Book Of Tongues

by Gemma Files

  Rook swallowed. “The hell’d you think I’d even come here for,” he managed, finally, “if I damn well didn’t?”

  “Then why do you fight me, fool?”

  Say it, husband.

  “’Cause . . .” His head swam, lightening like the sky, as the dying fire sunk lower. “. . . she threatened to kill him . . . then promised to save him — ”

  “From what, herself? In her time, the gods ate ones like him every day — the beautiful, the gifted. They ate their hearts, and drank their precious blood, because they could. Because that was what tasted best.”

  Little king, say —

  “That ain’t even vaguely what she — ”

  “Oh, save me from all men, bilagaana or Diné — do you really believe no one but you knows how to lie? Wake up!”

  Say it, say the words —

  Rook opened his torn mouth wide, only to have it twist shut on him yet again, so fast it burned worse than a swallow of sparks.

  “Your mouth stays shut, grandson,” Grandma repeated. “Or — ”

  Or what, old woman?

  Had he ever truly thought her gentle, kind? Damn, if the bitch wasn’t right: between her and the Lady, he might well be the stupidest whoreson alive.

  Grandma gave a sigh, similarly frustrated, and pressed both palms to her eyes, as though to soothe an aching brain. Then continued, after a moment — “When North and South went to War, Rook, you fought, yes? And that young man of yours, too — not because either of you cared one way or another who owned land, who kept slaves, but because you wanted to die and he wanted to live. Because he knew himself born for killing, and saw a chance to trade that skill for a long ride, far away. And neither of you cared who else might be hurt by it — not least because, unaware of your own true natures, you did not see what would happen when one of you was hurt badly enough to come to power.

  “Meanwhile, for we Diné, your War was one more theft in a long string of thieveries. Treaties which signed away the land from under us, leaving our horses no place to graze. Two of our sacred mountains taken — as though that could happen! Your greycoats offered us alliance against the bluecoats, but threatened us with death if we did not accept. After, the government men sent Kit Carson to burn us out, calling us traitors. And then, the Long Walk . . . men, women and children driven to Hwééldi like cattle, three hundred miles in eighteen days, on foot.”

  She shook her head, her braids’ double shadow lashing the ground. “Bad blood between us, always. Soon my people will march home once more, and there will be war again — a war we will lose. My dreams have shown me. Like the Steel Hats who drove your Lady and her kind under the ground, you will make it so we are forgotten even by ourselves.

  “And I might have stopped it — I, and every other Hataalii. When the tribes sent warriors to ask us for help, we might have banded together, even at the usual cost. When they said, These bilagaana do not think of us as people, given how they treat us, so why should we think of them as people?, we might have answered, You speak the truth. Let us go to war. Let us answer force for force, and make such a slaughter as the land has never seen.

  “But I am the true fool, here. I told them no: Bilagaana are only human beings, and to kill human beings by magic is the Witchery Way. We would become skinwalkers, Anaye, were we to do so. Yes, you ‘whites’ think no one as good as yourselves. You think you own everything, and care for nothing. Yet you are not evil spirits, or even dumb beasts — you love your children, at least, enough to cry for their pain. And even if you do not, you still piss and shit as we do, and know to go outside your own camps before doing so, for the most part. This is human enough, for me.”

  That’s quite the little philosophical dilemma you got yourself entangled in, Rook thought. His ears burned, and his forehead was clammy — was that his own tongue leeching iron between clenched teeth, or a knife? How could he have possibly cut himself so deeply he could feel it in every pore, without having said a single word?

  Why the hell’re you even tryin’ to sell me this cart-load of Indian horse-crap? he wondered, shame and hate struggling venomously inside him, two snakes in the same bag. Just go on and kill me, same’s I would you, if I thought I was capable of it. ’Cause I could face that a sight better than I can the prospect of being damn well talked to death.

