Authors: Alexei Panshin,Cory Panshin
Tags: #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Epic, #Science Fiction, #General
Chapter 20
H
ALDANE SAT IN THE DARKNESS OF THE PEN.
The rain had stopped and the early night was fresh-made. The air was cold. The clouds were broken. Haldane’s shoulder throbbed as though it were a warm heart at labor. Haldane’s shoulder throbbed as he thought.
He thought on his chief strength:
He could suck a teat, and crawl. These were strengths. He could hold his shit like a man. He could walk. He could run. He could ride. He could read. He knew all there was to raiding save for a raid, which was a small difference. He could lead men. He could lead men thus far only to death. But there were other things that he could do, too. Many things. Many strengths were his.
But, since yestermorn, he could see keys in the very shape of the land, and ways within the country. Next to this his other strengths were all as nothing. This was a great gift to him that he did not deserve, a gratuity, a lifting of the Veil of the Most Precious. He could not say why it should have happened. He could only feel small before that for which the land was made—that unknown. And that by which the land was made—that unknown. These unknown things were much greater than the Gets or Morca or any strength he had from them.
It seemed to Haldane that if this cage he was in was the cage of a Get, the close prison of one who was a Deldring who followed Morca, that it should have no strength that was greater than his strength. For the unknowns that were the source of his strength were much greater than the Gets or Morca and any strength that they might have.
So Haldane looked about him in the cage, and he saw there the door that was the way out. As Haldane had known even before, this place was an old place. There was a door in the pen. There had always been a door in the pen for those who could move in other ways as long as there had been a pen.
Before he was branded, Haldane had not seen the door. He had seen only those things that said that this place was an old place. It was as though the country were a book that none but he knew of, and in it he could read the letter “a.” Before he was branded, Haldane had seen sign of the book, but nowhere a letter “a.” So he was helpless.
Now he could see the door that left the cage through other ways. One more sign of the book was clear to him, if not all.
And so he left the pen.
He stood alone. Jana, the moon, was rising, full and fat. The night was new. Haldane stood, bare feet spread, naked but for his smock, one who was stripped to nothing but his essential self, and tasted of the night’s chill clarity.
Haldane thought then that he would make his way inside the land to Barrow Hill and there he would find Oliver, and together they would walk to Palsance. He would do this not because he was still the son of Black Morca, one who had need of a wizard, but because he had promised to help Oliver with his strength and it would wound his strength to break his promise.
And so he set out along the path, for there was a way into the land immediately thereby behind a bush. Feeling at one with himself, he followed this easy way, for it had been easier than he had ever expected to leave the place of the Get.
It was enough to make him laugh.
It was sprightly gay.
For he had shed great weight when he left Black Morca behind him. He had been paralyzed by Morca, and for that he had been branded. If it was not so, why was the way not open to him before he was branded? If not for Morca, could he not have thought of the Pall of Darkness, and left the cage?
His feet were light. Barefoot he sprang because of all that he no longer was.
It was to race beneath the moonlight, under the skying clouds.
It was to leap.
It was to merry springtime, ha-ha.
Hu-yah.
So it was that the boy went along the way to Barrow Hill through bright and flighty night, through calm chill under flying skies. All around him was infinitely alive, infinitely sensitive.
He had survived, and he had not thought he would. After all that had happened, he was still himself, and he rejoiced.
And then he began to notice the strangeness of the night.
The clouds ran wild across the sky, but the night was windless. The night air was cool, but it
was
, it did not stir about. He looked more and more to the skies as he walked.
Because his attention was in his eyes, he did not know when first the leaves in the trees about him began to shake and shiver. Now and then, the whispering rattle. The talk of leaves in wind.
But there was no wind. The night air was clear, and, but for the leaves, it was silent. It was so lucid that he could hear the throb of his shoulder in the silence.
He began to walk faster then, to leave the sound behind him.
The silent clouds hurtled overhead and cast large shadows over the land.
The leaves clattered in the windlessness.
Was it before he began to run that the wind began to howl? Or did it first howl and the trees to lash about as he began to run?
But where he ran it was windless. The winds of the earth were loosed all about him and he could see their great force, and he could hear them like screaming birds, and waterfalls, and winter, but naught of it touched him.
