A Handful of Men: The Complete Series

by Dave Duncan

  As she struggled upright on the bed, he tripped on the steps and crashed down on the porch. The whole cottage rocked. She scrambled to her feet and reeled unsteadily to the wall, through the doorway, and across the outer room.

  She found him curled up as he must have landed, breathing hoarsely. Appalled, she knelt and laid a hand on his sweat-soaked hair.

  “Mist? What’s wrong?” She could hardly think through the torrent of dread he was projecting. Her skin broke out in gooseflesh.

  He shuddered violently, breath croaking and rattling.

  “Tell me!” she cried. “Speak, Mist!”

  He raised a face the color of old snow. His eyes were round and his lips blue. He drooled like a dog.

  “The Defile! You can’t imagine! Oh, Gods!”

  She recoiled as he grabbed at her arm, crushing it with his big fingers.

  “The Defile… whatever you do… don’t let them… Stay away from there!”

  “Mist, you’re hurting me!”

  A board creaked; a shadow fell across them both.

  “That is all the extra trouble we needed!” another voice snapped. A heavyset young man stood there, glaring down angrily at the unheeding novice. Either his emotions were masked or Mist’s distress was drowning them out.

  “Who are you?” Thaïle shouted. She tried to rise, but Mist still held her arm. She staggered, swaying with sudden dizziness, and had to steady herself with a hand on the floor.

  Piercing gold eyes flashed fury at her. “Never mind! We’re leaving. I am sorry this young idiot disturbed you. Someone has been very careless.”

  Her arm was held no longer; both men vanished simultaneously. The door behind her slammed in the wind. She tried to reach it and her limbs would not obey her. She sprawled on the planks. By the time her head stopped spinning and her heart calmed down to something like its normal pace, she had almost convinced herself that she was hallucinating. Just faintness caused by hunger, that was all!

  Ignoring the bruises on her arm, the footprints on the grass, and the muddy marks on the stoop, she went back indoors.

  3

  The library complex stood on a high cliff overlooking the Morning Sea. The Scriptorium was one of the largest buildings, and the whole north wall was glass. Sorcerers could read and write perfectly well in complete darkness, of course, but that effort would have added to the occult noise they made in their labors, which was distracting enough already. The work hall was shielded. It would have been more pleasant had each of the many desks had its own shielding. Jain did not know why nobody had ever thought of that. Perhaps everybody did at some time or another and was scared to suggest the idea in case people thought they could not concentrate properly, which was why he didn’t.

  He was having great difficulty concentrating that morning. He was supposed to be restoring some genealogical records dating from very early in the College’s history, not long after the War of the Five Warlocks. Every page had to be freed of the remains of preservation sorcery, upgraded to legibility, and then preserved again. It was a monotonous and yet exacting task, and he was miserably aware that he was making an unconscionable racket doing it. He felt sure that everyone else in the great room was laughing at him.

  It was not fair! That fourth word must have been defective, and now he was stuck with the words he knew until the day he died. He might gain a fraction more power from time to time when whoever else shared his various words died, but then he would just have to share that word with some pimply-faced novice, so any improvement would be very brief.

  Eventually he took a rest from his labors. He wandered out to the stacks and consulted some of the historical archives. Mearn had not been far wrong. The last reported assembly of the archons had been two hundred seventy-six years ago and was believed to have debated a shortage of words of power. Whenever there was need of a new Keeper, the archons chose one of their own number as replacement, but apparently they could do so without formally assembling.

  Grumpily he went back to his desk.

  And now this wisp of a girl had provoked an assembly? Slouched on his stool, he worked it out and his hair stood erect. Archon Raim had asserted—and puissant sorcerers were seldom mistaken—that someone had been meddling. No one within the College would or could tamper with its official business, the Keeper’s business. Never! So the meddling must originate Outside. So security had been breached. So the work of a millennium was overthrown, and the demons might invade Thume again, bringing all the evils of ancient times. Jain’s reclusive pixie heart cringed into a prune.

