by Alexis Hall
Ms. Haas seemed as familiar with this place as she had with everywhere else we had been and led me with brisk, confident strides through the crowded walking tubes and to one specific tower, its entrance a mere fissure in the coral wall through which a small side tunnel had been rather inelegantly driven.
The gap seemed that it would barely accommodate us, and its sharp, rocky edges scraped at my hands and face as I squeezed through. On the other side was a sight most wondrous, but my editor informs me it will pleasurably heighten dramatic tension if I withhold my description of it until the next instalment of this narrative. He asks also that I remind the reader to be on the lookout for the next edition of The Strait magazine, in which he, she, ze, or they may vicariously experience my arrival in the domain of an Eternal Lord of Ven.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Walking Upwards Unmaking
My first thought on our emergence into the tower of the Eternal Lord was that I could see no way for us to go back. We stood on a platform of red coral some thirty feet across in the centre of which floated a decayed armillary sphere depicting an unfamiliar solar system. The sphere, the platform, and we ourselves were suspended in a vast and star-bestrewn void through which strange lights streamed like carnival ribbons in colours I cannot now recall but see sometimes in my dreams. Ms. Haas led me onto a staircase which arced out over empty space from where we stood and then curved upwards and backwards, leading to a second platform some way above us. The steps were barnacle-rough and kelp-slick, with neither handrails nor any visible means of support, which led me to proceed in a cautious fashion. Had I not served beyond the Unending Gate I would perhaps have found the experience more disorientating, but I had long developed the habit of focusing on the necessity of the task ahead, rather than peculiarities of the vistas around me. For all that it hovered unaided over a limitless starscape this was, after all, just a staircase.
At the summit, a woman sat upon a throne of shattered jade and tarnished silver. I say woman, but so human a term does not begin to capture the shifting nexus of past and future potentiality that was embodied in the being before us. To look upon an Eternal Lord of Ven is to witness all they are, have ever been, or may ever be, and so she was at once a laughing girl on the streets of a long-vanished city, a warrior queen in samite robes, a fish-eaten corpse in a drowned palace, and a vast, tentacled leviathan, dead and dreaming of forgotten glories. As we drew nearer, I saw her eyes across every version of herself were lightless wells of utter unbeing, and recognised the mark of the Empress of Nothing. Her name, I would later learn, was Walking Upwards Unmaking. This, too, was a scar from her battle against the Ruler of All That Is Not; the true names of the Eternal Lords having been taken along with their eyes and their empire.
She did not speak, but after she did not speak I remembered her having spoken. What brings you to this moment, Shaharazad Haas?
“I need a favour.”
You need too many favours, Shaharazad Haas. In a thousand realities, I have already killed you.
“Well, that’s fine,” returned Ms. Haas rather warily. “As long as you’re not going to do it in this one.”
Walking Upwards Unmaking slowly turned over one childlike hand, one silver-gauntleted hand, one mouldering fleshless hand, and my companion clutched at her chest, a look of horror flashing across her face as she crumpled to her knees. And now the Eternal Lord held a human heart in her tightening fist, blood dripping between her fingers and seeping into the coral as the sorceress Shaharazad Haas died at my feet.
No. Not in this reality. And then none of that had happened.
Ms. Haas swallowed. Besides this and a subtle shifting of her balance, she gave surprisingly little indication of having just been struck dead in an alternate timeline. “Thank you.” She bowed her head in a jarringly respectful manner. “But I need to travel to Carcosa and cannot go by the normal gates.”
Walking Upwards Unmaking made no reply. And then time and space and memory shifted through ninety-five degrees. Dancers whirled in a ballroom while a figure in ragged yellow robes stood above them all. Pale, misshapen towers vanished into fog-choked skies. A stranger in a pale mask stared at me from an alley in an unknown city.
My companion and I stood on the shores of a grey and turbid lake. Across the water, twin suns set and black stars rose.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
In Carcosa
“That,” observed my companion, “could have gone a lot worse.”
