Into the Narrowdark, page 48
For a moment, Snenneq looked as though he wanted to argue, but then he nodded. “Your sharp eyes have brought us the first hope in days. And what you say has sense. We will do as you suggest.”
“Now you are learning how to be a proper nukapik,” she said, squeezing his hand.
24
Breaking the Seal
For a very long time he did not know who he was, or where he was, or whether he was anywhere at all.
A field of inconstant, shimmering light stretched before him, and above it hung an endless mist of gray. It was only after an indefinable length of time had passed that he realized he was looking out across a great expanse of water. It should have been familiar—he could feel that—but it was not. He watched it apprehensively, still without a name of his own, still without any certainty about where he was or how he had come here.
He suspected he might have died.
Am I to cross all this water, then? It seemed impossible without a boat or bridge. Is Heaven on the far side? He had a powerful but inexplicable feeling that he hoped to see someone again, someone he loved and needed. Is she waiting there, across this endless deep? In that moment he conceived of a God that had brought him here, and wondered, But why would He leave me without word, without understanding? Why would He leave me alone?
You are not alone. The voice spoke in his thoughts, but if it was God, then He was a She. Look down.
He looked down. Earthly reflex, still strong, expected to see legs and feet beneath him, holding him up, but instead he saw only that which lay beneath him, a shining, polished sweep of amber-colored wood, shot through with streaks of gleaming gray. It seemed clearly something made, not grown.
Turn, now, the voice directed him.
He turned, not as a creature with a body would turn, in an ordered movement of limbs, but as a flame would turn with its wick when the candle was moved. Before him loomed a gate unlike anything he had ever seen before, set into the face of a dark but not entirely substantial extent of stone. Two vast, curving lengths of the same golden-and-gray wood that stretched beneath him also marked the gate’s dimensions, as if two recurved longbows stood side by side, leaning together at their top ends. Above this beautiful, monstrous arch—it seemed a hundred times his own height—the rocky wall rose until it met a great eruption of brilliant white stone looming against the gray sky. It seemed too large and too bright for his eyes to properly see or his mind to understand.
The Gate of the Fifth Ship, the voice in his thoughts said. Made from two pieces of its great stern. Enter.
He did, aware in a distant way that he was not walking but drifting along the jetty that stretched outward from the vast, shining arch. As he passed beneath the twin curves of amber and gray, he felt a shock of astonishment at the sheer size of them. If this was the gate of a castle, it was big enough for another, smaller castle to be dragged through it without touching either side.
Where am I? he asked.
In my dream, she said. In my memories. Here were the moments of greatest beauty and greatest horror I ever knew.
Beyond the immensity of the arch, he found himself in another astoundingly large space, and though he could never completely fix his gaze on anything around him, he perceived that he was inside a huge rectangular hall with immense staircases in each of its four corners, the farthest end so distant that he thought it would take a very long time to reach it. Figures moved all around him, the first signs of life beyond the voice that spoke to him, and though they seemed like familiar things—two arms and two legs, some hurrying, some standing in pairs or larger groups as if in conversation—each and every one of them was as translucent as a ghost from a midwinter tale, and all of them seemed to shudder in and out of fixity, as though seen through moving water.
The Hall of Five Staircases. The words came with a weight he had not felt before, heavy like a rain-sodden cloak. Someone I love died here. See!
As if his head turned by her command, his gaze shifted to the nearest staircase. A shadow lay across its lowest step. He could make out nothing beyond its rough shape, the limbs at strange angles, as if it had tumbled down from above. The shadowy figure also appeared black and twisted like something burned, and it sent a shiver of terror and loss through him to see it. Who was it? he asked.
I do not know, the voice said. Only that she was important to me, and was felled by an arrow in the back—an arrow loosed not by enemies, but by her own kind. He felt bitterness in the words. Why can I so clearly remember the terror and infamy of it, the pain, but not her name?
Can you remember anything else? he asked. I can’t remember my name, either.
These are my memories, but they are incomplete—mere fragments. I think we may be somewhere that names are not allowed. Or at least where they are not easily gained or remembered.
But you have told me the names of the gate, the hall—
Yes, it is a mystery, was all she said. I do not know the answer. Come up.
He left the shadowy thing on the floor and drifted up the staircase as it angled along first one wall, then another, climbing toward the distant ceiling. He emerged through another arch, decorated with intricate carvings that blurred before his eyes, and onto another level place. But if the gate and the first hall had astonished him with their size, this new space made the others seem like something children had built in hopeless imitation. Though his memory was all clouds, he knew beyond doubt that he had never been inside anything so large—a massive circular hall as wide as a city, or so it appeared. It stretched so far above him that as he stared up at the fiery glint of light at its highest point, he thought the great rotunda must reach all the way to Heaven itself.
Or is this Heaven? he wondered.
That does not feel right, the voice told him, and he thought he heard—or at least felt—a dry laugh at the idea. I believe it is the Hall of the Great Circle.
