by Glen Cook
“You have been enlisted by the Godoroth to find the Temple Key. That simple name doesn’t tell you that the group who fails to take possession of it will perish.”
“I think you got the wrong guy. I don’t know anything about any Temple Key.”
A whispering filled the air. Ice formed on my tailbone and crawled northward.
“Curious, Mr. Garrett. Torbit says you are only partially lying. But.” He rambled through an eyewitness review of my visit with the Godoroth. Maybe he was Imar in a good mood.
I searched the crowd, trying to get a good picture of faces. The Dead Man would want every detail — if ever we met again.
I said, “You got all the details, then you know I didn’t agree to do anything. I just slid on out of there.”
“There was an implication. You did not refuse.”
“Won’t stand up in court. Duress and coercion.” Which got me a blank look. Duress and coercion? Wasn’t that what being a god was all about? You could make people do what you wanted? Weren’t mortals toys?
He took it his own way. “Granted, you did not swear allegiance to the Godoroth. That is good. But why, then, were you on the Street of the Gods asking questions? Why were you visiting temples?”
“I was pretty sure it was a con of some kind. Those Godoroth characters didn’t convince me that they were real gods. They just told me that they were. They hadn’t shown me anything a clever conjurer couldn’t manage.” If you overlooked my magic rope. “I figured somebody wanted to set me up.”
My audience stirred. Most probably didn’t understand me. The guy in the chair had to mull it over before he got it. Give him that. He could step out of his own viewpoint. Not that he credited the mortal viewpoint with much value.
That chill whisper filled the air momentarily.
“It appears that, once again, you are telling most of the truth. Very well. I believe you understand the situation. Foreign gods have come to TunFaire. They have been awarded a place on the Street of the Gods. This means great inconvenience and dislocation for many gods, but for us and the Godoroth it means one group or the other has to go. For my part, I do not care to fall into oblivion.”
“Me neither.”
“You still believe you are being hoodwinked?”
“It’s starting to look like the real thing.”
“I want that key, Mr. Garrett.”
“I’ll say a prayer for you.”
Teensy thunderbolts crackled at his temples. Maybe it was something I said. He regained control. “You fled from my friends. If you are not in the service of the Godoroth, why run?”
“Give them an eye, chief. Most of them look like nightmares come true.”
More teensy thunderbolts flickered. I wasn’t doing too good here. I looked around. Things moving in and out of the light might have lurked under my bed when I was a kid. This was a much bigger crowd than the Godoroth. And not real friendly. Bad cess to the infidel, I guess.
“Where will you look for the key?”
“I’m not interested in any key. I just don’t want to be between gangs of divine sociopaths who have no interest whatsoever in my welfare.”
Crackly whisper in the air. Stir in the crowd, which seemed larger every time I checked. They were not all nightmares, either. This pantheon was well supplied with attractive goddesses, not one of whom had trouble with her hair and all of whom had normal teeth and the usual complement of limbs.
I didn’t need the whispers translated. Torbit the Strayer — whatever he, she, or it was — had reported the truth of my lack of interest. No grail quest for me. Forget that Temple Key. Garrett has no desire to save any holy bacon. I said, “I have friends in the beer business who do care and who do need my help. I’d rather be solving their problems.”
“There is little time, Mr. Garrett. We need a mortal to rescue us. Our remaining worshippers are few and of little value because of their age. Belief is not a requirement. Free will is. I see no more likely candidate than yourself. You work for hire. We have resources beyond your imagining.”
Yeah. Everything but loving followers eager to bail your asses out.
22
I’m sure I didn’t say that out loud. Must have been my body language. Dumb, to be twitching and aggravating the gods like that.
The head guy growled, “Put him into the lockup room. Some time with his thoughts should help him develop a new perspective.”
I liked my old one fine, but several unpleasant fellows disagreed. I had seen them on their day jobs as gargoyles. And not only did they have heads like rocks, they had muscles of stone as well. We took a vote. The majority elected to go along with Lang’s plan for an attitude adjustment. They lugged me through the house, up various flights of stairs, past a scattering of antique humans who had no trouble seeing us and who kowtowed to anything that moved. My companions chucked me into a large closet containing one ragged stolen army blanket (I knew it was stolen; otherwise it would still be in the army), one feeble fat candle, and two quart jars, one full and one empty. I presumed I was to be the middleman between jars.
The door closed. I gathered I was supposed to ruminate and quickly conclude that signing on with the Shayir was preferable to the alternatives. At the moment it looked like that could be true. I might have gone with that option had I not become distracted.
The dust hadn’t settled when the door popped open and the owl girls invited themselves in. They hadn’t bothered finding fresh clothing. They had mischief in their golden eyes, and “Uh-oh!” was all I got to say before they piled onto me.
They weren’t great conversationalists. In fact, I didn’t get anything out of them but giggles. I did my best to remain stern and fatherly and aloof, but they just took that as a challenge. I am nothing if not determined in my pursuit of information, so I continued to ask questions while I endured the inevitable.
After a while I began to fear the interrogation would never end. Those two only looked like girls.
