The Skrayling Tree (33 page)

This final thought helped me sustain a balance within myself as the Nihrainian steed carried me higher and higher out of the
depths, up into the roaring chasm and then down black shale, rivulets of red lava, a rain of pale
ash. The Nihrainian horses continued to follow their own peculiar route parallel to this reality. The stink of sweat and sulphur
remained in my nostrils. The neck of the great beast steamed, bulging with straining muscles as it continued down the flanks
of the black mountain and out into a world which turned by degrees from night to dawn and from lifeless ash to rolling meadowlands
with copses of oak and elm.

I was tiring. The horse’s pace slowed to a steady canter as if to enjoy the cool, autumnal air, the scents of sweetly fading
summer. The leaves of the trees turned gold and brilliant yellow and russet in the low, comforting light. Lobkowitz, still
ahead of me, his greatcoat and tricorn hat covered with light gray ash, turned in his saddle to wave. He seemed jubilant.
I guessed we had crossed another barrier. Our luck was holding.

At last we rested beside a pond on which a few white ducks squabbled. There were no signs of human beings, although the whole
area had a pleasant, cultivated look. I mentioned this to Lobkowitz. He said he thought that we were in a part of the multiverse
which for some reason had ceased to be inhabited by human beings. Sometimes entire futures vanished, leaving the most unexpected
traces. He guessed that this land had once been settled by prosperous peasants. Some action in the multiverse had affected
their existence. Their natural world had survived as they left it. Everything they had made had vanished. Every little pact
they believed they had with mortality brushed aside.

He gave a small, sad shrug.

Lobkowitz said that he had witnessed the phenomenon too often not to be convinced that he was right. “You might note, Count
Ulric, a certain barrenness to those gently rising and falling hills, those old stones and trees. They are a dream without
its dreamers.” He rose from where he had been washing his face and hands in the pond. He shivered, drying his palms under
his arms as he waited for me to drink and wash. “I am afraid of places like this. They are a kind of vacuum. You never know
what horrors will choose to fill it. An untrustworthy dream at best.”

I followed his reasoning, but did not have his experience. I could only listen and try to understand. I knew I did not have
a temperament for the supernatural, and I thus would never be thoroughly comfortable in its presence. Not all my family had
a natural affinity with infinite possibility. Some of us preferred to cultivate our own small gardens. I wondered with sudden
amusement if I might be the horror who chose to fill this particular vacuum. I could see Oona and our children cultivating
a farm, a pleasant house…

And then I understood what Lobkowitz feared. There were many traps of many kinds in the multiverse. The harshest climate could
hide the greatest beauty, the most attractive shireland could disguise hidden poisons. With this realization, I was glad to
remount the big, tireless stallion and follow Lobkowitz through endless meadows until starless, moonless night fell, and I
heard the sound of water far below me.

I hardly dared look down. When finally I did, I saw little, but it seemed the big Nihrainian horse was
galloping across a lake. We slept in our saddles. By morning we rode over the high, tough grass of a broad steppe. In the
distance we saw grazing animals which, as we drew closer, I recognized as North American bison.

With some considerable relief I realized that we were probably upon the same continent as my imperiled wife. Then the bison
vanished.

“Is she nearby?” I asked Prince Lobkowitz when we next stopped on a rise overlooking a broad, winding river. All wildlife
seemed to have disappeared. The only sound we heard was the remorseless keening of the west wind. We dismounted and ate some
rather stale sandwiches Lobkowitz had carried in his knapsack from Moscow.

His reply was not encouraging. “We must hope so,” he said. “But we have several dangers to overcome before we can be certain.
Many of these worlds are dying—already as good as dead.…”

“You take much in your stride, sir,” I said.

“ ‘Some polish is gained with one’s ruin,’ “ he said. He quoted Thomas Hardy, but the reference to our circumstances was obscure
to me. He threw the remains of his sandwich onto the ground and watched it. It did not move. I was puzzled. Why were we studying
a piece of discarded food?

“I see nothing,” I told him.

