The Visitor (50 page)

The doctor murmured, “I'll wager Bishop Lief Laron took himself back to Bastion some time ago.”

“Bastion is hell,” said Dismé. “Why would he go there?”

“Because he belongs there,” said the doctor. “For a little time.”

The silver warriors were halfway up the second ridge to the east.

Dismé turned to Wolf. “Can you call them back?”

“Do you want them called back?” Wolf asked, curiously. “It seems to me they're doing a good job.”

“There has been enough slaughter,” she replied. “Many of those men are as much victims as murderers. Call them back, now.” She searched the surrounding land with her eyes. Somewhere here were the ones who were needed. Certainly they would always be at the site of any battle. Even
tually she found them, three tiny figures dwarfed by the flayed and dismembered body of the ogre.

“Tell your creatures to go there,” Dismé said, pointing at the ogre's corpse. “Tell them to go there quietly, and just stand there, don't kill anyone else.”

Wolf took a small silver box from his belt, flipped it open, and keyed in a command. The far-off figures, all but one, slowed, turned, and trudged back in the direction they had come. Wolf cursed, keyed in a specific number, then the command again, and this time the lonely silver figure stopped, turned, and came toward them with lagging feet.

He said, “The others are fighting at command, but that one loves to kill.”

“Have them go farther right,” said Dismé, tonelessly, as the silver fighters neared. “Where those three people are, next to the ogre's body.”

“Who?” said the doctor, turning. “Oh. Of course.”

They watched silently as the silver figures came to the ogre's corpse and arranged themselves silently in ranks. The three Guardians there went among them, touching them. Even at the great distance, Dismé saw the green fire, and then the thin, white smoke.

“Who are they? What are they doing?” asked Wolf.

“Rankivian. Shadua. Yun,” said Dismé. “They are releasing your captives.”

“They aren't captives,” complained Wolf. “And you can't release them. There isn't enough left of them to exist outside the shells…”

“She knows,” said the doctor, expressionlessly. “Believe me, she knows.”

All three of the distant figures were gathered around one of the silver warriors, the last one to arrive. Dismé felt a tickling summons in her mind. She went off down the hill, both Michael and the doctor hurrying to catch up to her. The ogre's body was not far away. As the wind shifted, they caught a momentary whiff, which made their eyes smart and their throats catch.

Shadua, looking up, saw their reaction and went at once to lay her hand upon the mountain of oozing flesh. It exploded into leaping black flames that melted the body like wax, and in moments only a pile of ash remained beneath the charred bones on a darkly stained patch of soil, the ashes already blowing away among the grasses.

“You called me?” asked Dismé, wearily.

“This one,” said Rankivian. “All the others chose to die, but not this one. This one chooses nothing.”

“Can you find out who it is?” asked the doctor.

“It says only one name, over and over. Your name: Dismé, Dismé. It hates you. It wants to kill you. But it has no volition. It can do only what it is told. If told to hate and kill, it does it with enjoyment. If told to do anything else, it will obey.”

“Then order her to tell us her name.”

They turned their attention back to the silver form, intent upon it. Shadua said imperatively, “Tell us your name.”

Mechanically, the being answered. “Nemesis of Gone…”

Dismé said, “What was your name before you were Nemesis?”

“Rashel was my name.”

Dismé stared at the shining carapace, her own image reflected in it, a distorted personage that grimaced like a clown. What a vengeance! Rashel had hated and feared Gohdan Gone. He had done to her as he did to all his servants. And then…

She asked, “What was the potion Old Ben gave this woman, Jens?”

“I don't know what was in it,” he said, “but you know it was meant for you. The power in it came from Gone, not from the stuff itself. I took it to the clinic and put it away where I thought it would be safe…I knew it was evil, but I had no idea what it would do…” He fell silent, realizing Dismé was no longer listening.

