by Tad Williams
It was too much to think about. Vansen forced himself back to what was before them now, the hope of escape. It was hard to think, though—the voice of the wind was ever-present and insinuating, urging sleep and surrender. “The moss will grow thickest on the southern side of the trees,” he said. “If we continue south long enough, surely we will find our way back into wholesome lands again.”
“Leaving this place behind,” Dyer said quietly, thoughtfully. It was strange, but to Vansen he sounded almost unwilling, a notion that sent a pulse of fear chasing up the guard captain’s backbone.
The morning, or at least the stretch of hours after waking, slid by quickly. There was moss everywhere, on almost every tree, deep woolly green patches. If it grew more thickly on one side than another, it was a minute difference; after a while, Vansen began to doubt his own ability to distinguish. Still, he had no other plan and he was growing increasingly frightened. They had lost the road in a thicket of black-leaved trees too thick to pass and they had not found it again. He had not seen a single thing that looked familiar. It was hard not to feel that the forest was continuing to grow around him, that its borders were stretching outward faster than he and Dyer could ride, and that not only wouldn’t they find their way out again, the shadow-forest would soon cover everything he had ever known, like wine from an upended jug spreading across a tabletop.
Dyer’s mood also worryed him. The bearded guardsman had grown increasingly more distant, even as their horses strode shoulder to shoulder; he hardly spoke to his captain, but talked much to himself and sang snatches of old songs that Vansen felt he should recognize but didn’t. Also, the man kept looking at him oddly, as though Dyer were harboring doubts of his own—as if he no longer quite recognized someone who had been his daily companion for years.
There is something in the air here, Vansen thought desperately. Something in the shadows of these trees. This place is eating us. It was a terrible idea, but once it lodged in his mind, he could not shift it. He had a dreamlike vision of himself and Dyer lying beside the lost road, dead and decaying like the woman he had once found in her cottage, yet it was not insects that would devour them but the forest itself—tendrils of green growing into their mouths and noses and ears, seeds sprouting out damp, dark vegetation from their bellies and skulls, filling the vaults of their rib cages.
Maybe it is a true vision, he thought suddenly. Perhaps we are already dead, or nearly so. Perhaps our bodies are already disappearing under the moss and we only dream we are riding on through this dark land beneath the endless, gods-cursed trees . . .
“I feel the fires,” Dyer said abruptly.
“What fires?” The horses had stopped; they stood weirdly still and silent. A forested valley leaned close above the two guardsmen on either side, as though they were in the mouth of some huge thing that in a moment would close its jaws and shut them away from the light forever.
“The forge fires,” the bearded guardsman replied in a distant voice. “The ones that burn under Silent Hill. They make weapons of war, Bright Fingers, Chant-Arrows, Wasps, Cruel Stones. The People are awake. They are awake.”
As he struggled to make sense of Dyer’s bizarre statement, Vansen felt a sharp but noiseless wind come hurrying down the canyon. The mists swirled upward, rising and parting, and for a brief instant he thought he could see an entire city at the top of the valley, a city that was also part of the forest, a mass of dark trees and darker walls, the two almost indistinguishable, with lights burning in a thousand windows. His horse reared and turned away from the vision, dashing back down the path they had followed. He heard Dyer’s horse’s hoofbeats close behind him, and another sound, too.
His companion was singing quietly but exuberantly in a language Vansen had never heard.
Dyer was still behind him, but silent now: he wouldn’t answer any of his captain’s questions, and Vansen had given up asking, simply grateful not to be alone. The twilight had grown thicker. The guard captain could no longer distinguish any difference in the thickness of the moss on the trees—could barely tell the trees from the darkness. The voices in the wind had crawled deep inside his head now, cajoling, whispering, weaving fragments of melody through his thoughts that tangled his ideas just as the thickening brambles tugged at their horses’ hooves, making them walk slower and slower.
“They are coming,” Dyer abruptly announced in the voice of a frightened dreamer. “They are marching.”
