Maude thought of Gran, laughing, acting like a child, chasing her down the beach, playing with the gulls. She thought of Isaiah fixing her a cup of Blood-Dragon tea in the kitchen.
“What?” Amadia said.
“Nothing,” Maude said. “You have a very nice family.”
“The journey is a week, due north in the deep desert,” Raashida said, changing the subject. “You two, traveling light, should be able to make it in three days, perhaps two, if you are lucky and have kept up with your survival training.”
“I want to go,” Alter said. “I’ve come so far, and … I can keep up!”
“Alter,” Maude said, “I understand, and I am sorry, but Raashida is right. You would slow us down, and it’s a race now to save Constance.” Cline looked down at his plate and sighed. He ran a hand through his tangle of now long, curly hair.
“You’re right, of course. I don’t want to hinder you, or be responsible for anything happening to Constance. I’ll stay here … keep an eye on the ship.”
Maude took his hand and gave it a squeeze. “There are very few men in this world who could do that, you know. You truly are remarkable, Alter Cline. Thank you.”
Cline squeezed her hand back, and smiled a tight smile, but said nothing.
* * *
They waited for the blistering midday sun to begin to slip lower in the western sky. Cline watched as both women drank a seemingly endless amount of water, and then each took a few sealed canteens with more.
“Carcosa is partly of the Dreamlands,” Raashida said, as the women gathered up their gear. “Time has very little meaning there and space bends like a tree in a storm. Keep your minds focused as you have been trained. The City of Monsters has driven travelers mad before.” Each woman carried one of Cline’s rifles with her now, slung over her back. Amadia also carried a pistol and a machete as well as a sharp knife. “Also,” the former Oya said, “know that I have dreamed that both the Mother and the Father await the child within the city.”
“You mean the Mother,” Amadia said, looking at her teacher.
“And her former groom,” Raashida replied.
“Typhon,” Maude said. A tight bundle of ice shifted in Maude’s stomach.
“But how can that be?” Amadia said. “The seals keep Typhon out of Carcosa.”
“It was a dream,” Raashida said. “Just be careful, and aware of all possibilities, all contingencies.” She pinched Maude playfully on the arm. “that goes for you, too, pirate queen!”
“Yes, ma’am,” Maude said.
Raashida hugged her adopted daughter.
“Le rẹ irin ajo yorisi o si ohun ti o nilo,” the old woman said. “You are Oya, you walk between the orishas and man, and you carry light into all the darkest places. Go, my daughter, and know you carry all my love with you as well.”
Alter tried to help Maude adjust her pack and the water bottles. “If you’re not back in a few weeks,” he said, “I’m coming looking for you, the old lady be damned!”
Maude smiled. “Stay on the old lady’s good side, I’m pretty sure she can still thrash all of us!” She ran her hand over his bearded cheek. “Thank you, Alter. You have been a true friend. I’m very thankful for you.”
“You as well,” Cline said, taking her wrist and moving her hand from his face. His fingers slipped between hers, holding her hand. “I mean … talk about ripping good print! You’ll make me rich, ‘pirate queen’! Now I just need the ending, so hurry back to tell me. I’ve got publishers lined up!”
They both laughed, perhaps a little nervously, and looked into each other’s eyes. They seemed closer than either of them had intended to be. “I’ll endeavor to … not keep you waiting too long,” Maude said.
“Don’t,” he said, “please…” Alter gave her hand a final squeeze, and then reluctantly let her go. He took a step back, a smile quickly fastened back onto his face. “You know how impatient I can be, deadlines and all.”
Maude smiled, and then looked to Amadia. “Ready?” The latest Oya waved good-bye to her mother and new friend. “I love you, Iya! Cline, do not try your charm on her!”
“Perhaps I’ll try mine on him,” Raashida said with a near-toothless grin, slapping Alter on his rump. The reporter jumped a bit.
“Hurry back,” Cline said, rubbing his bottom.
“We will see you shortly.” Amadia looked to Maude. “Let’s go!”
