Iain Banks: Walking on Glass

He was happy.

Quiss stood on the parapet of the balcony, staring down at the white plain beneath. His mouth was dry, his heart beat quickly; he was trembling, and a nervous tic jigged at one corner of his mouth as he stood, swaying slightly, getting ready to jump.

He was going to kill himself, because now he knew the secret of the castle. He knew what it was founded on, what underlay it; he even knew where it was and when. The red crow had shown him.

They had played a game called Tunnel, which was based on a game called Bridge. They played two hands each, using blank cards, trying to make things called tricks. The idea was that Tunnel was like Bridge played underneath the table, or in the dark. As in Spotless Dominoes, they had to go through the motions of playing the game, hoping that eventually they would play one game in such a way that the blank cards - which the little games table had ascribed values to, new ones for each game - would end up displayed on the table in a logical sequence, the "tricks" correctly composed of similar-suit cards.

The game was over; after a thousand days they had done it, but they were still undecided what to give as an answer to the riddle. They couldn't think of anything they both agreed was a reasonable response. Quiss didn't care any more. It wouldn't make any difference, anyway. There was only death here, death or what the red crow had shown him. He looked down at the snow. It lay over the jumbled crags of slate far below, at the base of the castle. It was about a hundred metre drop. There would be a lot of wind noise, he would feel cold for a while, weightless for an instant, then... nothing. He should do it now, but he had to prepare himself. Still, Ajayi might not be away for very long (she had gone looking for books as usual), and he didn't want her seeing him there. He leaned forward, over the drop, biting his lip.

No machine-gun this time, he thought.

He had been down in the guts of the place.

More locked doors. The same ancient corridors, dimly lit. His scullions would not help him find keys for the doors; they said they had no influence with the keykeepers, they didn't know any of them and if they started to make any inquiries they would be under suspicion immediately; they thought the seneschal already knew of their allegiance to Quiss, and merely tolerated it.

Quiss tried to engage the attendants he met down here, deep under the castle, in conversation, on the odd occasions when he encountered them; but they were taciturn, unhelpful. He thought about knocking one over the head sometime, seeing if it had a key which he could steal and use, but as soon as he had even hinted he might try this his own scullions had started weeping and begging him not to. He and they would be terribly punished if he tried to open the castle's doors like that. The black minions, they said, in quivering voices; the black minions... Quiss assumed they were talking about the attendants he had seen only once, with the seneschal that one time he had found an open door and the seneschal and the black-robed minions arrived in the creaking elevator. He reluctantly shelved the idea of taking a key by force.

He walked along the corridor. He was in the general area of the door he had found open, many many days ago. He thought he could just make out a sort of half-felt, half-heard thumping noise, and suspected he was somewhere near the number-crunching room; dee pee as the snooty attendant had called it.

The corridor opened out to about twice the cross-section which he regarded as the castle's standard. A slate bench on one wall faced a row of twelve large, stout, metal-strapped doors.

He was weary, so he sat down on the bench, looking through the gloom at the tall, dark doors.

"Tired, old man?" a voice said, from above him. He turned and saw the red crow, perched on a peg stuck into the wall high above the slate bench, near the vaulted ceiling.

"What are you doing way down here?" he asked the creature, surprised to find it so deep in the castle's structure.

"Following you," the crow said.

"To what do I owe such an honour?"

"Your stupidity," the red crow said, stretching its wings as though stiff. One of its small eyes glinted in the dim light from the glowing, transparent tubes at the apex of the ceiling.

"Really," he said. If the red crow was just insulting him, let it. If it wanted to talk it would have to start things off. He suspected it did want to talk. It was here for a good reason.

"Yes, really," the red crow said testily. It flapped off the perch on the wall and landed in the middle of the floor, facing him. It folded its wings. A little dust swirled around it. "You won't listen to reason, so I'm going to have to rub your nose in things."

"Are you indeed?" Quiss said coldly. He didn't like its tone. "What 'things'?"

"Call it truth ," the red crow said, spitting the word out like a lump of gristle.

"What would you know about that?" Quiss scoffed.

"Oh, quite a lot, as you'll discover, man." The red crow's voice was calm, measured and mocking. "If you want to, that is."

That depends," Quiss said, frowning at the bird. "What exactly are we talking about?"

The red crow jerked its head, indicating the wall and the doors behind it. "I can get you in there. I can show you what you have been looking for all this time."

"Can you really?" Quiss said, stalling. He wondered if the crow was telling the truth. If it was, why was it telling him?

The bird, its bright plumage dulled to burgundy by the gloom, nodded. "I can. Do you want to see behind the doors?"

"Yes," Quiss said. There was little point in denying it. "What's the catch?"

"Ah," the red crow said, and Quiss thought that if the bird could have smiled, it would. "I must have your word."

"On what?"

"That I show you what I show you of your own free will, that you go willingly on the understanding that without any outside influence from me or anything else you may not desire to come back, or may desire to kill yourself. You may not, of course, but if you stay, or if you kill yourself, you must give me your word you will say that I warned you of this first."

Quiss narrowed his eyes, leaned forward on the slate seat, putting one elbow on his knees, one hand to his lips. His chin was rough with stubble. "You are saying that what you will show me may make me wish to stay behind those doors, or may make me desire death."

"In a word: more-or-less," the red crow cackled. "But you won't use any dirty tricks to influence me."

"No need."

"Then I give my word."

"Good," the red crow said with some satisfaction. It flapped once and rose into the air, and Quiss had the impression that it was done too easily, that the wings had not powered the bird at all, that it flapped them merely for show. The bird turned and flew off down the corridor, in the direction Quiss had been heading. It disappeared round a corner in the dim distance.

Quiss got to his feet, wondering if he was supposed to follow the creature. He scratched his chin, looking at the dozen doors. His heart started to beat a little faster; what was behind the doors? The red crow wanted him and Ajayi dead; it wanted them to admit defeat and give up their struggle with the riddle. That was simply part of its job, though it claimed it really did want rid of them anyway, because they were boring. It knew that Quiss knew this, so it must be very confident that whatever was behind the doors would have a considerable effect on Quiss; enough to break him, perhaps. Quiss was nervous, keyed up, but determined. He could take whatever the red crow was going to throw at him, whatever it had to show him. Anything which might help him find the way out of this thing, even just give a new angle on his and Ajayi's plight, would be useful. Besides, he suspected the red crow did not know that he had been behind one of those doors once, even if only briefly. If the revelation beyond that heavy wood and metal strapping had something to with the ceiling-holes and the place called "Dirt', then Quiss vas already prepared.