“A potion meant for me. One made by Rashel, at the command of Gohdan Gone. Because I was a Latimer. As, it turns out, we all are, all of us. Guardians.” She looked over the
doctor's shoulder at Wolf, who was approaching, but still at some distance.

“Rashel,” she said quickly to the silver form. “Who is Gohdan Gone? Is he dead?”

“A servant of the Fell,” said the metallic voice. “The Fell is not dead. The Fell is not here to die.”

They felt a chill, as though a harsh wind had blown across them. Dismé asked, “What is the Fell?”

“The Fell is in the book, greater than…greater than…greater than any being here.”

Dismé checked Wolf's progress again and said quickly, “Rashel, I order you to choose to die.”

For a long moment nothing happened. The three fingered hands clicked and clicked, the knife edge extending as though in longing. The optics in the silver face glowed.

“It's either that or imprisonment forever. I order you, choose to die,” said Dismé again, eyes fixed on Wolf who was very near.

“I choose to die,” said Rashel.

Shadua put her hand upon the silver figure and a fine white smoke came from a grilled opening near the neck. Dismé turned and started back toward the others, Michael and the doctor still at her side. They passed Wolf, who went by them purposefully on his way to his silver army.

“He'll be angry when he finds they are dead,” said the doctor.

“Very,” agreed Michael. “So will all of Chasm, even if they get their hardware back.”

As they passed the amorphous scattering that had been Gohdan Gone, Dismé lingered beside it. The stuff of it was leaking slowly into the sand. A thin whining came from it. She stooped to hear it better and made out the words. “Fell is not dead; sing while you can.”

She knew in her heart she could defeat Gone, had defeated Gone, but evidently Gone had been only part of the evil. The Fell still lived. Somewhere. After a moment, she rejoined the others at the bottom of the butte where they were saddling the horses and hitching the
wagon. Nell, Arnole, and the little people slowly gathered around them.

“Are we finished here?” Michael asked.

Nell nodded. “Except for your friend there. He looks upset.”

Wolf was storming back toward them, his anger palpable.

“What in hell have you done?” he shouted as he approached.

“I told you,” said Dismé, when he was near enough to hear her speak quietly. “We released your captives. What you had out there in those silver shells is the same thing Bastion had in the bottles. It doesn't matter if they fight for us or against us, what's kept there is pain, and Gohdan Gone can feed off it just as he could the ouphs.”

“Ouphs?” said Wolf.

“The spirits of those who had their patterns kept alive in bottles. Not full-fledged ghosts, just meager spirits, but taken all together, they felt enough pain to feed that monster.”

“You're talking magic again,” snarled Wolf. “Those warriors had no pain. We gave them pleasure, great pleasure.”

She shook her head. “If you could not detect the evil, you weren't looking for it. They hated and they were in captivity. Hate is pain, captivity is pain, even when the hater is eu-phorized into accepting it. If you could not detect the ouphs, you were not looking for them. Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there. As for magic, yes, I may be talking magic from time to time, but then, I am the temporary servant of only a small and temporary god.”

“We saw your small god,” sneered Wolf. “The way we at Chasm figure it, you had a collective hallucination. You only thought you saw and heard it, but your dobsi picked up on what you thought you sensed.”

Dezmai turned on him, took him by the shoulder and grinned fiercely at him. “I call upon my sister, Volian, Guardian of the Air,” she cried, keeping her eyes fixed on Wolf's face so the dobsi would catch it all and send the image to every demon within reach. “May he fly until the sun sets. I call upon my brothers, Hussara of Earth and
Wogalkish of the Waters. May dust devils annoy him and rain pour upon him, and may he hear the ridicule of Jiralk the Joyous throughout his suspension.”

She picked up a stone and threw it high into the air, so that it fell sharply on the drumhead, creating a resonance that carried Wolf aloft and spun him face down, slowly, staring at them from widely opened eyes as the sound went on, and on, and on, and laughter rang in his ears. Lightning split a cloud that began to move in their direction. Small dust devils began to collect.

“Magic,” whispered the doctor.

