by Glen Cook
“So am I, sweetheart. Let’s go.”
We stepped out of the room, me first, Maya last and brandishing her knife. She was having fun.
Morley had the little guy organized enough to stumble along. They were halfway down the stair. We caught up at the bottom. Morley said, “We’d better head for the nearest fence.”
“Right.” Though that would put us on the side of the Dream Quarter farthest from where I wanted to be.
We went out the door we’d entered. It faced the center of the grounds. There was all kinds of excitement over there. Some was moving our way fast.
Morley came up with a piece of cord. He slipped a loop around the little man’s neck. “One peep and I choke you. We didn’t come after you so we won’t be brokenhearted if we kill you. Got me?”
The little man nodded.
Morley headed due south. Maya and I followed with Jill between us. Maya threatened to stab Jill in the behind if she didn’t move faster.
She was having a good time.
I’d like to turn the whole thing into high drama with harrowing near misses, ferocious battles with fanatic priests, and a skin-of-the-teeth getaway when all seemed lost, but it didn’t work that way. We never came close to getting caught. A dozen priests with torches thundered up to the house as we fled, but they didn’t see us. We were at the enclosure wall, with Morley and Maya and Jill and the little gink perched on top and me reaching for Morley’s hand, before the gang charged out of the house again. We were gone before they found a trail.
We got ourselves lost in the alleys of the industrial district south of the Dream Quarter and made the little guy get dressed. He didn’t have much to say. No threats, no bluster. Once he’d taken stock he remained calm, silent, and cooperative.
We spent the rest of the night working around the Dream Quarter the long way, out to the western parts of the city, beyond the Hill, then back down to my place. I was damned tired when home hove into view.
I was pleased with myself, too. I’d pulled off a grand stunt and it’d proven easier than I’d expected. The raid on Chattaree hadn’t been necessary. I still had all my little bottles in my pockets.
49
There was a problem. The Watch had the house surrounded. And it was light out. There’d be no sneaking past them.
We hadn’t talked much but I’d mentioned my notion of getting Jill and Warden Agire together with the Dead Man. The little guy had proven to be exactly whom I’d suspected. I’d gotten that from Jill, not him. She’d been the one to try bluster, dropping his name. It hadn’t done her any good.
Morley said, “What now, genius? Want to hide them out at my place?’’
“We’ll get in. We just need a distraction.”
“Better come up with it quick. Five of us hanging around is going to catch somebody’s eye.”
“Right. Maya. Could I buy a little help from the Doom?”
She was surprised. “What kind?”
“Like maybe have Tey run to the door and tell Dean to tell the Dead Man we’re out here. Better, have her send one of the young ones. They wouldn’t do anything to a kid.”
“All right.” She sounded doubtful but she trotted off.
Those Watchmen were on their best behavior. TunFaire is a funny city some ways. One way is a popular determination to protect the common-law sanctity of the home. Our worst tyrants haven’t dared overstep people’s rights within their homes. An invasion of a home without a lot of legal due process will stir up a riot quick. People will put up with almost anything else but will shed blood in an instant over their right to retreat into and remain inviolate within their castles. It’s odd.
Those Watchmen would be under close scrutiny and they would be intensely aware of it. The whole neighborhood might come boiling out if they made a wrong move.
So there was a good chance an unknown could stroll right to my door without interference. They might try a grab once they saw where the messenger was headed but I was sure Dean would be alert. Once the messenger got inside there’d be nothing the Watch could do.
Maya wasn’t gone long. She looked bleak when she came back.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“I had to pay a price.”
She was upset. I took her hand without knowing why. She squeezed hard. “Tell me about it.”
“You got what you need. They’re sending a girl. But she made me pay.”
Oh-oh. I had a feeling Maya had given more than she should have. “What?”
“I had to step out. Leave the Doom. Give her war-chief.”
“Maya! We could’ve worked something else out.”
“It’s all right. You said it. I’m getting too old. It’s time I grew up.”
It was all true, but I felt guilty because she’d done it for me, not for her.
They sent the ragamuffin in a gunnysack who let me in that time I visited Maya. Tey would make a deadly warchief. That kid was perfect. Every one of those Watchmen stared and thought filthy, shameful thoughts, and not one considered interfering until she pounded on the door. By the time somebody reacted she was making her pitch to Dean.
Dean let her in.
Morley muttered, “That kid is a witch.” He’d felt it, too.
I said, “Some are at that age. Even when they don’t know what they’re doing.”
“She knows,” Maya said. “She is a witch. She’ll own the Doom before she’s sixteen.”
The Watchmen snapped to attention. I felt the lightest touch from the Dead Man as they presented arms. “Time to go, kids.” Jill and Agire balked.
Agire refused to move. Morley cured that with a quick kick to the foundation of his dignity. Jill wanted to yell. Maya laid a roundhouse on her nose. “That’s for the way Garrett looked at you.”
“Take it easy.” I knew she was spending her disappointment.
“Sorry.” She didn’t mean it and apologized to me instead of Jill. I let it slide. Jill had decided to cooperate.
We walked over to the house. Near as I could tell the Watchmen didn’t see us. Dean let us in, croggled by the numbers. I told him, “Breakfast for all. In with his nibs.”
