“Why the hell would Suraklin be doing something like that?” Joanna demanded, when they were once more gathered in the small sitting room and Antryg was placidly consuming the now-cold muffins. “And it can’t be Suraklin himself anyway—I know where he was on the Dead God’s eve at sunset...”
“If it isn’t Suraklin,” Caris said firmly, “we cannot afford to turn aside from our task, much less risk getting ourselves killed on a side issue.” He was pacing like a caged thing, his dull robes billowing about him, the short quiff of his blond hair falling into his eyes.
Antryg glanced up. “I’m not sure we can afford not to. Would you care for a muffin? Curious to think the gentry hereabouts import white flour from Kymil at twelve crowns the barrel to make muffins, solely because it’s the correct thing to do, when rye-flour muffins are just as good.” He licked the butter from his fingers and looked up at Caris, who had stopped, staring at him in openmouthed indignation.
“You are the most frivolous...” the sasennan began.
“Going to Far Wilden may not be frivolous—that is, if by frivolous you mean apt to pursue side issues. I hope that it will turn out to be frivolous, yes, for all our sakes. But I can’t know until I’ve been there.” He wiped his fingers on a corner of his coat and reached over to pinch loose one of the long stalactites of white wax which had dripped down from the side of a sitting room candle. Even at this hour of the morning, the sky outside was darkening with coming rain; servants were lighting the candles once again throughout the house. Antryg rolled the wax deftly into a ball with his long fingers, his gray eyes growing dreamy and distant. Then he pulled free one of the several pins he kept stuck through the frayed velvet lapel of his coat, and began scratching signs into the ball.
“I’m leaving you behind here, Caris,” he said. “Put this lipa where you can see it. If it turns red, beg a horse from Squire Alport at once and ride for all you’re worth to Far Wilden, but enter the town carefully once you get there. If it turns black...” He hesitated, the pin suddenly stilled, and his odd mouth set. Then he sighed, and handed Caris the tiny spell-ball. “If it turns black, I’m afraid you’re going to have to deal with Suraklin yourself.”
“Is it that important?” Joanna hunched her shoulders under the damp sheepskin of her coat and the weight of the backpack. The day was ending; the thin wind cut her like a knife. The utter weariness that seemed to have settled into her bones during the past week of continual walking dragged on her less than it had, but she still felt tired to death, as if she would never be warm or rested again. Not, she grinned to herself, that she wouldn’t have enthusiastically jogged the fifteen miles back to Squire Alport’s had Antryg said, No, not really, let’s go back.
The spire of the haunted church was visible through a dip in the iron monotony of the hills. When the wind shifted, she could smell the village’s familiar stinks—cow-byres, woodsmoke, and privies. It was growing dark. Her worry over Suraklin ebbed and she began to be scared.
“I’m afraid so, my dear.” In the shadows of his cloak hood, little was visible of Antryg’s face save the lenses of his spectacles, which caught the final pallor of the evening sky like luminous, insectile eyes. “I have a bad feeling about what’s in that church. For all our sakes, I hope it has nothing to do with Suraklin,, bat I can’t risk the chance that it might.”
For the last five miles, the group of villagers had been very hushed and had seemed to huddle tighter together as they walked. Even Greer, who for most of the journey had kept up a stolid appearance of courage while she told them details of the hideous visitation, had fallen silent. Now they stood gazing at that silent spire in the distance, like a spike against an iron sky.
Hesitantly, Joanna said, “What is the Dead God, Antryg?”
In the tail of her eye, she caught the movement around her, like the rustle of wind in a grove, as the villagers all blessed themselves with the air of people no longer sure of the efficacy of a charm. Though Antryg was still looking out across the hills at the skeletal black spire, he must have heard the stirrings of their clothes, for, in the shadows of his hood, she saw his lips twitch briefly in an ironic smile.
“Not, as many people believe, the God of Death, the Lord of Gates, who was worshipped in the Green Masses held in the fields. The legends have become conflated in the years. The Dead God is the God of Being Dead—not even the ‘God of,’ but just Deadness. He is entropy, if you will. The final flickering-out of the last candle in darkness, the ending of all songs of hope for want of breath, the dying of the last blade of grass when all life has been leached from the soil—that is the Dead God. As you yourself said, entropy always wins.”
