The Chamber in the Sky Read online

  “Food,” said Gwynyfer. “I could fairly kill for an omelet.”

  The man stopped scrubbing and looked them up and down skeptically with his black eyes. He did not speak. Gregory worried their costumes weren’t convincing enough.

  “Are you the innkeeper?” Gwynyfer said, trying to be brave. “This is your inn?”

  The man clearly thought about whether he should be welcoming and generous.

  Gwynyfer prodded, “This inn belongs to you, sir?”

  The man nodded. “The longtime owners were mechanical, and suffered an unfortunate technical failure last week while down in the extensive cellars.”

  “A technical failure?”

  “In this sad life, we can be sure of nothing. I fear to say I happened to be present at the couple’s demise. It was very sad and grisly. They will be much missed. But, children, it will be my utmost pleasure to serve you. Or, rather, since you appear to be still in the bloom of freshest youth, it will be my pleasure to serve your parents, whenever they arrive.” The innkeeper waited with crossed arms. He clearly was not going to serve a couple of unaccompanied kids, perhaps runaways.

  Gwynyfer reached into her pocket and pulled out several gold coins. “Our parents,” she said, putting them on the counter.

  The innkeeper smiled. “The young woman comes of good stock,” he said. “It is a pleasure to make their acquaintance.” He picked up one of the coins. “Norumbegan kroners. One doesn’t often see these. Outside of Norumbega.” He smiled.

  Gwynyfer slid the coins back toward her. “If you’d like to argue with our parents, they’ll take us elsewhere for breakfast.”

  “No, no, mademoiselle! I’d be delighted to serve you and your — your brother?”

  “That will do.”

  They were starving. They ordered a pile of food to eat immediately and quite a lot to take with them. Gregory sat silent and miserable while they waited. Gwynyfer talked happily and inspected the photos of mechanical rowing teams on the walls.

  The innkeeper came back in a few minutes with plates. He smiled and watched them eat with his hands clasped behind his back.

  “In this business,” he said, “one meets so many fascinating types from all over the many worlds of the Thusser dominion. I count myself lucky, as I am somewhat of a ‘people person.’ How unusual, for example, to encounter two unaccompanied children in a war zone who use Norumbegan coin and speak with a pronounced Norumbegan court accent, and who shield their thought emanations from all and sundry, as if they had something to hide. It almost causes the humble student of Thusser character to ask: Why? And wherefore?”

  “Is it unusual?” said Gwynyfer. “Is it really that unusual for Thusser children born with exceptionally strong magical gifts of a startlingly violent, destructive nature, to find their parents irritating, even meddling, and to finish the goofs off with a quick explosion of blaring demon-fire? And then to set out on their own?” She smiled. “One reads of such things in the paper.”

  At the mention of blaring demon-fire, the innkeeper started to look a little nervous. He replied, “Of course, not unusual at all. No, no, mademoiselle. Children will have their little pranks. I always say that a little patricide and matricide prepares one for marriage. As long, you know, as you keep it in the family.”

  “I agree,” said Gwynyfer. “Much better not to spend our precious gifts of destruction on passing strangers. And we would never think of doing so, unless we were cranky from lack of sleep.”

  “And are you … cranky?”

  “We are a mite cranky now, are not we, Ortwine?” she asked Gregory. “But perhaps if we were permitted to sleep for a few hours in one of your most sumptuous guest rooms, our constitutions would be restored, and we would come down the stairs beaming like the lux effluvium at noon.”

  “Of course, mademoiselle, a room could be prepared for a fee.”

  “Do you really think for a fee? A fee would make us crankier.”

  At that moment, several Thusser officers came in. They announced that there was a division moving through, and that they were going to billet themselves at the inn for the day. They had some work to do. The officers demanded rooms. The rest of the men and women would be setting up in the stables.

  Gregory was terrified. He prayed that the battery for his costume would hold. He did not want to be unmasked in the midst of their enemy. He sat on the barstool, facing the wall.

