Water Sleeps

“Goblin drove the Lance into Kina’s body. It’s still there. You know me. I’m completely hooked by the Company mystique. I believe that besides the A

That good feeling was moving through me again. I rose. Swan helped me step up to the higher floor level. “Hello!”

Riverwalker chuckled. “I wondered how long it would take you to notice.”

The crack in the floor was almost gone.

I went and looked. It seemed to be as deep as ever but now was nowhere more than a foot wide. “How did it heal so fast?” I assumed our presence had been a catalyst. Glancing around the crack toward the demon’s throne, I noticed Doj and Tobo hurrying our way. Shivetya’s eyes were open. He was watching. “I thought you said everybody had left.”

“The earthquake did it.” River ignored the presence, of Doj and Tobo.

Swan said, “It’s the latest thing in home repairs. Go down there and stab that thing again, maybe the plain will heal up completely.”

“Might get the clockwork ru

“Clockwork?”

Doj did a little hop. “This floor is a huge circle. It’s a one-eightieth-scale representation of the plain as a whole, with a complete travel chart inlaid. It rides on stone rollers and was capable of turning before the Thousand Voices got curious and broke it.”

“Interesting. I take it your chat with the demon proceeded informatively.”

Doj grunted assent. “But slowly. That was the big problem. Just figuring out that communication has to be managed very slowly. I think that would carry over physically, too. That if he decided to stand up if he could it might take hours. But as the Steadfast Guardian, he never had to move fast. He controlled the whole plain from here, using the charts in the floors and the clockwork mechanisms.”

Never had I seen Doj so straightforward and animated. The knowledge bug must have bitten him, along with its kissing cousin that makes the newly illuminated want to share with everyone. And that was not like Doj at all. Nor like any other Nyueng Bao of my experience. Only Mother Gota and Tobo ever chattered and between them they revealed less than Uncle Doj on a particularly reticent day.

Doj continued, “He says his original reason for being created was to manage the machinery that saw that travelers got where they wanted to go. Over time there were battles upon the plain, wars between the worlds, this fortress was built around him, and at every stage he was saddled with additional duties. Sleepy, the creature is half as old as time itself. He actually witnessed the battle between Kina and the demons when the Lords of Light fought the Lords of Darkness. It was the first great war between the worlds, it did take place here on the plain, and none of the myths have got it close to right.”

That was interesting and I said so. But I refused to allow the past’s allure to seduce me right now.

“I must confess a grand temptation to create a permanent camp here,” Doj enthused. “It will take lifetimes to recover and record everything. He’s seen so much! He remembers the Children of the Dead, Sleepy. To him the passing of the Nyueng Bao De Duang happened just yesterday. We need only to keep him convinced that we should have his help.” I looked questions at each of my companions. River-walker finally volunteered, “He’s got to have been stuffing himself with the demon food.” Meaning he thought Doj was out of character a few leagues, too. “Several others also went through big changes when they overindulged.”

“That much I understood already. Tobo. Have you undergone a complete character shift, too?” He had not said a word. That was remarkable. He had an opinion about everything.

“He scared the crap out of me, Sleepy.”

“He? Who?”

“The demon. The monster. Shivetya. He looked inside my head. He talked to me there. I think he did it to my father, too. For years and years, maybe. In the A

“That could be. That really could be.”

The world is infested with superhuman things that toy with the destinies of individuals and nations. Gu

I needed the solace of my kind of priest. And there were none nearer than five hundred miles.

“How many stories are there about this place?” I asked Doj. “And how many of them are true?”

“I suspect we haven’t yet heard one out of ten,” the old swordmaster replied. He gri

Tobo was so anxious to interject his own thoughts that he danced around like a little boy with a desperate need to pee.

He a

His good humor waned momentarily. “She went with Gra

A glance at Doj made me suspect that there had been a sharp encounter between Sahra the mother and men willing to accept her son as one of them. This was Nyueng Bao stubbor

I changed the subject. “All right. You two claim you’ve been in Shivetya’s mind. Or maybe he’s been in yours. Whichever, tell me what he wants.” I did not believe the demon was being helpful out of the goodness of his ancient heart. He could not be. He was a demon, accursed of God whether he was a creature of light or of shadow. To a demon we adventurers had to be as brief and transient as individual honeybees would be to us though, like the bees, we might be able to make ourselves obnoxious for a short while.

Doj said, “He wants what anyone in his position would want. That seems obvious.”

Tobo interjected, “He also wants loose, Sleepy. He’s been pi

“What’s he going to do if we pluck the daggers out of his limbs? Will he go on being our pal? Or will he start busting heads?”

Doj and Tobo exchanged uncertain glances. So. They had not spent much time worrying about that.

I said, “I see. Well, he may be the sweetest guy on God’s green earth but he stays right where he is for now. A few weeks or months more shouldn’t make much difference to him. How the heck did he manage to get himself nailed to his chair?”

“Somebody tricked him,” Tobo said.

Surprise, surprise. “You think so?”

It seemed there was a lot more light now than there had been when I was headed in the other direction with Swan. Or maybe my eyes had adapted to the interior of the fortress. I could make out the designs in the floor clearly. All the features of the plain could be found there except for the standing stones with their glittering gold characters. And those might have been represented by certain shadowy discolorations I was unable to examine more closely. There were even tiny points that seemed to be moving, which almost certainly meant something if one knew how to read them.