CHAPTER 1
The Great and Good
Jon, the Leader of the Commonwealth of Mankind, sat at the center of the high table. His seat was raised slightly above the rest of ours. Jon was a big man and powerful, even though he wasn’t the trim warrior he must’ve been thirty years ago when he’d turned the Commonwealth which his grandfather had founded into something real. His Consort, Lady Jolene, sat in delicate radiance beside him.
Most of the other men at the high table were members of Jon’s Council: the leading warriors in the Hall of Champions. On a level floor, all of them but me would have hulked above Jon. I was one of several at the table to fill in for Councillors who weren’t present in Dun Add, or who had died since Jon last raised members to his Council.
One of those missing was Lord Baran, whom I’d killed in a joust. I’d refused to take Baran’s place on the Council permanently, but I was attending while I was in Dun Add anyway.
I’d been glad at the invitation to sit at the high table tonight, because I knew that Lady May would love it. May isn’t vain, not really, but status meant something to her in a way that it doesn’t to me.
But May wasn’t here tonight. She’d gone to Madringor to attend her Uncle Albrecht’s birthday. I didn’t blame her—Uncle Albrecht was the only member of May’s family that she genuinely liked—but it meant I was here at a banquet celebrating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the founding of the Commonwealth, when I would much rather have been somewhere else.
Pretty much anywhere else.
I’d seen more people in one place than the four hundred dining in this temporary structure, but not often—and not till I’d come to Dun Add. I don’t know how many people were living at Beune when I left it last year, but probably not this many all told.
I wished I was back in Beune now. I wished a lot of things—but my dream had been to become a Champion of Mankind. For that I’d had to come to Jon’s capital.
“Some more wine, sir?” asked a servant with a pitcher walking in front of the table. “Oh—what is this?”
I was drinking from a jack of tarred leather rather than the metal or crystal at the other places here at the high table, mostly to keep the servants from topping me off with wine without asking. As the evening wore on, mistakes were likely to happen. The attendants—this one was male—had been sampling the beverages in the service area behind the temporary enclosure.
“I’m all right with what I’ve got,” I said. “And it’s beer.”
“Oh, Pal,” Lady Hippolyte said, putting her fingers on the back of my right hand. The attendant was filling her goblet. “I really shouldn’t have any more either, but this is such good wine that I can’t stop myself.”
I was sure that the Leader had arranged that the high table was being served vintages that the folks who cared about wines would approve, but I’d already figured that if pushed for an answer, Hippolyte approved pretty much any vintage. She was one of the Consort’s ladies in waiting, like Lady May; and she was my partner for the evening, since Lady May was absent.
I missed May, and I knew how much she’d regret missing the Founder’s Day banquet. This was really May’s sort of event. Still, her Uncle Albrecht was the one relative she’d been close to before she came to court in Dun Add, so when he’d made a point of inviting her to his birthday celebrations, she’d decided to go.
May had borrowed my boat for the trip. The boat turned a ten-day journey by the Road into two days. so she’d hoped that she’d be able to get back before the banquet. I’d surely hoped that. It hadn’t worked out, though.
“Lord Pal?” Hippolyte said. She pointed toward the nearest column with the hand that wasn’t touching the back of mine. A blob of light was rising from the base of a twelve-foot rod, throwing a soft pink glow around it. At the top of the rod it would turn blue and descend. “Do you know how they make the lights?”
“Master Guntram found an Ancient artifact,” I said. I wondered how much Hippolyte knew about my involvement in the light columns. “He copied it a lot of times so that the whole enclosure could have light without torches.”
There was a line of light columns down each of the three aisles between rows of smaller tables, each with four to six people. The original bloom of light had been shaped like a stubby monkey—or maybe a human dwarf. Guntram had simplified his copies, and I’d simplified further the twenty-odd that I’d made to fill out the set.
The copies were easier to make, but also the little monkey or whatever it was got on my nerves if I watched it for very long. We didn’t want that sort of feel for the fancy banquet.
May wouldn’t be thrilled to learn that I’d escorted Hippolyte—blond like May and very pretty—here, but to tell the truth, I wasn’t best pleased that May hadn’t showed up. Right now I wouldn’t have been in Dun Add at all if May hadn’t insisted I come to tonight’s banquet—back before Albrecht had summoned her.
