"My... my great-grandfather's time. Not since then. Not since then to Call Home. And no message received from Home long before that. The machines stopped working, Quench. It wasn't anyone's fault. They just stopped working."
"So it's all a mockery and a deceit. All of it. The monster watching, and the Faculty-all of it."
"No, no, Quench. You know that isn't true. It's worth something, worth preserving. You mustn't, mustn't..."
"I mustn't, mustn't I? Manacle, for the sake of those poor fools down there, I won't drag you out on the platform and expose you for what you are, an empty sack of nothing. I'll leave you to go to them, Manacle, with your lies and your ceremonial message. You! I remember a time when being Capan meant something. As for me, I'm off to the Council."
"What-where-what are you going to do?"
"I'm leaving, Manacle. I'm leaving with all the techs who want to leave with me, and that means almost all of them. We disabled the power machine for the boots this morning. You can't hold them, and they won't be held. We're going. Some of the younger men may go with us, and if not-well, be that as it may. I'm sorry for you all, Manacle, but there's nothing I can do to save you, and I won't perish with you."
And he was gone, clattering down the spiralling stairs. Mavin and I could hear him, down and down until the sound faded, and I knew he had come to the cargo space at the bottom and gone out through it. Manacle was crying before us, great tears oozing down his face. The singing outside had reached its climax once more. He gulped, made a little heartbroken sound, then wiped his face upon his sleeve, leaving long red welts upon it from the harsh gold trim. Unconscious of this he stepped to the door, straightened himself, and opened it. As Mavin and I slipped away to follow Quench, we heard his voice crying to the world, "Message, message from Home."
12 - Huld Again
We arrived at the cargo space near the bottom of the tower-the "ship"-only moments before Manacle himself came down. He wore a forced, fixed smile as he met Flogshoulder and Shear near the ladder. I heard Shear say, "Where are the techs? They should be here to unload the bodies and take them back to-" and Flogshoulder interrupting, as always, with some inconsequentiality. Manacle did not hear either of them.
He laid hands upon Flogshoulder and said, "Quiet, my boy. Be still. Now listen to me, for all your life is worth. Remember the room where we were yesterday? The room which controls the defenders? Good. That's a good boy. Now, I want you to go there. I left it unlocked for you. I want you to press the lever down. Just do that, my boy. Then come back and tell me." He patted Flogshoulder, almost absentmindedly, as he turned to Shear with that same fixed smile.
"Shear. There's a minor emergency. Nothing we can't take care of, but I think the Committee should be advised. Can you go among the celebrants and suggest that we move the celebration indoors? Hmm? And tell the Committee members we will meet them in the Committee room. Have you seen Hold? No. Well, that was more than I could hope for, perhaps
Shear and Manacle began a slow circling movement among those gathered in the grassy space. I remembered Manacle saying that the techs would serve cakes and wine. There were no techs, and the magicians were looking about themselves with pursed lips and expressions of annoyance. A mutter began, grew in volume as the celebrants moved away, away toward the doors. We waited for the last dawdlers to leave before emerging from the ship with the bodies of Windlow and Himaggery carried before us. We staggered across the grass to the machine. When we came close, I was horrified to see that the ribbons and garlands covered areas of corrosion. Wires and tubes appeared fused together into a blackened mass. We stared at each other for a moment. "What can we do but try?" asked Mavin. "We must."
We laid Himaggery upon the slab, placed the tiny blue in the recess beside his head, and Mavin went to the long, silver lever which protruded at the side. Her eyes were shut, her lips moving. I don't know whom she invoked, what godling or devil. Perhaps it was only herself she counseled. Her hands were steady when she thrust the lever up, in the opposite direction we had seen it moved in the laboratories, and I knew she had been thinking of that, puzzling it out. Could it be that simple? I could not dare to hope it was.
The machine screamed. I bit my lips until the blood came. The slab moved, turned, swung beneath the blackened mass which towered above it. I smelled smoke, burning oil. There was no device here to put out fire. I only held my breath and waited, waited while the scream rose to an agonized howl be- fore diminishing to silence. The slab had not returned. Mavin jiggled the lever, once, twice. Slowly the slab dropped from beneath the machine, down, twisting, out and back toward us once again. The blue was gone. Himaggery looked like Himaggery once more. I could see his chest move, tiny, tiny movements, the shallowest of breaths. We pulled him from the slab and put Windlow in his place.
I knelt above Himaggery while Mavin went to the lever again. I heard the ascending howl, smelled burning once more. This time there was smoke, harsh and biting. I coughed. Himaggery coughed. His head moved, his hand. I found myself patting him, stroking him, mumbling nonsense into his ear. Then Mavin's cry from behind me brought me to my feet.
The machine was on fire. Below the contorted mass, the slab moved out slowly, too slowly. Already I could see that the blue was still there. Nothing had happened. Then, when it came further into view, I knew that something had happened- Windlow's body had been... changed. Was it the heat of the machine? Some ancient device which had broken at last, irretrievably? It didn't matter. What lay upon the slab could not support life again, and I knew this with every cell which Dealpas had inhabited. "Dead," I whispered, unable to believe it. "Dead."
