Future Indefinite (39 page)

Dosh trotted down the steps and set off after the Thargians, crunching leaves under his boots. The night was calm but turning cold, and Trumb’s disk was almost a perfect circle, so the eclipse would start soon. He could find his way along the path by moonlight. If it had gone by the time he returned, the fires twinkling among the trees would guide him. Snatches of hymns mingled with popular folk songs told how the Free were celebrating the Liberator’s triumphant promises. They were showing their faith.

Shamefully, Dosh’s faith had not been as strong as it should be. He knew Thargians and how jealously they guarded their borders. He had been very relieved when he heard them promise to let the Free depart unmolested but also very astonished, which he should not have been. He should have trusted more in D’ward and the power of the Undivided.

Catching a glimpse of the envoys in front of him, he slowed down. D’ward had told him to speak to them when they had left the woods and not before. He could hear the mutter of their conversation, the clink of the ephor’s armor.

When D’ward rejected their terms, Dosh had been as surprised as everyone else. He should have had more faith. Just why the Liberator had chosen to proceed in the way he had was still a mystery, but he always knew what he was doing. Trust in the One! It would be the Thargians who would be surprised when they heard the message Dosh brought. They would curse, undoubtedly, but they would certainly accept, and it would be fun seeing their faces.

The real mystery was why D’ward had made so much of this mission. He had used the code words that meant Dosh was to obey without question, but it had not been necessary. Dosh would have been overjoyed to undertake this task without that. He could not imagine what problem D’ward had foreseen. Perhaps he had expected something else to happen, or had been considering several plans, and the worst had not happened. Why, then, had he used the code words “Good old days”?

“Dosh, darling?” A figure stepped out of the trees before him, from deep shadow to bright moonlight.

He yelped in horror and reeled back. His heel caught against a root and he fell, landing on his seat with an impact that knocked all the breath out of him. He gaped up at the apparition.

She was stark naked. She was hardly more than a child. She was also very pregnant, her breasts and belly distended. Her golden ringlets hung below her shoulders.

He turned his head away and closed his eyes. “Sister! You must not display yourself like that! It is unseemly. It is contrary to decency.”

In midwinter, too! She must be having some sort of brainstorm. He’d heard that imminent motherhood could have strange effects on women. He was not sure if this sort of madness was commonly one of them, but madness was the only possible explanation. She was in need of help. He scrambled to his feet.

She laughed, a laugh like a tinkle of silver. “You always liked me like this before, lover.”

Dosh reached out and clutched a tree for support. The roughness of its bark under his hand reassured him that he was awake and not dreaming. The voices of the Thargian embassy had faded into the distance. He stole a quick glance out of the corner of his eye and she was still there. In fact she was closer.

“Go away! Go back to your husband at once!”

“Husband?” She laughed again, nearer than ever. “Don’t you remember me, Dosh? After all the happy times we had together?”

He stole another glance—at her face, only her face. It was a very lovely face, soft and fair and smooth. She was much too close. He looked away.

“I have never seen you before in my life!” he squealed.

“Well not like this,” she admitted. “This is last year’s model. Lovely, isn’t she? Or she was. One of the guardsmen did the damage, I think.”

Dosh’s knees trembled with the shudder of terror and horror that ran through him. Oh, God preserve me!

She laughed again, and somewhere in the deep crypts of his mind, down in the foulness where the nightmares lurk, there was something unbearably familiar about that laugh. “Memories starting to come back, are they?” she teased. “It’s easier to wipe them clean than bring them back, but we’ll see what we can do. Aren’t you going to kiss me?”

Nausea burned in his throat and cramped his gut. He pressed his face against the prickly tree bark. “Go away! In the name of the One True God, I bid you begone!” He began to pray, but silently, so she would not hear how frightened he was. God would hear. God would help him.

After a moment, she said sweetly, “I’m still here, Dosh. Are you sure you don’t want to kiss me?”

