Olly’s escorts unceremoniously bundled her aboard, the others, except for the walkers, climbed into the truck with muttered oaths and complaints. It was damned near nightfall, they said. They were sore, they said. They had walked too far. They grouched and murmured to the sound of the engines as the vehicles went groaningly upward. Once in a while they could hear Ellel’s voice raised in tuneless song from her seat by the driver.
“Got her, got her, got her,” she caroled. “Got her to go, to fly, off to the sky. Oh, got her.”
Beside Olly, Qualary shifted her weight uneasily. When Olly looked up, she saw the older woman watching her with an expression of heartfelt pity.
Coyote led the way, sniffing out the trail the walkers had left. Bear roved right and left, to rout out any dangers that might be lying in wait. Behind them, Abasio and Arakny drove steadily westward across the mesa, down the same trail Orphan had traveled, across a shallow in the the river beside the narrow footbridge, on through the trees and meadows and up the far road, arriving a little before dawn at the place the truck had been parked the afternoon before. Coyote and Bear sniffed their way around the place, up and back, before returning to block the progress of the wagon and bring Big Blue to an abrupt halt.
“What?” snarled Abasio from the wagon seat. They had been moving since dawn of the previous day, they had not even stopped to eat, and he was hungry, tired, and furious with Olly for running off and getting captured.
“From here, better go afoot,” said Coyote.
“Where is she?” demanded Arakny.
“Up there,” said Coyote, pointing with his nose. “Inside the wall They’d done her no harm this far. She was walking with them until they got into a vehicle, right about here. From what’s left of the smell, the vehicle went up the hill about sunset.”
“It was walkers who took her?” demanded Abasio.
“Who captured her, yes. But it was humans who brought her here. Some men. Some women.”
“So now what?” demanded Arakny, climbing down from the wagon seat to stretch her legs. “I don’t imagine we can get over that wall.”
Bear whuffed, that peculiar noise he made that Abasio equated with laughter. “Go under,” he said. “Not over.”
“What does he mean?” Arakny asked the air. “Under!”
Coyote licked his nose. “He means what he says. We can’t go over the wall, but we can go under it. That means we have to leave the wagon here and go on on foot. Sneakily.” Coyote licked his nose again.
Arakny glanced eastward where the sun just edged above the horizon “It’ll soon be full light. There’ll be traffic on this road If we don’t want the wagon seen, we’ll have to hide it somewhere.”
“Easier said than done,” snarled Abasio.
“Easy done,” said Bear. “This way.” He strolled across the road, back the way they had come, then disappeared behind a clump of piñons up a side canyon.
With some difficulty, Abasio got the wagon turned around and drove Big Blue after Bear. A flat wash of gravel extended past the piñons and up the side-canyon, around an outcropping of stone, and into a good-size pocket of unexpected greenery. Evidently the little side-canyon had a spring in it, for the verdant growth extended halfway up the slope, hidden along its entire length between buttresses of bare stone.
Abasio climbed to the top of the wagon. Even from this vantage point, the road up the larger canyon was quite invisible.
“What do we take?” Abasio demanded of Coyote.
“Bring horse,” said Bear.
“Food,” suggested Coyote to Arakny “If we have to wait.”
“Wait for what?” she asked.
Coyote merely licked his nose. Bear scratched himself.
Muttering angrily, Arakny filled two canteens and made up a packet of bread, dried meat, and fruit while Abasio unhitched Big Blue and put a bridle on him.
Coyote looked at Bear, his head cocked, one ear up, one down.
“Enough,” said Bear.
The angel cried woefully as it flew to Arakny’s shoulder.
“Good angel,” said Bear. “Can come.”
“No, no, no!” cried the angel “No, no, no!” It flew from Arakny’s shoulder to a nearby tree, from that up the slope to another, then disappeared into the tumbled rock.
Abasio cried out and started to climb after it.
“Let it go,” said the Coyote “It’s gone to find Olly.”
