The Visitor

  “Enough of this nonsense,” growled the general. “This is serious.”

  “I’m not being frivolous,” Jens replied, reining himself in with some difficulty. His ebullience sometimes got the better of him, but now was definitely not the time to be noteworthy. He went on in a more moderate tone, “No amount of questioning will get an answer from people who don’t know, and we don’t know anything except that the event has something to do with the Guardian Council. It’s being said that the device in the cellar was one of many, created to identify members of that Council.”

  “How do you know this?” demanded the bishop, angrily.

  “I don’t know it. I’m merely repeating what people are saying,” said the doctor in an almost uninterested voice. “News that filters in from here and there. I’ve been making arrangements to do a bit of inquiry on the subject. Now that such creatures are actually showing up and interfering with us, it’s imperative we find out something about them.”

  “So you’ll be off exploring again, eh?” asked the Colonel Bishop in a testy tone.

  “No more than usual, sir,” murmured the doctor.

  The Colonel Bishop subsided, glowering. “I don’t like this…interference.” He also did not like the fact that his spy, Captain Trublood, had so far been unable to find anything wrong with the doctor. According to Trublood, the doctor came to the office in the morning, went to the Hold clinic an hour later, stayed there most of the day treating various wounds and diseases. The doctor was also teaching a couple of apprentices how to set bones and sew up wounds, one of them an old man from the town, Ben, who was already far enough advanced to treat people on his own. Since Ben was an anchorite who didn’t speak, Trublood had learned nothing from him.

  According to Trublood, the doctor returned to his office in late afternoon, where he signed documents, gave instructions, and met with medical officers who needed help. When he left the office, Trublood sometimes followed him to his quarters and had on occasion kept watch on those quarters all night, to no point at all. It could be proved that the doctor spent a good deal of time saving the bodies of people the bishop considered only bottle-worthy, but there was no Dicta against doing that, though there certainly should be, in the interest of efficiency!

  The doctor, who had read most of these thoughts on the bishop’s face, made himself be still. He half closed his eyes and decided to appear sleepy. That would be most appropriate and least involving. A total lack of involvement was what he had been conveying to Trublood.

  Only after a brooding silence stretched lengthily did the bishop say, “It’s said that a member of this supposed council showed up in a place called Everday, where they had a device very much like the one here in Hold.”

  “Find out!” directed the general. “You, Jens. Find out!”

  “I can try,” murmured the doctor, with seeming reluctance.

  Even the bishop agreed they should find out about the Council, though he felt no amount of information would ease his disappointment over the destruction of the device. The bishop was fifteen years younger than the general, and in the bishop’s opinion, it was time the general was bottled and he, Lief Laron, took his place. In order for that to happen, he needed something powerful, and he had hoped the new artifact would be that thing.

  It seemed to the bishop either very bad luck or extremely bad planning that after generations of experimentation with sorcery, all they had were a few eccentrics who could fly and a number of ancient devices that went off on their own and devoured investigators. Many of the Spared were coming dangerously near to Scientism in words and actions, thinking they could do things more expeditiously without magic than with it! Worship of the Rebel Angels was becoming more and more perfunctory; bottling of dissidents, once quite rare, was getting to be almost routine. Also, he was hearing more and more about magic that really worked, rumors that were growing both in number and specificity, many of them mentioning the general by name!

  If, as was now apparent, the device under the fortress was not his key to unlimited, safe power, then…well, maybe he should find out about what the general was using. Maybe he should take some of his spies off the doctor and add them to those he had watching the general. In order to find out what the general’s source was, however, he would need some time! If he could just get the general, and the army, out of Bastion for a while…

  “It seems to me we need to shift our focus,” he said firmly. “We should be talking about the army moving out of Bastion, soon. Right away.”

  Over Colonel Commander Achilles Rascan Turnaway looked up with his mouth open and his eyes wide. “The army isn’t ready, Colonel Bishop! Believe me, we’re not yet ready!”

