Mountain of Black Glass (99 page)

One such terrible moment had come as a dying Lycian soldier, speared in the back, had come staggering toward her. The young soldier, who only minutes earlier had offered Renie a drink from his water skin, had headed straight for her through the madness of battle as though he could see no one else, the spear that had murdered him protruding through his ribs, its long shaft dragging behind him like a stiffened tail. As his strength ended, he had reached out his hands, the clutch of a drowning swimmer, a man sinking in his own blood. Renie had stepped away, afraid he would clutch at her and leave her defenseless. The look in his fast-glazing eyes had burned her so badly she thought she would never forget it.

Is this what's coming?
she had wondered in helpless horror.
Is this what the future will be like? We'll make worlds where anything is possible, see real, breathing, sweating people killed before our eyes every day—even murder them ourselves—and then sit down to dinner afterward as though nothing has happened?

What kind of future were human beings creating? How could the human mind, an organ millions of years old, sort through such mad, science-fictional riddles?

The day had crawled on.

Spears had jabbed out at her from behind shields like vipers hiding among rocks. Without warning, entire sections of the battlefront had gone shoving past, so that the worst fighting was suddenly behind her instead of in front, and for all her caution she and her companions found themselves in the middle of the conflict again.

And all around, death. It was not a quiet presence during the long day—not a pale-faced maiden bringing surcease from pain, not a skillful reaper with a scalpel-sharp blade. Death on the Trojan plain was a crazed beast that roared and clawed and smashed, which was everywhere at once, and which in its unending fury showed that even armored men were terribly frail things; in a moment, all that solidity could be turned into bloodmist and bubbling cries and soft, tattered flesh. . . .

 

Renie sat up, trembling.

“!Xabbu?” She could barely find her voice. “Are . . . are you awake?”

She felt him move beside her. “I am. I cannot sleep.”

“It was so horrible . . . !” She covered her face with her hands, wishing like a small child that when she took them away everything strange around her would be gone, the too-bright stars and their dim reflections, the thousand campfires. “Jesus Mercy, I thought this post-trauma stuff wasn't supposed to hit for a few years.” Her desperate laugh almost began a fit of weeping. “I keep telling myself it's not real . . . but it might as well be. People really did that to each other. People really
do
that to each other . . .”

He reached out and took her hand. “I wish that I could find something to say. It was indeed horrible.”

She shook her head. “I just don't know how I can go through that again. Oh, God, it will be light again in a few hours.” She had a sudden thought. “Where is T4b?”

“He is sleeping.” !Xabbu pointed to a shadowy shape curled a couple of meters away from the fire. Relieved, Renie turned back to her friend and marveled for a moment at how quickly she had grown used to !Xabbu's new human body, a vessel which had quickly filled with !Xabbu-ness. The slender, youthful face, that of a stranger a day earlier, already helped soothe her simply by being in her line of sight.

“Sleeping. He's got the right idea. God, maybe all those battlegames are good for something. Maybe they harden you.”

“He was frightened and upset, just as we were.” !Xabbu squeezed her hand. “If he is sleeping, then perhaps he will be more alert tomorrow. We must all protect each other, as we did today.”

“We were lucky. We were damned lucky.” Renie did not want to think of the chariot wheel that had almost ground !Xabbu into the dirt or the spear that had hissed over her own shoulder, a hand's span from her face. It was terrifying to remember how close she had come to losing him. She ached to take him in her arms, to build something together that would shield them even for just a little while against what had been and what was to come.

“What . . . what's flying?” T4b sat up, a dim shape made even stranger by the black hair straggling across his face like a mourning veil. “Is it starting again?”

“No.” Renie tried to smile, but gave up. “Not yet. We've got a few hours.”

T4b brushed his hair aside. There was a gaunt intensity to his face that had appeared with the struggle atop Weeping Baron's Tower and which had not left since. “Look, why don't we just lock off and fly. Just . . . get out.” He produced the smile that Renie had not been able to summon; seeing the effect, she was glad she had failed. “Yeah, yeah,” he said, “it's wild funny—the guy in the Manstroid suit wants to run away. But I . . . I don't care, seen? Never thought it would be like this, me. Never would have . . .”

Renie wanted to offer him some comfort—fear and unhappiness almost throbbed off him—but as she leaned over to touch his arm, he shrank away. “We're all terrified, and we're doing our best not to get killed,” she said. “I won't stop you from doing anything you want, Javier—this isn't the military. You didn't enlist. But I believe we're here for a purpose, and I can't run away if there's a chance to fulfill that purpose.”

Jesus Mercy,
she thought.
I sound like some kind of army chaplain.

T4b was silent for a moment. Somewhere, an owl hooted, a sound so nature-documentary normal that it was only as T4b began to speak again that Renie realized it was the first noise they had heard other than their own in hours. They were on the far rim of the Trojan bivouac, and although she felt sure the feelings of dread and misery were similar all through the army of Troy, not to mention among their Greek enemies, the nearest Trojan campfire was a long stone's throw away, too far for normal conversation to drift to Renie's ears. They might almost have been alone beneath the blazing stars.

“They're not going to turn back tomorrow, are they?” T4b said slowly. “That guy Hector, he's screamin' for it, seen? He's one of those
tchi seen
six-knockers—you have to kill him to stop him. And he's bulk scorching now, 'cuz he got hit with that rock and they had to carry him off in front of everybody.” He seemed to be thinking deeply, working something out in his mind. “So there's like possibility major we're all going to get sixed, huh?”

Renie could think of nothing to say—she knew that in the same situation she would not want to hear anything but the truth. “It will be at least as bad as today. And we were lucky.”

“Then I want to tell you something. Tell both of you.” He paused again. “It's been bothering me, seen?—but if I'm gonna get boxed . . .”

