The Vistor

by Sheri S. Tepper

  "Jens," said the doctor, tonelessly.

  "Could have been. Something with a J, at any rate. A bit of a whirlwind, that wee bratty, though maybe the child only seemed more energetic than normal. He was among the last half dozen, and when I had them, I was already looking forward to the retirement God promised me."

  "Was your life that... distasteful?" whispered Dismé.

  "Oh, child, not in any way distasteful. I always found many secret pleasures to make up for quotidian tribulations, don't you know? I hated leaving a few of the men, and hated even more leaving some of the children. Baby Cammy, ah, he was such a dear. And my last one, dear, dear Dizzy-Dimples! I stayed longer with that little love. But I had to go..."

  A driver came into the room, whip curled at his belt and leather gauntlets folded in his hand. "Skulda?" he asked the room at large, looking about. "A carriage for Henceforth?"

  The old woman rose, took her cloak from the back of the chair and put it on. As she left, she turned to them. "So nice to have seen you again. Dismé. Jens. Arnole. Michael." Three more steps and she was at the door. "Say hello to Abobalee and Ababaidio for me. So nice to know you all turned out well."

  "I heard my name mentioned," said Bobly, climbing onto the bench beside the doctor. "Who was that. Somebody's grandma?"

  "Somebody's mother," said Dismé, staring at the doctor, at Arnole, then, with covert unease, at Michael.

  "Come," said Galenor, urgently. "Dezmai. Bertral. We must speak with Nell Larimer."

  The bishop and commander had been kept at the general's side during what was left of the day. The general, moving restlessly around his tent, had rehearsed a certain rite he would do when the ogre arrived, and the bishop had listened with growing revulsion as the details became increasingly clear. As the day waned, the bishop had asked, almost hopefully, "General, perhaps the creature isn't coming back."

  The general slapped the bishop on his back and gave him a jovial grin, displaying teeth which seemed larger than the bishop remembered his having. "Oh, he's still with us. Not as strong as he was, but he will be, when I do the rite. I remember it. Oh, yes, I remember it. Ah ... see, there, the sun's going down. Now he'll come..."

  They waited, and within the hour, he did come, monstrous and terrible, to drink the blood of half a dozen men. When the general howled at him to find women for the rite, he rose to sniff horribly the surrounding air, to lurch toward the cliffs at the roadside, and there to set his claws into a cleft in the stone, where the doorway of the seeress had been left unsealed by a woman more interested in being right than being careful. The airlock designed to keep out heat, dust, and radiation had not been designed to restrain an ogre who could smell young women inside—fairly young in elapsed years, at any rate—who were soon dragged out and brought to the general.

  The general did the rite from memory, cutting off this, chomping that, drinking this other thing, calling upon the Great Fell for power, while the other officers looked on, or looked away, or looked, as the bishop did, at his feet, wondering why the Rebel Angels had brought him to this place. Wondering what the Rebel Angels really were. Wondering if they ever had been angels or if he and his people were not now servants of some horrible antithesis.

  Other people were found in the redoubt. They were "fixed," as the general said, then left there to keep the magic strong, including the oldest woman among them who kept screaming, "Jackson, where are you, Jackson. Help, Jackson..." There was no one to help, and the general said it was important that there should be no one to help. This time, when the army marched, the pain of the victims buried deep in the redoubt should suffer for many days before they died. Now they were well hidden, well provided with water and warmth to extend their lives, but with the rock wall collapsed over them, they were unreachable by anyone at all.

  Before dawn on nineday, the exodus from Trayford took place with Dezmai, Bertral, and Galenor raging at the populace to get them moving. Nell, in the absence of Elnith to keep her mute, had spent the few hours with her old friend, Alan, before seeing him depart with the others.

  "I wonder if we will see one another again," he said. "This is a stranger future than any I ever thought of."

  "I know. It's like a nightmare, one of those vivid dreams that are terrible and enticing, all at once. The kind you are relieved to wake from, but don't want to forget..."

  "Don't forget me, Nell."

