We saw lights from
way out. What was that? There are no lights on the glittering
plain. We climbed a thousand feet. By then the lights were gone
except for what came out of the hole in the dome over the top of
the demon’s throne room. Before we got there that went away,
too.
Then we were too busy getting Lady and Tobo through the hole to
worry about anything else. Rheitgeistiden are trouble when their
riders are not helping.
When we got to the floor we found only one oil lamp burning on
that old man’s—that scholar from Taglios’s—worktable.
Croaker left a note. And, that clever old fart, he wrote it in our
language. Not very good, but good enough to understand.
I guess he did have the gift for tongues like he always
said.
Arkana took the lamp and used it to fire up a couple of
lanterns. We went off to look for Croaker. She said, “You
know, he was always teasing us but after a while I did start
feeling almost like he was my dad.” We never ever talk about
our real fathers. We would never get along.
“Yeah. He looked out for you. Maybe more than you
know.”
“You, too.”
We found Croaker sitting beside the wooden throne. “Hey.
He’s still breathing.”
“I don’t think . . . Shit. Look.
Those knives are all gone from the demon.” Actually, they
were laying all over the floor.
So just then the demon’s eyes open and so do
Croaker’s and both of them look pretty confused and it is
only then that I really understand what Croaker was trying to tell
us in his letter. It was not some confused religious good-bye, he
just did not have enough of the right words to tell us that he and
the demon had it worked out to trade places. So Shivetya got to
become a mortal for as long as Croaker’s body would last and
Croaker got to be a big, old, wise sea dragon swimming all around
in the ocean of history. So both of them got to go to heaven. And
the Nef were happy. And the plain went on. And the white crow kept
bitching, riding around on the Croaker body’s shoulder. And
Arkana and I got in a running fight about who was going to go on
keeping the Annals, because both of us hate to write.
So we take turns. When the little tramp will get away from Tobo
long enough to pick up a pen and do her part.
A point she missed, probably because she is too dim to notice,
is that Lady is recovering. A while ago I saw her spinning tiny
fireballs. I think if there was some way she could make love to
that big monster over there she would do it three times a day.
Because it is from him that the power flows. It is, probably, the
best and most meaningful gift he has ever given her and with it she
can become anything she wants to be. Maybe even the young and
beautiful and romantically sorrowful and remote Lady of Charm
again.
But then he would have to turn Soulcatcher loose just to give
balance to the world.
I wonder if he was right when he said a thousand years from now
we might be the gods everyone remembers.
And I wonder what he might do about his daughter. His flesh
daughter. I think there is no hope for her because she has no hope
of her own, but I also think that if there is a hope, Pop will find
it.
Suvrin is looking impatient. He wants to hitch a ride down to
the Hsien shadowgate. He is not Aridatha Singh but he may have to
do.
I guess it is time to go see our new world. The Abode of Ravens.
The Land of Unknown Shadows. Shukrat says the names have a ring.
That it sounds like home to her.
I think home is what I carry around inside me. I am a snail with
the meat on the outside.
And it is Shukrat’s damned turn to write. The sneaking,
slacking little bimbo.
Incessant wind sweeps the plain. It murmurs on across grey
stone, carrying dust from far climes to nibble eternally at the
memorial pillars. There are a few shadows out there still but they
are the weak and the timid and the hopelessly lost. It is immortality of a sort. Memory is immortality of a sort. In the night, when the wind dies and silence rules the place of
glittering stone, I remember. And they all live again.
We saw lights from
way out. What was that? There are no lights on the glittering
plain. We climbed a thousand feet. By then the lights were gone
except for what came out of the hole in the dome over the top of
the demon’s throne room. Before we got there that went away,
too.
Then we were too busy getting Lady and Tobo through the hole to
worry about anything else. Rheitgeistiden are trouble when their
riders are not helping.
When we got to the floor we found only one oil lamp burning on
that old man’s—that scholar from Taglios’s—worktable.
Croaker left a note. And, that clever old fart, he wrote it in our
language. Not very good, but good enough to understand.
I guess he did have the gift for tongues like he always
said.
Arkana took the lamp and used it to fire up a couple of
lanterns. We went off to look for Croaker. She said, “You
know, he was always teasing us but after a while I did start
feeling almost like he was my dad.” We never ever talk about
our real fathers. We would never get along.
“Yeah. He looked out for you. Maybe more than you
know.”
“You, too.”
We found Croaker sitting beside the wooden throne. “Hey.
He’s still breathing.”
“I don’t think . . . Shit. Look.
Those knives are all gone from the demon.” Actually, they
were laying all over the floor.
So just then the demon’s eyes open and so do
Croaker’s and both of them look pretty confused and it is
only then that I really understand what Croaker was trying to tell
us in his letter. It was not some confused religious good-bye, he
just did not have enough of the right words to tell us that he and
the demon had it worked out to trade places. So Shivetya got to
become a mortal for as long as Croaker’s body would last and
Croaker got to be a big, old, wise sea dragon swimming all around
in the ocean of history. So both of them got to go to heaven. And
the Nef were happy. And the plain went on. And the white crow kept
bitching, riding around on the Croaker body’s shoulder. And
Arkana and I got in a running fight about who was going to go on
keeping the Annals, because both of us hate to write.
So we take turns. When the little tramp will get away from Tobo
long enough to pick up a pen and do her part.
A point she missed, probably because she is too dim to notice,
is that Lady is recovering. A while ago I saw her spinning tiny
fireballs. I think if there was some way she could make love to
that big monster over there she would do it three times a day.
Because it is from him that the power flows. It is, probably, the
best and most meaningful gift he has ever given her and with it she
can become anything she wants to be. Maybe even the young and
beautiful and romantically sorrowful and remote Lady of Charm
again.
But then he would have to turn Soulcatcher loose just to give
balance to the world.
I wonder if he was right when he said a thousand years from now
we might be the gods everyone remembers.
And I wonder what he might do about his daughter. His flesh
daughter. I think there is no hope for her because she has no hope
of her own, but I also think that if there is a hope, Pop will find
it.
Suvrin is looking impatient. He wants to hitch a ride down to
the Hsien shadowgate. He is not Aridatha Singh but he may have to
do.
I guess it is time to go see our new world. The Abode of Ravens.
The Land of Unknown Shadows. Shukrat says the names have a ring.
That it sounds like home to her.
I think home is what I carry around inside me. I am a snail with
the meat on the outside.
And it is Shukrat’s damned turn to write. The sneaking,
slacking little bimbo.
Incessant wind sweeps the plain. It murmurs on across grey
stone, carrying dust from far climes to nibble eternally at the
memorial pillars. There are a few shadows out there still but they
are the weak and the timid and the hopelessly lost. It is immortality of a sort. Memory is immortality of a sort. In the night, when the wind dies and silence rules the place of
glittering stone, I remember. And they all live again.