We made our way down the many stairs, beyond the first, second and third doors, coming at last to that final door, triple-locked, triple-bolted, triple-barred. As we approached it, the Gardener held up her hand, tilting her head. “I hear a voice!”
We laid our ears against the crack where the door met the jamb to hear a voice murmuring, or perhaps reciting something, for it went on and on, uninterrupted.
“It sounds like you, Gretamara,” said Sophia.
The Gardener stood tall, eyes gleaming, her teeth showing between her lips in what I thought could be either a grim smile or a snarl. “Of course!” she said. “Unlock it!”
Sophia did as she was bade. The first bolt drawn silenced the voice beyond the gate. Moving the second bolt caused an eruption of noise, as if something on wheels were being moved. The third bolt and bar met only silence, as did the rusty squeal as the door was cracked open.
The Gardener spoke through the crack. “Is there someone there who has a name and a number?”
After a long moment, a male voice responded, “Is that you, Gardener?”
“What name and number have you, Weathereye?”
“I have Ongamar, and she is number four. What number have you?”
“I have Gretamara, and she is number three,” said the Gardener, pulling the door wide open. Inside, facing us, were an old man with an eye patch and three women: one quite old; one middling young, stocky and healthy looking; the other smaller, thinner, more sallow and bent, but bearing a definite resemblance to me.
“Lady Badness!” cried the Gardener. “Weathereye! What brings you by this route?”
“We accompanied those for whom it was the only route,” said the old woman. “You know Ella May, of the Siblinghood, and this is Miss Ongamar. You must hear what she’s been telling us!”
“Who are they?” asked Sophia in wonderment.
“Old friends and a new one!” said the Gardener, as she signaled Sophia to unlock the iron grille. “One devoutly wished for! What is that machine you’ve brought?”
“A device for changing the direction of the way-gates,” said Ella May, bowing to the Gardener and receiving in return a kiss on her cheek. “We believe there was a thriving trade going on through this gate, with goods passing in both directions. The machine made it possible.”
The other woman was standing very still, her feet apart as though to brace against shock, as she stared into my face. “Who are you?” she asked at last.
“I…was Margaret,” I said. “Now I’m Gretamara. And you?”
“I was Margaret. On Cantardene they called me Ongamar.”
“When did you…when did you become someone else?”
“I was twelve.”
“So was I, twelve.”
“You’re little more than that now?”
“I’m a lot older, really. I just haven’t…aged much. We were split when the proctor came, weren’t we?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” we both said at once. “Why?”
“Because,” said the Gardener. “It was necessary, for a very good reason, and it actually happened some time before that.” She turned to Weathereye. “Was she in some kind of danger?”
“Oh, a very definite kind,” he said. “Someone has found out too much and is trying to kill any or all of them.”
“How?” the Gardener whispered. “How could anyone have possibly…?”
“How could anyone have possibly what?” cried Sophia. “Gardener, what’s going on?”
“Shhh,” she replied. “Not here.” She unlocked the grille, beckoned the others through it, relocked first it, then the heavy doors, and led us out the cellars, locking each of the doors behind us.
As we reached the ground level, Lady Badness said, “For all we know, there may be listeners down there. After all, the other end’s in Cantardene.”
“Which is a pesthole,” remarked the Gardener. “If anything found out, I’d guess it was something from there…”
Miss Ongamar said, “The stone. The standing stone. They call it Whirling Cloud of Darkness-Eater of the Dead.”
Sophia and I exchanged a horrified look. I murmured, “We saw it, didn’t we, Gardener?”
Gardener said, “I took them to the Gathering, Weathereye.”
Ongamar said, “The stone called out, ‘It’s here.’ It meant me, didn’t it?”
“Probably,” said Mr. Weathereye. “As I said, the order to kill you came from the very top levels of Cantardene.”
“The very top levels were present when they made the ghyrm,” Ongamar said. “Anything any of them knew, that stone knew. What is that stone?”