Nell said tiredly, “Arnole told me once that sufficient power would look like magic to a person who didn't have it. If we are to believe the little god, the power is hers, not ours, or perhaps it is the natural power of Tamlar's kinfolk. Do I need to say I don't feel like a Guardian of anything at the moment? My children seem to have taken to it better than I.”

“Let's head back to Trayford,” said Arnole. “They may need our help in dealing with the remnants of the army. Whether they do or not, we need some time to ourselves.”

He helped Nell onto the wagon seat. Camwar, Bobly, and Bab climbed into the wagon bed behind them. Michael lifted Dismé onto her horse, then mounted his own as the doctor had already done.

“Tamlar,” called Nell. “Will you come with us?”

“I will come when you need me,” she replied. “But now I will help Shadua dispose of all this carnage.”

“Burn it well,” called Dezmai. “Be sure none is left for either Chasm or the Fell to use.”

Camwar turned to take a last look at his great drum. “I know it's too large to move,” he confessed. “But, I will miss working on it.” Then he smiled at Dismé. “You will need others, however. Smaller ones that will not take so long. I brought you a sample,” and he took from the wagon bed a set of three small drums, set into a curved frame that fit over the pommel of the saddle.

They rode eastward, up the rises and into the troughs, toward the distant mountains. As they crested one of the
ridges, they saw the flying machines from Chasm returning to the field. They stopped long enough to look through the glasses at the pilots of these machines gathered by the great drum, peering into the air above it where Wolf still revolved, around and around.

Later, as the sun was setting, they heard one brief drum roll from behind them.

“He fell. He bounced,” said Dismé, with a small, self-satisfied smile. “Dead snake.”

Jiralk, Michael, erupted into laughter which sped away like the wind along their back trail. “You didn't kill him, did you,” he cried.

“Of course not. I was just returning the insult he gave me.”

“And what now?” Michael asked her

Dismé reached out her hands to Michael and the doctor. “Bastion, I think. We know the devil there. We know what he eats. Maybe we can smoke him out. Maybe we can find out more about…the other thing.”

“You think we'll have access to our…counterparts to do that?” the doctor asked.

“I said we,” Dismé said, smiling ruefully to herself. “I didn't necessarily mean them, though I admit they're useful. Then, after Bastion, maybe other places for the same reason. And after that, to meet our brethren, those who live in the forest and the sea…”

Nell remarked from the wagon, “I knew there was a reason to come out of the redoubt. Also, if we're stopping in Trayford, I'd like to find Alan. I promised him I would. And poor Jackson. I suppose he's in Chasm. Perhaps I can visit him there.”

There was silence for a time, except for the creaking of the wagon, until Bobly asked Arnole:

“How many Guardians are there in the book, Arnole?”

“Twenty-one. We know some of them only by name, Ushel, for instance, and Geshlin.”

“And how many stones were there?”

“Twenty, one for each Guardian but Tamlar.”

“But Bab and I only used up one,” she said. “So if you count us as two…”

“As you certainly should,” said Bab.

“…there should be twenty-two Guardians.”

“Odd,” Arnole said thoughtfully. “You're right, of course. I wonder who that could be?”

No one had an answer. Camwar drew a long-necked stringed instrument from his baggage in the wagon and began to make a gentle music in time with the horses' hooves. Dismé touched the drums and then stroked them, bim, bom, and boom: tinky tunk, tiddle, tunk tunk. Jiralk began to sing, Dezmai joined him, and for a time, they rejoiced, while unseen far behind them the fortress of the small god emerged once more, silently from the grasses.

A
lan and I are living in a large apartment in the Fortress of Bastion. It used to belong to General Gowl, and it has access to the roof garden the general built to reward his wife for giving him a son. Gowl's wife, son, and unmarried daughters are now living on a farm somewhere in Praise, learning to raise sheep. Dismé wanted them moved completely out of Bastion, but the doctor preferred to have them where he could keep an eye on them until we start separating the sheep from the goats.

