God Stalk Page 3

  It rose tall, stark and windowless above a sea of ruins.

  Those buildings farthest from it still contrived to stand; but the closer they came, the more total was their collapse, until those that had once stood beside the temple itself were now reduced to bulwarks of dust piled high against its gleaming flanks. Nothing entered that poisoned circle by choice. Bats sheared away when their flight brought them too close. Rats swarmed through the buildings beyond, but none descended into that greater desolation. Nothing moved there that the wind had not touched, and even it seemed to sicken and die in the presence of that sullen edifice, whose shadow alone had crumbled granite and reduced mighty oaken beams to a handful of dust.

  The source of all this destruction, the temple itself, was not large, although it gave the impression of occupying a great deal of space. Jame knew instinctively that its interior would also seem immense, just as she knew, without ever having seen anything like it before, to whom it was dedicated.

  This was a dwelling of the Three-Faced God. Torrigion, That-Which-Creates; Argentiel, That-Which-Preserves; Regonereth, That-Which-Destroys: names rarely spoken out-loud and never all at the same time, names whose very mention could bring down a power that few men could now control and whose potential even for casual destruction was all too clearly shown by this graveyard of homes and hopes. This and none other was her own god, the one who had taken the Three People—Arrin-ken, Kendar, Highborn— and made them one against the enemy from outside, Perimal Darkling, Father of Shadows. For thirty millennia, three thousand years on Rathillien alone, the Kencyrath had fought the long retreat from world to world, down the Chain of Creation, waiting for their god to manifest himself through them in final battle. Chosen they were and proud, but bitter, too, over long delay, and angry that, the task being set, their god had apparently left them to accomplish it alone.

  And finally, for what? A lie?

  The power that flowed around Jame now, she suddenly realized, was different only in degree, not kind, from that which she had sensed in the puzzle-box district and again in the streets among the so-called dead gods of Tai-tastigon. Was there only one god, as all Kencyrs believed, or many? If the latter, then her people had been cruelly deceived for longer than one could bear to think. Had the Kencyrath been used? Very well. It had been created for use—but not to serve a lie. Honor would not endure it, nor would Jame. The mere suspicion of betrayal—now, when she most needed all the reassurance that her Kencyr heritage could give—acted on her like the deadliest of insults. Fists raised, wrists crossed, she silently challenged the temple before her: let it be war, then, until the truth was known. It was a mad gesture, as mad as to spurn the one place in this haunted city where she could be sure of help; but she was beyond reason now. Let it be war, or at least a clean end far from this seething abscess of divinity. As she turned away, darkness fell again and did not lift. The storm had broken at last.

  * * *

  MEN SAID afterward that no blacker night had even fallen on Tai-tastigon. The wind roared through the city, ripping up slates, clawing at the houses until those within feared that not a wall would stand until morning. They thought they heard voices wailing high above the earth, and those who peered out swore that they saw terrible things as the north wind, the demon wind, bore southward the nightmares of a dying land.

  * * *

  JAME STUMBLED on, wrapped in feverish dreams, oblivious to the chaos around her. It seemed to her that she was back in the keep, a child again slipping silently through the hallways, looking for something. It was very late. If anyone saw her, there would be hard words in the morning, especially if he learned of it; but she was too anxious to care. It was important that she find . . . what? Her feet were very cold, and the night was very dark. Nearly everyone must be asleep. Jame hurried on, wondering why she was so nervous, wishing she could remember what she was searching for. Then, suddenly, she knew. There was a space beneath a certain staircase, a favorite hiding place, and she was not looking for something but someone. Tori. There were the stairs now. Why was she so afraid to look beneath them? It was what she had come for, wasn't it? A dark recess, and in it, yes, a dim figure.

  "Tori?"

  No response. Jame crouched lower, peering into the shadows, then jerked back with a hiss. Oh God, Anar. Pressed against the far wall, she fought down nausea. No time for that now. She must look in all the places that Tori might be, hoping desperately that he would be in none of them.

  The dead were everywhere, huddled in doorways, crumpled in corners, stretched out on the floor as though trying to crawl to safety, tendons like taut wire along the bone, bones held together with a bit of skin and desiccated flesh. Jame made herself look into every face that sword, fire, and decay had left recognizable. She knew them all but never found the one she dreaded most to see. But if Tori wasn't here, where was he? Once Anar had told her that if she walked long enough to the south, she would come to another sort of land where the wind smelled sweet and the soil was untainted. Tori had heard that story, too. Was that where she would have to go to find him?

  She was still looking for Tori; but now there was a pack heavy on her back and she was trying to find her way out of the keep. Something had frightened her—no, she had done something terrible, and now she must get away. But where was she? The passages wound on and on, twisting, turning, leading nowhere. Had she lost her way? No, don't even think that. Keep going keep going keep going . . .

  There was someone walking behind her.

  You were gone so long child; now will you leave us again so soon? It was Anar's voice, faintly mocking, hardly more than a whisper.

  What? No word for your old tutor? Look at me, child,

  She would not. No one at the keep had been kinder to her, but never again did she want to see that face from the dark of the recess.