A surge of wind caught his vast purple cloak and tossed it like a huge wing around him. In the twilight, his tall, thin form, with his deep voice and round, alien-looking eyes made him seem almost like something from a Danse Macabre himself.
“That is why the Dead God elected to die, you see. So that he would have it all in the end, even though it meant being nothing himself. He is the god of stasis, of stagnation, of the utmost death without even regenerative decay. No matter how much life the other gods created, say the legends, the Dead God died so that he would get it all in the end.”
“Like a black dwarf star,” Joanna murmured, “that is so dense that even light can’t escape.”
Antryg nodded.
She went on doubtfully, “So it can’t really be the Dead God—can it? The Dead God—the true Dead God—wouldn’t need something as petty as the village; he wouldn’t need to make all those strange and senseless commands they talked about, like keeping everyone indoors on certain nights or bringing vats of blood to the Church or all those other things Greer told us about. All the Dead God would need to do is... wait.”
“Precisely.” The wizard shoved his hands into his coat pockets, and began to walk down the crooked and ice-slippery path toward the first wretched sod shanties of the town.
Her half-frozen buckskin boots sliding on the stony ground, Joanna hastened to catch up with his longer strides, and he slowed to wait for her. “Then what is in the Church?”
A thin stream of white breath escaped from the shadows. “I believe it’s something I’ve been rather fearing all along,” he said. “An abomination that has intelligence.”
Without enthusiasm, Joanna said, “Hot damn.”
“And I sincerely hope,” he added cryptically, “that’s all it is.”
Joanna sighed. “I’m not even going to ask how the situation could be worse.”
“Don’t,” Antryg advised.
In the village itself, the silence was almost palpable and had a watching quality that raised the hair on Joanna’s nape. Even the occasional muttered comment among Greer and her people had ceased; they walked close together, always glancing back over their shoulders at the heavy darkness that seemed to clot between the lumpish buildings of sod and logs. The village sounds to which Joanna had grown used, the lowing of cattle and the grunting of backyard pigs, were absent. Through the door of a byre, she caught a glimpse of a couple of goats, huddled head-down as if ill, their green eyes gleaming in the darkness. Before them the square bulk of the church, with its cluster of turrets and single emaciated spire, loomed black against a cinder sky.
Joanna shivered and drew closer yet to Antryg. She thought it was colder here than on the hills, in spite of the windbreak of the buildings. The fetor of decay hung over the town, clogging her throat like putrid dust. Antryg had pushed back his hood; in the wan twilight, his face looked strained and old.
“So you have returned, Greer.” From the shadows of a round, stumpy building a dozen feet or so from the church itself—a baptistery, Joanna knew, having seen them near several village churches already—other shadows separated themselves. A torch was brought forth, and its jerking orange glare played over the faces of half a dozen men and women armed for the most part with the makeshift weaponry of farmers, though at least two held heavy but businesslike swords. The man who swagger
ed in their lead was one of the few Joanna had seen who had not lost flesh in the harshness of a failed harvest: tallish, red-haired, the cut-steel buttons of his middle-class coat strained across an undiminished paunch. He was unarmed, but a couple of his bullies walked with axes at his back. “That was stupid of you.” Joanna noticed idly that one of his front teeth was gold, with a tiny chip of ruby set like a stray speck of beef in its center.
Greer drew in her breath for an angry reply. At that moment, however, Antryg forestalled her by breezing forward, gloved hands outstretched. “My dear Pettin,” he cried affably, “you really must forgive her concern. Of course the Unnamed One wouldn’t communicate all his plans to a mere subcreature such as her—how could you expect him to? But they serve also who only act as the Dark God guides, and I’m here now, so there’s no harm done.”
And, as Pettin the merchant gaped in speechless surprise and Greer stared at the wizard aghast, Joanna thought, Antryg, you’d better make this work.
Antryg shook hands briskly with the stunned town boss and flung a friendly arm around his shoulder. “Surely you don’t think He...” He nodded toward the silent church “...would have let her out of the village unless to fulfill his will.”
