by Jay Lake
“I have seen your eyes alight upon me often. In those gracious moments, I have seen heaven; I have experienced liberty and come under a yearning that no earthbound visage can satisfy. By your inspiration I have defeated untold scores of the enemy. I have led the liberation of towns and villages. I have made altars and monuments to speak of how the mystic gods of Eglantra have broken the mechanical gods of the Hermangens. My name is praised in all the land, and legends of my heroism precede me. Tell me now whether you have not looked my way with longing or if you do not know my name and I shall return to my camp, and earn yet the fame that would buy my right to your hand. But lady of the gods’ people, messenger of glory and wisdom, I know that on the eve of every great age for this people, the union of Man and Messenger has always vouchsafed the gods’ favor, and it is this favor and union I seek now.
“I am Timo Malthusset. I am the greatest warrior to come against Hermanga in an age. I offer you my hand and my service, and I pray that you do not reject this plea. I am captured by your gaze, held prisoner by your visage! Life without you drains of its savor, and only with you shall I feel whole, and shall the future of this nation be secured.” Timo bowed before the Lady, barely controlling his heaving lungs. Anxious seconds passed before she spoke back to him.
“You are bold,” she said, “and risking much in this venture. You speak like a poet, but are reckless as a savage. Nonetheless, I have known you, Timo. I have heard word about you, and seen your face, and your deeds do speak to me.” She smiled slyly; it might have looked crooked on a mortal, but it seemed wise on her. “Perhaps,” she went on, “you aspire to your proper station.”
“Rise,” said one of the Messengers beside the lady. “Speak not a word and follow us.”
Timo stood in confounded wonder. A mercurial hope had been confirmed. Terrible, unforeseen joy flooded his body, made it feel as though it was turning incorporeal.
The Messengers approached Timo as he stood still and experienced emotions so deep that no expression could convey them. The Lady held out her arm. He wrapped his fingers into her hand. She inclined her head, and then continued on, hand in hand, arm in arm, with the newly consecrated hero of Eglantra.
They traveled into the woods. The sun wore away the black of night as they moved in further. The Messengers’ auras dimmed, finally becoming nothing, letting them look almost mortal save for the uncanny lightness of their skin and the alien sharpness of their features. After unmeasured hours, they arrived at a great, ancient tree, its trunk so wide Timo could not see around it, its limbs so high that every other tree in the forest huddled in its shadow. Its tremendous roots, which were wide as a well’s mouth, wrapped around the entrance of a cave. The Messengers and Timo walked through the cave’s threshold. The soldier’s journey to transcendence had begun.
The Messengers’ auras returned as they descended into the gloom. Dust covered the floors and smaller, frayed roots hung from the ceiling. The passage spiraled downward, and grew wider at each turn. After many levels, the ground became solid rock, and then ceramic tile. The roots grew together, becoming twisted into deft patterns, swirling down from the roof of the cave onto the walls. Even deeper, and the roots were colored with vibrant, bedazzling streaks, giving way at points to murals of legendary battles and the courts of the Gods. The violence was depicted in vivid crimson, the opulence in brilliant gold and lapis lazuli. Then images that Timo could not discern appeared, murals of the Messengers at great feasts, sitting in gigantic chambers and watching on as tournaments were held, conducting violent rituals in crimson robes with strange emblems hanging above them. Timo wished to inquire about these, but kept to his mandate of silence. As he pulled his eyes away from the walls of the now widened tunnel, he saw ahead undulating light the color of old bones.
Emerging, Timo found himself in a vast hall that stood hundreds of feet high. Massive roots formed into columns and broke from the ceiling down into the ornately tiled floor. Winged lamps fluttered and circled between columns near the ceiling, casting tumults of light and shadow that refracted off the smooth, polished trunks of the root columns. Torch baskets rimmed the column bases, and between them sat merchant stalls displaying an immeasurable variety of goods traded by creatures that Timo could only sparsely identify. Some were obviously Messengers, though relatively few wore the pristine white mantles of the Lady’s company. Others resembled morlocks and trolls, the mythical enemies of Eglantrans and Hermangens alike. There was also something with slate-black skin, no eyes, and an extra pair of legs. Another being had the form of a man, but the skin and features of a reptile. There were humanlike things with great, pearl-white eyes bulging out to the sides of their heads, their narrow teeth gnashing as they spoke in hisses and screeches. The Messengers in the bazaar were often shadowed by strange, hunched over things in grey cloaks. Sharp ends and knobs protruded through their amorphous garments, and points dimpled the cowl that covered their heads.
