Winter Door (26 page)

Billy backed off. “I just wanted to help him.”

“Walk,” the fliers said in unison. The air reverberated with the echoes of their buzzing voices.

Rage exchanged a swift, frightened glance with Billy as one of the fliers hauled the wizard to his feet. The wizard staggered.

“Where are you taking us?” Billy said, using an aggressive tone so unlike his usual gentle one that Rage guessed that he was trying to draw the creatures’ attention.

One of the fliers gestured upward again. Billy obeyed, turning to walk up the ramp, and Rage did the same. When Billy glanced at her, she took the chance to signal her puzzlement at their being taken to the top of the tower. “Maybe their master lives up there,” he murmured.

“Silence,” commanded the flier behind them, lifting its lance. “No communication.”

Rage dared not say anything more. She looked back at the wizard shambling along like a sleepwalker and again felt an unwanted stab of pity for him. He might have failed his responsibilities and neglected those who cared for him, but as far as she knew, he had never knowingly set out to hurt anyone.

She tripped in her zebra slippers and wished that the alarm in her world would hurry up and go off. She wasn’t sure you could die while dream-traveling, but she didn’t want to test it out. Then her heart sank as she remembered that she had not set the alarm! She told herself it didn’t matter. Her uncle might come home, or the phone might ring, or she might just wake at any second. For the wizard’s sake, she must be careful to let the Stormlord—to whom she assumed they were being taken—understand that the wizard had nothing to do with their activities, for when she and Billy vanished, he would be left to bear the brunt of the Stormlord’s displeasure.

Stumbling again in her oversize slippers, she wished uselessly that she were more sensibly dressed. It was going to be hard to get the master of Stormkeep to take her seriously, dressed as she was. She had not looked at the other prisoners, but when they passed a small child, Rage wondered what the poor little mite had done. The child seemed to her not so much asleep as sunk into some evil dream. Was this “aligning,” then? They passed a young woman, and it struck Rage that the prisoners bore deep-etched lines of despair, no matter their age. The vibrating hum did not cease, though it had dropped in volume when the gray fliers appeared.

The ramp ended at an open doorway. Rage followed Billy through, her heart thumping. She was startled to find that they were in a snowy, cobbled courtyard. It was night, and it took her a moment to realize that what she had taken for a tower was actually a hole cut down into the stone pillar upon which the fortress had been built.
That
was why she had not seen it.

The walls of the fortress rose smoothly on all sides. The only light was shed by torches flaring dully blue above, throwing leaping shadows to the cobbles below. As they began to cross the courtyard, Rage noticed rank upon rank of gleaming gray fliers standing motionless in perfect grid formation. Rage remembered that Elle thought they might be machines.

Two fliers standing in the arched doorway stood aside at once and allowed the other two fliers to herd their three prisoners through. Not a word was exchanged. The fliers directed them along a passage. Like the houses in the settlement, it had no ornamentation. Rage wondered if the Stormlord was human.

They entered an enormous rectangular room, passing more battalions of winged warriors to arrive at the sole piece of furniture—a plain black chair. It ought to have looked absurd in all that space, but somehow it did not. A man sat upon it, clad in a great mass of rich gray cloaks and wrappings. His stooped posture and slumped shoulders made him seem old, and his face was dreadfully white and wasted. He looked so full of despair that Rage wondered if he was not the Stormlord but another prisoner that had been made to suffer unthinkably.

Then Rage gasped. Behind the black chair, to one side, was a great, sleeping pack of the giant beasts that had chased her and Logan: neither pigs nor wolves, she saw now, but something of both. They were hard to look at because their shapes seemed to shimmer from one thing to another and then to something else.

“Stop,” buzzed the flier behind Billy and Rage, although they had already stopped.

The wizard shuffled to a halt beside them.

“What do you smell?” Rage whispered to Billy, nodding toward the man on the black seat.

“Emptiness,” he whispered back. “Same as those people in the tower.”

“No communication,” warned the winged creature at their side.

“Why are you here?” asked the man on the black chair. His eyes had been closed, but now he opened them partway, almost as if he were too exhausted to bother opening them all the way. His pupils were very black and shining, yet lifeless. They reminded Rage of the polished eyes of a stuffed animal in a museum.

