Back | Next
Contents

CHAPTER SEVEN

Druadaen discovered he was still staring into the Shimmer, simultaneously terrified and fascinated. His question came out as a dry croak. “My Lady, you said that those who enter this, er, special osmotium, are unable to return through it?”

“‘Unable’? That is not known one way or the other. I said that so far as we know, no one who used it to exit Arrdanc has used it to return.”

Well, that’s certainly a significant difference, but it doesn’t help me decide whether I should risk stepping into what could be infinity, oblivion, or both. “Is there any speculation as to why the Shimmer doesn’t allow anyone to come back?”

The Lady laughed ruefully. “There is always speculation. But the simple fact is that no one knows how it works, or when it was made, or by whom. It is not even known if it was built into this tower or if this tower was built around it. We only know that it is very, very old, since it is mentioned in the earliest records.”

Druadaen nodded, discovered he was staring into the Shimmer again. Studying it more closely, he noticed that the fine, glimmering ripples followed a pattern similar to the one he’d detected in the reflection: a slow inward collapse toward the center. It imparted the impression that he was always on the verge of falling into it…

He started, stepped back: why am I even considering this? It’s madness! Is it really worth risking my life just to find out what is on the other side—even assuming it’s not a void? But a quieter voice kept reminding him of the unlikely combination of meetings and discoveries that had led him to the Shimmer, and that it might just lead to a place where he could learn the truth of the world.

Behind him, fabric rustled; the Lady had taken a seat to one side of the Shimmer.

“I am sorry, my Lady. I am… conflicted.”

She smiled, waved away his concern. “I am in no hurry.” She frowned. “I cannot speak for the Shimmer, though.”

Druadaen straightened. “How long does it remain in this state?”

She shrugged. “The duration varies, but how much and why—?” She raised a single resigned palm toward the ceiling. “If there is a pattern, the occurrences are so infrequent and the circumstances so different that speculation is pointless.”

Druadaen shook his head. “This is madness,” he muttered. And yet, yet… “My Lady, are you sure this is the best way to see the truth of the world?”

Her smile was sad and apologetic. “I wish I was. But my affinity with the Shimmer only confers impressions and a sense of the rhythms which may govern events. It helps me feel and see pieces of reality as they move around me, forming and evolving patterns. But I have no idea how I come to that awareness.”

Druadaen returned a sad smile of his own. “I wish I could see those patterns the way you do, for just one moment. But I can’t. I can’t even be sure they exist.”

Before the Lady could answer, Druadaen felt sudden movement on his wrist. In the blink of an eye, the velene had spun out of its bracer form and wrapped around his forearm, staring at him. Then it turned toward the Shimmer for several seconds—long enough that Druadaen could not possibly mistake its focus—and then back toward him. As he overcame his surprise, the small deep-silver dragonette leaned toward the portal, tilting almost comically.

Druadaen raised an eyebrow at it. “So what’s your intent this time: saving my life or sending me to my doom?”

“It will not mislead you,” the Lady said, standing as if meeting a newly arrived visitor.

Druadaen looked dubiously from her to the velene. “About half of the time, it’s led me into danger.”

She smiled. “I did not say it would always steer you toward safety. Sometimes, taking the most promising path is also the most hazardous.”

He glanced at the Shimmer, then the velene. “And which is it this time?”

“I have no way to know… and yet, I am sure it is not malign.”

Druadaen swallowed, could hardly believe he was starting to consider walking through the—“Wait: the others! I have to discuss this with them. We travel as a company, so any decision here—”

The Lady shook her head. “The Shimmer did not show images of them. Nor is it calling to them.”

Druadaen wondered how she could be certain of the last, but her tone was the same she used when making her other preternaturally certain assertions. “Well, at least I have to tell them what I might be doing. They deserve to know.”

“They do, but if you leave, it is unlikely the Shimmer will call you again.”

How unlikely?”

She considered the glimmering circle. “It has never opened more than once for any person. Those who only meant to defer its invitation returned to find it unresponsive.” She stepped to one side of the Shimmer. “It has decided. Now, so must you.”

Druadaen rubbed his forehead. “I must at least write my friends a letter,” he muttered—but then realized: And what should I write? That I’m stepping into a maelstrom of infinite possibilities, including ignominious death? That I don’t know when or if I will ever return?

The Lady had come to stand alongside him. “I have some experience explaining such matters to those who are left behind.”

“You will tell them?”

