The mouth before us turned downward, an introspective frown, followed by an expression of alertness, wonder, and then it opened to vomit out its own metal tongue, an endless tongue which extruded itself into a platform a little raised above the surface on which we stood. Onto this platform rolled a little car, somewhat like those I have seen used in some pawnish mines to transport ore, except this one was flat. From its prow there stuck up a tall beam, narrow and high. The beam broke itself into angles and stepped down from the car, its top section bending to look down upon us all.
“Tallman,” cried the Dupies.
“Tallman,” Fatman warbled in the same tone.
“Tallman,” said Laggy Nap, his fingers jerking along the seams of his trousers. As for the rest of us, we animals, we pawns and animals, we said nothing but stared and stared. The voice, when it came, was a woodwind sound, a reed sound, deep and narrow-edged.
“Well, Laggy Nap. You have returned. Have you fulfilled the orders I gave you?”
Fumble, fumble, fingers tap tap along trouser seams, feet shuffle back and forth, pale as paper, Laggy Nap. “I have most of what I was sent for, Tallman. The youth, Peter—the Necromancer, he was killed on the journey…”
Along, long pause during which that narrow, hooded head bent above Laggy Nap as some great serpent head might bend above its prey. “Killed? How killed? By you?”
“No, Tallman! Never! It was a rockslide on the southern route, in the canyons there. He would go that way, and mindful of your orders, we went with him until we could be sure to take him without injuring him. He went to the canyon wall to relieve himself, Tallman, and the wall broke over him. More rock than the train could move in a season, Tallman. His body, under all that rock…” Nap’s voice faded into uncertainty, and the head above him never moved but brooded still in that unrelenting scrutiny.
“How long ago?”
“How long? Ah, let me think. We have been thirty-five days on the northern route, Izia, wasn’t it thirty-five days? Then there was a space of three days getting back to Betand. Less than forty days, Tallman. Thirty-eight, I would say.”
“Not so long, then, that you could not take a Necromancer there and raise him. Raise this Peter. Find out from his spirit what it was he knew. Not too long for that?”
“Oh, I could do that. Yes.” He gave a little hop, as though eager to be on his way. “I need only to have my power renewed, Tallman. And to unload the cargo.”
There was a silence, a silence which drew out into a swamp of stillness in which no one moved. Laggy Nap himself did not seem to breathe. He might have forgotten how to breathe, so still he was, and when Tallman spoke at last the air came out of Nap as out of a balloon. “No, Laggy Nap. No power renewal this time. We will give you power when you return.”
“But, but…” Teeth chattering, face like melting ice. “How will I keep the pawns in order? How keep the beasts in order, the work done? How keep Izia doing her work…?”
The impossibly tall figure straightened itself. “You will leave the pawns here. They need some pawns. To make blues. For a ceremony. You will leave the woman here. I need a woman for … something. You will take one wagon and go. And you will wear the boots to be sure you return.”
Fatman burbled, chortled, “Boots, Tallman. Whose boots for Laggy Nap? Does Tallman have extra boots he wishes to be used for Laggy Nap?”
And the Dupies, “Patience, patience, Laggy Nap. We will find boots for him.”
Tallman growled something, beckoned to Izia where she crouched ashen-faced against a pillar. She sidled toward him fearfully, and he bent above her. “Take off the boots.”
“They will not come off,” she whispered, hysterical, panting.
“Fool! They would not come until now. They will come off now. Take them off.”
So, she drew them from her legs almost before my eyes, and I could see what had happened to her legs from the years she had worn them, old scars and lines of festering red, a scaly peeling surface where there should have been maiden smoothness. She saw her own legs and crawled away, retching and gasping. Dolwys put his foot upon mine once more, and again I heard that same, sighed word. “Wait.”