Rossamund gasped a steadying breath. "But am I an everyman or a monster?"

"Ahh." The Duke of Rabbits clacked its front teeth together impatiently. "Thus did Radica and Dudica, the darlings and saviors of the Brandenfolk, worry. 'Are we mannish monsters or monsterish men?' was ever their quest." The monster-lord became contemplative and so completely still, the young factotum thought he had been forgotten. Finally the creature stirred. "The answer is as it was for them: you are both at once, neither more one nor less the other, an everyman and euriphim congruently and indivisibly, unable to be separated into parts. No marks on arms nor hiding behind unsmells will make you more or less than what you already are and have always been, oh manikin."

Despite all the evidence, Fransitart's recounting and Rossamund's own knowing, a self-denying blank reached out from Rossamund's milt, p.r.i.c.kling at his scalp and setting a disconcerting buzz ringing in his ears.

The Lapinduce gave a disgusted snort. "Look at these pullings of long faces! How does knowing what you are make you any different? You have been you all this time; you will remain you for the long stretch of your life regardless of the reckonings in your thinking soils. The only alteration you have undergone is to simply have information to remedy your self-doubtings. Cease these snivels!" Again it clacked its terrible front teeth together, a loud, disapproving sound.

The rabbit-duke turned, took up a fine gla.s.s goblet that had sat upon the wooden-keyed spinet and sipped heartily at the wriggling froth it held, chewing on a mouthful. "I welcome you, ouranin, to my warren in this miniature remnant wood of mine." The Lapinduce bowed to him. It spread its arms like an invitation. "Come, let us walk in the cool of the morning so I might show it to you."

With a slow watchful stride over the tiny watercourse, Rossamund approached the urchin-lord under its ancient tree.

Another quaff of its frog-froth and the monster-lord coughed unexpectedly, two loud, clear hacks that bore the suggestion of language.

As if in response, two large buck-rabbits, brown with black faces and brooding jet eyes, hopped from a hole in the flagstones between a tight bole of walnut roots. Each rabbit bore one of Rossamund's boots, carried somewhat uncomfortably in its teeth by the heel-loop.

The young factotum gave an involuntary chuckle of delight.

"This is Ogh." Clearly pleased at the young factotum's reaction, the rabbit-lord indicated the buck carrying his right shoe with an uncurling of its great hands. "And this"-it did the same for the rabbit holding the left boot-"is Urgh; if they had not held them for you, the littler ones might have carried your shoes away for keeping."

The two creatures dropped Rossamund's boots carefully at his feet, and as he wrestled his footwear on, one pulled the leafy blanket from his shoulders and dragged it to its master. The other hopped in lazy lopes to disappear again beneath the walnut. As large as they were, there was nothing especially threwdish about them; they were just rabbits.

As if detecting its guest's inklings, the rabbit-duke declared, "They are of a long line of Oghs and Urghs who have served me ear and nose, keeping watchful eye while I ponder and I play to remember the sweet piping of the cosmic firstenings." The monster-lord reached down to fondle the ears of the one at its feet.

The other reemerged bearing Rossamund's slightly soiled hat in its gentle mouth.

The young factotum laughed again as he took it gratefully.

Eyes glittering, the Lapinduce turned and beckoned him to follow, taking the young factotum through the arches upon the other side of the cellar. By winding root-paneled pa.s.sages full of half-heard whispers, Rossamund let himself be led upward, holding back cautiously as around and around they went, ever higher. Stooping through a veil of bracken and root fronds-the Duke of Rabbits almost bent to its oddly working knees-they emerged between the roots of an enormous olive onto a bright hillside glade.

Dazzled and blinking, Rossamund perceived a host of rabbits grazing and loping about the thickly flowering gra.s.s hemmed by great thickets of th.o.r.n.y trees. To the east over the treetops, where the morning sun was well lifted into the wan blue, he thought he saw the gray misted curve of the city's entire harborage br.i.m.m.i.n.g with masts. Founded a dozen yards behind him on the summit dense with pungent sage like some fortalice, the hollow building of the Lapinduce's court rose for four stories. Its banks were grown around with ma.s.sive ancient trees of many kinds-walnut, sycamore, olive, turpentine-obscuring much of the skeletal tower. A powerful slumbering peace dwelt here, giving no hint that they were indeed in the middle of a vast and hostile city. Alighting with a whir in the branches above, Darter Brown played with little wrens and woodland robins.

Closing his eyes, Rossamund drew in a sweet cleansing breath.

Striding down the embankment, the Lapinduce was quickly gathered about by a milling, frolicking drove of coneys and hares. The monster-lord cooed for a moment to them, then held out its long arms and turned slowly about.