Though many faces seemed unfriendly, Timo assumed nothing about their intention. He entered a realm he had only encountered in tales from his parents and priests. The world of the holy, he saw, was not like the earth, nor were those who dwelled in it like their mundane counterparts. He thought he was prepared, but understood his folly, and repented in his heart. As lights swam over him, sounds bombarded him, and smells both revolting and enticing bewildered him, the supple grip of his lady’s hand stayed close in his grasp, anchoring him in this unfamiliar realm. He realized that the gulf between his future and past was more immeasurable than he could have anticipated. It sent another wave of expectant joy over him.
Mosaic tiled arcades led off into tunnels, hinting at other chambers of wonder, whose contents Timo could only guess at. As they proceeded, wagons separated from Timo’s train and went hither and thither, their armored guards now feeling free to laugh and speak with the coachmen who drove them. The tongue they spoke with was surprisingly harsh. Timo expected their language to be fair and beauteous.
At last he and the Lady broke off from the main company. She bowed and spoke farewells in their tongue before leading Timo into a relatively narrow passage that was free of vendors, and lined with stairwells leading down and up. Timo and his lady traveled downward.
For the first time, an expression of confusion replaced the look of awe on Timo’s face. The heavens, after all, were above, not below. If this were the base of the Tree of Life, atop which the gods dwelt, should they not have gone towards them?
“I know the confusion in your heart now, Timo, but worry not,” the Lady said. “We must make you ready to stand in our number, and for that we must first descend, and speak with Garum.”
“Who is Garum?”
She placed a finger over Timo’s lips. “I did not lift from you the your ban on speech. Know simply that Garum is wise, and helpful, and that he will fit you to serve in these numinous realms.”
They came out onto a hallway lined with stoops and doors, like a buried alleyway without windows, roofs or skies. At the end of the hall stood a massive steel portal. The black paint on the door seemed to suck away the circling lamplight. They approached it. The Lady pressed a button next to the door, and somewhere beyond a deep bell resounded that echoed through the hall. The door opened, and a grey-cloaked figure stood before them. The Lady withdrew a metal device wrapped in bronze wire from her robe’s sleeve and passed it over the creature’s hood. Blue and orange lights glimmered in the cowl’s dark, and the thing stepped back.
“Do follow,” she said.
Timo kept his hand in hers as they walked inside. Behind them, the thing in the cloak closed the door. It shut with a jarring boom. The place they had entered was lined with colorless bricks, turned a citrine yellow by the amber crystals hanging from the ceiling. After a short passage, they emerged into a large, domed chamber that smelled of ground iron and smoke. Carefully grouped and arranged implements of brass and steel hung off the walls. Some looked like tools, others like mechanical parts. Circling the room were workbenches
stained with patina and scarred by tools. A sewage grate lay at the centre of the floor. Another Messenger, cloaked in a long red mantle, greeted them.
“Mr. Malthusset,” he said, “I am Garum. ’Tis a pleasure to see you, truly.”
The Lady whispered in Timo’s ear, “I must leave you now, but I shall see you soon.” She unclasped her hand, bowed, and left the chamber. Timo steeled himself as she walked away, but quietly realized that his wonder was turning to dread. He wanted the Lady to stay. His eyes searched for her eyes as she left, but they did not meet him. Instead, she stared at Garum, that sly smile lying on the corner of her mouth.
Garum waited until she had left before continuing. “Now, if you’d please, Mr. Malthusset, could you remove your clothes and stand just next to this grate here?”
Timo disrobed, folding his white shirt and starched pantaloons neatly, and put them nearby. He waited by the grate, standing at attention. He hoped Garum would not notice his trembling fingers.
