by Glen Cook
The Goddamn Parrot got active suddenly. He wriggled till he got his ugly little head out into the wind. "Garrett. A dram of information. Shinrise the Destroyer turns out to be... "
"A Lambar Coast war god? Hangs around with cherubs and winged horses?"
"How did you know?" Next thing to a whine there, Old Bones.
"I remembered." Under stress some guys just can't shut up. Back when I was in the Corps we had had us one of those for a while, a kid from the Lambar Coast.
He had called on Shinrise whenever the going got tough.
One of those awful pinpoint flashes occurred on the far side of the city again. Ectoplasmic light expanded around it. For just an instant a point of darkness existed within that globe. Then cloud serpents began to spill down and twist into the lightning-laced mass below.
Lightning popped to our right front, close and over-poweringly intense. Cat and the horses screamed. Fourteen went on a cussing jag. Because I was still looking back to the north, I didn't suffer the blinding worst of it, but a brick wall of wind did smack me and almost bust me loose for one long and thrilling downward walk in the chill night air. I clutched mane hair and turned to see what had happened.
As I turned I thought I saw something cross the fragment of a moon. If I had not known that such things were mythical, the imaginings of men who hadn't ever seen an actual flying thunder lizard, I might have believed it was a dragon.
I faced front as that insane light's intensity dwindled to where it did not hurt the eye anymore. It was the same phenomenon again, only this time so close we got hit by the expanding ectoplasmic sphere. It smashed past me. My mount staggered. Blinded by the flash, he tried desperately to stay level while he recovered.
There was a hole in the night where the pop had taken place. It was a darkness deeper than that inside a coffin buried in an underground tomb on the dark side of a world without a sun. Then, just for an instant, something reached through that hole, something that was darker still, something so dark that it glistened in the light. Rainbows slithered over it like an oil film on water. It came my way, but I don't think it was after me.
The Goddamn Parrot went berserk inside my shirt. Either he wanted to get away bad or he had decided to snack on my guts.
Fourteen squealed like somebody had set his toes on fire.
Suddenly it was colder than any cold I had endured yet. The reaching something popped back through its window of darkness. For an instant, before the hole shrank to invisibility, a dark alien eye glared through, filled with a malice that was almost crushing in its weight.
All that didn't last more than a couple of seconds. My horse barely had time to beat his wings a full stroke.
The cold penetrated right down to the core of me. I knew, whether I wanted to believe it or not, that I had looked right into the realm of the gods. Maybe the eye belonged to something so unpleasant that the gods would willingly destroy my world rather than be forced to go back where that waited.
Hmm. That didn't feel quite right, though I had a suspicion that I had just seen something a lot nastier than any of the gods who were complicating my life now.
Damn! I couldn't see Cat anywhere. And my mount seemed to be having a seizure. Not to mention the fact that the ground looked like it was about eleven miles down.
I don't like heights very much. They give me the jim-jams in a big way.
48
"Worse things waiting." When I was a lad, that was the inevitable response of the old folks if you complained about anything. "You got it easy, young man. They's worse things waiting."
They knew what they were talking about, too.
I hung on. I kept my eyes closed tight while we fell. My mount banged the air feebly with spasming wings. It screamed a horsey scream, only about fifteen times as loud as a normal ground-bound beast might have.
Just the way I always wanted to go, at the age of four hundred and eight. Riding a waking nightmare.
"They finally got me," I muttered. I took even tighter hold of the creature's mane. This one damned horse was going with me.
Another horse shrieked from far above. Sounded like it was coming closer fast. I cracked one eye to see how far we had fallen. "Oh, shit!"
I should have known better.
My mount didn't like the prognosis either. He got serious about the flapping and flopping and got his hooves right side down and his wings floundering around in the right direction.
The cherub came whirring out of the night, hummed around and around, just hanging out like he enjoyed watching things fall. He chuckled a lot. Then he held up suddenly, staring, aghast. "Oh, no! That blows everything."
