The Boy regarded him. “Are you going to strike me, Tarl?” he asked. “That would be unwise.”
Tarl thought about it and saw it unfold in his mind’s eye. Grab the Boy. Smack him backhand across the room. Kick him. Tarl shook his head, pushing the vision away. He didn’t want that. “No…” he said. He sagged. “I won’t.”
“I know you won’t, Tarlannan of the river marshes,” the Boy said. “I have a name, yes, I do.” He met Tarl’s eyes. “But I like to keep secrets, large and small. Names are small things. Call me what you like.” He waved, looking around at the barracks common room. “They’ve called me by many names in this hall.” He smiled.
“Why are you here?” Tarl asked, collapsing into the chaise across from the Boy. “It wasn’t just to tease me about Murn.” He thought about her and her spending time with men when she was away. He rested his forearm over his eyes.
“The woman,” the Boy said. “She knew you.” It was not a question.
“I don’t see how,” he said. The Boy had reviewed the mission record. Grandmother had told him, or the other Archivists had, the ones he’d alarmed by coming back independently of their recall process. They were probably, he realized, still quite alarmed by it. It had never, he guessed, ever happened before. Unique.
“Grandmother talked with you,” Tarl said with a sigh.
“But not before she talked with you,” the Boy said. He looked like he’d bitten down on a seed. “What did she want?”
“She talked philosophy,” Tarl said. “I barely understand half of what she says.”
The Boy looked at him for a moment but didn’t press the subject.
Word would spread. She had sent him back somehow. They could not keep a secret like that, he thought. Everyone would soon know.
“That woman knew you,” the Boy said. “We think we know how. Or perhaps why.”
Tarl raised himself up on an elbow and looked at him. “So? Tell me,” he said. “Why?”
“There is a knot in the Tapestry. There are many such places, but this one is unique. From most, we can trace a thread from one edge of these tangles through to the other. We can see it go in and we see it come out the other side. In this tangle, threads go in, and they don’t come out.” The Boy spread his hands. “We don’t know why this happens, but that thread, the one with the woman, goes into this mess, and stops inside.”
Tarl looked at him. “You want me to go into one of these threads? In this…tangle?”
The Boy spread his hands wider and bowed from his waist. “Yes,” he said, straightening. “We aren’t sure where yet. But it’s one of those.” He leaned forward, an eager gleam in his eye. “It gets better.”
“How so?” Tarl asked, narrowing his eyes. “It sounds,” he said slowly, “like it is dangerous.”
“We think it is,” the Boy stage-whispered, eyes askance. He grinned at Tarl. “We think we can find her.”
“Forget it then,” Tarl said. “I’m not going near that woman again. You saw her.” He felt an icy sweat breaking out in the small of his back. He shook his head firmly.
“But we need to,” the Boy pleaded. “We know she is likely all throughout those threads. There is something special about her, and we need to find out what it is.”
“Well,” Tarl said. “There are other Seekers. Plenty of them. Pick one.”
“She knew you,” the Boy said. “The Dreamers aren’t wrong. They are sure she recognized you.”
Tarl’s mouth went dry. “She said she was coming.” He looked at the Boy.
The Boy nodded. “She said so. But she isn’t. At least, she isn’t coming.”
Tarl pondered this a moment. “Ah,” he said, and lay back down. He thought of the assembled crowd in the amphitheater. Of the old man, a girl-child a grinning father held on his shoulder as they chanted, so she could see better. She had waved at him.
“She was coming, Tarl.” The Boy paused a moment, then continued. “The Dreamers were sure of that, too. She knew a lot about the Tapestry, and how to manipulate it. She had a sizable amount of computation at her disposal, too. Probably through that headband she wore.”
“She silenced the crowd,” Tarl said. “With a wave of her hand.”
“She did do that.” The Boy nodded. “That was another first. Never seen that before.”
“How is that possible?” Tarl asked.
“That,” the Boy said, “is another of those secrets. I can’t tell you, or if I told you, I’d have to make you forget about it.”
