Too much enthusiasm far, in the case of Hero of Dreams and Eldin the Wanderer. Or at least, from their viewpoint.
Regulating Branch, like most of Bahama's administrative officesâloose authorities at bestâwas situated over the canal close to the inland-leading tunnel, where light was largely shut out. Built beneath an overhang, in the very face of the cliff, which Bahama's more prosperous terraces and much more precipitous streets and alleys had somehow bypassed or climbed over or simply ignored, its office windows and barred cells looked up in the shadow of the sprawling city that climbed and clung overhead, and down on the darkly lapping water of the canal fifty feet below. Even in midsummer it was cool here; porphyry pillars and stone flags are not the warmest materials, and the constant shade and dankness
of the canal lent a murky miasma which touched everything. But there again, Regulating HQ had not been built for comfort. In the old days, the brawnier Kledan barbarians had kept slaves hereâfellow blacks, mainly: Pargans, as often as not, and a few Kledan pigmies from the dense interior of that jungled land, who made good houseboys or chimney sweeps or ratters in the sewersâbefore selling them off in Bahama's markets.
Their buyers had been sea-merchants of Inquanok, horned Lengites (as they were known now), who had only ever bought fat Pargans, even a handful of lords and ladies from dreamland's so-called “more civilized” regions. That was all long finished with, but certainly the inmates of this place had had a very rough time of it. This was the unspoken conclusion of the questers, anyway, as they stood before Raffis Gan's great desk and were made to feel small.
By now they'd been handcuffed and only two Regulators were in attendance, the same pair who'd laid hands on the girls. Ula and Una were elsewhere, however, separated from the questers as soon as they'd arrived here at Regulating Branch. They would find out where the girls were later. But meanwhile:
Raffis had been silent for some seconds, toying with a quill and a scrap of parchment. Now he looked up, focused on the questers and smiled a thin smile. “Do you have, well
anything
, to say for yourselves?” he asked.
“Something to ask!” growled Eldin. “What's the charge?” Suddenly something clicked in the Wanderer's mind: déjà vu, waking-world memories, he didn't know, but words were on his lips before he even realized it:
“What's on your mind, Gan?” he drawled out of the corner of his mouth. “What's the rap, hey? What do you hope to pin on us, eh? You drag us in, cold-shoulder us, stick us in bracelets ⦠so OK, bring on the bright
lights to scorch our eyeballs, the rubber hoses that won't leave tell-tale bruises. Go ahead, have yourself a ball, Gan. But do you think we'll talk? Hell, we've been worked on by experts! You feel angry, Gan? You want to throw something? So throw the book at us! So what?” He grinned coldly, his mouth aslant, twitching.
“Steady, old lad!” Hero whispered, thoroughly alarmed. “He just might!”
Gan was frowning. “Throw the book? There'll be no tome-hurling here, ruffian! As for bracelets: those iron cuffs must needs suffice! But if I also heard you hinting at torture,
that
might be arranged!”
“Gan,” said Hero, “my friend was having a little private joke, that's all, but your joke's gone far enough. Just what
are
the charges? Why are we here? You know who we are, also that Kuranes of Ooth-Nargai won't let us rot in one of your cells. Do you intend to risk a diplomatic clash with Serannian, Celephais, Ulthar and Ilek-Vad? Do the city elders even know you're holding us? The way I see it, we
may
have charges to answerâwhich we will, given the chanceâbut this show of high-handedness can only do you harm.” Hero frowned in genuine puzzlement. “Just what is this all about, Gan?”
The Chief Regulator sighed, narrowed his eyes, sank down a little in his chair. If the questers were acting, then they were very good at it. Could it really be that they were here “by chance”? Coincidence, at this time? Raffis Gan wasn't much given to believing in such coincidences. On their own admittance they were Kuranes' questers, his agents in the lands of Earth's dreams. And had they talked to the seer with invisible eyes “by chance”? And the seer himself known to be another agent of Kuranes! These women of theirs, these
twin sisters, Ula and Una Gidduf: hadn't they been right there with this pair of rogues in the War of the Mad Moon? Were they, too, spies for the Southern Sea's coastal cities?
