The Company of Glass

by Tricia Sullivan

  Ice was taller than anything he’d ridden, and the muscles of his shoulders gleamed where the scant light struck them. Tarquin felt him playing with the bit, felt the stallion’s breathing move his calves. The sky was argentine with breaking clouds and the trees stirred. A vaporous light had begun to filter slowly from the east. Tarquin touched Ice with his heels.

  He felt the upsurge, like a pendulum rising to swing: a perfectly coordinated musculature was balancing itself for action. He glimpsed the wind lift the pale mane, and as he was lifted he clamped his legs hard against the horse in the split second’s premonition that something big was about to happen. Then the sky whirled, the wind went out of him, and it was all down, down, down as the horse took off. Ice ran so fast he seemed to leave his body behind, accelerating all the time like a fall from a high place. Speed pulled back the flesh of Tarquin’s face, stung his eyes, and nearly made him faint. The impact of hooves on the forest path shook his teeth. Branches streaked by. The body beneath him gathered and released, stretched itself forward as if trying to run straight into next year. If Tarquin were a boat, then Ice would be twenty-foot swells in a gale, with lightning in the rigging. If Tarquin were a salmon going to spawn, Ice would be a hundred-foot waterfall pounding him down every time he tried to leap. If Tarquin were a candle, then Ice would be the messenger wind of winter darkness that blows open the shutters and blackens the house. He had never been mounted on such fury incarnate. The martingale snapped. He hung on to the reins but Ice had the bit in his teeth and was snarling like no horse Tarquin had ever known.

  For one single instant Tarquin understood something, and then immediately forgot it. Something abstract. Something difficult. Something like: Ice is the White Road.

  Ires Quits

  Hanji was nowhere to be found: even his meditation chamber had disappeared, and Devri’s head got all turned around in the process of looking for it. To think what might happen to Jai Khalar if the seneschal somehow failed in his duties gave Devri gooseflesh. Jai Khalar was as unpredictable as a pregnant woman nowadays – one whom only Hanji, it seemed, knew how to soothe.

  Devri had followed instructions and stayed away from Ajiko and his soldiers; none of this was a hardship. But he had family in the Deer Clan villages not far up the valley, and with Tash’s army sitting on the doorstep, he was nervous about their welfare. If only he could get to the Eyes, he might send a message to the Seers at the Fire Houses, who would advise his relatives to go to the high pastures in the hills at once; or else to open up the Lower City and hide underground until the Pharician danger had passed.

  He was also hoping to make some sort of arrangement for Mhani, who was quite unable to fend for herself. Yet he daren’t go near the Eye Tower for fear of having a run-in with one of Ajiko’s underlings. The Citadel was a hive of activity: the Council were hysterical, the refugees clamoured to know why they could not find their chamber pots, or, for that matter, the walls themselves; the soldiers were forced to do their drills and manoeuvres in the open stairwells and galleries, as access to the training grounds had been blocked off a few days before as a result of the flood, which had been in turn caused by mice chewing through some crucial ropes in the clock tower; and with Hanji appearing and disappearing all the time like some magical wart, the clerks were constantly rushing around looking for someone to sign things.

  Devri laughed at their hidebound foolishness and took up with Ires the leopard, who had sulkingly deserted his usual post a few days ago – driven to the point of nervous collapse, Ceralse said, by the incessant taunting of the mice. It struck Devri as a bad omen that the guardian cat had quit. He had fallen in with Ires while he was looking unsuccessfully for Hanji, searching all the old man’s haunts and usually finding that he had missed the seneschal by a matter of minutes or even seconds; once or twice he even thought he glimpsed a corner of the telltale blue cloak, but always too late to catch Hanji.

  ‘Fine,’ he said to Ires at last, reaching down to touch the leopard’s head where he trotted alongside, munching mice. ‘It seems Hanji doesn’t want to see me. Damn you, Hanji!’ And he shook his fist at the nearest flowerpot.

