Peter Beagle - Innkeeper's Song

And that is all the gods get from me for the rest of my life, and you may tell them so if you’re much in the habit of chatting them up. Between one minute and the next, The Gaff and Slasher, my home for thirty years, came crashing to ruination around me, as I knew would happen the day I let those three women cross my threshold. The bottles were followed by every mug and wine glass I owned, and then by the hanging lamps. I thought javak at first, though we haven’t had one of those corkscrew storms since Rosseth was small. But when the two windows blew out—not in, out—as though they’d never been there, and the shelves behind the bar started pulling loose with a long squeal of old nails in old planks, I knew that this was no javak . The beer pumps were groaning and bucking under my hand, trying to plunge free of their sockets; the few rusty tag-ends of armor I had anchored to the walls to keep people from stealing them shot across the room like crossbow bolts. A hide-factor from Devarati got hit that time, but I think he recovered.

Earthquake? Earthquake ? There wasn’t so much as a twitch out of that floor—my customers, the conscious ones, were down flat, clinging to it with their fingernails, like lizards to a wall, while benches and broken glass and overturned tables hurtled past them. Within thirty seconds, I was the one object still standing in the taproom, supported by nothing but outrage. For I never doubted the source of this catastrophe for one instant. Storms and volcanoes and family spats of the gods be damned—the cause, the bloody cause , was only a few bloody inches above my head, and I was already on my way up there even though I may not have seemed to be moving at all. I was just waiting for my feet to catch up with my fury.

Tikat staggered through the outside door just then, crouching low to stay on his own feet. When I came out from behind the bar to meet him, I felt like a very small boat pushing off from shore into a howling rapids. Tikat was yapping something at me and pointing upwards. I couldn’t hear him in the confusion, but I knew he must be asking about his mad white Lukassa. I shook my head and shouted back, “Where’s the boy? Have you seen the damned boy?”

He never bothered to answer, but only reeled on by me, treading on customers and armor bits alike, slipping in the puddles of mingled ale and wine, heading for the stair. I scrambled after him, pushing him out of the way well before we reached the landing. No one was going to break down that door but me.

Down in the taproom it was bad enough. Even with the windows gone, the pressure around me was so great that it was like being under water when I dived and dived for Lukassa. I found myself holding my breath for fear of drowning, and pushing the air away with my spread arms as I struggled forward. But on the stair there was a hot, stinking wind blowing straight down, battering Karsh and me from wall to railing while the steps themselves flew apart under our feet. We seemed to be making no headway at all: now we were birds beating against a storm, flying slowly backward, counting it progress to lose only a little ground. How long this went on, I cannot tell you.

I think today—I say I think —that I might well have given up then, but for Karsh. Not that he spared me even a glance after he thrust me aside, let alone any encouragement; indeed, he missed his footing once and lurched full into me, and would have had the two of us bouncing all the way down those splintering steps if I had not been able to catch hold of him and brace myself in time. But he never lost heart or looked back, that fat, roaring man. He bent his fleshy neck and bowed his shoulders, and lumbered ahead, heaving and cursing, hacking out a way through the wind. I followed, gratefully riding his wake, unable to imagine what could be driving him on so savagely. Because it was Karsh, you see. If it had been anyone else, surely I would have understood, but it was Karsh.

On the landing he paused for a moment, shaking himself heavily, and I saw his face, huge with that pale rage that takes him over when nothing is going as he would have it. The blue eyes were darkening as I watched, turning almost lavender; his teeth were set savagely in his lower lip, which was bleeding. Then he was off again, charging along a corridor choked with falling plaster and roiling dust and shrieking half-clad guests trampling each other to reach the stairs. I was knocked down myself, almost immediately, but managed to roll aside and get to my feet by climbing up and over someone in a purple night-robe. The hallway was booming and rippling, like the metal sheets those actors used to use for thunder. I stumbled along, arms across my face, toward the tafiya’s room.

Karsh was already there, hammering on the door, rattling the knob, pounding again, then beginning to heave his whole body against it: one slow, muffled thump after another. For once there was no breath in him for bellowing—I could hear it wheeze out each time he smashed himself into the thick old wood. I was not quite up with him when the door finally burst open and we fell through.

At the far end of the room there was nothing. There was an emptiness. No, listen, don’t interrupt, listen to me. The emptiness was a mouth: you could see its edges writhing and folding like lips, beginning to close, and the foul wind seethed between them. Far away, or far in, or far down, a bright, bright spark tumbling forever, blazing bravely in the void. I knew what it was.

Lukassa was standing with her back to me, near the empty bed. There were others in the room, but I only saw her. She did not turn at the noise when Karsh and I broke in, but began to walk toward that black mouth that was closing more quickly now. Her steps were as light as they had always been when she came to meet me, never quite running, but running in her heart and her eyes. She was gone into the emptiness before I could call; and before I could reach it myself, it had snapped shut and vanished, leaving nothing behind but a sagging, crumbling wall in a little wrecked room full of the sound of her name.

I am not Lukassa. I am no one. No one can pass the gates of death twice. I am no one. I walked through, and they waited for me. They do not want to wait, but I will make them.

Cold, cold, cold, like the river. Someone was calling, is calling me, far behind on the edge of Lukassa. But I was not Lukassa then. I am a drawing that has been scratched out, scrawled over, erased again. Far ahead, a star, singing, promising to tell me my name if I can catch it in time. Is that why I am here, was here? I should hurry. Did I hurry?

Death is a nowhere lined with lightning. I remember. There is cold nowhere under my feet, but I walked swiftly, because I remember the way. There are faces now, there were faces before, flowing by in the dark, between me and the star. When I die the first time, I will see those same faces.

Down here in the riverbed, it is quiet as quiet. Above me, on the surface, the water snarls and tears, as it will tear me when I fall to its jaws. But in the riverbed, I looked up through stillness and watch the faces flowing past, so many heavy, weary village faces that should not smile at me with such tender knowledge. They should not do that. I am no one.

Beyond them, my star. I brush the faces away and climb over the water, over the beanfields and thatched roofs, and I follow the singing of the star. If I walk without tiring, without thinking, without expectation, so very gradually the star draws nearer. I remember.

This is different. Why is this different? Death is death, but something is different, the darkness. I can see great yellow claws smashing through from the other side, ripping down and down, and a greenish glow beyond. The claws withdraw, strike again, they leave simmering weals across the darkness, like the ones on his back when his uncle will beat him for stealing fruit. Beat whom? The faces begin to snap their jaws as they hiss by. There were so many, sometimes they hide the star.