“Renie.” It was !Xabbu, an odd, quiet urgency in his voice, but Renie could feel T4b working up to something.

“Wait.”

“Renie,” he said again, “there is someone in our fire.”

It took a moment for what he said to sink in. She turned abruptly to stare at !Xabbu, then followed his gaze to the low flames. She could not see anything like a person, or any shape at all, but the fire did seem to have some new quality—or rather it had lost some quality that had been present before, as though it had been simplified somehow, its flames made less chaotic or its colors reduced.

“I don't see anything.” She glanced at T4b, who was staring intently at the fire, too, arrested on the verge of some painful admission.

“It is . . . I think it is . . .” !Xabbu squinted, leaning closer, so that his cheeks and forehead were brushed with motile golden light. “A face.”

Before Renie could ask the obvious question, a female voice spoke in her ear, almost inside her head—distant but crisp, like a bell made to ring with the sound of a human throat.

The others heard it too—T4b grabbed his spear and struggled to his feet, looking around wildly. The fire was once more only a fire, but something was moving now at the edge of the circle of firelight. As if summoned by the mysterious voice, a figure walked toward them out of the darkness. For a moment the robe and hooded face made Renie wonder whether in this created world, Death had been given a traditional form after all.

“Stop,” she hissed, some instinct keeping her voice low. The shape did as she commanded, then slowly lifted and spread its hands, showing that it bore no weapons. The hood was nothing more than a fold in a thick wool cloak, which had been wrapped across the stranger's shoulders and pinned across the chest. Bright eyes looked at her out of the shadowy depths. “Who are you?” she hissed.

T4b took an aggressive step forward, spear thrusting toward the hidden face.

“Don't!” said Renie sharply. The stranger had taken a step away. Now, as T4b halted, the stranger threw back the hood to reveal an unfamiliar bearded face. “I asked you before,” Renie said. “You are running out of chances. Who are you?”

The stranger looked slowly from Renie to her two companions, then back. There was something strange in his hesitation—Renie felt sure that anyone caught and challenged while wandering around a military encampment at night would claim to belong there, truthfully or not.

“I . . . I was led here,” the stranger said at last. “By a floating thing. A shape, a light. I . . . I thought I recognized it.” He peered at them. “Did you see it?”

Renie thought of the fire, but kept her mouth shut. “Who are you?”

The stranger put his hands down at his side. “What's more important is who I'm looking for.” He seemed to be taking a step he feared he could not retrace. “This may seem a strange question. Do . . . do you by any chance know someone named Renie?”

T4b drew in his breath sharply and began to say something, but Renie waved a hand at him. Her own heart was hammering, but she kept her voice as calm as she could. “We might. Why do you . . .”

She was interrupted by T4b, whose excitement had overcome him. “Is that you, Orlando?”

The stranger looked at him sharply, then smiled a weary, relieved smile. “No. But I know him—I have talked to him only a few hours ago. My name is Paul Jonas.”

“Jesus Mercy! Jonas!” Renie reached out almost unconsciously for !Xabbu's hand and squeezed it, then pointed a trembling finger at a space beside the fire. “You'd better sit down. Somehow . . . somehow I thought you'd be taller.”

 

Renie found herself watching the newcomer closely, not so much out of suspicion—although her time in the network did not encourage her to trust anything or anyone—but more in curiosity at a man who had survived so much. The strangest thing was that Jonas' description of himself seemed exactly true: he was nobody special, an average and unremarkable man caught up in things he did not understand. Still, he was clearly not a fool. He asked intelligent questions, and thought carefully before replying to those Renie and the others asked him in turn. He had also paid attention to the things he had encountered along the way, and had struggled to understand the nature of the experience. Most unusual of all, in the midst of his terrible trials he had retained a dry, self-mocking sense of humor.

“You really are Odysseus,” she said aloud at one point.

He looked up, startled. “What do you mean?”

“Just . . .” She was embarrassed she had spoken the thought aloud. “Just what you've been through. Lost and trying to find your way home through strange lands, persecuted by the powers-that-be . . .” She waved her hand, encompassing not just the battlefield but the whole of the network. “It's like you've become the character who's the most like you.”

His smile was a weary one. “I suppose so. I've become a survivor, is what's happened. Wouldn't read too well on a CV, but it speaks volumes in these parts.”

“I wonder, though . . .” Renie looked to !Xabbu. “Things like that, it's like what Kunohara said—as if we were in a story. But what does that mean? That we don't have free will or something?”

!Xabbu shrugged. “There are other possible meanings. We could be participants, but someone else could be trying to give things a certain shape. There are many ways to understand the workings of the world—any world.” He gave Renie a shrewd glance. “Did we not have this discussion before, you and I? About the differences, if any, between science and religion?”

“But it doesn't make sense—who would be shaping a story, and how?” Renie did not want to rise to !Xabbu's bait: for all her happiness at learning that Orlando and Fredericks still lived, the larger truth was that Jonas did not bring any obviously useful answers. Before this moment, she had thought that if they ever found Sellars' escaped prisoner, he would be like a spy in some old-fashioned drama, full of hard-earned secrets. The information Jonas possessed was indeed hard-earned, but none of it shed any light on the most crucial questions. “The only candidates to be messing around with our lives that way are the Grail people themselves. Or perhaps this mystery woman.” She turned back to Jonas. “I heard her voice, just before you arrived, telling us not to be afraid. It was the same woman who appeared to us as the Lady of the Windows, I swear it was.”

Jonas nodded. “Yes, she led me to you. Orlando and his friend have seen her, too—Orlando seems to have had almost as much contact with her as I have, in fact. I'm certain that she's important—that she's more than just one of the fairground attractions, if you see my meaning. I've felt since the first that she means something to me, but what that might be, I still can't get to.”