The Storm - eARC

by David Drake

  “Ah,” I said as we settled ourselves on the bench. “Well, that was the big news when we got back here. While we were gone, the Beast that’s Guntram’s friend and mine learned where Master Guntram’s being held. He’s going to lead me there so that I can get Guntram out. And we’ll leave tomorrow at noon.”

  My face had been straight ahead as I spoke instead of looking at May beside me. Now I swallowed and turned to face her again. “Love,” I said. “The Commonwealth needs Guntram. And I need to be the sort of person who goes after a friend, even when it’s—” I paused because I realized what I was about to say. I said it anyway “—dangerous.”

  May smiled but her face seemed kinda washed out. “Everything a Champion does out on the Road is dangerous,” she said. “At least when you go out on the Road. But what you mean is more dangerous than usual, don’t you, Pal?”

  “Yeah, it might be,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure I can do it.”

  That was the next thing to a lie, but I really did think I could make this work. I’d have gone anyway, but I didn’t think it was suicide.

  “Now,” I said, trying to be brisk and businesslike. “I’ve had clerks in Mistress Toledana’s shop do a will for me. I went to her because I know her and I trust her to have the job done by the right person to do what I want. And I’ve talked with Lord Clain, and he’ll make sure it gets through the courts without a problem. Not that there’d be one anyway—it’s really simple, you inherit everything according to the terms that I hold it on. But it’s taken care of.”

  “You think you’re going to die,” May said. She didn’t put any emotion in the statement. She continued to meet my eyes.

  “I think I’m going to come back fine along with Master Guntram,” I said, shading the truth again. “But I might not. If I don’t, I want you to be taken care of as well as I can arrange it.”

  May nodded. “Yes,” she said sadly. “Pal, the Commonwealth may need Guntram, but the Commonwealth needs you too. And I need you.”

  She paused and swallowed. “I won’t tell you not to go—I hope I know men better than to do that,” she said. “And anyway, I wouldn’t want you if you were the sort of guy who’d listen to a woman who told you not to go. But come back, love. Just come back.”

  She kissed me hard.

  “I’ll try,” I said. That was the flat truth.

  May stood and tugged me upward with her. “Come on,” she said. “The other things can wait.”

  We went up the stairs to the bedroom.

 

  Baga, Sam, and I were at the boat well before midday. Sam was glad to be going out. I tried to keep him exercised while we were at Dun Add, but he wanted more than little walks up the Road. Our stopover this time had been too short even for that, though I’d asked Baga to take Sam out.

  “Boss?” Baga said. “You’re sure you don’t want me along? Because I sure wouldn’t mind getting out of Dun Add myself.”

  “I’ll be all right,” I said. “Besides, I need you to carry Lady May wherever she wants, or do whatever she says. The boat is hers while I’m gone. May might want to do the Leader another favor, you know.”

  Baga grinned. “Lord Jon’s got two boatmen, you know?” he said. “Michel and Cony. And let me tell you, it did my heart good to see their faces when I got back from Nightmount with the Consort and your lady, boss.”

  That wasn’t the most charitable comment, but I recalled the boat’s own assessment of the Leader’s vessel. It was a good reminder not to come over all high-hat to other people when I was doing well. Not that a kid from Beune had any business trying to lord it over other folks; but the more I saw of the world, the less I thought that anybody ought to do that, even the best-born.

  I’d thought May might come down to landingplace with us, though I hadn’t asked her to. As I was preparing to set out, she hugged me, kissed me hard, and told me that she didn’t want to see me go off on the Road. If we said goodbye here at the house she could imagine that I was just going to the palace and that she’d see me this evening.

  I’d have liked her here with me now, but we were both doing the best we could with a situation we didn’t like. I guess that’s what life is: doing the best you can and not expecting things to be the way you want them to be.

  The Envoy stepped out of the Waste and walked up to us. Sam paced swiftly to my side and leaned against me, quivering. His tail wagged, but he wasn’t happy.

