The Company of Glass

by Tricia Sullivan

  There was something black on the ground ahead of him. He crawled closer and saw that it was a dark-robed body. His heart began to race again. He sprang to his feet and drew his sword. The robes didn’t stir.

  ‘Night,’ he said, still deaf to his own voice. The air was no longer cold, and the stone beneath his feet was smooth and seamless. The fog cleared a little, and he could see the familiar curves of the White Road passing beyond the black robes in one direction, and on into unknown mist in the other.

  He gripped the sword in both hands and brought it down upon the prostrate figure. When the sword reached its destination, Night was no longer there. Tarquin’s sword skipped off the White Road, sending shocks back up along his arms and rattling his teeth. Nearby, Night was now standing, leaning slightly in his direction.

  Tarquin was afraid.

  I’ll kill Night, he’d told Mhani. And she had laughed at him.

  He charged at Night again, and again it slipped away from him quick as a flame in wind. Angrily, he began running away from it along the White Road, wondering what it would do. At first it didn’t seem to be following. He ran flat out, expressing his frustration in long strides and cutting the mist with his sword to make himself feel he was doing something. He still could not hear properly after the explosion, but he felt hoofbeats shuddering along the stone.

  He spared a glance behind him. Night was following, stumbling and groping like a beggar, dragging itself along the Road. As fast as Tarquin had been running, it seemed to have kept pace though it barely moved its feet. The Glass it carried must be very heavy, for it was clasped in both hands and it seemed to throw the slight figure off-balance, as if Night were wrestling with the contents of its own hands.

  The hoofbeats went faster. They were made by only one horse, but caused the road to tremble. Tarquin halted. If he went forward, he would lead Night forward. If he stood his ground, Night would catch up with him. He hesitated, and the black robes crept towards him.

  The hoofbeats accelerated, and the White Road shook.

  Tarquin thought, No horse runs that fast. This horse is so fleet it meets itself coming; it stands in two or three places at once, not laughing because horses don’t – but if they did this one surely would.

  He didn’t know what to do. Closer and closer came Night, till Tarquin could see the threads on its robes, and hear its thin breaths, and feel the air stir where it moved. In a moment it would touch him. The hoofbeats became a roar.

  Night’s shadow fell on the white surface just before Tarquin, shining like a pool of oil. Night stopped. Something within its shadow began to move. A shape rose out of the blackness, swelling the stone as if it were skin. The White Road stretched and gleamed as within its fabric some living creature thrashed, struggling to break through. Even as the form of the animal became apparent, there was a trumpeting scream. The head came up and ripped the white membrane apart.

  It was a horse of light and shadow, and its scream was a stallion scream, unmistakable in its ferocity. When it reared, all glinting teeth and flying mane, its forehooves struck Tarquin down and slammed the door on his senses.

  If the Sea Had a Purpose

  It was something resembling nighttime when Tash had Kivi brought to his tent in bonds. The Pharician sprawled on the ground on his spread cloak, propped half-clothed on one elbow, dark and gleaming like a panther. He was cleaning under his nails with a dagger and smoking some fragrant herb in an intricately carved pipe; his eyes were wide and shining. He dismissed the guards with a jerk of his head and pointed to the ground. Kivi sat. A flask was passed to him.

  Kivi brought the flask nervously to his lips. He had neither eaten nor drunk during all the long, hot hours of the afternoon, and he was now parched. He took a sip; the Pharician liquor burned all the way down. He coughed.

  Tash laughed. ‘You drink like a child.’

  Challenged, Kivi took another swallow. He could see no reason to remain sober under the circumstances: who knew what Tash intended for him? He hoped the stories he’d heard of Pharician soldiers and their fondness for slender young men did not apply to Tash.

  ‘Are all men in your country children, or is your king some exception?’

  ‘Lerien is not a child,’ Kivi said. ‘I make him older than you.’

  ‘All the more disgrace for him, then, that he is no man yet. Drink up, boy!’

