The Company of Glass

by Tricia Sullivan

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. Only children can have Impressions, and they can’t control them.’

  ‘I’m old, Mhani, not stupid.’

  She threw herself forward but the corridor continued to lengthen.

  ‘Mhani, if we don’t find the White Road, all you have worked for will fall into disfavour and be abandoned. Hear my words.’

  She had no choice but to hear his words; she couldn’t get to the door. Furious, she turned, nearly in tears. ‘I hear you,’ she shrieked at his figure, now reduced in the distance. ‘You wretched old man, I hear you. Now let me go.’

  Two steps brought her abruptly to the door, which opened on the stairway to the Eye Tower. As she passed through she heard him call after her, ‘The White Road, Mhani. It can’t be far. These damn mice are coming from somewhere!’

  She picked up her skirts as another couple of mice hurried by and disappeared in a crack between risers. Near the top of the stairs there was a hidden door that led to a small chamber that Mhani had appropriated for her personal use, and she sought out its refuge now. She closed the secret door behind herself, jammed knuckles against her eyes to prevent herself from crying, and at last sank on to the couch. She sat there for half a minute or so before leaping up, pouring water into a basin, and splashing it over her face, slapping herself in the process.

  She was already so full of sita she felt sick. She hadn’t slept in days, trying to find Ajiko’s cursed army. She ought to keep moving if she was to stay awake, but her joints ached. She pivoted slowly on one foot, taking in the small room, which she kept sparsely furnished just as she kept her mind free of clutter – as she had been taught. Now she felt cornered. She didn’t want the damned Impressions. She wasn’t some child freak, at the mercy of fits and seizures: she was a Scholar – a Seer, no less, and she was meant to be in command of herself. What Hanji was suggesting was repellent. She had spent all her life mastering herself even as she mastered the Eyes. To deliberately seek out the Impressions, and to use the Eyes to facilitate their possession of her … no, she couldn’t do it. Hanji didn’t understand.

  When she was a child, the Impressions had come unbidden; her family had amassed a small fortune on the strength of her inventions before the Clan elders had objected to the way she swooned and spoke in tongues and fashioned miniature aircraft out of paper and wire. ‘She’s a spooky thing,’ they told her parents. ‘Send her to that Taretel the wizard.’ Her parents, unwilling to suffer the loss of income that Mhani’s departure would cause, instead sent her to a local Scholar called Palavi, who showed her how to manage the flow of her mind just as the Everien farmers had managed their rivers. Palavi set her to doing research on ancient Everien, telling her the discipline would keep back the Impressions, which would cease to trouble her once she had passed puberty.

  He had been proven correct, and Mhani had become engrossed in scholarship. It was not until the Water of Glass united the Eyes of Everien that Mhani’s sensitivity to the Impressions had been roused from its slumber. Through her use of Tarquin’s Artifact she had come to Know things she could not know. She had Seen the distant past, or so she believed. She had Seen it and also felt it, so that she was able to put an interpretation on the visions offered by the Eyes where other Seers could not. Her facility with the Eyes had been the making of Mhani, but in truth she did not have the technical skill even of young Xiriel. What she had was a kind of knack of drawing Impressions through the Eyes and into her body. She hadn’t asked for it and she didn’t want it – the ability represented a dangerous lack of control. She fought to repress the talent. Daily she groomed her mind for the use of the Eyes, for it had to be kept immaculate and free of foolish influences. A strong mind, a logical mind, was required to use the Eyes in tandem, for they were only as good as the human eyes that interpreted them.

  That was why she told no one she had retained vestiges of Impressionism. She had worked too hard for her status as keeper of the Water of Glass and the Eyes to risk controversy over her mental soundness. Mhani might be soft of body and voice, and she might live high in the protective stronghold of the Citadel, but she was the ultimate defender of Everien.

