City of Miracles

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  The passageway goes dark. The screams are cut short. Malwina is blown backward like ten tons of explosives have gone off in her face, and she lands on a heap in the grass.

  Then there’s silence.

  Malwina coughs, then claws herself to her feet. “No,” she whispers. “No, no!” She runs back to the tollbooth, but is dumbfounded to find it is only four blank, wooden walls—no more, no less. “No!” she screams. “No, no, no!”

  She begins hammering on the walls of the tollbooth, sobbing hysterically. Ivanya rises and physically restrains her, pinning the girl’s arms to her sides. “Stop,” says Ivanya, firmly but gently.

  “She shut the door!” screams Malwina. “She dumped us out and shut the door and trapped him in there with her!”

  “Stop,” says Ivanya again.

  Malwina keeps struggling. “I have to go back! I have to help her! I have to, I have to!”

  “Stop. You’ll hurt yourself.”

  “Shut up!” cries Malwina. “Shut your mouth, shut your fucking mouth!” She kicks at the walls once, twice. “Let me go, let me go! Let me go, let me go, let me go!” Then she dissolves into tears.

  Everyone sits in silence, trying to understand exactly what happened.

  “M-Mother?” asks Taty, sitting up. “Are you all right? Are you…Are you really alive?”

  Shara snaps up into a sitting position with a surprising amount of strength. Then she grabs Taty’s arms and pulls them out, frantically looking at her wrists, her arms, her neck and face. “Are you all right?” Shara says. “Are you hurt? Taty, tell me, are you hurt?”

  “Mother, stop!” says Taty. “I’m fine, I’m fine! I should be asking you if you’re hurt, since you’re the one who di—”

  Taty never gets to finish her sentence, because then Shara throws her arms around her, hugs her tight, and bursts into tears. “I never thought I’d see you again,” she whispers. “I never, never, never thought I’d see you again.” Even though she’s weeping, her arms don’t stop searching Taty’s back and neck, still seeking any hidden injury.

  “I’m fine,” says Taty, who sounds torn between terror and bewilderment. “But…But what just happened?”

  One of the children, a boy of about fifteen, stands and walks to the tollbooth door. “Malwina?” he says. “What’s going on? We were asleep, and then…And then he was coming…”

  “What’s going on?” says Malwina savagely. “What’s going on?” She makes a noise that’s halfway between a sob and a laugh. “We fucking lost is what’s going on! We lost! He got everyone else, everyone else!”

  “What do you mean?” asks the boy. “What…What do we do now?”

  “What do we do? There’s nothing to do,” says Malwina. “Don’t you see? We’re the only ones left now.” She blinks as if realizing what she just said. Then, quieter, “We’re the only ones left.”

  Alone in the little room, mighty Nokov eats his fill. He eats greedily, lustily, with a fervor he’s never known before. To think he’d ever have such a victory, such a complete and total victory, with hundreds of his siblings laid out at his feet…

  He grows and grows and grows. With each death, a new domain. With each new domain, a greater power.

  Nokov changes.

  He is a serpent, vast and terrible.

  He is a great raven, his wings made of purest night.

  He is a long, lean wolf, whose jaws devour light and life itself.

  He is a tremendous volcano, pouring ash into the dawning sky.

  He is many things, many ideas, many concepts all merged into one, all lost within the night.

  Nokov eats. His hunger is insatiable and his vengeance merciless.

  All your happy lives, he thinks as he pounces from bed to bed. All your days free of torment. I will show you what they showed me. I will share with you my pain.

  When the last whimpering child vanishes into the endless abyss of the first night, he finds he is still not full, still not complete.

  He needs more. He must have more.

  He hears footsteps behind him. He turns around, which takes some time—he is no mere child anymore, but a creature of terrible, rippling bulk. He sees his servant at the door, his distorted seneschal.

  “Silence,” he says to her. “We have won. We have won, Silence, we have won.”

