"Do you need something?"
She shook her head. "Nothing you can give me."
Chert's patience, never his best feature, had been tested beyond belief this year, and it seemed the tests were far from over. "Then perhaps you will ex¬cuse me-my wife will be holding supper."
"I wish to speak to you about the one called Gil," she said.
Chert suddenly remembered. "Ah, of course. You were very attached to him, weren't you?" She didn't speak, but only watched him attentively. "I'm very sorry, but we were both captured by the fairy-soldiers. They let me go, but their queen, or their general, or whatever she was, sentenced Gil to death. He's dead. I'm sorry I could not do more for him."
She shook her head. "No. He is not dead."
He saw the look in her eyes. "Of course. His spirit lives on, no doubt. Now I must go. Again, I'm sorry for how things happened."
The young woman smiled, an almost ordinary thing, but it still had a
quality of ineffable strangeness. "No, he is not dead. I hear his voice. He speaks to Lady Porcupine every day. She hates what he has to say, because he speaks with the king's voice."
"What are you talking about?"
"It does not matter. I only wished to tell you that I heard Gil speak of you just yesterday, or perhaps it was today." She shook her head, as though Chert must know how hard it was to remember when one last heard from dead people. "He said he wished he could tell you and your people that they are not safe beneath the castle. That soon the world will change, and that the door will open under Funderling Town and dead time will escape." She nodded as though she had performed some small trick with an ac¬ceptable level of skill. "I am going now."
She turned and walked away.
Chert stood in the lengthening shadows, feeling a chill crawl across his body that was out of all proportions even to the cold day.
31
The Dark-Eyed Girl
When the gods had fought for one hundred years, Pale Daughter was so dismayed that she resolved to go out and surrender to her father to end the war, but her husband Silvergleam, his brother, and sister would not let her
go, fearing her death. But her cousin Trickster came to her in secret and
piped her a sweet tune, telling he would help her to slip away from her husband's house. Trickster intended to keep her for himself, and would
have, but a great storm came and he lost her in its howling discord. She lost herself as well, wandering a long time without knowing who she was.
In the battle Whitefire killed Thunder's son, Bull, and Thunder in his
rage beat down and killed Silvergleam, husband of Pale Daughter,
father of Crooked. Many died that day, and the music of all things
was thereafter more somber, even unto this hour.
— from One Hundred Considerations out of the Qar's Book of Regret
H;
E HAD BEEN FALLING for so long he could not remember what it was like not to fall, could not remember which direction.was up, or even what having an up and down meant. The last thing he remembered was seeing the gates, the sign of the owl and pine tree, and then-as if those monstrous gates had swung open and a black wind had lifted him and carried him through-he had been tumbling in darkness like this, helpless as a sparrow in a thunderstorm.
Sister, he called, or tried to, I'm falling. I'm lost…! But she did not come, not even as a ghost of memory; they were separated by some gulf that even their blood tie could not bridge.
Sister. I'm dying… He could never have guessed that it would happen this way-that they would have no last farewell. But she must know how he loved her. She was the only thing in this corrupted world that mattered to him. He could take solace in that, anyway…
Who… are… you…?
It came to him as a whisper-no, less than a whisper, it came like the sound of a flower unfolding on the far side of a meadow. Still, in the midst of such utter emptiness, it was a glorious sound, glad as trumpets.
Who's there? Is that you, Storm Lantern? But he knew that the fairy's words could never feel like that in his mind, each one as cool, gentle and precise as water dripping from a leaf after the rains had stopped. It was a woman speaking, he could feel it, but that still didn't seem quite right: the touch seemed even too light for that. And then he knew. It was the dark-haired girl, the one who had watched over his other dreams.
Who are you? he asked the emptiness. He was still falling, but the move¬ment seemed different now, no longer plunging toward something but sail¬ing outward. Do I know you?
Who am I? She was silent for a time, as if the question surprised her. I… I don't know. Who are you?
A silly question, he thought at first, but found he had no easy answer. / have a name, he insisted, I just can't think of it right now.
So do I, she told him, still no more than a ghostly voice. And I can't think of mine, either. How strange…!
Do you know where we are?
He could feel the negation even before he caught the word-thoughts. No. Lost, I think. We're lost. For the first time he recognized the sadness in her voice and knew he was not the only one who was afraid. He wanted to help her, although he could not help himself or even say what it was that troubled him. All he knew was that he was falling endlessly outward through nothing, and that it was a blessing beyond price to have someone to share it with.
/ want to see you, he said suddenly. Like before.
Before?
You were watching me. That was you, wasn't it? Those things were chasing me, and the halls were on fire…
That was yon. It was not a question, but almost a sweet note of satisfac¬tion. I was afraid for you.
I want to see you.
But who are you? she demanded.
/ don't know! When he grew angry her presence became fainter and that frightened him. Still, it was interesting to know he could still feel anger. When he had been falling alone, he had felt almost nothing. I just know that I was by myself, and then you were here. I haven't felt… It would have been almost impossible to explain in his waking life-in this wordless, direction¬less place it was far beyond impossible. / haven't felt anyone in my heart since I lost her. He could not summon the name, but he knew her, his sister, his twin soul, his other half.
The other was silent for a long moment. You love her.
I do. But there was a misunderstanding between them, a sort of cloud of confusion, and again the girl's presence became remote. Don't go! I need to see you. I want to… There was no word for what he wanted-there weren't even thoughts that could be strung together-but he wanted a reason to exist. He wanted a place to be, and to feel someone waiting for the thoughts in his head, so that he knew there was more to the uni¬verse the gods had made than simply a few whispers in endless darkness. / want to…
There is a place around us, she said suddenly. / can almost see it.
What do you mean?
Look! It's big, but it has walls. And there's… a road?
He could see it now, at least its faint lineaments. It was a space only slightly smaller than the endless dark through which they had been falling, and only a little more bright, but it had shape, it had boundaries. At the center of it he saw what she had called a road, an arching span of safety over an astonishing, terrifying dark nothing-a nothing even more profound than the void through which he had been falling. But this pit of blackness beneath the span was not simply nothing, it was a darkness that wanted to make everything else into a nothing, too. It existed, but its existence was a threat to all else. It was the raw stuff of unbeing.
No, that's not a road, he said as the one stripe of something slowly hard¬ened into visibility. It's a bridge.