Mists of The Ages, page 21
“I don’t know if it means anything, but they aren’t following,” I told him. “Or at least I can’t see them following. Maybe they’ll be smart and take your advice.
“They’d better be that smart, because it wasn’t advice,” he came back without looking at me, all of the growl gone from his voice but the faintest of shadows. “Doing things like that to people isn’t the joke some consider it, especially when there’s a lady involved. My parents taught me manners while I was growing up; if theirs didn’t do the same for them, it’s more than time the oversight was corrected.”
I lapsed back into silence at that, not quite sure what to say. The fighter was angry, all right, but not for the reasons I’d thought and he wasn’t only angry. He also seemed to be indignant and outraged, in large measure on my behalf. A reaction like that wasn’t something I’d expected from a virtual stranger, especially not one I’d exchanged more argument with than conversation. Obviously there was more to Serendel than just being a brainless glad, and he’d been very right: if people had left us alone, I might have found that out sooner.
Once again we just kept walking, something that was beginning to be really boring. I felt as though we’d already come miles, and there was no knowing how far we had left to go. Serendel didn’t seem interested in more conversation, and I agreed with that. When two people begin getting to know each other, the personal items they exchange are meant for each other, not an audience. We’d had more than enough proof that someone was keeping track of us; if they really were also listening in, the rest of our conversation could wait.
Possibly another ten minutes went by, and then I began noticing different sounds coming from the darkened openings we passed, with some not confined to the openings. I hadn’t realized it sooner but the fog also seemed to be thickening, which made seeing more than a few feet beyond us just about impossible. Some of the noises sounded like dragging, some shuffling, a few like scrapes, and one or two were nothing but strange breathing. At first I considered the whole thing stupid, but when the noises began sounding closer and there was still nothing in view to account for them, I began thinking about changing my mind.
“I think it’s safe to assume my warning was heard and believed,” Serendel said suddenly, almost making me jump. “Since I didn’t like the first game, they’ve decided to play a different one.”
“Do you think they’d listen if I said I didn’t like this one?” I asked, the words very nearly a mutter. “I know I don’t have your standing or size, but I am supposed to be a paying customer.”
“I hope you’re not taking any of this seriously,” he returned, and there was no doubt he was back to being amused. “Strange noises in the dark, breathing out of the fog—it’s the sort of thing you use to frighten little children.”
“Little children aren’t the only ones smart enough to distrust what prefers hiding out of easy sight,” I told him with a glance, disliking the faint grin he was wearing. “And there’s a big difference between fright and caution, something someone in your position ought to know.”
“That’s right, you’re the one who isn’t afraid of anything,” he said, and if he didn’t sound even more amused it was only because he was consciously refraining. “Believe it or not. I’m glad you reminded me about that. Now I don’t have to spend any time reassuring you, or protecting you, or anything like what I’d have to do with a different woman. It feels good having a companion rather than a dependent.”
With that he pounded me on the back a couple of times, not quite hard enough to knock me down, but certainly with brother-and-equal vigor. When I glared at him he chuckled, wordlessly admitting he was the kind who never passed up an opportunity for teasing, which told me I’d be wasting my time getting mad. He fully intended pulling my leg until it came off in his hand, and people like that are beyond help. All you can do is shake your head at them and sigh, and then get on with what you were doing before they started their nonsense.
Which meant I went back to wondering just what the hell was making those noises, and even more to the point, why they were being made. They couldn’t seriously be expecting to scare anyone, not even if it did sound like dead bodies and whatever had made them dead were just out of sight, waiting to add one or two more to their group. The fog was really thick at that point, cutting down visibility to arm’s length or less, and the fighter beside me was giving most of his attention to the ground under our feet. Since he was doing that my own area of responsibility became obvious, and that was why I kept a close watch on the fog all around. If anything was going to jump out at us in attack, it would find at least one of us on guard.
Our having to move so slowly made it seem as though we spent a really long time in the extra-thick fog, but it couldn’t have been much more than another ten minutes before our range of sight began expanding again. The fog thinned rather than receded, and when we were finally able to look all around, most of my companion’s amusement thinned with the mist.
“This doesn’t look anything like the passageway we were in.” he said with a frown, staring at the much wider area we suddenly found all around us. “As a matter of fact, it doesn’t look like anywhere I’d ever choose to be. Could we have taken a wrong turn?”
“Through all that completely transparent fog?” I asked with a snort, no happier than he was. “Of course we couldn’t have taken a wrong turn. This must be part of the palace.”
At that point it was his turn to make a sound of ridicule, all due to what we were seeing more and more of as the fog thinned. The walls of the area had wide, uneven gaps rather than archways, and where there wasn’t a gap it was possible to see some sort of long, drooping, creeping plant growing on the wall surface. What looked to be trails of slime could be seen under the plants, and here and there the floor had matching trails. Even though I didn’t want to, I looked up toward the ceiling, and was indecently relieved to see that it was just ceiling with some mist below it. If those plants had been on the ceiling as well, even someone Serendel’s size couldn’t have kept me from stampeding out of there.
