The Visitor (42 page)

She nodded wearily. “I'm incapable of being edified until I've had something to eat.”

They went in together. Those who had come from the redoubt had already filled the long, rambling room, their talk echoing from the smoke-darkened beams of the ceiling and adding to the chatter of a lesser number of local folk. Dismé looked for a demon, thinking she might transmit or receive some news thereby, and immediately saw one crouched at one side of the fireplace.

She went to sit beside him. “We have just come from the guard post at Bastion's border.”

He gave her a haunted look. “Then we came from the same place by different routes, woman.”

“We didn't see you on the road.”

“No. And likely you didn't see what happened to the army of Bastion two nights ago, at Ogre's Gap.”

“Ogre's Gap,” said the doctor, coming up beside them. “That's an old name for the meadow just below the guard post. What happened there?”

“The Ogre arrived,” said the demon, his shoulders hunched, as he stared into the fire. “If I describe it, I make it sound like something that could exist when, in fact, it is a being out of nightmare. Imagine a thing part bear, part snake, part ape, part prehistoric creature from the old books. It bit the heads off a number of soldiers and squeezed their bodies dry to drink the blood. Then it bit off a few more heads and sprayed the blood over the men, turning them into a horde of devils. Even the horses were changed. When the army marched away, the Ogre maimed the ones who were left behind. We received a Dantisfan message from someone named Dismé, so our people came out of the forest and killed the maimed soldiers. We are not killers. We do not relish it, though we knew it had to be done. I have had the grues since then.”

“You did them a service,” said Galenor in an icy voice. “Do not grieve over them.”

The demon laughed. “I am grieving over me, sir. Over ideals I had that are lost.” He shuddered as he went on: “The army and the Ogre move only at night. We demons are posted at relay points along their line of march. Every crofter or farmer capable of hearing has been warned.” He fell silent as he picked up his mug with shaking hands.

Galenor said, “You're having trouble believing this.”

The demon shivered violently, almost a convulsion. “We don't believe in magic…”

“Don't be misled by your eyes,” said Galenor. His voice was very deep and resonant. “If an inexplicable good thing happens, you do not call it magic. You call it good luck, or perhaps a miracle, wrought by some power you know nothing of. So, if a bad thing happens, it, too, can be a miracle, also wrought by power.”

“Magic!” cried the demon. “Miracle! What difference between the two?”

“There is no difference at all,” said Galenor. “Except
that people allow themselves to believe an event if it's called a miracle while disdaining the same event if it's called magic. Or vice versa. Life arises naturally; where life is, death is, joy is, pain is. Where joy and pain are, ecstacy and horror are, all part of the pattern. They
occur
as night and day occur on a whirling planet. They are not individually willed into being and shot at persons like arrows. Mankind accepts good fortune as his due, but when bad occurs, he thinks it was aimed at him, done to him, a hex, a curse, a punishment by his deity for some transgression, as though his god were a petty storekeeper, counting up the day's receipts…”

Galenor pressed the man's shoulder, once, twice. The demon relaxed and took a deep breath, color coming into his face. Dismé looked up to catch only a glimpse of the other being behind the doctor's eyes before he turned away and left her.

Dismé did not follow him. She was too weary to encounter Galenor or anyone else. Instead she sat down at a nearby table where an old woman was finishing a cup of tea, her empty plate before her. She took one look at Dismé's ashen face and imperiously summoned the server to order a draught of spirit, which she pressed into Dismé's hands.

“I'm not sure I can keep this down,” Dismé murmured.

“You will,” said the woman, pressing the cup toward her lips with a wrinkled hand. “This first, then you must eat.” And she turned to the server again to order a meal before welcoming the doctor who had returned to sit beside Dismé.

“My name is Skulda,” the old woman said, smiling at him.

“Did you arrive today?” Dismé managed to ask.

She nodded, taking a sip of cider. “It seems I got out of Bastion just in time.”

“Especially since Bastion does not approve of people getting out,” said the doctor.

“I wasn't a long time resident. They won't miss me.”

Dismé accepted the broth, bread, cheese, and fruit put before her by the innkeeper's daughter. Though she didn't feel
hungry, hunger would return, and the old woman was right, she had to eat.

