by D. P. Prior
“She knew,” Shader said. “At least, she had an inkling of the truth, I’m sure of it. My point is, how do we know what Nous wants if we don’t even know which parts of the Liber are from him, and if we have no authoritative way of interpreting the golden thread, even if we could find it?”
“It’s about love, any way you look at it, isn’t it?”
Shader looked at her as if she’d just spoken in a foreign language. “I’m not sure what that means.”
Rhiannon’s eyes wandered to the black sword. She reached for it, started to wipe the bloodied blade on the tree root. “Me neither. Why don’t you ask the freak? He seems pretty certain about everything. After all, he’s the Voice of Nous, isn’t he?”
“Maybe,” Shader said, standing. “Maybe he is.”
“What, so you think I’m a whore, too, do you? Thanks a bunch.” She expected Shader to laugh, but he remained stony-faced.
“I need to be harder, Rhiannon,” he said. “Harder. Come on, we’re leaving.”
“But it’s still dark.”
Shader’s hand enclosed the pommel of the gladius, as he headed back into the undergrowth.
What if I don’t want to leave? she wanted to yell at him. What if you’re better off without me? Shog, she could have used some reassurance right about then; could have used him begging her to return to camp, but what did he go and do instead? Shogging turned his back on her; walked off, knowing all the while she’d have no choice but to follow like an obedient dog. She’d half a mind to stay put. Half a mind to shog off by herself. She cast a look at the shimmering face of the largest moon, glanced at its sisters staring down at her, playing their patient game.
“Shit,” she said, whacking the black sword against the tree. “Shit, shit, shit.” She struck the bark three more times and then stomped off after Shader.
A THING THRICE DEAD
Gilbrum’s feet barely touched the marshland as he sped through the mangroves. Walking trees, he called them, their roots like giant spider’s legs encroaching upon the brackish water.
Three sets of footprints shimmered like stars to his elvish vision. There should have been four. He’d known from the first there was something wrong about the hunchback. He should never have let them go with him. He’d seen no other choice, being duty bound not to leave the marsh himself. But then he’d realized, that made him the same as the dwarves, set in their ways, refusing to lift a finger to help the outside world. Theirs was a self-imposed exile, a penance, but his was a virtue no longer called for. What good would it do to restrain the Sour Marsh at the expense of all Creation?
He followed the tracks in between a cluster of bubbling pools, up a mud-slicked bank, and into the damp grasses skirting the entity he’d come to call home. Another step, and it was all over. Decades of service wiped out with a single act of disobedience. He lifted his foot… and set it down again. He couldn’t do it. What if the reverse were true? What if it was a temptation, a trap? Perhaps the saving of Creation was a task for others. Was not reneging on one’s responsibilities an act of pride, and wasn’t that how the Demiurgos found his openings?
He closed his eyes, visualized Shader, Rhiannon, and Shadrak on their way to Arx Gravis. Could the hunchback really lead them there? Could he be trusted?
Accept it, Gilbrum—a voice from the past, long before he’d been assigned to the Sour Marsh. Dol Arium the prophet, speaking from the boughs of the Tree of Eingana, as he did to every child coming of age. Accept what is not yours to change. A leaf fallen from the tree is a thing thrice dead: to self, the people, and to the law.
“But what if everything ends?” he cried to the sky. “What does it matter then?”
But he knew what the prophet would say. Every elf did: Be true or be nothing. Duty first, duty always.
“Shader!” he called, not expecting to be heard. And then, more gently, he added, “Your god be with you.”
The wind gusted, bringing with it the scent of lizard-men. He spun, nocking an arrow to his bow in one fluid motion.
There were two of them, face down in the grass, patiently stalking him like a pair of alligators. His arrow thrummed through the air and thudded into the loamy earth between them.
“Begone,” he said. “I’ve no time for this.”
But even as they scurried for the mangroves, a thought struck him.
“Wait!”
The brutes turned to face him.
“Skeyr Magnus,” Gilbrum said. “Take me to him.”
The lizard-men looked blankly at him.
“Skeyr Magnus. Your leader. Take me…” Gilbrum let out a sharp breath and rapped his fingertips against his head. “Leader,” he repeated, and then made a fist and a crackling sound.
The lizard-men flung themselves to the ground and moaned.
