The Margarets (48 page)

“Like, but unlike.” Lady Badness laughed. “We’re mere meddlers, my dear. Doing what we can for those we depend upon.”

“There,” said Ella Mae, indicating a fold of land now dark in shadow. The ship descended soundlessly into its depths.

I offered tentatively. “We are not far from the outskirts of the city, and we’re on the Beelshi side. I can lead you to the mausoleum and the gates.”

“I would feel better about that if I knew where the gates go,” said Weathereye. “I should have asked. Still, since we have no way to get you and Ella May off this planet otherwise…”

“I have my own disguise,” I said. “I don’t have enough for all of us…”

“Quite all right, my dear,” said Lady Badness. “Take your shape, and we two will copy you. We’re quite good at that. We make our living at it, one might say.”

I opened the case and took out my Hrassian garb, the nose, the paint, the wig, the dirty robes, the little mirror that let me see myself as I changed. “Now,” I murmured as I worked, “the Hrass keep a solid wall to their backs whenever possible. Crossing open ground, they hurry, frequently glancing behind them. They mutter constantly. I think the real Hrass utter prayers, but I have had good experience with the phrase ‘Old rhinoceros my brother will you have some bread and butter.’ This phrase has in it many of the Hrass phonemes, and it avoids sounds they do not make. Please remember to start the phrase at different intervals and do not say it in unison.” I stopped, for all three of them were grinning at me.

“You were on your way to becoming a translator, I believe,” said Weathereye. “A woman who spoke many tongues.”

I blushed. I had been going on and on, sounding like my own didactibot! “That was long ago,” I said. “Some days it is hard to remember. I apologize for seeming imperious. You probably know all this
far better than I…”

“Not at all,” said Lady Badness. “We know little or nothing about the Hrass. We are human followers, our fates inextricably interwoven with your own.”

“Do I set the destruct?” Ella May asked.

“I should think so,” said Lady Badness rather sadly. “If they find it, we can’t get it back.”

I said, “We can work our way up the hill among the tombs, those big pottery jars that contain the bones of the dead. That is, I suppose they are bones by now. There’s been no room on Beelshi for new ones for a very long time, or so I’ve heard. They chain the door to the room, so we’ll need something…”

“I have the proper tool,” said Ella May. She turned with a grin, displaying a small tool clasped in one hand. “Are we ready?”

“Just have to fix my nose,” I commented, doing so and with quick strokes of my fingers blending the paint around the edges. “I can see you’re amused by this, but I can’t tell why. Beelshi is terrible and full of pain. I don’t like going back there.”

“We are not amused, dear lady,” said Mr. Weathereye. “We are simply delighted with you, which is quite another thing. Your resourcefulness, your determination, both do you credit.”

The four of us left the ship with me leading. When I looked back, it seemed to me two Hrass followed me, muttering, scurrying, glancing around quite as authentically as I could have desired. Ella May stayed between them, making do with a long cape and a scuttling walk. The Hill of Beelshi was to our left, across a well-traveled road and an open area of fields that might be fenced. If so, I would rely upon whatever tool the young woman carried to get us through.

We waited for the road to clear, then scurried across it without incident.

“Who is Ella May?” I panted to Lady Badness.

“She’s a member of the Siblinghood of Silence. Have you heard of that?”

“I don’t think so, no. What do I call her, Sibling?”

“That’s considered quite proper, yes. But she would probably prefer to be called simply Ella May, since you’re probably related to one another.”

I had time for only one astonished look at the elderly person before resuming my scuttle. Beyond the road were fences, quite a number of them, but Ella May had only to touch them with the tool, whatever it was, and a sizable hole appeared.

We approached Beelshi on the side opposite the one I had climbed before. There were no guards. Presumably, all the guards were out hunting for Miss Ongamar, which thought offered fleeting amusement. Once among the funerary jars, I paused, allowing us all a brief rest. The distance had not been far, the terrain not challenging, but the skittering mannerisms took both concentration and energy. We worked our way upward, pausing outside the upper ring of temples and mausolea while I located the building I had spied from before.

