Chapter 7 #5
From Lax to Corvine on the old salt road, then branch off and follow the river to Stralt, maybe hitching a lift on a charcoal barge; from Stralt to Iccen, and then we’re practically there.
Meanwhile, there’s Grimhild, waiting patiently for us on the quay at Brachen.
I looked out over the rail and saw a boat.
She came over and stood next to me. “Just think,” I said.
“If I’d listened to you, we’d have made the crossing in something that size, rather than a luxury galley.
In a fishing boat, you can feel every little ebb and flow, right up through the soles of your feet. ”
“All boats are horrible,” she said. “Are you sure we’ll be all right? That thing doesn’t look very safe.”
I thanked the galley captain, who gave me a sad look.
Then we scrambled down a short ladder into the fishing boat.
There were eight oarsmen and an old man sitting at the back holding a bit of string.
When we reached the shore I gave each of them a quarter-gulden, out of the funds I’d requisitioned from the archduke’s treasury.
It’s no hardship to be generous with someone else’s money.
“Is there anywhere we can get something to eat?” I asked.
Sure, they told me, if you’re not fussy, and pointed to a low wooden shed with a bowed roof. Is there anywhere else? No.
So we knocked at the door of the wooden shed. A thin woman opened it. “What do you want?” she said.
“Food,” I said. “Beds for the night.”
She thought about it for a moment. “All right,” she said, and let us past, closing the door behind us. It was dark inside, with only the light of one small fish-oil lamp. I could see four or five men and a woman sitting round a table. Then Svangerd screamed, and dropped to her knees.
The men round the table jumped up. Svangerd was on the ground, twisting and wriggling and kicking, as if she was fighting with half a dozen invisible enemies. The nearest doctor, I was thinking, and then somebody hit me.
When I woke up I was tied to a chair. Someone had opened the shutters. It was bright daylight in the hut.
The woman was sitting on a stool, looking at me. She was tall and thin, with short white hair and eyes so brown they practically glowed. “How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Dizzy,” I said. “My head’s splitting. I think I might be about to throw up.”
“You’re lying,” she pointed out. “Listen. I have no quarrel with you. We’re on the same side.”
“Grimhild.”
“Yes.”
“What have you done with—?”
“Nothing. I’ve done a preliminary assessment, and we can’t do an extraction in the field, we need to take her somewhere with the proper facilities. If we tried it out here, there’s a sixty per cent chance we’d kill her, or do irreversible damage.”
Oh, I thought. “Like you care.”
“Don’t be stupid. I brought Svangerd into the Order, I love her. I’m going to save her.” She looked at me, as if I was the reason the door wouldn’t shut properly. “Isn’t that what you want?”
“Never mind about me,” I said. “It’s what you want. The demon.”
“Hardly. That’s like a doctor performing surgery because he wants the tumour. And a kitchen table in a hut isn’t a good place to do a difficult and dangerous operation. Don’t you get it? I’m going to save her. What has she been telling you?”
I decided not to answer that.
“You’re not to blame,” she said. “If you’re not used to dealing with them, they can twist and shape your mind like a smith working hot metal. But that’s fine. It led you astray. It could happen to anyone.”
“In that case,” I said, “why am I tied to a chair?”
She smiled. It reminded me of my own efforts to copy a page of text in Echmen characters, which I can’t read. “Because you were under the influence of a very powerful and malignant demon. What I’m trying to assess is whether you still are.” She paused, and frowned. “You don’t believe, do you?”
“Believe you? No, not really.”
“You don’t believe in the Invincible Sun,” she said, “or His angels, or demons, or the Prince of Darkness. I find that very strange, after what you’ve experienced recently.”
“You can read my mind.”
“Good heavens, no. But when I probed the demon, there it was. I’m guessing that’s why it found it so easy to seduce you.
” She studied me some more, and came to the conclusion that she didn’t like me very much.
“Properly speaking,” she said, “I ought to report your atheism to your superiors, not to mention your feelings for Sister Svangerd. However, I have far more important things to think about. You’ll stay here for three days.
By then, you should have had a chance to recover from what the demon did to your mind.
