by Kage Baker
“And the woman says, ‘Look, all I want is wisdom, because the one I have has a hole in it and my acorns keep falling out!’ ”
“Huh?” said Smith.
“The trevani Luvendashyll has misunderstood the woman,” Willowspear explained. “It’s a funny story in Yendri, because he thinks she has asked him for wisdom, trev’nanori, when all along she asked only for a new basket, ’tren atnori’e.”
“Oh,” said Smith.
“And your confusion adds a further dimension to the parable, because you don’t speak Yendri in the first place,” said Willowspear, taking great strides upward in his enthusiasm. “And for the first time, I see the hidden meaning in it!”
“I never thought it was all that funny,” said Lord Ermenwyr sullenly, struggling along behind them. “I mean, so the trevani is deaf, so what? Or maybe the woman is missing a few teeth.”
“The point is that the woman needed a simple thing,” said Willowspear, “but the trevani did not comprehend simplicity, and so he wasted her time—” He scrambled up on a wide flat landing, and turned back to pull Smith after him, “wasted her time with advice, when what he ought to have done was simply taken reeds and made her a basket! And I, Smith, will make baskets for your people. Figuratively speaking.”
He pulled Lord Ermenwyr up as well, and turned to gesture triumphantly at the shoulder of the mountain they had just reached. “When we go up there, Smith, we will look out upon the Garden of Rethkast, and I will show you your future.”
“All right,” said Smith. He plodded after Willowspear flat-footed, envying the younger man his energy.
“The door is this way,” Lord Ermenwyr shouted after them, pointing to a cave.
“One moment, my lord,” Willowspear promised. He scrambled up to the crest. “Now, Smith behold the—”
Smith climbed up beside him and stood, gazing down at the wide valley below the mountain. He frowned. Regular lines of green, stretching to the near horizon…
“Those are tents,” he pointed out.
“But that was—” began Willowspear, and his eyes widened in horror as he saw the piled mounds of cut trees far below, that which had been the bowers of Rethkast, fast yellowing.
Smith was distracted by a slight sting in his foot. He shifted his weight in annoyance, thinking to kick the wasp away. How had he been stung through his boot? He looked down and saw the tuft of green feathers sticking in his foot, and father down the mountain the Yendri who had shot him, clinging to a precarious handhold. There were others below him, like a line of ants scaling a wall.
He had a rock in his hand before he knew what he was doing, and had hurled it down into the Yendri’s glaring face. There was some sort of horrific and spectacular chain reaction then, but he didn’t have time to notice it much, because yanking the dart out of his boot took all his concentration. Then Willowspear pulled him away from the edge, and they were staggering back the way they’d come. Lord Ermenwyr was at his elbow suddenly, dragging him into the cave.
There was a dark passage running into the heart of the mountain, but not far, because they came at once to a sealed door. Lord Ermenwyr was pounding on it, yammering curses or prayers. Smith could hear Willowspear weeping behind him.
There was a calm voice in Smith’s head saying: Some of the poison may have stayed in the leather of your boot, and after all you survived a much stronger dose, once before, and there is always the possibility you’ve built up some immunity. On the other hand…
But he was still conscious. He was still on his feet, though events had begun to take on a certain dreamlike quality. For example: When the door opened at last, he beheld the biggest woman he’d ever seen in his life.
She looked like a slightly disheveled goddess, beautiful in a heroic kind of way, gorgeously robed in purple and scarlet. A bracelet like a golden serpent coiled up one graceful biceps. Smith thought she ought to be standing on a pedestal in a temple courtyard, with a cornucopia of fruit under her arm…
“Did you bring him?” she inquired.
An instinct Smith hadn’t used in years took over, and he found himself turning and running back the way he’d come, without quite knowing why. At least, he was trying to run. In actuality he got about three steps before collapsing into Willowspear’s arms, and the last thing he saw was the young man’s tear-streaked face.
