by Samit Basu
The undead army had been assembling since the day the Great Pyramid had been sealed, long ago, but as world’s end approached, the dead began to dream in every land, their still synpapses pulsing with visions of the Scorpion Man, and in their homes in the dead of night the living shuddered, their spines tingling with sudden chills as troops of corpses travelled by. The lych-lords issued forth from the Great Pyramid and spread out across the world, raising undead and recruiting spirits. Graveyards were robbed and crypts plundered, necropolises emptied and cremation sites enchanted, as the dead gathered around invisible banners, answering the Scorpion Man’s call, waiting for their lych guides to lead them to the Pyramid of the First Pharaoh. The dead walked through hidden paths, and sailed to Elaken on secret ships, and those among the living that did not hide as they passed, or were brave enough to challenge them, were soon added to their numbers. In the Free States, mercenaries were recruited to transport mysterious voyagers to the west, and were simply added to their cargo when curiosity got the better of them. Seafaring necromancers killed more pirates than the navies of the southern nations combined. The armada of the dead sailed relentlessly across the southern seas, calling up the spirits of drowned sailors. In the north, the size-shifting, flesh-eating draugr left their treasure-mounds, where they had lain restless for ages, cheated of the afterlife they had dreamed of, tricked into endless servitude by bloated, corpulent valkyries who had snatched their spirits from battlefields with false promises of eternal feasts in the heavens.
Behind the zombies, under murky suspended swamps of un-leaves stood the slimy, decaying trunks of the Karloflora, hordes of roving tree-spirits overflowing with mildew and hatred. On their dripping branches, Avrantic vetals hung upside down, cackling maliciously. Revenants from Ventelot, torn from their graves by lych-whispers and unfulfilled quests, stood near the dark woods, looking disapprovingly at thousands of nomadic jiangshi, terrifying essence-absorbers from Xi’en, hopping comically as they shuffled their ranks. Aswangs from far lands to the south-east, mild-mannered, weary-eyed human farmers or butchers by day and ravenous corpse-stealers by night, scurried between the battalions of the undead, carrying their messenger familiars, the tiktiks, bearing messages from the Pyramid to the leaders of the hordes.
Two troops of skeleton warriors trudged from the west towards the Great Pyramid, drawing good-natured jeers from the undead already assembled because of their stork-like marching. They couldn’t help it, of course – it was difficult, wading through sand with feet of bone.
The lych-lords were not just masters of the dead; they had thousands of willing servants among the living, and they called to their followers in their hour of need. Mad world’s-end cultists drew out the empty-headed and eccentric; vetals possessed them and drove them westwards. Religious evangelists summoned vast crowds of people with empty lives, seeking salvation in empty words, to great gatherings, where they joined the lych-lords in prayer and sacrificed their own lives. Priests of darkness poisoned their own followers or drove them into devout frenzy, and wherever the living lost their way, the dead found greater strength. Leading the way in all matters of life-death transitions were the lych-lords’ greatest practical joke on the world, the sacred missionary order of Demonic Possessions Anonymous; thousands of people flocked to their ziggurats believing that the priests who ran the order removed demons from people.
As the last of the skeleton men fell into position and the Great Pyramid was completely surrounded by the teeming armies of the undead, a shrill screech was heard. At the apex of the pyramid, a small, glowing white figure appeared. It was Erkila, in vulture form, and she grew in size until all could see her, and then she flapped her wings thrice and screeched again, and the undead fell silent. Below Erkila, on the pyramid’s southern side, a massive slab of stone moved aside with a grating sound. A square passage opened, a tunnel to another dimension, a window into infinite darkness. Hordes of undead shuffled aside, creating a path for whatever would come out.
There was a sound like a trumpet-blast, and the undead armies cheered as one, hoarse growls and shrill screeches, clatters and clings, storms of whispers, agonized moans mingling and creating an unholy crescendo. This, then, was the beginning of the End. The First Pharaoh would not come out tonight, to burn the seas and melt the air, but his heralds would. The Four Horsemen, chosen by Erkila herself, would ride their steeds out to the lands of the living to announce the coming of the last day. Having delivered their final message, they would return, and then the reaping would begin.
