“Uh... yeah. I’m getting there, too. Toss in some joint aches, too. Come on. Let’s get that fire started and warm ourselves.”
Would fire be enough?
Once we moved forward another ten feet, the miseries stopped getting worse. The tingling on the outside faded. I told Swan, “I think it’s safe to let go now.”
“You should have seen your hair. It started dancing around when we were halfway through. It lasted only a couple of steps but it was a sight.”
“I’ll bet.” My hair was a sight anyway, usually. I did not offer it nearly enough attention and I had not had it trimmed in months. “Got anything to start a fire with?”
“You don’t? You didn’t prepare for this? You knew it had to be done and you didn’t bring-” ’ “All right, we’ll use mine. I just don’t have much tinder left. Didn’t want to use mine up when I could use yours.”
“Thanks a lot. You’re getting as bad as those two nasty old men.” Chagrined, he recalled that one of the nasty old men he meant had just completed his tenure with the Company.
“I learned from the best. Listen. I’ve been thinking about this. Even if we are past all the traps, the books themselves might be dangerous. Considering the way the brains of wizards work, it’s probably not a smart thing to peek inside at the pages. One look at the writings and you’re likely to spend the rest of your life standing there reading even if you don’t recognize a word-out loud. I recall reading about a spell that worked that way, once.”
“So what do we do?”
“You notice that all three books are open? We’ll have to come at them from underneath and tip the covers shut. So that they end up face-down. Even then we might want to handle them with our eyes shut when we go burn them. I’ve read about grimoires that had rakshasas bound into their covers.” Although nothing as exciting as that ever turned up in the library where I had worked.
“A talking book that can read itself to me. That’s what I need.”
“I thought Soulcatcher made you learn how to read when you were the king of the Greys.”
“She did. That don’t mean I want to read. Reading is bloody hard work.”
“I thought managing a brewery was hard work. You never shied away from that.” Being shorter, I took the job of sneaking up on the three lecterns. I used extreme caution. They might have been great actors but I was soon convinced that they could not see me coming.
“I like making beer. I don’t like reading.”
He should have been the one getting ready to burn books, then. I was suffering a crisis of conscience as troublesome as any of my crises of faith. I loved books. I believed in books. As a rule I did not believe in destroying books because their contents were disagreeable. But these books contained the dark, secret patterns for bringing on the end of the world. The end of many worlds, actually, for if the Year of the Skulls successfully sacrificed my world, others connected to the glittering plain must follow.
This was not a crisis that needed immediate resolution. I had my answers worked out already, which was why I was on hands and knees under the lecterns while suffering verbal abuse from an infidel who had no use for my god or for the Deceivers’ merciless Destroyer. I tipped the covers of the books shut while wondering if there was still some way the Children of Night could get to me.
“The covers appear to be blank,” Swan said.
“You’re looking at the backs of the books. I’m closing them so they’re face-down. Remember?”
“Hold it.” He held up a finger, cocked an ear.
“Echoes.”
“Uhm. Somebody’s out there.”
I listened harder. “Singing again. I wish they wouldn’t sing. Nobody in the band but Sahra can carry a tune in a bucket with a lid on it. You can come on up here now. I think it’s safe.”
“You think?”
“I’m still alive.”
“I don’t know if that’s necessarily a recommendation. You’re too sour and bitter for the monsters to eat. I, on the other hand-”
“You, on the other hand, are plain lucky that my god forbids me to reveal that the only thing interested in eating you would be the kind of beetle that flourishes on a diet of livestock by-product. Right there looks like a good place to start a fire.”
Swan was up beside me now. “There” was some kind of large brazier-looking thing that still had a few charcoal remnants in it. It was made of hammered brass in a style common to most of the cultures of this end of the world.
“You want me to tear a few pages out for tinder?”
“No, I don’t want you to tear pages out. Weren’t you listening when I told you the books might make you want to read them?”
“I was listening. Sometimes I don’t hear very well, though.”
“Like most of the human race.” I was prepared. In minutes I had a small fire burning. I lifted one of the books carefully, making sure it faced away from Swan and me. I fanned its pages out slightly and set it down in the flames, spine upward. I burned the last volume first. Just in case.
Something might interfere. I wanted the first volume destroyed to be one the Daughter of Night had not yet seen. The first book, which she had copied parts of several times and might have partially memorized, I would burn last.
The book caught fire eventually but did not burn well. It produced a nasty-smelling dark smoke that filled the cavern and forced Swan and me to get down on our stomachs on the icy floor.
The underground wind did carry some of the smoke away. The rest was no longer overwhelming when I consigned the second book to the flames.
While waiting to add the final book to the fire, I brooded about why Kina was doing nothing to resist this blow to her hopes for resurrection. I could only pray that Goblin’s sacrifice had hurt her so badly she could not look outside herself yet. I could only pray that I was not a victim of some grand deceit. Maybe these books were decoys. Maybe I was doing exactly what Kina had planned for me to do.
There were doubts. Always.
“You’re muttering to yourself again.”
“Uhn.” I possessed not so much as the faintest hope that Goblin’s death had put Kina out of the misery of the world permanently.
