The Lord of the Black Land (Unwithering Realm Book 3)

by John C. Wright

  The Blemmyae spoke a few booming words in his chest-language. Qall said, “He says it is nature. Things must be as they must be. It is law.”

  “Tell him there is a nature above nature, and a law above law. Tell him the wickedness of the Dark Tower shall also be punished, and most terribly, and at a time as unforeseen as all that has happened to him this day.”

  The Blemmyae stared at me and got a weird look on his chest, like he’d seen a ghost.

  I said, “Tell him nothing gives the Dark Tower the right to enslave us, no matter what we have done. Ask him if he is proud of his ancestors defying the gods? If he is proud, ask him if he will defy the Dark Tower? Or if he is ashamed, shall he atone for it?”

  Qall translated the comment. The Blemmyae stood up at that point, and I stood up too. We were about eye level with each other, which meant his shoulders were as tall as the lintel of a door to me, and the slab of his body was as broad. But I stared him in the pectorals, and did not blink.

  “He says no one can defy the Dark Tower. No one escapes the gaze of the stargazers. They know all things.”

  I did not answer that, but merely smiled and spread my hands, gesturing to the empty and unpolice-filled, jailor-less, and soldier-free area around us with a gesture like Vanna White showing off a newly-purchased vowel.

  The oversized chest-eyes of the Blemmyae turned left and right, roving over the walls of the chamber. A look of doubt began to wrinkle his stomach.

  3. Rings in the Still Water

  I pressed on. “Tell him I was rescued by a foreverborn, and I stand in the shadow of a deed the stars cannot see. If ever I do evil, I will step out of that shadow, and be seen again, and the Astrologers will know my deeds and doings. But if I do what is right, even if what is right seems insane, then no one can predict how it will turn out.

  “Now I have freed him and he is in my shadow.

  “I predict he wants to kill me and eat me, because he blames me for being here. If I can predict that, what can the Astrologers do? For him to forgive me would be a good thing, and insane, and unpredictable.

  “When a pebble strikes a pool, the rings go out, larger and larger. If he frees others, and they do only what is right, and don’t give in to their natural and darker impulses, the ripple of freedom will produce more ripples. The earthquake that will topple this Tower will start with a ripple as small as a pebble makes.

  “Even without becoming foreverborn himself, tell him that he can do good, and hide from the stars in the shadow I cast, as I am hidden by a greater shadow cast by she who rescued me; as he must henceforth do to others.

  “Can you translate all that to him?” I finished.

  “Say it all again, slowly, master,” said Qall. There was a note of awe in his voice.

  And as he repeated what I had said, something dark and angry and hopeless very slowly, as if it left one drop at a time, fell away from the huge and slablike face of the Blemmyae, and did not return.

  4. First Good Deed

  The monster stood looking very thoughtful. For the first time, I realized that he had no visible ears.

  I saw him turn his gaze—and he had to rotate his whole body to turn his gaze—toward the poor Abarimon, who was still lying in a lump, dull-eyed, like a puppet with his strings cut, without even the spirit needed to climb to his backward-pointing feet and get out of here.

  The monster put his hands on my shoulders and boomed out a word or two, so loudly I could feel his hot breath against my midriff.

  Qall said, “He says he will come with you.”

  “No, no!” I said. “He’s not coming with me! Whatever gave him that idea?”

  “He knows where you are going, and you are like a helpless child in this world, who cannot tell his food-eating hand from his anus-wiping hand. It will be his first unexpected good deed!”

  “Gnu? Duh? Who?”

  “He sees from the look on your skullbag that the deed is unforeseen.”

  “Tell him thanks but no thanks…”

  But Qall raised his voice and talked over me. “I wish the both of you luck on your journey, sir and master. May the stars shine brightly on your fate! Or—well I suppose I am not to say that any more … Fare you well! May your strange gods, whatever they are, who can blind the stars grant you your desired death, or whatever strange blessings you seek!”

  “Qall! Get back here! The monster has to go with you, to the gypsies and freedom or wherever!”

  “You cannot be killed by being eaten, master, but I can. His mood will wear thin.”

