Logorrhea

by John Klima

  A few minutes later, we were waved through the lesser gate. Ignominious perhaps, but a better fate than being turned back into the wilderness. I suspected I would not long survive being turned out.

  Once we were within the marble-floored street-halls of Cispius, our reception improved dramatically. Here I was not the villainous ex-slave that my attendants gossiped against by campfire. No, here I was an exotic dignitary from a distant city, come to save them from the blackstar.

  The well-born and the wealthy were not the sort to throng their city in celebration. As we traveled toward the Palace Circumferential, the top level of this ring-city where Sterope dwelt, silent servants emerged from ornate doorways to offer presentation trays of flowers, fruits, and cunning folded paper dolls meant to resemble mythic figures. After a false start, I found we were not intended to take the trays or their contents—indeed, these were “eye-gifts,” offerings of beauty which did not subtract from the mundane wealth of the giver, but only called for an investment of time.

  I immediately conceived of a handy business packaging such offering trays in advance and storing them in chill chambers beneath the city, to be delivered at a premium when need called.

  It was also passing strange that this city smelled of little but clean stone. I could only imagine the efforts at bringing up water and taking out waste which attended these people. On the other hand, it was in effect a single enormous house, and so less susceptible to litter and filth than any ordinary street in Cermalus.

  We wound around the perimeter of the city three times in the ascension. The inner street was built as a gently graded ramp, rising one level per full transit of the circle, and lined with houses, shops, and ateliers. Where in my home city the wealthy showed their taste and resources with extravagant gardens, wild variations in architecture, and baroque rooflines, here all was invested in the front door and the facade which surrounded that portal.

  For the wealthy, Cispius was a city of doors. One could live within this arrangement and easily never see the sky.

  The Palace Circumferential was the rooftop of the ring-city. Even here there were many sheltered passages, overgrown bowers, and wide-eaved buildings. I was pleased to see some fine examples of the roofer’s art.

  Under a bower of grapevines, we dismounted as silent servants brought blue bowls of water for us to wash in. “Don’t screw it up,” growled Leutherion. His men snickered.

  “Fear not. I value my life at least as much as you value yours.”

  We were soon enough brought before the court of Sterope, queen in Cispius. She sat on a glittering throne cut from one enormous crystal. Fires had been lit behind her throne so that the crystal gleamed along many facets and the queen was wrapped in a flickering glow. It was very hard to make out her face or form. Anyone could have sat upon that throne.

  I bowed low, then rose to indicate the great chest which my attendants Pelletier and Finnric had brought up from our pack train.

  “Majesty,” I began, but someone immediately struck a huge gong. Brass thunder reverberated.

  “Her Brilliance is to be addressed correctly,” shouted a tiny man in pink silks. He was no taller than a small child, though there was stubble on his little chin. His face displayed a certain natural inclination toward violence, and he obviously relished his role in rectifying my errors.

  “Uh…Brilliance.” I was off my pacing now, carefully prepared words jumbled in my head. “Halcyone, queen in Cermalus—”

  There was that damnable gong again. It would give me a headache quite soon.

  “Her Brilliance is the sole queen upon earth, and sovereign of all beneath the sun!” The little bastard was grinning now. I could see his teeth were filed to points. Did he wrestle otters in his free hours? “Others rule elsewhere only at her sufferance!”

  My thoughts were even more tangled, but I was determined to proceed.

  “Brilliance,” I said, rushing to get ahead of the next strike of the gong. “Halcyone, by your grace styled ruler in Cermalus, bade me come before you, being—”

  The gong rang out once more. The little man drew breath to correct me again. “Silence,” I screeched in frustration. “You mistreat the emissary of Heaven at your peril!”

  There was a pause, punctuated only by the last dying echo of the gong. Then Sterope shifted on her throne. “We will hear the messenger in his own words. The court will be silent.”

  And silent they were, scarcely even breathing, with no more noise among them than a flock of paper birds.

