“I don’t know what,” Paithan whispered. “And I don’t know how!” He stood aside. Rega emerged from behind him, her eyes wide and staring. She shrank against him, her arm stealing around his waist. Paithan put his arm around her and held her tight. Clinging to each other, they watched the jungle move in silently, surrounding them.
They could see no heads, no eyes, no arms, no legs, no body, but they each had the intense impression that they were being watched and listened to and sought out by extremely intelligent, extremely malevolent beings. And then Paithan saw them. Or rather, he didn’t see them. He saw what appeared to be a part of the jungle separate itself from its background and move toward him. Only when it was quite near him, when its head was almost level with his own, did he realize that he was confronting what appeared to be a gigantic human. He could see the outline of two legs and two feet that walked the ground. Its head was even with his. It moved straight up to them, stared straight at them. A simple act, but the creature made this simple action horrible by the fact that it apparently couldn’t see what it stalked. It had no eyes; a large hole surrounded by skin in the center had seemingly been bored into the center of its forehead.
“Don’t move!” Rega panted. “Don’t talk! Maybe it won’t find us.” Paithan held her close, not answering, not wanting to destroy her hope. A moment before, they’d been making so much noise that a blind, deaf, and drunken elflord could have found them.
The giant approached, and now Paithan could see why it had seemed the jungle was moving. Its body was covered from head to toe with leaves and vines, its skin was the color and texture of tree bark. Even when the giant was extremely close, Paithan had difficulty separating it from its background. The bulbous head was bare and the crown and forehead, that were a whitish color and bald, stood out against the surroundings.
Glancing around swiftly, the elf saw that there were twenty or thirty of the giants emerging from the jungle, gliding toward diem, their movements graceful and perfectly, unnaturally silent.
Paithan shrank back against the tree trunk, dragging Rega with him. It was a hopeless gesture, there was obviously no escape. The heads, with their awful dark and empty holes, stared straight at them. The one nearest put his hands upon the edge of the fungus and jerked on it.
The ledge trembled beneath Paithan’s feet. Another giant Joined its fellow, large fingers grabbing, gripping. Paithan looked down at the huge hands with a terrible kind of fascination, saw that the fingers were stained red with dried blood.
The giants pulled, the fungus shivered, and Paithan heard it lipping away from the tree. Almost losing their balance, the elf and human clung to each other.
“Paithan!” Rega cried, her voice breaking, “I’m sorry! I love you. I truly do!”
Paithan wanted to answer, but he couldn’t. Fear had dosed off his throat, stolen his breath.
“Kiss me!” Rega gasped. “That way, I won’t see—” He caught hold of her head in his hands, blocking her vision. Closing his own eyes, he pressed his lips against hers.
The world dropped out from underneath them.
18
Haplo, dog at his feet, sat near the steering stone on the bridge and gazed wearily, hopelessly out the window of the Dragon Wing. They had been flying for how long?
“A day,” Haplo answered with bitter irony. “One long, stupid, dull, everlasting day.”
The Patryns had no timekeeping devices, they did not need them. Their magical sensitivity to the world around them kept them innately aware of the passage of time in the Nexus. But Haplo had learned by previous experience that the passage through the Death’s Gate and entering into another world altered the magic. As he became acclimated to this new world, his body would realign itself to it. But for right now, he had no idea how much time had truly passed since he had entered Pryan.
He wasn’t accustomed to eternal sunshine, he was used to natural breaks in the rhythm of his life. Even in the Labyrinth there was day and night. Haplo had often had reason to curse the coming of night in the Labyrinth, for with night came darkness and, under the cover of darkness came your enemies. Now he would have fallen on his knees and begged for the blessed respite from the blazing sun, for the blessed shadow that brought rest and sleep—no matter how guarded. The Patryn had been alarmed to catch himself, after another sleepless sun-lit “night,” seriously considering gouging out his own eyes. He knew, then, that he was going mad.
The hellish terror of the Labyrinth had not been able to defeat him. What another might consider heaven—peace and quiet and eternal light—would be his downfall.
“It figures,” he said, and he laughed and felt better. He had staved away insanity for the time being, though he knew it wasn’t far off. Haplo had food and he had water. As long as he had some left of either, he could conjure more. Unfortunately, the food was always the same food, for he could only reproduce what he had, he couldn’t alter its structure and come up with something new. He soon grew so sick of dried beef and peas that he had to force himself to eat. He hadn’t thought to bring a variety. He hadn’t expected to be trapped in heaven.
A man of action, forced to inactivity, he spent much of his time staring fixedly out the windows of his ship. The Patryns do not believe in God. They consider themselves (and grudgingly their enemies, the Sartan) the nearest to divine beings existent. Haplo could not pray for this to end, therefore. He could only wait.
When he first sighted the clouds, he didn’t say anything, refusing to admit even to the dog that they might be able to escape their winged prison. It could have been an optical illusion, a trick of the eyes that will see water in a desert. It was, after all, nothing more than a slight darkening of the green-blue sky to a whitish gray.
He took a quick walk around the ship, to compare what he saw ahead of him with what lay behind and all around.
And then it was, staring up into the sky from the ship’s top deck, that he saw the star.
“This is the end,” he told the dog, blinking at the white light Sparkling above him in the hazy, blue-green distance. “My eyes are going.” Why hadn’t he noticed stars before? If it urns a star.
“Somewhere on board, there’s a device the elves used to see long distances.” The Patryn could have used his magic to enhance his vision, but that would have meant again relying on himself. He had the feeling, however confused, that if he put a purely disinterested object between himself and the star, the object would reveal to him the truth.
Rummaging through the ship, he found the spyglass, tucked away in a chest as a curiosity. He put it to his eye, and focused on the sparkling, twinkling light, half-expecting it to vanish. But it leapt into view, larger, brighter, and pure white.
If it was a star, why hadn’t he seen it earlier? And where were the others?
According to his lord, the ancient world had been surrounded by countless stars. But during the sundering of the world by the Sartan, the stars had vanished, disappeared. According to his lord, there should be no stars visible on any of the new worlds.
Troubled, thoughtful, Haplo returned to the bridge. I should change course, fly toward the light, investigate it. After all, it can’t be a star. My Lord has said so.
Haplo put his hands upon the steering stone, but he didn’t say the words, he didn’t activate the runes. Doubt crept into his mind.
What if My Lord is wrong?
Haplo gripped the stone hard, the sharp edges of the runes bit into the soft, unprotected flesh of his palms. The pain was fitting punishment for doubting his lord, doubting the man who had saved them from the hellish Labyrinth, the man who had established their home in the Nexus, the man who would lead them forth to conquer worlds.
His lord, with his knowledge of astronomy, had said there could be no stars. I will fly toward this light and investigate it. I will have faith. My Lord has never failed me.