“So what?”
“So d’you want this to fill up? What happens then?”
The fat man shrugged.
“Damn it, you get down there and get that hangover back!” Paul ordered.
The fat man snorted. “You’re crazy,” he said.
“Get down there!”
“Make me.”
Paul charged.
The fat man sidestepped and swung an arm to fend off his attacker; Paul, half-blind with fury and the pain of his headache, stumbled directly into the blow.
At first he didn’t know what had happened; he knew he was falling, that the grass had gone out from underneath his feet, but he thought he would land on his back on the meadow.
Then he realized that it was taking too long, and an instant later he slammed backward into the bare dirt and rolled, involuntarily.
He tried to catch himself, but all he managed to do was to turn his roll into a slide; he still wound up at the bottom of the slope.
At the bottom of the slope, and underneath the contents of the dump.
Despair washed over him, thick gray drowning despair, as he lay on his back, trying to gather his senses. He stared up at a sky gone the color of mud and a sun gone dim and brown, and the futility of it all filled him, pressed down on him. Simply to breathe took an effort, and it was horribly tempting to just stop, to let his breath out and forget to take another…
He reached up and pushed the thing off him, and the sun was bright again, the sky blue. His head still hurt, and one foot stung oddly, but the suffocating hopelessness was gone.
Whoever had thrown that down here, he thought, had done the right thing.
He looked around. He was sitting on the bare dirt, near the bottom of the slope, and all around him were the vague, indistinct shapes and colors of the dump’s contents. Above, at the top of the slope, Roger and half a dozen strangers were staring worriedly down at him.
It didn’t look like a particularly difficult climb—except that it went right through the center of the dump.
Frowning, he looked around. Could he go down the slope the rest of the way, and around?
No; the dump extended well past him, down to the trees, almost as great a distance as that to the meadow atop the ridge. And the walk around either end would be a good, long one, from the look of it.
So he would just have to climb straight up the slope.
“Are you all right?” Roger called.
“I’m okay,” Paul called back.
“Can you get back up?”
“Sure,” he said. He got to his feet—or tried to.
There was something clinging to one leg, something sharp and rusty brown, something that stung, that seemed to twang every nerve and tendon in his ankle. He winced, reached down, and plucked it off.
It burned his hand, and he flung it quickly aside.
Then he started climbing.
He knew, from his very first step, that he was going to be wading through decades, maybe centuries of accumulated psychic detritus; he tried to brace himself for it, but he really didn’t know how. Nothing he had ever done had prepared him for something like this.
A green like rotting cheese roiled up his leg, and a rush of envy swept over him. Roger was safe up there, the smug bastard…
He tore the envy away and took another step, and a rush of guilt flooded him—how could he think ill of Roger, who hadn’t meant any harm?
He hesitated with that one, and tried an experiment. He reached down and tore off a few fragments—just little ones, like sickly, gray-black cotton balls.
He hadn’t been sure it was possible, but in fact it was easy; easier, he thought, than it should have been. He was sure he was doing something wrong here, that this was immoral somehow, but he forced himself.
He collected about a dozen pieces, then wadded them up and stuffed them in his pocket.
He knew he shouldn’t be doing it, it was a really terrible idea…
Then his hand came out of his pocket and he smiled; the idea no longer troubled him at all.
“What are you doing there, Paul?” Roger called.
Paul had just tried to squeeze between two very large, nasty-looking things, and in doing so had run his leg right onto a hot red spike of anger. He snapped his head up and glared at Roger.
“What the hell does it look like I’m doing?” he bellowed. “Fat lot of help you are!”
He shook his leg free of the bad temper and took another step.
This was really very boring. Tiresome. Maybe he should just settle down somewhere and rest until it got more interesting. Climbing up the slope wasn’t any fun…
He waded on, through depression, ennui, anger, envy, guilt, shame, greed—and some surprises.
Lust, for one. That, he thought, was probably a relic of a more straitlaced era. It was all he could do to keep his hands out of his pants until he had scrambled up past it.
And pride. Sinful pride, a huge, seething mass of it. He wondered if whoever dumped it had kept any; the sheer quantity was amazing.
Maybe it had grown, since being dumped. Could it do that?
Any number of questions piled into his mind, and he realized he’d stepped on a lump of curiosity. He kicked it aside, and lost his balance. He put out an arm to catch himself.
And mindless panic swept over him, abject terror. He froze.
He was near the top, but suddenly he was scared to go any farther.
“Paul?”
He looked up, and Roger’s face was there, hanging above him like some looming horror about to pounce. The dirt was soft and crumbling beneath him; at any moment, he knew he would plummet back down the slope, he would break his neck against one of those trees at the bottom, he’d slash himself on the thorns and lie there bleeding and crippled, and Roger would just laugh, Roger had planned it all, the whole thing, he’d put Suze up to it, her depression wasn’t real at all.
They were all in it.
He started to take a step back down the slope, away from his enemy up there, that monster that had pretended to be a friend, that had lured him into this trap.
