“Now what?” he asked.
Vond looked about, considering. “I don’t think I want to fool around with that stuff,” he said. “If it is chaos, it’s dangerous.”
Sterren was not about to argue with that; he said nothing.
“What if I were to fold back the edge, here? That might even be useful; if the magic that holds that stuff back ever fails, a wall here would be a good second line of defense.”
Again, Sterren was not inclined to argue, although he thought Vond was talking nonsense. He could not help balking at the immensity of the idea, however.
“Fold it back,” he said, his voice cracking.
“Why not?” Vond said. “I’ll need to see how thick it is,though.”
“How thick what is?”
“The World, of course!” He bent over, peering down between his dangling feet, and Sterren watched as a narrow hole appeared in the sand before him.
Sand slithered steadily up into a ring around the hole, and did not slide back down to fill it in again. Instead the surrounding ring grew and spread.
Vond stared down into this unnatural opening for several minutes, and Sterren settled down to sit on a dune and watch. From where he sat he could not see into the hole at all, but he found he did not much care.
At last, Vond straightened up. “I can’t find the bottom,” he said. “I went down well over a mile, I’m sure.” He shrugged. “Well, I’ll just peel back the top layer, then, and fold that up.” He looked about, calculating, and his gaze fell on Sterren.
“Oh,” he said, “I’d better get you out of here. This may be messy.”
“All right,” Sterren said, greatly relieved but trying not to show it. He stood up.
In an instant, he had been swept up by that now-familiar magic and was airborne again, flying at a fantastic speed back toward Semma, moving so fast that once again, as he had at high altitude, he had trouble breathing.
Breathless moments later, he landed, stumbling, on a village street, in the shadow of the walls of Semma Castle.
CHAPTER 37
Carried over the intervening distance, low rumblings occasionally reached the village. From his perch in the castle tower Sterren could see huge chunks of sand and rock shifting in the distance, but he could make out no details.
After dark the noise continued, and an eerie orange glow lit the southern skies. The glow seemed to wax and wane erratically, and occasional sparkles of red or pale blue light rippled across it. Sterren was very glad he hadn’t used another of his ideas and suggested that Vond go fetch the lesser moon out of the sky; folding back the edge of the World was quite terrifying enough.
By noon on the eleventh of Harvest the job was complete; where once the edge of the World had been marked by a distant line of gold, now it was marked by a distant line of black that Sterren assumed to be stone, and a tiny black dot was approaching that could only be Vond, returning.
Sterren decided that the tower of Semma Castle was not where he wanted Vond to find him; he headed for the stairs.
He passed Shirrin in the sixth-floor hallway and almost stopped to talk to her. She stared at him for a moment while he hesitated, then turned and ran, and he continued down the stairs.
When he got back to the Imperial Palace Vond was already there, sitting on air in the audience chamber with the great red doors opened wide.
Sterren paused in the entryway, unsure whether to speak to the warlock, or to slip upstairs unnoticed. Vond settled the matter by calling, “Oh, there you are, Sterren!”
Sterren strolled into the audience chamber, trying to look casual. “How did it go?” he asked.
“Oh, well enough,” Vond said, smiling. “The sand wouldn’t hold together, of course, so I pulled up a sheet of bedrock. It’s about fifty feet thick and fifty yards high, and only the gods know how long.” He stretched and added, “It felt wonderful, using all that power!”
Sterren smiled back, hoping the warlock would not see how false the smile was. “I could see the difference from the tower,” he said.
Vond nodded. “It doesn’t look like much from this distance, though.”
“True enough, but it can be seen, and when people realize what it is, think how impressed they’ll be. Their emperor has turned up the edge of the World itself! The concept is more powerful than the appearance on this one.”
Vond nodded. “But I’ll want to do something flashy next time, something everybody will see. You think about what it might be, Sterren; I like your ideas.” He paused and frowned. “Right now, though, I think I might take a nap. I didn’t sleep at all last night, while I was working, and my head is buzzing, as if the walls themselves were talking to me.” He waved an arm about vaguely.
Sterren nodded and watched silently as Vond drifted off toward his private chamber.
Vond still did not realize what was happening, Sterren thought. He wondered how long it would take and when Vond would catch on.
He strolled aimlessly out of the audience chamber into the entrance hall, where the rosewood door of the council chamber caught his eye. He crossed to it, hesitated, and then opened the door and peered in.
The chamber was empty. All sign of Ildirin’s sudden demise had been scrubbed away.
Sterren wondered how the other servants had received word of Ildirin’s death. Who had told them, and what had they been told? How many had decided to leave?
He closed the door and thought for a moment.
The weather was beautiful, of course, as it always was in Vond’s empire, but that might not last. He decided to enjoy it while he could. The courtyard held a magnificent flower garden.
He was sitting on an iron bench, feeling the sunlight warm on his face, and letting the scent of roses fill his nostrils, when Vond screamed.
The scream came not just from the warlock’s throat, but from the air around him, from the palace walls, and from the stone of the earth itself; everything vibrated in rhythm. The stones groaned, so deeply that the sound was more felt than heard, while the air shrieked and even the leaves of the garden whistled piercingly.
The scream had no words; it was shapeless terror given voice.
The echoes were still fading, the air still humming, when the window of Vond’s bedchamber exploded outward into the garden, spraying shattered glass in every direction; Sterren ducked and covered his head with his arms as shards rattled down on all sides.
When the last tinkling fragment had settled, he looked up and saw Vond hanging in the air above him. The warlock wore only a white tunic, and his face was almost equally white. His eyes were wide and staring, his hands trembling.
“Sterren!” he called. “Sterren!”
Sterren said quietly, “I’m here.”
Vond heard him and looked down. He plummeted from the sky and landed roughly on the graveled path, falling to his knees and only catching himself from falling flat on his face with one outstretched hand.
He looked up at Sterren and said, “The nightmares, Sterren, they’re back!”
Sterren nodded. “I thought so,” he said.
Vond’s expression changed suddenly. Sterren’s calm cut through his fear and released anger and uncertainty. “You thought so?” the warlock demanded.
Sterren blinked and said nothing.
Vond rose to his feet, using warlockry rather than hands and legs. “Just what did you think? I had a nightmare, how would you know anything about that?”
Sterren hesitated, trying to phrase an answer, and Vond continued, “It was just a nightmare! It wasn’t... wasn’t that. It couldn’t have been. It was just a nightmare, my mind playing tricks on me.”