  "Alan, my dear. We've been together, in a way, for almost a thousand years. I shan't forget you. I figure we still have fifteen, twenty years to spend together, and if Elnith will allow it, I'll be back here, looking for you. Keep well until then."

  The town was empty by the time Arnole and the others were ready to set out. As they mounted their horses, Nell went into one of the trances that were becoming familiar and emerged to say:

  "Elnith says Bastion's army was at the redoubt. The redoubt is fallen. Janet left the door unsealed because she didn't believe in monsters. She's inside, with others, maimed like those at Ogre's Gap. They have water, they have warmth, they're not mobile, they can't reach anything to ease the pain..."

  She turned away, retching, unable to continue for the moment as she thought of kindly Jackson and the foolish few who had stayed. "Elnith says to get someone to go to the redoubt and put those people out of their pain. There are no demons nearby. Even if they come, the mountain has been tumbled down over where the entrance was. The army is near the foot of the mountain and turning westward. They march swiftly. We are nearer the goal, but not by much. If we are to get there first, we must go."

  Dismé climbed into the wagon, stood tall, covered her eyes with her hands and concentrated on broadcasting horror through the dobsi in her head. She could almost feel the stranger in her skull screaming, a sharp pain, like a stab wound. When she had kept it up for some minutes, she slowly relaxed. "That's the best I can do, Nell."

  Nell drew her cloak around her, sighing. "Tamlar awaits us where we're going, but Ialond and Aarond are not there. We have only one stone left, the wrapped one..." She fell silent as Elnith came upon her once more, for a moment, then departed.

  Dismé asked, "If the stone in the wagon is for either Ialond or Aarond, where's the last stone?"

  "We haven't time even to wonder," cried Nell. "There's no time, no time at all."

  Bice Dufor, Warden of the College of Sorcery, received a note from the Hetman, asking him to drop in as soon as possible. All Bice's instincts were to go in the opposite direction, quickly and with no intention of return, and his mind occupied itself visualizing this retreat while his body stood before his mirror, fingers busy buttoning his jacket, mouth telling his servant to bring the carriage to the gate. He tried, momentarily, to escape from whatever his body was doing, but it was useless. No matter how he screamed inside his head, his feet carried him out the door and down the walk, where he encountered Mace Marchant.

  "I have an errand, Mace," he said in a cheery, totally false voice. "Come with me, and I'll treat you to dinner, afterward." He caught hold of Mace's arm in a grip of iron and held it tightly until they were seated in the carriage.

  "Where are we going?" asked Mace, eyes fixed on the man beside him who had already sweat through his jacket, whose eyes were full of panic, yet whose voice was jolly as a Praiser after a service of adoration.

  "See a man," the warden said. "Only for a moment."

  Mace had come to the warden's place with a message, and since the warden was saying nothing, Mace shared with him the account of Rashel's death as he had learned of it from the anchorite at the medical clinic.

  "Rashel?" said the warden, in a strangely disembodied tone. "Rashel Deshôll?"

  "Arms gone," said Mace. "Eyes gone. Mutilated, Warden. Mutilated. Have you heard of any such thing?"

  "Ah," said the warden, with a panicky sideways glance. "How would I have heard of any such thing. What are you suggesting?"

  "I wasn't suggesting anything. I can't explain it, that's all. She was doing ... doing good work. She was ...
very intent upon her ... usefulness to the Regime. She was ... I can't understand it, that's all."

  "Well, no more do I. Here's where my man lives. This won't take long." He dragged Mace out of the carriage with him.

  The gate was opened immediately, subterranean hallways were negotiated at what amounted to a dead run, and never for a moment did the warden release the hold he had upon Mace's sleeve.

  Inside the overheated room, the Hetman waited in a fever of impatience. Dufor was not a pawn he had expected to sacrifice so soon, but there was no alternative. The army must move relentlessly to dig out and kill the Council of Guardians and destroy the being from the north. The Hetman had arranged for the army to be strong, led by one monster and transformed into thousands of others, but this intent was being inexplicably weakened. He had to add power, much of it, and since he had foolishly discarded Rashel, believing her usefulness was over, the warden would have to do.