“This feels so nice,” I said. “I could go to sleep right here.” And I did so, promptly.
Good old Willow’s sense of duty, or self-preservation, or something, kept him going. He got the last Book of the Dead into the fire for me before he, too, settled down for a nap.
93
The singing soldiers proved to be Runmust, Iqbal and Riverwalker. They had come to rescue the rest of us when Tobo reached them with news of the disaster that had befallen us down below. They had found us by following the smoke. “At the risk of finding myself goaded into employing unseemly language, how is it that I find anyone singing? How is it that you haven’t taken the road to The Land of the Unknown Shadows? I believe I was pretty insistent on the necessity for that.”
Runmust and Iqbal giggled [ike they were younger than Tobo and knew a dirty joke. Riverwalker managed to maintain a more sober demeanor. Barely. “You’re tired and hungry, so we don’t blame you for being cranky, Sleepy. Let’s do something about that. Settle down and have a snack.” He could not restrain a big, goofy grin as he rummaged in his pack.
I exchanged glances with Swan. I asked, “You have any clue what’s going on here?”
“Maybe there’s a stage of starvation where you get lightheaded and silly.”
“I suppose Jaicur could have been an exception.”
Riverwalker produced something the shape and color of a puffball mushroom but a good eight inches in diameter. It looked heavier than a mushroom that size ought to be.
“What the hell is that?” Swan asked. River had several more in his pack. And his henchmen had brought packs, too.
Riverwalker produced a knife and began slicing. “A gift from our demon friend, Shivetya. Evidently after a day of reflection he decided we deserved a payoff for saving his big ugly ass. Eat.”
He offered me an end slice an inch thick. “You’ll like it.”
Swan started eating before I did. I had an ounce of paranoia left. He leaned my way. “Tastes like pork. Heh-heh-heh.” Then he had no time for joking. He began wolfing the material, which looked exactly the same all the way through.
It had a heavy, almost cheesy texture. When I surrendered to the inevitable and bit into it, my salivary system responded with a flood. The experience of taste was so sharp it was almost painful. There was nothing comparable in my memory. A touch of ginger, a touch of cinnamon, lemons, sweetness, the scent of candied violets... After the first shock a sense of well-being gradually spread outward from my mouth, and again from my stomach soon after the first mouthfuls hit bottom.
“More,” Swan said.
Riverwalker surrendered another slice.
“More,” I agreed, and bit into another slice myself. It might be poison but if it was, it was the sweetest poison God ever permitted. “Shivetya really gave you this?”
“About a ton. Almost literally. Fit for man and beast. Even the baby likes it.”
Iqbal and Runmust found that news hilarious. Swan snickered, too, though he could not possibly have any idea what the joke might be. In fact, I found that assertion rather amusing myself. Heck, everything was amusing. I had begun to feel relaxed and confident. My aches and pains no longer formed the center of my consciousness. They had become mere annoyances way out on the edge of awareness.
“Continue.”
Iqbal squealed, “He grew them. These nasty lumps developed all over him, like bigass boils, only when they popped, out came these things.”
Under more normal circumstances that idea and the images it engendered would have seemed repulsive. I grunted, took another wonderful mouthful, pictured the creation process, caught myself in the midst of a fit of giggles. I regained control, though that took an effort. “So it finally decided to communicate?”
“Sort of. When we left, it was trying to manage some kind of dialog with Doj. It didn’t seem to be working all that well, though.”
Swan sighed. “I haven’t felt this relaxed and positive since Cordy and I used to go fishing when we were kids. This’s the way we felt lying beside the creek in the shade, never really caring if we got a bite while we shared our daydreams or just watched clouds scoot overhead.”
Even the recollection of his friend’s fate did not break his mood entirely.
I understood what he was trying to communicate even though I had had no special friend with whom to share the rare, golden moments of childhood. I had had no childhood. I felt really good myself. I said, “This whatever-it-is is great stuff. River. You seen any side effects yet?”
“It’s damned near impossible to stop yourself if you get the giggles.”
“I’ll try not to get started. Wow! I feel like I could whip twice my weight in wolves right now. Why don’t we get going?”
Nobody took the opportunity to mention that me whipping twice my weight in wolves might entail me fighting only the back half of one of the monsters. Iqbal and Run must continued to giggle over some shared joke of long ago.
“Boys,” I said, pointing. “That way. Don’t touch anything. Keep going. We’re going to go back upstairs.”
Dang me, I kept getting silly ideas. And every one of them made me want to start laughing. Riverwalker told me, “We found out that if we sing it helps us keep our minds on business.” A big grin spread across his face. He began humming one of the filthier marching songs. It concerned the business that seems to be on the minds of most men most of the time.
I hummed along and got everybody started moving.
Foul-smelling smoke from roasted books filled the cavern. It seemed even stronger in the stairwell. Some of it drifted downward.
Kina was not yet aware, I was sure. She would have done something if she had known. But she would not remain ignorant forever.
I hoped we could get ourselves well on the road before she recovered enough to assimulate the truth. Her dreams were deadly enough.
