The Company of Glass

by Tricia Sullivan

  The commander thought he was a wolf but he had come too far from his lupine origins, for his nose did not tell him I was waiting in the bracken and his ears did not register the disturbance of the scree when I shifted my weight slightly, overeager perhaps to touch and hold his soft mind. He was lean, with a long, thoughtful face and dun-coloured hair, and his eyes never stopped moving – not until they alighted on mine. He had an axe in his left hand; now his right hand went for the other axe hanging from his belt. He gripped it but did not draw it.

  There was a blood-soaked bandage on his left forearm; flies gathered on it. Behind him on the steep path hedged by miniature birches and fern I could hear his officers moving about, beating at the brush, looking for me. I could taste their fear on the air. Their aggression rose out of their fear and this blend fascinated me; their emotions were rich and intoxicating. The commander was in my eyes now.

  You understand I hope that I wanted you, but in your absence I had to make do with the ones who offered themselves.

  Taking him felt so right that I almost fainted on the moment of the Wolf commander’s surrender. Now I had someone real. The Company were far away, scattered across the worlds, fighting with all the fire that had been put in them; but I had the Glass that was their essence wrought from the soul of their leader. It was my guidestar and my hope. It was my sword my food my love my dream. I used it to capture the Wolf commander and he looked at the blank space where my Sight should have been and freely gave me the Eye he was carrying; I crushed it in my fist and it died. I do not wish to be Seen. I do not wish to be Known. Instead I used his mind to look out of.

  When I inhabited your commander I read his weaknesses, and I knew that the Glass could teach me how to move him and all his men, too. For it had the power to capture and bind, and I wished to hide among their numbers and move with their motion while I tried to discover what manner of thing I am this time.

  ‘Bring me your people,’ I said through the Glass, ‘and I will attach them to myself.’

  He did not understand but he had been taught to obey anyone who assumes power over him. He obeyed me, and I took all his army in one swallow, and then I moved them about as if I had grown new limbs. It was easy, for they were accustomed to letting go of their free will and delivering themselves to a leader; and I had the Glass, which acted on them like an elixir of loyalty.

  It is the Glass which is a thing of beauty. The Glass we made, you and I, out of the substance of the fight. When I held it, from far away I could smell the smoke and the blood; I could hear the horses screaming. Deep inside the Glass was the devotion of the body which every warrior knows, the offering of the fibres and fluids and electric motion, the flinging of the self on to the turbulence of chance. The ribs heaved and the fingers gripped steel with a conviction that is stronger than any love. The warrior had become the weapon and his heart swelled to bursting.

  I called them and they came because they thought I was you.

  You. That single syllable, pregnant with worlds and time.

  I remember the last time we were together, how my fingers tangled in your hair; how the sun came singing through the long window. It was not a time of battle then. It was a time of meeting and recognition and the sharing of thoughts we could only tell each other. Some of these thoughts we had been saving for years and years, finding no one who could understand. Some of these thoughts we had spent ourselves in trying and failing to communicate, so that now we hesitated to offer them, expecting to be rejected, or misunderstood. We had believed ourselves alone under empty skies until at last we stumbled on each other, and remembered.

  Quintar. Tarquin. How many other names I have called you by.

  You will not know me this time. How will I make myself accept this? All that I am was made that way by you; yet you will think me your foe. It is not my fault to be what I am. Once I was something else and so were you, but you don’t know it. If I could breathe the memory into you and raise you from drowning I would. As it is I can’t even touch you.

  The White Road is my only hope of salvation. You must take me to it, take me past its guardians – you must come with me. Home.

  ‘Mhani?’

  She didn’t rebuke Devri this time, for she had begun to feel herself slipping out of control and she was glad to be recalled to the Eye Tower and her own body, weary as it was.

  ‘What is it now?’

  ‘The riders have come back from Wolf Country. It looks like treachery.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ With an effort she focused her eyes on Devri’s face. She was only listening as a formality. She could guess what he was going to say.

  ‘It seems by all accounts that the various separate commanders have joined their armies together and gone up into the hills. Anyone who opposed them was killed.’

