Chapter 11 #3
I sat eating them on the steps of the Four Winds bridge (also on my must-must-see list), and I took a moment to think about things without Svangerd buzzing in my ear.
Quite probably, I thought, the old man had been right.
By not acting, and then by interfering, I’d most likely doomed generations yet unborn to unspeakable misery.
But that’s the long game for you – if you believe in it, which I didn’t, though it was beginning to make an eerie sort of sense.
And the whole point about the long game (if you believe in it) is its fluidity.
Something would turn up, or someone would turn it up with a big wrench, because the fated inevitable never does happen.
The fated inevitable, according to the rules of the game, is the triumph of virtue, justice and goodness – because it’s His chessboard and His pieces – but in a world without end (amen), the inevitable outcome is eternally, indefinitely postponed …
On those terms, I decided, I could almost bring myself to believe in God.
Almost, but not quite. Suppose you were an ignorant savage and you were walking along a beach and you found a Mezentine mechanical clock; and its works were rusted solid after being in the salt water for a hundred years, so it wasn’t working and would never work again.
You’d pick it up and you’d say, Oh, just another useless chunk of corroded minerals, and you’d be right.
The spice buns were particularly fine, so I went back and got another half dozen.
Eating them under the arches of the gateway to the Gardens of Sulpicius (number seven on my list), I tried to figure out where we were, godawful-mess-wise.
There wasn’t going to be a schism, so the dreadful thing I’d done, buying a box in a junk shop in Mavais, was effectively cancelled out.
We hadn’t murdered the princess; we hadn’t murdered anybody, which was unusual for us when we’re out and about for any length of time.
The weird alchemy of circumstance had apparently transformed Vitimer from a self-serving placeholder into some kind of holy prophet; well, stranger things had happened, see above, and Holy Mother Church was now being guided by someone that everybody seemed to approve of, in itself a miracle of no small magnitude.
As for the walkers, I reckoned I could safely leave them, or him, to Rotlaug of Unnsvik, certified hero and soon to be the richest man ever to come out of the Mesoge, the ultimate local boy made good.
The buzzing swarm of unanswered questions didn’t really bother me any more, so long as I could safely afford to ignore them.
They involved Home, which is a sore topic with me at the best of times, and for all my scholarly curiosity, I could honestly say that I didn’t want to know.
Somehow, with precious little valuable input from me, the mess I’d started had smoothed itself out, I was free to go, and the rest of the day was my own.
For Svangerd – No, I thought, things have turned out pretty well for her, too.
She’d be able to see it in good old-fashioned dualistic terms, which is how she likes things to be.
Evil reared its ugly head, but Mother Krimhild gave her life to save us all, and being Mother Krimhild’s particular pet made her something special – blessed, I believe, is the technical term.
I didn’t begrudge her that, not in a million years.
Life will never be easy for Svangerd, or pleasant, or anything less than a painful, gruelling struggle, in which you fight and never count the cost or heed the wounds; all that matters is winning, and I reckoned she’d be entitled to go home claiming a victory.
The unanswered questions wouldn’t bother her too much, because you don’t worry about that sort of thing when you’ve won.
One of the pamphlet stalls at the south gate of the gardens was selling a Life of Mother Krimhild, written on scraps of triple-skived goatskin in tiny letters with the ink barely dry, a bargain at half a denier.
I bought a copy, to give to Svangerd, and sat reading it as the sun started to go down.
Born to humble parents in a remote village, heard the call when she was twelve years old, novitiate at Adlersfell, meteoric rise to be prioress of Stikeslad before she was thirty; all good stuff, and probably a certain amount of it was true, though I recognised some elements from books written a thousand years ago: the miracle at the washing-pool, for example, and the feeding of the forty pilgrims. Still, it was possible that history had repeated itself, or that Krimhild had done these things in conscious imitation of sacred exemplars, or maybe it was just coincidence, or some formula or gambit in the long game.
None of my business, that was for sure, and I definitely wouldn’t spoil things by pointing any of that stuff out to Svangerd.
