Sea of Silver Light

by Tad Williams

  "Martine is alive, but I think she is hurt, too—she is very quiet, talking to herself just over there. T4b . . . T4b is praying."

  "Praying?" It startled him, but he could not claim to have any better ideas.

  "There are so many of these monsters, and we are all so tired. I am frightened, Paul."

  "I am, too."

  Florimel fell into troubled silence. Paul could see no reason to make her talk. It would be one thing if they had a plan, but the situation was too bleak for peppy chats.

  So it is me, then? Is it down to me to come up with something? I didn't bloody well ask to be here in this network in the first place. At least he didn't think he had—he still couldn't remember, but it would be hard to imagine: "Oh, and if you have a few spare moments, Mr. Jongleur, how about locking me up in a World War One simulation and torturing me a bit, all right?"

  But why, then? He was a nobody, a museum employee, a university graduate with less power than a classroom teacher or a shop steward. If he had interfered in the raising of Jongleur's daughter, why hadn't they just fired him? If he had somehow discovered something of the Grail Project, as seemed likely, why not just kill him? Perhaps they had not wanted the irritation of arranging an accident or a suicide, but it seemed bizarre to think that people like Felix Jongleur and his associates would lavish so much attention on a nonentity.

  Even if the World War One simulation had been something already built. Finch and Mullet, otherwise known as Finney and Mudd, had devoted a great deal of time to him, and had doggedly tracked him all over the Grail network. Why?

  Shuddersome memories of his escape from the trenches came back to him, made worse by the similarity to his present situation. The mud, the bodies, the shattered pieces of men and their machines lying beneath his feet. . . .

  A thought sparked. Paul, who had been crouching on his heels, suddenly dropped back onto all fours and crawled down the slope, feeling with his hands. It was disgusting work. Not only were the human and animal remains more common as the slope descended, but many of them had not been completely cleaned of meat, remnants perhaps from days of great feasting when all the spider-creatures ate their fill with some left over. The bleak realization struck him that he and his friends probably represented a similar bounty—that they had been unharmed so far only because they were to be the centerpiece of some grisly festival meal.

  The stench near the bottom of the pit was terrible, the ground and remains alike active with small creatures taking advantage of the web-builders' generosity. Worst of all, the farther he crawled the less light he had, and he was forced to handle every collection of remains as he looked for something which might save his life and the lives of his companions.

  Clambering across the rot and muck, it was hard to put the last hours of the World War One simulation out of his mind. Ava—Avialle—had appeared to him there as well, lying in a coffin like a vampire princess. "Come to us," she had said. Was she simply speaking lines the Other had given her, as Martine guessed? Trying to bring Paul and his companions together in a sort of fairy-tale-inspired rescue mission? But why? And what was Ava's part in it? Why did she pick such strange ways to contact him?

  He had been running his hands across the thing for some seconds before he realized what it was. At first he had unconsciously rejected it—if a buckle was no use, what good could be done with a rotting belt?—but as his fingers traced the length of it, coming at last to the large triangular pouch at the end, he felt his heart thump as though it might stop.

  He had been hoping only for a walking stick or perhaps even a knife, something the creatures had thrown away that would even the odds a little. Now he hardly dared breathe as he pulled the pistol out of its holster. It seemed to be a revolver such as he had seen in old Western flicks. It was surprisingly heavy, but that was all he could tell about it by touch—he was no expert, and had never thought he would need to know anything about pistols, ancient or modern. Of course, not even the most paranoid of gun-obsessives had ever envisioned a situation quite like this.

  Working slowly, but with a pounding sense of urgency, he carefully pulled and pushed at the cylindrical drum until it pivoted free of the barrel. He squinted, but could see nothing. A finger carefully inserted into one of the holes found an obstruction, and further examination showed that all the rest of the gun's six chambers were the same. Bullets—or mud? There was no way to tell without light and time, and Paul doubted he would get enough of either. And even if they proved to be bullets, there was still no guarantee that damp and dirt had not made them useless.