  The next thing he knew, he had fallen down a flight of stairs into the aviary again, where the falcons were flying about madly as if he’d only left them there a moment before and not days ago. They launched themselves at his eyes.

  ‘Leave me alone!’ he shouted, and running in wild circles he ended up inside the cage that had once been their home. There was a gaping hole in the floor and white light poured out of it. Over the edges began to spill a flood of squeaking brown mice. The falcons swooped on them; Devri closed his eyes against the carnage and began to run away, but then the wall to his left collapsed and white wind hit him, and he heard hoofbeats. He fell down. All of Jai Khalar seemed to shudder, and he had the sudden fear that the entire castle might collapse.

  A woman’s screams were blown on the wind from the light. Devri plunged forward into the noise, only to find the whiteness guarded by some fierce animal. He didn’t see the whole beast, but he glimpsed flaring equine nostrils and the black stripe of fur running down the grey belly as its prodigious hooves just missed cutting him; then he was rolling along a carpet of white fur like a child among dandelions tumbling downhill much too fast, until just at the moment he was sure he’d be sick, the surface beneath him heaved and tossed him roughly aside. The light faded and he was inside a disused linen cupboard. The white sheets were yellowed at the edges and populated by white mice. Mhani was there. He thought at first that she had been bound and gagged, but then he saw that she was caught in a net of white fibres. When he took a closer look he realized that the white fibres were Jai Khalar’s roads and bridges and passageways and staircases, and they had locked themselves around her like a spider’s web.

  ‘Help me,’ she said. ‘I’m trapped in the Liminal and I can’t get out.’

  ‘But how can you be here? You’re in your rooms. They carried you off and you were raving.’

  ‘Please help me. Get me out of Jai Khalar. I can show you how to get out, but I can’t do it alone.’

  ‘No, no, I must be dreaming. I’m only wishing you were sane; none of this can be real, there is no such place as this and what was that horse, how did I get here, where am I?’ He sneezed suddenly and, standing, began to move aside crates that blocked the only exit.

  ‘This is the Liminal, and you came on the White Road. It has gone wild, it has reverted to the animals; it is no longer ruled by the Knowledge. I can’t get out, Devri. The Knowledge has been broken and I can’t get out. I was seeking the White Road and I found its source, I found the mouse, and what they did to it, but I can’t understand it, what they tried to do that broke the world, the Animal Magic …’

  ‘Mhani. Mhani, I’m only dreaming I know …’ He cradled her face tenderly between his hands, feeling helpless.

  ‘Help me, Devri. Save me. Take me away. Take my body to our people, to the Deer Clan, to the Fire Houses where it all began. Help me!’

  ‘I can’t,’ he said feebly. ‘Perhaps I should get Hanji.’

  ‘No! No, Devri. You must not trust Hanji.’

  ‘B-b-but, Mhani. First you say not to trust Ajiko or Sendrigel, and now you say don’t trust Hanji. Forgive me, but isn’t it all a tad … paranoid?’

  ‘Listen to me, Devri. Hanji appears to be a man but he has become an outgrowth of the Citadel itself, I would not be surprised to peel back his robes and find that part of him was made of white stone.’

  ‘Don’t be silly; he’s just a fussy old coot.’

  ‘He’s fooled you as well, has he? Devri, please.’ And the High Seer, playing the last of her feminine mood-cards (Devri thought cynically), burst into tears.

  ‘All right, then! Can you walk? I guess not. I’ll have to come back for you.’

  He heaved the last crate out of the way of the door and opened it enough to slip through. On the other side were the ovens of the main kitchens, where he nearly collided with an app
rentice baker carrying loaves on a board. He twisted to see back the way he had come, but of course the door was not there. The apprentice muffled a curse, then gave a shriek as Ires came shooting into the kitchen, gazing accusingly at Devri as though the latter had deliberately deserted the cat.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’d better go check on Mhani.’

  Two female apprentices were attending the High Seer, who would not stay in bed but paced back and forth before her window, talking to herself. Her black hair was tangled and dull, and she was naked; the apprentices rushed to cover her when Devri entered, but she cast off the blanket and went to sit in the corner.

