City of Golden Shadow, Page 27

  "Very well," the voice said at last "We are truly sorry if we have disturbed you. We will go now. Sadly, we must seek our friend in another town if he is not here." There was another creak and the latch rattled in its socket. The invisible stranger continued calmly, as though the rattling were something quite unconnected. "If you should happen to meet such a man, a soldier, perhaps a trifle confused or strange, tell him to ask after us in the King's Dream, or in other inns along the river. Joiner and Tusk, those are our names. We so badly want to help our friend."

  Heavy boots scraped on the doorstep, then there was a long silence. Gally reached up to open the door, but Paul leaned over the railing and signaled him not to touch it. Instead, he moved to where the gallery rail stood closest to the fanlight above the door, and leaned out.

  Two shapes stood on the doorstep, both bundled in dark cloaks. One was larger, but otherwise they were little more than lumps of shadow in the gray before morning. Paul felt his heart speed even faster. He gestured frantically at Gally not to move. By the thin light, he could see some of the children were awake and peering out of various sleeping places around the Oysterhouse, their eyes wide with fear.

  The smaller of the two shapes cocked its head to one side as though listening. Paul did not know why, but he was desperate that these people, whoever they were, should not find him. He thought his heart must be pounding as loud as a kettledrum. An image came bubbling up through his panicked thoughts, a picture of an empty place, a vast expanse of nothingness in which only he existed—he and two things that hunted him. . . .

  The smaller figure leaned close to the larger as though whispering, then they both turned and made their way down the path and vanished in the fog that was drifting up from the river.

  "Two of them, eh? Are those the strange folk you said you saw?"

  Miyagi nodded vigorously. Gally screwed up his forehead in an awesome display of concentration. "I can't say as I've ever heard of such before." he said at last. "But there's plenty of strange folk coming through these days." He grinned at Paul. "No offense. But if they're not soldiers, they're spies or something like. They'll be coming back, I reckon."

  Paul thought the boy was probably right. "Then there's only one thing to do. I'll go, then they'll follow after me." He said it briskly, but the idea of having to move on so soon made him ache. He had been foolish to imagine that he might find peace so easily. He could remember very little, but he knew it had been a long time since he had been somewhere he could call his home. "What's the best way out of this town? As a matter of fact, what's beyond this town? I have no idea."

  "It's not so easy to travel through the Squared," said Gally. "Things have changed since we came here. And if you just set out, chances are you'll walk right into the Red Lady's soldiers, and then it'll be the dungeons for you, or something worse." He shook his head gravely and sucked his lip, pondering. "No, we'll need to ask someone who knows about things. I reckon we should take you to Bishop Humphrey."

  "Who's that?"

  "Take him to Old Dumpy?" Little Miyagi seemed amused. "That great bag of wind?"

  "He knows things. He'll know where the governor here should go." Gally turned to Paul, as though asking him to settle an argument. "The bishop's a smart man. Knows the names of everything, even things you didn't think had names. What do you say?"

  "If we can trust him."

  Gally nodded. "He's a bag of wind, it's true, but he's an important man, so the redbreasts leave him alone." He clapped his hands for attention. The children gathered around him. "I'm taking my friend to see the bishop. While I'm gone, I don't want you lot going out, and I certainly don't want you letting no one in. The password idea's a good one—don't open the door to anyone, even me, 'less they say the word 'custard.' Got it? 'Custard.' Miyagi, you're in charge. And Bay, wipe that grin off your fazoot. Try not to be an eejit just this once, will you?"

  Gally led him out the back door, which opened onto the headlands and a pine forest that grew almost to the very walls of the Oysterhouse. The boy checked carefully, then waved for Paul to follow him into the trees. Within moments they were tramping through a wood so dense that they could no longer see the large building just a few dozen yards behind them.

