I stepped out of the door. Fortunately, the house had been dark enough that I wasn’t too night-blind.
“Where are they?”
“Two minutes, Boss. Coming from the castle.”
Hide, or run? The area was dotted with small structures, shacks, up and down the hill, but this was their home ground; they’d be better at finding hiding places than me.
“Let’s go the other way,” I said.
I set off running. I wondered if the strange magic that had brought me here would snap me back at a certain point; but if it did, that was just as likely to help me escape as to hurt me. I reached the riverbank and cut right.
Rocza landed on my shoulder. “They’re pretty close,” said Loiosh.
I kept moving—not running, but walking pretty fast. I kept wanting to break into a run, but they could run faster than me, and I didn’t want to be exhausted if they found me. There were a lot of them; even with Loiosh, Rocza, and Lady Teldra, I didn’t much care for the odds.
There were no more lights off to the side, so I figured I was past the village, such as it was. The river curved gently to the right. I moved away from the bank to avoid growing things, but kept following the curve, and I came upon a structure, a large shed or a small cottage. It seemed there were no windows. If I hid there, might those chasing me go past? If they decided to search, I’d be nicely trapped for them. I hesitated, then tried the door. It was unlocked. All right, then. I stepped inside and shut the door behind me, then bumped into something. I felt around, and it proved to be a stool. At shin height, of course. I don’t want to talk about it. I couldn’t see a bloody thing, a problem I solved by not moving. I just crouched down near the door and waited.
I heard footsteps outside, getting closer, then—“Look!” “Duck!” “They’re his, he must be nearby.” “Follow them!”
“Good call, Loiosh. I should have thought of that. Where are you leading them?”
“Back toward the village.”
“Perfect.”
I remained still for a long time, though I’m sure less time than it felt like—if you want to screw up your sense of the passage of time, sit in a dark room with no sound except the very faint lapping of water some distance away. When I felt like it was safe, I opened the door again.
My eyes had adjusted more than I thought they could: I was able to make out objects now. There was a large bench, some casks, some boxes, ceramic bowls, glass jars, some empty, some stoppered and full of liquid that, from what I could tell, was clear. Against one wall was a stack of what I at first thought were planks of wood, but after checking proved to be sheets of glass—beautifully made, too: flat and smooth and even. They couldn’t have been made here; I didn’t know of more than two or three glaziers who could do that kind of work even in Adrilankha in my own day. I at once thought about the windows in the manor, and wondered if this is where they were processed, made unbreakable. That meant that construction on the manor had already started.
There was a lantern hanging by the door. I pulled the cover off, managed to get it lit, covered it again, and looked around some more. A ceramic jar held fine, white powder. I don’t recommend tasting every random white powder you come across in a building where magic or construction or something is taking place, but it looked so much like well-sifted flour, I just had to know. No, it wasn’t flour—it was sugar, ground down to an incredibly fine consistency—that kind of work is why bakers’ apprentices have such powerful shoulders. But—sugar? I couldn’t make sense of it. At the back of the room was a large brick oven, a smokestack leading up from it; next to the oven was a cauldron no bigger than a cooking pot. The incongruity of size between the cast-iron cauldron and the massiveness of the oven was at least as strange as the sugar. I studied it a little more, and realized that, no, it wasn’t an oven, at least not the way I thought of an oven; it was more of a kiln. Next to it was charcoal; someone needed to get something very hot for some reason. I felt the brick and it was cool to the touch, so whatever it was hadn’t been used for a while.
A little more exploring revealed a crate with two shiny bricks. I picked one up, tapped it, tasted it, weighed it in my hand: silver. I set it down after only briefly considering stealing it and looked around some more. I had even less idea what the other things were: one jar was full of some kind of crystals, and yet another, a glass jar, had the unmistakable and not at all pleasant odor of ammonia. Maybe you can put all this together and make sense of it, but I couldn’t.
“Boss!”
“What is it?”
“They haven’t given up; they’re starting to head back toward you. I think they might have figured out what we’re doing.”
“All right. I’m going keep heading along the river the way I was. Catch up when you can.”
I put out the lantern and hung it up again, stepped back into the night, and pulled the door closed behind me. That place had to have something to do with construction, but I sure couldn’t think of what it might be.
I made my way back to the riverbank and turned to continue following the long curve. I was just in the process of asking myself how far I was going to go when, just like that, it happened: it didn’t feel any different, but as I crossed some invisible boundary, my next step took me back to the other side of the river, just before the bridge, with the river on my right and the castle somewhere out of sight over the hill to my left.
“Loiosh, where are you?”
“Heading back to you now.”
“No, continue the way you were going.”
“Oh. All right.”
He sounded dubious about it, but a moment later he appeared and landed on my shoulder.
“That’s a little strange.”
“Tell me about it.”
Rocza appeared then and landed on my other shoulder. Her wings continued flapping.
“She’s upset.”
“Yeah.”
“She thinks that’s kind of weird.”
“Me too.”
