Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm (65 page)

I felt a little miffed by his comments. “Why do it, then? If you hate your homeworld so much, why are you in uniform, bearing arms?”

“Your world is paradise and my world is purgatory, but this world is the anus of Hell. I grade on a curve.”

That made sense of a sort. “So they took your clothes away when you got here? Mine, too.”

He pointed his thumb over his shoulder. “My garb is a special elf-weave that lets the mist pass through. It is one-of-a-kind; the hood is a tarn cap and the cloak is a tarn cape. The kid, he said he would get my clothes for me.”

I was about to ask him what a tarn was, but his last comment distracted me. “He? He who?”

“The little boy.”

“What little boy?”

“The boy-ninja dressed in black, the one with the Batman-style grappling hook, can burn open the locks.”

Abby lowered herself from some high and safe place, unharmed (Thank you, God!) and with a little gray bird of prey on her wrist. (Why me, God?) It was Wild Eyes.

Foster nodded. “Him.”

I snorted. “Boy, are you slow!”

“Eh?”

Then Foster looked embarrassed, snatched his quiver off his shoulder, and held it over his crotch.

I leaned and whispered. “About my cousin Alyonushka? You and her naked selfies? Either you marry her, or I kill you.”

It was a satisfying moment.

I stared at the bird Abby was carrying. (Abby also had some stuff of mine and stuff of Foster’s she had pried out of museum cases, and Foster went to find an aisle out of sight to put on his clothing.)

The falcon had evidently been waiting outside the windows but within eyeshot, to see if we would escape death, or, in my case, escape recapture.

I said, “I have about a zillion questions about what the heck is going on here, and why all you guys from other dimensions all live in Tillamook, Oregon, of all places, and why you sent us to this chamber, but all that has to wait. Bird! You do that voodoo you do so well, and make Abby’s magic needle point at Penny, or, if you know where she is—and I suspect you must know, if you are some sort of familiar spirit of hers—we are getting her out of here. Now.”

The bird cocked her head left and right, and said, “You have not the means to free her here. It would be better to retreat, to see the cloudwalker to safety, then to gather forces and return. Meanwhile, a systematic audit of what lies in this chamber is advisable. Many things of which legends speak may be here—”

I said, “That is good advice, so it pains me to ignore it, because I am going to twist your head off your goddam neck if you do not lead me to Penny! I am young and male and violent and stupid and very much in love — so are you going to argue with me?”

The bird lowered her head and ruffled her feathers to made herself look bigger. “Your infatuation is that of a loathsome toad hungering to lick the soaring she-hawk! You—”

I snatched the bird off Abby’s wrist. I have quick hands, but, even so, it was a lucky move.

Wild Eyes drove her beak, sharp as a knife, into the fleshy part of my thumb, drawing blood. It was a pretty deep cut, and might have even severed the nerve. I reached and caught her head in my other hand, and held her beak shut.

“You poked me slightly,” I said. “I hope you feel like that accomplished something.”

Because I cleared my mind and concentrated and the dripping blood dripped back up my wrist and collected itself back into the cut, and the cut closed itself like a tiny trapdoor closing.

“See?”

The bird glared at me. She was good at glaring. She was glarrific.

I said, “If I let go of your beak, the next thing you say is going to be, ‘Yes, sir.’ I am a man and a son of Man, and you are a beastie. Because you are the pet of the girl for whose sake I am suffering through all this rather than beating feet to the nearest exit sign, for her sake, I will spare you, but only if you serve her, and me, by permitting me to find her. Do you understand me, you wretched little feather duster?”

I took back one hand, releasing the beak. The bird said nothing, so I squeezed just a little bit.

“Yes, sir,” said Wild Eyes in a voice that dripped malice.

It was a satisfying moment.

Yes, I was picking on a critter one-hundredth of my size, which made me a bully, technically speaking. So what? At least she talked!

Wild Eyes promised me to perform the task. I either had to trust her then and there, or twist her head off. But no girl ever falls in love with the guy who kills her pet, so I decided that trusting the murder-eyed little crazy bird was the better part of getting my way. She shot out of my hands like an irked arrow.

