Dragons on the Sea of Night (30 page)

‘Because he is your brother.'

He shook his head. ‘That is not enough.'

‘But it is. And it is a very human emotion.' Sardonyx stroked his hair. ‘I know I would love you no matter what you did.'

‘Easy to say. Neither you nor I are criminals.' His tone was bitter.

‘But you have done the right thing. You made the decision Bjork was determined you should make. You did not judge him. Bjork did not judge him and neither did Ouwlmy, though he committed crimes against them. They allowed you to take him.' She glanced briefly over their heads at the sparks of lightning. ‘To have God judge him.'

‘God. I have to laugh,' Moichi said. ‘If God existed he would not have allowed such atrocities. He would have saved Sanda.'

‘Why, Moichi? Is she so special that she should be exempted from God's plan?'

Moichi turned his head. ‘Is that what you think? That all of this is some kind of plan? Chill take it, if so, it is an unconscionably cruel one.'

‘Any more cruel than the Iskamen suffering for centuries at the hands of the Adenese?'

Moichi was silent; he had no answer for that. But he put his hands on her arms. As they held each other, they felt the deep rumble as another temblor shook the mountain. Just below them, a chunk of rock split off, went crashing down the face.

‘Lord, what is happening up there?' Sardonyx said. ‘It looks like the storms are increasing in intensity.'

‘Soon enough,' Moichi answered her, ‘we will find out.'

The next morning, they breakfasted lightly, untied Hamaan and performed their abbreviated ablutions. Then they broke camp and were on their way. Mist closed over them almost at once so that the hypnotic panorama of Syrinx, the Khashm and, beyond, the walls of Mas'jahan were blotted out in a swirl of pearlescent sheen.

Moichi thought of the enigmatic Bjork – the self-described freak of nature, Sardonyx's sorcerous mentor. And he thought of Ouwlmy, whom he missed with an almost tangible pain. He missed Bjork, as well, but in a way that was unclear to him until Sardonyx said to him, ‘Do you see now why I did not tell you where I learned my sorcery?'

‘No,' he said. ‘I would have appreciated knowing about Bjork in advance.'

‘Is that so? Tell me how you would describe her to someone who had never met her.'

Moichi considered for a moment as he double-checked the line. ‘I don't even know whether to call Bjork a “he” or a “she.”'

‘Neither do I,' Sardonyx said, coming up beside him on a narrow ledge. ‘So isn't it better that I let you form your own opinion?'

‘Bjork called herself a freak of nature. What do you think?'

Sardonyx paid out the line so Hamaan could follow them up. ‘When it comes to Bjork it isn't important what I – or anyone else besides you – think.
She
thinks of herself as a criminal – not by any man-made law, but what difference does that make?'

‘She collaborated with Chaos, mankind's enemy.'

‘But you already know the falseness of that,' Sardonyx said. ‘Chaos is mankind's shadow-self, banished by ancient mages who may or may not have had the good of mankind in mind. Remember what you said about the cabal of Fe'edjinn Qa'tachs. That form of usurpation of power is, I will warrant, older even than mankind. The gods themselves fought over issues of power.'

Hamaan came up beside them and, for a moment, the three of them shared the precarious perch. Hamaan's eyes locked with Moichi's for what seemed an eternity. Then, Moichi launched himself upward.

‘Don't bother,' Hamaan said to Sardonyx. ‘He has trouble with commitment of any kind. He will never understand you or me.'

‘Save your strength,' she said, shoving him against the rock face. ‘We have a long way yet to travel today.'

As the day progressed, the mist grew thicker, lodging in their mouths and throats. Around them, now, the pink lightning danced, crackling like logs being felled in a forest. At midday, they paused to refresh and relieve themselves.

‘I want to warn you of something,' Sardonyx said. ‘Before we set out, Bjork told me that the higher we climb the less I will be able to work my magic. We must be careful to use it sparingly – only twice, Bjork warned – because Sin'hai has the ability to sap that form of energy. And even then there is no surety it will function properly.'

‘Noted,' Moichi said. After a moment, he added, ‘Will it work at all on the summit?'

‘No one knows, but I have little doubt that is where we will have need of it most.' She took a swig of water. ‘Ready?'

