Among the Powers (12 page)

“‘
Shadowdark?’ the storyteller asked.

“‘
Yes, Shadowdark. He is the oldest of us all,
and the most reclusive. He speaks to no one, either mortal or
immortal. He lives simply, in the forest not too far from here, and
if you did not know who he was you would have no reason to think
him anything but a very tall and ugly mortal man—very tall and very
ugly.’

‘“
You say he is near here?’ the storyteller
asked.

‘“
Yes,’ Rawl replied, ‘but you dare not seek him
out. If you saw him and thought him mortal, it would be of no
matter, but if you saw him and knew him for what he is, you would
die instantly...”

—
from the tales of Kithen the
Storyteller

“Sir, I’m afraid that you must rephrase your
question if you want a coherent answer. Shadowdark is a Power, as
you use the term, but I cannot tell you who he is without further
specification.”

After a moment’s consideration Bredon
accepted that. Not all Powers had neat, clearly-defined roles like
the Lady of the Seasons. He tried to choose his next question
carefully, making it specific enough for the familiar spirit, or
whatever it was, to answer, but general enough to give him as much
information as possible in its implications. “Why does he speak a
strange language?” he asked. “And why does Geste call him
‘sir’?”

“I assume, sir, that Shadowdark speaks
Alphan English because he feels most comfortable with that
language, and that Mr. Geste addresses him as ‘sir’ because of the
great difference in their ages and because Shadowdark has held much
higher social status and rank in times past than Mr. Geste has ever
achieved.”

This answer brought a flood of new questions
to mind; Bredon suppressed all but one.

“How can one Power be older than another? I
thought they were all immortals, created at the beginning of
time.”

“No, sir, I’m afraid you have misunderstood
the situation. The people you call the Powers are effectively
immortal, yes, but they were not created at the beginning of time.
They were born over a period of several thousand years. The person
who now uses the name Shadowdark was the first, and is now
approximately seven thousand years old. I use an approximation
because years differ in length on different worlds, but are close
enough on most of the worlds Shadowdark has lived on to make such
approximations possible. Thaddeus the Black is the second-oldest of
Shadowdark’s surviving children, and the oldest of those children
currently on Denner’s Wreck. These two are more than two thousand
years older than any of the other Powers. Mr. Geste was born almost
six thousand years after Shadowdark. He is the second-youngest of
the Powers, followed only by Imp.”

Bredon struggled with this for a moment.

“You said Shadowdark had lived in other
worlds?” he asked. “And had a higher rank than Geste? I don’t
understand that. I thought that the Powers were the Powers, and had
always been what they are now.”

“No, sir,” the floater replied with inhuman
patience and calm. “The people you call the Powers came to this
world, which you call simply ‘the world’ but which they know by the
ancient catalogue name ‘Denner’s Wreck,’ four hundred and sixty-two
years ago. Prior to that they had lived on a variety of other
worlds before gathering on Terra and choosing to investigate the
lost colony on Denner’s Wreck. As for Shadowdark’s rank, at one
time he was an emperor, absolute master of more than twenty worlds,
before he grew bored with power and abdicated. Mr. Geste has never
held any rank or office higher than his current position as
freeholder.”

Bredon was growing ever more confused. The
floater’s explanations were clear enough, but simply did not fit
with what he thought he knew about the universe or the Powers. An
emperor ruling twenty worlds? The universe as he understood it only
held three inhabited worlds—the one in the sky whence mankind had
come, the one he lived in now, and the one the Powers had come
from, where the gods ruled and where his soul would go when he
died, to either serve the gods or to be fed to the demons in the
wilderness called Hell.

“I don’t understand,” he admitted.

The floater was silent for a moment; Bredon
glanced out the window in the surrounding bubble of darkness and
saw only more darkness. He could only distinguish the window from
the rest of the bubble by the presence of stars in the sky
beyond.

Geste, almost invisible in the gloom, was
still sunk in thought.