“I will craft the message. It will be borne to them by an intermediary whom they trust. And whose understanding of the Shimmer’s nature will afford them answers to more questions than I may anticipate and touch upon in a mere letter.”

Druadaen nodded his thanks, glanced toward the shutters that separated them from the strange skyline of Shadowmere. “But if I leave them here, what will become of the hopes they vested in further journeys together, of making a better—?”

The Lady shook her head sharply. “They shall remain under my protection as long as they choose, and I can offer them employment that will be both useful to me and quite beneficial to them.”

Druadaen couldn’t be sure whether the Lady was being kind, was pushing him toward the Shimmer, or both. But a deeper reluctance was rising. “I owe my life to each of them. In some cases, more than once.”

She nodded. “Yes. And they to you.”

“That doesn’t mean I won’t worry about them.”

“Just as you will worry about them if you stay,” she nodded.

“What do you mean?”

She folded her hands. “Let us say that you turn away from this portal to whatever lies beyond. You will still persist in your quest, and so, continue to arouse the ire—and attacks—of those who wish you not to.” Her brows lowered into a severe line. “The more questions you ask, the more risky it becomes to travel with you.”

Druadaen nodded, stared at the Shimmer. Put that way, it was difficult to see which path might bring his friends greater safety, just as it was impossible to know—know!—the best path to find the answers he sought.

The velene unwrapped slowly from his forearm and bent downward. He glanced at it just as the tiny paws pulled up his sword by its baldric, brushing its pommel against his hand.

Light exploded somewhere behind Druadaen’s eyes as a shock moved through his body. Not painful, but very intense. He gripped the hilt—and felt the sword stir in its scabbard, as if it were tugging his hand.

Toward the Shimmer.

The Lady smiled. “Evidently, both your sai’niin companions have very strong opinions on your best course of action.”

Companions? Is the sword some kind of entity, too? He glanced at the Lady, then at the sword. “Trying to get me killed again, are you?”

Where Druadaen’s voice had been wry, even playful, the Lady’s was solemn. “Sai’niin has never been known to intentionally lead anyone to death. That is never its purpose.”

“It has a ‘purpose’?”

“Surely you have seen signs of that.”

Druadaen had, and had tried to discern what that purpose might be, but both the velene and the sword had been obdurately unresponsive. “Unfortunately, they do not deign to become active until a situation threatens to take a fatal turn.”

The Lady studied him. “Do they respond to events that might prove fatal—or, rather, fateful?”

Druadaen stared at her. “I will have to think on that.” His eyes slipped sideways to the glimmering circle in the room. “I have one last reservation.”

She nodded. “That your friends might try to follow you, and so, meet their deaths.”

He started. “Is it that obvious?” He considered. “Or that common?”

“Both. Although we know relatively little about those who pass through the Shimmer, the reactions of those left behind are well recorded. Among those groups where the personal bonds are strong, the instinct to ‘rescue’ the one who has departed is often equally strong.”

“If my companions decide to do so, could you, well, persuade them otherwise?”

The Lady frowned. “There is a more fundamental question: Should I persuade them otherwise? What if it is their path to follow you, just as it is yours to pass through the Shimmer?”

Druadaen sought an answer, found none. He wasn’t eager to take that step, or even compelled. But the responses of the velene and the sword seemed to echo a deeper voice within: that the ultimate consequence of all his travels, all his discoveries, had been to bring him to this place and point in time. That his next step was not the end of his journey, but the beginning.

He sighed. “I am decided.” The velene re-curled around his wrist and became a bracer. Druadaen smiled. “I guess all three of us are. So, how do I prepare to pass through?”

The Lady crossed her arms. “There is little to be done. But I must share one last thing that could have influenced your reaction when the Shimmer called you.”

Druadaen nodded for her to continue. “I am intrigued.”

“It involves the Hidden Archivist.”

He stood straighter. The kidnapping of the Hidden Archivist from his sanctuary in Tlulanxu—and Druadaen’s wildly circumstantial connections to its probable perpetrators—had been the pretext under which Dunarra’s authorities had called him to appear before them.

The Lady smiled sadly at his reaction. “I see I have your attention.”

“My attention? Assuredly. But not my understanding.”

The Lady sat again and folded her hands. “You know that the Hidden Archivist was being held in the Nidus.”

“Yes. We arrived in Saqqaru just ahead of the ships that effected his rescue. We commenced our return to Tlulanxu the next day. However, by the time we arrived, he had already returned there. Which should have been impossible… had he traveled there by conventional means.”