  This was what had her so worried. Ajiko’s troops had dropped from her sight. Pharice, Tarquin claimed, was invading – but she had seen nothing but a woman on a horse. If Tarquin was right, then she had failed to detect the enemy. Uncertainty now gnawed at her. Could she trust the Eyes? Could she trust herself? The very fabric of Jai Khalar was coming apart and reknitting, despite the best efforts of Hanji to keep track of all its parts; and now the seneschal himself seemed able to read her mind if he knew she could still do Impressions. He was advising her to use the talent that would destroy the very mental composure that enabled her to wield the Eyes at all. Opening herself to the Impressions could very well be her downfall as a Seer.

  How the hell did Hanji perceive these things, anyway? And if he knew so much, why didn’t he do something?

  Suddenly she stopped pacing. ‘Stop analysing,’ she said to herself. ‘Just do what you know you’re going to do in the end.’

  She opened the secret door and dragged herself up the last steps to the Eye Tower.

  The Seers Devri and Soren were there. She dismissed Soren immediately and turned to Devri, whom she judged to be the more talented of the two. A contemporary of Xiriel’s, he had practically been brought up in the Eye Tower and was conversant with the workings of all of the various monitor Eyes, major Eyes, and Carry Eyes throughout Everien. He had just started his watch period a few hours ago, but he did not seem surprised to see her here now.

  ‘Any progress?’ she asked, walking past him and glancing into the water. A collage of images coloured its surface, and she took them in automatically, listening to Devri with a fraction of her attention.

  ‘No White Road. And nothing new from Wolf Country. I’ve scanned all the villages that are still inhabited there, but it’s quiet. There was one odd thing, though.’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘It’s that H’ah’vah tunnel on the heights in the south-west corner of Wolf Country. Have you noticed it?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’ She was checking the Eye that showed the plains of Ristale again, but the land was as empty as it had been yesterday. Tarquin had to be mad to have seen an army there.

  ‘It’s just that H’ah’vah don’t usually descend into human-occupied territories, and yet this tunnel entrance is several weeks old, which means it was dug before all those villagers were evacuated by Ajiko’s order. I wonder whether some of his men might have not got into trouble with the H’ah’vah, or if they even could be hiding in those tunnels. That would explain why we can’t See them.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Mhani said. ‘Do me a favour, though. Don’t mention your hypothesis to Ajiko until I’ve had a chance to look into it. H’ah’vah are quite dangerous, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes,’ Devri said. ‘They kill people like we kill flies. That’s why I was concerned. If the Sekk—’

  ‘I take your point,’ Mhani said firmly, and ushered him out the door. ‘I’ll take over from here.’

  ‘I’ll be downstairs,’ he said as he went. ‘Call me if you need me.’

  She scrubbed her hands over her face. She looked around the tower, swung her arms, paced. She thought of a thousand things she would rather be doing than this. Then she knelt by the pool and gazed at the Water of Glass.

  ‘Show me the White Road. Please. Where is the White Road?’ Mhani moved her lips without making a sound; composed her mind, preparing to enter the Liminal.

  The White Road was a particular kind of ordering within the Liminal, which people pretended was a place so as to feel less baffled by it. She thought of it as the place between places, the intersection of planes in the mystical geomancy of Everien logic. It was where the rooms and windows went when they couldn’t be found; it was the repository of the missing pieces; it was the lost time on the clocks that ran backwards. It was an inferred reality, untouchable, u
nmeasurable. Like sleep, without location; like fire, without substance.

  And yet she could go there. If she let the Impressions take her while she was using the Water of Glass, she could tread the high wire of paradox. All it took was nerve and concentration – and a subtle kind of surrender. For the Liminal felt like a hand gripping her, swinging and shaking her mind for its own purposes, just as a warrior swings a sword. The sword she had ordered forged for Chyko had been her way of expressing herself to him, for she knew how the sword felt. When she was in the Liminal, Mhani was the sword held by something unseen. Her mind, polished to a dazzle with daily practice, was a tool. It was a weapon. She did not know who or what was her user.

  That was why she was afraid.

  Leap of Faith

  ‘Xiriel, I swear you have bat’s blood in you,’ Pallo whispered into the darkness as he groped nervously around a sharp curve in the passage. He caught his breath when his foot swung out over nothingness before finding purchase on a ledge to the right. He tightened his grip on the Seer’s cloak and scrambled after him. ‘How do you know where you’re going?’