Smith was walking along a road. It was winter, somewhere high among mountains, and the hoarfrost on the road and the snow on the peaks above him were eerily green as turquoise, because it was early morning and a lot of light was streaking in under the clouds. There were mists rising. There were shifting vapors and fogs.
He was following his father. He could see the figure Walking ahead, appearing and reappearing as the mist obscured him. He only glimpsed the wide-brimmed hat, the sweep of cloak; but clearly and without interruption he heard the regular ring of the iron-shod staff on stone.
He tried to call out, to get his father to turn and stop. Somehow, the striding figure never heard him. Smith ran, slipping on the patches of black ice, determined to catch his father, to ask him why he’d never…never…
He was lost in a cloud. The gloom enveloped him, and all he could see was a sullen red glow—
He was holding a staff. It rang, struck sparks from the rock as he swung it. He could not stop, he could not even slow down, for he was following True Fire though he could not see her, and she would not wait for him.
You bear my name.
I do? No, I don’t, it’s an alias. How could you be my father? I never knew my father. My aunt always said he might have been a sailor. This is a dream.
You walk in my footsteps.
You don’t leave footsteps! You never leave a trace. Not one shred of proof. Damn you anyway for never being there.
You kill like a passing shadow, just as I had to kill.
Never liked it. Never wanted to. Never had a choice, though.
Neither did I.
Things got out of hand.
Things got out of control.
I just wanted a quiet life. Why can’t people be good to one another?
Why didn’t they learn? I should have made them better.
Whose fault is it, then?
You bear my fault.
Like hell I will.
Try to put it down.
Smith attempted to fling the staff away, because somehow it had become the fault, but it wouldn’t leave his hand. Instead it shrank, drew into his arm, became part of him.
I don’t want this responsibility.
It’s your inheritance. And now, my son … you’re armed.
He tried to run away, but his feet were frostbitten. The right one, especially. He slipped, skidded forward and crashed into a painful darkness that echoed with voices…
“I didn’t know you were really in danger!” Lord Ermenwyr was saying.
“Neither did I, until I looked out the window and there they were,” a woman was saying in a bemused kind of way. She had an alto voice, a red velvet voice. “Things became rather horrible after that; but until then, I was enjoying myself with the puzzle.”
“How the Nine Hells did they know you were here?” Lord Ermenwyr demanded, panic in his voice. “How did they know it was here?”
The woman’s shrug was audible.
“Spies, I suppose.”
“Well, what are we going to do?”
“Hold them off as long as we can.”
“Hold them off? You, me, and a handful of monks hold off an army?” Lord Ermenwyr’s voice rose to a scream. “They’re fanatics who’ll stop at nothing to see my head on a pike! Yours too!”
“It’s not as though we can’t defend ourselves. We’re demons, remember?” The woman’s voice grew bleak. “The Adamant Wall ought to keep them out for another week. And if the poor man dies, they won’t even be able to get what they’ve come for. Is he likely to die, Willowspear?”
“Probably not, my lady.” Willowspear was speaking very close at hand, speaking i
n a voice flat with shock. “He’s responding to the antidote.”
“That’s something, anyway.” Lord Ermenwyr seemed to have got up. Smith could hear his pacing footsteps. “As long as we’re here, let’s have a look at this spell of yours.”
“It’s a terribly old Portal Lock,” said the woman, and she seemed to be rising too, her voice was suddenly coming from a long way up. “That was why I thought of you at once. You were always so much cleverer at that kind of composition.”
Their voices were moving away now; with their echoing footsteps. Smith could hear Lord Ermenwyr saying, “Ah, but you were always better at research,” and the woman was saying something in a tone of chagrin when the echoes and distance made it impossible to hear more.
Silence, a crackle of fire, breathing; several people breathing. A hesitant male voice; “Brother Willowspear?”
“Who is that?”
“Greenbriar. I made the Black Mountain pilgrimage five years ago. You brought us bedding in the guest bowers.”
“I remember.” Willowspear’s voice still sounded unnatural. “She was teaching Fever Infusions that season.”