  Tash took a long drag on the pipe. Smoke made the blue-grey light in the tent seem almost solid, as if sand were suspended in the air. It was very pleasant, Kivi thought, and began to wish he were Tash. If he were a powerful warrior he too would be obeyed when he spoke; he would have the best liquor and the first meat, and he would ride the fastest horse. Kivi was finding Seerhood tiresome outside of Jai Khalar; in the physical culture of road and field he found himself ever in a subordinate role, treated with a scorn that was thinly disguised at best.

  Yet Tash treated him with some privilege, and he felt gratified by that. Kivi took another swallow, and some of the ache of his recent exertions dissolved from the muscles of his back.

  ‘And what of you? You are a Seer. I would like to know what this means. See something for me.’

  ‘I cannot,’ Kivi said, brandishing the flask. ‘We are not permitted to use the Eyes when the mind is clouded.’

  ‘Ah, nonsense,’ Tash said. ‘Spare me your pathetic excuses.’

  Kivi shook his head; the tent spun and he laughed, slipping sideways on to his elbow. It was the strongest drink he’d ever had. ‘Seriously, I cannot,’ he said. ‘Anyway, there is something wrong with the Water of Glass. I have not been able to reach the Mother Eye in Jai Khalar. I can only see the Company, and I have already shown you that. Perhaps by tomorrow we will be out of range of the interference of the Sekk, and then I can hope to use the Eye effectively again.’

  Tash blinked. ‘I will not be confused by your esoteric terms,’ he said. ‘Can you see visions in it or not? If you cannot, surely it is no use.’

  ‘I’m not permitted to look in it with an undisciplined mind.’

  ‘Give me this thing,’ Tash said, holding out his hand. Kivi clutched the Carry Eye protectively. ‘It’s not a toy,’ he slurred.

  ‘Will you look into it or will I?’ Tash asked, snorting. ‘I am sure I can manage to break it, and then how would you feel, rabbit-boy?’

  ‘All right, all right. I’ll look.’ He felt guilty as he focused on the Eye; but not very much so since he could be excused doing what he must when his life was at stake. ‘It’s not working. I can’t see a damn thing.’

  Tash sat up. He moved like a snake, holding out an arm. ‘Give,’ he said.

  Feeling weak, Kivi gave it to him.

  Tash ran the globe around in his hands as if pleased by its very touch. He looked inside it and made a sound low in his throat. ‘Ah, there they are!’ he said. ‘Many riders; how wonderful they are. It’s so easy, a baby could do it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t advise—’ Kivi began, but Tash put a finger to his lips. Suddenly he gave a shudder and his eyes crossed.

  ‘Oh, no …’ Kivi moaned, and covered his face. ‘Tash, don’t—’

  When the Pharician spoke, his accent was gone. His voice was very soft, just on the verge of audibility. Kivi found himself leaning closer in spite of himself, aware that he had broken a cardinal rule in allowing a neophyte to come under the Impressions, but too fascinated to attempt to break Tash’s trance.

  ‘Those who think they know should be summarily chopped up and fed to the pigs,’ the warlord whispered. ‘They are useless. The only ones I want are the ones who know and respect the tide. If the sea had a purpose it wouldn’t tell you, would it? Purposes are hidden but actions are expressed. Action is what interests me. Can you move? Can you feint? Can you dive? Do you have something inside you or shall I cast you aside? If you have something in you that you recognize but don’t understand, that you have tried and failed to control, that asserts itself in the moonlight and under cover of various other darknesses, then may
be I will take you and together we will go into the pathless places and find things, but if you are sweet and content do not come to me for it is only the hard and difficult way that interests me, and if you wish to feel good you should drink wine and sleep and produce many offspring none of whom will respect you.’

  He fell silent. Twitched. Kivi started to move toward him, and in a sighing tone he said, ‘My head is loose on my shoulders. Will you come for me yet, my strange and errant lover? Or do you wish me upright like a statue, like eternity damned to stone – no, I would not dream it of you. You worship the changes and the coming darkness and you laugh always. How I seek you over fields and under clouds who think they are animals but they are only vapour, they will not commit themselves, they laugh in the sky but—’

  His voice cut off with a strangling sound. His expression came alert and he pushed the Eye back into Kivi’s hands. ‘I don’t want it,’ he said. ‘You take it. You do it.’

