The Soul Weaver (20 page)

“We found it,” I said, my voice quite normal again. Paulo stood quite solid beside me with a crushing grip on my hand. “Welcome to the Breach.”

“This can't be the Breach.” Paulo pressed his back against the rock cliff, ensuring he was as far as he could get from the outsloping edge of the precipice. “I don't care nothing for your feelings about it. That was a fearful place. I never told you, but I saw such things . . . And though no man could call this place rightful, it's nothing so wicked as that. This is just different, like Avonar is different. Well, maybe a bit more. . . .”

We stood on a narrow spit of rock that jutted out high over a barren landscape. Streaks of blue-and-green lightning split the sky, and thunder rumbled across the dark plains that stretched in every direction below us. Storms clustered about the horizon, boiling clouds of midnight that continuously changed shape in the bilious light.

“You're right that it's changed—or at least this part of it has changed—since we came out of Zhev'Na,” I said. “I can't explain why that's so. By rights we should already be going mad.”

“Maybe it's because you're the Prince's son, so you're protecting us like he did. I'm not getting so much as a handspan away from you; you can just count on that.” I could feel him willing me away from the edge of the precipice, back toward the dark shape of the doorway in the rock, a black arch outlined with yellow moonlight.

“But I'm not doing anything! When the Prince brought us through the Breach, he was using sorcery every moment, expending every bit of power he could possibly manage.” Even when he crossed the Breach by way of D'Arnath's Bridge, the Prince had to concentrate and hold the way open, like someone holding back branches to let you pass through a thick forest. “So this doesn't make sense at all. Maybe Vroon and the others will show up and explain it, now we've arrived.”

I was not mistaken. We were nowhere near D'Arnath's Bridge, yet we were standing in the Breach between the worlds. The Breach had been a part of me once, and I recognized it, just as you can look at a childhood portrait and know it is an image of yourself, even recalling the fancies going through your head as it was painted.

The Breach was chaos itself, the warped, broken, distorted bits left over from the birth of the universe, drawn together a thousand years before when three Dar'Nethi sorcerers named Notole, Parven, and Ziddari had reached too far for power. Since that event—the Dar'Nethi called it the Catastrophe—the Breach had divided the mundane world from Gondai. This chaos had no form of its own, but took horrid shapes created by the deepest fears of the traveler who had the misfortune to wander into it. Monsters, flesh-eating rains, rivers of blood, pits full of snakes, spiders the size of a house . . . terror in a thousand guises awaited anyone who walked into the Breach.

Only the ancient Dar'Nethi King D'Arnath and his Heirs had ever been able to control this chaos. According to the Dar'Nethi, D'Arnath's Bridge across the Breach was all that kept the worlds themselves from slipping further into ruin. According to the Lords and the Zhid, the Bridge was a blight on the world that prevented the full use of power and enslaved all true sorcerers to the greedy, spineless royal family of the Dar'Nethi. Whatever the truth, until the day the Prince led Paulo, my mother, and me out of Zhev'Na, no one had ever survived a passage through the Breach without using the Bridge. Even the Lords could not travel there, nor could they feed on the terrors of the Breach to expand their power. That's why I was such a prize for them. I was to be nurtured until I could give them the Breach.

I had almost gone mad on that journey out of Zhev'Na. In the desert I had seen men staked out in the sun until their skin shrank and grew black and brittle, so that it cracked and tore every time they moved. That's what it felt like with each step away from the Lords. And all the while, the Three were offering me release from the pain and reminding me of the power and immortality I was leaving behind, tempting me to take refuge in the cold, unfeeling darkness we shared.

But my masters had taught me well to ignore pain. As my father led me through a sea of rotting corpses and gales of acid wind, I rid myself of every thought, every sensation, every memory, every instinct. I forced my whole being—mind, soul, heart, senses—numb and empty. That should have been enough. But the pain got worse, and the Lords whispered and teased and tempted until I was half crazed with it.

