Weaveworld

III

THE HORSE UNHARNESSED

1

orris the Hamburger Billionaire had long ago forgotten what it was like to be treated as a man. Shadwell had other uses for him. First, of course, during the Weave’s first waking, as his horse. Then, when man and mount returned to the Kingdom and Shadwell took on the mantle of Prophet, as footstool, foodtaster and fool, the butt of the Salesman’s every humiliating whim. To this, Norris put up no resistance. As long as he was in thrall to the raptures of Shadwell’s jacket he was utterly dead to himself.

But tonight, Shadwell had tired of his creature. He had new vassals on every side, and mistreating the sometime plutocrat had become a tired joke. Before the unweaving, he’d left Norris to the untender mercies of his Elite, to be their lackey. That unkindness was nothing, however, to his other; the withdrawal of the illusion that had won Norris’ compliance.

Norris was not a stupid man. When the shock of waking to find himself bruised from head to foot had worn off he soon put the pieces of his recent history together. He couldn’t know how much time had passed since he’d fallen for Shadwell’s trick, (he’d been declared dead in his home town in Texas, and his wife had already married his brother), nor could he recall more than vaguely the discomforts and abuse that had been heaped upon him in his period of servitude. But he was quite certain of two things. One, that it was Shadwell who had reduced him to his present abjection, and two, that Shadwell would pay for the privilege.

His first task was to escape his new masters, which, during the spectacle of the unweaving, was easily done. They didn’t even notice that he’d slipped away. The second objective was to find the Salesman, and this he reasoned was best done with the aid of whatever police force this peculiar country boasted. To that end he approached the first group of Seerkind he came across and demanded to be taken to somebody in authority. They were apparently unimpressed by his demands, but suspicious nevertheless. They called him a Cuckoo, which he took some exception to, and then accused him of trespassing. One of the women even suggested he might be a spy, and should be taken post haste to somebody in authority, at which point Norris reminded her that he’d been requesting that all along.

So they took him.