The Spark

by David Drake

  I believed that. Nobody would be coming near me and Palin until I told them it was all right, and not then for most of them. From what Baga said, the whole garrison thought Palin was a demon. I wasn’t sure what he was, but he wasn’t a demon; a damned soul, maybe, at least in his own head.

  I stacked three blankets and a down comforter on the floor in front of the hanging corpse, then rolled myself into them. We’d borrowed the comforter from a family of six emigrating from Dun Add to Ariel. The charcoal fire would be safe enough with the door open.

  “I’m ready, Lord Palin,” I said. I couldn’t more than twitch with the bedding around me like this, but Palin had insisted I do everything I could to stay warm. I was sure warm enough right now.

  “Then enter my mind as though I were a weapon you were repairing,” Palin whispered. “I am the workpiece, you are the Maker.”

  I don’t understand, I thought, but I didn’t say anything. I drifted into a trance, as I’ve so often done lying on the floor of our hut in Beune. This time I entered not the usual lattice but a pattern of flowing light, living light. It enfolded me in a prism of color.

  Then I was in mottled grayness. I was naked. Beside me floated Lord Palin, exactly as I had last seen him—but freed from his chains.

  The ground beneath me was streaked and fractured in different shades of gray, but it seemed as smooth as polished glass. My feet hovered above it. I dipped one leg—it moved normally—and touched the grayness with my big toe. I felt nothing, and the surface didn’t show a dimple when I drew my foot up again.

  I looked at Palin, which I’d managed to avoid doing pretty much. Oh, I’d seen him, sure, but you know how you do when it’s somebody you really don’t want to think about? Your eyes go there, but they sorta slide off and your brain doesn’t let them stick.

  In this place, Palin was the closest thing to normal, to sunlight and grass, that I had. His flesh had shrunk like shoe leather over his bones, but there were bare knobs at the joints where the covering had pulled away. The right hip bone stuck out also. The right ear was missing, and though the nose hadn’t fallen in, it was a short, thin blade.

  The hair had continued to grow. Hanks of it hung to Palin’s waist, though swatches had fallen off during the years and left the skull bare. In the cell the hair had been auburn nearing a dirty blond, but here everything was gray.

  “Give me your hand,” Palin said, extending his right arm. His eyeballs remained; here they were as bright as if they were glass with a light behind them. “We will go to the place where the thing you wish to free is held.”

  “It’s a person!” I said, taking his hand in mine. It was like grasping a bundle of dry twigs. “It’s a person, not a thing.”

  “Indeed,” said Palin after another rustle of laughter. “The one you wish to free is every bit as human as I am.”

  We began to drift over the ground as if we were spider-silk on a spring breeze. I didn’t feel pressure on my body and Palin wasn’t pulling me that I noticed either, but the patterns beneath us changed faster and faster.

  “Do you come often to the Death Dimension?” I asked. There were no features on the ground, but occasionally I thought I saw things in the air moving. That could have been my imagination, though.

  “I have never come here,” said Palin. “I have spent twenty years observing this place but clinging to my chains to avoid coming to it. I do not call this the Death Dimension; I call it the Anteroom. Beyond waits justice.”

  “Justice for you can’t be worse than your existence in that cell,” I said.

  “How would you know?” Palin said. He laughed.

  Something ahead of us was poking up above the surface. When we got closer I saw a windowless tower resting on three thick steps. We stopped. Palin let go of my hand.

  “The spirit you wish to release is in the tower,” Palin said. “It cannot continue on its way because of the guardian.”

  “What guardian?” I said.

  “Go closer.”

  How? I thought, because my feet didn’t touch the ground when I moved them. Nonetheless I moved toward the tower, as slowly as molasses spilled onto a table.

  The top step lifted from the layers on which it rested. It turned toward me. It had no eyes that I could see, but the edges of the circular “face” wriggled in the air.

  The face opened into a toothless maw. It was wider across than my body was at the shoulders.

  “God!” I said, and it was closer to being a real prayer than anything I remembered mouthing in chapel. I went regularly and paid my tithes because Mom would’ve wanted that, but I’d never been much for chapel and the priest.