“Where are you from?” she asked, as she picked up the spoon.

Skulda sat back comfortably. “Oh, I've spent time along the New West Coast, in Mungria and New Salt Lake and Henceforth and Secours. I've lived on the Old West Coast, the Sierra Islands. I spent time in Everday and in Bastion. I've journeyed eastward to New Kansas and New Chicago, and there was even a brief time among those touch-me-nots down in Chasm, lah-me. The subterfuge and playacting it took to become part of
that
close little group!”

The doctor tented his brows, accepting his own bowl of steaming broth with thanks. “You've traveled enough for several.”

“Oh, not only traveled.” She chuckled. “I've been several. I've been Aretha and Bahibra and Clotho. I've been Hathor and Moira, almost the whole alphabet full from Atropos to Ziaga. And, the children I've had, lah-me! Nineteen at last count. I even stuck around to raise some of them. I may have great-grandchildren by now.”

“Don't you know?” Dismé sputtered around a mouthful of broth. It smelled of onions and herbs, and it was full of lamb and barley. “If you have great-grandchildren, I mean?”

The woman frowned, a little sadly. “That wasn't the task, dear child. I was to vanish from all their lives before any longstanding claims of affection could be made. Not that they weren't good children. Oh, they were good enough. That's what the whole point of having them was.”

The doctor put down his fork and took a sip of wine, looking at her thoughtfully. “But you've not had a child for some time.”

“I suppose that's true,” she said, nodding. “The youngest would be getting on toward thirty by now. And Befum…he'd be eightyish I suppose. Ah, but I was young when I began. And there were all those syrups and tinctures to keep me young. You introduced yourself as a doctor, lad. You'd make a fortune if you could duplicate such tinctures to keep
teeth solid and skin smooth and all the insides of you ticking as though you were a teenager still, even old as I was. How old d'you think I am?”

“I'd say, eightyish,” the doctor opined.

“Aha. See there. You missed it by a league, mile, or kilometer, whichever's to your taste. I'm a hundred twenty-one. My first child was born at forty, my last at ninety-three.”

The doctor turned to Dismé, winking his amusement.

“No more children,” mused the old woman. “God says enough is enough. All the miraculous pharmacopeia can be dispensed with. Good thing, too, for I'm tired of it all.”

Arnole, who had been sitting nearby, came to slip onto the bench beside Dismé. “Tired of what, grandma?”

“Being savior of the human race! The constant pregnancies, labor, deliveries, all that suckling, then the trial of making quite sure my current husband or lover could cope without me, or finding foster parents who could.”

“When you moved on,” Arnole said.

“Surely. When I moved on. Many babies to bear, and only a finite number of years to do it in! Oh, my boy, I always made quite, quite sure the child would be well cared for before moving on, very well cared for. But it's over, and now's time to lay down the fatal beauty, the erotic body, the seductive charm.” She winked at the doctor. “All those accoutrements of fascination and captivation that let me do my job with the least possible confusion. No more being bewitching.”

Michael had joined Arnole on the bench, and now all four of them confronted the old woman with total fascination, which did not at all dismay her. She smiled at them as she continued:

“I knew it was time to retire last time I was in Henceforth when I saw a poster in the little shipping office. Come to Urdarsland, it said. Natural beauty, leisure, intelligent companions, charm and relaxation. A retirement community for the connoisseur. Ah, good people, if there's anything nineteen children can make of a person, it's a connoisseur of leisure and relaxation. So, I've hired a carriage to take me to Henceforth. When I get there, I'll buy a one-way ticket to Urdars
land where it's full of warm springs and moss grows on the great trees…”

“Gardens too?” breathed Dismé.

“Oh, yes, my child. The booklet made it look like Eden.”

Dismé chewed the mouthful she'd forgotten about, and the doctor asked, “You want to leave this world behind?”

“It's getting too crowded with memories. In Bastion I took a short walk to buy myself a pair of shoes, not more than a hundred fifty paces from my hostel, and I saw two of my former husbands on the street. They couldn't recognize me, of course. I don't look at all as I did when I was ninety, claiming to be thirty-six, convincing them I was bearing their children.”

