by Michael Shea
She fell from the rock then. "Come near me, Haldar Dirkniss." She looked up at him from the gravel, and smiled at his haste. Though she lay on her back her body seemed still tensed against the earth. Her head she rested there, but the rest fought back.
"The door to my world lies through the death of another." She spoke more easily now, glancing at me as well as Haldar. "There is a man in Lurkna sure to die soon. Arrangements would be easier, of course, if you caught and killed some alley-trash. With the spell I shall give you, you will have passage through the death of anyone at all."
"We are not butchers," cried Haldar, pained. He needed no backward glance to know he spoke for me as well. "We relish difficulty. We'll come to you through the door that offers."
Dalissem nodded with slow, harsh-eyed approval. "Well spoken little mortal. You know, Haldar Dirkniss, that you are not a little man." She said this sharply as my friend was bridling again. "Others have passed this way through even these few years. I have let them pass. Sent up no feelers of my thought. Would I have cast my nets entire, and climbed this infinite, high climb for little men? Come nearer, and I will put in your memory the manner of your coming, and the spell."
My friend put his ear to her lips. She whispered for a long while, and my friend looked outward as he listened, but you could see from the dazed shifts of his eyes, strange spaces opening in his mind.
She let her head roll to the side when she had done. Her body gave an exhausted shudder, and just barely regained its tension. "Stand away," she hissed. "Turn your backs. I must return the way I came. In the face of horror, keep your thoughts on the Key. It will be yours."
We turned away. The reeking cold washed over us. The foaming sound of ten thousand little maggot jaws got louder and louder. Two fat tears jumped out of my friend's eyes and sank into his beard. That night we slept without guard. Death's presence was so strong in the place no wolf would come near it for many days.
My horse had stayed within the boulderfall, its nose having quickly told it of the wolves' departure. We rose before the sun and saddled up, having decided to run and ride in shifts. I took the first turn running. As we started out in the first light of day, Haldar said musingly: "You know, Nifft. She told me far more than the spell, and the information about Defalk and Shamblor. There were a thousand other things too, endless they seemed."
"Well what were they?" I asked.
"I don't know! She left them all there inside me, just past the reach of my thought."
He rode and I trotted on. I left it to him to call the time. I ran all morning long, so far away his mind was. I didn't object to it for three or four hours, greyhound though I am. But at length I had to rouse him. He swore he had not thought an hour gone.
III
Defalk of Lurkna Downs went to many inns and taverns in the course of a day. He went to the fashionable ones in the Exchange district, which stands on giant floats upon the lake, just off shore; he went to the more colorful ones in the wharfside district ashore; he went to the ones in the old center of the city where the chambers of law stood. Where he went depended on whether he was talking to a broker, or negotiating the sale of a haul of his father-in-law's fishing fleet, or cajoling a judge in Maritime Equity to smile upon a renewed charter to fish some particularly rich zone of the vast Great Cleft Lake. I promise you the pair of us learned Lurkna Downs well in the course of dogging the fellow and marking his ways and times. We worked with an ear always pricked to the news of Fleetmaster Shamblor's progress. He didn't command a fleet, you understand, he owned one—one of the city's largest. Gossip about his condition was abundant and we sifted it carefully, for his death was to be the door through which we took our quarry. The Fleetmaster rallied briefly shortly after our arrival, and gave us a week that we did not waste.
The upshot was that on our chosen afternoon, I crouched in an alley alongside the Quill and Scroll Inn. This is in the center of the city and the narrowness of the streets there decided our choice, for it compels passersby, if they wish to ride, to use one of the runner-drawn chariots that are the district's only feasible form of taxi. Defalk never walked when he could ride, and he lunched here almost every day.
On the previous night I had been inside the inn—after hours, you understand—and improved a crack high in the wall through which I could command the side of the inn our quarry almost always sat on. Empty crates in the alley screened me from any who glanced into it as they passed. I mounted a barrel and applied myself to the opening. I meant to watch for his entry, but he was already inside, at the table nearest my vantage. He had only a flagon before him, and seemed to be waiting for someone.
