by Tad Williams
This was a rare exchange. The exhaustion and misery of the journey were too great, the danger too constant, to encourage talking. The path still led them in a monotonous clockwise spiral down the massive black cone, but as it receded back into the mountain, or simply melted slowly into nothingness, the trail became too narrow for anything except single file, too treacherous for them to attempt any speed greater than a trudging walk with eyes flicking between the edge of the trail and the back of the person just ahead.
Sam had slipped twice, saved both times because they were now marching so closely together that everyone was within arm's reach of someone else. Jongleur had almost fallen once too, but !Xabbu had shot out a hand and grabbed the man's arm, allowing him to topple backward instead of forward. !Xabbu had acted without thought, automatically, and Jongleur did not thank him. Renie could not help wondering what she would do if the Grail master stumbled again and she were the only one who could save him.
After Jongleur's near-miss, they made it a practice to rotate positions during the dwindlingly frequent wide spots along the path, so that the four of them took turns at the front, ensuring that whoever was leading would be relatively alert. Only Ricardo Klement was left out of the rotation—consigned to the rear, where his somnambulistic stops and starts would threaten no one but himself.
It was an indescribably dreary trip. Other than the occasional odd shapes of the black stone itself, its bulges and candledrip flutings, there was nothing to look at, no plant life, not even the distraction of weather. The sky that so closely and fearfully surrounded them was less interesting than a concrete wall. Even the distant beauty of the silvery-white cloudbank below them, with its unstable shimmering and gleams of rainbow light, quickly lost the power to engage, and in any case it was far too dangerous to look over the edge for more than a few seconds. Weary feet frequently stumbled: the trail, though monotonous, was not uniform.
By the time they had gone through their third miserable night's sleep in one of the mountainside's narrow crevices—"night" signifying only the period during which they stopped walking, because the black peak remained in perpetual twilight—even the violent angers of the first camp had disappeared. Felix Jongleur barely mustered the energy for the few necessary communications, apparently avoiding even contempt as a waste of resources. Renie's fear and dislike of him did not disappear, but in the dull slog of routine and the occasional shock of accident it receded into something at the back of her mind, a small, cold thing that slept. Even Sam, despite her loathing of Jongleur, began to lower her guard a little. She still would not speak to him, but if she stumbled and he was the one in front of her, she would reach out and steady herself on his naked back. The first time she had shivered in disgust, but now, like almost everything else, it had become only another part of their bleak routine.
"I just realized something," Renie said quietly to !Xabbu. Since they had not found a place wide enough to sit, they were taking their rest standing up, backs against the mountain's side. With no sun to warm it or night to chill it, the temperature of the stone was indistinguishable from that of her own skin. "We were supposed to climb this."
"What do you mean?" He lifted one of his feet carefully and massaged the sole.
She sneaked a look at Jongleur, who stood a few meters away down the slope, spine and head pressed back against the smooth rock face. "Paul's angel," she whispered. "Ava. She said something about how we were supposed to get to the mountaintop ourselves, but there wasn't time. And then she made that gateway and dropped us right onto the path. Do you see? They wanted us to climb this whole thing. Imagine that! Having to go uphill even farther than we've already gone down." She shook her head. "The bastards. It probably would have killed half of us."
!Xabbu too was shaking his head, but in puzzlement. "But who wanted that? Who are they?"
"The angel. And the Other, I guess. Who knows?"
He pursed his lips, then wiped a hand across his eyes. Renie thought he looked wrung out—more weary than she had ever seen him. "It is like the journeys our people must make, where we must sometimes travel for months in the bush—but that is for survival."
"So is this, I guess. But it still makes me angry, someone setting up an obstacle course like this. 'Oh, and let's have them climb a hundred-kilometer mountain, too. That'll keep them busy for a while.' Bastards."
"It's a quest." Sam's voice was flat.
Renie looked at her in surprise. By the girl's slumped position, Renie had judged her too exhausted for conversation. "What do you mean, Sam?"
