The Gate of Sorrows (72 page)

His heart was in an uproar. His thoughts came in snatches.
Galla and her precious offspring. Galla, who gathered raw craving to rescue her child who was banished to the Nameless Land. Her precious child.

Even in a world of darkness, of countless monsters flapping their wings, there could be ties of love, of family—

Could there? If nonexistent beings couldn’t form a society, could they love one another?

A world of darkness beyond the pillars. Galla’s world. It was nothing like the image he had been nurturing in his heart.

Go back!

A voice that was not a voice. His heart beat wildly.

And there was light, everywhere.

A bell.

Kotaro stepped from the solid darkness of the gallery into a world of light.

In the center of this world: a single tower.

A row of pristine white pillars circled its base. It rose into the sky, topped by a dome of pure crystal. Beneath the dome, a single titanic bell, majestic, beautiful, elegantly curved. The tower was white silver dusted with gold. No sculpture or inscription broke its water-smooth surface. The bell was without embellishment of any kind.

It revolved in a perfect circle. Anyone tarrying beneath that serene rotation would soon have grown intoxicated. The true circle traced by the bell’s orbit was perfect beauty, perfect virtue, perfect truth.

The bell was silent.

Instead of sound, this sublime entity spawned words transparent to the eye and ear. It moved in its orbit without end.

“Is this really the birthplace of words?” Kotaro couldn’t help asking. Galla didn’t answer, nor did she slow her pace.

“Who’s making it move?” He saw no sign of life.

The tower rose into a sky that seemed enormous and far away. Transparent golden shafts of light dropped from gaps in high, milky clouds. No birds cut through the shafts of light.

A world without life, without even the whisper of the wind. The stillness of absolute purity. As he followed Galla, entranced by the bell, Kotaro realized that it produced something else.

Darkness. The shadow cast by the bell as it moved cut through the light and fell at his feet, tracing out its perfect circle.

The shadow was inverted into light in the world below, enclosed by the columns that supported the Tower. The shadow cast by the bell gave life to Galla’s world.

We
are
darkness, so there may be light.

Galla was a guardian of that darkness. Since their first encounter, Kotaro had conversed with her, exchanged opinions with her, and felt in his own way that he understood her. He’d spent a lot of time imagining what her world, the tower she guarded, must be like. The hazy image he’d formed was a child’s dream. Someone else in the same situation, of the same generation, from the same culture, would probably have imagined something very similar: A colonnaded temple out of ancient Greece, but immeasurably larger, with the holy of holies, a stately bell tower, served by priests and acolytes. And to defend it, valiant, awe-inspiring warriors with multifarious weapons and armor.

But there was nothing like that here. This was something unimaginable, nothing someone might picture spontaneously. There was no link between the beauty of this place and the human imagination.

Stories.

There was no trace of narrative in this place.

That was why everything was so pure and undefiled, so untouched by any description. It simply was.

The words born here were ultimate emptiness, unsullied by meaning or narrative. Only people could bring meaning and life to the words that poured forth from the bell. That was why this region had to remain undefiled. That was why absolute silence reigned: where there is sound, the beginning of meaning follows.

This place was emptiness itself, the emptiness of undifferentiated potential. Yet how full of sound and life and overwhelming spectacle was the darkness beneath the tower! Even the Hounds of Tindalos possessed name and form there.

Confusion and bewilderment called faintly to Kotaro the monster.

People framed the meaning of life with words. Words allowed them to build societies. Could absolute emptiness spawn
words
?

No. It wouldn’t do to question reality. He should be asking himself a question instead. Could he, Kotaro Mishima, believe that the words people used were born from pure emptiness?

It doesn’t matter now.

He shook his head resolutely. Once, twice. He closed his eyes and clapped a hand to his forehead.

Accept it or not—it’s not a choice I can make.

He was a monster, here in this place, because of the decisions he’d made. Now all he could do was accept it.

He opened his eyes, looked down at his feet. He was walking on air. There was no sensation of stone, or talons clicking on something hard.

He hesitated, peered around. He was hemmed in by white, faintly shining clouds. He hadn’t noticed the tower go out of sight. They must be high above it now.

He saw Galla’s black wings and streaming hair as she made her way upward amid the clouds. To his right and left and rear were only clouds and more clouds. They shone fresh, softly white, like untracked snow before dawn. They did not exist. They were eternally pure.

There was no road back, even if he’d wanted to return.

“You would only lose your way.” Galla read his thoughts and barred the way home with her answer. “There is no road back, not to your region or anywhere else. We can go only forward, toward the Nameless Land. The Skulls of Origin guide us through this pure emptiness. And once one possesses the skulls, one
must
go to the Nameless Land.”

Galla called the emptiness pure. Kotaro the monster blinked with surprise. “You think this place is emptiness itself?”

“I do not think. I know. We are ascending the Stairs of Emptiness. They link the Tower of Inception with the Nameless Land. Without the Skulls of Origin, even a guardian of the Tower would lose her way here. That would mean wandering in the void for eternity.”

Kotaro was not so much walking as being pulled along. Galla’s presence was the only thing keeping him from being swallowed up by this shimmering region of pure contingency.