“Yes,” Gilbrum said, approaching. “Skeyr Magnus.” He touched one on the shoulder, and it lifted its head, the glimmer of understanding in its amber eyes. “Take me—” Gilbrum tapped his chest. “—to Skeyr Magnus.”
He followed them deep into the Sour Marsh, across bogs and thickets, coming at last to a basin littered with bones and loud with the croaking of frogs. Skeyr Magnus was crouched down, poking and prodding at the gauntlet attached to his arm with a thin-bladed tool. An open case of assorted tools was beside him on the ground. A dozen or so lizard-men lazed around the basin, but they sprang up when they saw Gilbrum, grabbing spears and clubs and forming a protective circle about their leader.
Skeyr Magnus bashed the gauntlet against the ground. There was a hiss and a shower of sparks, and then nothing but a plume of smoke.
“See what you do. This close!” Skeyr Magnus held up his thumb and forefinger to indicate. “This close to mending. Tell Skeyr Magnus, elf, why he no kill you.”
Gilbrum smiled. “Because you’ve tried, and you know it is beyond you.”
“One day,” Skeyr Magnus said. “One day Skeyr Magnus catch you dozing. So close…” He blew smoke off the gauntlet. “Know-how, Skeyr Magnus has. Took it from Gandaw. Fix glove, then fix you, maybe.”
Gilbrum seated himself cross-legged on the ground and rested his bow across his thighs.
Skeyr Magnus narrowed his eyes then shrugged and set about packing away his tools.
“What is it you plan to do?” Gilbrum said.
“Fix glove. Kill you.”
“No, not about me. I mean, since you escaped the Perfect Peak, you’ve done nothing but skulk about the Sour Marsh. I’ve been watching you.”
Skeyr Magnus rubbed his lower jaw and rolled his head. After a moment, he stood and picked up his tool case. “Skeyr Magnus patient. Fix glove, grow strong, then go back.”
Gilbrum waved his hand in the direction of the Dead Lands. “To the Perfect Peak?”
“Kill Gandaw,” Skeyr Magnus said. “Take science.”
“Then what?”
Skeyr Magnus gave a low throaty laugh and spread his arms to encompass his lizard-men. “Who knows? Go to New Jerusalem, maybe.” The lizard-men made a collective sound that could have been a gasp. “Live good life.”
Gilbrum nodded slowly. He felt quite certain Skeyr Magnus didn’t mean good in the moral sense.
Confirming his thoughts, the lizard-man said, “Good food, wine, women.”
Gilbrum’s stomach clenched at the thought, but he knew he shouldn’t have been surprised. The lizard-men were only what Gandaw had made them, and the human part still desired human comforts. He gave Skeyr Magnus a sharp look. What if need of comfort wasn’t the only human quality remaining to them?
“And if they won’t give them to you?”
Skeyr Magnus made a fist of the gauntlet. “Then Skeyr Magnus take. Science too strong for humans.”
“If that’s your plan, you’ll need to make a move soon,” Gilbrum said as he stood. “Very soon.”
“Not ready,” Skeyr Magnus said. “Not stupid, Skeyr Magnus isn’t. He wait. Fix gauntlet. Grow strong.”
“You are wise,” Gilbrum said, “but you may n
ot have the time.”
Skeyr Magnus glared at him, the muscles about his neck twitching. “Who say?”
“Sektis Gandaw has commenced the Unweaving of all things.”
“Pah!” Skeyr Magnus said, turning on his heel and gesturing for his lizard-men to follow.
“If you don’t believe me, look to the skies above the Perfect Peak. Already there is a cloud.”
Skeyr Magnus whirled on him. “Skeyr Magnus come from mountain. If Unweaving start, he know. He see it. You lie. Want Skeyr Magnus to attack now when he weak. You too tired to hunt, elf? Want Gandaw to kill us for you?”
Gilbrum took a step toward him. “I do not lie. It has started. We must help each other, work together. Go to the edge of the Dead Lands. Watch the sky and see for your—”
One of the lizard-men grunted and fell like a stone, blood bubbling from his mouth. A silver dagger jutted from his ribs. From a treetop there came another flash of silver, then another, and two more lizard-men fell. Gilbrum shot a look at Skeyr Magnus, but the lizard-man was already bolting into the underbrush with the rest of his people in tow.