Never! Never, never again! That sort of sin was all behind him now. He had a job to do, a very important job. D’ward was depending on him. He spun around the tree, bypassing the girl, and sprinted away along the path, stumbling and staggering, trying to fend off the trailing branches but missing some of them, which stung him across the face.

“Goodness, what a hurry!” she trilled, right at his back. “It isn’t very good for this body to run like this, Dosh. Suppose it drops its brat right on the path here? And you won’t get away from me like this, you know. What a surprise the ephor will have when we turn up together! Will he take your message as seriously as he should, do you suppose?”

Dosh stopped dead. The girl cannoned right into him and wrapped her arms around him, laughing gleefully. He struggled to free himself, and of course she was far stronger than she looked. She weighed as much as he did, and her mountainous belly seemed to get in his way more than in hers. The two of them staggered to and fro, banging into branches and saplings. He cursed between clenched teeth, he tramped on her bare toes, and she just trilled her ghastly mocking laugh. At last he managed to free an arm. He punched her in the face as hard as he could, hurting his knuckles.

She released him and fell back a step. Again she was in full moonlight.

“Darling, does this mean you don’t love me any more?” Her smile displayed a missing tooth and blood coursing down her chin from a gashed lip. Her swollen bosom heaved as she panted. “Or are you just remembering how I enjoy rough play? Hit me again. Kick me!”

He was trembling so hard now that he could barely speak. “You are not a god! You are a foul, evil sorcerer—like that pair of mummies that call themselves Visek!”

“This is true,” she said, looking down at the dark stream flowing over her breast and splashing onto her protruding belly. “It was naughty of D’ward to tell you, but it is true.. That needn’t come between us, lover. We can still do all the things we used to do.”

“You bewitched me!” His voice broke. Tears of frustration blurred his sight. Memories were starting to writhe in his mind like worms in rotten meat. Naked girls, naked boys…Worse, the faces were starting to come back, and the sounds of laughter and screaming and gasping and pleading. “You cast spells upon me….”

She stepped forward. He retreated until he ran into a tree and could go no farther. She was so close that her nipples touched his coat and he could smell her sweat.

“Sometimes I did,” she said huskily. “But you didn’t really need them. You were the most inventive playmate I have ever had, Dosh. So tough, so versatile, so resilient. You’re too old to be Tion now, of course, but we could still have fun together. Even if all we do is just watch the others—”

“Go away!” He closed his eyes. His fists hurt, he was clenching them so hard. “I will have nothing more to do with you ever again!”

“You will if I want you to!” she said sharply. “I can take you away from here before D’ward knows a thing about it. Well, if last year’s model doesn’t interest you, how about this year’s?” A man’s voice added, “These ones wear better.”

The change of pitch warned Dosh what had happened. Reluctantly he looked. Now Tion was a boy—slim, narrow shouldered, dark haired, and startlingly handsome. Naked, of course. He pursed his lips invitingly.

“Go away!” Dosh screamed. He was powerless against such sorcery, and yet D’ward was relying on him. If he failed to deliver the message, thousands would die and all the Liberator’s plans be ruined.

The incarnation shook his head pityingly. “You are being terribly foolish, Dosh. You want to go and tell the ephor that the Liberator was only pretending and really does accept his terms. But you haven’t seen what that message is going to do to
you
, Dosh. D’ward is being very nasty and unfair to poor Dosh. Can’t you work it out?”

“What if he is? I don’t care! I’d do anything for him because he is my friend, a true friend, not a blood-sucking lecherous monster like you, Tion Sorcerer!”

The boy pouted. “I never treated you any worse than D’ward is treating you now. For your sake, you really shouldn’t deliver that message, love.”

Dosh clung to the thought that Tion the Youth was evil incarnate. Whatever he wanted was wrong, wrong! To escape by force was impossible, so deception was the only alternative.

“What message should I deliver then?”

