The Company of Glass

by Tricia Sullivan

  His men were moving all around him, their horses and their armour and their battle paint and their breathing and the easy way they floated in their saddles and everything else about them that was vital and true. The sensations took him over: the smell of saddle leather and the coolness of the gloaming that morning when thirteen riders had assembled before the entrance cave of Jai Khalar, and Hanji had showed the way to the White Road. Chyko had been whistling a jaunty Wasp Clan tune: it was infectious to the point of irritation. The steam came off the horses as they lifted their feet and placed them on the White Road, and Tarquin’s stomach had been in knots, his eyes heavy from lack of sleep. He had felt all sinew and nerve, but when he had exchanged glances with Chyko, the archer looked as if he were setting out for a day at the races.

  ‘You rode the White Road fuelled by hope; but you knew when you took the Water of Glass that you would pay a price.’

  At the end of the White Road they had come on a black triangle; when they stepped through it, they found themselves in a dark space with three doors. Only one of them would open: it bore the sign of the Eye. They entered it and began to ascend the Tower. Its very substance, its walls, floor and ceiling were everflowing, made strong and changeful as water. They reached the huge open chamber at the Tower’s heart. Everything here was water, as ice or snow or steam – but most of it was liquid that behaved as if bound together. Flashing across that liquid were images upon images. As they watched, a shining globe as tall as three men took form. It rolled from place to place on the polished floor; its surface wavered like liquid, but it hung together like a solid, perfectly round as a ball bearing.

  Chyko approached the globe in a half-crouch, one inquisitive finger extended. Between his teeth was a curved dagger, and the darts and poison vials rattled on the necklaces that draped his torso. He touched the globe, and its polished surface wavered as oil on a pond.

  Quintar said, ‘Chyko, don’t—’

  Chyko gazed into the globe and as suddenly leaped back. ‘Something looked back at me!’ he cried, and rebounded as if on a spring. He had another look. ‘I can see eyes. There’s someone in there.’

  He thrust his hand into the water and jolted as if stung. The tendons of his neck tightened and he screamed. Quintar rushed to his aid, but Chyko suddenly relaxed and withdrew his hand, laughing. He pranced and posed, gnashing his teeth at Quintar to show his amusement at his own wit. Quintar growled at him and looked into the Water. Inside floated a crystal with many facets, all bright but one. One of the facets of the crystal was entirely dark.

  He started to reach toward it, but Chyko grabbed his arm. ‘No. There are eyes in there. See, one facet is dark.’

  Quintar did not see. ‘I’ve had enough of your games, bug boy. It’s a Glass. It’s what we came for.’

  Quintar reached into the globe and touched the crystal in its chill, watery home. The sensation of touching the thing was lost to his memory. It had been good – he was fairly sure of this. It had been good after the way of things that later turn out to be illusion or to possess an underside of unbearable pain. But he hadn’t known of such things in those days.

  In that instant, the world inverted itself, and where Quintar thought he was holding the Water of Glass in his hand, suddenly he found that it was holding him.

  There had been a sound: not thunder, not rain, but something low and earthly and alarming. Maybe it was the buffeting of wind against the towers, for he had the feeling of the architecture of Jai Pendu swaying, growing unstable. Outside all the while the Moon dreamed its light on to the sea. It was time to go.

  ‘That is the way of you and I,’ she said. ‘It is always time to go.’

  He sighed. Her hand slid over his hair as if she could stroke it all away, smooth his mind the way she might smooth a child’s blanket before saying Good Night and leaving a kiss behind.

  He couldn’t get out.

  He was in the Water and the Company were not. The Water filled his ears and lungs and bore him up. He was cocooned safely away from whatever was now stalking through the city. He remembered seeing Chyko slip his bow off his shoulder and notch an arrow.

  ‘What’s become of Quintar?’ said Vorse.

  ‘He’s not in there.’ Lyetar prowled around the globe, looking straight at him but not seeing. ‘I don’t like this place.’

  Chyko laughed his battle laugh. ‘It doesn’t like you either. Here comes something bad!’