“Ah,” Lady Badness murmured. “What a good question. What would you say, Weathereye? Not merely K’Famirish, is it? Something of the slaughterhouse added? The torture chamber? The mass grave? One, or more, of the ancients in the Gathering?”
“Quite possibly,” said Mr. Weathereye crisply.
“Quite possibly what?” cried Sophia, stamping her foot.
“Quite possibly an amalgamation of K’Famir and Frossian gods along with something a good deal older,” the Gardener answered crisply. “You and Gretamara were there, Sophia. You saw the Quaatar.”
“You said they couldn’t do anything…by themselves,” I cried.
“They can’t,” said Lady Badness. “Just as a battery can’t do anything by itself. Attach a wire to it, however, and current flows. We gods are like that. We accumulate energy, feelings, emotions, needs, wants, hopes, dreams, hatreds, everything. Normally, most of it cancels out: Love balances hate, hope balances despair, joy balances sorrow. If you get a god that’s only one thing, however, only pain, only hate, only death, with nothing to balance it, then it accumulates. Attach a mortal to it, and you’ve got a lynching, a crusade, a clinic bombing, a jihad, an inquisition, an assassination. Those three, Dweller, Drinker, Darkness…they’ve set up a hate-and-horror generator! I would like to know how they found out about our plan, though. I thought we’d done an excellent job of hiding our traces.”
“Did the plan have anything to do with me?” asked Ongamar, tears gathering in her eyes. “If it did, they’ve found out from the ghyrm. I saw the ghyrm being created, and one of them has been feeding on me for years, using me to spy out horrors. I tried to keep some things to myself, but it knew me. It knew all about me…” She looked imploringly at the Gardener. “I know it doesn’t keep information to itself, I know it doesn’t. That…that stone probably knows everything the ghyrm does, everything every ghyrm does…”
“But what does it know?” the Gardener asked. “That you are Ear-thian? Everyone knew that. That you are female, sick of the place? Obviously.”
“I saw them being created. I don’t think the ghyrm learned that from me, but I can’t be sure.”
“Ah,” said the Gardener. “Well. Would it know there are more than one of you? You didn’t know that yourself…unless…”
“Of course,” said Mr. Weathereye, scowling. “Unless another one of the seven is also in contact with a ghyrm! Well, I was sent to Cantardene to find someone who had been Margaret. Aha. Yes. And why was I sent? Because there were already three Margarets on Thairy and another one on B’yurngrad who was in danger, and the one on B’yurngrad is a member of your Siblinghood, Ella May, and she’s a ghyrm-hunter, like you, who usually carries and feeds a finder. Which is, as we all know, simply another ghyrm.
“So, if we have one Margaret on Cantardene, known to a ghyrm, and another Margaret on B’yurngrad, also known to a ghyrm, and if those devils in The Gathering know everything the ghyrm know, then it would not take them long to figure out there was at least one more Margaret than there should be…”
“They identify us?” Ongamar asked. “Individually?”
“Oh, I imagine they can,” said Lady Badness. “At least the ones they don’t kill.”
“There are such things as identical twins, or even triplets,” I said indignantly. “Don’t they know that?”
“Of c
ourse there are,” said the Gardener. “But if a monster is several million years old and has survived enough extinction episodes to become completely paranoid, one is not averse to killing a few twins to eliminate a possible threat.”
“Several million years old!” whispered Ongamar. “Who?”
“This is not the place nor the time,” said the Gardener. “We must move very quickly before they know we’ve been warned…”
“Where are we?” asked Ongamar
“On Chottem. Weathereye, you say there are three already assembled on Thairy? What are they doing?”
“Going to B’yurngrad to pick up a fourth one,” he replied, with satisfaction.
“Two here, four there, leaving only one, and we know where she is. So, Weathereye will take Ongamar to B’yurngrad, where she’ll tell them about ghyrm. Then they find transport…Not a way-gate. No! The way-gate’s reversed. We can’t leave it that way!”
Weathereye frowned, eyes suddenly widening. “Of course! We need to change the gate so it goes from Chottem to Cantardene, the way it was, then we have to hide the machine.”