"A quest, seen? Like in the Middle Country. If you want to get something, you have to go on some utterly long journey and earn bonus points and kill monsters." She sighed. "If I ever get out of here, I'm never going in that fen-hole Middle Country again."
"But why would we be sent on a quest? I mean, we already are on one, in a sense." Renie scowled, willing herself to think when her weary brain wanted only to lie torpid in its skullbath of nutrients. "Sellars brought us in to find out what was going on. But those gameworld quests always have a purpose, an explanation. 'Get this and win the game.' We had no idea what we were looking for—and we still don't,"
Her gaze flicked to Jongleur, as still as a lizard on a rock. Something tugged at her memory. "It was Ava who kept sending Paul places, wasn't it? And she did it for you and Orlando, too, right?"
"That was her in the Freezer, yeah." Sam shifted position. "And in Egypt. So I guess so."
"Oh my God," Renie said. "I've just realized some- thing." Her voice sank to a whisper. "If Paul Jonas was right, then Ava is Jongleur's daughter."
!Xabbu cocked an eyebrow. "But we knew that already."
"I know, but it hadn't really sunk in. That means the answers to most of our questions might be sitting there in that horrible man's head."
"Let's open it up with a sharp rock and find out," Sam suggested.
Jongleur's eyelids slid up and he turned to regard them. Renie wondered if her own sim face would register a guilty flush. "If you have the energy to whisper like schoolchildren," he said, "then you no doubt have the strength to begin walking again." He pushed himself upright and began to limp down the path.
"You seem very disturbed, Renie," !Xabbu said quietly as they stepped out after Jongleur.
"Well, what if it's true? What if the answers to everything—the children, and why we're stuck here, and what's going to happen—what if he already knows everything we've been killing ourselves to find out?"
"I do not think he will help us, Renie. He might trade for information from us, but only if it was useful to him, and we have no idea what he needs."
Renie could not shake a certain sick feeling. "I can't help thinking about what Sam just said. Not trying to crack open his skull, but about using force. If he's stuck in a virtual body like we are, then he's vulnerable—and we outnumber him. Don't we owe it to all those children, to our friends, to find out what he knows? Even if we have to . . . to torture it out of him?"
!Xabbu looked truly disturbed. "I do not like that thought, Renie."
"Neither do I, but what if the fate of the world really is at stake?" Sam had fallen back a couple of paces, and now Renie lowered her voice until her mouth was almost against !Xabbu's ear, which made walking single file even more dangerous. "It sounds so melodramatic, but it could be true! What if that's the only way? Don't we have to consider it?"
!Xabbu did not reply. He looked, if it were possible, more exhausted now than before they had stopped to rest.
Renie certainly understood !Xabbu's reluctance even to talk about the possibility of torturing Jongleur for information—not just in abhorrence of what they would themselves become in taking such a step, but also because of real fear about what might come of it. Jongleur was a hard, ruthless man. Watching his measured pace a few steps ahead, the ropy, hard muscles of his naked body moving beneath the skin, she had the feeling that bending him to their will might not be a process without casualties on their own side—a price R
enie was unwilling to pay. And although Ricardo Klement had shown no interest in anything so far, that was no guarantee he would stand passively by and let them attack Jongleur. But even if they managed to subdue the Grail master and threaten him with pain or even death, what then? She did not know for certain that Jongleur really was as vulnerable to virtual execution as she and her companions; perhaps he was only pretending for some reason of his own, and dying in this place would merely fling him into some other sim, or back into his ancient physical body. Then they would have lost any chance at the information, not to mention having become the failed assassins of the most powerful man in the world—not a position with much long-term security.
She would not, could not rule out the possibility of using mortal force on him—not as long as the lives of Stephen and countless others were at stake—but all in all, it didn't seem like a gamble that should be undertaken before everything else had failed.
What else, then? If Jongleur were a normal man, they could bargain, trade something he wanted for information. But the only thing she could see that he needed was escape from this place and revenge on his unruly servant, Dread. Neither of those were in Renie's power to grant.
