Vergence (26 page)

If the usual laws followed, he would be stripped bare of shields and ward, incapable of any casting the moment he touched the surface of the blue void. And on the other side, who knew what? Fla didn't find the idea comforting, and yet here lay an irresistible mystery. He took a deep, painful breath to steady himself against the sensation of falling, and stepped into the sphere.

He looked back quickly to be sure the portal remained behind him. From this side it looked altogether more sinister, a sucking black void, a pulsating angry scar rupturing the crystalline beauty of the interior.

The place he found himself in was unlike any he had seen, or anywhere heard described. He seemed to be in a small space, like a narrow cavern, made entirely of a partially transparent substance much like pure blue ice. In spite of this, the air felt pleasantly cool, rather than frozen.

Near at hand, the surfaces appeared insubstantial, almost vaporous. Further away they seemed to become solid, but suffused with a pure sourceless light which made it impossible to determine how closely he might be confined. He found walking here easier, yet still painful.

Curiosity overcoming caution, Fla followed the direction of the cavern. He quickly realised the portal had opened onto a path, and not some natural formation. It veered right, and climbed gently for a few dozen paces, then abruptly cut left.

Had he been in Vergence, he would now be on the edge of the pattern chamber and approaching the weatherstone, that enigmatic artefact, which had so far eluded his determined efforts to discover its secrets.

He shuffled round the corner, moving carefully, uncomfortably aware that, should the rules of the between apply here, he'd lost his ability to perform castings as he stepped through the portal. Fla knew it would be wiser to turn back, but he needed to find out more — the nature of the tunnel, understand how Ben-gan had managed to open it, and what he wanted here. Fla guessed they must be perilously close to the great central spike.

Fla came face to face with Ben-gan, walking slowly in the opposite direction. In the strange non-light the other man had the appearance of a lifelike effigy in shades of quicksilver, and blue.

They stopped, and stared at each other. If Ben-gan was surprised, he hid it well. Fla felt a rare moment of uncertainty — behind Ben-gan he could make out a narrow passage running on for a dozen or so paces, the far end visibly contracting, and there he made out two indistinct figures, like statues embedded in the glassy blue crystalline walls. Both held the same posture, warding their faces with out-thrown arms.

“Fla? I think you have mistaken your turning and come too far,” Ben-gan said.

Fla could see two bright tracks running down Ben-gan's cheeks. “What place is this?”

“You might call this is an anteroom to the garden of the dead,” Ben-gan said after a pause.

Fla suppressed a scowl, trying to decide if he was being made a fool of. In spite of the narrow space, their voices fell flat, without echo or reverberation. “Garden of the dead?”

“Yes … and I think we will be added to it, if we do not get out now. I cannot tell you how hard it is to hold this space open for any length of time.”

Fla didn't move. “Are there others here? I see people behind you.”

“I will explain as we go …”

As Ben-gan stepped closer, Fla could make out a thin layer of silvery perspiration gathered on his forehead. This, more than anything, convinced him it might be time to leave. He stepped to one side to allow Ben-gan to pass, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever lay at the end of this strange passageway.

“You would do well to stay between me and the entrance. As I leave, where we stand now will close, and should you stray behind me you will become trapped, and I do not know when I will be able to return to free you.”

Reluctantly Fla turned and shuffled back around the corner and down the gently sloping passage, with Ben-gan following immediately behind. He hated having people at his back — he felt his skin crawling, as if expecting a blow at any moment.

When he took a chance to look back, he saw the passage collapsing silently directly on their heels. The crystalline walls seemed to move with the weight of stone, but flowed into, and through, each other like clouds.

“Please don't delay, holding this space open is taxing.”

“I saw people. Were they trapped here?”

Ben-gan's voice was strained. “No, not people. Do you know about the casting of metal? A clay mould is formed around a shape in wax, and when the clay is baked the wax melts away. The shapes of people you see here are the same. At the end, when Volane fell, the Culvarites converged on the last two strongholds. Tyvolare, the imperial city, the first, and Vergence, the second. You cannot imagine the forces released when this city was torn away from its world. In many places the newly formed world skin of Vergence was deep, folded like a scar upon a scar. In others so thin the boundaries bleed, and ooze. Wrapped inside these scars are shadows, empty forms, memories of the moment this city was reborn and Volane died.

“This is my garden of the dead. I make this journey when I can. I don't expect you to understand why at your age. Each day, waiting through the year, is like an eternity.”

“You mean it changes, the world skin shifts? You can only get there during the Tranquillity?” Fla asked, risking another glance back.

“Yes, it changes constantly. I think you should keep moving forward.”

When they reached the portal, the edges were wavering, with faint blue lines infiltrating the edge of the black void, like pale veins.

“Quickly,” Ben-gan muttered, pushing him along the last few paces.

Fla could feel a creeping numbness settling into his body as he stepped back into the library, and Ben-gan followed so closely they almost collided with each other.

Ben-gan straightened up, breathing hard, his face damp with effort. “That nearly had us, I think.”

Fla backed away slowly, trying to calculate the number of steps to the dampening reach of the sevyric iron manacles at the library entrance, and even then the manacles would be useless if a summoning were used. He watched Ben-gan closely, the most powerful living caster he'd heard of, and more than a few casters he knew would kill to protect their secrets.