  The morning fog was still thick and lay close to the ground. The woods were unnaturally silent; except for the sound of his own feet crunching across the carpet of fallen needles—the boy made almost no noise at all—Paul could hear nothing. No wind rattled the branches. No birds saluted the climbing sun. As they made their way beneath the trees with the mist swirling about their ankles, Paul could almost imagine that he was walking across clouds, hiking through the sky. The idea cast a shadow of memory, but whatever it was would not allow itself to be grasped and examined.

  They had walked for what seemed at least an hour, the slope slanting downward more often than not, when Gally, who was several paces ahead, waved Paul to a halt The boy silenced any questions by lifting his small hand, then lightfooted his way back to Paul's side.

  "Crossroads lies just ahead," he whispered. "But I thought I heard something."

  They made their way down the hillside until the land flattened and they could see a cleared place between the trees with a strip of reddish dirt road at its center. Gally led them alongside it with great caution, as though they paced the length of a sleeping snake. Abruptly, he sank to his knees, then reached up to pull Paul down, too.

  They had reached the place where a second dusty road cut across the path of the first. Two signposts that Paul could not read pointed away in the same direction down the crossroad. Gally crawled forward until he could watch the spot from behind a bush, not fifty paces from the intersection.

  They waited in silence so long that Paul was just about to stand up and stretch when he heard a noise. It was faint at first, faint and regular as a heartbeat, but it slowly grew louder. Footsteps.

  Two shapes appeared out of the misty trees, coming toward them from the direction the two signs were pointing. The pair walked in an unhurried way, their cloaks dragging in the dew-sodden dust of the road. One of them was very large and moved with an odd shuffle, but both were familiar from the front porch the night before. Paul felt his gorge rise. For a moment he feared he would not be able to breathe.

  The figures reached the center of the crossroad and paused for a moment in some silent communion before continuing in the direction from which Paul and Gally had come.

  The mist eddied around their feet. They wore shapeless hats as well as the sagging cloaks, but still Paul could see the glint of spectacles on the smaller. The larger had a peculiar grayish cast to his skin, and appeared to be holding something in his mouth, for the jutting shapes that bulged his upper lip and pressed against his jaw were surely far too large to be teeth.

  Paul clutched hard at the mat of needles, digging furrows in the ground with his fingers. He felt light-headed, almost feverish, but he knew that death was hunting for him on that road—no, something worse than death, something far more empty, grim, and limitless than death.

  As if they sensed his thoughts, the two figures suddenly stopped in the center of the road, directly opposite the hiding place. Paul's pulse, already painfully fast, now rattled in his temples. The smaller figure bent down and craned its head forward, as though it had somehow become a different kind of creature, something more likely to go on four legs than two. It pivoted its head slowly; Paul saw the lenses spark, spark, spark as they caught light through the shadowing trees. The moment seemed to stretch endlessly.

  The larger figure dropped a flat grayish hand onto its companion's shoulder and rumbled something—in his panic, Paul could only hear words that sounded like "sealing wax"—then set off down the road, waddling so slowly its legs might have been tied together at the ankles. A moment later the smaller straightened up and followed, shoulders up and head thrust forward in a sullen slouch.

  Paul did not release the breath burning in his chest until the two shapes had vanished into the mist, and ev
en then he lay unmoving for some time. Gally did not seem in a hurry to rise either.

  "Going back to town, they are," the boy said quietly. "That's as well. Plenty to keep them busy there. All the same, I think we'll stay off the road." He scrambled to his feet. Paul got up and staggered after him, feeling as though he had almost fallen from some high place.

  A short time later Gally cut across the road and led them down a smaller side road which wound through the trees and up a small rise. At the top of the hill, rising from a copse of birch trees, stood a very small castle whose central keep jutted like a pointed hat. The drawbridge was down, the front door—no larger than the door on an ordinary house—stood open.

  They found the bishop sitting in the front room, surrounded by shelves of books and curios, reading a thin volume in the light that streamed in through the entrance. He fit his wide chair so snugly it was hard to imagine that he ever left it. He was huge and bald, with a protuberant lower lip and a mouth so wide that Paul felt sure he must have a greater than ordinary number of bones in his jaw. He looked up as their footfalls sounded against the polished stone floor.