When I pointed it out, Ella May whispered, “Since there’s no one here, I suggest we go straight across. It’s quickest.”

I hesitated, my agitation no doubt plain on my face.

“What?” demanded Mr. Weathereye.

“You see that tall stone, the one that looks like a person hunched over the stone of sacrifice. I’ve seen its eyes. I got the strong impression that it could see.”

“And you think it might utter an alarm?”

“I don’t know. If I were here alone, however, I would work around behind it to the place I want to be, then go in very quickly, closing the door tightly behind me.”

“I see no reason to doubt your counsel,” Mr. Weathereye murmured. “Let us do so.”

We were stopped in our tracks by a cacophony of shouts from the foot of the hill behind us. Ella May slipped away to a vantage point and returned almost immediately. “They have mechanical scent detectors down there, they’ve picked up our trail. I suggest, watching stone or no watching stone, we run for it!”

We did so, rushing across the rough pavement like so many cockroaches, I thought, harkening back to what vermin were left on Earth. Humans and cockroaches. As we crossed before the tall stone, I glanced up to see the red glare of its eyes fastened on me. The creased rock ridges of the mouth opened to emit a huge, stony voice. No one needed a translation, though I made one automatically. “Here, here,
here it is!”

Within moments we were up the steps of the mausoleum, Ella May applied her tool to the chain, we pulled the door open, closed it firmly behind us and bolted it with the three huge bolts that were obviously well and frequently used, for they bore no rust and slid into their sockets with a satisfying thwack.

Ella May was facing the shimmering pool of light. She went toward it, thrust her hand in, drew it out again, then tried the same with the black pool, only to leap back with a choked oath.

“Way-gates,” said Ella May. “One comes in, one goes out, and the black one is obviously the one that comes in.”

The other gate, the shimmering one, had great stacks of empty cages beside it, along with heaped kegs of treasure.

“Read the meaning of this,” demanded Weathereye of his female companion, gesturing at their surroundings.

“It says trade,” said Lady Badness. “Treasure sent through this gate, creatures returned through this gate. What Miss Ongamar has seen is the key: The K’Famir were paying for human beings to be sent through this gate.”

“Were paying?”

“Look at the dust, heavy years of dust. Nothing has come through here for a considerable time.”

“But they used this one gate, both ways?”

Ella May said, “Nothing is stacked conveniently next to the other one, and that machine with wheels is an odd thing to find here…” She went to look it over more closely. “Phase transformer! Look at the size of it. It has to be salvage, because no one has used anything like this for years.”

“Used it to do what?” Lady Badness demanded.

Ella May nodded. “The fields of these gates are obviously one-way. This thing, if started up inside it, or in contact with it, is probably designed to reverse it.”

We turned toward the door as it clattered with a hammering of spearpoints.

“The K’Famir police don’t carry energy weapons,” said I. “But it won’t take long to get them from the armory.”

Ella May said, “I suggest we push this machine into that light pool
and turn it on. It seems to have its own energy source.”

“Don’t push it all the way in,” I cried. “Push in the front end, but leave the end with the controls out, so we can see what happens.”

“An excellent suggestion, my dear,” said Mr. Weathereye, applying his shoulder to the machine, which seemed reluctant to move in any particular direction. The clatter outside grew louder, and there were coordinated calls.

“They’re bringing up something to batter the door down,” I translated. “We have to make it move.”

We managed to get it turned around, though it seemed to me that only Ella May and I exerted any real force upon it. With a last, desperate shove, we thrust the end of it through the glowing gate. When Ella May pushed the button, the shimmering pool turned abruptly black as air smelling of dust and damp rushed around us. When she pushed the button again, it reversed.

“So they were trading with one source,” mused Mr. Weathereye. “I wonder where the black one goes.”

I had gone to peer through the crack along the hinge side of the great door. “They’re in the plaza. They’re bringing up some huge…looks like a log?”

