Believing Is Seeing (5 page)

“It's a long climb to Heaven,” Chrestomanci observed. “Is there anything you'd like to know on the way?”

“Yes,” said Thasper. “Did you say the gods are trying to kill me?”

“They are trying to eliminate the Sage of Dissolution,” said Chrestomanci, “which they may not realize is the same thing. You see, you are the Sage.”

“But I'm not!” Thasper insisted. “The Sage is a lot older than me, and he asks questions I never even thought of until I heard of him.”

“Ah yes,” said Chrestomanci. “I'm afraid there is an awful circularity to this. It's the fault of whoever tried to put you away as a small child. As far as I can work out, you stayed three years old for seven years—until you were making such a disturbance in our world that we had to find you and let you out. But in this world of Theare, highly organized and fixed as it is, the prophecy stated that you would begin preaching Dissolution at the age of twenty-three, or at least in this very year. Therefore the preaching had to begin this year. You did not need to appear. Did you ever speak to anyone who had actually heard the Sage preach?”

“No,” said Thasper. “Come to think of it.”

“Nobody did,” said Chrestomanci. “You started in a small way, anyway. First you wrote a book, which no one paid much heed to—”

“No, that's wrong,” objected Thasper. “He—I—er, the Sage was writing a book
after
the preaching.”

“But don't you see,” said Chrestomanci, “because you were back in Theare by then, the facts had to try to catch you up. They did this by running backward, until it was possible for you to arrive where you were supposed to be. Which was in that room in the inn there, at the start of your career. I suppose you are just old enough to start by now. And I suspect our celestial friends up here tumbled to this belatedly and tried to finish you off. It wouldn't have done them any good, as I shall shortly tell them.” He began coughing again. They had climbed to where it was bitterly cold.

By this time the world was a dark arch below them. Thasper could see the blush of the sun, beginning to show underneath the world. They climbed on. The light grew. The sun appeared, a huge brightness in the distance underneath. A dim memory came again to Thasper. He struggled to believe that none of this was true, and he did not succeed.

“How do you know all this?” he asked bluntly.

“Have you heard of a god called Ock?” Chrestomanci coughed. “He came to talk to me when you should have been the age you are now. He was worried—” He coughed again. “I shall have to save the rest of my breath for Heaven.”

They climbed on, and the stars swam around them, until the stuff they were climbing changed and became solider. Soon they were climbing a dark ramp, which flushed pearly as they went upward. Here Chrestomanci let go of Thasper's arm and blew his nose on a gold-edged handkerchief with an air of relief. The pearl of the ramp grew to silver and the silver to dazzling white. At length they were walking on level whiteness, through hall after hall.

The gods were gathered to meet them. None of them looked cordial.

“I fear we are not properly dressed,” Chrestomanci murmured.

Thasper looked at the gods, and then at Chrestomanci, and squirmed with embarrassment. Fanciful and queer as Chrestomanci's garb was, it was still most obviously nightwear. The things on his feet were fur bedroom slippers. And there, looking like a piece of blue string around Chrestomanci's waist, was the turban Thasper should have been wearing. The gods were magnificent, in golden trousers and jeweled turbans, and got more so as they approached the greater gods. Thasper's eye was caught by a god in shining cloth of gold, who surprised him by beaming a friendly, almost anxious look at him. Opposite him was a huge, liquid-looking figure draped in pearls and diamonds. This god swiftly, but quite definitely, winked. Thasper was too awed to react, but Chrestomanci calmly winked back.

At the end of the halls, upon a massive throne, towered the mighty figure of Great Zond, clothed in white and purple, with a crown on his head. Chrestomanci looked up at Zond and thoughtfully blew his nose. It was hardly respectful.

“For what reason do two mortals trespass in our halls?” Zond thundered coldly.

Chrestomanci sneezed. “Because of your own folly,” he said. “You gods of Theare have had everything so well worked out for so long that you can't see beyond your own routine.”

“I shall blast you for that,” Zond announced.

“Not if any of you wish to survive,” Chrestomanci said.

There was a long murmur of protest from the other gods. They wished to survive. They were trying to work out what Chrestomanci meant. Zond saw it as a threat to his authority and thought he had better be cautious. “Proceed,” he said.

“One of your most efficient features,” Chrestomanci said, “is that your prophecies always come true. So why, when a prophecy is unpleasant to you, do you think you can alter it? That, my good gods, is rank folly. Besides, no one can halt his own Dissolution, least of all you gods of Theare. But you forgot. You forgot you had deprived both yourselves and mankind of any kind of free will, by organizing yourselves so precisely. You pushed Thasper, the Sage of Dissolution, into my world, forgetting that there is still chance in my world. By chance, Thasper was discovered after only seven years. Lucky for Theare that he was. I shudder to think what might have happened if Thasper had remained three years old for all his allotted lifetime.”

“That was my fault!” cried Imperion. “I take the blame.” He turned to Thasper. “Forgive me,” he said. “You are my own son.”

Was this, Thasper wondered, what Alina meant by the gods blessing her womb? He had not thought it was more than a figure of speech. He looked at Imperion, blinking a little in the god's dazzle. He was not wholly impressed. A fine god, and an honest one, but Thasper could see he had a limited outlook. “Of course I forgive you,” he said politely.