  He hesitated. A part of him wanted to continue down the slope, a wild gambler's impulse suddenly activated by success. Maybe he would find enough pistols to arm the whole company. This was Dodge City, after all—many of the creature's captives must have been armed. Perhaps he would find something even more useful. It was hard to believe there would be a Gatling gun lying in the pit's muddy reaches, but there might be a shotgun. Paul actually knew how to shoot one of those, having endured several hunting weekends in Staffordshire with Niles and his family before mustering the courage to admit to himself, and then to Niles, that he never again wanted to stand on a cold moor with a group of people whose idea of a good time was to get drunk and blast small animals to shreds.

  Still, he would not mind blasting the things capering above him into random particles, not at all. A shotgun would be a very satisfying, mind-easing thing to have, and he would not be placing all his hope on the performance of one gun—a pistol that could have been lying here in the dark for the simworld's equivalent of years, for all he knew. . . .

  It was tempting, but he could not take the risk. He was almost fifty meters down the slope from his companions—what if the creatures snatched them now? He would have to get quite close before aiming would be anything more than a blind lottery in this near-darkness.

  He turned and began laboring up the slope, cursing now when he slipped on the bones and decomposing tissue he had so actively sought on the way down. As if to confirm his worst fears, definite activity of some kind had begun on the rim of the pit: the spidery creatures were gathering, their hissing, gulping cries rising in shared excitement. Paul heard a panicky shout from Martine. He tripped and fell, too numb and frightened now even to curse his luck, and scrambled upward on all fours like an animal, struggling to keep the gun out of the dirt.

  "I'm coming!" he called. "Get ready to run!"

  He reached the top of the pit in time to see one of the two women—in the half-light he could not tell which—being dragged out by a cluster of hairy creatures while her two companions pulled desperately at her arms in a gallant but failing struggle to keep her. Paul pushed up beside them and found himself only a meter away from the closest of the buffalo-spiders, which turned its smashed face toward him, squinting lopsidedly at this slightly unexpected arrival. It left its fellows to the job of dragging Florimel off to be eaten and reached for Paul with hideously long arms. He lifted the pistol and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell. Nothing happened.

  The creature's horn-plated paw struck him on the head and knocked him backward. The pistol flew from his hand into the darkness and dirt. He sank to his knees, the faint lights and deep shadows now wavering as though seen through water. The creature that had slapped at him hesitated for a moment, torn between following up the attack and going back to help its fellows secure the chosen meal. In that space of a half-dozen fluttering heartbeats Paul recovered enough of himself to crawl after the gun. He lifted it again, certain that it was all useless, steadied his hand, and yanked the trigger once more.

  This time the explosion was like a bomb going off. Fire leaped from the muzzle, and simultaneously the malformed head of the creature seemed to disappear. The other creatures sprang back, shrieking like startled gulls, but he could hardly hear them for the ringing in his ears.

  "Run!" Even at a shout, his own voice sounded as though it were far away, floating through cotton. "Come on!"

  He grabbed a
t the nearest hand and tugged its owner, who turned out to be Martine, up the slope. The creatures had let go of Florimel, and now one of the inhuman shapes lurched in front of him. Paul shoved the gun into the thing's midsection and the creature bent double and flew backward as the gun detonated again. The creatures were leaping around the darkened nest in growing confusion, but Paul could only concentrate on what was just ahead of him.

  Trusting that the other two were following, Paul dragged Martine toward the tunnel from which a little light washed out, praying that it was the sun. He had to duck his head as he entered the lower passage, and a surprise swipe from one of the creatures almost took his face off. Terrified, Paul squeezed the trigger, not bothering to aim. He didn't think he hit it, but the muzzle flash and the explosion of powder sent the creature squealing away down a side tunnel.

