Mountain of Black Glass

by Tad Williams

  "They're not going to turn back tomorrow, are they?" T4b said slowly. "That guy Hector, he's screamin' for it, seen? He's one of those tchi seen six-knockers—you have to kill him to stop him. And he's bulk scorching now, 'cuz he got hit with that rock and they had to carry him off in front of everybody." He seemed to be thinking deeply, working something out in his mind. "So there's like possibility major we're all going to get sixed, huh?"

  Renie could think of nothing to say—she knew that in the same situation she would not want to hear anything but the truth. "It will be at least as bad as today. And we were lucky."

  "Then I want to tell you something. Tell both of you." He paused again. "It's been bothering me, seen?—but if I'm gonna get boxed. . . ."

  "Renie." It was !Xabbu, an odd, quiet urgency in his voice, but Renie could feel T4b working up to something.

  "Wait."

  "Renie," he said again, "there is someone in our fire."

  It took a moment for what he said to sink in. She turned abruptly to stare at !Xabbu, then followed his gaze to the low flames. She could not see anything like a person, or any shape at all, but the fire did seem to have some new quality—or rather it had lost some quality that had been present before, as though it had been simplified somehow, its flames made less chaotic or its colors reduced.

  "I don't see anything." She glanced at T4b, who was staring intently at the fire, too, arrested on the verge of some painful admission.

  "It is . . . I think it is. . . ." !Xabbu squinted, leaning closer, so that his cheeks and forehead were brushed with motile golden light. "A face."

  Before Renie could ask the obvious question, a female voice spoke in her ear, almost inside her head—distant but crisp, like a bell made to ring with the sound of a human throat.

  "Someone is coming to you. Do not be afraid."

  The others heard it too—T4b grabbed his spear and struggled to his feet, looking around wildly. The fire was once more only a fire, but something was moving now at the edge of the circle of firelight. As if summoned by the mysterious voice, a figure walked toward them out of the darkness. For a moment the robe and hooded face made Renie wonder whether in this created world, Death had been given a traditional form after all.

  "Stop," she hissed, some instinct keeping her voice low. The shape did as she commanded, then slowly lifted and spread its hands, showing that it bore no weapons. The hood was nothing more than a fold in a thick wool cloak, which had been wrapped across the stranger's shoulders and pinned across the chest. Bright eyes looked at her out of the shadowy depths. "Who are you?" she hissed.

  T4b took an aggressive step forward, spear thrusting toward the hidden face.

  "Don't!" said Renie sharply. The stranger had taken a step away. Now, as T4b halted, the stranger threw back the hood to reveal an unfamiliar bearded face. "I asked you before," Renie said. "You are running out of chances. Who are you?"

  The stranger looked slowly from Renie to her two companions, then back. There was something strange in his hesitation—Renie felt sure that anyone caught and challenged while wandering around a military encampment at night would claim to belong there, truthfully or not.

  "I . . . I was led here," the stranger said at last. "By a floating thing. A shape, a light. I . . . I thought I recognized it." He peered at them. "Did you see it?"

  Renie thought of the fire, but kept her mouth shut. "Who are you?"

  The stranger put his hands down at his side. "What's more important is who I'm looking for." He seemed to be taking a step he feared he could not retrace. "This may seem a strange question. Do . . . do you by any chance know someone named Renie?"

  T4b drew in his breath sharply and began to say something, but Renie waved a hand at him. Her own heart was hammering, but she kept her voice as calm as she could. "We might. Why do you. . . ."

  She was interrupted by T4b, whose excitement had overcome him. "Is that you, Orlando?"

  The stranger looked at him sharply, then smiled a weary, relieved smile. "No. But I know him—I have talked to him only a few hours ago. My name is Paul Jonas."

  "Jesus Mercy! Jonas!" Renie reached out almost unconsciously for !Xabbu's hand and squeezed it, then pointed a trembling finger at a space beside the fire. "You'd better sit down. Somehow . . . somehow I thought you'd be taller."