We returned to Bastion by way of Trayford. The town had escaped any serious depredations by the army, which had pretty well scattered to the points of the compass, along with most of their leaders, including the bishop. Alan was there waiting for me, along with Hussara, Volian, and Wogalkish. I've forgotten the names they had before, though they told me, and when the huge, hairy bulk of Hussara hugged me to his chest and called me Mother, I was…a little put out. I cannot yet think of them as my children. Hussara is a very big man, wide-shouldered, with great muscled arms and legs. Wogalkish is built like a swimmer, very lean and fit and androgynic, and Volian is a graceful woman with white hair and light blue eyes, slender but tremendously strong. We stayed in Trayford just long enough to tell several demons what was intended and ask them to spread the word to the people of Bastion and the surrounding area.

From Trayford, we went north by wagon. Dismé and I traveled in the same small wagon, spending most of the time in talk. Of them all, I think she will be closest to me for she feels like a daughter whereas the others feel like…creatures out of myth, too strange to humanize. Oh, except for Arnole. And Michael. And the doctor, sometimes. I told Dismé a lot about the world before the Happening, and after we had established a friendly relationship, Dismé told me what the small god had told her at the end of our audience. The god said none of the Guardians had any deleterious genes, and therefore any cultural taboo against brother-–sister sexual alliances had no meaning. The small god had taken my embryos, yes, but she had made sure they carried nothing hurtful.

I spoke supportingly to Dismé about this, telling her that
what is
is no doubt more important than what people think. She replied, rather pettishly, I thought, that Arnole had told her that years ago. Nonetheless, believing that Dismé might be too shy to mention this to Michael—she seems to be totally inexperienced in such matters—I told the doctor and I presume he spoke to Michael about it, for on several occasions, I've seen Michael talking quietly to Dismé, and no one could mistake the message in his eyes. Or hers.

The trip over the mountains was uneventful, except that on the third day, we began to encounter refugees streaming out of Bastion. Most of them were on foot because the horsemen had taken their stock out of Bastion earlier, about the time Dismé and the others came out. Throughout the fourth and fifth days, the exodus continued, but by dawn of the sixth day we crossed the pass on virtually empty roads. At that point, Bertral, Galenor, Hussara, and Wogalkish went into conference, that silent sharing of views the inhabitants do when they take us over.

We camped at the pass, for we arrived there late in the day, not far from the great black scar on the meadow of Ogre's Gap, where the pyre had burned the bodies of the dead. There was a scatter of bones, pulled from the ashes by small beasts. When we woke in the morning, Tamlar had ar
rived amid a good bit of smoke, and the bones were gone. I imagine her fires burn a good deal hotter than any the demons could set. Besides Tamlar, there was a wan and wistful-looking man sitting on a log, waiting like a patient hound, and Tamlar said he had come to tell us something.

Since several of us were in conference, Bobly and Bab had gone down to the stream for water, Michael and Dismé were “picking wild strawberries” (an unseasonable excuse, at best), and I was less threatening than Tamlar, I summoned him over with a gesture and offered him morning tea, which he accepted.

“My name is Mace Marchant,” he said. “I used to be head of the Apocanew office of Inexplicable Arts.”

“What does ‘used to be' mean?” I asked him, in as gentle a voice as I could manage.

“It means I don't want to be connected to it anymore, not to any of it. It's because I loved this woman. Rashel…”

My ears pricked up at that, for during our long drive, Dismé had told me everything she could remember about Rashel, including her end.

“…but she wasn't in love with me. I think she put a spell on me, or someone did, so I would love her. And because I knew her, the Warden of the College of Sorcery dragged me along to meet this…this sorcerer. Gohdan Gone? Do you know that name?”

I told him we knew the name and we knew where, in Apocanew, he had resided.

