The Rainbow Abyss

IT RAINED THE FOLLOWING DAY. After a few hours of troubled dreams Rhion walked out through the Lower Town, where he and Tally had used to go, past the Temple of Agon with its windowless granite walls, and out to the marshes, like beaten steel under a flat silver sheet of sky. There was a shrine there, to some forgotten god, crumbled almost back to its native stones now, but built upon the invisible quicksilver track of a ley. In a corner of its old sanctuary, Rhion angled the facets of his scrying-crystal to the thin, cool light, and concentrated all his power and everything he could draw up from the ley and down from the first-stirrings of the equinox-tide into the calling of Shavus' name.



While gray rain whispered in the hollows of the broken floor and the wild herons rose crying from the reeds, he summoned every foot of the road between Nerriok and Bragenmere into the crystalline lattices of the stone's heart, scrying every footbridge, every gully, every curve of the mountain track where the rain sometimes washed stones down to block the way.



But he saw no sign of the Archmage. And the light grew broad in the sky.



All over the Forty Civilized Realms, men and women would be drawing and heating water for ritual baths, shaking out the soot-colored cloaks of penitence, preparing to go masked to the shrines of Mhorvianne to ask that bright-haired Lady's forgiveness for the sins of a year. The Solarists, of course, serenely confident that there was no other god than the Sun in Mid-Heaven, would undoubtedly stay home tonight and play cards; the priests of Agon, behind their windowless walls, would hold their own smoky and terrible rites. In the Drowned Lands of Sligo the ancient rituals of the Moon would go forward, as they had gone forward for three thousand years, treading out the Maze in a shifting aura of blood and starlight.



And in the octagonal tower at Bragenmere...



Rhion shivered and blew on his cold-reddened fingers, though he knew it was not the cold that touched his flesh.



Before leaving the tower, he had made another effort to talk Jaldis out of his resolve, hoping against hope that the light of day might make the old man more amenable. Obsession, he well knew, like many things, worsens with the night.



But Jaldis had only shaken his head. "When I spoke to them - to Eric and to Paul - " And the voice of the box slid and gritted over the alien names, " - at the Solstice, I told them how to create a Dark Well, that they may see into it, and guide us through. Even that will cost them all they can raise. I cannot abandon them."



Rhion took a deep breath, knowing the words he had to say and fearing them as he had not feared the faceless soldiers of Agon. "All right," he said shakily. "I agree that someone has to go. But it doesn't have to be both of us."



Rain had wept against the shutters, the wind groaning in the rafters, hair-raisingly like the voice of something coming from the Dark Well itself. Jaldis had sat for a long time, his untouched bread and coffee before him, looking up with sightless eyes into the face of the young man who had followed him, had cared for him, and had learned from him all that he had to teach. His hand found Rhion's unerringly, as it had always done. "My son..." the voice of the box began, the voice that could embody no emotion, none of the feeling that tugged at the muscles of his face. Then, for a long moment, a pause.



"My son," he said again, more steadily. "Thank you - for I know how little you want to undertake this quest at all. But it cannot be. A cook knows by the smell of the broth what herbs are lacking. A farrier can tell what ails a horse by a glance at the stable muck. I have studied the nature of the Universe, the structure of magic, for sixty-five years, and Shavus has for thirty-five, even though for part of that time he was not aware what it was he learned. Even Gyzan, or the other great ones of our own order - Nessa the Serpentlady of Dun, or Erigalt of Pelter - might stare at the solution in that other universe and not realize that it was anything which pertained to magic at all. My son..."



His grip tightened, like a hard-polished root over the younger man's soft palm and pudgy fingers. "My son, I love you, and no more now than when you have offered to go in my stead. But yours is not a powerful enough wizardry to do what needs to be done. Maybe not even to cross the Void alive. A strange and terrible magic fills that darkness, and I do not know its strength. You simply have not the experience."



Quietly, Rhion said, "I don't want you to die."



The old man smiled. "Then I may not. It is only an hour past sunrise - there is an entire day for Shavus to reach us. And then all our fears, all our endeavors on this subject, will be for naught, and we'll laugh about them over the steam of tomorrow's coffee. But thank you. I will never forget."



Listening to the thrumming of the rain on the tower's sand-colored walls, Rhion had felt only a sinking darkness of despair. If Shavus had been delayed, the rain would delay him further. It had been too late even then to do much in the way of turning the storm aside.