  Renie found herself watching the newcomer closely, not so much out of suspicion—although her time in the network did not encourage her to trust anything or anyone—but more in curiosity at a man who had survived so much. The strangest thing was that Jonas' description of himself seemed exactly true: he was nobody special, an average and unremarkable man caught up in things he did not understand. Still, he was clearly not a fool. He asked intelligent questions, and thought carefully before replying to those Renie and the others asked him in turn. He had also paid attention to the things he had encountered along the way, and had struggled to understand the nature of the experience. Most unusual of all, in the midst of his terrible trials he had retained a dry, self-mocking sense of humor.

  "You really are Odysseus," she said aloud at one point.

  He looked up, startled. "What do you mean?"

  "Just. . . ." She was embarrassed she had spoken the thought aloud. "Just what you've been through. Lost and trying to find your way home through strange lands, persecuted by the powers-that-be. . . ." She waved her hand, encompassing not just the battlefield but the whole of the network. "It's like you've become the character who's the most like you."

  His smile was a weary one. "I suppose so. I've become a survivor, is what's happened. Wouldn't read too well on a CV, but it speaks volumes in these parts."

  "I wonder, though. . . ." Renie looked to !Xabbu. "Things like that, it's like what Kunohara said—as if we were in a story. But what does that mean? That we don't have free will or something?"

  !Xabbu shrugged. "There are other possible meanings. We could be participants, but someone else could be trying to give things a certain shape. There are many ways to understand the workings of the world—any world." He gave Renie a shrewd glance. "Did we not have this discussion before, you and I? About the differences, if any, between science and religion?"

  "But it doesn't make sense—who would be shaping a story, and how?" Renie did not want to rise to !Xabbu's bait: for all her happiness at learning that Orlando and Fredericks still lived, the larger truth was that Jonas did not bring any obviously useful answers. Before this moment, she had thought that if they ever found Sellars' escaped prisoner, he would be like a spy in some old-fashioned drama, full of hard-earned secrets. The information Jonas possessed was indeed hard-earned, but none of it shed any light on the most crucial questions. "The only candidates to be messing around with our lives that way are the Grail people themselves. Or perhaps this mystery woman." She turned back to Jonas. "I heard her voice, just before you arrived, telling us not to be afraid. It was the same woman who appeared to us as the Lady of the Windows, I swear it was."

  Jonas nodded. "Yes, she led me to you. Orlando and his friend have seen her, too—Orlando seems to have had almost as much contact with her as I have, in fact. I'm certain that she's important—that she's more than just one of the fairground attractions, if you see my meaning. I've felt since the first that she means something to me, but what that might be, I still can't get to."

  "Means something? You mean, like you knew her before?" Renie thought back, but the apparition they had seen in the House had been as tenuous as the end of a dream. "Can't you think of anywhere you might have known her in your life? Lover, friend . . . sister, daughter. . . ?"

  Jonas hesitated. "Something was there for a moment, when you said that, but it's gone now." He sighed. "We need to talk all together, perhaps. Is this all that remains of your group? Orlando seemed to suggest there were many more than this."

  "No, we've left three people inside Troy." Renie shook her head in frustration. "We were told 'Priam's Walls,' but we had no idea where or why, so we split up."

 
"Got no clock for this," T4b said suddenly. He had been listening with surprising attention, but now it seemed his youthful patience was growing thin. "Let's just get on and bust Fredericks and Orlando out of that camp and fly back to Troy Town."

  !Xabbu nodded. "T4b is right. The clash will begin again at dawn, and look. . . ."—he pointed to the eastern sky—"the Morning Star is on his way back from his hunt across the night. At any moment now, he will be kicking up red dust along the horizon."

  "True—we can't just be sitting here when the hostilities start." Renie turned to Jonas, but the newcomer was looking at !Xabbu.

  "You have a poetic way with words, friend," he said. "Are you sure you're a real person? You'd fit in well with the Greeks."

  !Xabbu smiled. "Renie taught me it is impolite to question whether someone is real, but I am fairly certain I am not just code."

  "He's a Bushman," Renie said. "Originally from the Okavango Delta. Did I say that right, !Xabbu?"

  Jonas raised his eyebrows. "You're a fascinating group, there's no question. I can see we could spend days telling stories, but we'd better get into the Greek camp before dawn." He frowned, thinking. "I don't think they'd take too kindly to me bringing home some Trojan friends for breakfast, so perhaps you'd better be my prisoners." He stood up. "Let's bundle up your weapons so that I can carry them, then I can walk behind you with a spear and make it look good." He saw the glowering expression on the youngest of their company and smiled sourly. "You're going to have to trust me . . . what was your name again, sorry? T2v? There's just no other way."