“There will be guards posted at the far end, on Cantardene,” said Ella May. “If you turn it around, they’ll come through.”
“Do you have charbic?” asked Ongamar. “They grow it on Cantardene for export to Chottem. Charbic is lethal to the K’Famir, so they use slaves to work the fields.”
“Charbic?” mused the Gardener.
“Sometimes called mothbane,” I said. “The carpets here were adrift with it when we arrived.”
“So they were,” cried Sophia. “There are still sacks of the stuff filling up one of the stables.”
“Ah, very well,” said Mr. Weathereye. “Do you have stout retainers, Sophia? Stout enough to lug the stuff down below.”
“I don’t want them to see…” Sophia said.
“They won’t see,” said the Gardener. “Lady Badness can arrange that your men see nothing but floors and walls.” She stood, beckoning to me. “Gretamara and I will go just before the way is locked. Weathereye will precede us, with Ongamar and Ella May, continuing through the way-gates to Thairy, then on to B’yurngrad if that is where the others have gone.”
“You’re leaving me here alone?” asked Sophia in panic.
“I’ll stay with you,” said Lady Badness. “I’m really quite useful. Don’t worry.”
The Gardener stayed above while the rest of us returned below, and into the right-hand branch of the tunnel.
“If the K’Famir get through the grille, they’ll go through this gate, too,” whispered Sophia.
“It will do them no good,” said Lady Badness with a peculiar, almost anticipatory smile.
“We’re off, then,” said Weathereye, patting Sophia’s shoulder.
“There are four gates between us and Thairy, but it will take us very little time.” He bowed the women through, then followed.
Sophia took a deep, shuddering breath.
“You feel adrift,” said Lady Badness, patting her hand.
“Gardener has been…my mother, my family,” said Sophia. “I know all about my real mother. I know what kind of family she had. I think the Gardener is a lot harder to live up to.”
“She is only what our source is, and you’re part of that.”
Sophia was not cheered by this, as it seemed only to deepen her responsibility, but she resolutely sent for men to fetch sack after sack of powdered charbic root, then led them below to dump them just inside the gate.
“All kinds of vermin come through here,” Sophia said loudly, with a convincing shudder. “The charbic root will kill them, and we’ll shut this entry down.”
“Entry, ma’am?” asked the most forward of the men.
“A way my grandfather used to get down to the harbor,” she said. “He bought it from the Omnionts, but it lets rats in.”
When everything was prepared, the four strongest were told to stay by the machine while she pushed the button. Then they pulled the bulky thing back through the grille door, the sound of shrieking wheels covering the faint, distant howls that Sophia heard. She locked the grille and the gates behind her, then pointed out a dusty corner where the machine could be hidden under a pile of old sacking.
I watched them as they crossed each of the cellars, looking around with great curiosity. Everyone had heard the rumors of Stentor’s great hoard, but all I saw, all they saw was stone, dust, and cobwebs, with not so much as a scatter of coins on the floors. None of them noticed the old woman sitting quietly in a corner. When they had finished, Sophia thanked them for a job well done, paid them exorbitantly, and told them to take the day off.
“Now what are we to do?” Sophia asked Lady Badness.
Lady Badness turned toward me and asked, “Are you and the Gardener ready to go?”
“We are,” said the Gardener, coming down the stairs.
“It will be frightening, just waiting to see what happens,” said Sophia.
“We will stay busy,” said Lady Badness with a somewhat-gloating look. “Since the K’Famir may actually try to come through the way-gate, you and I, Sophia, must be ready with a proper welcome.”
The doors and the grille were unlocked only long enough to let the Gardener and me into the tunnel. We heard them being locked again, behind us.
We emerged from the way-gate into darkness. Light bloomed slowly around us. We were in a cube, a gate in the wall behind us, another in the wall ahead, an uninterrupted wall to either side, a ceiling, a floor.
“Do you have a name and a number?” whispered a mechanical voice.
“The name is Wilvia, the number is two,” said Gardener.
The wall to our left slid open, making a slender opening. We squeezed through and it shut behind us.
