City of Golden Shadow (36 page)

"Going back to town, they are," the boy said quietly. "That's as well. Plenty to keep them busy there. All the same, I think we'll stay off the road." He scrambled to his feet. Paul got up and staggered after him, feeling as though he had almost fallen from some high place.

A short time later Gally cut across the road and led them down a smaller side road which wound through the trees and up a small rise. At the top of the hill, rising from a copse of birch trees, stood a very small castle whose central keep jutted like a pointed hat. The drawbridge was down, the front door-no larger than the door on an ordinary house-stood open.

They found the bishop sitting in the front room, surrounded by shelves of books and curios, reading a thin volume in the light that streamed in through the entrance. He fit his wide chair so snugly it was hard to imagine that he ever left it. He was huge and bald, with a protuberant lower lip and a mouth so wide that Paul felt sure he must have a greater than ordinary number of bones in his jaw. He looked up as their footfalls sounded against the polished stone floor.

"Hmmm. In the middle of my poetry hour, my all-too-brief moment for restful contemplation. Still and all." He folded the book closed and let it slide down to the place where the hemisphere of his belly met his small legs-there was nothing flat enough in the area to be called a lap. "Ah. The scullion lad, I see. Gally, is it not? Tender of the cookfire. What brings you here, pot urchin? Has one of your spitted carcasses suddenly called out for shriving? The fiery pit has a way of engendering such second thoughts. Harrum, harrum." It took a moment before Paul realized that the hollow, drumlike sound was actually a laugh.

"I've come asking your help, Bishop Humphrey, true enough." Gally grabbed Paul's sleeve and tugged him forward. "This gentleman needed some advice, and I told him, 'Ask Bishop Humphrey. He's the cleverest man in these parts.' And here we are."

"Indeed." The bishop turned his tiny eyes to Paul, then after an instant's shrewd examination, let them slide away again. He never kept his gaze on anything for very long, which gave his conversation an air of distracted irritation. "A stranger, eh? A recent immigrant to our humble shire? Or perhaps you are a visitor of a more transient nature? Passing through, as it were? A peregrine?"

Paul hesitated. Despite Gally's assurances, he was not entirely comfortable with Humphrey. There was something distant about the man, as though something glassy and brittle stood between him and the outside world. "I am a stranger," he finally admitted, "I'm trying to leave town, but I seem to be caught in some trouble between the red and white factions-some red soldiers tried to harm me, though I did nothing to them. And there are other men looking for me as well, people I don't want to meet. . . ."

". . . So we need to reckon out the best way for him to get out of the Squared," Gally finished for him.

"The squared?" Paul was confused, but the bishop seemed to understand.

"Ah, yes. Well, what sort of moves do you make?" He squinted for a moment, then lifted to his eye the monocle which had been dangling on its ribbon down the expanse of his belly. In the bishop's pudgy fingers it seemed a mere chip of glass. "It's hard to tell, since you are an outsider like Gally and his tatterdemalions. Hmmmm. You have something of the kern about you, yet something of the horseman as well. You might be another thing entirely, of course, but such speculation as to locomotion would be fruitless for me-like asking a fish whether it would prefer to travel by coach or by velocipede, if you see what I mean. Harrum, harrum."

Paul was lost, but he had been warned that the bishop was prone to talk. He put on an attentive look.

"Bring that over here, boy-the large one." Humphrey gestured. Gally sprang to do his bidding, tottering back with a leather-bound book almost as big as he was. With Paul's help, they opened it across the arms of the bishop's chair. Paul was expecting a map, but to his astonishment the open pages contained nothing but a grid of alternating colored squares, each one full of strange notations and small diagrams.

