Little Place of Forgetting - Brass Window Books

A Little Place of
Forgetting
By C.S. Thompson

A Little Place of Forgetting
By C.S. Thompson
Copyright © 2009 by C. S. Thompson
Cover Illustrations by Cicely Noel
Cover Art Copyright © 2009 by Cicely Noel Thompson
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.
Published by
Brass Window Books
42 Green St.
Bridgton, ME 04009
Printed in the United States of America
Online at: http://www.brasswindow.com
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Table of Contents
I: A Little Place of Forgetting................................................................................5
Chapter One: The Slow Dreams of the Dead.....................................................6
Chapter Two: What the Skull Said...................................................................12
Chapter Three: You’re Starting to Share in Our Dead Life .............................19
Chapter Four: Watching the Autumn Moon ....................................................24
Chapter Five: A Beautiful New World ............................................................33
Chapter Six: The Queen of All Weapons.........................................................40
Chapter Seven: Testing the Bones ...................................................................47
Chapter Eight: The Marionettes.......................................................................53
Chapter Nine: Hunting the Dead......................................................................60
Chapter Ten: A Student of the Black School ...................................................68
Chapter Eleven: A Little Place of Forgetting...................................................75
Chapter Twelve: At Your Expense ..................................................................81
Chapter Thirteen: Carthage Must Die ..............................................................86
II: The Ghost Doctor............................................................................................95
Chapter One- Red Sea Crossing.......................................................................96
Chapter Two-The Iron Teeth .........................................................................102
Chapter Three – The Forest of Dead Trees....................................................108
Chapter Four- Galley Slaves ..........................................................................114
Chapter Five- Blood and Suffering................................................................123
Chapter Six- Aftermath..................................................................................133
Chapter Seven- The Devil Hills .....................................................................140
Chapter Eight- The Last Ghost Doctor ..........................................................150
Chapter Nine- Through The Gate Of The Purple Sky....................................158
Chapter Ten- Fire And Mist...........................................................................165
Chapter Eleven- The Under Heaven Country ................................................170
Chapter Twelve- Nightbirds and Mica...........................................................180
Chapter Thirteen- Human Beasts...................................................................191
Chapter Fourteen- Dead House......................................................................198
Chapter Fifteen- The Keep At The Centerpoint.............................................206
Chapter Sixteen- I Am Reason.......................................................................213
III: Only Do as We Ask ......................................................................................215
Chapter One- What You Did For the Decision ..............................................216
Chapter Two- Not At All Like Them.............................................................222
Chapter Three- A Thousand Years of Memories ...........................................229
Chapter Four- No One Is Innocent.................................................................236
Chapter Five- …And You Shall Be Free .......................................................240
Chapter Six- Sunlight And Blood ..................................................................244
Chapter Seven- Giving the Lie.......................................................................249
Chapter Eight- Bugs With Human Skin.........................................................256
Chapter Nine- The Wind................................................................................265
Chapter Ten- The Fall....................................................................................269
Chapter Eleven- The Destruction of Architecture..........................................274
Chapter Twelve- Goodnight Forever .............................................................278
Chapter Thirteen- Possession.........................................................................282
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Chapter Fourteen- Apotheosis....................................................................... 290
Chapter Fifteen- Human Sacrifice................................................................. 295
IV: Sanctuary .................................................................................................... 301
Chapter One- Nightmares And Illusions....................................................... 302
Chapter Two- When My Head Came Clear .................................................. 307
Chapter Three- At The Bottom Of The World.............................................. 312
Chapter Four- Illumination ........................................................................... 321
Chapter Five- Chewing At the Wind............................................................. 324
Chapter Six- The Black Sticks ...................................................................... 328
Chapter Seven- Twilight ............................................................................... 336
Chapter Eight- The Eater of Men.................................................................. 345
Chapter Nine- Ecstasy................................................................................... 365
Chapter Ten- Pilgrimage............................................................................... 373
Chapter Eleven- Oath-breaker....................................................................... 382
Chapter Twelve- Nowhere In the World....................................................... 386
Chapter Thirteen- The End Of My Story ...................................................... 389
V: I Remember Nothing (Parson's Tale) ........................................................... 390
Chapter One- Carthage Is Dead .................................................................... 391
Chapter Two- Those Who Laugh.................................................................. 402
Chapter Three- Mob Rule ............................................................................. 408
Chapter Four- Red Lights.............................................................................. 411
Chapter Five- A Man After My Own Heart .................................................. 417
Chapter Six- Exploring The Wounds ............................................................ 428
Chapter Seven- The Menagerie..................................................................... 438
Chapter Eight- Mutiny .................................................................................. 446
Chapter Nine- Steel Rivers............................................................................ 452
Chapter Ten- The Long Night....................................................................... 457
Chapter Eleven- Only For Revenge .............................................................. 462
Chapter Twelve- The Dead Flame ................................................................ 466
Chapter Thirteen- In The Thorp.................................................................... 472
When You Saw Me Robed In Splendor ............................................................ 475
About the Author .......................................................................................... 477
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I: A Little Place of Forgetting
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Chapter One: The Slow Dreams of the Dead
On my fifteenth day in the oubliette, the dead started
to talk to me. They were difficult to understand, at
first. The skull on the floor in front of me stirred, its
jaw moved, and it made a sound. At first there was no sense in that
sound. But I was patient.
There was sometimes a ray of light in that place. It came, by
deliberate design, from the floor of the Great Hall in the castle
above me. I imagined all the others who had been there, staring up
at that thin ray and hearing the music and the feet of the dancers
when the lord hosted guests. This skull had been one of those who
saw the light and heard the dancing. Now it was trying to speak,
perhaps for the first time in years.
I found the corner with the damp stone and licked until I had
a small mouthful. Then I took the skull and let the water run
between its teeth. I would have to repeat this many times, whatever
thirst it caused me.
“Talk to me,” I said, and the skull’s jaw moved. It made a
moaning whisper like the sound of wind in the dead trees.
I licked the stone again, and fed the skull more water. It was
trying to speak, through a throat that must be very dry. I was
determined to help it. Once again, it moaned.
“Make a sound I can understand,” I said. “There is no other
living person down here but me. And I have not heard you dead
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talking to each other. So unless you talk to me, this oubliette will
stay a silent place.”
But an oubliette is not a silent place. I had screamed when
they put me down here, as they all must have. I had shrieked at my
captors to pull me out-first constantly, and then sporadically. And
then I had stopped screaming. As they all must have.
For a time, I sat down and cradled the skull in my lap and
rested. But the empty spaces in my head were too wide, the lacunae
were too bewildering, to let me remain motionless for long. I
walked over to the water-stone and licked it again, and fed the skull
again while my own parched throat burned. If not for that stone, I
would already be dead, an ugly death of hallucinations and
distortions and confusion. I wasn’t sure how I knew that, but I did.
Still, a little water licked from a cold rock could never be more than
barely enough at best. If the skull did not speak to me soon, I would
have to start drinking again, and give up my efforts for a while.
This time, the skull’s moan was long and almost musical. It
shifted tones, perhaps as if it were trying to form words.
“That’s right, that’s right,” I told it, and held it tight against
my chest. I was eager for an end to my weeks of being alone with
the incomprehensible stretches of blankness in my head.
“I don’t remember anything before they threw me down
here,” I told the skull. I had decided to talk to it, to encourage it to
speak. “There are things I know- broad things, almost random. I
know this is the castle of some House, though whether they are
great or little I cannot say. I know this is an oubliette. But who I
am, what I am and what I was doing when they captured me- these
things are gone. Though, sometimes, I almost feel as if I knew who
I was till the moment they pushed me into the hole. Then I fell and
landed on these bones. Some of them broke underneath me.”
I laughed. “Sorry about that, I hope I didn’t crack you.
There was that iron spike, which I had missed by about a foot-they
meant the spike as a mercy, of course, since it gave me a chance to
just die. But I still felt lucky to have missed it. Maybe you did too,
hmm?”
I paused for a few minutes to give my hoarse voice a chance
to recover. Then I went on.
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“I spent the first night screaming for them to let me out. I
don’t know why. An oubliette is for forgetting about a person.
There is no appeal.”
The light from the Hall above me went dark, and I knew that
it was night again.
“Then I decided to explore this pit. My cell, if you could
call it that. I stretched out my hands and pushed aside the bones
until I found the wall. The room is only a few feet square-as you
know well enough. There is space enough to lie down, if you pillow
your head on a skull. There is no space to stretch out. I found the
damp stone by running my hands along the walls. I also found the
grooves made by people trying to dig out or drag themselves up. I
assume they failed.
“The night after I came here, the lord of the castle held a
ball. Perhaps that was at least partly for my benefit. I heard the
dancing and the music, and I screamed again, screamed for hours.
They ignored me, of course.”
Without the ray of light, I could see just as much with my
eyes closed as open. In the dark, the rock mass of the castle
weighed on me. I imagined it was my tomb.
“I’m going to sleep now,” I told the skull, “before the
blackness makes me crazy. I will talk to you again in the morning.”
Then I fed the skull some water and drank a little for myself.
I knew I would lose ground overnight. The skull would be thirstier
after a night without drinking. It would be that much further from
speaking. But I had no choice.
Not surprisingly, there were nightmares. Strange images, the
faces of wise yet hateful men. Scenes of war and famine and torture
and crucifixions by the side of a road. A woman cutting a cow’s leg
to feed its congealed blood to her baby, who was already dead.
Flames in a pit of plague victims. Stranger things.
I woke up several times in the black of the oubliette, and
told myself the nightmares wouldn’t come back when I went to
sleep again. I was wrong every time.
“It’s morning,” said the skull. “There’s a bit of sunlight
coming down from up there.”
The sound of its voice was unnerving in the darkness, even
though I had waited so long to hear it.
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“You can speak, then,” I said. “I thought it would take
another day of drinking from my mouth.”
“I needed to rest,” it said. “For a long time, I’ve been
wandering alone in my thoughts. You called me back from far away
when you talked to me.”
“Where were you, then? In the land of the dead?”
“There is no such place, as far as I know. I fell asleep, and
into dreams. They never ended. In time, they stretched out. They
became slow.”
“What do you mean?”
“The thoughts and the images...they revealed themselves in
every detail, every absorbing detail. No thought resolved itself. I
was lost out there. I don’t know how long I’ve been dead, but for all
I know I could have spent a hundred years dreaming about one
image or one moment in time. The feel of a woman’s flesh, or the
taste of ale, or the dirt under my fingernails when I tried to dig my
way out of here.”
“So that’s death?”
“That was my death. And it will be again. And even this
could be another slow dream”
“Does it seem slow?”
“I am not sure. Everything confuses me, now.”
I thought about the gaps and I knew what he meant. I
shuddered.
“Don’t go to sleep in the oubliette,” the skull warned me.
“Don’t go to sleep unless you have to. You will die in your sleep.
You will slip into dreams. The slow dreams of the dead.”
I woke up. It was still black, it was not morning, and the
skull had not yet spoken. I screamed, hoping someone would hear
me and lose sleep on my account. But it hurt my throat, and I
stopped.
The cold gripped my head like a tight rope. I retched, but of
course my empty stomach brought up nothing. I knew I would
never get back to sleep that night, but I couldn’t just lie there and
think about all the things I couldn’t remember, all the things I didn’t
know. I stumbled forward and caught myself on the wall, on my
knees in the empty ocean of the dark. I visited the damp stone, first
for myself, and then for the skull. I carried this second mouthful of
water back, and found the skull by running my hands along the
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floor. I picked it up and fed it the water. Then I climbed over the
bones to the far corner, steadied myself on the spike, and urinated. I
pushed some bones over the spot to cover up the stench. Then I
heard the bones clatter behind me, where I had thought I was alone.
I wheeled around, but I froze at that instant. There was a
black-and-white striped cobra, on top of the bones, watching me,
swaying. Its body moved like a worm. Its tongue licked the air. Its
eyes were like dark blue pools with no bottom, reflecting a sky
filled with stars.
I woke up. There was a faint light of early morning from the
castle above me. Someone was lighting torches in another part of
the stronghold, preparing a meal, cleaning, going about their day, or
so I assumed.
Pain tore into my stomach. I felt the tiny, sharp teeth of an
imaginary animal gnawing at me from within. For some time, I
fantasized about food, about the meal they would be sharing
together up in the great hall, about the breads and the soups and the
duck or pheasant, and the fruit...
I threw myself forward, and caught myself on the wall. I
took a taste of water from the stone, and brought another taste to the
skull. I turned around and pissed in the corner and covered it with
bones. Then I talked to the skull once more.
“I think I dreamed about you last night,” I told him.
“Something about the dreams of the dead.”
This time, he wailed. His cry echoed from the walls, as my
screams had done. After a few seconds, I realized I was wailing
with him, and made myself stop.
“There is no meat left on any of these bones,” I told him
when he was done. “If there was, I would have eaten it days ago.
The worms have taken it, or the rats have taken it-though I have
seen no rats. There is nothing. So I am the first person to be thrown
into this pit in some time. You must speak to me. I am alone.”
There was no sound from him at all.
“A few nights ago, I dreamed I was in a burning building.
Perhaps an inn. Someone was pounding on my door. He was
screaming for me to wake up. He was screaming that we needed to
get the children out. I jumped out the window and ran away, while
the children shrieked like panicked animals from behind the blazing
walls.”
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I wrapped my arms around myself, shuddering. “Even thatthat-is
better for me than the blank spaces, the missing story, the
mental desert I see when I look back to any time before the
oubliette.”
The skull moaned again, and again I thought he was trying
to form words.
“All I have is images,” I said. “Brief pictures. Scenes of
suffering.”
He made another sound, a long sound like a phrase of
speech, and I could almost make out the words. Almost.
“You must want more water,” I suggested, and for at least a
few hours I alternated between swallowing and letting water run
down his dry mouth. Actually, there was more spit than water. And
not much of either at any one time.
Meanwhile, the life of the castle went on. I heard feet and
voices and crashes of things dropping, and phrases of music. I
didn’t bother to scream. The ray of light changed. I realized it was
afternoon, and I hadn’t marked the day. I pulled a leg-bone from the
pile and stacked it in one corner with the other fifteen. My sixteenth
day in the oubliette. My sixteenth day with no food.
“I would have eaten the others, if I could,” said the skull. It
startled me half-way to my feet.
“You can talk!” I cried, and picked him up.
“Yes, and I can hear you, too,” said the skull. “The first
voice I have heard in a very long time.”
“How long have you been here?”
“I do not know. I cannot think clearly anymore. The water
drips for hundreds of years, and I listen to it. The wind blows, and I
listen to that for another century. Or for a moment. I no longer
know.”
“Slow dreams,” I mumbled.
“That’s a strange way to put it,” he said.
“I’m so glad you’re talking,” I said to him. “I was starting to
think I would die before it happened.”
“Don’t worry, you have all the time in the world. Starvation
is a long death.”
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Chapter Two: What the Skull Said
Iwas in Ysjeachd, far north of here,” he was telling me,
“on the frontier with the Thorp. The press-gang caught
me sleeping off a night’s drunk, and had me in irons
before I even woke up. There was no way to escape. I saw a few of
the men give it a try, and the crossbows got them a hundred yards
out of camp. So that was it. I was a soldier.
“They kept us marching in that campaign. It was a mess all
the way through-rain and mud and fog, and the yellow plague in the
camps. We didn’t see any combat for weeks. The Dynasty was
getting desperate, that’s why they brought in the press-gangs. Their
heavy cavalry was all gone, their mercenaries were gone, their
pikemen were getting thin. They cleaned out the dungeons and
stuck spears in the hands of the convicts, some of them lepers and
cripples and old men. They freed slaves and bondmen as long as
they would join the army. And they kidnapped men like me and
sent us off to the front, without training and with nothing but
homemade weapons.
“I, for example, had a scythe-blade mounted on a long pole.
No sword, no axe, no mace. We must have walked thirty or forty
miles a day for weeks, dodging the enemy back and forth across the
country, trying to avoid a battle for as long as we could. Then there
was nowhere left to run. They were headed straight for the capitol,
and it was either hold the line, or the Dynasty was coming to an
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end. Not that we cared about the Dynasty. But the last of the
crossbowmen were lined up behind us, and they had orders to shoot
us in the back if we didn’t stand.
“So we waited till the sun came up, with our spears and our
scythes and our clubs and our sticks. The few of us who had swords
and axes were in the front of the line. We were all staring out into
the rain and the fog.
“Then we heard a sound like thunder rolling across the
horizon. I stuck my weapon out in front of me and just waited for
them to come. I was shaking. The man on the right of me fainted.
Their heavy cavalry came crashing out of the mist and straight into
us, and we shattered. Our bowmen wouldn’t even shoot at them,
because they didn’t have enough bolts. They were saving their bolts
for our backs.
“If you’ve ever seen infantry come up against cavalry, you
know what I mean. Without a pike phalanx to break the charge,
nothing whatsoever is going to stop it. They used their lances on us
until those broke, then they drew their swords and hacked down at
us while we poked at them vainly with our pathetic weapons. Their
horses killed as many of us as their blades did. Not a man of us
would have stood his ground, if not for the fact that death waited
for us either way. Those who panicked and ran were shot down.
Those who stood were cut down. Most of us cowered and shrunk
and screamed and put our hands over our heads-and got trampled.
“For some reason, I was trying to fight. I brought my blade
up and down on one man, and he almost lost his place in the saddle.
One of the others tried to cut his horse out from under him, but the
horse was armored too. The cavalry man cut the fellow’s head
almost in half. That was his mistake. The sword got caught in my
man’s skull and stayed there. The cavalry man tried to pull it out,
instead of letting go and grabbing for another weapon. I pulled on
his arm hard, and he came tumbling down from his horse.
“Well, he was a dead man then. We bashed on him from
every direction, while he tried to get up just like a bug stuck on its
back. He started shrieking, but we didn’t care, because a lot of us
were shrieking when he rode us down. The bloodlust was up and
we felt strong, and we just didn’t care. When he stopped jerking, we
pulled up his visor and stabbed him in the face. But there were
others. The enemy had ridden straight through our line and out the
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other side. They slaughtered our bow-men while the fools tried to
reload from shooting at us.
“Then they had us surrounded. There was nothing to do but
turn and try to take as many of them as we could, or just to pray to
whatever gods we might suddenly believe in. I had a mace I had
pulled from the dead cavalryman’s belt, and I stood back to back
with a handful of the others, waiting for the circle to close on us.
The rest of the army was stumbling over itself to cry, and plead, and
beg the enemy horsemen to let us live. I knew they never would. I
spit at the ground for one last good luck charm. The enemy horses
started to charge.
“Then I saw him. He was one of us, a conscript soldier,
pressed into service for a dying family that had happened to catch
him drunk or asleep or sick. But he had a sword of his own, and he
had somehow survived the first clash with the enemy horse. His
hair was matted with blood and mud and sweat. His body was
covered with it. His sword was red to the hilt. And he was howling
imprecations or incantations in a language I didn’t want to
understand.
“The other men were standing a few feet away from him.
They were obviously scared of him, though what sense that made I
didn’t know. We were all about to die. But there was something
repulsive about him, some unhealth that went beyond his gory
appearance. He looked like a nightmare, just then. He looked like
death.
“The enemy charge hit us with a concussive shock that
rattled every bone, even though the beggars and the pleaders were
the first to be hit. I let my mace hang easy in my hand, ready to
swing, ready to strike one solid blow before I went down.
“But he attacked. When the cavalry rode into our mass, he
jumped up like a tiger attacking a bull. He actually cut a man off his
horse in mid-air, swinging his sword in a great arc while he jumped.
The riderless horse tripped on itself as it ran into the living and dead
chaos of our army. Behind it, another rider was unable to swerve in
time to avoid the crash. He was thrown, and we were all over him
in moments.
“The strange man with the sword never stopped for an
instant. He charged into the enemy like a victorious general. Those
who blocked his path were cut down as they appeared-the rest, he
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ignored. I saw a path to survival behind him, wherever he was
going.
“ ‘Follow me!’ I yelled, hoping to get the weight of numbers
behind me. Enough of our men followed me to turn it into a real
charge. The enemy was taken completely by surprise. We were
expected to cower and die, or at most to defend ourselves
ineffectually and die. We were not expected to attack them.
“Their own momentum carried them past us and into our
more timid or slower comrades. I remember the shocked gesture of
a horseman who realized, too late, that he was charging into my
mace-head at a full gallop. He was knocked completely from his
horse, but there was neither need nor time to swarm on him.
“Suddenly, we were past them and running into a reedy
marsh on which the first rays of daylight were starting to shine. Our
ersatz leader plunged into the water up to his waist and kept going.
We followed him, and reached the other bank with leeches on our
backs and arms. From here, he led us straight into a thorn-patch.
“And I don’t mean a thorn-bush. It was a field, hundreds of
feet square, filled with thorns. We ran into them and through them,
driven on by the screams of those we had left behind and the
trumpets of our enemies. One man was caught on the thorns. We
left him behind. Another man got bit by a quick snake that came up
out of an unseen pool. He sank down a few minutes later, and we
left him behind. On the other side of the thorn-patch, we were
bleeding and our clothes were ripped apart. The man who had led
us here just kept going, with only the occasional slash from his
sword to show that he even noticed any obstacles.
“We came to a bank so steep it could almost be called a
cliff, which dropped into a deep glen filled with more thorns.
Incredibly, the man sheathed his sword and threw himself down the
slope without a second of hesitation. As if he had enchanted us, we
followed him, and plunged into the glen. I fell, tumbling over and
over and slamming into trees and landing on my back at the bottom.
Some of us never got back up again, but I stood up when our leader
did, and followed him further into the thorns. Soon, these were so
thick that we couldn’t even see the sky above our heads. We went
down on our hands and knees and crawled, following a trickle of
water, as near as I could tell. In time, this led us to a tiny cave deep
in the glen, surrounded and covered by thorns.
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“ ‘Now we can rest,’ said our leader when we crawled
inside. Those were the first words I had heard him say.”
The skull paused for a little while. I didn’t know if he
needed a rest of some kind, or if he was only lost in his thoughts.
The ray of light was already fading, and another day in the oubliette
was gone. The cell would soon be in complete darkness. If the skull
would start talking to me again, I knew I would find that darkness a
little easier to face.
“What happened next?” I asked him, but before he could
speak I was distracted by a tiny, furtive movement on the wall.
It was a spider. Or was it? It could have been a trick of the
fading light. No, it was a spider. It was dropping a web down the
length of the wall in one corner. It was building a web. How could I
go to sleep when I knew that thing was sharing the cell with me? If
it bit me, I would die from its poison and it would weave a web
over me. Worms would swim through me. I would only be bones.
“Calm down,” said the skull. “There’s always a spider or
two down here. They keep away from you. Don’t worry.”
I laughed when he said “Don’t worry,” and he laughed too.
“I’m going to die,” I said.
“You’re going to die,” he said.
“So finish your story.”
“I lay in that cave for a long time, feverish and confused. A
few more of us had died while we were sleeping there. I woke up as
the sun was going down, and found myself soaked with sweat, and
wet with vomit and blood and swamp water. No one else around me
was awake, so I spent my time pulling the leeches off me and
throwing them away into the cave. Outside, in the night, I heard
animals and howling dogs and maybe the feet of enemy patrols,
hunting down stragglers.
“Behind me, in the cave, I heard a sound. I rolled over on
my side, and saw the man who had led our desperate charge. He
was crouching down in the back, staring out at the night. His face
was gaunt, and there were dark circles under his eyes. His body was
cut in a dozen or more places. There was no meat on his bones, and
his body looked well more than half dead. The white shirt and black
vest and dark pants he wore were all ripped, and were hanging off
his arms and chest and legs. His hair, long and dark, was snarled
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and wet and filled with wood-chips and thorns and leaves. But he
did not look beaten. Not at all. His eyes were alive with a ferocious
will to kill, but they did not make him look like an animal. An
animal’s eyes are placid and accepting. This man’s eyes accepted
nothing.
“He had his blade out across his lap, in his right hand, ready
to use. I was gripped with fear that he would notice me, this ogre. I
would have put nothing past him. For some reason, he made me
feel sick, even though I owed my life to him.
“ ‘You’re awake,’ he said, and he didn’t sound like an ogre
at all.
“ ‘How the hell are we going to get out of this?’ I asked
him. He looked down at me, as if he had actually just noticed me.
Deep fear passed over his eyes like a cloud. Then, callousness. He
shrugged.
“ ‘I don’t know anything about how you’re going to get out
of this,’ he said. ‘There’s no way out through there...’ he pointed
back into the cave’s dark stomach. ‘It drops off after a few feet, and
then, who knows?’ he laughed, sharply. ‘Maybe it drops into hell!’
“ ‘What about that way?’ I asked, indicating the swamp
outside.
“ ‘Not for a few days, at least,’ he said. ‘They’ll be looking
for our officers, such as there were, and they’ll kill any of us they
find along the way. There is no escape.’
“ ‘Then what are you going to do? I followed you before,
and you kept me alive. I’ll follow you again.’
“I didn’t know why I was offering to follow him. He
horrified me. And yet, he seemed to offer a hope for survival. I
could hardly imagine anyone killing him.
“ ‘There is only one thing I can do,’ he said, ‘and I can’t do
it for awhile. For one thing, I got hit on the head back there. I can’t
do the work yet. For another thing, I used all my strength back in
the battle, calling on Gursharak. And finally, to get more strength, I
need blood.’
“A shudder ran up my spine. Was he saying what I thought
he was saying? Was he talking about using the black arts to escape
from the cave? I didn’t dare to ask him anymore. I had escaped
from a deathtrap, only to find myself alone with a servant of the
demons.”
- 17 -

“Later, after I had slept and sweated more of the sickness
and fatigue out of me, I woke up and saw the stars bright and cold
in the sky outside the cave. And there were other lights, too. Dozens
of torches circled around in the glen, getting closer. The enemy
soldiers were about to find us. I looked back into the cave depths
again.
“And there he was! He had taken one of our comrades, still
barely alive, and strung him up spread-eagled in the back of the
cave. The man’s wrists were tied with rags to outcroppings of rock.
His legs were stretched out and held down with rocks that rested on
his pant legs, dangling below his feet. The man was unconscious,
but his shallow breath made his chest rise and fall quietly.
“The sorcerer had cut this fellow soldier of his, a thin scrape
meant only to draw blood. And he had painted his own face with
that blood, in strange, twisting characters. His arms were stretched
to the sky, and he was whispering in a musical and weirdly
beautiful language I had never heard before. Then I knew that there
was really no escape for me- not when his Masters were on their
way. I fainted as the soldiers approached the cave.”
“When I awoke, I was bound in irons in the back of a
covered cart, rolling south. No one spoke to me. No one asked me
any questions. I only knew we were headed south because I looked
through a gap in the boards and saw signs on the road. No one ever
explained to me why they hadn’t killed me, or what they wanted
with me, or where they were taking me. They gave me food and
water until we got here. I never saw any of the other soldiers again.
“When we came to this castle, they dragged me out and
walked me through the front gate and the Great Hall and brought
me to the edge of the pit. Then they threw me in. That was all. A
month later, I was dead.”
- 18 -

Chapter Three: You’re Starting to Share in Our Dead Life
Outside, the wind moaned like a lonely ghost. The
beams in the Great Hall creaked. The draft blew
down into the oubliette. I heard the breeze whistling
in the hallways. The skull’s story haunted me in my lack of sleep. A
battle, and a human sacrifice, and the oubliette. At least he
remembered how he had come here. In my mind, I saw the trees
outside as they were bent beneath the wind, black silhouettes
against a field that faded into the dark horizon. I shivered in the
wind. My body convulsed with the shuddering. I wrapped my arms
around myself. I imagined myself sinking into the wind like water,
drowning in the wind. It blew from one end of the world to the
other, touched everything, went everywhere. It could not be
restricted to this pit. If I drowned in the wind, would I wake up in
an aerial Fiddler’s Green? The thought made me laugh, and I came
to myself again in the cell. And I remembered what the skull had
not said-“Don’t fall asleep in the oubliette.”
But I fell, again, into the wind. I was carried on its current to
great heights; and I saw, past the high atmosphere, other planets
that emitted clear notes of perfect harmony, divine and pure. The
stars were still further beyond, and the wind of our own world bore
me to the wind between the worlds, and took me to the stars. I
examined one of them in my hand. It was like a quartz snowball.
And then there were other stars, too large to touch, and too hot. And
- 19 -

there was a ball of ice that flew between the worlds, which
reminded me of the comet, the Death-messenger.
In the outer places beyond our world, I found myself
forgetting my approaching death in the oubliette. I found a beauty
in that place which I had never seen within the brief span of my
memory. I saw the spiraling suns of the void, and I heard the Eight
sisters croon their fatal music and lure strange metal vessels to their
doom in maelstroms of light with black centers. I saw the birth of
worlds and peoples, and their death from war or plague or the
heavens raining with ice and stones. I saw a million billion worlds
unfold in front of me in a kaleidoscope of possibilities and
probabilities and options.
And then I saw the Unbeings, Those Who Wait Between the
Worlds, semi-visible but endlessly hungry. The Demons.
“Be aware of us,” They said. “Be aware of us. We are very
good.”
I became aware of my bed among the bones in the cold of
the pit. I might as well have stayed between the worlds, a place that
seemed no colder. When the shivering gripped me, I became a
mechanical thing, which flailed and jerked in a precise pre-defined
rhythm to the cadence of my clacking teeth. I burrowed into the
bones like a blanket.
If it was ironic that the dead were keeping me warm, I lost
that thought when I realized that the worms were probably all
around me now. They would be waiting for me to die so they could
lay their eggs in me. Do worms lay eggs? Or would they have to
turn into flies first? Then would they lay eggs in me?
Suddenly I felt warm. I had been shouting for a few
minutes. I hadn’t known.
“What is your name?” I asked the skull.
“ I was called Doll.”
“You didn’t have a last name?”
“Most people don’t.”
“I wonder if I do.”
Doll didn’t reply.
- 20 -

I looked through the wall of the castle and watched the burnt
grass not growing in the night. A raven the size of a dog ran over to
me and licked my face.
I woke up. I pushed the bones aside and stumbled halfway
up and fell to my knees and broke a few bones. Not my own.
“You’re getting weaker,” said Doll. “You won’t be able to
get up to piss, before long.”
“Then I’ll go where I am.” I groaned, and got up again. I
touched my face and felt the short beard I had grown. Was it there
before?
“It was a hard night,” I said to Doll. “I think I lost track a
little.”
“That happens. It’ll be easier when you accept it.”
“I won’t accept it.”
“Of course you will. I wrestled a man for an hour once, and
this was a match I truly wanted to win. But he wore me down. After
an hour, I didn’t care.”
“This is not why I woke you up,” I told him. I repeated my
ritual of corner, damp stone and then back to the bone-pile. Far
above my head, people were having a day. They knew nothing
about me. But they knew I was down here.
“Stop yelling at them,” said Doll. “It’s not going to help you
stay on track.”
I put my head in my hands and tried to wipe the mists away
from my eyes.
“You need to hear another story,” said Doll. “It will calm
you down.”
“Then tell me another story,” I said.
“Unfortunately, that ruin of a battle is my only story. You
won’t find much profit in tales of occasional work and pointless
meanderings across the North.”
“I don’t want to feed water to another skull for two days. I
don’t think I could survive it. Which reminds me-don’t you still
need to drink?”
“Not really,” he said. “That wasn’t anything I needed at all,
except insofar as it got my attention and pulled me up out of the
morass. You should be able to find another one on your own.
You’re starting to share in our dead life now. You can touch our
dreams without being trapped by them. You can find the flow, and
- 21 -

fall into it, and pull one of the others back up to this island of
lucidity you and I call home. You’re more than half-dead. You will
recognize our language. You can speak our absurdities.”
I looked at the bricks on the wall and imagined I was a man
the size of half an ant, crossing the great gray desert of those bricks
on behalf of some tiny fairy-tale queen.
“Well, who should I call? There are many of you, after all.”
“How did you choose me? There is nothing to set me apart
from the others. I’m hardly remarkable.”
“You were in front of my face when I woke up that first
morning. I would rather not be so random a second time.”
“No, that would be irresponsible. I can think of one that you
should find interesting.”
“Can you tell me his name?”
“Of course not,” said Doll. “Why would I know his name?
All I know is the ring that he’s wearing. This one hasn’t fallen
apart. He’s a complete skeleton, a functional cadaver. He has the
Royal Seal of Dumorovan on his finger. You should be able to find
him.”
“A Dumorovani courtier. He will have a story to tell.”
“I imagine he will. He was among the bones at the bottom. I
found him when it got bad, when I was looking for a scrap of skin
to tear off.”
“Was he wearing the robes?”
“Practically worn away by now,” said the skull. “The
summer insects had been at him.”
I dug in the pile, and threw legs and heads and arms aside
till I found a dead man with a ring. I held up his hand and examined
the design. It was definitely the ring of a courtier. An aristocrat of
Dumorovan in the cold desert. A lord of the effeminate empire of
aesthetes and dilettantes at the edge of the edgeless world.
“I know what Dumorovan is,” I told the skull. “I know what
it is, I know where it is. I could rattle off its history for you. But I
can’t remember why. I don’t know if I was ever there.”
“In death, the fool is made wise,” he quoted at me. I nearly
threw him and shattered his head into snowdust powder against the
wall. Then I remembered that I was going to die.
“A memory is a useless cobweb thing,” I said, “so why
don’t I find out what memory is his.”
- 22 -

I held the dead Dumorovani like a baby, cradled in my arms.
His dripping dreams were an easy river to find, rolling like sludge
as they were. I laid back and let myself float in them, felt his cool
mind on the back of my head and my neck and my limbs. It took
my shape, as any liquid would.
And then I was there. This man had no dreams of the spaces
between the worlds or the interplanetary wind. He was not
smothered by visions of comets and the eight fatal sisters. This was
a man whose mind was fixed on the image of a single rare and pale
flower, blooming in a night that would last him a million years. He
explored it with a fine-tuned emptiness of absolute aesthetic
appreciation.
Every instant of its unfolding was available for his
exploration, a classical poem with no passion, but infinite wit and
sublimity. I would have believed him content if I had not felt the
horror. There was corruption at the heart of his masterpiece. His
death had been too hard to leave his dreams untainted. Though he
could admire their beauty for a thousand lifetimes, he could not
erase their ultimately rotten essence. His gasp of pained discovery
unfolded as slowly as the flower.
“Come up with me,” I told him. “I cannot die in your
dream.”
The speed of my mind made him sick. His dreams reeled,
and I was buffeted and nauseated. He fled the wreck of his creation
as if he were running from a burning building. We came up together
in the cold, but no longer silent, oubliette.
I looked at his skull. His jaw hung open and he moaned,
doglike.
“That’s the first stage,” said Doll. “But it should take him
less time than it took me. You pulled him out directly.”
The courtier whined, then closed his mouth.
“Am I alive?” he asked me.
“No,” I said, “you are definitely still dead.”
“Then why did you awaken me? I was appreciating a
flower.”
“You were trapped in dead dreams,” I said. “You would
have been lost in there forever, but I pulled you out.”
“And we’ll all be going back there,” said Doll.
“Yes, we will.”
- 23 -

Chapter Four: Watching the Autumn Moon
The August Lord General Cumori had just returned
from triumphantly inspecting, if not exactly
subduing, our Northern frontiers,” said the courtier,
“and His Majesty the Emperor had decided to celebrate. There
would be a Ceremony of Watching the Autumn Moon, with the
customary extemporaneous poetry. This was an occasion of great
anxiety for every courtier. Much depended on composing a witty or
profound turn of phrase on a moment’s notice. I remember courtiers
who fell from favor permanently, and even had to go into exile, for
bungling an elaborate but fragile structure of rhyme or thought.
“I left nothing to the Bitch Goddess Fate that evening. I
chose a robe of emerald silk inlaid with traceries of gold thread. My
headdress was an exquisite representation of the purity of the
peasant life, but not so large as to raise any eyebrows. I wore boots
that rose to my knees. There were carvings of the Imperial Dragon
of Dumorovan on the front. My face was painted white in honor of
the moon, with black eye-shadow and black lipstick. I carried a fan
with the motto “Glory to the Divine Emperor” in fluid calligraphy
on the front and back. My slave carried my sword behind me, in a
golden sheath with diamonds on it. Such was the Dumorovani court
style.
“There was, at that time, a single foreigner at the Court. His
uncouth barbarian accent was grating to the ear, but he conducted
- 24 -

himself with enough grace to avoid offense. He dressed, carefully,
in the court style whenever he made a formal appearance. At the
Ceremony of Watching the Autumn Moon, he was wearing a red
robe with flared shoulders and a band collar. The silver buttons
reflected the moonlight delicately. His hair was in a high pigtail,
which had, at least, been fashionable not long before. There was
only one sign of obvious crudity-he wore a sword at his waist, since
he had no slave to carry it.
“He was on the balcony before me. I bowed to him, and
swept my wide sleeve behind me like a rock skimming the surface
of a pond. He returned the same bow, but held it for slightly less
time. I chose to ignore the insult I could have chosen to see in this.
He was a barbarian, after all.
“Behind us, the other courtiers glided down the long hall to
join us on the balcony. We were all the eldest sons of provincial
lords. His Majesty the Emperor trusted the loyalty of no one. If a
nobleman engaged in conspiracies, his son would be slain. The
blood of a lord’s son is not shed in an execution, of course. He must
be smothered between mattresses, so his blood, which bears the
Emperor’s divine spark, is not profaned by contact with the ground.
“Many of those whom I had known since childhood had
gone to the Mattress Death. We meant almost nothing to our
fathers. Though the eldest was known as the ‘favored son,’ many
lords had been succeeded by another child when their plots were
discovered. The eldest son had become expendable in the many
centuries of this custom. In the knowledge of our own
meaninglessness, we grew up as dilettantes who lived to curry favor
with an Emperor we worshipped and despised. Those of us who
survived to inherit our Estates were certain to plot against His
Majesty. And so it went on.
“I bowed to each of my comrades and rivals in turn. They
were in their most resplendent finery for the occasion. Their eyes
were just bored enough to look sophisticated, but I knew they were
both excited and anxious. Nearly every day at the Court brought a
fresh threat to their futures. If they were exiled, their fathers would
merely send the second oldest son to become a courtier. Until and
unless they held their family’s power, they were nothing more than
glorified hostages.
“A flute melody announced the arrival of Lord General
Cumori. Since the ceremony was in his honor, he was preceded by
- 25 -

a dozen beautiful slaves, six male and six female. As a military
man, he was not expected to dress like a courtier, but his uniform
was still made of the rarest and most colorful fabrics. He was
uncomfortable in our presence, of course. He might ape a degree of
refinement, but that was all, and he knew it. It would be unseemly
for a true nobleman to serve as a mere soldier, so the position of
Lord General was reserved for bastard sons of the backwater petty
nobility.
“We bowed to him in recognition of his office, and he
returned a polished yet somewhat curt bow. The sound of harp and
hammered dulcimer warned us that the Emperor was approaching.
We took our proper positions, as determined by our current state of
favor. The foreigner stood to one side, as he was expected to do.
Nevertheless, the others edged away from him subtly, for he was
disliked. My slaves informed me that there were rumors about him,
but I put the dislike down to his barbarian uncouthness. He made
my skin crawl as well, but what else could he have done? He was
doubtless doing as well as he could. He was no threat to me, so I
could afford to be tolerant.
“Two rows of slaves came onto the balcony, chanting the
Hymn of the Holy Imperial Conqueror of the World. The Grand
Slave came after them. He was a man with a certain power of his
own, for he controlled access to His Majesty. The Grand Slave
unfurled an old parchment scroll, and read the customary passage-
“ ‘Honored guests of the Court, you shall now be favored
with the shining presence of His Most Awesome and Terrible
Majesty, the godlike Samoril XX, Emperor of Dumorovan!’ He
stepped aside, dropped to one knee, and bowed his head.
“I remember every detail of that night at the Imperial Court!
The Emperor floated onto the balcony as if his feet were too pure to
touch the floor. We couldn’t see exactly what he was wearing, as
we were forbidden to look directly at him. Whatever it was, it
reflected the rays of the moon and made him glow. He might really
have been a god! So we bowed our heads and let him pass through
us to the edge of the balcony. He gazed up at the moon, the
grandmother of his ancestor the First Emperor.
“ ‘Let us watch the moon,’ he said, and rose his hands in an
exalted gesture. The Ceremony had now officially begun. The
slaves stood to the side and made themselves unobtrusive. We lifted
our hands in the same motion, to imitate His Majesty.
- 26 -

“The most favored courtier passed a small white flower to
the Emperor, who raised it to the moon and let the breeze carry it
away. Every aspect of every movement had meaning to us, the
initiates of the most elite aesthetic society in the world. In this case,
the hint of crispness about the Emperor’s motions suggested a
vigorous attitude in the poem we were about to create. To compose
lines which were too sedate or classical would be a disturbance of
the atmosphere he had indicated. Only the foreigner or the Lord
General might be so crude as to make such a mistake.
“The flutes and harp and dulcimer joined the Ceremony
with a melody carefully chosen to complement the mood. The sky
was a dark blue against which black clouds sailed like formless
ships. The moon rode through one of those clouds, and an icy
reddish halo appeared around its rim, casting a washed-out violet
glow over those of us at the edge of the balcony-especially the
Emperor.
“The most favored courtier stepped forward to deliver the
first line of the poem we would compose. He bowed quickly to the
moon, then to the Emperor. With raised hands, he intoned the line-
“ ‘Do you remember how the autumn moon...’
“There was a silence. In theory, the poem could be taken up
by any of us. But if two of us tried to speak at the same time, there
would be a disturbance of atmosphere. He who had spoken second,
even by the shortest interval, would fall disastrously from grace
with the Emperor. If one of us composed a line, he would look
around carefully to make sure that no one else was about to speak.
Only then could he deliver the line aloud.
“No one expected the foreigner to say a word. Although he
was allowed to attend the ceremony as a courtesy, and could
therefore participate, it was assumed that the complexities of our art
would intimidate him. But he spoke. He cleared his throat quietly,
and said-
“ ‘Can liquefy and lie till we’re exposed....’
“No one dared to stir, but there was an emotional ripple
across the balcony nevertheless. We were shocked at his audacity.
Even his choice of theme was daring, for it implied a dangerous
cynicism. Lies and exposure were not normally the focus of our
work. Still, the direction he took could be seen as an expression of
the vigorous attitude the Emperor had suggested. It was left to one
- 27 -

of us to take up his challenge and somehow continue this strange
poem.
“We were due for another surprise. The Lord General
Cumori turned his head and rose an eyebrow, and said-
“ ‘In altered shades of bland, anemic rose...’
“Not only was his demeanor and facial expression alarming,
his line was even more cynical than that of the foreigner. The line
could be taken to imply that the Emperor, who was standing in the
rosy glow of the moon’s halo, was somehow altered and weakened
by that pale light. If the General himself did not turn the poem
around somehow, he would not merely be exiled. He would be put
to death. Those of use who wished him no harm would stay out of
the poem for awhile. He would be given a chance to save himself.
“But the thirteenth courtier was a cruel and weak man who
would have delighted to cause the General’s death. He gazed
piously at the moon’s glowing face, and said-
“ ‘You’re like the rogue that stalks the river’s bank...’
“The foreigner had backed away, apparently realizing that
his participation had disturbed us. His body seemed tense and wary.
His eyes were apprehensive, as if he felt that he had made a deadly
mistake. He probably wanted nothing more than to stay quiet and
keep the situation from getting any worse. But this was impossible.
The issue was now the survival of the Lord General and the cruel
ambitions of the thirteenth courtier. The aesthetic harmony of the
evening had been disrupted, and in all likelihood this would mean
disaster for somebody.
“The ninth courtier, an undistinguished man, provided a safe
line in a vain attempt to calm the situation. He said, in a clear voice
directed at the sky-
“ ‘With stripes of black and orange on its flank...’
“The Lord General, seemingly undisturbed by the
potentially fatal turn of events at his own celebration, bared his
teeth and said-
“ ‘I’m like the shark that flies through endless blue...’
“At this point, the most favored courtier tried to gain more
favor with His Majesty by directly contradicting the unpleasant
lines which had been spoken.
“ ‘These things are not at all the same as true,’ he said, in
the meter and form already set, in order to allow the poem to
- 28 -

continue. Anyone who chose to take the poem any further along
sinister or cynical lines would be making a reckless choice indeed.
“The fifth courtier saw an opportunity to display his
aesthetic sense, now that the controversy was over and the
consequences deferred until later. He made sure that everyone else
was silent, and said, quietly-
“ ‘In ecstasies of white-do you recall?’
“But the Lord General was determined to destroy himself.
He threw his head back, as if in a silent laugh, and said-
“ ‘The autumn moon had mentioned we would fall...’
“The thirteenth courtier had no more need to drive the
General to ruination. The man had ensured his own execution with
this line of the poem, which sounded like a prophecy of doom on
the entire Court.
“Then the foreigner surprised me. As I mentioned, he had
seemed afraid. But now he defied all protocol and stepped forward
to confront the Lord General directly. They locked eyes and ignored
the rest of us to finish the poem between the two of them.
“The foreigner said, ‘In ecstasies of silver-don’t forget,’ and
the general replied, ‘The winter sun became a stone of jet.’
“I shuddered. The Emperor had turned around and was
staring at them. The foreigner referred to the first verse of the
poem-
“ ‘And I remember how the autumn moon / Can liquefy and
lie till we’re exposed / In altered shades of bland, anemic rose.’
“The general responded, in triumph, ‘And I remember how
the autumn moon / Solidified and lied till it revealed...’
“He left the final line for the foreigner, and waited, wearing
a sly grin. The foreigner turned his head and looked at the moon,
then returned his eyes to the laughing eyes of the General.
“ ‘My subtle shades of dull and shining steel,’ he said, and
finished the poem.”
“On the day of Cumori’s execution, the foreigner was seated
below and to the right of the Emperor. His Majesty had decided to
reward him for besting the insolent General at the moon-watching
ceremony.
“ ‘I only desired to protect your dignity,’ the barbarian had
said, flattering the Emperor like a true courtier! The final line of the
poem had been phrased as if no one had ever referred to the
- 29 -

Emperor at all, but to the foreigner himself. Thus, the Emperor was
no longer insulted by the unfortunate General’s choice of words.
This preserved the aesthetic harmony of the ceremony, but it could
not save the General from the Mattress Death.
“ ‘You are not a true bearer of our divine blood,’ the
Emperor had said in pronouncing sentence. ‘However, in honor of
your recent victories on our behalf, you will be given the death of a
nobleman.’
“So the assembled Court was now gathered in the Square of
Repudiation to witness Cumori’s last moments. He was tied,
spread-eagled, to a leather mattress which was much larger than he.
Another mattress, was placed on top of him, and the executioner
walked a stallion over it for many minutes to the sound of a frame
drum and pipes. We thought we could hear the General’s muffled
screams as they snuffed him out.
“But we were wrong. When the execution should long since
have been over, its victim suffocated or crushed to death, we could
still hear the same noise. The courtiers couldn’t help leaning
forward, curious to see what the General looked like now, how a
man could survive such a punishment.
“The top mattress was removed. Cumori’s body had been
practically destroyed. Shards of rib poked up from his chest, and his
limbs looked like jelly. The sound was coming from his mouth,
which was wide open. A black stump of a tongue hung out over his
blue lips. He was laughing.
“ ‘My master!’ he cried suddenly, as he turned to look at the
foreigner. ‘Haven’t I served you well? Why do you abandon me
now?’”
“The foreigner sprang to his feet, with his jaw clenched and
his hand on the hilt of his sword. He looked like a man who knew a
trap was coming, and had tried to avoid it, only to find it was
waiting in a different place than he thought.
“The Emperor signaled the guards, unobtrusive but always
present. Goetia was punishable by death, but the charge would have
to be proved. The Court would, of course, make much of Cumori’s
accusation. Or, should I say, the phantom’s accusation, since the
General himself was obviously lost in the wind-phantom’s
hellworld. While his body was used as a tool by the phantom from
the cold Desert, his soul was enslaved and tortured. If the foreigner
- 30 -

was responsible for this, he would be purified through our earthly
torments.
“We all moved away from the man, and the guards closed in
on him with their swords drawn. Many times, a man accused of
dark sorcery would resist the capture and interrogation. This time,
that would be impossible-the foreigner’s sword was still sheathed,
and the first guard was already within his measure. There could be
no resistance.
“Or so I assumed. When the guard reached out for the
foreigner’s sword-hilt, there was a flash of light, and the guard flew
back as if struck by cannon fire. His blood sprayed the Emperor in
the face-an artery had been severed. The foreigner’s sword was
high above his head-he must have drawn and cut in the same
motion. No one had ever seen such a thing before. We were
stunned, unmoving. The sword fell like a tree, and another guard
was dead. But there were too many of them for any swordsman to
resist. Even if he slew them one by one, he could never escape from
the Imperial palace. The circle was closing.
“The foreigner swung his blade in a diagonal slice that kept
the guards at bay. Then he grabbed the balcony where the Emperor
sat and propelled himself up beside His Majesty. Somebody
screamed.
“ ‘Keep back!’ yelled the foreigner, with no trace of the
civilized facade he had presented. His long sword-blade was
pressed hard against the Emperor’s throat, drawing a thin line of
blood. I couldn’t help but look at the shocking and blasphemous
scene, even if it meant staring the Emperor in the face. His eyes
were wide and white and horrified and not at all divine. Like many
of the others, I am sure, my heart held a secret satisfaction that our
national father could sweat with fear like any man.
“ ‘I’ll cut his head from his body!’ shouted the foreigner.
‘Stay away from me!’
“He jammed his fingers into the Emperor’s hair and pulled
the monarch backwards and up out of his seat. The courtiers were
paralyzed, but the guards seemed unsure of what to do. All of their
training told them to charge the barbarian, and cut him down-but
they didn’t dare.
“ ‘Tell them to back away!’ the foreigner growled. The
Emperor tried to make words, but his mouth only worked uselessly.
Tears started to roll down his face. He shook and sobbed quietly,
- 31 -

and his eyes rolled up in a desperate attempt to see the monster who
had him prisoner. He was a child, afraid of a death which had never
threatened him before. The pity I felt for him was followed
instantly by contempt. When a man has sent so many others to their
doom, he should face his own death with dignity.
“The courtiers wouldn’t move-they couldn’t move. The
foreigner’s sword flicked out like a snake’s tongue and cut down
the first man in his way, who happened to be the thirteenth courtier.
In the same motion, he cut the face of the only guard brave and
stupid enough to rush in. One by one, the cowardly nobles of the
Court fell to the foreigner’s sword while they stared at him like dull
peasants under the whip. I was more amazed at their bovine
paralysis than at the foreigner’s desperate escape attempt. I felt that
my own life wasn’t the most important thing in the entire world,
and I found that I could move.
“There were two things I could do. My slave was behind
me, holding my sword. I could take that sword and challenge the
foreigner, in defense of His Divine Majesty. Or I could step aside
and let the foreigner pass, and avoid the pathetic fate of the others. I
looked at my Emperor, who was so scared he could have swallowed
his tongue. It would have helped me to come to the rescue-if it
didn’t get me or him killed, as it probably would. But the whole
fawning game of the courtier’s life suddenly disgusted me.
“The foreigner was in front of me now, sword raised to hack
me down like the others. I looked him directly in the eyes and
stepped aside. He paused in his deadly work. I must have surprised
him somehow. He nodded at me curtly and then passed on. I have
no idea how he got out of the palace.”
“They found the Emperor’s body outside the palace walls,
half-drained of blood. There was no sign of the foreigner, no trail to
follow. The new Emperor crucified thousands in the purge that
followed. Appearances had to be kept up, after all.
“But I, who had allowed the escape, was not slain. I was
kept under house-arrest for ninety days, and then they told me I was
being sent into exile. I thought I was going to the steppes, or some
monastery in the cold Desert. But my escorts took me here, after a
long journey across many nations. My unknown captors threw me
in the pit and left me to die.
“And I did die. And then you woke me up.”
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Chapter Five: A Beautiful New World
Ilooked out over a field where filthy four-legged
creatures rooted and burrowed in whitish mud. Some of
them slept and some of them ate. Some of them dug for
food. Some of them fornicated. Some of them fought and some of
them died. They were human beings.
I was on top of a hill, looking down at them. The hazy sun
baked the white mud into a thin crust in patches. Worms and insects
made the mud writhe under the surface. One of the human beasts
fell into a pool and was eaten alive by tiny fish while he bleated like
a sheep.
Someone was standing behind me. He put his warm, damp
hand on my shoulder, and crooned in my ear.
“Look at the beautiful new world we are building in your
hearts.”
I had been awake for a long time, staring at the ceiling. I
wanted to get up and lick some water from the damp stone, to
soothe my throat. But I couldn’t move; I didn’t have the strength. I
no longer had the will.
“If I sleep,” I told myself, “I probably won’t die tonight. I’ll
wake up tomorrow morning and I’ll get some water. I’ll be able to
do it.”
- 33 -

I imagined my past as layers of soil in which the ruins of old
cities and shards of daily life were preserved. If I could dig under
the surface, I would find a fragment here and a splinter there, a
statue without arms, a broken wall. A mural of scenes from my
forgotten life.
I would have let myself sink into the wind again for the
night. But something wouldn’t let me. I stared at the ceiling and I
thought about food. Even a mouthful of milk would be something,
would thicken my bones, would keep me alive. I would have eaten
anything.
Then I remembered my shoes. They were leather. They
were made of an animal. I could eat my shoes. But were they soft
enough? Could I even tear into them, in my weakened state? Could
I bite them?
I pulled in my legs. They slid over the bones like snakes. I
found my shoes with my shaking hands. They were like skin. They
felt like a real animal. I pulled one off and put the tip of it in my
mouth. It was crusted with dirt. I spit the grit and the pebbles out of
my mouth. I sucked on the shoe-tip. The taste did remind me of
flesh. I sucked on it some more, and made a meat-juice with my
spit. It was the most delicious thing I could ever remember tasting.
It was the only thing I could ever remember tasting.
I pulled at the shoe with my teeth, and I pulled back with
my hands. The skin of the shoe wouldn’t rip. I pulled harder. It was
hurting my gums. I pulled harder. Some of my teeth started to come
loose. I would never be able to tear the shoe. Without a fire to
soften the leather, there was no chance.
Without sleeping, I drifted for a long time. I felt the bones
under my arms. I felt the texture under my legs. Shadows played on
the wall. The bricks were grainy and gray. The hair on my limbs
stood up in a sudden draft.
The oubliette became unconnected to the physical world,
and floated in the air, bandied back and forth by unseen and
unknowable forces. I sank without the cell and with it. I fell forever
to no destination.
My body was a hollow framework, barely connected to my
self, and therefore unmovable. Vaguely, I thought about exerting
my will on my inanimate limbs. I couldn’t even vocalize the
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thought to myself, fix it in time and space with a name and then act
on it. As soon as the shadow of the thought appeared, it was borne
away on the same insubstantial current as the oubliette. Fear seized
me, and I wondered where we’d land, except that we could land
nowhere when we were drifting nowhere.
Then we crashed. We had run up on the beach of a strange
island. The shaking almost vibrated the bricks apart. A half-image
of myself projected out and onto the shore. The sky was the dark
blue of late twilight. Black trees ringed the blood-red sand under
my phantom feet. The trees had huge leaves like Dumorovani fans.
Heavy, hair-covered fruits hung from their drooping limbs. A
narrow path lined with off-white rocks led into this forest. I
projected myself along the path, and comprehended the cool,
sparkling sensation of the rocks without actually feeling it. The path
through that thick forest felt like a tunnel in a great mountain.
Suggestions of movement disturbed the trees. Were they predators,
or harmless small creatures, or only branches settling and rustling in
the breeze?
Ahead of me, there was nothing but the curving of the path.
I went over small hills and into narrow cavities, deeper into the dark
woods. Something moved, before me and above me. My right hand
flew to my left side like a compass needle looking for the north.
There was nothing at my left side. I was a ghostly kind of thing.
Maybe nothing could hurt me. But I could feel my death in this
place.
I rounded a corner, and there was a clearing with a green
fire and a circle of men. They played dice with painted bones.
Loose robes hid their faces and made them look like nomads. Long
swords hung discreetly at their sides.
I had stopped at the outside of the clearing, but they didn’t
act like they could see me. They were arguing about something, and
one of them made angry gestures while his right hand crept slowly
toward his sword. The man across from him leapt up, and a log
rolled away into the dark. Something gleamed, and the first man fell
back, grabbing for his throat now rather than this weapon.
The other men were not given a chance to react. The man
who had jumped up wielded a very long sword. It was over his head
now, but it came down in a shallow angular circle and cut off the
head of one of the sitting men. Another one tried to stand and
grabbed clumsily for his own sword, but he was stabbed under the
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armpit before he could reach it. Another man was cut in the face in
the same motion that pulled the blade out of his companion’s body.
The last victim tried to run out of the clearing and was cut from his
left shoulder down to his lower right side. His hands flew out, and
he fell on his face. The victory had gone to the first man to draw
steel.
He looked around, as if unwilling to believe there were no
more enemies. His body looked wary and completely ready. But
nothing happened, and nothing moved. One of the men started
shuddering, face-down on the forest floor. This brought the killer
back to himself. He went over to the shuddering man, lifted his
sword high in the air, and brought it down. Then he went to the
others one by one, and decapitated all of them except the one who
had already lost his head. He took the purses from their pockets, put
them in his own robes, and sat down again by the fire.
I projected again, and floated away through the clearing and
down the path. Once more, I followed the twists and turns. Now I
knew there were living beings out there in those grim depths. They
brushed the leaves, and their yellow eyes stared at me from between
the columns of trees. I didn’t know if they could see me or not, but I
knew they were hungry.
I was less surprised to break out of the trees this time.
Below me, the darkness of a deep valley was broken by dozens of
lights. Men were working in the valley, crushing rocks and digging
earth under the lash of overseers whose arms and legs looked too
long for human beings. Other men stood at the edge of the valley,
looking down at their slaves with arms folded. One of them
reminded me very strongly of the man I had seen in the clearing. He
was hooded, as they all were, but from the way he held his body, I
was almost sure he was the same man.
He stretched out one gloved hand and pointed it at the valley
and the prisoners. His fingers twisted into a strange shape and a
stream of bright red gas poured out and down into the glen. As soon
as it touched the men in the pit, they staggered and vomited and
clawed at the air. Huge blisters sprouted on their faces, and they
screamed soundlessly as they died. When they were no longer
moving at all, yellow and rust-green hair grew quickly in patches
all over their bodies.
The men at the edge of the valley threw their heads back
and laughed, and like the dying men, they made no sound. Only the
- 36 -

man from the clearing did not laugh. His shoulders sagged as if
guilt weighed them down. If he had been driven to this course, I
could not imagine why. But he must have been. He dropped to his
knees, and put his head in his hands. Sobs wracked his body.
Somehow, something had survived down in the glen. I
couldn’t quite see what it was, but it crawled and dragged itself
toward the slope by some supreme act of will. One of the laughing
men poked the man I had seen in the clearing. They seemed to want
him to finish off whatever it was which had survived. But he shook
his head, and somehow I knew this had been an act of rare power
that he could not easily repeat. The man who had struck him leaned
over to say something in his ear. That was a fatal mistake to make
with a man as deadly as the swordsman from the clearing.
He grabbed his captor high on the arm, and low at the wrist,
and propelled the man down into the pit. The others moved quickly,
but they were no match for this man once he had determined on a
course of action. He swept his leg out in a circle and tripped one of
the others. The victim rolled over the edge, despite his desperate
attempt to claw at the grass on the side. So it was with the others.
After a few moments, they were all down on the floor of the valley,
twitching and gasping for breath. The red gas had dispersed, but
there was enough left to burn their lungs and their eyes. They were
dying slowly by the same death they had ordered for their slaves.
Once again, the man I had seen in the clearing was the only
survivor. He staggered away, and collapsed face-down at the edge
of the forest. As I started to project forward once again, I saw him
falling into a deep sleep. His slow, heavy breath made his shoulders
and his back rise and fall in rhythm.
I passed him along the rim of the valley, and soon I was
under the shadows of the trees. Now the path rose sharply, although
there was no exertion in floating up it. I saw a beast lope across the
path in front of me. They were gathering all around me in the
woods, pressing behind me and around me and in front of me. But I
still felt no immediate threat.
I came to the top of the slope, and there was a flat summit. I
wasn’t surprised to see the same man again. He already had his
sword out this time, in the same position, high above his head,
which he had used with deadly effect in the clearing. His back was
to me, but I couldn’t have seen his face, regardless. He was wearing
a floppy black felt hat with a long brim, pulled down low in front.
- 37 -

His long cloak flapped behind him like a cape, but not for long.
With his left arm he shrugged it off-his right arm must have already
been out of its sleeve. He let the cloak fall down, bunched up, onto
his outstretched left arm. Then he bent the cloak-covered arm in
front of him and waited.
On the other end of the summit, an army of enemies closed
in. They carried crude clubs and sticks and rocks, but there were
many of them. The rocks started to fly. The man lifted up his arm
and tried to catch the falling stones, but inevitably a few of them
got through. He staggered a little when one of the stones hit him. At
that point, he seemed to think better of remaining on the defensive.
With his cloak-arm still raised, he ran into them. His sword
rose and fell, but rarely in a straight line. It came in at strange
angles from the left and right, and it never came back up without
turning over and slicing upwards on the return. It removed hands at
the wrist and arms at the shoulder. It cut open bodies, which fell on
every side of him. He caught their clubs and sticks on his cloak for
a few seconds, then fell under the blows which came in from every
side. His enemies surrounded him and beat him. I wanted to help
him, out of natural sympathy for the outnumbered and
overwhelmed.
It looked as if they were going to kill him now. Here at the
top of the hill, I thought I was seeing the end of this man’s story.
But I was wrong.
A lurid tan-and-red cloud spewed out of a black dot which
appeared suddenly in the dark-blue sky. A black rain fell on the
men on top of the hill. Each long, thin piece of that rain sparkled
with tiny lights and looked like a chunk of the night sky filled with
stars. Shards of nighttime landed on the men with the clubs. They
threw their hands in the air and screamed and thrashed around.
Their exposed skin was destroyed by the weird rain. It dissolved
their faces and hands.
For the second time in only a few minutes, I saw a great
number of men struck down by the terrible powers at this man’s
command. As for him, he was wrapped in the same cloak which
had warded him from his enemy’s blows. His felt hat, which had
fallen over his face, protected his head. When his attackers were no
longer moving, the storm stopped and the reddish cloud was sucked
back into the black dot in the sky. Then this, too, disappeared.
- 38 -

One of the creatures of the forest ran over and stood above
the fallen man. It was a panther, lithe and black. Its yellow eyes
glowed with malevolent intelligence. It spoke, and I could hear for
the first time on that island.
“We were almost too late this time,” it whispered with
satisfaction. “It cannot go on much longer. Thy enemies were here
only moments after the Rite was completed.”
It leaned closer. “It hurts us so much to fulfill thy
commands. It injures us to provide aid to thee. But our death will
come to thee.”
Its familiarity sounded deliberately insulting. Then it licked
the man’s face, under his felt hat. I started to project forward again,
and the panther looked up at me.
“Follow us,” it said, and I did. But I wasn’t sure whether the
panther referred to all of the island’s animals, or to itself; when I
looked closely at its skin, I could see a worm-like writhing of dark
shapes, which cooperated to form the creature.
In any case, the forest moved on every side as the animals
left the trees and walked out ahead of me. We went to the other side
of the hilltop and looked out. The ocean I had expected on the other
side was not there. Instead, there was a wide panorama, filled with
tiny pairs of moving lights. I could see flat gray strips like dull
rivers. Apparently, they were roads. They stretched from one side
of the horizon to the other, and the lights hurtled along them at
staggering speeds.
The gray roads ran parallel to each other. On one side, the
lights were coming in our direction. On the other side, they were
moving away from us. In the distance, to the right of me, there was
a huge city. Its lights glowed brightly in a wide circle. At the center
of the city the buildings were too high, far too high. Their size
defied anything my mind could accept. The rows of lights were
stacked on top of each other halfway to the sky. Although I could
remember almost nothing of my own life, I knew I had never seen
anything remotely like those terrifying structures. The thought of
people living in such buildings made me sick.
The panther must have seen my face. He looked at me with
his yellow eyes, and said, “This is the beautiful new world we are
building in your hearts.”
- 39 -

Chapter Six: The Queen of All Weapons
The ray of morning light woke me up on the pile of
bones in the oubliette. I still couldn’t move, and I
knew that would mean death in a very short time,
now that I couldn’t get water. There was a cobweb over my face.
The spider had been at me, but he hadn’t bitten me. I looked to my
right, where Doll and the courtier were resting against a wall. I felt
the heat of their thoughts, as they came together and focused in
answer to mine.
“We were busy last night,” Doll told me. “We were playing
with the dead thoughts while you slept. We managed to wake up
another one.”
I was surprised to find Doll and the courtier working
together. But then, we were a confraternity of the dead. Class
distinctions meant nothing down here.
“The dead and the dying,” said the courtier.
“Yes,” I said. “But who did you wake up?”
“Someone very interesting,” said the courtier. “A Master of
Arms from Mogli”.
That was interesting. I remembered Mogli as the world
center of swordsmanship and personal combat. The young
aristocrats of Mogli were mad for the sword. One in every five died
in a duel before his thirtieth birthday. Those who were convicted of
the practice were hung, but nothing could discourage it. A scar on
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the face was a badge of honor to the fools. A missing eye was a
sign of rare courage. Nevertheless, the greatest of the Mogli
Masters of Arms taught men how to avoid being cut by an enemy at
all, and how to cut the enemy down in good time, too. Such men
were thought to be almost unkillable through normal means.
This was a strange echo of my visit to the island the night
before. Now that I thought about it, the man at the center of that
vision had fought in a variation of the Mogli style. Perhaps this new
companion was him?
“Why isn’t he speaking?” I asked. “Did he fall back into the
dreams?”
“He needs a moment to focus again,” said Doll. “You
should feel his thoughts on you very soon.”
Then I did feel them. A fourth mind had definitely joined us,
awake in the oubliette.
“Good morning,” I croaked at the newcomer. He was a
skeleton at the edge of the pile, near Doll and the courtier. One of
his arms had fallen off, but otherwise he was complete.
“Good morning,” he said to me. His voice was well-bred,
yet gruff and even hard-edged. “I understand you’re still alive,
unlike myself and these others.”
“Yes,” I said, “but not for long. I can’t move anymore. I
can’t get water. I probably shouldn’t talk very much.”
“It’s easier to face death with equanimity,” said the Master
of Arms. “We all knew we were going to die when we got here. I
made my best effort at escape, and when it failed, I practiced my
sword forms with a shin-bone until my strength gave out. Then I
meditated on the bright face of the god Yalos until I died. Why are
you torturing yourself with this struggle?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I know I am going to die, but I just
can’t let it happen. Something in me automatically denies it.”
“What will happen when you die?” asked the Master of
Arms. “You were the one who pulled us out of the mental rot and
helped us think again. But your own mind is rotting now. You’re
slipping into nonsense, especially at night. I wonder if we will all
be lost again when you die.”
“I assume so,” I said. Far above me, in the hall of the castle
where we were dying, somebody dropped a stack of plates.
- 41 -

“I was a Master of Arms in the lineage of Corrig,” our new
companion said, “which is the oldest verifiable lineage of
instruction in Mogli swordsmanship. My own Master was as severe
as the rime on winter trees. His students used to beat their heads
against the beams in the training hall so they would be ready for the
crushing blows of his wooden practice sword. He brought me up
into the true Tradition.
“When I was granted my initiation and my license to teach,
I was not so severe with my students. Still, I took care to pass on
the Tradition of our lineage faithfully and without alteration. I
fought in ten challenge matches and survived them all. I instructed
generals and servants of the crown more than the elite sons, for the
waste of the duel disgusted me. In my heart, I knew that the sword,
the Queen of all weapons, was meant for preserving justice and
upholding the king, not for a game of murder. And then I retired.
“I wanted to perfect my practice of the sword in order to
perfect myself. I could only do this in isolation. So I went to the
wastes outside the city and made myself a home out of a cave. For
several years I was alone in the wilderness, practicing my sword
and meditating on the face of Yalos every day. In his austere
strength I hoped to find an answer to my questions. But at the end
of that time I felt no closer to self-perfection. My journey was
leading me nowhere. When I meditated on the god’s face, I started
to see my own face reflected, and I knew that I had not conquered
my ego with my practice. Despite my skill with the blade, I was a
failure. Then my final student appeared.
“He came out of the wilderness on foot, with a long cuphilted
sword at his waist. He was a strange man. I disliked him
intensely as soon as I saw him, but he intrigued me. The air around
his body almost shimmered, as if invisible flies hovered around
him. Staring at the god had taught my eye to see deep, and I saw
that he was damned. He came to me on a hot day, bright and sunny.
The birds and the clouds in the sky cast shadows into the cave
mouth. But when he came up and stood outside looking in at me, he
cast no shadow.
“ ‘I need your help,’ he said, with no introduction. ‘I’m
looking for instruction at arms.’
“ ‘I no longer offer instruction at arms,’ I told him. He
amazed me by throwing his head back and laughing.
- 42 -

“ ‘You’re getting nowhere,’ he said. ‘You must be able to
see that as clearly as I can. I’ll apprentice myself to you. I was
almost killed in a common bar fight, and I can’t have that. I need to
make myself a swordsman.’
“I drew my sword, and in the same motion I smacked him
across the face with the flat of the blade. There was a thin trickle of
blood on his cheek. His eyes hated; his hand was on his sword hilt.
Then he relaxed, and nodded.
“ ‘Do whatever you need to do to teach me,’ he said. ‘But if
you threaten my life, I will kill you in your sleep.’
“This time, I was the one who laughed. ‘Get in the cave,’ I
ordered him. ‘Boil water for some soup.’”
“We practiced, from dawn until well after sunset. I had
always had to push my students, but this man pushed me. He rested
only when he was about to fall down. He stopped for the day only
when we couldn’t see anymore.
“We began with the footwork.
“ ‘Advance,’ I barked, and he advanced. His feet skipped
along the rocky ground, clumsily at first and more quickly as we
went on.
“ ‘Retreat,’ I ordered, and he reversed direction and went
backwards among the boulders.
“ ‘Pass,’ I said, and his right foot came forward in the
attack.
“ ‘Traverse left,’ I told him, and he stepped to the left.
“ ‘Slip,’ I said, ‘and advance again. And retreat.’ So our
lessons went.
“From the footwork, we moved on to the eight cuts. He
practiced them against a diagram on a board. The cut to the head,
the cuts down through the body, the horizontal cuts above the hip,
the cuts up through the body, the cut which severs the hamstring.
We moved on to thrusts.
“I insisted that every attack be precise, and instantly deadly.
So he studied anatomy, and learned about the arteries near the
armpits and the groin and on the neck. A man who is cut or stabbed
in these places will die in less than a minute-if the attack is precise.
I made sure it was.
“I taught him combative tactics, such as the false, where the
opponent is misled as to the line of attack; the stop hit, where the
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enemy is killed at the moment he himself strikes; and the grips and
disarms.
“We practiced all day every day for many months. He had
great enthusiasm and focus and commitment. Nothing mattered to
him but perfection with the sword. To that end, I made him fence
carrying heavy rocks on his back. I made him fence even when he
had injured a leg, just so he would know what to do and would
survive such a handicap in real combat. No other student would
have profited from such pitiless training. No other student could
have endured it. I made him fight brief bouts with a blindfold on. I
made him fight while running backwards up a hill. All the while, he
was eager for everything I had to show him. And so I finally taught
him the secret technique of the Corrig lineage-the Fast-Draw Cut.
“Generally, when a man is provoked to anger, he draws his
weapon and lifts his hand up naturally into the first guard position,
with the cutting edge face-up. From this ward, the bout begins. But
sometimes there is not time to draw steel and take a ward. When a
man is ambushed, any lost time can cost him his life. So the great
swordsman Corrig, the founder of our lineage, created the secret
Fast-Draw cut. As the blade clears the scabbard, it cuts the enemy
in that same motion. It can only be done at very close quarters, and
it can only work if the swordsman is extremely fast. I had my
student practice until his Fast-Draw couldn’t even be seen. Only a
flash of light as the blade reflected sunlight or moonlight, and the
enemy dead or dying.
“Whenever possible, our Tradition requires the swordsman
to kill every witness to the Fast-Draw cut. This is the only way our
secret can be protected, and thus the only way our swordsmen can
be protected. But we do not encourage the murder of innocent
people. When such a person inadvertently witnesses this technique,
they are sworn to secrecy on pain of death. As our swordsmen are.
“And that is where the problem came in. The oath is given
at the first initiation, which is withheld until the secrets are taught.
Every student knows that refusal means death. After I taught him
the Fast-Draw cut, I tried to swear him in. But he would not.
“ ‘I swear no oaths,’ he said, ‘and I kill people on behalf of
no one but myself.’
“Then he cut off our practice and went to sleep in his corner
of the cave.”
- 44 -

“After I meditated for many hours, I drew my sword in
silence and went in to look for him. My oath left me no choice but
to kill him. It never occurred to me that I could not kill him-he was
still a student, however desperately focused, and I was a Masterteacher
with decades of experience.
“I looked down at him where he slept. I didn’t know
whether teaching him had done anything to help me or not. I only
knew that I couldn’t stay in the cave any longer. I would make an
end of him, and then leave that place forever. I took the lofty ward,
beside and above my head. I had to move slowly so I would not
awaken him. The only sound was the sudden irrevocable rush of air
as my sword fell.
“I only knew I had missed when I saw the point of his blade
less than an inch from my face.
“ ‘That is the only gratitude I will show you,’ he said. ‘I
cannot be surprised. Spirits ward me in my sleep.’
“Then I heard the sound of many men, sneaking up,
surrounding the cave. I started to turn, but his point was poised to
take my life.
“ ‘Go,’ he said, and gestured with his blade.
“I ran to the mouth of the cave, with my sword aloft once
more. I stood so no bolt or arrow could hit me, and waited for them
to charge. As soon as I reached the cave’s entrance, a dozen torches
lit up together all around me. The torchlight showed at least a
hundred men, armored and well armed.
“ ‘The sorcerer is inside!’ yelled one of them. ‘Stand down
or you’ll burn with him!’
“Even if my oath forced me to kill him myself, the honor of
the lineage would never let me surrender him to his enemies.
“ ‘Come fight beside me!’ I called out to him. ‘Your foes
have found you!’
“There was no sound from within the cave.”
“I can only assume he crawled back into the cave when they
came up. Whether he made it through the dark passages and
caverns and found another way out, I do not know.
“They netted me and pulled me down before I could kill
even one of them. But they didn’t burn me, despite what they had
said. They tied me up in the hot sun while they besieged him and
tried to follow him in, and tried to smoke him out, and gave up after
- 45 -

a few weeks. Then they brought me here. So that is my story. I have
already told you how I died.”
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Chapter Seven: Testing the Bones
There was no doubt. The man in the Master of Arms’
story could only be the man I had seen on the island.
A man with enemies, a man hunted by demons, a
consummate swordsman.
“Could he be the man you followed in the battle?” I asked
Doll. “Or the foreigner who kidnapped your Emperor?” I asked the
courtier. “They sound like the same person.”
“And you know what that means.” said Doll.
“What does it mean?” I asked him.
“That you knew him too,” said the courtier. “You must
have. All three of us helped this man in some way, or did
something that might give that impression. All three of us suffered
the same punishment. That must be your fate as well. You did
something for the man, as we did, and now you are waiting to die,
as we died.”
“And yet I don’t remember,” I said. “I don’t remember
anything.”
“Yes, you do,” said the Master of Arms. “You remember
him in the dreams you have when you fall asleep in this place.”
“But I don’t remember how I met him, how I might have
helped him....and I don’t think I was asleep.”
We were silent for awhile. I thought that I had not screamed
in days, despite the many noises of daily life I heard above me. I
saw the dust of a hundred dead men hanging in the beam of light
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from the ceiling. The dust particles were like the planets I had seen
when I was in the wind. Each particle was a relic of one of these
lost lives.
“How many of us are dead, down in this oubliette? How
many people did they kill for helping him? Who are they?”
I thought about the castle, of which this cell was only a few
square feet among thousands. Who were the lords of this castle?
Who had built it? Was it all for his benefit? Did the castle exist just
to punish those who had helped him?
“Be quiet,” said Doll. “You’ve forgotten the most important
question.”
“Yes,” said the courtier. “Who is he?”
We were testing the bones. Every dead man in our cell had
met the sorcerer; every one of them had helped him. One of them
had to know something that would tell us who he was. That would
tell us why we were here. Doll and the courtier and the Master of
Arms and I dove into their dreams and tested them one by one. It
was easy for me. Now that I could no longer move, I was even
more like one of the dead. My share of their dead-life was very
great. I could find the pattern of their dreams almost as soon as I
closed my eyes; all I had to do was focus.
The first mind I found was useless. Starvation had broken it,
and cold and pain had broken it. A single image of the oubliette
ceiling was the only dream it held, forever.
The second mind was not much better. This man had been
impaled by the spike when he fell into the pit. He was trapped by
that picture. He must have had a weak mind. There was nothing in
there but the feeling of the spike, and the shock of bleeding to death
very quickly and yet endlessly.
The third mind was more interesting.
“It was at the Vrada Dance,” the newcomer said when I
woke him up, “in honor of the Dead of Avomey.”
Avomey was a nation so far to the south it was practically a
myth to Doll and the Master of Arms, and it was very foreign even
to the Dumorovani courtier.
“I was a new initiate of the Vrada Rite. The year of study
was over. I was to be allowed to join the Dance itself. If the spirits
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of our Dead chose to dance in me, I would understand the Mystery
at last.
“I prayed devoutly to the Dead. I pressed my forehead to the
ground while the drums rolled and the rattles shook. I prayed until
my words tripped over each other, until I babbled. I saw the images
of the Dead of my family before my eyes, but not quite physically
visible. When the priests passed me the bitter green drink of
delirium, I took it with shaking hands.
“I pressed it to my lips, but I needed none of it. ‘If they will
not take you without the drink, they will not take you with it,’ the
priests had said.
“They were right. I had only tasted the green drink, but the
priests and the other dancers shimmered like a desert mirage. The
ground shook, and the drums shook. My head shook. The triple
image of the Dead of my family shook and hovered before me, and
I knew they were all around me. They were not in the idols. Or
rather, they were in the idols, but they were also in the stones and
the water and the dirt.
“I laughed. Tears rolled down my face while I laughed. I
shook, and I kept laughing. My stomach hurt, and I kept laughing. I
laughed for hours. I felt my right leg evaporate under me, and I fell
on my face. My hands were covered with dirt and blood.
“And then I stopped laughing. My body leapt up from inside
me, and I jumped to my feet. I was not me. I was still inside my
body, but I was deep down. I was no longer at the forefront. In
place of the self I had always known, there was a fierce, proud and
powerful ghost from my family’s long history.
“He looked around. He was there to protect us, to make sure
we honored the spirits, to preserve us from harm. He threw his
hands in the air. His family was strong. His efforts from the other
side of the river had not been in vain. He howled in triumph at the
sky. But then he saw the other dancers.
“They were possessed, but not by the Dead. Something else
was inside them. Something ferocious and spiteful had stolen their
bodies when they opened their minds for the ghosts. They laughed
without mirth. They screamed without the joy they should have felt.
Their limbs flailed and their faces contorted. They roared.
“One of them threw himself at the feet of an Outlander who
had entered our valley from the outside only the night before. He
had spoken with our kinfather and been invited to watch the Vrada
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Rite, to the surprise of many. Now one of our family, possessed by
an evil spirit, writhed in front of him and foamed at the mouth.
“ ‘You served us once!’ he howled. ‘You used to belong to
us!’
“The Outlander looked down at him, and said, ‘I never
served you.’
“And then, as if to taunt the evil spirit, he leaned forward
and said, ‘But you have served me, many times.’
“The dancer jumped backwards at least twenty feet. Such
miracles are not uncommon at the Vrada Dance, but they are meant
to be caused by the Dead. The ghost in me was enraged. No
phantom of the jungle was more powerful than he. They must not
pervert the Rite!
“He strode up to the dancers and struck down the first one
he saw. With the flat of his hand, he laid them out on the ground.
The evil spirits made no attempt to fight back, but they didn’t act
frightened of him. He found the musicians and stilled the drums.
Then he left me.
“When all of us were on the ground, including me, the
drums began again. The priests resumed their chant. Slowly, most
of the dancers got back to their feet and continued the Rite. Despite
the disturbance, some of them were taken in the Dance by the
ghosts of our family.
“I remained on the ground. I couldn’t move. My self was
still deep inside me and far away, as if I had gone to a far country,
and could not quickly return. I was still swallowed up in the
ecstasy, the state of being outside and beside oneself. I felt the hard
ground under my arms and legs. I felt the Earth flying through the
heavens. I felt the texture of the dancing-ground, the pressure of the
planet pressing up at me.
“But the Dance ended abruptly when the riders came. They
were fighting men of another family, and they should have honored
the Vrada Rite. But they had converted to the three-times-damned
Wind religion, which taught that only the Wind of the empty spaces
was worthy of adoration.. They destroyed the Rite of their ancestors
as if they were performing a holy deed.
“The ghosts did not save us. They had retreated across the
river, and our minds lost contact with them when the riders came,
bearing flame and steel. The Outlander fought them for a time, and
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somehow he escaped. I was in chains long before my mind was
clear again.
“The caravan brought me to the slave market of Kesh, and
sold me to the silent men who brought me here. And only when I
was in the oubliette did I understand the Mystery-that the state of
ecstasy is no different from the dreams of the dead.”
“He rules the demons, yet he is hunted by them,” I said.
“And when they have the opportunity to harm him directly, they do
not.”
“So we know more now,” said Doll. “This is the man who
brought us to our death. But why?”
“We can only discover that by testing more bones,” said the
courtier. “One of them must have the answer to our riddle.”
“It’s very late,” I said. “It’s very late, and I’m starting to slip
away.”
The wall flowed in front of my eyes and congealed. The
oubliette was about to float away again.
“Hang on,” said the Master of Arms. “Keep your head. We
need to know the answer now.”
“What does it matter?” I laughed. “Aren’t you dead? Aren’t
we all dead?”
“Stop laughing,” said the Vrada dancer. “You woke us up.
You have an obligation to us. I am not going to let you die until we
know our answer.”
I stopped laughing. I floated for awhile. Then I dove back
into their dead minds and looked for a clue.
We found a man who had rowed as a galley slave under a
mad captain obsessed with finding the lost land of Osh. The firstmate
was definitely our sorcerer. The galley slave had kept the crew
from killing him when the inevitable mutiny came.
We found a counselor to the King of Varisi, who had voted
against burning the king’s alchemist after the king was poisoned.
We found a girl who had taken our man into her bed despite
the unclean feeling he gave her. She had helped him hide with her
for a week while soldiers hunted him. He sneaked away and
abandoned her when they surrounded her cottage.
We found many such people. They came from every land in
the known world, and somewhat beyond. All of them had helped a
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strange man with no shadow. Most of them had been betrayed or
abandoned by him.
“Wherever he goes,” I said, “disaster follows. He is tricked,
he is ambushed, he is denounced-yet he always escapes.”
“The demons lead other people to turn against him,”
suggested the Master of Arms, “but they themselves cannot hurt
him.”
I agreed. Their long hunt could only succeed by proxy, they
could never attack their quarry in person. But why did they want
him so badly? What could make a man so important to them?
“Keep looking,” said Doll. “Dive back into their minds.”
Early that morning, I found him.
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Chapter Eight: The Marionettes
Icame up out of a desert where the wind howled through
abandoned castles,” he told us. “Not even the vultures
had kept a toehold there. The change was gradual at
first. Though I had left the desert two days behind me, there was
still no sign that the country produced anything but thorns. But
there was life: dog-beaten peasants and their pox-marked children.
They didn’t look up as I walked by.
“ ‘This must be the Land-of-no-work,’ I thought, ‘of which
some visionaries speak.’ For in no other land would the nobles let
the peasants be so shiftless. I have seen men wrapped in straw and
burned alive just for failing to meet their grain quota. But in this
fief, grain had not even been planted.
“How did they eat? The men of working age sat halfalive
in front of filthy, thatched cottages which their wives had
clearly never cleaned. Their dead eyes and stretched skin
suggested famine. Little boys and little girls lay here and there
with their eyes half open, too supine to do more than scratch
their lice.
“I wondered where a traveler could eat. But there was an
inn, after all, just beyond the main clump of cottages. I walked
inside. My stomach hurt, for in the desert my horse had been my
only meal. There was no one inside but a short, balding man
whom I took to be the barkeep. He was hunched over an empty
mug at one of the tables.
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“ ‘Beer,’ I said, and he groaned at the indignity before
going to fetch the barrel from a pile behind the bar. It hadn’t
even been in place to pour. He drew a half-mug, and then the tap
was dry. I sipped his bitter soap-water skeptically.
“ ‘Food?’ I asked him. All he did was shake his head.
Soon he was back at his table.
“With so little plant-life, there was nothing to stop the
wind. It blew out of the desert and pushed the topsoil in clouds
ahead of it. It stripped the land and exposed the white sand
underneath. I drank my beer and watched the desert slowly
grow.
“A knight came to the door and looked across the room.
He was a gaunt man with stringy white hair. There was a twohanded
greatsword on his back, and he wore dull black halfplate.
The barkeep didn’t move or look up, but his body tensed.
“ ‘Michael,’ said the knight. My hand reached under the
table for my stiletto.
“ ‘Who are you?’ I asked. ‘And how do you know me?’
“ ‘I have nothing to do with your demons,’ he said. ‘My
master foretold your arrival, through his goetic arts. He wants to
meet you.’
“ ‘I had no idea I was so well-known,’ I muttered, and
stood up from the table. ‘If your master has food, I’ll come and
see him. What is his name?’
“ ‘Lord Savnic,’ he said as we climbed into a carriage
outside, ‘of an ancient and exalted line.’
“ ‘I regret to say that I am unfamiliar with the name.’
“ ‘They came from below the deserts. The original
Savnics were counselors to the Theocrats of the far south.’
“ ‘Why did they come here?’
“ ‘The line fell from favor with the Theocrats a long time
ago. But a man does not willingly become a cur, as they say.
The present lord revived the family name by conquering this
fief. The sword proved his nobility.’
“I knew there were lies in this story, but the world is
filled with lies. Savnic was probably a common adventurer who
justified his usurpations with an imaginary genealogy. It didn’t
matter. The ancestors of most lords had done the same.
“We passed several clusters of unlucky-looking cottages
with the same breed of degenerate and hopeless serfs. Perhaps
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Savnic only wanted to loot the castle treasury and move on. His
knight didn’t even try to make the serfs work.
“ ‘What do you produce here?’ I asked him.
“ ‘Art,’ said the knight. ‘We are cultured men.’
“I raised my eyebrows, but said nothing. Usurpers and
sellswords don’t normally conquer land as a creative forum.
“ ‘There’s the castle,’ said the knight. ‘Your dinner will
be waiting.’
“It was a keep like the thousand others I had seen. But
decay had set in even here. Minor repairs were not being done.
One tower had been abandoned to the crows. The knight told the
coachman to stop. We stepped down, and walked under the
portcullis into the courtyard.
“The knight led me up a short flight of stairs into the
Great Hall. Whatever the rest of the fief was like, the Hall itself
was splendid. Rich tapestries hung from the walls, and in the
center of the room was a long oak table covered with gold
vessels which held all manner of food. Along the tables sat
knights who wore clothing of a tasteful but old-fashioned style.
At the far end, there was a man who wore the plain robes of a
monk. His papery skin and brittle bones made him look more
like a skeleton than a man, but his eyes had the unemotional,
predatory intelligence of a hawk.
“ ‘I am Lord Savnic,’ he said. ‘Welcome to my home!’
“ ‘You know my name,’ I said, ‘so you must know my
story.’
“ ‘Yes,’ he confirmed, ‘I can see the miasma. But
curiosity can wait. Dine with me.’ He motioned for me to sit
down next to him, and I did.
“I ate for a long time, but when I had dulled the edge of
my hunger, the meal became bland and unpalatable. It was as if
the spiced breads, marinated meats and fried vegetables were
nothing more than enchanted turnips from the basement. It
didn’t matter. I had to eat.
“ ‘That should keep you alive and healthy,’ said Lord
Savnic. ‘Do you like the meal?’
“ ‘It is impressive,’ I lied. ‘I like it very much.’
“ ‘I am honored. Now tell me, infamous Michael, what
brought you here?’
- 55 -

“ ‘The same thing that brings me everywhere,’ I told
him. ‘I was chased. My enemies influenced my employers to
accuse me of treason. I fled north into the desert because they
could never have guessed I would run that way.’
“ ‘Nobody else would have survived there,’ nodded
Savnic. His eyes were thoughtful. A servant refilled my wine,
then drew back again.
“The knights were still at their places, but their plates
were empty. They leaned forward. Their eyes were as bright as
those of their master, and their faces were as taut as his. It
looked like they were waiting for something. But Savnic was far
away, staring at the fire while his eyes slowly drained of
expression. I watched, and wondered what kind of man this
castellan was.
“ ‘Bring out the players,’ he croaked at that moment, and
the servants hurried to the back of the hall.
“Two red velvet curtains drew back silently, to reveal an
improvised stage. The firelight cast a shimmering glow over the
gold weave on the curtains. From somewhere behind the wall,
an unknown instrument played a high, thin melody.
“As a reed flute joined the song, a single dancer floated
onto the stage. Her head did not bob when she walked, her feet
didn’t seem to move beneath the flowing silk of her robes. Her
face was hidden by a white porcelain mask with black, staring
eyes and a sad smile. She moved in perfect rhythm to the eerie
music. With profound grace, she rose her body and lowered it,
swept her foot, extended her body like a crane.
“She was joined by another dancer, a man with the mask
of a handsome young courtier. His smile implied viciousness.
They danced a courtship dance, like two animals with the faces
of angels. When he pulled away from her, her body arched
towards him, as his body did when she pulled away. They came
together and embraced, and the man threw his head back,
silently laughing while she wilted in his arms. She fell backward
like a feather, slowly and softly. No one could fall like that.
“I looked at Savnic for a clue. But he was fixed on the
scene before him. His face was flushed and his eyes were wide
while he leaned toward the stage. The knights did the same. I
glanced back, and the light reflected for just a moment on the
- 56 -

thin strings that held the dancer suspended like a marionette. She
hung a foot above the stage while she died.”
“ ‘It’s a new science,’ Savnic told me later. ‘I discovered
it myself. A person’s body is made out of many tiny fibers, thin
wires that control our every action. I can control these fibers
with gut-string. I can make arms and legs and fingers move, and
bodies dance. The face is not as easy, though.
“ ‘Which is why you use the masks,’
“ ‘Yes. Those dancers are not actors. They hang on the
strings like fruit on a branch. They might as well be dead, but the
hooks can only prod living fibers. My conductor pulls on a
string, and the fibers twitch. The body moves. We can have
control a real actor could never perfect. Isn’t it sublime?’
“I knew my answer was irrelevant. Savnic only
pretended we were fellow connoisseurs for his own amusement.
He would kill me and suck me dry like a piece of fruit, just as he
had done to the dancer.
“ ‘The play was wonderful!’ I said, and went for my
sword.”
“My arms were stretched high above my head by those
thin wires, and the hooks prodded my skin. Savnic stood in front
of me and gauged my reactions to minute adjustments in the
tension of the wires.
“ ‘Go back to sleep, Michael,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter
whether you sleep or wake. Your mind has nothing to do with
it.’
“I let my body go limp, then I jerked my arms down to
rip out the hooks which held them. I spasmed and I shook and
twitched and yelled out loud, but the wires held. I tried again.
The pain filled my head with white light, and still the wires held.
I tried again.
“ ‘Stop him!’ yelled Savnic. ‘He’ll kill himself!’
“A club hit my head, and I sank into the dizziness of a
pool of deep water.”
“Then I was up on the stage. I hung on the wires, and
they felt like a noose. I was weightless, suspended in air. Then a
hook dug in, and my arm moved in perfect obedience to
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Savnic’s calculations. He would have me drugged when it was
time, of course. It would ruin the play if I cried out.
“I knew what would happen then. Savnic and his
comrades would eat my spirit as the demons had always
promised to do. I lacked the strength of mind to work a spell.
“Lord Savnic stood before me. ‘Awake again?’ he said.
‘We’re making the last adjustments to the wires. Your
performance tonight will be the final show. We’ll leave your
body for the serfs and move north. The sands will swallow the
rest in a year or two.’
“I tried to speak, but I couldn’t.
“ ‘Don’t worry,’ said Savnic. ‘I know what you’d like to
say. I’ve wanted your spirit ever since I saw you in my glass. I
thought there was nothing in that desert but old bones and empty
towers, and in every tower a stage, as a memento of my passing
over these hundred years or so. And then you came up out of the
wastes, a strong spirit worth eating, a soul with bone and flesh
and marrow to it. The greatest solo performance that will ever
grace my stage. It’s almost a shame to use you so quickly.’
“I took the deepest breath I could, and croaked out one
syllable-‘Glolgh’-a harsh word for a horrible thing. And there
was no magic circle, no sign of sorcery to protect me, only the
barriers opening in the air and the knowing eyes of the demon I
had called up by his true name and the power of my mind.
Savnic looked at the smoking bulk with its arms like a mudslide,
and screamed.
“ ‘You presume too much,’ the demon said, taking Lord
Savnic in his hands. ‘Michael’s soul is ours to eat.’
“I wrenched at the wires until they ripped out of my body
in a spray of blood, then I fell on my face with my mind reeling.
Savnic cried while the demon performed its particular sexual
abomination on him. I knew it couldn’t free itself until it was
done with him. But I was sick, and weak with pain.
“ ‘No circle, Michael?’ taunted Glolgh. ‘Shall I have
you, then? I had not thought you favored me so much!’
“I dragged myself along the floor on my knees, but I
knew I could never get away. Glolgh was in my world, and
maybe nothing could stop him now. Unless bound by the circle,
the demon was nearly invincible.
- 58 -

