“Hey there,” I said. “Remember me?”
“Vlad,” she said.
“Good. That means time isn’t—never mind. Can we talk?”
“We are talking now.”
“Yeah. You say you built this place. This ‘platform.’”
“No, I designed it. My father built it.”
“Right. But you figured out how to anchor it in the Halls of Judgment so it could cross worlds.”
“It isn’t anchored in the Halls, it only passes through them.”
“Okay. But tell me something: why is it you keep disappearing?”
“I don’t know. Is it important?”
“I want to understand how this platform works. And that’s part of it.”
“You’re a necromancer?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t think I can explain.”
“Try?”
She nodded. I thought that would be an appropriate, or at least an ironic, moment for her to vanish, but thank Verra, for once the world withheld its irony. “Let’s try it this way, then. You have a familiar. Do you understand the mechanism for how you communicate with him?”
“No, but I’m very curious.”
“Ah. Well. All right, then. Another way: You say I vanish. I don’t vanish, and I don’t even move, really. Not much, at any rate. I turn.”
“Turn. All right. You have my attention.”
“That’s why it happens so randomly. Right now, I’m working very hard to hold myself still, because the least shift in position”—she smiled—“I almost moved just now to demonstrate it, will bring me to another state.”
“I’m still listening.”
“Time and space seem like distinct things, but they’re not. They’re the same. This matters because, where I was born, places and times come together as—” She looked frustrated, then she vanished, but reappeared just as I was preparing a good curse. I didn’t tell her that at least some of that I’d figured out, because I didn’t want to interrupt the flow. She said, “Do you understand what it means to be a god or a demon?”
“Yes. It means you can manifest in more than one place at the same time. Oh. Are you a god or a demon?”
“No. If I were, I would have control of this process, and I wouldn’t shift the way I do.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I know.” She frowned. “All right, I think I can explain it. To acquire powers of a god or a demon means to gain the awareness of the connections between different worlds, and to be able to move among them, and to control that movement. If you do not have these powers, but were born in a place where they meet, you can always see them, sometimes move among them, and only occasionally control the movement. Does that help?”
I nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes, that helps.”
She was silent while I compared this with what I knew about Devera. Yeah, it made sense. But—
“Okay, here’s what I’m not getting. How is it you ended up being born in the Halls of Judgment?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I wish I did.”
Me too. “Maybe I’ll find out,” I said.
She smiled a little. “Maybe you will.”
I wondered what all of this had to do with how I communicated with Loiosh. I wondered how Devera seemed able to move where she wanted to—except here. I wondered how—
“I have another question,” I said.
“I’m still here.”
“This room. The effect it has. How is that possible? It’s not sorcery, because I’m protected from sorcery. It feels like a psychic effect, but I’m protected from that too. Before you said it was the nature of the room itself, but I don’t understand how that’s possible.”
“There is an art to it,” she said. “It has been studied by the Vallista for thousands of years. The windows, the color, the tilt of the chairs and their height: all work to produce the effect.”
“There’s more to it than that, I think.”
“Oh, yes. But you see, that’s the heart of it. Those feelings become part of the designer of the room, and part of every craftsman who works on it. You draw it into yourself, like inhaling, and then you exhale it in your craft.”
“Um. Sounds like witchcraft.”
“The Eastern art. I’ve heard of it, but know nothing about it.”
“I’m not saying that’s what it is, it’s just, it sounds like it. Or I guess feels like it would be more accurate.”
“It is as much art as it is sorcery, but the result is that the feelings become inseparable from the room. As I said before, the effect on you was more pronounced than it would have been on a human.” She was polite enough not to add, “because your brain is weaker,” or something.
“I think I kind of get it,” I said, though I didn’t really and I still don’t. But with any luck, I wouldn’t need to. I’d gotten the answer to the question I’d come for, and that by itself made this an occasion for celebrating if I’d had anything to celebrate with. I needed more of Verra’s wine.
“What do you know of your state?” I asked her.
“I don’t entirely understand it. I feel like I died. But I’m here.”
“What do you remember?”
“Running.”
“To something, or from something?”
“From something, I think.”
“From what?”
“I don’t know.”
“All right. You don’t seem exactly like a ghost.”
“How much experience with ghosts do you have?”
“A little. Tell me something. What do you want?”
She was silent for a long time, then she said, “If I am dead, then I’d like to be free so I can move on, or rest, or reincarnate, however fate should decide.”
“But what could hold you here?”
“I don’t know. It would have to be necromancy.”
“Discaru,” I said.
“Who?”
There’s a particular kind of annoyance that comes when you realize you’ve killed some bastard before you know all the stuff he’d done that would have given you even more satisfaction in killing him. I’d never had that happen before. Oh, well. “Never mind,” I said. “A demon. It’s gone now. The question is, why?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think I do,” I said. “And I think I know why I’m here.”
“That’s something many of us never learn.”
I snorted. “I meant it in a slightly more practical sense. I think you did it.”
“Did what?”
“I think as you were dying, you reached out to the Halls, and got some help.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“Yeah, you don’t remember dying. But I think you were asking for help from a god, and managed to reach Devera instead.”
“Who is Devera?”
“Not a god.”
“Oh. So it didn’t work.”
“I think it sort of did. And I think I’m on track for fixing the rest of it now.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Good. We’re even. Tell me something else?”
“Anything I can.”
“What does the guide look like for your House?”
“Guide?”
“I don’t know what to call it. The Dragons memorize a book so they know how to navigate the Paths of the Dead. The Hawks have a signet ring that acts as a guide. The Jhereg wear a pendant that works like the ring, and the Tiassa get a tattoo that works like the book. What do the Vallista use?”
“Oh. Our key. It’s a piece of linen, usually dyed yellow, with purple threads that indicate the proper paths, usually made into a dress, or a toga, or a sarong.”