"Dead?" The voice behind me was Himaggery's. I turned to see him trying to sit up, failing, and trying once again. His eyes were unfocused, blind. Mavin was beside him in that instant, ready with one of the black dresses which Manacle had used in his ceremony, ready to wrap him and coerce him back into life once more. I reached over the slab and took Windlow's blue into my hands, hands sticky with tears. I tried not to look at the slab again, but could not stop the thought that this, this is what old Windlow had foreseen and begged for my help against.
Perhaps Mavin read my mind, or my face. She snapped at me. "There is no time for guilt, Peter. We must get out of this place. What Didir feared will happen very soon..
"The door is locked," I said stupidly. "Flogshoulder will find the door locked. He will have to return to get the key. We have a little time."
"We have no time. Didir warned of some general catastrophe. Gamelords know how far we would have to go to escape it, but the farthest, the soonest would be best." She leaned across Himaggery once more, urging him to his feet. I do not know how he did it, but the man lurched upright, mouth open in anguish as he did so. She went on even as she urged him toward the tunnels. "The cars that brought the bodies to this place are still there, still on the track. I watched them when they ran them. They will take us away. I followed her, placing Windlow's blue tenderly in my pocket as I went. The carts were there, just as she had said. Himaggery and I climbed into the foremost one as Mavin fumbled with the controls. It shuddered, made a grating noise, then began to run forward into the mountains.
"Where?" I asked her, seeing the daylight vanish behind us. "Where will you take us?"
"Where the tracks go," she replied. "The carts came from those cold caverns, they should return there. We need distance between us and this place, and any other way would take too long
So we ran off into a half darkness. There were no magicians. There were no techs. We saw one or two Tallmen from time to time, but they stood by the walls as still and silent as trees, but unalive. It was then I began to know that they had not truly been living things-or not entirely living things. I thought of Tallmen, and I thought of music, and I wondered how those who made the one could make the other. I have not yet made an answer to that.
Somewhere early in the journey, Himaggery began to regain his wits. He wanted to know what had happened, and in order to tell him that I had to tell him
everything, Laggy Nap, my journey, Mavin, Izia, the Tallmen, Manacle, Quench... and Didir. We passed one of those dining places once, and Mavin stopped while we raided it. After that, Himaggery seemed to be better, though still rather disoriented and weak. When he asked about Windlow, I could not answer him. I could only look back the way we had come and let the tears run down my face. So it was Mavin who told him, and then there was a silence which seemed without end. Finally he broke it. "So what is happening now?"
"Now we are trying to get away," I answered. "Flogshoulder will go to the room. He will find it locked. He will return to Manacle, and one way or another, with Committee approval or without it, Manacle will give him the key. Or Manacle will go himself. Whatever occurs, it will not take long. Manacle will believe that Quench is more of a threat than he ever believed the Council was. The defenders are to be used against a threat. So, he will use the defenders."
"What will happen?" whispered Himaggery from a dry throat.
"I don't know for sure. I believe that the defenders were never designed to defend the magicians. They were designed to defend Home, wherever that may be. Another world, somewhere."
"So you've figured that out," said Mavin, drily.
"Yes. The defenders were designed to defend Home against the monsters."
"Monsters?" asked Himaggery. "What monsters? Who?"
"Oh, Himaggery." I laughed and cried all at once. "You. Me. Mavin. All the children of Didir. She was the monster, the girl monster, the one the ship brought. Only she. And all those others to watch her and write down everything she did. All of it, the defenders, everything. Just to keep one little woman monster from threatening Home."
"I thought so," said Mavin. "I thought that was the way of it.''
"Well, if you thought so, I wish to heaven you had told me!" I said.
"So what will the defenders do?" Himaggery went on, tenacious as always.
"Destroy the place," said Mavin with finality. "Destroy Manacle and stupid Flogshoulder and sycophantic Shear, all the Tallmen and the pits, all the monsters-the real ones-and machines. Everything. Or so I believe."
"So do I," I said. "And we had best be far away when that happens."
"How far away?"
I couldn't tell him. Didir had thought only of danger, danger to everything. She had not limited it to a certain circle, a Demesne which could be measured for chill. "Far," I said. "As far as possible."
"At least to the end of these tracks," said Mavin, practical as always. So we rode along the tracks, deeper and deeper under the mountains as Himaggery grew stronger and I felt more the pain of Windlow's death. Once I thought of asking Mavin whether there was some way out of the place she was taking us, but decided she would not appreciate the question. If there was a way out, there would be a way out. If not, not. My asking would not change it.
The way to the caverns was a long way. When we arrived there, I wished we had not come. The bodies around us lay in piles as high as my shoulders, five or six bodies high, men and women together, stacked in endless rows. In one area to the side of the entry, Mavin and Himaggery found body after body of those they had known. Here were those Mavin had mentioned to me, but many others as well.
"And all of their minds-their memories, all, gone? Out there? In the aeries of Gamesmasters, to be used as teaching aids for children?" Himaggery sounded unbelieving, but we assured him it was true.
"Then what threatened us and worked against us was not the Council at all? It was these old men in this moldy place? Abducting us one by one and storing us away like fish?" Again we assured him this was true.
