The Visitor (39 page)

Raymond was talking with Arnole and Michael, all three of whom turned as Nell approached, saying, “I'll need your help, yours and anyone else we can get. The coffins will open soon, and we have to bring the people out into the sunlight. It must be done before the horror, the beast arrives.”

“The thing is coming here?” cried Michael. “How did you know about it?”

“SHE knows it,” Nell replied. “Yes, it is coming here. We need to be gone before then.”

“Is there a lift that goes down into the cavern?” asked Arnole, suddenly practical.

Raymond replied. “It will hold six or eight people at a time, once they're out of the coffins.”

“You want the dead out here?” Jackson asked.

“The Council wants the dead out here,” said Nell. “The Council of Guardians. This place is awash in trapped souls.”

“Would someone please tell us what's going on?” de
manded Raymond, querulously. “How did this Council of Guardians get into the act?”

“Later,” said Nell, heading back toward the cavern, Arnole following her.

Raymond found Dismé wandering thoughtfully, so he asked her the same question, at which she took a deep breath and told him what she knew of the Council of Guardians and the book of Bertral, summoning Michael to fetch the book from the saddle bag. Soon the three sleepers were looking through it—Raymond with belief, Jackson wavering, and Janet remaining convinced the Council was pure superstition. The three argued among themselves, finally taking their argument back into the redoubt, from which the elevator rose and fell throughout the afternoon. By late afternoon, all the sleepers had been carried into the light where lines of still bodies lay upon the stone.

 

The doctor had been delayed by copses and collapses on a road he accused of being uncooperative. The obstacles had eaten time, preventing the doctor and the little people from arriving until evening. It was still light, though barely, when the doctor halted the team and stared down into the rocky pit where the seeress had her lair. Laid out on an area of flat, gray stone were a great many bodies, with people moving among them. From far down the road, lanterns were approaching.

“That's the seeress,” said the doctor, amazed. “She's outside!”

“Seeress?” said Bobly, doubtfully. “Doctor, that's Elnith's costume from the book.”

“I'll look her up,” said Bobly from the back of the wagon.

“The book's in the saddlebag,” said the doctor, inattentively.

“Then Michael has it,” said Bobly, in disappointment. “I wanted to know what she's Guardian of.”

“I can quote it from memory,” said the doctor.

“Who are the others?” Bobly asked. “And who's that old man on the high rock, looking at the sky?”

“I don't think I've seen the oldster before. That's my horse, so Michael and Dismé must be here, but whose is that other wagon?”

By the time the tired team had plodded down the several switchbacks to arrive at the cavern, the people there had gathered to face them, as if they feared what or who might be arriving. Seeing this, the doctor stopped at a good distance, jumped down and helped Bobly alight.

“It's Doctor Ladislav,” called Dismé.

Above them, the figure on the high rock was slowly descending. From among the lines of bodies, the seeress came. She walked directly to the newcomers and took the doctor by the hand.

“Allipto Gomator?” he asked, wonderingly, for she was unlike the woman he had last seen here.

“I am Nell Latimer,” she said. “Allipto Gomator was a part I played as a way of getting information from the outside world. I am also, so it seems, Elnith of the Silences.”

Dismé came forward to greet them. “My old friend Arnole is coming, doctor. He's Bertral of the Book. He really is! The Book belongs to him and I don't think he'll give it back.”

Nell was moving inexorably toward the wagon, tugging the doctor along beside her. “Come. I was told to show you this.” When they arrived, she pointed imperiously at the stones.

“Aha,” cried the doctor. “Another one! Or is it two? Who found them? Where were they?”

“Get up in the wagon,” she said. “Get a good look at it.”

The doctor climbed into the wagon and confronted the stone, examining it with curious eyes. There were lights within it, as there had been with the one he had seen before. He wondered if this one also hummed, and leaned his ear against it, listening. Those watching saw his body grow rigid, his face empty, his hands fall limply to his sides as he leaned against the stone, his face pressed tightly to it as it exploded into light.

“Aah,” murmured Dismé.

“It could only be Galenor the Healer,” said Arnole at her side. “These things happen at appropriate times, in appropriate places. Who else could it be, with all those bodies laid out?”

“Most of those are beyond Galenor's help,” Dezmai said. “They can only be helped by Rankivian, Shadua, or Yun.”

“If you're expecting other people, they may be coming up the road,” said Bobly, from beside her knee. “We saw lanterns moving this way from up above.”

Even when the stone had sparkled away to nothing, the doctor did not move from the place he had slumped. His contact with the stone had created no frantic energy as in Dismé's case. Instead it had plunged the doctor into profound concentration which allowed him no motion or speech, though he showed no sign of distress. After a time, Michael laid him flat in the wagon bed and covered him with a blanket. Then at Bobly's suggestion, he drove the wagon down the road and into a grassy cleft where the horses could be hobbled and left to graze. The doctor's wagon was brought to the same area, where Bobly, Bab, and Dismé laid a fire and began preparing a meal.

They were busy chopping onions when the people from down the road arrived, three of them, far taller than most people, very slender, with long, bony faces, each one clad in a tight bodysuit covered by a loose, metallic, sleeveless ankle-length garment that fell straight from the shoulders, one in white, one in gray, one in black. They stopped at the wagons first, their extreme height allowing them to lean half over the wagon bed to examine the doctor.

“Who is this, Dezmai?” asked the one in gray, glancing at Dismé. “He bears our sign.”

“He is Doctor Jens Ladislav,” said Dismé. “I think he's unconscious. Perhaps he is Galenor.”

“Yes, this is Galenor the Healer, in whose charge is the battle against the ignorance and ills of mankind. His is the accomplishment of intelligence when he shall stand before the living and the dead to answer for the wisdom of his people.”