He was a tall, blond man. His wide shoulders recalled an active youth, but his belly and hips now matched the shoulders' girth. His face still had the habit of handsomeness, though soft living had already blurred its lines. But after all, the habit of beauty is the essential thing. He would still be a favorite among the women in his world. His world was that of the no-longer-young, would-be rich. His father-in-law was middling wealthy, but we knew he kept Defalk on a short leash. Our quarry was a man who could expect to be comfortably off eventually, after his youth was well past, and he had served a decade or so as a go-between and adjutant in the world of finance. And you could see at a glance that Defalk was a simple man who wanted no more than to be brilliantly rich, admired, and unencumbered with work. His face said it so plainly: "I'm an excellent fellow. Isn't such a life no more than my proper portion?" I assure you, I half agreed with him, his conviction was so uncomplicated and sincere. At one point in our observation of him, Haldar had turned to me and said with strange bitterness: "By the Crack, even the best women love just such men in their inexperience. A brainless complacency must be one of the great secrets of winning women's hearts!"
A burly man, black-bearded and doubleted in burgundy silk, came into the inn, and Defalk signaled to him. The man was Defalk's age, but his movement had verve and his eyes flashed a swinish vitality. Both men wore the insignia of wealth—most notably the fur-trimmed short-capes then in vogue—but when you looked at Defalk's lax shoulders and slightly vague blue eyes, and then at the other's energy, you knew at once that the bearded man was born to the world which the other was still scrambling to enter.
The man strode to Defalk's table and dealt him a hearty shoulder-clap whose familiarity bordered on offense in that relatively staid little tavern. He stood for quite a while, bantering boisterously, drawing lots of eyes, which he enjoyed and Defalk obviously didn't. At last he sat down, still gusty and hail-fellow in all he said. There was some small talk. Defalk kept his voice pointedly low and at the same time tried to return a toned-down version of his guest's conviviality. His awkward insincerity was painful to watch. Kramlod, his friend, drank it in greedily.
At length Defalk set his flagon aside and leaned toward Kramlod. "We've known each other long enough for me to be blunt," he said. "Bespeak what you'll have, and I'll come out with what's on my mind." He signaled the keep. Kramlod smiled.
"Ah, Defalk, you're just the man to speak out what's on your mind! I remember you as a young man, chasing temple skirts, no less, for your pleasure. We all thought you such a daring romantic then, and so outspoken about all us more conventional souls! Remember what you used to say about the world of business? All toadying and chicanery, lean purses fawning on fat ones for favors? Were those not the days? How far we wander from our youthful views!"
He made only the thinnest pretense of speaking at large. He sat grinning in Defalk's face as the latter chuckled—a sickly and unpleasant little cackle, I judged it, but obviously music to Kramlod. The keep appeared and Kramlod made a stridently jovial affair out of ordering—prodding recommendations from Defalk, echoing them, rallying the keep for his reactions. At last he ordered a small glass of punch. Defalk ordered a double firewater and I didn't blame him.
"Favor-seeking you mentioned," Defalk said when the keep was gone. "By coincidence, Kramlod, that's precisely my own role now! Perhaps you
guessed it! There's no dimming your eyes, old buck! In a word then, noble fellow, you must ask us to this evening of yours! It would help us greatly and harm you not at all. Lurissil sends her pleas with mine—very pretty ones, I promise you, they'd charm you in a minute. Come then, I know you simply overlooked us!"
Kramlod smiled with childlike wonder. "I'm baffled!" he said. "I'm nonplused. I'm robbed of speech. You and Lurissil, music lovers! For surely it's the orchestra on the raft—the prospect of waterborn music under the stars—that starts your saliva regarding our little evening! There you have it—one thinks one knows someone, only to have them reveal utterly unsuspected traits of character!"
The drinks came. Kramlod took up his and looked blandly about the inn, as if the topic had been disposed of. Defalk smiled wryly and took a pull on his firewater, no doubt to take a certain taste out of his mouth. "You're like one's elder brother," he chuckled, shaking his head as if Kramlod indeed recalled to him some affectionate memory. "You hold the candy out of one's reach, just for the joy of being taller! Look here, this is really unconscionable, old man. And you know very well I'm no music lover! You rogue!" He smiled in relish of Kramlod's roguishness. The crinkles round his eyes looked more like pain than mirth, and Kramlod studied them avidly.