Ferras Vansen did not need to ask him what he meant: he could feel it, too, the tightening of the air around them, the deepening of the twilight gloom. He could hear the triumph in the wordless wind-voices, although he still couldn’t hear the voices themselves except where they echoed deep in the cavern of his skull.
His horse abruptly reared, whinnying. Caught by surprise, Vansen tumbled out of the saddle and crashed to the ground. The horse vanished into the forest, kicking and bounding through the undergrowth, grunting in terror. For a moment Vansen was too stunned to rise, but a hand clutched him and dragged him to his feet. It was Collum Dyer, his horse gone now, too. The guardsman’s face was alight with something that might have been joy, but also looked a little like the terror that Vansen himself was feeling, a pall of dread that made him want to throw himself back down on the ground and bury his head in the spongy grass.
“Now,” Dyer said. “Now.”
And suddenly Ferras Vansen could see the road again, the road they had sought for hours without success. It was only a short distance away, winding through the trees—but he barely noticed it. The road was full of rolling mist, and in that mist he could see shapes. Some of the figures, unless the mist distorted them, were treetop-tall, and others impossibly wide, squat, and powerful. There were shadow-shapes that corresponded to no sane reality, and things less frightening but still astonishing, like human riders dimly seen but achingly beautiful, sitting high and straight on horses that stamped and blew and made the air steam. Many of the riders bore lances that glittered like ice. Pennants of silver and marshy green-gold waved at their tips.
An army was passing, hundreds and perhaps thousands of shapes riding, walking—some even flying, or so it seemed: teeming shadows fluttered and soared above the great host, catching the moonglow on their wings like a handful of fish scales flung glittering into the air. But although Vansen could feel the tread of all those hooves and feet and paws and claws in his very bones, the host made no sound as it marched. Only the voices on the wind rose in acclaim as the great troop passed.
How long was a sleep? How long was death? Vansen did not know how much time passed as he stood in amazement, too moonstruck even to hide, and watched the host pass. When it had gone, the road lay all but naked, clothed only in a few tatters of mist.
“We must . . . follow them,” Vansen said at last. It was hard, painfully hard, to find words and speak them. “They are going south. To the lands of men. We will follow them to the sun.”
“The lands of men will vanish.”
Vansen turned to see that Collum Dyer’s eyes were tightly closed, as though he had some memory locked behind his eyelids that he wished to save forever. The soldier was trembling in every limb and looked like a man cast down from the mountain of the gods, shattered but exultant.
“The sun will not return,” Dyer whispered. “The shadow is marching.”
21
The Potboy’s Dolphin
THE PATH OF THE BLUE PIG:
Down, down, feathers to scales
Scales to stone, stone to mist
Rain is the handmaiden of the nameless
—from The Bonefall Oracles
THERE WAS A TOWER in Qul-na-Qar whose name meant something like “Spirits of the Clouds” or “The Spirits in the Clouds,” or perhaps even “What the Clouds Think”—it was never easy to make mortal words do the dance of Qar thought—and it was there the blind king Ynnir went when he sought true quiet. It was a tall tower, although not the tallest in Qul-na-Qar: one other loomed above all the great castle l
ike an upheld spear, a slender spike that was simply called “The High Place,” but its history was dark since the Screaming Years and even the Qar did not visit it much, or even look up at it through the fogs that usually surrounded their greatest house.
Ynnir din’at sen-Qin, Lord of Winds and Thought, sat in a simple chair before the window of one of Cloud-Spirit Tower’s two highest rooms. His tattered garments fluttered a little in the winds but he was otherwise motionless. It was a clear day, at least by the standards of Qul-na-Qar: although as always there was no sun visible in the gray sky, the afternoon’s sharp winds had chased away the mists: the slender figure who waited patiently in the chamber’s doorway for Ynnir to speak could see all the rooftops of the vast castle spread out below in a muted rainbow of different shades of black and deep gray, glittering darkly from the morning’s rains.
