Out of Oz: The Final Volume in the Wicked Years (74 page)

Fresh prettibel spikes arched against the burnished leather wals, and an aroma of arrowscent and pickled roses issued from braziers set in brass wal brackets. The windows were draped with lace worked over with scenes from the life of some Ozma or other. The visitors had to take off their shoes to stand on the patterned carpet, which felt like moss on its first day.

“I am Avaric bon Tenmeadows,” said a gentleman with a pince-nez and a silvery whirl of mustache. “I wil direct you on proper comportment for your audience with His Sacredness.”

“Are we meeting His Sacredness al by itself, or are we actualy meeting
him
?” asked Dorothy. “I just wanted to ask,” she sidelined to Rain, who was shushing her.

“Enter with your heads covered and do not remove your veils until directed by His Sacredness. Do not speak until you are spoken to. Do not turn your back on His Sacredness—when instructed, you wil leave the room by walking backward, heads covered, eyes down. Mention no subject with His Sacredness that His Sacredness does not introduce. Ask for the blessing of His Sacredness in your life past, present, and to come. Ask for the mercy of His Sacredness in considering your petitions, if you have any. You wil have about ten minutes. Have you any questions?”

“Wel, it reminds me what it was like with the Wizard,” said Dorothy. “There must be a rule book everyone folows, generation to generation.”

“Al this fuss. It reminds
me
of the visiting Senior Overseer at St. Prowd’s,” said Rain. “I hope His Sacredness doesn’t douse himself with water.”

“No, not
that
party trick,” agreed Dorothy. “Had enough of that one!”

“I wil retire through this near door. When the far door opens, that’s your sign to approach,” said Avaric. “You wil proceed through it. But before I go, Miss Gale, may I be permitted to make a personal remark?”

“No one’s stopping you, far as I can see.”

“I want to thank you for your service to our country,” said Avaric. “I knew the witches of Oz, those Thropp sisters. We were wel rid of them.” He clearly thought of Rain as little more than Dorothy’s retainer. Fair enough, thought Rain. A few more moments of anonymity in this life—let me treasure it before it’s trampled to extinction.

The far door swung wide. Obeying Avaric’s instructions, the pair of visitors made their approach to His Sacredness, Shel Thropp.

He didn’t sit on the throne, an impressive carved chair capped by an octagonal canopy chained to the ceiling with golden links. Rather, he squatted upon an overturned bucket. Three smal tiktok creatures, narrower and more locustlike than the round brass figure Rain had once seen in that shop in Shiz, moved around in the shadows behind him, performing devotional measures with fans and also seeing to the flies, which were everywhere.

A man about fifty, maybe. He didn’t wear the glorious robes of office, just a humble sort of sackcloth loin rag and a skirt. A beggar’s shawl about his shoulders. His eye was keen and his form sleek despite the initial impression of poverty.

He said, “His Sacredness never knew those women very wel. Nessarose Thropp, Eminence caled Wicked Witch of the East. Elphaba Thropp, miscreant caled Wicked Witch of the West. His Sacredness lived with them in the Quadling badlands when His Sacredness was young. His Sacredness’s sister Elphaba was born with infirmities. His Sacredness’s sister Nessarose was born with infirmities. His Sacredness himself was born whole and clean and is the Emperor of Oz and Demiurge of the Unnamed God.”

There didn’t seem to be a question yet, so they just waited.

He said, “His Sacredness sits on the bucket that was used to kil His Sacredness’s sister Elphaba Thropp. It represents to His Sacredness the loss of the living water of grace. A loss that wil be reclaimed once the battle for dominance with Munchkinland is completed and Restwater is permanently appropriated as the basin of water to cleanse and to nourish the suffering citizens of Oz’s capital city.” Rain saw Dorothy peer at the bucket to see if she recognized it, but Dorothy just shrugged at Rain. A bucket is a bucket.

He said, “Both of the sisters of His Sacredness were removed from life by the hand or the hearthstone of Dorothy Gale, leaving the Eminenceship of Munchkinland open to question. Therefore His Sacredness offers gratitude to the visitor. She delivered unto His Sacredness the rights to Eminenceship of Munchkinland. This moral privilege underpins and sanctifies the military effort to subdue the traitorous Munchkinlander rebels. For that reason has His Sacredness deigned to extend the right to an audience with His Sacredness. His Sacredness is aware of certain Munchkinlander accusations against Dorothy. His Sacredness proposes the publication of a divine testimonial clearing Dorothy of al suspicion of malfeasance in the matter of the death of his kin. The certificate.” A tiktok minion roled forward holding a salver upon which lay a scrol bound with a green ribbon and a clump of sealing wax. Shel handed it to Dorothy.

