Chapter 24 The Menander Tollpoint
Clay did remain in the tomb, mostly because he was too scared to leave. Who was not searching for him? At least in this huge vault of echoes he could hear the slightest sound of anyone approaching him. Besides, he was very sleepy. In the morning he would go around the city and down to the Olympus river on the east.
He pulled himself onto the top of the sarcophagus, where Bekah had sat, and stretched out on his back with a fold of his rough shirt under his head. He tried to calculate the next steps of his journey but had to give it up, for he had little notion of what lay between him and Eschor. Or whether he wanted to go there. Should he not be trying to locate Simone? Or to find one of these Doors of Kulismos and get out of the Fold? Go back to the Door at Lucilla? So far, just staying out of chains had been hard enough. Witches, soldiers. At least Simone was OK, or had been according to the Lusetta. So Bekah had said. Bekah. Poor kid. He hoped he had not ruined her beliefs for her.
The next thing he knew, Clay was dreaming. He was home at Cemetery House, sitting in the kitchen and watching his mother fold laundry. Susan Tanner somehow knew all that had happened and was discussing it with him critically.
“So now you’re sleeping on bones,” she said sharply as she laid a folded towel on top of the others.
“Yeah, Mom.”
“Because they want you to be a saint. Well, you know our family never believed any of that. We haven’t gone to church because all they want is your money. People’s beliefs are very personal, very private. It all amounts to the same thing for everyone in the end. But privacy, private beliefs, that’s the key. What do you believe?”
“That’s very personal and private, Mom.”
“Don’t get smart with me, you know what I mean.” She began matching socks. “Well, what does she believe, then, that girl of yours? What does she think of you?”
Although he knew his mother meant Bekah, Clay could not answer. He never discussed anything so weighty with his mother. Bekah believed a lot of things, that much he knew.
“You don’t even belong there,” Susan went on. “You’re missing everything for—”
“You don’t even believe in the Fold!” he suddenly said to his mother. She looked at him with her mouth open. “You don’t believe in Fijats or Ulrigs or even that I’m here where I am. You just don’t know, Mom!” He was almost shouting. “Mom? Mom?” The echoes of his own voice were threatening, tremendous.
He woke up shouting, and found the tomb ringing with his shouts. It was dimly lit by a newly risen moon, its light streaming in through the curved colonnades of the upper tower, revealing statues that looked down at him from high niches. After lying terrified for minutes, he decided that no one had heard, no one was coming for him.
He got off the sarcophagus and looked at its richly carved surface. Buried here was the leader of the first humans to come to the Fold. That was hundreds and hundreds of years ago, but it had really happened. Quintus Pausanius’ bones were here to prove it. The bones were real, the Fold was real. He, Clay Gareth, was real and perhaps had a real purpose to his life. ‘What does she think of you?’ his mother had asked in the dream. Well, what if Bekah was right? Not, he meant, the soul-crushed and weeping Bekah who had fled this tomb but Bekah in her normal times. Central Bekah. That Bekah who believed in Thoz and all His designs for people, who thought that life did not ‘amount to the same thing for everyone in the end,’ but that people are chosen for certain tasks and had better cooperate. Maybe she was right, and if so, then he was in all this trouble for a good reason.
Clay was interrupted from this train of thought by a change in the light that entered the tomb through the open story at the base of the great dome. The interior passed from palest white to palest blue. Looking up, he saw something so big that only a portion of it was visible through the colonnade. It glowed blue.
It moved! Clay cringed behind the sarcophagus but could not take his eyes off it. Like a giant walking, it was passing Quintus’ tomb. But it turned and looked down at him through the dome. He saw a face, suffering and solemn, a face like Augustus the Lost One, former High King of Kulismos. It seemed to know he was within. It continued looking down for an immeasurable time, then turned and strode away, and Clay was left to take long, shuddering breaths in the darkness.
At the first hint of dawn, he left the palace-tomb, crossed the bridge, and wended his way through the City of Graves down to the wall. This he scaled, and so went on through the Blue Colony, passing between their darkened huts. He came to a small military camp surrounded by spear wielding sentries. This troop was no doubt intended to keep Pidemoi out of the plague colony, but the sentries seemed unconscientious. Clay got around them easily. Now his way was down narrow paths to the river as day began to dawn.
