The litah snarled warningly but held his ground. Ehomba instinctively drew back. As for Simna, he ducked sharply, frowned, and then straightened anew. To all outward appearances he was entirely unharmed.
The cloud of powder that puffed from the muzzle of the strange device was primarily pink with deeper overtones of cerise. It enveloped the swordsman for the briefest of moments before dissipating in the still air of the chamber. Simna sniffed once, twice, and then laughed out loud.
“A decent little fragrance. Delicate, not too strong. Reminds me of a girl I spent some time with in a town on the western edge of the Abrangian Steppes.”
“Good.” The monk lowered the contraption but did not set it aside. “I’m glad it brings back fond memories for you.”
“Very fond.” Simna grinned wolfishly at the savant. “Fonder than you’ll ever know.”
“That may very well be true. You are obviously a man of extensive appetites. Mine, I am not ashamed to confess, are more modest. In that respect I envy you, though I cannot say that my envy translates into admiration.” He indicated the swordsman’s upraised weapon. His two associates were watching closely. “What, may I ask, were you planning to do with that impressive-looking piece of steel?”
Simna looked down at the sword in his hand. “This? Why, I was going to ... I was going to ...”
His words trailed away along with his anger. He stared stupidly at the weapon, as if he had once known its purpose but had forgotten, like someone who finds a long-lost piece of clothing in an old drawer and cannot remember how it is to be worn. Slowly, he lowered the blade. His expression brightened when he remembered the scabbard that hung from his belt. Sheathing the metal, he looked back at the trio of inquisitors and smiled.
“There! I guess that’s what I was going to do with it.” The smile plastered on his face resembled that of several of the lesser sculptures that decorated the exterior of the rectory: bemused, but not vacuous. “I hope we’re not giving you good people any trouble?”
“No,” the woman told him confidently, “no trouble at all. It’s nice to see you right thinking. A lot less painful, isn’t it?”
“It sure is.” But even as Simna spoke, his lips seemed to be doing battle with his jawline. Small veins pulsed in his forehead and neck, and perspiration broke out on his forehead even though it was quite cool in the darkened chamber. Everything about his expression and posture indicated a man at war with himself—and losing. One hand trembled visibly as it attempted to clutch the hilt of the now sheathed sword. The fingers would twitch convulsively forward and miss, twitch and miss, as if their owner was afflicted with any one of several neuromuscular infirmities.
It was dispiriting to watch Simna take a step toward the table. One leg worked well enough, but the other hung back, obviously reluctant, as if fastened to the floor by metal bolts. The paralyzed grin on the swordsman’s face hinted at internal mental as well as physical conflict.
“Better,” the monk in the middle declared tersely even as he raised the singular device and pointed it in Ehomba’s direction. “As your friend can tell you, this won’t hurt a bit. A few weekly treatments and your thinking will be right as rain.”
“Yes,” agreed the man on his left. “Then you can choose freely whether to return to your homeland, or remain here in beautiful Tethspraih, or continue on your way. Whichever you do, it will be as a contemporary, right-thinking person, with none of the irritating emotional and intellectual baggage that so cripples the bulk of humanity.”
“I like my intellectual baggage,” Ehomba responded. “It is what makes me an individual.”
“So do unfortunately inherent human tendencies to commit murder and mayhem.” The woman succored him with an angelic smile. “But they do not contribute to the improvement of the person.”
Ehomba tried to duck, to twist out of the way, but it was far more difficult to avoid a cloud than a spear thrust. As the pallid vapor enveloped him he tried not to inhale, only to find that it was not necessary to breathe in the powder directly to experience its effects. The delicate fragrance was an ancillary effect of the substance, not an indicator of its efficacy. It sank in through his eyes, his lips, the skin of his exposed arms and ankles and neck, from where it penetrated to the core of his being.
While his feet remained firmly on the floor, he felt his mind beginning to drift, to float. Ahead lay a pillowed rosy cloud, beckoning to him with pastel tendrils while masking his view of the three savants. He was aware that they were continuing to observe him closely. If only he would let himself relax and fully embrace the mist, a great deal of the inner torment and uncertainty that had plagued him throughout his life would vanish, dispersed as painlessly and effectively as vinegar would kill a scorpion’s sting.