"Now then, let me see. . . ." The bishop traced his way across the grid with a broad forefinger. "The most obvious course would seem to be for you to hasten here, catty-cornered to us. But then, I have always favored bold diagonals, at least since my investiture. Harrum. However, there have been reports of an unpleasantly savage beast in that vicinity, so perhaps that should not be your primary choice. But you are rather hemmed in at the moment. The queen has a castle not far from here, and I take it you would prefer not to meet with her minions, hmmm?" He turned a shrewd look on Paul, who shook his head. "I thought not. And the lady herself visits this area here with some frequency. She moves very swiftly, so you would do well not to arrange any long journeys through her favorite territory, even should she prove to be temporarily absent"

The bishop leaned back, making his sturdy chair squeak. He gestured for Gally to take the book away, which the boy groaningly did.

"I must cogitate," the fat man said, and let suety eyelids descend. He was silent for so long that Paul began to think he might have fallen asleep, and took the opportunity to look around the room. Besides the bishop's large collection of handsomely bound books there were also all manner of curious things lining the walls, bottles full of dried plants, bones, and even complete skeletons of unfamiliar creatures, bits of twinkling gemstone. All alone on one shelf stood a huge jar containing living insects, some that looked like crusts of bread, others that resembled nothing so much as puddings. As he watched the strange creatures climbing over each other in the stoppered jar, Paul felt a pang of hunger which was followed a moment later by a surge of nausea. He was hungry, but not that hungry.

"While there is a great deal to be said for the order which Her Scarlet Majesty has brought to us during this extended period of check," the bishop said abruptly, making Paul jump, "there is also something to be said for the more laissez-faire attitudes of her predecessor. Therefore, while I myself have excellent relations with our ruler-as I also did with the previous administration-I can understand that you may not be so fortunate." Humphrey stopped and took a deep draught of air, as though struck breathless by his own admirable rhetoric. "If you wish to avoid the attentions of our vermilion monarch, I suggest you must take the first alternative I proposed. You can then pass through that square and find yourself directly at the border of our land. The terrible beast said to inhabit the area is doubtless a phantasy of the peasantry, who are famously prone to enliven their dull and rusticated routine with such tales. I will draw you a map. You can be there before sunset. Carpe diem, young man." He spread his hands contentedly on the arms of his wide chair. "Boldness is all."

While Gally scurried to find the bishop's pen and paper, Paul seized the chance for information. He had been traveling in fog, figuratively and literally, too much of late. "What is the name of this place?"

"Why, it is sometimes referred to as the Eight Squared, at least in the oldest and most learned of tomes. But those of us who have always lived here do not often find cause to refer to it, since we are in the midst of it! Rather like a bird, do you see, when asked to define the sky. . . ."

Paul hurried to ask him another question. "And you were once on good terms with . . . the White King?"

"Queen. None of us has ever met the somnolent seigneurs of our humble territory-they are rather absentee landlords. No, it is the ladies, bless them both, who have traditionally kept the order within the Eight Squared while their husbands stayed close to home."

"Ah. Well, if you were on good terms with the White Queen, but the Red Queen now rules the land, how do you manage to be her friend as well?"

The bishop looked a trifle annoyed. "Respect, young man. In a single word, that is it. Her Scarlet Majesty relies on my judgment-and I am consulted on things secular as well as superworldly, I might add-and thus I am possessed of a rather unique status."

Paul was not satisfied. "But if the Red Queen finds you've helped me, despite the fact that her soldiers might have been looking for me, won't she be annoyed? And if the White Queen ever gains back her power, won't she be furious with you for being so close with her enemy?"

Now Humphrey seemed truly put out. His sparse eyebrows moved together and tilted sharply downward over the bridge of his nose. "Young man, it does not become you to speak of things beyond your expertise, whatever may be the current fashion. However, in the interest of beginning an education which you obviously sorely need, I will explain something." He cleared his throat just as Gally reappeared bearing a plume and a large sheet of foolscap.

"I found them, Bishop."