“I am afraid,” the floater said at last,
“that explaining the situation will take a considerable length of
time. Your ignorance of history and cosmology presents a
significant barrier to comprehension of the present situation.”

Bredon asked, “What did you say?”

“I said you don’t know enough to understand
my explanations,” the floater explained.

“Oh.” Bredon started to protest, to defend
himself, then stopped. The thing was probably right, he realized.
He was not stupid, but he was very ignorant indeed.

He didn’t even know what he was talking to.
Was
it a familiar spirit? He didn’t know.

He wanted to know, though. He wanted it very
much.

This entire journey had been a flood of new
experiences and new ideas, and Bredon found it exciting and
invigorating, so much so that he had already forgotten his
resentment of Geste, and had come close, at times, to forgetting
that he was here in pursuit of Lady Sunlight, and not for the sake
of the adventure itself. He wanted more. He wanted to understand
what the thing was talking about. He wanted to understand who and
what the Powers were, and what they were doing.

He had always liked learning, even as a very
young child. He had spoken early, and had asked more questions than
the other children. His heritage as a hunter had been a good one in
regard to his love of knowledge; he had been not merely permitted,
but required, to learn the habits of the various creatures that
roamed the grasslands, to learn the patterns of the weather, to
learn to read an animal’s trail. He had been able to study the
animals he hunted—not merely their behavior when pursued, but every
aspect of their behavior, their anatomy, their environment. He had
been free to roam the countryside, to explore more or less wherever
he chose, and he had pitied those people who stayed always in the
village. He had thought that he knew his world well.

Now he was discovering that he knew almost
nothing, and he wanted to learn more. He did not want to go quietly
back to his village and wait there while Geste rescued Lady
Sunlight for him.

“You know, you don’t really need to take me
home,” he said. “I don’t mind coming along while you... while you
do whatever you’re going to do.”

“Who’s taking you home?” Geste asked,
startled out of his reverie. “I never said I was taking you
home.”

“But... but you told the platform to take me
home!” Bredon protested.

“I said take
us
home. I meant
my
home,” Geste replied coldly.

Bredon hesitated, confused, but unsure
asking the obvious question would be wise.

Every story he had ever heard about Geste
the Trickster had emphasized that Geste was a wanderer, that he
roved about wherever he pleased. Other Powers had their holds,
their places of power, but a few carried all the power they had
with them—Rawl the Adjuster and Geste the Trickster were the two
wanderers Bredon knew of.

He could not restrain his curiosity.

“
What
home?” he asked. “I thought you
didn’t have one.”

Geste smiled, for the first time since the
drone had attacked the platform.

“Ah,” he said smugly.

Bredon waited, but the Trickster did not
continue.

“What home?” Bredon repeated.

Geste smiled, and gestured mysteriously with
an upraised finger. “
You’ll
see!” he said.

Bredon felt himself growing angry, but
before he could say anything more Geste gave in and continued.

“It’s true,” he said, still smiling
cheerfully, “that I don’t stay home much, and that I don’t let
anyone else in, as a rule. I don’t suppose my home gets into the
stories you people tell about us. It may well be that even some of
the other Powers, as you call us, don’t know it exists, since I’ve
never held a party there, never had more than one or two guests.
It’s real enough, though, and you’ll be the first mortal to see it
in, oh, two or three hundred years.”

Mollified, Bredon relaxed, and tried to
think of more questions to ask.

They stood on the platform, surrounded by
darkness, and Bredon knew that the world was rushing by them, but
he could neither see nor feel any movement.

“How will you know when we’re there?” he
asked.

Geste shrugged. “I’ll know.”

Bredon could think of no polite way to pry
further into that subject, so he switched to another that had been
preying on him. “Do you really think Lady Sunlight is trapped in
that place, that castle we saw?”

“Probably.” Geste’s smile faded. “If she’s
not, if she’s faked all this somehow, then she’s managed a stunt
that makes any of mine look trivial.” His expression turned
thoughtful. “I wonder... I wonder, could she have put all this
together? Got them all into a little conspiracy to get back at
me?”