I looked around, spied a half-dozen tower-tall, transparent, and obviously pissed-off figures striding toward TunFaire. None of them were Shayir or Godoroth.
Neither did I think they belonged to the Board, whose controls had failed so abominably. It looked like some of the really big guys had decided to forgo normal business—making guys sacrifice their firstborn or sneaking up on virgins disguised as critters—while they attended to some emergency heavenly housekeeping.
Fourteen shot toward me, grabbed hold, scrambled up under my blanket. I grumbled, "It's getting a little crowded in here." That distracted me from the screaming I wanted to do.
The damned horse got it all together. It beat hell out of the air with its monster wings. To no avail. We had too much downward momentum. Whambomy! We hit. We shot on down through about half a mile of tree branches. Lucky us, they slowed us down. Lucky us, none of them were big enough to stop us cold. Lucky us, when we hit water I only went in up to my ears.
We surfaced. The horse whooped and hooted and gasped after its lost breath. The Goddamn Parrot wriggled its head out of my clothes again, began a wet and lonely soliloquy filled with every cussword the Dead Man could recall from about fifty languages.
Old Chuckles has been around a long time.
The cherub came out and hovered. He agreed with the bird.
It was all my fault.
Same as it ever was.
Personally, I was too busy being glad I was still in one piece to give either one of them a hard time. But good ideas for later did occur to me.
"Where the hell are we?"
Fourteen snapped, "In a freaking swamp, moron."
That wasn't exactly hard to miss. There were mosquitoes out there big enough to carry off small pets. Otherwise, though, it was your typically wimpy Karentine swamp. If you overlooked a few poisonous bugs and snakes, it would be completely safe. Nothing like the swamps we endured down in the islands, where we faced snakes as long as anchor chains and the alligators who survived by eating them.
I found myself not feeling at all awful—for a guy who had just missed falling to his death and had missed drowning only by inches.
That horse had one ounce of brains. He didn't try to fly out of there. As soon as he got his breath back, he let out a couple of forlorn neighs. He seemed surprised when they were answered from above. Fourteen buzzed upward, rattling and clattering and cussing his way through the branches. In minutes he was back, a fresh, competition-class banger in his mouth. "This way." My mount headed out. He was not inclined to hear suggestions or commentary from me.
The beast pulled in his wings completely. He proceeded as straight horse and regained his strength quickly. The cherub led us to solid ground fast. Minutes later, we left the trees. The horse broke into a trot that graduated to a canter and then a vigorous gallop. This continued for a while, the horse not growing winded but not getting off the ground either. We went over hill and dale and farm while Cat and her mount cruised overhead. Our course tended southwest. Time seemed to take the night off. Before long we left the farmlands.
I checked the moon. For sure, it hadn't traveled nearly as far as it should have. We were on elf hill time. And covering a lot of ground. Already we were in territory that remained unsettled because people were too superstitious to live there.
A sudden vague glow limned some hil
ls up ahead. It made them look like they were standing in a circle, looking down at something they had surrounded. "Oh boy." It just got worse. I poked the Goddamn Parrot.
That gaudy chicken dia not respond—except to bite my finger. Evidently we were beyond the Dead Man's range. At last. With the Goddamn Parrot, mercifully, left with little command of his vocal apparatus.
Great. Once again I was getting a lesson in watching out what I wished for because my wishes might come true.
Those hills had to be the Bohdan Zhibak. That name translates into modern Karentine as "The Haunted Circle." Over the ages a lot of really awful things are supposed to have happened there. And tonight, it seemed, the tabled Fires of Doom were ablaze inside the Circle. Fourteen didn't want to get any closer. He was not shy about telling everyone about it.
49
Cat landed. We dismounted. She told Fourteen to shut up or go away. I hung on to a stirrup in order to maintain my defiance of the seductions of gravity. I felt like I had been living in that saddle for days. I glared at Cat. "You saved me from those lunatics back in town so you could sacrifice me out here?"
