Читать книгу Fragments of a Broken Land: Valarl Undead - Robert Hood - Страница 5

CHAPTER ONE

ALIEN PLACES

i.

Remis felt soiled just being in this rat’s nest. Its patrons were as loud as the poorly embroidered hanging that dominated the barroom wall. The wood of the table, stained and pitted, mimicked its owner’s complexion. Remis even fancied she could see tiny creatures in her wine glass. It was a foul place, yet it was here in The Night Binge that the representative of Lanaris Commercial House had insisted on meeting her.

“Lady! Ya want another drink…or ya just gonna take up table space, eh?” The landlord leaned over her, his face scowling. It wasn’t personal. He carried an air of resentment with him from table to table and inflicted it on all his customers.

Remis thrust her glass at him. “I haven’t finished this one, as you can see. There’s rather too much body in it for my liking.” The man glanced at the specks floating—even swimming—in the wine.

“What’d you want of me?” he managed at last.

She pushed the glass into his hand. “A replacement, please.”

“Replacement?” He frowned. “You must be joking.”

Remis stared at him coldly.

Muttering to himself, the barman shuffled toward the bar. He paused to talk to a thin, raggedly bearded man, who looked at Remis and laughed.

Choices are rarely free—that was what Remis Sarsdarl had come to realize. The spilt beer on the floor, the ambient smell of sweat and sickness, swearing voices—she resented all these things as she would a personal slight. Nevertheless she sat there enduring it, a martyr to her sense of the inevitable. Lanaris House was an important force in City-life—and since it also controlled a significant proportion of the world’s traffic in magical artifacts, it was in her interest as a novice spellbinder to listen to its proposals. That she knew what was wanted, and had no intention of working for Lanaris whatever was offered, didn’t matter to her. Humility was all part of her initiation into the world of commerce and had to be endured. Newly graduated from the Aram-Halas Seminary—the largest and most prestigious magic-training college in Vesuula—Remis wanted to be accepted as a colleague, not an underling. Advancement in the commercial environment of Vesuula’s political capital, Koerpel-Na, demanded such gamesmanship.

When at last Lanaris’ lackey arrived, he didn’t utter one word of apology. Remis had pictured him just as he turned out to be: a neat man, officious and slightly sinister, squatting like a toad over his glass. “So you see, my dear,” he croaked condescendingly, “without us you will flounder in poverty, struggling vainly for a mandate. Neither the House Lanaris nor its insignificant rivals will aid you. The manufacture and sale of magical artifacts is no frivolous venture—”

“I know about magical artifacts.”

“So you do. But what will that avail? You have only recently come from the Seminary, where you did tolerably well in your studies. But you have no friends, and it is these who will help you thrive. Put your talents to the best use. To work for my Lord Deern Lanaris is no degradation. He would make a useful ally.”

“I worked for your House under acolyte bond, but the apprenticeship is over. I want to remain free of direct ties, thanks just the same.”

“Such freedom is illusory. You’re too vulnerable.”

“Is that a threat?”

He smiled and the bend of his lips told Remis the truth of it.

“Surely there’s room for everyone,” she said.

The little man smiled again, more tightly this time. “Idealism is an admirable trait…in the young.” He leaned toward her and his voice lowered. “May I speak frankly?” Remis shrugged, as he clearly had no intention of remaining silent. “Your acquiescence is inevitable, because the alternative is not to work at all…and hence not to live. You have surpassed all your peers in the development of spellbinding arts and this fact alone is enough to bind you to Family service.” His head cocked arrogantly before continuing his lecture. “Profits are the key to political power in the Merchant State—and as Vesuula is the world’s commercial center, it little tolerates either the idealist or the democrat. Should you work in opposition to us, for yourself or another Family, you will be draining Lanaris’ custom and influence, however minutely. My Lord Deern would not readily condone such a thing.”

Remis stared at him. It was unbelievable that her simple wish to be self-dependent should lead into conflict with the rulers of Koerpel-Na. But she saw that that was where her training had consistently been taking her. Magic studies bore on how the world was fashioned, not on the vagaries of society. Now she felt alone and abandoned, no longer part of a vast supportive family. She had no friends and was acquiring enemies quickly.

“I see you understand our position.” The man glanced away, as though hearing something that interested him much more than Remis. Tension along his jaw line, however, told her he was waiting more keenly for a response than he was letting on.

“I understand that you think I can be influenced by threats,” Remis said, drawing his attention back to her.

“We never threaten. Commercial intimidation is forbidden by Ruling Council guidelines.”

Remis leaned forward slightly. The man half-turned from her, as though sensing something that repulsed him. “What if I said I could wither your heart as easily as I could spit on the floor at your feet?” She glared at him, intending to convey a delicate instability. “The Deep Power is more primal than your bureaucracies.” The man cleared his throat, pushing his chair away from her.

“You dare threaten me?” he said shakily.

“Of course not. As you yourself pointed out, it’s forbidden.” Remis sat back. “But I won’t sell myself to you either. There’s no law says I have to. Having commercial power over me doesn’t make you right.”

Suddenly the little man rose. His scornful superiority had returned. “Sooner or later we all must choose to whom we will sell ourselves. Look around you. Learn the lesson of this place. Would you be slave to such a life, or would you be its master?” He bowed minutely. “I take my leave. If you change your mind, send a message to me. I’ll understand.” His smile was sour. “Out of charity, I’ll assume your insolence is merely the folly of youth.”

He bowed again and left. Remis watched him push through the crowds as though they were not there, every movement a denial of the tavern and its common inhabitants. She rubbed at her forehead, feeling the tension growing into a headache. Damn it!—she felt as though the ground had shifted uneasily under her feet.

Roars of drunken abuse from across the room gave her no chance to recover her equilibrium. At a nearby table, even the publican stopped scrubbing with his greasy rag. A dark-complexioned, exotically dressed man was engaged in a scrap with a rather weedy crewman from one of the commercial ships, the pair of them threatening, shoving at each other like adolescents. It ended when the sailor lost his balance and crashed into a table. Spilt beer did nothing to dampen the roar of conversation in the place, but it did inspire a chorus of shouts from several onlookers.

“Watch your tongue, fancy-boy,” the sailor’s attacker slurred, staggering slightly as movement raised the alcohol in his head, “or you won’t keep it long.”

