by Tad Williams
Grip and one of the other bandits seized T4b by his arms and dragged him toward the first intact window. The teenager fought uselessly: when his sleeve fell back and exposed his glowing hand, Grip started and leaned his head away, but still maintained his hold.
"No!" Florimel struggled with her own captors. Beside her, Emily let out a cry of true terror, ragged as a death rattle.
"It is only a little time to fall," Viticus assured T4b. "Only a moment of cold wind, and then you will have nothing to fear ever again."
"Kunohara!" Renie shouted. "Are you going to let this happen?"
The harlequin crossed his arms on his chest. "I suppose not." He turned to the bandit chieftain. "I cannot let you have these people, Viticus."
The powdered man regarded the prisoners, then Kunohara. He seemed more amused than anything else. "You are being dreadfully boring, Koony. Are you certain?"
Before Kunohara could reply, the bandit named Bibber stepped forward, face contorted in fury. "Who's this little dung-monkey to say no to the White Prince?" He leveled his blunderbuss at Kunohara, trembling with outraged traditionalism. "Who is he to tell the Spiders how to honor the Mother?"
"I don't think you should do that, Bibber," said Viticus mildly, but the bandit was so outraged he paid no attention to the chieftain whose honor he was defending. His finger curled on the trigger. "I'll blow this little crease-wipe clean out of the House. . . !"
Kunohara made a small gesture and both Bibber's arms suddenly burst into flame. He immediately dropped to the floor, shrieking and thrashing, surrounded by an ever-widening circle of nothing as his comrades hurried to get away from him. Kunohara waved his finger and the flames were gone. The bandit lay curled beside his forgotten gun, stroking his forearms and weeping.
Kunohara laughed quietly. "It is good, sometimes, to be one of the gods of Otherland." He still sounded a bit drunk.
"Can we use none of them?" Viticus asked.
Kunohara eyed Renie's companions. Emily was crying. T4b, reprieved, had sunk to his knees again in front of the window. "The monk?" the harlequin said, half to himself. "He is not one of you, after all," he pointed out to Renie. "He is . . . well, you know what I mean."
Renie was outraged, although what he said was technically true. "Brother Factum Quintus has just as much right to live as we do, whether. . . ." She paused—she had been about to say whether he's a real person or not, but realized that might not be the kindest or the smartest thing to bring up, "It doesn't matter," she said instead. "He is one of us."
Kunohara turned to Viticus and shrugged.
"So, then," said the White Prince. "Grip?"
The giant bent and scooped whimpering Bibber up from the floor. He took a step to one side to get around T4b, then—with Bibber already squealing in unbelieving horror as he realized what was happening—got a good hold on his captive and heaved him through the stained glass window, which exploded outward around him.
The scream went on for long seconds, growing fainter all the way down. In the silence that followed, a few remaining pieces of glass slid from the frame and chinked to the floor.
"Thank you, Mother, for all you have given me," Viticus said, bowing toward the statue of glass shards. He bent and with his long fingers tweezed up the pieces that had sprayed from the shattered window, then tossed them onto the statue's lap. For a moment it seemed to swell a little, a trick of the guttering firelight.
Renie, frozen in shock at the callous murder, suddenly felt the cold room grow colder still, although the wind had not risen. Something was changing, everything somehow shifting sideways. For a moment she was certain it was another of the bizarre hitches in reality, like the one they had experienced when they had lost Azador on the river, but instead of the entire world shuddering to a halt the air only became thicker and colder, clingy as fog. The light changed, too, stretching until everything seemed farther away from everything else than it had been only instants before. Some of the bandits cried out in fear, but their voices were distant; for a moment Renie felt certain the statue of the Mother was coming to life, that it was about to step down from its plinth, claws creaking open. . . .
"The window!" gasped Florimel. "Look!"
Something was forming in the very place where only seconds before Bibber had plunged to his death, as though the stained glass were growing back to cover the gaping hole. A pale blur in the middle became a rough sketch of a face. A moment later it grew clearer, a faint, smeary image of a young woman, dark eyes staring blindly.
