Walk to the End of the World (14 page)

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Authors: Suzy McKee Charnas

BOOK: Walk to the End of the World
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Kelmz said, ‘I was assigned to accompany d Layo. There he is. Here I am.’
Before Senior Riggert had time to fully consider this remarkable, not to say insulting, reply, Servan said smoothly, ‘I am sure that Senior Riggert has his own goals, which are served by this expense of his time and knowledge with us.’
‘Justice!’ snapped Riggert. ‘Retribution!’
Kendizen spoke up, unhappily, as if he would rather not have, but couldn’t keep silent. ‘Certainly the Holdfast could use more of the first, but as for the second, surely the manly ideal of generosity -’
‘You’re soft, sir,’ Riggert said, harshly. ‘I’ve always said so, and I say it again, in front of these young men.’
‘And I say that there are those who are so eager to be tough that they become cruel,’ Kendizen retorted, turning pink like an angry boy.
Ignoring him, Riggert continued, ‘Vengeance is owed to my friend Karz, though he wouldn’t say so himself. He has an open and forgiving nature - perhaps a trifle too much so, like Senior Kendizen here – and would no doubt have Maggomas’ friendship back if it were offered, a possibility that I mean to prevent – or rather to help you to prevent. In return, I will require some token, some proof that Raff Maggomas has been destroyed.’
Was that what moved this fierce old man, jealous rage at having been robbed of a lover? Anger with himself for accepting Maggomas’ leavings again afterward? Bek saw himself as a weapon in
another man’s hand, a sharp edge to cut an enemy. He didn’t like that.
‘Your token must be my word, Senior, that I mean to find Raff Maggomas and deal with him as I see fit.’
Outside, the boy-voices mounted in praise of the manly virtues: pride, courage, strength, patience, reason, loyalty … Senior Riggert chose patience.
‘We will discuss this later,’ he said. ‘Just now, we have only the interval of the dreaming in which to deal freely with Karz. If he thinks it’s to protect Raff Maggomas, he’ll tell you where to find him. Can you think up a story that will put that appearance on your questions?’
‘Nothing simpler, Senior,’ Servan said. ‘Let’s go.’
‘One thing,’ Kelmz said. ‘Seniors, when you came in, were the streets clear? Is everyone but the boys inside the Hall now?’
‘All but a handful of young rowdies who were turned away for arriving half-drunk,’ Riggert said, disdainfully. ‘They’ll have staggered off to keep each other company somewhere until the silence is over.’
Kendizen frowned. ‘There is a rumor that some young Tekkans went up to the Rock, and that one of them swam up a vent-pipe and let the others into Endpath. So it’s known that the Endtendant, far from having barricaded himself in, has left Endpath and is at large. Possibly the young men we saw were only feigning drunkenness and are actually on the watch for suspicious movement in the City during the dreaming – in hopes of capturing the renegade, and with him some extra points.’
Eager and apprehensive now at the prospect of actually closing in on Raff Maggomas, Bek said shortly, ‘I accept the risks. Let’s waste no more time.’
‘Good.’ Captain Kelmz looked over the confusion of paper that he had created. ‘I’m sick of this place. There’s nothing here but pictures of dead things and a stink of lies.’
Servan laughed and said it was really wonderful, how you couldn’t so much as set foot inside the Boyhouse without learning something, no matter what your age.
Their passage from the Boyhouse through the silent City was swift and uneventful. The two Seniors put up their mantles to hide the sight of the empty, sunny streets. They hurried ahead, unmindful of the dust swept up by the hems of their dress-mantles. The stillness oppressed them.
Bek had developed a taste for stillness at Endpath, and he would have liked to walk alone and slowly. But Kelmz worried him. He dropped back to walk with the captain. ‘Did it go all right with the Rovers?’
‘Fine.’ Kelmz kept his eyes moving, watchful of alleymouths and shadowed doorways. ‘Tell me something. If you were the descendent of beasts that somehow survived the Wasting, would you stay anywhere near the descendants of men?’
‘There were descendants of the beasts,’ Bek said, slowly, ‘the monsters. But the refugees’ descendants exterminated them.’
‘From the Holdfast,’ the captain said. ‘The world was a big place in the days of the Ancients. It still is.’
‘A hostile place, Captain. Sometimes men who go out on the wood crews go rogue, have you forgotten?’
‘I’m just giving you notice: after this you’re going to be on your own with your friend d Layo. I’ve got a trip of my own to make.’
‘But what can you hope to achieve – ’
Kelmz snorted. Servan heard and glanced around at them. ‘You’ve got balls to ask that! Look at your own expedition, your own purposes!’
‘I want to talk with you before you go.’
Kelmz smiled. ‘Your turn to advise me? All right.’
It was none of Bek’s business, he had no reason to be concerned. But he was. And Kelmz seemed to accept his concern.
They stepped into shadow, and thick doors closed them into a spacious, cool quiet. The Seniors had brought them to the company compounds. This was the common-room of the Angelists’ Hall, high-ceilinged, gloomy and islanded with groupings of high-glazed furniture that were strewn with rugs and cushions for the comfort of Seniors at table-games or conversation. No one talked or played now, no old men gossiped by the hearth today in their accustomed places. Like everyone else, the Angelist Seniors were off dreaming in the Boardmen’s Hall. So who were the men chanting down at the hearth-end of the room, masked by fire-glowing screens of woven grass?
