The desert evening was mild, the sands empty and still, yet Orlando
Gardiner was being dragged forward by a compulsion as powerful as hurricane
winds. His friend Fredericks had shown surprising strength and resourcefulness,
but with the breaking of the great urn Fredericks' strength had gone, and
now he too was being drawn helplessly toward the looming temple and the
terrifying thing that slept inside it.
Whether or not they felt the same compulsion, the little yellow monkey-children
of the Wicked Tribe clearly felt something: shrieking their dismay,
they clung to Orlando like baby bats. He wore so little clothing in his
Thargor guise that most of them clutched bare flesh, a living cloak of
tiny pinching fingers that would have been excruciating if Orlando had
not had far greater worries.
Something horrible is in that temple, and it's pulling us in. I asked
that goddess for help, and all we got were these stupid monkeys. It doesn't
make any sense! But nothing in Otherland ever made much sense.
Does it even matter? I'm dying, whether that . . . thing gets us or
not.
He took a grudging step forward, then another. The monkeys scrambled
around to his back in a leggy, tweezering mass, keeping the width of his
body between them and the temple. They were terrified of the place, which
was perfectly logical, but why on earth had the goddess thought these children
could help?
"Run away now, 'Landogarner!" one of them squeaked in his ear. "Big
Bad Nothing live there. All the gear is crazy. Run away!"
Orlando was already working so hard to resist he did not waste time
explaining that at this moment he could no more run away than he could
compose an opera in Turkish. Just as he realized that the yellow microsimian
had used the word "gear," reminding him that there was actual machinery
behind this madness, he stumbled on something half-buried in the sand.
It was a piece of the broken pot which had imprisoned the Tribe, a section
with only one visible carving on its surface-a feather in a rounded rectangle.
"Walk into the darkness," the goddess Ma'at had told him. "You
will see my sign." But her sign so far had brought him only miniature
monkeys, a dubious boon. He forced himself to stop anyway, bracing against
a pull that felt like a window had been blown out of a jet in high-atmosphere
flight, then managed to scoop the ceramic fragment into his numbed fingers
before surrendering to the temple once more.
"What you do with that?" the monkey nearest his head demanded. "That
from the Lady."
"You . . . know her?" Orlando was exerting a tremendous amount of energy
to slow himself, but that meant Fredericks had moved several paces ahead
and the distance between them was widening.
"She talk to us in the dark. Tell us stories!" The monkey hand-over-handed
up into the Thargor sim's dark hair. "You truly best turn 'round, 'Landogarner."
"Malocchio abbondanza!" shrilled another monkey fearfully. "Lady
said stay away from that!"
"I'd . . . love . . . to stay away," Orlando grunted through clenched
teeth. His head was hammering so badly it felt as though some artery might
explode like a blocked pipe. "I . . . I can't. It's . . . pulling us toward
it." He took a deep, shaky breath. All he could see of Fredericks now was
his friend's back as he trudged forward, bowed and helpless. "You said
. . . 'gear'. . . ?"
"Gear all crazy there," said the passenger in his hair. He suspected
it was Zunni, but it was hard to think properly with all the noise in his
head. "Like big what-is-a-callit-singalarity."
"Singularity?" If he had not been so close to screaming, he would have
laughed. "Like a black locking hole? Is that what you mean? This is virtual,
damn it!" His voice was so raggedly unpleasant that some of the monkeys
fluttered free. It was bizarre to see them circling in the air-it felt
so much like he was being sucked down a giant drain that he could not understand
why they were not tugged straight toward the temple as well. "Ohhhh,"
he groaned, finding it more and more difficult to speak. "Doesn't it .
. . pull you, too?"
Zunni, if that was who it was, went on as though he hadn't spoken. "Singularity?
All the arrows point one way? That not right?"
"Too inside out!" another one chirped. "Not get small like that."
Orlando could not make sense of anything and no longer had the strength
to care. He realized he was clutching the piece of pottery so hard his
fingers had turned white.
"You go there, but you don't want to go?" The little yellow shape was
too close for him to focus on it. It flittered before his eyes, fuzzily
insubstantial as an angelic vision. "Then you have to go through and bounce."
"Uh-uh, Zunni," one of the others said. "Not bounce." This one's voice
was so high as to be almost inaudible, the lisping tones of a child too
young even for school. "Wanna go 'round. Do Gavvy Well."
"She means 'Gravity Well,'" said Zunni confidingly. "That a game, okay?"
