Sea of Silver Light o-4

by Tad Williams

  "It goes to Jinnear Bad House."

  "I don't care. I'm sure it's dreadful, but if we stay here, eventually those things are going to catch us and kill us."

  "I don't want to go to the Bad House."

  "No arguing. I can't leave you behind." She rose and found the long fibrous stalk she had put aside. "Now move over beside the window where we came in." Renie turned to Klement. "You too. It's time to get out of here."

  Klement looked at her for a long moment, then stood up. Renie returned her attention to the fire. With the stalk, she shoved the blackening leaf against the tower wall opposite the window. Bits of flaming vegetation fell off along the way and died where they landed, insufficient to ignite the dark, moist greenery, but the leaves along the wall began to blacken and shrivel.

  "We've got only a few minutes before it's too hot to stay in here," Renie said as she turned, then stopped, staring in amazement. Only the Stone Girl remained in the small green belfry. "Where's Klement?"

  "He went down there." She pointed down the opening to the lower level.

  "Christ. Christ! He'll get eaten by those things!" Renie took a step toward the bramble-stairs, but a burning leaf fluttered free from the wall and stuck smoldering against her blanket. It took her several seconds to put it out. The wall was beginning to burn in earnest, the heat such that even the living plants were being consumed as though they were straw. Renie hesitated. The Stone Girl was looking at her, eyes huge with fear. Who was Klement after all but a murderer, a monster? Maybe this new version had seemed more acceptable, but did she have the right to risk the child's life in order to save him from his own damaged folly?

  A line of flame crackled across the floor, making the decision moot. "Out onto the vines," she told the Stone Girl. "Now."

  Renie hoisted herself through the window. When she had found something like stable footing in the tangle of greenery on the wall, she helped the little girl out and onto her shoulders. "I have to climb down a little way," she told the child. "Hold on tight."

  By the time Renie had lowered her head beneath the line of the windowsill, the room behind her was burning brightly; flames crackled in the ceiling and the blaze had already eaten several holes in the wall. When Renie felt the first vine beneath her feet, she probed until she found another one of the springy cables a little lower down so she could use the first as a handhold. When her feet were firmly situated she lowered the Stone Girl down beside her, both of them swaying above the darkness and the swarming Ticks.

  "In a minute the whole tower will be burning," Renie whispered, "so we'd better get going. If we're lucky, the whole flaming mess will come down on top of the those things and confuse them—kill a few, too, if we're really lucky!"

  They were inching along some twenty meters out from the tower, the top of the structure burning like a torch now and spitting great sparking fragments onto the breeze, when the Stone Girl yanked at Renie's blanket. "What's . . . what's going to happen when it falls down?" she asked.

  "Ssshhh." Renie tried to steady the alarming sway the girl's tugging had begun. The whole center of the vegetal town was lit with wavering red light, including them, and despite the distraction of the fire, she feared they might be noticed any second. "I told you! It's going to fall down in a big burning, smoking mess, and it's going to distract those monsters and we're going to get away."

  "But won't the vines fall down, too?"

  Renie paused, still swaying from side to side. "Oh, shit."'

  "You said a bad word!"

  "I'm going to say more, I'm afraid. Oh, damn me, how stupid can I be?" She began sliding along the vine with increased speed. They had only been spared so far, she realized, because the fire was burning upward much faster than it was burning downward, toward the spot where the vines were rooted into the tower.

  She looked at the ground between her feet, wondering where they would fall when the vines gave way, and wished she hadn't. More of the white shapes were beneath them, weaving back and forth atop the brambles like dolphins sporting in the wake of a ship.

  "Just hurry," she hissed at the Stone Girl. "If it gets too hard, let me carry you."

  Now it was a race against the fire she had set, and Renie wished she had spent more time scouting the vines before committing to this particular pair. They stayed a reasonable distance apart, but not always one above the other: by the time they had slid their feet another dozen meters along one vine, the one they were using as a handrail had sagged down until it was scarcely higher than the first. Renie had to let the Stone Girl climb onto her back again, since she was leaning out almost horizontally and the girl could no longer brace herself against Renie's leg when the distances between the vines became too great.