They stood for a time looking aimlessly in the direction the angel had gone before Arakny turned with a sigh and asked, “Where are we going?”
“Through the forest,” said Coyote, peering up and down the road to be sure no one was coming. “Follow me.”
They went across the road, over its outer edge, and down the embankment into the canyon, where juniper and piñon grew thickly, fogging the air with fragrance. Here, if they were careful, they could walk unseen by anyone traveling the road unless that person looked directly down on them from above The bushy little trees grew too closely to the ground to walk beneath them.
By the time there was much traffic on the road, the sun was halfway toward noon and they had come through the shorter trees to walk among pines and spruces whose branches hid them from above It was cooler in this more verdant forest, though the ground between the trees was still the sparsely grown pinkish gravel of the plains.
The farther they went, the farther the road was above them, winding along the south wall of the canyon. From time to time they could see the glimmer of sun on an ascending vehicle.
“Must be a market day,” remarked Arakny. “Everyone’s headed up.”
“Could we join the market?” asked Abasio “Maybe sneak in through the gates?”
Arakny shook her head. “One of my more vivid memories of this place is the identifying crystals that were fastened to people’s bodies, like jewelry. I recall welded-on bracelets or collars or ear studs. Without such identification, no one gets in.”
Abasio subsided Since they had found Olly gone, he had tried to think not about her but only of what he was doing at the moment. He could be an effective rescuer only if he didn’t panic, and the thought of her being in the hands of the walkers made him panicky. He remembered too well the confrontation between gangers and walkers, the sounds he had heard from behind the tree. Even though Coyote said Olly wasn’t hurt, as long as she remained with those creatures she could be.
Bear and Coyote knew where they were going, although for the moment, Coyote was rivaling Bear in being laconic. Neither one of them intended to reveal the destination, probably wisely. If one or more of them were captured before reaching wherever they were going, it would be better if the humans could not tell their captors any specifics about where they were headed. No one would think of asking the animals.
Coyote had said “under the wall,” which was suggestive. It implied what? Tunnels? Caverns? Old worked-out mines, full of rotting timbers? Or a bear hole, a muddy burrow full of the roots of trees?
Abasio sighed and walked, trying to keep his mind only on what he was doing.
Arakny, meantime, was putting one weary foot in front of another, wondering why she was here, what she thought she was doing, whether she ought to be here or someplace else. Certainly, invading the Place of Power hadn’t been in the orders the Wide Mountain Mother had given her. “Go spend some time with the girl and find out what she’s up to” had been the assignment. Perhaps even now there were clanswomen scouring Artemisia, looking for her. Well, no. Word would soon filter back from Crooked Wash that she had been there yesterday. They would know where she had been headed. Trackers from one of the men’s societies would soon find where she had come to, but until the whole matter became clearer, they would take no action except that of following her trail.
“You may leave us, Qualary,” said Quince Ellel.
They were in Ellel’s quarters, Qualary and Olly just inside the door, Ellel moving restlessly about a few feet from them.
“I’d be happy to stay and help,
ma’am,” said Qualary, moved both by pity and despair for the girl beside her.
“I said you may leave us!” said the golden mask, in tones of deadly threat.
“Ma’am,” murmured Qualary, backing out the door, feeling Olly’s body sag against it as it closed. She went down the corridor, past the turn. In a moment she heard the door jerked open, then slammed shut again. She went back and put her ear against it, hearing Ellel’s voice rising and falling, like a chant, like a litany.
“Got you, got you, got you,” Ellel sang, over and over. “Got you, girl. No matter how you run, how you twist, how you hide, found you.”
“I didn’t twist and I didn’t hide,” said Olly. “I was on my way here when you took me.”
