Water Sleeps (45 page)

T he singing soldiers proved to be Runmust, Iqbal and Riverwalker. They had come
to rescue the rest of us when Tobo reached them with news of the disaster that
had befallen us down below. They had found us by following the smoke. “At the
risk of finding myself goaded into employing unseemly language, how is it that I
find anyone singing? How is it that you haven’t taken the road to The Land of
the Unknown Shadows? I believe I was pretty insistent on the necessity for
that.”

Runmust and Iqbal giggled like they were younger than Tobo and knew a dirty
joke. Riverwalker managed to maintain a more sober demeanor. Barely. “You’re
tired and hungry, so we don’t blame you for being cranky, Sleepy. Let’s do
something about that. Settle down and have a snack.” He could not restrain a
big, goofy grin as he rummaged in his pack.

I exchanged glances with Swan. I asked, “You have any clue what’s going on
here?”

“Maybe there’s a stage of starvation where you get lightheaded and silly.”

“I suppose Jaicur could have been an exception.”

Riverwalker produced something the shape and color of a puffball mushroom but a
good eight inches in diameter. It looked heavier than a mushroom that size ought
to be.

“What the hell is that?” Swan asked. River had several more in his pack. And his
henchmen had brought packs, too.

Riverwalker produced a knife and began slicing. “A gift from our demon friend,

Shivetya. Evidently after a day of reflection he decided we deserved a payoff
for saving his big ugly ass. Eat.” He offered me an end slice an inch thick.

“You’ll like it.”

Swan started eating before I did. I had an ounce of paranoia left. He leaned my
way. “Tastes like pork. Heh-heh-heh.” Then he had no time for joking. He began
wolfing the material, which looked exactly the same all the way through.

It had a heavy, almost cheesy texture. When I surrendered to the inevitable and
bit into it, my salivary system responded with a flood. The experience of taste
was so sharp it was almost painful. There was nothing comparable in my memory. A
touch of ginger, a touch of cinnamon, lemons, sweetness, the scent of candied
violets . . . After the first shock a sense of well-being gradually spread
outward from my mouth, and again from my stomach soon after the first mouthfuls
hit bottom.

“More,” Swan said.

Riverwalker surrendered another slice.

“More,” I agreed, and bit into another slice myself. It might be poison but if
it was, it was the sweetest poison God ever permitted. “Shivetya really gave you
this?”

“About a ton. Almost literally. Fit for man and beast. Even the baby likes it.”

Iqbal and Runmust found that news hilarious. Swan snickered, too, though he
could not possibly have any idea what the joke might be. In fact, I found that
assertion rather amusing myself. Heck, everything was amusing. I had begun to
feel relaxed and confident. My aches and pains no longer formed the center of my
consciousness. They had become mere annoyances way out on the edge of awareness.

“Continue.”

Iqbal squealed, “He grew them. These nasty lumps developed all over him, like
bigass boils, only when they popped, out came these things.”

Under more normal circumstances that idea and the images it engendered would
have seemed repulsive. I grunted, took another wonderful mouthful, pictured the
creation process, caught myself in the midst of a fit of giggles. I regained
control, though that took an effort. “So it finally decided to communicate?”

“Sort of. When we left, it was trying to manage some kind of dialog with Doj. It
didn’t seem to be working all that well, though.”

Swan sighed. “I haven’t felt this relaxed and positive since Cordy and I used to
go fishing when we were kids. This’s the way we felt lying beside the creek in
the shade, never really caring if we got a bite while we shared our daydreams or
just watched clouds scoot overhead.”

Even the recollection of his friend’s fate did not break his mood entirely.

I understood what he was trying to communicate even though I had had no special
friend with whom to share the rare, golden moments of childhood. I had had no
childhood. I felt really good myself. I said, “This whatever-it-is is great
stuff. River. You seen any side effects yet?”

“It’s damned near impossible to stop yourself if you get the giggles.”

“I’ll try not to get started. Wow! I feel like I could whip twice my weight in
wolves right now. Why don’t we get going?”

Nobody took the opportunity to mention that me whipping twice my weight in
wolves might entail me fighting only the back half of one of the monsters. Iqbal
and Runmust continued to giggle over some shared joke of long ago.

“Boys,” I said, pointing. “That way. Don’t touch anything. Keep going. We’re
going to go back upstairs.”