“Battering ram,” said Ella May. “We don’t have much time. I suggest we go through there”—pointing at the shining gate—“and take the machine with us.”

“When we get to the other end, we use it to seal it off behind us,” said Lady Badness.

“Exactly,” said Ella May.

“This road, rather than the other one?” I asked.

Ella May shook her head. “We don’t have time to move it to the other one. This one smells fairly clean.”

From outside came a chant, “Hrnah, cush, hrnah, cush.” The battering ram had arrived and was thundering against the door. The metal shrieked as it bulged inward in a huge, swollen carbuncle. Crates toppled in a cloud of dust. Ella May and I thrust the machine ahead of us.

Voices outside built to a bellowed unison: “Hrnah, cush, hrnah, cush!”

The door screamed, the hinges popped, long metal screws flew across the room, one striping my cheek with blood. Over my shoulder I could see the bolts bending slowly, a little more with each crashing blow. We pushed, grunting, sweating, the others swearing words I had never heard before, thrusting through the shining disk only moments before the great metal doors came off their hinges.

The heavy machine was moving more easily, as though downhill, and I glimpsed the room behind us as it filled with K’Famir who were obviously unfamiliar with the gate. Some of them approached it cautiously, some searched behind the crates, some approached the other gate and were shocked by it, as Ella May had been. We were still pushing when the machine reached the end of the way we were in and protruded into somewhere else. Several of the K’Famir tried reaching into the light gate, discovered it did not hurt them, walked boldly through and began to pursue, spears waving.

“Turn it around,” I cried, shoving at the nearest exposed surface of the device with all my strength. The bulky device was now moving fast enough that the momentum carried it around and let it come to rest with the four of us in the clear while the front of it remained inside the gate. I was nearest to the control and I slammed my fist down on it, holding it down. From inside the gate we heard the high, ululating screeches of K’Famir voices just as we, ourselves, were thrust hard against the machine by a gust of air that came from behind us. It rushed away into the opening, then stopped.

“It’s closed,” said Lady Badness. “I hope whoever was in there was blown out. Now it’s black at their end, just like the other one. They can’t use either gate, unless they have another machine.”

“Were the soldiers pushed back?” I whispered.

“The sounds of pain receded,” said Mr. Weathereye. “I think it likely they were more than merely pushed. Flung, perhaps.”

“It’s dark in here,” I said. “The only light is from the pool…”

“I have a light,” said Ella May, turning it on. We looked around ourselves, trapped in a short tunnel, blocked at one end by the shimmering gate and at the other by a locked iron grille. Beyond the grille was a huge, heavy door.

Ella May asked, “Shall I see if I can cut through the grille?”

Weathereye shook his head. He sat down and leaned against the wall. “There’s no hurry,” he said. “We’re not trapped. Cantardene can’t follow us. While we have a moment, I’d like to sit here quietly while Miss Ongamar tells us what she has learned over the last decades she spent there.”

To their manifest amusement, I took off my Hrassian nose, turned my outer garment inside out, and began at the left side hem to read them everything I knew about the K’Famir.

When the Gardener joined Sophia and me as we breakfasted under the flowering tree, she seemed distracted. While we ate, she merely sat, eyes half shut, obviously troubled.

“Gardener,” Gretamara said at last. “Something’s wrong?”

“Something’s happened, but I can’t locate it. I knew something was going to happen, but I don’t know what!”

Gretamara looked up, suddenly alert. “It’s the cellars, Gardener. Sophia and I had the same oppressive feelings about the house, and they came from the cellars. This morning I had the feeling that a wind had swept through them…”

“But it was not something dreadful,” the Gardener remarked. “Perhaps that’s why I’m confused about it. If it had been dreadful, I would have thought of the cellars, but this…”

“Let’s go look,” I said, rising from my chair. “We’ll stay behind the iron grilles, just in case.”

We made our way down the many stairs, beyond the first, second and third doors, coming at last to that final door, triple-locked, triple-bolted, triple-barred. As we approached it, the Gardener held up her hand, tilting her head. “I hear a voice!”

