Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm

by John C. Wright

  Some Panotii were still at the windows. Others landed on the huge wooden chandeliers or golden shields hung across the roofbeams so far above. The hall was taller than the roof of a gymnasium. They were not within flail range.

  The windows were not so tall. So I jumped up on a table, and swung the flail at the nearest pygmy shape crouching like a bat on the sill of a tall window. He fell out of that window, flapped his huge ears, and landed in the next one, raised a blowgun to his pig snout, and blew a feathered dart into my neck.

  It was a good shot, and I took a moment to draw in a deep breath, say a prayer to Saint Benedict, the patron saint of cures for poison, calm my thoughts, and to decide that the venom I could feel spreading like cold fire through my neck would have no effect.

  I did not know how much, if any, of the Oobleck was still present in my system. I did not know if my state of mind had total control over my ability not to die, or only partial.

  I knew that if I could breathe with a hole in my lung, and stick my severed leg back on my leg-stump and be walking on it one second later, that none of the normal laws of biology applied to me. My mind simply did not need my body to operate. So, in theory, nothing should be able to affect me. But in practice, it was not that simple. Because I somehow knew — call it intuition if you like, or call it random guess — that the least particle of fear would allow the particles of poison to affect me.

  I had to stop and concentrate, or, rather, zenlike, to clear my mind of clouds, of self, of doubt. When I stopped, though, all the long-eared monstrosities, grunting and snorting and snuffling and shrieking like boars in heat, whirled and threw their barbs and throwing knives, and tossed their lariats.

  A flail is not the best weapon for parrying a thrown knife. In fact, you cannot do it at all. What you can do is whirl the arms of the flail in a great circle and catch or snarl all the ropes that are leading to the fishhooks now stuck in your mantle or in your tender flesh, or the loops snaking around your neck or upper body. And if you are quick, you can snatch shut the arms of the flail against each other with your other hand, so that all the ropes are caught in the elbow joint of the weapon. There was a handy rack of tablets right next to me: I stuck the haft of the flail between two tablets on the rack, so that when the dozen or so pygmies jumped off the windows backward, all their weight was tugging on the huge library rack bolted into the marble floor, not against me trying to brace my feet against nothing on a slippery marble table top.

  Nakasu was not doing well: he was bleeding from a dozen minor wounds, and I don’t know if he had any poisoned darts in him. I could not see Abby: I assume Pastor Ossifrage had pushed her down behind one of the overturned tables.

  Only a few throwing knives or blown darts were winging toward Pastor Ossifrage, but they all wavered and spun when they got near him, as if bouncing off an unseen wall of air, and they struck the bookshelves to his left and right. He was waving his arms at the Panotii like a mad conductor orchestrating a silent Wagner opera, one with lots of trumpet blasts and drumrolls, had it been audible: but nothing at all was happening. When his levitation power robbed them of weight, or floated them upward, they just flapped their wing-sized ears and floated downward again. And I saw them adjust the colored gems on those big belts they wore, and again I guessed that they were some sort of Buck Rogers-style anti-gravity belt, except, because this is crazymagicland, probably they operated by grav-alchemy rather than technomancy, or something ridiculous like that.

  “Abby! Can you hear me!” I shouted over the din of battle. I forgot to mention, everyone in the chamber was screaming at the top of his lungs, except the guys blowing little feathered blowdarts at us. I did not hear the captain Izi, shouting any orders, however. Once or twice I heard him say something in a soft voice, almost a whisper. If your men have ears the size of overcoats, I guess there is no need for trumpets or bullhorns.

  There was no reply from Abby. That was bad.

  I shouted at Ossifrage, trying to remember words in the Hebrew I had studied. Finally I remembered, “H’erev! H’erev!” It was the word for sword. I was pointing at the dead body of one of the men he had killed inside the room earlier, one of the two soldiers. The corpse was all the way across the chamber from me. I would never reach it before Nakasu was hauled out the window.

  Ossifrage understood, though. He pointed a finger at the scabbard on the dead man’s belt, and the scimitar flashed, spinning, through the air, and landed, quivering, embedded in the head of a wooden winged serpent statue near to me. I yanked it out and belabored the ropes twining me. They parted reluctantly. Even lightweight rope is harder to cut than you think. It is not the kind of thing that parts in one stroke. Usually it just gives a bit, and a few strands come loose.

