Dinner at Deviant's Palace

by Tim Powers

  Though his face was a horrid red tangle of exploded flesh and bloody beard-fringe from the bridge of the nose on down, the eyes were bright and alert. He gargled something that sounded to Rivas like, “Go ahead.”

  Rivas did, and then with sick, weary disgust flung the fouled sword away and plodded back to the kneeling man. He had to keep fighting off a dizzy, fatalistic certainty that this hot afternoon, characterised by dust in the throat and fingers sticky with drying blood, wouldn’t ever end.

  The man had finished tying and adjusting the bandage, and though it seemed to have cost him half his soul, had stood up and was hanging weakly onto the saddle horn.

  “I’ve got,” said Rivas, “money. Brandy. To sterilize your wound.”

  “Screw that,” the man said. “Let me… sterilize… my stomach with it.”

  “Right.”

  Peripherally Rivas noticed that Sister Windchime didn’t evince any disapproval at all as he walked to his horse, unstrapped the bottle and carried it back to the man. He uncorked it and handed it over.

  “Cheers,” Rivas said.

  “Happy days,” the man responded, then tilted the bottle up to his mouth. Bubbles wobbled up through the amber inside, but not a drop spilled. The man finally lowered it and handed it back, with a sharp exhalation and a breathless “Thanks.”

  “Sure you don’t want to splash some on your bandage?” Rivas asked. “It kills germs.”

  “Germs,” the man echoed contemptuously. He looked around. “They all dead?”

  “Seem to be.”

  Sister Windchime had quietly moved up behind Rivas, and now she shyly asked, “Why were they after you?” She pointed at the horse, whose harness bore cut straps but no pouches or saddle bags. “You haven’t got anything.”

  “Not anymore, no,” the man agreed. “They started after us just north of Stanton. Everybody’s running from the Berdoo army, hooters as well as city citizens. We had some supplies originally, but had to cut ’em loose—less weight for the horse, and we kept thinkin’ we could lose these boys while they were grabbing our scattered food. We kept going up steep hills and across bad terrain, but they’d always find a parallel street and be right back on us in a half hour at the most. And then this afternoon when they knew we had no supplies left but they still kept after us, that’s when I knew they were as hungry as everybody else and our poor couple of pounds of salted pork hadn’t done them enough good. They wanted fresh meat.”

  “Well,” said Rivas, “now they are fresh meat.”

  The man gave him an unreadable stare. “Not for me, thanks.” He cautiously let go of the saddle horn; and reeled a little but didn’t fall. “They killed my wife—this kid’s mother—a hundred yards back. We’ll head back and bury her and then be on our way. We’re much obliged to you people for saving our lives.”

  Sure, thought Rivas helplessly as he watched the man take the horse’s reins and begin to walk back. I’ll bet we bought you and your little girl another whole two days of life. Six hours less for you, maybe, and six more for her, but averaged out, say two days. Jesus.

  Sister Windchime touched him hesitantly. “I’m sorry, brother,” she said. “I feel terrible about it. Of course you’ll report me to the disciplinary committee.”

  At first Rivas thought she was sorry for having put a fast rock into the face of the dismounted hooter, but when he looked at her he realized that she was apologizing for having intervened in a worldly quarrel; and for having done it even as he was virtuously pointing out to her the doctrinally correct course.

  “It was a singularly strenuous test,” he told her with kindly condescension, now faking the tone he’d somehow been sincerely taking earlier. “I’ll report that fact to them.”

  “Thank you, brother,” she said earnestly. With a humble, short-stepping stride she walked back to her horse and, with an ease that infuriated Rivas, swung up into the saddle.

  After he managed, to flounder onto his own horse they set off down the gravel track. Rivas waved as they passed the slow horse with the girl in the saddle and the wounded man walking alongside—there was no answering wave—but Sister Windchime, he noticed, frowned unhappily and looked away.

  A few minutes later they passed the collapsed, ripped-up body of a woman. They didn’t alter their pace.

