Chapter 3: "In Darkness"

Vandar tumbled through the dark waters. His eyes may have been open or closed, and he may have cried out with fear. He may have let go of the skiff, or he may not have. There was no thought in him. There was only the darkness and the water, the vertigo, and the roar of the wave that filled the crevasse and his ears. Heard from within the wave, this was the sound of death for foolish men.

Somewhere near him was a small skiff. He had fallen from it, or he may have jumped from it. He did not know. There was also a hand that hit him in the face as he traveled through the water. It was the hand of one of his two friends, or perhaps his dead friend's father. He could not see which. They both must have been close by him, like the skiff. Caught up in the wave, moving together.

Into the choking darkness.

Vandar scraped along the long rough surface of a stone. The force of the wave compressed his body onto it, and dragged him along it, tearing at his hands and face and legs. Ripping his heavy sheepskin cloak. Then he slammed into another rock, which jutted out at a sharp angle from his scraping-board. The impact was tremendous. His lungs emptied. Water forced itself down his throat. His eyes opened as he choked. The rocks were green and slippery with moss. He was drowning on them.

The force of the water now ceased. What had carried the skiff into the crevasse and tossed it about like a flower had expended all its strength. The power that had compressed Vandar against the green rocks now lifted, and for an instant there was no threat at all in the water. It was cold and salty, but it was not the hand of the drowner, the killer sea. It was merely water. Then it began to drain away, and suddenly Vandar's head was not immersed in water anymore. He breathed in air, to his everlasting surprise, and vomited. Then he found a handhold on the rock. The draining wave washed past him and over him. He held on.

Vandar choked on salt water. He coughed and vomited again, and called out to his friends. "Torjek! Koeno!"

He held onto the slippery rocks, his fingernails dug into waterworn indentations with all the solidity that he could muster. The skin on his face and hands, although he could not see it, was scraped and bloody, and he could not get a foothold. The salt water swirled around his waist, draining away into the sea beyond the crevasse. He struggled for a foothold.

"Torjek!"

He looked back out across the water. What might have been the bottom of the overturned skiff floated in the outgoing water. Vandar considered lunging for it. He tried again to pull himself up out of the water onto the rocks. Another wave was coming. He knew that. It was the only certainty. And if he could not pull himself up onto the higher rocks he would be swept away.

"Koeno!"

Vandar listened for his friends. He heard nothing. He called out again, and when there was no reply his thoughts became more distracted, more concerned. What if they were lost? What if...

Then he saw a body floating in the water just below where he stood. It wore the same red cape that Lazar's father had worn. It circled in the momentarily calm waters, awaiting the rush of the next wave.

"Torjek! Koeno!"

He called out their names desperately, and twisted himself around to look for them in the water. He saw only the overturned skiff and the body of Lazar's father, nothing more. Then he saw what he had feared. At the open mouth of the crevasse, where sunlight shone and the ocean moved like an animal or an angry god, where Vandar and his friends had passed moments before, Vandar saw the swelling of another wave. It seemed to lurk in place for a moment, but then white foam appeared all around it and the deep roar of rushing water rose up around him. The wave hurtled into the crevasse, toward Vandar and the overturned skiff.

Vandar threw himself up on the slippery rocks. He scratched at the moss and cut his fingers on the barnacles, and struggled to find a toehold. Anything to get him up and out of the water. Anything to save himself. There was nothing. Finally he dug his fingers into the holds that he had found, and used his arms alone to slowly pull his body up from the water. His feet dangled uselessly, finally up out of the water, and as he peered over the rocks he could see a wide ledge that disappeared into the darkness of the crevasse. He pulled once again with his hands, and dragged himself up the slippery surface, urged on in desperation by the approaching roar, to escape from the wave that now descended on him.

First it felt like a heavy rain fell on his legs and back, but only for a hair of an instant. Then a tremendous force fell on Vandar from behind, and he lost his handhold on the slippery rocks. The wave crashed onto the rocks and the ledge with the weight of the dark sea itself. In an instant, Vandar was subsumed in water again. The force of the wave threw him up onto the wide ledge, which was just as instantly flooded itself, and he landed hard on another waterworn boulder. He coughed up blood (the taste, he knew it instantly), and inhaled seawater again. He lifted himself up, found that he was breathing air again, and vomited up the seawater. It was tinged with blood. He choked and coughed, and the water began to drain away from him. He thanked God for his life. He was on solid ground. In the darkness of the crevasse, he was on solid ground.

The Wheel had turned.

* * *

Vandar got to his feet. The ledge rocks were slippery and his balance was unsteady on them. He called out for Torjek and Koeno, and looked out at the raging waters.