  I realized, to my horror, that it would be quicker to cut the barbs out of my flesh. Oh, the pain. So I just hacked at myself, screaming, sword in one hand, pulling out huge hooks dripping with me-juice with the other. The flail, you remember, was wedged between two tablets on the bookrack at this moment, acting as my anchor.

  The vision of me cutting myself to bits was so bloody that the Panotii all stopped and stared, their little pig eyes wide and round in their uncouth faces.

  The last barb was out. I threw it from me in the sudden silence, and it rang, clattering, on the marble floor. They were all staring at me while I slurped the puddles of my blood off the table and floor like a horror scene filmed in reverse and had it run up my legs and shoulders into my mouth. I swallowed it. At the same time all my wounds closed like so many little doors in a clock once the hour is rung and the cuckoos vanish back inside.

  One of the staring, shocked Panotii uttered a single fearful word:

  “Lalilummutillut”

  I raised my sword and shouted.

  And gravity turned off and I was soaring like a superman, sword-first, an avenging angel, and this time I did slice the ropes, the ones holding Nakasu, or most of them, at one blow, and the others parted beneath his weight, or he took the ropes in a giant hand and yanked to him four or five of the pygmy men.

  They were dead before they could disentangle themselves, because his melee tactic was just to scoop them into his mouth with both arms and bite. Imagine a bearhug if the bear had a beartrap where its bellybutton should be. I saw a whole body vanish headfirst into the maw of that mouth, but I did not have time to puzzle out where the monster’s digestive tract was hidden, or where or how a hundred pounds of meat could simply vanish. I am sure there is a logical explanation, such as that all Blemmyae had a small black hole lodged in the back of the throat.

  I handed Nakasu the flail. He twisted the base of the shaft in his huge hands, and the world started to get that underwater look, the heat-shimmer above a hot desert, and twilight started spreading. Just a bit. I assume he could stand a certain amount of exposure without getting sick: but I noticed he did not turn it anywhere near as smoky-dark as I had turned it.

  I whistled and screamed at Pastor Ossifrage. He had a big grin on his face, which shocked me, because he had looked as stern as a fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel before now. Because of how he dressed, I sort of assumed he was a holy man of some sort, but I suddenly realized that he might be a barroom bouncer, or come from a world where they pick their holy men by nine rounds of mortal combat in the gladiatorial circus.

  Whatever the case, he wanted to see me slay four-foot-tall men with elephant ears, because he made the chamber flip end over end (or that is what my inner ear told me was happening when he shut off my gravity) and suddenly I was up in the rafters with the flying pygmies high up near the chamber roof.

  “Hiya, boys!” I grinned at them. With my feet dangling in midair, I could not fence at all, and Ossifrage was trying to bump me into targets like a boy trying to control a kite from the ground. It did not matter. These guys were the size of children, they did not wear armor, and their weapons could not dismember me, which meant they could not stop me.

  I chopped without grace or art, not carin
g which part of their bodies I cut, and the wounded who fell or fluttered to the floor were grabbed by Nakasu and stuffed into his maw feet-first. Little rivers of blood and viscera were running down his belly and legs like a red apron.

  Suddenly, all the lights overhead went out. The Panotii had pulled the lampwood sticks away from the marble plate that fed the chandeliers. There was some moonlight coming in through the windows, but not enough for me to see what was what. The glowing belts looked like distant flocks of fireflies.

  Out of the dark, four or five poisoned blowdarts hit me at once, all right in the chest. At a shooting range, they would have earned a good score for target control. They were aiming by ear. From the placement of the shots, I knew they were hearing my heartbeat. I assume Izi thought they could hear us better than we could see them, belts or no belts.

  I could not see what was happening on the floor below me, but there was an uproar of noise. I wobbled in midair: Ossifrage, wherever he was, had almost dropped me. Suddenly I realized Izi’s tactic.

