The Lens of the World Trilogy

by MacAvoy, R. A. ;

  It seemed I could only get in Nazhuret’s way, so I let him handle the assault as he had handled Ngaul Eyluzh. The battle was no credit to either fighter, seen critically, for Nazhuret was not really accustomed to the use of ancient armaments, and of course he was not in his right mind. Reingish, however, was probably totally untutored in the uses of a carving knife. He probably didn’t even cut the roast at table.

  He attacked three times and received three wounds, the deepest one by ramming himself upon Nazhuret’s sword.

  Nazhuret had taken no wound, except that which had severed him from me. I wondered what it was, for the minsanaur, to look into those eyes that were almost his own. Did Nazhuret look mad, or mindless? If I were Reingish, it would have given me bad dreams.

  At last the prince backed off, panting and bleeding, and Nazhuret made it to the staircase and put one foot upon it.

  “Stop!”

  Now Reingish was on his knees. “By the five hundred faces of God and by his thousand hands, I adjure you, stop!” Nazhuret paid no attention, but I did. Reingish was lifting his hand, and brilliance flickered in the air. “By the light that I carry and the light that I am, I cast dark into darkness! Begone! Begone! Begone!”

  The light of his diamond exploded and took me with it, dazzled and dumb, into blackness. I did not know what had happened to Nazhuret; I left him behind again.

  I was without sight, without hearing, without feeling. I was not without time, because time’s anxiety surrounded me, and worse, I was not without “I.”

  This was not death; this was far more fearsome. There were memories in my mind, but they had no power to comfort—only to worry, to irritate. To frighten.

  There was the thought that they had killed Arlin, and I—I was locked in a box between life and death and could not follow. There was the thought that Rezhmia had overrun Velonya as far north as Sordaling, and that it was my fault somehow, for being in the dreams of the sanaur’s prophet. I thought that I had killed Dowln, as he had feared. I wished I had killed him much sooner. I wondered if all my friends and my enemies were long dead.

  The heavy weight and agony of these thoughts was all in the word “I.” No one ought to carry such a heavy weight, without material shoulders and a strong animal being to heft it with. I wished to God I might be rid of “I,” now that Nazhuret was gone. I wished for a miracle.

  God, however, has always been as unpredictable as Powl to me, and has answered me more with methods than miracles. I had learned my methods long since and now was forced to deal with them.

  I used self-collection to pull my scattered being together in the darkness. When confusion washed over me I observed it, until I thought I knew more about despair than any man alive. Or almost alive.

  Next, after solitary ages, came grief, which was less deadly than despair, but more seductive. I had known Arlin as a grown woman for almost six years, and the child she had been I remembered from my own childhood. I had known a few other women, for days at a time, but my black lady I loved as I loved no other soul, man or woman. And her loyalty to me was stronger than mine to her: unbroken since her thirteenth year.

  Could she live without me? With whom else could she live? What other man could see her perfection? Whom would she allow to know her perfection, disliking most of mankind as she did?

  Could she die without me? Dead or alive she would look for me; neither in death nor life was I to be found. I thought I heard my lady’s voice calling in the featureless dark. I kept as calm as I could, for Arlin’s sake. I heard her again.

  There was a flash—of light, or hope, or something. Perhaps it had been there unnoticed for a long time. It was not above me nor below. I took different attitudes to it, trying to see it as a horizon, as a rope, as an adamant in a necklace, and then I disciplined my experiments. I postulated that the shining was from the diamond of the minsanaur that had thrust me into his hell. I tried to climb it.

  I stuck myself to the lance of light and went higher: brighter. I was succeeding, but after all I doubted it was a diamond, for it was too linear. Suddenly I knew my hypothesis had been wrong. I was climbing the star of light coming from the sapphire on my own hand. (There is no loss in being disproved, in science. The gain comes from having an answer at all.)

  I was sitting on the wickerwork staircase, my two hands raised above my head in a mimic of rope—climbing. The light was lower, but a glow of silver came out of the blackness of the stone on my finger. There was no one around me at all.

