“And the Unbounded… what is that?” If there was a Bounded, its opposite must also exist.
He shifted a bit, and a shadow touched his eyes and his face. “It is beyond the Edge. It is nothing. Terrible. Nothing.”
He was afraid. His fear, deep and profound, shaped his thoughts and deeds. To know more of that fear could be a useful thing. “Was the Bounded at one time the Unbounded?”
He pursed his thick lips and clasped his hands together tightly on his fine table, considering his answer as if my question were not rampant nonsense. “Some say it. I don’t hold with it. I say we are as we are. I certainly have no memory of such a time.”
“Why is your king to lead you to victory over all bounded worlds?”
At this, the Guardian drew himself up even tighter and glared at me. “The dwarf told you this?”
“I heard it said.”
“He should not have said it. The dwarf and those like him are too eager. You are not the king. You are not to know our business.”
“But now I do, so you may as well explain.”
He considered for so long a while that I was sure he would refuse. But after a time he rose and circled the room again, brushing invisible specks of dust from the plain tables and chairs set about the room. “You have seen a firestorm?”
“Yes.”
“I suppose they are quite common outside the Bounded.” The slightest hint of a question in this statement.
“No. Not common.”
“But you know of them. The Singlars claim you caused one to stop, so you must understand their nature.”
“That was only a coincidence. In fact, I was going to ask you about them. What are they? How often do they occur?”
“Humph. They come from the same place as you, so your question is clearly foolish and deceitful. The storms tell us that those outside the Bounded - maybe you and your uncivil companion - do not care about our survival. The Source prophesies that our king will not allow this destruction to continue, and that he will shape the destiny of all bounded worlds. We do not know how that is to occur. Because of the firestorms, some believe it will be a great violence, and thus our king will be victorious in this conflict.”
“And what do you think?”
He stopped behind his table, directly in front of me, and drew up to his full height. “I think only as the Source commands me. But I have not yet seen our king. So I encourage our people to nurture their fastnesses and wait.”
“Does the Source know the nature of the storms?”
“The Source knows all.”
“Can you take me to the Source?”
“Certainly not!” He ground his thick, knobbed fingers into the edge of the table. “Only the Guardian and the king may visit the Source. I think you’ve asked quite enough questions, traveler. I think you should take your leave of the Bounded.” He pointed to the door.
The Guardian’s fear washed over me like a heavy sea lapping at the sides of a boat. Frightened men were always more dangerous than they might appear, so I didn’t think it wise to push him further. I hadn’t forgotten the two beefy maintainers outside the door.
I stood up to go and bowed respectfully. “I am not your king, Guardian. I have no desire to be a king of anything. I just want to understand about my dreams, and about your world, and how they are related. Nothing more. And so I present you with this proposition. Allow me to stay here for a while. Tell the Source of me and see if it is willing to hear my questions. If not, I promise to go peacefully, leaving you my sincere thanks. And in either case - answers or none - I will grant you the name you desire.”
“You make no claim?” Incredulity dripped from his tongue.
“No claim. I don’t want to rule anyone. Ever. I’m not suited to it. And I have no wish to make my home in the Bounded.”
He dropped into his chair and drummed his fingers while he looked at me. When he made his decision, he leaned forward. “And if I tell you the Source refuses to answer… ”
“… I will present you the name Mynoplas, and then I’ll go. Do we have a bargain?”
“For now you may stay. Until I consult the Source.”
He dearly wanted a name, for he was still very much afraid of me.
CHAPTER 13
It is a strange fact of war and politics that fortunate circumstances can condemn the best of strategies to ruin. Another of Lord Parven’s maxims. I wasn’t sure that I had actually stopped the firestorm on my first day in the Bounded, only that I had kept myself intact, but it happened that no more of them struck in the days following. And because this astonishing and welcome eventuality was associated with my arrival, the people of the Bounded came to believe I was their king.
Whenever I explored their city, they bowed or cheered as I passed. When I attended the Guardian’s daily audiences, the petitioners knelt before me and begged my indulgence or my hearing. They would not attend to the Guardian, even when I insisted they do so. I started sitting in the retiring room behind the gold curtain to listen discreetly, but it only took them two days to find me and come after me again.
And, of course, all this made my bargain with the Guardian go sour very quickly. At first he only grumbled and snarled at me as we sat at meals. Eventually I decided it was politic to stay away from his audience sessions, which annoyed me, as I was learning a great deal about life in the Bounded from listening to its troubles. But even that did not pacify him, and whenever I asked if he had yet spoken to the Source, he turned red and tightened his lips. “The Source has said nothing of you. No answers to your queries have been spoken.” Then he clamped his mouth shut. But he didn’t send me away.
I was no less irritated than he, because seven days had passed, and I’d learned nothing of real importance. I was worried about my mother and worried about what other untoward events my father might be blaming me for. But nothing could be done about either concern, and I didn’t know of anyplace else to look for the truth. So we stayed and tried to learn what we could.
Though the Guardian disapproved of our wandering, Paulo and I spent our days poking about the Blue Tower, also called the King’s Fastness, and the Tower City, trying to discover how the place worked. Everyone in the Bounded seemed to be holding his breath, waiting: waiting for the mythical king, waiting for the next firestorm, waiting for someone to come and give all of them names. Life was dreadfully dull.
The Blue Tower itself revealed little. The lamps lit and darkened themselves in a rhythm quite familiar to those who’d lived in sunlit worlds. You could control them with your fingers, too, in the way of ordinary lamplight. A few other fastnesses in the Bounded had slot windows and lamps like these, and the Singlars watched the lights in those towers to measure their days, passing the information from tower to tower. Besides his maintainers, the Guardian had an army of servants at his beck, a hundred quiet, oddly shaped men and women who wore ruffled collars over the same brown tunics as the other Singlars wore. Neither servants nor Guardian seemed to understand why the lamps behaved in the way they did. It was only one of a thousand things they didn’t know.
Beyond the tasks of serving or protecting the Guardian, the servants in the Blue Tower could tell me nothing of other people’s occupations. The Guardian’s food was grown or raised, fabric was woven and thread was spun, but no one could say who did those things or where. Meat and flour, oil, fruit, fabric, pottery, and all types of goods arrived in the storerooms of the Blue Tower, seemingly without the interference of servants or laborers, and were used as the Guardian desired.