  I swallowed, then said, “How do I get past it, Lord Palin?”

  “You fight and kill it, human,” Palin said, his bright eyes fixed on the creature. “The spirit that you came to free will go on its way when the guardian is dead.”

  The end of the creature’s body wobbled back and forth, following me. I wondered if it could strike like a snake…though what it really reminded me of was a lamprey. I’d caught trout with lampreys attached, sucking out their flesh and life.

  “The guardian’s hide is tough,” Palin said, “but if you pierce the hide, its substance will leak out. It will die and the spirit of the Beast will escape.”

  I looked around again, wondering what I was missing. I was naked and the ground was smooth as a polished mirror. There were no rocks to chip to an edge, nothing at all.

  “You have your teeth,” Palin said.

  Ah. The creature would certainly attack me if I closed, but I didn’t see any better way to deal with it. I’d said that I was willing to die to pay the Beast back, and it looked like that was what was going to happen.

  I strode in the air toward the creature. The head, big as a bushel measure, swung down at me.

  With my left hand I grabbed the fringe of feelers around the mouth to keep from being sucked down the gullet. I tried to squeeze a roll of skin with my right. I couldn’t get a grip on the slick hide but I bent my neck and bit anyway with the corner of my jaws, hoping the eye teeth would get purchase.

  They didn’t. The creature’s hide tasted of copper. Its mouth kept pressing toward me, but I’ve got strong arms.

  Holding the guardian off wasn’t going to free the Beast. I tried again to bite, failed again, and let go of the feelers so that I could grab the skin with both hands. By holding my hands close together I was able to lift a fold and pull it taut. I bit.

  Icy suction closed on the left side of my head and that shoulder. An instant later something brushed me and the mouth released. My hands held the doubled skin tightly enough that my teeth really closed on it. I jerked my head back and sideways, the way I’d seen Buck whipping a rabbit he’d caught.

  Something gave. Fluid gushed over my face and hands. I dragged back the flap of skin I’d torn loose. The creature writhed, flinging me loose.

  I’d shut my eyes by reflex as I worried the creature, but now I looked at it again. I’d ripped a triangular hole that I couldn’t have covered with both hands. Liquid gushed from it like a split in a dam wall.

  As the guardian thrashed, its shrinking body exposed a doorway in the tower which had been covered before. From the opening slid something that might have been a Beast, but it was gone too quickly for my dimming eyes to be sure.

  In the guardian’s maw was a bundle of sticks, halfway swallowed. It twitched. I saw leg bones from which the foot had fallen away.

  Then cold squeezed in on me from all sides and my consciousness faded away.

  CHAPTER 31

  A Change in Direction

  “God help me!” I shouted. I was freezing and I couldn’t move when I tried to jump up and I had a splitting headache.

  “Boss! Boss!” Baga was shouting. I opened my eyes and was back in Lord Palin’s cell, wrapped in bedding so of course I couldn’t jump up.

  I started to unroll the blankets. The pain of my head made me gasp. It was so bad that I couldn’t even scream
a curse; I just froze where I was, half-lifted on my left elbow. A white glare pulsed in my head every time my heart beat, blinding me for that moment.

  “Boss, what’s the matter? What can I do?”

  “I’m okay!” I said. “Just give me a moment.”

  I wasn’t okay, but I was feeling better as long as long as I didn’t move. I could imagine moving again now, which I sure couldn’t when the white pain was squeezing my brain.

  “Bloody hell, boss,” Baga muttered. “You’re cold as Gammer Schmidt was when we dragged her out of the pond after three days!”

  “Help me get out of these blankets,” I said. “I need to get out, but I’ve got to be careful.”

  “Look, have a drink first,” Baga said, offering me a pewter mug. I took a sip. My mouth was dry and it tasted wonderful, beer instead of wine.

  I swallowed and it came back up with the little breakfast I’d had before we reached Ariel. It was as sudden as if I’d been hit in the belly with a maul. I’d managed to turn my head and I hoped I didn’t spew on the borrowed comforter, but I really didn’t have much choice.