The facade of the red stone temple now loomed above Orlando like a cliff
face, impossibly tall, impossibly harsh and imposing, and still the monkeys
chittered among themselves. Fredericks was right, he thought despairingly.
It
is like talking to breakfast cereal. . . .
"Better run fast, 'Landogarner," one of the other little creatures told
him at last. "That the best thing."
"Only thing," said another. "Misterioso fabuloso. Need the best
tricks."
"I can't . . . run," he gritted. "I told you. It's . . . it's got me."
Zunni rappelled down his forehead on a strand of hair and poked at his
cheek.
"No, run toward thing. Run fast. Think fast thoughts, maybe."
"Zunni, you a big dumb itipoti!" another monkey squealed. "That
never work. Tell him just run fast."
"Think fast stuff, too," Zunni whispered, a tiny, dangling coconspirator.
"Big Bad Nothing gone all asleep-maybe he fooled."
Orlando was almost weeping with the effort of slowing his forward march.
The shadowed entrance to the temple stood before him, a wide black spot
in the facade like the hole left by a missing tooth. Fredericks was a pale
shape several meters ahead, almost absorbed by the darkness. "I don't understand,"
he panted. "Run toward it? Run?"
"We help," Zunni promised. She clambered onto his shoulder, then dropped
onto his back, out of sight, but he could still hear her voice. "We help
you come out fast, like Gravity Well. Here-we push!"
And suddenly the entire fluttering force of the tiny simians centered
itself between his shoulder blades and gave him an astonishingly hard shove.
He was propelled forward in a stumbling flurry of arms and legs, struggling
just to keep his feet beneath him. Everything before him swirled, as though
for the first time Otherland's latency could not approximate real life,
but he quickly realized it was even stranger than that: the doorway, the
huge sandstone blocks of the walls, even Fredericks turning in astonished
slow motion, all were abruptly flattened and stretched, rolling themselves
into a tunnel down which he plummeted. Orlando snatched at Fredericks as
he sped past him-through him-beyond him. . . . For a moment he felt the
hard piece of feather-scribed clay clutched in one of his hands like a
shield, and his friend's fingers gripping his other hand, then all sense
of his physical self dropped away and he was only an eye plummeting down
an endless well, an ear that heard nothing but the rushing of endless wind.
I'm inside it, was all he had time to think, then an image burst
upon him, sudden and vivid, a picture that drew itself on his mind rather
than his sight. Hidden within the temple, he suddenly knew beyond doubt,
but also encompassing that temple somehow, like a shadow bigger than the
object which cast it, was the monstrous black pyramid of his desert dream.
. . .
. . . The pyramid . . . the house of the beast . . .
Something struck him with an impact like a bomb--a great, shuddering
blow, as though he were a hammer that had just smashed down against a titanic
anvil, a deep reverberating tone like the sound of a world being born .
. . or ending. .. .
Doom. . . !
The tunnel around him shimmied and broke apart into opalescent smears.
First step, he dimly realized, his thoughts distant as the voices
of migrating birds invisible in the night sky. I've taken the first
step into the temple . . . into the dark. . . .
The thunderous concussion faded. The shivering, gleaming light reformed.
He was a child again, following his mother home from the well, watching
the sway of her hips and the jerry can balanced on her head. Something
rustled in the dry grass and he saw the red-and-brown skin of a snake snap
out onto the path before him. His mother turned in fear, her eyes wide,
but the snake was between them. . . .
Now he was in the back seat of a car, driving along the coast, with
his parents arguing in the front and his sister beside him, grinning and
jabbing him with the neck of her headless doll. He kicked at her, but she
stayed out of reach, and although he cried out to his parents, they were
busy with their conflict. As the car rounded a bend in the highway the
sun bounced its reflection off the water, and for a moment he was dazzled
by the light that silhouetted his parents' faces. . . .
His two younger brothers had crawled out of the tent. His mother was
yelling, which wasn't helping her soothe the sick baby in her arms, but
the bad thing was that his mother was really frightened because it was
night outside and dark and his father still wasn't back yet. He pushed
out of the flap and past the nervous goats, who rang their bells and bleated.
The night sky was huge and endless, running away in all directions, and
the stars were fierce, and he called his brothers' names over and over.
. . .
But I don't have any brothers, he thought. And those aren't
my parents, are they?
Everything began happening all at once.
A shack high up in a valley between the hills, and his bicycle lying
in a ditch beside the front path, the wheel rusted to the forks because
he had left it there all winter, to win an argument with his father that
his father didn't even know they were having. . . .