“You died.”
“I went to ask a favour from an Eternal Lord of Ven. My death was one of the least terrible possibilities.”
“In all candour, I’m not sure why she assisted us at all.”
Ms. Haas knelt down and dipped her fingertips gently in the lake. “It’s not the first time she’s helped me, insofar as ‘first’ has a meaning for such a being. My working hypothesis is that she believes I will be useful to her in some future scheme whose shape I cannot yet fathom, a thought that vexes me. And I suspect that Walking Upwards Unmaking also takes some pleasure in the knowledge of that vexation.”
“That seems rather petty for somebody with so much power.”
“My dear man.” She laughed, as she rose from the waterside. “The whole point of having power is that you can be as petty as you like and nobody can stop you. Now come on. We need to get off the streets before the byakhees come out.”
As it transpired, we had arrived on a relatively isolated spot along the shores of Lake Hali. A short walk up a sandbank and onto a narrow wooden jetty led us towards the city proper. The waterfront was entirely given over to industrial architecture, squat, square buildings from which a ceaseless stream of black smoke rose to choke the city in smog, casting a yellow pall over the sky through which even the impossible blackness of the stars struggled to penetrate.
I had never been to Carcosa, but I had seen pictures. The city’s delicate spires, alien geometries, and strange moons featured prominently in the fever dreams and opium hazes of a certain sort of artist on many worlds, a peculiarity which had made the tourist trade a booming part of the Carcosan economy. The paintings tended to emphasise the bridges and towers and weird edifices of almost organic-looking stone. Later on our journey I would observe the city did, indeed, possess these features in abundance, but the facades of the factories spoke of dreams of quite a different sort. A brutalist vision of cement and steel, a triumph of collective will over individual sentiment. And it struck me that, while this was not the kind of madness that had made the city famed through a dozen realities, it was, perhaps, a madness nevertheless.
Ms. Haas curled her lip in disgust. “This used to be a charming little marina. Time was, you’d take a yacht out on the lake and make a blood offering to the Unspeakable One and then sail back in time for the masquerade at the court of the Yellow King. But now look at it.” She paused in front of a poster depicting a proud Carcosan worker holding a hammer aloft, and indicated a slogan in a language I couldn’t read. “‘The Organisation of Consumer Cooperatives Strengthens the People’s Army.’ And to think Carcosan literature once drove readers mad with its beauty. What a waste.”
A whistle blew, and from several of the factories, lines of labourers in dark overalls filed in and out as the shifts changed. Despite my companion’s insistence that I eschew my traditional attire in favour of that which she had selected for me, I could not say that amongst the identically dressed proletarians I felt especially inconspicuous. Still, we attracted surprisingly little attention. Indeed, the Carcosan citizens seemed to go to some pains to avoid noticing us, rather pointedly averting their eyes as they passed. But in fairness to Ms. Haas, as we moved away from the lakeside towards the less modernised parts of the city our garments came to more closely resemble those of the general public, although I still saw wariness in the eyes of strangers.
Ms. Haas led me down a narrow flight of steps between two buildings, their walls fashioned from a
rock-like substance that seemed somehow softer than such material ought to be, and into a shadowed, sloping alleyway. There she rapped sharply at a door, which, after a few moments, inched open. I should warn the reader now that since I speak no Carcosan and the majority of Carcosan citizens speak neither Khelish, Eyan, Athran, or Apostolic (this last being the common term for the set of mutually intelligible dialects spoken in the Hundred Kingdoms), much of what was said by both my companion and her contacts in Carcosa was quite beyond my comprehension. Whatever account she made of herself, the person upon whose door we had knocked apparently saw fit to allow us ingress into his chambers.