  I saw Lord Palin. The hands and forearms still hung in the shackles, but the rest of the corpse had fallen in bits to the floor. Some of the bones had broken when they hit the stone, and the dried flesh had crumbled like finely ground spices onto the pile.

  “I got to get outside,” I said. “I got to.”

  Baga frowned but he helped me get to my feet. We staggered to the door. Garrett and Welsh both stood in the hallway, their weapons and shields in their hands. I couldn’t imagine what they thought they were going to fight, but they were willing.

  “Lord?” said Welsh. “Are you all right?”

  “Just need some air,” I said. “Need it bad.”

  “Did you get what you needed, sir?” said Garrett.

  If Garrett was here, how long have I been with Palin in that other place? Aloud I said, “I don’t know. I hope so. I don’t bloody know!”

  I stumbled into the shaft with Baga still holding my arm. We were at ground level before I started to draw another breath.

  “I shouldn’t have snarled at Garrett,” I said. “I don’t know if I did anything at all. Except that I killed Lord Palin.”

  If the other place was an anteroom like Palin thought, I hope the judge on the far side saw things the way I did. But that wasn’t my job.

  I was taking Baga toward the outer gate. The sunlight felt good now, but the courtyard would be all shadow in half an hour. I needed the sun, not just for warmth—I was still shivering—but for the light itself. I really wanted light after being in the other place.

  “Ah, boss?” said Baga as we went out toward the landingplace. He was walking beside me now; I didn’t need support. “About the other fellow? Lord Palin you call him?”

  “Well, what?” I said. If he didn’t stop babbling, I was going to send him away…though I didn’t want to be alone either.

  “Well, I was just wondering what we ought to do with him now,” Baga said. “I mean, just leave him or—”

  “Bury him!” I shouted. “He’s dead, isn’t he? Dead dead dead!”

  A group of people—it looked like several families together, maybe twenty folks all told—had come off the Road. A fellow had started toward us, probably meaning to ask where to go next, but he veered away when I shouted at Baga. They headed for the castle, giving me a wide berth.

  “Look, Baga, I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just going to sit down here in the sun. I won’t need you for a while.”

  “Sure, boss,” Baga muttered. “I’ll sit, you know, right over there for a while, I think.”

  I settled myself on the tall grass; I didn’t even bother to check what Baga was doing.

  Palin thought he’d be punished horribly if he finished dying. Whatever it was he expected, he’d believed it’d be worse than hanging in chains for eternity. He’d thrown away what passed for a life to save my life, while I tried to pay a debt. And I wasn’t even sure that I’d done what I tried to.

  I heard first a whistle, then a whicker-whicker-whicker. I opened my eyes. A boat landed, just this side of ours. I tried to stand but changed my mind when my thigh muscles refused to lever me up.

  “Boss!” Baga said. “It’s mine! It’s my boat!”

  The hatch opened. Stefan stepped back from the opening. Then May came out, holding her cat in her arms.

  I did get up, using my arms to help. I got upright but I felt myself wobbling.

  “Lord Pal,” May said in a clear voice, walking toward me. The gong in the watchtower rang. “I’m glad to see you. I have a favor to ask. I—”

  I dropped to my knees and was lucky to get my hands down in time to keep me from toppling onto my side.

  “Pal, are you all right?” May said, running toward me. The cat yowled peevishly, though it landed neatly on its feet as May dropped it. Baga grabbed me by the shoulders from behind; Stefan jumped to the ground to lend a hand if needed.

  “I’m all right!” I said. “Really, I’m just going to sit here for a moment. Baga, go check out your boat with your buddy there, all right?”

  “Sure, boss,” Baga said, though he kept looking back at me as he joined Stefan at the hatch of his boat. They muttered briefly, then went aboard.

  “Sorry,” I muttered to May. “I’ve been really cold and I’m still getting my feet under me. But I’m okay.”

  I forced myself to look up and meet her eyes. I’d remembered seeing, really seeing, Palin for the first time in the other place.

  She looked worried, and what I’d said didn’t change that.

  “Look,” I said, “I’m safe. I can’t even throw up on you, I emptied my belly back in the cell.”

  She giggled. “I feel reassured,” she said. “You really know how to put a girl at ease.”

