CHAPTER 2
Adrift
Humans rarely see Beasts, though sometimes survivors tell about being savagely attacked on the Road. When travellers disappear—or their mangled bodies are found—it’s often blamed on Beasts, and I guess that’s true some of the time.
I’m a little different from most people. In Beune I’d traded with creatures, probably Beasts. When I found artifacts from Not-Here, I left them at a node in the Waste just off the Road. When I came back in a month or two, I’d find them replaced by artifacts from Here.
Then last year when I was in a hard place, a Beast had done me a favor—and I’d survived when I otherwise wouldn’t have. I did the Beast a favor in return, not because I had to, but because that’s what a man does if he’s been brought up the way I was.
I put my hand on the weapon in my right pocket, but I didn’t pull it out.
“Here is the one knows of Master Guntram,” the Envoy said, stepping aside and dropping her arms to her sides.
I swallowed and said, “Have we met?”
You never really see a Beast, because the surface is always sliding in and out of Not-Here. There’s nothing that seems rigid in the body, but some part can cut flesh and even drive through bone. I can’t say I recognized the Beast, but the fact that it hadn’t thrown itself at my throat made me hopeful. I wonder if the Beasts can tell people apart?
We have met, the Beast said. I heard its words in my mind, gravelly and deep…and even though I knew there was no real voice, I did recognize it. You put me under great obligation. Because you humans have no afterlife, I cannot repay you.
I think I understood what he was saying, but I decided just to ignore it. I had no business discussing souls or any other kind of spiritual business. For sure, I wasn’t going to discuss it with a Beast.
“If you can tell me where Guntram is, that’s all I want,” I said. I was speaking normally, but I didn’t suppose the Beast was hearing me with his ears—if he even had any. I saw him as a blotch of oil in the air, black but with rainbow highlights shimmering sometimes. “He’s been gone from Dun Add for, well, weeks.”
I wasn’t sure about the timing. I hadn’t been here myself when Guntram went off.
I learned of the human Guntram when you and I met, the Beast said. The Beast had been inside my mind, tuning a device which controlled what I did. I arranged to meet him to ask for help, and I fear that while helping me he has been trapped.
“How in the world did you arrange to meet Guntram?” I asked. “He doesn’t leave Dun Add but once in a blue moon.”
It wasn’t the most important question, but it was sure the one that popped into my mind first. The only time Guntram had left since I met him was when he trekked all the way to Beune to convince me to come back to the capital. I’d given up the notion of becoming a Champion after I’d left Dun Add the first time. When I’d got to know Guntram better during the year since, I realized just how big a thing it was that he’d done for me.
And thank the Almighty that he had.
Guntram buys artifacts from prospectors who find them in the Waste. the Beast said. I placed a device where a human who sells to Guntram regularly searches. The device guided him to where I waited.
“Was this a Not-Here device?” I said, trying to get my head around what the Beast had just told me.
I built the guide myself, he said. I am of what you call Not-Here. If Guntram was the person I needed, then he would be able to use it…as he did.
I swallowed. “Where is Guntram trapped?” I asked. “I’d appreciate any help you can give me, but I’ll get him out myself if I have to.”
I do not know, the Beast said. This human—
A portion of the shiny blackness suddenly extended toward the Envoy. She didn’t flinch as I might have done.
“—came to me and said that Guntram had sent her, but she could not inform me how to return to the place she had come from.
I looked at the woman. Before I snarled an angry demand, I remembered what I had seen through the Envoy’s eyes: an infinite twisting of paths. I couldn’t have described a course I’d taken through that tangle; that made me think about another question.
“You,” I said to the woman. “Do you have a name?”
“I do not know my name,” she said. She shrugged. “I think I had a name once, but I do not remember it now.”
“Envoy, then,” I said, because that’s how I’d been thinking of her. “How were you able to find—” I gestured “—the Beast?”