“If this is the palace, I’m going back the way we came.” Serendel said, turning slowly to look all around himself. “That ragged gap behind us must be the way we came in, but I’d like to know how much more of this we’re supposed to …”
His voice trailed off because he had heard the same thing I had, the sudden sharpening of a sound that had probably been hovering just below the level of our conscious awareness for the last couple of minutes. It was the sound of deep, body-racking, heartbroken sobbing, the voice clearly a woman’s, also clearly coming closer. For some reason it was difficult deciding from what direction the crying was coming, but it was definitely getting closer. It got nearer and nearer, louder and more like a totally shattered soul, and then, with what seemed like no warning despite all the sobbing, the woman was there in the room with us.
I think every drop of blood in my body froze at her appearance. It wasn’t the fact that she and her floorlength gown were as white as the fog was gray, or even that she was surrounded by at least a dozen of those dark blue lines, all of them taking turns stroking and touching her. What turned my stomach upside down and aimed it at my mouth was the fact that the sobbing woman held her arms out toward us as though begging for our help, but she couldn’t also stretch out her hands. Her arms ended where her wrists should have been, nothing but stumps without proper finishing.
“I can’t find them,” the sobbing woman said, looking at us from where she’d stopped, at least twenty feet away. Her voice was muffled by the crying but was also unbelievably clear, as though the words and the woman herself were no more than inches away.
“I can’t find them,” she said, sounding like a little girl who had lost her brand-new birthday boots. “They took them and won’t give them back—and now what am I going to do?”
Serendel made no more effort to answer the question than I did, but he stood staring at the woman with no visible sign of the shuddering storm I could feel inside me. I would have loved being able to say something smart, but at that point I couldn’t even get my heart to stop the exploding it considered beating. Although I don’t know what I would have done with it. I was wishing I could make myself reach for the palm dagger—and that’s when we began hearing the laughter.
Have you ever heard someone who was really insane, laughing in chilling delight at something you have no hope of seeing the humor in? The laughter we heard then was very much like that, and then all the ragged openings behind and around the woman were filled with hideous creatures, showing themselves as the ones who were laughing. Two of them, one to the left and one to the right, each held a slender white hand, and even as we watched they approached the woman with their burdens. They were humanoid in shape but horribly twisted and malformed, wearing rags rather than clothing, and when they reached the woman they each set a severed hand at the end of a stump of a wrist. The woman’s sobbing trailed off when they began their grisly attempt at reconstruction, and once it was done she began to laugh the way the others were doing. I couldn’t see what there was to laugh about—until she held up arms and hands that were complete.
“Oh, thank you, thank you for giving them back,” she sang, beside herself with joy, and then her horrible white eyes returned to Serendel and me. “Now you can take theirs!”
A chorus of insane laughter greeted the suggestion, and then all of the creatures were producing very long, very sharp-looking knives from somewhere. Every one of them was staring straight at Serendel and me, and then they began moving toward us.
I wasn’t exactly frozen in place any longer, but I might as well have been, for all I could figure out what to do. My palm dagger was useless against the knives the creatures were holding, and even if there had been some definite place to run to, I didn’t want those things coming right behind me. Running was a bad idea and I had nothing to stand and fight with, all of which meant I might as well have been frozen in shock for all the good being relatively free did me. I took a step back from the slowly advancing creatures, watching as many of them as I could while I frantically tried to think of something—and then something happened that was even more unexpected than what had already occurred.
I hadn’t forgotten about the man who stood only a few feet away and ahead of me on my right, but despite Serendel’s size and training. I couldn’t see that he had any more of a chance to accomplish something than I did. Numbers and weapons tend to negate size and skill, but our intended attackers were due for a shock. They, like me, had thought the fighter was unarmed, but suddenly, unbelievably, he proved he was anything but.
The fighter took one short step forward and his right hand reached left, but rather than finding nothing but air his fingers seemed to close around something. He drew his fist up and away, as though he unsheathed that giant sword I’d seen him wearing on the liner, and then I had to rub my eyes and blink very hard because he was holding the sword! I hadn’t the faintest idea of where it could have come from, but there was no doubt that it was there; he wrapped both of his fists around its hilt, set himself as he held it up before him, then grinned that faint, deadly grin at the advancing creatures.
Formerly advancing creatures. When I looked at them again, they were as still as paintings, decorations for the room that had been posed staring at the gleaming sword held by a man who had proven he was very good at using it. Even the woman was staring in shocked silence, and then one of the creatures swallowed hard.
“Shit,” he muttered, and the word rang hollowly but clearly all over the room. “That is Serendel, and he sure as hell does have his multisword with him. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I didn’t take this job to get sliced into sections. I think it’s time for my javi break.”
With the last of his words the creature turned and began striding back the way he had come, suddenly looking more like a man in costume than a malformed monster. The rest of the creatures lost no time following his example, some almost tripping over their own feet in their hurry, and in less than a minute only the woman was left. She looked as though she wanted to call to the creatures to wait for her, but there turned out to be something she had to say instead.