"When far-seeing Idaho was still on pap, this wood covered every dune and vale," it spoke with chanting tone, "from Lillian of the Faye to the People of the Dogs and far into the Piltmen's kingdoms. The Harholt, the Harleywood, Cacolagia, Nemus Cunicula . . . It has gone by many names, but each one gives it my name. Whether brave sires or cowardly heirs, wide-visioned conquerors or money-hearted gooses-grabbers, all souls have lived in it and about it by my consent."

"You let them cut your trees?" Rossamund asked carelessly, more intent on keeping from crushing a rabbit as he stepped down to the gra.s.s.

"Trees do not concern me as long as I am let alone. The ambits of this park are enough; I seek only to be untroubled by man or monster, and I let all these little naughtbringers flurrying about me flourish. I am not bound to be kind to everymen; however, it pleases me to watch their self-important antics. Ahh, everymen, one brief span you get!" the rabbit-duke cried into the sky, its tiny charges crowding about its slender feet untroubled by the monster's pa.s.sion. "You are like the twigs on a plum tree; in spring you blossom, in summer bear fruit, in autumn you drop your leaves and in winter fall and then are gathered up to be thrown as kindling on the fire . . . How I delight in watching you all scurry and toil so seriously only to depart too soon. I stop for but a movement of thought, then rouse, my nails grown again, to find that a once-familiar generation have all departed and their children have become grandsires. Think what troubles you could wreak, oh, busy, busy everymen, if your span of years were but doubled! What terrible momentum you might gather. It is well you fight with each other as much as with us and waste time making wagers over the fate of the weakling tykes in their pits."

The monster-lord returned its shrewd attention to its guest.

"Are you pecked?" it inquired with a peculiarly light tone, holding out its now near-drained goblet of wriggling froth.

Eyeing the offering with barely contained repulsion, Rossamund declined while his stomach turned traitor and gave an audible burble.

"No? Maybe some thrisdina?" It walked over to an anciently knotted olive, reached up and pulled several strands of the diaphanous weed that hung limply from a lower branch.

The young factotum peered at the serving, a dull wan green frond wet with dew and unappetizingly coiled on the Lapinduce's pale palm. Feeling obliged after his first refusal, Rossamund opened his own hand to receive his morning repast and felt a soulful surprise of threwd shiver through his very marrow as the urchin's truncated claws brushed his bare palm.

The rabbit-duke did not appear to notice this contact, but explained with a strange and disarming chattiness, "You will find this growing almost anywhere with enough dampness in the air, and every variety is good for eating-whether for everyman or euriphim."

Rossamund sniffed the mossy tendrils. They smelt of gra.s.s, of hidden forest glades, of dirt. He tried a nibble. It was like a mild variation on mushrooms, bland enough to be edible. "How do people not fathom you are here?" he asked, still chewing.

The Lapinduce tapped its long-whiskered upper lip ruminatively with a crooked finger, a voluminous cuff dropping to reveal its bony wrist. "Because I do not wish it. Though some do . . . " came the patient answer. "My steadfast ones . . . Oftentimes the short-lived dukes will know of me too and reckon well to keep mum."

Rossamund could barely credit it. "They do not send in battalions of teratologists?"

The monster-lord peered at him as if this were a ridiculous notion. "I would fill this city full of terror and empty it, make it barren for generation upon generation to become a nest for sunderhallows and darkness . . . Though your concern for me is commendable, ouranin," it added dryly. "The last duke with whom I had to deal-and all those before him-have proved shrewd enough to keep such discernment to themselves. How-be-it, I do not know if the current fellow is the same fellow as before. Too quickly does each generation come and live and go again."

"Do other . . . monsters"-Rossamund hesitated, wanting a better word-"dwell here with you?"

"I seldom seek the company of my frair. Too often they are spoiling to harm or help the everymen, pulling at me to do the same. I prefer stillness and memory."

Looking up, Rossamund beheld eoned memories that shifted in the depths of the Lapinduce's inhuman gaze. Was this the fashion of the Duke of Sparrows' rule as well, to watch and wait and remember sweeter times? "Are you and the Duke of Sparrows kin, sir?"

It regarded him with what the young factotum could only read as amus.e.m.e.nt. "Ahh, the Sparrowlengis. As such things are reckoned, indeed we are-though you will find him less willing to admit the kinship. But we theraphim-you and I and the sparrow-king too-are frair all to each other and to the groaning earth too."

Rossamund peered at the monster-lord in wonder. Could I possibly be kin to such creatures? "But what of the hob-rousing?" he dared to ask. "Does it not stir you to anger to have it in your land?"