  “But—but— But I cannot talk to him!”

  Even though his feet were on frontwise, and he was not as fast as a jaguar, Qall got out of the jail chamber pretty fast.

  I would have followed him, but right at that moment, Kaqqudu Nakasu the headless man dropped his catcher’s mitt-sized hand from my shoulder to my palm, where I was still holding the cylinder seal, twisted my thumb with a finger the size of a bratwurst, and snatched up the little brass tube.

  He lumbered in four huge steps carefully (it was not easy walking on top of half-buried barrels) over to the wall, pushed the cylinder seal into a decoration, twisted it, and opened a secret panel, a different one from the one Qall and I had entered by.

  Kaqqudu Nakasu bowed slightly from the waist, which narrowed his mouth into a sardonic line thinner than a leather belt, raised one collarbone in much the same way Spock would raise an eyebrow, and pointed toward the opening with his ungainly arm. He raised his arm high enough that I saw a small hole just below his armpit, which I realized must be his ear.

  He snorted something in whale-noise at me. The secret panel through which Qall had scampered away was closed, and I could not open it without the cylinder seal, and I could not get that without wrestling the monster.

  I stepped into the narrow opening, but hesitated on the threshold, and looked back.

  There were two normal, undisguised doors into this jail chamber, one of which was hanging wide open.

  I looked one last time at the Abarimon, and spoke to him. But it does not matter what I said, because he did not understand me, and was not listening anyway.

  Nakasu slid the panel shut, and it was like seeing a coffin lid close.

  5. Walking Blind

  It took us hours to climb the stairs. You would think going down flights of stairs, even if it were a distance thrice that of the Empire State Building from observation deck to subbasement, could not take so long? Well, try walking in the dark.

  Kaqqudu Nakasu the Blemmyae could see just fine, with his eyes bigger than softballs and glittering like a cat’s, but when I groped around for one of those magic lampwood sticks to light up, he slapped it roughly from my hand, and hooted at me in dolphin-snort.

  If he spoke French or Spanish or some other language where your tone goes up at the end to indicate a question, or gets loud to indicate an exclamation point, then maybe I would have been able to tell from his tone of voice what he meant. As it was, I could hear the creak of his rhino-like hide as he made pantomime gestures toward me in the darkness, I did my best to convey to him by means of gestures that I could not see what he was doing.

  He put his huge meaty hand over the lower half of my face at one point, and made a hiccupping noise. Was a hiccup from him the same as a shush or a hiss? Or was it something else?

  Sometimes we would stop, as if there was some sort of stop sign here that only he saw. We would wait, sometimes fifteen minutes (one rosary) sometimes an hour (four). I am telling you, if you do not count the time when you are trapped in the dark with no noise with a man-eating Blemmyae who smells a bit like elephant, you are going to go crazy. Crazier. Okay, I admit, it probably does not happen very often, but just in case, take a Braille wristwatch along.

  So we were sneaking. I got the concept.

  What we were hiding from, that I cannot tell you. Maybe there were invisible radar beams or motion sensors sweeping through the staircase like searchlights, which he could sense and I could
not.

  Or maybe he just had a weird, headless-monster sort of sense of humor.

  But he was as good as his non-word. Eventually, he slid open a panel, allowing a blinding sliver of light to enter.

  6. The Doors of the South Southwest

  I blinked, and saw a corridor decorated in dazzling gold and paved with blocks of onyx, and two man-headed bulls with eagle wings and scorpion tails loomed at the far end, statues taller than three-story buildings.

  Beneath the winged bulls, in a double line facing each other, were man-sized eagle-headed statues cast of gold and black, each holding a realistic-looking pike.

  Between them was a golden door two stories tall, inscribed with an eighteen-pointed star and surrounded by seven rings gem-encrusted in seven different hues: pearl and emerald and silver-white diamond, ruby bright as sunrise, purple amethyst, blue sapphire, and outermost, black onyx.