Senior Riggert turned toward the screens with nervous eagerness. He seemed to have forgotten all his anger.
‘Wait here,’ he said, and strode off down the length of the room.
To the others, Kendizen said tensely, ‘You understand, a lot of cults like this one have sprung up in the last three five-years, as in other troubled times. The cultists come here for the blessings of the sun; they say the rite can help some men more than dreaming can. And the cult’s existence enables a man like Karz Kambl to support himself as its leader, in spite of his condition – or because of it, I should say.’
A sun cult, Bek thought, with contempt. Appealing to a sun god for power against a moon witch was an old man’s game, like the taste for magic, another weakness of age. A man would do better to come to Endpath.
Kendizen read his expression. ‘Sometimes you young men are as intolerant as the most tyrannical Senior,’ he said. ‘Try not to show too much shock when you see Kambl. He was burned once, and he has healed badly.’
Rejoining them, Riggert said, ‘When we join the circle, I’ll tell Karz that he has visitors. He’ll dismiss the others, and they’ll be glad to go. They can’t afford to stay together and risk discovery by prowling youngsters. The Board is not lenient with sun-worshippers. Are you prepared?’
Servan said, ‘Tell him who I am by name. I’ll do the rest.’
‘What about her?’ Kelmz pointed at the fem, who was skulking in the darkness of the great doorway.
‘The cultists will be furious if they see a fem here,’ Riggert said.
Servan went and spoke to her. She hesitantly took a place on one of the long, cushioned couches – a small figure obscured among the blocky shapes of seats and tables around her.
‘She’ll keep watch on the door for us,’ Servan said, ‘just in case. I’ve pointed out to her the reason for everyone’s interest in not being surprised here – we wouldn’t all pay together or in the same way, but by Christ-God-Son, we’d all pay!’
On the other side of the screens, a group of blank-suited men, masked, walked in a long oval, chanting. They paced gravely, not looking at one another or at the newcomers, for whom room was made in the line without apparent concern for age-standing. The chant consisted of a set of lines extolling the world as a fitting place for men, watched over by a benevolent Being: ‘To the Sun, Earth is a small stone; the sea is a drop that films it; the sky is a glass ball enclosing, that the Sun holds in his hands to darken; and in daytime he looks within, one bright eye.’
Bek, taking up the words describing a deity who peeped in at the world of men like a boy at a keyhole, could scarcely keep from smiling. The rest of the ceremony was not at all amusing.
Now and then a man would leave the line and go to kneel before a figure seated on a block between two small braziers in the ashes of the high-arched hearth. The figure was a horror: the body was hidden in a robe of dull red and yellow patches, but Bek could see that one arm was drawn up in a twisted crook against the chest, while above it cheek and shoulder were squeezed together on a seal of scar-tissue. The face was an unreadable snarl, wound tightly around the off-center vortex of the one milky eye.
He had seen such deformities at Endpath and could scarcely credit that a man would choose rather to live on in this state. Involuntarily, he thought of the fems he had seen burned today in the square; they were surely better off than this ruin of a man!
Senior Riggert stepped forward as others had done and knelt before the burned man. He reached out and took the figure’s one sound hand between his palms: a lover’s gesture, simple and direct. Kneeling so, he spoke in loving treachery. Bek, watching, felt his own flesh creep. When Riggert rose, the burned man spoke aloud.
Bek didn’t understand a single word, but the cultists did.
The chant died. Swiftly and in silence, the line of men filed past the burned man, who briefly clasped the hand of each of them. Then all dispersed; the Hall doors closed with a soft booming after them. The visitors were alone with the burned man.
He spoke to them. Bek watched his fire-scarred mouth, and this time, despite the distortion, he made out the meaning: ‘I’m told that a young man, a friend of Raff Maggomas’ son, is here.’
Servan stepped forward, bowing his head in an appealing manner that suggested pride and independence struggling with awe. ‘What was once friendship between Raff Maggomas’ son and myself,’ he declared, with becoming boldness, ‘was betrayed by him and has become a bond of debt. He turned me over, in my moment of weakness and boyhood foolishness, to my enemies. I’ve lived an outcast since then. I owe him for that.’
It was, Bek thought, an interesting interpretation of events. He made a small sound of appreciation, something between a snarl and a laugh. Kambl, moving his upper body all in one piece as if fire had fused his joints, turned toward him; how much did he see out of that one clouded eye?
‘Who is that?’ the burned man asked.
‘A true friend of mine,’ Servan said, and he managed to imply with his modest tone the effort of a man to suppress unseemly pride as he showed off the one he loved. His delivery was masterful. A whole relationship was conjured up, a golden transmutation of the reality between himself and Bek. It was so convincing that even Riggert, with murder on his mind, looked up with a flash of quick sympathy and pleasure.