"Yes, that's fine, boy. Now hush." The bishop briefly fixed his small eyes on Paul before allowing them to roam once more. "I am a respected man, and I dare not, for the good of the land, throw my not inconsiderable weight behind either one faction or the other. For factions are impermanent, even ephemeral, while the rock upon which my bishopric is founded is made of the sniff of eternity. So, if I may create an analogy, my position is that of someone who sits upon a wall. Such a perch might seem dangerous to one who, without my experience and natural sense of balance, gazes up at me from below, in fact, to such a one, a man such as I might seem in imminent peril of a great . . . downfalling. Ah, but the view from up here, from inside here," he tapped his hairless head, "is quite different, I assure you. I am, as it were, made in the perfect shape for wall-sitting. My Master has designed me, as it were, to balance permanently between two unacceptable alternatives."

"I see," said Paul, who could think of nothing else to say.

The bishop appeared to be in a much better mood after explaining. He rapidly sketched a map, which he handed over with a flourish. Paul thanked him, then he and Gally left the tiny castle and thumped back across the drawbridge.

"Leave the door open," Bishop Humphrey called after them. "It is too nice a day to miss, and after all, I need fear no one!"

Looking down as they thumped across the drawbridge, Paul saw that the moat was very shallow. A man could walk across it and barely get his ankles wet.

"I told you he'd have the answer you needed," Gally said cheerfully.

"Yes," said Paul, "I can see he's the kind of fellow who has answers to things."

It took most of the afternoon to walk back. By the time they reached the Oysterhouse, the sun had vanished behind the forest. Paul was looking forward to a chance to sit down and rest his legs.

The door swung inward on Gally's first knock.

"Curse those addlepates," the boy said. "Larking about and they don't remember a thing I've told them. Miyagi! Chesapeake!"

There was no answer but echoes. As Paul followed the boy down the hallway, the sound of their footsteps as stark as drumbeats, he felt a tightening around his heart. There was a strange smell in the air, a sea-smell, salty and unpleasantly, sweetly sour. The house was very, very quiet.

It was silent in the main room as well, but this time no one was hiding. The children lay scattered across the floor, some struck down and left to lie in strange postures like frozen dancers, others piled carelessly together in the corners, things that had been used and cast away. They had not merely been killed, but violated in some way that Paul could not completely understand. They had been opened up, shucked, and emptied. The sawdust on the floor had clumped in sodden red balls and still had not sopped up all the red, which gleamed, sticky-shiny in the failing light.

Gally fell to his knees, moaning, his eyes so wide with horror that Paul feared they might burst from his skull. Paul wanted to pull him away, but found he could not move.

Written on the wall above one of the largest piles, arching above the pale, spattered arms and legs and blind, wide-mouthed faces, smeared across the boards in sloppy scarlet letters, was the word "CUSTARD."

CHAPTER 13

NETFEED/INTERACTVES: IEN, Hr. 4 (Eu, NAm)-"BACKSTAB"

(visual: Kennedy running across estate garden pursued by tornado)

VO: Stabbak (Carolus Kennedy) and Shi Na (Wendy Yohira) again try to escape the fortress estate of the mysterious Doctor Methuselah (Moishe Reiner). Jeffreys, 6 other supporting characters open. Flak to: IEN.BKSTB.CAST

"Someone at the door downstairs." Long Joseph stood nervously in the doorway of her room, unwilling to enter the proximity of illness, even something as unlikely to be contagious as what he had been told was a "breakdown due to stress." "He says his name Gabba or something."

"It's !Xabbu. My friend from the Poly. You can let him in."

He stared for a moment, frowning, then turned and trudged away. He was clearly not happy about answering the door or taking messages for her, but in his own way he was doing his best. Renie sighed. In any case, she couldn't summon up the energy to be angry-suspicious and bad-tempered was just her father's way. To his credit, in the days she'd been home, he hadn't expected her to get up and fix him meals. Of course, his own contribution to the household hadn't grown much either. They were both eating a lot of cold cereal and waved Menu Boxes.