  There is a rippling silence in the room, and with it comes the words:

 

  It takes him a moment to realize what she means. Then he understands—the dauvkind. He came here, that Nokov knows—he sensed the taint in the man’s body, felt its shadow dwell here. But where is he now?

  Nokov reaches out, rifling the darkness for the man’s scent. Finally he finds it.

  If Nokov still had lungs—and he never did, but he certainly doesn’t now—he would gasp.

  Because the dauvkind now stands in a place Nokov himself could never find, never penetrate, never see. Yet now it seems Nokov is strong and great enough to do so.

  And perhaps, he thinks, standing straight and tall until his head touches the ceiling, great enough to challenge her.

  I keep coming back to Voortya, and her afterlife. It seems a running theme in this world that a Divinity must defeat themselves in order to accomplish something great and beautiful.

  Death, as you know, had to die to understand death. War had to lose in order to understand victory.

  If Kolkan had been punished, and confessed, would he have been different?

  If Olvos had lost hope, and despaired, would she have been different?

  —FORMER PRIME MINISTER ASHARA KOMAYD, LETTER TO UPPER PARLIAMENT HOUSE MINORITY LEADER TURYIN MULAGHESH, 1734

  Olvos opens her eyes. “There,” she whispers. “It’s done.”

  “What’s done?” says Sigrud.

  “The last stages of the end,” says Olvos hoarsely. “You and I, Sigrud, you and I and Shara, we all have a part to play in this. In what began when the Kaj first crossed the South Seas and made war upon these lands. Saypur thought that was the end, but it was just the beginning of the end. The first hour, perhaps, of our twilight.”

  “What do you mean?” asks Sigrud, now anxious. “What…What has happened?”

  “Your sword,” she says. “Flame. Can you still find it?”

  Sigrud fumbles for it, focuses, then grabs it in the air. It’s there still, waiting in the space before him, and though it feels firm in his fingers he notes the blade is now queerly insubstantial, as if it were but a piece of golden tulle.

  “What’s wrong with it?” he says.

  “Most of the people who made it are now gone,” says Olvos. “It is just a shadow of what it once was.”

  He stares at the blade. Then he slowly puts it away and turns to look at her. “Gone? What do you mean?”

  Olvos bows her head.

  “What…What are you saying?” he asks, horrified.

  “That’s the problem with a power vacuum,” she says, smiling sadly. “Something must swell to fill the gap. It’s…It’s just nature, I suppose. But though one may weep, one can’t fight nature.”

  “They’re gone?” he asks. “The children? They’re really gone? He’s…He’s won?”

  She does not answer.

  “And this…This is how you justify your cowardice?” he says. “With talk of nature? This is how you rationalize allowing children to be lost to the most dangerous thing walking this earth, the thing that wishes to devour the world?”

  “Nokov is not the most dangerous thing walking this earth,” says Olvos. “He never was. None of the six Divinities ever were. That title is reserved for a player who has yet to make their appearance. Though you will come to know them in due time.” She stands and looks down at him, and once again her eyes are like distant flames. “Listen to me, Sigrud. Do you hear me?”

  “I wish I did not,” says Sigrud bitterly. “Such is my disgust for you.”

  “Your disgust is well earned,” says Olvos
. “And I share it. But listen—this was born in blood. It always was. It was born in conquest, born in power, born in righteous vengeance. And that is how it means to end. This is a cycle, repeating itself over and over again, just as your life repeats itself over and over again. We must break that cycle. We must. Or else we doom future generations to follow in our footsteps.” She stabs a finger out at him. “You have a choice, a choice I never did. You have a choice to be different. You, who have defeated many by strength of arms, you will have a moment when you can choose to do as you have always done, or you can choose to do something new. You, a man who has never forgiven himself, who believes he deserves all his ills, you will have a moment to reconsider. And in that moment, the world will teeter upon a blade of grass, and all will be decided thereafter. Walk it carefully.”

  “What are you talking ab—”

  She cocks her head as if she hears something, though Sigrud’s ears catch nothing but the crackle of the fire and the sigh of the snowflakes.

