Cast a Bright Shadow

by Tanith Lee

  Lionwolf Vashdran lay looking up once more at the polished sky of the deathland, the bones of his spine thrumming as they knit. He thought, If ever I doubted, now I know. I’ve died before.

  The other was already up and away before Lionwolf could rouse himself. But all around, beneath the lifting of the morning sun blue as an iris, countless quantities of men, winged, wingless, lay immobile.

  It was like any battlefield. Yes, he could recall battlefields. Heaped corpses, decorated by blood, covering miles.

  How could this be?

  Kuul helped haul Lionwolf to his feet. Kuul said at once, ‘I’ve remembered my name. But I don’t want it, not here. I prefer Kuul.’

  Lionwolf said, in a voice whose use still hurt, ‘Do you remember the name of your wife?’

  ‘Jasibbi.’

  Others were moving up, the men who had been with Lionwolf – Nameless – the night before. Not all, however, not all.

  ‘How have they died?’ said Eleven, looking everywhere around. ‘You can’t die here. Can’t be injured that will last. I had some bastard’s bird claws through my eye – but it healed. Yorrin here, he got a slice in the heart – see him now.’ They looked at number nine, Yorrin. The shirt and leather hung off in a stripe, all bloody, but under it the flesh was firm and closed, unscarred.

  Lionwolf looked down. He saw, where he had been lying, Choy, who had been for Lionwolf a softer cushion than the stones. And how, under his healing neck, had lain the little wiry Kelp Lifli, who prayed to a shell.

  ‘This place—’ said Lionwolf. He stopped himself. He stared at them, all the ones who remained. ‘We live. We will hold the rest in our memories. And we stick together like honey to a hive.’

  They cheered. But all across that dreadful extensive battle-ground, aching and repaved with dead, cheers were eerily rising, for delegated leaders, for those who survived.

  Lionwolf turned again to his band, now only ten in number. He said, ‘My name is Vashdran.’

  Going into Shabatu, the survivors of the battle stuck close, keeping to their own battalions.

  The blue priests had reappeared, accompanied by the snake-heads. A pair of phrases were spoken. Nothing about gods, death or honour. It was to do with victory, and reward.

  But the men of the enemy force, the shield-wing flyers, were also encouragingly brought back towards the walls. So who had won this cutch of a battle?

  The corpses were left without ceremony. In the empty sky not even any scavenger birds had gathered.

  By day, the non-gleaming city walls looked only pale and unreasonable.

  In through the iron gates all the men walked, Lionwolf Vashdran among them, under the silent gaping trumpet-mouth.

  Within the first high wall was a space about wide enough for fourteen or fifteen men to move easily abreast. Running the far side of that lay another wall, high, opaque and toneless like the first. Both curved round together, and soon the upward-tending roadway gave on a flight of shallow stone steps. Vashdran counted the treads as they climbed. There were fifty, before another ascending roadway replaced them.

  As they went on, Vashdran noted the other walls, rising and rising with them, one behind another. They were in fact continuations of the same two walls. The host climbed then on a spiral route, like that which marked the back of a sen-snail. Ah. He had remembered the name of a snail.

  There had been another city too, more a big ice-glass town, effete if quite attractive. Had that also had a very long wide stair? Someone had told him of it … who?

  Most of the men trekked up the roadways and steps without much said. There was no tiredness though many of them, so you heard, had been badly wounded, even slaughtered. Nothing remained of that.

  The walls and walks were planed to a glacial uniformity, and nothing lived there, either in or on them, that Vashdran could detect. He judged their height as he would a crag. Choy had thought the city was a cliff. Why had Choy, Lifli, those others – those other hundreds spread outside on the stones – not survived?

  ‘A long walk,’ said Yorrin the heart-sliced, trudging just behind Vashdran. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Up there.’ The voice of the one called Eleven in Jafn: Behf.

  ‘Up where?’

  ‘The top.’

  Vashdran listened to them sparring, nearly good-humoured, at his back.

