The Storm - eARC

by David Drake

  We have reached the place where Master Guntram is held, he said.

  CHAPTER 26

  Guntram

  Through Sam’s eyes—and knowing what to look for—I could make out a faint pattern of cross-hatching in the bland sameness of the Waste. I sighed and said to the Beast, “I wish I had somebody else along now, Baga or Lord Osbourn. I don’t have anybody to leave with Sam while I’m working on the cyst except—”

  I nodded to the Envoy.

  “—the lady herself. Maybe there’s a node nearby where I could leave her and Sam and hire somebody to guide me back?”

  “No one will disturb me on the Road,” the Envoy said. “And your dog will wait while you are in the trance. He does not like me, but he will not run.”

  That was pretty much my opinion also. I said, “All right, I’ll get to work.” I ruffled the back of Sam’s skull and lay down on the Road, using my cloak as a pillow. He curled up beside me, his warm back against my side.

  The cyst I’d entered on Severin had fallen open—rotted—by itself after the Female, the ruling intelligence, had been cut out. The opening through which Croft reached the ruling intelligence didn’t penetrate the wall of the cyst. I’m not sure I would have liked Croft, but he certainly would have been able to teach me about the Maker’s craft. Indeed, he could have taught Guntram.

  This cyst had been skillfully snipped open, then spliced closed by the same expert intelligence. The work itself showed me how to proceed to reopen it, however, so I got to work doing that.

  Again much of the substance of the wall was invisible to me, of Not-Here construction or something even more exotic than that. I ignored what seemed to me to be gaps. By concentrating on the silicon that I could see, I made good headway. I have a lot of experience working with silicon; it’s the base element of most Ancient artifacts.

  Even in my trance I felt a little regretful at what I was doing. The repair had been flawlessly done. It was truly a thing of beauty, and I was destroying it. Smashing things, ripping them up, burning them—that was so much easier than creating them.

  But what I was destroying was Guntram’s prison. I was pretty sure that he’d repaired it himself after the cyst seized him to replace the Envoy whom he’d freed.

  The opening began to close again shortly after I got to work. I was able to stay ahead of the repairs more easily than I’d done when I was getting into the artificial cyst walled off from Histance. The structure here was perfectly regular, and it hadn’t had hundreds or thousands of years to reinforce itself into a single unity. What I was doing was like pulling one thread from a knitted garment. The portions fell apart from their own inertia as I worked.

  My body felt contact, drawing me back into the present though for some moments I wasn’t aware of where I was or what I was doing. I don’t know how long it was before I recognized the Envoy’s voice saying, “This is enough. You can enter now.”

  Even after I heard the words, I didn’t immediately understand what they meant. The Beast’s voice said, You can reach our friend Guntram now, Lord Pal.

  The name “Guntram,” brought me alert. I sat up and blinked. I was on the Road and Sam was licking me.

  The beige blur of the Waste now had a long tear in it. Through the black opening I saw things sparkling. They could have been stars in the night sky or diamond chips scattered on black velvet.

  “All right,” I muttered as I got to my feet. I took out my weapon. With the blade sizzling in front of me, I stepped through the opening and into the cyst.

  There were three fuzz-covered bodies on what had been landingplace before the cyst had succeeded in walling itself from the Road and the universe. These had been human, but except for the shape of the desiccated foot thrusting out from one fungus cocoon there was no difference from the interior of the cyst from which the Female had been carved.

  I could see a dozen houses. Most had a stone foundation course with shake roofs and walls of wattle-and-daub. Most of the roofs had fallen in, and the mud sealant had crumbled into low mounds at the base of the walls. I saw other bodies in the streets and the interior of house where doors had fallen away. The leather hinges had rotted, though often tags of them dangled from where they’d been stapled to the doorframe.

  The houses looked like no style I’d seen before, though that didn’t prove much. It was only in the past year that I’d been any distance from Beune, and even now I didn’t count as a great traveller.

