Gardner James. Fire and Dust

   Hezekiah wore a pained expression. «I don't think Uncle Toby would approve of me —»
   «Do not worry, honored Clueless,» Wheezle interrupted. «The umbrals voluntarily chose to enter these gems. It is how they always expected to end their lives: as objects of trade. And we must remember the treasure you carry.» He pointed to the grinder, still trickling out white dust. «We have a responsibility to keep that out of the wrong hands.»
   Hezekiah nodded gravely… as if he found it obvious what the right hands would be. To me, the issue was not so clear-cut. I was inclined to pass on the grinder to Lady Erin as fast as possible; but I knew Wheezle would want to turn it over to the Dustmen, Yasmin to the Doomguard, and Kiripao either to the Ciphers or to whatever power he worshipped. When the time came, there would be a sodding huge argument. Still, we tacitly agreed we didn't want the grinder taken by Rivi or the umbrals, so the question could be postponed a while.
   With each of us prominently displaying a soul-gem, we walked toward the village. I almost missed the sentry fiend, posted beside the path; it stood under the hood of a willow-like tree, glaring at us from the shadows. When it saw I had noticed it, the umbral took to its wings immediately, staying low to the ground but swinging its flight-path over the Styx, getting an unobstructed route to the huts. Since we were still on foot it took us longer to cover the remaining distance, forced to clamber over fallen logs and detour around spots where the muddy bank had crumbled into the river; so by the time we reached the umbral village, a sizable welcoming party had assembled along the path.
   Every pair of hollow eye sockets pinned a yearning gaze on the soul-gems we carried, as if the villagers were deciding which gem they would claim as their own. Yasmin's free hand strayed to the hilt of her longsword; but the fiends made no motion toward us. They watched in silence, shadows among shadows, each sepulchral face lit by the purple glow of the gems.
   Without speaking, we walked to the very heart of the village, coming to a circular patch of mud with a shallow flame-pit dug in the middle. Unfamiliar runes had been carved in the stones that lined the pit; I suspected they were invocations to whatever god the umbrals deemed it necessary to mollify.
   Wheezle nudged Yasmin and she held him aloft, her hands under his arm-pits like a mother lifting her child. «Honored fiends,» he called, «we have come to negotiate trade.»
   The crowd of shadows uttered no words, but they rustled like poplar leaves stirred by a stiff wind. Every shade-dark face crinkled into a razor-toothed smile.

* * *

   The swamps of Othrys have no cycle of morning and night. The sky is always somber and overcast, the air pregnant with the anticipation of a storm that never comes. Sages claim that the red-tinted light of Carceri comes from the land itself; but in the fetid umbral swamps it leaked up to the sky, then reflected down again from the clouds, casting a cold illumination whose chill gradually seeped into our bones.
   Wheezle told us the negotiations to sell the soul-gems would take three days – not more, not less. I wondered what a day meant in a place without light or dark; but Kiripao told me the umbrals measured out time in chunks of twenty-four hours, just like so much of the multiverse… an enigma that has puzzled more learned brains than mine.
   As promised, the fiends supplied us with all the necessities of life, even before Wheezle and Kiripao began discussions with the village council. Umbral food consisted of marsh weeds and beetles, which the others refused to eat until I assured them the insects had an appealing nutty flavor… rather like a cross between grasshoppers and earthworms, although the worm taste probably came from the mud clinging to each beetle carapace. (Haven't you found that no matter how thoroughly you wash a bug, you can never clean away the grit that lodges in the crannies of its exo-skeleton? Then again, my dwarven friends say the dirt is the best part.)
   The water offered by the fiends had a greasy aftertaste, but it was drawn from a well, not the river. I had heard stories about water from the River Styx – how the tiniest dribble touching tongue or skin could erase your memories, leaving you empty as an infant – and I worried that some portion of the Styx might have seeped into the well. However, after steeling myself to try a sip, I suffered no ill effects… so I used every drop in the bucket to wash off the sticky white dust still coating my body. The others did the same with their own buckets, and Yasmin went so far as to begin a tiny invocation to test whether the dust was safely gone. A second later, she broke out in a fit of coughing, pressing her fists to her chest.
   «What's wrong?» I asked, wrapping my arms around her.
   Wheezing, she gasped out, «Lungs… my lungs!»
   As I held her, waiting for her to recover, I contemplated how much dust we must have inhaled during our fight with the Fox. How much lurked in our noses, our throats, our bronchial tubes and deeper? I couldn't say; but none of us would be casting magic for a long, long time.

