He walked off, somewhat guiltily; he shouldn't have left Culpole like that, so hurriedly. Culpole had been close to Mother Lamprey, and it was ill-luck that his duties as cessbeater had kept him from the hanging and the wake. Ashura well remembered how Culpole used to pass on stories she told him about the Old Time, when the tide of things was still turned to dying and Science held sway.
Ashura thought of the scientists he had seen wandering the city -pathetic creatures full of half-remembered schemata and faked ritual, their ludicrous labcoats torn and crammed with totemic pens, their heads filled with some gibberish called mathematics.
Respect them, Mother Lamprey had said to him and Culpole once, when their post-feral laughter rose too high and cruel at her description of them. "They walk the paths of the dying at a time of bloom; their systems are misplaced. But come the next millennium and their time will have come again. Then our broomsticks and elixirs will be as risible to the good folk of the world as their mechanics are now." Wise old woman. Strong old woman. Dead? Strange.
Foxtongue was leaning against the entrance to the Walking Eye tavern. Her shirt was open; her tender breasts and her child-swollen stomach glowed in the sun as if they would melt the cotton around them.
Ashura caught his breath and strode over to her.
"I came as soon as I heard," he announced, hoping she'd take his blushes for signs of exhaustion and effort. By the wry look in her eyes there wasn't much hope of that.
"It's been a long time, Father-to-be." Her voice was like honey in climax.
He forgave her the sardonic remark instantly. "I.I'd like to see Mother Runnell."
She smiled and led him through the tavern. It was nearly empty, Ashura noticed; the regulars must all be at the funeral feast. Round the back of the inn, in a brick yard thick with dust and weeds, sat the shawled bulk of Mother Runnell. She turned rheumed eyes to meet him. She did not smile and, even given the present circumstances, he found that disconcerting.
"Foxtongue, leave us. Go mend your Jape Day dress or something," she commanded, and there was an edge to her voice Ashura hadn't heard before. Foxtongue flounced back into the inn, causing Ashura a final pang.
"And so," the oracle said, observing him through clouded green eyes. The silence stretched. In spite of himself, Ashura found himself surveying her huge bulk.
Mother Runnell had been pregnant with the same child for some twenty-eight years. It was nowhere near adult size ― more the size of a feral. Nonetheless, it made an impressive addition to the woman's natural bulk.
Mother Runnell was that rare phenomenon, an oracle; a permanently pregnant seer. The townsfolk came and told her stories, rumours, gossip, opinions ― and Mother Runnell passed the messages on in her blood to her ever-underdeveloped child. The child in turn would mull over the flavours of the world outside, and dance in Mother Runnell the likely outcome. Mother Runnell and her fleshly charge could not predict major events, but they could predict people's fortunes with shivering accuracy.
"I don't want your condolence, Mite," she said at last.
Mite ― his nickname as a post-feral, dropped in early adolescence and not heard since then. Ashura lowered his head. He'd stumbled upon some hurt, some worry. Quick of temper and of wit he might be. But life on the streets had told him well when to bite his tongue.
"You've chosen a strange course, Mite. I wish you were Mite once more, so you could choose again. You may well hang your head in shame."
"Not shame, Mother, puzzle ― "
"Silence!" She'd meant it, presumably, to be an imperious command, but it came out tinged with hysteria and the weakness of an old woman. "You are a pander, a tool of evil work. We ― " she stroked her belly -"cannot say whether you are aware of this, but we fear the worst."
"I keep my eyes open," said Ashura. "But I cannot see through locked doors, or closed minds."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning Master Urkhan is a wily, mischievous old bastard whose very eyes don't trust each other, hence the squint."
Mother Runnell grinned, very briefly, very warmly. Then the cold, worried mask was back. "So. Have you heard about Mother Lamprey's death?"
"That's why I'm here, to say I'm sorry."
"Aaach," she snapped, "I didn't say, 'that she died,' I said 'about her death.' Of how she died, boy. Do you know how?"
"Brained by a pot."
"Have you any idea how tough old Lamprey was?"
"That...occurred to me, too. It must have been a damn large pot."
"You tell me. Neighbours saw the thing fall, that's all. Can't say after it hit that they gave it much thought."
Some reflex made Ashura glance up into the sky. He did a double-take. The clouds there were pink-edged. He was late. "Mother Runnell, I must go now."
"Your good master requiring more favours of your good will?"
"Well I am his apprentice."
"More deliveries?"
Ashura stood up and dusted himself down. "No doubt." The next second he was staring at her. "How, how."
"What was in the pot, Ashura?" And all of a sudden Mother Runnell's eyes didn't seem bleared at all, but emerald and piercing.
"A dead ancient's brain," Ashura replied in a whisper.
"How do you know?"
Ashura looked at the ground, abashed. "I don't know. I didn't look, if that's what you mean. I can only surmise that's what it was from what I heard behind locked doors."
"Ahh," she said, and started rocking, back and forth, very slowly, "you do keep your eyes and ears open, young Mite, after all. I'm glad to hear it. Your life may depend on it, someday." Ashura shivered at the pronouncement but the oracle's smile was warm. "Now come, tell me, what was the brain for?"