“Not me,” Morley said. “I did my part. You have it under control. I have to see if there’s anything left of my place.”
I thought he was in an awful hurry but I didn’t argue. He’d done his share and hadn’t tried to hit me with an inflated fee. He had something on his mind. I didn’t want to interrupt.
Dean let him out after I had Jill and Agire installed with the Dead Man. Jill was frightened. Agire was terrified. He clung to self-control by concentrating on offenses to his dignity.
I trust there is some significance to the presence of these people, the Dead Man thought at me.
“Yep. How’d it go with the civil servants?”
They kept losing track of what they were doing and wandered off to drink beer or indulge other vices.
“What about those Watchmen? They going to call down the wrath of the Hill?”
They believe one of the stormwardens just went past. Once Mr. Dotes is out of sight they will return to their duties unaware that anyone has come or gone.
The little witch from the Doom was gone, too. I hadn’t seen her go. Dean must have planted her in the front parlor, then hustled her out behind me.
These two? the Dead Man reminded me.
I made the introductions and suggested we might tie things up if he’d help out for a few minutes. He could, after all, plunder their minds if he wanted.
He astounded me by agreeing without being bullied. He went after Agire first. The Warden let out a squeal of panic. He yelled, “You have no right! What’s going on is none of your business.”
“Wrong. I have two paying clients and a personal interest. A friend of mine got caught in your game. It killed him. One of my clients died, too. Magister Peridont. Heard of him? His death doesn’t end the commitment. And my other client is too damned nasty to walk out on. His name is Chodo Contague. He took off
ense at the Sons of Hammon. He’s after scalps. If you know anything about him, you know you don’t want to get on his bad side.”
Agire knew something. He got rockier.
I said, “We don’t have to be enemies. But my friend and I want to know what’s going on so we can get ourselves out of a bind and maybe put the crazies out of their misery.”
That is enough, Garrett. Say nothing more. He is considering his position and options and the probability that you are telling the truth. You are?
“The whole and nothing but.” I glanced at Jill. Gone was the cool. She had a bad case of the fidgets. Her eyes wouldn’t stay still. She might have tried to run if Maya hadn’t been between her and the door.
We waited on Agire. Agire waited on divine inspiration.
Dean brought a small side table from the kitchen. “I’ll set up a buffet,” he said.
“Fine. As long as there’s plenty of it.” I was hungry and tired and impatient with my guests.
The Dead Man cautioned, They are thinking, Garrett. That is enough.
“Anything interesting?’’
A great deal. We now know, for example, why Dean and your young friend could not locate what the woman concealed here. She is trying too hard not to think of it.
“What?”
My backchat disturbed my guests. I told myself to can it. I helped Dean when he brought a tray of goodies. I wasn’t polite. I helped myself immediately. “Breakfast,” I told the others.
After a pause calculated to have me panting with suspense, the Dead Man said, She hid it here while I was sleeping.
“I know.” I went to the case on the short wall where we keep our maps and references, searched the shelf that kept drawing Jill’s eye, and found a big copper key. It looked like it had been lying around turning green for a couple hundred years.
The Dead Man was irked. I had stolen his thunder. Jill looked like she was going to cry. Agire couldn’t take his eye off the key.
It was six inches long and the heaviest key I’d ever hefted. It excited Agire but I knew there was no key among the Terrell Relics. It was squared off flat on the sides. There was an inscription under the verdigris. I scraped at it.
“My, my.” It was the very slogan on those old temple coins. I chunked it under the Dead Man’s chair, collected my plate, and started stuffing myself. Maya followed my lead. My guests were too nervous to partake. If they didn’t get busy, I’d get their share.
50
Patience paid. Agire cracked.
“The Hammon cult has been making war on us. Its object is recovery of that key, which can unlock the Tomb of Karak, where legend has the Devourer imprisoned. The cult can’t free him any other way. It’s only been a few months since they found out who had the key, although they’ve known for decades that it was in TunFaire.
“For three decades they’ve slipped men into the priesthoods here. Sometime this year one of them reached a level of trust where he could find out the key is kept with the Terrell Relics.
“The cult’s leaders brought men to TunFaire. Using sources inside my church, they began a whisper campaign meant to rip us apart. They might’ve succeeded, but a minor player defected. He told me what he knew. I tried to take steps but learned that the hierarchy was riddled with traitors.
“I shared some of this with my friend.” He indicated Jill. “I didn’t realize she knew who I was, nor that she had a relationship with Magister Peridont. Nor, for that matter, was I aware that my peccadillo was known to my enemies.
“I mentioned my informant in front of the wrong man, resulting in an attempt on my life and an effort to steal the Relics. By Orthodox monks. I fled to the one person I could trust.” He indicated Jill again. “But I chose a bad time. She was entertaining her friend from the Church.”
