Sensing the anger around me, I was suddenly uncertain.
The room was very small and it was rapidly becoming stuffy. The walls and the low ceiling were curiously irregular, made of variegated slabs of snortoiseshell that creaked whenever the building moved. Features were hard to make out, for the only lighting came from a foggy casement directly behind Black and the two men flanking him.
Beyond that rattling window lay the nightmare landscape of Dusk—scabby hills tangled with dead trees and monstrous bloated fungi in bilious yellows and mauves, all lit by a baleful red twilight along the horizon. The clearings were buried deep in snow, drifted by icy winds that ran wailing under a dark sky. The snortoise browsed with monotonous crunching, and in the distance many others issued their weird roaring bellows. This was Heaven, but it was much closer to what I should have expected of Hell.
Since our meeting at the spinster’s lair, Black-white had gained promotion. In place of angel buckskins he wore a heavy green robe. The others addressed him as Uriel or Archangel.
On his right sat a leather-clad angel, a fairish man with tawny hair and yellow eyes. His stripes identified him as Two-green-red.
The man on Uriel’s left was older, portly, and swathed in a purple robe. He sported a coronet of snow-white curls and a friendly sort of face. This was, of course, Saint Kettle, of whom I have spoken earlier. He was there to represent his superior, Archangel Gabriel. Gabriel had a cold. Colds are common in Heaven.
There was a sixth man present also, sitting in silence in the corner behind Quetti and me, so we could not see him without turning. Uriel kept shooting him glances, but so far he had not spoken at all.
The snortoise roared deafeningly beyond the window and took a mighty lurch forward, rocking the building.
Kettle coughed.
“Yes, Saint?” Uriel asked.
“I’m curious to know how they escaped the forest.” Kettle shuffled through his notes on the table. I had been wondering what sort of game he was playing, having never seen writing done before. “Even with the spinster dead, wetlanders are precious goods in those parts, but these two evaded recapture. They somehow managed to sail that chariot, by land and river, out of the forest, and that in itself is no mean feat. They must have gained hospitality from the inhabitants or else lived off the land.”
He paused, thinking. “No. They must have done both, so they’re good hunters and damned good diplomats, too! They made their way north across the cold desert, then east through the dying lands to Heaven, but without any formal navigation, I assume. They evaded predators, two-eyed and three-eyed. All in all,” he added, rubbing a plump chin or two, “those are astonishing accomplishments for a couple of beginners, and one of them a cripple!”
Black—Uriel—nodded rather reluctantly. “I agree, but it’s taken them long enough. Heavens, I’ve been up to Sunday since then and over to February. How long is it?”
How long was what? I wondered.
“It’s been about three years” Kettle said.
I wondered what that meant, growing angry at such gibberish being spoken over my head. If they were discussing time, then it had been long enough for Quetti to grow from fuzzy-faced boy to a hard-faced young man with a heavy growth of golden stubble. That stubble—and my own—had been annoying Uriel since he first set eyes on us.
“Long enough that they must have talked themselves into every pretty girl’s bed from Friday to Tuesday,” he said crossly. “Shaving, masquerading as angels!” He fired one of his angry glances at the sixth man in the corner.
“No!” Quetti looked hurt. “Not just the pretty ones!”
Uriel growled again; it was obviously a habit of his. I could have told him that Quetti had never needed the angel disguise—he had an astonishing ability to make girls want to mother him. That wasn’t true of me, though, so I stayed silent, hoping someone would change the subject.
It was Two-green who spoke into the silence. “I doubt that they could have done otherwise, Uriel. Who else drives a chariot but angels? They had to pretend to be angels or else abandon the chariot—and one of them can’t walk.”
“I can so!” I retorted. “But…but not that far, I guess.”
Uriel dismissed me with a shrug and looked to Quetti. “How did you manage?”
Quetti scratched his chin loudly with a knuckle. “I didn’t.”
Then he flashed me a sly grin out of the corner of his eye, and I saw what was coming. I cursed under my breath and glared back warningly. Quetti and I had been good companions on our long trek together, but never close. If fires burned within Quetti, he kept them well banked; no man could ever warm himself on Quetti’s friendship. He was self-contained and taciturn. Usually. But now, I could tell, he was winding up to make a speech that he had promised me he wouldn’t. Admittedly I had twisted his arm very hard to get that promise. I had almost dislocated his shoulder.
Quetti turned his grin on Uriel. “It was Knobil, all Knobil. I collapsed. I was a useless heap, crazy. He worked out how to sail the chariot. He brewed up some sort of dye from tree bark and colored us both brown, just in case. He did it all.”
“That’s not true!” I said quickly.
Idiot! Once he had recovered his health, Quetti had also recovered his ambition to become an angel, for his only real alternative was to head home with FAILURE written on his heart.
My case was different. I had my revenge planned in detail now, and all I needed from Heaven was a ride back to the grasslands. I had hoped to earn that favor by returning the lost chariot. Once we had arrived north of the desert, I could have dropped Quetti off to walk and then turned my course westward, but that would have been unkind, so I had agreed to sail to Heaven. Besides, the chariot was in bad disrepair by then. In any event, we had been intercepted by an astonished angel, White-gray-orange, and brought in under guard as murder suspects.
“It’s true!” Quetti said. “He repaired the wheels more than once—and the ropes, and the sails. He made traps and caught game. He’s a devil of a fine cook, too! He worked out where we were and which way we should go. I went right out of my mind and—”
“He’s out of his mind now!” I howled. “Don’t believe all this.” Yes, Quetti had been sick for a while in the forest—that was hardly surprising after what he had been through. I had warned him not to mention that, but he was not to be stopped…
“Knobil knew how the gun worked. He once held off three men in a canoe with it. He was bringing down birds on the wing by the time we ran out of those tube things you put in it.”
The snortoise roared, drowning out both my protests and Quetti’s tales, but he didn’t even pause for breath.
“…fished me out one-handed and brained the brute with an oar at the same time. And after that he kept me tied up until I got my head back. He fed me like a baby! He treated my wounds with herbs. He found out how—”
“Oh stop it!” I yelled. “This is nonsense! Quetti caught a fever—” What the angels thought of me was of no importance. I would not care if they believed I had been helpless dead weight on our journey. Quetti was the one who wanted to stay in Heaven, and by talking like this he was steadily ruining his own chances—but he was determined to spare me not a single blush.
“…grabbed its head in a way that paralyzed it, and I ran for the ax. So we ate snake until…”
I had never suspected that his cool, sane exterior hid this outrageous juvenile hero worship. I wanted to scream.