Monster—that was it. Roger wasn’t human at all. He was some kind of demon. He’d planned it all, he’d probably created the spirit dump in the first place just to trap people. He lured his prey out here with his phony cures, then trapped them in the dump where he could torture them, where he could suck out their souls, where he could blind them with thorns and let flies drink the blood and…
If he stepped back, that might be what the fiend wanted. There could be barbed metal spikes there, spring-loaded spears that would thrust up into his belly, his groin. They’d missed him the first time, but now the Roger-thing was trying to drive him back to where the traps, the other monsters, were waiting. Little things with teeth and claws and shining bright eyes—he could almost see them, behind him, on either side, everywhere.
He didn’t dare move.
But he didn’t dare stay where he was, either. He began trembling, not merely with fear, but as he struggled with himself over what to do.
He knew he could never defeat the monsters—not just the Roger-thing, but all the others that must be lurking up there out of sight, that had been hiding in among the trees. But maybe he could at least try, maybe somebody would hear his screams as he tried to escape and they brought him down, fangs and claws and sharp steel blades gleaming.
He lunged forward, and the fear lost its grip. He sprawled on the slope, his hand reaching the grass at the top of the cliff, his face falling smack into the hangover that someone had thrown down just moments earlier. The world spun, his head throbbed, Roger’s shuffling footsteps were like huge grating sandpaper sounds, like fingernails on a blackboard, but at least he wasn’t terrified any more.
Just nauseated.
Then someone had hold of his arm, a
nd he was being pulled up, and he reluctantly managed to get his feet under him and clamber up the last few feet onto the meadow. The hangover came with him, and he blinked owlishly at his rescuers. The light hurt his eyes.
“Are you all right?” someone asked. He winced.
“Don’t shout,” he whispered.
Someone giggled. “I think he got my hangover,” he said.
Paul nodded, then winced again as the movement made his headache worse. When the others released his arms he sank down to sit cross-legged on the grass, where he gradually managed to pry the hangover, bit by bit, out of his head and gut.
When he finally flung it back over the side it was as if the sun had burst through stormclouds, and he took a deep, gasping breath in relief.
Then he sat for a moment, gathering his thoughts, as the others all huddled about him. He stuck a hand in his pocket and pulled out a little wad of guilt.
He felt bad about what he was about to do—but he told himself that was just the guilt, he didn’t let it stop him.
“Give me a hand,” he said, reaching out.
Two people took his hands, one on each side, to help him up; when he was upright he made sure to leave a little bit of guilt with each of them.
A little guilt never hurt anybody.
“Roger,” he said, after quickly dipping his hand back in his pocket, “thanks for pulling me up.” He reached out to shake hands.
Roger, a bit reluctantly, shook, and took a little guilt away with him.
Two others were clapped on the back.
The last of the group he didn’t bother with; the poor woman looked guilty enough already. And he still had a fair-sized lump in his pocket that would come in handy when he talked to Suze on Monday and asked her to stop broadcasting about the place. He wasn’t sure how he would store it that long, but he was sure he could manage it.
“Bet you’re glad to be out of there,” someone said. “I’m really sorry if we caused you trouble.”
“It’s nothing,” Paul said. “Really.”
“Yeah, well,” Roger said, “I wouldn’t want to go down there! We could see your face—it looked awful.”
“It wasn’t so bad,” Paul insisted.
“I’ll bet you wouldn’t want to do it again!”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Paul said, looking back, remembering lust, and pride, and the wad of guilt, and thinking of Angie’s good old Uncle Bert. “People throw away the damnedest things.”
ARMS AND THE WOMAN
“It’s not as if we didn’t know this one was coming,” Uril said loudly as he stumbled over a rock that protruded from the mud. “The books are very clear, and the astrologers confirmed the date.”
“We should have done something sooner,” Staun grumbled. “If we’d been sent out a little sooner we wouldn’t have to rush like this. We could have gotten there before it started raining, and we wouldn’t have to hurry. Why did the Council leave it until the last minute?”
“Because they’re a bunch of squabbling old fools,” Captain Lethis said as he pushed aside a dripping branch that hung low over the overgrown road. “We were supposed to be here days ago, but they wasted time arguing about who should go, and how many, chosen how, and who should pay for it all, and a dozen other details, until all of sudden they realized that the prophesied date was almost upon us.”
“If the Undead Lord gets loose because of their delays, I swear I’ll cut a few of their throats,” Staun said.
“And if he does I won’t lift a hand to stop you,” Lethis agreed. “But let’s not let it come to that, shall we?” He turned and beckoned to the stragglers, bellowing, “Come on, you!”
The other soldiers, with much cursing and grumbling, picked up the pace a little; behind them came a ragged little crowd of others, tagging along.
Officially the Council had chosen ten men for this errand, but altogether, including friends, helpers, family, and assorted camp-followers, there were almost thirty people slogging through the Forbidden Marsh in the pouring rain, making their way toward the ruins of Haridal Keep. There had been almost fifty when they left the Citadel two days before.