  “We certainly shouldn’t delay,” the bishop advised him. “Better sooner than later.”

  “And our treaty with the demons?” asked the doctor. “What are we to do about that, Colonel Bishop?”

  The Colonel Bishop had momentarily forgotten the treaty with the demons. “Th…that,” he sputtered. “That will have to be…fixed. They’ll have to get out of our way. Or be subdued. We’ll tell them that. They’re to be subdued.”

  General Gregor Gowl laughed in a mocking tone. The bishop looked up to see he wore an expression of evil glee.

  “You must have been reading my mind, Bishop.” The general chuckled. “I was about to make just such an announcement! The fiery angel returned late this afternoon, bearing new instructions. We are indeed to make ourselves ready. Tomorrow at dawn will be threeday of this span. At dawn on fourday, the army leaves Bastion. By sixday, we will be at the border, up near Ogre’s Gap, where the Rebel Angels will send us means to subdue the demons.”

  A silence fell, confusion on the part of some, dismay on the part of others, a rising elation so far as the bishop was concerned. When the quiet had persisted for some moments, the doctor asked:

  “Did your visitor describe these means, General? Are these means devices, or weapons, or perhaps fighters?”

  “Fighters,” said the general, allowing his imagination full rein. “Oh, yes, Colonel Doctor Jens Ladislav Praise. Fighters before whom the whole army of demons will be like toy soldiers, set up to be knocked down. Fighters so terrible they will go in advance of our own men, for our own men would collapse in terror if they were too close.”

  “What fighters?” asked the commander, waiting openmouthed for an answer.

  “They are called Quellers,” said the general. “And each of you in this room is to select someone to accompany the army to the border, that the Quellers may draw strength from their support.” He was paraphrasing, but he thought this was what the fiery apparition had meant. He turned to his aide. “Pass out the papers, Joram.”

  The papers were passed. “Just write the name,” said the general, in a jovial tone. “Some family member or subordinate you’d like to honor.”

  Around the room there was a scuffling of paper and pen. The doctor knew a euphemism when he heard one, and he inked the name of Captain Trublood on the sheet before him, folded it, and handed it in. Next to him, he saw the bishop writing the name of Gars Kensy Turnaway, his bastard son-under-the-blanket for whom Michael had worked. So, the bishop had also heard in the general’s voice that same ugly glee.

  Well, whoever might be named—and it would be a wonder if the doctor’s name was not on someone’s page—the doctor was resolved to be far, far from Bastion when the army moved in any direction at all. There was now an even more urgent reason for going: to warn the people over the borders that Bastion was erupting at once, bursting like a boil, and putrid war was coming upon them again.

  In the last dark hours of summerspan five: twoday, the doctor knocked softly on Bobly’s door. Only Dismé was awake, and she shushed the doctor into the room and pointed to the kettle, just put on to boil, and the teapot standing ready. “You’re earlier than the roosters,” she said.

  “Just came by to be sure you’d be ready,” he murmured. “To be sure you have your clothing and what not.”

/>   “I don’t, yet. I was about to go up and get them. This late there’ll be no one about. I can do it while we’re waiting for the kettle to boil.”

  “I didn’t expect to find you awake.”

  “Thirst,” she said, shaking her head. “All that running about and being…whatever it was. I’ll go get the clothing while the kettle boils.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “You can’t,” she smiled. “The keeper wouldn’t allow it.”

  In a moment she was gone, shutting the door quietly behind her. The doctor sat tiredly back in his chair, shortly falling into a doze, only to be startled into alertness when Bobly came rustling into the room, rubbing her eyes.

  “Something,” she said. “Something wrong wakened me!”

  “Nothing wrong,” he replied. “Dismé’s gone after her clothing.”

  “Something wrong,” she repeated, fixing him with wide eyes. “You know me, Doctor. Why else would I have wakened unless something was wrong. Very, very wrong. Someone’s in danger!”

