The Visitor

  They subsided into silence. Eventually, the bishop asked, “Is the monster still with us?”

  “At the moment, probably not,” said the commander. “It seems to show up a little after dark. It was with us last night, I know that. It took a dozen or so of the men as strengtheners.”

  Another silence was interrupted by the arrival of a young officer. “The general asks for the bishop,” he said. “And for you, Commander.” He hesitated for a moment, then turned to the bishop, crying, “Sir…don’t, don’t let him take us any farther. That thing, sir. It’s eating…it’s eating us. There’ll be none of us left if we go on with it.”

  By the time the bishop rose to his feet, Colonel Rascan had already run the young man through with his sword. “Rebellion and disobedience. They must be dealt with relentlessly!” he cried with fiery emphasis, totally unlike his usual grave demeanor.

  The bishop surprised himself by being outraged, though he kept his voice level. “Isn’t the monster eating enough of us? Do we need to kill each other?”

  “A rebel is not one of us!” Rascan turned furious eyes on his companion, the bloody sword still in his hand. “The creature is on our side. Working for us. Nothing must interfere!”

  The bishop, eyes on the quivering blade, said nothing more. He followed the commander out of the tent and across the few paces of stony ground to the place the general awaited them.

  “Something’s wrong,” said the general, conversationally. “Something’s gone quite wrong. The wounded men up there at the Gap should have lived for a long time yet!”

  The bishop murmured, “I don’t understand, sir.”

  The general looked surprised. “I thought you’d know. Well. It’s this kind of magic. I’ve used this kind. You have to do it so the pain goes on. The spell takes power from the pain to make us Quellers, but we aren’t Quellers anymore. We’ve reverted! Something’s gone wrong back at the Gap.”

  The bishop paled. “I thought, that is…we believed it was an angel, one of the Rebel Angels who strengthened us. That’s what it said! Was that wrong?”

  “No, no, I’m sure that’s right, I’m only saying the angel used magic to do it. That shouldn’t surprise us, should it? The whole thing seemed very familiar, and then I realized when I woke today why that was. One has to oppose nature in each step, you see. The killing or maiming of a healthy innocent old enough to be aware, that’s necessary; and the drinking of blood or eating of flesh of one’s own kind; that’s necessary, and the infliction of lasting pain; that’s necessary, too. To make it work, you see?”

  “To make what work?” the bishop whispered.

  “Gone’s magic. Hetman Gone. Never mind. You don’t know him. He showed me how to do it, that’s all.” The general stepped away from them and peered down the river valley to the gap that gave a view of the plains. “What are we doing here?”

  “We came to conquer the world outside Bastion,” said the commander, firmly. “But we have received new orders to kill the Council of Guardians!”

  “Before we kill them, we must have battles. What about the people outside Bastion? The farmers? The settlers? What about the canyon roads, where the caravans come through?”

  “We saw no farmers or settlers, sir. We’re a great distance from the canyon routes. To reach them, we’d have to go down to the plains, then a good way eastward.”

  “We need someone to fight!”

  The commander marshalled his thoughts. “The first town on this road is Trayford. Or, we could pursue the nomads, though I seem to recall seeing them far across the plain from us, and going farther…”

  “Trayford,” mused the general. “I remember Trayford. It’s only a village. I want a battle, Commander. A big, big battle. We need a larger target than Trayford…”

  “Henceforth?” offered the bishop, with a sudden spurt of hope. “We could leave this road when it reaches the plain and go cross country. That’s the direction the…thing told us to go anyhow.” Which would have the added advantage of taking them through largely unpopulated country where some of them could sneak away. Also, the fewer people, the less likely the Spared could be slaughtered during the exhausted sleep they fell into after these forced marches.

  “Got to get us Quellers back, right?” said the general. “I’ll need a few young women.”

  “There are no young women with us,” said the commander. “Nor have we seen any.”

  “They’re here,” said the general, his head bobbing up and down as he agreed with himself. “Got to be here. Somewhere. We’ll just look for them, that’s all. Or Ogre will. When he gets here.”