“I’m of the Shippers Confederacy,” sneered the crewman from his pained crouch among the ruins of a table, “and of honest parents. I won’t apologize to a slaver’s bastard.” The dark man went for him, but the sailor was away before he could be caught. He pushed a path to the door, turned and spat. “Have that as a favor, horseshit!” The door swung shut. The dark man bellowed something incoherent.

Enough is enough, thought Remis, it’s time I went home. Meeting with Lanaris House had been a mistake, more damaging to her than she could have imagined—at the very least it signaled an end to any complacent acceptance she might have had as to where her future was headed. Certainly there was no reason to endure the tavern’s acrid smells and coarse violence further. She shoved past the table and headed toward the landlord and his cronies. They watched as she approached, as though they suspected her of some sinister intent. “You forgot my replacement wine,” she said petulantly, when she reached the landlord.

He shrugged.

“I know you’re busy,” she continued, her tone flattening. “Perhaps too busy. I’ll mention it to my uncle. Perhaps he could help.”

“Your uncle?”

“Councilor Nabalen. He’s a sympathetic man…at heart.” Nabalen was Head of the Waidenar Family, which owned most of the taverns in this part of the City, and was a leading member of the Ole’eth-Aluk Ruling Council—the State’s elite political body. He was no relative of Remis’s, of course, though he’d once instigated bankruptcy procedures against her father, when failing wheat crops had spoilt some minor entrepreneurial endeavor of the Waidenar’s. But Remis’s clothes and superior manner would add credence to her claim, enough to unsettle him perhaps. “I’m sure he’ll be fascinated by your plight,” she added for effect, mustering as much sarcastic self-confidence as she could manage.

The landlord scoffed, though uncertainly. “Nabalen wouldn’t piss on the likes of you,” he ventured.

Probably true, thought Remis. But she mimicked a sort of mock surprise. “You think so, do you?” She smiled nastily. “Well, we’ll see.” And turned away, feeling that if she evoked momentary doubt it would be sufficient. A petty revenge, yes, but the afternoon had made her feel petty. He called to her before she reached the door. She ignored him and swung out into the night. Street air was cool. A strong wind blew in off the unseen harbor and carried ocean tangs and other stenches from the docks. Only the windows of The Night Binge showed any light. The tall stone warehouses and surrounding shops were dark and few people walked the streets.

A cacophony broke through the night as the door of the tavern opened. The publican staggered out, trailing shadow and smoke. “You don’t frighten me, lady!” he yelled, his face betraying his anxiety.

Remis waved dismissively and strode off down the main Dehum-Rewi thoroughfare before he could say more, her boots clicking dully on the paving stones and sloshing in the frequent patches of mud. Wide and long, the road disappeared into darkness around the edge of a black-stone edifice. There were no oil-lamps there. But she didn’t intend to be frightened of the night and she didn’t look back either.

A voice shouted from beyond the buildings, one of the workers on the main dock. It was bleak and forlorn. That pompous Lanaris fool was right in one thing, Remis thought, I need friends, or nothing will thrive. But I’ll pick them myself, no matter how unlikely the choice may seem.

The ground about her flickered under the pale movement of residual day in the clear, but always starless, night-sky.

ii.

Sevthen Ulart-Tashnark made it home—or rather, made it back to his mother’s home—without much trouble. Sure, his head hurt, his memory was fuzzy and he had no real awareness of his surroundings, but none of that could be considered unusual. For many years, he’d been able to negotiate the short walk—or, more accurately, stagger—along the port district’s muddy streets without the help of conscious thought at all. It was like a groove he was in and the most that ever happened to him was a bruised elbow or two acquired from bumping into the sides of the rut.

His mother, ever trustful, had left the back door unlatched so there was no need for him to deal with the impossible task of locating keys and then manipulating them into the lock. Instead Tashnark pushed on the plain wooden paneling and let the door swing open by itself. He staggered into the kitchen, tripped over a chair and admonished himself rather loudly to keep quiet. Somehow he found his bedroom at the end of a dark corridor that should have defied navigation.

“Tashnark? Is that you?” came his mother’s voice, echoing dimly through the night like an overfamiliar memory.

“No,” he shouted grumpily, “it’s just a burglar!”

As he fell face down onto his bed, he allowed himself a moment of regret. There wasn’t time to define the nature of the regret, however, before his abused body and mind withdrew into darkness.

This had become a familiar pattern. Nearly every night, it seemed, Tashnark would drink enough cheap beer to deaden the most intense depression. Its effect would sit on him like a fog, blurring the edges of memory and dulling his fears. Sometimes it made him aggressive, as it had earlier tonight.

But it never kept the night and its darkness away. And the darkness scared him. Lately it had been offering up strange and vivid dreams—dreams that took him to another place, another time.…

And on this night, too, as he slept, reality shifted—and he became someone else.

He was Bellarroth and Bellarroth was travelling. He had been travelling for…he couldn’t tell how long. Though he was aware of progress he had no sense of history. His memory was only the memory of present-past—moments slipping into an obscurity that had no form, offered no imagery. He did not question; he just traveled.

But time filled him with thoughts.

When the wind grew bad, he sought shelter. Its sudden intensity and the way it screamed around the crevices and ridges told him that the Great Monster Tammenallor was moving, making Its way through the void. Memory of Tammenallor came suddenly, a herald of other knowledge. Tammenallor was the world on which he lived, he knew that much—a living being like himself, but one so far beyond Bellarroth’s conception of life, and so much larger, that he had no terms in which to think of It. Bellarroth looked toward the horizon and let his mind understand the heaving movement visible there.

Soon he reached the Serpent Acres themselves. The twisting trees, snakeheads raging, made a fearful silhouette against the sky. Beyond them, mountainous Koroom—as he had euphonically named Tammenallor’s noisy head—loomed above him and momentarily drove other thoughts from his mind. Every so often light would spark off the gargantuan fangs protruding through the flesh of the Koroom-mouth, spearing Bellarroth’s heart with pain and blanching the sky with its horror. Only this distracted him from the danger of the trees themselves. He would watch Koroom’s huge mouth open soundlessly and it would numb his more immediate fears, replacing them with primitive terror.