  He decided to go and talk with Mearn, as the two of them seemed to be in this together. He hurried out of the Scriptorium into sunshine and the cool spring wind, and strode off along the Way.

  A sorcerer’s hunch told him to look near the Commons and he found her outside, in the courtyard. Even a mundane could have guessed she would be outdoors somewhere. Four novices had passed through the Defile the previous night and would still be recovering. They would especially want sunlight. She was sitting at an outdoor table with three of them, in the dappled shade of an arbutus tree, which had not been there yesterday. Apart from them, the courtyard was empty, but it would soon fill up. Lunch was a popular social event.

  “How did it go?” he inquired, pulling up a chair.

  Mearn pursed her lips at him, but with less than her usual distaste. “Novice Doob had a nice walk in the hills.” She glanced at the youngest of the three.

  He smiled back shyly. “I’m going home!”

  “What’s his talent?” Jain inquired. The boy wasn’t close to pubescent yet, and looked about as intelligent as an average mango.

  “He hasn’t any but his Uncle Kulth wouldn’t believe it.”

  “No harm done?”

  “No, he saw nothing but moonlight and shadows. Can’t say the same for Novice Maig.”

  The second boy was slouched slackly in his chair, arms dangling, head propped against the wall; he might have been put in position by somebody other than himself. He seemed quite unaware of the world around him. His face was locked into a sick stare of horror, and his unblinking eyes gave Jain familiar shivers.

  “Don’t look—it’s very nasty.” Mearn meant not to look inside, of course. “He was half-witted to begin with,” she said sourly.

  “It happens. Will he recover?”

  “Probably not. Of course!” she added aloud. “Just takes a little time.”

  Not necessarily. Jain would certainly never forget his own visit to the Defile, nor the many sleepless nights that had followed. He had gone in with six companions and come out with five. The biggest, toughest-looking novice in his class had died of fright. Admittedly that was unusual. The sneer on Mearn’s face showed that she knew what he was thinking.

  She turned to regard the third youth. “However, I think Novice Woom may have gained some benefit from the night’s activities.”

  Woom was old enough to show that he had missed shaving. He had been sitting with his arms on the table, staring fixedly into a mug of coffee. Now he raised his head to send Mearn a stare of calculated dislike. He was holding himself under very tight control, so that his whole body seemed clenched. His eyes still bore the wildness of eyes that had looked on unimagined horrors. His lower lip was swollen where he had chewed it. He had also torn the palms of his hands with his nails and was keeping them hidden.

  “Do you enjoy subjecting people to that?” he inquired hoarsely.

  “Normally, no,” she said quickly. “Sometimes, yes. You were an obnoxious streak of slime yesterday. Today you know that there’s more to life than poking your betters in the eye.”

  He flushed, but he held her gaze a long moment before speaking again. “I can go back to a clean slate?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Good.” He returned to his brooding.

  Mearn radiated a burst of satisfaction. “See that? He’s ten years older than he was last night!”

  “Would you go through what he did if you cou
ld be ten years younger tomorrow?”

  “Of course not. Stupid question.”

  Woom looked up again, frowning. “Where’s Novice Mist, ma’am? Is he all right?”

  Mearn primped up her mouth as she so often did. “And concern for others now, see? He had what I call the panic reaction,” she said aloud. “He’ll run himself to exhaustion and probably pass out. He’ll feel better when he wakens. I’ll go and track him down shortly.”

  Woom’s lips writhed into a mawkish smile, while his wild eyes did not shift their expression at all. “And did you make a man out of him, also, ma’am?”

  Jain suppressed a grin. Nicely done, lad!

  Mearn did not flinch—she had been processing adolescents for longer than a mundane lifetime. “If I give you my opinion, will you keep it to yourself?”

  Woom blinked, then nodded.