Timo considered the implements on the walls: brass fittings, copper knobs, coils, gears, pipes. He scowled, considering how they looked like Hermangen machinery.
“No doubt,” said Garum from somewhere behind Timo, “you are curious about the media I utilize? An Eglantran such as yourself might be surprised to see such here.” A crackling buzz, then the smell of sulphur entered the air.
“Machinery has a mystique, Timo, does it not? Even growing up in a place where the supernatural and truly natural have no distinction, it always fascinated me what a turned knob here, a piece of copper wire there could do. And that is what I do, Timo—I take things like you, things like these instruments, and I marry them to mystical processes, far beyond the ken of your kind, and I bring out the greatest potential in both.” Timo could hear Garum stepping through the chamber, the clatter of metal tools as he took them off their racks and placed them on tables. “Your unstoppable cannons? Your hounding bullets? I pray you aren’t surprised.”
But Timo was surprised. Garum spoke what to Timo’s people was heresy. It was the Hermangens who deified their machinery, ascribing to it powers over life, death, heaven, and creation. The partisans fought to cleanse the land of these ideas. They fought against everything Garum spoke of. It was the heavens and the heavens alone that the Eglantrans fought for.
“These machines are capable of miracles, Timo,” Garum said, “even without the aid of my craft. But to one side we make available the mystical, to the other the material. I mean, regardless of their natural acumen, and how much they venerate these devices, the Hermangens aren’t so gifted as to come up with them on their own. They are animals, too.”
“Now,” he added, his voice coming closer, “just to be clear, what I’m about to do is not out of pity or sympathy, but only because it is necessary.”
“Wait,” said Timo, daring to break his order to silence, “if the Hermangens didn’t come up with their—”
A crack rang through his skull as Timo’s head shot forward. The base of his skull burned, the room spun, and a bloody stream poured down his neck.
Thought ended and fury seized him. The rim of his vision darkened, and tightly honed instincts awakened. Timo spun around trying to find an assailant. He saw drips of blood on the floor and his clothes. He noticed a brass cap fitted all over with crystals on a workbench. The cap held his attention but for an instant, yet it was long enough for another strike to connect to him. The blow was nearly in the same place.
Timo twisted again, and glimpsed Garum skipping out of his vision. He sprang towards the Red Messenger, but Timo’s sight was already blurring. He stumbled past Garum, and another strike crashed into the back of his head.
Timo fell to his knees, panting and heaving. Blood dropped past his face and landed in patters on the brick floor. He struggled to maintain consciousness. He shook his head back and forth looking for Garum.
“Goodness, you are strong,” the Messenger remarked. “One blow should have been enough.”
Another shock hit the back of Timo’s head. A louder crack resounded through the room. Timo felt a rush of cold air. He reeled and looked up to see the Messenger standing over him. Timo got to his feet and stumbled towards his assailant. Garum avoided him easily.
Blood gushed down Timo’s shoulders and back. He struggled to set himself upright as he lurched forward. His legs could not stay straight. He felt unstoppable weakness creeping through his body, first in his feet, then his arms, then his whole self.
He tripped over a crack in the bricks and fell crashing to the ground head first. It was wet where he landed. He hardly felt the impact when his face hit the floor.
* * * *
Timo awoke to burning throbs of pain surging over his body. He shook uncontrollably as they went through him, but it was over in an instant.
It was utterly black wherever he was. It stank like a charnel house poured over with petroleum. His eyes felt sealed, as if coated in wet wax. He couldn’t blink or even feel his eyelids. He stared without volition into the dark. He felt bugs crawling over him, and lingering jabs of pain driven into his joints, over his limbs, up and down his spine. He tried reaching up to brush the insects off, but the agony residing in his bones came to life, halting him. Similar sensations attacked any time he moved a muscle. He couldn’t even open his mouth or swallow but for the pain it awakened.