  “Because I do not want to kill you,” Grandma said, to herself, her voice full of a dull sorrow. “If only I could be sure you were fully a monster! If I killed you, it would upset her plans, I know that much — I do not think she could get another man to serve her quite as willingly, as quickly. And so long as you practise only for your own pleasure — or your lover’s — you both come closer and closer to being something anyone can kill without guilt, without even having to cleanse themselves of the deed, afterward.”

  Chess’s voice, now, answering for him — distinct as the Lady’s, though licking hot against his opposite eardrum — Yeah? All right, then. Bring it on, bitch. Let them damn well try.

  “Yes. And this, too, is a monster’s answer.”

  As though resolved, Grandma got to her feet, flicking back her braids. Rook found himself jouncing upwards as well, knees popping painfully.

  “Has your Lady told you the full extent of her plans?” she demanded. “I doubt it. Even an uneducated bilagaana Hataalii would not consent, if so. Remember what I showed you — there are things which must not be done, because their cost is too dear. To bring the dead back to life tears a hole in the world’s fabric. It is a great crime, a sin against Balance. What your Lady wants is to remake the world, to poison everything. It will destroy her, and everyone else.” She glared at him, suddenly furious. “Yet you think nothing of helping her, if it gets you what you want.”

  Rook took her contempt, which stung, but at least gave him enough strength to speak again. “Yeah? Well — screw you, you crazy squaw! All I ever wanted was her out of my head, away from me, from Chess . . . and I thought you were gonna help me with that, by the by!”

  Rolling her eyes, at the very idea: “Oh yes, of course — because it makes such sense that another Hataalii would offer to solve your problems, free of charge. Or that I would ever wish to help any white man, let alone two.”

  Put like that, it did seem foolish — and though he overshot her by a foot at least, when she thrust her face alongside his, it was he who felt dwarfed. That marrow-deep suck turned on full, guttering him ‘til he watched himself fade away by shades, like windowpane breath.

  You can still stop this, husband, the silver-bell voice reminded him. If . . . you want to.

  “So . . . this was a trap, right from the start. Right from that first time you spoke to me.”

  Grandma nodded, a touch sadly. “Always, yes.”

  “Was always my power you wanted, the whole time, like any other hex — ”

  “Your power? Tchah! You have nothing I need. But when I saw in my dreams that if you were not stopped everything would die, how could I refuse that call? This being the only time at which I could stop you from Becoming — ”

  “Becoming what?”

  And here . . . he heard what she was thinking, two equally strange ideas laid overtop each other, contradictorily at odds. Grandma’s double voice with Miss Rainbow whispering underneath, translating the unspoken:

  A god’s lover,

  Husband to

  two gods at once,

  And your own lover’s

  Killer.

  Fear spiked down through Rook at those last four words, a shooting metallic pain. He looked down at the ashy remains of the conjured cob, and it was almost a relief to realize how sick he still felt at the thought of Chess hurt, dying. Let alone —

  “So.” Grandma reached up, prodding his cheek, and brought it away wet. “If you do still care, this much . . . then there may yet be a way to save you both. A way to live in Balance, without one of you devouring the other — if you are willing to pay the price.”

  “What . . . price?”

  �
��There is a binding,” Grandma said, “that makes a circle of two willing Hataalii. It sets their power to feed each upon each other, a combat which becomes partnership, perfect Balance. Each takes power from the other, and is instantly restored by the power they have taken. They may then live together, so long as chance permits.”

  Rook blinked. “Doesn’t sound so — ”

  “Listen, fool: they may live, I said. But not as Hataalii.”

  It took a long time for Rook to find the words. But even when he said them, they sounded meaningless — ridiculous.

  “You mean give up the hexation. Both of us.”

  Grandmother didn’t move, even to nod — so Rook leaned forward instead, barely aware that some range of motion was beginning to return. “But . . . not permanently, right? You can break it, when you need to. . . .”

  I could live with that, his mind gibbered to itself; Chess need never know what he didn’t already suspect. Keep the law’s eyes off each other, mask themselves to stay safe then unsheathe the power only when absolutely necessary, a lock-boxed magic shotgun.