Kambl said, ‘Good. It will help you to do well what you have to do, if your friend is looking on. His presence will remind you of what is best in yourself. A man’s revenge should never be polluted with spite or cruelty.’ He did not sound pompous, like a Boyhouse Teacher launching an exhortation on the Streets of Honor, but rather as if he really believed what he said, never having doubted or examined the truths of Holdfast life. Bek would have preferred some good, healthy bombast. He could not despise this wreck who spoke so simply of virtue. ‘You understand, I owe Eykar Bek, too; but my grudge is not personal, like yours. It’s only that by the Law of Generations he is the first and most dangerous enemy to my first
and most precious friend.’
Then he said, ‘Dagg?’ And when Riggert, who stood just behind him, touched his shoulder he added, ‘I’m sorry, but truth is truth.’
Saying nothing, Riggert leaned down and pressed a handkerchief into Kambl’s hand. Saliva sheened the lower part of the burned man’s face. He seemed to have hardly any contol of his lips at all and probably did not even feel the moisture, the scar-tissue being insensitive. With an audible sigh, Kambl used the cloth to blot the shining film from his face.
Servan, to Bek’s sardonic amusement, looked rather dismayed. He was accustomed to grotesqueries more figurative than literal through DarkDreams or to quick, straightforward and bloody reality. A prolonged nightmare like this shook him up.
But he caught up the thread of his performance again. Briskly, he said, ‘I’m afraid the danger to Raff Maggomas from his son is more than theoretical now. Are you under the impression that I’m on my way to find Eykar Bek at Endpath to settle our differences there?’
The handkerchief hovered beside the ruins of the burned man’s mouth. ‘I take it, then, that you’re not?’
‘No, sir; coming back from there. Eykar Bek has bolted like a fem, the whole City knew this morning. I think he’s gone looking for his father.’
‘“Rebellious sons rise”,’ intoned Riggert, “to strike down first their fathers’ ways, then their fathers’ lives.” ’
Kambl sat very still, like one who hears a sound for which he has long listened. In a strong voice, he said, ‘What do you need from me?’
‘If you can tell me,’ Servan said, ‘where to find Raff Maggomas, I’ll intercept Bek on the way to him. When I’ve paid Bek what I owe him, he won’t be fit to trouble Maggomas, or anyone, ever again.’
Standing very tall behind Kambl’s chair (like the shadow of the man Kambl might have been, had he been able to stand erect), Riggert said, ‘Tell them everything.’ The glow of the braziers reddened his dry, grooved cheeks and the mass of hair hovering above him like a sunset storm. ‘Young men should know that the quarrels which heat their blood began long before them and have more history than a Junior’s tally of injuries. They should know for whom they act, and why.’
Kambl said, ‘It’s nothing of any great importance, except to
myself and those kind enough to concern themselves with me. I was at Bayo with the Quarterbacks when Raff came down from Lammintown. He was bitter about his troubles there. He’d been trying to reorganize some phase of the way the Tekkans were handling the weaving shops, and he’d been making some headway - and then the scandal about his claimed son broke, and his influence was wiped out, though the rumor was never proven. I don’t think he ever got the chance to answer the accusation formally.
‘He came to Bayo in a hurry, afraid that he wouldn’t have time to start over again and achieve something as great as he meant to before he died. He distrusted his health. He had no use for Endpath immortality, though. He used to say that a man should be remembered by the works of his hands and mind, not by generations of ignoramuses babbling his name by rote.
‘Our Seniors,’ Kambl went on, ‘had heard the rumors, and considered Raff a trouble-maker. But he was a Senior himself, so they had to take him in. From the beginning he was full of notions that set him apart. He insisted once that fems’ milkcurd could be turned into a hard substance useful for making into buttons and buckles. The Quarterback Seniors were laughing behind his back for weeks afterward.
‘So he used to talk with us younger men. He said the Seniors were too soft anyway, not men enough to be really intent on Reconquest, which was his goal. He wanted to explore the waterways south through the marsh, looking for solid land to be the site of a new town, a base for expansion beyond the present borders of the Holdfast. He spoke of winning back our pride by winning back the world. It was very exciting. We liked to think of ourselves as new heroes, turning our backs on everything we hated: our Seniors, the Rovers, the marshes, the smell and sound of fems around us all the time …
‘What we hated we also feared. Some of us came to love Raff for his enthusiasms, his brilliance and for his – misplaced – faith in us. But we never did do what he planned for us to do.
‘Toward the end of that five-year the lavers failed again. Raff was enraged to see the fems being decimated for witchery in retaliation. He said they weren’t to blame and that killing them was a stupid waste. That got him into more trouble. Some of the Seniors began saying that he had brought the blight with him, that he was in
league with the fems. But he was tough and clever, and he got back to the City with us at the end of that unhappy five-year and began working to amass new power – which he did.
‘Then, a few years later came this other upheaval: news that his son was mixed up in a DarkDreaming. He went to a Board meeting about it and came back very keyed-up, but he wouldn’t say anything. He began to get ready immediately to got to ’Troi in a boat that he’d been fitting out for that journey for some time. Nobody knew he was doing it, except me. I don’t know even now where he found all the metal he needed to make the machine that drove it. At the time, I didn’t dare ask – he had no scruples at all about things he thought were necessary.

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