The A'Rak

by Michael Shea

  My predominant reaction was gratitude to the enigmatic Eelritter for her suggestion that I come here. What a stroke of luck it had led to! Joining a nuncial mission would be perhaps the best safe-conduct a foreigner might secure for unobtrusively scouting out the country and its vaults of gold.

  "I do beg your pardon," I told her. "I'm a newcomer here, and was absorbed in the sights. I am indeed a spear for hire and, if I may be forgiven for saying so, a consummate master of my art."

  Still she looked at me with that absent-minded fixity—perhaps made skeptical by what was in fact an understatement of my skill with spear, lance, and javelin. "Please set me a test," I hastened to add. "You sir?" Here I addressed the muscled shaven-scalp beside her, who sported a lance with serrate head in the Taargish mode. "Set me some mark, I beg you." Even as he obligingly looked about, I spotted something myself. "There," I suggested, "that empty freightwagon, moving at a trot there—the rear wheel's hub?"

  Such a hard mark bemused him, but I threw without hesitation. My stick thunked home inside the steel rim binding the axle's end, and I had planted it so nearly horizontal that the haft scarcely wobbled as the wheel spun on. I sprinted out and plucked it before the teamster knew of it, showing them I could run as well, a skill they would want in me as much as a good arm with a stick.

  "A master spearman," cried shaven-scalp, "that's settled once and for good, sir—a master! I'm Olombo. This is our Nuncio, Dame Lagademe." I liked this Olombo at once for his outright manner, and his unfeigned pleasure in expert spearwork.

  "I am Nifft of Karkmahn-Ra." Olombo gave me a hearty hand-clasp. The Nuncio Lagademe gave me a cool nod for my bow.

  "Are you versed in the local worship, Nifft?" She asked this with an air of cunning. Each word she spoke revealed her nature to me more plainly: one of those fiercely upright persons, unbending and brave and barren of humor, her moral judgements utterly transparent. "Our commission," she explained, "has for its terminus a distant fane of the A'Rak's cult, and we ourselves are ignorant of the local religion."

  I was not reassured to learn that I must tread yet again in the spidergod's precincts, but I would deal with that when I came to it, while en route the chances for reconnaissance of the spidergod's gold should be excellent. "Alas, Nuncio Lagademe, I too am ignorant of the cult."

  "Are you indeed?" Her stare, at this, struck me as being quite pointed. Who or what did this woman think I was? There was a pause in which she visibly suppressed something else she wanted to say. "The wage," she resumed, "would be a fine-gold sixweight, for a run some five days long. Under nuncial oath, your doings would be wholly at my disposition, and departures from the Nuncial protocol severely interdicted."

  "Of course," I said firmly. I had known Nuncial protocol would have to be dealt with, though it seemed this Dame Lagademe was going to make rather a point of it. But I was resolved now. I must reconnoitre, if the grand, vague hope I nourished was to be brought to—dared one dream it?—a harvesting, and the universal (or nearly so) right-of-way granted Nuncios must be my shield in my preparatory investigations.

  As I followed them down to their 'shaw, a great commotion and outcry drew our eyes toward the raft of gleets. Half the flock had escaped their railing, and with preternatural agility were leaping from the dock up onto the butcher's roof. Those still on the raft were prancing and bleating shrilly with a rhythmic emphasis that uncannily suggested bestial song, whilst the big man and the butcher wrung their hands. As we watched, three of the beasts in succession discharged cannonades of flatulence, releasing two more batwinged blacknesses that flapped loudly skywards, and one multibrachiate blackness the size of a small dog which scuttled to the water and snaked away, propelled by the lashing of a whiplike tail.

  "It would appear," I hazarded amiably, "that someone's been sold stock serviced by priaphs—the old yeaning-ewes trick, the two-gleets-for-the-price-of-one wheeze."

  "Priaphs?" asked Lagademe stonily.

  "A small, lustful species of demon—they don't harm the stock, and they do make them pregnant, though seldom with kid or calf. It's a well-known cheat among the Kairnish cattle folk. Hack sorcerers do it there, but here in the Astrygals I would guess it was the work of some witch wanting ready cash."

  The Nuncio stood stock still for a long moment. Then she flew into a furor of haste and business. She reached the raft running and shouting orders. We were mid-river in moments, and cranking upstream with a will.