"Calm down. Fourteen, you shut up. You can be put back away with your brothers and sisters."
That worked on the cherub but not on me, though I protested, "I am calm. If I wasn't a veteran of all that screwiness in TunFaire I might not be calm. I might have a case of the rattlemouth like my buddy Fourteen. But, I mean, what's to get excited about, just because I find myself alongside the Haunted Hills? Just because there's all that doom light burning up out of the ground over there without, I bet, there being a real fire anywhere around? None of that ought to frighten a mouse."
I saw something move across the valley ahead of us, little more than a shadow hurrying, late for work. I didn't want to be on its list of chores.
"Plans change, Garrett. Originally Mom just wanted to get you out of there. But that was before the disaster."
"Which disaster? They come in strings lately." I dug the Goddamn Parrot out of my shirt, looked around in there to see what damage he had done. I wasn't going to die, but I was sore enough that I would have strangled the ridiculous little feather duster if he had not been too dull-witted to appreciate what I was doing. I parked him on my shoulder. He had just enough wit to hang on. Fourteen had a notion to take up residence opposite him. I did not feel guilty when I swatted him away.
"Which disaster? The breakdown of discipline. The squabbling. When they use their powers that way they weaken the walls of reality. What is that thing?" She meant the Goddamn Parrot.
"A really bad practical joke."
"Excuse me?"
"It's a parrot. Argh! Shiver me timbers! Like that."
"I'm so pleased that you can maintain your sense of humor." But she didn't sound pleased.
"It's all I've got that's all mine. What the hell are we doing out here?" Not even Winger would have the numskull nerve to go wandering around the Bohdan Zhibak.
"Because of the holes in the fabric. You saw what was happening. One blew out right in your face. If the walls really break down... "
I knew enough mythology to guess. Cold beyond imaginable cold. Eternal darkness beyond imaginable darkness. The end of the world. But just the unspeakable beginning for the unnamable eldritch horrors from beyond the beginning of time. Never mind it all sprang from the imagination in the first place. "Come on! This is some game between two gangs of petty half-wit gods who needed me to sort them out to see who gets to stay respectable. All of a sudden I've got to save the world?" I'm not big on world-saving. Way too much traveling and not nearly enough reward in the end. Not to mention you don't get much sleep.
"No! Of course not. Don't be absurd! You think too much of yourself. If you keep your mouth shut except when somebody asks you a question and you don't smart off when they do, you may survive long enough to see the world get saved."
Put me in my place, she did. "What's going on here?" We were sneaking between a couple of hills, crunching dry grass and bare stone, in weather that was appropriate for the season. Fourteen buzzed hither and yon, ahead, but very tentatively and very low to the ground. He wanted to be there less than I did. There was an astonishing shawl of stars flung across the shoulders of a cloudless sky. The moon was in no hurry yet, though it had climbed higher.
The light up ahead wavered, waxed, waned. Sounds came down the valley, inarticulate but angry. "I don't like this, Cat. Last time I came home from the Cantard I swore I'd never leave TunFaire again. Till now I've stuck to that." More or less. But no lapse of mine had brought me this far afield.
Damn! This could turn real nasty. I might have to walk home.
"The gods have a secret, Garrett." She allowed the cherub to settle into her arms for a moment of rest. She held and patted him as if he were a baby. He seemed to like that.
"Just one? Then a lot of paper has gone to waste turning out holy books that claim to explain the ten million mysteries... "
"There you go again. Can't you ever just listen?"
Maybe when I run my yap I feel like I'm in control. I needed some control here. Desperately.
"Go ahead."
The cherub lit up a fresh banger that he pulled out of his diaper. He got fire by snapping his fingers.
Cat took the smoke. "Not now. Not here. Garrett, all gods, whatever their pantheon, whatever dogma has accreted around them, came from the same place and started out much the same. You looked into that place a while ago. The gods fled it because it's so terrible. But over here they can't stay functional, can't hang on, without belief to sustain them. Or without drawing power from the other side, which risks opening new gateways. If they have no sustenance at all, eventually they fall back to the other side. Naturally, they don't want to go home."