“Then I saw a table with a pile of soul-jars like the astral
prisons of the Manabran magic-men. These jars were used for
storing souls and holding them under the sorcerer’s control.
Savnic must have meant to carry some spirits with him on the
road. I grabbed at one of them just as Savnic became useless to
Glolgh.
“ ‘Now, Michael!’ roared the demon. ‘Now!’
“But the jar was open, and pointed in his direction as his
giant feet stepped towards me. The demon Glolgh was drawn
inside, trapped screaming in the jar like a phantom of the desert
wastes. It was over. My gamble had worked.
“When I reached the Great Hall again, I found my sword.
The knights at the table were old bones, as white as the sand on
the dunes. With the illusion of flesh gone, it was clear that they
had been dead for hundreds of years.”
“That is not our man,” said the Master of Arms.
“What do you mean?” I asked him. “He gave us his
name, he told us the whole story...”
“I am sure he was there,” said the Master of Arms. “The
name is probably right. But there are things in this version that
can’t be true. We know our man doesn’t always need a circle to
control the demons. And for that matter, why start with this
story? It explains nothing! No, I think he was a witness to the
events, perhaps a servant at the castle, or a serf. Somehow he’s
convinced himself that he is this man Michael. He has confused
the real story, whatever that is.”
“Well?” I asked the skull who had told us the story. “What
is the truth? Who are you?”
“I came up out of a desert,” he said, “where the wind
howled through abandoned castles. Not even the vultures had kept a
toehold there...”
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Chapter Nine: Hunting the Dead
Icouldn’t keep the oubliette in one place. It floated away,
despite my best efforts. This time it lurched because I
had made it wait so long. We fell for a long time. The
dead people stopped talking. Red arms of vapor surrounded the cell.
We fell into a lake of liquid fire.
“You are not in the slow dreams yet,” said the spider. “You
might think you are, but you’re not. These dreams are fast. They’re
as fast as your thoughts. They’re as rotten as your thoughts. But
they are not slow.”
“You haven’t talked before,” I said. “All the dead people
were talking. You weren’t talking.”
“When you’re dead,” said the spider, “I’ll wrap your head
completely in the web I make out of my own body. I’ll catch flies in
you. I’ll lay eggs in you and my babies will grow in you.”
“If I could catch you,” I said, “I would probably eat you. If
you weren’t a poison spider, I would probably eat you.”
“If you were a fly, I would probably eat you. There’s not a
lot of meat left on you, since you haven’t eaten in weeks. But that
wouldn’t hurt me, because a little meat on a man is a lot of meat to
a spider.”
“I must look like a skeleton,” I laughed.
“You look like a Carthaginian,” said the spider, “with the
dry thin meat of you stretched so tight over your brittle bones! And
your face like a burnt piece of chicken! You’re going to die! I’m
going to eat you!”
“Shut up!” I yelled. “You son of a bitch! You are not going
to eat me! I am not a fly!”
- 60 -

“I ate all the rest of them,” said the spider. “I chewed my
way through their papery bones. Good night. You’re going to
belong to me.”
“Spiders don’t eat people,” I said. We floated on the shifting
currents of tidal fire. “Spiders have never eaten people.”
I shook, and wrapped my arms around myself.
“We found another one who seems to think he’s Michael,”
said Doll. “He’s probably a pseudo-Michael like the last one.”
“He has a story to tell,” said the courtier. “And whether he
is Michael or not, he might be able to tell us something.”
I looked at the yellowing bones all around me. They didn’t
look papery at all. They didn’t look like a spider had eaten them.
They looked just fine.
“Bring him up,” I said. “Let’s hear what he has to say.”
“I wandered for many months in the Kurik Range, alone
with the goats and the bears. I knew better than to think that the
mountains were safe, but they were safe for a time. I lived in an
abandoned hunter’s cabin, and spent my days climbing along the
ridges to track my meals. I was attacked by bandits once, but that
was mere harassment. My enemies know I can cope with riffraff
and mountain scum. The real danger was winter. If the snows
caught me in the hills I wouldn’t be able to walk out. That’s why
they didn’t try harder to send people against me. They waited for
the first flurries, which drove me down into the Merrel Valley.
“This was Hunters’ Territory. The Merreli don’t even farm.
The men live in the valley in the winter with their wives and wait
for starving game to come down looking for food. All summer they
hunt in the mountains and live in cabins like the one I stayed in.
The chief and his retinue take a tithe. So they hunt only for sport.
That’s where I came in.
“ ‘I am bored with the hunt,’ the chief told me after I
introduced myself in the Big House. ‘I need a new diversion.’
“It is one of the ironies of my life. I am hunted because of
what I am, but I have no other trade. I won’t make it easy for the
demons by serving as a mercenary. All I can do is seek work as a
sorcerer, alchemist, necromancer or mystical doctor. Whatever the
local aristocracy is hungry for.”
- 61 -

“You’re dead,” said the Master of Arms. “You can’t do any
of these things anymore. Do you understand that?”
The skeleton was silent.
“The demons were looking for you. So why didn’t they
catch you? Why didn’t they do whatever they were going to do to
you-eat your soul, or whatever it may be?”
The skeleton was still silent.
“Let him talk,” said Doll. “Whoever he is, let him talk. He
might be able to help us somehow.”
We were all silent for a time.
“I wandered for many months in the Kurik Range...” the
skeleton said. We had to wait for him to repeat everything.
Finally, he said, “Whatever the local aristocracy is hungry
for. This time, a new hunt is what they wanted. A new diversion.
Their chief was a big man, but his muscle was going to fat with age.
His long beard had a little gray in it. He wanted something that
would give him back the joy of the chase.
“ ‘I want to hunt people,’ he told me, ‘but not my own
people, of course.’
“ ‘What do you want of me?’ I asked him.
“ ‘You’re a necromancer,’ he said. ‘We have some dead
people on hand. A large party of travelers tried to cross the Kuriks
last winter and died, fools that they were. We dug the bodies out
after the thaw, and hauled them down here. Can you wake them up
for me?’
“ ‘That I can,’ I said. ‘But for what purpose?’
“ ‘To hunt them, of course. We want to hunt the dead.’
“I have seen every kind of depravity in my travels. And I
have committed every kind of depravity, too. I sighed.
“ ‘I take pay only in coin,’ I told him. ‘And I will require
lodging for the length of the winter.’”
“The travelers were stacked in ice in one of the chief’s
outlying loghouses. Some of them had gnawed on each other before
they died, but they hadn’t put much heart into it; only a few of the
bones had human teeth-marks. The rest had lost flesh to the forest
animals. Most of them still had decent tendons and even some
muscle, probably because they had frozen quickly. This wasn’t
essential, but it was good. I can make bare bones dance if I want to,
but it’s easier to get movement out of real limbs.
- 62 -

“There are two basic ways to give a dead man the
semblance of life. You can call up his own ghost from the land of
the dead, or you can force a minor spirit to possess his corpse. The
second way is better for this kind of thing. It isn’t easy to compel a
human ghost to do something it doesn’t want to do-although it is
certainly possible. If you take a captive spirit and send it into the
corpse, you have much more control.
“Now, I would generally use the first method to get
information, and the second method to control the body. But both
methods are harsh, I’m afraid. The first method can confuse and
hurt the dead person, and as for the second method, the ghost is
enslaved and in pain while the possession lasts. A necromancer is a
master of the dead, but he knows their suffering as no one else can.
There is no way to ease that knowledge, or the guilt of that
knowledge. We call this ‘The necromancer’s empty sorrow.’
“I called up almost a hundred petty spirits and captured
them one by one for my use. They were eager to know physical
sensation, but they could only crudely manipulate the limbs of the
men and women they possessed. They opened their new eyes and
found them empty; their arms and legs flopped heavily from side to
side.
“The chief had given me assistants. I had them bind the
dead for the time being. The spirits wanted to run and rave and
exult in their temporary physicality, but they had to wait until the
hunt was ready. Then they would find out that all they could do was
stumble along pathetically until the Merreli brought them down.”
“The chief was ready the next day. ‘It’s a fine, cold day for
a hunt,’ he said to me. He was dressed in faded leather and wrapped
in heavy furs. He rode a short Merreli pony, like his retainers who
were gathered all around him. The hunters’ long mustaches, strange
conical leather hats, pikes almost as tall as trees, curved sharp
swords, heavy bows and colorful pinions gave the band a barbaric
cast. I must have looked barbaric too-I was wearing a thick fur coat
and a cone hat, although I had kept my own long, straight sword.
“We spurred our ponies and set off into the chief’s hunting
forest. This was a thick, dark grove set aside for the tribal elite. In
another part of the grove, my assistants heard our trumpet call and
unbound the dead people I had animated.
- 63 -

“We rode on a narrow path. Branches hung over us on both
sides. The forest was quiet at first. We didn’t hear a bird or an
animal from the twisting thickets and tangled branches at either
side. Then the birds came over the treetops, crying and cawing.
“ ‘We’re almost on them,’ the chief grunted. He kicked his
heels against the ponies’ flanks, and we galloped in over a hill. At
the bottom of the slope, there was a revenant, stumbling away from
us on a leg crippled by dog-bites months before. The retainers
yelled and lowered their pikes half-way.
“But I held back a little. Why was there only one of them?
Where were the others? I looked around me on either side. The
chief’s pike was the first to penetrate. It went through the victim
and out the other side, and the force of it lifted the body a few feet
into the air before the pike snapped. The revenant fell to the ground,
but didn’t stop moving. Its arms and legs flailed vainly for a
moment before the chief wheeled around and decapitated it with his
scimitar.
“Then they came in at us from every direction. There were
dozens of them behind us, in front of us, on either side. It was
impossible! We had been drawn into the simplest and oldest trap. I
drew my sword and jumped down from my pony as they swarmed
over us. That turned out to be the right move. High on their horses,
the hunters couldn’t keep the dead men at a distance. Nor could
they ride through-the creatures threw themselves at the horses and
held on anywhere they could find a hold. The Merreli slashed and
stabbed and struck down many of their attackers, but eventually
they were pulled to the ground, screaming.
“I used the techniques for keeping a large group of enemies
at bay, but they didn’t work. Sword methods assume that the enemy
doesn’t want to die, and will avoid your sword if he can. These men
were already dead, they didn’t care. But I knew enough to aim for
the head, or to sever the spine. I cut left and right, taking heads
when I could and limbs when I just needed to slow them down. Still
they dragged themselves forward, tripping and jerking. Their
mouths gaped at me. Their completely hollow eyes fixed on me
without wavering.
“The Merreli shouted oaths and even battle-cries while they
fought and died. I fought silently. The old chief roared like a bear
surrounded by dogs. His horse was down, but he had jumped free.
His sword wheeled in bright arcs through the air.
- 64 -

“ ‘Come at me, you sons of dogs!’ he bellowed,
vaingloriously and proudly. I admired him in a vague way while I
fought.
“The creatures tried crudely to surround me. I was too fast
for them. When they came in from the left side I wheeled around
and kept them on my right. I kept a dead horse at my back so they
couldn’t come up from behind.
“But there were more than a hundred of them. When the
chief died, buried under a pile of the dead, I was the only one left.
There were still dozens of them. They didn’t pause for a moment.
Their outstretched arms reached for me. Their mouths clacked shut
as they bit at me. There was a bald man, blue-skinned, fat. His
uncontrollable drool poured out over his short beard. I cut him in
the neck, just enough to sever the spine and put him down. There
was a young woman with blood-matted hair. Her teeth were broken.
Her face had bite-marks. I removed her arm and threw the corpse
back and to the right of me.
“I could not use sorcery to escape. There was no time to do
a real ceremony, and the star-patterns weren’t right for a strong
extemporaneous working. The dead kept coming. There were far
too many of them. I looked out over the sea of dead eyes and
dragging limbs and I wondered if I might finally die this time.
“A hand clawed at my coat. I spun to the right and cut the
hand off. A huge, naked woman walked into my sword. I let it go,
and had my dagger in my hands quickly enough to cut deep into her
neck. Then the dagger was stuck, too. The woman fell forward and
drove my blade up through her back. I grabbed the dirty, scrawny
one who came at me next and threw him down onto that blade.
Then I stooped and grabbed a scimitar from the hand of a dead
Merreli hunter. On my way up I opened a dead man’s face like a
fruit.
“Now there were three of them grabbing at me-at least three
of them. I rose my sword very high and to the left, and brought it
down in a very wide cut that freed up the space all around me...”
“I’ve had enough of this lurid fantasy,” said the Master of
Arms. “This man can’t tell us anything. He obviously wasn’t there,
since according to his own story Michael was the only survivor.
Maybe he heard the tale, or something like it, in a tavern
somewhere. It means nothing to us.”
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The skeleton had stopped when he was interrupted. I knew
he would start again from the beginning or stay silent.
“In any case,” said the courtier, “I’m not willing to hear it
all again.”
My mouth was wet. A light-green sludge rolled out over my
lips. The floor fell away from me. I tumbled into a dream of
Michael and the vengeful dead men, possessed by spirits, who
should have obeyed him. I saw him fight them, I saw him fight the
feather-coated spirit-doctor who had turned them against him.
I saw living fungus, the size of a man, shaped like the
spider. It waved in the breeze. It nodded at me.
“Dive back into the bones,” said the Master of Arms. “All of
us will dive as well. We will find the answers we are looking for
before you die. You have to dive.”
I came back to such a self as I had knowledge of. “I’m
dying,” I said. “Let me die. Let me share in your dead life. Let me
be one of you.”
“You cannot be one of us while you live,” said Doll. “And
while you live, you owe us a debt for disturbing us. You woke us
up.”
“You were trapped,” I said, “as I will be trapped. You have
been awake for a little while because of me.”
“We have known we were dead because of you,” said the
courtier. “And we have known we died for a reason that was kept
from us. I am not willing to go to sleep again unanswered.”
“Dive,” said the spirit-dancer. “All of us have to dive. All of
us have to find the answer.”
I picked up spirits and discarded them in my mind. One
after another, they proved useless to me. Some of them thought they
were Michael. Some of them remembered themselves, but their
stories could teach us nothing new. And many of them were bound
by the painful images of their own deaths, replaying endlessly and
without purpose.
I found the spirit of a dead fly who dreamed of the beauty of
rotting meat. His life ended in a moment of horror when the spider
came crawling down the web. Despite this one moment of fear, the
fly was still able to savor the smell of decay.
- 66 -

The oubliette was such a beautiful place. I sank into the
limitless crannied texture of its stones. The spider found me
contemplating the play of a draft of air across a tiny invisible desert
of sand particles.
“I noticed you found a fly,” he said. “That wasn’t the only
one.”
“It wasn’t obsessed with its death,” I said, “unlike so many
of us.”
“Your minds are more complicated. Your pleasures and
your pains are more intricate. You cannot escape their web any
more than the fly could escape mine.”
“That’s very interesting,” I said.
“Do you know how you look now?” the spider asked me. “I
can see your ribs-every one of them. You have a long beard-you
look like a fanatic! Every part of you is stretched tight over your
bones. Your skin is black with filth. You have sores on your back
and arms and legs. Your eyes are as wide and white as two moons!”
“Shut up,” I said. My face was wet with the green sludge
that still flowed from my mouth.
“Was there ever a time when it wasn’t like this?” I
wondered.
“For you?” said the spider. “No.”
Then I found the man who told me the truth. I ran into his
dream sideways while I bobbed along retching. I bounced up
against the bubble of it. He was alone in here, and the bubble only
let light in from my side. I could see exactly what he was doing, but
he couldn’t see me.
I was face to face with Michael. The man having the dream
wasn’t Michael, but Michael was in his dream. He was beside a bed
with a plate of food and some ale, and Michael was in the bed,
telling a story. The dreamer’s eyes were glittery, fascinated.
Michael’s eyes were desperate and yet jaded.
I floated all around the bubble and looked at them from
every side. This was the man. This was the answer I was looking
for. Somehow I knew that this man’s story was Michael’s story, our
story.
I woke him up.
- 67 -

Chapter Ten: A Student of the Black School
Ihave seen many tavern fights in my life, but never one
like that. It started when a tall man, with dark hair pulled
back in a ponytail, sat down at the bar. He seemed
agitated, even nervous, as he asked for a mug of ale. I thought
maybe he had been mugged as he walked across the streets of
Myranar. But he had money-and the tavern bullies noticed it. They
were the Ortogue brothers, and a vicious crew to run into. Just a
month before, they’d thrown a man through my front window, and
watched him die when the broken glass cut his veins. I did nothingtavern
owners don’t talk in this part of the city. Neither does anyone
else, for that matter.
“Well, Kyle Ortogue sat down on one side of the darkhaired
man, and his brother Vic on the other. Corey, Van and
toothless Caleb stood behind him, grinning at the thought of what
they were about to do. Kyle spilled his drink on the man. Often, that
was enough to start a fight-a fight from which their victim might
never recover.
“But this victim ignored it. It was a blatant insult, but he
seemed not to notice. Vic pushed it further.
“ ‘You know, Kyle,’ he said, grinning that wide, slack grin,
‘you got to wonder about a guy that don’t even care if he gets drink
spilled on him. Might be some kind of a bum or something.’
“ ‘Yeah,’ said Kyle, ‘some kind of street trash.’
“Their target still didn’t seem to notice. He just drank his
ale, silent.
- 68 -

“ ‘Maybe we should take out the street trash,’ said Vic.
“ ‘I think so, Vic,’ said Kyle.
“ ‘Gentlemen,’ said the dark-haired man, ‘if it’s money you
want, I would gladly give you money to leave me alone. I don’t
want any trouble.’
“ ‘We’ll take your money,’ growled Kyle. ‘But first we’re
gonna hurt you!’
“That was the last clear thing Kyle Ortogue ever said. He
moaned and gurgled a lot as he tried to hold his guts in, but he
never said another word before he bled out. The other brothers
charged in on the dark man and his now bloody sword. There was
no chance they’d let this man live now, not after what he just did to
their brother. Knives and blackjacks came out of their coats, and
they charged.
“The dark-haired man fought with a ferocious desperation I
had never seen before-and as I said, I’ve seen a lot of bar fights.
I’ve seen men fight for their lives-and they didn’t fight like that.
But these were the Ortogue brothers, and it looked like the best he
could hope for was to take a few of them down with him. Caleb got
it right in his toothless face-but that held up the dark man’s sword
for a moment, and a blackjack clubbed him across the head. He
swayed a little, but he stayed on top of it. Vic tried to close with
him, then fell back howling. The dark man had put a finger through
his eye. Corey and Van both swung at once, and the dark man went
down on one knee, with blood pouring from his shoulder.
“Just about then, I decided I’d finally had enough of the
Ortogue brothers. I broke Corey’s head with a skillet, and the dark
man gutted Van when he turned around in surprise. I helped the
stranger to his feet. At first he said nothing, but he took his sword
and methodically ran it through Vic and the others. Like a boy
sticking a pin through flies. Then he sat down heavily at the bar,
and finished his drink.
“ ‘Thanks,’ he said when he was through. ‘They almost had
me there.’
“Then he passed out on the bar. As I came around to help
him, I noticed a strange shift in the air around his head-almost as if
he were surrounded by flies. I didn’t see any flies, though.
“ ‘There’s a good story behind this,’ I said to myself. ‘And I
think he owes it to me after all this.’
- 69 -

“But first, there was work to be done. I had him bandaged
and put to bed by the serving girl. Meanwhile, I dragged the bodies
out back and threw them in the charcoal pit. So long, Ortogue
brothers. I mopped all the blood and whatnot from the floor. Then I
put together a plate of supper, drew a mug of ale, and brought it up
to the stranger. He was already looking much better.
“ ‘I thank you more than I can say for helping me,’ he said
as I gave him his supper. ‘There is nothing I fear worse than death,
and it’s not often someone tries to help me escape it.’
“ ‘Don’t we all fear death more than anything?’ I asked him.
“ ‘Not at all,’ he said, and took a long drink of ale. ‘There
are those who would die for love, those who would die for cause or
country. No one in the world fears death worse than I.’
“ ‘What special terror does it have for you?’ I asked him.
“He paused for a moment before answering and looked
uncomfortable. ‘I hesitate to tell anyone,’ he said to me. ‘And yet, if
you were an agent or a helper of my enemies, you would not have
saved me when they were near taking me.’
“ ‘You might repay me for saving you, this way,’ I said. ‘A
good story passes the hours.’
“ ‘Very well. But you may not like what you hear, and you
should bear in mind-if you become a threat to me, I will destroy
you.’
“ ‘I am curious to hear what has made you so desperate,’ I
said.”
“ ‘I was a student of the Black School,’ he whispered. This
made me shudder, but as I said nothing, he continued. ‘My name is
Michael. I was born to a peasant family in the North. In that
country, there is little opportunity and no education for the sons of
serfs. But I wanted to be educated, I wanted power and women and
gold. My brothers became bandits, but the duke’s men spiked their
heads on the roadside. I knew that road would never lead me where
I wanted to go. So I packed up my bags, saddled an old horse-and
rode into the Thorp. I’ll never forget that region for as long as I
live. They say the gods themselves have forgotten it, and the
demons are nearly free there. The mountains, the forest, the blades
of grass, were all bathed in an eerie light that moved and shifted
and seemed to breathe like a living thing. The trees writhed and
- 70 -

led foam like epileptics, and their wood-smoke gave strange
visions.
“ ‘And I saw dead things-like men and yet not like men, the
heads oddly shaped, the eyes too large or too small, the limbs
strangely proportioned. Their bodies stretched out from the rocks
and the trees, as if they had been trying to enter our world-and
hadn’t quite made it. The look of terror and despair was still on
their faces, as they must have starved to death in their natural
prisons. Some of the dead things were clearly human, and these
must have been trying to leave our world, as their legs jutted out
from the ground. Yellow beasts like pigs snuck out of holes to
nibble at the bodies, while off-white squirrels gnawed on the bones
of those which had been stripped clean. I thought I was on the
borders of Hell-but since then I have seen worse places than the
Thorp. The worst place I ever saw wasn’t made by demons, but by
men.
“ ‘Still, the Thorp is a terrible place, and all the world will
be like it if the demons break through. I made it across the Thorp-I
don’t know how long it took, for it bends time in subtle ways. In the
mountains at the center of that land, I found a cave that led to the
classrooms of the Black School. I know you have heard of it, but
you cannot imagine what it is truly like, or even what its real
purpose is. The students who come there may think they are taught
to rule the demons, but it is always the demons who rule them.
Power, riches, pleasure of every kind-this is just spit to the beings
who taught us. And they will gladly spit to amuse their playthings,
as we might pet a dog or give him a treat.
“ ‘The things I learned there would set the world on its side
if they were believed-they would destroy the principles of every
church and state! The demons taught that we humans are not the
favorites of the gods, but close cousins of the monkey, and the great
ape. They showed us that the sun does not revolve around the Earth
as we are told-the Earth is only a lump of clay that turns around the
sun! And the sun itself is only one among so many suns that they
cannot be counted. Someday, barman, someday-the sun will go out.
When we learned such things, all faith that might have been left in
us was destroyed.
“ ‘If we were only dust then all was dust, and all of it might
die. The horror was too much for some of the students, but the
- 71 -

demons would allow no dropouts. They taught us more truths and
more truths, and we either accepted it or died drooling.
“ ‘Then the demons taught us what they truly are-not mere
evil spirits or dark gods, but living beings from a world much
different from ours. They said that there are many worlds, and even
“more worlds than there are worlds” though I didn’t understand
what they meant by that. We were taught how to travel between the
worlds by swimming through the ground or any other solid thingand
those who failed were left for the furtive yellow pigs. At least
they didn’t usually start chewing until the person was dead.
“ ‘During all this time we never heard them speak. Our
lessons were in silence-we read from massive books bound in tan
scales and lit by their own radiance. A shaggy hand passed food to
us at mealtime. I thought it was an ape’s hand, but when I looked
closer I saw that that was not hair, and it moved on its own...
“ ‘At the end of every day, we asked questions by writing
them on tablets, and glowing letters revealed the beings’ reply. My
schooling frightened me, but I had known there would be trials if I
wanted to become a sorcerer and a necromancer. I knew my
education was worth more than any other in the world, for I was
learning the truth about things.
“ ‘The demons assured us they would favor us well, if they
ever broke through into our world. I don’t know why my fellow
students never questioned that the demons would offer themselves
as slaves and ask for nothing in return. I don’t think it ever occurred
to them that they would really be serving the demons whenever
they thought the demons were serving them. Legend portrays
sorcerers as the mightiest men on Earth, but I believe they are
pitiful slaves, blinded by their own petty power. And I would be the
same, if not for what finally happened on graduation day.
“ ‘Of all the students in the school, I was the most
promising. None was so quick to understand the logic behind all the
new facts they threw at us. None was able to command so much
power so quickly. And that’s probably why I was able to save
myself when my fellow students betrayed me.
“ ‘You see, there was no tuition at the Black School. The
students didn’t even have to pledge themselves to the demonsalthough
the demons knew that most of them someday would. The
only fee was the soul of the last student to leave the room on
graduation day. A delicious snack for those who thrived on all life
- 72 -

energy. They would inflict that soul with torments more atrocious
than anything that can be done to the human body.
“ ‘Naturally, no one wanted to be the last one to leave when
that day came. It wasn’t uncommon for students to cheat and trick
each other into being last. That year, they all decided to trick me.
Maybe it was because they knew I was better than them, and they
wanted to remove the competition to their careers. Maybe they just
didn’t like me. When graduation day came, the whole student body
conspired to put a sleeping-spell on me, so I would be left behind
when they left the room. It nearly worked. They all left the room
ahead of me, but I wasn’t quite unconscious.
“ ‘I felt the eager touch of the demons, a caress of
excruciating agony that still terrifies me to think about. Then I
wriggled away from them, as no other young sorcerer could have
done, and I was free. They came shrieking behind me as I fled
through the caves into the evil light of the Thorp, and then they
stopped. Even there, in the place on Earth where they are most
powerful, they can’t come all the way through. They cannot act
directly unless they are summoned by a human. That’s why they
teach and serve human servants, so they can spend some time on
Earth and slowly spread their influence.
“ ‘I looked out over the Thorp, and saw that the creatures
there were coming out of their holes to attack me. The dirty yellow
pigs and the off-white squirrels, the spiders with hair like dogs, the
dogs with legs like spiders. Their masters called them, and they
surrounded me. But I was filled with the exultation of cheating the
demons and escaping them, and I spoke words of power. The foul
creatures fell back, and I forced one of them to carry me out of that
land. That was when I knew that the demons must obey me,
whenever I use the magic they taught me. Even though I do not
serve them and they are constantly arranging to have me killed,
they must obey. I had joy in my heart, that I had gained power
without cost.
“ ‘But I was a fool to think so. When I came out into the
clean light of the sun, I saw that I had lost my shadow. The demons
tore it from me deep in the cave as I struggled in their embrace.
And since that day, I have been a hunted man. It isn’t so much that
my one soul is that important to them. But they cannot bear the
thought that a human-whom they consider little more than a bugcould
get away with cheating them.
- 73 -

“ ‘They hover over my head and wait for me to die. And I
run from land to land, always a few steps ahead of those they turn
against me. So all my dreams of power turned to dust.”
“He stopped talking for a moment, and gazed out the
window bitterly. He had long finished his meal. ‘Yet from time to
time,’ he said, ‘someone does me a kindness. And for this, I like to
repay them. I have cast a small spell that your beer will always be
the best served in this city.’
“I nodded, and left the room. When he had gone, I sampled
my beer, and it was indeed the best I had ever tasted. But I dumped
every barrel of it out, and I bought my beer from a wholesaler from
then on.
“I didn’t like the way the air shifted over his head-like a
halo of invisible flies.”
- 74 -

Chapter Eleven: A Little Place of Forgetting
At last I felt myself dying. Every working part of me
slowed to a stop. My heart beat as slowly as the
passage of days. My breath rolled in and out of my
body at the same rate as the tide. My self, unattached to the
workings of my flesh, started to come loose. When it was free it
would expand forever, no longer held back by layers of skin. My
corpse would remain only as a focal point from which my oceanic
self could be accessed.
“So beautiful,” the spider said, crawling on my paralyzed
face. “So much of it in one place. So many places to burrow and lay
eggs. So much meat and so much bone!”
His tiny scuttling legs scratched my face and made it itch
distantly, like a conversation in another room which you can’t quite
understand.
“I am so grateful to you for starting to die now,” the spider
said. “I take it as a personal favor and a token of the deep affection
you undoubtedly feel for me and my kind.”
“Be quiet to me,” I said to him, deep inside myself without
real words. “I am not ready yet. I am not ready for you. My body is
not cold yet. Various tiny parts of me are still in working order. I
need to have some time.”
“But you’ve had plenty of time,” said the spider, “far more
than you deserved. Far more than you earned-you bought this death
- 75 -

for yourself a long time ago, and a hundred times since then in
every way.”
I couldn’t think for a moment. The vast beauty of the worlds
and the absolutely unending spaces between them and beyond them
came over me.
“It always comes over them like that,” said the spider to
someone else. “They are so impressed with the spaces between the
stars! I am reliably informed that they will navigate them
someday.”
“Then they will be seduced by the eight sisters,” a second
voice said. It belonged to another spider, scarlet red and smaller
than the first. This was only one of many. They washed over my
body together and enveloped me.
“It is so disappointing this way,” the red spider said. “What
good is he after this slow death? I would prefer him awake and
aware. He should have landed on the spike as so many of those
others did.”
“It could never have happened any other way,” said the first
spider. “At least we have him now. We have him for our own. Mate
with me on his chest and we will build a nest on him.”
“Will we absorb his dreams when they come out of him?”
“Of course we will. That is how it is done.”
I sank down through the bricks of the oubliette floor and
from there into the cold hillside where they had built the castle.
There was a layer of sand and a layer of stones, and a layer of wet
mud, and a layer of fire. It was wet in the layer of fire. I tried to curl
into myself and around myself, and I shivered in the damp cold.
“You can see him fading out of his own eyes,” said the
scarlet spider as it coupled with the first spider on my chest. “He
won’t be with us anymore.”
“He will be with us,” said the first spider. “He can’t get
away from himself.”
The fire shaded into the blue sky of a summer day. I took it
in and pushed it out with my slow, occasional breaths. When I
pulled it in with my lungs it became green; when I pushed it out
with my chest it was bright purple.
“Do not allow this to him,” said the scarlet spider. “I
demand you make him aware of his circumstances.”
- 76 -

“I will show him where he is,” said the first spider. “And I’ll
show him what he’s worth.”
“Let me come with you,” she said. “We can hide
somewhere. You can be safe.”
I laughed in her face. Pampered daughter of the nobility, she
had never been anything but safe! But she would understand me
soon enough, when they discovered her.
“I won’t be here at dawn,” I said. “I’ll be fifty miles away.
You’ll explain it to them as well as you can.”
She cried, with her head in her hands. I had no thought or
time for it. By the time she looked up again, I had left her.
Later, I heard that they had put her on the rack.
“You led us into this valley. Now they have us surrounded!”
“There is nothing I can do to help you. I never asked you to
follow me. What I did, no one else had to do. You could have
stayed behind.”
“But now they will kill us!”
“They will kill most of you, yes.” I turned my back on him
and walked out of the tent. The fires of our camp were all around
me in the autumn night. Outside the circle of our fires, the much
larger semicircle of their fires hemmed us in. With the strength the
stars had given me, I could climb the cliff and get away before the
massacre began. But the stars had no power for me to share with the
others that night.
“You did the work of the king,” said the judge of the
Citizens’ Tribunal, “and you slaughtered hundreds of us with the
foul thing you made possible in our wells. You forced our agents to
betray us when you infested their minds with your corruptions. You
aided the white terror of these last few years in every way you
could. What do you have to say for yourself?”
“At least now,” I said, “you have a terror of your own.”
“Take him!” the mob yelled, but I did not run. There was
nowhere to run. To my right there was a burning windmill whose
great arms still slowly turned. To my left was the tower of the
marquis, dead with his family in this year of the plague.
- 77 -

Those who were not yet ill raved in front of me and
demanded my death. I looked inside myself and gave them theirs
instead.
“He is starting to become aware,” said the red spider, “and
he is starting to know what manner of man he is! How much more
sweet his chalky bones will taste. How beautiful!”
“He has always been beautiful,” said the first spider. “He
has always been a man entirely after my own heart.”
“My notion of aesthetics is different from yours,” the old
man insisted. He strained a long draught of cider through his white
mustache. “I find no beauty in suffering.”
“Did you think that I did?” I asked him. “I’m afraid you’re
mistaken. I never delighted in knowing someone was hurt. Pain is
not pleasant or amusing to me. I am only unable to escape it, and
constrained to work with what I have.”
“You could do the noble thing,” he said. “You could
sacrifice yourself.”
“You think so?” I drank my own cider at a gulp. “You don’t
know them as I know them. I know them intimately! And I know
what their kisses are like. No, I cannot give myself up to them. No
one could. Even a messiah would refuse that sacrifice.”
“Then you will be the cause of so much misery,” he barked,
his eyes angry, as he pushed his chair back and stood up to walk out
on me. “You will be the cause of so much misery and the
destruction of so many lives that you will do their work a thousand
times more completely than you could ever have done as their
slave!”
He left. I sat and finished his cider and watched a slattern of
a waitress lean over and push her breasts at the face of a leering,
drunk patron as toothless as she.
“I tried one time,” I said to no one. “I made a brief attempt
in that direction.”
“On behalf of such disgusting creatures?” I was looking out
over the field of whitish mud where the human beasts groveled and
crawled. Behind me, something was talking to me and taking
pleasure in my discomfort.
- 78 -

“On behalf of these contemptible things, you would ever
consider a consequence so severe?” It laughed, and clapped me on
the shoulder like a true comrade. “You would ever consider the
discovery of exactly how much lust we feel for you?”
It leaned over my shoulder and I felt its hot breath on my
face. “You would know us as intimately as that?”
One of the human beasts was attacked by another, and
murdered. It was pushed into the white mud. Its eyes were wide. It
screamed the high, thin scream of the hopeless animal. It sounded
exactly like a person.
“You cannot call it a murder,” said the thing behind me.
“Such a word is too high for a thing so low. It assumes a value you
will never find, no matter how deep you look. No matter how many
lives you destroy yourself. There is nothing there.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “I’ve never been in a position to
judge.”
They caught up with me when the fever had made me weak.
My body was nothing but sweat. I shook. I saw weird images and
geometric shapes which danced and leered. I vomited when they
came into my tent.
There was no strength in my arms to draw my sword, no
strength in my mind to work a spell. They had a sword at my throat,
but they didn’t kill me.
“It would be better if we made him forget himself,” said one
of them. “Like we did with the others.”
“Shouldn’t we keep it simple?” asked another one. “He is a
dangerous man. Such a dangerous man! Our purpose would be
answered if we killed him now.”
“Answered,” said the first voice, “but not well. He has been
too much of a scourge. Let his mind be broken! Think of every
person who has died because of his pathetic need to live.”
“Yes,” said the second voice. “And among them are those
we killed ourselves, when we threw them in the oubliette.”
“How much more fitting it will be,” the first voice said,
“that the oubliette will also be his place of forgetting.”
They tied my arms, and they tied them again. They dragged
me to their carriage, and they forced a sour yellow liquid between
my teeth. I had no strength left in my limbs until the moment they
- 79 -

threw me into the pit. When I landed at the bottom, I struck my
head. I forgot everything.
“This was not what I intended!” the scarlet spider yelled.
“He has come to himself, and the strength of his mind has not yet
left him! He will evade us again!”
“You delighted my body with our lovemaking,” said the first spider
as they shuddered and were done. Then it injected its poison into
the scarlet one and tore off a red leg with its mouth.
“You will delight me in other ways, if he must escape us.”
I blinked several times, and opened my eyes. There were no spiders
on my body. I was between the four solid walls of the oubliette.
“We lost you for a few minutes,” said Doll. “Are you still with us?”
“I remembered everything,” I told them. “My name is Michael.”
- 80 -

Chapter Twelve: At Your Expense
Then you can swim through the wall,” said the Master
of Arms, “if you are truly Michael.”
“No, I cannot,” I said. “If I swam to another world, I
would expose myself to them. It would be a great risk.”
“And you never take risks,” said Doll.
“No, I don’t.”
“Then what are you going to do?” asked the Vrada dancer.
“Something tells me you are not going to redeem yourself to us.”
“I should never have let you pass,” the courtier said. “I
should have cut you down. I would never have let you pass me if I
had known what you are.”
“You could not have cut me down,” I said. “You would
have been slain.”
“I was slain,” said the courtier. “I suffered for a long time
and then I died.”
“As I have suffered over these weeks,” I said.
“Yes,” said the Master of Arms, “but we suffered on your
behalf. And every one of us was betrayed by you.”
“There is nothing I can do about that,” I said, “nor about
that which is to come.”
“What do you mean?” asked the Vrada dancer. “Tell us
what you are going to do!”
“I am going to escape,” I said. “I’m going to escape and
live. I’m going to avoid paying my debt to the demons.”
- 81 -

“As you always have,” said the Master of Arms. “You are a
pitiful creature, Michael.”
“He is not Michael,’ said the courtier. “He was near death a
moment ago. I felt the light of his life flickering in him. It almost
went out. He raves with hunger. This claim of his is vanity and
personal delusion. When he dies, he’ll start repeating himself
pointlessly. He’ll dream the same imaginary story in an endless dull
round, as those others did.”
“I can prove myself to you,” I said. “I’m afraid I’m going to
have to.”
“What do you mean?” asked the spirit dancer. “What are
you talking about?”
“If I had remembered my own art, I would have known who
I was before now. Only a necromancer could have called you up out
of the dead life. That is my trade, of course. But I am so close to
sharing in that life, and I am so weak. I cannot call up a demon to
help me, as weak as I am. Neither body nor mind could endure it.
Nor can I force your bones to lift me up out of the pit. Nor could I
give you the strength if you wanted to help me. And I am unable to
pull strength down from the stars or the moon. I can hear their
music, and the time is not right. There is only one thing I can do,
one thing, at your expense.”
“Michael,” said the Master of Arms after a time,
“everything you have ever done has been at the expense of others.
There is another way. You can break free of the pattern. You can
free yourself from the slavery of your life. You can die with honor
as a Corrig swordsman should die.”
I laughed, choking. “Honor,” I said. “Honor is a good thing.
It means you would die for another, or to protect your name. That
has nothing to do with me! Haven’t you heard anything? My death
is not death.”
“But you could triumph over them.”
“I will triumph over them,” I said, “by staying alive.”
“For how long?” he asked me. “Can you stay alive forever?
Of course you can’t!”
“You should turn your mind to the bright face of the god
Yalos,” I said, “and we can see if you have finally conquered your
ego. You are about to undergo a more final dissolution than death!”
- 82 -

There is no such thing as the soul. That is one of the secrets
of necromancy. There is no bright and higher being inhabiting our
bodies, distinct somehow from our animal urges and instincts.
There is a pattern of energy which is more focused when the body
is alive, and more diffuse when the body is dead. That is all. But
this pattern, this broad pool of semi-awareness, has a rhythm of its
own. It is like music, with a melody and a harmony and many
subtle features. We only call this a soul for convenience-so even a
necromancer uses that term. But we do not mean the same thing by
that term.
When this pattern, the so-called soul, is understood to be
like music, many things become possible. Because a piece of music
can be played by anyone, so long as they have the instruments and
the knowledge.
I went into the rhythm of the Master of Arms. It was
stunningly beautiful, of course-it almost always is. I let his many
personal complexities flow through me. I felt his loves and his
hates, and every struggle and desire of his life. The ecstatic and
refined pleasure of that moment can destroy the necromancer; but I
am too familiar with it to be trapped by its wonders.
When I knew the rhythm intimately, and every smallest part
of his self was mine to play, I took his melody away from him and
made it mine. I played the Master of Arms in my own way, in my
own interpretation, and his dead awareness was too diffuse to resist
me. I had the strength of his supposed soul, and I set it aside so I
could use it for my own. And at that moment, there was nothing left
of him.
And then I moved on to the others, one by one. The weak
spirit of the dilettante courtier was much easier to take. I absorbed it
in moments, without taking the time to savor it fully. I didn’t want
to savor it fully. It is too rich, too delicious, and too much like the
ferocious pleasures of the demons. It is one of their traps, that their
playthings become eventually like them. In all my years as a
necromancer, I had never done more than listen in on the music of
the dead souls. But now it was time to go one step further. My
hunters had tested me a hundred times, to see if there was anything
at all I would not do.
There is nothing I would not do.
- 83 -

I sat outside with Doll in the light of the midday sun. I
cradled the yellow little skull in my arms and leaned back against a
boulder and rested. I had called up one of my many servile enemies
on the floor of the oubliette. The dead had given me the strength I
no longer had on my own. It would be weeks before I had that
strength again. Weeks to hide in the wilderness and trap game and
rest.
The air on my face reminded me of the wind between the
worlds. The song of the birds reminded me of the twittering sound
that some of the dead made when I absorbed them. But the ground
under my legs was soft. The dirt was fresh and healthy.
“I made it out, Doll,” I said. “They brought me to the edge.
They were starting to nibble at me. But I got away.”
“Just like you did after the battle,” said Doll.
“Yes,” I said. “Just like I always do.”
“Why did you let me be?” asked the skull. “Why was my
spirit the only one you did not destroy?”
“I would never have survived if you hadn’t talked to me,” I
said. “You were the first one I woke up, and the most essential. I
was grateful.”
“There is no sense in that,” said Doll. “You owed each one
of us as much. You owed the barman even more.”
I shrugged. “It was a whim, Doll,” I said. “I could just as
easily have taken you, too.”
We were far away from the castle. The demon had
reluctantly sent help. When we crossed the empty Great Hall, we
saw nothing but tapestries. Our captors were long gone.
“Who do you think they were?” asked Doll. “Why did they
do this?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “except that they did the demons’
will, whether they believed it or not.”
I made a fire, and cooked the meat I had found in the castle
icehouse. It was heavily salted. I ate it carefully. Too much food
would kill me. I had been too close to death in the oubliette. Only
the strength I had stolen could keep me alive while I recovered.
“I have a question for you,” said Doll.
“What do you want to know?” I asked him. “I will tell you
anything.”
- 84 -

“You must have seen more horrors than anyone else who
ever lived,” he said. “And you know the truth about the demons and
their plans.”
“That’s true,” I said. “I do.”
“But you told the barman that the worst place in the world
was made by men.”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “The city of Carthage.”
“How could it be more terrible than the Thorp? How could
it have anything worse than the oubliette?”
“You’ll believe me when I tell you,” I said, and shuddered.
“Carthage must die.”
- 85 -

Chapter Thirteen: Carthage Must Die
Carthage was that country’s dirty secret. Those who
wondered why there were no limbless, no lepers and
no beggars in Stoneway, no mad prophets on the
streets of Unver, just didn’t know about Carthage. Carthage herself
had been a great city, in her time. The necromancers of Carthage
were among the most powerful in the world, and they ruled a city
rich with trade. Then the blight came-a disease or a sorcerous
experiment gone bad. The children of Carthage began to be born
flawed. Some had the wrong number of digits or limbs or eyes.
Some had worse ailments. As the blight fouled every family in
Carthage, some tried to escape. But the citizens of other cities
feared that the blight would spread to them, and they appealed to
the Emperor. The Emperor’s own sorcerers blasted all that land for
a hundred miles around Carthage. They made it a desert where no
thing grew and no water ran.
“There was only one road across the desert, with a wateringhole
every fifteen miles. At the end of this road, a legion of soldiers
waited in a blockhouse to crush anyone who tried to come or go
without leave. So the blight was contained.
“There were those who said that Carthage should simply be
destroyed. But the Emperor had a better idea. True, he said, it
would have to die eventually. But many families had died in
Carthage, and its streets were far from full. What would a few
thousand freaks and mutants care if more were added to their
number? So the cities of the Empire were cleaned of the rejects and
- 86 -

deviants and malformed. And visitors marveled that any nation
could be so clean and free of imperfection. All this I learned on my
way to Carthage. The carriage of new Carthaginians rolled
ponderously past roadmarkers made of skulls. Some were beasts
and some were men, and with some of the skulls you just couldn’t
be sure...
“I thought I would do better in the Empire, where Goetia
and magic are not forbidden like they are in the North. But the
demons can find someone to condemn me wherever I go. The
soldiers judged that I was a freak of some kind, though I am whole
in body. They saw the subtle shift in the air that follows me at all
times. It is made by the hungry demons who wait eagerly for me to
die. To the commander, it looked like a host of invisible flies.
“ ‘You’re putrid somehow,’ he growled at me, ‘and we can’t
be having that in Stoneway.’
“So now I found myself jolting along in a carriage chained
next to some drooling idiots and other human carrion. You must
understand that I see all humans as carrion, and have compassion
for few. But I know what it’s like to be cast out and reviled by
them, so I had a certain grudging sympathy for my fellow prisoners.
“A guard explained Carthage to those of us who could
understand. We had been crossing the desert for days, and now our
new home was near. Could I not have escaped with my sorcerous
powers? Of course I could. But it paid not to make quick decisions.
The demons who are always setting snares for me have only one
goal-that I die, so they can feast on me as they have the right to do.
Their plots are cunning and subtle-and my captors clearly weren’t
going to kill me outright. While I lived, I was still free from Hell. If
I acted too soon, I might not be. Better to let the situation develop at
its own pace.
“ ‘Look alive, kids,’ grunted the guard. ‘There’s your new
home.’
“From the outside, Carthage looked like the splendid city it
used to be, worn down just a little by decay and time. A sign before
the gates read ‘Carthage Must Die.’
“ ‘Two things,’ said the guard. ‘Remember ‘em. When you
get out of this carriage, half that city’s gonna try and kill you. We
don’t provide refreshments, so you’re gonna have to learn how to
like your fellow man, if you get my meaning. The weak ones
- 87 -

among you are goin’ in someone’s stomach inside of ten minutes. If
you live, you’ll be in the feeding mob next time.
“ ‘Second, you might not want to talk too much out there.
The priests have said this city is damned by the gods, so someday
it’s gonna have to die. And the Emperor says, that means you gotta
say “Carthage must die” after everything you say. Just so you don’t
forget your place in the world. Everything, now. You get tired of
sayin’ it, just stop talkin’. Which would do some of you some good
anyhow. But if you forget, and you don’t say it like you’re meant to
after anything else you say-well, we got guards in every street of
this city. You can bet they don’t like to be here, it’s a punishment
detail and they got to be quarantined for a year when they get back,
so they’re in a mean humor. They don’t care about murder nor rape
nor anything else-hell, you people got it freer than anyone in this
Empire, I guess-but if you forget what you got to say, they’ll run a
sword through you and leave you for supper quicker than you can
close your mouth. So remember it now.’
“The carriage rolled through the city gates and jolted to a
stop. The guard came through and unlocked our chains. Outside, I
could hear the hungry roar of the crowd. Had I made a mistake by
not escaping sooner? There was no time to work a ritual now.
“ ‘Make your way into the crowd if you can,’ said the guard.
‘It’s your best chance. If they think you’re a regular, they won’t try
and mob you right away. Only newcomers and weaklings get
mobbed.’
“I tensed myself and made ready to run. So this was the
demons’ plan. First I’d be eaten by my fellow humans, then my
masters would consume my spirit. I had to appreciate their sense of
irony.
“The carriage doors swung open. I threw myself forward
without looking, and landed on the heads of the crowd. They
grabbed at me as I went down, and some of them went down with
me. One shabby specimen was on top of me, clawing at my face.
Desperately, I lunged for his throat and bit a chunk out of it. I
thought I might well be in the last fight of my life, but the sight of
my enemy’s torn throat and gushing blood was too much for his
famished neighbors. They swarmed over him; weakness never
lasted long here. I shoved my way through the crowd, who hardly
noticed me now that they had someone else to make a meal out of.
The square was full of them, and most of them would not get a
- 88 -

chance to eat today. Their only hope would be if they came upon
someone smaller than them, sleeping in an unlocked room. Some of
them were too addled to be careful, or had stopped caring. The
survivors depended on it.
“I made it through to a stairway that led into an abandoned
building. As for those who had shared my carriage ride, I never saw
any of them again. The dark hallways led to rooms where any
Carthaginian might sleep, one part of the cycle that led to
starvation, weakness and death. There was not enough food to go
around. Opportunities to eat fellow citizens were only occasional,
and resulted in stiff competition. When hunger weakened someone
enough, they fell prey to someone else’s hunger. I saw it happen a
dozen times while I was there.
“After crossing through the building, I came out in another
square. Here, I got my first good look at the Carthaginians. It turned
my stomach-one man had only a single eye, huge and bloodshot.
Another was hunched over, hardly able to move because his spine
was so bent. Only his great size and muscularity protected him. One
man had flaps of skin like gills on his arms. Another had a
branchlike gray fungus growing out of his cheek. What a menagerie
of the damned! Were the demons giving me a foretaste of the Hell
to which I had been promised? There is no end to the subtlety of
their schemes.
“As for me, I would stoop to eating human flesh, though I
did not, while I was there. I have done worse things, to keep myself
alive. For death does not only mean death, for me. Years ago, I
cheated the devil who taught me of my soul, and he had to be
content with my shadow instead. There is nothing I would not do,
to keep myself from meeting him.
“I was about to cross the square, when something caught my
attention. A graceful and beautiful girl, so out of place in this city,
walked out and sat in the center of the square. She carried a wagonwheel
in one hand, and some papers in the other. At her belt, a flask
dangled. From that distance, I couldn’t see what her aberration was.
“ ‘I’m going to read you a story,’ she said quietly. I stood
where I was, enthralled. She shuffled the papers in her hand, and
started to read. A crowd of midgets had gathered to listen. Each one
had a comb, with which they pretended to comb their bald heads.
“ ‘Once there was a man who built a machine which could
fly,’ she read. The midgets kept combing. ‘The man flew his flying
- 89 -

machine all over the world, and saw things as the gods must see
them, from the heavens. Then the day came when he flew through
the Bhoukra gate-a gate between worlds, that led to another land.
Here his flying machine crashed on this other Earth. And he was
greatly afraid, for he saw the ruins of another flying machine, and
knew that he might never escape. Near by him was a huge old
house, and the flying man went to the door, hoping to find help. In
this house, there lived a horrible old witch, she who had built the
Bhoukra gate and used it as a web to snare men with flying
machines. Those whom she captured went into her stewpot. The old
witch invited him in, then served him with sleeping-tea. But the
flying man was very clever, and he knew the witch for what she
was. He did not drink the tea, but only pretended to. When the
witch came in to throw him in the stew, he leapt up and shouted,
“You wicked old witch! It is not you who shall eat me, but I who
shall eat you!”
“ ‘At this, gray drool poured from her lips and a look of
eager pleasure came into her eyes. “Oh yes,” she said to him. “That
is really what I wanted all along.”
“From across the square, I saw a guard approaching. The
girl had finished her story without saying ‘Carthage must die.’
“ ‘You know,’ the girl said, holding up her stories, ‘these
are not very good.’
“With that, she poured the contents of the flask over her
body and hung the wheel around her head. The flask had held some
kind of oil, which now glistened over her skin. I started across the
square towards her, but I didn’t make it. She lit a match, and burst
into a ball of flame.
“I have said that I have little compassion for people, but I do
appreciate beauty when I see it. I do not like to see it destroyed.
“ ‘A man of tender sentiments?’ the guard asked me.
“ ‘At least this way they won’t be able to eat her body,’ I
said. ‘Carthage must die.’ I knew better than to ignore their rules.
“The guard seemed curious about me. ‘Hey, you don’t look
like a freak,’ the guard asked me. ‘What are you doing here?’
“ ‘What was she doing here?’ I asked him. ‘She seemed
normal enough. Carthage must die.’
“ ‘Didn’t you hear what she was reading?’ he laughed. ‘She
was insane!’
- 90 -

“I left him, and spent the next week alone. I fed on bugs and
rodents, because I would not turn cannibal if I did not yet have to.
But it was meager fare. As I said, I saw several times when the
starving became too weak to fight back, and were eaten. Nearly
every time I ventured out for an hour or so, I saw this happen. Yet
there were so many in Carthage, and so little to go around. Nearly
everyone was weakened by hunger, and only in the final stages did
a person become safe to attack. I saw this pattern just starting to
develop in me, and I knew I would have to make my move soon.
The demons still might be goading me to precipitate flight, so I
would play the game out-but only a little longer.
“I went out to wander the streets. This city was an animal in
the final stages of decay, an animal that even jackals would not
touch. Blood, piss, vomit and feces stained the walls and ran
through the gutters. The malformed and the insane lurched from
one moment to the next, teetering on the edge of becoming a meal.
“In all my travels, I had never seen anything as horrible as
this.
“On one street, some men had found a woman out alone.
Her face had been eaten by leprosy, but she was still serviceable for
their purposes. They were raping her, and presumably they would
devour her next. One of the men had only one leg, and he was
howling in frustration at being denied his fair share. I did not
interfere. It would be unwise to anger the mob, and I will risk my
life for no one. I can’t afford to. Still, the scene disgusted me, and I
wandered into a small dark hovel to be sick.
“ ‘Ah,’ said a gravelly voice, ‘a fellow philosopher.’
“ ‘I am not a philosopher,’ I said when the bile was wiped
from my lips. ‘I am a necromancer.’
“ ‘The dark side of the coin of philosophy,’ said the voice.
‘Did you study at the Black School?’
“ ‘I did,’ I told him. ‘It was the worst mistake of my life.’
“ ‘As was philosophy the worst mistake of mine,’ said the
voice. It came from an old man with an odd bump on his forehead
who sat in the corner. ‘Were I not a philosopher, I would have no
real understanding of the hell this place is.’
“ ‘Even a dog could understand it,’ I spat. ‘This place
should be destroyed.’
- 91 -

“ ‘Carthage must die, eh?’ he chuckled. ‘Well, there’s no
guard nearby, you don’t need to make a point of saying it. But the
horror of this place is not the fault of those who live here.’
“ ‘I know, I know,’ I said. ‘Treat a man like a brute, and he
will become one. But what can we do? I should call down my dark
gods and consign this city to fire.’
“ ‘And kill those whose only crime is that they have been
degraded?’ he asked me. ‘Besides, the Emperor’s sorcerers would
never let it happen. They aren’t through with Carthage yet.’
“ ‘Then what can be done?’ I asked. ‘I cannot abide this. It
must be purged.’
“ ‘There’ll be a purging, all right,’ he said, his voice turning
hard. ‘A purging of those who did this to us. Follow me.’
“I don’t know why, when I was determined to protect
myself at all costs. But I followed him. Anyone who could offer
some answer for this was worth listening to. He led me to the main
square of the city, where a large crowd was already gathered.
Greetings of “Carthage must die!” echoed to us over the stones. In
the center of the crowd, a stone platform was all ready for the
featured speaker. This seemed to be the philosopher. He strode up
to the platform, and I stood at his right hand. I could see the massed
ranks of armored soldiers at the edge of the square.
“The philosopher’s face twisted in fury as he raised his
voice to the skies.
“ ‘Carthage must die!’ he bellowed. ‘You have said it many
times. But have you ever stopped to consider, my fellow
Carthaginians, that it is not we who deserve to die? We did not ask
for this blight our rulers brought down on us! We did not lock the
gates of this city and blast our fertile country into a desert! We did
not burn the grain stores to turn us all into cannibals! It is not we
who committed these sins!’
“Now his voice lowered, and he pointed at the guards.
“ ‘It is they who are guilty,’ he said. ‘And the Empire they
represent. They stand for the utmost in the degradation of humanity.
They created this experiment in turning men into fiends!’
“ ‘What can we do?’ yelled someone in the crowd.
“ ‘We can show them how a man replies when he is
knocked down!’ howled the philosopher. ‘He gets back up and
fights!’
“The guards began to advance.
- 92 -

“ ‘Let us bring our blight to the cities of the Empire!’ he
yelled. ‘Let us spread our mutations to every corner of the world, so
none shall ever call us freaks again! When all are together in their
aberrations, no one shall ever be ugly any more. Then we can truly
say that Carthage has died!’
“The crowd roared, and turned to face the guards. My heart
leapt up for a moment in empathy and anger. If I must someday die,
at least it might be like this, fighting to end such an obvious evil as
Carthage. Also, the idea of a world of mutants held a certain black
charm. I momentarily forgot my good sense and made ready to
fight the guards. But there were never enough of the guard to stand
against such a massive and furious crowd. Despite their swords and
armor, those who didn’t flee were ripped apart. The purpose of the
crowd was one, and the fallen soldiers weren’t even eaten until the
battle was won.
“Soon, I was part of the mob that advanced on the guards’
blockhouse in the city. We besieged the terrified guards, smoked
some of them out with a fire, and butchered them. Many more were
still beyond our reach, deep in the building. The sun was starting to
set.
“ ‘Come on!’ I said to the philosopher. ‘I know something
we can do to drive them out!’
“ ‘We can’t do that,’ said the philosopher. ‘The sun is
setting. Riot Day is over.’
“I looked at him with confusion. A booming voice rolled
over the city. ‘Return to your rooms. This is an official
announcement. Riot Day is over. Repeat: Riot Day is over. The
next Riot Day will be in thirty days.’
“The crowd began to disperse. I cursed my own stupidity.
Riot Day? Riot Day? Now I saw the demons’ plan. They had meant
to give me what I lacked-a purpose larger than myself-and then to
take it away, so my will might be broken. Well, I would still resist
them. I hurried to the first building I saw, and cast a circle to call
up the spirit h’Alkabuth. I knew it was time to get out of here.
“ ‘Oh, it’s you again,’ the demon greeted me. ‘Aren’t you
dead yet? You can’t run forever, Michael.’
“ ‘Maybe not,’ I agreed, ‘but right now, by the powers you
yourself helped teach me, you are bound to do what I require.’
“ ‘Then what do you require?’ His eyes implied that even
this might be used as a way to trap me.
- 93 -

“ ‘Send a horse to take me out of here,’ I said. ‘And plenty
of water.’
“ ‘We will kill you on the way, Michael,’ said the demon,
‘but it shall be done.’
“ ‘Maybe you will,’ I told him, ‘but you haven’t managed to
kill me yet.’
“The spirit disappeared, and soon I was far away from
Carthage. Carthage still hovers on the edge of death, but it never
dies. The Empire wasn’t totally wrong to create it, they just didn’t
go far enough. I think of this whenever I remember the girl with the
stories, or the midgets, or the leper they raped and ate. It wasn’t a
bad idea to put all the horror in one place, to be destroyed. But they
thought Carthage was a city, and it wasn’t. Carthage is the world.
Carthage must die.”
- 94 -

II: The Ghost Doctor
- 95 -

Chapter One- Red Sea Crossing
Their skin is like milk, and their eyes are like
emeralds, and they have among them men called
ghost doctors, who live in the Devil Hills and who
win back lost souls.”
That was all. One phrase in an obscure travel diary had
brought me to this red desert beyond the known world. Tied to my
pack, the skull called Doll clacked in rhythm as the wind threw him
up and down. The red sand flew at my face and stung my eyes.
With the dust blowing, there was no horizon.
“How many days have we been lost out here?” I asked
myself. I couldn’t answer the question. The Red Desert was the
edge of everything I knew. Less than a dozen men had ever come
back from beyond its dunes.
Doll said nothing. He was dead, of course, and he spent a lot
of time musing on his own strange thoughts. When the fire was up
in our campsite and the sun was down, he would speak with me.
But for now, I was alone with the sand and the wind.
I stumbled against a rock, a boulder blown smooth over
time except for the millions of tiny pockmarks made by sand.
“This is where I rest.” I said, and sat down.
I drank a mouthful of water from my canteen and pulled my
robes tighter about my face. The nomads who wander the edge of
the desert had sold me some of their loose clothes to protect me in
the Red Sea. Even the wanderers did not come this far except to die.
I had heard them jabbering and laughing about me when I handed
them my coins. No doubt they thought I was already dead.
- 96 -

I myself was beginning to wonder. The wind howled and
whispered, as the dead sometimes do. I could see nothing except the
swirl of red particles directly in front of my face. It was easy to
imagine I was in hell.
I stood up again, because I didn’t like that thought. It had
been a terrible risk to attempt this crossing, and I am not a man who
takes any risk lightly. But I had little choice. I could run from my
enemies until they hunted me down, or I could try to slip the trap
once and forever. No matter how well I ran, no matter how well I
hid, they would take me in the end. To merely run was to surrender.
That one phrase in the writings of the merchant Yolo, although it
was short, although it was two hundred years old, offered me the
only chance I had seen, in all these years of running. And my
enemies had come so close in the oubliette. They had tasted me that
time.
My long boots were made to keep out the sand, but it found
a way through. I sank to my knees in the soft patches, and I fell to
my knees more than once. The sand was in everything. It was in the
cured meat I carried in my pack. It was even in my water. And this
desert was not a place where the sun beat down and kept men under
cover at the height of the day. It was a cold place, as cold as the
stones in the dungeon where I had found my silent companion. The
wind pressed me back and staggered me from side to side while I
pushed forward. Very few people could have survived the Red Sea
crossing. Very few people had ever tried. But this was my only
chance for escape.
I had taken shelter against a boulder as the sun went down,
and now I chewed my cured meat and drank from my canteen and
spat gritty pieces of red sand out from between my teeth. An
enchanted blue flame warmed my fingers and did a little to relieve
the extreme blackness of the desert night. The powder that made the
flame was rare, but I am a necromancer and the dead tell me where
to find secret things. No mere spell-flame could have stood up to
that wind, it would have been snuffed out even as it lit. But I had
made every preparation I could make for the crossing.
“Are you going to talk tonight?” I asked the skull, “Or are
you lost in your thoughts?”
- 97 -

“I can never sleep soundly anymore,” he said, “since you
woke me up in the oubliette. Even my best dreams are restless
now.”
“Nothing lives out here, you know.” I said, “I myself am the
only living thing.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” he said.
I didn’t ask him what he meant. The blue flame made the
sand at my feet look purple. I sat for a while, watching the colors.
“You could live out here,” said Dol.
“What do you mean?” I asked him.
“Nobody comes here.” he said, “Whole armies have
disappeared in the Red Sea. Your enemies would never find you.
They’d never even try.”
I laughed. “What would I eat? If I don’t find the way out of
here in a few days, we’re going to run out of supplies. I’ll die.” The
time was not right for me to do a working.
“Then you’ll join me in the slow dreams…” he said, and
stopped. He knew I would not. We were silent for a while, at the
thought of that.
“How could there be a place where nothing lives?” asked
Doll, “I have never heard of another.”
“There are said to be worlds where the demons have broken
through. They must be something like this after a time. When the
ghosts and their dreams and every kind of life had been absorbed,
the demons would leave a dead world behind them and move on.”
I stretched out my hands and warmed them over the fire. It
was very unsettling, to be talking about these things. I knew how
hungry they were. They wanted whole worlds and they wanted me.
And whatever Doll thought, they could get through to me
anywhere- on the main street of Unver, or by a boulder in the Red
Sea.
“I’m going to sleep.” I said, “We have to make a big push in
the morning.”
Of course, I could have stopped the dreams. That isn’t hard
to do. If I wanted to, I could make my sleep empty and quiet and
still. Sometimes I do that, when my dreams are too bad for too long
and it interferes with my daily survival. But I don’t like to do it
very often. Dreams are a door into the inner life of the world, and
- 98 -

they’re a way to know what’s going on in the background, under
the surface. It isn’t safe to be apart from that for long.
I dreamed about the oubliette again. Every night I let them,
these dreams came. The hunger and thirst, the fevers, the cold, the
pile of bones, the spider talking to me and waiting for me to die.
Every incident of my life examined from a strange angle, as if I
were an outsider to myself. As indeed I was, for I had not known
myself in that place.
Three times that night I woke up terrified, convinced I was
still in the oubliette and everything since then had been the
delusions of a starving man. I lay awake with my eyes closed,
unwilling to confirm that I was still trapped, still dying. Then I
opened my eyes, and saw the clear stars of the desert night over my
head, and I knew I had escaped.
Three times. So it was getting better, at last.
The stone floor of my dream slipped away from me and was
gone. I fell for a long time, and all around me there was a blue sky
broken only by thin clouds through which I briefly passed. The mist
brushed my face, but it was not cold, because the air around me was
warm with sunlight. The droplets of water washed over me as I fell.
The sun warmed my face and my arms, and soothed the ache in my
legs which had spent so many days walking through the shifting
sand. Without knowing why, I felt that my enemies could never
find me here. I had finally found a place that they could never
reach; a pure dream, with no hint of fear or conflict. I was safe.
A little dizzy with the thought of it, I relaxed even more. I
wanted to feel nothing but the sun on my limbs and the mist from
the clouds, and the falling. Lazily, a thought surfaced in my mind.
Since that last day at the Black School, this was my first pleasant
dream.
The truth shocked me back to myself. My first pleasant
dream, in all these years! Something was terribly wrong. The
moment I knew this, my blue sky and sunlight disappeared. I felt
the gnawing of small teeth working at my leg. There was something
underneath me in the sand. Something that was eating me while I
slept, something that could paralyze me with joyful dreams and
dodge my spirit-wards. And there were more of them burrowing up
out of the sand, coming for food. I jerked, and opened my eyes.
- 99 -

We were in the middle of a sandstorm. The wind drove a
stinging cloud of sand across my face, sand that was piling up over
my pack and my skull and my arms and legs. All around me, little
mounds of sand collapsed in on themselves as the creatures swam
upwards towards me.
I jumped to my feet in a cloud of red sand. The dreamfeeder
was on my leg, a huge maggot-like thing with tiny sharp
teeth. It hissed when I jumped, and it shook from side to side. I
drew my sword, and I chopped down at it, cutting a long slice of
white flesh from its back.
It tried to chew for a moment, but the blood welled up
where I had cut it. Squealing, it fell off me and into the others who
had been just behind it. Two or three of them attacked, and started
to eat it while it gurgled with pleasure.
One of them bit my foot through my boot. The pain was
followed instantly by a wave of joy and well-being that almost
dropped me to my knees. I gritted my teeth against it and stabbed
down at the thing. When it was impaled on my sword, it too became
prey to the others.
I jumped up on the boulder as the victim moaned with joy.
The dream-feeders couldn’t come up on the rock. I snatched my
pack, with Doll attached, and pulled it to me through the growing
mound of sand. Then I collapsed, bleeding, on the boulder’s
surface.
Doll came awake. His thoughts brushed against mine.
“Don’t fall asleep, Michael.” he said to me, “If you fall
asleep now, you’ll bleed to death and be buried by the sand. You
need to stay awake.”
I shook my head sharply to clear it. Then I opened my pack
and found bandages and did my best to cover the wounds.
“Sit up.” said Doll, “Wrap yourself in your cloak, against
the wind.”
I sat up, and wrapped my cloak around my face. The sand
howled around me all night, and I have no doubt that dunes were
moved and boulders were buried. But my boulder was not buried.
When morning came, I was still alive.
gone.
By the time I could walk again, my supplies were almost
- 100 -

“We’ll have to finish the crossing today.” I said, as I put my
pack on and started out from the boulder where I had taken refuge.
“We’re running out of food, the water is completely gone, and I am
never going to sleep on that sand again.”
Doll said nothing. I had no real idea of where I was, but I
gauged the direction as well as I could by the sun, and headed east.
The red sand blew in my face all day, but there were no more
sandstorms. I plodded on through the dunes and their lack of solid
footing. There was no hint of the dream-feeders, and no sign that
any living thing had ever been this way before.
Around noon, with the sun standing high at due south, I
noticed an upward grade to the land. I was walking up into the
foothills, even if I couldn’t see them with the sand in my eyes. Over
a few hours, the sand became tighter and more packed, and I could
see a little. I was gradually climbing a long ridge that led up into the
mountains. In Yolo’s work these peaks were called the Iron Teeth. I
could not yet see the reason for the name.
The further I climbed, the less red sand was beneath my
feet, and at sunset I was high on the ridge, looking down on the
desert behind me. There was solid rock and earth for me to sleep
on. I was out of water and almost out of meat, but I could find these
things.
When I woke up in the morning, the clear light of dawn
showed me the path to follow. It led up over boulders and ridges,
past waterfalls and cliffs, to a land of sharp, high mountain peaks
that stabbed out blackly against the sky.
I was entering the Iron Teeth range.
- 101 -

Chapter Two-The Iron Teeth
There was snow in the air as I went up further into the
mountains. Doll was silent again, and I was alone
with my thoughts under the flat, silver sky. A hawk
had come down for the last of my cured meat the night before. They
had never resisted my traps, and they never would. Now I had a full
stomach for the first time in days.
I looked around me and saw a fantastic landscape made
even stranger by the snow and mist. To my right side, a black cliff
with no handholds stretched up into the sky. Down to my left, the
path dropped off into a deep glen littered with broken stones which
had tumbled off the mountains and settled at their feet. Further off
to my left, a wall of sharp peaks made a semi-circle, hemming in
the path and the valley like a prison.
Ahead of me, I could see the dim outline of taller summits
looming out of the mist. I knew little about the mountains. Yolo had
written that the mountain tribes were headhunters, but shy of large
parties of outsiders. I was, of course, not a large party at all. I don’t
think the merchant had so much as seen one of the natives with his
own eyes, but I couldn’t expect to be so lucky.
Despite my dimming spell, I expected to be noticed and
probably even attacked. No dimming is foolproof, and they would
react to my subtle halo, the shimmer made by eager demons waiting
for me to die. That halo was my mark. Almost everyone saw it, and
many wanted to kill me for it. I thought about getting off the path
- 102 -

and heading inland. That would have kept me out of sight in most
places, and out of sight is all I ever want to be.
But I didn’t think there was much chance of that here.
Mountain people, accustomed to feuds and sudden raids and
treacheries, would mark any incursion onto their tribal land. I
would be no more invisible in the forest than on the path. And
before long, I would be above the tree line anyway, with no cover
but the rocks and the peaks themselves. I thought an open approach
was probably best. When they saw me, they would know I was a
traveler, and they would decide how to deal with me by their own
customs. As for me, I had gone up against multiple attackers before.
I could do so again.
Towards evening, I came to the site of a massacre. Old
bones in scraps of chain mail were scattered and piled around a
small clearing with slopes on every side. There were broken arrows
in the skeletons, and their hands held spears and axes. Some of
them had been taken alive – now their bodies were impaled on
sharp stakes or hanging from trees by splayed arms. There must
have been a hundred dead men in that clearing, and not one of them
still had his head. But the killers had not touched the weapons and
armor. These still hung on the corpses, rusting.
I decided to camp there for the night. Hopefully the
mountain folk would fear ghosts too much to attack me in that
place.
But I had another reason for camping there, too. If I could
call up one of the dead men, maybe I could learn enough about
these hills to stay alive.
I searched for hours. I do not need a dead person’s head
when I talk to him. His spirit must obey me. Yet these dead could
not talk to me.
I could feel their ghosts, or their dream-patterns. I could
hear them wailing, lost and cold and lonely and still surprised at the
sudden attack that had slaughtered them all at dawn. But I could get
nothing coherent out of any of them. They seemed unable to focus,
to coalesce enough to make any sense. They babbled and
sometimes they wept. I gave up, and thought for awhile.
“There must be magic in the head-taking,” I decided. “It has
disrupted them.”
- 103 -

If I had been desperate for information, I could have called
up a demon. But they are deceptive, they lie with subtle truths and
implications. I only use their help when I must.
That night I stopped my dreams, because the bones all
around me reminded me too much of the oubliette. When I woke up
in the morning a light, cold rain was falling. I packed up my bedroll
and started up the slope at the edge of the clearing.
Far above me, an eagle circled, looking for a dead or dying
thing. Somewhere in the hills, I heard the howling of wolves and
the snarl of some strange beast they had cornered. But there was no
sign of any people among the peaks.
The path was gone now, and there was only the steady rise
of the mountainside. The few trees were scattered, stunted and
sickly. After awhile, there were no more of them. I was over the
tree-line now, in the high mountains.
Most of the time, mist kept me from seeing much of the
country around me. But every now and then the mist cleared, and I
saw the great spine of the mountain range stretching up into the
north and down into the south.
Despite the supposed shyness of the hill people, I had
expected them to approach me or attack me by now. They had
destroyed a well-armed column of a hundred men within the past
fifty years at most. Why were they ignoring a single man alone in
the mountains? They must have seen me coming up the path the
day before, in plain view to anyone roaming this upper ridge. How
long could it take them to put a party of men together and come
find me? They must be excellent scouts and trackers, I thought.
Most hill-people are.
I could have scryed for my answer. It would have been
simple enough. But I decided against it. Staring into a flame or the
ripples in a pool of water can bring answers, but they are usually
vague and general. I kept walking. In places, the ridge was so
narrow I could barely keep my footing. Rocks and pebbles tumbled
down in small avalanches every time I stepped. It was slow going,
and I had to be very careful. Doll didn’t speak at all that day. When
I made camp in the shadow of a boulder, he lay in silence against
my pack.
- 104 -

They surrounded me while I slept. I was dreaming of the
oubliette again, shivering against the cold, when my spirit-wards
screamed out a warning to me and I woke up with drawn sword in
hand.
There were only about half a dozen of them. I could see
their shapes, indistinct around the edges of my camp. Some of them
had bows, with drawn strings and arrows pointed at me. Others held
short, thick spears and poked them out at me fearfully. From what I
could see, the men had long white beards and pale skin.
“What do you want with me?” I asked them. I used the
crude Trade Tongue, which most people in my part of the world
had for a common language. They answered me with a string of
fluid, yet guttural sounds that meant nothing to me. So the Trade
Tongue wasn’t known here; that was not surprising.
One man stepped into the meager light of my dying
campfire and motioned with his spear for me to walk. The bow-men
had me at a disadvantage, so I obeyed. The leader took my sword.
They formed a loose circle around me and led me away into the
night. We walked until dawn.
I got a closer look at the hill-men as the sky turned a lighter
shade of blue. These were not the ferocious warriors who had
massacred the column I’d found. If these men faced invaders, I was
sure they would only run. They were pale, anemic relics, with
malnourished skin pulled tight over brittle-looking bones. There
were strange, tiny bite marks all over their bodies, shades of bright
or fading red against their sickly skin.
At the right moment, escape would be easy. But for now, I
played along. We came to a cluster of stone huts roofed with sod.
Smoke was already rising from the chimneys, and both children and
young adults sat outside in front of the huts with their legs stretched
out into the common square. The men and women, and even the
children, held their hands against their bodies in different places
and rolled their eyes back in mute pleasure. From time to time one
of them made a tiny sound. Sometimes they licked their lips. Only a
few people were up and about, tending to the chores. Almost all of
them had the same bite-marks on their bodies.
One of the children moved. She pulled her hand away and
plucked the thing from her skin. It left a red bite-mark, oozing
- 105 -

lood. I looked at what she was holding. It was a baby dreamfeeder
from the Red Sea, plump with her blood but biting at the air
in frustrated hunger. She glanced at it and threw it against a wall.
The creature burst. As we passed her by, she stood up languidly and
walked over to a well in the center of the square. She pulled on the
rope, and the bucket came up filled with red sand. She snatched at
the sand and pulled out another of the things, an infant, no longer
than her finger. Then we were past her.
There was a large hut just past the main cluster. Two guards
stood in front of it with crossed spears. They were healthier than the
others, and their limbs still had strength. Their eyes were still alive.
But there were a few bite-marks on their arms and legs, and I knew
they, too, were using the worms.
I was led to the hut by my captors. The guards traded a few
words with them and then pushed a cloth out of the doorway, to let
us in. I stooped a little to get through the door, and peered through
the dark hut at the man I assumed was their chief. I could hardly see
him, but I could tell he was young. He sat in the back of the hut on
a pile of furs, with a thin, silent woman on each side of him.
“The worms have destroyed us,” he said to me in the Trade
Tongue. “You do not want us to sell them to you.”
I was surprised. “I have not come for trade,” I said. “But
how is it that you speak this language?”
He sat for a moment in silence. Then he said, “A man came.
He brought us a bucket of sand from the Red Sea. Our well was
dry, and we were poor. He poured the bucket down our well. He
told us there were magic worms in the sand. There would be
caravans, he said. Men would pay us furs for the worms. For many
years we did not touch the sand. We waited for the caravans. Our
chiefs learned the Outland Talk from their fathers, and gave it to
their sons in secret, so they would be ready when the caravans
came. But the caravans did not come. The man had said the worms
were precious. He said he would send men back for them. He
would be wealthy. We would be wealthy. But no one came. We
pulled up the bucket, and our people were bitten by the worms.
When we had done it once, we did not want to stop.
“We killed the large ones and let the small ones live until
we needed them. A few of the large ones lived long enough to split
in two, and there were more. We sold buckets of the worms to our
neighbors. All of the hill-kindred used the worms. But they ate
- 106 -

away at us. We lost our strength. The warriors did not use them at
first, but at last the young were all enslaved and did not care to
become warriors anymore. Then we knew we were going to pass
away. This was in my father’s time. He told the warriors to keep the
children from the worms, but the warriors had begun to use them
too. It was no use. At last my father also used the worms. There will
be no other chief here after me.”
I did not know what to say. The chief sat back in the
darkness and watched me. The warriors watched me, too.
“I could kill the worms,” I said. “Your people will get better
after a time.”
Then I saw something move between the legs of the chief. It
was one of the worms. The women had them, too.
“It was a foreigner who gave us the worms,” he said, “Now
a foreigner says he will save us. And what secret are you hiding
now? What is the reason for this offer? Even the air around you is
diseased.” He shook his head. “The thought of a foreigner has
become hateful to me,” he said. He gestured at the warriors and said
something in the hill-language. One of them grabbed for me. I took
his wrist and sent him crashing into the hut. The spear point at my
back went past me harmlessly, and I wheeled around. My sword
was sheathed in a warrior’s hand, then it was unsheathed in my
hand. The warriors were dead before long. The chief looked up at
me from his furs.
“They were going to throw you in the well,” he told me. “It
is what you deserve.”
When I left him, his head was back against the wall and
drool was running down his cheek. He was happy.
- 107 -

Chapter Three – The Forest of Dead Trees
After that, every village I passed was a ghost town. I
slept in the empty huts of dead chieftains, but I
didn’t try to call up their spirits. I knew what they
would have to say.
When I came down out of the mountains, it was snowing
lightly. I followed a trail I had picked up a few days before. It led
me down into the Forest of Dead Trees, which separates the Iron
Teeth from the Provinces. Already, I could see dead, barkless
trunks every few hundred feet. No one lived in these woods, and
nothing nested there. Yolo hadn’t said it was a haunted forest,
exactly, but lone men avoided it. I was glad for that.
When sunset came, I was a few hundred feet into the
thickness of the woods. The tree branches were easy to break into
kindling, but they would not burn. The fire played around them,
blackened them, and went out. Yolo had written this, but I had to
test it for myself. Travelers’ tales are so often wrong.
I used the powder in the end, and the clearing was lit by its
blue glow. For the first time in days, Doll came awake and spoke to
me.
“I have been dreaming steadily,” he said. “I’m getting used
to the dead life again.”
“Does that mean you’ll be leaving me?” I asked him.
“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “You could bring me back
whenever you wanted to. The dead belong to you.”
- 108 -

I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I should let you
sleep.”
The blue light shining off the skull made his eyeholes glow
as if with life. But he was dead, and we spoke only in my mind,
which was tuned to his.
“I am far from my fathers and mothers,” he said, “very far.
If you left me dreaming out here, how could I ever find my way
back? How could I be born in my children’s children?”
“I’m not sure that happens,” I said to him. “If it does, no one
remembers it. And you don’t know your family anymore.”
“Still, it’s strange,” he said. “We had a plot of our own,
where we were buried. The others, of course, not myself. I wonder
what it would be like if I was there.”
“Much the same,” I said, “although perhaps you could
mingle your dreams with theirs.”
“What exactly are you looking for?” asked Doll. “Why are
we going so far?”
“It’s not much of a hope,” I told him, “but I read something
that might put an end to this. Get my shadow back. Get me away
from the demons before they run me down. I had heard rumors
before, but this told me where to look.”
“And you think it’s true?”
I shrugged, and poked at the fire with a stick even though it
didn’t need it.
“I have no way to tell,” I said. “It could be a whole truth, a
half truth, the seed of a truth, or no truth at a ll.”
“And you’re willing to leave the world behind for that?”
“We’re not leaving the world, Doll. We’re just leaving our part of
it. People have come this way before, and some of them came back.
Past this forest is a land called the Provinces. North of that is a
wasteland called the Devil Hills. That’s where we’re going.”
“Into the mouth of the dragon. Won’t your enemies be
there?”
“I don’t know. The Devil Hills is just a name. It might not
mean very much. But even if it’s a place like the Thorp, the demons
still couldn’t attack me directly.”
“You’re taking a lot of risks here, Michael.” He knew I did
not do such things.
“I know,” I told him.
- 109 -

For a long time, then, he didn’t speak. I looked at the fire
and the blue glare on the dead trees. I looked up at the stars.
“Do you still think about it much?” he asked me, a few
hours later. I knew he meant the oubliette.
“Every night,” I told him. “It comes up in my dreams. But
it’s happening less and less. I’ve seen so many horrors. Carthage.
The Thorp. You find out you can live with anything.”
“Some people don’t think so,” he pointed out.
“They’re wrong,” I said, “and their death is not my death.”
The demons had never explained these things to us at the
Black School. Despite everything, death was a mystery to me. I
didn’t know what lay beyond the dreams, or why some of the spirits
disappeared and could not be called up after a time. I don’t think
They wanted us to know. We could know where the sun was going,
where our planet was going, where solar systems and galaxies and
universes were going, but never where we are going. It wouldn’t
have suited Their purposes.
Like me, Doll had been raised to think the Earth was the
center of the heavens, and a flat plane. But I knew better than that.
My schoolmasters had made sure of it.
“If I told you how everything works,” I said to Doll, “you
would wish I had never woken you up.”
“I’m not sure I don’t wish that now,” he said. I knew he was
ambivalent about me. He had seen what I was capable of. Still, he
was the first comrade I’d had in many years. A piece of a man who
had died because of me.
The Forest of Dead Trees sounded like an old man
wheezing at night. The wind stirred the trees, and they creaked and
moaned across a hundred square miles of wilderness. Doll had
drifted away into the slow dreams again while I watched the blue
flickering of the fire. It played with the air in a different way from
natural flame. I watched it move and shift, and the wind shifted the
trunks and branches at the same time in a strange, soft rhythm.
I remembered a song from my childhood. Something about
the Sore Plague, which had killed so many in my parents’ time.
“Hush, little dear one, and do not weep…mother and father are
going to sleep…”
How rarely I thought about those times. They were quite
abstract to me; they could have happened to anyone. They certainly
- 110 -

didn’t seem like my life, these memories of a child who had worked
in the field and played with other children, and poached small birds
from the lord’s forest…
I remembered the dead of my family. Those who had gone
outlaw rather than live the life of a serf. I had never tried to evoke
them. They had swung from the gallows outside the manor, and
some of them had been crucified along the road. They might be
among the spirits who could still be called, they might be among
those who were gone. I had never been home to find out. I thought
perhaps all my people were dead. That would not be surprising. My
enemies could easily have killed them all, even the first girl who
had ever taken me into herself out in the fields.
For so many years, I had thought of nothing but the chase,
and my survival, and the hunger of my enemies. There had never
been any time to think about the past. Or so I thought. After what
they did to me in the oubliette, my memories were with me all the
time.
“Michael, come outside.”
It was the girl from the field. The girl from the village. She
was wearing her hair down, and the sun was shining through it.
“Do you want to go out to the field again?” I asked her, in
my crude adolescent way.
She smiled flirtatiously. “No,” she said, “not right now.
There’s something you have to see.”
She took my hand, and I went out through the door of the
hut and followed her down the trail. I made her stop and kiss me
once or twice, and I pulled an apple off a tree for her. She smiled.
“Hurry up,” she said. “You’re going to miss it.”
We came into the village just as the lord’s men were riding
down from the manor on their fine white steeds. The lord himself
was there, and the young lord too. We bowed our heads. The rest of
the crowd did the same.
“What is it?” I asked her. “What are we here to see?” She
put her finger over her lips and said, “Hush.”
Behind the men-at-arms, there was another man, on
horseback. It was the lord’s necromancer, dressed in coarse gray
and black robes, weighed down with amulets and jewels and a coinbag.
There could be only one reason for him to show his face. He
had come on the lord’s behalf, to punish someone.
- 111 -

A heavy cart rolled into the square from around the corner.
Two men were on their knees in the back, with hoods on their
heads. Their hands were tied behind them. Their heads were bowed.
“Charm-setter!” someone yelled. “He stole the luck of my
crops!”
“He stole the cream of my milk!” yelled another. I had
heard rumors of this, but I hadn’t paid much attention. The two men
lived together on the outskirts of town. People said they were
simple, but they were usually able to beg scraps of food from the
neighbors. Until the rumors began. Now rocks and rotten pieces of
fruit were in the air. The two men crouched down, and shuddered
when they were hit.
“Where is your magic now?” somebody screamed. It was
the butcher or one of his boys. They threw guts and bits of offal at
the men. One of the butcher’s boys had chunks of meat and bread,
for sale to the crowd.
The cart rolled up to the market pole and the driver stepped
down. Two hooded men stepped up and tied the charm-setters to
the pole. The executioners were pelted with fruit and rocks. They
snarled and jumped away. The lord gestured.
“The crowd will stand down or be cleared,” said one of the
men-at-arms, with his hand on the hilt of his sword. The fruits and
rocks and bits of gut stopped flying after a moment. The sorcerer
rode up. One of the executioners unrolled a piece of parchment and
pretended to read. He couldn’t read, of course. Only the lord, his
son and the sorcerer could do that.
“For casting of petty spells,” he said, “you are condemned
by the law of the land.” The sorcerer pulled a vial of blue powder
from his robes, and spoke a word. He poured the powder over the
men. We could hardly hear their high, thin screaming behind the
glare of whitish blue flame that burst from their bodies.
The crowd was sated. This was more than the serfs needed
in their lust for blood. Rage of any kind tapped easily into rage
against our masters. A dark muttering washed from one end of the
crowd to the other, and back. Hands moved toward the rocks that
had been shoved hastily away only moments before.
“Clear the square,” said the lord, and the men-at-arms rode
in. The butcher lost three boys that day. But I left the rocks on the
ground. Let my fellow serfs rant and rail at the power that
controlled their lives. I wanted to have that power for my own.
- 112 -

Several years later, the necromancers of the north went too
far. They had destroyed the charm-setters and the healers and the
spell wives, their old rivals. But the hatred of the people turned on
them, and the Goetic arts were banned throughout the north.
I came to a town where my lord’s old sorcerer had set up
shop as a petty fortune-teller. They had taken him and punished him
at last. He was burned black when I found him, and his darkened
eyes stared out at nothing. His true Masters had not come to save
him. Pledged to them, he could not compel them as I could. He
could only trust them. By that time, of course, I knew better than to
trust them. And it was far too late.
I had seen many people burned. In the wars, raiding parties
would surround a village and set fire to the peasants’ houses. Some
ran outside and were shot down by the bow-men. Some stayed
inside among the flames.
Heretics were burned for their beliefs, criminals for their
crimes, the infected because of their infections. I had seen people
burned alive and I had seen great piles of plague corpses burned all
at once on the outskirts of a city.
The images played in my head, and I saw the crisp skin and
the black stumps of tongues, and I smelled that smell…
“Michael,” I heard, “Michael, pay attention. I need you to
talk to me.” I came out of the thoughts. “Michael, wake up.”
“I am awake, Doll,” I said, “I am awake.” I looked around
me. The sun was rising in the Forest of Dead Trees. Gray light and
cold air settled in on me.
“What happened to me?”
“You were lost somewhere,” said Doll. “Lost in your
thoughts. The oubliette.” He meant that my thoughts had trapped
me as they had often done in that place. I shook my head, confused.
“I don’t think so,” I told him. “I think we’d better leave this
place.” I packed up my things, and buckled on my sword.
“If only these trees would burn,” I said, “I’d leave nothing
here but ash.”
We walked, that day, until we left the trees behind.
- 113 -

Chapter Four- Galley Slaves
Pull!” yelled the foreman, and I pulled on the oar. We
all pulled. The ship skimmed along the surface of an
ocean we couldn’t see.
“Pull!” yelled the foreman again, and we pulled again. It
had been this way all day, and every day since we had left port. The
drum set our pace, and the foreman yelled harsh encouragement.
Every once in a while I looked around, if I could do it
without breaking my rhythm. These people were not like me. Their
eyes were gray, and their hair was pale blond or red. They were
shorter than the people of my land, but they were strong, and we
kept the same pace without difficulty.
By this point, I understood their language. The demon
Karath had instructed me , however reluctantly. Though the
grimoires contain many rites for gaining mastery of foreign
tongues, these are not as effective as they would have you believe. I
could follow along in conversations, but a deeper understanding of
this language would take time.
A few days after I left the forest, I had come to a small
village. The people stayed away from me because they were scared,
but the Provincial soldiers caught up with me by the next day. I
could have cut them down, but I did not. They surrounded me on
horseback, and I drew my sword. They held back, nervously.
“Outlanders must report to the local governor,” the sergeant
said. I decided that was easier than fighting, for the time being.
They took me on the back of a horse to the governor’s palace, a
- 114 -

day’s ride away. I saw them looking at me as we rode. They saw
the miasma, of course, and it frightened them.
“You cannot remain here”, the governor said, “we have no
place for you.” He was looking at my halo, too. “There’s a ship
pulling out for Crellin tomorrow morning. They have work in the
mines there, even for outlanders. If you can pull an oar, you can
go.”
According to Yolo, Crellin was in the north, near the Devil
Hills I had come to find. I assumed the ship was going to hug the
coast east, turn north when it could, and bring me conveniently
close to my destination.
I bowed in their customary way. The next day I was pulling
an oar.
The crack of the whip came after the pain. I jumped a little
at the shock, and my hand went for my absent sword. They had set
aside all weapons in case of battle. I controlled myself, with
difficulty.
“No dreaming!” the foreman growled, or something to that
effect. I stopped my hand from shaking, and bent my back to the
oar. He stood over for me for a while, then wandered away to watch
someone else.
“I didn’t sign on to be a slave.” said the man at my right,
quietly. I nodded, once. Out here on the ocean, it didn’t matter what
we had signed for. If they wanted us to be slaves, that’s what we
would be, at least until we reached Crellin.
“We should do something about it!” he whispered, urgently.
“Be quiet!” I snapped at him, “There’s nothing we can do.”
The penalty for mutiny was probably just as harsh in the
Provinces as it was back home. I could see a potential snare
forming as we spoke, a new way to get me killed. The man at my
right stared at me poisonously. “You’re a filthy one,” he said, “a
filthy foreign bastard.”
I bowed my head and pulled the oar conscientiously, hoping
he would leave it alone. But he’d figured something out about me
now. “That’s why you won’t help,” he said, “You’re not an
undercaste like the rest of us. You’re nothing like us at all! You’re
dirty, and you’re surrounded by flies!”
- 115 -

The whip cracked again, and this time it landed on his back.
He bent over and pulled the oar, and his eyes narrowed and stayed
that way. I knew he would kill me if he got the chance.
That night I found my corner above deck and rested my
head on my pack. But I did not go to sleep. My new enemy would
have friends, I was sure of that. And they would probably come for
me at night. I made certain preparations.
Doll was silent. I had left him tied off to the side of my
pack, and everyone had assumed this was simply an outlandish
fetish of some kind. He lay there dreaming as I did what I needed to
do. When I was ready, I laid on my back and stared up at the
strange configurations of the stars; the same constellations I had
always known, but in different places in the sky. I had seen this sort
of thing before, when my wanderings took me far from my
homelands. But it never failed to have an effect on me.
The galley swayed and rocked with the black ocean waves.
The other oarsmen were all asleep, and the guards were up at the
other end of the ship, drinking and playing at dice. My spirit-wards
alerted me to movement from the other side of the mast. I had set
powerful wards that night, stronger than those which protect my
sleep. Even if they drained my energy a little, I needed to be ready
for this when it came.
Quietly, shadows came into view. There were three men,
armed with sticks and knives and what looked like a rope- they
probably meant to strangle me while I slept. I lay silently and
waited for them. A few moments passed while they examined me.
Then I heard a shuffling sound of feet. I waited till the first
man was almost on top of me, then I sat up and spread my hands
out in front of his face while invoking Vashya the Spider. He was
trapped, and when the others ran into him, they were trapped too.
They could move a little, very slowly, as if they were drugged, but
the spiritual web was wrapped around them, although invisible.
They struggled and flailed like men trapped in thick mud. They
didn’t speak.
I stood up and looked into the eyes of the first man, my
enemy from belowdecks. His pupils reflected the image of a great
black spider speckled with green. It scuttled eagerly down the
shining strands of my web, and then it was on top of him…
- 116 -

When the stars favor me and I have time to prepare, my
enemies have no hope at all. I went to sleep.
“Do you know anything about this?” the First Mate
growled. He pointed to the three dead oarsmen on the deck in front
of my pack. Most of their skin had been burned away overnight,
and more was evaporating as we watched. I had thought Vashya
would be faster than this, but perhaps she wasn’t as hungry as I had
thought.
I shook my head. There were mutterings about black magic
among the crew. Suspicion fell on me, of course.
“Outlander,” said the foreman, “if this is your deathworking,
you must tell us. You need not pull an oar.”
The First Mate nodded his head. “We are rounding the Cape
soon,” he said, “and we have no one who can calm the waves. If
such skill is yours, you will have a cabin of your own and you will
dine with the officers. But do not lie. The sharks in these waters
swarm like the flies in the Gray Swamp.”
The oarsmen tried to look at me without looking at me. I
knew this was going to be trouble. But it seemed to be the best way
to go. Down among the slaves I would be hated and feared as a
sorcerer now. I might at least get some comfort from it.
“I made this deathworking.” I said, “My name is Michael. I
am a sorcerer.”
The Mate took this in a little uneasily, then gestured for me
to follow him. I felt the hateful eyes of the slaves on my back as I
went.
“These men aren’t going to be let go in Crellin, of course.”
said Captain Verikommenian. He swallowed a bite of spiced pig
and washed it down with red grape wine. “They’re destined for the
mines. We’re at war with the Kroat Archipelago, and we need gold
to pay for more ships.”
I accepted this news as I accepted everything else. They had
planned to trick me into a life of slavery underground. So be it. That
had not happened, and now I was dining on fine meats and drinking
good wine while a musician played some unknown song. The night
before, I had eaten a thin gruel, and drunk only water.
- 117 -

