'Her hair's on fire.'
'That's no excuse,' he replied, and strode off into the forest.
This was an important moment, I knew. If I chose wrongly I could end up regretting the decision I made now, and here, for the rest of my life. I looked down at the Field again, and then back towards the trees. Bright though the designs on Quitoon's scales were, the shadows were already obscuring them. Just a few more steps and he'd be out of sight, and my opportunity for some adventure would have disappeared.
'Wait!' I yelled to him. 'I'm coming with you.'
So now you know how I went traveling with Quitoon. We had a fine time in the years that followed, moving from place to place, playing what he liked to call the Old Games: causing the dead to talk, and babies to turn to dust as they suckled; tempting holy men and women (usually with sex); even getting into the Vatican through the sewers and smearing excrement on some new frescoes that had been painted using a device that allowed the artist to achieve the illusion of depth. Quitoon was irritated not to have been there when the invention had been used, his bad temper making him fling the dung around with particular gusto.
I learned a lot from Quitoon. Not just how to play the Old Games, but how he always said the sport of invention chasing was keener if the human you were playing who really had a chance — just a little one, maybe, but nevertheless a real chance — of outwitting him.
'You didn't give the mob in the forest much of a chance of winning,' I reminded him. 'In fact, you didn't give them any.'
'That's because we were outnumbered. I had no choice. If we'd been able to go up against them one by one it would have been an entirely different story.'
That was the one time I ever really pressed him on any matter of significance. After that we were a much neater match than I would ever have believed. Like long-parted brothers who'd been finally reunited.
Well, that's the end. Not of my life, obviously, but certainly the end of my confessions to you. I never intended to tell you so much. But now that it's done, I don't regret it. I feel lighter, unburdened I suppose you'd say.
Perhaps, in some misbegotten fashion, I owe you my thanks. If you hadn't kept staring at me with those puzzled expressions on your face, I would never have told you one of my guilty little secrets. Not
So, no Secret. Don't even bother to hope. I never promised it to you, and it wouldn't even have come up if I hadn't been telling you what Quitoon said.
All right? Are we clear?
No Secret.
Just burn the book.
Please.
Take pity on me.
Damn you! Damn you!
What do you want from me?
WHAT IN THE NAME OF THE DEMONATION DO YOU WANT?
Just stop reading. That's not too much to ask is it? I've paid the price for getting into this infernal book. You've used me up, demanding my confessions.
And don't say you didn't. You just read and read and what was I going to do? I could have erased the words if I'd chosen to. Or worse I could have erased every other word, so ____ wouldn't ____ what ____ was ____ you. ____ only ____ you ____ be ____ to ____ was ____ a ____ game. ____ would ____ liked ____. He ____ so ____ of ____ righteous ____ about ____ Humankind ____ chance ____ winning ____ bent ____ of ____ ____ ____ armadillos.
See how easy it would have been to frustrate you? I should have started doing that right after you first kept reading. But the words got their hook in me, and once I began telling the truth, it was as though I couldn't stop. I could see the shape of the stories ahead of me. Not just the big stuff — How I Got Burned, How I Got Out of Hell, How I Met Quitoon — but the little anecdotes I picked up, or minor characters who appeared along the way and had some business with me, whether it was bloody or benign, before heading off to get on with their lives. If I was a really good storyteller, I mean a real professional, I would have been able to make up some clever twist to finish their stories off, so you weren't left wondering what happened to this one or that one. Shamit, for instance. Or the Archbishop who'd burned his predecessor. But I don't know how to invent things. I can only tell you the things I saw and the things I felt. Whatever happened to Cawley's people, or the Archbishop who was the father of the girl behind the rock I never found out. So I cannot tell you.
Yet you still stare. Still you look backwards and forwards along the lines as though I'm going to suddenly turn into a master storyteller and invent wonderful ways to bring things to a conclusion. But I've told you, I'm burned out, so to speak. I've got nothing left.
Why don't you make this easy. Just take pity on me, I'm begging you. I'm on my knees in the gutter of the book, entreating you.
Burn the book, please, just burn the book. I'm tired. I just want to die away into the darkness and you're the only one who can give me that gift. I've cried too long I've seen too much I'm just tired and lost and ready to go to my death so please, please let me burn.
Please —
let —
me —
burn.
No?
I see. All right, you win.
I know what you want. You want to know how I got from wandering with Quitoon into the pages of a book. Am I right? Is that what you're waiting for? I should never have mentioned that damnable Secret. But I did. And here we are, still looking at one another.
I suppose it's understandable, now I think about it. If the situation was reversed, and I'd picked up a book and found somebody already possessing it, I'd want to know the Why and the When and the Where and the Who.
Well, the Where was a little town in Germany called Mainz. And the Who was a fellow named Johannes Gutenberg. The When I'm not so sure about: I've never been good with dates. I know it was summer., because it was unpleasantly humid. As to the year, I'm going to guess it was 1439, but I could be wrong by a few years in either direction. So that's Where, Who, and When. What was the other one? Oh, Why. Of course. The big one.
That's easy. Quitoon took us there, because he'd heard a rumor that this fellow Gutenberg had made some kind of machine and he wanted to see it. So we went. As I said earlier, I've never been much good with dates, but I think by then Quitoon and I had been traveling together for something like a hundred years. That's not long in the life of a demon. Some of the Demonation are virtually deathless, because they're the offspring of a mating between Lucifer and another of the First Fallen. I'm not so pure bred, unfortunately. My mother always claimed that her grandmother had been one of the First Fallen, which if it's true means I might have lived four or five thousand years if I hadn't got myself in a mess of words. Anyway, the point is this: Neither Quitoon nor I aged. Our muscles didn't begin to ache or atrophy, our eyes didn't fail, or our hearing become unreliable. We lived out that century indulging in every excess the World Above had to offer us, denying ourselves nothing.
I learned from Quitoon in the first few months how to stay out of trouble. We traveled by night, on stolen horses, which we'd change every few days. I have no great fondness for animals. I don't know a demon that does. Perhaps we're afraid their condition is a little too close to ours for comfort, and it wouldn't take more than a whim