  Still I spoke too fast, spitting my introduction in one breath. “Brilliance, Halcyone in Cermalus bade me come being declared messenger of the blackstar and here to relieve the evil which has descended upon your people.”

  There. I hadn’t quite taken personal responsibility for the claim of divine sending.

  A long pause followed, the court still quiet as lice on a dead man’s head, while the queen sat cloaked in light and—presumably—considered my words. Finally, she raised one arm upward. The hand which I could actually see above the glare of her throne was slim and pale and finely wrought as Halcyone’s had been.

  “The blackstar stands high in the heavens. Our servants on the hill have cried fear, and our priests burned great offerings on the rooftop temples. Here now is a messenger from the blackstar, graciously sent on to us by our daughter ruler in Cermalus. He will hold court in the Plaza of Punishment for a day and an hour. All will bring their dreads and fears to him. When that day and hour is done, we shall commend him to our daughter ruler in Fagutal. After that, we shall hear no more fear, for he shall carry away our evil.”

  The entire court turned to face me—servants, nobles, soldiers, priests all mixed together. Every one of them had a starveling look. Leutherion hooked an elbow into my ribs. “Nice work,” he muttered.

  “Our heads are not on pikes.”

  I never did sleep during my time in Cispius. With astonishing alacrity my entire train was brought to a plaza on the ground level of the ring-city. We had of course passed through this area on the way in, but I had not remarked the high posts topped with chains which surrounded the plaza, nor the barred doors of most of the establishments—prisons, oubliettes, and houses of pain.

  Another great chest was procured, and a row of scribes was set out before me. The people great and small came. If they had their prayers already written, they were waved on to me by rough men in the uniform of the city. If not, the scribes took down their words. I received every one of those folded slips and silk-bound sheaves, while Leutherion and the others crammed them into the new chest.

  This took the entire day and night, and into the next day. While I was kept well supplied with wine and delicacies, I was desperately exhausted. We were turned out of the city with remarkable efficiency at the appointed hour, there to be met by the tiny man and an enormous eunuch carrying that damnable gong.

  “Her Brilliance has graced me with the honor of being your herald,” the tiny man said with venom in his voice and face. “My gong accompanies me on its legs.”

  I leaned close. “If I hear that thing struck even once out here in the wilderness, I will have it fed to you. Do you understand?”

  Leutherion beside me nodded. “And I will ensure the messenger’s orders are carried out.”

  That was news to me.

  When Celæno was queen in Fagutal the messenger of the blackstar made the third stop of his Transept.

  We traveled now over a higher, broken country of purpled rocks stained with the empty glyphs written by lichen. There were myriad false paths that ended in blind walls or drop-offs, so Leutherion was forced to send outriders ahead to plot the way. Even so, we spent three days following a road that ended before a shattered temple with no way beyond.

  The little man, whose name proved to be Osmio, had no idea of this country—he was born and raised in Cispius. His eunuch, who had no name at all save legs-of-the-gong, seemed bereft of ideas whatsoever.

  The blackstar glowered and spat abov
e us. It seemed to have come lower in the sky, as if following me. For the look of the thing, I made pretense at prayer, but no one was fooled.

  Before we ran out of water we found a man standing at the edge of a high cliff. He was a squat fellow, wearing a high, square leather cap with matching armor. He carried a tall bow crafted from horn and hide. He appeared to be guarding rock and empty air.

  “Make way,” said Leutherion, “for the messenger of the blackstar, come by grace of Halcyone queen in Cermalus and Sterope queen in Cispius.”

  The gong rang loud, causing the armored stranger to flinch.

  “Her Brilliance—” began Osmio, but was cut off with a squawk as Pelletier caught him in the ribs with a spear butt. There was a general muttered cheer. No one saw fit to discipline the eunuch. It seemed pointless, and besides which he could have broken any three of our heads.

  Leutherion continued: “We seek admittance to the noble city of Fagutal there to present our words to the queen Celæno.”

