by Garon Whited
You’re welcome.
“Stop that!”
Sorry. You were thinking rather loudly.
“Psychically, I’m very well-endowed.”
I know.
“Let’s try something else,” I suggested. “I’ll call up the Kashmanir area, like so. See it?”
I have to look through your eyes. Is that okay?
“Let’s try it and I’ll let you know.”
Hmm. Getting something… yes. Yes, I can see the sand table.
“I don’t feel anything.”
It’s daytime. Maybe you’re not sensitive enough right now?
“Could be. So, this is Kashmanir. Right half or left half?”
From where we’re looking, right half.
“Top half or lower half?”
Lower.
I zoomed in on that quarter of the province, centering it on the table.
Lower half, toward the center.
We repeated the process, quartering the view area until there was only one house in view that fit the bill. It was impossible to probe, however, but such defenses certainly fit well with the occupant.
“Answer me something.”
Sure.
“How do you know Tort is in there? The place is shielded like an antimatter reactor core.”
She loves you.
“I don’t follow.”
Look, you’re sort of my avatar. She loves you. That’s a form of worship. That makes her—indirectly, but definitely—one of my worshippers. She can’t block her own emanations on that level. She doesn’t even know they exist. Humans can’t detect energy in that range. So, her walls block visible light and the infrared remote, but she still gets cell service inside the house. Follow the metaphor?
“I’m good with metaphors and with electromagnetic theory. Thanks.”
De nada. Anything else?
“Nope. Got anything you want from me?”
Any divine revelations about the cloak?
“Nothing I’ve noticed.”
Bear in mind I’m interested in how it turns out. Keep me posted.
“I’ll try.”
And I was alone again. Weird sensation.
Watching the house for the next hour or so told me a few things. The house itself was a big, stone building, made of either a smooth, white stone or whitewashed. It was brilliant in the sunlight. The general structure was two floors high and wrapped around an inner court. It was larger than I first thought. The central court was a water garden, with flowering plants and a number of pools, including one large-ish pool suitable for wading or simply soaking. In the center of the garden was a circle of dirt and a small oak tree. It seemed out of place, but it had room all around it to grow. Maybe it was intended as a natural source of shade for the water garden but hadn’t yet grown into the job.
A covered patio or walkway—is that sort of thing called an arcade? —formed the boundary between gardens and house. The roof sloped inward, presumably to catch any rain and store it in a cistern, but I wasn’t certain. This design raised the outer face of the house into an intimidatingly high wall. A projecting roof overhung the southern, outer face of the house, shading it from the sun somewhat. During the summer months, it would probably shade the entire wall.
There were two people easily visible outside. One groomed the horses in a small, detached stable. The other tended the garden, puttering around with the flowers. I also caught glimpses of a third, the one who answered the door. There wasn’t much traffic to and from the house. The only visitor I saw drove a two-horse cart and delivered a few small crates.
Peeking in the windows through my scrying telescope, I counted quite a number of men and boys, but I didn’t see any women. I also felt like a stalker.
During the day, my stomach can flip over and do various things my nighttime metabolism doesn’t or can’t. I can have physical symptoms of nervousness, including sweating, nausea, trembling, dry mouth, and so on. I know this because I was nervous as hell.
No, I take that back. I was afraid. Of all the people in the world whose opinion I value, Tort tops the list. She’s loved me with the unquestioning love of a child, the romantic love of a woman, the heated love of passion, and the religious love of the fanatic.
Yet, there she is, living in Kamshasa, hiding from everyone and everything. It’s like she doesn’t want to have anything to do with Karvalen or Rethven or me. After nine years at the right hand of the Demon King, I can’t imagine why.
That’s not sarcasm. I literally can’t imagine what she’s endured.
I’m not sure I can take it if she…
It’s hard for me to remember back before she loved me. I’ve lived with the knowledge she loves me, and it changed things. I’ve known wherever I was, someone—one person—loved me despite everything I’ve ever done. The races of the world might rise up and denounce me as a terrible thing and cast me out, but Tort still loved me, and that would be enough. It always was.