He fought back. He conjured up stark images of Mirhanja and the children that were faithful down to the smallest detail. He recalled the time he had been fishing in the stream the village used as its source of fresh water, and had stepped on a spiny crawfish. The remembrance of that pain pushed back the insistent vapor, but only for a moment. He recalled the specifics of discussions he had engaged in with the village elders, and arguments he’d had with his wife, and the day they had celebrated his mother’s eightieth birthday and it had rained on everyone and everything. He reviewed the minutiae of his journey to this time and place, assigning each an emotion and a day.
He did everything he could think of to keep his thoughts his own—even if they were not “right.”
“He’s fighting it.” Through the brume of befuddlement that threatened to overwhelm him he heard the woman’s voice. She still sounded confident, but not quite as confident as previously.
“His channels of thought are more deeply worn and solidly set than those of his companion.” This from the monk seated at the other end of the table. “Give him another dose.”
“So soon?” The senior of the trio sounded uncertain.
“We don’t want to lose him to irresolution.” The other man’s tone was kindly but firm. “It won’t hurt him. He’s strong. At worst it may cost him some old memories. A small price to pay for a lifetime of proper thinking.”
Benumbed within the fog of right thinking, Ehomba heard what they planned for him, and panicked. What memories might he lose if subjected to another dose of the corrective dust? A day hunting with his father? Favorite stories his aunt Ulanha had told him? Remembrances of swimming with friends in the clear water pool at the base of the little waterfall in the hills behind the village?
Or would his losses be more recent? The number of cattle he was owed from the communal herd? Or perhaps the knowledge of how to treat a leg wound, or bind up a broken bone. Or the wonderful philosophical conversations he had engaged in with Gomo, the old leader of the southern monkey troop.
What if he forgot his name? Or who he was? Or what he was?
The only thing that seemed to fight off the soporific effects of the powder was strong thinking in his accustomed manner. Behind him, Ahlitah had finally roused himself from his slumber. He could hear the big cat growling, but softly and uncertainly. Seeing his friends standing unbound or otherwise unrestrained, freely confronting the three unarmed humans seated behind the table, the cat was not even sure anything was amiss. When it came to the realization that all was not as well as it seemed, it would be too late for it to help. And a burst of thought-corrective powder from the big-mouthed apparatus might render its feline mind incapable of intelligent thought altogether.
No matter how persuasive or compelling the effects, Ehomba had to fight it off—for the sake of his friends as well as himself. The inimical darkness he knew how to combat, but the sweet-smelling pink powder was far more treacherous. It did not threaten death or dismemberment, only a different way of thinking. But the way a man thought determined who and what he was, the herdsman knew. Change that and you forever change the individual behind the thoughts.
Desperately, he struggled to keep rigid, uncompromising images at the forefront of his thinking. Cloying and insistent, the subtle aroma of the powder suffused his nostrils, his lungs, the essence of himself. It ate at his thought processes like acid distilled from orchids.
No! he shouted to himself. I am Etjole Ehomba, and I think thusly, and not thatly. Leave my mind alone and let my friends and me go!
“Definitely needs another dose.” The woman’s expression reflected her compassion and certitude. “Give in to the way of right thinking, traveler! Let yourself relax—don’t fight it. From the bottom of my being I promise that you will be a happier and better man for it.”
“A happier and better man perhaps.” On the other side of the fog that had enveloped him he believed he heard his voice responding. “But I will not be the same man.”
The senior of the trio sighed regretfully. “I would rather not do this. I hate to see anyone lose memories, no matter how insignificant.”
“It is for the greater good,” the savant on his left pointed out. “Society’s as well as his.”
“I know.” After performing a quick check of the small canister attached to the top of the contrivance, the monk raised the metal tube and for a second time aimed it in Ehomba’s direction.
