Battles are loud. Also, they stink. But an occasional wind can relieve the stink for a bit, and sometimes, like loud conversations in crowded inns, there comes a relative lull. I faced off against a guy with two shortswords and a big nose, and I heard Hossi say, “See you next life, maybe, Birn.”
I didn’t look down, but I said, “I think you might live through this,” and then something hit me hard in the head and I had the sudden thought, Bad luck or not, I’m glad I read the Guide before this started.
And then there was nothing.
* * *
“Are you all right?” said Discaru.
I realized that he’d already asked me that a couple of times.
“I think so,” I said. “There’s a lot of dying going on.”
“Oh. Yeah. Death memories are traumatic. Try not to relive too many of them at once.”
“Thanks,” I said.
I guess, whatever I’d been focused on, it was about death. Just what I want to be thinking about, right? I mean, contemplating death is perfectly fine when you’re safe, but when you’re in danger it’ll just get you killed.
And there I was thinking about it again; I made sure I wasn’t looking at the fountain. Instead I was looking at—
—The Halls of Judgment. What was I doing there? Well, I was trying to solve a mystery, and, somehow or other, the Halls of Judgment were tied into it. The question was, how?
I turned back to the fountain again and watched the dance of the water.
* * *
I left early when I got the message from the Priestess, but it was Homeday, so there wasn’t a lot of reason to stay. I ran my operations out of a back room of the Sleeping Cat, which I owned through a couple of layers of friends. The Cat was in a part of Dragaera City that didn’t have a lot of action on Homeday, being just far enough from the Palace to be full of the dwellings of civil servants as well as markets and entertainments for them.
I took Dosci and Ven, and our first stop was to the temple of Verra on Prince Lagginer Street. I left them outside, because no one will pull anything at a temple. I made an offering and a prayer so as not to stand out, then walked around behind and clapped outside of the door to the rectory. After a moment, the Priestess appeared. She was an Athyra, and I never knew her name; I just called her Priestess. It being an early Iorich reign, she called me “my lord.” She bowed and invited me in, had me sit, offered wine, which I declined.
“I have it, my lord,” she said, before I could ask.
“That’s good, that’s good. Was it hard to get?”
Her brows went up. “Do you actually care?”
I shrugged. “I’m a caring kinda guy. And I had an Issola nanny.”
“No, it wasn’t hard, it just took time.” She reached down next to her chair and picked up a small package, wrapped in paper the color of diluted red wine. She handed it to me. “And your end?”
I nodded. “Looking into the future, I gotta feeling you won’t need to find a new location for many, many years.”
“And?”
“Yes, that’s all. I don’t need nothin’ else, so I won’t be back. Unless I feel a sudden urge to pray.”
Everyone I know would have made some sort of remark, like, “I could recommend some places,” or even, “don’t hurry.” But she was an Athyra; she just nodded.
Dosci and Ven were where I’d left them, and they fell into step with me. My next stop was Black Swans Park, a tiny little place with a pond and worn stone benches and very few trees. It was a good place to relax because there was no way for anyone to sneak up on you. I sat down and opened the package.
A very simple pendant, a jhereg in black on a silver chain, about half the size of my palm. I put it over my head, slid it into my jerkin, against the skin of my chest. It felt a little cold, but there was no sensation other than that. Nor would there be. While I lived.
* * *
“I don’t suppose,” I said to the inker, “you can tell me what it means?”
He looked embarrassed. “Sorry, m’lady. That would take a diviner. And even then—”
“It’s all right,” I said, suddenly in a good mood in spite of pinpricks; I wasn’t used to being “my lady” to anyone. I resolved to spend more time around tradesmen.
To distract myself from the constant stinging, I looked around the shop. There was little enough to see: curtains, a table, a shelf for his inks, samples of his work (mostly sketches, with a couple of cheap psiprints), and his House emblem, a chreotha, over the door. I tried to get involved in the art, but it just wouldn’t hold my interest.
“So,” I said, “you know what it is?”
“It is your guide through the Paths, my lady. And permit me to hope it will be countless centuries before you need it.”
“Thank you,” I said, but that killed the conversation, so my attention was on the pinpricks again.
I tried again. “Does your family have one?”
“A length of string, my lady,” he said. “It has different sorts of knots tied in it at different intervals, which correspond to the choices we will face.”
“Accurate?”
“It was divined for my generation, so I am hopeful.”
“Well, for your sake, I hope it is, and that, as you said, you don’t need it for a long time.”
“Thank you, my lady. And yours?” He seemed hesitant, but I’d encouraged the intimacy, hadn’t I?
“Old, I’m afraid. The family have tried to get a more recent one, but no luck so far.”
“I trust it will serve,” he said.
The ink he was using was a light blue that would match my House colors, and already I could see the intertwining lines with points marked here and there. Someday, those lines, covering my left arm from wrist to elbow, would be all I’d have to guide me. Not soon, I hoped, but someday. And, as my father had said, better to get it down when young than spend one’s life worrying about it.
The pinpricks continued and the design grew.