"The Lady. . . ." someone cried out from the crowd behind Renie. All sound was distorted—it was impossible to tell whether the words were spoken in joy or horror.
The face moved in the cloudy plane that filled the frame, sliding from corner to corner like something trapped. "No!" it said, "you send me nightmares!"
Renie felt !Xabbu clinging, his head only inches from her own, but she could not speak; nor could she take her gaze from the suggestion of a face surrounded now by a halo of dark hair.
"I do not belong here!" Her indistinct gaze seemed to take in Renie and her companions. "It hurts me to come here this time! But you summon me—you send me my own nightmares!"
"Who . . . who are you?" Florimel's voice was barely audible, as though someone had gripped her throat in strong fingers.
"He is sleeping now—the One who is Other—yet he dreams of you. But the darkness is blowing through him. The shadow is growing." For a moment the face grew even dimmer; when it reappeared, it was so faint that her eyes were little more than charcoal smudges on the pale oval of her face. "You must come to find the others. You must come to Priam's Walls!"
"What do you mean?" Renie asked, finding her voice at last. "What others?"
"Lost! The tower! Lost!" The face dwindled like a cloud torn by high winds. After a moment there was only the square hole where the window had been, a gaping wound opening into night's deeps.
It was long moments before Renie could feel anything again. The deep cold had gone, replaced by the lesser chill of the wind swirling in the turrets outside. Outside, evening had turned into night; the only light remaining in the high chamber was the inconstant flicker of the oil fire.
The bandit chieftain Viticus was sitting flat on the floor as if blown there by a great gale, his rouged face slack with surprise. "That . . . that is not what usually happens," he said softly. Most of the rest of the bandits had fled; those who remained were facedown on the floor in positions of supplication. Viticus hoisted himself onto his trembling legs and purposefully dusted his breeches. "I think it likely we will not come here again," he said, and walked to the doorway with careful dignity, although his shoulders were tensed as though he expected a blow. He did not look back. As he passed through, the remainder of his Attic Spiders clambered to their feet and hurried after him.
!Xabbu was tugging at Renie's arm. "Are you well?"
"Enough, I guess." She turned to look for the others. Florimel and T4b were both sitting on the floor, and Factum Quintus lay on his back talking to himself, but Emily was in a limp tangle near the far wall, just beneath one of the broken windows. Renie hurried to her side and reassured herself that the girl was still breathing.
"She's just fainted, I think," Renie called over her shoulder to the others. "Poor child!"
"Priam's Walls, is it?" Hideki Kunohara was sitting cross-legged beneath the jagged likeness of the Mother, his expression distant. "You are indeed in the center of the story, it seems."
"What are you talking about?" Florimel snapped, regaining a little of her composure. She came to join Renie at Emily's side, and together they turned the girl until she was resting in what seemed a more comfortable position. "That means Troy, does it not? The fortress of King Priam, the Trojan War—no doubt another one of these damned simulations. What does it mean to you. Kunohara, and what do you mean, 'center of the story'?"
"The story that is taking place all around you," he said. "The Lady has appeared and given you a summons. Quite impre
ssive, even I have to admit it. You are wanted in the maze, I suppose."
"Maze?" Renie looked up from Emily, who was beginning to show signs of waking. "Like with the Minotaur?"
"That was in the palace of Minos, in Crete," Florimel said. "There was no maze in Troy."
Kunohara chuckled, but it was not a particularly pleasant sound. Again Renie felt something wrong about him, a certain febrile wildness. She had thought it was liquor, but perhaps it was something else—perhaps the man was simply mad. "If you know so much," he said, "perhaps you can answer all your own questions, then."
"No," Renie said. "We're sorry. But we are confused and frightened. Who was that . . . that. . . ?" She gestured at the window where the face had appeared.
"It was the Lady of the Windows," Brother Factum Quintus said behind her, his voice full of awe. "And I thought I had experienced the full run of marvels, today. But there she was! Not just an old tale!" He shook his head as he sat up, as oddly articulated as a stick insect. "They shall be talking of this at the Library for generations."
