Creatures of Light and Darkness

by Roger Joseph Zelazny

  –as the General of thirty-five seconds before the point of attack sees himself draw back his hand, and vanishes to a time twelve seconds previously…

  All of these, because a foreguard in Time is necessary to preserve one’s future existence…

  … And a rearguard, one’s back…

  … While all the while, somewhere/when/perhaps, now, Bronze is rearing and descending, and a probable city trembles upon its foundation.

  … And the Wakim of forty seconds before the point of attack, seeing his arrival, departs twenty seconds backward-one minute of probable time therefore being blurred by the fugue battle, and so subject to alteration.

  … The General of forty-seven seconds before the point of attack retreats fifteen to strike again, as his self of that moment observes him and drops back eight-

  … The Wakim of one minute before goes back ten seconds-

  Fugue!

  Wakim behind the Steel General, attacking, at minus seventy seconds sees the General behind Wakim, attacking, as both see him and his other see both.

  All four vanish, at a pace of eleven, fifteen, nineteen and twenty-five seconds.

  … And all the while, somewhere/when/perhaps, Bronze rears, falls, and shock waves go forth.

  The point of initial encounter draws on, as General before General and Wakim before Wakim face and fugue.

  Five minutes and seven seconds of the future stand in abeyance as twelve Generals and nine Wakims look upon one another.

  … Five minutes and twenty-one seconds, as nineteen Wakims and fourteen Generals glare in frozen striking-stances.

  Eight minutes and sixteen seconds before the point of attack, one hundred twenty-three Wakims and one hundred thirty-one Generals assess one another and decide upon the moment…

  … To attack en masse, within that instant of time, leaving their past selves to shift for themselves in defense-perhaps, if this instant be the wrong one, to fall, and so end this encounter, also. But things must end somewhere. Depending upon the lightning calculations and guesses, each has picked this point as the best for purposes of determining the future and holding the focus. And as the armies of Wakims and the General clash together, the ground begins to rumble beneath their feet and the fabric of Time itself protests this use which has been made of its dispositions. A wind begins to blow and things become unreal about them, wavering between being and becoming and after-being. And somewhere Bronze smashes his diamonds into the continent and spews forth gouts of blue fire upon it. Corpses of bloodied and broken Wakims and fragments of shattered Generals drift through the twisting places beyond the focus of their struggles and are buffeted by the winds. These be the dead of probability, for there can be no past slaying now, and the future is being remade. The focus of the fugue has become this moment of intensity, and they clash with a force that sends widening ripples of change outward through the universe, rising, diminishing, gone by, as Time once more tricks history around events.

  Beyond their midst, Bronze descends and somewhere a city begins to come apart. The poet raises his cane, but its green fires cannot cancel the blue flare that Bronze exhales now like a fountain upon the world. Now there are only nine cities on Blis and Time is burning them down. Buildings, machines, corpses, babies, pavilions, these are taken by the wind from the flame, and they pass, wavering, by the fairground. Regard their colors. Red? There’s a riverbank, green stream hung above, and flying purple rocks. Yellow and gray and black the city beneath the three lime-hued bridges. Now the creamy sea is the sky and buzz-saw come the breezes. The odors of Blis are smoke and charred flesh. The sounds are screams amid the clashing of broken gears and the rapid-fire rainfall of running feet like guilt within the Black Daddy Night that comes on like unconsciousness now.

  “Cease!” cries Vramin, becoming a blazing green giant in the midst of chaos. “You will lay waste the entire world if you continue!” he cries, and his voice comes down like thunder and whistles and trumpets upon them.

  They continue to strive, however, and the magician takes his friend Madrak by the arm and attempts to open them a gateway of escape from Blis.

  “Civilians are dying!” cries a moment of the General.

  A moment of Wakim laughs.

  “What difference does a uniform make in the House of the Dead?”

  A great green door appears in outline, grows more substantial, begins to open.

  Vramin diminishes in size. As the door swings wide, he and Madrak are both swept toward it, as tall waves race and topple upon a wind-slashed ocean.

  The armies of Wakim and the General are also raised by the waves of chaos and driven by the winds of change until they, too, are come at last to the green gateway which stands now wide, like a luminous magnet/ drain/whirlpool’s center. Still striving, they flow toward it, and one by one pass within and are gone.

  Bronze begins to move very slowly as the gateway closes, but somehow passes through it before the chaos comes upon the empty space it occupied.

  Then the roaring and the movement cease, and the entire world of Blis seems to sigh within the moment of its reprieve. Many things are broken and people dead or dying at this moment, which could have been one set thirty-three seconds before Wakim and the General began the fugue which will not now begin upon the litter-strewn fairground with its crevasses and its steaming craters.

  Among the fallen archways, the toppled towers, the flattened buildings, salvation strides with its sword of fires unsheathed. The fevers of the day come forth from the Houses of Power, and somewhere a dog is barking.

  WRATH OF THE RED LADY

  Megra of Kalgan flees, half unseeing now, through the many-formed shapes of the crowd. As she moves, there comes up a new screaming, from out many throats. A cold, wild wind begins to blow among the colors and shapes of the fairground. Looking upward, she sees a sight that holds her eyes upon it and causes her feet to falter, there amid the buffeted tents and the flapping pennons.

