Mountain of Black Glass

by Tad Williams

  "What is this place?" Paul asked sleepily.

  The smiling, dignified old headman of the village nodded slowly, as though Paul's question contained the very essence of wisdom. "The Island of Lotos," he said at last. "Treasured of the gods. Jewel of the seas. Welcomer of travelers."

  "Ah." Paul nodded, too. It was a lovely place. All those names were understatement, if anything. He and Azador had been fed a meal more sumptuous and delectable than even the nymph Calypso's ambrosia. "Lotos. Lovely name." And familiar, too, an exotic word that tickled his mind pleasantly but did not compel further consideration.

  Beside him, Azador nodded even more slowly. "Good food. Everything is very, very nice."

  Paul laughed. It was funny that Azador should say that, since there hadn't been any meat to eat at all, only bread and cheese and honey and berries and—oddly but somehow appropriately—the white flowers that shrouded the hillsides. But it was good to see the gypsy man enjoying himself, his usual dour expression gone, as though carried away by the warm breeze. Several of the local girls had already noticed Azador's dark good looks and now sat around him like the acolytes of a great teacher. Paul might have been jealous, but he had a fan club of his own only slightly smaller than the gypsy's, all watching his every move and hanging on his words as though they had never seen his like before, nor had even imagined such a paragon could exist. It was good, Paul decided. Yes, things were good.

  He was having trouble keeping track of time. He dimly remembered that the sun had vanished more than once, perhaps slipping behind clouds, but darkness had been as pleasurable as daylight and he had not minded. Now it was dark again. Somehow, when Paul had not noticed it, the sun had set. A fire had been lit in a ring of stones on the bare ground, even though the beautiful city was all around them, but that just made things feel more homely. Many of the Lotos people were still entertaining the newcomers, although others had finally wandered off, doubtless to their lovely, comfortable houses.

  Azador disentangled himself from the long limbs of a dark-haired, comely young woman and sat up. The woman protested sleepily and tried to pull him back down again, but Azador wore an intent expression.

  "Ionas," he said. "My friend, Ionas."

  Paul stared for a moment before he remembered it was the name he had given himself. He laughed—it was funny that Azador should call him that.

  Azador waved his hand, trying to concentrate despite the caressing hands of the woman. "Listen," he said. "You do not know it, but I am a very clever man."

  Paul had no idea what he meant, but it was pleasantly amusing to listen his friend's voice. The slightly halting English was exactly how an Azador should talk.

  "No, stop laughing," Azador said. "The Brotherhood, those bastards—I am the only person ever to escape from them."

  Puzzled, Paul tried to remember exactly who the Brotherhood was, but he felt so good that it seemed like a waste of time to think too hard. "You got away from someone . . . escaped. . . ?" he said at last. "Is that the woman? The one with the cigarette monkey and the lighter?" Something was wrong about that sentence, but he couldn't figure out what.

  "No, not the woman, she is nothing. Never fear, I will find her soon and take back what is mine." Azador waved his hand.

  "I am talking about the Brotherhood—the men who own this place, and all the others."

  "The Brotherhood." Paul nodded his head gravely. He remembered now, or thought he did. A person called Nandi had told him about them. Nandi . . . the Brotherhood . . . something about the subject nagged at him, but he gently pushed it away. The wide ivory moon sliding along the sky behind a thin net of clouds was so beautiful that for a moment Paul forgot to listen to what Azador was saying.

  ". . . They do not simply use the few children they have stolen," Azador was saying when the moon disappeared behind a thicker cloud bank and Paul's attention returned.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "The Grail people. The Brotherhood. It is strange to think about now. It seemed so important." Azador laid his hand on the dark-haired woman's brow. She pulled it to her mouth, kissed it, then gave up on persuasion and slid back down to sleep curled beside him. "They took the Romany first, of course."

  "The Romany. . . ."

  "Gypsies. My people."

  "Took them first for what?" It was nice to talk to Azador, Paul reflected, but it would be good to sleep, too.