In the meanwhile, Nakasu had been kneeling by the broken hoop of the Moebius coil set in the floor. He had connected the socket in the hilt of the golden flail to some sort of valve or control I could not see, and he was adjusting the ruby rings on the flail rod, giving them little half turns to the left or right like someone working a combination lock. His chest was frowning in concentration. He looked like he knew what he was doing: I assume his work as a station master included wayship travel through Moebius gates, and maybe the basics of Moebius coil maintenance and operation.

Nakasu stood and twisted the flail. The whole thing, pole and triple arms and all, expanded and went limp, and he curled it up like it was a cat-o-nine-tails whip, except with only three tails, and laid it flat on the floor. He plugged the first arm into the socket at the base of the stock, while the other two arms lay to one side, like the tongue of the capital letter Q. With a surge of auroras, a dark ball appeared in the center of the ring. At first it roared, pulling Nakasu and assorted litter toward itself, but in the same instant the roar became a teakettle whistle, and the wind died.

(I was sort of expecting a spear-shaped Moebius coil to fling itself through the black sphere of the gate, the way it had when Penny opened her father’s crude breadboard coil in the basement of the Haunted Museum, but none did.)

Nakasu bellowed with laughter, and looked around for Abby, who was not there. He waved at me and pointed at the dark orb. We could get out at any time. That was a satisfying moment, too.

He made the gate ball shrink and vanish, and he plugged the other two arms of the flail into the socket, one after the other, to test if a gate would form. I felt a pang of embarrassment, mingled with admiration.

Because I would have assumed that if one of the flail arms worked, the others would work, too. He might be a monster, but he was older than me, and more thorough too.

Abby had picked up the child Ossifrage had cleansed, and all three went outside together for proper midair burial. She had been raised by corpse-handlers, after all, and so I guess she thought no one else would help.

When she came back in, Ossifrage floated her over to a high shelf, and she set to prying open more cases with her red-hot weapon blade.

She lowered herself on a copper chain. For a girl her age, she rappelled like a pro rock-climber or a ninja on a bat-rope.

Nakasu said something to her. She jogged toward me, saying, “The Freedman says he can open a working portal to the last three aeons this gate touched, but he does not know which is which. They are all living worlds, because only from them come these captured relicts and rarities. Whether they are allies of the Dark Tower or enemies, the gate will open directly into an Ur encampment or one of their depots.”

I said, “It may be our only way out. We cannot use it yet. We have to stay long enough to rescue my — um.”

But she was already talking to Nakasu. And, yes, I heard her call Penny my mistress to him.

“Employer,” I corrected. “No, not even my employer, really, the daughter of my employer.”

Abby smiled a beautiful smile and handed me my father’s gear: bulletproof jacket and night-vision goggles and flashlight. The gear had not been in the shelves that fell, so it was all unharmed and in working order. That was a satisfying moment, too.

I slipped the coat on. There I stood, barefoot, wearing a loincloth, in a heavy jacket that was too small for me. The moment was less than satisfying.

Then Abby handed me a leather package.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“It was with your leather-armor coat,” she said, tapping the Kevlar jacket. “It was in the pockets and compartments of the belt. The magicians removed them and cast separate horoscopes for them, but I found them locked in the same case.”

I had not checked all the pockets of the coat hours and geologic ages ago when Dad threw it on me. There were pouches and sheaths hidden in the lining. I had not even known the belt was a money belt, with secret pockets and flexible pouches.

Some of the gear was hidden in the coat, and some in the belt. The gear included a magnetized compass needle sealed in plastic, able to float in water; a cotton square coated in petroleum jelly; a small ferro-cerium rod for use as a signal mirror; a carbon steel three-inch hacksaw blade with a reverse tango-style tip, which could also be used a striker for the ferro-cerium rod to start fires; several moleskin adhesive patches, in case of blisters; over two feet of stainless steel downrigger cable packaged in plastic, for use as a garrote, or to cut zip ties, or to tie things together; Kevlar line of the same length; two small and one large black bobby pins, or maybe they were lockpicks; zirconium-ceramic razor blades; a brace of throwing knives of the same material; five gold coins, big as quarters; and a punching dagger hidden in the belt buckle.

