The Vistor

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Elsewhere, on other roads leading toward other passes, wagons, flocks, and herds were leaving Bastion by hundreds and thousands. Within several days there wouldn't be a farmer or his produce, a stockman or his animals, a craftsman or his tools left in the country. Those leaving, in fact, included about ninety-eight percent of the useful inhabitants and one hundred percent of those who could actually do magic.

  On Ogre's Gap, the warriors of Bastion had been fed, which made them feel less weary and ill-treated, and when the sun fell toward evening, they began to assemble their gear and repack it for the march. A number of the general's own guardsmen had been told to move quietly through the camp to form a line around the so-called strengtheners, though it was a line half-hidden in shadow. At Ogre's Gap the dark would come early, for the great peaks that thrust themselves into the western sky intercepted the lowering sun to cast deep shadow across the nearer mountains, plunging the meadow into dusk while the lowlands of Comador and Turnaway still basked in light.

  As shadow came, so came an ominous quiet among the men. Even the officers took to looking over their shoulder, as though something dangerous might be descending upon them from the open air, or from among the trees on the darkling slopes of the mountains. With the dark came a cold wind from the forest, one that sent sparks fleeing from the campfires and silenced the men who'd been warming themselves. Officers came from their lantern-lit tents into the night, fastening their armor and testing the edges of their swords with their eyes fixed on the ceaseless movement of the wind-stirred trees. The first sound of something approaching came from among those trees, over the ridge, the loud cracking snap of large branches.

  The sound dropped into absolute silence, for every man on the meadow was holding his breath. Next came the rattle smash of broken wood, a whuffling and snorting such as a huge pig might make as it came through the trees, which again cracked and crashed, broken trees falling outward into the Gap as something monstrous emerged from cover, elephantine and black, its arms reaching to the ground, its knees half-bent, crouching forward to sniff the soil, then rising to full height, arms raised, only to fall once more onto its knuckles as its head turned from side to side, nostrils wide, sniffing.

  The wind blew from behind it, and the stench of it came in waves that made the waiting soldiers gasp with dizziness, as though being suffocated. The creature bellowed, and though no words could be discerned in that great rush of sound, each person present understood the howl to have meant, "Where are my strengtheners?"

  The hundred or so men who had been nominated, including Captain Trublood, turned to flee, but the general had foreseen this possibility when he set his spearmen behind them. They were chivvied forward at spearpoint, pressed back toward the place the monster waited. Nearest the beast was Fremis, the great warrior, who spun toward the monster and, as it grabbed for him, jabbed his spear upward with all his strength into the huge, hairy belly. The howled response to this attack felled the army like wheat before a scythe and those few who looked up saw Fremis dangling by one leg from the creature's fist, saw the giant jaws gape, saw Fremis's head bitten off and heard the crunch of the skull like a piñon shell between huge, black teeth.

  The monster threw its head back and held the man above its open mouth, the enormous hand squeezing the body as blood gushed from the severed neck into that cavernous maw. The giant gulped and swallowed. The desiccated body was thrown aside. It was done before the fallen men had even struggled to their feet, and Fremis's fate fell on ten others of the strengtheners too swiftly for any reaction except that of some few men who had chosen to sleep at the very edges of the forest and who now lost themselves in its shadows and crept away.

  Energized by these draughts, the monster reared itself almost upright, yammering into a chorus of echoes:

  "Go west from here, down the mountain, go west. We go to kill the Council of Guardians!"

  The bishop whispered to the general, next to him, "We're fighting against the Guardians? I thought that was another name for the Rebel Angels?"

  The monster seemed to have preternaturally acute hearing, for it screamed, "I am Rebel Angel! I am one who saved you! My kind, we saved you, you follow us now!"

  And with that, it fell to its knuckles and selected another victim. The next man decapitated, instead of being drained into the monster's mouth was swung at the end of a huge and hairy arm like a whirling censer, filling the air with red rain. So with the next dozen slaughtered, until all who stood in Ogre's Gap were soaked with blood. As the men were reddened they began to grow, taller and wider and more horrid with each moment, teeth lengthening into fangs, armor becoming living bone and shell, skulls becoming scaled casques that gleamed with an ashen pallor. The beast bawled again. All still capable of hearing anything, heard the words, "Behold the Quellers!"

  The crimsoned drummers began to beat, the sanguined trumpeters to blast, the general—scarlet from plumed helm to boot-toe—rode a horned and carmine dappled beast that no longer resembled a horse. The commander rode, teeth showing in a ferocious grin. The bishop rode, forgetting all about his coup. The officers rode. The men marched. The ogre bawled again, and this time the message was, "Westward. Move westward!"

  The army began to move. From the woods, the rebels watched, aghast. They were not believers in magic. They could not have imagined the enormity that went against all nature, the warlock's horrid horde. Fortunately for them, the army had no eyes for them, nor did the monster who had called the army into being, for that creature was busy with the remaining strengtheners, assuring that no one of them should be left unmutilated though well over half the original number would be left alive.