Vapor hung like torn skin in the space around it.

<Come to me. Hurry, hurry.>

The urgency had taken on a voice now, so clear that Bellarroth started, thinking someone had approached him. He steadied himself, and listened. <Hurry,> it said, <Hurry or the way is lost.>

The voice was not from outside. It trembled through the interior of his head like uncontrolled thought.

Is it Hanin? he wondered. Is the voice my teacher’s?

The ground shook.

* * * *

Tashnark would respond by tossing aside the images that crowded through his restless sleep. He’d open his eyes and the night, broken into shadow-patterns on the plaster roof above him, would coalesce into something familiar again. He’d be in his mother’s home. Her house stood on the edge of a large park on the seaward side of the City of Koerpel-Na, in the merchant-state called Vesuula. His father was a state-sanctioned slaver. He himself was drunk too often and a great disappointment to his family. Heavily built and, on occasion, oafish with it, he occupied his time in taverns and gaming houses, working for money only when his father indulged in the sort of parental moralising that had frustrated many a fine layabout.

Why then was he plagued by the dreams? They were more frequent now than they had ever been, so barely a night passed that was not full of their bizarre imagery. Tashnark felt the dream…no, it was more than a dream…he felt the memory growing clearer and clearer nightly. Yet it was impossible. He was Sevthen Ulart-Tashnark and he lived in Koerpel-Na. There was no Tammenallor, no Hanin, no Bellarroth.

He’d turn in his bed and pull the blankets around his shoulders.

Can dreams supplant reality? he’d wonder—but would not want an answer.

* * * *

In the morning he had a hangover. His memory of its causes was blurry to say the least, though oddly enough what he remembered most about the night before was not whatever conversation he may have had with acquaintances in The Night Binge, nor how much he drank, nor the fight with the ship crewman (which he only knew about because of a note from the publican he found in his jacket pocket, billing him for a busted table). Rather it was a woman he’d noticed sitting at the back, as though waiting. He’d watched her for a while, fascinated by her, and had seen some self-important bastard from one of the Commercial Houses come in and sit with her. As a liaison, however, it looked to be about as welcome as a bacterial infection in places best not mentioned in polite company. The woman was intimidated at first, but then rallied, putting the wind up him by something she said and sending him on his way with only a show of scorn to cover his annoyance. What happened then got a bit hazy, but Tashnark did recall that the next time he’d looked for her, the woman was gone.

He’d been attracted to her, that was certain—irresistibly drawn in fact. He’d admired her face and figure to be sure, but was even more entranced by the manner in which she carried herself. Dark hair, tied back firmly, compact body, ornately decorated clothing, piercing eyes. Though her face was delicately and finely featured, giving a suggestion of being lost, there was no hint that this fact demoralized her. In her determination, which was plain to him even from a distance, she reminded him of his mother. Tashnark might have approached the woman, hoping to prolong an acquaintance that didn’t even have a starting point, except he’d been sober enough to realize he was in no state to impress. He was incoherent and morbid and drunk. His shirt and rough cotton pants were filthy with spilt food and beer stains. No doubt he stank. So he’d kept away and all that was left now were a few recollections. It was strange, though, that despite the alcoholic amnesia that inevitably settled over him, memories of the woman should linger.

Both his mother and Ishwarin, his brother, had breakfasted by the time he made it to the kitchen. He forced himself to eat some eggs and a plateful of cereals covered in thickened juice—he had no idea what kind of fruit the reddish green sludge had once been—then was sick into a large washbasin he was using to splash the throbbing out of his temples.

His mother didn’t appear either to comfort or berate him, so he assumed she’d left for her workplace—the Hassur Libraries. She spent an inordinate amount of time there, much more than her job required. It was as though she were desperate to track down some important scrap of information hidden in the thousands of volumes written by men and women long dead—a truth that would make her content. She wasn’t content, Tashnark knew that. Under her veneer of easy acceptance was a spirit tormented by longing. Tashnark didn’t fully understand the source of that longing, but his awareness of it made him uncomfortable. Part of him wanted to help her, though he had long ago given up any pretence that he knew what could be done for her.

And he was conscious of his own responsibility. Once, looking for money, he’d violated the sanctity of her room while she was out. On her desk lay piles of paper and his eyes had scanned them lazily. One sheet was an old fading leaf covered in the archaic square pen-craft of Hassur-scholars. It was a ‘Meditation on Worthiness’ by Halek-Sinor, one of the College’s founding fathers. Next to it was something written in a recent and more flowing script: his mother’s, without a doubt. There was a date at the top, that of several days before. Strangely compelled, Tashnark had picked up the paper and read it.

How can we see Halek-Sinor’s Worthiness, with its relentless pursuit of Truth and correspondent Morality, in the Hassur of today? Godliness seems further and further removed from every part of intellectual life. Nor can I, on a personal level, keep my own life pure and free of ambiguity. What is my son? I cannot admit what I know in my heart, that my son is dead, and that a stranger has taken his place. Hassur records, but does not evaluate. Is this worthy? I remember the past, as does Hassur, but resist the memory in favor of blind hopes and ignorant assumptions. In that, I’m like the Temples. If Ur-Teth the God called upon us today, how far from truth and willingness would we find ourselves to be, I and my Hassur?

…that my son is dead, and that a stranger has taken his place. What did she mean by it? Tashnark hadn’t known, and still didn’t, but memory of her doubt and sorrow made him afraid—for her…and for himself.

He heated water over the stove, carried it through the house in a large pot and poured it into the expensive metal-wrought tub that graced his mother’s bathroom. After the third trip, he stripped off his smelly clothes and soaked himself for a while. He tried to cut off his thoughts, which were too often spoiled by a self-pity he didn’t let anyone else see. Post-binge melancholy didn’t help. Such self-indulgence struck him as pathetic and made him feel worse. Instead he watched the whirling phantoms molded from steam from the hot water and listened to the muffled sounds of the outside world. At one point he found himself wondering again who that woman in the tavern had been—her dark hair tied back, her gray-green eyes glinting clearly even across the smoky taproom, the way her hands moved with an elegant expressiveness as she talked.

If I search hard enough, he wondered, will I be able to find her again?