Horns brayed dully, and the breathless host fell silent. There was a clatter of hooves, and the First Rider emerged, riding slowly down the slope of the pyramid. Even in the moonlight, the horse and rider appeared red, dark, bloody red and gold. Tzimem was his name, and he was once an emperor in the south-western lands now lost under the wave that made the Vertical Sea. His square mask shone gold, and his horse, an undead Marichelli creation, had a narwhal horn on its forehead and was the colour of terracotta. In his right hand he held a crude, broad-bladed sword, and in his left a beating human heart.
No sooner had Tzimem’s mount dug its heels in the sand than there was a great rolling of human-skin drums, and the Second Rider emerged, a diminutive, sinister grey man who went by the name of the Muratorian. In life he had been a great Hudlumm general, a short, stocky, charismatic leader of a horde that had terrorized the far north. Now he wore a thin crown and carried a longbow, and looked rather uncomfortable on his magnificent white charger, possibly because it was a horse skeleton, always a pain in the buttocks to ride, especially if, as in the case of the Muratorian, an aversion to new technology meant the rider refused to use a saddle.
The Third Horseman, or Horseperson, sat on a magnificent black steed, a living Artaxerxian stallion of exceptional size, whose hugeness made its rider look even smaller. The Third Rider looked like a human girl, about six years old, except that she had big, pretty blue eyes with no pupils and pale green skin. In her time, long ago, for she had been one of the very first humans, she had been the most dreaded witch in the world, or at least the known world, which at that time had consisted of a few caves in the Grey Mountains, and a little pond. She had abandoned her ancient bearskin and skull for more modern attire; now she was dressed in a frilly frock made of fish scales, and wore a pointy hat of great magnificence. She was called The Unnamed, mostly because of her habit of making her head spin like a top and vomiting in every direction when asked what her name was. With her rode her were-cat, Manslaughter.
The drums sounded again, and the Fourth Rider rode out, a splendid figure, a grim-eyed, broad-shouldered, frighteningly handsome man in black armour, bearing a massive scythe as long as a lance, riding on a pale grey horse with flaming red eyes. This was the Cold Prince, the Scorpion Man’s champion, a mighty warrior from the east. His face was pale and stern, and still bore the colour of human flesh. He was now known officially, in the rewritten Book of the Dead, as Pralay the Destroyer, but whispers of his great deeds in his lifetime, recently unnaturally cut short by divine error, still rode before him, and drowned out his new name, and told the armies of the dead his true name: Asvin.
Side by side, amidst great cheering and howling, the Four Horsemen rode out through the path the undead cleared for them, past fields of dead faces, forests of rotting feet shuffling in the moonlight, shifting hissing oceans of sand, Their steeds’ hooves kicked up clouds of white sand that rose around them and enveloped them. They stopped and turned on a high dune-hill, and watched the massed legions of the dead and the Great Pyramid standing like a mountain-top amidst clouds of ill omen. They waited until the cheers died down, and a tidal wave of silence rolled through the desert, infinite sorrow, anger, and yearning in its wake; then they spurred their mighty horses westward and were gone.
* * *
‘And the Fourth Rider shall ride a pale horse, and he will be grim, and his scythe will be found suitable for a great reaping, but you will not know him by the name that would logically
be obtained by bringing these diverse elements together under one umbrella of reason,’ said the unwaba.
‘And this is why we’re stuck in the Bleakwood? To meet the heralds of the end of the world? What do we do with them?’ asked Kirin.
‘I will not tell you what to do, and you cannot meet them,’ said the unwaba, sounding smug, or at least as smug as it is possible to sound while whispering through a chameleon’s throat.
‘Thanks, then. We like knowing these things. Next time there’s a contest at the Underbelly, we could win a candlestick for general knowledge or something,’ said Kirin.
