The Nothing: A Book of the Between (8 page)

“You do as she says, little man. I will be back for you when the sun passes Third Hill.”

“I guess you’d better come in,” the old woman said, after Kraal turned a corner and disappeared from sight.

He entered a small, low-ceilinged kitchen furnished with a wooden table and two chairs. Something simmered over a wood stove in a large black pot that made him think, without wanting to—
cauldron, witch
. A narrow, dark hallway led out of the kitchen and ended in a closed door. It had several doors on either side as well, and he revised his original estimation of the size of the dwelling.

The old woman gave him another of those sharp, knowing looks, as though she could read his mind and disapproved. Her nose wrinkled, and she sniffed at him tentatively. “Well, at least you’ve been bathed, but you’ll still need a shave and a haircut. And clothes. What good is a bath if you’re putting dirty rags back on after? And where does he think I’m to come by clothes for you at a moment’s notice? We haven’t many human guests.”

Jared clenched his jaw tightly over his anger. He was used to deference and respect, or at least the veneer of it. Even the criminal element he represented called him “sir,” knowing that a good bit of their future depended on his goodwill. “Sorry to trouble you,” he said.

She laughed. “No, you’re not. We’ll get on better if you don’t try to lie to me.”

“All right, then. I’m not sorry. It’s not my fault that Kraal brought me to you. I haven’t asked you to do a single thing, and you talk about me like I’m some noxious poison you’ve been charged with the disposal of.”

“Accurate except for the disposal part, perhaps.”

She walked down the hallway, disappearing through a door on the right. A few moments later, she reappeared, pushing a wheeled wooden cart. On it were a basin, a straightedge razor, some soap, and a clean white towel. Jared took one look and retreated toward the door. Nobody who looked at him like that was getting a straightedge anywhere near him.

“Sit down. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“How do I know that?”

“You are under Kraal’s protection. If you are harmed, Kraal will be harmed, and he is important to me. For similar reasons, your appearance is important and I’m going to shave you. Sit.”

To his own surprise, he sat. She was a force of nature and he wasn’t about to cross her. She poured water into the basin from a clay pitcher, whisked up the soap in a small bowl, and shaved his face and throat, one terrifying stroke after another. She also trimmed his hair.

And then she opened a drawer in the side of the little cart and brought out an armload of clothing, which she laid out on the table beside him.

Jared picked up a pair of what he supposed would have to be called breeches, made out of what was obviously homespun yarn roughly sewn together, and a harsh brown shirt that looked for all the world like a nightshirt. Peasants, he supposed, would wear clothing like this. If they were called peasants in this world. Whatever they were called, he wasn’t one. Kraal had brought him here because he was of value.

“I’m not wearing that.”

“Because what you’re wearing is infinitely better,” the woman said with evident scorn.

Jared looked down at his bloodstained pants, the right leg torn away to reveal his new, clear gel appendage. The tunic was ripped open down the front.

“But—I’m meeting the Queen. Is there nothing else?”

“If you think clothes will impress her, you know naught of the Queen of Giants. You’d best dress quickly—the sun has nearly passed Third Hill.”

“Whatever that means.”

“Come. You’ve got a lot to learn in a very short time.”

He got up and followed her down the hallway. When she opened the door, he covered his eyes with his arm, so bright was the light, but after a moment, he looked again and, squinting, was able to see.

A large, square of vacant space stretched out between the house and those neighboring, paved with flat, gold-colored stones laid expertly together in an intricate pattern. Like a city square, he thought, which ought to have a fountain at the center, with a few shade trees and park benches and pigeons. Where there should have been a fountain or sculpture, instead there was a half circle of perfectly symmetrical standing stones, twenty feet tall, all rounded at the top. They were too perfect to have been formed by nature but didn’t look like they’d been made by hands, either. Each was a different color, and he realized as he looked more closely that they were gemstones of a size and clarity unimagined.

Emerald, sapphire, ruby.

At the point that would have been the center of a complete circle, a clear crystal pillar stretched upward, catching a few of the sun’s rays in faceted angles and reflecting the light skyward in a visible beam.