The monster-lord's ears went flat again. "Am I to be the soul to solve the endless enmity twixt theriphim and naughtbringer?" it hissed, taking several large strides toward him and thrusting its visage into Rossamund's own, the young factotum retreating a small step.

A sinister threwdishness-an angry surge that made the world go strangely dim-swirled about him. With a gasp of dismay, Rossamund raised an arm as if to defend himself, vaguely aware of Darter Brown's own anxious twittering above him.

"I happen to know that Gingerrice won free!" the Lapinduce declaimed with low and sibilant ferocity. "As has that daftling Grackle; oft has he pa.s.sed through the guts of kraulschwimmen and other terrible salamanders and always survived barely hurt! Did not I myself save you from that fluffed and perfumed neuroticrith looking to s.n.a.t.c.h you away? What more do you wish for, squidgereen! Do you seek to provoke me in my own city and question my mercies?" it snorted.

Its warm, scented breath-like flowers and new-turned earth-was strong in Rossamund's nostrils. "No, sir, I do not," he said in a small voice, recalling all too lucidly that this mighty creature had slain a wit in his defense as thoughtlessly as a pantry maid might strangle a chicken for a meal.

"I-" continued the urchin-lord self-importantly, "I have never prevented the many shifting tribes of people from coming to dwell in my domain nor prevented them from conquering the previous tribe to establish themselves. I gave my consent when the two sisters Radica and Dudica-rossamunderlings just as you are and now long departed-defended this youngling city against an onrush of wretchling theraphim kin. I parleyed with the seventh duke-blind and deaf-of this current dynasty, for with me alone could he commune, and in doing thus proved his crafty advisers mendacious and insincere. And yet, I let the schwimmenbeasts take from the harbors their share of iron boats with their toothsome marrows of muscle, and leave marauding nickers to take their fill of souls in the parish lands. Complexities within complexities . . . As it has ever been." It opened its mouth and clacked the long front teeth of top and bottom jaw together. "You might do well too to ask the sparrow-king-so righteous in his forest nest-why it is he lets revers be made in the hinter of his own autumn-his own realm!" It straightened to look down its long nose at him. "If you are of such wisdom and thew, frail ouranin, why do you not do better than me and go and bring out all the skulking, simple-souled sprosslings from those loathsome dog-fighting dens?"

"I-I am but one . . . boy . . . I could barely help one," he countered. "You are a great lord of the monsters!"

"A boy, forsooth! Is that how you see it, oh wise one? Have clean now! You are much more than a mere boy! That is ichor in your innards and there is cruor on your hands. You have felled our frair and used your great vigor in the defense of the everyman foe. How would you answer me if I were to call you to account and p.r.o.nounce judgment, as is my long privilege?"

Rossamund opened his mouth in response yet could offer none. He ducked his head, strange pa.s.sion thrumming under his ribs.

The Lapinduce gave a grim smile, a disconcerting expression in such an animal face. "You are right, however, when you say that I am great. I am grandfather to the hills and elder brother to the vinegar's boundaries, but restrictions there are to my reach, margins that I have placed on myself and limits laid down upon me." It lapsed and its sight became inward as it began to walk about the woodland hollow, touching flower and branch, leaf and stalk, humming a muted variation to the tune it played so stridently on the spinet.

The glade was quiet but for this mellifluous purring.The soft caw of a high-pa.s.sing ibis and the subdued whisper of wind-shifting trees only joined the sympathetic melody.

Rossamund found himself swaying in accord with the monster-lord's throaty music, the very core of him vibrating with ponderous complex regret for the discord between monster and man; with anger confounded by a peculiarly happy melancholy that folded back to anger again; with great longing for an ease and joy once known so well so long ago.With a shock of clarity he realized that he must be feeling what the Lapinduce felt. He smudged away a lonely tear that had squeezed unheeded to tickle down his cheek.

"Ahh . . . this has been a most excellent deliberation," the Lapinduce abruptly declared, breaking the chant of its throaty music. "You are most certainly an unwitting yet faithful student of the Sparrowlengis, your watchful sparrow-duke. He too thinks better of men than they deserve and defends them in obedience to the ancient treaties." It eyed Rossamund cannily, and he felt his very soul shudder. "Yet for me the blackest of all the blackest things I have seen is an everyman's evilness to a fellow everyman-"

"Or everymen-enemies only because they do not know better-flayed and splashed to the eight winds by a nicker's claws!" was the young factotum's own reflexive retort.

