The Incompleat Nifft (6 page)

Hitting him had been a relief—it felt like revenge. How could he be what he was, when he had had Dalissem before him, beckoning him to all he could have been? I found I was as angry with him as Haldar was.

But, not being an idealist like Haldar, I couldn't help seeing it in a saner way too. The man had only been vain and weak. Cold-blood killing is bad enough, is it not? But to drag a living man down there . . . he was an oath-breaker. He'd sworn his life away, and it stood forfeit by all laws known in this world and the subworlds alike. I kept a firm grip on this fact in my heart, you may be sure. And wouldn't you have done the same, gritted your teeth and dragged away—for the Key of the Marmion Wizard's Mansion?

Two days after taking Defalk, we lay in readiness for our descent. Our captive lay between us, tied hands and feet, with Haldar's dirk-point in the hollow of his throat.

I've said a great deal in saying we lay in readiness. Here's what it meant: We lay on top of a great velvet canopy that overhung the bed of Shamblor. The Fleetmaster himself was below us, in the bed, busy dying. Half a dozen other people were in the room. We were invisible to them all, due to the canopy's height, so long as we did not sit up, but the room was so quiet that even the growl of a man's stomach was clearly audible. I knew from some carefully stolen peeks, and from following their conversation, how they were situated.

Two of them were druggists, and wore their sable cowls up in sign of professional engagement. They did not sit down, as their guild rules forbade this at a deathbed. Of the other four, two were seated. One was a dried-out woman, Gladda, the magnate's spinster daughter and only child. The other was her nurse-companion, a burly, short-haired woman with an oddly beautiful face. The remaining two were a cousin of Shamblor and his wife. They might have found chairs, for the room was full of opulent furniture, but they stood with a stoicism that conveyed a fitting sense of humility and gratitude in advance. The man, a long rickety fellow, insisted on being the one who ministered Shamblor's medication when his breathing got rough. This was a posset in a gold cup that stood on a table by the bed.

We had got Defalk into the house the day before by delivering him, drugged, inside a gaudy funerary memento sent to the house with the condolences of a fictitious earl. It was a great ceramic tombstone, all bewreathed with black-dyed plumes. Defalk, folded, just fit within the "stone."

The memento was accepted with perplexity by the daughter. Within the hour I followed it, properly garbed, as the said earl, I spoke to Gladda with moist intensity, wringing her unwilling hand. When I had been a mere fopling, before the days of my family's increased fortunes (we were a great house latterly decayed) a jovial old gentleman had once given me a copper for some sweets. He clapped my little shoulder, and spoke words of encouragement and good cheer which had lit a little blaze that had warmed me ever since.

But one always forgets precisely these small yet precious debts. The march of time, the whirl of events, the flow of circumstance! I had long known the kindly old man's name—Fleetmaster Shamblor—and still had never called, never squeezed that gruff but giving hand. And now I came too late! I had learned of the great man's death. And so I had sent that poor token she had already received, and had come myself with a plaque of graven silver commemorating his good deed to me.

What? He still lived?! There was still a chance to meet those eyes, still a moment in which to—you get the drift. Within five minutes Gladda was leading me up to Shamblor's chamber, and with a fairly good grace too, considering the dry and suspicious woman that she was. She was no fool, either. People will sometimes lose sight of the most fundamental truths merely through the long habit of them. I'd tinctured my tale with circumstantialities, I'd done my research, but Gladda momentarily forgot what she'd never have doubted an instant if you'd asked her about it directly. Namely, that Fleetmaster Shamblor wouldn't give a fly a swat without something in return. The plaque was a costly thing—the silversmith we got it from was paying for it himself, though he didn't know it—and perhaps the spinster was persuaded by its value. Mind you, I gave her a perfect version of the rich man who has nothing better to do than go around making himself look soulful.

At the magnate's bed, I laid the plaque tenderly beside him, sprinkled some more drivel on it, and wrung his suety hand. Shamblor peered up at me like a fish through ice. While all this went on, I did the thing I'd come for. I let a rat pellet fall from my codpiece, and as I rose from the bed, much affected, I crushed the pellet with my heel.