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  LAGADEME V

  I had only to look at this Ephesionite hireling of ours, trotting at point with Olombo, to feel my jaw start clenching. The comedy of his unavoidable hiring seemed increasingly grotesque the longer I looked at him. So good a spearman! For this utility we were compelled to take him on, even as I clearly saw him for a palpable scoundrel.

  He was perfect in the scoundrel's arts of affability. A droll, easy rogue, a phrase-turner, a man keener to hear your tale than hold forth with his own, but if he must, forsooth, enlighten or inform you, why, he was ready to give you the benefit of his experience, in a modest, self-deprecating way, of course.

  He was liberal with information, for example, when Olombo—an ebullient man, bless him, and rather too quick to trust just such smooth, plausible, democratic villains as this Nifft—when Olombo told him of our amorous feasting with the beauties of Buttercrock Creek. To this tale Nifft replied, "Charming! Though the entire encounter, of course, would likely have been stimulated by the priaphs. Wherever anyone summons up priaphs to impregnate stock, these lustful demons will, through their aura, impart lascivious impulses to anyone on the periphery of their coital frenzies. Kairnish lore abounds with testimony to this phenomenon."

  I'd been seething inwardly, of course, ever since Nifft's first mention—back at Big Quay—of priaphs, and the concomitant revelation that our crew had been a witch's dupes. I saw at once it was the plain truth. The instant it was out, the scales fell from my eyes. Our labile and densely veiled "widow"—in one stroke the utter improbability of her contrived identity stood revealed. The so-called Pompilla with her dizzying sachet! Why, its cloying fumes had almost certainly masked the smell of the obfuscatories she had undoubtedly been dispensing to dull our wits. There was no getting around the humiliation of it—to be witch-duped here in the Astrygals, witchcraft's very eyrie, where any sensible person would come on his guard against that very thing.

  Of course I liked Nifft none the more for being the bearer of our disillusion, but I was sure that my assessment of him did not flow from his being the bearer of ill tidings. For there was simply no getting around the circumstances under which I first clapped eyes on him in the fane. That little tableau plainly proved him a spy, a lier-in-wait, and a secret sneaker-behind. To these, given his denial of any knowledge of the fane, I must add the character of a liar. He was all but certainly a miscreant, and he had that miscreant's allure, that raffish grace. I could not help thinking my Persander would consider this Nifft a perfectly fascinating fellow. In short, he was the very type of the life my son had chosen, the gaudy, unsolid world of Game, Easy Gain, and No Thought for Tomorrow. Our Ephesionite Spearman was a native of that Knave's Nation, that fellowship of triflers and wastrels, and it was hard not to feel, with a mother's loving illogic, that he was literally and personally subverting my son's career, stealing Persander's precious love from me month by month—stealing his loyalty to me and to the honorable uprightness I had tried to make him cherish. I all but shouted at the man, "Have done! Leave my son be! What good does his moral ruin do you?"

  The highway crested the first of many ridgelines. Behind and below us the Haagsford River, and little Carder's Weir on its bank—just such a small dock town as Big Quay must have been before its hour of destiny—sank from sight. The highway led down across a river valley—the Mucklespring's Vale—so I called a rest while we were still in the meadow zone above the valley floor. We pulled the 'shaw onto the grass, stretched our limbs, and sat down to watered wine and biscuit. I weighed the words I wi
shed to put to Nifft, and, through him, to my crew as well. Before I could speak, Nifft sharply asked, "Did you hear that?"

  We all listened. There was only the easy breathing of the breeze through the grass and thickets around us.

  "Do you know, Nifft," I began pleasantly, "in my first years as a Nuncio, I used to be tortured by the phrase `a fool's errand,' for I realized early on that at least half our commissions were fool's errands, by the common criteria of the world at large. Now in my maturity, I can quite calmly acknowledge that half the world misuses the Nuncial guild. Nuncios are exploited for the universal respect and freedom of passage that all nations accord them—exploited by cynical clients who, in brief, lie to them.

  "Our clients lie to us about every aspect of a mission that is capable of falsification: they lie about what it is we carry, about why we carry it, about the true identity of its recipient, about the risks attending the delivery . . . what do they not lie to us about?