The storm wind battered the land. It flung trees. It made his ears to ring as though great gongs had sounded but a moment before. But nothing of the wind touched the boy. He ran within the calm and silence of the night.
He ran toward Barrow Hill, which he saw before him, bald and alone.
As he came through the hills to the plain, light and shadow reeled beneath the moon.
Power circled around Haldane. It lashed at his heels.
He ran into the plain that lay before Barrow Hill. When he left the hills and set foot on the plain, clouds coasted over the face of the moon and all grew dark. In that darkness, the wind became silent and all was still. There was no howl. There was no clash of leaves. The clouds lay unmoving before the face of the moon.
In the middle of the plain, the boy came upon a standing stone. He was winded from running, so he paused to lean against the stone in the silence and in the darkness. He felt it a familiar thing, almost a place of safety.
He listened to the pulse in his shoulder, the pulse of his heart, the pulse of his breath, the pulse of the universe in his ears. And as he rested there against the stone, the moon suddenly shone again in its fullness, as though a hand had swept the clouds away. Then, before him, he saw the rough place, Barrow Hill, like a boulder alone in a wide field.
Then he turned and there saw three riders. One was in link that shimmered in the light. One was in lacquer that threw the moon back to the moon again. The third wore no armor but carried a golden horn and blew at the sight of Haldane.
And before the riders came a monstrous black pig. Lather from its jaws snowed the ground. Its breath was so hot as to alter the coolness of the night. Moonlight reflected from its tushes would wound sharply.
The snort of the pig was like the sucking out of his bones. The cries of the three riders were night fears given tongue. The calling horn struck him like the cold wind at last.
It cried:
Here is the quarry. Gather for the kill. Here he is. Gather quickly. Kill. Kill.
It was the wind he had not felt before, cutting lightly through his simple smock, cutting away skin, flesh, and bone, flaying open the heart.
He ran and did not know why he was pursued. These men sought the Son of Black Morca and he was not that anymore. He had no army anymore to match against Ivor Fish-Eye. He was small and never would be large. He would never play Deldring to Romund’s Farthing. What were Farthing and Deldring to one like him who wished only to melt into the land? He would never return with men at his back to make Arngrim no more a Get. He would swear to it.
He was nobody. And yet they pursued him through the night. They blew the horn after him. Why would they seek to kill him so hard, these three inexorables? Why was he the quarry? Why was he to be killed?
They came after him across the plain. The pig snorted and they cried halloa.
Ta-ta
, the horn,
ta-ta
.
All the Gets who hunted for Haldane through all the Gettish ways of Nestor were called to gather here as he, their victim, was brought to bay. They would dismember him and silver his red blood with moonlight. They would throw the pieces of his body into the abyss and turn their backs on it.
And the monster pig harried after him to have its own desire. It meant to drag his body away from the huntsmen and devour it in greedy secret as a sow sometimes consumes her own farrow. And it would befoul his carrion bones with dirt and filth as it fed.
He reached the base of Barrow Hill and began to climb. Up the rocks and through the scrub. And then he clambered. All among the boulders, around and over, up the hill he went in his bare feet.
He climbed without looking since there was nothing that he might do but climb. He lost himself in climbing, climbing to climb. Where they were behind him, he knew not. Who they were, how many they had now become—he did not look to know.
He knew they followed him. He knew there was no hope for him. He climbed because he could still climb.
He would show them who he was, what little was left of him. They must climb this hill his way and his way would be the hard way. Then only might they have him.
And all the while as the boy climbed, he could hear the great black creature-pig slavering behind him. It touched his heel hotly and he wore its spume on his smock.
He came at last to a place where there was no more to climb. Only one final great block of stone overhead. When he was there, that would be the place they would tear him down and kill him.
The pig was close, and then he left the pig behind, well below at the base of the rock to find its own way to the top. As he climbed his chimney, the fetid black animal trotted back and forth looking for another route.
At the top of the rock there were several small trees and lichen growing on the rock face like a small landscape. The boy sat on the countries of lichen as though they were a carpet and looked at the many men scrambling up the rock hillside to be part of his death. He felt sorrow and infinite pity for them because they were only Gets when there were larger things to be than that.
The evil black pig squealed madly. It looked at him and knew him. It agonized at the rock.
In that instant, Haldane remembered the Pall of Darkness. It seemed to him that of course he must know it.
