by Steven Brust
He glared at the warlock. “May you never—”
“Really?” said Laszló, his voice shooting out like a thrown knife. “You’re going to curse me? You are going to curse me?”
Discaru shut up.
“You’re better than me,” I told the warlock.
“Hmmm?”
“You’re a better witch than I am.”
“I’ve been at it a while.”
“I still resent it.”
“I’ve heard you once managed to teleport an object. I mean, with witchcraft.”
“Yeah. What—”
“I’ve never done that.”
“Okay, that helps.”
“Maybe we could trade recipes sometime?”
“Sure.”
I turned to the Athyra, or the demon, as you please. “So, I have some questions for you.”
He suggested I do something that demons might be able to manage, though I’d prefer not to watch.
“Can’t,” I said. “Let’s start with the one that’s really bugging me: are those clothes part of the illusion, or do you create actual clothes when you transform?”
He made another suggestion, one I don’t think even a demon could have managed.
“So, what’s this about? Why did you really bring me here?”
His response was short, but colorful.
“I get part of it,” I said. “You had to bring me here so I couldn’t use my weapon against you, and so I’d draw it and get all the gods pissed off at me. But why kill me? What are you afraid I’ll find out?”
His fourth suggestion disappointed me. “You’re getting less interesting now,” I told him. “How about just answering my question?”
He stood mute, which I guess was an improvement.
“Yeah, well.” I turned to Laszló. “Can you convince him to talk?”
“How?”
“He must feel pain.”
“I won’t do that,” he said. “I have sort of a personal history with that kind of thing and I’ve sworn off it.”
“I guess I get that,” I said, shuddering involuntarily. I hoped neither of them noticed.
I could try it myself. But no.
So many questions he could have answered.
“Boss, if he can get us out of here, he could bring us somewhere that isn’t in that weird building, right?”
“Maybe.”
“You could ask.”
“I could.”
“But you’re not going to, are you?”
“All right, Discaru—is that your real name? Never mind. All right, if you won’t talk, you won’t. What say you bring me back and we’ll pretend none of this ever happened. How does that sound?”
He smirked.
I turned to the warlock. “You sure you don’t torture?”
“I’m sure.”
“Too bad.”
“But if he doesn’t take you back, I’m happy to chain him to the fountain for ten thousand years or so. He wouldn’t like that.”
Discaru stiffened, then said, “I don’t like threats.”
I looked at the wolf, at the dzur, at Laszló, then back to him. “And?”
He gave me a murderous look, then nodded. “All right. I’ll take you back.” He turned and gestured, and the two rocks appeared again. I wondered if all he’d done was turn them invisible, and I could have left anytime. I doubted it was that simple.
“Let’s go, then,” he said.
He took a couple of steps toward the rocks, then, I guess, observed that the wolf and the dzur were gone. I turned back to Laszló, and there were a dog and a cat next to him.
“Um,” I said.
I tried to wrap my head around what had just happened, with only limited success. The cat jumped into his arms.
“Thanks,” I told him.
He bowed, which made it look like the cat was bowing too, which was weird. “Glad to be of help.”
I felt like there was probably more to say, but Discaru was waiting. I saluted Laszló, turned, and followed my demonic leader.
We walked between the stones, and we were once more in a hallway of the house.
He turned and glared at me. “There,” he said.
I drew Lady Teldra. “Yeah. Now, I have some questions.”
He sighed. “How did I not see this coming?”
“It’s not like you could have done anything about it. If you start to transform, I swear by Verra’s sense of humor that I’ll put this weapon through your guts before your forehead drops.”
“Will you really use that thing on me?”
“Gleefully. What are you?”
“You’d call me a demon.”
“Yeah, I got that part. You know, the squat legs, big snout, pink skin with blue splotches? I put that together. Now, what are you?”
“I’m from another world.”
“Right. What world?”
“Depending on the language, we call it ‘ground’ or ‘the world’ or ‘home’ or ‘dirt.’ Does that help?”
“Are you trying to piss me off?”
He looked down the length of Lady Teldra, then said, “Probably not a good idea, I guess.”
“I see you come from a people capable of learning. What does your race call yourselves?”
“Our term for ourselves translates to ‘those who think.’”
I sighed.
“All right, tell me this, then. Why are you trying to keep me from finding out anything? What’s the big deal?”
“I’m carrying out Zhayin’s wishes.”
“Oh, a demon thing?”
“Actually, no. He could have bound me. You know that, right?”
“Right. That’s what it means to be a demon.”
“Yeah. But he didn’t. We’re friends. He helped me once, long ago. So he asked for my help, and I agreed. That’s all. Does it surprise you that I could have a human friend?”
I chose not to comment on what “human” means. I said, “No. I have a friend who’s a demon. Well, he’s called the Demon, he isn’t really one. And he isn’t a friend, he’s more of an enemy. But anyway. What is it that you so desperately want me not to find out?”
“Oh, that,” he said.
“Yeah, that.”
“Can we negotiate?”
“Uh, I think that’s what we’re doing.”