"But really, Defalk. I'm absolutely adrift. What but the music could make you beg so hotly for an invitation to my little evening? I'm forced to think you're teasing, that you don't really want to come at all."
Slowly Defalk shook his head, displaying further relish for his friend's humor. "Well, well, I see you'll insist on playing the fox, Kramlod. I don't hide my motive. It will give Lurissil the opportunity of inviting the Lady Squamash to her afternoon next week. Lord Squamash's fleets have the charter for the waters adjoining my father-in-law's. We have a negotiation in view. There. A man can't be plainer. You see I don't seek to minimize the indebtedness we'd feel for this little favor from you."
"By the Crack I understand. I'm terribly thick, Defalk—ludicrously so. To make a mystery of a thing I might have seen in an instant if I'd put my mind to it. Lord Squamash! Of course! Darla swears I'm far too dim for public duties. I deny it, but in my heart I confess I think her right! This was delicious, Defalk. What was the name of it again?"
"Red-posset punch."
"Indeed. Well, I've had great amusement here, dear friend. I must get away now—Darla is hiring the music all day today, and wants my help. Convey my heartiest kisses to Lurissil."
Kramlod stood up, beaming. Defalk looked up at him blankly—getting his gorge down, I suppose, so he could speak. Kramlod waited in obliging silence, giving him the time he needed. At last Defalk said: "And your evening, Kramlod—will you invite us to it?" His voice was flat, and he didn't manage or bother to get all the hate out of it. This apparently was the last treat Kramlod was waiting for. He smiled with a pleasure which it must have felt downright obscene to have given him. He gave a brightening start of recollection and thrust his hand into his doublet.
"Now see the decay of this noble memory! Here we've been talking on and on about it, and all the time I had this for you from Darla! Here! Spare my dignity, Defalk—don't tell anyone else of this humiliating display . . . of my forgetfulness!" He tossed a little beribboned scroll on the table and left with a cheery wave.
* * *
Defalk sat still for a while, looking blank—looking like a man who was busy not thinking or feeling anything. I felt as embarrassed for him as if I'd been sharing the table with him during the brown-nosing. I was so ashamed of him I wanted to hit him. An odd thing that. I'd never have felt it, of course, if I hadn't known that Dalissem had died for this man. He picked up his drink and drained it, and sat still again. His eyes got meditative. He took on a rapt look of vengeful fantasy, and his lip's stirred, with triumphant rebukes, I guessed. At length he sighed, and ordered another drink. He never touched the invitation till he had finished his second drink and gotten up. Then he pocketed it quick and strode out.
I knew his route from the inn to the main thoroughfare, and I got ahead of him on it, glancing back to be sure of his following. Haldar waited just past the first turning I took. As you've guessed, he stood by a chariot. He was barebacked and oiled against the cold—all in the mode of a Lurkna taximan. He stood far nearer the Quill and Scroll than Defalk could usually hope to find a vehicle, as the tavern was in a commercially dead zone. We could be sure of his taking our accommodations.
"He's a minute back," I told Haldar. My friend threw me a leather sack. I sprinted ahead to the next lane, and turned down it. I ran, light and fast, to a cul-de-sac between two abandoned buildings. It was deep enough to look like a through-way when you first turned into it, but after a slight veer you saw it was blind. I passed this turn and crouched down.
After a few moments I heard the chariot coming, and then Defalk's voice: "Is this a through way? I think not."
"It is, my lord, and dodges the snarl of the carts on Vertig lane."
"I don't want to lose time . . ."
The chariot whirled past me. I jumped out to stand behind it while Haldar stopped short and heaved upward on the traces. Defalk spilled headfirst and backwards out of the cart. I brought up my sack's mouth to catch him and he tucked himself into it all the way to the waist, just as neat as your foot thrusts into your boot of a morning. Then Haldar was by me. We got the bagmouth to Defalk's ankles and knotted the heavy drawstrings. He was bellowing to bring the walls down. We righted him, and I punched him in the center of the ribs' arch, just enough to knock his breath out. He sagged, and we put him in the cart, folding him to fit the bottom. I got in the seat. Haldar turned the chariot and trotted us off to our lodgings in the wharfside district.