We laid our ears against the crack where the door met
the jamb to hear a voice murmuring, or perhaps reciting something, for it went on and on, uninterrupted.

“It sounds like you, Gretamara,” said Sophia.

The Gardener stood tall, eyes gleaming, her teeth showing between her lips in what I thought could be either a grim smile or a snarl. “Of course!” she said. “Unlock it!”

Sophia did as she was bade. The first bolt drawn silenced the voice beyond the gate. Moving the second bolt caused an eruption of noise, as if something on wheels were being moved. The third bolt and bar met only silence, as did the rusty squeal as the door was cracked open.

The Gardener spoke through the crack. “Is there someone there who has a name and a number?”

After a long moment, a male voice responded, “Is that you, Gardener?”

“What name and number have you, Weathereye?”

“I have Ongamar, and she is number four. What number have you?”

“I have Gretamara, and she is number three,” said the Gardener, pulling the door wide open. Inside, facing us, were an old man with an eye patch and three women: one quite old; one middling young, stocky and healthy looking; the other smaller, thinner, more sallow and bent, but bearing a definite resemblance to me.

“Lady Badness!” cried the Gardener. “Weathereye! What brings you by this route?”

“We accompanied those for whom it was the only route,” said the old woman. “You know Ella May, of the Siblinghood, and this is Miss Ongamar. You must hear what she’s been telling us!”

“Who are they?” asked Sophia in wonderment.

“Old friends and a new one!” said the Gardener, as she signaled Sophia to unlock the iron grille. “One devoutly wished for! What is that machine you’ve brought?”

“A device for changing the direction of the way-gates,” said Ella May, bowing to the Gardener and receiving in return a kiss on her cheek. “We believe there was a thriving trade going on through this gate, with goods passing in both directions. The machine made it possible.”

The other woman was standing very still, her feet apart as though to brace against shock, as she stared into my face. “Who are you?” she asked at last.

“I…was Margaret,” I said. “Now I’m Gretamara. And you?”

“I was Margaret. On Cantardene they called me Ongamar.”

“When did you…when did you become someone else?”

“I was twelve.”

“So was I, twelve.”

“You’re little more than that now?”

“I’m a lot older, really. I just haven’t…aged much. We were split when the proctor came, weren’t we?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” we both said at once. “Why?”

“Because,” said the Gardener. “It was necessary, for a very good reason, and it actually happened some time before that.” She turned to Weathereye. “Was she in some kind of danger?”

“Oh, a very definite kind,” he said. “Someone has found out too much and is trying to kill any or all of them.”

“How?” the Gardener whispered. “How could anyone have possibly…?”

“How could anyone have possibly what?” cried Sophia. “Gardener, what’s going on?”

“Shhh,” she replied. “Not here.” She unlocked the grille, beckoned the others through it, relocked first it, then the heavy doors, and led us out the cellars, locking each of the doors behind us.

As we reached the ground level, Lady Badness said, “For all we know, there may be listeners down there. After all, the other end’s in Cantardene.”

“Which is a pesthole,” remarked the Gardener. “If anything found out, I’d guess it was something from there…”

Miss Ongamar said, “The stone. The standing stone. They call it Whirling Cloud of Darkness-Eater of the Dead.”

Sophia and I exchanged a horrified look. I murmured, “We saw it, didn’t we, Gardener?”

Gardener said, “I took them to the Gathering, Weathereye.”

Ongamar said, “The stone called out, ‘It’s here.’ It meant me, didn’t it?”

“Probably,” said Mr. Weathereye. “As I said, the order to kill you came from the very top levels of Cantardene.”

“The very top levels were present when they made the ghyrm,” Ongamar said. “Anything any of them knew, that stone knew. What is that stone?”

“Ah,” Lady Badness murmured. “What a good question. What would you say, Weathereye? Not merely K’Famirish, is it? Something of the slaughterhouse added? The torture chamber? The mass grave? One, or more, of the ancients in the Gathering?”