  I almost lost myself in the intestines of the building, because it was made to be an illusion, and besides the light had changed. Then I remembered to close my eyes as I ran. It became an exciting progress, and I left some skin and blood against the woven walls. From the distance I could hear people shouting, and even a heavy chanting of many voices, that sifted through the filter of wickerwork so that I could not understand anything said.

  Space slapped me as hard as any of the walls. I opened my eyes and stumbled into the great hall, where the sick lay still and the healers stood listening. There was no sound louder than a whisper. Being no priest, I stepped across the sandstone floor to the closest bed, where a man lay smelling of broken guts. His face was green and his eyes frightened. Not of his injury, I thought.

  I asked what had happened, in my best idiomatic Rezhmian. He answered me: “War.”

  The courtyard was filled with people standing in small clumps, seeming to my dazed senses to reflect the clotting blood on the pavement. I ran without any thought save to find Arlin, and I retraced my steps to Dowln’s workshop, only to find it locked.

  Of course: I had seen them flee the place. I had seen them in a dream, a drug-dream, a fantasy, but I had no sense or memory to go by now except that drug-dream, so I followed the vision of a corridor past the big archway, past scurrying women, past tubs of roses, past a child’s funeral, where his small body lay under the heavy brocade wrap, crushed by yesterday’s disaster, and men all around me shouted and called and dragged the heavy clanging arms of tomorrow’s disaster. I brushed by soldiers, but none of them stopped me. I heard the sound of my own name, but I was not certain whether it belonged to my recent drug enchantment or to the present moment.

  The light was failing, and I was lost. I needed to find Arlin, and I ought to find the sanaur who had declared this impossible war. I held myself upright by the trunks of two potted apricot trees and tried to think how to accomplish either of these goals.

  I had never been to the sanaur’s personal chambers, or to those of his intimates. I presumed they were in this building, for we had seen him in the doorway only yesterday—and then his pet jeweler was here. But there was no proof of this.

  As for Arlin, in my delirium I had only seen her in the passages. I had no idea where Dowln would take her.

  In another moment I realized that Dowln would take my lady nowhere, because no one could lead or drive Arlin, nor any student of yours. She would decide where she was going, even to the last extremity. And where would she go?

  Like me, she would feel she ought to find the sanaur.

  I was leaning on the saplings, and they bent with my weight. I could no longer forget that I had been poisoned and still felt somewhat sick. It occurred to me I could vomit behind the huge pot and feel better for it. It occurred to me more strongly that I had to piss.

  Remember, you forbade me to piss against buildings, let alone in them? You said it was unhygienic and encouraged the dogs. Here I had no access to civilized facilities and the windows were too high for human aim. I voided into the pot with the apricot trees, and was only half done when an old woman, dressed in apricot color herself, shuffled up behind me and ordered me to desist. It was too late for such an injunction, and I continued to piss on the tree, feeling more humiliated than a man sick and amid catastrophe ought to feel.

  I apologized in what words I could find and explained it was an emergency.

  “It is an emergency for everyone, lad,” she answered. “But we are not all p
eeing on the bushes.”

  Something about her accent drew my embarrassed face toward hers and I saw this was an old dame of some quality, with a bruised face and one arm wrapped in linen. Although her words had been sharp her eyes seemed human enough, and as she saw me swaying she stepped forward as though to catch me.

  “Brace up now. We’ve all suffered in this,” she said, less angrily but still tart. I nodded and did not put any weight against her elderly frame. “Tell me, lad. How many did you lose yesterday?”

  I felt an impulse to laugh and quashed it. “Lost literally, Grandmother. I have lost my companions since noon today and I have lost the sanaur’s chambers completely!”

  She nodded, winced, and held her broken arm more still. “You can’t get there through the main hall anymore. That’s your problem. Follow me.”

  The old lady set off in the direction I had been going and I picked up my weapons and followed, adjusting my steps to hers. She gave a wide stare at the antique sword and shield that I was dangling from my fingers to appear as harmless as possible.

  “Those come off a wall in the earthquake?” she asked me, and I answered, truthfully, that I did not know.

