“Thank you, good lady,” Maddoc enjoined most seriously. “I should like a room with a southerly exposure and a private bathing room, if you would be so kind.”
“Well, Maddoc, you may have it,” Galen said, dropping his sack down on the rock. Relieved of his burden, he stretched as he turned toward Rhea. “I don’t think he actually knows which way the southerly exposure is, so I guess you are safe.”
“Nonsense!” Maddoc scoffed. “I know exactly where we are!”
“You do?”
“Of course!” Maddoc replied. “This is Talwood Forest on the western slopes of the Rheshathei Range. We are about seven or eight miles southwest of the Ghrumald Pass, I should think.”
Galen turned to Rhea with surprise on his face. “Is he right?”
Rhea laughed as she leaned back against the flat rock. “Not often about much, but he is right about this. Geography was one of Maddoc’s favorite subjects. He has a collection of maps that seemed to always be underfoot at home. Most of them cover just about every corner of the Dragonback, and there are a number of rather detailed maps of Hrunard as well. He used to study them endlessly at home, telling Dahlia and me about all the different places on the map. He would even . . .”
Rhea’s voice trailed off and she fell silent.
“Even what?” Galen encouraged quietly.
“Dahlia has an insatiable curiosity. ‘I don’t know’ would simply never satisfy her. So, when Maddoc came to a place on the map that he did not know about, he would make things up just to keep her happy.” Rhea looked down at the ground, her voice thick and her words suddenly difficult. “It was . . . it was a happy memory.”
Galen nodded. “How old is she?”
“Now?” Rhea looked up, trying to look casual as she wiped a tear from her eye. “She is twenty-three and far too independent for the men in our village. I wish you had met her.”
“I will,” Galen asserted. “You can introduce us when you visit me at home.”
Rhea caught her words before they came out. Galen was important. She felt that he was somehow the key to this entire mystery of the Elect and the madness that had robbed her of her husband. Through Galen she might just find the bottom of that dwarven mine after all.
But that meant keeping some things to herself for the time being. For many years, the only home she had known was the one she carried in her heart. She had come to understand that she could never return to her old village and neighbors. But the idea of going back to his former life was what drove Galen, gave him his reason for getting up each morning, breathing from moment to moment, and allowed him to sleep each night. Rhea knew that Galen could never go home again . . . not in any sense that Galen would understand. It was better for them all—including Galen—if he were left with his wonderful delusion for a while longer.
“I look forward to it,” was all she could bring herself to say.
“Well, it can’t come soon enough,” Galen said with a smile. “Do you and your scholarly husband have any idea how we get there?”
Rhea looked away, then nodded. How could she tell this man? When would it ever be right to speak the terrible words: that the world would never be the same for him or for any of them? How could she show him that their future could be both different and beautiful when she herself could not see it?
“Of course we have a plan,” she said brightly. “There is a pass to the south through the range. The Old Empress Road runs through the mountains there. It is far less traveled than the Ghrumald Pass, especially this late in the year. That will take us east over the Rheshathei Mountains. We’ll then follow the River Celborsil eastward. There are small farming settlements along the river that we can use to scavenge for food. That should take us as far as the sea.”
“Yes,” Galen said, nodding eagerly. “That sounds good.”
“You understand: we have to avoid the major ports,” Rhea said. “Any passage that we arrange will be illegal in the eyes of the Pir and therefore expensive if we can obtain it at all. If we cannot find passage on a ship, then we may have to turn south and follow the coast all around the Chebon Sea until we reach the Dragonback. It could take months to get to your home . . . possibly a year.”
“I don’t care, so long as I put this nightmare behind me!” Galen snatched up the sack from the rock and stomped back toward the cavern.
Rhea sighed loudly, her exhaling breath carrying with it as much of her burden as possible.
“I know that sound,” Maddoc said easily. “Rhea always made that sound when she was displeased and frustrated. I always feared that sound more than all the invading hordes of Vordnar.”
Rhea smiled sadly. “Am I that fearsome, husband?”
“You always were,” Maddoc replied, walking up to her. He suddenly cradled her in his arms. Tears welled up in his eyes. “How I miss you.”
Rhea held him long, reluctant to let him go.
“Galen misses his wife, too,” Maddoc said. “Doesn’t he?”
“Yes,” Rhea replied. “He does. He longs for his wife and home . . . and he cannot let them go.”
“I understand.” Maddoc nodded as he held her. “More than he knows.”
The sounds all shine in colors I have never heard. Their expression tastes sweet as they fold over me in great, warm waves. I let them flow over and around me, caressing me in their delicate embrace, exploring their vibrancy even as they drift behind me and into silence.
The glorious expressions of heightened thought and experience emanate from the flame creature dancing before me. It writhes seductively, consuming itself continuously and being reborn at once. I watch it with fascination, reveling in its power, life, and sensuous call.
How Rhea would have marveled at this. I weep oceans at the thought, threatening to drown out the flame before me in the sorrow that engulfs me. Losing my beloved is a vast ocean of pain that can never be emptied; only crossed, and the far shore lies past the horizon of ice.