So what do you give the man who has everything? she thought in sour amusement. Was there something that Jongleur also needed to know? Something that Renie and her companions had to give? What might possibly interest him?
His daughter, she thought suddenly. How does she fit into this? Suddenly Renie knew why the whole thing had bothered her. Whatever she's doing, it doesn't seem meant to help her father. The opposite, if anything. Didn't Paul say Jongleur's goons have been chasing him? But it seems like she's been trying to keep Paul away from the Twins when surely she could just hand him over if she wanted. In fact, he said she was afraid of them, too. So what was her relationship with Jongleur? It certainly didn't appear to be an old-fashioned, Daddy's-Little-Girl scenario.
There was definitely something there. Renie felt a surge of grateful energy. Something to chew on, some useful work for her brain.
We don't really know anything about this Ava. Why was she also Emily, for God's sake—a minor sim in an Oz simulation? Why did she help Orlando and Fredericks in the Kitchen and Egypt, but never did anything for me and !Xabbu? And why has she elected herself Paul's guardian angel when it's her own father who's tearing up the network trying to find him?
She continued her downward march like a zombie, one slow foot in front of the other, but inside she felt alive for the first time in days.
They found a hollow in the mountainside relatively soon after the last stop, but since there was no guarantee another suitable spot would present itself anytime soon, they decided to make camp, which meant nothing more than dragging themselves off the trail to sleep.
Renie was the first to wake. She rolled over and looked at Sam twitching in uneasy slumber. The girl was bearing up as well as could be expected, but Renie was worried: she suspected the teenager's restraint was due mostly to the flattening of exhaustion. Acting on impulse, she gently withdrew the ruined sword from Sam's waistband, then sat back and waited for Jongleur to wake.
!Xabbu and the hard-faced man began to stir at the same time. Felix Jongleur seemed to be having a bad dream—his hands clenched and unclenched, and his lips were moving as though he were trying to speak. It made Renie feel more than a little happy to think that something might be preying on the monster's conscience.
Jongleur started upright, muttering, "No, the glass. . . ." then looked around blearily. His gaze touched on Ricardo Klement, lying a meter away, eyes open but otherwise almost lifeless. Jongleur shuddered and rubbed his face.
"So," Renie said suddenly and loudly. "What's with you and Paul Jonas, anyway?"
Jongleur froze like a startled animal, then his face became as carefully expressionless as the mask he had worn as lord of ancient Egypt. "What did you say?"
"I asked what your problem is with Paul Jonas." She kept her own voice aggressively casual, but her heart was beating fast.
Jongleur was on his feet in an instant, moving aggressively toward her. "What do you know of him?"
Renie was ready. The broken sword blade flashed up, inches from his face. Jongleur froze again, staring, lip curled and showing teeth.
"I don't think you should come any closer," she said. "What are you, anyway—French? There's still a little accent to your English. Maybe you're used to those North African black women, the ones whose husbands tell them what to do. Well, I'm not that kind of African, old man. Back up and sit down."
He moved no closer, but did not retreat either. "Accent? A poor jibe from you, with your school grammar draped over the township patois." His hands were knotted, knuckles like little white eggs. Renie could tell that the autocrat was only one bad decision on her part from trying to use them on her, sword or no sword. "What do you know of Jonas?" he demanded again.
"That's not the way we're going to play this game." She saw that !Xabbu was sitting up now, watching her carefully, silently. "You said before that we weren't going to get any information from you for free. Okay, I suppose that's fair. We know a lot about Paul Jonas. You know a lot about the network. Let's trade."
He had mastered his rage now, although the cords in his neck and arms were still pulled tight. "You think much of yourself, woman."
"No. I know my limitations—that's why I don't feel very comfortable about our arrangement. You need our help to get down this godforsaken mountain, but what do we get back for it? If we do make it down and you disappear on us, we have nothing but another enemy on the loose."
