Raven raised his hand, fighting to summon up the calm that would summon his powers. The wolf head snarled. The creature raised his flintlock and fired, running forward at full speed down the steep slope. There was a flash in the pan and a stench of gunpowder, but the weapon failed to fire.
Sparks crawled around Raven’s fingertips, but he lost his nerve and was jolted by an electric shock, thrown from his feet.
Two vast bat wings spread out from the selkie’s back and he launched himself into the air on wings of membrane.
It was the strange wonder of the sight that saved Raven. He was so startled by the appearance, by the selkie being able to use the coat from the bat-skin in this size, that he forgot his fear.
It was as the monster fell down on him, slashing with cutlass and snapping with wolf teeth, that Raven thought of Galen and, face calm, slapped his hands together.
At his hand clap came a noise louder than any noise on Earth, and the selkie diving down on him was unconscious as he plunged into Raven. The two of them rolled in the dirt.
III
The selkie regained his senses, blinking through the dizziness clouding his vision. He saw Raven, standing with his back to the charred remnant of a snaky body, pointing behind himself, eyes closed.
One lightning bolt after another snapped between his finger and the dead strand of smoking meat. The air smelled of ozone.
“’Tis tight dead, shipmate!” shouted the selkie. “Ye can leave be, now! But the whole force of Uhnuman heard that racket ye made to blow me down. They be a-coming, for sure. Now give me back me coat! I feel a right fool, a seal in a desert!” And he flapped his flippers against the sand and rock chips.
Raven opened his eyes. He had the several selkiecoats tied at his belt. He looked up at the selkie. “So! This Oberon fellow, he has no beard after all, eh?”
“Ye think of that fine phrase to say while ye were skulking after me? Sounded a mite rehearsed.”
“You are very big for seal. Look more like whale. Fine color, too! You are albino, white as snow. Make fine coat for many ladies, or perhaps one big fat lady.”
“The fat ones will be here, aye, too soon for my liking! Great, stinking, fat, blind things they be, with nasty beasties serving them. You killed one basilisk; good for ye. Six thousand more be coming! Give me my coat!”
Raven took the goat-skin and threw it up into the air. He pointed; a lance of blue-white flame destroyed the coat.
The selkie cried out in horror and pain. “Oh no! No! No!” Raven took out another coat; this one white, man-skin.
The selkie said, “Not that one, Master, I beg ye! Take any other coat of mine, take everything, but not that one! My life is in it! Me whole life!”
Raven paused, his arm drawn back, ready to throw the coat up. “Explain.”
“That is the face and form of the Keeper of the King’s Falcon, a high officer at court! I came upon it by merest accident, and shan’t never find another like it, not in a million years! The beautiful people live at court, handsome, fine, and rich! Ye don’t understand! As soon as I found out more about the man, I was going to go back and issue a bill of divorce! A bill of divorce, don’t ye see?”
“Tell me.”
“My wife ran off with another man and left some trollop she hired behind to take her place. Gave up her best coat, too, to do it! I been searching for my wife for years! For years! Watching all the women at court, and any man who seemed too effete and dainty, if ye catch me drift. But I found her! The Countess of Noatun be she, I’m sure! But I can’t have her back unless I can divorce her from the Count, and only a member of the Inner Court can write a bill like that! Pity, Master! Pity! It’s all my dreams ye be holding in yer hand!”
“Pity? Don’t you have to kill a man, flay him, in order to become a selkie in the first place?”
“Please …”
“Is there a single member of your race who is not a murderer?”
“Arrrgh! ’Tis true. But even murderers have dreams! I’m begging ye, sir … and I’ll help ye find your wife if ye’ll let me have a chance at finding mine. Spare that coat!”
Raven hefted the coat in his hand.
“Garn! Me Lord, ye ain’t got too long to calculate about it! The Eech-Uisge be coming across the plain! Them and all their rout of monsters! At a hundred paces they can hear a mosquito what clears its tiny throat to spit!”