  When the army had gone so far down the mountain that the drums could no longer be heard; when the monster had ravaged the last of the strengtheners and had shambled off in the same direction, only then the demons crept from the forest to move among the bodies. One of them stood silent at the edge of the clearing, sections of his horns becoming transparent as the Dantisfan upon his head transmitted what he saw to others of his kind west and south and east of him.

  Far from where he stood, two days journey at least, a dobsi spoke, and to the demon's mind, his Dantisfan interpreted. "Person, maybe human, label Dezmai cries loudly: They must not be left alive. From their pain the monster takes its life. None living may be left alive! From their pain the monster takes his power!"

  The demon spoke to other demons, and they to a troop of rebels who had just emerged through the wood. Neither demons nor rebels were armed, but there were arms enough upon the field. Swords sharpened for battle served to behead those who had been left alive. Captain Trublood was among them, and his last thought was that he need no longer worry about the bishop's daughter. Axes meant for war were keen enough to chop the trees needed for a great pyre. The smoke of that burning rose throughout the night and into the following day. When it was done, all that was left on the high field was ashes, armor, and charred bone.

  As the pyre burned at Ogre's Gap, the rebels sent riders to warn the people that the horror lived on blood and pain, that the only way to conquer it was to deprive it of blood and pain. "Do not fight," the riders cried. "Do not defend. Give up bravery or honor, for they are meaningless. Only run, hide, deprive the horde of the agony that keeps it alive."

  Elnith said the Guardians had to go west, at once, and quickly. At the cavern of the seeress, while some people slept and others tried to convince themselves they should stay in Omega Site, those with the sign readied themselves for the long march that Elnith told them they must begin at dawn. Bertral, with his eyes shut, sat on the wagon tongue with his book, calling the role of the Guardians and Elnith moved restlessly about him, searching silently for the beings he named. Intent upon this distant communication, she did not see the shadow that detached itself from the cavern entrance and came to the side of the road.

  "Nell," he said.

  Elnith stopped. She did not know the man before her, but Nell did, and Nell had come awake at the sound o
f his voice. Elnith retreated, not far, waiting to see what was happening to her link with this present day.

  "Alan?" Nell asked. "Oh, God, Alan."

  He stepped forward and hugged her, the two of them clinging together in the darkness.

  They said you didn't talk."

  "Elnith doesn't," she replied. "But she's an intermittent inhabitant."

  "It's not you, then, who's changed. It's someone else."

  "Oh, it's not me, Alan. No. But it isn't anyone ... foreign, either. I mean, she fits into me like a hand into a glove. It's not uncomfortable. I could resent being a glove, of course, but the things I catch sight of when the hand inside me moves! The things she knows! We used to argue all the time, at the observatory, Neils and me, and now ... if he were here ... I could tell him where to find how it works, how it all works."

  "She picked someone in her field, then." He smiled tenderly at her, smoothing her hair back from her face, searching the sign on her forehead as though to memorize it.

  "Maybe that's it. I know her language, at least a little."

  "Her language is silence?"

  "It's just... words are so imprecise. They have different meanings to different people. She ... she speaks in certainties. Directly, mind to mind."

  "Do all of them do that?"

  She shook her head. "No. I don't think so. Dismé doesn't mention it... Dismé. Did you know she has my book."

  He smiled. "I passed it along to a Latimer descendent a few centuries back. By that time, the written language was beginning to deviate quite a bit, and I thought if I waited any longer, no one would be able to read it. The last bit, the bit you taped, I transcribed that into the book as well, so it was your complete account of the Happening. There's a copy in your stasis locker, just in case you want to review."

  "I don't need to review. I remember it far too well. The Darkness, when even the pings couldn't see. The endless numbers of the dead. The monsters. I thought that was over, and here it is again!"

  "When you make this journey, may I go with you. Will Elnith mind if I go with you?"

  Nell was silent, as though waiting for a signal or a comment, but none came. "It may not be possible. In any case, you have no reason for going except me."

  "Isn't that enough?"

  "Not in this battle, Alan. I don't know what's happening, but I know it's more important than we are as people."

  He inspected her face, looking at each part of it as though searching for something.

  "I've grown old," she said.

  "I've been looking at you in your coffin every time I've waked. You don't look any different to me. Does she have a personality, this ... inhabitant of yours?"

  Nell considered this, the emptiness of her face showing her thoughts. "No," she whispered. "She doesn't. She has no ... agenda at all. No ... hope, fear, anything. Just this pure intelligence, loaded with curiosity, picking up every detail of everything she comes upon. Almost without self-awareness..."

  He hugged her again, whispering, "Frightening, I should think. Despite her, I'm here, if Nell needs me."

  She held him for a moment almost frantically. Seeing the world through Elnith's eyes was like peering from a dizzying precipice at a foreign landscape where perspective and content coalesced into an alien and unrecognizable whole. She said, "There's something vertiginous about it, though Dismé says it will get easier." Tears flooded her eyes and Elnith came.

  "Hush," Elnith said without words. "I will not harm you. You are the hand with which I hold this world. I will care for you well. I will not take you from yourself or from your love forever. Do not be afraid."

  Nell came back to herself staring into Alan's face, and he into her eyes, dazzled at what he had momentarily surprised there. When he left her, Arnole spoke from the wagon, startling her.

