In Which We Enter
Ehvenor and I Get Lost
Nothing endures but change.
HERACLITUS
When you get to my age, you like a little stability. At least in the fucking ground under your feet.
WALTER SLOVOTSKY
The mountain road bled off onto flat land at the shoreline, as we walked on while the morning fog crept in and the city insisted on changing in front of us. The road narrowed, became little more than shoulder-width, surrounded on each side by dense brush; we had to walk single file.
We walked for what felt like hours and hours; Ehvenor drew slowly closer. Dawn threatened to break over the horizon, while a light fog blew in off the Cirric, chilling me thoroughly to the bone.
Tennetty and I had switched off with Ahira and Jason, taking the lead behind Andy while they watched our backtrail. So far, so good.
The only trouble was Andrea: she was too calm, her steps too light and easy as we stopped at a fork in the road. I shook my head. That fork hadn't been there before; the road had twisted at that spot, but it hadn't forked.
It did now.
She smiled, and muttered a few quick syllables under her breath. "Right fork," she said, then relaxed.
Her eyes met mine for a moment. "It's okay to talk now; there shouldn't be any decisions for the next half mile."
"It would be nice if it didn't change for awhile."
"Don't count on it."
I tried to smile confidently. "How are you holding up?"
She shrugged. "I'm okay. I can handle this."
"Fine," I said. "But we can turn around any time you want."
Her eyes had stopped blinking. I didn't know what that means, I still don't know what that means, but her eyes had stopped blinking.
"I don't think so," she said. Then she corrected herself. "No, we don't turn around here. We keep going."
"We just lost the fork behind us." Ahira's voice was too calm.
I turned to see the road twisting behind us, vanishing off in the fog well beyond where the fork was. Had been. Should have been. Whatever.
"Good," I said. "I never liked it anyway."
Ahead, the fog thickened.
"Hey, Ahira? What say you and Tennetty switch?" Infrared can pierce fog a bit deeper than visible light, and dwarves can see farther into the infrared than humans can.
They did, and as we walked on, the fog thickened further, until I could barely see six feet in front of me.
"Let's close up, people," Tennetty said, beckoning Jason in tighter. "One for all and all for one, eh?"
I would have been tempted to protest, but Ahira nodded. "Makes sense. Andrea?"
She shook her head. "I can't think. The fog is too thick, on the ground, in my eyes, in my mind." Her shoulders hunched, as though waiting to receive a blow, then slackened as she breathed a spell, her fingertips working in front of her, drawing invisible letters in the air.
The fog drew in further, until I could barely see my feet, and Ahira off in front of me.
My heart started thumping.
LookI'm not normally claustrophobic. A dwarf friend of mine (not Ahira; he doesn't like spelunking) and I once waited out a cave-in for three full days until rescue reached us. I didn't have any trouble; I taught him how to play Ghost in dwarvish. But there's something reassuring about the solidity of cave walls. Nobody can reach claw-tipped fingers out of a cave wall and pluck your heart out; the closeness of a dwarf passage doesn't hide pitfalls and tripwires, or strange creatures waiting to leap out of nowhere and . . .
Easy, Walter.
Andy was guiding us toward Ehvenor by magic; Ahira was looking into the fog, at least a little way farther than I could, protecting us from sudden attack. Tennetty, Jason, and I were useless, and a third of that really bothered the hell out of me.
"Just a little farther," Andrea said, off in the mist, just a shape, nothing more.
The fog rolled up to my knees, and then to my belly, and it was all I could do to see my hand in front of my face.
"Here," Andy said, "take a sharp right, and step forward. No, not the rest of you. Just Ahira. Okay, Walter, you're next."
I turned right and took a step forward, out of the fog, and found myself standing next to Ahira in the morning light and thick mud of a narrow Ehvenor street.
I wanted to run, I started to run, but the mud sucked at my boots. It would be like trying to run, well, through mud.
Besides, there was no reason to run. I had just been in dense fog, and now Ahira and I stood in clear light on a narrow street, surrounded by two-story wattle-and-daub buildings, up to our ankles in soft, brown mud. It could have been any street in any city, except for the way that faerie lights, bright even in the daylight, hovered motionless overhead, seemingly frozen in place.
