Free Songs of the Dying Earth by George R.R. Martin, Gardner Dozois Page B

wait.
    I knew what Grolion would be seeing: the much-cracked walls and damp, uneven floor of the crypt, the blackness only partly relieved by two narrow airshafts that descended from small grates set in the garden wall above; the several bundles of cloth near the bottom of the steps, containing the shriveled remains of my former junior and intermediate assistants, as well as the wayfarers who had, individually, sought shelter from the invigilant’s ghoul and found themselves pressed into service; and one end wall, fractured and riven by the barbthorn’s roots as they had grown down through the ceiling and the soil above it.
    And, of course, on a raised dais at the opposite end of the crypt, the coffin that held my physical attributes. They were neither dead nor alive, but in that state known as “indeterminate.” I did not think that Grolion would be curious enough to lift the lid to look within; that is, I was sure he possessed the curiosity, but doubted he was foolish enough to let it possess him, down there in the ill-smelling dark.
    When he came back up into the red sunlight, his brows were down-drawn in concentration. “No more work today,” he told the resident. “I wish to think.”
    The tree had been stimulated by its tastes of the resident. Its branches stirred without a wind to move them. A thick tubule, its toothed end open to catch his scent, was extending itself along the ground toward where he sat, still bound but struggling to inch away. Grolion stamped on the feeder and kicked it back the way it had come, then hauled the resident by his collar farther toward the workroom end of the garden. He turned and stared up at the tree for a moment, then went to look at the starburst again. Thinking himself unobserved, he did not bother to prevent his thoughts from showing in his face. The tree was a problem without an opportunity attached; the design was valueless, even when completed, since it had to remain where it was; the Phandaal on the shelf was precious, but painfully defended.
    He came back to the resident. “What happens when the design is completed?”
    “A microcosm of the overworld will appear above it, and it will be absorbed.”
    “Could we enter the microcosm?”
    The bound man signaled a negative. “The overworld’s energies are too strident, even in a facsimile. We would either melt or burst into flames.”
    “Yet your master intended to enter it.”
    “He spent years toughening himself to endure the climate. That was what made him hard to kill.”
    Grolion strode about with the energy of frustration. “So we are locked in with a vampirous plant and a magical design that will destroy us if it is not completed. Only your master truly understands what needs to be done, but if I revive him, he will probably feed me to the plant to gain the wherewithal with which to finish his project and achieve his life’s goal.”
    “That is the situation.”
    Grolion abused the air with his fist. “I reject it,” he said. “My experience is that unhelpful situations will always yield to a man of guile and resource. I will exert myself.”
    “In what direction?”
    “I will eliminate the middleman.”
    The resident was framing a new question when a voice called from the corridor. A moment later, the invigilant’s belly passed through the archway, followed shortly after by the man himself. He took in the scene, noting the resident’s bonds, but said only, “How goes the work?”
    The resident made to answer but Grolion cut him off. “A new administration has taken charge. The situation as it stands is unsatisfactory. It will now be invested with a new dynamic.” He moved toward the invigilant with an air of dire intent.
    “What’s this?” said the invigilant, a look of alarm making its way to the surface of his face through the rolls of fat beneath it. His plump hands rose to defend himself, but Grolion treated them as he had the tree’s creepers; he pulled up the flap that closed the