The herdsman was frantic. The pink haze was no longer advancing on his thoughts, but neither had it gone away. It hovered before him like a fog bank awaiting a ship being thrust forward by the current, waiting to swallow him up, to reduce his individual way of thinking to the mental equivalent of zero visibility. Reinforced by a second burst from the long-barreled device, its effects would doubtless prove overwhelming.
Ehomba cogitated as hard as he could. Concentrated on bringing to the forefront of his thoughts the most powerful, most convincing images he could call up. Not right-thinking notions, perhaps, but those of which he was most soundly and resolutely convinced. He envisioned Mirhanja, and the village. He contemplated the stark but beautiful countryside of his homeland, the hunting and herding trails that crossed its hills and ravines. He conjured up the faces of his friends and relatives.
Taking careful aim, the well-meaning monk triggered the powder shooter. Thought-paralyzing pinkness blossomed in the herdsman’s direction. When it surrounded him he knew he would be the same, but different. Identical in appearance, altered within. He concentrated furiously on the pain of his own birthing, of the lightning strike that had killed an old childhood friend, of the way he and the other men and women of the village had spent all of a night debating how to deal with a visiting hunter who had availed the Naumkib of their hospitality only to be discovered attacking one of the young women. Strong thoughts all, couched in his own unique, individual manner of thinking. From the mouth of the device the salmon-hued haze approached as if in slow motion, like bleached blood.
He thought of the sea.
Behind him, the litah yelped. Another time, the herdsman might have remarked on the unusual sound. He had heard the big cat snarl, and growl, and snore, and even purr in its sleep, but he had never heard it yelp. It would not have mattered if Ahlitah had suddenly burst into traditional village song, so hard was Ehomba fighting to concentrate on his way of thinking. Had he identified it, that which had made the cat yelp would have surprised him even more than the uncharacteristic feline expression itself.
Ahlitah cried out because his feet were suddenly and most unexpectedly standing ankle deep in water. Cold, dark water that smelled powerfully of drifting kelp and strong salts. Nearby, Simna ibn Sind blinked and found himself frowning at something he could not quite put a finger on. Something was not right and, try as he might, he couldn’t identify it.
Behind the table, the three savants gaped at the water that had materialized around their feet. Where it was coming from they could not imagine. It seemed to well forth from the solid floor, oozing upward via the cracks between the stones, replacing vanished mortar. Oblivious to what was happening around him, Ehomba continued to concentrate on the oldest, most distinctive entity in his copious store of memories, one he could reproduce with the least amount of effort. He thought of how the sea tasted when sips of it accidentally forced their way past his lips while he was swimming, of the cool, invigorating feel of its liquid self against his bare skin, of the spicy saltiness that tickled his palate and the burning shock whenever any entered his nose. He remembered how its far, flat horizons provided the only real edge to the world, recalled the look of specific creatures that swam sinuously through its depths, saw in his mind’s eye the humble magnificence of the abandoned skeletons of creatures large and small that each morning found cast up on its beaches like the wares of a wise old merchant neatly set out for inspection and approval.
And as he remembered, and thought, the sea continued to fill the interrogation chamber, the water level rising with preternatural, impossible speed. It covered him to his knees, reached his hips. Behind him, the agitated litah rumbled and splashed. Having risen from their chairs, the three stunned savants were backing away from the travelers and wading dazedly toward the door. All around Ehomba, pink powder drifted down to the water and was absorbed, dispersing within the rising dark green depths like ground tea leaves in a boiling kettle.
The monks shouted and the door was pulled aside—only to reveal two of the armed servitors slipping and floundering in water up to their waists. The deluge from nowhere was as prominent in the hallway outside the room as it was within, offering neither safety nor dry environs for the fleeing savants.
Half standing, half floating next to Ehomba, Simna ibn Sind shook his head sharply, blinked, and seemed to see his newly saturated surroundings for the first time. Wading with difficulty through water that was now up to his chest, he grabbed the herdsman’s arm and pulled violently.
“Etjole! Hoy, bruther, you can turn off the spigot now! Our happy mentors have fled.” The swordsman nervously eyed the rising waters. “Best we get away from this stagnant seminary while the awaying’s good.”
