The Vistor

  Rashel's disposal of her mother had put an end to a minor annoyance. Rashel wished a similar departure for Hetman Gone, but nothing she could do would rid her of Hetman Gohdan Gone, save die, perhaps, and she was not sure even that would serve. She knew very well what had prompted this summons. Dismé! Dismé the idiot. Dismé the "little golden bird." Dismé, whom Hetman Gone had commanded Rashel to keep close and under supervision. Dismé, who had departed without Gone's approval.

  When she stormed out of the room, Michael, who had stepped only around the corner, immediately re-entered it and found the letter upon her desk. He approached it (as he thought wise to do) with his hands clasped behind his back. He read it quickly, keeping well away from it and fighting a strong urge to pick up the letter, to look at it more closely, to bring it near his eyes. Instead, with a shiver, he stepped away, glancing back to see the page disappear in a single flare of red, leaving no ash.

  Though he had not heard the name of Hetman Gohdan Gone, he had been told about sorcerous documents. Such manuscripts were often designed with a dual purpose, first to convey a spell or enchantment, second to entrap the person who read or touched them, making them subservient to the sorcerer's will. It was good he had handled only the envelope.

  Within the hour, Rashel ordered the carriage for a trip to Apocanew, directing Michael to the street corner where he had taken her before. She told him to return in two hours' time, and after the carriage turned a corner and disappeared, Rashel walked toward the Hetman's gate, taking no notice of the small boy who came around the corner where the carriage had turned. He followed her at a distance, obviously preoccupied with the ball he was bouncing against buildings and walkways, always leaping and scrambling to catch it before it bounded into the street.

  The keeper of the iron gate was as rude as usual, and gaining the Hetman's dwelling was as onerous. The way seemed longer, the air colder in the hallways, hotter in his room.

  He told her to be seated, and when she had done so, he remarked, "Quite unexpected, Dismé running off like that."

  "Temporarily," murmured Rashel. "They won't keep her long. She's totally inept."

  "Tsk," murmured Gone. "She was the only one left in Bastion, and you let her get away. And after you'd been so efficient with all the others. But then, Dismé was the only one you were specifically ordered to keep alive."

  She looked puzzled, not understanding him.

  "The others went so very neatly, too. I always admired the ease with which you disposed of her father and brother, and you barely into your teens. No one ever thought you'd done it."

  For a moment, Rashel's heart stopped. This was a new tack, something never mentioned before, something she had not been sure he even knew. Still, his voice had not been angry.

  She was practiced enough at these interviews not to dissimulate. She replied in a monotone, "It wasn't difficult. The man wasn't my father, and he didn't like me. Roger wasn't my brother and he slapped my face. I didn't like them."

  "You didn't mind at all?"

  "Roger was his favorite. And Roger couldn't stand being called a coward: he would walk on the bridge parapet above the river, showing off. All it took was a little push."

  Hetman Gone was, for a moment, silent. When she said nothing more, he murmured, "And Val Latimer?"

  "I brewed foxglove from the garden and put it into his tea. His heart was bad anyhow. It didn't take much."

  "Well you did it very neatly. Your mother knew, of course."

  She gasped. She had had no idea her mother knew!

  "Oh, yes. That's why she brought you to me, after you killed Roger. She had to. She was under instructions to protect all three of the La-timers. You had killed one of them, which meant your life was forfeit, Rashel. Then you killed again, and for the second time she convinced me you'd be useful. I'm afraid she was wrong."

  She sat, stony faced, her mind awash in confusion.

  The Hetman went on. "Five of them altogether, wasn't it. Roger, your step-brother. Latimer, your step-father. Then your own mother. Then Arnole, and Ayward—oh, you didn't kill those two, I know, but you disposed of them, nonetheless. If only you'd been told to dispose of them, I could congratulate you. You weren't ordered to do anything to Arnole or his son, however, so why did you?"

