CHAPTER SIX
Fradi had recently died, which made it all the more remarkable for him to realize that he was once again awake. That is to say, on the one hand he was rather surprised, but on the other hand he was scarcely surprised at all. He was aware that “recently” was a relative term under the circumstances, but - but... wait a minute. Something wasn’t quite right. Something -
Something seemed awfully familiar. If his head didn’t hurt so much Fradi was sure he’d have no trouble remembering what it was. Why bother being resurrected if you were merely entering a life of ongoing pain? The whole point of being born again was to leave past baggage behind. This hadn’t happened last time; last time he’d felt -
Last time. That was it - he had been through this before. He had died in bed and had woken up again, the damage of age and assorted wounds miraculously healed, his thought and memory restored, eyesight renewed and energy invigorated. But this time... What did he remember? There had been a fire, no, a fire and a fight, against that guy Spilkas who had been pawn and tool and then suddenly a raving menace, who had been enough of a menace to kill him...
Or had he? Spilkas had been about to slice his head from his body with that flaming sword of his when the sword had turned on its master instead. Fradi’s better instincts had deserted him in the heat of the moment, that’s how the trouble had started. Instead of abandoning the girl to her fate and fleeing, he had turned to fight the maniac Spilkas; had landed a death blow dead center, too, only to have his own sword lash back and then melt over his hand. So that was why his hand hurt so much... But then there had been Spilkas fighting his own weapon and going into an epileptic fit, and Fradi had taken that final opportunity to scramble out of the place before being entombed once and for all under a building-full of fiery rubble. Out? Yes, he remembered he had made it to the outside wall, where he had experienced a momentary collapse, but there had been no further mortal wounds that he could recall, nothing but the collapse and faint...
So why had he required resurrection, and such an inefficient one as this, too?
Fradjikan opened his eyes. Above his head was a ceiling of cunningly carved stone inset with patterns of dancing light. He was resting on his back in a long coffin-shaped basin whose sides he could see right through. The surroundings were familiar. He had been here before. Last time, though, he had been overtaken with theosophical awe, for one thing.
He had also been more appropriately dressed. Instead of the pristine robe of his previous experience, he was wearing the same torn, burned, blood- and grime-soaked clothing that had accompanied him through those most recent paroxysmal events. Recent? - yes, clearly, since his clothes were even still wet, and their odor was much too fresh to have suffered through significant delay. His hand wasn’t even bandaged; just a open mass of weeping blisters and raw red flesh and -
“It is about time you’re awake,” said a rumbling voice.
If Fradjikan had experienced more than his share of odd situations during the many years of his several installments of life, he had also recently learned quite a bit more than he had known the last time this particular situation had arisen; enough not to grovel beneath the shadow of gods, for example. There would be none of that sickly “sing your praises” or “no way to properly show my abasement” nonsense this time around. A politic tone of respect, though, was mere prudence. Fradi settled for, “Thank you for allowing me the opportunity for repose.”
“Um,” the voice rumbled noncommittally. Last time, this glass resurrection chamber had lifted Fradi up of its own accord, but then last time there had been attendants around as well. This time he would apparently have to do the work himself. Fradi got his functional hand behind him, a tight fit in the narrow coffin, and levered himself up, trying to catalog the condition of as many body systems as possible during the process.
The familiar steam-pillar aspect of his employer hovered a confusing distance beyond the end of the bier, behind it the endless steely plain. None of it might actually be there at all, Fradi now understood, but it was just as well to act as though physical reality was the watchword until the need arose to prove it otherwise.
“You have been very active,” his master continued, roiling his vapors in vigorous thought. “Activity, though, is not in itself a goal, and furthermore you have not been the only active one on the board.”
Fradi had also learned the advisability of making particular preparations. Had he been searched, or had he retained the amulet? “I was merely attempting to carry out Your will to the limits of my ability.”
“I am not displeased with your performance,” pronounced the pillar. “Your primary target has been removed from the scene without the need for liquidation. He may be interrogated at leisure. This is as I willed it. But now there is more to be done, and quickly. There is now an opportunity for Me to become Supreme.”
His boss did like the trappings of office. “Excuse me, Your Preeminence. May I ask a boon?”
The pillar’s spinning slowed, and it directed a not-necessarily-favorable attention on him. “What do you want?”
Fradi’s hand felt as though it was still burning, and being raked through with steel combs for good measure; his head was thoroughly throbbing. “Is there a possibility of repair?” he asked judiciously. “I take it I have not actually been returned to life, per se, but merely rather transported here for this audience.”
“In the sense to which you refer, that is true. You could have been cloned, I suppose, but that would have taken much longer than we have available. No, for now you must subsist with the fruits of your own carelessness.”
“My effectiveness would be enhanced with two operational hands,” Fradi pointed out. “The standard-bearer of the Supreme one should be without blemish.”
“Do you presume to instruct Me?” the steam-pillar said forebodingly. “There are other tools available to Me.”
Fradi’s ally, the Scapula, had counseled him to act preemptively if the need became apparent. The Scapula had also warned him of the cardinal signs of impending loss of favor, as he understood them from his own research. The amulet which the Scapula had helped him develop and obtain had indeed not left his person; it had now made its surreptitious way into his good hand. Fradi raised his damaged hand in obeisance and lowered his head; as good a misdirection move as he could manage under the circumstances. Only how could you misdirect omnipotence?
Except omnipotence was not one of his patron’s virtues. Fradi’s good hand flicked, the small amulet arched inconspicuously across the chamber, barely even another irrelevant mote, and entered the steam cloud. The pillar made a horrid grinding sound like a tornado plowing suddenly into a mountain of broken glass, stood up straight, and then fell over stiff as a log. Once on its side on the endless plain, the steam cloud unrolled itself, carpet-like, and began dissolving quickly into the air. Left revealed behind it writhing on the ground was a balding man in a cut-back tunic, short pants, and sandals, wearing wire-rimmed spectacles looped over his protruding ears, and mumbling in a voice that was the same as the Voice of the earlier Presence stripped back to human or even less-than-human proportions.
Fradjikan swung himself belly-down over the side of the glass coffin and was reaching with his feet for the floor when a door behind the coffin’s head flew open. A nimbus of golden light like an abruptly exploding sun expanded through the door toward him, around him, through him. The room reeled. Fradi found himself lying on the floor, limp but for an occasional spasmodic twitch, as something seemed to be freezing his bones from within.
His head had come to rest on one cheek, giving his lolling eye a view beneath the coffin and across the room onto the endless plain. A set of feet came into view from the now out-of-sight doorway and hurried quickly toward the incarnate but equally supine form of Fradi’s master. “He was more clever than I had expected,” the owner of the feet was calling, “and so quick! How can I forgive myself?”
It was a voice Fradi recognized. It was far more than a casual recognition. He had spent hours in the presence of that voice over the past days, planning, honing, sparring. Now the rest of the Scapula came into view as well as he bent over the other man. “Appalling,” Fradi’s late master croaked. “He might have eradicated me if not for your warning. You have nothing to apologize for.” He coughed weakly. “I was the fool to have doubted you. Is he dead?”
The Scapula looked across at Fradi, his gaze impassive. “Even now his eye glazes over. Shall I finish the disposal for you?”
Fradi’s ex-patron snarled without power. “Let him lie there and putrefy, the treacherous dog. We have more important matters at hand, and a visit to conduct.”