Ehomba seemed not to hear his friend. Cursing under his breath, Simna directed the disoriented Ahlitah to join them. By dint of much hasty pushing and shoving, they managed to position the unresponsive herdsman facedown across the big cat’s broad back. In this manner, with their lanky companion wallowing so deep in thought he was unable to rise above his thinking, they walked and waded and swam out of the room.
Emerging from the hallway into the rectory’s central inner hall, they kicked their way into a scene of complete chaos. Frantic monks were struggling madly to keep irreplaceable scrolls and tomes above the rising water, which was rapidly climbing toward the second floor. Foaming waves broke against banisters and railings, and thoroughly bewildered fish leaped and flopped in the troughs.
“The main entrance!” Simna shouted as he plunged headlong into the agitated combers and whitecaps. “Swim for the main entrance!”
Though water was able to escape from the few open first-floor windows, these were already submerged and proved themselves unequal to the task of coping with the rising flood. Monks and acolytes bobbed helplessly in the waves. Off to the rear of the hall, above the now sunken master fireplace, a miniature squall was brewing. Looking down into the water, Simna thought he saw something sleek and muscular pass beneath his body. Behind and to the right of him, a flailing servitor, having divested himself of his weapons and armor, suddenly threw both hands in the air. Shrieking, he disappeared beneath the chop, dragged down by something that should not have been living so many hundreds of leagues from the sea, should not have been swimming free and unfettered in the center of the rectory of right thinking.
Following close behind the swordsman, the black litah paddled strongly through the salt-flecked rollers. Turning onto his back while still making for the almost entirely submerged main door, Simna yelled to his limp friend.
“Enough, bruther! You’ve made your point, whatever it was. Turn it off, make it stop!”
Words drifted back to him, across the water and through the black mane. It was definitely Ehomba’s voice, but muted, not as if from sleep but from concentration. Concentration that had led not only to a realization more profound than the herdsman could have envisioned, but to one from which he seemed unable to liberate himself.
“Cannot ... must think only ... of the sea. Keep thinking ... straight. Keep thinking ... myself.”
“No, not anymore!” The swordsman spat out a mouthful of salt water. It tasted exactly like the sea, even down to the tiny fragments of sandy grit that peppered his tongue. “You’ve done enough!” Around them the residents of the rectory screamed and cried out, kicked and flailed as they fought to keep their heads above water. Not all were good swimmers. At that moment the hall and the rest of the structure were filled not with right thinking or wrong thinking, but only with thoughts of survival.
“Ow! By Gelujan, what ... ?” Turning in the water, Simna saw that he had bumped his head against the heavy wooden double door that sealed the main entrance to the rectory. Only a small portion of it remained above the rising waters. Opening it was out of the question. Not only would it have to be opened inward, against the tremendous pressure of the water, but the twin iron handles now lay many feet below his rapidly bicycling legs.
Something gripped his shoulder and he let out a small yelp of his own as he whirled around to confront it. When he saw that it was only Ehomba, awakened at last from his daze, he did not know whether to cry out with relief or deal his revived friend a sharp blow to the face. In any event, the uneasy waters in which they found themselves floating would have made it impossible to take accurate aim.
“What now, humble herdsman? Can you make the water go away?”
“Hardly,” Ehomba replied in a voice only slightly louder than his usual soft monotone. “Because I do not know how I made it come here.” Treading water, he scanned their surroundings. “We might find a second-story window to swim through, but that would mean spilling out onto the streets below and risking a dangerous drop.” He glanced down at his submerged feet. “How long can you hold your breath?”
“Hold my ... ?” Simna pondered the question and its implications. “You’re thinking of diving to the bottom and swimming out one of the first-floor windows?”
The herdsman shook his head. For someone who spent so much of his life tending to land animals, the swordsman mused, Ehomba bobbed in the water as comfortably and effortlessly as a cork.
“No. We might not locate one in time, or we might find ourselves caught up and trapped among the heavy furniture or side passageways below. We must go out the front way.” He indicated the upper reaches of the two-story-high main door. “Through this.”
“Hoy? How much of your mind did you leave in that little room, bruther? Or are your thoughts still tainted by that virulent pinkness?”