And now, huddled in the sheltered corner of the old shrine under what was left of its crumbling tile roof, that despair returned, bringing panic and a hundred imagined scenarios of disaster like camp followers in its train.



Toward noon, before he left the shrine, Rhion called to the Gray Lady through the crystal and, after a few moments, saw her face in its facets, more beautiful, more ageless than in true flesh, like a crystal herself filled with hidden light.



"I don't know what I can do," Rhion concluded, having told her of Shavus' nonappearance and Jaldis' resolve to cross the Void, come what may, that night. "I can't let him go alone. He says he'll be all right, that Eric and Paul - the two wizards on the other side - will take care of him. But I can't know that."



"No," the Lady said softly. Her hazel eyes clouded, and Rhion felt a stab of guilt for laying upon her a new trouble, when, with the difference his absence could make to the power of the rites, she had sufficient worries already. "No - I understand your fears. But Jaldis is right in saying that Shavus may yet appear. He's a wily old man, and very powerful, trained in the skills of war. Neither is Gyzan to be reckoned lightly. They both know your master's resolve. If they could not come, Shavus would contrive to send word."



"To what purpose?" Rhion sighed and straightened his water-flecked spectacles with one plump forefinger. "If he tells Jaldis not to undertake the quest to this other world - which he will if he sends word at all - Jaldis will only ignore it. He is - obsessed."



"Then you must make your choice," the Lady said, and there was sadness in her eyes. "But Rhion, if you both go... What will become of Jaldis' books?"



"Ah..." Rhion looked away, unable to meet her eyes even through the crystal's tiny image. Away across the marsh, hunting horns were ringing through the drizzly mist as a party of young nobles splashed their horses through puddles, their dogs bounding happily in their wake. Rhion thought he recognized Marc of Erralswan's bright-green doublet, close beside a lady in a yellow gown with long cascades of raven curls. He did not want to lie to the Gray Lady, but Jaldis had ordered him strictly to say that he did not know.



"Rhion," she said sharply, calling his gaze back to hers. "This is not a trick. Does he think I will wait until his back is turned and then come to steal them?"



It was, in fact, exactly what Jaldis thought, and something Rhion himself would not quite put past the Lady, much as he cared for her. So he only said, "He's made provision for them. They'll be safe - Shavus or any of the Morkensiks, will be able to get to them."



"But not corrupt and superstitious Earth-witches, not Bone-Casters who weave little spell-dollies in straw and divine the future from the flight of ducks. I must go," she said, exasperation at the opinion of her fading from her face, leaving it weary and sad. "It is noon. I must rest, and prepare. And so must you, if you will do this thing tonight."



Rhion nodded. Indeed, he thought, if the victim of the spring rite were to survive, the Lady would need all her power - even as he would need all of his, such as it was, to see the other side of the Void alive. He felt spent already from long scrying. The slow stirring of the sun-tide was rising in his veins, like the pull of the tide in his blood.



"I pray the Goddess will keep you safe."



Her image faded. Rhion got to his feet, chilled and slightly nauseated, though, as usual, the nausea changed to an overwhelming craving for sweets before he was halfway up the muddy road to the town gates. He bought half a dozen balls of steamed sweet dough wrapped in greased paper in the Old Town market, enough for himself and his sons; the rain had eased by this time, and the steam from the vendor's cart blew in soft white clouds, like rags of fog in the gray air. Most of the market stands were shutting down, farmers and their wives folding up the bright-colored awnings of orange and blue, to return to their homes to prepare for the procession tonight. Not only in his own blood could Rhion feel the coming of the equinox. It was implicit in every closed shop, in every home-hurrying slave, in the steam that leaked from every window he passed on his way back to the palace. The city and all who worshipped the orthodox gods had lapsed into the time of preparation, the time of acknowledgment of their sins from whose consequences only the gods could save them. But for the mageborn there was no salvation. As he walked by the Bull and Ring Tavern in Market Lane, a glimpse of something yellow caught his eye - he saw it was the poster of the "God of Wizards" crudely pasted to the wall beside the door.