  It is the Steel General on the back of Bronze, riding. Downward he comes, slowing, slowing. She has read of him, heard of him, for he exists in the apocalyptic writings of all nations and peoples.

  Behind her, a pavilion goes up in a burst of green flame. Now, as she watches, a green flare cuts the air, hovers, burns there.

  The great beast Bronze changes his course, slowing, still slowing with each stride, as he descends upon the ruined pavilion where she had left Wakim and Madrak the warrior-priest to their combat. She looks back in that direction, but her height, within any crowd, prevents her seeing beyond whatever walls of humanity may be standing near.

  Finally, the Steel General himself is lost to her sight, and she continues to push her way through the many-footed mass and toward the latest tent of death.

  She calls upon her strength now to force a path where others would be left standing: she moves like a swimmer doing a breast stroke amid bodies large and many-limbed, machines with faces and feathers, women with blinking lights within their breasts, men with spurs at their joints, hordes of ordinary-appearing persons of the six races, a woman from whose blue thorax violin notes constantly emerge, corning now in a frantic crescendo which it hurts her ears to hear, and passes then by a man who carries his heart within a humming casket close against his side; she strikes a creature like an uncovered umbrella, which encircles her with a tentacle in its frenzy; now she pushes past a horde of pimply green dwarves, turns up an alleyway between pavilions, crosses an open place where the ground is hard-packed, caked with sawdust and straw; she moves between two more pavilions as a gradual diminishing of light begins to occur about her, and she strikes at a small flying thing which circles and gibbers around her head.

  She turns then and regards a sight that is like nothing she has ever seen before.

  There is a red chariot standing, with empty traces, still smoldering with the dust of the sky. Its wheels have dug deep ruts into the ground for a distance of perhaps three meters. Beyond that, there is no track.

  Within the chariot
stands the cloaked and veiled figure of a tall woman. A lock of her hair hangs down, the color of blood. Her right hand, almost as red as its nails, holds reins which are attached to nothing before the chariot. The flying, gibbering thing at which Megra had struck stands now upon this woman’s shoulder, its leathery wings folded and invisible, its hairless tail twitching.

  “Megra of Kalgan,” says a voice that strikes her like a jeweled glove, “you have come to me as I wished,” and the vapors that rise from the chariot swirl about the red women.

  Megra shivers then, feeling a thing that is like a piece of the black ice that lies between the stars, touch upon her heart.

  “Who are you?” she asks.

  “I am called Isis, Mother of Dust.”

  “And why do you seek me? I do not know you, Lady- save by reputation out of legend.”

  Isis laughs and Megra reaches out and touches a metal strut that bolsters the pavilion to her right.

  “I seek you, little rabbit, that I might wreak a terrible thing upon you.”

  “Why, Lady? I have done nothing to you.”

  “Perhaps, and perhaps not. I may be wrong, though I think not. I shall know shortly, however. We must wait”

  “For what?”

  “The conduct of the battle which I believe is about to occur.”

  “As much as I enjoy your company, I am not about to wait here, for any purpose. You must excuse me. I’ve as errand-“

  “… Of mercy! I know-“ and she laughs once more, and Megra’s grip tightens upon the metal strut so that it buckles within her hand and she tears it free of the pavilion, causing it to sway and creak, there at her right.

  The laughter of Isis dies upon the air.

  “Impertinent child! You would take up arms against me?”

  “If necessary, though I doubt I’ll need them, Madam.”

  “Then be frozen like a statue where you stand!” and as she speaks, the Red Witch touches a ruby pendant at her throat and a ray of light speeds forth from its heart and falls upon Megra.

  Striving against a numbing paralysis which comes then over her, Megra hurls the metal strut toward Isis. It spins like a great gray wheel, a saw blade, a discus, as it falls toward the chariot.

  Dropping the reins and raising an arm, Isis continues to clutch her pendant, from which more rays now leap forth. These fall upon the turning metal which for an instant blazes like a meteor and vanishes, a heap of slag falling to the baked ground beneath its place of combustion.

  During this time, Megra feels herself released from the icy grip that had seized her, and she leaps toward the chariot, striking it with her shoulder, so that Isis is thrown to the ground and her familiar scoots, chittering, behind a swaying wheel.

  Megra steps to her side, ready to strike her with the flat of her hand, and seeing that her veil has fallen, hesitates for an instant to touch a thing of such beauty as she beholds of eyes dark and large within an heart-shaped face, so red and blazing with life, and lashes that reach to the brows with a movement like the wings of crimson butterflies, and teeth pink as flesh within a sudden smile of the sort that may sometimes be seen when staring into flames.

  The darkness continues to deepen and the wind grows more wild, and suddenly the ground is shaken, as with some distant blow.

  The light of the pendant touches Megra once more, and Isis attempts to stand, falls to her knees, frowns.

