The Soul Weaver (36 page)

“What in the name of Annadis—?” Roxanne's yell was cut off when Paulo shoved her back flat against mine. The princess had never experienced a firestorm. The one we'd survived on our first day in the Bounded had not reached so far as the Blue Tower.

“Alas, the death fire . . . save us . . .” A wailing Singlar, trailing a length of tappa cloth behind him, raced down the lane just ahead of a jagged rent in the earth.

Paulo reached for his hand, but his fingers slipped out of Paulo's grasp, and the Singlar fell screaming into the fire. Feeling weak and useless, I struggled to keep breathing, clutching the sides of my head to keep it from cracking in two. Hands dragged me sideways. A burst of white flame blackened my shirt, scorched my cheek, and incinerated one of my bodyguards.

“We'll watch out,” yelled Paulo in my ear. “Do as you need!”

This storm was far worse than the first one. I could scarcely hear him for the thunder and the pain in my head. Another rift split the sky. Fighting not to cry out, I sank to my knees. Gathering what strength I had left, I closed my eyes and plunged myself into darkness.

The canvas of my mind was scarred with searing ribbons of fire, one and then another, coming so fast I almost couldn't keep up. As I had done before, I attempted to seal each rift as it appeared, to absorb the heat, the pain, and the terror that rode the lightning like an enemy warrior on a white charger.

I built the walls thick, muffling the shouts of warning, the clamor of fear and destruction. I no longer felt the hands pulling me to safety, only the soul-searing flames.

Hold,
I told myself.
You must hold
.
One slip, one weakness, will breach this armor you forge, these walls you build, this fastness that is safety. Keep it dark outside. In here, let the fire burn. . . .

 

An odd sound called me out of the silent dark. The low-pitched trill might have been the buzz of a hummingbird's wings until it skittered up the scale into a cheerful melody you might hear at a jongler fair. The piper dragged my limp senses along with him until his music was abruptly halted by a harsh whisper. “Quiet till he wakes. Your noise disturbs the king.”

“If he sleeps, then my playin' don't disturb him. If he wakes, then he can decide for hisself if it bothers. My whistle must play the last of the storm away. It's been too long silent.”

“We'll stuff the stick down your gullet!”

“It's all right,” I said, opening my eyes to a string of dusty, whitish lumps dangling just above my nose. Tappa roots. Three pale and anxious faces, bearing a striking resemblance to the lumpy roots, hovered close in the smoke haze that hung below the low ceiling.

“Majesty!”

The dangling foodstuffs had to be nudged out of the way, along with my relieved bodyguards, before I could prop myself up on my elbows. The place looked bleaker than the worst tenant shacks at Comigor. Dirt floor, low ceiling. My prickly bed felt like twigs with a thin blanket thrown over them. Beyond a tiny fire flickering in a freshly dug fire pit, a scrawny, light-haired youth was curled up against the wall of dried mud, playing a reed shepherd's pipe.

“How is it with you, sire?” Nithea knelt on the floor beside me, her cool hands on my forehead and cheek.

“I'm all right,” I said, taking her hands and moving them aside so I could sit up all the way. “What am I doing here? The storm . . . How bad was it?” Paulo stood just behind Nithea.

He stepped around her and squatted down beside me. “Seven towers destroyed in the city,” he said, speaking low. “Twenty-some damaged. Three Singlars lost, including Gant.” Gant was my fourth bodyguard, the one I'd seen catch fire. “It was just as before. All the lightning headed straight for you. After a bit everything went dark, and then it was over. You wouldn't wake up, though, so we brought you to the closest shelter.”

“The princess?”

Paulo jerked his head to a shadowy spot beyond the makeshift fire pit.

Roxanne sat on the dirt by the wall, huddled under a long cloak, staring at her knees. She must have felt us looking at her, for she glanced up and met my gaze. Her face was smudged with soot, and her eyes were bleak. Pressing her hand to her mouth, she slowly rose to her feet. After a moment, she inhaled deeply, lowered her hand, and straightened her spine. “I'm going back to the Blue Tower now,” she said. “I'll be in my bed.”

She stepped to the silvery trace on the wall and vanished.

Paulo gazed after her. “Her mouth was open to scream the whole time, but she couldn't make a noise. Pulled you to safety once, though. And grabbed Kalo before he could fall into a rift. He did the same for her. When it was over, she followed us in here. Sat here all day staring like that.”

All day . . . “How long have I been out?”

“It's almost time for the lights to go down. Are you sure you're all right now?”

“I'm fine,” I repeated. Especially for having been insensible most of a day. “Is this your fastness?” I asked the piper.

“ 'Tis.”

“If I could have a drink of something . . .”

My three bodyguards almost fell over themselves rummaging about the place as I got to my feet. The piper directed them to a crude clay bowl, and I was soon drinking a cup of weak tappa ale.

“You're Tom from Lach Vristal,” I said. The arm he'd used to point out the water bowl had no hand on it.

“Aye. I am that.” He grinned broadly. “And you're the new king.”

“I followed you here from your father's lay.”

The hand holding the reed pipe fell into his lap. “Did you now? How fare they at the lay—Pap and Hugh and Dora? I've a sorrow not to see them.”

“They seem well enough. But your father grieves. He thinks you were stolen away by thieves.”

“He didn't understand how I had to come here.”

“I suppose you'd like to go back now.”

The youth had probably not been out of this hovel in weeks. The place smelled like it.

“Why would I want to go back?” said Tom.

“For your family. For the hills. For the sheep. I don't know. What have you here? Wouldn't you go back just to see the sun or eat a slab of bacon?”