He seemed to have missed entirely the fact that they had almost been hurled to their deaths, Renie thought sourly. "But what did she want, this . . . Lady? I couldn't make any sense of it at all." She turned to Kunohara. "What in hell is going on around here?"
He lifted his hands and spread them, palms up. "You have been summoned to Troy. It is a simulation, as your comrade said, but it was also the first simulation the Grail Brotherhood constructed. Near the heart of things."
"What do you mean, 'the heart of things'? And how do you know so much—you said you weren't part of the Grail."
"I am not part of the sun either, but I know when the afternoon turns hot, or when night is coming." Pleased with this epigram, he nodded.
Florimel growled, "We are tired of riddles, Kunohara."
"Then Troy will hold many disappointments for you." He slapped his thighs and stood, then sketched a mocking bow to the statue of the Mother before turning to face them once more. "In truth, you cannot afford bad temper—you curse riddles, but where does wisdom come from? Have you solved those I posed for you earlier? Dollo's Law and Kishimo-jinl Understanding may well be important to your own part of the story."
"Story! You keep saying that!" Renie wanted to hit him, but could not rid herself of the memory of Bibber's horrified face, of the flames Kunohara had summoned which had momentarily engulfed him. In an unreal world, who could say what was real? Kunohara had called himself one of the gods of Otherland, and in that he was correct.
"Please, Mr. Kunohara, what does this mean?" said !Xabbu, reaching for Renie's hand to calm her. "You speak of a story, and the woman—the Lady of the Windows—spoke of someone who dreamed of us. Dream is my name, in the language of my people. I thought we were in a world purely of mechanical things, but now I am not sure it is true. Perhaps there is a greater reason I am here, I wonder—a greater purpose. If so, I would like to know it."
To Renie's surprise, Kunohara looked at !Xabbu with something like respect. "You sound a bit like the Circle people, but more sensible," the bug man said. "As far as dreams, I do not know—there is much in a network this complicated that cannot be known by anyone, even the creators, and there were also many details that the Brotherhood kept hidden from the rest of us. But as to what I said about story, surely you have seen something of that. The entire network has lost its randomness, somehow," he paused, musing, ". . . or perhaps randomness itself is only a name for stories we have not recognized yet."
"You are saying that something is guiding the network?" Florimel asked. "But we knew that already. Surely that is the Grail Brotherhood's purpose—it is their invention, after all."
"Or perhaps the operating system itself. . . ." Renie suggested. "It must be very complicated, very sophisticated."
"No, I mean something even more subtle is at work." Kunohara shook his head impatiently. "My idea is not something I can explain, perhaps. It does not matter." He hung his head in mock-sorrow. "The fancies of a solitary man."
"Please tell us!" Renie was frightened he might disappear again, as he had done to them twice before. Despite his sarcasm, his discomfort at the situation was palpable—this was not a man who felt comfortable with others.
Kunohara closed his eyes; for a moment, he seemed to be talking to himself. "It is no good. A story-meme? Who would do such a thing. Who could do such a thing? You cannot infect a mechanism with words."
"What are you talking about?" Renie reached to touch his arm, but !Xabbu's warning squeeze stayed her. "What's a . . . a story-mean?"
"Meme. M-E-M-E." He opened his eyes. His expression had grown tight and angrily mirthful. "Do you wish to go to Troy?"
"What?" Renie looked around the little company. T4b was cradling Emily, who was still only half-conscious. Factum Quintus was across the chilly room, apparently oblivious to their conversation as he inspected the frame of one of the broken windows. Only Florimel and !Xabbu were paying close attention.
"You heard me—or you heard the Lady of the Windows. You have been invited, or commanded, or implored. Are you going? I can open a gateway for you."
Renie slowly shook her head. "We can't—not yet. Our friend has been kidnapped. Will you help us get her back?"
"No." Kunohara now seemed distant, glacial, but the half-smile remained. "I have spent too much time here as it is—intervened, broken my own rules. You have your part in this story, but I do not. None of it concerns me."