“Let’s see. You could tell them that D’ward says Thargians are cowards. You could tell them he’s calling Ephor Kwargurk a turd in a tin tankard.” The boy chuckled and then his eyes narrowed. “Don’t try to fool me, love. You never could before, and you’re terribly confused at the moment. D’ward is just another sorcerer, like me. That invisible god he’s invented doesn’t exist. D’ward doesn’t even believe in him himself.”

“That’s not true! You’re lying. You’re on Zath’s side! You want D’ward to die!”

The kid sighed, fluttering his long lashes. “No, love, no! You’re wrong again. I am on D’ward’s side, believe me! I always was. I had him in my power years ago and I let him go. Didn’t you know that? I set you to spy on him, but just out of curiosity. I never tried to stop him, did I?”

Dosh moaned, unable to speak. His mind was whirling like a moth as it tried to find some way out of this. His efforts to pray were being choked off by all those ghastly memories bubbling up in his mind. D’ward had told him many times that the Youth was crazy. He’d said so to Visek, and they hadn’t denied it.

“So you see,” Tion said, “I really do want to see that horrible Zath dead, and this is the only way to do it. D’ward himself still isn’t strong enough. He has to do one of two things. Either he lets the Thargians kill the Free, or he gets help from me and the others—all of us, the Five he has been slandering so nastily. I’d gladly help him, truly I would, but I won’t dare to, because I know that the others won’t. It would take all of us, all Five together and all our flunkies as well. And that won’t ever happen, because none of us trusts the others enough. Somebody would be sure to break faith and help Zath, and then Zath will win.”

He reached up a hand to stroke Dosh’s cheek. Dosh jerked his head away and banged it on a branch hard enough to make stars fly in front of his eyes.

The boy tweaked Dosh’s beard playfully. “You can guess what Zath will do then! It’s called the Great Game, lover. The secret is to always choose the winning side, and D’ward isn’t the winning side.”

“You’re lying!”

“No, Dosh, dear, I’m not. So I’m not going to let you deliver that message. We’re going to let the Thargians think he meant what he said the first time. The silly boy changed his mind, but they’re not going to hear that. You won’t understand, but this way D’ward may just have a chance without our help. Zath will outsmart himself, and that will be a very elegant solution.”

Dosh tried to lunge past. The kid caught him with one hand and held him like a steel bracket, so his feet shot out from under him and he thought his arm had been jerked from its socket. Tion supported the weight without even tensing his slender muscles. Dosh regained his footing and swung a punch at the beautiful face. He howled as his fist cracked into something as hard as a stone wall. Tion apparently felt nothing at all.

“Oh you do want to play rough games?” He glanced up at the sky and frowned. The light was fading fast as a stain of black spread over Trumb’s great disk. Stars were returning.

“Well!” the sorcerer muttered. “Now that’s interesting!”

Dosh squirmed, trying to pry the slender fingers loose and failing utterly. Tion ignored him, apparently staring at the eclipse.

“Very interesting! That changes things.” The sorcerer chuckled. “All right, Dosh. You go and deliver your message. Stop the massacre if you can.”

With that he vanished, fading away even faster than the green moon.

The ceremony was over. Alice had understood not a word of it, but the actions had been plain enough. Eleal, that silver-tongued ingenue, had now been installed as bishop of Thargvale or perhaps archbishop of the Vales. She had recovered from her shock and was already warming to her new role, accepting congratulations from the shield-bearers with matronly grace. Edward had certainly made some very odd decisions tonight. Pinky’s face was a picture. Ursula’s would rank as a whole art gallery. Even Julian had gone into a black sulk about something. With the fire shrunk to a few red embers, some subtle difference in the overgrown garden beyond the windows hinted that the eclipse had begun.

Edward must have given orders to start the feast, because people were leaving. He was standing by the door, speaking to each shield-bearer in turn, but his tone sounded cheerful enough, more like personal instructions than final farewells. He would not dispose of Cousin Alice quite so easily. She wanted to know what he was planning to do next, and she was not leaving until she found out, so there! She stood up and eased her stiffened limbs.

