LITMIR.BIZ

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      COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

      Copyright © 1988, 2012 by Michael Kurland

      Published by Wildside Press LLC

      www.wildsidebooks.com

      DEDICATION

      For Linda...

      PROLOGUE

      The Princess of the Golden Orb paused at the edge of the clearing. Panting for breath, she crouched under the fallen statue of an antique hero and peered fearfully up at the pink-streaked yellow sky. Sharp-eyed calla birds circled somewhere above; she sensed the malignant touch of their aura. Behind her croaked the six-legged scouts of the Nimber Horde as they crashed through the forest following her scent. They drew ever nearer.

      She had one slim chance. Before her in the clearing stood the long-unused temple consecrated to Loth, God of Visions, God of Vengeance, God of Last Resorts. Once carefully tended by dozens of acolytes as an act of holy devotion, the temple, the clearing, and all that had been the work of humans in and about it were long fallen into disuse and decay. She must cross the overgrown clearing to the ancient alabaster temple and gain access through the long-unused priestess door. If she could remember the words of power. If the door had not been permanently frozen shut by the dead hand of time. And she must act before she was attacked from either above or behind by the minions of those who would displace the few remaining humans from all that had been theirs.

      Long moments passed.

      Despite the danger, despite the waves of fear that coursed through her body, leaving her weak and nauseated, she felt a curious sense of detachment from the awful scene. It was as though part of her were somewhere else, watching with interest as she performed this intricate ballet of fear and death.

      She crawled cautiously around the massive bronze thighs of the fallen god and then, gathering what reremained of her flimsy skirts about her, raced toward the temple.

      From above came the high-pitched shreee of a calla bird, and then another, and a third, as they prepared to dive. She looked behind her, and saw the first of the six-legged Nimber scouts reach the clearing. There was no turning back. She ran on.

      The flapping of great leather wings sounded overhead, drawing closer. Talons raked across her back. She screamed.

      Still screaming, she woke.

      PART ONE

      WHAT DREAMS MAY COME

      CHAPTER ONE

      The morning commuter from Philadelphia crossed the Hudson a scant five hundred feet above the Schuylkill Palisades. Like an airborne chain of silver sausage links, the segmented craft bobbled along, slowly losing altitude as it approached its mooring on the west side of Manhattan’s Great Central Park.

      Delbit Quint stared out the tiny porthole of the third-rater cabin, watching the ground rise up to meet the air-train. As he watched, the mooring lines were cast out, and the ground crew rushed to catch them and secure them to the landing winches. The engines stopped, and a new silence enveloped the cabin. Slowly the winchmen reeled the lines in, and the string of silver balloons was made fast to the earth.

      A double honk sounded over the loudspeaker. “Attention third-rater passengers! If you are detraining in New York, please gather your belongings and prepare to exit the rear door of your cabin,” came the flat, nasal voice. “You will have ten minutes. Exiting the forward door will not be permitted.”

      Delbit put on his jacket and took his brown-paper-wrapped bundle of clothes from the overhead. Quietly he joined the line of passengers threading their way toward the rear of the long, skinny left aisle of the great, fat third-rater cabin.

      Delbit followed the crowd of passengers across the hard-packed dirt field to the large third-rater exit gate at the far end. The second-raters headed toward their own gate. Private carriages met the first-raters, pulling up to the egress as they detrained.

      Outside the third-rater gate, among a small group of greeters, stood a tall, bewhiskered man in a brown dress suit with a gold insignia on the breast pocket. In the man’s left hand, held before him like an amulet, was a small, discreetly lettered paper sign reading Delbit Quint.

      Delbit surrendered his ticket at the gate and walked over to the man. “Sir?” he said, taking his cap off. “I’m Delbit Quint.”

      “Don’t call me sir,” the man said sharply, folding the sign in quarters and putting it in his pocket. “I’m no better than yourself. Quint, eh? Is that all of your luggage? Good, then come along.”

      The man led Delbit across the road to a high-bodied, angular electric touring landau with a chauffeur in a costume like his own. He held the rear door open for Delbit, who looked the vehicle over curiously before he entered. It was a highly polished deep red color with gleaming brass fittings, fully the equal in elegance to any that had come for the first-rate passengers. Delbit was impressed. The device on the door panel matched the insignia on the man’s coat: a pair of birds facing each other and flying upward. Each bird held something in its beak, the one on the left a pen, the one on the right a lightning bolt, pen and bolt crossing each the other in the center of the design. Around the X thus formed were the letters F C A E B, and underneath was the motto, Learn Ye Inner Truth & Bee Free. The man slammed Delbit’s door and walked around to the other side of the landau, pausing briefly to speak to the driver. He got in the rear next to Delbit and slammed his own door. The electric started its silent way.

      “Where are we going?” Delbit asked.

      “To the clinic,” the man told him.

      “What clinic?”

      “The Faineworth Clinic.”

      “What sort of clinic is it?”

      The man twisted in his seat to look at Delbit. “Don’t you know what you’re doing here?”

      “No, sir,” Delbit told him. “I surely do not.”

      “I should think,” the man told him seriously, “that before becoming involved in an endeavor of this nature, you would ascertain what it is that you’re going to be required to do. Well, no matter, you’ll know soon enough. And don’t call me sir. My name is Bantersea Dobbins, and I am called simply Dobbins.”

      “My master sent me,” Delbit told him. “Master Fessily Branterberger of the Branterberger Top-Lance Gentlemen’s and Ladies’ Quality Shoe Works. He didn’t bother telling me why I was wanted. I don’t even know whether I’ve been loaned, sold, or traded.”

      “You’re indentured?”

      “I’m an articled apprentice.”

      “Comes to the same thing,” Dobbins told him. “I may be a servant under the bond, but on my off-times I’m my own man, free to come and go as I choose after reasonable hours; free to give notice if I have cause. I tell you, young Quint, it makes all the difference.”

      “I’m sure it does,” Delbit agreed. “You work for the clinic?”

      “I am on the household staff of Dr. Faineworth himself,” Dobbins said. “I am his personal man. Most of my duties involve serving him at the clinic in a professional capacity.” He tapped himself on the chest and added, “But I sleep in the house.”

      “I see,” Delbit said. Status among upper-level servants was as important as status among the gentry, and sleeping in the house was, for a manservant, high status. The maidservants, of course, all slept in the house, under the watchful eye of the chief housekeeper. If you were an articled apprentice or an indentured servant, it didn’t matter where you slept; you had no status.

      The electric turned uptown on Broadway and bounced its way north. Delbit pulled aside the curtain and stared out the window at the passing shops. It looked much like Philadelphia except that the buildings averaged a bit taller, some as high as nine stories, and the shops seemed more open to the street than he was used to, and many of the shop signs were not in English.

      “Dobbins, what language is that?” Delbit asked, pointing to the blue-and-gold

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