“I wouldn’t,” said Jarre. “The crowds—”
Limbeck blinked. “Oh, yes. Of course. You’re right.”
“You’re exhausted. All this traveling and excitement. Go lie down and take a nap. I’ll finish your speech. Here are your spectacles,” Jarre said briskly, plucking them from the top of Limbeck’s head and popping them onto his nose. “Up the stairs and into bed with you.”
“Yes, my dear,” said Limbeck, adjusting the spectacles that Jarre had, with well-meaning kindness, stuck on lopsided. Looking through them that way—with one eyeglass up and the other down—made him nauseous. “I … think that would be a good idea. I do feel … tired.” He sighed and hung his head. “Very tired.”
Walking to the ramshackle stairs, Limbeck was startled to feel a wet tongue lick across his knuckles. It was Haplo’s dog, looking up at him, wagging its tail.
“I understand,” the animal seemed to say, its unspoken words startlingly clear in Limbeck’s mind. “I’m sorry.”
“Dog!” Haplo spoke to it sharply, calling it back.
“No, that’s all right,” said Limbeck, reaching down to give the animal’s sleek head a gingerly pat. “I don’t mind.”
“Dog! Come!” Haplo’s voice had an almost angry edge to it. The dog hurried back to its master’s side, and Limbeck retired up the stairs.
“He’s so very idealistic!” said Jarre, gazing after Limbeck in admiration mixed with exasperation. “And not at all practical. I just don’t know what to do.”
“Keep him around,” suggested Haplo. He stroked the dog’s long nose to indicate that all was forgiven and forgotten. The animal lay down, rolled over on its side, and closed its eyes. “He gives your revolution a high moral tone. You’ll need that, when blood starts to flow.”
Jarre looked worried. “You think it will come to that?”
“Inevitable,” he said, shrugging. “You said as much yourself, to Limbeck.”
“I know. It seems, as you say, that it is inevitable, that this is the natural end of what we began long ago. Yet it has seemed to me lately”—she turned her eyes to Haplo—“that we never seriously turned our thoughts to violence until you came. Sometimes I wonder if you aren’t really a god.”
“Why is that?” Haplo smiled.
“Your words have a strange power over us. I hear them and I keep hearing them, not in my head, but in my heart.” She placed her hand on her breast, pressing it as if it pained her. “And because they’re in my heart, I can’t seem to think about them rationally. I just want to react, to go out and do … something! Make somebody pay for what we’ve suffered, what we’ve endured.”
Haplo rose from the chair and came over to Jarre, kneeling down so that he put himself at eye level with the short, stocky Geg. “And why shouldn’t you?” he said softly, so softly that she couldn’t hear over the whumping, whooshing of the Kicksey-winsey. Yet she knew what he said, and the pain in her heart increased. “Why shouldn’t you make them pay? How many of your people have lived and died down here, and all for what? To serve a machine that eats up your land, that destroys your homes, that takes your lives and gives nothing to you in return! You’ve been used, betrayed! It’s your right, your duty to strike back!”
“I will!” Jarre was caught, mesmerized by the man’s crystal blue eyes. Slowly the hand over her heart clenched into a fist.
Haplo, smiling his quiet smile, rose and stretched. “I think I’ll join our friend in a nap. It’s liable to be a long night.”
“Haplo,” called Jarre, “you said you come from below us, from a realm that we … that no one knows is down there.”
He did not reply, merely looked at her.
“You were slaves. You told us that. But what you haven’t told us is how you came to crash on our isle. You weren’t”—she paused and licked her lips, as if to make the words come more easily—“running away?”
One corner of the man’s mouth twitched. “No, I wasn’t running. You see, Jarre, we won our fight. We are slaves no longer. I’ve been sent to free others.”
The dog raised its head, turning to stare sleepily at Haplo. Seeing him leaving, the dog yawned and got up, hind end first, stretching out its front legs luxuriously. Yawning again, it rocked forward, stretching the back legs, then lazily accompanied its master up the stairs.