I went back to my room and lit a lamp to finish reading the pamphlet.
I knew how the story ended, of course, but I wanted to see what sort of take the pamphleteer had on it; had he turned the speech to the council and the graveside reconciliation into full-blown miracles, or was that a step too far for the present?
I was just getting to the good bit when I heard the most appalling racket. Appalling because familiar.
Oh, come on, I thought. But no, it’s no bad thing, because Dad would’ve been a loose end, but now Rotlaug will deal with him and that’ll be that. Good old Rotlaug, and how lucky we all are that he’s here to protect us.
Then the door of my room flew open, and something huge was in there with me. My lamp had gone out. “Dad?” I said.
Something grabbed me. I remember being ground against a wall, and all the air being forced out of me. Then something landed on my head. I felt oversized fingertips on the left side of my skull, and a giant thumb on the right. Nuts, I remember thinking, or words to that effect.
Then a roaring noise, and the fingers let go.
Then a colossal thump, as two massive, enormous creatures crashed into each other.
They were between me and the door. Then they were fighting, like two stags in the rut, hammering into each other; no attempt at skill, just what Rotlaug called brute force.
If one of them were to be pushed back and step on me or stumble against me, I’d be crushed, all my thin, fragile little bones, like a bird in a child’s ignorant fist. There was nowhere I could go and nothing I could do, and the outcome would be pure chance.
One of the monsters was winning. It slammed the other one against a wall, which cracked, and the air was full of dust. The other one fought back – I heard the thump of its fist, and the air in the room was compressed by the violence of the blow – but it wasn’t enough.
The winner gave it another slam against the wall, which gave way, letting moonlight into the room.
I saw two walkers. One of them was my father.
He was losing. He launched a terrific punch at the other one’s head.
It landed, but the head didn’t even move.
Then the other one – its back was to me – put its hand on my father’s head and squeezed.
For a moment nothing happened, and then his skull gave way.
The winner’s thumb disappeared inside the fractured bone, and his face folded up like a towel and all his features were lost, ironed out, gone.
I don’t know how I knew it, but I knew it.
That was that. My father was dead. Really dead.
The other monster lifted him off the ground and peered up at him at arm’s length, as if saying, what have I got here, I wonder?
The moonlight showed me a little gap between my father’s uplifted body and the wall, with the doorway beyond.
That’ll do me, I remember saying to myself, and I darted at it like a startled rabbit.
A hand swished past me as I went, brushed against me but didn’t close in time. I was in the corridor. I ran.
It was following me; I could feel its footsteps through the stone floor.
It was gaining on me. But there was a stairwell leading off the corridor – I couldn’t see it in the dark, but I knew it was there.
One of those horrible, terrifying corkscrew spiral stairs, only just wide enough to get your shoulders through, if you’re a big man like me. And not wide enough for a walker.
Two steps and I lost my footing, tripped and went cascading down.
I hit my head against the wall twice, maybe three times, and I came out head first at the bottom of the stairs, landing on my neck and doing a sort of backwards somersault that should’ve broken my spine.
But it didn’t, and I could hear and feel the walker’s footsteps through the ceiling.
I stood up. No bones broken; I was mobile. Time to go.
Something stamped on the ceiling overhead, twice, three times. Then the ceiling gave way and it fell through, landing in a heap of tumbled stone and mortar. Oh, for crying out loud, I remember thinking, and I ran.
It followed me out into the courtyard. There were people and lights. I saw Rotlaug, stark naked apart from a pair of boots and his hog knife in his hand. Thank God, I thought, forgetting for the moment that He didn’t exist. “It’s after me,” I yelled at him, and ran straight at him.
He wasn’t looking at me. I turned my head and followed his gaze.
It was a walker, no doubt about that. It was Mother Krimhild.
The sure and certain hope of the Resurrection. I remember wondering, in some compartment of my addled mind, if the remote village where she’d been born to humble parents had been anywhere in the Mesoge. I decided I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if that turned out to be the case.