  “They,” said Sister Windchime after a while, “are going to die, aren’t they? Soon?”

  Rivas glanced at her. “One way or another, yeah. They won’t make it to a town.”

  “Then it didn’t do any good, did it? Interfering. All we did was… delay them a little, in their trip to the Dogtown gate.”

  Rivas was busy worrying about his episode of unfeigned birdy orthodoxy up on the hidden slope-crest road, and even this slang confirmation of his guess that she was an Ellay girl didn’t make him want to talk. “Right,” he said shortly. “Goddamn waste of time.”

  For another half mile they rode on in silence while the sunlight began to cast a warm light on the greenery to their left and silhouette it to their right; then Sister Windchime said, “Why do I feel like you have to do what you can to help? Even when you know in advance it won’t do any good.”

  “Because you’re sinful,” said Rivas impatiently. “Now shut up, will you?”

  “Would it be all right,” she ventured a little later, “if we stopped for a few minutes? I think I need to do some more Sanctified Dancing.”

  Rivas groaned. “We’re in a hurry, okay? Do it in the saddle.”

  After that they rode on in silence, Sister Windchime stiff with resentment and Rivas frightened—frightened of what he was getting into and of what was happening to his mind.

  They carefully avoided all other groups of fugitives and by early evening they’d reached their destination. Viewed from above as they crested the last of the rounded, brush-covered hills, the huge Regroup Tent in the valley below them looked, Rivas thought dizzily as he swayed on the back of the horse, like a vast bony beast huddling under a patchwork blanket big enough to drape around God’s shoulders. Up where they were, Rivas and Sister Windchime were still dazzled by the red sun sinking over the Pacific Ocean, but the tent was already in shadow, and lamps and torches bobbed like fireflies in the valley.

  In spite of himself, Rivas slowly turned his head to the southeast, knowing what lay in that direction. And yes, there it was on the far side of the Seal Beach Desolate, the Holy City, its wall just visible as a pale rectangular segment on the horizon. He shivered, not entirely because of the cold sea wind that stirred the dry grass on the miles-separated hilltops.

  With no sensation of relief he let his gaze fall back into the dark valley that lay open to him below his horse’s hooves. He remembered how easily and totally he had succumbed to the mind-sapping techniques of Sister Sue and her band, and how difficult it had been to float back up into his own identity. I didn’t even know how old I was, he thought now with a tight mix of sadness and panic. And this afternoon I delivered all those birdy homilies to this girl sincerely!

  Only for you, Uri, he thought as he nudged his horse forward and down, would I do this.

  In less than a minute the chilly sea wind and the sunlight and the view of the ocean were behind and above him. Up from below came warmth and the smell of rancid cooking oil.

  “Not so fast, Brother Thomas,” called Sister Windchime behind him. “Your horse will trip in the shadows.”

  “How nonessential of you to remember my name,” he snarled without looking back.

  Rivas had been to the Regroup Tent only once, more than a decade ago, and in the years since he’d forgotten how big the thing was. Now as his horse slid and clattered down the slope, kicking up a plume of gray dust that was red lit at its breeze-flattened top, he began to remember details: that there were streets and tents inside it, and that the highest sections of the roof were seldom visible from inside because of the upwardly pooled smoke from all the cooking fires, and that for half an hour or so at night, especially after a hot day, you could hear
a low whistling that was the warmer interior air escaping through the stitching of the million seams.

  The path leveled out and, having given vent to some of his apprehension by his plunging descent, Rivas reined in and waited for Sister Windchime to catch up. It’d be idiotic to ditch her now, he told himself, after you’ve put up with her all the way down.

  She stared at him when she rode up alongside. “You’re a strange one, Brother Thomas. You act so bitter, but I’ve never seen anyone so anxious to get back to the Lord.”

  He made himself smile. “Being away makes me bitter. I’m sorry. I’ll be perfect when we get there.”

  “I think we should both take the sacrament as soon as we get in, don’t you?”