As his mind numbed and his eyelids got heavier, Tashnark heard his brother singing gently in the room above. The words filtered into his mind as an undercurrent to thought and settled there like a sediment over his day-dreaming.

“Where are you going?” spoke a man I met beside the

bay.

“Along the road and out of town,” at once I tried to

say.

“Where are you going?” again he pressed, that man so

thin and gray

“Beyond the last house, out the gate, still further on

my way.”

The tune was slow and measured, soothing on the surface yet somehow unsettling at a level below Tashnark’s conscious thoughts. Verse after verse described the determined questioning of the thin, gray man. More, it charted the narrator’s growing terror as the stranger’s words took on darker meaning. Tashnark found his mind drifting into a landscape full of hazy light, as the song’s narrator begged the strange man to leave him alone.…

His “Where are you going?” laughed at me, his eyes

said plainly “Nay!”

His hand stretched out and touched me, and he wraith-

like went away.

The winds sigh “Where are you going?” Dark waters

in the bay

Breathe the words like sleeping beasts; “Where?” the

brambles say.

Trees whisper “Where are you going?”, “Where?”

chirps the lonely jay.

A cursed soul, I wander lost, in exile, old and fey.

The accompanying lute mimicked the sound of wind. Tashnark stirred restlessly in the cooling water as, again, something monstrous formed in the empty spaces of sleep. He felt it coming and groaned, tossing about in sudden terror.

Words burst from his lips. “Hanin! Hanin!” There was an intense red glow that blinded him and stunned his mind into dullness. He squeezed his eyes shut.

* * * *

When he opened his eyes, a vague uneasiness came upon him, making him feel displaced and lonely.

He was called Bellarroth. He remembered that.

He remembered the name ‘Tashnark’, too. But who was Tashnark? Bellarroth had no idea.

What was he doing then? Bellarroth couldn’t remember that either.

He looked around at the near-dormant serpent-trees and the grainy haze of the sky beyond, and another name came to him. Hanin! He was searching for Hanin—that was what he was doing.

The first signs of the Fire-beast Lucishnor had appeared on the few scraps of horizon visible to him. Lucishnor’s imminent arrival heralded a new day—and the possible awakening of the trees. A touch of fire in the sky silhouetted their still forms. Bellarroth began to run, his awareness of Hanin’s call renewed and strengthened. But the sky flared suddenly as the monster Lucishnor sped into view. The heat of its closeness battered him.

Movement made him glance up. A shadowy mass towered above—a mountain moving with life. He was close to the base of Koroom, so close the monster-head lost appreciable detail and was simply a solid, incomprehensible hugeness. Hanin’s call hounded him on. <Hurry, hurry!>

Bellarroth’s breath came in gasps and his chest heaved against the rough, hair-woven garment he wore, while the heat of Lucishnor burned across the back of his neck like a swung fire-brand. Sweat rolled off him and thirst tore at his throat, but he didn’t stop beneath the shade of denser forest nor when he came to water leaking out of Tammenallor into a gentle rivulet. The water began to steam.

And then the winds grew fierce. There was movement among the serpent-trees that was not a product of their perpetual squirming. It threw them into a simultaneous swing to one side and their hissing swept into Bellarroth’s ears as though they cried out in alarm. Hair-grass whipped about his feet, making him stumble as a blast of wind hit and scalded his already-reddened skin. He fell to his knees.

Now the sky was on fire. As he glanced up, Bellarroth’s flame-blurred eyes discerned in that instant the shape of Lucishnor’s fiery wings even through the forest of serpent-silhouettes between him and the sky-beast. He turned away, praying that the monster would fly around behind the enormous head of Tammenallor, so that Bellarroth would be running in shadow. Battle between the monsters seemed inevitable and this perception fueled the panic already barely under control in him. If the monsters were to fight, there would be no possibility of survival for him on Tammenallor. Gigantomachy would annihilate the delicate balance of existence, his life consumed in the holocaust.

He knew instinctively that time was shortening. Yet it was not despair that rose in him, but determination and heightened awareness of the urgency sent from Hanin. Fatalistically, he stumbled on through the mounting chaos, crouching low to reduce the push of the winds. Heat ate at him like a predator.

How long it was before he reached the limit of his endurance he didn’t know, but reach it he did. And acknowledging that limit brought a swift and unwelcome end to his flight. The call speared into his mind with a sharp, almost hysterical intensity. He saw ahead a tangle of shapes materializing in the stark glare—his mind grasped to that tangle as though linked by some ethereal bond. Momentarily the haze on his eyes cleared, showing him a thick mesh of smaller, vine-like serpents and clinging, fibrous strands. In the midst of this, held and shredded by insensate fingers, lay Hanin—a bloody corpse being shorn of its flesh. A moan escaped from Bellarroth’s lips and his limbs stiffened with sudden fear. Darkness overwhelmed him.

* * * *

Tashnark awoke to the sound of dim voices, chattering frenziedly in dark. A hand gripped his arm, pulling him up. “Hanin!” he cried, weak with ghostly terror, “I saw you dead.”

“Dead, no.” The thin, wrinkled lips released words as though they were precious jewels, “but you find me dying. Tammenallor has broken my defenses and Its body takes me to Its own. Soon I will be dead. You, Bellarroth, have been born to save. Act now! Awaken!”

His skeletal finger bent to Bellarroth’s forehead and touched him there.

The contact jolted him, filling his bones with fire.

“I’m not Bellarroth!” he yelled.

Tashnark’s voice echoed in the small bathroom, rebounding like a shattered vase from the tiled walls. The water, cool now, lapped against his chest, spilling over onto the floor. His fingers gripped the smooth-beaten metal of the bath rim. Someone was pounding on the door. “Tashnark! Are you all right?”

The door creaked open and the smooth, ascetic face of his brother, Ishwarin, squeezed into the gap. “What the hell are you yelling about, brother?”

“Nothing. Sorry. I fell asleep and had a nightmare.”

Ishwarin opened the door fully and came in. He was dressed in the formal purple and gray coat he always wore when attending the Courts. “You yelled something about Bellarroth.”

“Did I? I’ve never heard of him.”

“The thing is.…” Ishwarin leaned down, full of his usual earnestness—a peculiar stance that always accompanied displays of erudition. His plucked eyebrows curved into a questioning frown. “Bellarroth is a rather esoteric name. Where did you come across it?”

