Smoke and Stone

by Michael R. Fletcher

  Nuru pushed herself to her feet, anger propelling her forward. “This is wrong.”

  “There is no such thing as wrong.”

  “There is! And just because the nahual spill blood, it doesn’t mean we’re justified in doing the same.”

  Efra stepped close, scar stretched in a snarl. “Yes, it fucking does. This is a fight. This is a war, just like the nahual preach about. You don’t win a war by being meek and subservient and peaceful. You win a war by killing your enemy.” Nuru retreated and Efra followed. “The priests are our enemies. The Bankers, the Senators, the Crafters. They’re all our enemies. Look around you. See the way the Crafters live, how much better they have it. Food. Clothes. Tools. They even get to raise their own children!” Efra stopped, and swallowed, her eyes bright with rage and pain. “Everyone has it better than the Growers. Everyone. And they only have it good because we have it bad. When we try to change that, they will fight to stop us. All of them.” She gestured at the dead Crafter woman. “What is her life worth when held against the survival of the Growers? Would you sacrifice her to save Chisulo?”

  Nuru couldn’t answer. There had to be a limit. At some point the price was too high. Wasn’t it? “You don’t understand,” she said. “Power comes with a price.”

  “Oh, I understand,” said Efra, turning away and heading up the stairs. “The nahual have the power, the Growers pay the price. It’s time they paid.”

  Nuru followed her. Even here in the Crafters’ Ring the steps were worn shallow by the feet of thousands of generations.

  She’s too quick to violence, too sure of her reasons. Nuru’s own doubts weren’t gone, far from it. I have to control her. She’s dangerous. But Nuru needed her. What made Efra dangerous made her useful. No one else would have dared this mad dash into the Crafters’ Ring.

  Smoking Mirror chose her. There had to be a reason. Or was that it? What if the god chose her because she could kill without hesitation? What did that mean for what was to come? Did the god see a future where Efra’s willingness to violence was advantageous, where it was necessary?

  I can stop her from killing again. I’ll be ready.

  And maybe Efra was right, at least in part. Maybe war was the only way. After all, Nuru became a street sorcerer because she wanted power, because she wanted some shred of control. That Cloud Serpent nahualli wandered into the smoke-world she created for her friends and took over. She was nothing. He crushed her will, commanded her to be still, and she obeyed.

  Never again. The next time she met that priest, things would end differently.

  Maybe there was no such thing as wrong, just like Efra said. The pounding of the drums, the whip, fear of sacrifice, and the promise of being reborn closer to the gods in the next life. Maybe all these things were a means to an end: Control. Maybe teaching Growers of right and wrong was a way to get them to imprison themselves.

  What about Chisulo? They followed him, at least in part, because he had such a clear idea of what was right. He never bowed, never bent. You could trust him. If Efra is right, what does that make Chisulo? A fool? And what did that make Nuru and her friends for following him?

  I didn’t follow Chisulo here, I followed Efra.

  Here they were, in the Crafters’ Ring, where no Grower had ever gone before. Either it would change everything, or get them both killed.

  Bruised and beaten as Efra was, Nuru couldn’t imagine anything killing the girl.

  Back in the street, surrounded by bustling life, the murder felt unreal. A nightmare. Tremors of horror ran through Nuru and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to vomit or cry. It felt like the after-effects of badly blended narcotics. Her stomach twisted and the world seemed too bright, too crisp to be real.

  A man made to pass them, to enter the painter’s abode.

  Efra stopped him with a hand on his chest. “She’s busy,” she said.

  He glanced at the sun, high above. “An early lunch?”

  “Yes,” said Efra.

  After he wandered away, Nuru asked, “What’s lunch?”

  Efra shrugged, grabbed Nuru’s hand, and set off.

  Crafters, in their infinite shades of brown and orange, crammed the streets, hustling about their inexplicable business. She let it distract her. Anything was better than thinking about the people she helped kill.

