The Lady's Man (46 page)

Chapter Thirty Five.

The Land of The Sky lay ahead of them. Yorik could see it in the distance – almost. He wanted to gallop flat out towards it. And yet he couldn't seem to get any closer to it no matter how long and hard they rode. That he didn't understand. It had to be a trick of the eyes. But for two days as they'd ridden up the very gently sloping trail through the hills towards the home of the sylph, it hadn't got any closer. Instead it was always there ahead of them, disappearing into the distant horizon with the clouds and the endless rainbows. Yorik was beginning to wonder if it could actually be reached.

He'd asked Myral of course, and the wizard had been curt with him each time, telling him it would be five more days in the saddle at least and that he should stop asking foolish questions. Yorik suspected he was sore from so much riding, and so much time spent getting wet. And maybe he was also worried about what they'd find when they got there. Certainly Yorik was. The sylph weren't known for their helpfulness.

But at least he finally understood why the realm was called the Land of The Sky. Every league they rode felt like another league closer to the sky.

The only ones who weren't bothered were the horses. They were finally starting to enjoy the journey, probably because they were out of the jungle at last and away from whatever predators might have been lurking within it. Here they could see for leagues, and they couldn't be crept up on. Here there were only endless rolling hills of long grass flowing gently up to the distant sky filled with rainbows. So many rainbows. It seemed that they remained long after the rain had departed.

Like the weather Yorik and Myral's conversation had dried up over the previous days. In fact they hardly spoke at all save to discuss practical matters. The state of the trail ahead, the condition of the horses, how much further they could ride each day and where to set up camp for the night. There was no point in talking about what they would find when they finally arrived. Neither of them knew and talking about it only made things harder.

It was a difficult time for them and Yorik's thoughts were often travelling in strange directions. Which was why he didn't notice the man standing on the trail ahead of them until he called to them.

“Yield!”

Yorik's immediate impulse was to reach for his sword when he heard the command yelled at them, but he stopped before his hand had started to draw the blade. The man was no enemy, no paladin of the Iron Hand as he'd feared. He was not undead and not Mayfall either. He was just a man, tall and thin and wearing a strange garb. And he held no weapon in his hands. But he was like no man Yorik had ever seen.

As they drew closer and he could make out more of him, Yorik realised he was a sylph. There was no other people he could be of. But more importantly, Yorik guessed the fact that he was standing there waiting for them, four or five days before they reached his realm, had to mean that he had been expecting them. Their journey had ended early.

The sylph was a strange man. Stranger than Yorik had expected to find. He had heard the tales of the bards of course, but never paid them much coin. The bards would spin a tale for a few coppers; any tale. And they would make it sound true even when it wasn't. That was their gift.

So when they'd spoken of winged men with skin of pale alabaster he'd assumed that they were simply spinning a tale. But they hadn't been. The sylph was indeed the colour of pale alabaster, and he did have wings on his back. Small feathered wings that could never have lifted him off the ground, but which flapped as quickly as the heart of a frightened woman beat. But there was more strangeness to him than that. Far more.

His eyes were silver. Not just the circles themselves, but where there should have been whites they too were silver. He was marked in silver too; long lines and geometric patterns of silver that covered every inch of his exposed skin from his forehead to his feet. According to the bards those markings were tattoos. The places where his skin had been damaged and the silver blood that flowed within him had risen to the surface and stained his skin.

As for his body it was strangely proportioned. Thin as he'd expected, but far too long. He stood at least a good head taller than Yorik but surely weighed far less. And his arms and legs were like sticks. Very fine sticks. There was not a trace of a muscle anywhere on them. Something he could see only too clearly since the sylph chose to wear a short skirt and a cotton top without sleeves. Strange garments for a man to wear he thought. Had he been a woman Yorik would have called them indecent.

But probably none of that mattered as much as the fact that the man had come to meet them.

“Well met sylph. You know our purpose?”

Myral asked the question of him even before the horse had come to a halt, and Yorik let him speak. He was not here to speak, only to carry the thoughts and act as the eyes of the Lady. So instead of speaking he whispered her name and let the Lady come to him to watch as she wanted. And by the time he'd dismounted and was standing beside Myral in front of the sylph she was there with him, keeping quiet and also letting the wizard speak.

“Of course I know wizard. All of my people know why you have come, and none of them want you in our realm. Not when you will most likely soon be dead at the hands of the thane and he will then know that you came to us. Or worse that this one will bring him directly to us.”

The last was aimed directly at Yorik.

“So you know then that a new thane has been loosed upon the world sylph.”

“Generan.”

The sylph gave them his name but not out of politeness Yorik knew. He just wanted not to be addressed as “sylph”.

“And how could we not know? We are always alert for the signs of the thanes. We know their power only too well and we do not wish to know it again.”

And that Yorik realised was the reason he had come to greet them early. Not to help them, but to send them away so that they would not bring Mayfall to them. His hopes sank quickly. They were being kicked out before they'd even arrived.

“Then you wish to help us stop him.”

Fortunately Myral wasn't so weak of spirit.