  Izi was concentrating his men on Ossifrage, because without Ossifrage to hold me in the air, I could not attack the flying pygmies on the ceiling. Nakasu was quicker on the uptake than I was (monster or not, he was still a grownup and had more experience), and must have moved quickly to Ossifrage’s position to protect the gray-bearded man.

  I kicked off a nearby wall, and sailed in zero-gee over toward one of the windows, and managed to grab the sill before I floated out into the abyss of air.

  Just in time: my weight returned with a slump of sudden heaviness. My feet found the narrow ledge, so I did not fall to my doom. A trio of Panotii dived at me from outside, dirks seeking my eyes and throat, trying to blind or hamstring an abomination they could not kill.

  But now I had my feet under me, even if the footing was bad, and even if the sword was not the shape I was used to, it was still longer than their weapons, and they had tiny little arms like children. I concentrated on each blow to try to make it perfect, and snap the blade into the skulls just deep enough to hit brain matter without going too deep, and with enough flexibility in the stroke to let the power flow through my arm to the sword tip without forcing it. I did not like using this scimitar. It was not built right. But I was able to kill two midgets in two neat strokes, but I missed the third one's skull, and cut an ear off his head instead.

  Well, that had a dramatic effect. Half his wingspan suddenly went away. He wobbled in the air like a drunk, but he did not fall.

  So I slashed the sword across his belly, parting the belt of glowing stones.

  He dropped like a rock down and away into the night. Far above, the broken belt fluttered upward, a twisting snake of gems.

  I turned. From this position, I had a clearer view than when I had been among the rafters. I could see the glitter of the flying belts of the Panotii, and the gleam of the giant eyes of Nakasu, eyes as large as softballs, in the dark of the vast chamber. All the glittering lights of the belts near him suddenly went dark.

  Then the lights came back on. High above, Abby was sitting in a chandelier, her chain of cunning metal in a bowline around her, the hook of her weapon like a grapnel lodged in the rafters, and one hand was touching the lampwood, calling forth its power somehow. The twilight spread by the golden flail was neutralizing the flying ability of the Panotii, who simply were not big and strong enough to face Nakasu in his rage. I saw a dozen knives and barbs flung toward Abby, and I shouted in alarm, being too far away to help her. But then they parted and fell to her left and right as if they had struck an unseen wall of air. Only then did I notice Ossifrage walking up through the air, out of the reach of Nakasu’s cloud of twilight, and he put himself between Abby and the main group of Panotii.

  I spoke in a normal voice, without shouting, “Bold captain Izi of Izan! Pull your men back, and I will let you live!”

  I was not sure where he was, whether in the room somewhere, or among the flock still outside, or perched along the windows and ornaments.

  But I was confident he could hear me with those sail-like ears.

  “We can spread twilight along the ground,” I said, “And any man afoot our friend the Blemmyae will eat, and any man in the air, our friend the windwalker will fling me at them, and they will find the death for which my kind seek in vain. We are the enemies, not of the slaves of the Dark Tower, but only of its masters. We would spare you if we could.”

  4. Parley

  Sudden silence came from the chamber. The Panotii had fled from Nakasu, and were clustered along the tops of the bookshelves throughout the chamber, but they were not trying to approach Ossifrage or Abby. She was now standing next to him in midair alongside the wooden chandelier.

  There was a noise behind me. I turned. Izi was perched like a monkey atop an ornamental projection on the outer wall of the tower, his knees near his cheeks, ears spread like a cape to either side.

  He said in Ursprache, “Why do you call them friends?” He pointed. “The one is a Blemmyae of Sabtah, an eater of men, who sees all other races as cattle. The Cloudwalker is a Jeshurun of Arphaxad, who serves the hermit god who hates all other gods. The girl is Pagutu-mar’-Nazar, a Therapeutae of Tharsis, a sect that will never drink wine, nor touch gold, nor clasp women, because they despise all life. You are an abomination of Cain, whose race neither loves nor is loved.”

  Pagutu-mar’-Nazar meant She-Monkey daughter of the Accursed. It suddenly occurred to me that the one person in all the Dark Tower whose fate could not be foretold must be famous.

  I said, “We are each from those places, yes. What is your point?”

  “All the races hate each other.”