“Exactly,” he said. “There is nothing to see, my friend. Everything around it is unaffected. Nothing comes to investigate.
This place looks very tranquil, but it is lifelessness. Eh?’ He kicked at the stale bread. “Dead.”

Lobkowitz stamped back to his horse and mounted.

At that moment I do not believe I had ever seen a more heavily burdened individual.

Thereafter I treated my companion with a different respect.

Moons and stars saw many passings

Many long suns rose and fell

Many were the women dancing

Many were the warriors singing

Many were the deep drums calling

Calling to the Gods of War!

W. S. H
ARTE
,

“The Shining Trail”

T
he rolling hills of that ersatz Sylvania behind us, we found ourselves in a grey terrain of shale and old granite. The world
had changed again. Ahead was a succession of bleak, shallow valleys with steep, eroded flanks. High in the cloudy skies carrion
eaters circled. At least they were a sign of life or, if not, the promise of death. The floors of the silvery lime stone valleys
were rent with dark fissures, long cracks which ran sometimes for miles. A leaden, sluggish river
wound across the depressing landscape. In the distance were low, wide mountains which from time to time gouted out red flames
and black smoke. This was not unlike the dead world Miggea of Law had created.

I asked Lobkowitz if anything had caused the withering of these worlds we crossed, and he smiled wryly. “Only the usual righteous
wars,” he said. “When all sides in the conflict claimed to represent Law! This is characteristically a land which has died
of discipline. But that is Chaos’s greatest trick, of course. It is how she weakens and confuses her rivals. Law will characteristically
push forward in a predictable line and must always have a clear goal. Chaos knows how to circle and come from unexpected angles,
take advantage of the moment, often avoiding direct confrontation altogether. It is why she is so attractive to the likes
of us.”

“You do not want the rule of Law?”

“We could not exist without Chaos. Temperamentally I serve Law. Intellectually, and as a player in the Game of Time, I serve
Chaos. It is my soul that serves the Balance.”

“And why is that, sir?”

“Because, sir, the Balance serves humanity best.”

We were cantering through the shallow dust of a valley. A few hawthorn trees had managed to grow in the hollows, but mostly
the scenery was bare rock. Slowing to a walk, Lobkowitz turned in his saddle and offered me a white clay pipe and a tobacco
pouch. I declined. As he filled his own bowl, tamping it with his thumb, he sat back in the big wooden saddle and gestured
towards the horizon. “We have kept our coordinates, I do believe.
At this rate it will not be long before we reach our destination.”

“Our destination?”

Almost apologetically Prince Lobkowitz said, “It is safe to tell you now. We travel, with a little luck, to the city of the
Kakatanawa.”

“Why could we not have gone back with the Kakatanawa when they returned home?”

“Because their path is not our path. If my judgment is accurate, when we find them, they will have long since been back at
their positions. Those warriors are the immortal guardians of the Balance.”

“Why are we all from different periods of history, Prince Lobkowitz?”

“Not history exactly, my friend, for history is just another comforting tale we tell so that we do not go mad. We are from
different parts of the
multiverse.
We are from the multitude of twigs which make up this particular branch—each twig a possible world, yet not growing in time
and space as we perceive, but growing in the Field of Time, through many dimensions. In the Time Field all events occur simultaneously.
Space is only a dimension of time.

“These branches we call spheres or realms—and these realms are finely separated, usually by scale, so that the nearest scale
to them is either too large or too small for them to see, though perhaps the physical differences between the worlds are scarcely
noticeable.”

Prince Lobkowitz gave me a sideways look to check if I was following his argument. “Yet there are occasions when the winds
of limbo breathe through the multiverse,
tossing the branches to and fro, tangling some, bringing down others. Those of us who play the Game of Time or otherwise engage
with the multiverse attempt to maintain stability by ensuring that when such winds blow, the branches remain strong and healthy
and do not crash together or proliferate into a billion different and ultimately dying twigs.