Just how much did Kuranes know? It was important that Raffis Gan find out. He could play this game soft or hard, however they liked itâor didn't. Very well, first hard. “Charges?” Gan straightened up in his chair. “All right, try these for size:
“One: that you, David Hero, or Hero of Dreams if you insist, stabbed a Kledan with a poisoned dart when he went to the assistance of a previous victim, the charlatan mystic known as the seer with invisible eyes. Two: that you, Eldin the Wanderer, hurled a manâanother Kledan, as it happensâthrough a wall into the harbor, where doubtless he drowned. Certainly his body hasn't been found yet. Three: that both of you, making your escape from the scene of these murders, savagely attacked certain of the customers of one Lipperod Unth a licensed waterfront taverner, Unth himself, his son, and numerous innocent bystanders. Four: that to facilitate your escape, you deliberately vandalized the
Craven Lobster
, a tavern, to such an extent that it fell into the harbor! Charges? And how are they for starters? I could lock you in a cell, melt the key and drop it in the canal, and even your best friends wouldn't want to know about it! Kuranes? He'll consider himself lucky to be rid of you!”
Gan looked at Eldin's scarred face and believed he saw the Wanderer's nerves fraying a little. What he actually saw was a growing impatience and frustration, but he couldn't know that. As for Hero ⦠the younger quester's eyes had narrowed more yet, were keenly aglint. And:
“You know, Chief Regulator,” said Hero, “I didn't
see a man-jack in the
Craven Lobster
I'd ever have guessed was one of yours. And if there had been, he'd know the truth of it, and these so-called âcharges' wouldn't even arise. Also, you couldn't cram half an hour between the, er, incident and the time you picked us up. So how'd you come by your information so quickly, eh?”
Gan went white, got slowly to his feet, leaned on his desk with knuckles shiny where the skin stretched across them. And: “Are you trying to say something, David Hero?” he hissed. “Making some sort of accusation of your own? That sort of tack won't answer the questions I've got lined up for you, and it won't get you anything but a cell to rot in!”
“I think it's already got me something,” said Hero, relaxing a little and nodding knowingly. “It's told me something, anyway: that there's a hell of a rotten stink in Bahama's Regulating Branch!”
Gan went whiter still, leaned right across his desk, opened his mouth to say somethingâand too late saw his danger. In the heat of the moment Eldin hadn't been able to resist. He stepped forward, looped the chain of his handcuffs over Gan's head, dragged him bodily across the desk.
The Wanderer had no plan; perhaps at best he hoped to hold Gan as a hostage, but he didn't get the chance. More used than their boss to the ways of hard men, Gan's pair of Regulator thugs jumped in, brandishing teak truncheons. Eldin was chopped behind the ear and never knew what hit him. He fell into a pit of stars with no sides and no bottom, like a comet rushing through the outer void.
Hero, hurling himself furiously to his friend's assistance, joined him a moment later. There was more than enough room in that interstellar pit for both of them.
Â
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The first thing Eldin saw when he came to was Hero, red-eyed and haggard, glowering at him across the width of a tiny cell. They were both hanging in chains, manacled, feet on the cold stone floorâbarely.
“Ow!” Eldin groaned. He wanted to finger the lump behind his ear, but of course couldn't.
“âOw'?” Hero echoed him. “Is that all? Only an âow'? In that case you're lucky. Me, I don't think my cranium can take much more of you!”
“Not now, lad,” Eldin quaveringly protested. “I deserve it, I know, but upbraid me later. Only not now. Give me a chance to think straight first.” And, after a moment: “What month is it?”
“Septober,” said Hero, “âor maybe Octember. It's morning, anyway.”
Dawn's light, feeble down here in Baharna's guts, drifted in through the bars in cold, clinging wreaths of mist from the canal. The wall opposite the barred window featured a stout oak door with its own iron-barred hatch. Nothing else. No furniture, no amenities; nothing at all other than stone walls, floor and ceiling. “We've hung here the night?” Eldin turned his head this way and that, tenderly, his eyes slitted and deeply wrinkled at their outer corners.