Jarre watched, then shook her head, and was sitting down to finish Limbeck’s speech when a thumping against the curtain recalled her to her duties. There were people to meet, pamphlets to be delivered, the hall to be inspected, parades to be organized.
The revolution just wasn’t much fun anymore.
Haplo mounted the stairs carefully, keeping to the inside against the wall. The knobwood boards were cracked and rotting. Large snaggletoothed gaps waited to snare the unwary and send them crashing down to the floor below. Once inside his room, he lay down on the bed, but not to sleep. The dog jumped up on the bed next to him and rested its head on the man’s chest, bright eyes fixed on his face.
“The woman is good, but she won’t serve our purpose. She thinks too much, as my lord would say, and that makes her dangerous. What we need in this realm to foment chaos is a fanatic. Limbeck would be ideal, but he must have that idealistic bubble of his burst. And I’ve got to leave this place, to carry on with my mission—investigate the upper realms and do what I can to prepare the way for the coming of my lord. My ship is destroyed. I have to find another. But how … how?”
Musing, he fondled the dog’s soft ears. The animal, sensing the man’s tension, remained awake, lending its small support, and slowly Haplo relaxed. Opportunity would come. He knew it. He had only to watch for it and take advantage of it. The dog closed its eyes with a contented sigh and slept, and after a few moments, so did Haplo.
CHAPTER 31
WOMBE, DREVLIN, LOW REALM
“ALFRED.”
“Sir?”
“Do you understand what they’re saying?”
Hugh motioned to Bane, chatting with the Geg, the two of them scrambling across the coralite. Storm clouds gathered at their backs and the wind was rising and keened eerily among the bits and pieces of lightning-blasted coralite. Ahead of them was the city Bane had seen. Or rather, not a city but a machine. Or perhaps a machine that was a city.
“No, sir,” said Alfred, looking directly at Bane’s back and speaking more loudly than was usual for him. “I do not speak the language of these people. I do not believe that there are many of our race, or the elves either, for that matter, who do.”
“A few of the elves speak it—those who captain the waterships. But if you don’t speak it, and I assume that Stephen didn’t, then where did His Highness learn it?”
“How can you ask, sir?” said Alfred, glancing significantly toward the heavens.
He wasn’t referring to the storm clouds. Up there, far above the Maelstrom, was the High Realm, where dwelt the mysteriarchs in their self-imposed exile, living in a world said by legend to be wealthy beyond the dreams of the greediest man and beautiful beyond the imagining of the most fanciful.
“Understanding the language of a different race or culture is one of the simpler of the magical spells. I wouldn’t be surprised if that amulet he wears—Oh!”
Alfred’s feet decided to take a side trip down a hole and took the rest of Alfred with them. The Geg stopped and looked around in alarm at the man’s cry. Bane said something, laughing, and he and the Geg continued on their way. Hugh extricated Alfred and, keeping his hand on his arm, guided him rapidly over the rough ground. The first raindrops were falling out of the sky, hitting the coralite with loud splatters.
Alfred cast an uneasy sidelong glance at Hugh, and the Hand read the unspoken appeal to keep his mouth shut. In that appeal, Hugh had his answer, and it wasn’t the one Alfred had given for Bane’s benefit. Of course Alfred spoke the Gegs’ language. No one listened intently to a conversation he couldn’t understand. And Alfred had been listening intently to Bane and the Geg. What was more interesting—to
Hugh’s mind—was that Alfred was keeping his knowledge secret from the prince.
Hugh thoroughly approved spying on His Highness, but that opened the other nagging question. Where—and why—had a chamberlain learned to speak Geg? Who—or what—was Alfred Montbank?
The storm broke in all its deadly fury and the humans and the Gegs made for the city of Wombe at a dead run. Rain fell in a gray wall in front of them, partially obscuring their vision. But the noise made by the machine was, fortunately, so loud that they could hear it over the storm, feel its vibrations underfoot, and knew they were headed in the right direction.
A crowd of Gegs were waiting by an open doorway for them and hustled them all inside the machine. The sounds of the storm ceased, but the sounds of the machine were louder, clanking and banging above, around, below, and beyond. Several Gegs, who appeared to be armed guards of some sort, plus a Geg dressed up to look like an elflord’s footman, were waiting—somewhat nervously—to greet them.