“Master Guntram directed me when he put me out of my village,” she said. She was of ordinary height, probably five feet six inches, and looked plain without being ugly. I could think of thirty women in Beune that I would’ve described in the same words I’d use of her. “He had removed my connection, but the village had taken Master Guntram in my place.”
“The village had?” I said.
Our priests— the Beast said, and I felt a smile in his thought —tell us that there are cysts which are separate from all other places. Neither Here nor Not-Here. They are holy— the smile again —and my folk cannot enter them. I believe Guntram found a cyst and entered it in search for a treasure which to me is worth the afterlives of all my kin to the beginning of time. But he could not escape once he had entered.
I thought, “I see,” but I didn’t see, so the words didn’t reach my mouth. I suppose the Beast heard them anyway. If he did, he knew they were just a politeness to spread over my ignorance and worry.
I said, “What do I do now? To find Guntram and get him free?”
I do not know, the Beast said. The Envoy remained a silent figure. Her eyes didn’t even move between us as we spoke, unless we were speaking to her. I cannot even guess where Guntram is. I came to you, Lord Pal, because you are his friend, not because I thought you could find him.
I took a deep breath. The Beast was being honest. That was good, but it wasn’t comforting to hear.
I am capable of lying, the Beast said. But I do not lie.
I smiled, or anyway I felt the corner of my lip lift a trifle. “It’s pretty much the same with me,” I said. “I guess that’s why we get on. Get on better than people and Beasts generally do, anyhow.”
I turned to the Envoy and said, “Why was your village a cyst? Or how did it get to be a cyst, if that’s what it did?”
“I don’t know,” the Envoy said. Her voice, no matter what she was saying, was emotionless. She frowned and added, “I have a brother. He is a bandit but he hides with us. He came back with what he had stolen before the fur devoured the village.”
“Is your brother still in your village?” I asked.
“My brother is dead,” said the Envoy. Then, “His name is Arno.”
I thought I heard a tone of satisfaction in her voice at having remembered the name. Maybe she’d recover her memory enough to lead us to the place that Guntram was being held…but not soon, I guess.
How many humans live in your village? the Beast asked.
The Envoy looked at him. I wondered if she saw more than I did. “No one lives in the village,” she said. “The fur killed all of us. All of us but me.”
“Why not you?” I said, thinking about Guntram.
She shrugged. “Maybe it did kill me,” she said, her tone as calm as water in a bucket.
I rubbed my forehead hard, wishing that I could squeeze a useful thought into it. Perhaps in the morning.
“Sir…” I said to the Beast. “Unless you know something I ought to do, I guess I’ll go back to Dun Add. In the morning I might be able to find a note Guntram had left about where he was going. I hadn’t looked hard before because I just figured he’d be back.”
Take this, Lord Pal, the Beast said. A streak of blackness extended toward me with something round at the end. I was expecting it, so I didn’t flinch. It will summon me if you strike the center.
I took what looked like a disk of red jade. It was cold to my touch, but even without entering it in a Maker’s trance I knew that it was an Ancient artifact.
“What about her?” I said. Realizing how discourteous that was, I made a little bow toward the Envoy. “Ma’am?” I said. “What would you like to do?”
She met my gaze for the first time. I understood now why Lady Hippolyte had fled. There was nothing in the Envoy’s eyes; nothing at all.
“I do not wish,” she said.
I will take care of her, the Beast said. If I have more information, I will send her to bring us together again.
“All right,” I said. If he’d been human, we would have shaken hands. “I hope to see you soon.”
The Envoy guided me to Dun Add; then she turned back.
<scenebreak>
In the banquet enclosure the heavy drinking had begun. I met the attendant I recognized at the service entrance; he said Lady Hippolyte had gone off with Lord Boilleau, but that he could find me an even prettier girl if I wanted.
I went to bed alone, which was what I wanted. I slept in Master Guntram’s suite, as I’d been doing since May left.