  Something pinged and snapped on the tower end and the lower vine sagged alarmingly. It held, and Renie was able to stand almost upright once more, but the vine suddenly felt very loose. She looked back and saw that the uppermost part of the tower was belching flames dozens of meters into the sky, then a huge fiery piece of it tottered and broke free. Somebody or something may have heard her panicked prayer, because it fell away from the vines on which she and the Stone Girl were trapped, but the collapse set the whole springy structure quivering. The vines leaped like plucked strings and Renie had to wrap both arms around the upper vine and cling just to keep her balance as the Stone Girl teetered atop her and almost fell.

  They had seconds now, if they were lucky, and Renie cursed her own earlier decision to pick the longest vines. She had wanted to get as far away from the tower as possible before having to touch the ground, but now she desperately wished there was a roof somewhere close by onto which they could jump. She put her head down to concentrate on her footing, trying to see each coming step in the inconstant, glaring light as she hurried sideways. The Stone Girl clung to her shoulders, crying softly.

  She had only an instant's warning: the vine seemed to tighten beneath her hand as though someone had given it a hard tug. Renie made a lightning decision and let go so she could grab at the lower vine with both hands.

  "Hold on tight!" she screamed as she wrapped hands and legs around the bottom vine. The weight of the little girl snatched her over backward but Renie kept her desperate grip and so did the Stone Girl. As they dangled upside down, the upper strand parted with a distant crack and a second later the broken end swept past, glowing red, flying away from the collapsing tower like the lash of a bullwhip. Renie felt its rough hide score her fingers as it flew past.

  Would have taken my head off, she thought, a dizzy, horrified fragment of thought. The broken vine had whistled going by, a ton of fibrous cable moving at bullet speed. We have to let go, she realized in horror, before the next. . . .

  This time she did not even have a chance to warn the little girl. Renie's fingers released just as the second vine snapped with another whipcrack explosion. They tumbled down into the dark even as it hissed through the spot where they had been.

  They landed in something like thick bushes, but Renie still felt the air leave her body as though she had been slammed by a giant hand. For long moments she could not get the breath back into her lungs and lay straining, facedown in prickly leaves.

  When she was able to stagger to her feet she saw that the flaming tower had collapsed into a wildfire fifty meters wide, with tendrils of flame already marching out into the surrounding greenery. Some Ticks had been caught in the collapse—she could see writhing shapes in the blaze—but far more of them remained in an agitated mass around the perimeter of the fire.

  The Stone Girl groaned. "Are you okay?" Renie whispered. "Anything broken?" The little girl seemed able to move, but did not get up. Renie reached down and pulled the child into her arms, then stood. "Which way?" The Stone Girl groaned again and pointed. Renie began to run.

  It was terrible country in the dark, so much vegetation that there was little hard ground beneath her feet, brambles and vines and trailing roots everywhere, snatching at her and tripping her up like malicious fing
ers. After a few hundred meters she was gasping for breath and feeling the bruises of the fall from the vine. She stopped and set the solid weight of the little girl down on springy leaves before looking back. She was relieved to see that the spreading fire was still surrounded by squirming, confused Ticks, and that she could see no others any closer.

  "Can you walk? I don't know if I can carry you much farther."

  "I . . . maybe I can." The little girl struggled up. "I hurt my legs, I think."

  "Just try. If you can't make it, I'll carry you again. Let's hurry. We don't know how long this will distract them."

  They quickly stumbled out of the vicinity of the fire. Renie's feet were achingly sore, her legs scratched and cut so many times she had stopped paying attention, but there was nothing to be done. Run or die, she thought. It's been like that since we first got onto this damn network. "Are we almost there?" she asked the little girl. "Are we still going in the right direction? Can you tell?"

  The Stone Girl only plodded forward. Renie surrendered to trust.