“Tell me how to trust you, liar of lying race? You see how weak a thing a selkie is. Once a man knows you, once he knows truth, he will not hand you his trust. You must ask me to hand you the very weapon, my trust, you use to hurt me.”
“Keep the coat. Give it back when we’re done.”
“Very well. Here is wolf-skin. You can find scent?” Raven threw the wolf-coat toward him. The selkie reached down, picked up a tuck of the fur in his teeth, and shrugged his head to throw the coat across his shoulder. He twisted and shrank, and a wolf stood there.
The wolf spoke in a breathy, growling voice, “Galen Amadeus Waylock of the High House of Everness? Find his scent? Ye don’t know who ye speak of or ye would not ask!
“’Twas he who slew the seven-headed troll of the House of Capricorn, found the hidden heart of the Land Beyond the Northern Wind, and drove the nightmares out of Tir-na-Nog’th with a drop of water from the Well at the World’s End. ’Twas he who healed the Hermit Prince, and found the drowned lands of Lemuria, not to mention taught the Bird of Fire how to sing again when she had lost her song. Nar! He is a Great Dreamer, that one is, and they’ve carved a palace for him atop the forbidden mountain of Kadath in the Cold Waste, when his time comes.
“Think I can’t find one such as he? A living man, with the Blood of Everness in his veins, Wizard’s blood and fairy-blood and blood of English kings! Can’t smell that, here among the meepers and mewlers the Eech-Uisge use to fuel their nightmares? Ha! Be like looking for a prince among swineherds. A bonfire next to candles! He can call the unicorn down from behind the shoulder of Orion, that one can; and if they’re smart, they won’t let him kiss his shadow!”
At that moment, a hoard of cockatrices and nagasnakes came slithering over the crest of the rise, and a flock of grotesque birds like ostriches with plumes of sharpened bronze and faces of hags.
Raven calmly turned, calmly closed his eyes, and calmly clapped his hands. A dozen bolts of white-hot lightning spurted from between his fingers and a cannonade of noise too loud for senses to tolerate shook the heavens.
IV
For Raven, there followed a nightmarish period of groping through the battlefield, blindfolded, climbing over and around the fallen and thunderstruck monstrosities and fell beasts of Uhnuman. His hands touched slimy serpent scales, knife-sharp harpy plumage, and the bloated, leprous flesh of some disgusting creature that seemed composed of diseased wads of flab.
In one hand Raven held the pelt of the selkie-wolf, who led him; at the selkie’s request, Raven had put the cap of the bat-skin over his head so that the selkie was now a chimera with the body of a wolf and the head of a bat. Every now and again, Raven’s sharp ears felt a painful throb, and he guessed the selkie was using his echolocation.
Legion after legion they passed. Then came a long time of walking through a plain of dusty rock. The stink of rotten blood grew stronger and stronger until Raven’s nose grew almost numb.
Then the surface underfoot turned to riveted metal planks. The wolf said, “Look now. I think ’tis clear.”
Raven was afraid. He remembered the look of fear carven forever on the face of a statue now sunk in the sea.
The wolf said, “In the pockets of my courtier’s coat, you might find a small mirror.”
Raven’s fingers found a round, smooth glass in the cloth folded at his belt. Now he looked.
The street in which they stood was lined on both sides by gibbets from which corpses dangled. The buildings to either side were windowless, squat, iron blocks. Their massive doors and portals were closed shut, so that the whole street was as if i
t were a metal canyon. There were no decorations nor signs in this ugly city of blank metal, except for hand-high railings along the sides of the streets, cut with angular basreliefs, some sort of crude cuneiform, worn smooth by centuries of finger-touch.
The wolf trotted down the street, sniffing, his eyes shut, his bat ears quivering. “This way!”
There were barred gates hanging open at each crossroads, with lines of heads on spikes above, mummified by the lunar air. The next street was lined on both sides with starvation-cages, and the one beyond that was lined with impaling screws.
They turned again, passed a gate hung with severed hands. In the near distance was the central dome. The archstone of the main gates had the head of a medusa hanging from it, with hair of snakes and eyes of viper-hate.
