Way Three: Down and Out to an Ending
23
Lorel’s Passenger List
I HAD A FINE TIME at the wedding celebration except when I looked at the arch king. Of course, Golias and I didn’t overdo it. I don’t recall that we drank a drop more than was held by any given bottle. At that it was three days before we eased back to normalcy. In the mean time Jamshyd had left, making it possible for others to depart. Lucius and Hermione had taken advantage of the opportunity to escape on their honeymoon.
If we had made any friends in the course of our whingding, they must have gone, too. “Cold sober,” I said, as we sat at breakfast the fourth day, “I don’t like this joint or the people in it.”
“There are more cheerful places than Castle Nigramous most of the time,” Golias admitted.
“Let’s hit the road, then.” Disregarding the fact that he made no rejoinder, I looked at him with cheerful expectancy. “Where shall we go?”
This time I noticed his hesitancy and the curious expression which went with it. “I haven’t quite decided,” he said at length. “About where I’m going, that is. You’re going to try to reach Hippocrene.”
“Oh, yes, that business.” The Delian’s injunction had slipped my mind. Now that it was called to my attention again, I was only a little troubled; but I didn’t like the way Golias was talking. “What’s the matter with going together?”
He helped himself to some more ham and eggs. “The Delian didn’t include me.”
“Forget the Delian.” I was irritated by his evasiveness but still inclined to be cheerful. “Make up your mind where you’re steering for, and I’ll tag along.”
Golias hadn’t been looking me squarely in the eye, but now he did. “I wish it could work out that way, Shandon, but it’s not in the cards.”
“Go to hell, then!” I snapped. “And the next time you don’t want a man’s company, tell him so instead of giving him double talk.”
I was still indignant when we left the castle and retraced our steps through the swamp. A factor which increased my bad humor was that Golias made no overtures. Moreover, when he found Tyl waiting for him at the end of the causeway, he held a long confab with the gambler — one which I wasn’t invited to join — before he walked on with me. Puzzled as well as angered, I, too, kept silent until our arrival at a split in the road forced the issue.
“Well,” I demanded, “which way now?”
He pointed down the left-hand road. “That’s the only way you can go.”
“Oh, rats! What’s to keep me from going to the right, or back where we came from?” As I asked this, I looked in the direction of the swamp. We had reached high enough ground for it to be almost wholly in sight, but the fortress which had risen from its midst had vanished. With an exclamation I whirled to take the right-hand road, which ran east to the young sun. I did not advance.
I have known people who profess a physical inability to force themselves to walk across a high bridge. No matter how safe they know the structure to be, they claim they cannot make themselves walk so far up in the air. I had never fully believed that, but now I had a similar experience, more unsettling because it took place on solid earth. When I gazed down that road, I suddenly couldn’t conceive of any possible course of action. Unable to contemplate so much as a second of the future, I was panic-stricken. When I turned to face the open country, it was no better. It wasn’t until I had turned to the westerly road again that I regained poise.
“It’s just the way the Delian wants it,” Golias explained. “So you might as well want it, too.”
“Oh, well, it doesn’t make any difference to me.” It was a relief to have my faculties in order again, but I was resentful about yielding under pressure. “How far is this place, and what do I do when I get there?”
“To answer your last question first, Hippocrene’s a spring.”
“A what? Well, O.K. Do I get a drink out of it, or do I just peek in it to see how pretty I look?”
Golias expression showed me he didn’t take to my jocularity. “You drink three times — if you can, and if you get there, which you probably won’t.”
“That’s jake with me, too,” I said, growing more jaunty as he grew more serious. “But why do I drink, and water at that, Tamborine?”
“So you won’t stay a nit-spirited slug all your life!” I had wanted to anger him, and I had succeeded. “Listen, Shandon; you got this assignment because the Delian read something in you that made it suitable. Didn’t you once tell me you tried to make a song?”
“Yes,” I owned up, “but it was no go.”
“Well, you weren’t qualified, but the Delian’s giving you a chance to be. That’s where Hippocrene comes in. The first swallow is the drink of recollection, so you won’t forget what you’ve seen, heard, and done in the Commonwealth. The second is the passport drink, giving you the know-how to find your way back. The third is the maker’s drink, no bottom limit to quality guaranteed, and no top specified.”
I reviewed his list. “Two for a passport, eh? And how many for citizenship?”
“You won’t have to worry about that,” he assured me. “Unless you’re born to it, there’s no such thing. Now going back to your query about distance, I can’t help you. I’ve been there, naturally, but there are miles on the way which can’t be computed. That signpost gives no figures, either.”
I glanced at the road marker to which he pointed. The arrows aiming west read:
Usher’s Tarn
The Dark Tower
Gnipa Cave
“It doesn’t say anything about Hippocrene,” I protested.
“Unless you get by what you’re bound to encounter, you won’t care,” he informed me with a coolness I found callous.
“I see. And it’s final that you’re not going?”
“It’s out of the question,” he declared, exasperated at my persistence. “I’ve told you, Shandon! This trip is one that a man must take by himself.”
It seemed to me that he was telling me that he had other things to do besides attending to my affairs. Mortified at having asked him, I froze up.