  ‘Is Pharice involved?’

  ‘We don’t know. That’s why Ajiko wants to talk to you.’

  ‘Absolutely not. My utmost priority is to reach the king. Ajiko will have to wait. I am faced with many problems.’

  Devri had begun to sweat. ‘I was afraid you’d say that. Mhani, you’ve been up here a long time without relief. Please, won’t you—’

  She silenced him with a sharp gesture.

  ‘If you want to be useful, help me See into Kivi’s Carry Eye.’

  Devri said, ‘All right – but you must eat the food I’ve brought, and stand up. Move about. Do you have any idea what day it is? What time it is?’

  ‘No. What time is it?’

  Devri had lowered himself to the stone lip of the Water; now he gave a sheepish smile. ‘Actually, the clocks are running at so many different speeds it’s hard to say for certain – but I can hear your stomach growling from here.’

  Mhani drank some mead and broke her bread into small pieces, chewing with an unfamiliar feeling. As Devri gazed into the Water and began to arrange the confusion of images, she closed her eyes for a moment and tried to remember how it had felt to be someone else something else. She shivered.

  ‘Here we go! I’ve got an image in Kivi’s Carry Eye.’

  Mhani stood and walked stiffly to his wide. ‘Show me.’

  Devri focused the image for her. It was the Company, riding on the White Road.

  ‘Let me have control of that.’ She took the image away from Devri and began checking the other Eyes. Some were dark – destroyed, she now knew, by Night. Of the others, one by one they were all filling with the same vision.

  ‘What does it mean?’ Devri whispered. Mhani’s reply was a murmur, which she wasn’t really directing at him.

  ‘If I say I seek the way to Jai Pendu for the purposes of my king and myself, is that true? Or am I really a pawn of Night? It is stronger than I am and all my Eyes are full of it. Night also seeks the White Road – if I find it, how can I prevent Night from using it?’

  ‘Who is Night?’ queried Devri.

  ‘That’s what I’d like to know,’ Mhani said. ‘Go back downstairs and stand guard until I send for you.’

  Chyko’s Idea of Fun

  Lerien had been counting on obtaining mountain horses in the Wolf hamlet of A-vel-Jasse, which was the highest settlement of any size in these parts; no one lived among the peaks that separated Everien from Pharice. But when they arrived, the place was deserted. There were no animals and virtually no goods left behind; nor were there signs of violence. Apparently the inhabitants had simply picked up and moved away.

  ‘Tarquin, did these people tell you they intended to leave? It’s scarcely a week since you were here.’

  ‘I didn’t come this way,’ Tarquin answered. ‘I was on foot, and I cut down a watercourse two days’ ride north of here.’

  Stavel had been walking through the empty houses. He said, ‘The Wolves who lived here are long gone. No one has been here for many weeks.’

  Lerien looked up at the mountains. ‘These horses will never make it up the mountain paths. We will not be able to climb to the monitor tower from here.’

  ‘We ha
ve to,’ Tarquin said. ‘If the Pharician army is moving on schedule, they are only twenty or thirty miles away across the mountains, marching down the border towards the sea gates. If we continue into Wolf Country before crossing the range, we will end up far behind them once we finally reach the other side.’

  ‘By all accounts our troops are still placed somewhere in Wolf Country, whatever the Eyes may say. Dario’s is the second report we have had of Sekk amongst the army there – remember Epse and his tale of mutiny? The H’ah’vah are associated with the Sekk, and Mhani saw H’ah’vah tunnels in Wolf Country. Soldiers are finding eggs … It is all very strange, and meanwhile Kivi cannot reach Mhani with the Carry Eye. I have a dilemma. Shall I climb the heights to get a view of Ristale and hope the Eye in the monitor tower can link me to Mhani, or shall I use that time to go directly to Wolf Country and round up the troops?’

  ‘No one knows where the troops are,’ Jakse said quietly.

  ‘Jai Khalar will be a Pharician outpost when you get back from Wolf Country,’ Tarquin said, shrugging. ‘You would have been better off had you stayed at Jai Khalar and prepared for a siege.’

