Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

“Only as far as the twelfth level. Walk that way.”

“There are no more stairs.” He sounded happy. He had been frightened as we descended and descended, and must have thought that having reached bottom we would go up again.

“There must be more stairs.” I was speaking mostly to myself, and I prodded him again with my point. “But there aren’t!”

“This is Aelfrice,” I explained. “So there are worlds that are lower still, Muspel and Niflheim.”

“The realms of fire and ice.” He sounded awed.

“You wished to go to Aelfrice,” I told him. “You are here. It will soon be day.”

We walked on and heard the lapping of waves. “Winds are rare here,” I explained, “but there’s a breeze at dawn and at twilight, near the sea.”

“This is the air that I’ve longed to breathe,” the Earl Marshal said; it seemed to me that he addressed me even less than I had addressed him.

Night was gray as we strolled down the shingle to the water’s edge. I sheathed my sword, for I had no more need to prod him.

“Where will the sun rise?” he asked.

I knew he was thinking of the sea of Mythgarthr, in which he must often have seen the sun set. “It won’t,” I said. “We are their light. You’ll see.” His silence told me he did not understand. “The worlds get smaller as you descend. Aelfrice isn’t as big as our world, though I think it must be bigger than Celidon.”

“There is a geometric progression,” the Earl Marshal told me, and tried to explain what a geometric progression was, a thing I could not understand and that I doubt anyone can understand. “The highest world, the world of the Most High God, is infinite. The world below his is one hundredth as large. But a hundredth part of infinity is infinity still, though so much smaller. The world below that—”

“Skai.”

“Yes, Skai, is a hundredth the size of that, and so a ten-thousandth the size of Elysion. Still infinite. May I sit on this stone?”

“Of course, My Lord.”

“Very kind of you, Sir Able. Harrumph! Kindness to a prisoner. Knightly. You got little yourself.”

“I did the first time, My Lord, but not the second. I’d escaped—so Her Majesty chose to take it.”

“We’d been defeated.” The Earl Marshal wiped his face. “We have been, as I ought to say. They are less than human, those Osterlings.”

“I fought them at sea, My Lord, and they are not. The Angrborn often seem very human. King Gilling did in his love for Idnn. But they aren’t. The Osterlings don’t look as human as King Gilling, yet they’re what we may become.”

The air grew brighter. There is no air anywhere like the air of Aelfrice. That of Skai is purer than the purest air we know in Mythgarthr, so pure no distance can haze its crystal transparency; but the air of Aelfrice seems luminous, as if one breathes a great gem. Day came, and we saw before us the sea that is like no other, as blue as sapphire and as sparkling, stretching to island realms unguessable. A league overhead Mythgarthr spread itself as stars do on a cloudless night. Jotunland lay north, wrapped in snow. Above us was Celidon, where green shoots peeped from tree and field. All around us, Aelfrice, white where it was not green, rejoicing in the silver light, forests of mystery and cliffs of marble.

“I could stay here forever,” the Earl Marshal muttered. “Give up fortune, castle, horses—everything. They’re all lost anyway if the Osterlings prevail.”

“Maybe you will,” I said, because I was thinking of leaving him there; but soon I said, “Follow me,” for I had spied a crevice in the base of the cliff to our left.

He did. “Where are we going?”

“To look at that, and go down farther if we can. I have—you don’t understand my nature. I don’t either, though I understand much more than you do. I can’t use the powers my nature confers. I’ve given my oath. But I can’t change this nature that neither of us understands. What do you smell?”

He sniffed the air. “The sea, and I think these meadow flowers.”

“I smell sulfur, and I wish Gylf were with us.”

We descended into the crevice, I eagerly, he more slowly behind me. Fumes billowed about us at times so that we could scarcely breathe, at others vanished, leaving air that would have suited the desert, lifeless, dusty, and scorching.

The Earl Marshal took my arm. “This is dangerous. We must be nearing Muspel.”

“We’re there,” I told him. I had glimpsed a dragon in the darkness.

It seemed to hear the hiss of my blade and came at us, silent at first, then roaring. The Earl Marshal tried to flee and fell, rolling down the stony slope into darkness. The dragon struck at me, and I put my point into its eye.

How long I searched for the Earl Marshal I cannot say. It seemed a minute or two, but may have been much longer. No matter which way I turned, the ground sloped down. It grew cooler, then cold, and air as clotted as phlegm held pitiless white light that drew the color from the gems on my scabbard and the skin of my own hands.

“Able! Sir Able!” The Earl Marshal came waddling so rapidly that I knew he would have run if he could. “There’s a—a giant—a monster...” He pointed behind him. “We—go. We must! It—it—”

I told him I wanted to see it, thinking it might be Org.

“No, you don’t! Sir Able, Sir Able, listen. I—I—I’ve seen it.” He fell silent, gasping for breath.

“Yes, you’ve seen it, My Lord. I want to see it, too.” His fear had infected me, and I added, “and afterward go.”

“I’ll go now.”

“And face the dragons alone? If you won’t come with me, I’ll go with you and save your life, if I can.”

We started up the slope, walking easily. After some while I realized we were not walking up it, but down. I corrected our course. We reached a ridge, and had to descend or turn back. Great sheets of ice hung like curtains from a dark sky; the ground was hard as ice, and slick with frost.

“This cannot be Muspel,” the Earl Marshal gasped.

A voice before, behind, and all about us answered him. “You call this Niflheim.” It was weary, yet resonated with such power as no Overcyn possesses, not even the Valfather.

Trembling, the Earl Marshal fell to his knees.

“You wished to see me, Able. You have only to look.”

It surrounded me. I cannot write it in a way that will make it clear if you have not seen it. I was in it, and it scrutinized me from above as from below, huge and stronger than iron. Hideous in its malice. I tried to close my eyes, feeling that I walked in a nightmare. It was there still.

“Call me God, Able.”

Pride woke in me; that pride did not still my fear, but shouldered it aside as the weak thing it was. I said, “Call me Sir Able, god.”

“You come near the secret that lies at the heart of all things, Able. Worship me, and I will tell it.”

The Earl Marshal worshipped, but I did not.

“Learn it, and you will have power such as men and gods scarcely dream of, easily obtained.”

I said, “This lord is worshipping you. Tell him.”

“You behold me as I am, Able. It may be the sight is too much.” As it spoke, it no longer surrounded me. Instead there sat before me upon a throne of ice a creature grossly great. Toad and dragon were in it. So was the Earl Marshal, and so was I. “Worship me now. You shall know the secret.”

I said, “I don’t wish to know this secret, but to return to Muspel and from there to Aelfrice.”

“Worship me!”

“Lord Escan is worshipping you,” I repeated. “If you’d tell me, why won’t you tell him?”

It lifted the Earl Marshal before I had finished, held him close, and whispered; Niflheim trembled as it whispered, and a sheet of ice miles long fell with a deafening crash.