The doctor looked at her in confusion, which was echoed to some extent by the demon himself.
"You never saw me," he challenged.
"I heard your voice," she said. "Yours and your female friend's. Is she with you? At least she was less insulting!"
"Insulting?" the doctor asked, his eyebrows raised.
"He called me a dead snake," she said. "A limp rag. A do-nothing, know-nothing."
"I had no idea we had friends in common," said Michael, laying his hand on Dismé's arm. "Are you sure he wasn't trying to provoke you into taking an appropriate action? That's what he did with me."
"By all the Rebel Angels and their golden footstools," said the doctor, "Is this a reunion? Someone please enlighten me?"
Dismé gave a concise account of her encounter with the demons in the cavern below Faience, to which Wolf added his own explanations: "What was really happening was..." while Michael offered: "We have to take into account that..."
"How do you know this horny one?" demanded Bab of Michael.
"Because I spent a year with him and his kin," said Michael.
"And what is it Wolf put in your head?" Bobly asked Dismé.
"The female demon called it a dobsi," Dismé replied. "A creature that transmits information to them. Everything I see or hear. Or, I should say, did transmit. I don't know what Dezmai allows to be seen."
"Thank you for the warning," said the doctor, somewhat snappishly to Wolf. "I may have said certain things I did not want transmitted!"
"But they arranged for me to meet you," Dismé cried. "I thought you were in on it; you sent the letter."
"In on what?" the doctor cried.
"Shhh," said the demon. "You'll frighten the horses. We didn't arrange it, Dismé. It was Arnole who sent the letter to the doctor. He didn't tell us he'd done so until you'd already left Faience, and since it took you precisely where you could be best helped, we simply let it be. We kept our word. We did make a plan for you, but it wasn't half as good as Arnole's."
"Arnole?" The doctor threw up his hands.
"Ayward's father," said Dismé. "My friend. Who also had a dobsi in his head." She turned back to Wolf. "And you also know Michael?"
Michael flushed and dug his toe into the ground, as the doctor's eyebrows threatened to escape his head. "Well, well," he said. "You didn't enlighten me, Mr. Pigeon."
"I didn't think it mattered," said Michael. "So, I'm a rebel spy! A spy for them, a spy for you, rebel either way, what's the difference?"
"We'll discuss it later," said Jens, beckoning the others to join him on the blankets spread around the fire. When Wolf had seated himself, he unwound the turban, displaying a complicated bony structure attached to the horns. To Dismé's amazement, he slowly lifted the entire assembly, which separated from his head with a decided snap. He set it down beside the fire, where the horns remained for a moment upright, like a stringless lyre, then lowered slowly to a horizontal position. The bony structure between them emitted legs, and the leg part dragged the horn part off into the undergrowth. Neither the doctor nor Michael showed any surprise.
"We let them wander around sometimes," Wolf said to Dismé, scratching his head vigorously with both hands. "They like to nibble bits of foliage and mosses..."
"They?" she faltered.
"The Dantisfan. A race of small, psychosensitive creatures who exist in symbiotic relationships with larger, less perceptive beings, such as humans. The dobsi are the juvenile form, flat, thin, capable of inserting themselves inside the skull without at all injuring the brain. We protect the Dantisfan from predation, we feed them and give them a protected place to spawn, and they accompany us and alert us to any hostile intent in the area."
"Where did they..." she asked, astonished.
Wolf said, "They came with the Happening, along with the Visitor and the other Un-Earthlies. Some of them were predatory monsters, most weren't. The Dantisfan are among the most useful, at least to us. The horns are full of tissue rather like brain tissue and the outsides are studded with receptor cells, like eyes, ears, barometers, thermometers, tastebuds, smell sensors, and, most important, some organ that detects emotions in the vicinity. The middle part has the legs, and what we call the pressor organ, the one they use to tell us what they feel, or what they see and hear through their dobsi's sensors."