Tarl looked at him for a long moment, then buried eyes in his elbow and lay back.
“You killed them all?” he said, finally.
Silence. “She was coming. She knew way too much,” the Boy said finally. “It’s part of my function, dealing with such threats.”
Tarl pushed the image of the squealing, dark-haired girl riding her father’s shoulders away. He levered himself up again, sat up and swung his feet around to face the Boy.
“You want me to help you find her?” Tarl asked evenly.
“Yes,” the Boy said. “Very much so.”
“I want something in return for it,” Tarl said, licking his lips. His sides were slick with sweat, but he felt cold as ice.
“I know you do,” the Boy said, leering. “Now, tell me what it is.”
Chapter Ten
Mexico City, In the Ruins
Approximately AD 3000
Tarl wondered if he was about to die and wondered, again, if he really cared.
“You are not from around here,” the man said, the scowl puckering his weathered face. The ragged headscarf he wore hung in loose loops around his neck. It was old, threadbare, and filthy. The man held a dagger, its blade fire-blackened but needle-sharp. The knife looked old. Like everything here, Tarl thought. He looked at the rough pile of stones that formed the keep behind the man. This place is a tomb.
Tarl shook his head. “No,” he said. “Not from here.”
The man sneered. “Where...?” The man asked. It was question, but garbled. He spoke Spanish, which was a relief, but it was mixed and mangled with other words Tarl didn’t know. Tarl shook his head, and the wiry man leaned close to Tarl’s face, studying him intently.
Tarl knew what he saw. He was average height, at least from where he came from, but that was not this place. People here seemed shorter than Tarl was used to. This was, he knew, malnutrition. They lived in a wasteland.
The man mistrusted him, this was clear from the menace that radiated off him. Tarl knew his clothes were wrong, too new, too clean, to not stand out. His face was smooth-shaven and unlined by years of outdoor living. His eyes slanted slightly, with a hint of a fold to the eyelids. He was brown, a light brown, but brown all the same.
His interrogator was brown too. Well, he might be brown if you scrubbed him, which it looked like no one ever had. But his eyes were pale blue, blue as the sky over this desert. Blue iris, but the whites were yellowed, shot with red veins, and narrowed in suspicion. He was whip thin under his tattered robe, and his hand pointed the long-bladed knife at Tarl. “Where ...?” he demanded again, this time with an urgency.
“Please,” Tarl said. “I don’t speak well. I am a traveler, from far away. I bring gifts to your leader. I seek only to visit the old places, the ruined places. I am a scholar.” He kept his eyes on the man’s eyes. The eyes reveal all.
“What gifts?” the man asked. “What gifts?” He looked at Tarl, who bore nothing, not even a pack. Just a light tunic and headscarf, bright red. “Where gifts?”
“Knowledge I bring. With this, I can make your leader rich,” he said. There it was, the naked appeal to greed, what his training said was dangerous, but useful for mercantile societies. These people had to be trading with someone, Tarl knew. They didn’t live out here without getting regular shipments of food from somewhere, and for that they probably needed to trade. What they traded for their food he didn’t know, but it must be something. With a little more knowledge of how they lived, he woul
d spot a lever. Then he would pull on it.
The man spat as this sank in. They spoke a bastardized form of what Tarl would call Spanglish, which he could follow sparingly. He knew Spanish well…having lived in a Spanish-speaking place for almost a year. That place had been very different.
That place had been lush, a rich jungled land, dotted with plantations whose fields of corn and barley and wheat had stretched on forever. The masters had spoken Spanish, and the slaves had taught Tarl. The masters had machines, but they were simple. Too simple. They had had the same machines, simple calculators, for centuries. Their priests kept to their old ways. The Center had recalled him after he reported this. A Failed world.
That had been several assignments prior to this one, since he last spoke with the Boy. Since they had struck their bargain, as Tarl had thought of it. Several more Failed worlds, places where there were promising, tantalizing signs, but eventually, after weeks or months, the Center had recalled him. He’d gotten close to her on only once, and she’d nearly killed him, before they’d snatched him back. He thought of her in green goggles and the torn silver dress.
