I got up. I had to get moving. My mind was clearing. The truth was coming back. I had a desperate need to get to the old familiar entrance to the Palace because I had to get to my apartment in a hurry.
The moon suddenly splashed its light down into the street. It had to be past midnight. I saw the woman watching from across the way. I started to say something to the Shadar but a sharp whistle came from the distance, in the direction the monster had seemed to be moving. Another patrolman needed assistance. He said, "Take care, foreigner." He jogged away.
I ran too, not pausing to take the elementary step of closing the sally door.
I reached my customary entrance. Something was wrong. Cordy Mather's Guards should have been on duty there.
I was unarmed except for a belt knife. I drew it, pretending I was a fierce commando. There was no way Mather's gang would leave an entrance uncovered. You could not bribe those guys to screw up.
I found the sentries in the guard room. They had been strangled.
No need to question the prisoner further, now. But who was the target? The Old Man? Almost certainly. The Radisha? Probably. And anyone else important that they could get.
I fought panic, managed to keep from baring off blindly. Thai Dei and Uncle Doj were up there, anyway.
I stripped the shirt off one dead guard, wrapped my throat. That should afford some protection against a Strangler's scarf. Then I bounded upstairs like a mountain goat who was long out of practice. I reached my own floor so winded I had to lean against the stairwell wall and strain to keep from puking. My legs were jelly.
Alarms banged everywhere now. It was happening as I stood there. I got some wind back, left the stairwell for the corridor and tripped over a dead man.
He was filthy and undernourished. A blade had laid him open from left shoulder to right hip. His right hand lay ten feet away. It still clutched a black rumel. There was blood everywhere. Some still seeped from the corpse.
I stared at the scarf. The dead man had murdered many times. Now Kina had betrayed him.
Such treachery is one of the goddess's more endearing qualities.
Only Ash Wand could cut that clean and deep.
Another corpse lay near my apartment door. A third lay in the doorway itself, holding the door open.
All the blood was fresh. The corpses still bled. As yet few flies were in evidence.
Knowing I did not want to do so I entered my quarters ready to sink bare teeth into anything that moved.
I smelled something.
I spun and stabbed as someone skinny and brown and unwashed flew at me, hit me, threw me backwards. A black rumel spun around my neck but failed its function because of the shirt wrapping.
I hurtled backward into my worktable. There was a sharp pain in the back of my head. Inside I screamed, "Not again!"
Darkness closed down.
Pain awakened me. My arm was on fire.
My crash into the table had overturned a lamp. My papers, my Annals, were burning. I was burning. I leaped up shrieking, beating my arm, and when I had that extinguished I began jumping around trying to save the papers, I saw nothing else and thought of nothing else. This was my life, going up in smoke. And beyond the smoke there was only the house of pain, only the bleak seasons.
Way, way over there, like down a long, cruel tunnel, I saw Uncle Doj kneeling beside Thai Dei. Between them and me lay three dead men. The floor was invisible beneath their blood. Two of the dead showed Ash Wand's characteristic precision cuts. The other had fallen to a cross cut that betrayed a hint of raggedness. The swordsman had been in the grip of an uncontrolled rage.
Uncle Doj held Thai Dei's head against his chest. Thai Dei's left arm hung as though broken. His right surrounded To Tan on his lap. The five-year-old's head was tilted at a bizarre angle. Thai Dei's face was pale. His mind was not in this world.
Uncle Doj rose, came toward me, stared into my eyes, shook his head, then stepped close and wrapped powerful arms around me. "They were too many and too fast."
I collapsed.
This was the present. This was today. This was the new hell where I did not want to be.
... fragments...
... just blackened fragments, crumbling between my fingers.
Browned page corners that reveal half a dozen words in a crabbed hand, their context no longer known.
All that remains of two volumes of Annals. A thousand hours of labor. Four years of history. Gone forever.
Uncle Doj wants something. He is going to make me drink some strange Nyueng Bao philtre.
Fragments...
... all around, fragments of my work, my life, my love and my pain, scattered in this bleak season...
Darkness. And in the darkness, shards of time.
Hey there! Welcome to the city of the dead...
86
The apartment was overrun with guards. What was going on? I was confused. Another fainting spell?
Smoke. Blood. The present. The hard present that breathed pain like a dragon breathes fire.
I became aware of the Captain's presence. He came from the back of the apartment shaking his head. He eyed Uncle Doj curiously.
Cordy Mather blew in looking like a man encountering the worst horror show of a long and unhappy lifetime. He went straight to the Old Man. I heard only "... dead men all over the place."
I could not catch Croaker's response.
"... were after you?"
Croaker shrugged.
"You just moved out last... "
A Guard rushed in. He whispered to Mather. Mather barked, "Listen up! We've still got some live ones out there. Be careful." He and the Old Man moved a little closer. "They're lost in the labyrinth. We'll need One-Eye to find them all."
"The excitement never ends, does it?" Croaker sounded really tired.
To no one special Uncle Doj announced, "They have only just begun to pay." His Taglian was excellent considering he had been unable to speak a word the day before.
Mother Gota came from the back, bent and moving slowly. Typically of Nyueng Bao women dealing with disaster she had brewed tea. This was quite possibly the worst day of her life. It would be a good pot.
The Captain gave Uncle Doj another searching look, then knelt beside me. "What happened here, Murgen?"
"I'm not sure. I walked in in the middle of it. Stabbed a guy. That one. Got thrown across a table. Tripped and fell through a hole in time. Maybe. Woke up on fire." I still had charred pages around me. My arm hurt like hell. "There were dead people all over. I lost it. Next thing I knew it was now."
Croaker caught Mather's eye. He used a rocking motion of his right hand to indicate Uncle Doj.
Cordy Mather asked Uncle for his story. He spoke perfect Nyueng Bao.
It was a night of a thousand surprises.
Uncle Doj said, "These Deceivers were skilled. They gave no warning. I wakened just an instant before two fell upon me." He explained how he had evaded death, breaking a neck and a spine in the process. He described his kills clinically, even critically.
He spoke harshly of both himself and Thai Dei. He was down on himself because he had allowed himself to be tempted into pursuing other Deceivers when they fled. Their flight proved to be a diversion. Thai Dei, who had not been drawn away, received criticism for showing the instant of hesitation that had cost him his broken arm.
"Cheap lesson for him," Croaker observed. Uncle Doj nodded, missing the Captain's sarcasm. He had to face the cruel cost of having allowed himself to be deceived.
There were fourteen corpses in my apartment, not including those of butchered Annals. Twelve had been Deceivers. One had been my wife and one my nephew. Six perished by Ash Wand, three at Thai Dei's hands. Mother Gota gutted two and I pigstuck one when I walked in.