Andy's voice was far away, but I couldn't tell in what direction. "Jason goes next," she said. "Right here. Yes, go right, right here."
And suddenly Jason, and then Tennetty, and finally Andrea herself were beside us.
I forced a smile. "Nicely done. I didn't know you could teleport."
Andy smiled; then reached over and gave me a peck on the cheek. "Thank you for the compliment, but true teleportation takes power and control that's only theoretically possible. For anything mortal," she added.
If that wasn't teleportation, I'd like to know what it is.
I guess the question showed on my face, because she shrugged and answered. "It's not teleportation. Teleportation is when you go from point A to noncontiguous point B, skipping the points between. This just happened to be right next to where we were, if you knew where to look."
The air was warmer than it should have been for this time of the morning; I'd expected it to warm up some, but not this much. Cold mornings are better. Give a hot sun a while to work on the typical city street, and it'll smell like it's been paved in well-aged horseshit. Which it has, come to think of it.
"Waddling Way," Andrea said, nodding to herself, beckoning us to follow her. A twisty street, lined by two-story wattle-and-daub buildings, it curved off sharply maybe a hundred feet behind us, and less in front. The buildings were too tall and we were too close to see much over them, except for the distant glow of the Faerie dome to the north.
It was all quiet, and empty, except for the mud, and the buildings, and the faerie lights.
"Is quiet," I said. "Too quiet, kemo sabe."
Ahira chuckled. "Shut up," he said, not meaning it, as we walked after Andy. "Take it while you can get it."
Tennetty turned about slowly, like a camera panning in a full three-sixty, which I guess she was, at least in a sense. I didn't blame her for wanting to take it all init was so ordinary, not at all what I'd expected Ehvenor to be. Where was the flickering? The street we were standing on was as ordinary and solid as any street I'd ever seen.
I was going to be the straight man, but Jason beat me to it.
"Where's all the flickers? Why is it all so stable?" he asked.
Andrea didn't turn around. "The flickering was from indeterminacy. Ehvenor is never really sure what it is, and the uncertainty has been growing. But whatever it is, we're here, and that's determinate. We're in only one time and place."
I had my usual reaction to explanations about magic:
"Oh."
There's three theories about how to make your way down a street in hostile territory. My favorite theory is to avoid it in the first place; you very rarely can get killed in places you aren't. Second best is to split the party in two, each group staying on one side, covering the other. It limits the field of fire of anybody hiding in buildings on either side.
Another theory is that you walk square down the middle of the street; the idea is that gives you time to react before anybody or anything can reach you.
I don't much like that one, so I moved away, toward the raised wooden sidewalk that skirted the alley.
"No," Andrea said, without turning around. "Don't. You might get lost. Can't afford that."
Lost? LookI'm not the kind who gets lost. I don't have a perfect sense of direction, but nobody's going to lose me on the streets of a city, not without a whole lot of trying.
Right, Walter, so where's the fog bank that was up to your nose?
I stayed close.
Waddling Way twisted and turned for maybe a quarter of a mile until it forked around a vest-pocket park, the left road leading up a cobbled street, the right one down into more muck.
I bent my head toward Ahira's. "Want to bet which way we go here?"
"Right here," Andy said, clopping down into the deeper muck, sinking in almost to her calves.
"It rained hard here, and recently," Ahira said, his eyes never stopping moving.
"No shit, Sherlock."
We followed her down into the muck, our boots making horrible sucking sounds every time we lifted our feet and stepped
up onto the hot, dry dirt of the street, under the heat of an oppressive noon sun and the whistle of music in the crowded marketplace.
"People," Ahira said. "It's good to see people."
That was the moment I expected them all to turn from their buying and selling, sprout long fangs, and leap at me, but sometimes I'm lucky enough not to get what I expect.
High overhead, a dozen wood flutes swirled and swooped and dived through the moist air, moving fast as they piped their tunes, the high-pitched whistling dopplering up and down in counterpoint to the manic melody. Not great music; they played an eight-bar theme, repeated without variation.
We had to step aside, quickly, to avoid two horseshuge things, about the size of Clydesdales, although dappled, not solidpulling a heavily laden wagon.
We pressed tight around Andrea, like a bunch of school-kids staying with teacher. Which wasn't so bad an idea.
