by Dave Duncan
"No, not the Colonial Office. This is another Service altogether. There's two Services, really. The one on this world we call Head Office, but it's not really in charge of the Service on Nextdoor. They're more just allies, sort of in cahoots. Service and Head Office are the goodies. There are also baddies, which on Nextdoor are the Chamber and here are the Blighters. I don't know very much about them here, except that they had a lot to do with starting this awful war. Mr. Goodfellow took us to his, er, residence, and he cured my broken leg."
"Snap of the fingers cured?"
"Pretty much. Yes. Then Creighton and I traveled down to Wiltshire. I didn't want to, of course, but he insisted I owed him that much. There's a portal there, a magic door. It let us cross over to Nextdoor. Trouble was, there were baddies waiting on the other side, and Creighton got killed. So there I was—stranded. Stuck. All washed up. Robinson Crusoe."
Ginger was following a lorry. Its stronger headlights were lighting the road for him, and they were doing a steady thirty at least.
"I really wanted to come back and do my bit in the war,” Exeter said. “But the only way I could come back here was to find the Service, and I didn't know how to do that. I had what I thought was a lead, but it didn't pan out. When I did get in touch, they were pretty reluctant to help me. Three years, it's taken. You see, there's a prophecy about me."
Houses now. Perhaps this was Canterbury already. Smedley was feeling dizzy. Perhaps he had banged his head falling off the wall. Perhaps he was suffering from lack of sleep. He wouldn't have nurses popping pills at him every night now, so he might not sleep much in future. But he did have a strange tingling in his head.
The car jerked, coughed, and then purred again.
Alice: “What was that?"
Jones: “Dunno."
Dirt in the petrol, likely. That would put the hen among the foxes, wouldn't it? If the car broke down with Exeter in nightclothes and him with blood all over his bags ... Even a modestly intelligent bus conductor might be suspicious enough to blow the whistle.
"You cross over,” Exeter was explaining, “by doing a dance, a particular mixture of chanting and rhythm and words, done at a particular place. It used to be quite a common accident, I think, because the nodes are very often holy places. You know that sort of awe you feel in old churches? You're sensing what the Service calls ‘virtuality,’ although no one knows what it really is. So in primitive times, when the shaman called the tribe together to do their sacred leap-about, they would do it at a node. And if the routine was good, they'd feel that virtuality more strongly. Why do you think people sing in church? The shamans would experiment with the ritual, I expect. Try different words, different movements, to increase that sense of the holy presence or whatever they thought it was. And one day—one night, more likely—someone would hit the right mixture and pouf! Clarence and Euphemia had disappeared. Big feather in shaman's cap! Do it again next Thursday."
The car coughed again, twice, and then resumed its low rumble. Everyone was silent, but nothing more happened.
Smedley jerked his head up. He seemed to be drifting off to sleep. His leg had stopped throbbing. Come to think of it, his leg was numb. Were legs usually numb?
"...set themselves up as gods,” Exeter said from a long way away. “I expect many of the old myths relate to strangers from Nextdoor or one of the others: Hercules, Apollo, Prometheus. And on Nextdoor, they may be from either this world or one of the others. The more worship they get, the stronger they become. The stronger they become, the more worship they can demand."
"Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” Alice muttered.
"It certainly does. On Nextdoor ... Well, actually, the area I know is called the Vales. It's not much bigger than England and I haven't seen all of the Vales even. So there's an awful lot of the world I know nothing at all about. But in the Vales, there are five or six dominant gods. Well, they call themselves gods, but they're really just magicians."
Oh, that made things a lot more believable, Smedley thought drowsily.
"Each one has a retinue of lesser gods. Some of them are jolly nasty types. The Service refers to those as the Chamber of Horrors, and they're the ones trying to kill me, because of the prophecy. The worst is Zath, who calls himself god of death.” Exeter paused for a moment. “I know this must sound dodgy, but they caused the Nyagatha business."
