David Drake: The Fortress of Glass

Tenoctris lifted her chin in the direction of the Fortress of Glass. Each step now sent the sea rolling onto the shore with a snarl.

"Those are the bones of your race, Master Bird," she said. "Will you leave them in the hands of their slayer, to kill more beings as innocent as your people were?"

"I told Garric that I would return him to his world for his purposes and for mine," said the Bird's silent voice. "I will complete my purposes here. But Tenoctris-you know what that will mean for your world and your people?"

"I know," said Tenoctris, nodding. "Forces must balance. But it must be done."

"The sides of the equation must be equal," said the Bird. "But I regret the cost to you and yours, for some human beings have treated me as one of their own."

"Go," said Tenoctris, pointing her bamboo wand toward the fortress towering against the clear sky. "There's very little time."

"There is enough time," said the Bird. It rose into the air and headed seaward with jerky, fluttering motions of its wings. Faintly, as though from an unimaginable distance, the mental voice added, "There is all eternity."

Cashel spun his quarterstaff in a simple circle before him, varying the movement with an occasional figure-8 to make sure he was working all his muscles. The rhythm was simple and soothing; his body could keep it up all day, leaving his mind free to watch the dance of universes on the surface of the Fortress of Glass.

He couldn't follow the pattern, not really, but it was a delight to watch something more wondrously formed than anything in this world or any single world. Cashel's eyes saw shimmering light, but his mind showed him the connections stretching through time in all directions. Ages rose and rolled and tumbled again into the depths, not ofthis universe but of the cosmos that was all universes. The Fortress of Glass was perfect, and because it was perfect there could be nothing more beautiful.

It was going to crush Cashel and everyone he loved. It was his duty to stop it. That was impossible but of course he'd try. Ofcourse he'd try.

"Cashel," said Sharina behind him. "Stop spinning your staff and hold me. It's all right. Hold me!"

Something flickered into Cashel's line of vision. Because he was focused-eyes and mind both-on the fortress, for a moment it was just that: a flicker. Then Cashel saw the bird that'd been on Garric's shoulder. It was flying toward the Fortress of Glass, and like the fortress the bird's shimmer held all worlds and all times.

"Cashel, it's all right," Sharina repeated. "Please-hold me. Something's going to happen."

This time Cashel brought his staff to a halt and held it upright. He stepped backward, putting himself beside Sharina and holding her in his free arm. He didn't take his eyes off the fortress and the crystalline glitter that flew toward it.

The Fortress of Glass had a cold, perfect beauty, but Cashel or-Kenset was human and of one world. In Cashel's world, Sharina was as close to perfection as there could be. He smiled shyly, his eyes on the looming fortress and the bird mounting so high in the air that it now looked like a mote wheeling in the sunlight.

Tenoctris said, "The fortress is bigger than it seems. I suppose you and your sister know that, Cashel?"

"Yes ma'am," said Cashel. He was speaking for Ilna, but he didn't have any doubt about it. It was all so clear that he sort of couldn't imagine that it wasn't clear to everybody. He knew it wasn't his eyes that were seeing the fortress as it was, though.

Sharina nestled close to him. It was so wonderful…

"Whatever happens to the fortress," Tenoctris continued, "happens in all the times that the fortress is part of. If the fortress vanishes, something will take its place. I think the times themselves will merge to balance what's being taken away."

"I don't understand," said Sharina.

Cashel didn't understand either, but it wasn't the sort of question he cared about. He couldn't change whatever it was that Tenoctris was expecting, so he might as well wait to learn. He'd deal with whatever it meant when it'd happened, just like he always had in the past.

He smiled. Sharina didn't think that way, or Garric or most people. The kingdom needed shepherds as sure as it did princes.

"Things will move in time rather than space," Tenoctris said. "I can't guess how great an area will be affected, but the fortress is very large. Very large."

One leg of the Fortress of Glass settled onto the bar at the mouth of Calf's Head Bay; the earth shook itself like a wet dog. The crystalline mass of cliffs and peaks was so nearly overhead that it seemed a fiery cloud, and the legs that'd looked slender when the fortress started walking were each thicker than the gate towers in Valles. The legs shifted the way sand pours through a timekeeping glass rather than by bending like snakes.

"There," Sharina said. She pointed upward. "The Bird flew into the other. Did you see it, Tenoctris?"

"I trust your young eyes, dear," the older woman said. "And that's what he would do, of course. Return to his people."

The next step the fortress took would put a huge foot onto the mainland. Cashel didn't know how much the Green Woman saw from wherever she was inside the crystal, but he figured she saw enough to make sure the foot landed where it'd do the most good. If the legs shortened and brought the body down onto the ground, it'd easy cover the whole muddy plain and all the people standing on it.

Cashel held Sharina a little tighter instead of bringing his staff around again. That was what she'd said she wanted, and he wasn't about to refuse Sharina anything in these last moments.

The back leg of the fortress rose and started to swing forward. It stopped as suddenly as iron hardens as it flows from the smelting pot. A flash of Cashel couldn't describe it. It wasn't light, it wasnot -light, penetrating blackness.

– flooded the world. For an instant the Fortress of Glass wasn't visible. The sky was empty, but inside it there was an infinite blackness.

The crystal mass reappeared, shifting from the shape the Green Woman had formed it into. "The Bird!" Sharina cried, and itwas the Bird, now the size of the fortress it replaced.

A voice screamed the way Cervoran and his Double had screamed in Ilna's net of shadow. Cashel's fingers tightened on the hickory staff, then relaxed. Ilna hadn't needed help to pay back the ones who'd taken Chalcus and Merota from her; the Bird didn't need help either.

The glittering wings fluttered, but there was no sign of the violent wind they should've fanned across the bay. The Bird lifted, but not into the air or notonly into the air. The Bird shrank as it moved away from the world of men.

There was a rumble too deep and loud to be sound. Everything flowed, earth and sea and air. Cashel held Sharina tight.

Nothing else mattered. Nothing else in the cosmos mattered.

Garric clung to Liane, watching realities tumble around and through him. Lord Waldron stood as stiffly as if he'd been tied to a post as an archery target, but many of the troops in his personal regiment had knelt with their hands flat before them in an attitude of prayer.

"It's not an earthquake!" Liane said. "The ground isn't shaking!"

Rock and earth and sea and once the trunk of a gigantic tree wavered before Garric and were replaced. He could breathe normally and his feet remained firmly set as Liane had said, but a fog of other worlds half-concealedhis world and blurred the figures of the people about him.

The enveloping sound was like the whisper of leaves as wind rustles a forest ahead of a violent storm. It was so loud that Garric could hear Liane's words only because she shouted, and even then he was reading much of the meaning from the shape of her lips.