The two women began to walk north. The old woman and the young man stood and watched them go. In no time at all they were tiny specks on the horizon, and then they were gone. Cline noticed something in his shirt pocket. It was an envelope, sealed with a blob of red wax. On the front of the letter, in Maude’s handwriting, it said, “Alter, please deliver this to Golgotha if I don’t make it back.” Alter looked at the envelope and held it and continued to look to the vastness of the desert.
“Her heart belongs to another,” the old woman said, “but you are there as well.”
“I know,” Cline said, slipping the letter carefully back into his pocket, “I know.”
32
Judgment
Sahara Desert, North Africa
November 15, 1721
Carcosa squatted in the wasteland, a tumor of knotted thought and fear, the thing that drives you, thwarts you, in the deepest precincts of dreams. The desert had given up its dead for the night. The sandstorm Anne and Raashida had endured that day had uncovered parts of the antediluvian city. The high bone walls drank in the moonlight. A single looming tower that looked as if it had been made from a monstrous spinal column jutted above the line of the city wall. Strange lights, like aurora, and warbling sounds, like the wind off the desert moaning at different speeds, different tones, stretched out and compressed, crossed the dunes outside the massive jaw-like gateway to the city’s shadowed and distorted interior.
“Merciful Heaven,” Anne muttered. “It’s … I can’t even … The damn thing is making my eyes ache, Raashida.”
“Yes,” the old woman said. “It affects everyone differently. In time, I can teach you mental exercises that will help you. In the meantime, try to focus on small details, and if you get the urge to hurt yourself, tell me.”
They made their way down one of the large dunes. It was bitterly cold in the desert at night. The cold burned Anne’s sunbaked skin, but looking at the City of Monsters with her own eyes made her feel colder still.
The trip here had been a literal week of hell, at least for Anne. The endless Sahara seemed only to exist to drive one mad, or simply to kill. If not for Raashida’s constant help, Anne would be dead now, her bones picked clean of meat by predators and bleaching in the baleful sun. It seemed that the old woman needed only a sip of water and a few crumbs of food to operate out here. Anne asked her the secret and Raashida’s reply was, “Your mind controls your body, not the other way around.”
They stood at the yawning gateway to the bone city. Raashida looked about the desert wastes. “This was a great veldt,” she said. “A grassland. The city was originally built beside Lake Hali, all gone now, devoured by ravenous time.”
Anne wished again they had brought weapons, but Raashida had told her they were useless here. “The only things that steel could hurt here turned to dust eons ago,” she said. “Tell me more about this voice you heard in your mind talking to you, telling you to come here?”
“Aye,” Anne said. “It was a woman, older sounding, and in dire need of help. It wasn’t the voice from my visions—that always sounded like you.”
“We’ve shared those dreams and visions,” Raashida said. “In my version of them, I always heard your voice speaking.”
“Whoever this is, I heard her clear as fair winds and following seas,” Anne said. “Her voice began almost as soon as you recited that oath to me.”
“The oath?” Raashida said. “Lilith’s Load?”
“Aye,” Anne said nodding. “She knew my name. She was calling me to Carcosa, saying she needed me, needed my help. That all was lost
unless I came. It seemed a familiar voice, but not one I can recall ever hearing.”
“All right, we go in,” Raashida said, “but just remember, there were forces unleashed on this plain so long ago, and those forces left a wound upon the world here. Cause and effect, time and distance, mind and self, dream and reality, they are all broken and scattered in this place. Question everything, trust nothing.”
They walked through the mouth of the gate and disappeared into the throat of Carcosa. The streets were paved with skulls and mortar. Tiny whirlwinds of desert dust spun about the empty maze-like streets.
Looking up at the slivers of sky that could be seen in between the walls and battlements, Anne noticed stars burning with green and red fire, and did not recognize any of the familiar constellations she knew from sailing the Earth’s seas. She looked over to comment to Raashida and a young woman Anne’s age stood where the old woman had stood, wearing the old woman’s cloak, and the bird-skull mask hung at her hip. Her skin was flawless and brown, her eyes the same as the old Oya’s.
“It has us now,” the young Raashida said. Anne tried to talk but Raashida was gone. Anne heard sounds of struggle, fighting. She ran toward them.
