Working God's Mischief (51 page)

Vali sniffed. “I smell animals. And filthy people.” No surprise there. Heris had predicted that.

The Devedians had built well. The mountain people would have been foolish to let such good shelter go to waste.

Februaren said, “Let's watch ourselves. Let's not get hurt.”

His companions stared as though wondering what he meant.

“This way,” Lila said. “The scent is stronger from the building with the concrete foundation.”

Heris said, “That was where the owners and managers worked and lived.” She had come here before.

The girls had, too, and Februaren nearly as often as Heris. Heris growled, “That's where Korban and his thugs took the falcons away.” The falcons Piper had left so she would have weapons to use in the Great Sky Fortress. Those falcons were, no doubt, now in the hands of the Aelen Kofer, being radically improved.

Februaren entered the building wondering loudly why the women of the family had to be so determinedly contrary.

Lila said, “They were here.” She looked at Heris. “Can you find the gateway?”

“I don't know. They wouldn't let me see how. More the rituals than the way but Iron Eyes was in charge. He has a big lazy streak. He wouldn't have tried hard to hide it. He wouldn't expect anyone to look.”

The old man agreed. “Despite being sure that I'm a master villain he would never believe that a middle-worlder was clever enough to open the way if he did stumble onto a gateway.”

Vali asked, “Even though you already did it once?”

“A fluke, obviously. Purely accidental. I was just bumbling around. So he would think. If he thought at all.”

“He can't be that dumb.”

“Aelen Kofer aren't stupid but they aren't thinkers. Not in any abstract sense. They're builders and doers. The Shining Ones worried about consequences. But not much.”

Heris said, “We're being watched.”

“Of course we are. We're invaders.”

Lila opened the door to the office place. She tossed something inside. A flash and bang followed.

Nothing else happened.

Heris observed, “That might not impress this bunch. They saw plenty of smoke and bang when the Deves were here.”

“Whatever. There isn't nobody in there.” She stepped back out, pointed at curious children watching from forty yards away, laughed maniacally.

“Drama queen.” Vali sneered.

“Stick in the mud.”

“Girls. Focus,” the old man said. “This could get dangerous.”

Lila made a face, but said, “Heris, there's an area in there with a really strong Aelen Kofer smell.” She headed back inside. The others clumped after her.

There was some chatter somewhere outside, the language unintelligible but the fright plain enough. There was no bellicosity in it.

Februaren muttered, “Why didn't those idiots in Hypraxium put a garrison in here? It couldn't be that hard to figure out how to make their own falcons.”

Heris said, “The Emperor believes falcons to be tools of the Adversary. He doesn't want them included in his arsenal. His generals understood the lesson Piper taught at the Shades, though. This was where the bigwigs stayed. And the Empress when she was here. There were partitions in here, back then.”

Tribal people still chattered outside, louder but no more intelligible. Heris wondered how they had reacted to the Aelen Kofer, or if they had seen the dwarves at all.

Februaren said, “I got some of that. They won't bother us if we don't threaten them. They already think this building is haunted.”

A toddler in a filth-stained rag of a shirt too large for her appeared in the open doorway, fist in mouth. She needed her nose wiped. A frightened woman no older than Lila snatched her up and fled.

“I like this,” the old man said. “I don't have to work so hard.”

Heris felt bad for the villagers but not badly enough to go away.

“They did use this place till the dwarves scared them off,” Heris observed. The grime and rubbish made a clear example of why city folks considered their country cousins subhuman. “Poverty is no excuse for this. I've been poor. I never lived like a pig.”

Februaren said, “Never mind. We aren't missionaries. Lila?”

“The other end is where the smell is the strongest.”

“Let's open a couple of windows and get some light.”

The women moved, Lila leading. Heris wondered, “Did they come through when people were living here?”

Lila said, “They did stuff to scare them off. Can't you smell it?”

“No.” Heris had one supernatural talent. She could use the Construct to walk the Night. She was better at that, now, than the Ninth Unknown. She had no capacity whatsoever for smelling magic. Though Lila admitted she did not actually smell anything. That was just the most proximate sensory reference.