  Again I heard Arlin call my name, but the old lady did not respond to the sound. Perhaps she was only hard of hearing, for the call seemed very real and not magical at all. I felt a strong desire to dodge past my guide and run down the sandstone corridor, calling in my own right, but I could not tell where the voice came from, and I might go wrong as well as right.

  I wanted to pick the old lady up and carry her, as once I did a farmer’s daughter in the fields of Satt Territory, but her goodwill was everything. I followed behind her little feet and heavy skirts, while the last daylight died and I knew something terrible and important was happening without me.

  I heard running feet down another corridor, echoing from everywhere. There was a shout, which faded.

  A man came by in the opposite direction, lighting the wall sconces one by one. He moved very quietly, and very slowly.

  “Once you have grandchildren, it is easier,” she said over her shoulder. Her lined face was black and white in the lamplight. “They may kill one of your children, or even all, but you will have some to carry on.”

  I asked her who “they” were and she answered, “Anything. The earthquake. This war. Great-grandchildren are even better. Once your grandchildren begin to bear, you can stop worrying.” She turned and peered at my face.

  “But you’re a child yourself. Not old enough for your own children.”

  I replied “Oh, I’m old enough, Grandmother: well old enough. I don’t have any children, though.”

  The old lady turned away and sighed lustily. “Just some mother’s worry yourself. That’s what you are. Just another worry.”

  It hardly seemed a fair accusation. My mother must have worried about me severely for the first few years of my life, but then she went beyond worry, and for the most of my youth I worried no one but various instructors. And myself. Yet the old woman’s complaint drew feelings of unease and regret from me. My heart was beating heavily. I touched the belly of the wolf to find composure.

  This time I was sure the voice was Arlin’s and not a souvenir of my delirium. I asked my guide if she heard anything, and she answered, “Oh, they’re digging up walls, still. They’ll be doing that for weeks, I imagine.” She looked around again, lost me in the dark, and took a grip upon my sleeve and marched me on.

  She did not hear what I heard, but I soon began to hear what she did, and it did not sound like shovels to me.

  “They are fighting, I think, Grandmother. Can you tell me where?”

  The old lady shrugged, perfectly calmly. “There will be fighting, with this war after all.” I wondered if she had understood. I decided to push past her, for the sounds of violence themselves might lead me to Arlin.

  But there was something about this half-heard battle that did not seem like Arlin. That dull clang of metal was of blade brought hard against blade. There were the grunts and bellows of men using their weight against one another, crudely. My lady did not fight like that, nor did she allow any hulk of a man to use such weapons against her. Arlin’s battles were silent except for the light ring of the saber. And the sound of bodies falling. I did not rush past the old lady after all, and that was my great fortune, for she pressed her good shoulder against a narrow, leather-padded, and inlaid door to the left of the hall, and I followed her into a long chamber and the presence of the emperor.

  He was at the head of a black table scattered with papers, looking very shrunken and small in a black leather chair. Behind him stood three guardsmen in attitude of defense and four others lay dead around them. The mosaic floor of sandstone and turquoise was earthquake-cracked and slippery with new blood, and I saw myself standing by a door at the other side of the council room, assaulting the sanaur’s men with a dowhee.

  It was an astonishing sight, and it came on top of too many astonishments. For a long moment I could only stand and watch myself, thinking that I was not free of the enchantment after all, and a body that was mine was still moving independently from me. Independent and wicked.

  Nazhuret smashed aside the blade of one more of the guards and disemboweled the poor man at his master’s feet. Seeing this I was freed from my paralysis, for the blow was heavy and crude and did not use the dowhee in its strength. This was not how Nazhuret, body or mind, had been taught to fight. I turned to assure my elderly guide that this fellow attacking the sanaur was not the lad she had helped along the halls, but she was no longer beside me, nor anywhere in the long room. It was as though she had never been.

  The sanaur stood, pressing back against the table. “You do not fool me, Reingish,” he said. His voice echoed among the stones and the hangings of the room.