  Then she heard other voices echoing in the hallway behind her. At first they were only a soft-textured murmur, one sound running into another, but then strands began to separate. An accent here, an inflection there . . . Jame felt her heart lurch. They were all coming. Shambling feet scraped on the floor, rotten clothing ripped as bodies stumbled against the rough stone walls, but the voices that called to her were sweet and wheedling.

  Where are you going, child? Come back to us. We love you.

  But once they had let her go easily enough, Jame thought bitterly. He had said that she was tainted, a thing without honor, and they had let him drive her out into the wilderness. Now they said that they wanted her back. It was a lie, of course, but to what purpose? Then she knew. They wanted her to hesitate, to delay because he was coming too, coming to get her, coming to make her pay for what she had done.

  She heard his footstep overhead.

  I must run, Jame thought wildly, and found that she could not move. The crash of iron boots grew louder. He was coming down the stairs from the battlements.

  "It's a dream, all a dream!" she cried out loud in helpless protest.

  For an instant, the city street again lay before her, with a metal sign high overhead banging against the wall. Then it faded into the keep's upper corridor. A black figure strode down the hall toward her, brushing aside the indistinct crowd that swarmed there, crumbling flesh from bone with his touch. Three broken arrows still nailed the gray jacket to his chest. His mutilated hand reached for her.

  Child of Darkness! The voice was the sound of bones grinding, cracking. Where is my sword? Where are my . . . "father!"

  The hated word stopped him.

  Nothing stays dead forever: but "I gave you fire!" she cried at him, at them all. "Fire and final rites, such as I could manage. Even when your hands twitched in my grasp. Even when I saw your dead eyes open. Did you want to become haunts?"

  They stared at her. She could read nothing in their faces. Then they were covered with ash. They were falling apart.

  "Nooo!" she wailed, clutching at them, seeing her childhood again in flames.

  The wind whirled them away.

  He
r legs betrayed her, and she went down, too spent to remember her bad arm until she tried to break her fall with it. Pain dazed her, spiraled her senses toward darkness. "Don't go!" she heard someone cry. "Don't leave me alone, not again!" Yes, it was her voice, but this time no one answered. For a moment she clung to the image of that empty hallway, the last of her old home that she would ever see. Then it too slipped away.

  The cobbles beneath her hand were hard and cold, glazed with ice from the bitter rain that had begun to fall. She lifted her face to it. It seemed to wash away everything—icy street, shuttered windows, even, at last, itself. Jame let them all go. Numbly, like a sleepwalker, she rose and stumbled on, beyond guilt and grief at last, moving blindly forward until the night swallowed all.

  Chapter 2

  The House of Luck-Bringers

  THE FIRST THING JAME saw upon opening her eyes was the cat. It was rather hard to overlook, being very large, very close and, in fact, very solidly sitting on her chest. They stared at each other. It yawned, showing white teeth and a great expanse of pink ribbed gullet, then snuggled down with its nose tucked under her chin and one forefoot resting firmly in the hollow at the base of her throat. This made it somewhat hard to breathe. Jame raised her hand to shift the paw, then froze, staring at her arm. It was not only still there but almost healed, with nothing but white scars to mark the injuries that might well have cost her both limb and life. Dwar sleep had come in time after all.

  For a moment, sheer relief made her almost dizzy. Then she began to wonder where she was and how she had gotten there.

  From what Jame could see, she was lying on a cot in a small room, at the other end of which was a narrow doorway blazing like the mouth of a furnace with the level rays of the rising sun. The light made her eyes ache. She shut them for a moment, then craned backward until above and behind her a window framed with ivy leaves came into sight. Toward one edge, suddenly appearing in silhouette as a gust of wind pushed back the greenery, were several small stone heads, all frozen in fits of mad laughter.

  That stirred a memory.

  Jame relaxed, trying to remember what had happened after her awakening in the rain. She had slept again and dreamed that she was walking—well, clearly she had been, although out of all that time only one image remained: the façade of a house covered with small figures carved in full relief that gamboled up the walls, clustered around the windows, and clung together under the eaves, all looking like deformed children, all making gestures that bordered on the obscene. The door had opened at her touch. And beyond it?

  Think. Yes, now bits of it came back: a room full of faces, of eyes wide with fear staring at her. After that, it had been like sinking into deep water, alone at first but then the familiar forms had begun to slip past in the darkness, faces, hands, hair, touching, clinging, dragging her down beyond light, beyond life . . .

  The beams overhead had white roses painted on them against a cerulean blue ground. They were not part of any nightmare, past or present. Why then was it so hard to breathe?

  Oh, you fool, thought Jame. It's that damn cat.

  She was trying to dislodge the beast, who only responded with a loud purr, when a woman darted into the room crying, "Boo, you great lump!" and heaved it off her chest onto the floor, rump first.

  "Oh, the wretch!" the newcomer exclaimed, shoving the offended feline out of the room. "I'm only gone a minute, a few seconds, and he comes sneaking in. You haven't been smothered, have you? I mean, it would be a bit much after surviving the Feast of Dead Gods to be done in by Mistress Abernia's pet tabby, wouldn't it? I'm Taniscent, by the way —Tanis to my friends." She perched on the edge of the cot and leaned forward eagerly. "Well? Don't you want to ask where you are?"

