Dave Duncan – The Living God – A Handful of Men. Book 4

“Not a word, I promise.”

“He said it was all my fault! He put the other four to sleep and . . . There was just me and him. And . . . And he played with me!” Gods! I was only sixteen, Gods! “I doan wanna talk about it. He broke me! Crawlin’ on the floor . . . gibberin’ and crawlin’. He played with me like a kid an’a beetle. I can’t tell you what he did, what he made me do. I kept beggin’ to die and . . . Gods’ bollucks, I doan wanna talk about it!”

He hadn’t been conscious of either of them moving, but Rap was sitting up and holding him, crushing him tight, hugging him like a baby, and he couldn’t seem to stop talking, even while he was blubbering like a kid, weeping on Rap’s shoulder, talking, talking, and sobbing, too.

“He said I was the criminal. He said the others were just my dupes. Said I owed him some fun, said I owed them, too, for leading them astray. Bugs an’ bones an’ things inside me. Toes ‘stead of fingers. Things crawling inside me. I doan wanna talk about it!”

But he couldn’t stop talking about it, not until he had detailed every agony and humiliation and terror of that night. Even things long forgotten came bubbling up and got spat out—everything. Only then did the pauses grow longer, the words scarcer, the weeping quieter. He fell silent. Rap maintained his rib-bending hug, and gradually the indignity of that position seeped through to Thinal.

“T wish you’d left the spell the way it was,” he muttered hoarsely. ”Living isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.”

He tried to pull free, but was held as by hemp cables. “Living is all there is!” the faun said softly in his ear. “Don’t. ever think about what follows. You listen to me now. Did you never wonder, how Orarinsagu managed a matched set? You five are not just a random handful of men! Scholar, lover, warrior, artist, thief—did you never wonder how he was so lucky, to find one of each?”

Thinal pushed free. He blew his nose, wiped his fingers on the grass, and mumbled, “No.”

“Sure?” Rap said. “Sure you never wondered? There was more to that sequential spell than I expected. Lots more. I only discovered it all when I took it apart. Orarinsagu robbed you, Thinal! Sagorn’s brains, Andor’s charm—all those great talents the others have—they come from you. Oh, the word of power helps, of course, but the basic talents are yours. The spell strips them from you and gives them to the others, so they get a double dose. You sure you never knew that?”

Thinal grunted . . .

“Mm,” Rap said suspiciously. “You must have been quite a youngster with all that ability. In time you’d have been a great man. A great criminal, maybe, but certainly great. The sorcerer divided you up to make the matched set. Darad’s thuggery is his own, but basically the others are all just shadows of what you might have been. Without what they steal from you, they’d only be shadows of what they are now.”

“Why’d you put the spell back then?” Thinal mumbled.

Rap thumped a big hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “Because you asked me to. You, not them. It was your idea! Oh, partly because I thought it was too late to undo the damage; it would have ruined them to lose the use of your talents, and I didn’t think those talents would do you any good then. You’d been a guttersnipe so long, I didn’t think you’d ever learn to be anything else. I’ve often wondered if I made the right decision. And if you tell me that you didn’t know where the others get their skills, then I’m going to feel an Evil of a lot worse about it.”

“I . . . I maybe guessed some,” Thinal admitted. He’d known. He could remember the sorcerer’s exact words: Your larceny I leave you, but all the rest is forfeit. It wasn’t fair, though. The others had grown since that night, gone on to manhood and achievement, and he’d shrunk, gotten less. He’d been a leader before that night and since then he’d been nothing.

“So why’d you ask me to put the spell back?” Rap asked. Thinal wiped his nose and eyes with the back of his arm. God of Sewage! Why’d he gone and spouted all that crap to the faun? What must he be thinking? “Doan wanna talk about it anymore.”

“Then don’t,” the faun said cheerfully. “And I’m not surprised you don’t want to help me break into the sky tree! I understand. I don’t hold it against you.”

Sniff! “Rap, it’s hopeless! The dwarf’s beaten you. He’s won. Sagorn knows. Give up, Rap!”

The faun doubled over, putting his arms on his knees and his head on his arms. He looked all weary and beat, but when he spoke he didn’t sound that way. ”I can’t, Thinal! You can quit, if you like. Everyone else can quit, but not me. He’ll hunt me down somehow. He’ll go after Inos and the children. The God told me I must lose one of my children, but They didn’t say which one. And They didn’t say it would be only one. I don’t care how hopeless the cause is, I must soldier on.”

Silence.

Crazy, stubborn faun!

Thinal snuffled, “Whatcha gonna do? Whatcha wan’ me t’do?’

Rap looked up with a smile sad as death. “I’ll go and take a look. If there’s no one there, I’ll come back. We’ll talk some more. If I don’t come back in a little while . . . You get your ass out of here, okay?”

Thinal nodded and sniffed again. “I’ll wait.”

Rap thumped him on the shoulder and stood up. “Thanks, old buddy! You must have been quite a kid.”

He stepped back onto the road and walked away, not looking around.

The wind blew cold through the gloomy gully. Thinal sat and shivered, hugging himself. Bare grass and bare road, and that awful roof up above, threatening to fall on him all the time. He was being a fool. He ought to make tracks back down the road, real smartish. Lotsa empty houses-even Jalon had managed to break into those. In a few more days Thinal’d be able to call one of the others, probably Andor. Andor’d know which way the sea was, and he could head there and talk his way onto a boat.

The war was lost. The dwarf had won. That was no skin off Thinal—no skin off any of ‘em. The five’d get by whether four wardens ruled or just one Almighty. Waiting was hell, but he’d told Rap he’d wait. How long? What was the guy doing, all this time? And if Rap did come back, and asked him, what was he going to do? Crib a warlock’s shop?

He stood up and relieved himself—second time—and moved a few steps and sat down again. Right away he wanted to pee again.

Why’d he gone and blabbed all that stuff about Orarinsagu to Rap? What must Rap think of him, a grown than blubbering? What was the guy doing? Thinal wasn’t going to go and see. Rap must be dead. He wasn’t going to come back. Thinal was going away.

Now!

Well, very soon.

He sort—of tried to call Andor, and knew it wouldn’t work. He wouldn’t be able to call any of the others for days yet. Curse Rap and his meddling around with the spell! They’d never had this trouble before he changed it.

He was a city boy. All this grass-and-sky-tree crud was not his gruel. He’d never had much truck with elves—no elf in the Impire ever owned anything worth lifting.

Rap wasn’t coming back. He would count up to a hundred and then go.

Behind him, someone coughed politely.

Thinal’s heart flew away and the rest of him twisted around so hard he near broke his back.

Half a dozen elves stood in a semicircle. They all wore silver chain mail and they all had drawn bows trained on him. If he made one false move, he’d be a human forest.

He called—Darad! Darad! Nothing happened.

So Thinal did what he always did in moments of stress. He screamed in terror and peed in his pants.

5

The elves closed in on their prisoner, babbling in highpitched voices with an accent he could barely decipher.

Two were men, four women. They were all about his size, yet they seemed like adolescents and he had seen enough of the underlife of cities for that illusion to frighten him even more. Their golden faces were contemptuous, with big opal eyes flickering in impossible shades. Their silver-link tunics were prettied by bright-hued belts and baldrics and lanyards; their half-boots and helmets were equally gaudy. Their legs and arms were bare, except for dainty greaves and vambraces. Even their weapons might have been chosen for appearance, but he did not doubt that they were real and deadly.