  “If you are ready to go,” the Envoy said, “I will take you to the Beast and we will set out.”

  “Right,” I said. “Baga, tell Lady May that I’ll be back as quick as I can. C’mon, Sam.”

  “Why do you bring your dog when you can use my mind?” the Envoy said as we reached the edge of landingplace.

  “I need to use your eyes when we’re in the Waste,” I said. “When we’re on the Road, I prefer letting Sam guide me.”

  “I see more than a dog sees,” the Envoy said. She paused on the edge of the node and looked at me instead of stepping off.

  “Yeah,” I said, remembering the infinite branchings that I glimpsed through the Envoy’s eyes. “That’s why I prefer Sam. He shows me something that a human mind can hold.”

  “Am I not human?” the Envoy said.

  I swallowed. “I don’t think so,” I said. “I’m sorry for what happened to you.”

  “You needn’t be sorry,” she said and stepped off into the Waste. I followed, quickly switching to her mind.

  I wondered if my growing experience in the Waste would permit me to walk into it confidently when the Envoy wasn’t present. Probably not. The reasons that people were afraid of the Waste were perfectly good ones.

  I’d started searching for artifacts in the Waste when I was a child, and by now I’d stepped into it many hundreds of times. Occasionally I’d gone more than fifty paces out into the featureless gray.

  But every time I did I was aware of the desiccated corpse I’d once stumbled onto. It might have been dead for centuries or even thousands of years—I had no way of knowing. I suppose death in the Waste was no more eternal than death anywhere else, but that dry sexless lump that I’d dragged back to the Road made me feel death at a gut level. I’ve seen my share of dead folks and I’ve killed a few of them myself, but that corpse in the Waste is what comes to mind if I hear the word “death.”

  We stepped onto the small node where the Beast waited for me. I breathed out in relief. I hadn’t been conscious of how nervous I was until I could release it.

  “Master,” I said to the Beast and half-bowed. I wasn’t sure what status he had among his own people. “I’m ready to go find Master Guntram.”

  Then we will go, Pal, he replied.

  With the Beast leading, we walked off the back edge of the node. The Envoy followed him, and Sam and I followed her. Using the Envoy’s eyes, I could see the Beast as a blurred figure in the Waste—larger and with softer outlines than he had to my own eyes in Here.

  We reached the Road almost immediately—it was closer than Dun Add had been. I didn’t recognize the foliage to either side. Through Sam’s eyes it was broad-leafed and dark green, though it smeared into a smudge of color if I concentrated. It didn’t exist anywhere but in my mind, so if there’d been another human with me he’d have seen different scenery. Stretches of the Road which I’d been over repeatedly always looked the same to me, though.

  I couldn’t see the Beast through Sam’s eyes or my own, but a quick dip into the Envoy’s perceptions showed the Beast as the same blurred uncertainty that she had seen in the Waste. I got out of her mind immediately. She could follow the Beast and I could follow her; that was good enough.

 

  We walked on at a reasonable rate: not as fast as it might have been if it was me and Sam alone, but quicker than I’d have travelled in a group of a dozen or so, the way it’d been when I first came to Dun Add as one of a number of strangers who’d met on the Road and stayed together for safety and company.

 
; Occasionally we met travellers going in the other direction. They saw me and the Envoy: a respectable man-at-arms escorting a coldly exotic woman. I offered minimal acknowledgements; the Envoy gave them a glance. Sometimes strangers chance-met on the Road are glad of company, but often they are not. Our behavior was well within the range of normalcy.

  Once we met a large body going in the direction the Beast was leading us. straggling across the width of the Road. Sam and I moved to the front; I brought out my weapon and lit it though I kept it pointed in the air. I called, “We’re passing through! Give way for my lady!”

  The reality was much more complex than that, but what I said was easily understood and immediately obeyed. The gaggle of travellers moved aside; some of them even bowed, assuming the Envoy was some high-ranking dignitary.