The one who could not remember the Pall of Darkness was the one who was son to Morca. He was not that one anymore. He was not the son of Black Morca. Therefore, he could know the Pall of Darkness. Of course. Of course.
He knew the spell then. He remembered the words as though they were the Lineage of Wisolf. The gestures of hand were as familiar as those in training horses. It was all open to him.
Also open to him was the memory of the Night of Slaughter, the night of his betrothal, the night of Morca’s death. He remembered the Chaining of Wild Lightning, and Oliver’s failure. He remembered all: fighting, death, sickness and blood, and he remembered the Pall of Darkness. Now much was clear to him.
And here he was now on Barrow Hill with the Pall of Darkness again on his lips. And where was Oliver?
He stood and called, “Oliver! Oliver! I am here. Where are you? Oliver!”
But Oliver did not answer Haldane.
The eager creature-pig squealed in triumph as it found its own way up the rock.
The horn blew just below. It said:
The game is up. The game is up.
But it was not, for Haldane could still pull the Pall of Darkness down around his shoulders and steal away down Barrow Hill. No mortal eyes could see him. He could go away and continue to live as he was. He could be safe.
But for the pig! But for the black pig!
Haldane turned and looked away from the rock and over the moonlit country at his alternative. And before him, curving away, there was a stone bridge. It was clearly limned. Below it there was mist and voidness. The bridge was without foundation. Where the bridge led was lost to sight in the mist. He who fell from that bridge would be forever forgot.
Bridges may fall down, as all who know Nestor know.
The pig was upon him then, and he fell onto his knees before its power. It struck him with its heavy body and then it was past him. Haldane looked up and the pig grunted and trotted out onto the bridge as though it were substantial and might easily bear great weight. Haldane watched to see what the pig would do. It had lost all interest in him and it walked out farther and farther on the bridge that had no support. Haldane wanted to call to it.
He thought once more of the Pall of Darkness and looked out to see Arngrim, and Romund and Ivor. But he could not see them anywhere. Where had they gone? Where were the other Gets who had come from all Nestor? He could not see them around the base of the rock.
The mist circled the base of the rock now. Beneath it, there was great nothing. Haldane stood on the rock in the Void that supported the bridge over the Void. There was bright moonlight and there was mist clear as cloth.
Haldane looked to see the black pig. As he looked, the animal became a white wurox and disappeared into the mist.
Chapter 21
H
ALDANE STEPPED CAUTIOUSLY ONTO THE BRIDGE.
The Winds of the Void that had surged about him through the night now whistled like hollow desolation and waited below in the emptiness for him. Haldane tested the stone, but it bore his weight without wag or sag.
How strange, how very strange this all was. Since Morca’s Banquet, all was always strange. It was a mystery and a delight and an awfulness how strange things had been. Those things that had befallen him were like nothing that had ever befallen him before.
What was this place? What was this bridge?
It was a causeway over the Abyss, resting on nothing, passing over the Void. How could such a bridge, hanging giddily, hang? It wound slightly, sometimes curving as though following the slope of emptiness. Everything that Haldane knew—his senses, his fears, his desire to survive—all these told him that the bridge was not to be trusted, even though the wurox might walk upon it.
But his chief strength, which was his new ability to find his way within the inner mysteries of the land, insisted that he walk forward boldly, that this was the true way.
And so he paused, torn between nightmare and dream.
He knew only this: that he was afoot in a universe that always changed. He was not in Morca’s old world where all was safe and still until the world broke. He was in a universe that always moved and never broke.
The old unmoving world had broken that he might not break. Now, he might break, but he knew this new ever-changing world would not.
Was this nightmare? Was this a place he did not fit and could not fit? Was it always to be endless whirling confusion? Was it Libera, the hideous caterpillar creature, She Who lured, promised and lied, toying with him still as though he were a little spider made to run madly on a green grass stem?
Or was this the place that he dreamed of? That place where he was at home, even though all was always strange, because he was one with that great mysterious power which inhabited this country.
Before him, the wurox returned to stare silently out of the fartherness of the mist. Then it became vanished again in the white folds of gauze. Haldane followed where it had disappeared, stepping out onto the bridge.
The clouds were gone now from the sky. The moon shone clear. The night air was still and cold. Mist hung about the bridge in ribbon curtains.