The gray-clad one stood tall. “Forgive me. I am Rankivian who was Jon Todman of Secours. This is Shadua, once Ellin Loubait from Murgia, and Yun, who was Karm Lostig, from the Sierra Isles.”

“Elnith has been expecting you,” Dismé said. “She has a great many of her people around on the other side of the rock.”

“Dead or alive?” asked Shadua, bending from her great height to look intently into Dismé's eyes.

“Dead ones. Live ones. Some who could be either.”

The three went around the rock and across the stone to the place Nell stood, among the bodies. They laid their hands on her shoulders. She stiffened, seeming in the instant to grow larger and taller, and for a moment all four stood very still, as people do who are consulting one another on matters of critical importance. They moved down the line of bodies, Rankivian first, the others following.

At this body or that one, Rankivian stopped and touched the face or head, and at his touch a green flame sprang up and ran flickering across the supine forms.

The others had gathered at the edge of the great rock to watch what went on. “Ninety-one,” murmured Arnole, who had been counting the ones Rankivian touched. He turned at a sound behind him to find that the doctor had joined them.

Jens stared at the figures moving among the sleeping and the dead, murmuring:

“‘Rankivian the Gray, of the Spirits, in whose charge are the souls of those imprisoned or held by black arts, and the
souls of those who cling or delay, for his is the pattern of creation into which all patterns must go…'”

When Rankivian had finished and moved to one side, the white-clad Guardian moved among the bodies, touching some of those Rankivian had touched as well as some of those he had ignored. From those touched, a small smoke arose, white as snow, and the bodies fell at once into dust. Body after body went into smoke.

“One hundred twenty,” said Arnole.

Again the doctor spoke:

“‘Shadua of the Shroud, in whose keeping is the realm of death to which she may go and from which she may come as she pleases, for its keys are in her hands.'”

When Rankivian and Shadua had finished, Yun went among the bodies that were left, his black garments disclosing and revealing as he knelt to touch every person who was left upon the stone.

“‘Yun of the Shadow, by whose hand all those locked from life may be restored or safely kept until the keys may be found.'”

Where Yun walked, people began to stir, to sit up and move, to stare around themselves, as though in a dream.

“Seventy-six,” said the doctor. “Seventy-six of them were alive.”

“What was all that?” exclaimed Michael.

The doctor replied in a voice almost his own, “That monster, the one that followed us, is part of something larger, some kind of devil that's responsible for the Terrors. The Terrors have weakened their life force, sucked them into a halfway state between life and death. Rankivian released them from that stasis: some went one way, some the other. Shadua touched only the dead ones, unknitting them, raveling them, letting their patterns depart.

“When Shadua had finished, the remaining ones were alive, though some were lost in dream and refused to come out of it. Yun woke all of them. From the apparent youth of some of them, they may have waked seldom or never in the cavern.”

Michael said, “There are more alive than Elnith thought!”

The doctor nodded. “Some of them carry wounds of the spirit, however, and I should see to those.”

The doctor did not move, however, and Dismé turned to find him staring at her, into her face, at the sign on her brow. He touched his own forehead, then smiled his familiar smile, took her hand and touched her sign with his lips before moving off. She stared after him, puzzled. He was talking quietly with Nell, who shortly moved away from him to climb the high ridge where Arnole had spent part of the day.

People began to gather at the campfire, for the evening was growing chill. Around them was much coming and going, as wakened sleepers went below to find clothing and blankets, as those already dressed came back up into the world, as food stores were sent up from below for the hungry.

“Has anyone told Elnith about the thing that was following us?” Bobly asked no one in particular. “Seems like she should know, and those new three who just came.”

“Elnith knows,” said Dismé. “The others may not.”

The three were approaching them now, with Raymond trailing behind. Bab and Arnole rolled several lengths of log near the fire, for sitting on.

Bobly demanded, “Someone tell them about the thing.”

Arnole stirred the fire with a stick as he told the story of the three stones, his broken wagon, and his own awakening at the crossroads, concluding, “…Michael gave me Bertral's Book, and Dezmai chased off the monster. Not forever, though, according to her.”

The doctor had returned to sit beside Dismé, taking her hand very gently in his own.

Shadua asked, “Does anyone know what all this is about?”

Rankivian said, “I feel that some great task awaits, but I know…nothing.”

“Nor I,” said Dismé. “Yun?”

“The same,” said he. “Something momentous needing doing, but no idea what. Perhaps the doctor has a better idea of it.”

The doctor nodded, saying very softly, so that they had to lean forward to hear him, “It has something to do with people who should be dead but are not. I thought at first it was just those of the cavern, the sleepers, because the freezing kept them alive, or parts of them alive year after year, century after century. Rankivian released them, however, and Shadua unknit them, but I still feel the pressure of regret…”

“The bottle walls,” cried Dismé.

The doctor's face lighted with sudden comprehension, and he cast a quick glance over his shoulder and put his finger to his lips. “Quietly, Dismé. We may be watched. Or, we may be searched for in order to be watched. Let's speak softly.”

“What are bottle walls?” asked Shadua.

The doctor stared at the fire for a long moment, as though he were having some internal discussion of the matter. Then he raised his head and said clearly, “According to the Dicta of Bastion, any cell from a person is equivalent to the person. This doctrine originated some decades before the Happening and was at first applied only to fertilized egg cells. Later, still before the Happening, it became possible to use complete cells to make clones. There were great religious and political arguments about it, all of which came to an end with the Happening.

“However, during and after the Happening, those who had held the belief concerning egg cells decided that the doctrine logically had to include any living cell at all. If a single cell of a person was kept alive, that person was said to be alive. One would have thought that the survivors had more urgent things to think about, particularly inasmuch as the technology necessary for cloning was no longer available. The Spared, however, made the doctrine part of their Dicta.