The Soul Weaver (37 page)

This marvel, like the moon-door and the garden and the heaving Edge, was no enchantment, but the natural substance of the Bounded. Looking on it left the same warm, satisfied feeling in my belly as a good meal and good wine.

I was not tempted to touch the substance of the sea itself. To stand even so near as I was to the scalding water . . . fire . . . whatever it was . . . was debilitating enough. Yet neither could I retreat. For the great crescent of shoreline that swept alongside the river, where it flowed out of the sea and across the plain to cool and plummet over the edge of the cliff, was not sand, but shingle, great swathes of fist-sized golden rocks abandoned by the sea and the river.

The rocks were the key to life in the Bounded. The sea and the rocks would brighten and fade with the rhythm of the suns that warmed more familiar worlds. I could not explain it any more than I could explain the fickle weather of the Bounded or the green stars or the expanding Edge. I just understood it. If you waited until the rocks began to fade of an evening, you could gather and carry them in your hand or a bag or a cart. If you set them in a pit of sand in a tower, they would glow and nourish a small garden with healthy light.

Light, food, a world . . . I could make that happen.

 

Sharing the sunrocks and the plants that grew in the garden became my highest priority. If I could accomplish what I intended, every Singlar would be able to use the sunrocks to grow a little garden in the heart of his or her fastness, every one of them slightly different. Names continued to be something special that the Singlars had to get directly from me. I used names to recognize those who changed things for the better and obeyed my laws. But although we made a great ceremony of it—that part was Roxanne's idea—
everyone
received the rocks and the plants.

The first supply of sunrocks went to the Rift Cluster. I carried them there myself, excited to tell the bent philosopher of the new things I had seen. So much had happened since I'd sat in his fastness. Weeks had passed. As we traveled through the rain and gloom, I chafed at how Avero's crude wheeled sledge slowed our progress. When we reached the rift, I left the others behind and hurried down into the dreary cluster. A gaunt young woman with a stunted arm stepped forward in the muddy narrows to greet us. My excitement withered.

“Your leader,” I said, as the cold rain beat down on my head, “the tall Singlar with the bent shoulder . . . who sings . . .”

“To our loss and sorrow, our leader is unbounded, good traveler,” said the woman. “Six wakings before this.”

“Was it a beast . . . or did he drown . . . ?” But I knew better.

“He weakened greatly in the cold just past,” said the woman, her eyes bright in the torchlight. “But happy was he always, teaching us to endure. He told us that he, a humble Singlar, had supped with the Bounded King, who was traveling his realm in disguise! Is that not a wonder? We hold his thoughts dear, and they warm us more than flame.”

A wonder? I could not answer the woman. Could not look at her. All the bright pleasure of my discovery . . . my plan . . . dulled and fell into ash. Why had I not thought to send these people help in the past weeks?
Selfish, stupid fool.
Paulo had warned me.
Too caught up in playing king
. In playing god.

The woman stood waiting for me to make sense of the world.

“Grieved . . . sorrowed . . . greatly sorrowed am I to hear this,” I said. “I had hoped to give him—Well, we've brought things to help you. My companions will show you.”

The woman summoned the rest of the rift dwellers who waited shyly beside their towers in the cold rain. Vroon opened the stone caskets and distributed the sunrocks, teaching the Singlars how to use them to warm their towers and nurture the tappa roots and other plants Zanore pulled out of our wheeled sledge. I stood in the rain contemplating pride and thoughtlessness and how little difference sorrow or shame makes once a deed is done.

When the lesson was finished, I asked the Singlars to stay one moment before returning to their fastnesses. “Though I neither sought nor wanted the office, and though I've neither experience nor wisdom to commend me, it seems I am your king. To your leader”—I nodded to the woman—“I give the name
Vanaya
, which means
wise follower
, for I see that she follows in the footsteps of a great leader, her own kind spirit learning from his wisdom and grace. To the one who is gone, I grant the name
Daerli
, which means
farseer
in the language of my people
.
This name will be held in the highest respect in the Bounded forevermore, and his life will serve an example and reminder for us all.”