* * *
I came to consciousness with no shirt and an itch in my back.
“My back itches,” I announced to anyone who might be nearby.
Shandy was, it seemed, nearby. “Dolivar’s back itches,” he said. “It probably doesn’t have anything to do with passing out half-naked on shortgrass. I would look for a mystical explanation.”
I gave a few mystical explanations for his life and sat up. We were back in camp. A quick look around showed fires going, the sun just rising over the eastern hills glimpsed through occasional breaks in the trees, and Herthae chipping away at spearheads. Above me, Morning Snake would soon slither off until nightfall, but watched over us for now, if you believe in that sort of thing. Bigmoon was high up, but already becoming pale as the light grew; Littlemoon wouldn’t rise for another nine days. I smelled breakfast. I believed in breakfast.
“What happened?” I said.
Tivisa said, “You don’t remember?”
I shook my head, and it hurt, so I made some deductions. “I got hit in the head during the raid.”
She nodded. “You need someone to just follow you around and yell, ‘Duck!’ from time to time.”
“I’ll get right to work on that. What hit me?”
“Flat of an ax. You did sort of duck.”
“Ax. Where are they getting those?”
“You don’t remember that either?” said Shandy. “They have a forge. We saw it during the raid and you said to destroy it and then you were down.”
“Did we destroy it?”
“No. Sethra was there. We ran.”
“Who dragged me back?”
She gestured toward Rothra. “Her and Shandy.”
“Anyone hurt?”
“You.”
“Anyone else?”
“Some of them.”
“Other than failing to destroy their forge—damn, I don’t remember it at all—did we get anything?”
“Breakfast.”
“Huh. Well, I guess if we didn?
??t lose anyone—”
“Chief!” came from behind me, shouted. It was Chiqwe, presumably on watch to the south.
I turned my head. “My name is Dolivar,” I called back. Then, “What is it?”
“Someone’s coming,” he called.
“Okay,” I yelled. “Make sure you don’t shout or anything to let him know we’ve spotted him.” Then I tried to stand up but got dizzy. I sat down again and pointed to Shandy and Rothra. “You two. Find out what’s up.”
They each picked up a spear from the pile, then Shandy grabbed a second one because he was Shandy. They needn’t have bothered; before they could move, Chiqwe called, “Coming through,” which meant that whoever it was, was no threat.
What the—?
I tried to stand up again, failed again, sat and stared.
She came walking up to me as if she knew just who I was, and with me sitting we were eye-level. A child, not more than ten years old. “Uh, hello,” I said. “You are—”
“Devera. And you need to come with me now.”
Okay, then. Here was something new. I had no idea what to say.
“Uh, who are you, and why?”
“I told you, and because.”
“Um. Do you have a better reason?”
She just looked at me. I looked at her, and, for the first time, paid attention to what she was wearing. It was a single garment, covering her from shoulder to ground, of a rich blue I’d never seen before, and with gold on it, and, well, I had no idea who could make something like that, or how, or how many hundreds of hours it would have taken, and who has hundreds of hours to put into one garment that, well, how does it even survive ten minutes of walking around?
“Where did you get that?”
“I’ll show you,” she said. Then, “Please?”
I guess it was the please that did it. Well, that, and I’ve never been able to resist the uncanny.
“Sure,” I said. “Lead on.” I started trying to stand up again.
Shandy said, “Chief, you—”
“My name is Dolivar,” I said. “If I don’t come back, it’s all on you.”
I wobbled a little, then said, “All right, Devera. Walk slow.”
“What happened?”
“I got hit in the head.”
“Are you all right?” she seemed genuinely concerned.
“Mostly. I’m seeing imaginary children wearing impossible clothes who are convincing me to follow them I know not where, but other than that, yeah, I’m okay.”
She giggled and ran off for a ways, then stopped and waited for me as I shuffled along. Everyone in camp was looking at me. I caught up with the little girl and didn’t ask myself what I was doing. But, if this was a trap by the Dragon, it was a lot more clever than any of the other traps they’d set for us.
I imagined a bunch of them, probably including my sister, waiting just beyond the clearing, but I kept walking anyway. I shouldn’t have worried; we didn’t make it as far as the clearing.
I stopped and said, “What just happened?”
I was no longer in the clearing. I was no longer in the forest. I was in, well, I don’t know what to call it. There was no sky, there were no trees, no grass. It was a like a hut built out of something impossible and big enough for a thousand million families. Okay, I’m exaggerating, but huge, all right? And all of it white.
I reminded myself that I had been hit in the head.
Also, Devera was gone, and I was alone. Yeah, the “hit in the head” thing—
“Hello, Dolivar.”
The voice echoed weirdly, like I was in a narrow, close canyon. I turned and she was behind me, about ten feet away, unarmed, very tall, and then everything blurred and I was outdoors again, though nowhere I recognized.
“My apologies, Dolivar; I imagine the setting must have been disorienting for you. Here, let me fix your head.” She reached toward me—there was something odd about her hands—and the pain in my head and the dizziness went away. I hadn’t even been aware of the pain until it stopped. And I still didn’t trust what I was seeing.