  And now Grandmother did shake her head, of course. Dashing all his hopes with one simple word: “No. It can be broken, yes. Once broken . . . never remade. Because the power, once bound and balanced, cannot be divided again. It must go with one or the other. And the one left empty . . .”

  . . . dies. Anyhow.

  “Did you really think there would be no price?” Grandmother asked, after long silence — more honestly curious than contemptuous, for once. “Even foolish as you are, have you really learned so little?”

  No, thought Rook, numbly. Knew there’d be one, ’cause there always is. Just — not this.

  Take away the magic, and Reverend Rook was just a fallen preacher turned outlaw, gone in one fell swoop from demigod to dirty joke. Everything Rook had been, he had thrown away for hexation’s sake. If he gave that up, what was left?

  But then again . . . Chess would be losing more than he knew, too: his miraculous marksmanship, lizard-swift recovery from wounds and such. Hell, even the slow-burning brightness that turned men’s heads might drain away, leaving nothing behind but a too-pretty little man with a too-bad attitude, no longer fit for his formerly natural-born twin occupations of shooting and screwing. Could he ever forgive Rook, if he learned the Reverend had bargained away what made him special? Even if it saved his life?

  If neither of us were hexes, could we even stand each other?

  Grandma still held him down, a hundred ghost-hands ’round his throat, unwilling to give him even the slightest chance to refuse. Like she didn’t trust him far as she could throw him — by magical means, or otherwise — to not want both his cake and eat it too.

  Knew him pretty well, all told, considerin’ how recently they’d met.

  “. . . no,” he managed, at last, then coughed hard and spit, half-expecting to see a chunk of lung in the sputum. “I think — not.”

  Grandmother’s brow, already hard-rucked, threw up fresh lines. “What?”

  He could see it in her eyes, again — that brief flash of weary sympathy. Oh, grandson, do not make me make you do right —

  Don’t worry, lady. You won’t get the opportunity.

  “I accept,” he said, out loud. And — not to Grandma.

  Then saw her draw breath to protest, just barely — begin to, anyhow. But the answer was already returned before the old woman could even complete the action, through channels so obscure he had to strain to even perceive them fully: a tintinnation, borne by dust and blood.

  That silver no-voice, so sweet and dry and dreadful: husband, husband, yes

  (you will not regret this)

  No? Rook thought. Then: Probably not, no. Knowin’ me.

  And — back to Grandmother, still caught in that half-tick of timelessness, her brown face turning purple. Rook felt her influence fall away, probably only accelerating as her head grew lighter, her eyes stung and swum. It occurred to him that putting her out of her misery sooner rather than later would be a truly Christian mercy.

  And the glow starting to leak from every pore, laid overtop her lines like a badly exposed plate, emulsion popped and bleeding black light . . . all that wouldn’t have the slightest bit to do with him feeling oh-so-forgiving, would it? The magnetic pull of one hex for another, increased thousandfold by proximity to death.

  A departure-born mutual arrival, rape and sex combined, with only one still left standing to savour the doubled load. . . .

  Oh Jesus, it’s not like that. Can’t be. I just want — I don’t — I don’t hate her that much.

  The Lady, then, in reply — triggering her Traps, flicking shut her Snares, with him a mere struggling fly at her web’s sticky heart:

  But she would have done the same to you, given half a chance. For all her talk of sacrifice and Balance, of Doing Right, she is our kin, her hungers the very same. Would you refuse a meal offered in starvation, on moral grounds?

  Embrace what you are; take her defeat, my gift to you. Grow strong, to shelter him from your needs. Then find your way back to me, at last, and give me — in turn — due payment.

  I’ll do it before Chess has time to manifest, Rook thought, to Become himself — ’cause oh, but he’ll burn and shine, shed light so hard it hurts to look, a bonfire of bones. Gotta pay her back before that, or there’ll be great feasting indeed, on that day. . . .

  So: done deal. He took a step, grabbed his “Grandma” by one braid, brought his free hand up instinctively, and plunged it somehow through her chest, elbow-deep — not into gristle or grue, but right into the seed-sac of boiling energy she carried ’round her heart.