He put his hands together in a tender way. His eyes never left Dorothy’s.

He said, “His Sacredness alows that the visitors may now retreat. Go with the blessings of the Unnamed God conferred through this avatar on earth.” Only now did he close his eyes, in acknowledgement of his own immortal splendor.

Rain said, “But we’ve come to find my father.”

The chirring of the tiktok acolytes wheeled faster, as if spinning out disbelieving air from their metal lungs. A stench of hot oil spiled from some gasket with a slipped ring, maybe. Shel, her great-uncle Shel, said nothing. It was as if Rain hadn’t spoken to him but perhaps to his machinery.

“We have come to barter,” she said, but she wasn’t sure to whom she was talking. Maybe not the man nor the tiktok-niques but to the empty throne itself behind them.

“You don’t barter with God,” said Shel, in a quiet voice, not deeply fussed at the breaking of protocol. Most likely he could see that his visitors were young and foolish. “Go now. I am tired and I am waging a war in my heart. Only if I win it in my heart can it be won in the land, for I am the blood of Oz itself. I am its sacredness and I am His Sacredness.” Rain felt cornered by sacredness.

She knew her great-grandfather had been a unionist missionary to the Quadlings, trying to convert them. She knew her great-aunt Nessarose had inherited his convictions and institutionalized them in Munchkinland, a theocracy overturned only when Dorothy arrived the first time. She knew her great-uncle Shel was divine, or divine enough.

On the other hand, of her grandmother Elphaba’s convictions she knew nothing. And while Lir had expressed admiration for the courage of independent establishments of outspoken maunts like the place Little Daffy had come from, he had perpetrated in Nether How no ritual of prayer, no theological discussion. And Candle’s faith was limited to herbs and intuition.

So Rain had avoided the questions of devotion, mostly. The concept of an Unnamed God was too much for her. If you’re abandoned by your parents, do you hunt them down to love them more deeply, or do you learn to do without? If the Unnamed God has gone to ground leaving no forwarding address, why bother to pester him?

Stil. Rain had had just enough schooling at St. Prowd’s to be able to think for herself. It would take a pretty talented godhead to infuse itself in a single person as the living essence of the land—the very Ozness that made it be Oz. If this were realy true, then what would happen to Oz if Shel Thropp, Emperor, happened to get a splinter in his naked heel? And die a week later of a rude infection that refused to acknowledge the divinity of the foot it blistered?

“You are too great for me to know who you realy are,” she admitted. “But I know something of who I am. I am the daughter of Lir. I’m told that I’m the granddaughter of Elphaba. I’m your great-niece. My name is Rain.”

“She’s also the rightful daughter of Munchkinland,” Dorothy interrupted. “If I’ve got the line of succession straight, and I’ve been keeping track, the Eminenceship of Munchkinland descends through the female line. So the nearest female relative of the last ruling Eminence has preference. That would be my friend Rain here.”

“I don’t care about that,” said Rain. “I only want to know if you have taken my father. Your nephew, Lir. Someone kidnapped him and made off with the Grimmerie. We have come to secure his release.” She rephrased that to be more docile. “I mean, to beg for his release. Humbly.”

The divine Emperor looked just a little annoyed. “I don’t barter with human lives.”

“You attacked Munchkinland when I was eight,” said Rain. “Human lives tend to be involved in military attacks.”

“His Sacredness has consternation in his heart. Go away.”

Dorothy drew herself up. “Look, you. I know what I’ve done and not done. I have no need of your certificate of forgiveness unless I ever meet up with Toto and in al the excitement he has an accident. He’s not a puppy. A convenient rol of testimonial parchment could come in handy just then.”

“His Sacredness has a headache. Do go away.”

“You’l have more than a headache when I get through. When I arrived first time I came in a house that smashed your first sister. Before I left I threw a bucket that splashed your second sister. Is it time for me to take care of you, too? As I was preparing for my encore, I brought down a good deal of San Francisco with me. I arrived from heaven in a gilded elevator cage right down the side of a mountain. I’m getting pretty good at this. I can bring upon your holy kingdom an entire downtown district of hearty commercial buildings. Just try me.” A pretty bold bluff, Rain thought, but it may not work on someone like Shel, who has lived in power for so long he doesn’t remember what it’s like to be powerless.