But the sunlight shone now directly on the ruby stone, the third, on it and through it so that the whole thing glowed and cast red beams across the square.

“When the sun has a clear path,” the old woman said, “and lights up the Time Stone, Kraal will come for you. You must be in the Queen’s audience hall and ready to present your petition before it moves on to Fourth Hill.”

“And if I don’t choose to see the Queen?” The stones were too much. Too much light, too much color, an intensity of sensation that made his nerves scream for relief. When the sun lit up that central pillar—what was that, diamond? It was going to be blinding.

The woman laughed, or he thought it was a laugh, a dry rustling sound. “You are a child, with the ways of a child, and if you continue with such foolishness, you will be a dead child. Kraal has no death wish. If you aren’t ready or if you try to resist, he will pick you up and carry you there naked. They take agreements seriously here. Now, will you get dressed or no?”

Her wrinkled face was void of expression, and he knew he’d get less mercy from her than from the Giants. “What’s your bargain with them?” he demanded.

“You would like to know that, I am sure.” Without another word, she turned and went back into the cottage, and after a moment, he followed, his emotions a turmoil. He wished he’d never come here, but then, he hadn’t had much choice. Vivian had dragged him out of his own comfortable life and into nightmare beyond his imagining. She blamed him for things done in dreams, for being that other man in Surmise, the Chancellor.

A twist of longing for that alter ego surprised him. The Chancellor had power and privilege. He wore jewels and satin and took what he wanted. People feared him and treated him with respect. Now he, Jared, was going to appear in court as an impoverished mendicant. At least he had both legs, and for this, he owed Kraal.

Still, gratitude was a long way from his thoughts as he dressed in the scratchy wool breeches and the rough handwoven shirt. The old woman looked him over and nodded, just as two things happened at once.

Kraal’s shadow blocked out the light from the door, and the whole hut lit up as if the stone itself were filled with small suns. Shards of light pierced Jared’s eyes and he cried out, covering them with his hands, but there was no mercy, no relief.

Somebody pried his hands away and put some dark glasses over his eyes, and then he could breathe, could look up without feeling he was about to die from an abundance of light. The old woman, too, wore dark lenses, but Kraal wasn’t even squinting.

If he went outside—
when
he went outside, because Kraal was already towing him mercilessly in that direction—the crystal pillar would be unbearable.

“We find it beautiful and marvelous, but I understand it is difficult for a human to tolerate the sun on stone, even with the glasses. Just close your eyes, and I will lead you.”

Jared complied out of necessity, even as internally he churned with bitterness and shame that he must come into the presence of the Queen in this way. His leg, although functional and painless, was also nerveless and felt heavy and awkward, so that he limped no matter how hard he tried to maintain an even gait.

Kraal had his hand, forcing him to reach up as though he were a very small child, a toddler, holding on to an adult’s hand to support and guide its wobbling steps. As they passed the Time Stone, even with his eyes closed and the dark glasses in place, the light burned through his eyeballs and into his brain with a cold, sharp fire that turned his stomach and made his knees go weak. For a minute, he thought he would further humiliate himself by vomiting all over the shabby clothes, but he managed to swallow it back and carry on.

Little by little, the light faded from excruciating to bearable to uncomfortable and merely harsh. Color began to tint it, so it was no longer pure white but infused with blue, and Jared knew the sun was moving toward Fourth Hill. He was too out of breath to ask questions or express his fear, but just then, they came to a halt.

Opening his eyes, he saw that they stood on a black slab of stone so highly polished, he could see his own reflection. And deep, deep in the stone, as though it were a lake, shone the twinkling light of stars. He felt dizzy and disoriented, as if he had fallen in and been left to drown, but the anchor of Kraal’s hand steadied him.

Across the expanse of the marble sea stood a palace, the breadth and height of which were dizzying. It, too, was made of stone, not gemstones this time but a golden granite with flecks of something like mica that caught the afternoon light and reflected it back.

Two female Giants stood before closed doors. They wore flowing gowns of purest white that did little to conceal perfectly sculpted breasts and hips. Long hair, red as flame, curled over their shoulders in shining tendrils.