  A dozen more steps and his heart sank. There was no sun. The tunnel widened into a broad space with a great fire pit in the middle, the flames surrounded by a crude ring of blackened skulls, both animal and human, and a corona of burned split bones. Several more of the monsters had backed against the wall, startled by the sudden appearance of the escaping prisoners, but they looked as though they were mustering the courage to attack.

  No sun. We'll just stagger through these tunnels till they surround us or we run out of bullets. . . . The adrenalized numbness wore away a little. He realized he was already gasping for breath, that his wrist ached from the kick of the pistol. Behind him, Martine was jerking frantically at his arm.

  "It's no good," he said. "Just their . . . their kitchen. No sun."

  "Keep going!" She was fighting to control her voice. "You're going in the right direction. Go on!"

  He could only hope she knew what she was saying. The little party hurried forward through the flaring yellow light. He waved the pistol, backing several of the creatures out of their path. One would not be bluffed, so Paul fired again. The thing fell to the floor in a hissing, writhing heap, forcing them to inch around it with their backs against the damp clay of the tunnel wall. Its guts had spilled onto the ground and the stench clawed at his nostrils.

  How many bullets gone? Do I have any left?

  Time became something not quite calculable as they stumbled through the nest. With every branch the tunnels seemed to get smaller and smaller. Paul began to feel horridly certain that Martine had made some miscalculation, that one or two more turnings would lead them into a tube where they would have to crawl on hands and knees, and from there into a wall of dirt where they would be trapped.

  No, that was the war, he told himself. The shrilling of the enraged spider-buffalos was all around him. He felt his thoughts fragmenting. Keep your mind on what's in front of you . . . in front of you. . . .

  "Go to the right!" Martine shouted. "Paul! To the right!"

  He hesitated because at that moment he honestly could not think which direction was which. He felt Martine shoving him from behind and allowed himself to be guided out of the tunnel into a passage that turned sharply upward, a twisting path through cracked and broken rock.

  "I see light!" he said excitedly. A circle of dim, twilight blue hovered a hundred meters above him, but this was no trick, no monster's cookfire: there were faint stars in it, real, honorable stars, as welcome as the faces of old friends. "Hurry!"

  He reached back to help Martine over a stone that jutted into the passage like a crooked tooth and had a moment of panic when he could see no one behind her. Then T4b and Florimel lurched into view, made clumsy by their hurry to get out of the corridor below.

  "They're coming," cried Florimel as she pulled down stones and earth, shoveling them with her hands into the tunnel opening to slow the pursuers. "Dozens of them!"

  Paul could not make his way up the steep tunnel with only one hand free; he shoved the pistol into the pocket of his torn, muddied coveralls and began to climb, stopping every few meters to reach back and help Martine. The sounds of pursuit were growing louder. As Paul felt the first breath of outside air wafting down the tunnel onto his face, Florimel shouted that the creatures were forcing their way into the passage below.

  Paul reached the top of the hole and dragged himself out, gasping in his first breath of clean air in hours. He had only moments to look around as he helped Martine and the others out, but what he saw did not encourage him. They were in the middle of a stony mountainside almost bare of vegetation, a thousand meters above a valley floor already drowned in evening shadow. The top of the rocky ridge was much closer, but only after a terrible climb across jagged stones and loose scree. . . .

  "We have to go down," he gasped as he and Martine dragged Florimel over the lip of the hole. Behind her T4b was muttering in terror and dismay, and almost knocked the older woman down the steep slope to certain death in his hurry to get out of the tunnel.

  "Right behind me," T4b gasped. "Grabbin' my legs, them."

  "Let's go," Paul said. "Maybe they won't follow us across open ground."

  He didn't really believe it himself, and the hope proved futile by the time they had slipped and skidded a dozen meters from the tunnel. A horde of the spider-buffalos spilled out of the hole onto the hillside. They gulped and jabbered excitedly, peering around nearsightedly until one of them saw Paul and the others, then the whole bristling crowd of them came boiling down the slope like termites out of a split log.