  Kivi didn’t look into the Eye. He knew it was polluted at least, and damaged at worst, for even a Carry Eye required skill in the use. Yet he dared not disobey Tash. So he looked down on it without focusing his eyes, for once trying not to See.

  ‘It’s not working properly,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if I can get a clear image.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Tash barked. ‘I used it, and I’m not even a Seer. Do you know what you’re doing or shall I have you executed?’

  ‘No! Wait, I’m starting to get something.’

  Kivi had been about to make something up, to lie about what he Saw simply for the sake of keeping Tash at bay; but when he spoke these words, an image did appear in the Eye. Through the haze of alcohol he tried to make it clearer. When suddenly the picture came into focus, he leaped back and dropped the Eye as if it were fire.

  ‘What is it? What do you see?’ Tash was excited, raising himself and lunging across the tent on all fours, eyes bright.

  ‘Mice!’ Kivi shrieked. ‘Ugh … thousands of mice!’

  Mouse

  Finding the White Road for Tarquin had used up the last of Mhani’s strength. As Hanji might have put it, she could no longer swim; she could only drift with the current of the Liminal.

  It was winter in the valley of Everien, and the river was a frozen black strip on which skated lit boats with black sails. Snow lay over all the land, its moonlit sheen haunted by grey-violet shadows where the wind had banked and curved its surface. The sky was indigo and once in a while the silent wings of some aerial thing passed across the stars. A-vi-Khalar looked like a cluster of luminous mushrooms, the lights of each building oozing from the windowless, rounded walls. Overseeing it all like guardians, the Fire Houses climbed the sky.

  Where are all the people? Mhani wondered, and then noticed two figures standing in one of the boats as it glided to a halt on the edge of the town. She found herself there, observing from the banks as they tied the boat and slithered across the ice to the dock. One was larger and faster; it turned to help the smaller one. Both were heavily wrapped against the cold, their faces invisible. She saw no weapons.

  As she followed them down the street she gazed in wonder at the town. The frescoes and arches were no different than the ones to be found in A-vi-Khalar even now, but there were flowers in bloom everywhere, despite the frost, and they cast coloured light about, tinting the ice. The smaller of the two reached out and snapped off a cluster of them in passing. Sparks flew. Mhani willed herself to look more closely at the plants, but her sight was not really under her control. She had no awareness of her body and no volition: she was a captive spectator.

  The two figures moved rapidly, almost furtively past door after door, all of them shut against the night. She recognized some of the symbols etched on the doors from the murals and maps in Jai Khalar, but there was no time to memorize their placements or analyse them, for the walkers had nearly reached the base of the Fire Houses. The conical black towers looked like the rending teeth of some giant predator, and they blotted out the moon.

  The larger figure held a gate open for the smaller, and they both plunged down a steep ramp into the underground, where a warren of passageways and rooms awaited them. The underground town had been the ancients’ way of coping with the severity of the Everien winters, but in Mhani’s time most of these tunnels were collapsed or blocked. She would have liked to have seen more of the town, but as it was she had no more than a glimpse of a bright-lit avenue crowded with moving bodies, accompanied by a burst of weird music that she recognized as Everien in origin, for its like sometimes played uninvited in Jai Khalar. Then the two figures plunged down a flight of stairs. Mhani thrashed inwardly in frustration at not being able to see more.

  What does any of this have to do with the White Road? she wondered. Is it now hidden beneath the Fire Houses?

  Although it was warm underground, the pair did not uncover their heads. They had reached the base of the middle of the three Fire Houses, the largest of which in Mhani’s time held the Fire of Glass, and they climbed up a flight of metal stairs that was no longer there. They emerged at the bottom of the forge pit. Several small, ordinary fires were burning, but no one was at work. The interior of the Fire House was spectacular: on the inside it resembled a living structure woven from red and gold fibre and impregnated with both light and colour. From bottom to top the interior gradually became brighter, until at the apex of the cone there seemed to be no ceiling at all, only a muted, red sun that was the Fire. The place reminded Mhani of a womb, and at the same time it reminded her of the embers of some conflagration that now lay at rest. There was no other source of light, so the nature of the equipment and furnishings that rested in and around the forge pit was obscure. There were metal structures in the forge pit that seemed to hold unfinished work of some sort: whether weapons or other tools, she could not tell. She was not at liberty to study anything in detail, for the two Everiens had stopped at one of the fires, and one of them was adjusting the brackets on a device made of metal and glass. Mhani found herself wishing urgently for the assistance of Xiriel, who had a way of understanding machines.