  "T4b, but you can call him Javier," said Renie, giving the teenager a stern look. "It's easier to remember."

  T4b glared back at her, but having his true name revealed had taken some of his starch out, and he meekly handed his spear over to Jonas.

  They had only gone a hundred paces before T4b stopped in midstep and jumped back, swearing. "Shit!" he said. "Give me that sticker back!"

  "What are you talking about?" Renie snapped. "We explained. . . ."

  "It's a locking big snake!" T4b said, pointing. "Right there!"

  Renie and !Xabbu could see nothing.

  "I ain't dupping!"

  Paul Jonas stepped up beside the quivering teenager. "Ask it what it wants."

  "Can you see it?" Renie asked.

  "No, but I think I know what it is," Jonas replied. "I had one earlier—it was a quail."

  T4b turned back to them, more shaken than before. "Did you hear that? It talked to me!"

  "It's part of the system," Paul said. "I think everyone gets one—certainly all the important characters do, I suppose so they can get the details right. Orlando had one, too." He turned to T4b. "What did it say?"

  "Told me I was heading for the Greek camp, seen? Which was, like, a bad idea—but that if they captured me, I should ask for some Greek guy named Die-Tommy-Tees or something, because he knows my family."

  "Diomedes—he's one of the likely lads on the Greek side." Paul inclined his head. "Well, your snake could have been more useful, but at least it sounds like you're important enough that I might be able to get some ransom for you."

  It took T4b a long, distrustful moment before he realized the man was joking. "Oh, chizz, man," he growled. "Wild funny, you."

  The eastern sky had lost a few layers of black when they reached the gate. The soldiers standing watch there recognized Odysseus and were excited to see he had brought back Trojan prisoners. The high flames of the watch fire also revealed something that Renie and her companions had completely forgotten.

  "By the Thunderer!" One of the soldiers gaped at T4b. "Look at his armor—all of gold!"

  "Odysseus has captured a hero!" one of the others said, then turned and shouted to a nearby group of soldiers, just stirring awake, "Crafty Odysseus has captured Glaucus of Lycia! The man with the golden armor!"

  Much to Renie's distress, they were quickly surrounded by a cheering throng of soldiers and camp followers. The mob shoved them toward Agamemnon's headquarters, intent on sharing the good news.

  Paul Jonas leaned close to her as people clapped him on the back and congratulated his daring. "We can't afford this. The bird-woman, the angel . . . she said time was running out."

  "Don't look at me!" Renie hissed in frustration. "You're supposed to be the smartest man in Greece—think of something!"

  Roused by the noise, Agamemnon came out of his cabin. Half-buckled into his armor and with his plaited hair disarranged, the big man looked like a bear jostled from hibernation. "Ah, godlike Odysseus, you have indeed performed a feat for the ages," the high king said with a hard grin. "Sarpedon's heart will be heavy in his breast when he discovers we have his kinsman alive. Even courageous Hector will wonder if the gods still favor his cause."

  "We haven't much time," Jonas said. "I have questioned these Trojans, and they say the attack will come with dawn." He looked to Renie and !Xabbu. who nodded—even their few sparse exchanges with other Trojans after the battle had made that clear. "This time Hector and the others intend to drive us all the way into the sea."

  Agamemnon held out an arm so one of his men could tie an ornate bronze guard onto his forearm. "I guessed as much. We will all be ready, though—you, noble Odysseus, and my brother Menelaus, and mighty Ajax, and Diomedes, master of the war cry. The Trojans will find out what kind of men are born in the Greek isles, and much Trojan blood will stain their own earth."

  Renie was almost ready to scream with impatience as Agamemnon summoned them all back into his cabin so he could finish dressing. Despite Jonas' assurances that the prisoners had surrendered and no such precautions were necessary, she and her two companions found themselves surrounded by helmeted spearmen, all of whom wore expressions of frightened anger that made her even more nervous than Agamemnon's pragmatic nastiness.