She settled down and I studied the area and considered my options. I was assuming that since all the nice people chasing me belonged here, they wouldn’t be subject to whatever boundaries I was. I hoped I wasn’t wrong; it would be embarrassing. But assuming I was right, I could head to where I’d first entered this, uh, this area, and maybe somehow find my way back.
“Loiosh?”
“I’m not sure, Boss. We noted it, but we’ve moved around a lot. I guess sort of back toward the castle, kind of?”
I’d been very clever, you see, in memorizing the exact spot where I’d appeared, because I’d realized I might have to find it again. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d have to find it coming from some whole other direction, and in the dark at that. I didn’t like my odds.
“See what you can do.”
“Right.”
“And let me know if you see those guards coming back.”
“Oh, good thing you mentioned that. Otherwise, I’d have kept it as a surprise.”
They took off from my shoulder again. I took my best guess as to the direction of the castle. A couple of jhereg passed overhead, wild ones, none of my business. Loiosh had a sort of superior attitude to them. There were also a few nocturnal birds flying low above the river, but I couldn’t see them well enough to identify them.
I set off, Loiosh guiding me with instructions like “I think it might be more that way,” and “that kind of looks familiar,” and other confidence-boosting remarks. I still wasn’t sure we were even going generally the right way when I saw a figure looming up in front of me. I stopped, waited; whoever it was, was also waiting. I tried to make out details, but it was too dark. I took a wild guess.
“Hello, Discaru. I was wondering if I’d see you again.”
“I was hoping you’d find your way here.”
“Right. If I die in the past, I just vanish, right? I mean, no body to worry about.”
“You’re very clever.”
“Why haven’t you transformed?”
“It seems we can’t communicate when I’m in my natural shape. And I wanted to make you an offer.”
“An offer? Why not just kill me? Not sure you can pull it off?”
“Exactly. I think I can, but I’m not certain, so why take the chance?”
“How very rational of you.”
“Do you want to hear my offer, or am I wasting my time expecting sense from you?”
“Oh, this is bound to be good. All right, I’m listening.”
“First, let me explain your position.”
I looked around elaborately. “You mean, lost in the past, unsure if I can find my way home, and with a batch of angry Dragonlords chasing me? I’m kinda used to that.”
I took a step closer. The issue wasn’t killing him; I was pretty sure I could do that. The issue was how to get information out of him.
“No,” he said. “I mean the shield that’s gone up around us, so your friends can’t help you.”
I gotta give the bastard credit for good timing. As he finished saying that, there was a scream in my mind.
“Loiosh?”
Nothing.
“Loiosh!”
“What did you do to him?”
“Easy, little man. I doubt he’s harmed. He just flew headfirst into the shield. I’m sure he’s only stunned. And he won’t come to any further harm, as long as you behave yourself.”
“As long as I—Discaru, or whatever your true name is, you are really stupid.”
“Your pet is surrounded by magical energies, and I can pour as much energy into it as I wish, or collapse it. So, if you care about its life at all, you’ll be very polite to me, and do precisely as I say.”
Even in the dimness, I could see Rocza, about ten feet away, trying to get closer to Discaru, unable to, as if there were a sort of invisible bubble around him.
“This demonic plane you’re from,” I said. “Is everyone there a complete idiot, or is it only you?”
“Curb your tongue. You can’t harm me.”
“Oh?”
“I exist here, in the past, in another form. Do you know what would happen if you were to kill me here?”
“No, but I’m really close to finding out.”
“Two of me cannot exist at the same time. My existence here is already causing necromantic disruptions. Sooner or later, probably sooner, the platform that permits this access will collapse on itself. At best, you will be trapped here in this time. More likely, you will be caught in the collapse and destroyed.”
“Sounds grim,” I said, and took another step forward. “Is that what happened when you brought Her Ladyship to the Halls of Judgment?”
“One more step, and I destroy your pet.”
I stopped.
“Do you understand what I’m telling you? Destroy me, and you destroy yourself.”
“Yeah, yeah. I get it. But you haven’t answered my question. I know you brought her to the Halls, and she gave birth there. But was she already pregnant at the time? Did you know it? Did you bring her daughter back out? How did that all work?”
“If I were you, I’d forget about—”
“You are so very, very much not me. You are nowhere near being me. I can’t even begin. Now, are you going to answer my questions?”
“Of course not. If you care to get out of here alive, you have one chance.”
“Oh, good. I was getting worried.”
“Here is what you’re going to do. I suggest you listen, and quickly, because I can already feel the pressures building, and I honestly do not know how much time there is.”
“All right, tell me,” I said. “This is bound to be good.”
There were two long steps between us.
“I’ll create an opening to your own time, to the road outside of Precipice Manor. You’ll go through it, after giving me your word that you won’t try to come back or interfere in any way. Then I’ll let your pet go through.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Can I make a counter-proposal?”
“You’re in no position to—”
I drew and moved, as fast as I ever have. From fully relaxed, to draw and move and strike; to be honest, I wasn’t sure I could pull it off until I felt the contact. Lady Teldra came up under his chin and into his head.