The man seemed to reach a decision. He took one more look at the red headscarf, a long covetous look. Then he turned and stalked across the sand towards the low stone house.
Really, Tarl noted, it was a collection of closely-built stone houses. Someone had salvaged these stones, cobbled them together. No two houses alike. Some were straight, others jumbled and random-shaped. Someone had salvaged these blocks from ruins, as people did who lived atop older buildings from earlier times. Buildings which had collapsed. As he approached, he realized that some stones were really lumps of shaped concrete. Shaped or poured. He ran his hand along a curved section of pitted, crumbling concrete.
Most concrete lasted a century or less. Some types would last longer, depending on the composition of the mix and its purity. He had attended a lecture in the Center on building materials and what you could learn from a world’s buildings and materials. Concrete as a building material, used in large-scale construction, indicated advanced technical civilization. This was easy to deduce. The condition of the concrete could also gauge age.
Tarl guessed this was several centuries downstream from its pouring. That was interesting. These people were living on the ruins of an older civilization. That was promising. It meant there might be something worth finding here. This was the Work. This was his task.
He ducked inside the largest of the buildings, coming face to face with a large, shirtless man. The man’s beard was a tangled mess of hairs sprouting every direction at once. He looked at Tarl with small, piglike eyes. He bore a large wooden club tipped with a fat, smooth stone. He pushed Tarl’s shoulder, not roughly, but not gently either. His hand, the one not wielding the mace, patted at Tarl through his clothes.
Looking for weapons, Tarl decided. He bore none. It was not possible to carry weapons between the worlds, or he would have.
Satisfied, the big man stepped aside and motioned him into a largish room. In it, a dais or platform rose above a central open area. Ah, Tarl thought, a hall or courtroom. This was where power was. There was a chair on the platform. Whoever sat there, Tarl told himself, was in charge of this place.
But no one sat in the wooden chair with the wide, flared back. The chair was old, the wood desiccated and dry. It looked very old. It was a big chair, and would raise its occupant, thanks to the platform, high enough to intimidate. A dark cushion, roughly woven, filled the oversized seat. At its base was a wire cage of some sort. Twisted wire, heavily flaked with rust. The cage held white stones. Tarl stared.
Not stones. Bones. The cage was full of bones. Skulls, mostly, but also long ribs, femurs, and other, unrecognizable bones. But lots of them. Mostly skulls, which stared at him with their wide, empty eyes. He blinked, shaking his head slightly. Then he sighed, and seemed to fold inwardly a little, shoulders hunching slightly as he took it in.
The Center had trained him for this, he reminded himself. He had studied such worlds, read the reports from other Seekers, who had visited such places and reported back. He knew what this was.
Intoxication by power. No law beyond strength and savagery. That was what he was dealing with here. The skulls? Previous petitioners, such as himself? Enemies? Sacrifices? All were possible, and plenty of other horrific alternatives. He steeled himself as best he could. Was he in more danger here than he had been outside? He was not. He could die here, in any of these places. This was the nature of the Work. It was what Seekers did. Remember your training, he reminded himself. His nose felt tight across his face, his mouth pursed into a tense pucker. Some of the skulls were small.
There was a movement in the back of the hall, and it jolted him from his reverie. He smoothed his face, long practice asserting itself.
She was long, brown, glistening with oil, and nude. Her hair was long, lush, dark, and braided. Beads of gold threaded into her hair. She wore a torc of twisted golden chains about her neck, many of them bearing toothlike nuggets. There were golden flecks of dust on her breasts and belly. Tarl felt his stomach clench around a knot of icy fear. It was her.
He straightened slightly, raising his chin to face her as she mounted the platform, flanked by three attendants, burly men bearing staves, knives thrust into their belts. One of them bore a mace, sharp and angular, tipped with a black blade. She flicked them away and stalked towards him across the platform.
He felt the pressure of her gaze before he met it. She focused on him intently. He looked up at her, and at that moment felt like a rabbit crossing a field under the eyes of a hawk. Prey. His bowels turned to water. She held his eyes.