Tashnark shrugged. “This water’s cold. Do you mind?” He stood in the bath, letting the water slough off him.

His brother stepped back to let him get at his towel. “It’s part of an ancient tale.”

“Tale?”

“About the end of the world. Do you know it?”

Tashnark dried himself, shoving Ishwarin aside whenever he got in the way of his elbows. The floor tiles felt cold and unpleasant under his feet.

“It’s a very obscure thing. Legendary. Bellarroth was said to have undertaken a great journey to confront the world’s tormentor. No, wait, I’m wrong. It was not something done, but an action foretold. A prophecy—”

“Brother!” Tashnark gestured in front of Ishwarin’s face to silence him, sensing danger. “I don’t want to know this, thanks. Save it for your better educated cronies.” He strode out, heading for his bedroom. “I don’t know anything about it and I’m quite happy to leave it that way.”

“It’s interesting.”

“I’m sure it is. But I don’t care.”

Ishwarin didn’t follow him, taking his frustrated attempt to further Tashnark’s education through into the hearth-room. Tashnark dressed quickly. His mind was numb, still disturbed by fragmented images of serpent-headed trees, a roaring mountain and a fiery monster that lit up the sky. He tried not to think about it.

Then striped light falling from outside across the crumpled surface of his bed invoked the specter of a bloodied corpse cut by vines.

“Ishwarin!” he yelled.

“What is it?” came his brother’s distant voice.

“What about the name Hanin? Does that mean anything to you?”

Silence took over for a moment, until Tashnark thought that Ishwarin hadn’t heard him. He was about to withdraw, when Ishwarin appeared at the end of the corridor.

“There was a Hanin in Cormidthal’s court. One of the Warlord’s Inner Circle spellcasters, I think.”

“Cormidthal?”

“The last ruler of Mikhalin—which, in case your history’s as poor as your manners, was a great empire on the southern landmass, before it was fragmented in an apocalyptic war, oh, perhaps a thousand years ago. The Greatest War, some call it. Surely you learnt something of this from your tutors.”

“What I learnt from my tutors wasn’t what they were trying to teach me.”

Ishwarin’s gaunt features became more stern as they reflected his disappointment. “You’ve wasted your time, Tashnark. You always were disrespectful.”

Tashnark held up his hand. “No lectures.”

Ishwarin shrugged.

“Is that all you can tell me about Hanin?”

“I could look it up. Why? What’s your interest in him? Has this to do with Bellarroth?”

“Just something I heard.” Tashnark waved him away. “It doesn’t matter. Hadn’t you better get going? You’re late for work.”

“The Court sitting doesn’t start till mid-morning.” He walked toward Tashnark, a gaunt shadow in the dimness of the hallway. “You look like you could use a drink. Want to visit the Refectory?”

“I drank quite enough last night.”

“Something non-alcoholic then?”

Dream-residue struck Tashnark suddenly and he staggered, leaning against the wall so that Ishwarin wouldn’t notice. Heat and tempest around him. The corpse of Hanin a bloody skeleton, little flesh remaining on the bones. Even as he watched he could see that the mesh in which Hanin was trapped sucked the moisture from what remained of his body. Too late! Too late!

“Are you still drunk?” asked his brother.

The image of dead Hanin was replaced by that of a living woman. The woman from the tavern last night. She reached out and beckoned to him.

Tashnark shook the visions aside. Damn it! “No, just a bit dizzy. Listen, there’s something I want to talk to you about anyway. Maybe you can give me some advice.”

“Me? Advise you?” Ishwarin raised an elegantly curved eyebrow. “This is a turnaround.”

“Don’t get cocky. The world’s aging and so am I. Come on!” He grabbed his brother’s bony arm and bustled him toward the front door.

* * * *

The Refectory—originally established by the Shaa-Derthperrit Temple as an eating place for magic-workers who, for one reason or another, had fallen on hard times, but long since having become a fashionable secular meeting-place for locals—wasn’t very busy at this time of the day. Its high roof and compartmentalized architecture, however, created complex patterns of light and shadow that always gave the impression of quiet occupancy. Ishwarin never objected to coming here, even though the richness of his purse predisposed him to more upmarket venues. On the other hand, it had always been a favorite of Tashnark’s. It suited him when the louder egotism of the district’s innumerable taverns didn’t appeal, or when he felt like talking. He liked the way its internal skeleton of wooden pillars and carved ribbing evoked a living presence. Even when there were musicians playing, it was a quiet, contemplative place.

Ishwarin called for hot drinks made of crushed ocar beans and nuts—to Tashnark it was an anemic scholar’s drink, but he accepted the gesture. Suddenly hungry, he added bread, cheese and crispy bacon to the order.

“So what’s on your mind?” Ishwarin started right in, once the attendant was gone. His curiosity was patent. “Is this something serious?”

“Serious? Have you ever known me not to be serious?”

“It’s about our mother, is it?”

Ishwarin had always had a profound love for Eresteyin that he never offered to his real mother, their father’s current wife. Strictly speaking, Tashnark and he were only half-brothers, though they didn’t think of themselves that way. Ishwarin’s actual home was far across the City, in the Old Gorim district—the historic center of Koerpel-Na—but he spent most of his time in Eresteyin’s house. It was always plain where his loyalties lay.

“No, she’s fine,” Tashnark said. “This is about a…different woman.”

Ishwarin laughed. “What? You’re asking me about your love life?”

Tashnark frowned. “I don’t have a love life.”

“I noticed.”

“For god’s sake, just listen.”

“Sorry.”

“I want to find a woman, a particular woman, and I don’t know how to go about it. You’re good at all that bureaucratic horseshit. You got any ideas?”

Ishwarin grinned at him stupidly. It irritated Tashnark.

“Well?”

“I’m amazed, that’s all.” Ishwarin swiveled his eyes in a dismissive gesture. “Who is she?”

“I don’t know. She was at The Binge last night. I watched her, on and off, for maybe half an hour. Now I can’t get her out of my mind.”

“Love at first sight, eh? I didn’t think you had it in you.”

