by James Axler
Or mebbe half-man, Ryan thought. The visitor was a black man, an oldie from his short wiry white hair and beard and the wrinkled face it framed. But he was trim and held himself upright, and his movements were those of somebody in pretty good shape.
He stood about a yard tall.
“A dwarf,” Mildred repeated.
“That’s a person, but your half-size model.”
“Right,” Jak said.
Whatever he was, he was speaking in a high-pitched voice, though Ryan couldn’t make out the words. Blackwood was nodding gravely. Then he turned to beckon the group on the porch.
“Ryan, friends,” he said, “please join us. This gentleman has brought news for you.”
“For us?” Mildred echoed. Ryan shrugged and walked forward. The rest trailed after.
As he reached the small group standing out in the Gulf Coast sun, he saw Amélie Mercier walking up the crushed-shell path from the ville with a servant who’d apparently been sent to fetch her. Like Elizabeth Blackwood, she sensibly carried a parasol.
“Ryan Cawdor,” the baron said, indicating the little dude, “this is Achille.”
He introduced the rest of Ryan’s party. Achille nodded gravely in turn to each.
“Pleased to meet ya!” he said, pumping Ryan’s hand enthusiastically. As did at least half the people they’d run into in the ville, he spoke with a Cajun French accent.
“I come bringing important word to Monsieur Cawdor.” He dragged the first syllable of Ryan’s name out long.
“That’s me,” Ryan said. “Shoot.”
The man blinked at him for a moment. He had large pale amber eyes. Despite some yellowing around the edges, they were as sharp as a bird’s.
“My mistress the healer, wise woman, and incomparable seeress has words for your ears, monsieur. Others may come, as you will. But she will speak her truths only to you in person.”
“Who’s your mistress,” Ryan asked wryly, “shy of all the excess wordage.”
“She is known as Sweet Julie Blind Eyes,” Mercier said crisply as she joined the group. “She is a folk healer, held in great esteem by the people of the ville. She lives miles back in the bayous. Hundreds of people make the pilgrimage to visit her each year.”
“What’s with the ‘seeress’ part of that really impressive résumé?” Mildred asked.
“She has the sight,” Achille announced proudly. “Both far and second.”
Mildred cocked a brow at Mercier. “And what do you think of this, Amélie?”
“What there is of science in the Deathlands has recognized for years that certain mutations convey limited powers of telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition,” the healer said. “Precognition meaning, glimpsing visions of possible futures, since it is demonstrated that acting with foreknowledge can prevent foreseen events from coming true.”
Mildred blinked at her. “Girlfriend, we have got to talk.”
“Later,” Ryan rasped. “Why should I hike way back in the swamp to talk to this blind woman of yours?”
“Because Mistress Sweet Julie, whose eyes see nothing of this world, but see most clearly in the One Behind It, she and she alone can tell you what you must do if you wish your woman Krysty Wroth back.”
Ryan drew his head back, stunned by the words. It’s no big thing he knows her name, he reminded himself. Given the bayou grapevine, the whole ville and beyond probably knows about Krysty by now.
He looked to the Blackwood siblings. “Is there anything to this woman? Any chance she’s likely to know something useful?”
“She is legitimately wise,” Elizabeth said, “as well as honest. And her knowledge of herbs and traditional remedies is encyclopedic.”
“Our family has consulted her on occasion,” her brother said. With visible reluctance he added, “For generations.”
“You’re the consummate rationalist, Amélie,” Mildred said. “What’s your take? Might this witch-woman have the goods?”
Mercier shrugged. Like Elizabeth she looked fatigued. There were dark circles beneath both women’s eyes. Ryan supposed she’d been working late in her lab.
“C’est possible,” she said. “That is one of the things that drew my father here, along with the late baron’s offer of employment and full assistance, of course. This environment contains a wealth of plants whose possible pharmacological properties have never been adequately cataloged. Some, undoubtedly, have arisen since the skydark. They form a major portion of my own inquiries.”
“So this self-proclaimed seeress—” Doc began.
“May well possess insight that could prove of value to the treatment of Miss Wroth’s condition, yes. At least, I believe such a chance exists.”