She peered up crossly at Julian’s scowl. “What’s the matter? Don’t you think Eleal will make a good pope?”

He shrugged, not caring about that. “I wish I knew why he rejected the Thargian offer. And the way he did it! Dammit, Alice, an ephor is like a king or a president, one third of an absolute tyrant.”

“I think I know why. I’ll tell you if you promise not to repeat it.”

Julian said, “Right-on!” too quickly. He obviously thought he did know the answer and she didn’t.

She looked around. Edward wouldn’t hear her. He was saying good-bye to Eleal at the door, but she was the last.

“It’s the old problem of church and state…. This is isn’t easy to put into words. I’m not sure Edward could, even. I think he was acting on instinct—”

“Instinct!
Instinct?
He’s likely to get us all killed or enslaved with his bloody instinct.”

“In a sense that almost doesn’t matter.” She wondered if she could ever explain to a man who couldn’t see it already. Julian was a downright, earthy Anglo-Saxon. Edward was a realist too, but he also had a Celtic streak in him, an artistic undercurrent that defied logic. “The point is that this is the climax of everything he’s worked for, yes? So even details are very important. What we saw tonight may become legend for thousands or millions of people. This was his night, his apotheosis almost, and he would not be seen currying favor from the Thargians.”

“If you think that, then you’re as mad as he is! This is Thargia, woman!”

It must be her turn to shrug, so she did. “I just don’t think Edward saw that man as Ephor Kwargurk. I think he saw Pontius Pilate.”

Julian’s mouth opened. Then closed.

“He was irrelevant,” she explained, “like Pilate. Sometimes military force just doesn’t matter. Generals and armies are forced to dance to other tunes and serve purposes they cannot comprehend.”

Julian was a former soldier. “That is the most ridiculous—” His eyes shifted to look over her shoulder.

She turned. Edward was approaching, but he wasn’t looking at them, he was staring out the windows. He spoke as if one of them had said something.

“It’s too late to ask questions.”

Julian said, “But—”

“No. There’s only faith left now.” Edward glanced briefly at him and held out a hand, but his attention went back to the garden.

Julian ignored the hand. “Just tell me why—”

“No. Good-bye, Julian. Thank you.” Edward put his arm around Alice as if to lead her away.

“Thank me for what? I haven’t done a thing, and—”

“You will.” Edward steered Alice over to the wall. “If you stand back here in the shadows you should be safe. Don’t draw attention to yourself.”

She put her hand over his. It was icy. His face was rigid.

“Edward! What’s…” She grabbed his shoulders as he tried to leave. “What are you going to do now? Tell me!”

“You must have faith, too.” He flashed her a grotesque smile and left her there, heading for the windows. His sort might die of fright, but it would be on its feet, doing its duty.

The ghastly green moonlight was fading fast. She folded her arms tightly around her and watched as he stepped over the sill. He strode through the weeds and brambles, hastening to the patch he had cleared earlier.

She had thought Julian was leaving, but he changed his mind and came and stood beside her. Neither spoke, but her hand found his to hold. She was grateful for the company.

Dimmer and dimmer grew the light. The night seemed to close in, growing colder as well as darker. Edward was standing with his arms folded, waiting, barely visible through the branches. Waiting for what? Clocks in the Vales were primitive contraptions. With no uniformly accepted standard time, how did one set up an appointment?
Meet me when Trumb eclipses
would do very well. Waiting for whom?

It could not be Zath. He would not have let her stay if he expected Zath. He did anticipate trouble or danger. No one had ever said that his campaign would be anything other than dangerous, but she had been thinking that the threat was still a few days off. The sudden urgency had caught her unaware. It could not possibly be Zath, the main event. It must be vital, or Edward would not have been so tense. She said a small prayer.
Lord, two men I loved have been taken from me. Be with him and keep him safe.