He took a comb from his pocket to restore his hair to order, continuing, "In addition to transmitting what the dobsi sees and hears, they'll show you what they sense as well." He cast a quick glance at the doctor, whose habitual smile seemed somewhat strained about the edges.
"No doubt it was a survival characteristic, wherever they evolved," said the doctor with a dismissive twitch of his nostrils. "It would be an advantage to be able to leave your offspring by itself and still be able to see everything that was going on around it. Do they hear only their own offspring?"
Wolf shook his head. "Their own by preference, but if any dobsi yells loud enough, all Dantisfan within range pick it up."
"And who is the Visitor?" asked Dismé.
"The big something that came with the Happening."
Dismé nodded, recognizing it as part of the story she had told her students. "The part that split off."
Wolf said, "Those of us from Chasm started calling it the Visitor because that's a relatively comfortable label. It implies the stay is temporary, that the thing will go away. We think the Visitor must be part of a race of beings who live in space, though we're guessing at that. We also postulate that they hitch rides on bits of space trash that are moving somewhere, like the huge one that came at us. Anyhow, the Visitor is getting closer by the day."
"What does it want here?" Dismé asked. "What does it do?"
"Nobody knows. It's headed inland, now, toward a wide stretch of dry prairie where there's some kind of building. We have a few Chasmites out there, to keep an eye on it."
"So demons are just ... people?" Dismé asked.
"Quite right. People."
"Then why ... why all this secrecy?"
Bobly said, in an amused voice, "She wants to know why you don't make friends with the Regime?"
Wolf snorted. "Why doesn't the damned Regime make friends with us? Because we're heretics. We don't believe in sorcery. We don't believe things happen by magic. We don't pray to Rebel Angels. We don't have a Dicta that answers all questions. Also, we don't go along with all that bottle and chair nonsense, even though we make the hardware for them. Among ourselves, we tell jokes about keeping the Regime well seated and bottled up. We don't need a hundred thousand fanatical killers out here."
"But there is magic," cried Dismé. "I've seen it!"
"I'm sure you saw what looked like magic," said Wolf, in a kindly tone. "Nonetheless, I'm also sure there was a natural explanation for it."
"Heya..." someone called from downhill.
"Flower," said Wolf. "I'll fetch her." He got up and strolled away, pausing to stroke the Dantisfan, which had thrust itself against a rock and was busy scraping lichen with a ridge of emerald chitin that evidently served it for teeth.
The doctor murmured, "Demons are no less doctrinaire than the Spared. They refuse to believe in anything they can't measure and explain. The Regime believes implicitly in magic and thinks that Scientism is heretical, but the demons already have carts that move without horses as well as a few mechanisms that carry people through the air. They have a great many other technological things as well, and they have no patience with magical thinking."
"So I shouldn't blather like a classroom monitor about the end of the world, or how the Spared will be saved."
"Or about angels. Most particularly not angels. They see the idea of angels as a threat to their own dominance of the physical world. We're not here to debate Wolf or his people. We just need to warn them about the army, so they can spread the word to everyone who lives out here."
"Can't anyone do anything to stop the army?" Dismé asked.
The doctor shook his head. "Most of the rebel
s aren't fighters. They do, however, make up at least a third of Bastion's population. The night before we left, I sent messages in all directions. By the time we were at Lessy Yard, most of Bastion knew what the army planned. When the army moves, a third of Bastion's population will leave, leaving only the Regimic types behind. The Fortress at Hold will still be full of Turnaways, but there'll be no food grown or cooks in the kitchens."
"No support for the army, in other words," said Michael. "But no active opposition, either."
The doctor shook his head. "What are they supposed to oppose? From what General Gowl said, there will be monsters joining the army, but Chasm believes all the real monsters died out centuries ago, and it doesn't believe in magical ones. Chasm will have to see them before they can plan to fight them."
Dismé said angrily, "Michael, why didn't you tell me this?"
"How could I with Rashel right there," Michael protested.