‘Unfortunately, the Fragrant Underbelly will be destroyed when the ravians destroy Kol,’ said the unwaba, ‘so the chances of your winning any contest there are somewhat slim.’
Kirin and Maya both sat up, aghast. ‘When the ravians what? Destroy Kol? How do we stop them?’ gasped Maya.
‘You cannot stop them, since an act of magnitude will undoubtedly draw the attention of the gods,’ said the unwaba.
‘But they’ll all be watching the war, or the Riders! There’s a chance they won’t notice us!’
‘I said what I said. I know what I know. You will do what you will do.’
‘I’m not going to sit by and hide while Kol is destroyed,’ said Kirin.
‘This is a test of your will, son of Danh-Gem,’ said the unwaba. ‘Defeating gods is never easy, and you will have to make several sacrifices before you succeed – this is but the first. You know the rules. Remember, if by your actions your rebellion is revealed and thus thwarted, and your plan to save the world fails, Kol is doomed along with everything else.’
Kirin sank down on the ground, considered clasping his head dramatically and decided against it. ‘The ravians airships will destroy Kol, and you tell us this in advance, and expect us not to be affected by it?’
‘Be as affected as you desire. I expect you not to do anything rash. Too much is at stake.’
‘I’m not going to let Kol go, just like that. It’s the only home that means anything to me.’
‘That is truly touching. No one cares.’
‘But when Kol falls, what will prevent the ravians from destroying Imokoi, and the rest of the world?’ Kirin asked.
‘That we will see,’ said the unwaba.
‘Between the ravian airships and the dead, what’s going to be left to save? What’s the point of lurking around and saving the board when all the pieces are dead?’ asked Maya.
‘When I say save the world, you must not take me too literally,’ said the unwaba. ‘If you must know, this world cannot be saved. The game will go on until it ends.’
Kirin and Maya looked at him in shock. ‘We can’t save the world?’ said Maya. ‘What are we doing here, then?’
‘You cannot save this world,’ said the unwaba. ‘But if you meet the gods, and ask them nicely, and have a few convincing arguments up your sleeves, they might make you another one.’
‘You’re going to fall asleep now, aren’t you?’ asked Maya.
‘Stupid one-trick lizard, aren’t you?’ asked Kirin.
‘Yes,’ said the unwaba to both, and fell asleep.
Chapter Nine
The sense of dull foreboding that had enveloped Kol since the year of the Simoqin Prophecies had now sharpened into mass hysteria. The once thriving sale of amulets and talismans had stopped; no one had any to spare any more, and even the ones known to be fake were kept – just in case. Kol had never been a city whose inhabitants greeted you with a smile and a wave, at least unless they were trying to take away all your money, but now general hostility had reached epic proportions. Not without reason; everyone was a potential enemy. The ravians could be anywhere, twisting, whispering, scheming; no one was safe. Magic-users travelled in groups, fearing attacks. Other citizens lived in dread and avoided strangers, especially tall and attractive ones. Thick blankets of fear covered the city like a fog. Avranti had fallen, and was lost to the world. The survivors of Pataal-e-Gurh had nearly all deserted the army, and lurked about on the streets, ashen-faced, wild-eyed, telling their stories of the battle, of the day the age of the humans ended. All hope was lost. They had seen the beginning of a new world, where humans would have to learn their place. The ravians were coming, like avenging gods, bringing death from the heavens, and against them there could be no victory.
Angry rumours roamed like feral dogs through the city, biting and snarling; the Civilian, they growled, was responsible for all this. She had turned Kol away from the ravian way of light and embraced the darkness of Imokoi. In the last Age, the asurs and rakshases had been punished for their hubris; this time, it was humanity’s turn. The official pronouncement that the ravians had not responded to any overtures of friendship or peace was, the mob decided, a lie, for surely the ravians were friends and heroes, and by stabbing them in the back the Civilian had doomed them all. The deserters had, of course, mentioned that all Askesis’ attempts at negotiations had been met with silence, but that was a mere detail.