* * *

   The umbrals gave us a single hut for lodging, with a floor three paces square… not much space for five human-sized people and a gnome. On the other hand, we weren't all going to sleep at the same time; even with the fiends on their best behavior, we scheduled a watch around the clock.
   To prevent the enemy from catching any of us alone, we decided to pair off. Wheezle and Kiripao, our two most knowledgeable bloods when it came to umbrals, would handle negotiations. Miriam volunteered to accompany Hezekiah wherever he went, leaving Yasmin and me together… which caused us a nervous blush or two, but we didn't ask for a different arrangement.
   The four of us who weren't negotiating took on the task of learning if this village had a portal, where the portal went, and what key was needed to open it. Accordingly, Yasmin and I took a stroll around the area, keeping our eyes peeled for the faint glimmer of a gate. Soon, however, I found my attention straying to something totally unexpected: umbral art. The huts weren't the only things molded from solid darkness; everywhere you looked there was brooding black statuary, sculpted from pure shadow. A few had recognizable subjects – a fat human man laughing wildly, a woman being crushed under a stone – but most were utterly alien shapes. What was I to make of a pitted block that resembled a human knucklebone, or something like a huge axe-head attached to a shriveled cone?
   As I was looking at this last one, an umbral slithered up beside me and murmured, «You like ssstatue?»
   «Is it supposed to be a tomahawk?» I asked.
   «Isss abssstract,» the umbral replied, sounding as if I'd offended him. «Isss ssstatement.»
   «What kind of statement?»
   «Come now, Britlin,» Yasmin said beside me. «It shows the precarious balance of all our lives… how we cling fanatically to familiar concepts, while deep in our hearts we doubt if we've made the right choice.»
   «Yessss, yesssssss!» the umbral whistled. «Issss exactly that.» He sidled closer to Yasmin. «You are artissst?»
   «No, I just know what I like.» She reached out to tap on the axe-like statue, but her finger went right through. It seemed the shadow-stuff wasn't so solid after all. «Were you the one who made this?» Yasmin asked.
   «Made it, yesss,» the umbral replied. «Jusssst a humble effort.»
   «It's very good,» Yasmin said. «It has a particularly strong sense of form and motion.»
   «There's no motion,» I muttered, «it's a sodding statue. The piking thing just sits there, doesn't it?» In a louder voice, I asked the fiend, «Have you considered making a piece that actually looks like something? Perhaps you could get a pretty she-umbral to model for you. Nothing develops your attention to accuracy as much as sculpting from the figure…»
   But that was as far as I got. The fiend covered its ears with its hands and ran shrieking into the marsh.
   Yasmin patted me on the shoulder. «I don't think they're ready for these advanced artistic concepts.»
   «Primitives,» I growled. «I can't understand why their work gets so much attention.»
   And for several minutes thereafter, I found myself kicking at any pebble with the audacity to lie in my path.

* * *

   Our walk through the village and outlying regions took several hours, after which I arbitrarily declared that night was drawing in. Of course, there was no change in the uniform grayness of the Carceri sky; but fatigue was pressing down on me, compounded by the many exertions of the day. Yasmin agreed it must be dark by now, back in Sigil… and she took my hand as we walked quietly back to the hut.
   When we arrived, Miriam announced she had found the portal. It lay inside a piece of sculpture shaped something like a ruptured watermelon, with a crack down the side just big enough for an emaciated umbral to squeeze through. The crack was, of course, the portal; and it remained to be seen if we humans could fit into the gate. We would have serious difficulty at the best of times. It would be next to impossible to squash through quickly and quietly.
   Alas, «quickly and quietly» was exactly what we needed. After hours of formal discussions, Wheezle and Kiripao had established only one point: the umbrals would double-cross us as soon as bargaining concluded. The moment they handed over the agreed-upon price, any outsiders in the village would change from «merchants with goods to sell» into «targets with gold to steal». Of course, the fiends hadn't said this in so many words; but the undercurrents of gloating hostility were too obvious for our companions to miss. The gnome and elf insisted we must have an escape route ready by the time negotiations ended.
   I did not sleep well that night; and I was grateful when Hezekiah woke me to say it was my watch.