Ehomba did not reply. Instead, he turned in the water to face the methodically paddling feline. “Can you do it?”
The big cat considered briefly, then nodded. With his great mane plastered like black seaweed to his skull and neck, he managed the difficult feat of looking only slightly less lordly even though sopping wet. Wordlessly, he dipped his head and dove, the thick black tuft at the end of his tail pointing the way downward like an arrow aimed in reverse. Ehomba followed, arching his back and spearing beneath the surface like a sounding porpoise. With a last mumbled curse Simna ibn Sind pinched his nose shut and initiated a far less elegant and accomplished descent.
The ocean water itself was clean and unsullied, but since only limited light penetrated the rectory, underwater viewing of any kind was difficult. Visibility was limited to a few feet. Still, while Simna’s stinging eyes could not locate Ehomba, they had no trouble picking out the massive, hulking shape of the litah. As he held his position, his cheeks bulging and the pack on his back threatening to float off his shoulders, the big cat sank the massive curving claws on its forefeet into the secondary human-sized entry door that was imbedded in the much larger, formal gateway. Then it did the same with its hind feet—and began to kick and claw.
Though working underwater reduced the litah’s purchase and slowed its kicks, shredded wood quickly began to fill the gloom around them, drifting away and up toward the surface. A burst of daylight suddenly pierced the damp gloom, then another, and another. Simna felt unseen suction beginning to pull him forward. Kicking hard and pushing with his hands, he held his submerged position. His heart and lungs pounded against his chest, threatening to burst. He couldn’t even try to harangue Ehomba into performing some of the magic the herdsman insisted he had not mastered. If something didn’t happen very soon, the swordsman knew his straining, aching lungs were going to force him back to the constricted, wave-tossed surface.
Something did.
Beneath the constant attack of Ahlitah’s claws, the waterlogged wood of the secondary door not only gave way but collapsed completely. Simna felt himself sucked irresistibly forward. Flailing madly with hands and feet, he tried to maintain some semblance of control over his speedy exodus—to no avail. His right arm struck the doorjamb as he was wrenched through and a dull pain raced up his shoulder.
Then he was coughing and sputtering in bright sunlight as he bobbed to the surface. After making sure that his sword and pack had come through with him, he looked around for his companions.
Ehomba was rising and falling in the current like a long uprooted log. He waved and shouted back to Simna. The swordsman, he noted, was far more agile and confident on land than he was in the water, even though the torrent was slowing as it spread out on the rectory square. Just ahead of him, Ahlitah was already scrabbling for a foothold on the paving stones.
Behind them, seawater continued to gush from the shattered doorway as if from an open faucet. Furniture, pieces of coving ripped from floors, sodden carpets, utensils, and the occasional gasping acolyte broke through the otherwise smooth surface of the flood. Screaming filled the air as stunned, startled citizens scrambled to escape the clutches of the saltwater river. Those who failed to move fast enough found themselves knocked off their feet and ignominiously swept down the street.
Dragging themselves clear of the main flow, the travelers reassembled behind a walled mansion. As Ehomba and Simna checked their packs, they were drenched all over again when the litah chose that moment to shake itself vigorously. After a few choice words from the swordsman, they resumed their inspection.
“Everything I own is soaked.” Grousing, he held up a package of dried mutton. “Ruined.”
Ehomba was sorting through his own possessions. “We are not in the desert anymore. There will be places to buy food.” Rising, he looked around. “We need to find a source of fresh water and rinse everything out. If we do it quickly enough, some of the jerky should survive.”
“That’s the last time I listen to you where officialdom is concerned.” The swordsman’s pack squished wetly as he slung it over his shoulders. “Next time we put up a fight instead of going quietly.” As they started down the deserted street, he looked back the way they had come. The torrent of salt water continued to gush unabated from the bowels of the rectory. “Sure is a lot of water. When will it stop?”
“I do not know. I thought of the sea to try and keep my thinking to myself, and you see what followed. I do not know how it happened, or why, or how I did what I did.” He looked over at his companion. “Not knowing how I started it, I have no idea how to stop it. I am not thinking of the sea now, yet the water still flows.” Behind them, cries and the sounds of frantic splashing continued to fill the square around the rectory.
