The warder’s brow smoothed; he nodded approval. “Aye, there, good fellow, talk him into it, if you can.”
“To be sure, Majesty, to be sure!” Dirk salaamed, turned to hiss into Gar’s ear. “Come out of it, idiot! What’re you trying to do—get yourself force-fed?”
Gar’s head turned, slowly, almost mechanically, as though it were separate from his body. His voice was a hoarse, grating whisper. “The walls …”
“Yeah, the walls. Well, the hell with the walls! Eat the damn food, man, or they’ll ram it down your throat!”
Gar’s eyes stayed glassy.
Dirk scowled to hide abiding fear. “Come on! What’s the matter with you?” He slapped Gar’s cheek and cried, “Wake, coz! For the moon, that startled into flight, the sun before him, from the lake of night …”
He hoped Khayyam’s ghost wasn’t listening; but it seemed to work. Something seemed to click behind Gar’s eyes; they seemed to focus suddenly. He turned, frowning, to stare at the bowl of food, Then he shuddered and began to eat.
The warder nodded approvingly, climbing to his feet. “You’re a proper man, though a daft one,” he said to Dirk. “Care for your brother, then. You seem to have wits enough for that, at least.”
At the far end of the chamber, a man screamed, rearing up to claw at the air, straining against the chain harnessing his shoulders. The warder looked up in alarm and leaped over to him. Another attendant slammed into the man from the other side. They grabbed the ancient’s arms, wrestled them down around behind him. “Come then, old Jean, come,” the warder growled in a tone that was meant to soothe. “It’ll pass, Jean; it always has. They’ll go away …”
Dirk turned away, stomach rebelling, as the old man collapsed, sobbing, sliding back down the wall, drooling and trembling. Dirk looked up at Gar, and felt alarm grab him. The big man had frozen again, into stone, eyes squeezed shut, lips parted, breath hissing in and out. Sweat dripped from his temples.
Dirk scowled. “Hey, then! What’s the matter with you?”
“I can’t …” Gar swallowed thickly. His eyes opened; he gave his head a quick shake. “I can’t … not much longer …”
With a heave, he rolled forward to his knees, rolled back to sit on his heels with only the soles of his feet in contact with the floor. “The stones, dammit! I can’t take them! The clamor in here is bad enough, but the stones! Ten times worse—it’s too much! They … the emotions … screaming … rage, despair, the …” He swallowed, and was stone again, his mouth moving as though trying to force sound out.
Dirk felt a thrill of panic, and under it, the dread certainty that, if Gar hadn’t been crazy when he came in here, he would be when he went out. This was just the place for it.
He tried to calm himself—maybe it was all an act. Too good an act, something inside him prodded. He’d heard of such cases—actors who really began to believe they were the characters. And if the character was insane …
The gloom in, the chamber deepened into night.
A single lamp burned at the far end of the hall, where two warders sat playing cards. The inmates lapsed into slumber—most of them, at least. A few began to moan, rocking themselves from side to side. Several lay huddled against the wall, sobbing with the tearing agony of total despair. Now and again one sprang to his feet with a scream, arms windmilling as he fought invisible demons. The two warders were at his side almost before the first long scream was ended, hedging him in and keeping pace with him as he turned, so he couldn’t harm his neighbors, until the spasm passed and the patient sank into a sobbing puddle.
It was a night of nightmare, lit only by the flickering rays of one feeble lamp, filled with wails and the howling of demons—and Gar reached over to slap Dirk on the arm. “Talk—anything! Give me bits, anything to chew on.”
Dirk stared.
Then he shook himself; he could remember when he’d needed distraction. “Okay. Obviously there’s no psychology here, not even an attempt to understand any of what’s in their minds; the authorities stick on the label ‘mad,’ and don’t question any further. After all, everyone knows there’s absolutely no understanding of a madman’s mind, right?”
Gar nodded. “Right. But—common sense, at least? Her!”
He jabbed a finger out into the gloom; Dirk looked across the way, and saw a girl, maybe twenty, who would have been beautiful anywhere else—hair golden under the crust of filth, heart shaped face, high, full breasts and a tapering waist, which were easy to see, because her gray tunic was ripped in a dozen places, shredded. Her eyes were glazed, vacant; and Dirk might have been wrong, but he thought Gar winced as he looked at her. “Don’t they wonder why a beautiful girl would despair?” Gar grated. “Can’t they see why—”
The girl erupted in a sudden, soundless fury, her face contorted in a silent scream, ripping and tearing at her clothes .as though they were on fire.
Gar snapped his head down, huge fingers digging into his scalp, eyes squeezed shut, body rolled into a tight ball balanced on the balls of his feet, until the girl had relaxed into silent, shuddering sobs. Then, slowly, he looked up, breathing hoarsely.
“What’s the matter?” Dirk said gently. “Couldn’t you even stand the sight of her?”
Gar shook his head, looking up wide-eyed, gasping. “No. It was … what was going on in her mind.”
Dirk frowned. What kind of figure of speech was that?
“It gets worse.” Gar waved vaguely toward the right, past Dirk, not looking. “There’s a man down that way who’s watching her like a gorgon, and his tongue is thick in his dripping mouth.”
Dirk turned and looked, frowning. He could just barely make out the humped body of a Merchant who sat tailor fashion, leaning elbows on knees, staring at the girl in rapt fascination, lips parted, a thin thread of saliva hanging from his lower lip.
Gar hadn’t even looked. How had he known? Noticed the guy earlier, probably.
“Don’t they see what she’s doing to him?” Gar rasped. “The fantasies he’s building around her, the constant tension she keeps him at?”
Dirk turned back to him, scowling. “How do you know that?”
Gar shook his head impatiently, went on as though he hadn’t heard. “And there’s one down beyond him, gene damage—from inbreeding—with only the stump of a leg, and it’s not amputation, born that way—and with a piece of his mind missing, too; born without a left frontal lobe.”
Dirk peered through the murk, but this one he couldn’t see at all. Could Gar have that much sharper eyes?
No. Impossible.
He turned back to Gar. “You can hear their thoughts, can’t you? And you can’t shut them out—not this many, this strong.”
Gar shook his head, staring, glassy-eyed. “That’s not what’s doing it. Not just that much, alone. It’s the stones, you see.” He rose into a crouch, shifting from foot to foot, picking first one off the floor, then the other, in a sort of shuffling dance. “It’s been stored in the stones of this place, year upon year, agony and despair, piling up into centuries, and I can’t get away from them!”
Dirk glanced nervously at the warders. “Keep your voice down.”
“If I just didn’t have to touch them, if I could get something between me and them, a good thick board maybe, but no, that wouldn’t help, they’re coming at me from all sides, pushing and shoving into my head, and I can’t … can’t … I can’t take it!” He whirled about, clutching at his head, spinning around against the chain. “Stop them, damn it, stop them; shut them up! I can’t take it! I’ve got to get … out of here!” He grabbed the chain in both hands and set his foot against the wall.—“I can’t take it!”