“Uh—” Pettin managed.
“Where’s Del?”
Greer’s gasp of rage, of betrayed fury, caught Joanna’s attention like the rattle of a snake, and she turned in time to see the mayor twist an axe from the grip of the nearest of Pettin’s guards. “Traitor!” Greer screamed. “You were its servant all along!” She strode forward, axe upraised, totally forgetting Joanna by her side until Joanna stuck out one booted foot and tripped her.
Joanna herself was a little surprised at the movielike patness of it. Even as a child, she had never dared to trip anyone deliberately and was astounded at how easy it was when the tripee had the momentum of rage. With a little more presence of mind, she supposed she could have dived in and got the axe away from her then and there, but didn’t think that quickly; when she did, she decided to let Pettin’s guards do that part—the axe looked damn sharp.
By the time Greer sprang to her feet again, covered in offal and mud, the guards were upon her.
“Stop it!” Antryg barked as one of them raised a fist to smash the infuriated woman across the face. Such was the authority of his deep voice that the man froze in mid-gesture. “Lock her up,” he said coldly. “Don’t hurt her.” He glanced down at the totally discomposed Pettin by his side. “As you know, they must be untouched.”
“Yes, my lord.” Pettin clearly wasn’t about to admit that nobody had communicated to him about this.
With a shrug that would have done credit to an Emperor, let alone the emissary of a god, Antryg shed the patched cloak from his shoulders. Joanna, with perfect timing, caught it and folded it over her arm. Casually, the wizard removed a club from the grasp of the guard nearest him and didn’t even glance at it as its tip burst into flame. Pettin’s bullies drew hastily back, murmuring and whispering; not a few made the signs against evil.
“Do as the god has bid you and keep everyone away from the doors,” Antryg said. In the yellow glare of the new flames, Joanna could see the glitter of sweat on his face, but his voice was uncaringly arrogant. Magister Magus, Joanna recalled, had said he would have made the best charlatan in the business. “Obey my servant here as you would me until I come out.” And he strode to the church steps as if he’d just closed escrow on the place.
“Liar!” As Antryg’s foot hit the step, the doors slammed open; the rolling cloud of stench that swirled forth caught Joanna cold and she fought not to retch. With that stench, darkness seemed to pour out like smoke. The skinny old man framed in that vile and leaden darkness, Joanna saw at once, was completely mad.
Antryg ordered calmly, “Get out of my way, Father Del.”
“Mountebank!” the old priest snarled. In the glare of Antryg’s torch, drool gleamed on the old man’s unshaven chin; by the black hollows of cheeks and eyes and the slack folds of filthy skin behind the ears, Joanna wondered, in the detached portion of her mind that wasn’t sick with panic, if Father Del had eaten at all since the coming of the Dead God. Not, living close to that smell, that anyone could...
Antryg’s voice was soothing, the deep notes played like an instrument against the shrillness of the lunatic’s mind. “I am but a servant of the Unnamed One, as you are, who was once Del. He sent for me, and I came.”
“Liar! Jackanapes!” Father Del advanced down the steps, leaning on a six-foot staff, heavy oak reinforced with plates of iron. Its iron tip grated on the stone. “Yes, he sent for you—it suited his purposes that you should come. He sees all, knows all. All things come at last to him! A mage, he says. Light shines through your flesh, he says, and the colors that halo you are not the colors of other men. You lie, he says.” He stumbled a pace nearer, clutching at his staff with hands that shook as from palsy. At twenty feet, Joanna nearly gagged on the stench of his clothes.
Antryg did not move, but all around her Joanna sensed Pettin’s men stir, hefting weapons in their hands. I’II run for it, she thought, it’s an admission. Adrenaline shot through her like gas to an engine racing in neutral.
“He smells your mind,” Del’s voice creaked. “Yours and this little girl’s. You seek to destroy him. But he will have your flesh. Perhaps it will kill his long craving...”