  Squatting solidly at a crossroads, the Inn at Trayford was a sprawling building built upon and added to over the centuries. The several stable and barn wings surrounded enclosed yards for carriages, oxen, horses, and other livestock being driven from one part of the country to the other. The windows were of a style called “salvage,” which meant ancient bottles with the bottoms cut off, threaded in nested stacks onto long sticks that were abutted in vertical rows in wooden frames. While the undulant surface gave no view during the day, it allowed a greenish-amber glow to guide travelers at night.

  It was this light the travelers spied late in the evening of summerspan five, eightday, after two days travel that had felt like forever. None of the sleepers had been in condition to walk the distance, as the doctor had said to begin with, so the trip had been a succession of halts to dress blisters, to bandage sprains, to let some folk ride awhile, to convince others they could walk, to dole out painkillers from the redoubt, to fill water jars at every stream and take comfort breaks at inconvenient locations. Still, as they approached the town, all who had started on the way were present, though many were at the end of their strength.

  “We can’t take them the rest of the way,” Dismé murmured to the doctor, when they had achieved the stableyard. “I even worry about Nell and Arnole.”

  “I’ve talked to Arnole,” said Jens. “He says he’ll trade the heavy wagon for a lighter one to carry the last stone; he’ll take four horses instead of two, so he can trade teams. He and Elnith will ride in the wagon, along with the little folk. You, Michael, and I will get two riding horses each and change them often.”

  “And how do we pay for all this?”

  “Jens Ladislav the doctor has been traveling for some time, and he has built up a credit account in many little towns. The hostler will be glad to get some of his stock out of danger, and our tired beasts can be set free to graze in the canyons.”

  “And the people we’ve brought from the redoubt?”

  “They’ll have to take cover with the people of Trayford. The villagers have had to take refuge before; the nearest canyons have caves big enough for all of them.”

  “There’s nothing we can do to protect this town?”

  “What power do you have, Dismé?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, neither do I. I don’t know what power Elnith has, or Bertral. You and he fought off the monster, back at the bridge, so we Guardians have some potent force, but we don’t know how to use it. As I read Bertral’s book, the three most powerful in terms of sheer force are Tamlar, Ialond, and Aarond. Tamlar is at the fortress, along with Camwar, but no one knows where Ialond and Aarond are.”

  “What has Camwar been doing there?”

  “Building a barrel, Elnith says.”

  Dismé spluttered, then began to laugh helplessly. “Doctor Jens. If only you had foreseen all this when our journey began!”

  “Like a bit of flotsam foresees a flood? All I had in mind was a neighborly warning! This whole…ogre, Goodland, guardian bit is so far from my understanding that I wouldn’t have believed it if you’d told me.”

  “Galenor doesn’t explain things?”

  “He does not. I feel this cold, precise intelligence standing just behind my right shoulder, evaluating everything I sense. As for offering help, the only thing he’s done is lay hands on a few of those ex-sleepers who had giv
en up on living. They were immediately healed, but since I had nothing to do with it, I didn’t find the experience particularly edifying.”

  She nodded wearily. “I’m incapable of being edified until I’ve had something to eat.”

  They went in together. Those who had come from the redoubt had already filled the long, rambling room, their talk echoing from the smoke-darkened beams of the ceiling and adding to the chatter of a lesser number of local folk. Dismé looked for a demon, thinking she might transmit or receive some news thereby, and immediately saw one crouched at one side of the fireplace.

  She went to sit beside him. “We have just come from the guard post at Bastion’s border.”

  He gave her a haunted look. “Then we came from the same place by different routes, woman.”

  “We didn’t see you on the road.”

  “No. And likely you didn’t see what happened to the army of Bastion two nights ago, at Ogre’s Gap.”

  “Ogre’s Gap,” said the doctor, coming up beside them. “That’s an old name for the meadow just below the guard post. What happened there?”