“Is this a warship?” I asked the captain. There was a
company of soldiers on board. They were hard, quiet men who had
their own quarters and who kept to themselves.
“Not exactly.” he told me, “Our job is to carry the assorted
scum of the docks and alleys to Crellin, on the pretense of offering
them paid work, which we cannot afford in wartime, you
understand.”
He chewed on a roll, thoughtfully. “If the Kroats attack us,
we can fight. If we come across our own fleet, and they’re about to
give battle, we may be pressed into service. That’s why we have
extra weapons. If we have to, we’ll arm the oarsmen. But this ship
is primarily a slaver.”
I thought the captain might have more trouble enslaving
these men than he anticipated. But I kept that thought to myself.
Those who lie to others, will lie to you. Better to keep your own
counsel, always.
“I know little of your country.” I told him, “Perhaps you
could educate me.”
The other officers were talking amongst themselves. The
first mate, who was apparently used to the captains’
companionship, sulked and poked at his food. The captain, a roundfaced
prosperous man, seemed to relish the chance to expound on
his nations’ history. I had read much of this in Yolo’s work, but I
wanted to see how an insider’s account would differ.
“The various Provinces were separate countries once,” he
said, “about a thousand years ago. They fought each other, and
there civil wars within each country. Everyone was a soldier in
those days. When a warlord needed an army raised, he would have
his artisans make many thousands of long spears. Then he would
hand them out to everyone within his lands, sometimes even old
people and children. The carnage was endless. The crops weren’t
planted when there was a war. Famine killed many thousands.
Plagues followed the famines, as they always do. Every country on
this continent was dying. Then one cartel of warlords changed the
world. They took weapons away from the people at large, and
trained a professional army of real warriors who had the discipline
to destroy the peasant levies. They cleared their land of the
wandering mercenary companies and bandits. Then they brought
order to the neighboring lands.
- 118 -

Within decades, the nations and the warlords were gone.
Every country east of the Forest of Dead Trees had joined the
Provinces and come under the rule of law. The people were given
the caste system to bring order and to save them from the endless
wars. Those who worked the land became the backbone of the
undercastes. The overcaste kept order and maintained the peace, as
we do even today. Now,” he said, waving a drumstick from one of
his heaping platters, “prosperity and peace have taken the place of
famine and war.”
I enjoyed my meal and paid little attention to his selfserving
rant. The nobles in my homeland had similar stories. The
nobles of every land did. And the peasants of every land hated it. It
would always be that way.
I sipped my wine. “Is there any land on this continent which
you have not absorbed?” I asked him.
He waved his hand dismissively. “A few tribes here and
there.” he said, “Tribesmen can be hard to… absorb, as you put it.
Our big problem now is the men of the islands, the Kroat
Archipelago. They’re as fierce as our warrior ancestors were.”
“Are you trying to conquer them?” I asked him.
“No,” he said, “nor are they trying to conquer us. They are
pirates, essentially. All they crave is tribute-money, and plunder if
they cannot get that. We will not allow our cities to pay tribute to
anyone.”
I nodded in feigned appreciation. This was the first decent
meal I had eaten in a very long time. There were three or four kinds
of fine meat, and cheese and breads. I had dreamed about a meal
like this for long hours when I was in the oubliette. I could listen to
his nonsense all night if I had to.
“Let’s have a ballad!” the first mate called out to the
musician. It was the first time he had spoken since dinner began.
The captain was a little startled.
“You’ve been quiet tonight, Korsellemon.” he said, “But
very well, let’s have a ballad. Something about an outlander, in
honor of our guest.”
The musician tuned his instrument while he told us about
the song he was going to play.
“This ballad is sung by the men of the Southern Ocean,” he
said, “who trade with outlanders from a nation to the west.” He
looked at me slyly. “It is called The Man With No Shadow.”
- 119 -

I started, and my foot kicked the table-leg involuntarily.
Everyone looked at me. I didn’t know if they had noticed my own
lack of a shadow, or not. The musician began his song.
“In a land to the west,” he sang, in the language of the
Provinces, “There is a man who casts no shadow. Spawn of the
devils…”
I scarcely heard another word. The facts were distorted, but
the story was mine. The first mate was staring at me intently. I
knew he was behind this, somehow. But how had my story spread
so far beyond my own land? And how had this one man happened
to recognize it? The captain seemed to take no notice.
“This song bores me.” he snapped, “And as it does not
speak well of outlanders, it may offend our guest. You will leave
now.”
The musician bowed quickly, and left. As we finished our
meal and made ready to leave, I could feel the eyes of the first mate
on me constantly.
My wards woke me up just before dawn. I thought it was
the first mate, coming to kill me. But it was something else, outside
my new cabin. They had given me back my sword, so I drew it
quietly and listened at the door. Something was happening out
there. People were yelling. I decided my best chance was to face it
directly.
I opened the door, carefully. A desperate battle was being
fought on the deck. The slaves had tricked the guards, and now they
had the cutlasses which had been set aside. The guards were being
overwhelmed.
I didn’t have time to decide who was likelier to win. Four
men ran up to me with drawn cutlasses, howling. They had decided
I was an officer now.
I cut up at the first one and severed his hand just as he was
striking at me. This put my sword in a guard position that blocked
the second man’s attack. I stepped to the side, and his momentum
carried him past me. Then I lifted my sword and cut off his head.
The other two turned and tried to trap me between them. But they
were tentative and weak. They made little feints, and shuffled with
their feet. I cut one of them down, and the other one made a halfhearted
attempt to come in at me. I stabbed him in the stomach and
stepped back to let him fall.
- 120 -

My best chance at survival seemed to be in crushing the
mutiny. I ran out onto the deck, and saw the oarsmen besieging the
first mate’s cabin. They were pounding on the door, and it was
cracking.
“Help him, outlander!” yelled a voice. I turned, and saw the
musician. Here was a chance to destroy a few enemies at once. In
the confusion, no one would know. I cut the artery under his armpit
and left him to bleed out. The oarsmen would take care of the first
mate for me. Now I needed to rescue the captain if I wanted this
mutiny stopped.
I found his cabin surrounded by soldiers who were holding
off about forty oarsmen armed with cutlasses and various shipboard
tools. I came into the mutineers from behind, cutting left and right.
The soldiers charged. The enemy scattered.
“You’re good with a sword!” said one of the soldiers, under
his breath. The door opened, and the captain came out, armed with
a boarding-ax.
“Let’s put a stop to this.” he said to me, “Can you do
anything with your Art?”
“It’s not the best way.” I told him, “There’s no time to
prepare, and cold steel is often better for quick troubles.”
“As long as you can use the steel.” he said, and we went to
find the mutineers. They had pulled the first mate out of his cabin
and hacked at him terribly with their cutlasses. His face was a mess.
One of his arms was barely attached, and his fine white linen shirt
was soaked with blood. But he was still alive.
The mutineers shouted when they saw us. We charged
before they could. None of these undercaste men had ever been
trained to use a sword. They either swung wildly or make weak
attempts to guard against our attacks. I killed four of them within
moments. The captain was a soft man on the surface, but he had
been trained to weapons from childhood. His boarding-ax swung in
wide arcs through the unprotected heads and arms of the slaves.
They broke and ran for the safety of the oar-decks, an admission of
defeat. The guards and officers ran ahead to lock them in. I finished
off the first mate by stabbing him in the throat.
“Let us have no more pretense.” the captain said to the
oarsmen the next morning. They had asked for mercy, and been
chained to their oars. “You men are slaves. You are being taken to
- 121 -

Crellin to work, as slaves, in the mines. You will never know
freedom again. So you have no basis to complain of our treatment
of you. If we want to throw you in the ocean, we will. There is
nothing you can do to stop us. We have disposed of the weapons
you used last night.”
There were large gaps in their ranks. Almost half of them
had been killed in the uprising.
“Since there are fewer of you,” the captain said, “you will
have to do the work of those who were slain. If there is any delay in
our schedule, or any slacking of pace, you will be whipped.”
The foreman, their worst enemy, had survived the fighting.
His whip rested lightly in his hands. He stared at the oarsmen
intently. The captain and I went back above deck.
Three or four men had been named as the ringleaders in the
mutiny. One of the soldiers punished them above deck so the
screams would float down to the oarsmen below. When they
stopped screaming, they would be tied to long ropes and pulled
behind the ship in the shark-filled waters.
“What do we do if we’re attacked now?” I asked the
captain, “There can be no question of arming these men again.”
“We have a more immediate problem.” he told me, “we’re
about to round the Cape of Obela and turn north. There are signs of
a bad crossing…” he pointed at dark mountains of clouds piling up
to the east.
“I will call up the spirits of this ocean tonight.” I told him,
“If they are anything like the spirits of my own land, I will have
leverage over them.”
“See that you do that, Michael.” he said, “See that you do.”
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Chapter Five- Blood and Suffering
The rite was a success, and we had as gentle a crossing
as we could have expected. The wind and the waves
threw us around a bit, but we had no real trouble. I
stayed above deck with the officers at all times. The oarsmen were
chained down below both day and night.
“It’s what we should have done all along,” the captain said,
“but we wanted to avoid trouble if we could. We wanted to let the
mine bosses handle it.”
If you wanted to avoid trouble, I thought, you could have
told your foreman to be more sparing with his whip. My own back
still sung from it. But I said nothing.
I was exhausted from the ceremony I had performed. I did
not call up some benign ocean-spirit as I had suggested to the
captain. Such beings can sometimes be compelled, but they do not
love necromancers and sorcerers. Often, they will not obey at all.
Instead I called up one of my own foes, a demon named Vultach
who has power over the waves. Between his threats, and his
reluctance, and the things I had to do to force him, I had used much
of my strength and would need a day or two to heal. As he had
intended. The demons must obey me when I do the things they
taught me. But they have many subtle ways of delaying and
pretending not to fully understand instructions, and twisting words.
This is usually intended to frustrate the sorcerer until he makes a
pact, and becomes their servant in exchange for their complete
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cooperation. Then the sorcerer belongs to them, and their power
grows in our world.
In my case, however, these tactics are only intended to tire
me, and to help my human enemies run me down. I rested in my
cabin for much of that day. At the end of the day, Doll finally spoke
to me again.
“I have been dreaming in the oubliette.” he told me, “Why
do you suppose that is?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, “except that it was a hard death for
you. But even in the oubliette, you dreamed about other things,
didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, “the water and the wind and small noises. It
is much the same with these new dreams, except that they reflect
the past.”
“Some things take time,” I said, “and perhaps you’ve been
influenced by me. But I don’t think you will be in the oubliette
forever.”
I slept for a while, and so did Doll.
The carnage of the mutiny had convinced the oarsmen. We
had no further trouble with them as we sailed up the coast towards
Crellin. Now that they were chained below deck, I didn’t see them
at all. I only heard the drums, the occasional rowing-song, or the
crack of the foreman’s whip.
We hugged the coast, to avoid pirates as much as we could.
I leaned on the rail of the ship and looked across the water at the
land we were passing. For several days, we saw purple heather
blanketing soft hills broken by occasional homesteads, fishing
villages and small cities. Once or twice we were stopped by the
Provincial navy, and our papers were checked. Each time, the naval
officers stared at me with undisguised wonder and faint revulsion. It
was not unheard-of to keep a weather-wizard on a ship, but it was
very unusual to carry an outlander. Our captain, however, seemed
quite proud of me, as if I were some kind of an exotic bird to be
displayed to his peers.
Now that the first mate and minstrel were both dead, the
captain relied on my conversation to keep him entertained through
his long dinners. I told him the history of the Western Continent
from which I came, and he told me more of the legends and
histories of the Provinces. One night, I mentioned the pale-skinned
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green-eyed Dwellim tribesmen who live just south of the Devil
Hills, without saying that I intended to find them. He was
dismissive.
“They used to be fierce,” he said, “but they’re a sorry lot
now, I assure you. Even worse than the undercastes for laziness and
drinking. We conquered them about seventy-five years ago.”
I was a little worried, at that. A conquered race in a state of
decline may not have kept up all of their cultural traditions. But
surely, after seventy-five years, not all of their ghost doctors could
be gone. Some of their young people would still be called to the old
ways.
“How do you know these things about our nation?” asked
the captain, chewing on an enormous drumstick. The hold must be
packed with food for the officers, I thought. No wonder there was
only gruel for the oarsmen.
“There was a merchant,” I said, “a man named Yolo. He
traveled to the Provinces from the Western Continent about two
hundred years ago. Copies of his travel diary can still be found by
those who know how to look.”
“But why did you come here?” he asked me, “There must
have been employment in your own land for a man of your talents."
I lied, naturally. Or rather, I told him only a small part of the
truth. “Sorcerers,” I said, “are not always popular in my home
country.”
“Nor here,” he pointed out, “but you’ll have steady work if
you stick with me. We could use a weather-wizard full-time, and
you’ll always have a full belly and gold in your pockets.”
“I’ll think about it.” I told him. I didn’t intend to.
We came to Crellin Harbor, but we were not allowed to
dock. The Provincial navy had gathered there to meet a Kroat
armada that was bearing down toward the coast at top speed. This
would be no mere pirate raid, but a full-scale invasion intended to
strip the land bare. The captain groaned when he was told we were
being pressed into service.
“My profit is gone!” he said, “If I can even manage to
escape with my life and my ship.”
There was no way for me to escape without taking drastic
measures, as crossbowmen had been put aboard to shoot any
deserters- including the officers. I was sure I could find a way to
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slip out if I had to, but it might not be any safer than combat. The
bowmen had been specifically told to keep us on deck, so I couldn’t
be alone to summon help.
“I might be able to turn my power on the enemy,” I told the
captain, accepting the situation for the time being.
“That’s a good thing,” he said, “because the Kroats bring
sorcerers of their own when they attack in strength. We’ll have
more than steel weapons to face today.”
I was not eager to fight a battle of sorcery, but I was
confident. No rival sorcerer had bested me before, no matter what
demonic help they summoned up. My unusual talent was one
reason my fellow sorcerers at the Black School had betrayed me in
the first place.
“Can you arm your oarsmen?” an officer shouted from one
of the naval ships. The captain shook his head. “No!” he yelled,
“They’re mutineers! We have them chained up down below.”
The officer cursed, and went back to his work. I looked
around me at our fleet. There were a number of large vessels with
multiple oar-banks and sails and small catapults to hurl flaming
pitch, and hundreds of armored soldiers waiting on deck. These
were the true naval warships, but besides these there were hundreds
of ships like our own- merchantmen, slavers, fishing-vessels and
small raiders carrying an assortment of soldiers and local riff-raff.
No one wanted the Kroat to come ashore.
I could see Crellin across the harbor. It was a prosperous
city, with tall, columned temples and villas and market areas. A
long stream of people was making its way out of the city and up
into the countryside, in case the Kroats broke through.
A cry went up from several ships at once. One of the
lookouts had spotted something.
“The enemy!” someone yelled, “The Kroat armada has been
seen!”
I turned to the captain. “I need to start now,” I told him, “but
the heavens are not in the most favorable conjunction for me. If you
want any serious help you’ll have to turn over one of our wounded
to me.”
He looked in my eyes, and shuddered involuntarily. A few
of the soldiers and guards who had been hurt in the mutiny were
still recovering in one of the cabins. One or two of them were near
death, past the point of recovery.
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“I could simply use my sword.” I told him. He looked a
little sick, but he shook it off. “Do what you have to do.” he said,
and told one of the soldiers to bring me the dying guard. The
military men would let me sacrifice a hired bodyguard, but never
one of their own. I started to make my preparations. On a raised
section of the deck, I cleared a space and laid the guardsman down.
He was slippery with sweat, and clotted blood mixed with fresh
blood on his body where the cutlasses had hacked at him. I dipped
my finger in the blood and used it to draw a diagram, a sigil which
would invoke demons of battle and war. These were the Garakii,
who are worshipped as gods under various names in many corners
of the world. They are vehement for blood, and hard to control, for
their battle-frenzy often keeps them even from working with their
fellow demons in their larger purposes.
The sigil was large and intricate, and each stage in its
creation was accompanied by certain chants and phrases of power
and ritual gestures. Any demon can be called up just by speaking its
name with intent. But that would not be safe for the sorcerer at all,
and especially not for me. The rites and sigils were ultimately for
my own protection.
The armada came into full view as I finished the rite. I cut a
long strip of skin from one side of the guard’s body to the other,
and held it high as I intoned the customary words. The Garakii
appeared, and began to feast on what I had offered them. They
became agitated.
“Obey me!” I commanded them, and they looked up from
the guard’s body, already stripped of flesh. Their rows of tiny teeth
were white, licked clean before they spoke. “We will eagerly feast
on you,” they said together. It was impossible to say exactly how
many of them there were. At times there were three, at times there
seemed to be a hundred, and then at other times I could see only
one. No one else aboard the ship could see them at all at that point,
although they had seen what happened to the guard, and many had
gotten sick. Several crossbows were trained on me now.
“I have no time for your threats and boasting.” I told the
Garakii, “Do as I wish, and you will be free to leave.”
These creatures were not subtle. They did not attempt to
play any games with me at all. “What do you ask of us?”, they said,
with a hundred voices in one.
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“You must enter the bodies of our warriors,” I told them,
“and slaughter the enemy as he opposes us. You will be needed for
the first assault alone. When each warrior has slain five of his foes,
you shall return to the place from which you came.” I did not think
it safe to let them remain any longer than that.
“Were you able to help us?” the captain asked, as I pushed
what was left of the guardsman into the ocean.
“Yes,” I said, “Look below. Our men will win the first
onslaught, at least.”
The captain turned and looked. The soldiers and guardsmen
on our vessel were waving their weapons in the air, howling and
shrieking at the Kroat fleet as it came towards us. His face was
more than a little pale. “What did you do?” he asked me.
“They’re possessed.” I said, “Don’t ask any more.”
“It will affect our ship alone?” he asked.
“That’s all I can do for now.” I said, “If the Kroat sorcerers
are powerful, I will need reserves to call upon.” As we talked, I was
busy drawing sigils and protective signs with the last of the guards’
blood. These would be needed if I had to call up more demonic aid.
I didn’t tell the captain that I might use this to escape rather than to
help him fight.
Now the Kroat fleet was almost upon us. Flaming arrows
and balls of burning pitch flew between their ships and ours. The
Kroat armada was made up of thousands of small raiding vessels,
long and sleek and filled with warriors who were also oarsmen.
Every ship was painted black and had black sails. The men were
pale, with long black hair hanging loose or tied in braids. They had
blackened swords and chainmail armor too. They howled war-cries
at us and waved their black shields in the air. In the prow of every
ship stood a red-robed man or woman with shaven head, chanting
invocations. These were the Kroat sorcerers.
The entire armada rammed into our own fleet with a terrible
concussion. The Kroat vessels had steel prows, but even so, a
number of them were torn to pieces on the first impact. Whether
their own ship or their enemies’ ship was damaged, the Kroat
warriors leapt eagerly up into our vessels and charged our men.
Three Kroat raiders struck our ship at different angles, but
our bow was sturdy and it held together. The Kroat were eager for
battle, but they were no match for the fury of the Garakii. Our men
threw themselves at the enemy shrieking, with contorted faces and
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eyes rolled up to show only the whites. The Kroat warriors
panicked and tried to run, but they were stabbed and cut down and
tackled as they ran. Our soldiers and guardsmen tore at the corpses,
dipped their hands in the blood, bit at the dead men’s faces.
“Don’t worry,” I told the captain, “They won’t remember.”
The sorcerers in the three, now empty, raiding ships were
taken by surprise. They had presumably called upon their spirits to
make their men brave and give them might for the battle. I had
raised the level of the conflict far beyond their ability to
immediately respond. They tried frantically to prepare new
sorceries, but our men overwhelmed them and ripped them apart
with their hands. Those of our men who had not yet killed five
Kroats jumped across into other vessels and threw themselves at the
foe. The others fell to the deck in a sudden sleep, as the Garakii left
them and went home.
“Michael,” said the captain, “you must wake them up!”
The second line of Kroat ships had moved up to fill the gaps
caused by the early fighting. Two more enemy raiders slammed into
us. “They’re waking up,” I said, and pointed at the men. They got to
their feet, wiped the sluggishness from their eyes, and stood side by
side to absorb the Kroat charge. I turned my attention to the enemy
sorcerers. One of them was a man, and one was a woman. Unlike
most of the others, she was not bald. A single braid of hair hung
from the back of her head, and her face was tattooed with abstract
designs. She foamed at the mouth and threw her head back, while
her hands waved in the air like snakes. This was the state of ecstasy
which preceded some mighty spellworking. I shouted a word of
power to cross her and foil her design, but it was too late. Our men
faltered and succumbed to their fears. She had taken their courage
from them.
There was no time to respond with an elaborate rite. I would
have to use simpler methods, and lead by example. Chanting an
incantation to restore their bravery, I drew my sword and leapt
down to the lower deck, where the black-clad Kroat swordsmen
were cutting our soldiers down and laughing at their weakness.
I sheared a man’s head from his neck, then cut the legs out
from under another man as he came in at me. I cut at their throats
and their shins and their hands- anything not protected by armor.
Our men rallied, and drove the Kroat back to the edges of the ship.
But while I had been fighting, the sorcerers had prepared another
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working for us. Although it did not harm me, I felt the warm wave
of fever which swept across the deck and dropped many of our men
where they stood. They vomited and fell. Some of them toppled
over the edge and into the harbor. The captain, just behind me with
his battle-ax, dropped to one knee.
I was the only man on our ship who could fight, and there
was no time to work sorcery. The Kroat warriors, although wary of
my sword, were closing in.
I jumped back, and found myself in front of the door to the
oardecks below. This was my only chance. I threw the bar up and
opened the door, then ran below and slammed it behind me. The
foreman turned, about to ask me what I was doing. But he would
stand in the way of my plan, I knew. I stabbed him in the stomach,
and he fell to the floor bleeding. I took his keys and spoke to the
men at the oars.
“The Kroat are overwhelming this ship.” I told them, “If
you want to live, you’ll have to fight.”
I could see the naked hatred in their eyes. But I knew they
didn’t want to die. “We have no swords,” one of them said, “you
threw them in the sea.”
“Then use your chains.” I told them, “That’s the best I can
offer you.”
I blocked the door with the foreman and a chest or two, then
unlocked the slaves, with my sword above their heads. They stood
and stretched and felt the heft of their chains. The Kroat broke
through the doorway and rushed in.
“Hold them off!” I yelled, “I’ll bring us help!”
I ran to the back of the underdeck and spoke rapid words of
power which drained me and made me reel as the blood rushed
from my head and blackness absorbed the edges of my vision. I
could not easily change the fabric of the world, but I could change
perception, and that amounts to the same thing. I knew the enemy
sorcerers outside were standing in a rain of blood, or thought they
were. The blood-rain was accompanied by a terrible thirst, an
itching and burning. They would be neutralized for a time. Without
a favorable arrangement of the stars, there was a limit to what I
could accomplish. Yet my enemies might be helped by this
conjunction, for there are different systems of sorcery with different
rules. I had enough strength to do one more summoning. I intended
to save this as my final card.
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When my head cleared a little, I got a firm grip on my
sword and joined the fight again. The oarsmen had done
surprisingly well against their armed and armored enemies. They
had taken advantage of the narrow door through which the foe had
to pass. Some of them even had swords now, seized from the hands
of fallen Kroats. Perhaps their fear and anger had given them
strength.
I charged at the enemy as they came at the doorway again. I
cut my way through several of them, and back onto the open deck.
The enemy pulled back, but they didn’t dare return to their ships.
Blood fell in thick, dark drops on their sorcerers, who cowered on
the deck. I had gone further than they were able to go.
The captain, our soldiers and our guardsmen were all dead.
Our ship was now defended only by the slaves and myself. We
could hold the underdecks, but we could not defeat armored men in
an open area. I retreated through the door again to think.
That was when I first smelled the smoke. The Kroats had lit
torches, and they were setting fire to our ship. As my blood-rain
came to a stop on their own vessels, they set our sails and rigging
on fire, and jumped back to their raiders to pick up bows. Soon
flaming arrows rained down on the deck, preventing any escape and
spreading the flames more rapidly.
“There is only one chance,” I told the oarsmen, “ and I’m
going to give it to you as well as me.”
“Why should we trust you?” one of them spat, “You joined
the officers, and you helped them kill us.”
“It’s not a question of trust.” I said, “You will die if I do not
do this.”
Smoke was starting to fill the oarbanks as I spoke. “What do
you need?” asked one of the men.
“I’m very weak.” I told them, “Without the help of the stars,
I need blood and suffering to call up my demons safely.”
I pulled the old crates away and grabbed the arm of the
foreman. It takes a long time to die from most stomach-wounds. He
was still breathing a little, and semi-conscious. They were only too
glad to help me hurt their tormentor.
The flames played along the edge of the walls, and several
men had collapsed from the smoke by the time my circles and sigils
had been written out in blood. I called up the demon Vultach once
again. He appeared as a dark distortion, wavering in the air.
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“Michael,” said Vultach, “aren’t you making this something
of a habit? It will not matter where you run, you know. You owe us
a debt.”
“A debt you cannot collect.” I told him, “Now do as I
command.”
I ordered the demon to raise a terrible wind, a wind
powerful enough to put out the flames and to ensure that no one
would pursue us. The oarsmen and myself were to be washed safely
onto the shore. Vultach disappeared, after many subtle
prevarications, but the rattling and the howling told me that he was
fulfilling my commands. The flames were snuffed out and we were
thrown to the floor. Then our ship was struck by the great wave.
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Chapter Six- Aftermath
Iwoke up on a beach, with my face in the sand. The gray
light of dawn was growing around me. Wreckage and
twisted bodies stretched as far as I could see along the
sand dunes. Kroat warriors and Provincial soldiers lay together,
their limbs broken by the waves and the ocean floor and the beach.
I was shaking, and not only because I was cold and wet. The battle
had taken nearly all my strength. Now I felt as if I could hardly
move. I tried to stand, and when I vomited, I let myself fall back
against the ground.
Every time the surf rolled in, it cast up planks of wood, and
weapons and men. I saw no one living but myself. The oarsmen
must have come ashore elsewhere.
I looked out across the ocean. There were no ships along the
horizon. The devastation of the storm must have been nearly
absolute. This was not necessary. The demon had been too eagerly
obedient. No doubt this was intended to heap fresh guilt on my
conscience, to weaken me. I would not be weakened. I knew my
responsibility in these deaths, and I accepted it. But it would not
lead me to surrender to them.
I wanted to sleep again, but I was too cold. I pulled myself
up, leaning on my sword. It was time to walk inland and find a safer
place to camp for the day, a place where I could recover a little.
Something white was at my feet, next to a body which had
been worked on by the fish. I bent down to look. It was Doll, and he
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was undamaged. I picked him up, and walked up into the low hills
of the Dwellim country.
“So you destroyed both fleets?” asked Doll as I sat at a
warm fire that evening.
“Not exactly,” I said, “but it amounts to the same thing.
Both fleets were wiped out by the storm. Many thousands must be
dead.”
“Sorcery can be a terrible thing.” he said.
“I’ve never known it to be anything else.” I answered him,
“It would be a great service to the world if the Thorp could be
closed. If the demons could be driven out.”
“What are they doing here?” he asked me.
“They want to devour the world,” I said, “To make it a place
where they can thrive, and then over a long period of time- perhaps
thousands of years- to absorb it and use it up. It’s a long war, really,
and one which few people know is being fought. The necromancers
are the advance guard of the demons. And they do not generally
understand this either. The demons themselves are the only ones
who know how the game is played.”
“But isn’t there some other force?” asked Doll, “Some force
which opposes them, and aids us?”
I shook my head. “You’re thinking of your religious
education,” I said, “or the speculations of certain philosophers. The
demons are not symbols. They are not part of some balance- or if
they are, they’re no more aware of it than you or I. All they are is
alien beings. We call their world Hell, but it is a very congenial
environment for them.”
“If you understand these things,” he said, “then why do you
not seek to turn them back? To drive them out of our world?”
“I have been too busy with running, all these years.”
I stared at the fire, and thought about that. I had done my
enemies more good than ill, with the destruction I left in my wake.
Every country I came to was a little more of a home for them by the
time I left. What if that was the secret of my longevity? What if
they never intended to catch me?
“Whatever their plans really are,” I said to Doll, “I’ll put a
stop to all of them if this works.”
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We camped in a thicket until I had recovered, a few days
later. When I had most of my strength again, I tied Doll to my waist
and moved further into the foothills. Although my destination was
the Devil Hills, a little to the north, I needed to speak with the
Dwellim before I went there. Only they could tell me how best to
find a ghost doctor. I had no intention of doing any more spell-work
for the time being.
I walked through the forest until I came to a thin trail
leading north. I thought this would probably come to a settlement
along the way, so I took it. It wandered and snaked around a
number of hilltops, and the occasional ruins of an abandoned
stronghold. These decrepit forts had been overrun by brush and
trees and vines. The crumbling stones were black from forgotten
fires. War had been a constant in this land a few hundred years
before. I assumed the Provincial armies had broken these strong
places in their final war of conquest. Now the Dwellim warlords
who had been so proud to rule the hills were nothing but names in
folk stories which would become more distorted with every passing
year.
As the day settled into twilight, a party of men stepped out
of the woods ahead of me. They were Dwellim- with skin as white
as snow, and long white hair, and brilliant green eyes. They had an
assortment of rusty old weapons and crude clubs. They were
clothed in rags which had once been the finery of merchants. I
laughed aloud. They were bandits, like my long-dead kin.
“It is we who should be laughing,” said their leader,
“Deliver us your money and your sword. We are desperate men.”
“I carry no money today,” I told them,“but if I did, I would
gladly give it to you. My sword, however, is another matter. I need
it to survive.”
“No,” said the leader, “If you want to survive, you need to
give it to me.”
He advanced on me, holding his sword high. No doubt he
thought he had me at a disadvantage, with my sword still sheathed
at my side. But I drew and cut in the same motion, and severed his
hand at the wrist as he went to strike. He shrieked and stumbled and
went down. His blood was on my shirt.
They were desperate men. They charged at me, without
coordination, but with more determined will than the Kroats I had
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fought a few days before. They only turned and ran when half of
them lay dead on the path.
Bandits often haunt the edges of towns, and these had been
no exception. Within an hour of their attack I was eating warm soup
and bread, and nursing a mug of ale, paid for with their dead
chieftain’s gold. The inn was half empty, and the barman was sullen
and quiet. I was the only person there without the skin and eyes of
the Dwellim. The people stared at me and I stared back, and they
saw something in my eyes, and turned away. At one table, a few
men were playing at dice. At the back wall, a few others were
playing with darts. Everyone else sat with bowed heads over their
drinks, apparently trying to make each mug last as long as possible.
It was a grim, dark and cold little place. Some inns have a kind of
glow, a feeling of warmth which they pass on to you. Others feel
like they actually drain your life and warmth away. This was the
second kind of inn. But I didn’t mind. I had my warm soup, and I
had my ale. It was better than being outside.
Hours passed. I let the people clear away, which they did as
late as they possibly could. When I was the only customer left, I
turned to the sullen barman.
“I am looking for something.” I told him, and took out my
bag of coin.
“What would that be?” he asked me, pausing with his mop,
“We have nothing here.”
“I am looking for a ghost doctor.” I said.
He looked me straight in the eyes. “There are none,
anymore. When will you accept that?”
“What do you mean? I asked him, “I’ve never been here
before.”
“I mean you spies and your masters. When will you accept
it? The ghost doctors are dead. They have incited their last
rebellion. We’re Provincial subjects now.”
“I’m not a spy.” I said, “My reasons for asking this are
personal, not professional.”
He looked me over, as if trying to size me up. Greed came
into his face, though he made a show of reluctance. “We’ll see.” he
said at last, “If you take a room here for the night, I’ll try to find
you someone to talk to. Maybe there’s something we can do.”
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I thanked him, left some coins on the table, and followed
him to a room, which held only a yellowing bed between four
yellowing walls. Here I slept, trusting in my wards.
“I found an old man who used to be the ghost doctor for the
neighboring village.” he told me, in private, the next morning. “He
doesn’t practice anymore, but for enough coin…”
I was both disappointed and skeptical, but I decided to give
the old man a chance. There was no way to gauge his power
without meeting him. The innkeeper told me to come back at
sunset, so I went to look around the village.
The place was called Cothe, which meant nothing at all in
the Provincial language, so I assumed it was a remnant of the
original Dwellim tongue. I heard snatches of this, here and there, as
I walked around, but always from the old people. The young didn’t
even seem to understand their native language. This conquest had
been complete.
Not surprisingly, there wasn’t much in Cothe worth looking
at. A cluster of houses- some made of stone, and others, the newer
ones, made of wood. A blacksmith’s shop. A church of the official
cult. In less than an hour I had seen everything in the town and near
it, and was left to sit on an old wall and watch the people go by.
I had come very far to get here- too far, if this was to prove
a fool’s errand. If there were truly no ghost doctors anymore, what
would I do? Where would I go next? And what hope would I have?
Even if I outran them for decades, evaded every trap they set for
me, brought death to thousands who served them whether
knowingly or unknowingly, what would it matter? When I died, it
would be irrelevant whether sword or old age had brought me
down. They would have me, and I would pay their price. They
would collect the tuition for my education in the Black School, and
there would be interest to pay for all the years in which I had been
in default to them. No vengeful deity, outraged at my crimes, could
possibly conceive of greater torments than those which awaited me
at their hands. That one excruciating caress as I wriggled from their
grasp- it seemed to grow more horrible as time went by. It was all I
was willing to taste of their hell and their punishments.
I was startled from my thoughts by the sound of jeering. Six
or seven foolish young men had gathered around me to mock my
outlandish clothes, my strange skin and hair, but most of all, the
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subtle feeling of uncleanliness and revulsion which emanated from
me. They were being drawn to do me enemies’ work, and they had
no idea.
“Go away, “ I told them, “you don’t know what’s going on
here, and you don’t want to pay the price for that.”
One of them threw a stone. I got to my feet, and drew my
sword in a blur of light that could hardly even be seen. They
jumped back. I showed them the tip of my sword. It held a button
from the jacket of the biggest boy.
They ran away, of course, and I walked back to the bar to
wait for sunset with a mug of ale.
“Follow me,” said the barman, “He’s through here in the
back.”
I ducked my head in the narrow doorway and went in. The
barman stood in front of a small table where a decrepit old man sat
hunched over a bowl of rock incense.
“Leave us.” I said, and the barman left.
“So you’re a ghost doctor.” I said, and sat down at the table
opposite the old man. He nodded slowly, and produced a feather
from the wide, hanging sleeves of his tunic.
“Any answers you want.” he said, “Anything that’s been
troubling you. I am the ghost doctor. I will fly to the spirit country
and find out what you need from the wise old ones.”
“And what do you ask of me?” I said, “What payment
would you require?”
He licked his lips. “None for me,” he said, “I need nothing
to do this. But for the spirits…”
I nodded for him to continue.
“Twenty heads.” A ‘head’ was a gold coin, in the Provincial
slang. I laughed, and brought my face up very close to his. His tired
old eyes could not face mine. He looked away.
“You are not a ghost doctor.” I told him, “And you never
were.”
I got up and went out to the bar. “You should have tried a
little harder,” I told the barman, “That wouldn’t even have won
over a fool.”
He shrugged. “I told you there were no more ghost doctors,”
he said.
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I heard the thumping and the crashing as they beat my bed
with their homemade clubs. If you can’t make money from a
traveler one way, there are always other ways. But I was not in my
bed at all, I was standing outside the inn with a burning torch in my
hand. And it was rather too late for them to figure that out.
The straw roof caught easily, and soon the windows were
cracking from the heat. I had been the only guest, but the barman
and his cronies were trapped inside. One of them jumped from my
second story window in a shower of glass, burning and shrieking. I
stabbed him in the back where he fell. No one else made it out.
A young man stood in the corner of my vision. I judged him
to be about thirteen years of age.
“Go away,” I told him, “I’ve killed enough of you Dwellim
for one night.”
He was one of the boys who had taunted me. I wondered
why he wasn’t scared of my sword.
“If you are looking for a ghost doctor as they say,” he told
me, “Then there is only one place to look, and one person to take
you there.”
I turned to look at him. “I suppose that’s you.”
“For the right coin it is.” he said, “My name is Illye. I scout
in these hills for the hunting parties from the south. More than once
I have crossed into the Devil Hills, to the north, ignoring the stories
people tell.”
I was intrigued. “What did you find?” I asked him.
“An old man,” he said, “an old man who lives in a cave,
surrounded by ghosts. I think he is the type of man you are looking
for. I think he is the only one left.”
“If you are lying,” I warned him, “I will sacrifice you to my
devils the next time I need a convenient victim.”
I was in the mood for no further trickery. He swallowed,
hard, but did not waver.
“I will take you to him,” he said, “If we make it there alive.
But I want all of the gold you carry- enough to take me away from
here forever.”
The dead bandits’ bag of coin dangled heavily at my waist.
“I will give it to you.” I said, “On my word. But only once
you take me to the ghost doctor.”
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Chapter Seven- The Devil Hills
As I had expected, this land was not like the Thorp.
But it was not quite an ordinary place, either.
Echoes lingered strangely among the sharp angles of
the peaks. Sounds were distorted. The landscape was subtly
different every time a bank of mist drifted through, as if the fog
could rearrange the hills or change their shapes.
I followed Illye through a light snow up into the hills. He
seemed to know his way as much as anybody could. I kept an eye
on him, and on the rock walls around us, for any sign of a trap or an
ambush. My wards were dormant, as they usually were when I was
awake. They drained too much of my strength if I kept them up at
all times.
“How far are we going?” I asked the boy.
“It’s hard to tell.” he said, “Distances are not consistent
here.”
“Why do your ghost doctors live here?” I asked him,
“Wouldn’t they have been more use down in the villages?”
“They would have been even more trouble in the villages.”
he said, “They stayed in the Devil Hills to catch the spirits and
compel them into service. The people benefited, for a time. When a
man had a problem , he would walk into these hills and try to find a
ghost doctor among the caves. If he was sick, the ghost doctor
would heal him. If he had a question, the ghost doctor would find
the answer. Once or twice in every generation, someone in our
village would have an animal child. A child who acted crazy and
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said strange things and kept to himself. We sent these children into
the Devil Hills. Somehow, some of them made it far enough to find
a ghost doctor and learn his trade. This happened in every village of
the Dwellim.
Then the soldiers came, and we fought them as long as we
could, but eventually our warlords were overwhelmed. The men of
the Provinces had conquered us, or so they thought. For the ghost
doctors remained in the Devil Hills, and they stirred up the people
by saying the spirits were angry at the presence of the foreigners in
our country.
We rebelled too many times. The soldiers broke us, at last,
and those who were not slain were taken into slavery for the rest of
their lives. The ghost doctors were hunted, although the soldiers
were scared of the Hills and their noises. And any family which
sent an animal child to the Hills was taken away. Now people say
that the ghost doctors are gone forever. But I found the last one left
alive.”
“How do you know he is the last?” I asked him.
“He told me so. He asked me to learn his trade from him,
but I refused. I will not stay in the Dwellim country forever.” said
Illye.
“What happened to those people who came to ask questions
and did not make it?” I asked.
“If they were lucky,” he said, “they fell off.” He paused, and
pointed down to our left. The rock wall plunged down hundreds of
feet into the rolling fog. As Illye paused, the fog flowed away to
reveal a deep, broken cavern floor littered with smashed stone and
the white of a skeleton or two. The hills were jagged and gray,
savage and haunted-looking. Circles of mysterious stone monoliths
capped two or three of the peaks. Below the tops of the hills, a
black eagle coasted along the wind, looking for food.
“I hate this place.” said Illye, and we went on.
We made our camp in the shadow of a cliff, to shelter from
the wind. Snow piled up around us as our blue fire burned the last
of the precious powder I had brought. I had kept it safe in a small
bag around my neck through everything that happened. Illye sang
songs and told me the folk tales of his people to pass the time.
“But why are the Devil Hills so dangerous?” I asked him,
“You haven’t told me that.”
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A long, cold aching moan answered my question for me. I
sprang to my feet with drawn sword. “What was that?” I said.
“Sheath your weapon, outlander.” he told me, “It will do
you no good.”
He did not stand, although if it was possible for his skin to
be any paler, I think it would have been. I sat back down, warily.
“That was an…ogre.” he said, struggling for the right word,
“A cannibal giant. They live in the Devil Hills. They are stronger
since the conquest.”
“What are they, exactly?”
He shrugged, uncomfortably. “Some say the first one was an
evil ghost doctor.” he said, “Others say they are the gods of these
Hills. Many of them, if not all of them, used to be men.”
“Will they attack us here?” I asked him.
“They may,” he said, “or rather, It may, for they are solitary
creatures. If it attacks us, we will die. There is no fighting them. If
we can avoid crossing their path, we stand a good chance.”
“Describe them.” I said.
“They are tall,” he told me, “as tall as a tree. And they have
the might of the ghost doctors for commanding wind and storms.
They are thin, and black of color, and their eyes are red. They have
ice for hearts.”
I dismissed the better part of this as folklore. But something
was definitely out there among those hills.
“I can call up powers.” I said, “Spirits of my own, to protect
us.”
He raised an eyebrow at this. “They would not serve you
here.” he said after a time, “This is the country of the ghost doctors
and the tall cannibal beings. It will allow no other magic but theirs.”
I did not believe him, but it was true. I tried to call on the
power of the stars, and I could not. There was something in the
Hills, a stronger power, and it blocked me.
I looked at Illye, and wondered if his blood would be
enough to break the barriers. If it would not, I was at the mercy of
the Hills.
“Do you smell something strange?” he asked me, after we
had not spoken for a time. I sniffed the air. “Strange?” I said, “What
do you mean?”
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“Something strange!” he snapped at me. He breathed in, and
wrinkled his nose. “A sweet smell… a foul smell…”
His face was flushed, and beads of sweat stood out against
his skin.
“Are you feverish?” I asked him. He did not look well at all.
“No, I’m not feverish.” he said, looking at me as if I was
crazy. “I just smell a strange smell.”
“You’re behaving oddly.” I said to him, “I think there’s
something wrong”
“Nothing’s wrong!” he barked, “Smell the air. You’ll see
what I mean! There’s a strange smell in the air!”
He jumped to his feet. A deep, cold moan echoed in the
hills, the same moan we had both heard before. Illye answered it
with a howl of his own, baring his teeth, rolling his eyes up into his
head.
I stood up, drew my sword, and backed up against the rock
wall of the cliff. Obviously, Illye was possessed. But the possessing
spirit was not a true demon, an alien from another world. This thing
was an evil spirit of the earth, a monster perhaps, but a part of the
natural order. I had seen such creatures before.
“I’m coming!” Illye yelled, and launched into a howl that
should have torn out his throat and left him dumb. He bounded off
into the night, up the path, and I did not follow him.
The cannibal giant had chosen Illye, and he had succumbed.
I was alone in the night.
I stood by the fire without sleeping and waited for the dawn.
The wind came up after a few hours, and the snow came with it. A
storm was growing, and I knew what that might mean. The wind
moaned, and I wasn’t sure if it was really the ogre or not. The Hills
were terribly cold, and even my blue fire gave little heat in the tiny
clear area where I was sheltered.
My numb fingers were clumsy on the hilt of my sword. The
snow piled up around my boots, and the footing became difficult.
The conditions for my destruction were being created. Only a
desperate attempt could probably save me now.
I turned to the wet and slippery rock of the cliff. I had
climbed many cliffs before, but this one would not be at all easy. I
found some holds and started to drag myself up as the moaning
began again, much closer and definitely not the wind.
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It was slow going. My hands were too stiff to be agile, and
the rocks were slick. But I found a way to climb, and in a little
while I was twenty or thirty feet above my campsite, where the blue
fire still glowed. I paused, and looked below me. Something large,
yet stooped-over, stepped out of the mist. It was thin and bony and
at least fifteen feet tall. It was not black- rather, its skin was mottled
and white and cracked. Thin tufts of white hair still clung to its
large, bulb-like skull. Its eyes were a light yellowish green which
glinted brightly in the light of the blue fire as it looked around my
campsite. Its nose and part of its face and a section of its ribs had
been chewed away, and the torn flesh hung in ribbons beside the
ribbons of cloth rags. Its teeth were jagged and huge. It took a
moment to determine that I wasn’t there. Then it threw its head up
and howled into the howling of the storm. I saw its eyes more
clearly as it screamed.
This creature was Illye.
I climbed frantically, and several times I almost fell. The
thing was just behind me, and its long fingers brushed against my
boots as I pulled myself up onto a ledge. I had enough time to draw
my sword and plunge its tip into the creature’s right eye as it came
up at me.
The ogre screamed, and jerked its head back, ripping my
sword out of my hands. I ran along the ledge, looking for a clear
way to keep moving upward. I found a natural path, perhaps a goat
trail, and took it as the creature pulled itself up onto the ledge. My
sword-tip dissolved in the ogre’s eye and the weapon fell over the
edge of the cliff, forever useless to me now. The being was unhurt.
I screamed invocations and maledictions, and they did
nothing. The creature’s head came up into view again, and it’s
yellow-green eyes fixed hungrily on me. The ogre that had been
Illye moaned and threw one leg up over the next ridge I had
climbed onto. I followed the goat trail higher onto another ridge and
came to a small boulder. As the ogre came up behind me I put my
shoulder to the rock and pushed as hard as I could. The rock
tumbled over and struck the ogre in the chest, knocking it back. It
lost its hold on the rocks and slid down to one of the lower ridges. I
heard its frustrated cry as I climbed further, going so fast I almost
lost my footing more than once.
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Then I saw the fissure in the rock wall. It wasn’t quite a
cave, it was too narrow. There was only a thin gap in the wall in
front of me, a space wide enough to squeeze into and deep enough
to hide in. I pushed myself into the fissure backwards as the
creature came back up to face me once again.
Its long arms could almost reach me, but not quite. The
bony fingers brushed my chest repeatedly. It wouldn’t give up.
Even though it obviously couldn’t get through to me, it kept
stretching, touching me with its fingertips as if this could alleviate
its hunger. Its gray tongue hung over its lips, and drool poured out
and turned into ice on the rock below.
Its eyes were not blank or empty or inhuman at all; they
were eager. Its mouth moved as if it were trying to form words.
And then a word came out, slow and stretched-
“Please,” it said to me, “Please…”
I shuddered, and pressed myself further back against the
wall of the rock. I could smell the foul, sweet breath of the creature
as its mist puffed out into the air.
The ogre screamed in frustration and lunged at me. It was a
tremendous, powerful effort and its fingers reached far enough to
catch the front of my shirt. It pulled, trying to drag me out of the
fissure. Its mouth opened and closed, and it shook its head from
side to side. I pulled back, and put my feet against the rock walls
for leverage. The muscles in the monster’s arm strained to pull me
forward. I slid forward a little, and it opened its mouth wide to
receive me, to tear as huge a chunk out of me as it could with the
first bite. Long strands of spit hung from its lips, and its eyes grew
very wide. I threw my weight back, and regained my lost ground,
but the shirt strained and stretched between us.
The thing started to gurgle, deep in its throat. I could feel
the immense weight of the rock on either side of me, holding me in.
There was no way out in any direction, no hope of escape. I could
barely even move between the massive walls of my hiding place.
No clever plan could save me now, all I could do was hold myself
in the fissure and stay alive from one moment to the next. The ogre
braced itself and pulled, and I pressed my weight back against the
wall.
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My shirt ripped, and the creature pulled it away from me,
leaving me unprotected against the cold. It cried out mournfully,
and lunged again, and its fingertips brushed against my bare chest.
“Please,” it said again, “please…”
Then it paused, and pulled back as if to think. It lifted its
hands high into the air and twisted them into strange shapes which
could only have a magical significance. The wind howled more
ferociously, and the ogre answered it in triumph. Snow and
devastating cold blew in at me together. The creature was using its
magic to do what its arms could not do. It was going to freeze me
death, and pull me out of the fissure when I collapsed. It looked at
me with Illye’s eyes and laughed, like a donkey braying.
I tried my power again, and I could not find it. Then I
remembered the one source of power I had left, the same type of
power I had called on in the oubliette when there was no other
choice. I could absorb Doll’s dreams and feed on them for energy.
Then this creature would discover what I could do.
I cast my mind out, and looked for the rhythm of Doll’s
slow dead dreams. I almost caught it. But I was so cold, far colder
than I could possibly be, and I felt myself falling into a fatally deep
chasm. My head swirled, and I drifted into dreamlike stupor. I
could not clear my head. I wondered, vaguely, if it might not be
better this way. What if the demons had no power in this region
where my sorcery was useless? What if they could not touch my
soul if I happened to die here? It would not much matter how I died,
if I could be free. There could be no question of a normal life for
me, not with my long record of crimes. Maybe it would be better
this way, to fall here and cheat my enemies of what I owed them.
But I could not be certain! My head cleared a little, at that
thought. There was no way to be sure. I could not accept even the
slightest risk that dying now would deliver me into their hands.
They would devour me so much more slowly and more completely
than any ogre ever could.
I felt my thoughts clear even as I sagged and fell to the floor
of the fissure. The ogre grabbed me by one arm and pulled me out
onto the snow-covered ledge. It sang its triumph to the hills with a
long, echoing cry. Then its head darted in like a fish toward the soft
meat of my stomach. Desperately, I wrapped myself around its
ankle and rolled. I wasn’t strong enough to unbalance the creature,
but I fell off the ledge and hung out into open space, dangling over
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the cliff edge. The thing looked down at me in surprise, and tried to
shake me off. Then it thought better of that, as it did not wish to
lose its meal, so it bent over to pull me up by my arms.
The monster’s massive frame was overbalanced now, with
too much of its weight hanging over the edge of the cliff. But I
didn’t realize that, for I was as eager to regain my footing as the
ogre was to regain my flesh. I scrambled to get a place on the rock
wall to put my feet against so I could pull myself up. The ogre tried
to lift me up by my arms at the same time. But I was still attached
to its ankle, and my weight pulled the creature over.
It flailed at the air for a moment, shocked, then it tumbled
over the cliff-edge, taking me with it. We fell into empty air as it
cried out in surprise and rage.
We struck the first ridge and kept going, but the impact was
jarring. The ogre was underneath me now, and its body had taken
most of the shock. Even as we fell, its long fingers curled around
my arm and leg to hold me, to make sure I didn’t get away. We
struck the next ridge, and bounced against the rock slope several
times before once again falling into open air.
This was absolute vertigo, with no point of reference, no up
or down, only the two of us entangled and soaring into nothingness.
We slammed against a boulder, which cracked at the impact of the
creature’s spine. I had no time to be shocked or even impressed by
this. We stopped our free-fall and went into a roll, tumbling down
the slope to the site of my campfire, toward the sheer drop of the
cliff beyond that.
The open space where I had camped finally stopped us, but
only after another long fall through the air. When the ogre struck
the rock underneath me I was thrown free, and I landed, stunned, at
the edge of the sheer cliff. I still thought I was falling for a long
time. The world soared around me, and moved wildly in every other
direction now that the space underneath me was solid again at last.
Finally, I understood that I had stopped falling, and that my
life might still be in danger. I propped myself up, retching, on one
elbow. The ogre was still flat on its back by the campfire,
unconscious or dead.
Could it be dead? I knew I could not run from it, and
finishing it off now was my only real chance. But my head was
reeling, and the pain rolled over me repeatedly. I could hardly see
for the pain in my head alone. Somehow, I managed to stand up.
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The creature was still breathing, and its left arm was starting to
twitch and move. I went out to the campfire and pulled out a rock,
glowing blue on one end from the fire’s intense enchanted heat.
“You can have this to eat!” I said to Illye, with tears rolling
down my cheek. I shoved the rock deep down its throat, ignoring
the smell of my fingers burning. It made choking noises, and smoke
poured out of its mouth while its huge body flopped and writhed. I
pulled out more stones from the fire, holding them by the cool end
but being burned nonetheless. I pushed every one of these down its
mouth, and saw its eyes roll up while it struggled for air.
Finally, the ogre stiffened and lay still. I took every stone
from the fire, and filled the creature’s mouth until they overflowed
and its open jaws held a blue campfire. Then I collapsed against the
wall of the cliff, sobbing with exhaustion and pain.
Time passed. I wrapped my arms around myself against the
cold. Then the ogre’s left leg bent as if to brace itself to stand. I
stared at it with wide eyes. Could this be a last spasm of the
muscles? No, its eyes were open now, and glowing with life and
hunger once again. I got to my feet a moment before it could, and
looked frantically around. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to
hide, no weapon in sight.
The ogre retched, and burning blue rocks poured out of its
mouth onto the ground. It coughed them all out, one by one, then
took a step in my direction on still uncertain feet.
I backed up, eyeing the thing warily. It was apparently
unkillable, and that probably meant I would die. But it was a little
slower now, stunned and disoriented. It did not charge me
immediately. I kept backing up the path to the peak. Illye and I
would have taken this path in the morning. We still were, in a
manner of speaking.
The ogre was growling with a low voice and advancing on
me slowly. It wouldn’t be long until it regained its confidence. I
kept going, hoping that something would happen to change the
balance between us. But I could hardly imagine what could.
Then a desperate hope occurred to me. The thing was
ravenously hungry, that was obvious. Once it lost its caution again,
it would rush me without forethought.
- 148 -

I stepped to the edge of the cliff, and stopped. For a
moment, it stopped too. It looked me over. It cocked its head
quizzically to one side.
Then it charged me with outstretched arms and gaping
mouth. I jumped out of the way at the last moment. It tried to stop,
but by that point it had too much momentum. I heard one final
scream as it plummeted over the cliff.
- 149 -

Chapter Eight- The Last Ghost Doctor
Iwoke up, sputtering, as a harsh tea was poured down
my throat. The world faded and came clear and changed
shape in front of my eyes, so I closed them again. I was
wrapped in heavy furs on the floor of a cave.
“Don’t sit up,” said a voice, in the Provincial language, “and
don’t try to open your eyes. You were shirtless in the cold for a
long time, and you are ill.”
“More than you know.” I muttered, and rested against the
furs. I had lost my suspicion, for the time being. Whoever this was,
he wasn’t trying to kill me, and I had done enough fighting on the
mountainside.
Then I realized who this must be. I opened my eyes for a
moment, and they briefly focused on a thin old man wearing red
rags. I knew this man was the ghost doctor.
“How did you find me?” I asked him. He poured more of
the sharp-tasting tea between my lips.
“I head you fighting the Up’Kalpi’Ko,” he said, “I arrived
too late to aid you, unfortunately. But I found you, passed out,
under a snowdrift.”
“Would you have worked magic on it?” I asked him,
remembering Illye’s comment. I opened my eyes again.
“Not on this beast.” he said, and held up an ax with a
gleaming silver head, crusted with black blood.
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“The only way to kill them,” he said, “is to dismember them
with a weapon like this.” Some of the blood looked fresh.
“Did you actually kill that thing?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, “It crawled back up looking for you, after a
while.”
“That was the boy named Illye.” I told him.
“I know.” he said, “It is unfortunate. I had hoped to prevail
upon him to learn from me. He was not an animal child, but he was
the only person to come to me here in a long time.”
“I came here looking for you.” I said, closing my eyes. “I
came from very far away.”
“You certainly don’t look like the foreigners I’m
accustomed to.” he said, “Where is your homeland?”
“A thousand miles.” I said, “Two thousand miles. I’m not
sure. It’s to the west.”
“And why did you come looking for me? How did you even
know about me at all?”
“I didn’t, exactly. There was a merchant from the Western
Continent who came here a long time ago. He wrote of the ghost
doctors, and I realized I had need of one.”
“Because you have no shadow.” he said. He had known why
I was here all along.
“Yes.” I told him. He was bustling around in the cave,
which was furnished like a small cabin and heated somehow.
“You are in thrall to the things that don’t come from here.”
he said.
“I am in thrall to no one!” I insisted, “But they do have a
piece of me. I owe them a debt, and I do not intend to pay it.”
“You’re exciting yourself.” he said calmly, “You need to
rest now.”
He said a word or two in a strange language, and I was
asleep.
He wouldn’t let me wake up again for several days. My
head cleared only when he fed me tea or soup. The rest of the time,
I floated in a dreamless sleep, more deeply relaxing and healing
than any sleep I had known in years. I awoke strong and healthy, if
a little weak in the knees from my enforced inactivity.
“I can’t remember the last time I rested like that.” I said to
him. I could see him clearly now. He was body was shriveled and
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corpselike, but his bright, lively eyes seemed to blaze out of his
skull. His head was shaved, and filthy red rags hung loosely around
him. He wore pounds of jewels and chains and talismans and
trinkets. His arms, legs, face and chest were tattooed with fading
blue designs, abstract whorls and angles and spirals and an
occasional animal-like shape. Like all the Dwellim, he had milkwhite
skin and green eyes. Though his arms and legs were as thin as
kindling, there was taut wiry muscle over the bone.
“That sleep was the easiest part of the work we must do.” he
told me. He was sitting in the corner on a pile of furs, methodically
cleaning an old piece of bone. “Healing and prophecy are my
vocations. I can walk inside the ghost of a man and find the small
speck of black flaw in him and chew it out. I can bring back his
ghost when it is lost in the tooth of a dog. I can bring it back from
far away. But your case is difficult. You have no shadow. I assume
it is in the possession of the outside beings. I can see them hovering
over you like squealing little souls. It won’t be easy.”
“Then you will recapture my shadow for me?” I had not
known, all this time, whether or not a ghost doctor would even
attempt such a task.
“If you can pay me,” he said, “and I think that you can.
There is always an item of value, however insignificant it may seem
to the owner. It is not a matter of coin. I will choose another thing
of yours, and you will leave it as a gift.”
He blew some dust from the bone and threw it out the cave
mouth over the cliff. Then he picked up another one from a small
pile. He blew on it three times, then started to polish it.
“What do you want that is mine?” I asked him. I owned
nothing but the skull of Doll, which had been broken nearly in two
in my fall from the cliff. It still hung at my waist, but it was not in
good condition.
“We will discuss that later.” said the ghost doctor. “First, we
must make ourselves known to each other. My name is now Milosh
Op’Kalpi’Kodungar, which means He Who Will Be The Last To
Slay The Cannibal Giants. I am the only man left alive to carry on
the tradition of the Dwellim ghost doctors. The rest have been
killed, or burned, or caged until they starved. There will be no
others now. The tradition is dead.”
“My name is Michael.” I said, “I have no last name, because
I was born a peasant. Some people call me Michael the
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Necromancer. I was a student at a college of sorcery called the
Black School. My fellow students betrayed me so that I would pay
the schools’ tuition- the soul of the last man to leave on graduation
day. But I escaped, although I left my shadow behind with them.
Now they hover around me, and work up the urge in others to hunt
me down. They hope to bring about my death, so they can eat my
soul and punish me for my defiance. If I could have my shadow
back, I believe they would lose their hold over me. In the course of
escaping their manipulations, I have taken thousands of lives. I
have betrayed and lied and plotted as much as any demon.”
I wanted him to know the whole truth about me. It might be
necessary.
“That is good to know,” he said, “it will help me. Your
Dead House will be full. It will be crowded.”
I had no idea what he meant, but I let him talk. Every
system has its own rules, its own vantage-point and picture of the
world. I would not challenge his.
“The ritual is complicated.” he said, “We must purify
ourselves for three days by abstaining from nourishment.”
“No food?” I asked him. I had a sudden, black memory of
the oubliette. Of starving and forgetting and raving.
“No food.” he said, “We must be clean and empty for this
journey. The helping-spirits must see no sign of the human upon us.
It disgusts them that we eat flesh. It disgusts them that we chew
upon the growing plants. These things are repulsive to them. We
will not indulge in them.”
I was willing, but it was not an easy thought. I had spent too
many long days without food. This would surely bring back the
nightmares, which had been fading away.
“And you must consider something.” Milosh said, “You
must consider what will happen if I succeed. You have known no
other life than this for many years, is that not so?”
“It is so.” I told him, “This has been my life since I was a
young man.”
“You are still a young man now.” he said, “You might do
any number of things if you are free. Although I would not advise
you to return to the places you know. People might remember, and
hate you for the things you have done.”
“I don’t know.” I said, “My only concern right now is to
free myself of this at any cost. I have not given it much thought, but
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I had considered becoming a monk in the service of some charitable
god. Or simply falling on my sword.”
The ghost doctor laughed. “You don’t own a sword.” he
said, “And I think you might want to give the matter more thought.
These crimes to which you attach so much importance will
disappear like ripples in a pond. You have added only a little to the
long history of murders and tragedies. It is not as important as you
believe.”
“Did I say it was important?” I asked him, “In any case, I
cannot afford to hope more than is prudent.”
The ghost doctor let another few days go by before he went
any further with our plans. During that time he told me stories of
the Dwellim and their heroic past, their great heroes and tragedies
and their gods. They worshipped a strangely cold pantheon of
impersonal forces which were sometimes seized with madness and
incarnated as human beings. These people then became demigods,
ferocious and unstable but capable of leading their tribes to great
victories. It was an unusual mythology.
“Can you tell me something about the journey you spoke
of?” I asked him one afternoon as we were cutting up some
mountain vegetables for a stew.
“I will take this journey alone,” he said, “While you sleep in
a trance. I will fly into the country of your ghost and journey to the
Keep at the Centerpoint where all the facets of your self are
accessible. To do this, I must pass through several worlds- the Gate
of the Purple Sky, the Gate of Fire and Mist, and the Under Heaven
Country. From there we will try to reach the Place of Gold, and
your House of the Dead, and then the Keep itself. Inside the Keep,
I can pull your shadow back to you by the translucent thread which
still connects it to the keep. You will be able to see me while I am
within your ghost country. But you may not speak to me unless I
call on you.”
I was uncomfortable with this. But I had no choice. I had
come too far, I could not give up my only chance.
“We must discuss the gift which you will leave with me.”
said Milosh.
“I cannot imagine what I have for you.” I said, “But I will
pay whatever you require.”
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“You will leave me the skull which you carry with you. I
need a skull to make a certain powder, and I need the ghost as a
servant and a helper.”
“I have known this ghost for some time.” I told him, “I must
discuss your terms with him.”
This was only a formality, a way of showing Doll respect.
To get my shadow back, I would sacrifice Doll or anyone else.
We spoke when Milosh was out. I told Doll that I was
bartering him in exchange for my shadow, or at least a chance at its
recovery. He was philosophical.
“I knew you would use me in some way,” he told me, “and I
feared, without telling you, what that way would be. This is better
than what you offered the others in the oubliette.”
“He will grind your skull to a powder.” I said, “This does
not concern you?”
“I can’t imagine why it should,” he told me, “You said
yourself that it was only a focal point. When he does not have need
of me, I will still dream as I do now?”
“Yes,” I said, “I believe so.”
“My death has been much stranger than my life.” he said.
And that was the last time he spoke with me.
Milosh performed a dance and a ceremony of bell-ringing to
draw Doll’s ghost into an old gourd. Then he ground up the skull
with a mortar and pestle.
“We will stop eating now,” he told me, “so we do not
disgust the spirits.”
He prepared us a bright red concoction which made my face
go numb and my throat burn for hours. We sipped it repeatedly over
the next few days. I started to lose sight of the barrier between
sleeping and waking.
I fell in and out of darkly vivid dreams in which cold cities
were destroyed on the border between light and endless night.
I fell in and out of the oubliette. I was Michael; I was not
Michael but an anonymous starving prisoner.
I was an old bone, drying up comfortably as the last shreds
of my former owner’s flesh were devoured by microscopic
creatures.
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I was a ghost, dragged out of pointless and horrifying
dreams into the more horrifying reality of total disintegration at
Michael’s hands.
I was a spider which was never truly a spider, consuming
one of my own kind, my lover, in frustration at allowing this human
to escape once again.
I was a fanatic, determined to exact revenge on this massmurderer
Michael and all who had ever helped him.
I was a child in the womb, not even a human being yet but
an unformed animal, waiting to be born and given this name.
I was layers of old dirt and stone and petrified bones, and
slow water seeping between the grains of soil.
He never warned me that he was about to start the ritual. I
woke up from one dream into another dream, a trance in which I
was paralyzed and my arms hung limply at my side. The ghost
doctor had clothed himself in ritual garb. He wore a cloak that was
black with the feathers of the mountain eagles, and a mask made
from the face of a cannibal giant with an eagle’s beak attached. He
looked like some horrific bird-person, and he danced a strange,
hopping dance while he played on his cannibal-drum. This, too, was
made of the flesh of an unlucky ogre, stretched tight over a frame of
bone.
Ogre’s-teeth and eagle talons hung from his cloak in many
layers of necklaces. Dried tongues and eyes poked between the
black feathers. He did not look like a human being.
“I call upon you!” he sang. His voice wavered and dropped
and soared like a musical instrument. He cried like a bird and he
growled and moaned like an ogre, giving his song a strange, offbeat
rhythm.
“I call upon you! Be here before my eyes and show
yourself! I call upon you!”
He stamped his feet and shuffled and beat his drum of
transformed human skin. His head jerked like a bird’s beak,
scanning the world for food or danger.
“I call upon you!”
He dropped to his knees and reverted to the Dwellim
tongue. Although I did not speak this language, I understood.
“I am the man-eating bird who lives on the side of the
mountain! Many times I have drunk my fill of human blood! Eyes
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are sweet fruits to the eater of carrion! Full is my nest with the
scraps of my prey!”
He shook and his hands waved in the air like snakes, and
sweat glistened on his body.
“I am coming to you! Spirits who guide me, show me your
face!”
Now his eyes focused on something beyond what I could
see. He spoke one line again and again, the words tripping and
running over each other and merging. I cannot remember what it
was.
His body tensed and arched and twisted. His jaw opened and
clenched and opened and stretched; I could see its outline just
below the beak of the mountain eagle.
I felt myself soaring. The ground rushed like a current of
wind. The walls followed me at first, then went away. We were in
another world.
But then our own world pulled us back. Its hold was too
strong to be lightly shrugged away. The cave swirled and fell
through vast spaces of open air, but its walls were around us again.
The ghost doctor was transforming. The feathers on his cloak fell
away from him while real feathers, black and sleek, grew from his
skin. The beak fused to his face, then cracked and steamed and fell
away. A real beak pushed the folds of his human flesh aside; poked
its way through his face like a child being born, slick with blood,
and wet. The eyes and skin of the ogre stretched tight against the
face of the man. They bubbled with heat from an unseen source.
They melted and stuck to him, liquid then solid dry skin. The dead
eyes of the ogre stared at nothing, then came awake with fierce, yet
human, life.
The walls of the cave crumbled from rock into sand. We fell
into the brilliantly purple sky of an unknown world. I myself was
nowhere. I could see through the ghost doctor’s eyes.
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Chapter Nine- Through The Gate Of The Purple Sky
For a long time, we fell. Violet clouds of thick and
clinging mist were piled and stacked and spiraled
end-on-end and as we fell they clung and pulled at us.
Blue stars and specks of light, small and shining, popped in and out
of life around our eyes. From time to time we tumbled into vast
explosions without heat which fed themselves on dark blue mist
pouring from gray dots and flaring into patterns of geometric flame.
I realized that I was not there, not falling in this world of
purple and blue, mist and fire. It was only him, Milosh the ghost
doctor, in the shape of a monstrous bird. He fell through miles of
mist and flame before he learned his wings. A wind caught him, a
wind of tiny lights like grains of sand, and he found his balance. He
tried to fly. And then he flew. The wind of lights was underneath
him, and he was in control.
He spiraled down through blue and red and black. The
grains of light went with him, and their wind was his. Behind his
wings, a long and shining row of sparkles gleamed.
There was a great burst of black. A speck of darkness had
appeared in a blue cloud and burst. The black became a wave, and
washed across the sky and bounded back. The transparent darkness
stretched until it broke and fell like crystal shards.
There was no ground in sight. Milosh dove through shapes
and shades and images of lives in worlds which could not be our
own. Their stories flickered and we passed them by. Three newer
specks appeared. They didn’t burst. These different specks had
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wings and winds of light behind them too. They followed after
Milosh as he dove.
On the top of a purple cloud, the ghost doctor stopped. He
turned and looked above him at the other birds. They were still
small, but getting larger. He kneaded the cloud with his sharp talons
and worked it into a solid, doughy substance he could stand on.
They fell on him like arrows. There was no doubt, from the
first moment, that they were trying to destroy him. Their great
violet wings beat the air as their talons raked at his face and their
beaks plunged at his eyes. The winds of gleaming light became a
wild cloud where currents crashed against each other, where lights
swirled as if four banks of stars had come together in a terrible
collision. He spread his wings. The birds tore at him with a
ferocious rage, but he did not fight. He stretched his wings out and
folded them over his attackers and held them close. When he
unfolded his wings again, they were dead.
Small birds, baby birds, black eagles like Milosh, had
hatched from inside their skulls and poked their way out through
the eyes. They squawked for food like any newborn, and Milosh fed
them. He pecked at the dead birds and tore off thin strips of
glistening purple flesh which almost glowed against the light. The
strips of skin jerked and twitched and became long, living worms
and Milosh fed them one by one to his six new children.
The black birds grew. They ate the purple worms as fast as
their strange father could feed them, and they grew plump from the
meal. They pushed themselves out from the hollow sockets of the
dead birds’ eyes, and walked on the faces of their unfortunate hosts,
which turned soft and soaked with an unknown liquid where they
walked. The dead dissolved, and the part of their flesh that did not
fall down through the purple cloud became a purple mist, and
joined the cloud in its flowing.
The six new birds walked up and climbed their fathers’
back. He let them walk along his spine until they reached his beak,
then he snatched at them, one by one. They squawked as he
swallowed them whole. Deep in his stomach, a greenish light began
to glow. It turned the soft feathers of his underbelly to an emerald
darkness.
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Feathers, black and purple, floated on the wind. The
currents of light had joined and become one. The wind belonged to
Milosh once again.
He coasted down on that glittering wind and passed great,
transparent purple cities in the clouds, where hollow wooden
faceless men walked among temples with columns and palaces of
many tiers. They fought each other in some of the cities, and
hacked at each other with axes, and the dark red wood splintered
and flew up into the sky and burst around the ghost doctors’ head
before falling as liquid flame.
He ignored them all. There was an ocean below us, I could
see it now, a sea of violet in a constant, rolling boil. Below the
waves, something writhed and jerked and parts of it evaporated,
constantly, in violent explosions of red mist. We flew above the
surface, no more than twenty feet away from all of this, and when
Milosh glanced at the sea I caught a glimpse of tortured faces and
arms and legs, flailing frantically beneath the waves. When one of
them broke the surface, however briefly, the part that touched the
air was instantly destroyed. The scarlet mist escaped and floated
away to join the giant banks of clouds above us in the sky.
There was land ahead of us, a flat and featureless plain of
dirt as black as my own hair. Milosh flew above the boiling sea
until we came to this. Then he touched down on the ground, and his
legs stretched, and his talons grew longer and turned into toes, and
his beak withdrew inside his face and was swallowed by the fusing
flaps of skin.
His feathers pulled back into his body like cats’ claws, but
they pinched him as they went in, and left small dots of oozing
blood. The blood clotted instantly, and became solid, and waved
like hair in the wind as it grew and merged together into a red cloak
like that which he usually wore. He was himself again, the ghost
doctor, a human being. And yet his stomach had not returned to
normal.
It still glowed, like jade rather than emerald now, without
the feathers to obscure its light. Milosh took his right hand and
made a shape with his fingers. He did the same with his left. Then
he plunged his hands into his abdomen as if it were a shallow pool.
He caught a hold of the jade-green glow and worked it with his
hands, kneading it as he had kneaded the cloud not long before. The
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light became an oval as he pulled it out, and the oval grew a round
lump on one end, and four other lumps, gelatinous and green. He
placed the thing on the ground and it gripped on the black soil, and
stuck to it, and kept growing. Soon there was a small man, with
arms and legs and a head. This creature was not completely solid,
but translucent, reflecting some part of the light from the purple
sky. Its green dissolved away and flowed out of it at its feet and was
absorbed by the black earth, which made a slurping and hissing
noise while it drank.
Now the being was the color of light reflected on water, and
it spoke.
“I am the Past Six.” it said to Milosh, “I am your children.
What do you ask of me first?”
“Allow me to share in your essence.” said the ghost doctor,
“If I assume your form, it will go easier with me in this world.”
The Past Six touched Milosh with its jelly-hand. A bubble
of air grew where its heart would have been if it were human. The
bubble rose and darted to its fingertips, and entered the ghost doctor
at the center of his lower abdomen. Here it grew, and as it grew it
breathed a counterpoint to its father’s breath. They slowed down,
and adjusted their breathing till they matched. The ball expanded,
and filled his limbs, and grew and breathed within his head. Then
once again, the ghost doctor as a human being was gone. Now two
translucent glowing beings stood side by side, the tall one from
whose eyes I could see, and the short one which called itself the
Past Six. They began to walk on the black ground, headed for the
distant horizon. Along its edge, several turning planets hung above
the earth.
I had been told of these by the demons, and I had seen such
things in the visions brought on by starvation in the oubliette. There
are other worlds, like our own, although most of them are without
life or the possibility of life. These worlds hung in the sky and
turned as slowly as mud flowing in a riverbed.
Milosh and the Past Six walked on into the flat black plain
and paid no heed to the planets or the floating cities in the sky.
They were watching the ground, which split suddenly ahead of their
feet and opened into a fiery, gaping wound. There was liquid rock
inside this fissure, magma from the earth’s heart, bubbling up and
blazing. In some places, a black crust had formed, which steamed
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fitfully and gave off small explosions of melted stone, bright and
stretched like taffy.
“This way,” said the Past Six, and pointed ahead to a spot
on the horizon where the lava poured into a great basin I had not
seen until then. The fiery liquid struck the ground, rolled, and
spread. They walked along the edge of the fissure until they came
up to this spot, then they stopped and watched.
There was a city inside the basin, transparent like the others
but made of a light-green substance like glass. It looked small for
some reason, as if the perspective was distorted. Its inhabitants
were naked and faceless, but made of living flesh.
They tried to run, but there was no time at all. The lava
caught them where they fled or where they stood, and burned them
alive. Their city melted, cracked, and fused in the lava in outlandish
shapes. One of the melting palaces arched up fantastically to the
sky as a long strand of lava climbed it and pushed it along. This
impossible arch stretched all the way to the smallest of the planets
and made a bridge, from which hung twisted shapes of fused glass
and molten rock.
“We must wait till it cools.” said the Past Six. They waited a
long time. The lava raged for hours, it seemed. Some of the people
were disintegrated by its terrible heat, while others were trapped in
the glass buildings as they melted. These people were frozen into
horrifying caricatures behind the glass, or up to their waists in the
glass as it melted, with their hands stretched out in hopeless appeal
or pushing pointlessly at their sudden prisons. They melted, like
wax, after a time, and their heads and limbs sagged pitifully against
the green walls and sizzled and ran.
They cooled in strange, altered shapes with many strings of
skin stretching in every direction. They did not seem to have any
internal organs. The lava stopped bubbling and turned sluggish. It
congealed into a glossy black stone. After a while, it stopped
steaming.
“It is ready now.” said the Past Six. He walked out onto the
black rock, and Milosh followed. They walked among the ruins of
the green city, and did not stop. The Past Six did not even look, but
Milosh glanced at the destruction as he went by.
The climb took far longer than I would have guessed. The
bridge did not seem so long, and the planet, impossible as it might
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seem, had not looked to be very high in the sky. But they were
climbing for days.
The ghost doctor and the Past Six walked along the bridge
of cold black lava and twisted green glass without speaking. When
night came, the shades of red and violet became a deep purple that
was almost black, and stars reeled and stumbled like drunk men
across the skies.
The ghost doctor watched the patterns and waited while his
companion slept, a congealed glowing pool which clung to the sides
of the great bridge, high above the black ground below.
The dawn was a red shining in one corner of the sky. I could
see no sun, but the light spread across the horizon and the drunken
stars stopped their chaotic reeling and faded into the light. The sky
regained its lighter purple shade and many clouds, and once again I
could see the explosions of the black dots and the elaborate, crystallike
formations of fire leaping across the empty spaces.
The light stirred the Past Six and heated him into life. He
grew into a man-like shape again, and briefly became a light-green
color until his body steamed and the green shades melted away. He
turned his head to the bridge and the path in front of him, but
Milosh was watching the ground.
Far below us, the black dirt had sprouted dark stalks which
grew and twisted around each other and merged into new shapes as
they spread. They braided and curled and made unusual angles
when they touched, and they budded too. These buds were hard to
see from our height at first, but after a while I could tell that they
were growing flesh. The buds grew big until they were too big for
the black stalks, then they broke off and fell to the ground and
stretched themselves into the naked faceless people we had seen the
day before. These people tore at the black stalks which had
spawned them, clawing the dirt away to reveal the green glass
underneath. Soon they were hard at work pushing and pulling these
glass stalks into buildings.
Milosh stood up, and with the Past Six, he continued his
journey up the bridge. After that first morning, we were too high in
the sky to observe what happened on the ground.
Every night, it was the same. The Past Six dissolved and
clung to the bridge while the stars veered crazily from side to side
and the sky spun. Milosh observed it all, in silence, alone. Every
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morning when the light appeared again, the Past Six was revived
and the two of them continued on their journey.
After several days, the planet loomed large before them and
its features could more easily be made out. This world was made of
swirling mist and massive storms, where lightning played across
many miles of cloud bank. The lightning struck something
flammable from time to time, and indescribable waves of churning
flame leapt from one end of the world to the other.
The Past Six pointed at the flames.
“She is probably there.” he said.
“Yes,” said the ghost doctor, “I had expected her to be
waiting for me.” He looked at his hand, translucent and shimmering
with watery light. A shape grew from either end, like a long staff,
and he carried this with him as they went on.
“She will not aid you,” said the Past Six, “She may seek to
destroy you.”
“I will pass through the Gate of Fire and Mist whether she
aids me or not.” said the ghost doctor.
They followed the bridge to the planet’s edge, and to my
surprise I saw that the bridge went through the planet’s
insubstantial surface, straight through the mist to some unknown
center.
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Chapter Ten- Fire And Mist
Now that they were within the planet, Milosh and the
Past Six were enveloped in tendrils of color,
snakelike and sinuous. Yellow, green, white, red
and other shades mingled together, and as they flowed in their own
currents, they carried things with them which I could not yet see.
There were black dots in the air, like those on the world down
below. They floated and danced on the currents, and hovered in the
mist.
I thought I saw shapes and faces in those shifting colors, but
that is not surprising. Men often see faces in random things. Before
long, the planet had surrounded Milosh and the Past Six
completely. When the ghost doctor turned around, he could no
longer see the other world with its purple sky behind him.
Far away, behind layers of atmosphere, the lightning flared
and the firestorms roared. The ghost doctor and the Past Six did not
act at all concerned until the flashing arcs of light moved closer and
played around the bridge.
“ Hurry,” said the Past Six, and Milosh lifted his staff of
watery light and made a bubble around them. A lightning bolt
burned through some of the black dots and a sheet of flame burst
out.
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The sky became fire, and for as far as I could see, even the
mist was consumed in flame. The ghost doctor held his ground
against the onslaught, and in time it began to fade. But as soon as
the strands of colored mist began to flow into the spaces between
the remaining tongues of flame, I saw what they had been carrying
all along. Small crystals were inside the mist, and growing larger.
Soon they were the size of a man’s head, and sprouting thin
black legs which stretched out behind them as they dove through
the air towards Milosh and the Past Six. At the last moment before
impact, they reversed direction, and their legs poked at the shield
which still surrounded the two on the bridge.
The shield faltered, and collapsed. Now the ghost doctor
struggled to defend himself with his staff of light, while the crystals
poked at him and tried to pierce him with their legs. The Past Six
had been knocked down by three of them, and he writhed on the
bridge as they inserted their legs into his head and body. Some of
his light flowed up through their legs and lit the crystals from
within, and as they grew stronger and more radiant, he grew weaker
and more dim.
The ghost doctor knocked his own attackers away with such
force that they were hurled into the withdrawing flame and
destroyed in explosions of tiny shards. Then he used his staff to
impale one of the creatures attacking the Past Six. He pulled all the
light out of it, and it made a high whine of protest.
The other crystals withdrew their legs from their victim’s
body and turned to face the ghost doctor. The first one leapt up at
his face, while the second one charged his legs. He jumped up in
the air to vault over the first attacker, and he held the point of his
staff in front of him to intercept the second. It drove itself onto the
staff with the force of its own leap, and as Milosh landed on his feet
and turned around, it screamed and flailed its thin legs. Soon all of
its light was gone, and Milosh left it, still flailing, on one end of his
staff while he stabbed the last remaining creature with the other
end. Soon, it too had been drained of light. The ghost doctor
shattered them against the side of the bridge, then did the same to
the one he had first impaled.
The Past Six was weakened, but not destroyed. The ghost
doctor touched the staff to his helper’s abdomen and the energy
flowed back into him and restored him. They rested on the bridge
for some time before they went on.
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The lightning came again, and the firestorms followed. And
every time the firestorms came, the crystals dove from the sky and
attacked. But after the first attack, Milosh and the Past Six were
more prepared. Neither one of them was knocked down again.
As they walked into the depths of the planet, the mist
became darker and thicker. Dark blues and deep reds became more
common, and the floating black dots and lightning strikes became
less common. Finally, the mist was entirely black, and thick enough
to catch on the legs of Milosh and the Past Six. They had to kick the
mist away, and sometimes they had to pull it off of them as it held
them back.
After some time, they came to a glossy black sphere, which
seemed to be the center of this planet. The bridge of cold lava and
twisted glass came up to this sphere and stopped. There were no
doors or windows, no markings of any kind. From the black surface
of the sphere, the bolts of lightning arced out into the thick, dark
mist, on their way to ignite the black dots into sheets of fire.
The Past Six walked up to the sphere and spoke some words
in a strange tongue. His body expanded instantly to cover the
sphere in a thin layer of watery light. The ghost doctor did the
same, and all I could see was a curved surface, sleek and shining,
flowing with currents of its own. Then a tiny hole opened at the top
of the sphere, and the light began to flow into the hole. This took
several minutes, but eventually I saw the light around me rush
towards the hole as if it were a maelstrom.
They flowed into the hole, and through it, and assumed
their previous shapes. The Past Six was once again in the shape of
a small man, and the ghost doctor, although his normal height, was
still a glowing and translucent being like his helper.
The moment my eyes adjusted, I was overwhelmed by the
light. There was a perpetual firestorm within the black sphere. The
fire leapt and crashed and arced across the room, and took fantastic
ephemeral shapes which formed and disappeared together in an
instant. The Past Six and Milosh were not burned, but they were
slowly melting.
“She is here,” said the ghost doctor.
“Yes,” said the Past Six. His gelatinous light beaded like
sweat and rolled away from him. Every bead that struck the black
floor became a tongue of fire. The ghost doctor looked down at
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himself and saw that the same thing was happening to him. His legs
collapsed beneath him when they lost their shape, and the pool of
light they formed burst out in flames.
Within a minute, there was nothing left of either Milosh or
the Past Six. There was only the fire, everywhere, raging endlessly
with nothing left to consume. But I could still see.
“She’s coming,” said the voice of the ghost doctor, and I
realized that he was still alive within the swirling arcs of flame.
They had not been destroyed, they had merely changed their
shapes.
“Be ready for her,” said the Past Six, “She will be perilous.”
A shape came into view between the leaping fiery waves. It
was a woman, tall and slender, clothed completely in the burning
flame around her. It had shaped itself around her limbs to make a
flowing dress, although her arms, legs, face and hair could still be
seen. Her features were exquisite. At the first sight of the soft flesh
of her leg, my mind was consumed by lust. Her arms were long and
perfect. Her cheekbones were high and aristocratic. Her hair flowed
out behind her, black or very dark red.
I desired her completely, with no shade or memory of any
other thought. I was not even present in the room, yet I belonged to
her. Then I saw her face more clearly. Her mouth was open in a
soundless scream, and her eyes were rolled up far into her head.
Her beauty was distorted. As she floated slowly through the sphere,
held up by clouds of flame, I felt the rot behind her eyes.
“You are interested in talking tome?” she said.
There was something about her voice, like a cracked
instrument which would otherwise have sounded a perfect tone.
“Yes,” said the ghost doctor. His voice echoed and repeated
itself now, bounced off the walls and came back to him in whispers
and different voices.
“Then why do you sit there so quietly?” she asked him, “I
am open to conversation. I have forbidden myself to no one.”
She placed her hands against her face and pushed her
fingers slowly underneath her eyes. The blood rolled out, dark and
thick. Her eyes bulged, but did not come out of their sockets.
“It is obvious,” she told them, “I can see you. You want to
come into my eyes because you think they are a portal to the Under
Heaven Country. You should be ashamed of yourselves!”
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“I have no choice, Most Excellent,” said the ghost doctor,
“The Under Heaven Country is in my way.”
“But you would think to force me?” she spat out at him,
“You would come into my eyes as an invader and give me nothing
in return? No compensation?”
Her eyes filled with blood and became red. Her face started
to turn blue. Her tongue hung out of her mouth, blue and swollen. It
started to split, and something with many waving arms started to
push its way out from the wound.
“No, Most Excellent,” said the ghost doctor, “I would not
have come here without a payment for you. Consider my children
here, the Past Six. I created them from the eyes of the violet eagles
at the Gate of the Purple Sky. They have no emotions. You may
copulate and drain them as you please.”
She closed her mouth, withdrew her fingers from her eyes.
The blood drained out of them and stained her face like red tears.
“Thank you!” she said, “You have brought me adequate
compensation. I will begin to teach these creatures about feeling.
You may enter me through my eyes.”
The ghost doctor climbed her leg and flowed up her arm as
a line of fire. He glanced behind him as he went. The Most
Excellent had formed a ball of fire into the shape of a young,
androgynous being whom I recognized as the Past Six. She had
pushed its face between her legs, and she was howling like a dog.
The Past Six was howling too.
The line of fire that was the ghost doctor climbed up along
her cheek as she bent down to bite at the Past Six’s neck and tell it
things that made its eyes fill with joyful tears. Then the fire which
was Milosh flowed beneath her eyes and fell into another world.
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Chapter Eleven- The Under Heaven Country
The fire broke up into small beads like burning tears.
All around me, I saw them falling into darkness. As
we fell, we cooled and hardened and turned black.
When we struck the ground, we clattered and rolled. The beads
came together, skittering across the floor. With a surge of energy,
Milosh leapt up out of the beads as a black statue of himself,
smooth as marble or glass. We were in the Under Heaven Country.
He looked around him. This world was made of dark colors.
I could see no earth or plant-life from where he stood. The ground
was black marble, smooth and curved and shaped into soaring lines
and abstract designs. Black marble stream-beds flowed with
something that might have been water. Black hills and mountains
rose high to our right and left, while directly in front of us, long
rows of dark pillars led up to vast temples which stretched behind
each other into the horizon. High above us, the stars looked clear
and cold. Three moons sailed through dark clouds above the temple
city.
There were creatures in this world. They were walking to
the city of temples, but they stopped to look at Milosh. These
beings were made of muscle. Their faceless heads turned to
examine the ghost doctor, as if they could see. But they had no
eyes.
There was no skin on their bodies, only the red and purple
of their glistening limbs, and the yellowish-white of their tendons.
They looked at Milosh briefly, then turned back to their journey.
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Milosh grew a black staff from the palm of his hand, then fell in
line behind them. Without a word, they all walked on together.
At the first pair of pillars, their leader stopped. He picked at
the muscles on his left hand till a piece pulled away from the rest.
He wound this around the pillar to his left until it tore away from
his arm. Then he pulled another piece away and started to wind
that. The torn pieces of muscle clung to the pillar and fused with its
marble surface. When the leader’s left arm was gone, the second
creature in line helped him finish. He pulled apart the leader’s right
arm and wound these muscles around the other pillar. Then he
began on the legs. The left leg was torn apart and wound around the
left pillar, and the right leg was torn apart and wound around the
right pillar.
When there was nothing left of the leader but his torso and
his head, these also were taken apart. Every piece of the leader
fused with the marble and became black marble itself. They were
creating a decoration, a spiral which wound from the bottom of
each pillar to the top and ended in an abstract design.
When they were done, after several minutes, they walked
on. Every pillar they passed was decorated in the same way.
Beneath the smooth vines of marble I could still see the shape of
muscle.
They came to the staircase of the first temple. The stairs,
although black, had white and purple veins of stone as well. Here
they knelt and touched their heads to the first stair, but Milosh did
not. He simply waited for them to be done, then continued on
behind them as before.
The staircase was huge. Every individual step took the
column a minute or two to cross, and there were at least a dozen
steps in all. On many of the steps, there were signs and strange
symbolic glyphs. The creatures knelt and bowed to these as they
climbed. Milosh waited, and then followed on behind. The temple
roof was supported by massive pillars far larger than those below.
These pillars were smooth and undecorated from top to bottom.
The column walked between them and entered the central
courtyard, which stretched back into shadow.
They walked in darkness, without speaking, for a long time.
On either side of them the great pillars soared up toward the ceiling.
The muscle-people walked with bowed heads and dragging feet, but
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whether they did this out of resignation or reverence I did not know.
Milosh made no attempt to communicate with them, and they did
not look at him again.
His marble staff echoed against the marble floor with every
step. It was difficult to see. The light of the three moons was weak
inside this immense structure. In time, the darkness was nearly
total. I could see nothing but dim shapes, and I focused on the
shuffling feet and the echoing staff. Then the darkness passed. A
dim light penetrated from somewhere deep inside the temple. This
light was pale, like moonlight, but it flickered like ordinary flame.
The light grew as they walked, until the floor in front of
them was bright and clear and the veins in the stone were visible
once again. They came up to a brazier burning with a white light in
the center of the aisle. There were coals in the brazier, white coals
which glowed and pulsed.
The new leader of the column walked up to the brazier
without hesitation and placed his left arm next to the flame. It
started to turn white, and he turned it to work the other side. When
his left arm was entirely white and light brown, he could not lift it
anymore. The creature behind him helped him cook his right arm in
the same way.
This was the same process I had seen before. Methodically,
in a set order, the creatures cooked their leader. When his entire
body was white and golden, they pulled him from the flames and
laid him down upon the floor. The new leader of the column
dismembered him, and passed the cooked limbs and pieces of meat
to the others in line behind him. Only Milosh was given nothing to
carry. Each creature shouldered his burden, and the column once
more was on the move.
This time, they did not have far to walk. After a few minutes
in the receding light of the brazier, they came to a black wall with a
low door. One by one, they stooped through this door and went in
to meet their god.
His size was almost impossible to believe. I had not known
the temple itself was so large. The god was a small mountain of
metal and hair-covered skin. He had thousands of black iron arms,
and many mouths with iron teeth. Blades rose and fell in some
places, while other parts of his body opened onto glowing furnaces.
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He was an animal encased in metal, or fused with metal. In
patches, some of which ran for several feet, his stringy black hair
hung out and his body could be seen, rising and falling as he
breathed. Small faces grew out of these patches of skin and peered
down at us, like hairy living gargoyles, plump and rough. These
faces blinked repeatedly, and gnashed at the air, opening and
closing their jaws for no apparent reason.
The muscle people approached the god on their knees,
shuffling along the floor. They went in line as they had done for the
entire pilgrimage. The first creature lifted the white piece of muscle
he carried and held it high for the god to take. An iron arm, manyjointed
and riveted, unfolded itself and reached for the offering. Its
pincers dug into the muscle and pulled it up to one of the waiting
faces. The face accepted its dinner eagerly, but it could not stop its
jaws from their constant opening and closing. It was able to chew
and swallow much of the meat, but some it was dropped.
When the first muscle person had given up his offering to
the god, he stood up and walked to the side to wait. One by one, the
others did the same. Each time, the iron arms selected a different
face to feed, until all of the faces were fed and all of the offerings
had been given.
Now that the sacrifice had been made, the muscle people
were ready to leave. They formed a line, and each creature put his
hands on the shoulders of the one in front of him. The first creature
started to turn to the left, and the second one turned to the right.
They alternated down the line, twisting themselves around each
other. Their arms and bodies fused and grew together until they
were no longer separate creatures, but a long worm-like mass of
muscles coiled together. This new creature slithered through the
door and away, and Milosh was left alone, standing in front of the
god.
The faces glared down at the ghost doctor, with jaws
champing and eyelids blinking. One of the faces tried to form
words, but at first it could not. It could only force sputtering noises
between its teeth. Its iron arms waved in frustration at its inability
to communicate. It strained and worked its mouth and made noises
for a few moments before it was able to speak.
“You are here for the Incorruptible?” said two or three of
the faces, more or less at the same time. Milosh nodded.
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“You will not pass me unless you can compel me,” said the
god, “I myself have been fed, but my mechanism has not.”
The doors to all of its furnaces opened at once. They glowed
with the same white heat as the brazier. A few of the iron arms
clanked and creaked and reached down for the ghost doctor.
“I will compel you,” said Milosh, “As you are well aware. I
know your true name, Mechanical God. I call you Dravra.”
The arms stopped moving at once, and the many faces of the
god stopped blinking and fell into sleep. A great door opened in the
body of the god, revealing a passageway to the temple city beyond
this first structure.
The walls of the passageway were slick and wet with the
blood of the god. The corridor had been hollowed out of his flesh.
Milosh did not seem concerned. He had come wellprepared,
and this guardian had been no surprise to him. The ghost
doctor walked through the new doorway and into the god’s body. It
was not a long walk, considering the size of the god. In a little
while, Milosh had come through to the other side. The temple city
was wide open before us, but all of its columns, arches, stairways
and towers were now made of white marble and bathed in the light
of three suns under a perfectly blue sky.
The streets of the temple city were busy, but not crowded.
White-robed people wearing hoods walked by the ghost doctor as
he started toward the center. The doorway into the Mechanical God
closed noisily behind him. I could not see the faces of the people
beneath their hoods, so I did not know whether they looked like
men or not.
Milosh, as always, paid them no attention. Every building
was a masterpiece of white columns, massive stairways, and
exquisitely detailed carvings of abstract shapes. Every courtyard
held a statue of a faceless man with perfect proportions, reaching up
to the heavens. Fountains flowed busily with water in every square.
Some of the hooded men carried large books, bound in
leather and attached to their arms by thin chains of gold. They read
these books as they walked, paying no attention to the people
around them.
Milosh walked rapidly through the city. He followed a wide
avenue which led directly to a large temple complex on a hill at the
center of the city. I noticed, suddenly, that he was no longer made
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of black marble. He had become himself again, a white-skinned,
tattooed man in red robes, carrying a wooden staff.
This city was quiet and serene. There was no sign of the
chaos of human civilization. There was nothing dirty, no sign of
disease, no sign of poverty. I wondered where their Carthage was.
“You mean to reach the Keep at the Centerpoint?” asked the
shape, hovering in the air in front of Milosh. It was a shifting thing,
first oval, then square, then unnamed design. A thin layer of short
bristles covered its body, which pulsed and breathed with a pale
inner shining.
“Yes,” said the ghost doctor, “I do.”
“The Incorruptible will have to see you,” said the shape, and
led Milosh through a doorway into the temple complex. They
walked through long corridors and vast courtyards, of perfect
craftsmanship, but unadorned. Milosh, in his usual way, did not
speak to the floating shape at all. When they came to the room
where the Incorruptible were, the shape stopped. It would not enter.
Milosh pushed a curtain aside, and stepped into the room on his
own.
They were made out of two ovals of black flesh, fused
together. Their eyes were slits, with thick strands of clinging wet
skin between the lids. Their mouths were the same. They were not
beautiful in any human sense. Nothing about them would invite
adoration or aesthetic appreciation. But they were flawless and
perfectly proportioned and they seemed to be absolutely poised in
themselves. Their eyes held something which might not have been
wisdom, but was compelling nonetheless. Something that suggested
mass murder, and made it seem like common sense. They did not
speak until Milosh had made his case.
“I go to the Keep At The Centerpoint,” he told them, “and I
believe you know why I go. You may regret my recovery of this
individual’s shadow, but I will go on despite your wishes. You have
only a foothold here, not an empire.”
“Our control of the Temple City is absolute.”
“That may be so,” said the ghost doctor, “Yet you will not
bar my way. I have already passed the Most Excellent and the
Mechanical God.”
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“If you had reached us by another route, your difficulties
would have been as great. Your hardships do not concern us. If you
mean to go on, this time, against our will, then why did you come
to us here?"
“Because I knew you would seek to stop me,” he said, “As
it is no doubt your right to do.”
“And you believe you can earn our pity in some way?”
There was a very faint upturn at the corners of their mouths. A hint
of contempt.
“No,” he told them, “I believe you will make your first
attempt on me now. It would be the easiest way for you. And I
prefer to dispose of it here. I did not wish to wait.”
“The first attempt is important,” said one.
“Yes,” said another, “Consider this. This creature calls
himself the Michael of legend, the necromancer whose name is so
feared on the Western Continent. Yet it is not long since he was an
anonymous prisoner, starving and dying, with no sense of himself
and no name. He must have come very close to madness in that
oubliette. What if he did go mad? What if the story he tells you is
mere raving, no better than the whispers of a ghost?”
“He has no shadow,” said Milosh, “That alone is enough for
me. It does not matter if he is Michael the necromancer, or a
random criminal who lost his mind in captivity and somehow
escaped. He has lost his shadow, and I know what manner of beings
would keep a thing like that.”
“But you have not considered every possibility,” said one of
the others, “You cannot be certain that he isn’t starving still. What
if these are his hunger dreams? What if these are his dead dreams?
What if you are his dead dream, ghost doctor?”
“It is not important,” said Milosh, “I do not consider such
idle concerns.”
“And why do you wish to save him? He is a depraved
individual, by his own account.”
“I am, once again, not concerned with that. I am a ghost
doctor. This is my work. And I have been fairly compensated.”
“No, you have not,” said the one in the center, “You have
not been fairly paid. You could not be fairly paid.”
He opened his mouth, and his teeth were very sharp. The
façade of reason slipped away. This thing was hungry, and eager to
begin. “In the other ghost worlds which you have crossed, we saw
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you and we knew you. We tolerated you. But this is a special case.
Not only shall you be forbidden to cross, you shall be forbidden to
return. Your client has made a mistake. Your presence here will
result in his death.”
I knew fear suddenly, and it was very cold. Entranced,
without power, I would starve to death in the cave, unable to move
to save my life. And they would come…
The ghost doctor laughed.
“Your questions are puerile and sufficient to frighten only
children,” he said, “I know your philosophy. It has only one
principal. You have let me pass before, but I would have passed
you if you had wanted it or not. This is not your world. Do not try
to frighten me any further. Stop me if you can.”
They looked at him in silence. Then they attacked.
A blush spread over their faces, and they became red like
glasses of wine. Their mouths parted to reveal their gleaming teeth,
and small bony knobs poked up under their skin. These knobs
pushed out of them in the form of long, waving tentacles of red
flesh which darted in at Milosh like the Dreamfeeders in the Red
Sea. He staggered under the impact as they attached themselves to
his head.
He was struck by an avalanche of images, pictures of my
life. He saw the burning cities and the mass graves. He saw the
people I had betrayed, and the people I had murdered with my own
hands. He saw their families and the poverty they had suffered from
the loss of breadwinners and protectors. He saw their pain.
And so did I. I knew what the ghost doctor was seeing,
because I could see it too. But these images affected me only
distantly. When you have killed so many times, you come to feel
that human life is almost literally worthless.
I was uncomfortable with these images. I was aware of my
responsibility. But it did not overwhelm me, I was not swept away
by guilt or horror. I couldn't afford to be.
Milosh reeled at first, affected if not sickened by these
images. But he was jaded by his training, as I was by my
experience. He regained his composure, he calmed his spirit, and
the images faded away.
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I was closer to knowing him in that moment than I had ever
yet been. I could almost feel what he was feeling, or at least, as the
images broke up, I could make a strong guess.
“You are doomed,” he must have thought to the people in
front of him, “I cannot help you. Now I turn my back on you.”
It wasn’t very long since I had felt such things myself. They
made it possible to walk away, to move on.
Now another image flooded the ghost doctor’s mind. There
was a white field, thickly marked with rivulets and crannies. Blue
flashes like lightning leapt from one place to another. It was a
human brain. It was supposed to be my own brain. And it was
infected.
A great worm, fat and bloated with blood, fed on the brain’s
surface. It was a Dreamfeeder, and it drank at the brain greedily,
slurping and squealing. A thick, orange discharge rolled out of its
mouth, the source of the images we had seen. As the creature saw
Milosh, it turned to him, opened its mouth, and screamed an
enraged warning at him.
I knew it was a lie. The Dreamfeeders of the Red Sea had
anaesthetized their victims by filling them with joy, with dreams of
delight. There was nothing at all about those pictures to delight me.
I had become dull to suffering, not enamored of it. I had never
taken joy in killing.
Milosh understood. He dismissed this image more easily
than the pictures of my life. He was the ghost doctor, the controller
of images. They could not deceive him.
“Michael,” said the ghost doctor, “Can you hear me?”
We were in a different place. The illusions had cleared and
left a new world in front of our eyes. The ghost doctor had passed
the Incorruptible. He was no longer in their city.
“Yes,” I said to him, “I can hear you.”
I could not yet see what our new environment looked like.
The ground at Milosh’s feet was a kind of crystal. A few feet away,
the darkness of night covered everything. There was no moon, and
there were no stars. I could see the dim outline of some hills.
“They are not done with us yet,” he told me, “They do not
want me to reach the Keep At The Centerpoint. They will stop me
if they can.”
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“Their city reminded me of something,” I told him, “An
empire on my own continent, where everything was clean.”
“Yes,” he said, “They admire beauty as much as they create
ugliness.”
“I did not find this empire beautiful,” I said, “Although I
cannot be objective. They tried to kill me, after all.”
“As the Incorruptible did,” said Milosh, “Because you are
dirty.”
“Yes,” I told him, “Exactly. They cleaned out their country
of everything dirty. They swept it away. But they made a place that
was worse than the sum of its parts. They made a city called
Carthage. To collect the ugly things in one place, and let them die.”
The ghost doctor nodded. “Yes,” he said, “The Incorruptible
are doing the same.”
“Who are they?” I asked him, “And where is their Carthage,
if they have one?”
“They are the Outside Beings,” said Milosh, “The Demons,
as you call them. They have a foothold in you, and so you are dirty.
But they themselves are pure. They are one thing, one appetite,
without corruption. Without dilution. Their Carthage is the world!”
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Chapter Twelve- Nightbirds and Mica
It was a long night. Milosh sat in the darkness, and
waited for the dawn. Sometimes we talked, and
sometimes we did not. High in the blackness, we heard
the crying of strange birds.
“You must have many stories, Michael,” said Milosh,
“Many tales that would be the envy of any Dwellim storyteller. It is
amazing that you have managed to survive, all these years, in spite
of everything.”
“I have survived,” I said, “because there is nothing I would
not do.”
“That cannot be all,” said the ghost doctor, “There are
people who live that way under far less provocation. They do not
often live very long. You are a man of unique talents, I think. With
the Outside Beings hunting for you, you would have to be. If your
classmates had not betrayed you, you would have been the
mightiest of sorcerers.”
“I would have been killed,” I said, “As most of my
classmates were. The court necromancers and the alchemists and all
that tribe were rooted out and slain. Most of them were burned
alive. Those who escaped were cast to the four corners of the world
like human dust.”
“I wonder why,” said Milosh, “It seems strange to me that
their masters did not save them. The demons were using the
sorcerers, were they not? They wanted to expand their hold on this
world.”
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“Yes,” I said, “but they abandoned them utterly in the end.
An entire generation of necromancers was virtually wiped out. I
have never known exactly why.”
“Perhaps the Outside Beings had used them up,” he said,
“Achieved what they wanted to achieve. Perhaps they lied to you
about their true methods and purposes. Or you may have
conjectured wrongly.”
“I do not know,” I told him, “But if they used up that
generation of sorcerers, they did not stop using sorcerers altogether.
The Black School is still in operation. A young adept from a recent
class sought me out once. They had promised him unparalleled
power if he could kill me.”
“They must have known he could not.”
“Of course they did. They were disposing of him, actually,
not me. The ruse he had employed on graduation day was a little
too devious. A little too imaginative. He had cast a glamour on his
fellow students, convincing them that graduation day was over, that
they had slept too long and were destined to be consumed by the
demons. He walked out of the mountain while they cried and
begged in trance. A few of them lost their minds.”
“I see,” said Milosh, “They were afraid he could think
around corners. See through them. Be more than a puppet.”
“Exactly,” I told him, “So they sent him to me. And there
was the added benefit of harassing me and stretching my resources
and my strength as much as possible.”
“What did you do to him?”
“I destroyed his rhythm. I fractured him so completely that I
was able to send the raving shards of his personality to possess six
different people who had threatened or attacked me. One by one, I
sent them into the Thorp. They were animated by broken pieces of
him, savage and unthinking. They were under my control. I sent
them to the mountain, to the Black School itself. To warn the new
students against accepting a similar commission from the demons.”
It was some time before the ghost doctor spoke again.
“They did not just abandon your classmates, Michael,” he
said to me, “They themselves were behind the Inquisition. They
must have hoped that you would be caught in the same net. Do you
understand what this means, if I am correct?”
“Yes,” I answered, “It can mean only one thing. They would
rather catch me than destroy the world."
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“Or at least,” said Milosh, “To capture you, they are willing
to see their final triumph delayed. Their will to succeed must be
nearly as strong as your own”
The sun rose. Milosh looked at his own leg rather than the
ground, but still the light was almost blinding. The world was made
of crystal, most of it quartz, and it mirrored the rising sun with
many explosions of light. As the sun climbed the sky, my eyes
adjusted, and I assumed that his did too.
“We have to move,” said Milosh, “Their servants will have
been hunting us all night. The dark of this world cannot be dispelled
by Power, so we were trapped in place till the sun rose. Now they
will be coming.”
He stood, with the help of his staff, and started for the
nearby hills. As he walked, he scanned the horizon with his eyes,
looking for the enemy. There was no sign. Glimmering sheets of
mica crunched beneath his feet. Sometimes he almost slipped on the
smooth crystal.
“We lost too many hours,” said Milosh, “But I had no
choice. To walk in the dark of this place is to be taken by the
nightbirds. The Incorruptible must have sent us here for that reason.
Now they have had time to set a trap.”
“Can you not call a helper?” I asked him, “A creature like
the Past Six?”
“I have not captured any of the creatures of this place,” he
told me, “And I do not have time to do so.”
“You speak as if you have been to some of these worlds
before. I thought were within my own ghost country.”
“We are,” he said, “But to one of my trade, the ghost
country of one man is much like the ghost country of another. They
intersect; they share terrain. It is much easier that way. The first
ghost doctors imposed this geography and I have been trained to
perceive it. I can see nothing else within you, but without training,
you might see something else. Perhaps only chaos.”
This was a familiar concept to me. If I had ever been able to
swim between the worlds without exposing myself, I would have
seen strange places and marvelous countries in a form shaped by
my own training. It was either impossible or unprofitable to see
them without a pre-determined structure.
- 182 -