“Quite possibly,” said Mr. Weathereye crisply.

“Quite possibly what?” cried Sophia, stamping her foot.

“Quite possibly an amalgamation of K’Famir and Frossian gods along with something a good deal older,” the Gardener answered crisply. “You and Gretamara were there, Sophia. You saw the Quaatar.”

“You said they couldn’t do anything…by themselves,” I cried.

“They can’t,” said Lady Badness. “Just as a battery can’t do anything by itself. Attach a wire to it, however, and current flows. We gods are like that. We accumulate energy, feelings, emotions, needs, wants, hopes, dreams, hatreds, everything. Normally, most of it cancels out: Love balances hate, hope balances despair, joy balances sorrow. If you get a god that’s only one thing, however, only pain, only hate, only death, with nothing to balance it, then it accumulates. Attach a mortal to it, and you’ve got a lynching, a crusade, a clinic bombing, a jihad, an inquisition, an assassination. Those three, Dweller, Drinker, Darkness…they’ve set up a hate-and-horror generator! I would like to know how they found out about our plan, though. I thought we’d done an excellent job of hiding our traces.”

“Did the plan have anything to do with me?” asked Ongamar, tears gathering in her eyes. “If it did, they’ve found out from the ghyrm. I saw the ghyrm being created, and one of them has been feeding on me for years, using me to spy out horrors. I tried to keep some things to myself, but it knew me. It knew all about me…” She looked imploringly at the Gardener. “I know it doesn’t keep information to itself, I know it doesn’t. That…that stone probably knows everything the ghyrm does, everything
every
ghyrm does…”

“But what does it know?” the Gardener asked. “That you are Ear-
thian? Everyone knew that. That you are female, sick of the place? Obviously.”

“I saw them being created. I don’t think the ghyrm learned that from me, but I can’t be sure.”

“Ah,” said the Gardener. “Well. Would it know there are more than one of you? You didn’t know that yourself…unless…”

“Of course,” said Mr. Weathereye, scowling. “Unless another one of the seven is also in contact with a ghyrm! Well, I was sent to Cantardene to find someone who had been Margaret. Aha. Yes. And why was I sent? Because there were already three Margarets on Thairy and another one on B’yurngrad who was in danger, and the one on B’yurngrad is a member of your Siblinghood, Ella May, and she’s a ghyrm-hunter, like you, who usually carries and feeds a finder. Which is, as we all know, simply another ghyrm.

“So, if we have one Margaret on Cantardene, known to a ghyrm, and another Margaret on B’yurngrad, also known to a ghyrm, and if those devils in The Gathering know everything the ghyrm know, then it would not take them long to figure out there was at least one more Margaret than there should be…”

“They identify us?” Ongamar asked. “Individually?”

“Oh, I imagine they can,” said Lady Badness. “At least the ones they don’t kill.”

“There are such things as identical twins, or even triplets,” I said indignantly. “Don’t they know that?”

“Of course there are,” said the Gardener. “But if a monster is several million years old and has survived enough extinction episodes to become completely paranoid, one is not averse to killing a few twins to eliminate a possible threat.”

“Several million years old!” whispered Ongamar. “Who?”

“This is not the place nor the time,” said the Gardener. “We must move very quickly before they know we’ve been warned…”

“Where are we?” asked Ongamar

“On Chottem. Weathereye, you say there are three already assembled on Thairy? What are they doing?”

“Going to B’yurngrad to pick up a fourth one,” he replied, with satisfaction.

“Two here, four there, leaving only one, and we know where she is. So, Weathereye will take Ongamar to B’yurngrad, where she’ll tell them about ghyrm. Then they find transport…Not a way-gate. No! The way-gate’s reversed. We can’t leave it that way!”

Weathereye frowned, eyes suddenly widening. “Of course! We need to change the gate so it goes from Chottem to Cantardene, the way it was, then we have to hide the machine.”

“There will be guards posted at the far end, on Cantardene,” said Ella May. “If you turn it around, they’ll come through.”

