Yes. I had that sense of balance.
In the distance, I heard a long and mournful whistle, and a locomotive chuffed by drawing a train around a circular track, with so many cars that the engine was both pulling the tender and pushing the caboose, which was pulling it. I didn't have to look; I knew it had no driver. It was going faster and faster the longer it ran, and I looked away.
"Say, you wouldn't know where I can find the Dinganzich, would you?"
"It is not here the ghost lamented."
"We have only its shadow among us," the Demon said.
"No," I said with regret, "I was looking for the real thing. Next dimension, huh? "
"Nay; beyond them," the Demon commiserated. "I fear, mortal, that what you truly seek is not here."
"And probably not anywhere," I sighed, except inside me after all.
"Or in Heaven," one of the monks spoke up. I frowned, looking up at him. "Thought you guys didn't believe in that state."
"It has many names," the monk explained.
"Look, I gave up on trying to find God a long time ago." The monk shook his head. "Foolish. You must seek while you live, if you would find Him after death."
But that had a false ring to it. "Next thing I know, you'll be telling me the Ultimate Buddha is in Heaven along with Jehovah."
"Nay," the monk contradicted. "They are Heaven, and they are one it."
"One what?" I asked, then felt a chill pass over my back and into my vitals. I tried to chase it by saying, "You would think that way," but I shivered and turned to the Demon. "I think maybe I'd better get out of here. I'm not ready for this."
"Will you ever be?" the cat mocked, but the ghost said, "He may be, if he never leaves off seeking."
"Yet for now, you have the right of it," the Demon told me. "Back to your Ordeal, mortal. Are you refreshed?"
"Enough to last," I told him. "Could you send me back to just before sunrise at the end of the fifth night after you found me?"
"Gladly," the Demon said. "Prepare yourself."
"Hey, just a minute!" I said. "I almost forgot. This other guy in that universe - the one that you said knew about you, too. Who is he? "
"He is Matthew Mantrell, Lord Wizard of Merovence. Do you wish to go to him?"
It was tempting - but there was Angelique, and the need to get her body back. "No," I said slowly, "I'm just glad to know he's alive and well."
"He is," the Demon assured me. "Now let us see to yourself. Lie back and relax, mortal."
I did, closing my eyes.
"Awake," the Demon's hum said right next to my ear. I opened my eyes and sat up - and realized I could sit up. Of course - I had spelled away the ropes. No reason to think they would have come back, was there?
"Thanks, Demon," I said. "I won't forget you for this." I could feel an impulse to laughter somewhere around me, and the Demon's voice hummed, "I am rewarded in your mere existence, mortal, so long as you seek to remain poised on the cusp of paradox. Farewell, for the sun is rising."
I looked toward the east just as the first ray pierced the lightened sky. "Good-bye, Demon," I said into the roseate glory of the new Chapter morning. "And thanks."
Chapter Twenty-Four
They appeared as black dots on the face of the rising sun, then expanded hugely, seeming to zoom out of the ruddy disk - the duke, with a dozen of his men behind him. Most of the men carried shovels, but one of them was nice enough to be carrying a big water skin - probably for them, not for me.
I debated whether I should play dessicated semicorpse, or just be sitting up obviously alive, well, and nonchalant. That last sounded suspiciously like bragging, but what the Hell, it was the truth, so I went with it.
They loomed dark and darker until they were close enough to begin seeing features. That's when I sat up.
They shied off like elephants confronting a lemming, and the duke took time for some loudly intoned verses in his archaic language, with a few mystic passes. I just sat there and watched, studying his technique - but I didn't feel anything, so he must have been working on de-ghosting a risen corpse. Wouldn't have any effect on me, of course, since I was still alive and in my body ...
The duke finished his gestures and chants, and his eyes widened when I didn't disappear or even waver. He came closer, very carefully, as if I were a rattlesnake that might strike any minute, the whites showing all around his irises. He edged up near enough for a close inspection, reached out toward me as if he were going to prod me to make sure I was really there, but said instead, "You live!"
"That's my main occupation," I agreed.
"He should be dried!" one of the boys in the back row muttered, with a quaver that would have done credit to a vibraphone. "He should be leather!"
"I'm not feeling too chipper," I admitted. "But I'm still juicy."
" 'Tis not unknown." You could see the duke was doing a quick revision on his estimates. "Yet those few who have endured till the second morn were feverish, seeing sights that mortal eyes seldom view I felt a chill; that sounded uncomfortably like the Demon's home."
"They told you about that, did they?"
"Some one or two who endured to reclaim life," the duke admitted.
"Most have not lived to see a third dawn, no matter how gently we tend them, for they are the chattels of the god, look you ... "
The god? Suddenly I realized why this man's magic seemed to be halfway between good and evil - he was a pagan and didn't realize the source of the powers he was drawing on. " ...and surely none can speak of the holy sights they have seen, when we find them, for their tongues are swollen." A look of foreboding came over his face. "How is it yours is not."
I didn't see any reason to lie. "I conjured up something to drink."
"That, I did sense - and did seek to block! How is it you were able to go around my wall, and without my knowing of it?" I wondered where he thought I'd brought that drink from - and I began to see what he was afraid I'd been doing. "I went away. I called up some friendly spirits, and one of them took me to one of those places your victims see, but can't tell you about. He and his friends took care of me and sent me back as you see me." I didn't figure I needed to tell him about the time shift - that would just have complicated matters.
The man in the back row spoke up again, his voice trembling.
"What spirits are these he can call upon?"
"Be silent!" the duke snapped, so viciously that I knew he must be scared - and overawed, or he would have thrown a whammy at me.
"In truth," he said to me, "you must be a far more puissant wizard than I had thought. I caught the subtext - that he was afraid I was more powerful than he was. Maybe I could play on that. "I guess so," I agreed. "Things being as they are, maybe you'll go a step further than just letting me live, the way you promised."
"What step is that?" He was braced for the worst.
"A boat," I said. "Nothing elaborate - just a one-man craft, with a sail and a rudder. Say, about twenty feet long."
He looked startled, and another anonymous voice from the ranks muttered, "What will he conjure up to sail it for him?" Now, that was a thought. For a moment, I toyed with asking Sir Francis Drake or Christopher Columbus in for an excursion, but I decided they might be otherwise occupied. "I'll manage," I assured the duke. "You might put in a few goodies, too - say, a week's worth of journey rations. And water."
"Oh, aye!" He nodded his head, most emphatically. "For one who has survived the Ordeal? Oh, most surely."
You bet he thought it was a good idea. Get me out of his hair, for only a longboat and a week's worth of rations? Cheap at the price. For all he knew, I might have been sore enough to turn against him. Which wasn't that bad an idea, now that I thought of it - but I didn't have time; I had bigger fish to spear.