* * *

   As I stepped out of the hut, I saw Yasmin already standing in the gloomy shadows. The sky was still gray and overcast, unchanged since we had arrived in Othrys; but the village had a brooding silence to it, as if true night had fallen. No umbrals walked the streets or hovered in the doors of their huts, watching us with greedy eyes. Perhaps they had gone to sleep too… if shadows are capable of slumber.
   «It's quiet,» Yasmin whispered.
   I nodded.
   After some time she said, «Sometimes I have this vision of Sigil, completely empty. No one left in the city – no people, no dogs, no rats – everyone gone but me. I have the whole perfect silence to myself.»
   «It's a Doomguard kind of dream,» I said. «The twilight at the end of the world.»
   «Not the end of the world,» she replied. "The completion of the world. Have you ever been in a tavern when a truly great bard starts to sing? At first, people keep talking to their neighbors, clinking tankards, making noise… but as the bard's voice reaches them, they stop to listen, one by one. The hush spreads over the crowd, until all you can hear is the singing. No one wants to breathe or move, for fear of missing a note of the song.
   «That's what Entropy means to me, Britlin: the beautiful song of Time. I dream of the day people stop their desperate jabbering and finally hear the music.»
   «A pretty metaphor,» I told her, «but in real life, people don't just fall quiet and listen to the Harmony of the Spheres. In real life, people die – often painfully and pointlessly. Where's the music in that?»
   «You're too short-sighted,» Yasmin replied. «Death is merely a transition, like adolescence. It may be easy or hard, but it's not the final word. Your soul moves on to another plane, Upper or Lower, wherever your heart truly belongs. And when your afterlife ends, you move on again, absorbed into the multiverse one way or another. We'll all be present for the final song. We'll all be part of the final song.»
   I shrugged. «Pardon me if I want to put off choir membership as long as possible.»
   «I'm a Handmaid of Entropy, not a leatherhead. I don't want to die in the near future either – there are still a million things I have to do… and a million others I want to do.»
   «Even so, you're devoted to helping Entropy along.»
   She shook her head. «Entropy doesn't need help, any more than stars need help to shine. Entropy is always on the job, berk, and whatever pace it wants to move is fine by me. I only get annoyed when someone tries to jig the natural progression faster or slower. Trying to accelerate Entropy is just as bad as trying to stop it: both are presumptuous… tinkering with the great bard's song. The path of wisdom is just to go about your business and try to hear the music.» Her eyes were distant; but suddenly she broke into a chuckle. «By the gods, I sound pompous.»
   «Let's be kind and say you're profound.»
   «I've never been profound in my life. I've been…» Her voice broke off. «I've been a lot of things, but never profound.»
   «Tell me what you've been.»
   She bit her lip. «You don't want to know, and I don't want to remember. Life was not good before I became a Handmaid. Life was very bitter and lonely.»
   «No friends or family?»
   «No friends, bad family. My mother died. My older brother – he died eventually too, but not soon enough.» She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. «Let's talk about something else.»
   I looked at her closely. Maybe I was jumping to conclusions, imposing my mother's history on another woman; but the sound of her voice when she mentioned her brother… ugly. So much ugliness in the world. And despite my grousing, I knew I had lived a pampered life, all things considered.
   Reaching out, I took Yasmin's hand. «Okay. Let's talk about something else.»
   Her mouth curved into the ghost of a smile. «What did you have in mind?»
   «Giving this place the laugh. Declaring that this patch of ground is not Carceri at all, but other plane entirely. What would you like it to be?»
   «The Plane of Dust,» she answered immediately.
   «Dust?» I snorted. «Pardon me, but I was there mere hours ago, and didn't enjoy it at all.»
   «The Glass Spider wasn't the real Plane of Dust,» she said. «I visited Dust years ago, while studying to be a Handmaid. It was very soothing. Quiet and healing.»
   «But it has no air!»
   «They taught us spells that could cope with that.»
   «You can't cast spells at the moment,» I reminded her.
   «Oh no?» She draped an arm over my shoulder. «Imagine we're on the Plane of Dust,» she said in a low voice. «No umbrals. No swamp. No smell or noise…»
   «No air.»
   «Shh.» She put a finger to my lips. «We're in the Plane of Dust and I have wrapped us 'round with spells that will keep us very safe. Very private. No one for a million miles around but you… and me…»
   For more than an hour after that, we weren't very good watchguards.

* * *

   Early on our second «day» in Othrys, a boatman from the Styx arrived at the village. At the time, Yasmin and I were sitting on a clump of moss, watching an umbral artist shape a block of shadow into what looked like a headless rhinoceros. The sculpting process appeared no different from molding clay, full of kneading and squeezing and slapping; yet when I tried to touch the lump of darkness, I found it as insubstantial as mist. Maybe the shadow-stuff existed on a shifted plane of reality, one the umbral could contact and I could not… or maybe I was just spouting gibberish because I didn't have any rational explanation.
   Yasmin, of course, didn't care about the «how» of shadow-sculpting. Every few minutes, she hiccupped with admiration as the fiend's hands pinched out a blob of blackness or smoothed down a dimple in the rhino's left buttock. No doubt, my tiefling inamorata would have happily explained how the piece symbolized the Voice of Irony, the Cosmic Jest, or some other deep theme; but I refused to ask. In fact, I was delighted when a group of umbrals broke into hysterical gabbling down by the riverside – it gave me an excuse to leave. Leaping to my feet I hurried to the Styx, with Yasmin close behind.
   As we came into sight of the river, the boatman's skiff was just drawing up to the shore. A crowd of umbrals stood back a short distance, clacking their teeth together rhythmically. The sound seemed to be their way of offering a cheery hello; and they kept up the noise as the boatman tied his skiff to a tree stump and climbed onto solid ground. Yasmin grabbed my arm and whispered, «Maybe we should get out of here.»
   I hesitated. True, this skeletal ferryman gave me more cold chills than a trip to the privy in January; but he hadn't shown any overt hostility. The umbrals seemed delighted to see him… and as for myself, I'd never met such a creature before. Would he let me shake his boney hand, maybe take flaky samples of his skin? No – I wouldn't ask him about that at the moment. But I didn't want to run either. I simply watched as his pale gaze flicked our way then moved on, as if Yasmin and I didn't deserve his attention.
   Stepping into the circle of fiends, the boatman bowed once in the direction of the village fire-pit, then a second time toward the Styx. The umbrals bowed back… and I noticed their bows were much deeper than the boatman's, like peasants bowing to their lord. Dapperly waving his hand, the boatman acknowledged the bows; then he cleared his throat with a loud raspy cough, sounding as if he hadn't spoken in weeks. When he finally opened his mouth, his voice resembled the scrape of gravel on sandpaper.
   «Greetings,» he said huskily. «I have come to bring light to your dreary circle of hovels… because I find myself in need of an artist.»
   Yasmin's grip on my arm tightened. I'd have to talk to her about clipping her fingernails.

