Glen Cook - Surrender to the will of the night

“I did. The man has a unique mind. Most of what you’re looking at is an illusion. The real fortress goes more back into the flesh of the mountain than it goes up.”

“Not the answer I was looking for.”

The ascendant frowned. He took a moment, as though trying to craft a response that would be approved. “I’m sorry you were disappointed. I’m never sure how things are done. Nor why I do what I do. The Walker and the Banished were powerful personalities. Even as ghosts they sometimes work some wicked magic.”

Heris started to say that that was not what she was looking for, either, but stopped herself.

Asgrimmur continued, “I do enjoy time spent with the old man. My stay at Fea was a pleasant interlude. I enjoyed him even more, here, while you were away. He has an insatiable curiosity. But he likes to start arguments. He squabbled with the Bastard constantly.”

“I’d say he has an infinite capacity for making mischief. What did he get up to when I wasn’t watching?”

Asgrimmur gave her a blank look. Again, she had trouble connecting him with the brute raiders who had come out of Andoray centuries ago. Then she recalled the Ninth Unknown suggesting that he might have absorbed knowledge from the people he had killed during his mad seasons.

She asked, “So what do we do now?” Trying to distract herself.

That old man with the insatiable curiosity would have been up here countless times while she was away. Maybe she could get Asgrimmur to let her in on what they had learned. Maybe she could get him to explain how he had become such a changed man.

“Come.”

She followed.

He showed her a place she refused to visit again.

“This is where my brother and I and our boyhood friends were kept while the Instrumentalities waited to turn us loose. This is where the heroes of the north, scavenged from battlefields by the Choosers of the Slain, awaited their destiny. This is where those who served the Old Ones well in life hoped to spend eternity. The Hall of Heroes. A paradise that has a lot in common with your Chaldarean Hell.”

Despite countless years gone on the smell of death remained.

There was little light back there, inside the mountain. For which Heris was thankful. In the area she could see there were scattered limbs and bodies so terribly mutilated that they had not been able to answer the call to battle when the Walker summoned them to save the Night.

Before the Old Gods went, there had been no corruption in the Hall of Heroes. Just a stink of fresh death. But, now, corruption had found its way into the Great Sky Fortress. Slow, slow corruption, constrained by cold and alien physical law.

“How did you trap them?” Heris asked.

“Clever. Trying to catch me by surprise. But no help. I must have been inspired. But I was too mad to remember. I ripped the necessary knowledge out of the All-Father and the Banished like tearing out their lungs, I expect.”

Heris suppressed a gag reflex. “The smell is too much. How did you stand that for a couple hundred years?”

“It wasn’t that short. Time differences, remember? But we were lucky. We were unconscious. Though that was bad enough. There were dreams. My brother… No point tormenting myself with that.”

“I understand.” Recalling what the ascendant and his brother had done once the Old Ones turned them loose.

“I make no excuse more powerful than that I was trying to take care of my brother. As you would if you had one.”

“All right. Yeah. Whatever. Show me something else.”

There was little to see. Certainly nothing dramatic. Just more and more rooms, large and small, where nothing remained but dust. And that mostly dust created by the slow decay of stone, one mote at a time.

“There aren’t any furnishings,” Heris noted. “No matter where we go. Not one shred of old cloth or one bit of corroded metal. It can’t have been that long, even if time does run different here.”

“The glory that was existed because the Old Ones were here to see it. The Aelen Kofer of antiquity were ingenious artificers. Even the form and dimensions of some parts of the Great Sky Fortress would change in accord with the whim of the beholder.”

“Those would be the same Aelen Kofer we’re working with today?”

“No doubt a point worth keeping in mind.”

“You speaking from memory?”

“Memories not my own. But, yes. There’s still a thrill of pride in the ghost of the All-Father, though he did no more than compel the dwarves to build what he wanted. The genius was that of the Aelen Kofer.”

“If they were geniuses, how did they end up the next thing to slaves?”

The ascendant stopped, faced her, stared for several seconds, then said, “Though the dimmest Aelen Kofer are a dozen times more clever than us that doesn’t make them a dozen times stronger. Nor more willful. They aren’t… They’re… They’re artificers, Heris. Merchants and tradesmen. Folk who take orders and execute them.”

Heris noted the first time use of her name but gave it no weight. She knew what he meant about the dwarves. She had been there. She shifted the subject. “You don’t sound anything like an Andorayan pirate should.”

The ascendant frowned, worked out what she meant. “You have some practical experience? You think you know how a pirate sounds?”

“An Andorayan pirate, no. But I do have direct experience. Though I’ll stipulate that I’m female and I was young at the time.” Younger than he should be thinking now.

The ascendant just looked puzzled.

Heris said, “Show me where the Old Ones are locked up.”

“There isn’t anything to see.”

“Then show me all the nothing.”

There was a hall. An empty hall, empty like every other hall, of any size, that Heris had seen anywhere in the Great Sky Fortress. This one was thirty feet by forty-two, with no distinguishing features. She prowled its bounds. Unglazed windows in an exterior wall admitted ample light, though this was the time of day when passing clouds were thickest. Nothing marked the room as unique.

“Where are they? Is there a direction? A point? Something?”

Asgrimmur spread his hands. “This is where I ended it. That’s all I remember. Any more questions would be a waste of time. I don’t know. I went through it with the old man twenty times. That’s all I can tell you. I don’t know. Though I am sure I can undo it with help from the Bastard, Iron Eyes, and the old man.”

“It would be so handy to know what direction I ought to be looking when you guys open the way.”

Asgrimmur shrugged. And managed to look apologetic.

“All right, big dummy. I’m standing here. The way opens. I watch that, wherever it develops. What am I going to see? What will be behind the opening?”

“I can be a little more useful, there. There’ll be…” His words slowed, stopped. He looked baffled. Like his mind had become a blank.

“Don’t tell me. You just fogged.” Heris thought she might know why Asgrimmur had memory problems.

“I did. I’m blank.”

“One of the soul chips in you is more powerful, more rational, and more independent than you thought. It’s sabotaging you.”

Asgrimmur stared at her dolefully. Then started violently. “I believe you’re right.”

“So. Which one? Arlensul, wanting to keep her family locked up? Or the One Who Harkens, working on a jailbreak?”

“Heris, I don’t know. I’m no good at this Instrumentality business. I don’t have much contact. Not like us standing here talking. Most of the time they’re just ghost voices, way far away. I only catch a few words. Sometimes their voices get lost in all the others.”

Did he mean the voices of those he had killed and eaten when he was the mad monster of the Jagos?