Act I — The Crossing

Page 2 — The Threshold continues

The Threshold has no floor. I have said it before and I will say it again, because the saying is the only map I have. No ground under it, no sky over it, and a thing that has no floor does not stop when the ground stops. We did not stop. Below us — the word is a guess, and I keep my guesses in a separate place — the light thinned toward a color that is not a color, and the color was going somewhere, and the going was patient.

I want to describe the going, and I will try, because the trying is the honest part. It was not motion as we know it. Not the way a stone falls, which is a thing happening to a stone, the stone gaining speed and the world getting smaller and the ground rushing up to meet the end of it. That is a fall, and a fall has a bottom, and a bottom is a thing you can plan for. I have planned for bottoms my whole life, because the archmage is the one who plans for the bottoms the other men are not clever enough to see. This was not that. There was no gaining of speed. There was no rushing up. There was only the white, and the smallness of the six of us in it, and the fact that we were not arriving.

It was more like the way a debt settles. I have seen a debt settle, in the old world, in a hall where a man owed a thing he could not pay and the creditor did not come for him and did not call him and did not threaten, but simply kept sitting at his table, patient as a well, until the debtor's own hands did the reaching. No direction that I could name. No speed that I could measure. Only the fact of an arrival that never arrived, and the not-arriving that went on. The patient is not a kindness. A river is patient, and the river takes the stone. A debt is patient, and the debt takes the man. I do not know what the white was patient for. I will not guess at it in this record, because the guessing is where the record lies.

There was a sound, or the memory of a sound. I will not decide which. If there was a sound, it was not the sound of wind, and it was not the sound of the planes, and it was not the sound of a thing that moves through air, because there was no air to move it through. It was the sound a room makes when a door is opened in it and no one comes in — a low taking, a settling, the air of the room choosing to be thinner than it was. I have heard that sound in the old world, in the sanctums, in the halls where the gods sat and did not sit, and the sound was the sound of a presence that was not there. I have not been in a room like that since, in the new world, and the not-being is the one I have kept, because a room with a presence that is not there is a room the world has not cleaned up, and the new world has not cleaned up yet, either.

I will tell you what I did with my hands, because the doing is the record, and the record is owed the archmage's work. I kept them open, the way I had kept them at the last of the old world, open at my sides, the way a man holds his hands when he is not trying to take anything and is not trying to be taken. I tried the planes a second time, in the white, in the old words, the words that have carried me through a hundred years of work. I asked the water to come, and the white did not answer. I asked the earth, and the earth did not answer. I asked the air to move, and the air did not move. I tried a third time, because I have had the lying practice, and I know that a man will ask a thing three times before he admits the thing is not there. The white did not answer the third time either, and the not-answering was the one I owed the record, because a record that writes the planes as sleeping is a record that lies, and the lying is the one thing I will not do on the second page of a story that has already lost a man.

I will tell you what I felt in the body, because the body is the record, and the record is owed the body's part. My craft was under my ribs, coiled, and the craft did not wake. I want the record to be plain about that, because the not-waking was the one thing in the white that frightened me more than the white did. A craft that does not wake is a craft that is not owed the waking, and a craft that is not owed the waking is a craft the world has stopped answering. I have not had a world that stopped answering since the first page of this story, and the not-having is the whole of the second page, and the whole of it is the thing I have kept. My feet were not on anything. I will not say that I looked down to check, because I did not look down to check. A man who checks for a floor in a place that has no floor is a man who has not yet admitted the place has no floor, and the admitting was the one I owed, because the record is the admitting, and the admitting is the thing the record does not let go of.

Rumzuck's hand found mine in the middle of the falling. I am not saying this for the warmth of it. I am saying it because the ogre who has held the line in every fight I have ever known reached for the hand of the archmage in the white, and reached it, and held. I will give you the reaching, because the reaching is the record. The ogre does not reach for a hand out of fear. The ogre reaches for a hand out of the line, and the line is the one thing the ogre has, and the having is the one the ogre does not spend. His hand found mine the way a shield finds the line — not with the face, with the whole of the body, the body that is the ogre, and the ogre is the one that has held the line in every fight I have ever known. The grip was not a comfort. I want the record to be exact about that, because a man who writes a grip as a comfort on the second page of a story is a man who has not yet learned what a grip is. The grip was a fact. The hand found the hand, and the finding was the one thing in the white that was on our side, and the on-our-side was the whole of the ogre's part, and the whole of it was the thing I have kept since the first page of it.

I held the ogre's hand. I will not say that I was glad, because the glad is not the word, and the word is the one the record keeps. I held the hand the way the archmage holds the shape of the story — with the whole of the craft in the hand, and the craft in the hand was the one thing that was still mine, and the still-mine was the one the white did not do. The ogre did not speak. The ogre does not speak in the white, because the white is not a place that is owed a word. He held, and the holding was the line, and the line was the one the old world put in the six of us before the six of us knew the old world had put it in them.

Somewhere in the white, or somewhere that was not in the white, the sound came again — the low taking, the settling, the door opened in a room where no one comes in. It was closer this time. I want the record to be careful about that, because the closer was the one I felt in the body, and the body is the record. The craft under my ribs turned over once, the way a sleeper turns over in a dream he does not know he is having, and the turning over was the one part of the white that was not mine, and the not-mine was the one I kept. I looked for the ogre's hand in the white, and the looking was the archmage's part, and the part was the one I owed: the hand was still there, and the still-there was the whole of the line, and the whole of the line was the thing the white did not spend.

That is all the second page holds. The white did not do the rest. The white did not do the rest, and the not-doing is the one I have kept since the first page of it.