"Then we have only to tell the world what has gone on here, and it will stop. The Traders can be watched."
"That may be true," I said. "But there may be more to it than that. It was these old men who abducted and kept you, true. But Quench said it was the Council told them who to take and keep. And it is to the Council that Quench has gone, gone with every tech in the place."
"And," said Mavin, "I would wager with every book they could lay hands on."
We had not yet gone into the largest part of the cavern, a place from which a chill wind came to assure us of egress somewhere. It was then, as we were readying ourselves to find it, that the first rumble came, shivering the rock about us and dropping dust and ice onto our heads from far above. The shaking went on. Rock grated and twisted beneath us.
"We have taken too long," shouted Mavin. "Through the large cavern, quickly"
But we were not allowed to go. We had no sooner stepped within the large cavern than he came from behind a pile of bodies, Demon helmed, all in silver, a strange device cradled in his arms, its ominous tip pointed toward me. "Peter, the Necromancer," he said. "I told them you were not dead! I would not let you be dead! Not you, Peter. Not until I could do it myself! I call Game, and Move. Necromancer Nine!"
Himaggery leapt to one side, behind a pile of bodies. Well, he was older than I. He had more experience with this kind of thing. On the other side, Mavin Shifted into something quick and fierce, and the corner of my eye saw her fade into an aisle. Well, she, too was a more experienced Shifter than I. I did not move. The tip of the thing which pointed at me said do not move, and I understood its language. "What have you there, Huld?" I asked him, almost conversationally. I was not unafraid. I was simply too surprised to act frightened.
"A thing Nitch made for me, Peter. Was that not kind of him? It was when you all thought me bottled up in Bannerwell. Do not trust Immutables to do your bottling for you, Peter. They do not do it well. They have no skill in foxing or outfoxing; any Gamesman could outwit them, as I did. I had another place to go, a better place. I found Nitch as he traveled between Schooltown and that place of the magicians. Nitch. It was Nitch who was responsible for what happened to Mandor, Peter. Remember that. What happened to him was just."
"What happened to him?" I had put one hand into my pocket, feeling desperately for-for what? Shattnir could do me no good in this cold place. Those around me were not dead to be raised by Dorn. And neither would come to me in any case.
"Why, he died," he said, pretending surprise. "After he had made me the things I wanted, told me the things I wanted to know, given me the books he had. He made this shield, like the one you had in Schooltown. This weapon, like no other you have ever seen. Oh, Peter, with this weapon there will be no Gaming against Huld. No. All the Gaming will be as I choose." He stroked the thing exultantly. "After I dispose of your family."
He drew out the word to make it an obscenity. Until that moment, I had not thought of them as my family, but they were. Himaggery. Mavin. My own kind. My fingers still groped in my pocket. Habit, not hope.
And closed around a Gamesman, closed to feel a warm, wonderful certainty rise through me, soft and gentle, kind as summer, the voice whispering as familiar, almost, as my own. "Peter. Why are you standing here? Valor is all well and good, but shouldn't you be elsewhere if you can manage it?"
It was Windlow. I almost laughed aloud before remembering the threat. Yes, I know that is foolish. It was only an instant thing, as quickly suppressed. I let Windlow go and burrowed deep to close around a figure I had not tried until then. Old as Didir, powerful as she, her mate and coeval, Tamor. Grandfather Tamor. Towering Tamor.
There was no hesitation. The block, whatever it might have been, had been healed. Perhaps Windlow had healed it. Tamor came into me like a hawk stooping, and I was looking down on Huld as he peered at the place I had been. There was no sensation of flying as I had often thought there would be. No, I was simply lying high upon the air, above Huld, seeing Mavin and Himaggery moving stealthily toward him around barriers of chill bodies.
"Huld!" I cried.
He pointed the device up, released a bolt of force which blistered past me and melted stone and hanging ice from the arched ceiling far above. Liquid rock fell past me, hardening as it came, and Huld ran from the lethal rain even as I swooped away to another part of the cavern. More stone and ice rained down. This was no resu
lt of Huld's weapon. This was more of the same quaking we had felt before. Mavin waved to attract my attention, pointed to the far end of the great cavern. I nodded to show her that I understood. I should have watched Huld, not Mavin, for another bolt from the weapon came toward me, touched me agonizingly, and splashed against the ice. "All right," said Tamor from within. "Keep your eyes open, boy. Shall we rescue your friend?" Himaggery did look lonely and lost, sprawled out below me between two piles of bodies. We swooped down, not at all birdlike, to grab him and lift him high in a long shallow glide which took us toward the cavern end. I heard Huld screaming in fury. He had known of some of my Talents. He had not known of them all. Well, how could he have done? I had not known of them myself.
"You will not get away," he was screaming at me. "I've closed that way out. I knew you'd come here, come where the bodies of your allies lay. I knew you'd try to get them. It's the kind of Gamish stupidity they taught you, boy."
"Even if you escape, it won't stop me. I'll come after you again, and yet again. I have allies, too. And plans. And the world will not hold us both as Masters, so you will serve my Game."
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