He paused on a pebbly shore. Only one person was in sight, a short woman wearing dark clothing and a heavy veil. She was motionless by the water, as if in deep thought. She looked harmless, so Clay approached her.
“Excuse me, but do you know if any ships are expected to leave for Farja this morning?”
As he drew to within a few feet of her, she slowly turned to face him.
“Good morning, Your Eminence. I have to talk with you.” Clay knew the voice. “Bekah! I thought you didn’t go out in daylight.”
“I’m making an exception.” She bowed to him. “Emperor Clay, I apologize for being so insulting last night. When I got home to the city, I tried to pray, and at first I couldn’t. After a while Thoz spoke to me. I’m just a fool. How could I think that you would come in strength and in knowledge? He reminded me that you’re the seed of Lila, and a seed is just a bare, little thing. It’s all about what it will be and not what it is. Then I thought to give you this.”
She handed him a tiny glass bottle, securely stopped and swinging from a loop of leather string. Clay held it up.
“Those little seeds,” she said, “came from the Land of Unknown Kings where I was born. My parents brought them when we came here fourteen years ago. The chrusodendrons that grow from these seeds are common there. Anyway, Father gave these seeds to me when I was a little girl and told me that the fruit of the tree is very healing. So they’ve been my treasure. I’ve never used them. The first seeds, Father said, were brought to the Land from the place called Heaven’s Doorstep at the White Mountain.”
Clay bit his tongue to keep from asking what good tree seeds would do him on his travels. He didn’t want to disturb her again, not after she had somehow managed to return to ‘Central Bekah.’
“Thank you.” He put the loop around his neck and stuffed the bottle inside his tunic. “I need to get out of here, Bekah.”
“I know. Jules is up the river trying to find a ship that will take you both east. Be careful in Farja. Just get past it as fast as you can.”
“What? Jules is around here?”
“Yes, I found him down here waiting for you when I came out this morning. He had the idea that some boats might have anchored outside the city, and so their crews wouldn’t have been warned last night to look for you. And he felt sure you’d be along this way since it’s the shortest path to the river.
“But can I trust Jules?” Clay asked. “He must know who I am by now.”
“Of course, he knows. But he’s making no move to betray you, Your Eminence.”
“Stop calling me Your Eminence.”
She laughed. “I’ll never forget you. Meeting you has taught me that I’ve been counting too much on this world. I’ve got to get beyond the world and have real faith. Do you know that a Blue Flis was born last night? A sign from Thoz!”
“What—what was that thing?”
“One of the Blue Colony. Some say it was the old king. No one knows why or how, but sometimes one of them becomes a flis. Well, I better get back in the city.”
“Why don’t you come with Jules and me?” Clay asked suddenly.
/> “And makes things worse for you? That’s all you need is a mysterious, veiled female to arouse suspicion.”
Clay acknowledged this with a reluctant nod. This was an awkward moment. He really liked this girl. “We’ll never see each other again, will we?’
“Sure we will.” She started off along the bank, then turned to him again. “You should start walking that way to meet Jules. Zuz be with you! If you ever want to find me, just go to the end of the world and keep on going!”
Clay watched her out of sight around a bend. This sudden feeling of belonging, of attachment, was unexpected. He had never liked a girl so much, not even Colleen Lobo in Science Club.
He found Jules about a half mile up the river. The boy was eating fried fish among a gang of hobos. The fish were cooking on a simple grill over a campfire on the sand. Nearby in the river a galley was anchored.
Jules leaped up when he saw Clay. “Gaius! How are you, Gaius? I was about to come looking for you.” He winked hard.
“You and everyone else,” Clay grumbled. “May I have some fish?”
“Sure, this is for everybody, Gaius. Captain Pellus is about to take us on the Mercury there, but you’ve got time.”
Clay looked back at the river gate in the city wall a mile away. Ships were already emerging from Kulismos, banks of oars dipping and rising in the sunlight, and one of them might be the Cerberus. He hoped Captain Pellus would start soon.
Having had little more than a glance at Kulismos, Clay and Jules were rowing again in the trireme Mercury, a galley with three tiers of oars. This time Jules was just above and in front of Clay.
“Jules?”
“Yes, Gaius?”
“What does Bekah look like? I mean, is she pretty?”
“Don’t you know? Sneaking off with her like that.”
“Well, it was dark, I couldn’t see her.” Clay had to pause while the other rowers laughed lewdly. “And this morning she was wearing a thick veil. So what does she look like?”
