Issola (14 page)

"I don't know."

She didn't say, "Coming up with plans is your job," but I had
the feeling she was thinking it. I didn't scowl, but she probably
had the feeling I wanted to.

I said, "If I felt able to perform a spell, I might test the solidity
of the wall." I pushed against the nearest wall, demonstrating
,
then said, "Hmmmm."

"What?" She pushed against it too. "What is it, Vlad? It feels like a wall."

"Yes, but what if it isn't everywhere?"

"Illusory walls?"

"Maybe," I said. "But I was thinking real walls, but a doorway
made to look like a section of wall."

"Oh. Yes, that would be possible."

"You go that way, I'll go this way."

She nodded agreement, and we went around the room, pushing at the walls everywhere. If they were illusion, the illusion
included the tactile, and didn't give when pushed.

"So much for that," I said, when we were back to where we had started. She nodded. "Next idea?"

"You sure it isn't your turn?"

Her smile flicked on and off.

"You
know, Boss, they don't actually have to
have a doorway at all."

"I know, I know. But that's what they say about the keep of an Athyra wizard. And we know better."

"Just because it wasn't true — "

"I know, Loiosh. Now shut up and let me think."

He refrained from any cracks about that. I have come to appreciate the small blessings in life. I considered matters for a bit, then said, "All right - if we’re going to test it, we're going to test it." Teldra gave me a look of inquiry. I let Spellbreaker fall into my hand. I could see Teldra wanting to ask what I was up to, but she didn't, and I didn't volunteer the information - if I was going to look ridiculous, at least I didn't have to explain why.

I struck Spellbreaker against the wall above where we had been chained up. It gave off a dull ringing sound.

"Vlad?"

"Get used to that sound, Teldra."

"Very well," she said.

I took a step to the right, and struck the wall again, it sounded just the same. I took another step, and another, and so on.

It was a big room, and it took a while, but I just told myself I was killing time until either the Jenoine reappeared, or Morrolan and Aliera showed up to rescue us, or something else happened.

Move a step - whap. Move a step - whap. Move a step and then, when I found it, I almost missed it anyway. I was about a third of the way from where I started when I struck the wall, and started to move past it, but noticed that Spellbreaker had changed again. It was shorter, the links smaller. I stopped, looked at it, then at the spot of blank wall I was facing.

I struck the wall again, and a light tingle went up my arm, and I was looking at a doorway. Not even a door: rather a large stonework arch, maybe twelve feet high at its top, and big enough for four of me to walk past arm in arm. It was just there, as if to say, "What took you so long?"

I glanced back at Lady Teldra, who had been walking beside me to keep me company.

"Yes," she said. "I see it, too."

I not only saw it, but I felt the wind through it. Through mostly what we could see was darkness, except for the points of light in the sky.

"Stars," said Lady Teldra.

"I know them," I said. "They have them in the East, too."

"I know," she said. "I remember."

"I don't know exactly what they are; some say the homes of gods."

"Some say each is a world," said Teldra. "That when we go through a necromantic gate, we are stepping onto one of those points
of light, from which we could look back and see our own world
as a point of light. I like that notion."

"I'm not entirely certain that I do," I said. "I've never liked stepping into the unknown." She refrained from any of the obvious observations she could have
made to that, merely falling silent and waiting with me. Even
as I watched, I realized that it was becoming brighter; it was dawn wherever we were, and I started to be able to make out
features of the landscape.

It took several long moments before I was able to bring myself
to step through the archway, toward the strange world, the emptiness, and the stars of the heavens.

8

Here's a quick story for you, before we go any further:

In the earliest days of the World, Darkness mated with Chaos and produced three daughters. The first was Night, the second was Pain, and the third was Magic. Now Chaos went on and mated with the Sky, producing a son who was Evil. One day, Evil, being jealous of his stepsisters, captured Magic and took her away to his secret fortress beyond the World. But Magic called upon her Mother, Darkness, who heard her cries, and, seeing everything, saw what Evil had done.