The place in the long front hallway where his mother's and older sister's
pictures sat on a table, with a vase of flowers just between them, and
where sometimes, on holy days, his grandmother burned a candle. . . .
Playing in the river before the rainy season returned, with nothing
but mud far down the banks. His cousin and one of the other village children
were wrestling, and they slipped down and for a moment they disappeared
into the sludge, frightening him, but then they came up again laughing,
with everything the same fecal brown except their shining eyes and teeth.
. . .
They were taking down his uncle's flag now that evening had come, and
he was rigidly at attention, hoping his uncle would notice how straight
he was standing. . . .
Doom . . .
Second step. The smears of light fragmented into smaller, more rigid
pieces, shards of lives, thousands of bright, jagged insights like broken
windows-a high mountain trail, following the horses, watching the brilliant
tassel of a blanket . . . a sharp bark as his dog heard something in the
next apartment, where no one was supposed to be home . . . his baby brother's
crying face, fat and red and completely without understanding why it had
been pushed down in the sandbox . . . a pair of new shoes set carefully
on his folded communion suit. . . .
And all the time a great dark something was moving beneath these glinting
bits, as though he, the observing eye, were a diver floating just beneath
the surface while something impossibly large, something too big and traveling
too deep to be fully comprehensible, passed slowly, slowly beneath him.
It did not know he was there, and his fascination with it was almost as
great as his naked terror, but nothing in the universe could have been
more exposed than he was, a worm without even a hook, floating above the
great shadow . . . .
Doom . . .
This third step brought the dark, as though the Big Nothing passing
beneath him had risen and, without realizing it, accidentally swallowed
him whole. Dark surrounded him now, permeated him, but it was a darkness
that burned, the darkness inside the oven after the door has closed.
He screamed, but there were no words. He knew no words. There were flashes
of light, but they had no more meaning than the burning darkness. He was
not only bodiless but nameless. He had no brothers, no sisters, no fathers,
no mothers, only pain and confusion. He was a singularity, one infinite
point at the center of everything, and all that surrounded him was finite.
He turned himself inside out over and over again.
The oscillations came faster now, hotter now, faster and hotter and
he could not he tried but there was no sense or sound or sight or anything
but fast and hot and
Faster hotter faster hotter broken-backed jerking scratch needle
white heat can't stop strike out no no more no make it no faster hot stop
make no it won't it too stop hurting not why understand no hot make faster
inside stop inside hotter outside stop make faster no make hotter it stop
. . .
Stopmakeitstopitwon'twhywon'titmakeit . . .
And then something finally did. Something blue, something quiet, something
clingingly cool poured over and made everything slow down, slow down, blessed
creeping syrupy slow frost that held him and covered him and let his deep
black empty heart go slow, go so very slow, until it beat only once in
an age, once in an aeon, once when everything began and then again when
everything would finally stop . . .
Doom . . . The fourth step.
And with that singular and potent reverberation came nothingness. And
it was welcome.
He came up nameless, out of fundamental blankness into another, lesser
blackness, a still place with no time except now. He only knew it
was a place because he had a sense of himself as an individual thing, and
thus a dim feeling that anything that existed must exist in a place, but
he was in no hurry to know where he was, or even who he was. With the acceptance
of personal existence came a certain commitment, he knew, and he did not
wish anything so strenuous or permanent just yet.
The blackness, although it encompassed everything, nevertheless had
a shape, a shape he had seen before, wide at the bottom, narrow at the
top-a mountain, a cup emptied and then turned over, a pyramid . . . He
was in the darkness-of the
Darkness-but he could still feel the impossible geometry of the black
form, the vertices both converging and simultaneously extending upward
in parallel, forever.
And as he felt himself alive and tiny and for this moment unnoticed
in the heart of the black pyramid, something began to sizzle in the emptiness.
When he saw the torn place moving before him, he realized that what had
ripped the darkness was light, a fizzing irregular glow like a Fourth of
July sparkler. . . .
. . . His parents' balcony, him with a cripplingly bad respiratory infection
and too sick to go down to the fireworks, even those on the compound's
green, but his parents having their own show just for him on the balcony,
so he could watch it from his bed . . .
The jagged place tore more widely, light spilling out now. For a moment-only
a moment-he was disappointed to see the beautiful darkness compromised
so easily and so carelessly. But as he floated in all that black he could
not look away from the light, which was spreading before him, becoming
a field of regular shapes, angled lines, a grid that turned inside out
from white lines on black to black lines on a white . . .