I’m afraid.
What’s wrong with me? I can face dragons—admittedly, knowing what I know now, I strongly prefer not to—or I can face demons of all sizes, shapes, and levels of nastiness. I’ll smart off to fake gods, subdivide possessed priests, or do any number of other immensely stupid things. All I need to do here is open a gate, dive through, let the person at the door know I’m there to see Tort, and wait. She’ll see me or she won’t. What’s the big deal?
But I’m still afraid.
Is it a psychic premonition? I do that, sometimes. It could be a terrible forewarning from my forebrain, or wherever people keep psychic sensitivity. I’d check the Ribbon, but it takes me a long while to get a look at it, and it always cuts off at the upcoming sunset—not too useful. Besides, it would only tell me what I already know: a major life event is coming up.
The future could be rushing down on me like a truck while my mystical third eye is trying to tell me something. Something horrible about seeing Tort. Something horrible about going to that house. Something horrible in general.
This isn’t helping me overcome my cowardice.
All right. I can be paranoid. I could be talking myself into a tizzy with nothing whatsoever of substance to it. Everything is going to be perfectly all right. This is all an effect of my radical life changes, a week or so of torture and the resulting mild post-traumatic stress, my own sense of guilt for everything in creation, and a billion or so bits of unfinished business.
Or I really am just a coward.
All right. Fine. Okay.
It’s possible my brain is trying to tell me something and I’m not listening. The usual response is to have a nap and see what I can dream up. Since I’d like to be sharp for my meeting with Tort, I should have one. Fine.
Bronze joined me in the cavern I was using as a workroom—I didn’t feel comfortable sleeping in a known location. I let Torvil and Kammen in on it, too. Them I covered in a multiphase active/passive combination of stealth spells before we went down there. I didn’t want anyone tracing them to find me. Once down in the workroom, I drew the lines for an Ascension Sphere, put a protective circle inside it, and laid out a couple of blankets, furs, and a bundle for a pillow.
As I laid down on my makeshift bed, I wondered where Fred was. Not Fred the preacher, Fred the Monster Under the Bed. Was he still doing his best to scare the crap out of would-be knights, checking them for bravery in the face of the unknown? I hope so. He seemed to enjoy the work.
I settled down with Firebrand on my left, a sheathed super-sword on my right, and my armored underwear in place.
Paranoid? Maybe. Is it paranoia if powerful and dangerous forces really are out to get you? Or is it merely reasonable caution?
I stepped inside, into my mental study, and slowly turned down the lights.
A fishbowl. A bubble of glass. Me in the middle, building castles of sand on a tiny island. The black ocean all around me, seething, sending waves up on the sandy shore, never quite reaching. Each wave clawing up toward my constructs, fall
ing back, dragging some of my island with it.
Outside, beyond the glass, are the eyes. Eyes, eyes, eyes. Eyes enough to surround my glassy universe in all directions, as though it sits at the bottom of a sea made of bubbles. All alike in that they are balls with lids, pupils, irises… but all strange, all different. Red irises, slit pupils, square pupils, glowing or dark, wide-eyed or narrowed, interested, curious, hostile, angry, weeping…
One eye, closed, seems almost to be asleep. It slides through the mass of them, drifting slowly, like a man moving through a crowd. It is the only one closed, so I look at it, wondering, while the sand around me slowly swirls into the ocean foam.
As though feeling my gaze, it opens. It is a ball of solid black, a void of emptiness with a gloss to mark its border. Yet, within it, something stirs. They eye is open, but there is more opening within, like the unfolding of some dark flower within the sphere, until the Eye looks out at me, burning with a fire as hot as hatred, as bright as fury.
The ocean sweeps over the sand at last, and I sink into the dark waters. I descend into the depths.
