Limits by Larry Niven (tohfa e dulha read online TXT) 📗

Eighth floor down.

Behind him, Durily moved as if her joints hurt. Her appearance repelled him. The deep lines in her face weren’t smile wrinkles; they were selfishness, sulks, rage. And her voice ran on, and her hands danced in creaky curves.

She can’t hurry. She’d fall. Can’t leave her behind. Her spells, my jewel: keep them together, or we drown. But the ghost was drawing ahead of them. Would he leave us? Here? Worse, King Nihilil was becoming hard to see. Blurring. The whole corridor seemed filled with the restless fog that was the King’s ghost…

No. The King’s ghost had multiplied. A horde of irritated or curious ghosts had joined the procession. Karskon shivered from the cold, and wondered how much the cold was due to ghosts rubbing up against him.

Tenth floor down…and the procession had become a crowd. Karskon, trailing, could no longer pick out the King. But the ghosts streamed out of the stairwell, flowed away down a corridor, and Karskon followed. A murmuring was in the air, barely audible, a hundred ghosts whispering gibberish in his ear.

The sea had not retreated from the walls and ceiling here. Water surrounded them, ankle deep as they walked, rounding up the corridor walls and curving over their heads to form a huge, complex bubble. Carpet disintegrated under Karskon’s boots.

To his right the wall ended. Karskon looked over a stone railing, down into the water, into a drowned ballroom. There were bones at the bottom. Swamp-fires formed on the water’s surface. More ghosts.

The ghosts had paused. Now they were like a swirling, continuous, glowing fog. Here and there the motion suggested features…and Karskon suddenly realized that he was watching a riot, ghost against ghost. They’d realized why he was here. Drowning the intruders would save the jewel, save their fading lives. Not drowning them would repel Minterl’s enemies.

Karskon nerved himself and waded into them. Hands tried to clutch him…a broadsword-shape struck his throat and broke into mist…

He was through them, standing before a heavy, ornately carved door. The King’s ghost was waiting. Silently he showed Karskon how to manipulate a complex lock. Presently he mimed turning a brass knob and threw his weight back. Karskon imitated him. The door swung open.

A bedchamber, and a canopied bed like a throne. If this place was a ruse, Nihilil must have acted his part with verve. The sea was here, pushing in against the bubble. Karskon could see a bewildered school of minnows in a corner of the chamber. The leader took a wrong turn, and the whole school whipped around to follow him, through the water interface and suddenly into the air. They flopped as they fell, splashed into more water and scattered.

A bead of sweat ran down Durily’s cheek.

The King’s ghost waited patiently at another door.

Terror was swelling in Karskon’s throat. Fighting fear with self-directed rage, he strode soggily to the door and threw it open, before the King’s warning gesture could register.

He was looking at a loaded crossbow aimed throat-high. The string had rotted and snapped. Karskon remembered to breathe, forced himself to breathe…

It was a tiled bathroom, sure enough. There was a considerable array of erotic statuary, some quite good. The Roze-Kattee statue would have been better for less detail, Karskon thought. A skeleton in the pool wore a rotting bath-attendant’s kilt; that would be Nihilil’s spy. The one-eyed god in a corner…yes. The eye not covered by a patch gleamed even in this dim, watery light. Gleamed green, with a bright vertical pupil.

Karskon closed his good eye and found himself looking at himself.

Grinning, eye closed, he moved toward the statue. Fumbling in his pouch for the chisel. Odd, to see himself coming toward himself like this. And Durily behind him, the triumph beginning to show through the exhaustion. And behind her—

He drew his sword as he spun. Durily froze in shock as he seemed to leap at her. The bubble of water trembled, the sea began to flow down the walls, before she recovered herself. But by then Karskon was past her and trying to skewer the intruder, who danced back, laughing, through the bedroom and through its ornate door, while Karskon—

Karskon checked himself. The emerald in his eye socket was supplying the magical energy to run the spell that held back the water. It had to stay near Durily. She’d drilled him on this, over and over, until he could recite it in his sleep.

Rordray stood in the doorway, comfortably out of reach. He threw his arms wide, careless of the big, broad-bladed kitchen knife in one hand, and said, “But what a place to spend a honeymoon!”

“Tastes differ,” Karskon said. “Innkeeper, this is none of your business.”

“There is a thing of power down here. I’ve known that for a long time. You’re here for it, aren’t you?”

“The spying stone,” Karskon said. “You don’t even know what it is?”

“Whatever it is, I’m afraid you can’t have it,” Rordray said. “Perhaps you haven’t considered the implications—”

“Oh, but I have. We’ll sell the traveling stone to the barbarian king in Beesh. From that moment on the Movement will know everything he does.”

“Can you think of any reason why I should care?”

Karskon made a sound of disgust. “So you support the Torovans!”

“I support nobody. Am I a lord, or a soldier? No, I feed people. If someone should supplant the Torovans, I will feed the new conquerors. I don’t care who is at the top.”

“We care.”

“Who? You, because you haven’t the rank of your half-brothers? The elderly Lady Durily, who wants vengeance on her enemies’ grandchildren? Or the ghosts? It was a ghost who told me you were down here.”

Beyond Rordray, Karskon watched faintly luminous fog swirling in the corridor. The war of ghosts continued. And Durily was tiring. He couldn’t stay here, he had to pry out the jewel. He asked, “Is it the jewel you want? You couldn’t have reached it without Durily’s magic. If you distract her now you’ll never