  ‘She’s having a bad day,’ the small blond apprentice called Lestel told Devri. ‘We asked if we could move her to a chamber that doesn’t overlook the Pharician camp, for it upsets her so; but the healer said she must stay in her familiar quarters if she is to have any hope of getting better.’

  Mhani sprang up, wrapped the blanket tightly around herself, and began pacing again. Ires tilted his head back and forth, following her with his eyes.

  ‘Is this the only exercise she gets?’ Devri asked. ‘Pacing up and down a ten-foot length of floor with you two watching her?’

  ‘We attempted to take her for a walk in the evening,’ Lestel said defensively. ‘But she kept trying to go to the Eye Tower, and we didn’t want to get in trouble.’

  Devri sighed. ‘Get some clothes on her, at least. You two must make an effort to be more forceful.’

  ‘She is the High Seer,’ Lestel protested. ‘We cannot disrespect her.’

  ‘She needs help more than she needs respect,’ responded Devri. ‘Get her dressed.’

  ‘We must get out of here, Devri,’ Mhani said. She hadn’t looked at him, but her voice was entirely calm.

  ‘What did you say?’ He moved towards her, but she shrank away and put her hands over her face. Ires sat down and began licking his back.

  ‘Don’t touch her!’ Lestel warned. ‘She’ll cry.’

  The girls brought out Mhani’s red robes.

  ‘Not those,’ Devri said. ‘Something she would wear when she’s relaxing.’

  He stood in the doorway of the closet and watched them select more simple garments, while behind him Mhani continued to pace.

  ‘She’s put on too much weight to wear that. Hand me the green.’

  ‘Ooh, is that gold embroidery? How lovely.’

  From behind him Mhani’s voice whispered, ‘It is absolutely crucial that you get us both out of here. Tonight, Devri. Please. I’m begging you.’

  This time he didn’t turn, hoping she would keep talking; but the apprentices bustled out of the closet loaded with enough clothes to stage a play. Mhani stood like a doll while they dressed her, and Devri averted his eyes – not so much from her nakedness as because he didn’t like seeing her reduced to this passive state.

  ‘That’s enough,’ he interrupted after Mhani was at least decently covered, pre-empting their efforts to dress her hair. He picked up her shoes. ‘Thank you for your assistance. I will take the High Seer for a stroll. She needs fresh air.’

  She drooled and tripped on his arm, and he was beginning to feel silly as he led her along a gallery open to the sunset, the sort of place where young couples went to sit on the windowsills and make exaggerated vows while stroking each other with tongues and fingers. Devri had been accosted here a few times himself, profiting by the absence of the majority of the male population. Tonight Mhani by his side sang off-key, and he hastened her along, jarred by the incongruity of her madness in such a romantic setting. Ires walked at her other side as if sensing that she needed some kind of support, the tip of his tail moving in that pensive way of his.

  After a little while Devri realized that Mhani was not well enough to be out and about, and whatever she might have said that sounded lucid, she wasn’t about to elaborate. In this condition she couldn’t very well leave Jai Khalar even if he could think of a way to get her out with a siege going on outside. He decided to turn and take her back to her room.

  Ires stopped in his tracks and sat down. A shaft of light fell on the leopard’s face; he blinked. Devri looked up and the ceiling of the room had opened, exposing a square of yellow evening sky. A rope ladder tumbled down as though thrown by an unseen hand.

  ‘Yes,’ Mhani said. ‘That’s where we have to go.’

  It was the full moon that night, cooling the white cliffs of Jai Khalar, which lay silent and invisible in the mountain folds while its sister city exploded into reality beyond the Floating Lands. In the field beside the entrance stream, Tash’s army slept, their fires dimmed. Within the Citadel, the mice threaded their way from shadow to shadow, and the liberated falcons roosted in the eaves, full of the day’s catch. High in the confusion of rooms, a silent, cloaked figure glided along a picture gallery to a small, grey door with a silver keyhole. There was a musical sound as the key turned in the lock and the door opened, revealing a closet. The door at the other end had been left open weeks ago by Tarquin and the cat. Surefooted, the cloaked figure passed through, following the same route as the escaping cat, until finally a hidden door opened on the fields where the king’s horses no longer grazed in this time of siege.