. . . Ceiling . . .
. . . And he came to realize he was lying on his back, looking up at
the ceiling of some institutional room, all insulated tile and easy-clean
surfaces.
Hospital. The word came to him after a moment, and with it the
slowly dawning realization that he must have awakened-that he must somehow
have been thrown out of the network and back into his body. Another thought
came to him tardily, and he braced himself for the pain that . . . that
. . . (the name finally came) that Fredericks had described, but after
long moments of looking up at the acoustic tiles, it still had not arrived.
He had, however, become aware of two other presences on either side of
the bed, leaning over him, which could only be his mother and father. A
quiet joy filled him as he opened his eyes.
The shape on his left side was hidden by shadow, so deeply hidden that
he could not see it, only feel it. What he perceived was sentience, but
also emptiness and the cold that came with it. It was not a pleasant feeling.
The shape on his right had a head that was nothing but light.
I've been here, he thought. But it was an office, not a hospital.
When I first . . . when I first came through . . .
Hello, Orlando, said the thing with the face made invisible by
its own brilliance. It spoke with his mother's voice, but it was not his
mother, not by any stretch of imagination. We have missed you. Although
we have not been very far from you.
Who is "we"? He struggled to rise but could not. The thing on
his left side moved, the chilly shape he could not quite see; for a heart-stopping
moment he was terrified that it would touch him. He turned away violently,
but the light on the other side was blindingly bright, so he was forced
to turn his face back toward the acoustic tiles. A small thing was crawling
there, a tiny thing, perhaps a bug, and he pinned his attention to it.
"We," in the sense of "I," the not-his-mother continued. "You,"
I suppose it could even be said. But of course that would not be strictly
accurate either.
He could make no sense of that. Where am I? What is this place?
The thing of light hesitated. A dream, I suppose. Perhaps that would
be the best explanation.
So I'm talking to myself? So this is all in my head?
The cold fire rippled. He realized the shape was laughing. As if angered
by this, the shadowy thing on his left periphery shifted. He thought he
could hear it breathing, a slow, somnolent sound from a long way away.
No,
no, the shape on his right said. Nothing so simplistic. You're talking
to yourself, yes, but that's because that's where words come from.
Am I dead?
That word doesn't mean much in this particular conversation.
The glow rose a little, the fierce radiance bringing a tear to Orlando's
right eye. He blinked as it continued. You are between. You are near
a boundary. You are halfway between Heaven and Hell-a place which, medieval
theology aside, has nothing to do with Earth at all.
Are you . . . God? Even in his distraction and disconnection,
a part of him did not believe it. It all seemed too pat, too simple. The
cold thing on the other side of him leaned closer, or seemed to-he felt
a chill shadow inch across him, and he shut his eyes tight, terrified that
he might see what stood there.
The voice that went with the radiant face was kind. Here's the question,
Orlando. It's kind of a Sunday School question. . . .
Eyes tightly shut, he waited, but the silence went on. Just as he was
about to risk everything and open his eyes, the soft voice spoke again.
If God is all-powerful, then the Devil must be nothing more than
a darkness in the mind of God. But if the Devil is something real and separate,
then perfection is impossible, and there can be no God . . . except for
the aspirations of fallen angels. . . .
Orlando strained to hear as the voice, which had grown steadily fainter,
whispered the last word. As if he might hear better with his vision restored,
he opened his eyes to . . .
Blackness, complete and absolute and containing nothing but . . .
Doom . . .
For the second time in what seemed a very short span, he appeared to
be back in a hospital. His eyes were tight shut, and the idea that those
same odd bookend figures might still be sitting over him meant he was in
no hurry to open them, but Orlando could tell that he was flat on his back,
restrained by sheets or something equally binding, and someone was dabbing
at his forehead with a cold, damp cloth.
Also contributing to the hospital theory was the fact that he felt absolutely
dreadful.
"He just blinked," said Fredericks in the excited tone of someone who
has been watching for something a long time.
"Oh, God," Orlando groaned. "I'm still . . . alive, then? God, that
locks utterly."
"That's not funny, Gardiner."
As he opened his eyes a second sarcastic remark died on his lips. It
was not Fredericks cooling his brow, but a round Egyptian woman with dark
skin and an impatient expression. "Who are you?" Orlando asked.
"Just hush your mouth." She sounded far more Deep South than Nile Delta.