“I don’t know, it was dark.”
More laughter. The oars swung to the rhythmical notes of a piper.
“But you saw her last year, didn’t you? Don’t you remember?”
“I don’t remember, man.”
“But you’d remember if she was ugly, wouldn’t you. She’s not ugly?”
“I don’t know, man. I don’t remember.”
Four days later the Mercury came to the Menander Tollpoint just west of Farja, a place where the river narrows. Here the Council of Farja had caused to be built a great fortress spanning the river. All ships must enter the Menander and be held, inspected, taxed. Hard eyed public officials closely questioned their captains and, if all was not as it should be, confiscated their cargos. After an hour or more a galley might be permitted to pass under the portcullis on the far side.
When the Mercury glided that morning into the narrow passage between high stone walls, Captain Pellus wisely ordered his illegally obtained rowers to stay below and actually had them chained in place, for the moment, to avoid suspicion. For in the Silent Cities everyone was supposedly accounted for; hobos such as Jules and Clay simply did not exist. To admit their existence, and that one had hired them, would invite an endless and merciless investigation. Therefore, they would appear to be slaves and answer to the names of those who had sat their benches at the beginning of Pellus’ journey—the names on Pellus’ official roster. Clay was ‘Marcus’ and Jules was ‘Silenus.’ Pellus had bluffed his way through before.
Not this time. As soon as the galley docked, the highest official in the fortress, Publican Gullus, was marching on board and demanding to go below. He paid no attention to the ship’s cargo but, attended by servants and soldiers, threaded the narrow catwalks that led past the rowers’ benches; and with a smoking oil lamp, examined each of the one hundred and seventy-four zugs. Clay interested him, especially after he had made him speak.
“Have this one brought to the courtyard,” he ordered. “Pellus, what about him? What’s his name?”
“Marcus, Publican.”
Gullus took the roster from him. “Marcus is remarkably preserved for fifty-four years old.”
“An error, of course, sir. He’s twenty-four.”
“No, he isn’t.”
Gullus continued cheerfully to the next bench. In the end Clay alone was yanked from the Mercury and brought into full daylight in a courtyard overlooking the narrow channel of the river. All around rose towers and walls. Ragged and dirty and with ankles shackled, Clay was stood up between two soldiers. Several other ships were detained at the Menander, and idlers from among their passengers and crews drew near out of curiosity. With the soldiers already assembled, this made a small crowd.
Pellus was at the hand-wringing stage. “Publican Gullus, don’t make me lose my position over a slight irregularity.”
“This may be a greater matter than you think,” Gullus answered. He produced a tablet from a fold in the front of his robes and handed it to the captain. “My orders, you see, are to search all ships, coming or going, for a blond haired youth with an accent. Any such is to be held and sent to Farja.”
Two other ship captains, who like Pellus had come from the west, volunteered that they had been told to look for the same boy, only that they were to take him to Kulismos for a reward. Pellus truthfully swore that he knew nothing of any of this.
Clay looked all around the interior of the river fortress: at its massive walls and towers, at the hardened faces of the soldiers, the entertained faces of the civilians—and gave up hope.
Gullus turned to him. “Your name?”
Pellus interrupted softly. “Publican, you and I have done business before.”
“Enough of that, captain. This is not just a case of a misidentified zug, I told you that. There’s a vast reward out for this boy, and I intend to have it. You didn’t know that? The entire estate of Farjan Councilman Hector, that’s what’s promised. You may keep your captaincy for all I care. I’m pressing no charges against you, Pellus.”
Relieved, the captain stepped back. “You are gracious, Gullus.”
“Soon I can afford to be. The boy I’m looking for is accused of poisoning to death Hector himself. Is it any wonder that the reward is large?” He turned again to Clay. “All right, boy, what’s your name?”
Clay looked away from Gullus’ eyes, like hard, blue marbles, and watched under the raised western portcullis another ship entering the Menander. Then he started. Only this could make things worse. For the prow of the ship was carved in the likeness of three ravening and frightful dogs’ heads. The witches had caught up with him. In a flash, he saw Ven Magus bending over Simone and himself in the cemetery back home, where they very nearly had been sacrifices to Fowroz.
Gullus made a sign to one of the soldiers, who promptly slapped Clay. “Pay attention, scum. What is your name?”
Suddenly, Clay could not remember what name he was supposed to go by.