"Arnole must have been a rebel, and he didn't tell me. How could there be so many rebels without the Regime knowing it?"
It was Wolf's partner, Flower, just arriving, who replied, "It was inevitable. Once the Regime said that one living cell is a life, real living became irrelevant, and the Regime started bottling everyone who was troublesome. Meantime, it was Regimic policy to capture young people from outside. Follow that pattern for a few generations, bottling people who believe, replacing them with outsiders who don't, and before long most of the people in Bastion pretend to be Regimic but aren't."
Wolf nodded. "Meantime, the leaders are so proud they believe pride will hold Bastion together, and as an extra incentive, they say everyone outside Bastion will be wiped out."
"Which, if true, might have made Bastion alluring," said Flower.
Wolf nodded. "We outsiders based our strategy on keeping the Spared where they are, keeping them satisfied, bleeding them out slowly while replacing their people with our people, until they wouldn't be dangerous anymore."
"It was working fine until the general had his visions," the doctor growled. "And that brings me to the reason I came this way..."
The warning took some time, allowing for Wolf's explosive digressions into disbelief and anger, particularly on the subject of the Guardian Council. "They've upset things already. People doing magic. People causing miracles. Bastion's bad enough without some power hungry cult gaining influence among the rabble by doing a little legerdemain."
"Is it legerdemain," murmured Dismé.
"Of course it is," snapped Wolf.
"And do they bear a sign, on their foreheads?" she asked, innocently.
"Dismé!" warned the doctor.
Wolf said, "They are said to, which is more trickery, though I haven't seen them myself. Luminous paint, most likely."
Dismé removed her scarf and turned so the demons could see her face. Flower rose and came to her, bending to touch the sign, jerking her finger back at the sensation.
"Use soap and water if you like," Dismé suggested. "I don't mind if you remove it. I've tried."
They tried soap and scrubbing, reddening her skin in the process but making the sign glow only brighter.
"It's a substance we're not familiar with," said Wolf, at last, through his teeth. "Chasm could identify it."
"No, they'd be as baffled as I am," confessed the doctor, with a head-shake at Dismé. "I'm by way of being a small scientist myself, and nothing known to me glows like that. Certainly not the way it did immediately after the device hit her."
"You saw it?"
"I did. Wolf, I respect you too much to lie to you. Something here is outside your experience and mine. You know the Tamlar story. Remember the pillars on the mound that P'Jardas spoke of? On the way here, we stopped at the storage yard where those pillars had been taken when the Fortress was built. The pillars aren't there anymore. How many of the Council have been ... what did you say, Dismé? Called?"
She looked into the distance and said, "Tamlar needed no call. I feel most of the others have been found." Her voice seemed to come from very far away.
"How does she make that voice?" asked Flower, in an interested voice. "It's very clever."
Dezmai turned to look at her, and Flower froze in place.
The doctor said, "It isn't a trick."
"Oh come now," said Wolf, sneeringly.
Dezmai opened her mouth hugely and roared the sound of great drums pounding. Around her the trees shivered, branches fell, leaves flew. The fire flared up and sparks went soaring away in lines of fire. Wolf, who seemed to be at the focus of the sound, was flung aside in a crumpled heap.
Dismé dropped her head and was silent.
As Wolf struggled to his feet, the doctor gulped. "Wolf, I think perhaps it would be wise if you and Flower ah ... withheld judgement about the Council. For a time."
"I'm sorry," murmured Dismé. "She does what she likes, and she hates being ridiculed."
"We know," said Michael coming to put his arm around her shoulders, and looking piercingly at the others. "Don't we?"
Bobly and Bab assented quickly, as did Wolf and Flower more reluctantly.
"Show them Bertral's Book," whispered Bobly. "Perhaps that will help them understand."
The doctor fetched the book from his saddle bag and sat down with it in his lap, the two demons leaning over his shoulders.
"Lady Dezmai of the Drums," he read.