An old woman in a long brown robe materialized with their drinks. Tashnark took a heavy gulp and let the smooth bland liquid course down his throat. Was it love at first sight? Or perhaps lust? No doubt there was a sexual side to it, but that wasn’t what it was about. He met many women, felt drawn toward their shapeliness or their long, inviting legs. Yet he rarely pursued them. What was different with this one?

“I don’t know,” he said. “I felt.…” He shrugged. “Actually I don’t know what I felt, but she got in my mind and now worries at its edges like a damn cat with a mouse.”

Ishwarin stared into his eyes thoughtfully for a moment. It was a disconcerting habit and one that normally irritated the hell out of Tashnark. Today, however, it unsettled him instead. He glanced away.

“What is it you want, brother?” Ishwarin almost whispered.

“Want? You mean, from this woman?”

“From your life. You have to admit, it’s not in the best shape.”

Confusion flowed through Tashnark, numbing his arms, hollowing out his chest. Something he recognized as a sob ballooned into his throat, but he cut it off before it could be expelled into the air and give him away.

“I want to find this particular woman at the moment, that’s all. Is it too much to ask you for simple help, without a cross-examination?”

Ishwarin would have recognized this response as evasion, but he let it pass. He nodded. “Seriously, though, this is just what you need, Tashnark. An obsession.”

“Can you give me any useful advice?”

Ishwarin let his broad mouth smile knowingly. “Her name? That’d be a start.”

“I didn’t talk to her.” When Ishwarin’s face produced a look that contained both amazement and scorn, Tashnark added: “I was drunk at the time. I kept my distance.”

Ishwarin gazed at him with an amused smirk.

“She was dressed well but in clothes that were slightly out of fashion. Too much pattern.” Tashnark frowned, concentrating. “And she moved her hands when she talked in a very studied way, but beautifully, like it was a dance.”

The bread, cheese and bacon arrived and Tashnark ate it while he told Ishwarin what he could remember of the encounter, such as it was. Thinking of it must have distracted his stomach from its earlier disquiet, for the food stayed down.

“Maybe the publican knows her,” Ishwarin suggested.

“She was totally out of place. Her first and last time in The Binge, I’d guess.”

“Her unwelcome companion then, the Houseman? Could you track her through him?”

“The emblem on his cloak was a round object—a ring perhaps—with three wavy lines in the center—”

“Lanaris Family. From your description—especially the hand movements—she’s probably a magic-worker. It fits. Lanaris’s interest would suggest a spellbinder. No doubt newly graduated. Lanaris aims to maintain a monopoly on the employment of the Seminary’s best students. They want her and she’s resisting.” He waved his hand like a street performer. “Simple.”

Tashnark squinted at his brother. “You’d make an excellent legal advocate, if you could just learn to be suitably corrupt. So how do I find her?”

Ishwarin swallowed a mouthful of ocar, unaccountably yet obviously savoring the light creaminess of the beverage. It left a scum of brown foam on his upper lip. “Ask Lanaris House,” he said.

iii.

Despite her sense that bridges had been burned behind her, Remis continued with plans to find independent work. In the morning, she woke bleary-eyed and lethargic and had to force herself to wash, have breakfast, dress and head out from her thin, cluttered rooms into the City. Everywhere it was the same: officials who had previously welcomed her enquiries now turned her away without explanation, agreements nearly signed were found to be faulty and lapsed or were discarded, no new custom approached her door. Over the following days, she would go to the docks to meet incoming ships, hoping to keep ahead of the spreading conspiracy that isolated her from her future, and there approached captains and foreign merchants, offering her skills. Some would express interest. But within the hour a richly attired figure would come to them with whispers and nods, and they would send her away.

“I’m sorry. We can’t use your services,” they’d say.

“Why?” she’d ask. “I can be competitive and guarantee the result.”

“I’m sorry.”

Once, pushed beyond self-pity into anger, she let go her restraint and accused a fat merchant’s agent of conspiring with Lanaris House to ruin her. The man laughed and had her removed from his office by force. When she threatened to go to the Ruling Council, he gestured carelessly for her to do so. He knew as well as she that it would get her nowhere.

Her shop, so lately a symbol of her new, expanding life, suddenly felt like a prison, its dark narrow workrooms cold with discouragement and failure. She spent some time binding minor power-spells into worthless trinkets, which she then hawked at a nearby market. One sold, but word got around somehow and before she knew what was happening, she was jostled and items were stolen in the crush; thugs appeared to channel passersby away from her. When she complained to a Sumis law enforcement officer, he commented that the markets were like that—not a fit place for someone of her status to peddle their wares.

“It’s more than that,” she insisted. “This is organized intimidation. I’ve been threatened by Lanaris House.”

The officer studied her intently. “You do have a permit to sell in open market, do you?”

“I’m a trained spellbinder. That gives me the right.”

Darkly, he insisted she accompany him back to the main Sumis offices at Mallos House, where he checked her credentials. After a delay of about three hours, she was told that her license could not be confirmed.

“I’m a graduate of the Seminary,” she said, astonished.

“I’m sure someone has misplaced the documentation, that’s all. It’ll get sorted out. But until it does, you must refrain from practicing your Art commercially. I’m sorry.”

Argument was useless. In a rage, she went to the Faen-Hassur Shas’torarb, which housed the Seminary and had been for so long her only home, and told the Dean her story. He was sympathetic, but it was clear that neither his jurisdiction nor his outlook extended much beyond the walls of the school. She talked to some of her teachers to the same end. It was her problem, they said. If she chose to resist the system, there was little they could do to help her.

It made her isolation all the more apparent. What friends she’d made during her years of study were scattered across the world now; only one had remained in Koerpel-Na—Seran, a young woman born far outside Vesuula and adept at various minor commercial magics. Accordingly, Remis sought her out and they went for a drink together, but already their paths had separated. Their talk was superficial, emotional connections weak. It left her feeling morose. More and more she thought of the family she’d left behind many years ago in the mountain plains just outside the northern Vesuulan border. Her father hadn’t wanted her to go, had instead wanted her to marry the son of a local landowner and thus cement the family’s local fortunes. “What else are girl-children for?” he’d yelled. They’d fought about it, long and hard; Remis had left home in a storm of argument and regret. She hadn’t seen either her father or his wife for over five years, though once her mother had written—a tense, clumsy missive which Remis had too easily discarded. To whom or to what was she connected? She’d abandoned her bloodline and the society she’d adopted was abandoning her. Perhaps it had been a mistake to place so much hope on a vision of the future. Of what real worth was it anyway?