  Chyko was floating back off some invisible enemy. In his movement Quintar recognized the attitude of utmost respect that Chyko afforded to very few opponents, and he could see in the flare of his friend’s nostrils that Chyko was alarmed. The chamber darkened. Quintar could no longer perceive its walls or ceiling, and the Water distorted the image of his men as they reacted to the attack. He couldn’t see the Company’s enemy no matter how he strained. Each of them was fighting, flailing at thin air, turning to track an invisible opponent – shuddering under mighty blows.

  Through the medium of the Water, he could feel what was happening to each of them; and it was again as it had always been during the years he had trained them, blooded them, marched them across the hills and pitted them against one another to make them all strong. He could sense what was going on in their minds; he could gauge their fatigue and their frustration and also their hidden reserves, the strength they didn’t even know they had but he knew it.

  ‘I couldn’t reach them, but I could feel them. I tried to help them …’

  ‘You had become something else. You had connected.’

  ‘Connected to what? To who?’

  Her fingertips stroked his brows.

  He hurled himself upward. He couldn’t get out.

  ‘Quintar!’ His name was called. ‘Hurry, and bring the Artifact. We can’t hold out for long.’

  He shouted a reply, or tried to. He could hear the words in his own ears but they didn’t penetrate the Water of Glass. ‘Don’t wait for me. Get away while you can!’

  Whatever they were fighting, whether men or beasts or something more alien, it was a powerful enemy. Their blood was spilled and it was not invisible; they were toppled from saddles; horses were skewered, the fallen trampled. The Company were moving like a force that finds itself hopelessly hemmed in, outnumbered. The brilliance of their weapons play was irrelevant. Their courage did them no good. They began to look desperate. They began to break down. He knew they were looking for him, seeking guidance.

  He had lost all self-control. ‘Fight!’ he screamed. ‘Don’t give in to it! Fight fight fight!’

  This they heard. He shouted instructions, directed them, conducted their weapons the way a choirmaster commands voices, all the while unable to see their enemy or to join them himself. Valiantly they strove to obey his instructions. They gave everything. They fought and fell; they lost limbs and mounts; they were disembowelled; they bled; they were dying. Some were decapitated, others crushed by the massive, unseen forces that opposed them.

  All the while, he watched, screaming until blood flowed from his nose.

  ‘Fight! Fight!’

  But they faced an impossible adversary.

  ‘You don’t understand what happened after that, do you?’

  ‘I … I wasn’t alone in the Water.’

  ‘No. You will never be alone.’

  ‘Someone grabbed my hand. It was strong, but small, and the bones were so fine. I was startled. I inhaled water, and the thing was pulling me. I was terrified. This thing, it was no bigger than a child, but I couldn’t see it clearly. It was so dark I panicked and crashed through the side of the Glass. It was still clinging to my forearm, and it scrambled over my back. I can still feel its weight on me.’

  It had let go of him at last; he broke out of the globe of Water and shattered into the hall where he’d begun.

  The place was empty. They were gone; there was no blood; and he had the Water of Glass as a crystal in his hand. That was when he knew he’d been tricked: for somehow his men had been taken, a
nd he was free. Therefore, there would be no escape for anybody.

  He was free he was free he was free. That freedom, a curse.

  Something large and white was waiting for him, moving with a flutter of what Quintar first took for feathers but then realized were filmy robes over a smaller human figure. The figure within was largely concealed, and its face was purest obsidian. The teeth were black and it had no eyes. The figure threw up its hands and darkness flew from its fingertips as liquid; but everything it touched turned to light as if soaked in the luminescent cave growths that the Snake Clan used for lamps.

  It brought its hands together and darkness turned to light between them. The Company were still fighting. He could see them through its fingers.

  In its hand was a Glass, and in the Glass were Chyko and Riesel and Ovi and all of the others.

  It said, ‘Now it is your turn, Quintar, servant of Ysse. You have the Water of Glass and we have touched each other. There will be no going back. Come and join your fellowship.’

  The thing came at him like a serpent, a wind, assaulting from all angles like no opponent he’d ever known.