  "Hmmm. In the middle of my poetry hour, my all-too-brief moment for restful contemplation. Still and all." He folded the book closed and let it slide down to the place where the hemisphere of his belly met his small legs—there was nothing flat enough in the area to be called a lap. "Ah. The scullion lad, I see. Gally, is it not? Tender of the cookfire. What brings you here, pot urchin? Has one of your spitted carcasses suddenly called out for shriving? The fiery pit has a way of engendering such second thoughts. Harrum, harrum." It took a moment before Paul realized that the hollow, drumlike sound was actually a laugh.

  "I've come asking your help, Bishop Humphrey, true enough." Gally grabbed Paul's sleeve and tugged him forward. "This gentleman needed some advice, and I told him, 'Ask Bishop Humphrey. He's the cleverest man in these parts.' And here we are."

  "Indeed." The bishop turned his tiny eyes to Paul, then after an instant's shrewd examination, let them slide away again. He never kept his gaze on anything for very long, which gave his conversation an air of distracted irritation. "A stranger, eh? A recent immigrant to our humble shire? Or perhaps you are a visitor of a more transient nature? Passing through, as it were? A peregrine?"

  Paul hesitated. Despite Gally's assurances, he was not entirely comfortable with Humphrey. There was something distant about the man, as though something glassy and brittle stood between him and the outside world. "I am a stranger," he finally admitted, "I'm trying to leave town, but I seem to be caught in some trouble between the red and white factions—some red soldiers tried to harm me, though I did nothing to them. And there are other men looking for me as well, people I don't want to meet. . . ."

  ". . . So we need to reckon out the best way for him to get out of the Squared," Gally finished for him.

  "The squared?" Paul was confused, but the bishop seemed to understand.

  "Ah, yes. Well, what sort of moves do you make?" He squinted for a moment, then lifted to his eye the monocle which had been dangling on its ribbon down the expanse of his belly. In the bishop's pudgy fingers it seemed a mere chip of glass. "It's hard to tell, since you are an outsider like Gally and his tatterdemalions. Hmmmm. You have something of the kern about you, yet something of the horseman as well. You might be another thing entirely, of course, but such speculation as to locomotion would be fruitless for me—like asking a fish whether it would prefer to travel by coach or by velocipede, if you see what I mean. Harrum, harrum."

  Paul was lost, but he had been warned that the bishop was prone to talk. He put on an attentive look.

  "Bring that over here, boy—the large one." Humphrey gestured. Gally sprang to do his bidding, tottering back with a leather-bound book almost as big as he was. With Paul's help, they opened it across the arms of the bishop's chair. Paul was expecting a map, but to his astonishment the open pages contained nothing but a grid of alternating colored squares, each one full of strange notations and small diagrams.

  "Now then, let me see. . . ." The bishop traced his way across the grid with a broad forefinger. "The most obvious course would seem to be for you to hasten here, catty-cornered to us. But then, I have always favored bold diagonals, at least since my investiture. Harrum. However, there have been reports of an unpleasantly savage beast in that vicinity, so perhaps that should not be your primary choice. But you are rather hemmed in at the moment. The queen has a castle not far from here, and I take it you would prefer not to meet with her minions, hmmm?" He turned a shrewd look on Paul, who shook his head. "I thought not. And the lady herself visits this area here with some frequency. She moves very swiftly, so you would do well not to arrange any long journeys through her favorite territory, even should she prove to be temporarily absent"

  The bishop leaned back, making his sturdy chair squeak. He gestured for Gally to take the book away, which the boy groaningly did.

  "I must cogitate," the fat man said, and let suety eyelids descend. He was silent for so long that Paul began to think he might have fallen asleep, and took the opportunity to look around the room. Besides the bishop's large collection of handsomely bound books there were also all manner of curious things lining the walls, bottles full of dried plants, bones, and even complete skeletons of unfamiliar creatures, bits of twinkling gemstone. All alone on one shelf stood a huge jar containing living insects, some that looked like crusts of bread, others that resembled nothing so much as puddings. As he watched the strange creatures climbing over each other in the stoppered jar, Paul felt a pang of hunger which was followed a moment later by a surge of nausea. He was hungry, but not that hungry.