Just past mid-afternoon, they found their way blocked by a massive rockfall. The vertical chimney – the last landmark on the upper reaches of Bjork's chart – had been almost completely filled in. Moichi looked up. The outside of the chimney bulged from the face of the mountain. Worse, this piece must have been born in one long thrust because it was almost glassily smooth without a foot-or hand-hold to be seen.

‘Is there a way around this?' Sardonyx asked.

‘Not according to Bjork's map.' Moichi was studying the almost unnaturally smooth face. ‘No help for it but to attempt an assault.'

He drew out a pteron, a thick spike-like implement with a loop at one end which he hammered into a small stress-fracture zigzagging up the rock. He stepped up onto it, hammered home another. The safety line trailed down behind him as he ascended. But by the time he had hammered in the fourth pteron, he knew they were in trouble. The stress-fracture petered out an arm's length above his head. From then on to the top of the bulge, the rock appeared absolutely seamless. There was no place to hammer in another pteron.

He glanced down. Hamaan was already on the second pteron and Sardonyx was readying the lines to go up herself. Moichi looked upward again, searching for a way to traverse the outside of the chimney. He thought he spotted something and, climbing onto the last pteron, he stretched himself to his limit.

There!

The face was not absolutely seamless after all. A stress fracture – to be sure, thinner than the vertical one they were now on – snaked its way almost laterally, more or less bisecting the chimney. But would it lead to a way off?

Moichi, with little to lose, reached up and hammered in a pteron. He threaded the lines, moved upward. Behind him, Hamaan and Sardonyx followed. He paid his brother scarce attention. Here, at the edge of an almost sheer drop Moichi did not have to concern himself with Hamaan trying to escape. They were all bound together by the safety lines, and there was nowhere for Hamaan to escape to.

Methodically, like a spider over glass, he moved across the sheet of smooth rock. A chill wind fostered mini-whirlwinds of mist and damp, brushing his cheek and swirling down the collar of his tussah-silk vest. Without perspective, it was impossible to judge how far they had come and, worse, how much farther they had to go. Tension sang in the lines, was marked in the concentration on their faces, the hard bulging of muscle, the stretch of sinew.

After he drove in the fifth lateral pteron, he called a rest period. Despite the efficacious ministrations of both Bjork and Sardonyx his wounds pained him fearfully. One of them had opened up and he was obliged to wipe the blood away every few minutes. When they made camp tonight – if they got off this Godforsaken chimney – he would have to get Sardonyx to cauterize it anew. He could not risk the onset of an infection at this point.

They hung by their safety lines, clinging to the rock that bulged out from the mountain-face. Winds, rising, buffeted them as if they were ships on the ocean. Moichi was never so aware of the distance between himself and Sardonyx. He wanted to reach out and take her hand but she was too far away and, in any case, Hamaan was between them.

He called them out of their reveries and he swung to the left, onto the next pteron. And so it went. Sardonyx was obliged to pull up the last pteron and, as they moved pass it forward to Moichi to reuse. There was no turning back.

Moichi counted twelve pterons he had driven into the slender thread of a fissure. He climbed onto it, stretched himself out to drive in the thirteenth. Day was ending. Even at this altitude, where the sun hung in the sky very late, it was obvious in the change in hue in the mist. It became more and more pink, like blood in water, as the sun slid beyond the horizon and the main source of illumination became the flickering pink lightning from the ice storms above in Cloudland.

Moichi knew that he was exhausted and that was why when his fingers searched along the rock face for the continuation of the fracture and found only smooth stone he checked three times. Nothing. The fissure ended eighteen inches from where he had driven the thirteenth pteron. Now what? Even, if by some freak chance, there was another parallel fissure the low light made it all but impossible to pick it up.

So there they hung on the bulge, with night fast encroaching, with nowhere to continue on. Moichi turned to Hamaan and Sardonyx and passed along the bleak news. It was suicide to attempt to continue the assault in twilight. They decided to spend the night suspended where they were and hope for the best tomorrow. They ate a spare meal of dried meat, fish paste and water. Then they slept. Or, at least, tried to.

It was evil time.