  Above the door was a circular window above a balcony overhanging the lintel. Whatever was beyond was brightly lit with fluttering yellow light, and I could see onyx columns upholding a vast blazing vault of lampwood that shone like the sun behind clouds, but no noise came through the oriel window.

  Now, I should mention that being cooped up in a narrow staircase for an hour or three with an oversized hippo-legged man-eating monster is no fun, especially if he has bad breath coming from a mouth the size of a radiator grill on a small foreign car, not to mention a weird smell to his skin, a mixture of hay and dried blood. And in the dark, smells smell stronger. So I really wanted to get away from him, and his armpits, which were just above my nose, height-wise.

  Also, I wanted my cylinder seal back. Knack had of course used it to open the panel, and it was going to protrude from the other side.

  I reached around the panel and took the seal in my hand. Knack grabbed me by the shoulder, and started to yank me backward.

  I must have not filled my union-mandated daily quota of total stupidity, because instead of letting the hometown guy with super acute eyeballs the size of softballs drag me back to safety, I looked around with my eyeballs the size of grapes, and, seeing nothing, jerked myself forward, saying loudly, “Whatsamatter, stinky? No one’s around here.”

  I jerked myself forcefully enough to pull my shoulder out of his surprised fingers, and did a pratfall on the slick gold of the marble floor, and the three-armed flail hit a metal floorpanel with a noise like a church bell bouncing across the deck of an aircraft carrier. While a jet was taking off.

  And all the eagle-headed statues turned their heads in unison in a metallic rustle of coif mail and stared at me.

  I suddenly realized that these were not statues at all. They were men in armor. Fighting men. And there were a lot of them.

  The Nine-Star-Aligned Chamber

  1. Eagles and Peacock

  From my location on the floor, looking up at the moving statues that turned out to be not statues at all, but soldiers armed with pike and harquebus, I got a long and lingering look at their get-up. Each wore a winged salet with a bevor shaped like an eagle beak, golden shoulderboards elongated and enameled and carved like feathers, a scaled cuirass inset with opals and dark starbursts, and gold- and black- and silver-encrusted gauntlets, and spaulders, vambraces and pauldrons, tassets and skirt, cuisses, poleyns, greaves, and sabatons, each piece fretted with a border of black admantium or shining copper or other living metals. (And if you don’t know what a salet or bevor is, you don’t spend enough time at Renaissance Faires or with the SCA.)

  Nakasu groaned a belly groan of disgust and started to slide the secret panel shut. To my great delight and surprise, he was on this side of it. He had not run.

  One of the eagle-masked soldiers shouted, “Officer of the Watch!”

  A man in armor like theirs, but more elaborate, with the head of a peacock for his mask and the most enormous half-circular headdress enameled in the pattern of colored feathers reaching from shoulder to shoulder like a rainbow of bad taste, came strolling very slowly into view from behind a pillar. “What is it, Decurion? The next disturbance scheduled is for the thirteenth hour, when the Panotii will arrive because of the calling … what’s this?”

  The eagle-masked sergeant said, “Unauthorized and unexpected use of a desecrated passage, sir!”

  Peacock mask nodded in a rustle of metallic feathers, and the soldier barked out an order. Neatly as a clockwork mechanism, soldiers in their outrageously overdecorated gold armor wheeled right and left and formed a double line blocking the enormous golden door with its eighteen-pointed star.

  I was sitting on my buttocks. Marble is both hard and slippery. “I was sent here by Sergeant Sakrumash to deliver this artifact of power to Lord Ersu. I bear his seal to show I come in his name. Here is his seal!” I held up the little cylinder that was still in my fingers.

  All the men laughed. I don’t know what part of the fib they thought was unbelievable, but it was something as painfully obvious to them as butt ache.

  Eagle mask shouted, “Acolyte! Secure that portal!”

  I did not see which one of them was the acolyte, but someone must have done some hoodoo, because there was a soft thud from behind, and I glanced back and saw that clamps made of the black living metal had folded out of the walls and gripped the secret panel on four sides. One clamp was covering the spot where the cylinder seal was supposed to go.

  That did not look good.