Dang me, I kept getting silly ideas. And every one of them made me want to start
laughing. Riverwalker told me, “We found out that if we sing it helps us keep
our minds on business.” A big grin spread across his face. He began humming one
of the filthier marching songs. It concerned the business that seems to be on
the minds of most men most of the time.

I hummed along and got everybody started moving.

Foul-smelling smoke from roasted books filled the cavern. It seemed even
stronger in the stairwell. Some of it drifted downward.

Kina was not yet aware, I was sure. She would have done something if she had
known. But she would not remain ignorant forever.

I hoped we could get ourselves well on the road before she recovered enough to
assimulate the truth. Her dreams were deadly enough.

I settled my behind onto the rise in the floor near the entrance to the
stairwell. I sat there dully wondering why the excavation had been started way
out here on the periphery. I did not concern myself about it much, though. I ate
again. “This stuff could get addictive.” And not because it made me feel happy
and silly but because it took away aches and pains and every inclination to
sleep. I could sit there knowing my body was at its physical limits without
having to endure all the suffering associated with that state. And my mind
remained particularly alert and useful because I was not preoccupied with the
miseries plaguing my flesh.

Swan grunted his agreement. He did not seem to have been rendered as cheerful as
the rest of us. Although, come to think of it, I was not doing much whistling or
singing myself.

My mood improved after I had eaten again, though.

In one of his more lucid moments Riverwalker suggested, “We shouldn’t waste any
more time than we have to, Sleepy. The rest should all be gone by now but they
went away hoping that you and the standard would catch up.”

“If Tobo hasn’t already told them, I’ve got some bad news about that.”

“The boy said nothing about the standard. He may not have had a chance.

Everybody was so shocked about Goblin and so worried about how to keep One-Eye
from finding out . . . ”

“Goblin drove the Lance into Kina’s body. It’s still there. You know me. I’m
completely hooked by the Company mystique. I believe that besides the Annals,

the standard is the most important symbol we have. It goes all the way back to
Khatovar. It ties the generations together. I’d understand if somebody wanted to
go back after it. But that somebody isn’t going to be me. Not in this decade.”

That good feeling was moving through me again. I rose. Swan helped me step up to
the higher floor level. “Hello!”

Riverwalker chuckled. “I wondered how long it would take you to notice.”

The crack in the floor was almost gone.

I went and looked. It seemed to be as deep as ever but now was nowhere more than
a foot wide. “How did it heal so fast?” I assumed our presence had been a
catalyst. Glancing around the crack toward the demon’s throne, I noticed Doj and
Tobo hurrying our way. Shivetya’s eyes were open. He was watching. “I thought
you said everybody had left.”

“The earthquake did it.” River ignored the presence of Doj and Tobo.

Swan said, “It’s the latest thing in home repairs. Go down there and stab that
thing again, maybe the plain will heal up completely.”

“Might get the clockwork running again,” Doj said, having overheard our
conversation as he arrived.

“Clockwork?”

Doj did a little hop. “This floor is a huge circle. It’s a one-eightieth-scale
representation of the plain as a whole, with a complete travel chart inlaid. It
rides on stone rollers and was capable of turning before the Thousand Voices got
curious and broke it.”

“Interesting. I take it your chat with the demon proceeded informatively.”

Doj grunted assent. “But slowly. That was the big problem. Just figuring out
that communication has to be managed very slowly. I think that would carry over
physically, too. That if he decided to stand up—if he could—it might take hours.

But as the Steadfast Guardian, he never had to move fast. He controlled the
whole plain from here, using the charts in the floors and the clockwork
mechanisms.”

Never had I seen Doj so straightforward and animated. The knowledge bug must
have bitten him, along with its kissing cousin that makes the newly illuminated
want to share with everyone. And that was not like Doj at all. Nor like any
other Nyueng Bao of my experience. Only Mother Gota and Tobo ever chattered—and
between them they revealed less than Uncle Doj on a particularly reticent day.

Doj continued, “He says his original reason for being created was to manage the
machinery that saw that travelers got where they wanted to go. Over time there
were battles upon the plain, wars between the worlds, this fortress was built
around him, and at every stage he was saddled with additional duties. Sleepy,

the creature is half as old as time itself. He actually witnessed the battle
between Kina and the demons when the Lords of Light fought the Lords of
Darkness. It was the first great war between the worlds, it did take place here
on the plain, and none of the myths have got it close to right.”