Dorothy clasped her hands together and prepared to break her promise not to sing. Rain motioned to her,
don’t, don’t
. Dorothy filed her lungs with air and, consumed with trust in the conviction of sweet melody, fixed upon her countenance an expression of mighty choral readiness.
La Belle Dame sans Merci.

Great-uncle Shel, you’re not the only one who’s become deranged by power, thought Rain.

As the tiktok characters ran for cover, the door of the magnificent salon opened up, and Avaric bon Tenmeadows rushed in. “What is the meaning of this?” he cried.

Dorothy opened her mouth and began to sing about rainbow highways and raindrops and storms. Awful lot of rain in there, thought Rain. The thunderclouds broke overhead at the same instant, a tympanic accompaniment to the sound of Dorothy’s voice. When she reached the end of her musical preamble and paused for breath before launching into the melody proper, the thunder rol was deteriorating and another mounding behind it to take its place. They realized that it wasn’t only thunder overhead.

I4.

The autumn clouds covering central Oz had screened the approach from the east of the dragons trained by Trism bon Cavalish. Maybe their arrival over the Emerald City had kindled the lightning and signaled the thunder. Or maybe it was only the meanness of the Unnamed God, alowing fire and destruction to rain upon the capital under the guise, initialy, of an ordinary cloudburst.

In the sudden darkness, Rain and Dorothy ran for cover. They folowed the tiktok acolytes until, one by one, the tiktokery exploded their glass gaskets due to barometric anomalies, spinning out on the marble floors, knocking over the plinths of fresh flowers. The girls didn’t know if Shel was behind them, but they could hear the man named Avaric caling to someone, so perhaps he was leading the Emperor to safety.

“Don’t go outside,” they heard Avaric’s voice yel, but Dorothy was freaked by the sound of colapsing buildings. “We’l be crushed in this damn place, a mausoleum in the making,” she yeled at Rain, and grabbed her hand. “It’s this way, I’m sure. I’m pretty good at directions.”

“How do you get out of Oz, then?” screamed Rain, with a touch of hysteria of her own. Was her father here in this roar of tumbling stone, or was he safe somewhere else? Or, anyway, safer?

Dorothy’s sense of the architecture of the palace wasn’t quite what she advertised. They ran through a long, slightly bowed corridor of steep arches, like the holowed-out chambers of a lake nautilus built on a scale for giants, and they came across Avaric approaching from the other direction. He was leading Shel by the hand. A contingent of palace apparatchiks and staff huddled behind them.

“The city is under attack,” Avaric told them.

“And I’m just warming up,” said Dorothy, assuming a performance pose.

“Don’t!” cried Shel.

“Where is Lir?” demanded Dorothy, going up to the Emperor. “Where’s that damn book? Tel us, or I’l go into a reprise.”

“We haven’t got him,” said Avaric. “Not for lack of trying, but the enemy must have got to him first. Do you think they could unleash this havoc without his assistance? Mercy, girl; the city is faling. Don’t make it worse.”

Dorothy took a breath, then closed her mouth. “Wel, al right then. But I’m warning you.”

“We can see the buildings colapsing,” said Avaric. “The Law Courts is flaming rubble. Look, there’s a passage from the Palace directly to Southstairs Prison. We’l be safer from assault from the sky if we’re underground, and Southstairs is nothing but underground. Come; we owe you that much, child of Lir. Come with us.”

“If my father isn’t in prison, I’m not going,” said Rain. “I’l take my chances outside.”

Avaric said, “On your own head, then. We can’t wait. His Sacredness must descend to the safety of the megalithic tombs, to emerge in triumph when the aerial assault is over.” He began to beetle away, and the fragments of court society that had continued to gather in the corridor flooded after him.

Shel, in his humble garments, stood his place a moment longer. “Rain Thropp,” he said. “I never had daughter nor son of my own. I took many a woman but never a wife, as I couldn’t find one suitable for my ambitions. His Sacredness does not have a wife.”

“You’d better hurry,” said Rain, as the thunder gathered again.

“Your right to the Eminenceship of Munchkinland supersedes mine,” he concluded. “Your being my only living female relative also consolidates in you the right to be Throne Minister of Oz, as the historical line of Ozma is severed and dead these five decades. Should I fail to emerge for reasons of transcendence, it is your throne to accept, your scepter to grasp.” She didn’t answer. She grabbed Dorothy’s hand and they ran away.