  I’d thought of the Envoy as a housewife like my mother and others in Beune. I suddenly realized that the node she came from might have been an isolated castle and she the wealthy chatelaine before it was swallowed by a cyst. I didn’t know anything about her.

  “Ma’am?” I said, moving close. “Envoy? What did you do before there was a cyst? What did you do in your village?”

  She turned toward me. Her skin was as smooth and colorless as a plaque of ivory. It made her seem to be a fine lady—certainly no farm wife in Beune had a complexion like that. But she’d been hundreds of years, maybe thousands, attached to the interior of a cyst. Asparagus is that pale when it’s blanched underground.

  “I do not remember,” she said. “All I remember is that my father brought a diamond. We were happy.”

  She paused before adding, “I do not remember what happiness is, but I remember thinking that I felt happy.”

  “After the cyst?” I said. “Before Guntram freed you? What did you do inside the cyst? While you were a prisoner.”

  The Envoy had looked away. Now she faced me again. “I was not a prisoner,” she said. Her voice was as flat and emotionless as hearing a stone wall speak. “I lived, I guided the parts of myself that were beyond my body. I kept the balance.”

  “How did Guntram free you?” I said. “Do you know how he entered the cyst and got you out?”

  The Envoy’s face took on an expression, but I couldn’t be sure what it was. She said, “I failed. The parts beyond my body became blighted, cancerous. Strands of being separated and reattached themselves out of order. I concentrated when I realized what was happening and how serious the disease was. When at last I healed the breach, I found that something had entered the outer part of myself.”

  “Was that Guntram?” I asked. “But you said you had healed the breach?”

  “This portion of my body,” the Envoy said, “was separated from the outer portion. I have never since then been whole. And I do not know what happened to the outer portion. I was placed on the Road and told to find—” she paused “—the Beast, as you call him. And I did that.”

  “But who told you that?” I said. “Was it Guntram?”

  “I do not know,” she said.

  It had to have been Guntram.

  “And how did you know how to find the Beast?” I added. The Beast had never given me another name to call him and seemed to be quite comfortable with that one, but I felt awkward referring to him that way when I was talking to the Envoy. I wondered what she called him in her own mind.

  “I was told when I was put onto the Road,” she said. “I do not know who told me. I did as I was directed to do, and when I reached the Beast he fed me.”

  That made me think of food—for me and Sam certainly, and I expected for my other companions. “Ma’am?” I said. “Can you speak to the Beast? I’d like to—”

  The Beast reappeared in front of us and turned. I couldn’t tell one side of him from another, but the movement on the surface was obvious and I guessed what it meant.

  No one is nearby now, the voice in my head said. What do you wish, friend of Guntram?

  “We’ve passed branchings to several nodes,” I said. “I’d like to stop at the next one and get food, and food for you too if you’ll tell me what you want. Guntram has a little converter for when he travels, but he must have taken it with him. I’ve got plenty of money for whatever you want, though.”

  Gruel in milk has sufficed in the past, the voice said. I do not need a great deal of food.

  “And you, ma’am?” I said to the Envoy.

  She looked at me without replying. Without comprehending what I’d just said, it seemed to me.

  She will have gruel and milk also, replied the voice. There is an inhabited node not far ahead on the left, and there is an uninhabited node just off the Road here with water. The Envoy can guide you to it when you return from buying food.

  The Beast stepped into the Waste and vanished. I cleared my throat and said, “Well, let’s get on.”

  The Envoy strode along beside me. Sam led me, though I don’t suppose she was using his eyes.

  “How long did you walk before you reached the Beast?” I asked. “After Guntram freed you, I mean?”

  “Four days, I think,” she said. “I do not regard what happened to me as being freedom.”

  “Could you have died on the Road?” I said. “Four days is a long time without food.”

  “Yes,” the Envoy said. “Now that my outer self has been stripped away, I could die.”

 

  We didn’t speak again until we found the entrance to the node a few minutes later. I didn’t know what to think of the Envoy. It didn’t matter, of course, but it seemed to matter to me. I was more glad than ever that I’d brought Sam along and could use his eyes whenever I wished.