“It’s a Gentheran survey ship,” remarked the Gardener. “It’s been buried here for a very long time.”
We moved down the dimly lit passageway and came to a viewscreen that looked across a clearing into a forest. Through the trees we saw a shoreline and an expanse of water. Along the shoreline was a village swarming with very small people, somewhat humanlike in appearance.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“At the far end of nowhere,” replied the Gardener. “A place that interests no one, a place visited only by accident. The Frossians were determined to kill Wilvia, Queen of the Ghoss, so we kept moving her about in order to keep her safe.”
“When we were children,” I said, “we invented Queen Wilvia, and Naumi the Warrior, and all the others. There was a spy, too. I suppose Ongamar was the spy. I wonder if they found a warrior…”
A door opened at our approach to disclose a courtyard garden with flowering trees grouped around a burbling fountain. Cushioned chairs were set around it, one of them holding a slender, careworn woman, who rose, startled by our arrival. She wore a simple white robe and a diadem. The glowing gem at the center of her forehead was her only adornment.
“Gardener,” she said, but she was not looking at the Gardener. Her eyes were fixed on me.
“Wilvia,” the Gardener cried. “You’re pale, tired. Why are you all alone? Where are your companions?”
“They had to go,” she gestured, her eyes still fixed upon Gretamara. “A long, long time ago. Who…how…?”
The Gardener motioned to me to be seated, remaining standing herself to observe the two of us. “You recognize yourselves?”
“Myself?” Wilvia stood. “She’s younger than I.”
I shook my head. “I’ve been living with the Gardener since I was twelve. People who live there don’t age very fast. One named Ongamar has been a bondslave on Cantardene since she was twelve, and bondslaves do age. There are four more of us.”
“As I told you,” the Gardener said to Wilvia.
“I know you told me!” Wilvia took a step away, her cheeks burning with quick, hectic color, her eyes shifting restlessly, her voice shrill. “Being told is one thing. Confronting oneself, after all these years…Oh, Gardener.
When I saw you, I thought it might be my children! Or Joziré!”
“You know your children are well, for you and your friends left each of them in a safe place, did you not?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “My friends and I…”
“But where are your companions? They should be here.”
“Gone,” said Wilvia, taking a deep breath. “They had to go to Tercis to take their child. They weren’t supposed to be gone for very long, but when they started back, they realized they were being followed. They sent a message here, to the ship, to let me know why they hadn’t returned.”
“I need to see,” said Gardener, moving through the garden. I rose to follow her, but Wilvia stayed where she was.
“Gardener, there’s something wrong with her,” I said, as we went from the garden into another ship corridor.
“Isolation is wrong with her,” the Gardener said angrily. “Isolation, and grief. Her children were taken away for safekeeping, her husband also, a pair of Gibbekot were her only companions. We didn’t mean for her ever to be left alone!”
A door opened, and we went through into a control room. The Gardener turned to the right, to the communications room. “Access message from Prrr Prrrpm and Mwrrr Lrrrpa.”
“Message accessed.” Two faces appeared on the screen.
The Gardener said. “Prrr Prrrpm and Mwrrr Lrrrpa. Message!”
The larger Gibbekot said, “Wilvia, we can’t come back to you just now. We have placed Falija in foster care, as planned. As we were leaving Tercis, we detected someone following us, which means we have to lead the followers away. We knew it was a risk. Have patience. We will return to you as soon as possible…”
The screen went blank. We returned to Wilvia.
“You’ve been alone since they left?” cried the Gardener.
“Alone, yes. I know it seems longer than it really has been. I still have books to read. There’s plenty of food. Sometimes I spend days just watching them, out there, wondering at them. They’ve been almost wiped out over and over, but they don’t remember a thing…”
“And no one has come here at all?”
“Sometimes in the nights, I’ve wakened, thinking I’ve heard the gate. It makes a kind of liquid sound, you know, like water, flowing, but nothing happened except for the sound. I’m sure you’re right, that no one knows the ship is here.” She sat down again, closing her eyes and trembling. “Tell me it’s time to go?”