  Allowing Efra to pull her through the streets, she saw an entire block of buildings with freshly slaughtered animals displayed in the windows. Hanging upside down, flesh and fur removed, they looked cold. The dead Crafter woman lying among her beautiful paints, she too would grow cold like this. Nuru imagined her hanging alongside the rabbits and goats.

  The buildings of the next street were all open to the air, lacked front walls of any kind. Huge wood tables sat in front of each. Lumps of pink and brown covered the tables, swarmed with fat green flies. A wagon with a squad of six disinterested looking Birds stood nearby. Crafters scooped stuff from the table, tossing it into the back of the wagon. A strangely familiar scent, sour and staining the back of her throat, reminded Nuru of meal time back in the crèche.

  She remembered finding a dead rabbit in the field she’d been assigned to work as a child. Nuru, Chisulo, Happy, Bomani, and Omari had already fallen in together, formed a tight-knit group. They skinned the little corpse, impaled it on a stick, and cooked it over an open fire. It was half burnt, and half raw when they ate it, and she would never forget the flavour. When the crèche nahual, snake spines woven into her hair and robes, caught them, Bomani took the blame. He said it was his idea, that he cooked it and bullied the others into eating it with him. The priest dragged the boy into the crèche courtyard and whipped him bloody before all the gathered children. Bomani lost consciousness before he made a sound. Not one whimper. When he woke, he grinned at his friends. Even at eight years old he was the craziest Grower she ever met.

  I’m going to cry again. “The flies are beautiful,” she said.

  Efra glanced at the tables. “That’s meat,” she said. “They’re loading a wagon to take it to the Growers.” She pointed out another area where Crafters carefully wrapped meat in brown paper. “That one is bound for the inner rings.”

  Huge roasts. Entire legs of lamb. Strips of strange meat, salted and left in the sun. Tubes of bright pink, joined together, made long chains. Nuru had never seen so many different kinds of meat before. Strips of chewy goat were all that ever made it to the Growers.

  A second group loaded each package into another wagon. They worked with exaggerated care. A single Bird loitered at this wagon, watching.

  At another building across the street, a Crafter woman approached one of the open tables. She handed something to the man at the table and pointed out a slab of red meat. The man wrapped it in the brown paper and gave it to her. She wandered off like it was nothing. No one stopped her. The Birds in the area didn’t even notice.

  I want meat. I want rabbit again.

  Efra pulled her into another street. A train of wagons, some loaded with brightly coloured fabrics, some bearing what looked like complete suits of Bird armour, rumbled past. Once again, a single Bird travelled with the wagon.

  They don’t fear the Crafters. She couldn’t imagine why not. The Growers had nothing, while the Crafters could make their own weapons and armour. Glancing around, she realized none of the Crafters were armed. None even carried the tools of their trade unless they were actively working on something. Were they not allowed to remove the tools from where they worked? Even here, she realized, there were subtle levels of control.

  The crèche nahual’s sermons on Bastion returned to her. One hundred and seventy thousand strides between the Sand Wall and the Grey Wall. Only fifty-six thousand strides lay between the Grey Wall and the Wall of Lords which separated the Crafters from the Senators’ Ring. Half expecting to see the Wall of Lords from here, she looked west. Heat hazed the distance, made it wobbly as if she’d eaten ameslari fungus. She saw nothing of the wall separating the Growers and the Senators. The
scale of Bastion made comprehension impossible.

  Turning away, Nuru studied the Crafters. Now that she paid attention, she saw the dashed looks of concealed hate and loathing as Bird-guarded wagons wended their way to the Senators’ Ring. The brightest fabrics. The choicest cuts of meat. Nuru understood. The Crafters made everything that fed and clothed all of Bastion, but the best of their efforts were taken inward.

  So dazzled by their myriad shades of orange and brown, she hadn’t considered why they didn’t wear other colours. Like us, they have no choice.

  They ate better. They had better clothes. They were, apparently, allowed to raise their own children, a concept so strange Nuru couldn’t wrap her head around it. They had access to tools, at least with permission from a priest and scrip—whatever that was. Though looking around, that permission was clearly given freely. And yet discontent simmered beneath the surface. She couldn’t understand why. They have so much more.