“Will She come to us, at the end? When we are killed?”
“You must trust Her children’s word that we will withstand the siege,” Willowspear replied, but he sounded unconvinced himself.
“I don’t know how I can face Her,” the other man said, with tears in his voice. “We failed Her trust. They came like a grass fire, they wouldn’t even talk to us, they just laid waste to everything! Brother Bellflower tried to save the orchard. He stood before the palings and shouted at them. They shot him with darts, then they marched over his body and cut the trees down. Thirty years of work killed in an hour…”
“It’s an illusion,” said another voice, too calmly. “She will bring the garden back. She can do such things. They have no real power over us.”
“They are madmen,” said a third voice. “You can see it in their eyes.”
“One can forgive the Children of the Sun, but these people…”
“We must forgive them too.”
“It was our fault. How could we keep the secret from Her own daughter?”
“Pray!” Willowspear’s voice cracked. “Be silent and pray. She must hear us.”
They were silent.
Smith was regaining the feeling in his limbs. Surreptitiously, he experimented with moving his fingers. He squinted between his eyelids, but could make out nothing but a blur of firelight and shadow.
He was moving his left hand outward, a fraction of an inch at a time, groping for anything that might serve as a weapon, when he heard the echoing voices returning.
“…right about that. I wouldn’t reach in there for an all-expenses-paid week in the best Pleasure Club in Salesh.”
“This was probably a bad idea,” said the woman, sighing.
“Well, I’m sure our poor Smith would prefer you should get hold of it than the Orphans,” said Lord Ermenwyr briskly. “We can make much better use of it.”
“I only wanted to study it!”
“My most beloved sister, it’s Power. You don’t study Power. You wield it. I mean, it pays to study it first, but nobody ever stops there.”
“I would have,” said the woman resentfully. “You really don’t understand the virtue of objective research, do you? Even Mother isn’t objective.”
“Mother especially,” said Lord Ermenwyr. His voice drew close to Smith. There was a pause. “Poor old bastard, he’s in a bad way, isn’t he? I suppose you can’t use him if he’s unconscious, either? If all you need is his hand—”
Instinct took over again in Smith, and if it had been able to make his body obey, it would have propelled him out of the room with one tigerlike spring. Unfortunately, his legs were in no mood to take orders from anyone, and he merely launched himself off whatever he was lying on before dropping heavily on his face on the floor.
There was a stunned silence before Lord Ermenwyr asked, “What was that? Premature rigor mortis?”
Smith felt Willowspear beside him at once, turning him, lifting him back on the cot in a sitting position. They were inside a cavern whose walls were lined with racks of bound codices. There were hundreds of volumes. He saw the light of a fire, and Lord Ermenwyr and the stately lady standing before it, staring at him. There were robed Yendri in the near background, seated in attitudes of meditation, but even they had opened their eyes and were staring at him.
He glared back at them.
“You lied to me,” he told Lord Ermenwyr, in a voice thick with effort and rage.
The lordling looked uncomfortable, but he lit his smoking tube with a nonchalant fireball, and said, “No, I didn’t. I just wasn’t aware I was telling the truth. Here’s my sister, see? Svnae, meet Smith. Smith, you are privileged to behold the Ruby Incomparable, Lady Svnae. And she is in mortal danger. It was uncanny precognition, gentlemen.”
“You lied to us both,” said Willowspear quietly. “You brought Smith here for some purpose. My lord, I will not see him harmed.”
The lady looked chagrined. She came and knelt beside Smith, and he was acutely aware of her perfume, her purple-and-scarlet draperies, her bosom, which was on a scale with the rest of her and which could only be adequately described in words usually reserved for epic poetry…
“It’s all right,” she said kindly, as though she were speaking to an animal. “Nobody’s going to harm you, Child of the Sun. But I need you to perform a service for me.”
Smith labored for breath, fighting an urge to nod his acceptance. He believed her without question. For all that she was dressed like the sort of wicked queen who poisons the old king, turns her stepchildren into piglets, and exits with all the palace silver in her chariot drawn by flying dragons, there was something wholesome about Lady Svnae.