I’ll leave one of my men here to watch you, and if he thinks you’re safe to be loose, he’ll let you go. ”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“He’ll arrange for you to be taken to Beal Devoir, where there are specialists who can help you.” She stood up. “Don’t worry. It may take a while, but we can cure you. We have a lot of experience.” She came closer and peered into my face. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine.”
“No headache, nausea—?”
“No.”
“Splendid. My men will put a hood over your head. It’s not a pleasant experience, but it’ll help you heal faster. Try and keep still and quiet. Normally I’d recommend intensive prayer, but I don’t suppose you’ll do that.”
“No.”
She walked out of my line of sight, and a few moments later the bag went down over my eyes and chin, leaving me alone with my least favourite person in the world at that particular moment, namely me.
Because – the hell with it. You don’t have to be Saloninus to figure out why.
Everything Grimhild had said made perfect sense. It had been Grimhild who saved Svangerd from the world and from herself. She’d said “I love her”, and I believed her. Who was it who told me the demon couldn’t be got out of Svangerd without killing her? The demon.
Look at it from another angle. I was still alive.
If Grimhild was what the demon had led me to believe, she’d have had my throat cut while I was out cold, out of simple efficiency.
There was nothing to be gained from leaving me alive.
I was an awkward complication, a nuisance, of no value to anyone; so much simpler just to get rid of me, like the skin and the bones.
The only reason you’d have for not killing me would be respect for human life and obedience to the rules; credit Grimhild with those and you’re over halfway to accepting her at her word.
In which case, I’d been aiding and abetting the demon in staying inside Svangerd’s body, a torment for her worse than anything I could possibly imagine.
I’d been responsible for the deaths of – let’s see now, the rustic goons in the derelict barn, the Order monks in the wood with the wild boar, a squadron of cavalry and the Flos de Glaia; I gave up, it was too depressing.
How had that happened? I’m not completely stupid, not all of the time.
So a demon had misled me. What sort of idiot believes what he’s told by a notoriously malicious parasite?
It was like throttling my sister because a tapeworm told me to.
And the only reason I’d listened to the tapeworm was because of my illicit lust for a nun. It just gets better and better.
Since I was being honest with myself – why not?
Not just my illicit lust for a nun. Also because – I couldn’t squirm effectively because of the ropes, but I did my best. Because I was attracted to the demon, the parasite, the worm in the bud.
Because she, it, was bright, smart, charming, funny, all the things – go on, admit it – that Svangerd wasn’t; but that personality in Svangerd’s beautiful body…
Trapped in a bag with only myself for company. I don’t believe in hell, but if there is such a place, I know what it’ll be like.
I was sitting there, thinking whether being trapped inside a bag with yourself is like being trapped inside someone else’s body, with them in there with you, hating you to death. If so, I didn’t envy the demon one little bit.
“Quiet,” hissed a voice. “Don’t say anything.”
After a while, the inside of the bag becomes the whole world. I did as I was told.
“I’ll get you out of this, don’t you worry. I just need to—”
I waited. No more voice.
It had been a nice voice. Female, soft and low, strong but sweet, like Blemmyan wine. The difference was, I realised, that a demon can see out of its host’s eyes. It doesn’t have to sit there in the dark.
Time doesn’t work the same inside a bag.
Its operation is directly connected to what you’re thinking.
When you’re wondering if they’re going to cut your throat now, each second is very long.
When you drift away into contemplation of some issue, good versus evil or the complete shambles you’ve made of your life, time foreshortens dramatically, like perspective in a thousand-year-old Mannerist icon.
There’s a bit in a Saloninus play where someone says that in the presence of the infinite, space and time become one.
I never had a clue what that was supposed to mean until I spent quality thinking time inside a bag.
Now I know. What Saloninus should’ve said was, space and time become one, under the influence of thought.
But that wouldn’t have rhymed or scanned.
“Keep still,” the voice said, some time later. “I’m going to cut the ropes.”
I felt a tug on my wrists, and the sensation of reciprocal movement, consistent with someone sawing at a thick rope with a not particularly sharp knife. Svangerd puts a razor edge on all her knives, so when she cuts rope it’s more of a slicing action, like carving meat.
I heard a scuffle of feet, then a grunt, then a crash, then a thump. Then nothing. Then the voice said, “Was there just the one guard?”
“Yes,” I said. “I think.”