  I trotted on. Tendrils of the fungus began to reach out from bodies, bending to follow me as I moved. I glanced to either side as I went on, knowing that I’d have to make a careful search of the buildings if I got to the end of the hamlet without finding Guntram.

  I didn’t know how long I had. The fungus was moving faster.

  The house at the end of the central street was a little larger than the others; wings of similar construction had been added to either end, and there had been a porch at one point, though one wooden pillar had collapsed and taken the roof with it to the side.

  I looked through the door. The interior was clogged with the frothy white fungus. I swore in my heart. Instead of using my weapon, I thrust my bare left arm into the foulness.

  If this was where Guntram was being held—and it looked a great deal like the interior of the building Croft had cut the Female out of—then I couldn’t just go stabbing into it. Croft had known where the guiding intelligence was, and he had entered at that point from behind. I had no way to probe except by feel.

  The fluffy white matter was as dense as lard and clung to my skin. The touch tingled like water rising to a boil. I found nothing else to the depth of my elbow, so I dragged my arm out and stuck it in again a foot to the left of my first attempt. I’d thought I could waggle my hand through the mass as I would in muddy water, but the material was too stiff for that.

  I touched cloth. I bunched it in my hand and began dragging outward. It resisted as though I was trying to pull somebody through sand. Wisps of the fungus began to touch my face; it had ignored me until now.

  Now that I knew where Guntram was, I ripped into the fungus with my weapon. I cut down, then up. With all my strength, I tugged my handful of cloth to my right—toward where I’d been cutting.

  The mass of white suddenly gave way. I stumbled backward, and Guntram fell across my legs. When I pulled his body out of the building, the fungus sloughed away from his face. His eyes were open, but they saw nothing.

  I got my feet under me and dragged Guntram along. I used his weight to anchor me as I leaned backward to slice a deep half-circle in the fungus suddenly reaching out of the building toward me.

  Turning, I slogged forward at the best speed I could manage. I’d have liked to pick up Guntram and carry him rather than dragging him as a dead weight, but I needed to have my weapon free and my body unencumbered enough to use it. This was hard on Guntram, but he wouldn’t complain if we survived.

  Ropes of fungus advanced on me from both sides of the street. I cut through one on my right but, though I hadn’t paused more than a heartbeat, another wrapped about my left forearm and began to tighten. I cut it, but tendrils from both sides caught Guntram’s ankles as I dragged him behind me.

  I’d counted on Guntram being able to help me hold open the entrance I’d formed in the cyst. That way we both would be able to get out.

  The reality was that Guntram couldn’t even stand on his own, let alone carry out the mental manipulations of the Maker’s art. I remembered the Envoy saying that Guntram had thrust her out onto the Road. I’d be lucky if I managed as much with Guntram.

  I dropped him for a moment so that I could jump back and cut the fungus gripping Guntram’s ankles, the two tendrils I had seen and a third just fastening on his right leg.

  I turned and saw the Envoy squirming through the opening I’d torn. It was already beginning to close, but she made it.

  “Ma’am!” I shouted. “Give me a hand with Guntram! Then I’ll keep the hole open while you pull him out!”
/>
  The Envoy walked past me, stepping over a rope of fungus coiling above one of the bodies at the entrance to the cyst. She said, “That will not be necessary.”

  “Bloody hell!” I said. “Woman, give me a hand!”

  I was furious but that wouldn’t help. I did the only thing that would help, grabbed Guntram’s tunic again and tried to resume dragging him. My hand cramped. I cut apart the fungus extending from the ages-dead corpses—one, two, and the third, then took the weapon in my left hand so that my right was free to grip Guntram’s tunic.

  When my head turned, I saw the Envoy step into the cavity from which I’d freed Guntram. She caught my eyes. With no more emotion than her voice had ever shown, she called, “Take Master Guntram to his friend. I have come home.”

  There wasn’t time for thinking, and there really wasn’t anything to think anyway. The fungus had stopped quivering toward me.

  I switched off my weapon and dropped it into my pocket, then lifted Guntram’s torso with both arms and staggered toward the opening. One of my friend’s feet dragged—but only one. His head lolled against my chest.

