashed to particles; then his boot sole jarred against cobblestone. Continuity slammed back into focus, and through widened eyes, Korendir beheld a wonder: a road sprang straight as a draftsman's line across the murk of Alhaerie.
Surprise drove his hand to his sword hilt. The weapon clanged half clear of the scabbard before he understood his own mind had imposed the stonework underfoot. Though the discharge of unexpected power left him dizzied, a laugh escaped his lips. The sound was visible, in that place, as a glassy, jagged-edged ripple that fell and smashed like crystal against the paving.
Korendir paused. Ithariel had once confided that intangible things on Aerith held solid form in Alhaerie; this anomaly formed the working basis for her magic. The Master of Whitestorm bent and fingered one of the scattered fragments. It proved exceedingly sharp. On the chance that noise might prove useful as a weapon, he tried calling out his wife's name.
The syllables spun like scythe blades, carved through the oily film which passed for atmosphere, and vanished out of view. Pensively, Korendir moved onward. Underfoot, the cobbles stayed convincingly firm; the muted click of his heels scattered shards like sleet at each step, and the implications stunned.
In Alhaerie, sound was an object, and thought, an act of physical creation.
Korendir's breath stuck in his throat. Only now did he fully comprehend the capabilities of the demons he had banished from Illantyr. The White Circle feared beings from the otherworld because their power over reality beyond the gates was proportionally the converse of this; and Aerith, stripped of its wizards, was left vulnerable as wet clay should any denizen from Alhaerie slip through the tallix gate left open at his back. Korendir made himself run. The Valjir must be destroye
d for more than Ithariel's sake; now the continued existence of Aerith itself might be forfeit.
His boots struck like hammerblows, firing silvery crescents of sound. The whisper of his breath trailed a wake of glittering threads, but he paid such marvels no heed. His every resource concentrated upon the overwhelming need for urgency.
His hurry became wasted effort since his bond with Ithariel in the end drew the Valjir to him.
The Master of Whitestorm saw the horror first as a gossamer sphere which spanned the width of the roadway. The chaos native to Alhaerie unbound the solidity of the cobbles where the void-spawned being passed. Winded from more than exertion, Korendir checked. Sweat slid in droplets down his wrists. He wiped his palms instinctively, lest a dampened grip on his sword lend unnecessary advantage to an enemy.
Yet on sight it seemed unlikely that steel could vanquish this adversary. Insubstantial as a silk balloon, the Valjir advanced. Closer, its surface revealed an astral mosaic of heads, bodies, and limbs, lapped one against another without break. A few of the faces were familiar. Korendir jerked his eyes aside to forestall a painful search for the single one which mattered.
The records failed to describe what sort of being lurked inside that envelope of souls. Dwarfed by its drifting presence, Korendir chose not to speculate. He shouted a verse from Neth's litany of creation on the chance that whetted edges of sound might breach the Valjir's defenses.
His words shaved the atmosphere into strips that streamed like twisted ribbon. Consonants thin as razors cleft the Valjir's spirit mantle. They passed clean through and emerged from the far side without inflicting a mark. Before the Valjir swept over him, Korendir abandoned verse and dove headlong off the road.
He landed in a patch of spikeweed. Dry stalks tore his skin and snarled the Archmaster's robe with burrs. Korendir's disgruntled curse pruned away a scattering of leaves. Apparently his recitation had imposed portions of Aerith's flora into being in Alhaerie. Backlash left him queasy and a scratched lip coated his mouth with the taste of blood.
Korendir thrashed to his feet as the Valjir loomed to confront him. It could not retaliate with the keen edge of a shout since it possessed no flesh to shape sound. That did not make it defenseless. Since its abilities were only comprehensible on an enchanter's terms, Korendir could not guess what form its attack might take.
Air whispered through a thousand stolen mouths. "Mortal, what are you called?" The Valjir's words spooled forth from row upon row of lips and snagged, fragile as frost, against the forms of weeds and man.
Korendir flicked the threads away. Pain began behind his breastbone and flared unpleasantly through his nerves as the Valjir grappled for the hold his untrained mind could not provide. He could only attempt to answer in forms an intangible being could not master.
Korendir framed thought; and Alhaerie's reverse properties transformed intent into substance with the immediacy of a thunderclap. A wall of stone rose up, steep and flint-blue as the granite that comprised the bastions at Whitestorm. Graven on the face which blocked the Valjir was an inscription shaped more for the captive souls of wizards than for demand by any being from the netherworld.
I am son to Morien of Alathir, and also husband of Lady Ithariel. For her, for Orame, for Telvallind Archmaster who was murdered, and for every enchanter you have stolen alive from Aerith, I challenge your right to exist. Korendir swayed, light-headed. Sweat sheened his body and dampened the wizard's robe. The backlash inflicted by his creation exacted a merciless toll. Half-crippled by an exhaustion that seemed to drain the marrow of his bones, the man understood that rock in Alhaerie could not protect him. The Valjir would pass through as easily as it had banished the roadway, but at least the obstacle might buy time.
That hope endured but an instant. Blue quartz unbound and tumbled like dry sand; between heartbeats the last grains eddied away, restored to the roil of wild energies that comprised the otherworld universe. A searing ache flared behind Korendir's eyes. Cast adrift into chaos, he felt his stomach turn from dizziness. With his jaw clamped against nausea he tumbled, flotsam stirred in a medium of jelly.
The Valjir advanced. "You are no sorcerer," it whispered. "You possess only mortal awareness, and worse than a fool's perception. Aerith cannot take form in Alhaerie without unbinding the soul from your flesh. Each act of transformation saps your substance, and hastens your mind to insanity."