  The Crafters’ Ring seemed like a dream-world, a vision in a narcotic-induced hallucination. She wanted to grab one of the many fat, soft women, shake her, and scream, ‘You still have your baby!’

  She wanted to wreck it all, bring down the Grey Wall and show the Crafters how good they had it.

  That’s not me. I’m not like that.

  AKACHI – HE SPOKE IN DUST AND BONES

  Obsidian is a stone of souls. Each life an obsidian edge takes is trapped within. The souls are the smoke in the glass.

  Before a sacrificial dagger is bequeathed to a nahual, it must be brought to the Gods’ Ring to be exorcised of souls lest it become too stained with death. Upon the death of that priest, the dagger must once again make its journey to the gods to be cleansed.

  —The Book of Bastion

  Akachi stood in the grand hall of the Northern Cathedral. Pillars, ornate swirls of stone twisting like tortured snakes, reached up to support the arched ceiling fifty strides above. All part of Bastion. All part of that one flawless stone comprising the entire city. Row upon row of stone pews faced the grand altar at the head of the hall. Every day, thousands of nahual from every sect gathered here to listen to Bishop Zalika’s sermons. As an acolyte he’d often smuggled in a small cushion to sit on. While the awe of those early days was gone, murdered by the contempt of familiarity, he still felt some thrill at being here again. This hall was for the nahual. The only Growers who ever saw the inside of the Cathedral were those about to be sacrificed to the gods. He couldn’t remember how many live sacrifice lectures he’d sat through, the guilty party strapped to an altar in front of the class, gagged and restrained, while the nahual talked through the finer details of the art.

  Art. The memory of the Grower he sacrificed in his church, haunted him. The look in the man’s eyes as he realized he would not escape, that there would be no tomorrow. The way that looked changed as the blood drained away and the doors to Father Death’s underworld opened before him.

  A cold wind blew through Akachi’s robes, raising goosebumps. Turning, he saw a door at the far end of the hall that he didn’t remember.

  Not in the Northern Cathedral, he reminded himself.

  ‘The dream world has its own logic,’ one of his teachers once said. ‘You must listen. What you see is not what is. The truth often lies buried in symbolism.’

  Approaching the door, he saw stairs spiralling down into darkness.

  The scarred girl isn’t down there. She couldn’t be. They were a day’s walk from the Wheat District. Why had his allies in the smoke brought him here? Was there something Cloud Serpent wanted him to see, or were other forces at work? What if a Loa sorcerer had penetrated Akachi’s dream? This could be a trap.

  What if the trap is one of your own creation? What if you’ve been betrayed by your own thoughts and the influence of the stone of self-destruction?

  No. The amethyst was powerless without Mother Death’s influence and she remained beyond the Sand Wall as she had for a tens of thousands of years.

  You don’t believe that. The Loa assassin had power.

  Come, the door seemed to tease, or are you a coward?

  Akachi descended the steps, down, down.

  Hours passed.

  Ever deeper.

  Days.

  The air grew cold and Akachi huddled in his robes.

  Hunger and thirst came and passed.

  Years.

  The flesh melted from him, decaying and peeling away to expose the muscle below. That muscle rotted and ran off him in vile white streams of putrescence. His eyes dried up and fell from their sockets like raisins. His brain putrefied and leaked from his skull, and still he descended deeper.

  Centuries.

  By the time he reached the first floor, he was bone, a skeleton held together by gristle and a fraying will power. Though he had no eyes he saw the world in a smear of grey. Though he had no ears he heard the hollow tock tock of his bone feet on stone.