  ‘I brought a young one,’ said the smaller of the two. ‘Perhaps it will be easier to capture when its mind is soft and unformed.’

  The voice was feminine, and the gloved hand that reached into a pouch beneath the outer robes was delicate. It clasped a brown mouse – tiny, struggling.

  ‘Hello, little sister,’ said the tall one in a soft baritone. ‘Don’t be frightened.’

  ‘Of course it’s frightened,’ said the female. ‘You’d be frightened if some giant seized you in your nest and brought you here, to end up under magnification.’

  The man had contained the mouse within the restraints of the apparatus; Mhani could not even see his eyes, for they had both put on tinted masks. The woman now began shedding her wraps under the heat of the fires.

  ‘You won’t be harmed,’ said the man to the mouse. ‘There will be no need for blood or pain. You will not feel anything, and afterwards you will go free. We only wish to take an impression.’

  ‘Once there was much pain,’ said the woman. ‘I’m glad we don’t have that dilemma. How could they have hurt such a tiny creature to gain knowledge?’

  ‘They killed not one, but millions, in thousands of ways,’ said the man.

  ‘We are gentle now,’ she said as if to reassure herself.

  ‘Yes,’ he answered absently, busy with some fine adjustments on the equipment. The mouse held very still, paralysed maybe. Nothing was happening that Mhani could see.

  ‘Do we have anything?’ asked the woman after a while.

  He shook his head. They were silent, tense.

  ‘Anything yet?’ She sounded nervous.

  He breathed out through his nose. ‘No.’

  The mouse began to move.

  ‘Got it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she whispered. ‘Why is it moving?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The mouse was writhin
g in earnest now, its fluttering respiration and shivering nostrils impossibly tiny and fast. A deep tone like a bass string throbbing began to build, way up in the cone of the Fire House. The sound travelled down the ropy strands of red glass like blood surging through arteries, and the structure visibly shook.

  ‘Ah,’ said the woman. ‘It must be working now.’

  Mhani wondered what sort of a face she had, and whether her eyes now on the frantically struggling mouse were kind. The stupid mouse, Mhani thought. It would not understand that it was trapped. It thrashed in the grip of the restraints, which only held it tighter the more it moved. Exhausted, it sat still, panting. Then it started fighting again. It flipped and twisted in the grip of the apparatus, flashing a minute white belly. The phalanges of its digits might have been made of the finest grains of rice, not bone. The mouse would not give in.

  ‘Why do they resist?’ said the woman in frustration. ‘Can’t they relax? We are no threat! We only want your patterns, little mouse. We only want to understand you.’

  ‘In the old days they would have cut up this mouse piece by piece and then tried to put it back together.’

  The woman cringed. ‘That’s horrible! How could they?’

  ‘You cannot reason with an animal,’ the man said. ‘Wait for it to be tired and then its pattern will appear. All we need is one impression from you, little friend, and then you can go free.’

  The Fire House was vibrating from top to bottom. The Fire in the roof dimmed and brightened in pace with the mouse’s pulse. The floor, which was all black and smooth as the river outside, began to steam. The arterial cords in the walls had become pliant and they glowed and dimmed, stretched and relaxed in an inconstant rhythm.

  ‘Anything? Anything?’

  ‘No, Carmyn!’

  The mouse stopped moving. It was limp.

  Probably dead, Mhani thought, and didn’t feel especially sorry. Mice were a damned nuisance. They would overrun Jai Khalar if given half the chance. She spent half her time seeking cats in hope of keeping pace with them, but most cats disliked Jai Khalar and would not stay there unless caged.