It was the perfect time for a revolution, but the revolution never happened; this was because all the Civilian’s political rivals, and all the money that would have raised them to replace her, were busy getting out of Kol. A lot of people had woken up one day to find they no longer ran the world, and this inspired in them a sudden desire to visit the great outdoors and get in touch with their inner selves.
If this was the heart of an empire, its arteries were now clogged. The streets of Kol were lined with great wagons and vaman-made landbarges, and ever-swelling crowds milled about them, jostling, cursing and shouting. Thousands of Kolis were fleeing the city, returning to their villages, seeking refuge with relatives elsewhere, desperate to flee the fiery death that rolled sky-borne from the east. Others sought refuge underground; the vamans had created vast tunnels and halls underneath the foundations of the city, to act as storehouses and shelters in dark times. Endless lines of people thronged at tube-worm stations, waiting for the great hollowed annelida to transport them through newer, deeper tunnels to the burrows of war. Fights started frequently; the citizens of Kol, previously unacquainted with the threat of actual annihilation, found new ways to divide themselves every day, and long-forgotten barriers racial, regional, religious and social were discovered anew; the city guards had their hands full trying to keep riots from breaking out all over the city. The Civilian’s counter-propaganda squads were fighting a losing battle; their assurances that the otherworldly invaders would be vanquished before they reached Kol by the world itself, by little things like the common cold and the malarial mosquito, usually ended in scenes of mob violence.
The Chief Civilian stood on the balcony of her palace, watching carpets flit about between towers and spires, flies buzzing around the rotting Big Mango. Ojanus was half asleep around her shoulders; she patted his sleeping head absent-mindedly. She looked stern, resolute; the time for weakness and self-doubt had passed. With her, staring gravely at her unreadable face, stood Mantric, Chancellor Ombwiri, and Amloki the khudran. Three Kaos butterflies, gifts from the centaur shamans, sat on Ombwiri’s arm, their wings flapping in slow, rhythmic beats, sending howling winds and thunderstorms to slow down the invaders. On the eastern side of the balcony, Arathognan, the heir to Kol’s long-empty throne stood alone, looking outwards and upwards, searching the sky for specks of gold, for the beast-shaped celestial airships of the ravians.
A solitary figure on a speeding vroomstick streaked down to the balcony and landed gently. It was Roshin of the Red Phoenix. She carried a small wooden box under her arm.
‘It is done,’ she said.
The Civilian took the box and opened it. Within it lay Kol’s greatest treasure, the Heart of Magic, the ruby within a gold mesh that kept Kol’s magic field stable and its carpets and vroomsticks in the air. Temat handed the box to Amloki.
‘Keep it safe and airborne when the time comes,’ she said. ‘I need not tell you how important this is.’ Amloki nodded, covered the box with his black
cloak, and cast Roshin a smouldering look out of habit.
‘All significant artifacts have been transferred to vaman vaults,’ said Roshin. ‘The objects you wanted removed from the palace have been given to Mati for safekeeping.’
‘Good,’ said the Civilian. ‘And is there any news from Imokoi?’
‘Yes. They will do nothing to help us, as they are busy preparing their own defences. Ravian armies have been sighted in Vrihataranya and the northern Free States,’ said Roshin. ‘But I doubt there is anything they could do; our agents inform us that the Dark Lord no longer wears the Gauntlet of Tatsu, and it is believed that the dragons no longer serve him. The Dark Lord, has, however, sent an invitation, for you and for Mantric, though he will not consider it rude if either of you refuse. He is aware you are awaiting guests.’
‘Kind of him,’ said Temat. ‘What was the invitation for?’
‘The Dark Lord’s wedding,’ said Roshin. ‘He’s marrying Maya.’
Everyone on the balcony suddenly became very preoccupied with their sleeves.
‘This would seem to indicate that she is alive,’ said Temat. ‘Has she made no attempt to send messages to Kol?’