I guess she’d have liked me to go with her to Madringor. I’d rather not have been in Dun Add, but I had friends here and was respected. Neither of those things would be true in a rural county like Madringor. The local nobles would either resent me or patronize me, and I didn’t like it when either of those things happened.
Attendants were carrying in another course, this time beef. I still had chicken on my platter and I didn’t need more food. I waved the fellow off when he got to me.
“Oh, we’re so lucky to live now,” Hippolyte said. “When we have all this.”
“Well, we have,” I said, taking a drink of beer as a way to move my hand away from Hippolyte’s. “This sort of do wouldn’t happen anywhere except at Dun Add, though, and not very often here.”
Hippolyte had more right than not, though. Until Jon and Lord Clain cleared the bandits from Dun Add and made the Commonwealth of Mankind more than a high-toned phrase, there was nowhere that so many people could have gathered in safety and comfort.
Things had generally been quiet in Beune while I was growing up, but that was because we didn’t have much of anything that folks would want to steal—and we’d been lucky. Once something huge had swept in from the Waste that could have eaten all Beune down to bedrock. I could claim that I’d chased it back into the Waste with the weapon I’d cobbled together out of Ancient artifacts—and maybe I had. What I’d really thought at the time was that I was bloody lucky that the thing had turned around for no more reason than had made it stumble into Farmer Jimsey’s field to begin with.
“Oh, Pal…” Hippolyte said, more breathing the words than speaking them. She closed her left hand firmly on my wrist as I held the jack. “With a Leader like Jon and heroes like you to act for him, it will be this way for everybody.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I said, crossing my left hand over to take the beer so that she wouldn’t spill it. There wasn’t much left in the jack, fortunately.
I let Hippolyte guide my hand down to the table—but not onto her lap as it seemed she’d hoped to do. “There won’t be much need for Champions then, so maybe I can go back to Beune and find a plot of land to farm.”
“Oh, Pal, you’re always joking!” Hippolyte said. “You’re rich. You don’t have to farm anywhere!”
I wondered what she’d say if I told her that I kinda liked guiding a plow, at least in decent weather and the soil wasn’t too rocky. Plowing a field was a good place to think, because your body does the work once you’ve trained it to the job, and that frees up your mind.
But I didn’t see Hippolyte worrying much about finding a place to think.
The hand holding my wrist now started to stroke it. “You’ve got such a wonderful sense of humor, Pal,” Hippolyte said, bending closer. “You’re always so alive. I really like that about you.”
I turned to her and used the motion to pull my wrist free. “Lady Hippolyte…” I said. “My companion Lady May will be back soon, maybe even yet tonight—”
That wasn’t very likely, but I could hope.
“—and I’m not interested in knowing you as any more than Lady May’s companion.”
“Oh, Pal!” Hippolyte said in a tone of surprise. “Why, you should know that I wouldn’t do anything to harm my relationship with Lord Josip. But both our mates are gone and it gets so lonely. And not everything has to come out in public, you know.”
“Dear…” I said, gently pushing her fingers away when she tried to take my hand again. “It seems to me that everything does come out in public, sooner or later; and besides, I’m really not interested.”
Hippolyte sighed and composed hands in her lap. “You say Master Guntram made the lights?” she said. “I guess he’s nice, but he’s always seemed sort of spooky to me.”
“Master Guntram is an extremely nice man,” I said mildly. “When I first came to Dun Add and got the hell beaten out of me, he put me back on my feet. He’s the best friend I’ve got here.”
“Oh!” Hippolyte said, flustered. “Well, I didn’t mean anything, you know. I was just saying…”
“It’s fine,” I said, smiling. I hadn’t meant to set her off that way. “Lots of people think Makers are spooky, but really it’s no different from being a warrior. Well, a little different.”
Most any man—and a few women—could use the weapons which survived from the time of the Ancients. Very few of those using the weapons were any good, but that was true for every line of work: a good plowman was an artist.