The one who waited was patient indeed: nearly an hour passed before the blind king at last stirred and turned his head. “Harsar? You should have spoken, old friend.”
“It is peaceful to look out the window.”
“It is.” Ynnir made a gesture, a complex movement of fingers that signified gratitude for small things. “All morning I listened to the anger of the Gathering, all that arguing about the Pact of the Glass, and thought about the time when I would come here, away from it all, and feel the breeze from M’aarenol on my face.” He lifted his fingers and touched them to his eyes once, twice, then a third time, all with the precision of ritual. “I still see what was outside it on the day I lost my sight.”
“It has not changed, Lord.”
“Everything has changed. But, come, you have waited for me patiently, Harsar-so. I do not believe the view alone has brought you here.”
Harsar inclined his hairless head ever so slightly. He was of the Stone Circle People, a small, nimble folk, but was tall for his kind: when Ynnir rose and Harsar stepped forward to help him, his head reached almost to the king’s shoulder. “I have good news, Lord.”
“Tell me.”
“Yasammez and her host have crossed the frontier.”
“So quickly?”
“She is very strong, that one. She has been waiting long years for this, preparing.”
“Yes, she has.” The king nodded slowly. “And the mantle?”
“She carries it with her, at least for now, but the scholars in the Deep Library think it will not sustain itself if stretched too far. But everywhere she has raided the mantle has spread, reclaiming that which is ours, and even when it will spread no farther, she will go on with fire and talon and blade.” Even patient Harsar could not keep his voice altogether even; a hint of exultation writhed in his words. “And everywhere she goes, the sunlanders will wail behind her, searching for their dead.”
“Yes.” Ynnir stood silent for a long time. “Yes. I thank you for these tidings, Harsar-so.”
“You do not seem as pleased as I would have thought, Lord.” The councillor was startled by his own words and lowered his head. “Ah, ah. Please forgive my discourtesy, Son of the First Stone. I am a fool.”
The king lifted a long-fingered hand, made a gesture that signaled “acceptable confusion.” “You have nothing to apologize for, friend. I simply have much to consider. Yasammez is a mighty weapon. Now that she has been loosed, all the world will change.” He turned his head toward the window once more. “Do me the favor of excusing me, Harsar-so. It was good of you to come so far to give me this news.” His long face was grave and still; a hovering mote of light like a pale lavender firefly had begun to flicker above his head. “I must think. I must . . . sleep.”
“Forgive me for imposing myself, great Ynnir. Will you permit one more unforgivable imposition? May I offer my company on your journey down to your chambers? The stairs are still damp.”
A tiny smile came to the blind king’s face. “You are kind, but I will sleep here.”
“Here?” There was only one couch in the Cloud-Spirit Tower and it was a place of power, of shaped and directed dreams. A moment later, the man of the Stone Circle People brought his hand to his mouth. “Forgive me, Lord! I do not mean to question you again. I am a fool today, a fool.”
This time Ynnir’s response was a degree or two closer to frost. “Do not distress yourself, Councillor. I will be well.”
Harsar bowed and bowed again, backing out of the room so quickly that an observer might have feared the councillor himself was in greater danger of tumbling down the long, steep stairwell than the blind king, but he spun neatly on his heel at the edge of the steps before starting his descent. Many of the towers of Qul-na-Qar had stairs that yielded quiet music, and of course the infamous steps of the High Place moaned softly, like children in troubled sleep, but the stairway of Cloud-Spirit Tower surrendered no noise except that of a visitor’s tread. Ynnir listened to his councillor’s velvet-soft footfalls grow fainter and fainter until he could no longer hear them above the skirling wind.
Ynnir din’at sen-Qin moved through a door in the wall that separated this highest place in the tower into two rooms. That other chamber, that twinned space, had its own window, facing not across the expanse of the castle and its countless rooftops glinting wet as beach stones but away into the misty south—toward the Shadowline and the great host of Lady Yasammez and the lands of mortals. Like the other room, it was sparsely furnished. That room had a chair: this one had a low bed. The king lay down on it, lavender light glittering above his brow, then folded his arms across his breast and began to dream.
