“Oh, wonder of wonders,” Goblin squeaked, looking the other way. A number of mantas, big blue-blacks, soared off the rosy bluffs, caught updrafts. Must have been a dozen, though they were hard to count, maneuvering as they did to avoid stealing one another’s wind. These were giants of their kind. Their wings spanned almost a hundred feet. When they were high enough, they dove at the Taken in pairs.
The rider halted, fell. He had an arrow in his back. He remained conscious just long enough to gasp, “Tokens!”
The first manta pair, seeming to move with slow stately grace, though actually they streaked ten times faster than a man can run, ripped past the nearer Taken just inside Darling’s null. Each loosed a brilliant lightning bolt. Lightning could speed where Taken witchery would not survive.
One bolt hit. Taken and carpet reeled, glowed briefly. Smoke appeared. The carpet twisted and spun earthward. We sent up a ragged cheer.
The Taken regained control, rose clumsily, drifted away.
I knelt by the messenger. He was little more than a boy. He was alive. He had a chance if I got to work. “A little help here! One-Eye.”
Manta pairs ripped along the boundary of the null, blasting away at the second Taken. This one evaded effortlessly, did nothing to fight back. “That’s Whisper,” Elmo said.
“Yeah,” I said. She knows her way around.
One-Eye grumbled, “You going to help this kid or not, Croaker?”
“All right. All right.” I hated to miss the show. It was the first I had seen so many mantas, the first I had seen them support us. I wanted to see more.
“Well,” said Elmo, while calming the boy’s horse and going through his saddlebags, “another missive for our esteemed annalist.” He proffered another oilskin packet. Baffled, I tucked it under my arm, then helped One-Eye carry the messenger down into the Hole.
Ten
Bomanz’s story
Croaker:
Jasmine’s squeal rattled the windows and doors. “Bomanz! You come down here! Come down right now, you hear me?”
Bomanz sighed. A man couldn’t get five minutes alone. What the hell did he get married for? Why did any man? You spent the rest of your life doing hard time, doing what other people wanted, not what you wanted.
“Bomanz!”
“I’m coming, dammit! Damned woman can’t blow her nose without me there to hold her hand,” he added sotto voce. He did a lot of talking under his breath. He had feelings to vent, and peace to maintain. He compromised. Always, he compromised.
He stamped downstairs, each footfall a declaration of irritation. He mocked himself as he went: You know you’re getting old when everything aggravates you.
“What do you want? Where are you?”
“In the shop.” There was an odd note in her voice. Suppressed excitement, he decided. He entered the shop warily.
“Surprise!”
His world came alive. Grouchiness deserted him. “Stance!” He flung himself at his son. Powerful arms crushed him. “Here already? We didn’t expect you till next week.”
“I got away early. You’re getting pudgy, Pop.” Stancil opened his arms to include Jasmine in a three-way hug.
“That’s your mother’s cooking. Times are good. We’re eating regular. Tokar’s been...”He glimpsed a faded, ugly shadow. “So how are you? Back up. Let me look at you. You were still a boy when you left.”
And Jasmine: “Doesn’t he look great? So tall and healthy. And such nice clothes.” Mock concern. “You haven’t been up to any funny business, have you?”
“Mother! What could a junior instructor get up to?” He met his father’s eye, smiled a smile that said “Same old Mom.”
Stancil was four inches taller than his father, in his middle twenties, and looked athletic despite his profession. More like an adventurer than a would-be don, Bomanz thought. Of course, times changed. It had been eons since his own university days. Maybe standards had changed.
He recalled the laughter and pranks and all-night, dreadfully serious debates on the meaning of it all, and was bitten by an imp of nostalgia. What had become of that mentally quick, foxy young Bomanz? Some silent, unseen Guardsman of the mind had interred him in a barrow in the back of his brain, and there he lay dreaming, while a bald, jowly, potbellied gnome gradually usurped him... They steal our yesterdays and leave us no youth but that of our children...
“Well, come on. Tell us about your studies.” Get out of that self-pitying mindset, Bomanz, you old fool. “Four years and nothing but letters about doing laundry and debates at the Stranded Dolphin. Stranded he would be in Oar. Before I die I want to see the sea. I never have.” Old fool. Dream out loud and that’s the best you can do? Would they really laugh if you told them the youth is still alive in there somewhere?
“His mind wanders,” Jasmine explained.
“Who are you calling senile?” Bomanz snapped.
“Pop. Mom. Give me a break. I just got here.”
Bpmanz gobbled air. “He’s right. Peace. Truce. Armistice. You referee, Stance. Two old warhorses like us are set in their ways.”
Jasmine said, “Stance promised me a surprise before you came down.”
“Well?” Bomanz asked.
“I’m engaged. To be married.”
How can this be? This is my son. My baby. I was changing his diapers last week... Time, thou unspeakable assassin, I feel thy cold breath. I hear thine iron-shod hooves...
“Hmph. Young fool. Sorry. Tell us about her, since you won’t tell us about anything else.”
“I would if I could get a word in.”
“Bomanz, be quiet. Tell us about her, Stance.”
“You probably know something already. She’s Tokar’s sister, Glory.”
Bomanz’s stomach plunged to the level of his heels. Tokar’s sister. Tokar, who might be a Resurrectionist.
“What’s the matter now, Pop?”
“Tokar’s sister, eh? What do you know about that family?”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“I didn’t say anything was. I asked you what you know about them.”
“Enough to know I want to marry Glory. Enough to know Tokar is my best friend.”
“Enough to know if they’re Resurrectionists?”
Silence slammed into the shop. Bomanz stared at his son. Stancil stared back. Twice he started to respond, changed his mind. Tension rasped the air. “Pop...”
“That’s what Besand thinks. The Guard is watching Tokar. And me, now. It’s the time of the comet, Stance. The tenth passage. Besand smells some big Resurrectionist plot. He’s making life hard. This thing about Tokar will make it worse.”
Stancil sucked spittle between his teeth. He sighed. “Maybe it was a mistake, coming home. I won’t get anything done wasting time ducking Besand and fighting with you.”
“No, Stance,” Jasmine said. “Your father won’t start anything. Bo, you weren’t starting a fight. You’re not going to start one.”
“Uhm.” My son engaged to a Resurrectionist? He turned away, took a deep breath, quietly berated himself. Jumping to conclusions. On word no better than Besand’s. “Son, I’m sorry. He’s been riding me.” He glanced at Jasmine. Besand wasn’t his only persecutor.
“Thanks, Pop. How’s the research coming?”
Jasmine grumbled and muttered. Bomanz said, “This conversation is crazy. We’re all asking questions and nobody is answering.”
“Give me some money, Bo,” Jasmine said.
“What for?”
“You two won’t say hello before you start your plotting. I might as well go marketing.”
Bomanz waited. She eschewed her arsenal of pointed remarks about Woman’s lot. He shrugged, dribbled coins into her palm. “Let’s go upstairs, Stance.”
“She’s mellowed,” Stancil said as they entered the attic room.