Steven Brust - Dzur

“Sandor,” I said. “My name is Sandor.”

My voice still worked too.

“And I’m not drunk,” I added.

“What happened?” said one of the faces.

“I don’t know.”

I struggled to my feet, receiving kindly assistance I didn’t want, but at least learning that, yes, my legs were working. I smiled as pleasantly as I could, and slipped away, moving back toward Six Corners.

Someone yelled for me to wait a minute. I chose not to.

“Is anyone following me?”

“No, they’re just staring.”

“Good. They can stare.”

I made it back to my room without incident, though my head was spinning to the point where it was a bit tricky to keep my eyes focused, and to remember where to go. When I finally made it, I threw off my coat and flopped on the bed as Loiosh and Rocza came through the window.

“You okay, Boss?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What is it? What happened?”

“I’m not sure. Something. My head. In my head.”

“I know,” said Loiosh. “Me, too.”

There was an edge of panic to Loiosh’s voice. I tried to think of something reassuring to say, but I was having trouble focusing my thoughts. Loiosh perched on the chair, and either there was something in the way he held himself that made him appear pensive, or else I was just picking it up from him. Rocza perched next to him, rubbing her neck against his.

“What happened, Boss?”

“I don’t know. I’m trying to make sense of it.”

Sethra once told me that, when overwhelmed by the mysti­cal, start with the physical and mundane, and work both inward and outward from there. I never did understand the “inward and outward” part, but the advice still made sense.

“Okay, the last thing I did was touch an altar of the Demon Goddess.”

“You’ve done that before, Boss.”

“Yeah.”

“This didn’t happen before.”

“Yeah.”

“What was different?”

“I didn’t have Lady Teldra?”

“Yes, but were you touching her when you touched the altar?”

“No, but—wait. Yes, I was.”

“You were?”

“Yes. I’m sure of it?”

“Oh. Well. Isn’t it nice when we can solve mysteries so easily, Boss?”

“Yeah. It’s great.”

I relaxed onto the bed and closed my eyes. The bed was both lumpy and too soft; they must have paid extra for it.

“Okay, I know some of what just happened: I just got some mem­ories back.”

“Boss, that’s ... I don’t know what that is?”

“Yeah.”

I tried to concentrate; to work it out.

Verra, the Demon Goddess, patron of my ancestors, had arranged for my perceptions to be altered, and for some of my memories to be suppressed. The best way to control someone’s actions is to control the information upon which he makes his decisions. Some methods of controlling someone’s information are nastier than others.

None of which addressed the questions of what she wanted me to do, or to not do, and I wanted to know so that I could cross her, just out of spite.

I realized that I was shying away from considering exactly which memories had been taken and were now restored, I guess for the same reason that, on a long-ago occasion when I’d been stabbed, I had tried not to picture the piece of steel that was inside of me. The whole idea was—

“You’re trembling, Boss.”

“Yeah, well. How are you doing?”

“Not so good. What they did to you, they did to me, too.”

“Not they. Her.”

“That doesn’t help?”

And the other thing was, I didn’t know which memories were taken, and which had come back. It’s been weeks now, and I still don’t know. Memory doesn’t work like that. Sometimes you can dig around in your memory looking for something the way you’d dig through a desk drawer, and maybe even find it. Sometimes you can just explore your memories like going through the old trunks in an attic, and find interesting things. Sometimes you can follow memories, one to the other, like a twisty corridor, just to see where they lead.

But you can’t investigate your own memory to see what is there that used to be missing.

And in a way, that was the horror of the whole thing; that’s what still is. What memories, or memories of memories, are back, waiting to bite me? And what is still missing?

I brought myself to a sitting position, lit a candle, found the jug of wine, and drank some. It had that taste that reminds me of old shoe leather. I’m told that wine experts really like that taste, when there’s only a little of it. That isn’t as silly as it sounds; there are any number of things that are good when you have a little, and bad when you have too much; like the way we sometimes for-get things that are either unpleasant, or not worth remembering. A little bit of that is okay.

There was way too much taste of old shoe leather.

I set the jug down.

“Not getting drunk, Boss? I’m impressed.”

“Loiosh, when was the last time you saw me drunk?”

“Yesterday, when you left Valabar’s.”

“I wasn’t drunk, I was just happy.”

“So happy you almost passed out right outside of Sethra’s door.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“Okay, other than that. No, never mind.”

I sat back on the bed again, leaning against the wall. I had touched the altar. Okay. I’m no expert on how those things work, but I could believe that this would give me some sort of connection to the Goddess. Only I was wearing the Phoenix Stone amulet, which ought to make that impossible. And, even if it wasn’t, what sort of contact with the Goddess could restore memories she had taken away?

It was hard to concentrate on that. The idea of her messing around inside my head like that was

“You’re grinding your teeth, Boss?”

I stopped grinding my teeth, sat back again, and tried to relax. I cursed Verra under my breath for a while. That helped. Besides, if the Phoenix Stone was working, she couldn’t hear me.

I wanted to get up and walk somewhere, because I think better that way. I also didn’t want to leave the safety of my room. Or maybe I should say the security.

I took a knife from my boot and threw it into the wall. I made a loud, echoing “thunk.” I hoped I’d get some complaints from management. Then I could slap management around and explain what I thought about the quality of the room. That would make me feel better. I found another knife, and sent that one to join the first. It landed about four inches away. I used to be better.

I got up, retrieved the knives, sat on the bed, and threw them again. The results were about the same, but now there were four nice gashes in the wall. By the time the count was up to a score, I had improved a little and become convinced that no one was going to complain about the noise, so I stopped and replaced the knives. I had another sip of wine, then threw the jug out the win­dow. It made a good crash when it hit the ground. Someone yelled something unintelligible. I would have answered, but I didn’t have anything unintelligible to say.

“Not thirsty anymore, Boss?”

“That really was terrible wine.”

“I see?”

“Remind me not to buy it again.”

“All right.”

“It has to be Spellbreaker.”

“Boss?”