Haldane walked firmly, one foot after another, each set down squarely on the supporting stone. In the Abyss, there were moans. Something awful lurked below. It was lonely and alone. It was that which was hacked to pieces and forgotten. It was that which was fouled in mud and devoured by the sow. It was that which was dead. It howled and seethed to have Haldane. It tested itself against the bridge, pushing and scrabbling to tear it away.
Could this be the dream where he was more at home than with Morca because he was one with that which always changed? How could he be safe and not be broken and cast down? How could he be one with this? Morca’s name was not enough that he should cease to fear. In whose name was he fearless, that he might live?
All that existed was himself, Haldane, alone, afraid. There was no wurox. There was himself and the causeway and the moon and the mist and the Thing waiting below. It was like Libera in its hideousness.
The Thing reached for him. It tore away small stones from the bridge and hurled them into the roiling turbulent nothing. It cried like oily black water in the Void. It meant to swallow him whole that he should be absorbed into it and be one with its awful, lonely, solitary power.
He had thought when he escaped from the Get that he was safe. He might be branded. Morca’s Son might be no more. But there was still Himself, Haldane, who was free and would survive as he had always been. Haldane was that which was really real, which might find refuge for itself in some safe place in Palsance and there never be troubled again.
This Haldane was no Get who might not don other clothes and live. This Haldane was not Morca’s Son, with his dreams of maelstrom, who might not be marked with another’s private mark and live. This Haldane was that Haldane that was sure it would be Haldane in any clothes, in any condition of body, in any body, at any age, always. That which continued. That which cried.
Haldane cried in pain and hopelessness.
Haldane cried in fear his one last inadequate name of power.
Haldane cried, “Haldane!”
And the Void echoed, “Haldane!” eagerly, as though now that it knew his true name it was hungrier than before to devour him. It would rip the meat from the name. It would gorge itself on his flesh, lick its lips, and leave him isolate and nameless on the place of lonely bones.
Before him, the bridge suddenly came to an end. It hung there unfinished, as though he had been brought so very far, through worlds on worlds, to this ultimate brink. As though this end had been made for Haldane.
This world—so always new! So nightmarish, but always hovering on the edge of dream.
There was a great echoing crash then as though thunder boulders dropped clashing into the Well of the Worlds. And then again. The stone bridge was collapsing section by section. Before the echo of one collapse had fairly rung, another section would fall, pulled after it into empty forever falling by the Thing of the drowning Void. The bridge fell away, and the mist swept after, so that the last remaining sections of the bridge stood alone under the moon, hanging in nothing. Their fallacy, curtained by the mist, was now clearly revealed, and they could no longer hang unsupported but must fall.
Again: a rumble like the hungry stomach of time, and the stone curve was gone—echo, echo, echo. There were but two sections of stone now remaining.
Haldane stood on the final coursings that the mason had set in place. Behind him, one more section of the bridge gave way. So little was left—no more than the stones he stood upon. The black waters of infinite loneliness and separation awaited him below.
He closed his eyes. In the darkness, he thought of one great security amid fear. A Name came to him. With the Name, he stepped forward, off the rock, into the Abyss, as the last stones of the bridge fell into the storm.
He was unsupported by himself or by anything that he had ever known. He stood on nothing. But he stood!
His eyes tight closed, he stepped and stepped again. And there, where he could not see, there was always something beneath his feet. Again, and again.
He did not fall. The winds of the Abyss cried in self-pity that he did not fall.
One step at a time he proceeded. Each step was different than the last. It might be hard and sure. It might be soft and uncertain. It might yield and sway. It might not even be there—so that he stepped and caught himself, heart swooping, on a stair below. But as he fell he did remember the Name, and lo, a stair was there beneath his foot.
That which was below his feet might be like rock, or like a bog, or like a grassy hillside, or like a tree trunk bobbing in water to tip and spin. It was this, it was that.
And then again, it was nothing! But always he remembered the Name. With the power of the Name he pulled his foot free from the bog that sucked at him. And a stair was there instead of the Abyss, which cried for him.
Then there was another stair, stair upon stair. Eyes tight closed, teeth set, he stepped away into uncertainty as though he walked Morca’s Stair by night and was confident. And again and again, the next step was there, waiting or created, for his reaching foot.
Then a Voice suddenly said: “What do you do on My Staircase?”