Okay, okay, I'm slow, but eventually I get it: Ehvenor wasn't just unsure what it was, it didn't know when it was. Normally, it's easy to get from mid-morning to noon, but you don't do it without skipping over late morning. Unless everything, time included, has broken loose. Hell, it was possible we'd stepped from today into yesterday.
It was a market day, and the trading was brisk under the whistling of the overhead flutes.
Over by a pyramid of reed bushel baskets, an apple-cheeked appleseller haggled endlessly with a tall, raw-boned man in a traveler's cloak and floppy hat. Beyond them, one of the hulking beastsshit, I'll call them urks or orcs until you've got a better name for them, thank you very muchgestured clumsily that the butcher was asking too much for one of his hanging haunches of mutton. Well, I hoped it was mutton; it could have been shepherd.
Beyond the street, the dome of the Faerie Embassy waited, separated from us by maybe two or three cross-streets.
"This way, and try not to bump anything," Andy said, working her way through the crowd as a heavily laden wagon clomped by, pulled by two enormous horses. The trouble with a crowd is that you have to suppress combat reflexes. I don't like strangers pressing up against meI'd rather do the pressing. That's how you work a crowd, and I'm a pretty good pickpocket, actually. Not that this was the time to see if my pickpocketry was up to snuff.
We made our way down the street, past the filled stalls where an overweight appleseller haggled endlessly with a tall man in hat and cloak, past the orc arguing with the butcher, past the shops where the candlemakers wielded their frames and dipped their wicks, where a fat old basketweaver took another turn on the base of the frame she was building.
Something about it bothered me, and I gave Ahira a quick touch on the shoulder, then slipped back to the rear of our group, and looked behind. Yes, yes, you can leave trouble behind you, but monkey curiosity is a survival factor, if you don't overdo it.
They were still at it. All of them. The orc was still haggling over the cost of meat, and the tall buyer was still arguing with the short appleseller, and the basketweaver still hadn't
A heavily laden wagon clomped by, pulled by two enormous dappled horses, each about the size of a Clydesdale.
And the flutes were still swooping and swirling overhead through the same eight-bar theme.
I pushed my way up to Andrea's side. "Andy"
She raised a peremptory finger as she muttered another spell. "We go this way." She elbowed her way through the crowd, between two stalls, and into the cool of the day and the
dark of the night near the middle of the square. Well, trianglethree streets dumped on it; the buildings at their ends wedge-shaped, triangular, like pieces of stone cake. No windows, no doors, nothing.
A pedestal holding a statue stood in the middle of the square, although I couldn't see what it was a statue of.
Ever do that experiment where you find your own blindspot? It's pretty simple. You put two dots on a piece of paper about six inches apart, close one eye, and stare at one of the dots as you move the paper closer, seeing the other one only out of your peripheral vision.
Eventually, you'll pass the dot through the blind spot of your eye, the place where the optic nerve enters. And it'll disappear, although you'll still know it's there, and if you move the paper or your eye just a little, you'd see it, but don't: stare straight ahead.
That's what the statue looked like. Like I Can't See It.
Above and beyond it, straight up one of the feeder streets, the dome of the Faerie Embassy stood, flickering in the night.
Andrea hurried us along. "Quickly, quickly," she said, moving us toward another one of the feeder streets.
Ahira held up a hand. "No. Stop. What are we doing"
She shook her head, her eyes growing wide. "No. We can't stop. It's all breaking loose." Her lips moved, her breath went ragged.
"It's not just the city anymore. It's falling apart." She gestured at the street that apparently led toward the embassy. "The Hand was right: it's connecting with the rest of the world." She gestured at the street. "Walk down that way, true, now it'll take you to Lost Lane, but Lost Lane won't dump you out on Double Circlego north at the first corner and it will lead you down to the pits; the east road will bring you to a spot a hundred feet under the Cirric, just off the Pandathaway coast; west will drop you in a tree outside a village on Salket. It all," she wriggled her finger, "touches. But you won't walk down there, will you?"
Great. Andy had an n-dimensional map of the city so crowding the inside of her head that she couldn't remember that the rest of us barely knew what the hell we were doing.
"Let's get the hell out of here," I said.