He could not look away from the brightness above but could sense that he was now surrounded by people, or the shadows of people, though none seemed to take notice of him.
Why are you showing all this to me? he asked. Why have you called me to this mad place?
I did not call you. You are simply here with me, little spirit—that is all I know. Now, come. I am waiting for you on the Tan’ja Stairs.
The Tan’ja Stairs. He knew that name, though he could not say why. He saw only one stairway in that impossibly huge, cylindrical chamber, a great spiral that followed the outer wall upward, through tier after tier. As he moved toward it, he found his gaze drawn upward. The walls along each staircase tier were carved from beautiful white stone. Some had been shaped like frothing ocean waves; others like the eaves of forests, all the trees and undergrowth created with loving accuracy. But even in the forests of white stone, real plants and trees grew. Each tier was bursting with greenery, a spiral of living vegetation entwined with the marmoreal carvings, all rising together in a tightening spiral that closed at the top in a burst of light too bright for the eyes this dream had given him.
Heaven. A faint, faceless, and nameless memory of his lost love came to him again. Does she wait for me there? Even the idea of her, though without name or face, pierced him like a blade in his heart. But I do not belong with God, he said to the voice guiding him. I do not belong there. I have failed all those I loved.
You mean you lived, she told him. Now, look, mortal. Here I am.
And there, on the wide, bottommost step of the great stairway, he saw her at last, a shadow marginally more real than the others moving across the monstrous circular floor below. He had expected something grand, a glorious, angelic figure, but the shape that stood waiting for him was small and slender, wrapped in bands of what looked like cobwebs, though he could only glimpse them here or there, as if a faint light played across her and dispelled the shadows for mere instants at a time.
Ah. I know you, she said. Or so I believe.
I do not know you. But if you know me, tell me my name!
Again came the laugh, dry and dusty as an ancient book. I told you, this is an untrustworthy realm for names. But I believe I met you in the old world, the solid place, where truth takes strange shapes. You are the mortal boy. You came to our home in the forest.
Something drifted to him then, a blurry thought that might have been a memory—a glowing disk the color of an autumn moon; a kind voice; words that gave him hope in another time, when hope had been hard to find—and with that memory, a name returned. Are you the one born on the ship? he asked. The one who lived in a hollow tree? She was kind to me.
Ah! she said, and a shudder seemed to pass through her spectral form. No, I am not her, but now I remember her. By the Garden, I loved her too, as I did the one who lies at the bottom of the stairs. Perhaps that is what this place is—a place for memories of love lost long ago to return. That would be good, I think. That would be enough.
She turned back toward the rising steps, beckoning him to follow. They did not walk but floated up the stairs like tufts of thistledown, around and around the great atrium, ever higher above the vague, foggy gray below them. But if the floor receded, the shred of memory that had come to him did not, entwining inside him like a swirl of smoke, shifting, eddying. That beautiful old woman. In the forest. Among the Fair Ones, the immortals. He had stayed long with them, though it did not feel as if it had been by his own choice. He had stayed with them until . . . until something terrible had happened.
They killed her, he said suddenly, or thought it. In either case, his spectral companion heard him.
Yes, she said. I feel that too. The one with the silver mask reached out into our home and killed her.
Fire. Fire and shouting and arrows. And hounds baying. As it came back to him, something tore through his thoughts and left anger and sorrow behind. First Grandmother had been kind to him. She had been ancient, so old that she had been born before the great ship at last came to rest. The Ship-Born, they had called her.
First Grandmother. As he said it, he knew it was true. The Fair Ones called her First Grandmother.
The shape beside him stopped, billowing like a filmy scarf in the breeze. For a moment he thought she would do something terrible to him for saying the name, strike him or dismiss him from this place. But when she spoke, she sounded relieved.
First Grandmother. Yes. My father’s mother. And it was my mother who died in the Hall of Five Staircases. For a moment he thought he saw a hint of his companion’s face beneath the cobwebs and shadows, features proud and fierce, eyes gleaming like those of a hunting cat in the night. But I still cannot remember their names. I cannot even recall my own name. It is hidden from me.
A moment passed in the timeless silence, then he heard or felt her say, But I thank you, mortal child. You have given me back a little of what I had.
But I don’t remember anything of my own, he told her. He was nothing but a phantom—a lost, wandering soul. All I remember is that I had everything—and then I lost it.
* * *
Brother Etan watched in silent horror as the killing went on and on, not guessing that the worst was yet to come.
Philosophers and poets had likened a battlefield to Hell itself so many times that it had become a mere platitude, but he could think of no other comparison. All across the slope below Winstowe Castle and along the broad ditch that surrounded the curtain wall, men murdered each other in a hundred different, terrible ways. He heard the screaming of the wounded, both men and animals, saw bloody soldiers staggering with missing arms or other dreadful wounds, and was all but deafened by the clamor of men shouting in desperate rage and the clash of metal on metal. Even his nostrils were filled by the commingled smells of war, of blood and human waste, of iron, salt, and shit.