“Tell me—” Smith demanded. Lord Ermenwyr flipped up his coattails and squatted down beside his sister, looking like an evil gnome by comparison, perhaps one the wicked queen might keep on the dashboard of her chariot as a bad luck mascot.
“There’s something hidden in this rock, Smith—” he began.
“It’s the Key of Unmaking, isn’t it?” Willowspear stated.
“Yes, actually,” replied Lady Svnae. “Good guess! Or did Mother tell you about it?”
“Erm … I’ve been trying to explain this to them a bit at a time,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Giving them hints. Well, Smith, what can I say? The damned thing’s worth a lot right now. I want it.”
“I want it,” said his sister firmly.
“But we can’t get it. It’s sealed in the rock, and only one of your people can reach in there and get it. That’s why you’re here, Smith.”
“You’re asking him to betray his people,” said Willowspear. “My mother’s people. My wife’s people.”
“Don’t be an idiot!” said Lord Ermenwyr sharply. “The thing’s not safe here any longer, don’t you understand? The Steadfast Orphans are waiting their chance out there and if they get their hands on it, they will use it, Smith.”
“All I want to do is learn how it works,” pleaded Svnae. “If I knew that, I might discover a way to disarm it.”
“Well, let’s not be too hasty about that—”
“It’s not real,” said Smith at last.
The lordling sat back on his heels. “You don’t think so? Come have a look, then.” He stood and made a brusque summoning gesture to the monks. “Bring him.”
Greenbriar came forward and, between them, he and Willowspear got Smith to his feet and supported him. They followed the lord and lady down a corridor cut in the rock, lit only by the firelight behind them and a faint flickering red light far ahead.
“You people didn’t make this place,” said Smith.
“We found it,” said Greenbriar wretchedly. “We came to here to make a garden. The earth was warm, there was plenty of water … but in the caves we found the piled bones of Children of the Sun. Terrible things happened here, long ago. An
d in the deepest place, we found the thing.
“We told Her about it. She gave us wise counsel. We buried the bones, we made this place beautiful to give their souls peace. We labored as She bid us do. And then, Her daughter came and asked to see the thing… and we thought no harm…”
“There wouldn’t have been any harm if the Steadfast Orphans hadn’t shown up,” said Lady Svnae, her voice echoing back to them.
“You really ought to do something about your household security,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “I’ll interrogate your servants, if you like.”
“As though I’d let you anywhere near my chambermaids!”
“Well, how do you think the Orphans knew where it was?”
“They probably sat down and read the Book of Fire, the same way I did. There are perfectly blatant clues in the text, especially if you happen to find one of the copies that was transcribed by Ironbrick of Karkateen. But there are only three copies known to exist…”
Smith tuned out their bickering and concentrated on making his legs work. Unbidden he heard a voice years dead: that of the old blind man who used to sit on the quay and recite Scripture, holding out his begging bowl, and Smith had been no more pious than any other child, but the sound of it never failed to make him shiver, all the same …the dead on the plain of Baltu were not mourned, a hundred thousand skulls turned their faces to Heaven, a hundred thousand crows flew away sated, in Kast the flies swarmed, and their children inherited flesh…
…on the Anvil of the World, Forged his fell Unmaking Key, Deep in the bones he hid it there, Till Doomsday should dredge it up. Frostfire guards what Witchlight hides…
“It isn’t real,” he muttered to himself.
“Here we are,” said Lady Svnae, as though they had come to a particularly interesting shop window.
Smith raised his head and flinched, averted his eyes. Frostfire. Witchlight. Doomsday…
All he had really glimpsed was an impression of a spinning circle, the same eerie color as the snow in his dream, and sparks flying within it as though they were being struck from iron. But the image wouldn’t fade behind his eyes. It grew more vivid, and to his horror he felt a solid form heavy against his palm, the weight of the iron staff.
