Glen Cook - Surrender to the will of the night

“Or we can just brief them on the way.”

“No. We’ll keep our world to ourselves. You do your sideways trick.”

“More time,” Heris grumbled.

“Everything takes time,” Jarneyn countered. “That’s the curse of being mortal.” He headed for the barge. It still concealed the portal to the Aelen Kofer world.

“So what do we do now?” If she had known there would be more waiting around she would have stayed in Brothe. She could cause a lot more mischief there. And could sleep in a comfortable bed when she was not.

“We can check what they did in the Great Sky Fortress.”

Heris had lost all fear of the rainbow bridge. She walked across like it was solid granite.

For no real reason she detoured to the dead orchard. She had not visited since that one time, before. She stepped through the fallen wall. “Asgrimmur.”

“What?”

“Look at this. Is this what I think?”

A shoot stood six inches tall where she had envisioned a blond goddess planting a golden apple. The shoot was not healthy. It was a pallid greenish yellow.

The ascendant seemed almost breathless. “I think so. But it hasn’t absorbed much magic. It may not survive.”

Heris stared. She thought the shoot was aware of her.

The gods would need their golden apples after their release.

“Asgrimmur, we never considered the apples in our calculations and preparations.”

The ascendant let that simmer briefly, said, “We didn’t, did we?”

“How strong could they be when we release them? How long can they last without the fruit? Because that tree won’t produce apples in a human lifetime.”

“More likely, never.” He turned away, shoulders sagging. He stepped out of the garden, ambled toward the entrance to the keep.

What was his problem?

The ghost of the Walker, disappointed. Beginning to realize that patience was not enough. There would be no restoration. No escape from flesh where he was a passenger without control.

Could he be exorcised? She rather liked today’s Asgrimmur Grimmsson.

Heris followed the brooding ascendant to the hall where the return would happen. It was a jungle of color as jarring as biting into an unsuspected hot pepper. Nowhere else in the Great Sky Fortress was there any color.

The Aelen Kofer had created lamps burning oils charged with sorcery to give the color Heris wanted to paint and chalk her cuing lines and signs so participants would know where to stand and how to move. The colors were on floor, ceiling, and walls. Cords ran hither and yon to keep people from moving in wrong or dangerous directions. Six falcons all directed their snouts at an area of interior wall on which had been painted a square in a harsh red. Large black dots marred the red. Two eighteen-inch-wide trestle tables sat endwise to the wall and lengthwise toward the two heaviest falcons, which had their butts to the light from outside. On the tables were hammers, star chisels, copper tubes with silver linings, blow tubes charged with silver dust, oils and unguents, garlic paste, and anything else Heris, Jarneyn, or the ascendant thought had any chance whatsoever of being useful.

Heris discreetly checked to make sure items suggested by the ascendant lay at the ends of the table farthest from the red paint.

Trust leavened by caution. Always.

The ascendant did not appear to mind. Might not, for that matter, have noticed.

There was more. Much more. The Aelen Kofer had invested a middle-world fortune in silver. There was silver everywhere, in everything, in patterns meant to constrain and direct the Old Ones if they evaded immediate control. Silver would channel them into the mouths of the falcons. Silver would subject them to harsh debilitation before they could escape to their hapless world. Any that did win free would have been drained down to the weight of boogies and sprites. There would be nowhere to go but their dead realm after that.

Before the release started Iron Eyes would seal all the exits from outside. Only those inside the Realm of the Gods would suffer.

A dozen heavy glass bottles in the general shape of flat bottom teardrops sat near the painted wall. Their tops bent at right angles and narrowed to a tube just large enough to fit one of the silver-lined copper tubes. The bottles ranged in size from a gallon to more than a hogshead. They were masterworks of Aelen Kofer glassblowing. The thick glass held hints of sparkle, smoke, and gray and purple. Silver dust had gone into the melt.

Heris hoped to move the Old Ones from one captivity to another, where contracts could be forged before the Old Ones were decanted.

The ascendant asked, “Is there anything more you can ask?” Exasperated because she was such a detail-oriented woman.

His main personalities were all smash and grab and deal with the consequences later sorts.

“I’m sure there must be. I’m counting on the Old Ones to be confused and disoriented long enough for us mortals to get control.” She watched to see how that played.

Too much of this depended on the ascendant.

He had to have control of the Instrumentalities inside him. Then the Bastard had to do whatever a blood descendant had to do.

Heris never did understand that part. But all the old farts agreed: The thing could not be managed without the presence of the divine blood. They were the ones intimate with the Night. They knew the supernatural rules.

She hoped.

Iron Eyes was waiting on the quay. Impatiently. “Good to see you two…” He did not explain what irritated him. “The youngsters are over there already. Including my only son. The Windwalker is working himself up. He knows the appearance of Aelen Kofer means an attack is coming. It always has. He’ll think the Old Ones are free and will turn up after the Aelen Kofer prepare the way. But all he’ll get is you. Hurry. I don’t want him smashing up the future of my tribe.”

Heris scowled. If Jarneyn hadn’t been determined to save the dwarf world from outsider pollution she and the ascendant would be there now. “So let’s hoist all sail and a-reeving go.”

That won no smiles.

They kept saying she had to work on her sense of humor.

Iron Eyes wasted no time moving Heris and Asgrimmur outside the Realm of the Gods.

The ascendant was shaking when Heris took hold for the translation. So. He could be afraid despite all his strength and power.

Out the other side, arriving at the same point as before, with Asgrimmur totally shaken. He needed three minutes to regain control.

“Are the transitions really that rough?” Heris asked. They were like blinking her eyes for her, anymore.

“Yes. And worse each time. That was terrible. I felt trapped. The more time went on the more sure I was that I’d never get out again.”

“We need to explore that, then. Come on. Tell me while we’re getting set to shoot.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to tell me what you experienced, carefully and clearly. I want to know why it’s different from what I experience. And will you look at that?”

There had been a dramatic change in the Windwalker. The great jellyfish blob was gone. The god had traded the protection of two-thirds of its mass for a shape that concentrated strength and required less energy to maintain.

The Windwalker now resembled a gigantic lard toad tadpole about to shed its last remnant of a tail.

Asgrimmur said, “It isn’t that hard to explain. When you translate you’re a human cutting a chord across the Night. When you carry me you take a part of me back home. The Banished and the Walker were born of the Night. Svavar was imprisoned there for centuries. Svavar is repelled. The Walker and Banished are, too, but they’re also drawn. And we can see the entities that dwell there. The hideous souls.”