  Tash’s army was camped right under the shadow of the cliffs, and when the door opened, a sentry on patrol halted in his tracks and then came forward, perceiving the dark aperture when it suddenly appeared in the alabaster stone.

  The sentry’s sword preceded him, but the cloaked figure melted back into the darkness. Wary of the confined space, the sentry gave an alarm shout, and ten men immediately leaped from their rest to run across the field towards him. Torches were lit.

  ‘Shh!’ said a soft voice from the door. The words that followed were Pharician. ‘Do not raise the alarm. Enter quietly, and the Citadel shall be yours.’

  ‘Where did that door come from?’ said the sentry, lowering his blade slightly. ‘And who are you?’

  The slight figure stepped forward into the moonlight. He pushed his blue hood back to reveal silver hair and old, cunning eyes.

  ‘A friend,’ he said.

  Open

  Tarquin could not fear the White Road, for as it cast itself playfully down at Ice’s feet it revealed its true nature. All roads bear within them some promise of a surprise or delight that could be just around the next bend, but the White Road was the very essence of such possibilities: it was the wellspring of newness and the unexpected from which all roads must draw in order to entice their travellers onward. The sights flew by too fast for words. Like butterflies released from the grass in a storm of wings, visions of unknown lands and creatures and peoples whipped past the horse and rider. There were flocks of great birds that sailed on the sea with their human tenders passing among them in tiny boats, playing irresistible songs on their flutes – to what purpose Tarquin would never know. There were houses like paper lanterns that drifted through the sky, supported only by the heat of their own flames, and the shadows of the winged inhabitants made dramas on the see-through walls; there were creatures of vast bulk that lay beneath the sea, guarding caves whose treasures were only glimpsed as a flash of light in the deep; there was the roar of a squadron of bright monsters like legless beetles, which skated on red and gold ice through starless nights while the clouds lurked upstairs like thieves; there were visions of earth torn open to reveal palaces resembling exotic flowers; and high places where the wind has a form and strange voices cry. There were pitched battles fought by young boys with glowing whips. There were lamplit nights with the rain like jewels on the windowpane and the traveller settled by the fire, giving news for wine.

  Ice broke them all as if running through a field of new snow, and as every image yielded to the next, the road’s destination was seen first in a shadowy way, and then more clearly as the worlds peeled away from the floating city and the moon rolled up and balanced itself on the edge of the ocean, and the evening came open.

  Here Comes Your Chance to Get
Power

  ‘But I don’t believe in the Animal Magic,’ Xiriel heard himself protest. ‘And anyway, I’m a Wolf, not a Snake.’

  By the time the words had come out of his mouth, Xiriel had already forgotten what he was protesting about. He didn’t really know what was going on. He knew where he was: he had chosen the passageway that led to this cave because he’d hoped to find Istar here – he’d sent the others on ahead in what he was fairly certain was the right direction. But when he got into this cavern and met the man and ate the flower, he promptly forgot about everything he had been doing.

  What had come over him? He’d never ever behaved like this before. He probably shouldn’t have eaten that flower. It had tasted so good, though.

  And he was enjoying himself … kind of.

  At the moment he was standing over a pit of snakes. The man was there, already submerged in snake flesh, lying with their weight draped all over him. They were all colours and sizes, and the banded ones could be seen wrapping themselves around his limbs, forming a circuit of endless motion. The man seemed afloat in a living sea; he did not move except for an occasional shudder of pleasure, but all around him the reptiles were twining and untwining, massaging his body.

  The man was called Se. Xiriel remembered that much, at least. Before he climbed into the snake pit, he had given the Seer a flower to eat. It had been an exotic, blood red flower on a woody stalk. Maybe that had brought on this irresponsible and confusing state of mind. Maybe not.