panniers, a band consisting of lutes, quintajells and nose-trumpets began tuning their instruments.
“You need not fear the gid,” boomed Melorious. “I have bound it with a potent spell that renders it as docile as a pet thrail. Travel the Great Erm in complete security! Enjoy the companonship of beautiful women lacking all moral rectitude! Come away to Cil and Saskervoy…with first a stop at my subterranean palace for a feast to end all feasts.”
The gid rumbled again, attempting to push the top of its head up through the gorge; a piercing whistle caused it to cease. Thiago perceived an opportunity. He sketched out his scheme with whispers and hand signals. Derwe Coreme looked at him aghast, shook her head vigorously, and shaped the word, no, with her mouth.
“Conscience will not permit me to leave you to the perils of the forest.” A bald, honey-colored man clad in a jacket and trousers of dark blue silk worked with gilt designs, ostensibly Melorious, appeared on the gid’s neck, tethered by a line; he spoke into a small hand-held device. Several other figures, untethered, cowered at his side, clinging to folds of the skin. “Make yourself known at once or I will have to send my minions after you. Wood gaunts and Deodands, beware! The flesh of my men bears a fatal taint that causes demon mites to breed in the belly of whatever consumes it.”
Thiago burst from the thicket, half-dragging Derwe Coreme. She resisted, but upon realizing there was no going back, she outsped him to the edge and leaped, landing atop the gid’s head, now a few feet beneath the lip of the gorge, and sprinted across his brow for the opposite side. Thiago also leaped, but did not land where he had intended. The gid, alarmed by Derwe’s impact, trying to learn what had struck it, tipped its face to the sky, and Thiago came down feet-first near the center of its left eye. He expected to penetrate the membrane, to drown in the humor, but instead he slid along the clammy surface of the eye, fighting for purchase. The gid roared in anguish and tossed its head violently, sending Thiago hurtling through the air and crashing into a ragthorn bush. Screams from the men and women in the panniers stabbed at the air, but he could scarcely distinguish them from the ringing in his ears. Stunned, not knowing where he was, he peeked out and discovered that the ragthorn bush overhung the gorge. A little honey-colored bug in dark blue silks, Melorious dangled from his tether, hanging in front of the gid’s vast, empty face. As Thiago looked on, he managed to set himself aswing by kicking at the gid’s monstrous cheek, but every swing carried him back to the creature, nearer its unsmiling mouth. He had lost the hand-held device and thus his voice (and his whistles) went unheard. It seemed to Thiago that the gid stared at Melorious with a certain melancholy, as though it realized its youth was about to end and was made reluctant by the idea, by the grisly requirements demanded by this rite of passage. Melorious bumped against the creature’s nose and, as he swung out wide again, the gid extended its neck and lazily snapped him up.
Ignoring his hurts, Thiago scrambled to his feet and ran, beating aside branches, tripping over roots, half- falling, intent on putting distance between himself and the gid. Behind him, the creature roared and, though no less loud, it seemed a narrower throat had shaped it — a snarly, grating sound with an odd buzzing quality. There was no sign of Derwe Coreme. He tried to recall if he had seen her clamber up onto the far side (this side) of the gorge, but without success. His lungs began to labor and, after a passage of seconds, he threw himself down under the snakelike roots of a mandouar and burrowed furiously until he was covered with black dirt. A minute or so later he felt a discharge of heat as if something on fire had passed close overhead. He put his head down and lay still for quite some time. When at length he sat up, he kept watch on the sky, picking thorns from his flesh, ill at ease and alert for the slightest sound.
A torrential shower dowsed the first of daylight, a pulsating redness in the east, and thereafter the overcast held. Wind herded black and silver clouds across the sky, accompanied by fitful thunder. Thiago felt around for his pack. It was gone, along with their supply of food and the various runes and devices he had coerced Vasker into giving him. The tower’s summit was visible above a high hill and as he went toward it the rain started up again, blowing sideways into his face, drenching him to the bone. Just below the crest of the hill stood the ruins of a shrine. Its stone porch was more or less intact and beneath it a figure dressed in black sat crosslegged beside a crackling fire. Derwe Coreme. The carcass of a small animal, its bones picked clean, lay beside her. She looked at him incuriously and licked grease from her fingers.