I wasn't sure what happened then. I tried to drown myself in chaos, thinking that only death or madness would silence the Lords' whispers. For the rest of that crossing, I was very much a part of the Breach, like a bottle of seawater submerged in the ocean. Only when my father carried me into the green world once again did the chaos drain out of me like the water running off as you walk out of the sea. Then I was just empty again.

So that's how I knew where we were as we stood on the dark crag, buffeted by a gale that blew cold from one direction, and then hot from another, and then slowed to a balmy breeze sighing and swirling about our legs like a cat's tail. I knew it in the same way I knew how to walk and how to breathe.

Our perch stuck out of a rugged ridge that stretched as far as we could see to our right and left. In the distance the eerie light revealed clusters of twisted shapes that looked like trees, but my dreams had shown me that they were, in fact, oddly formed towers. A few spidery paths threaded their way through the lowlands from the vague distances to left and right, converging on a low range of hills in the center of the horizon. Beyond the hills . . . yes, there it was again, lit by another flash of green lightning . . . stood the spiral tower from my dreams. Vroon had shown it to me when I dreamed of this place, but I had never determined whether he was trying to get me to go there or warning me to stay away.

Paulo stood at my shoulder. “So what do we do now we're here, whether this is the Breach or somewhere else? How does this tell us what happened to the Lady, or why the Prince is so sure you're still one of the Lords?”

“I don't know. I just think the answer must be here. But we ought to wait for better light before we head down, I think.”

“I'll stand watch. Can't go back, and I'm not going anywhere without you're close, so you might as well get some sleep if you need to.”

I huddled in the lee of a mottled gray rock, cracked down to its heart with a dead shrub sticking out of it, but I didn't think I could sleep. I just sat there wondering if my real life would show up in my dreams, now that my dreams were outside of me.

 

“Here.” No mistaking Ob's massive presence. I peered out from under my heavy eyelids. The leathery man squatted beside me, smiling. Astonishing how the sound of a word can tell you so much. He wasn't offering to give me anything or calling me to come somewhere other than the place I was. His simple word was spoken in pure wonder. I was
here
. In this place.

“I am most definitely here,” I said, standing up and wishing for the cloak and blanket I'd left behind on the moonlit ridge in Valleor. The alternating gusts of hot and cold wind were equally unpleasant through my damp clothes. “ ‘Where next' is likely more important right now.”

“Most eagerly are you expected,” said Vroon. “Your subjects await your command. Devastatingly honored are we to lead you to your abode, where you will take up your kingdom and order it as to your least desire. May you reign until the Unbounded is no more, and the Bounded has grown ancient in its days!” It was somewhat difficult to interpret these pronouncements, as Vroon's face was flat against the stone at my feet.

“Take up my what?”

“Your kingdom, sire.”

“Vroon, would you please stand up? I can't hear over this wind.”

Though it seemed I had dropped off to sleep, I could not have slept long. The land was still locked in night, and I didn't feel as if I'd slept an entire day around. Storms raged across half the sky. Vroon popped to his feet, but kept his eyes cast down. “We have prepared a wall place of magnificence, a fastness as befits our king. If it pleases you not, we will slay the makers who chose wrongly and start again.”

If my damp and dirty clothes hadn't itched me so sorely, and if my empty stomach hadn't rumbled so convincingly, I might have thought this was another bizarre dream, where everyone makes sense to each other, but not to you. “Where is your king?”

“
Here
, great Master!
You
are the king, the One Who Makes Us Bounded. You have found your way here as the Source prophesied, and have come to lead us to victory over other bounded worlds. Your glory will be everlasting!” The dwarf snuffled in his beard and fell down to the ground again. By this time Ob and Zanore had flattened themselves on the damp rock, too.

“No, no. There's been a mistake. I'm not a king . . . and not likely to be . . .”

I was the designated successor to a king. Yes, the person who reigned in Avonar was called “the Prince” or “the Heir of D'Arnath.” But that was just because the Dar'Nethi thought that no one since the great D'Arnath himself had been worthy of being called king. But even if I had wanted the title, I had no illusions about my claim to D'Arnath's throne. The Dar'Nethi would have something to say about the Fourth Lord of Zhev'Na sitting in D'Arnath's chair.