Finding an unsullied public fountain, they removed everything from their packs and rinsed it all in the cool, clear fresh water to remove the salt. That task concluded, they did the same for their weapons to prevent the metal blades from corroding. Few citizens were about, most having locked themselves in their homes or places of business to hide from the intemperate sorcery. Everyone else had run to the rectory square to gawk at the new wonder. Gifted with this temporary solitude and shielded from casual view by Ahlitah’s bulk, the two men removed their clothes and washed them as well.
“I feel as if I shall never be dry again.” The disgruntled swordsman struggled to drag his newly drenched shirt down over his head and shoulders.
As Ehomba worked with his kilt he squinted up at the sky. “It is a warm day and the sun is still high. If we keep to the open places we should dry quickly enough.”
“Hoy, we’ll keep to the open places, all right!” Picking up his sword, Simna slid it carefully back into its sodden sheath. “I’m not setting foot in another building until we’re clear of this benighted country. Imagine trying to control not what people think but the way they think. By Gwiswil, it’s outrageous!”
“Yes,” Ehomba agreed as they started up the deserted street. “It is fortunate that the savants have to confront the unconverted in person. Think how frightful it would be if they had some sorcerous means of placing themselves before many people simultaneously. Of putting themselves into each citizen’s home or place of business and talking to many hundreds of subjects at once, and then using their magic to convince them to all think similarly.”
Simna nodded somberly. “That would truly be the blackest of the black arts, bruther. We are fortunate to come from countries where such insidious fantasies are not contemplated.”
His tall companion indicated agreement. “If the sheepherder’s description of the boundaries hereabouts was correct, we should be out of Tethspraih before midnight and thus beyond the reach of the guardians of right thinking.”
“Can’t be soon enough for me.” Simna lengthened his stride. “My way of thinking may be skewed, or conflicted, or sometimes contradictory, but by Ghev, it’s my way of thinking.”
“It is part of what makes you who and what you are.” Ehomba strode on, the bottom of his spear click-clacking on the pavement. “Myself, I cannot imagine thinking any differently than I do, than I always have.”
“Personally, I think the guardians had the right concept but the wrong specifics.”
Both men turned to the litah in surprise. Water continued to drip from the big cat’s saturated fur. “What are you saying?” Ehomba asked it.
“The problem is not that men think wrongly. It’s that they think too much. This leads inevitably to too much talking.” Ahlitah left the import of his words hanging in the air.
“Is the big pussy saying that we talk too much?” Simna retorted. “Is that what he’s saying? That we just babble on and on, with no reason and for no particular purpose, to hear ourselves jabber? Is that what he’s saying? Hoy, if that’s how he feels, maybe we should just shut up and never speak to him again. Maybe that’s what he’d like, for us not to say another word and—”
Raising his free hand so that the palm faced the swordsman, Ehomba replied softly as they began to leave the urban center of Tethspraih behind. “I am not saying that I agree with him entirely, Simna, but perhaps it would be good if we measured out our words with a little more care and forethought.”
“So most of it is waste? Most of what we say has no meaning, or makes no sense, or is of no use to anyone just because he thinks so? Our words are just so much noise hanging in the air, containing no more sense than the songs of the birds or the buzz of bees? What we speak is—”
“Simna, my friend—be silent. For a little while, anyway.” Ehomba smiled encouragingly at the smaller man.
“Then you do agree with him?” The irascible swordsman would not let the matter drop. “You think we do talk too much, about nothing of substance?”
“Sorry, my friend.” Smiling apologetically, Ehomba pointed with his free hand to the side of his head. “My ears are still full of water, and I cannot hear you properly.”
Simna had a ready reply, but decided to set it aside. Was the cursed cat smiling also? That was absurd. Cats could not smile. Yawn, snarl, tense—but not smile. Storing his rejoinder in an empty corner of his memory, he traipsed on in silence, knowing that he could summon it forth for delivery at a later time. He never did, of course.
Both Ahlitah and Ehomba were counting on it.