I asked for the conveniences. Gladda blushed and directed me, remaining in the room. But out in the hall, I went no farther than the next bedroom door. This room was the only suitable place for lodging the sick man, once the other became unbearable, and the other room would become unbearable some time near midnight. I pulled some light, strong climbing cord from my doublet, anchored it to a window mullion, and let it fall outside. We had dyed it the color of the stone of Shamblor's walls. I reclosed the window but left it unlatched. I returned to the sickroom and took my wordy leave.

Our plan was loose and chancy. In such a big house, they might choose another room. Or the rats might come too soon, and Shamblor be moved before we could get ourselves into it.

Well, every big house, however fine, has plenty of rats in it, especially in damp waterside towns like Lurkna. But the staff was well paid and hard-driven by Gladda, and the bait was as slow as we'd hoped in bringing the invasion. Haldar and I climbed in just after dark. We chose our hiding place and lay listening till we had a good sense of how many servants were about, and what was the frequency of their movements.

As soon as activities appeared to be tapering off for the night, we stole out. Without trouble we slipped downstairs, got Defalk out of the mock tombstone, and brought him back to the bedroom. Once we were all settled on top of the canopy, there was time left for a half hour's sleep apiece. Then we brought Defalk round with a restorative herb. He must not suddenly awake in the midst of things. He had been prepared for his situation, but given no explanation of any kind. He knew only that we meant to ransom him, and that he would emerge unharmed, providing he did nothing, no matter how bizarre the circumstances he found himself in. So when he woke, he only glared at both of us, and said nothing. Haldar and I lay listening.

Sometime near midnight we heard the first hasty footsteps and shouts of disgust in the corridor. Soon after, we heard the skittering little feet of drug-maddened rats charging past. The rat-sounds got even thicker and never wavered, not even when several pairs of feet hammered up and down the hall. Ripe concussions, the squalls and coughs of slaughtered rats, reached us. The reaction was as we'd hoped. The passionate fixation of the rats on that one door alone was observed. Two wheezing grooms burst into our room with the sick man on his mattress between them, and the burly nurse like a harpy from hell on their heels. Rats, after all, are a groom's business.

Down the hall the storm raged, and would till the pellet faded. The apothecaries and the relatives quickly left the battle and cleanup to the servants and resettled in our chamber. Strong beverages were brought which, by the sound of it, none of the watchers refused. Conversation was attempted several times, but it did not thrive.

And thus we'd lain in our readiness for two hours and more, when I decided we'd have to take a hand in things. Shamblor had settled into a snore that sounded like restorative sleep. He'd gurgle now and then and some posset would be dribbled into him, and he would sleep on. It began to seem he'd rally again. I was not about to meet the Taker of Souls with my nerves worn and raw from a grueling wait. I reached across Defalk to warn Haldar with a touch, but before I'd moved farther, Gladda broke the long silence. Quietly she asked: "Do you suppose they came . . .
for
father?"

"No," said the nurse crisply. You felt, hearing them, that they'd forgotten everyone else. "They haven't followed him, have they? There's your answer," she concluded. There was a pause.

"So many of them. . . ." Gladda said.

Thus was a ploy pointed out to me. I eased a copper out of my breeches, the room's carpet being dark brown. I flipped it through the air so it struck the farthest wall. At the sound, the old cousin screeched and someone jumped up from her chair so fast it fell over backwards. The Druggists were made to inspect the other side of the room, and everyone else gathered at their backs. I sat up and flicked a pellet of poison at the goblet on the stand. It was as adept a move as I've ever brought off in a tight spot. It landed with a plurk in the posset—the noise raised more gasps, but no one could fix its source. They didn't find my copper either. They returned nervously to their positions. We had only to wait for the magnate to gurgle again.

Poisoning the cup made it all realer. The man would now die, sure and soon. Which meant the door to that world would open, sure and soon. None in the room but ourselves would see it open, and only we would see what entered. And roast me if I didn't nearly throw a fit then and there, Barnar. I was taken so fiercely with a shout of laughter that the canopy quivered with my holding it in.

It was Defalk, you see. The grimness of what stood now so near him, coupled with the ridiculousness of all he had just been through! How grotesque his puzzled theories must be, and how far off! I remembered the last thing I'd heard him say before we took him:
I don't want to lose any time.
Alas, Defalk! Haldar, at that very instant, was wheeling you to Eternity! I know you'll not think that because I laughed I did not pity him. Pity was half the reason of that laugh. I barely managed to wrestle it down—a bad omen, considering the bout I'd have to fight shortly.

