Roger Zelazny - Donnerjack

“Through my Stage and beyond.”

“Did he tell you anything?”

“Not precisely, but an entity I met there said that the Piper was a lingering remnant of Skyga’s mental army.”

“Remarkable. I never heard that story,” Paracelsus said. “He does not usually manifest for those of the Verite.”

“It was as if he came seeking me,” said Donnerjack.

“Then you are unusually blessed.”

“Tell me, does Death figure in the pantheon?”

“Yes, but we don’t talk about him much.”

“Why not?”

“What’s to say? He’s Lord of Deep Fields. He gets you in the end.”

“True. Though right now my relationship with him is a bit different. I’m doing a Virtuelle engineering job for him in partial payment of a debt.”

“I did not know that your sort ever got involved at that level. But then, you are who you are, when it comes to reputation. However, the Piper’s presence is a riddle. I would suspect it has to do with your contract.”

“If it does,” Donnerjack said, “he did not reveal it to me.”

“If you meet him again, perhaps you should ask.”

“I will. If he’s interested, maybe the others are, too. How would I recognize the Master or the One Who Waits?”

“The Master limps and usually carries some strange piece of equipment. The One Who Waits is said to have a scar that runs from the top of his head to the sole of his left foot. It is supposed to have come of his having inadvertently gotten in the way of the Creation—though some say it was on purpose.”

“Thank you, Paracelsus. Could you get me a copy of your catechism or whatever it is that contains these items?”

“I’m afraid that’s a no-no. Since we’re all AIs we just transfer data to converts.”

“You mean that no one other than an AI has ever been interested?”

“That’s right. We generally discourage them. Normally, I would have answered a few of your questions and then started changing the subject. But you’d met the Piper and that made a difference.”

“Is there a policy against admitting the people of Verite?”

“No, no discrimination. But we always felt it was our thing.”

“Hm,” Donnerjack said. “Would you have any qualms about discussing it occasionally?”

“All but certain secret parts which aren’t really that interesting.”

“I don’t want to know your secrets. I just want to know whether I may ask you about it.”

Paracelsus nodded.

“What about the Elishite religion?” Donnerjack asked. “Is there any connection between yours and theirs?”

“Yes. We recognize their deities, but we feel that our pantheon supersedes theirs and that our moral code is superior.”

“Your Trinity is more potent than Enlil, Enki, and Ea and all the rest?”

“Some of us like to think so. Others say that they’re versions of each other under different names.”

“We have similar anthropological and theological problems in Verite.”

“1 don’t really think it matters, one way or the other, though.”

“Me neither.”

“I’ll ask you further another time how Bansa figures in your religion—”

“—and you and Jordan,” Paracelsus said.

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“But I absolutely must get some work done before I’m too tired to do it.”

“I understand, boss.”

“Talk to you later, then.”

Paracelsus went out like a light.

Donnerjack moved to his desk and reviewed some designs for Death’s palace. Then he moved onto his real work.

The first full moon following Ayradyss’s initial exploration of the caverns beneath Castle Donnerjack passed without the caoineag successfully managing to take Ayradyss into the secret places. The failure was not for lack of effort—something sought to block their way, something shadowy yet solid, taloned and fanged. Ayradyss caught a glimpse of gimlet eye, forked tongue, wings that were less wings than animate darkness.

“It reminded me of the moire,” she said to her companions when they had retreated back to her parlor, where she had made herself a nest of pillows on the nig before the fire. She wrapped her fingers around a mug of hot cider to warm the fear from them. “But the moire is without malice. It just is —a warping, an indication that the end is come for a proge. This was…”

She shivered and fell silent. Although the room smelled comfortingly familiar, of spices, of the burning wood fire, of the lemon oil the robots rubbed into the antiques, she felt cast adrift. It was as when the moire had touched her in Virtu, and though John pressed her to him as closely as he could, she had become nothing.

“The three nights of the full moon are gone, Ayradyss,” the caoineag said, “and we need not return to those places when the moon comes full again. The guardian you saw cannot cross into Castle Donnerjack. It belongs to the eldritch realms. You are safe—and, believe me, though I stand to gain from your ending, I would not lead you into it. I have had my taste for betrayal burnt from me these long centuries past.”

“That’s right, you betrayed your father.”

Ayradyss pulled herself to a sitting position. She had come to the lovely stage of her pregnancy—the glow was upon her, coloring her skin, her eyes, causing her hair to fall longer and fuller than it had even in Virtu. The awkwardness had gone as well—she had centered herself around her growing baby and moved with a peculiar grace that made it seem impossible that she would ever become ponderous.

“I did, and not merely by omission.” The caoineag’s expression was impassive, the expression on her thin, fine-boned face imperious. “My mother had died some years before and clearly he meant to take another wife. My kin from my mother’s clan did not care for this, nor did I. They spoke to me, hinted at their plans, and although I did not raise hand against my father, I looked the other way when I knew the}’ were coming for him.”

“Did you know that they meant to kill him?”

“I suspected.”

“And that was enough?”

“Enough?”

“Enough to make you the wailing woman.”

“It must be, for I am here.”

“As I will be.”

“Do you regret your choice?”

“No.”

In the weeks that followed his interview with Paracelsus, Donnerjack worked with a cold concentration. So intense was his absorption that he almost refused a call from Reese Jordan.

“Oh, Reese. Sorry, sorry. I’ve been distracted.”

“They’ve gotten me back into working order,” the other announced. “I’m ready to help you.”

“Glad to hear that. I’m going to risk sending you all my notes on everything I’ve been doing recently.”

“Oh, excellent. When I’ve reviewed them we’ll confer?”

“I trust. If anything prevents it, do what you would with them.”

“What could prevent it?”

“I will include excerpts from my journal, also. I think they’ll give you a pretty good idea. Glad you’re up and about.”

Donnerjack broke the connection and returned to work.

As the moon waned and grew fat again, Ayradyss visited the tunnels and caverns repeatedly. She invited John to join her on some of these expeditions. They brought a picnic and she showed him the demicaverns, the hidden beach, the claymores stuck in the floor. (He agreed with her that they should remain there; together they made up stories about how the swords had come to that place, laughing as they added detail after fantastic detail).

She did not bring him near the place that led to the eldritch realms. Testing her courage, she had gone there once after the moon was clearly thinning and found nothing remarkable there but a tunnel that terminated in an unremarkable bit of rough rock. Voit’s probes found no openings, nor did his densitometer readings show any significant spaces behind.