He sat facing her, miserable as mud. A thorn he had been unable to dig out of his back gave him a fresh jab. “Do you have anything to eat?” he asked.
“Where is your pack? Is our food then at the bottom of the gorge?” She gave a rueful sigh, dug into a pocket and handed him a cloth in which a few edible roots and nuts were wrapped.
The roots yielded a bitter juice and, as he gnawed on one, he experienced a sharp pain in his jaw.
She watched him probe the inside of his gum with a forefinger and said, “When we met in Kaspara Viatatus, I worried that you were much like Cugel. The manner in which you dealt with Vasker and the rest reminded me of him. After you crippled the Deodand, I understood you were nothing like Cugel. He does not have your courage and, though your fighting style is not optimal, it reflects a directness of personality. A type of honesty, I thought. Now, having seen you destroy hundreds of lives by means of a foolhardy act, I wonder if what I assumed to be honesty was simply brute stupidity. And I ask myself, is moral incompetence any different from outright iniquity? The result is the same. Innocents die.”
“Are you so naive that you believe Melorious had a festive weekend planned for those in his cages? His spells had bedizened them — they were dead already. Or perhaps it is for Melorious you grieve?”
She seemed about to speak, but bit back the words. Finally she said, “You forced me to jump into the gorge and race across the forehead of a gid. Does this not, in retrospect, seem ill-considered?”
“Risky, yes. But we have reached our objective, so it can hardly be countenanced ill-considered.”
“‘Patience finds a way’, you said. I suppose this is exemplary of the quality of your patience?”
“One must recognize when the time for patience has passed. I made a decision.”
She brushed dirt from her trousers. “Kindly consult me in detail as to all your future decisions.”
The sky cleared by mid-morning and the sun struck shifting black crescents of shadow from the field of boulders that lay beneath the tower; but the tower itself cast no shadow, a fact that gave Thiago pause, as did the presence of a pelgrane that flapped up from the summit and briefly circled above them before returning to her perch. A female and, judging by her clumsy and erratic flight, gravid — a condition that would render her especially vicious and unpredictable. None of this had a discernable effect upon Derwe Coreme, whose eagerness increased with every step. As they drew near, she could no longer contain her enthusiasm and broke into a trot. By the time Thiago reached the base of the tower, however, she was the picture of dismay, darting about, sliding her hands along the walls and making noises of frustration.
“There’s no door!” she said. “Nothing. There’s nothing!”
The tower was a seamless flow of stone, a single unbroken piece more than a hundred feet high, evolving at its top into a bulbous shape — this had been cut into an intricate filigree pattern of windows that would allow someone inside to scan the area below without revealing themselves. Leaving Derwe Coreme to vent her anger, Thiago began a circumnavigation of the base, testing each slight declivity and projection in hopes that pressing upon one of them would cause a hidden door to open. After an hour or thereabouts, his circuit less than a third complete, he heard bellicose voices coming from the opposite side of the tower, Derwe Coreme’s hoarse outcries loudest of all. She had struck a defensive pose, knives in both her hands, and was fending off five men who encircled her. A sixth lay upon the ground, bleeding from slashes on his arm and chest. On seeing Thiago, the men fell back and their menacing talk subsided. They were a motley group, ranging in age from a mere lad to an elderly, weather-beaten individual with a conical red hat, identical to the roofs of the village below, jammed low onto his brow so that wisps of gray hair stuck out beneath it like bent wires. They were armed with rakes and clad in coarse white garments that were belted about their waists with green sashes. Lead amulets bearing the image of a crude anthropomorphic figure hung from their necks.
“Ho! What’s this?” Thiago gestured with his fist and this served to drive the men farther from Derwe Coreme. “Explain yourselves at once.”
The elderly man was pushed to the fore. “I am Ido, the spiritual charge-man of Joko Anwar. We sought only to inquire of the woman in the name of Yando and she rasped at us in a demon’s voice and attacked. Poor Stellig has suffered a dreadful wound.”
“Lies! They laid hands on me!” Derwe Coreme surged toward the men and Thiago side-stepped to block her way.
“Enlighten me as to the nature of this Yando,” he said.
“He is the god of Joko Anwar,” Ido said. “Indeed, it is said he is the god of all forlorn places.”