I stand upon the floor of Olympus, facing a bright thing in the form of a man. Wings as vast as skies stretch behind it, blazing angrily with the light of the universe. It curses at me and each curse is like a blow. I stand mute while it rages, buffeting me with angry words. All around, the gods look down from their thrones, frowning. The figure of light blinds me with its radiance and I shield my eyes. Some of the gods are moving, reaching down—for me? For the bright thing? The light shines too bright and I cannot see.
I blink in the desert sun. Eleven ragged men stagger through the hardpan, shuffling along. One raises a canteen to drink, takes the last of the water, sighs and moves on. There is nothing behind them but footprints vanishing in the hot, dusty wind. There is nothing before them but more desert. They will die here, lay quietly until their flesh is desiccated, turned to dust, and their bones erode into a patch of white sand.
They pause to pray and another figure stands beside me, watching them. Bearded, robed, barefoot.
“Jesus!” I exclaim, surprised.
“Yeah. You’ve got some troubles, son.”
“Don’t I know it. Any advice?”
“’Fraid not. You’re screwed.”
“Oh, you’re a lot of help.”
“It’s what you get for harboring a thing from the original, primal void inside you.” He shrugs broad shoulders before he grins at me. “Don’t take it too hard. It’s not personal.”
And the world blows away in a cloud of hot dust, hot sand, and the taste of ashes. When it clears, there is a dirt street between two rows of buildings. Dry goods, saloon, hotel, sheriff’s office—it’s every nowhere town from every Western I’ve ever watched. A tumbleweed rolls by, between me and the man in the black hat. I cannot see his face, for the shadows under the brim are deep and dark. I think I see two faint sparks of red where his eyes must be.
“They say it’s not the fastest gun,” he tells me, drawing back one flap of his coat, “but the one who doesn’t hesitate.”
While he’s busy talking, I draw and shoot him and he goes down. The crowd appears from nowhere, cheering, lifting me on their shoulders, carrying me around. They transfer me to a fence rail, carrying it on their shoulders, parading me all around the town. We stop at the train station where they dump me on a flatcar, shouting obscenities and throwing stones. The train pulls out of the station and I lay there, baking on the rough wood beneath a terrible light.
The sands around swirl, obliterating the train, leaving only a narrow tunnel into the sky, aimed at the noonday sun. The sands swirl aside in a whirlwind, forming a gigantic figure. The djinn stands a hundred feet tall, with baggy pants, metal wristbands, upthrust fangs, glowing eyes of green and gold, and a long tail of hair from the back of his otherwise bald head. He bears wounds, dozens of them, and where his blood falls the desert blooms.
“Why have you done this to me?” it asks, softly. “I slept, and you bled me dry.”
“I never did.”
“It was you,” says the djinn, pointing a sharp-taloned finger at me. “You did this!”
The genie falls. All around it, grass and flowers spring up. Trees leap from the ground into full growth. Birds sing, brooks flow, cool breezes dance.
The genie dies and decays before my eyes, crumbling into dust, and everything around it crumbles with it. The desert is desert once more, bearing not so much as a bone to show it ever was anything else.
I lay there, helpless to move, pinned by the eye of the sun. I would weep, but the tears are blood and vanish, sucked up by my eyes and skin faster than I can shed them.
Olivia sits down beside my head and throws her two-year-old arms around my neck. She cries for me, as I could not, and calls me Uncle Flad.
The Four come up and drag me sideways along the sand. They take me out of the sun, into a dry, cool place. It is a treehouse, hammered together from scrap wood and random nails, smelling of summer grass and green, leafy places.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Patricia tells me.
“You’re not dead yet,” Edgar adds.
“Where am I supposed to be?” I ask.
Gary helps me sit up. We look out the window at the neighborhood. He points down the street, where kids play ball, fathers mow yards, mothers make lemonade.
“That way,” he says, pointing beyond these things. I see the crossroads is abandoned.
“Get your ass moving,” Luke advises.