Bjork had said Syrinx was filled with ghosts and, suspended on the mountainside between sleep and waking, Moichi could believe it. Once, the black earth had run red with the blood of Syrinxian and Shinju alike. So much death. No wonder the atmosphere, even this high up, was rank with it. Souls stalked the night in the fitful wind, the intermittent icy rain showers, the pink lightning, flickering like a reptile's forked tongue. They sang in the blood, carried inside by inhalation, then inward on each double-pump of the heart, each rush of blood through artery and vein. They told their tales of misery and death, of life cut short, of deprivation and warfare.

Moichi, sleeping and dreaming, guided by these lost souls, fought Syrinxian wars, felt Shinju deaths, experienced the retribution of Chaos. His muscles jumped and popped in galvanic response, and when he awakened at first light, he felt as if he had not slept at all.

Trying to stretch his aching muscles, he craned upward, then to left and right and, finally, desperately, below them. Then, seeing that the others were awake, he told them the news. ‘We are stuck,' he said. ‘There are no more fissures anywhere to be seen. The pterons will not go into solid rock.' He looked past Hamaan to Sardonyx. ‘We need you now,' he said. ‘It is the only way.'

She looked at him and he knew what was in her mind: Bjork's warning of using her sorcery only twice. And he knew she wanted to save both for what might be waiting for them on the summit, where the Portal into Chaos somehow had been opened. ‘There is no help for it,' he said. ‘Without you we will never even reach the summit.'

She nodded, closed her eyes. Once again, as he had in Mas'jahan when she had transformed him into a Fianarantsoa, he was aware of a profound sensation of slumber, and then a dreamlike falling, falling …

He opened his eyes to find himself wedged into the center of the vertical chimney. ‘Almost there!' he cried, glancing down at Hamaan and Sardonyx climbing the chimney just below him. ‘Six more feet and that rock slide we passed down below would have filled this chimney and made it impassable.'

As he said this, as the reality of it permeated him, he was also aware of an odd sensation, as if his voice was coming from some distance, had been spoken by someone else inhabiting his body. He broke out into a cold sweat. Then, the eerie sensation passed and he banged in the last pteron, threaded the line and levered himself up through the hole in the chimney.

Looking around while he caught his breath, he found himself on a snow-covered ledge that sloped upward to the left almost like a natural path. Hamaan, then Sardonyx emerged from the chimney and when they were all on the ledge, they brought up the remainder of their equipment. Darkness was falling along with snow as dry as sand. It clung to every non-smooth surface, settling on their equipment, their eyebrows and lashes, the men's beards.

As they set up camp, Moichi said softly to Sardonyx, ‘What happened?'

‘Time and the future,' she said. ‘This was Miira's special gift – the sorcery she passed on to Bjork and she to me. Time and the future are both, in small, incremental ways, mutable. In fact, there are many futures, just as there are many currents in the ocean. What comes to pass can sometimes be … manipulated.'

‘You mean you can create your own?'

‘No, no. Perhaps not even God has that power any more,' Sardonyx said. ‘Futures at any given moment are multiple. So many factors go into creating the future out of the past and the present, a human would go mad trying to categorize them let alone count them. But sometimes I am able to reach out into the currents of time and pick
another
future, make it come to pass.'

‘Like now.'

‘Yes. Here, in this future, the chimney was passable and there was no need for us to head onto the outside.' She stopped what she was doing, clutched Moichi's arm. ‘But this is a dangerous occupation on the Mountain Sin'hai. So close to both God and Chaos, such sorcery can be distorted. That was why Bjork warned me. Remember, I can only use my power once more.'

She was about to turn away when he said, ‘What happened to us in that … other future?'

She put her hand to his cheek. Her eyes glittered darkly. ‘Don't
ever
ask that question because you do not want to know the answer.
This
is our only reality now. Be satisfied with that.'

After dinner, she tended to the men's sounds. She was not happy to see the fresh blood on Moichi's face and she cleaned the wound as best she could, then cauterized it. Hamaan carefully observed the entire procedure. Even when white-hot blade tip pressed against his brother's skin his eyes revealed nothing, but as Moichi squeezed his eyes against the agony he breathed a tiny sigh.