“We will help if we can. But there is little we can do and we will not risk ourselves to do it. We will tell you what we know, but we will not allow you to enter our home. Should the thane come for us we have taken precautions and we would not want that knowledge to become the thane's.”

“We will not speak it to him.” Yorik felt the need to defend them, especially when he suspected that the sylph was speaking more of him than Myral. “On my honour as a paladin of the Order of the Lady.”

“You do not need to speak it stripling. If you face the thane again you will do it as a man apart from your mistress and you will die. And then should he choose it he will simply take the knowledge from you as he takes your life.”

The sylph turned to face him directly, his eyes accusing him of some terrible crime. And Yorik already knew he was guilty. That knowledge had been with him for every league they had travelled. The pain in his soul was far worse than the pain of his slowly healing body.

“I do not fear for my life sylph. And since I created this monster I will gladly give my life to destroying it. Tell me what I must do to kill the thane and I will do it.”

“You? You did not create this.” The sylph's voice rose a little in surprise. “Do not grant yourself such power paladin.”

“I killed the wizard for his murderous crimes against my family. I did it out of vengeance instead of justice. And as the reward for my wrath Mayfall gave himself to the thane. This is my dishonour.”

“Dishonour.” The sylph shook his head as if in disbelief. “This has nothing to do with such things. Stop speaking as a metal clad fool and listen.”

“The wizard created this himself. He gave himself to the Nameless in exchange for power as do all thanes. Thanes are always of wizardry first and only. They are our mistake and our doom, peculiar to us alone. It is the price that we pay for our ambition. To truly taste greatness a wizard must know ambition. He must dare. And he must wager everything. And the one called Mayfall did that. He wagered and he lost as all who do as he did will do. He created this nightmare long before you killed him.”

That did not make any sense to Yorik. After all, the thane hadn't been around until Mayfall had died. Maybe some of that doubt showed on his face.

“Wizards seek congress with power. It is our nature. We always seek out power in all its forms. And some of us, those who are the greatest risk takers or who lack too much wisdom, seek too much. That is what your wizard did. He sought the greatest power he could find. The power of the void itself. The power of the making and the unmaking. He sought out the Nameless as it is called.”

Despite having been told by Myral that that could not have happened, Yorik believed the sylph. It made sense. But it didn't matter whether a thane had found him and possessed him or he had called the Nameless to him; he had done it when he was dying, and that was still Yorik's doing.

“None but a fool would do such a thing. Because the power is vast, beyond measure, but the danger is greater still. The void cannot be contained. That is what it is. You could not hold it in a pot for it would eat the pot. It would consume any container. And in the same way you cannot hold it within a body and a soul. It will eat them too.”

“The one you called Mayfall was being consumed from within long before you killed him. Long before he arrived in Ender's Fall. He was fighting to hold that which he had summoned inside him. And he was losing. Little by little the power that he had sought was consuming him. Eating him from the inside out.”

“You said that he did terrible things. Such is normal for those who try to contain the void. The fear that builds within them – not just of death but of becoming nothing – drives them in dark and terrible directions. They see their doom approaching and they must prevent it at all costs. So they seek power from others if they can steal it. However they can steal it. All the power that they can find to help them contain that which hungers for their living souls. It is never enough.”

“And as they slowly lose the battle they know that they are being eaten alive. That they are being unmade. They are in torment, suffering and in pain, without hope and terrified by their fate. And so they will do anything they can to feel alive and powerful again. They will always hunt for that which made them feel happiest. And those who seek this sort of power were never those who knew the joy of a heart well loved.”

“And so the cycle begins. The Nameless consumes a little of the wizard. The wizard learns fear and desperation and fights it. He draws strength from his dark arts and dark deeds. He hunts for ever more powerful and darker magics to aid him. Necromancy, demonancy, vampiric magic. There is no magic he will not try in order to save himself from what lurks within him. There is nothing he will not do. And though he cannot accept it, there is nothing that will save him.”

“And at the same time the wizard has to deceive himself. To pretend that he is not being eaten alive. So he gives in to his desires; all of them. Whatever can make him feel triumphant. He relishes victory and power over others. Believing that in them he may have truly tasted the fruit of the gods. That he can remain in command of the Nameless living within him.

But the wizard is not in command. And sooner or later the Nameless will take a little bit more and the wizard will grow more frightened and more desperate. That fear makes him hunger for ever greater victories and triumphs in turn. And so the cycle grows ever more terrible.”

“Most of those who have accepted the Nameless to themselves have already done worse and more terrible things as mortals than they will ever be able to do as thanes.”

“When you killed Mayfall you simply brought that cycle to its natural end. Perhaps a little sooner than it would have come by itself, but that was for the good. What was for the ill was that you waited too long to kill him. He should have been dispatched years before. The less the wizard experiences of his doom, the less terror he knows before his end, and the less dangerous the thane that arises from him will be. For that reason if we ever suspect that a wizard has taken the Nameless to him, we kill him – if we can. And we do it as soon as possible. But paladin this was always coming and it would always have been terrible. From the day when that foolish wizard drew the power of the Nameless to himself, this was destined.”