  The guard stared at us all, no doubt taking in our numbers and the composition of our train. “None pass within the walls of Fagutal,” he said, “save those who have paid the toll and sworn the tributary prayer.” After a moment he added, “You must lay down your weapons as well.”

  Leutherion bristled at this, but I raised my hand to speak. “I am the messenger of Heaven, and have no care for weapons. But I will swear tribute to no one and pay no toll. Better that I pass on to another city and relieve them of their evil than that I bend to Celæno in Fagutal. I enter free, or not at all.”

  The sentry looked at all of us a moment, then came to a decision. “The messenger may go freely within, with one guard, and submit to the judgment of the queen. The rest of you must remain without.”

  “I accept your terms,” I told him. “Leutherion, will you accompany me?”

  There was some delay while Leutherion reorganized the train in our absence. I walked over to the guard’s post, expecting some declivity in the rock beyond, but instead realized that we stood on the edge of a very high cliff. The ground below was quite far down, verdant with jungles and open prairies, and stretched miles away toward distant ridgelines. Silver-glinting rivers wound among the expanses.

  I saw no city, only an endless horizon and a country broader than any I had ever thought existed.

  Finally the guard led me and Leutherion to a hidden notch in the cliff face. Stairs descended toward the open air.

  “Follow this down. You will not be challenged until you are within.”

  “What if we lose our way?” I asked.

  The guard laughed. “There are only two ways to go. You may follow the trail, or you may try your wings in the empty air. In either case, you will know where you are going, though each journey is of a different length.”

  Down we went.

  The less said of the descent, the better. Suffice to say that I did not have a fear of heights before, but I shall never work the rooftops again. Leutherion liked it no better than I, but his bearing as a soldier compelled him forward.

  Fagutal is a city carved from the face of that vast purple cliff. I suppose that if one were to ride astride a dragon or air-demon one might see the whole thing in one sweep of the eye. It has the architectural detail familiar to any ordinary city dweller—columns and fascias and friezes and great facades—but every bit of that is carved from living rock high above the jungles below, and faces out toward the domain of birds.

  Being a city of the cliff, these buildings are arranged in a haphazard manner. If one did have a flying view, one would see the building faces stacked as if by a child of the gods. The trail wound among these, never quite reaching an entrance or window through which we might escape inward to safety and a horizontal floor. At last it came to a landing where more square-helmeted soldiers lounged.

  “Ah, messenger boy,” one said. “We’re to take you to the queen.”

  “Birds,” whispered Leutherion. “A letter came a-wing before us.”

  The enclosure of the ring-city of Cispius was nothing to the carved caverns of Fagutal. All was lit by torches or lamps or a glowing fungus which clustered on the walls like pale green scabs. The architecture within was much like that without—elaborate imitations of an ordinary city. Like Cispius, Fagutal smelled clean, though there was an undertone of molder and earth. People moved quietly, cloaked against the stone chill, avoiding our little party.

  We were led deeper and deeper within the cliff, ever further from the sun, until we came to a sort of leather tent. “Her Majesty’s through here,” said a grinning guard. The flaps were laced closed behind us, then we were whispered onward to pass a set of stone doors that pivoted at a touch and so into deepest shadow.

  Queen Celæno’s throne room was dark as the inside of a cow. There was nothing to be seen, not the faintest eye-gleam, and I was seized with the sudden thought that I had tumbled over an edge and was falling into a chasm. My head spun as if I were being tumbled by toughs. Leutherion laid his hand on my arm.

  “Breathe deep and slow,” he advised softly. “It might help to close your eyes, for then the dark will seem more sensible.”

  “Advance,” said a voice which echoed from all around.

  We shuffled like addled pensioners.

  “Halt.” It was a woman’s voice, or perhaps a child’s. “Who comes before us, untaxed and unsworn in violation of all our laws and customs?”

  We both knelt. I nudged Leutherion with my elbow.