  Saw her grimace and almost cry out, and “heard” someone else — many someone elses? — call back, in answer: a vague sympathetic notion, her solitary hurt multiplied and reflected, fragmentary, fleeting. And along with it, the realization that she herself was severing this contact, breaking it off mid-stream before he could think to back-trace it — crying out (a warning? an order?) in her own language, all trace of English kicked to the wayside.

  Gone, now, with only they — three — left.

  Rook sucked hard, piggish, already brim-full of everything which had made Grandma her, and slid his hand down even further, with a wet, hot crack, to touch her heart’s fluttering meat-lump through broken ribs. There was a last rising sigh, warming him to his own hollow core — the sound a coal makes when it cracks across, releasing a last rush of embers.

  “You are . . . a monster,” Grandma told him, painfully, blood leaking from her mouth. “Bilagaana with a Bible . . . your One-God tells you this whole world is yours, so you . . . think that means you can use it up, throw it away. That all things conspire to serve you.”

  And now she spat, hot and sizzling, to scar the ground. “Such shit. If I could help that boy of yours drain you dry before you get the chance to do the same to him . . . teach him to dance with your heart in his mouth, as one should, after slaying foulness . . . then I would. I would.”

  Rook didn’t try to deny it. Just shrugged, and answered, “Well . . . that’s kinda what I thought, all along.”

  One more wrench, and she was emptied — he saw her spirit pass him by obliquely, a star falling the wrong way.

  Rook just stood there panting, and watched.

  Damnation didn’t feel so bad, on consideration; not bad as he’d feared, anyhow. Felt like, well — nothing, mostly.

  Which was probably why it gave him not a moment’s pause when all Grandmother’s blood humped itself up and sprayed blowhole-high to form a geyserish pillar — the midtop of which bowed slightly, spread outwards in a cowl, to let a too-familiar face push through.

  Rook gave the Lady a stiff little bow. “Ma’am,” he said.

  Little king, my affianced. It does me good to see you, face to face.

  “Likewise.”

  We are allies now, after all. Such courtesy is the least I owe you.

  “’Spect you’re right,” Rook agreed.
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br />   Go back to your lover, now, she instructed him. Do not feed overmuch from him, if he can help it. Just keep yourselves alive and free, until you find a way to speak with me directly.

  Rook frowned. “But — how’m I supposed to — ”

  Oh, it will come to you. It comes even now, as we speak. Have faith, husband — as I have faith in you. The blood-face smiled, too full of sly glee to bother approximating anything recognizable as human, any longer. You knew how to do that, once. . . .

  With that, the inevitable wind whipped up — pillar boiling back to dust with nauseating speed, a pale red cloud which blew away, leaving him alone, in silence.

  Sighing, the Reverend turned back for Bewelcome, and Chess.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Things went quicker, after that — like every other foregone conclusion.

  Rook returned to find Chess still waiting for him in Bewelcome’s frozen ruins, even more parched and sunburnt than he otherwise might have been, due to the salt’s coruscating glare. Hardly the best place for any redhead to linger, let alone one who’d apparently fallen asleep — or lightly comatose, perhaps, after what Rook later worked out had been near two weeks of dehydration — with his shirt spread out under him, to keep the ground from rubbing his back raw.

  Two days, from Rook’s point of view. One less fourteen, for everybody else. But that was magic for you, he thought, idly — ten pounds of trouble in a five-pound sack.

  Rook drew a stream up from beneath the lumpy white crust, cracking it open ’til the fresh water bubbled free, and fed it to Chess a fingertip at a time, for fear he’d puke and die. Then hoisted his slack weight high, carried him over to the same hill they’d once stood on and kicked it open, creating a cave. Since the trip hadn’t drained him overmuch, Rook was still so stuffed-full of stolen power he felt bloated as a tick — like he just had to use it, or pop.

  Inside the cave, he nursed Chess through a day and night more of fever, flensing his lover’s burnt skin away gently throughout, onion-careful. Beneath the worst of it a fine new layer of skin had already re-grown, bright pink, painfully smooth and sensitive to the touch.