  “The Ogre arrived,” said the demon, his shoulders hunched, as he stared into the fire. “If I describe it, I make it sound like something that could exist when, in fact, it is a being out of nightmare. Imagine a thing part bear, part snake, part ape, part prehistoric creature from the old books. It bit the heads off a number of soldiers and squeezed their bodies dry to drink the blood. Then it bit off a few more heads and sprayed the blood over the men, turning them into a horde of devils. Even the horses were changed. When the army marched away, the Ogre maimed the ones who were left behind. We received a Dantisfan message from someone named Dismé, so our people came out of the forest and killed the maimed soldiers. We are not killers. We do not relish it, though we knew it had to be done. I have had the grues since then.”

  “You did them a service,” said Galenor in an icy voice. “Do not grieve over them.”

  The demon laughed. “I am grieving over me, sir. Over ideals I had that are lost.” He shuddered as he went on: “The army and the Ogre move only at night. We demons are posted at relay points along their line of march. Every crofter or farmer capable of hearing has been warned.” He fell silent as he picked up his mug with shaking hands.

  Galenor said, “You’re having trouble believing this.”

  The demon shivered violently, almost a convulsion. “We don’t believe in magic…”

  “Don’t be misled by your eyes,” said Galenor. His voice was very deep and resonant. “If an inexplicable good thing happens, you do not call it magic. You call it good luck, or perhaps a miracle, wrought by some power you know nothing of. So, if a bad thing happens, it, too, can be a miracle, also wrought by power.”

  “Magic!” cried the demon. “Miracle! What difference between the two?”

  “There is no difference at all,” said Galenor. “Except that people allow themselves to believe an event if it’s called a miracle while disdaining the same event if it’s called magic. Or vice versa. Life arises naturally; where life is, death is, joy is, pain is. Where joy and pain are, ecstacy and horror are, all part of the pattern. They occur as night and day occur on a whirling planet. They are not individually willed into being and shot at persons like arrows. Mankind accepts good fortune as his due, but when bad occurs, he thinks it was aimed at him, done to him, a hex, a curse, a punishment by his deity for some transgression, as though his god were a petty storekeeper, counting up the day’s receipts…”

  Galenor pressed the man’s shoulder, once, twice. The demon relaxed and took a deep breath, color coming into his face. Dismé looked up to catch only a glimpse of the other being behind the doctor’s eyes before he turned away and left her.

  Dismé did not follow him. She was too weary to encounter Galenor or anyone else. Instead she sat down at a nearby table where an old woman was finishing a cup of tea, her empty plate before her. She took one look at Dismé’s ashen face and imperiously summoned the server to order a draught of spirit, which she pressed into Dismé’s hands.

  “I’m not sure I can keep this down,” Dismé murmured.

  “You will,” said the woman, pressing the cup toward her lips with a wrinkled hand. “This first, then you must eat.” And she turned to the server again to order a meal before welcoming the doctor who had returned to sit beside Dismé.

  “My name is Skulda,” the old woman said, smiling at him.

  “Did you arrive today?” Dismé managed to ask.

  She nodded, taking a sip of cider. “It seems I got out of Bastion just in time.”

  “Especially since Bastion does not approve of people getting out,” said the doctor.

  “I wasn’t a long time resident. They won’t miss me.”

  Dismé accepted the broth, bread, cheese, and fruit put before her by the innkeeper’s daughter. Though she didn’t feel hungry, hunger would return, and the old woman was right, she had to eat.

  “Where are you from?” she asked, as she picked up the spoon.

  Skulda sat back comfortably. “Oh, I’ve spent time along the New West Coast, in Mungria and New Salt Lake and Henceforth and Secours. I’ve lived on the Old West Coast, the Sierra Islands. I spent time in Everday and in Bastion. I’ve journeyed eastward to New Kansas and New Chicago, and there was even a brief time among those touch-me-nots down in Chasm, lah-me. The subterfuge and playacting it took to become part of that close little group!”

  The doctor tented his brows, accepting his own bowl of steaming broth with thanks. “You’ve traveled enough for several.”

  “Oh, not only traveled.” She chuckled. “I’ve been several. I’ve been Aretha and Bahibra and Clotho. I’ve been Hathor and Moira, almost the whole alphabet full from Atropos to Ziaga. And, the children I’ve had, lah-me! Nineteen at last count. I even stuck around to raise some of them. I may have great-grandchildren by now.”