  “Oh little child, what fate awaits you!" she says, and Megra, remembering the legends out of the old days, prays not only to an official god of the established religion, but to one who fell long ago, saying, "Osiris, Lord of Life, deliver me from the wrath of thy consort! But if thou wilt not hear my prayer. I then address my words to the dark god, Set, both beloved of and feared by this Lady. Save my life!” And then her voice goes still within her throat. Standing now, Isis looks about her, as the ground is shaken and shaken again by a terrible pounding, and noonday is become dusk within the heavens and over the land. There is a blue glow come up in the distance now, and somewhere a sound as of the clashing of two armies. There are shouts, shrieks and wailings. The prospect begins to sway in the distance, as though the world lies beneath heat waves.

  “You may think this to be your deliverance,” cries Isis, “an answer to your blasphemous mouthings! But you are wrong! I know that I must not slay you now, but do a thing far more fearsome. I shall give you a gift that is all unhuman wisdom and human shame. For I have learned what I came to Blis to discover, and vengeance must be had! -Come with me now, into my chariot! Quickly! This world may soon cease to exist-for the General is not defeating your lover! Damn him!” Stiffly, slowly, Megra’s muscles obey the command, and she mounts the chariot. The Red Witch comes and stands beside her, adjusts her veil. In the distance, a green giant is screaming into the wind words which cannot be heard. Flickering fragments of everything seem to be spinning around within a great vortex that moves about the fairground. Everything blurs, doubles, triples, some images shattering, others remaining. Cracks and crevasses appear within the ground. In the distance, a city is falling. The little familiar hides within the witch’s cloak, a cry upon its lips. The dusk is broken now and the night comes down like thunder, and colors all splash together in the dark places where there should be no colors. Isis raises the reins and red flames leap up within the chariot, burning nothing, but encasing them within the heart of a ruby or the egg of the phoenix, and there is no sense of movement nor sound of passage, nor any other sound, suddenly, but now the world called Blis with its trouble, with its chaos and its plague, its salvation, lies far away from them, like the bright mouth of a well down which they are rushing, stars like spittle splashing beside.

  THE THING THAT CRIES IN THE NIGHT

  In the days when I reigned

  as Lord of Life and Death,

  says the Prince Who Was A Thousand,

  in those days, at Man’s request,

  did I lay the Middle Worlds within a sea of power,

  tidal, turning thing,

  thing to work with peaceful sea change

  the birth,

  growth,

  death

  designs upon them;

  then all this gave

  to Angels ministrant,

  their Stations bordering Midworlds,

  their hands to stir the tides.

  And for many ages did we rule so,

  elaborating the life,

  tempering the death,

  promoting the growth,

  extending

  the shores of that great, great sea,

  as more and more of the Outworlds

  were washed by the curling,

  crowned by creation's foam.

  Then one day,

  brooding on the vast abyss

  of such a world, brave,

  good-seeming,

  though dead, barren,

  not then touched by the life,

  I roused some sleeping thing

  with the kiss of the tide I rode.

  And I feared that thing which awakened,

  issued forth,

  attacked me-

  came out the bowels of the land-

  sought to destroy me:

  thing which devoured the life of the planet,

  slept for a season within it,

  then hungry rose and vicious sought.

  Feeding upon the tides of the Life,

  it awakened.

  It touched upon thee, my wife,

  and I may not restore thy body,

  though I preserved this breath of thee.

  It drank, as a man drinks wine,

  of the Life;

  and every weapon in my arsenal

  was discharged upon it,

  but it did not die,

  did not lapse into quiescence.

  Rather, it tried to depart.

  I contained it

  Diverting the power of my Stations,

  I set up the field,

  field of neutral energies

&n
bsp; caging the whole of the world.

  Were it able to travel the places of Life,

  devastate an entire world,

  it must need be destroyed.

  I tried, I failed-

  many tried, many failed-

  during the century’s half

  I held it prisoner

  upon that nameless world.

  Then were the Midworlds cast into chaos,

  for want of my control

  over the life the death the growth.

  Great was my pain.

  New Stations were a building, but all too slow.

  It was mine to lay the field once more,

  but I might not free the Nameless.

  I held not the power

  to keep my shadow prisoner

  and hold the Worlds of Life.

  Now, among my Angels

  grew up dissension’s stalk.

  Quickly did I harvest it-

  the price being some loyalty,

  as even then I knew.

  You, my Nephytha,

  did not approve when my father,

  risking the wrath of the Angel Osiris,

  returned from Midworld's end,

  to undertake the ultimate love

  that is destruction.

  You did not approve,

  because my father Set,

  mightiest warrior who ever lived,

  was also our son in those days gone by,

  our son, those days in Marachek,

  after I had broken the temporal barrier,

  to live once again through all time,

  for the wisdom that is Past.

  I did not know that, as time came back,

  I would come to father the one who had been my father,

  sun-eyed Set,

  Wielder of the Star Wand,

  Wearer of the Gauntlet,

  Strider over Mountains.

  You did not approve,

  but you did not gainsay this battle,

  and Set girded himself for the struggle.

  Now, Set had never been defeated.

  There was nothing he would not undertake to conquer.

  He knew that the Steel General had been broken