"That sounds dodgy,” Alice agreed, “but keep talking."
"You know when the guv'nor was born?"
"Yes. Roly told me. He certainly didn't look his age."
"Because he'd spent thirty years or so on Nextdoor. You pick up mana even without trying.... He helped found the Service there. Then Zath tried to kill him, and failed. That brought the prophecy to light. The prophecy foretold that Cameron Exeter would father a son who would be a sort of messiah, who would kill death. It's very muddled, most of it, but that bit was clear enough."
The car coughed again.
When nothing more happened, Exeter continued. “So Zath was gunning for the guv'nor. He went to earth. That's a joke, actually."
"I expect you're out of practice. Carry on."
"Well, it was very ironic. Zath tried to stop me being born, but the attempt drove the guv'nor into coming Home—meaning home to Earth—and about the first thing he did was meet the mater and fall in love and, whoops, there was me. These things happen.
"If Zath had only known it, the guv'nor wasn't in favor of the prophecy either. It leads to all sorts of evil complications. So both sides in this business wanted to break the chain! The guv'nor thought that all he had to do was stay out of the Chamber's reach until after the prophesied date, which would have been August 1914 by our reckoning, and then keep Baby Exeter, that's me, from crossing over. Then the chain would be broken and nothing else would apply. Head Office wangled him into the Colonial Office and got him posted to Nyagatha..."
His voice kept fading away and coming back. Smedley was having a deuce of a job keeping his eyes open. Funny, that. Heavenly choirs.
"...like everyone to take Home leave every few years. A little refresher course as a mortal is very humbling, and it keeps people in touch with the language and customs, and so on ... Jumbo Watson and Soapy Maclean dropped in on Head Office in 1912. Jumbo inquired about the guv'nor ... when he heard about me the penny dropped. Edward is a common enough name in England, but it begins with a vowel, which would make it feminine in the Vales; the masculine would be D'ward.
"There's actually more about D'ward in the Filoby Testament than there is about the Liberator, but nowhere did the seeress say that they were one and the same chappie. Soapy headed for Nyagatha to explain this and find out if the guv'nor was still opposed to the prophecy. Somebody tipped off the Chamber's agents—or perhaps they followed him. Anyway, Soapy arrived the day before the massacre...."
Bad business, that massacre, but perhaps Exeter Senior had not been as much as fault as everyone had thought.... Smedley started awake. He had dozed off but not for very long. Exeter seemed to be talking about the gods again.
"Some of them aren't so bad. I've met a couple of the Pentatheon, the five Great Ones. When I first crossed over, Zath's assassins were waiting for me and almost nobbled me. They're rather like Kali's thugs, in India ... wander around killing people at random. Fortunately that was in Sussland. That's Tion's manor, and he was miffed.... Tion's one of the five, the Youth. He's a sort of Apollo figure, if you believe his advertisements, god of art, and beauty, and sport. He holds a big festival every year, like a miniature Olympic Games."
"Sounds all right,” Alice said.
"Well, he's not very likable, but he let me go so I could settle Zath's hash. He did warn me about the prophecy that said the Liberator would be betrayed by his friends and thrown among the legions of death. That's exactly what happened. There's a traitor in the Service, and I know who it is, and I absolutely must get the word back to Olympus."
Alice spoke from a long way away. “But you did find the Service in the end
?"
"I found the Service right away, the next day. But I was too late. Zath got to their agent before I did. I saw him being burned alive by—"
"Excuse me,” Smedley said. “Frightfully sorry and all that, but I think I'm going to faint."
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12
THE PRIESTS WERE STILL HARANGUING THE CROWD.
As subtly as drifting snow, the young men of Sonalby closed in around the stranger in their midst. Just as unobtrusively, women, children, and older men left his vicinity, leaving Edward surrounded by youths. They all seemed intent on the funeral pyre, but he knew better than to try to escape.