  ‘I didn’t ask for your opinion,’ Lerien said angrily. Tarquin suspected they were both remembering Lerien’s failed attempt to join the Company.

  ‘You were lucky that day Vorse beat you,’ Tarquin said. ‘You lived.’

  Lerien’s face darkened. ‘Is that luck? I didn’t ask for responsibility over Everien, and when I try to do anything I find my hands are tied by the Seers or the clerks … Maybe it would have been better if I had died in a battle for something great.’

  Tarquin laughed. ‘Forget it. You should be grateful for what you have. I have never had a day’s peace in eighteen years; I cannot keep a woman, or land. I have seen and done terrible things. If I do not find a reason to hurl myself at death, neither should you.’

  In a mocking tone Lerien said, ‘Even now you outdo me; nothing I have is as much as yours, is it? No one has ever suffered as you suffer. Or so you say.’

  Tarquin’s sword came out at these last words. ‘Explain yourself! What do you accuse me of?’

  Stavel and Ketar grabbed his arms from behind and he shook them off in a rage.

  ‘Quintar always had a hair-trigger temper, didn’t he?’ Stavel remarked. ‘Some things never change.’

  ‘If Ysse found no fault with your conduct at Jai Pendu, then neither do I,’ Lerien said to Tarquin. ‘Miro will stay to guard the horses. We will climb to the monitor tower’ – he pointed – ‘on foot, and I will consult with Mhani, irrespective of whether we see your Pharician army. Let us waste no more time guessing.’

  Tarquin put his sword away and directed a cold smile at Lerien. ‘Good,’ he said, and set off uphill at a pace fuelled by anger.

  By the time the others had caught up with him, climbing off-road through near-vertical fields towards the bare rock, Tarquin’s fury had subsided to a vague annoyance that he had done everything he could to help Lerien and his people, but Lerien was a fool who never should have been made king. He was beginning to suspect all Lerien’s armies had simply dissolved under poor leadership; he certainly felt like taking off on his own.

  Ketar was the first to catch up with him, and he tried to commiserate with Tarquin over Lerien’s indecisiveness, but Tarquin told him to shut up and eventually Ketar moved off ahead, quailing. The others didn’t speak to each other. There was something about being on foot and confronted by a mountain that made everyone concentrate. Tarquin told himself he didn’t have to compete with these green youths; gradually he fell behind the rest, until he found himself panting and sweating beside Stavel. Glancing uphill, he could see Taro’s muscular legs moving like pistons, eating up the ground.

  ‘If my grandson could see me now,’ Stavel gasped, ‘he’d laugh himself sick.’

  ‘Wait until the mountain fever hits them,’ Tarquin said knowingly. ‘Tomorrow half of them will be faint and won’t be able to eat. You’ll see.’

  Stavel cast him a grateful look.

  ‘Ajiko broke his arm about two miles south of here,’ Tarquin remarked. ‘I haven’t been back to these parts since then.’

  ‘I remember he had to stay behind when the Company took the White Road,’ Stavel glanced up at Lerien and Tarquin guessed he was also recalling how Vorse had defeated Lerien over Ajiko’s place. ‘Ajiko told us how he fell down a chasm when fighting Freeze Wasps.’

  ‘That’s not precisely how it happened,’ Tarquin said, laughing.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Ajiko broke his arm in a fall when we were training up here. It was a clumsy accident. While we were stopped, splinting Ajiko’s injury, Riesel spotted a Freeze Wasp drifting on the wind. It probably wouldn’t have attacked us, but Chyko was bored of waiting and he decided to go after their nest.’

  Tarquin hadn’t thought about that incident in years. Now that he was in the same hills where it had occurred, it came back to him as if it happened yesterday: Chyko jauntily picking himself up, licking a finger and holding it to the wind before setting off among the rocks without so much as a by-your-leave. Tarquin remembered summoning the Wasp back, annoyed that one member of the Company was already injured and another behaving like a child.

  ‘This is a training manoeuvre,’ he said sternly. ‘Chyko. Come back.’

  Chyko’s backside wriggled suggestively as he climbed up the frozen watercourse.