Then they were gone and I was collapsing into exhausted sleep while trying to figure out what that had been all about. They hadn’t tried to worm anything out of me or to get me to promise a thing. They were very direct, very focused, and very demanding.
The door opened. The woman who had gotten me into this mess stepped inside. She was in her redhead phase, and a very desirable redhead she was. She sniffed. “I see Lila and Dimna have been here.” Her observation was as neutral as a remark about the weather.
“I don’t know what they wanted...”
“What they wanted is what they got. They are direct and simple.”
“Direct, anyway.”
“Simple.” She tapped her temple. “You find this form attractive?”
“I’ll howl at the moon.” Though she made no effort, she exuded sensuality. “But that won’t get you anything.”
“You’re sated.”
“Got nothing to do with it. I’m being pushed and bullied. I don’t take to that much. I get stubborn.”
“You have to understand something. If the Shayir don’t get what they want, neither do you.”
“And the Godoroth will think the same, so I can’t win. But I can stay stubborn and take everybody with me.” Damn. I didn’t like the sound of the slop gushing out of my yap. I don’t know if I believed it. I hoped that Torbit thing wasn’t listening.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“To be left alone.”
“That isn’t going to happen. And you know it. A sensible man would cut himself a deal.”
“I’ve already referred to the fatal flaw that renders that idea specious. Based on the record, it’s only reasonable to assume that you all will fail to keep your half of any deal. Promise the fool mortal all the gold and girls he can handle, tell him he gets to be ruler of the world and several provinces in hell as soon as he delivers this nifty key that will save some divine butts.” Speaking of divinity of the foundation, she knew the nature of perfection. “When we’re done we’ll turn his morta
l ass into a catfish or something.”
“You’re certainly a cynic.”
“I didn’t create myself.”
She appeared thoughtful. “You may have touched on a real problem. I’ll think about it.” She looked straight at me, radiating that heat but not extending any invite.
“What?”
“You’re a true curiosity. I’ve met believers, unbelievers, fanatics, skeptics, and heretics, but I don’t think I’ve ever met a man who plain just didn’t care.” She did not, however, seem displeased by my indifference.
“I do care. I care a whole bunch about being left alone.”
“Only the dead are left alone, Garrett.”
“And even that depends on which gods they chose while they were alive.”
“Perhaps, stubborn man.” She left me with an enigmatic smile and a philosophical conundrum. She seemed content with my attitude.
TunFaire has innumerable clots of gods. Each bunch anchors a different belief system. Some of those are as crazy as pickled cats. If competing groups of gods, like the Godoroth and the Shayir, actually revealed themselves to mortals and confirmed not only their own existence but also that of their enemies, by implication, the existence of all the rest of the gods would be validated. In my skewed view it further implied that any given value or belief system must be just as true as any other.
Maybe I should start my own Church of the Divine Chaos. Everything is true and nothing is true.
I had no trouble with the idea that all the gods might be real. I’d always liked the notion that gods will exist as long as there is someone who believes they exist. The solidity of my intuition was now at the root of my difficulties. What troubled me was the possibility that the dogmas surrounding various really wacko religions might bear equal validity while there were true believers. If the general population reached that conclusion, there would be a big winnowing fast. Some belief packages just look a whole lot better than others. I would much rather kick off and fall into a paradise stocked with wild women and free beer than just become part of a ball of light or shadow, or become some dark spirit that necromancers would summon, or be gone to eternal torment, or, as had always been my personal suspicion, be just plain dead.
Deserved some thought.
23
I didn’t get time. I had too much on my mind. And I kept getting interrupted by one god person after another, each with the same mission: convince Brother Garrett to scare up that precious key. I had several truly intriguing offers from a couple of goddesses who looked like I had made them up. Maybe I did, come to think. One side of me wished I had a really remote deadline so I could take advantage of all these wonderful offers.
I dozed off at last, started sighing my way through a marvelous dream wherein all these randy goddesses decided I should go in with them on starting a new paradise. We would forget all those stuffy, weird shadow lurkers and hammer pounders and generally unfun, gloomy-gus guy gods. Then the bane of my existence raised its ugly head once again.
Somebody tapped on my cell door.
Something buzzed like the world’s biggest bumblebee. Voices clashed in whispers. The buzzard-size bee went away.
Somebody tapped on the door again.
I did not respond, probably because I was so amazed that anyone here would have the courtesy not to walk right in. I decided to play possum. I cracked an eyelid and waited.
The door opened.
This one was a girl. Surprise, surprise.
At first watery glimpse she seemed chunky and plain, and at second glimpse she seemed vaguely familiar. She had the glow of a peasant girl lucky enough to have enjoyed good health, with a body designed for serious work and frequent childbearing. As lesser gods went, she might be some sort of spring lamb or crop planting specialist.
She poked my shoulder. She was between me and the candle. Nothing insubstantial about her. My earlier visitors, however determined or enthusiastic, had not been entirely impervious to the passage of light.
I opened my eyes completely, startling the girl. I frowned. I did know her... Ah. She looked like a young version of Imara, Imar’s wife. But the head god here looked like Imar, too. Maybe Lang had a kid. No! Hell. She was the girl from Brookside Park.