We reached the first of the crystal hills. The ghost doctor
moved along the bottom, slowly climbing as the land rose, not
committing himself to the peaks.
“If there is an ambush,” he said, “It will be there among the
summits.”
High in the crystal hills, where he pointed, there were
massive quartz boulders and narrow passes where enemies could lie
in wait.
“Won’t we have to cross them in the end?”
“Yes,” he answered, “We certainly will. But I may be able
to frustrate them, and they may break cover first.”
To this end, he zigzagged among the hills, changing
direction often and climbing slowly to stay away from the peaks
and the passes. After a few hours, he decided it wasn’t going to
work.
“They’re just going to wait,” he told me, “No matter what I
do. And they can probably see me right now.”
“What will you do, then? I asked him.
“Head straight up,” he said, “And spring their trap. The
important thing now is to deal with the first threat before nightfall.
We have to make camp by sunset.”
He walked straight up the slope for the nearest pass. It was
another few hours before he reached it, and in this time there was
no sign of an enemy. He decided not to walk straight into the pass,
but instead to circle around among the boulders to upset any
ambush plans.
There was still no sign of an enemy, and no sign that an
enemy had ever been there.
“What are they doing?” asked Milosh as he clambered over
a quartz boulder with clear red chunks the size of a man’s head.
“They’re going to attack me eventually. Where are they?”
He stood on the top of the peak and looked in every
direction. From this vantage point, we could see for a hundred
miles. There were small, dark holes in the crystal cliffs around us,
but I saw no living thing. Milosh pointed at the hole.
“Those are the nests of the nightbirds,” he told me, “They
will be stirring soon.”
He set about making our camp. There would be no fire, but
by this time he was sure that the enemy would attack us at night. He
set traps by shifting the weight of stones and piling up small rocks
- 183 -

to fall if they were disturbed. As the sun went down behind the
hills, he crouched down among the boulders to wait.
“We have to move,” said Milosh. He had not spoken to me
for hours, as he listened for the sound of feet. “We have to move,”
he said, “I can feel them coming. I’m sure of it.”
He stood up and held his staff out, warily.
“Won’t it be safer to stay here than to move?” I asked him,
“What about the nightbirds?”
“Yes,” he said, “They will hear me walking. They will
certainly attack. But the Incorruptible have sent their servants
against us! There are too many of them! We have to go.”
I could hear nothing. The ghost doctor was being very
strange. His head was cocked, as if he was straining to hear. He
took a few nervous steps away from our camp.
There was a terrible shriek, like stone grinding against
stone. Without any further warning, a great bird struck Milosh hard
enough to knock him from his feet. But he did not fall, because the
bird did not let him. Its stone talons dug into him and held.
I could hear the beating of its gray rock wings as it took to
the air. Milosh held onto his staff, but he could not escape the bird
before they were airborne. The blood rolled down his body where
talons pierced his skin. He did not attempt to struggle or use his
power. The nightbird flew Milosh to a dark hole in the side of the
quartz cliffs. The bird dragged Milosh into the hole, where three
smaller birds waited, crying for food.
As soon as his body was on solid ground, Milosh turned and
fought. He jabbed at the small birds with his staff, and smashed its
end into their faces as they tried to come in at him. The mother bird
still had its talon in Milosh, so he pushed his body up hard to pin it
to the roof of the hole. It flapped its wings in his face, and tried to
dislodge itself. It let go of his body, and raked his back with its
claws.
The ghost doctor let go of his staff with one hand and
caught one of the smaller birds around the neck as it charged him.
He tossed the bird behind his back and out over the edge of the
cliff. The bird was too young to fly, and it did not return. The
mother bird jabbed at Milosh with her beak viciously, but up
against the roof there was no leverage to strike. The ghost doctor
caught her other two children and destroyed them both in the same
- 184 -

way. Then he pushed his staff along the floor until it was deep in
the hole. When it was at the right angle, he picked it up and thrust it
at the mother bird on his back.
She attacked the staff, but Milosh kept jabbing at her until
he had pushed her back out of the hole. Quickly, he turned around
to face her. She was, for the most part, undamaged. She was also
very angry. She screamed at him and beat the air with her wings,
and every few moments she darted in to attack him with her beak
and talons.
Milosh was wet with blood. He still had the staff in front of
him, but it was getting slick and hard for him to hold. Every time
the nightbird attacked, he suffered fresh wounds which weakened
and hurt him. Blood flowed into his left eye from a gash above his
eyebrow. He tried to blink it away, since he didn’t dare let go of the
staff with one hand now.
Behind him, something moved. He risked a glance, and at
that same moment, the bird attacked. Her beak dove into his left eye
while her talons held him in place. From behind, a strange, flat
creature attached itself to his back and burned him along half the
length of his body.
The bird dragged Milosh out of the hole by his chest, and
swallowed his left eye with one toss of its beak. It tried to carry him
up to the summit, where it would have room to finish him off.
But the burning, flat thing on the ghost doctor’s back spread
up his arm like a liquid and on to the nightbird as it flew. The bird
screamed in pain and flew blindly into the cliff, where it shattered
into a hundred shards of stone. Milosh fell, surrounded by the
broken pieces of the bird. The thing on his back grew into a
platform which fused to the wall of the cliff and held in place. It
stopped his fall, but it kept burning him, and blisters sprouted up on
his body while other sections of his skin simply peeled away.
He found the strength to role up against the cliff wall and
find a handhold. When he climbed up onto the cliff, broad stretches
of his back were left behind. The creature shrank down to its
original size and flowed up the cliff to Milosh’s leg, where it started
to burn him again.
From above, I could see something moving- there were
other creatures, like liquid rock, rolling down the cliff to join the
attack. But Milosh kept climbing, even when they were on top of
him and burning him. He kept putting one hand in front of the other
- 185 -

until he came up over the edge of the cliff. Once he was there, he
found a sharp quartz stone and scraped at the creatures until one of
them slipped off onto the rock. Then he threw it over the edge of
the cliff and found another stone. After a few minutes, he was free
of them. There was no sign of any other attacker.
He did not move for the rest of the night, and he did not
speak. He lay on the flat surface of the hilltop and stared up at the
sky while the blood crusted over on his wounds. Although he had
been cut in dozens of places, most of these injuries were shallow.
The serious damage had been done by the loss of his eye. He was
hurt badly enough for the shock to kill him. I had seen it on a
hundred battlefields.
But he did not die. When the sun rose again, he stirred and
slowly got to his feet.
“I made a mistake,” he said, “They laid their trap for me
very well. I let their magic worm its way into my brain and make
me fearful. I didn’t recognize it for what it was. And all along, they
were only waiting for me to move and attract the nightbird. Within
the bird’s nest, the mica waited.”
“Those creatures were living mica?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said, “Or rather, something that looks like mica so
it can hide in this world.”
“What will you do about your wounds?” I asked him, “And
your eye?”
“There is only one thing I can do,” he said, “I will go on.
They have decided to kill me rather than let me reach the Keep At
The Centerpoint. And they have refused to let me leave. Only by
freeing your shadow from them can I erase the foothold they have
inside you. Then they will lose their power here. In our own world,
I will be able to heal many of these injuries unless I am slain.
Death, however, is death in every world.”
“Can you even walk with those injuries? You’ve been
horribly burned.”
“It will be easier when we leave this place. I am very weak
here. The crystal of this world is not a substance I can become. Nor
can I draw on much power here. They knew that when they let us
fall from their temple in this direction.”
Milosh started to walk. He had lost his staff in the battle on
the cliffside, and it seemed that he could not yet grow another one.
- 186 -

As the day passed, he crossed several of the crystal peaks
despite his wounds. By the time the sun went down again, I could
see his goal. He was headed for a red tower on a tall summit of
white quartz.
“They will attack me again soon,” he told me, “Whether in
this world or the next.”
“What is the next world?” I asked him, “And how many
more worlds do you need to cross before the end?”
“Probably only two,” he said, “The next one should be the
Place of Gold. From there we can cross over to your House of the
Dead, which will lead us to the Keep At The Centerpoint. In that
place, I can reach every piece of you, no matter how remote.
Although they have taken your shadow, they cannot remove it from
you completely. The cord will maintain the connection, and all I
will need to do is gain control of it. But there is something you
should know, Michael. That place is the core of your being. When I
have been there, I will know you far more intimately than a lover.”
“No lover,” I said, “Has ever known me intimately. Go on,
ghost doctor. I have risked everything on your success. It does not
matter to me how thoroughly you know me. If I am free again,
nothing else will matter.”
He stopped talking, and cocked his head to one side.
“There’s something out there,” he said.
“Be careful,” I warned him, “Don’t let them fool you
again.”
“It’s not even them.” he said, “It’s not from them either.”
He didn’t get to his feet this time. He stopped moving at all.
Even his hands and legs were silent and still. I heard something
move. It didn’t sound like the nightbirds or the mica. It didn’t
disturb the pebbles like a foot. It was just a sensation of pressure
against the ground, a hint of something out there.
Milosh had stopped breathing. As far as I could tell, he
wasn’t even blinking.
The rock exploded underneath him in a burst of wind. He
was thrown at least ten feet into the air, but he didn’t hit the ground.
The wind took him up and carried him high into the sky. Shattered
pieces of quartz swirled around him. The world flipped over and
over itself.
- 187 -

Milosh was totally powerless. As he flew helplessly through
the air, I saw a circling light. It grew larger and larger until it filled
my vision. Then I was part of it.
“We are in the Red Tower,” said Milosh when he spoke
again. He was whispering.
“How did that happen?” I asked him, “What was that?”
“The Lord of this place,” he said, “A being like the Most
Excellent. I had hoped he would not find me. Not until I had
infiltrated his home.”
“Why are you whispering?” I asked, “He knows about you
now.”
“Yes,” he said, “But that wind was only an arm of his
power. Now his Mechanisms will come, and if they find me here
they will tear my body apart.”
He was crouched in a dark patch around the corner from a
glowing entrance- the light I had seen from the air. I heard a
clanking of metal, and a shrill whine. Milosh crouched down still
further, as if the dark could swallow him. Up to this moment, I had
never seen him in fear.
“This,” he whispered, “Is not the way I planned it.”
The horde of machines spilled out of a dark doorway into
the light.
They were glossy and red, but their arms were black metal,
and whirring blades protruded from hands, backs or heads. They
moved on fast wheels, treads, and flat stamping feet. When they
came to the glowing doorway, they stopped, and green lights
flashed on their heads. Metal stalks came out of them and turned
from side to side, as if looking for Milosh.
In his corner, the ghost doctor could not be seen by them
directly. This was his only chance. But I wasn’t sure he would take
it. He had been out-maneuvered by the Incorruptible. They had sent
him to this world because they knew he would have no power here,
and would have to rely on stealth and strength alone. Now he was
practically shaking, hopelessly waiting for the attack to come.
The Mechanisms regrouped and turned away from the door.
They were about to come our way, to check the dark corners and
the other hiding places. They would find him here, and as he had
said, they would tear him apart.
- 188 -

But I was wrong. The Mechanisms went back through the
door they had come from, and disappeared. Milosh, although
shaken, stood up slowly and followed quietly behind them. I had
underestimated him. The ghost doctor had fooled the machines, at
least for now. However scared he was, he could still do whatever he
needed to do.
“They are simple things,” he told me, “They assumed I
would either be at the doorway, stunned by what had happened, or
that I would already have gone further into the tower. But they will
be back.”
He walked down the dark red corridor, listening for the
return of the Mechanisms. He was looking for a side door to duck
into. There were none. Within a few moments, I heard the
Mechanisms coming back.
“This may be it,” said Milosh, “I have nowhere else to
hide.”
But the machines were not alone. The Lord of the Red
Tower was at their head.
“You wanted to come through my Gate,” said the Lord. He
was shaped like a man, at least eight feet tall, encased in gleaming
red metal like his machines. His metal mask could move and feign
expression. Now it was a wide and feral grin.
“Yes,” said the ghost doctor, “But I have nothing to offer
you.”
Smiling, the Lord looked into Milosh’s eyes.
“You have lost here, ghost doctor,” he said at last, “You will
never be able to fulfill your client’s mission. I’m afraid you took on
something far larger than yourself this time.”
“What can I do?” said the ghost doctor, calmly, “You have
the authority to let me pass. I cannot give you a reason to do so,
unless you believe that my good will could be worth something to
you.”
“Hardly,” said the Lord of the Red Tower, “I demand
payment from every one who passes. As do all of my kind. Give me
this ghost behind your eyes. I can gain much by trading him to his
enemies. At least this way, you might get home.”
I could have vomited, if I was not entranced. I knew what I
would have done, if I was him. I knew what I had always done
before.
- 189 -

“Don’t be absurd,” said Milosh, “This is my client’s ghost
country. Do you think you would even exist, if not for him?"
“Of course I would,” said the Lord, “I can exist in every
ghost country, as you are well aware.”
“I do not refer to your potentials,” said Milosh, “But to your
reality. Those simulacra are not yourself. There is only one of you
in any one place. As you are well aware.”
The Lord of the Red Tower looked at him for a moment.
“We could find out,” he said to Milosh, “My Mechanisms
could dispose of you. Then we’ll see what happens to this ghost. In
my opinion, he will starve to death, wherever he is, and I will go on
as before. You call my other selves simulacra, as if they were not a
part of me. You are wrong.”
“It is a question,” said Milosh, “Of point of view.”
His right hand shot to the Lord’s eye like a crossbow bolt.
The Lord threw his hands up to protect himself, but he was too late.
Milosh thrust two stiff fingers deep into the Lord’s eye. The
Mechanisms swarmed while the Lord screamed and clawed at the
ghost doctor. Their blades sliced at the air and their metal arms
grabbed at Milosh. He was cut in the back of the leg as the world
disappeared.
- 190 -

Chapter Thirteen- Human Beasts
He was face down in white mud. His blood writhed
into a pool of water like a snake-shaped river
flowing into the sea. He turned back to look, then
tore a strip from his tattered robes and quickly tied it around the
wound. He looked around.
“This is not the Place of Gold,” he said. His eyes were wide,
and I knew he had never seen this place before. But I had. I saw the
burrowing people, filthy and naked. Their limbs were like brittle
old kindling, and their bodies had the patches of stiff hair that come
with starvation. I saw their eyes, which were not quite dead enough.
I saw the thin hard crust which had formed here and there on the
wet ground. In other places, the surface of the mud writhed with
worms and other crawling things.
“I know this place,” I said, in horror, “They called it their
beautiful new world.”
Milosh had been burned, cut and beaten. Now he was caked
in the thick, wet dirt. He looked like a native of this place. One of
the women must have thought so too, because she crawled over to
the ghost doctor on hands and knees and bent over, presenting
herself to him. He stared at her in shock for a moment, then pushed
her roughly away.
He must have pushed too hard. She rolled over into a deep
pool where the surface danced with tiny fish, nipping at the air for
food. She tried to catch herself before she tumbled in, and failed.
- 191 -

The pool boiled like a pot of water as the fish swarmed over her.
Her stripped bones floated up again before Milosh could even
speak.
“I didn’t…” he said, his mouth moving repeatedly. “I didn’t
mean…”
“Calm down,” I said, “Milosh, calm down. This is only an
image. It is inside of me. It isn’t real.”
“Everything is real!” he said. He was on his knees in the
mud. Yellow and brown worms poked their heads up and climbed
his injured leg. They were headed for his wound.
“Milosh!” I snapped at him, “Your leg!”
He shook his head, looked down, and wiped the worms
away. Then he got to his feet.
“Where are we?” he asked me.
“I don’t exactly know. But I saw this place when I was
dying in the oubliette. This was one of my hunger dreams. I saw it
more than once.”
“It is one of the hells,” he said, with conviction. But he
didn’t know anything about this world; calling it hell was only
common sense.
“Why did we land here?” I asked him, “Why not the Place
of Gold?”
“It must have been their will,” he said, “They must be in
control of all our transitions now. We will only reach the House of
the Dead if this pit leads directly there.”
He scanned the horizon. Except for some low hills, barren
and dark, the vast landscape was everywhere the same. Despite
their hunger and their violent lives, these human beasts were
devoted breeders. The ground was covered with them, like maggots
in an old tree. They fought and murdered and ate small things in the
mud. They came together in brief and repulsive copulation, and
when the men were done they pushed the women aside to live or
die on their own.
There were thousands of children, most of them already
dead. The older and stronger ones picked at the worms and flies
which infested the bodies all around them. But they did not eat the
bodies themselves. Perhaps they did not dare. I had seen the worms
as they crawled eagerly toward the cut on Milosh’s leg.
If they had lain their eggs in the corpses, eating the meat
itself could bring the things inside you.
- 192 -

“The Outside Beings created this place for you,” he told me.
For the first time, I heard resentment and disgust beneath his voice.
He was beginning to judge me as the world judged me. I said
nothing.
The ghost doctor continued to look around. “What
direction?” he said, “Which way to go? It is a crucial choice.”
“Can you not transform?” I asked him, “Become a thing that
can adapt to this world?”
“I cannot even imagine,” he said, “The disgust I would feel
if I had to do such a thing. But I cannot. I knew that the Crystal
World was dead in power to me, but now I find that this world is
dead as well. They have decided to leave me helpless. They have
maneuvered me into an impotent and potentially fatal position.”
“Why?” I said, “If they can make you powerless, they can
kill you. They are capable of much more than you have seen.”
“It must be you,” he said, “Maybe they only want to trap me
here, exactly as they said. Maybe they relish the thought of your
fear as you starve, again, but with no hope of escape this time.”
“You could be right,” I said, “They have hunted me for a
long time, but they are often too elaborate in their schemes. They
like to watch me struggle in their web. They have said that a hard
death would please them more, no matter what they themselves
have planned for me.”
“In any case,” said the ghost doctor, “we need to decide
which way to go. I am no more willing to be trapped here than you
are to be trapped in the cave.”
He turned and started to walk toward the nearest hill. It
wasn’t very high, but it was our only chance for a wider view.
There were people on every side of him as he walked. The
children pulled at his arms and legs. The woman offered themselves
to him with downcast eyes. The men looked up at him and growled,
deep in their throats. I found out why the women were so eager to
mate despite the harsh treatment they were given. Those who were
slow to present themselves to a nearby male were beaten, strangled,
or pushed face first into one of the deeper pools. Some of the
women who had survived such an attack stared at Milosh out of
ruined faces chewed away by the hungry fish. They, too, bent over
as he passed. They had learned to be compliant.
The ghost doctor was shaken by all this. I could see his hand
quivering as he walked. I began to feel contempt for him.
- 193 -

He climbed to the top of the hill. The people stared up at
him, horrified. There was no sign of life, not even insect life, where
he now stood. This hill belonged to the demons alone.
He looked out across the land, and scanned the horizon
again for any sign of a doorway to the House of the Dead. At first I
could see nothing, but then I noticed a small speck down below us,
miles away.
“Do you see it?” I asked the ghost doctor.
“Yes,” he said, “That is our goal.”
He descended the hill, and set out in the direction of the
speck. After a time, he no longer noticed the people.
We walked, and nothing changed. On every side, throngs of
people ate and fought, mated and gave birth, and died. Milosh
ignored them resolutely.
The ghost doctor was no longer strong and ready to fight.
He was unsteady on his feet, and his hands shook as he walked. I
had watched his decline as he passed through my ghost country. He
had been so confident and strong, even brash. Now he was barely
able to keep walking, and his bold assertions were forgotten. I don’t
think he wanted to do anything at this point but survive, and
regaining my shadow was now only a means to that end.
We passed a black field of burnt corpses, transformed from
the barely human to the abstract and pointless. Their hands were
stretched out in silent protest. Their mouths were pulled back,
melted across their faces like gargoyle smiles. The ground, like
their limbs, was black and crumbling beneath our feet.
Milosh stared straight ahead, but I could almost feel his
weakness now. I had seen so much, and he had not. His travels and
his battles had been narrower than mine. He was not strong enough
to free me, I thought. But he kept walking.
I could almost remember a time when this would have
meant as much to me. Before the oubliette, perhaps. Carthage was
worse than this only because it was real. Despite what Milosh had
said, I could not quite believe that this place was.
But I could almost remember. I had seen the aftermath of
war and famine and revolution. I had been shaken, sometimes, by
the things I had seen. I had wept, sometimes. I had been sick.
- 194 -

But all of that was over now. A vague discomfort, a vague
sense of disgust. That was all they could get out of me now.
Milosh simply hadn’t known what he was getting himself
into.
We found out what had burned the human beasts. When we
left the field of charred remains, we passed hundreds of them lying
supine in the mud, too weak to look for food or even push the bugs
and worms away. They stared up at the empty sky with dead eyes
that had gone beyond their own suffering.
Their thin ribs rose and fell with rattling breaths while black
bugs and yellow worms crawled in their mouths and noses and
burrowed into their hollow bodies. When I saw the white specks of
eggs on their arms and stomachs, Milosh put his hand to his
suddenly writhing stomach. He vomited, and at the same moment
fire flashed across the sky.
The ball of flame exploded a few feet above the ground and
set the catatonic beasts on fire. Milosh had been doubled over when
the fireball struck. He saw it streak across the sky in his peripheral
vision, and threw himself to the ground in a tight ball. Although he
was ignited, he pushed his burning back against the mud and rolled.
Then he jumped to his feet and ran, weaving through a forest of
blazing arms and legs, as thin as their screams.
Very quickly, the fire was snuffed out. A blanket of wind,
heavy and smothering, followed the explosion and left nothing but
ash and blackened bodies. Milosh was knocked to the ground, and
he stayed there. The ash and dirt rained down slowly on his face.
He didn’t blink.
I couldn’t speak to him, because he had not stayed in
contact. I think he would have remained there, staring up at the sky,
if a new danger hadn’t threatened. The fireball had struck the earth
nearby, and now the point of impact began to glow with a pulsing
green light.
The air rippled, plastic and hot, around the glow. It took him
a few minutes to react, but Milosh finally woke up and understood
the threat he faced. He braced himself and got to his feet. After a
brief glance at the shimmering green stone half-buried in the
ground, he walked away on shaking legs.
When he was far enough away, he spoke to me again.
- 195 -

“Damn you, Michael,” he said, “I should have left you for
the Up’Kalpi’Ko.”
He kept walking, like a machine, unable to stop till every
gear stopped turning. He looked at his feet. One of them appeared
in front of the other. It happened again.
He passed more fields of the unconscious, waiting to die. He
passed mounds of black ash and bones and limbs. He passed
hundreds if not thousands of the human beasts, going about their
usual business. The women still offered themselves to him, but the
men’s behavior had changed. Before, they had only growled. Now
they pulled their women away and bared their teeth, openly
threatening him. Only when he shambled past, oblivious to the
females they controlled, did they stop their challenges. They sensed
his growing weakness as much as I did.
I saw the Dead House on the horizon. It was a castle. Avery
familiar castle.
“That is your Dead House,” said Milosh, “Do you recognize
it?”
“Yes,” I said.
“That is not unusual,” he told me, “What place is it?”
“It is the castle where they held me prisoner,” I said to him,
“It is the place with the oubliette.”
“Do not expect it to be the same,” he said, “This is only a
form, a framework. This is not truly that castle, but your House of
the Dead. It will hold an image of everyone who ever died because
of you.”
“If that is the case,” I told him, “It must be far larger than it
looks. Many thousands have died by my actions, many hundreds by
my own hand.”
“They will all be there,” said the ghost doctor, “They will
show themselves to me. I will have to convince them to let me pass.
If they refuse, I may not go on.”
“Why did you not tell me this before now?” I asked him
angrily, “These people are certain to resent their deaths. Those
whom I merely slew will be the easiest. There will be many in this
house whom I betrayed. Many who trusted me or helped me, and
were destroyed. They will never let you pass.”
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“They will not judge you more harshly than you judge
yourself,” he told me, “They are only memories, not ghosts. If you
care nothing for having destroyed them, they will not stand in my
way. This House will tell us how dead you truly are. A monster, a
man of death, would find nothing to delay him here.”
I could not tell whether he considered me a man of death or
not.
“What would you do if they were reluctant?” I asked him.
“I would convince them,” he said, “It is part of my vocation.
I could certainly do this, I have done it many times before. But not
now. Now I am almost dead, and the sap of my reason is weak in
me.”
“You will pass through the House of the Dead, ghost
doctor,” I said to Milosh, “You have to do it. For both of us.”
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Chapter Fourteen- Dead House
He walked up to the gate, and I was going back to the
one place I most wanted to avoid. I had only seen
these stones briefly, when I stumbled half-dead out
of the castle and wandered away into the woods. But I remembered
them. They were dark and solid and thick.
“Hold steady, Michael,” said the ghost doctor, with a hard
voice, “I am too weak to do this on my own. I will need you to help
me think. I will need you to help me find the right words.”
“Will there be any resistance?” I asked him. No enemy had
attacked us in this world. The Incorruptible had led us directly to
our goal, diverting us from the Place of Gold for no apparent
reason.
“If there is an enemy,” said Milosh, “I will die.”
“Exactly,” I said to him, “You would have died, Milosh.
You would have died! All they had to do was send something to
finish you off. You were ready for the Dead House yourself. So
why didn’t they do anything?”
He stared at nothing for a moment, then he sat down on the
castle steps.
“Why did they…” he said, “I suppose…”
He stopped talking for a few minutes.
“This is part of a larger game, Michael,” he said at last,
“And they’ve been one move ahead of me from the beginning.
They never meant to keep me away from the Keep At The
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Centerpoint. They wanted to make sure I’d be weak when I got
there. And they’ve succeeded completely.”
I should have known there would be a larger plan, a subtle
and clever scheme. There always was. But Milosh was
unaccustomed to their manipulations.
“What can we do?” I asked him, “Is there any other way?”
“No,” he said, flatly, “To enter the Keep At The
Centerpoint, we must pass through the House of the Dead. Any
other route would only have led us here.”
“Then what is their plan?” I asked, “What could they
possibly be trying to do?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “And I lack the strength to find
out.”
“You cannot call on any healing spirits here?”
“No,” he said, “This place is like the Crystal World. It is
dead to me. I have no allies here.”
“You could call on the kind of power I use,” I suggested,
“When the stars are wrong and there is nothing else I can do.”
“What do you mean?” he asked me, “That I should seek
leverage over them? In this world, there is no such thing.”
“I suppose you couldn’t use my magic, in any case,” I said,
“Any more than I can use yours.”
“Were you going to suggest that I kill one of those poor
creatures?” he asked. He pointed at the people, burrowing and
dying.
“Yes,” I said, “They can be used to call the demons down.
To help summon them and control them.”
He got to his feet, “Their only goal is to destroy you,” he
said, “If I succeed, then both of us will escape. If I fail, they will
have no reason to keep me here. Maybe they were only trying to
wear me down. Maybe they only want me to give you up to them.”
“Does that mean you would do so?” I asked him, panicking.
He did not answer me. He walked up to the castle gate and started
to open it.
“Whatever happens,” he said, “You will help me get past
the dead, or there will be no hope for you.”
The Great Hall was not the same as I remembered. It had
mutated inside me, and now it had the shape most suited to its
legions. The walls soared up into the high darkness over the ghost
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doctor’s head, and now the sides held many stone cubicles where
my dead memories crouched like birds.
They were uncountable. Every enemy who had ever fallen
at my hand stared down at me, or watched me from the wide floor
where they were packed like slaves in a smuggling ship. But they
had mutated too.
Some of them were worm-like and gray, segmented and
writhing with thin hairs and pincers, fat faces, and round staring
eyes. Others were small and oval, with hard black shells. Some of
them were still like their former selves, clothed in the torn ruins of
military uniforms and chainmail, and bearing rusted weapons. Their
eyes were bright and eager, their skin was a light blue, and their
broken teeth hung out over dark purple lips as they smiled down at
me.
They took many shapes, but I recognized them all. Here was
a man I had stabbed in the stomach when I overheard him plotting
to rob me. There was a man I had cut down in a barfight, and
another who had been part of a lynch-mob. Many were soldiers I
had slain on the battlefield. Town guards and clerics, sorcerers,
women and children. They all stared down at me.
“They have shifted in your ghost country,” said Milosh,
“And taken shapes to match your rhythm. But their shapes are not
important. Nothing is important except their judgment. And their
judgment depends on you.”
They followed Milosh with their eyes. He walked past them
on his way to the other rooms, and they looked at him. Some of
them leaned towards him. A few of them stretched out their arms.
But they didn’t try to stop him. They didn’t really do anything.
“We might make it out of here,” said the ghost doctor. But
then someone touched his arm.
“Wait,” she said, “You can’t just leave me here.”
She was a young woman, wearing dirty rags and trying to
suckle a gray baby. Her hair hung out in patches over her face, but
her light blue eyes were alive, and I could see that she had once
been beautiful. I remembered her.
“I was murdered,” she told the ghost doctor, “I was killed in
my sleep. Someone cut my head off. You have to help me.”
“What would you have me tell this one?” asked Milosh. He
did not even try on his own.
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“Tell her I killed her because she was spying on me,” I said,
“Tell her I found out about the messages she was passing to the
Inquisition. I didn’t have a choice.”
“But I was innocent!” she said, when she had heard him out,
“I didn’t do it! I had turned Corin down. That’s why he told you
lies about me.”
The ghost doctor was silent, waiting for me to speak.
“This doesn’t mean anything,” I said, “I have always
wondered if she was truly guilty. If I was too hasty that time. That
doesn’t mean it’s true.”
She tried to hold on to Milosh’s arm, but he pushed her
away and kept walking. There were others like her. I had killed
many in plain defense of my life, but some were uncertain…
One by one, we passed them by. Somewhere in the crowd,
we passed the newly slain, the bandits and Kroat warriors and
Provincial sailors. They tried to talk, but they made no sound, and
their lips moved uselessly while their tongues hung out.
We walked into the next room, home to another class of
memories. Here the dead were stacked like cordwood. I didn’t
know these people personally, and here in my Dead House their
faces were indistinct, their features melted together. They were
piled on top of one another, and their tangled limbs were a bluish
shade of white. Some of them were burned, some had starved, but
most of them had great gashes on their bodies, dark red with dried
blood. I knew what they were, if not who they were.
In the course of my long career, I had often been employed
by tyrants, despots, usurpers and murderers. Such men had need of
sorcerers to hold on to their fragile power. And I often had need of
them, for strongmen and warlords had the means to protect me, if
only temporarily. Despite my situation, I could usually find work
within my chosen field.
Between the border wars, the conquests, and the rebellions I
had helped to crush, there were many thousands of victims whom I
had never even met. Now I saw the end-result of my repeated
complicity, born from my own unconscious imagination. They were
stacked up to a ceiling far above the ghost doctor’s head, beyond
sight in the darkness.
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These people didn’t speak. I didn’t know them, I couldn’t
even imagine what they would have to say. But Milosh sat down on
the floor abruptly, unable to pass or even to move.
“Unless you give me the words to convince them,” he said
to me, “We will never leave this room.”
I tried to find the words for a long time. I knew there were
no excuses. These people had been like me, serfs and tradesmen,
common people who were pawns in the larger power struggles of
our so-called betters. Some of them had joined in futile resistance
against these same rulers, and I had betrayed them to their enemies.
I had used my powers to locate rebel bases, to foil ambushes, to
capture popular leaders. What could I possibly say?
If I had been one of them, I would never have forgiven me.
There was only one angle I could possibly take.
“Tell them,” I said to Milosh, “That I was driven to these
deeds against my will. If I am free of the demons who chase me, I
will never take such work again. No future rebellions will fail
because of me. No more cities will be burned. There will be no
more mass-trials because of me. These things will stop forever if
they let me pass.”
Even as he made my case to them, I knew it was useless. If I
was trapped or destroyed, I could do no further harm. They knew it
because I knew it. I would have to find something else to say.
I started to think about my fellow serfs. Resentful, but
obedient. Hate-filled, but ultimately afraid. Sneaky rather than
defiant. How much like dogs they really were. And when a dog
strikes out and bites you, does it do so out of pride? It does not. It
bites you in resentment, in momentary anger, and it remains a dog.
“Tell them now,” I said, “That these things are in the nature
of war. When armies pass through a country, that country is
destroyed. If they had not suffered, they would have inflicted
suffering. Now, tell them, they will let me pass!”
The ghost doctor didn’t need to say a word. When I had said
these things to him, he was able to stand. He passed the dead in
their thousands, and went through another door.
There were fewer people in this room. My fellow
necromancers, my classmates and other alumni of the Black School,
those who had died in the Inquisition that had been meant to
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capture me. Various people who had hidden me in their homes, or
lied to my pursuers. My parents, and other relatives, and my first
lover. All the victims of my enemies’ frustration.
I was truly sorry for some of these people. The sorcerers
meant nothing to me, of course. Most of them deserved at least as
much, if not more. But why should my parents have been killed?
Why should someone be killed just for helping me? Why should
this foolish young girl have died because she slept with me?
My human enemies, like the demons who inspired them,
were often pointlessly vengeful.
“I had no choice but to keep running,” I told Milosh to tell
them, “I wasn’t willing to suffer forever so you wouldn’t die, that’s
true. But I never wished you any harm.”
They made no serious attempt to keep him from passing. He
walked by them and opened a door, and fell in a hole.
“I have broken my arm,” said the ghost doctor, when he
spoke again. But I hardly heard him. I knew where we were, I
recognized the cold, wet darkness of the oubliette. I was in shock. I
couldn’t even think.
The bones and skulls were piled up all around me, and I saw
suggestions of movement, furtive scurryings that might have been
spiders.
“You need to stop screaming, Michael,” said the ghost
doctor, “These will not be easy ghosts to pass.”
I tried to calm myself. I reminded myself that the oubliette
was under the Great Hall, not an outlying room. This was the Dead
House, not the castle where I had been a prisoner. I was not actually
in the oubliette again.
“There shouldn’t be any ghosts here,” I said, “I absorbed
their energy. They no longer exist. Doll is the only one who still
remains.”
“You know better, Michael,” said the ghost doctor, “You
destroyed the reality, but not the memory. And it is the memory we
must face.”
“Then I know which memory will come first,” I told him.
And I was right.
“Have you come to help him?” asked the Master of Arms.
“Yes,” said Milosh, cradling his injured limb.
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“I could stop you,” my old teacher said, “I could forbid you
to pass. He deserves far worse than that.”
Milosh said nothing.
“But I will let you pass,” said the swordsman, “Because
private vengeance is forbidden to me. And I am obligated to no one
here.”
He said nothing more. The next one to speak was the
Courtier.
“So you have come back, Michael,” he said, “You’ve come
back to forget yourself again.”
“Michael is not here,” said the ghost doctor, “Although he
can hear what you say.”
“You murdered me twice,” said the Courtier, “And the
second time was worse than the first. You even took my dead
dreams away from me.”
“I took the dead dreams away from all of you,” I said, and
Milosh repeated my words.
“Is there any reason,” asked the Courtier, echoed by the
Vrada Dancer, “That we should let you pass?”
“None whatsoever,” I said, “Out of all the memories in my
Dead House, I owe you the most. All of you helped me. All of you
were destroyed by me. I can only tell you that I had no choice.”
“This is not the method I would have chosen,” said Milosh,
before he repeated my words.
“I do not care,” said the Courtier, “Whether or not you ever
regain your shadow. I do not care if the demons torture you till the
end of time.”
“That is not the point,” I said, through the ghost doctor,
“You have every right to wish destruction on me. I would certainly
do the same if I were you. But do you wish to have died for no
reason? To see no result for the risks you took on my behalf?”
“We took those risks,” said the Courtier, “Before we knew
what kind of a man you were. What kind of a monster you were!”
I stopped talking, and looked at the wall. I remembered
every grain and crack in every stone. I saw the corner with the
damp stone, and the familiar bones whose energies I had absorbed.
I knew those energies were gone, used up and dispersed by me
when I made my escape.
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These voices I spoke with now were only memories, and in
essence I was arguing with myself. But what could I tell myself?
What could I say that would make any difference?
Milosh sat quietly among the bones, rocking back and forth.
He must have been in a lot of pain. I looked through his eyes, and I
remembered.
The oubliette could never be just itself, for me. When I was
there, I had melted through the stone walls into strange worlds. I
had seen myself through the eyes of a stranger. I had heard spiders
talking.
Now I looked at the walls, as solid as ever, and not likely to
melt or to let me melt through them. All of those images, all of
those memories, were present; but only half-seen, like reflections in
water.
The ghost doctor was not going to speak until I told him
what to say. He sat among skulls and legs, arms and broken ribs. He
looked at his arm, twisted and distorted. I had come back full-circle
through him, and ended up where I started. He was just as hurt as I
had been, and just as helpless. He would never escape the oubliette
on his own.
Nothing happened, and no one said anything. I started to
wonder what it would mean if I had my shadow back again. I would
be free of the future then, but not of the past. Even if I no longer
had Hell to fear, I would never be able to escape from the things
that I had done. Nothing could bring my victims back to life, or call
the scattered pieces of energy back into these bones.
Still, no one spoke. No one was going to speak. The dead in
this room had floated in their dreams, silent and separate, until I had
joined them. They had nothing to say on their own. Left to
themselves, they would be silent forever.
“These old bones are powerless, ghost doctor,” I thought.
But unless he spoke to me, I could not get through to him.
“It looks like you’ve beaten them,” said Milosh, even
though he couldn’t hear me. The walls were breaking up, and all
around I saw the shards of shattered wall and sky, falling as he fell.
“We’re on our way to the Centerpoint,” he said.
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Chapter Fifteen- The Keep At The Centerpoint
He fell into a bright and glowing world, and behind
his eyes I fell with him. A wall of light cascaded
like a waterfall from unimaginable heights. He was
pulled along by it, rolling and tumbling through vast bright spaces
of empty sky. The light fell towards a black hole, a dark round dot
like the pupil of an eye.
He plunged through that hole, and landed in a large
courtyard made of translucent, breathing flesh. The floor was like
tooled leather, red and textured. The walls were pink and lined with
blue and purple veins. The ceiling was a dark purple. The room
pulsed like a panting animal.
Light shone through the skin and poured down from the
hole in the ceiling. There was a slit in one of the walls, a dark red
gash, wet and thick with a violet substance. The sides of this gash
opened and closed as the room breathed.
Milosh ignored the gash at first. He curled up in a ball and
pressed his head against his legs. His skin sloughed away, and long
strands of moist pink flesh grew out of him. They stretched to the
floor, and enveloped him like a cocoon.
His body transformed into a mass of interlocking strands of
this wet flesh, which pulsed and breathed in time with the room
itself. When the change was complete, he stood up, and snapped the
strands which bound him to the floor. He was still hurt, and his legs
and arms had formed into irregular shapes. But some of his power
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had returned, and he walked over to the gash in the wall with a hint
of his former confidence.
“We are in the Centerpoint,” he told me, “This place is not
easy to reach, but I can reach everything from here. No part of you
can be severed from it. Your echo grew here, the sap of your reason
grew here, the life of your atoms grew here, and your shadow grew
here. Even though they have stolen it, the connection will remain.
And I will reel it back in, if I still have the strength in me to do so.”
“Are we in the Keep?” I asked him, confused.
“No,” he said, “You cannot see the things which are inside
the Keep. You would know too much about yourself then, and even
you are not ready for that. As I told you in the Crystal World, the
Keep At The Centerpoint will show me the core of you. I will know
you. I will even understand you. It would kill you if you understood
yourself.”
“But if I can’t see through your eyes there, then where will I
be?”
He had pushed through the slit in the wall, and the bright
red substance clung to his arms and legs, steaming. Now he crawled
through a narrow tube made of the same translucent fleshy material
as the room.
“You will wake up in the cave as soon as I go inside,” he
said, “And there you will wait for me. I will not be long. But first I
must reach the Keep.”
He kept crawling through the tube, which sloped upwards
steadily. After a while, I noticed small teeth protruding from the
walls. Milosh tried to avoid them, but occasionally they poked into
his hands or legs. After a while, the teeth started getting bigger.
Sometimes the ghost doctor even used them to pull himself up the
tube.
He was trying to hurry, but he was getting tired. He stopped
for a moment to rest. Instantly, the tube contracted. The walls
crushed in on him and pinned his arms and legs, and the teeth bit
into his new body in a dozen places. Foaming water poured down
the tube, followed by a slow flowing of the thick red liquid. Milosh
screamed. Pieces of his arms dissolved and broke apart. The red
flow carried them, steaming, away.
The ghost doctor breathed in sharply, and held the breath.
The tube’s grip on him was loose for just a moment. He flexed his
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fingers, and a long staff of braided red skin grew out of his right
hand. The walls closed tight around him again, but he touched them
with the end of the staff. Green fire flared up, and they were
burned.
Huge lights burst and reeled in front of my eyes, and the
edges of my sight went black. I realized that Milosh couldn’t see
this; it was happening in my own head, because of what he was
doing.
The tube loosened and lost its grip. Milosh snuffed out his
burning arms on the walls and climbed frantically, trying to get out
of the tube before it could trap him again. He pulled himself up by
grabbing the teeth, arm over arm, until he came to another slit at the
end of the tube, over his head. He pushed his way through this, and
fell out into another room.
This room was still soft and moist, but the walls and floor
were black. The ghost doctor curled up again, and the twisting cord
of his body turned black like a pot filling with ink. Soon his arms
and legs were mottled and dark, and his chest was black, smooth,
and hard. His skin and the room breathed together.
“Your Centerpoint is protecting itself,” he said, “And it will
keep doing so. Our enemies will now be your own Defenders.”
“Are you strong enough to fight them?” I asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said, “And it’s dangerous to even try.
You must have felt it when I burned the Corridor.”
“I almost passed out, I think. If you can pass out during
trance.”
“You cannot,” he said, “But you can go into shock and
die.”
The black room had a kind of mouth in the center of the
floor. It was a circle of interlocking teeth, yellow and brown. It
breathed in the same rhythm as everything else, and the mouth
clenched and loosened.
Milosh walked over to the mouth, waited for it to open, and
jumped in. He fell into a mass of soft hairs, too thin to hold him
back. A moment later, he tumbled out onto a hard floor, and sprang
to his feet. He was on a kind of balcony, stiff like the black shell of
a bug.
He was surrounded by floating yellow-brown balls with
open mouths and jagged teeth. They hovered and buzzed around his
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head, watching for an opening. His staff was now black and mottled
like his arm. He held it in front of him and waited. One of the balls
dove in at his face while another flew at the back of his left leg.
Milosh spun the staff and knocked both balls away. Then three of
them came in at once. Milosh knew the perfect angle to bat two of
them aside with one swing, but the third one attached itself to his
head and started chewing. He touched the staff to his head, and
green flame burnt his attacker away. Then he was back on his
guard, while a dozen of the balls hovered patiently around him.
I felt nothing at first, but a faint dizziness grew as he battled
the Defenders. When he sent green fire arcing out to destroy three
of them, the lights exploded in front of me again. Seven of the balls
attacked at once, and three of them got through the ghost doctor’s
guard and started to eat his skin. He burned them away, and the
lights wheeled in front of my head like drunk suns. I didn’t see the
rest of the fight clearly, but a moment later my sight cleared and
Milosh was standing alone on the balcony, injured again but still
alive. He turned and looked out on a soaring mass of organic towers
piled on top of each other from the distant floor to the unseen
ceiling above our heads.
The Keep At The Centerpoint.
“There is a more powerful Defender still to come,” he said,
and started to walk along the balcony. The Keep was immense.
From the outside, it seemed to have thousands of rooms. There
were many windows, glittering and cold like stars. Every tower
pulsed and breathed with its own rhythm, and took in light from the
tubes which stretched out in every direction and attached to the
walls.
“Those are the Cords,” said Milosh, pointing, “And one of
them leads to your missing shadow.”
He followed the curve of the balcony until he came to a
thick strand of twisted bone that led down to a bridge far below us.
The bridge led to a dark gap, a gateway into the Keep. Milosh
pulled his staff back into his hand, and started to climb down. It
was slow going, because he had to keep turning to look for
Defenders. But there were none.
Soon, he stood on the bridge and looked across at the gate.
It was a high, dark gap with a narrow door made of carved red
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one. Nothing happened for several minutes, and Milosh made no
move to approach the door.
Then a long strip of light appeared in the middle, and the
door split in two and opened wide. A giant figure, twice as tall as
Milosh, stepped out on to the bridge. It was dressed in rags, and
skinny as an old beggar. Its matted black hair hung in wild tangles
over its face, which was half eaten away by leprosy.
Despite the rotten nose and skinless left cheek, I recognized
its features as my own. The monster looked at Milosh and rolled its
eyes, and a low moan rumbled out of its chest. It was essentially
mute, for leprosy had turned its tongue into a gray stump. The
creature lifted its arms and stretched out its twisted hands, and I saw
long, sharp nails on its remaining fingers.
Milosh grew a new staff out of his hand, and held it out to
ward the leper to keep it away. It threw its right arm out with a snap
and tore at the staff so hard that Milosh’s arm was ripped from his
body. He fell to his knees while black liquid sprayed from his
massive wound. The monster charged, but Milosh thrust his left
hand into its torso. His fist plunged through the creature’s skin and
into its stomach.
The monster stumbled back, flailing its arms. A great cavity
had been torn out of its body. Milosh grew new skin over the hole
where his arm had been. Then he jumped to his feet and moved in
to press his advantage. The leper tried to protect its stomach, but
Milosh kicked its lower leg and knocked it off-balance. It fell down
and curled up into a ball to protect its head, and Milosh kicked it
repeatedly like a common street-fighter.
The monster’s head turned soft under the constant blows,
and started to cave in. But it was not a human being, and this world
was not bound by the rules I knew. Even though a stretch of its
skull had cracked beneath Milosh’s feet, it was still alive and ready
to fight. It caught the ghost doctor’s foot as he kicked, and pulled
his legs out from under him. Milosh fell on his back, and his head
hit the bridge with an echoing report. The leper still had Milosh’s
ankle, and started to pull him in. He didn’t resist, and I wondered if
he was unconscious, although his eyes were clearly open.
I had seen no flashing lights and no darkness despite the
brutal attacks Milosh had made on this Defender. I wondered why,
as the creature pulled Milosh in close and tore a section of black
skin away from his face.
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I could see the staring eyes of the thing, and its stump of a
tongue, and its decomposing skin. Blood had turned its hair into
wet clumps, and its head looked like a broken toy. Why had this not
affected me at all?
Then I knew it had. I suddenly noticed that I was looking at
the leper and Milosh, the Keep and the bridge, in a tiny clear bubble
which was getting smaller and smaller, floating away into a vast
darkness which I had not even known was there. I was losing the
bubble, I was dying, and in the black space I heard the stirring of
soft voices…
I tried to focus. I tried to bring the bubble back to me, to
turn the tiny meaningless squealing figures into life-sized pictures
once again. The bubble came back, the pictures came into view, and
I saw that the leper had lost its hold on Milosh as I floated away. Its
injuries were killing both of us, and when I lost touch, the ghost
doctor had regained the upper hand.
Now he turned from the creature’s ruined head, and broke
its ribs methodically, like dry branches. But the leper stirred. As the
picture filled my vision once again, the thing clawed at Milosh with
desperate strength, and cut his face from forehead to jaw. The ghost
doctor jumped back, but he wasn’t fast enough. The leper lunged
out at him and caught him in a bear hug, squeezing until ribs began
to crack and there was anguish in Milosh’s panicking gasp. He
drove his head into the monster’s nose, and fell to the bridge when
the thing lost its grip.
The bubble formed again, and started to float away, and as
it floated the ghost doctor desperately broke the fallen leper’s leg.
Immobilized, the thing had no defense. Milosh obviously meant to
beat it to death with his hands and feet. Did he not realize that I was
dying? How could he not? I wanted to scream out to him, to beg
him not to do anything else to the Defender, but he had stopped our
conversation and there was nothing I could do. The only way to
save my life was to focus, even if it gave the creature strength.
I made the view come clearer once again. Milosh had
completely crippled the thing by now, and he was back at the head,
kicking the leper again and again, his black feet red with blood. He
had actually torn off parts of its limbs like a boy with a captured
fly- the rot had softened the creature’s body even though it had not
sapped its supernatural strength. The Defender suddenly threw its
head forward, and bit into the ghost doctor’s leg.
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“Damn you!” growled Milosh. He tried to pull free, but he
could not. He fell to the bridge, and lay there for a moment
unmoving, with the thing still attached to his leg. Then he lifted his
remaining arm, and from his palm he grew a black web-like strand
which crossed the leper’s body and pinned it to the bridge.
“Very well,” he said, “Perhaps I will never destroy you, but
I will bind you.”
He covered the thing in strand after strand of the black web,
until it could no longer move. Then he used the same substance to
close the terrible injuries that had exposed the Defender’s brain. He
closed several of the creatures’ wounds, and finally it fell asleep.
“You are too strong, Michael,” said the ghost doctor, “Far
stronger than I ever could have guessed. You did not know my
ways, you did not know that I was meant to persuade the Defenders
to let me pass. If I could slay this creature here, I would rid the
world of you. But you have survived me. I will have to face the
truth about you now.”
He started to crawl on his belly, unable to stand, but
determined to reach the doors of red bone and go into the Keep.
After my first terrified pleas were completely ignored, I could no
longer get through to him.
Was it their Beautiful New World? Was it my Dead House,
and the things he had heard there? What had made the ghost doctor
decide to destroy me? When he reached the door, he told me on his
own.
“You are repulsive, Michael,” he said, “And you will do
their bidding in the end. You have been tainted by their touch, and
regaining your shadow will only free you to serve them at last. I
could stay here and let you starve, but there are better ways to
destroy you. I could give you over to them, but your destruction is
my responsibility, and I should inflict it myself. Nothing in my life
is as important as your death.”
He touched the red bone, and pushed it back. He crawled
into the Keep.
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Chapter Sixteen- I Am Reason
We will no longer treat you like a human being,”
they said to me, “We will take no demonic form
in our private dealings with you. It is a childish
game; we do it only because it impresses them. And you are too
powerful for that.”
I looked around me. The demons were there, the Outside
Beings, the Incorruptible. False names for the false faces they had
always worn. But this was only communication, a kind of dream,
and they could not hurt me.
“He could not endure the things he saw at the core of you.
Our secrets broke his mind, though his body still lives. He has
fallen out of your ghost country, and back into the empty shell of
his own. In a moment, you will be awake. There is no way to take
your shadow back from us by force or fraud. Now go, and reason
out the only other way.”
They started to recede. I was returning to the cave, and they
were leaving. But they had shown me their true faces.
I cannot describe them. Anti-Being cannot be described.
He was lying on the floor, dressed in his black feathered
cloak, wearing his cannibal mask. I pulled the mask away, and saw
two eyes, as empty as the demons themselves.
Whatever he meant to do in the Keep At The Centerpoint,
whatever destruction he had planned, the things he saw had taken
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him away from himself. There was nothing left, nothing at all, and I
knew he would never be coming back.
“They were right,” I told him, “You were never fairly
paid.”
I found his ax and ended his life out of mercy. I understood
what he had done, and I did not want revenge.
I filled a pack with food and water from the cave. Until I
was out of the Devil Hills, the ghost doctor’s silver ax would be my
sword.
I looked out over the shifting panorama of mountains and
fog, never quite the same from one moment to the next. South of
me were the Provinces, and more running, and more work. Unless
there was any meaning to the demon’s final words.
I shouldered my pack and my ax, and started to walk. It
never even occurred to me to take Doll.
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III: Only Do as We Ask
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Chapter One- What You Did For the Decision
Ihave faced the sharp blade of an enemy hundreds of
times, but for me the sick feeling never goes away. The
enemy draws his sword, and a flash of light runs along
the steel like an intimate greeting. The world collapses into that
long, thin edge and glittering point. And even if the man knows
nothing about swordsmanship, even if his blade is as sluggish as a
drowning swimmer, still it is almost hypnotic as it moves, because
you know it is looking for a way into your body. If you can force
yourself to look into his eyes, you will see the same horrified
fascination. You will see that your enemy, like you, is fighting back
the bile from the pit of his stomach, fighting to keep his hand from
shaking like a fish out of water, fighting to make himself do
something, anything, before you cut him down where he stands.
And that is where training and experience take over, and
save your life if they are going to. Still horrified, still obsessed with
your enemy’s sword more than your own, you feel a part of your
mind detach and go cold. Your body turns, your arm pulls the
sword around in a deceptive arc that evades the enemy’s steel and
severs his hand at the wrist, or opens an artery in his neckwhatever
the best target might be.
And then, with a look of stupid animal surprise on his face,
your enemy freezes in shock. His blood rushes out of him, and he
sees it but he doesn’t believe it. His legs collapse underneath him,
and behind his eyes, you see him disappear.
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But not this time. This time the slow one is me. As his
sword flies up at me, I make a last attempt to block him, but my
hand is numb and clumsy and my fingers feel wide and soft like
links of meat. Three feet of sharp metal glance off my useless parry
and dive into my lower throat. I feel no pain, only a deep, wet
coldness.
I fall to my knees, stupidly clawing at the blade as if to pull
it out of me. As the edges of my sight go black, I hear their voices,
the complex equations of the difference between their world and
mine.
“Too late, Michael. You ran out of time.”
“You’re slipping, Master. Your mind is slipping loose from
its moorings.”
“Do not call me Master,” I warned the thing, “Unless your
thoughts match your words.”
But I wondered if he was right. I had always had
nightmares, of course. Especially since the oubliette. But they were
different now, more bloody, like premonitions of a specific death. I
knew that deep terrors preyed on my mind, besieging me from
within. I put the head called Gorem back in the bag, while his
glassy eyes stared up at me with blank hatred. Down below, the
empty glen was about to become a place of death.
“They are almost here,” I said to the Leader, “Signal the
men.”
Just at that moment, leaves skittered along the ground.
There was a light breeze. The branches swayed gently on both sides
of the little valley. I heard the faint sound of marching feet, of
sheathed swords bouncing against mailed legs.
The chill of my nightmare was still upon me as the Leader
gave the ready signal to our men on both sides of the glen. A latenight
breeze rolled over my neck, and I shuddered. It felt like that
cold blade jutting out of my throat. My sword, though it was drawn
only as a precaution, felt heavy. My limbs held me down. The trap
would have to work, as I was in no shape to fight.
They came around a bend in the path, and we saw them for
the first time. They had been trailing us for weeks, ever since we
came out of the hills and burned the garrison at Kolchik. Now they
were tired, and their bellies were empty, and most of them probably
thought they would never find us. They were wrong.
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The soldiers wore half-plate and chain-mail. They carried
spears or pole-axes, and had short swords at their sides. They
marched two by two, and their captain, the only overcaste among
them, rode a white horse at their side. His mount would be an easy
target.
They marched into the trap. There were about a hundred
men in the column, and we waited until the bulk of them were past
the point of no return. They walked on wooden boards, kicking up
our thin screen of dirt, and the wood was showing through. But my
Glamour clouded their eyes, and they thought they marched on
solid ground.
The Leader’s hand dropped, and down below, seventy men
or more were swallowed up by the earth. They fell ten feet into a
bed of sharp stakes and mud. The captain’s horse jumped clear of
the trap, and he yelled, “Ambush!” pointlessly. His horse went
down under the first wave of arrows from the valley walls. From
either side of the glen, our people scurried in to catch the survivors.
Our men had homemade spears, pitchforks, and scythe-blades
mounted on long poles. The soldiers should have been able to break
free. But the arrows fell down on them from either side, and those
who raised their swords to strike were pierced three times in an
instant. The men in the pit screamed like devils as they writhed on
the stakes or floundered in the mud with broken limbs. We silenced
them after we had finished off the others.
“Is everything ready?” the Leader called down. Somebody
showed him the captain’s severed head.
“Very good,” he said, “Now get down in the pit and strip
their bodies of steel.”
I’ll always remember his eyes. They changed like the
weather, from gray to blue to green, and they were pale and cloudy
like the ocean. There was always a quiet stillness about him, a
slightly impersonal warmth, a broad sense of compassion. He had a
way of looking at you, like he was the first person to ever truly see
you.
That made me uncomfortable, and I did not seek out his
conversation. But he sought out mine. We were in our camp high
up on the hillside, and most of our fighters were asleep. Here and
there on the outskirts of the camp, men stood guard, with new mail
on their bodies and new weapons in their hands. The Leader had let
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them take some armor, but not too much of it. Speed was more
important to us than protection.
“Without you, Michael,” he said to me, “That column might
have run us to ground. Now we have new weapons, new armor, and
the governor has another disaster to explain.”
“Be sure to build a statue of me when we win,” I said. I was
staring into the fire. We could dare to make a fire now. There was
no one nearby to come hunting for us.
“No one will care about your past deeds,” he said, as he sat
down on an overturned log. The firelight reflected in his eyes and
cast shadows in the wrinkles of his face. Black shapes flickered in
his gray hair.
“We can even give you another name, if you want. But it
won’t matter. To the people of the Provinces, you won’t be a
legendary monster. You will be a great symbol, a hero.”
“That should make for a contradictory ballad-cycle.”
He shook his head ruefully. “You’re referring to those songs
about the Kroat invasion, the destruction of the Armada? We will
see those ballads change. When people know what you did for the
Decision, every scrap of your story well be retold in a different
light.”
“You can change what people say about the past,” I told
him, “But you cannot change the past. My story will remain the
same.”
“I do not understand you, my friend. You risk your life for
us. You live on the hills with us like a hunted animal. Why do you
do these things?”
“It is not for the glory,” I said, “Any more than for you.”
He looked at me and nodded solemnly. His eyes were as
gray as his hair. He was a kindly old grandfather, leading a
revolution. I got up and went off to my bedroll.
“Goodnight, Michael,” whispered Gorem, from inside my
pack, “I hope you die in your dreams.”
“For a long time,” I answered, “I have lived in my dreams. I
hardly know what is real and what is not. And I die in my dreams
every night. You must feel very much the same, my slave.”
He said nothing more after that.
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This time it was different. I dreamed about my undiscovered
country, the place I should have left unexplored. My country of
living mica and faceless men made of raw flesh, the place of the
mechanical god, and the Most Excellent pushing her fingers under
her eyes. The place where everyone I ever killed crowded together
to block my way. The place where human maggots murdered and
raped each other in pale mud.
But my dream ended the same way. I was killed before
morning, and the Incorruptible came. I woke up shaking, and I had
to crawl outside to vomit in the dust of the camp. The moon looked
down on me, shuddering face down in the dirt beside my own bile.
I cradled my sword until morning. My old teacher, long
since destroyed and absorbed by me, had called the sword the
Queen of all Weapons. I didn’t believe it. A sword was a piece of
metal, sharpened to hack apart human meat. It was a quick way to
put an enemy into shock, to open up his veins and take enough of
his blood to put him down. I had taken swords when I needed them,
thrown them away if they slowed me down. They meant nothing to
me.
But not anymore. I wrapped the sword in my arms and slept
with my hands on the hilt. It was the only way to get back to sleep.
It was the only thing that made me feel safe.
I woke up under a gray sky streaked with orange. The sun
was rising over our camp, and most of our army was already awake.
There were not yet very many of us. The Leader had recruited these
men from the local villages, from the young undercaste men, angry
about conscription and new taxes and lives of endless work. I knew
these men. I had been one of their kind. And I knew they would
never have done this on their own. The peasant’s mind is
everywhere the same. They would have worked, and hated, and
then died. They would not have rebelled.
But the Leader had woken them up. He was a blacksmith
one day, and an outlaw the next. He had been quiet all his life, then
he had started to speak. People gathered around him, especially
young men in their reckless years, eager to prove themselves; and
most especially the hired men and the tinkers who had nothing at all
to lose. They would campaign with him until he got hung. I don’t
know if any of them really expected him to change their world.
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Except perhaps those few. He was surrounded by them at all
times. They were young, but unlike the others they were clean and
well-groomed, and they did not drink. While the others sat around
the fire at night downing skins of ale and playing dice, the Leader’s
true believers stood guard at his tent. They were quiet and sincere,
and I did not trust them.
“He wants to speak to you,” the young man said. He was
one of the believers, and his voice was crisp and disciplined. The
fear and contempt were subtle, well masked.
“I’ll be there in a moment,” I told him. I was there to help
the Leader win the war, I was one of his soldiers. I had decided to
risk everything on his behalf. But it still wouldn’t do to let him
think he owned me.
The messenger turned on his heels and left. I saw the look in
his eyes before he turned. I was a problem for him, a threat to his
ideology. The Leader was just, why did he rely on necromancy?
The Decision was destined for victory, so what was the need for my
spells? I knew that he wanted to kill me. If the Leader hadn’t
needed his services, I would have murdered him that night.
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Chapter Two- Not At All Like Them
Good morning, Michael,” the Leader said, quietly. He
did not seem angry that I had delayed him. I sat
down at his table, and shared his breakfast. It was
the same gruel that the soldiers were eating.
“You can wait outside, Karem,” the Leader said. The
messenger who had brought me left the tent.
“He’s a good man,” said the Leader, “But too eager. When
they really accept the Decision, it overwhelms them a little.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said, and had a sip of water.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said, leaning
back on his stool, “I think it’s time we explored your motivation.”
“Why?” I asked him, gesturing broadly at the door of the
tent, “Those men out there are willing to fight for you, but they are
not fanatics like Karem. Do you question them?”
“I educate them,” he said, “And it’s a slow process. But you
are not at all like them, Michael.”
“No, I’m not,” I said, “And neither are you. But we used to
be, didn’t we?”
He nodded, while I fought the urge to avoid his eyes. I
didn’t want him to read me, to see into me. Then a surge of bravado
came over me, and I let him see. I looked right through him, and he
looked away.
“You have a lot of stories, Michael,” he said, “But this is
not the time to show them to me. I asked you here because I want to
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understand. Not your past, but what you are doing here now. After
all, we are not even paying you.”
“I do not know about your Decision,” I told him, “It’s a
good name for a rebel army, it has a militant ring to it. But when
you talk about ‘accepting the Decision’, I’m afraid you lose my
interest. I sounds rather mystical for me.”
“That’s a strange thing for a necromancer to say.”
“Be that as it may. I wanted to fight for you because I think
you’re right. But your apocalyptic tone is a little disturbing to me.”
“Don’t let it worry you,” he said, “The people need the
imagery of destruction, the vision of the world turned upside down.
It’s the only way they can accept the idea of rebelling against their
history. But I don’t plan to create an apocalypse. My dream is a
world with no more Masters. That is all.”
“I’ll drink to that,” I said, and finished my water, “If I could,
I would cleanse my own country of that whole ancient tribe. There
are always people like us, born to work or to destroy ourselves in
pointless resistance. And there are always people like them.
Parasites.”
“They made you what you are,” he said, “Didn’t they?”
“Well, not exactly. I was an ambitious young man. I wanted
more than what they allowed me. But no one told me I had to find
that in the Thorp.”
“Still,” he said, “If it were not for them- if you had not been
born a serf, if you had not seen your kindred die for resisting themyou
would never have made your fatal mistake.”
“My mistake,” I said, “Has not proved fatal yet.”
“Do you still hope to escape that doom?” he asked me,
“Even after the ghost doctor failed you?”
The Leader knew much of my story.
“I do not know,” I answered, “I may have a practical
solution. But I am very much afraid that I won’t live to see it
through.”
“You’ll live forever, Michael,” said the Leader, “You’ll live
in the memories of the generations.”
“I told you before,” I said, standing up without asking him,
“That doesn’t mean anything to me.”
I sat on a rock and scanned the empty horizon. The Leader
was talking to the troops. I didn’t hear everything he said. He never
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waved his fist in the air or shouted empty phrases. That wasn’t the
way he worked.
I watched an old black bird float over the low hills below us
while I listened. The Leader’s voice was quiet and calm. He
sounded like a kindly old man telling a story. But his command of
rhythm and tone was masterful. He praised them on their victory
over the Provincial troops, but took care to mention the things they
would have to improve.
Karem and another Believer stood at attention on either
side, watchful for assassins. When the Leader was done, there was
warmth and admiration on the soldier’s faces. They loved this man.
Every morning he painted them mental pictures of the new world
they were creating for their children and their children’s children.
He gave them a reason to sleep on the ground, to live under the
hunt, to risk their lives and fight. They went to their daily weapons
drill with a light in their eyes.
“There is nothing in your eyes,” said Karem, “Except your
ghosts.” He had come up to stand behind me, and echo my
thoughts.
“What do you want?” I asked him, with a level voice. My
right hand twitched a little; it wanted to go for my sword hilt. I was
surprised at myself. There was no threat, but killing had become so
natural to me.
“The Leader would like you to instruct the men in weapons
drill,” he told me, “Old Sherik is gone. He must have deserted.”
“He’s not gone,” I said, “He didn’t make it over that ridge.”
I pointed across the hills towards a small patch of level
ground, where Old Sherik’s face was being chewed apart by wild
dogs. He should not have considered informing against the
Decision.
Karem shuddered, and looked at me with revulsion and awe.
I had known, and I had acted. He opened his mouth, then forced it
shut and turned away.
I took our men through a standard weapons drill. There was
no sense in trying to teach them sophisticated techniques. It was
enough if they could thrust or cut effectively and if they knew some
basic guard positions. That alone would take daily practice.
We were done in a few hours, and I went back to my
bedroll. It was time to ask Gorem some questions. I took him out of
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my backpack, and his eyes blinked like a kitten’s. He was my
trophy, my prize, a gray head with matted black hair, a blue-ish
tongue hanging out over his lips, and staring eyes that looked at a
far away nothingness. He smacked his lips and tried to spit, as if to
clear his mouth of a bad taste.
“I hate these dreams you’ve given me,” he growled, “They
don’t belong to me, or to any of the dead.”
“They belong to me,” I said, “And you are the box I carry
them in. I will let you dream your own dreams someday, Gorem.
But until the Decision is victorious, I can’t allow that. Be thankful
you were not with me in the oubliette, or you would never dream
again."
“What do you want from me?” he asked, “This talk is worse
than the dreaming.”
“What have you seen?” I said, “Are there any soldiers in the
region?”
“A mounted column has turned north from their patrols.
They ride straight over the hills, and they will reach this camp by
midnight.”
“How could this have happened?” I asked him, “They could
never have heard about the ambush. And nobody knows we are
here.”
“There are a few,” he said, “In villages where you recruited.
Somebody must have told.”
I rolled him back into the pack, and ran to find the Leader.
When midnight came, we were still marching. Our old camp
was far behind us, but that didn’t mean we were safe. Our pursuers
rode mountain ponies, and they could follow us even into the high
hills.
“How are your stars, Michael?” asked the Leader, “Does
your power wax or wane?”
I glanced at the constellations, but I already knew the
answer. “I can call no power from the stars tonight that would guise
our tracks over so much ground,” I told him, “But if we can stay
ahead of them for a few more days…”
“That may not be good enough,” he said, glancing back over
the column of men and the dark slopes and ridges, “What else can
you do?”
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“I can do a number of things, if I have power to draw upon.
But I need either stars or blood, to perform a major working.
Without them, my options are limited. I cannot call up one of the
great demons, but there are sick places in the mountains I could turn
to good effect. If I wake them up, their corrupt dreaming will
pollute the minds of our enemies. That could slow them down.”
He looked at me, unsure for once. I think he was worried
that rumors of black magic would damage his cause. But he had no
choice if he wanted to escape, and he was already committed to me.
We had made a sorcerer’s bargain, and now I knew what it felt like
to be a demon. It wasn’t what I wanted.
“Do it, Michael,” he said, “Bring the dreaming of these sick
places down upon them.”
“It would still be better if I had blood,” I said, “In fact, I
could destroy them if I did.” I scanned our column, looking for
stragglers who might serve us better this way.
“No, Michael,” he said firmly, “You must unlearn your old
ways, however much you might have needed them in the past. We
will not make sacrifices of our comrades. You will live or die with
the Decision, now.”
I nodded. “I’m sorry,” I said, “You’re right. I’m used to
thinking in a certain way. But these are my people, now.”
His eyes were warm with gratitude, when I said that.
The men were tired, and some of them were already
grumbling. But I was used to being pursued. I looked out over the
ridge, where the moonlight made weird shadows over the rocks.
Pebbles slipped off the edge with every step I took, and skittered
down the side like nervous insects.
I had been on many empty peaks, and I had fled through
many abandoned valleys like the glen down below us. Such places
are always deserted, alien and un-welcoming. Even the ghosts are
solitary in the high hills.
“You have a strange look in your eyes, Michael,” said the
Leader. I had gone ahead a little, but now the column had caught up
with me, “Almost contemplative.”
“I don’t know,” I shrugged, “I think maybe I’m just seeing
things a little differently.”
- 226 -

“There is a cold kind of beauty up on these peaks,” he said,
as if he knew my thoughts, “Almost malevolent, but quiet, too. The
silence of thinking alone in a dark room.”
I nodded. “It’s the first time I’ve felt quiet in years, I think.
I’ve been looking at my feet for a long time.”
“What do you mean?” he asked me.
I pointed down. “One foot in front of the other,” I said,
“You must have felt it. When you’ve been climbing or running for a
long time, the world goes away. All you can think about is your
feet.”
“I see what you mean,” he said, “You’ve never had a chance
to stop. But you’re not stopping now.”
“Inside myself, I am. I’m more afraid of dying than ever
before, but every shadow and every rock catches my eye. I look up
at the moon, and it transfixes me. Something is changing.”
He clapped me on the shoulder. “You remind me of myself.
I forget that you’re a young man, Michael. You’ve seen so much
more than I have, than anyone has. But you’re only just starting to
get a look at the world. Maybe the Decision is giving you a new
way to see.
“It was only a short time ago, really, that I stood on one of
these same hills and looked up at the moon in her glory for the first
time. I had spent a lifetime in hard work, hammering red iron and
shaping it into tools, horseshoes, nails. When an overcaste came
into my shop, I had to curry favor and hope he decided to pay me. I
had to watch while he leered at my wife. I buried two sons,
because leeches are for the overcaste alone. I sent another son to
their army, and I never got the chance to bury him.
“By the time my wife died, I was like an old piece of
driftwood, bent-up and hard. I went to the hills to make the death
offering to the gods. And there I saw the moon. She rode through
the clouds over my head like a young queen. I looked up at her, full
and fat and cold as the mountains, and her light poured into me and
dissolved my twists and turns. She washed all my dirt out of me, all
the hate I never even knew I had. She showed me a new thing, a
new solution, and the mountains showed me, too. They were cold
and dark and forever alone, the opposite of the moon, and their
empty places had room enough for all my newborn thoughts.
“There was no need to live the way we lived. There was no
need for sons to die, and men to grovel under the eyes of other men.
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All we had to do was tear it down. All we had to do was turn the
world upside down.”
His eyes were on the moon again, and so were mine.
“I think I’m starting to really accept the Decision,” I told him. He
put his hand on my shoulder again, reassuring and strong.
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Chapter Three- A Thousand Years of Memories
Idreamed of a black thing, slick with the juice of its
mother’s womb, rising up to meet me with the
confidence of a young god. It had a head, but no face,
and over its glistening dark flesh there was no skin. It squatted on
two legs as if they were four.
“Come with me,” it said, raising its hand. When it spoke, a
thin line parted where its mouth should be, and strings of membrane
stretched and contracted with the words.
“You went too far to go back forever,” it told me, “And
there are things you haven’t seen.”
I waited for it to try to kill me. In my dreams, everything
wanted me dead. But it didn’t attack. Instead, it made a slit in its
own torso with a long and twisted fingernail. Clotted white blood
poured out, like sour milk. Behind the blood, strange fetuses
struggled to be born. A boy and a girl, locked in an embrace by the
umbilical cord which had strangled them both. They were dead, but
their blue limbs still moved.
The boy turned, and I looked into my own eyes, staring like
fish eyes from his dead young face.
We marched in a wall of rain. The soldiers were still behind
us, and according to Gorem, they were gaining now.
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“Your petty working sent a few of them to their deaths,” he
said to me, “But only a few. Their minds were afflicted with strange
dreams, and they lost their way. But they shook it clear, they set
themselves straight, and now they are coming! You can make me
warn you, Michael, but you can’t stop them from catching you.
Soon I will die!”
“You are dead, Gorem,” I told him, “Your eyes do not see
the world. They see only in the dead dreams, even if those are not
your own.”
His mouth worked at the air emptily, and his eyes rolled up,
showing the whites. His knotted hair was tied to a strap on my
pack, so I could consult him more easily.
“Why did you do this to me, Michael?” he said when he
could speak again, “Why did you keep me from dying?”
“As I said, Gorem, I did not keep you from dying. I am a
necromancer, a ruler of the dead. I caught the pattern of your slow
dreams as they pooled up in the air around your corpse. I kept your
dreams from becoming diffuse, and I put them under bonds. Now
you can only dream the world and its happenings. I needed this, and
the Decision needed it. Your warnings have saved us.”
“Damn the Decision!” growled the head, and at this Karem
and the other Believers began to watch us closely, “My warnings
haven’t saved you yet! If I could lie, I would lead you all to your
deaths! You have stolen my death from me!”
“You were trying to kill me, Gorem,” I said in my patient
voice, “You are luckier than you could be. When I don’t need you
anymore, I will let you go. But I could feed you to the Outsiders,
you know.”
He said nothing, after that.
The hills were deadly in the rain. We lost a few men on
slick boulders or loose pebbles. There was no time to stop or take
any notice. Our enemies rode mountain ponies, and gained on us
constantly.
I kept looking up at the sky, as if the stars would come out
in the middle of the day in the right shapes to save my life. I was so
close to the solution now, but my long death had its fingers on my
shoulder. I felt its breath on my neck.
“You look sick, Michael,” said the Leader, “Are you weary
from the march?” He himself was never tired.
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“Not at all,” I told him, “I’ve been moving for years now. I
could keep walking for months.”
He gave me a strange look. “How many years have you
been running? Your eyes are old, but your face is very young.”
I thought back, but I lost the thread somewhere over the
years. Season followed season, and nothing changed. It was always
like today.
“I don’t know,” I said, puzzled, “I have so many memories.
It feels like a thousand years.”
“You need to find a stopping point,” he told me, “A place
inside that never moves.”
I shrugged. “A clean death would be a stopping point.”
He said nothing for a while. We picked our way among the
boulders, always making for higher ground. There was no sign of
our enemies behind us, but we knew they were out there. Water
poured down the brim of my hat and spurted like a fountain in front
of my face.
“Come to think of it, Michael,” said the Leader, “I know too
little about you. I am trying to understand you from myths and
stories, and all I can see are these distorted images. I’d like to hear
some of it in your own words.”
“No you wouldn’t,” I told him, and lowered my eyes a little.
“It wouldn’t reflect well on me. I’m trying to be a different person
now.”
“And that will only be possible if you face your past. I want
you to tell me a story, Michael. Give me a sense of what it means to
be you.”
I looked back over our column. We struggled hopelessly
along a mountain ridge in the rain, trying to out-run cavalry. At
least this would help me take my mind off it.
I said, “I’ve been a mercenary all my life. When I was
young, I saw the way my parents lived, and I knew I couldn’t face
that for myself. So I went to school; but I lost my shadow in the
demon’s Thorp.
“Since then, I’ve worked for anyone who could pay me and
shelter me for a time. That meant kings and princes and proud
churchmen. I turned my sorcery against their enemies, and they
paid me and protected me. Sometimes those enemies were their
own people.
- 231 -

“I’ve helped crush rebellions in a dozen countries. Two
dozen. I don’t really know how many. I’ve trapped rebel armies,
made their own dead betray them. I’ve stopped the torturers from
stripping a man’s flesh only to cut his head off, myself. The head
can’t lie to me.
“I’ve betrayed and murdered at every turn, but always to
save myself, never for gain. Always to keep the pattern of my self
free from the Outside Beings.
“I was employed once by a king named Guuth. He was the
ruler of a vast land, home to many tribes and peoples. One of these
was called the Ovan. They were not a violent people. They had
their history of wars, like any nation, but they were not plunderers
or conquerors. They had never tried to build an empire.
“King Guuth distrusted them. The Ovan spoke a different
language, a tongue he did not know. This language held their
history, their law, their customs and their songs. Everything that
made them separate and alien, all that kept them apart from the rest
of his subjects. And it was ephemeral, easily destroyed, because the
Ovan did not know how to write.
“King Guuth proclaimed them rebels. If they did not cast off
their language, they would be wiped out. His army carried out the
order, but I made it possible. My magic told his generals where to
look. The Ovan had certain people called Renyara who were the
keepers of their lore. Any one of them held the entire history of that
culture in his head. When the proclamation was made, the Renyara
went into hiding. But my spirits sought them out, dreamed them
huddling in dark places or crouching down in bogs and thickets.
They were cut down.
“I saw it happen only once. The king brought me on
procession through the Ovani province, to examine his triumph. We
had killed the Renyara over the course of a summer, and replaced
them with new schools and new teachers, chosen by the king. But
we had not quite been thorough enough.
“While we were there, my spirits told me of a secret place,
protected by petty magics which had delayed them for a time. It
was a small stone chamber, cut into the ground, which was used for
storing bodies in the winter when the ground was too hard to dig. In
this room, six of the Renyara still survived.
“I was there when the king’s army pulled them out. Five of
them were mere students, but the last one was an old woman, a
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Renyara of seemingly fantastic age. I could see her stories in every
inch of her face. Her eyes held the life of a thousand years of Ovani
memories.
“I could have saved her, if I had understood. And there was
no reason I shouldn’t have understood. When my spirits came to
me, I could have kept it to myself.
“But work meant survival, and King Guuth had paid me to
root out his enemies- whether armies or old women. I hadn’t given
it any thought.
“I watched a soldier cut off her head, quite casually; as if he
were picking fruit. It lay on the ground for a minute, staring up at
me, and its eyes were still filled with that same life, even older than
herself. Then it was kicked aside, and the army moved on.”
“It almost seems,” said the Leader, “As if you chose your
story to horrify me.” He did not sound horrified, only quiet and
kind.
“I just wanted you to know what you were dealing with,” I
answered, “I wanted you to know what I’ve been.”
“You distort the truth of your story,” he said, shaking his
head, “All these horrors were only a preparation for what you are
today. Every person commits horrors, Michael. But you have turned
your back on them. And I believe, because I have looked in your
eyes, that you’re ready to make the Decision once and for all.”
“I cannot become a Believer, I’m sorry,” I told him, “I
regret what I’ve done. It sits in the pit of my stomach like a tumor.
But I’ve seen too much. I cannot believe in anything without
reservation. I cannot fully accept the Decision.”
“You will,” he told me, and he put his hand on my shoulder.
His eyes reassured me. They were still and blue.
“Yes, I have done it,” said Gorem. His lips were pulled back
from his gums. His teeth were yellow and cracked, and his gums
were gray.
“You have found a place?” I asked him. He was still tied to
my pack, dreaming the world as I required. Rain covered his face
like a clear sheet.
“Yes,” he said, “I dreamed of it just now. A small ravine,
too narrow for two men to walk abreast. It isn’t easy to see, but it
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cuts deep into the mountainside. If you hide your column in there,
the cavalry might pass you by.”
“We’ll do it,” I said, “Good work, Gorem.”
He told me how to find the ravine, and we marched as
quickly as we could.
“There’s something I want to show you, Michael,” said the
Leader. We were camped in the ravine, and the men were curled up
next to each other, pressed between the walls. They were all
exhausted, and we had posted no guards. Only the Leader and I
were still awake.
“Look up in the sky,” the Leader told me, “Look up at that
star.” He pointed to the thin strip of night we could still see between
the rock walls. There were many stars, actually, and they were
coming around to the pattern that would make me strong. In a few
days, we would be able to turn on our pursuers. But one star was
very bright in the night. It looked down on us like a watchful eye.
“I’m looking at it,” I told him, “But why?”
“I want you to understand that star,” he said, “Like I
understood the moon on my first night in the hills. Try to reach up
to it. Let its light into you. That star will teach you to accept the
Decision.”
“There are too many people here,” I said, uncomfortable
with his suggestions. “I would need to be alone.”
He looked at me, straight in the eyes. I looked away. His
compassion was terrible to me.
“Then leave the ravine and go on the walls of the cliff. I
know the cavalry might see you. But I will take that chance. I will
risk losing you, I will risk the destruction of this army. Because I
need you to accept the Decision. Our struggle needs you. We need
you to Believe.”
“What difference will it make,” I said, “If I go up there?” I
was starting to get angry. I didn’t want to do this.
“Up there on the mountain,” he said, “I want you to look at
the star. Don’t turn away, not even if it means your death. Don’t
look aside for anything. Surrender yourself, and you will
understand.”
Without a word, I turned to leave the ravine. I had to step
over dozens of sleeping men.
- 234 -