  "For their machines—their live-forever machines." Azador smiled, but it was a little sad. "It is always the Romany, of course. No one likes us. I do not mean here. Here on this island, everyone is kind, but outside. . . ." He drifted for a moment, then made an effort to recover himself. Paul too tried to concentrate, although he was not sure why Azador's words were any more important than the night birds and the distant sound of the ocean. "In any case, they took our young ones. Some disappeared, some were taken, some . . . some the parents turned a blind eye, telling themselves that although they never heard from them anymore, the money from the companies meant that the children were alive and well and giving satisfaction with their work."

  "I don't understand."

  "They use the children, Ionas. This network, it is made with the brains of children. Thousands they have stolen, like my people, and thousands more they have crippled, who they control with their machines. And then there are the million never-born."

  "I still don't understand." He was almost angry with Azador for making him think. "What are you talking about?"

  "But they could not hold me—Azador escaped." The gypsy seemed almost not to remember Paul was there. "Two years I have been free in their system. At least I think it is that long—it was only when I had the lighter that I knew what time it was in the real world."

  "You escaped from . . . from the Brotherhood?" He was trying as hard as he could, but the scent of the night pressed down on his eyelids like a cool, gentle hand, urging him to sleep.

  "You would not understand." Azador's smile was kindly, forgiving. "You are a nice man, Ionas, but this is too deep for you. You cannot understand what it is to be sought by the Grail Brotherhood. You are trapped here, I know. It has happened to many others besides you. But you cannot imagine what it is like for Azador, who must travel without being discovered, always one step ahead of the bastards who own all this." He shook his head, moved by his own bravery. "But now I have found this place, where I am safe. Where I am . . . happy. . . ."

  Azador lapsed into silence. Paul, quite satisfied not to have to think anymore, let himself drift down into comfortable darkness.

  At some later point the sun was up, and Paul again took a meal with the island's handsome, friendly inhabitants, savoring the sweet blossoms and other wonderful dishes. The light on the island was oddly inconstant, sliding almost unnoticeably from bright day to darkness and back, but it was a small enough irritation when weighed against the deep satisfactions of the place.

  During one of the intervals of bright sunshine he found himself staring down at something that seemed inexplicably familiar, a piece of shimmering cloth bearing the emblem of a feather, a pretty thing that had fallen to the ground. Having admired it for a moment, he was about to walk away, following a group of singing voices—the islanders loved to sing, another of their many charming habits—but he could not quite bring himself to leave the cloth behind. He stared at it for what seemed a long time, although it became harder to see as the sun dipped behind a cloud again. A cool breeze sprang up and ruffled it. Paul leaned down and picked it up, then stumbled off again in pursuit of the singers, who were now far out of sight but not yet inaudible. Even the feeling of the soft, slippery weave was somehow familiar, but although it was clutched in his hand, he had already nearly forgotten it.

  He did not remember lying down to sleep, but he knew somehow that he was dreaming. He was back in the giant's sky-castle, in the high room full of dusty plants. Somewhere far above him he could hear the sound of birds murmuring in the treetops. The winged woman stood close, her hand on his arm. Leav
es and branches surrounded them, a bower of green, intimate as a confessional.

  The dark-eyed woman was not sad now, but joyful, full of a bright and almost feverish happiness.

  "Now you can't leave me," she said. "You can't ever leave me now."

  Paul did not know what she meant, but was afraid to say so. Before he could think of anything to say at all, a chill wind slid through the indoor forest. Paul knew without understanding how he knew it that someone else had entered the room. No, not just one. Two.

  "They're here!" she gasped, breathless with sudden alarm. "Butterball and Nickelplate. They're looking for you!"

  Paul could only remember that he feared them, but not who they were or why. He looked around, trying to decide which way to run, but the bird-woman clutched him harder. She seemed younger now, little more than a girl. "Don't move! They'll hear you!"

  They both stood frozen like mice in the shadow of an owl. The noises—leaves rustling, stems snapping—came from either side. Paul was filled with a deep, heart-thudding horror at the idea that the two searchers were closing on them like pinching fingers, that if they stayed a moment longer they would be trapped. He grabbed the woman by her arm, conscious despite his terror of the avian frailty of her bones, and pulled her deeper into the thick greenery, searching for another way out.