Hero gave a painful nod. “Certainly feels like it,” he said.
“And the girls?”
“Too late to worry about them now. Just hope that Gan's been a bit more lenient with them than he's been with us, that's all.”
“Huh!”
grunted Eldin. “Lenient? What did they do? Come to think of it, what did we doâexcept long overdue civic duties at a well-earned launching? Slum clearance,
I call itâwith a bit of pest control thrown in. And all for free. That Chief Regulator, he's got things up his sleeves.”
“So many, I'm surprised there's room for his arms!” Hero agreed.
“But what in hell's it all about, eh?”
“Dunno,” Hero shook his headâcarefully.
There came a fluttering from beyond the bars at the window. Something pink perched a moment, squeezed its way into the cell, soared straight for Hero and settled on his head. A temple pigeon, message cylinder and all. “P-coo, p-coo, p-coo!” it said, complainingly.
“Couldn't agree more, old chum,” said Hero, “we're damned hard to find, I'm sure. But see, we're sort of tied up right now.” He tried in vain to get his hands on the bird, remove its message.
“Now if only Kuranes would consider parrots,” said Eldin, “we'dâ”
There sounded footsteps from outside, bolts were thrown back, and the door clanged open on its hinges. It was Raffis Gan and his bodyguards.
Gan took in the scene inside the cell at a glance. “Get that bird!” he snapped.
“Shoo!”
Hero yelled, shaking his head wildly to dislodge the birdâwhich made him feel he'd dislodged his head. “Run, flap, flee,
fly
!âdamn you!”
Too late. The bully-boys were into the cell, one blocking the window, the other snatching at the pigeon and knocking it from Hero's head. To give the bird credit, even half-stunned it flapped for the windowâstraight into the ham fists of the Regulator there. He grabbed it out of the air, twisted its neck till it snapped. And wrenching the silver cylinder from a still twitching leg, the gray-clad lout tossed the poor lifeless body down.
Nostrils flaring, Hero and Eldin looked at each other.
The faces of Gan's sidekicks were already well-etched on their memories, but now the questers committed them firmly, in minute detail. The one who'd killed the bird was squat, thin-lipped, bald, with a head like the sharp end of an egg. The otherâthe one who'd held Una's head a little too highâwas taller, but bandy-legged, bull-chested, with eyes so close-set only the bridge of his nose kept them apart. With Gan, they made a most unlovely trio.
Meanwhile Gan had taken the message-cylinder, removed the tiny wad of paper tucked inside and opened it out. He gazed eagerly at what was written there; blinked, and stared harder. Then his pale lips curled in disgust and disappointment. “Coded!” he snapped. Which told the questers that it was very important and highly secret. It wasn't often Kuranes used the olden glyphs of dream (which Eldin had a knack for) but when he did â¦
Now the Chief Regulator looked up, came forward. “So I was right,” he said. “You
are
spying for Kuranes. But what's he after? What is it you're here for, eh?”
Hero shrugged (to the tune of rattling chains) and answered: “Maybe if we could read that message we'd know.”
“Oh, you'll read it soon enough,” said Gan slyly. “Be sure you will.” And suddenly furrows appeared in his pallid forehead. He gave a little start, said: “Has anyone searched these two since we picked 'em up?”
His men looked at each other, shrugged.
Gan made a tutting sound. “Maybe they're carrying orders, instructions! Do it now while they're hung up. And be thorough!” While his men set about their task, the Chief Regulator paced to and fro, shaking his head as he studied Kuranes' glyphs.
Hero, submitting to the search (there wasn't much
else he could do), wondered why Eldin suddenly seemed subdued. True, he was subdued, but now there was also a sheepish look about him. Then the egg-headed thug reached into the Wanderer's jacket and brought out a second scrap of paperâat which Eldin groaned, and not from the pain of last night's lump.