  "I seem to remember lots of tables and men with ale mugs," said Jame slowly. "Everyone stopped drinking when I came in, though. Is this an inn of some sort?"

  "Yes, the Res aB'tyrr—that is, the House of Luck-Bringers—and as for stopping, aiee! Some of our patrons were like to drop dead of fright when you opened that door, and the rest nearly jumped out the windows. If you hadn't gone down in a heap a moment later, there wouldn't have been a full bladder in the house."

  "I'm sorry I broke up your party. But what about my arm?"

  "Oh, that was a proper mess!' said Taniscent with relish. "The healer said it would have to be amputated—bitten off, preferably, if we could find someone with a suitably tame demon—but while Tubain was trying to make up his mind, it began to mend. Damnest thing he'd ever seen, the healer said; but then he'd never tended a Kencyr before. Thirteen days it took. Yes, you've been asleep that long."

  Jame's startled reaction to this was cut short by the appearance of a large, dark form in the doorway. After several moments of maneuvering, it came edging sideways over the threshold and turned into a big-bellied, bald-headed man.

  "Every year those frames get narrower," he said cheerfully. "So you're with us again. We'd begun to worry. I'm Tubain of Endiscar, your host. Be welcome to this house and peace be yours therein."

  "Jame of the Kencyrath. Honor be to you and to your halls."

  "Kencyr! Well, now, so the healer was right. We don't see many of your kind here these days except for those bound for East Kenshold or west over the Ebonbane. Where did you come from? Where are your people?"

  "My people are dead." The words came flatly now, a mere statement of fact. Already the nightmare images were fading and so, she suddenly realized, was the room about her. I'm slipping again, she thought with a flicker of panic, and fixed her attention on Tubain's broad, bland face. "I came from the north."

  "No one comes from that direction," the face said decisively. 'The fever must have confused you. You must have come from East Kenshold. On this side of the mountains, there's nowhere else . . ." nowhere . . . nowhere . . . nowhere . . . a word echoing in the distance, then dying away. Jame slept again.

  * * *

  IT WAS NOT A CAT that woke her the second time but a great clatter. She opened her eyes just in time to see Taniscent scoop a small bronze mirror off the floor, toss it on the opposite cot, and run out in a flurry of bright shawls, not noticing that her new roommate was awake. Jame stared after her. When they had first met that morning, she had assumed that Tanis was at least in her thirties, but how could the girl who had just rushed out of the room be more than nineteen? Perhaps dwar sleep had dulled her senses. . . or perhaps not. After all, she had accepted far stranger things without question on that first night. But there would be time for answers later; now what she wanted was food, for the long healing process had left her desperately hungry.

  She sat up carefully, then swung her feet to the floor and, after several tries, succeeded in standing up. There, that wasn't so difficult. With fresh confidence, she took a step toward the door, only to discover that the folds of her overgrown nightgown were snugly twisted around her legs. She stood there swaying for a moment, then lost her balance altogether and came tumbling down on the opposite cot.

  A face stared up at her from the mirror beside her hand. Was that really what she looked like, all sharp lines and huge, silver-gray eyes? Certainly, no one would ever call those features beautiful, Jame thought ruefully; but were they really enough like a boy's to have fooled that old man in the alley? Well, maybe, with all that long black hair out of sight under a cap. It was a very young face, and a defiant one, she thought with an odd sense of detachment, but frightened too. And those extraordinary eyes . . . what memories lived in them that she could not share? Stranger, where have you been, she asked silently. What have you seen? The thin lips locked in their secrets.

  "Ahh!" said Jame in sudden disgust, tossing away the mirror. Fool, to be obsessed with a past she couldn't even remember. But all that was behind her now. A new life had begun, and with it came at least the prospect of food. Spurred on by her growing hunger, she soon managed to untangle the gown and then set off gamely for the door.

  Beside it, crouching darkly in a corner beneath a wall vase full of f
lowers, was her knapsack.

  The sight brought Jame up short. It seemed to have been waiting for her, patiently, dull malignancy gathering in its dusty folds. I haven't outrun anything, or left anything behind, she thought bitterly. For two weeks she had carried the relics of her past, known and unknown, on her back like a deformity. Even now they were part of her, and so were those lost years, whatever terrors they might have contained. The latter were beyond her reach now, but as for the pack and its contents, she must find a safe place to hide them as soon as possible. Then, forcibly putting all of this out of her mind, Jame lifted the hem of her gown and unsteadily left the room.

  Outside, an open gallery stretched some ten paces in either direction, connecting the north and south wings of the inn. Below, one story down, was a courtyard bounded on the far side by a stout wall. From below came the pungent odor of manure and the sound of hooves shifting on straw, mingled with a more distant clatter of pots and a sudden whiff of something cooking. Whatever the latter was, it smelled delicious. Jame was trying to locate the source when there was a crash somewhere nearby, closely followed by an angry shout. A tall, aproned woman emerged from a side door to the left holding a piebald cat at arms' length, dropped it on the pavement and stalked back inside.