Even the shadow of the medusa in the mirror was almost too much for Raven; there was a stinging pain in his eyes, and he felt faint. He had to bow and clutch his stomach, struggling not to retch. Raven wondered what it would be like to see the thing with naked eye and was not surprised that creatures turned to stone.
When he recovered, they crossed over a moat filled with blood into the shadow of the central dome.
Suddenly, the gates opened with a hiss of pent air. Raven saw they were thicker than bank-vault doors. Within was a passageway wider than a street, leading back into darkness. A sound, as of many people softly sobbing or moaning, issued forth. Then gates behind them, one at each crossroad, swung silently shut, making each street a series of cages.
From overhead, aqueducts carrying poisonous and vile liquids began opening their floodgates, and sending rains of venom into the locked streets. Before the first sprinkles of stinking poison ever reached the street they were in, Raven’s whirlwinds had shattered and overthrown the legs of aqueducts, and the vast structures collapsed all across the city, crushing buildings and towers.
Out from the main gates of the dome came a swarm of cock-headed snakes, their each glance petrifying and deadly.
Waddling behind them were the rulers of this horrible city of pain. The Eech-Uisge were fat, nude things of obscene obesity, their empty eyesockets filled with pus or scars. In their fat hands, they held long rods of iron with which they felt their way, and with these rods they herded the cockatrices before them.
The bloated, pale men formed a line from one side of the street to the other, holding hands and linking arms.
Raven raised his hand but paused. If he destroyed this troop, those within would merely close the gates.
He threw pebbles among the basilisks, so that they all hissed, not just those that had seen him. The Eech-Uisge swung their great heads from side to side, waiting for some clear signal from the serpent-monsters.
Raven put the bat-skin around the shoulders of the wolf and gestured for the selkie to don it. The bat fluttered as Raven put in his pocket. Taking an iron rod from a nearby gibbet, Raven used it to thrust away the snakes he saw in his mirror.
Then he moved with all the stealth he possessed, guided by the little mirror held before his face, stepping between snakes, till he was right before the advancing line of Eech-Uisge.
He snapped his fingers between two of them. They both raised heavy lanterns and worked a lever. Raven silently moved aside. Beams of molten metal spurted from the machines; two of the Eech-Uisge were splashed with white-hot iron and fell, gasping, screaming, burning.
Raven stepped over the burning corpses and to one side, ducking below or hopping above the iron rods the neighboring Eech-Uisge swept through the area. It took a moment of confusion for the Eech-Uisge to reform their line.
One of the Eech-Uisge uttered a hiss. All the cockatrices fell silent.
Raven, within arm’s length of the monsters, stood still, silent, motionless.
Their blind heads turned from side to side, their ugly nostrils wrinkling.
A shattered segment of a destroyed aqueduct chose that moment to lean away from its supports and clatter to the ground.
The line began to march in step in that direction, driving the basilisks before them, leaving Raven behind.
The gates before him were open; but it required all of Raven’s skill to move in between the pair of ungainly mole-eyed gargoyles crouched on pedestals to either side of the gate. Their huge, misshapen ears were cocked, and they flailed the air between them with their canes at any slightest noise.
Within, all was dark. This place had no lamps, no windows. Raven heard heavy footsteps on the metal floor. Where he heard movement, he crept carefully around.
Guiding himself by touch, he went deeper into the structure, down a flight of stairs.
At one point he heard low sobs. At another, a strong odor told him there was a living being nearby, something that moved in utter silence. Raven stood motionless till the odor faded.
Now he drew the bat from his pocket. He felt it ripple under his hands and grow into a wolf. The wolf nose nuzzled him, urging him toward a certain direction. He followed.
Once he heard a steady dripping. Another time he heard a voice begging to be let out, then a solid clangor as if a heavy weight had been dropped into place.