The Lady’s smile was wry. “Which he did not.” The smiled faded. “His rescue was a narrow affair. The commanders feared that the Archivist would not survive a fighting withdrawal. So they found another way to remove him.”

Druadaen was confused for a moment, then let his eyes wander away from the Shimmer, carefully scanning the walls of the room. “When I arrived, you called this chamber a Refractorium and that you would explain what that term meant later on.” He smiled slightly. “Is now that time?”

She smiled. “A Refractorium works much like a lens. But instead of simply focusing light and amplifying images, it can also reify the forces which comprise osmotia.”

Druadaen felt his mind tilt sideways for a moment—and then right itself as conjecture began to become comprehension. “So you created another osmotium here, in this chamber. That’s how the Hidden Archivist escaped. But—”

The Lady nodded, waiting.

Druadaen rubbed his chin. The Nidus was reportedly not just a formidable citadel, but one that was reported to be inconstant, even chaotic. As if the forces within it were subject to unpredictable, irregular change…

Druadaen looked up sharply. “The Nidus has an osmotium within it.” No, something was still missing. “So either the one created here was able to force the Nidus’ osmotium to recognize it as the ‘other end’—or someone in the Nidus forced the one there to change its destination to the new osmotium in this chamber.” He nodded to himself; the final step was obvious. “And afterwards, the Hidden Archivist used yet another osmotium to reach one in or near Dunarra. That’s how he was in Tlulanxu long before we returned from Saqqaru.”

The Lady nodded the way a pleased teacher might have. “That is the gist of it.”

Druadaen tried to picture the hectic activity in the chamber at that time but gave up: he had no idea what such mancery might look like. Assuming it was a mantic effect at all. “I imagine it must have involved great risk.”

“It did,” she sighed. “More than we knew.” She stared at him.

He saw her eyes and understood it as plainly as if she had said it aloud: “Because those events could influence what might happen—or what I might find—when I pass through the Shimmer.”

She nodded. “Using the Refractorium had its own peculiar costs, that day. Once a temporary osmotium was created here, it was incumbent upon one of the rescuers to alter the Nidus’ permanent portal so that they were connected. But without their constant attention, it would have reverted to its original state.”

Druadaen nodded. “So they had to, er, maintain the effect until the Archivist had gone through. Which means they were unable to go through themselves.”

The Lady’s hands were clenched and white. “And we hadn’t the time to worry over that person’s fate.”

Druadaen nodded, even as he wondered, And who is “we”?

“As the Archivist stumbled through, he shouted that he was being pursued. For all we knew, his captors could have arrived in the next moment and overwhelmed us.”

“So you destroyed the osmotium you made on this end?”

The Lady seemed to collect herself for a moment. “No, we employed a more… aggressive alternative. We had foreseen that, if the Archivist had to be brought through the Nidus’ osmotium, the person controlling it would have to remain behind—and close at hand. So if any of the forces pursuing the Archivist could not follow him, they were likely to turn on that person. So we used the osmotium here to eliminate those pursuers.”

“How?”

“By repositioning our osmotium in this chamber before the pursuers came through.”

Druadaen shook his head. “I do not understand.”

The Lady pointed at the Shimmer.

Druadaen’s spine grew suddenly cold. “You moved it closer to the Mirror. So that when the pursuers emerged here, they went through?”

She nodded. “I am told it has only been used that way three times before.”

“What happens to those who enter that way?”

She closed her eyes. “A few seem to survive. Most are never seen again.” She opened her eyes. “Understand: this outcome only occurs when the person entering the Shimmer has not been called by it.”

Druadaen, slightly relieved, could not tell if this made the idea of entering the Shimmer more terrifying, more compelling, or both. “How many of the enemy were… well… ” He gestured at the silent portal.

“At least half a dozen, but they were just a blur. The osmotium was only two feet from the Shimmer and they came at a run. But I would not be surprised if several survived. At least three of those who came into contact with it did not simply disappear, but dwindled into the surface of the Shimmer—just like those whom it has called.”

“And the others?”

She shook her head. “They simply passed into the Shimmer. I saw no shrinking, no transition at all.”

Druadaen nodded. “Only one other question. It has been almost nine moonphases since the Hidden Archivist was rescued, yet it seems you believe that some of the pursuers might have survived on the other side of the Shimmer.”

“Yes.”

“So do you have reason to suspect that they will still be near the other end of the Shimmer? After all this time?”