“What?” I asked.
She didn’t seem to have in mind using woman’s oldest tool of persuasion.
“Hush. I’m here to help.”
“Funny. You don’t look like any royal functionary I ever met.” I touched her. She flinched. Earlier visitors had felt just as solid but had seemed awfully warm. This one was a normal temperature and lacked the absolute self-confidence the others had shown. “You’re mortal.” Clever me. Now I was sure she was the girl I had seen in the park. The pixies had seen her, too.
“Half mortal. Come on! Hurry!” An angry buzz waxed and waned in the corridor outside. “Before they realize there’s something happening outside their set pattern.”
I debated it for a long time, six or seven seconds. “Lead on.” I couldn’t see her getting me into the hot sauce any deeper, whatever her scheme.
Sometimes you just got to roll the bones.
“Who are you? How come you’ve been following me? Why are you doing this?”
“Hush. We can talk after we get out of here.”
“There’s an idea I can get behind.” And right in front of me was a behind I could get behind. She wore the peasant skirt again, whitish linen under a pale blue apron. I liked what I could see.
This mess had its aesthetic up side. I could not recall ever having run into so many gorgeous females in such a short time.
So some were a little strange. We all have our moments of weird, and life is a series of trade-offs anyway.
Blonde braids trailed down the girl’s back. “Wholesome” was the word that came to mind. Generally, some wholesome is the last thing most guys find interesting. But...
She beckoned. I rose to follow. She opened the door a crack, beckoned again. I caught a bit of that buzzing racket again. It had an angry edge. Or perhaps it was impatience.
I don’t think the Shayir ever posted a guard. I guess when you have a Nog on staff you don’t much worry about prisoner escapes. Or maybe it was just divine hubris.
I wondered how my new pal planned to cope with the owl girls and Nog and his girlfriend with the dogs and weapons and no sense of humor.
“Come on!” She was intense but would not raise her voice above a whisper. Which was a good plan, probably.
She was flesh for sure. The floorboards creaked under her, ever so softly. They groaned under me. My earlier visitors had not made the house speak.
“This way, Mr. Garrett.”
Her chosen route was not the one the Shayir had used when escorting me to my spacious new apartment. It was not the route I would have chosen to make my getaway. It led down a narrow hallway only to a small, open window. A chill breeze stirred the thin, dirty white cotton curtains there. Outside, an almost full moon slopped light all over and made the whole manor look like a haunted graveyard. Maybe it was. How were we going to deal with that?
There was a whole lot of buzzing going on out there, suddenly. Somebody said, “Come on, babe, getcher buns moving.” Outside. Stories and stories up.
The girl went right out the window, indifferent to the fact that she was not dressed to play monkey on the wall. I stuck my head outside — and discovered that the big darling was not going downward. Gulp! What the?... Where was the rope? There wasn’t any rope. I had expected a rope from the moment I’d realized her plan included us climbing out that silly little window.
Buzz overhead. I looked up in time to glimpse just a hint of movement vanishing behind the edge of the roof.
Meantime, the girl had gotten herself onto a ledge that was not much wider than my palm. She was sidestepping industriously, headed I couldn’t tell where.
I then noted that the ledge was not a ledge as such. It was the top side of some kind of decorative gingerbread I could not make out because
I wasn’t out there in the moonlight. I drew a deep breath, meaning to tell the young lady that I preferred my adventures at low altitudes with solid footing. Somebody behind me spoke up first. “Here, now! You! Who are you? What are you doing there?”
The speaker was a real live human old man, possibly of the butler calling. He wore only nightclothes but was armed with one truly wicked-looking meat cleaver. A door stood ajar behind him. Feeble light leaked into the hallway. If he had pests in his room the way I’d had them in mine that might explain why he slept with kitchen utensils.
The old man didn’t look like he was interested in conversation. He began slicing the air. I considered using my magical cord to climb down. But there was no time to stretch it. Nor did I see any handy place to tie it off.
Why not just jump? Falling would be less unpleasant than an encounter with a slab of sharp steel. The ground wasn’t more than a mile down.
That bumblebee buzz whirred off the roof and dropped down behind me. “Why you want to waste your time on this candyass pug, sweetheart?” I caught a strong whiff of weed smoke.
I looked back. Floating behind me was a pudgy baby with a thousand-year-old midget’s head. The critter wore what looked like a diaper but was actually a loincloth. “What you gawking at, Jake?” it snapped. And, “Get your lard ass moving.” He yelled upward, “Hey, babe, this one’s a fourteen-karat dud.”
The critter carried a teeny little bow and a quiver of little arrows and had the world’s biggest weed banger drooping from the corner of his mouth, smouldering. Here was the source of the buzz. And of the weed stink.
I managed to stand myself up on that ledge. A dud, huh? Look here. Sometimes a military education is useful in civilian life. Watch me now.
The old man leaned out the window and took a swipe at me. Rusty iron dealt the air a deep, bitter wound entirely too close to my nose. For a moment it looked like pappy was going to come outside after me.