  I bent down. The gash I’d made in the cyst was half closed, but we could get through one at a time. I crawled in, reaching back to keep ahold of Guntram’s wrist, then drew him away with me. Sam excitedly jumped about us, though he’d been trained not to bark.

  When I was sure Guntram’s feet were clear, I knelt and drew his right arm across my shoulders. When I tried to straighten, I instead passed out. I had only enough consciousness left to make sure that I cushioned Guntram with my body instead of falling on top of him.

  CHAPTER 27

  Recovery

  I don’t know how long I lay on the Road. A voice murmured travellers are coming. I will retreat into the Waste. That didn’t bring me around, but at least it made me alert enough that when I heard human voices a moment later I opened my eyes. Maybe I croaked something also, but I’m not sure.

  “Rege, one of ’em’s alive!” a woman said shrilly. I tried to focus, then managed to twist my body enough that Guntram’s body no longer prevented me from lifting my torso. After a moment of nausea, I really came to.

  My left arm felt sunburned to the elbow. Patches on my cheeks tingled also, reminding me that the fungus had licked me as I leaned toward the mass while fishing for Guntram.

  Almighty heaven, I’ll have nightmares about that for the rest of my life! But I was alive to have a future life, nightmares and all.

  Half a dozen people were coming along the Road from the same direction as we had. Two men were peddlers. The others were a guide and his female companion, and a well-off peasant couple who had probably hired the guide. Sam and the fluffier of the mongrels were sniffing one another

  “Come to the side, master!” the guide said. He’d drawn his weapon but he didn’t switch it on. “We’ll leave them about their business and get to Skiria without any excitement.”

  “It’s all right,” I said, wondering what I looked like. The fungus had fallen away, leaving only fine white dust on my arm and clothing. “I just need a little help for my friend. He was attacked—”

  That was more or less true. It was certainly believable.

  “—and I’m not in shape to get him to the nearest node. I’ll pay for your help, please.”

  “Go on, Rege,” the peasant wife said to her husband. “You can see the old man’s hurt.”

  “Pay how much?” one of the peddlers said. He’d been looking me over carefully. I suspect he’d sized up my clothes as something beyond the norm of what was available here in the hinterlands.

  “A silver Dragon between you and—” I pointed to the peasant “—this man. For getting my friend safe into the next node.”

  Instead of replying, the peddler who’d spoken dropped his pack on the Road and sprang to Guntram’s side. The peasant was only a moment later—just ahead of his wife’s elbow. The second peddler looked at me morosely and said, “Say, I’d a helped too.”

  I stood up—on my own, but it was a near thing—and said, “Look, you leave your pack too and help me, and I’ll find the same for you, all right?”

  The guide’s companion said to him, “Barnett, do you hear that?” Her voice started loud and rose as it went on. “That’s as much as you’re getting for the whole trip from Madsen, and you’re such a coward you run away from it!”

  While she and the guide squabbled, the men with Guntram lifted him from either side so that his toes didn’t touch the Road. I let them lead and was happy to follow with the other peddler supporting my arm. As we walked, my legs resumed working better. I wasn’t sure whether I was wrung out from the struggle or if the fungus had been poisonous.

  “Skiria’s right up here,” said the peddler who was helping me. Guntram and his helpers stepped off the Road and through a curtain. We followed them onto landingplace.

  Beyond were a scatter of houses. A farmer let his ox stand in the field he was plowing and came clumping over to us in his shapeless hide boots. A boy and a woman in a loose tunic came out of the nearest house and ran down to us too.

  “Oh, it’s Master Guntram!” the woman called. “Addis, Master Guntram’s been hurt! Come, bring him up to the house!”

  The men I’d hired helped Guntram up the slight slope, accompanied by the farm couple and their boy. A pair of girls came out of the house also, the elder holding a toddler by the hand.