  A quick glance back sent a wave of terror through her: this time she definitely saw pale shapes behind them. She had no idea if the Ticks could follow a trail, or even if these were some of the same creatures who had surrounded the tower, but it wouldn't matter much if they got close enough to see her and the girl. She had no illusion they could outrun the pallid monsters for more than a few steps—she had seen their terrible, darting speed.

  Something rose out of the dark shrubbery before them. Renie gasped in alarm and tripped, slamming down onto one knee and dragging the Stone Girl face-first into the undergrowth. She scrabbled desperately for something to use as a weapon—a weapon she already knew would be useless—but the expected attack did not come.

  The thing in front of her had a face.

  "Klement! How did you . . . you're not. . . !" The Grail master was still holding the strange blue infant, although it was almost invisible in the dark night. "They're behind us," Renie said. "I've just seen them. You'd better run, too."

  "I am . . . waiting."

  "Waiting for what? To get eaten?"

  Klement shook his head. "I do not know if this is the right . . . place. I . . . we . . . cannot feel. . . ."

  Renie scrambled to her feet and pulled the quietly weeping Stone Girl up as well. "No time for this. You do whatever the hell you want." She swept the little girl into her arms, a weird mirror of Klement and his malformed charge, and sprinted ahead.

  Once Renie looked back and was sure she saw maggoty-white shapes pursuing them, another time there seemed nothing behind her but endless vegetation. She no longer trusted her own eyes. Her lungs were burning. It seemed almost impossible to believe she had ever done anything but run through this endless, tangled nightmare world.

  She was tripping and crawling her way up a long slope, the wildfire in the town now a small coin of flame in the black night behind her, when the Stone Girl's arm tightened around her neck.

  "I feel it," the girl said. "We're almost there."

  A high wall ran along the top of the hill, as leafy as everything else in More Very Bush. Renie stopped to lean against it, desperate to suck some new air into her chest before attempting the climb. She looked back and saw Klement walking stolidly up the hill, still a couple of hundred meters back. Behind him, but closing fast, half a dozen Ticks were sliding through the undergrowth like sharks. From this angle there was no question. They were moving rapidly and in concert. Whether it was Klement or Renie and her companion they were trailing, they were actively in pursuit!

  Renie cursed bitterly. She lifted the little girl, who seemed to have tripled in weight, up onto the top of the fence, then left her clinging there while she began her own climb. Pulling herself up a vertical nearly defeated her, but somehow she found the strength.

  From the top she could see the blessed river only a short distance away down the hill, its waters a meandering black stripe through the endless bramble. She turned again and saw that the Ticks had broken out of the deeper growth at the base of the hill and had almost caught up with Ricardo Klement. They boiled up the slope like hunting hounds, swiftly overtook him, then parted around him as though he were a tree in the middle of their path, leaving him untouched and seemingly unnoticed. Without a moment's hesitation they continued up the slope toward the spot where Renie still hung at the top of the wall, dumbfounded.

  She had only enough time for a single startled and horrified curse, then she grabbed the Stone Girl and lowered her far enough to let her drop to the ground, then swung her own legs over and slid down the scraping branches.

  "Where's the bridge?" she shouted to the Stone Girl. "They're right behind us!"

  The little girl took her hand and pulled her on an angled course down the slope. The Ticks were flowing over the wall behind them like fingers of cloud coming down a mountainside. Renie snatched up the little girl and sprinted.

  By the time they reached the thick brush that lined the river, Renie could hear the crackling slither of their pursuers.

  "There!" squealed the Stone Girl.

  The bridge had been almost invisible. Like everything else in More Very Bush, it was made of living branches and leaves, an arch leaping out from the center of the thicket across the water. Renie ran the last few steps and sprang up onto the end of the bridge with the girl in her arms. When the water was beneath her, she finally risked a look back.

  The Ticks had stopped at the edge of the river, but clearly knew she was there. They made a few tentative movements toward the bridge, but something seemed to hold them at bay.