“You must ask yourself what it is you want out of life, Remis,” one of her old teachers offered her. Right now, she didn’t know.

Walking home that afternoon, she passed the forge of a smithy whose skills she’d used on occasion when her own non-magical technical abilities hadn’t been up to the metal-working required for some particular object she was devising. The smithy was named Arhl Mogarni, and his ultra-pale skin and borderland accent branded him as much an alien in this cosmopolitan city as she was becoming herself. Koerpel-Na wasn’t as open a place as it pretended to be, she reflected. It was closed-off and unfriendly, greedy for foreign trade but subtly exclusive in its practices, even to those it had beckoned into the fold.

As she approached, she saw that the smithy was standing in his front yard, leaning against the large open door of his workroom—obviously seeking momentary relief from the interior heat. He noticed her and waved. On an impulse, she veered closer.

“Hello, Mogarni,” she said.

He acknowledged her with unexpected eagerness. “Please, it’s Arhl,” he said. “No formality necessary.”

“Taking a break?”

“Not entirely by choice.” He smiled a touch wryly. “Work is scarce.”

“For me, too. It’s hopeless.”

The look of concern that spread over his pale, bony features seemed overstated—she should have been more careful what she said. He had always adopted a fatherly air in her presence.

She shrugged. “It’s all right. I’m just feeling a bit sorry for myself. I’m finding it harder than I imagined. Independence, I mean.”

He nodded dumbly, as though he’d been close to revealing too much and had suddenly realized the fact. “You deserve better,” he mumbled.

“I’m sure things will improve.”

She wished him well and continued on her way, vaguely disappointed. What had she expected? There had been some sort of connection between Arhl Mogarni and herself, but it had felt distant and awkward. They hardly knew each other—and not personally—so how could it be otherwise?

* * * *

Her nights, lying alone in her rooms, filled with dreams and omens. These gnawed at her incessantly, like rats at a hessian grain-sack. She shivered in her bed, desperate to throw them off. But they gathered about her mind in ever-thickening clusters, finally coming together into shapes of terrible significance.

One night a few days after her abortive meeting with Lanaris House’s lackey—finding herself on the verge of acquiescence—Remis lay on her bed in the semi-dark, staring at the ceiling, wishing she could find some resolve. After a while the shadows seemed to move toward her. She blinked to steady them, but they only drifted closer, wrapping themselves around her.

She was standing before a creature of corrupted flesh, a death-being whose eyes were black and lifeless in their sockets. Its limbs were shrunken, but the muscles on them were bound like thick twine about its bones. Fearfully she offered this creature a bronze-edged coffer and watched as it took the offering in its hands. It stared mutely at the object that lay inside: a spiky, jagged-limbed artifact that made her think of a candle-gleam caught in stone. Although she only vaguely recognized the shape, it created in her a strong urgency and a sense of awe. There was greed, too. She indicated for the creature to place its hand upon the object.

At that moment the skin of the creature’s face tore like volcanic ground splitting apart under vast subterranean pressure; its hand became a knife that cut out her heart in one bloodless stroke. She screamed as pain twisted her muscles. The candle-gleam artifact sprang from the cut and its pointed, undulating arms grew swiftly, flowing outward and around, engulfing her, binding her, one with her body and spirit, utterly consuming her every thought. Then the artifact began to rise away from her and it drew her life with it, leaving her crying out in despair and torment. There was fire in her chest and it supplanted the hollowness of her body, flowing through her like blood. Desolation overtook the world. She cried out: “Where are you going?” but the evanescent artifact gave no reply. Its departure left the world ablaze.

Remis was tossed into wakefulness. She stared up at the ceiling still, re-living the nightmare in an effort to secure it in her memory. She was a student of the Deep Power, and in the philosophy of the Magic Arts dream-imagery held mysteries it was worth making an effort to solve. The meaning of this one escaped her.

The night was quiet, and her surroundings suddenly unfamiliar. Her wooden casements had been transformed into threatening alien relics.

A storm pelted heavy rain drops against her tile roof, creating a rumble that vibrated through the baked-clay walls. Wind swept over her. She shivered and dragged herself from her bed, realizing that a door or window must have been blown open in the sudden tempest. Sure enough, as she emerged from her room into the central corridor, she could see along it to the square of liquid dark that should have been the closed front door. She cursed. Her feet padded across the gritty sandstone floor toward it.

Lightning flared, cracking the night apart. There was something there, in the doorway. Two vivid green eyes, low to the ground, pierced into hers, surrounded by a compact gray shape. A cat?

For a moment, while storm-light lingered in the air, and as the building trembled with the concussion of lagging thunder, she stood as though paralyzed, staring at this specter. Then darkness engulfed her.

She moved forward again. The cat was no longer there. Remis leaned out into the storm, glancing up and down the street. Nothing but the detritus of the night.

She shut and locked the door and in the resulting stillness went back to her bed.

iv.

Ishwarin claimed it was simply because Tashnark was so bone idle, and had nothing better to do with his time, that he had become so focused—but something more drove Tashnark to visit the main offices of Lanaris House, seeking information about the woman he’d seen in The Night Binge. Call it obsession, call it lust. He didn’t care what it was called. He simply wanted to know who she was and felt a growing urgency to find her.

Lanaris House was less than cooperative. The insincere fool he was allowed to talk to was suspicious of his request for information and sought guidance from above. Whoever his reply came from, the answer was the inevitable one: such a meeting as Tashnark described could not have taken place—it would hardly be appropriate for a commercial Family of Lanaris’s eminence in the Supreme Council to conduct business in a grubby dock-side tavern. Tashnark must have been mistaken.

“Maybe it wasn’t official business,” Tashnark suggested, “but I’d like to speak to the Lanaris official who was there. He was wearing the House emblem.”

He described the man, but still received no satisfactory answer. If he hadn’t been so physically imposing, they would have thrown him from the building. The experience confirmed the prejudice he harbored against Family bureaucracies and made him suspect a conspiracy.

