“Time’s passing,” cried Highbones. “Light’s going. Time to climb!”
Rillibee was surrounded by a whispering mob of them, hustled down one corridor and into a storage building, then up a flight of stairs and out a hatch onto the thatched roof of the hall. Beside him was the leg of a tower, a slender ladder running beside it to the first crossbrace. Above that were other legs, other ladders. The mists hung about the top of the towers, hiding them. Between the clouds and the earth speared the last rays of the setting sun, beginning the long dusk of Grass,
Topclinger whispered, “This one’ll climb, this one will,” gripping Rillibee’s shoulder in his hard hand, squeezing it.
“Oh, I’ll wager on that, Tops, I will,” snarled Highbones.
Rillibee heard them through the muttering. All those years listening to the mosquito whines at Sanctity, picking meaningful language out of nonsense, let him understand what they said though they did not mean him to hear.
“Bet,” responded Topclinger. “Bet one whole turn on kitchen duty.”
“Done,” said Highbones, giggling. “In my opinion he’s a deader.”
Rillibee felt the chill of that giggle run down his bones.
“Oh, God, oh,” said the parrot in his mind.
“Shut up,” he whispered to himself.
“Did you say something, peeper?”
Rillibee shook his head. Highbones was not the sort to leave the winning of his bet to chance. Highbones would try to make sure, up there somewhere.
But then, did it matter? Why not let him have his way?
“Let me die,” begged the parrot.
The dozen surrounded Rillibee, all of them posturing now as though they were one creature, pointing upward toward the heights, toward the last of the sunlight.
“Will he climb?” they wanted to know, pressing closer to him as they explained the rules. They would give him three minutes’ start and then come after him. If he could reach another ladder and get down without being caught, then he’d be a climber. If they caught him, he’d be a peeper, but they wouldn’t beat him too badly if he gave them a good chase. If he fell off, he’d be a deader, depending on where he fell from. He might get away with no injury at all. But if he wouldn’t climb, he would die right there on the thatch. They would rub his face in shit and keep hitting him in the stomach until he’d wished he’d died up there, rather than here. If he didn’t climb, said Highbones, there were other pleasures some might find in Brother Lourai’s anatomy before they killed him. Others agreed to this with wide, toothy grins and feverish eyes.
“Up,” they chanted. “Up, Lourai. Got to be initiated. Got to climb!” The word “climb” was howled from half a hundred throats as others, drawn by the initial ruckus, ran to join the ten or twelve who had started the racket, clambering up the side of the hall on rope sashes dropped to them from those above, clustering upon the thatch. “Climb, Lourai! Climb,” bellowed the Brothers of Sanctity, the Green Brothers, with Green Brother names like Nuazoi and Flumzee and faces intent upon mayhem.
Bored, Brother Mainoa had said. Bored to insanity. And Brother Lourai would just have to learn to get along with them.
It wasn’t their threats that moved Rillibee. He had considered death many times during recent years. He had seen no reason why he should go on living when Joshua and Songbird and Miriam had all died. Dying had not seemed a bad thing, though getting dead had seemed to be more difficult than he had liked. So now getting dead seemed the problem. If he gave himself to this pack, here and now, there would be pain first, and humiliation, neither of which he wanted. If he was to die, he wanted it to be in peace, and not at the hands of some long-armed barbarian like Highbones.
What really moved him to the first ladder, however, was the confounded noise they made, the derisive cacophony centered on him, the knowledge that they would give him no peace until he acted.
The ladder did not frighten him. All those years, up and down the towers of Sanctity, ten times taller than these. He knew enough not to look down. He knew enough to have a good hold before he shifted his weight. He went up the ladder, slowly at first, then faster, his eyes up, seeing something there that those assembled on the thatch evidently had not seen or had taken no notice of.