* * *

   Five minutes later, the boatman's skiff was beached on shore, open to the inspection of every fiend with artistic aspirations. The starboard side of the bow was painted much like the skiff we'd seen before: with a profusion of faces from many sentient species, all of them clouded by a profound sadness. None of these people wept openly, or even seemed close to tears; instead, they wore the dull expression of long-term grief, too wearily dispirited to cry. I had to admire the technique of the painter – each face, rendered in muted browns, had a clinical accuracy I found uncanny.
   Unlike the painted starboard side, the port side of the bow was completely undecorated: bare wood, simply sanded smooth. The planks looked freshly cut and trimmed; and as I ran my fingers along the wood's surface, the boatman stepped up to my side. «You will notice this is newly repaired,» he said in his rasping voice. «My boat suffered damage after… a financial disagreement with some passengers.»
   I made a sympathetic noise. «Customers can be so hard to please.»
   «Indeed. They had quite a falling out.» He smiled. His teeth were yellow, with dark brown stains that gave me cause for unpleasant speculation. «Now that my boat has been refurbished,» he went on, «I wish to restore the usual… embellishments.» He turned to the crowd of umbrals. «Your fame as artists has spread the length of the river. I would be pleased to pay a reasonable commission to anyone who could copy the images from the starboard onto the port.»
   A chorus of murmurs rustled through the assembly. Every bat-like wing trembled with dark shivers. «Copy?» several voices whispered. «Copy?»
   «Yes,» the boatman replied. «These faces are my personal insignia. I must have them painted on both sides of the bow so that I am recognized by my… clients.»
   «Copy?» the whispers continued. «Copy facesssss…»
   «Surely this is not a difficult assignment?» the boatman said. «I've brought the necessary paints, and even a few brushes.»
   «Not facessss,» said a nearby fiend. «Maybe nice mandala with sssstar motif?»
   «Yessss,» agreed another, «or Cosssmic Egg with wreath of ssstylized sssnakesss?»
   «Ssscythes,» chirped up a third, «I sssee ssstunning asssemblage of peach-toned ssscythes, sssuperimposed on mauve medicine wheelsss, sssurrounded by cressscent moonsss and dolphinsss.»
   «Dolphins?» the boatman shuddered.
   «Ssscarlet onesss. Very pudgy, with lightning boltsss coming out of tailsss.»
   The boatman made a strangled sound. «I do not want scarlet dolphins, whether or not they come equipped with anal lightning bolts…»
   «Isss sssymbol,» an umbral put in quickly. «Dolphinsss sssymbolize river Ssstyx.»
   «There are no dolphins in the Styx!» the boatman snapped. «There are only unpleasant creatures called hydroloths, and they would rip a sissy little dolphin to fillets just for the fun of hearing it squeak.»
   One fiend cocked its head to the side. «Hydrolothsss look good with lightning boltssss?»
   «A hydroloth wouldn't look good if you put a bag over its head, and one over yours while you're at it. I do not want hydroloths; I do not want stylized snakes; I do not want a nice mandala. I want an exact copy of the faces that are already on the other side of the boat, all right? Do you think you can handle that?»
   The umbrals bristled with artistic indignation and stormed away, stomping louder than you'd think shadows could manage.
   Yasmin stepped forward and tapped the boatman on the shoulder. «Sir,» she said above the noise of the fiends' departure, «you don't need an artist; you need a hack. Let me introduce the most unrepentant hack in the multiverse…»
   I tried my best to look modest.