Anne heard sounds of struggle … she ran toward th …
Anne heard sounds of stru …
… Anne stood, dizzy from déjà vu, at the edge of a well. The sounds were coming from within. She knelt and looked below; there was sunlight now. It was day in the city, somehow. Her brain began to try to make sense of that, but she told it to shut up. Concentrating, she tried as hard as she could to just exist in this present moment.
Below, at the bottom of the well, three oddly dressed men fought in a large dome-like room. An altar of skulls and stag antlers, a twisted sculpture of wood and vine and rotted yellow cloth lay before them. One man was gaunt, with a mustache and long, graying brown hair tied back in a ponytail. The other man, aiding him, was shorter and a bit thick in the middle, with balding, graying blond hair. The two men contended against a third giant of a man, hairy and fat. He had a hunting knife buried in the gaunt man’s stomach and was lifting him off the ground with one hand, and had a hammer raised high in his other, which the balding man was struggling to pry away from him. The three grunted and gasped as they tried to kill each other. The giant looked into the eyes of the gaunt man impaled on his knife and hissed, “Remove your mask…”
The city rumbled and a great horn blew. Anne’s head snapped up and she looked around frantically. When she looked back at the well, it had vanished and she was staring into the empty grins of the mortared skulls embedded in the street. The street’s surroundings had changed as well. Up ahead was a wide opening in the maze. There was the laughter of children and strange, haunting music. The street led to a courtyard, and old Raashida was now beside her again.
“Where did you get to?” the old woman said. “You looked like an old version of yourself and then you vanished.”
“What’s happening to us?” Anne said. The courtyard was empty; the childrens’ laughter twisted to screams and then to a fading echo. The music came from a pipe organ the size of a large building that covered the far end of the courtyard. Desert dust blew out of pipes that were carved femur bones: thousands of them of different sizes, from infants’ to gargantuan monstrosities. The keyboard and the musician playing the grisly instrument were hidden from view.
Raashida took Anne by the hands as the music began to grow in volume and bass. “Focus on the sound of the blood in your veins,” she said. “The external can deceive you. Find a calm center within yourself, Anne. Make your body your universe, your reality. Center, breathe, listen to the sound of your heart, make it your guide.”
Anne closed her eyes and tried to do what Raashida said. She felt the mandibles of the skulls under her feet moving, trying to nip at her feet, at the tendons in her heels. She tried to ignore them, even as they scraped at her boots, the way the rats on the ship used to grind their sharp yellow teeth against the leather. The same presence that had tugged at her awareness when Raashida had been telling her about the war and the aftermath manifested in her mind again. The mental presence felt strangely familiar. “This way!” she called out to the Oya. “Whoever it is, they want us to go this way.”
They ran down a narrow sliver of an alley off from the courtyard; Anne led the way and the bone music pursued them. They had to turn sideways to move through the narrow passage. The street got narrower and tighter until it finally dead-ended. Anne looked up and saw a sliver of the sky. There was a bloodred, swollen sun—the kind you might see at sunset—hanging directly overhead at noonday. A wide grate, made of fibula bones that had obviously been gnawed on for a very long time by something, was at her and Raashida’s feet.
Anne knelt by it, wiped the sweat from her face with a rag, and felt cool air filtering up from the darkness below. The alien music had faded. “This way,” Anne said and began to pull on the grate. Anne’s mind flashed back to the storm drain grate when she had escaped the Marshalsea Prison on Port Royal. Perhaps she had died in childbirth, in that damp drain? Perhaps she was in Hell now. No. Even if she was in Hell, she would find a way out. There was always a way out, and through. Anne pulled and the grate broke with a sick hollow snap, and a draught of cool air greeted her efforts. Raashida uncoiled the rope she had brought with her and began to tie it about Anne’s waist.
“I could climb down as long as there is a wall,” the Oya said, “but you don’t have that skill just yet. I’ll lower you down as far as the rope goes. If you reach bottom, I’ll secure it up here as best I can and follow you down.”
Anne tugged the rope at her waist and noticed the knot the old lady had used was one she had never seen in all her years of sailing. “Aye,” she said.
“You sure you want to go down there?” Raashida said. “The only things below are the vaults. The legends and tales passed along from the first days all say no one has ever gone below and come back.”
“What are the vaults?”