  "But you know, Nifft, it's just here that a Nuncio's famous honor lies. Nuncios unbreakably swear to fulfill their contracts on the unfailing assumption of perfect truth in their clients. This is exactly what many would call the Nuncio's famous foolishness. But it is this sublime assumption of truth in others that gives us the respect and unmolested passage we enjoy almost the world over. Our unflinching assumption of truth, and our unfailing fulfillment of contract that logically follows from this assumption, have made our honor, and made it known in every nation."

  His eyes were fixed on mine. I waited for his comment. He said, quietly, "Now do you hear it?"

  And then I did hear it, and the hair stirred on my nape. A soft, long-drawn moan, scarcely human in sound, issued from a copse of trees and shrub a rod or so downslope.

  I gestured my pullers to stand to the 'shaw. I, Olombo, and Nifft fanned out in the grass and crept down toward the copse. Our probing ears found such silence within it, that we inched right to its periphery.

  Now, from so close, the silence in the thicket changed quality. It was an occupied silence, that of a presence mutely intent on its work. Then there sounded a delicate crackle, as of a weight shifted upon the leafmold. Another gentle, long-drawn moan followed.

  Now my nape stood stark: it was a human voice indeed, from a mouth frozen open, a lipless aperture emitting sound unshaped, its faintness testifying to frozen lungs that could draw scarce a cupful of air for utterance. My spine was understanding this faster than my mind, and when I felt another kind of emanation from the coppice, I groped for its meaning with terrified incomprehension.

  This other emanation was an indescribable, prickly flux, a vaporous friction, a ghostly turmoil in the air that hovered over the groaning man. It felt more like a touch than a sound, yet I found myself struggling to hear it somehow. It whelmed out like invisible smoke from a fire, yet it seemed to probe softly for my understanding.

  And with this intuition, comprehension came. It was a hellish, inhuman speech, pure thought imparted to the nerves and brain, an intimate, cozy murmuring of the Devourer to his helpless, still-conscious food:

  . . . strange for you? To bid your limbs move, and find them unmoving? We relish you most for this amusing perplexity—our mindless prey are dull by comparison. . . . Now I shall begin to feed, here upon your legs . . . thus, and thus . . . I introduce the solvent that dissolves your tissues for my sucking out . . . mmmm, exquisite, that first sip of the fleshy soup!. . . . Slow and savoring is our creed, no gobbling, eh?. . . . You'll be with me quite a while yet before I must dissolve your vital parts . . .

  My eyes had found my horror mirrored in Olombo's, and Nifft plainly understood as well. I have never mustered greater self-command than in signalling to them our silent withdrawal, and in setting the example of swift and noiseless retreat. Our looks and my gestures sufficed for Shinn and Bantril. In moments our 'shaw's wheels were whirring again down the highway.

  We triple-timed it down the highway in good order. Through the forest, across the river bridge we trotted, our footfalls perfectly synchronous, our demeanor dignified and grave. But the truth of it was we were running pell mell, fleeing in terror. We'd encountered our first god. We'd thought ourselves braced for it, but how utterly unprepared we were in the event. Unprepared for the shame, for one thing. The abasement of having to leave a still-living man in the jaws of that alien abomination! It was humiliating to have to confirm—by our abandonment of that poor person—the monster's entitlement to human food. The Covenant was everyone's nightmare.

  When we had gained the next ridgeline, the sun hung scarce an hour above the western hills. I felt a craven relief to be up in the wind-licked grasses of the heights, a world above the spidery thickets and bosks of the dark valley floor. A new valley lay below us, but our route now followed the ridgetop for a while, and we meant to pass the night in a highland village just ahead. Hagia is a lush and lovely land. The tawny highland grasses rippled with the winds like licked fur. The valley below us was a great green bowl half full of shadow, and in the unshadowed half the neatly appointed farmsteads, and some grand stonework structures as well, wore the lovely gold light of late day.

  As I mused on the prospect, I heard Nifft's cheery voice: "I say, Olombo—yonder stone-walled cluster of little domes and spires—just past the shadow-line there? Could that, Olombo, be one of this land's renowned monastia? I have heard they are marvellous specimens of the native architecture."

  Olombo, guileless as he always was with another hail-fellow sort whose prowess he respected, affirmed that the little structure so far below did indeed resemble such descriptions as he had heard regarding those fabled coin vaults.