Another man stood in the clearing, facing Edward and about ten feet from him. He was slim, dark haired…. He had no clothes on.

Julian sucked in air through his teeth. “Tion! It must be!”

Alice edged closer to his side. Cold and tension were making her shiver. That boy out there would freeze to death unless he was using mana to keep himself warm, or unless he wasn’t really there at all, just some sort of moving picture.

The Liberator and the Youth might be exchanging words, but if so they were too soft to hear. Then another figure…This man was larger, husky even, decently clothed and black bearded. That must be Karzon, the Man. Two more people appeared almost simultaneously. They were only vague shapes, but they could have been a girl in a blue robe and a mature woman in a red. That was what the mythology of the Vales would dictate.

“It won’t work!” Julian whispered.

“Sh!”

“No Visek, see! The Five can never all cooperate…been squabbling for centuries…won’t trust each other, let alone a…” His voice trailed away.

What was being said out there in that unworldly meeting? Alice would give her front teeth to be allowed to eavesdrop. And where was the fifth, Visek? The Free had a legend that the Liberator had met with the Parent in Niol. As far as Alice knew, Edward himself had never described such a meeting. The story was attributed to Dosh—the gospel according to St. Dosh.

The light had almost gone when the node shimmered again and the gap in the circle was closed by two more figures. Their arrival showed only because they were wearing white or something close to it. Starlight glimmered on silver hair. Seven people—the Liberator and the Pentatheon.

“There!” she whispered. “He’s got all of them!”

Julian snorted. “He’d be crazy to trust them. And why in hell should they trust him?”

“You think he’s asking for their help? He wants to borrow their mana?”

“What else? But all he has to offer them in exchange is Zath removal, and they have to gamble that he’ll pay them back afterward. They’ll stick with the devil they know.”

Alice did not reply. She had no idea, really, but she was confident that Edward had worked it out a long time ago, before he even started his crusade. He had gambled his life to arrive at this one point, so he would not let the Pentatheon cheat him out of everything he had won. Yet they must know he had his back against the wall. Events were rushing to a climax and if he needed their help, he needed it now or never. That was not a good bargaining position.

Have faith!

The darkness was total. This, above all, was the time when the reapers pursued their grisly work, when Zath might be distracted by the inflowing surges of mana. Was that another reason to choose the eclipse as the time of meeting? Starlight showed only as a gleam on rimy branches and on the walls around the courtyard. Whatever was happening, whatever was being negotiated, the scene was invisible and inaudible. She wanted to run out there and shout, “You can trust him!”

For Edward
was
trustworthy. An Englishman’s word was his bond. That creed had been drummed into him all his life, and no one believed it more strongly than he did. If he borrowed mana on a promise of returning it later, then he would do exactly that, even if it killed him. He would repay every penny of it. Yet how could those age-old pseudogods ever believe that? He had set out to prove himself to them, but why should they believe? Far more likely, they would judge him to be what they were themselves—sly, devious players of the Great Game. The whole point of that game was to lie and cheat. It would be no fun at all if a promise could not be broken at will.

“This is crazy!” Julian muttered at her side. “They’ll cross their hearts, but when the chips are down, they’ll pull the plug on him and leave him holding the bag.” Metaphors were never his strong suit.

“Wait!” she said.