In the rooms above the library tower, he found Jaldis asleep and no sign yet of Shavus' coming. Jaldis' books, he noticed, were gone, entrusted already under every seal of protection the blind mage could devise to the Duke's care. The old man must have told him that he was going away for a time, though of course not how or where. The secret of the Dark Well was too deep, too dangerous, to be shared, even with one whose lack of ability or thaumaturgical training would have made his knowledge harmless.



The afternoon passed like the slow gray wheel that crushes out the grain. Rhion knew he should sleep, should rest and meditate, but sought out Tally and his sons, instead. The boys were far too absorbed in the excitement of trying on their masks to have much attention to spare even for their favorite of their mother's friends. It was said to be bad luck to try on one's mask before the procession, but the boys were doing exactly what Rhion and his friends had done at their age - holding the masks to their faces with meticulous care not to touch the flesh and seeing how close they could come. In the secrecy of a loft above the mews, Rhion and Tally made love, feverishly clinging to one another amid the smells of sawdust and leather and the cinnamon of Tally's perfume, and lay locked in one anothers' arms in the huddle of cloaks and horse blankets until nearly dark.



The dark fell early, overcast and grim. After a final, inconclusive attempt to argue Jaldis out of his resolve, Rhion tried to sleep, but the slow fever of the spring-tide was flowing too strongly in him now, the awareness of the heavens' turning towards their balance point... and the awareness of how increasingly unlikely it was that Shavus would arrive in time.



"You are fretted," the old man said comfortingly and patted Rhion's arm. He seemed rested, stronger and livelier and with the quiet serenity of one whose mind is made up. "That is understandable..."



"Fretted is not how I'd describe my reaction to the prospect of throwing myself into an infinity of chaos, with nothing reaching out toward me from the other side but a bunch of half-trained wizards who can't even work magic!"



Jaldis smiled. "All will be well," he said softly. "They need my help, Rhion, if they are to defeat the enemies of magic in their world - if they are to return their world to the true paths of power. I cannot turn my back."



"We can't leave this way!" he pleaded. "Shavus could be in trouble! We have no idea what's going on in Nerriok, in Felsplex, or anywhere..." He thought of Esrex again and of Tally and his children - a wizard's children - floating like chips in a tailrace on the deep intrigues of court.



Jaldis' face contracted for one moment with concern, anxiety for his friend and for all the possible permutations of what would happen in this world after they left it... then he shook his head. "We cannot think of that," he said, and his lined face was deadly grave. "Truly, truly, we cannot. Not if we are going to call forth our entire strength, our entire concentration, to make the leap across the abysses of the Void. We can think of neither the future that we go to nor the past that we leave behind."



From the massed shadows of the pillars of the library porch Rhion watched the Procession of Masks assemble in torch smoke and drizzle. The stone-gray cloaks of the penitents gave them a look of fantastic ghosts, the cressets' glare picking out here the blue mask of a grim, there a lion head's serene golden eyes. Horns, jewels, feathered dragon manes... men and women alike, no matter what god or gods they worshipped. Rhion suspected that the crowd numbered a sprinkling of Solarists - certainly he thought he had seen Esrex and Damson, discreetly masked from the eyes of other gods than Mhorvianne.



"They won't miss me," Tallisett murmured, standing in the darkness at his side. On either side of the bland silver face of a marsh-fae her unbound hair hung in curtains of bronze-gold silk, darkened with the rain and the bath. "The boys are with Dinias, his nurse is looking after them all."



Rhion trusted the furtive and sickly heir no more than he trusted Esrex, but there was no time to think of more elaborate arrangements. Dread and tension were making it difficult for him to think at all; added to those, were his growing guilt at leaving Tally and his sons unprotected and the black premonition of disaster which had settled on his heart. "Tally..." he began desperately, but she touched his arm and shook her head.



Together, beneath the cloudy cloak of his spells, they made their way to the massive bronze doors, where Jaldis waited. The smoky torchlight from the court, flaring and dying between the arcade's shadows, caught in the huge rounds of his spectacles; the voice-box with its clinking talismans seemed about to overset his fragile form, like a too-heavy yoke bound upon too young a child. Propping one crutch in the hollow of his armpit he held out his hand, and said, "My son... daughter."



Tally pushed up her mask, stepped forward swiftly and hugged him. She had, Rhion realized, been much closer to Jaldis these last seven years than he had, looking after him and making sure he was not lonely in his little attic rooms. Then, turning, she placed her hands on Rhion's shoulders, and all he could remember were all those afternoons when she'd play her flute for him in the grotto at the end of the gardens, and the hazy glimmer of firelight in her hair.