"You were almost dead, boy, so I think you'd better keep still for a bit."
Orlando looked to Fredericks, hovering behind her, and mouthed, Who
is she? His friend shrugged helplessly. The room decor gave no clues-the
walls were whitewashed mud brick, the ceiling white plaster, and there
was no furniture in the room other than whatever kind of lumpy, pillowless
bed was beneath him.
The woman put a gentle but firm hand against his chest and pressed him
back onto the rustling mattress. When he tried to resist, he realized that
some kind of rough blanket had been tucked around him very tightly: his
arms were virtually pinned against his sides.
"What's going on?" he blustered, frightened to be so helpless. "Are
you planning to make me into a mummy or something?"
"Don't be stupid." She dabbed a last time and then stood up, fists on
her full hips. Even with Fredericks wearing his slight-bodied Pithlit sim,
she only came up to his shoulder. If Orlando had been vertical, the Thargor
body would have towered over her. "You aren't a king, you're just an ordinary
god like your friend here, and you're not even dead. You just don't rate
mummification, boy. Now say your prayers and then get some sleep."
"What are you talking about? Who are you? What's going on here?"
"You were really sick again, Orlando." Fredericks looked to the woman
as though asking permission to speak, but she did not look away from her
patient. "When we came through . . . when we were out of that temple place
. . . you were . . ."
"You were acting like a crazy person," the woman said matter-of-factly.
"Hootin' and hollerin' and carrying on something terrible. You tried to
kick your way through the wall of somebody's house, and then you tried
to walk across the Nile."
"Oh, my God . . ." Orlando shuddered. "But how did I get here? And why
won't you tell me who you are?"
The woman squinted at him as though judging whether he was worth the
effort of serious conversation. "Watch that cursing, boy. My name is Bonita
Mae Simpkins. My family call me Bonnie Mae, but you don't know me that
well, so for now you can call me Mrs. Simpkins."
The headache which had been merely excruciating at first was getting
worse every moment. Orlando could feel his eyelid twitching badly, but
that was the least of his worries. "I . . . I want to get some answers,
but I feel pretty impacted," he conceded.
"You're not well, boy, that's why. You need more sleep." She frowned,
but her touch was gentle on his forehead. "Here." She drew something from
a fold of her baggy white cotton dress. "Swallow this. It'll make you feel
a little better."
Under the pressure of that gaze, he did not argue, but dry-swallowed
the powdery ball. "What is it?"
"Egyptian medicine," she said. "They make a lot of it from crocodile
poop." For the first time she allowed herself a quick smile at Orlando's
horrified expression. "But not this. Just willow bark. Another few thousand
years, I 'spect they'll call it aspirin."
Orlando was not as amused as Mrs. Simpkins, but he had no strength left
to tell her so. He lay back. Fredericks squatted beside him and took his
hand. "You'll be okay, Gardiner."
Orlando wanted to remind his friend that okay was the one thing he would
never, ever be, but already something was dragging him down, like river
weeds tangling the legs of a drowning man.
He felt a little better the next time he woke, and after some bargaining
was even allowed to sit up. All his nerves felt like they were coming back
to life. Whatever was stuffed in his mattress felt as bristly as horsehair,
and the light streaming in through the doorway of the room splashed with
almost painful brightness against the white walls.
When Mrs. Simpkins wandered off briefly to another room, he called Fredericks
over. "What's going on?" he whispered. "What happened with the temple and
how did we get here? Where is here, anyway?"
"It's someone's house." Fredericks looked over his shoulder to make
sure the formidable Mrs. S. was not in sight. "Pretty big, too. She was
telling the truth, though-you were scanned out. A bunch of guys with, like,
clubs were going to kill you, but she calmed you down."
"But where are we? It's still Egypt, right? How did we wind up here?"
Fredericks' face was unhappy. "Egypt, yeah, but I don't really know
the rest. After we reached the temple place-I really thought some kind
of monster was going to come out of there and just utterly devour us or
something-I guess I blacked out, then I just kind of . . . woke up again.
And you were gone. But we were near the edge of the river, and there was
like this big city around us. And then I heard people shouting, and I went
to look, and it was you, and you were standing in the river, scanning majorly,
shouting something about God's offices."
"I don't remember any of that," said Orlando, shaking his head. "But
I had some really weird . . . I don't know, dreams, experiences . . . about
that temple place." He had a sudden, worried thought. "Where are the monkey
kids?"