  A colossal chamber opened before him. Hundreds of lit torches lined the walls, giving off a harsh white light. Tens of thousands of statues stood scattered chaotically about the room. Those closest to him were crisp and detailed, the work of masterful artistry. Those further away became crude, the work of savages and madmen. Some he recognized. Smoking Mirror, a twelve-foot-tall monolith of jagged obsidian. The coiled rattlesnake statue of Feathered Serpent stood three times Akachi’s height, feathers cresting its rearing head. Southern Hummingbird, constructed of many types of stone somehow fused together, showed a warrior decorated in bright green jade feathers wielding a curved snake like a weapon and clutching an obsidian mirror in his other hand. It looked like it might suddenly burst into action.

  Akachi wended his way through the statues, brushing stone with bone fingers, as he passed. With each contact he felt a dizzying flash and saw the gods as they were, ancient and selfish, wrapped in jealousy. They craved worship, begged for his attention. He continued deeper into the chamber.

  He walked for days, touching statues and dreaming their forgotten pasts.

  He saw the statue of a bearded man with black hair whose name was something like Lord of Ghosts and who claimed to be the Father of Gods. Having heard so many similar claims, Akachi moved on.

  A two-sided statue, a beautiful woman on one side, the other a terrible monster, she wore snake scales like a tight-fitting dress. She was ancient, gave birth to monsters and gods.

  The King of Gods. The Mother of Gods. She Who Birthed the World. A thousand gods, a thousand grand claims.

  Some gods were horrors, tentacled and insane, nightmares carved in stone. Most were men and women. Many could have walked the streets of Bastion without drawing attention beyond their strange garb.

  They made us in their image.

  And yet a thousand gods claimed to have made man. They couldn’t all speak truth.

  Over and over he saw the same gods, twisted, changed in some way, but sharing aspects of others he’d seen. Sometimes they had more or less less limbs or eyes. Sometimes crows rode their shoulders or hawks. Sometimes wolves followed along behind them, sometimes jaguars or bears. Yet they always shared features, boasted the same achievements.

  And there, at the far end of the Hall of Gods, standing before a set of stairs descending even deeper, was the last god, carved in red and black hematite.

  Akachi approached, reached tentative fingers of bone toward her.

  Chandraghanta. Ambika. Kālikā. The Fullnes of Time. Sekhmet. Kālarātri.

  The Destroyer.

  She Who Ends the Universe so it May Be Reborn.

  Mother Death.

  She was beyond beautiful. Blue-black skin and eyes of midnight, each with a star trapped within. Sometimes she had four arms, sometimes as many as ten. He couldn’t focus, couldn’t make her be one thing. But she was always voluptuous, always curved and proud.

  She looks no older than I.

  Akachi’s thoughts reeled. What was this place? What did it mean?

  Some of these gods he knew. Others he recognized as bein
g trapped beyond the Sand Wall, demons haunting the Bloody Desert. Yet each time he touched a statue, he knew something of them. Did that mean some aspect of each god still resided within Bastion? Was this how the Loa assassin was able to use crystal magic?

  This is the dream world. I’m not in Bastion. Not really.

  Was Mother Death guarding the stairs?

  No, that felt wrong. Had she been placed there as a mockery?

  Mother Death seemed to wink at him as he moved beyond her to the waiting stairs.

  Akachi descended deeper.

  Forever down. Deeper into the rank guts of a dead world.

  Thought became anathema to existence.

  Contemplation eroded sanity.

  Empty.

  One calcifying bone foot in front of the other. Ever down.

  Akachi stood blinking at a purple sun for years before some semblance of self returned.

  This is the underworld, the land of the dead.

  He’d descended into Father Death’s domain.

  He remembered when he first came to the Northern Cathedral, how he’d half believed The Lord and all his lands existed beneath the great church.

  Standing atop a hill, a scene of unspeakable war greeted him.

  Millions upon millions of dead fought, seething against each other in colossal armies. Mountains roared across the twisted landscape, crashing into each other like warring elephants. Rivers of blood, thick with corpses both fresh and decayed, swept past. Prides of black jaguars prowled the landscape, bringing down their prey. They dragged the corpses to the shores to be tossed in the red rivers. A searing wind whipped shards of obsidian in flesh-shredding tornadoes, flaying the dead. A cacophony of screams struck Akachi with concussive force, staggering him.