Clutching at any straw of hope, he whispered, "Keep watch for Shavus," in a voice very unlike his own. "If he comes, send him up, please, fast..."



Somewhere above them, the palace clocks struck eleven, the heavy bronze note sounding leaden and dead.



"I will." She took his face between her palms and their mouths met desperately. "I love you." Her hands traveled down his shoulders, his arms, his back, as if to memorize the shape of muscle and flesh. "Always..."



"I'll come back..."



She nodded convulsively, and he knew she didn't believe him. Then she was gone, walking swiftly through the blowing curtains of rainy mist to the dark of the palace gates.



In the black loft above Jaldis' quarters, they made the conjuration, waking the Dark Well from its shadowy quiescence, watching it deepen and clear until it stretched before their feet in an abyss of sightless chaos. Past the shuddering dark rainbow of unnamable colors, Rhion sensed things about the Void which terrified him, and it took all the discipline of seventeen years to keep his concentration unwavering upon the spells they wove in concert. For Jaldis was right: they could afford to think neither of the future nor the past, neither of what strange world they would find nor of what would befall those they loved once they had stepped through the shifting colors of that dreadful gate. He became only the spells that he worked, summoning power from air and earth and aether, watching the darkness before him deepen to blackness and to something else far beyond that, something that swallowed all matter, all light, all time.



Deep in that bottomless infinity, Rhion saw a shining pinprick of gold.



He knew instinctively that what he saw was ten or twenty times as far away as it seemed, that the flickering glimmer, the tiny sun-cross shining like a star in the blackness, had been blown huge so that they could see it at all.



And he understood that, delayed by the gods only knew what, Shavus was not going to arrive to save him from having to do this thing.



Midnight was upon them. He felt it through the shining tracks of energy which webbed the earth and carried magic forward and back to the world's farthest corners, the balance point swinging like the fulcrum of some huge beam above their heads. Beside him, Jaldis' face was untroubled, the withered lips and throat twitching in subconscious echo of the voice that spoke the words of power, the words that would open the Void itself, from the box upon his chest.



He held out a hand and Rhion took it, his own palm icy as death. The arthritic fingers gave his a quick squeeze of thanks, the only human thought they could spare, then transferred their astonishing grip to his forearm. Rhion focused his mind away from his terror - for his life, for his past, for the nightmare dreams of the future - and formed of it a cutting crystal lightblade of concentration. Together, the two men stepped into the Dark Well.



And fell. Fell into infinity.



Later Rhion remembered very little of it except the terror, and the cold that drank at his life in a single greedy draught. Jaldis' mind and soul closed around his, a blazing column of strength that had nothing to do with the old man's frail body - the splendid obverse of the strength that had swept him aside in anger when Rhion had tried to part him from his dream. It was only that, Rhion understood even then, which kept him from dying or worse than dying. He could see the tiny red beacon of the far-off sun-cross; but, as he had feared from the start, there was nothing there to touch, no magic in it, no power to draw them through.



The drag of the abyss pulled them, the black current which had never heard the name of life, and swept them away.



Then the fragile spark seemed to gleam brighter, a flare like a tiny starburst. Something, tenuous and silvery, like a single glowing spider-strand of magic came drifting towards them across the flooding spate of darkness...



He was lying on something hard. His fingers moved and felt damp stone which would have been cold had there been any warmth left in his body. A confusion of voices drifted in and out of the exhausted darkness of his brain, voices crying "Eric... Eric...!", shouting things he didn't understand.



Eric, he thought. The wizard born to magic in a world without it - the wizard who. had summoned them, brought them here.



They'd made it. They were in this world where magic no longer existed.



And, more surprisingly, he was still alive.



He was too weary for joy or exultation, almost too weary for surprise or thought of any kind. It occurred to him that he really hadn't expected to make it here.



But where and what was "here"? Unbidden, there crossed his mind, like the fragment of remembered magic, something - a dream? - some dread connected with this world, some terrible premonition that made him wonder suddenly what this world was, that they had come to...



Jaldis had said, We can think neither of the future, nor of the past we leave behind...



The stench of blood and incense filled his nostrils, dark forms bending over him out of darkness. He heard someone say Jaldis' name. Then he passed out.