God Stalk

by P. C. Hodgell

  "Well," said Jame, picking herself up off the floor, "here we are."

  The inner sanctum of the temple was just as she remembered it—high, dark, and dank even in this time of drought because of the hand-filled reservoir on the roof. Benches, moss velvety walls, the giant image of Gorgo looking, if anything, more woebegone than usual, and, balanced on its hands over a bed of old ashes, a roll of parchment. Perfect, if one discounted a minor host of enraged celebrants hammering on the door . . . or was it? Something about the length of the scroll, the color of its paper . . .

  "Marc, see if you can find another way out. I think something is very wrong here."

  While the big guardsman began a slow circuit of the room, Jame took the scroll out of the stone hands and carefully unrolled it. "Eyes that read, beware," she began out loud, struggling with runes' meaning. "BE STILL, TONGUE . . ."

  She recoiled from it, teeth closing with a snap. The words of Forgetting swept through her mind, drowning thought and memory. When she looked at the scroll in her hands again, cautiously this time, not translating, the marks on it were mere lines, their deadly power locked in. She stood there biting her lip for a moment, then looked around for her companion. He was not in sight.

  "Marc, where are you?"

  There was a scraping sound and a muffled grunt from behind the statue.

  "What are you doing?"

  "There's a lever back here. Maybe it controls a secret exit. I think I can . . ."

  There was a sharp crack, then a deep-noted gurgle. Jame sprang back as the glass eyes of the idol flew out of their sockets, closely followed by two thick jets of water.

  Marc emerged from the shadows, looking sheepish. He held out a metal bar and said, apologetically, "It broke off."

  "Never mind that. Look here." She held out the parchment. He stared at it, making an obvious effort to focus. Like most Kendars with their faith in memory, he had never learned how to read.

  "Is that the Law Scroll?"

  "Not unless they've started writing them in the Master Words of High Runic. No, this is something else, older than any temple copy and far more deadly. See how the figures start out crisp and clear, then here, halfway down, begin to falter? Despite himself, the scribe must have begun to see the words forming under his quill point, and the race began to the end of each line. More speed, less control, ink spattering, lines shaking . . . and here it simply ends, in midsentence, in mid-word. Well?"

  She glared up at Marc, oblivious both to the water now swirling about their knees and to the irate pounding on the door which had settled down into the steady, bone-jarring blows of some makeshift ram.

  "Tell me I've the imagination of a street balladeer. Tell me the annals of the Kencyrath is full of such stories. Tell me this thing isn't Anthrobar's scroll, the only copy, partial as it is, of the Book Bound in Pale Leather. Go on, tell me!"

  Marc blinked owlishly at the roll of parchment. "How did it get here?"

  "God knows!" She was beginning to lose patience with him. Here they were, faced with a genuine crisis, and this nodding giant with his bandage slipping down rakishly over one eye was only half-awake. "We may find out later if—if, I say—we ever get out of here, but don't you see what a dilemma we're in now? Short of the Book itself, can you think of any more dangerous document ever entrusted to the Three People? Creation, preservation, destruction—this thing is the key to every power planted in us for good or ill. How many times have our wisest scrollsmen and greatest lords, in the best of faith, nearly destroyed us all by using it? And who wants his talons in it now? Ishtier! Why, the man doesn't even use the power he has properly. Marc, I can't turn it over to him."

  "It isn't the Law Scroll," said Marc, beginning to sway gently. "You don't have to."

  "Idiot that I am, I swore to bring him the scroll—any scroll—in the arms of the idol. My word binds me."

  Marc shook himself fiercely. "Aaaugh! But listen: when we thought it was the Law Scroll, freshly stolen, it was all right for you to recover it. Now—how long has this thing been missing? Over two thousand years?—even for something so valuable, the period of jeopardy must have run out centuries ago. Originally Kencyr property or not, under the laws of the city it now belongs to Loogan, and if you steal it, my word as a guard binds me to turn you over to the Five. . ."

  ". . . who will be delighted to dethrone Hangrell in my favor. If you're a thief, as they say, never get too attached to your own skin. Oh, what a trap that priest has sprung on me, and all without telling one direct lie. If I take him the scroll, think of the power he will gain; if I'm killed, he will at least have the satisfaction of my death; if I refuse, I'll be breaking my word to him and he will declare me a renegade, which may be what Bane hoped for when he consented to be Ishtier's messenger. Between them, those two have given me the choice of being dishonorable, irresponsible, or dead. Beautiful! The only consolation is that matters can't possibly get any worse."

  At that moment, three things happened more or less simultaneously: the whole face of the image gave way, releasing a torrent of water into the already half-flooded room; the rings holding the bar across the door, jolted loose, fell away on one side; and Marc suddenly fell asleep, standing up.

  Jame looked around the room with raised eyebrows, then back at the scroll in her hands. One complication would have been manageable; two, a calamity; three, ridiculous; but four? It would be an excellent time to burn the manuscript and drown herself, but then there was Marc, who didn't deserve to die alone, much less asleep on his feet. She reached out and rapped the swaying giant on his chest.

  "You'd better see to the door," she said. "I think we're about to have company."