  He tried to fight, but he couldn’t hit it, and its light came after him like a spiderweb. Terror unruled him. In the thick, slow mire of dreams Quintar turned and began to flee; he could feel the white thing like a magnet behind him. When he glanced back he saw its colour flash to black and then back to white again as with a terrible slowness he made his legs move him. Quintar was running through the mirror hall to the landing that led to the White Road, and the evil thing followed him, the white robes now pregnant with darkness.

  He was down in the crushed grass and the Sekk was beneath him. There was thick, black smoke everywhere, and the sound of men and horses screaming. The ground shook. The Sekk had one hand on his throat and it bucked. He was hitting it again and again in the face, but it did not bleed.

  He was not dazed at all by his abrupt return this time: his blood was full of outrage and he could think of nothing but destroying the slender body, slicing open the place where the eyes belonged. But the Sekk was cool and slippery as a fish and it slithered out from beneath him.

  ‘You dare attack Everien with its own people? You dare use my men for your purpose? I’ll grind you to dust, you—’

  For the first time he saw her properly. She was silhouetted at the top of a flight of stairs. Her dress was unlike any of the traditional Clan garments, rather more like the type of heavy robe that Ysse had taken to wearing in later years, which gave little hint of the shape of the figure beneath. The staircase was strange: a metal framework with no stone or wood between the steps, so that tendrils of lit fog passed through from below. Behind her the sky was full of burning, whether from the falling sun or some other fire he could not tell. The light limned her red hair where it fell across her shoulders, and a shiver of uncertain recognition went through him. One hand rested protectively across her belly. The other held open a gate. Beyond were green things, incongruous against the desolate sky.

  ‘We have no choice,’ she said. ‘It’s awakening.’

  As she closed the door she turned slightly and he saw that she was pregnant. The door shut to silence and darkness.

  His face was in the dirt. The Sekk had a forearm across his throat and was choking him, clinging to his back like a monkey. Inches from his face he saw the Glass lying loose on the ground. He worked a hand free and clasped it. The Sekk’s black hair fell around him. He saw its pale hand grasp his own where it touched the Glass; but he felt nothing. He felt nothing at all.

  Stew

  Ajiko was the last person Devri wanted to see, and Sendrigel was the second-to-last. He had had nothing but grief from either of them for days, he was worried about Mhani, who never came out of the Tower, and he trusted no one else to follow her instructions, so he was always on watch in the office that Hanji had arranged for him at the foot of the Eye Tower. Fortunately, the seneschal’s abilities had not failed him completely, for even in this solstice time of madcap behaviour on the part of Jai Khalar, the little office had held its ground.

  Devri was having a much-needed nap in the middle of the day when they all burst in on him: several guards, a Pharician prisoner, and the two busybodies who were running Jai Khalar in the absence of Lerien. The Pharician was unkempt and he smelled of leather and animals and sweat; he seemed to fill the room with an intense physical energy, making Devri feel dusty and two-dimensional by comparison. Sendrigel rushed up to Devri’s desk, his pot belly drooping over his belt to disarray the paperwork – and burst out talking.

  ‘You, clerk! Wake up! We have wasted enough time already just looking for the Eye Tower, and that crazy old man is worse than useless. He sent us the wrong way.’

  Surreptitiously Devri let the key to the stairs slide into the fountain as he cleared his throat and shuffled the papers on his desk with his free hand. ‘I am not a clerk. I am a Seer. What do you want?’

  ‘We need to see Mhani. We know she’s in the Eye Tower, and she’s probably told you not to let anyone in, but this is an emergency so don’t bother resisting.’ Sendrigel did the talking; Ajiko just stood there, gently slapping his fist into his opposite palm. The soldiers behind him stood rigid, eyes forward, unblinking. Obscurely, Devri wanted to laugh.

  ‘I’m sorry, but she’s locked herself in,’ he said. ‘I’d like to admit you but I can’t.’

  Ajiko gave a slight jerk of his head and two of the guards – both childhood friends of Devri’s, as a matter of fact, though they didn’t show it now – stepped neatly around him, lifted the desk, moved it aside, and picked up Devri before he could react. Mice scattered from beneath the desk. The Pharician’s lip curled.

  ‘If my country were invading you,’ he remarked in a deep voice, ‘it would be much to your benefit. So this is the grandeur of Everien! Senile houseboys and mice!’