  ‘Practice,’ replied Xiriel, halting. Pallo walked into his back. ‘This part of the Citadel tolerates no light. We learn to navigate by memory, and by feeling the air currents. Stop breathing on me.’

  Pallo could be heard shifting his weight from foot to foot.

  ‘We must be deep within the caves in the cliff side.’

  ‘No. We are a hundred feet above the gate to the first level, suspended over the fields. I’m looking for one of the alternate exits. We don’t want to get mixed up with the king’s party.’

  Istar said, ‘Whatever you do, make sure you take us to the upper reaches of the cliffs. I don’t want to set foot in the valley if I can help it.’

  She’d not slept that night and her metabolism ought to be at a low ebb, but she’d nevertheless broken out in a nervous sweat. Tarquin’s words about Queen Ysse cutting her opponents to pieces had not entirely overcome Istar’s natural caution. If she defied Lerien, she must do it with absolute swiftness and secrecy. Yet already they had spent two hours wending among the circuitry of Jai Khalar’s inner workings. They had walked under arches of coloured metal that sang out resonances when they passed; between the walls of shafts so deep their lines curved and converged into a distance filled with unknown light; through lattices of gems that stung their fingers when touched. The sound of rushing water followed them and went silent again. At whiles they could see the moon through some high window, but it was never the same moon twice. Now night was turning towards dawn; in summer, fewer than four hours of weak darkness blotted the sky above Everien, and three of these were now gone.

  ‘Faster,’ she said.

  ‘Could the Everiens not have drawn some maps?’ Pallo asked plaintively. ‘I can’t tell up from down any more.’

  Kassien reached past Istar; she felt him shove Pallo.

  ‘That way is down,’ he said. Istar almost tripped over the fallen archer.

  ‘Kassien, will you behave?’ she said. She hoped he didn’t intend to prove to her that bringing Pallo was a mistake. Pallo had enough problems without having to cope with Kassien’s sense of humour.

  ‘Here we are,’ Xiriel announced and opened a door, blasting the others with grey light and wind. ‘Now, if you’ll come to the edge and look out, you’ll see that we’re standing on the very seam between the Citadel and the mountain. At the moment this particular exit leads out into thin air. We’re high up, just as you wanted, Istar. So, if you lot can make a good clean jump, we’ll be on our way.’

  ‘Jump?’

  Xiriel stood aside and the others saw the wind-sculpted cliff face that would be white in sunlight, but was now shadowed with rose and blue in the grainy light of morning. The only possible purchase was a long ledge a couple of yards below, which ran around the curve of the cliff and led, in a vague and not particularly convincing way, to a series of almost invisible handholds probably carved by falling water. To hit the ledge would require a long jump of some twelve feet in addition to the drop itself. It could be done; but the fact that there were no more ledges between this one and the cliff base several hundred feet below did not bolster anybody’s confidence. Pallo, in fact, had begun to chuckle nervously. He kept looking down, and laughing – and looking away, and looking down again, and laughing … Finally, Kassien shoved him back into the passage and addressed Istar.

  ‘We should throw our packs first,’ he said. ‘They’ll only slow us down and upset our balance in the air.’

  She nodded and shrugged out of her pack. Standing on the edge of the doorway, she hefted it, bracing herself against the wind’s buffeting. It would be impossible to grow up in Jai Khalar afraid of heights; still, she did not want to do this jump.

  She threw the pack; they could all see the wind catch and drag it in the wrong direction. It bounced once on the outcropping and tumbled almost to the edge. Pallo started giggling again.

  ‘All right,’ Istar said. ‘Everybody get out of the way.’

  ‘No.’ Kassien blocked her. ‘It’s not going to be easy in this wind. I’ll do it. If I can make it to the ledge and drive in a piton, I can throw you a rope. Then, if any of you miss the ledge, you’ll be stopped.’

  ‘I said get out of the way.’

  Pallo sneered. ‘Who died and made you—’

  ‘Fine,’ Kassien said coolly, standing back. ‘Let her do it. Go on, Istar.’