  Peacock mask said to me, “Oho! So the Crown sends outlandish clowns down Star stairs fated not to be cleansed of pollution until three decades hence? Surely you concocted a more feasible tale?”

  “Pizza delivery!” I shouted. “Who ordered the butt-whoop special, extra cheese?”

  Peacock mask drew back, “What?”

  “Landshark!” I shouted.

  Nakasu walked up next to me, picked me up (which he could do without bending over, since his arms hung apelike past his knees) set me on my feet.

  I started to draw the curved shortsword I had looted from Sergeant Crowmeat, but Nakasu grunted and handed me the flail. He pointed to two of the ruby rings on the hilt, hooted at me softly, made a gesture with his hand, pantomiming a half-turn on one, a full turn on the other.

  I could not open the pouch one-handed, so I stuck the cylinder seal between my lips like a cigar butt and started to twist the flail hilt rings as instructed, but Nakasu made a shushing gesture with his huge, meaty hand, one of those calm down — wait for it sort of hand-motions.

  He took a large step away from me. I nodded (a gesture that made him hunch his shoulders in amusement) because I understood. Nakasu was showing me how to open the twilight leak, an effect poisonous to everyone but me.

  Without a hand free, I spat the cylinder seal into the cheek of the hood I wore, and then bucked my head like a horse to knock the hood backward. I felt the heavy metal slug of the seal fall down into the pointy part of the hood hanging halfway down my spine. I was pretty sure it would not fall out of that impromptu pocket.

  Peacock mask sighed a sigh of exasperation, turned to his men, and barked out: “Unexpected event. Bugler, sound quarantine. Scorpios, fall out and secure the main doors; Virgos, fall out and secure the stairwells and waystations for the quadrant.”

  Two squads of a dozen men each trotted past us and went their way. I nodded and waved genially while they double-timed it past me. Nakasu stood glowering, arms folded across his face, eyes above his elbows and haughty sneer below.

  I should explain that the corridor here was laid out like a giant letter Y. The secret door was at the fork, and the giant doors at the stem. Two lesser doors, which were brass inset with lustrous blue lapis lazuli in shapes of rain clouds and sea waves, were set at the end of either arm, leading to further spaces beyond. These brass doors were only a story-and-a-half tall.

  One squad of eagle-masked soldiers went down a huge gold-decorated corridor to the right, and the other went down a huge gold-decorated corridor to the left. They passed through the smaller brass doors. The echoes of
their receding footfalls diminished.

  Peacock mask turned toward us and raised a hand. “You there! Unexpected and disorderly! Give me use-name, house, your birthdate and hour!”

  I said, “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

  “What?”

  “A Yankee Doodle! Do or Die! I’m a real live nephew of my Uncle Sam, born on the Fourth of July!”

  “Silence, lunatic! And what of you, Blemmyae? Your date and hour?”

  Nakasu cracked his knuckles, and spat the most impressive glob of spit I have ever seen—an Olympic gold medal wad of spit, a pint at least—onto the floor.

  Peacock mask said, “I don’t see a slavemark on either of you! Come now. You are freeborn! We all serve the Tower. You are caught in a mire; thrashing about will only suck you deeper.”

  I counted. There were twelve men left. I felt a strange feeling began to swell in me and I started to grin.

  You see, I could be dismembered, even decapitated, but I could not be killed. And Nakasu was an honest-to-Saint-George monster. I was beginning to think these dudes did not know who they were up against, and that maybe we stood a chance.

  Peacock said, “Tell me your birth signs, loyal subjects of the Dark Tower! Putting fate back on course is not what you’ve heard in the public house tales! No pain is involved, no punishment. We are not going to kill you.”

  There was enough of a suppressed snort from enough men in masks at this announcement that I knew it was false, and knew that the soldiers did not give a darn if I knew. It was not a pleasant feeling.

  Nakasu grunted. The sardonic look on his chest was visible from across the room: he did not believe the officer.

  I said to Nakasu in a soft voice, “I know you cannot understand me, but you understood what he just said. We cannot surrender and there is nowhere to run. So, you in the mood for a fight? I think we can take ’em!”