A dim yellow were-light appeared above a nearby shelf, casting a flickering light into a small area around them.

Ben-gan gave a short laugh. “I'm becoming a rusty sword. Even my elementary castings are rough-edged. Were you harmed?”

“No, not hurt,” Fla said.

“I've seen you here in the library, but we've never spoken. I think you used to be in the Aremetuet order, under Brack? Did you have any training with the Hemetuen?

“Yes, I can walk the between,” Fla said, feeling wrong-footed by the sudden shift in conversation.

“I think you could learn to walk behind the world skin. Is this something you would be interested in learning?”

Fla understood the trade — keep my secrets and I'll teach you some of them, yet something in him hesitated, wondering why Ben-gan chose this casting rather than one of the many others he must have.

“Why this one? what can I use it for?”

Ben-gan smiled. “Once mastered you could use it to travel from one place to another directly, allowing for the folds in the world skin.”

“You mean I could walk past walls?”

“Yes, or across chasms, but I think I must caution you to use it sparingly, as it is a casting which easily goes astray, with deadly consequences. Are you prepared?”

“Yes, that,” Fla said quickly.

“Good,” Ben-gan said. “When you have mastered this I can show you why Vergence has twelve seasons.”

Orim appeared first as an outline — the briefest suggestion of a shape in the air. For a few short moments, his form shifted energetically, creating dancing ripples in the space above the ground. With each stride, he became more solid, as if moving past a succession of extraordinarily fine translucent veils, walking rapidly on one spot.

He stepped out onto a small area of even ground in the centre of a rocky outcrop, three-quarters of the way up a tall cliff. In his right hand, he held a saecarum, shaped into a metallic torc, and with his left, he dragged Quentyn along by an elbow.

As their feet touched solid ground, Quentyn slipped from Orim's grasp, collapsing onto his hands and knees.

A roasting gale blew up the side of the cliff, and almost immediately Orim became drenched in sweat. He drew in great lungfuls of the thin, searing air, but it lacked vitality and soon he was light-headed, and laboured to breath. Quentyn seemed to be fairing worse. He shook uncontrollably, and rasped with his mouth open, like a floundering fish. Orim seized him under the armpit, dragged him upright, and forced him to the edge of the drop.

The cliff fell away two thousand yards to a scarred and twisted plain. The wind created a high-pitched whistling noise as it met the rim of the ledge. Dark shadows moved across the dull red glowing sky above them.

Clouds of roiling flame scudded through the upper air, hurrying ahead of erratic squalls, casting flickering patterns across the dark landscape, where groups of lumbering creatures with glittering onyx carapace edged slowly over broken ground.

Glowing pools of molten rock puddled in shallow depressions, and flowed thickly along narrow gulleys. As they looked down, a huge geyser erupted with a deafening hiss, and sent clouds of white vapour hundreds of yards into the air.

“Know where you are, do you?” Orim shouted above the noise.

Quentyn shook his head, but didn't reply. He stared fixedly over the edge, his chest rasping, as he tried to draw in sufficient breath.

“Here it is Uspelen,” Orim said, speaking loudly in Quentyn's ear. “Do you know why you are here?”

Quentyn put a hand, bloody from his fall onto the sharp-edged stones, over his mouth and whimpered.

“And so. I will take you somewhere better now, and there we talk. You tell me everything you know about Ebryn Alire. If you tell only the truth, I will leave you in that place. If you lie, I will bring you back to this place and leave you. Understand?”

“Yes,” Quentyn whispered.

“Good. First you will tell me why you went to Fyrenar — and who sent you.”

Fla examined Orim with his good eye. Orim's long red hair had tangled and matted, and his clothes were scuffed and torn in places. He scanned the room cautiously, wondering how long Orim had been there. Nothing appeared to have been disturbed, but there were other ways to search a room. How had Orim managed to get in here, past all the wards and traps, without disturbing anything? And what had he found?

Confident Orim had come here alone, Fla allowed his concealing glamour to dissipate, and stepped into the room.

“You look like crap,” he said.

He noted, with satisfaction, a fractional hesitation before Orim turned and moved into the light. He’d managed to approach Orim without being detected, a man notoriously difficult to take unawares.

From the front, Orim looked even worse. A long unbound cut ran along the right hand side of his face from the front of his cheek to his ear. The other side of his face was swollen with two large bruises, one on his forehead and another under his eye. His tunic gaped at the shoulder, and again at the waist on his left side.

He moved stiffly, favouring his left leg, right hand tucked into his belt to support the arm. A fine patina of dried blood flecks covered his upper body, and his right sleeve and trouser legs were soaked a deep red. Fresh enough to still glisten wetly in the erratic blue-white light.

“Fla—” Orim said.

“Did you get those pimping Kunu-gar for Vittore?” Fla asked.

He could see Orim's injuries had been caused by edged weapons, leather sliced rather than torn, and any of them might have maimed or killed, a few finger widths wider or deeper.

Orim carried enough scars, so the new ones would merge invisibly in time, but so many at once suggested a small army, or a truly deadly opponent. Fla couldn't decide which was more likely. Either way, a visit this late at night, on the eve of the Tranquillity holidays, told him two things — Orim wanted help, and the work could be dangerous.