  The innkeeper excused himself and made some quick arrangements. When he returned, his smile was more sly. He stood across the bar from Gwynyfer. She was eager to get a place for them to hide until this division went past. She asked in a very low voice whether the room for her and her brother was ready.

  “You are interested still in a sumptuous room?”

  “We are. We would not like to be cranky as we travel on. As I’ve said, we become very violent when cranky.”

  “Do you know, mademoiselle, now that I hear you speak more, I become even more interested in your magical and thaumaturgical education. Your accent is undeniably that of a Norumbegan noblewoman. Perhaps you were taught wizardry by some slavish tutor, seized from the City of Gargoyles in times of old?”

  “You’ve touched the matter with a needle.”

  “Of course, it would be impossible for me to give shelter to any Norumbegan, however blessed with golden kroners. That would be a crime! And I hope that you are not suggesting that your humble innkeeper is capable of subverting the war aims of our glorious Horde.”

  “No, indeed.” The officers were looking over toward the bar, interested in the murmured conversation. Gwynyfer smiled. “Why don’t we quit this chitchat? Never mind the lodgings. We’ll just be on our way.”

  “Will you, now?”

  “We’ve already presumed too much on your kindness.”

  “I thought you were positively desperate for a room. A sumptuous room. I would be more than happy to rent it out to you for a week.”

  “We have no need of a room for a week. Regardless, we would be gone in a few hours.”

  “I rent it by the week. If you choose to leave in a few hours, that’s your affair. You pay by the week. I should be sorry to see so interesting a specimen travel on without giving me a chance for more delightful conversation — as I say, I am indubitably a ‘people person’ — but oh well, there it is! Of course, if mademoiselle wishes to leave immediately, I can understand that. And let me say, sometimes it is as interesting to discuss the character of one’s guests with other guests — idle speculation, robust anecdote — as it is to observe the guests oneself. Who knows what fascinating insights and conjectures those officers over there, for example, might suggest, if I were to chat with them about two Thusser youths with Norumbegan gold and Norumbegan accents, traveling with their thoughts shielded from inquiry? If you were to leave, I could spend a happy hour discussing the question of your identity with Lieutenant What’s-His-Name, musing and tale-spinning. That would make for a very lively forenoon!”

  Gwynyfer scowled. “We’d like the room for the week, please.”

  “Certainly. That will be seven golden kroners. And for ten kroners in toto, I will show you where the fire escape is, in case, mademoiselle, you should find that your room at any point gets too hot.”

  Furious, Gwynyfer shoved the money across the counter.

  The innkeeper bowed and led them up to their chamber.

  Gregory sat unhappily on the bed. He’d shut off his disguise. He looked merely human, and small at that.

  Gwynyfer threw herself back onto the pillows and groaned. “This is miserable,” she said. “How am I supposed to know what a Thusser accent sounds like? I’ve never heard a real one before. And you have to keep silent. We’ll make up an excuse.”

  “How are we going to find Brian?”

  “Would you stop fretting over that little waif, G? Oh, look, complimentary toothbrushes. I do call that sumptuous.”

  Gwynyfer slept for several hours. Gregory could not. He stared out the window. Thusser sol
diers were all over the inn, carrying out their military errands. Several of them practiced marching in the walled garden. One walked back and forth on the slate roof, carrying an antenna, then disappeared.

  In the early afternoon, there was a rough knock on their door.

  “Hello?” called a voice. “Sergeant Bogen of the Horde.”

  Gwynyfer snapped awake. She pulled herself upright on the pillows and braced herself with her thumb over the toggle switch of her disguise. She called out, “I suppose some people still take note of a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on a doorknob.”

  “Army business, miss. We understand you and your brother are the owners of the two thombulants in the stable. The three-legged and the five-legged.”

  “Those are ours.”

  “We’re going to have to requisition them.”

  Gwynyfer’s jaw dropped in indignation. “Do you mean steal, sergeant? You are going to steal our thombulants?”

  “Would you come out and discuss this with us, miss?”

  “I certainly will not. One doesn’t curtsy and make nice with highway bandits.”