"But why won't you just help us?" Renie said. "All you give us are these irritating riddles, like something out of a . . . a story."
"Look," said Kunohara, ignoring her troubled expression, "I have done more than I should. Do you want honesty from me? Very well—I will be honest. You have set yourself up against the most powerful people in the world. Worse than that, you have invaded their own network, where they are more than people—they are gods!"
"But you're a god, too. You said so,"
Kunohara made a scornful noise. "A very small god, and with very little power outside my own fiefdom. Now be quiet and I will tell you the honest truth. You have set yourself an impossible task. That is your business. Somehow you have stayed alive so far, and that is interesting, but it is nothing to do me with me. Now you ask me to intervene—to join you, as though I were some friendly spirit standing by the path in a children's tale. But you are not going to succeed. The Brotherhood may destroy themselves someday with their own cleverness, but that will have nothing to do with you. Instead they are going to capture you, either here or in the real world, and when they do, they are going to torture you before they kill you."
He swiveled from one member of the company to another, swaying a little, but making eye contact with each of them, some for the first time. "When it happens, you will tell them anything they want to know. Should I give you information from the privacy of my own mind so that you can give it to them? Should I provide you a tale of how I helped you work against their interests, so that you may tell it to them between screams?" He shook his head, staring down at his own hands; it was hard to tell who was the target of his disgust, Renie and her companions or himself. "I told you—I am a small man. I want nothing to do with your imaginary heroism. The Brotherhood are far, far too strong for me, and I exist here and enjoy my freedom of the network only because I am not an impediment. You think I speak in riddles just to torment you? In my way, I have tried to help. But should I lay down everything I have for you, including my own small life? I think not."
"But we don't even understand those things you told us. . . ." Renie began. An instant later she was talking to nothing but cold air. Kunohara had vanished.
"You're safe," Renie told Emily. She felt the girl's forehead and checked her pulse, knowing as she did so that it was a pointless exercise with what was at best a virtual body, and which might not even belong to an actual human being. How could you tell if code was seriously ill, anyway? And what if the code claimed to be pregnant? The whole thing was crazy. "Yo
u're safe," she said again. "Those people are gone."
With FIorimel's help she got Emily into a sitting position. T4b hovered nearby making attempts at assistance that wound up interfering more than helping.
"Say my name," the girl requested. Her eyes were still almost shut; she sounded like someone half-dreaming. "Did you say it? I can't remember."
"You are. . . ." Florimel began, but Renie, remembering what the girl had said before, grabbed Florimel's arm and squeezed, shaking her head.
"What do you think your name is?" Renie asked instead. "Quick, tell me your name."
"It is . . . I think it is. . . ." Emily fell silent for a moment. "Why are the children gone?"
"Children?" T4b sounded frightened. "Those raggedy ma'lockers, they hit her? She funny?"
"What children?" Renie asked.
Emily's eyes flicked open, scanning the room. "There aren't any here, are there? For a moment I thought there were. I thought the room was full of them, and they were making lots of noise . . . and then they just . . . stopped."
"What's your name?" Renie asked again.
The girl's eyes narrowed as though she feared a trick. "Emily, isn't it? Why are you asking me that?"
Renie sighed. "Never mind." She sat back, letting Florimel finish checking the girl for any sign of damage. "So here we are."
Florimel looked up from her ministrations. "We have much to talk about. Many questions to try to answer."
"But finding Martine still comes first." Renie turned to the monk, who was inspecting the statue of the Mother with rapt fascination. "Factum Quintus, do you know how to get to that other place from here? The one you said we'd check second?"
"The Spire Forest?" He was bending at the waist, a gaunt shape like a drinking-bird toy, his nose only inches from the glass-shard face of the Mother. "I suppose so, if I can find the main Attic throughway. Yes, that would be best. We can't be more than a few hundred paces away in a straight line, but we will have to find a route, and the Attic is a bit of a maze." He turned to face her, his expression suddenly intent. "Hmmm, yes. Speaking of mazes. . . ."
