Anselm stilled. "What do you say?"
"Only that, if ever the lords wish to claim back their rights and powers, the time to strike is come." Sir Orgon leaned forward with glittering eyes. "But they will not rise without a leader, and who better to command them than the rightful duke of Loguire?"
Anselm sat frozen, not believing he was hearing talk of rebellion again after all these years—or how welcome that talk was, or how it roused a sudden yearning for revenge. He hated himself for it, but he listened all the more intently.
"The Crown has lost its two most stalwart supporters," Sir Orgon said. "There will never be a better time to rise."
For a moment, Sir Anselm's eyes burned; then he summoned the will to resist and forced himself to stand, pushing back his chair, and said, "I have no stomach for talk of treason, Sir Orgon. I will bid you good night."
He turned and stalked away, not waiting even to see Sir Orgon stand in respect—but the knight watched him go, eyes glittering, knowing that his fish was half-hooked. If he were not, if he were truly loyal down to his bones, Sir Orgon would have been clapped into irons on the spot and would have spent his night in a dungeon cell.
AS DARKNESS FELL, Rod found a stream, kindled a solitary fire for warmth, then went to the brook with his folding bucket, brought back water, and hung the bucket over the fire to heat for tea. Then he took jerky, cheese, and hardtack out of his saddlebag and sat down on a log to have dinner.
"That really is not adequate fare for an evening meal, Rod. You usually find wild vegetables and heat them with the beef as a stew."
"Yeah, but what's the point in cooking for just one, Fess?"
"Health, Rod."
"So what's it going to do—kill me?" Rod gave the horse a sardonic smile. "I'll gather vegetables as we go tomorrow—but right now, I'm tired."
A low growling began off to his right, swelling into a heart-rending moan.
Rod froze. "What was that?"
"A waveform of low …"
"Yeah, I could tell that much. What made it?"
"From the quality, Rod, I would assume it is a creature in distress."
Rod stood, came over to stuff his dinner back into the saddlebag, and led Fess off into the woods. "Can't ride— the trees are too thick. How far away is whoever made that moan?"
"It is difficult to tell with only the distance between my ears for triangulation, Rod."
The moan sounded again.
"Make a guess!" Rod said. "Whoever that is, they're in dire distress."
"Rod, you know my distaste for …"
"Okay, call it an estimate! Just tell me how far!"
Static crackled through Rod's implanted earphone— Fess's version of a sigh. "Perhaps two hundred meters, Rod."
"To carry this far, that would have to be a pretty loud moan. Let's hurry as much as we can, Fess—whoever that is, needs help in a bad way."
There was a little moonlight—not enough to show the roots or potholes that waited to trip Rod, but enough so that he could keep from blundering into tree trunks. As he went, though, the moonlight seemed to grow brighter. A little farther and he saw the cause—delicate strings of light hanging all about. With a shock, he realized they were branches, and the leaves that hung from them began to glow. Another few yards, and he found himself walking through a forest of crystal, adorned with berries that were gems and filled with the delicate silver glow of moonlight concentrated and refracted all about him. "What is this place?" he asked in a hushed voice.
The moan came again, much nearer. Rod turned to his right—and stepped across an unseen boundary. Everything about him was dark and dank; the branches hung bare, and mold squelched beneath his boots, filling his head with the stench of corruption. He found himself in a pocket of decay in the center of the crystalline wood. He half expected a skeleton to rise from the muck.
Not a skeleton, but right beside him rose a glowing figure hung with rags, its cheeks sunken, its skin withered and wrinkled, its eyes lost in the shadows under its brow, long trails of mucus streaking down its cheeks. It moaned, the sound so loud that Rod clapped his hands over his ears— but it drifted toward him, reaching out a skeletal finger to touch him.
Fourteen
ROD FLINCHED AWAY, BUT TOO LATE—HE HAD felt that touch graze his shoulder, and his arm suddenly weakened.
"Why come you here, foolish mortal?" the apparition demanded. "What has brought you so far down this road?"
"Time." Rod lifted his arm to fend off the spectre even as he backed away—but that arm seemed leaden, taking a titanic effort to lift, and wouldn't rise more than half-way. Rod gave it a quick glance and was shocked to see that the skin of his hand was wrinkled, the muscles of the arm shrunken. He backed away quickly, not stopping to wonder how the creature had come to be—on Gramarye, there was no doubt it was real, for all practical purposes.
"Turn aside," the creature advised, "for know that you have come to the place of Decay, where you shall waste away till you can neither walk nor lift, nor even raise your hands to eat."
"There is always the mind," Rod said. His arm was intolerably heavy; he fought to keep it high, but it drooped steadily. He had to let it fall; he needed all his attention to avoid the creature's next lunge.
"Your mind too shall waste away," the spectre intoned. "Go back, human creature. You may not be able to choose your death, but you can surely choose not to have this one."
"Can I?" Rod met the hollow gaze with a level stare. "My road goes on past this place, Decay. I will not turn aside; the one I love awaits upon the farther side."
"Then you are a fool, for you'll not pass," Decay answered. "Your hips shall seize up, your spine shall bend, your muscles shall waste away." It drifted closer, finger reaching out. "Beware my touch."
"Good advice." Rod stepped aside.
The spirit turned and came after him. "Forgo this land, go out from this forest—for even that creature that goes on four legs in morn and two legs at noon must walk on three when coming here—and shall leave on four again, if it goes at all."
"A human." Rod sidestepped the touch and backed away again. "That's an old conundrum, spirit. Surely you can do better than that."
"I have no need," Decay answered, "for your mind shall fade so gently as to escape your notice. Can you not feel your acuity slipping even as you speak?"
"No, for if it were to fade so gently that I didn't realize, how could I feel it?" Rod sidestepped another touch. "Fess, come up behind this creature and pull it away!"
"I see nothing, Rod, except a small clearing in the woods, like any other. You must tell me where to bite."
Illusion! Rod realized. But was it in his own mind, his old delusions returning, or was it the work of a projective telepath? Or even a witch-moss construct that was visible only to living creatures? Rod had no idea how such a thing could be made but didn't doubt that it could.
"You are liable to me, as are all living things," Decay told him. "You cannot turn me any more than you can turn that invader who roars across the land and whom even the Crown with all its soldiers cannot divert."
"The wind," Rod interpreted, "and we may not be able to turn it aside, but we can certainly harness it with windmills. Will you do as much work for us as it does?"
"I shall work upon you." All at once, the spirit darted forward, lunging to touch.
Rod ducked and said, "I have it! You yourself are a riddle!"
"Foolish human, I am nothing of the sort," Decay answered, still drifting toward him. "I am inevitable, if you are born to meet me."
"Not since DNA surgery was invented," Rod said, "and since my great-grandparents all had it, I'm exempt from your domain."
"Do you mean to say you are not human?" Decay kept drifting even as it spoke. "Then you are truly a fool! But how can a man not be a fool and still be a man?"
"When he's dead and gone," Rod said, then leaped aside to avoid another lunge. "All men are fools in some way— the more so because we can't agree on which behavior is foolish. Some of us are fools about money, some are fools about power and status, some are fools over women… The list is endless."