As the sun rose higher, Etan caught occasional glimpses of King Simon in his bright armor, wielding his sword like a hero on a tapestry come to life, scattering Unver’s men, riding them down. Then the fighting would close around the king again, like fog shrouding a mountain peak.
As the battle dragged on, Brother Etan began to see patterns in the fighting, subtle as the way stones on a riverbed shaped the current on the surface. Unver Shan kept sending in his supposedly uncontrollable warriors from different angles, as if he were playing a game of Kunsbort—King’s Table. A hundred grasslanders would sweep in to engage with the Erkynlanders; then, just as both sides began to tire, the clansmen would fall back and another force of Thrithings-men would charge in from another angle, forcing the Erkynlanders to turn and fight again without a chance to rest.
The battle roared on, surging here, falling apart there, active and unpredictable as a living thing—which, Etan thought woefully, in a way it was, and bigger than any of its combatants.
He felt rather than saw the change that took place shortly before the mid-morning bell rang high in the castle’s tower: the cries of the fighters lost some of their individuality and rose together in waves of excitement, and the knots of struggling warriors began to move toward the center. But it was only when a circle formed in the middle of the battle around two mounted men that he understood what was happening.
“The king!” someone shouted. “The king and the Shan go against each other!”
Startled, Etan picked out the tall figure of King Simon, and thought Simon’s dark-cloaked opponent must be the grasslands’ new chieftain. It was hard to see with so many men rushing forward to watch, as if the slaughter had abruptly turned into something more like a tournament, but even Etan knew that this was more deadly than even the wildest mêlée. If either Simon or the Shan fell, the winner’s men would sweep in and do their best to put the loser’s army to flight. The battle, after hours of blood and horror, now swayed in the balance, the fate of uncountable thousands to be decided by the strength of two men’s arms.
Forgetting his own safety now, Etan pushed forward with the rest of the Erkynlandish camp—grooms, pages, camp followers, and cooks—but the crowd around the two warriors was so thick that even from the hill above the battlefield, he could barely make things out. Each time something important happened, Etan tried to guess which side was cheering loudest, but the fighters were so close together and the tumult so overwhelming, it was impossible to be certain of anything.
Then, as the last of the morning mist burned away beneath the climbing sun, a series of heavy blows that Etan could hear but not see suddenly stopped, and in the silence he heard cries of alarm. Now someone new was riding across the field toward the place where the king and Shan fought, waving something—a sword. The slender figure flung the blade to one of the opponents, but Etan could not see which one. As he jumped up and down, struggling desperately to discover what was happening, a huge groan swept through the crowd, rippling outward.
“The king!” someone cried in astonishment and fear. “King Simon is down!”
“The barbarian has killed the king!” shouted another. “God curse them all!”
“Everything is lost! The king is dead!”
The chaos at the center of the field abruptly resolved into broad movements, Erkynlandish knights rushing forward to surround King Simon, the Thrithings-men, instead of pushing their advantage, drawing back as though from a grisly accident. Etan thought he saw Unver Shan, still standing, trying to wave his men back, and though it made no sense, that was exactly what seemed to happen. As the grasslanders withdrew, Erkynlandish knights came down from their horses and bent over what must be the body of the king.
As if some other spirit animated him, he found himself running across the field, holding his wooden Tree high in the air as he cried, “Let me through! Let me through in God’s name!”
Later, he could not remember anything about his trip across the muddy, bloody field, though he must have passed hundreds of people, many of them Thrithings-folk who cared little for the Tree of the Aedon and could easily have spitted him with sword or spear. But the grasslanders seemed almost as confused as the Erkynlanders. Still shouting God’s name, Etan pushed his way into the circle of men and horses that had formed around King Simon.
“He does not need you, monk!” said a knight as Etan struggled past. The man’s gauntlets were covered with blood. “The chaplain is saying the Mansa.”
And indeed, a priest in a clean white robe had already knelt beside the king. Simon’s face was turned to one side, but his skin was so wan and white that Etan’s heart lurched.
The chaplain broke off his prayer as Etan pushed his way through the last of the surrounding knights and threw himself beside the king’s body. “What are you doing, Brother?” the startled priest demanded.
“Have you even looked to see if he is breathing?”
The chaplain ignored him, beginning the ritual again, but Etan leaned forward to tug a knife out of its sheath on the king’s belt. Several knights and other soldiers reached down to restrain him, but at least one of the nobles recognized what he was doing and called for the others to let him alone.
Etan gave the knife a quick swipe on his own cassock, then held it before the king’s pale, bluish lips. He lifted it to look at it and saw nothing but wiped it again and this time held it for a longer moment. When he pulled it away once more, he saw a film of vapor that swiftly vanished.
“He lives!” said Etan. “He is breathing, but only just.” He stared down. The king had several minor wounds on his arms and legs, but his dangling breastplate and mail, though both were damaged in several places, showed no blood. “What happened to him?”