Februaren said, “It's there. I can smell it, too. They were definitely here recently. A lot of them.”

“Recently we figured.”

“Uhm. The strength might be intentional. Maybe they left a little something for us.”

Heris, Vali, and the old man formed an arc behind Lila. The blonde focused on what was in front of her.

Heris thought she might be seeing the maturation of the Thirteenth Unknown. Lila might get picked for that before the Twelfth Unknown took over for the Eleventh.

Februaren was as intent as Lila. “Are they aware that we're trying to get into their world?”

“How would they find out?” Then, a thought. “Oh. I see.”

“Asgrimmur.”

“He might still be in touch. The Bastard thinks he could be. He's for sure always fluttering around in the shadows of the Shining Ones.”

Korban Iron Eyes had not been completely truthful when he declared an end to all contact between his and the middle world. There had been numerous dwarfish incursions since, usually technology-related. Heris had yet to catch them, though.

She and Februaren wanted to reach the dwarf world so they could look for a path from there to Eucereme.

The Raneul Hourlr had shown a flattering interest in Heris from the moment she decided to look. He was afraid at the same time.
She
was the Godslayer now.

The Old One was forthright in his interest. He was randy. Secretly, he hoped she could get through to his home world. He wanted her to believe that the Old Ones there could help resolve the Twilight, which could end the middle world.

The Ninth Unknown said he exaggerated. The deity had his personal agenda. But Hourlr would not talk to him. Hourlr could not communicate with anyone male. Nor would Heris allow him near Lila or Vali. She knew that light in his eyes. No more Bastards would drop into the middle world.

As if thought alone could conjure a devil Hourlr stepped out of the doorway vacated by the snot-nosed child without having come in from outside. “Still watching over my shoulder.”

“You are endlessly fascinating.”

“He said with a straight face.” She said with a slight blush.

“We cannot help being interested.” Fraught with double meaning.

Heris flashed a nervous smile. Hourlr was a charmer. He made his desires seem so utterly reasonable that you might find yourself making the two-back beast before you realized that he had suggested it.

She told herself she was an old campaigner in a long, tough struggle. She would not succumb. “Of course.”

The Old Ones were all charmers. Even sour old Wife could heat it up when she wanted.

Hourlr asked, “Are you sure you really want to get into the world of the dwarves?”

“Yes.” And he had been feeding the idea.

“Why?” He wanted to know if she had thought this through.

“You know why.”

“Not exactly. No. Unless you have an abiding need to see Khor-ben Jarneyn again.”

“Again said with a straight face.”

“I was not teasing, lady.”

That left Heris nervous. “What are you hinting at?”

“It's good to be a god.”

“I would think so.” Had his agenda changed?

“You haven't found a pathway from the middle world to Eucereme.”

“We haven't. No.” He knew that.

“I'll gift you with knowledge. That is because no such way has existed since the ascendant trapped the rest of us. The free Raneul did not just close the ways, they destroyed them.”

“With help from the Aelen Kofer. Of course.”

“Of course. The Raneul wouldn't actually do any work themselves.”

“Which means I'm on the right road.” Heris grinned. “There have to be connections from the world of the dwarves. They wouldn't let it be any other way.”

Hourlr nodded. “You might be an Instrumentality yourself, Heris Godslayer.” He reeked of charm.

The girls and the Ninth Unknown watched intently, Vali most attentively. A smoldering slow match had appeared in her left hand. Her right clutched a massive handheld falcon, pointed at the floor right now, hidden under a kerchief.

The Instrumentality had begun keeping a wary eye on Vali, unnerved by the fact that his charm had no effect.

Heris said, “We think the rest of the Shining Ones can help us here.”

“If you believe that you are deceiving yourself.”

Heris was startled. “How so?” That was a change.

