Umber

Svengali and Klavicus consider the metaphysics of Tharizdun’s prison.

“Are you quite finished with these unscheduled departures from my domicile?” Klavicus called irritably from his study when Svengali returned from seeing Glom Gargull back to Khundrakar. He entered the sitting room to find the shapeshifter already sprawled on the black dragonhide sofa. The sleeves of Svengali’s shirt were almost completely burned away and any patches of exposed fur were singed. “Well, you were quite nearly finished, weren’t you?” the balor remarked. “Try not to leave piles of ash on the furniture.” He went to the sideboard and poured two small glasses of a nearly opaque, ruby-colored liquid from an extremely expensive crystal decanter. “The finest product of Abyssal fermentation techniques.” When Svengali eyed it skeptically he added, “There are no grotesque ingredients, if that’s what concerns you.”

“What concerns me,” Svengali replied as he sat up and accepted the glass, “is what I have to do to earn the finest product of Abyssal fermentation techniques.”

“But you’ve already done it, haven’t you?” Klavicus lit his pipe. “You look like you’ve been through the Nine Hells and back. But back you are, so I assume the Tharizdunian threat has receded.”

“You didn’t think that last time. Last time you thought it was a harbinger of more or less imminent doom.”

“Yes, but this time the doom was most certainly more imminent than less. I don’t know what Tharizdunian cocoon you were swept off to, but out here the world was well on its way to tearing itself apart.”

Svengali laughed bitterly. “A cocoon, indeed.” With prodding from Klavicus, he related what he’d seen when he was pulled into the Dreaming Stone.

“Points on a tetrahedron,” he mused. “I’ve been reading since your last – experience – and saw no references to such a structure. Nor, for that matter, to the pulsing violet thread you describe.”

“The thread, at least, doesn’t surprise me,” the shapeshifter replied. “Perception within the Dreaming Stone is far from reliable. But I couldn’t help but recognize the animus of that slender filament. Dryden and Brin could have – ” half speaking to himself, he murmured, “well, it turned out all right in the end. And even if I’d had the heart, there was no reason to tell them that they weren’t, as they thought, attacking Tharizdun, but Hadrack.”

“The tiny Jasian would have been distressed by that, wouldn’t she?” Klavicus sounded amused. “As for this tetrahedron – I assume the intent never was to create a gate. It was in some sense, to manifest the prison.”

“You’re getting warmer.” Svengali looked a bit smug. “Here’s a twist for you. There is no prison.”

Klavicus narrowed his eyes. “Explain yourself.”

“It isn’t a prison. It’s a cage.”

The balor frowned. “A trivial semantic difference.”

“Not,” Svengali grinned, “if we’re the canaries.” He took more than a little pleasure in the surprise, however fleeting, that flickered across the old balor’s face. “That’s right, the gods didn’t create a structure to contain Tharizdun.”

“It’s quite possible that even with their collective might,” Klavicus took up the thought, “they weren’t powerful enough. “So instead, they contained the multiverse, hedging Tharizdun out. Interesting. Somehow, I suspect, this all folds back in the end onto Ammet’s manipulations with the World Seed.” He drew deeply on his pipe. “Well, well. This could be a most interesting intellectual exercise.” Picking up his glass, he rose and headed back toward his study. “Yes, this could be interesting indeed.” Just before he disappeared he poked his head back into the sitting room. “How did you get yourself into that state?”

“The small matter of escaping from a spike that had driven itself very nearly to the center of Oerth – through an erupting volcano.” He told Klavicus about Tenser’s intervention, and the oddly Everyman mage who rescued them.

“That’s quite the sphere,” Klavicus said. “It would have taken Otiluke himself to sustain a field of that size.”

“I don’t think a sphere of Otiluke’s would have burned the clothes off our bodies,” Svengali replied, “as you know perfectly well. I’d be inclined to say there was no sphere. And the mage’s stern warning to Corwin and Brin not to attempt to penetrate his incognito confirmed that impression. I don’t think he wanted them thinking about what around them was illusory and what wasn’t. It might have had – unfortunate – consequences.”

“A powerful illusion, then.”

“If you’re waiting to see if I’m a bright enough pupil to come to the conclusion that the mysteriously featureless wizard was Rary, the answer is yes. It’s difficult to imagine anyone else sustaining an illusion of that scope.”

Klavicus chuckled. “Tenser may find himself owing an unpleasant number of favors for individuals with whom he’d rather not be indebted.”

“That’s his lookout,” Svengali shrugged.

“You think so? I’ve always found that men like Tenser have a way of sucking any number of other people into the payment of their debts. But that’s no concern of mine. I know Tenser can’t infringe on my privacy – or that of my guests.” As the study door closed Svengali could still hear him laughing quietly. “Tenser indebted to Rary over the tiny ones. How amusing.”

After the balor disappeared, Svengali thought idly that he should get up and change – well, put on clothes, in truth, since what was left of his scarcely qualified for the title – but he felt too fatigued to get up. He closed his eyes, but instead of drifting into meditation his last conversation with Hadrack played again across his mind.

“Will you go back into service for the paladin-king?”

“No,” Hadrack said firmly. “I’m finished with all of that. I thought I might go back to Blasingdell – spend some time with Scald, and Haissha and Berrick. It’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to something I’d call home. Go back as myself, for a change.”

“That will cause quite a stir among the townfolk.”

Hadrack sighed. “I can’t help that. No more being things that I’m not.”

“Didn’t want or intend to be, perhaps,” Svengali corrected him. Seeing him watching Corwin and Brin, Dryden and Ammitai he added, “You’re wrong, you know. If you think that Blastir and I changed them. They wouldn’t have grown up to be millers and blacksmiths and seamstresses. It was too late for that the day Magnus and Bane rode into town on their demon-spawn mounts, the day they watched their town nearly burn and saw what it took to save it. We gave them what they needed to survive what they meant to do anyway.”

“How could you possibly know that?” the ranger replied testily.

“I couldn’t. But like him or not, Blastir could.”

Hadrack’s anger faded as quickly as it had come. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t have to be afraid for them anymore.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, what did that druid do to you?”

“There is a psion named Go. She has done work for the king, for the Dispatch. It is her special talent – or burden – the ability to take another person’s fear upon herself. It is a thing she does before she strikes her killing blow. I don’t know,” he mused, “why she spared Varachan. But spare him she did, and somehow he came out of the experience with an innate – though as we saw, imperfect – understanding of the process.”

“I confess I don’t really see how that’s possible.”

“Nor I. But I do know that suddenly it struck me as absurd, that frantic impulse to protection that has dogged me all these years. Almost an insult, really. You of all people didn’t need me to protect you in Greyhawk.” He nodded toward Clement’s young knights. “They don’t need me now.”

Svengali made some gesture to Brin, and Hadrack could see from her abrupt change in posture that whatever it was had embarrassed her. “Some of them might disagree,” the shapeshifter said.

Just then the Jasian laughed at something Glom said, then turned, smiling, to Sir Borch. “We are a web,” Hadrack replied, “and too much pressure or emphasis on any one point destabilizes the whole. That’s been the meaning of the Alpha all along, although I’ve come very late to realizing it.”

“It’s about time,” Svengali said, adding at Hadrack’s taken aback glance, “I mean, it’s time to go. Come on.”