by Alexis Hall
I stood as calmly as I was able and did my best to walk away as if I had witnessed nothing untoward. A commanding voice shouted from behind me. Its words were Carcosan, but the tone was unmistakable. I turned and raised my hands cautiously. The waiter and the street sweeper both had their weapons trained firmly upon me, and the street sweeper appeared to be asking some manner of question or giving me some manner of instruction, although I could not have said which. Then I heard another shriek and a second of the strange bat-winged creatures swept down from the rooftops, wrapped its squamous talons around my shoulders, and hoisted me aloft.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Dim Carcosa
The flying creature brought me to a cell in a high yellow tower and there I was left for some days. They fed me enough that I retained the majority of my faculties, although the strange vistas visible through the narrow window, the ever-shifting patterns that marked the walls of my prison, and the peculiar behaviour of my captors caused me increasingly to doubt the strength of my grip on reality.
It began on perhaps the second day of my incarceration. The second or the third—early enough that time still had meaning but late enough that I was already losing track—I was led to an interrogation room, where two guards in black suits and pallid masks shackled me to a chair. A bright light shone in my eyes and opposite me I could just make out the silhouette of a slender man of aristocratic bearing.
“My name is Citizen Castaigne,” he said in thickly accented Khelish, “and you will tell me everything.”
I blinked against the glare. It was gratifying to have located our quarry, but I dearly wished it could have been under other circumstances. “I would be most happy to, but I have no information that would be useful to you.”
One of the guards struck a blow to the back of my head, which dazed me sufficiently that I missed my interlocutor’s next question. The necessity of repeating himself did not improve his mood.
“Why,” he asked, apparently for the second time, “were you meeting with counterrevolutionaries?”
I considered the somewhat unenviable options before me. My ordinary instinct would be, of course, to offer my full cooperation, for I saw great value in upholding the social contracts that support an orderly society. I had also, however, grown up in a kingdom whose law enforcement agents were corrupt to the point that they could be considered unambiguously evil, being as they were primarily the unliving minions of a malevolent sorcerer king. The Repairers of Reputations put me more in mind of those beings than of the good and faithful Myrmidons who protected the citizens of Khelathra-Ven.
Be this as it may, I was also cognisant that my actions in Carcosa, although they had involved some peripheral contact with subversive elements, had not, in fact, posed any threat to the Carcosan state or its apparatus. And although it is rare for tyrants to believe the truth if it does not confirm their fears I nevertheless concluded that honesty, in this context, remained the best policy. “I am visiting from Khelathra-Ven in order to investigate the blackmail of a friend of mine. To this end, I needed to make contact with a high-ranking member of the party. More specifically, with you.”
Mr. Castaigne leaned forward, leaving me uncertain whether I had made a clever choice or a foolish one. “Why would I be involved in the blackmail of a Khelathran?”
“You were betrothed as children. I thought it possible you might want her back.”
“Your friend is one of the former people?”
“If you mean she’s a refugee from the Carcosan revolution, then yes.”
“So,” sneered Mr. Castaigne, “you confess that you came to Carcosa as the agent of an enemy of the revolution and you believe that I am also in contact with this traitor.”
“That seems like a mischaracterisation of my statement.”
“Take him away.”
The guards returned me roughly to my cell and I was sure the walls were closer together than when I had left, the ceiling tilting at an odd angle. In my dreams that night I saw black stars and heard a dreadful flapping in the darkness.
* * *
• • •
I do not know how long I slept, but on awakening I saw that my cell door had moved, and that I was no longer alone. Huddled against one wall was a dishevelled man in a grey suit. His face, which might once have been handsome, was gaunt and drawn, and his eyes sunk to dark circles. I asked him who he was, and he told me his name was Icarius Castaigne.
Looking closer, I could see that he did indeed have the same build as the man who had interrogated me earlier, although his demeanour lacked all of his former confidence. “But how did you come to be here?”
“The Repairers took me.” His voice was thin and quavering, and he appeared almost on the verge of tears. “I am accused of consorting with an enemy of the people.”
“Miss Viola?” Was this a consequence of my earlier confession? How long ago had it been? An hour? A day?
Citizen Castaigne gave an anguished laugh. “That’s a name from another life.”
“You are not attempting to destroy her marriage by means of blackmail, then?”
The man looked genuinely perplexed. “I didn’t even know she was alive. I wish I still did not know. It is the knowing, you see, that they object to.”
“Then I am sorry for what has happened to you.” Outside I heard the beating of wings and the screaming of the strange not-birds. “But surely if this was all a misunderstanding they will let us go?”
“They see enemies everywhere. Without and within. They watch us always. He watches us always. The revolution was meant to end it, but I see the sign, I hear the awful dragging of His tattered robe. This is Carcosa, and ever will it be a place of—”
The door opened. Two guards seized him. Two guards in black suits and pale masks. The door closed and he was gone. Or perhaps he had never been there. I ran my hands over the floor where he had sat, looking for some sign that I had really seen him, that I had not imagined the frail man in grey or the opening and closing of the door. Or the world outside the cell. I closed my eyes and dreamed again.