Our host was an old man, whose yellow-tinted eyes marked him as a native. He was clad in a sober outfit of brown trousers and a white shirt, accented with a yellow necktie and covered with a faded brocade dressing gown. After exchanging some further hushed words with Ms. Haas he took us into a tiny sitting room, filled with a variety of paraphernalia the origins and purpose of which I could not begin to guess.
My companion threw herself down on a sofa and I took a seat beside her. She and the gentleman continued to converse, and I did my best to avoid straying into impertinent inattention. Ms. Haas’s prodigious talent for extended discourse meant that this proved rather more challenging than I had anticipated and, feeling quite excluded, my gaze began to wander to some of the artefacts around me. A disturbing array of decorative masks hung from the walls, all pale and queerly shaped, and surprisingly distinct from one another given their relative featurelessness. Well-stocked bookshelves boasted a number of slim volumes, whose titles I could not read and, open on the desk was some kind of genealogy the gentleman appeared to be compiling. On a nearby end table, I observed a delicate and rather beautiful onyx clasp, quaintly inlaid with a character in no script I could understand, but which I recalled having seen at several junctures on our journey through Carcosa.
I am not normally in the habit of handling the personal effects of strangers, especially those who are so kind as to invite me into their homes, but some eerie fascination drew me to the onyx clasp, and I rose from my seat and reached out to take it.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said Ms. Haas. “Not unless you want to be throttled by a dead man.”
I sat down immediately, since I very much did not. My actions, however, had drawn the attention of our host, who became quite animated and addressed me with a stream of enthusiastic Carcosan.
“He says you have a good eye,” my companion explained. “And he wishes to tell you some of the history of the piece. I would personally be grateful if you declined the offer, because I frankly can’t be bothered to translate.”
At this, the old gentleman seemed to take offence, although I am not certain how complete his understanding had been. Ms. Haas responded with similar sharpness and the two fell to bickering for some minutes. I made no further attempt to intrude upon their conversation and eventually it appeared that whatever business Ms. Haas had with the fellow was concluded. It was not until we had left that it occurred to me she had offered no introduction, and I felt an acute retrospective embarrassment at having had the ill manners to spend so extended a time in a person’s company without endeavouring to learn his name. Ms. Haas, however, reassured me that this was for the best since it would mean that I would be unable to betray our contact in the likely event that we were apprehended and tortured by the Repairers of Reputations. This reassurance alleviated one set of concerns but exacerbated another.
My nerves were not aided by the fact that my companion then insisted upon undertaking a seemingly directionless ramble through the streets of Carcosa, a journey which encompassed two parks and a public fountain decorated with a grotesque antler-headed statue, looped back towards the lakeside factories, and ended in a small guesthouse in what I took to be one of the less wealthy parts of town. The language barrier still preventing my following any of the finer details of our interactions with the citizenry, it was not until we were making ready to retire for the night that I discovered we were to be sharing a room.
“Madam,” I protested. “I must protest. This is unseemly.”
“Mr. Wyndham, we are in an alien city-state attempting to reach out to subversive elements in the hope that they may put us in contact with a high-ranking member of the paranoid and oppressive political party that rules it. Is your greatest concern really that the locals might speculate as to the nature of our relationship?”
I resolutely avoided sitting on the bed. “I know you think me prudish, but I prefer to uphold certain standards.”
“You can only call something a standard if it is demonstrably superior to the alternative. What you try to maintain are meaningless cultural taboos.”
“I am, as you observe, in an alien city-state where I do not speak the language and I am hiding from the secret police in a small room on a street whose name I do not even know. Meaningless cultural taboos are all I really have right now.”
Ms. Haas began to strip off her outerwear. “Well, that’s as may be. But one room is all we have, so I hope you don’t snore.”
The night that followed was one of the most uncomfortable that I had ever passed. I, of course, allowed Ms. Haas to take the bed, not that there was really any question about the matter, for while I have known her to face near certain death in support of her friends or her clients I have never once known her willingly to compromise on a matter of personal comfort. I would, over time, grow more accustomed to sharing a room with my companion, something necessity would require that we do on several occasions over the course of our adventures. But that first evening the impropriety of it all left me feeling quite anxious, and I slept only fitfully. This, as it turned out, was fortunate, for Ms. Haas was in a talkative mood and would toss snippets of information in my direction seemingly at random throughout the hours that followed.