“It is also lucky,” Chrestomanci said, “that none of you succeeded in killing the Sage. Thasper is a god's son. That means there can only ever be one of him, and because of your prophecy, he has to be alive to preach Dissolution. You could have destroyed Theare. As it is, you have caused it to blur into a mass of cracks. Theare is too well organized to divide into two alternative worlds, as my world would. Instead, events have had to happen which could not have happened. Theare has cracked and warped, and you have all but brought about your own Dissolution.”

“What can we do?” Zond said, aghast.

“There's only one thing you can do,” Chrestomanci told him. “Let Thasper be. Let him preach Dissolution and stop trying to blow him up. That will bring about free will and a free future. Then either Theare will heal, or it will split, cleanly and painlessly, into two healthy new worlds.”

“So we bring about our own downfall?” Zond asked mournfully.

“It was always inevitable,” said Chrestomanci.

Zond sighed. “Very well. Thasper, son of Imperion, I reluctantly give you my blessing to go forth and preach Dissolution. Go in peace.”

Thasper bowed. Then he stood there silent a long time. He did not notice Imperion and Ock both trying to attract his attention. The newspaper report had talked of the Sage as full of anguish and self-doubt. Now he knew why. He looked at Chrestomanci, who was blowing his nose again. “How can I preach Dissolution?” he said. “How can I not believe in the gods when I have seen them for myself?”

“That's a question you certainly should be asking,” Chrestomanci croaked. “Go down to Theare and ask it.” Thasper nodded and turned to go. Chrestomanci leaned toward him and said, from behind his handkerchief, “Ask yourself this, too: can the gods catch flu? I think I may have given it to all of them. Find out and let me know, there's a good chap.”

T
his is the trouble with being a newly qualified vet. The call came at 5:50
A.M
. I thought it was a man's voice, though it was high for a man, and I didn't quite catch the name—Harry Sanovit? Harrison Ovett? Anyway, he said it was urgent.

Accordingly, I found myself on the edge of a plain, facing a dark fir forest. It was about midmorning. The fir trees stood dark and evenly spaced, exhaling their crackling gummy scent, with vistas of trodden-looking pine needles beneath them. A wolfwood, I thought. I was sure that thought was right. The spacing of the trees was so regular that it suggested an artificial pinewood in the zoo, and there was a kind of humming, far down at the edges of the senses, as if machinery was at work sustaining a man-made environment here. The division between trees and plain was so sharp that I had some doubts that I would be able to enter the wood.

But I stepped inside with no difficulty. Under the trees it was cooler, more strongly scented, and full of an odd kind of depression, which made me sure that there was some sort of danger here. I walked on the carpet of needles cautiously, relaxed but intensely afraid. There seemed to be some kind of path winding between the straight boles, and I followed it into the heart of the wood. After a few turns, flies buzzed around something just off the path.
Danger!
pricked out all over my skin like sweat, but I went and looked all the same.

It was a young woman about my own age. From the flies and the freshness, I would have said she had been killed only hours ago. Her throat had been torn out. The expression on her half-averted face was of sheer terror. She had glorious red hair and was wearing what looked, improbably, to be evening dress.

I backed away, swallowing. As I backed, something came up beside me. I whirled around with a croak of terror.

“No need to fear,” he said. “I am only the fool.”

He was very tall and thin and ungainly. His feet were in big, laced boots, jigging a silent, ingratiating dance on the pine needles, and the rest of his clothes were a dull brown and close-fitting. His huge hands came out to me placatingly. “I am Egbert,” he said. “You may call me Eggs. You will take no harm if you stay with me.” His eyes slid off mine apologetically, round and blue-gray. He grinned all over his small, inane face. Under his close crop of straw-fair hair, his face was indeed that of a near idiot. He did not seem to notice the woman's corpse at all, even though he seemed to know I was full of horror.

“What's going on here?” I asked him helplessly. “I'm a vet, not a—not a—mortician. What animal needs me?”

He smiled seraphically at nothing over my left shoulder. “I am only Eggs, Lady. I don't not know nothing. What you need to do is call the Master. Then you will know.”

“So where is the Master?” I said.

He looked baffled by this question. “Hereabouts,” he suggested. He gave another beguiling smile, over my right shoulder this time, panting slightly. “He will come if you call him right. Will I show you the house, Lady? There are rare sights there.”

“Yes, if you like,” I said. Anything to get away from whatever had killed that girl. Besides, I trusted him somehow. When he had said I would take no harm if I was with him, it had been said in a way I believed.

He turned and cavorted up the path ahead of me, skipping soundlessly on his great feet, waving great, gangling arms, clumsily tripping over a tree root and, even more clumsily, just saving himself. He held his head on one side and hummed as he went, happy and harmless. That is to say, harmless to me so far. Though he walked like a great, hopping puppet, those huge hands were certainly strong enough to rip a throat out.

“Who killed that girl?” I asked him. “Was it the Master?”

His head snapped around, swayingly, and he stared at me, appalled, balancing on the path as though it were a tightrope. “Oh, no, Lady. The Master wouldn't not do that!” He turned sadly, almost tearfully, away.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

His head bent, acknowledging that he had heard, but he continued to walk the tightrope of the path without answering, and I followed. As I did, I was aware that there was something moving among the trees to either side of us. Something softly kept pace with us there, and, I was sure, something also followed along the path behind. I did not try to see what it was. I was quite as much angry with myself as I was scared. I had let my shock at seeing that corpse get the better of my judgment. I saw I must wait to find out how the redheaded girl had got herself killed. Caution! I said to myself. Caution! This path was a tightrope indeed.