Glen Cook - Shadow of all Night Falling

There was great joy in Fangdred when it was over. Varthlokkur and the Old Man declared a holiday and ordered a feast. A bull was slaughtered, wine brought forth, games taken out, contests held, and the piper driven to a frenzy of playing. The people danced, sang, and everyone had a wickedly good time.

Except Marya. She was more than ever confused, and her feelings had taken a battering.

And then the piper.

As day marched into evening and the wine-cask levels sank to the lees, as more than one reveler passed from happiness into drunkenness, more than one mood abjured gaiety. The Old Man grew reticent and testy, till he spoke only in monosyllabic growls and snarls. In his cups, time piled on him, millennia deep in weight. All the evil he had seen and done returned to haunt him. "Nawami," he muttered several times. "My guilt." All the boredom, that only his wickednesses had interrupted, returned to remind him how much more of both awaited his future. He grew increasingly depressed. Death, the specter he had never beheld, became a desirable, lovely, mocking lady, a will-o'-the-wisp forever an inch beyond his reaching fingers.

And Varthlokkur, too, found all his days returning as the lift of the wine began to fail and his temples began to throb. He remembered everything he wanted to drive from his mind: deaths in ancient times; his years in Shinsan and echoes of the bargains he had made there, that he might receive his education; and the hidden evils in his use of those who had become his allies in the destruction of Ilkazar. They were dead now, those people and those days-and many because of him. How many people had died with his name and a curse on their lips? He remembered the screams in dying Ilkazar... Till now they always had remained confined to his worst nightmares. But now, through the throbbing ache left by over-indulgence, they invaded his waking mind...

"Abomination!" the Old Man roared, hurling an empty flagon at the piper. He surged up, smashed a fist against the table. "I told you not to play that!"

The piper, too deep in his cups himself, bowed mockingly, repeated the passage. Silence enveloped the hall. All eyes turned to the Old Man, who had drawn a knife from the wreck of a roast. He began stalking the clown.

The piper, realizing he had gone too far, ran to Varthlokkur. The wizard calmed the Old Man.

Poor fool! No sooner was he safe from one Lord than he antagonized the other with passages from The Wizards of Ilkazar. Anything else Varthlokkur could have forgiven. His mood wouldn't permit this.

He gave no warning...

A stumbling, lengthy spell he chanted, often pausing to correct his wine-tied tongue. With a sudden handclap and shout, it was done. The piper drifted upward, weightless. With a growl, Varthlokkur kicked him, spinning him across the room. He shrieked, flailed the air, vomited, and spun into the Old Man's orbit.

It was a pity that Marya and the women had retired. A tempering feminine presence might have averted disaster.

The Old Man seized an arm, spun the piper, then hurled him into a mass of drunken retainers, few of whom had much love for the fool. The little guy habitually told truths nobody wanted to hear.

Pack instincts came to the fore. The piper became a shrieking ball bouncing about the room, with Varthlokkur and the Old Man leading the baiting. They were animals baying after defenseless prey, their cruelty feeding itself. Someone remembered the fool's fear of heights. In a whooping mass, the mob swept from the common room to the outer wall.

Hurled screaming outward, the piper hung over a thousand feet of nothing. He wailed for mercy. They laughed. The wind carried him away from the wall. Varthlokkur, smiling malevolently, drew the piper in until he clawed desperately at the battlements-then released him completely. Down with a wail he hurtled, crying his certainty of death, only to be stopped a dozen feet short of icy, jagged rocks.

The wind drove tendrils through tiny openings in Varthlokkur's clothing. The chill proved sobering. He realized where he was, what he was doing. Shame struck in a sticky gray wave, shattering his insanity. He pulled the piper in, prepared to defend him... And saw there wasn't any need. The cold had had its effect on everyone. Most were leaving, to be alone with their disgrace.

Varthlokkur and the Old Man apologized effusively, offering restitution.

The piper ignored them. He said not a word as he hurried off to nurse his rage and fear. His departing back was the last they saw of him.

A distraught Marya dragged Varthlokkur from dismal dreams. Groaning with hangover, he demanded, "What?"

"He's gone!"

"Uhn?" He sat up, rubbed his temples, found no relief. "Who?"

"The baby! Your son!" Without comprehending, he studied what tears ha.d done to her dusky face. His son? "Aren't you going to do something?" she demanded.

His head began clearing, his mind working. Intuitively, he asked, "Where's the piper?"

Within fifteen minutes they knew. The fool, too, had disappeared, along with a mule, blankets, and food. "Such cruel revenge," Varthlokkur cried. He and the Old

Man spent days in the Wind Tower, hunting, hunting- but finally had to concede defeat. Man and child seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth.

"The Fates have used us evilly," said the Old Man. "Cruelly."

Indeed. They had taken a hostage to insure Varthlokkur's participation in the Great Game.

Marya was disconsolate for a time, but eventually made peace with herself. Women of her world often had to accept the loss of children.

Again, Saltimbanco sat in the chair before Nepanthe's fireplace-but she was away, Downdeep, tending the wounded. She should be back soon. Her workload had eased as wounds healed. She now had time to spend with her man-for so she sometimes thought him, and so everyone named him. Only Saltimbanco himself was unsure he fit the part. With matters so nebulous between them, she seemed little closer than a friend. Away, as now, she disturbed him not at all. In her presence his soul turned chill. There was something about her, icy and strange, incomprehensible, that made him feel stark emotional nothingness when she was near. He went through the motions she permitted, but they somehow seemed directed toward someone else, an imaginary construct, not the genuine woman. An emotional vacuum separated them, one he couldn't fill while her fears persisted. Oh, he had found sex less important than he had earlier thought-but her unreasoning fear! It birthed an unnatural tension devouring the hope of their relationship. Seldom had he been so far at sea-almost as far out as she claimed to be herself.

As he sat thus thinking, examining the relationship, peering at the fire through half-closed eyes, there came a knock at the door. He rose, went, found Elana. "Woman is in Deep Dungeons."

"I know. Look, Haaken is out of his coma. They're going to talk to him. You want to come down?"

"Maybe later. Am needing report, though. Meanwhile, must talk with strange woman." He was silent a moment, then asked, "What is problem for same? Am unable to breach mental walls thicker than ramparts surrounding Ravenkrak."

"She's afraid..."

"Am making no such demands. Woman's body is her own. Am living without that. Is total aloofness and coldness which makes for sadness of this one."

"That's not her only fear. She's afraid she'll hurt you."

"Is stupid! Crazy."

"Foolish, anyway, but real enough for her. If we weren't besieged, she'd run away. She feels trapped. All her fears are closing in. She's uncomfortable. More than she's ever been. There's nowhere to run; she's afraid to accept; so she fights.

"There're cycles in her moods, you know. Sometimes she loves you and wants you-then the fear takes over. Then she can't fight. Or won't."