“I’ll try,” he promised. “Each time, I’ll try.”
She was about to say more, but there was an abrupt change in their surroundings: darkness like banked flames erupted in front of them, and a sound worse than thunder and the firing of many cannon shot the air. Lurid shadows fell over them, and the air echoed with screams.
“What…?” Arkady demanded, suddenly wishing that he was armed and mounted with a full troop of cavalry behind him.
“The Bundhi. He has found us.” She turned them around, away from the ghosts of battle and death that loomed before them, and pointed to the rising walls of the bamboo redoubt. “Don’t let that touch you, Arkady my champion; it is dangerous in this other place as well as in the daily world.”
With an unconcealed shudder, Arkady remembered the body he had found in the deserted village, and he could not deny his repugnance. “I won’t touch it.”
“The bamboo is alive. It feeds.” She was on the verge of panic as the redoubt walls rose higher behind them.
“Surata!” His tone was sharp, deliberately jarring.
“They’re seeking us.” Everything about her urged flight.
“Steady,” he ordered as if he were leading his men against overwhelming forces. “We can manage it, with a little good sense.”
“We can leave this other place,” she suggested.
“And then the Bundhi would send his tigers after us while we are still naked, lazy from fulfillment? No thank you. I’d rather throw him off the scent.” He pondered the problem. “Surata, does he know what…we’re doing? Now, in the daily world?”
“Yes,” she answered.
“Does he…have the means to follow us because of that?”
“How do you mean?” Her apprehension was controlled now, but the redoubt was increasing in size at a steady and alarming rate.
“I mean that being together could be something he can use. He might be able to know that we are together here, and will use that as a link to where we are in the daily world.” He waited impatiently for her to answer him. He had been sliding away through the air, but the redoubt did not become a distant place as he had hoped it would.
“He could,” she said carefully, her words ringing their warning in his skull.
“But…” Arkady began, feeling his way, “what if we were to make him think we were in another place, would he believe that? Would it be possible to make it appear that we’re in a barn or…any building, or ruins? Could he be made to assume that we were there and not where we are?”
She strove to match his composure. “I really don’t know. It was never suggested that we could lie about such things. Still, it…might work.”
“Is there anything else that we can do instead that you know of?” He was not challenging her; he wanted nothing more than to learn she had a trusted and successful way to avoid the Bundhi and the voracious bamboo staves that made up his redoubt and the strength of his agents and himself in the daily world. “Did your father or your uncles tell you that they…?”
“Nothing,” she admitted sadly. “Before, the Bundhi always knew where we were, in any case. Our redoubt was an old one, one that had been established generations upon generations ago. It was part of our power, as his redoubt—this one and the one in the daily world—are part of his. There was never any need or inclination to dissemble.” She trembled as the bamboo expanded, appearing now to be the size of the pillars of temples and throbbing with vile appetite.
“Do they know we’re here?” He dreaded what her answer might be.
“They know. But they are as blind as I am and have no way to locate us beyond the sense they have of…prey.” If it were possible, she seemed to become more completely part of him.
“What do they want to do? Feed on us here and in the daily world at the same time?” It was a guess, but one that made a curious sort of strategic sense to him.
“The Bundhi would like that, but he would want to be able to find us in both places himself.” She gave a little shriek that came through his mouth. “Arkady my champion, look! There are more staves.”
The redoubt had more than trebled in size since they had first seen it, and now it appeared to be enclosing them in vast, ascending walls.
“Where is the Bundhi?” Arkady demanded, wondering if he dared to attack the sorcerer directly.
“There! All around us! Don’t you understand that he is the redoubt. This is not only where he comes in this other place, it is his manifestation.” She shook as if consumed with fever. “Arkady my champion, we must leave and be sure that…your trick diverts him and his agents.”
“Right,” he said harshly.
(“Arkady-champion, are there any rats in the hay? I don’t want to ruin this with rats.” The words came out in a rush and she rolled them so that neither of them could see the last embers of their fire.
(“There are usually rats in stables. But cats live here as well. They’ll keep the rats away.” He blinked, trying to concentrate on what sort of stable they were in. “Don’t light the lanthorn, Surata. The dark is better.”)
Together Arkady and Surata put on a burst of speed, then, as they moved beyond range of the staves, Surata whispered urgently, “Quickly; think of a place or other grand place—the biggest and most beautiful building you’ve ever seen.”
Confused, Arkady did his best to remember the castles and cathedrals of his youth, and came up with an immense building that was a fortress version of Saint Stanislas as he recalled it from his childhood. It was so vast, with tall, buttressed arches and windows of stained glass letting in light of so many colors that the air of the place seemed tangible with it. Statues of Saints and the Virgin and Our Lord were everywhere, all in the scale a seven-year-old boy would perceive.
“Did you like this place?” Surata asked as the structure soared around them.
“I don’t know. It awed me too much to like it.” He was amazed at what she had done, and he hesitated only a moment before he said so. “How can you do this?”