Korendir shook off a trailing tinsel of spun sound. He ignored every screaming signal that insisted he lacked equilibrium, and fumbled one hand into his pocket. The sword slipped free of his scabbard with a scroll of metallic sound. With it came the warmth of the forge fire, and the shock of running water which had tempered the blade; Korendir drew comfort from ore-bearing bedrock, to the dwarf armorer whose expertise had smelted raw metals into steel. Their strengths lent steadiness to failing muscles, and purpose to sick confusion. Fire, water, earth, and flesh, the weapon was wholly of Aerith. Surely no being of chaos could disregard such a talisman.
Korendir swung.
The sword clove through souls like smoke and drove on unresisted into a pocket of limitless cold. Contact shocked through the blade and laced its sheen jagged with frost. The flesh of palm arid knuckle froze fast to the grip in a flash of indescribable pain.
Korendir screamed.
His agony drew a bright arc of sound. His arm jerked back in recoil, and the sword followed, dragged by fingers incapable of releasing their hold.
The Valjir continued its advance, scatheless.
Korendir felt its pull against his mind even through his torment. He responded the only way possible. The enchanters had been born of Aerith. They had been stolen through their affinity for manipulating alien reality. The Master of Whitestorm dragged his sword upright in lacerated fingers, determined to remind them of their rightful existence.
He swung the blade two-handed, carved an arc through Alhaerie's unreason. Even as the Valjir moved to obliterate the cut, he braced the span with images drawn from a lifetime of travel.
Aerith unfolded into vivid existence. A meadow blossomed into spring and thousands of scattered wildflowers nodded under a sapphire sky. The sword reversed stroke. Ardmark's ridged mountains plunged sheer into the paintbox reds and purples of desert sunset, swept aside by the sparkle of ocean swells dashed to lace and jewels on a reef.
Korendir's breath rasped into lungs that felt silted with grit. The sword handled like stone in his grip; its black weight dragged at the sinews of shoulder, elbow, and wrist. He forced another stroke. He could not see the Valjir at all through the raging creation of his thoughts.
Autumn flared red across Thornforest, and dawn tipped fuchsia and gilt over the snow-bound peaks of Illantyr. Korendir thrashed on, though his head spun; water splashed, exotically patterned by the King of Faen Hallir's incomparable Court of Fountains, and stars glanced like tears through the pines of Southengard. The sultan's vanquished city of Telssina gleamed, enamel and filigree, against sand flats coppered with heat haze.
Images spilled from the sword edge until Korendir's heaving mind could frame no more. Alhaerie invaded his being and unbound the will which knit his sanity. He saw between, into memories too terrible to contemplate; and the sword slipped from weakened fingers and was lost. Korendir tumbled after it. His eyesight rippled, torn by wave upon wave of blind dark. The screams of Mhurgai victims shivered his flesh. Worse things flapped down and gorged on his nakedness, ravens with gobbets of scarlet trailing from snapping beaks. He suffered reliving of the unthinkable past, became macerated by horrors that this time overwhelmed him. His body thrashed beyond control. Between snatches of image, and cruel fragments of nightmare, he saw the Valjir, untouched still, and almost upon him.
"You are undone," it whispered softly.
Korendir heard without understanding. With his doom inevitably at hand, every scrap of will he possessed was absorbed in his final desire. The treasure he valued beyond life remained out of reach upon Aerith. At the last he determined to ma
ster the nightmares within him, shape his ending statement before the chaos of Alhaerie crushed reason and the Valjir claimed his spirit in triumph.
Korendir rolled to his knees. Shadowed by the sphere of the Valjir, he shaped the memory of his wife.
She materialized between his spread hands exactly as she had appeared on the morning of his departure. Dark hair fanned like ribbon across his shoulder. He cradled her softness against his chest, warmed beyond hurt by the lustrous perfection of her flesh. Like the sword, and the Archmaster's robe, Ithariel was wholly of Aerith: lilac, pearls, and rainwashed earth; and night transformed to mystery under moonlight.
The act of creation set Korendir beyond reach of his own handiwork. Sucked in the downward spiral toward unconsciousness, he knelt with blind eyes, unaware that the Valjir now battled against dissolution of its own.
One soul in its composite thousand had recovered self-awareness. Ithariel strained against the Valjir's hold, desperate to reach the flesh recreated in the arms of her husband. Her efforts distended the Valjir's patchwork perimeter until the seams between spirits stretched dark with stress. A small bead of black leaked through. The seep was followed by a droplet which swelled to a trickle. Like a breach in a weakened dam, the Valjir's forces parted, and Ithariel of Whitestorm ripped free.
For a moment, the mists in Korendir's mind swirled thinner. He beheld the form of his lady etched in light, a solitary sparkle like a star shining through the hollow of her hips.
Then the woman in his arms stirred with life. Her eyes opened just as the Valjir burst asunder. The plundered spirits of enchanters unravelled and scattered like wisps blown in a gale.
Darkness poured forth from the space their life-force had defined; hungry and cold, it ran like ink through the uncolor that comprised Alhaerie.
"Fly, Korendir!" Ithariel tugged at her husband's sleeve. "What you see is the essence of the void unleashed."
Her voice dispelled some of his stupor. Korendir shoved to his knees, dimly aware that she had broken the Archmaster's edict against magic; or else another sorcerer had provided a semblance of solidity to orient his stumbling feet. On all sides, blue-edged and luminous, the spirits of Aerith's enchanters fled the Valjir's spilled contents.