As he began to consider with dread what may have happened to him—his imagination wandering to memories of immolation, torture, and mortal wounds he had either witnessed or inflicted—bright, colorful lights flickered on and glimmered in the dark. The lights washed back and forth in every direction. The colors changed from blue to orange to magenta to yellow. They clustered in small groups, flashing and cascading; little balls of luminescence floating at about eye level. There were dozens, hundreds of them. They took Timo’s mind off the pain. He scarcely reckoned the ghost of burning sensations shifting over his scalp.
Chains clanked and rattled. Steel groaned as mechanisms moved in the dark. Light poured in as a large gate opened. Timo finally saw where he stood—in a warehouse, packed shoulder-to-shoulder with other…men.
The things were naked and scarred, with thick stitches snaked around their bodies. Their skin was pock-marked and sun-starved, sealed with signs of abuse and decay. Brass rods jutted out from holes sealed with dried blood. Pistons, gears, and wires connected the rusted brass fixtures, framing the mannish things, creating a ghastly union of the organic and industrial. Each one wore a bronze cap studded with glowing crystals, revealing where the lights in the darkness had come from. Timo had seen those caps before on the table in Garum’s chamber.
Timo looked down as far as he could see. He was nude. His body was spattered in dried blood. Over his arms he saw the same structure that braced those creatures he stood with.
He silently asked his lords for mercy. His tear ducts welled up, but not a drop touched his eyes.
At some unseen orchestration, the men walked forward in ranks. When Timo’s time came to move out, bloodstained machinery whirred and clicked. Metal drove into his limbs and directed his movements. Never had Timo felt such torment, but his jaws stayed locked shut—his desperate screams silenced before he could even make them.
After marching through a tunnel, they came to a high-ceilinged room where roots sprouted from the walls. Knives, hammers, and saws lay on steel slabs around a fountain in the middle. There were tables and carts scattered about. The chamber smelled of blood, dirt, and stagnant rot.
The mechanized men circled the wall and stood still. Timo’s eyes darted everywhere. He noted the translucent goggles covering their eyes, and determined that this was why he couldn’t blink. In the better light, he saw how mottled, bloody and deficient they were. On one man he saw a tanned arm and a fair torso; on another a masculine body with a feminine face. The stitches ran like seams around their parts, cruelly designed and through cruelty animated. Morbid sensations flooded his mind as he guessed at their purpose despite himself.
; The sound of grinding rocks reverberated from above. The roots came to life, moving into the wall, knocking off clods of dirt and debris. Then a body fell, as if spit from the hole the roots left behind. A mechanized man below opened his arms and caught the carcass, then carried it to the fountain. More rumblings emanated about the room. The roots dropped the dusty, bloody corpses; the mechanical men picked them up. Timo caught one himself, a Hermangen with burns seared across his chest, a rictus of pain sealed upon his face. He wore an officer’s uniform. Timo was too pained to smile, but somewhere deep within, the satisfaction of seeing a defeated enemy still welled up.
In his brass-driven limbs, the body felt weightless. The corpse was taken to a table where its clothes were cut off. It was washed and severed of its appendages. The machine in Timo stripped flesh from its bones. Some pieces were placed in a cart, others arranged on a long, metal table. After the Hemangen was processed, Timo was returned to the wall, where he waited.
Timo saw several more bodies cleaned and cleaved, all Hermangen military. Shocks from the copper wires wrapped around Timo’s fingers pressed him to diligently butcher his enemies’ remains. Other mechanized men sewed some parts together, still others came and went, carrying out cartloads of mangled pieces.
The pain of the machinery tore at Timo’s fingers and limbs. If the Messengers had simply asked him, Timo would have done all of it just as effectively of his own free will. These were the enemies of the gods, and worthily did they come to this. He had never flinched as blood splattered across his face before. The reek of their insides didn’t even linger on him during or after the haze of battle.
Timo expected that this duty would bring him to his lady. He endured the pain for the prospect of pleasure to come.
After the series of soldiers had been processed, another figure fell to him. It was smaller, and wore nothing to indicate military status. He glanced at what had landed in his arms, and the face of a young girl stared back. Her hair and eyes showed her to be Eglantran. A look of dismay was wrought on her features. Ashes stained her clothes, blood trickled from her mouth. He panicked as he began taking her to the table.