Mercier looked at Ryan. “I must warn you that there is no certainty that she will know a cure, no matter how strongly she believes.”
“Only thing I know is certain,” Ryan said, his voice sounding to his own ears as if he’d been gargling battery acid, “is one day we’ll all find dirt hitting us in the eyes. A chance is good enough for me. Baron?”
“Of course,” Blackwood said, rubbing his hands together. “You’ll have everything you need, of course. We’ll take a small flotilla of flatboats. We’ll need a small security contingent accompanying us. Sweet Julie dwells near the regions claimed by the swampies. Although they hold her in superstitious fear, and would not harm her, such forbearance doesn’t extend to us.”
“Wait,” Ryan said. “Us?”
The baron smiled. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” he said.
AS BLACKWOOD SAID, Sweet Julie Blind Eyes lived in the backwaters beyond the ville. Ryan and company endured four hours of poling and paddling through molasses-thick humid heat and clouds of crunchy, biting insects. At least the companions didn’t have to share any of the propulsion duties, which mostly left them with hands and energy free to slap the mosquitoes.
Sweet Julie Blind Eyes sat awaiting them as they trudged up the slope from the little uneven pier on the shore of her tiny island. No larger in any direction than Ryan could heave a rock the size of his head, it had grown up out of the confluence of several channels, so that it had at least fifty feet of water on all sides, around the roots of an ancient cypress. Or rather, several trees with boles grown together.
Like a vertical mouth, a crack eight feet high yawned in the compound trunk of the still-living trees, at least twelve feet across. The doomie sat in the opening like a housewife on her stoop, her long skirts of dark brown broadcloth flowing to conceal her legs and whatever she sat on. Her hair, silver-gray rather than white, flowed in vast crinkly waves over the shoulders of a blouse made of patches of many colors, including what had to be predark prints on scavvied fabric. Years seemed to have concentrated her so that she was as skinny yet dense as one of the gnarled roots of her mighty tree home. Although not so twisty. She sat erect, and though the joints were prominent on the hands that methodically crushed herbs in a small mortar and pestle she held on a thick board in her lap, that seemed because she had shrunk around the bones, not because of arthritic deposits.
“You have got to be shitting me,” Mildred said emphatically but mostly to herself. “Talk about a blatant female-genitalia symbol! If it was a flower, it’d have Georgia O’Keeffe’s signature right next to it.”
That made no sense Ryan could even imagine. It didn’t sound like anything that he needed to know. Or maybe wanted to. He let it slide.
The woman turned blind eyes toward them. Her face was long and as spare as her hands, with knobs for cheekbones and the skin drawn hollow beneath. But her features showed little sign of wrinkling. She had been a looker once, Ryan reckoned. Her eyes were as white as pearls.
“Welcome, Tobias!” she called in a voice that was strong and clear though cracked by the weight of years. “You’ve grown strong and confident in step since last you visited my isle.”
She turned her parchment-hued face toward Ryan. “And you must be Ryan Cawdor.”
“Mutie!” Jak
said for the second time today.
The woman’s brow wrinkled. “Yes, yes. Weren’t you told that part? But I don’t need mutie powers to tell me those things, young man. I just use the senses I was given. By sound I recognize young Tobias, his step and breathing. By common sense I know he’s brought retainers. By smell I recognize that some of his party have spent their lives elsewhere, eating foods not found in our hospitable swamps, or brought only as luxury imports.”
“But how’d you know Ryan, ma’am?” J.B. asked. He sounded a touch uncertain himself.
She laughed, more a pleasant bubbling flow, with perhaps a touch of static, than a crone’s cackle. “Lots of people across the Deathlands mention your deeds, youngster. You’d be J. B. Dix. And Mildred Wyeth, a healer and Dr. Theophilus Tanner. Which would make the young man so worried by muties Jak Lauren, once known as the White Wolf along this very coast a ways.”
Blackwood raised a brow. “With all respect to my honored guests, I never heard of them before they washed up on the fringes of Haven.”
“Sweet Julie spreads her nets wide,” she said. “News comes to me from everywhere. Through the wind, the water, the very earth beneath us.”