“My leader,” I said, and tears ran down my cheeks, “It was
so beautiful up there. It was clear and cold and perfect in the sky.”
“I know,” he said, “I know, Michael. You don’t need to live
the way you’ve lived.”
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Chapter Four- No One Is Innocent
It was not quite dawn. In the gray light, children fed
goats and sheep, and carried wood and water into the
houses down below us. Smoke curled up into the air
from a few of the chimneys.
Our men looked down on the village with hard eyes. We
had been running for so long, always a few hours ahead of our
pursuers. Now the stars had started to come around and give me
power, and with that growing power I had found out the village of
our betrayers. These people had reported us to the cavalry. They
had tried to get us killed. We didn’t care if they had done it for
money or for spite. We surrounded the village. The Leader
stationed parties of men to cut off any escape.
“Come here, Michael,” he said, and sat down on a rock.
Karem and a few of the troops marched into the central square to
call the people out, but it was unnecessary. The children were
already screaming a warning, and frightened eyes peered out from
dark doorways. I stood next to the Leader. I had seen this sort of
thing before. In a rebellion, both sides need the support of the
population- but the rebels need it more. A rebel army is invisible if
the people are with them. The people can hide them, feed them,
clothe them, arm them, care for their wounds and provide fresh
recruits.
But things aren’t always as clear and perfect as that. Some
people want a reward, or value stability, more than whatever the
rebels have to offer. Those are the people who have to be kept
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afraid. Karem was talking to the village headman and the elders.
The headman was on his knees, begging. He knew we were going
to kill him. The elders were also doomed, and they knew it. But
they looked on, like cows.
Karem waved his hand. Our men went door to door, and
dragged the people out. The older ones came, slowly but without
resistance. Our troops had to beat some of the young people with
the flats of their swords. One of the young men tried to hold back.
They cut him down and threw his body in the dust at the headman’s
feet. After that, everyone hurried to get outside. I assumed some of
them were still hiding, here and there. But this would be good
enough. They would see their headman die, and their elders too.
They would never inform on us again.
Karem raised his hand. I saw the headman’s face, fat and
dark, and stained with tears. Karem dropped his hand. A sword
flashed, and the headman’s face was gone. The blade rose and fell.
The body jerked like a dog on a leash.
The shafts arced across the dawn sky like falling stars.
Absurdly, I noticed that the sun was rising, a bright orange ball in a
pool of purple that weighed heavily on the horizon. A dozen tiny
stars jumped up into the sky, hung for a moment silhouetted against
the rising sun, then dove. The arrows hit the roofs with a strange
popping sound. A few seconds later, I understood.
“Leader…” I said, but he raised his hand to quiet me.
“Untie that head of yours,” said the Leader, “And bring him
to me.”
It was the first time he had spoken. I had to shake my head
to clear it. My face was numb with the intoxicating smell of blood.
My mouth was raw with the sharp taste of bile. The sides of my
tongue burned with it.
“Yes, Leader,” I said, and swallowed. I walked up the hill to
my backpack. My fingers felt frozen. I fumbled at Gorem’s dark,
matted hair. His eyes rolled up and showed the whites. His
eyelashes fluttered like the wings of a bird.
I vomited on my bag, and tore him away. My fingers were
wrapped up in his hair.
“That’s right, Michael!” said Gorem, when I told him where
I was taking him. “Take me to your Master, Michael. Ask me some
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more questions! I’ll give you all the answers you demand. Look
where they lead you!”
I swung him into the side of a rock, and part of his face gave
way. I punched him in the cheek.
“Keep your mouth shut till I ask you questions!” I growled
at him.
“Are you sure, Michael?” he said, “Are you sure you don’t
want me to warn you if you’re in danger? If your Master is in
danger?”
“He is not my Master,” I said, and I punched him again. One
of his teeth broke off and fell down his throat. He started to laugh.
Down below me, in the village, they had started a bonfire.
The bodies shrank like thin bits of bark. Their skin was black and
tight against their bones. Their lips were pulled back from their
white gums. Our men were throwing them on, bodies and limbs and
heads like dead old wood.
The Leader was walking through the village. Karem was
beside him, pointing out his various achievements. Gorem gave a
sharp little howl.
“What is it?” I asked him. The Leader stood in front of a
black, smoking hut where two bodies lay. Karem gestured, and they
were taken to the fire.
“Below that hut,” Gorem yelled, “Someone lies waiting!”
His eyes rolled up, and he moaned in what was left of his
throat. I was numb, then I was moving. Whatever happened, the
Leader must not die. He peered into the hut.
“Leader!” I yelled out, “Wait!”
I ran down the hill to warn him. I tripped over the rocks.
The moaning head was knocked out of my hands.
‘Wait!” I yelled, “Someone is hiding under that hut!”
The Leader stopped, and gestured at the troops to go in first.
I got to my feet again, and ran down to make sure. My sword was in
my hand.
“Just these two,” said Karem, and threw an old carlin out on
the street. I couldn’t see her face. She was dead. One of our men
threw her on the fire, along with something else he had in his hand.
I wasn’t looking.
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Karem came out after her, with a small yellow thing draped
loosely over his shoulder. It had legs, and blood between them. It
had a head, in Karem’s other hand. Behind him, one of the troops
straightened his tunic, and wiped his mouth off with the back of his
hand. Karem glanced back at him with faint disgust. My mouth was
open. I closed it when I heard Gorem’s voice.
“It worked, Michael!” he yelled at me, “It worked! You’ll
have to use her head now!”
He was burning in the fire. His skin melted from his skull. I
clenched my fist.
“You’ll have to use her now!” he yelled, “I slipped your
leash!”
He cracked and broke.
‘Who?” I growled, “Who threw that head on the fire?”
“I thought,” said one of the men, “I thought that was one of
them…”
I spun on my heel. I only had a moment before she fell into
her own dreams.
“I had meant to thank him,” said the Leader, “He was so
good to us.”
Behind us in the night, the dead village glowed against the
sky.
“Her name is Aulek,” I said, “She is six years old.”
My cheeks were wet. I tried to swallow, and I could not.
“Michael,” the Leader told me, “No one is innocent.”
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Chapter Five- …And You Shall Be Free
Their legs were too thin. Their bodies were too heavy
for legs that were so thin. I tried not to look at them,
but they wouldn’t stop looking at me.
We marched into the cave like animals, burrowing deep into
the earth. Aulek had told me how to find this place, how to follow it
and escape the army and come out the other side. But first we had
to walk beneath these things. They skittered along the rock like
furtive insects, with white tubes for bodies, and no eyes. They were
coated in a bright reddish jelly which dripped on our heads as we
passed. Their legs were thin and brown, mosquito’s legs. They had
no organs of sense, but their attentions were focused on me.
“Why aren’t you talking, Michael?” asked the Leader.
“Be quiet,” I whispered, “A cave is not a place to raise your
voice.”
“We will need to talk,” he whispered back, “When we are
out the other side”. He fell back in the column, and left me in the
lead. We went deeper into the blackness of the cave.
The things were gone after a while because it was too dark
to see them. We walked in an empty black, like birds floating
through a starless night. The men begged for light, but I would give
them none. There were no turnings, no side-paths. No need to see.
The cave was a King’s Highway into the hollow core of the
mountain. It would be some time before we would need a light
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again. But I knew my reckoning, and I knew the pattern of the
shifting stars above our heads. Out there the night sky was speckled
with a fatal configuration of other stars and other worlds.
“Stay here and rest,” I whispered to the man behind me.
“And send the Leader up to me.”
He passed the message back, and the Leader came. I felt
him standing next to me in my blindness.
“It is time,” I told him, “Let them come into this cave and
they will die. All I need is space to work alone.”
“But how do you know they will come?” he asked me. His
voice still wasn’t low enough for my taste.
“They will come,” I said, “They will all be killed.”
He was silent for a moment. “Where will you go to work,”
he asked me, “In this darkness?”
“Wait here,” I told him, “And keep the men where they are.
I will go on alone and return when I am done.”
He said nothing. He could refuse me nothing while he
feared losing me. He knew I did not belong to him.
“First we work,” I said, “And then we talk. There are things
I must know.”
“There is nothing you must know. But you may ask.”
“Send death to the men who will follow us into this cave.
Leave none of them alive.”
“If that is what you require to serve us, Michael. We are
always eager to please you in that regard. And it must be easier now
that you do not have to compel us any more.”
“It is easier. But not more pleasant.”
“If we could, we would make it more comfortable for you.
We would leap across the void at the suggestion of your wish. But
you know we can only feel your world when the stars are right, or
when the space is narrowed by blood and pain. Only in the Thorp is
your planet like our own.”
“That isn’t true. I know the Thorp for what it is- it feeds you
with our squirming. But it is nothing like your world.”
Water dripped in the darkness. Boulders shifted.
“What did you want to know?”
“Why are you having me do this? What is your purpose, in
bringing this undercaste to power? He will slaughter many, I am
sure. But any king or warlord does the same.”
- 241 -

“It is not for you to pretend to be innocent. You have
murdered more than all his army.”
“I’m not pretending to be innocent. But I don’t want to help
him murder children. I don’t want to stand by and watch his
soldiers rape women. None of these people would ever have
threatened me.”
“What difference does it make? Don’t weave a world of
illusions, Michael. Help him kill. Take the women for yourself. Do
whatever you want, but bring this man to victory. Serve him, and
you will serve us.”
“I only want to know why.”
“You will not know why. Do not try our patience, Michael.
If you die before our contract is fulfilled…”
“I know, “ I said, “I know. But what can I do? I’ve never
gone this far before.”
“Only do as we ask,” they said, “And you shall be free.”
I walked back, and I heard the skittering of the tube-like
creatures on the tunnel walls. My neck spasmed like a scared rabbit,
and I retched. I sat down for a while, and rested my head against the
rock wall behind me. One of the creatures crawled down on my
shoulder, nuzzled its smooth wet face against my cheek. I squeezed
it until my fingers met in its soft body. Then I threw it away. Where
my skin had touched its jelly, I itched and burned.
I couldn’t stay on the wall. They would keep crawling
down, they’d crawl all over me. I got to my feet. The tunnel went
on for days, while I wiped my wet hands on my cloak.
I wouldn’t go to sleep in the darkness. The others slept, and
the white tubes nuzzled their faces and poked around their clothes.
They rustled while I talked to my newest head.
“Aulek,” I whispered, “Aulek, they wouldn’t tell me why.” I
turned her head so her lips were against my ear.
“Never mind, Michael,” she said, “They don’t want to help
you. They tell lies to you.” I turned her again. Her ear was against
my mouth.
“They have lied a thousand times,” I said, “But they cannot
lie about this. They have sworn the Oath of the Thorp, and the
Thorp is their only home to bind them to this world. They cannot lie
about this. They’re going to set me free.”
- 242 -

I turned her mouth to my ear.
“Only if you do what they say, Michael,” she said, “And I
don’t think you should.”
I turned her ear to my mouth.
“I didn’t want to, Aulek,” I told her, “I didn’t want to do
what they said.”
I turned her mouth to my ear.
“I know you’re sorry, Michael,” she said, “I know you
didn’t mean to. It’s all right.”
I woke up with her cheek against my cheek. My arm was
curled around her like a doll.
“Aulek,” I whispered, “Can you tell me anything good?”
“Yes, I can,” she answered, “I found what you’re looking
for on the other side of the cave.”
“Another target?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she said, “A fort with a lot of men. They aren’t
expecting you. You can sneak up on them.”
“Thank you, Aulek,” I told her, “Thank you very much.”
We went to sleep again. I dreamed, and she dreamed.
- 243 -

Chapter Six- Sunlight And Blood
Now my power was upon me, and I wove with it
while the shape of the stars was good for me.
Though I needed my masters for some things, there
were other things I wielded for myself. Now a glamour of black
blood fell on our enemies like rain. When I used my own power, I
felt less like a slave.
Our men were scared of me, and that was good. I stood on a
slope, not far above the enemy fort. The sun was going down into
the row of hills. Around the slope, our troops were huddled like
frightened children, ready to fight. And there I was, commanding
the black cloud I had pulled from the earth. My hair was longer
now, black and snarled, and dirty. I had a growing beard. A tattered
dark mantle was around my shoulders, and my long sword hung at
my side. Aulek’s head was cradled in my left arm. I could tell they
were scared of me, and hateful because of their fear. And that made
me glad.
“Surrender!” yelled Karem, “Surrender to the Decision or be
destroyed!”
The garrison huddled together under the rain of blood. They
crouched in doorways or tried to cover their heads with their cloaks.
They weren’t sure what they should do.
An officer ran to the flagpole and started to run down their
flag. The yellow and green lion banner of the Provinces began to
sink. The men in the fort started to unbuckle their swords.
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“By Gar’s crooked mouth!” yelled the garrison commander,
stepping outside for the first time. He was a giant of a man, almost
seven feet tall, and he had a naked sword in his hand. He buried the
sword in the officer’s body, then pulled it away. The man fell in the
dust.
“Run that flag back up!” he roared, “And throw your
scabbards away! You’re going to swing those swords until they
break!”
One of the men pointed up at the black rain. The
commander slapped him in the face.
“We’re going to stop this here and now!” he yelled, “This is
a crew of half-starved bandits. They’ll never stand against the
Army. We’re not going to surrender to peasants and warlocks! Now
stand and fight!”
To my left, below the slope, the Leader shook his head and
furrowed his brow with regret. Karem saw, and waved his arm at
the fort. Our men charged.
“No one’s going to kill that commander,” the Leader said,
“No one’s even going near him.”
That wasn’t quite true. There were a dozen men near the
commander, but not voluntarily. He strode through the garrison
courtyard, cutting left and right. He reaped our men like wheat.
I had broken the wall with my power, but I chose to do no
more than that. Most of our battles would have to be fought with
steel, or we would never win the war. Men follow causes, not
necromancers.
“Why don’t the Believers go against him?” I asked. The
Leader winced a little. A few days before, I had called myself a
Believer, and he still didn’t know I had lied.
“They should,” he said, “They should, if they Believe.”
One of them did. His name was Doren, and he went through
the gap in the wall as soon as there was an opening in the press of
men. He had a three-foot ax, which he swung at the commander’s
head. He was screaming something about the Decision when his
hands were cut off at the elbows.
“Do something,” said the Leader, “He’s going to kill too
many of us. We can’t afford this.”
“I won’t cross blades with him,” I said, “I fight for you with
my Power, not my sword.”
- 245 -

“Then do so,” he said, “Whatever it takes.”
The truth is, I would rather have used my blade. When you
can do something with your hands, it makes no sense to use magic.
But I saw the man’s sword as it flashed in the light; I saw the arc of
sunlight and blood. And I thought to myself- I have such a short
time to go, and if I can live that long, I will be free. I walked back
to the top of the little hill, and examined the signs I hat cut in the
earth.
These were sigils of glamour, equations of illusion. I had
given black blood to their eyes, not the air. And there were sigils of
wind, which had broken their wall. To everyone else, these were
only marks in the ground. To me, they held the silver light I had
pulled into them from the stars. That is why sorcerers speak of red
marks and silver marks. The silver marks drink starlight and the red
marks drink blood.
While the stars were strong, I needed no blood. I drew my
sword and cut a new sign in the ground. It was a silver mark of
Weakness, aimed by my will at the garrison commander alone. I
called out to the stars with a long, breaking cry. Their light came
into me, and flowed from the tip of my sword like ink. The sigil
glowed and lived for a moment, and my face went numb. But the
power broke, the connection was lost, and the silver flowed out of
that sign in black rivulets that scarred the ground.
`I stared down at my mark in confusion. What had broken
my connection to the stars? Whatever it was, it had protected the
garrison commander alone. My other marks still glowed with the
light of the distant worlds. Black blood still fell from the sky.
“He is warded somehow,” I called out to the Leader, “But I
can break it.”
“No time!” yelled the Leader, “He’s leading a
counterattack!”
He pointed at the broken wall, and our men who were
pushing each other out of the gap to get away. Inside the fort,
Karem was surrounded by soldiers, and in his eyes I could see the
light of impending martyrdom. The Provincial soldiers were
winning the fight, and at their head the giant commander still sliced
left and right in great arcs, with no one to parry his blade.
I knew what I needed to do. My sword was the answer now,
the commander would have to be cut down. But my arm was as
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heavy as lead, and all I could see was his sword-blade flashing in
the sun.
“Get out of my way!” I yelled, as if I was going to charge.
But I didn’t move, my feet were like stones in the ground. I
watched him, with my mouth open, while he ruined my plans.
“Michael,” said Aulek, from under my left arm, “Michael,
you have to wake up. That man is going to hurt you.”
I shook my head, tried to clear it. My mouth was painfully
dry. I licked my lips.
“It will be alright,” said Aulek, “Don’t worry, you will win.
You just have to remember how to fight. If you don’t do it,
Michael, They will eat you!”
I put her down on the ground, wiped the sweat off my hand
and the hilt, and took a firm grip on my sword. The enemy had
broken through our lines now, and all are men were running, except
for the Believers. Karem was still trapped in the fort, fighting with
religious fervor, while the others had surrounded the Leader. He
was unarmed, but his eyes looked straight ahead. The commander
charged towards them at a run, and his sword was raised high in the
air.
He stopped short at the terrible cry that echoed from my
lips. Everything stopped, and the battlefield went silent except for
the moaning of the wounded. I came down from the hillock like a
bird of prey, and the tatters of my mantle flapped behind me in the
wind like dirty wings. His eyes flashed when he saw me. He could
tell that I was a swordsman, and some part of him must have
welcomed the chance to test himself against me.
His sword came around in a low guard which blocked my
initial strike, then whipped up again at my face. I caught his wrist
before the blade reached me, and punched him in the jaw with the
pommel of my weapon. He staggered a little, but didn’t lose his
balance. He spit one of his own teeth into my face, dropped his
sword, and wrapped his massive arms around my ribs. He crushed
the breath out of me in an instant, and lifted me up to the level of
his face. I stared into his eyes, while my sword dropped out of my
limp fingers. Blackness poured into my eyes, and in the center of
my field of vision, where I could still see a little, his grimacing face
had become a meaningless pattern of swimming dots.
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I slammed my forehead into that pattern, into the hard
bridge of his nose, and he dropped me. We tumbled to the ground
together, but I landed on top. Blood poured down his face, but still
he grabbed for me, tried to get another hold. I let him push me aside
and get me underneath him, and he didn’t notice that my arms were
so close to his throat. There was a chain there, some kind of a
necklace. I pushed with one hand, and pulled with the other. He
struggled for a few seconds, but his face went white. His eyes went
blank.
A moment later, my sword was in my hands, and then it was
across his throat. I got to my feet and looked around. The men on
both sides were staring at me, and their mouths were open. I ran at
the first enemy I saw, and knocked his head into the air while he
stood there. There was a chorus of shouts, and our men rushed in
from every side. Our enemies tried to run, but the wall of the fort
blocked their way. Some of them made it into the gap, and I chased
them while the others were being butchered.
A few of them turned and tried to fight, but my sword
weaved like a snake, and cut them one by one. They ran into their
comrades who still had Karem surrounded, and there was more
chaos, because these men still thought they were winning. I killed
those who fought and those who ran without distinction, and our
men beside me did the same.
“There he is!” yelled one of the men, “Karem!”
We found him alone and bleeding, surrounded by the dead.
He looked at me as if I had stolen heaven from him.
“Here it is,” I said to the Leader, “The reason my last spell
didn’t work.”
It was a dead man’s hand, black and curled, and bound to a
silver chain. Fierce sigils were burned into the skin.
“He had it around his neck,” I said, and threw it away into
the dark.
The broken fort was filled with men, and more streamed in
along the road as the night wore on. The Believers were out in the
nearby villages, bringing in the local men with words or torches.
The Leader was about to make a speech.
“We are starting to build a real army now,” I told him. He
looked at me, but said nothing.
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Chapter Seven- Giving the Lie
This time, I didn’t die in my dream. She died again,
but I tried to save her. I came in while the soldier was
raping her, and I cut him down. She fell to the floor,
and I scooped her up in my arms, but she was already cold. She
smiled up at me, and tried to grab at my finger with clumsy, stiff
hands. Her eyes reflected a night sky flecked with the lights of the
alien worlds and their revolving stars. One of them was brighter and
colder than the rest.
“Lord Kamekalk,” said Karem, pointing at the castle in front
of us. Like many castles, it had been built in stages over hundreds
of years. The central keep was squat and dark, with narrow
windows and small bricks. Around this original structure, new
wings had sprouted, each one in a different style. One wing was
carved with elaborate gargoyles and sinister, curving shapes.
Another was simple and severe. Another, the newest, was more like
an estate-house than a castle, and its first purpose was obviously not
defense. The local overcastes had not known war in a long time.
“Surround the place,” said Karem, “So they can’t get out
anywhere.”
Men fanned out, and encircled the castle. Karem and an
armed guard approached the front gate, bearing a white flag of
parley. Someone lowered the gate, and an old man came out,
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dressed in a household livery. He spoke to Karem, then went inside.
The gate was closed again.
Karem returned. “Lord Kamekalk is a fool,” he said, “His
man told me they wouldn’t treat with undercastes. Not even if we
have an army.”
“How many men does he have?” asked the Leader.
“None,” I said, as Aulek had told me, “Or to be precise, he
has a few old retainers with rusty swords, and no archers. They
didn’t need their own men, with the garrison nearby. All they do is
manage their estates.”
“And live as parasites,” the Leader said, “We’ll have to
break the shell of this beast.”
“I can kill them,” I said, “But I’d rather not call up those
Powers too often. I can terrify them into coming out.”
“No need,” said the Leader, “They have no real defenses.
We’ll have them out before sunset.”
He was right. The new society would have no need of
castles. There was no reason this one shouldn’t burn. Our men
threw torches in the windows. Lord Kamekalk stumbled out the
gate with his family and his people. There were about twenty of
them in all. Our soldiers bound them and put them with the
baggage. The Leader walked over to them.
“The people need to know that justice will be done,” he
said, “You and your family made slaves of your neighbors. There
will be a public trial.”
There were nine castles in the Severan region, north of the
High Hills, and we burned them all. These men were landlords, not
the warlords of my own country, but one of them did put up a fight.
He had a few archers among his men, and they kept our people
away from his walls for a little while. But it didn’t last long. We
picked them off, and burned the castle over his head. I was
surprised that no one in his family tried to escape.
When this was done, the Severan belonged to the Decision.
For a hundred miles in every direction, there was no law but ours,
no army but our own. For the government to defeat us now, they
would have to send a major force. For the time being, we had our
headquarters in the captured garrison. Here, I trained the soldiers in
basic drill, and Karem or the Leader gave them a new model of the
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world. Eight noblemen, with their families and followers, were
down in the dungeon of the fort, until their trial. When I wasn’t
busy, I walked in the nearby foothills and talked to Aulek.
“Aulek,” I said, “There’s going to be a battle soon.”
“Yes, Michael,” she said, “They’re putting a big army
together. They’re going to come up here, and try to kill you all.”
“They won’t succeed, will they Aulek?”
“No, Michael,” she told me, “They won’t.”
“The path,” I said, “Is very interesting today. The rocks and
pebbles are giving back the light, and everything is very bright in
front of my eyes, except for the hidden angles where they make
shadows.”
“It sounds very pretty,” she said.
I sat down on a boulder, and ran my fingers through her hair
to comfort her.
“I’m sorry you’re dead, Aulek,” I told her.
“I know you are,” she said, “But it’s alright.”
do.”
“Michael,” said the Leader, “We need to talk.”
“Do we?” I said, “I’ve done everything you asked me to
“I know,” he said, “But why?”
We were in my room, in a deep corner of the garrison. This
time, the Leader had come to me.
“I left you alone,” he said, “Because I knew my policies had
shocked you. But time has passed. There are only two possibilitiespart
of you still Believes, or else you have another agenda. I cannot
tolerate any other agendas.”
He tried to look me in the eyes, and this time I let him. He
didn’t look away. But all I could see in him was calm kindness and
patience. Understanding. There was nothing of the massacre in his
face. I put Aulek out of my mind, and tried to find something to
say.
“Part of me does still Believe,” I said, swallowing hard, “I
know that the new world will be a beautiful world, when the
overcastes are gone. But how many of your own kind will you kill
along the way?”
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“Only the traitors,” he said to me, “Only those who turn
their backs on the Decision. They could never be incorporated into
the new society. It is better for them to go.”
“But what about the other things,” I asked, “Rapes, beatings,
burnings?”
“The people will know,” he said, “That they can build a
heaven on earth, or a hell. And we will help them, either way.”
I had to turn my face and look into the corner to say this. “I
think I understand,” I told him, “Just give me some time to think
about all this.”
He looked at me for a long moment, then left the room.
“Karem will be the prosecutor,” said the Leader, “I want
you to be the advocate for the accused.”
I laughed out loud. “Why me?” I asked him, “I don’t care if
these overcastes live or die.”
“That is not your task,” he said, “We already know they are
guilty. All I want from you is their confessions. The Decision will
be merciful if they are willing to face the truth. The advocate’s job
is to find that mercy for them.”
“This is a waste of time, Leader,” I said, but I already knew
that it wasn’t. The people hated their rulers, and wanted to see them
punished. It had to look legal to feel right.
I walked down to the dungeons, with Aulek hanging from
my left hand. This was my first visit to a dungeon since the
oubliette. It wasn’t the same. I went past two guards and down a
long flight of slick stairs into a dark corridor. This was lined with
empty cells, wooden doors. Only one cell was occupied. It was at
the far end.
“Michael,” said Aulek, “There are children down there.”
“I know,” I said, “I know, little Aulek. But they wouldn’t
have played with you.”
“I freely confess, without reservation, that I, Josen
Kamekalk, commonly known as Lord Kamekalk, have lived for my
entire life on the fruit of the efforts of others; that I charged
exorbitant rents and evicted those who could not pay; that I served
notice of conscription into the Army through my orders to my
Steward; that I lived with my family in luxury during a time of
famine; that I had men executed for failing to do my bidding. I
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further confess that my wife, Corine Kamekalk, was a willing
partner in all my crimes, and that my children Kara and Dona were
to be brought up to do the same. I also confirm that my servants and
retainers were for many years my accomplices. All these things I
admit freely, and in a spirit of sincere contrition for my crimes
against the people of my own country.”
He bowed his head, and stepped aside. There were no
bruises on his body, but he was broken behind his eyes. His wife
stepped into the box, and a thousand men of the Severan undercaste
howled together for her head. Karem waved them into silence, and
she spoke. It was much the same.
“Michael,” said Aulek, “They’re talking about you. Karem
and his friends. They say you’re evil and crazy. They want to hurt
you, but they don’t dare.”
“I know,” I told her, “You’re a good girl. Thank you for
telling me that. But I can’t kill them, Aulek. The Decision needs
them, so I need them.”
“Do you need all of them?” she asked me. I stood under a
row of black crosses where the nobility of Severan hung dying.
There had been no mercy for them. The people had piled up their
rents and taxes under the crosses, at the foot of the hill. Aulek
dangled from my fingers by her matted hair.
“That’s a good point,” I said, ‘I probably don’t need all of
them. Shale, for instance. He’s not very important. I could make an
example of him.”
“That’s very smart, Michael. You’re a very smart man.”
“That’s a nice thing to say.” I pulled her up, and kissed her
on the cheek.
“But what can you do?” she asked me, “If you hurt him with
magic, the Leader will find out. Or if he doesn’t, they won’t, and
what good will that do?”
“It won’t be very hard,” I said to her, “In my country, we
call it Giving the Lie.”
“Fellow Believers,” I said, and sat down at their table in the
garrison mess-hall. Shale jumped a little, and Karem gave me a
long look. The others curled their upper lips in open contempt. The
Leader was meditating, up in his room.
“What do you want?” asked Karem.
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I put the little girl’s head on the table, and they all stared at
it, unable to look away. Flies landed on her face and crawled across
her eyes, so I shooed them off. I had her smiling.
“Just a little conversation,” I said, “About our beloved
shared Decision.”
Karem kept his temper. The others kept their tempers. But
Shale was the weak link. I could almost feel him clenching his fists
beneath the table. In the long moment of silence, specks of thick red
and green beaded up on the walls like sweat. They ran in long
streaks like liquid jewels, and pooled up between the wall and the
floor.
“Decided Michael,” he said, and emphasized the first word a
little too much, “You love the Decision so much, then?”
I cocked an eyebrow. Karem kicked Shale under the table.
The wall was slick and wet, and darkly blue.
“Do you mean to imply that I do not?”
I said it quietly, but this was a fatal sentence for one of us.
His faith wasn’t strong enough to let him be called a liar. His blood
was still hot with his pride. But I could see the look on his face, of
mingled rage and fear. I had trapped him with such a thin rope of
words. If he called me a liar, we would fight. If he denied it, I
would call him a liar, and we would fight. He had no choice,
because he couldn’t lead men if they thought he was a coward. That
is true even among the undercastes of the Provinces. He swallowed,
hard.
“Yes, I do,” he said, making his choice, “I do not believe
you truly love our Way. I do not think you have Accepted, in your
heart.”
“Shale,” said Karem, “You are a fool.”
We met that night, so the Leader wouldn’t know. We had
agreed that the loser’s body would be left up in the foothills, to be
considered the victim of an unknown attacker. No one wanted the
Leader to be disturbed with our quarrel.
There were no Seconds in this duel. The custom in the
Provinces was for the two parties to climb a hill from opposite
directions. Only the winner would come down.
Shale drew his sword, and threw his scabbard away into the
night. His blade reflected the light of the moon, fat and shining
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above our heads. He was a young man, only about twenty years old.
His eyes were sharp and lively.
“Draw,” he growled, “Draw your sword.”
I didn’t respond. The stars glittered in the sky like cold,
white jewels. The wind burned my arms.
“Draw or be cut down!” he yelled. The wind caught his
words and lifted them, threw them against the rocks. I did nothing.
His face was twisted-up with hatred and fear. There was no fear,
that night, for me. Shale was no swordsman.
He made a noise in the back of his throat, and cut at my
head. I drew my sword and cut him in one motion, a flash of light
that lingered in front of my eyes. He fell to his knees. A few feet
away, his severed hand pulsed blood into the grass.
He looked at his arm with wide eyes, and made choking
sounds. I left him, and walked down the hill.
“You did a good job, Michael,” said Aulek, still hanging
from my left hand.
“Thank you,” I told her.
Karem was alone at the bottom of the hill. He was not
surprised to see me.
“Do not plot against me,” I told him, “Or I will kill you, one
by one.”
He only looked at me, with his arms folded.
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Chapter Eight- Bugs With Human Skin
Italked to Them alone, when the stars were up and my
fellow killers were asleep. We had a secret meetingplace
by a dead stream on the banks of a stony hill.
“Who is your new slave, Michael?” they asked me. I held
her up and looked at her. She was not smiling, she hated the Anti-
Beings. I didn’t want to display her to them, but I had no choice. If
she was my slave, I was theirs. I held her up for them to see.
“A child,” they said, in their chorus of echoing whispers, “A
bug with human skin. That is fitting.”
I felt sick in my stomach, to hear them talk about her that
way. But there was nothing I could do.
“Why is it fitting?” I asked them.
“Because there is a Host,” they said, “A Host of bugs with
human skin. Reflections from our little bronze mirror. We use them
to collect people’s flesh.”
“And there is flesh to be collected.”
“Absolutely. And far too much for you to carry back to our
hive with you. We’re going to send these bugs to feed on your
aftermath.”
“What else can you send me? If there’s going to be a big
killing, I’d like to be on the winning side.”
“You will be, Michael, but you’ll have to rely on your
sword. This will be the first real test for the Decision. A great
battle, to end with limbs missing and bones broken, and blood
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soaking deep into the ground. Your revolution must be seen to win
such a great victory on its own. Goetia cannot play a part.”
“It’s not my revolution,” I said, “And if no sorcery is
needed, I will stand aside and observe.”
“That you shall not do. You are bound to do as we ask,
Michael, and we ask that you go into battle.”
I felt the blood leave my face, while tears welled up in my
eyes. This was not in the spirit of our agreement. My hand shook.
“You will kill me,” I told them, “If I am slain in the battle,
you will never be made to set me free.”
“Then do not be slain. Your survival is not our concern. We
need your sword to make certain the Decision is triumphant. You
can tell the Leader you’ve decided to join in the charge.”
I sat down on a rock in the dead stream and shook in the
early morning breeze. A small green snake crawled over me. Aulek
said nothing.
“You’re losing weight,” the Leader said, with concern.
“That’s because I don’t eat much,” I said, “But that’s not
important right now.”
We sat on a balcony, in the sun. Below us, our army grew
and took shape. Men came in, with homemade weapons and rusty
old relics from past wars. The Believers gave them food, told them
where to sleep, and started their training. Women sewed tents and
clothing. Blacksmiths hammered out spears, and fletchers made
arrows.
“There’s going to be a battle,” I said, “The government is
sending a great army north to meet us, to break the rebellion.”
“And where is the army?” he asked me.
“Five days march from here,” I told him, “Led by General
Garonet.”
“He’s a hero of the Sereti Wars,” he said, “But that was a
long time ago. They’ve sent an old man to deal with us.”
“Concerned, but not too concerned.”
“Exactly. To them, we’re still a peasant rabble.”
“Well, we’ll show them otherwise, sir.”
He looked at me. He couldn’t tell whether I was being ironic
or not, and he didn’t like that. He was used to reading people.
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Despite everything, they had to have their games. I was their
thrall, now. I fought for them as if I had never lost my shadow, like
an ordinary sorcerer who sells himself to further his ambitions. Yet
still they took pleasure in pushing me up against death, making me
feel that terror. Because our bargain was incomplete. When I
brought them victory, I would be free. If I died before that, I would
be lost. What was more important to them, the victory or the game?
I couldn’t tell.
I did not bring Aulek into battle with me. She was too
vulnerable, I could not protect her. Instead, I left her in the garrison,
warded with fatal spells to keep anyone from stealing her. She
would be there when I returned, or nothing would.
I wore no armor. I had always preferred mobility in combat,
and I fought now in nothing more than my tattered black rags. But I
carried three weapons this time- a long dagger, a sword at my waist,
and a great two-handed sword on my back, almost as tall as a man,
which I had found in the garrison.
I stood in the front rank of our army. We were on a small
slope above the enemy, who had come to meet us in the gray light
of dawn. It was hard to see them in the mist. They wore chainmail
and black plate-armor, and they had helmets on their heads. Their
overcaste officers paced back and forth on horseback, checking
their order. There were so many of them. Despite the hordes of
peasants who had poured into the garrison, the Provincial Army
still outnumbered us by at least a fourth. And they were better
armed as well, at least in theory. They carried halberds and swords,
while many of our men had only long spears and farming tools such
as scythes. Our only advantage in weaponry was length- our spears
were more than fifteen feet long, against six or seven feet for their
halberds. Now we would find out if our training had been effective.
“Michael!” said Karem. He was the field commander, the
Leader’s appointed general. He walked the length of our lines,
inspecting the troops.
“Yes, Karem?” I answered him.
“Take command of this unit,” he said, and gestured at the
men who stood nearby. There were about thirty of them. I nodded
as he went past. He might hate me, but he knew what I could do.
“You’ve all been drilled,” I said to the men. Most of those
in the front rank were veterans now. “When you hear the drums, be
ready for my commands.” Only the officers knew the drum patterns
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for coordinating the army. This was risky, but it protected us from
spies.
The men were afraid of me. That was no surprise. My
reputation was fearsome, but beyond that there were always the
swarms of demons, the unclean rippling in the air.
“What should we do if you fall?” asked one of the men. This
was a reasonable question, although to me nothing could possibly
matter after that. “Form up with the nearest unit,” I told him after a
moment, “And do what they do.”
“Here’s the plan,” said Karem, after taking me aside, “We
can’t beat this army in a set battle no matter what we do. Our only
hope is to shatter them quickly, to put them in a panic. Try to get
your men worked up. When we sound the charge, just run down the
hill as fast as you can, and hit them hard. They’ll break under the
shock, or we’ll be heading back to the hills.”
I nodded again. It was all we could do. Our men would
never stand under a prolonged arrow shower. Speed and ferocity
would be everything.
“Here it comes,” I said, “Get ready to lower your points and
run into their line for all you’re worth. Whatever you do, don’t stop.
Just run right through them. We’ll sweep them off the field.”
The men set their jaws, and got a firm grip on their pikes.
This was the one tactic the enemy would never expect. Half-naked
peasants don’t charge formed lines of soldiers. The drums started to
beat.
“Lower points,” I said to the men, and they aimed their
spears at the enemy. I took my baldric from my back, and drew my
two-handed sword. I dropped the scabbard and baldric on the
ground. The enemy archers moved up into position. Hundreds of
arrows arced up into the air, paused above our heads, then dropped.
At that moment, our drums sounded the order.
“Charge!” I yelled, “For the Decision!”
The men echoed my cry, and started down the hill.
Everything depended on enthusiasm. I ran so fast that my men
could hardly keep up, and I screamed as I ran. The arrows hit our
men on the run. Many fell, but not nearly enough to stop us. Battles
are started with archery volleys, not charges. By closing the gap
between us, we took their best weapon away.
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We rolled down that little hill like a dirty human wave.
Some of the men tripped, overbalanced by their long spears, and
tumbled like sliding rocks. Some of our men ran into each other,
and ran each other through. Many trampled over fallen comrades
and killed them underfoot. But we closed the gap in moments, and
hurtled into the enemy almost before they could lower their points.
My two-hander spun over my head in great circles that cut
the morning mist. I chopped the head off an extended halberd, and a
moment later I cut its owner in half. Beside me, spears shattered on
enemy armor or inside enemy bodies. Either way, the victim
usually fell beneath the impact, dropped by our pikes while still out
of range to use his halberd. But few of our spears survived the
initial shock. The first few lines facing my unit staggered and fell
apart, but most of my men were now reduced to using farm tools.
“For the Decision!” I yelled, and my two-hander wheeled
again like the arms of a windmill. This sword could cleave armor
like flesh. Another enemy fell in two pieces in front of me.
The enemy second rank was in shock at the speed of our
attack. They had hardly formed up when we came, screaming, out
of the mist. Now they hacked at us with their halberds, but every
man fought on his own. Their order had already been destroyed. I
kept running forward, and my sword wheeled and sliced. It was
easy to knock their halberds aside and put them down. I had no
need to stop and fight in place.
Several of my men went down beneath the chopping enemy
blades, but their comrades still ran on, and the enemy couldn’t hold
his ground. My howling peasants surrounded them, hit them with
flails and scythes, trampled on them. The enemy in front of us
broke. Men threw weapons to the ground and tried to run. My men
wanted to chase them, to cut them down from behind, but there was
no time. We had to use the advantage we had gained.
“Roll up their flanks!” I yelled, “Come to the right and roll
up their flanks!”
To the right, our enemies still held their ground. In fact, they
had stopped the charge of the rebel army at that point, and were
doing considerable destruction with their halberds. I turned and
dove into them, and my two-hander revolved blackly over my head.
My men turned too, and charged into the enemy with the ardor of
conquerors. We took them completely by surprise. I took heads two
and three at a time, and as the enemy stumbled and fell, our
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comrades in front attacked them with renewed determination. This
unit also broke and ran, and a great gap opened up in the enemy
line.
Now there was no controlling my men. They chased the
enemy like dogs after wounded deer. Our quarry wore armor, and
most of us did not. We no longer had to fight, only to chase and
kill. I slew more than a dozen of them as they ran for the safety of a
nearby river.
Behind us, the overcastes tried to keep their men in order,
but they could not. When they saw that their lines had been
breached in several places, they threw their weapons down and tried
to run. A few units retreated in good order, but most of them simply
fled.
I stopped to rest on my sword while my men and others
chased the enemy into the water. They had crossed at the ford the
night before, but it had rained in the early morning hours. Now the
river ran strong, and those who waded into it were quickly swept
from their feet. The brown water filled with red streams of writhing,
snake-like blood. Then the whole current ran red. From the banks,
our men chopped down at the screaming faces in the water.
I looked around at the disintegrating battlefield. A few
enemy units still tried to fight their way off the scene. One of them
was succeeding. The men were all overcastes, picked troops of the
Provincial Guard. They were trying to escort General Garonet off
the field. This battle was already a great victory for us, but if we
killed the general it would be an absolute triumph. I didn’t think it
was really worth the risk to get involved. But I was given no choice.
Under the pressure of attack from Karem and a number of our men,
the general’s Guard was falling back in my direction. Karem saw
me leaning on my sword.
“Michael!” he yelled across the battlefield, “Block their
retreat! We can’t let them get away!”
I would have ignored him if I could. But the prize was too
big. I wouldn’t be able to explain it to the Leader if I let it slip
away. I sighed, and called to some nearby men to form up around
me.
“That is General Garonet,” I said, pointing at the torn battlestandard
at the center of the beleaguered enemy formation,
“Whoever kills that man will be granted an audience with the
Leader.”
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The men should have known better, but their eyes were
bright with blood-lust and the joy of victory. They didn’t hold back
from the enemy elite.
These men were not the same. They didn’t panic, and they
didn’t run. We quickly had them trapped and surrounded, but they
fought on regardless. I swung my two-hander, and it caught in the
fork of a halberd. My enemy twisted down and to the side, and the
weapon fell out of my hands. I jumped back, and drew my other
sword. It was just in time to block the Guardsman’s halberd. But
this sword was too short, and I couldn’t quite reach him. I turned
the blade a little to trap his weapon in place for a moment. Then I
drew my dagger with my left hand, and ran in to close the distance.
Before he could drop his halberd and draw another weapon, I
plunged the point through his helmet, into his eye. He fell to his
knees, and I pulled my sword free again.
Another Guard was in front of me immediately. Now there
was no room to swing a sword. I punched my pommel into his face,
and he staggered back a little, but his helmet protected him. I
punched him again, and again. He drew a dagger, and swung at my
face. I caught his wrist with my left hand, and twisted his arm.
When his wrist broke, he was helpless. I pulled his helmet off and
ran my blade through his open mouth.
The elite fighters of the Provincial Guard were no great
challenge for me, but they were far beyond the ability of my halftrained
men. Most of those who had joined me were already dead,
and the enemy, although dwindling in number, was about to break
free.
Across from us, Karem and his men also struggled. For
every Guard we slew, two or three of our own men fell. If we didn’t
overwhelm them soon, they would certainly escape. I looked over
the heads of the men in front of me. There, surrounded by a knot of
grim Guardsmen, stood General Garonet. He was far too old to
fight, but he had a naked sword in his hand and his eyes were
unwavering and stern. Here was the key to our victory. The General
wore a ceremonial helmet, but his eyes were unprotected. I stepped
back from the struggle, and found a small knife on the body of a
dead soldier. I slipped this between my fingers, sighted the General,
and threw.
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The blade flew end over end, and came to a stop in his right
eye. He cried out, and fell to the ground. The Guards turned to help
him, confused, and we swarmed over them like hungry rats. Not
one of them survived.
Less than an hour had passed, but an army had been
destroyed. As the sun rose in the sky, our men wandered the
battlefield, stripping the corpses and killing the enemy wounded.
Some of them begged for mercy, others pretended to be dead, and
others just moaned or cried. They were all to be decapitated.
The river had dammed up with bodies, and now the water
rose slowly, filling the field. We waded in pink water to our ankles.
From the water, a strange kind of life had arisen to feed on the
dead. These were translucent gelatinous things, about two or three
feet tall. They were wide at the top and base, and narrow in the
middle. They had short worm-like arms, seven or eight in the center
of the body, but no eyes, mouth or nose. The worm-like arms were
orange, and they writhed about in the air until they landed on
human flesh. Then they attached to the skin like leeches, and drank
the color from the body, until it was a transparent hollow husk.
These things were not truly dangerous to the living, but they were
an irritation. Sometimes, they would follow a living man slowly,
vainly trying to reach him with their short and waving arms. I had
to cut several of them in half as I inspected the battlefield. At
around noon, a dark, moving cloud appeared in the east. In the
distance, I heard a deep buzzing sound.
“Clear the battlefield,” I said to Karem, “Clear it
immediately.”
He saw the look in my eyes, and did not hesitate. Most of
our men had escaped to the hill by the time the swarm arrived.
Those who had not were quickly overwhelmed.
They were bugs with human skin, just as the demons had
promised. There were millions of them, pale and white and pink. I
caught a stray one from the air and inspected it. It had six legs, and
long antennae, waving in the air. Its wings were like gauze, but its
body was clothed in human flesh. There was no shell, no black
exoskeleton- only skin.
Down on the battlefield, the bugs writhed like a great patch
of shuddering flesh. They fed for an hour, and only Karem and I
stayed to watch. When they were done, there was nothing left
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elow us but an occasional shard of bone. There was no sign of
those we left behind.
“This is your work, isn’t it, Michael,” said Karem. The bugs
left, and flew, together, towards the east.
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Chapter Nine- The Wind
The snowstorm howled like men think demons do. We
didn’t talk much, and we hadn’t for days. Any words
were swallowed by the wind. After our great victory,
winter had come quickly. My power had waxed and waned as the
stars turned, while the ground became hard and more men joined
our cause. Castles and garrisons had fallen, and many lords had
died on the black crosses of the Decision. The northern quarter of
the nation was completely ours by the time the first snow fell. Men
said that the Leader was a god, or chosen by the gods, to lead the
undercastes to freedom. But they also mentioned me, and always in
whispers- the sorcerer or demon who fought at the Leader’s side.
The Provincial government told a different tale. According to them,
the Leader had made a pact with Hell, and I was his demonic
master. This version, perhaps, was closer to the truth.
War stops in the winter. Armies cannot move when snow
covers the ground, because supplies fail quickly and there is little to
scavenge. There are exceptions, but these are rare. So everyone
assumed we would sit tight till the first thaw and our enemies
would do the same. In the spring, no doubt, they would send a
massive army north, with a young but talented commander. They
would crush the rebellion, then turn the north into a wasteland. An
example for others to heed.
We didn’t wait for that to happen. When the stars were right
again, we set out from the garrison in a terrible blizzard. I kept the
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men just warm enough with the heat of the stars, and I led the way
with Aulek’s dreaming sight. Without my power, the storm would
have eaten us all. But it was a subtle effect, and no one knew that
sorcery was involved. No one except the Leader and myself.
We camped in a thick woods, under cover of the trees. But
there was no need for cover. No living thing was out except for us.
The men ate cornmeal and dried meat, and huddled together against
the moaning wind. The Believers sat in a circle around the Leader,
who seemed immune to the cold. I sat alone, and cradled Aulek in
my lap.
There were more Believers, now. As our army grew, so did
the circle of true devotees. Karem had no formal rank except in
battle, but in fact the Believers followed him. I wondered what his
motivations truly were. Did he intend to serve the Leader, and
succeed him when he died? Or would he overthrow the Leader, in
the end?
I would have to kill him, I knew that. But I couldn’t strike
too soon. Karem was a part of my own designs.
The trees were rimed with ice, and when the storm passed
they would glow like a forest of diamonds. Now they bent in the
wind, and creaked, and sagged with the weight of the snow.
Somewhere in the forest, I thought a wolf cried out to his pack. But
there was no wolf. Only the wind cried, or a spirit on the wind; and
nothing answered.
“Michael,” said Aulek. I had her mouth up against my ear
while I slept. “Michael, wake up. I want to talk to you.”
When you catch their dreaming as they die, they can speak
to you whenever they want. That is their intimate connection with
the necromancer. When you find their dreaming after they die, they
can speak only when spoken to. They are more truly dead, and their
dreaming is their own.
“Yes, Aulek,” I said, after rolling her ear to face my mouth.
I had been dreaming of a wolf alone in the woods while the storm
howled among the trees. The wolf was dying, and the things with
translucent bodies and waving orange arms were coming out of the
snow. While he could still move, their efforts were in vain. But he
was tired from the cold.
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I was not sorry to be woken up. I rolled her mouth to face
my ear.
“I don’t like the way the wind screams,” she said, “It’s
getting into my dreams a little.”
“I know,” I told her, “The wind is scary. But the wind will
keep us safe. No one can see us to hurt us here.”
“Can you tell me a story?” she asked me, “A story to help
me forget.”
“I’ll tell you a story,” I said, “That I learned when I was a
child.”
“A long time ago,” I said, “There was a beautiful land.
Green grass grew in the land, and there were tall hills covered with
trees. Every stream flowed with clear water, cold and clean. And in
this land, there was no war. Men lived in peace, and died in peace
surrounded by children and grandchildren.
There was a young man in this land, who wanted to see the
world. He had grown tired of the little valley and the tall hills which
ringed it. He had grown tired of the faces he looked at every day.
And on the day he grew tired, a stranger came into the valley.
‘If you want to see the world,’ he said, ‘Just come with me.
There are many things to see beyond these hills.’
The stranger was tall, and he wore fine and exotic clothes.
The young man was excited, and he followed the stranger without a
thought. No sooner had he passed the hills, than he came to a land
of waste and ruin. Thorns grew, but struggled for their life. Narrow
streams trickled darkly under the thorns. In this land, the mark of
man was everywhere. Dead bodies writhed with the small life of
worms and bugs. The young man from the valley was overcome
with horror.
‘Take me back,’ he said, but the stranger was nowhere to be
seen. He turned around, but the path to his home had disappeared.
And in that harsh land he battled for his living, unable ever in life to
return to the beautiful valley.
But it is said that he did return at last. For the beautiful land
he came from was the land of the dead, and the world he found
beyond the hills was the living world of sorrow and tears. He
worked out his life in the land of the living, but at death he was
given the key.”
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Aulek was silent for a moment, thoughtful, as I had been
when I was a child.
“Are my mother and father in that beautiful land?” she
asked me.
“Yes,” I told her. I knew it was a terrible lie.
“Michael,” she said, “Someday will you let me go find
them?”
“Yes, Aulek,” I whispered, kissing away her imaginary
tears, “I’ll let you go find them, when I can.”
By the fourth day, I could see the question on their faces-
“Is this a natural storm?”
I would not have told them, but in any case there was no
simple answer. The storm had begun on its own, but now it was
something else. I held it in place for us, suspended over our headsor
rather, my masters did.
The men were proud of themselves for struggling through.
In future years, this fast winter march would be a mighty legend of
the revolution. They didn’t know they would have died if not for
me.
Our garrison had been a hundred and fifty miles north of
Apolika, the capital city of the Provinces. That was more than far
enough for them to feel comfortable, especially considering the
storm. But we would be on them before the clouds broke, and long
before their scouts were riding again. They would never have the
chance to put an army together, or even to sound an alarm.
“Michael,” yelled the Leader, with his hand cupped over
my ear, “The Decision is in your debt. The people of the Provinces
will bless your name forever.”
The Leader’s face was wet with ice and snow. His skin was
red. I looked at his eyes, as calm and kind as ever. I thought of a
forest of crucifixion, a sea of staked corpses. I nodded at him and
smiled. All he wanted for me was an enduring reputation, a place in
the epic of his victory. Between him and the demons, I was pinned.
“I know, my Leader,” I yelled into his ear, “Don’t worry, I
understand you now. I’ll do your bidding, and bring the Decision its
triumph.”
In the joy of this secret march, he chose not to examine my
words. The smile on his face seemed genuine, and warm.
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Chapter Ten- The Fall
Apolika had never been taken. This was a planned
city, built when the Provinces united and the caste
system was born. Actually, there were two cities,
each surrounded by a high stone wall. The Outer City, which was
far larger, housed almost a hundred thousand undercastes in cheap
tenements which often collapsed. The walls of the Outer City were
guarded by four Gatehouses, large forts with many soldiers. In the
center of Apolika, marble walls marked off the Inner City, the home
of the senate building and the Consul’s Palace, and the mansions of
the greatest lords. The four quarters of the Inner City were also
guarded by Gatehouses, manned by the elite Provincial Guards.
We could never take the city by siege. But we didn’t need
to. In total blindness, with nothing but white above us and white
below us, Aulek led us in the early morning to a snowdrift piled up
against the city walls. This was nearly a mountain of snow and ice,
more than fifty feet high, which had been blown against the walls
by the powerful wind. When the storm broke, the drift would be
cleared away. But by then it would be far too late.
There was no one on the city walls, but they couldn’t have
seen us if they were there. We held onto long ropes strung together,
so we wouldn’t lose each other in the swirling snow. Then we
clambered up the snowdrift, and hung the ropes over the other side
of the wall. Most of our men made it down the ropes and onto the
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street, but a few of them fell and broke their legs. They were
quickly silenced, one way or another.
Now there were thousands of us behind the walls of the
Outer City. But we were still greatly outnumbered, and our only
hope was speed. We pulled the ropes down, and formed up quickly
into columns. Then, guided by Aulek, we ran through the city
streets.
A few people heard us, and looked out their windows, to see
thousands of dim shapes passing through the storm. But most of
them were asleep in their beds, and we crossed the city like an army
of silent ghosts. Within an hour, the walls of the Inner City rose up
out of the blizzard, white and smooth before our eyes.
We had pierced the heart of our enemy, the center of all
power on this continent. And there was no easy way to get inside.
“Michael,” yelled the Leader, “Can you break these walls so
no one will know it was sorcery that did it?”
I thought for a moment. “Yes,” I answered, “Make a
battering ram, and I’ll break them down.”
I went off into an alley while our soldiers cut down a tree
from the street. People were stirring. Windows opened here and
there, and in the distance I thought I saw the glimmer of a signalfire.
We would have to be fast, now. When I drew my sigils, the
Outsiders spiraled up at me from out of the snow.
“What is it, Michael,” asked the Anti-Beings, “What can we
do to solve your little problem? It will have to be subtle, you
know.”
“I understand,” I told them, “Just lend the men some
strength. Bring down the walls, and let them think the love of the
Decision gave them power. No one will ever know.”
They fell back into the snow-bank and disappeared. I heard
a great cracking sound as I came walking back. Our strongest men
smashed the fallen tree into the wall. And the wall was cracking.
Another moment, and it would break.
“Michael,” said Karem, from my left, “I need you to take
command of a unit again. Pick fifty men, and tell them to stay with
you. Your first target is the senate building. Half the army will go
there, and the other half will storm the Consul’s palace. We’ll meet
in the courtyard between them.”
I cursed him under my breath. This was the critical battle,
the moment of victory or defeat, and I knew I had to fight. But I had
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een working magics for days, and I was tired. My powers had
become vast, since I surrendered to the demons. But there was still
a breaking point.
I drew my sword, and tied Aulek to my pack. The wall
shuddered, and chunks of marble tumbled to the ground. I quickly
counted fifty men as I came upon them, and took them aside in a
group. Each of the Believers commanded such a force. There was a
sound like a tree cracking, and a section of wall gave way. There
were no battle-cries, no shouted slogans over the roar of the wind.
We poured in over the broken marble to take the sleeping Inner
City.
Black shapes appeared out of clouds of whirling snow. We
cut them down without asking questions. The Inner City was
orange and red, flickering and wet. The senate building was empty,
and we set it on fire. The Consul’s palace was also burning, and
those who escaped the flames were quickly killed. From the four
Gatehouses, Provincial Guards came at a run. They didn’t take time
to put on their armor. We fell on them as they stumbled in the snow
and gaped at the burning buildings.
It was a confused and vicious fight. One guardsman ran up
to me with his sword drawn, only to ask me if I knew what was
going on. I cut his throat by way of an answer. He had a comrade,
who swung at me with an ax and knocked the sword from my hand.
I dove at his legs, pulled him down on the street, and stabbed him in
the face with his own dagger. Then I took the sword from his
convulsing body and went back to my men.
We lined the street, and waited for the full body of
guardsmen to arrive. We killed many of them in twos and threes,
but after a while a larger force did appear. They had a random
collection of weapons pulled down from the walls only moments
after they had woken from their sleep. We charged into them as
soon as we saw them, and I cut right and left as I ran. One guard
tried to stop me with a spear. I knocked it aside with my sword,
then reversed the cut to take his head above the ears. I saw an
officer with a sword, vainly trying to shout orders over the wind.
I cut off his open jaw, and he fell to the ground with his
hands at his face. Then I took a wrong step, and slipped in the newfallen
snow. I rolled out of the way as an ax-head came down at me,
and my arm extended like a tree branch into my attacker’s
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oncoming body. It broke inside him with a spark. I stabbed the
broken piece I still held into the groin of a guardsman above me.
His blood burst out over my face, and he passed out a moment later.
I wiped off my face with my sleeve, and pulled his sword from his
hand while he bled out.
Carefully, I got to my feet, and looked around for a fresh
enemy. But there was none- the Provincial Guard had been totally
unprepared, and those who still survived were running.
Karem came running down the street. He had a small cut
above his eyebrows.
“Burn every government building you come to,” he said,
“Just throw torches in the windows. As you go, make your way to
the North Gatehouse. When you get there, take it and hold it.”
The North Gatehouse was almost undefended. They had run
from their bunks to fight our surprise attack, and only the captain
was left inside, guarded by a few of his men. When we got to his
suite of rooms, he had already fallen on his sword.
Soon, I looked out over the Gatehouse battlements into a
vague but growing glow. The center of the Inner City was in
flames. There was no longer gain in this confusion. I went off alone
and revoked the Power that held the storm together. The wind’s
fury broke, and the snow slowed to a stop. By the time we had the
Gatehouse well barricaded, the storm was at an end.
A messenger came from Karem and the Leader, who were
holed up in the Eastern Gatehouse.
“The army will be coming from the Outer City,” he said,
“To keep them from overwhelming us, we’re going to invite the
people inside. Throw the gates open and invite the undercastes to
sack the Inner City.”
We scarcely had time to carry out the command. When the
gates were opened, the people were too scared to come inside. We
drove some of them in by force, but when they realized the Inner
City was open to be plundered, they streamed in by the thousands.
Soon the flames were everywhere, and the beautiful mansions of
Apolika were burning by the dozen. Precious statues, paintings,
jewelry and tapestries were scattered in the streets or hauled away
on guards and backs. The daughters of aristocrats were raped on the
sidewalk. Those were resisted were torn to pieces by the crowd.
This was the vengeance of the undercaste, and the harvest the
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overcaste had sown. I covered Aulek’s eyes and told her to think
about something else.
“Here they come,” said one of the men, “There must be
thousands of them.”
It was the army from the Northern Outer Gatehouse. From
the battlements, I could see the shock on the faces of the men. The
soldiers stopped still in their tracks, and stared at the flames and the
looting. Between sunset and noon, their universe had changed. The
officers urged them on, their faces twisted with fury. But the
soldiers were uncertain. I stepped to the edge of the wall, and called
out to them.
“What you see, is the work of the Decision. We have
already conquered the north, and today we have come to liberate
the capitol. It is not too late to join the work of virtue. Fight for the
Decision, and freedom will be yours. You will be undercastes no
longer.”
I stepped down a moment before an arrow flew up at me.
But my words had been heard, and more importantly our amazing
victory stared them in the face. Within a few moments, the army of
the Northern Outer Gatehouse had collapsed into chaos. Some
soldiers surrounded their officers and defended them with grim
determination. Others tried to get at them, to strike a blow at the
men who beat them and terrorized them. Others just ran through the
gates and joined in the work of destruction.
“Go down and help the new recruits,” I told my men. I had
no intention of fighting more than I had to.
“Well, Michael,” said the Leader, “The city is ours.”
The looting continued, but all the real fighting had stopped.
Karem, the Leader and I were all seated on a balcony on the Eastern
Inner Gatehouse, our temporary headquarters. Here the overcastes
were packed in a frightened heap. They were terrified of us, but
they preferred us to the anger of the mob. There were hundreds of
them, and more were always streaming in. Our men checked them
for weapons, then made them sit on the floor.
“We’re going to build a beautiful new world,” said the
Leader. I shuddered suddenly, and retched.
“What’s wrong with him?” asked one of the Believers.
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Chapter Eleven- The Destruction of Architecture
Idreamed again about the flashing blade, hypnotic as a
snake, and the cold liquid feel of it as it drove up into
my gut. I couldn’t see my enemy’s face, but he was
triumphant, proud of himself- the first man to defeat my sword, the
champion hunter. I fell to the ground. My feet treaded water against
the dry dust, and a thin spume of blood pulsed up at my lips.
Internal bleeding- certain death.
Then he wrenched his sword to the side in my belly and
pulled it out. I tried to hold the blood in, with my hands on my
stomach like a sick child, but it welled up between my fingers and
flooded out over the ground. The edges of the world went indistinct,
and a living blackness swallowed my sight. As the blindness
submerged me, I saw his arm fly up like an executioner’s arm. His
sword was like a new sun in the sky.
“Aulek,” I said, “It’s too hot in here. I’m covered with
sweat.”
I wiped away the flies that had bothered her while I slept.
She smiled up at me, and said, “Good morning.”
We were in the East Gatehouse of the Inner City. The
Leader had given us a private room. This was a privilege, a mark of
rank, but in truth no one wanted to sleep near us. I had been offered
a whore to share my bed- every soldier had found one, except the
Believers- but I had declined. It had been a long time, that is true.
But I didn’t want to make Aulek uncomfortable.
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I threw my wet sheets away from me, wiped my sweatsoaked
hair from my brow, and went to the window. My hand was
shaking, so I steadied myself on the curtain. Much of the Inner City
still smoldered down below me. We had destroyed the greatest
architecture, the most beautiful set of buildings, the Provinces had
ever seen.
Marble and quartz and alabaster were scattered on the
sidewalks in glittering splinters, shards and milky dust. Burned
bodies swarmed with flies, like overcooked chicken left to rot.
There was a girl on the street, with long dark hair and skin so white
I could tell she had never had to work. Her dress was purple silk
with black designs. It had been torn, and her body was exposed. Her
eyes stared up at the morning with a look of permanent surprise. I
thought of Aulek, and turned away, then I ran to the corner and was
sick. I had looked at her breasts, and felt lust.
“You don’t look well,” said the Leader, “Your skin is
flushed. Do you have a fever?”
“Bad dreams,” I told him, “It happens all the time.”
He took a bite of his porridge, and looked around at his
victory. The overcaste prisoners were chained in the dungeon below
our feet. In the mess hall, where we sat, hundreds of armed men
came and went on various errands, or sat and ate their breakfast.
The city was ours, but the war was not yet won. All over the
Provinces, armed garrisons still held land in the name of the old
order. To join our cause, they would have to put themselves under
the command of one of our Believers. When they crucified the
landlords, we would know them for our men.
The Leader expected most of them to join us. Reversing the
Revolution now would be a desperate battle, with no guarantee of
victory. Only true loyalists would oppose us. Mere professional
soldiers would gladly serve a new set of masters. The war might
last for years, but from now on the advantage was ours. As for me, I
still didn’t know when the demons would consider our bargain
complete.
“Michael,” said the Leader, “The people of the city don’t
know what to expect from us yet. All they know is that we’ve
destroyed the Inner City, and that our men patrol the streets. I want
to show them the new justice we will bring them. And I want them
to know that this justice is their own. We won’t accuse the
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prisoners. Signs have been posted now on every corner, and the
people have been asked to step forward on their own account. Let
each man denounce the lord who exploited him, the lady who used
his taxes to buy gems, the lackey who collected the coins. We have
a unique opportunity to make them answer for all of their crimes.”
He had new garments now. They were plain, but clean and
white. I knew what he wanted me to do.
“You want me to make them confess,” I said, “All those
hundreds down below us.”
“Only the guilty ones,” he said, “The ones who are
accused.”
The people were scared at first, but once they started to
come in, they didn’t stop. The line stretched far into the Outer City,
and hundreds packed the small room in the Gatehouse, each with a
real or imaginary complaint. No more than two denunciations were
allowed against any one overcaste. Many would have gone away
disappointed, except that one denunciation meant death.
I worked for days in the belly of the Gatehouse, until all I
could hear were their screams. I didn’t go up to watch the trials,
because I knew they were always the same. The streets beneath my
window were lined with crosses, and the people amused themselves
by watching their masters die. It helped the line pass more quickly.
“Aulek,” I said, “Aulek, I am exhausted. I break dozens of
them every day, and when I break them, they confess and they die.
It is hard work, and terrible work.”
“I know, Michael,” she whispered, “I know. Are there any
who will survive?”
“No one denounces the children,” I said, “And so they stay
behind. A few of the girls have caught the eye of a guard, and been
let out to stay with him. The rest will stay down there until the
Leader decides what to do with them. I have little doubt that he will
kill them in the end.”
Aulek said nothing for a while, after that. Outside, the
winter wind became a buzzing of many wings. I got out of bed, and
went to look.
“It’s the bugs with human skin,” I said, “They’ve come back
to feed on the crosses.”
“Not on the crosses,” she said quietly.
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“Michael,” said Aulek. The moonlight flooded through the
window, and I lay on the bed in a pool of silver. I watched the wall
bead up and flow away. Every drop exploded in steam against the
floor. The steam swirled and became thick, coagulated into tiny
worms. The worms glowed, translucent, in the moonlight. They
looked delicious, like tiny bags of cool, white juice.
“Michael,” said Aulek, “Tell me how it happened. Why you
started to help your enemies.”
I swallowed, and licked my lips. She did have a right to
know.
“I tried to escape Them,” I told her, “I tried to slip the chase.
I sent a ghost doctor on a quest to break my tie to them, to win me
back my shadow.”
“And he failed?”
“He was destroyed. He turned against me on the way, and
tried to deliver me to them. But he saw something at the core of me,
something I myself cannot see. It ruined his mind.”
“What happened to him then?”
“I killed him then. And the Outsiders asked me to use my
reason, so I did. It led me here. I realized I could never escape; I
could only stay ahead of them for a little while. There was no hope
for me except surrender.”
“Keep your eyes open, Michael,” she told me, “Don’t give
up all the way.”
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Chapter Twelve- Goodnight Forever
Istayed in my room for a long time, after that. They
knocked on my door, and they shouted, but I wouldn’t
come out. The sun rose and set, and I watched the light
on the walls. I watched the worms on the walls. After the second
day, the walls were like a salt block, and the worms burrowed into
it like goat’s tongues. A few days after that, they exposed limbs;
hands stretched out in pointless supplication. Then the face, with
eyes squeezed tight and mouth open. This young man had
swallowed a mouthful of wet mortar. The mortar had drowned him,
the lime had burned him from within.
“Goodnight,” I said to him, “Goodnight forever.”
He didn’t respond.
sad.”
“Aulek,” I said, “Why don’t you tell me more about you.”
“I shouldn’t do that,” she said, “I don’t want to make you
“It’s alright,” I told her, “I won’t be too sad. I want to know
who you are.”
“I’m not anybody,” she said, “I just belong to you.”
“That’s not true, Aulek,” I told her, “That’s not true. You
have a story to tell me. Who were your mother and father?”
“My father made horseshoes,” she said, “And my mother
cooked food for us and cleaned the house.”
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“What did you do?” I asked her.
“I played,” she said, “I went out to the square and I played
with the other children. I followed the older ones around..
Sometimes I went to the well and looked at the things in the water.”
“What sort of things were in the water?”
“Slugs were there sometimes. And you could hear little fish,
jumping around.”
“Did you ever see the fish?”
“Once or twice I did. They were shiny, like silver.”
I looked at the silver light of the moon, and thought about
the silver glinting of those fish.
“They sound very beautiful,” I said to her.
“They were,” she said, “I like to think about them when I
can.”
“Do you see that man over there?” I asked her, “The one the
worms are digging out of the wall? I call him the Victim.”
“I’m sorry, Michael,” said Aulek, gently, “I don’t see him
there at all.”
“Oh,” I said, “Well, I think he’s trying to talk.”
His jaw moved, and bits of mortar crumbled and fell to the
floor. He retched, and wet mortar poured out of his throat. It rolled
out of him for several minutes.
“Time for you to understand,” he said at last, “Time for you
to know them by their names.” He coughed and gagged.
“I know their names,” I said, “I know them all. Names and
sigils, voices and smells.”
“No, Michael, you do not. You know an elaborate myth they
foisted on your kind. You know a set of forms that they can take, a
set of chains that do not chafe them too severely. Come into my
mouth, and I’ll show you what they call themselves.”
I stood up, on unsteady feet. The world came up at me from
the left, and I fell to one knee.
“Clean up your mouth,” the Victim said. I wiped a strand of
vomit from my lips. I wiped the sweat from my face with the back
of my hand.
“Michael,” said Aulek, “I’m scared, Michael.”
I got to my feet, and put my finger in the Victim’s mouth.
He sucked on my hand, and I flowed into his body as a stream of
liquid mud.
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And then They were in front of me, in their world, breathing
without air, breeding without fornication. I could see no ground, but
only a vast ocean of dark mist like a reservoir of clouds, and the
uncountable trillions of them roiling in the atmosphere. They were
like a bucket of bait worms, like flies and maggots and eggs on a
corpse, eating it forever. They had no shape at all, nothing like a
shape. But I could see them.
I was a spray of brown rain, blown by hot winds through the
upper reaches of their home-world. The Victim was inside me
somewhere, dredging up mortar from the depths of his lungs,
spitting it out in wet clumps. I could hear him in the back of my
mind.
In the Black School I had learned their shapes, I had been
taught their names and signs. But they had no names and signs, no
forms, no Being at all. I had known this since the day the ghost
doctor died. Now I saw their essence, their lack of essence, and I
knew them as well as they could truly be known.
They had no names, because they were not Many. They did
not have one name, because they were not One. They could not
encompass both, because they were not both. In any sense which I
could understand, the demons, my masters, did not exist at all.
And in their Nothingness, they could only thrive when we
were gone.
“I am called Hunger-For-Flesh.”
When they saw me, they took shapes to satisfy my mind.
They worked together and took names. If one could speak of a
Them, or a together, in this place.
“I am called Architect-Of-Joy.”
They did not know it was me. They had never seen me
shaped like this before. They did not know I could ever see their
world. There were four of them now, hovering in the atmosphere,
floating like the bloated victims of a drowning. They were like
humans above the waist, although leprous and impossibly obese.
Below the waist their bodies dripped away, in mile-long trails of
melting skin, like cheese. Their mouths were open and eager, and
their eyes were flat marbles that reflected a distorted sky.
Two of them were male, and two were female, with massive
breasts that bled a thick green blood from open wounds. Behind the
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wounds, a green mechanism pulsed and turned, and every gear was
slick with the juice of their bodies. The mechanisms breathed.
“I am called The Colony.”
“And I am called The Weaver Of Bones.”
Two males- Hunger-For-Flesh, and Architect-Of-Joy. Two
females- The Colony, and The Weaver Of Bones. Images for
another mythology. Another set of lies.
“You have no names!” I yelled, “You have no names!”
And when I said that, the Victim coughed me back onto the
floor.
“I have to go outside,” I said, “I need to know what
happened while I slept.”
“If you’re going to go,” said Aulek, “Take me with you. I
can help you think sometimes.”
I took her up in my left hand, by her hair. From the corner, I
took my two-handed sword. This was becoming a favorite weapon
of mine, but now I needed it for a cane as much as anything.
I opened the door. Two soldiers jumped aside, startled by
my return to the world. They didn’t know what to do. They must
have been asked to watch me. I shuffled down the hall, and dragged
myself with difficulty down the stairs. No one moved to stop me,
but I heard the running of their feet.
At the gate, the guards stood aside for me. They pulled away
in obvious distaste. I thought about killing them, but decided not to.
Outside, the wind blew cold in a city of the dead.
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Chapter Thirteen- Possession
Aulek,” I said, “Do you see what I see?”
“I’ve seen it for a long time,” she said, “But you
didn’t listen. You were very sick and confused,
Michael.”
My knees gave way, and I sat down. I looked around me
with my mouth open. But I didn’t breathe, at first, because the air
was thick with the smell of rotting flesh, salty and putrid.
Dead men, like scarecrows, stared down from sharpened
stakes, or gazed up at the sky with faces frozen forever. Points
jutted up out of their mouths, or poked between their ribs, or peeked
out of their stomachs, as if trees had invaded them. There were
women too, staked like pinned ants, with their breasts cut off and
stuffed into their mouths. I thought they stared, at first, with their
eyes fixed and black. But there were no eyes. The ravens had eaten
those without exception.
“How many are there,” I asked, “Ten thousand? Twenty
thousand?”
“I can’t count them,” she said, “There are too many for me.”
The sky was black, but alive with the rustling of feathers,
the flapping of wings. Thousands of birds had settled in to feast, to
tear little scraps of skin and fly away to chew on them in private; or
to stay put greedily, tearing off chunks too large to chew and
pecking at the other birds.
At night, in the winter, there were few insects. But some
species were strong enough to brave the cold, and they burrowed
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and fed, bred and gave birth in the warm folds of the corpse’s open
wounds. Between the birds and the bugs, the city swarmed with a
thriving unhuman life. The Leader had given a great gift to all the
smaller beings.
The wind was a high whistle, and thousands of the dead
swayed in the moonlight, shifted from side to side. Their clothes
rustled, and made a million whispers, furtive and secret. I jumped to
my feet, and started to run.
I fled into the dark streets of the Outer City, but the forest of
the dead went on. I ran to the left, I turned to the right, but
everywhere they loomed over me like statues in a temple. And
every time the wind changed, they creaked and whispered.
Finally, I came out on the other side of them, and stopped
short. The street was like a throat, blocked by a fatal bone, and
breath was impossible. People and parts of people were tangled in a
careless heap, scattered like the victim’s of the Spider’s Dance. In
that one narrow alley where I stood, there were a dozen random
corpses, a pile of headless trunks, severed legs and arms, and an
orderly little pyramid of severed, eyeless heads. Black birds hopped
and squabbled in the carnage, and here and there a dog’s eyes
glinted an eager challenge.
I turned and ran another way, but it was everywhere the
same. There was no street without corpses, no alley without ravens
and hungry dogs. The victims were not overcastes. The city’s elite
had been crucified, and consumed by the bugs with human skin.
Now the Decision had turned on the people, and vast numbers had
been murdered. I could not imagine how many survived, huddled in
basements and dark corners, too scared to go outside. They would
soon be dead if these bodies were not removed, for plague follows
massacre as bodies decay.
I wandered the streets in awe, unable to trust my eyes. I had
never seen destruction on this scale. On every street corner, a staked
head looked down at me with empty sockets. Here and there, the
soldiers had built small structures out of bones- shrines with four
walls and a roof, just large enough to hold another head.
I was looking on the altars of a fierce new religion- a
religion I had helped create, but had failed to understand.
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Life and energy returned to me, but not clarity of thought. It
felt like starlight, pouring into my bones, and my marrow crackled
with it. I hated them. My two-hander felt as light as a stick, and I no
longer needed it for a cane. I held it over my head, and its point
made deadly little spirals. I ran through the streets, and bones broke
under my feet, teeth clattered in the gutters.
I had to find some of our soldiers. I would rather have a
Believer, but any one of us would do. If I had run into myself on the
street, I would have cut me down.
I ran through a nightmare, down dark and narrow streets
where corpses swayed in the wind, and skulls stared out of houses
made of bone. At last I found them. There was a faint glow in the
distance, and I knew my quarry was there. When I found the light, I
came upon a dozen soldiers, and a hundred or so of the city’s
inhabitants, trussed like pigs.
Their faces were black from burning lamps in dark
basements. Their eyes were wide and terrified, or cast down in quiet
hopelessness. The soldiers had pulled out the children, about thirty
of them, screaming for their parents. Now they drew their swords
and chopped the people like cordwood. On the street-corner, a lamp
cast light and smoke.
I crashed into our men from the side, like a wave. My sword
was a blinding wheel of turning light. Our men were totally
unprepared. I cut them in silence, but my sword cried out like a
diving bird. Three of them fell, four of them fell. The others turned
to face me. I had trained some of these men, but they didn’t know
the secrets of my style. I knocked their weapons aside like toys, and
I murdered them.
Soon, only one survived- a Believer named Cherek, one of
Karem’s devoted followers. He looked on me without fear, and his
thrust for my body was fast and technically flawless. He was the
captain of this death squad, the instrument of the Leader’s ferocious
orders. His blade made sparks as it slid up my own, and deflected to
the side. I put the point of my two-hander into his face, and ruined
his untroubled eyes.
When the people were untied, I asked them questions. They
were horrified at the sight of me- a man dressed in rags, with a
filthy beard and matted hair, wet with sweat and blood, holding a
sword and a severed head. But one of them finally spoke up.
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“The people started denouncing each other,” said an old
lady, “Once the overcastes were dead. We accused our neighbors,
we sought revenge for petty offenses. There were claims of
disloyalty to the Decision. The Leader allowed this for a day or
two, but then he was mad. He told us all we had been corrupted by
our masters. He said that only the children were free of mental
corruption, because they were young. The soldiers came out to kill
us all.”
I sat on the ground, and the parents untied their children. By
the time I looked up, they were gone.
“Leader,” I said, “My Leader, this has to stop.”
He stared at me for a moment, then Karem and a few others
leapt out of their seats.
“No,” he said, and rose his hand, “Do nothing to harm him.
He was a part of our victory, and I will let him have his say.”
The Believers sat down, with their hands on the hilts of their
swords. They were all awake, and in the main hall, despite the
lateness of the hour. The Leader had a central place, like a throne,
and Karem was at his right hand. I had expected all these things.
“So, you had no trouble with the guards. I didn’t think you
would. But what do you have to say to me, Michael? Do you have a
quarrel with the shape of our victory?”
He knew what my quarrel was. I could see that in the
piercing focus of his eyes, patient as they were.
“You were never angry with the people,” I said, “You told
them they had displeased you, but you lied. There is no human
anger in you, Leader. Not anymore. But you are very hungry for
destruction.”
“Beautiful is the work of destruction,” he quoted, “That
clears the way for new things to be born.”
These were the words of a great mystic, Shtevan Amara,
who had died a hundred years before the Leader was born.
“That is not what Shtevan meant,” I told him, “Leader, you
are killing an entire generation in this city.”
“Three or four generations,” he said, “No one over the age
of twelve can be allowed to live, unless they have fought and
struggled beside us. There are too many of them, they cannot all
accept the Decision in their hearts. They cannot all become
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Believers. But the children are soft, they want to Believe. They can
be brought to the Truth. And the new world can be born.”
“It’s not as simple as that,” I said, “You try to comfort me
with lies, while your soldiers make altars of the dead. You are
creating a religion!”
He had no answer for that. He only looked at me, and a
gentle sorrow crept into his face. I abandoned my arguments
completely.
“The killing will stop,” I said, “Or the dead will turn against
you and your cause. I can make it happen, Leader! Your soldiers
will be torn apart by the bodies of those they murdered. Do not
doubt my word on this.”
He looked in my eyes, and I knew what he saw- that in that
one moment, I believed what I was saying. I could destroy him, I
could bring an end to the Decision. For the first time, I saw him
lose his composure. His mouth opened, and he fumbled for
something to say. In his eyes, I saw a moment of actual fear. Karem
stood, and his sword began to clear its sheath. I took a fighting grip
on my weapon.
The torches went out, in a gust of wind that sprang from the
bricks of the wall. The Leader was jerked to his feet, and his spine
arched back, in the grip of an invisible power. The Believers were
the same. Their skin puffed out, as if air bubbled up unevenly under
the surface, and in the dim light they looked like drowned sailors,
bloated and purple. There was nothing at all behind their eyes.
“Is that you?” I asked them, and I knew that it certainly was.
“Michael,” they croaked at me, “You are a slave! Do not
defy us, when you are so close to purchasing your freedom!”
“I have not defied you!” I told them, “You told me to bring
him victory, and that is what I did! How does this massacre serve
any purpose?”
“This massacre is the purpose!” they screamed. I fell to my
knees in sheer awe at the horror of their combined shriek, forced by
invaders over the swollen tongues of those they possessed.
“This was your purpose?” I asked them, “But for what?
What is your final agenda?”
“You do not need to know!”
Their eyes were rolled up, like the eyes of attacking sharks,
and I could only see the whites. They started to jerk, like puppets on
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a string, and bile foamed up in them and rolled out over their lips.
But they did not fall.
“You will obey!” they roared at me, “You will do as we ask,
or we will eat you until the end of time! Do not defy us, Michael!”
I couldn’t help it. I was shaking on the floor. I tried to look
up at them.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Listen!” they hissed, “You will hear the buzzing of the
tribe from our little bronze mirror. Even now, they are eating the
last of the dead. Did you believe they knew hunger only for meat?”
I did not answer, and in a moment, they continued.
“They eat the substance of the dead when they consume the
flesh! Each one is an unthinking little necromancer! And you shall
command them all. Do those things that we cannot. Pool their
energy, and be ready to use it as we require!”
“But what do you require?” I asked them, “Tell me what
you need, so I won’t wonder any longer. Why do you need all these
people to be killed?”
“Michael,” they warned me, “Your contract is nearly
fulfilled. When you complete this task, when you use the power of
the dead to do as we demand, then you shall be free, as we swore to
you before. But do not ask us ‘why’ again, or we will void the
contract no matter what the cost.”
“Yes,” I said to them, “Yes.”
But I was not yet satisfied.
The Leader and his Believers had collapsed into a deep
sleep, and I knew they would remember nothing of the possession. I
returned to my room, where the stench of vomit and sweat hung
heavily. Outside, I heard the droning of the bugs with human skin.
Without a word to Aulek, I lay down on my mattress and went to
sleep.
My wards screamed a warning in the early morning hours. I
rolled from my bed and fell onto the floor, and with my left hand I
flung Aulek into a corner. A battle-ax cut deep into my bed, and
stuck in the wood underneath. I took my two-hander up from the
floor, and drove it into the chest of the man who wielded the ax.
Behind him another assassin swung a sword. I let go of my trapped
two-hander and caught the second enemy by the wrists. He tried to
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wrestle me to the side, so his comrades could enter the room, but I
smashed my forehead into his face and broke his nose. His hands
flew to his face, and I caught up his falling sword and cut them both
off at the wrist.
Two more men came into the room, and I cut right and left,
evading their parries with ease. They weren’t killed outright, but
they fell to the ground with ruined faces gushing blood. A large
man entered, with a beard and long hair, and then I knew my
attackers. These men were Believers.
The bearded man lunged out at me with a short spear, and I
slipped to the right, sidestepping his attack. His arms were exposed,
and I cut the right one off at the elbow. Now I tasted their blood on
my lips, and my face was warm and wet. One by one they came at
me and died, or fell crippled to the floor. I killed or maimed fifteen
of them, and only one was left.
It was Karem. Now the blood on my face felt cold.
“Michael,” said Karem, “I’ve planned to kill you since the
day we met. No demon will save you now.”
He jumped into the room over the tangled bodies of his
comrades. I sprang back, and pointed my sword at his eyes. He
looked at me without fear, with total Belief, and pointed his sword
at my torso.
Now the world collapsed for me, and everything became
that edge and glittering point. I knew, at last, the meaning of my
dreams. Karem had no fear, and martyrdom was sainthood for him.
He wouldn’t freeze when I attacked him, his concentration
wouldn’t falter for a moment. I could stand and watch him forever,
but there would never be an opening for attack.
A bead of sweat rolled down into my eye. My pupil burned,
but I couldn’t blink and I couldn’t wipe it away. Any such
movement would be death.
Karem had reservoirs of deep commitment, a calm certainty
I would never understand. He fixed his gaze on my eyes, and I felt
myself drowning in that depth. I knew he wasn’t drowning in my
eyes.
Minutes passed. Most of the screaming came to an end at
the foot of my bed. One man still wept about the destruction of his
face. To me, his words were an irritation and a distraction. To
Karem, I could tell, they meant nothing.
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Slowly, incredibly slowly, his sword-arm straightened and
his blade jumped up at my torso while I watched in horror. As his
sword came up at me, I made a last attempt to block him, but my
hand was numb and clumsy and my fingers felt wide and soft like
links of meat. Three feet of sharp metal glanced off my useless
parry and slid into my body. I felt no pain, only a deep wet
coldness.
I fell to my knees, stupidly clawing at the blade as if to pull
it out of me. But the edges of my sight did not go black, and I heard
no voices like equations in my mind.
I looked down at the blade, and my eyes went wide in
amazement. The steel had missed my arteries and organs. The
sword was trapped, and this was not yet a fatal wound.
I looked up at Karem’s face. He still had the look of the
victor, the joy of triumph in combat. I took up my sword from the
floor, and held it loosely in numb fingers.
“Too bad for you,” I thought, “That omens are sometimes
wrong.”
I drove my weapon deep into his belly, and guided it up
behind his ribs. It was almost worth my wound, to watch the death
come over his face.
“Leader,” I croaked, “I have bad news to bring you.”
The guards, with his permission, had allowed me to enter
his room. My wound had been cleaned of infection, and the
bleeding had been stopped. No human nurse had tended me, but a
demon with power over wounds. I had called him up with the
sacrifice of the wounded.
“What is your news?” he asked me. He was still awake,
hunched over a small table with a lamp. He was studying an ancient
book.
“Someone,” I said, and let the word hang in the air,
“Someone killed Caleb, Haret, Yonek, Belset, Sharat, Teren,
Balsan, Sonel, Conor, Moren, Abul, Tenel, Pheren, Abet,
Shondith…”
I watched the effect of all these names. They were all
Believers, all true devotees.
“And Karem. The pieces of their bodies were in front of my
door.”
His eyes grew wide and white. I left the room.
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Chapter Fourteen- Apotheosis
Michael,” said Aulek, “You know we need to find
out.”
“I know,” I said, “They’ve surprised me several
times. Since I made my bargain, the Outside Beings have been
ahead of me all the way.”
“It was an unfair bargain,” she said, “You should have made
them tell you the truth.”
“I thought I had no choice,” I said, and sighed. The sun was
rising, and empty stakes creaked softly in the wind. The last of the
blood would soon be dry. There was no sign of the dead.
“If I’m going to fulfill our contract,” I said, “I need to know
what the stakes have been all along.”
“How can you do that?” she said, “How can you find out the
truth?”
“I’m not sure, yet,” I said, “Dream an answer for me, and
I’ll be very happy. In the meantime, though, there’s work that I
must do.”
I heard footsteps in the hall.
“Why?” he asked me, “Why are you doing this to me?”
He had screamed for a while, but no one was going to save
him from my room. They ignored his screams, as I had known they
would. I had him tied to the corners of the bed.
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“You are a soldier of the Decision,” I said, “And I have no
doubt that you deserve this. Beyond that, there is work to be done,
and the stars are not in my favor. Beyond that, I heard you walking
by.”
I cut a strip of skin, from his chest down to his stomach. He
shrieked, and his tongue stuck out like a goat’s. I cut it off, and
placed it on his chest. He made a rattling, deep in his throat. I took
the strip of skin, and tied it in a significant shape. I knew They
wanted me to stick to the script of their mythology. But it was the
blood and pain that called them, not the symbols.
“You have called on us often,” said the Anti-Beings, “Since
you squirmed in your leash last night.”
“I am trying to serve you,” I told them, “You asked me to
pool the powers of the dead.”
“Indeed we did. Even now, the bugs with human skin are
rolling around in their hive in the little bronze mirror. We will stir
them into shape and let them be actual for you. Draw them into
your throat like a liquid, let them live in your chest with your heart.
Then you will hold the Power of those dead.”
“How many are there?” I asked, “I'd like to know.”
“Do not be vulgar, Michael. There are many, many
thousands. You will be lucky,” and here they laughed, “If you
survive!”
I shrugged off their taunt.
“Do it, then,” I answered, “Send me the bugs with human
skin.”
They left the room, and I turned to face the window. Several
minutes went by, and a moving cloud came swirling through the
sky. I heard the droning of a million gauzy wings.
“They scare me, Michael,” said Aulek, “Please don’t let
them eat me!”
“Sleep and dream,” I told her, “I will not allow them to
harm you.”
They poured in through the open window and covered my
body at once. No inch of me was free of them. I felt the crawling of
their tiny legs, the curious probing of their antennae. They crawled
in my mouth, and tumbled down my throat. I breathed them up my
nose like air. They parted the skin of my chest and slipped between
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my ribs. And every bug that entered me infused me with the Power
of it’s life.
I went numb at first, as if I was drunk. I felt a rushing noise
and a roaring light inside me, and every cell in my body took on the
burden of another person’s spirit. I heard their memories and saw
their melodies rush by, much faster than the savoring I had known
in the oubliette. There were soldiers and overcastes, old women and
young men inside me, and I knew them all intimately as I absorbed
them into my skin. I knew their stories with the objectivity of a god.
My limbs shook with it, my back arched as if I was
possessed. It seemed they would never be done. They entered my
body by the thousands, but there were always more. Their droning
filled my world, a counterpoint to the roaring of the light. My body
tried to reject them, but it could not. I fell to my knees, and my
stomach heaved in a vain effort to expel them. I couldn’t breathe,
and my mind fell into panic, but there was no need for breath.
I tumbled through waterfalls of light, where wave-patterns
rushed and pooled. I spiraled into a glowing maelstrom. Inside the
light, their voices waxed and waned. Fragments of conversation,
songs and screams. On the floor of my room, I knew, my body had
collapsed and started to twitch. Still, the bugs with human skin
dove into me, crawled up my open mouth, crawled through my
nose, burrowed into my chest. Some of them opened my wound and
squeezed inside. My body absorbed them all, but my mind was
nearly overwhelmed.
No sorcerer had ever known such Power. This was a true
revelation- in the past, I had extorted the demon’s aid; now they
gave it willingly and in far greater measure. I could crush cities
with this Power; I could shatter mountains. But it was tight in my
body like a flood against a dam. The moment I let it go, it would all
rush out, and nothing could contain it past that point. One moment
of focus, one taste of an energy that could shape landscapes. But for
what purpose, I still did not know.
“Michael,” said Aulek, “You’re not the same.”
“I know,” I told her, and my voice had a hint of echoes,
“Don’t be afraid, it’s only for a little while.”
“I am afraid,” she said, “But not because of you.”
“Then why are you scared?” I asked her, while I ran my
fingers through her hair.
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“I’m scared of what the demons want you to do. I have a
feeling, Michael. I think I know what it is. I saw it in my dreams,
far away and shifting. I could have reached it, I think. But it was a
little too far.”
“It wasn’t in the world,” I told her, “But in between the
worlds, a state of being you weren’t designed to see.”
“Is there a way to see it clearly?”
“No, Aulek,” I told her, but she knew that I was lying.
“There is a way,” she said, “There is a way, and I need you
to tell me. What I saw was so terrible, Michael! I have to see it well
enough to tell you what it is.”
“I can’t let you do that,” I said, “Because you would
disappear forever if you did.”
“You mean I would die?” she asked me.
“No, Aulek,” I told her, “You are already dead. I mean that
you would spread out, lose your focus- you wouldn’t be a person
anymore.”
She said nothing for a while. I looked out the window, and
watched the sunlight on the buildings with my several thousand
eyes. These eyes were inside me, but each one had a different
meaning, a specific angle. For a time. They were pooling into one,
and all the little lives were being destroyed. Soon they would be
one life, my life, but larger than ever.
“I think we need to do it, Michael!” said Aulek, “I think I
need to do it. Won’t you let me?”
“What could scare you so much,” I asked her, “That you
wouldn’t want to be you anymore?”
“I do,” she said, “I still want to be me. I want to go with you
and help you, or go where my mother and father went. But They’re
hiding a terrible secret from you. This is something so bad that you
can’t do anything more without knowing what it is. I saw it when
you were eating the bugs.”
I turned away. I didn’t want to look at her.
“I’m going to do what they tell me,” I blurted out, “I don’t
care what it is.”
“Yes, you do,” she said, “They’ve been tricking you all
along! This is something I don’t think you’d ever want to do!”
“How do you know?” I asked her, “You couldn’t even see
it. Their manipulations are hidden from this world. None of their
servants can ever know the truth.”
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“It made me feel sick when I looked at it!” she said, “Sick in
a way that I’ve never felt before. Why won’t you let me find out
what it is?”
“Even if you could,” I said, “You’d be destroyed. And I
need you to help me, Aulek. You do a lot of nice things for me.”
“I can’t help you anymore,” she said, “Except by doing this.
If you won’t let me go, I’ll never speak to you again.”
I bit my lip.
“I could make you speak to me.”
“That wouldn’t be the same.”
“I should have let you die!” I spat at her.
“You did,” she said.
And there we were. I told her what to do. I told her she
could expand her dreaming until it overflowed it’s bonds, until it
flooded out and spread away forever. She would go out and fill the
little cracks, flow down into the secret places in between the
worlds. And possibly, only possibly, she’d be able to speak to me
one last time. And then she’d be gone.
I waited in the room for more than an hour, and I felt my
many points of view disappear and merge into one. But even
though they were destroyed as personalities, their energy lived on in
my vast new reservoir of Power. The Outsiders had needed me to
be this strong, for whatever deed they wanted me to perform. But
they could not direct me, they could not possess me, and they had
taken the risk that I would not do as I was told.
I watched her face grow slack and fully dead. There was no
link between this rotting piece of a corpse and any personality at
all- or so I feared. Much time had passed, and I thought that she had
failed. I looked at her head and wondered if I should bury it. Surely
her self had evaporated now.
But then her lips moved, very faintly, and a distant sound
came out, like a faraway wind. Quickly, I lifted her head up to my
ear.
“Thorp,” she said, “You will open another Thorp.”
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Chapter Fifteen- Human Sacrifice
Iwant to see the Leader.”
“The Leader will no longer see you. You may leave the
city, but do not…”
I cut his throat, then stabbed his comrade in the heart before
he could even draw his sword. I let him fall with my sword in his
chest. The door was locked, but I broke it with a blow of my hand.
The Leader was inside, sitting on his bed. Karem was dead, and if I
could kill Karem, there was no one to protect him. There was no
one to protect the Decision. He looked tired and old and scared.
“Don’t you have any patience to show me?” I asked him,
“Don’t you have any calmness, any gentle understanding? Are you
starting to realize that there are forces more powerful than the
Decision? You have been used, my Leader.”
He stared at me without words, and a tear rolled down his
cheek.
“That’s right,” I told him, “Your Revelation was flawed.
You had no power to re-make the world. But to break a hole in ityes,
you were useful for that!”
“What are you?” he asked me, “Are you one of the Outside
Beings?”
“Not exactly,” I told him, “But I served Them, and never
you. Their Power was granted, to lavish on you and your cause.
Don’t tell yourself you could ever have won on your own!”
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“What do you want from me?” he asked me, “Kill me if
you’re going to.”
“Not at all,” I told him, “Not at all. I want you to know what
your true purpose always was. I want you to watch me while I
break open a Thorp!”
“What is a Thorp?” he asked me.
I struck him in the face. His cheekbone broke, and he
moaned to himself quietly. Blood poured out over his lip.
“A Thorp,” I said, “Is a colony of the demons in this world.
A direct link between our planet and their own. There is such a
place already, on the Western Continent from which I came. It
made me what I am.”
He looked on me with the eyes of a trapped animal. I felt
pity, and it made me feel bad. So I punched him again.
“Please,” he said, and he cried freely, without pride. I hated
him.
“Your beautiful destruction,” I yelled, “Was really a human
sacrifice! Not in your religion, but my own!”
“What do you mean?” he asked me. I could hardly hear his
words.
“They needed the Power, to link our different worlds. They
are aliens here, and they cannot come and go as they please. You,
with your Belief and your Decision- you supplied the dead souls
which I have eaten to grow strong. All of those people are here
inside me now!”
“I didn’t know,” he said, “I didn’t know.”
“I’m going to take this two-handed sword,”- and here I drew
the massive weapon from my back- “I’m going to take this sword,
and use it to funnel their energies. I’m going to swing this sword,
and the city of Apolika will become a Hell you cannot even
imagine. And I will leave you there, to face the things that come up
out of the holes.”
“Don’t!” he said. He grabbed on to my arm. I backhanded
him in the face, and he flew back into the wall. He sat there with a
look of idiotic panic, trying to fit the splinters of his teeth back into
his gums.
I spat in his face. “What an anti-climax you turned out to
be!”
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I dragged the Leader up to the roof, and looked down at the
city below us. Before long, someone would discover this
kidnapping. But it didn’t matter. All the Power was in my hands,
and they could do nothing against me. The Leader sat in the corner
with his head in his hands. Blood welled up between his paperwhite
fingers. I jerked him to his feet.
“Look down there,” I said, “Look at the city. You think you
destroyed it. In an hour’s time, nothing human will walk those
streets. There will be life, but it won’t be human life. And when
people return to this place, they will be students of the demons”.
“Stop,” he said, “Why are you doing this to me? So you
fooled me all along. You were serving the demons. I understand
that now. But why are you angry with me?”
He was sobbing like a child.
“You sent Karem to kill me, for one thing!”
But I knew that wasn’t it. I would have killed him already if
he were merely a threat. My hatred for him was born from different
roots.
“Because you helped Them put me in this place! You
backed me into a corner, you made it possible for them to demand
this of me!”
It was a mistake, for me to say that. The Leader looked at
me with sudden understanding, and my hold on him was gone. He
laughed through his broken teeth, and blood flew out at me from his
mouth.
“They fooled me,” he said, “But you did not. You were only
another puppet like myself. And it breaks your heart to murder all
these people.”
He laughed to himself, and went over to sit in the corner
again. He was still laughing, quietly, when I cut him in half.
Their orders had come to me through a possessed soldier
only twelve hours after Aulek’s sacrifice. Though the stars were
waning for me when I needed to call them, they took possession
when and where they chose. I asked them why.
“These minds are soft,” they told me, “Because these men
are close to us in spirit. They are drunk on blood, and we hop
among them so easily. If it wouldn’t kill them, if we could do more
with them, we would take these bodies for our own. We reach
across the void between the worlds, and the distance is too great.
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We draw back from the cold of outer space, stinging in pain. But a
mind like this is a warm, soft shell for us.
“Now, do as we require. This is your last task, Michael, and
you shall be free. Fail us, and our contract is at an end. We will
hunt you like before, but we will hunt with endless vigor.
“To fulfill your contract, take the power you have pooled.
Focus it as we taught you long ago- channel it through a tool. Then
punch a hole in the world for us to wriggle through. It will be a
small hole, and we won’t be able to step beyond its borders. No, not
yet. But it will be a beautiful place, a place for our ways to grow
and thrive and spread. Make us a second Thorp, Michael, and you
shall be free.”
They hadn’t wanted me to know. They had intended to take
me by surprise. With no time to think, with my freedom in front of
me, they thought I would simply obey.
But I had been given the time to think. Aulek had purchased
that for me. And after twelve hours of thought, I already knew it
made no difference. I was going to do exactly as they asked.
So I stood on the roof, with my sword in my hand and the
halves of the Leader beside me. I could strike whenever I chose, as
long as it was soon enough to please them. I told myself to do it
right away, to finish the task and ride away as a free man. But I
lingered, and watched the sun go down and the first white gleaming
of the stars.
Soldiers came up to the roof, in search of the Leader. I blew
through them like a wind, and they died or ran back downstairs.
They would return very soon, with Believers, fanatic to avenge
their Leader’s death. I would have to do my job before that
happened. I lifted my sword with both hands, and pointed it high
above me at the stars. The Power stirred in me like an unborn child.
It struggled against its bonds. All I had to do was call it up, push it
out through my swinging sword, and rip a hole in the fabric of the
world. It would be difficult, but not complex.
I let the energy start to churn. I felt it in me, rolling like
boiling water. My arms went numb, and in my mouth there was a
strange, metallic taste.
The sword began to glow. At first, it was the glow of a
corpse-candle, a phosphorescent bluish white. But the churning
continued, the rolling became faster, and soon the blade was a
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narrow beam of white-hot light. The energy jumped out of my legs
and focused in my belly. It left the cells in my arms, and rolled
down into my stomach. The Power flowed out from every part of
me, till there was only a churning point of focused energy just
below my navel, and two streams of light which came from there
and traveled up my arms to light my sword.
The energy was no longer part of me. I had objectified it,
separated it, and now it was something I held, something I could
choose to give away. I started to swing the sword.
The light was like a new sun being born. I felt no heat, and
no pain, but the center of the city was disintegrated in an instant. A
wave of Power burst out from the sword, and rolled across Apolika.
Some buildings were flattened in its path, while others burst into
flames. Beyond a certain point, the wave became green, and green
ice crusted over everything as it passed. Then it was blue, and
everything in its path collapsed into a drifting blue dust. There were
more colors, and more changes, but I did not mark them all.
The Eastern Inner Gatehouse, where I stood, collapsed to
sand in slow time beneath my feet. I stood in sand, a fine wet sand,
and I knew that most of the Believers were in the grains which sank
beneath my feet.
I was in awe at the forces I had unleashed. I had waved my
hand, and thousands of people had instantly been destroyed. In a
life of killing, I had not slain so many as this. I thought of my Dead
House, where all their images would go. But I would never open
that door again.
I didn’t grasp the truth at first. My mind had rebelled, but I
didn’t know it. As the last of the energy left the sword, a cold
horror and triumph came over me. I had refused to do as They
asked! No second Thorp would be opened by what I had done.
The sword had been in my hands. The Power had been
ready in my body. But when I cast that Power out, I had not focused
on the tearing of the world. Instead I blotted out the Decision, I
swept its army and its leaders into nothingness. There would be no
second Leader, no new Karem would rise from the ranks of the
Believers. The Provinces would not be conquered by the Decision,
but neither would Apolika become a Thorp. It would only be a ruin.
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On that point, I was wrong. I left the sand-dune that had
been the Leader’s fortress, and I resumed my flight, Their quarry
once again. I walked through the burning streets where sand had
fused to glass. I passed the rubble and the burning buildings, and I
marveled at shadows burned into the wall, victims of that wave of
Power. The shadows were bitter to me, because my own shadow
still belonged to Them.
Beyond the zone of fire and disintegration, strange sights
awaited me. The green ice was warm to the touch, and wet as if
with sweat. The streets were slick with it, and the buildings were
the same. But in this zone, the people were not dead. They watched
me as I passed, and some of them tried to move. Their limbs were
distorted, like waves in heated glass. They were not human
anymore. One had a single eye, swelled and fused grotesquely
across his face. Another had a tooth, long and faintly green,
piercing his cheek like a fish-hook. There were many with missing
limbs, or twisted and melted features. They looked at me, and their
mouths moved.
It was much the same in the zone of blue dust. Here, their
skin was blue or faintly purple, and ridged or dotted with tiny,
oozing lumps. Their skin was fragile, like dust, and it flaked away
from them while they scratched an un-cacheable itch.
I left that city by the time the night was dark again. When
the last of the explosion had faded from the sky, I was wandering in
the snow of the countryside beyond. I had failed to do as They
asked, but I had done something else.
I had created a second Carthage, not a second Thorp. And
there was no one to say it ever had to die.
- 300 -