Chert had barely slept at all. The long watches of the night had passed like guests who sensed they were unwelcome and were all the slower to leave because of it.
We’re caught up in bad things. It was in his every thought. For the first time he understood what the big folk must mean when they asked him how he could stand to live in a cave under the ground. But it was not the stone of Funderling Town that oppressed him any more than a fish was oppressed by water; it was the feeling that he and his small family were surrounded and enwebbed by a faceless, invisible something, and it was precisely because he did not know what it was that he felt so miserable, so helpless. We’re caught up in bad things and they’re getting worse.
“What in the name of the Mysteries are you up to?” Opal’s voice was muzzy with sleep. “You’ve been twitching all night.”
He was tempted to tell her it was nothing, but despite their occasional squabbling, Chert was not one of those fellows who felt more comfortable in the company of other men than with his own wife. They had come far together and he knew he needed not only her comfort, but her good wits, too. “I can’t sleep, Opal. I’m worried.”
“What about?” She sat up and pushed at the strands of hair escaping from her nightcap. “And don’t talk so loud—you’ll wake the boy.”
“The boy is part of what worries me.” He got up, padded to the table, and picked up the jar of wine. Funderlings seldom used lamps in their own homes, making do with the dim, dim glow spilling in from the street lanterns, and found it amusing that the big folk couldn’t seem to blunder around aboveground without a blaze of light. He took a cup from the mantel shelf. “Do you want some wine?” he asked his wife.
“Why would I want wine at this hour?” But her voice was definitely as worried as his, now. “Chert, what’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure. Everything, really. The boy, those Rooftoppers, what Chaven said about the Shadowline.” He brought his cup of wine back to bed and slid his feet under the heavy quilt. “It wasn’t simply an accident that child appeared, Opal. That he was brought out of that place and dumped here on the very same day I find that the Shadowline has moved for the first time in years.”
“It’s not the boy’s fault!” she said, her voice rising despite her own injunction to quiet. “He’s done nothing wrong. Next you’re going to say he’s some kind of . . . spy, or demon, or . . . or a wizard in disguise!”
“I don’t know what he is. But I know that I’m not going to go another night wondering what�
��s in that bag around his neck.”
“Chert, you can’t. We have no right . . . !”
“That’s nonsense, woman, and you know it. This is our house. What if he brought home a poisonous snake—a fire-worm or somesuch? Would we have to let him keep it?”
“That’s just silly . . .”
“Well, it’s at least as silly when there are dangers all around, when the Twilight People may walk right out of the old stories and come knocking at our very doors, to pretend as though this was an ordinary time and ordinary circumstances. We found him, Opal, we didn’t birth him. We don’t know anything about who he is—or even what he is—except that he came from behind the Shadowline. You didn’t see the way those Rooftoppers treated him—like he was an old friend, an honored ally . . .”
“He helped one of them. You said so!”
“And he’s carrying something we haven’t looked at that might tell us about his past.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No, and you don’t know that it doesn’t. Why are you fighting me, Opal? Are you so afraid we might lose him?”
There were tears in her eyes—he needed no light to know that: he could hear it in her voice. “Yes! Yes, I’m afraid we might lose him. And mostly because you wouldn’t care if we did!”
“What?”
“You heard me. You treat him well enough because you’re a kind man, but you don’t . . . you don’t . . . you don’t love him.” She was fighting to be able to speak now. “Not like I do.”
For a moment anger and astonishment ran together in him. She turned onto her side. Her sobs shook the mattress and something in the brokenhearted sound of it pushed everything else away. This was his Opal, weeping, terrified. He curled his arms around her.
“I’m sorry, my old darling. I’m sorry.” He heard himself saying it, regretted it even as the words left his mouth. “Don’t worry, I . . . I won’t let anyone take him from you.”