“It is what we learn, when we are trained for this life. This was strange for me; I have never been to such places. Is all your stone so dark and your ceilings so high? They did not appear so in your other memories.”
“You’re…tired,” he blurted with surprise.
“This takes strength,” she said by way of explanation. “It will not protect us for long, but long enough, I hope, to confuse the Bundhi while he tries to determine where the stable is.” She changed her tone. “You saved us this time, Arkady my champion. I was useless when I should have been fighting with you. I am abashed.”
“You were afraid.” He did not accuse her, but it was apparent he would not allow her to protest his judgment. “You needed me at first because I can fight. I’ve shown you now that you made a good choice.”
“I knew that from the first,” she said, not willing to accept his implied excuse for herself. “I did what I have been taught I must not do, and for that we were nearly consumed. I was not worthy of your defense or your trust.”
He was aware of how great her disgust with her actions was; it was as keen a sense in him as his own feelings. “Surata, look at me. Look. You have no reason to do this. You have to accept that even the most seasoned soldier will sometimes freeze, for no reason at all, in the face of the enemy. Others will weep like frightened babies at the sound of cannon-fire, though it has never troubled them before. You know the strength of the Bundhi, and you know it far better than I. It was too hard for you to think about it, for a little while.”
She was not consoled by his kindness. “I should have acted. I knew the consequences, for both of us, and still—”
“Stop that. If you spend our time berating yourself, we won’t be ready to meet the Bundhi’s next attack. There’s one sure to come.” He wanted to take her by the shoulders and give her a quick shake, but it was impossible, with her a part of him.
“If the Bundhi comes again, we have this, and it will give us some protection.” She paused. �
��We ought to do more with that stable, but I’m worried that if we give away too much, it will become apparent that it is our imagination and not a real place.”
“We haven’t given much willingly—this can be no exception, or the Bundhi might grow suspicious. It would be the sensible thing to do, under the circumstances. You’ve said that he has very little trust in anything.” His cool attitude at last had the effect he had hoped it would.
“Yes; all right.” She shivered with disquiet. “I don’t know these places, Arkady my champion. This building is…strange and forbidding to me. What do you do in a place like this?”
“Worship God,” Arkady answered, aware that she did not and would never have the same sense of comfort he did. To her the stone room was stark, the towering statues cold and unresponsive, inhuman in their holiness. He studied the surroundings with his shared knowledge of her and could not believe any longer in the succor of the cathedral-fortress he had brought forth out of his memories.
“Arkady my champion, what is wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“What is it?” she insisted.
Before he could answer her, a bamboo staff the size of a tree trunk fell through one of the stained-glass windows, scattering bright shards of the Martyrdom of Saint Boniface of Querfurt over the stone floor.
Chapter 20
Arkady shouted, feeling Surata’s alarm as well as his own. The stones shook with the impact of the bamboo, and he realized his hands were burning where he had accidentally touched the surface of the tremendous staff.
“We can’t stay here,” Surata said, spurred to action. “And it is not yet time to go back. We are not ready to go back. We can still do a few things to protect ourselves, and we must try.”
“But the Bundhi,” Arkady protested as he watched the stones melt like ice at the end of winter. The staff lay across them, filling the air with a charnel-house stench. “The Bundhi will try to find us here in this other place as well as in the daily world.”
“He has found us already,” Surata said. “And that is not a good thing for us. You have seen men surrounded, haven’t you, and cut off?”
“Yes. It’s rare that anyone gets free of such a trap.”
She could feel his bitterness but chose to ignore it. “Then think of what you would do then and we will do it now.”
Arkady laughed, and with his laughter, the walls of the cathedral-fortress broke and dissolved. The bamboo staff hovered not far from them, undulating slightly. “And what now? We’re still exposed.”
“But not enclosed,” she pointed out. “In this other place, it is difficult to build walls that last forever.” Her strength was returning, making him feel stronger and more capable than he had since they fled the expanding walls of the redoubt. “We can go through this other place with great speed. It will lengthen the time we are gone from the daily world, but it will divert the attention of the Bundhi.”
“Where did you get an idea like that?” he asked her, surprised at her acumen.
“From you, Arkady my champion,” she said with a trace of amusement. “It is your mind that tells me these things.”
He knew what she meant, as he knew her thoughts, but he could think of no way to acknowledge this, and so he said, “It’s a good idea, and we’d best act on it quickly, before the Bundhi finds another way to capture us.”
At that, he felt himself made lighter, lighter, until he was nothing more than thistledown floating in the vastness, Surata with him, and lighter than he. There was no voice left to either of them, but Surata said softly in the long fibers that radiated out from the center of him, “You are learning, Arkady my champion. Until now, you’ve been anchored in your own shape. This is great progress and it pleases me that you have done it.”
He wanted to respond, but found no way, and in his confusion, he almost forced her to return him to his proper body. “What is this?” he finally was able to inquire, although he had no notion of how he had managed it.
“It is a start toward your growth, Arkady my champion,” said her voice without sound. “With this, we have a chance.”
