by Tom Toner
Then he was being dragged with astonishing force towards the railings, his feet raw with metal shavings. With a drugged start, he began to writhe again, sluggish and stumbling, his eyes filled with the green ghost-light of the water.
PART III
WOLF
Florian Von Schiller opened his eyes amid a tangled scrub of wintery trees. Putting his hand out to fend off the worst of the twigs, he glimpsed light through the tangle—a yellow slant of sun almost at the horizon. He pushed ahead, one arm to his eyes, until the trees gradually thinned to stands of black copses agitated by the chill wind. The cold that bit through his clothes was countered for the moment by the tingle of his long Bilocation from Yanenko’s Land, but Von Schiller was conscious that he’d need to find warmth quickly as night fell.
Outer Wolf, a moss-slimed winter world of lichen-encrusted trees, was the second of the Most Venerable Sabran’s private Satrapies, long cut off from the Firmament. Its days lasted less than two hours, its nights black and moonless, lit only by icy stars. Like Sabran’s other private world, Procyon, it had escaped the attentions of the hollowing lathes, remaining forever solid at its core. Von Schiller wondered what might lie under the crust of this place, never to be found, and why the planet, discovered in an age of relative scarcity when all new lands were needed, had been left so starkly alone.
Here, on a dangling finger of sea-shrouded land at what was laughably referred to as the equator, no snow ever fell; instead, the cold crept upwards out of the ground, snaring boots and feet in its numbing grasp as night descended. Florian thought of all the Amaranthine souls who had come for an allotted audience with their Firmamental Emperor only for him to not appear, some choosing to freeze to death rather than do Sabran the dishonour of taking their leave. What a place to become a ghost.
That might well happen to me, Von Schiller mused, climbing a slope of twisted roots until the shores of an icy lake became evident to his right, the simple wooden boat he’d been looking for appearing at last. He took a deep breath, relieved beyond words. It was not the Venerable Sabran’s displeasure he risked, after all.
The boat was tied to a stump where the lake met the woodland’s edge, its peeling paintwork glowing in bars of yellow where evening sun blazed through the trees. Florian went down to it, examining the ground around the shore where someone had disembarked and made their way up the slope not too long ago. The trail was fresh; Sabran was close.
Aren’t we all beings of ice? Sabran had once remarked to him. Each of us trying to delay our return to the sea.
He took his time, following the boot marks in the silt to where they’d crunched through the evening’s frost and into the woods. He crept, hunched, the cold starting to leach into his toes, glad to know he would soon be gone.
A sudden movement, partially glimpsed, brought his head up. Flo-rian stared into the trees, seeing only the white and grey lichen of the trunks. He waited, ears tuned like a startled deer, all immortality forgotten, then looked down again, searching out the trail.
His Most Venerable Self was insane, not powerless. Stalking him was like stalking a lion, Florian reflected, relishing the comparison. It was something he’d never done in his previous life, but now the chance had come. He knew that the air here carried none of the Motes that filled the Vaulted Lands; countless charged particulates that floated on the winds like invisible snow, each attuned to a specific command so that it could assist the Amaranthine in the casting of their Incantations. So he was safe from those, at the very least.
Another flicker of darkness to his left, something man-sized wandering silently through the trees. Florian turned, hands open in a clawlike gesture, but again the woods were empty. He spun, peering into the branches, his heart awakening from its thousand-year slumber, but could see nothing. Nobody. Not a wild bird or gnat stirred in this frigid world. At his feet he saw an autumnal leaf pressed frozen into the earth; another print, fresher than the last.
He could just disappear, pay the Prism to leave his estates on Can-cri alone and live out his life until it was time to die. But more would come, and more, then more again. They were chaotic now, yes, but soon enough some Vulgar or Pifoon would rise to the challenge and take a whole Vaulted Land. Then chaos would ignite the Firmament all over again, each Satrapy laid claim to. Florian would run out of funds to pay his protectors, and then he’d be a dead man, hunted into the Whoop or imprisoned for the amusement of some new Prism Satrap.