  The sergeant now took a more pointed tone. “You and your brother: runaways, miss?”

  “Is this what the Thusser army spends its days doing? Talking to people through hotel doors?”

  “You two are traveling on your own through a war zone. Are you runaways?”

  “Our parents died in an unfortunate accident with a blast of demon-fire, after denying us use of the wagon for a high school hop. We’re cast away on the shores of an unfriendly world.”

  “You’re going to have to come with us.”

  At this, Gwynyfer gestured frantically to Gregory to open the window and prepare to slip out via the fire escape. She sounded calm, however, as she said, “We’ll do no such thing. And you cannot have our thombulants or our wagon. We want to go abroad to make our fortune. It will be a heart-stirring, weepy tale of pluck, courage, rags to riches …” She barely knew what she was saying anymore. Gregory was outside the window. He clicked on his disguise just in case, and motioned that Gwynyfer should follow.

  She turned on her disguise, too, and backed toward the window. It was time to make their getaway. “Tell me,” she said, “what do you need our thombs for?”

  “Transport.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Tell me at greater length what you need our thombs for. This is no time to be brief.”

  She stepped over the windowsill. The sergeant was saying something. She couldn’t hear what. She yelled back into the room, “I see. Go on.”

  And then she and Gregory sneaked down the fire escape.

  “What now?” he whispered.

  “Blamed if I know,” Gwynyfer muttered. “We can’t cross the marsh. And we can’t get our wagon. The stables are full of soldiers.”

  They were on the ground. They flattened themselves against the stone wall of the inn. They crept along the side, ducking beneath the windows.

  They went through the archway that led into the yard.

  And there was a woman in a long Thusser military coat waiting for them.

  “The runaways,” she said. “I’m Lieutenant Kunhild. You’re coming with us.”

  On an endless causeway across an endless flat marsh, a division of the Thusser army marched. They were accompanied by wagons, jeeps, carts, and an old bus with its windows painted black. In the middle of them marched Gwynyfer and Gregory, not speaking a word to each other, anxious about when the batteries of their disguises were going to wear out.

  Lieutenant Kunhild had originally suggested that they should be taken prisoner until their parents could be found and their circumstances examined. Gwynyfer had quickly offered that they were active members of their local Young Horde troop, and would be invaluable to the war effort if they were not thrown in chains. The lieutenant asked them what badges they’d gotten.

  Gwynyfer had said, “Pardon?”

  “What badges? You know. Camping. Arts and crafts. Incendomancy. Torture.”

  “Oh, almost all of them. Ortwine here didn’t get his murder badge because he felt pity at the last moment, but if you starve him long enough, I’m sure he’ll become as vicious as the best of us.”

  So there they were, marching as junior members of the armed forces. Gregory reflected that this was not exactly where he wanted to be: fighting for the race that was seeking to enslave all of New England and other worlds beside. He didn’t know what to do. He had no idea how they were going to find Brian. He just felt tired. Unnaturally weary. He wanted to go to sleep and never wake up.

  They marched for hours. They were headed, apparently, for Pflundt, which had become the headquarters of the Thusser invasion.

  They marched along with other Thusser children. It appeared that the adult soldiers brought their kids along on military campaigns to teach them the lessons of strength and plunder. There were ten Young Horde scouts traveling with the division — six boys and four girls. They didn’t talk much, but Gregory got a sense of a few of them: Aelfward, a big, wide-shouldered, handsome boy who took an immediate interest in Gwynyfer and showed it by ignoring her completely; and Druce, a pudgy, short, silent kid who kept muttering spells to himself and clearly was thinking creepy thoughts about girls.

  Occasionally the kids in the troop talked to each other. Usually it was six-foot-two Aelfward teasing one of the girls, to show Gregory and Gwynyfer that he was the leader of this little pack, and that Gwynyfer would do well to pay attention to him.

  Gwynyfer whispered, “He hasn’t even asked my name.”

  Gregory pointed out, “You’d lie to him anyway.”

  “He doesn’t know that.”

  Gregory looked at her jealously.