“Gaius.”
“Is that right, Pellus?” the Publican asked.
“I—I don’t know, sir.”
“You don’t know him?”
“Never saw him before four days ago, Publican.”
“Can anyone here identify him? Anyone ever seen him on the river?” Gullus scanned the crowd.
To Clay’s astonishment, someone stepped forward, a handsome and richly dressed nobleman of about forty, slim and fit.
“He’s mine,” he said. “This is my slave.”
“Oh, he is, is he? And who are you?”
“I’m Kroz Zendor of Quintusia.”
The man glanced meaningfully at Clay as he said his name. Bekah, Clay remembered, had said that Unknown King Zendor of Quintusia had been looking for him in Kulismos.
“This slave escaped from my friend Kroz Mucius,” Zendor went on. “Mucius didn’t want to take the trouble to track him down, so he sold him to me, on paper, an
d let me hunt him. Furthermore, this boy has nothing to do with Councilman Hector, and in fact, he’s never been to Farja. Here’s my certificate of ownership, look it over.”
Gullus reluctantly took the paper and checked the seals and the wording. He verified the description of a birthmark against the slave before him, finding the mushroom shaped red mark on Clay’s left thigh.
“It says his name’s Kla-ee,” Gullus growled. “That sounds like the name I was given—Cally or Calesios.”
“Only because you pronounce it to sound alike,” Zendor said smoothly. “It’s actually pronounced Clau-ee, which is what he called himself when he was a toddler. Mucius’ wife Octavia meant him to be ‘Claudius,’ but everyone got used to the baby name.”
Clay was impressed by Zendor’s ability to lie plausibly. But had the Unknown King seen the Cerberus; did he know how little time they had?
“May I take my property, Publican?”
Gullus hesitated, still staring at the paper in his hand.
“Publican, the word from ships going west is that everyone in Farja is trying to claim that reward. Every blond waif with a stutter is hopefully turned in—they’re up to seventy-one now—and no one has collected a penny.”
Others in the crowd contributed yet larger estimates of the number of blond boys in Farjan prison cells. One man swore to as many as two hundred and fifty.
“My point, Publican, is that if you turn in Clau-ee, you get nothing and just put me to further trouble to get him back, which I will do. I must have him because he’s the only witness to a theft back in Quintusia that involves several of my own priceless art treasures. Frankly, I have a fortune at stake in the law courts. Now, let’s go aside and make an agreement. You’ll find that I’m more than reasonable.”
Virtually arm in arm, the two noblemen strolled under an arch, and Clay was left to sweat. The Cerberus was at the dock now. Sailors were tying her up. Yet, in a remarkably short time Zendor and Gullus reappeared, and Gullus ordered Clay given to Zendor.
The Unknown King still appeared calm and unhurried. “Do you know, I’ve never been to Farja,” he remarked to Gullus. “It’d be a shame to come this close and not see the city. Besides, Captain Jovian here is expecting me to continue as his passenger.”
“Yes, Kroz, see the city,” Gullus agreed cheerfully. “But make sure you keep that young scoundrel locked up.”
“Yes, yes, I will. Have no fear.”
“And brand his forehead!”
“Yes, Publican, I will.”
Clay walked in his shackles on the side of Zendor farthest from the Cerberus. It was a long ten yards to the galley. Meanwhile, black robed figures were leaving the witches’ ship. He recognized on one of them the sort of hat that Ven Magus had worn in Indiana. Finally, he stepped aboard Zendor’s ship the Leona.
“Cast off at once,” Zendor said cheerfully to Captain Jovian. “Gullus has given us clearance to go on to Farja.”
This was verified by a minor toll official who had followed them. As Clay slumped behind the balustrade, stealing glances at the Cerberus, the Leona’s oars began to churn, and she slowly backed away from the dock and turned toward the eastern gate. The crowd on the dock had by this time dispersed. The witches seemed to be waiting for an official to come down to them. Very, very slowly the Leona moved against the current. The gate’s portcullis began to rise.
Zendor was leaning idly against a mast. “Oh, captain,” he said, “once we pass the gate, will you please order your zugs to row like Gennez?”
Clay followed Zendor to his passenger’s quarters on the quarter deck. Once inside the door, the Unknown King seated himself in a wooden arm chair and looked at Clay with an unreadable expression.
“Well, you had better be worth the trouble,” Zendor said presently. “I don’t suppose you really are the Lila-me?”