“Apocanew? Really? The warden took me to a place in Hold. He, Gone, told me I could go, but he kept the warden there, and Gone killed the warden. I heard some of it, through the grates in the streets. It was…” He had to set his cup down, for he was shaking. Galenor glanced at me from his position with the group, and I beckoned. He came to stand behind the wretched man, laying a firm hand on his shoulder.

“Is that what you wanted to tell us?” I asked.

The shaking stopped, and he said, “No. Not all. When I was there, before they told me to go, I saw a book. I noticed
it because it moved, as though it had something alive inside it. On the cover it said, ‘The Book of Fell.' And when I heard the Guardians had come, when I heard that Bastion would be cleansed of all that, well, I thought you should know about the book…” He picked up the cup and sipped at it. “Such books…grimoires, are like collections of evil spells, aren't they? Sources of dark power, and this one looked very, very old.”

As he set his cup down, he glanced up at the person behind him, and rose, crying, “Jens Ladislav?”

“Galenor the Guardian,” came the reply, in such tones of awful power that the poor man was quite stricken, a state made even worse when Dismé came out of the trees.

“That's Rashel's sister,” he whispered. “They killed Rashel.”

I gave Galenor a forbidding look and told Marchant that indeed, Rashel was dead. I saw no reason to upset him with the details when he would need his wits about him in telling Arnole and the others what he had seen. They gathered around and began to question him, at which point Elnith joined the group, and we soon had his life's story among us. When we had drained him quite dry of useful information (including the location in Hold of Gone's place and Mace's destruction of the warden's documents, which quite frankly surprised me, for he didn't look capable of stepping on a stinkbug), we fed him and suggested he join a nearby demon encampment in case we needed him for anything further.

Bertral said firmly, “He's right about the book of Fell. There is now a reference to it in my Book. The only way we'll know we've destroyed it is to see it done.”

“Let Aarond and Ialond go as children,” Tamlar suggested. “Gohdan Gone slaughtered many children. Let them say to the servants of this necromancer that they have been summoned. I will follow them into the lair, and together we will find the book.”

Hussara nodded. “That may gain you entrance, but let Volian and Wogalkish walk with me to the street where this
entry is, to wait there for the book to emerge or for Aarond's call. It may be a more difficult task than you imagine.”

“All of us,” said Tamlar, her voice crackling. “If it is to be a difficult task, then we will all be needed.”

Elnith decided to go with the small ones, and if Elnith went, I had to go along. The journey was made more quickly than I could have imagined, quite as though we giants were striding in the magical seven-league boots I had read of in fairy tales as a child. Giants did not knock upon the gate, however. It was just Bobly and Bab and Nell who knocked upon the gate, in our own unthreatening guises. The street was empty, but the gate was just as Mace Marchant had described it, as was the dwarfish, hairy person who came to greet us. I felt a spasm of pure revulsion when I saw it, an instinctive loathing. The creature tittered and pranced, but after a bit of this it decided to admit us, though he said his Master was away.

Below, at the end of long corridors, we found another gate, guarded by another such, who said Master wasn't home, to which we replied as before. We had been summoned. We would await the Master. This creature led us to another door which a third monster opened, letting us into the room Merchant had told us of. Despite the smoldering fire that burned, the room was in virtual darkness. It smelled…oh, how can I describe that smell. To me it was wet ashes, hot metal, rot, decay, blood, sewers, a stench the color of bruises. The chair stood beside the fire, heavy legs, arms, back, but the seat was only an empty frame over a precipitous hole that went endlessly down into darkness.

The three of us just stood there, trying to breathe, hideously aware that the pit before us was not empty. Each of us knew it was occupied. Gohdan Gone had departed, but the power that had moved him was still here. Elnith had taken over once we entered, but she didn't insulate me from her fear, which I felt for the first time. She was suddenly, terribly afraid, taking a long moment to gain mastery of herself and reach out toward the book. It was on the table next to the chair, and I saw my own hand go out to grip it. It was like
touching the base of a great cliff, immovable as mountains. My hand fumbled with it, unable even to open the cover.