Near the rear of the party, a young woman named Siria was listening to the complaints and thinking that the score who had abandoned the quest were the sensible ones. After all, if this worked the way it was supposed to, there probably wouldn’t be much to see or do; the legends said that whoever wore the magical armor that the wizard Karista had given King Derebeth sixteen hundred years ago would be immune to the black sorcery of the Undead Lord, and could therefore easily strike the monster down before his resurrection was complete, sending him back to the grave for another four hundred years.
If it was really that quick, Siria doubted she would have a chance to ingratiate herself with anyone—she could be charming, given time, but she might not have that time.
And she really didn’t have anything to offer other than charm. These past two years since her father’s death she had used up everything else—not that there had been much to begin with. She was too small to keep up the land her father had worked, not strong enough to work it, and the lord had sent her away, giving the land to a husky young man more suited to farming.
Since then she had wandered hither and yon, looking for a place, and had found none. What she had found was that soldiers were often generous with a pretty girl, especially when they had just done something strenuous and dangerous and were feeling proud of themselves.
She hoped that this particular job would qualify, that the soldiers would find errands for her along the way, and when the Undead Lord was properly dispatched that they would invite her to join their celebration.
It shouldn’t be dangerous. The stories and written records from before the Extermination, left by the wizards who had dominated the world back then, were fairly clear about what needed to be done.
The earliest report of the Undead Lord dated back sixteen centuries, to a time when the world was awash in chaos and powerful magic—nothing like the quiet present day. That first time King Derebeth had disposed of the Undead Lord after a long, fierce struggle, and everyone had thought that was the end of it—but four hundred years later, when certain stars aligned properly, the creature had reappeared. After some messy delays the legendary Kurlus of Amoritan had retrieved Derebeth’s armor, not to mention the sacred Sword of Light, and dealt with the problem.
Eight hundred years ago the local wizards had been ready—even though magic was already in decline astrology was in full flower by then, and they had known the exact time when the Undead Lord would rise again. They were waiting, with a mercenary warrior by the name of Porl already wearing the armor and wielding the sword, and the Undead Lord had scarcely begun to materialize before being dispersed. The whole thing was over in a few minutes, according to the reports.
Four hundred years ago there had been some doubt about whether the Undead Lord would put in another appearance, and matters had been complicated by the Third Lodrian War, but a party of soldiers had been waiting. A Lieutenant Rusran had worn the armor and dealt the required blow.
Again, it just took a few moments.
So there wouldn’t be much to see unless something went wrong and the Undead Lord was able to restore himself fully to life—and in that case, anyone in the area stood a good chance of winding up dead or ensorcelled. Siria did not care for that possibility—but she didn’t expect it to arise. Captain Lethis and his men would see to that. They were the best that the Council had had on hand, and would surely handle this nasty business quickly and efficiently. They had all handled pre-Extermination relics before.
While she had supposedly come along to run errands beforehand, Siria was mostly looking forward to a time when the Undead Lord was safely gone. Once Captain Lethis and his men had the job done, no matter how easy it proved to be, they’d be feeling good, and might be generous with a woman who
helped them feel better. The Council paid its soldiers well—especially when left-over magic was involved. The world was still cluttered with this sort of remnant of the bad old days before the Extermination, and the Council did not stint those brave souls who helped dispose of these menaces. Lethis and his men would have fat purses when this was done, even though sending the Undead Lord off to another four hundred years in limbo did not appear especially difficult or dangerous.
Of course, there might be unknown dangers. Siria had heard that the accounts of the previous manifestations were not as detailed as the Council might have wished—there was a mention in the record of the Undead Lord’s third appearance that the wizards had had some brief difficulty in finding a suitable candidate before choosing Porl, but there was no explanation of what the selection criteria had been. The report from the Lodrian Wars mentioned in passing that Rusran was given the job at the last minute when his commanding officer, a Captain Orilik, proved unable to do it, but again, there was no explanation of why Orilik wasn’t up to the task.
And of course, since the Extermination there were no wizards or sorcerers to ask for more details—they were all long gone. Only their written records and the scattered bits of magic remained.
This lack of clear, detailed information had worried the Council somewhat, and that was why they were sending ten of their finest, rather than two or three volunteers; it wouldn’t do to have no one in the party fit to wear the armor.
Lightning flashed, followed all too closely by a sudden clap of thunder; a moment later the rain turned from a drizzle to a torrent.
“Oh, enough!” a woman to Siria’s right exclaimed. “If they want me, they can find me back in Splittree.” She turned around and began slogging in the other direction.
As if that were a signal a handful of the party turned back, as well—but the ten soldiers kept on marching forward, and Siria stayed with them, as did a dozen others. After all, Siria had no place to go back in Splittree, no family waiting for her anywhere, and she was already soaked to the skin.
Uril, the big bushy-bearded pikeman from the Stoneford Marches, paused and looked back at the shrinking of their retinue. Siria smiled at him, and he smiled back.
The Lawrence Watt-Evans Fantasy Page 24