Clay slumped on a bench and examined his shackle locks. “I wish I wasn’t,” he mumbled.
“No! Really? Old Mald was right, after all?”
Clay pulled out a pick from his inner belt.
“You don’t need to do that,” Zendor said. “Gullus gave me the key.”
“That’s all right, I need the practice.”
Zendor eyed him some more. “My apologies, but I must have some proof. I’m all anticipation, especially after leaving behind in the chase my own ship and my slaves, and after sacrificing all the usual amenities of life—a soft bed and decent food, for example. I might mention following your trail right through an execrable plague colony (of all things!) and bribing Gullus with the ridiculous sum of twenty gold dragons. Oh, and did I forget the money I paid to your master Mucius after I fished him out of the Little Appian? He was glad enough to sign you over to me. It seemed he’d had a run-in with the witches and only wanted to dry out and go home. Well, what do I have—the genuine article or a bundle of rags? Frankly, your appearance does not do you credit.”
Clay popped open one of the shackles.
Zendor leaned forward a degree. “Tell me about the Misara.”
Clay told him. In ten minutes Zendor had heard enough details about Razabera’s mission in Indiana to convince him.
“In a way, this only makes things worse,” he said. “If you were a fraud, I’d throw you over the side and go back to Quintusia, having suffered little more than indigestion and a lightened purse. Ah, but now....” He drummed his fingers on the chair arm. “You’re aware that everyone in the Sigapoleis is now searching for you? And that when mother Smoke Hag gets finished talking with them back there at the Menander, she’ll know we’re on this ship? She’s not the fool Gullus is. Therefore, we flee eastward with infamous Farja ahead, waiting like a rodrom’s great, black gullet. Was it—absolutely necessary, young man, that you hold a straight line toward enemy headquarters?”
“I didn’t know. I just knew to go east.”
“Well, your girlfriend might have warned you. Didn’t she tell you not to go to Farja? Did the phrase ‘crawling with witches’ come up in your conversations, or did you only have time for flirting?”
Clay was annoyed. “Are you talking about Bekah?”
“But she’ll have learned all her prudence from her parents,” said Zendor heatedly. “Unknown King Micah and Unknown Queen Leah, the maniacally faithful!—who must be preaching in the very forum, who think they have to associate with Pidemoi, who throw their money away on the moronic poor so that their own daughters have to live on charity after their parents’ arrest. And imprisoned just when I need them the most! Bekah, I suppose, told you to deliberately go to Farja and preach salvation to Monophthalmos!”
“Uh, who’s he?”
“He’s a stinking, thousand year old witch, that’s who.”
Clay met this thought like a blank wall and bounced off. “I didn’t ask to come here,” he said.
“No, no, that was Razabera’s idea, toying with things she didn’t understand. I’m sorry if my temper gets the best of me, but this affair has been botched from the start. Am I supposed to step in and make it right? Where is Razabera, anyway?”
“She’s dead. The witches killed her. And who asked you? I didn’t ask for your help. You didn’t have to come after me.”
“I wouldn’t have for anyone less than you. Do you think I risk my life or even waste my time on trivial matters?”
Under Zendor’s verbal pummeling, Clay had slowly worked himself up to something like anger. “Razabera taught us that no one is unimportant.”
“Razabera took stupid risks.”
“Lay off her. She was the best!”
Seeing that he had touched a nerve, Zendor waited a moment and changed the subject. “The word at the Menander is that the Midras cult, the witch cult, has at long last gained control of the Farjan Council. Old Hector was the swing vote, and someone poisoned him—probably the witches themselves. What that means for us is that, in addition to their thousands of witches, they now w
ill have a soldier on every street corner, looking for you. The question is how to get you through town unnoticed.”
“But couldn’t we just sail right by and not get off the ship?”
“No, that’s what they’ll expect us to try. Perhaps its time we changed rivers.” Zendor stood up. “I’m going to speak to the captain.” He picked up a leather bag and placed it in front of Clay. “Here, I believe these things are yours. Mald discovered them at Lucilla.”
As Zendor went out, Clay pulled open the neck of the bag. His eyes lit up. Here was everything from his and Simone’s tote bags from home, including the bags themselves folded up at the bottom. He dug through the contents, tossing aside the clothes and personal articles as useless. That left a small pile of the sort of things he loved to mess with. This was good stuff.