by Heide Goody
Something worrying was happening to Cope’s face. In the short time he had known her, Pagnell had come to accept Cope’s face (and personality by extension) was like a sponge; by which he didn’t mean it was brown and full of holes, but very much an absorber of thoughts and feelings. It projected very little. Now, Cope’s genially open and accepting expression had tipped over into ghostly blank vacancy. A state normally achieved by a seasoned drunkard at the darkest moment of a five day bender: when the body was still moving, the lips perhaps still talking, but the soul within had been totally supplanted by alcohol.
“There is no time,” she said. “There is no now.”
Pagnell waved a hand in front of Cope’s face. She didn’t even blink.
Cope stepped backward with utmost care, as though heavy footfalls might put a crack in the universe, and pressed herself into a corner. “Are my memories even mine?” she whispered. “Am I my thoughts? What is thought?”
“Cope?” said Pagnell, clicking his fingers in front of her face. There was no response.
“Are we all just shadow puppets moved by an invisible puppeteer? Is anyone watching?”
Pagnell wagged a finger at Lorrika. “You did this.”
“What?”
Cope curled up on the floor. “The shadows are imaginary. There is no one in the audience.”
Pagnell blew out his lips, frustrated. “Well done, Lorrika. You broke Cope.”
“I was just repeating what I’d been told by philosophers.”
“Philosophers are dangerous things. You should know that. This is why the Carians are always getting invaded. No one likes a smart-arse. Right, now we have to figure out how to solve this problem.”
“You think it’s a riddle?”
“It’s a puzzler,” said Pagnell, scratching his beard, immediately regretting it as his fingers sank into fresh, oily unguent. He shuddered in disgust. “That’s it!” He picked up a jug of drink, sniffed it, decided it was a dark wine, decided further he didn’t care, poured a quantity into a shallow bowl and washed his face and beard vigorously.
“Solving it by sticking your face in wine?” said Lorrika. “Novel.”
Pagnell ignored her and proceeded to tear off his equally oily tunic.
“And getting naked,” Lorrika commented without judgement.
As he pulled the tunic away, Pagnell stretched his injured shoulder. He yelped.
“You’re hurt,” said Lorrika, looking at the blood-stained tear in his under shirt.
“An eagle bit me then ate me,” he pointed out.
“Sit down and let me take a look at it.”
Pagnell, who was slightly less slimed but definitely sticky, wine-scented and irritated, plonked himself down on a bench. While Lorrika peeled aside the ripped material around his shoulder, he angrily poured himself a cup of wine, downed it and ate a fig.
“How’s the food?” said Lorrika.
“Delicious,” he said miserably.
“At least that’s something,” she said. “You’re not bleeding, but you’ve got one hell of a bruise coming up.”
“Good,” said Pagnell. “If I’m going to suffer, I want my body to put out the flags and bunting so everyone else knows it.”
“I think you need a sling, though.” She glanced around. Pagnell could see her considering taking down the curtains around the bed, but the material was too thick and unwieldy. Lorrika shrugged and undid the bandages around her hand. They’d grown brown and grubby, but would make a serviceable sling. Lorrika unwrapped them and inspected the scabbed bite mark between thumb and forefinger. It was sufficiently healed and, washed properly, would be nothing but a red mark in a few days.
She tied the bandage into a loop to form a sling and helped place it over Pagnell’s head.
“What did you do with Spirry?” he said quietly.
Lorrika hesitated.
“I’m a dentist,” he said. “Never forget a set of teeth. Or a bite pattern.”
Lorrika’s mouth framed several answers before she settled on, “I didn’t hurt her.”
“No?”
“She hurt me. Look.”
“Good.”
Lorrika adjusted the sling to support Pagnell’s arm. She clearly knew what she was doing. Pagnell watched her work. She was young, at least ten years his junior, barely more than a child, really. A thief by training or inclination, in service to philosophers and wizards, neither profession treating morality as anything other than an intellectual exercise or something which applied to other people. Did that excuse her being party to kidnapping and blackmail?
“General Handzame has her in the temple,” said Lorrika. “Your little girl is safe. As long as you bring back the Quill of Truth.”
Pagnell nodded and tested the sling. “She’s not mine,” he said.
“Oh, right,” said Lorrika.
“And she’s not a girl either.”
Lorrika’s brow creased.
“And how to get the Quill of Truth, eh?” said Pagnell, swivelling on the bench to regard the tomb.
“What do you mean, she’s not a girl?” asked Lorrika.
“Come now,” said Pagnell, “focus on the task in hand. There’s the Quill of Truth in stony Foesen’s hands. We need it but can’t get it. What’s the answer?”
Pagnell considered the black and white relief carving on the side of the tomb chest. The holy words What will you do today? were engraved among them. Below was a stylised representation of Tudu, the holy eagle, wings spread, cruel beak turned to one side. It was much like the one on the cover of the book Thedo the carter had bought in Qir. Apart from the gulf in artistry between this representation and Thedo’s cheap souvenir. Was the image of Tudu meaningful? Was it a clue to the way forward?