  "I think we're safe," Renie gasped. "Don't we . . . need to say something now . . . before we cross? About a . . . a gray goose?

  "I don't want to cross."

  "We have to. We can't go back—look at those things! They're waiting for us." But why didn't they want Klement? "Let's cross," she said to the child. "We'll be all right."

  "No, we won't," the Stone Girl murmured, but spoke the nursery rhyme in a tone of flat resignation. "It's the Bad House," she said when she had finished. "This goes to the Bad House."

  "It can't get any worse than this." Renie turned back toward the center of the river.

  "It can," the little girl said. "It really can."

  She had been prepared for the mists that rose as they neared the center of the span, prepared for the way the river vanished beneath them, even its noise becoming so muted as to be little more than a constant, indrawn breath, but the sudden dark surprised her. The few distant stars of More Very Bush abruptly winked out and the black sky oozed down and covered everything like paint. And when the first faint lines of the place the little girl had called Jinnear Bad House appeared out of that darkness, Renie realized she had not been prepared for it at all.

  She had half-expected something in the nursery rhyme vein, a quaint cottage of gingerbread—overblown perhaps, even a sprawling edifice like the House world, acre upon acre of crenellated marzipan trim—but she had not expected the utter, utter strangeness of the Bad House.

  It had no shape. She could see it only in strange, silver gleams, as though its curves and angles caught light that came from some invisible source—thin crescents and flat surfaces that came and went, as though the thing itself revolved. But it also seemed . . . inside out, somehow, as if the momentary illusions of an exterior shape were immediately succeeded by—or were perhaps simultaneously manifesting—almost incomprehensible inversions, an outfolding into imaginary space of every boundary wall. There was even something rounded about the glimmering, elusive shape, something paradoxically sealed and secretive.

  She could no longer see the bridge beneath her feet, but it certainly did not feel like the uneven vegetal construct that had been there before. There was only the feeling of a bridge now, an idea of a span between her and . . . the place. The Bad House. And the mists were rising.

  She realized she could no longer feel the Stone Girl's hand in her own. "Where are you?" she asked, then called agai
n, louder. "Stone Girl?" No one answered. Renie stopped, even retreated a few steps, swiping her hand from side to side, but found nothing. She paused, her heart rattling, and thought she heard a thin sound like a child crying in a distant room—but it was in front of her, not behind her.

  Horrified, shamed, Renie could hardly think. She had brought the girl here, against all the child's wishes, and now she had lost her. She could not retreat, no matter how powerfully her instincts told her to do so.

  She walked forward into the darkness. The Bad House opened to her and then closed around her. She joined it.

  This, too, she had experienced before, but it was something for which she could never, never be prepared, a clutching void so terrifying that in the first moments she nearly surrendered everything. This remorselessly freezing grip must have been what killed the old man Singh, she thought, clinging to rationality. Even though she had felt it before, felt it and survived it, it seemed to be only a breath away from extinguishing her entirely, too.

  I'm inside it now, she realized. The operating system. Not just in something it made—I'm inside it!

  That glimmer of perception brought something else with it, a thought so terrible it almost blasted her from her ragged grip on sanity. Is this what it feels like all the time? Is this what it feels like . . . to be the Other?

  As if this revelation had fractured a perfect black crystal, the darkness shattered and flew apart. Flashes of imagery ran through her, some so swift they seemed to laser through her brain in a continuous stream, others substantial enough to register, but only briefly, as though she fell through a universe of broken mirrors, catching glimpses of a thousand disparate scenes.

  There were voices in hundreds of languages, children's voices raised in fear and pain, adult voices yowling in terror and anger, agonized faces, searing bursts of cold and intense heat. Then the oscillations slowed and became more regular, resolved into something like time and space in their normal ratios. There was a white room. There were bright lights. Deep voices roared, loud and incomprehensible as the rush of a mighty river, and faces pressed in on her, gigantic and distorted. Then there was a huge convulsion, the universe itself seeming to choke and vomit, and the faces exploded away from her, bloodstained and howling.