A beating of wings. A ragged figure in a yellow robe. A cell that was smaller than it was. That was larger. Ever-shifting patterns on the wall. I was tied to a chair. I was locked in a room. I was alone on the shores of a lake under cold black stars.
* * *
• • •
I awoke. I thought I awoke. A light shone in my face and guards in pale masks stood on either side of me.
“You will tell me everything.” By the shape of my interrogator’s silhouette I was certain that it was Castaigne.
“You were not a captive at all, then?” He did not answer. Perhaps he was playing with my mind. Perhaps I was.
“Why,” he asked, “were you meeting with counterrevolutionaries?”
“I am here on behalf of a woman who fled Carcosa as a child. She has no interest in your city or its politics, and neither do I.”
“Your friend is one of the former people?”
“You know this. I have told you this.”
The interrogator leaned forward. “Do you believe that Citizen Castaigne is in contact with this woman?”
This was preposterous. “You are Citizen Castaigne.”
“You will answer my questions.”
“I do not know how to.”
A guard struck me, and the interrogator spoke again. “Do you believe that Citizen Castaigne is in contact with this woman?”
“You told me that you were not.”
Another blow. I had known that it was not the answer he wanted. I did not know how to answer differently. I had been in the cell for two days. For five days. I had never been anywhere but the cell. I had never seen stars that were not black or a sky with only one sun.
“Take him away. I am growing tired of his impertinence.”
The guards lifted me from my chair and dragged me
down the corridor to my cell. It was the same cell as before. It was not the same cell as before. The floor had developed an unnatural smoothness. The air tasted of tin. In my dreams, cloud waves rolled across the surface of a great lake. On the far shore I saw a ragged figure in yellow robes.
* * *
• • •
I awoke in my cell with jaundiced sunlight filtering through the window. I awoke in my cell with the un-light from black stars prickling my face. I awoke to see Citizen Castaigne huddled against the wall. I awoke alone. The claws of a winged monster scrabbled at my window. Everything was silent. I could not sleep for the sound of the tattered robe dragging on the floors of an ancient castle. I slept and dreamed that my face was a porcelain mask.
I awoke in a cold chair, a bright light shining in my face. A hooded woman sat opposite me, and once more I heard that soft and now-familiar flapping, as of cloth against rock or leather against bone.
“If Castaigne is not the traitor, who is?”
“Perhaps,” I suggested, “there is no traitor.”
“There must always be traitors.”
“Why?” I was not certain I wanted to know the answer. I could not help but ask the question. I had been there for three days. Two. Five.
“Because the shadows lengthen, and songs die unheard.”
The guards took me back to my cell. It was the same cell. It was a different cell. A yellow sky. A black sky. Now I ate. Now I slept. Now I dreamed. Or perhaps I always dreamed. I awoke and the floor was unnaturally smooth. I awoke and the air tasted of tin. My skin felt smooth and dry, as if it would crack at the slightest pressure. I feared what I would find beneath. I heard the tearing of cloth and the beating of wings. I raised my hands to my face and dug my fingers into my skin. Take off the mask. You must take off the mask. The bird-things screamed outside.
* * *
• • •
I awoke, or thought I awoke, in my cell. The door had moved, and I was not alone.
“Mr. Castaigne.”
He stared at me with wild, desperate eyes. “Tell them what you know. It’s the only way to stop this.”
I did not trust him, but then at that time I also did not entirely trust myself. “You have been interrogating me. You are as much one of them as anybody else.”
“No longer. I have been found guilty. Guilty of betraying the Party and the People and the great City of Carcosa.”
“I am sorry to hear that.”
He giggled. It was perhaps the most disturbing sound I had ever heard a human make. “Do not be sorry for me. I am a traitor. I accused myself and tried myself and convicted myself. I am a spy. An agent for reactionary powers. And I will see myself hang for it.”
“I am not certain that you are in a fit state to make such a judgement.”
“The dreadful king whispers in my dreams. The shadows of my thoughts lengthen. How can I serve the people if I cannot trust even my own mind?”
The door opened, and he was taken away. The door opened, and I was taken away. I had been here for three days. Castaigne had been here for two days. He was a prisoner, a guard. I was a prisoner. I was a guard. I was Castaigne and I wore a yellow robe and a pale mask.
I sat in a cold chair, a bright light shining in my face. The silhouette opposite me was a hooded woman in a pallid mask.
“If Castaigne is not the traitor, who is?”
Focus, man. Keep to what you know. Tell them so you can tell yourself it is the only way to stay whole. “He told me that he was.”
“These lies help no one.”
“That may be, but I know what I saw.” I did not know what I saw. “He was in my cell, only moments ago. He said that he had confessed, that he had been tried and convicted.”
The lady sat quite motionless. “If that were the case, why would we still be interrogating you?”