Makers worked with all Ancient artifacts. Most of the artifacts are in bits and pieces, worn by time and forces that I didn’t understand. A Maker in a trance could enter the structure of what was left, figure out the pattern, and replace the missing molecules from raw materials set out nearby.
Makers ranged in skill too. Understanding a pattern was as much instinct as art, but the very best Makers were true artists. My friend Guntram is one of the best; Master Louis, whom he’d trained, is better yet at repairing and even creating weapons. The success of the Commonwealth owes as much to Master Louis as it does to Jon’s genius for leadership and Lord Clain’s might as a warrior.
I wasn’t much of a Maker compared to Guntram or Louis, but I was a Maker. Understanding how weapons really worked made me a better warrior than my strength and skill would have done without that knowledge. Lord Baran had been quicker and stronger than me; maybe not as much as he’d believed, but I hadn’t doubted that he’d win. I’d just been hoping to fight to a draw which would allow Jon to end the bout honorably.
Instead Baran had tried to force a conclusion—and had overstepped, because I knew our equipment better than he did.
“Is Master Guntram here tonight?” Hippolyte said, looking out into the enclosure. Mostly all I could see were faces tinted alternately pink or blue, and shadows quivering because the lights moved. Maybe she could see more.
“I don’t think so,” I said, working meat off the ribs of my chicken with the edge of my fork. Back home I’d just ’ve picked up the bones and gnawed them, but I didn’t want to do that in front of all the guests here in Dun Add. I didn’t mind folks calling me a hick from the Marches, because that’s what I was in all truth…but I didn’t want to give folks a chance to say that hicks didn’t have any culture because I hadn’t followed the rules that somebody in Dun Add had decided were the mark of culture.
“Guntram went off somewhere while I was looking into things in Bonny three weeks ago,” I went on. “To tell the truth, I was hoping he’d be back before now, but—”
I smiled at Hippolyte. She wasn’t a bad person, and I shouldn’t take it out on her that May was gone.
“—he wouldn’t have been here even if he was back to Dun Add. Guntram likes parties even less than I do.”
I was more worried about Guntram than I hoped I sounded. He spent most days in his suite in the palace. He sometimes went out—last year he’d taken the Road all the way to Beune to find me—but that wasn’t common.
It bothered me a little that he hadn’t told anyone where he was going: Guntram kept himself to himself, and apart from me there wasn’t anybody likely even to notice that he was gone. But he knew I’d worry, so I figured he’d have left a note if he hadn’t expected to be back by the time I was.
The attendant who’d come by with wine reappeared. Before I noticed what he was doing, he’d lifted down my jack and started refilling it from his pitcher. He looked up at me with a grin and said, “Ale, your lordship. They’ve got a cask just for you in the back.”
I took the jack when he handed it up. “Thanks,” I said, though I guess you’re not supposed to thank servants. I hadn’t really wanted a refill, but the fellow was doing his job. I took a drink and smiled as he went off.
I was about ready to ask Hippolyte if she needed an escort to the door of her dwelling or if she preferred to stay. Regardless, I was heading off shortly. I’d fulfilled my duty by coming, and staying longer wouldn’t help anybody.
The attendant who’d been serving me and Hippolyte reappeared. “Milord?” he said. “There’s a lady at the back who wants to see you.” He pursed his lips and said, “What she really said was you need to see her.”
“At the back?” Hippolyte said, bending close to hear better. “At the service entrance?”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought too,” the attendant said, glancing at her. “Only she says it’s about Master Guntram, and he’s friends with Lord Pal. Lord Pal’s staying in Guntram’s suite, you know.”
In fact Hippolyte didn’t know that. It wasn’t exactly a secret, but I hadn’t told anybody. I guess I should’ve expected that the palace servants would all know about it.
I got up from my backless chair. “Sorry, milady,” I said to Hippolyte. “This is something I need to see about.”
I was mildly curious about who the woman was. I was very curious—very worried—about what she had to say about Guntram.
The dais supporting the high table was only wide enough for the table itself and the diners on their chairs, so I stepped down off and followed the attendant along the passage between the dais and the wall of the tent. It was wide enough for people to pass in both directions—necessary, because the attendants had to do that—but I stumbled twice on the dais legs because there weren’t any lights back here.