Even as the force of the last wave dissipated back into the sea, another one gathered beyond the mouth of the crevasse. The capsized skiff spun in circles in the violent waters, and the stench of salt and decay was overpowering. He could not find Lazar's father's body now. There was only a half-light in the crevasse, which was almost more like a tunnel. Although from the sea it had seemed that this place was open to the sky, that the walls of the crevasse rose separately and created a gap in the cliff-wall that widened as it rose upward toward the world, from inside the crevasse seemed dark and sealed. It was like the grave, like the world beneath the world. Vandar scurried along the ledge, looking toward the seaward opening of the crevasse constantly. The next wave would come from there, he knew, at any moment. To his left were the swirling waters. To his right the cold rock wall gave way to an opening into the darkness. He felt along the wall and peered into the dark portal. A steady breeze emanated from it. Vandar backed away from the opening, peering through the shadow-light of the crevasse. This was the way out. It must be, he thought. Confused. He called out his friends' names. Stared into the swirling water of the channel. Kept his stance on the slippery and worn rocks. The overturned skiff turned in its lonely circles. Another wave gathered at the mouth of the crevasse. Vandar cried out to his friends.

"Torjek! Koeno!"

He could not breathe.

"They followed me. They died because of me. All of them."

Then the roar of the approaching wave grew louder and he gazed out at it. The white foam rising up. Racing into the crevasse at him. His footing seemed so poor on the slippery rocks. In the water just before him, which now seemed to feed back into the oncoming wave, he thought he saw the shape of a man. Floating beneath the surface. He could not see who it was or if it was merely an illusion. He scrambled backward on the rocks and lunged for the tunnel. The force of the wave sent a flood of water in after him. He clawed at the dank walls but the backflow was not so powerful. The water drained back away from him and he followed it. Shouting for Torjek and Koeno. Looking down into the water.

Shouting again.

Not believing that they were gone.

* * *

The steps went on and on. He crawled sometimes. At other times he pulled himself up to his feet and walked despite the blazing pain that hobbled him. The darkness did not yield, and the difference between day and night became a thing of memory only. There was sleep, which was fitful and full of uncertainty. In the dreams he saw long lines of men walking together across the frozen north sea. They wore red robes and carried the heads of blue-faced corpses on pillows before them. The heads had long white hair, and the robed men bore them like treasure.

Or offerings.

He was in the dream. He floated above the bearers, watching them and invisible to them. He flew up high above them and saw that they were walking toward the distant island of the Monastery. He saw that the lines of men were actually great concentric circles of red robed men, at least five or six of them, one within the other. Centered on the island.

They bore the heads before them, and they sang a song that Vandar had known in childhood:

Here comes the weeping widow

Look! There goes the mouse

With her broom the weeping widow

Chases it from the house!

Vandar floated high about the concentric red circles. At the center of them all was the island. When he first saw it, the feeling was of fear. But he floated like a bird, and as he rose up it disappeared below the clouds. The red circles could still be seen, and the song could still be heard, but he had no fear.

He rose so fast! He saw the lip of the world approaching, beckoning as he drew nearer and nearer, and he reached out to take hold of it. But then he stopped rising. Something in his stomach seemed to turn upside down, and he flailed as he began to drop back from the lip of the world. He fell away from it with a scream, down toward the clouds and through them, and then he saw the red concentric circles. He was falling right into the center of them, like they were a great target and he was one of his father's darts.

He screamed as the long fall came to an end--

* * *

Vandar awoke in the darkness. He clutched at the cramping pains that tore through his legs. Seemed ready to turn them inside out. He thought for a moment that he was dead, that he had died falling from the world's edge, but then his memory came back to him. He was in the endless stairway, he remembered, where thought and mystery lived like demons. He was in the bowels of the world, and he had left his friends far behind him. He had fancied himself a hero and a swordsman, and he was going to die in this tomb. He had thought trying to take the skiff, but even if it had not been smashed by the waves, he would never be able to escape from the crevasse. This he knew for certain. He had been inside it once before. It was a place of death.

Like Lazar's father, and Torjek and Koeno.

What had happened?

"I will die in the earth," he said to himself. He was sure of it. He had given up hope of finding an end to the tunnel, and he had not eaten since the island. His provisions had been enough for ten days (if eaten very sparingly) but they went down in the crevasse, and Vandar had only the dripping water that he could find at occasional intervals along the stair. He found it by feeling along the walls, and wiping the water up with his fingers, then sucking it from them. He tasted metals in the water, but he did not care. He heard dripping and stopped to sate himself, and knew that he would only become weaker and more desperate.

There was no food in the tunnel. No food or light, no sound save the occasional drip of water. Yes, there was the sound that Vandar made: the shuffling of his sheepskin boots, the heavy breathing, the pounding of his heart. Of these things he was less aware. He climbed the steps without counting or a sense of time, and without fear. There was nothing to fear in the endless stair.