The sick man wheezed, and there followed the sound of a dram administered. Hearing the sound was like having a key turned in the pit of the stomach, letting in dread. Haldar touched my shoulder to sign his readiness. We clasped hands over Defalk's chest, and Haldar began to whisper the spell. The breathing noise of the magnate suddenly grew spastic and harsh. The nurse said: "Your father! Look!" Her voice was crisp and alert, a sensuous tremor in it, as if the moment of passage were a physical pleasure to her. And I felt her voice as if it had slithered across me. My skin was unnaturally alive. I was feeling everyone in the room, as if they were moving through my nerves. I felt the quiver in the nurse's loins, and in Gladda's cry of "Father!" I felt the doubt mixed equally with hope. Everyone was gathering toward the bed murmuring. . . .

And then the room was absolutely soundless except for the dying man's breath. Nothing moved. So strong was the sense of the chamber's emptiness that I sat bolt-upright on the canopy, and got a bad shock to find everyone still there, frozen mute in postures of approach to the bed. Gladda faced us directly, but her face had stiffened in a look of heavenly appeal, and her eyes registered nothing. And then there was a sound outside the door. A progression of sounds. Footsteps.

Oddly, the steps seemed to scuff on stone, not carpet, and to echo in a cavern, not a corridor. The door of the chamber drifted open—inward, against the way it was hinged. A naked manlizard, six feet high and a yard wide, stalked in, shoulders swinging. Since it grasped a leather sack in one hand, it would be the Soul-taker, my opponent. I shuddered at the leverage in that cold, leathery frame. Its tail was short and massive, better than a third leg with its flexibility. The Taker would have tremendous stability in a tussle.

But when the Guide of Ghosts followed his servant into the room, I breathed a prayer of gratitude that it was only the henchman I had to fight. The Guide was a wild-haired barbarian. He had to stoop through the door—more than seven feet I'd put him. He wore a ragged and muddy kilt, and battle-sandals, also muddy, whose thongs wrapped his calves. He wore nothing else but a traveler's cape, under which his trunk bristled as hairy as an ape's. His eyes were black slots, his cheeks like glacier slopes, flat and cold. His mouth was a restless chasm deep in the brambles of his beard. All he carried was a staff, but its crook was a living serpent as thick as my arm.

The two of them stood looking up at us, pausing without surprise in their approach to the deathbed, waiting. I cleared my throat.

"Hail, Guide of Ghosts," I said. "We beg you to take us with you, alive, on your journey back down with the life of Shamblord Castertaster."

Slowly, the Guide said, "Come down." He had the voice to give those two words their ultimate expression. His tones seemed to fall endlessly—his speech echoed and fell away within him, and it drew you after it, into him. I jumped down onto legs that almost buckled under me, what with our long lying. Haldar handed Defalk down—he'd started to struggle when he heard our aim, and Haldar had stunned him with a blow to the neck. Haldar jumped down in his turn. We were in the midst of the watchers. Gladda still looked heavenward, the nurse hung poised nearest the bed like a hunting dog, the apothecaries exchanged an endless grave expression, the old couple wrung their hands, making paralyzed haste to their benefactor's side.

Alone among them, Shamblord was awake to us. His eyes moved with dismay from one to another of us, and real sweat shone on his face. He knew his moment, and was alive in it.

The giant stared at us; I believed I saw him smile, noting Defalk's bonds. As he stared, the serpent that sprouted from his staff leaned near us, and its tongue flickered with inquiry near my face. Its impudent obsidian eyes scanned us as a toad scans flies. Shamblord Castertaster spoke, it was the first time I had heard his voice. It was scratchy, and thin as a mosquito's whine:
"What
?
Now
?
"
 

The Guide turned his eyeslots on the manlizard. He gestured at Shamblord. The Taker of Souls marched to the deathbed with its wrestler's waddle. It climbed onto the bed and crawled over the magnate's legs. Shamblord thrashed weakly amid his sheets. The lizard demon lowered its head and butted the sick man's belly—at least I thought it only butted. But in fact its blunt scaly snout, and then its whole head, sank right through the blanket. Then the whole damned squamous beast crawled through the belly-bulge of the old man, leather sack and all. For a moment it was gone. Shamblord gaped, and a bizarre, liquid convulsion moved through him. Then his face split asunder like a rent fig, and the bulky reptile poured out of the wound.