* * *

   In the next few minutes, I learned several things: that the skeletal boat people who ply the Styx call themselves marraenoloths; that marraenoloths are the only creatures who have learned the secret of navigating the river's black waters; and that this particular marraenoloth was a haughty berk named Garou, who refused to admit how lucky he was to find the one village in Carceri with a painter who would (a) take his commission and (b) not charge an arm and a soul for it.
   «There is no element of luck involved,» Garou insisted. «I simply concentrated on my need for a suitable artist, and the Styx carried me here. You could have been anywhere on the Lower Planes and the river would have brought me to you… or to someone else equally talented and perhaps less imbued with that foul-smelling dust.»
   I was going to snap back a caustic reply, but stopped myself before the words came out. Instead, I asked, «Can you really smell the dust on me?»
   «Most certainly,» Garou replied. «And let me add that in my day, I have inhaled the stench of rotting corpses, the reek of embalming chemicals, the odors of a thousand types of river pollution… but never have I smelled such a disgusting aroma as that which arises from the dust in your garments.» He leaned toward me, thrust his gaping nasal cavity against my jacket, and drew in a heady breath. «Ah yes,» he sighed with pleasure, «totally, putridly repugnant.»
   Yasmin's jaw tightened and she let out her breath slowly. «You're a Sensate, aren't you, Garou?»
   «I have the good judgment to belong to the Society of Sensation, yes. Is there something wrong with that?»
   «No, no,» she answered, a fatalistic tone in her voice. «Britlin, shouldn't you give him the secret handshake or something?»
   «Handshake?» I snorted. «The formal Sensate greeting is rather more tactile than a mere handshake.»
   «Indeed,» Garou said. «It requires a hundred and twenty-seven meticulously prepared props, takes a day and a half to perform, and may only be conducted under the auspices of a qualified chirurgeon.»
   «I've done it twice,» I told Yasmin. «Remember that scar I showed you last night? The sodding duck moved at precisely the wrong time.»
   «You too?» Garou asked with something close to sympathy in his voice. «I now make a point of ramming ducks with my skiff whenever they cross my path. Of course, all marraenoloths like to ram ducks – it's one of our little traditions. But for me, it has personal meaning.»
   «Yes? Then clobber one for me sometime,» I said.
   And if there is such a thing as friendship between humans and creatures of evil, that was the start between me and Garou.

* * *

   We negotiated a simple deal: I'd paint Garou's boat, and he'd ship us out of the village before the umbrals had a chance to butcher us. The Styx flows through all the Lower Planes, offering access to every form of hell imaginable; but it also passes close to a number of portals, and Garou promised he could take us to gates that led to relative safety. Nothing so convenient as a route directly to Sigil, alas – the best Garou could offer were portals to the so-called gate-towns, outposts which serve as staging points between the Lower Planes and the neutral Outlands. From the stories my father told, I knew the gate-towns to the Lower Planes were vicious places in their own right, tainted by evil seeping up from below… but as long as they retained some vestige of neutrality, any gate-town would be less lethal than where we were now. In a gate-town, we could contact the local chapters of our factions and get help. After that, we could worry about our next move.
   Soon I had a paintbrush in hand, and was roughing out the sorrow-filled faces I would have to copy. There were sixteen of the portraits, a day's work at most: by the time the umbrals retired to their huts for the night, I'd be finished. Garou assured us he could slip our party out of town quietly while the fiends slept.
   «Can we trust him?» Yasmin whispered to me as I started to paint the grief-ravaged face of a high elf.
   «That's the question, isn't it?» I muttered. «He has nothing to gain by betraying us and we seem to get along passably well; but it still might amuse him to deposit us in some festering cesspit. On the other hand, he is a fellow Sensate… and I think he'll be impressed on with my work on his boat.»
   «Maybe you should leave one face unfinished until he takes us somewhere safe.»
   «Good idea,» I nodded. «It'll give Garou some incentive to live up to his half of the bargain.»
   Yasmin watched me paint a few strokes, then asked, «Which gate-town do we aim for?»
   «I don't know. Have you visited any of them?»
   «No.» She shrugged. «Maybe one of the others has.»
   «Why don't you check with them?» I suggested. «I'll be all right here.»
   She stared at me for a moment, clearly debating whether she could safely leave me by myself. «Very well,» she said at last. «I don't want to watch you work on these pictures anyway. Too depressing.»
   «Because the faces are so sad or because it's just a hack copy job?»
   She didn't answer. I watched her walk away.