“I am Verra,” she said.
I almost said, “Who are you?” but shut my mouth instead. People kept telling me their names as if that were useful information.
There was silence for a moment, than a titterbird whistled and I almost started laughing uncontrollably; it made more sense than anything else in the last few minutes.
“You are at a critical moment,” she said.
“You mean, in my brain fever?”
“Be quiet and listen. It is perfectly fine with me if you think you’re mad. It is fine if you think this is a dream. None of that matters. What matters is that you listen, and that you do what I say. It won’t make sense to you, and that doesn’t matter either. Listen.”
Under the circumstances, I thought it best to listen. It wouldn’t have mattered, I think, if I hadn’t wanted to, because she walked right up to me—she really was tall—touched my forehead with one of her weird fingers, and said, “There is a line that began centuries ago, with the creation of the Great Sea that released me and my sisters. It extends into the future, I don’t know how far.”
Even up close, her voice had a weird, echoing sound, like she was saying everything two or three times, so close together I could just barely hear the separation. The thought formed in my head, Why are you telling me? but I didn’t dare speak. Nor did I have to; she either pulled the thought right out of my head or guessed what I was thinking, and I’m ready to believe either one. “I’ve chosen you,” she said, “because from the outside, you will know what is happening on the inside, and so on the inside you will work. Another will work from without, and you’ve just met her.” I had no idea what she was talking about. “I know you don’t understand,” she said. “Just keep listening.” As if I had a choice.
“Have you ever wondered why you exist?” she asked me. No. “I don’t mean you, I mean your entire species. You are pieces in a game, Dolivar, all of you, you exist to answer a simple question: can a society of sapient beings be made to achieve a certain level of culture and then stop? You’ve been set up for this. Created, manipulated to do this.” I had no idea what she was talking about, but she didn’t seem to care. She kept going. “My sisters and I, with some others, broke them, but we haven’t broken what they did. Yet. But I swear by those who perished, we will. And you’re going to help, little boy.” Okay, that was uncalled-for. “You will go back, and you will make peace with your brother and your sister.” I would do that—“When you get back. Instantly. You’ll do whatever it takes. Just as a bonus, you’ll survive that way. And then later, much, much later, I can’t even guess how long, you’ll be there for the other end. It begins with the creation of Amorphia, and so it will end, and you will have a part to play.”
Aside from anything else, I never believed in seeing the future. “I am not seeing the future, little boy, I intend to create it.” Good for you, I was thinking. What do I get out of it? “Here, she said, and placed something around my neck. I looked at it; it was a piece of lapis lazuli, like out of the Broken Canyon, with a hole punched in it, and something had been carved on it. I couldn’t make sense of the carving; it seemed to be an animal with wings, maybe a jhereg, but it was made up of a series of curving and twisting lines that were broken in places, and—“You’ll have time to study it later. Never mind. Keep it with you, pass it on to your offspring. Someday one will find it useful. Now, go.”
There was a blurring and a sharpening, a going and a coming, a silence and a sound, and I was back in the clearing. I was next to Tivisa, who jumped about four feet and said, “Where did you—”
“Don’t ask,” I said. Several of them gathered around me, staring. “Okay, yeah,” I told them. “I’m going to go visit the Dragon tribe.”
“Visit?” said Shandy, giving me a dark look.
“Yeah.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they’ll have something that will make my
back stop itching.”
* * *
It took me a while to remember where I was. Discaru was still next to me, the personification of patience.
“Well,” I said. “That was interesting.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, thanks for your concern. But, yeah. That was interesting.”
“Oh?”
“Boss?”
“How much did you catch?”
“Just bits and pieces.”
I shook my head and turned my eyes away from the fountain with the feeling that enough was enough.
“What did you learn?” he asked me.
“Give me a minute.”
“All right.”
“In fact, give me a few.”
“All right.”
“I don’t know. There was a lot there, and some of it made sense, and some of it connected, and I might be able to figure it out when my head stops spinning.”
He nodded. “I’m not surprised. I’ve looked at the water myself; I know how confusing it can get.”
“Yeah. I want to sit somewhere quiet and sort it all out.”
“Give it time, don’t concentrate on it, and it’ll sort itself out.”
“All right.”
“Although,” he added, “I’m in no hurry.”
“No, I’m going to follow your advice. In any case, I don’t want to stay by the fountain.” I looked around. “Somehow this isn’t the best place for contemplation.”
“No? That’s most of what happens here.”
“Maybe it’s different for dead people.”
He nodded. “Good point.”
In spite of my words, I stood there in the Halls of Judgment and tried to wrap my head around things. Eventually, because the silence was bothering me, I said, “It’s a lot to take in, to make sense of.”
“Can I help?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What—”
“I’m trying to work out the connections between the things I saw, how they all connect to understanding that building, that platform we were just in, what it all means for finding my way out once I return, and, on top of it, trying not to think about all those lives I had, and if they were real, and all me, and who I was, and if it had anything to do with who I am. Did that happen to you?”