My wife to me is dying . . . will die . . . is dead. Time flows in strange eddies about me; all time is one time. All death is the same death. All hope is one hope. The future and the past converge in the great and eternal choice that is now.
He comes.
He, too, burns with the flame of creation and destruction. I have seen this one before wandering the landscape of forever. He speaks with Galen when he dreams, but never before to me. Our infinities collide in this now, for he speaks to me.
“Sir, can you hear me?” he speaks and forever binds our fates together.
“Of course, I can hear you,” I reply. “Are you enjoying your journey?”
“It has been a long one, sir, and appears to be longer still.” He appears before me in the robes of his office. They are shabby and cheap, as is his power here in the Grand Truth. I pity him that he has not cast off the trappings of that other place of dreams he calls his life. “You are the one they call . . . Maddoc, are you not?”
I bow out of courtesy. There is no call to upset the poor monk who still believes his robes and his titles have any power or authority. “I am, indeed, sir.”
“Then you can help me.” He is too excited and too anxious. “I am searching for Galen. It is imperative that I find him. Have you seen him?”
I am bemused. Their fates must be forged together somehow. “I would love to help you, good sir, but it seems you have me at a disadvantage.”
“My name is of no consequence,” the shabby monk replies stiffly, “but my need is urgent.”
“Well, in that case, I wish you the best of luck in your search,” I reply, casting my arm about me. “The world of our experience is vast indeed. We are drawn together by our fates, it would seem—fates which include our wills in some mystic fashion. Galen is out there in all of time and place. I doubt very much that you will find him until he wishes to be found.”
This, the monk considers for a moment.
I turn back to my revels with the fire.
The monk’s voice is quiet behind me.
“My name is Tragget.”
I turn to him. “Indeed? I have heard of a Tragget . . . he was the Lord Inquisitor of the Pir. His life was to discover the madness of the Elect and hurry their fate before their time. Only it seems that perhaps the Elect were not so insane after all. Still, that Grand Inquisitor Tragget would not know anything about that. Are you, then, this same Grand Inquisitor Tragget?”
The monk shrinks as I speak. I expect him to vanish into smoke and blow away in a breeze but he looks at me instead and speaks with gaining strength.
“I am. I am that Tragget, and I am mad, truly mad! Yet I think that there is some purpose in this madness, some great design that I cannot see.” Tragget grows taller with his words. “The Dragonkings wish to destroy us and have been destroying us for centuries. They fear us, Maddoc!”
“As well they should!” I reply with a laugh.
“I’m living a lie—I know that—and I need Galen’s help,” Tragget pleads with conviction. “I need to learn this mystical power that he is mastering. Imagine it, Maddoc! A power higher than the Dragonkings! Perhaps it is the evidence of the ancient gods returning to men. Perhaps it is the power of a new, higher god in search of followers who are strong enough to serve it. Whatever its source, I must learn how to wield it, and I need Galen’s help to do it.”
“He won’t help you.” I laugh. This Tragget is quite comical in his naive earnestness. “He hates the Pir for what they have done to him. Now that he is free he appears to have little use for exploring the mystic powers and their use in the world of the dying. I do not think he will help you.”
“But I can help him . . . I can help him return home.”
I shake my head sagely. “No one can ever return home.”
“Galen can, if he will help me,” Tragget replies.
Suddenly the fire erupts and spreads all about us. It is a forest of flame suddenly cooling into a charred wood. Beyond its blackened branches, I espy a ruined tower on the western slope of a hill.
“I want you to give Galen a message for me,” Tragget continues. “Tell him that I am leaving the Pir, that I wish to join him and learn all that he knows of this mystic power of the Elect.”
“This is an interesting place,” I remark, gazing at the ruin. “Does it have anything to do with us?”
“Yes,” Tragget replies. “There is much to tell, so listen patiently. I need you to tell it to Galen just as I tell it to you.”
“I always liked a good story.” I smile, sitting down.
“First of all, his wife, Berkita, is here with me . . .”
THE CONFESSIONS BRONZE CANTICLES, TOME VI, FOLIO 3, LEAVES 14-16
Tragget lay in his bed, his breath shallow and quick. His eyes rolled beneath their lids as he dreamt, fitfully shifting under his bedding. His lips moved, though he did not voice the words. His head shifted occasionally in quick jerks from side to side.
All about him as he slept, the candles of his bedside sputtered in the room. Their flames were not tall nor their light all that bright. Still, they were a gift and he had never preferred sleeping in the darkness. He feared the darkness still. He always felt there were eyes in the darkness watching him. The light helped keep those demons at bay.
The smoke from each of the candles curled upward toward the ceiling of his bedchamber. They drifted through the eddies of the air, coiling one about the other in the stillness over his sleep.
Here was a face in the smoke.
There was a forest in the smoke.
There, again, was the ruin of a tower.
The smoke from the dragonwax was special indeed.
And the eyes were watching, as they always had, from the darkness.
36
Gynik
Mimic! Keep my cape out of the mud!” Mimic dutifully obeyed, raising the end of Lirry’s cape off the ground. They were parading down through the marketplace, as they did twice each day, in search of something new to purchase. Normally this meant that Mimic would have to follow along behind Lirry while carrying the Device. It certainly was too valuable to just leave anywhere out of Lirry’s sight. Awkward as this was, it was now compounded by Lirry’s cape, which was entirely too long for him and required that Mimic both hold the Device and keep the cape from dragging along the mud-churned central avenue of the market.