Muttering filtered through the trees. Over a rise, he heard the unmistakable wheeze of a laugh. Florian slinked towards the sounds, hands clenching and opening stiffly, wanting to get it over with. He came to the crest of the rise, stepping neatly between the trunks, seeing the top of Sabran’s white head, wisps of hair blazing against the winter sunset. He looked down into the hollow at his defenceless Emperor.
“Oh, he’s here now, is he?” Sabran said suddenly, turning from where he was arranging firewood and glancing up. His blue eyes fixed on a point above Florian’s right shoulder. “Stop staring at him and leave him alone.”
Florian flinched, looking over his shoulder at the trees, then around the bowl of the hollow.
“Who do you speak with, Most Venerable? Your ghosts of the mountains?”
Sabran chuckled, the back of his head nodding. Florian stepped down to him, rolling up his sleeves despite the cold and standing behind his old Emperor.
The Most Venerable began to hum a tune as he busied himself with his firewood, little snippets of song emerging as he laid the last of the logs.
As Lomattis shunned the Perinnieds,
And Glomax killed the Smae,
I absent myself from mortal life,
And make my merry way.
Appear now, my friends, my dears,
Appear and be not shy,
Come share the warmth I bring for you,
From lands beyond the sky.
We’ll pass the night in jollity,
With tales and song and cheer,
We’ll pass all nights for evermore,
Appear, appear, Epir!
Florian looked around the clearing again, up into the trees as the wind sighed through their bony fingers. Sabran clicked his tongue at the pile of firewood as he continued to hum, flame leaping from within the lattice of branches.
It was time. These songs about appearing Epir—whatever those might be—chilled Florian more than the settling night. Sabran’s madness really had grown monstrous out here, the drifting iron in his blood thickening and choking his neurons, fizzling them out. This sickness, it was the cause of everything; the entire reason the Satraps had placed their faith in the untried spectre of the Long-Life and his promises: a man of great age, miraculously still unblinded by the sickness, as if he were Jatropha the Assassin himself. He was their hope for a future, their hope for more life than the universe would appear to allow.
But they were wrong, Florian supposed. There was no more to be had. Nobody—nobody human, anyway—lived beyond thirteen thousand years. It was impossible. All the powers they’d dreamed of, inconceivable abilities and insights, would never come to pass. The Perennials’ only hope lay now in the veneration of the machine mind they’d discovered in their midst, and by adhering to his every whim.
He almost turned away, despite the thought.
No. He licked his lips and bowed behind Sabran, hands extended. This man’s life is over, anyway.
He brought them together over Sabran’s head in a single clap.
The old man crumpled before him, nearly one hundred and thirty centuries of life gone in a snap of sound that was lost to the wind. Florian grimaced and pushed the corpse to the ground, scattering the smoking firewood. The cold sank back into the hollow. He regarded the body, a wild guilt permeating the chill, ready to turn and run, to close his eyes and snap as far away from here as he could.
He blinked.
Woodsmoke from the ruined fire had dimmed the twilight beyond the hollow, drifting between the trees and catching the last
rays of the sun. But the gentle, hanging fog had not settled uniformly across the air. Here and there, in half a dozen places in and around the trees, it had parted.
Florian began to tremble uncontrollably as he looked into the woods, unable to understand what he was seeing. There were things here with him, invisible things, only now made visible as the smoke rolled past them.
Appear.
He doesn’t bother locking the car, a beautifully restored Rolls-Royce Phantom with a speak-start installed. The ancient cobbled streets of Salzburg—more ancient by far than the three-hundred-year-old automobile—do not cater for the needy these days.