  “The messenger of Heaven,” he said. “He is here to bring surcease from the ills of the blackstar, sent by the grace of your sister queens in Cermalus and Cispius.”

  “What fear do we have of the blackstar, who live beneath a roof of living stone?”

  “Majesty,” I said. I waited a moment, lest another of those damnable gongs ring out, or some similar mischief. “Your Wisdom doubtless knows no fear, but there are those among your people who pass outward under the light of day and the gloom of night. To them I offer the opportunity to cast away the evil of their fears, that I might carry it with me back to Heaven. In return, I ask nothing of you or your city save a rest for my train, and possibly a few supplies.”

  Silence for a while, then the voice again, querulous. “And so those biddies have foisted you on us?”

  That did not sound so good. “It was never our wish to burden you, majesty.”

  She laughed. Bitter, cold. “It is no matter to us. If our subjects wish to unburden themselves to sky dwellers, they may do so. We will direct the mayor of our palace to provide such provisions as he sees reasonable. There remains only the matter of the toll and the tributary prayer. As you did not pay on the way in, you shall forfeit the freedom of one of your traveling party. We are generous, we invite you to make your own choice.”

  Strong hands grasped both Leutherion and me to pull us away from the audience. “What do we do now?” I asked him when the guards had pushed us past the leather flap and into the light.

  “You choose,” Leutherion said, disgusted. “You have never bothered to learn the names of most who follow you, it should be easy enough.”

  Accepting prayers for the blackstar was easy in Fagutal. Leutherion and I sat upon a bench near a cave mouth, with a view of the jungle basin below. We kept a bucket between us. People came, singly or in small, furtive groups, and dropped tiny scrolls in. Most were soldiers, who would have of course seen the blackstar for themselves. None spoke, few smiled.

  We waited on that bench two days, sleeping in a spare little house that seemed to have been set aside for guesting. The fare consisted mostly of mushrooms and cheeses. I did not inquire as to the source of the milk. There were no fruits nor fowl nor fish as might be hoped for from the vast jungle below.

  On the third day, another high-helmeted soldier came with a small force at his back. “You have been invited to resume your journey,” he said.

  “What of our train?”

  “They have been brought down the Second Trail to the lands below.
Their provisions have been seen to. They await only your return, and your selection of the one who will stay here and serve our noble Queen Celæno.”

  It was on my lips to say Osmio, for the little man had done nothing to endear himself to me. But legs-of-the-gong would have been lost—I had marked how they slept curled together—and I conceived of a certain sympathy for the eunuch. Besides which, I might someday be called upon to return him to Queen Sterope.

  “I will choose when we are a caravan assembled,” I said, imagining that we might perhaps simply get underway. Perhaps the weakly Pincus would prosper here. He had been a palace servant in Cermalus. Or the adventurous Pelletier.

  “Of course,” the soldier replied blandly. “My men and I will accompany you to assist in your selection.”

  This time we walked down winding passages inside the cliff. There were occasional windows, or even natural cracks, that helped me gauge our progress. Otherwise we saw by the light of the torches we bore. The better part of half a mile passed before we reached the bottom.

  One of the soldiers carried our bucket of messages. Leutherion would not speak to me. Angered, I suppose, by the penalty the queen Celæno had laid upon us.

  We debouched from a gap in the rock to a high-walled corral made of close-set tree trunks. The jungle rose beyond. The caravan was assembled there, men mounted on our donkeys. I could not see a gate from the enclosure, which was more than passing strange. I realized there were more of Queen Celæno’s men atop the walls. Therefore a rampart ran behind those logs.

  “This is a trap,” said Leutherion. “We are not a fighting force, nor do we carry war or disease in our packs.”

  “No.” Our escort commander’s voice was almost sympathetic. “But no one who has stood before the queen is allowed to once more walk beneath the light. She is blind, you see, and jealous of the eyes of others. As almost all visitors refuse to be blinded, we find it easier to offer a quick, clean death.” He stepped back from Leutherion and raised one hand to signal.