“The—the way up into the palace is just through there, sir,” she quavered, pointing with a long-fingered hand toward the largest gap on our right as she backed away. “I’m sorry we—I mean, it’s only what we’re supposed to—Please don’t be angry—”
Serendel’s lack of response finally got to her, and she turned and ran into the nearest wall gap as though she was being chased, her hands holding up the bottom of her gown. I was seriously tempted to let myself collapse into a heap on the floor, but couldn’t do it with all that slime they’d spread around.
“And that’s another benefit to having people know who you are and what you can do,” the fighter said with heavy satisfaction when the woman was out of sight. “Their own game ended as soon as they saw I was about to start one of my own, and that’s just what I wanted—They couldn’t—Hey, are you all right?”
His question obviously referred to the way I stood there with my eyes closed and one hand to my head, the rest of me trying to get the sour taste out of my mouth. If the scene Serendel had broken up was the Mist people’s idea of fun, there’d be no pretense about it when I hated the rest of the tour.
“We’d better get you up into the palace where you can sit down for a while,” the fighter said as his arm went around me, nothing at all patronizing in his tone. “I’m as mindless as they are for not understanding how you’d take this nonsense. Come on, it shouldn’t be far.”
I opened my eyes to see his concerned face looking down at me, but he didn’t know the half of it. I felt very pale as we took the gap pointed out by the woman in white, a corridor that turned out to be no more than fifteen feet long. On the other side of it was another room with a stairway leading up, but it was a normal room with normal walls and floor, and two normal, human men.
“Is the lady all right?” one of the men said when he saw us, the other frowning and coming forward with the first. “Was there an accident? Does she need a doctor?”
“All she needs is to sit down for a while, and what happened was no accident,” Serendel told them in a very hard voice, one that stopped the men before they reached us. “Don’t you people have sense enough to check the home planets of your guests before you pull childish jokes on them? If I hadn’t been there, someone could have been very seriously hurt.”
“I—don’t understand,” the same man said, exchanging a bewildered glance with his friend. “The passageways scene is an extremely popular one with guests, especially the very end. What could home planets have to do with any of that?”
“The lady comes from Gryphon, and Gryphon has the wilds,” Serendel answered, still sounding very unfriendly. “Anyone who has ever been in the wilds knows that the fastest way to get killed is to doubt what you’re seeing, no matter how fantastically unreal it looks. Some part of the seeming fantasy will always be real, and if you don’t figure out which part that is, you’ll never get another chance. The lady has been through one of the worst sections of the wilds, and because of that everything she just went through was real rather than a joke. Is there any way up to the palace besides that stairway?”
“Certainly, sir, there’s an emergency lift right over here,” the second man said hastily when the first just stood with his mouth open, looking almost as pale as I felt. “Please follow me and I’ll accompany you aboveground, and then pass on what happened to my superiors. I know they’ll be very upset, and they’ll also want to apologize to the lady.”
“Give me a couple of minutes, and I’ll be glad to tell you what they can do with their apologies,” I managed to say, making the second man look very unhappy. He pressed a section of the not-stone wall and a part of it slid aside to reveal a small lift-car, then moved into the car to hold the door open while Serendel helped me in after the man. The fighter’s sword had disappeared again, back to wherever it had come from, I supposed, but I wasn’t quite up to wondering where that was. What I needed right then was a good, stiff drink, or maybe two or three drinks of the sort that bring you alive again. I still had the fun of the palace to look forward to, and I could hardly wait.
Chapter 11
The man who was accompanying us aboveground had the choice of letting the lift move as fast as it could, or setting it to a much more leisurely pace. I’m not quite sure why he opted for the slower rise, but by the time we got to the top and the door opened, I’d pulled myself together enough to stand without help. I hadn’t realized just how hard I’d been hit until it began wearing off, and I didn’t know yet whether or not to be angry. I’d have to speak to Lidra first, in private, and then I’d be able to decide.
The open door let us out into what looked like a private alcove off a much larger room, part of which could be seen through the crystal-like walls of the alcove. Besides being absolutely enormous, the area beyond was filled with fountains, and crystal staircases, and couches and servants and music and partying people, none of which caused crowding in any of the parts I could see. It looked as if someone had roofed over an acre or more, fog and all, of course, but nobody seemed to be minding the fog. The scene was so opulently compelling it was hard to look away from, at least until Chal, Lidra and Velix came hurrying up to us.
“Inky, are you all right?” Lidra demanded as she reached me, more outraged than the ones who had asked the same question before her. “These people must substitute this fog for their brains, always assuming, of course, they had any brains to begin with. I think a doctor should look you over.”
“I could have used one down below to restart my heart, but I’m over that now,” I told her, pretending I didn’t see how carefully Chal was studying me. “If I had any wishes coming I’d wish I was still a smoker, though. A drink and a puffer and a quiet place to sit down for a couple of minutes are things I would enjoy right now.”