They had no choice but to wait. Even the fire had disappeared. They stood in darkness, broken only by faint outlines of windows. She could not have found the door had she wanted to. Oh, what a wonderland this Alice had found! She did not belong here in the dark and cold, on another world, meddling in tumultuous events; she never had. She should return to her own place soon, as soon as possible, if indeed it was still possible at all, for the Service had collapsed. The old Church of the Undivided had been overthrown and Edward obviously intended his new church, whatever it would be called, to be a populist movement with little place for world-jumping elitist strangers. Go Home. She tried to frame a prayer in her mind, for the act of putting her fears and wants into words often clarified her thinking. First, let the good triumph here on Nextdoor. Let Edward survive, his purpose achieved. Go Home, yes—she did not belong here. Go Home with Edward…yes again, wonderful! If he still wanted her. His name was still on a murder warrant, but the trail was cold, and perhaps Miss Pimm could solve the matter anyway. Norfolk? The cottage? It would be spring there now. London was gorgeous in spring, and this first spring after the war it should blossom beyond imagining. But neither prospect thrilled her. Africa did; return to Nyagatha. The war was over; it should be possible. No warrant would find them there. Heat and starkly brilliant sunshine and the scenes of their childhood. That was really Home.
Thy will be done, but if I had my dibs, Lord, it would be that.

The light had begun to return. The trees came first, then the roofs and the general shape of the courtyard. Soon she made out the ghostly glimmer of Visek’s robes, the pallor of Tion’s bare flesh. The circle was still there, still presumably negotiating—the Liberator and the six who made up the Five.

Tion sank gracefully to his knees. Mana rippled. Then more. Julian gasped. The node writhed with surges of power, wilder and wilder until reality itself seemed to twist and the house undulated. Karzon went down, then the Maiden, the Lady…and finally, slowly, the two who were together Visek. A silent thunderstorm of mana rolled through the courtyard, dim flickers of sepulchral color playing over the kneeling Pentatheon and the one triumphant figure looming over them.

“My god!”

Edward Exeter stood in the clearing and the paramount sorcerers of the Vales knelt before him, fulfilling the prophecy: “They shall bow their heads before him, they will spread their hands before his feet.” Then, suddenly, everything vanished again into darkness, blacker even than before.

Alice and Julian had their arms around each other, although she could not recall who had started it. “He’s done it! They have agreed to help!”

“Shush! And don’t be so bloody sure! I wouldn’t trust any one of that lot as far as I could throw a battleship.”

The scene changed almost too fast to register, the Five gone and Edward trudging back to the windows. Alice ran forward to meet him as he stepped over the sill. She hugged him. He drooped in her arms like a man exhausted. There was no doubt now—he was shaking. Relief, of course!

“You did it!”

He sighed, leaning his head on her shoulder. “Think so,” he mumbled.

“Oh, Edward!” There was nothing else to say. Just hug him, hold him.

He endured her embrace without returning it. She discovered she wanted to tell him to get a good night’s sleep, so he wasn’t the only one suffering from reaction. She had not realized how taut her nerves were. She clung as he made a halfhearted effort to break away.

“Things to do, Alice.”

“But the worst is over, isn’t it?”

He made a sound that was half a laugh and half a sob. “The worst hasn’t even started.”

She looked at him in alarm and did not like what she saw. His forehead was beaded with sweat like dew.

“What more? What happens now?” she demanded.

He shook his head. “Have faith, remember?” Then he did laugh, a bitter, hollow laugh. “What does it matter? Even if Zath wins, he can’t stop what I’ve started. The Five can’t. They’ve pushed their own theology so long that they have no idea how flexible faith can be. Even if I die tomorrow, some people will go on believing I brought death to Death in some mystical way.
I am the resurrection
, or something. They’ll find a faith to fit.”

“Stop that! You’re going to fight and win.”

He pulled free and straightened up to his full six feet. “Even if I do, what do you suppose they’ll make of it all? What will the Church of the Liberator be like a hundred years from now? Religions don’t spring up fully armed. They sprout, they grow, they change. They split off heretical sects and persecute them until the best creed wins.” His voice was dangerously shrill. “As soon as the Caesars stopped torturing Christians, Christians tortured Christians. What would Jesus of Nazareth have thought of the Inquisition? What would Saint Paul have said to a Borgia Pope? Will the Free do that now? Or have I convinced them enough? Do they believe my lies about the Undivided? Have I convinced anyone? Who really believes in that hodgepodge god of mine?”