“. . . and I'm certainly not the king of this place. I've only come here to find some answers.”

“Whatever answering you desire shall be yours, most majestic one.”

Paulo had propped his shoulder against the sheer cliff face. In between yawns, he cast a hostile eye on the rest of us. “Might start your reign by asking about breakfast, Your Majesty. They seem set on pleasing you.”

I wanted to kick him. Zanore popped his silver-haired head up from the stone, his amber eyes gleaming in the dark like hot coals. “Shall we slay this rudeness-speaking, Majesty?”

The three of them seemed to know everything I felt and take it much too seriously. “No! Most certainly not. Don't kill anybody.”

“Appreciate that,” Paulo grumbled. “Just let me starve slowly. Do you know how long you were asleep? It was at least—”

“Look,” I said to the three, “is there someone who can answer some questions? Someone with some authority? Who sent you to find me?”

Vroon lifted his head, the wind threatening to tear off his curly hair and beard. “For all the time of our remembering, we have awaited the king. He dreamed of us, and we felt his presence . . . your presence. But even with a manylight waiting, you had not come, and it was thought you could not remember us because of the time passing. And so we traveled through this moon-door, searched, and found the one who dreamed us, and then we saved you from the Sword Wielder who would have left you unbounded. The Source it was that commanded our sending—the Source knows all about you and about our waiting—and the Guardian chose the three of us from all Singlars to go. Our honor was unmatched, though we know not why—”

A constant rumbling thunder like a stampede of herd beasts interrupted him. Fat drops of hot rain spattered on us from fast-moving, purple-streaked clouds. The wind had shifted so that it was blasting straight up from the plains, and it seemed to be staying cold for a while, so that as soon as we were thoroughly soaked from the hot drops, our teeth were clattering.

“Let's continue this somewhere more sheltered!” I yelled in Vroon's ear. “Can you lead us to this Source?”

“To the Source we cannot take you. Only to the Guardian. The Guardian can make answerings . . . if he will.”

“All right, then. Take us to the Guardian.”

Vroon prostrated himself again, apologizing that he could not transport us instantly as was sometimes possible outside the Bounded. I interrupted his abasement. “It's all right. I wouldn't want to travel that way in this land anyway. Please, just show us the way before we freeze. We need shelter and food.”

The three jumped to their feet. After a brief consultation which I could not hear, Zanore, his amber eyes like two great fireflies, bowed and took the lead, jogging ahead of us down a steep, narrow path. Though the path zigzagged sharply, every pitch seemed to head directly into the bitter wind. We stepped carefully. The rain made the black rock slick, and a misplaced boot would have left little to scrape off the sharp rocks below. The half-dark was no help, either. Each lightning bolt left me squinting to see beyond an arm's reach.

“When does the sky get light?” I shouted at Ob and Vroon, who hovered around me like hummingbirds at a red flower.

“No sky-brightness shines in the Bounded, not as in the other bounded worlds.”

Paulo, raindrops dribbling down his face, nodded knowingly. “I tried to tell you. You slept a good four hours, and the sun never showed up.”

Vroon chimed in again. “Mayhap
you
will bring us sky-brightness, Majesty! By you could it be done.”

His eager assurance struck me colder than the wind. “I don't do that sort of thing. If you expect sorcery from me, you'd best think again.”

Vroon halted abruptly, looking like a fountain gargoyle as the rain cascaded down his crinkled forehead, long beard, and ample belly. I walked on.

The dwarf did manage to soothe my annoyance after a while. About the time I realized that the unnatural quiet was his absence, I sensed rather than heard pelting footsteps on the track behind us. I stopped, holding on to a stunted tree that poked out of the rock so a wind gust wouldn't knock me off the path. Vroon skidded to a stop right beside Paulo, his one eye hidden behind a pile of cloaks and bags.

“I happened across these things,” said Vroon. “The moon-door was open, and the One Who Makes Us Bounded wished them here.”