  In deep confusion, Rashel moved fretfully, "They were complicating things, attracting attention. Ayward would go on and on about Inclusionism." She swallowed deeply and attempted an appearance of candor. "It wasn't done as neatly as I planned. For some reason they both disappeared."

  "True, neatness escaped you. But Arnole and Ayward are not the ones I regret. It's the three Latimers I wanted: not killed, not hurt, not maimed, only watched and kept, for we of the Fell may need one or all of them alive and unhurt. You weren't punished for killing Roger or his father, and we forgave your mother in return for her donating your life and services, and for keeping tight watch on our little bird. Then you disposed of your mother, which wasn't authorized, and the duty fell to you. Now ... now we no longer have her. You have cost us much, Rashel, and you have given us little. What will you do about it, ah?"

  "They'll send her home," Rashel blurted.

  "I think it unlikely. I feel wheels spinning within wheels, circles emerging from circles, the pivoting and whirling of forces, while the danger looms still. The Latimer lineage is of unusual interest to certain powers outside Bastion, and you have let the only Latimer in Bastion get away."

  "In Bastion? You mean there are others?"

  "Latimers? Oh, yes. One here, one there. A dozen or so outside. Who knows how many altogether? Each new bit of information only serves to confirm their importance, as is clear from my reading of the Book of Fell." He laid a huge, horny hand upon the book beside him, a heavy book, with unevenly cut pages and patches of mold on the cover. She shuddered. The book had played a part in her dedication. At least, the thing that had emerged from its pages had played a part.

  The Hetman went on. "But you weren't responsible for any of the others. Dismé was the only one of the Latimers you needed to concern yourself with."

  "Why are we concerned about Latimers outside Bastion?"

  "You're questioning me?" His tone was amused.

  She swallowed deeply, moistening dry lips with her tongue. "I'm naturally curious, that's all. I have long thought I could serve you better if you involved me in your magic. I know you have magic. Several of my dear friends have spoken of it, to me, without mentioning your name, of course, but I knew who they meant."

  "You have wanted to be involved in my magic," he said musingly. "Now that's an idea."

  "And I could serve you better if I knew why Dismé is so important!"

  Gohdan Gone chuckled, such a clatter as a gibbet load of bones might make, rattling in a cold wind. "You work best when you do what you were told during your dedication. You were perhaps distracted at the time? I will tell you once more. The Lost Book of Bertral says there is or will be a Guardian Council. There are a score or more members of this Council. We read this in the Book of the Great Fell, whom I serve, whom you serve. Whoever or whatever this council may be, it will be inimical to us, and the Latimers have something to do with it. We of Fell don't want a Guardian Council. Now, what will you do?"

  She drew herself up. "I'll visit her in Hold! I intended to go there in any case. I am part of the commission studying The Artifact. There is a meeting there in a few day's time."

  "Of course you are part of the commission," he murmured, looking her full in the face. "Another of the little benefits we have provided you." He hummed under his breath. "Have you learned yet what it is?"

  "No. No one has any idea. Not at this stage."

  "What do you think it is?" he demanded.

  She took a deep breath. "I believe it is a crystallized process, something which was ensorceled into being but never potentiated."

  He pinned her with his glance, his eyes red in the fireglow. "An interesting concept. And was there a book with it?"

  "N
o one has seen a book. The whole cellar has been excavated, and all that's there is the thing itself."

  "While you are in Hold, take care of Dismé. Somehow, you must take her back to Faience."

  She licked her lips again, and murmured, "I found a recipe a few years ago, in one of the old books Caigo Faience had collected. It was an account of a potion used by black magicians in the deep past. The drug seems to kill, but the one dosed and seeming dead may rise again, subservient to the will of the person who does the raising up. It uses the liver of a certain fish, which I've obtained through trade channels."

  "Does it work?"

  "I'm not sure I have the incantation right, but the drug part works well enough. I've done several dogs, buried them, dug them up, brought them back."