* * *

   Time passed. Garou watched long enough to see me finish the high elf's face, then wandered off into the village. I took that as a vote of confidence; he had accepted I possessed sufficient talent for the job, and could work without his supervision. The umbrals were not so quick to drop the issue – I could feel their hollow eyes peering at me from dark vantage points under the trees, and could hear their rustling voices whisper unrecognizable words – but in time they too faded away, vanishing on unknown errands.
   I was left alone with the grieving faces.
   Whoever painted the originals had done good work: nothing too difficult in the way of technique, yet with a sure touch in capturing the pathos of each subject. It was easy to believe the faces had been taken from life; but I didn't want to pursue that line of thought. Sixteen people, heartsick people, herded together and forced to pose for the unknown artist… it didn't bear thinking about.
   But I couldn't keep my mind off the subject. Garou's previous artist had done that old trick with the eyes, aiming them out flat so they seemed to follow me wherever I moved; and it is hard to bear up under such sorrowful scrutiny for long periods of time. Sad, mad eyes, always watching.
   Among the faces was a human man, light-haired, full-bearded, nothing like my dark and well-trimmed father… yet the more the face stared at me, the more I felt this was Niles Cavendish: not dead, not lost these fifteen years, but still alive somewhere here in the Lower Planes and crushed by overwhelming grief. Time and again, I caught myself staring instead of painting. It was not my father, it was nothing like him – nothing like anything he could have become since I saw him last. And yet, when I was fleshing out other faces, I would repeatedly catch sight of the man from the corner of my eye and gasp. My father. Papa.
   «Magic,» I muttered under my breath. «Sodding magic.» It could have been in the paint, on the boat, or hanging in the very air around me. Every plane lays its fingers on your soul and toys with you, trying to seduce you into its dance. Carceri wanted to embrace me with its ripe despair, and why not use visions of Niles Cavendish as bait? The man in the picture was not my father… any more than I was.
   That was it: I was not my father. He had been a hero. I was a mere copyist; as Yasmin said, a hack. How long before she despised me for that? She knew I was the son of Niles Cavendish – we'd talked about it the night before, after… after we'd finished being inattentive sentries. Maybe my father was the only reason she cared a twig for me. Maybe she thought I was a savior with a sword, like him; and when she learned the truth, how I could scarcely bear thinking of him… would she walk away disappointed, longing for a real man, and a real life, and real emotion on the canvas…
   «Painting more pictures, huh?» said a nasal voice behind my shoulder. «You must be really dedicated – working every chance you get. Uncle Toby says artists are like that.»
   I turned and saw Hezekiah looming over me. For some reason, he didn't look like a gawky Clueless nuisance at this moment; he looked downright welcome. «I don't know sod about artists,» I told him. «I don't know sod about anything, except this piking place is playing tricks with my mind. Sit down on that stump and keep me sane.»
   «How do I do that?»
   «Grant me wisdom. Grant me truth. Grant me the secrets of life. Or failing that, tell me about your home town, the girls you left behind, and your piking Uncle Toby.»
   Which he did.

* * *

   Like every home town, Hezekiah's birthplace of Templeford had the dewiest dawns, the slowest horses, and the tangiest cheese in the multiverse. The barber was missing a finger and knew more jokes than any man in history. The tailor who sold men's clothes held a «going out of business» sale at least once a year. There were two blacksmiths, one competent, one not… and the well-to-do patronized the fumble-fingered fellow because the other man's smithy was always full of commoners. Of course, no one locked their doors at night. Of course, everyone went skating on the creek in winter time. Of course, there was an old house suspected of being haunted, a young woman suspected of selling her nights for silver, and a butcher suspected of adding cat-meat to the ground pork.
   Born and bred in Sigil, I still knew Hezekiah's home. I'd never been there… perhaps no one had ever been there, including Hezekiah. In real towns, drunks are sad or intimidating, never innocently amusing; and the girl next door has a complicated life of her own, not centered on being your foil. In real towns, marriages are neither unending bliss or unmitigated disasters, but always somewhere in between; and the same goes for children, never purely angels or demons as the stories would have you believe. But none of us comes from a real town – we come from home towns, where everyone is a «character» and where our stories, smiling or angry, are all painted in primary colors.
   At that moment, I liked primary colors; they were a welcome change from the subdued browns on the palette in front of me. Thus I let Hezekiah prattle on about the dances in Pecksniffle's pack-barn, and the blizzard three years ago that buried houses up to their eaves. Was the creek full of trout in spring? Of course. Did the leaves turn crimson and gold at harvest time? Every tree in the forest. And every grandmother could cook better than the greatest chefs in Sigil, every grandfather could whittle better than the most famous sculptors, every hunting dog could sniff out a partridge ten miles away…
   What about Uncle Toby?
   «What do you want to know about Uncle Toby?» Hezekiah asked.
   «He raised you?»
   «Yes.»
   «And he taught you the tricks of mind over matter?»
   «Oh sure – he taught me lots of stuff. But…» Hezekiah's voice trailed off and he sighed a sigh of theatrical proportions.
   «What's wrong?» I asked.
   «Well,» the boy said, «I think Uncle Toby skimped on one part of my education.»
   «Yes?»
   «He never… well, Uncle Toby was a bachelor, see. He knew about the multiverse, and the gods, and the powers of the mind, but he never really talked about… you know.»
   Hezekiah looked at me with anxious brown eyes. I knew exactly what kind of guidance he wanted, and as a Sensate, I had plenty of experience to draw upon. The trick was not to unnerve the boy with excessively hydraulic details.
   «What do you want to know?» I asked.
   «Well… it's just that… ummm, well… I think Miriam likes me.» He lifted his eyes quickly, then lowered them again. «I could be all wrong about this, but…»
   «But you're probably right,» I finished for him. «That trick you did back in the Spider – making yourself look terrifying – I think that caught her attention.»
   «That? But that was… she liked that?»
   I held up my hands in a shrug. «All I said was, it caught her attention. By now, I'm sure she realizes you aren't the demonic horror we claimed you were. But she's still here, isn't she? What do you think of her?»
   «I don't know…»
   «Do you want her to go away, or do you want her to stick around?»
   «Oh, I don't want her to go away.»
   «That's all you have to know at this point,» I told him. «You want to spend time with her and see what happens. Right?»
   «Right.»
   «So don't start worrying about a million other things.» I gave him a quick smile. «You've known her less than two days. There may come a time when you should start thinking of the future, but right now, stick to the present.»
   «Thanks, Britlin,» Hezekiah answered earnestly, as if he believed I'd given him advice instead of platitudes. «I've been really confused about… oh, hi Eustace, what are you doing here?»
   «Eustace?» I repeated. The boy was looking at something behind my back. «Eustace?» I choked. And then I was diving out of the way as sharp wight claws sliced down through the position I'd occupied a split-second earlier.