There was a point where the echoes of distant screaming told him he walked through a vast space. Then, a movement of air told him he walked on an unrailed bridge. He heard the throbbing murmur of some unknown machinery, the groaning of wheels, the rattle of chains. The wolf led him into a narrow place where he was forced to go on hands and knees, shuddering from the touch of wet things growing on the walls.
The wolf started. Raven felt with his hands, found an opening in the floor, stairs steep as a ladder leading downward. He heard a gargled cough from below. The noise, distorted and horrid as it was, nonetheless sounded human.
The sensation that he was being watched overtook him. Raven stood there on the stairs, shuddering for a moment in the darkness. It took him a long moment to regain his calm. He twisted his fingers tightly in the mane of the wolf, who led him warily down the stairs.
The wolf stopped and would go no farther. Raven wondered whether that meant the selkie had found Galen’s cell or scented an enemy ahead. He had no choice but to look. Raven touched the heavy gold ring he wore, concentrated his thought, grew calm, and when he raised his hand, he held a dazzling ball of Saint Elmo’s Fire, dripping sparks and shivering between his fingers.
The light twinkled on gold and crystal and on the bulks of pallid flesh that loomed to each side.
The carpeting was rich and luxurious, and carven ornaments of gold and spun glass lined the walls, hung with panels of polished wood or drapes of finest silk.
One of the obese monstrosities turned toward him and a sticky, sucking sound came with its horrible, slow movement. When it opened its drooling mouth, Raven winced at the stench that came from the white throat, the black stumps of teeth. The thing’s eye sockets were gaping wounds, dripping strands of corruption across its flabby cheeks.
“Intruder, we can smell you, hear your breath. Why do you disturb our delicate meditations? Now you must join us; we intend to dine …”
An arm hung with layers and rolls of fat raised and pointed. Highlights glinted off the crystal and silver with which the banquet table was appointed, the tall candlesticks, fragile glass vases, and hanging thuribles of perfume. The light also glinted from the chains and shackles coiled atop the centerpiece, which was a box of sharpened steel slats shaped like a coffin.
Arms stronger than any human arms caught Raven suddenly from behind, pinning his own. Beneath the gelatinous folds of fat sagging from those arms were muscles harder than steel bars. Raven’s strength was like an infant’s compared to this inhuman might.
Raven’s fist, pinned against his side, still tightened on the wolf’s mane, who pulled and snapped, but could not escape Raven’s grip.
The wolf twisted his head around and touched his teeth to his shoulder; and Raven found himself holding nothing but a long wolf-pelt. A bat, wings flopping energetically, fluttered up the stairs and was gone.
The floor trembled almost imperceptibly, and a thundering murmur rolled down from far, far overhead. There was rain and wild wind suddenly above, and rolling thunder, but Raven was below, behind vast and airtight doors, where weather could not reach. And he was afraid.
Raven heard the voice of Tempestos, the Storm Prince, in his imagination, calling, “Brothers, heed! Once fear and anger shake his soul, the Raven’s spell t is gone away, him we slay, and take the ring withal!”
One of the blind creatures picked up a length of chain with pudgy fingers; another began to heat a rack of jagged knives and iron forks over black coals from which a terrible heat radiated, but no light.
A deep, bass voice rumbled, “Our guest must suffer pain on pain ’til he be cured. Ready the eye-spoons and castration scissors! Sharpen the amputation scalpels, and ready needles to sew his wounds and orifices tightly shut! We will feast on arms and legs and other outward parts, and pare away his shrieking flesh till only purity remains, a living mass without distraction or sensation. A life of contemplation is best.”
Raven got his feet against the table’s edge and, straining with his whole strength, kept his captor for a moment from hauling him toward the iron box. The monster was infinitely stronger than he, but pushed at a weak angle, not seeing what was in the way.
A pockmarked lumpish body, bloated and babyish with fat, pushed its eyeless face toward Raven, and two strands of filth dangled from its nostrils. “Join our holy order, mortal man! We are the eremites of Uhnuman, the handsome Eech-Uisge! Our strength is Herculean, and our beauty and grace exceeds that of Adonis!”
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