  "There might be more these enemies have held back," said the high king. "We will prick them a bit and let out some blood, and thus discover whether they have told all they know."

  "Please," Jonas said, fighting to keep desperation from his voice. "I will work on them with more . . . subtle means. Leave them with me."

  Agamemnon had finished pouring ritual libations on the fire and was hesitating, clearly relishing the prospect of torturing a few Trojans, when there was a commotion outside and an old man came through the door, flapping his hands in the air.

  "The Trojans are at the walls!" he wailed. "Apollo's golden chariot has not risen above the hills, yet they are already slavering at our gate like wild dogs!"

  Agamemnon clapped his meaty hands together, calling for his high, plumed helmet. "We will go, then. Leave the prisoners to these guards, noble Odysseus—your Ithacans await you, and the fighting will be fierce."

  "Give me just a few moments more," Jonas begged him, "I suspect there is something these Trojans can tell me that might bring great Achilles out to fight—surely that's worth the time?"

  The high king cocked his head. His plumes waggled like a peacock's tail. "Certainly, although I doubt anything you can do now will sway that stiff-necked man." He marched to the door, his retinue falling in behind him. Just as Renie was breathing a sigh of relief, he stopped and turned, a look of mistrust twisting his face. "Did you not swear to me, clever Odysseus, that Achilles could not fight because he was ill?"

  "I did," Jonas said, caught off guard. "Yes, I did. But . . . but perhaps it is a plague brought by the gods, and if they have turned in our favor, perhaps they have made him well again."

  Agamemnon stared at him for a moment, then nodded heavily. "Very well. But I cannot help remembering that you also were reluctant to join us, Odysseus. I hope that you have not become changeable again on this day of our great need."

  The door creaked closed behind him, but half-a-dozen armed soldiers still remained in the cabin, along with the rest of Agamemnon's household, several women and old men. The din of conflict was already loud outside, and Renie could almost feel the advantage of having found Paul Jonas sliding away from the
m like water down a drain.

  "Let's do something!" she whispered to him. He started, as though he had been daydreaming.

  "I just . . . something was on the tip of my tongue," he told her quietly. "From something you said earlier, about the woman. You said 'sister, daughter. . . .' and I almost heard a name." His eyes again became distant. "Avis? Could that be it?"

  "We know it is important, Mr. Jonas," !Xabbu said quietly, "but perhaps we could talk about it at some later time. . . ?"

  "Good God, of course." He turned to face the guards, who had been suspiciously watching their quiet conversation. "We must take these people to Achilles," he announced to them.

  One of the soldiers, a clean-shaven man with a scar across his broken nose, elected himself spokesman for the others. "The high king said you were to question them. . . ."

  "Yes, but he didn't say I had to do it here," Jonas declared. "Come with us if you like, but we must take them to Achilles. What they have to say could mean the difference in this war." His face hardened. "Where are you from?"

  The soldier looked startled, as though he expected Jonas to know. "Argos, noble Odysseus. But. . . ."

  "Do you want a chance to see it again? You saw what happened yesterday, didn't you? Without Achilles to help us, who will stop the Trojans?" The soldiers still hesitated; Renie saw Jonas make a decision. "The gods decree it! Are you calling me a liar? How do you think I captured mighty Glaucus and these others in the, first place? The gods sent me a dream!"

  This clearly shook the guards, and Jonas was not going to give them time for any lengthy theological pondering. He picked up the bundled weapons and prodded Renie, !Xabbu, and T4b toward the door. After an exchange of troubled glances, the soldiers fell in behind them and followed them out into the shouting and confusion of the Greek defense.

  They were scarcely a dozen paces away from Agamemnon's cabin when the huge gate of the encampment burst inward, swinging so wildly on its hinges that two men were killed just by the force of its collapse. Great Hector loomed in the opening, still holding the massive log with which he had smashed the bolt, and the Greeks stumbled back from him in superstitious terror. Just hours before Priam's son had been carried from the field; now he stood glowering before them, recovered from injuries that would have killed any normal man. A moment later his Trojans came pouring through the shattered gate like floodwater over a crumbling dam. slaughtering all before them. Desperate Greek defenders leaped down from the walls to try to halt their advance, and any semblance of order vanished. The fire of battle now raged in the center of the Greek camp.