“Fine,” said Nap heartily. “You take them along into the sun and bring them food and water, Dupies. They’ll love you for that.”
“Ooooh, love us all to bits, the big things will.”
“Love us, yes they will.” The two led us off, the one led us off, caroling their—its pleasure. Beside me Dolwys trembled again and again. I wondered what he was thinking. We were too much in evidence to talk. It would have to wait. We were taken to a sunny spot near a trough of water, and a cart of hay was pushed near to us. We swished our tails and swung our muzzles under the pattering hands and constant voices of the Dupies, trying to see through them or around them to what Nap and the others were doing.
“Where is Fatman? Dupies, where is Fatman?” Nap was persistent in the question, as he needed to be to draw the monster’s attention away from us.
“Fatman? Oh, Fatman is here. Maybe in a little while, Laggy Nap. He was here a while ago. Patience, patience. He will be here.”
“Tallman? Is Tallman here as well?”
“Oh, yes. Tallman is always here. Always sometimes. He goes and comes, Laggy Nap. Patience, patience.” The two heads turned to one another, kissed passionately, hugged one another fiercely and went back to their patting and brushing of the horses. They had not groomed us yet. I found myself begging that they would not. This was not to be, however, and I was thoroughly fondled as was Dolwys at my side, with such hungry tenderness that we were both shaking by the time the Dupies had made off and left us. At last we could watch the people of the train, but they might have been made of stone, slumped as they were on the shadowy pavement of the place near one of the great, mouthy doors. None moved except Nap, striding among them, slapping his hands along his thighs, clicking his heels upon the stone, toe, toe, toe, an erratic rhythm. From some hidey hole we could hear the Dupey voices calling, “Patience, patience, Laggy Nap.”
The first evidence of other inhabitants came in a shrill, premonitory shrieking, like a tortured hinge crying stress into the quiet of the place. It came from within one of the towers, behind the mumble lips of the doors. The shriek became a rumble, the rumble a clatter and one of the mouths began to open, reluctantly wider and wider until the eyes disappeared in wrinkles and the teeth gaped wide above a metal tongue extending outward, toward us. Down this ramp rolled a figure as strange in its way as the Dupies were in theirs, round, so fat that the shoulders bulged upward and the cheeks outward to make a single convex line which blended into a spherical form, a balloon, a ball, an egg of a man. He rode in a kind of cup, like an eggcup on wheels, and it was this vehicle which made the extraordinary shrieking noise.
“Oil, Dupies,” it cried. “Oil for the Fatwagon. Oh, she screams, doesn’t she? Makes a terrible racket. Laggy Nap. Walla, wallo, holla hello, listen to me come screaming at you. Oil! Oil! Dupies!”
“Patience, patience, Fatman,” came the answering call, evidently the standard reply to all happenings in this place. The Fatman rolled his eggcup backward and forward, sending all the animals into frenzies at the high-pitched sound, until the Dupies ran from whatever place they had been hiding. They bore a can of oil, and a kind of tag game ensued during which the sounds gradually diminished into almost quiet. It was only then that Laggy Nap came forward once more.
“I greet you, Fatman.”
“Oh, I greet you as well, Laggy Nap. Have you a fine cargo for us this time? Something to please them? Something to make the great, tall things happy? I do hope so. They become difficult, Laggy Nap. Sensitive. Given to fits and hurling things at us for no reason. Oh, my, my, my, yes. They need distractions, Laggy Nap, indeed yes.
“I have most of what I was sent for, yes.”
“Most? Do you say ‘most,’ Laggy Nap? Ah, to have only most may not be enough. It is far better to have more, not most. Well, he will be in a temper, you may be sure. Tallman will be in a temper, Laggy Nap. All the Tallmen. All. He’ll tell you so, even if I don’t.” And the Fatwagon rolled away among the towering arches and the mumbling door-faces, exclaiming to itself as it went, careening here and there, light glistening again and again in the gloom from the bald pate of Fatman where he wheeled his way into the shadows.
I heard Izia say to Laggy Nap, “Why will you not let us go outside? We are no good to you here. Let us take the animals outside the walls. We will wait for you there.” Her voice was hopeless, even as she begged.
“I want you here!” he hissed, fingers jumping along the seam of his trousers, tap tap, full of an energy and rhythm of their own. “Here.”
“We sicken,” she murmured. “All of us, animals, all. In here. In the gloom of this place, we cannot help it. We sicken.”
“So, sicken. I care not whether you sicken. Sicken silently. I swear, I will find that Shifter who sold you to me and sell you back to him or have vengeance upon him for cheating me as he did.”
“You were not cheated, Laggy Nap! I have driven your animals across this world a dozen times in the ten years you have had me. Who treats your team beasts when they are injured or ill? Who gets them across fords they will not cross and up trails they will not climb? Who but me, Laggy Nap? You were not cheated.”
“I say I was because you do not give me peace. Now be silent or burn a little.” His fingers tapped a different rhythm, and she caught her breath in sudden pain.
I moved, and Dolwys immediately put one of his great, floppy feet upon mine, half tripping me in the process. I heard him sigh, “wait,” or some such word, blown through his water ox throat. I subsided, frustrated, unable to do more than ache at her hurt. In any case, Nap did no more than twinge at her, perhaps because his powers were much dwindled and perhaps because the careening Fatwagon came barreling out of the dusk into our midst, its occupant caroling madly.
“Tallman’s coming, Laggy Nap. I sent the call, just as I knew you’d want me to, and he’s coming swiftly. Watch the big mouth, now, Laggy Nap, he’s on his way. Come Dupies, come and watch. Tallman’s coming.”
The Dupies emerged from twilight places, chattering at one another like sparrows, patting at one another with their swift little hands, eyebrows cocked and mouths moving, all the time stroking at one another, pausing only to hug and kiss with that same greedy passion they had displayed toward the animals. They paused before one of the mumbling Tower mouths, waited in hushed expectancy. Reluctantly, Laggy Nap took up a position beside them and the Fatwagon rolled to one side. There was a long hush, then the sound of far off machinery in motion, a rumbling which vibrated the ground beneath us and sent all the Tower mouths into fits of grimaces.
The mouth before us turned downward, an introspective frown, followed by an expression of alertness, wonder, and then it opened to vomit out its own metal tongue, an endless tongue which extruded itself into a platform a little raised above the surface on which we stood. Onto this platform rolled a little car, somewhat like those I have seen used in some pawnish mines to transport ore, except this one was flat. From its prow there stuck up a tall beam, narrow and high. The beam broke itself into angles and stepped down from the car, its top section bending to look down upon us all.
“Tallman,” cried the Dupies.
“Tallman,” Fatman warbled in the same tone.
“Tallman,” said Laggy Nap, his fingers jerking along the seams of his trousers. As for the rest of us, we animals, we pawns and animals, we said nothing but stared and stared. The voice, when it came, was a woodwind sound, a reed sound, deep and narrow-edged.
“Well, Laggy Nap. You have returned. Have you fulfilled the orders I gave you?”
Fumble, fumble, fingers tap tap along trouser seams, feet shuffle back and forth, pale as paper, Laggy Nap. “I have most of what I was sent for, Tallman. The youth, Peter—the Necromancer, he was killed on the journey…”