His Nibs issued an opinion. Imara and several other goddesses engineered this thing. I imagine they just intended to rid themselves of stupid males who...
"Cat already told me that."
... gave no thought to consequences.
"And didn't listen, no doubt."
He ignored me, began spinning out a storm of dreamlike images and speculations. My weary brain tried to translate them, but his thinking was alien because he experienced the world in so different a way. Once my mind processed his thoughts I drifted through a fairy-tale realm where all lies and surface posturings were illusions to be ignored because truths and real motives could not be hidden behind them. "Can you get anything from the girls?"
They are exactly what they appear to be. They do not have the depth to he anything else. They could if they so desire, but they are perfectly happy with themselves just as they are. This should thrill you. For you they are a dream come true, saddled by no more inhibitions than alley cats in heat.
"That is wonderful, isn't it? But, to paraphrase the immoral philosopher Morley Dotes, what do I do with them the other twenty-three hours a day?"
Not to fear. You will not remain amusing long. Some insects have longer attention spans.
Not exactly an ego bash, that. I figured that out moments after meeting those dolls.
My own attention began to slip its moorings. Nothing would keep me awake much longer.
The Dead Man continued to spin confusions off all his minds at once.
"You tossing a mental salad, Old Bones?"
My apologies, Garrett. I was not aware that I was drawing you in. I am trying to identify the missing ingredient. I am reviewing events as reported while sorting the clutter in your head. There must be something you know, although you are unaware that you know it. You would be unaware, in fact, that there is knowledge of which to be aware.
"You're zigging before I even get the chance to zag, sidekick."
There has to be something more to this.
"You've been inside my head. You know I didn't want to hear that. You say nothing is ever what it seems?" It never is when I get involved.
Actually, I fear that, in this particular case it did indeed start out being what it seems. However, as is often the case with both human and divine endeavors, powerful outside forces and normal social dynamics will force what ought to be simple to become complex and devious.
I leaned back and swilled me a long, long draft. Dean had bent that much. I had been so ragged when I turned up he hadn't considered arguing over a few beers. Possibly he received some encouragement from the Dead Man. The Dead Man has no interest in whether or not food or drink is good for you. "At least the original problem is solved."
Is it?
"There's no need for anybody to choose between the Shayir and Godoroth. They don't exist anymore."
Nog is inescapable.
"On, shit!" I gulped air. I had forgotten Nog. Couldn't he wait until I'd gotten some sleep? Then I caught on. "You had me going for a second."
Amused. I see. I do not indulge in practical jokes, do I?
"Not too often."
Consider it a dramatized warning.
"It was you?"
Reminding you that at least one survivor of the Haunted Circle massacre likely carries a grudge.
"Wish I could figure out a way to make this all your fault. But all I can think of is I didn't have problems like this before I moved in with you."
Life was simpler in the old days. Not more pleasant, but definitely simpler. Life in the islands had been simpler still, if pure hell.
The Dead Man made a mental noise that sort of implied intense festering disgust. If the anomaly is there, even I am blind to it. Maybe there is nothing after all. Possibly no one had any real, long-term plans. Self-proclaimed masters of the universe, yet they do everything by improvisation.
"Tell you the truth, I've never seen any gods whose depth was more than a few pages."
Clever boy.
"Yeah. So clever I go out chasing redheads because they look interesting. I'm dead. I can't stay awake another twenty seconds."
Wait.
"Come on. It can keep for a few hours."
The redhead. The shapechanger. Adeth? There is no place for her in the central events.
"I told you that already. She led me into it but hasn't been around much since. She visited me once—I think it was her—when the Godoroth had me. She didn't make much sense. I saw her once in the Haunted Circle. Maybe one or two other glimpses round and about. Talk to Cat about Adeth. She knows something she won't tell me." I didn't bother to glance at Cat. "I'm gone upstairs. Tell Dean to do whatever he wants with these people."
The beer, while just about the most wonderful liquid I had ever swallowed, had sapped my ability to stay awake.
I met Dean in the hall, headed toward the Dead Man's room. I grabbed a greasy sausage off the platter he carried. I gave him a quick review of what I had told Himself. I was asleep before my head hit the goosedown.
56
I plunged down the well of sleep faster than ever I had without the aid of somebody whapping me on the gourd. Only the well became a tunnel. At its far end an incredible woman waited, radiant in her dark beauty. She extended a taloned hand in welcome, offered green lips for my kiss. A snake winked at me from her hair.
"Not yet, Maggie."
She smiled. The tip of a fang sparkled, though there was no light. Still smiling, she touched my cheek with a forefinger—then raked me with its nail. I felt hot blood on cold skin. It was chilly there, though I had been unaware of that until that moment. Soon it was cold beyond any imagining.
Magodor tugged at my hand. She didn't speak. Words wouldn't carry there. She led me to the tunnel's end, high on the face of an immense black cliff, on a constructed balcony overlooking a vast black lake, facing a city on the far shore, that made TunFaire seem like a pig farmers' village. Some towers had fallen. No light showed. There were no lights anywhere. The sun in the sky shed no light either. Neither did three black moons.
Things swam in that lake and crawled across that landscape and flew in that sky so cold it held no air. They were things like nothing of our world, cold things that ate only the strange rays that wander between the stars, things for whom hope and despair and all other emotions were notions without meaning, utterly beyond comprehension. They were all ancient things, half as old as time, and for an eon they had been trying to escape that cold prison. They were not evil as we conceive of evil. There was no more malice in them than in a flood or earthquake or killing storm. No more than in the man who plows a field and turns up the nests of voles and rabbits and crushes the tunnels of moles.
Yet they were imprisoned. Something had felt obliged to isolate them from the rest of existence. Eternally.
Out in the lake something broke the surface of liquid as thick as warm tar. The light of remote and feeble stars was too weak to provide me a good look. Maybe that was just as well. I did not want a good look at something like that, ever.