"No, it's not all of Faerie. Not in the solid regions. Just a piece of it. We go, before he gets here." Dragging Jason by the arm, she ran off toward the street.
What did that mean? He? Who, he? I broke into a sprint after her, Ahira and Tennetty at my heels. There was something behind us, something huge, but I didn't take a look at it. We reached the juncture of square and street only a few paces behind her.
"Boioardo?" I asked, craning my neck to look as we lunged into the night and
skidded to a stop two feet from the edge of the hot, flat roof. I stuck out an arm and stopped Ahira from bumping into Jason. A bright noon sun beat down on us, but the blue sky was covered with black bands, arcing from horizon to horizon.
"Quickly, now," she said, "over this way." We made our way down a ladder into an alley, and followed Andy down the alley and
into a vestpocket park, cool and green and minty against the heat of the late afternoon.
I would have said the trees were oaks, except that their bark was edged in silver, and the broad leaves chimed gently, like silver bells, as they rustled in the breeze.
Tennetty's breath was coming in ragged gasps, and I could have used a breather.
Ahira looked around. "Can we take a moment here?" he asked, over the ringing of the leaves. "Or do we have to run on?"
"Oh, yes," Andy said. "We rest here for a moment," she said. "I've muddied the trail enough for us to do that, at least."
One branch of the ancient oak hung long, within grabbing-and-hanging-on-while-you-grab-your-breath range, which I did. The bark was rough beneath my hand, its silver trimming cool.
Jason reached up and flicked his fingernail against a leaf. It rang like a tuning fork.
Ahira squatted on the ground. "Well, just in case we need to know, which way do we go next?"
She closed her eyes and thought about it too long, her lips moving almost silently.
I mean, I wasn't timing it or anything, but easily a minute passed before Tennetty started getting twitchy, only to subside at Jason's light touch on her arm. Jason was getting good at light touches; I would have wanted to punch her. (I wouldn't have done it, mind, but I would have wanted to. I get nervous around magic.)
Finally, Andy opened her eyes. "You can't see it from here, but there are steps down to the road about fifty yards that way, past the old oak. For the next while, at least, we'll be able to make it almost all the way down the stepsbut do skip the top one; it connects off the roads."
I let go of the branch and sat slumped against a tree, letting myself go limp, which took no great effort.
The rough bark was somehow reassuring against the back of my tunic. Maybe I took some comfort in its solidity. My fingers played in the long grass. Long for a park, that isabout four inches in height, dense and fine and green, like a lawn.
Tennetty tapped a finger against the glass eye. "What is going on?"
Andrea opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. "You don't have the background to understand it."
I've never liked that sort of explanation. The trouble is, it's true, sometimes. Try explaining Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle to somebody who doesn't know that the smallest possible piece of matter isn't a dust speck, or the rudiments of atomic theory to somebody who thinks that if only you have a sharp enough knife you can divide a piece of clay endlessly in halfI've done both.
Andrea's fingers twisted clumsily. "We live under laws of nature. Magic is part of those laws. Gravity attracts matter to matter; magnetism attracts or repels; the weak magical force carries information; the strong force carries power." She waved her hand toward the dome of the Faerie Embassy. "But those are just a . . . a subset of the rules of Faerie. When we're in Faerie, or even just close to it, it's like we're a bunch of Newtonians trying to plot our way through Einsteinian space, and wondering why we can't break the speed of light no matter how much faster we run."
She gestured at the park around us, her movements jerky, like she was wired too tightly. "Ehvenor's always been part of the . . . outskirts of Faerie. The Good Folk don't like it much; it's too restricted there, too flavorless. But that's changing, and I'm starting to see too much of it." She stood, and as she stood, the tension in her body eased. "It's not just space that touches, but time. The here and the now." Her voice was low. "At the core of Faerie, at the singularity at the heart of it, all is chaos, all touches, there are all rules and none."
She shook her head, as though to clear it. "But that doesn't have to be here. The Three can anchor it all in reality, if only they know . . . where. Vair is the most powerful, but he's uncertain where to put his fire; Nareen's tools have the solidity and stolidity of his race, but little more." She reached out a finger and tapped at Tennetty's eye. "They need her sight."
I wouldn't have wanted to poke my finger at Tennetty's eye, even at a glass one, but Tennetty didn't react.