  The sun rose with them as they wended up the city, and met them again startlingly an hour later when they came out on a high flat plateau. It was coiled in by the penultimate wall, and it supported at its centre the sky-pointing cone of the last wall of any.

  The priests, who had gone ahead of them, flowed away over this space. The snake-heads still escorted the fighting force. The hair of these guards, hissing and worming about, had even here and there managed to escape by now its ties and slid down over backs and shoulders, to thrash and spit glaucous venom. The poison regularly showered both guards and warriors; the latter cursed it but seemed to suffer no harm. The jatchas had also padded up the city.

  There was another gate in the central wall. This had chalk-white doors, complexly sculpted with tangled forms.

  The sun had reached the zenith. Noon.

  Suddenly voices sang out in a rhythmic chorus. The white gates flew wide. An imposing vista was seen inside them, a broad road lined with human-like forms which sang and danced, playing instruments. Drums beat and rattles cracked, small harps let out plinking cadences. The music burst up into the air. The words were in some tongue Vashdran did not know. Perhaps none of them could. But it bounced with feral joy, with lawless optimistic praise. Welcome to Shabatu.

  Through the wall and along the road the victors strode and the music gyrated against them. Flowers fell on them, lush blue and purple, as if from the hothouses of a king. Vashdran caught one of these blooms. He looked into the amethyst cup of the flower, and saw there a single ice-grey eye, looking stonily back at him. He cast the flower away.

  But the dancing, singing crowd was applauding them. Men were in the throng, and now women were both audible and visible, their high cajoling tones added to the chorus. Slim bangled arms shook trills from strings of bells, hair fluttered, rounded hips swayed.

  Were any of them real? Or were they illusions, sprites …

  At the end of the wide road a towering archway opened on what must be some vast palace of Shabatu.

  They went in, the crowd surging and ceaselessly praising them in the unknown tongue, the unruly music.

  The flowers with eyes were crushed underfoot.

  A labyrinth. Hall gave on hall. Everything still stretched upwards, vaguely, coolly shining. There was no roof. The sun circled over, letting down sails of light.

  Sometimes too things dropped from up there. Dimly seen in distance and at speed, each would strike somewhere below with a clashing thud.

  There were hot springs, room after room of them. The fighters flung off garments, splashed and swam through fountains, or lay about in the long steaming pools of liquid azure water. Young men and women advanced to wait on them, bringing unguents, alcohol and sweets. When the first warrior chanced pulling a partner in with him, she swam against him in the water willingly. Soon enough, half the pools were busy with coupling. Noises of pleasure echoed through the halls.

  Vashdran absented himself. After the heat of the bath, which made wet only during immersion, diminished, the cold of the labyrinth palace grew solid again. The atmosphere was visibly braided with patterns of frost. But it did not discomfort; you were unharmed.

  He walked, as if idly, from pool to pool. The antics of the couples left him unaroused. The laughter and shouts were like those of children. Had they forgotten the morning?

  For some, he supposed, to live like this – or be dead like this – was all they would ever want. War and invulnerable success, sex and jollity after. Well, had he not vowed they would get these rewards?

  His men – if they were his – did not follow him now. Not even Kuul, who lay out on the poolside with a fair-hair
ed girl astride him.

  Vashdran though was looking for something else. He had a purpose.

  Finally he began to find groups of the enemy, the shield-wing flyers. They had not mingled with their adversaries, but their bathrooms commenced only a matter of paces off, and separated only by one more open arch.

  Curjai was lying on his back in the third pool Vashdran came to. His dark hair floated round him on the water’s top, his lean muscular body drifted. His eyes were closed, but the instant Vashdran stood over him the flyer spoke. ‘So, you love me that much, you couldn’t keep yourself away. I’m touched. Or have you only come to beg for mercy?’

  Vashdran stood looking down at Curjai. Naked as the flyer, Vashdran seemed to notice similarities between them, in build, length of leg, physical stamina. Curjai too, as Vashdran did, had a skin that was tawny in colour, though the flyer’s hair was a brownish-black. Neither bore scars, only the useful calluses on their hands.