Hitting him had been a relief—it felt like revenge. How could he be what he was, when he had had Dalissem before him, beckoning him to all he could have been? I found I was as angry with him as Haldar was.
But, not being an idealist like Haldar, I couldn't help seeing it in a saner way too. The man had only been vain and weak. Cold-blood killing is bad enough, is it not? But to drag a living man down there . . . he was an oath-breaker. He'd sworn his life away, and it stood forfeit by all laws known in this world and the subworlds alike. I kept a firm grip on this fact in my heart, you may be sure. And wouldn't you have done the same, gritted your teeth and dragged away—for the Key of the Marmion Wizard's Mansion?
IV
Two days after taking Defalk, we lay in readiness for our descent. Our captive lay between us, tied hands and feet, with Haldar's dirk-point in the hollow of his throat.
I've said a great deal in saying we lay in readiness. Here's what it meant: We lay on top of a great velvet canopy that overhung the bed of Shamblor. The Fleetmaster himself was below us, in the bed, busy dying. Half a dozen other people were in the room. We were invisible to them all, due to the canopy's height, so long as we did not sit up, but the room was so quiet that even the growl of a man's stomach was clearly audible. I knew from some carefully stolen peeks, and from following their conversation, how they were situated.
Two of them were druggists, and wore their sable cowls up in sign of professional engagement. They did not sit down, as their guild rules forbade this at a deathbed. Of the other four, two were seated. One was a dried-out woman, Gladda, the magnate's spinster daughter and only child. The other was her nurse-companion, a burly, short-haired woman with an oddly beautiful face. The remaining two were a cousin of Shamblor and his wife. They might have found chairs, for the room was full of opulent furniture, but they stood with a stoicism that conveyed a fitting sense of humility and gratitude in advance. The man, a long rickety fellow, insisted on being the one who ministered Shamblor's medication when his breathing got rough. This was a posset in a gold cup that stood on a table by the bed.
We had got Defalk into the house the day before by delivering him, drugged, inside a gaudy funerary memento sent to the house with the condolences of a fictitious earl. It was a great ceramic tombstone, all bewre
athed with black-dyed plumes. Defalk, folded, just fit within the "stone."
The memento was accepted with perplexity by the daughter. Within the hour I followed it, properly garbed, as the said earl, I spoke to Gladda with moist intensity, wringing her unwilling hand. When I had been a mere fopling, before the days of my family's increased fortunes (we were a great house latterly decayed) a jovial old gentleman had once given me a copper for some sweets. He clapped my little shoulder, and spoke words of encouragement and good cheer which had lit a little blaze that had warmed me ever since.
But one always forgets precisely these small yet precious debts. The march of time, the whirl of events, the flow of circumstance! I had long known the kindly old man's name—Fleetmaster Shamblor—and still had never called, never squeezed that gruff but giving hand. And now I came too late! I had learned of the great man's death. And so I had sent that poor token she had already received, and had come myself with a plaque of graven silver commemorating his good deed to me.
What? He still lived?! There was still a chance to meet those eyes, still a moment in which to—you get the drift. Within five minutes Gladda was leading me up to Shamblor's chamber, and with a fairly good grace too, considering the dry and suspicious woman that she was. She was no fool, either. People will sometimes lose sight of the most fundamental truths merely through the long habit of them. I'd tinctured my tale with circumstantialities, I'd done my research, but Gladda momentarily forgot what she'd never have doubted an instant if you'd asked her about it directly. Namely, that Fleetmaster Shamblor wouldn't give a fly a swat without something in return. The plaque was a costly thing—the silversmith we got it from was paying for it himself, though he didn't know it—and perhaps the spinster was persuaded by its value. Mind you, I gave her a perfect version of the rich man who has nothing better to do than go around making himself look soulful.