“Do you have charbic?” asked Ongamar. “They grow it on Cantardene for export to Chottem. Charbic is lethal to the K’Famir, so they use slaves to work the fields.”

“Charbic?” mused the Gardener.

“Sometimes called mothbane,” I said. “The carpets here were adrift with it when we arrived.”

“So they were,” cried Sophia. “There are still sacks of the stuff filling up one of the stables.”

“Ah, very well,” said Mr. Weathereye. “Do you have stout retainers, Sophia? Stout enough to lug the stuff down below.”

“I don’t want them to see…” Sophia said.

“They won’t see,” said the Gardener. “Lady Badness can arrange that your men see nothing but floors and walls.” She stood, beckoning to me. “Gretamara and I will go just before the way is locked. Weathereye will precede us, with Ongamar and Ella May, continuing through the way-gates to Thairy, then on to B’yurngrad if that is where the others have gone.”

“You’re leaving me here alone?” asked Sophia in panic.

“I’ll stay with you,” said Lady Badness. “I’m really quite useful. Don’t worry.”

The Gardener stayed above while the rest of us returned below, and into the right-hand branch of the tunnel.

“If the K’Famir get through the grille, they’ll go through this gate, too,” whispered Sophia.

“It will do them no good,” said Lady Badness with a peculiar, almost anticipatory smile.

“We’re off, then,” said Weathereye, patting Sophia’s shoulder.

“There are four gates between us and Thairy, but it will take us very little time.” He bowed the women through, then followed.

Sophia took a deep, shuddering breath.

“You feel adrift,” said Lady Badness, patting her hand.

“Gardener has been…my mother, my family,” said Sophia. “I know all about my real mother. I know what kind of family she had. I think the Gardener is a lot harder to live up to.”

“She is only what our source is, and you’re part of that.”

Sophia was not cheered by this, as it seemed only to deepen her responsibility, but she resolutely sent for men to fetch sack after sack of powdered charbic root, then led them below to dump them just inside the gate.

“All kinds of vermin come through here,” Sophia said loudly, with a convincing shudder. “The charbic root will kill them, and we’ll shut this entry down.”

“Entry, ma’am?” asked the most forward of the men.

“A way my grandfather used to get down to the harbor,” she said. “He bought it from the Omnionts, but it lets rats in.”

When everything was prepared, the four strongest were told to stay by the machine while she pushed the button. Then they pulled the bulky thing back through the grille door, the sound of shrieking wheels covering the faint, distant howls that Sophia heard. She locked the grille and the gates behind her, then pointed out a dusty corner where the machine could be hidden under a pile of old sacking.

I watched them as they crossed each of the cellars, looking around with great curiosity. Everyone had heard the rumors of Stentor’s great hoard, but all I saw, all they saw was stone, dust, and cobwebs, with not so much as a scatter of coins on the floors. None of them noticed the old woman sitting quietly in a corner. When they had finished, Sophia thanked them for a job well done, paid them exorbitantly, and told them to take the day off.

“Now what are we to do?” Sophia asked Lady Badness.

Lady Badness turned toward me and asked, “Are you and the Gardener ready to go?”

“We are,” said the Gardener, coming down the stairs.

“It will be frightening, just waiting to see what happens,” said Sophia.

“We will stay busy,” said Lady Badness with a somewhat-gloating look. “Since the K’Famir may actually try to come through the way-gate, you and I, Sophia, must be ready with a proper welcome.”

The doors and the grille were unlocked only long enough to let the Gardener and me into the tunnel. We heard them being locked again, behind us.

We emerged from the way-gate into darkness. Light bloomed slowly around us. We were in a cube, a gate in the wall behind us, another in the wall ahead, an uninterrupted wall to either side, a ceiling, a floor.

“Do you have a name and a number?” whispered a mechanical voice.

“The name is Wilvia, the number is two,” said Gardener.

The wall to our left slid open, making a slender opening. We squeezed through and it shut behind us.