We got to the service entrance. There was ten feet between the main enclosure and the food preparation area. Some of that was under canvas, but the roasting pits were open to the sky. Though there wasn’t much wind, the oil lamps quivered badly in their glass containers.
The attendant turned left, dodging a turbot on a platter, and said, “Here she is, your lordship.” He bowed toward a woman whose white robe showed up even in the uncertain lighting.
I stepped closer to be able to see her better. Her hair seemed to be blond or red blond, but there was something odd about the texture. Her cheeks were as smooth as polished marble but I didn’t think she was young.
“Ma’am?” I said. “You wanted me? I’m Pal of Beune. What do you know about Master Guntram?”
I glimpsed Hippolyte out of the corner of my eye and realized that she’d followed me from the main enclosure. I wanted to swear, but I didn’t let the words out. When Jon requested me to partner Lady Hippolyte at the banquet, I’d agreed without much thought—it was just a favor for the Consort, so that one of her Ladies could attend in proper state. If I were asked a second time, I’d know better; and I’d avoid the experience, even if that meant refusing the Leader’s request that I be present myself. This wasn’t the business of the Commonwealth that had brought me to Dun Add.
“I will take you to the one who can tell you about Master Guntram,” the woman said. Her voice wasn’t unpleasant, but it was as lifeless as a stack of hides falling to the pavement. She started to turn.
“Wait,” I said. “Where is Guntram? And who’s the person you want to take me to?”
“I am an envoy,” the woman said. “I do not know where your friend is. I will take you to one who may know.”
About a dozen attendants came out of the main tent, in a hurry to refill their empty pitchers. One bumped me from behind, and I heard Hippolyte yelp and snarl a barrack-room curse at the servant who’d stepped on her toe.
“All right,” I said. “How far are we going? My dog’s in the stables so we’ll have to get him if we’re leaving Dun Add.”
I had my weapon and shield in the pockets of my tunic. Both are small and light, so I can carry them with me pretty much all the time. Some Champions have more powerful equipment, but it’s a lot bulkier. For the power, I don’t think anybody could have handier tools than I did.
“Are you going off with this trollop?” Lady Hippolyte said, gripping my shoulder. “Look at her! She’s prettier than me, you think?”
“She knows where Guntram is,” I said, turning my head. That wasn’t quite true, but it’d do for Hippolyte. “He’s my friend and I’m afraid something’s happened to him.”
I was a lot more afraid of that now than I had been at the start of the evening. Something was going on with Guntram, and it was shaping up to be bad.
“Pal, I won’t let you lower yourself this way!” Hippolyte said. Her voice had shrill resonance when she got angry. “For a Champion to run off with some tramp would be an insult to Lady Jolene and the whole Commonwealth!”
I blinked. I really didn’t know how to respond to that.
The Envoy stepped between me and Hippolyte. The two women didn’t touch as best I could tell, but Hippolyte’s hand fell away. Hippolyte stumbled backward into main enclosure; a pair of women returning with platters dodged out of her way.
“Come,” the Envoy repeated. She touched my left wrist and drew me toward the side of the preparation area.
“What did you say to Lady Hippolyte?” I said. The kitchen staff was busy with its own duties; I didn’t notice anybody looking out from under the tarpaulins as we walked past.
“I didn’t speak to her,” the Envoy said. I hadn’t heard words, but something had gone on. “The woman is a fool.”
We were in the belt of horse chestnuts which screened the castle from the jousting ground and landingplace. I was willing enough to go with her, but I wondered if I ought to shake my wrist loose. If we were attacked, I wanted to be able to get my shield out quickly.
“If we’re going on the Road,” I repeated, “I need to get my dog. I won’t be able to see the Road otherwise.”
“It isn’t far,” the Envoy said. “You will touch me and use my eyes.”
Her garment fluttered about her like cobweb. It must be in many layers, but I couldn’t see any seams or fasteners. I wondered if I’d be able to make out more detail in better light.
Despite the late hour, several peddlers waited in kiosks at landingplace. You could never tell when travellers might arrive. Most people tried to time their journeys so that they arrived at each next node during daylight, but there were exceptions—and accidents. The clerk from the Herald’s office ignored us—his business was with arrivals.