That was interesting and I said so. But I refused to allow the past’s allure to
seduce me right now.

“I must confess a grand temptation to create a permanent camp here,” Doj
enthused. “It will take lifetimes to recover and record everything. He’s seen so
much! He remembers the Children of the Dead, Sleepy. To him the passing of the
Nyueng Bao De Duang happened just yesterday. We need only to keep him convinced
that we should have his help.”

I looked questions at each of my companions. Riverwalker finally volunteered,

“He’s got to have been stuffing himself with the demon food.” Meaning he thought
Doj was out of character a few leagues, too. “Several others also went through
big changes when they overindulged.”

“That much I understood already. Tobo. Have you undergone a complete character
shift, too?” He had not said a word. That was remarkable. He had an opinion
about everything.

“He scared the crap out of me, Sleepy.”

“He? Who?”

“The demon. The monster. Shivetya. He looked inside my head. He talked to me
there. I think he did it to my father, too. For years and years, maybe. In the
Annals? When Dad thought Kina or the Protector were manipulating him? I’m
betting that lots of times it was really Shivetya.”

“That could be. That really could be.”

The world is infested with superhuman things that toy with the destinies of
individuals and nations. Gunni priests have been claiming that for a hundred
generations. The gods were banging elbows with each other, stirring the
cauldron. But none of those gods were my God, the True God, the Almighty, Who
seemed to have elected to elevate Himself above the fray.

I needed the solace of my kind of priest. And there were none nearer than five
hundred miles.

“How many stories are there about this place?” I asked Doj. “And how many of
them are true?”

“I suspect we haven’t yet heard one out of ten,” the old swordmaster replied. He
grinned. He was enjoying himself. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if most of them
are true. Can you sense it? This fortress, this plain, they’re many things at
the same time. Until recently I believed it had to be the Land of Unknown
Shadows. As your Captain believed that it had to be Khatovar. But it’s only a
pathway to other places. And Shivetya, the Steadfast Guardian, is many things,

too. Including, I think, infinitely weary of being everything that he’s had to
be.”

Tobo was so anxious to interject his own thoughts that he danced around like a
little boy with a desperate need to pee. He announced, “Shivetya wants to die,

Sleepy. But he can’t. Not as long as Kina is still alive. And she’s immortal.”

“He’s got a problem then, doesn’t he?”

Swan had an idea. “He could divide up that life span and offer it to us. I’d
take him up on it. I could use another couple thousand years. After I get away
from this kind of life.”

I moved us closer to the demon as we talked. My natural pessimism and sourness
evidently reasserted itself, though I never stopped feeling younger and happier
and more energetic than I had for ages. I just stopped giggling with the rest of
them. I asked, “Where’s your mother, Tobo?”

His good humor waned momentarily. “She went with Granny Gota.”

A glance at Doj made me suspect that there had been a sharp encounter between
Sahra the mother and men willing to accept her son as one of them. This was
Nyueng Bao stubbornness again, from two directions. On this one the Troll must
have sided with her grandson and Doj.

I changed the subject. “All right. You two claim you’ve been in Shivetya’s mind.

Or maybe he’s been in yours. Whichever, tell me what he wants.” I did not
believe the demon was being helpful out of the goodness of his ancient heart. He
could not be. He was a demon, accursed of God whether he was a creature of light
or of shadow. To a demon we adventurers had to be as brief and transient as
individual honeybees would be to us—though, like the bees, we might be able to
make ourselves obnoxious for a short while.

Doj said, “He wants what anyone in his position would want. That seems obvious.”

Tobo interjected, “He also wants loose, Sleepy. He’s been pinned that way for a
long time. The plain keeps changing because he can’t get out to stop anybody.”

“What’s he going to do if we pluck the daggers out of his limbs? Will he go on
being our pal? Or will he start busting heads?”

Doj and Tobo exchanged uncertain glances. So. They had not spent much time
worrying about that.

I said, “I see. Well, he may be the sweetest guy on God’s green earth but he
stays right where he is for now. A few weeks or months more shouldn’t make much
difference to him. How the heck did he manage to get himself nailed to his
chair?”

