That Mathi had failed in his endeavor and was embittered by his lack of success was Tralane's childhood perception, which he maintained even now. Perhaps this was the reason Tralane had refused to absorb the meaning of Mathi's lessons. For Tralane, Mathi had fallen before the naked glare of truth, and this had inspired contempt, not compassion, in the youthful bard. But he himself had not even possessed the courage to pursue the revelations of magic as far as Mathi. He had never tested himself, as Mathi had done, and found his true limits and nature. He had only followed Mathi's apparent path and achieved his tutor's end. Tralane clenched his teeth and closed his eyes tightly as he realized what he had been running from.
To see as the Eye saw, and not as he would have it be—that was the key Cumulain had given Tralane. His youthful years had been wasted fleeing and hiding, playing for power only to let it slip through his grasp. He had wanted his way, but without paying any price. He had avoided confrontations only to trap himself. There was no escape—what was left undone had finally caught up to him.
Tralane removed a glove and wormed his hand through the layers of clothing. He unfastened the pouch which hung around his neck and pulled out the amulet. Then, when its silver mount and hard green gem glinted in the snow storm, Tralane knelt, holding Wyden's Eye with both hands, and peered into its intricately faceted depths.
The Jade Warrior stood behind him, his leg almost grazing Tralane's back. The base of the bard's neck tingled with the close proximity of the creature. It was as if the Warrior were trying to distract Tralane's attention from the task at hand, as if the Warrior were guarding the gates through which Tralane wished to pass.
Tralane fought and conquered the Warrior's encroachment. As his mind began to concentrate on the amulet, shadows and light played a mad child's game of running and hiding from the world. Tralane repeated the sequence of mental steps Mathi had taught him to approach the paths of sorcery. He concentrated on the Beast and plunged deeper into himself and the amulet. He closed his eyes.
The wind ceased to howl; the daggers of ice pierced his skin, but not his mind. Yet he still saw Wyden's Eye in his hands. He caught in its myriad reflections glimpses of his own secret thoughts and fears, forgotten dreams and dreaded nightmares, the loves captured and then smothered in quick-frozen crystals of passion. Ancient, unhealed wounds whose scars Tralane had never perceived in himself reopened before him. For a moment he tried to see clearly the run of these dark scabs, fascinated by the aberrations and petty corruptions he had so quickly seen and cleverly exploited in others, and which he now readily saw in himself. The further back he traced them, among the flickering lights and shades of Wyden's Eye, the more tangled and obfuscated they became, and the harder he had to concentrate on tracking down their origin. He wanted to understand the injuries and discover what weapons had been used to make them. His curiosity picked at the incrustations, as it had done with so many of the people in his past, and he winced with pain and satisfaction at the ugliness he exposed. He began to take pleasure in the destruction, forgetting that the object of his cruelty was himself.
The unmutilated flesh of his self was disappearing as he delved further into the source of pain. The faint patches of white became tiny stars in the web of night, and these stars glowed brighter when his eyes came to rest on them. They shone with piercing whiteness, calling to him, urging him to explore their minuteness. A dim roar, gravelly, hungry, issued from the stars. They began to move, lazily at first, then faster, in circles, and finally in tempestuous chaos. He recognized the snow. He was back kneeling in a mound of snow, the Jade Warrior standing behind him. The Warrior seemed far away, yet Tralane could plainly sense the creature's nearness.
Then Tralane remembered he had closed his eyes. He had become the Eye, scanning across the horizon, the clouds of swirling snow a galaxy of stars by which he could see all the more clearly. The gate was crossed, its guardian safely bypassed.
Tralane sought, and found, the Beast. It was crouching not far away, as tall as a man in its hunched position. The eyes were red and white, filled with the primitive rage of a dozen wild beasts held captive and molded into one being by a single intelligence. Tralane could separate the remains of the sorcerer Cumulain had told him about, buried alive in the savage passions lending strength to and propelling the Beast. Vengeance had been its own curse. Sanity was absent from the sparkle of awareness; only the joy in the unleashing of murderous power remained.
The Beast watched Tralane, sensed the sorcery, and snarled. But with its maker no longer in control, and motivated by the single drive of bloody revenge, the Beast could not sift through the dangers it sensed and discover the true source of the threat to its existence.
Tralane's consciousness slipped partially back into his own body. He stood shakily, keeping an unsteady balance of awareness between the Eye and his true physical form. His right hand grasped the pommel of the black sword, and the weapon responded with a surge of strength racing up his arm. Tralane walked uncertainly towards the Beast, finding the balance between flesh and stone even more difficult to maintain when moving. However, his clumsy movements managed to ally the Beast's suspicions. The monster waited patiently for Tralane to stumble into his arms, thinking the bard was blinded by the storm.
The Beast stood when Tralane was almost within striking range. It raised a huge paw into the air, then swept down in an arc that would end at Tralane's head. But before the blow could land, Tralane fell to one knee. He watched the arm swing by him overhead, the momentum of the missed blow forcing the Beast to fall forward, off balance. With an upward sweep, Tralane sank the sword's edge deep into the Beast's upper arm. A wrench with a backward step made the sword bite deeper, almost severing the arm. The snow on the ground blossomed into a scarlet bed, and the spraying blood transformed the falling ice crystals into rubies.
