R. Salvatore - Bastion of Darkness

Belexus glanced up to Desdemona, who was in cat form, lying in the sun across the top of one of the boulders. She regarded him and yawned profoundly, then stretched and rolled over, letting the warm sun-and it was indeed warm for the season-caress her ample belly.

“Oh, she’ll be a help,” Ardaz said with obvious sarcasm.

“Where, then?” the ranger asked again.

Ardaz hopped in circles, looking all around, eyes darting, arms flapping, scratching his chin repeatedly and muttering “How curious, how very curious” many times. Finally he settled and shrugged his shoulders. “Well, I did see it, after all.”

The ranger moved to inspect the wizard’s bedroll. “As soon as ye waked?” he reasoned.

“Well, and after a belch,” Ardaz replied. “But not too long a delay.”

To the wizard’s surprise, and confusion, Belexus then lay down atop Ardaz’ bedroll, then lifted his head just a bit. The ranger sat up quickly, smiling, then openly laughing, and the tone of his fit was more of resignation than of humor, as if to say, “I give up,” and not, “How amusing.”

“Are you to let me in on the joke?” Ardaz asked. “I mean, if I am the butt of it, after all, and since there is no one else for you to share it with.” As soon as he spoke the words, the wizard snapped a dangerous glare over the apparently oblivious-but Ardaz knew better-Desdemona. “And not a meow from you,” he said.

“Ye seen an old man’s profile,” the ranger explained. “Yer own.”

Ardaz snorted a dozen times, but lost his ire as Belexus pointed to a nearby wall of one of the boulders, its side covered by a cascade of ice.

The dumfounded wizard stuttered in protest, trying to refute the claim, but as he bumbled about, crouching to take the ranger’s perspective, he came to realize that Belexus had spoken truthfully. “Oh,” was all that Ardaz said.

Belexus laughed again, and now lost all of his frustration, allowing himself a bit of true mirth. The situation in all his world remained so very grim-the wraith, Andovar’s murderer, walked the world uncontested-but having the always-surprising Ardaz along on this long and perilous journey surely stole more than a bit of the tedium.

“I’ll play your fool, then,” the wizard said, seeming sullen. That mood lasted but a moment, though, Ardaz’ pout vanishing as the corners of his mouth inevitably turned upward. “My own profile,” he said suddenly. “Oh how jolly, how very jolly!”

It was a good laugh, a long laugh, followed by a hearty breakfast, after which Belexus announced that he would do a bit of hunting to try to restock their packs before they took to higher ground.

That left Ardaz alone to pack up the campsite. Desdemona watched the wizard work, the cat comfortably stretched on the warm boulder.

“So much help,” Ardaz complained to her.

She just rolled over again, warming the other side.

The cloud was huge, tremendous, beyond comprehension, a swirling mass of matter gradually, gradually contracting, pieces spinning off, the birth of stars.

And he watched it, saw it, the ages compressed into seconds, it seemed, or perhaps the seconds stretched out into ages. For out here, it didn’t matter. Out here, time was nonexistent, each instant its own bubble, always there, always recorded.

Immortality.

He knew that he would always be out here, that each moment of this experience would last forever and ever, and yet, he was going back, spinning through the galaxies, the star clusters. He saw the glowing rim, the sudden sunrise, and black turned to blue. So much blue! On and on he went, down and down, and he sensed the wind, though his less-than-corporeal form could not feel the wind. At least, not as he suspected he had once felt it.

There were colors below him, shining blue and dark brown, mostly blue, then mostly white and green, then still more white and green until it filled all his vision. White and green and brown and gray, a silver snake, a blue patch. Colors and texture, and familiarity somehow, though in the enormity of what he had seen, of what the angels had shown him, it seemed a distant memory indeed.

Down and down he dropped, and now he understood that he was indeed dropping, that there was a concept such as down. That recollection caused him to flinch, altogether unnecessarily, when he landed, when he did not continue to pass along, his form, somehow and somewhat more substantial than it had been, coming to rest on a hard gray surface.

“Ice,” he said, or rather, found himself saying, when he glanced to the side, to the crusted edges of a quick-running stream. The word, the sound, startled him, causing him to look down at himself. He had form again, real form, and not just the light he had been-the light he still was, though now he was encased in a somewhat corporeal coil. Even more curious, that coil was encased in a white material, a robe, he remembered.

“As it used to be,” he heard himself saying, and he screwed his unfamiliar face up curiously as he contemplated the notion of language , then grew even more curious as he considered the notion of time. “Used to be?” he asked, and the different inflection of words when used as a question only confounded him even more. “Always is, always was, always will be,” he recited, giving words to what he had learned to be the most pervasive and enduring truth about the universe, about existence itself. A jumble of thoughts came at him all at once, memories mixed with reasoning. He had worn this coil, this body, before, though it had been more substantial then, more attuned to the elements around it. He reached his hand down tentatively to brush the stone, to feel the stone. It seemed too smooth; he recognized that in his previous experience, the stone would have felt more grainy and rough, even painfully sharp-edged at some points.

For the spirit who had witnessed the birth and death of stars, it all seemed too curious. And so he sat, for a long, long while, and the entire concept of time, of the passage of moments, of a continuum, a fluid movement, came back to him. “Ice,” he said again, then, “Brook, stream, river… water. And snow, yes, of course. Snow.” He paused, then, mouthing that last word over and over, the very sound of it conjuring images of wild, playful fights, of rushing breakneck down hills, the wind blowing in his chilled ears. The very sound of it brought images of joy.

“Yes!” he said again suddenly. “Snow… and winter.” Again came that curious look, the strange-feeling face of this still-uncomfortable coil twisting and contorting. “Winter, cold,” he reasoned, and yet he did not feel cold. He looked down at his meager robes, and knew that they should not be able to ward any chill at all.

But as he thought about it, he did indeed come to feel cold-not unpleasantly so, not threateningly so, but rather a cold that he could control, that was there within his grasp only when he wanted to experience it. Already the spirit was beginning to understand that he was not quite the same-no, not at all-as he had once been. He was better now, he supposed, and he left it at that.

Something stirred to the side, moving out from under a tall pine tree.

“Deer,” the spirit said at once.

The creature froze in place, sniffed futilely at the air, ears twitching all the while. After some time, it seemed at last to see the form sitting on the stone, and away it leaped, disappearing from view in the wink of an eye.

“Curious,” the spirit remarked, and rose to follow. Again the binding form confused him, but he remembered enough to put one of his long lower limbs in front of the other and was soon walking steadily, a crude, but undeniably effective mode of transportation in this tangible, tiny-scale environment. Moving without a whisper of sound, he caught up to the deer in a small clearing not so far away. Once the creature noticed him, it again turned to flee, but this time the spirit reached out to it, imparted unthreatening thoughts to the creature, and it held still. He went to it, then, to examine it. Its fur seemed inviting; he vaguely remembered a pleasant sensation connected with touching it. Slowly, but eagerly, he lifted his arm, reached out his hand.