IV: Sanctuary
- 301 -

Chapter One- Nightmares And Illusions
Iremembered her face, and that is the first thing I
remembered, after a long time with no time, wandering
in the gaps in my mind. I looked around me, and she
was not there. There was a mattress, soaked in sweat. There was a
low candle, burning. I was alone in a dim room with rock walls, and
I thought I was underground.
I reached for my sword, out of long habit, but my shaking
fingers couldn’t find it. I had no sword-belt, or any proper clothes at
all, but only a white tunic, thin and wet.
Had she been waiting on me? Was I a patient, or a prisoner?
Her face was still in front of my mind, with her long yellow hair
and her bright green eyes. I was certain she existed, that she was
somewhere nearby, even though I had been lost in nightmares and
illusions for so long.
I put a foot over the edge of the bed, and the room pitched
like a raft on a waterfall. I coughed, and watched my ribs heave.
Someone had been trying to feed me, I thought, and failing. I ran
my hand over my head, and it was smooth. Someone had shaved
me. I wasn’t a prisoner, then- or else they were preparing me for
execution. If so, I knew I was not ready for escape. When I had
more strength I could take blood from their veins, smear it in ugly
shapes, and call up the creatures who hunted me, to bring me out of
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this place. But at that moment, I was so sick and weak that I
couldn’t even hear the distant calling of the stars.
I tried to think back, and the first clear moment in my
memory, other than her green eyes looking down at me, was the
city of Apolika in its ruination. I had destroyed that place more
completely than the Leader or the Decision had ever planned. His
way led to mass murder, but my way had led to something worse.
Even now, I was sure, nothing walked there that was truly human.
After that holocaust, where had I gone? I had flashes of
memory, too many of them, as if I had wandered for years in all the
dark corners of the Eastern Continent, and in other places too. How
had I survived, if I had been as sick as I now suspected? I could see
glimpses, images of fire and bloated faces floating in icy water. But
nothing was clear.
Someone pressed soup to my lips, a thin broth that dribbled
down my chin. A soft hand brushed my face. I didn’t open my eyes,
because I didn’t want to see. I had to rest, I needed time to recover.
I had no strength to try and know my enemies.
When my thoughts went soft, as they often do before sleep,
I tried to fight them. My mind threw up random snatches of
conversation, pointless phrases, things I didn’t want to hear. I had
the feeling I’d been listening to them for a long time; that I’d taken
their advice.
It was no use to struggle. My body wanted sleep, and my
mind could not dissuade it, although there were places in sleep that
I didn’t want to go. I went back to that same confusion from which
I had only just escaped.
It was terribly cold. Even the storm that had covered us on
our long march had not been like this. I could see nothing but a
swirling of white snow, alive like a cold flame, and I could hear
nothing but the howling of the wind.
I stumbled along the hard ground, half-asleep and leaning
on my greatsword as a crutch. There might have been no one alive
in the wide world, only myself to hobble through the storm like a
bedraggled ghost without a drop of blood to give it life.
I had passed corpses on the way, frozen refugees who had
been trying to flee the Decision. They were curled up like sleeping
dogs, and in the white of the storm I could not say if they were men
or women, young or old. I poked at them with my sword, I don’t
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know why. They were like mummies, I thought, and they would
never decay, for no maggot or invisible thing could grow in such a
storm.
It seemed to linger for months, though it might have been
only days. I walked without sleep, and in all that time I saw neither
sun nor moon nor stars. My hands became hard wet claws, and my
feet swelled up inside my boots. But I did not freeze, and though
the ice crusted over my body, I was warm and red, and wet with the
sweat of my fever.
There was no end to the storm, in my dream. I walked and
stumbled, and steam drifted off my clothes and evaporated in the
cold air. I was still walking when I woke up again.
“Try to drink it,” she said, “You need nourishment, and you
have not been getting it.”
She held a bowl to my lips again, and a warm, strong broth
poured down my throat. My stomach churned, but I clenched my
teeth and the broth stayed down. She wiped some of it off my chin,
but I would not open my eyes. This was not a time to think, but
only to drift in my sleep, however unpleasant, and let my body be
healed. If she was trying to help me, I would bless her with my
Power when I was well. But if she had another agenda, her blood
and pain would call the Anti-Beings to me.
“Sleep again,” she said, and felt my forehead with the back
of her hand. I felt the warmth of her breathing body, and it made me
sick.
“Kyri,” I heard a woman say, “Fetch him water. His tongue
is blue.”
Tiny stars flashed and died in my eyes when the water
struck my face. She had spilled it, because my hand jerked.
“Try to calm down,” she said, “You are in no danger.”
A dry towel passed across my skin. The sweat came up
again in an instant.
“Hold him down,” a voice said, “But gently this time.”
My limbs shook and flailed. My mouth was thick with a
white foam.
“And I thought he was over the worst of it,” said Kyri. The
girl with the green eyes.
- 304 -

“Do not assume,” said an older woman, “Do not predict, “It
is not for us to say.”
I lay down by the side of the road to sleep. I was thin like
little Aulek now, or like the Leader’s victims after the crows came.
But I still had eyes. I could see that the storm was never going to
end, that the world would be covered in a thick layer of ice and
snow, and that nothing would live.
But then I remembered, with a shock of surprise that drove
me to my feet. I was Michael the Necromancer, a wanted man. I
could not afford to go to sleep. Long worms, the color of glue,
flowed back into their holes as I walked away.
“Keep changing the towels,” said the older woman, “And
keep them cold. He is too hot by far.”
There was a wet towel on my face, sharply cold. The water
ran down my neck and cheek in little streams. The cloth grew warm
against my face. It was replaced with another.
“I think he’s awake,” said Kyri, and I felt her breath on my
brow.
“He has been close to death for a long time,” said the older
voice, “Longer than he could have known. I think he was feeding
on it.”
“What do you mean?” said the other voice. Kyri’s voice.
“When an animal is near death,” the older woman answered,
“There is sometimes a fever energy. An energy that is not real. The
spirit of the fever makes the muscles twitch and the blood flow so it
can keep its host alive. This energy does not last- but I think our
patient has been driven by it and nothing else for many months.”
I thought my head was beginning to clear. I could remember
things now. I could put myself in a time and place, if only in the
past. There was something more than a mystery. And yet it was
wrong. Some vital ingredient wasn’t there.
“Don’t stare at him so long,” the older one said. The note of
reprimand was slight. “It will not be easier for you if you indulge
your curiosity by gazing at him. He is just a man; no different from
the father that bore you or the people beyond the Barrier.”
“Yes, Mother,” she said. There was no resentment in her
voice. She had been curious, and she had stared. She accepted the
correction.
- 305 -

What was missing in this situation? My eyes were still
closed, and I had no wish to open them. I was starting to think
clearly, but I didn’t want to face the realities, to find out what was
wrong. I could sleep if I wanted to, and I didn’t need to run. The
illusion was to pleasant for me to break it.
But there is more than one kind of illusion. When I slept, the
dreams came back, and I was lost again in the fever that had been
my only source of energy.
Not for the first time, I was caught. Whoever had put me in
the oubliette had waited until I raved with sickness and could not
resist them. Now, new captors tried to do the same. My sword
flicked at them like a lizard’s tongue, and some of them were hurt.
But none of them were killed, and they beat me with clubs of hard
leather till my face was raw with welts.
I was thrown into a cart, and to my mind it was a worm’s
trough, and fat white worms came over and gorged themselves on
the non-existent fat of my belly. They were well satisfied, but I
laughed at them as they grunted and chewed. They were being
fattened up for the slaughter, and the stupid creatures had no idea.
There were other men in the cart, and they screamed, as I
thought, at the worms. They were filthy, angular people, who
shared their bodies with hordes of lice and other pests. Everything
around me was alive, and crawling with life, and I had none of the
dead to share it with. There was no head to talk to me, no clump of
hair to wrap my fingers in.
One of my neighbors stabbed me in the leg with an old
piece of glass, because he didn’t like my laughing. I tore two strips
of cloth from the tatters of my rags. With one strip, I closed the
shallow wound. With the other one, I choked out his life till it was
gone. I tried to call him up to me, but I could not. I tried to cut his
head from his body with that same piece of glass, but it was no
good to me at all. He wouldn’t talk to me, and his eyes stayed dull.
The other men in the cart avoided me as well as they could.
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Chapter Two- When My Head Came Clear
When my head came clear again, my mouth was
dry. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth,
and my throat burned. But the room was warm,
and I could stretch my legs out without much pain, and I felt no
need to sleep. I opened my eyes. Kyri was there, looking down at
me to monitor my condition. She saw me open my eyes.
“Hello,” I said, but my voice was a harsh whisper. She
passed me a bowl of cool water, and I drank it.
“Is your head clear?” she asked me, “Are you well again?”
“Well enough,” I said, “And clear enough. Why am I here?”
She touched the back of her hand to my forehead.
“Your fever has broken,” she told me. She smiled a little,
pleased with her work. “You will not die.”
“I’m glad to hear it. But why have you been tending to me?”
She looked at me directly, and she did not drop her eyes. As
far as I could tell, she had no fear of me.
“You were very ill,” she said, “And I can tell you no more.
Mother will answer your questions. I can get you anything you
need, but I can explain nothing. I am only a Novice here.”
The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. Were they
fattening me up for the kill?
“My sword,” I snapped at her, “I need my sword.”
“You do not need your sword,” she said. Her voice was
calm, quiet, impossible to make ripples in. I remembered all the
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enemies they’d sent at me over the years. Many of them wore
masks, but it never mattered. I trusted no one, so no one could
deceive me.
“You’re right,” I told her, “At the moment, I do not need my
sword. But a man’s sword is his mark of free status. Without it, I
am only your prisoner. I would not remain a prisoner, Kyri.”
If she was surprised that I knew her name, she did not show
it. And she was unaffected by the story my eyes told the world.
Anyone who saw me at that moment would have seen the death of
Apolika, the thousands who crowded my Dead House. But these
memories of mine did not disturb her poise. A great wave of energy
came over me, a wave of rage.
“Haven’t you ever seen it before?”
I spat the words at her through my teeth. My stomach
churned.
“It happens every day,” I hissed, “Don’t you know about it?
Don’t you recognize it?”
“You’re getting excited,” she said, “You should sleep until
Mother comes.”
I fell back into the bed, and I had no strength to stand. My
hands were shaking. She put a damp cloth on my forehead.
“You are not fevered,” she told me, “But this cools the
blood.”
I heard her in another corner of the room. Her feet were
light on the floor, and I thought about the long empty days in which
she had nothing better to do than to practice this soft and graceful
walk. She was so quiet, I could hear the thin folds of her white
dress as they moved in the air. It sounded like people whispering in
the background, or the sound spirits make when they gather
together, trying to go unnoticed.
My right hand twitched, and jumped to my left hip where
my sword should have been. My fingers opened and closed,
groping for the familiar hilt. They waved and folded like spider’s
legs.
She put a bowl up to my lips, and warm tea trickled down
my chin. I tried to knock her away, but she pressed it at me, and a
taste like jasmine ran into my mouth. It had a sudden fullness about
it, a soft ripe feeling like a large bite from a peach. My mouth
opened, and my hand fell limp at my side. She poured the tea down
my throat, and I swallowed it all without thinking. Too late to
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esist, I caught the aftertaste of leaves and sticks, and the muscles of
my face relaxed into sleep.
I awoke in the middle of the night, or at least at some time
when the room was dark and empty. I was calmer now, but I knew I
had to leave. Whoever these people were, whatever their purpose,
they had taken my sword from me and refused to give it back. This
could be a new plot of the Anti-Beings, a new design to destroy me.
I could not afford to wait and play it out. I was still too weak, in no
condition to walk through a maze of secret motivations.
I cleared my mind, and sent the point of my thought up and
out to find the stars. If their patterns were right, I would compel a
demon to help me get away. If their patterns were wrong, Kyri
would be made to understand me. Her blood and pain would call
them up, and she would no longer look at me as if I had no Mark.
At first I thought there was some mistake, that even with all
my years as a necromancer, I had somehow done something wrong.
Because the wide sky was unreachable to me, as if it didn’t exist
and there were no stars anymore.
But it wasn’t the sky, and it wasn’t the stars. I looked deep
in my mind, and I found no Power there. There were no subtle
energies or rhythms, no tingling in the marrow of my bones. My
sorcery was gone.
Later, many hours later, when I came back from the long
stretches of fear that unfolded in front of my mind, I tried to walk. I
pushed the blankets from me, and I put my foot on the floor. I felt
the dirt beneath my soles, and I thought about the tiny living things
that spread disease. Any one of them could come into me, any one
could infect me, and I had no defense. There was nothing I could do
to protect myself from anything.
I pulled my foot back. It took me a few minutes to clean it
off completely, and then I wrapped it in blankets. I stared up at the
ceiling, and a tear came into my eye. I was utterly trapped.
“You should have waited,” said the older woman, Mother
Tori. She sat by my bed, and her hands were folded in her lap. I
stared at her blankly, like a sick animal that shows no pain or
weakness.
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She had the tone of a leader, but her eyes were neither cruel
nor frightened. It seemed that I made no impression on these
people. Whatever their plans for me, my pollution meant nothing to
them.
“Why should I have waited?” I asked her, “You must know
that I am helpless, but last night I thought I could escape. I took my
chance.”
“If you had waited,” she said, “You might not have wanted
to escape. In any case, there is no need to speak in such terms.
When you are well enough to cross the ice again, you may go. But I
doubt you will choose to do so.”
“And why is that?”
“We offer sanctuary. You are in need of it.”
I said nothing for a moment. She laughed a little.
“Am I too blunt for you?” she asked me, “Well, I can speak
more plainly still. You are an enemy of the Aliens. They are
hunting you, and they have been for years. Well, they cannot reach
you here. This place is as free of their influence as the Thorp is
given over to it. Within these walls, you are safe.”
She looked at me, measuring the effect of her words.
“Give me my sword,” I said to her, “Put it into my hands.”
She laughed again. “So you can cut me down? So you can
use my blood to call Them here? But it cannot be done! This is the
one place on earth where they can never be!”
There was an image in my mind- a picture of my hand,
strong and fast, and her throat in my grasp. But it would do me no
good. Without my sorcery, there was no hope within me. The sword
would buy me days at the very best. Then it occurred to me.
“You say they cannot reach me here,” I asked her, “Is that
why my Power is dead?”
She nodded, and beckoned to Kyri behind her. The girl
brought a mirror made of polished bronze. She held it up to my
face. I was a corpse wrapped in skin that didn’t fit. My cheeks were
like chicken bones in a trash heap. My lips were thin and cracked,
and slightly blue. My head was totally hairless, and my only
clothing was the tunic of a monk.
In the center of my face, my eyes gleamed with the
unbalanced focus of an ascetic. I was better now, I could see that,
but I was very far from well. So, what had changed? Why did I feel
that I was looking at a stranger, a man who was not me and who
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could never understand me? I looked at the face in the mirror,
searched its eyes for some hint of what had changed. There was
nothing, as far as I could tell.
The next moment, I was on my feet on the bed, backed
against the wall. The mirror was in the corner, and Kyri was
nursing her hand. I looked from left to right, and back again. I
looked down at the women, and I staggered and fell.
The thought was too huge, far too vast to wrap my mind
around. In the mirror, I had seen no miasma. There was no
distortion in the air, no hovering like invisible flies.
The demons were gone.
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Chapter Three- At The Bottom Of The World
The ocean was more black than blue, and it reflected
thousands of suns. I heard it lapping against the hull,
and I knew its color although the stars made no
sound. We slipped through the water, and it felt like falling. I
couldn’t see anything, but I could hear people stirring. I could smell
terrible things.
They threw us food sometimes. I made sure I got some.
I tied a knot in my tunic to make a noose. I took the other
end and looped it around an empty sconce on the wall. I stood up on
the bed. My hands shook when I held the cloth. I kneaded it in my
fingers. Then I untied it, and put the tunic back on. I sat on the bed,
and stared at the corner. The women were walking in the hallway
outside the door.
The cracks in the ice were wide and black, and when I
looked over the edge, I could see no bottom. I had to go around
them, or jump over them, flapping my arms. The wind beat a rolling
storm of white against my face. I walked into it without stopping,
while strange balls of blue light drifted in the air above my head.
Mute white birds hovered over me while I walked.
All around me, the other prisoners were terrified and
foolish. No one was going to help me, and there would be no mass
mutiny to set us free. But it didn’t matter.
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I stood with bare feet and bled into the snow, and I looked
up at the stars, hard and clear in the night sky. On every side of me,
shackled men chipped at the ice with picks and shovels, searching
for the red globes our keepers wanted.
My thoughts were under water. Fat beads of sweat stood out
on my face, ran into my beard, and turned to ice. I couldn’t think
clearly, couldn’t remember thinking clearly.
My shackles were cold. My face was too hot. And the stars
made shapes that were familiar to me, and right.
“Close your eyes,” she said, “Go back to sleep. You were
having one of your dreams again.”
She smoothed my hair back. My forehead was damp. The
thought of sleep was not pleasant. I had crossed half the world, and
survived only because I could still feel the stars in my sickness. The
Provinces were gone, fallen to pieces, and it could be a thousand
years before anyone put them back together. I had passed through
that chaos, and survived.
Because of the stars.
Some of them drowned in the frozen water, where chunks of
ice floated and bobbed and brushed together. Others knew how to
swim, but it didn’t matter. The cold ran into their bones till they
were filled with it, and when it had wrapped them up in itself, it
made them warm. They fell asleep in that warmth, and never woke
up. But they were much luckier than the rest.
Beneath my back, the creature stirred, shoulders and hips
and ribs in far too many places, with dark hair in thick patches
between stretches of white skin marked with red. The mouths
opened and closed without strength, without sound. Its new legs
were like braided cord, with the soft fat of men’s bellies for its feet.
I had called Power from the stars, Power without thought
except the one need to escape. And the Anti-Beings had come in a
great wave of ocean water and rolling ice. The wave did not touch
me, and I was dry. But most of those who felt its force were now
beneath my back. They had melted together, combined into this
thing made of guards and slaves and soldiers, and they were my
steed.
It eased into the water and floundered around, then found its
balance. There was a deep sound from its belly, a kind of grunt, and
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it started to swim. Parts of it drowned and stopped moving, on its
belly where the water was. I looked out across a dark horizon,
where mountains of ice floated like glass cities. I was at the bottom
of the world.
She found me awake, and staring at the texture of the wall. I
didn’t look up at her, but I took the bowl of broth from her hands,
and drank it slowly. The warmth reached me even in my fingertips.
I tasted the grains of salt, and the small floating herbs.
I put the bowl aside, and took the bread she gave me. It was
warm and soft, with salted butter melted into the top of it. I wiped
my fingers off on the cloth she held, and closed my eyes.
“You should rest,” she said, “If it takes you ten years. I can’t
imagine the things you’ve seen.”
Her voice cut into me, made my muscles tense. I heard the
little tones and undercurrents of warmth and concern, the code
below the level of words, that people use to soothe each other’s
fear. These things made me sick. To me they meant a trap was just
around the corner. I opened my eyes.
“What are you doing?” I asked her, “Why have you people
taken me into your home? Why have you been nursing me back to
health?”
I barked the words at her, and she jumped back a little
before regaining her calm. It was a matter of practice, among other
things. I could see that. She was startled, and then she drew on
something deep inside her, and her face was smooth. Her eyes were
patient and impersonally kind.
“This is a holy place,” she said, “It is not exactly a home,
although most of us here have known no other.”
She pressed my shoulder softly with her hand, and without
thinking I relaxed into the bed. She pulled a sheet up over me, and
gave me a bowl of water.
“Mother Tori,” she said, “Has granted me leave to answer
your questions and tell you about our work here, and your place in
it. I am sorry I could not answer you before.”
A long, deep sigh came out of my mouth. My shoulders
relaxed a little.
“Then tell me,” I said, but quietly this time, “I’d be glad to
know. Why are the demons barred from this place? How is that
possible at all? I have crossed continents, and found them
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everywhere. I have seen inside myself, and they were there. This
world is not their home, but it will be. It is only a matter of time.”
My voice choked on the last word, and I swallowed hard.
“Yet you almost hung yourself,” she said, and her fingers
brushed my neck, “How could you do that, if you didn’t believe
us?”
“I did no such thing,” I growled, “I was only examining my
options. But how did you see me?”
“You are our patient,” she answered, “Your well-being is
our responsibility. They were coming to stop you, when you
changed your mind.”
“Again,” I told her, “I would not have taken my life! How
can I be sure? If I knew there were none of Them at the other end,
waiting to claim their prize, I would gladly be done with it. Of
course I would.”
But I wasn’t sure that was true. I didn’t know what I wanted
to do. If nothing had changed, I had to fight to stay alive. If the
demons were gone, and they could not touch me here… there was
no life for me that I could even imagine, and beyond that I knew
nothing.
She hadn’t answered my question. I didn’t know how they
watched me. But they did watch me, even when I was alone in the
room, and that was enough about that for the time being. There
were more important questions.
“You told me you would explain,” I said to her.
“Yes,” she nodded, and sat down at the side of the bed. Her
hands were folded modestly in her lap. The light made shadows in
her long hair.
“You are at the bottom of the world,” she told me, “The
very bottom of the world, and beyond this place there is a vast
desert of ice and snow. You walked across it from the shores of the
ocean to the north, though how you crossed it is a mystery to all of
us. This place is a sanctuary of the Sisterhood of the Kerun. We
serve the Kerun with prayers and dances. Its power protects us, and
protects the world. In the sanctuary, the world is always itself, and
the corruption of the Aliens cannot translate across the space
between their world and our own. Death in the sanctuary is equally
pure. They cannot touch it, and if you die here you will not have to
reckon with them. But we would not have you die. Stay with us.
Learn the prayers and dances to which guests are entitled. Live in
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peace with us, and when you die, you will have peace forever. We
offer this to you in the compassion of the Kerun.”
She made a pious gesture with her hands.
“But who are you?” I asked her, “What are you doing here
at the bottom of the world?”
“Most of us are sent here,” she said, “By powerful families
with too many children, or families in disgrace or trouble with the
authorities. I came from the Provinces, a nation in the continent
across the sea. Some of us come from other lands.”
“I came through the Provinces,” I said, “There is nothing
left of them. The continent has fallen into chaos.”
A shadow crossed her face, but she smoothed it away.
“The Kerun has followers in every nation on earth,” she told
me, “There will always be women to join us. We go to the seashore
every year, across the plain of ice, and there is often a boat at the
water’s edge, with new novices to join our Order.”
“You cross the ice?” I asked her.
She nodded, “It is a pilgrimage. A test of faith. And
sometimes the pilgrims do not return. I myself have never gone,
though I may make the pilgrimage this year.”
“Who is this Kerun?” I asked. I imagined a demon,
masquerading as a god.
“Not who,” she said, “But what. The Kerun is the dreaming
of the world.”
“Then the force you serve is the force which I control. Dead
men sink into the world’s dreaming. I find them there, and I enslave
them. That is the work of the necromancer.”
“You know the Kerun,” she nodded, “You have tasted it, I
can see that. Perhaps you shape a patch of it here and there, for your
own use. Outside the sanctuary, the Aliens could give you the
power to play that kind of trick. But you control nothing. The
Kerun is far too vast for you. If you could do as you say, you would
be a god. The minds of men would be yours, and the shape of the
physical world. But that is not the case.”
She was right. I nodded, slowly. I could go into the dead
life, but my power there was not unlimited. In fact, I could only see
a glimpse of the slow dreams. No more than the space around a
single ghost. To see further, I sent out the dead as my scouts. Aulek
had done that for me.
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“Have I disturbed you?” she asked me, quietly, “I did not
intend to.”
I shook my head. “I was just remembering someone. Tell
me about this Kerun. Why would you serve such a thing? You
mentioned compassion, but I have seen no compassion in it. We
have quick dreams when we live, and slow dreams when we die.
The dreams and the world are not the same, but they interact in a
strange pattern. Without the dreams, the world might not exist. I
was taught these things in the Black School, when I was young. It
was a science to me, not a faith. How can you worship a pattern, a
random interaction?”
“Because It gives shape to the world,” she said, her voice
still undisturbed. My questions and criticisms were not a challenge
for her.
“The compassion of the Kerun is not an illusion. We do not
look for personal benevolence in something so vast. The Kerun is
the fire that casts the shadow of our world. We who live in the
world must acknowledge this great power, this immense pattern
that includes all our gods. We must try to move in step with It, to
live in Its rhythm deliberately. Because It is endless, It can be very
cruel. The compassion of the Kerun is our obligation to be merciful
to all our fellow creatures, because all are caught up in that web
from which none may escape. We honor the Kerun by easing the
burden of Its weight on people like you. People who do not yet
comprehend Its rhythms.
“We do not petition the Kerun when we pray. We don’t try
to please It when we dance. Instead we try to bring our spirits closer
to the shape we have discovered in the chaos. In all the centuries,
according to Mother, there is only one force that does not seem to
fit into this pattern.”
“The demons,” I guessed, “The Anti-Beings.”
“We call them the Aliens,” she said, “They come from
somewhere else, beyond the Kerun and not a part of Its essence.
The Kerun contains good and evil, and all such dualities, but it does
not contain these Things. In a manner of speaking, They do not
even exist. But when They found the Kerun, and the worlds that It
shapes, the war began. There can be no compromise- They have
laid their eggs here, and They will consume the world till it is gone.
Until nothing exists. That has always been their ultimate goal."
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“And They will succeed,” I said, “They cannot be stopped.
That much I know.”
“You do not know,” she told me, “The war continues, and
you have never even been on the battlefield. You are only a refugee
from the conflict, not a soldier.”
“You’re so convinced,” I said. And I laughed. “You have
your faith, Kyri. You’re welcome to it. But I do not. Why would I?
To me, the Kerun is a resource. I strip Power from it, as men strip
coal from the ground.”
She was still untroubled. Always untroubled, with a strength
I could not understand. And yet, she was a child. She knew nothing,
and my words were a small challenge indeed compared to the
reality beyond those walls. She had said the Kerun could be cruel.
But she did not know; someone had told her. It was a doctrine of
her faith. I had seen Carthage, and Apolika, and the oubliette. And I
had been in the Thorp.
“Go to sleep for a little while,” she told me, “When I come
back, I will talk to you again. You can ask me more questions.”
She smiled, as if she was humoring me. As if I was the
ignorant one.
“There are things you need to know,” she told me later,
“Things that will be expected of you.”
She searched my eyes with her own. She wanted a sign of
cooperation from me.
“This is your place,” I answered, “You have the right to
name your rules.”
To name them, but not to enforce them. From the day I left
the Black School, I had had no master. I could not afford to have
one.
“The rhythm of the Kerun is very complex,” she said, “It is
not possible to find the thread of It if you are tied to the demands of
the world. You cannot hear It if you cannot find the silence inside.
The sanctuary exists in order to make that possible. In a thousand
years, there has been no lust here, no greed or violence here. The
place itself has grown quiet and discovered that rhythm over time.
We depend on the quiet that has grown up here. As our guest, you
must never disturb our repose.”
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“What do you mean?” I asked, “Surely you don’t claim that
no person has felt lust here in the past ten centuries. Human nature
does not change.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” she said, as quiet as ever. We spoke
of things she was forbidden to understand, but she was not
uncomfortable. The Order had taught her self-control, but not
shame.
“We have had male guests from time to time,” she said,
“According to Mother Tori. And once, I remember, two of the
sisters had to be kept away from each other because there were
strong feelings between them. No doubt, they felt lust. But I was
not speaking of feelings, which no one can control absolutely. I was
speaking of actions. To those who follow the discipline, a feeling is
unimportant. It floats away from you, it is only a whim. But it if
you give into even once, it assumes enormous power. It cannot be
satisfied, no matter how much you feed it. One act of violence, one
act of lust, and the quiet of our sanctuary would be gone from us
forever.”
I could see that she didn’t know. She knew nothing of
violence or lust. She knew only her doctrine. But her voice calmed
me, and in the back of my neck I felt a pleasant warmth, a growing
relaxation.
“You have three choices now,” she told me, “You can take
vows with us, and undergo castration. Then you would have the
freedom of the sanctuary. You can leave, and return to the world
outside. That, we do not wish you to do, because you would be
killed and your soul would be lost to the Aliens. Or you can stay
here as our guest, without the vows, and abide by our restrictions.
Your weapons would be kept from you, and you would be watched
so you cannot confuse the Sisters.”
“As I am watched right now?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she answered, “As you are watched right now. I was
assigned to you because Mother believes I may be ready to leave
the Novice Rooms, to take full vows and assume a vocation in the
Order. But I am a young woman, and it is better for them to watch
me than to rely on my judgement alone.”
I stared at her in open wonder. She was not self-conscious in
the least. She was not ashamed to acknowledge her weakness, to be
under their control.
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“They can watch us both!” I laughed, “But how can they
control me? I am a violent man, Kyri. I have killed many thousands.
What use is it to have an old woman watch me?”
Her hand flicked like a snake, and my head jerked to the
side out of long habit. The tip of a black stick was an inch from my
face. Now it was her turn to laugh.
“Such storm clouds on your face!” she teased me, “Have I
offended you, Michael? It was only a game.”
She lifted her arm, and the stick slid down into her sleeve.
“It does not draw blood,” she said, “And it will not kill. The
black stick does not violate our vows. But it keeps the Sisters safe
from those who fall into our care, and as a last defense against those
who live outside. All the sisters are expert in its use."
I stared at her with my mouth open while she walked out of
the room.
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Chapter Four- Illumination
In my dream, I floated by black towers where red spiders
the size of men made webs the color of seashells. They
looked down at me from the icebergs as I passed. My
creature was slowly drowning as its many mouths filled up with
water. It was sluggish now, but it still swam, and pushed aside the
bodies with its snout.
This was an ocean of bodies. Their blue faces rolled under
the surface of the water, and their stiff limbs brushed up against the
beast. They wore strange clothes, like none I had ever seen. Eels
nuzzled up to them, like babies nursing. I had a sword again, and it
rose and fell for hours. The eels swam up and sank their teeth into
my creature. I had to kill them so I wouldn’t drown.
When the dawn came, I saw the outline of an enormous cliff
of ice and snow ahead of me. It stretched on as far as I could see in
both directions, and as far as I could tell, there was no way to climb
it.
Another dream. I was alone in a great wilderness, where no
human foot had ever been. The trees were as wide as houses, and
their branches twisted together like manuscript knot-work, high
above my head.
I had taken my sword off, although it was still nearby. I had
my pack in a tree-branch to protect it from the bears. There was a
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ock under my head, cool and shaded, and I was chewing on a thick
crust of bread.
The dream never changed. The wind blew through the trees,
and old leaves and pine needles skittered along the ground. Birds
hopped from branch to branch, and small creatures chattered. But
there was no threat, and no sense of a threat, and I was calm.
I became aware of a thin murmuring, like an incantation,
somewhere between the trees. Someone was saying prayers over
me, and they were sinking into my dreams. I didn’t mind. For many
hours, it seemed, I was alone in the trees, listening to the sound of
those prayers.
When I woke up again, I was wearing a clean white tunic. I
was alone in the room. For the first time in my memory, my head
was clear. I could breathe in a full breath of air. My head wasn’t
damp, and there was no pain in my limbs. I stretched my arms, and
stepped out onto the floor. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t feel like
waiting for Kyri to return. I wanted to see the sanctuary.
My door opened up onto a corridor with no windows. There
were globes along the walls, which glowed with a soft white light. I
could smell a sweet incense. I looked both ways, and decided to go
left. There was a mural on one side of the wall. It was much like
any other religious scene- a procession of women, bearing plates of
fruit and pouring libations, on a blue background. I paused for a
moment to study the mural, then I went on.
The corridor opened out into a courtyard, where sunlight
poured down from an opening high above. I looked up, and there
was a small patch of blue sky above my head. There was a slight
draft, but it wasn’t cold. I sat down against the wall, and let the
sunlight surround me. The floor was warm, as if it conducted heat
from some unknown source.
Across from me, on the other side of the courtyard, there
were two statues. One was a young girl, with solemn face and
outstretched hand. Her eyes had no pupils. The other statue was a
woman, perhaps the mother, with one breast bared and a small,
straight rod in her right hand. Her face was calm and
compassionate, but somewhat cool. Here and there, around the
court, there were small trees with broad green leaves.
I heard footsteps in the corridor, and expected to see Kyri or
Mother Tori. But it wasn’t them. Three young women walked
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through the room, and a girl behind them. They turned and smiled
shyly at me, but said nothing. I closed my eyes, and slept without
dreams against the wall.
It was her murmuring that woke me up. I thought I heard
water running, and decided I was thirsty. But instead of a fountain,
it was her voice that I heard, from a room beyond the courtyard.
She was on her knees, with her back to me, and her long,
light hair hung down over her white robes in shallow waves. There
was a patch of sunlight, from another opening high in the ceiling,
and in the light that bathed her I could see the shape of her body
through her robes. I was wordless at the sight of her, but it wasn’t
lust that took my words away. I couldn’t name what I was feeling at
all.
Her head was bowed, and her hands were together in front
of her face. A rapid stream of words flowed out of her mouth, a
melodic chant without rhythm, and she paused only to take a breath.
I couldn’t see her face, but the way she held her body told
me what she was feeling. She was relaxed, but completely focused,
and there was nothing in her world at that time but the object of her
prayers. Her attention was precise, like that of a duelist when the
weapons are drawn.
She was in touch with the divine. I might not have believed
it if I’d been told, but here I could see it for myself. A strange grace
encompassed her and infused her body with invisible light. Her
neck and shoulders and back, in all their little movements, were
pregnant with a sexual energy that her celibacy only made more
potent. The lines of her figure made beautiful shades and shapes,
and in the far back of my mind, there was an image of that body
moving with mine. But that was unimportant, almost irrelevant. She
transcended any lust I felt for her, and I wanted nothing from her
except to watch her at that moment, to take in the pale curve of her
back and the faint glow of sunlight on her hair.
She didn’t know I was there. I breathed out, slowly, so she
would not notice me, and I turned around in silence to leave the
room. Mother Tori was there, watching me from the doorway. Her
eyes had no expression.
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Chapter Five- Chewing At the Wind
Iremembered, without dreaming, how the snow and ice
had stretched out ahead of me for unimaginable miles,
and how my fever had kept me warm sometimes despite
the cold. I stumbled across the waste for days if not weeks, and I
don’t know what I ate or drank or how I stayed alive.
Most of my memories were strange, too strange to be real, if
I didn’t know there were such things in the world. Long white
worms with hundreds of fat human faces along their bellies,
chewing at the wind. Tangled shapes made of hairy white legs, like
spider’s legs, running along mindlessly without bodies or eyes.
Patches of snow that turned gray and grew into long fields of crustlike
skin.
Once, in a cleft between two boulders of ice, I found an egg
made of blood. It was wet, and red, and perfectly symmetrical, and
beside it in the ice there were red gills that breathed when I
breathed. I wanted to destroy it, but I was scared that it would hurt
me.
I took my sword out of its sheath and wrapped it in a dry
cloth. If it had frozen into the scabbard, I would have been totally
helpless. Because there were people in the waste, and they followed
me for days. Their faces appeared here and there in the snowclouds,
then disappeared. They were stalking me, driving me like
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game, and when they had me in a nice open space surrounded by
snow banks, they charged.
I thought they were bears, at first, because they were
covered in white fur and had wide heads with long yellow teeth.
But they were only men dressed in bearskins, and their weapons
were clubs and spears, not teeth and claws. The first one was on me
before I could un-wrap my sword. I pivoted to let the tip of his
spear shoot past me, and I punched the bundle sharply across his
face. He stumbled in the snow when I hit him, and my sword came
free of its wrappings. A club came down on his face from behind
me, and his mouth spurted blood on his white furs. I wheeled to the
right; the club had been intended for the back of my head. My
sword arced right, then left, in a figure eight that put both of them
on the ground.
The others were a little more cautious now, but there were
dozens of them. They circled me warily, with clubs raised and
spears pointed at my chest. I took up the club from my fallen enemy
and held it in my left hand, extended and ready. My sword was in a
hanging guard, with the edge up and point down, and the hilt high
up beside my head.
A few of them charged in. I blocked a spear with my club,
and turned on the ball of my foot while my sword wheeled in the air
like the arm of a windmill. The blow knocked the head from the
first of these attackers, and left the sword in a position to block a
spear thrust from coming in at my face. Now the club wheeled
around, and crushed the skull of the second one so that his bear
head-dress fell in on his face. The third one struck a glancing blow
at my side with his club- these weapons were all made of bone, I
realized as it hit me- and I buried my sword-tip in his mouth. He
staggered back, and the fourth man brought his club down on my
arm. The pain numbed me, and I almost dropped my sword. I
swung the club around, and knocked him in the jaw while I tripped
him up with my left foot. His legs went out from under him, and I
finished him off with one strike from the club.
The man who’d been stabbed in the face bled from his
mouth like a drunk vomiting blood, but he still stood. He gave a
terrible scream, like a war-cry, and as he charged at me the rest of
them also came rushing in. I turned to the side and cut his throat
open as he passed, but within seconds their clubs were striking at
me from every side. I tried to defend myself, but I was too sick and
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weak, and there were too many of them. They stabbed at me with
their spears of sharpened bone, but only in the arms and legs, never
in vital areas. They wanted me alive.
I fell to my knees, with my weapons crossed over my head
to block some of their blows. I tried to find an incantation, some
desperate spell that would destroy them where they stood. But the
stars were wrong, or my fever kept them from me. I could find
nothing, and my sight was starting to fail.
I could remember it now. Just at that moment, as I fell to the
ground, shouting figures came rushing in out of the snowstorm.
They were women, the women of the sanctuary, and at the sound of
their prayers my attackers ran away.
“Kyri,” I said, when she came in my room with some food,
“Who were those men with the clubs?”
“You’ve remembered!” she said, and she smiled, “We call
them the Bearskins, because they wear the skin of the arctic bear.
You must have seen such creatures as you walked here.”
I tried to remember, but there was only a vague picture in
my mind. Were there white bears on my journey? Did I fight one of
them? I shrugged my shoulders.
“Why did they run from you?” I said, “And what were they
trying to do?”
“They were trying to take you prisoner,” she said,
“Although I can’t say exactly why. Some believe they are
cannibals. They ran from us because they were very close to the
sanctuary, much closer than they usually dare, and they are very
superstitious about this place. We were walking the boundaries,
blessing the walls which protect us, when we found you fighting
them.”
“I was almost done fighting by that time,” I said, “I must
have been hurt very badly.”
“Worse than you know,” she told me, “I didn’t think you
could survive. You were wounded, of course, but we can treat
wounds. The worst danger was from your fever. You raved for days
at a time.”
“What did I say?” I asked her.
She squeezed my hand, “It’s better if you don’t know.”
I took the soup from her hands, and ate it slowly.
“Where do you eat?” I asked.
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“There is a common dining room,” she said, “You may join
us there if you wish.”
“I should,” I said, “I’m much better now.”
She smiled again, but said nothing.
“Come to think of it,” I said, “How do you eat in the first
place?”
“There is a garden, and we keep livestock as well. This
continent is covered in ice, that is true, but we have learned to
adapt. The sanctuary is warm, and there is no ice or snow on the
inner grounds.”
I looked at her with a curious expression. She laughed
again. Her laugh was clear and young- uncomplicated.
“I don’t know how that works,” she admitted, “It is one of
the Mysteries.”
I finished the soup, and ate the buttered bread she had
brought for me.
“Now that I’m better,” I said, “Will I be seeing less of you?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, “Mother Tori hasn’t told me
yet. There is much more work to be done, teaching you the ways of
this place. You must learn our history, and our prohibitions. There
are certain dances and prayers which you should learn.”
I had no interest in learning dances and prayers. I had been
struck by the sight of her, absorbed in her vision of what was holy,
but I was not concerned with having that holiness for myself. In
fact, I still couldn’t imagine staying alive. If only I could believe
that I was safe here, so I could die.
“Kyri,” I said, trying to find words for something I didn’t
think she could understand. My mouth worked at the air and made
no words. I couldn’t look her in the eyes. She put her hand under
my chin, and made me look up at her. Her eyes were so green, like
two bright liquid pieces of jade, and I was terrified. She saw right
through me. I didn’t want her to look at me, and see everything I
had done, and see how little guilt I could really feel.
“What are you afraid of, Michael?” she said.
“Only one thing,” I whispered, and she shook her head.
“Not anymore,” she whispered back at me. Slowly, without
making a sound, she leaned in to me and kissed me lightly on the
head.
“Sleep,” she told me.
Then she was gone.
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Chapter Six- The Black Sticks
It was some time before I saw her again. In the morning,
a young novice named Sherel came to escort me down
to the dining hall.
“Where is Kyri?” I asked her.
“She is away in seclusion,” said Sherel, “As all of us must
be from time to time. She fasts and prays, searching for an insight.”
“An insight into what?”
“Something that vexes her.”
The words were said casually, as if they had no weight, but
my spirits fell when I heard them. I didn’t know what might vex her
other than me. She had helped me, and yet I caused her difficulties.
“They say she has a difficult duty,” said Sherel, echoing my
thoughts, “Although I don’t know what that is.”
I followed Sherel out the door, and we turned right. The
dining room was at the end of a maze of corridors, decorated with
murals and the occasional statue. I hardly noticed them at all. The
room itself was large, and almost a hundred of the Sisters were
already there, kneeling in front of a large statue of a woman with a
wand. There were women of every age there, from little girls to old
crones, and all of them wore the same white robes. But Kyri was
nowhere to be seen.
Sherel led me to the statue, and motioned for me to kneel
down with the rest. I hesitated, but decided I should do so. I bowed
my head and closed my eyes while they recited a prayer. They
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prayed with passion, and I thought it might affect me as before, but
I felt nothing.
When we sat down at the long tables in the center of the
room, Sherel motioned for me to bow my head again briefly before
I ate. There were bowls of soup, and loaves of bread with butter,
and pitchers of water. The Sisters ate in silence, so I was able to sit
quietly and watch.
Mother Tori sat at the head of the longest table, flanked by
young women of Kyri’s age or a little bit older. Sherel, who was
only about thirteen or fourteen, sat next to me, mixed in with the
rest of the Sisters. It seemed there was a special group that Mother
Tori had taken charge of for herself. Perhaps she was grooming
them for something, or they were the novices on the verge of full
admission to the Order. I guessed that Kyri was a member of this
group.
On the opposite wall, there was a huge tapestry that showed
the Sisters planting and harvesting their food. Around the room,
young girls carried pitchers of water, baskets of bread, and trays
bearing fresh bowls of soup for those who came in late. The Sisters
were always busy, and one by one they left to return to work. Sherel
and I were soon done with our food, and she stood up to leave.
“Where are we going?” I asked her, as soon as we were out
of the room.
“Mother wants me to teach you things,” she said, “But I
can’t teach them all myself. The first step is to find a Sister who can
help us.”
I followed her through a twisting and turning warren of
corridors and little rooms, and out of long habit, I memorized them
all. It was always important to remember how to leave. The rooms
and courtyards were not all the same, but they were very similar.
All the decoration was religious, and there were few signs of a
personal touch from any of the Sisters. They were not individuals
here, but members of a community of faith. I could remember such
a life, from my days as a serf in the distant past, in my own
homeland. The serf is not a person to himself; he is always a
member of a certain village, a certain family, from a particular
estate. I had left that far behind.
“Here,” said Sherel, “Luka is probably in the study back
here. She knows the guest prayers better than anyone.”
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We entered the study through a small door. The walls were
lined with bookshelves, stacked high with manuscripts and old
scrolls. In a chair in the corner, an old woman slept with a book in
her hand.
“Luka,” said Sherel, and touched her on the shoulder. The
old woman opened her milky white eyes. She seemed to be blind.
“Luka, wasn’t there a guest here once when you were
young?”
The old woman nodded, and turned her head to face me, as
if she could see.
“This is Michael,” said Sherel, “He needs to learn the guest
prayer so he can stay here.”
The old woman closed her eyes. Her brow furrowed, as if
she was searching through her memories from years before. Then
she started to chant-
“Take me, Kerun, into your place of worship,
Fold me up in your arms without arms, without folding.
I will enter your rhythm.”
Sherel nodded to her crisply, like a quick bow, and I did the
same.
“Do you think you can remember that?” she asked me, when
we had left the room.
“I’m sure I can,” I told her, “I just don’t know if I can
actually do it.”
“Just say it for now,” she countered, “Time will take care of
the rest.”
That was my life for the next several days. Sherel took me
from one sister to another, and they taught me everything I needed
to know. There was the guest prayer itself, which I had learned
from old Luka, but there were also a number of other prayers for
various purposes. Prayers before food, before work, before sleep. I
was expected to pray as a condition of their hospitality; no one ever
asked me if my words were sincere.
“Don’t you care,” I asked Sherel, “If I believe in these
prayers?”
She shook her head.
“The Kerun and yourself,” she said, “Are not aligned. You
are part of its pattern, of course, but you do not understand it and so
you are not in a right relationship with the world. The words of
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your prayers- even the rhythms of the sounds- will restore your
understanding. A right relationship will grow, whether or not you
believe.”
She took me to learn their dances, or at least those few that
would be expected of me. A guest was expected to dance only once
every month or on special ritual occasions. Jeren was the teacher- a
tall woman with brown eyes and dark skin, who rarely spoke. She
showed me the movements, which were simple enough although
new to me, and she motioned for me to repeat them. It was not easy
for me to dance in front of the watching novices, to whom I must
have seemed rather graceless. But the simple postures of hands and
feet, and the basic footwork, were not too much for a swordsman to
memorize. After a few days, I could perform them well enough.
They kept me busy during the day. Between learning
prayers and practicing dances, there was little time to think. But at
night, I watched the shadows on the wall, and I listened to the little
sounds of the sanctuary, and I remembered.
“Sherel,” I asked one morning, “When is Kyri going to
come out of seclusion?”
She gave me a long look. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, “Put
it out of your mind.”
“She saved my life,” I said, “I wanted to thank her.”
“She did as she was told,” said Sherel, “It was part of her
education.”
We were walking down a long hallway, over scenes of
battle made of blue and green tiles. The tiles showed the women of
the sanctuary, fighting the Bearskins with black sticks in their
hands.
“She affected you strongly,” said Sherel. It was not a
question. We stopped short, and I looked in her eyes, and it
suddenly occurred to me that she would never be married, never
have children. I nodded.
“That’s good,” she said, “Let her affect you; she will be
your doorway into the Kerun. Let your thoughts of her lead you
forward. But do not mislead yourself. She is not a woman to you,
Michael, and you are not a man to her. Remember that you are
watched at all times.”
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My jaw clenched, and I bit my tongue. Images of
destruction leapt to mind- the sanctuary burning, and the women
slaughtered. I would not be a prisoner.
“Don’t be so angry,” said Sherel, without fear, “You can
leave whenever you wish.”
I laughed out loud.
“Of course,” I said to her, “Whenever I wish.”
I waved for her to move forward, and we kept walking.
“In any case,” I said, “What were you thinking, Sherel? I
have no designs on Kyri. My life has nothing to do with seducing
women, I assure you.”
We passed through a long garden, open to the sky but
surrounded by walls, where a dozen novices were tending
vegetables. She didn’t respond until we were on the other side.
“Seducing?” she said, “That’s not what I meant. You could
not seduce her, Michael. She is firm in her faith. It is your own
spiritual health I am concerned with.”
“My spiritual health.”
I practically spit out the words.
“Sherel,” I whispered, “I am a necromancer by trade. I call
up the dead and I steal them from their dead life. I interrupt the
slow dreams. I use them as I see fit.”
“That’s not all you’ve done,” she said. We started up a flight
of stairs, carved with illustrations of myths, and partly covered by a
blue carpet.
“That’s true,” I said, “I’ve aided the demons, and I’ve
worked for their servants, and I have killed many thousands of
men.”
“My point exactly.”
She had the self-righteous confidence of her age, but her
tone was not cruel.
“With everything you’ve done,” she said, “With everything
in your past, what’s the sense in being distracted by thinking about
Kyri? She doesn’t think about you! If you’ve seen her devotion, and
thought it was beautiful, then find that devotion for your self. Let
your thoughts of her lead you forward. But don’t tell yourself lies,
or you will only be deluded.”
“You misunderstand me,” I told her, “That was not what I
meant. I don’t think of her at all. I have enough things to think
about! I was trying to be grateful. That’s all.”
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“Well, that’s all then,” she said.
I knew where we were going before we got there. I heard
the familiar sounds, the shuffle and clap of feet, the clash of sticks.
“Why are you taking me here?” I asked my guide.
“How do you know where I’m taking you?” said Sherel, a
little perplexed, “I haven’t told you yet.”
“The training hall,” I said, “I know the sounds. Your
novices may train with the black sticks, while I trained with the
sword. But all these places sound the same."”
“You’re right,” she said, and started to walk again, “Mother
Tori wants you to serve a useful purpose here. That could take
many forms, and I’m sure it will. But for now, she wants you to put
us through our paces.”
We walked through the doors of the hall. The moment I
appeared, a sharp voice barked an order, and a dozen pairs of
sparring students came to attention. There were ten-year-olds and
fifty-year-olds, and everything in between. Here, in the heart of
their practice, their martial spirit was remarkable. There was no
anger, no excitement, but even with their black sticks lowered, I
could see few gaps in their defense. Any attack would be met, any
move to strike would be futile. Their spirits were aware and alive.
“Like Kyri,” I thought, although Kyri was not among them.
Another order, from a shriveled old woman in a corner of
the room, wrapped completely in blue. From my right corner, I saw
a flash of black, and at the same moment I heard the snap of
Sherel’s sleeve. I ducked down and threw my arm out and up, while
I kicked out behind me with my left foot. My fingers wrapped
around the flying stick, while Sherel’s black stick whistled past my
head. She had failed to strike me, but to my surprise she had also
dodged my kick.
I rolled away, and came to my feet with her black stick in
my hand. The woman in blue shouted again, and everyone charged.
When you’re fighting a group, the corner can be attractive trap. It
feels safer, and it’s hard for them to attack, but in the end there’s no
escape. The key, instead, is constant movement.
As the women came in, I didn’t pull back. Instead, I jumped
into their distance, and the few sticks that struck me had no room to
come into full power. I wheeled left and right, and my stick made
figure-eights above my head. I didn’t strike the women. Each blow
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stopped an inch away from its target, or a fraction of an inch.
Whenever the black tip paused for a moment, above an eye or just
beside a cheekbone, the target would fall. They fell gracefully,
acknowledging the touch, and rolled to the side without tripping up
the others.
That first phrase accounted for five. But there were many
others, and they recovered quickly from my attack. I would not
parry them, because there were too many strikes- to simply defend
myself would have been impossible. Instead, I struck again and
again, but the arc of my stick was designed to close lines of attack.
Every time my stick reversed direction, I heard the clack of their
high attacks bouncing off my weapon, while my feet moved and I
swung on my hips to avoid their low attacks. They struck each
other, and some of them were hurt.
I came through to the other side of the room, and swung
around to face the opponents who remained. There were eight of
them left, and they advanced on me cautiously, but without
wavering. Three of them were grown women, with gray or white
hair. The other five were younger, including a few children and a
few of Kyri’s age. Some of them had blue eyes, and some were a
deep, dark brown. All of them were perfectly focused, aimed
straight at me, and unblinking. I shifted my stick in my hands.
“Halt!” yelled the woman in blue, “Stand at attention!”
The girls on the floor, and the girls who still stood, were
together in two lines in a moment. Sherel stared at me from the
corner, with a smile on her face.
At night, alone in my room, I did think often about Kyri.
After only a few days, I couldn’t really remember her face. It had
become unreal to me, as faces often do. But her green eyes were on
my mind, and the curve of her back when I was watching her
praying. Every now and then, I remembered the way her skin felt
when it brushed against mine. Or I remembered the shadows in her
hair, and the patterns of light. These memories came over me
suddenly, and were gone in a moment. But they kept me awake.
I put her out of my mind. I practiced sword-forms without
my sword in my hand, and I practiced dancing and praying. I didn’t
understand this at all. Long ago, I thought, when I had been a young
serf thousands of miles away from here, before I ever went to the
Black School- it was just possible that some peasant girl had kept
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me awake. Possible, but unlikely, because I couldn’t remember
such a thing.
These images were hateful to me. When a thought of her
green eyes surprised me, I pushed it away by remembering other
things. I imagined her in Apolika, impaled on a pole, eyeless and
swaying in the wind. I imagined her in Carthage, being eaten by a
leper. I imagined her in the oubliette, starving to death and having
her slow dreams eaten by me.
I didn’t know why, but the thought of her brought a slow
ache to my bones.
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Chapter Seven- Twilight
Iwoke up in the morning, and Kyri was sitting at the foot
of my bed.
“Good morning, Michael.”
She smiled at me.
“Good morning,” I said, “You’ve come out of seclusion.”
She nodded, and I sat up in the bed.
“I didn’t know if I’d see you again,” I told her, “I thought
Mother Tori had decided to keep us apart.”
“Not at all,” she answered, “Mother has been planning this
since the day we found you. She knew exactly what you were.
Some of the other Sisters didn’t want to take you in. But Mother
did.”
“Why?”
“You don’t have to be suspicious, Michael,” she laughed at
me. As these women often did. “You’re a unique opportunity, she
tells me. She thinks you can do much for the Kerun. That you know
the Aliens as we cannot. She’d like to tap that potential.”
“I won’t do anything,” I said, “Anything at all- to risk
myself. I’d let all of you die before I’d draw my sword to help you.
Unless I was sure They couldn’t have me.”
“It is not death that scares you.”
“Not remotely. Not death on its own.”
She nodded again. She already knew this.
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“But Michael,” she said, and put her hand on my arm, “You
won’t have to risk your life. I think Mother needs something more
subtle from you, much less dramatic. It’s not something I can even
explain.”
I pulled my arm away from her. I didn’t want her to touch
me.
“I’ll wait and see,” I told her, “I’ll let the situation develop.”
She smiled again.
“Come with me,” she said, standing up, “You need some
fresh air.”
I hadn’t been ready for this. She had come back without
warning, without explanation. A few hours ago, in the dark of my
room in the night, I’d been imagining her dead.
“I don’t want to go anywhere with you.”
She stopped in her tracks. For a moment, she turned her face
to the side. I couldn’t see it, her hair was in the way. But when she
looked at me again, she was calm. Her face had no expression but a
warm concern, though her eyes were unusually bright.
“Have I offended you?” she asked me, in a very soft voice.
A quiet, little voice.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I just want to be alone.”
“There’s some water at the foot of the bed,” she told me,
“I’ll come back again later.”
I didn’t know why she disgusted me so much. And I didn’t
want to think about it. I never thought about anything. Remove the
threat, and move on. That had always been my way. Even these past
few years, trying to escape Their hold forever, were ultimately the
same. I understood what I should feel. I knew the faces of my ghost
house should keep me up at night- but they did not. I had no time
for them. Make no time for your ghosts, and you’ll have no ghosts
at all.
But now I was invoking my ghosts, using them to keep
something else away. I didn’t want to be thinking of her. I didn’t
want that one moment to have so much significance. I had seen her
praying. What of it? The Sisters prayed, even a guest prayed. It
meant nothing.
I imagined a situation. Kyri and I were together in an inn, a
thousand miles from here. My enemies came, and called for me to
come out. They surrounded my hiding-place. I tried to call Power
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from the stars, but there was none. Kyri was there, cowering in the
corner, wanting to believe that I would never be able to hurt her.
Blood and pain calls the demons, when the stars are far
away. I flayed her body, and made sigils from the skin.
“Michael,” said Sherel, “Stop taking yourself so seriously.
This happens all the time.”
Hours had passed, but Kyri had not returned. Sherel had
come in her place, and the two of us were talking.
“What do you mean, it happens all the time? What in the
world would you know about it?”
“I know enough,” she laughed, “I didn’t grow up here. I
know what men and women do. And as for you, you’re transparent
to everyone! Kyri made you well. She treated you kindly, and no
one ever treats you kindly. And then, she’s a pretty girl, of course.
It’s as plain as day, and isn’t so dramatic.”
“I don’t like you laughing at me!”
“Don’t try to be so threatening, Michael- I’m not at all
scared of you. Although,” she added, “After your performance with
the sticks, perhaps I should be.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Not at all. But then again, do you? All these years, you’ve
never been in a position to be affected this way. I’m sure you’ve
slept with women on your travels, but what is that? In some ways,
you’re more celibate than we could ever be!”
“You may be right about that,” I conceded, “But what are
you implying?”
“Not what you think,” she answered, “I’m not telling you
this is important, I’m telling you the opposite. Your fascination
with her is predictable, shallow, irrelevant. It doesn’t really mean
anything. Enjoy it if you want to. Spend your time daydreaming
about her. She really won’t mind. In a few months, or maybe only
weeks, you’ll get to know her. The fascination will pass.”
Kyri did return, hours later, while I was staring at the
shadows on the walls. She walked into my room with no hesitation,
and asked me if I was feeling any better.
“I’m sorry if I upset you this morning,” I said, “I think I’d
like to go outside as you suggested.”
- 338 -

She cocked her head at me, as if she was trying to figure
something out.
“Alright, Michael,” she said, still very quiet, “But we can’t
actually go outside. The roof of the sanctuary is what I had in
mind.”
I stood up from the bed, and motioned for her to lead the
way. We walked through some of the corridors I already knew, but
she stopped at a corner and opened a small door I had assumed was
only a closet. This led to a narrow stairway, damp from the runoff
of melted snow. The mysterious warmth extended even to the roof.
She led me up the stairs, and through a little door. On the other side,
my eyes met the continent.
“Kyri,” I said, “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
The sun was going down over a vast landscape of snow and
twisted ice, and the sky was darkly blue. Great mountain ranges
stretched away in the distance in a strange chaos of high, narrow
peaks and deep chasms that led down into blackness. There were
deserts of snow where the wind blew swirling white clouds over flat
wastes where no feet had left a mark. I didn’t notice her hand on my
shoulder, not at first.
“I like to come up here,” she said, “Because it reminds me
of the holiness of the world.”
“The holiness of the world?” I asked, and my lip curled up
in a sneer, “There’s nothing holy about this world. It’s just a nest
for the Anti-Beings.”
“You’re wrong,” she said, “And you’ve seen it for
yourself.”
I jumped a little when she said that. Did she know what I’d
seen?
“Yes, I know you saw me praying,” she said. As if she’d
heard my thoughts.
“That wasn’t mine,” she went on, “That Power wasn’t mine.
I am almost a Full Sister in the Order of the Kerun. From time to
time, Its dream obscures my own. Its rhythm becomes me. You saw
it for yourself. The heart of the world is in that pattern, and you saw
that it is wonderful. Now how can you tell me that this planet isn’t
holy?”
“I’m sorry, Kyri,” I said, “That moment was powerful,
that’s true. But you haven’t seen what I’ve seen.”
- 339 -

The last of the light went away, and the polar waste became
totally dark.
“She won’t rise again for months,” said Kyri, “Night is long
in this part of the world.”
“Yes,” I said, “I think I remember that from school.”
“School?” she asked me.
“Yes,” I said, “The Black School. The place where They
train necromancers. That’s how I lost my shadow.”
“Tell me,” she said, “I don’t know the story. We knew They
were chasing you, that they’d captured your shadow, but we didn’t
know why.”
“It was the last day of school,” I said, “We were going out
into the world. We would all be powerful men, counselors to kings,
wealthy beyond belief. But one of us had to pay. The Aliens would
own us all, of course, some sooner and some later, though we
pretended not to know. But the last one out the door was the first to
be Theirs. They would inflict torments on him, pain beyond
imagining. I was last.”
“But you escaped.”
“Yes,” I said, “In a manner of speaking, I escaped. One of
the demons caught me in his embrace. I can’t describe the pain to
you. No words could describe it. I could do nothing to equal it, not
even with an executioner’s tools. I felt it in the atoms of my body.”
I lowered my face when I spoke of it. My body shook. She
pulled my head towards her chest.
“That would be my fate,” I said, “For all time, I would
belong to Them. I cannot allow that. No price is too high to pay.”
“It’s all different now,” she said, “It’s all different now.”
I closed my eyes, and in the darkness I heard the rushing of
blood in her veins, and the beating of her heart. I felt no roof
beneath my feet, and no air on my skin. There was nothing at all but
the rushing sound, and the slow rhythm in her chest.
“Michael,” she said at last, “Come pray with me.”
“He can’t do that right now,” said Mother Tori, standing in
the doorway. I jumped a little.
“He can’t go pray with you right now, because I need you to
do something else. Old Luka needs some help with a manuscript.
Go down and take it out for her. It’s too heavy for her to lift.”
- 340 -

“Yes, Mother,” said Kyri, with a nod of her head. She let me
go, and left me standing alone on the roof with Mother Tori. The
old woman looked at me for a long time, and I met her gaze. In the
dark of the night I couldn’t see her face very well, but her eyes
burned out of the gloom, like two coals in a cloud of smoke.
“Michael,” she said at last, “Why don’t you sit down for a
moment. I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”
I sat down on a carving, and she sat down across from me
on a section of wall. At first, she didn’t seem to know what to say.
“Do you know why I took you in?” she asked me.
“Not really,” I said, “I’ve heard your standard explanation.
But I’ve also heard that some of the Sisters were opposed.”
“They were,” she nodded, “Though none of them bear you
any ill-will. You’re a very dangerous man, Michael, and especially
dangerous to us.”
“How exactly am I a danger to you?”
“For more than one reason,” she said, “You have an energy
about you, a liveliness, though in many ways it’s like the hollow
energy that fever gives. Young women are attracted to a strong
energy, for perfectly natural reasons. But in that, if you’re not
careful, you could destroy our work.”
“You saved my life,” I said, “I’m not going to destroy your
work. I have been running for many years, and that’s all my life has
been. As I told Sherel, seduction is the last thing on my mind.”
“Good,” she nodded, “See that you don’t forget that as time
goes by. Because in that mistake, however natural it might seem to
you, you could destroy our purity and open our doors to the enemy
outside”
“Sherel did not seem so concerned. She told me Kyri was
strong in her faith.”
“Who said anything about Kyri?” the old woman snapped,
“Don’t try to find meanings in my words unless I put them there.
But I haven’t told you yet why I decided to help you.”
“No,” I said, “You haven’t.”
She turned her face away, and looked out over the dark
expanses of the ant-arctic waste. She seemed to be having trouble
with her words.
“I think you might be the person we’ve been waiting for,”
she said, “A person from a prophecy.”
- 341 -

A cold shudder crawled along my spine. The hairs stood up
on the back of my neck, and parts of my face went frozen and
numb.
“What prophecy?” I asked her, and the words were thick in
my mouth. I didn’t know why, but I thought I had never heard such
sinister words.
“Read this book for me,” she said, and she reached into her
sleeves. It was a thin volume, bound in leather, and extremely old.
Far older than the Provinces themselves. I could almost feel the
thousands of hands that had held it over the years. It seemed to
carry their carry their extra weight.
“Unless I’m wrong,” she said, staring at me intently, “You
are from the northern regions of the Western Continent of this
world.”
“Yes,” I said, surprised that she knew. Provincial was the
only language I had heard in the sanctuary.
“You should be able to read this book,” she said, “For it
comes from those regions, and though it is very, very old yet
sorcerers read manuscripts from every age.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said, and took the book from her hands,
“Have you read it yourself?”
“I read it every day for thirty years. It is called the Last
Book of Kerun, and it tells the story of the final downfall of our
sect, before we came here in exile and built the sanctuary. Once,
long ago, we were the greatest power in the world. In your own
homeland, a place I have never been, we had a city called Hakerun.
‘The Adoring-Place of the Kerun’. It was a beautiful city. We were
so wealthy and powerful then, and we had walls of white marble,
and alabaster fountains, and great libraries far larger than this entire
sanctuary. That was the glorious time of the world.”
I remembered, suddenly, that there were old foundations out
in the empty hills near my place of my birth. The ruins of a mighty
city. I had played in them as a child.
“In Hakerun,” she went on, “There were both men and
women in holy service. And there was no celibacy in our religion at
that time. In fact, priest and priestess together celebrated the pattern
- 342 -

of the Kerun by joining their bodies. We called this the Holy
Marriage.”
“Why did it change?” I asked her.
“Because,” she said, “It all went very wrong. Debates over
doctrine led to schisms. The city began to decline. We were puffed
up with pride, and we didn’t even realize that our power was gone.
Too late to save the city, a few of us began to understand that a new
power had come into the world. Something from outside the Kerun.
Something that had corrupted the Order, and provoked all our
schisms. The local kings adopted a new religion. They turned their
backs on our city, and gave their allegiance to the Varite gods. By
the time they tore down the walls and put our libraries to the torch,
our sect was ready to act. We took as many of the books and scrolls
as we could carry, and fled the city to roam the world as tinkers.
One by one, the Varite Church tracked us down, till only a cell or
two remained. In those days, the Kerun was almost forgotten. But
the Aliens had not yet gained the foothold they desired. There was
still no Thorp. We didn’t know it, but since the birth of our Order,
we had been making a terrible mistake. When Hakerun was born,
we drove out a race we called the Dark People, and we tore down
the temples of their gods. In all the centuries that passed, we
thought those gods of theirs were dead. But they were not dead, and
they were never truly gods. They were the Aliens, already trying to
find entry to our world. They had found worshippers, and they were
preparing for a holocaust, a sacrifice terrible enough to open a
Thorp. Those first Kerunites had shattered their plans. They had
pulled back to their own world, nursing their wounds. Foolishly, the
Order of Kerun never realized it was at war. We thought of the
Dark Faith as a primitive cult- even our puerile name for it makes
that clear- and in our arrogance, we had overlooked their return.
They had avenged themselves on our Order by arranging the
destruction of our city. But they had been forced to work through
others, to act through whispers and influence and suggestion. They
still had no worshippers, and no sacrifice to open a Thorp. This
book is the story of how our own sect did their bidding. It is not
written, but burned into the pages by some sorcerous means. Still,
these are the words of an ancient priest of our own Order. A priest
who was born and raised in Hakerun, in your part of the worldperhaps
an ancestor of your own.”
- 343 -

She put a peculiar emphasis on these words, as if they
should somehow be significant. But I, who had been responsible for
the destruction of my entire family, cared nothing for my ancestors.
If one of them had been responsible for the Thorp, that was merely
ironic. It would not make me lose any sleep.
“Read the book,” she said, “And then I will tell you how it
led us to this place. And why I think it may have led you to this
place.”
- 344 -

Chapter Eight- The Eater of Men
Iread that book in the light of my room, and in the back
of my mind I heard the wind howling outside. I saw the
white empty wasteland and the high peaks of mountains
in the distance. And beyond that, I could see the Eastern Continent,
and the sands of the Red Sea, and the Western Continent where I
was born. Where the book itself was born.
It was written in a far older form of my own native tongue. I
could read it, with difficulty, because many of the most ancient
grimoires were in the same language. It was strange to see familiar
words, familiar patterns of speech, so many years and miles away.
The story it told was unknown to me. Nothing like it had
survived in the lore of my own people, and whoever the author
really was, he was long forgotten. But somehow, it had a very
familiar feel.
We walked with weights on our shoulders, knowing our time
had passed, unable to do anything about it. Ahead of me was
Morgan, ten years my senior, and the High Priestess. Even
disguised as a tinker, she still walked with pride and spoke with
authority.
Next to her walked two men - her husband Robert at her left
hand, and her High Priest and sometime lover Kenneth at her right.
Morgan and Robert’s daughter Kerry walked behind them with
flowers in her hair. She had not been born yet, when Hakerun went
- 345 -

up in flames. The stain of that loss didn’t seem to be on her, and she
took our wandering as any young girl might. I walked behind these
four with my wife Mary, and behind us all walked stubborn old
Tina.
My name was Calum, and I was a priest of the Order of
Kerun in exile. I was born in the time of the schisms, when petty
debates about doctrine had weakened our city and drained away its
power. The local kings abandoned us, turned their faces to the
Varite gods instead, and left us behind.
The High Priest of Hakerun paid little heed to this - we no
longer involved ourselves in the affairs of the world. But then the
Varite pontiff demanded a Holy War against all who still clung to
the Kerunite Faith. The refugees filled all the streets of Hakerun,
the last city in the land that still retained our creed. Then came
King Drummond’s soldiers with their guns. We chanted mighty
spells against the army of our persecutors. We cursed them by the
elements of the earth, but their siege engines knocked our stone
walls into pebbles. Then many believed that the Kerun had deserted
them, and let themselves die when the city was put to the flame.
I was fifteen when this happened, an apprentice under the
Priestess Morgan. She had watched our High Priest give in to
despair and decide to die with the city, but she belonged to a
faction that chose to escape and survive. The leader of our faction
had claimed a vision from the heart of the Kerun itself. The vision
told him that if he escaped and kept the faith alive, our creed should
flourish again in another time. When that sect fled the burning city,
I followed my tutor Morgan into exile. And in the years that
followed, we roamed the land in small bands or hid in desolate
places, always at the risk of being denounced and burned. Bands of
priests met each other only rarely and at great risk, so it was
necessary for each group to have its own High Priestess. Twentyfive
years after the fall of Hakerun, I was still in the group led by
my old tutor Morgan.
We were on our way to a village called Annar, where the
peasants would celebrate the High Day of Kerun in a month’s time.
The Varite Church had kept the old festivals of our religion under
new names- they knew that it would take generations to wean the
country people from their customs. As for us, we wanted to keep the
holy day with the people, and if they chose to call the Kerun by a
new name, then so be it, we would play along.
- 346 -

To the left of us the cliff-side fell away into the shallow
farming valleys of the Crye, then rose again to form the soft
outlines of the Tannen Hills. It was all very striking and I’m sure it
was quite beautiful, but my mind could capture no peace there.
Even though twenty-five years had passed since our defeat, the cup
of my heart was still filled with it, and I brooded in silence over my
loss.
Young Kerry was a novice, just starting to learn the adult
prayers. Her voice in ritual was light and joyous, a perfect example
of what ritual was meant to be. My own prayers were curdled with
bitterness like sour milk.
My wife Mary said nothing as we climbed yet another ridge.
I had confided my secret mind to no one but her. As a priest of the
Kerun, it was not my duty to bring down the spirits of the others.
They would be looking forward to Kerun’s day, to the dancing and
the feasting and the people. But there was another god, whose
worship was older, and that day belonged to him as well. His name
was the Eater of Men.
I draw the curves and lines and sweeping figures of the sigil
carefully, for in matters like these, a mistake can mean
annihilation. The fire is stoked, the doors are locked, and my robe
of bird-feathers is around my shoulders.
I do pause and think for a moment, that much is true. It is
not too late to turn back- I can erase the sigil, open the cages, turn
my back on this. Soon it will be past repairing. But then I think of
her looking up at me with her dazzling eyes. I think she recognized
me, even though they had her drugged. I looked on from the crowd,
unable to do anything as they carried her to the center of the
market. Is it right that no one should pay for this? No, it is not. I
take the first of my pokers, and hold it in the fire.
“What are you thinking about now?” my wife asked me.
“The Eater of Men,” I said. “He used to be the god of that
day, before the Kerun.”
“Another morbid thought,” she said, half-sympathetically.
“Calum, your mind is a dusty room in need of spring cleaning.”
I laughed. “I’ll try to shake it off,” I said. “I’ll be better
when we get to Annar. I’m getting too old for this traveling life.”
- 347 -

“Too old?” she said. “Don’t be ridiculous, you’re only
forty.”
“Well,” I said, “I’ve been old for a long time.”
She pulled me in and put her arm around me. We came to a
fork in the road- and found a squad of the King’s soldiers. My hand
went around the hilt of my long knife, where it was hidden under my
cloak. Morgan and Robert and Kenneth tensed up, and I knew they
were also ready to fight if we must. But the soldiers only looked
down at us with contempt as they thundered by on their war
stallions.
“Out of the road, you goddamned tinkers!”
I was shaking when they had ridden by.
“Now don’t start feeling sorry for yourself again,” said
Mary.
“This isn’t sorrow,” I told her. “This is rage.”
The Crye was a region where a soft rain fell almost every
day. When the sun peeked out for an hour or two it lifted everyone’s
spirits. Then the clouds would roll over us again and the breeze
would carry drops of rain. But it was not an unpleasant rain, all
things considered.
“Calum, can I speak with you privately for a moment?”
Morgan asked me.
“Of course you may,” I told her. “You are the High
Priestess.”
“This isn’t official,” she said. “It’s only personal.”
We let the others walk on a little ahead of us.
“I’ll try to help any way I can,” I said to Morgan. “What’s
the problem?”
“I’m not sure it is a problem, yet,” she said, “but it might
be. When the Day is here, Kenneth will come to my bed.”
“Indeed,” I said. “The Holy Marriage. As it has always
been.”
“Although I doubt it need always be that way,” she pointed
out. “Many customs have changed.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked. “You’ve made the Holy
Marriage with every High Priest this cell has ever had- first Shane,
then Berryl after him, and now Kenneth. Have you grown tired of
Kenneth? Do you desire a new High Priest? It wouldn’t be easy to
find a qualified one. It was nearly a disaster when Berryl was
- 348 -

caught by our enemies. If we hadn’t run into that other cell that was
training Kenneth, we’d have missed the Holy Day that year.”
“No, it’s not that at all,” she said. “It’s nearly the opposite!
It’s not that I’m tired of Kenneth, it’s that I’m too passionate with
him. Robert saw the way we looked at each other after the ritual
last year, and he’s seen the way our eyes have met often since then.
I’m afraid from making love with Kenneth at the Holy Day, I’ve
started to fall in love with him as a man.”
“That isn’t you and him at the ritual,” I reminded her, “It’s
the rhythms of the Kerun.”
“It doesn’t help to tell myself that. I’m afraid if I make love
with him on Kerun’s day, I won’t be able to help myself. I’ll start
going to his tent when my husband is away shoeing horses.”
“What does Robert think of all this?” I asked her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “What does Robert think about
anything? I know it must rankle him that he can never be the High
Priest because of his lame feet. And then, the fact that Kenneth is so
much younger than him must be a blow to his pride as well. But
what can I do?”
“It’s a hard one,” I said. “But remember that you’ve got a
daughter here. If you do anything to jeopardize your marriage,
she’s the one who’ll suffer.”
“There must be some way I can resolve my paradox.”
“Go to the Oracle,” I suggested. “Cast the cards and see
what they tell you. If there’s a way out of your predicament, they’ll
point you to it.”
“I already have,” she said. “I drew the card of Fire.”
I pull the poker out from the fireplace. It’s red and steaming
now; that’s just the way I need it. I must make myself hard against
any sort of remorse or questioning. It doesn’t matter what price I
pay for this now.
The Varite Church has said that whoever does the Golur’m
ritual will never look on the face of the gods. That’s all right with
me, their gods are bastards, and if I ever looked on their faces, I’d
spit at them.
But Hakerun forbade this ritual as well, and if Morgan were
here to see me, she would repudiate me forever. If Mary were here
to see me, she’d say it was the final evidence of the rot in my mind.
And if Kerry were here...
- 349 -

I shake these thoughts from my head, put the hot poker in
place on the floor, and bend down to open the cage.
“What was Morgan talking to you about?” asked Mary. We
had started to move down the slope now, and could expect to reach
Annar the next day.
“She’d probably prefer me not to talk about it,” I said. “It
was a personal problem.”
“Oh?” she said teasingly. “How personal?”
“Are you jealous now?” I asked. “I never knew you to be
that way.”
“No,” she said, “I’m not getting jealous. And if I was, it
wouldn’t be of Morgan- she’s ten years older than you! Kerry, on
the other hand, she’s quite beautiful.”
“Is she?” I asked. “Having known he since she was a baby,
I can’t say that I’ve noticed. You hardly notice her growing up,
you’re so used to having her around.”
The object of our attention was walking about ten feet ahead
of us, singing a song she had made up. Now that I thought about it,
her features were quite striking- she had pale skin and long, light
brown hair. I remembered watching out for her as a baby, playing
games to entertain her when her parents were too busy. I was
almost like an uncle to her, although we hadn’t spoken much lately.
The idea of Mary being jealous of her seemed amusing.
“Look, Calum,” said Mary. “We’re coming out into the
valley.”
The trees had opened up just below us, and the fine green
farmland of the Crye stretched out into the distance.
“So we are,” I said. “We should be in Annar before too
long.”
We had reached Annar to a lukewarm reception from the
locals, who were always wary of tinkers. Still, we expected to do a
brisk trade telling fortunes and trading small goods. We had a
rented space on a farm just past the main square of town.
Telling fortunes was always a risk, as that in itself was
enough to get us burnt at the stake if someone denounced us.
However, isolated villages like Annar had to have their diversions,
and as long as we weren’t suspected of being actual Kerunite
- 350 -

priests, the local cleric would probably leave us alone. I was
unloading our baggage when Tina approached me.
“That girl Kerry needs your help,” she said. “She’s not at
all happy, and unless someone shows an interest in her, she could
be in trouble.”
“Kerry?” I said. “Are you sure, Tina? She seems so
carefree and childlike. I’ve never heard her complain.”
“I’m telling you,” she said, “That child cries herself to
sleep at night.”
“Then don’t you think you should talk to her parents about
it?” I asked her.
“Not at all,” she said, “ Those three are so tangled up in
their nonsense, they’re hardly any better off than she is. Listen,
Calum, I want you to make friends with the girl, and that’s the end
of the conversation.”
I went away bemused. The question was, if Tina could see
through Kerry’s mask, could she see through mine as well? Did she
know how blighted my thoughts were? And who was she really
trying to help?
When the sun set, I was free to try and find Kerry, and do
something about the problem foreseen by Old Tina. I didn’t find her
by our campsite, so I walked out to the little stream we used for our
cleaning and drinking water. At first I didn’t see her, but I did see
the moon riding through the clouds over the distant Tannen Hills.
This cold orb too was part of the Kerun’s vast pattern, the Witness
of all things hidden from the sun. It had a place in our worship; we
called it the Protector. It galled me to think that I was one of the
last of our priests still alive on the earth, an outcast and a fugitive.
“Why did you let it happen?” I asked the moon through
gritted teeth. “Was it the best that you could do?”
“I was asking myself the same thing,” said a soft voice
behind me. I turned and saw Kerry standing in the trees. The
moonlight seemed to make a halo around her hair. She looked like
a phantom.
“Have you been crying?” I asked her, seeing the look in her
eyes. She nodded silently.
“Well, then, I’ve found you out,” I said. “You should have
told someone sooner if our life was troubling you.”
- 351 -

“And what about yourself?” she laughed quietly, “You
never let anyone know.”
“No,” I said, “I never did. No one knows but Mary.”
“Come sit with me, Calum,” she said. “Now that we know
the truth about each other, we might as well take comfort in it.”
She led me to a rock above the stream. We let our feet
dangle down over the silver pool.
“How long has it been this way for you?” she asked me.
“Since the fall of Hakerun,” I said, “twenty-five years ago.
And you?”
“For as long as I can remember,” she said. “Every day
from when I wake up to when I go to sleep, I think about only two
things- dying, and keeping anyone from finding out.”
My heart ached for her. Of course it did- it’s always easy to
dredge up sympathy for a pretty girl, isn’t it?
“What makes you want to die?” I asked her.
“I don’t know, Calum,” she said. “It’s just inside me, and it
never goes away.” I put my arm around her to comfort her. At first
she only sat there stiffly, then she leaned her head on my shoulder.
“I’ve never seen you practice your Dances, Kerry. You
always go away from the camp. Can I see how your studies are
progressing?”
“I won’t show you the Dancing I do for my mother,” she
said. “That’s all part of the mask. Here’s one that hits a little closer
to the bone.”
She stood up, and began a sacred Dance. But it was not
right, there was something wrong with the rhythm, as if her worship
were distorted by a deep bitterness. As if it were mockery.
“That was close to my own heart,” I told her.
She seemed to move in closer to me. The next several
minutes passed in awkward and frustrating silence. She was in my
arms, pressed up against me, with her head on my shoulder and her
hand on my hand. I wanted to make love with her, and this need
was so strong, I almost shook. But there was a difference in our
ages, I had virtually raised her from childhood, and I had a wife
waiting back at home. I could go no further than I had already
gone, even if every inch of me wanted to. Her finger caressed my
hand, and I hugged her to me convulsively. This was too much.
Her face tilted towards mine, and her lips half opened.
Without thinking about what I was doing, I kissed her gently. The
- 352 -

next moment, the two of us were lying on the rock. She was on top
of me, and loosening my belt.
“Kerry, we shouldn’t...” I started to say.
“Don’t give me a reason to hope, and then take it away
from me,” she said desperately. “This is the right thing to do.”
“Hello, Michael.”
It was Kyri. Hours must have passed. I was sitting up in
bed, with the book in my lap. She came across the room and sat
down beside me, and put her hand on my head.
“You’re sweating,” she said, “You need to get some sleep.”
“This is hard reading,” I said, “In more ways than one. But
I’d rather read till I’m done.”
She didn’t glance at the book. Instead, she looked in my
eyes, and again her eyes reminded me of two clear pieces of jade.
Her face was close to my own, and her lips were slightly open, full
and soft. I could see the small white teeth in her mouth, and the
shape of her tongue. I looked away.
“Let me sit with you awhile,” she said, and she put her head
on my shoulder. “I’m very tired, Michael. I have a difficult task.”
“And what is that?”
“I cannot say. But it tires me still more, that I cannot know
the reason for it. I have only my duty to perform. I must do it
without reason.”
I put my arm across her shoulder.
“You can sit with me awhile. I have much more to read.”
She closed her eyes, and remained where she was. I returned
to my book.
That’s what I’m thinking about now, as I pull this grubby
cat out of its cage and look at it. It hisses and tries to bite me. I
can’t bring myself to calm it.
The moonlight shone over her naked body and down into the
pool. Even if I were condemned for all time, how could I ever forget
the way she was that night? She was a balm for the bitterness of the
world. I drank her in to me, reveled in her clear white body, took
more joy from her than I had in twenty-five years of wandering. Did
she deserve what happened to her? Was it just? Does this little cat
deserve what’s about to happen to it?
- 353 -

Well, little cat, a thousand of your kind wouldn’t mean as
much to me as one of her. And she wasn’t the only one who was
wronged. I take the cat across the floor.
The sun was behind the hills now, and we watched the moon
sail like a ghost ship across the sky. She was so small, she almost
disappeared in my arms. Her head rested on my chest, her hand
was across my waist.
“I knew I shouldn’t have done this,” I said.
“Do you feel guilty?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
The sleepy, lonely look she wore vanished, blossomed out
into a smile. Every other smile she had ever shown me had been
façade- now that I saw the real thing, she illuminated me.
“We’d better go back,” I said. “People will ask questions.”
She scooped up her clothes from the rock and started to put
them back on.
“Do you care if they do?” she asked me.
“I have to,” I said. “I’m a priest of the Kerun, I have
responsibilities. And I love my wife, too. I won’t be hurting her.”
“Will you come down to the stream with me again?” she
asked.
How could I not?
We walked back to our little camp. My wife looked up when
she saw us walking together, but she said nothing. I walked over
and kissed her on the cheek.
“Tina wanted me to talk to Kerry,” I said. “She thinks
Kerry’s having problems.”
“Did you make them better?” she asked me, coldly.
“What do you mean by that?”
She shrugged and turned away. So, she would not confront
me to my face. At least not yet. I didn’t pursue her. I turned around
and looked out over the green fields and the small rock buildings of
the town.
In the days before the Old Days, the Eater of Men had ruled
this land. A dozen men went screaming into his belly every year on
harvest day, and whatever the stone god did not eat, the people did.
Thus in the god’s oven the next season’s harvest was guaranteed.
- 354 -

When our priesthood came to power in the land, the Kerun had
replaced the Eater of Men, and ours was a gentler creed.
“What are you thinking about, Calum?”
I jumped a little, but it was only Morgan’s husband Robert.
“I am thinking about the way all things are made for
change,” I told him.
“Yes indeed,” he said bitterly. “All things change, all bright
things fade.”
“Dark things fade as well,” I said. “The Eater of Men has
vanished, and all his priesthood live only in memory. All the hungry
gods of the Dark people who preceded us are dead. As our gods
shall maybe die.”
“The gods the dark people worshipped are not dead,” he
said. “They live on in sleep, waiting to be fed again. Even today, if
a man did the Golur’m ritual, those gods would come and grant
him one wish. So it is written in the oldest lore.”
“But that way is closed to us,” I said. “If any man were evil
or insane enough to do one of those rituals, he would not find our
religion any more merciful than its grim predecessors.”
“Perhaps not,” he said, “but I cannot help thinking that
time has proved our Kerun wrong. The Dark Faith is more suited to
the spirit of these times.”
Robert left me and went to brood alone. So, he no longer
loved the Kerun. Well, why should he, when that pattern took form
in the man who bedded his wife? Then I realized I had little right to
think like that now, and went off to a newly cold bed. My wife had
her back turned when I came in, and it stayed that way.
I couldn’t help but feel good when morning came. No
conversation or suspicion could take away the gift of freshness
Kerry had given everything in my life. Every fortune-telling I did
that day predicted grand things. I know now that it wasn’t the
Kerun that sent me those fortunes.
The leaves and the grass and every color seemed more vivid
and alive. I couldn’t wait until I could find time to make love with
Kerry again. She stuck her head in my tent once, and smiled at me.
My life was new, my future was still in front of me. I was being
given the youth that had been taken away from me, to live over
again as if Hakerun had never fallen.
- 355 -

Hakerun. That city had begun as a grove of trees, many
centuries ago when the first priests had brought our religion to
these lands. Our religion had remained, it had flourished and
spread. The grove of trees where our priests first taught the creed
became a great city with stone roadways and high buildings and
influence on the wider world. We were the spiritual heart of the
country, the place where priests came to be educated before going
out and becoming counselors to the kings of the world. The
exquisite carvings of our myths adorned every corner of every
temple in the city, a city of pride and dignity and beauty. Now no
stone was untouched by fire.
Was it possible to be reborn at my age? For years I had
been trapped by Hakerun’s fall. Now it finally seemed like it might
be possible to put it to rest.
“Come with me, Calum.”
It was Kerry again. Had I worked all day telling fortunes? I
had hardly noticed the hours.
“Is it sunset yet?” I asked her.
“Not quite,” she said. “I told Robert I wanted you to help
me gather some logs that are too big for me to carry. He’s going to
cover for your booth.”
I followed her out and we went up the hill into the forest. I
knew the course I was taking was ridiculous and could only end in
disaster. But I wasn’t worried. I had never felt so alive.
“Calum, my friend, things are getting bad,” said Morgan
the next day.
“How do you mean?” I asked her warily, afraid that Mary
might have said something.
“It’s Robert,” said Morgan. “He sneered when I chanted
the dinner prayer last night. He actually sneered! I don’t know
what to do about him.”
“He does seem to be getting rather cynical,” I said. “I
wonder if his faith has been shaken by recent events.”
“What recent events?” she said, a little angrily.
“ Morgan,” I laughed. “The Holy Marriage is meant to be
the sacred pattern of the world’s dreaming, not merely you and
your lover. If Robert thinks you’re falling in love with Kenneth, it
makes a mockery of all our creed, now doesn’t it?”
- 356 -