  "Pfah. Chemistry. We of Fell do not trust in that." He opened a box beside him on the table and took from it a curled pale scrap of skin, scant hair still sprouting from it. "Here on this parchment is the recipe for Tincture of Oblivion, all the ingredients spelled out. You will create this, and you will use this. If you let her escape, all our confidence in you will be gone. And once we have no further use for you ... well, you know. What the Fell did to you before, but slightly, he will take pleasure in doing again, and this time you will die of it."

  She was sweating, not only from fear and the heat of the fire, but also from the words she read on the parchment and the wrath that consumed her inwardly. Though it was a fury she dared not show, she said stubbornly, "I wish I understood all this focus on her, her father and her brother and her kin!"

  He leaned back in his chair, seeming to ruminate for a moment, chewing over the alternatives. When he spoke, it was almost a whisper. "One time, one time only, I will tell you why. You will never ask why again.

  "It was revealed to me that Latimer would rise up against me. Therefore, I sought Latimer and found a lineage that began at the time of my arrival on this world with one couple and their two children. He, Latimer, was the founder of the Spared. His first woman was gone in the Happening, but the children remained, two of them, male and female, who sired or bore into successive generations. I took the Spared as my people, and I guided them to make a source of power for me. I have identified the descendants of that line, and have set a watcher over each of them against the time one of them will rise up against me. So I found Val Latimer and his children, so I set your mother, and so I have set you as watcher."

  "Why don't we kill them all?"

  "To do so would change a future which benefits me. Now do not ask me why ever again."

  She bowed, fighting to maintain control of herself.

  Gohdan Gone purred, a sound like the warning rattle of a snake. "She's perched there in Hold. Don't let her get away. And if, by chance, she eludes you, waste not a minute in following after her, for we will be following you."

  She had neither resolution nor obstinacy left. For the moment she was beaten. "Yes, Master," she breathed. "I won't let her get away."

  When Rashel emerged from the gate on the street, the small boy was still busy bouncing his ball off a flight of steps at the corner. He saw her emerge and went swiftly around the corner and down an alleyway, where he found Michael leaning against the carriage eating a sausage roll.

  "She went into a hole down the block," said the boy, "There's a gate and a keeper."

  "Ah?" murmured Michael, expectantly.

  The child gave him a shrewd, completely adult wink. "Once she was in, I made myself useful. There's an apartment up above, with a window looking down on the hole, and there's an old woman living there. I helped her carry her marketing up to her rooms. She says she's seen this one and that one coming and going. She's heard one of them ask for Hetman Gone. Strangeness is..."

  "Strangeness is what, Bab?" asked Michael, wiping the grease off his chin with his kerchief.

  "Strangeness is, people go in and come out, not staying long, in and out, several over a few days, then nobody for some long time, then several again..."

  "So?"

  "But nobody ever goes in and stays. So, if there's somebody living in there, they get in there another way."

  Michael felt in his pockets, discarding splits and bits until his fingers found a Holdmark. He tossed it to the boy, who caught it in one snatching fist and put it into his pocket. "You helped her carry her shopping, eh?" he said, looking up and down Bab's toddler body and babyish face.

  "Well, you know," smiled Bab. "I'm stronger than I look."

  32

  dismé in hold

  As Hetman Gone had said, Dismé was indeed perched in Hold, though she was not singing. There was no time for singing among the books she was to read, the dialects she was to learn, the bare-handed fighting technique she was to master. Since it was less troublesome to delegate this last than to worry over it, she put the matter in Roarer's paws and told it to learn well. Though Dismé herself was not conscious of making progress, the master seemed satisfied.

  Arriving via the back stairs and the ledge outside the doctor's window—a secret way, he had told her, that could never be disclosed to anyone else—she spent many evenings in his quarters, reading pre-Happening books aloud to him over dinner, or joining him in learning country songs that were, so he said, current outside Bastion. He had prided himself on his voice until he heard hers, which was remarkable.