Most of them leaned on spears, and some had shields also. Every one had a wooden club dangling at his side; none wore more than a leather loincloth. Their hair and beards were trimmed short, so they could not be caught hold of in battle, and they all had painted faces. They all had scars on their ribs, too regular to be accidental—some old and healed, others still raw and oozing.
The Carpenter house collapsed into ashes, and there were no more heretics to burn. The priests departed, and the mob began to disperse.
The young men turned to the next item of business, the stranger in town. They opened up into a circle around him and proceeded to discuss him as if he were a piece of furniture. He was footsore and thirsty and melting in the heat. The debate seemed likely to go on for the rest of the day. It might eventually conclude with a decision to put him to death or perform something less fatal but more unpleasant.
There were two factions involved, one slightly younger than the other. The younger group were clean shaven or just beardless, and their faces were painted in a complex design, mainly yellow, with very minor amounts of blue, white, red, and green. The older group had beards and another pattern, in which blue predominated, with lesser amounts of the other colors and an ominous addition of black.
Had Edward been a native-born Englishman, he would probably have demanded at that point to be taken before the village headman, and that would have been a very serious error. Fortunately, he had been raised among the Embu of Kenya, so he had some idea of what he was dealing with, although he could not make out a word of the jabbering talk.
Finally heads began to nod; some sort of agreement had been reached. One of the blue-painted older ones said in heavily accented Joalian, “Do you wear merit marks?” He tapped the scars on his ribs.
Sussian smocks left arms bare, but concealed chests. “It is not the custom of my people."
The debate resumed, as incomprehensibly as before.
Then the same man asked a second question. “How old are you?"
"Eighteen."
"How long since you shaved your face?"
Edward rubbed his stubble. “Two days ago."
There were grunts, then. And more jabber. At last the younger, yellowfaced youths just melted away. They had conceded that the beardless stranger belonged to the other group.
He belonged to them outright. He was fairly certain that he was theirs to do with as they pleased. There would be no headman, no council of elders to whom he could appeal. A young male stranger in town was a matter for the young warriors.
There must have been fifty of them around him now. By and large they were too swarthy to be a typical crowd in England, but they would not have been out of place in Southern Europe. They varied from lithe to beefy, from short to tall, although few were six-footers like himself. They were all about his own age. Now they were debating who should interrogate the prisoner, with much pointing. Eventually one of the tall ones was selected; he stepped forward and the rest fell silent.
"Foreigner, what is your name?"
Edward had already given that matter considerable thought. He had decided to stick with D'ward, having learned that it was not uncommon, the name of some minor god or other—who might be an interesting stranger to meet sometime, possibly a fellow countryman. To use an alias would be to concede to himself that he was frightened of the Chamber. D'ward he would remain, but in the Vales a man's name included his trade. He could think of only one skill he possessed that might be of any value at all in Sonalby.
"I am D'ward Spearthrower,” he said.
It was an insane gamble. He would have to prove himself in the eyes of men who had been practicing all their lives, and he had no idea of the technique required for their weapons. But he had always had a knack for throwing things. He had set a school record with the javelin.
Now he had won the interest of his age group. They marched him back out of town in very short order, to the practice field he had seen on the way in. An audience of women and the younger youths watched curiously from the sidelines.
He would need to work a miracle. He had done so once, after picking up mana by playing holy man on a node. Later he had absorbed some from the audience in the theater, but that had been trivial and he must have used it up in the exertions of the last two days. Now he was so tired he doubted he could summon up any charisma at all.
A couple of warriors offered him a choice of spears. They were heavier than he had expected, with leaf-shaped metal blades. He selected one of medium length and weight and hefted it a few times. At that point someone thrust one of the round shields at him, a massively heavy circle of wood and thick leather. He was supposed to hold that while throwing this! His confidence plummeted.