“You’re aware that just having that, that weapon out, is attracting all sorts of attention, right? I’m expecting help—”
“To have showed up the first time I drew her,” I finished for him. “That is, if there was anyone to show up.”
“Okay, point,” he said.
I gestured with Lady Teldra. Discaru shrugged and said, “All right.”
He moved fast, really fast. Maybe it was a demon thing, or maybe I was off guard, or maybe some of each, but he was past Lady Teldra before I knew it. He slammed his shoulder into me, and as I fought to keep my balance he ran past me back into the room and vanished.
“Well, crap,” I said to the walls.
“Sorry, Boss. I should have picked up on that.”
“So should I.”
I pulled the door shut. Okay, then. I’d learned some things from all of that. I wasn’t sure exactly what those things were, and certainly not how they fit together, and I had absolutely no idea how—or if—they were related to the mysterious nature of the “platform” I was walking around in, but I’d certainly learned some things.
Now what?
“Invent theories, then test them?”
“That’s what I’ve been doing, Loiosh.”
“Oh? What theory have you tested so far?”
“That I died, was brought to Deathgate, and the entire house is contained in the Paths of the Dead, and this has all been part of one of those tests you have to go through to reach the Halls of Judgment.”
“Oh. Is it?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“The Paths are set up for Dragaerans. Only Dragaerans. They couldn’t bring
in a fake, mentally constructed Easterner I’d never met. He has to have been real. If he’s real, it’s all real. If it’s all real, then this isn’t part of a test, and I’m still alive. Also, if I’d died, you’d have mentioned something about it.”
“Good, then. Uh, did you really think that was going on, Boss?”
“No.”
“Then—”
“I’m not starting with the most likely, I’m starting with the easiest to test.”
“Oh. So, what’s the next theory?”
“Actually, that was the only one I had.”
“Right.”
To my left was the beast, locked in its room. I didn’t feel like meeting it again. To my right was the stairway back down, and places I hadn’t yet explored. So, just go ahead and open doors? Why not. Maybe there were answers behind one of them. Maybe there were pieces of answers behind all of them. So downstairs, and—
“Boss, there’s still a door here you haven’t opened.”
“Where?”
“There.”
Yeah, heading back toward the stairs, on my right. Well, sure then. The echo of my boots was very distinct as I walked toward that door; I was aware of the sound as I hadn’t been before.
I stood in front of the door, took a deep breath, and opened it.
Light.
Pure light.
I don’t mean blinding; I didn’t have an urge to shut my eyes or anything, but it was like the entire room was filled with light, or there was so much light that it was impossible to make out anything inside.
“Loiosh?”
“Boss?”
“Seem dangerous?”
“Well, not as far as I can tell.”
I shut the door and looked around. My eyes worked fine.
Why was there a room of light? Who would do that? And what would be in the room? Well, if I couldn’t answer that, there was another one: what would be past a room full of light? As I was trying to figure that out, something else occurred to me.
A room of mirrors, a room of light, the smell of bread, stone grinding against stone, footsteps in the hall: Light and sound and smell. The fact is, if you’ve known me for a while, the things I notice aren’t so much how much light there is, and what odd sounds there are, and smells. I have, from time to time, mentioned them, because I’ve been trying to give you, my listener, an idea of the place where things happened. But I’ve had to work to do it, because the things I notice are more like There’s a nook where someone could be hiding, or, That guy could be walking that way because he has a knife in his boot, or, I could go ten steps down that street, duck into that doorway, and vanish, or, Both of those guys can use a blade, but the one on the right is faster, or, That guardsman is watching me. That’s the stuff that I automatically pay attention to, because that’s who I am, because that’s what you need to be aware of when you kill people for a living. I’m not apologizing, I’m just telling you, because it was just then, standing before that door, that I became aware of how important light and sound and smell were in this place, and that I hadn’t been paying enough attention to them.
There was a connection between my world and the Halls of Judgment, and the connection was based on necromancy, which I understood not at all. But I knew this much: if I was going to make sense of how this place was put together, I was going to need to pay attention to all sorts of things I wasn’t used to noticing. Things are always the way they are for a reason: sometimes as a cause to create an effect, sometimes as a deliberate or accidental effect of something else, sometimes both at once. But there was a reason for the light, for the dark, for the smell of bread, for the sound of stones and footsteps.
I opened the door again.
“Boss?”
There was probably a little end table that I’d bark my shin on, or I’d set off a trap that would send a bucket of molten lava on my head and kill me, or something like that.
“Boss, we’re not going in there, are we?”
“Would you be afraid if it were dark, instead of light?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we’re going in. Our answers are on the other side.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because.”
“Because?”
“Uh, because, why not?”
“Oh, good.”
I don’t know why entering into a room I couldn’t see because of light was scarier than entering into a room I couldn’t see because of darkness. Maybe how weird it was? Probably.
I took a step into the room and didn’t die. I took another step, a smaller one, because now the idea of a table at shin height had set itself up in my head. I started sliding my feet forward. I heard the door close behind me, but I ignored it and continued. I kept going, and after what felt like miles, my foot reached the far wall. I was obscurely disappointed that I hadn’t cleverly detected any shin-level furniture.