  Curjai’s eyes opened lazily. Droplets of watered steam hung on his lashes. He smiled. ‘You carry your weapon downwards. It can’t be love then, can it?’

  ‘Wake up,’ said Vashdran. He was unsure why he said this.

  ‘I’m awake. You?’

  ‘Why did so many die?’ said Vashdran. ‘Answer that.’

  Curjai looked aside. Men cavorted around them, in the pools or out, taking no notice either of the red-haired man standing there or of Curjai lying on the water.

  ‘The gods know,’ said Curjai. ‘Why anyway is it always like that, some dying, some left alive?’

  ‘We are not alive.’

  Curjai frowned. ‘You have something in that. This is an after-world. Somehow …’

  Vashdran reached out into the air, and plucked one of the feathers of frost. ‘This is Hell.’

  Curjai came exploding from the pool, landing in front of Vashdran. Now they showed themselves to be also of equal height. And they had snarled into each other’s faces not long before, were practised. ‘You,’ said Curjai, ‘run home to your mother. I’m not done with you. Better have joy while you can.’

  Vashdran pushed Curjai slowly and irresistibly away, and watched as the flyer fell back into the pool with a tidal concussion. Men swore, their sex-games disturbed.

  Vashdran walked off through the arch.

  ‘Where did you go?’ asked Kuul, sprawled now eating dates and sugary things.

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘To a wonderful place. That girl took me there and we never moved off the spot. I must find her again in a minute.’

  Vashdran sat by the smooth carapace of a wall. He thought he could feel it breathing against him. He thought it murmured, a sort of song: Ask the snow what it is, ask ice, wind, sea and sky, ask wisely, wisely, but oh, what am I?

  A river ran through the feasthall, and away into dim caverns either side.

  On each bank of it was a wide table, long as any lane, and through the middle of these two tables also two tributaries of the river went, bubbling and plashing in broad streams.

  Evening was beginning, sky blue and bruising to black.

  Torches burned white, like flaming snow.

  Soft and easy from their bath and play the men, led by their attendants, wandered in and took their seats on the long benches. They peered into the tables’ darting streams. ‘Moving water! There are fish in there!’

  The seating was along one side only, and on the further bank the same, so the diners would face each other, just the wider river between. The original army of Shabatu – if such it was – sat the south side, the shield-wings to the north. You gauged this from the compass point of sinking blue light in the west.

  Music tinkled from somewhere. The unbiquitous, mellifluous attendants served more drink and treats.

  ‘What will they have cooked for us? I’ve seen no animals about the city.’ Yorrin was uneasy.

  Eighteen said, scathing, ‘You ate it all up last night.’

  Vashdran, sitting among them, looked for and discovered the flyer Curjai at the opposite table over the river.

  How wide was the water there? Not so wide, not wide enough, maybe.

  Then the food started to be brought in, great platters which smoked. There was meat and pastry, vegetables which seemed familiar, probably to all of them. Sauces were offered from long-necked jugs like those seen in cities.

  Kuul, on Vashdran’s right, said, ‘This is good. Better than yesterday. Look, that gadcher of a winged thing is staring over.’

  ‘Yes. He’s raising his cup to us.’ Vashdran lifted his silver goblet, and pressed it to his lips. He did not swallow any of the fiery Olchibe liquor he found in the cup. He would not toast Curjai. No doubt Curjai did not down his mouthful either.

  A sullen sorrow was on Vashdran. He could neither name it – in this country of namings – nor shove it off. He bore it, like a wound, hi his mind, he saw the stony plain, and the dead who could not die but had, sprinkled generously there as salt. What would become of them? Tomorrow this unholy citadel must reek from the fumes of decay.

  ‘The water’s getting up in the river,’ said Yorrin.

  ‘Along the bloody river in our table too,’ added Nineteen.

  They gawped. Two large fish dived high from the table-river and arced back down, spraying everyone with water.

  Nineteen, obviously believing this too succulent to pass up, lurched forward, grabbing with both hands. He yelled.

  Something else came out from the stream, attached to Nineteen’s hands.