94
I settled my behind onto the rise in the floor near the entrance to the stairwell. I sat there dully wondering why the excavation had been started way out here on the periphery. I did not concern myself about it much, though. I ate again. “This stuff could get addictive.” And not because it made me feel happy and silly but because it took away aches and pains and every inclination to sleep. I could sit there knowing my body was at its physical limits without having to endure all the suffering associated with that state. And my mind remained particularly alert and useful because I was not preoccupied with the miseries plaguing my flesh.
Swan grunted his agreement. He did not seem to have been rendered as cheerful as the rest of us. Although, come to think of it, I was not doing much whistling or singing myself.
My mood improved after I had eaten again, though.
In one of his more lucid moments Riverwalker suggested, “We shouldn’t waste any more time than we have to, Sleepy. The rest should all be gone by now but they went away hoping that you and the standard would catch up.”
“If Tobo hasn’t already told them, I’ve got some bad news about that.”
“The boy said nothing about the standard. He may not have had a chance. Everybody was so shocked about Goblin and so worried about how to keep One-Eye from finding out...”
“Goblin drove the Lance into Kina’s body. It’s still there. You know me. I’m completely hooked by the Company mystique. I believe that besides the Annals, the standard is the most important symbol we have. It goes all the way back to Khatovar. It ties the generations together. I’d understand if somebody wanted to go back after it. But that somebody isn’t going to be me. Not in this decade.”
That good feeling was moving through me again. I rose. Swan helped me step up to the higher floor level. “Hello!”
Riverwalker chuckled. “I wondered how long it would take you to notice.”
The crack in the floor was almost gone.
I went and looked. It seemed to be as deep as ever but now was nowhere more than a foot wide. “How did it heal so fast?” I assumed our presence had been a catalyst. Glancing around the crack toward the demon’s throne, I noticed Doj and Tobo hurrying our way. Shivetya’s eyes were open. He was watching. “I thought you said everybody had left.”
“The earthquake did it.” River ignored the presence, of Doj and Tobo.
Swan said, “It’s the latest thing in home repairs. Go down there and stab that thing again, maybe the plain will heal up completely.”
“Might get the clockwork running again,” Doj said, having overheard our conversation as he arrived.
“Clockwork?”
Doj did a little hop. “This floor is a huge circle. It’s a one-eightieth-scale representation of the plain as a whole, with a complete travel chart inlaid. It rides on stone rollers and was capable of turning before the Thousand Voices got curious and broke it.”
“Interesting. I take it your chat with the demon proceeded informatively.”
Doj grunted assent. “But slowly. That was the big problem. Just figuring out that communication has to be managed very slowly. I think that would carry over physically, too. That if he decided to stand up if he could it might take hours. But as the Steadfast Guardian, he never had to move fast. He controlled the whole plain from here, using the charts in the floors and the clockwork mechanisms.”
Never had I seen Doj so straightforward and animated. The knowledge bug must have bitten him, along with its kissing cousin that makes the newly illuminated want to share with everyone. And that was not like Doj at all. Nor like any other Nyueng Bao of my experience. Only Mother Gota and Tobo ever chattered and between them they revealed less than Uncle Doj on a particularly reticent day.
Doj continued, “He says his original reason for being created was to manage the machinery that saw that travelers got where they wanted to go. Over time there were battles upon the plain, wars between the worlds, this fo
rtress was built around him, and at every stage he was saddled with additional duties. Sleepy, the creature is half as old as time itself. He actually witnessed the battle between Kina and the demons when the Lords of Light fought the Lords of Darkness. It was the first great war between the worlds, it did take place here on the plain, and none of the myths have got it close to right.”
That was interesting and I said so. But I refused to allow the past’s allure to seduce me right now.
“I must confess a grand temptation to create a permanent camp here,” Doj enthused. “It will take lifetimes to recover and record everything. He’s seen so much! He remembers the Children of the Dead, Sleepy. To him the passing of the Nyueng Bao De Duang happened just yesterday. We need only to keep him convinced that we should have his help.” I looked questions at each of my companions. River-walker finally volunteered, “He’s got to have been stuffing himself with the demon food.” Meaning he thought Doj was out of character a few leagues, too. “Several others also went through big changes when they overindulged.”
“That much I understood already. Tobo. Have you undergone a complete character shift, too?” He had not said a word. That was remarkable. He had an opinion about everything.
“He scared the crap out of me, Sleepy.”
“He? Who?”
“The demon. The monster. Shivetya. He looked inside my head. He talked to me there. I think he did it to my father, too. For years and years, maybe. In the Annals? When Dad thought Kina or the Protector were manipulating him? I’m betting that lots of times it was really Shivetya.”
“That could be. That really could be.”
The world is infested with superhuman things that toy with the destinies of individuals and nations. Gunni priests have been claiming that for a hundred generations. The gods were banging elbows with each other, stirring the cauldron. But none of those gods were my God, the True God, the Almighty, Who seemed to have elected to elevate Himself above the fray.
I needed the solace of my kind of priest. And there were none nearer than five hundred miles.
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