Vandar sat down on a step and rested. He had never been so tired. So much in pain. In his legs and feet. He had climbed for an unknown amount of time, and he thought that he should sleep. He wondered how long he could go on without food. The image appeared in his mind of a thick slab of fish meat, cooked over the open fire in the kitchen at the Monastery. He imagined the bubbling juices in which the fish was served, and the potatoes which had been cooked with it. He could almost see the steam rising from the plate, and he further fantasized that he could see his own hand reaching out toward the plate. Reaching for a piece of the fish. His mouth watering at the notion.

Something stirred Vandar from his reverie. He had taken to falling asleep by fantasizing about food, and nothing had disturbed him before. This time was different. He opened his eyes and looked up to the upward stairs. Then he looked down to the downward stairs. He began to laugh at himself: "Foolish you! There is nothing in the tunnel! Nothing at all! That's why I am going to die here!"

Hardly had that thought passed when there came from below, from the way he himself had come, the distinct tap--tap--tap of feet upon the stone steps. Feet in the darkness, where there could be no one. Vandar looked down into the blackness. His eyes might as well have been closed for all he saw, but the instinct to look was too strong. He looked, and what he heard was this:

Tap - tap - tap

They were not running feet, nor feet in any hurry at all. They were merely climbing the steps.

Vandar stood up shouted. "Torjek! Koeno! Is that you?"

He waited.

"Friends! I thought you were dead! I could not find you!"

No reply. Now his hand drifted down to the pommel of his short sword, which had rested in its sheath, hanging from his belt, all this time. He had let his friends die while his sword hung uselessly at his side. Now, for the first time, he put his hand to it. He listened again.

Tap

Vandar stood in the darkness like a blind man in his matted sheepskin cloak and boots. He slowly pulled the sword from its sheath. His father had given it to him when he passed into manhood. Now he would use it. He stood in the darkness, his sword drawn, and awaited whatever it was that followed him. He put his other hand beneath his coat and held the necklace.

Tap - tap

"Torjek?"

Vandar listened and imagined: two feet, walking in the darkness, following me... He lifted the sword up over his head. He could see nothing at all. He might not see the thing before it was on him. Perhaps it was a waterman. If that were the case, he might feel the sting of its poisonous tentacles long before it ever came within reach of his sword. Then his flesh would swell up and his body would stiffen, and he would still be awake as it began to eat him.

Tap

But what would a waterman gain from following him up into the earth? Why would it come this far? Now his mind conjured up every stripe of fearsome thing. Perhaps the channel in the crevasse was a nest of watermen. Perhaps the skiff had traveled right over their heads, and perhaps Vandar himself had only been a moment from death when he was hanging onto the rocks. Perhaps they have followed in their stunted pace, with their gibbering jaws and their mindless red eyes. Perhaps Torjek had fallen directly into their hands. And Koeno too.

Tap - tap - tap

The waterman was an obscenity that walked on the floor of the great sea that surrounded the world, and occasionally wandered up onto the island of the Monastery itself. Its body was that of a man, affixed with swirling poisonous tentacles, but its gibbering mouth knew no language or expression. It existed only to eat and to wander, and those on the island who knew such things regarded the watermen with hatred. They were the souls of the damned, it was said, who came down from Thane to walk forever.

Tap

In the blackness of the endless stair, Vandar Harkess waited with his sword ready to strike. He waited and listened to the footfalls on the stairs below, and he listened for breathing or whispers. He listened and waited, then took a slow step backward, upward, away from his pursuer. Then he turned and slipped up the stairway, his sword still drawn, one hand trailing along the wall for balance. He had seen nothing, but he had heard the footfalls. That was enough. He went on into the darkness without a thought of stopping again, sure now that he would push on until he reached the end or fell dead trying.

* * *

It might have been five days later. This was Vandar's best guess.

His legs moved, his hand felt along the cold wall. He took each step without thinking now, and his feet moved effortlessly beneath him--despite the pain in his legs, the biting hunger, and the thirst that made him lick at the damp walls like a rat.

All the while, his mind conjured images of home.

He saw the Monastery's white walls and majestic position on the ridge, the grassy hills where the shepherds watched over their flocks, the tiny villages where the farmers and fishermen lived, the pool of the ram's head. He listened to the drums and the pipes, with their fluting mysteries, the singers whose voices came from heaven, the deathless credo of the Harkess clan: May your sword be good and your word be good...

Their faces were bathed in golden light:

His mother, Ysana, who watched over the island from a favorite place on the parapet of the Monastery, whose eyes were green and whose touch could heal the heart of a child. He saw her now, and her very presence was beckoning.

Come home, she said. Come back to me.

His father the Lord Harkess, Larniku, whose grimace was stony and silent, who sat in the cave of the dead lords with his face pressed to the smooth hubstone. Vandar owed his father an explanation for all that had befallen him. All that gone so wrong. Those on the island would know when Lazar's father did not return.