“If we had some string or rope,” said Lorrika, “we could tie it round the feather and then, standing in the doorway, yank it out and run for it.”
“You’re assuming the bit where we get zapped back in time only applies in this room?”
“I assumed, yes.”
Pagnell gave it some thought. “Do we have string or rope?”
“We did have a big ball of string.”
“Which grimlock Clive confiscated and turned into a natty knitted smock.”
Lorrika poured herself a goblet of wine. “But if we had some string…”
“It might work,” Pagnell conceded. “Or we might just reset the room.”
“We might have to do that anyway if we want Cope back.”
“This Aurelion Pippo…” murmured Cope from the floor.
“Hey, look who’s back in the room,” said Pagnell, turning to the warrior woman.
Cope got to her feet. “Who does his thinking?”
“What?” said Lorrika.
“You said he claims to think for all men who do not think for themselves. Does he do his own thinking, or does someone else do it for him? Either way, he’s a liar.”
Lorrika was perplexed.
“Oh, she’s got you there,” said Pagnell.
“And if he lies about that,” said Cope, “how can we trust anything he says? Time not existing? Pfff.”
Pagnell laughed. “The philosophers of Carius outsmarted by our Cope. Excellent.”
“What are we doing?” said Cope, hands on hips and ready to move into action.
“We’re solving the conundrum which is this room,” said Pagnell.
“It looks like you’re eating and drinking.”
“Ah, you should never solve conundrums on an empty stomach.” He poured another goblet of wine. “Join us.”
“We must return before the Hierophant’s army gets here. We do not have the time.”
“I think, in this place, time is the one thing we do have. We could eat and drink and stuff ourselves silly for hours on end, and if we so much as touch the Quill of Truth, we will be sent back to the moment of our arrival and—” He was silenced by a thought.
“Yes?” said Cope.
“Eat up,” he said. “Eat up, dr
ink, throw it on the floor.”
“Why?” said Lorrika.
“We’re making a change. We’re making it different. Come now. You must be hungry.”
Pagnell downed two cups of wine. Lorrika munched through a bunch of grapes. Cope, hesitant at first, picked at some rolls of what might have been pickled fish and then ate two chicken legs and a whole loaf of bread.
“I am hungry,” she said. “How long is it since we had an actual meal?”
“Too long,” said Pagnell, shoving four quail eggs in his mouth, one after the other. “Right. Right. That will do.”
He got up and crossed to the tomb chest. He probed with his tongue at a fleck of egg caught between his teeth and looked at the effigy of Hierophant Foesen. The old priest looked very sombre, carved from a single piece of onyx. But then he was dead. It was probably the most appropriate time of life to look sombre. Pagnell gave the statue an amiable wink and picked up the Quill of Truth.
Pagnell’s foot came down hard on the expected step at the entrance and he staggered into the table and swore.
“It’s exactly as it was before,” said Lorrika, coming into the room beside him.
“And I’m hungry again,” said Cope.
They were correct. The banqueting table was fully laden as it had been when they’d first entered. Nothing remained as evidence of their previous appearance in the room. The headiness brought on by the wine had vanished, the crumb of egg no longer between Pagnell’s teeth.
“So what does this teach us?” he said.
“That Kavda was a cunning fox,” said Cope.
“Mmm. I suspect this particular device is beyond Kavda’s genius abilities,” said Pagnell. “I think this is the goddess herself at work.”
“Is it?” said Cope. She looked around and gave a reverential nod towards the tomb chest. “Very impressive, your worshipfulness.”
“What else?” said Pagnell. “What else can we infer?”
“It means we can eat and drink ourselves stupid and not need worry about a hangover. A dozen glasses of wine, a sing-song and then we just touch the feather and we’re instantly sober.”
“And we could do that as often as we like,” said Pagnell.
“We could spend our entire lives enjoying day after day of food, drink and whatnot.”
“Not just our entire lives,” said Pagnell. “At the moment the feather is touched, our bodies are made as they were when we first arrived. We could theoretically enjoy a limitless age of gluttony, crapulence and indulgence of the senses.”
“I’m not indulging in anything with you, wizard,” said Cope firmly. “And I’m not sure about that whatnot you were on about either,” she told Lorrika.
“Good food, good company,” said Pagnell. He scuttled to the instruments in the corner and picked up the lute and the sacbut. “Music! We can have as much luting and sacbuttery as we could wish for. Again and again and again until we … ah.”
“Until we’ve had enough?” said Lorrika. “Because I think there’s only so much sacbuttery I could stand.”
“I understand now,” said Pagnell slowly.
“Yes?” said Cope.
“It’s the teachings of Buqit, only writ small.”
“Is it?”
He crossed back to the tomb chest and placed a hand on the carved book under Foesen’s hand. “The Book of Truth teaches us that after this life—”
“—we are reborn,” said Cope, “and Buqit gives us the life we deserve: the good given better lives, the wicked punished with toil and misery.”
“That’s right,” said Pagnell. “And we do it again and again and again until we get it right, until we have done everything on the List of Things To Be Done.”
Lorrika gave him a worried look. “And that’s what we have to do?”
“Maybe,” he shrugged. “I’m really just grasping at straws.”