Yeah. Feed, Lady Teldra. Take it. Take whatever grotesque ugliness he uses for a soul and chew it up and digest it and make him gone gone gone—
His scream was a thing of agony and despair and I relished every lingering note, and it continued in my ears after that and I didn’t mind a bit. At one point, his eyes met mine, and past the hate I felt a jarring contact that formed into the words I will remember this, and you will regret it. I have to admit, as dying words go, they aren’t bad. I was not, however, excessively impressed. The last thing he did was start transforming, but he didn’t get very far, so he was a sort of strange misshapen mostly-human partly-demon object. Students of sorcery may draw whatever conclusions they wish from the fact that, on death, he didn’t return to his native form.
Rocza settled on the ground. I jumped over what remained of Discaru and found Loiosh. I picked him up; he didn’t seem colder than usual. Rocza fluttered and flapped and half flew and settled again, and eventually landed on my shoulder.
I felt for a connection to Loiosh. “Hey? You there? Hello? Loiosh?”
There was something; not a conscious thought, but something, and my knees almost gave out with relief. Now all I had to worry about was the minor issue of, what if the demon had been telling the truth? I looked around. Everything seemed normal. Not that I had any idea what to look for.
I tucked Loiosh carefully into my cloak, then grabbed hold of Discaru’s legs and began pulling in what I hoped was the right direction. That was my clever plan, you see: if I could get his body back to the other time before everything collapsed or he met himself, then, even if the bastard had been telling the truth, it wouldn’t matter because they’d never meet.
Pretty smart, huh?
The question is, how can a guy make a living as an assassin for the better part of a decade without ever learning how bloody heavy a Dragaeran is? I managed about a foot, then stopped, panting.
Well, I could always hope he’d been lying—that’s what I’d sort of counted on in the first place. I mean, he was a demon, right? Being a demon meant being able to manifest in two places at once, which ought to mean that two of him could exist at the same time without everything collapsing. Maybe. And for the hundredth time, I wished I could consult with the Necromancer. I wondered if I could bury him, or maybe sink him in the river, when the air sort of shimmered in front of me—getting wavy, like how on a hot day you see waves go up from the water, only it wasn’t hot, it wasn’t day, and there was no water. My stomach dropped, and my first thought was Oh, crap, it’s happening. But no: a figure came through the shimmering, and for the second time in as many minutes, my knees got weak with relief. Or maybe I’m just getting old.
“Hello, Devera,” I managed.
“Hello, Uncle Vlad. We shouldn’t be here.”
“I know. Can you get us out?”
She nodded and held her hand out. “Come with me.”
“What about him?” I said.
She looked at the remains of the demon, her expression, from as much of it as I could see, mostly one of curiosity.
“He doesn’t belong here either,” she announced.
“Yeah. What do we—”
She reached out, and he began to dissolve. I don’t mean, like, melted, or turned into something; it was more like the whole area he was in turned two-dimensional and wavered, became indistinct, and faded. Or it might be that my mind filled in a lot of that. It seemed like I saw, at the last moment, a vaguely human shape kneeling over him, holding a sword or a wand, but it was just for an instant, and may not have been real, and then that, too, was gone.
“Can you teach me that?”
She gave me a look I can’t possibly describe.
“Never mind,” I said. “I suppose we should get out of here. Tell me though, the Halls of Judgment, that’s where you were born, right?”
She nodded.
“And would someone else who was born there be able to do what you do?”
She frowned. “You mean make spinnysticks?”
“Um, no. I mean walking around in different times.”
“Oh! Maybe. Is this about why I’m stuck here?”
“I think so. A demon seems to have arranged for someone named Tethia to be born there, and Tethia did something, made something, that permitted that kind of travel.”
“Where is the demon, Uncle Vlad?”
“He’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Um. I killed him, and you just made him vanish.”
“Oh!” Devera nodded, the expression on her face incongruously mature. “She’d have had to raise it up above the normal plane of existence, so it could reach other places.”
“I don’t understand.”
Her face twisted up, and it reminded me of Loiosh once when I’d asked him to explain how he flew. “The world is a place, and there’s another place next to it, okay? But you can’t get from one to the other unless there’s a way to get to somewhere else that you can get there from.”
“Uh, yeah,” I said as if I understood that. And then suddenly I did. “Yes, she made something above the normal world. A platform.”
Devera nodded. “So that—” She stopped and looked around and above her. “It’s collapsing,” she said. “We need to go.”
“All right.”
“Boss?”
“It’s okay, Loiosh.”
“I ran into something.”
“I know.”
“That guy—”
“He’s dead now.”
“Oh. Good.”
Some distance away, I heard a shout of “What’s that? Over there?”
“Come on, Uncle Vlad,” said Devera.
How could I refuse? Still holding Loiosh, I followed her through the shimmering area, and found myself, once more, back by the fountain—not the one in the Halls, the one that looked like it.
“Thank you, Devera. Now maybe you can explain—”
I was talking to the air. I should have seen that coming.