“Somebody tricked him,” Tobo said.

Surprise, surprise. “You think so?”

It seemed there was a lot more light now than there had been when I was headed
in the other direction with Swan. Or maybe my eyes had adapted to the interior
of the fortress. I could make out the designs in the floor clearly. All the
features of the plain could be found there except for the standing stones with
their glittering gold characters. And those might have been represented by
certain shadowy discolorations I was unable to examine more closely. There were
even tiny points that seemed to be moving, which almost certainly meant
something if one knew how to read them.

Shivetya’s throne rested atop a circular elevation positioned at the heart of an
intermediate raised circle just over twenty yards across. Doj assured me that
that was roughly one-eightieth the diameter of the biggest circle and that that
was an eightieth of the diameter of the entire plain. The smaller circle, I
noted, also boasted its representation of the plain—in much less obvious detail.

Presumably, Shivetya could sit his throne and, turning, could see the whole of
his kingdom. If he needed more information, he could step down to the next
level, where everything was portrayed in a scale eighty times finer.

The implications of the quality of the magical engineering involved in creating
all this began to seep through. I was intimidated thoroughly. The builders must
have been of godlike power. They had to have been as far beyond the greatest
wizards known to me as those were beyond no-talents like me. I was sure that
Lady and Longshadow, Soulcatcher and Howler, would have little more grasp of the
forces and principles involved than I did.

I stepped in front of Shivetya. The demon’s eyes remained open. I felt him touch
me lightly, inside. For some reason my thoughts turned to mountainous highlands
and places where the snow never melted. To old things, slow things. To silence
and stone. My brain had no better way of interpreting the actuality of what
Shivetya was.

I kept reminding myself that the demon antedated the oldest history of my world.

And I sensed what Tobo had mentioned, Shivetya’s quiet, calm desire not to grow
any older. He had a very Gunni sort of desire to find his way into a nirvana as
an antidote to the infinite tedium and pain of being.

I tried talking to the demon. I tried exchanging thoughts. That was a
frightening experience even though I was filled with the confidence and good
feeling that came from the gift food Shivetya had provided. I did not want to
share my mind even with an immortal golem who could not possibly have any
genuine comprehension of the things it contained or of why those troubled me so.

“Sleepy?”

“Huh?” I jumped up. I felt good enough to do that. I felt as good as I should
have back in my teens, had I never had a need to feel sorry for myself. The
healing properties of the demon’s gift continued to work their magic.

Swan said, “We all fell asleep. I don’t know for how long. I don’t even know
how.”

I looked at the demon. It had not moved. No surprise there. But the white crow
was perched on its shoulder. As soon as it recognized that I was alert, it
launched itself toward me. I threw up an arm. The bird settled on my wrist as
though I were a falconer. In a voice almost too slow to follow, it said, “This
will be my voice. It is trained and its mind is not cluttered with thoughts and
beliefs that will get in the way.”

Marvelous. I wondered what Lady would think. If Shivetya took over, she would be
deaf and blind until we brought her back from her enchanted sleep.

“This will be my voice now.”

I understood the repetition to be a response to my flutter of unspoken
curiosity.

“I understand.”

“I will aid you in your quest. In return, you will destroy the Drin, Kina. Then
you will release me.”

I understood that he meant for me to release him from life and obligation, not
just from that throne.

“I would if I had the power.”

“You have the power. You have always had the power.”

“What does that mean?” I recognized a cryptic, sorcerer-type pronouncement when
I heard one.

“You will understand when it is time to understand. Now it is time for you to
depart, Stone Soldier. Go. Become Deathwalker.”

“What the devil does that mean?” I squeaked. So did several of my companions,

all of whom were awake now and most of whom were gobbling demon food while
eavesdropping.

The floor started moving, at first almost imperceptibly. Quickly I noted that
only the part immediately around the throne, that had healed itself completely,

was involved. I now knew that all the damage, including the earthquake so
violent it had been felt as far away as Taglios, had been initiated entirely by
Soulcatcher during an ill-conceived experiment. She had discovered the
“machinery” and in her willful, damn-the-consequences way, had begun tinkering
just to see what would happen. I knew that as fully as if I had been there as an
eyewitness, because an actual eyewitness had given me his memories.