Three prostitutes drifted toward us purposefully, but two of them turned back when they saw I was with a woman. The third kept advancing until I called, “No thank you!”
The Envoy didn’t appear to notice the other people. She took my wrist again and stepped onto the Road.
Normally I’ve seen the Road through a dog’s eyes. To humans, the Road is just a misty blur. I’ve been told that it’s because human brains overlay the structure with “sense” that isn’t what your feet feel walking on it. When I asked Guntram, though, he said he didn’t know; that’s good enough for me.
Polarized spectacles—mica is better than glass, I’ve found, but a dog is a lot better yet—allow a person to walk the Road by himself, but he’s still likely to step off into the Waste. I can tell you, that’s a nasty shock if you’re not expecting it.
The Waste isn’t anything at all. It looks like brush beside the Road, but I’ve never heard two people describe the same thing even though they’re standing beside each other and maybe using the same dog to guide them.
I’ve looked at the Road in a trance; so has every other Maker, I’ll bet. There’s nothing there, not even a texture. The Waste has grain if not substance, but the Road doesn’t even show scattered atoms the way air does.
We walked from landingplace onto the Road. I entered the Envoy’s mind as I would have done Buck’s or my new dog’s, Denison Lad, expecting to see hazy hints of a corduroy of tree trunks. Instead I saw an undulating path like poured stone. The Waste didn’t appear, even as a hue. All that I’d ever been able to see before was the fifteen or twenty feet directly in front of me, but now the Road curled and split and spread, filling the view to the horizon in whichever direction she looked.
The Envoy walked on stolidly. I first thought of what I was seeing the Road as a gourd vine, but the paths as frequently rejoined as they split. It was more like a woven fabric, and there was no end to it.
Also it was alive.
I wanted to stop and examine what I was seeing, but I realized that I wasn’t seeing it: the Envoy was. Causing her to pause would only delay me hearing the news about Guntram. Maybe later Guntram and I could use the Envoy’s insights to learn more, but first to find Guntram.
There was a large patch of white, featureless and indefinite, off the Road to the right. I could see similar patches in the distance, and—mostly farther away—reddish blurs as well.
The Envoy stepped off the Road. I said, “Wait! Where are we going?”
The Envoy looked back and I saw myself through her eyes. That image, as bland as a painted pole, slapped me alert.
“We are going to the one who sent me to you,” she said. “Are you afraid?”
“I’m not afraid,” I said. “But I hadn’t expected to be going into the Waste. I’m ready now.”
I stepped forward. The Waste closed over me like a warm blanket. I’d entered the Waste many times, searching for Ancient artifacts. All I saw with my own eyes or an animal’s was grayness; sometimes when Buck and I had been very close together, I was a thicker gray through his eyes.
You can walk through the Waste, but the only objects there are Ancient artifacts—or bits of them, anyway. I’ve picked up scraps that were so worn that I wouldn’t have thought anything of them if I’d found them in a streambed.
Things live in the Waste, worse creatures than the bulk that had crawled out on Beune five years ago—but they could appear on the Road or at any part of Here as well.
From my own experience, the Waste wasn’t dangerous unless you stayed in it until you overheated; but if you did that, you died. I found a fellow once, a body I mean. I dragged it back to the Road. I think it’d been a man, but the body was shrivelled up to only maybe four feet tall if I’d pulled it out straight—which I didn’t. The skin was black, the hair had all fallen off, and there was no sign of clothing.
I carried it, him, back to Beune and buried him at the edge of Mom’s property. I’d thought of putting him under a tree, but I wanted to get him in the ground fast and not fight roots.
There was no way of telling where he’d come from or how long he’d been in the Waste. He was just some poor devil who’d lost his bearings when he was searching for artifacts. It could be the same for me one of these days. There’s risks in life however you live it.
The Envoy was heading for a white blotch which grew with every step. I didn’t have any notion of relative distance until I stepped out into a small node. It was a stretch of shingle beach, so tiny that I could see the edges all around it.
In the middle stood a Beast, an inhabitant of Not-Here.