“I do not know, but . . .” They are trying to break you. This is not supposed to make sense. You will never force it to make sense. Still I could not answer her.
“Why are you really here?” she asked, her tone unexpectedly gentle.
“I’m . . . I’m not sure I remember.”
The guards took me back to my cell. I slept and I woke. Now I ate. Now I did not eat. I lay on the floor while the ceiling crawled and distorted above me.
“Whatever you do,” whispered a voice I had half forgotten, “don’t wake up.”
“But I’m not asleep.”
“Stop being tiresome, Wyndham.”
The malign influence of that place still pressed into my head like thick yellow fog, but my companion’s instantly recognisable tone brought me a good deal of the way back to myself. “Ms. Haas?”
“Yes. Now listen very carefully if you don’t want to spend the rest of your short life watching your mind and spirit fracture under the unbearable weight of inexorable cosmic truths.”
The prospect was not appealing. “If you have a means to free me from this place, I would be most grateful.”
“Really, Captain. What do you think I’ve been doing for the past week? I can help you escape, but to do so I have had to invoke some quite explicitly unspeakable powers. Rather nostalgic, but terribly dangerous. In a moment, things are going to get very loud and very messy. I will need you to go through the door, keep moving, and when I tell you to do something, do it immediately and without question. Open your eyes when you hear the gunshots.”
I heard gunshots and opened my eyes.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
The Tatters of the King
Rising, I saw the door to my cell stood open. Beyond it, the hallway was deserted, and behind me I heard a sound like the tearing of cloth.
“What are you waiting for?” Ms. Haas’s voice appeared to emanate from somewhere beside me, but she was not there when I looked. “Go.”
I followed her instruction. The corridors of that tower were a maze of dead ends and blind passages, through which I wandered with no further direction from my companion. Disjointed laughter caught my attention and, in the absence of a clear alternative, I moved towards it. I found Mr. Castaigne in the wreckage of one of the interrogation rooms, crouched over the body of a slender man in a grey suit who I recognised as also being Mr. Castaigne.
“Dash it all, man,” I exclaimed as I drew closer, “what have you done?”
He looked up at me, with an expression like a wounded fox. “It was him. It was him all along.”
“No time for this,” said an echo of Ms. Haas. “Get the mask.”
I glanced between the dead man and his living double, neither of whom was masked. “What mask?”
“No mask,” whispered Mr. Castaigne, rising and training a pistol upon me. “No mask.”
Tired, disorientated, and half-starved as I was, my reflexes could have been swifter. But one did not survive long beyond the Unending Gate without learning to respond adequately in times of danger. I shifted my weight forward, bearing his weapon away with one hand and, at the same time, driving my opposite forearm into his throat. Mr. Castaigne fell, struggling to breathe, and dropped his gun.
I retrieved it and covered him. “Sir, for reasons I cannot explain, it is important that I acquire a mask. Please tell me where to find one.”
But Mr. Castaigne was staring past me, his face a waxen veil of horror.
“If I were you,” Ms. Haas said from nowhere, “I really wouldn’t look over your shoulder.”
Someone—something—rushed past me; a ragged creature in yellow robes, its presence at once glorious and vile. I did not watch as it engulfed Mr. Castaigne, but turned instead to flee.
* * *
• • •
“Mr. Wyndham. Wake up.”
I opened my eyes. Rising, I saw the door to my cell stood open. Beyond it, the hallway was deserted, and behind me I heard a sound like the tearing of cloth.
“
What are you waiting for?” said Ms. Haas. This all seemed familiar, but I couldn’t think why. “Go.”
I moved through the shadowed corridors as if tracing the steps of a half-forgotten dream. On the floor of one of the interrogation rooms, I found the body of Mr. Castaigne, his eyes wide and his visage a paroxysm of terror.
“Get the mask.”
I saw none but, surrendering to the twisted logic of Carcosa, I knelt down and hooked my fingers behind the dead man’s jaw. His face came away in my hands, becoming a shard of featureless alabaster and revealing beneath a thing of which my editor advises me I should not speak.
“Put it on and move quickly.”
I followed her instruction and felt at once a cold and indefinable sense of violation. Returning to the tangled skein of corridors, I found now that my steps were drawn on by some will not entirely my own. My path led me up a spiral of broken stairs and out onto a ledge of scored and weathered stone. The sky roiled with sepia clouds and, far below, the ancient and famous city of Carcosa spilled forth its canals and its factories, its tenements and spires like the fever dream of a dying cartographer.
I found Mr. Castaigne standing perilously close to the edge, a few paces away from me.
“They are here,” he said. “The enemies of the people are inside the tower. And, since only we two remain, it must be either you or I who betrayed us.”
I considered my position. On the one hand, I could not help but feel some pity for this man whose loyalty to his cause seemed to have driven him so deeply into paranoia and whose predicament may have been at least in part my doing. On the other hand, he remained one of my captors and, therefore, ultimately my enemy. And it was this last factor that I deemed most pertinent to my current situation.