Andrea shrugged into her pack. "So we go."
"Why now?" There was a panicky tone in Ahira's voice.
"Because," she said, "I told you; I've seen the paths. In just a few seconds we hear his footsteps, and we . . ."
Heavy footsteps thudded on the ground; we ran down the stepsskipping the top oneand across the cobbled street, down the alley, and
into the dark of a cloudy night, lit only by the dim green glow of the stinking mosses lining the gutters.
Ahira pulled a glowsteel from his pouch, and the actinic blue chased the darkness away.
It was just an alleyway, a slim street between two rows of buildings that towered in the night, vanishing up in the distance. There was no sound behind us, but Andy shook her head. "He's too close herewe have to take a short cut by diving deeper into Faerie.
"This way," she hissed, vanishing in the darkness of a doorway. We followed her, through the darkness
and into the hard, cold wind of the Place Where Trees Bleed.
The icy air blew unrelentingly through the scarlet leaves, each one dripping crimson at the slightest movement. The giant limbs creaked in their pain. Pools of blood gathered beneath the trees, darkening, thickening in the air.
"Nobody move," Andrea said. "Let me move you. The rules are more . . . general here; there's no safety in solidity, not if you don't know where to step." She stepped quickly around, moving so fast it was as though her feet hydroplaned over the damp grass, gently touching Jason once on the cheek. He disappeared with a loud pop!
"You have to move just right." She pulled Ahira's arm forward. He staggered forward and then disappeared, too.
Only Tennetty and I were left with her, but I could hear the footsteps on the ground behind us. One chance only, and not much of one.
Andy's hand caressed my cheek. "Don't move, Walter," she whispered, her voice low. "He's behind you."
Tennetty spun, her sword raised high, but the grasses turned into snakes, winding themselves about her ankles, their long fangs sinking deep into her calves.
She screamed. I don't know why it surprised me that it was a high-pitched, horrible sound, like anybody else's. But she turned it into a grunt, as she hacked down at the snakes, her blade slashing them, turning the ground around her into a mass of bleeding, writhing pieces of reptilian flesh.
The voice was the same:
"Good day, all," Boioardo said. His face was too regular, too pretty, the cleft in his chin too sharp. He was all in black and crimson, from the cowl of a scarlet cape flung carelessly over one shoulder to the black boots with enough shine for an SS officer. His tunic was of red velour, cut tight at shoulders and belted at the waist to reveal the v-shaped torso of a bodybuilder.
He proceeded to sit down on the empty air, like somebody who had forgotten that there wasn't a chair behind him. But before he could fall, a swarm of tiny winged lizards flew down from the trees, the lot of them barely supporting a jeweled throne that they slipped behind him, just in time. Others pulled off his cape and folded it neatly over the back of the throne.
Tennetty grunted again, still slashing at the snakes.
Boioardo crossed one knee over the other and smoothed at the already-smooth black tights. "Oh, please. Don't make such a fuss." The snakes melted at his gesture, but the blood continued to run down her leg.
He blurred in front of my eyes, and when I could focus on him again, he was a slim man, about my age and height, still sitting easily on his throne. Maybe a touch older, less in shape, gray at the temples only. His jaw firm, his mustache evenly combed, an ever-so-slight hint of epicanthic folds at his eyes. He was dressed all in black, except for a brown cloak held fast by a blackened brass clasp.
Okay, okay, I'm slow: "I'm more handsome," I said.
Tennetty gave me a funny look. Funnier than usual, I mean. "Than me?" she said.
Andrea's fingers touched me at the temples, and for a moment, he flickered, becoming Tennetty, then Andy, and then back to me. He wasn't me, here, he was just mirroring me, in his own way.
Andy looked me in the eye for just a moment. She didn't need to say it: she had to get the Eye to the Faerie Embassy, and Boioardo had to be delayed enough for her to do that. She knew the path; Tennetty had the Eye. That made Andy essential, Tennetty next in importance, and me expendable.
But she couldn't. Expend me, that is. Not without my permission. That was the trouble with Andrea: she never was cold-blooded enough.
The dream was always the same. Except this time the Cullinane was asking me to do it by myself, and I didn't know if I could.
I froze, for just a half-second