Read Online The Incompleat Nifft by Michael Shea - Free Book Online Page B

she stood up and watched what passed. Through all her journey, she stood by me and watched, and her expression scarcely changed. At the very last, when we stood by the chasm of the Winds of Warr, I pointed to the staircase that led down their brim. She stepped from the chariot gravely. She turned back to me and gave me a deep reverence, dropping to one knee. She did it like a queen! Then she strode down those steps, elegant and grim. But at the bottom, on the brink of the pit, hauteur alone was not enough to express her wrath. She stopped and raised both fists above her head and shook them. Throwing back her head, she howled. Then she dove from the steps, head-first into the black hurricane."
    While the giant spoke, Defalk sat down on the deck and rested his head in his hands. How much can you hate weakness? I felt sorry for him. But then the first thing he said was:
    "What does she want with me now? Is she going to take my life?"
    "We don't know," said Haldar. Strictly speaking, we didn't. But could there be any doubt?
    After a moment Defalk, still not looking up, asked: "What has she paid you for this service?"
    Haldar gave a disgusted snort. The reaction was odd—after all, we were working for hire, weren't we? I answered:
    "She is giving us the key to the Marmion Wizard's Mansion. It is, somehow, in her possession. She showed it to us." I looked hopefully toward the Guide as I said this. He volunteered nothing about how one of the dead might obtain the Key. After a silence, barely audibly, Defalk said: "I see."

VI
     
    The soul-sewer branched and veered and branched. We steered through the reeking maze for an endless time. Defalk sat hunched, no doubt remembering things. Haldar stood rapt at the Guide's side, his eyes straining with an avid light at the semi-dark.
    I could not share his calm rapture. It seemed to me the current had begun to quicken, and that the gloom was thinning . . . and somewhere ahead there was a sound, too faint to read, but growing. I was not at ease. It made me realize how separate our thoughts had really been in the days just past, even during our closest planning. For my friend this exploit was, from its first proposing, a feat of devotion, a chivalrous quest. He loved me well, and made a point of gloating over the prize we would win—but he did this out of concern for my feelings, lest he should seem to scorn the baseness of my motive by proclaiming the disinterest of his. Splendid Haldar! He was transparent to me. I saw then that when the moment came he would, on oath, renounce his share in the Key, and would demand that Dalissem bestow it formally on me alone. Thus did he mean to declare his love to that queenly ghost. For him, Defalk was a cur, and Dalissem nearly a divinity.
    But I was in it for the Key. For me, Defalk's suffering was an ugly necessity, and Dalissem was a splendid but utterly self-willed spirit. And most important, nothing was to be taken for granted in that place. In Death's world, any covenant, no matter how mighty, can fall null—any spell, however cogent, can be abrogated. The only certain law in that place is Death itself.
    Just then my uneasiness was getting a lot of encouragement. The current was unmistakably increasing, for the ectoplasmic sewage had begun to seethe with alarm and resistance. At the same time it was getting lighter—a yellowish light that thickened like mist. The ribbed vaults above us showed clearer. I discovered, with horror, that the Guide had no eyes. His sockets were wrinkled craters filled with grey smoke.
    I was sure he had eyes in the death room—or had he? I can't explain why it unnerved me so—I gaped at him. He looked back at me, waiting.
    "What is that noise, Lord Guide?" I stammered.
    "It is the entrance to Death's domain," he said. That it well might be. It was a holocaust of cottony sound—a mumbling roar of waters. The Taker shipped his pole. All around us, the soul-trash—all the bugfaces and rotten monocular snouts and