  It was like a tiny dragon, plated and sinuous. It clung on with its claws and serrated teeth. Nineteen was screaming, trying to pry it loose, but with no spare hand to accomplish this. Vashdran got up. He pulled one of the torches off the wall behind them and put it to the dragon-creature. Now it too shrieked and leaving go of Nineteen’s bleeding fingers spurted back into the stream, was gone.

  Kuul held Nineteen’s shoulders as he threw up on the stone floor.

  ‘It’ll heal, fool. You can’t be hurt here.’

  Sobbingly Nineteen clasped Kuul like his father until Kuul pushed him off.

  ‘Get back to the table. Eat your food.’

  Already the abrasions were fading. Nervously giggling, Nineteen resumed his seat, and presently started again to dine.

  ‘The moral of this tale,’ announced Yorrin sententiously, ‘is never pluck your dinner from running water.’

  Vashdran threw the burning torch down over the bank into the black abysm of the river. He saw Curjai regarding this but pretending, like a woman, not to.

  Now from the east, along the course of the river, some kind of boat was coming. Vashdran could see the soft lights at its prow, and oars dipping in the water.

  His ten men had crowded round, all but Nineteen who was replacing his lost food, refusing to look up. Others from their side were also leaving the table, assembling on the bank to stare away, through the inchoately luminous arches and caverns of the labyrinth, at the boat. On the far bank too the flyer men left their places, Curjai among them.

  What was slinking up the river towards them all?

  Vashdran could make out the torch he had jettisoned burning there under the black surface of the tide. The water here, then, did not extinguish fire. Something to memorize.

  The boat was long and low. There were no rowers, the oars worked by themselves. In the middle was a black awning, and under this were two chairs. Here sat two figures, not properly to be seen.

  A priest standing in the prow blew a horn, and rounded echoes winged away from the solitary note.

  ‘Another of those flat-faces.’ Yorrin gnawed a meat bone brought from the table.

  Kuul said, ‘More of them, look.’

  They turned and saw the priests arriving, orderly and together in their advance as things that had one brain between them. Over the river it was the same. Behind both long tables the cloud of priests assembled, raptly gazing towards the river.

  ‘And from above.’

  Something was drifti
ng lightly downwards. It was a sort of broad platform, lowering itself as if weightless, on a chain which must slide from some high shelf in the walls.

  There were priests on the platform, but at the front of it was positioned a slender, pale-clad shape, which as it descended folded its hands and began to sing.

  ‘What is it? Is it a child?’

  ‘It’s a boy. It sings like the trained boys in the freakish temples of western lands,’ declared Kuul, uncertainly.

  Behf said, ‘No, it’s old. Look at its face. And the voice …’

  The singing was alternately pure and horrible. It had rich sudden fullnesses, and a needle-fine upper register. But then the voice would stumble and change to a soulless strength-less drone.

  The elderly child sang on until the platform had halted low above the river. Then it concluded, bowing its head.

  Vashdran though had barely taken his eyes off the boat.

  Something cold and genderless called: ‘The king is here.’

  The vessel had reached a spot below, just where the torch had been thrown in and still burned. The awning and its deep shadow concealed the two seated forms. But Vashdran thought one was male, and one a woman – the king then, the King of Hell, and his wife.

  The unseen caller called again.

  ‘Here are the lists of those who will fight tomorrow in the Stadionum, which privilege they have won by their prowess in battle.’

  Dumbly, the men along the banks attended. Not every name by any means was called out. Vashdran heard his own, that was the name he had given himself here, and that of two of his men: Kuul, Yorrin – the very ones now beside him. And he heard as well the name of Curjai. That was enough for Vashdran. A grim satisfaction washed over his mind. Tell himself as he might that Hell had reduced him in a hundred ways, he felt settled, stimulated, very nearly at peace. The chosen others were the same, he saw. Only the several men not chosen were frazzled and angry. He heard rough cries – Why not me? I fought as well as that one.

  Even this did not disturb Vashdran. He had gone back to staring down into the boat.

  It was then that the male figure, presumably the King, got to its feet and walked forward into the prow.

  Gradually and totally all sound ebbed from the banks.