  “Don’t you know?” Dismé sputtered around a mouthful of broth. It smelled of onions and herbs, and it was full of lamb and barley. “If you have great-grandchildren, I mean?”

  The woman frowned, a little sadly. “That wasn’t the task, dear child. I was to vanish from all their lives before any longstanding claims of affection could be made. Not that they weren’t good children. Oh, they were good enough. That’s what the whole point of having them was.”

  The doctor put down his fork and took a sip of wine, looking at her thoughtfully. “But you’ve not had a child for some time.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” she said, nodding. “The youngest would be getting on toward thirty by now. And Befum…he’d be eightyish I suppose. Ah, but I was young when I began. And there were all those syrups and tinctures to keep me young. You introduced yourself as a doctor, lad. You’d make a fortune if you could duplicate such tinctures to keep teeth solid and skin smooth and all the insides of you ticking as though you were a teenager still, even old as I was. How old d’you think I am?”

  “I’d say, eightyish,” the doctor opined.

  “Aha. See there. You missed it by a league, mile, or kilometer, whichever’s to your taste. I’m a hundred twenty-one. My first child was born at forty, my last at ninety-three.”

  The doctor turned to Dismé, winking his amusement.

  “No more children,” mused the old woman. “God says enough is enough. All the miraculous pharmacopeia can be dispensed with. Good thing, too, for I’m tired of it all.”

  Arnole, who had been sitting nearby, came to slip onto the bench beside Dismé. “Tired of what, grandma?”

  “Being savior of the human race! The constant pregnancies, labor, deliveries, all that suckling, then the trial of making quite sure my current husband or lover could cope without me, or finding foster parents who could.”

  “When you moved on,” Arnole said.

  “Surely. When I moved on. Many babies to bear, and only a finite number of years to do it in! Oh, my boy, I always made quite, quite sure the child would be well cared for before m
oving on, very well cared for. But it’s over, and now’s time to lay down the fatal beauty, the erotic body, the seductive charm.” She winked at the doctor. “All those accoutrements of fascination and captivation that let me do my job with the least possible confusion. No more being bewitching.”

  Michael had joined Arnole on the bench, and now all four of them confronted the old woman with total fascination, which did not at all dismay her. She smiled at them as she continued:

  “I knew it was time to retire last time I was in Henceforth when I saw a poster in the little shipping office. Come to Urdarsland, it said. Natural beauty, leisure, intelligent companions, charm and relaxation. A retirement community for the connoisseur. Ah, good people, if there’s anything nineteen children can make of a person, it’s a connoisseur of leisure and relaxation. So, I’ve hired a carriage to take me to Henceforth. When I get there, I’ll buy a one-way ticket to Urdarsland where it’s full of warm springs and moss grows on the great trees…”

  “Gardens too?” breathed Dismé.

  “Oh, yes, my child. The booklet made it look like Eden.”

  Dismé chewed the mouthful she’d forgotten about, and the doctor asked, “You want to leave this world behind?”

  “It’s getting too crowded with memories. In Bastion I took a short walk to buy myself a pair of shoes, not more than a hundred fifty paces from my hostel, and I saw two of my former husbands on the street. They couldn’t recognize me, of course. I don’t look at all as I did when I was ninety, claiming to be thirty-six, convincing them I was bearing their children.”

  “They weren’t your husbands’ children?” asked Michael, in a strangled voice.

  “Oh, no, my boy. No. They were the children of other men, long gone, children perfect for the purpose, God said.”

  “And you were doing this at God’s behest?” asked Arnole.

  “Ah, yes, my boy. I was born to duty. Aging is my retirement benefit. There in Bastion, picture this, I was peering nearsightedly over my spectacles at this man I’d been sheet leaping with some thirty or forty odd years ago, thinking I should be reveling in erotic memory when I was actually grateful for being old. Let’s see. The baby I had with that one had been…James? Jasper?”