  “I think Novice Mist broke in the kiln. I don’t think there were the makings of a man there to start with.”

  “So what do you do with the pieces?”

  “We send them home. He’ll find some sucker of a woman to care for him. Perhaps his descendants will be Gifted. The worthwhile ones we keep, and let them help us.”

  Woom blinked again, and then looked down at his coffee again. “Thanks,” he said quietly.

  “One out of four—that’s well above average,” Mearn sent. “And this one has real promise.”

  Her paean of self-satisfaction was interrupted. A clap of thunder in the ambience announced the arrival of Novice Mist alongside the table. He was standing on his feet, but at an impossible angle. Mearn made an occult grab to stop him falling. Jain jumped up to help, and they lowered him onto a chair.

  A quick glance of hindsight told Jain that Mist had been dispatched from the Thaïle Place by Archon Raim himself. He shuddered at the implications. Things just kept getting worse, and it was almost noon.

  4

  The archon had told Jain he would be summoned and there was no denying the summons when it came. While he was helping Mearn restore Novice Mist to jittery consciousness, the world seemed to open under him. He plunged into cold darkness. He staggered, seeking sure footing on uneven, spongy ground.

  His first thought was that he had gone blind and deaf, but that was only because the ambience was now closed to him. All his power had been taken away. He felt bereft and vulnerable, because he had come to rely on sorcerous talents far more than on his mundane senses. After a confused moment he established that he was standing in forest denser than any he had ever seen. Enormous trunks soared up to a canopy thick enough to cut off the noonday sun. The damp, fetid air was heavy on his skin—cloying and stagnant, as if no healthy breezes ever penetrated.

  His feet had sunk to the ankle in soggy moss; his hose were already soaked by clammy, knee-high ferns. The faint chattering noise beside him was coming from Mistress Mearn’s teeth.

  As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, a vast building came into view before him, a pile so ancient that it seemed to have sunk into the forest and become part of it, or else to be itself a product of the jungle, something that had grown there over the ages. The old walls were cracked and canted, the very stones crumbling under leprous coats of greenish lichens. Narrow windows once inset with glass were now gaping holes toothed by fragments of columns and tracery. Doors, likewise, had long since rotted away; the entrance archway gawked at him like the mouth of an idiot. The roof must have survived, though, for the interior was even darker than the enveloping forest.

  “The Chapel!” Mearn said unnecessarily. “I… I did not expect it to be so large.” She moved forward, and he hastened to follow. Stumbling on roots and rotten timber, they waded through the drippy undergrowth to the forbidding facade. The building had sunk or the forest had risen; uncertain light revealed a ramp of humus and detritus leading down to the dark interior floor.

  Resisting an absurd urge to take Mearn’s hand, Jain forced himself to go first. The footing was firmer than he had feared it might be. He paused when his feet reached wet flagstones, and in a moment she joined him, doubtless cursing loss of farsight just as he was. The air was cold and dead. They stood within a vestry of some sort, so black that the forest seemed bright behind them. In the inner corners, two fainter glows showed where archways led through the nave. They advanced cautiously, finding the paving clear of traps or obstacles.

  From the sumptuous jeweled church of the College itself to humble rustic shrines, every holy place Jain had ever seen had been designed to illustrate the eternal conflict between the Good and the Evil. Always there would be a bright window and a dark window, and a balance standing upon an altar. Even ancient ruins that he had noted in his travels as a recorder had shown evidence of the same basic plan. This abandoned, forgotten place had none of that; it predated the fashion or had been built by maniacs. There was no altar, no furniture at all that he could see, and the framework itself seemed perplexingly lacking in symmetry. The proportions and angles were wrong, the empty arched windows placed at random, no two quite the same height or shape or size. The roof was a dark mystery.