  “Well—of course,” he said wildly. “Let’s go. You can lead for a while—I think I may have lamed my horse a little there.”

  As she nudged her mount ahead, he let his horse follow at its own pace and weighed his choices. It would look good, he had to admit, to rush in begging for the sacrament; the problem was that they’d probably be given it. So did he want to use the drunk defense—there was the third of a bottle of Currency—or the newly discovered pain defense?

  Somehow, taking into account his weariness and fever—and the fact that he couldn’t approach the tent with the liquor—the answer was inevitable. He pulled the bottle out of his shirt, held it down where the girl wouldn’t see it if she turned around, and with his good hand he thumbed the cork out. He heard it rustle in the dry grass. And then every time it was clear that her attention would be devoted for a few moments to guiding her horse, he’d raise one arm as if pointing out emerging stars to her, and behind this cover—in case anyone below might be looking up—he’d raise the brandy bottle and swallow a couple of mouthfuls. The warm fumy liquor choked him, but he forced down gulp after gulp, and when he knew that one more drop would undo all his labor he let the nearly empty bottle fall noiselessly into a thick green bush. He’d ridden a few yards further before he realized that the bush was wild anise. He halted his horse and goaded it back, then with a cry toward Sister Windchime he swung his leg over and jumped into the bush.

  He buried his face in the greenery and as he heard the thudding of her horse’s returning hoof beats he ripped up handfuls of the ferny plant, shoved them into his mouth and chomped them up.

  To his surprise he felt her hand on his shoulder and realized that she’d actually dismounted to help him, or at least to satisfy curiosity. “Are you all right, Brother Thomas?”

  He got up unsteadily, his recent actions having accelerated the alcohol’s invasion of his blood stream. “Yeah, thanks, I was dizzy—” He brushed bits of greenery out of his hair and spat out a leaf or two. “Dizzier than I thought, not really well enough to ride all day, I guess… went to sleep and fell off, and I… banged my head a good knock on the ground just now.”

  He grinned foolishly at her. Perfect, he thought. I killed the brandy smell on my breath and at the same time established an alibi for any drunken lurching or babbling I may do: Poor guy—evidently a concussion. And I get to be drunk, too.

  “Let’s walk the rest of the way,” said Sister Windchime. “Wait here while I get the horses.”

  The sky was a deep cobalt blue by the time they’d wound their way down the increasingly well-constructed path to the valley floor, and when Rivas looked up he saw that a lot of stars were already visible, seeming to hang not too far above the highest peak of the tent. Lowering his head, a bit jerkily, he saw several makeshift towers like the ones that had ringed the field in the Cerritos Stadium, and, closer at hand, an approaching figure silhouetted by the cooking fires behind it. The figure was tall and broad and carried a staff, and for one moment of drunken panic Rivas thought it was the same shepherd who had stomped his pelican and shot him, and whom he’d killed, the day before yesterday.

  “Children,” rumbled this shepherd, “welcome home. What band are you from?”

  “I’m from Brother Owen’s,” said Sister Windchime.

  “I… don’t remember,” said Rivas. He remembered Sister Sue vividly, but he wanted to get the concussion established right away.

  Sister Windchime came in right on cue. “Brother Thomas has been feverish all day,” she explained apologetically. “And on the way down the path a little while ago he fell off his horse and bumped his head.”

  Good girl, thought Rivas. “We’d like to take the sacrament, please,” he said.

  The shepherd clapped him on the shoulder. “Of course. I imagine you’ve missed merging with the Lord.”

  The man had turned toward the light now as the three of them approached the tent, and Rivas could see the kindly smile curling the mouth behind the beard. Careful, he told himself; they practice that you’re-home-now smile. Don’t relax.

  A dozen cooking fires hazed the air of the valley floor and made the many lamps and torches glow like lights seen through fog, and as the shepherd escorted Rivas and Sister Windchime on a looping course toward the tent, unseen people called greetings to them through the smoke and glare and darkness: “Welcome home, stray sheep!” “Merge with the Lord!” and “May you enter the Holy City soon!”