13. THREE MINUTES OF DEPARTURE

   One cannot paint while wearing a sword, so I had set mine down… only a few paces away, but the wight now stood between me and the weapon. While alive, this particular wight had been mostly human, but back a generation or two his family must have received an infusion of giant blood – the creature stood close to seven feet tall, with shoulders as wide as a wheelbarrow. He looked vaguely familiar; and in the split second before he lunged for another attack, I realized where I'd seen him before.
   This was one of the wights attending Rivi when she confronted us back in the Glass Spider.
   «She's found us!» I yelled to Hezekiah; then I was too busy rolling out of the way as two handfuls of talons tried to embed themselves in my chest.
   «That isn't Eustace, is it?» Hezekiah observed.
   The boy was still sitting blithely on his tree stump, watching as the wight took another whack at me. This time, the monster dug his claws so deep into the muddy ground I had time to scramble to my feet before he could pull his hands free. With a snap of his wrist, the wight flicked the muck on his fingers into my face, spattering my cheeks and nearly blinding me in one eye. A moment later, he charged straight for me, hoping to run me through while I was distracted. He very nearly managed it too; but I dove over the skiff I'd been painting and scudded away along the slippery mud.
   «My sword!» I gasped to Hezekiah. «Get me my sword!»
   The wight didn't bother to jump the skiff after me; he simply bent down, planted his hands on the boat, then shoved it forward with all his strength, like a carpenter shoving a wood-plane over the flat of a board. The keel of the boat skimmed up a mound of mud as it skated over the ground, but the resistance wasn't enough to slow down the wight. In an instant, the skiff slammed into me and propelled my whole body forward, knocking me roughly down the beach. I could handle the bruises; but another five paces would drive me straight into the River Styx. From the blazing fury in the wight's eyes, I guessed that was precisely the plan.
   Digging my heels into the mud, I tried to resist the steady push forward; unluckily for me, the wight's toe-claws gripped the ground and gave him excellent traction, much better than the smooth leather soles of my boots. I slipped and slipped and slipped again, as the wight bent his back into one heave after another. There was no respite to let me stand up, no chance to scramble away around the front or back of the skiff. It might have been possible to clamber over the gunwale into the boat, but that would only put me within range of the wight's life-draining touch.
   «Hezekiah!» I yelled. And the lapping sound of the Styx was almost as loud in my ears as my own voice.
   The wight hissed with glee. The river was only inches behind me; one more push and I'd be swimming… at least for a second or two, before the memory-stealing waters wiped out all knowledge of how to keep myself afloat. The wight's arms flexed, ready for the final thrust…
   …and then he stopped and turned around, an expression of polite curiosity on his face.
   Behind him Hezekiah held my sword, both hands on the pommel. The boy had taken a swing at the wight, perhaps trying to whack off the creature's head with a single mighty blow. However, he'd scarcely made a mark; he had botched the angle of attack and delivered a glancing strike with the flat of the blade. To the wight, it was no more than a shaving nick. The creature curled his lip in something approaching a grin and reached out toward the boy, close enough to crush Hezekiah's head like a wineskin.
   That's when I shoved on the boat with all my strength and caught the wight at the back of his knees.
   The skiff was the perfect height for buckling the monster's legs. He jerked backward, trying to keep his balance; and at the same time, Hezekiah had the presence of mind to jab forward with the rapier. It didn't actually pierce the wight's chest – the boy hadn't kept his wrists straight as he thrust out – but the tip of the blade banged against the creature's breastbone, giving him some extra momentum for falling. As the wight began to topple backward, I reached up and helped him along, grabbing a handful of his ripped clothes and yanking with all my strength.
   For a moment, the wight's arms flailed. His rotting face loomed close to mine, his pointed teeth gnashing, his hot breath hissing rankly against my cheeks. Then he was spearing down headfirst into the black water, his body collapsing into globules of greasy pus the moment he hit the surface.
   I froze. He hadn't made much of a splash as he went under, but a small shower of droplets had spattered over my clothing. Should any of that wetness soak through to touch my skin… so I didn't move, didn't breathe, didn't blink an eyelash. If I lost my memory now, I'd have to start experiencing life all over again from the very beginning. I might even have to eat another swineberry.
   Seconds passed. The only dampness on my flesh was sweat, pouring out in gushers. Thank all the friendly powers, the day had been cool and I was wearing my jacket; it had given me that extra bit of protection against the splash. At last I let out a shuddering breath and struggled to my feet.
   «That was exciting, wasn't it?» I said to Hezekiah.
   He nodded. «I can hardly wait to tell Miriam.»
   «Wonderful. Give me my sword.»
   «Could I practice a little with it?»
   «No. Give me my sword.»
   «Yes, Britlin.»