  “He comes,” she says, her voice low and full of dread. “He comes to me now, my prodigal son.” She smiles slightly. “What is reaped is what is sown. And what is sown is what is reaped. You must go, Sigrud. Soon he will be here, and he cannot find you. Soon the walls will grow and the dawn will be threatened. And time, as always, will remain our deadliest foe.”

  Sigrud stands. He sees her jaw is trembling. To see a god so anxious fills him with terror. She notices his glance, and smiles and reaches out to touch his face, a strangely reassuring gesture. “Quiet now, child. All things end. Just as the stars fade and mountains fall, all things end. But that does not mean there is no hope.”

  “What is it you wish me to do?” asks Sigrud. “What is there to do?”

  “Fight, of course. And, if we have luck, live.” Her smile fades, and hot tears spill out to hiss upon the ground below. “When it comes to it, when you have that chance…please don’t hurt her. She didn’t deserve what we did to her. And she loves you so. Please be there for her when she needs you to be, as I never was.”

  “Who do you mean?” asks Sigrud. “Why must you speak in riddles?”

  Olvos points over his shoulder. “There,” she says. “Your auto.”

  He turns to look. He sees she’s right: his automobile is just behind him, parked next to the road—but wasn’t the wall there just a bit ago?

  He turns back only to find she’s gone: he’s standing on the grass beneath the trees, facing the dark forest below the polis governor’s quarters. There is no bonfire, no walls, no sight of Olvos.

  Sigrud looks around, seeking any sight of the Divine, anything that could possibly suggest this last interaction really happened. But there is nothing. He is alone.

  Nearly all the children are gone? Can she be right? He feels a Divinity is probably a reliable source, but…What about Malwina? Tavaan? And Shara? Could he have lost her again?

  He climbs into his auto, starts it up, and begins the short journey back to Bulikov.

  He comes to her like a thunderstorm, like a pack of wolves charging through the forest, like a great, dark wave pouring up onto the shore. Her barriers and protections are nothing to him, mere spiderwebs he can bat aside with but a flick of his hand. He is drawn to her, he finds, drawn to her light, drawn to the shadows dancing around the bonfire.

  How he despises those who have the light, who enjoy the warmth. How he despises her.

  He leaps forth from the shadows and stands at the edge of the bonfire, tall and proud and regal. A child no longer, certainly not. He stares down at her, smiling, waiting for her glance to fall upon his form—her eyes will widen, surely, and she will be overcome with awe and terror, and beg forgiveness…

  But Olvos does not do this. She just sits at the edge of the fire, lights her pipe, and puffs at it.

  “Hello, Nokov,” she says absently, as if he just walked in. “I see you’re still struggling with the idea of doors.”

  Nokov’s smile turns into a scowl. He walks closer to his mother, his footfalls heavy on the earth. He walks over to the fire to show her what he can do, to show her how the light means nothing to him anymore—but she still doesn’t look at him, doesn’t behold the wonder of his presence. She just keeps fiddling with her pipe.

  “Look at me,” he says.

  She glances up at him. She meets his dark gaze for but a second, her fiery eye blazing bright.

  “Look at me!” he snarls.

  She sighs slightly, then sits up straight and faces him. Her face does not fill with awe and horror as he wished; instead there is only a contemptuous resignation.

  “Do you see me?” he asks. He tries to smile. “Do you see?”

  “I see you full well, Nokov,” says Olvos.

  “Do you see how strong I am? Do you see how I have conquered? Do you see how I have grown mighty?”

  Olvos says nothing.

  “I did this without you,” he says. “Just as I have lived my whole life—without you. I found a way to survive, to grow strong, to prosper, all without you.”

  “It seems sad to live one’s life,” says Olvos, “defined by the absence of another.”

  Nokov is speechless for a moment. “Sad?” he says, furious. “Sad?”

  “Yes,” says Olvos. “I think so.”