"They're here. They just won't come inside-that woman scares them. They
were all climbing around on you when you were still sleeping, the first
afternoon, and she chased 'em out with a broom. I think they're living
in a tree in the open place out there-what's it called, a courtyard?"
"I don't get any of this . . ." Orlando said. "I mean, what's someone
named Bonnie Mae doing in ancient Egypt. . . ?"
"There weren't a lot of folk named Orlando Gardiner laboring to build
Pharaoh's pyramids either," said a sharp voice from the doorway. "Now were
there?"
Fredericks started back guiltily. "He's feeling better," Orlando's friend
asserted, "so he was asking some questions."
"Well he might," Mrs. Simpkins said. "Well he might. And I s'pose I
might have a couple myself. Like, where you got this, and why you were
hanging onto it so tight there are still finger marks in the clay?" She
held up the piece of broken pot, waving the feather design in front of
Orlando's face. "Talk to me, boy. The good Lord don't care for liars-He
cannot abide those who do not tell the truth."
"Look," Orlando said, "no offense, but why should I tell you anything?
I don't know who you are. I mean, thanks for taking care of us and giving
us a place to stay, but maybe we should just get going now, let you have
your house back." He tried to climb to his feet, then had to try even harder
to avoid falling down. His legs felt overcooked, and even the effort of
steadying himself brought his breath fast and frequent.
Bonita Mae Simpkins' laugh was mirthless. "You don't know what you're
talking about, boy. First off, you couldn't walk around the corner yet
without your friend helping you. Second, in another hour it's going to
be dark, and if you're outside, you'll get torn to pieces. You ain't the
Daniel of this lion's den."
"Torn to pieces?"
"You tell him," she said to Fredericks. "I don't take well to being
argued with these days." She folded her arms across her broad chest.
"There's . . . there's some kind of war going on," Fredericks said.
"It's not very safe outside at night."
"Not very safe?" the woman snorted. "The Lord has given you a gift for
understatement that is truly miraculous, youngster. The streets of Abydos
are full of abominations, and that's the truth. Creatures with the heads
of vultures and bees, men and women who throw lightning and ride in flying
boats, scorpions with human hands, monsters you can't even imagine. It's
like the Final Days out there, like the Book of Revelations, if the good
Lord will forgive me saying so about a place that ain't no more than a
poor copy of His universe in the first place, no more than the work of
sinful men." She fixed Orlando with an agate eye. "And what's more, from
what I understand, all this craziness is your fault, boy."
"What?" Orlando turned to Fredericks, who shrugged and looked sheepish.
"What is she talking about?"
"Well," his friend said, "you remember Oompa-Loompa? The guy with the
wolf head? Apparently, he sort of started some kind of revolution."
"Osiris is gone at the moment, but his lieutenants Tefy and Mewat are
wrathful creatures," said Mrs. Simpkins. "They are going to do their level
best to get things back under control before their boss comes back, and
to creatures like them, that means a lot of pain and a lot of killin'-and
they've already done a goodly amount. So don't tell me what you're going
to do or not do, boy."
Orlando could only sit for a moment in horrified silence, trying to
make sense of it all. The angle of the light on the far wall had changed
already, the shadows creeping up the whitewash, and with the woman's words
still echoing in his thoughts he could almost feel the held breath of a
community waiting fearfully for darkness to come. "So . . . so what are
we supposed to do? What's all this mean to you . . . Ma'am?"
Mrs. Simpkins grunted, signifying her approval of a more respectful
Orlando. "What it means to me is more than you're ready to hear yet, boy,
but you came stomping through the tomb-builders' neighborhood with the
feather of Ma'at clamped in your hand like it was your last friend, and
I mean to know why."
"How do you know about . . . about her?"
"Who's asking the questions, boy?" She glared at him. Orlando felt certain
she could crack a walnut between those eyebrows if she wanted to. "Not
only do I know about her, my husband Terence died in Osiris' dungeons to
protect her secrets, and eight more of my friends have died here, too.
So you can understand I'm a little bit short-tempered about the whole thing.
Now you better talk to me."
Orlando took a breath. Self-preservation screamed at him not even to
think about asking another question, but he had been under sentence of
death too long to be easily cowed. "Just tell me who your friends are,
please. Why are you here?"
Bonita Mae Simpkins also took a breath. "I'm praying for patience, boy."
She closed her eyes as though it were the literal truth. "We are the Circle,
young man, and we are going to send every one of these sinners and false
gods down to hell on the express elevator. Now, s'pose you start talking."
advertisement