  ‘Sendrigel, I have not asked this Pharician to speak yet,’ Ajiko said ominously. ‘Keep him quiet or I will have him gagged.’

  The Pharician composed himself to silence with the air of performing a favour. Sendrigel was fidgeting with anxiety. ‘Where’s the key, little staglet?’ he pressed. ‘Don’t tell me you can’t get in. You Seers have a way round everything!’

  Devri squirmed as the soldiers’ fingers bit into his skinny arms.

  ‘Nirozi! Gen! Put me down! I haven’t done anything wrong.’

  They tightened their grips.

  ‘Your mother would be ashamed of this behaviour, Nirozi,’ he chastised. One of the other soldiers reached out and slapped Devri across the mouth. His lip began to bleed.

  Ajiko studied Devri coolly. ‘I am not here to fight with Mhani,’ he said. ‘We are in the midst of a diplomatic incident and the only way that I can communicate with King Lerien is through the Eyes. I know that Mhani would wish for Lerien to have all the information we have gathered. Lerien explicitly told Sendrigel to bring reports to her, and this is our report. If you obstruct us you are obstructing the king.’

  Devri wavered. ‘Who is this Pharician? What’s he doing here?’

  ‘He is a messenger from Hezene to Lerien. It is your duty to help us reach Lerien through the Eyes. You place us all in danger when you refuse.’

  ‘I told you, there’s nothing I can—’

  The other two soldiers were rifling the desk and one of them came up with a ring of keys. Systematically he began trying them on the locked door.

  ‘It’s never the same door from one hour to the next anyway,’ Devri babbled. ‘So how could there be a key? I tell you, when Mhani is ready she will come out.’

  ‘She will get no food nor water till she does,’ Sendrigel said. ‘I will instruct my men to monitor the exit at all times, and Hanji will be warned to behave himself as well. She must come out eventually. Devri, will you not reason with her? Lerien needs this information. Has Mhani gone mad that she hides herself from us?’

  Something must have shown in Devri’s face, for Ajiko began to nod slowly.

>   ‘The Knowledge is dangerous,’ he said. ‘I would not be surprised if she were mad by now. I give you one day, Devri, to get us access to the Eyes, with or without Mhani’s help. After that I will use any means available to me to break down the door. It may be necessary’ – he smiled slightly – ‘for her own safety.’

  Devri drew himself up to his full height. ‘You cannot break down the door,’ he said. ‘You can do what you like with me, but you will not enter the Eye Tower by force.’

  Ajiko actually believed him: Devri could read it in his face. Emboldened, he went on. ‘Tell me your message and I will make an attempt to reach Mhani with it.’

  Ajiko rocked back on his heels and stuck his thumbs in his belt, sizing Devri up anew. The swaggering bastard, Devri thought, even as he quaked inside because he knew the general could render him unconscious with one blow from the back of his hand. Ajiko said, ‘Sendrigel, take your Pharician and wait outside. All of you go.’

  Sendrigel made a noise of frustration and complied. When he was gone, Ajiko cast his gaze on the floor and did not move for several seconds. Then in a flash he stepped forward, caught Devri by the throat and hissed, ‘Pharice is not making war on us, you canting little wizard. Their garrison at Ristale was overrun with Clan soldiers.’

  Devri would have been speechless even if he had not had Ajiko’s thick hand crushing his windpipe.

  ‘What do you know about it, Devri?’ Ajiko said suddenly, a canny light appearing in his eyes. He threw the Seer backwards; Devri bounced off the desk and hit the floor gurgling and coughing. Ajiko stood over him.

  ‘All of us are at the mercy of you Seers. If you tell us the troops are not there, we must believe you. If you show us a scene, we trust that it is a true vision, but we have no way of knowing. My men have been out of communication for weeks! For weeks I have listened to Mhani, and you, and Xiriel, and that old fart Hanji – whatever he has to do with it I’ve never been able to figure out – you all say, “We’re trying, General. We’re working on it. We’re doing our best.” Yet for all I know you are all part of the same plot. Don’t give me that dumb-dog expression, Devri!’