Jongleur narrowed his eyes. "I saved your life."
Renie snorted. "That would carry more weight if I didn't know you'd just as happily push me as catch me. And we've saved yours since then, anyway. None of this has anything to do with what I'm talking about. Let's share, shall we?"
Sam also sat up now, a child to whom waking into bizarre situations was sadly becoming second nature. Nevertheless, this time she was watching the proceedings with a curiously feverish intensity. !Xabbu moved close to the girl, perhaps to keep her from intervening in this edgy bit of diplomacy. Renie felt strengthened by his trust.
"What do you want to know?" Jongleur said. "And what do you have to trade?"
"You already know what we have to trade. Paul Jonas. We know him—we know him well. In fact, we've traveled with him." She watched carefully and was rewarded by a flicker deep in Jongleur's eyes. "Why don't you tell us about the Other?"
"Ah. You have learned some things, then."
"Not enough. What is it? How does it work?"
His laugh was as harsh and sudden as a shark bite. "You must be more of a fool than I thought. I spent enough money to dwarf the national product of your miserable country developing this system, put years of my life into it, and had dozens of people killed to protect my investment. Do you believe I would give that away for nothing?"
"Nothing? Is Paul Jonas really nothing?" She frowned—his face had gone cold again. "He was with us, you know. You were within a dozen meters of him back on the mountaintop, when everything started falling apart." She saw his expression of disbelief and laughed harshly. "He was! Right there, and you didn't even know it."
Jongleur was clearly wrestling with the idea. For the first time she saw a real crack in his facade of power, a shadow of unhappiness. "It does not matter," he said at last. "He is not here now. I want Jonas himself, not old news. Can you deliver him to me?"
Renie hesitated for a moment, trying to figure out which way to take it. "Maybe."
Jongleur's smile was slow and humorless. "You lie. This conversation is over."
Stung, Renie tightened her grip on the sword hilt. "Oh, yes? Before we even get a chance to talk about your daughter Ava?"
To her astonishment, Jongleur actually staggered a step backward. His face went bloodless, so that his dark eyes seemed to bulge out of the sockets. "You speak her name to me again and I will kill you, blade or no blade," he
said in a grating whisper. He was struggling for control and barely succeeding, and that was the most frightening thing Renie had seen so far. "You know nothing of anything . . . in far over your head. Not . . . not another word! You understand?" He turned and moved out onto the path. Just before he stepped out of sight, he turned and thrust a quivering finger toward her. "Not another word!"
When he was gone, silence fell in the small enclosure. Sam was looking at Renie with wide eyes.
"Okay," Renie suddenly felt very shaky. "Okay, if that's the way he wants it. He's a murdering bastard anyway, so it's not like we're going to be friends." She hesitated for a moment, then handed the broken sword back to Sam. "In case he's angry enough to push me off the edge or something. Keep it safe."
"Chizz," said Sam in a muted voice.
Jongleur stayed well ahead of them for hours, although he was almost always within sight, shoulders stiff, face resolutely forward. A part of Renie wanted to speak mockingly of his behavior—the most powerful man in the world, who had climbed over the bodies of countless people to get to the top, had stalked off like an angry child when the game did not go his way. But that snide inner voice, she recognized, came from the part of her that feared the man and which wanted desperately to bolster her own courage. A more sensible portion of her realized she had touched something deep and catastrophically dangerous in Jongleur. She had seen his quick and frightening angers, but this had been something different, an ice-cold fury that she feared would not dissipate.
She had goaded a bad man, it seemed, and made him into a personal enemy.
Things might have been worse with Jongleur had the mountain not still demanded all their attention. The path was growing worse, a slow but obvious devolution, and they were all disheartened. Almost half the time now was spent edging along the narrow trail with their backs against the stone, forced to stare at the ugly drop down into the weird silvery mist. Even Jongleur appeared to decide on practicality after a while, dropping back until he was only an arm's length in front of !Xabbu, but they found no place wide enough-for a safe transfer of leadership for many hours.