“Just heard ’bout us from ville people!” Jak accused.
She laughed again. “Guilty as charged. But I do not lie. I have heard of your exploits. Allow an old lady the pleasure of mystifying for its own sake.”
“If you don’t mind,” Ryan said, “why don’t we get right to the matter at hand. How can I bring Krysty back?”
“What would you give to have Krysty Wroth, the redheaded beauty, at your side and hale once more?”
“Anything.”
“Anything and everything?”
“I wouldn’t sacrifice my friends to buy her back,” he said. “Short of that, yeah. Anything and everything.”
She nodded. “You may have to pay that. What about your own life? Would you swap that, die so Krysty might live?”
“If it comes to that,” he said, “yes.”
She nodded. “That, too, it might cost you.”
“Tell me,” he said. After a moment he moistened lips that had gone dry despite air you could practically grab and from which squeeze droplets of water. “Please.”
“I do not possess the cure,” she said.
Ignoring Mildred’s muttered, “Oh for fuck’s sake,” she went on. “But I know the one who does—Papa Dough, vodoun king of the swampies in this region. He holds the key to Krysty’s cure. You must go to him in the darkest depths of the swamp to get the cure.”
“But this is madness!” Blackwood exclaimed. “All my men and myself wouldn’t be enough to carve our way to the heart of Papa Dough’s stronghold and force him to disgorge this knowledge. If we could, we’d have taken his head long ago, and put an end to the evil that afflicts our people!”
“No, Tobias,” she said, “not you and the Black Gang together could conquer Papa Dough’s kingdom. The cost of trying would be the destruction of all you have worked for. You’re wise enough not to follow that path to ruin. Are you sure, though, that your heroic ability with those swords you wear strapped across your fine strong back hasn’t clouded your judgment otherwise? It takes two to wage a war, Tobias. Mebbe talking more and cutting less would spare you and your people much treasure and pain.”
“You sure that’s true, ma’am?” J.B. asked. “We’ve seen plenty of villes overrun because they couldn’t defend themselves and were attacked through no fault of their own.”
“I’m not advising helplessness, young man,” she said in a tone that reminded Ryan of his tutors back at Front Royal. “I’m saying there is a time to fight, and a time to talk. It is usually best to leave the former for when the latter fails.”
Blackwood shook his head. “The swampies don’t seem inclined to negotiate. They only slay and burn.”
“Have you tried talking to them, Tobias Blackwood?”
“They are as beasts,” he said. “Insensate.”
Sweet Julie turned back to Ryan. “Do you think you can fight your way to Papa Dough and take what you want from him by force?”
“If that’s what it takes to get Krysty back,” he said, “I’ll do it or die trying. I’ve been in way too many fights for that to be my first choice, though.”
“Quit stringing us along!” Mildred snapped. “Is there any way to get what we need for Krysty without fighting? Or is it possible at all? Are you leading us into a trap?”
“Now, Mildred,” J.B. said.
“Don’t ‘now, Mildred’ me, John! Why’re we even listening to this, this phony psychic?”
“Because your whitecoat pal Mercier told us it was an ace idea, Mildred,” Ryan said. Mildred’s jaw shut with an almost audible clack.
“The good healer means well,” Sweet Julie said, “even if she allows concern for her friends to overwhelm her manners. She raises sound questions. The answers are, there may be. It may be possible. And no, if I wanted to trap you, there are a thousand less elaborate snares I could set—and you’re wise enough to know that in traps as in most things simpler means stronger.”
“I’ll do it,” Ryan said.
“What?” Mildred yelped. “Has your brain gone critical mass on us?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t say ‘you.’ I didn’t say ‘we.’ Said ‘I.’ I’m going. I won’t ask any of the rest of you to go along. You should probably stay behind and help Mercier with her whitecoat stuff, anyway, Mildred.”
“No way! No way are you leaving the womenfolk behind when you go into danger! Anyway, I’m as fed up as you are, Ryan, cooling my heels watching Krysty not die and not get better without a thing on God’s green Earth I can do about it! I’m coming if I have to steal a boat and paddle after you myself.”