“I will still give you a smack on the ear,” I warn.
“Please get your ass moving?”
“It’ll do.”
I unwind Olivia from my neck and she kisses my cheek, giggling. I climb down and walk the length of the street. The smells of fresh-mown grass and charcoal smoke are strong.
The crossroads is a simple four-way, with a hanged man on the gibbet. I look back, but the road behind me is a cracked and blasted ruin.
Three ways, then.
“Tough choice?” asks the hanged man.
“Not when you don’t know where you’re going.”
“Doesn’t that make it harder?”
“Here are three boxes. Pick one. I’m not going to tell you one has a bomb, one has treasure, and one is empty.”
“I see your point. Maybe you should read the signpost.”
I look at the corner opposite the gibbet. The signs indicates I’ve just walked along Life-And-Death Road to reach the intersection. The cross street is Good-And-Evil Avenue.
“So, which way is Good and which way is Evil?”
“Excellent question,” admits the hanged man, and fades out around his grin. A moment later, the grin fades, too, leaving a noose swinging in the wind.
Alice gets enigmatic cats. I get enigmatic corpses. Figures.
I consider the four directions. Behind me, Death isn’t even a road. Life, presumably, is the road before me. Good and Evil run perpendicular to Life and Death. My choices seem to be Life, Death, Good, or Evil. But if they’re different choices, what does it mean to choose Good or Evil? You don’t get a life?
Cheap philosophy there, if you want it.
I choose the way in front of me, heading down the road of life. Good and Evil will doubtless cross my path again. None of these roads is a straight line. They twist and turn like spaghetti on the boil. In the meantime, the first rule is to survive. You can do good and evil on your own. It would be nice to have a map, though, to know when you’re taking a detour along one or the other.
The chittering at my back catches my attention. Against my better judgment, I glance behind.
Things. Black things. Multi-legged things. Lots and lots of Things. They swarm after me like a hungry tar pit brought to life and invested with several thousand mouths.
I run, bare feet bleeding on the slick stone as I avoid the stream of smoking liquid in the middle of the ruined street. I dodge through a ruined building, swing up to the second floor, leap the alleyway, str
eak through the remains of the opposite building, and leap down to the street again. If they are following my bloody footprints, that will throw them off…
Bronze stands in the street. She sees me and turns away, crouching in a most un-horse-like manner. I take the hint. I run straight up behind her, jump up enough to hit right over her rump, somersault along her back and into her saddle.
She leaps into motion and I do not recognize the direction.
I opened my eyes and sat up.
About two bands of the candle, Boss.
“What?”
You were about to ask how long you were asleep.
“Yes. Yes, I was.”
Bronze indicated I should scratch her forehead. I did so and thanked her for waking me.
Learn anything? Firebrand asked.
“I have nightmares.”
This is a surprise?
“No, but they might interfere with my ability to have psychic dreams.”
I guess. What do I know? I’m a psychic sword, not a psychologist.
“Anyone who goes to a psychologist should have his head examined.”
Uh… I’m not sure that makes any sense, Boss.
“Sometimes I don’t,” I admitted. I stood up and rubbed sleep out of my eyes. I was sweaty and sticky. It wasn’t a good nap.
What was I going to do now? Clean up, get dressed, and head for Tort’s? I didn’t really want to do it during the day. I feel a little more confident when it’s dark. Or is it merely less frightened? Is there a difference between more confident and less frightened? I think there is. Either way, I feel better at night. Fewer active glands, maybe that’s it.
Aha! I’m not on a hurried schedule anymore. I can go visit Diogenes, make sure that’s all set up, then come back and visit Tort.
Yes, that sounds like a good way to stall—and I know I’m stalling. Knowing it doesn’t mean I can do anything about it. I want to see her as much as I’m afraid to.
I went down to my main gate room. It was almost unrecognizable with the pointy crystals projecting from every wall. At least it was easy to illuminate.