“Bane, what’s going on?” Hugh demanded loudly, shouting to be heard above the racket made by the machine. “Who is this guy and what does he want?”
Bane looked up at Hugh with an ingenuous grin, obviously highly pleased with himself and his newfound power. “He’s the king of his people!” shouted Bane.
“What?”
“King! He’s going to take us to some sort of judgment hall.”
“Can’t he take us somewhere quiet?” Hugh’s head was beginning to throb.
Bane turned to the king with the question. To Hugh’s amazement, all the Gegs stared at him in horror, shaking their heads emphatically.
“What the hell is the matter with them?”
The prince began to giggle.
“They think you’ve asked for a place to go to die!”
At this juncture, the Geg dressed in silk hose, knee breeches, and a worn velvet doublet was introduced to Bane by the Geg king. The velvet-clad Geg threw himself to his knees. Taking Bane’s hand, he pressed it against his forehead.
“Who do they think you are, kid?” Hugh asked.
“A god,” Bane answered airily. “One they’ve been looking for, it seems. I’m going to pass judgment on them.”
The Gegs led their newly discovered gods through the streets of Wombe—streets that ran up, under, and straight through the Kicksey-winsey. Hugh the Hand was not awed by many things in this world—not even death impressed him much—but he was awed by the great machine. It flashed, it glittered, it sparkled. It whumped and thwanged and hissed. It pumped and whirled and shot out blasts of searing hot steam. It created arcs of sizzling blue lightning. It soared higher than he could see, delved deeper than he could imagine. Huge gears engaged, huge wheels revolved, huge boilers boiled. It had arms and hands and legs and feet, all made of shining metal, all busily engaged in going somewhere other than where they were. It had eyes that shed a blinding light and mouths that screeched and hooted. Gegs crawled over it, climbed up it, clambered down into it, turned it, tapped it, and tended it with obvious loving care and devotion.
Bane, too, was overwhelmed. He gazed with wide-open eyes, his mouth gaping in ungodlike wonder.
“This is amazing!” breathed the boy. “I’ve never seen anything like this!”
“You haven’t, Your Wurship?” exclaimed the high froman, looking at the child-god in astonishment. “But you gods built it!”
“Oh, er, yes,” Bane stammered. “It’s just that I meant I’d never seen … anything like the way you’re taking care of it!” he finished with a rush, exhaling the words in relief.
“Yes,” said the high clark with dignity, his face glowing with pride. “We take excellent care of it.”
The prince bit his tongue. He wanted very much to ask what this wondrous machine did, but it was obvious that this little king fellow expected him to know everything—not an unreasonable assumption in a god. Bane was on his own in this too, his father having imparted to him all the information he had on the great machine of the Low Realm. This being a god wasn’t as easy as it had first appeared, and the prince began regretting he’d agreed to it so fast. There was this judgment thing. Who was he judging, and why? Would he be sending anyone to the dungeons? He really needed to find out, but how?
The little king fellow was, Bane decided, just a bit too shrewd. He was very respectful and polite, but the boy saw that when he wasn’t looking, the Geg was scrutinizing him with a gaze that was sharp and penetrating. Walking along on the prince’s right, however, was another Geg who reminded the child of a performing monkey he’d seen once at court. Bane guessed from what he’d heard that the beruffled, beribboned, velvet-lined Geg had something to do with the religion in which the boy had suddenly found himself so intimately involved. This Geg didn’t appear to be all that bright, and the prince decided to turn to him for answers.
“Pardon me,” said the boy with a charming smile for the head clark, “but I didn’t catch your name.”
“Wes Wrenchwranger, Your Wurship,” said the Geg, bowing as best he could for his stoutness, and nearly tripping on his long beard. “I have the honor to be Your Wurship’s head clark.”
Whatever that is, Bane muttered to himself. Outwardly he smiled and nodded and gave every indication that nowhere else on Drevlin could he have found a Geg more suited for that position.