  Paul drew the pistol and aimed it at their pursuers. The jerk of the gun's detonation knocked him off-balance so that he stumbled into T4b and almost sent them both tumbling down the mountainside, but although the closest of the creatures recoiled from the shot, halting the pursuing pack for a moment of milling confusion, none of them fell.

  Paul turned and hastened downhill behind his companions. He was fairly certain he had no bullets left, and carrying the gun in his hand was a terrible risk to balance, but the thought of facing a rush of those hairy things with only his bare hands was too much. If it wouldn't shoot, he would use it as a hammer.

  I'll smash a few of those ugly faces back in the other direction before they get me. Even in his own head, the words sounded like the most pathetic and useless sort of bravado.

  Martine was in front now, but at the rear of the line Paul could barely muster time to wonder about the wisdom of letting a blind woman lead them. The footing was terrible, loose stones and shallow soil everywhere: he could only pray Martine's strange gifts would make her a better guide across such terrain than others might be. As it was, every hurried step threatened to start an avalanche: Paul alternated between clinging to T4b's shoulders for balance and supporting the teenager in turn when patches of loose stones turned into little rockslides below T4b's feet. Florimel was clearly in pain and could move only slowly, but they could better accommodate her pace in their downward scramble than if they had been fleeing across even ground. Even so, Martine had to stop every few steps and help the German woman onto the next relatively stable spot.

  Paul did not dare lake his eyes off the slope in front of him until a sudden squealing from their pursuers, a shrilling chorus that sounded something like panic, made him turn back. Several of the monsters, scuttling too quickly across a section of scree already loosened by the passage of Paul and his companions, had started a slide. As Paul watched, the rocky earth crumbled away beneath them and they went hissing and shrieking down the mountain, freefalling in a hail of loose stones and dirt. For a moment Paul felt something like hope, but only a few had fallen, and although the rest had to stop and clamber uphill to make their way around the deadly section, it was the briefest of delays.

  The sun had now disappeared between the horns of the stark mountain range on the far side of the river basin. Cold shadows climbed up out of the canyon. Paul could almost feel his heart freezing inside his chest.

  We'll never make it. We'll die here in this idiot, backwater world. . . .

  A horrid wet barking noise, very close, stopped him in his tracks. He whirled to see two of the creatures crouching on a promontory just ab
ove him, twisted mouths open and drooling with excitement. They had found a faster way along the mountainside and had outflanked him from above.

  The nearest leaned out over the edge of the rock shelf, long legs drawn up beside its head like some hairy midnight cricket. Paul only had time to let out a little shout of surprise and dismay before the thing unfolded itself in a powerful spring.

  To his complete astonishment the beast missed him, even seemed to jolt and change direction in midair. It landed heavily at his feet, limp as a flour sack, and skidded a few meters down the slope to lie unmoving below him. The second monster leaped just as the crack of the gunshot that had killed the first reached Paul's ears.

  The second spider-buffalo sprang only a little way down-slope to land just above him, and had time to rear up on its legs and snatch at him before something went past Paul's ear like the crack of a whip and punched into its matted chest, drenching him in an explosion of blood.

  Whoever was firing now shifted aim onto the large crowd of spider-buffalos farther up the slope. Bullets pinged off of stones and sent up gouts of dirt, but an almost equal number struck their targets; within seconds a half-dozen of the creatures were tumbling down the hill while the rest let out bubbling shrieks of dismay, eyes rolling with terror.

  "Get down!" Paul scrambled forward and yanked T4b to earth, then huddled facedown while shots winnowed their pursuers. He could turn his head to one side just far enough to see Florimel's back where she lay nearby; Paul could only hope she had not been hit, and that Martine was safe on the other side of her.

  The chase and almost inevitable capture of a meal had now turned into a spider-buffalo's worst nightmare. The rest of them scrambled back up the slope in a disorderly rout, leaving their dead and wounded scattered on the mountainside, some of the carcasses still bouncing from the impact of stray bullets. If Paul had not been so tired and terrified that he could barely remember his own name, he would have let out a bellow of triumph.