* * *

   No other wights showed their decaying faces before lunch. Over the meal, however, the six of us met and agreed it was only a matter of time before we received more undead company. Rivi must have brought the Glass Spider back to an even keel, then sent wights through the portal to search for us. When that ugly basher from the riverside didn't report back to Rivi's base, she would eventually muster other wights to find us. Dangers like the Tooth-Storm bushes might slow her forces down, but I doubted the nasty wee albino would be completely stymied by such nuisances. To someone as vicious as Rivi, the swamps of Othrys might look as congenial as a backyard garden.
   The news was not good from Wheezle and Kiripao either. For the umbrals, negotiations were a process of «becoming one mind»… a process that consisted of long silences, punctuated by grisly stories of life among the fiends. «The stories are bad,» Wheezle murmured, «and the silences are worse. They press in on one's brain…» He shook his head and refused to say more; but his face looked more haggard than it had through all the trials of the Glass Spider.
   After lunch, the others accompanied me back to the Styx, keeping watch as I continued painting the boat. I welcomed their presence as a way to steer my mind away from morbid brooding; the face of that man on the bow looked less like my father while Miriam was telling about a drunk who walked into a tavern of centaurs and called it a «hay bar».
   So the afternoon passed with inconsequential conversation. By the time Garou returned to view the work, my stomach was growling for supper… which just goes to show what addle-coves stomachs can be, since I was not looking forward to forcing down more bulrushes and beetles. The boatman looked over my shoulder for a few moments, gave a soft sigh, and said, «I suppose it will do.»
   «It's an exact copy,» Yasmin offered on my behalf.
   «Close enough,» Garou replied. I recognized the voice of a customer who doesn't want to sound too enthusiastic for fear the price goes up. «Have you decided where you want to go when the job is done?»
   «Do any of us know anything about the gate-towns?» I asked the others.
   «I know people in Plague-Mort,» Miriam answered. «I've been there a couple of times.»
   «What's a Plague-Mort?» Hezekiah asked.
   «Gate-town on the edge of the Abyss,» Yasmin replied. «From what I've heard, it's a depraved and violent place to spend your time.»
   «No worse than a lot of neighborhoods in Sigil,» Miriam protested. «And it has some first-rate taverns.»
   «Dens of iniquity?» Hezekiah asked hopefully.
   «Dens, yes,» Miriam said, «but I wouldn't use big words like iniquity there, unless you want your teeth shoved down your bone-box. A bunch of us from the Glass Spider had some fine nights in Plague-Mort.»
   «From the Glass Spider?» I choked.
   «Sure,» she replied. «One of the Spider's portals led straight to a Plague-Mort butcher shop.»
   «It seems to me,» Yasmin said, «if there's a direct portal from the Spider to Plague-Mort, we should head someplace else. We don't want to make it easy for Rivi to find us.»
   «Rivi's looking for us here,» Hezekiah piped up, coming to Miriam's defense. «This Plague place is several planes away, right? She won't suspect we've gone there.»
   «True,» Yasmin admitted.
   «And I know the lay of the town,» Miriam said. «I also met someone there, claimed she knew a portal from Plague-Mort to Sigil.»
   «Was this someone you could trust?» I asked.
   «Depends what you mean by trust,» Miriam replied. «Her name was November. Would I let her hold my jink-bag for a few days? No. But if I gave her a handful of gold, would she stay bought an hour or two? I think so. She showed me a license from the Arch-Lector authorizing her to 'arrange divers services' for visitors to town… which probably means she knows who to bribe to get things done. I know how bloods like November work – they peel your pennies every chance they get, but they won't try to do you a slice-job.»