Mimic tried to shake himself out of his reveries. He had been thinking about a place far from here—so far he could not say—where there was a ruined tower. There was a woman with the wings of a bug caged atop it. She seemed so terrible and so real in his thoughts, sitting inside a glass ball. There was that tall robed fellow with the light hair as well. He was made of brass with a clockwork mechanism inside him that never stopped. Such was the nature of his strange imaginings. They were sometimes so compelling that he forgot all about what was going on around him. It seemed more and more as the days wore on in the great fortress-city of Dong Mahaj-Megong that he was having trouble keeping his mind on his work.
Not his work for Lirry, of course. That particular work was a mind-numbing repetition of groveling tasks to support his master in the manner to which he was rapidly becoming accustomed. Anyone would be bored into forgetfulness trying to keep up with those particularly mundane chores. It was backbreaking and often needless work.
Lirry delighted in giving orders. Now that he had risen to a more prominent station in the goblin community, he had more goblins to boss around than ever. Mimic had hoped that this would mean his boss had less time to order him around, but such was not the case. There seemed to be no end to Lirry’s sense of inferiority, and therefore no end to his need to remind anyone else that they were inferior to him.
Sometimes Lirry would have him take out each of the treasures under the floor grating for cleaning and oiling. The oiling especially was sheer ostentation on Lirry’s part. None of the gears or mechanisms in his treasury were actually connected or required oiling at all. Still, it was a sign of wealth that one not only had the gears but cared enough to oil them as well. There was a period of three days, however, when the fad went about court that mechanisms that looked old and antique were all the rage. Lirry then told Mimic to dirty up every one of his treasure mechanisms to be in step with the latest fashion. Mimic just barely managed to convince Lirry not to do so with the working Device, but submitted with the rest of the treasures. Just about the time Mimic finished corroding and messing up Lirry’s collection, the fad passed. Mimic spent the next three days cleaning up the treasures he had just dirtied.
It was no wonder to Mimic that his mind wandered from time to time as he performed his chores.
That was not the work that he needed to concentrate on. His real work was for him alone; a somewhat quieter and secret thing. It required that he be diligent and alert. He knew there would only be one chance for him. He knew what to do. The critical question was not what but when.
It was not easy. His musings during the day took a different turn. He might be standing next to the clockwork man in the robes, opening him up and contemplating the mechanisms within . . . with Gynik standing at his side. Or he might build a great winged device that flew like a bird in the air . . . with Gynik holding him in an enraptured embrace. The dreams and visions were constantly in flux, changing as his imagination shifted, like eddies in a slow stream, but Gynik was more often than not at the center of them all.
It certainly did not help that for the last week she had rarely been more than ten feet away from him. Ever since that day when she had accompanied the vice-chancellor to Lirry’s residence, she had become a fixture of Mimic’s life. They were almost constantly together.
Not that Gynik took a moment’s notice of Mimic. Indeed, the miserable little goblin was barely acknowledged by the ravishing beauty. It was on Lirry’s arm that Gynik hung and his attentions alone that she curried.
“I’ll smack you if you let that cape fall again!” Lirry screamed.
“Yes, sir,” Mimic responded automatically as he lifted the garment once more. He sta
ggered backward slightly under his awkward load, trying to pull the slack out of the cape.
“It is so difficult to get good servants,” Gynik said to Lirry with sad resignation. “It is so wonderful of you, Lirry, to keep your servant on out of your generous heart!”
“Well,” Lirry said with far more magnanimity than he had ever actually felt, “I feel that it is a responsibility that comes with wealth and superior position.”
“Oh, you are so right, Lirry!” Gynik smiled, her sharp teeth flashing in the sunlight. “You are such a generous creature!”
“After all,” Lirry continued, “keeping lazy and stupid servants employed shows character and upbringing. I think all truly superior individuals should have one.”
“You are so sensible,” Gynik cooed. She reached over and ran her fingers through Lirry’s sparse hair. Lirry smiled dumbly.
“Well, a little understanding and patience with indolent servants will— Ouch!” Lirry yelped. “Mimic, when I get you home I’m going to smack you so hard that you’ll be using your teeth for a gearbox!”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” Mimic sighed. The cape had been dragging again in the mud. Gynik had insisted that they purchase the cape for him even though it was far too long for his squat body. It was, however, the most expensive in the shop and that had impressed Gynik.
“You are going places, Lirry,” Gynik said casually as they walked between the stalls of the marketplace. “I think you should give more thought to your image . . . how others think of you.”
“Really?” Lirry said. “I thought I looked pretty good!”
“Oh, you do! Of course you do,” Gynik responded at once. “It’s just that a person of your stature and wealth, there are appearances that you have to keep up. You are about to be presented before Dong Mahaj-Megong himself! You can’t just be great, you have to appear great as well.”
Lirry nodded. “You are so right. What do you suggest?”
Mystic Warrior Page 30