  "You must have sung a great deal to get a voice like that."

  She shook her head. "Only to myself, when I was alone, out in the woods. It went along with my twiddling."

  "Twiddling?"

  "You know, pounding on things, making a rhythm."

  Though she had begun with some suspicion of his motives, as the days wore on she came to trust him. He remained unfailingly friendly and appreciative without ever indicating he thought of her as anything but a useful person who might as well have been sexless. She was incapable of imagining that this cost him some effort.

  She made one trip to Newland on the doctor's behalf, where she visited Gayla and Genna and retrieved the book of Nell Latimer. Since her quarters were subject to periodic housekeeping inspections, the doctor kept it for her among his secret things; after reading it, he was extremely thoughtful.

  At the end of several spans she entered his office via the reception area, her face closed and dull, responding to Captain Trublood's greeting with a murmured "morning," and was admitted into the doctor's presence. Here she was greeted with his assessment, gratuitously offered, that she was beginning to shape up. She, who had come to his office for quite another reason, was much flustered by this.

  "That was a compliment," said the doctor, sternly.

  "Yes, sir. Yes, thank you, sir."

  "The Fight Master says you are becoming quite skilled. He wonders how this is possible, in such a short time."

  She flushed. "I ... I really don't know, Doctor."

  "He is impressed. He would like to know the secret, so he can impress it upon other students. Take it as a compliment."

  "Thank you," she murmured. "But I came about something else." She handed him the letter she had just received.

  "You are to receive a visit from your sister," he commented, looking at her quizzically over the top of the letter.

  "My step-sister," she said, quietly. "She has never wished me happiness. I think she may be trying to kill me."

  "Ah," he said, quirking his eyebrows at her, as he did from time to time when she did something momentarily puzzling. "Why?"

  "I don't know. I suspect that she killed my brother and father, though I don't know her reason for that, either. I do know she uses people, uses them up, and when they've been used up, they are chaired or gone. She has never finished with someone then let them go on to something else. She goes on sucking the life out of them long after she's through with them."

  "She says business brings her to Hold. Would you have any idea what that may be about?"

  "Wasn't some mysterious artifact discovered here in the Fortress not long ago? Down in a cellar, I think. She is
a member of some study commission for such a device."

  He stared at her, unblinking. "Did she mention that?"

  "To her husband. I overheard."

  "Well. Since you already know about it, perhaps we can give her a surprise. She says she arrives day after tomorrow. There has been a good deal of conjecture about this artifact, and some people have drawn conclusions—unwarranted ones I think, but understandable nonetheless. Let's arrange that your meeting shall be in an unexpected manner and place, in my presence, and immediately thereafter we will depart, which will give her no time to harm you. Does that solve the problem?"

  She frowned, suspecting he was up to mischief, but sure that he grasped her feelings well enough. "I suppose it solves that one. Isn't our departure rather sudden, though?"

  "Not really, no. I didn't tell you everything about our making the trip. The foremost reason for going is to warn the harmless people near the borders to get out of the way before Bastion boils over and scalds the countryside. Again."

  "Again," she murmured, remembering the demon's words in the cavern.

  "The Regime used to do it quite regularly. Then the demons took to picking us off... but you don't know about demons..."

  "I know they come into the cities," she said quietly. "I was only eight when I first saw them, going out of the city and adding to a bottle wall. I was up on the wall, in a place my mother had shown me."

  "You astonish me," he said. "You remember your mother?"

  "Yes. She went away when I was very young. I never knew why, though since I've grown up I've wondered if perhaps she wasn't threatened by the Regime. I came to know later that many of the things she told me were not ... Regimic."

  "I had a mother like that, as well," he said, his eyes crinkling. "And I, too, was very young and bereft when she departed, though my father seemed impervious to grief. He married again, very soon."