“Why can’t it be both?” she asked. “I feel it when Kenneth
and I are together. I feel the pattern there too, but I don’t
disappear. I’m still there inside, I still feel his hands on me. What
am I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know, Morgan,” I said. “You used to be my
teacher, I’m not qualified to instruct you. And I have no right to
instruct you.” Not anymore. Before that night with Kerry by the
stream, I would have told Morgan to dismiss Kenneth if he was
making her forget her duty. But I didn’t want to spout hypocrisy.
Morgan left me and went back to her booth. That day went
as any ordinary day in any little town we might visit. I read cards
and told fortunes for farmers and their wives and children. We
never went openly into town unless we had to. Our place was on the
outskirts, and that’s where we stayed.
Then came the night. I could find only an hour or two to
spend with Kerry, an hour where we both went to do chores and
met secretly in the forest. We made Dances, and formed strange
shapes by playing with our hands, meshing our fingers and letting
them run around each other and down our arms. We stared into
each other’s eyes intently, looking for the meaning hidden in these
sigils. And when I kissed her, her lips fit mine more perfectly than
any other lips could ever do. Every moment I spent with her was
charged with magic, but it was the magic of the Dark People. It was
fueled by the same grief it tried to console. And when I went back to
my wife she ignored me and would not look at me. Why didn’t she
speak up? If she suspected me, she could at least attempt to fight for
me. But she chose not to, and I went on with my life.
As far as I was concerned, it was a matter of life or death. I
had lived too long as an island, a dot in an unending plain of
blankness. It might be no fault of hers, but Mary had not reached
me in my empty country. Now Kerry had, and it was either take my
one chance at survival, or be crushed by the gulf around me.
Did I owe Mary an explanation? I don’t know. She never
asked for one.
“It’s going to fall apart,” said Kerry.
I knew what she meant. We had gone on like this for two
weeks now, and Kerun’s day was approaching. Every day we were
together, and the only reason Morgan and Robert didn’t notice was
that they were too busy with their own crisis. If Tina knew anything,
- 357 -

she wasn’t saying, but she probably just thought I had befriended
the girl as she had asked. But somebody would see something
before long, and we knew it.
“What exactly do you want from me, Calum?” She turned
and faced me. We were walking down the path back to our camp
after another secret meeting.
“I want what I have with you,” I said. “After all these years
with the cell and Mary, if anyone found out what we’re doing, I’d
be disowned.”
“You can’t have it that way,” she said. “Do you remember
what we talked about the other night?”
“Yes,” I said. “I told you that it seemed like we were both
on another world, a different country far from this one.”
“So you did,” she said, “and we can only go so long with a
foot in each world, waiting. It’s a choice between leaving them or
getting thrown out.”
“You would leave your parents?” I asked her.
“I would,” she said. “In the rest of the world, children do
not live at home after they have found a husband.”
So that was what she wanted. I told her to give me until
after Kerun’s day to think. It wasn’t an easy decision, leaving my
wife and my priesthood and everything my life had been up till then.
But maybe it was better than sneaking around and deceiving them
all. It doesn’t matter what I would have chosen now, does it, little
cat? All my choices have been made for me. Except this one. I could
still spare your life if I chose to. Perhaps I’d be sparing my own self
in the process. Unfortunately for you, damnation is a rather
abstract concept to me. What they did to her, now, that was very
real.
I noticed Robert talking to Mary, and I was scared. If she
reported her suspicions, Morgan and Robert might well hate me for
seducing their daughter. But his face did not look angry. They stood
just beyond my range of hearing, looking out over the road through
town as I started to work one morning. She gestured with her
hands, he simply listened with his eyes cast down thoughtfully. Then
he smiled. I turned away to answer the blacksmith’s request for a
card reading on his business prospects. And for the rest of that day,
- 358 -

I was preoccupied. But the thought came back to worry me later,
when Mary came late to our bed that night.
At first I thought the two of them might be pursuing an
affair, a chance for petty revenge against their partners. But then
Mary started to talk to me again.
“I’ve been far too suspicious of you, I hope you can forgive
me.”
“Why were you suspicious?” I asked, confused at this new
turn.
“Because Kerry is so beautiful and young compared to me,”
she said, “and I thought you might have been sleeping with her. I
know I’ve seen her look at you that way. But Robert tells me Kerry
is in love with one of the boys from the town, and he’s quite worried
about it. It could mean trouble for us.”
“Well, you know how young girls are,” I said. “It probably
doesn’t mean much, if she’s got a crush on some farmer’s boy. I’d
tell him not to be too concerned.”
“I hope you aren’t too angry with me?” she asked.
“No,” I said, “I’m not angry with you at all.”
I asked Kerry about it the next day.
“I had to tell my father something,” she said. “He was
starting to notice things.”
“Then I have no rival for your affections?” I asked
teasingly.
“Who are you to talk?” she said. “But no, Calum, there’s
nobody other than you.”
She opened her eyes after I’d been reading for another few
hours. She shifted under my arm, and pressed her face against my
chest.
“Thank you,” she said, “I needed a good chance to rest.”
“Are you going now?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she said.
“Kyri,” I blurted out, “People have been talking to me about
you.”
“They’re right,” she said, “You don’t need to worry.”
She stood up, and kissed me on the forehead.
- 359 -

“We will work closely together,” she said, “That’s part of
my task. Let these thoughts of yours grow deeper. Learn to know
me as your sister.”
And with these words, impossible to understand, she left the
room.
When the Day came, the townsfolk all rose early and went
to gather in the harvest. It was long work, and it took them all day,
so we had no customers. That was just as well, because we were
busy with preparations of our own. We planned to attend the
peasants’ ritual, then slip away to hold the Holy Marriage and do
the things that would align us with the pattern. Our own ceremony
was long and involved, and took some going over. I didn’t speak
with Kerry at all that day, but I wasn’t too worried. We would have
all the time in the world together if I chose to run away with her.
And if not, then at least the situation would be resolved. I would
base my choice on the reading of an Oracle that evening.
When the harvest was gathered in, the women of the town
began to cook the great feast that would feed the whole town and
thank the gods for their benevolence with the crops. Even we
tinkers would be welcome, as long as we made no trouble. When we
were done making ready, we went down to the common field to
watch the festival. The boys of the village were busy playing tug-owar,
tag and other games, organized into factions and “secret
societies” named after half-forgotten mythical characters. The
women cooked all together in a huge common oven, while the men
readied the fire. When it was burning, the first of the dancing
began. Some of these dances dated back to the Dark People’s timewe
had never been able to wean the country people of them, though
they had long forgotten their original meaning. Other dances had
been taught them by the priests of Hakerun long ago, and a few
dances were actually the invention of the new Varite Church. The
Varite cleric, however, was conspicuous by his absence. Their
Church might have to tolerate such festivals for the time being, but
it did not have to approve.
When the dances were over, it was time to eat. We were
allowed to take portions of food after the local people had all been
served. There was still plenty left over for us. We ate well on roast
beef, fish, grains, bread and vegetables. It was an old custom that
everyone must overeat on Kerun’s day. We also drank mugs of hard
- 360 -

apple cider, and watched many of the locals drink themselves into
the ground.
Moral guidelines were relaxed on this day as far as the
peasants were concerned- not only did we see many young lovers
curled up together on the ground, we saw many wives dancing or
lying with men other than their husbands. This aspect of the festival
was equally a part of both religions. To us, the lovemaking was a
type of sacred Dance. To the Varites, it was a primitive
endorsement of fertility.
Before the exhausted revelers crawled home to bed later
that night, the people would scatter the ashes of the fire and put
stones in a circle around the remains. Each stone would stand for a
member of the village- if a stone was found disturbed the next
morning, that person was thought to be marked for death within the
year.
That hour was yet to come, however, and the celebration
still raged. Kerry came up behind me and whispered in my ear.
“Let’s go down there and make love in honor of the Kerun.
You know what they say- there is no wrong loving on Kerun’s day.”
She placed her hand between my legs, hidden from the others only
by the folds of my coat.
“Kerry, I can’t do it,” I said. “Everyone will know...”
“They’ll know anyway, when you run away with me
tomorrow morning. Don’t tell me you prefer this life to what we
have.”
The sight of a dozen other couples doing the same thing in
different corners of the field, the soft pressure of her hand on me- I
wanted to do as she asked. Morgan might hate me for it, Mary
would certainly hate me for it, but it was true- no one could
condemn anyone for honoring the Kerun in this way. I glanced
around. Mary and Robert were nowhere nearby, Kenneth and
Morgan were busy in earnest conversation. I took Kerry’s hand and
let her lead me down to the center of the field. She simply opened
my cloak, pulled her dress up, and sat on top of me. As I entered
her, it occurred to me that she had made my decision for me.
Whatever I said or did, there could be no going back now.
“What are you doing?” screamed Morgan, her eyes blazing
with shocked anger. She had seen the two of us across the field as
we finished our union.
- 361 -

“No more than you do in the Holy Marriage, mother,”
snapped Kerry. Morgan made as if to slap her in the face, then
dropped her hand.
“We’re going to be leaving the cell, Morgan,” I said
calmly. “Everything has changed this past month. We don’t have a
mandate from the pattern anymore.”
“Why?” she said, “Because of what has been between
Kenneth and me? I tire of your lectures, Calum. You say I’ve
forgotten my duties, but you’ve sunk far lower than I. Seducing my
own daughter, when I myself made you a priest of Hakerun! You
were like an uncle to her. This union is practically incest.”
“He didn’t seduce me,” said Kerry. “I seduced him. And
you cannot condemn what is done between us on this day.”
“Then I gladly welcome your resignation from the cell,”
said Morgan. “The two of you make me sick. You can’t imagine
how much this will hurt your wife, Calum.”
I glanced over at Kenneth behind her, and she took my
meaning. After twenty-five years, our cell had torn itself apart. She
drooped visibly, and sighed.
“The hour has come for Kenneth and me to make the Holy
Marriage,” she said. “The Kerun must still be honored, whatever
else might happen. I would prefer it if the two of you did not come
to observe the ritual. I am finished with you.”
She walked away to find Robert, Mary and Old Tina. Kerry
looked shaken, but triumphant.
“We’d better go get our things,” I said. “No use waiting for
the showdown with Mary.”
“Could you get them?” she asked me. “I need a minute to
compose myself. I’ll meet you at the stream shortly.”
“All right,” I said, and kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll see
you in a minute.”
I hurried back to our campsite. Every friendship I had was
gone now, and my marriage and vocation were gone as well. Yet
perhaps Kerry and I could start a new cell, and so carry on that
way. It didn’t really matter now. The Kerun had woven Its threads
in this pattern, and it was pointless to question. At least I would be
with my newfound lover, and any number of possibilities presented
themselves. For the first time in years, I could do whatever I wanted
with my life. I got back to our tents and quickly threw some clothes
and other supplies in a small pack. I took care to get Kerry’s
- 362 -

practice book of prayers, she wouldn’t want to lose that. Then I
hurried out to meet her by the stream.
When I got there, I was surprised to find that she wasn’t
there yet. Well, maybe she’d needed more time to calm down than
she thought she had. I sat and watched the moon play with the
stream water the way it had on our first night together. At least
fifteen minutes passed, and she still did not come. Then I heard the
sounds of shouting from the direction of the town. Was Kerry in
some kind of trouble?
I ran through the woods along the path, pushing every
muscle in my middle-aged body to get there in time to help her. I
finally gave up caution and ran down the road itself, only slipping
back into the woods as I neared the common field. But I was too
late.
Below me, at least a hundred of the king’s soldiers ranged
about the field, scaring away the villagers with blows to the head.
Morgan and Kenneth were being dragged out of the forest naked
and struggling. Kerry was held by the soldiers near the spot where
we had lain. And standing next to the Captain were Mary and
Robert. Morgan and Kenneth were thrown to the ground in front of
them, and the Captain asked Mary a question. She nodded, and
Morgan and Kenneth were taken away. I stood in the shadows, in
dumb horror. So our cell had been betrayed- though doubtless,
Mary and Robert felt that they were the victims.
I knew that to run out onto that field would be death. Part of
me wanted to die, rather than live on alone after the death of my
last hope. But that would not help Kerry, and I knew there was
probably only one way I could help her now.
I tried to find some way to get through to her, even with a
message, but all of them were guarded well, and I had a hard time
escaping the hunting soldiers as it was. The six of them were tried
together a few weeks later. Mary and Robert had been promised
mercy in exchange for their cooperation. The mercy they got was to
be hung instead of burned alive. Robert turned out to be the right
one, in the end. Our prayers had grown weaker as the years went
by in exile, and I could not break any of them free no matter what I
did. They went to their deaths while I watched secretly from the
crowd, and I saw Kerry’s beautiful figure being tortured by the
flames.
- 363 -

Yes, Robert was right. Our religion was either dead or a
creed for weaklings, and it was time to turn to the old gods with
their black hungers. If she could not be saved, then she could be
avenged.
So now I take this little cat and force the hot poker through
its screaming body. I try not to feel much of anything, these days. It
is only the first cat of many. The gods of the Dark Faith demand
three full days of sacrifice before They will appear. They are
voracious, like all those who are truly powerful. I don’t know how I
endure the stench as I impale the cats alive, one by one by one. The
priests of the Dark People put up with it, and so can I. I do to these
cats as they did to my lover and my friends. It is, at least, equally
unjust.
“Tell me your one wish, you who shall never look on the
face of the gods.”
“I know you cannot truly free the dead,” I say, “or else I
would ask for my friends to be returned.”
“They cannot be the same. We could allow you to speak
with them. But their slow dreams have been corrupted. They would
greet you only with horror.”
“I want all those responsible to die slowly by fire,” I growl,
“From the lowest soldier who touched her to the Arch Pontiff of the
Church of the Varites.”
“Very well,” says the voice, “We will give you the power.
But you must do these deeds yourself. We will create the means for
your revenge. We will give you many powers. Before ten years have
passed, you will consume them all by flame.”
“Then,” I say, “It will be at an end.”
“Then we will have our introductions. You have given us a
name.”
The Eater of Men!
- 364 -

not.”
Chapter Nine- Ecstasy
The Eater of Men did not eat him,” said Mother Tori.
She came into my room as I was finishing the book.
“That would have been better for all of us- but It did
“What happened, then?”
I still had the book wide open in my hands. I didn’t want to
close it, as if closing it would make it real.
“It fed him the dreaming of those who had been destroyed
by fire. It came in the shape of a swarm of bugs, insects with skin
instead of shells. He drank them in, and with the Power it gave him,
he blasted a hole in the fabric of our world.”
“The Thorp,” I said, “I’m familiar with the process.”
“Yes,” she answered, “That was the opening of the Thorp.
They built the Black School there, to teach him Their ways, and he
went out into the world as the first of the necromancers. Over the
years, he hunted all but a few of us down.”
“He wanted to destroy the Order?”
“Yes. He did. There was a single cell left alive, but that cell
had discovered the Book, hidden in the ruins of Hakerun. Because
of what it told us, we evicted the men and adopted strict celibacy as
our rule. We knew exactly who he was, and why he’d gone over to
the enemy’s side. We knew something else about him, too. Our
prophetess told us he would come to us again. Long after he’d died,
long after Hakerun itself was forgotten even in legend, he would
- 365 -

walk the world again in the body of a man of his blood. He would
seek us out, and find our home in exile. It would be our duty to take
him in. Because this man, the reincarnation of the greatest enemy
our Order had ever known, could also be the key to our salvation.
“He would need redemption. He’d be tied to our enemies,
with the filth of Their aura hanging over his head when he walked
beyond our walls. And he would bring danger, because his
dreaming would still be corrupted by those sad events from
centuries before. But if we could bring him redemption, if our own
faith was strong enough to restore him to the Kerun- then, Michael,
that man would become a messiah! He would cross the world and
restore our Order to its former glory. The Thorp would be closed
again forever, and the City of Hakerun would be reborn!”
I pulled back from her in distrust. Her eyes were too
focused, too passionate. They were white and huge.
“Does Kyri know about this?” I said with a sneer. To think
that they’d been manipulating me all along!
“She doesn’t know my plan,” said Mother Tori, “She
doesn’t know where you come from, so it has never occurred to her
that you could be the man we’ve been waiting for. The messiah is
always unexpected. But the older sisters know!”
“Get out of my room!” I growled into her face, “I will never
risk my life for you! Turn me out if you want to, but I’ll go my own
way when that happens. I won’t be leading you in your holy war!”
“I’ll go for now,” she said. Still poised, still self-righteously
confident. “And we’ll never turn you out.”
The moment she left, I collapsed against the wall.
Again, I began to suspect. Her story was nonsense, and what
she wanted me to do would get me killed. Become their messiah.
Close down the Thorp. The demons themselves could hardly have
come up with a better plan to pull me back to them at last.
Not for the first time, fierce images filled my head. The
women dead, the sanctuary in ruins. No one would trap me, and
those who thought they could would die. But I couldn’t kill them all
without killing Kyri. If they were all guilty, then she was guilty too.
I tried to imagine it again. The point of my blade against her belly.
The stunned look in her eyes as she started to bleed from within. To
my great surprise, these images made me sick.
- 366 -

Kyri found me staring at the wall. She came in and sat next
to me, and put her hand on my hand. This was getting familiar. I
knew the texture of her skin, its particular softness. I would know
her hand in a dark room. I pulled my hand away.
“Why do you pull away from me?” she asked me. She
didn’t sound angry or upset, only curious.
“I suspect you,” I told her, “I won’t tolerate being
manipulated.”
She looked at me without speaking for a long moment. As if
there was something she wanted to tell me.
“What is it?” I asked her.
“I am bound by an oath,” she whispered, choosing her
words very carefully and slowly, hardly moving her mouth, “If
there are things I can’t tell you, that is not because I would ever
play you false.”
“I could make you tell me,” I said, just as quietly, looking
straight in her eyes. But her eyes defeated me, because she didn’t
blink or look scared, and I could no longer imagine scaring her at
all. I could have broken her spirit; I had broken so many. Torture
was only one way I had made my living. It had always been
distasteful. But suddenly, it was unthinkable. I could no longer look
her in the eyes.
“Kyri,” I asked her, “What can I do?”
I was still talking quietly, as if someone was listening in. As
if our words should be kept secret.
“You come in here every day,” I went on, “And you sit with
me. You talk with me. You put your hand on my hand, or you go to
sleep on my shoulder. For whatever reason, foolish or not- and
Sherel’s right, I’m sure, that it’s foolish- this has an effect on me.
You know it has an effect on me. You’ve confirmed that yourself.
So why do you do it?”
For the first time, she actually looked troubled. I glanced up,
and our faces were so close to each other that I could see the flecks
and shapes and shades of color deep in the green of her eyes.
“Michael,” she said, “This is part of my oath of obedience. I
can’t disobey, so I cannot explain. The only thing I can tell you is
that I’m not lying.”
“Lying?” I asked her.
- 367 -

“If I did this,” she said, and touched the back of her hand to
my cheek, “And there was no feeling behind it, wouldn’t that be a
lie?”
“Very well,” I said, “So you’re not lying. Then what should
I do?”
“Trust me,” she said, “Trust me for now. I know this is hard
for you, but I’m not trying to tempt you into breaking our rules. My
chastity is the core of my faith. Without it, I wouldn't know the
Kerun.”
“I have no interest in taking your chastity.”
“Good. We’re walking a dangerous path. You have to
believe that I’ll guide you with your own good in mind.”
“I don’t have to believe you,” I said, “In fact, if there’s one
thing I’ve learned, it’s to not believe anything, ever.”
“Then what will you do?”
“Nothing,” I said, and I lay down with my head on her leg.
She put her hand on my cheek. “And don’t ask me why.”
Hours passed, and no one came in the room. There was no
chore for Kyri to do, no sign of Sherel asking me to learn
something. As if this was our task, all part of the plan.
Kyri and I were talking. I had her wrapped in my arms, with
her head on my chest. That was her idea.
I heard the beating of her heart, and I felt her warm breath
on my skin. I almost shuddered, with a kind of revulsion. I wanted
to push her away from me, but I could not. We were discussing the
theology of the Order.
“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” I said. She shifted
her weight, pressed in closer against me. Distrust and fascination
ran together through my mind.
“What is that?” she asked me.
“How did the Aliens corrupt Hakerun from within? If the
sanctuary is free from their corruption, why wasn’t the city safe as
well?”
“We are different in many ways from the ancient Order.
They didn’t understand the importance of the rules we now follow.
They weren’t chaste, for instance, and they observed no prohibition
on taking life. They knew the Kerun, but they didn’t know the best
ways to understand It.”
“So it’s your purity that keeps you safe.”
- 368 -

“That, and nothing else. If our rules were broken, we’d be
open to corruption from within. Our mission would be destroyed.”
“And what is your mission?” I asked.
“To wait,” she said, “To wait for the Millenarian, the
reincarnation of Calum. And then to redeem him. So he can revive
Hakerun.”
There was no hint whatsoever that she thought of me as that
man.
“And when he revives Hakerun?” I asked her.
“Then the Thorp will be destroyed,” she said, “Or rather,
closed forever. The Aliens will be cast out. Our world will be clean
again at last.”
“So, it’s dirty now,” I said, “Despite what you told me of its
beauties.”
“Not despite what I told you,” she said, “It will always be
beautiful. But it’s a battleground now, a front in the war between
the Aliens and the Kerun. They’ve laid Their eggs here, and
They’re waiting for those eggs to hatch. The eggs have corrupted
our planet. Filth and horror are everywhere, layered over our
reality.”
“Yes,” I chuckled, “They certainly are.”
“The Millenarian will cleanse that corruption. But this could
happen tomorrow, or a thousand years from now. In the meantime,
we must wait. All of us must wait, whether we know it or not.”
“Only till you die,” I said, “Then the waiting is over.”
“Not at all. Rebirth is not for Calum alone. What did he ever
do in his life, to merit redemption more than anybody else? No, all
of us must wait. Through dozens of births and lifetimes, if need be.
We must try to cleanse our own selves of corruption. Only then,
when Calum comes again, can we dare to stand in front of him and
hold him to account. He will not go to war for us from sympathy
alone. Before redemption, he must understand his guilt.”
“But how can he go to war?” I asked, “When you’re
forbidden to kill?”
“Nobody knows,” she said, “That will be a sign of his
power.”
We were silent for a time. I ran my fingers through her hair,
and absent-mindedly, she touched her lips to my chest. I startled,
and pulled my hand away.
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“Kyri,” I said, “Because of me, there are some who will
never be reborn. I captured their slow dreams, found out their
rhythms, and played them for my own. I destroyed their souls
completely.”
I wasn’t certain I believed in this notion of rebirth.
Sometimes, the dead could not be reached. They simply
disappeared, especially when much time had passed. Was this
rebirth, or disintegration?
“I know,” she said, “That you have much atone for. Like
everyone else, you need to cleanse your spirit.”
“More than most,” I said, “But I don’t know how.”
She fell asleep. I held her against me for a long time,
without moving. Her shoulders rose and fell, and I listened to her
breath. I didn’t know what I was feeling. I couldn’t quite breathe as
deeply as I wanted to, and my ribs ached when I tried. My blood
was rushing in my veins, and I could hear my own heart beating in
my ears. She was sleeping against my body without fear. As if I
was a person. As if I was just like her.
It wasn’t a pleasant feeling. But at the same time, I didn’t
want her to move, and I had the urge to breathe in the air that she
was breathing out, to absorb a part of her in that way. She shifted in
her sleep, and turned her face up towards mine. I made the first
mistake, by giving in to my thought and moving my face next to
hers. I breathed in as she breathed out, and our two breaths were
part of one cycle.
She opened her eyes. Her lips were next to mine. Before I
could move back to stop her, she leaned forward and kissed me.
Our lips pressed together, and her mouth opened slightly. I felt her
hips push against me, and her small, soft tongue brushed against my
own.
“Oh!” she gasped, sitting straight up at once, “I shouldn’t
have done that!”
She ran out of the room.
I didn’t sleep at all, that night. Kyri would renounce me
now, I was sure of it. Even Mother Tori might renounce me, and
send me out into the world to be hunted once again. Or maybe not.
We had stopped ourselves. Her chastity was intact. Close as we
might have been, we had not made that terrible mistake. If Mother
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Tori considered this lust, I would certainly be sent away. If she did
not, then perhaps I could remain, but even then, they’d probably
keep us apart.
Close on the heels of that intolerable realization came
another- they might very well throw Kyri out of the Order. I
actually sank to my knees at the thought. If she was in front of me, I
would have begged her forgiveness without pride.
I was irrational. She didn’t matter to me; why would she? If
she had stood in my way, anytime in all the years of my wandering,
I would have cut her down without a second thought. I had cut
down many like her- men and women, young and old. She was no
better than they. There was no better reason for her to live, or for
me to be concerned. But I had ruined her vocation, I had changed
the course of her life, and I couldn’t tolerate the thought.
I felt her hand on my shoulder.
“Stand up,” she said, “There’s no reason to be afraid.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, and helped me to my feet. We were
facing each other, only a few inches apart, but nothing could have
induced me to move closer.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said, “We slipped a little, that’s true.
But I said it was a dangerous path. We have not broken any rule.”
“Then what is next?”
She looked me straight in the eyes. I saw nothing but
warmth and affection in her gaze. There was no blame there, and no
hint of anger. I would have done almost anything she asked.
“Come pray with me,” she said.
We knelt together in a light-less room, side by side. There
was a statue of the woman with the rod. This was a symbol of the
balanced spirit, calm and wise in the rhythms of the Kerun. I folded
my hands, and lowered my head in prayer. I had prayed before, but
only in study, under Sherel’s watchful eye. Now I prayed with a
different spirit- not exactly faith or sincerity, but still something
powerful.
I was alive with the feel of her lips against mine, her body
pressing into me, her mouth opening. And it was more potent by far
because we had gone no further than that.
She started to pray. The words were unimportant; I had
heard them before and been unaffected. But now, as she softly
- 371 -

epeated the first few lines in a monotonous chant, I was compelled
to join in. We chanted together, just slightly off time with each
other, as if I echoed her words. Her voice spiraled up, and she
reached out towards the ceiling. I stayed in a lower range. She was
swaying with the force of her devotion, and though I could hardly
see her, I felt her illumination as I had before. She touched my arm,
and my face went numb. Without warning, a spasm passed through
my back. I threw up my hands without thinking, and my own voice
soared up with a strange passion.
I was watching myself from without. I was standing outside
of my body, in bewildered amusement, unable to stop myself from
surrendering to the worship of the Kerun. Time passed, although I
don’t know how much time. I fell to the floor, and my right foot
kicked out behind me again and again. My jaw sagged, and I
drooled. Kyri pulled me up.
After a while, my ecstasy changed to something else. I
found a rhythm inside it, a pattern like music, or more precisely,
like the slow dreams of the dead. It might have been the rhythm of
the Kerun.
When I found that rhythm, everything changed inside me. I
can describe it as a deep peace, a sense of rightness and beauty- but
these are only words. Even at the time there were no words for it,
and as for now, I remember nothing.
I can only say that it changed everything inside me. For that
brief time, I had no history and I was a free man. It felt like forever.
When I came back to myself- hours must have passed- my face was
a sheet of tears.
And Kyri was kissing them away.
- 372 -

Chapter Ten- Pilgrimage
Islept too long. If I’d been awake, I would never have let
her go. I had crawled to my bed, and Kyri had left me
alone. And when I woke up again, she was gone. She
never came to my room to wake me up, and when I went out she
was nowhere to be found. I searched for an hour, worried that she
had gone again into seclusion. Then I came upon Mother Tori, and
she smiled at me in joy.
“Michael!” she beamed, and put her arms on my shoulders,
“Kyri says you were illuminated by the Kerun!”
“Where is Kyri?” I asked her. Something felt totally wrong.
“She has begun her pilgrimage,” she said, “She walks to the
coast, along with other novices. When she returns, we will make
her a full Sister of the Order!”
“She’s outside?” I said, “Outside in the snow?”
“Yes,” said Mother Tori, “It is a final test of her devotion.
She must go across the wasteland. Along the way, there are certain
holy cairns. At every cairn, she must stop to say her prayers.”
“But the Bearskins…” I said, “Won’t they know she’s
there?”
“They may. Some pilgrims don’t come home. But for the
most part, they stay away from the girls. They are usually afraid of
us.”
“I’m going to bring her back.”
“No, you’re not!”
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She grabbed my arms, and held them in a fierce, tight grip.
“Kyri has suffered much. She has faced many dangers, for the right
to unravel this Mystery. If you go after her now, you will destroy
the meaning of her work.”
“But she could be killed!”
“What of it?” she said, “Any one of us could be killed at any
time. Even you!”
She looked deeply into my eyes. Her gaze was ferocious. I
could almost believe she would try to kill me herself. And then she
changed. A great joy welled up in her eyes. Her scowl was gone,
and she smiled up at me like a proud grandmother.
“But Michael!” she said, “You have much to celebrate!
You’ve been touched by the Kerun!”
“Something happened,” I said, “But so what? That doesn’t
mean I’m redeemed. It doesn’t make me your Millenarian.”
“You’ll come around,” she said, “The Kerun has known
you, and you’ll come around. And if you’re Him- Michael, if
you’re Him, then Hakerun can be reborn!”
“I wouldn’t do it for you!” I spat at her. Her fervor disgusted
me. “If I would ever play along, it’s not for your sake that I’d go!”
“I know,” she told me, “I’ve known that all along.”
I waited for her, at first. Because I knew of her devotion to
her faith. I had touched that faith myself, I had glimpsed what it
meant to her. So I didn’t go out. Hours passed. I no longer knew
one day from another. Mother Tori tried to send for me, no doubt to
convince me that I was Calum.
Calum, come again after all these centuries, to do- what?
Restore their cult? And why would he want to do that? I knew
exactly why. Because they were on to something, after all. Because
their Mysteries were real. But that didn’t mean they’d interpreted
their Mysteries correctly.
I didn’t answer Mother Tori’s call. I knew I wasn’t Calum.
Calum was dead, long dead, and I didn’t doubt for a moment what
had happened to him. He had chosen his Masters, and he was
Theirs. May be he was even one of Them, by now.
I went out on the roof. The moon exposed an endless vista
of snow and ice. If the pilgrims were out there, I couldn’t see them
from here. But it was beautiful, so beautiful, and I could see that
now. There was a universe for me in every ice-covered peak, in
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every mile of empty snow. It didn’t matter if I never explored them
for myself, if the sanctuary was my only safe place. I knew, at that
moment, that I’d seen nothing in all my years.
It was the cloud that changed my mind. A dark cloud
covered the moon, and the light rolled away. It vanished from the
peaks and valleys, and left hundreds of miles of wasteland black
before my eyes. And out there, in the blackness, something started
to move. It was only a shifting at first, a rippling in the air. It took
me a moment to know it for what it was.
A storm had blown in, and Kyri was out in that storm. The
wind, when it struck me, nearly knocked me from my feet. Hard
snow blew into my face and stung my skin. The air began to roar
like a massive beast. I ran for the stairs.
There was one image in my mind, and one image only-
Kyri’s hand, her soft white hand, sticking out of the snow.
Clenched and grasping at the air.
A Sister got in my way, somewhere, as I ran through the
halls. I knocked her into the wall, and put my face up to hers.
“Where does Mother Tori sleep?”
“She sleeps in there.”
She could barely get the words out over my arm. She
pointed at a door, a plain door, at the end of a hall. I dropped her to
the floor. A moment later, I had entered Mother Tori’s room. It was
a small room, with a simple cot and undecorated walls. No one was
in. But there, in the corner, in a white cloth, was my sword. I threw
the cloth aside. There were sigils on it, charms of blessing, but I
paid them no heed. It took me only a moment to strap the sword to
my waist. Mother Tori came in the room.
“No, Michael!” she said, “You cannot!”
Her black stick shot out of her sleeve and into her hand. But
the tip of my sword was at her face, before she could move again.
“I could kill you so easily,” I told her, “It wouldn’t even
give me pause. Now tell me how to follow her.”
“I will not.”
“Indeed, you will,” I said. The tip of my sword pricked at
her neck. A drop of blood welled up. “Believe me when I tell you,
Mother Tori, that all my gratitude won’t keep me from murdering
every woman in these halls. Your mission will be permanently
destroyed.”
- 375 -

“You are still Calum!” she said to me, “You are still the
Millenarian!’
“Tell me the truth!”
She seemed to sag, but at the same time she became more
cunning.
“I will show you the way,” she said, “I will take you to the
gate. But you will never find her in this storm. Not if you rely on
your self alone! Pray to the Kerun, Michael! Let Its pattern show
you the way. Otherwise, the girl will die! And Michael,” she said,
her face alive with triumph, “Only the Millenarian could do such a
thing!”
I could see nothing, of course. The cold snow burned my
face, so I could hardly keep my eyes open. I had to look at my feet
as I walked. When I did look up, there was no world in front of me,
only the driving of the snow. Mother Tori was right about one
thing- there was no chance I’d find Kyri on my own. I could walk
straight forward, as I’d been instructed, but I’d lose myself in the
storm. In all likelihood, I would only start walking in circles.
There was no light from stars or moon. Beyond the swirling
of the storm, the night was absolutely black. And on the ground in
front of my feet, there was no sign of their footprints. The fresh
snow had buried any tracks. They were ahead of me by several
hours. But I was sure I could catch them, because they’d be taking
shelter from the storm- if only I knew the way.
I started to pray. Kyri had told me they did not petition the
Kerun with prayer. But at first, that’s what I did. I walked straight
on into the storm, hardly noticing the cold and wind, and I prayed
out loud, begging the Kerun to keep her safe. Before long, I
remembered that was wrong. The Kerun was not a being. It did not
look kindly on me. It did not look kindly on anyone. It could help
her and protect her, but not in that way.
I had to bring myself to It. I had to feel It, understand It as I
had only a few short hours before. If I could do that, if I could pick
up the thread of Its rhythm, I knew the pattern would lead me to
her. But this time, there was no one to help me. Kyri couldn’t touch
me on the arm and pass the ecstasy over me; I’d have to do it for
myself.
I knelt down in the snow, and I chose the words that Kyri
and I had sung the night before. At first, and for a long time, there
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was nothing. The snow almost buried me. I was cold, and wet, and I
couldn’t focus, because every part of me was uncomfortable or in
pain. But I kept on praying, regardless.
The cold and wind drove everything out of my mind. After a
few minutes, I could think of nothing else. I had just enough
presence of mind to remember the words of my prayer. And that
was what drove me over the line. Just as suddenly as before, that
Power came over me. My lips pulled back in an animal grimace,
and a howl rose from deep in my chest. Even as I fell, with my face
in the snow, I fought to control it. I wrestled with it, looking for the
rhythm. And it went away. In the space of a moment, I was back in
my ordinary mind. I yelled out a line of the prayer in frustration,
and the ecstasy returned.
I jumped to my feet in a single, strangely light motion. My
head threw itself back and looked up at the storm, and started
laughing without me. My spine arched, and my arms twisted up
behind my back. And that was where I found It. It was the same
rhythm we had shared in front of the statue. The rhythm they
described as the Kerun. It was all around me, in every snowflake, in
the marrow of my bones. I understood it, and at that moment, I
knew I could find my way.
The wind roared like a monster. I was knocked from my feet
more than once, and great chunks of ice flew past me through the
air. I couldn’t see anything, and it didn’t matter. That rhythm led
me on. As long as I kept saying my prayer, I knew exactly where to
go. I walked for at least half a day before I found the first cairn. It
was totally invisible until I was about to walk into it. Then the dark
shape of it loomed up out of the snow. This was where I expected
them to be.
“Kyri!” I yelled, although I knew she’d never hear me in the
wind. The stones of the cairn were huge and almost black, where I
could see them through the snow. I walked around it, slowly. Snow
had drifted high along its sides, but still, I expected to find the
pilgrim’s camp. I thought they would have made simple tents by
stretching blankets from the stones. There they would be, huddled
together against the cold, waiting for the storm to break, or waiting
to die.
And that had certainly been their plan. On the other side of
the cairn, a blanket flapped angrily in the wind. One end of it was
- 377 -

under a stone, and the other end was free. I touched my hand to the
cloth, and it came back wet with blood. Now my rhythm almost
faltered. I knew there was blood here, and it could be Kyri’s blood.
I knew she could be dead. If I had lost the Kerun at that moment, I
don’t think I could have found her. I cried out in rage; but that was
only my self, standing beside my body while my body adored the
Kerun.
The pattern was still inside me. I knew how to find her, I
had only to trust what It told me. I turned to my left. In this
direction, there were no cairns, only a white desert which might go
on forever. It didn’t matter. I walked forward into the storm. Deep
inside me, somewhere far away, I could tell I was in pain. Wetness
and cold were wounding my body, and I was in danger of death.
And I could feel it all- it was painful, terribly painful. But it didn’t
matter. I was walking beside myself, and I looked on my pain and
my ecstasy with equal detachment.
The storm lasted for hours. I think I walked for at least half
a day after leaving the cairn behind. It was always the same- a
cloud of snow in front of my face, and the wind howling. From
time to time, I passed a black crevice to the left or the right. None
were ever directly in front of me. I didn’t stop to rest at all. There
came a time when the snow was so deep, I had to force myself
through. I was wading in snow. Like everything else, that seemed
strangely irrelevant. The only thought in my mind was the rhythm
to which Kyri was devoted. It was the rhythm that passes for a soul;
that makes the slow dreams of the dead. But it was infinite.
I don’t think I was even thinking about Kyri during that
walk. I was following her trail, I knew that for a fact, but she was
not on my mind. There was only the thread of that enormous
pattern, leading me on, through the heart of the storm. And then the
storm passed. It broke suddenly, and the wind died away. There
were thousands of snowflakes in the air, drifting to the ground.
When the last of them died, the dark sky was clear.
Before my eyes, there was a great city with walls of ice and
hard-packed snow. I looked at the gate, which was a large house of
ice, and at the two guards with clubs made of bone. It was the city
of the Bearskins, and Kyri was inside, alive or dead.
I tugged at my sword- it wouldn’t unsheathe- the ice had
crusted over the mouth of the scabbard, and it was trapped. The
guardsmen approached. They were large men, like two human
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ears, and they had long brown beards with patches of white. They
bared their teeth at me, and growled.
I took the first one by the wrist and twisted his arm. The
other one swung at me, but he was so slow. I stepped to the side,
and drove my fist through his mouth. The first man was down on
his knees, splattered with blood and teeth. I broke his arm, then
stepped back and let him go. As he sank to the ground, I forced my
sword from the scabbard. A moment later, they were dead.
There was no real door on the gateway to the city. I walked
through the entrance, into a corridor of ice. This twisted and turned,
and led me to a much larger room. Inside the room, a dozen men
lounged on white bearskins, sharpening their weapons. The first one
screamed when he saw me. I put my sword through his eye, and
stepped back to look at the others. At first they were paralyzed.
Half of them looked almost ready to fight, but the other half stared
up at me in fear and disgust. One of them pointed at the air above
my head, and choked out an oath of some kind. I passed through the
room.
By the time I reached the yellow bearskin doorway on the
other end, they were dead or dying on the floor. A few of them
were screaming, because there are mortal injuries that don’t kill
very quickly. None of them could still stand and fight. I pushed the
skin aside, and stooped to pass through the doorway. There was a
flash of white, and a bone club sailed away through the air. I pulled
its owner in closer- we were far too close for my sword- and bit his
throat open with my teeth. I threw him to the ground, and stood to
look at the city. All the houses were made of ice and snow. But
there were patches of ground, bare ground at the sides and bottoms
of deep pits, where steam rolled up from some heat of the earth.
Along the sides, there were empty gardens.
I paid no attention to the women and children along the
way. There were men, here and there, who stopped in surprise and
fell dying a moment later. There was a swelling noise at the center
of the city. Here, around a great cloud of steam, I found thousands
of Bearskins. My sword made no intricate patterns in the air. I used
no flowery techniques- indeed, I couldn’t remember any. But they
all seemed so slow to me, so impossibly slow. I walked straight
through the crowd, and I cut them one by one.
I know where all the arteries are. I know where to cut a man
so that blood will fill his lungs, or so that air will fill his heart.
- 379 -

Everyone in my way was a network of arteries and organs, and all I
had to do was cut the closest one. It took them too long to
understand. They could try to avoid me, or they could fight and die.
But they couldn’t stop me.
On the other side of the crowd, with more than two dozen
corpses at my back, I found organized resistance. A group of their
warriors surrounded me and closed in. This time, I was injured.
Slow as they were, there were too many for me to evade. But it
didn’t matter at all. Bone clubs struck my shoulders, and bone
spears pierced my skin. I felt it all so far away, and nothing they did
could even slow me down. My robes were like a white sky scattered
with dark red stars. A moment later, they were thoroughly wet and
red. None of my attackers still stood, and for the first time I could
see what was going on.
There was a black pit, wide and very deep, and down in the
bottom, red coals shifted and glowed while the ground belched out
clouds of white steam. I could just see the black limbs of women’s
corpses somewhere in the darkness, and I looked around me for any
sign of Kyri.
There she was. On the other side of the fire pit, next to an
enormous ice statue of a screaming god. Sherel was with her, held
tight in the grip of a Bearskin warrior in elaborate ceremonial
regalia.
“Michael!” cried Sherel, as if she wanted me to stop. Her
captor pushed her, and she tumbled into the pit. She didn’t scream,
but the steam burst out again in a rolling cloud when she hit the
bottom.
I ran, and I jumped. If the steam had come up again, it
would have killed me in an instant. But it did not come, and I
landed on the other side of the pit with my arms and legs flailing. I
fell on my face. I’m sure the warrior in front of me would have run
me through if he could, but he never got the chance. When I had my
feet again, he was down on the ground, unconscious. Kyri had his
bone club in her hand, and without a word she turned to guard my
back.
They held back from us for a moment. They were scared of
me, repulsed by me, I could see that. It was nothing unusual for me.
Without thinking about what it meant, I took full advantage. With
Kyri at my back, I started to walk towards the gateway. After a step
or two, they charged. Their faces were distorted by hatred and
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outrage. We had violated their sacred ground, disturbed the
sacrifice intended for their god. They were careless of death,
determined to exact full revenge. But all those who entered our
circle were felled.
I evaded all dangers with an ease I’d never known before. A
club snapped out at my face, but it seemed to move through water. I
shifted my feet, avoided its arc and the line of a thrusting spear, and
sliced the artery under the armpit. The spearman soon went down
with a punctured lung, and I turned to cut off the hand of a warrior
who was attacking Kyri.
The sky had cleared, and in the light of a thousand stars, my
Kyri was magnificent. She wheeled and turned, avoiding blows and
dealing out her own. I caught a glimpse of her eyes, where a fierce
light burned. Yet she was calm, and even in this battle she did not
forget her training. She was forbidden to kill by the compassion of
the Kerun, and not one of those who fell at her hand was slain.
Between the two of us, we could have beaten dozens of
them. But there were thousands here, not dozens, and there was no
way we could survive. I could feel no pain, but that was not the
case with her. Already she bled from several minor wounds, and I
knew that she could only last so long. The Bearskins could have
killed us, that is certain. But instead they gave us the victory, in a
way. From the swarming mass of the angry crowd, a great man
pushed himself forward. He was massive, and heavily tattooed, and
he bore a two-handed club in his hands. From the reaction of the
mob, I assumed that this was their king.
He looked at me, and roared. He was a mighty warrior,
unafraid of death. In fact, he was so powerful that he could
probably have swept my guard aside, no matter how firm my parry.
He lifted the club up high above his head. Kyri leapt forward, and
blocked his line of vision with a swirling fold of her dress. I buried
my sword to the hilt in his barrel-like frame, and he doubled over
on the blade. I pulled it out, while the crowd looked on in shock.
When he fell to the ground, I pulled it out with the help of my foot,
prepared to fight again. But the crowd was already running.
“Come on!” I said to Kyri, “This won’t last forever!”
We ran for the gatehouse.
- 381 -

Chapter Eleven- Oath-breaker
She said nothing for several hours. At first, I simply
assumed she was in shock. The pilgrimage had been
ambushed, and many of her comrades were dead. She
herself had barely escaped their fate. It was not surprising that she
didn’t care to speak. But as we marched on through the drifted
snow, trying to get beyond the threat of pursuit, I started to wonder.
Sherel’s last word had sounded like a warning. As if she
hadn’t wanted me to interfere, and preferred for fate to take its
course. Did Kyri feel the same? Did this new silence mean that I
had somehow done her wrong, that I’d disrupted her faith? I didn’t
like the thought, but then again, it wasn’t particularly important. I
could never have left her out there to die. The idea seemed fantastic
and impossible. From the moment the storm blew up, I’d had no
other choice.
We pushed on through thick snow that was up to her waist
in places. I held her up from time to time, but I never had to carry
her. When the moon rose again above the ant-arctic plain, I saw a
line of low hills, or rather masses of ice, with several dark holes
along the ridge. We were wrapped in thick white bearskins, taken
from the bodies of the dead. In those caves, I thought, we could
take shelter for a time. We could tend each other’s wounds, then
somehow get back on track for home.
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The prayer ecstasy was long gone, and I knew it would be
some time before I could hope to do that again. Perhaps if we rested
first, Kyri could lead the way. I pointed to the ice caves, and she
nodded once, wearily. We walked on for another hour, then I
helped her up the ice. We found a cave, low and dark and empty,
and we crawled inside.
I threw my bearskin on the floor. But Kyri would not lie
down until she had cleaned my wounds with ice water and closed
them with torn pieces of her dress. I did the same for her. Without
speaking, I lay down on the bearskin and motioned for her to join
me. She did not hesitate, but she was just as silent. I wrapped her
bearskin over both of us, and pushed her head against my chest.
Within a minute, she was asleep. Her body rose and fell
with her breath, in a warm and steady rhythm. I stroked her head.
Kyri was alive, and at least for now she was safe.
I must have fallen asleep, although I had meant to watch for
the Bearskins. I would never have allowed this if I had been awake,
but when I woke up she was on top of me, straddling my body, and
I was already inside her.
She looked me straight in the eyes, from an inch or less
away, and I could tell she knew exactly what she was doing. Our
lips met, and because she was giving herself to me so completely, I
couldn’t help but do the same. In her eyes I saw a kind of solemn
joy. She kept those eyes on me, open and locked with mine, and she
knew every part of me, my whole story, by the time we were done.
“Why, Kyri?” I asked her, “Why did you abandon your
vocation? I would never have thought…”
She put her finger to my lips.
“Hush, Michael,” she said, “There was nothing else I could
do. You told me before that you would never risk your life for me.
Not unless you knew you were safe. Well, you’re not safe, Michaelnot
out here beyond the grounds of the sanctuary. Right at this
moment, I can see Them hovering over your head- shifting in the
air. If you died tonight, you would be in Their possession forever.
When you came out in search of me, you could have chosen to use
sorcery. You could have relied on Their powers. But you didn’t do
that, I can tell. You relied on the Kerun. And you did all this for me.
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There was nothing else I could give you to restore the balance
between us.”
“There was no need!” I said, “There was no need!”
I was so afraid for her, because she would certainly be sent
away from the sanctuary.
“I regret nothing,” she told me, “Michael, we’ve been using
you, it’s true. And Mother Tori was using me, for her own ends.
Whatever those may be.”
“She thinks I’m the Millenarian.”
“Ah. Well, that explains it then. Almost as soon as you were
awake, Mother Tori gave me new instructions. I was to play on
your feelings for me, help them to grow, without ever
compromising my chastity. I was to use them to bring you to the
Kerun.”
I choked a little. Everything was a trap. There was always a
secret plan. And I hadn’t seen this one, hadn’t known it for what it
was.
“This was your difficult task?” I whispered.
“Yes,” she answered, “To draw you to me, and not to be
drawn to you. But it didn’t work. I am your wife now, Michael, and
I will follow you wherever you go.”
And she was my wife, for that brief time in the wilderness.
We found the sanctuary after five days in the waste. If it had
been two days, or three days, it might have been different. We
could have packed some supplies, and left the place at once. I
would never have gone back there, myself, but Kyri had insisted.
She wanted to bid farewell to all her Sisters. As it was, the fifth day
found us cold and sick and far too tired to walk.
Mother Tori welcomed us at the door. Even in the dark of
the long night, she had somehow seen us coming. Kyri collapsed in
her arms, and buried her face in Mother Tori’s shoulder. The old
woman patted her on the head, and took her by the hand, and led
her in.
“Let her rest,” she told me, without a trace of anger, “You
can talk to her when she wakes. Then, the two of you can do
anything you want.”
As if she knew. As if she was giving us her blessing to
leave. As I went down the hall, to collapse in my own familiar bed,
- 384 -

she said something else. Something I couldn’t be sure I heard. But
it might have been this-
“You look different, Kyri. Your eyes are different now.”
- 385 -

Chapter Twelve- Nowhere In the World
Idreamed that she was pregnant with my child. I put my
head to her belly, and listened for the movements it
would make. But it didn’t kick or turn around. Instead,
Kyri made a slit in her own torso with a long and twisted fingernail.
Thick blood poured out, as white as sour milk. Behind the blood,
two strange fetuses struggled to be born. A boy and a girl, locked in
an embrace by the umbilical cord that had strangled them both.
They were dead, but their blue arms still moved. The girl turned,
and I looked into Kyri’s green eyes, staring like fish eyes from her
dead young face.
When I woke up, there was blood. Red blood, still warm to
the touch, was rolling down my hands. I sat up, convinced I was
dreaming, and on my stomach I saw Luka’s severed head.
I could taste the salt of it in my mouth. I spat it out, and
wiped at my tongue, and I stumbled out of bed. My foot slipped in
the blood, and I fell to my face. This time, no one had taken my
sword. I grabbed it from the corner and ran out into the hallway,
more desperate than I’d ever been before.
But all of them were dead. Old crones and young novices,
their bodies were lying where they fell. Their throats had been
opened, or they had been gutted. Bloody handprints stained the
walls, and long streaks of blood were smeared across the murals. I
ran towards the dining hall, for some reason I don’t understand. On
- 386 -

my way, I almost tripped on the body of a girl, only five years old,
who’d been eviscerated. Her eyes stared at me blankly.
Who could have done this? These women all were armed.
Who could have murdered them, in their own place of refuge, with
no sign they’d fought back?
“They didn’t fight back,” said Mother Tori, in the center of
the dining hall, by the statue, “Except for her, of course.”
She gestured at Kyri, who was tied to the statue’s stone leg.
There was a gag in her mouth, and a bruise on the side of her head.
From Mother Tori’s black stick, I was sure.
I have never been so fast in all my life. I crossed the dining
hall in leaps, with my sword raised, ready to free her. I was certain I
could. But the room was far too large. Before I was halfway across,
Mother Tori had opened up her belly. Kyri died in front of my eyes.
I dropped to my knees, and almost fell on the point of my sword.
Those eyes, those bright green eyes of hers, went empty and
slack as I’d seen so many do before. I don’t know if I screamed, or
if I made any sound at all.
In a lifetime of horrors from war and sorcery and simple
everyday murder, this was the first death I had ever found…
unbelievable. My mind kept telling me that Kyri couldn’t be dead.
That there was something, some sorcery, some way I could really
bring her back.
I got to my feet. My sword was still in my hand, and I had
to make Mother Tori pay for what she’d done. She would suffer for
days and days. For weeks at the least. Maybe I could even deliver
her to hell. But I was unsteady on my feet.
“Michael!” she shrieked at me, “You turn our Sisters into
whores!”
I stumbled towards her, trying to lift up my sword.
“I couldn’t redeem you!” she yelled, “But there will be no
triumph for you!”
I took a step closer, tried to focus my eyes. I thought I might
faint. Quickly, before I could punish her at all, she drove the point
of the knife through her throat. Her blood gushed out, and she
choked a little as she died. For some reason, I kept on walking.
Her spine arched, and her dead body jumped up in the air.
Her pupils rolled back, and her white eyes looked down at me while
she smiled. Her fingers opened and closed. Around the knife, she
- 387 -

somehow managed to laugh. And then, while I looked up at her in
final understanding, I heard the voice of a legion. It was coming
from her mouth.
“Michael,” she jeered at me, “If we had known you were so
easy to fool! There is nowhere in the world, Michael- nowhere in
the world- that is forbidden to us!”
- 388 -

Chapter Thirteen- The End Of My Story
So there you have it. The end of my story, and the end
of a lot of people’s stories. I left her body there in the
polar waste, and I crossed the Eastern Continent
again. I came back through the Red Sea, and I returned to the West
at last.
I am not a messiah, no matter what she told me, and no
matter what I have told you.
I have come here only for revenge.
- 389 -

V: I Remember Nothing
(Parson's Tale)
- 390 -

Chapter One- Carthage Is Dead
You were so beautiful to me, like a gold mask on a
dead king’s face, worthless and precious. You had a
dark red tunic, and of course your sword. And your
head was shaved, but a long black braid hung down behind. You
bore a mark on your head, the symbol of a long-dead cult. Your
eyes had none of your history, but there was a hungry whiteness in
them, disguised as pious rage. I gasped out loud when I saw you,
because you were so very close to perfect.
But you are silent now. No one else will hear your stories;
no one will listen to your thin excuses.
He looked like a desert prophet, and I chuckled to myself at
his pretensions. Stoneway would fall, and there was nothing he
could do about it. I stood in a room filled with frightened, hollow
men, and I knew there was nothing they could do to stop the
Carthaginian horde. That army of scarecrows would tear them all
apart like bread soaked in wine, and they would tear me as well.
But I was not concerned.
The Emperor was scared, of course. Carmel III, bloated and
fat, not eager to be eaten raw by lepers. Sweat stood out on his head
like waxy beads on a melting candle. I spat on the floor to clear my
mind of him. He was my liege, my lord and sovereign, but he meant
nothing to me. The Emperor of hollow little ghosts.
- 391 -

So our prophet came in through the door. Our new prophet,
our new fanatic, with his red tunic and that mark upon his head. The
center of our world. But the Emperor didn’t know it yet.
“Who are you?” he growled, and his guardsmen lowered
their pikes, as if he still held some authority. Outside, the sky
crawled with white flapping things the color of glue, with
occasional dark hairs, and wrinkled faces spitting poison. The street
hummed with the wings of a billion flies, breeding and laying their
eggs in hills of the dead. Rocks, burning debris and plague
casualties flew over the walls and landed in our streets. Our soldiers
manned the walls and fought the horde.
“I am the Millenarian,” said the newcomer. His voice was
calm and deep and cold. The guardsmen faltered with their pikes.
Behind him, other guards came running. A small dark stream of
blood ran down his hand, and it wasn’t his own.
“Take him away from me,” said the Emperor. A pike shot
forward, but it broke when it struck his chest. I almost laughed out
loud.
“Hard man,” someone muttered. It was an old superstitionthat
some men couldn’t be cut. The broken pike jerked out of the
soldier’s hand, and spun like a windmill into his head. He fell, and
didn’t get back up.
“I will have an audience,” said the newcomer, “One way or
the other. I can kill as many as you wish.”
Outside, dead men clawed at the walls of the city. I knew
them; we all knew them. We had bought bread from them in the
alleys of Unver, or shared fine brandy in the palaces of Tical. They
had fallen in battle, or been caught cowering in the dark parts of
burning buildings. They had gone to feed Carthage’s swollen belly.
Now they carried spears and broken swords, and fought side by side
with the men who had taken their lives. Some of them had been
picked clean, and were only piles of bone. Others still had some
flesh, hanging out of their clothes, tempting the Carthaginians.
They had no battle array, but there were so many of them
that our survival was impossible. They would fall by the thousands
and it would not save us. In among them, the mutant citizens of
Carthage wandered and fed. Men with stunted arms, women whose
swollen breasts dripped with sickness. Lepers and albinos and blind
men, screaming that Carthage must die. And at their feet, long
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yellow worms whose thick sweat burst into blue flame in contact
with the air, and coiling things with many legs, singing to
themselves. Further back, siege engines worked constantly, and
archers fired volleys of poisoned arrows. And somewhere near the
center of the horde, the necromancer Davin, fresh from the Black
School in the north. He sat on a mound of human skins, battle
trophies meant to please his masters, and at his side sat the
Philosopher of Carthage.
Inside, the Millenarian stared them down, and the soldiers
dropped their pikes. This was the end, if he wanted it that way. The
life of the Emperor was in his hands alone.
“Are you one of them?” the Emperor asked, in a dry
whisper. The Millenarian shook his head.
“I came through them,” he said, “And they could not stop
me. And they won’t stop me now. I have come to you in the name
of the Kerun, to cleanse the Earth of all corruption.”
At this, I almost laughed. He was utterly unclean, a
disgusting creature that should have made them retch. It was
obvious to me. But most of them were too jaded to understand.
They might not believe him, but they didn’t want to burn him.
“You can save us from the horde?” asked our Emperor. Our
weak and foolish little Emperor.
“I can and I will.”
He looked around him with his dead eyes- not dead at all, to
me- daring anyone to contradict his claim. The councilor Theketh
smirked at him.
“Stay quiet,” said the Millenarian, and it sounded like a
stone god speaking suddenly in a temple. “And look into Their little
bronze mirror.”
Theketh said nothing. His mouth opened, and the tip of his
tongue rolled out. His eyes lost their meager intelligence.
I was so pleased with you, when you played that trick.
The Millenarian had been granted an audience. I was there,
because no one ever noticed me. Quiet Parson, insignificant and
therefore privileged. I stood in the shadows, soaking up their
nonsense and chuckling to myself.
“What can you do for us?” asked the Emperor.
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“What does he want from us?” asked a priest. A brave
priest. But, brave or not, he was shaking when he said it.
“That’s a reasonable question,” said the Millenarian, “And
in return for your salvation, there is much I will ask of you. But not
yet, and you will be glad to give it.”
“And in the meantime?” asked Baron Mueller, an exiled
nobleman from the conquered lands of the north.
“Give me a free hand,” he said, “Complete command of
your army and all its generals. I will annihilate the Carthaginian
horde.”
Worried muttering rippled across the room. The priests were
unhappy- this man was clearly a heretic, a prophet of some
forbidden sect, and a threat to their power. The emigres- Mueller
and the other northern lords- were obviously excited. They craved
battle, and a chance for vengeance. Our own nobles were quiet and
calculating.
“All hope is lost,” said the Emperor, “You are talking to a
room of dead men.” He choked when he said it.
“Then why resist me?” said the Millenarian, “Let me lead
your army in a final sortee. I assure you it will succeed. But if it
fails, you can go to the pyre and save yourself from being eaten.”
There was open shock when he said this. No one had
mentioned cannibalism to the Emperor, although of course, he
knew. The hunger of Carthage was no mystery.
“Who are you?” asked one of the priests, “You call yourself
the Millenarian, but that is meaningless to us. Our scripture has no
mention of such a person.”
“Then write a new scripture,” he said, “A thing you will
soon be only too happy to do. This is the fulfillment of an ancient
prophecy.”
“Those Who Laugh,” said Baron Mueller, as if he suddenly
remembered, “The cult of Those Who Laugh. The old histories of
my nation speak of men who looked like you.”
“Yes,” said the Millenarian, “The last flowers of Hakerun,
the city that ruled the world before the opening of the Thorp.”
“Before the opening of the Thorp?” asked the Baron, “But
the Thorp has existed since the beginning of the world!”
“Not at all,” said the Millenarian, “It has a history, like
everything else. And I will close it down.”
- 394 -

“You are a madman!” said the Emperor. Outside, there was
a shattering at the wall.
There was a gap in Stoneway. A flying boulder had broken
a great hole in our defenses, and opened up our shell to the enemy.
Dead men and Carthaginians poured through, and all the worms and
coiling creatures came in with them. The men of Carthage no
longer picked at the arms and legs of their dead comrades; now
there was fresh meat to be taken.
Davin sang on his pile of skins. This was the final victory;
Stoneway and the South would belong to the Council. But you
would never let that happen. You had an agenda of your own, a
wonderful plan, and that novice was no match for you. No matter
what help They gave him.
You turned and looked at me. You noticed me when all the
rest did not- and told me to come with you.
“I need a bold man to carry orders,” you said, “And you
look lively enough.”
It must have been my eyes.
“The wall is broken!” someone yelled, “They’re coming
in!”
There was vomit on his lips. Mueller slapped him, hard
enough to knock him down. His gray eyes were eager.
“They’re coming in!” he growled, “And we’re going out!
Join us at the gap, or burn yourself now!”
He turned to the Millenarian. “My men will follow you,” he
said.
“Come on, then,” was the answer, “We haven’t got much
time!”
We ran out through the Royal Court, and everyone who still
had the stomach for a fight came behind us. Even serving women
found weapons and joined our party. But not everyone could bring
themselves to challenge the horde. We passed a circle of womensome
of them were ladies renowned for their beauty and breedingwho
had set themselves on fire. They were so afraid that the
Carthaginians would chew on their beautiful skin! And there was
no time to save them. They turned black behind us while we ran,
and the lords who had honored them with eloquent verses paid no
attention to their screams.
- 395 -

We came out of the Palace with our swords drawn, but at
first the fight was far away. Thousands of people were bunched up
and crushing each other in the square, trying to reach the imaginary
safety of our courts. It was like the end of the world! Shrieking
people without personalities, melted into imbecility by fear, and the
glow of fires burning in the background. The white flapping
creatures hovered overhead, and plucked off patches of skin with
burning tongues. The yellow worms with their blue burning sweat
slid through the crowd and set men on fire, then dragged them
down and stripped the hot flesh from their bones. In the distance, by
the gap in the wall, there was a clashing of weapons. But there was
no way to join it.
The Millenarian bent down to the ground, and pried a great
two-handed sword from the fingers of a dead soldier. It was nearly
his own height, with a flame-blade and a long black hilt. He looked
at the mob without pity.
“Clear the way!” he roared, “Clear this square in the name
of the Kerun!”
And that was their only warning. He dove into them, and his
blade made wide circles that severed arms and heads. “Kerun!” he
yelled, and the rest of us yelled with him. Killing the scum of the
streets came easily to warlords like Baron Mueller and Duke
Hargen, and our own nobles were not totally unfamiliar with it. We
cut them down and left them for the worms, and a path cleared
ahead of us. They couldn’t get away. There was no longer any safe
place to run, and in the absence of safety, they could be driven from
one threat towards another. Those who didn’t want to die stumbled
back from our onslaught, and the mob bunched up to make an
unintentional barricade against the horde. We hacked at them from
either side. I split the head of one man with my pommel, while his
wife behind him was dragged down by the dead. A Carthaginian
tore at her throat, and I took advantage of the moment to run my
blade down his mouth. Dead fingers plucked at my leg- the woman
was already trying to get at me. I stomped on her face with my
boot, and she stopped moving.
We were surrounded now. In front of us was the
Carthaginian horde. Behind us were the dead men from the crowd,
and our own comrades who had fallen along the way. Many of them
weren’t armed, but they were all the enemy now, and they were
pressing in on us. I cut to the left and right with calm precision. Not
- 396 -

one of them, living or dead, meant anything to me. I cut off their
heads and they no longer troubled me. Behind us, the household
troops and bodyguards rallied, and ahead of us, the soldiers at the
wall re-formed and charged at the enemy.
But this was the moment of our enemy’s greatest power.
The mounds of the dead, the plague-infested bodies in the city
streets, now began to twitch and come awake. Davin had waited for
this opportunity- beyond the walls, a thousand staked prisoners
were being flayed alive to give him what he needed. The strips of
skin were flapping in the wind, tied into sigils to represent his eyes.
He was like a god himself, the raiser of the dead, but he had only
borrowed power. The Millenarian strode through his army,
knocking them aside and breaking them like eggs. He drove the tip
of his sword into a stirring mound of corpses, and they flared with
white fire. The fire hopped, and spread. A breeze came up, and
blew it suddenly across the entire front of the advancing horde.
“Kerun!” yelled the Millenarian, while they burned before
him and fell back. He swept the sword across our city streets. White
flame crackled out of it, and consumed the dead within our walls.
“Kerun!” yelled Baron Mueller. He was a large man, with a
long forked beard and broken teeth, marks of pride among his
people. He swung a spiked mace with great joy, and broke the
skulls of commoners, dead men and Carthaginians alike.
A burning body stumbled into my arms. It wasn’t
screaming, so I knew it had already been dead. I knocked it to the
ground, and kicked its softened face away from its head.
“Messenger!” yelled the Millenarian, “I need you with me
now!”
“The Millenarian will call on his god, the Kerun.”
I was talking to the commanders.
“He will silence all of the dead. We are to hold the gap until
he does. At the moment they fall, we will go forth, and spare none.
Hunt them even to the walls of Carthage itself.”
Most of them went and did as they were told. One of the
Emperor’s favorites, though, a beautiful young boy named Shekal,
followed me and tugged at my sleeve. I turned back and saw his
hateful sneer.
- 397 -

“You are giving orders now?” he asked, “The Emperor made
me the Marshall of the Legions. I will take over your task.”
“I am the Legions,” I said, and drove my blade into his
belly. He wrapped his hands around it, tried to pull it out. I pushed
him off the steel, and a worm enveloped him in flame.
The horde had nothing but mass. The dead were slow, and
the men of Carthage were untrained. They could overwhelm us in
the end, or they could starve us out, but they couldn’t beat us in
hand-to-hand combat. I held a place in the gap while the
Millenarian said his prayers.
A man with five arms charged in at me, wielding a five-foot
ax. Two of his arms were useless stumps, waving in the air like the
limbs of a trapped fly. I sidestepped his ax and grabbed the shaft
with my left hand, then drew my blade along the side of his throat.
Blood burst out like a fountain, and I pushed him back into the
waiting hands of his comrades. All their discipline was gone. Unver
and Tical had gorged them with meat, and their hunger had gone
beyond reason. They swarmed him, and I cut into them as they bent
down to feed.
The dead were not so easy to manipulate. Over the backs of
the fallen Carthaginians, dozens of skeletons came crawling. Their
weapons rose and fell with blind persistence. I barked “Kerun!” at
them and jumped into their midst. Behind me, veteran warriors
gasped at my foolhardy charge. They were all afraid of death. But I
was not. I cracked heads and cut bones and crushed the coiling
creatures under my feet. I made things stop moving. I built a mound
of silence beneath my feet, and when the few Carthaginians who
still had their heads came back awake, I gladly stopped them too.
The warriors were inspired by me. They believed I was
brave, and they wanted to be brave as well. They cried out
“Kerun!” because that was the word on my lips, and a bold battleslogan
made them believe they were fierce. They followed me in
the charge.
“Stop moving!” I yelled, and drove my sword into a twisted
little face whose mouth opened and closed on a Carthaginian’s
chest. It was his little twin brother, swallowed by him in the womb,
but undigested till now. He screamed out loud when I murdered the
little thing, and I tried to pull out my sword to do the same thing to
him.
- 398 -

The sword would not pull free. My enemy was still alive,
and he brought up his iron club, determined to have his revenge. No
matter, I thought, and I dug at his eyes with my thumbs. They
wouldn’t pull out, but everything went black in his world. I pushed
him to the ground, retrieved my sword, and stepped on his head till
it cracked beneath my feet.
“Stop moving!” I yelled, then decided to yell “Kerun!” The
warriors who had followed me yelled it too.
We stopped hundreds of them that day. They had to have
heads in order to fight, because their spinal cords needed to take
orders from their brains. Nobody knew that until I told them. We
chopped spinal cords like cordwood, and they all stopped moving.
But there was a horde of them, of course. Davin’s army
blotted out the horizon, and most of it was dead. They would roll
over us eventually, and we would drown in their depths. I fought
with great patience, waiting for the Millenarian to win.
Baron Mueller was off to my right. He hadn’t wearied- his
mace rose and fell, breaking everyone who approached him. But he
couldn’t last for long. Behind his back, the Carthaginians had
overwhelmed some of his men. They were cutting off his escape,
and in moments they would have him surrounded. When that
happened, all his prowess wouldn’t save him. He would go down
beneath them, and they would eat the meat from his bones. I
decided to help him survive.
“Kerun!” I yelled, and my sword made circles in the air. I
reached him within moments, and drove my blade deep into the
back of an old hag who was about to stab him from behind. I
twisted the sword around in her body and held it there until she
stopped moving. Then I pushed her to the ground, and chopped off
her head with a single stroke.
“Well done, friend,” said Baron Mueller, “Consider me in
your debt.”
My admiration society came up quickly to join us, but there
was no doubt now that we were in serious danger. A section of our
army had pulled back and left us stranded on the open field, and
thousands of the dead had poured in to fill the empty spaces. We
looked out now over an ocean of enemies.
“This is our last stand,” said Baron Mueller, “Sing your
death songs!”
- 399 -

He started to make a monotonous chant, and the other
northerners did the same. The sound was not to my taste, and I
almost regretted having saved him. Skeletons and corpses pressed
in on us from every side, hacking at the air with their weapons.
Some of them could see, and some of them could smell or hear us.
Others were too far decayed, and simply shambled forward
stabbing and biting.
I took up a second sword from the ground, and fought with
a weapon in each hand. Corpses fell on every side of me, and more
than once I stopped the white flying things in mid-air while they
sprayed poison at our men. The worms writhed at our feet, and I
chopped at them as well. One by one, our men were falling. We
were all potential enemies, so death led to quick decapitation. High
in the sky, hundreds of eagles and crows waited eagerly for their
feast.
A shriveled old man, recently dead, fixed his eyes on me
and grabbed for my throat. I was busy fending off a young woman
with half a face, and I couldn’t stop him. Down by my feet, a naked
little child whose stomach had been eaten sank his teeth into my
leg. I cut the young woman in half, and pulled the child up to me by
raising my leg. He was stuck on me like a leech, and the old man’s
face was a half-inch away from mine, while his fingers tightened at
my throat. I drove the point of one sword into the child’s head, and
the blade snapped in two as his teeth lost their grip. With the other
sword I cut out the old man’s torso, but he was too close for me to
do anything about his head. His breath smelled like dead animals
and rotten fruit, sweet and salty at once.
All over his body, I saw purple mounds of plague growth,
and I fought to keep them from brushing against me. The corners of
my sight went black. Sometimes, even I forget. I started to go
under, and I could almost feel one of my comrades getting ready to
remove me from my head.
At that moment, everything changed. An invisible shudder
passed over the battlefield, and all the corpses sank to earth at once.
The old man who was choking me slumped down and fell to the
ground. I took his limbs off one by one with my bare hands, then
kicked at his face until it collapsed.
Now the victory was ours. Only the Carthaginians still faced
us, and they were scattered across the battlefield, in no particular
order. I saw Davin on his pile of skins. I almost thought he looked
- 400 -

at me, that his eyes made some accusation. Then he fell, dead, from
the pile- the spiritual battle had been too much for him. Beside him
was his lieutenant, the Philosopher of Carthage. His eyes were wide
open, absolutely surprised. He had thought that Riot Day was
behind him. That this was the final revolution.
But Riot Day is all there really is.
We chased them across the desert for days, and every day
their corpses lined the road. We marched both day and night, past
the ruins of guardhouses and the bleached bones of previous
travelers. Every time we caught a band of stragglers, we took them
prisoner if possible. The Millenarian wanted to inspect them before
they died.
On the evening of the fourth day, we came to Carthage. The
city that was meant to hold everything sick and unwhole. The
Carthaginians had fled back to their nest, and no doubt they had
burrowed into every little hole, every dark hidden corner. But the
city’s walls were broken, and there was no way they could protect
themselves from us.
“Burn it to the ground,” the Millenarian told me, “Have the
commanders destroy this place completely. We will camp here and
watch it burn. And when the fire has done its work, no stone shall
be left on another stone. And we shall sow the ground with salt.”
I looked into his eyes, expecting at last to see a joy of
triumph in them. But there was nothing. No joy, no delight of any
kind. Not even hate.
Later, he inspected the prisoners. We had lined them up as
much as we could. He walked down the line slowly, as if looking
for a face. We had captured the Philosopher on the march. No one
had recognized him, hidden among the fugitive tatters of his army.
But I recognized him now, and so did the Millenarian.
“You,” said the Philosopher, “I knew you would be back. I
knew you would come back eventually.”
The Millenarian put a hand on the back of his neck, and bent
to speak in his ear. He put a long dagger to the Philosopher’s belly.
“I just wanted to tell you something,” he said. I could barely hear
him. He pushed the dagger into the old man’s body.
“Carthage is dead.”
- 401 -

Chapter Two- Those Who Laugh
Stoneway had been cleared of the dead. A month had
passed since the destruction of Carthage, and now the
streets of our city were filled with the living again. All
the nations of the far South had sent their armies, and their most
prestigious commanders. The North had fallen to the Goetic
Council and its hordes, but for now the South was safe. Our Empire
still existed, though only our capitol had been spared. My days in
the Court, however, were over. I was now the assistant to the
Millenarian. We stayed in a suite of rooms in a back corner of the
palace. I waited on him, and I carried his messages. He didn’t like
to go out.
“Parson,” he called, and I pushed aside the curtains around
the small dark corner where he had his bed. He was sitting on the
edge.
“Yes, my lord?”
“The Council begins today. Am I correct?”
“You are, my lord.”
“What are the factions I will have to reckon with?”
“There are many- ” I said, “The clerical faction is made up
of those who support the Priesthood. Their power is weak now,
because their gods did not save us from the horde. But they have a
long history in this land, and several of the noble families still
support them. Lords Neikel and Carr are among them. Then there
are the royalists. They claim to support the power of the Emperor,
but this is a lie. Everyone knows that the Emperor is a weakling.
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Their true purpose is to rule the land themselves. Their ranks
include Lords Houton, Lennan and Okal. The burghers have a
representative at Court. His name is Pelek Modar, and he is
followed by a tribe of hangers-on. He speaks for the merchant class.
There are the Northerners, of course, of whom the strongest is
Baron Mueller. They are exiles from the war in the North, and they
hope to persuade the Empire to help them recover their lost lands.
They have soldiers of their own. And then there are the generals
from the Far South- all the southern lands the Empire never
conquered. Each has a retinue of men. But the army, my lord, the
army itself- I believe those men are yours.”
He was a silent for a moment, as if weighing the
possibilities. I waited for his answer.
“Send the strongest priests to me.”
Saig and Runri stood at the door of our suite of rooms. Saig
was the elder of the two, and very angry. Runri’s face had no
expression.
“How dare you call me out of my private contemplation?”
Saig hissed at me, “I am a priest of the gods. I am at no man’s beck
and call.”
“And yet you came,” I said. The old man almost choked.
It was fear that brought them, of course. It was humiliating
to be summoned, and it made them look weak. But the Millenarian
commanded unknown powers, and like everyone else, they had lost
their faith in the gods.
“Follow me,” I said, and I could hear them hating me behind
my back. The Millenarian sat in darkness at the far end of the suite.
“I’m glad you came,” he said, and motioned for them to sit
down.
“You consider me a heretic,” he said, in a quiet voice,
almost a whisper, “Because I speak of the Kerun. You do not know
this god; He does not appear in your mythologies.”
“That is correct,” said Saig, practically grinding his teeth.
He wanted to have the Millenarian burned alive.
“The Kerun is here now,” he said, “And I am his Messiah.
Nothing else could have protected you from the hunger of the
horde. No matter what you do, and no matter how much you pray,
the faith of the Kerun is alive again in this land. My way is the
future, and the gods of the Empire will fade into the past.”
- 403 -

He looked Runri straight in the eyes. He paid no attention to
Saig.
“You have two choices,” he said, “You can resist this
change in the world, and watch your power slip away. In the end
you will pay the price for your blasphemies. Or you can embrace
the change, and become a Priesthood of Kerun. I myself will tell the
world that your gods sent me to inaugurate the new order, to bring
an end to their era and initiate the era of the Kerun. You will retain
your power. And as we re-conquer the North, your power will
actually grow.”
Saig jumped to his feet, with his fists clenched in anger.
“You speak of blasphemy!” he shrieked, “But you yourself
are a blasphemer and a hypocrite! In seeking to corrupt us, you
speak with a forked tongue! You show the emptiness of your
claims!”
He could have gone on like this for hours, but Runri stopped
him. While Saig ranted, he took the cord from his robes and slipped
it around the old zealot’s neck. There was still no expression on
Runri’s face while Saig struggled and died. The cord slipped off,
and the old priest fell to the ground.
“He died in his sleep.”
“Yes,” said the Millenarian.
And so it was arranged.
I stood behind him in the shadows of the great purple
tapestries in the Imperial Hall. As always, he looked confident and
strong. And he had reason to be, for the time being. Runri stood
beside him, and Lord Neikel and Lord Carr both sat nearby. With
the priesthood and the army both behind him, the Millenarian was
now one of the most powerful men in the room. But he had his
enemies. There were many forces at work, and everyone had an
agenda. To achieve his goal, he would have to tame them all.
“The Empire is finished,” said the Crown Prince of
Khimmer, for the eleventh time. He was a powdered and painted
young man, dressed in colorful silk, but he was openly ambitious.
“Only Stoneway still remains. You cannot stop Oshovo from
joining with us. The Oshovites are Khimmeri by blood and
religion! They should be ruled by our King!”
He finally sat down, and a wave of angry muttering
followed after him. Now it was the Theocrat’s turn to speak. Zhem
- 404 -

was their leader- a cadaverous old man, dwarfed by his
ecclesiastical robes. But his eyes burned eagerly when he spoke.
“We have sent missionaries to your Empire,” he said, “Since
the reign of your first Emperor. Always, you have rejected them
and clung to your idolatrous barbarism. Now I see that your
priesthood has finally fallen. To ally yourself with an upstart
prophet like this Millenarian character- how this degrades you in
the eyes of the nations! Turn aside from this ruinous course. Accept
the god Buotu and be free.”
“Jackals around a carcass,” muttered Lord Neikel.
Surprisingly, the Theocrat was not long-winded. He took his seat,
and Earl Glasig of the Kingdom of Fyff stood up to speak. He had
his riding boots on, and his sword.
“This is not the time to be dividing up the Empire. He said.
His voice was crisp, almost angry. “The Goetic Council still
threatens us all. We must liberate the North, or none of our own
lands will be safe.”
The exiles cheered out loud, and Baron Mueller pounded the
table with his hand and yelled, “Hear, hear!”
But the rest of the room responded with angry silence. Then
our own Lord Houton stood up to speak.
“The Empire will not be divided,” he announced, “We have
more than enough might to crush any who would seek to take our
land.” He glared at the Khimmeri Crown Prince. “But as for this
talk of liberating the North- I can tell you with confidence, the
Empire will have no part of it! We need time to rebuild, time to
replenish our population. We will not stake our future on a
desperate and pointless adventure!”
“Pointless?” yelled Baron Mueller, “My people are enslaved
by the necromancers!”
“Yes,” said Lord Houton, “Your people, Baron Mueller.
Why don’t you liberate them yourself?”
The Baron said nothing. Lord Houton pressed his point.
“The fact is,” he said, “The fall of the North has already
occurred. Nothing can save those people now. We have no choice
but to abandon them to the necromancers and their demons.”
The room burst out with voices and clattering chairs.
Everyone was screaming and preening their feathers. You let them
go on like that, for a time. But at last you’d had enough.
- 405 -

“Be quiet,” said the Millenarian. He didn’t raise his voice,
but everyone stopped talking. He had stepped forward, and they
were struck dumb. This was the man who had saved the Empire, or
the man who had corrupted the Empire. No one would say a word
until he was done.
“The army will march within the month. All of you will
send forces to aid it. We will not merely liberate the North. This is a
crusade, a holy war to rid the world of evil. We will not stop
fighting until the source of evil is gone. The necromancers would
never have banded together if not for their masters. Their masters
would never be able to help them if not for the Thorp. The Thorp
shall be destroyed. I myself will seal it for all time.”
Every voice was silent. Every prince and general was struck
with utter shock. The Millenarian went on.
“Tomorrow, when this Council meets again, I will tell you
all about the glory of the Kerun. Until that time, no further
discussions will be held.”
He said his piece, and quietly left the room. And in awe of
him, both awe and hatred, the others left as well.
You slept, and I watched the nightmares play across your
face. And you were beautiful, like a young virgin giving herself to
her lord. I watched you all night long, and I was captivated by the
shadows as I watched.
When you woke up in the morning, the Council had already
gathered. Our Hall held the rulers of half the world. But none of
them were speaking, yet. There were some anxious whispers, and of
course some clever conspiracies. But no one dared to stand up and
speak. Not before you arrived.
You put on your tunic, and I brought you a pitcher of water.
I was so careful to be respectful towards you, so careful to please
you. You paid me no heed.
When you entered the Hall, even the whispering
disappeared. You did not ask for the Emperor’s permission to
speak. You looked out over the assembled company, and told them
your story.
“In a very early time,” you said, “Before the oldest of your
histories, there was a city called Hakerun. This city was the center
of the world, and its power spanned all the continents. The people
- 406 -

of Hakerun honored a very mighty god, the Kerun who has now
saved Stoneway from the horde. And the world was prosperous and
whole.
“But the city became corrupt. They lost their purity over
time, as power made them arrogant and vain. And in the corruption
of their power, they allowed an evil force to enter from beyond the
world. This enemy was the alien race you call the demons. They
were weak, at first. But They spread Their influence in many subtle
ways, and Hakerun, in the end, was destroyed.
“One man fought to preserve the world from Their
corruption. He was a priest named Calum, and he made a lifelong
struggle against this foe. He led a band of men called Those Who
Laugh, a sworn brotherhood marked by this sign-” here you pointed
to the angry red sigil on your brow- “Which bound them to slay the
enemies of the faith. The world had changed, and Calum was
defeated. The demons created the Thorp, and since that time the
world has lived in fear. Now that fear has come to pass.
“The necromancers have formed a new alliance, the Goetic
Council, which seeks to rule the world. If they succeed, then none
of you are safe! Their masters will make our world Their own, and
every one of us will be enslaved and then destroyed.
“But there will be no victory for Them. The Kerun has taken
pity on you. He heard the pleas of the gods of the Empire, he heard
the prayers of its priests. They knew a change had come upon the
world. The era of a thousand gods is done. The Kerun, at last, is
returning to this world. To prove that this is true, he has sent an
emissary ahead. A new leader, who will free you from the demons;
who will close the Thorp forever. A reincarnation of the warriorpriest
Calum, an avatar and Messiah. That leader is myself.”
Total silence greeted these extraordinary claims. They
would rather have laughed at him, they would rather have destroyed
him. But he had already saved the Empire, and he had the army and
the priesthood at his back. There was nothing they could do.
Nothing on the surface or in the open. They would have to bide
their time. He left the Hall, and left them to their debates.
- 407 -

Chapter Three- Mob Rule
He was catching up the crowd with pretty words, or at
least the ones who wanted to be caught. They didn’t
care that he had murdered their own kind in the
streets of the city only a month ago. He had become a hero, and
they would allow him anything.
“The Thorp is the center of the evil,” he told them, from the
stage in the center of the square. The veins on his neck were bright
and blue. His hands were bent like feeding birds, red and slick with
sweat. I stood behind him, and allowed myself no expression on my
face.
“The Thorp is a cancer on the world!”
He let the word cancer drip out of his mouth, like a poison
he was unwilling to part with. And it had a lovely magic to it,
because the moment he said it they could see the leprosy, the
tumors, the infections of the Carthaginians, and all of it was hateful
to them. I saw it on their phantom faces, reflected from their deep
and empty wells. They were in love with his words, with the thrill
of disgust that he gave them.
“The Thorp is an abomination!” he roared, and he waved his
scrawny little fist against the sky. Spit flew from his mouth. Hot
beads of sweat evaporated on his brow. His face was purple now,
and his limbs shook. He had worked himself up into a frenzy, so he
could give them the power to be obedient to his will. He was like a
child, contorted by pointless anger, incapable of serious
- 408 -

consideration by reasonable men. But he knew there were no
reasonable men left in Stoneway.
“In the Thorp,” he cried, “There are yellow pigs that eat the
corpses of the dead. There are men who tear out their own eyes
with alder roots. There are fruit-crops with purple fur, poison rivers,
and sand that burns through skin! In the Thorp, the earth itself is
like flesh infected with the plague- it cracks and bubbles in a
hundred places with a thick and filthy corruption!”
He was shrieking now, and the crowd was shrieking with
him, delighted to let go of itself and do exactly as it pleased, exactly
as he told it to do. At the corners of the crowd, I saw sick men
creeping away, because they knew what this might mean. There
were soldiers in the crowd, many soldiers and armed men, and they
could clear the city of corruption far more easily than they could
ever clear the Thorp. I waited for him to give them that permission,
for him to humor them with instructions, for the hunt to begin.
But he didn’t go that far. I don’t think he would have; but he
didn’t get the chance. He was interrupted by a crossbow bolt, which
jumped out of the crowd at him and flew up at his chest.
It didn’t matter to him. He plucked the bolt from the air, like
a bear catching a salmon. He held it in his hand, with his eyes
triumphant and wide. He showed it to the crowd. The stage actually
shook when they started to chant, “Kerun!”
But that was not the end of it. They were brave men, the
assassins who had taken on this task. He could catch a crossbow
bolt, but they believed that cold steel would certainly kill him.
There were dozens of them, and they jumped up to the stage from
every corner of the crowd.
I drew my sword. There was one of them in front of me, a
large man whose face had been broken by the lash. He had an ironheaded
mace. I laughed at his ugliness, and increased it
considerably by making two halves of his brow. Behind him,
another man wielded a long, slender sword. He wasn’t looking at
me; all his attention was focused on the Millenarian. I tripped him
with my foot, then removed one of his legs. He bled out in front of
me, screaming.
They had you surrounded, of course. I thought you were
buried under them, but you fought without fear. You had your twohanded
sword, and the great sweep of its intricate compasses kept
- 409 -

them at bay. I came at them from the side, and every wound I
inflicted meant blood in the lungs, or poison in the blood from an
infection, or any other certain slow death. I liked to think of them
lying there, unable to save themselves, tasting the shape of it on
their lips. I liked to leave them that way.
And then the crowd made up its mind. At first, they had
only been entertained. He had taken them from entertainment into
ecstasy. They stormed the platform, tearing at the assassins with
their hands, hacking at them with their weapons. They mistook me
for an enemy, and I had to kill a few of them. But still it was
wonderful. They tore those men into pieces. Their arms and legs
were ripped apart and broken. Pieces of their meat were held up like
trophies in the air.
And I also did the same. I took a fellow from the ground, a
man whose hamstring I had cut, and I scooped his eyes out with my
knife. I flung them out into the crowd, and people caught them like
pieces of candy.
And it didn’t happen to most of them. But a few of them
were the kind of man he was looking for. They started to laugh. For
the most part, these weren’t people who had been in on the worst of
it. They weren’t kicking at the dead, they weren’t smearing their
faces with the blood. But they started to laugh at what was
happening, and they sat there laughing till the last of the assassins
was gone.
You were definitely not laughing. You sat on the platform,
staring at the crowd, and to my disappointment there was still no
pleasure in your eyes. I couldn’t read your eyes at all. You had set
the machine in motion, and its gears were moving just as you had
planned. But there was no joy in it for you.
I saw them all again later. I was carrying messages for the
Millenarian, to the lords who supported him and the priests who
had accepted his faith. He spoke from the platform all night. He
told them all about the great crusade he was planning, the holy war
to bring an ending to the Thorp. And one by one, they were
baptized. All of those who were willing to go all the way, to have
their heads shaved except for that one long braid, to wear the mark
of his oath upon their brow. He had brought back Those Who
Laugh.
- 410 -

Chapter Four- Red Lights
You didn’t sleep that night. I stood in the corner, in
the darkness, and I watched you brood. You were
on the balcony, looking out over the city, leaning on
your two-handed sword. You didn’t know me as well as I would
have preferred.
“Master,” I whispered, and handed you a drink. It was
mulled wine, heated on a brazier. You took the drink without
looking at me, and held it in your hand. The sky was a strange dark
red, almost the color of blood, and the moon was red too, sailing
through black clouds in the wind.
“Go to sleep, Master,” I said, “The city is sleeping. You
cannot watch all night.”
“And why not?” you asked me. Your drink slipped out of
your hands. It tumbled end over end, and broke on the street far
below.
“You will need your full strength,” I told you, “And your
health will fail if you do not go to sleep.”
“It makes no difference whether or not I sleep.”
You turned to me, and your eyes were bloodshot, red with
staring veins. I could almost have been frightened of you.
“You have nightmares,” I said, “I know.”
“You do not know! You could not imagine what I dream.”
You were agitated and sweating. You wanted to convince
me.
- 411 -

“Tell me,” I said, “A man should not keep these things to
himself.”
“You may regret having said that.”
You turned away from me, and stared out again at the dark
redness of the city skyline, and all the unlighted buildings with their
thousands of people and their flies.
“I dreamed I was in a sect,” you whispered, “A sect which
sought communion with the gods in a devout frenzy. There was a
song we had, and a dance… and then the frenzy began. A madness
came over us. We stripped to our skins, and coupled with each
other like animals on the ground. We felt the presence of the gods.
And then, when I myself was in the belly of my wife, while she
moved on top of me and laughed and fondled others, I tore out her
stomach with my teeth.”
You lowered your head, as if you couldn’t face the image. I
remembered not to laugh.
“All of us did the same. We fornicated, and we ate each
other’s flesh. I chewed on her, screaming while she screamed, while
she kept on moving on top of me. She pushed me into her till she
died.”
I brought you another glass of wine. You swallowed it in a
single motion, and quietly asked me for more.
“Whatever you need, Master,” I said, “Whatever you need.”
He drank wine until the sun rose, red in the sky, and in all
those hours he never went to sleep. I brought him one glass after
another, and I joined him in disjointed conversation. He never
seemed to be drunk, but as the hours went by, his silences became
longer. By morning time he was staring at the wall, sitting on the
edge of the bed, and his eyes were distant and cold. The red light of
the sun came into the room, and gave a thick purple tone to the red
of his tunic. He glanced up at last.
“The sun is red,” he muttered, “That is a sign.”
I went ahead to the Council, hoping to get a taste of the
undercurrents. Someone in that Hall had arranged the attempted
assassination. Someone was desperate to keep the Millenarian from
launching his crusade. I might find out who that was.
I expected them not to notice me. My plan was to lurk in the
corners, pressed against the wall, and listen to the whispers and the
- 412 -

patterns of their gossip. Ever since I had first appeared at Court, I
had been considered thoroughly unimportant. That was acceptable,
because I wasn’t ambitious. I was only interested in the Millenarian
himself. It had suited me to be a shadow among them, to watch
them play out their lives and ignore me. But now it was different.
The royalists stared at me with undisguised contempt. They saw me
the moment I walked in, and they marked me with their eyes.
Several of the outlanders did the same. The priests and their
supporters looked at me with a wary sort of respect. They knew me
as the emissary of their conqueror, but not as their enemy. My
master had done nothing to their power, he had merely changed
their god. I saw them sizing me up- Lord Neikel and Lord Carr,
Runri and his young protégé Krig. While the Millenarian held the
cards, they would treat me with respect.
Baron Mueller saw me coming. He was hunched over,
talking quietly and rapidly with the other exiles, but he noticed me
nonetheless.
“Come, Parson,” he said, “Sit next to me until the
Millenarian arrives. You are welcome at my table.”
I accepted his sentimental little offer. He turned a little in
his chair, to include me in the conversation.
“We were talking,” he said, “About supporting the
Millenarian’s crusade. Do you think it can be done?”
I chewed on my lip a little, pretending to think about it.
“Yes,” I said, “The Thorp is only a window between the
worlds. He has power, we have all seen that. I believe the window
can be closed.”
“And when it is closed,” said Baron Mueller triumphantly,
“Our lands shall then be free!”
“Or at least,” I said, “They will again belong to you.”
“And what exactly do you mean by that?” growled Duke
Garonen. He was a white-haired man with purple battle-scars across
his face. I shrugged at him as if I didn’t understand.
“Never mind it,” said Baron Mueller, slapping both of us on
the back, “We are all on the same side, together.”
Duke Garonen stared at me suspiciously. I simply ignored
him.
“Be quiet, everybody!” hissed someone in the room, “The
Millenarian is here!”
- 413 -

The night shifted on your face, red lights and black
shadows, and I sat dutifully behind you, always heating up more
wine. I listened while you talked.
“It will all be over soon,” you said, “And everything will
change.”
You downed the glass. A red bead rolled out of your mouth
and over your lip. Your glass dropped again. I brought you another
one.
“Everything will change, master?” I asked.
“Yes,” you said, “Everything will change. The Thorp will
be no more.”
You started to laugh, for no very obvious reason.
“And what will that mean?” I asked.
“No more demons!” you said, and your head swiveled
around to face mine. You looked at me with eyes like little suns,
focused and bright, but still absolutely unreadable.
“Yes,” I said, and patted you on the back, “No more demons
at all.”
The Millenarian walked in. I stood up, and walked around to
stand behind him. The room was silent in an instant.
“There is no more time to wait.”
He spoke without introduction. This was no longer a
conference, and he had no intention of allowing them to make their
own decision.
“If we wait any longer,” he said, “The armies in the streets
will spread the plague, and everything we have gained will be
destroyed. The time for a decision has arrived. When morning
comes, I will march for the North with everyone who will follow
me. Our army will live off the land. Not one shall return until the
Thorp has been destroyed. Let no one gainsay the prophecy of the
Kerun.”
Now they were no longer silent. They leapt up by the dozen.
They screamed and yelled, and of course they made demands. But
he had made cowards of them already. When he strode to the
window and opened the great curtain that looked out on the square,
there was one general gasp.
Some rushed towards the window, and some pulled away
from it. Baron Mueller laughed with joy. Outside, overflowing in
the streets of the city, was a vast host of soldiers and armed
- 414 -

civilians, singing and dancing in honor of the Kerun. The red sun
shone down upon them all.
“Be quiet,” you said, “Don’t talk to me anymore.”
But you weren’t looking at me when you said that. You
looked out at the city, or up at the moon in the sky. And you were
thinking of something else- though what, I could not say.
The stones in the street were all red. The sky was red, the
color of a rose. And the mulled wine ran thinly over your chin. You
looked like an albino. Red eyes and white skin.
“You’re very picaresque,” I said, “Very dramatic, standing
on the balcony that way.”
“Be quiet,” you said, “I do not want you to talk to me.”
“You’re my albino messiah,” I said, “You’re very beautiful
to me.”
“Be quiet,” you whispered, “I asked you to be quiet.”
“I propose,” said Carmel III- our Emperor of Weakness, our
commander of phantoms and fools- “That the Millenarian should be
our Tyrant till the end of the war.”
I looked at him in awe. On the first day of this Council, his
guests had been ready to divide up his Empire. And he had said
nothing. He would have let them take it all. And now, merely
because of a mob, he was glad to give it away.
But all of them felt the same. The Millenarian held all the
power now. With this host at his command, he could easily have
them all killed. He stood over them with his arms folded, staring
down at them while they made their meaningless vote. He was,
again, like a statue made of stone. But he no longer had to speak to
be obeyed.
now.”
“I have been staring at the city for too long.”
You turned around, and walked back into the room.
“Keep bringing me wine. I will drink it on my bed.”
I followed you, with another steaming glass.
“Here you go, master,” I said, “There’s some for you right
You stopped talking. You stared at the wall.
- 415 -