  Meanwhile I was thinking that, coming from Nifft, an interest in monastial architecture had a disingenuous sound. Extravagant though the notion was, I actually wondered if the man were not merely a chiseller and swindler, a cozzener and sharper. Could it be that the man was an out and out thief? That he had come—here of all places—to steal?

  I was glad to let this wild thought go—our association was unpleasant enough without indulging in hyperbole. Still, I meant to have his skulking business in the A'Rak Fane accounted for. For if our mission was some witch's trumpery, as now appeared, we stood in that much more danger of the god's being offended by it, and that much more in need of information.

  "I am in some puzzlement, Nifft," I declared, advancing to point and falling in step just behind him and Olombo. "I recall you most emphatically telling me you were wholly ignorant of the A'Rak's worship. But what I can't get out of my mind is the oddest coincidence. For you see, yesterday morning I chanced to see you—before I knew you in the least, of course—chanced to see you . . . how shall I phrase it? Well, it was in the Big Quay Fane after morning service, and you appeared to be . . . quietly shadowing the Ecclesiarch of the Church back towards his private quarters! I don't wish to pry, but can you in fact be wholly ignorant of the A'Rak's rites?"

  "But indeed, Nuncio Lagademe," the lanky rogue protested, "I am ignorant of the spider god's worship. I know that tomorrow at the Choosing, some score or so of lot-chosen victims will be devoured by Grandfather A'Rak, and that this is done every summer solstice. There you have the whole of my knowledge on the matter."

  I waited for more, but evidently he would still have left me uninformed. I goaded him, betraying some exasperation. "Will you tell me the subject of your visit to the fane yestermorning? I do not idly pry. If our, ah, mortuary mission is after all bogus, some cover for our witch's hidden aim, then we could be in danger from a deity we unknowingly offend. . . . Slow March, my friends!"

  We had just rounded a curve, and here ahead was the pastoral hamlet of Haggis. The hub of the place, right beside the highway, was a little sprawl of pens, corrals and milking stalls, all under a canopy of plank roofing supported by posts. This communal gleetery was swarming now as herders brought their flocks in from pasturing for the evening milking. The whole village seemed present. Those not actually inside the pens milled and gossiped in a great gregariou
s crowd that overflowed onto the highway. We courteously detoured round the throng while I pressed Nifft again, causing him to heave a protracted sigh.

  "Nuncio," he said with an infuriating tone of harassed good breeding, "I am enjoined by the Ecclesiarch to absolute discretion. You must rest content with little, though it is still more than I have any right to disclose. In brief, while in the Great Shallows, I chanced upon a rumor of some danger to the A'Rak. I came hither to sell this bit of hearsay, and was indeed generously remunerated by the Ecclesiarch, in return for which I was sworn to strictest confidentiality."

  ". . . Some . . . danger to the A'Rak? . . . excuse us please, good folk."

  "Just so. . . . Please forgive us, sirs and madams! We are a funeral procession. Please forgive us if we incommode you."

  We were all abruptly disconcerted to find ourselves encountering a marked unwillingness among the foregathered folk of Haggis to yield us the slightest room for passage. The villagers were in the main a lean and sunburned folk, pale-eyed and steady-gazing. They had seemed, at a distance, quite vivacious and gregarious with one another. The faces they now turned on us at our approach, however, were as cold and set as stone. This calculated two-facedness was most unnerving, the more so since their stoniness barely contained a hostility which glinted fiercely in their eyes when closely confronting us. Could they—I fatuously marvelled in my distraction—have some traditional dislike of the Nuncial Guild? Once again it was Nifft, that morally ambiguous man of the world—who supplied the needed information.

  "I have heard that Hagia's highlanders," he leaned near me to murmur, "furiously dissented at the very outset from the Covenant with the A'Rak. Nowadays they send their wool and cheese to market with the rest of the country, but regard the lowlanders and their Covenant as despised foreigners."

  It was our coffin, all spidered over with A'Rak runes, of course! I could scarcely fault Haggis for an outraged loathing of the Covenant. Indeed, galvanized with loathing myself by the feeding we had lately overheard, I could understand just how intense their dislike of our commission must be, and I began to fear a little for our safety hereabouts. I'd thought to shelter here, but now determined to put the village behind us and camp on the highway tonight.