Steven Brust - Issola

I turned my attention to the landscape, and eventually thought of Dzur Mountain.

There was nothing there that actually looked like Dzur Mountain, mind you, but—

Okay. A stream, maybe fifty or sixty feet wide, cut across and dominated the landscape, flowing diagonally toward me from my right to my left, about a hundred yards away at its nearest point; a few spindly trees with stubby branches and massive leaves all along their lengths dotted the banks on both side, and what seemed to be a stonework bridge appeared not far away. To my right were a couple of low hills, all brown and rocky, and to my left the ground was flat but sloping gently down, maybe dipping to meet the stream, maybe not. And above it all (quite literally) was this terrible, bright object burning down on everything. I’m not trying to be mysterious—I had been to the East, and I knew damned well that it was a Furnace, just as we had in the Empire, only here, as out East (and a few places in the far West), it wasn’t hidden by a constant overcast. But I had forgotten how painfully bright it was, and how dark were the shadows it caused when it met anything else. It was low in the sky, a little to my left as I stepped out of the door, and, among other things, it highlighted everything else, including the few white puffy bits of overcast in a sky that was otherwise as blue as the sky above Fenario, giving me a very strange feeling of homesickness that juxtaposed with the harsh certainty that I was in a world that, perhaps, no other human had ever set foot on before.

So Teldra and I studied all of this, and that’s when I thought of Dzur Mountain. It was a very nice mix of natural elements, here, and I’d swear someone had crafted it. I don’t know why—I’m not sure what the indications were; but it looked for all the world like someone had sat down and said, “Okay, the river runs this way, straight, then we’ll put a curve in here. How ‘bout a couple of hills?” and like that.

“You’re right,” said Teldra.

I looked at her. “I beg your pardon?”

“Dzur Mountain,” she said.

“Oh. I hadn’t realized I’d spoken out loud.”

“You muttered it under your breath.”

“Hmmm.” I wondered where I’d developed the habit of do­ing that? Probably from being alone so much of the time. I was going to have to watch out for that; it wasn’t a good habit.

“Nothing lives,” murmured Teldra.

I started to ask what she meant—I mean, there was grass, and there were trees and such. Then realized: I saw no birds in the air, no small animals hopping around, much less big ones; looking at my feet, I didn’t even see any insects. “You’re right,” I said. “We seem to be the only living things here.”

“Oh,” she said, smiling. “That time I did it.”

My hand strayed to my rapier, and I suddenly had the feeling that this entire world—everything that had happened since walking through Morrolan’s window—was a massive illusion, was one of those elaborate living dreams, such as I had encountered in the Paths of the Dead.

“It’s real enough, Boss.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. If there is a glamour, it’s to conceal something, not to alter the appearance of what we’re seeing.”

“That’s sort of a fine distinction, chum.”

“I know,” he told me.

Well, that was part of Loiosh’s job, so I had to trust him. Besides: if he was wrong, and it was all an elaborate dream like the ones in the Paths, well, there had been no way out of those except to treat them as real and work through them. But the lack of critters was hard to get used to.

“What do you think, Teldra? Was this whole area fabricated?”

“Maybe, Vlad. Maybe the whole world.”

“No,” I said. “I know it wasn’t the whole world.”

“Oh?” she said. “How can you tell?”

“Because if they can do that, we don’t have a chance against them.”

She laughed. “Ah. I see. I’m not familiar with that logic.”

I shrugged. “Actually, I’m not kidding. That’s one thing I learned in the course of my long and checkered career. If your only chance of living through something is if your enemy isn’t a sorcerer, or doesn’t have a spare dagger, or can’t jump an eleven-foot crevasse, then you assume your enemy isn’t a sorcerer, or doesn’t have a spare dagger, or can’t jump an eleven-foot crevasse.”

“Hmmmm,” said Teldra. “I see. It makes a very practical sort of sense.”

“Yes,” I said, involuntarily remembering the guy who could jump an eleven-foot crevasse, much to my disgust—but I survived that one anyway, because he turned out to be wearing the wrong kind of boots. Long story; never mind.

There was a bit of a breeze coming from my left; not too strong, just enough to tickle the back of the neck. It brought no smells except the sort of sweet scent that seemed to be part of the air here. This reminded me, again, to keep my breathing even and shallow.

“Well,” I said, “Teldra, you must have studied all the old songs and stories, and you must be better read in history than I am, and since I almost never attend the theater, you must attend it more often than I do.”

“Perhaps,” she said.

“Well then? What does one typically do in a situation like this?”

Teldra looked at me.

“I mean, usually when one finds oneself on an entirely different world, barely able to breathe, surrounded by a bizarre environment, beset with enemies with the strength of gods, and with no way home—what are the usual steps?”

She barely cracked a smile.

“Usually,” she said, “one calls for help of one’s patron god, who then assigns one an impossible task in exchange for mini­mal aid, which aid turns out to be ironically fatal. Or else one discovers a powerful artifact of unknown properties, which, upon use, proves to take over one’s soul, so that, after the rescue, one kills one’s beloved.”

“I see. Well, now you know why I almost never attend the theater.”

Teldra supplied the obligatory chuckle and I looked out once more at the world around us—suddenly taken by the fear that Morrolan and Aliera would not come, and the Jenoine would not come, and we would find no way out; that we would remain here for the rest of our days. Which days, now that I thought of it, wouldn’t be long if we didn’t figure out how we were going to eat. But I knew this fear was groundless. Whatever Morrolan had done in the past, I knew that he would never stop trying to rescue us as long as he was alive. And, of course, things being as they were, death might not manage to stop him either.

I sighed.

“You know, Loiosh, if anyone had told me yesterday at this time that thirty hours later I would have rescued Morrolan and Aliera, nearly killed the Demon Goddess, and found myself trapped in a prison the size of the world, unable to decide if I was hoping to be saved or was hoping not to be saved, I’d have said, ‘Yeah, sounds about right.’”

“You probably would have, Boss.”

“I think this says something about my life choices.”

“Uhhuh.”

I looked around at the world, noticing the perfection of the stream, the hills, the mountains—the general sense that everything had been planned and crafted. I had the sudden irrational (and, I’m sure, wrong) notion that this little part of the world was all there was—that everywhere out of sight was just sort of grey and unfinished; and I was also again reminded of the Paths of the Dead, though I’m not sure why.

Teldra and I began walking. The ground was soft and springy, and we soon reached the banks of the stream, which

were only two or three feet above the flow. I leaned over and stared into it, watching it. It hardly seemed to be moving, yet occasionally the crests would break into diminutive whitecaps. It was neither blue nor green nor red, as is most of the water I’ve seen, but sort of an olive; I could not imagine what accounted for this. I couldn’t see the bottom, but it seemed neither shallow nor dirty.