Something rustled the leaves. Gilbrum caught its scent, but it was nothing he recognized. He raised his bow and nocked an arrow. The treetop stilled, and for a couple of heartbeats there was no sound save the crashing of the lizard-men through the undergrowth. Then a voice sounded in his head, icy and as sharp as a blade.
“Too easy.”
A shape of inky blackness emerged from the leaves and launched itself at Gilbrum. He fired, but the thing corkscrewed around the arrow. Silver glinted from its torso. Gilbrum flung himself aside, rolled to his feet, spun, and fired again. This time, the creature caught the arrow in slender fingers before tossing it to the ground. Its ovoid head tilted to one side, utterly sleek and featureless. On bird-like legs, it stalked toward him, as if it had all the time in the world. Gilbrum backed away, drawing another arrow and taking aim.
“Stay,” he said, despising the quaver in his voice.
Another step, another arrow, and the creature lithely swayed out of its path.
It wore some sort of harness bedecked with gleaming blades, so many it seemed the thing was armored.
“One down,” it said in his head as it delicately took a blade in each hand. “Three to go.”
“Bit presumptuous, don’t you think?” Gilbrum said, circling to the left and nocking another arrow. Three, it had said. Three to go. Shader, Shadrak, and Rhiannon. “Gandaw sent you?” he asked, playing for time.
The thing moved so fast, Gilbrum’s arrow went awry. He ducked beneath a blade, grabbed a wrist, and tried to trip the creature as he spun it round. It rolled over his back and he felt a sharp pain in his shoulder blade. Without looking, Gilbrum swept out a leg, but the creature hopped over it, hanging in the air an instant on bat-like wings that spread beneath its armpits. As it landed, it flicked a blade at him. Gilbrum deflected it with his forearm, skipped back, and spun a scything kick at its head. He connected, but the creature rolled with the impact and slammed a blade into his hamstring.
Screaming, Gilbrum hit the ground hard and dragged himself toward a trunk. He used it to pull himself upright, taking his whole weight on one leg. On instinct, he swayed, and a blade thudded into the bark. He swung himself behind the tree and spotted Skeyr Magnus watching from a bank of reeds skirting the lip of the basin. He hopped toward him, hoping against hope the lizard-man would do something, but the second he realized he’d been seen, Skeyr Magnus lowered his head and vanished.
A shadow passed above Gilbrum, and he froze, perched on one leg as the creature descended with arms spread wide, leather membranes beneath them fluttering in the breeze. Swift as lightning, its hand went to a holster at its hip and came up blasting. A sound like thunder, a hammer blow to the ribs, and Gilbrum was on his back looking up at the overhanging foliage. Salty blood trickled from his lips. He tried to speak, beg for time. Time to warn this creature about the Unweaving. Nothing would be spared, not even it. The only sound that came out was a wheezing whimper.
Shader, he thought. Must give him time.
The creature loomed over him, a black blur in his failing vision. He was panting, gasping for every breath.
Shader, he thought again.
His fingers clutched at a tuft of grass, and he felt the familiar malevolence of the Sour Marsh tingle through them. His old enemy seemed like his closest friend at that moment. And then he realized: the marsh understood what was at stake. No matter its own incipient evil, it too clung to existence; it too was terrified of the end of all things.
“Help,” Gilbrum rasped. He coughed up blood and tried again. “Help… me.”
Tendrils lashed down around the creature, and creepers coiled about its legs. It slashed through one with a blade, but another took its place. Soon, the creature had holstered its pistol and was frantically cutting left and right with a blade in each hand. It no longer focused on Gilbrum; must have known he was going nowhere. Instead, it angled east, as if it already sensed which way Shader and the others had gone. One agonizing step at a time, it inched through the undergrowth that rose up against it with the full virulence the Sour Marsh.
Gilbrum’s head lolled to one side.
Accept what is not yours to change. A leaf fallen from the tree is a thing thrice dead.