Someone grabbed Joanna’s wrist and she twisted the bone of it against the weak joint of her captor’s thumb, at the same time slamming her full hundred and one pounds with her heel on the man’s instep. The grip slacked. As hands snatched at her clothes, she plunged up the brick steps. At the same instant, the wizard thrust his torch at the priest’s face and twisted the iron staff from his grip. Pettin’s men surged up the steps at them, weapons flashing in the guttery light; Del’s screaming, shrill as an angry hawk’s, stabbed through Joanna’s panic like the senseless sounds of nightmare.
With the hand that held the priest’s iron-shod staff, Antryg thrust Joanna before him into the utter blackness beyond the great doors, and the doors thudded shut behind them.
Chapter XII
“HOLD THIS, PLEASE.”
Antryg’s calm voice was so quiet Joanna, stunned as much by terror as by the hideous stench and bone-freezing cold of the place, barely comprehended what he said. But she accepted the torch and the iron staff he shoved into her hands, even as the bolts outside the door were still scraping into place. The wizard was already down on his knees, a piece of chalk in his hand, sketching the wide arc of a circle on the stone floor around them. He must have practiced a lot, Joanna thought, as her panic drowned itself and left her feeling oddly cool; the circle was perfect to within a few degrees. Considering the bad light and the way her own hands were shaking, that in itself was astounding.
Around them, the pillared vestibule of the church was like a well filled up with evil, evil such as Joanna had never encountered—nauseating stink and gluey darkness pressing in on them, swamping the feeble torchlight. The cold here was intense, far more severe than outside, and she no longer questioned how the villagers had believed the assertion of the thing in the church that it was the singularity point of eternal death.
The chalk made soft crumbling sounds on the granite slabs of the floor. Straining her eyes into the aphotic depths beyond the carved and painted pillars—no two alike and all gaily colored like psychedelic barber poles—she heard the whispery hiss of the torch as it burned in her hands and the faint, quick creaking of Antryg’s belt as he moved here and there, drawing out a five-point star within the double circle around them. He hadn’t made the original ring quite big enough, and once the star was drawn there was only a square yard or so in its center for them to stand. Joanna had known Antryg long enough to know without being told not to step over the chalked lines.
Somewhere among the pillars, something was moving.
She heard it blunder against the wood with a fumbling hollow sound, heard a kind of wet slither that t
urned her stomach with a dozen gruesome implications. The smell was growing stronger, too, in spite of the killing cold—meat long rotten, the fetid excrement of fear, and something else, something she had smelled in the Void. Don’t panic, she told herself, forcing herself to breathe slow and deep in spite of the appalling stench. If you panic, you’ll run, and there’s nowhere to run to... The cold was a living thing, malevolent, eating her bones. She wondered briefly whether she could scream long enough and loud enough to wake herself out of this nightmare and, if so, in what place she would wake.
Antryg stood up, his face clammy with sweat in the wavery yellow light. He took the iron-bound staff from her left hand, the torch from her right. His voice was calm and unstrained. “Joanna, get down and cover your head. It’s psychokinetic; I think it’ll try throwing things first. Don’t try to move about to avoid me. I’ll avoid you.”
Joanna didn’t even bother to try and guess how he knew it would be psychokinetic. She merely dropped to her knees, pulled off her backpack, tucked it beneath her—mostly to protect the worm-program disk—and assumed the position recommended by the California Public School System as effective protection against atomic bombs. Antryg carefully laid the torch down beside him on the floor and stood straddling her, the iron-bound staff in his hands.
He’d kilted up his robe almost to his knees, and the rough wool brushed her back, weirdly comforting, as was the sight between her slitted eyelids of the brass rings of his boot harnesses. She clenched her hands more tightly over the back of her neck and tried to make herself small.
Somewhere in the blackness of the church beyond the pillars, she heard a knocking.
It was impossible to say where it originated or on what kind of surface. There were a few experimental taps, soft and strangely hollow-sounding, then suddenly a huge crashing like thunder or the slamming of some massive door. Heavier and faster the sounds came, iron boulders falling from some unguessable height to an iron floor, a vast fist beating a ringing wall—It’s only noise, Joanna told herself, shutting her throat on a scream. The same as the darkness is only darkness, the cold is only cold, the smell is only a smell...
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