Стивен Браст: Tiassa

He wasn’t in the hallway outside the nursery. He wasn’t in the kitchen. Later, I was asked why I didn’t at once raise the alarm, and I can only say I didn’t think of it. And as I ran about like a madman looking for him, imagining him scalding himself in the kitchen, or severing a finger in the armory, I say, to my shame, that the knowledge that whatever happened would be my fault was as terrifying as my fear of what that disaster might be. Were I to live for a Great Cycle, I would never experience such terror.

Could anything make it worse? Yes, because as I left the armory and began to run toward the Great Hall, I saw that the doorway to the stairs up to the tower was open. In the castle, you understand, there was no glass on the windows, much less the unbreakable glass we have here; the vision of him falling from the tower was all that filled my mind.

May Triharunna Nagoray forgive me for saying it, but maybe it would have been better if he had.

I reached the top of the stairs. The west tower of the castle was large and square. It contained a small room where my lord kept his magical equipment, and a necessary room, and many windows; but the door that was open led up to tower’s cap, which is where my lord carried on his magical studies and experiments.

Was it a capricious god who determined the moment the child would enter? Perhaps Verra; it is the sort of thing she would do. Maybe when I reach the Paths I will ask her.

Lord Zhayin was engaged in necromancy. I am not sufficiently familiar with the art to explain exactly what he was doing, but I do know that he was reaching into the Great Sea of Amorphia to attempt to touch a place where the laws of nature are different. There were three rods placed about the room, all white, waist height, as thick as my wrist, and each was emitting both a sound and a light. The result was an odd sort of music, low, discordant, unsettling; and where the lights came together in the center of the room it had the same effect on the eye: one couldn’t focus on it without feeling unsettled.

For a moment—perhaps the worst moment of the entire ordeal—my panic ebbed, because the child wasn’t there, and my lord was continuing his work, looking like the conductor of an orchestra, hands weaving back and forth, eyes closed, face distant, reflecting a mind that was far, far away.

I made myself look into that place, where the light and sound met. It was hard, the way it is hard to stand in a high place, but I made myself look into the swirling emptiness. I remember the sweat on my hands, and how it seemed that my ankles were about to give way. I kept looking. Sometimes it seemed patterns would form in the light, and sometimes I was sure it was my imagination. I kept looking. I felt like whatever it was, was actually entering me, working its way into my head, changing me. I kept looking.

And I saw him, I saw the child. He had wandered into the midst of it, into the very focus of the spell.

I know I screamed, or made some inarticulate sound of denial and rage against the gods.

I remember moving toward the child, but when I screamed, my lord opened his eyes, saw me, and released the spell.

Of course it was too late then.

Sometimes I think his refusal to kill me, or even discharge me, is a form of punishment—that he wishes to make me live with my failure. Sometimes I think it is a kindness, a way to let me know that I’m forgiven. Of course, I’ve never asked.

My apologies, sir. You wanted to know about the child, and I have been speaking of myself. It is difficult not to, both because the event remains in my consciousness, and because speaking of the child is painful, and I suppose I was avoiding it.

The child was damaged. I suppose “damaged” expresses it as well as any other word.

What happens when a body is subjected to forces designed to change the nature of the world where they are focused? And what happens to a mind? I am not a sorcerer, still less a necromancer; I can tell you nothing of why or how, but what you saw was the result. We care for the child as best we can, and see to it he is unable to harm anyone.

Yes, I understand that you saw him. I don’t know how he came to be loose. My lord keeps a sorcerer on staff just to prevent that from happening. But whatever happens, we are forbidden to speak of him. And I wouldn’t have, except you—you looked like you meant it. Would you have really killed him? Yes, I think you would have. You’ve killed before, I can see it in you.

That is all I have to tell, m’lord. I hope it satisfies you.

Satisfied isn’t exactly the way I’d put it, but it was nice to get a few answers. “Yeah,” I said. “That’ll do.”

“Then,” he said, “would you mind…?”

“What? Oh.” I hadn’t realized I was still holding the dagger, testing the edge with my thumb. “Sorry,” I said, and made it vanish.

“If that will be all, m’lord?”

Okay, I gotta give it to him: I’d just terrorized him, then dragged out his darkest secret, and he was like, “If that will be all, m’lord?” That’s impressive, isn’t it?

“Sure,” I said. “Thanks.”

He gave me a stiff and almost military half-bow, turned abruptly, and went away, presumably to collapse somewhere where he could do so privately.

“Well, okay, Boss. That was some, uh, something. What now?”

“Now we explore some more. And if we see a big, ugly, whitish, drooling thing, we run.”

“It was drooling?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“I agree with the running part. Or, you run. I’ll fly.”

Down the hall, past the kitchen. I ducked my head in to see if it was any different; it wasn’t.

“Want to hear my nightmare, Loiosh? It’s that we’ll figure allof this out, deal with it, and the thing with the kitchen will have nothing to do with it and I’ll never understand it.”

“My nightmares are a bit worse than that, Boss. They have more to do with a giant, white, slobbering thing.”

“It was slobbering?”

“Sure, Boss. Why not?”

“Yeah. Hey, do you actually get nightmares?”

“Not really.”

After the kitchen, when the hallway ended, I turned right; I hadn’t gone that way before. On the other side of the wall to my right should be the kitchen, and for all I knew, maybe it was. Part of what made this place, this platform , so weird is that sometimes things were just where they should be, which made the other times even more unsettling.

There was a stairway leading up. In a normal place, you can tell a lot about where you’re going by the stairway, or, at least, you can tell if it is expected to be used by those who live there, by guests, or by servants. This one was white marble, but not excessively wide, and didn’t have much in the way of decoration—if you don’t count the inevitable mirror perched on the wall as a decoration—so I would have figured it was for residents. But that was in a normal place; here, I couldn’t be sure of anything. I started climbing. It went up, then doubled back, which left me one floor up facing back the way I’d come, in a hallway that was much too short for what ought to be there.

There was a door on either side, and at the end of the hall a pair of sconces—and, yes, a mirror. I took the ten necessary steps, grasped the sconces, and played with them. The one on the right turned to the right, then the one on the left turned to the left. As secret passages go, it wasn’t hard to find. The room was small and comfortable, with a large Eastern rug in red and blue on the floor and several chairs, a small bookcase, some tables, and a cabinet that was a bit taller than I was. There was a hand pump over a deep sink, and in the corner a mop, a broom, and a pail. So, in other words, it was a fairly typical servant’s closet appointed and set up for one of the residents to relax in. If that makes no sense to you, then you’re just where I was. An iron chain with a handgrip hung from the ceiling. Also, there was no mirror. I didn’t know if I should be pleased or worried about that.