A reminder for me.

 

Any surmise that my presence in the Bounded had stopped the firestorms was quickly dispelled. Whatever the cause of the previous cessation, it was done with, for at about the same time I discovered the sunrocks, the storms took up with a virulence and regularity the Singlars had never before experienced. Every two or three days the world fell apart with a bolt of white brilliance, and I retreated into the fastness of myself so I could put it back together again. Paulo said the storms stopped quickly once I got to work, though I seemed to experience their entirety. By the time the fires burned themselves out and I slipped into insensibility, I had long lost all sense of time.

Once I came to expect them, I caught most of the storms early on, so the Bounded suffered little injury or damage. When a particularly violent storm struck one night while I was sleeping, though, it was devastating—fifty towers lost in the Tower City alone, and many more in the smaller clusters throughout the land. Being waked so suddenly made it almost impossible for me to get control. Paulo admitted that I was screaming worse than when I had nightmares at Verdillon by the time I'd stopped the storm. Almost an entire cycle of the light passed before I woke up again.

From that day forward, I posted a guard outside my door whose sole function was to wake me in case of a firestorm. The Singlars considered it the highest honor I could do them, so I kept the position active even after I'd come to sense the storms' birth in my sleep, like any trained warrior who learns to feel his enemy steal through his dreams. Or maybe I never really slept any more.

Though the storms terrified her beyond any sorcery or dungeon, Roxanne suggested that I should let some of the storms have their way and maybe they would stop. Paulo urged me to leave the Bounded until they subsided again. I refused both suggestions. Now that the Singlars had sunrocks and gardens, sledges and kilns, I could not allow the destruction, not to mention the loss of life. And, as storms had occurred even before I came to the Bounded, we had no reason to believe they would stop if I left. Besides, I wanted my answers from the Source, and I wanted to leave the Singlars able to take care of themselves so I wouldn't feel so responsible.

Four or five weeks after the storms had taken up again, a violent firestorm struck on the eve of a long-planned journey to a remote tower cluster. I was insensible for half a day after it. Paulo suggested postponing the trip so I could rest, but I wouldn't hear of it. We were delivering sunrocks.

We left the Tower City just after the lights came up and were soon walking through sparsely settled countryside. The weather was wild, dense clouds of purple and black surging and boiling across the sky. The wind was blowing a gale, and sleet threatened to remove our skin or at least any prominent features we left exposed.

During our first rest stop, I huddled into the lee of a rock while Paulo, Vroon, and the others ate. Even after the rest period had come and gone, I couldn't seem to muster the will to move on. My limbs felt like lead.

“They're eating you up, aren't they?” Paulo lowered himself to the frozen mud beside me. I hadn't even heard him coming.

“What do you mean?”

He offered me a piece of sweet tappa bread. I shook my head and burrowed deeper in my cloak as a gust of wind swirled around the rocks.

“
That's
what I mean. You haven't eaten three mouthfuls of anything since the storm yesterday, and I'll wager I could take you down in three moves as I've not been able to do since you were a nub. The princess could take you down with her tongue.”

“I'm just tired. I'll recover.”

“Not while the storms keep up.”

“I'll figure out something. It's only another few weeks till we can leave this cursed place.”

“You won't last that long. And if some of these oddments that still believe the Guardian was their friend find out you can't think straight for half a day after a storm, they might come up with some way to do us in.”

We'd had some trouble with some of the old maintainers trying to force Singlars back into their fastnesses, beating them and telling them I was destroying the Source. Most Singlars were still easily intimidated.

“I can't leave now.”

“Then go back to the Source. Try what it said would help you.”

“Drink from the spring? Not likely. I don't want to take anything from the Source. You said yourself that you didn't trust it.”

“I don't. But I don't want you dead neither. I want to go back where they make jack and real biscuits, and where I can plant my backside on a piece of horseflesh. If you're going to be dead, then you might as well be dead from trying to stay alive.”