The eyeholes glared. The hands came up. The mask was lifted, and it took every jot of Olly’s self-control not to scream at what she saw there. It was Burned Man all over again, only worse. The eyes were all right. The lips were terrible, but complete. But as for the rest, the riven cheeks, the corrupted nose, the forehead blistered and eaten like the surface of the moon. The twisted flaps of ears. The horror of the oozing chin and the neck…
“Don’t take me for a fool,” the horrid lips said, sucking on the words. “Oh, girl, don’t take me for a fool. It suits me to let the others think I’m less than I am. They don’t believe I can do what. I’m doing, and so much the better. They won’t try to stop me until it’s too late. Now. We need to talk about you. After all this time I’d been hunting you, I caught you coming here. Why?”
“Curiosity,” Olly replied, carefully unfocusing her eyes as she had learned to do with Burned Man. Some things simply should not be looked at. “The Oracle in my village gave me a prophecy about the Place of Power. I was to answer some questions here, so I came here to do it.”
“What questions?”
“I don’t know yet. Even if I knew the answers, which I’m not sure that I do, that doesn’t mean I know the questions.”
Ellel began a restless movement, to and fro. After a moment, she took the lid from an ornamental jar, removed a glassy oval, thrust it into her mouth, and bit down sharply, making crunching noises. Her pupils dilated. Her breathing slowed.
Olly moved toward a chair.
“Not there!” Ellel snapped. “That’s my father’s chair. Over here. On this.” She pointed out a much-carved and painted bench that looked uncompromisingly uncomfortable and proved to be so. Too weary to care, Olly sat, her head sagging onto her folded hands.
Ellel moved around the cluttered space, muttering to herself, looking into cupboards, under pieces of furniture, behind draperies and tapestries. Once in a while she asked a question. Several times she slapped Olly with her gloved hand when Olly did not answer immediately. The questions were silly, meaningless, as though Ellel were only passing time, as though she thought someone might be listening. Time wore on, but Ellel’s search went on, every corner, under every piece of bric-a-brac.
Olly dozed and woke again at a slap across her face. Ellel was before her, holding her shoulders.
“Time,” Ellel said, her voice flat and unemphatic. “Everything secure. No one hiding in here. None of Mitty’s little devices Now we’ll find out if you’re right for the job!” She tugged Olly erect, pulled her across the room to a locked door, unlocked it, pushed it open, pulled Olly through into darkness.
“Minute,” she said “Minute. No lights. Can’t do the job with no lights.”
In a moment she returned with a lighted candle, which she carried down a dusty corridor, through another door, and put upon a table near the doorway. The little flame barely illuminated the dust, the curtains around the huge bed, the window across the room.
“Brought her, Daddy,” said Ellel in that same flat voice. “Got her.”
Silence.
No. Not quite silence.
Olly felt her hair rise at the back of her neck, felt her skin creep.
“Good, good, daughter,” came the words, a whisper, a mere crepitation from behind those dusty curtains “Oh, that’s good, Princess.”
“Got to check, of course,” Ellel went on. Her tone was coldly implacable “It would be foolish not to check.”
She gestured Olly to sit in the chair by the bed, and Olly fell into it bonelessly, so tired she would have sat anywhere.
The metal bands that slid around her arms and legs were fastened before she knew they were there. Ellel stooped before her, eye to eye, peering intently at her from a terrible madness and an equally terrible purpose. Ellel was letting her see the purpose, letting her know there would be no random or erratic behavior, no way of escape. Ellel smiled, and among the ruined teeth, Olly saw death waiting.
“This is an input console,” Ellel said, pointing to a device beside her. “Information is fed through here into the helmet. The helmet comes down over your head. That is the output console. If you can understand what comes in, you can make a signal come out. The signal goes to the engines. I’m telling you this so you’ll understand I’ve told them all.”
“All?” Olly whispered.
“All the girls my walkers have found. All they’ve brought to me here. All who have sat in this chair.”
“Where—where are they now?”
Ellel went to the window and opened it. Cold night air came in, raising the dust in clouds, sweeping the sill.