That night he must have dreamed of Hanin, for when he woke his head was filled with memory of the man. How could such memories suddenly exist where before there’d been nothing? Moreover the memories were from the point of view of Bellarroth, who haunted his nights with greater and greater frequency.…

* * * *

“Who are you?” Bellarroth had asked.

Hanin’s old eyes flayed him, as though the issue were one that should never be raised. He had not answered.

But Hanin had taught Bellarroth many things—how to cook and sew and hunt and survive. He found him shelter where there was none, fed him when vermin was scarce, and gave him thoughts beyond those of simple survival. The old man always appeared whenever he was needed.

“What’s does my name mean, Hanin?” Bellarroth had asked once.

“It means nothing, as now you mean nothing.” Hanin smiled ironically, his weathered face creasing into a complex pattern. “One day—in another place—you will be more important than you can imagine and then you will have a new name. Until that time, you are nothing.”

Hanin spoke of the ‘other world’, the world he called Tharenweyr, born out of the dream of the fallen deity Errellinarth. He spoke to Bellarroth of many things in that other world—of great magic and the Deep Power, of greed and of ambition and how these evils had brought destruction; and he told Bellarroth of the exile of his mother, who was named Korrenea, onto Tammenallor’s shoulders. “Tammenallor?” Bellarroth would declare. “What is Tammenallor to me?”

Tammenallor was a great cosmic monster, Hanin explained, a living world…one of the mythological Kharathahul who were said to inhabit the spaces outside reality—manifestations of the deepest of human emotions. “You live upon its shoulders. It’s no natural dwelling for men and women, rather a tomb and a prison…we’re simply parasites and die in futility like the vermin we parody, trapped in the guilt we have ourselves provoked.”

Bellarroth protested. “Guilt? I have nothing to be guilty about.”

Hanin smiled at him with affection. “Not you, my son—no, you are born of this place. The guilt is not yours. It belongs to those who brought it from the first world.” He sighed melodramatically. “But you inherit the consequences of their actions.”

Bellarroth never understood the purpose of Hanin’s teachings, nor did he question the source of the old man’s knowledge. Only once had Hanin come close to that subject. “My son,” he’d said, “you are my expiation. Responsibility lies heavy on my soul and somewhere a world laden with pain by my indulgence. I will pay the debt.”

Bellarroth knew from this that Hanin had been one of those whose guilty acts had created Tammenallor and exiled them both onto the monster’s vast shoulders. He did not understand what to do with the insight.

Once they talked of death, Bellarroth asking whether it was true that life did not end, that each person was formed around a grain of the Immortal Being. But Hanin spurned his questioning. “I’m neither a god nor a prophet. Don’t ask me to delve beyond my mortal knowledge.” He lowered himself into a crouching position and stared at Bellarroth with his disturbingly lambent eyes. “This I can tell you, son. I am a dealer in the arcane and I live in power. To one such as I life consists less of surface and matter than it does of spirit, and though I have spent many years and much error learning the cause and the course of things, it is still the unpredictable, the mystery, that most forcibly defines my experience. If I chose I could draw my life into the smallest part of me, and it would survive there, invulnerable to blade and disease. I can’t be killed by mere attack upon the flesh. Something as malleable as the life that sustains me is not confined to flesh and space…truly it can resist the demands of time and the tyrannies of fate.”

* * * *

These thoughts were in Tashnark’s mind when he awoke. He felt threatened by them. It was mid-morning, as he discovered when he approached the window, the street beyond its imperfect glass still damp from storms that had raged across the City during the night. Early light reflected in sharp yellow patterns from the wet stonework. He heard someone, probably his mother, moving about below.

Unwilling to risk communication at that moment, he dressed and left the house silently. The Skywave lay less than mid-firmament northward, its long scar of crackling energy sizzling the blue expanse white. Scattered clouds created bands of shadow. Around him, Koerpel-Na hummed—but suddenly it wasn’t his city. It seemed an alien place, its densely packed building-squares, its park lands, and bustling streets and markets as bizarre as anything that haunted his dreams. More so. At that moment, it was as though the strange landscape that Bellarroth trod was more familiar, more a part of him, than this place where he lived his real life.

He trudged across the park behind his mother’s house, then over the central Dehum-Rewi thoroughfare just north of the Temple of Shaa-Derthperrit. That building’s imposing marble façade was expressionless and silent. A path wound past the Temple’s vegetable plots and several large storage buildings, ending among a tussle of bushes and windblown trees on a small cliff overlooking the harbor. Tashnark sat at the edge and stared across the deep blue water, which only gave way to an illusory strip of gray land far off on the other side of the bay. Several merchant ships and a scattering of smaller craft glided over the choppy surface. Sometimes all Tashnark wanted to do was get on one of those ships and travel to somewhere else. He didn’t know where.

Later, when his stomach told him he should eat, he headed back the way he’d come, dodging the produce carts going to and coming from the docks along the main street. His mother waited for him.

“Are you ill, Tashnark?” she asked. She was a small, compact woman, absurdly slight considering her son was so large. Tashnark looked at the delicate curves of her cheek bones and the fragility of her arms and wondered how the two of them could be related.

“Bad dreams last night,” he said.

“Again? Won’t you tell me about them?”

He put his arm around her shoulders, which were on a level with his chest, and squeezed gently. It was an affectionate gesture but also dismissive. “They’re nothing,” he commented.

She wouldn’t let it go. “Dreams are never nothing. You need to understand them.”

He moved away, toward the kitchen. “I know what they mean.” She followed him; he could hear the skittish whisper of her feet on the boards. “My mind’s restless. I think I’ve been here, doing nothing much, far too long.”

“We’ve all told you that.” She pushed past him as he grabbed a loaf of bread, taking it from him. The bread quickly became sandwiches filled with cold meat and a cold vegetable stew she’d obviously made sometime during the night before. She glanced up at him, her eyes hard and unforgiving among her fragile features. “I don’t want to lose you, Tashnark, but you mustn’t be consumed by this City’s essential wastefulness.”

“You want me to be a scholar, like you. But it’s not in me.”

“I want you to find out where you belong, that’s all.”

He took the sandwiches and retreated to the hearth room, where the atmosphere was closed off and shadowy. She didn’t follow him. No fire was lit, but he sat in front of the hearth anyway, as though the memory of flame could warm him in places the real fire left cold.