In the largest compartment was a rosary as long as a belt, with a cross larger than my palm, with a centerpiece medallion showing two knights astride one horse.

This was no money belt. It was a utility belt. I buckled it on, feeling like Batman.

The flat wooden case of the sword cleaning kit was in one of the large jacket pockets, as if Dad had just slipped it in there during those last hectic moments while he was sending me off, and I had not noticed. Some Batman. But I had been worried about the sword, so I was glad to see it.

I made some wisecrack about not having any pants, and Abby volunteered to go look for something for me to wear on my nether parts.

It really annoyed me that I was too big to close the Kevlar jacket all the way shut, but then I realized I was thinking in too human a fashion. I cut a big slice of myself out of my chest with my sword, pushed the jacket shut and zippered it up, and then reabsorbed the extra flesh and blood and bone back into myself, ending up slightly taller and slightly thinner. That was really gross and painful, but it was still a satisfying moment, because I realized that I had not realized what the limits were on being immortal.

I was also sick and tired of getting hurt all the time, and I used to play Dungeons and Dragons, and so I know you are supposed to collect loot after a mission. I kicked through the museum of fated rarities looking for armor. There were several helmets and at least two full suits of jousting armor, but they were made for people way smaller than I was.

I scrounged around and found a suit of chainmail made of copper-colored cunning metal, and a coif. (Technically, it is called
mail
, not
chainmail
, you know, but I don’t want you to think I was wearing a bag of letters.) A coif is a hood made of mail usually worn under a helm or helmet, with a collar to protect the shoulders and neck.

The chain links expanded and contracted after I donned it, so that the mail adjusted to my height and width, and the forty pounds or more then fit snugly, so that not all the weight was resting on my shoulders.

There was a heavy conical helm that went with it, but it only had one eyehole right in the center of the faceplate, so I could not use it.

For padding and an extra layer of armor, I wore Dad’s jacket under it, but removed the belt and baldric and wore that on the outside so I had a place to hang my flashlight. I slung my night-vision goggles around my neck, and checked and was surprised the battery was still good—I had assumed my tech gear would fail in the Dark Tower.

While I was still fiddling with the sword belt, Abby returned with a pair of red silk pantaloons large enough to fit anyone who did not mind wearing puffy clown pants, and a pair of sandals too small for me, for anyone who did not mind wearing used shoes. They were old-fashioned sandals, the kind you tie up to the knee, so they would fit on any feet although my big hairy toes hung over the lip.

Abby said, “Before you touch them, know that these are from the feet of the Illyrian. They are ritually unclean, both from her death and her witchcraft.”

I grunted as I pulled the laces tight as possible. “If wearing the shoes of a dead witch was good enough for Dorothy, it’s good enough for me! I even killed her pretty much the same way, come to think of it.” Experimentally, I stood and tapped my heels together. “There is no place like Tahiti!” But nothing happened. (In hindsight, I was glad it didn’t. Considering where I was, I should have been more careful.)

Abby insisted that she was the one to tie on my sword belt and sword. “Since neither your sister nor your mother is here,” she said, “I must serve in their stead.” She put her arms around me to buckle the belt and scabbard on. My grandfather’s katana—which was apparently a magic item—was now hanging in its proper place at my side. Altogether a satisfying moment.

The chainmail made some small adjustment when she hung the sword, and this made her jump back in fear.

“What is that?” she said.

I showed her the one-eyed helmet.

“This hauberk was made for Arimaspians,
Rephaim
from beyond the Riphaean Mountains,” She said. Rephaim meant giants, but it also meant tall men, sort of the way our word dwarf both means a short man and a magic creature. “They are in eternal war for the Cunning Metal, the living gold, that runs through the mountains with a race of flying horse-monsters called Twyforms or Gryphons, and in the struggle, both sides display insane cupidity, and so such alloy is frequently cursed and disloyal!”