The Giantess on the right clasped a stone jar. The one on the left held a knife with a blade as long as Jared’s arm, honed to a razor sharpness but rusty and stained. As beautiful as were their bodies, perfect as any sculptor could hope to chisel from purest marble, their faces looked like the work of a child. Flat-featured, with only a crack for a mouth, noses askew, cheekbones jutting and uneven. The eyes, though, were a beautiful sapphire blue.

“Kraal,” said the Giant to the right. “What do you here?”

“I come for an audience with Her Eminence.”

“And your little friend?”

Jared caught a hunger in the voice, the low purr of a cat confident of a dinner.

“Under my protection.”

“And what will you give as pledge, that you should bring one such as this before the Queen?”

“I pledge my life.”

“And in token of this pledge?”

The words were formal and formulaic, with the ring of old custom, and Jared began to relax. Of course the guards looked imposing; it was their job to guard these doors, to monitor the traffic of all who would meet with the Queen. But in the end, it all came down to ritual and formula. Kraal knew what he was about.

The guard held out her knife and Kraal took it from her. “As proof of my bond and my pledge,” he said, and then, with one sudden stroke, cut off his own right ear. Blood gushed, pouring in a red tide down the side of his head, staining his neck and shoulder.

Kraal bowed and returned the knife to its keeper, and Jared realized, his heart battering his ribs with sudden terror, that the blade was not rusty but bloodstained, that this was not the first such use it had seen.

The other Giant held out the stone jar, and into it Kraal dropped the severed ear.

“I accept your bond. What price will your friend pay?”

“He is under my protection. My life stands for his.”

“Your pledge has been heard and accepted.”

“Let it be so.”

A child stepped forward from where she had been hidden behind a pillar, dressed like a Victorian doll in frills and lace, with a fur cape pinned at her breast by a giant emerald. Her hair fell in perfect raven ringlets framing a square, roughly hewn face. In her right hand she carried a golden triangle, in her left a baton of the same lustrous metal. Stationing herself between the two guards, she struck the triangle once, twice, and then a third time.

As the sound pealed out, the doors swung open.

Kraal let go of Jared’s hand and strode forward. Jared, confused and disoriented, stayed rooted to the ground, watching his host move away, until the child nudged him. “Go.”

His feet began moving almost of their own accord and he stepped across the threshold into a light-filled room so splendid, he could barely take it in. No windows that he could see, and yet everything was permeated with a golden glow, as if the light came from the stone itself.

Beneath his feet was a marble floor beyond imagining, inlaid with colored stone that formed images of Giants and dragons and other winged creatures, and doors of every imaginable size and shape. Flowers grew without any beds of soil that he could see, in fanciful arrangements that highlighted certain elements of the paving. Large trees graced the vast expanse, their trunks emerging from the floor with no visible space around them, and again no sign of earth.

No time to look, though, because he was busy holding himself straight and walking as evenly as possible. A clear path, red stone like a carpet, led down the center of the room, bounded on each side by a low hedge of red flowers. A throng of Giants stood in ranks on either side, staring down at him out of expressionless faces.

His knees wobbled, sweat crawled down his back in cold insect trails, but he kept moving, at first following Kraal’s back as his only landmark.

And then he saw.

A throne marked the end of the red stone path. It was impossible to tell of what it was originally constructed, it was so heaped with flowers. At first, Jared wondered whether they had been piled there or had grown on their own, and then it ceased to matter.

On the throne, amid the flowers, sat the most beautiful being he had ever seen. She wore a short tunic of blinding white, cut low to reveal the perfect swell of her breasts. Her legs, her arms, they were as though sculpted of perfect ivory by a hand too skilled to be human. And her face—

All of the Giants Jared had seen so far had roughhewn, often distorted features, while hers had been shaped with the same symmetry as her body. Golden hair, twined with red roses, cascaded down over her shoulders. Her eyes were dark sapphire, with stars behind them. Kraal fell to one knee and Jared followed his example and then bowed lower still, resting his forehead on grass unbelievably lush and smooth.