“So long, bub.”
“I’m sorry you can’t understand.” Golias caught at me as I turned away. “Wait. I’ve promised to help Tyl out with a deal he’s cooked up, but if he doesn’t land me in jail, I’ll pick you up somewhere along the line, if it’s possible.”
I took the hand he offered as if it were slimy. “That will be fine,” I told him.
My mood grew more sour as I went on. I had made shift for myself in the Commonwealth before, but only as a matter of accident. I had come to consider my partnership with Golias a pillar of existence. Now, inexplicably, he had walked out on me. At the outset amazement kept pace with indignation. It seemed incredible that our association should dissolve just after our fine triumph in pulling Jones out of his troubles. I myself had never felt the zest of good alliance more keenly than when we had stood together watching Lucius’ wedding.
And now, for no cause, we were washed up. Other feelings made way for bitterness, as I remembered that when he had asked me to join him in assisting Jones — an utter stranger to me, be it noted — I hadn’t failed him. But when I requested him to come along on a journey on which, by his own account, I would need all the help I could get, he had quit on me.
I cursed him for the way he had acted, and myself for caring. He had come to stand for integrity at any price, and now I had found he wasn’t like that. The knowledge cheapened and rendered suspect everything I had discovered, or thought I had discovered in the Commonwealth. All my latent skepticism revived to jeer at me for letting myself be taken in. Yet if I writhed in a fury of shame at having been naive, I felt sad, too. The disillusion of the convert is a harder affliction than having no faith.
Because walking was the only outlet I had for working off steam, I kept on steadily, stopping only for a bite of lunch. Feeling as I did, I paid no more attention to such traffic as there was on the roa
d than I did to the countryside through which it led me. When some sort of horse-drawn vehicle rolled up behind me about the middle of the afternoon, I merely gave it room without troubling to look at it.
“Stop the coach, please, driver,” a feminine voice said. Even then I continued to face doggedly forward until the inmate of the carriage spoke again. “If you please, sir, can you tell me whether this is the way to Gotham?”
Unwillingly I halted. “You can’t prove it by me.” I waved my hand toward the descending sun. “All I know is that it’s somewhere on the other side of the Titans.”
Her small features were not especially pretty, but her face was made attractive by bright, intelligent eyes. They were giving me a going over.
“Excuse my curiosity, but are you out for the exercise?”
I knew why she asked that. Jones had given me one of Ravan’s best outfits, a black velvet affair with silver trimmings, that made me appear very prosperous. Certainly I looked too well-dressed to be footing it on a dusty road.
“No,” I grunted. “I’m just going from one place to another.”
“Oh.” Her voice was soft. “You’re the kind of man who just goes from one place to another. It must be fun.”
Starting to give an ironic rejoinder, I stopped as something clicked in my brain. Her eyes lowered when I stepped nearer, but a dimple winked at me. Then she met my look, and her own wasn’t new to me. I had seen it on the faces of sundry girls I had known at home. It was the look of a woman who was too sharp an article to prize anything but her own impulses. In a moment my face wore its male counterpart, as it had not since the disastrous encounter with Circe.
“It can be a lot of fun with the right person,” I said.
She seemed to consider that remark. “Would you think me forward if I offered you a ride? All this walking must have made you tired.”
“No more forward than you’ll find me as a rider,” I volunteered. “And I’m not too tired.”
That was the way it was with Becky Crawley. She wasn’t the kind that bothered to take off her wedding ring when I entered her room at an inn that night. When I left it early the next morning, she merely grinned sleepily and twiddled the fingers of one hand in farewell.
Everything between us was therefore easy, natural, and perfectly understood. But if there was none of the grief that had unsettled me after the loss of Rosalette, and none of the wild passion which had undone me with Nimue, there was also none of the ecstasy I had known with those two. One night of matter-of-fact lust was enough at a time. I saw Mrs. Crawley too clearly to wish further relations. To make sure she would not again catch up with me, I turned off the highway at the first fork in the road after leaving the inn.
Just the same, meeting someone who viewed human relationships with such a casual eye calmed me. I lost some of my indignation toward Golias. He had simply used me when he wanted me and discarded me when I was no longer useful to him. That was the way I myself had always acted. That was what I had always recognized, except for my recent period of mental aberration, as the normal in conduct. All I had to do to get my feet on the ground again was to cleanse my mind of irrationality.
Ever since I had left the causeway to Castle Nigramous the road had climbed steadily. By noon I could see ridges that I took to be the foothills of the Titans. About the same time my progress was halted by a canal. The bridge which had once spanned it had been down for years. Irritated rather than concerned, I looked around.
All day the scenery had been dull. Here it was downright silly. That is a state which can only exist with man’s help. I was reminded of some of the broken-down rural stretches near Chicago. There were drab farms which looked as if nothing could be or ever had been raised on them. There were scattered houses, but no explanation of why anybody chose to live there or how they found it possible. Autumn had faded the leaves on the few, blighted trees instead of changing them. As a crowning touch, a sign on one scrofulous field bore the warning: “Hunters and trappers will be prosecuted.”