  The warden, however, did not come unencumbered. He brought with him a strangely silent Mace Marchant, a man who started at a sound, who seemed inclined to fade into the furniture, who did not, in fact, look as though he had wanted to come.

  Dufor was babbling, "While Marchant may be mistaken, Hetman— and I apologize sincerely for taking up your time with nonsense if he is mistaken—he received information today that Rashel Deshôll, near death, was taken to the bottling room near the Praise Gate in Hold. I thought you might want to know."

  Hetman Gone smiled, a sight from which Mace Marchant hastily averted his eyes, at the same time opening his lips slightly so he could breathe through his mouth.

  The person called Gone rumbled, "How thoughtful of you to bring me this word, Warden, though in fact I am not interested in the woman and deeply regret the inconvenience you have caused Major Marchant. Major, thank you for attending the warden. I look forward to meeting you at another time, but just now, the warden and I have some urgent and private business to discuss."

  Marchant bowed and tried to back away, but the Wardens hand was still locked upon his arm.

  "Let the major go," said Gone, in a voice like a knife, keen as a scalpel, cutting through all obstructions, all contrary ideas or intentions.

  The warden's hand fell away, and the major got out of the place into the torch-lit courtyard, only to wait there an interminable time until one of the dwarfish servants came into the area.

  "Still here?" crowed the creature, prancing about and giggling, as though drunk.

  Mace gestured at the gate.

  "Oho, it wants out! Not the only one, no, no, no." It giggled frantically. "Many people want out. What's my name?"

  What had Bice called him? "Thissel. Please let me out."

  "Thissel, Thissel, that's my name." He pranced around the courtyard, circling, giggling.

  Mace shuddered. What was the creature doing? He turned his eyes from the enormous erection protruding from the creature's clothing. Surely ... surely that was some kind of physiological abnormality! Surely, this one should have been bottled long ago.

  "Knows my name. Says please. So, we let him out..."

  Mace stood close to the gate, pretending not to notice how the creature looked at him while it unlocked the gate, then moved quickly, slipping from the creature's sudden embrace and into the tunnel where he ran up the many stairs and seemingly endless corridors until he reached the fenced area abutting the street. The grille was locked. The vertical bars were too narrow and slick to climb. He waited again, quietly, refusing to scream though the scream welled at the base of his throat, refusing to panic though panic nattered at him, refusing to admit fear though he was frozen with it, waited seemingly forever before the one called Gnang came to open the grille. This time he asked at once.

  "Gnang, please open the gate for me."

  And this one, too, giggled and muttered and tried to touch him intimately as he fled.

  Once outside, Mace stumbled away, his heart pounding dangerously, only now fully aware that he was terrified to the point of paralysis. He stopped for a moment, leaning against the wall as he panted. Near his feet, where the walkway met the cobbles of the street, a barred culvert led, so Marchant had always supposed, into the storm sewers of the town. Such openings were found at intervals on all the streets at the center of Hold.

  As he panted, hand pressed to his chest, a sound came from the culvert, a voice, gasping words. No, he told himself, he was imagining it. After hearing what had happened to Rashel, after the warden's dragging him off that way, and that... man and his servitors. By all the Rebel Angels, it would be odd if he didn't imagine awful things.

  He plodded slowly on, taking deep breaths, gradually calming himself. As he approached the next culvert, the sound came again, a labored gasp, panting, words, gargled. He stood over the opening, trying to decipher the sounds. Again the panting, grunted monosyllables that sounded like, pleez, pleez, pleez. Mace looked around to find himself completely alone on the street. He knelt down and listened.

  Gohdan Gone's voice. "You have been a good servant. You have done well, building that collection of sorcery at the college. All those spells in your office, all those slabs of human skin, all that critical mass of sorcerous intent, there in the college, a place from which I can draw the power in my necromancy."

  "The college?" squeaked the other voice. "The college?"

  "Colleges. Churches. Schools. All of them, fertile ground. Full of people jockeying for position, easily corrupted. You have been useful, and I regret the necessity of using you now. I had intended to reward you better than this, at least temporarily. But still, you know what must be done in the attainment of power..."