"You mean they're all related?"
"No. Is everyone in TunFair related? Of course not. They're not even all of the same race. Say this is like some of the humans going off somewhere together, in search of a better life. If they found it they might not want to come back."
"You telling me they're refugees?" The gods are refugees from somewhere else? Wouldn't that stir some excitement in the Dream Quarter? Wouldn't that be dangerous knowledge for some non-god to be lugging around?
This was no place for me. I had a notion I was one of the non-gods.
"Cat, you're a doll and I love you, but this isn't my idea of the perfect date. I've got a sneaking suspicion my prospects would be a lot better if I headed some other direction." Like any damned direction but this one.
Cat grabbed my hand. She was strong. My course remained steady, straight ahead. She told me, "You have a tool."
"Huh?"
"You can make yourself invisible."
"Yeah. But when I do, the Godoroth always know where I'm at."
"And you think they'd try something here?"
"Why the hell not? They've already proved they're bonkers. But you know them. I don't."
"We should remain unnoticed. For now."
"That's what I had in mind when I said let's go." I started to head for the horses. Just this once they looked like the lesser evil.
Cat still had my hand and she hadn't gotten any weaker. I got nowhere.
We were near the edge of the light and had attracted no attention yet. Shapes and shadows haunted the hillsides. Wouldn't you know a place called the Haunted Circle would be like that? I didn't recognize any of them. Few were in anthropomorphic form.
More arrived by the moment, flopping, flying, slithering, jogging in on two hundred legs. "Sooner or later something is going to trip over us." I tried beating feet again. Have I mentioned Cat's unusual strength? I didn't go anywhere this time either.
I took out Magodor's cord, stretched it, knotted it, created a loop big enough for two. We hopped inside. "This may get real friendly," I warned.
Cat smiled a wicked smile that told me the deviltry was in her but she wasn't feeling flirtatious right now. She could stick to business where her mother could not. It seemed
my sack of invisibility could be made as big as whatever loop I started with, plus however high I could raise that loop before I closed it up. By holding hands and staying in step, Cat and I were able to move the sack with little trouble. She insisted on heading right out into the middle of the lighted ground. Once we were there we could see all the hillsides. Our presence didn't attract any attention. Still I saw nothing I recognized. The mob fell silent. The result was spooky. All that many humans in one place would have created a racket like hurricanes raising hell amongst the boughs of tropical forests. I turned slowly, examining every hill. I was scared, but I was not out of control. Not like Fourteen, who was down between our feet trying to vanish into our footprints, unable, apparently, to believe we were truly invisible.
I whispered, "I take it little ones like him don't get treated real well by the big guys."
"Cruelty is in their nature."
I didn't stop turning, studying. Few of these gods clung to any shape I had seen in the Dream Quarter. Maybe out here the belief of their worshippers was attenuated enough to let them relax. Scary to think things as ugly as Ringo and as attractive as Star might be identical blobs on one of those hillsides. Pity, that.
I whispered, "You know any of those things?" I noticed a few taking imaginable shapes for flickering instants. Maybe their worshippers were thinking of them.
"No. My mother worked hard to keep me a secret from them. If Imar found out about me... "
Of course. It was just ducky being a half god if a god was your pop and your mom was human. A divine tradition. The great heroes of antiquity all had some heavenly blood. But goddesses aren't supposed to boff the suckers, apparently.
The old double standard was alive and well amongst the sons of heaven. Or whatever you called that over there. Always nice to know that some things are the same in heaven as they are on earth. Lets everybody know where they stand.
The shadows continued to gather like buzzards to a freshly fallen thunder lizard. The great towering ones began to arrive, their eyes like cities burning, their hair the ugliest thunderheads. I whispered, "What's happening here, anyway?" I was sure no such assembly had taken place before, ever.