  "While there is a great deal to be said for the order which Her Scarlet Majesty has brought to us during this extended period of check," the bishop said abruptly, making Paul jump, "there is also something to be said for the more laissez-faire attitudes of her predecessor. Therefore, while I myself have excellent relations with our ruler—as I also did with the previous administration—I can understand that you may not be so fortunate." Humphrey stopped and took a deep draught of air, as though struck breathless by his own admirable rhetoric. "If you wish to avoid the attentions of our vermilion monarch, I suggest you must take the first alternative I proposed. You can then pass through that square and find yourself directly at the border of our land. The terrible beast said to inhabit the area is doubtless a phantasy of the peasantry, who are famously prone to enliven their dull and rusticated routine with such tales. I will draw you a map. You can be there before sunset. Carpe diem, young man." He spread his hands contentedly on the arms of his wide chair. "Boldness is all."

  While Gally scurried to find the bishop's pen and paper, Paul seized the chance for information. He had been traveling in fog, figuratively and literally, too much of late. "What is the name of this place?"

  "Why, it is sometimes referred to as the Eight Squared, at least in the oldest and most learned of tomes. But those of us who have always lived here do not often find cause to refer to it, since we are in the midst of it! Rather like a bird, do you see, when asked to define the sky. . . ."

  Paul hurried to ask him another question. "And you were once on good terms with . . . the White King?"

  "Queen. None of us has ever met the somnolent seigneurs of our humble territory—they are rather absentee landlords. No, it is the ladies, bless them both, who have traditionally kept the order within the Eight Squared while their husbands stayed close to home."

  "Ah. Well, if you were on good terms with the White Queen, but the Red Queen now rules the land, how do you manage to be her friend as well?"

  The bishop looked a trifle annoyed. "Respect, young man. In a single word, that is it. Her Scarlet Majesty relies on my judgment—and I am consulted on things secular as well as superworldly, I might add—and thus I am possessed of a rather unique status."

  Paul was not satisfied. "But if the Red Queen finds you've helped me, despite the fact that her soldiers mi
ght have been looking for me, won't she be annoyed? And if the White Queen ever gains back her power, won't she be furious with you for being so close with her enemy?"

  Now Humphrey seemed truly put out. His sparse eyebrows moved together and tilted sharply downward over the bridge of his nose. "Young man, it does not become you to speak of things beyond your expertise, whatever may be the current fashion. However, in the interest of beginning an education which you obviously sorely need, I will explain something." He cleared his throat just as Gally reappeared bearing a plume and a large sheet of foolscap.

  "I found them, Bishop."

  "Yes, that's fine, boy. Now hush." The bishop briefly fixed his small eyes on Paul before allowing them to roam once more. "I am a respected man, and I dare not, for the good of the land, throw my not inconsiderable weight behind either one faction or the other. For factions are impermanent, even ephemeral, while the rock upon which my bishopric is founded is made of the sniff of eternity. So, if I may create an analogy, my position is that of someone who sits upon a wall. Such a perch might seem dangerous to one who, without my experience and natural sense of balance, gazes up at me from below, in fact, to such a one, a man such as I might seem in imminent peril of a great . . . downfalling. Ah, but the view from up here, from inside here," he tapped his hairless head, "is quite different, I assure you. I am, as it were, made in the perfect shape for wall-sitting. My Master has designed me, as it were, to balance permanently between two unacceptable alternatives."

  "I see," said Paul, who could think of nothing else to say.

  The bishop appeared to be in a much better mood after explaining. He rapidly sketched a map, which he handed over with a flourish. Paul thanked him, then he and Gally left the tiny castle and thumped back across the drawbridge.