“Nor can we let the branches grow so thick and heavy that the whole bough breaks and dies. So we maintain a balance between
the joyous proliferation of Chaos and the disciplined singularities of Law. The multiverse is a tree, the Balance lies within
the tree, the tree lies within the house, and the house stands on an island in a lake…” He seemed to shake himself from a
trance, in which he had been chanting a mantra. He came smartly awake and looked at me with half a smile, as if caught in
some private act.

It was all he would tell me. Since I could now anticipate further answers to my questions as it became possible for him to
offer them, I grew more optimistic. Was he relaxing because we were getting closer and closer to where Oona was in some mysterious
danger? If Lobkowitz was so optimistic, there was every chance we would be there to rescue her.

On we galloped as if we rode on the soft turf of an abandoned shire, although the limestone now was melting and turning to
a sickly, sluggish lava beneath the Nihrainian horses’ hooves. The stink of the stuff filled my nostrils and threatened to
clog my lungs, yet not once did I feel afraid as we crossed a sea of uneasy pewter and reached a shore of glittering ebony
far too
smooth to accept any mortal steed’s hoof. The Nihrainian stallions took the slippery surface with familiar ease. Ducking as
large trees came towards us, we found ourselves in a sweet-smelling pine forest through which late-afternoon sunlight fell,
casting deep shadows and calling the sap from the wood. Lobkowitz let his horse stop to crop at invisible grass and turned
his face upwards to admire what he saw. The sun caught his ruddy features. In the heightened contrast he resembled a perfect
statue of himself. Great shafts of sunlight broke through the silhouettes of the trees and created an incredible mixture of
forms. For a moment, following Lobkowitz’s gaze, I thought I looked into the perfect features of a young girl. Then a breeze
disturbed the branches, and the vision was gone.

Lobkowitz turned to me, his smile broadening. “This is one of those realms all too ready to mold itself to our desires and
take the form we demand. It is particularly dangerous, and we had best be out of it soon.”

We cantered again, across sparsely covered hills and through valleys of sheltered woodlands, and entered a broad plain, with
a greying sky hovering over us and a cold breeze tugging at our horses’ manes. Lobkowitz had become grave, turning his head
this way and that as if expecting an enemy.

The clouds streamed in towards us, thick and black, and lowered the horizon. In the far distance I could make out the peaks
of a tall mountain range. I prayed they were the Northern Rockies. Certainly this great, flat plain could be part of the American
prairie.

It began to rain. Fat drops fell on my bare head. I
was still wearing the clothes Sepiriz had first given me and had no hat. I lifted a gloved hand to hold off the worst of it.
Lobkowitz, of course, was now dressed perfectly for the weather and seemed amused by my discomfort. He reached into one of
his saddlebags and tugged out a heavy, old dark blue sea-cloak. I accepted it.

I was soon even gladder for the cloak as the wind came whipping in from the northeast and hit us like a giant fist. Doggedly
the Nihrainian stallions maintained their pace. As their great muscles strained harder, there was a hint of tiredness now.
The endless veldt stretched all around us. Still no obvious signs of beaver, birds or deer. Once, as the wind howled fiercely
and caused even my stallion to reduce his speed to a dogged plod, there came a gap in the clouds. Red sunlight brightened
the scene for a moment and revealed a herd of deer running for their life before the wind. The first I had seen. They were
clearly trying to escape the region. I had the distinct feeling we were not heading in the sensible direction. I remarked
on the wind during a lull. Lobkowitz looked concerned as he confirmed my guess that we were heading into a tornado. Knowing
little of such things in Europe, I could not recognize one. All I understood was that it was wise to find shelter.

Lobkowitz agreed that, as a general rule, it was usually wise to seek cover.

“But not this time. He would find us, and we would be more vulnerable. We must continue.”

“Who would find us?”

“Lord Shoashooan, Lord of Winds. He commands a dangerous alliance.”

Then, as if to silence my friend, the wind again became a shouting bully. The rain was a giant’s fingers drumming on my back
as we cantered on, crossing marshes, rivers and grassland with equal ease. The only thing powerful enough to slow us was that
cruel, relentless wind. It seemed to carry hobgoblins with it, tugging at my body and teasing my horse. I could almost hear
its hard, cackling laughter.