“Are you the master of this place?” she asked. This strange, chilly man was so unlike the evil tyrant she had been expecting that she was confused.

“There is no master here but despair,” he answered. “Why have you come?”

“We wanted to see this wizard,” Rage said, making up her mind to tell the truth, hoping they could find out what was going on. “We want to close the winter door.”

“The winter door will remain open,” the man said.

“But it mustn’t!” Rage cried. “It is causing terrible harm to other worlds. Why would you want it to stay open?”

“I want nothing,” the man said drearily.

“Then who does want it open?” There was no response to this. “You say you want nothing but that’s not true,” Rage said. “You wanted the wizard to be your prisoner.”

“I did not ask him to come to Null, or to Stormkeep,” the man said. “Nor do I desire him as a prisoner. It is his own desires that keep him here. When he is no longer tormented by them, he will be free to leave.”

“You mean you are keeping him here because he wants to close the winter door?” Rage asked, confused.

“He cannot close it,” the man said. “Now tell me what your mistress desires here. This Lady Elle.”

Rage’s heart leapt, for it seemed that Elle had sent her letter after all. Without warning, one of the winged creatures lashed out with the blunt end of his spear, and Rage fell to her knees. “Answer the Stormlord,” it commanded.

Billy stepped forward to help her, but again a lance flashed out to block his way.

“No communication!” the flier chittered.

Rage was dizzy from what had been some sort of electrical shock.

“I
wasn’t
communicating,” Billy protested. “I was just trying to help her up.”

“Touching is communication where humans are concerned,” the Stormlord announced dully. “And for these creatures who serve me, it is an intimate thing to touch another even in the most casual way.”

“Can’t you tell them that I didn’t mean anything by it?” Billy asked.

“Did you not?” he asked. Billy blushed. “Why has your mistress invaded my realm?”

“None of us are invaders,” Rage said indignantly. “We just want to close the winter door.”

“Wanting is forbidden,” the Stormlord said. “Null was created to offer a sanctuary for those who want nothing. Those who invade do so at their peril.”

“What about the people in the settlements? They didn’t invade,” Billy said.

“Their ancestors invaded. I closed the gaps by which they came here and suffered them to remain because they were aligned to this world. It was a mistake, for they bred and their offspring were infested with desire. I see now that there is only one answer to all those worlds beyond this one where creatures yearn.”

“What answer?” Rage asked with terrible foreboding.

“The winter door will remain open until all worlds are as Null.”

“This horrible, black, sick place!” Rage cried. “No one could be happy here.” Clearly the Stormlord was himself a wizard.

“This place does not require happiness,” the Stormlord said implacably. “That is its virtue. There is no hope of joy or brightness, and in time those who dwell here cease to long for such things. Eventually all worlds will be as this one, and no one anywhere will yearn for anything.”

“Why would you want to hurt other worlds?” Billy asked.

“I want nothing, save to be free of yearning. But this will never happen while there are other worlds full of beings to yearn and invade and damage this world with their wanting and hungering. The door is open and so will it remain until all share the peace of this world.”

“This isn’t peace!” Rage said. “This is a nightmare! And why did you keep the wizard a prisoner?”

“I have told you that it was the wizard’s desire to be free from the pain of longing that drew him here. Just as it calls to you.”

“Wh-what do you mean?” Rage stammered. “I came here—”

“Seeking an end to pain,” the man said. “The machine felt it when you were near and so did I. There is only one way to end pain, and that is to want nothing.”

“But…that would be death!” Rage said.

“Death is merely oblivion. This world offers another way. To live, and yet to be free from desire. You came here for that reason.”

“I…I…” Rage faltered to a stop. She felt uneasily that the man was uttering a truth, albeit a twisted one.

“She didn’t come here for this black, cold emptiness,” Billy said firmly. “Nor did I.”

“No, you came here because of what you desire, boy, and yet that desire can never be fulfilled. In your heart, you know it already.” Billy paled. The Stormlord continued. “For the last time, tell me why your mistress came here. She is not a wizard, or I would have sensed it. But she has some great power that is unknown to me, with which she disrupts Null.”