It was from these non sequiturs that I learned the substance of Ms. Haas’s plan. We were to meet in the morning with a low-ranking party official sympathetic to counterrevolutionary causes. As part payment for certain services my companion had performed for the Carcosan resistance some years before, he would furnish us with a copy of Citizen Castaigne’s itinerary, which should allow us to contrive a meeting in a relatively discreet location. Once in the gentleman’s company, we were to rely upon Ms. Haas’s powers of observation and persuasion to ascertain if it was, indeed, he who was responsible for the blackmail of Miss Viola. And, if it was, prevail upon him to desist.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Lost Carcosa
Ms. Haas had arranged to meet our contact at a pavement café on a cobbled street between two of the city’s many bridges. The place was quiet, allowing us to secure a pleasant table by the door, and Ms. Haas ordered breakfast for us, which arrived in the form of an honestly slightly disappointing black coffee, some poorly cut bread, and a pot of bitter jam. Ms. Haas spoke animatedly to me in Carcosan and I did my best to respond appropriately to her nonverbal cues in order that I might conceal my utter ignorance of the language.
To my considerable discomfort, her manner grew increasingly flirtatious as she went on and, while I did my best to respond in kind, it was not a mode of intercourse with which I had a great deal of familiarity. Eventually, she took the opportunity to lean close and whisper in Eyan, “Something’s wrong. Watch carefully and be ready to improvise.”
Some minutes passed and a few other Carcosan citizens came in, took tables, and ordered refreshments. Close by us, to the right, a youngish man in a brown jacket sat sipping coffee, an unopened newspaper folded on the table beside him. A little farther away, a lady in a yellow patterned headscarf cradled a baby in her arms, while to our left a moustachioed gentleman in a threadbare suit argued with the waiter. From his gesticulations, it appeared he, too, had reservations about the quality of the coffee. Between the caffeine, my companion’s warning, and my inability to understand what anyone was saying, my attitude to the entire tabl
eau began to verge on the paranoid, a sensation that was further exacerbated when a woman in drab overalls began apathetically sweeping the street nearby. Her cap was pulled low over her eyes and her waste removal duties seemed to edge her ever closer to our location.
The argumentative gentleman left his table, and a bird-like creature landed in his place and began to peck at what was left of his pastry. The younger gentleman got up shortly afterwards, appearing to forget his newspaper. He started down the road at a brisk pace, but almost immediately, the waiter stepped out in front of him, blocking his exit. In a panic, the young man turned and attempted to flee in the opposite direction, only to find himself confronted by the street sweeper. I watched with a certain morbid fascination as she raised a hand to her chin and unhooked some strange and hidden mechanism. Her entire face came away, revealing itself to be a delicate porcelain mask with a second mask beneath, pallid and featureless. At the same time, she drew a pistol from within her overalls, a detail that I found less viscerally disturbing but more pertinent given our present situation.
My natural instinct was to intervene in this poor man’s defence, but I was deeply sensible of the treacherous nature of our predicament. At that moment the only persons I knew for certain were not secretly Repairers of Reputations were myself and Ms. Haas and, when I looked to my companion for guidance, I found that she had gone.
A shot rang out. The waiter, too, had unmasked and discharged his own weapon into the young gentleman’s back. Before the man even had the chance to fall to his knees, a great shriek echoed from above and a bat-winged creature, not quite ape and not quite vulture, swooped from the skies and seized him. Paying no heed to her adversary’s piteous cries, the street sweeper turned her attention at once to the table at which he had sat, the table on which, I noted, there was no longer a newspaper. It was at this point that I became firmly convinced that it would be safest to leave at once.