  "Zaugh . . . oh!" said Marc, blinking at her. He turned and waded through the water, which now reached almost to his waist, over to the opposite wall. While Jame took refuge on the statue's right kneecap, the big Kendar raised the bar back into place and began to hammer the ring bolts in again with the head of his truncheon. Suddenly he froze, looking startled, then spun about and came splashing back across the room.

  "Lass!" he bellowed over the roar of the water. "I've got it! You can't steal the scroll, but I can!"

  Jame saw his hand sweeping up at her out of the corner of her eye. She had been deep in thought and had only half heard what her companion had said. Instinctively, she twisted away from what, from almost anyone but Marc, would have been a threatening gesture. The stone beneath her was slick with spray. Her sudden movement threw her sideways off her perch and down, scroll and all, into the surging water.

  Marc fished her out and set her sputtering on her feet. She swept a streaming lock of hair out of her eyes, shook herself, then froze.

  "What did you say?"

  He shifted his weight uncomfortably, as it he would have liked to have shuffled his feet if only there hadn't been so much water on them. "I wouldn't be stealing from a Kencyr, you know," he said, half pleading. "It wouldn't be breaking the Law, just—uh—bending it a little. After all, if that wasn't honorable, you wouldn't have been doing it yourself all these weeks."

  Jame's stunned gaze dropped to the soggy piece of parchment in her hand. At the sight of it, she caught her breath, then threw back her head with a shout of laughter. Marc stared at her. She held the scroll out to him. Streaks of ink twisted down it into a muddy lower margin. Not a letter remained legible.

  "By Trinity, m'lord Ishtier may be subtle, but he's not omniscient," she said. "This is one solution he could never have foreseen. Here, take the damn thing! Just this once, I'll let you steal for me. Now, in all the names of God, let's get out of here."

  "Uh, lass . . . short of staging a massacre, how? I've no taste for these peoples' blood."

  "It needn't come to that. Look here: where there's fire," she gestured to the wet ashes in the cupped hands, "there's usually smoke. Where there's smoke, there had better be some sort of ventilation." Her finger traced a line from the offering bowl to the ceiling far above. There among the shadows was a square of less
er darkness, through which the eyes of the Frog constellation sparkled fitfully.

  Her hands had been busy as she spoke, pulling small pieces of metal out of her full sleeve and fitting them into the familiar form of a Cloudie's grapnel. To this she snapped the line that had been wound about her waist. On the third try, the hook shot straight through the hole and caught firmly on something outside on the roof.

  Marc went up first, by some miracle not falling asleep halfway to the ceiling, although he had begun to nod again. Jame, following him, heard the door at last give way as the bar dropped off altogether. The shouts of the celebrants changed timbre as the wall of dammed up water came crashing down on them. It was fortunate, she thought, as she scrambled up onto the roof, that they had all come expecting to get wet anyway.

  So much for Loogan. Now, to get Marc safely home, and then to settle with m'lord Ishtier.

  * * *

  "FOOL, DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'VE DONE?"

  Jame had come prepared for the priest's anger, but the violence of it drove her back a step, flinching.

  "The key to our future was in your hands, and you threw it away. How many ages have you added to our exile? How many eons until night falls at last?"

  "Night? Exile?" She had expected his rage to fall on her for denying him (and, unfortunately, the Three People as well) the means for escaping Rathillien to the next threshold world if the barriers here against Perimal Darkling should fall. Why was he looking backward to lands already lost?

  At the sound of her voice, the old man stiffened, as though suddenly aware that he had said too much. The shriveled lips moved again. This time not words but raw power whispered in from the outer corridors, ripping into her, blocking thought, freezing motion. She knew that he meant this to be her death.

  "BE STILL, TONGUE THAT SPEAKS . . . TO THE CHOSEN LEAVE THE HIDDEN WAYS."

  Afterwards, seated by a sleeping Marc in the loft, Jame touched her sore throat. Yes, she had said that, one hand thrown up to shield her face . . . or perhaps, futilely, to seal in the words. But whatever had possessed her to raise it higher, fingers curved, nails unsheathed, beckoning as did the image of Regonereth, That-Which-Destroys, towering over both her and the priest? Sheer defiance, probably. It was dangerous to mimic the god, but well worth it this once to see Ishtier blanch. He had not hindered her leave-taking.

  Jorin was pacing from one end of the loft to the other. She needed no mental link to know his thoughts as he turned his blind, moon-opal eyes to her with each pass: the hills? Now? Now? Soon, kitten, soon. As she had told Cleppetty earlier, it was clear that he was rapidly outgrowing these cramped quarters and would soon have to be moved elsewhere.

  The knapsack lay on her knees. All this time it had been there, and she had been trying to ignore it, as though hoping it would somehow vanish or she would think of an excuse to return it to its hiding place unopened. No such excuse had occurred to her. With a sigh, Jame threw back the flap and drew out the large, flat package.