  “Look, Ortwine,” said Gwynyfer, stroking his cheek quickly, “don’t get all boiled in your skivvies. These are just kids. Just Thusser.”

  They walked silently, hoping that their disguises would hold out.

  Late in the afternoon, they saw part of the surface of the slime ripple. Something was floating on top of the marsh like the skin on hot milk. It gathered itself.

  A soldier yelled, “Thordath!” It appeared to be a warning.

  The skin raised itself up; underneath it was a body with wheeling legs and feelers. It screamed at them and flapped its gooey canopy.

  The soldiers scrambled and fired at the monster. It swarmed toward them. They fired another round of blue bolts. Now it yelped in pain and sank into the murk.

  Gregory was glad, suddenly, that he and Gwynyfer hadn’t been on the causeway alone.

  They made camp on an island covered with low stone houses.

  Gwynyfer tromped over to the wagon to demand her pavilion.

  “Hello,” she said to the adjutant, who was checking things off on a clipboard. “I’d like my silk pavilion, please.”

  “Yours?” he said.

  “Yes. Big, spacious, with cloth-of-gold rugs? It was in this wagon?”

  He smiled icily. “The one with the coat of arms of a Norumbegan noble family on the side?”

  Gwynyfer bit her lip and nodded. “Yes. Spoils of war. Not mine originally, of course. Ah well, never mind. Never you mind! Not necessary. Thanks awfully. Thanks.”

  So she and Gregory set up the tent that had been his and Brian’s.

  As they sat by a campfire, eating baked beans out of a can, some of the soldiers began pointing at the sky.

  Gregory looked up. There was Tars Tarkas, wheeling in the air, looking down at their tent.

  Several of the soldiers had grabbed their guns. “First one to get it,” one said, “I’ll give a bag of hot dogs.”

  The soldiers laughed and aimed at the little bacterium. Aelfward grabbed a rifle, eager to impress the men around him. Tars didn’t understand the danger and bobbed closer, looking friendly and hopeful.

  A bolt of blue light ripped past him.

  The bacterium opened his beak in shock. He hissed and wheeled, uncertain what to do.

  More shots were fired.
r />   “NO!” said Gregory. “NO, DON’T!”

  The boy rushed to the side of the sharpshooters and pulled the nozzle of a rifle down. “Stop it!”

  “What’s your problem?” the soldier grunted.

  “Don’t bother with it! It’s just a bacterium!”

  Aelfward looked at him in astonishment. “So what does it matter?”

  Gregory didn’t know. He looked anxiously toward the sky. Tars Tarkas lingered there, uncertain of whether Gregory and Gwynyfer were friendly or not. Gregory willed the thing to fly away — fly away as quickly as it could.

  “It never did anything to you,” he said.

  “And it never will,” Aelfward pointed out, “if we kill it.”

  They turned back to the sky.

  The bacterium was gone.

  They arrived at a town on the edge of the marsh of slime. Here, the troops were transferred to a train that would take them directly to Pflundt.

  Lieutenant Kunhild called them into the first-class car, which she had taken over as her HQ. “We haven’t been able to locate any word of your parents. Yours is becoming a fascinating case. Where did you say your parents were when you finished them off?”

  “They were in the City of Gargoyles. Underneath Mount Norumbega. Back on Earth. We had a new condominium.”

  “It’s a shame that no one there has been declared dead.”

  “That is a tearing shame. But it does prove how wonderfully clever my brother and I are at murder-craft. We’re rare ones for hiding a corpse.”

  “Your accent is fascinating. And why doesn’t your brother speak?”

  “Ortwine doesn’t have anything to say. He has no conversation. Bandying words with this fellow is like dribbling an aluminium ball.” She squeezed Gregory’s arm affectionately.

  “And how did you get from the City of Gargoyles to the Great Body?”

  “Do you know, Lieutenant, asking too many questions of children is unmannerly?”

  “And I think it’s unmannerly for children to shield their thoughts. One might even say suspicious.”

  “Always pointing the finger at the runaways themselves! When, in fact, society is to blame.”