Rage thought of the earth tremors, and the maid’s assertion that they had begun when Elle arrived. Was that what he meant? “You will have to ask
her
about the source of her power,” she said. “You don’t imagine that we who serve her would know such things, do you?”

The Stormlord stared at her for a long moment. “Very well. You will remain here until your mistress comes to seek you. Then she will answer my questions.”

“What are you going to do with us?” Billy asked.

“You will be aligned, and this wizard will be realigned, for it is clear that your appearance has caused him to regress. The machine felt it, and so did I. That is why I commanded that the link be broken. He will need realignment before he can be reconnected.” He seemed to look closely at Billy for a moment. “It will take longer for you because there is only a very little darkness in you yet. It will have to be coaxed to life if it is to grow.”

“You are a hateful man,” Rage cried, too angry to be afraid. “You like hurting people, and you
want
them to be sad and miserable or you would never have made such a horrible, ugly world. And what about all those other people you have chained up in your tower. Do they all want nothing? Even the children?”

“I see that you come from a world that deludes itself that children are innocent, by which you mean witless slaves with no ability to affect or be affected by the worlds they occupy,” the Stormlord said with hollow humor. “I do not make that mistake. The children of the invaders are more difficult to align because they have not experienced enough pain. They must be made to know it without having experienced it. They will have to remain here for many years before they can be allowed to leave this place.”

“You must be mad!” Rage said. The ground under their feet pitched violently and then gave a long shudder. It was the strongest earth tremor they had yet experienced.

“Why does your mistress attack Null when she claims to desire a parley?” The Stormlord’s dull monotone did not alter, and yet it seemed to Rage that his eyes had grown more densely black.

“No one is attacking you,” Billy said before Rage could stop him. “And you are wrong about yearning only leading to pain. Not everyone wants to be free from it. Maybe yearning is actually more important than having what you want.”

The floor trembled under their feet again, and this time the Stormlord rose to his feet. Now that he was not slumped in his chair, Rage saw that he was very tall. “So that is your trick, lad?” he said to Billy. “You think to strike at my world by accepting pain and embracing it?” He made a signal and again the winged creature struck out with its lance. Billy cried out and fell convulsing to the ground, blood dripping from his nose. Stepping forward, Rage groped in her pocket for a handkerchief. Instead, she encountered something soft. It was the pouch of sleep dust Thaddeus had given her! She did not know how it had come into her pocket, but she pushed her hand into the pouch, scooping up some of the fine, silky dust, and hurled it into the face of the Stormlord.

He swayed and his eyes rolled back in their sockets as he collapsed at their feet. The fliers didn’t comprehend what had happened, and Billy was up and snatching the lance from the one that had hurt him. Instead of using the sharp tip, he batted at the creature with the gray end, using it as a club. There was a stunning explosion of light, and the flier fell beside its master. The other fliers did not move, although several of them were beginning to rock back and forth and flutter their wings.

“They must be linked to the Stormlord somehow, but the dust doesn’t last long,” Rage said, wondering what she had set in motion.

“It doesn’t matter,” Billy said. “You have given us the chance to get the wizard out of here, so let’s try. Do you have any of the dust left?”

Rage nodded. “What are you doing?”

Billy hoisted the unconscious Stormlord across his shoulders. “You can use the dust on him to keep him asleep, and then we’ll use him to stop the fliers from doing anything. Bring the wizard.”

Rage looked warily at the ranks of fliers about the room, all rocking and fluttering their wings, and prayed that they would not be able to act until their master awoke. Billy was already heading for the door, so Rage caught hold of the wizard and dragged him after her.

The ranks of fliers outside were standing quite still, but it was unnerving as Rage and Billy passed those gleaming, many-mirrored faces. As soon as they had passed out of their sight, Billy began to run slowly. Rage pulled the wizard along as fast as she could. They had just reached the courtyard archway when the Stormlord began to stir. Rage threw another handful of the dust in his face and he was still. Now the fliers in the courtyard barred their way, regarding them passively.