  She unwrapped it gingerly, folding back the cloth, layer by layer, to reveal at last what appeared to be simply an old book, remarkable only in the unexpected warmth of its soiled white binding. Fixing in her mind the patterns she hoped to find but not their meaning, Jame opened it. The first page was covered with hieroglyphs of a completely unknown nature. So were the second, third, and fourth, up to the twenty-fifth; and every one of them was written in a different, equally unfamiliar language. The damn thing was playing with her.

  "Stop it!" said Jame sharply, rapping it with her knuckles.

  The next page was composed of Kencyr Master Words. On it, she found the second set of runes that she had been looking for and, turning back, located the first where before there had only been an unreadable tangle of lines. When she closed the volume, its binding was no longer dingy leather but something finer grained and wanner, with little white hairs and faint blue lines running just under the surface.

  So. Now she knew not only why she had been so sure the scroll in Gorgo's temple was Anthrobar's and why its destruction—a potential catastrophe for her people—had not dismayed her, but also why she had been able to quote to Ishtier both a section she had just read and one she had not.

  Because the original was in her possession.

  Marc's voice sounded again in her mind against the memory of falling water. "How did it get here?" he was asking. "How?"

  There was only one way. When the elder world fell, the renegade Master of Knorth had kept it with him in the deepening shadows, dedicating it as he did himself and his sister-consort Jamethiel to the service of Perimal Darkling; and there it had stayed for time out of mind, becoming no more than a legend to most of those Kencyrs who had fled. If the Book was in Jame's hands now, it could only mean that she herself had brought it out of darkness. Those lost years, so long a mystery to her, must have been spent in the Master's house, in Perimal Darkling.

  "Well?" she said out loud. 'Tell me where else they could have sent you from the middle of the Haunted Lands —south to Rathillien, or north, across the Barrier. Idiot, it's been staring you in the face all this time."

  But she hadn't seen it, had not, perhaps, wanted to see it. There, presumably, they had taught her to dance, fight, read the runes, and Trinity knew what else; yet even now not a memory of it remained. Nor did she know how she had come into possession of the Book. Clearly she was familiar with its contents, had perhaps even used it to flee Perimal Darkling, but once here in Rathillien all recollection of that had faded too . . . until tonight. Now at last the Book Bound in Pale Leather was on its way back to the Kencyrath, in her charge, as the widow would say, for lack of anyone more sensible. Or perhaps not. Such objects of power were said to fulfill their own destinies. If this one had been using her, one might even ask if she had stolen it from the Master's house or it had stolen her. One thing at least was certain: Gerridon of Knorth could not have been pleased to find it missing.

  Might he, in fact, have been displeased enough to have come after it?

  . . . dead, all dead under the twilight sky, within the broken walls: Anar, her father . . . Marc's demon warriors riding down from the north on East Kenshold, blood already on their armor as though fresh from battle, looking for something—or someone . . .

  "Jame!"

  She started violently. Ghillie's head had popped into sight around the spiral stair's newel.

  "What's the matter with you? Don't you hear them? Aunt Cleppetty says come down quick before they start breaking things, or by all the gods, she'll break you!"

  She jumped up as the boy disappeared, hearing clearly for the first time the steady, rhythmic pounding below, not hooves on the iron hills but tankards on tabletops, beating an impatient tattoo. A year ago, yet just that evening, she had made a promise; now they were here to see that it was kept. Let the dead wait, she thought, hurriedly returning the Book to its hiding place and stripping off her street clothes. The living would not.

  At the stroke of midnight, as Marc lay on his pallet snoring happily and far away the temples of Tai-tastigon heralded the new day with bells, chants, and laughter, the B'tyrr walked down the stairway to be greeted by the waiting crowd with a roar of welcome.

  Tubain, who had been considering a hasty retreat down to the wine cellar, beamed at her across the room. Trust a Kencyr always to honor her word.

  Chapter 10

  The Feast of the Dead Gods

  THE RABBIT'S HEAD jerked up, green shoots dangling from its lips. Jame froze. A stealthy movement seen past the quarry's alert ears helped her to spot Jorin, crouching behind a clump of late daisies. It had taken them over an hour of patient stalking to reach their respective positions, all for one stupid rabbit, which, it seemed, was not even going to let them get within striking range. Would it bolt? Yes, dammit, it was—away from them both.

  Jame sprang up. The rabbit had broken to the left, but her wild dash set it jinking back toward the daisies. Jorin erupted from the heart of the clump, narrowly missing a perfect pounce.
The rabbit was doubling back now toward Jame's original position. She pivoted. Sprinting to turn it, her foot hit something in the grass, and she fell, fingertips almost grazing the white tail as it flashed past.

  She was lying flat on the ground with most of the breath knocked out of her when Jorin gave the top of her left ear a tentative lick. "Has it ever occurred to you," she said in exasperation, rolling over to look up into his face, "that you might just once go on without me?"

  Apparently, it never had.

  The ounce gave a conciliatory little chirp and flopped down beside her. Relenting, Jame ran her hand down the length of his back, feeling muscles flex under the richness of his late summer coat, now tinged with gold where that odious brown dye had worn off. Jorin stretched, purring, and rolled over on his back in a most Boo-like fashion to have his stomach rubbed. Jame sat up with a laugh and obliged. Then she groped back through the grass for the thing that had tripped her.