She cocked her head at him, and her step faltered slightly. Then she smiled at him as she approached. Her gaze held recognition and excitement. His face felt tight, and the muscles of his forehead twitched. He stood very still.
She spoke words at him, in a tongue he could not understand. A question. She repeated a word. One man spoke, the one who had brought him in.
“Smoke,” she said in the strange Spanish the guard had used, settling into the chair, draping her right leg over the wooden arm. Tarl kept his eyes on hers, trying to match her focus. “I know you, don’t I?” Her voice was clear, but with just a hint of doubt, he thought.
He blinked. “You are mistaken, Lady,” he said, nodding slightly. “I am Tarlannan, a voyager from far away—” he began. She waved a hand languidly at him.
“No,” she said, shaking her head at him, her braids tinkling. “No no no no no.” Bells, he thought, not beads. Small bells of gold, in her hair. The nuggets in her necklace were teeth, he saw. Teeth of gold? He wondered at it. How? Why? But she just looked at him, frowning now. A puzzled frown. “I know you,” she said flatly, but again, her eyes held just a twinge of doubt. It flashed by quickly, but to one trained by the Center to study human reactions, he saw it. “Smoke, is it your name? Yes or no?” Yes or no, she said in a whisper, but Tarl shuddered as she breathed it.
“You are mistaken, Lady,” he said, again. “We have not met.”
“Smoke,” she said, almost to herself. “You are from…” She looked at him, cocking her head. “I knew you once, but it was long ago.” She shook her head as if to clear it and arched her back as she studied the ceiling in thought. “I know it,” she said with a nod down at him. “Why have you returned?”
“Lady,” he began, “I am newly arrived in this land, truly. Perhaps you recall another man. Sometimes one man can look much like another. I assure you, if we had met, I would remember it.”
“Are you calling me a liar?” She said it softly, but there was an edge to her voice now, and her eyes seemed very hard and dark suddenly. She looked beyond him then and nodded. She beckoned one of her guards to her. Tarl turned, fearing the worst. One man stepped forward, bearing his mace, the one tipped with a blade longer than Tarl’s hand.
She whispered to him. He looked into her eyes. She nodded. Pressing something into the man’s mouth, Ta
rl could not see it, just the motion. The man wheeled, mace held crosswise across his chest, and he stepped forward across the platform, aimed at Tarl like a missile.
She made no move to stop him. He braced himself.
The man lunged at Tarl, spitting. He spat a shimmer of light into the air between them. A cloud of gold billowed about him, powdered gold, Tarl realized. It hung in the air a long moment before settling on him. He could feel it settling, cold and moist, on his head and face. Tarl blinked, trying to clear his eyes without wiping at them. The man drew close, thrusting his tongue, long and coated with gold dust towards him, like a lizard, Tarl thought. He blinked again, and the man drew away.
The man began to dance about him, spinning and kicking, twirling the mace. The others began a murmuring, deep-chested hooting song as he danced. The man spun, swinging the mace by its long wooden shaft, arms cocked back, the blade pointing towards the floor. He moved, then, lunging threateningly towards Tarl, the blade coming back up in a wicked arc that passed close enough to him that he wanted instinctively to pull back out of the reach of that blackened blade, but did not. He knew such games. Tests. He had passed such before, though never with stakes like these.
The hoots came faster now, faster and accompanied by clapping and a keening chorus from the shadows. There were others in the room now, hidden in the shadows. Women, by the sound of their voices in the song. The dancer raised one end of his mace to his shoulder, and as his grip folded around one protuberance from the main shaft, Tarl realized that the mace was a gun, a projectile thrower. He had seen such things before, which followed similar patterns. The gun looked old, scarred and burnt.
The woman in the chair clapped her hands and yelled something in a language Tarl did not recognize. She waved the dancer away, and he retreated to the shadows. The song faded, and she peered at them from atop her chair. She waved languidly. “Children,” she said, to him, as if apologizing to him. “They want a show. I can give them a show. I stay strong for them. They need it.”
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