Darkness then summoned Chaos and said, "Look what your son
has done! He has taken Magic from the World." Chaos then turned on his son, Evil, and cast him out, and rescued Magic, restoring her to the World. Then Evil cried out, saying that he repented his act, and praying that his father not abandon him. Chaos could not turn his heart from his only son, so
he relented and permitted Evil into the world as well, but from that moment on, Magic has mistrusted Evil, though Evil still pursues Magic; and Darkness watches over them both, so that wherever you find Evil, you will find Darkness there, watching; and Chaos will sometimes be found in the aid of Magic, and sometimes in the aid of Evil.

Do you like it? It is an old story of my people, and there are some who believe it literally. I myself think there are elements of truth in it, because another name for Magic is Verra, the Demon Goddess, and, who knows, perhaps the Jenoine really are Evil. Beyond that, I don't care to venture; if there is a personification of Darkness, not to mention Chaos, then I don't want to know about it.

So here we were, maybe in the power of Evil; at least on their world, and maybe Magic would help us, and I was very much afraid that, if the Jenoine didn't get me, I'd trip over my own metaphors and break my neck. These were my thoughts, then, as we stepped out of the door, and I don't know how it was for Teldra, but for me then was a shock: the sudden realization that the entire world was not that one room of that one building.

"Anything or anyone, Loiosh?"

"Not as far as 1 can tell, Boss."

We walked twenty-five or thirty feet away from it, and looked back; I was half expecting it to have vanished, but it was still there, the outside looking quite a bit like the inside, except that the surface was rougher - it seemed to be just chunks of rock stuck together. A closer look indicated an odd shape to the structure - it was hard to tell from this close, but it seemed that it had an angle to it; that it wasn't quite straight up, and then were bits of projections sticking out. Was this significant of anything? Stupid question. What was significant and what wasn't with these beings?

I turned my attention to the landscape, and eventually thought of Dzur Mountain. There was nothing there that actually looked like Dzur Mountain, mind you, but—

Okay. A stream, maybe fifty or sixty feet wide, cut across and dominated the landscape, flowing diagonally toward me from my right to my left, about a hundred yards away at its nearest point; a few spindly trees with stubby branches and massive leaves all along their lengths dotted the banks on both side, and what seemed to be a stonework bridge appeared not far away. To my right were a couple of low hills, all brown and rocky, and to my left the ground was flat but sloping gently down, maybe dipping to meet the stream, maybe not. And above it all (quite literally) was this terrible, bright object burning down on everything. I'm not trying to be mysterious - I had been to the East, and I knew damned well that it was a Furnace, just as we had in the Empire, only here, as out East (and a few places in the far West), it wasn't hidden by a constant overcast. But I had forgotten how painfully bright it was, and how dark were the shadows it caused when it met anything else. It was low in the sky, a little to my left as I stepped out of the door, and, among other things, it highlighted everything else, including the few white puffy bits of overcast in a sky that was otherwise as blue as the sky above Fenario, giving me a very strange feeling of homesickness that juxtaposed with the harsh certainty that I was in a world that, perhaps, no other human had ever set foot on before.

So Teldra and I studied all of this, and that's when I thought of Dzur Mountain. It was a very nice mix of natural elements, here, and I'd swear someone had crafted it. I don't know why - I'm not sure what the indications were; but it looked for all the world like someone had sat down and said, "Okay, the river runs this way, straight, then we'll put a curve in here. How 'bout a couple of hills?" and like that.

"You're right," said Teldra.

I looked at her. "I beg your pardon?"

"Dzur Mountain," she said.

"Oh. I hadn't realized I'd spoken out loud."

"You muttered it under your breath."

"Hmmm." I wondered where I'd developed the habit of doing that? Probably from being alone so much of the time. I was going to have to watch out for that; it wasn't a good habit.

"Nothing lives," murmured Teldra.

I started to ask what she meant - I mean, there was grass, and there were trees and such. Then realized: I saw no birds in the air, no small animals hopping around, much less big ones; looking at my feet, I didn't even see any insects. "You're right," I said. "We seem to be the only living things here."