“They weren't your husbands' children?” asked Michael, in a strangled voice.

“Oh, no, my boy. No. They were the children of other men, long gone, children perfect for the purpose, God said.”

“And you were doing this at God's behest?” asked Arnole.

“Ah, yes, my boy. I was born to duty. Aging is my retirement benefit. There in Bastion, picture this, I was peering nearsightedly over my spectacles at this man I'd been sheet leaping with some thirty or forty odd years ago, thinking I should be reveling in erotic memory when I was actually grateful for being old. Let's see. The baby I had with that one had been…James? Jasper?”

“Jens,” said the doctor, tonelessly.

“Could have been. Something with a J, at any rate. A bit of a whirlwind, that wee bratty, though maybe the child only seemed more energetic than normal. He was among the last half dozen, and when I had them, I was already looking forward to the retirement God promised me.”

“Was your life that…distasteful?” whispered Dismé.

“Oh, child, not in any way distasteful. I always found many secret pleasures to make up for quotidian tribulations, don't you know? I hated leaving a few of the men, and hated even more leaving some of the children. Baby Cammy, ah, he was such a dear. And my last one, dear, dear Dizzy-Dimples! I stayed longer with that little love. But I had to go…”

A driver came into the room, whip curled at his belt and leather gauntlets folded in his hand. “Skulda?” he asked the room at large, looking about. “A carriage for Henceforth?”

The old woman rose, took her cloak from the back of the chair and put it on. As she left, she turned to them. “So nice to have seen you again. Dismé. Jens. Arnole. Michael.” Three more steps and she was at the door. “Say hello to Abobalee and Ababaidio for me. So nice to know you all turned out well.”

“I heard my name mentioned,” said Bobly, climbing onto the bench beside the doctor. “Who was that. Somebody's grandma?”

“Somebody's mother,” said Dismé, staring at the doctor, at Arnole, then, with covert unease, at Michael.

“Come,” said Galenor, urgently. “Dezmai. Bertral. We must speak with Nell Latimer.”

 

The bishop and commander had been kept at the general's side during what was left of the day. The general, moving restlessly around his tent, had rehearsed a certain rite he would do when the ogre arrived, and the bishop had listened with growing revulsion as the details became increasingly clear. As the day waned, the bishop had asked, almost hopefully, “General, perhaps the creature isn't coming back.”

The general slapped the bishop on his back and gave him a jovial grin, displaying teeth which seemed larger than the bishop remembered his having. “Oh, he's still with us. Not as strong as he was, but he will be, when I do the rite. I remember it. Oh, yes, I remember it. Ah…see, there, the sun's going down. Now he'll come…”

They waited, and within the hour, he did come, monstrous and terrible, to drink the blood of half a dozen men. When the general howled at him to find women for the rite, he rose to sniff horribly the surrounding air, to lurch toward the cliffs at the roadside, and there to set his claws into a cleft in the stone, where the doorway of the seeress had been left unsealed by a woman more interested in being right than being careful. The airlock designed to keep out heat, dust, and ra
diation had not been designed to restrain an ogre who could smell young women inside—fairly young in elapsed years, at any rate—who were soon dragged out and brought to the general.

The general did the rite from memory, cutting off this, chomping that, drinking this other thing, calling upon the Great Fell for power, while the other officers looked on, or looked away, or looked, as the bishop did, at his feet, wondering why the Rebel Angels had brought him to this place. Wondering what the Rebel Angels really were. Wondering if they ever had been angels or if he and his people were not now servants of some horrible antithesis.

Other people were found in the redoubt. They were “fixed,” as the general said, then left there to keep the magic strong, including the oldest woman among them who kept screaming, “Jackson, where are you, Jackson. Help, Jackson…” There was no one to help, and the general said it was important that there should be no one to help. This time, when the army marched, the pain of the victims buried deep in the redoubt should suffer for many days before they died. Now they were well hidden, well provided with water and warmth to extend their lives, but with the rock wall collapsed over them, they were unreachable by anyone at all.