His heart leaped and he ceased to step. His eyes were still tight shut.
He said, “This is my Stair. I found it, and I may follow it down.”
“But these Steps that you have found are My Steps and not your Steps. There are Rules for those who walk My Steps. If ye would walk the Steps, ye must mind the Three Rules of the Stair.”
“What be the Three Rules of the Stair?”
There was a sudden tug at his smock that threatened to overbalance him, so that he cried aloud.
The Voice said, “None may walk My Staircase who is not naked to himself. Are you naked?”
“I am not naked,” he said. “The night is cold. All that I have in this world to keep my bones warm is this smock.”
“Rule the First broken,” the Voice said. “Smocks are expressly forbidden on My Staircase. No one may wear a smock here. You must leap from the Stair.”
“Must I?” he asked. “I did not know the Rule. May I not take off the smock and cast it from me?”
There was a long silence. Then the Voice said, “Just this once, I will bend My Rule. You may take off the smock and cast it from you.”
Eyes still shut, he pulled the smock over his head. He held it in one hand and threw it into the teeth of the Abyss. The mad Thing snatched at the tidbit, swallowed it whole, and whined for more. Cold air beat around his shanks.
“Rule the Second,” said the Voice. “No one may close his eyes and walk My Steps. Are your eyes closed?”
“They are closed,” he said. “If I ever opened my eyes, I would surely fall.”
“Rule the Second broken,” the Voice said. “That cannot be. Now you must jump from the Stair. You cannot stay.” The Thing howled at these words.
“What if I should open my eyes. May I stay on Your Staircase then?”
“Bend another Rule?” the Voice asked. “Very well. I have bent one Rule. I will bend a second. But no more. You may open your eyes.”
He opened his eyes then. He saw nothing before him. But he did not look at his feet. And his feet continued to stand on the stair that was in nothingness.
“Rule the Third,” said the Voice. “All those that walk My Steps must have My special let-pass. Do you have My special let-pass?”
“Is a chipped tooth a let-pass?” he asked.
“No,” said the Voice. “A chipped tooth a let-pass? Never such a thing.”
“Then I have no special let-pass.”
“No special let-pass? Then Rule the Third is broken. And this one cannot be bent. And so we are at an end. At last. You cannot walk My Staircase. You must hurl yourself into That Which Waits.”
That Which Waits swirled about and moaned to itself.
There was no help for him now. He was naked and alone. He was without power. He was helpless. He was nothing.
He was nothing but the Name in his heart. He stood on the stairstep over nothing. He breathed one last time, and then cried the Name aloud as he hurled himself into the Void. He was nothing. The Void was nothing.
All that was was the Name. The Name was all that was.
And the Name held him safe in Its arms.
The Voice, which was the Voice of Infinite Gentleness and Love, The Voice of Truth, said: “Who am I?”
He said, “Thou art that for which the country was made.”
And the Voice asked again: “Who am I?”
He said, “Thou are that by which the country was made.”
And yet again: “Who am I?”
“Thou art Thou. Thou art Libera.”
And the Voice said: “Open your eyes.”
His eyes were open for he had opened them on the stair.
He said, “But, Mother, my eyes are open.”
“Open your eyes,” She said.
And he opened his eyes. Before him there was radiance, which was light flooding the mind to fullness and overflowing.
The Voice said: “Thou art My Lover, Giles.”
He who had been Haldane, but was now Giles—which was the name of the Lover of Libera—lost himself in Love of the Goddess. She was that One Who united All that was Lost and Scattered. Who was the Path. Who was the Home and the Dream. Who was the Always New. Who was the Pig. Who was the Wurox. Who was the Abyss, and Who was That which lies beyond the Abyss.
He Loved Her for a moment that was eternity. And She cradled him like mistress, like mother.
When it was time for him to leave Her and return to the world, She said: “There is yet More. There is always More.”
He, Giles, said, “I would know More. I will know More.”
She said: “If you would know More, then you must discover these answers: Why were you born? And for what purpose did I make this country? Study the questions well. When you bring these answers back to Me, then ye shall surely know More.”
“I will,” Giles said. “I will return.”
“In time,” the Voice said. There was a note of—was it compassion? Was it pity? “You will learn that it takes time. Go now with My Love and Blessing and meet your trial, for ye have trials to meet. Remember My Name.”