“They have no reason. You cannot win commitments from them the way you extorted them from us. The ways to Eucereme are closed for a reason. The Raneul plan to evade the Twilight by sitting it out, an avoidance of destiny by abstention. Which I expect not to work.”

The more he said the more she realized that she had considered her choices from no perspective but her own—despite the Ninth Unknown's similar argument when he tried to talk her out of this adventure.

She avoided Februaren's eye. Smug old fart.

“I suppose.” It made sense when he said it. “Because I'm me I can't see the doorway, but I know it's here.” Hourlr nodded. She added, “I want to see the other world even if we never go there.”

Lila sniffed, moved in little shuffles, palms facing outward.

Februaren grunted suddenly. “What the hell? How did that…?”

“Double Great?”

“We're about to solve a mystery. On the other side of this gateway.”

“What mystery is that?”

“Open it up. It could be my imagination.”

“Any idea how?”

Lila said, “I'll do it.” She turned sideways.

Heris squeaked.

A rectangle of reality, shoulder-high and six feet wide, chunked backward two inches, then slid to the left, vanishing behind reality that did not move. Even the Instrumentality seemed awed.

The panel's movement revealed Lila squatting in the mouth of a tunnel with a roof barely high enough to clear a tall dwarf's crown. The rock appeared to be basalt. Basalt did not underlie this region. The light of the middle world, not bright back with the visitors, penetrated only a few yards into the passageway.

Vali observed, “It's wider than it is tall.”

Lila said, “It's really dirty, too.” She sneezed. “It would be big-time spider country if it wasn't for regular traffic.”

The Instrumentality began to glow. That light all flowed into the tunnel, illuminating it for thirty yards. It ran downhill ten degrees, straight, wide, and low, the floor cluttered with dust and stone chips.

Lila sneezed again.

The Ninth Unknown mused, “It really is,” puzzling everyone. He pushed past Lila, bent over briefly, then took a knee and stirred the detritus.

“Aha!” He held up something shiny.

Heris blurted, “Piper's missing pendant! How did that get in here?”

Meantime, the old man picked up what looked like shreds of silk. Like something a woman might once have worn next to her skin. He seemed baffled as he slipped the shreds inside his shirt.

Heris did not miss that.

She did not mention it. It could mean anything.

The old man, moving a foot at a time, produced other bits that must have gotten tracked in by the dwarves.

Hourlr asked, “Shall we see where the tunnel goes?”

Heris suggested, “You light the way.”

“Of course.”

Lila squeezed aside. The Ninth Unknown did the same. Heris followed the Instrumentality. She told the old man, “Give me that. I'll get it back to Piper.”

Februaren surrendered the pendant without comment.

The tunnel ended at a wall of oak planks a hundred yards directly ahead. There were gaps between planks but nothing could be seen on the other side. “It's dark over there,” Februaren said.

“Thus spake the Lord of the Obvious,” Heris said. “How come there aren't any stars or anything?”

“The sky is overcast,” Hourlr said. “Can't you feel the rain?”

Cold, damp air pushed through between planks.

Februaren predicted, “She'll want to go ahead anyway.”

Vali said, “If we left the door open the cold air would cool things off up there … What?”

Even Lila looked at Vali like she wondered how her mind worked.

Hourlr said, “Leaving it open is not an option.”

Heris kicked a plank, hard, by throwing a foot out sideways. Something cracked, evidently not part of her. She kicked again.

Voices came down the tunnel. The Ninth Unknown cocked an ear. “Tribesmen. How long have we been down here?”

“Four minutes,” Heris replied. She kicked again. Nails squeaked. The right end of the plank backed off half a foot.

Hourlr said, “For them it has been an hour. They wonder where we have gotten to. A few are working themselves up to come find out.”

“You can understand them?” Heris asked.

“Some.”

“I thought time matched up between the middle world and the world of the dwarves.” She noted that Hourlr had begun to frown fiercely.

The Instrumentality got hold of the plank she had been kicking, pulled it back into place. “This is a trap. That isn't Dwarvenholm. It's the world of the giants. Help me.”