“Not particularly. But then again, they are among the least predictable of opponents.” She measured his uncomprehending stare. “They were Tsost-Dyxoi, of course.”

“Of course,” Druadaen croaked. Dunarra’s foes since the end of the First Consentium. The ones who’d probably killed his parents and had come quite close to killing him just before he’d been inducted into the Couriers.

The Lady was studying his face closely. “Are you still resolved to go?”

“I am,” Druadaen heard himself say. Instead of pushing him away from the Shimmer, the possibility that the Tsost-Dyxoi might be involved was drawing him toward it. “I will trust to your wisdom and discretion concerning a message to my friends.” He smiled ruefully, expecting he already knew the answer. “I would prefer to go with my full kit, but I suspect there isn’t time for that, either.”

The Lady smiled back. “Almost certainly not. However, we have adequate gear here.” She gestured to a low, wide trunk at the other end of the room.

He discovered a small, efficiently packed backpack and first-rate equipment. It was all, however, of wildly different manufactures and origins. “I can see you have done this before.”

“And even so, we usually neglect to include something important. Do you anticipate any other needs?”

He considered. “A parka.”

“You shall have it. But… why that?”

“Because as a Courier I visited climes that were intemperate due to heat and to cold. One learns quickly enough that in a hot region, you may strip off whatever layers you must. But in a cold region, if you cannot add a thick layer to retain heat, death can come very, very quickly.”

Before long, a prefatory knock on the door barely preceded the entry of the Solorin nativist that he had passed on the stairs. The fellow was carrying a very well-made coat. It wasn’t exactly a parka, but it was more than adequate and probably less bulky.

The Lady, who’d watched Druadaen’s preparations, observed, “I suspect that you already are better prepared than most who step through the Shimmer.”

Druadaen felt slightly more optimistic about the outcome of his impending mad adventure. “You refer to the velene and the sword, I presume?”

“They will no doubt be helpful, but I was reflecting upon something the dragon communicated to me: that you have a dragon mind.”

“A dragon’s mind?”

“No: that you have a dragon-mind.”

Unsure how those things could be different, Druadaen murmured, “That’s a rather strange thing to say.”

“Yet that is specifically what was conveyed.”

Druadaen shrugged his shoulders into the rucksack’s straps. “I imagine a dragon-mind is one that can’t be read.” The dragon had certainly been surprised, and somewhat rattled, by that discovery.

But the Lady was shaking her head. “As you point out, a dragon’s mind is inviolate: their thoughts cannot be influenced nor can their memories be read. But also like you, a dragon’s dreams are neither predetermined nor orderly. Nor has there ever been contact between them and the gods. They deem all this to mean that theirs is ‘a mind beyond reach.’” Her eyes grave, she held his for a moment before adding, “If you do indeed have a dragon-mind, you are singularly well suited to investigate mysteries that others might wish to hide.”

“That would make me singularly threatening to their interests, as well.”

The Lady, eyes unchanged, nodded slowly, somberly. “You seem to be ready.”

Druadaen made sure the bow’s string was both secure and came easy to hand. “It seems I am.” He walked back toward the Shimmer. “Is there anything else you can tell me about the other side? Factual or fanciful: it doesn’t matter.”

“I am not sure ‘the other side’ is a single place. The few stories we have are so different in every regard that some speculate that it may lead to several different destinations. That may be why it is also called the Vortex of Worlds.”

“And it is called that by whom?”

“The name is as old as the Shimmer itself. But that, too, could be truth, rumor, or a bit of both.” She nodded at his readiness. “I wish you good luck, Druadaen u’Tarthenex.” She waited as if expecting him to say something.

Druadaen almost laughed. Such a pivotal moment—stepping through a portal into another world or reality or both—and he had no words to share. He didn’t even have any thought in his head, other than to be alert and yet not too hasty in reacting to—well, whatever he first saw on the other side.

Then he thought about Ahearn and he did laugh.

The Lady’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “I am not sure anyone has ever laughed on the threshold of the Shimmer.”

He chuckled. “That may be because they did not have such a confounding companion as my friend Ahearn who would, this second, be making merry at my expense.”

“How so?”

“Why, for being a needlessly voluble Dunarran, who—at the worst possible moment—had nothing to say!”

She laughed with him. “He sounds a good friend.”

“He is.” And maybe, having no grand parting words is a virtue akin to simplicity. “Just wish them well for me.”

He stepped through the silvery ripples of the Shimmer, wondering what would happen next.


Back | Next
Framed