He runs his hand over a chrome headlamp and looks up the autumnal street, barely a soul about. Gilded tavern signs, Germanically floral, hang low over mountaineering shops and restaurant windows. As Flo-rian walks, he takes surreptitious peeks at himself in the reflective shop-fronts, admiring the admiral-blue Brioni suit delivered by the tailors last week. As his eyes travel over the lapels and pockets, something scuttles darkly behind him in the window’s reflection, and Florian develops the impression that there are unseen people in the shops, looking out at him. He checks himself, momentarily embarrassed at such unsubtle vanity, and moves on.
Rust-brown leaves swirl in an eddy of wind at his feet, a few sticking to his glossy shoes as he walks, the remains of some ghostly song reverberating in his head, some nonsense he’s heard somewhere.
Appear, appear . . .
Epir. He considers the word, mouthing it, but it is not a word he knows. While his mouth moves, his tongue slides across his teeth, craving something. Craving meat. Dark meat: lamb or beef. Florian is largely vegetarian these days—outwardly for sentimental reasons, the poor things, the cruelty. Only a select few know that he desires immortality more than anything else in the world; one must prove—concurrent with certain portfolio criteria, of course—one’s absolute devotion to health in order to ever be worthy of obtaining The Invitation.
But it’s Sunday, a day when anything should be possible. He knows of a fine delicatessen at the very end of the Getreidegasse and quickens his immaculate step, allowing himself another glance at the superbly fitted suit. The sensation of eyes watching him through the glass returns, primal and eerie, but this time he fancies he sees dim hands pressed to the windows, tapping. Florian stops to look, stepping away from the windows on one side of the street, his image losing focus as he gazes past it to whatever is tapping upon the window.
Tap, tap, tappety-tap. The song of the Epir surfaces in his mind once more as the rhythm plays out against the glass. Gravity, he thinks, it’s all to do with gravity.
Something slams against the window of a shopfront behind him and he turns, startled. His reflected face looks back, eyes wide, the crisp white pocket square of the suit disrupting any image of what might lie behind the glass.
He swivels on his heel and runs for the deli, the song bright and loud in his mind.
Appear now my friends, my dears,
Appear and be not shy.
He reaches the top of the street without looking back and turns the corner into a leaf-strewn alley. There it is, lights on, welcoming. A wooden cut-out of a hog wearing a stained butcher’s apron gurns at visitors from the street, beckoning him in.
A bell tinkles as he enters, noticing that the deli is deserted but hardly caring. Here they are, great wheels of cheese with thick red wax rinds, wizened white sausages the texture of chalk, glistening pink ham hocks. And there, over towards the wall, a giant browned leg of smoked prosciutto.
Florian steps forward, his trembling lips wet with spittle, pressing his hands—like the hands of whoever was just watching him, he thinks absently—against the glass counter. He pushes harder with the heels of his palms until a crack snaps and dances across the display, silvering the glass.
We’ll pass the night in jollity—
He sees terrines cast in jellied chunks, some pies encased in glazed, golden pastry. He watches a ribbon of drool fall across the busted glass beneath his hands.
The counter smashes inwards and Florian baulks at the sound, almost afraid. He feels a stab of brief cold for a moment, then dismisses it and uses his elbow to clear away the remainder of the debris around the edge, sparing a glance at his hands. He has cut himself in the process, probably badly, but it doesn’t matter in the slightest any more. He reaches in to collect what he can and dumps it on the counter, then heaves the prosciutto from the wall.
Checking once more for the absent proprietor, Florian lunges into the prosciutto, tearing at it like a wolf. Blood runs down his sleeve, drizzling the meat, and he laps it up. The scent and taste of it only serve to drive him wilder, gasping in frenzy like a feeding shark, gulping and shredding. He peels off a lump of cheese and throws it aside, intent on the red rind, stuffing another shred of meat into his mouth to mash with the wax.
He chomps into his tongue. Pink drool runs from the corners of his mouth and spatters the suit. He breaks more glass, clearing everything from within the display cabinet and grinning as his hands encounter the boards of soft foie gras, his fingers sinking in. A dull pain that has lingered in the background begins to sharpen, a wormlike wriggling deep inside the soft parts of him. He shrugs it away, gagging and spitting out a chunk of gristle.