I ran my hands over the wall, looking for a door. I had about concluded that either there wasn’t one or it was on another wall, when I found it. Then it was a matter of feeling for the knob, turning it, pushing—And I could see again.
“That was almost too easy, Boss.”
“Loiosh, never ever say that again.”
“Right. Sorry.”
There was a small, oval area. There was a white marble table with a sculpture sitting on it, and a corridor leading off to the left, and a curved stairway heading up with a round mirror placed so that I could see the top stair.
“Ah ha,” I said.
“Ah ha?”
“Ah ha.”
“So, you know where we are?”
“I think so. I think at the top of that stairway is the chamber where Zhayin does his sorcery.”
“Oh. Then why aren’t we going the other direction?”
I went straight across, no hesitations, and climbed the stairway.
It curved around to the left until I was pointing back the way I’d come, which, given the nature of this obnoxious structure, could mean I was anywhere pointing in any direction. I kept reminding myself of that in hopes of easing the shock the next time something bizarre happened. My boots made more of a scuffing than a tapping sound, for whatever reason.
There was a door at the top, opening outward. I put my hand on the knob, tried it, and it turned.
It was only a place set aside by a sorcerer to perform necromantic experiments in a building that didn’t make sense but clearly crossed over from world to world and had managed to trap Devera here. What danger could there possibly be?
“Boss—”
I pulled the door open.
8
WITHERING DEPTHS
The room was pretty big, about a third of the size of the ballroom. The floor was black and there were designs painted in silver all over it: circles with lines connecting them and a few odd shapes here and there. There were lamps hanging from hooks on the walls, but they weren’t lit. The ceiling was high and had a very large window in it—maybe the biggest window I’d ever seen. The sky was orange-red, as it was supposed to be, so I could assume it really was the sky, and I wasn’t looking at some other world or something.
I took a step into the room. There were tables of varying heights scattered about. One full-size freestanding mirror leaned against the back wall; a second hung from the ceiling in the near corner. I took another step, avoiding a head-size circle on the floor because, well, I don’t know. Would you have stepped in it?
I approached the nearest table, which seemed surprisingly cheap and rickety and had paint spatters on it. It held, scattered about haphazardly, a couple of books, a steel rod, a jar of something yellow, two polished rocks and three unpolished ones, and a small clear globe with a greenish tint.
There was also dust. A thick layer of dust over everything. I mean, thick.
I looked back at the floor, and, yes, I could see my footprints in it.
No one had been in this room for years.
Well, okay then. I put that in storage with every
thing else I knew. I recalled Harro’s story, and thought about the beast, and decided I really did not want to be messing around in here. I wondered what the books were, but, no, I wasn’t even going to pick them up to find out. Then I tried to remember how much dust I’d seen in the other rooms as I went by, but couldn’t remember. Maybe that meant there hadn’t been much. I’m pretty sure if I’d tracked footprints in the dust I’d have noticed. I made a mental note to watch for dust from now on.
At the far end of the room on the right-hand wall was another door, and across from it one of those four-legged ladders servants use for lighting lamps that are placed too high to do any good. I stood for a while, looking at all the juicy objects, each one with its own story and its own uses, and maybe, if I’d been smart enough, its own piece of the puzzle. I wanted to pick things up; I was afraid to pick things up. I looked up at the window over my head. Loiosh helpfully remained silent. No, I mean it: it was helpful.
I cursed and, without giving myself time for second thoughts, picked up the steel rod from the table. It didn’t blow up, or shoot lightning bolts, or do anything else embarrassing. But it felt funny; its weight was oddly distributed. I turned it slowly in my hand. There was liquid inside it, flowing as I moved it, which is something I’d run into before, though I couldn’t remember the details. I set it back down and picked up one of the polished rocks, studied it, didn’t learn anything, put it down.
One of the books was called Creating Nexus Points, the other was An Inquiry into World Drift. I was pretty sure I could read them both and know as much as I knew now. I opened them, and they were both marked on the inside cover with a seal and the name Zhayin. Also, they were both very dusty.
I looked around the room again and shrugged. It was full of stuff, and no doubt full of information, but there was nothing I was capable of learning here. I went over to the ladder, looked up, and there was a sky-door. I climbed up, pushed the door open, and saw the sky. Then I went up the rest of the way and stepped out onto the roof.
I hadn’t expected it to feel that good to be out in the open again. The air felt moist, like it should after a rainstorm, and there may even have been a bit of drizzle left. I didn’t care. I took a look around and saw, yeah, you guessed it, mirrors built into the stone itself, facing inward, one on each side, each of them a little shorter than me, and a little wider. I walked all around the top of the manor. There were walls, and the great sweeping arches as I’d seen before I entered the place, but at the low points I could easily look over them. I enjoyed the view of the ocean-sea on one side, and of flatlands on another, and a jungle on yet another, and the sight of the road back home.