  Oh, thanks, thought Rivas, nervous in spite of the brandy. He was trying to figure out what it was that had changed since his previous visit. Something—some smell or noise—was missing.

  Under wide hooked-back flaps the tent’s main entrance was “a twenty-foot-tall arch spilling out a delta of yellow light against the increasing darkness, and as they approached it Rivas could see brightly painted canvas tents inside and robed figures striding about. It occurred to him now what the missing piece of furniture was—there weren’t any far-gone communicants speaking in tongues. The other time he’d been here, the valley had echoed day and night with their babbling.

  “A jaybush will be administering communion before very long,” the shepherd told them as he led them inside, “so it might not be a good idea to put anything in your stomachs right now, but I’ll find you a tent where you can relax for a—are you all right?”

  Goggling around at the lanes of colorful tents and the spiderwebs of cables far overhead, Rivas had stumbled and fallen to his knees, but as he got up, muttering apologies, he saw only concern in his companions’ faces.

  “Merging with the Lord will help clear your head,” the shepherd assured him.

  Rivas nodded solemnly, trying to re-establish his dignity.

  “It will be a well-attended ceremony,” the shepherd went on. “Several bands are here to pick up their strays, and one of the bands is going directly from here into the Holy City!”

  “Called home at last after their hour of wandering in the wilderness,” quoted Rivas drunkenly.

  “Amen, little brother,” said the shepherd.

  To someone perched on those high cables, thought Rivas an hour later as he peered up into the smoky heights of the tent, this line of Jaybirds would look like the outline of a huge snail, all looped around and around in a spiral.

  He stood up on his toes and craned his neck, but he couldn’t see the white-robed jaybush anymore. The old man had wordlessly entered the tent and begun walking through the coiled gauntlet toward the center; Rivas had nervously dropped his gaze when the jaybush passed directly in front of him, but when a few minutes later the man made his next pass on the other side of the line of people in front of Rivas, he sneaked a look… and reflected, not for the first time, that it was hard to tell jaybushes apart. Like every other one he’d ever seen, this one had a craggy, browned face and an ivory-colored beard.

  Suddenly from the center of the coil he heard an agonized gasp and the clopping thud of a heavy fall, and he realized that the distant mutter he’d heard an instant earlier had been the jaybush’s formal exhortation: “Merge with the Lord.” He could now hear the faint creaking of clothes and the change in everyone’s breathing as the people in the spiral tensed in anticipation. Many closed their eyes and seemed to go into a trance, and Rivas knew that if any of the fa
r-gone men present were on the brink of entering the speaking in tongues stage—women, of course, never deteriorated that far—it would happen about now. Got them old sevatividam blues, thought Rivas.

  And, sure enough, two men in the line ahead of him started up at the same instant, in such effortlessly perfect unison that even their inhalations were exactly synchronized. “Hmmm,” they said. “Hmm?” Now joined by two more, they went on in a rush: “Yes, yes, it’s boiling down nicely now, let me see—yes, I think I can even taste the heaviness…. Help me boil it, children, gently, each of you lend me your little flame….”

  Quickly but calmly several shepherds trotted into the spiral, pausing in front of each speaker in tongues just long enough to deliver, with all their strength but apparently no animosity, a devastating punch to the belly.

  Finally there was just one speaker still working—“Always welcome, newcomers are, oh, quite a group, how tasty, tasty… yes, children, let’s see if we’re strong enough to squeeze it, shall we? Summon a triton for your sea-king to make a hot dinner of, ho ho ho….” and then an echoing punch silenced him too. All through these noisy interruptions the metronomic “Merge with the Lord,” and subsequent thumping collapse, had been continuing without any change in pace.

  Rivas wished he could sober up just for a minute and think clearly. My God, he thought, they speak in English now! It’s a much eerier-seeming trick now that when it was just gibberish. How do they do it, so perfectly in step with one another? Do they rehearse it? Impossible, most far-gones can’t even feed themselves….