  For a moment he could hear nothing but the crunch of fallen branches and the whip and smack of leaves, but then a wordless cry was raised somewhere behind him and echoed by another. equally cold voice. An instant later he crashed through the last of the vegetation and against the hopeless obstacle of a blank white wall.

  Before he could turn back to the sheltering jungle a vast eye appeared in the wall, blinking slowly, red-rimmed and implacably cruel.

  "The Old Man!" the woman beside him howled, but her cry was swallowed by the deep rumble of a voice more inhuman than the roar of a jet engine.

  "BEHIND MY BACK!" It was so loud that Paul's eyes filled with helpless tears. Birds sprang into the air, squawking in terror, loose feathers sifting down like multicolored snow. The winged woman fell to the ground as though she had been shot. "BUT I SEE YOU!" the voice bellowed, and the eye widened until it seemed bigger than the room. "I SEE EVERYTHING. . . !"

  The floor shook with the voice's power. Staggering to stay upright, Paul leaned down to pull the woman to her feet, but when she turned, her look of panic was gone, replaced by one of stern intensity.

  "Paul," she said. "You must listen to me."

  "Run! We have to run!"

  "I do not think I can come to you again in this world." Even as she spoke, the huge, dusty garden grew faint. The roar of the Old Man's voice faded to a wordless rush of sound. "It pains me to be in a place where I have a reflection. It pains me terribly and makes me weak. You must listen."

  "What are you talking about. . . ?" He remembered now that he was dreaming, but he still could not understand what was happening. Where was the horrible Eye? Was this another dream?

  "You are trapped, Paul. The place you now are—it will kill you, as surely as would any of your enemies. You are surrounded by . . . by distortion. I can hold it back, but only for a little while, and it will take most of my strength. Take the other one with you—the other orphan. I may not be able to come to you again, with or without the feather."

  "I don't understand. . . ."

  "I can only hold it back for a little while. Go!"

  Paul grabbed at her, but now she was fading, too, not into darkness but into a dull half-light, Paul blinked, but the ugly gray light did not disappear, was not replaced by anything better.

  He pushed himself up onto his elbows. All around him lay the dreariest view imaginable, nothing but mud and stunted leafless trees, made even more depressing by the pale dawn light. Things that at first he took to be more excrescenses of the muddy earth slowly revealed themselves to be pathetic shelters made of sticks and stones and lopsided bricks. More disturbing still were the scrawny human figures, tangle-haired and toothless, seated like nodding beggars or lying in the mud, limbs slowly moving as though they swam through the deepest and thickest of dreams. Everything was muck and misery—even the clouds smearing the gray sky were thick and damp as mucus.

  Paul clambered to his feet, knees trembling. It was hard to hold up his own weight—how long since he had stood? Where was he?

  Distortion, the bird-woman had said. The meaning came slowly, horribly.

  I've been . . . here all along? Sleeping here? Eating here?

  For a moment he thought he would be sick. He choked back the burning liquid that had risen in his throat and began to stagger blindly downhill, searching for the sea. She had told him to take the other with him—what had she said? The other orphan? She must mean Azador, but where was he? Paul could hardly stand to look at the mewling, whispering human shapes that lolled among the crude shelters. And he had thought them beautiful. How could such a madness happen?

  Lotus-Eaters. It floated to the surface of his memory and popped, like a bubble. The flowers. I should have realized. . . !

  But even as he slid through the muddy wreck of a village the wind changed direction and the scent of the white blossoms came down the hillside. The breeze that carried their sweet, pungent odor was warm—everything was growing warmer. The sun appeared, and the clouds instantly evaporated above him, revealing the great seamless blue sky beyond.

  Paul stopped, arrested by the bright, whitewashed stone of the village, the orderly paths and walled gardens, the bright-eyed people gathered in the shadows of the olive grove, sharing talk and song. Had it simply been a nightmare, then—the decay, the mud?