  I said to my peddler, “I’ll be all right now,” and fished in my purse before he had to remind me of his pay. The hire of the three men was going to take much of my bronze, but that only mattered until I reached a hamlet large enough to change a gold piece—or the holding of a noble who would loan me cash for the trek back to Dun Add.

  It was good pay for the short distance involved, but I wasn’t sure I could have managed it without their help. The money didn’t matter anyway. I’d gotten along without it in Beune, and if I got back to where I did need it, I had more available than I could spend.

  My helper burbled happily to me as he headed back to the Road to fetch his pack. He passed the guide and his companion at the veil. Sight of the money the fellow poured into the top of his knitted cap was enough to set off the guide’s woman again.

  I went into the large farmhouse where everybody else was gathered. It was a little bigger than that of my friend and neighbor Gervaise back home, and he was about as well off as anybody in the hamlet.

  “Oh, it’s Master Guntram!” the older of the girls cried loudly. The men were laying my friend on the mattress of woven rye straw which the farm wife had tugged out from beneath the couple’s own bed. I suppose the kids slept in the half-loft. “Mama, what’s wrong with Master Guntram?”

  “He’s just worn out and needs food,” I said, hoping I was right. “Can you get him gruel and some beer to give him in little sips? I’ll pay.”

  The two wives—the woman of this house and the woman I’d met on the Road—went off together through the door in back, chattering happily. Apparently they’d made friends.

  The farmer himself stood near me; he had nothing to do while the folks I’d hired on the Road were dealing with Guntram. I said to him, “You’ve met Guntram, then?”

  “He stayed with us three months ago, it must be,” the fellow said. “Ah, my name’s Addis, by the way. You’re Master Guntram’s friend, then?”

  “I am, yes,” I said. “More to the point, though, I’m Lord Pal of Beune and a Champion of the Commonwealth. The Leader set me to find and return with his friend Master Guntram.”

  Addis was having trouble taking in what I’d just said. “My lord?” he said. “My lord!”

  “How did Guntram come to stay with you?” I asked. The women were returning with containers. The peddler and the male traveller watched while the women got to work with a horn spoon on one side and a tiny wooden cup on the other.

  “Well, he came by the Road,” Addis said. “He had a hedgehog to guide him. Can you imagine that? He left it with my kids when he went
away the last time and they love it like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “I can believe it,” I said, remembering the little creature’s nose wriggling like the earthworms he ate voraciously. It was extremely cute, unless you were an earthworm.

  “Well, he asked for a few days’ bed and board,” Addis went on. “He said he was a scholar from Dun Add who was researching some things out on the Road nearby. How was we to know different?”

  “Master Guntram is a scholar if the word is true for any man alive,” I said. “You did nothing wrong, Master Addis. But what did Guntram do while he was staying with you?”

  “Well, he went out during the day two days running,” the farmer said. “Each time he came back for dinner and slept in the truckle bed where we got him on now. The third day he took Egon, he’s my oldest, out on the Road. Then he stopped and gave Egon his hedgehog and told him to send me out in the evening if he didn’t come back for dinner on his own. Well, me and Egon went out but we didn’t find Master Guntram, so we just came home.”

  “Did you notice anything odd about the Waste where Guntram had gone?” I asked. “Discoloration, anything like that?”

  “In the Waste?” Addis repeated. “No, my lord. I’ve never seen anything like that.” Then, frowning, he said, “Lord, did I do wrong?”

  I shrugged. “It doesn’t seem like it to me,” I said. “You did what Master Guntram asked you to do, after all.”

  I walked closer to the bed. Guntram was snoring softly. The farm wife was drawing a comforter over him, and the woman from the Road was dabbing his face with a wet cloth.

  I looked at the women and said, “Could you find me another bowl of that gruel?”

  “Oh, sir!” the farm wife said. “We’ll boil a fowl for you!”

  “I’d like that very much when I return,” I said. “But for now I’ve got a friend out on the Road I want to take some gruel to.”

  While the women—both of them again—were fetching the food, I paid the peddler and the travelling farmer. They’d done well by me, and by Guntram.