Read Into the Thinking Kingdoms Online
Authors: Alan Dean Foster
Tags: #Fiction, #Fantasy, #General, #FIC009000
Into the Thinking Kingdoms (16 page)
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.”
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—”
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