“Prisons,” Raashida said. “Many of the monstrous children of Typhon were locked away in special crypts, sealed with powerful Bo to keep them from escaping. Their names still hold power for those who traffic in sorcery. A special seal was placed upon the cornerstone of Carcosa by the Mother herself before she vanished. It keeps Typhon from entering the city and freeing his kin.”
“Why didn’t they just kill these things if they are so terrible?” Anne asked as she sat at the edge of the open grate and swung her legs over into the darkness. “Why lock them up?”
“They tried to kill them,” Raashida said. “They cannot die.”
“This bedtime story just gets better and better,” Anne said. “Right, then, I’m off. You ready?” The pirate queen pulled a sharp-bladed dirk from her boot and began to hold it in her mouth.
“I thought I told you weapons were no good here,” the Oya said. Anne paused in biting down on the blade to reply.
“You did. I warned you I don’t listen.”
The old woman shook her head as she anchored the rope firmly in the crook of her arm.
“Go,” she said, handing Anne an unlit torch she had prepared.
Anne pushed off and dropped a few feet into the utter darkness. Her stomach lurched, then the rope caught. She lit the torch and saw she was in the middle of a deep well made of rib cages. Beyond the ribs was only darkness her light could not pierce. She took the blade from her mouth long enough to call up.
“I’m steady,” she shouted up into the light of the bloated red sun. “Lower away.” Slowly, she began to descend. It was impossible to gauge time, so she focused on the torch as it burned. It was a quarter burned when the rope stopped lowering her.
“End of the rope!” Raashida shouted. Her voice was tiny and distant, smothered by the darkness. Anne removed the knife again from her mouth.
“Aye!” she shouted up. “I’m dropping the torch!” The torch fell what seemed ten or fifteen feet and then struck and sparked against
a floor that looked like it might be sand. “Bottom!” Anne called up. “Not much farther, I’m going to drop!”
“Wait! No!” Raashida called. “Distances lie here, girl, remember! Don’t!”
“She’s close and she needs me!” Anne shouted, clutching the knife tightly. “I can feel her! She’s calling to me right now! I want to see who she is! I’m going!” Anne cut the rope and plummeted into the darkness toward the guttering light. She fell long enough to feel fear mingle with the nausea of acceleration in her stomach before she hit the sand, hard. Anne tried to tumble as she felt the sharp pain in her ankles, but instead she just landed on her face. She came up, swearing, and gingerly stood. Her ankles weren’t broken, but they hurt like hell. She looked up to call to Raashida to climb down, but there was no hole in the ceiling; the well was no longer there.
“Tupped,” Anne said softly to herself, “all your bloody tombstone needs to say.”
She dusted herself off, and that was when she made the revelation that the floor was not just covered with sand but with a fine bone dust as well; it was the same composition as had been in the box with the map. She rubbed the ashy concoction off on her breeches, picked up the dagger, and retrieved the torch from the ground. This place was circular, like an arena, with high, curved walls. Anne had an impression suddenly that each of the enormous walls was actually a rib. The center of the arena was open to the sky, a vast, yawning hole you could glimpse the sky through, and through it, Anne could see that it was once again night. The moon and the stars seemed familiar to Anne. She was alone, as far as she could tell. She turned to take in the rest of the arena, with the torch fluttering in the cold, whistling wind, and saw something at the dead center of the arena.
It was a statue, about twenty-five feet tall, on a ten-foot pedestal of thick, solid, yellowed bone, perhaps some gargantuan vertebrae, hacked and carved into the shape of a cube. Anne was behind it, but she thought she already knew the statue’s face. She walked toward the statue, arcing so as to come to the front of it. The moonlight glistened and reflected off its metal surface, seeming to pool and flow like some ethereal liquid. Anne faced the statue, and its visage was the same as in her dream when she and Jack had first found the box: a woman’s face, the details vague but with eyes that seemed to look through you, cut from midnight opals, with irises of crimson ruby. The statue was made of gold and ivory, with diamonds, emeralds and sapphires of every imaginable size, shape and color adorning the figure’s female form. The moonlight playing over the face made it almost seem to move, to look down on Anne, as if judging her with the burning eyes of a night goddess.
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