Czernobog looked as if he were about to argue, but he closed his mouth. He spat on his forefinger and thumb and began to snuff the candles between his fingertips. Shadow could hear them fizz as he walked from the darkening room.
Wednesday was heavy, but Shadow could cope, if he walked steadily. He had no choice. Wednesday’s words were in his head with every step he took along the corridor, and he could taste the sour-sweetness of mead in the back of his throat. You work for me. You protect me. You help me. You transport me from place to place. You investigate, from time to time—go places and ask questions for me. You run errands. In an emergency, but only in an emergency, you hurt people who need to be hurt. In the unlikely event of my death, you will hold my vigil…
A deal was a deal, and this one was in his blood and in his bones.
Mr. Nancy opened the motel lobby door for him, then hurried over and opened the back of the bus. The other four were already standing by their Humvee, watching them as if they could not wait to be off. Loki had put his driver’s cap back on. The cold wind whipped at the sheets, tugged at Shadow as he walked.
He placed Wednesday down as gently as he could in the back of the bus.
Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned. Town stood there with his hand out. He was holding something.
“Here,” said Mr. Town, “Mister World wanted you to have this.” It was a glass eye. There was a hairline crack down the middle of it, and a tiny chip gone from the front. “We found it in the Masonic hall, when we were cleaning up. Keep it for luck. God knows you’ll need it.”
Shadow closed his hand around the eye. He wished he could come back with something smart and sharp and clever, but Town was already back at the Humvee, and climbing up into the car; and Shadow still couldn’t think of anything clever to say.
Czernobog was the last person out of the motel. As he locked the building he watched the Humvee pull out of the park and head off down the blacktop. He put the key to the motel beneath a rock by the lobby door, and he shook his head. “I should have eaten his heart,” he said to Shadow, conversationally. “Not just cursed his death. He needs to be taught respect.” He climbed into the back of the bus.
“You ride shotgun,” said Mr. Nancy to Shadow. “I’ll drive a while.”
He drove east.
Dawn found them in Prince ton, Missouri. Shadow had not slept yet.
Nancy said, “Anywhere you want us to drop you? If I were you, I’d rustle up some ID and head for Canada. Or Mexico.”
“I’m sticking with you guys,” said Shadow. “It’s what Wednesday would have wanted.”
“You aren’t working for him any more. He’s dead. Once we drop his body off, you are free to go.”
“And do what?”
“Keep out of the way, while the war is on. Like I say, you should leave the country,” said Nancy. He flipped his turn signal, and took a left.
“Hide yourself, for a little time,” said Czernobog. “Then, when this is over, you will come back to me, and I will finish the whole thing. With my hammer.”
Shadow said, “Where are we taking the body?”
“Virginia. There’s a tree,” said Nancy.
“A world tree,” said Czernobog with gloomy satisfaction. “We had one in my part of the world. But ours grew under the world, not above it.”
“We put him at the foot of the tree,” said Nancy. “We leave him there. We let you go. We drive south. There’s a battle. Blood is shed. Many die. The world changes, a little.”
“You don’t want me at your battle? I’m pretty big. I’m good in a fight.”
Nancy turned his head to Shadow and smiled—the first real smile Shadow had seen on Mr. Nancy’s face since he had rescued Shadow from the Lumber County Jail. “Most of this battle will be fought in a place you cannot go, and you cannot touch.”
“In the hearts and the minds of the people,” said Czernobog. “Like at the big roundabout.”
“Huh?”
“The carousel,” said Mr. Nancy.
“Oh,” said Shadow. “Backstage. I got it. Like the desert with all the bones in it.”
Mr. Nancy raised his head. “Backstage. Yes. Every time I figure you don’t have enough sense to bring guts to a bear, you surprise me. That’s right. Backstage. That’s where the real battle will happen. Everything else will just be flash and thunder.”
“Tell me about the vigil,” said Shadow.
“Someone has to stay with the body. It’s a tradition. One of our people will do it.”
“He wanted me to do it.”
“No,” said Czernobog. “It will kill you. Bad, bad, bad idea.”
“Yeah? It’ll kill me? To stay with his body?”
“It’s what happens when the all-father dies,” said Mr. Nancy. “It wouldn’t be true for me. When I die, I just want them to plant me somewhere warm. And then when pretty women walk over my grave I would grab their ankles, like in that movie.”
“I never saw that movie,” said Czernobog.
“Of course you did. It’s right at the end. It’s the high school movie. All the children going to the prom.”
Czernobog shook his head.
Shadow said, “The film’s called Carrie, Mister Czernobog. Okay, one of you tell me about the vigil.”
Nancy said, “You tell him. I’m drivin’.”
“I never heard of no film called Carrie. You tell him.”
Nancy said, “The person on the vigil—gets tied to the tree. Just like Wednesday was. And then they hang there for nine days and nine nights. No food, no water. All alone. At the end they cut the person down, and if they lived…well, it could happen. And Wednesday will have had his vigil.”
Czernobog said, “Maybe Alviss will send us one of his people. A dwarf could survive it.”
“I’ll do it,” said Shadow.
“No,” said Mr. Nancy.
“Yes,” said Shadow.
The two old men were silent. Then Nancy said, “Why?”
“Because it’s the kind of thing a living person would do,” said Shadow.
“You are crazy,” said Czernobog.
“Maybe. But I’m going to hold Wednesday’s vigil.”
When they stopped for gas Czernobog announced he felt sick, and wanted to ride in the front. Shadow didn’t mind moving to the back of the bus. He could stretch out more, and sleep.
They drove on in silence. Shadow felt that he’d done something very big and very strange, and he wasn’t certain exactly what it was.
“Hey. Czernobog,” said Mr. Nancy, after a while. “You check out the technical boy back at the motel? He was not happy. He’s been screwin’ with something that screwed him right back. That’s the biggest trouble with the new kids—they figure they know everythin’, and you can’t teach them nothin’ but the hard way.”
“Good,” said Czernobog.
Shadow was stretched out full length on the seat in the back. He felt like two people, or more than two. There was part of him that felt gently exhilarated: he had done something. He had moved. It wouldn’t have mattered if he hadn’t wanted to live, but he did want to live, and that made all the difference. He hoped he would live through this, but he was willing to die, if that was what it took to be alive. And, for a moment he thought that the whole thing was funny, just the funniest thing in the world; and he wondered if Laura would appreciate the joke.