Florian is distantly aware that he has begun to vomit between mouthfuls, and yet the wondrous flavours remain unaffected. He stops to throw up again, spotting blood mixed in with the mess like jam in porridge, and tears into the stringed ham without another thought, breaking a tooth against his knuckle as he crams things into his mouth.
Half-sated, he leans against the counter and slides down it, his suit catching and tearing on shards of glass with a zipping sound. His lap is a mess of vomit, nearly all blood.
He stares at it, feeling the chill of a place far beyond this world bleeding through his trousers and sleeves.
Florian puts a hand out behind him to steady himself, and the ground is cold and hard, like frozen cement. The skin of his palm sticks to it. Outside in the street only the glow of the sun remains.
He wakes a little from his torpor as he notices the lichen-barked trees standing in groves beyond the windows; desolate, denuded branches sigh, scraping against one another as the wind picks up.
With a jolt he remembers where he is, thousands of years of memory breathing in through the open door.
In the darkening woods, Florian Von Schiller looked down at what was left of himself. Twin strips of peeled, bloody cream femur lay beneath the glinting pile of his mangled guts. Another collection of white objects lay not far off. The bones of his left arm.
Florian spat out what was left in his mouth, which was now missing more than a few teeth. The taste was appalling, and he understood vaguely that he must have ripped into his own spilled intestines.
He looked off into the silent woods as the last of the light vanished, perfectly numb from the anaesthetising cold, unable to open his mouth and scream.
GALLERY
The word meant nothing to Lycaste, a susurration in the darkness. He’d imagined something happening when it was uttered: a breeze sweeping the room, a door flinging open. In the stillness of the chamber, Maneker fell silent. He reached out a hand and touched Lycaste’s shoulder, as if already used to his blindness.
“It’s gone,” the Amaranthine said, a fresh good humour lightening his tone. “But it’ll be back.”
The creak of heavy wood and ancient hinges as light flew into the space. Maneker pushed the second shutter to one side, colouring the room the grey of the sea. Lycaste’s mouth fell open. The chamber was far smaller than he’d assumed; across its black and white tiled floor, a dilapidated castle of exquisite, colourless dust had been built, its walls strung with lines of spider silk like the guy ropes of a ship. Where Lycaste had blundered—and he remembered now with a shiver the feeling of softness brushing by—all had been ruined, so much artistry gone in an instant. It was little wonder Perception hadn’t welcomed his arrival wi
th open arms.
“It made this out of dust?” Huerepo asked, gazing around and flicking at something with the edge of his rapier. Lycaste saw that it was the husk of an extremely unpleasant-looking spider—much larger than the beast he’d encountered in his glove—its legs curled in death. The bodies of more were lying everywhere, mingled in with the ruins at their feet.
They left the place, continuing up a further flight of stairs and along the Oratory’s great landing to a gallery of tall, mostly broken windows. Grey light daubed the place, and when Lycaste looked out he saw the sun was nothing but a smudged cream blotch in a landscape of dirty cloud. Even the dagger-shaped mountains on the far side of the world appeared washed out and drained of colour. Wind flowing over the high spires moaned through the cracks, stirring sand grains across the long white stone floor. More of the large spiders, having made their escape through Perception’s opened door, scrambled in halting dashes from one distant window to another. Arranged along the gallery, a host of eggshell-blue statues looked down on them, faces of Immortals from another age, Maneker said.
They walked between the likenesses of the ancients, inspecting their faces. Lycaste thought they looked like real people drizzled with thin paint, smooth moulds of solemnly sleeping men and women.
“They are,” Maneker said, when asked. “These are Statuary Tombs. There are real Amaranthine inside, as fresh and untroubled by decomposition as the day they were poured.”