  Though Mace Marchant had postponed a previous engagement in order to attend the meeting called by the general, he had no intention of missing it entirely. Several hours after the time he had been expected, he tapped at the window of a private room in a lodging house some blocks from the Fortress. After several taps, of increasing volume, the window was opened from inside by his dear friend, Rashel, who greeted him warmly. Once he was inside, she put wood on the fire and poured each of them a glass of aged cider before they settled upon the hearth rug to continue the relationship which, Marchant believed, had long been their chief amusement. Actually, the relationship had never amused Rashel, who had been unable to feel pleasure of that kind since her dedication to the Fell.

  “I have news for you,” he murmured. “The device under the Hold? It wasn’t, maybe isn’t, the only one.”

  She sat back, startled. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, there have been or are other devices like it. Here and there. According to Colonel Doctor Ladislav, people have come in contact with the devices, and the devices have identified them as members of the Guardian Council.”

  “Mere people?” she said in disbelief. “Surely the Council would be angelic, at the least?”

  Hearing her annoyance, he hedged: “Well, maybe the people aren’t the members. Maybe they just have appropriate bodies for the Guardians to inhabit.” He pulled her close to him and began to stroke her shoulders and arms.

  She shook off his hands. “Mace, this is important. What do you really know? Exactly?”

  He sighed, thinking he shouldn’t have told her until later. Pillow talk was more fun than inquisition. “I should mention first it’s rumored some of our people actually have The Art.”

  “Who,” she breathed, fury building. “Who has it?”

  “Oh, head of Inexplicable Arts, Ardis Flenstall, for example, and Warden of the College, Bice Dufor. I don’t mean it’s talked about on the street, but those of us in Inexplicable Arts have heard the whispers. It seems those two, and perhaps others, have received instruction from someone. They don’t mention it themselves, but their servants and students aren’t totally discreet.”

  “How?” she breathed. “Since when? And by whom have they been instructed?”

  “From what we can piece together, the source is ancient and arcane, someone or something—a warlock, a grimoire, maybe both—that existed before the Happening. Whatever the source, some men are really able to do it…”

  “Move carts without horses?”

  “No, no, it isn’t that kind of art. It concerns itself with summoning powers and forces to bend the will of others. As I’ve heard it, the magician wouldn’t try to move a cart, he’d move himself. Be that as it may, General Gowl is one of those to whom The Art has been given…”

  If Mace had been able to see her eyes, he would have seen fury. Ardis and Bice had such power? And they hadn’t told her? Shared it with her? She looked down at her hands, forcing them to stop writhing in her lap, tasting gall as she begged sweetly, “What do they say, about the…about where they got The Art?”

  “I can only tell you what I’ve heard. Bice Dufor’s manservant was talking in the servant’s hall. He said that the warden returned to his quarters with his clothes soaked with sweat, remarking he’d met with someone ‘heat loving as a snake.’”

  “Ah,” murmured Rashel.

  “Flenstall got drunk one night at dinner and maundered to his aide about this old man he knew. ‘An old man who has a grimoire called the Book of Fell…’” He shrugged. “I’m putting bits and pieces together, but they do start to make a picture.”

  “But you’ve never met this person.”

  He shook his head. “Never. Which is surprising. I should have thought this source would have been interested in anyone associated with the Inexplicable Arts. Not that I want to learn black arts. The idea is frightening.”

  “And what about the devices?” she asked, wiping the anger from her face to replace it with an expression which was merely interested.

  “The doctor says he has heard from various sources—by which he means people who live on the borders and hear things from outside—that these devices have been found in other places, that each one disappears after causing a change in some person who touches it. Now that’s really all I heard, but I thought you’d be interested.”

  “I am,” she breathed, settling against him with a languorous sigh, purposefully hiding the fury she felt toward her dear, dear friends Bice Dufor and Ardis Flenstall. “I am very, very interested.”