  “How sad it was when they captured me,” he snarls. “How sad it was when they tortured me! For days, for months, for years! I don’t even know how long it was. And you, a Divinity, a god who could hold the whole of the world in her hand if she wished—you did nothing to help me. Nothing. If I were to choose a word for this, it would not be ‘sad,’ oh, no.”

  “If I said I was sorry,” says Olvos softly, “would that mean anything?”

  Nokov pauses. “W-What?”

  “If I said I was sorry. Would that mean anything?”

  “Sorry? Could…Could that mean anything to what?”

  She shrugs. “To you. To everything, I suppose.”

  Something hisses on the ground at her feet. It takes Nokov a moment to realize they’re tears.

  Olvos, to his disbelief, is weeping.

  The sight of his mother crying fills him with confusion. He wished for his mother to be haughty and proud, or perhaps cowardly and quailing, but…but, perversely, he did not wish her to weep so.

  “Your…Your tears mean nothing to me,” he says. His voice shakes. “You were gone from my life well before the Kaj. You were gone from all our lives, long before then. You left us.”

  “I had to,” says Olvos. “I knew how this would end.”

  “You could have taken us with you!”

  “Could I have?” she says. The pipe is trembling in her hands. “Could I? I wasn’t sure…”

  “You should have tried!” says Nokov. “You could have at least tried.”

  “Do you know what I was trying to avoid, Nokov?” asks Olvos. “Do you know what I feared most, my child?”

  “The Kaj,” says Nokov. “The purge. The Blink.”

  “No. I feared what power would do to me. I feared it would change me. I feared it would make me dangerous.” She looks up at him. “I feared, my son, that I would become what you are now.”

  Nokov hesitates, confused. “Mighty,” he says. “You feared strength.”

  “No,” says Olvos. “I feared being alone. To be the one Divine thing, with all the beliefs of all mortals leaning upon me…I knew that would be unbalanced, and unwise. A lone celestial body, spinning out of its orbit…The damage would be catastrophic. But I know a way out. For you. And for me.”

  “Do you.”

  “Yes. So now I ask you, Nokov—will you let me give you what you’ve wanted most of all for these long years?”

  He is silent.

  “I will give you myself,” says Olvos. “I will be here with you, mother and son, forever. We will be together forever. But you must stay here with me. You and I, the two strongest Divine creatures in this world, we must stay here, alone, isolated. We must not allow ourselves to spill into the worl
d. We must not.”

  She looks at him, her eyes wet with tears. But her words echo in his ears, and he begins trembling with fury.

  “You…” he whispers. “You want to trap me.”

  “No!” she says, alarmed.

  “You want to put me in a box,” he says. “To stuff me in a box out here, all alone!”

  “No, I don’t! Nokov, Nokov, I don’t!”

  His face twists in anguish. “You’re just like her….Why are you people like this? What did I do to you?”

  “I am trying to help you!”

  “That’s what she said!” He rises up, a vast, dark spike shooting into the sky. “That’s what she said to me before she trapped me! And look at me now, look at me now!”

  Olvos pauses, stunned, then bows her head in defeat.

  Nokov looks down at her. “To be alone,” he says. “That is a thing I have always known. Whatever madness this world could do to me, Mother—it won’t be anything I haven’t already seen.”

  “It breaks my heart,” says Olvos, “to see what all this has come to.”

  “A chance to begin again,” says Nokov. “A chance to start over bright and fresh and anew.”

  “No,” says Olvos. “No, it will not be that. You are doing nothing new here, my child.”

  He cranes his head down to look at her. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I think this is not the first time this has happened,” she says. “Not by far. Imagine this, child—a world is born, and mortals and Divinities are born into it. Some mortals get access to the gods, others don’t. Conquest begins, enslavement, until there is a great war, and someone finds a way to slay the gods. The old Divinities are overthrown, and their children inherit the world—and rewrite it. They erase reality and rewrite it, birthing a new world, with new mortals, new gods, new origins, new conquests, and new wars. The old ways and the old gods are forgotten, as if they’d never happened. The world doesn’t even remember they were ever alive. And it all starts all over again.”