The Incompleat Nifft Read Online Free

challenge that must be taken up if he was to proceed. So at last the Chilite rumbled grudgingly:
    "Well, if such a thing can be done, you're as likely a man for the job as any I know, though in truth it's a hard matter to swallow. Does the Guide of Ghosts pass traffic thru his gates, then?"
    This was enough—Nifft sat up, warming to speech. "Now that it's said, I find it easy to tell. All the time I've known you I've hesitated to try. I was afraid you'd mock the notion and anger me and bad blood would be made between us. I've been remembering that exploit ever since we entered the swamps.
    "You see, Barnar, there is no gate to that place. You enter it through an instant of time. You must stand near someone when his death comes, and in the instant before he goes there is a spell you must speak which lets you into the dying man's moment. And then, you see, you are present when the Guide of Ghosts, and the Soul-taker, come for him.
    "And though there may be other living men around the deathbed, they will be to you as statues. For them, the man's passing is a single blink of time. You who have entered his moment through the spell move within the Time beneath time—the Time where the dead endure."
    Barnar opened his mouth to ask a question, but closed it again on seeing his friend's self-absorbed stare. Nifft would give the whole tale now, and would not like interruptions. The Chilite settled himself a bit more comfortably. Leaving an ear open to the noises of the swamp, he gave the rest of his mind to Nifft's words, smiling slightly to himself.
    "But it goes further—much further than this, Barnar. For if you meet the Guide's minion in combat—if you grapple with the Soul-taker, and pin him—then the Guide will bring you with him on his journey below. He will bring you to any soul you seek, wherever it lies in death's domain. And he'll bring you out again too if you're lucky. . . ."

II
     
    We were crossing the great steppes when the night caught us short, Haldar and me—just as it's done us tonight. In case you don't know it, that's wolf country, and I'm not talking about your carrion-eating skulkers of the foothills, but big, red-jawed man-eaters as high at the shoulder as a two-year colt.
    Our mounts were bone-tired with staying ahead of them all day long. We'd drawn no steady pursuit, but the price of that was holding a pace that would kill our horses if we kept it up the next day. Even so, we rode long past sunset, encouraged by the full moon that rose at dusk. It bought us nothing—there are no safe camps on those plains—and we finally had to take what offered. We wound our way into a boulderfall on the flank of a ridge. We settled into a narrow clearing well-overhung by the big moon-pale rocks, and we hobbled the mounts at its mouth. The rocks were polished granite, and were something to set your back against if it came to swordwork against wolves. But they had none of the friendly feel of something that gives you shelter. The very gravel we crouched on had a nastiness to it—a kind of sick smell. You know such spots; a fear inhabits them over and above any fear you may be feeling for this reason or that. We made a small fire, broke out a loaf and cheese. We didn't talk.
    The mean little prairie towns we'd just come through, and the ill luck we'd had in them had left us bruised and black of spirit. All our tricks had been small and mean, our purses were flat, our bellies vacant and our skins unwashed. Lurkna Downs, on the shore of the Great Cleft Lake, was little more than a day distant—a city large and rich and old. Assuming we survived the night, we had an even or better chance of reaching it. But we took no consolation in this. Our gloom had gotten to the philosophical stage, you see. Or rather Haldar's had first, and I'd caught it from him, as usual. The upshot was we felt so leaden that it was damned unlikely we ever would reach Lurkna. We sat chewing slowly and glaring resentfully at the plains that fell