“There need be no talk of stealing boats, Dr. Wyeth,” Blackwood said gravely. “Whatever help I or my ville can spare you, will be yours.”
He looked at the Sweet Julie. “Still, I cannot help question the wisdom of this journey. I can see no other ending for it than blood and doom.”
“There is none,” she answered. “The questions are, whose blood? Whose doom? I can tell you that if the voyage is undertaken, much suffering and loss will be averted.”
He shook his head. “I find it hard to see—”
“That thing I foretold, when you came to me ten summers ago as a skinny tadpole,” she said. “How did that go, Tobias?”
He bowed his head. “It came to pass as you said it would.”
“Why cannot you predict the future for us with some particularity, madam?” Doc asked. “At least give us some hint of what awaits us in the land of the swampies?”
“What can I, an old blind lady who sits in the crack of a tree all day each day mixing potions, tell Ryan Cawdor and companions about fighting and dangers? You will face forbidding country, horrid beasts, hostile muties, and terrifying tests of your character as well as courage. There. What have I told you that you didn’t already know?”
“Well,” Doc said, “since you put it that way—”
“Besides,” she said, “my doom-seeing powers tend not to be rich in specifics, and are nothing I can control, anyway. All I get are occasional glimpses through the great, ever-shifting fog of probability. I have no more to give you than what I have already.”
Doc nodded. “Ryan, you know you can count on me.”
“Goin’,” Jak announced. “Not afraid swamps, beasts, mutie boogers!”
“I’m not used to being Tail-End Charlie on a thing like this,” J.B. said, taking off his glasses and cleaning them, “but it shouldn’t need saying anyway. You can always count on me, Ryan. Double when Krysty’s involved!”
Mildred scowled thunderously. “I already said I was in,” she said. “But—but what guarantee do we have that we aren’t chasing a will-o’-the-wisp? That we can actually bring Krysty back this way?”
“If you want guarantees, young woman,” Sweet Julie said, her voice for the first time snapping with asperity
, “you’ve come to the wrong place.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Are you completely out of your mind, Ryan?” Mildred demanded as the pirogue slid along the dark water, leaving a wake of lazy ripples that disturbed the tiny pale green plants that covered the surface. “Bringing us on this wild-goose chase up this damned sewer on the word of some crazy old charlatan?”
“You wanted to come along, Mildred,” J.B. pointed out. He rode the third of the three small watercraft with Doc. Ryan and Jak were on the lead boat. Mildred was in the middle with two of their six volunteers from Haven, whom she had dubbed Team Heart of Darkness for some reason. The others were doled out by pairs in the other pirogues.
“Yes, I did,” Mildred said. “But that doesn’t mean I thought it was a good idea.”
“Too late turn back,” Jak called, grinning. He was standing in the bow, keeping watch. The two Havenites in the boat with him and Ryan, towheaded teenage boys named Cole and Cody who claimed not to be related although they were near identical and inseparable, had quit urging him to sit. He’d shown his customary grace and his own not-inconsiderable experience with water-wags, so they made an exception in his case.
A screw-steamer riverboat, the Gypsy Tailwind, had given the eleven adventurers a ride up the Blackwood Bayou half a day, or about eight miles as J.B. reckoned it through use of his microsextant. They’d tied up to a tree along a sandbar to let Ryan and company pull up the three pirogues the steamboat had been towing and transfer themselves and supplies aboard. The Tailwind’s captain, a guy named Mackerel, tooted the steam whistle three times in farewell as the pirogues paddled up a bayou to the northwest. Then he proceeded on his merry way upstream, carrying a load of Caribbean fruit and planks sawn by Haven’s combo water and stream-driven sawmill to a ville called Coverton.
A swollen orange sun hung low above the trees. The six Havenites who had come to guide and guard the companions into Papa Dough’s domain rowed the pirogues down a bayou so narrow Ryan could practically stretch out his arms and trail his fingers through the long, skinny beards of Spanish moss that dangled from the cypress boughs. Bullfrogs uttered their bass-fiddle moans from the shallows. A nutria sculled past the other way with powerful strokes of its tail, effort fully holding his blunt, buck-toothed, oversize-rat face clear of his own bow wave.