  Then came a horrid gargling, an agonized though muffled scream, and Mace began to run, as fast as he had ever run, for though he wanted to believe he was imagining things, he knew the scream had been the warden's.

  Four of the travelers sat beside a well in the prairie lands west of Trayford while Michael shifted saddles on the horses. Arnole was speaking. "I first heard of Nell Latimer's children when Dismé said that she had a book written by Nell Latimer. Dismé said Nell had written that she saw the being fall to earth and heard it say, 'Come to me quickly, with all your children.'"

  "Yes, I did hear that," said Nell.

  The doctor mused, "The book also spoke of donated ova. Of your embryos stored in the redoubt, were there as many as nineteen?"

  "I suppose, yes. But all the embryos were destroyed at some point. Not only mine. The gametes of animals, too."

  "Some were no doubt destroyed," said Arnole. "Perhaps on the same occasion when yours were taken from the redoubt and implanted in a woman calling herself Skulda who bore nineteen infants, leaving them in the care of men who thought they were the fathers of the children. Plus you, Nell, plus Tamlar makes twenty-one."

  Nell shook her head. "I know nothing about it. One person could, I suppose, be the biological mother of all nineteen human Guardians, but why? And who arranged all that?"

  Dismé asked, "And what did the being mean, 'Come to me quickly with all your children?'"

  Arnole spoke harshly. "It meant that Nell and we who are her children had better get to this place we're going before that monster does. I wish I knew where Ialond and Aarond are."

  They mounted and rode on, Dismé and the doctor side by side. "I've just realized," she said in a stifled voice. "We are brother and sister."

  "Yes," he said with a wry twist to his mouth. "I guessed that some time ago. I have been working on brotherly feelings ever since."

  At the railway station in Hold, Mace found a great many people wanting to travel to Apocanew on a train that had no engineer, no stokers, no conductors. An angry official from the Office of Maintenance dragooned a crew from the street and went along to keep the volunteers at it. Finally, the train set off on what was to be a nerve-wracking journey that ended prematurely when the boiler blew up some distance northeast of the city, killing both the dragooned crew and the official.

  Mace abandoned his luggage and
walked the rest of the way. He wouldn't need luggage. He was not going back to Hold, where the monster was. He had never ... never used a black art. Despite all the rumors going around, he had never, never inquired into that side of things, never hinted that he wanted to know. Nonetheless, he had read old books, as they all did, those who searched for The Art. He had read of a certain ancient people in middle America who had a religion based on torture and blood. He had read of tribes in North America who routinely tortured and ate their captives, including children. What had happened to the warden was no new thing, but an ancient evil practiced by many primitive men publicly, and by a few civilized men privately. Disappearance. Torture. Hideous death, too long delayed.

  He could only guess what was happening, but he could extrapolate a little from what he knew and had heard. He greatly desired to use that little for the general ... good. Something to upset the balance, perhaps. Frustrate the dark powers, perhaps. The monster had done that terrible thing to Rashel, and Mace had cared deeply about Rashel. He would have married her, if she had consented. There had been something about her, a kind of hidden vulnerability, that had moved him. Perhaps he could do something to the monster who had killed her, perhaps only a mosquito bite, but whatever he could do, he would do.

  Within the hour, he was at the College of Sorcery, bustling in with every appearance of officialdom, calling for the wardens aide, who happened to be the only one in the building.

  "The warden has sent me down from Hold to pick up some papers for him, private papers. Something he needs for his business in Hold. He's told me where to look for them, and which ones he needs, if you'll be kind enough to let me into his office. I had a note from him, but the train blew up outside town, can you imagine? I lost my cloak and everything in the pockets!"

  The aide had heard of the train disaster and was not prepared to contradict the head of the Apocanew sub-office of Inexplicable Arts. He opened the door and offered his assistance, but was shooed away by Mace, who then locked the door and began a careful search of the warden's room. If what he had overheard there in the street was true, then the warden would have a cache of sorcerous stuff in this room. Among such a cache, he might even find something to aid Rashel...