Then he saw his sister, Petra, whose soul was alive but far away, and who saw all worlds together. Their father had silenced her, but to Vandar's mind perhaps they should have consulted her before embarking on this adventure. In his vision she sat alone by the fireplace in the great hall of the Monastery, her black dress fastened tightly around her arms and her neck, and she looked up at the great stained glass panel that oversaw that huge room. She looked up as if counting the stations of the Wheel that was represented in the panel, and to the walking sleeper who saw this, she seemed so beautiful and glasslike. Nine sons and daughters there had been, and only Petra and Vandar survived. Now there would be only Petra, and one day Vandar would be forgotten. Only Petra would live on in the great old Monastery.

He walked on, savoring her gentleness, her peaceable observance of the old Wheel, her delicate and humble way, and as he did this she did the strangest thing. She looked back at him in a way that was beyond the dream. Her eyes showed recognition, and her head turned at the slightest angle, as she did when devoting her attention to some small piece of the world.

It was to him, in the endless stair, that she looked. He felt her true presence and he tried to speak. His mouth was too dry, her radiance too insistent for his blind eyes, and he seemed to crumble before her.

He whispered her name: "Petra..."

Vandar's heart sank as she disappeared into the darkness. He stopped climbing the stairs, and his heart was pounding. He leaned back against the wall, his head spinning with fantasies of escape, his hand gripping the short sword like it had never known another function, his breath heavy and labored. He did not know. He could not tell time or space anymore. Weary, he wondered if the time had come to just lay down and surrender to his fate.

Tap - tap

He sank down to sit on the stair, facing down into the depths from which he had come, and it was then that he realized that he could see the silver blade of the short sword. It was faint, and he had thought it to be part of the dream, but he could see it surely enough. A faint reflection of light ran along the side of the blade, and when he touched it the shadow of his hand obscured it.

Light.

He turned around and looked up the stair. The taste of metal in his mouth was suddenly overpowering, and the thirst which overcame him now set him into a desperate strait. He shielded his eyes with a pale white hand, and emitted a grunt that might have been a word. He turned around and looked back into the darkness of the long stair. It descended into the earth like nothingness itself, like the stairway into the depths of a greedy soul.

Tap - tap - tap

Vandar climbed toward the light at the top of the stair, which now lit the way through the tunnel. He balanced himself against the wall as he climbed, and his sword hung in his right hand half-forgotten. He climbed and the thirst became stronger and stronger, and with each step he became surer that the weakness in his feet would overcome him completely. Now he took the steps two at a time, and the sound of the other feet on the stairs below suddenly dominated his attention: the thing that pursued him.

Vandar slowed as he approached the source of the light. Blinding. Not more than twenty steps up the last of the endless stair. He edged toward it, his eyes shielded by one hand, and he looked back into the darkness. He listened to the approach of the thing -- tap-tap-tap -- and he raised his sword up in readiness. Slowly, he backed his way up the stairs.

The pursuer's final footsteps came slowly. Tap. Tap. Tap. Vandar felt its presence below him on the stair, looking up from the shadows. He could not see it, but could only feel the eyes that lurked in the darkness, the coldness of its gaze. He stood now on the final step. The blazing sunlight engulfed him, and he looked down into the stair with a sense of glory and giddiness. He had escaped!

"To hell with you, beast!" Vandar shouted into the tunnel. He waited for a reply, but heard nothing. With a triumphant sense he went out into the daylight. He shielded his eyes from the sun and realized that although he could hardly stand the white light, it was in fact near dark. The sun hung low amid giant mountains, and he stood on a narrow path that traversed a steep slope. The opening was nothing more than a crack in the rock, and all around him stood great mountains topped with snow, and he stood high over a valley, on an inaccessible place without trees or shelter.

He looked back at the crack from which he had emerged and saw that a solitary figure stood there. It had the size and stance of his friend Koeno, and as soon as Vandar looked back the figure disappeared. The crack was once again an insignificant feature on the rocky slope.

Vandar called out. "Koeno!"

There was no reply. He was alone. His friends were dead. He knew that. Perhaps Koeno's ghost had been following Vandar all along. Perhaps Vandar had left him behind prematurely.

He stared at the opening where the stairs began. He would not go back. He could not face it.

In a valley far below ran a river that reflected silvery red with the light of the sinking sun. Vandar had to find his way down from his perch on the precipice. His thirst drove him mad as he futilely attempted to reach it before dark. When the path disappeared from underfoot, he felt his way along the steep and rocky slope. He sat among the rocks as the night came down in the mountains, and his thirst did not abate. He saw visions in the night, and he shivered in the mountain air.

He had reached Thane. The Wheel had turned.