  “We found a way to get along so far,” I said with a shrug.

  “You cannot be One!” he objected. “Only the One are One.”

  (I am not sure how to translate Ur bas’ uru. It might have meant ‘the one people are one’ or it might have meant ‘the city is unified’ or even ‘we are the world.’ Whatever the specific nuance, the general gist was that only the Dark Tower had the right to be unified.)

  I spoke coldly. “The Dark Tower is a mockery of us. Their unity is the unity of slaves, all chained alike under one cruel master, a union of fearful underlings and proud overlords. Ours is the unity of a marriage, where opposites attract, and unlikeness is cherished for itself, complimented, completed. It is the true unity.”

  “On whose behalf do you speak? Who sent you? The Golden City? Or the Lady of the Grail?”

  “I don’t know who sent me,” I admitted.

  “What does that mean?”

  “That means I am not here by accident, but neither can the Astrologers predict my fate. Whoever or whatever sent me, it was a power greater than any this aeon holds.”

  “Who — who are you?”

  “Ilya Muromets, Destroyer of the Dark Tower.”

  He tilted his pug-nosed swine-tusked head to one side, unfolding one ear wider than an umbrella. “Ridiculous! A childish boast.”

  “You underestimate me, ear-flappy man? I am a Life Scout of Troop Two of Tillamook!”

  “I say nothing can destroy the Tower. Its strength reaches to the heavens.”

  “Really? I know a Heaven even higher, and a strength even greater. You doubt me?” I reached out the window where I stood, and struck the metal wall of the outside armor of the Tower with the side of my fist, saying, “Yahweh!”

  There was again a noise as if the deepest string on a bass fiddle the size of a skyscraper had been plucked, and a murmuring swell as the sound rushed up from the earth below. Then the place where I stood shook, and dust fell from above. Then the upper reaches of the Dark Tower trembled, and from where I clung, I could see the crown of the Tower sway against the stars.

  Izi was staring, round-eyed in amazement and astonishment. “You shook the Tower with your hand!”

  I said, “No. Of myself, I can do nothing.”

  I saw in his little pig-eyes that this modesty unnerved him more than if I had claimed t
he credit.

  Izi of Izan heaved a great sigh, and said, “Very well. I already can hear the host of the cynocephali on their way. Their noses will seek you out whatever your path, wherever you hide. No glory is to be won for the host of the Panotii, the all-hearing, this night. We will remain as we always are, the clowns and mockeries of greater powers, and the scorn of fairer races.”

  With that, he turned and sailed off into the moonlight, and his troop flung themselves like a flock of bats through the windows after him, forming into V-shapes like migrating ducks, and descending to the cloudbanks below.

  If he had not just been trying to kill a little girl, I would have felt sorry for him. Instead I said softly, knowing he could hear me, “There are better jobs you could do, better masters you could work for, little big-eared man.”

  I raised my eyes. In the distance, small as snowflakes, I could see pale wolflike shapes clinging to the side of the Dark Tower, head-downward, loping toward me. More than a score, they came, more than a hundred.

  I jumped inside, landed awkwardly on a table, skidded across the marble floor through one of the many puddles of blood pooled upon it, and ended up by the big doors. “Time to bug out! Big bad wolves on the way! Can anyone get these doors open?”

  Stupid question. Ossifrage made a sweeping gesture with his arm. Weightless as thistledown, a rollercoaster of wind whirled me through the oriel window thirty feet in the air in the wall above that door, leaving perhaps the pit of my stomach behind: and monster and prophet and ninja-girl blew after me, swirling like autumn leaves in a gale.

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Descending the Utter Dark Tower

  1. Out of the Fork

  The Y-shaped corridor outside had two doors that Nakasu and I had barred. Some Astrologer must have sent the soldiers on post outside new scrolls by pneumatic tube with updates to the new fate, because now came the sound of battering rams smashing the metal doors ringing on their massy hinges; or else the soldiers had just heard the noise and decided (showing more initiative than I think it is fair for minions of an omniscient tyranny of magicians to show, let me say) to batter down the doors. Whichever it was, the doors trembled and rang on their massy hinges. The banging was coming from both forks of the corridor.