  We passed through the misty boundary and found a grassy landingplace with houses—and sheep—visible in the near distance. Nearby was an old woman under a tilt of canvas with a barrow of produce and a pottery jar; the handle of a dipper was looped over the rim. She looked up abruptly when we appeared.

  “Milord!” she said, obviously startled to see members of the quality arriving here. “What can I offer you and your good lady?”

  “Is there a proper inn or tavern here?” I asked, fishing a bronze piece out of my purse.

  “Indeed!” the woman said. “My master, Squire Ranald, takes in guests. And the bedding is as clean as his own!”

  “Thank you, mistress,” I said, bending to give her the coin instead of tossing it to her. “I think we’ll just buy some food and drink from him.”

  We walked on along the track to the houses. One of them was two-story and had a brick facade, making it pretty clearly the squire’s.

  “There is water in the node where the Beast will meet us,” the Envoy said without turning her face toward me. “I will drink the water.”

  “So will Sam and me, then,” I said. It might be a better bet than locally brewed beer, anyway.

  A child was carving a top on the stoop of the residence. I took the youngster for a boy until she jumped up and ran inside shrieking “Ma! Ma! Ma!” in a girlish treble.

  A woman’s voice responded. The peevish tone was clear though the words were not.

  “Outside!” the treble shrieked. “Outside!”

  The woman who came out through the door—the child hadn’t closed it—couldn’t have been more surprised if the Envoy and I had been a pack of ravening monsters. After a frozen moment she turned her head and shouted, “Annie! Fetch the Squire! Now, you stupid girl!”

  She then stepped onto the porch and curtseyed. “Milord, how may we help you?”

  “Ma’am,” I said. “We just want some simple food to carry with us to our friends on the Road. They’re waiting for us, so we can’t be but a moment.”

  I’d hoped the business was going to be simple, but the only way that would be was if I’d brought out my weapon and ransacked the pantry by force. It crossed my mind to do that—though I’d have left a couple silver pieces if I had. I’d brought a purseful of bronze and silver, and a couple gold coins wrapped in leather and sewn to my waistband as though
they were attachments for galluses.

  The Envoy said nothing—as usual—while the mistress fiddled and I fumed, trying to get away with my purchases of bread, bacon, cracked oats, and a jug of sheep’s milk—and a basket of oak splits to carry it in.

  The Squire and three workmen stumbled in with the hired girl before I’d made my escape. I think the servant’s summons must’ve suggested a band of robbers, though the workmen retreated back outdoors with the shovels and pick they’d arrived with. They’d been carrying the tools in as threatening a fashion as they could manage.

  To the Squire I said forcefully, “Sir, my lady will give a fine account of you when she returns to Dun Add presently. I trust that two silver Dragons are sufficient payment?”

  They would have been sufficient to house and feed all of us including the Beast—if we could have introduced our companion from Not-Here without sending the locals into screaming panic. There was still the problem of getting rid of the workman whom the couple insisted on sending along to carry the basket of provisions. As soon as we were back on the Road I gave him a bronze piece to go back to the house and leave us alone.

  I’d never appreciated how much trouble it would be to dress like a gentleman and travel through rural nodes. It only mattered because I was trying to make haste. When I’d been patrolling as Jon’s Champion and agent, I brought with me an air of menace that kept people from pestering me.

  We spent the night in a wooded node through which a stream ran. I cut a mattress of pine boughs and spread my cloak over it as a ground-sheet, then offered the bed to the Envoy.

  “No,” she said. “I will stand with the Beast.” And so they did.

 

  The next twelve days were much like the first. The nodes we stopped at for food were all small. What was available differed slightly: sometimes smoked beef instead of bacon, once potatoes in place of bread.

  And then, after I’d pretty much forgotten that the journey had a purpose rather than just being the thing I got up in the morning and did all day, the Beast reappeared in the Road in front of me.