The Beast's scream beat down the angry wind's voice. Tralane took two steps to the side and let the creature fall on its injured arm. Before it could roll over and attempt to sit up, Tralane pulled the sword free from the arm and pushed the point into its back, trying to sever its spine. He missed the bone, but the Beast's shudder and spasmodic flailing told him he had struck something of equal importance. Then one of the Beast's legs struck him and knocked him twice the length of his body's across the snow, almost wrenching the Eye out of his hand.
The Beast's howl was incessant, evenly proportioned with wrath, pain and fear. It began to stagger to its feet and withdraw, seeking the path to some unknown refuge. Tralane grunted with the effort of getting up. He lunged across the distance between them and desperately sliced at the Beast's knee joint, before it could make good its escape. His blow landed, and the Beast collapsed in a heap.
Tralane took a few steps back, breathing heavily. There were some red stains on his coat, but the monster had not touched him; the blood came from the Beast. The Beast's gaze was resting steadily on Tralane as it pretended to be hurt beyond action. The bard waited patiently for the creature to make the first move. It did, whipping the remaining arm at Tralane as it suddenly sat up. Talons emerged from the paw, ready to slice through his garments and rake open his body. Tralane met the blow head on with his sword, the hand holding the Eye backing his hold on the weapon. The black edge passed smoothly and evenly up the Beast's arm, through bone and sinew. The Beast fell on its side, again knocking Tralane away. Before the monster could rise again, Tralane leaped up and finished the battle with a swift downward stroke to its neck.
When the work was done, Tralane stepped away from the body. Wyden's Eye was not needed any longer to see the Beast—free-flowing blood marked the corpse, matting its fur and corrupting the pristine innocence of the snow-covered earth. He released his sensory hold on the amulet and took deep breaths, glad to have returned to his own form. Then he turned away with disgust from the sorcerous creature as it began to break up into its component animals. The town's spurned sorcerer had tormented many natural beasts out of shape besides the predominant cthan, to accommoda
te his plans.
He put the amulet in a pocket inside the lining of his coat and washed the sword with snow. The Jade Warrior emerged out of the storm. The Warrior's hand was on the hilt of his sword, but Tralane did not give any sign of his apprehension. For several moments the Warrior stood by Tralane, his crystal sinews tensed, the flaw lines in his limbs and torso refracting more light as they contracted to form bright, nerve-like clusters.
Tralane memorized the location of the bright clusters he could see. They would make logical targets in the inevitable confrontation between the two of them.
His sword cleansed of blood, Tralane stood with the weapon held firmly in his hand. The Jade Warrior crouched slightly, anticipating battle. Tralane calmly sheathed his sword with one fluid motion. He had no intention of meeting his enemy on even terms.
"You've done more tonight than I thought you capable of, Tralane," the Jade Warrior shouted over a shrieking gust of wind. Though he had relaxed slightly, Tralane noted with satisfaction that the Warrior was not as arrogant in his stance as he had previously been.
Tralane started back in what he assumed to be the direction of the town, anticipating a hero's welcome by the townspeople. Surely now they would cease their cursings, set aside their hostility to strangers, and accept him into their community. At last he had proven his worth and lifted the doom from their lives. He had won a place among people.
But before he took a dozen steps, doubt dampened his enthusiasm. He was indeed a hero, a savior of the community. Cumulain had healed and strengthened him and sown the seeds of knowledge that had bloomed into the victory that was the fulfillment of his mission. She had prepared him for the task, but she had also cleared a path for his departure. He heard once again her evasive replies to his demands for commitment. She had met his desire for the security of protective walls with the freedom of the choices in his future.
He stopped and pictured the scene he would find in the Wilderness Flower: a group of men, quiet, sullen, fearful, waiting for the storm to end so they could go out and bury the remains of either their hero or the Beast. Cumulain would be hovering over her family, desperately pulling together the shattered fragments into a whole. She would have no time for the dalliance of courtship or extra affection for a young lover. The feeble strength she had left would be used to seal the rifts that had fractured her world. The townspeople would close in around her, protect her, and share their common grief over the loss of loved ones and the memory of cursed times. Already, she and the town were drawn together, trying to forget the Beast and sealing the grim reminders of their suffering from their reality. And he, as their hero, would only haunt them as a living memory of the past.
Tralane stood for a long while, letting the snow pile around his legs. The wind pushed him from behind, like the giant hand of a parent prodding a stubborn child towards an ambiguous goal. The cold seemed to have jumped through the layers of clothing and coated his stomach with ice.
He would live with them only in legend and song; perhaps, in a lonely hour, their voices raised in revelry would reach him on some distant world with the tale of his feat. The comfort, if it happened, would be small. Tralane turned his back on the town, as he must have known he would have to do.