Outside the door, the creatures who had let us in were peeking at us, tittering. In the vast hole beneath us, something turned its attention toward us. Elnith felt it. So did Bobly and Bab, for Ialond and Aarond were suddenly there, laying their hands upon the book, struggling with it, unable to open it any more than Elnith had done. Elnith called, and from elsewhere Hussara and Volian and Wogalkish answered.

We felt the cavern begin to shake. The floor shuddered beneath our feet, things fell from the shelves; we three moved against the outer walls just before the roof of the cavern came down, narrowly missing us. Light flooded in. It was noon, and the sunlight streamed downward into the abyss beneath the chair. We heard something from below uttering words we did not know, had never heard, strange words that went to our hearts and chilled them. Hussara leaned above us, with Volian, whose wind came down in a great vortex and scooped everything in that room away, upward, burning as it went, for Tamlar was there to burn it as it came. A sharper gust pulled out those small, tittering creatures who had served their master, and they too were burned as they swept up into the sunshine. With the earth riven wide, as it was, there was enough light in the place to see the book was not a separate thing. It was part of the stone beneath it, part of the bedrock beneath that, rooted into the substance of the planet.

I felt Elnith summoning. We all stood as we were, without moving, hearing that movement from below, listening to it climb from the pit that held it. Then, suddenly, Dezmai and Jiralk came sliding down the sides of the pit that Hussara had made, she with her drums that Camwar had made for her, and he with Camwar's instrument. They stood tight against the wall, not to throw any shade into the pit, and Dezmai drummed, Jiralk strummed, and the two of them began to sing. Their voices twined like snakes mating, turning and twisting and lacing themselves together, pure pur
pose untroubled by thought or need, and we saw the cover of the book rise, only a tiny bit.

Oh, from that book came such sounds and smells and tastes. The clangor of bars and gates, the rattle of chains. The shriek of imprisoned and tortured beings. The taste of blood on our lips. Dezmai drummed, Jiralk played, they sang, the cover opened, and the first page of the book rose up as Volian leaned above it and ripped it from its binding with her breath. It came loose with a sound of ripped metal, fluttering upward like a living thing, only to fold itself into a deadly arrow shape and plunge toward Volian's breast.

Tamlar caught it with one fiery hand and melted it with her breath, and the next, and the one after that.

The book was thick. It held hundreds of pages, every page a history of some bestial cruelty mankind had committed against his own kind or other kinds. The first few were only sticks and stones used by one kind of proto man against another. Then came spears and slings, used to more purpose. Then horsemen, with bows and swords of bronze. I saw pyramids of skulls left in the lands conquered by marauding hordes; I saw living children thrown screaming into the flames of Moloch; I saw impalements without number, and crucifixions and burials alive; I saw blood poured upon high altars until the pyramids ran red to their bottoms. I saw wars of religion against religion and people against people. Every page was one such; every one had to be raised separately, separately ripped away, separately melted into a tiny blob of metal that writhed on the broken stone like mercury, crawling toward the dark. None escaped. Bobly and Bab caught them all, scooping them into a pitcher they had found among the wreckage.

The farther we went into the book, the more recent the pages became. I saw despots releasing poison gas upon their people and others; I saw torture raised to an art form in the dungeons of police states; I saw hordes starved by their rulers; I saw the ovens, the gibbets, the laboratories, the suicide bombers, the blowers-up of busses, the terrorists, the nihilists, and I heard the lip-smacking of that being in the pit
that fed on it, all of it, including the souls of those who had committed the acts.

And near the end of the book I saw the Spared Ones repeating every evil man had ever invented. One by one the pages opened with cries and shrieks and howls and an outpouring of terrible spirits that stank of hatred. One by one they were silenced and the page was ripped away. One by one the pages rose on the wind like fallen leaves and were burned to the accompaniment of a far off sound, as of chains broken or walls fallen, or great cages rent wide.