"This weight is not familiar to me,” he announced brashly. “I shall try for distance first.” After that he might attempt to hit a moderate size barn at close quarters. He nudged the tall man with the edge of his shield. “Give me a mark.” He could watch how it was done.
He expected the tall man to run, but he barely moved. He just leaned back, took one long pace with his left foot, and hurled. The spear flashed in the sky and dropped into the scrubby grass about a hundred miles down range.
Merciful heavens! Wasn't that out of bounds?
"Good throw!” Edward said. He could sense that it was a good throw from the reactions around them. He steadied himself for the roll of the dice, braced his left arm to support that pestilential shield.... He threw.
His spear fell well short of the other, but he heard no sniggers. He thought he sensed some grudging approval. He snarled angrily.
"Let me try again, with a longer pole!"
He was given a longer spear. This time he did better, and the audience was moderately pleased.
"Good throw!” said the tall man. “I am Prat'han Potter.” He gripped Edward's left shoulder and squeezed. Edward did the same for him.
Then the fifty or so others went through the same procedure, each announcing his name in perfectly understandable Joalian, although the accent was harsh. Their trades were not what he had expected—tanner, shoemaker, tentmaker, yes, but also wheelwright, silversmith, printer, musician, and many others.
Now Edward must show that he could hit a target, and he discovered just how seriously young Nagians took their spear-throwing. One of them stalked forward about thirty paces, then turned and waited. His shield covered him from his shoulders to halfway down his thighs, but that still left far too much of him exposed. The blades were not honed to battle sharpness, but they could still maim.
"I will not throw against that target!"
Suddenly the blue-painted faces were dangerous again. The circle seemed to close in with menace.
"Your spears are not what I am accustomed to!” he protested.
"You are so good that Gopaenum cannot block your cast?"
"I don't mean that. It is unfair to the man to throw against him until I have practiced more."
"It is perfectly fair,” Prat'han said. “That is a very easy shot. You throw to Gopaenum Butcher's shield. Then he throws to yours. Throw, D'ward!"
Hmm! Like that, was it?
"It is still not fair. He is at much greater risk than I shall be."
He provoked another debate. Did they never sit down in Nagvale? The human target was called back for the discussion, but in the end nothing was changed. E
dward asked that Gopaenum stand closer, which was folly because now he had complicated the matter with questions of courage. Of course Gopaenum went out even farther than before, making the range greater. They really did seem to think the shot was an easy one.
Fortunately there was no wind. Wiping a sweaty palm on his smock, Edward summed up the problem. His bluff had been called. Only the most incredible luck would let him hit that shield, and even then he might be expected to repeat the throw. Gopaenum probably could block a single spear, and obviously this exercise was shield practice as well as spear practice, but Edward would not risk wounding a man just to carry off a fraud. It is better to have leaped and lost than never to have stuck your neck out....
He missed the shield. His spear passed three feet over Gopaenum's head, and that was still a yard closer than he had planned. The audience burst into howls of ironic laughter. Their accent suddenly became incomprehensible again.
Out in the field, Gopaenum Butcher retrieved the spear and turned to throw.
The spectators moved back a pace or two, but probably only so the marksman could see his target more easily. None of them expected Gopaenum to miss.
Edward looked around for a safe place to hide, and of course there was none. The sprawling village was the only settlement in sight. Beyond the river, bare plain stretched out to the misty peaks, shimmering in the awful heat, and behind him the rocky face of Nagwall. At best he would be driven out to die of thirst and hunger. At worst the warriors would all use him for spear practice.
He should have claimed to be a traveling scholar. Then they would have assumed he was a spy, but they might have allowed him a night's sleep before they ran him out of town. He had gambled and lost.
He put down the shield, lower edge resting on the ground just in front of his toes, upper edge leaning against his thighs, leaving valuable parts unprotected. He straightened and folded his arms.
"What are you doing, foreigner?” Prat'han demanded.
"Waiting for Gopaenum."