He hesitated, considering, then said, “No.
She could never get Thaddeus to help. And Brenner wouldn’t let them
shoot up the High Castle for a joke, and that attack on us seemed
pretty serious. Besides, if it
were
a set-up, they couldn’t
know when I’d come across it. I only tried to find Sunlight to help
you; I might have gone years without checking on her whereabouts
otherwise, so you’d need to be in on it, and I can’t imagine
Sunlight finding you and recruiting you into something like
that.”

Bredon agreed, “Nobody recruited me for
anything. I don’t know what’s going on at all.”

“Oh, it’s simple enough, really. We Powers
squabble amongst ourselves all the time, but nothing much comes of
it; we all have so many machines and devices protecting us that it
would take a real effort to do each other any harm. But now it
looks as if one fight has turned nasty, and Thaddeus is making that
effort against Brenner, and Sheila and Sunlight and the others got
caught in the middle.”

Bredon thought he glimpsed something in
Geste’s expression, something that indicated that the Trickster did
not believe his own explanation, that he was worried, as if he
thought something else, something more, was involved. Bredon could
not imagine what else
could
be involved, but he could not
find the nerve to ask directly, to admit he did not believe Geste.
Instead, he poked around the edges of the subject.

“Do you think Lady Sunlight may be
hurt?”

“She could be,” Geste admitted.

“Is it my fault? Would she have gotten
involved if I hadn’t tried to get into the Meadows?”

Geste glanced at him, then looked away
again. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” he said. “I doubt she
paid any attention to you at all.”

Bredon hardly found that flattering, but he
let it slide as he pressed his inquiry.

“Could she be killed?” he asked. “Can a
Power die?”

Geste laughed bitterly, then said, “Oh, we
can die, all right, but it takes a lot to kill one of us. There
isn’t much on Denner’s Wreck that could kill a Power except another
Power, and even then it isn’t easy.”

“Do you think Thaddeus the Black might kill
Lady Sunlight?”

Geste glanced at him again, his face
unusually serious. “Not intentionally,” he answered. “Are you
hungry?”

The abrupt change of subject caught Bredon
by surprise. “Yes,” he said, realizing suddenly that he was indeed
very hungry.

“Good; so am I,” Geste said. “Worrying
always gives me an appetite. We’ll be at my hold in a minute, but
I’d rather not wait.” He reached out and began pulling foil packets
and glittering crystal vials from the air and handing them to
Bredon.

When Bredon’s arms were full Geste settled
down cross-legged on the platform. Bredon followed his example;
they sat facing each other as they peeled open packets and popped
the lids from vials, and both ate and drank heartily of Geste’s
strange and wonderful viands.

“
The Skyler’s job, of course, is to maintain the
sky, to put fallen stars back in their places, to herd the clouds
into rainstorms, to polish the sky dry after every storm. She
cleans the clockwork that moves the sun across the heavens, paints
the colors of the sunset, collects the stars each sunrise and then
hangs them back up at dusk.

“
It’s a hard, lonely job, and the Skyler is
always much too busy to spare any thought for the mortals below.
She hasn’t even got time to go to and from a home on the ground, so
long ago she picked up an island from the sea and set it sailing in
the sky, where we call it the Skyland. This makes her work much
easier, since she can keep all the stars and clouds neatly stored
away in compartments aboard the Skyland, ready when she needs them.
Imagine what the bins and cupboards must look like, with the stars
twinkling and the sunsets glowing softly, the clouds piled up
everywhere, white and fluffy on top, grey and dripping below! What
a wonderful sight it must be!

“
Of course, it can be a bit startling for people
on the ground to see that island hanging overhead, but it’s nothing
to be afraid of, just the Skyler at her work, keeping the heavens
clean and beautiful for us all.”

—
from the tales of Atheron the
Storyteller

The last crumbs fell from his clothes and
vanished in mid-air as Geste stood and calmly stepped off the
platform.