Vroon had told me that most of the newcomers had a difficult time learning how to grow their fastnesses, or even how to get in or out of them, much less where and how to harvest the tappa roots. He and his companions felt bad about it, but didn't know how to remedy the problem. The idea of teaching the poor souls had never occurred to them. At least Tom had learned about tappa.

The fellow smiled, then. “Listen.” Returning the pipe to his lips and propping it up with his handless wrist, he danced his five fingers over the holes.

I was not a judge of music. Though my mother valued it, and I was told she played the flute reasonably well, four years of listening to her had not made up for twelve years' lack. But Tom's playing was something else again. The song rambled slowly and mournfully for a while, up and down the scales as if looking for just the right note. There it was, and the next, not the one you might expect, but a different note that took you around an unsuspected corner, and before I knew it, I was somewhere else altogether. . . .

 

 

“You see?”

The music had stopped, taking the vision with it. I had never felt so light, so . . . joyful. Now, my bodyguard's bulk close to my elbow seemed to be the only thing that kept me from toppling over.

“Are you sure you're all right?” Paulo. Whispering.

I shook the fragments of the image from my head. “I'm fine.” I almost shivered as I wriggled the fingers of my left hand, reassuring myself that fingers and hand were all there. From the puzzled looks, I gathered that no one else had seen what I'd seen.

Tom smiled at me crookedly. “How could I leave? I never made such music in the hills, and it brings the hills to my heart so's I don't sorrow for 'em too fierce. And these good folk here”—he waved his stump at Vroon and Zanore and the other Singlars—“they don't make jest of a man if 'e's a broken one like me. They're all broken, too. I belong here.”

Someone had dropped a cloak about my shoulders. I hooked the clasp at my throat. “Your music is very nice. Stay as long as you like in the Bounded. Come and tell me if you decide you want to go home.” I hurried out.

From the outside, Tom's tower was a squat, ugly place, like a mud wasp's nest attached to a grimy windowsill. I told Vroon I wanted Tom taken care of, taught how to live properly in the Bounded, and the same for all the others that he and Ob and Zanore had brought here. If they wanted to return to their homes, Vroon should take them back through the moon-door.

Then, we headed back for the Blue Tower. I needed to sleep.

As I had expected, they were waiting for me outside the Blue Tower . . . the Singlars . . . filling the commard so that I had to pass through them to get inside. They murmured reverently and bent their knees as I passed. I didn't want this. I didn't want any of it.

The condition of the Singlars nagged at me. I didn't understand how the storerooms at the Blue Tower had come to be filled with ham, duck sausage, oranges, and silk, while the Singlars had nothing but tappa, mud, and rock. The answer must exist in the garden. I didn't trust the Source to tell me anything useful, so I decided to do some investigating, putting the question to the Source only if I couldn't discover the answer on my own.

“I need to understand about the light,” I said one day, as Paulo and I poked around the base of the cliffs near the waterfall and the amethyst cave. “What makes a light so bright that plants can grow inside this place?” And it was only here. No Singlar I'd spoken to, even among those who had traveled widest, knew of anything like this garden elsewhere in the Bounded.

The pale yellow boulders were jumbled and broken around the waterfall and the grotto, the face of the rock less sheer than the rest of the garden perimeter. Innumerable dirt paths squeezed past the rocks, promising to take you higher, only to taper into nothing or end abruptly at a cliff. I climbed back down from the current dead end.

“This whole world is fair odd. I could believe most anything.” Paulo vanished behind a boulder twice my height, then emerged above it, craning his neck upward and shaking his head. “We might try this way. Looks rugged, though.”

I squeezed between the boulder and the cliff, and scrambled up the rocks to stand beside him. It wasn't exactly a path. More like a flight of granite steps, sized for legs three times the length of mine, with a number of stomach-curdling gaps filled by loose avalanche debris. We started up. Our path held close enough to the falls to keep the rocks treacherously damp.

A quarter of the way to the top of the falls, Paulo sat heavily on a wide boulder. His exaggerated groan bounced off the rocks as he sprawled on his back and flung his arms wide. “Demonfire, but I'm done already. I'll just wait here for you to scrape me up on your way down.”

No surprise. The way kept getting steeper. Paulo's stamina was much improved in the last week, but his hands were still bandaged and weak. I'd already had to haul myself over a few of the slabs.

“If I'm passing by too fast on the way down, you might need to stick out your hand and catch me,” I said, peering up into the glare.

By the time I reached the top of the falls, I was climbing rather than walking or scrambling. The effort required all my limbs and all my concentration. And the heat had become murderous. Only the spray from the falls and the eddying air currents set in motion by the massive movement of water kept me from melting into a heap.

Eventually, the steep cleft in the rock led me over the edge of the cliff. I rested for a while on a gentle slope of barren rock that formed both the cliff top and the riverbank, funneling the water over the edge. Before me lay the gut-heaving drop to the colorful blot of the garden. I couldn't see the roof or sky or whatever it was existed above this odd landscape. Great billows of steam hung over the river as it thundered over the edge of the cliff, causing a hazy glare that obscured the view. The rock underneath me was hot to the touch.

Not much farther
. What I was searching for was nearby. My bones told me. My senses and instincts insisted. After the brief rest, I blotted my damp face one more time on my shirt and climbed up and away from the cliff's side to see what lay beyond the rocky slope. When I reached the summit, my heart almost stopped.

The ridge sloped sharply downward and flattened into a shimmering plain, the shore of an ocean of fire . . . a sea of sunlight . . . a rippling expanse of gold that stretched as far as I could see into the uncertain reaches of this strange place. From this gleaming ocean, pillars of shifting light rose into the heights, some gold, some blue-white, some red-orange, ever growing and dissipating like the watery storms and spouts sailors witnessed on mundane oceans. The hazy brilliance threatened to blind me; the heat came near blistering my skin. To stay here long would leave me no strength to go down again.