In whose charge are the howls of battle, the roaring of great beasts, the lumbering of herds, the mutter and clap of thunder, the tumult of waves upon stone, the cry of trumpets, the clamor of the avalanche...
"There must be some kind of device in the wagon to make that sound," suggested Flower. "Some kind of amplifier."
"There is no device in the wagon," said Dismé in a tone of fatal decision. "You have doubted once. Do not doubt again."
"I think that would be wise," said the doctor. "Please, Wolf, Flower, bear with us. I don't know what's going on any more than you do, but I do know I bought that wagon just a few days ago, and there's no device in it."
The two demons looked at one another skeptically, but they did not voice their doubts again. Instead, they crowned themselves with their Dantisfan, wound their turbans to hold the horns in place, made rather curt farewells and took themselves off, scarcely waiting until they were out of earshot before beginning to argue with one another.
"I apologize for them," said the doctor, getting up to return the book to his saddle bag.
"No need," said Dismé. "In time, they will either learn or Rankivian will take them." She rubbed her head, fretfully. "I have the strong feeling that if we don't want to encounter black arts, we need to leave this place. Dezmai, dobsi, or demons—one or all of them has set my teeth on edge. Something horrid is coming this way, and we must be far away if we are to avoid it."
They hitched up the wagon and set out again upon the road, not stopping until the dark was well upon them.
38
anglers and border guards
Summerspan five, fourday, evening: on a grassy promontory in the Comador mountains, a pair of anglers vacationing from Newland made themselves a sketchy camp out of a couple of bedrolls and a circle of stones around a small fire. They had camped the last two nights some way north and west of Newland. They had tramped on today to intercept the Outward Road and had followed it first west into the hills and then south along the valley to the old storage yard below. From there they had clambered up a narrow and well-hidden trail to the top of the promontory, where they had spent a twilight hour fishing the pools up the stream and back again before setting up camp.
The woods were behind them and the open air before them. Their view to the north included the smoke from a village or two in the Comador rumplelands, and a little east of that, light from a village in the flatland of Turnaway, past the Outward Road. It would take a bonfire to be seen this far, so someone was memorializing a marriage, a birth, or a bottling. From above, the near end of the Lessy road was hidden by copses in the valley below, but it emerg
ed into the open farther north, where it curved to the east around the sides of two low hills.
Behind them, their fishing stream wandered through the forest, dropping in a staircase of talkative falls and mute pools, to the edge of the precipice before them, where it slipped over a smoothed rockrim in a vitreous flow that entered the large pool, only its shimmer showing that it moved. From there on, the water was only a valley creek, running smooth a bit, then quicker and whiter over stones, becoming a crooked silver thread along the road they had come by, whiter and wider as it met other rills and brooklets until, at the road fork, it straightened north and east toward the wetlands that bordered Apocanew in Turnaway-shire: the lowest, flattest, and wettest of the shires, source of the subterranean river that drained all Bastion and kept it from becoming a lake.
The men had raked a bed of coals to one side of the fire and spitted half a dozen fat trout above it. On the fire, a kettle steamed alongside a pot of cornmush, beans, and bacon to which had been added a handful of peppers and some other common herbs, a mixture locally known as much-a-plenty. The fish took only a short time to cook, and the much-a-plenty had been cooked before they left home and heated several times since, so they soon filled their plates, took their jug of cider from the icy waters of the precipice pool and sat crosslegged near the edge of the drop to enjoy their meal and the view. Darkness had fallen in the valley below them where the moon silvered the curves of the road and made of the landscape a painting in steely lights and ashen shadows, a view that brightened as the moon rose further and the fire died behind them to leave only a faint haze of smoke against the darkness of the trees.
"Look there," murmured one to the other, in a whisper.
"Where?" grunted the other, older man.
"Shhh. Look down there at that largest pile of stuff in the old yard. See it? Now look left a little. What's that moving?"
The other stared. They both did, for several moments.
"It's big," whispered the older man, suddenly convinced of the wisdom of quiet. "Really big."