Had he fallen from the tree? Hadn’t he done his duty, stayed within the Sour Marsh? And hadn’t he done what was within his power and accepted what was beyond him? He’d failed to stop the creature, but he’d at least slowed it down, and perhaps kept hope alive a little bit longer. No, he wasn’t a thing thrice dead, he was certain of that. He opened his mind to the vision of the Tree of Eingana, heard the sad lament of his people singing him home. He was dead only once…
FOR NOUS, ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE
Shader stopped to pick charred goat-flesh from his teeth. Dave hobbled to a standstill twenty yards in front and turned, waiting, as if they had all the time in the world.
A quick glance at the cobalt skies back the way they’d come gave the lie to that idea. Aethir’s twin suns had risen in the time it took to skin and cook the goat. Now they scorched their ire upon the receding summit of the Perfect Peak looming above the distant smudge of the Sour Marsh. A corona of filth occupied the space between the suns, directly over the top of Sektis Gandaw’s mountain.
“Ain’t exactly impressive for the end of the world,” Shadrak said, coming alongside and following Shader’s gaze. “What happened to the flashes and all that?”
Rhiannon hung back behind, using the black sword as a walking stick, taking the odd swipe at the tufts of curling long grass scattered about the balding earth. She’d eaten nothing, hadn’t even joined in the blessing when Dave had divided up the meat. Shadrak hadn’t either, but that was hardly a surprise.
“How much time do you think we’ve got?” Shader asked.
“Buggered if I know, but if that’s all it is, I’d say we’ll all have kicked the bucket long before we get unwove, or whatever the word is.”
Shader squinted at the dust cloud, trying to gauge any growth. Maybe Shadrak had a point. It could take weeks, months even, for the miasma to spread as far as the eye could see, and a sight longer to encompass the whole of Aethir. Then there was Earth, the other planets, and the stars. Wasn’t the cosmos virtually infinite? At least that’s what was implied in the lore of the Ancients the Templum had made available.
Dave lurched into motion and came shambling back toward them, gesticulating at the sky. “Come, come. To Arx Gravis. The Unweaving is near.”
“Maybe that’s not it,” Rhiannon said, lopping the head off a lone thistle.
Everyone looked at her as if she were mad. She gave a nonchalant shrug and let her head fall to one side.
“From where I’m standing, it looks like someone needs to clean the chimney.”
Shader rolled his eyes and turned back to the trail. Dave nodded and took the lead once more.
“All I’m saying is
that I can’t see anything being unwoven,” Rhiannon said. “Maybe he’s just stoking the furnace or whatever. Didn’t anyone bother to find out how it’s meant to happen?”
Aristodeus had said something about it not being too late; something about these things taking time. That was about it, as far as Shader could recall.
“Well?” Rhiannon said. “Don’t you think we should have found out what it is we’re supposed to be stopping. I mean, what if he’s just smoking a bloody great pipe?”
Shadrak chuckled and shook his head at Shader. “You certainly pick ’em, mate.”
Shader inclined his head. Couldn’t argue with that, not when you considered his choice of traveling companions: a woman who was getting harder to understand at every juncture; a fanatical loony who claimed to be the avatar of Nous, and Shadrak himself, an assassin who’d once stabbed him in the back, quite literally. You had to wonder what it was that had brought the albino on this mission, what had brought on his apparent change of heart. Shader had seen enough of conversion experiences to know that Shadrak didn’t fit the bill. Whatever he was about, he was a test, that’s for sure. Shader had come that close to killing him back at the camp. It was only Nous that had held him back; only allegiance to what he imagined Nous would want. He shook his head. There it was again, the age-old dilemma. He’d been taught it was all right to kill for Nous under certain circumstances, but he’d never been comfortable with the explanation. Guess that came from his father. Jarl had seen the incompatibility from the off, which was why he’d always been a disappointment to Shader’s mother. At least he was honest. At least he was clear about the kind of man he was. Not at all like his son.
I need to be harder, he’d told Rhiannon. Shader didn’t even know what he meant by that. Harder how? More ruthless? More certain? More dogmatic? More like Dave?
He watched the hunchback forging ahead as if he had no doubts about where they were heading, as if he were in his own backyard. How he could maintain such a pace was beyond Shader. He rolled over the ground in long easy strides which belied his crippled frame. Shadrak, with his short legs, had to jog to keep up, but he seemed utterly tireless, almost pleased for the exercise. Rhiannon continued to lag behind, trailing them like a heavy penance.