He no longer had a choice, but he was not afraid. He did not call out in fear or try to run away. He no longer had the right to human reactions. Yet still there was an echo, a faint reverberation of the person he once had been. No, Kotaro Mishima would not have run away either.

He still knew who he was. He remembered. Ash had only been trying to help him, but Ash had missed the point. Kotaro was drifting like a buoy on an infinite ocean, drawn on by Galla’s dark power, but only because that was what he wanted.

There was soft earth beneath his feet. The pure white emptiness drew back quickly on either side. A new world opened before him.

Terra firma and a breeze, heavy with the scent of dry grass, caressing his cheek. He reflexively lifted a hand and waved it toward his nostrils, hungry for the smell of it, the fragrant smell of dry spring grass and the moist air of an autumn night.

He was in grassland.

There was no moon, but he knew that the darkness here was the friendly darkness of night.

Countless lamps flickered and wavered far across the plain. People must be living there. A town?

The grassland spread from horizon to horizon. Here and there the ground rose and fell gently, but there was nothing to block the eye. The entire vista could be taken in with one sweeping glance. It was like having the sight of a god.

“What is this place?”

Galla planted her feet beside him, rose to her full height, and lifted her chin in triumph.

“This is the Nameless Land.”

Galla stood motionless, gazing at the lights. Kotaro stood beside her, shoulder to shoulder. Where once he had gazed up at her with fear and trepidation, Kotaro the monster was now as tall as she was.

The source of all stories, where they were born and to which they must return. The Nameless Land.

But for Kotaro, the gently rolling plain, the sky, the scent of the wind—everything was intimate and familiar. He knew the names of the things he saw. He could say their names. This was not a nameless place. After his journey past the darkness beyond the pillars, past that silent, shining bell and its massive shadow, through the faintly glowing emptiness between the regions, this place seemed to his eyes, to his ears and all his other senses, natural and welcoming. Even the touch of the night was gentle.

In the distance, a small galaxy of lights twinkled in the darkness, distant like the lights of the skyscrapers seen from Galla’s sanctum, but without distortion. The sense of perspective was exactly what Kotaro was used to. The natural environment was compellingly real.

For a moment he forgot he was no longer human. He felt like a college student teleported to a mystery destination. Where was he? Europe? South America, maybe? Was this vast plain a nature preserve?

Where there are lights, there are people.

“That is the fortress.” Galla raised a hand and pointed. “Its proper name is the Hall of All Books. It holds thousands of them, stories that cannot be allowed to leave this place.”

“You mean, like a library?”

She smiled. “Just so.”

“Then it must be the biggest library in the Circle.” Judging from the number of lights and their size and distribution, the Hall of All Books had to be far larger than the Tower of Inception.

A pinpoint of light separated from the rest and moved flickeringly away. Then another and yet another began moving in the same direction, forming a string of lights.

“The nameless devout,” Galla said. “They go to their labors.”

“Labors? You mean they have to work?”

She turned to peer at him. “There is no work here.”

He remembered what U-ri had told him, that the nameless devout had to turn the Great Wheels of Inculpation for eternity. Wasn’t that work? But the nameless devout were confined here because of some sin they’d committed. Maybe if you were a prisoner, what you had to do every day wasn’t considered work.

“The devout are not human,” Galla said. “They were human once, but no longer.” She paused. “Your wolf said U-ri’s brother was a nameless devout.”

She shook her head lightly, sending her hair floating behind her in the wind off the plain, and began to walk. Kotaro followed, pressing the grass beneath his feet. He too was a monster, no longer human. No longer Kotaro Mishima.

They moved side by side, neither of them human, treading the grass heavy with dew. Kotaro was quietly grateful for the compassion he felt in its touch. Because of the grass, he did not have to see his own footprints.

Galla had not drawn her weapons. She seemed utterly calm. Where was the gate, Kotaro wondered. Was it a long way from where they were?

As if in answer to his question, a light streaked across a corner of the sky. “A shooting star!” Kotaro was a child again, enchanted.

As though his cry of wonder were a trigger, one glowing trail followed another through the heavens, fainter and more ephemeral than the lights in the Hall of All Books, but like miniature jewels against the veil of night. The sight was beautiful—and to Kotaro, thoroughly familiar, no different from the world he called home.

Trees rose into view, dotted in far-off clumps, dense groves of trees and low hills. The trees were old and gnarled, spreading their branches close to the ground. They stood out against the sky like props on a grassy stage. Kotaro’s eyes were those of a monster and of a child. Everything appeared new and wonderful to his sight.

But something cold and ominous reared into view that extinguished the pure curiosity and excitement of a boy discovering a new land. It was a black barricade, a barrier to those who would approach the Hall of All Books in the heart of the Nameless Land. With each step the barrier loomed higher, but Galla’s pace did not slow. Kotaro’s heart beat faster. He quickened his pace.

What from a distance had seemed to be a spaced line of iron palings turned out to be enormous pikes with their heads buried in the earth. They reached so high that their far ends were out of sight in the mist. At the foot of the pikes was a solid line of huge black shields, each inscribed with a pentagram that glowed a dull silver.