  "Old friend, ah?"

  "Very old, Arnole. Not a lover, ever, but closer to me than any lover could have been."

  "I envy you that friendship. I worry that we ... we Guardians may not have friends, though perhaps ... among ourselves."

  She cried, "What do we have, Arnole? What are we for?"

  He shook his head, saying, "See if you can call Elnith back. It is urgent that we find all members of the Council, but of the twenty-one, we still have found only nine."

  43

  various pursuits

  Summerspan five, sevenday: Some people left Omega Site before dawn, others decided not to leave at all.

  "I don't believe any of this nonsense," Janet told Dismé, Nell, and Arnole as they put the last few items into the wagons. "Jackson doesn't either. We're going to sit tight along with some of the others."

  "Will you accept some advice?" asked Nell, looking across Janet's shoulder at Jackson, who was shifting uncomfortably.

  Janet shrugged, her lip curling. "You'll give it, anyway."

  Nell spoke directly to Jackson. "There's an army headed this way. If they can't see, hear, or smell you, they may pass you by. If they do see you or hear you or smell you, they'll dig you out, like a rabbit out of a burrow. When we've gone, clean up every scrap of anything left out here that smells of people, spray it with ... I don't know, something natural and anonymous, hide every indication of people and shut the place up tight."

  Janet pursed her lips. "Except for Allipto's booth."

  Nell turned on her. "Any opening will get you killed."

  Janet jeered, "The booth is tamperproof."

  "It was never tested." said Nell, as she turned toward the wagon, speaking over his shoulder. "There are monsters with the army, much like those that came during the Happening. The booth wasn't built until after they were gone."

  Unconvinced and angry, Janet watched them go, two wagons heavily loaded with people from the redoubt, trailed by a long line of walkers. Rankivian, Shadua, and Yun had gone during the night, stalking with great heron strides. Janet had been glad to see them go, for those with signs on their foreheads troubled her. Though she was certain it was a trick, she couldn't figure it out. The best she could do was stay away from them, and she had prevailed upon Jackson to stay with her, to care for the few newly wakened ones who had chosen to stay, most of whom had never wakened in the redoubt and now only whined about it.

  "Monsters!" Janet said, with a sneer.

  "There were monsters," Jackson reminded her. "You know there were, Janet."

  "I know that they all died centuries ago!"

  He tried to persuade her. "You believe that, because we've seen nothing of them since the darkness ended. Some of them might still be here, able to harm us."

  "If they were here now, the pings would have seen them."

  "Not necessarily," he said, looking with some regret at the wagons moving down the hill. "Nell gave us good advice."

  "Nell! 'Elnith of the Silences,' for Lord's sake. And she called herself a scientist!"

  Jackson's eyebrows went up and he said stiffly, "Nell never called herself anything. She was a scientist. We all were."

  "Perhaps, but she always had something peculiar about her."

  He gritted his teeth. "Such as?"

  "Raymond told us the gametes had all spoiled. It seemed a strange thing to have happened, so I actually opened up the compartment and examined the vials. No question they were spoiled, every vial except Nell Latimer's and the ones in the animal file. There was no residue in those vials. Her embryos hadn't spoiled. They'd been taken."

  "After they spoiled, she could have cleaned them out herself, any time in the centuries we've been sleeping."

  "Why would she have done that?"

  "Sentiment, possibly. Fastidiousness."

  "Then why not say so?" She turned away in irritation.

  "She probably considered it a private matter."

  Janet turned to give him a look of frank derision and went back toward the redoubt, while Jackson cast another uneasy glance at the empty road, wondering if his decision to stay behind with Janet might not have been a very stupid one.

  Two days later,
the monster army arrived in the vicinity of the redoubt, quite early in the morning. The demons and rebels had forerun the army, cutting directly across country to warn every living person in the way, so the army had found only vacancy. The few crofts visible from the road had been abandoned, their livestock driven away into the woods. From a high pass at dawn after the first night's march, the only living persons visible were the Mohmidi on the plains below, headed away southward at some speed and at a great distance.

  The ensorcelment in which the army had left Ogre's Gap had lost much of its force by the end of the second night's march. Though the huge and horrible monster shambled along at the army's rear throughout the night, at sunrise it departed, letting the exhausted men and leaders collapse into sleep. By late afternoon, when the men began to waken, the sorcerous urgency that had moved man and horse away from Ogre's Gap was entirely gone. The army woke to find themselves no longer devilish Quellers but only hungry men who had lain all day in blood-stiffened and reeking garments beneath great clouds of stinging flies.

  Their first action was to scramble down the canyon wall to the river, where they bathed and washed their clothing. As soon as the officers' tents were set up, water was wanned and brought to them for the same purposes.

  "I'm finding it hard to think strategically," said the commander to the bishop, when he had cleaned away the blood and dressed himself in clean garments. "I feel foggy, as though my head was stuffed with wool."

  The bishop held his own head with both hands. "Can you remember what happened?"

  "The ... thing, you mean?" Even to himself the commander's voice sounded hollow, echoing, as though he were in a cave.