“I know who you are!” Lord Houton hissed in anger.
Perhaps he thought it mattered, I don’t know. He took the
Millenarian by the shoulder, spun him around, and looked him
straight in the eyes.
“I’ve heard your claims!” he said, “We’ve all heard your
claims!”
The Council was filing out, and every Prince and
Commander was going to take charge of his men. Many of them
were coming on the crusade. All of them were at least sending
soldiers.
“Do you know my name, then?” asked the Millenarian.
There was a thin little smile across his face. “Do you know about
my history?”
Lord Houton stepped back a little, surprised by the
Millenarian’s lack of fear. If he was about to be exposed as a
charlatan, that didn’t seem to concern him.
“Yes,” said Lord Houton, “Yes I do. There are legends
about you in every part of the world!”
“You know nothing about the other parts of the world.”
The Millenarian walked on. I followed after. In the morning,
they found Houton’s skinless body, nailed to the stone walls of the
palace.
- 416 -

Chapter Five- A Man After My Own Heart
Most of us would never make it to the Thorp. Parts
of the army were organized, such as the exiles, the
foreign contingents, the Imperial army itself, and
Those Who Laugh. But along with these marching columns, there
were many thousands of untrained armed civilians, trailing along
behind in no particular order, with officers who’d been assigned the
night before. There had been no planning, no consideration of
supplies. I looked back out over the crawling mass of them, and I
knew that most of them would die. The plague would take them,
starvation or cold would take them, and the enemy would take them
too. It didn’t matter- they were only mass to propel our vision
forward.
I rode a small horse behind my master. We were surrounded
by Those Who Laugh, grim men and women in wine-red tunics,
riding black horses. These were my master’s fanatics, his personal
bodyguard. I wasn’t one of them.
Ahead of us, blue centipedes the size of men waved their
arms and sucked the marrow out of piles of bones. Green liquid ran
from their faces and touched the ground, and the earth became jadelike
stone wherever it landed. The Millenarian gestured, and the
beasts were slain. When the spears ripped them open, tiny black
human-like children with many legs came pouring out of their
bellies. They couldn’t breathe the air, and in moments they were
dead, and dissolving into a thick white jelly.
- 417 -

“Don’t step in that or you’ll die,” said the Millenarian.
Those Who Laugh steered their horses around. This diverted the
columns for the most part, but there were some who did not
understand. I glanced back and saw soldiers with puffed and
swollen skin, clawing at their faces and crying as they marched.
Soon they fell to the ground, and the black children emerged again
from their eyes and cheeks, chewing at their skin as if it were soft
pale leaves.
The blue grass of the hills became a deep purple under the
red of the sun, and a warm wind blew purple dust in our faces. On
the nearby peaks, dead old castles and palaces looked down at us,
and their broken windows were like rows of long dark eyes.
“Master,” I said, “What is the meaning of the red sun and
moon?”
I was pretending to be afraid, because it made him feel
important. He glanced up at the sky.
“It is a sign of war,” he said, “So much blood will be
spilled. Enough to fill the heavens.”
“Enemy blood,” I said.
“Some of it,” he replied.
But when the sun set that night, the moon rose darkly blue.
Those Who Laugh sat quietly around the campfires,
absorbed in private prayer. Throughout the army, Kerunite devotees
sang and danced and celebrated. Men coupled with their wives if
they had brought them, or played with slave-girls from the markets
of the Empire.
The Millenarian waited in his tent. He did not sleep, except
for a few minutes here and there. I brought him bottles of clear
spirit, harsh and strong. He drained them one by one, and shivered
in the cold.
“Beautiful master,” I said, “Why will you never sleep?”
“Why are you trying to make me sleep?” he growled, “Do
you want me to have to dream?”
I gave him another drink.
“Not at all,” I said, “I’m sure.”
“Then let me stay awake. It won’t be long till dawn.”
Through the flap of the tent, I saw massive shapes that
sailed across the night. Black spiders pulled glass ships that
captured the moon’s blue radiance and crashed together like chunks
- 418 -

of shattering ice. Clouds of exploding glass rained down on the
distant hills.
“Is everything different?” he asked me. He looked drunk, a
little. Confused.
“No,” I told him, “Everything is the same.”
He lay back in his pile of furs. Something black and small
ran away across the tent.
“It’s cold,” he said, “Make me another drink.”
“There’s nothing to make,” I said, “This is all there is.”
I passed the bottle to his hand. He spilled half of it on his
face. The wind blew in and chilled me, and I shuddered.
Suddenly, a dark shape jumped up from out of the corner. I
tried to go for my knife, but I would never have made it in time. It
rushed across the floor, and a hand raised, with a dagger as long as
my forearm. It shouted the name of one of the Empire’s dead old
gods.
The Millenarian never looked. The blade of his sword
flashed an arc in front of his body. The assassin fell.
“Come and get the body,” he told me, “The head fell in my
lap.”
We marched north for ten days. We left the blue hills
behind, and the blue sun and moon. In a country of crushed glass
the color of insect shells, under a lemon-yellow sky, we came to a
great barricade made of the severed heads of dogs. It stretched from
one end of the horizon to the other, and the dogs blinked and
watched us while maggots burrowed in their skulls.
“Burn it,” said the Millenarian, but we heard the sound of
feet. Marching feet, from an army of many thousands. It came from
behind the wall. The Millenarian turned to me at once.
“Tell the commanders to form up in an arrow-head,” he
said. This was a standard formation of the Art of War. Most of our
host would of course know nothing of it, but those thousands were
not his concern. Or perhaps I should say they were not his main
concern, because he did have a use for them as well.
I brought the order to those who could understand. The
exiles and the Imperial Army formed up on the right, while the
foreign soldiers from the Far South took positions on the left. Both
wings slanted in towards a single point, which was made up of the
Millenarian and Those Who Laugh.
- 419 -

Between the two sides of this wide arrow-like shape, the
untrained bulk of our army milled around nervously. I returned to
the Millenarian.
“Be ready,” he said to me when I came, “This wall of dogs
is only an illusion. They mean to screen their forces while they
prepare for the attack.”
“Who are they?” I asked him, as if I didn’t know. As if
anyone didn’t know.
“This is a horde from the North,” he answered, “They are
marching to the destruction of Stoneway, to complete the conquest
of the South. Our earlier victory was obviously quite temporary.”
He knelt down as if to pray.
“Do not disturb me,” he said, “I must call upon the Kerun.”
I drew my sword in preparation. The dogs started to whine,
and their worm-eaten tongues flapped loosely from their mouths.
Our own army chanted, so the enemy could not be heard. That one
word, “Kerun!” thundered again and again. I didn’t join in the
chant. The wind rose, and the mottled bits of glass blew at my eyes.
I pulled my hood more tightly over my face.
The dogs exploded in a rolling cloud of yellow dust from
one end of the horizon to the other. Behind the cloud, a vast black
army of moving shapes surged towards us. I couldn’t see them well,
at first.
This would be no ordinary battle. There were archers in both
armies, but no organized attempt to use them. There were pike men,
but no phalanxes. There had been no scouts. Our cavalry was
scattered here and there. It seemed to me that the battle would be
pure chaos, and only the strength of men’s sword arms would
decide the day. But my master had a plan.
Those Who Laugh had made a circle around him where he
knelt. They lowered the points of their lances and prepared to meet
the charge. On every face there was an eager delight for battle, a
dream of martyrdom and sainthood. But this was not yet to be their
role.
The Millenarian jumped to his feet, and gestured for me to
come closer.
“Yes?” I asked him.
“Take a message to the commanders,” he said, “Tell them
not to meet the charge. Wait for it to build up momentum, then on
- 420 -

my signal, open the arrow-head and let the brunt of it strike the
masses.”
“And what about us, master?”
“We will be an island in the midst of it.”
I didn’t know what this meant. I decided to ignore it.
“And what will your signal be?”
“They will know it when they see it.”
I did as he instructed. Baron Mueller was not pleased.
“Will we be fighting, Parson?” he asked me, “Or is he only
hoping that this deluded rabble will dispose of them?”
“I think we’ll be fighting,” I answered, “The mob will never
be able to stop a horde of the dead on their own.”
Some of the others were amused. Lord Carr chuckled when
I told him.
“That’s clever,” he said, “Let them waste all their fight on
the scum of the streets. We’ll attack them from the sides.”
The enemy was almost upon us. I saw thousands of the
dead, both skeletons and pale fresh corpses, adults and children.
There were black things, slick and flailing, like dark eels with no
eyes. There were creatures from underground- tiny goblin-diggers
from the coal mines, with mottled skin and thorn-like horns on their
arms and chests. There were hags from the forests of the North,
riding hungry yellow wolves, and hurling curses at us. A murmur of
fear and anticipation passed through our army. Our devoted
volunteers were wondering why they’d come. But they didn’t stay
for long.
The signal came before I could get back to the Millenarian.
A column of white light shot up from his hands, and into the lemonyellow
sky. At that moment, the two sides of the arrow split apart,
and I went to the right so I wouldn't be left behind in the center. The
gap opened quickly, and our masses of armed civilians took the
brunt of the attack. My master and Those Who Laugh were
instantly surrounded; swallowed up by the surging of the horde. We
had only that column of light to tell us that they still stood.
I had only a moment to savor the show. The enemy wave
crushed down on our men, and only a few could stand and face that
force. Our front rank crumbled and collapsed- hundreds of men
went down in the first few seconds. The dead hacked at them and
walked over them, the black eels smothered them and absorbed
them, the mine-goblins broke their heads with picks. The screaming
- 421 -

hags vomited spider-webs and trapped them, then crawled off the
wolves on all fours to paralyze them with poison.
But the trained soldiers on the flanks were not neglected.
We had avoided the shock of the initial impact, and given the
enemy our peasants as a sacrifice. But the horde was immense, and
moments after our center started to fail, we too were fighting for
our lives. A hag with gray skin and colorless eyes spat a bit of her
web at me. I skipped to the side and avoided it, then ran the point of
my sword into the softness of her face. Three children, still bloated
with the freshness of their deaths, latched on to my leg. This time I
had hard leather to protect me, and I cut them all off me with ease.
Mine-goblins came at me in a crude sort of shield-wall. I laughed at
them and harvested their heads.
On either side of me, Imperial soldiers fought to stay alive.
Those who failed fell quickly to my sword. To my right, Baron
Mueller battled them with joy. Duke Garonen was beside him, but
the old warrior was tired. A dead child crawled in under his guard,
and disabled him by biting open his tendon. He cried out and fell to
the ground, and the dead people swarmed in on top of him. Mueller
shouted a curse.
To my left, Lord Carr was surrounded by his bodyguardshuge
grim men with halberds or two-handed swords. They kept the
dead men at bay, but the black eels were too much for some of
them. The skin sloughed off their bodies, hissing and steaming,
whenever the black creatures started to absorb them.
In the middle of the horde, about a hundred feet in front of
me, a hag was coupling with the dead. She had them in her web,
trapped on the back of a wolf, and they impregnated her in turn so
she could bring a new weapon against us. When she was done with
one of them, her belly swelled, and in moments she gave birth. A
fat black spider crawled out of her, slick with the juice of her
womb. She screamed each time it happened, and the spiders came
and suckled at her breasts. When they had absorbed their mother’s
milk, their teeth came alive with her poison. They came scuttling
over the heads of the dead, and launched themselves at the faces of
our men.
I caught one in mid-air. It waved its legs around, and cried
out like a child, impaled on the end of my sword. I tore its legs off
one by one, and forced them down its mouth. When it stopped
moving, I scraped it from my blade.
- 422 -

But I had wasted too much time. While I was playing with
the spider, a dozen skeleton warriors had moved in far too close. I
wove in and out among them, smashing and cleaving their bones. I
heard an agonized scream, and turned to find the source. Too many
of Lord Carr’s bodyguards were dead. He was almost alone now,
and he had even drawn his sword personally. One of the hags had
captured him with her web, and she was crawling along a strand of
it to finish him off.
There was a knife in the sleeve of my tunic. I drew it out,
and threw it across the battlefield. It sank to the hilt in the left side
of her head. Carr’s surviving bodyguards freed him, and I returned
to the task at hand.
But the battle was already lost. Our center collapsed in a
pitiful stampede. All the many thousands, all those who were not
professional fighters, turned and ran for some imaginary safety in
the distance. The dead followed after them, and with them the
goblins and hags. They made a slaughter of our believers. I could
see them, killing our men from behind, cutting them down while
they ran.
And there, alone in the center of what had just been the
battle, were the Millenarian and Those Who Laugh. They hadn’t
been fighting. There was a shimmer in the air, the signature of a
spell, and they were totally unharmed.
I turned to my right. There, in front of me, where we had
seen the wall of dogs, sat another necromancer on a pile of human
skins. His army had left him behind. They had won the victory for
him, they had routed most of our vast force. But those were only
extra mouths to feed. Here we stood, the professional soldiers who
would actually make up our army, and most of us were unhurt.
He got to his feet, as if he realized his mistake. The
bodyguards around him formed a circle. But it was far too late for
that. The Millenarian dropped his hand, and the column of light
flickered out. He took up his sword, and strode across to his foe.
The bodyguards couldn’t stop him, nothing whatsoever could have
stopped him. He walked through them and turned them into ghosts.
But when he came to the necromancer, he didn’t use his
sword. In fact, he dropped it on the ground. The necromancer was
mesmerized by fear. He belonged to the demons, and now he would
truly understand. The Millenarian grabbed him, and forced his head
- 423 -

into the end of a broken spear. The splintered piece of wood took a
long time to shatter again.
And yet, there was still no joy in it for you. You had
conquered your enemies with ease, you had made them suffer and
know fear, you had killed some of them with your own hands. You
had the loyalty of thousands, men who followed you and obeyed
you, men who killed for you.
It was a joy to me when I looked at your deeds. But I
searched in your eyes for some sign that it pleased you, and I found
none.
The sun was a rich dark purple, almost black, and it bore a
white corona from which long streaks of the same bright purple
darkness flashed across the sky. We had been marching in the
wilderness, in an empty land of bare blue hills and yellow glass-like
gravel, without a beast or human being. Now we came upon a
village.
“Tell the men they may take whatever they need,” you said
to me.
“Will there be enough?” I asked. There were only a few
dozen homes, with thatched roofs, spewing black smoke into the
sky.
“Enough for us,” you said. And so we came down upon the
village like a cloud of locusts on a field. You retired into the
headman’s house. The men went door to door, seizing every piece
of food, taking every bottle or skin of wine. A few of the village
men were killed, and a few of their women were raped. I followed
you into the big house after a time. You were hunched over, reading
a book. There was a strange look in your eyes.
“So you serve the Kerun?” you asked the headman. He was
huddled in the corner, an old fat peasant, with hot sweat on his
cheeks.
“Tell me the truth,” you said, “Is your village a secret haven
for the Kerunite cult?”
“No- no!” he said, making wild gestures with his hands,
“These people have nothing to do with it! It is only myself! I am the
only one who serves the Sanctuary in this place!”
How delightfully brave of him. How noble and proud, like a
proud fat lump of butter.
- 424 -

“Then you alone will die.”
You walked over to him, and put a long knife to his throat.
“I destroyed the Sanctuary,” you whispered. He fell with a
bright red pulse of blood. You returned to the table, and threw the
book into the white heat of the hearth.
“No,” you said, pushing the bottle away, “I don’t want to
drink anything. I need to think.”
We sat in the headman’s house, in the back bedroom, while
the army camped out in the village. The violet moonlight poured in
through the window.
“Master,” I said, “You need to answer some questions.”
You looked at me as if you had only just noticed me. And
you could just as easily have killed me; I saw the shadow of it
flicker across your face. But instead you asked me, “Why?”
“Because I continue to serve you,” I said, “I wait on you day
and night. I carry your messages. I fight at your command. I believe
you owe me an explanation.”
“An explanation for what?”
Despite your protests, I had brought you a bottle of liquor.
You opened it without thinking, and started to drink as we talked.
“You call yourself the Millenarian,” I said, “You claim to
serve the Kerun. But it was only a few hours ago- I saw you kill a
man who served the same god as you. That alone was strange. But
then you burned his holy book. Master, that was stranger still to me.
What is the meaning of these deeds?”
“If you ask me again,” you said, “I will give you to Those
Who Laugh.”
You drank silently for hours. I brought you bottle after
bottle. But there was something different about you this time.
Twice you wandered out to the fireplace, and stared at the ashes of
the hearth, where the Kerunite book still smoldered and slowly
burned away. Once you made a choking sound, deep in your throat,
as if there was something far inside you that you wanted to expel.
You drank twice as much as before. On other nights, you
had slept an hour here and there. Now you didn’t sleep at all, except
for that one moment when your eyes closed and you suddenly
bolted up, digging with your fingers at your face. I saw the first
- 425 -

light of dawn, darkly purple like the moon, before you spoke to me
again.
“Drink with me, Parson,” you said, “Your silence is making
me nervous.”
I poured myself a drink. I didn’t want my lips to touch the
bottle where your own lips had been. I held the drink in my hands.
“Tell me,” you said, “Who are you, and where are you
from? What is your story?”
“I am no one,” I said, “And I go wherever you go. My story
is your story. There is nothing else.”
“Such devotion,” you chuckled, with the liquor still wet on
your face, “If I believed you, I would be touched.”
“Why not believe me?” I asked you, “Do you not believe
that the Millenarian would inspire men to serve?”
You gave me a hard and knowing look. “He would inspire
some to serve,” you answered, “Some, because men can be fooled.
But you, Parson, why do you serve me after all? Do you believe in
the Kerun? Have you accepted that I am Calum, His messiah?”
“Not at all,” I told you, “I don’t believe those things at all.”
“Then why?” you snapped at me. You were in a dangerous
place, somewhere out there between amusement and paranoid rage.
But I am never afraid.
“I serve you,” I answered, “Because you are a man after my
own heart, entirely after my own heart. Except for one little
thing…”
I clicked my glass against your bottle in salute. “You take
no joy in what you do.”
“No joy in what I do?” you barked. It was almost like a
laugh. “Of what consequence is that? And why should I take joy in
killing men? I do only what has to be done.”
“It’s a little thing,” I said, “I will agree that it’s a very little
thing. But in this world, you have the power of a god. You can take
life away or give it back. You can destroy whole nations. That is
beautiful to me. I stand in awe of the powers you possess. And yet
you carry them like a weight. If not for that one little thing, you
would be perfect in my eyes.”
You laughed, and drank still more.
“Parson,” you said, “I believe you are probably mad.”
“Not at all,” I shook my head, “I can say that for a fact. But
I am sure I seem that way.”
- 426 -

I paused, and looked you in the eyes. This time, I
whispered-
“You see, I know the truth.”
You only laughed at me again. You took a swig from your
bottle, and started to rock back and forth. Suddenly, you sat straight
up. Your eyes blazed, and then cleared. You put your bottle to the
side.
“Parson,” you said, “It’s all going to be over very soon. The
whole thing will be done. And as for me, I think it’s done already.”
I watched you very closely. I didn’t move at all.
“Someone should know,” you said. Very quiet, very soft.
“Someone should know the story before it ends. Not to preserve it
for history, that’s not what I want. But it seems to me that someone
should know the truth.”
Yes, I thought to myself, someone should know. I was
careful not to move.
“Would you like to hear the story? Would you like to know
the whole truth, from the inside? I am about to change the world!
Would you like me to tell you why?”
“Yes, master,” I answered, “I would like that very much.”
You lowered your head, and drank again for a time. You
were silent as you drank, but I knew that when you started, you
would not back away from the task.
“Not from the beginning,” you blurted out, “Not from the
beginning, it would make no sense like that. Because that was only
running and hiding.”
You finished off your bottle. I passed another one to your
hand.
“I’ll tell you my story,” you said, “From the moment it
started to change. From the events that made me try to escape. And
from there, I was led to tonight.”
You were silent again for a moment. I glanced out the
window at the moon. She was fat with a sack of her young, and
they were about to spill out, skittering across the sky. You looked
up at me again, and your eyes were distant like the stars.
“On my fifteenth day in the oubliette,” you said, “The dead
started to talk to me…”
- 427 -

Chapter Six- Exploring The Wounds
We crossed a plain of pale globes, smooth and white
as polished skulls, on which green hairs were
growing. They were hard and sharp like wires,
and they swayed whether or not there was a wind. On their tips, soft
green balls like moist clay grew and burst. The powder floated in
the air, and those who breathed it became ill. This was a plague sent
by the enemy, and it killed us by the dozen. The victims became
feverish and hot, and a slick green sweat stood out from their pores.
Soon it hardened in the heat. As their bodies turned to shells, the
victims invariable went mad, and died a few hours later when their
faces hardened. Soon Those Who Laugh were killing anyone who
showed symptoms. We didn’t know if it was contagious.
Now there was no sun and moon, but still an alternation of
dark and light. Waves of color shuddered across the sky, like
ripples in a vast patch of skin. And it was skin indeed, for there was
cancer in it, and the growing of tumors. We saw them over our
heads, brown and dry, and crawling with spiders who made wide
webs across the horizon. Rain fell from the webs, fat drops of it as
thick as a man’s head, but they never hit the ground. Somewhere in
the sky, they turned to glass, and the glass melted and grew into
crystal flies. The flies rose up in the sky, borne by warm currents of
wind, and were caught against the webs. And soon the webs shed
rain again.
- 428 -

We marched for a time, and no one could say how long.
Men died, and we left their bodies behind. Others weakened,
because there was hardly any food. We killed them, and left their
bodies behind.
The ground became white mud. My master jumped when he
saw it. He turned and looked back at me, and his eyes asked a
question. I had heard that question before. I nodded at him slowly.
“It’s all the same,” I said.
Baron Mueller looked at the sky. His black horse snorted in
disgust.
“No sun,” he said, “We are fighting the end of the world.”
My master smirked. This was indeed an apocalypse. But the
world would end either way.
“The hazy sun baked the white mud into a thin crust in
patches. Worms and insects made the mud writhe under the surface.
One of the human beasts fell into a pool and was eaten alive by tiny
fish while he bleated like a sheep. Someone was standing behind
me. He put his warm, damp hand on my shoulder, and crooned in
my ear. ‘Look at the beautiful new world we are building in your
hearts.’”
You paused for a moment in telling me your story. You
choked a few times, and cleared your throat with more liquor. You
thought in silence for a time, then drank half the bottle at once.
“I had been awake for a long time,” you said, “Staring at the
ceiling. I wanted to get up and lick some water from the damp
stone, to soothe my throat. But I couldn’t move; I didn’t have the
strength. I no longer had the will…”
We came to a ghost town, you and I. You stopped the army
on a hill overlooking the city. It was a place called Etan.
“I was here once, before,” you said quietly to yourself, “Its
defenses are secure.”
Etan was surrounded by a wall, and in the center of the city
there was a tall hill, with gothic towers.
“There’s no one there,” I said. I saw no movement in the
streets, but the carrion birds were wheeling overhead.
“I believe you’re right,” you answered, “The city has been
abandoned. Or everyone has been killed.”
“Should we send scouts?”
- 429 -

“Tell the army to march to the gates. We need food, and we
may find it in the city. But they are not to camp beside the dead. If
necessary, burn or decapitate the bodies.”
“We found a girl who had taken our man into her bed,” you
said, “Despite the unclean feeling he gave her.”
You seemed to have particular difficulty with this point.
You swallowed a mouthful from your bottle, and wiped your lips
off with the back of your hand. “She had helped him hide with her
for a week while soldiers hunted him. He sneaked away and
abandoned her when they surrounded her cottage.”
You started to shake. I thought it would simply pass, but it
only got worse. You made your choking sound again, and I let you
retch for a while. Then I put a blanket around your shoulders and
patted you on the back.
“We found many such people,” you said, suddenly and
fiercely, “They came from every land in the known world…”
The City of Etan was beautiful and alive. Magnificent
marble temples and alabaster palaces, dark soaring towers and gray
stone edifices were nestled in among rows of squat buildings that
housed the city’s poor. And all of them were alive, crawling with
eager life, though none of it was human. We passed great heaps of
the dead. We smelled the stench of rotting flesh, and heard the
constant buzzing of flies as they walked along faces and arms,
crawled into noses and mouths, explored the red wounds. Black
birds and eagles with bloodstained necks fought for pieces of flesh.
The enemy had destroyed this city utterly and left it behind. Etan
was no more.
“That’s the end of their singing,” said Lord Carr.
Etan had been a center of poetry and composition. The bards
of Etan were known and honored in every part of the Western
world. Now they’d never warble again.
“Poets are better when they’re dead,” I quipped, and Baron
Mueller laughed. I looked down at one of the corpses, the fertile
remnant of a refined-looking man with high-boned half-eaten
cheeks and long fleshless fingers.
“Maybe that’s one of them now,” I said, “Perhaps it’s old
Kerethin himself.”
- 430 -

And I quoted one of Kerethin’s poems, a particular favorite
of mine-
“Blind images flutter across my eyes.
And I can see nothing. I am a feast
For all the small life of the world. What dies
In us except the clothing of the beast?”
“How prophetic of him,” I said. Baron Mueller laughed
again.
“You have a grim sense of humor,” said Lord Carr. He
might have said more if I had not saved his life in the last battle. He
was proud of being sophisticated, and of his reverence for Etan.
“Here,” said the Millenarian. We were on the High Hill at
the center of the city. Even our lowliest soldier would camp in a
palace or a temple.
“This building, master?” I asked him. We had paused before
the Temple of Constant Silence, a black marble structure with
narrow windows.
“Yes,” he answered, and got down from his horse, “You and
I shall sleep here. So will Those Who Laugh.”
Two of Those Who Laugh were stationed outside the door.
They didn’t laugh, of course, and they didn’t speak. They were
perfect little pets.
You had consumed every bottle of the raw, clear liquor I
had brought up from Stoneway. But priests are thirsty men, and I
had found both wine and rum in the cellars of the Temple. You
drank them both, but the wine was like water to you. You hadn’t
slept an hour in days.
“I found the spirit of a dead fly,” you said, “Who dreamed
of the beauty of rotting meat. His life had ended in a moment of
horror when the spider came crawling down the web. Despite this
one moment of fear, the fly was still able to savor the smell of
decay.”
I laughed out loud. You had such a pretty little story, and
you didn’t mind me laughing. You never even noticed.
“The oubliette was such a beautiful place,” you went on, “I
sank into the limitless crannied texture of its stones. The spider
found me contemplating the play of a draft of air across a tiny
invisible desert of sand particles. ‘I noticed you found a fly,’ he
- 431 -

said, ‘That wasn’t the only one.’ ‘It wasn’t obsessed with its death,’
I said, ‘Unlike so many of us.’”
You were imitating its voice, like a whisper in a dark place,
and I clapped my hands with delight.
“ ‘Your minds are more complicated,’” you made the spider
say, “ ‘Your pleasures and your pains are more intricate. You
cannot escape their web any more than the fly could escape mine.’”
“How true,” I said, “How pretty!”
You looked at me once, and I was quiet. I didn’t want to
disturb you with my admiration. You finished a bottle of wine,
though much of it had spilled on your tunic. Then you continued.
“ ‘That’s very interesting.’ I said. ‘Do you know how you
look now?’ the spider asked me, ‘I can see your ribs- every one of
them. You have a long beard- you look like a fanatic!’”
“That’s true!” I said, “Master, you do look like a fanatic!
Your eyes can see straight through me!”
“No they can’t,” you said, “I can’t see anything at all. You
are a mystery to me; everything is.”
I leaned in closer, very interested.
“It’s like a shadow play,” you said, “And none of it seems
real. It’s as if I’ve been dreaming all this time. Things change, and I
can’t remember what’s real.”
“Nothing changes,” I said, “Nothing changes at all. It’s
always been the same.”
You didn’t notice what I said.
“There’s only one thing…” you said, leaning back on the
bed, “Only one thing I know was real. And that means it all has to
be real.”
“What’s that?” I said, smirking at your innocence. You
sat straight up and looked at me. Your eyes were ferocious.
“We’ll get to that later,” you said.
Hours later, you were still drinking and telling your story. A
guard threw open the door.
“My lord!” he yelled, “The army is under attack! The dead
have risen in the streets!”
You jumped to your feet. “Parson,” you said, “If you failed
to give that order…”
- 432 -

“I did give the order!” I protested, “I told them not to sleep
near the dead! I told them to decapitate the bodies!”
You turned to the guard. “I will have to still them,” you
said, “With an appeal to the Kerun. But I am weary, and they are
many. Give them battle till I prevail.”
The guard ran out the door.
“Go join them,” you told me, “And return to me when it is
done.”
I left the Temple with my sword drawn, because the dead
were everywhere and I might find them around any corner. And so I
did- past the Temple of Joyful Singing with its jade-green columns,
there was a little square filled with fountains and statues. Here there
were hundreds of the dead, the priesthood and aristocracy of Etan,
closing in on a squad of our soldiers, who cowered against a wall.
The fools could have left at any time. I myself had come around a
corner to find them, so their escape was not cut off. But a panic had
come over them, and they were mesmerized by the blank faces of
their enemies, the eyes without personality, the pale hands without
flowing blood.
These men had fought the dead before. But that was on the
battlefield, in disciplined order, with plenty of warning. Now they
were surprised, barely out of their dreams, and stupid as paralyzed
rabbits. I stood behind a statue. It was disgusting to look at- a
carving of two people mating, their faces distorted by lust.
Fornication was sacred in Etan.
The soldiers tried, clumsily, to fight. They hacked halfheartedly
at the mob of corpses. The dead were unarmed, but there
were so many of them that they kept moving forward, even though
some of them fell. Their fingers scraped at the idiot’s cheeks. I
watched them intently, the horrible fear on their faces, the sickness
and confusion.
There were no humans anymore, no people there at all, only
flies in a web. And their new mother was waiting to welcome them
in. It came over them as I watched, sick stupidity and fear, and then
a shameless abject terror and a scream without pride. That high and
childlike scream!
I jumped forward to rescue the flies, and my sword made
pretty, flashing figures in the air. The figures cut through dead
people’s heads, made ruins of the aristocracy of Etan and all their
delicate breeding. I played the hero with delight.
- 433 -

A few of the soldiers were hurt. One of them was missing
his eye. One of them probably wouldn’t live, because his
uncomprehending heart pumped his hot blood over the ground.
Several of them were wet with their own vomit and urine. But they
rallied when I helped them, the lovable little cowards. They
followed gamely behind me, chopping with their swords, and
together we drove the creatures back. I made short work of many.
There were spirits in the dead- not their own spirits, but
petty creatures, assigned to this simple possession- and I sent
dozens back to their masters. As for the bodies, though they were
focal points for dreaming and the remnants of personalities, in the
end they were lumps of rutting meat. Without these phantoms to
make them twitch, they would go quietly about the business of
getting soft. We left them where they fell.
But there were too many of them still walking in the square.
We could fight and be brave, but their numbers would overwhelm
us in the end. They pressed in on every side of us.
A bearded old priest got in past my guard. He had a
crossbow-bolt in his eye, and his mouth hung open. His dry tongue
drooped out over his lips. I smashed my head into his nose. He
staggered back, and I got my sword around to hit him. “Back you
go!” I laughed, and his head flew off across the square.
I felt their hands all over me- cold hands, stiff and grasping.
I resented the familiarity, but there was little I could do about it.
They wanted to drag me down, press me to the ground beneath their
weight, and become more familiar with me still in the course of
eclipsing my life.
But we were joined by Those Who Laugh. They charged the
square with thunderous cries of “Kerun!” and that ever-present
sainthood in their eyes. I knew great disgust for them at that timethe
happy, worshipful little dogs. But they did do a rather clever
thing. As soon as they entered the square, I renewed the fight with
greater vigor. So did a few of the soldiers. But several of them did
not. Those Who Laugh cut the cowards along with the dead.
They recognized me when they saw me, though as usual
they didn’t know what to think of me. We drove through the dead
men together, and soon the Temple square was clear.
“They’re everywhere on the Hill,” said one of the identical
fanatics, “And there are thousands more in the Lower City.”
He was decapitating the executed soldiers.
- 434 -

“What we need,” I said, “Is fire…”
“Yes,” said another one, “Burn them all. Burn the city to the
ground!”
“Not till we’re done with it!” I said, “For now, our enemies
will burn well enough.”
I was impatient to be gone. But Those Who Laugh were
singing one of their devotional songs, a wandering toneless chant
with a chorus of harsh and artificial guffaws.
“You sound like jackals!” I said, “Why don’t we go and
fight?”
One of them looked up at me with murderous, flat eyes.
“You’re the master’s little pet,” he spat at me, “But he will
tire of you in the end.”
“And what then?” I laughed at him, “Do you think he will
favor you instead? You are only a bee in his hive!”
His sword hand twitched, and I laughed at him and his
impulses.
“Don’t draw on me,” I advised him, “Unless you want to
test out your theories about heaven!”
I wasn’t angry with him at all. He could see that, and it
enraged him still further. One of his comrades pulled on his arm.
“Let us go,” he said, “We have orders from the master.”
They started to turn away.
“Hold on a moment,” I said, “I want to tell my friend a
secret.”
I leaned closer for a moment and whispered in his ear, and
he looked at me like a dying puppy.
“Now,” I said, “Let’s see if you survive the night!”
Those Who Laugh went on ahead.
“What did you tell him?” asked one of the soldiers.
“Don’t ask,” I said, “Unless you want me to tell you too.”
Parts of the city were burning. I don’t know how it
happened, but it served our purposes. We were able to get flaming
torches to use against our attackers. These were very effective. We
ran into wandering mobs of the dead, searching clumsily for our
men. Within moments, we had most of them on fire. Thousands of
them moaned and thrashed about, and many buildings were in
flames. The dead made a chorus as they burned, an inarticulate
choir of cries, echoing in the fire-tinted sky.
- 435 -

But this was confined to the Lower City. On the High Hill,
where most of the army had been encamped, there was still a
desperate battle. We used torches to drive back the dead, but we
didn’t dare to set their bodies alight. If the High Hill caught on fire,
all of us would burn alive.
We had lost men in the attack. They had been sleeping, or
playing at dice, and a lucky few were drunk. When the dead came
awake, some of our soldiers had been trapped and outnumbered.
These men were overwhelmed. But the army had weapons, and
most of the dead did not. All in all, we had reacted to the ambush
rather well.
There were thousands of dead on the High Hill, and many
thousands below. But those down below us were on fire, or
wandering aimlessly through the burning slums, and on the Hill the
tide had turned. We fought them in the streets, and in dozens of
small shrines and mighty temples. Everywhere we were
outnumbered by them, and in places the situation was grim. But in
other places, the battle had become a slaughter, and with halberd,
spear and sword we put the dead back to sleep. I strode through the
city with a burning torch in one hand, and my naked sword in the
other, and I cut them down with joy.
I looked out over the city. Giant flames danced, leaping, in
the sky. Screams of the living and dead mingled with the hungry
cries of birds. The heavens were again blood-red, though the clouds
were flecked with long streaks of black.
On every side of me, men fought to save their lives. I heard
their prayers and their shrieks of fear and pain, their battlecries and
pointless pleas for mercy. Far to the north of us, the horizon was
torn by angry winds. A maelstrom of wind and water tore across the
landscape. It howled and clattered like a god. In its wake, white
flowers of poison grew.
“It’s the end of the world,” I said. I laughed quietly to
myself.
We put an end to the last of them as the sun rose. This was
the first we’d seen of it in days, but it cast a pale white light and
gave off fog. The Millenarian came out of the Silent Temple. He
inspected the High Hill with his hands behind his back, and Those
Who Laugh sang songs to him and cheered.
- 436 -

“The Kerun was testing you,” he cried, “He asked for proof
that you were loyal, that your love for him was sincere. How you
have gladdened your Father’s heart! Now our enemy has been
defeated, we hold the High Hill in triumph, and our hymns of praise
will echo in the heavens!”
They roared for him with a single mighty voice. Scattered
hymns erupted here and there. Some of Those Who Laugh cut at
their arms, their faces distorted with ecstasy. But the regular troops
looked up at him, silent and unsure. He had failed to put the dead
back to sleep.
“Now there’s another task,” he told them, “This morning I
have learned that we are under siege. An enemy horde, far greater
than any we have fought till now, has surrounded the Lower City.
Within the hour, they will reach us here at the Hill. Stop them for
me, turn them back and bring us out, and the Kerun will reward you
with glory!”
Those Who Laugh were howling with delight. They would
all soon be singers in the heavenly choir. But the soldiers of the
army were unhappy, sullen and scared.
- 437 -

Chapter Seven- The Menagerie
You were Michael all along,” I said, shaking my head.
Outside, the battle still raged. Our men fought a
horde of creatures and strange beings, but they
didn’t fight alone. My master had drawn from a great well of
power, the power he called the Kerun, and the worst of the enemy’s
sorcery had been stilled. Now our army held the High Hill, while he
waited for something to change, something that would bring him
more power to fight.
“You are Michael,” I said again. He had finished the first
part of his story.
“No,” he said, “I’m not Michael anymore.”
“Why not?” I asked him, “Are you not the same man who
was imprisoned in the oubliette? What has happened to you since
then? Why have you rejected your name?”
He wouldn’t answer me.
Outside, Baron Mueller had the command. He thought the
master liked him, because he was ferocious. But the master liked
nobody.
There were humans in the enemy horde, both living and
dead. But they were far outnumbered by the others. Hags crawled
and gave birth to broods of spiders. White flapping things flew and
spat their poison. Fields of hair-like growth crept up the hill, and
grew rapidly and fatally through living flesh; these had to be
destroyed by fire. Snarling yellow apes with the faces of dogs
- 438 -

charged in a frenzy at our men, flailing at them with broken arms
and crying out in pain and rage. Blind faceless children hatched out
of fat pale eggs, then shaped themselves by devouring some of the
hard egg-white out of which their bodies were made. When they
ate, their smooth soft heads opened up, dripping thick yolk. When
they had a leg or two free, they stumbled forward in confusion,
tearing with passionate hunger into anything they touched.
These are only a few of the horrors, but our men faced the
menagerie and fought with a grim determination I might
hypothetically have admired.
“One of the children moved,” you said. You had already
consumed two bottles of wine since sunrise, “She pulled her hand
away, and plucked the thing from her skin. It left a red bite-mark,
oozing blood. I looked at what she was holding…”
I was poking at the fire. Sparks jumped out, a red rainstorm,
hot and bright. Some of them landed on your leg. You didn’t move.
One of them was still quite warm. It burned its way through your
tunic. Still, you didn’t move.
“It was a baby dream-feeder from the Red Sea, plump with
her blood…”
The sun climbed towards noon. Baron Mueller broke charge
after charge on the ranks of his men. Only Those Who Laugh were
beyond his control. They flitted here and there, charging with
laughter and songs wherever they could find the most blood. Some
of them fell with bright smiles on their lips, and together they
accounted for multitudes.
At the south end of the Hill, the rotting corpse of a lake
dragon crawled up over our barricades. Our men collapsed from the
stench, and it swallowed them two and three at a time. Dead, it
couldn’t digest them, and the pieces of their bodies tumbled through
the holes in its stomach. The dead and the living clambered over it
like a ladder.
Baron Mueller charged the thing himself, swept its head
from its body with one stroke of his seven-foot ax, and sent it
crashing back down on the foe. Those who had climbed it were
surrounded and destroyed.
You were on to the rum after your second bottle of wine.
- 439 -

“I woke up, sputtering,” you said, “As a harsh tea was
poured down my throat. The world faded and came clear and
changed shape in front of my eyes…”
I knelt on the floor at your feet. I insisted on gazing up at
you, adoring and enthralled. I smiled at you like a dog. My smile
for you was so wide, that a thin strand of drool ran down to the
floor. You didn’t notice me, of course. I only wanted to be sure, to
be certain that if you did notice me you would see the sincerity of
my affection.
“He wouldn’t let me wake up again for several days,” you
were saying, “My head cleared only when he fed me tea or soup…”
And later, much later, “She placed her hands against her
face and pushed her fingers slowly underneath her eyes. The blood
rolled out, dark and thick. Her eyes bulged…”
I smiled for you while you spoke.
As the sun set, the enemy settled in. They couldn’t take us
by storm; instead they would court us over time. And of course,
over time, not all of our followers kept the faith. Our master lost
their love. They slipped out of the ranks of their comrades, followed
certain officers who gathered in dark corners and whispered.
You were telling me your story.
“The god was a small mountain of metal and hair-covered
skin. He had thousands of black iron arms, and many mouths with
iron teeth. Blades rose and fell in some places, while other parts of
his body opened onto glowing furnaces.”
One of the guards threw open the door.
“Master!” he yelled, “There is a mutiny outside!”
“He was an animal encased in metal, or fused with metal,”
you said, “In patches, some of which ran for several feet, his stringy
black hair hung out and his body could be seen, rising and falling as
he breathed.”
“Master!” yelled the guard, “The Temple is under attack!”
“Small faces grew out of these patches of skin and peered
down at us,” you said, “Like hairy living gargoyles, plump and
rough. These faces blinked repeatedly, and gnashed at the air,
opening and closing their jaws for no apparent reason.”
The guard stared at you from across the room. Then he
quietly closed the door.
- 440 -

“The muscle people approached the god on their knees,”
you said, “Shuffling along the floor. They went in line…”
Those Who Laugh defeated the attempted coup. How they
relished the opportunity! The mutineers were desperate, but they
had nothing to equal the love of Those Who Laugh. They didn’t
have a chance.
Our happy fanatics made corpses of them, but no more
quickly than necessary. Those who died in the fighting were torn
apart and thrown to the enemy as offal. The wounded were
crucified and left to die. The battle-birds came down to tear at their
guts, and Those Who Laugh caught the birds and tore them into
pieces.
“I saw the burrowing people,” you said, “Filthy and naked.
Their limbs were like old brittle old kindling, and their bodies had
the patches of stiff hair that come with starvation. I saw their eyes,
which were not quite dead enough. I saw the thin hard crust which
had formed here and there on the wet ground.”
My knees were paralyzed with pain. Hours ago, they had
passed from mere discomfort into numbness, and from numbness
into fierce waves of hurt washing over my bones. I savored this for
you. I took joy in this for you. Because I wanted you to see, if you
should ever look up, that I was watching still- that I still knelt in
your honor and smiled in delight at your words. I wanted you to
know that I would always smile when I looked upon your deeds.
And yet you never even glanced at me. You went on and on, while
the battle was waged through the night.
You said, “The sides held many stone cubicles where my
dead memories crouched like birds,” and, “In the course of my long
career, I had often been employed by tyrants,” and, “I was truly
sorry for some of these people.”
“He kept crawling through the tube,” you said, and, “I tried
to bring the bubble back to me.”
And finally, the ghost doctor’s fate.
“He was lying on the floor, dressed in his black feathered
cloak, wearing his cannibal mask. I pulled the mask away, and saw
two eyes that were as empty as the demons Themselves.”
And then you looked up. “Get that stupid look off your
face!” you snapped, and dropped your empty bottle on the floor. I
- 441 -

hurried to bring you another. Warm salty tears rolled over my
chuckling face.
“I shouldered my pack and my ax,” he said, “And started to
walk. It never even occurred to me to take Doll.”
“So that was the end of your escape,” I said, “You couldn’t
recapture your shadow.”
He had no shadow now. Few of his followers noticed that,
but when they did, they assumed he was especially holy.
“No,” he said, “But I had not yet surrendered after all. I tried
twice more to evade Them. Once by complying with Their
demands.”
“And the other time?”
He didn’t answer my question.
“What happened to the ghost doctor?” I asked.
“I am not sure,” he said. He looked troubled and confused,
“He found something which I myself have never been able to see.”
He put his head in his hands. “It ruined his mind.”
“A secret, master?” I asked him.
“I don’t know.”
A bit of his hair had fallen in his eyes. I brushed it away,
and with the hem of my tunic I wiped the sweat from his brow.
“I know the secret the ghost doctor saw.”
He said nothing. He was lost in his memories again.
“It is only this,” I said, “That you are beautiful and low. A
filthy despicable thing, like an angel from the sky.”
I took a coal from the fire. It burned wickedly and
ineffectually against his skin.
“Master?” said the guard at the door. I threw the coal aside
quickly. The guard looked across at me with distrust.
“Yes?” you said, glancing up at the guard.
“Master,” he said, “The enemy is starting to move. We
believe they will storm us at dawn.”
“There is a battle?” you asked, and the guard nodded yes.
You stood up in an instant.
“The Kerun,” you said, “Has need of a human sacrifice.
Bring me the skin of a man who has failed in his duty.”
The guard’s smile was like the moon.
- 442 -

When I saw you, I nearly choked. Those Who Laugh
howled out with laughter. Behind them, soldiers and aristocrats
vomited and fainted. There was a warm and treasonous whisper that
rustled among the host- “Necromancer. The Millenarian is a
necromancer.”
You were a sight to bring miscarriages to women. You were
slick with red blood. You wore no clothes, but the fresh hide of an
executed soldier was wrapped around you like a second skin. His
death surrounded you with its stench. And you stared out at us, your
eyes flat and unaware, through the holes in his stitched-up face.
Fierce symbols dripped from his skin in a red chaotic jumble. You
bore your two-handed sword.
“The Kerun has answered my prayers,” you cried to your
flock, “He will punish the guilty and raise His righteous on high.
Follow me now. The horde shall not stand in His way.”
A dagger flew through the air. It tumbled end over end, the
last hope of a desperate man who realized what you were. Before it
struck you, Those Who Laugh had already crippled the assassin. He
would die on the cross like the others.
One of your bodyguards, ecstatic to be transported to
heaven, threw himself in the way. But you were far too fast. You
pushed him savagely aside.
The knife struck you in the eye. It slid deep into your head.
The chorus of cries was a mix of horror and delight. But they had
forgotten. You staggered back when it struck, but only for an
instant. Then you looked up with a roar, and the army saw that there
was no blood on your face. You pulled the knife out and it was
clean. Your eye was unwounded.
Delirium came to our host. When you pushed the knife back
through your head, their voices swelled up as one. Some of them
chanted with fervor, true passion for your creed. Many chanted in
horror, certain now that there was no escape from you on earth. But
drunkenness took them all, a strange drunkenness you had given
them, and their cry of “Kerun!” would have terrified a merely
human enemy.
We charged them under the power of that cry. Your
greatsword was on fire; a blue flame that didn’t radiate but ran
down the metal like water. You staggered them with your fury. A
hag was first, squeezing a fat hungry spider our of her womb when
you reached her. You cut them with the Strike of Wrath, and they
- 443 -

flew in halves across the battlefield. A yellow ape was next. Its
dog-head snarled at you, its broken arms flailed heavily at your
face. But you compassed around, and your blade removed an arm at
the shoulder.
You cut through the dead, who had clustered behind the ape
like jackals at an oasis. They were nothing to you, unable to hurt
you and almost meaningless to your overall goal. You sent a
number of them to the ground, and your army followed after you,
driving a deep wedge into the horde in the Lower City. I was on a
side of that wedge, and the enemy’s various creatures pressed in on
me and were slain.
Soon, you faced a more formidable foe. A vast white mouth,
eyeless and nearly flat, screeched as you approached. Inside there
were hundreds of mouths, human mouths, open and howling. Some
of them vomited blood. How they wanted to consume you!
When you saw it, you shouted, “Kerun!” and dove headlong
at its maw. The white jaws tried to close in on you, but you pierced
the creature’s flesh. With the strength of your arms, you carved a
thick cut of meat from its body while it screamed. Then you fed the
meat to its mouth, and the smaller mouths devoured it and were
choked. You climbed high on the creature’s flat head while it
quivered and suffocated on itself.
“Kerun!” you shouted, and the enemy charged you from
every direction. You were ferocious and inspired. Those Who
Laugh ran forward to guard you at first, but there was nothing they
could do. There was nothing they needed to do.
The creatures and monsters of the Thorp were amazed at the
fury with which you fought. They gave up and pulled back, but not
before you had ended a dozen of them or more. You held a head in
your hand- the head of a fat, warted man whose skin was purple and
pale.
“Kerun!” you shrieked at them. They pulled back still more.
Now we caught up with you, and hit them with the full weight of
our terrified crusade.
The dead were merely tiresome by now. They groped at me
with numb, slow fingers and I caved in their heads. But the
denizens of the Thorp- these were various indeed. I killed a black
little animal with no muscles, only skin stretched taut over bones. I
shattered a living crystal that would have burrowed into my chest. I
slew worms and hags and furtive yellow pigs. The blade of my
- 444 -

sword was slick with the liquids of my foes. On every side of me,
my comrades did the same, in the fervor of unreasoning fear or
contemptible Belief. And the enemy turned and pulled back.
“They go!” you cried out to your army, “The Kerun has
rewarded your courage! See how your enemies turn away!”
The army had won another victory. The siege was broken,
and the crusade would continue. But we had not destroyed our foes.
The horde was still vast, far vaster than our host. And we had no
idea where they were going.
- 445 -

Chapter Eight- Mutiny
Iinsisted that you bathe. You would have returned to
your room, stripped of the hide but still stained with
drying blood, and resumed your story and your rum.
“Master,” I said, throwing the skin on the fire, “The army is
restless. They cannot endure the horrors you force upon them."
“Some of them would love me for it,” you whispered.
“Those ones would love you regardless. Do not lose your
army, my master, or the Thorp will not be destroyed.”
“Do they plot against me?” you asked, “Are they planning
to betray me?”
“I can’t see into their hearts,” I said, “But I have heard what
they whisper. They say you are a necromancer, that you are leading
us into hell.”
You clenched your fist as I poured a basin of water down
your back. Your fingers made white marks in your palms.
“I cannot fail her,” you said.
“Fail who?” I asked you. My face had a puzzled expression.
“You will know that soon enough,” you told me, “Do not
mention her until you know.”
Your eyes told me what I already knew- you would kill me
if I disobeyed your commands. To you, I was only a man.
“Master,” I said, “Can you not determine the will of their
hearts? Will the Kerun not reveal them to you?”
You spat on the ground. “The Kerun tells me nothing,” you
said.
- 446 -

“I have faced the sharp blade of an enemy hundreds of
times,” you mumbled. I dabbed at the wet rum on your chin. It was
very nice for me, keeping you clean. I couldn’t burn you yet. “But
for me,” you said, “The sick feeling never goes away.”
I pressed the bottle firmly into your hand. You would
certainly drop it, if it didn’t stay familiar to you.
“The enemy draws his sword, and a flash of light runs along
the steel like an intimate greeting. The world collapses into that
long, thin edge and glittering point. And even if the man knows
nothing about swordsmanship, even if his blade is as sluggish as a
drowning swimmer, still it is almost hypnotic as it moves, because
you know it is looking for a way into your body…”
“But nothing can enter into your body, master!” I protested,
“Your skin is like a mountain of iron! Or then again,” I said, curling
up on the floor at your feet, “It is an invincible soft substance! You
cannot be killed!”
“Shut up!” you said, and struck me in the face with the back
of your hand.
“No one knows the truth about my skin.”
“Down below me, in the village,” you said, “They had
started a bonfire. The bodies shrank like thin bits of bark. Their skin
was black and tight against their bones. Their lips were pulled back
from their white gums. Our men were throwing them on, bodies and
limbs and heads like dead old wood.”
You coughed, and your body heaved. A wave of thin gray
vomit rolled from your mouth. I wiped the vomit away.
“The Leader was walking through the village. Karem was
beside him, pointing out his various achievements. Gorem gave a
sharp little howl. ‘What is it?’ I asked him. The Leader stood in
front of a black, smoking hut where two bodies lay. Karem
gestured, and they were taken to the fire.”
Your eyes were bright with tears. You slid from your chair,
and fell face-first on the floor. I pulled you up by the arms. You
weighed no more than a piece of dead old wood.
“Aulek,” you said, “Are they plotting to betray me?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “But I’m sure you could find out.”
- 447 -

He didn’t try to find them out. I don’t doubt that he could
have, but he never even tried. Because he knew they would come to
him. They had been buzzing in private places, whispering and
stoking their fragile courage, and at last the moment came.
Our army rarely made use of scouts. We knew nothing
before it happened, as if he didn’t want to know. But the horde was
undefeated. It had pulled back from Etan, but still it was very vast.
And no one knew what it would do. So the conspiracy sent out
spies.
They snuck in secret from the High Hill and down through
the Lower City. They left Etan itself, and scoured the countryside in
every direction. But our enemy was not there. Every sign implied
that they had marched at once for the South.
“Our homes are undefended!” said the Crown Prince of
Khimmer. He spoke for them all, at a council they had convened.
The Millenarian had been summoned, as if they would tell him
what to do. But he had sent me in his place.
“That horde will ravage the South. Stoneway will fall, and
the Empire will be destroyed. And the lands of the Far South will
be next- Khimmer, the Theocracy, Fyffe- all will be consumed.
Before we continue this crusade, our first duty is to protect our
homes and people.”
“Indeed,” I said, across the campfire in the square, “If your
dynasty falls, who will supply the boy-slaves you require? The
Kerun is not impressed by your lusts or your false talk of duty.”
His pale face became as white as pure sand.
“You bastard of a message-boy,” he hissed at me, “What
gives you the authority to speak in a council of great men? I should
thrash you for your temerity.”
“You may do whatever you please,” I said, “But think- there
is only one great man in this world. The Millenarian is he. All
power flows from his word. If you are insolent to his messenger,
you will feed the eagles and crows.”
Behind him, he could not fail to hear the wooden crosses
creaking, the small forest where that earlier band of rebels slowly
died. His face was poisonous with rage. And this was the master’s
plan, for if we goaded them into acting we could destroy them and
move on.
“I will leave now,” he announced, “And the men of
Khimmer will follow me. And furthermore…”
- 448 -

Now he focused on Lard Carr, “We will help defeat the
horde. But when this war is done, your Empire will come to an
end.”
I looked across at his younger brother, Prince Yovan of
Khimmer, who followed him like a dog. He could never be the
King, and in the end he would be sent into exile or murdered in his
sleep. Unless, of course…
He nodded at me once. I could expect him to approach me
in private after the conference. True loyalty to the Kerun!
“We will follow the lead of Khimmer.”
So said Annat, the representative of the Theocrats and
Zhem. “We joined this war to defeat the Goetic Council. We will
never serve the Kerun.”
I had already spoken with Sheven, his second-in-command.
He too would meet me before they left.
“We cannot leave our people undefended,” said Earl Glasig
of Fyffe. He was a warrior, and one I didn’t wish to lose. “I
believed we could liberate the North. That we would not be safe
until we did. But no one expected the enemy to do this. We march
North, but they ignore us, and march South.”
“This is only a bluff,” I said, “Of this, I’m sure. They hope
to force us to pursue them. More than anything, this is proof- they
are terrified that we will do as we say- destroy the Thorp, and make
an end of them forever! How their masters must be afraid! Can you
not see that only this will keep your people from destruction?”
“I am uncertain,” said the Earl, “I would rather hear this
from the Millenarian. Why has he sent you in his place?”
“I have not.”
There you sat, in the darkness at the edge of the square. You
stood up and approached. I felt them move away from you, inside
as much as out, except for Those Who Laugh. You were a monster
to them, but a monster they had chosen to serve. Even Baron
Mueller was unsure of you.
“Bring them all,” you said. Your voice was like stone again.
“Call the army to me. I would speak to those who still love me.”
“And what of those who don’t?”
A brave little challenge from the mouth of Prince Tannig of
Untal, a tiny principality without consequence.
“I will show them the love of the Kerun.”
You walked across to where he stood.
- 449 -

“If my miracles are true,” you said, “If I am the son of the
only God, do you not believe that I could burn out your dreams
with His passion?”
He took a little step back. “That would prove nothing at all.
They say you are a necromancer, that you lead us into hell. A
necromancer could make miracles like yours.”
You lowered your head.
“Prince Tannig,” you whispered. You only whispered, but
your voice was heard by all. “Perhaps you believe that I respect
courage even in a heretic. Perhaps you think that I would spare you
because you are brave, that I would be impressed by your honesty,
that I would raise you up on high.”
Count Tannig fell to his knees.
“I see you now!” he cried. He started to shake, with what
can only be called religious fervor. His arms and legs were jerking
like a puppet. His eyes were like two bright rising suns.
“I see you now, my lord!”
You turned to his brother, Count Linn.
“You will succeed to the throne of little Untal.”
Prince Tannig choked on his tongue.
And he was starting to adopt a realistic view. I could see it
in him, like a little child, which had grown all these years in his
womb. Now the infant was ready to be born.
When he decided to rule by fear, to cow even the leaders of
the world, I was overwhelmed by the taste of it in my mouth. I
could have savored it for decades.
“Despite everything,” you said, “They had to have their
games. I was their thrall, now. I fought for them as surely as if I had
never lost my shadow, like an ordinary sorcerer who sells himself
to further his ambitions. Yet still they took pleasure in pushing me
up against death, making me feel that terror. Because our bargain
was incomplete.”
You commanded them with your hands. Your words were
strong as well, and Power was alive in your eyes. But your hands
made secret gestures while you talked, your fingers formed
mysterious symbols, and your soldiers were captivated, unknowing.
- 450 -

“My army,” you said to them. Once again, you didn’t raise
your voice. Your words were clear to us, clear and sweet, like a bell
calling us to prayer. “My army, you have done wonders for the
Kerun. He smiles upon you from His place in the kingdoms of
heaven. He will reward you for your deeds, in this world or the
next. But the task is not yet done.
“How the enemy lies! He would have you believe, this
enemy of ours, that he will ignore our invasion and move on to
destroy all your homes. You fear for your children and your wives.
The Kerun has an ear for your prayers. But do not believe these lies
that the enemy tells! The Thorp is vulnerable to destruction, indeed
it is fated to be destroyed! Of course the demons are afraid! And if
the demons themselves are afraid, imagine the terror of their
servants. Imagine the necromancers cringing under their threats and
rewards!
“Fear not, my heroic army. Before long, final victory shall
be ours.”
They were mesmerized again. And the few who might have
resisted were afraid. They had forgotten, they were willing to
forget, that you had fought in the skin of one of their own.
The men of Khimmer and the Theocracy were not there.
They were forming up in ranks, preparing to march from Etan.
Prince Yovan and Sheven sought me out.
“Yovan,” I said, “You will lead Khimmer, in the name of
the Kerun. Sheven, you will command the Theocratic Janissaries.”
“Fine words, indeed,” Prince Yovan said, “But from you,
we need guarantees.”
“Yes,” said Sheven, “What shall be done about Annat and
the Crown Prince?”
“Even as we speak,” I said, “They are being destroyed.”
They started screaming, not far away.
- 451 -

Chapter Nine- Steel Rivers
And of course, you were right. We left Etan on a
forced march, because the horde had turned around.
You had seen through their charade. We didn’t
know how you knew, but you told us to march, and we marched.
You didn’t want to fight them again, not yet. We had fought twice
since leaving Stoneway. Sickness was corrupting our ranks, and our
men still had little to eat. We would never reach the Thorp unless
we made it very much further north before we met our foes again.
But this was a pace that killed the weak. We walked through
the day, under a sun made of strips of flesh, and we marched all
night beneath a wet and melting moon. The wounded fell by the
road, and the sick were left to die on their own.
Too many of us were sick. Some became soft and fell apart,
and the stench of their wet brown arms and legs led their comrades
to burn them, dead or alive. Others puffed up with a bloat beneath
their skin, and fell to the ground from the pain. They never rose
again.
On the second day of our march, gray veins of metal
appeared along the ground. They were like rivers of steel, with
tributaries and streams. Some of the soldiers tried to drink from
them in delirium. They licked at the metal, desperate to get water,
and they stayed there although we moved on.
We camped on the third day. The metal rivers had widened,
and we were even crossing lakes, hard and cold beneath our feet.
- 452 -

The men collapsed where we stopped, on the edge of one such lake.
They slept until the dawn.
I waited on you in your tent. Despite riding for days, you
still did not go to sleep. I fed you bottle after bottle, and cleaned up
your vomit, and picked you up when you fell down on the floor. I
knelt down on the ground in front of you, admiring your story, and
the great deeds you had done in the name of your Leader and his
Decision.
“Marble and quartz and alabaster were scattered on the
sidewalks,” you told me, “In glittering splinters, shards and milky
dust. Burned bodies swarmed with flies, like overcooked chicken
left to rot. There was a girl on the street, with long dark hair and
skin so white I could tell she had never had to work. Her dress was
purple silk with black designs. It had been torn, and her body was
exposed. Her eyes stared up at the morning with a look of
permanent surprise. I thought of Aulek, and turned away, then I ran
to the corner and was sick. I had looked at her breasts, and felt
lust.”
We marched again. We were in the region of Chemia now, a
flat land of dark, rich soil and fertile fields. But this was a season of
famine. There was no water beneath the crumbling hard crust of the
ground, but the rivers of steel were everywhere in its place.
There was no village left to give forage. The horde had
consumed what was there, and we found burnt foundations and the
remnants of bodies along the way. But there were refugees on the
road. We found them crouching in a ditch, overjoyed to find us
human but terrified nonetheless.
“Bring them into the camp and give them weapons,” said
the Millenarian, “They will join in our crusade.”
We took food from them, of course.
“I stayed in my room for a long time, after that,” you said.
Light shifted across your face from the constant melting of the
moon. Your eyes stared off into the void, and I searched in them for
hours but didn’t find what I was looking for. You hadn’t enjoyed
the sack of Apolika; you took no pleasure in the punishments your
Leader had ordained. There was nothing in those eyes for me.
- 453 -

“They knocked on my door, and they shouted,” you said,
“But I wouldn’t come out. The sun rose and set, and I watched the
light on the walls. I watched the worms on the walls. After the
second day, the walls were like a salt block, and the worms
burrowed into it like goat’s tongues. A few days after that, they
exposed limbs, hands stretched out in pointless supplication. Then
the face, with eyes squeezed tight and mouth open. This young man
had swallowed a mouthful of wet mortar. The mortar had drowned
him, the lime had burned him from within. ‘Goodnight,’ I said to
him, ‘Goodnight forever.’ ”
But we had no intention of making them soldiers. There
were women among them, women and children. There were
females in our army, especially among Those Who Laugh, but they
were fierce and bright like hawks. These women were damaged
goods, peasant-wives and old harridans, lost without their
massacred little breadwinners. Their eyes darted from one thing to
another, rabbit eyes, and they cowered in the corners while we
watched. Some of them had dead eyes, flat and distant,
unfrightened and uncaring. They were the same to us either way.
I noticed a soft-skinned, pleasant brown-eyed girl, with long
hair, dark like the rich brown of Imperial cattle and curled like
foaming water. When we started to open their legs, I stood in line to
spend some time with her. She accepted what we did to her, clung
to our men like a slim hope of support in a fatal current. She clung
so hard to me that her fingers left marks in my back.
I enjoyed the sweet smell of her sweat, and the rapid birdlike
fluttering of her heart. When it faltered, I dropped her and
walked away.
“She’s dead!” cried the next man in line. He wanted to
complain, but I had already gone back to you.
“They had no names,” you said, “Because they were not
Many. They did not have one name, because they were not One.
They could not encompass both, because they were not both. In any
sense which I could understand, the demons, my masters, did not
exist at all.”
You paused for a moment, examining the horror of this
understanding, turning it over and playing with it in your mind.
- 454 -

“I adore you,” I said, “For revealing the wonders of your
philosophy. I take it as an earnest token of the deep affection you
feel for me, of the special function I possess within your heart.”
“Don’t talk,” you said, “I don’t want to listen to you talk.”
I gave you another bottle, and drew the edge of my long
knife across your arm. No blood welled up, but only a thin white
line.
“Unkillable,” I said, “And nobody knows all your secrets.”
“Come with me, Parson. I want to go for a walk.”
“Parson,” he said, and his voice was dangerous and soft. I
stopped for a moment, examining his face. There was a hardness in
the set of his jaw. He had been walking around the camp.
“Were the women raped, Parson?” he asked me, “They have
a look about their eyes.”
He saw the body of my lover. They had thrown her at the
edge of the camp for the little things to eat.
“What happened here?” he whispered. He knelt and
examined her. Her face was black and bruised.
“She was beautiful,” I said.
He bent his head for a moment, then stood.
“Did you enjoy her before she died?”
Here was quicksand for my feet. He might know everything
and he might not. He might discover me, or he might forget about
it.
“I enjoyed the beauty of her face,” I told him, “She was a
fine-looking woman. I do not know what happened to her.”
“She was murdered by your comrades!” he spat at me, “Men
who claim to love the Kerun! Have them crucified as a warning!”
Then he spun around and ran, stumbling, back to his tent.
I gave the order to Those Who Laugh. They had not
participated in our deeds. I saw the self-satisfied fervor, the
eagerness in their faces, and I was sick. A troop of them went
happily to punish the guilty. I had pointed out maybe two dozen.
“I wonder how they’ll find enough wood?” I asked myself.
“They’ll need another tree for you.”
It was one of his faceless minions, staring at me with angry
little eyes. And yet, I vaguely remembered who he was.
“Did your friend survive that night?” I asked him.
- 455 -

“No,” he said, “And you won’t survive this one. I saw what
you did tonight. You were there among the murderers.”
I laughed at his simple, righteous anger. There was a tentstake,
near at hand. I marked it with my eye.
“I am the murderer myself,” I whispered. How he wanted to
bring me to justice! He could have licked his lips at the thought of
me, moaning up there on the cross.
“Perhaps they could use this for my crucifixion,” I said, and
grabbed him by the back of the neck. No one saw me when I drove
the tent-stake into his eye.
You had started again when I returned, as if nothing had
happened, as if you had blotted that beautiful dead creature from
your sight. You remembered nothing, and I was happy to let you
forget.
“The light,” you said, “Was like a new sun being born. I felt
no heat, and no pain, but the center of the city was disintegrated in
an instant. A wave of Power burst out from the sword, and rolled
across Apolika…”
You went on like that for a time. And here I caught a
glimmer, almost a hint that your taste of such power had not quite
left you unscathed. You were more awake when you spoke of it,
and I thought I saw desire for the memory of that strength. The
strength to turn the city into a desert.
“I will know you in time, I assure you,” I said, while you
indulged your temporary guilt. You had known the power of a god.
I knew you would seek it out again.
- 456 -

Chapter Ten- The Long Night
That was the long night, the night of listening. I sat at
the foot of your cot, enlightened and enthralled by
the final unfolding of your story. Stars fell outside,
burned up the air, and made great craters in the distant fields.
Chunks of the melting moon made deadly radiation here and there.
It fell near some of our men, and I heard it changing them. They
grew feathers and limbs, and their eyes widened into deep red
pools. The world was bending beneath our feet, becoming a bowl
that would roll us all down to the Thorp. To the place of your
beginning and ending.
“I remembered her face,” you said, “And that is the first
thing I remembered, after a long time with no time, wandering in
the gaps in my mind. I looked around me, and she was not there.
There was a mattress, soaked in sweat. There was a low candle,
burning. I was alone in a dim room with rock walls, and I thought I
was underground…”
There was a weakness in your eyes. You thought they were
secret, perfect little globes. You thought they told me nothing. But I
could see you in them now, wincing and afraid. There was a shape
of something you dreaded in this tale.
You hadn’t touched your rum in hours. I tried to encourage
you to drink it, but you ignored me completely. Your lower lip was
trembling as you spoke.
- 457 -

“She was on her knees, with her back to me, and her long,
light hair hung down over her white robes in shallow waves. There
was a patch of sunlight, from another opening high in the ceiling,
and in the light that bathed her I could see the shape of her body
through her robes. I was wordless at the sight of her, but it wasn’t
lust that took my words away.”
No of course not, Michael my master, of course it wasn’t
lust.
“I couldn’t name what I was feeling at all. Her head was
bowed, and her hands were together in front of her face. A rapid
stream of words flowed out of her mouth, a melodic chant without
rhythm, and she paused only to take a breath.”
And you had no desire to tear into her body, no hunger at all
to make sure that her prayers were for you.
“I couldn’t see her face, but the way she held her body told
me what she was feeling. She was relaxed, but completely focused,
and there was nothing in her world at that time but the object of her
prayers.”
Outside, there was nothing in the world but grim shapes
stirring and shimmering, and the horizon alive with the anger of
their presence. Men cowered in terror at those shapes, and muttered
fervent meaningless prayers in the imaginary safety of their tents.
Ghosts, every one of them, not even as real as you.
“Her attention was precise, like that of a duelist when the
weapons are drawn.”
And so was mine. I was focused absolutely on your decline.
“She was in touch with the divine. I might not have believed
it if I’d been told, but here I could see it for myself. A strange grace
encompassed her, and infused her body with invisible light. Her
neck and shoulders and back, in all their little movements, were
pregnant with a sexual energy that her celibacy only made more
potent.”
Indeed. My own lover of a few hours before had almost
been a virgin when I took her.
“The lines of her figure made beautiful shades and shapes,
and in the far back of my mind, there was an image of that body
moving with mine.”
Moving and then not moving. Ephemeral beauty.
“But that was unimportant, almost irrelevant. She
transcended any lust I felt for her…”
- 458 -

I choked a little when you said that. Your story was so
transcendent in every way.
Outside, the wind blew all the dust away, and exposed the
metal beneath the dirt. It was a planet of metal, all metal and no
skin, and the hills and even the oceans were conducted by
mysterious gears.
“At night,” you said, “Alone in my room, I did think often
about Kyri. After only a few days, I couldn’t really remember her
face. It had become unreal to me, as faces often do. But her green
eyes were on my mind, and the curve of her back when I was
watching her praying.”
I waited for every word. How precious she had been to you,
how you had dreamed of watching her die.
“Every now and then, I remembered the way her skin felt
when it brushed against mine. Or I remembered the shadows in her
hair, and the patterns of light.”
The softness of her skin against your own. The shadows and
patterns of light. These are the things that remind us, when they’re
gone.
“The sun was going down,” you said, “Over a vast
landscape of snow and twisted ice, and the sky was darkly blue.
Great mountain ranges stretched away in the distance in a strange
chaos of high, narrow peaks and deep chasms that led down into
blackness. There were deserts of snow where the wind blew
swirling white clouds over flat wastes where no feet had left a
mark.”
Yes, I thought to myself, the ant-arctic wastes, and there is
nothing there at all. You talked on for a time. In the metal wastes
outside, the men who followed you shivered in the wind, pressed up
against the hard, cold steel.
“I closed my eyes,” you said, “And in the darkness I heard
the rushing of blood in her veins, and the beating of her heart. I felt
no roof beneath my feet, and no air on my skin. There was nothing
at all but the rushing sound, and the slow rhythm in her chest.”
Outside, something was growing through the steel- thin
hairs, transparent hairs, like the fine hair on a woman’s body. It
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pushed up here and there, and the metal stretched and yawned, and
the wind howled, clattering, in the dark blue sky.
Snow began to fall. When the long night was over, by the
time the morning came, the landscape would be as white as your
lost ant-arctic waste. Most of your men wrapped their blankets
around themselves. Some of them stiffened and died.
“Her face was close to my own,” you said, “And her lips
were slightly open, full and soft. I could see the small white teeth in
her mouth, and the shape of her tongue.”
And the shape of your tongue was also clear to me, but it
was gray and strangely thick. Strands of vomit clung to it when you
spoke. I wished you would have another drink.
“Kyri and I were talking,” you said.
I heard the emphasis you gave her name, the special quality
you assigned to it. You seemed to relish it despite the terror I could
see in you so clearly.
“I had her wrapped in my arms, with her head on my chest.
That was her idea. I heard the beating of her heart, and I felt her
warm breath on my skin. I almost shuddered, with a kind of
revulsion.”
As did I. I tried to imagine you breeding with her, and I
could not. Yet I could hear you imagine it, as you told me your
tender story.
You were not like her. That girl was not like you. But you
knew no guilt or shame.
“She was sleeping against my body without fear. As if I was
a person. As if I was just like her.”
But she was not a person, and she was never at all like you.
“It wasn’t a pleasant feeling. But at the same time I didn’t
want her to move, and I had the urge to breathe in the air that she
was breathing out, to absorb a part of her in that way.”
And there are much more thorough ways.
“She shifted in her sleep, and turned her face up towards
mine. I made the first mistake, by giving in to my thought and
moving my face next to hers.”
You had your face in your hands. I heard the steel collapse
outside, dissolve into dirt and become the world again. You were
shaking quietly as you talked.
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“I breathed in as she breathed out, and our two breaths were
part of one cycle. She opened her eyes. Her lips were next to mine.
Before I could move back to stop her, she leaned forward and
kissed me. Our lips pressed together, and her mouth opened
slightly. I felt her hips push against me, and her small, soft tongue
brushed against my own.”
Her tongue brushed up against your own. How wonderful
for you. I thought about the beauty of potential, and wondered if
you would also be meaningless after the fact.
And here it was- the last of your thin excuses. You’d
reached the end of your story, and I was about to hear it all. The
reasons for what you had done. They were not the reasons I had
waited so long for you to give. But for now, they would have to do.
“I must have fallen asleep,” you said, “Although I had
meant to watch out for the Bearskins. I would never have allowed
this if I had been awake,”- no, of course not- “But when I woke up
she was on top of me, straddling my body, and I was already inside
her. She looked me straight in the eyes, from an inch or less away,
and I could tell she knew exactly what she was doing…”
So you rhapsodized, and I listened. You described the whole
touching scene. I could imagine her warmth around you, and the
pleasure it gave you. But your eyes were staring in horror.
“And she was my wife,” you said, “For that brief time in the
wilderness.”
For the first time in several hours, you took the bottle from
my hands. You drained it with a single long swallow.
“She was my wife,” you repeated. You repeated it several
times.
“So there you have it,” you told me. After telling me
everything else.
“The end of my story, and the end of a lot of people’s
stories. I left her body there in the polar waste, and I crossed the
Eastern continent again. I came back through the Red Sea, and I
returned to the West at last. I am not a Messiah, no matter what she
told me, and no matter what I have told you. I have come here only
for revenge.”
- 461 -

Chapter Eleven- Only For Revenge
The North of the world was not an empty place. There
were old barrows and dark hills, crowned with rings
of stones. There were small gray keeps, broken and
burnt, looking down over dead fields and abandoned villages. There
were wooden sigils, nailed together out of the boards of windmills,
with skulls and old dry corpses hanging from the arms. There was
no place empty and barren. But it felt like a desert nonetheless.
The sun and moon had returned to their usual forms. The
ground beneath our feet was simply earth. Cold, clear water ran in
every stream. But in those streams, there was not a single fish. No
insect hovered over the water. Nothing moved in the earth. The
corpses, here and there, were becoming stretched and dry. But there
was no rot in their flesh, because there were no tiny creatures to
feed on them. The land of his birth was absolutely dead.
Snow was thick on the ground. We waded through it on
foot- even my master’s horse had been butchered on the march.
Most of us had died along the way. Plague and starvation, cold and
the fortunes of battle, all these things had whittled away at our host.
Now few of us survived.
“Parson,” said Baron Mueller, “Look what they’ve done to
my land.”
“There’s nothing left,” I said.
He nodded in helpless misery. His eyes were wet with angry
tears that hovered over his sunken, humbled cheeks.
- 462 -

“I’ll be the baron of ghosts,” he said to me.
“That’s assuming you survive,” I answered, “There are so
few of us left to keep going. Every morning, some of the soldiers
are dead. Others are no longer human. How can we conquer the
Thorp?”
“His powers are remarkable.”
To that, I could give him no reply.
We stumbled onwards through the snow. Hours passed
without a word, without any thought but the placing of one foot in
front of another. The only marking of time was the passage of the
sun through the sky- that, and Those Who Laugh with their horrible
grating carols.
Nothing came out to challenge us. If anyone cared that we
were getting closer to the Thorp, they gave us no sign of their
presence.
You no longer had a tent. There was no baggage, because
the horses were all gone. The cold moon shone down on us, on our
little hillock just above the camp. Light flickered across your face
from the dead wood burning at your feet. You hadn’t spoken to me
in days.
“Master,” I said, “The rum is almost gone.” I had only been
able to carry a handful of bottles. There was no understanding in
your face.
“Don’t you want to tell me the end of it?” I asked, “The
story of how you got here, of what you’re intending to do?”
“The story is over,” you said, “There is nothing more to
say.”
“Yes, there is,” I said.
A few days later, we came to another empty village. Most of
the buildings were there, but there was nothing living within. You
stopped what was left of our host. Here there were sigils made of
windmills. There were cottages with roofs of straw. A broken keep
watched silently over its manor. Exactly like every other place.
You examined the bodies for an hour. We waited in the
cold, and snow fell lightly in our hair.
“No one I recognize,” you said.
- 463 -

You turned to me, and waved vaguely at the town.
“I was born here,” you told me, “Have it burned.”
You wouldn’t let us camp in the abandoned castles.
“I don’t want to sleep there,” you said.
Baron Mueller wasn’t pleased. “If we cross through my own
fief,” he said, “I guarantee you that I will be sleeping beneath the
portraits of my forefathers.”
You paid him no attention. We marched on for hours, and
the glow of your burning village lit our way into the night. For a
time, you seemed to be lost. Ghost-clouds careened across the sky,
and the light of the moon made bright stars in the snow. Your face
was uncertain and sad. Every now and then, you put your hand to
your forehead and gazed off into the night. Then the army would
change course, and we would wander again in silence, passing
through narrow glens and over the ridges of dark hills.
There were standing stones on the hilltops, and the men
were superstitious and afraid. Some of them said prayers beneath
the stones, and they were not praying to your god. The exiles
bowed briefly as they passed; these stones were sacred to their
ancestors. Two actions of disloyalty to the Kerun. Those Who
Laugh observed, and waited for an opportunity to judge.
Dawn came, and found us crossing the ridge of a hill. We
were not far from your home- I could still see it smoldering in the
valley below us. You were looking for something specific, and as
the sun rose, you found it. A pile of stones on a long, flat hilltop,
the wreckage of a massive foundation. The ruins of Hakerun.
“We will make our stand on that hill,” you told us.
“Our stand?” asked Baron Mueller, “And what can we stand
against, weakened as we are?”
“Our faith will keep us strong,” you said.
I looked to the south. In the distance, but not too far in the
distance, the horde was coming fast.
We stood in a circle behind the wreckage of the wall. The
blocks were fat and crumbling. You and those blocks were the only
memories of mighty Hakerun.
I looked at Those Who Laugh. They had surrounded you
and I. And they were laughing, because now they would finally
- 464 -

meet their god. We were down to a few thousand, and the horde
was vast and strong. Martyrdom or apotheosis awaited us all. This
was the final test of your power, of your messianic claims. Only a
god could salvage our crusade now.
The sun was going down. We had spent the day preparing to
meet our death. Now the creeping line of the enemy force advanced
along the horizon.
“I’m not done with you,” I said.
You were staring into the distance. You had a noble look on
your face, a high look like a statue. You had not revealed your plan.
“What do you want with me?” you growled.
“Those Who Laugh,” I said.
I said it very quietly indeed. But this time, I spoke to you in
a way that commanded your attention. You turned your face
towards mine.
“What about Those Who Laugh?”
“They were not as you have claimed. By your own
description, Calum didn’t fight to save this city. He hunted its
people down. He founded the Order of Necromancers. So who were
Those Who Laugh?”
You laughed, yourself, when I said this.
“They were Calum’s corps of hunters. They were sworn to
destroy the followers of the Kerun.”
I looked at the mark on your brow. The symbol of an oath to
take life.
My smile was truly sincere.
- 465 -

Chapter Twelve- The Dead Flame
You are not the Millenarian,” I said. Quietly, of
course- I didn’t want to be crucified.
“Is that what I told you?” he said, “Then that is what
you can believe.”
He was looking out over the enemy army, rolling into the
valley below us like a malignant wave.
“I have known it since I met you. And yet you cannot be
slain.”
“I can be slain,” he said, “Even by steel. A determined effort
could certainly make an ending of me. I am weakened whenever I
take a wound.”
“But master, your powers are almost impossible to believe.
You were not so mighty in all the years of your wandering. If you
are not the Messiah, then why this amazing transformation?”
“You weary me,” he said, “And your services are no longer
needed. When I chose to avenge her, I found that the power was
mine. There is no other explanation.”
I laughed in his saintly face.
“Surely that is not the reason!” I said, “The little harlot had
no power except to die!”
I was taunting you, of course. Because it was all over now,
we were coming to the end, and I wanted to see what you would do.
I wanted to see how far you had come down this road.
I didn’t see your knife. You chose not to use the weight and
power of your two-handed sword. You chose not to destroy me
- 466 -

with a baneful turn of a word. I looked up at the sky, and the hilt of
your stiletto jutting awkwardly out of my face. I was flat on my
back.
“Take him,” you said to Those Who Laugh, “And throw
him out on the wall. The spiders can eat him now.”
And so I was separated from you for a time. They threw me
on the cold, thick stones of the wall, and left me there to die. The
horde would wash over me, the spiders would consume me, and I
would be dead. But I had no intention of playing along.
“What did he do to you, Parson?” asked Baron Mueller. I
was pulling the blade out of my face and tying a strip of my tunic
around the wound.
“I provoked him,” I said, “You wouldn’t understand.”
“He’s a strange man,” said the Baron, “A strange man, and I
don’t trust him anymore.”
He helped me to my feet.
“Fight beside me now,” he told me in his grandiose way,
“We’ll die together on this hill. And if we don’t die, I’ll help you
slip away.”
“Thank you,” I answered, laughing behind my face.
I drew my sword as the enemy came near. They were as
lovely as before- a horde of monsters and the dead, with small
columns of frightened living men. Hags hissed at us and mated with
the dead. Spiders crawled and hopped along their heads. There was
a screaming, and many hungry cries. Out in the distance, beyond
the approaching horde, I saw the commanders of this force for the
first time. A great beast, a black elephant, bore a platform on its
back. Within the platform, five necromancers sat enthroned.
Our false messiah against five servants of the Thorp.
Falling over each other, fighting and eating each other on
the way, they rolled up the slope towards our line. Baron Mueller
and his few remaining comrades chanted their monotonous and
idiotic death song. I took a firm grip of my sword.
Living soldiers met its edges first. They ran at me with open
mouths, and shouted foolish slogans about their masters. Their
eyes, terrified to the point of collapse, betrayed their lack of faith.
Without faith, nothing can be accomplished. I cut several of them as
they ran.
- 467 -

The wall was our advantage. We stood behind the stones,
and our bodies were warded from the foe. The din of their charge
was incredible. Some of our men collapsed beneath the cacophony
of war-cries and screams, grating steel and shrieking beasts. They
cowered and they fell.
A featureless white creature, mottled with thick brown
specks, jumped up to meet my sword. I drove my weapon through
its body, but the creature didn’t stop. It struck me with the flat of its
paw, and I was thrown to the ground. It hopped down to finish me
off.
“There you are!” said Baron Mueller, and lopped off its
bulbous white head. I pulled my sword from its belly after he
helped me to my feet.
“We’re even!” laughed the Baron, while I glanced around
the field. Sheven and his Jannisaries were in trouble. Spiders had
overwhelmed them, and they struggled on beneath a growing tangle
of web. The spiders spat their poison, distilled from the bodies of
their mothers, and the Janissaries were blinded. I heard them
screaming over the chaos of the battle- their attackers had started to
feed.
“Forget them!” cried Baron Mueller, “Damn Theocrats can
fend for themselves- we’ve got work of our own!”
I turned away from the hairy, waving legs and plunging
jaws. I was only just in time. A column of the dead was storming
our section of the wall. Not murdered peasants or massacred
royalty, but soldiers. They had mail and rusted swords, and thin dry
strips of flesh still stretched from their withered bones. They
charged with gaping mouths.
An old captain, with strands of a thin red beard still clinging
to his face, clambered up on the wall. He swung his broken sword
at me, and I parried the blow. I drove the stiletto deep into his thigh,
and when he stumbled back I cut his legs off at the knee. He fell
backwards into the horde.
The next one had a morningstar in his hand. Without a
pause to consider or make a plan, he swung it heavily at my head. I
made a stop-cut to the wrist, and his morningstar fell harmlessly
past my shoulder. He fell on me from the wall, with arms
outstretched and mouth wide open to bite. I stabbed him through
the head, and dropped his body on the ground.
- 468 -

A wyrm came coiling up the slope. It was green and very
long, but not much wider than my arm. Small horns covered its
body, and it slithered up with unbelievable speed and wrapped itself
around one of our men. He was pierced in a dozen places, and his
blood pulsed out over its body. It hissed a warning at the rest of us,
and darted for his head to extract his brains for a meal. I cut them
both in two.
We heard a thunder over the battlefield. I wheeled around,
and looked north, where the sound seemed to have begun. Warm
wind blew dust in my eyes.
“They’re coming!” someone yelled, pointing to the northern
horizon. I strained my eyes to see. Then I lowered my sword for a
moment, and laughed out loud. It was a second horde, at least as
large as the first.
We fought on, in a constantly tightening circle. Those Who
Laugh were ferocious and shining with joy. They fought and they
killed, and they died.
For those warriors, there was a smile on every face. But not
for the rest of our host. Kings and Princes fell beside common men.
Prince Yovan of Khimmer had only briefly enjoyed his new rank. I
saw him fall beneath a hag, cross the border into death, and begin
breeding with her at once. They gave birth to a spider together, and
when it wriggled from her womb, Lord Carr went down beneath its
poison. It settled in on his head and slowly ate his face.
Earl Glasig of Fyffe was surrounded by yellow apes. They
flailed at him and screamed, and he slew them all where they stood.
He was speckled with blood, and the hunger for battle was shining
from his eyes. His sword made patterns in the air, tracings of light
that lingered then faded away. He fell when a white worm touched
his leg. Within moments he was burning, blue flames skipped along
his skin, and the creature was burrowing towards his bones.
And so you finally showed your hand.
I fought beside Baron Mueller, chopping off limbs and
cutting down foes on each side. I had impaled a hag by stabbing her
spider just as it crawled from her belly. And then the great flame
began. I glanced behind me at the light. I hadn’t noticed it, but
Those Who Laugh had been out of the fight for some time. They’d
been making a mound of our dead.
- 469 -

You had said you were no longer Michael. You had told me
that yourself, despite the dead man’s skin in Etan, despite your
power to still the dead in Stoneway. Now you proved yourself at
last. You were still Michael, still the Necromancer, and you would
turn to the dead when you needed them. Your men knew you, and
they feared.
You walked quietly into the flames. They tried to stop you,
they tried to Bind you, with waves of power that echoed across the
horizon. But they were only ghosts, compared to you.
Your men cried out in terror. Even our enemies paused a
moment and watched, waiting for you to burn and then turn black.
But you didn’t change at all.
The fire was bright in your eyes. It played along your limbs
like running water. And I could see you through the flames,
smiling, triumphant, as you raised your hands on high. The dead
burned beneath your feet. The fire blazed blue and white on your
face. The corpses changed to glowing coals.
Thousands of weapons dropped from numb, white hands.
You breathed the burning deep into your lungs, absorbed the
blue heat like water and fresh air. The flames infused your skin.
Even when they died out in the air, they still flickered softly along
your arms. The coals gave all their glow. The ashes of thousands
faded and turned black. Soon nothing was left but your figure on a
mound of thick gray ash.
“Baron Mueller,” I said, “He’s about to kill us all.”
He dropped his ax, and fell heavily on his knees.
You opened your mouth, and flame came rolling out. The
Dead Flame, like the Northern Lights in the sky. It covered our host
like a blanket and set us on fire. Thousands of men screamed,
flailing in the light.
The fire consumed the world- our host was first, but the
light soon flickered and turned against the hordes. Men’s bodies
exploded in the heat. Worms melted, blazed or burst. The dead
collapsed.
Hags screamed, and blackened before they fell. Their
spiders ran, but burned like all the rest. Strange creatures of every
kind were liquefied or charred. The black elephant of the
necromancers fell to its knees. Blue flames ate its flesh.
- 470 -

I looked around me, and marveled at all that I saw. You
were murdering all three armies, with a Power so great you would
never be able to turn away again. You had shaped the universe to
your will, and you had willed that it be destroyed.
“Carthage is the world,” I echoed, “Carthage must die.”
When we were dead, you breathed us in. I sat on the wall,
and watched you absorb all that flame. You breathed it in through
every pore, like the bugs with human skin from the little bronze
mirror. This was the way you had chosen, to plug up the Thorp.
- 471 -

Chapter Thirteen- In The Thorp
You walked onwards towards the Thorp. A light
snow fell, at first, but it disappeared as you walked.
You kept your eyes on the ground. Blue power
played across your limbs. The Dead Flame, your final weapon. The
force that would end your chase at last.
It took you days to reach the borders. You no longer slept,
so you walked on through the night. I never heard you speak in all
that time.
The demons were nearly free there. The mountains, the
forests, even the blades of grass, were bathed in an eerie light. It
moved and shifted and breathed like a living thing.
The trees writhed and bled foam like epileptics, and the air
was gray with their visionary smoke. And there were dead thingslike
men and yet unlike men, their heads oddly shaped, their eyes
too large or too small, their limbs strangely proportioned.
Their bodies stretched out from the rocks and the trees, as if
they’d been trying to swim between the worlds- and hadn’t
succeeded. They had starved to death in these prisons, and their
faces were twisted with terror and despair. Some of the dead were
human, jutting out of the ground. They had tried to leave our world.
Yellow pigs snuck out of holes to nibble at the bodies, and
off-white squirrels gnawed on the clean white bones. And there
- 472 -

were fruit crops with purple fur, dripping their poison into rivers
that flowed sluggishly by. And there was sand that burned through
skin, though you avoided that with ease.
In the Thorp, the earth itself was like flesh infected with the
plague- it cracked and bubbled in a hundred places with a thick and
filthy corruption.
You made it across the Thorp- though you couldn’t say how
long it took, for time was altered there in subtle ways. Its denizens
resisted- they gathered together and swarmed you as you marched.
But you were never once concerned. Dead Flame destroyed them,
and flowed more powerfully back into your hands. You left their
bodies behind you as ash, and as you passed there was nothing but
ash in your wake.
In the mountains at the center of that land, you found the
cave that led to the classrooms of the Black School. There was a
mighty force to oppose you, but you destroyed it like the saint you
had become. You were a prophecy come to life, and your
apotheosis was sweet to me as I watched.
The Thorp was now in ruins. You had reduced it to
nothingness, destroyed it and moved on. There was nothing now
but to reverse your initiation. You entered the cave, and passed
through darkness and cold. As you went to your answer, you felt a
million miles away. But I relied on you to the end.
They raved at you, of course. Their names don’t matter;
mere flashes obscured by your shadow. But they thought they were
winning the war.
“Michael,” they greeted you. They were the proud Goetic
Council. The necromancers, the students of the Black School. “You
have returned to pay your debt.”
“No,” you told them, “I owe no debt to you.”
“Our masters demand it. They will have it from you in the
end.”
“The end is now,” you said.
There was nothing they could do. One was fat and small and
cruel, another was bearded, cowardly and ambitious, several were
clothed in ridiculous black robes. Only humans, and even less than
that. In all your years, you had bested so many of their kind. You
- 473 -

would have been the greatest among them, the most powerful
sorcerer in the world.
Except that you lost. Your comrades conspired against you,
or at least that’s the excuse you most preferred to give. You were
the last one out the door. And for the last one out the door…
“Why?” they asked, “Why did you betray us, in the end?”
You ignored them, and I spoke. “You are a pack of fools,” I
said, “What did you expect?”
The demons possessed Their fragile little servants. They
foamed at the mouth, and their bodies distorted and flailed. I
laughed aloud as They begged you not to strike-
“No, Michael- we will set you free at last! Your shadow is
yours, but do not destroy the Thorp! You will drive us from this
world!”
It was an almost divine performance. But the Dead Flame
shut them down.
- 474 -

When You Saw Me Robed In Splendor
We writhed in front of you, in our world, breathing
without air, breeding without fornication. There
was no ground, but only a vast ocean of dark mist
like a reservoir of clouds, and the uncountable trillions of us roiling
in the atmosphere. I had no shape, nothing like a shape, but you
could see me.
“I am called Hunger-For-Flesh.”
When you saw me robed in splendor, I took a form to please
your mind. I was human above the waist, though leprous and
impossibly obese. Below the waist my body dripped away, in milelong
trails of melting skin, like cheese. My mouths were open and
eager; my eyes were flat marbles with an imperfect reflection of the
sky.
You cried out when you saw me.
“I am called the Eater of Men,” I said, and wet tears stained
your face.
“I was the spider in the oubliette as well.”
You started to shake.
“Michael,” I said, “You’re here. You made it home.”
“The Thorp,” you choked, “I won, I destroyed the Thorp.”
“You lost,” I answered, “You lost, a long time ago. You
never escaped from the pressure of our embrace. We took you to us
on graduation day. And everything else- our hunt for you, your
flight- all of these things have been meaningless and false.”
Now I could see it- now, the edge of surrender. We had
created a world, an image of your own, with the same people and
- 475 -

the same nations; mere ghosts in your mind. A slow dream to
occupy you. A place to enjoy you, and temper you over time.
“You lie!” you said, “I’ve evaded you all these years. I
remember- the moment- I struggled with you… I fled…”
“No,” I told you, “We kept you, and you are mine.”
You dropped your head, and I watched you with eager
delight. In all this time I had failed to shape you, till now. I had
failed to make you like one of us, like a god. You had always kept a
part of you as your own. Now you lifted your head again.
“Then she didn’t- she didn’t even exist!”
I laughed, and you collapsed.
I swirled around you, letting you taste of my strength. All of
it, and none of it, could be yours. We have no names, because we
are not Legion. I have no name, because I am not One. In any sense
that you can understand, I don’t exist at all.
And in my Nothingness, I can only thrive when you are
gone.
You looked at me, and there was a hint of your old will to
fight in your eyes.
“You cannot keep me here. Now that I know, you’ll never
keep me here.”
“Michael,” I laughed, “You’ve said those words a thousand
times before!”
You cringed at my laughter, and your eyes were so close to
surrender.
“I remember nothing,” you said.
The End
- 476 -

About the Author
C.S. Thompson is a poet, writer and historical fencing instructor.
He is the author of the Noctiviganti series of dark fantasy novels,
and his collections of poetry include Ghost Shadows from Wildside
Press and City at the Edge of Night. In addition, he has written two
books on the art of the Highland Broadsword, including
Lannaireachd: Gaelic Swordsmanship and Highland Knife
Fighting. C. S. Thompson lives with his wife, Cicely, in Portland,
Maine. You can visit him online at:
http://www.noctiviganti.com
http://www.cateransociety.com/
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