  ‘This is not a game, Chyko, you foul bastard,’ Quintar screamed. ‘You’re a member of this Company. You can’t just go off …’

  Chyko slipped into a crack in the rock and was lost from sight.

  Lyetar was at his shoulder. ‘The Freeze Wasps are not pretty creatures. I saw one suck out a man’s insides and leave only the clothes and hair behind. They have poisons that can melt your bones.’

  ‘Bastard!’ said Quintar again.

  ‘We should help him,’ Lyetar said. ‘He’ll get himself killed.’

  ‘We are not helping him. Don’t even think about it. Let him die! I’ll dance on his grave, the bastard.’

  Yet the words were scarcely out of his mouth before Quintar was pelting up the incline after Chyko. The others fell in behind him almost silently, moving like fluid travelling paradoxically uphill. Scarcely a stone was disturbed as they climbed, and their dark cloaks looked like patches of exposed stone among the snow. Chyko had disappeared into a narrow aperture between two huge blocks of stone. Quintar did not like the look of it.

  ‘He’s dreaming,’ Lyetar murmured, ‘if he thinks he’s going to shoot a Freeze Wasp. It’s like putting an arrow through a snowflake.’

  ‘If the Wasps don’t kill him’ Quintar said, ‘I will. Cover yourselves up.’

  He squeezed into the crack, pulling himself along by judicious movements of fingertips and feet.

  ‘Freeze Wasps love to hide in places like this,’ Lyetar remarked. ‘They wait in a half-frozen state until something with heat comes along and arouses them, and then they strike.’

  ‘Maybe Chyko will be all right, then,’ Quintar said. ‘His blood’s too cold to wake them.’

  ‘Mine isn’t,’ Lyetar panted, behind him. ‘I think I’m going to shit myself.’

  ‘Shut up. I’m not scared yet and I don’t need you ruining my concentration.’

  The crack ended in a shaft whose walls were almost sheer. Above could be seen a scrap of sky.

  ‘Chyko? Chyko?’

  They could hear the wind above. Quintar turned to his cousin and said, ‘How best to fight them? How big are they?’

  ‘About the size of a bat, I guess,’ Lyetar replied. ‘But they’re … full of holes. They look like flying spiderwebs.’

  ‘Can you burn them?’

  ‘Yes but—’

  ‘Good. Give me some oil and send Ovi up here.’

  The Deer slid past Lyetar, his dark eyes fiery and keen. Ovi was the only Deer in the entire company. In general, Quintar found the Deer Clan too intellectual, too soft, to produce the kind
of fighters he needed. Ovi, as if to make up for the lack in the rest of his family, was one of the most savage warriors Quintar had ever seen. He could cut with the sword as well as any Seahawk save Quintar himself and Lyetar, and he could wreak havoc given a simple pole or pair of sticks of any size or weight.

  ‘You want to fight a Freeze Wasp, Ovi?’ Quintar asked, knowing already how the Deer would react. ‘Put oil on your sticks. Lyetar, light a torch. When you see the Wasps, set Ovi’s sticks alight. But only at the ends!’

  Ovi said, ‘Just pour the oil on and I will spark it myself when I hit Chyko over the head.’

  Quintar laughed. ‘Use a torch. Come, it’s not a game.’

  Ovi climbed the shaft, Quintar and Lyetar on his heels. Ovi stuck his head out the top and looked around. ‘Mother of Ysse,’ he hissed, ducking. ‘I think Chyko’s done for.’

  Quintar pushed past him and looked for himself. ‘Give me the torch,’ he said grimly.

  Chyko had finally met his match. Standing on an uneven ledge surrounded by vertical rock rising above him on three sides, he was motionless, unblinking, hand half-raised to ward off the enemy that must have come flying out from among the rocks. There were no fewer than six Freeze Wasps sticking to his back, his shoulders, and his head. They looked like white mantises draped with such lace as was used on the swaddling clothes of baby girls.

  ‘You idiot,’ Quintar muttered. ‘You don’t know when to stop.’ He raised his voice. ‘Give me the torch, damn it. Will they suck out his insides? Is he done for?’