  “I don’t need to fool you, Grandfather. Just the men in the hall who see me flee and find your body. I’m your bastard grandchild from the North: a stupid, treacherous brute.”

  The little old man did not flinch. “You describe yourself well, Reingish,” he said.

  The prince was a very good fighter, even with a weapon as strange to him as a Felonk dowhee, but I saw that his power against the sanaur’s men was their awe of him. I saw a man thrust at him and allow the thrust to fail and I saw that man die for it.

  I was running toward that black table, but there was only one soldier standing. The sanaur drew something from his belt: a dagger, I presumed. Whether it was for his nephew or for himself I did not know. I shouted, “Reingish! Reingish! You have failed. It will do you no good to kill Grandfather now! Run or suffer the penalty!”

  Reingish sprang back and lifted his eyes to me briefly. He spat like a cat. The last soldier standing was worse distracted than the prince was, and I saw his head skitter under the table before his body fell, fountaining blood.

  There was only the table between the prince and myself, but there was nothing at all between the prince and the emperor. To my surprise, the old man threw the dagger in his hand, which was not a throwing weapon at all. It hit the minsanaur hilt first in the face, as he was lifting the dowhee to strike. As the blade rang on the stones, the door behind him slammed open and Arlin, a black shape with dead-white face, stood facing the image of Nazhuret.

  “No!” I began to shout, and then choked back my words, for I knew the danger of distracting anyone in Reingish’s presence. Her saber was in her hand. He smiled at her, softly, intimately. I wondered if I smiled like that. Casually, he raised his arm to wipe blood from his face; he raised the arm with the sword in it.

  Arlin stood unmoving, her gray eyes black, and then her saber struck for the prince’s neck.

  For a moment I thought it was over, for Reingish stood staring at her and around his throat ran a tiny, mathematically pure line of red. As he stepped back and into guard I saw that he had been very fast, and Arlin had only scratched him. It had been a terrifying scratch, however, and his eyes blackened with respect for this “eunuch” wh
o had done more to stop him than seven of the emperor’s chosen.

  So she knew him, I thought. By the tiny pebbles of color that made up the eyeballs or by the subtle difference in hair or stance she knew this Nazhuret was not the real one.

  The prince struck in turn: an abrupt, unconventional flip of the tip which would have fooled most soldiers of Rezhmia or of Velonya. But in countering a dowhee with a cavalry saber, Arlin had more experience than any fighter living, and she turned the broad blade past her face and slipped it away.

  She had done as much against me a thousand times.

  In fear and in enjoyment of my lady’s expertise, I leaped into the air and struck one palm with the other fist. I did this silently, for my fear was much greater than my enjoyment, and when I saw the door behind the combatants swing open, revealing Dowln’s face, so pale, so strange-eyed, so steeped in enchantments, I froze in the fear that Reingish would use the jeweler against Arlin. The emperor’s eunuch had more sense however, and he faded back into the corridor. I noticed that his blue eyes had remained fixed upon those of the little emperor, and I wondered how he could love him so—the man who had ruined his life and his manhood.

  It was not a question that bore investigation, since at the moment both Arlin and I were at life’s last risk for this same emperor. At least he was my “grandfather.”

  In my moment of inattention, Reingish had found the thrown dagger lying on the tiles and used the sanaur’s trick to throw it at Arlin. A dueling saber is not held with the heavy grip with which a farmer holds a hoe, and the shock of the knife hitting the round hilt caused Arlin almost to lose her weapon. In that moment Reingish struck and I saw blood on my lady’s hand and running down her face. Without knowing how, I was on the polished table and sliding toward my own image, screaming in rage.

  Then, pouring out of the door where Dowln had stood were more soldiers, in dress no different from those who lay in blood. By the angle of their attention, however, I knew these were Reingish’s men, and my slide toward the prince became a cannonball over his head. I heard a blade in the air behind me, but did not know even if it had been directed at me. The men pressed back again without decision, but I had come down sliding on the wet, red paving and one leg folded under me as I came at them, groin-level, with my head unprotected and unprotectable.