“So,” said Cope, “we do the right thing or things and then we will be allowed to take the Quill of Truth?”
Pagnell spread his hands. “Worth a try.”
8
They ate all the food.
They drank all the wine.
They sat on all the cushions, individually and all at once.
They laid in the bed, singly and then together.
They played the instruments badly. Pagnell spent a length of time trying to get something resembling a tune out of the zither.
They sang along to the zither tune.
They smashed the instruments. Cope enjoyed smashing the zither.
They threw the food on the floor and ground it up with their heels.
They poured the wine onto the floor also and mixed it with the food with their hands.
They mopped up the mess with the bedsheets.
They tore open the cushions and threw feathers at each other. They hit each other with cushions.
Lorrika took hold of the Quill of Truth and they were at the door once more, Pagnell stumbling into a table and cursing his injury.
They piously refused to drink the wine.
They made a brief but devout show of fasting and refraining from food.
They prayed to Buqit.
They placed an offering of fruit at the foot of Foesen’s tomb.
They recounted what few tales they knew of the Hierophants of Ludens.
They loudly praised the temple of Buqit as a shining beacon of spirituality.
They pleaded with Buqit to look kindly on them and, when there were no more pleas to be said, Cope took the Quill.
They found themselves at the door once more.
They overturned the table.
Cope hacked the bed apart.
They poured wine in the sacbut.
They stuffed bread inside the cushions.
They made a teetering pile of musical instruments, bread-stuffed cushions and topped it with dates and chicken legs.
Everything was moved. Nothing was as it once was.
Pagnell attempted to swap the Quill of Truth for the eagle feather he had brought from the previous room.
They were once again by the entrance. Everything was as it was before.
Pagnell spat on Foesen’s stony face.
Cope tried to prise the tomb chest open with her sword.
Lorrika screamed for a very long time.
Pagnell cast every spell he knew which wouldn’t kill them.
Cope tore a brass plate in half with her bare hands.
Lorrika gave a spirited philosophical argument which disproved the existence of all gods.
Together they laid their hands on the Quill of Truth.
9
Pagnell poured himself another cup of wine.
“Try me again,” he said. “Maybe the plan makes more sense with more alcohol inside me.”
Cope continued polishing her sword. “We chop our hands off.”
“Nope,” he said. “Not making sense yet.”
“Maybe it requires a physical sacrifice. And it strikes me the goddess Buqit doesn’t like it when we touch the Quill with our hands.”
“So,” said Lorrika, munching on a nectarine, “we chop our hands off— All of them?”
“One, some, all,” said Cope. “Does it matter?”
“I think it does, somehow,” said Pagnell.
“If it doesn’t work, we will be back as we were before with our hands reattached,” said Cope.
“And if we succeed,” said Lorrika, “we’ll have the Quill of Truth but no hands.”
“Correct,” said Cope. Her face twitched as she considered whether this would be an ideal outcome.
“Yes, probably best we have a rethink of that one,” said Pagnell and, fortified with a mouthful of wine, plucked disconsolately on the zither in his lap.
“I don’t think that plan goes far enough,” said Lorrika eventually.
“Not far enough?” said Pagnell and struck a sour note.
“We should kill one of us.”
Cope bent to apply more buffing pressure to a dark m
ark on her blade. Pagnell looked at the sword and slid a short distance away along the bench.
“I don’t think killing anyone is going to be help,” he said.
“But it will,” said Lorrika. “Think about it. We kill someone. You, for example.”
“I don’t want be the example,” said Pagnell.
“You die and you go before Buqit for judgement and to be born into a new life.”
“That’s assuming the unique teachings of the Book of Truth are correct. It’s generally accepted elsewhere that, upon our deaths, the gods will despatch us to one of various underworlds, blessed isles or mead halls to received our eternal reward, punishment or mindless oblivion – actually, if it’s a mead hall, possibly all three at once.”
“Whatever,” said Lorrika. “While you’re there, you ask Buqit or the gods or whoever what we must do to get the Quill of Truth. And then – this is the clever part—”
“I am so glad there is a clever part.”
“—we touch the Quill of Truth and we’re all transported back to the door, alive as before, and you can tell us what the gods said.”
Pagnell ruminated on the idea and, discovering his cup was empty, went to pour himself another. The wine jug was empty.
“It’s a bold idea, I’ll give you that.”
“Are we doing it?” said Cope.
“We most certainly are not,” said Pagnell. He reached for another wine jug. It sloshed emptily too.
“We’re out of wine,” he said, got up and touched the Quill of Truth.
They were by the door again.
Pagnell fell against the table, coughed at the pain it brought on and then immediately went to pour himself another goblet of wine.
“I was enjoying that nectarine,” said Lorrika.
“And you will again,” said Pagnell. “Pass me my zither, Cope, would you?”
Cope obligingly collected the zither from the corner and then, with a one-handed slam, smashed it to kindling against the wall. She smiled sweetly.
“I can just go touch the Quill again,” said Pagnell.
“And I can break it again,” said Cope.
Pagnell glared at her. Cope met his gaze and matched it.