  “Well, we folks from Beune are famous for being smooth gentlemen,” I said, looking at her. She was really pretty.

  “Look, May,” I said. “You said you wanted a favor. What is it?”

  “Is there a place we can go to talk?” she said, looking up at the people coming toward us from the castle. “I mean, if you’re willing to talk?”

  I turned and said, “Garrett? We’re okay here. If we need something we’ll ask, but otherwise I’d like folks to give us some space. All right?”

  “All right, everybody back inside!” Garrett bellowed. “Nobody needs to be out here! I mean now!”

  Smiling a little, I looked back at May. “I’ll talk to you,” I said. “But I’d rather not get up again for a while, if that’s all right. And the sun feels good.”

  “Yes, of course,” May said. She was carrying a light cape in her hands. She moved beside me so that she wouldn’t block the sun and arranged it on the ground. She sat cross-legged.

  She looked sharply at me, then put her fingertips on my forehead. They felt warm.

  “I’m all right,” I repeated, keeping a grip on my temper because I really wasn’t all right. She’d seen me shivering, I guess.

  May stood, whipped the cape off the ground and laid it over my shoulders. She sat down again. “No,” she said, “you’re not. This is a bad time, but it’s the time we have. Pal, I’d like you to come back to Dun Add and be Lady Jolene’s Champion. That is, if you can. Are you sick?”

  “I just got out of a bad time,” I said. “I’m not sick, I’ll be fine. But I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  May crossed her hands primly in her lap and looked down at them for a moment. She was wearing a dark green dress of heavier material than her usual clothes in Dun Add.

  “Please just listen to me,” she said, raising her eyes to mine again. “You won’t approve, but just listen.”

  I nodded. I guess my face looked pretty hard, but I can’t help that.

  “Lord Clain and the Consort are having an affair,” May said, watching me closely. My expression didn’t change. “They’re discreet, but that’s the truth. Just as Lord Baran said, though that ha
d nothing to do with what happened between his friend Berenice and her page.”

  “Go on,” I said. That was what Garrett and Welsh had told me too, though I didn’t see what it had to do with me.

  “Lord Clain is a very attractive man,” May said. “Any woman might want him for a lover.”

  My lips twitched then. I didn’t mean them to, but I felt them do it.

  “I asked you to hear me out!” May said.

  “Go on,” I repeated. “Sorry.”

  I was responsible for how I lived. Maybe it was a good way, maybe it wasn’t, but it was my business. The same was true for everybody else. Including my real mother and father, I now saw.

  “Any woman would,” May said; she’d said “might” before, “but Clain isn’t interested. He’s never touched any woman but Jolene since I’ve been in Dun Add. They’re in love.”

  “Go on,” I said. I didn’t know what to think about all this, but that could wait until I understood what “all this” really was. Which I certainly didn’t do so far.

  “Another of the Consort’s maids, Ziga,” May went on. “She was a little thing—long black hair and a triangular face. Maybe you remember her?”

  “I don’t,” I said. “Go on.”

  I didn’t look at the maids of honor. Mostly I hadn’t been in places where I’d see them, but I didn’t pay much them attention regardless.

  “Well, Ziga really wanted Clain,” May said. “We all knew that, but you know, it wasn’t anybody’s business but hers. And Jolene’s, I guess, but Jolene just kind of laughed about it. She never said anything to Ziga and she didn’t send Ziga away. I told her—Jolene—she was being cruel, but like I say, she just laughed.”

  “It seems cruel to me too,” I said. Just plain nasty, though I didn’t say that. “But go on.”

  “Somebody sent Jolene a bottle of port,” May said. “One of the Champions, we figured—it was good vintage. There wasn’t a note with it. Jolene doesn’t like port, but she thought it might be a way to mend fences with Baran, you know the things he’s been saying about her. She sent it to him.”

  She shrugged. “I could’ve told her it wouldn’t work,” she said. “Baran’s seat is Caledon, and his head is as hard as the rocks of his estate. Still, why not try? Baran told the messenger to take it back to the slut, pretty much as I figured, only his friend Lord Gismonde said he’d willingly drink it in honor of the gracious woman who’d sent it.”