The canal still looked usable, though the water was scummy. Off north to my right there was nothing on it for as far as I could see. To the south, however, something caught my eye. It turned out to be a mule-drawn canal barge, moving toward me.
Notwithstanding the countryside and their means of conveyance, the passengers were getting a lot of excitement out of their trip. They were shouting and laughing, pointing and gesticulating as they approached. Their appearance was as wild, I saw when they got close, as their voices and actions. Even their mules were wall-eyed and unkempt.
Because the animals were using the tow path on my side of the canal, I withdrew to give them passage. When I stepped forward again to hail the barge, more than half of it had already passed me. Folding my arms, I waited until the vessel showed me her square stern. The paint was peeling, but I could make out her name and home port. She was the Menippus out of Narragonia.
“Ahoy, Menippus!” I called out, much more loudly than was needful. Because most of the passengers were intent on something or someone on the other side of the boat, none aboard had so far noticed me. My shout changed this situation. Nearly all of them — and there must have been several dozen — turned to peer at me. Simultaneously they began to laugh, and some pointed to let me be sure I was the object of their derision.
“There’s one!”
“Somebody tell the skipper.”
“Where’s Lorel?”
“Hey, stop the boat until the skipper’s had a laugh, too.”
That injunction was unnecessary, because the driver had turned to grin, and the mules had halted without being told. The result was that everyone could examine me at leisure; and I had the choice of standing my ground in the face of their mirth or of retreating out of eye and ear range. Not pleased by either alternative, I stood glaring at them. They were too numerous to assault and too noisy to allow me a come-back.
My wrath, thus short circuited, was just about to blow a fuse when a diversion was created. A man emerged from the cabin and looked at the driver.
“Who told you to stop the ship?” he demanded.
“I did,” a half-dozen passengers promptly announced.
“Sure they did, skipper,” the driver said, “but the mules got more influence when you come right down to it. They stopped when I turned to look at that one.” Here he pointed to me.
The skipper, a gangling, horse-faced fellow, turned his gaze my way. Instantly he chuckled.
“That’s one, all right.”
At that the top came off my restraint. In a few strides I caught up with the boat.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I snarled, growing more enraged when they all yelled with delight. “One what?”
He was unmoved by my fury. “What,” he wondered, “would you say you were yourself, if you had a guess?”
If there was a way out of this ridiculous position into which he had euchred me, I couldn’t find it while I was in a bad temper. Having no good answer, I settled for one I couldn’t lose too much on.
“Just a guy, like you.”
“Proud of it?”
He had left me a small opening, but I didn’t have the heart to take it. His sardonic words, and his even more sardonic eye, rubbed my raw grief. Nevertheless, I didn’t feel like giving him the satisfaction of knowing he had scored.
“Oh, I’m doing all right.”
“Named Ananias as well as Simon,” he commented. “Lord’s my handle — C. Lorel, shipmaster and connoisseur of my fellow idiots. You look to me like a collector’s item. Jump aboard, if you like.”
I hesitated. Although this crew had got my hackles up, I was in need of guidance or at least a means of getting across the canal without plunging into the foul water which filled it.
“Where are you going?” I temporized. Then as I caught the gleam in his eye, I added hastily: “I know — where the canal goes; but would it take me anywhere near Usher’s Tarn, say?”
“What difference does it make?”
he wanted to know. “You won’t find any friends no matter which way you head.”
There he stuck his finger right in my new sore. At the same time the jauntiness with which he voiced the truth served as cauterization.
“You’ve got something there,” I agreed, “but I’m looking for a place not a person.” In spite of making the effort, I couldn’t speak with conviction. “I’ve got a project.”
“Oh,” he said, pursing his lips. “There’s something you want to accomplish. Think it will make you feel any better?”
“Of course.”
“Up anchor and shake out every stitch of canvas!” he roared. “And while you’re at it, hit those mules a lick. Here’s a man with big things to do, and we’re in his way.”
Everybody laughed, but I didn’t much mind, because I found myself joining them. Captain Lorel grinned over his shoulder.
“Put her into the wind and whoa!” he shouted. “I’m willing to admit you could walk faster than we can bully these mules into doing,” he remarked when I had caught up again, “but what’s the use in it?”
My only assurance that the road I had chosen was taking me toward my ordained goal was that I had found it possible to follow it. It now occurred to me that I might be able to outsmart the Delian. If I couldn’t walk except on the way to Hippocrene, perhaps I could ride on a divergent course. Then once I had broken the hex, maybe I could find a way to get out of this country that no longer appealed to me.
“No sense in it that I can see,” I said as I jumped aboard.
He grabbed my arm to steady me. “Hope you didn’t jar yourself when you came down from that high horse. Of course, it sometimes operates to get the gas out of you.”
“Bet it wouldn’t work in your case.” This fellow wasn’t bothering me any longer, and I wanted to let him know. “As for the nag you mentioned, there’s no sense in riding where there’s no purse.”
“Talk ’em into starting up again,” Lorel ordered the driver. Then he shook his head at me. “If you know that much, I shouldn’t expose my self-hypnotized innocents to your corrosive influence; but anyhow come up on my quarterdeck. As a newcomer, you have a right to examine the passenger list.”