Roger Zelazny - A Night in the Lonesome October

«This way now,» the old one stated, and he looked at me as he said it, so I knew that I was included in the invitation.

He led us up an alleyway beside the Palace of Seventy Delights, where fluted dustbins of umber, aquamarine, and russet, their sides inscribed with delicate traceries of black and silver, handles of malachite, jade, porphyry, and chrysoberyl stood, holding forgotten mysteries of the temple. Purple rats fled our approach, and a single lid shivered, emitting a bell-like tone which echoed from the rose-crystal wall.

«In here,» he told us, and we followed him into a darkened recess which held a temple postern. Beside it, a less substantial door quivered upon the crystal wall, a churning milkiness beginning within its suddenly apparent rectangle there as we approached.

When we came up before it, he turned to me.

«As you have been a friend of one of my own,» he said, «I would give you a boon of knowledge. Ask me anything.»

«What does tomorrow hold for me?» I said.

He blinked once.

Then, «Blood,» he said. «Seas and messes of it all around you. And you will lose a friend. Go now through the gate.»

Graymalk stepped into the rectangle, was gone.

«Thanks, I guess,» I said.

« Carpe baculum! » he added as I followed, somehow knowing that I recalled a bit of my Latin, and doubtless getting some obscure cat-laugh out of telling me to fetch a stick in a classical language. You get used to little digs from cats about being a dog, though I'd thought their boss might be above that sort of thing. Still, he is a cat, and he probably hadn't seen a dog in a long time and just couldn't resist.

« Et cum spiritu tuo ,» I replied, moving forward and entering.

« Benedicte ,» I heard his distant response as I drifted again in that place between worlds.

«What was all that business at the end?» Graymalk called back to me.

«He gave me a quick quiz on my Virgil.»

«Why?»

«Damned if I know. He's inscrutable, remember?»

Suddenly, she wavered within another rectangle. It was odd, watching her go two-dimensional and ripple that way. Then she turned into a horizontal line, and its ends collapsed upon its middle and she was gone. When my turn came it didn't feel that complicated, though. I joined her atop Dog's Nest before the block of stone, which was again just a stone with some scratches on it. The sun was far into the west, but the storm was over.

I turned in a circle. No one was sneaking up from any direction.

«There's still enough light to check out that spot you located,» she said.

«Let's save it for tomorrow. I'm late making my rounds,» I told her.

«All right.»

We headed homeward. I thought about the old cat's boon, but that wasn't till tomorrow.

«Dognappery's a lot less lush than Celephais,» I said, as we walked.

«What's it like?» she asked.

«I'm back in a primal wood with an old wolf named Growler. He teaches me things.»

«If there are any Zoogs about,» she said, «we passed over your wood to the west of the River Shai. It's below the Gate of Deeper Slumber.»

«Maybe,» I said, thinking of the small brown creatures who lived in the oaks and fed on the fungi, except when there were people about. Growler laughed at them as he did at most things.

The clouds purpled in the west and our paws grew damp from the grasses. Blood and messes… . Perhaps I could use a review.

Tonight Growler and I would ramble, till we fought and I was beat.

Up in the morning, out on the job. I hassled the Things, then checked around outside. A black feather lay near our front door. Could be one of Nightwind's. Could be openers on a nasty spell. Could just be a stray feather. I carried it across the road to the field and pissed on it.

Graymalk wasn't about, so I walked over to Larry's place. He let me in and I told him everything that had happened since I'd last seen him.

«We ought to check that hillside,» he said. «Could be there'd been a chapel there in the old days.»

«True. Want to walk over now?»

«Let's.»

I studied his plants while he went for a jacket. There were certainly some exotic ones. I hadn't told him yet about Linda Enderby, perhaps because he'd revealed in passing that all they'd spoken of was botany. Perhaps the Great Detective really was interested in plants.

He returned with his jacket and we went out. It was somewhat blustery when we reached the open fields. At one point we came across a trail of huge misshapen footprints leading off in the direction of the Good Doctor's farmhouse of the perpetual storm. I sniffed at them: Death.

«The big man's been out again,» I remarked.

«I haven't been over that way to say hello,» Larry said. «I'm beginning to wonder now whether he isn't a rather famous man I've already met, seeking to further his work.»

He did not elaborate, as we came upon a crossbow bolt about then, stuck in the bole of a tree.

«What about Vicar Roberts?» I said.

«Ambitious man. I wouldn't be surprised if his aim is to be the only one left standing at the end, sole beneficiary of the opening.»

«What about Lynette? This doesn't require a human sacrifice, you know. It just sort of greases the wheels.»

«I've been thinking about her,» he said. «Perhaps, on the way back, we could go by the vicarage and you could show me which room is hers.»

«I don't know that myself. But I'll get Graymalk to show me. Then I'll show you.»

«Do that.»

We walked on, coming at last to the slopes of the small hill I had determined to be the center.

«So this is the place?» he remarked.

«More or less. Give or take a little, every which way. I don't usually work with maps the way most do.»

We wandered a bit then.

«Just your average hillside,» he finally said. «Nothing special about it, unless those trees are the remains of a sacred grove.»

«But they're saplings. They look like new growth to me.»

«Yes. Me, too. I've a funny feeling you're still missing something in the equation. I'm in this version?»

«Yes.»

«We've discussed this before. If you take me out of it, where does that move it to?»

«The other side of the hill and farther south and east. Roughly the same distance as from your place to a point across the road from Owen's.»

«Let's take a look.»

We climbed the hill and climbed back down the other side. Then we walked southeastward.

Finally, we came to a marshy area, where I halted.

«Over that way,» I said. «Maybe fifty or sixty paces. I don't see any point in mucking around in it when we can see it from here. It all looks the same.»

«Yes. Unpromising.» He scanned the area for a time. «Either way, then,» he finally said, «you must still be leaving something out.»

«A mystery player?» I asked. «Someone who's been lying low all this time?»

«It seems as if there must be. Hasn't it ever happened before?»

I thought hard, recalling Games gone by.

«It's been tried,» I said then. «But the others always found him out.»

«Why?»

«Things like this,» I said. «Pieces that don't fit any other way.»

«Well?»

«This is fairly late in the game. It's never gone this long. Everyone's always known everyone else by this time, with only about a week to go.»

«In those situations where someone was hiding out, how did you go about discovering him?»

«We usually all know by the Death of the Moon. If something seems wrong afterward that can only be accounted for by the presence of another player, the power is then present to do a divinatory operation to determine the person's identity or location.»

«Don't you think it might be worth giving it a try?»