He tried to deal with her praise, but found his impressions so jumbled that he could not fasten on any idea for very long. His consternation increased. “What good is this?”
“We will be able to meet the Bundhi with some of his abilities for ourselves.” She hesitated. “Aren’t you aware that the redoubt of the Bundhi here is the Bundhi, in another form? What the bamboo eats in this place nourishes the Bundhi. What the bamboo eats in the daily world nourishes the bamboo.” She grew more somber, and the thistledown no longer wafted on unfelt breezes.
Arkady thought of what she had told him—that in this other place, the Bundhi and his redoubt were one in the same—and it worried him. It was one thing to storm a fortress; he had done it enough times in the past to know how it was done. But this was another matter entirely. He had never had such a battle to fight, and he did not know what he ought to do. No matter how he puzzled over the matter, he thought of nothing. He let her carry them wherever she liked, and experienced something that might be speed, or simply distance.
“Arkady my champion,” she said some little while later, “we have come far, and if the Bundhi wishes to find us, he will have quite a search on his hands. That gives us time to make a safe place to use later on.”
“How do you make a safe place here, where everything changes?” He could not hide from her the disgust he felt, nor the futility that had taken hold of him.
She did not upbraid him for his melancholy but said, “There are things that can be made here that will last as long as your will lasts. That is the nature of this other place. You will have to join with me to make such a place for us. If we could unite to the point that we became the Divine Child, then we would have no need for the protection of a fortress or other barrier, but you are not so advanced that it is possible for the Divine Child to manifest yet.” Her tone changed. “You have heard of a castle, I perceive, that is in an island in a low salt lake. That would provide protection. It is a thing that the Bundhi does not know, and because he does not know it, he will not be looking for it. Your…cathedral”—the word was strange to her and she pronounced it clumsily—“was too much like a temple, and for that reason, the Bundhi sought us out. But a place that you think of, that stone fortress in a salt marsh, that should stop him for a little while.”
“Why would it stop him, when the other didn’t?” Arkady asked, confused and irritated.
“I have explained that. The Bundhi will not look for it at first, and that is the advantage we need.” Her tone was becoming more enthusiastic. “You must understand, Arkady my champion, that we need a haven, one where we will be able to resist the Bundhi for the time he pursues us.”
Arkady shook himself in confusion, and the thistledown quivered in the emptiness. “Right. I will try to remember everything I know about that castle. It’s old, and it’s held off more attacks than most. The marsh around it is filled with sinking sand, so that any approaching without knowing where to step will be sucked under the water.” He put all his effort into recalling the vast salt marsh. The place was desolate but secure.
“Very good, Arkady my champion. For a man untrained to this study, you are apt.” She was more encouraged, which communicated itself to him. “Let us establish this place, and then we may come to it when we need it.”
In the void, there was shimmering light, the color of the sea and the color of stone, green and gray, with a somber shine that looked like the glint of sunlight on polished armor. Arkady felt an inner pride as the fortress took shape before him.
“Is this right, Arkady my champion?” Surata asked, her voice more thready than it had been.
“Yes, it’s right,” he said with satisfaction. “There is a causeway to approach it, and a drawbridge, so that the castle can be completely isolated.” As he described it, the thing came into being. “Beautiful, Surata.”
“…grateful,” she breathed, her
strength almost gone.
“What is it?” he asked her, feeling how exhausted she had become.
“It takes…strength to…keep such a place…real.” Her sigh was fluttery, so soft that there might not be any breath at all behind it.
“Surata!” Arkady demanded, afraid of the sound of her.
“I am both here with you and there in that castle,” she forced herself to say. “It is…what I know to do.”
“Almighty God!” he protested. “You’re hurting yourself.” He felt it as keenly as he felt his own tenuous existence in the thistledown.
“Not badly, Arkady my champion. Here we can defend…”
Her failing accents gripped him in fear. “No, Surata—”
“It is protection,” she insisted, so feebly.
“Enough of this. I won’t have you risking yourself to make a place for me to hide.” He attempted to change his form, or to be able to reach her in her efforts. “Surata!”
“It is…good, Arkady…my champion.”
“Not if it hurts you, it’s not,” he countered, feeling her fading in his thoughts. “Stop, Surata.”
(“Surata! Surata!” He took her by the shoulders, then held her tight against him.
(“Arkady-champion,” she murmured, sounding a long way off.)
“Arkady my champion, the castle is for you.” She was struggling to be stronger. “Together we can be there.”
“Not this way, not losing you!” He wanted to be more than thistledown, more substantial than anything in this other place. “Damn everything!” He shook with the violence of his feelings and the spiky ends of the thistledown quavered for the inadequacy of their form.
“The castle,” she pleaded. “Go there.”
He could not bear to listen to her, to know how much she had sacrificed of her own power to make him safe. He felt himself drift forward, over the shine of the salt marshes toward the castle and the safety of its massive walls. He strove to resist this, certain that Surata was so enervated that she would not be able to continue the transformation for long.
To the High Redoubt Page 30