The Jade Warrior had not moved from the spot Tralane had left him. The bard glanced at his companion's stony visage, detecting a hint of perplexity and suspicion. Tralane had changed, and the Warrior was revising his estimation of the man.
Tralane trudged resolutely past the Warrior without a word. He took out the amulet and began the motions that would open the door between worlds. Keeping his body between Wyden's Eye and the Warrior, Tralane altered his motions slightly and painted in his mind the barren world with its endless city that he had seen when Cumulain had tried her hand with the Eye's magic. The city began to appear before him, as it had done in his room at the inn. He concentrated on the image so that the right door would be taken. The site was ideal for the winning of answers from the Jade Warrior.
As they walked through the slowly dying storm, Tralane sensed the distant movement of another intelligence. Something stirred in the Eye, searching for the source of his subtle manipulation. He withdrew before he was discovered, satisfied that the Eye was set in the direction he wanted. He wondered at the Eye's power, that two wills could wander in its vastness without meeting each other. Then he questioned whether the vastness was not left deliberately unoccupied, so that Tralane might lead him-self to where his enemy waited. But if this were so, it served Tralane's purpose as well.
Again reality began to lose its tangibility, and his feet trod on both the snows of the past and the soil of the future. The town behind Tralane was as nameless as the city before him. The comforts of the Wilderness Flower receded, and there was nothing ahead to replace it. Tralane welcomed the emptiness, for in it he would at last mold his own future.
Chapter 17
The city grew around them with the creeping appearance of dawn. The stars appeared briefly in the half-light, and Tralane was shocked by their scarcity. Even the day, when it had finally gained all the strength it apparently would ever have, seemed pathetically weak. The sun was a small fist of dull light, almost lost in the thin haze which covered the sky like a veil woven from the floating dust of the dead. The city's buildings, many-terraced, gilded with bright, precious metals, and interconnected by delicate spans of stone, appeared untouched by the general aura of decay. Yet when they passed near a cluster of tall, intertwining structures, the illusion of immortal beauty gave way to the reality of crumbling edifices and gaping holes, like the dead eye sockets of skulls, signifying the passing of an age. The city was rotted, ready to collapse, undermined by an unknowably long period of neglect. Even the ground they walked over was powdery, rising in scurrying clouds with every step.
The air was thin, and Tralane had some difficulty breathing. There was hardly the touch of a breeze on his face, and whatever movement of air existed was amply heralded by swirls of dust. There was no sign of life—even the ground was bare of the slightest form of vegetation. Tralane could not imagine that the city was inhabited. The fanciful buildings, towering and winding into space, had caught in their delicate dilapidation the strands of a funereal web of silence. There was nothing left to disturb the quiet work of corruption.
The avenue Tralane and the Jade Warrior found themselves traveling on was wide, with several lanes of paved stone separated by equal proportions of dusty earth which at one time must have nourished a rich abundance of vegetation. The unprotected openness, surrounded by distant borders of stone and metal, chilled Tralane. Despite the heavy clothing, he was colder in the city than he had been in the storm on Cumulain's world. He shivered and hunched his shoulders against the gnawing air.
"Would you not like to rest, Tralane?" the Warrior asked suddenly, shattering the grave silence between them that had been made nearly audible by the passive, quiet presence of the city.
Tralane was still strong from his healing and long sleep at the Wilderness Flower. He shook his head and directed them to a nearby complex of low, flat buildings. The streets narrowed until they were barely three man-widths across. The closeness of the walls did less to comfort Tralane than the wide expanse of the avenues. The air was musty, and the sense of entombment was heightened by the permanence of decay in the city. He wondered if he had not brought himself to the House of the Dead, the resting place of souls belonging to all the worlds existing and accessible to the Eye. But such a place would be teeming with some kind of activity—the spirits of the dead would be restless, especially with a living soul among them. In the city, there was not even the feeling of being watched. There was only the emptiness framed by skeletal monuments to loneliness.
"What are we doing here, Tralane?" asked the Jade Warrior. Even his voice was subdued by the silence.
"Searching for answers."
"What are the questions?"
Tralane stepped through an open doorway and quickly examined the room beyond it,
finding it devoid of content, except for the hint of oddly shaped steps leading upwards in a recess at the far end of the chamber. He came back out into the dusky light, noticing that the Jade Warrior was keeping distance between himself and Tralane.
"Did you know, Warrior," Tralane quipped with a smile, "that you are terribly dull to look at when there's no sun to reflect on your many facets?"
"That seems a shallow enough question for a human. Is that all you hoped to discover?"
"Oh, no." Tralane began to walk, quickening his step as they progressed further into the complex. He wandered, doubling back, surreptitiously marking buildings as he passed and checking them as he came across them again. He appeared to be lost, taking streets and turnings seemingly at random, while he mapped routes and laid out his strategy.
"I have a few problems that need to be solved," Tralane added after a while, distractedly.
"You'll find no answers here. We are alone, the two of us. All the books and records have long since crumbled to dust and followed their makers into obscurity."
"Is that another one of your penetrating perceptions?" Tralane asked caustically, giving the Warrior a sneering glance.
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