  He had just concluded that the crypt was empty when he made out a small group of people standing in the far corner. He pointed at them. Mearn nodded uneasily, then headed that way without a word. Should they go slowly to show respect, or hasten so as not to keep the archons waiting? He let her set the pace and she went slowly—perhaps she was as scared as he was; perhaps hurry would be impossible in that ominous sanctity. The flagstones here were dry and bare, but uneven. Each footstep was swallowed by a silence that seemed too solid for mortals to disturb, as if the very air had congealed into sadness.

  Eight cloaked figures stood in a rough circle, their cowled heads bent in meditation. All eight wore the same plain garb; Jain could see no significance to their grouping. Obviously they were the archons assembled. He had been worrying that the Keeper might preside over such gatherings. Archons would be bad enough. At least they were human.

  As the newcomers arrived, the nearer figures moved slightly, opening a gap. They did so without looking around, which suggested that their sorcery was still operative. Jain and Mearn stepped into line, closing the circle but staying closer to each other than to the flanking archons.

  He glanced surreptitiously around the silent figures, wondering why they did not tell him to stop making such a racket, for his heart was hammering like a woodpecker. They continued to ignore him, studying the ground. He saw then that the group was not located at random, or because the archons had wanted to be in a corner. They were gathered around a particular dark patch of floor, about the size of a bed. Its surface was slightly raised, perhaps uneven and lumpy, although he could make out no real detail in the gloom. After a while, as his eyes continued to adjust, he began to suspect that the patch was wet. A leak in the ancient ceiling would not be exactly surprising. Then the chill creeping remorselessly into his flesh made him wonder if water would freeze here.

  And finally he realized that of course the black layer was ice. This was why the Chapel was so sacred. He was looking at Keef’s grave, last resting place of the first Keeper. That somber ice was composed of the tears the pixies had shed for Keef over a thousand years. This was the very heart of the College and Thume itself.

  For some reason Jain thought then of the name the Outsiders were reputed to use for Thume: the Accursed Place. He had never understood that term and no one had ever managed to explain it to him, but now it seemed oddly appropriate for a realm that would take a tomb as its most revered relic and then hide it away where almost no one ever saw it.

  The vigil continued. Eventually the archon on his left moved slightly aside. Jain heard a faint sound at his back and a woman stepped into the gap, wheezing nervously. Her face was only a pallid blur, but he recognized her as Analyst Shole. He edged closer to Mearn, to make the spacing more even. Stillness returned.

  He hoped this assembly would do something soon and dismiss him before he froze to death here in the dark, or died of fear.
r />   “May we serve the Good always,” intoned one of the cowled archons—Jain could not tell which.

  “Amen!” chorused the others. He jumped, wondering if he should join in.

  “May the Gods and the Keeper bless our deliberations.”

  “Amen!”

  Mearn and Shole stayed silent. Jain decided to take his cue from them—he was only a lowly archivist. And an innocent one, he reminded himself. He had done nothing wrong. He had nothing to fear. It was not his fault

  “Analyst Shole,” whispered the same voice as before, deadly and impersonal like a winter wind. “You and Archivist Mearn delivered the woman Thaïle of a male child. You removed all physical results of that birth. You transported her to the College.”

  Shole muttered an incoherent agreement.

  “Tell us exactly what power you used on her memories.”

  Jain waited for the reply and then knew that there was not going to be one. The archons were reading the answer directly from the woman’s thoughts. They were, after all, the eight most powerful sorcerers in Thume—except for the Keeper, who was more than just a sorceress. His flesh crawled.

  “You have not spoken to the novice, or used power upon her, since that day?” Whoever was speaking, it was not Raim.

  “No, noble sir.”

  “We are satisfied. You may leave.”

  “I would have used greater power except you… except I had been instructed—”

  “We know. You may go.”

  Shole spun on her heel and in seconds her footsteps were lost in the massive, immovable silence.

  Jain braced himself. Now it would be his turn! He wished he could make out faces, but they were hidden from him. He could not tell how many of the eight were men, how many women. He was unable even to determine the color of their dark robes.