"Ahh." The monster-lord smiled narrowly. "Yet is their thoughtlessness an excuse?" It raised a blunt bony claw. "Who is responsible for one's thoughtlessness if not a soul itself? Enough evidence there is of our good support to change an everyman's opinion a score of times over should any care to look better, but they will not. The kingdoms of everymen stand much through the protection of our blithely frair, yet still they course and kill them."

"But there are those everymen who have thought better," Rossamund countered stoutly. "I have seen monster-slayers show kindness . . ."

"Little doubt you speak with your mistress in mind-the Brambly Rose, who has taken you into her care."

The young factotum's eyes went round with amazement. "How-"

"How again, is it?" The Lapinduce's blank expression held the shadow of a b.e.s.t.i.a.l smirk. "How is it I know that you serve Europa of Naimes, d.u.c.h.ess-in-waiting, the Brambly Rose? How is it I know that-as I have done-she saved you from the grasp of selfish souls knitting abominations in their high stone hall on the edge of Master Sparrow's autumn?" It arched a brow. "Why, Lentigo has told me . . ."

"Lentigo, sir?"

"The one you know as Freckle, who goes huc illuc to all points and serves none but Providence."

To this Darter Brown puffed himself and gave an affirming kind of chirp.

"He is here?" Rossamund looked about rapidly, thinking the plucky glamgorn might emerge from the shadows.

"Most certainly, quizzing ouranin! Lentigo has been and is now gone. Very anxious he is after your weal in the custody of one so infamous as is this orguline, the Rose of Brandentown. Ahh, a hindrance and blight to all euriphim is she . . . I would like to meet her before she all too soon perishes. She suspects, I think, that I am here. Many times has her square-faced servant-man stood under my trees to sniff me out . . . He failed, of course."

Suddenly the young factotum realized he had forgotten . . . Europe's treacle!

Anxious now to get back to Cloche Arde and attend his testtelating duties, Rossamund opened his mouth to ask his leave of this perplexing creature.Yet before he could press his plea, the Lapinduce spoke.

"An ouranin as manservant to an orguline . . ." the Lapinduce's b.e.s.t.i.a.l eye twinkled with a cold mirth. "Complexity, I see, follows you like flies do a dung cart. Ever it is like this for an ouranin; never fitting, always searching on and on through generations and on into history . . . Come, let me show you a fine trick."

Immediately the monster-lord stalked out of the dell, ears back, finding a path that wended deviously among the thickets.

Keen not to get lost in the hedging woods, Rossamund had to run to keep pace while Darter Brown dashed low before him. A goodly way into the park, breath rasping in windpipe, he found the Lapinduce had halted atop a sizeable mound. Ears tall, standing alert in the thick shadow of a geriatric pine, the monster-lord peered down with keen intent on something below. Creeping on soft clover to hunker by the creature's side, Rossamund could see through crooked branches a figure prowling down in the parkland gloom maybe only a half-a-hundred yards away, a heavyset fellow in a deep green soutaine and a black tricorn pulled over his white wig.

The young factotum's innards went still.

It was one of the Broken Doll's door wards.

Rossamund clenched every muscle, ready to leap into hand strokes.

"They have trespa.s.sed deep indeed in search for their lost chum . . . and for you too, I think," the rabbit-duke breathed. "They will not seek for long. Watch. . . "

The intruding fellow was scowling at the darksome nooks and threatening crannies, patently uneasy at his task. Calls came through the trees-other searchers on the prowl. Shouting his own reply over his shoulder, the door ward approached the base of the hillock where the Lapinduce and Rossamund were hid.

The Lapinduce closed its eyes and let out a slow hissing breath.

All around the threwd thickened, a settling dismal chill.

The young factotum shivered.

The door ward hesitated and stared anxiously about. There came another cry to the left, its unintelligible words possessing a warning. The intruder began to withdraw, the calls retreating with him until the woodland hush relaxed and the threwd eased to its usual gentle watchfulness.

"Come, ouranin," said the Lapinduce, "let us return to my court."

"So what of you, oh ill-named one!" Stepping to its spinet stool and sitting, the Lapinduce peered at Rossamund keenly. "I did not save you to pa.s.s you back to bloodthirsting everymen." For a moment it sounded angry. "You ought depart from here to live in proper seclusion with the sparrow-duke and Cinnamon, so interested in your progress; let this generation and all its selfish single-mindedness pa.s.s into matter. I can grant you easy pa.s.sage to your sparrow-lord to dwell in peace till all things are restored.Yet it is for you alone to choose your progress."