I didn't answer him then. I just got to my feet and said, “I'll be all right. Let's get moving.”

Three days later another storm struck, worse than the last. Another sevenlight, three more storms, and I couldn't go up the stairs in the Blue Tower without stopping every third step to rest. I'd lost so much weight, my breeches wouldn't stay up. I felt as scrawny as Zanore, but Zanore could have tied me in a knot with one hand. My mouth tasted like ash, as if everything inside me had burned up. Paulo kept looking at me, and I knew what he was thinking.

I went to the Source while everyone was asleep. I didn't take Paulo with me, didn't tell him or anyone where I was going. I didn't want anyone seeing how hard it was for me to get up the stairs.

The lamps were down in the tower, so it was night in the garden. But it wasn't completely dark. Lamps just like the ones in the tower hung on iron posts, scattered throughout the plants and trees, casting a soft yellow glow on the path. The air felt chilly, but that was no surprise. I couldn't seem to get warm any more.

“Greetings, my king.” The voice washed over and through me when I walked into the cave and dipped my hand in the water. “Too long it's been since you've come here.”

I didn't waste time. “What did you mean when you said the water from the spring could sustain me through my trials?”

“Just that, my king. The water is of you, and thus will strengthen and nourish you.”

I dabbled my hand in the icy blue-green water. It had no smell, no aura of enchantment. I touched my tongue to a drop and discovered no suspicious taste, no unexpected sensation except for overpowering thirst. No instinct warned me of poison. Having eaten or drunk nothing for many days without threat of imminent nausea, and having scarcely made it down the garden steps without falling on my face, I decided it was worth a try. I scooped up a handful.

“Drink deep, my king. Live.”

And so I did.

“Oh, stars of night . . .” It was hard not to drain the basin dry. Pure, clean, clear, the water stung each of my senses awake. After I had drunk all I could hold, I sagged against the cave wall and slipped down to the floor, feeling the ash that clogged my veins and lungs washed away. I did not sleep, but by the time the lamps faded and the sunrocks began to glow, I could think clearly again. I must have been perilously close to the end. The Source did not speak again that night.

 

From then on I went to the Source after every storm. Each time I dipped my hand in the water, the voice would greet me. “Welcome, my king. I rejoice in your life. How may I serve you this day?”

“Will you answer my question?”

“Not yet. The time of your understanding is not come. But I would talk with you about many other things.”

“Then I'll just drink the water and be on my way.”

“Ah, you are hard! I must find something to tease you into talking with me. I've waited so long for your company.”

“Tell me what I want to know.”

“You should expand the realm of those things you want to know. Your wisdom is lacking in many areas.”

It became a game of sorts between us.

“Tell me, O voice of the water bowl, have you a name?” I said one day, as I sat watching the torchlight sparkle on the surface of the spring while the water did its work in me.

“I am the first root of the Bounded. It is perhaps not an elegant name. Not easy on the tongue.”

“It seems strange to call you
Source
. It's not a proper name. I could call you
Root
, I suppose.”

“As you wish—and I could call you
boy
, instead of
king
, for at the root of your being is a youth of sixteen, though you bear the burdens of a king.”

Gradually we did move on to matters of more substance in our conversations. I began to talk of problems brought to me by the Singlars, of difficulties caused by the changes I'd made, and of freedoms I'd given them. I asked about the roving bands of monstrous creatures that I knew were sentient beings who threatened outlying fastnesses, and what to do about the Singlars who were afraid to leave their towers to join in the awakening life of the city. I began to think of the Source as a friend who spoke to me as an elder sister might. She never told me what to do, but led me through my thinking, asking questions and encouraging me to draw on everything I'd learned: from books, from watching my father and mother—both my true parents and those who had raised me—even from my time with the Lords, though neither the Source nor I ever mentioned them by name. I refused to sully the beauty of that cave with the ugliness of my past.