Pain shown for a moment. “I should have known she couldn’t afford a place like that.” Another pause. “Later she arranged for me to hide in the apartment opposite hers. She urged me to take Magister Peridont into my confidence. The threat to the Orthodox church was a threat to all Hanites. I was stubborn. She says she dropped hints to Peridont. Those set him moving along the course you know. I didn’t yield to her till too late. I gave her permission to speak to Peridont after she saw you that first time, hoping you could protect her from men watching her in hopes of tracing me. When she tried to tell Peridont he was too rushed to get the full story and didn’t understand that she could bring us together. He tried to hire you to find me.
“Then he made the mistake I did — talking in front of someone who had infiltrated the Church. The enemy immediately suspected that she knew where the Relics were.”
He seemed to think that explained everything. Maybe it did, in some ways. But it ignored why I’d received so much attention. I asked.
Jill confessed. “I set you up, sort of. You have a reputation for stumbling around turning over rocks and getting away with it. You scared them. They tried to get rid of you without being connected to it. You got the best of the kids they hired. They panicked. Everything just escalated.”
Really? It made a crazy sense. Maybe perfect sense to somebody in the religion business.
“You telling me there really is a Devastator? And that this character can destroy the world but can’t bust himself out of a tomb? Come on. You might as well stuff him in a bag made of cobwebs.”
Agire looked at me like I was a mental defective. Make that spiritually handicapped.
“I know you priests believe six impossible things everyday before breakfast,” I said. “Some of you, anyway. I think most of you are parasites who live off the gullible, the ignorant and the desperate. I don’t think any of you who get ahead believe what you preach. You sure never practice it. Convince me you’re an honest man and a believer, Warden.”
Garrett.
I thought he was going to caution me about pushing the man.
True, the man does find some dogma a useful fiction. He manipulates the laity cynically and he is devoted to improving his place in the hierarchy. But he believes in his god and his prophet.
“That’s absurd. He’s an intelligent man. How can he buy something so full of contradictions and revisions of history?”
Agire smiled sadly, as though he had overheard the Dead Man and pitied me my blindness. I hate it when priests do that. Like their pity is all the proof they need.
You believe in sorcery.
My brain was in better shape than it should have been, tired as I was. I got his argument.
“I see sorcery at work every day. It’s absurd but I see concrete results.”
Agire said, “Mr. Garrett, you appear to be the sort who needs to be cut to believe in swords. I understand that mentality better than you think. Do you comprehend the idea of symbol? You say you accept sorcery. The very root of sorcery is manipulation of symbol in a way that affects referent. And that’s the root of religion, too.
“Say there never was a Terrell. Or that Terrell was the villain portrayed by some. In the context of symbol and faith the Terrell who lived is irrelevant. The Terrell of faith is a symbol that must exist to fulfill the needs of a large portion of mankind. Likewise the creator.
“Hano must be because we need him to be. He was before we were. He will be after we’re gone. Hano may not fulfill your prescription for such a being. So call him Prime Mover or just the force that set time and matter in motion.
“He must be because we need him to be. And he must be what we need him to be. It is a philosophical argument difficult to grasp for we who live among obdurately hard surfaces and sharp edges that ignore our wishes, but the observer invariably affects the phenomenon. In this context, God — by whatever name — is, and is constrained to be, whatever we believe him to be. The Hano of Terrell’s time isn’t the Hano of today. The Hano of the Orthodox denominations isn’t the Hano of the Sons of Hammon. But he exists. He was what he was and he is what he’s believed to be now. Do you follow? Hano is even what you believe him to be, in that infinitesimal fracti
on of himself that is yours alone.”
I understood that they always have an argument. “You’re saying we rule and create God as much as God creates and rules us.”
“Ultimately. And that’s how we get a fragment of God called the Devourer that can be locked in a tomb even though he can destroy the world. He can’t get out because nobody believes he can get out — except by unlocking the door from outside. In fact, you might be able to argue that nobody wants him out — not even his followers — so the tomb becomes a total constraint.”
“Too spooky for me. I’ll keep thinking you’re a bunch of crooks.” I punctuated with a grin, telling him I knew what he’d say next.
“And the vast majority of people would as soon keep thinking in the symbols to which they’re accustomed.”
“All of which doesn’t get us a step closer to cleaning this mess up before those guys turn TunFaire into a battleground. Symbols haven’t been getting killed.”
“The crux. Always the crux. The practicalities of everyday life. The early kings did what they had to when they exterminated an insidious and vicious enemy. Only a handful survived to rebuild. That solution is impractical today because we couldn’t convince the agencies of the state that a threat exists. Symbolism again. A threat must be perceived to exist before the Crown will act. We have bodies all over the city? So the lower orders are slaughtering each other again. So what?”
I glanced at the Dead Man. He seemed amused. “Old Bones, you were going on about a rogue Loghyr the other day. This guy hasn’t said anything about that.”
He does not know, Garrett. The possibility of a true, cynical manipulation of men and their beliefs has not occurred to him, except in his own feeble way.
Ah! There is no contradiction, as you are about to protest. I am aware that I mentioned a great evil being created because some people needed it to exist. That is what the Warden has been saying. The rogue created a god in order to manipulate men. Men then created that god with their belief. Agire is right. There is a thing in a tomb. It can be released. It could destroy the world. It is a product of the imagination that has taken on life. Now it rules the rogue who imagined it. It has sent him to find the key.