The Visitor (41 page)

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.”

S
ummerspan 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 warmed 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.

The bishop mumbled, “There was a monster? I mean, really a monster?”

“Oh, yes. It strengthened itself very quickly, as I recall. Blood seems to be the key to the whole matter.”

The bishop gulped, lowered his head still further, then asked, “Did we stop to eat on the way? Have we eaten at all since then?”

The commander looked momentarily confused. “I don't recall.”

They subsided into silence. Eventually, the bishop asked, “Is the monster still with us?”

“At the moment, probably not,” said the commander. “It seems to show up a little after dark. It was with us last night, I know that. It took a dozen or so of the men as strengtheners.”

Another silence was interrupted by the arrival of a young officer. “The general asks for the bishop,” he said. “And for you, Commander.” He hesitated for a moment, then turned to the bishop, crying, “Sir…don't, don't let him take us any farther. That thing, sir. It's eating…it's eating us. There'll be none of us left if we go on with it.”

By the time the bishop rose to his feet, Colonel Rascan had already run the young man through with his sword. “Rebellion and disobedience. They must be dealt with relentlessly!” he cried with fiery emphasis, totally unlike his usual grave demeanor.

The bishop surprised himself by being outraged, though he kept his voice level. “Isn't the monster eating enough of us? Do we need to kill each other?”

“A rebel is not one of us!” Rascan turned furious eyes on his companion, the bloody sword still in his hand. “The creature is on our side. Working for us. Nothing must interfere!”

The bishop, eyes on the quivering blade, said nothing more. He followed the commander out of the tent and across the few paces of stony ground to the place the general awaited them.

“Something's wrong,” said the general, conversationally. “Something's gone quite wrong. The wounded men up there at the Gap should have lived for a long time yet!”

The bishop murmured, “I don't understand, sir.”

The general looked surprised. “I thought you'd know. Well. It's this kind of magic. I've used this kind. You have to do it so the pain goes on. The spell takes power from the pain to make us Quellers, but we aren't Quellers anymore. We've reverted! Something's gone wrong back at the Gap.”

The bishop paled. “I thought, that is…we believed it was an angel, one of the Rebel Angels who strengthened us. That's what it said! Was that wrong?”

“No, no, I'm sure that's right, I'm only saying the angel used
magic
to do it. That shouldn't surprise us, should it? The whole thing seemed very familiar, and then I realized when I woke today why that was. One has to oppose nature in each step, you see. The killing or maiming of a healthy innocent old enough to be aware, that's necessary; and the drinking of blood or eating of flesh of one's own kind; that's necessary, and the infliction of lasting pain; that's necessary, too. To make it work, you see?”

“To make what work?” the bishop whispered.

“Gone's magic. Hetman Gone. Never mind. You don't know him. He showed me how to do it, that's all.” The general stepped away from them and peered down the river valley to the gap that gave a view of the plains. “What are we doing here?”

“We came to conquer the world outside Bastion,” said the commander, firmly. “But we have received new orders to kill the Council of Guardians!”

“Before we kill them, we must have battles. What about the people outside Bastion? The farmers? The settlers? What about the canyon roads, where the caravans come through?”

“We saw no farmers or settlers, sir. We're a great distance from the canyon routes. To reach them, we'd have to go down to the plains, then a good way eastward.”

“We need someone to fight!”

The commander marshalled his thoughts. “The first town on this road is Trayford. Or, we could pursue the nomads, though I seem to recall seeing them far across the plain from us, and going farther…”

“Trayford,” mused the general. “I remember Trayford. It's only a village. I want a battle, Commander. A big, big battle. We need a larger target than Trayford…”

“Henceforth?” offered the bishop, with a sudden spurt of hope. “We could leave this road when it reaches the plain and go cross country. That's the direction the…thing told us to go anyhow.” Which would have the added advantage of taking them through largely unpopulated country where some of them could sneak away. Also, the fewer people, the less likely the Spared could be slaughtered during the exhausted sleep they fell into after these forced marches.

“Got to get us Quellers back, right?” said the general. “I'll need a few young women.”

“There are no young women with us,” said the commander. “Nor have we seen any.”

“They're here,” said the general, his head bobbing up and down as he agreed with himself. “Got to be here. Somewhere. We'll just look for them, that's all. Or Ogre will. When he gets here.”

 

Squatting solidly at a crossroads, the Inn at Trayford was a sprawling building built upon and added to over the centuries. The several stable and barn wings surrounded enclosed yards for carriages, oxen, horses, and other livestock being driven from one part of the country to the other. The windows were of a style called “salvage,” which meant ancient bottles with the bottoms cut off, threaded in nested stacks onto long sticks that were abutted in vertical rows in wooden frames. While the undulant surface gave no view
during the day, it allowed a greenish-amber glow to guide travelers at night.

It was this light the travelers spied late in the evening of summerspan five, eightday, after two days travel that had felt like forever. None of the sleepers had been in condition to walk the distance, as the doctor had said to begin with, so the trip had been a succession of halts to dress blisters, to bandage sprains, to let some folk ride awhile, to convince others they could walk, to dole out painkillers from the redoubt, to fill water jars at every stream and take comfort breaks at inconvenient locations. Still, as they approached the town, all who had started on the way were present, though many were at the end of their strength.

“We can't take them the rest of the way,” Dismé murmured to the doctor, when they had achieved the stableyard. “I even worry about Nell and Arnole.”

“I've talked to Arnole,” said Jens. “He says he'll trade the heavy wagon for a lighter one to carry the last stone; he'll take four horses instead of two, so he can trade teams. He and Elnith will ride in the wagon, along with the little folk. You, Michael, and I will get two riding horses each and change them often.”

“And how do we pay for all this?”

“Jens Ladislav the doctor has been traveling for some time, and he has built up a credit account in many little towns. The hostler will be glad to get some of his stock out of danger, and our tired beasts can be set free to graze in the canyons.”

“And the people we've brought from the redoubt?”

“They'll have to take cover with the people of Trayford. The villagers have had to take refuge before; the nearest canyons have caves big enough for all of them.”

“There's nothing we can do to protect this town?”

“What power do you have, Dismé?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, neither do I. I don't know what power Elnith has, or Bertral. You and he fought off the monster, back at the
bridge, so we Guardians have some potent force, but we don't know how to use it. As I read Bertral's book, the three most powerful in terms of sheer force are Tamlar, Ialond, and Aarond. Tamlar is at the fortress, along with Camwar, but no one knows where Ialond and Aarond are.”

“What has Camwar been doing there?”

“Building a barrel, Elnith says.”

Dismé spluttered, then began to laugh helplessly. “Doctor Jens. If only you had foreseen all this when our journey began!”

“Like a bit of flotsam foresees a flood? All I had in mind was a neighborly warning! This whole…ogre, Goodland, guardian bit is so far from my understanding that I wouldn't have believed it if you'd told me.”

“Galenor doesn't explain things?”

“He does not. I feel this cold, precise intelligence standing just behind my right shoulder, evaluating everything I sense. As for offering help, the only thing he's done is lay hands on a few of those ex-sleepers who had given up on living. They were immediately healed, but since I had nothing to do with it, I didn't find the experience particularly edifying.”