Rossamund breathed long and deep. How simple it might be to take up the Lapinduce's offer, to retreat and live safe, and make forays out into the cities to overturn every rousing-pit or ma.s.sacar he could find. For just a moment Rossamund's soul soared with the idea.Yet, as quickly as it swelled, this hope sank again. "Europe has risked too much for me to desert her now," he breathed, swallowing back on the knot griping in his throat. "Fransitart and Craumpalin too . . ."

A melancholy shadow pa.s.sed through the Lapinduce's ancient gaze. "An answer at last to my original question . . . ," it murmured heavily. "Brutish and short are the lives of every men; do not expect your own with them to be different."

Rossamund looked to his hands-a man's hands, a monster's hands.

Born out of the mud from some other soul's parts . . .

"It is time for you to return to your chosen mistress," the rabbit-duke commanded abruptly. It coughed to summon Ogh and Urgh. "Follow them close and do not mind their bold divagations; they shall show you by their own route to familiar paths that will take you home again."

Rossamund hesitated. He glanced anxiously to the sliver of forenoon sun peeking over the towering eastern wall-so much higher from this sunken vantage. How did it get so high? Surely they had talked only for some moments.

Flicking its coat hems to sit properly on its stool, the Lapinduce lifted long hands to play. "I will likely not see you again, ouranin," it said without looking to him. Flourishing a blunt-clawed hand, it gave the spinet voice once more, a wild tune that had the urchin-lord's arms and deft fingers running along every octave. It closed its eyes and was lost in the music.

Reeling, Rossamund slowly heeded a gentle tugging at his right shin. Ogh-or was it Urgh-was pulling at his stocking with its teeth, while its twin was slowly hopping to the farthest of the three arches and out of the court. With a final, heavy-hearted glance at the furious playing of the Lapinduce, the young factotum followed, leaving the glorious monster-lord in its hidden musical court.

10.

A BAD EXCUSE IS BETTER THAN NONE.

crimp(s) privately operating impress contractor, that is, a group or individual licensed to press people into naval or military service. They are usually given a quota by a ram's captain or a regimental colonel and with this authority trawl the streets of less well-heeled districts, seizing anyone appearing at that moment not to be engaged in gainful activity, regardless of the poor soul's true employment status.

IN dour fungal light the twin rabbits Ogh and Urgh took Rossamund down the bending root-walled course, loping at an easy pace yet keeping out of his reach. He tried once to stride forward and pat one, and in an instant they shot ahead into the twilight of the tunnel that led away from the Lapinduce.

"Wait! Wait!" he called, finding them sitting in gloom in the middle of the pa.s.sage floor, eyes glittering, noses twitching rapidly.

Guided by the flash of their bobbing sallow tails, he was shown through many dim intersections and lighted burrows, the flanks of the warren becoming coa.r.s.er, more uneven. Tessellated floor gave over to cool earth and cold puddles, the walls to rough earth, then quickly to the brick and stone of the city's deep-sunk foundations. Finally even radiant fungus ceased, the threwd shrinking to little more than a sleepy suggestion, the merest hint for those who might care to notice.

Moldy twilight gave over to a strengthening warmer glow. Just about a bend he discovered Ogh and Urgh stopped, sitting silhouettes before a ragged window of umber and blue; the end of the hole.

"Thank you, good sirs," he said to the rabbits, bowing to each in turn, wishing they might respond with words of their own and divulge primeval secrets.

Mute, they regarded him blankly, noses ever twitch twitch twitch.

With a sigh, the young factotum pushed through the shrouding fringe of unchecked vegetation, and, blinking near-blinded in the bright afternoon sun, almost slid down the steeply slanted side of the brick-paved drain. Gripping the edge of the hole, he saw that he had emerged into the usual world from between the weedy roots of an old turpentine growing far beyond the bounds of the Moldwood in some tiny neglected common.

By its green trickle and orange carp he easily identified this channel. The Midwetter!-the very one flowing by Cloche Arde.

Darter Brown appeared over the top of the high roofs-somehow reckoning Rossamund's path despite his hidden progress. With a tweet! the little fellow alighted on a spear-pointed post of the fence that lined the height of the drain.

Rossamund straightened, set his thrice-high firmly on his head and went on by way of the channel, back to service and contradictions.Walking carefully along the slope, he had the disorienting sensation of rousing from a deep and convincing dream-some mystic abyss-to finally gasp mundane and sensible air. By the time he clambered up the side of the bridge to Footling Inch, his time with the Lapinduce was a small disquieting memory and his thoughts were more concerned with how he might explain his absence to his mistress.

Kitchen greeted him in the cold black vestibule. "Glad to see you have elected to return to us, Master Bookchild," the steward began, a little dryly. "You are expected in our gracious lady's file."