  Dismé waved at the keeper as she went by, wondering why the woman was so red in the face and even more flustered than usual. None of the keepers were what one would think of as personable, but Livia Squin seemed to be perpetually walking a fence between anger and tears. Dismé thought the woman called her name, but she chose not to stop. Better get her clothes and go.

  In her room, she pulled the bundle from beneath the bed, untied it and took out the clothes she intended to wear. Time was growing short, so she would change into them now.

  As she struggled with her petticoats, the keeper down the hallway shifted from buttock to buttock in indecision, wiped her nose, bit a fingernail, finally rose from her chair, went out into the corridor and started down it, only to stop at the top of the stairs when she spied a girlchild making her way up the flight toward her. The little girl was wearing a hooded cloak over her nightgown and staying tight to one wall as she hummed softly to herself. The keeper had often heard small children make that tuneless humming when they were up past bedtime and badly needing sleep. She had the lagging steps of a tired child who had climbed a long way.

  The keeper fixed Bobly with slightly protruding eyes as she whined: “Child, what are you doing here? You don’t belong here.”

  “I know,” said Bobly, rubbing her eyes. “My mommy is here visiting my aunty, and I got tired, so my aunty said come up and go to her room and lie down. She gave me her key.”

  “She should have come with you,” said the keeper, disapprovingly. “You shouldn’t be wandering around alone.”

  “My aunty says, if a child isn’t safe in the Fortress of the Regime, then where is she safe? Isn’t it safe here? I can tell her you said so…”

  A look of alarm crossed the pasty countenance, “No, no, child. No such thing. It’s just, you’re such a wee little one.”

  Bobly pursed her lips in an offended manner. “I know my numbers. I’m old enough for that. Anyhow, I like exploring.”

  “You’re sure you know the room number?”

  “It’s down there,” said Bobly, yawning and pointing. “I’ve been to my Aunty Dismé’s before.”

  “Dismé!” cried the keeper. “Oh, my child. I’ll go with you.”

  “You don’t need to.”

  “Oh, yes. I do, I do. I should have gone myself, right away. I should have, after what I heard, oh, my…” and the keeper was off down the hallway at top speed, with Bobly tr
otting close behind her.

  Dismé had not locked the door. When the keeper and Bobly burst in, she was sitting on the bed, a bottle of cider at her lips.

  “Don’t drink it,” cried the keeper. “Oh, no, don’t drink it.”

  And at that moment, the doctor’s voice came from over their shoulders. “What’s going on?”

  “Oh, oh, you shouldn’t be here,” squeaked the keeper. “Or maybe you should. You’re Dr. Jens, aren’t you. Why, then perhaps you should be. Don’t let her drink it. I think it has poison in it.”

  Once Dismé assured them the cider had not touched her lips, the story took some time to elicit, for it began with a great deal of information about Livia Squin herself, necessary information, Livia thought, to establish why she so resented the rude woman named Rashel Deshôll. And to establish why the keeper believed she was up to no good. And to establish why the keeper sneaked down the corridor after her to listen outside the door and hear the unmistakable sound of a cork being pulled, and the subsequent chanting which was enough to freeze one’s blood.

  “That one’s sister left it for that one to drink, meantime making a wicked spell that I heard every word of, and talking to herself, which I also heard, and sure as certain, this wicked potion is something to send that one to sleep for a time, and wake as a mindless slave. Also, that wicked woman talked of somebody called Hetman Gone, ah?”

  All in all the experience had been both mysterious and horrifying, as her tears and shaking hands now gave evidence. The doctor took the cider bottle into his hands and looked at it curiously, noting the sediment in the bottom.

  “Well now, we’ll take charge of this,” said the doctor, patting the keeper on her bony shoulder. “It would be wisest not to say anything about it, don’t you agree?”

  Keeper Squin nodded frantically, still trying to stanch her tears.

  “You run along. We’ll see to Dismé’s welfare.”