Sidling close to the head clark, Bane slipped his hand into the Geg’s hand—a proceeding which caused the head clark to swell rather alarmingly and cast a glance of supreme self-satisfaction at his brother-in-law, the high froman.
Darral paid little attention. The crowds lining the streets to see them were getting unruly. He was glad to see the coppers reacting to it. For the moment they appeared to have matters under control, but he knew he would need to keep a watchful eye on things. He only hoped the child-god couldn’t understand what some of the Gegs were shouting. Damn that Limbeck anyway!
Fortunately for Darral, the child-god was completely absorbed in his own problems.
“Perhaps you could help me, Head Clark,” said Bane, flushing shyly and very prettily.
“I would be honored, Your Wurship!”
“You know, it’s been an awfully long time since we—your gods … Uh, what did you call us?”
“The Mangers, Your Wurship. That is what you call yourselves, isn’t it?”
“Yes, oh, yes! Mangers. It’s just that, well, as I was saying, we Mangers have been away an awfully long time—”
“—many centuries, Your Wurship,” said the head clark.
“Yes, many centuries, and we’ve noticed that quite a few things have changed since we were away.” Bane drew a deep breath. This was coming easier all the time. “Therefore we’ve decided that this judgment-thing should be changed as well.”
The head clark felt some of his smugness begin to drain from him. He glanced uneasily at the high froman. If he, the head clark, screwed up the Judgment, it would be the last screw he ever turned.
“I’m not quite certain what you mean, Your Wurship.”
“Modernize it, bring it up-to-date,” suggested Bane.
The head clark appeared terribly confused. How could you change something that had never before happened? Still, he supposed that the gods must have had it planned out. “I guess it would be all right—”
“Never mind. I can see you’re uncomfortable with the idea,” said the prince, patting the head clark on his velvet-covered arm. “I’ve got a suggestion. You tell me the way you want me to handle it and I’ll do it just like you say.”
The head clark’s face brightened. “You can’t believe how wonderful this moment is for me, Your Wurship! I’ve dreamed of it for so long. And now, to have the Judgment go just as I’ve always imagined …” He wiped tears from his eyes.
“Yes, yes,” said Bane. He noted that the high froman was watching them with narrowed eyes and edging nearer all the time. He might have stopped their conversation before this except that it was undoubtedly considered bad manners to interrupt a god in conf
idential conference. “Go on.”
“Well, I always pictured all the Gegs—or at least as many as we could get in there—dressed in their very best clothes, standing in the Factree. You would be there, seated in the Manger’s Chair, of course.”
“Of course, and—”
“And I would be there, standing before the crowd in my new head-clark suit that I would have made specially for the occasion. White, I think, would be proper, with black bows at the knees, nothing too overdone—”
“Very tasteful. And then—”
“The high froman would be standing there with us too, I suppose, Your Wurship? That is, unless we could find something else for him to do. You see, Your Wurship, what he’ll find fit to wear is going to be a problem. Perhaps, with this modernization you were discussing, we might dispense with him.”
“I’ll think about it.” Bane gripped the feather amulet and tried very hard to be patient. “Go on. We’re all up in front of the crowd. I stand up and I …” He looked expectantly at the head clark.
“Why, you judge us, Your Wurship.”
The prince had the sudden satisfying vision of sinking his teeth into the Geg’s velvet arm. Reluctantly banishing the thought, he drew a deep breath. “Fine. I judge you. And then what happens? I know! We’ll declare a holiday!”
“I don’t really think there’ll be time for that, do you, Your Wurship?” said the Geg, looking at Bane with a puzzled expression.
“P-perhaps not,” stammered the prince. “I forgot about… the other. When we’re all …” Slipping his hand from the hand of the head clark, the boy wiped his sweating forehead. It was certainly hot inside the machine. Hot and noisy. His throat was getting sore from shouting. “What is it we’re all doing now, after I’ve judged you?”
“Why, that depends on whether or not you’ve found us worthy, Your Wurship.”
“Let’s say I find you worthy,” Bane said, gritting his teeth. “Then what?”
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