“Out there,” she said, gesturing into the night. “Out, through the window. There’s a pit in the rock below this window. The crows roost there. And the buzzards. Coyotes come there—I hear them singing. None of those who went out this window could do what has to be done.” Olly’s head sagged.
Ellel whispered. “I’m not using the full array. I’m not sure we could disconnect if I used the full array. I’m only using enough to test. Just to test.”
Olly felt the helmet come down. She felt points pressing at her scalp, then pain, a terrible, searing pain that was everywhere, simultaneously. She opened her mouth to scream, saying to herself she had to scream, to let the pressure in her head escape, and in that instant the pain ended, all at once, as though a door had opened inside her to let it flow through and away.
A question asked itself. This was moving and that was moving and the other thing was moving, too, this thing at that speed and the other thing more slowly, so how should this thing move to meet that one?
In that way, she told herself, knowing the answer the way she had often known answers. It was like catching a ball. It was like seeing the pattern the dye blocks would make before they were printed or knowing what Bastard’s motivation had been in talking with Fool. It was the same kind of problem: A joined to B joined to C yielded X without question, incontrovertibly. One needed to move in this way to arrive at that point. It was simple.
Other problems presented themselves. It didn’t matter. No matter what the problems were, she could solve them. There was no pain. Only certainty.
The helmet moved. She was aware of the pain again, for the briefest possible moment, then it was gone. The bands released her arms, her legs. She put up her hand and found blood on her face.
“I want to wash my face,” she said calmly from a depth of despair. Everything was clear. Clear and unbearable.
“Go, go wash your face,” Ellel said, pointing the way.
As Olly got up, staggering, for the moment unable to move, she heard Ellel babbling behind her.
“All we have to do is plug her in!” cried Ellel. “It’s finished except for her. Almost. Only a few days left. Then we’ll go, Daddy. Just like you wanted to. See the moon, see the stars!”
“Good, that’s good, daughter.”
“You want to see her, Daddy? You want to see her?”
While Olly stood, wavering, Ellel pulled the curtains roughly apart. The movement set off an explosion of dust in the dimly lit place. Olly gasped and coughed. She knew the smell. Part of it, at least. But only partly.
“Here she is. Here she is.”
Olly turned and saw what lay on the bed. Ellel we
nt on talking with the creaking voice, but Olly paid no attention after that.
Berkli responded to a request from Ellel that he come to the Dome after her morning ceremony. Her enormous excitement and his recent conversation with Mitty made him more apprehensive than he otherwise might have been. Though unwilling to acknowledge it, he had to admit she had sounded victorious He waited until the walkers left the Dome, then came slowly through a side door, slowly, hearing Ellel’s voice before he saw her stalking slowly toward him across the mosaic floors. For a moment, all he could think of was the big cats he had occasionally seen from the walls, stalking their prey as she stalked now, shoulders high and eyes intent.
When she came up to him, she stopped, drawing herself up to her full height and uttering a peculiar noise somewhere between the crow of a cock and the bray of a trumpet. She gestured toward the people behind her, two of Ellel’s female servants supporting a young woman between them. The young woman looked desperately tired. There were small bloody wounds on her forehead and horror in her eyes.
He had expected to feel something if and when this happened, but he was unprepared for the rage that overtook him. Ellel had done it. She had actually done it. Unforgivably, the bitch had done it.
He took a deep breath and held it, willing himself to be calm. He walked beside her, smiling. He listened, smiled, listened again while Ellel spoke softly, cogently, while she told him she had found the girl, had tested the girl. The girl could guide the shuttle All was as had been planned.
He felt his control slipping. She preened while his anger welled. Face flushed, neck swollen, but still smiling, he excused himself to turn and walk away from her.
Olly, sagging between her two guards, saw him go, saw Ellel poised behind him, the line of her back like that of a serpent, ready to strike. Her eyes glittered through the mask, the damp snaky tendrils of her hair waved around her mask Medusa, Olly thought irrationally. Oracle had told her tales about Medusa, and here she was.
A Plague of Angels Page 43