  There was no other answer, surely. The heady, perfumed air from the meadows had simply woken him to the truth again. It was impossible to see such beauty surrounding him again and regret the loss of such a dreadful vision, even as its last cold strands still troubled his thoughts.

  Azador, he thought. I was looking for Azador. But surely I can find him later at the evening meal, or even tomorrow. . . .

  Paul realized he was clutching something in his hand. He stared at the veil, once pristine, now so spattered and smeared with gray mud that the embroidered feather was almost hidden. He suddenly heard the woman's voice again as clearly as if she stood at his shoulder.

  "I can hold it back, but only for a little while, and it will take most of my strength. . . ."

  He did not want to lose the safety of the stately village and the warm sun, but he could not forget her voice—how apprehension had made her words harsh and jagged. She had been pleading . . . begging him to think, to see. The muddied feather was in the palm of his hand, the fabric creased where he had clutched it.

  The sky began to darken, the village to dissolve back into ruination, as though some evolutionary wheel had been sped forward to the end of time or back to the pathetic precursors of civilization. Paul pulled the veil tight against his chest, terrified that the magic of false beauty would overcome him again, leaving him trapped and blind forever, a prisoner of the mire.

  "Azador!" he screamed, struggling to keep his footing on the foul, muddy hillside. "Azador!"

  He found his companion in a tangle of bodies, the wet, naked forms intertwined like mating snails. He leaned down and grabbed the gypsy by a slippery arm and dragged him loose from the pile. As thin, bruised arms reached up to pull them both back down, Paul gave a shout of disgust and kicked at the nearest muddy figure. The arms all jerked in unison, like the polyps of a startled anemone.

  At first Azador hardly seemed to understand, and allowed himself to be propelled down the hill toward the beach and their raft, but as Paul coaxed the raft out past the first set of breakers and the scent of the lotos-flowers grew less, the other man tried to fling himself into the surf and swim back to shore. Paul grabbed him and held on. Only the fact that Azador was still in the grip of the flower-spell, frail and trembling, allowed Paul to withstand the man's increasingly manic struggles.

  At last, as the island dropped out of
sight below the horizon and the winds washed the air clean of anything but sea tang, Azador stopped fighting. He dragged himself away from Paul and lay sprawled on the deck of the raft, dry-eyed but sobbing, as though his heart had been yanked from his body.

  CHAPTER 19

  A Life Between Heartbeats

  NETFEED/ART: Thank God She's Not Pregnant Again

  (Review for Entre News of staging by Djanga Djanes Dance Creation)

  VO: ". . . Those who suffered as I did through the entirety of the occasionally fascinating but generally excruciating spectacle of Djanes' pregnancy and delivery, including the unintentionally hilarious final moments, with choreographed doctors and technicians slipping in blood and fecal matter, will be pleased to know that although her subject matter is still unabashedly self-absorbed, Djanes will be giving us a little more of the terpsichorean and a little less of the cloacal in her new piece titled, 'So I waited in front of the restaurant for about three hours, Carlo Gunzwasser, you pathetic little man'. . . ."

  Orlando was so tired he could barely stand. One arm dangled at his side, almost broken by a blow from a tortoise-man's club. Except for the rumbling, growling breath of the sphinx fighting for its life, the shadowy temple was almost silent: the few survivors of the siege were whimpering in dark corners or hiding behind statues, but to little avail. The air was nearly empty of flying creatures now, but only because most of them had settled down to feed—the temple floor was dotted with writhing piles of bats and serpents clumped in the rough shapes of human beings.

  But dying sphinxes and winged serpents were the least of Orlando's problems.

  The larger of the two grotesqueries before him was dangling his unconscious friend Fredericks like a gutted fish. Mewat's snaggle-toothed smile showed how much the bloated cobra-man was enjoying himself, reveling in the power he and eyeless Tefy wielded. Despite all the fearful things Orlando had seen and survived, these two filled him with a terror he could barely resist, a chest-squeezing panic that made his heart stumble. He dredged up what felt like his final reserves of strength and lifted his sword, hoping that in the guttering torchlight his enemies could not see how it trembled. "Let her go," he said. "Just let me take her away. We don't have any argument with you."