  Her insides froze; but she had got herself into this. She ground her teeth, balled her fists, and charged. She was still kicking when she reached the farthest point of her flight and began to drop, smashing face-first into the cliff and slithering down. Her feet hit the ledge so hard her knees went out from under her. She got up, exhilarated, only to be caught by the wind, which nearly threw her over the edge.

  Clinging to the rock, she regained her footing and turned around more judiciously this time. She couldn’t see the Citadel. There was only the valley below, as though she had fallen from the sky itself.

  But she could hear Pallo cheering.

  She got a piton from her pack, drove it in, tied a secure knot, and threw the rope back towards the Citadel. It took three tries before they caught it; then out of nothingness Kassien came sailing towards her, landing well-balanced on the balls of his feet, his knees flexing to take the jarring as if he had done this a thousand times. He untied the safety line from around his waist and grinned at her.

  ‘You have blood on your face,’ he said.

  The Assimilator

  After the others had slid down the rope and out of Jai Khalar, Istar let Kassien take the lead in picking a way across and up the cliff until they had reached a kind of diagonal shaft that permitted them to climb not only away from the roar of the wind, but also where the stones were rougher and provided more handholds. They were all bleary and faint with hunger by the time they reached more level ground near the top. The wind numbed their senses, and the march of clouds across the sky cast heavy shadows over the farmland. On the road below, they could see the king’s horses moving away from Jai Khalar in a slow, straggling group.

  But they turned the other way, up into the gentler slopes of the mountains, where the white stone yielded by degrees to moss and alpine flowers, and the arching flights of birds gave shape to the wind.

  The mountains were to become their home for the first phase of their journey, and they spent days tramping through the bogs that lay on the heights. They had reached a plateau in the range and had to cross a large, relatively flat section before the extremities of the Everien Range confronted them with their snowy cliffs. In winter, these heights would be all snow and ice; but the summer sun awakened life, and stench, in the standing water that couldn’t escape the furrows and clefts of the plateau. Their legs ached from the effort of walking through water, and their boots began to rot and fray. This was nobody’s idea of high adventure. Tempers shortened.

  It was the third day since leaving Jai Khalar
. Kassien and Istar had been bickering most of the morning over frivolous things in a contest to determine who was the real leader. When they stopped to rest at midday, Xiriel told them both to be quiet.

  ‘We’re all nervous,’ he said. ‘But I for one don’t need to listen to the two of you take it out on each other.’

  So Istar polished her sword to ease her mind. Pallo hovered nearby watching, mesmerized.

  ‘Are you practising your lunges?’ she asked without looking up.

  ‘What, now?’

  ‘If not now, when? We walk all day.’

  ‘I know,’ he groaned. ‘I’m tired. How can I train my swordplay when I can barely move my legs? No—’ He raised a hand to prevent her chastising him. ‘I’m going. I’m going to practise them right now.’

  Istar turned her gaze back to the blade. ‘It was to have been my father’s sword,’ she said suddenly.

  Pallo, sensing a possible reprieve, hesitated. She knew that his fascination with the Seahawk weapon was not lessened by the fact that he seemed to have no natural ability whatsoever. Any talk about swords and swordfighting automatically interested him.

  ‘But Chyko was an archer,’ he said in surprise.

  ‘Chyko,’ Istar said dramatically, and swung the sword whistling in a figure of eight, ‘was anything he damn well pleased. Mhani had this sword made for him in the Fire Houses at A-vi-Khalar, and he would have been outstanding with it if he had had the chance to use it.’

  She traced the incisions on the blade: a swarm of wasps, gossamers, stingpicks, mantises.

  ‘He was small and light.’ She snorted. ‘Unlike me. It was easy to underestimate him. But he put in three attacks where others made one at best, and he could come at you from angles you didn’t even know existed. I wish I could have seen it.’ She paused while Pallo drew his own sword and began to get into the spirit of things, trying a lunge or two, awkwardly. ‘I think Mhani had this made so he would be inspired to challenge Quintar. She liked it not that Chyko was unranked and Quintar was Captain of the Guard. She liked it not one whit.’