I stood on the first step, jumped, grabbed hold of the second, and pulled myself up. I stood up again, jumped, and pulled myself up. The world blinked and the magic of the starry sky disappeared. The space below me was once again a perfectly ordinary, unremarkable eighth-level hall, brightly illuminated by the light streaming from its walls.
I had to climb for a long time and I was puffing and panting. Balancing on narrow steps where there was barely enough space to set my feet was very difficult. I tried not to look down. I’d climbed so high now that if— Sagot forbid—I started feeling dizzy, I would fall just like Lafresa. When my arms were just about ready to fall off, I found metal brackets hammered into the wall. That made climbing a lot easier, and after a while I reached a wide stone platform.
There was quite a substantial wind blowing up there.
At this level the call of the Horn sounded a lot deeper and clearer. That damned tin whistle was somewhere close now. The world blinked again, and once again I seemed to be in the center of a starry sky. Somewhere below me I could just make out the purple spark of Selena, barely visible among the scattered stars. I hadn’t realized just how high I’d climbed.
Right. Which way now? There were no more brackets. The wall above me was smooth, and I could barely even see it because of the magical stars. The ladder leading upward turned out to be where I was least expecting to see it—it was hanging in midair three yards away from the platform I was standing on. And for the thousandth time during my tour of the Palaces of Bone I regretted having lost the cobweb rope.
Now I had just one try at it, a single chance to make the leap.
I studied the stairway leading up into the starry sky carefully again. I could certainly give it a try—and I had no other option in any case. Sagot preserve me!
The stars flickered past below my feet, the ladder grew larger and seemed to go rushing upward, and I just managed to grab hold of the very bottom rung. It turned out to be terribly slippery and it was only by the will of the gods that my fingers held their grip and I wasn’t launched into my final flight to a meeting with Selena.
I jerked my arms, wriggling like a grass snake and gritting my teeth, pulled myself up, threw my left arm over the next rung, then heaved myself up again, swung my feet onto the bottom rung, and started climbing.
The wind started getting frisky and the Horn was singing all the time now, filling the Hall of Stars with its mighty battle roar. I tumbled into a brightly lit corridor, leaving the stars behind me.
The Horn’s roaring made the floor tremble, but I was in no hurry now. Nothing would happen to it, it could wait for me to get my breath back. After twenty yards of corridor, a new starry sky spread its canopy out over my head. Hanging among the lights of the stars was a pearly bridge. I walked across it and came to Grok’s grave.
It was a beautiful structure of amethyst. Something between a summer arbor and a memorial chapel. Four slim, elegant columns supported a dome of delicate blue. Below the dome was a gravestone with the following words carved into it:
“I made it,” I sighed, still not able to believe that I had reached my goal.
I was standing at the grave of the famous military leader and the brother of the Nameless One. But I felt no sacramental tremor, or anything of the kind. So he was a great general, a legend, and he saved the country from the orcs during the Spring War.
So what?
I’d almost saved the country, too, and from the patchy information I had, Grok wasn’t such a great hero, since he was responsible for the appearance of the Nameless One.
The goal of my quest was lying in full view on the grave. The Rainbow Horn. It hadn’t changed at all since the first time I saw it in my waking dream in the Forbidden Territory. A large twisting horn gleaming with a shimmer of bronze, encrusted with mother-of-pearl and bluish ogre bone. A beautiful, skillfully made object. A genuine battle horn that any king would be proud to own.
“May I?” There was a note of pleading in Valder’s voice.
“Go ahead,” I said, opening up and giving him complete freedom.
And now I saw a completely different Horn, surrounded with a rainbow halo that glimmered faintly in the power emanating from the artifact. The power that held the Nameless One in the Desolate Lands. The power that held the Fallen Ones in the depths of Hrad Spein and prevented them from returning to Siala. The power created by the ogres. The power that had destroyed that race and saved others.
It was failing, disappearing, like water draining away into sand. The hours of the magic that filled the Horn were numbered.
“Can you bring back its magic?” I asked the archmagician, keeping my eyes fixed on the treasure.
“No, that would require the power of the entire Council. I’m sorry.”
“Never mind,” I said, although in my heart I had been nursing a vague hope that Valder could do it and I wouldn’t have to carry this dangerous toy with me. “Can you leave now?”
“No.… It’s too weak. Perhaps later, when they fill it with power. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. Your company’s beginning to grow on me. It’s better than talking to myself.”
The reply was a quiet little laugh. And then:
“Take it, Harold, and let’s go home.”
Valder was right, there was no time to waste on thinking things over. I licked my lips, which had suddenly gone dry, and approached the grave with my heart pounding in my chest.
There it was. Lying right in front of me. The salvation and the destruction of this world. The trump card in the stupid games of the Masters. What would happen if I dared to carry it out of Hrad Spein? Would that save anyone, or just cause more grief and woe? What should I do? The choice was such a terrible one! To decide the fate of the world and hold power in your own hands. To know that what you do could tip the scales completely and everything could go straight down the ogre’s throat.
Should I really take this thing? Was it worth the lads from our group giving their lives for it?
I stood there, not knowing what I ought to do. I was in some kind of stupor. I couldn’t move a hand or a foot, as if I was spellbound. I stood there looking at the artifact, and it lay there, waiting for the man who had come to Grok’s grave to make up his mind.
“With no doubt or hesitation,” I said, repeating the promise I’d made to Egrassa as if it was an incantation, then I sent the world and its brother to the darkness, stepped forward, and picked the Horn up off the grave.
The last thing I remembered was the sky flashing and weeping a fiery rain of falling stars for the second time that day.
12
The Moth
Sleep is always a relief. It’s like a waterfall that washes away the traveler’s accumulated fatigue. Everyone needs sleep, but sometimes sleep brings nightmares with it. They are its eternal companions, never far away. Waiting for you to drop your guard and give them free rein—and that’s when the nightmares that have been building up their strength really come into their own, bursting into your mind like a tornado and fastening onto your resting brain like ticks.
Every nightmare has its own purpose. One creeps up to frighten and to drink its fill from the well of its victim’s fear, another is no more than an echo of your own conscience, yet another will tear open old wounds, and another will awaken doubt and uncertainty. There are nightmares that will drive you insane and make you want to commit suicide, and there are some …
Bright. Blinding. Radiant. Unreal. Astounding. Glittering. Sparkling snow.
Lying on the streets of Avendoom in a thick blanket, luxuriating in the rays of the good-natured winter sun. The snow crunches as a myriad beautiful, perfectly formed snowflakes break under the soles of my boots. I walk through the empty streets, listening to this crunching. Trying to hear some other sound in the city, but the city is
