I found myself not feeling at all awful—for a guy who had just missed falling to his death and had missed drowning only by inches.
That horse had one ounce of brains. He didn't try to fly out of there. As soon as he got his breath back, he let out a couple of forlorn neighs. He seemed surprised when they were answered from above. Fourteen buzzed upward, rattling and clattering and cussing his way through the branches. In minutes he was back, a fresh, competition-class banger in his mouth. "This way." My mount headed out. He was not inclined to hear suggestions or commentary from me.
The beast pulled in his wings completely. He proceeded as straight horse and regained his strength quickly. The cherub led us to solid ground fast. Minutes later, we left the trees. The horse broke into a trot that graduated to a canter and then a vigorous gallop. This continued for a while, the horse not growing winded but not getting off the ground either. We went over hill and dale and farm while Cat and her mount cruised overhead. Our course tended southwest. Time seemed to take the night off. Before long we left the farmlands.
I checked the moon. For sure, it hadn't traveled nearly as far as it should have. We were on elf hill time. And covering a lot of ground. Already we were in territory that remained unsettled because people were too superstitious to live there.
A sudden vague glow limned some hills up ahead. It made them look like they were standing in a circle, looking down at something they had surrounded. "Oh boy." It just got worse. I poked the Goddamn Parrot.
That gaudy chicken dia not respond—except to bite my finger. Evidently we were beyond the Dead Man's range. At last. With the Goddamn Parrot, mercifully, left with little command of his vocal apparatus.
Great. Once again I was getting a lesson in watching out what I wished for because my wishes might come true.
Those hills had to be the Bohdan Zhibak. That name translates into modern Karentine as "The Haunted Circle." Over the ages a lot of really awful things are supposed to have happened there. And tonight, it seemed, the tabled Fires of Doom were ablaze inside the Circle. Fourteen didn't want to get any closer. He was not shy about telling everyone about it.
49
Cat landed. We dismounted. She told Fourteen to shut up or go away. I hung on to a stirrup in order to maintain my defiance of the seductions of gravity. I felt like I had been living in that saddle for days. I glared at Cat. "You saved me from those lunatics back in town so you could sacrifice me out here?"
"Calm down. Fourteen, you shut up. You can be put back away with your brothers and sisters."
That worked on the cherub but not on me, though I protested, "I am calm. If I wasn't a veteran of all that screwiness in TunFaire I might not be calm. I might have a case of the rattlemouth like my buddy Fourteen. But, I mean, what's to get excited about, just because I find myself alongside the Haunted Hills? Just because there's all that doom light burning up out of the ground over there without, I bet, there being a real fire anywhere around? None of that ought to frighten a mouse."
I saw something move across the valley ahead of us, little more than a shadow hurrying, late for work. I didn't want to be on its list of chores.
"Plans change, Garrett. Originally Mom just wanted to get you out of there. But that was before the disaster."
"Which disaster? They come in strings lately." I dug the Goddamn Parrot out of my shirt, looked around in there to see what damage he had done. I wasn't going to die, but I was sore enough that I would have strangled the ridiculous little feather duster if he had not been too dull-witted to appreciate what I was doing. I parked him on my shoulder. He had just enough wit to hang on. Fourteen had a notion to take up residence opposite him. I did not feel guilty when I swatted him away.
"Which disaster? The breakdown of discipline. The squabbling. When they use their powers that way they weaken the walls of reality. What is that thing?" She meant the Goddamn Parrot.
"A really bad practical joke."
"Excuse me?"
"It's a parrot. Argh! Shiver me timbers! Like that."
"I'm so pleased that you can maintain your sense of humor." But she didn't sound pleased.
"It's all I've got that's all mine. What the hell are we doing out here?" Not even Winger would have the numskull nerve to go wandering around the Bohdan Zhibak.
"Because of the holes in the fabric. You saw what was happening. One blew out right in your face. If the walls really break down... "
I knew enough mythology to guess. Cold beyond imaginable cold. Eternal darkness beyond imaginable darkness. The end of the world. But just the unspeakable beginning for the unnamable eldritch horrors from beyond the beginning of time. Never mind it all sprang from the imagination in the first place. "Come on! This is some game between two gangs of petty half-wit gods who needed me to sort them out to see who gets to stay respectable. All of a sudden I've got to save the world?" I'm not big on world-saving. Way too much traveling and not nearly enough reward in the end. Not to mention you don't get much sleep.
"No! Of course not. Don't be absurd! You think too much of yourself. If you keep your mouth shut except when somebody asks you a question and you don't smart off when they do, you may survive long enough to see the world get saved."
Put me in my place, she did. "What's going on here?" We were sneaking between a couple of hills, crunching dry grass and bare stone, in weather that was appropriate for the season. Fourteen buzzed hither and yon, ahead, but very tentatively and very low to the ground. He wanted to be there less than I did. There was an astonishing shawl of stars flung across the shoulders of a cloudless sky. The moon was in no hurry yet, though it had climbed higher.
The light up ahead wavered, waxed, waned. Sounds came down the valley, inarticulate but angry. "I don't like this, Cat. Last time I came home from the Cantard I swore I'd never leave TunFaire again. Till now I've stuck to that." More or less. But no lapse of mine had brought me this far afield.
Damn! This could turn real nasty. I might have to walk home.
"The gods have a secret, Garrett." She allowed the cherub to settle into her arms for a moment of rest. She held and patted him as if he were a baby. He seemed to like that.
"Just one? Then a lot of paper has gone to waste turning out holy books that claim to explain the ten million mysteries... "
"There you go again. Can't you ever just listen?"
Maybe when I run my yap I feel like I'm in control. I needed some control here. Desperately.
"Go ahead."
The cherub lit up a fresh banger that he pulled out of his diaper. He got fire by snapping his fingers.
Cat took the smoke. "Not now. Not here. Garrett, all gods, whatever their pantheon, whatever dogma has accreted around them, came from the same place and started out much the same. You looked into that place a while ago. The gods fled it because it's so terrible. But over here they can't stay functional, can't hang on, without belief to sustain them. Or without drawing power from the other side, which risks opening new gateways. If they have no sustenance at all, eventually they fall back to the other side. Naturally, they don't want to go home."
"You mean they're all related?"
"No. Is everyone in TunFair related? Of course not. They're not even all of the same race. Say this is like some of the humans going off somewhere together, in search of a better life. If they found it they might not want to come back."