"Oh," she said, smiling. "That time I did it."

My hand strayed to my rapier, and I suddenly had the feeling that this entire world - everything that had happened since walking through Morrolan's window - was a massive illusion, was one of those elaborate living dreams, such as I had encountered in the Paths of the Dead.

"It's real enough, Boss."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. If there is a glamour, it's to conceal something, not
to alter the appearance of what we're seeing."

"That's sort of a fine distinction, chum."

"I know,"
he told me.

Well, that was part of Loiosh's job, so I had to trust him. Besides: if he was wrong, and it was all an elaborate dream like the ones in the Paths, well, there had been no way out of those except to treat them as real and work through them. But the lack of critters was hard to get used to.

"What do you think, Teldra? Was this whole area fabricated?"

"Maybe, Vlad. Maybe the whole world."

"No," I said. "I know it wasn't the whole world."

"Oh?" she said. "How can you tell?"

"Because if they can do that, we don't have a chance against them."

She laughed. "Ah. I see. I'm not familiar with that logic."

I shrugged. "Actually, I'm not kidding. That's one thing I learned in the course of my long and checkered career. If your only chance of living through something is if your enemy isn't a sorcerer, or doesn't have a spare dagger, or can't jump an eleven-foot crevasse, then you assume your enemy isn't a sorcerer, or doesn't have a spare dagger, or can't jump an eleven-foot crevasse."

"Hmmmm," said Teldra. "I see. It makes a very practical sort of sense."

"Yes," I said, involuntarily remembering the guy who could jump an eleven-foot crevasse, much to my disgust - but I survived that one anyway, because he turned out to be wearing the wrong kind of boots. Long story; never mind. There was a bit of a breeze coming from my left; not too strong, just enough to tickle the back of the neck. It brought no smells except the sort of sweet scent that seemed to be part of the air here. This reminded me, again, to keep my breathing even and shallow.

"Well," I said, "Teldra, you must have studied all the old songs and stories, and you must be better read in history than I am, and since I almost never attend the theater, you must attend it more often than I do."

"Perhaps," she said.

"Well then? What does one typically do in a situation like this?"

Teldra looked at me.

"I mean, usually when one finds oneself on an entirely different world, barely able to breathe, surrounded by a bizarre environment, beset with enemies with the strength of gods, and with no way home - what are the usual steps?"

She barely cracked a smile.

"Usually," she said, "one calls for help of one's patron god, who then assigns one an impossible task in exchange for minimal aid, which aid turns out to be ironically fatal. Or else one discovers a powerful artifact of unknown properties, which, upon use, proves to take over one's soul, so that, after the rescue, one kills one's beloved."

"I see. Well, now you know why I almost never attend the theater."

Teldra supplied the obligatory chuckle and I looked out once more at the world around us - suddenly taken by the fear that Morrolan and Aliera would not come, and the Jenoine would not come, and we would find no way out; that we would remain here for the rest of our days. Which days, now that I thought of it, wouldn't be long if we didn't figure out how we were going to eat. But 1 knew this fear was groundless. Whatever Morrolan had done in the past, I knew that he would never stop trying to rescue us as long as he was alive. And, of course, things being as they were, death might not manage to stop him either.

I sighed.

"You know, Loiosh, if anyone had told me yesterday at this time that thirty hours later I would have rescued Morrolan and
Aliera, nearly killed the Demon Goddess, and found myself trapped in a prison the size of the world, unable to decide if I was
hoping to be saved or was hoping not to be saved, I'd have said, 'Yeah, sounds about right.' "

"You probably would have, Boss."

"I think this says something about my life choices."

"Uhhuh."

I looked around at the world, noticing the perfection of the stream, the hills, the mountains - the general sense that everything had been planned and crafted. I had the sudden irrational (and, I'm sure, wrong) notion that this little part of the world was all there was - that everywhere out of sight was just sort of grey and unfinished; and I was also again reminded of the Paths of the Dead, though I'm not sure why.