"Master Urkhan's old wards are wearing down. He made them from squirrel and cat and other small animals. He's made new ones from chaffinches, but he hasn't used any of them. I think he's after something a little stronger."
"A ward from the ka of a dead man?"
Ashura nodded, blushing.
Mother Runnell tutted. "Oh, Mite, what have you got yourself involved in? You know that's a restricted practice. If the burghers heard. Who provided the brain?"
"Trimghoul."
"The psychokine?"
"The same."
"And where did he get it?"
"From Blood Park, so he said."
"And do you really believe him, Ashura?" Ashura, his correct name. Seriousness. Mother Runnell's questions were in deadly earnest.
Did he believe Trimghoul? He thought of the man, astride his skittish gelding and shrouded in his habitual garb, an unnerving costume of black net that covered him from head to foot. Things started slotting into place inside Ashura's head, forming a pattern he didn't much care for ― not at all.
His tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth. "What must I do?" he stammered.
"Act upon your suspicions," she replied simply. "That's not so hard, is it?" Something cold slithered down Ashura's spine.
Foxtongue was waiting inside. She was sitting on a rough oak table, her feet up on a stool. Ashura gave her a worried smile as he made for the door.
"No time to show me a trick or two, Warlock?"
"'Fraid not," he shrugged.
"Do you fear your master's scolding that much?"
Yes, something screamed at him. Yes. But Ashura sensed that whatever displeasure he might encounter by arriving late this afternoon, it was as nothing to the roasting he might suffer should he follow Mother Runnell's advice, as he knew he must.
So he went back to the table where Foxtongue sat and with an unconvincing attempt at a jaunty smile he stroked up the material of her dress, lifted her leg and kissed her calf. And as if she knew, and maybe she did, how he needed someone then, how afraid he really was, she lifted her skirts for him.
Late that night, with the moon full and lime green through his window, Ashura got out of bed and began to dress. He bound his feet in leather thongs, then pulled on stout boots. He slipped on a jacket made fr
om oiled canvas. It was worn and not as tough as he would have liked, but it was all he had. He tied polished black chaps around his trousers. He had bought them to impress womenfolk. Tonight, they would serve a more practical purpose. Life, new form, it was an infection here, and of course the children carried it. Life was strong in them.
He went to the sink and armed himself with a razor. He padded down the stairs, careful not to wake the other sleepers in the tenement. He did not take his bicycle, but trotted light-footed towards the dark centre of the city, and Blood Park.
Decorations had been hung over the city's main thoroughfare in preparation for the Jape Day festival. Immense jointed papier-mache heads painted in clown's colours rocked in their wire cradles, sending shadows scudding across the moonlit street. They grinned at him, and
Ashura shuddered. They winked and squealed their wire hinges. The red paint around their full lips was black in the moonlight, and gave to the line of each huge mouth a skeletal spareness. Their jaws swung open and closed. A row of bats clung to the lips of one, till a sudden gust swung the gaping, star-filled maw shut with a hollow, wooden concussion. The bats fled and plummeted into a side-alley.
The houses which fronted the flagstoned alley bulged like the buds of unnaturally huge flowers, or the pregnant bellies of giants. Timber balks two storeys up held the walls apart; flags and bright streamers covered the dark timber, only now they were colourless and tatty in the pitiless light. They wove about themselves with undersea slowness, like stranded things.
For comfort, Ashura thought back to former festivals. The memories were childlike, unclouded by the shadow of Urkhan. On Jape Day young girls earned pennies setting trip-wires across the streets. In the hours before dawn they suspended buckets of water and powder dye and paint in ingenious, thoroughly insecure harnesses between the rooftops of this most ancient and fertile of cities ― and this was but the beginning.
Throughout the day townsfolk set trap after trap, large and small, for their fellows. Ashura's street came together to nail the contents of a grandee's mansion to its sun-baked roof. At lunchtime, someone sent an intricate clockwork spider marching up his trousers. Ashura responded by slipping a tight-wound elastic snake beneath a councillor's travelling blanket as he watched the city's navvies dismantle an iron bridge. Ashura followed the workmen when they took the girders away, and watched them rebuild it so it strung together the houses of notorious rivals.
In the evening, trouveres played the lute, jesters juggled flaming brands, grinning crones sold nosegays for tuppence and witches and warlocks demonstrated their arts in night-long shows of tricks, fireworks, curiosities and miracles..
But not Urkhan.
Not Urkhan, not this year, and Ashura feared to know why.
The gate and fence of Blood Park were guarded night and day to prevent errant wizards from practising restricted arts. He, a wizard's apprentice, had no choice but to enter Blood Park surreptitiously by the section of fence furthest from the gallows and least carefully patrolled.
They had given Mother Lamprey the funeral rites of an ancient as a mark of respect. He could see from a distance feral children swinging on the fresh rope.
He climbed up the high barbed fence walling in the bodies of the city's dead.
Nothing died in the city, not without a struggle. Mother Lamprey had explained it to him once.
GodGate was the nub, the centre, the very place where the world's change from death to bloom had begun. God himself, who had grown feeble during the Age of Science, had been reborn in this city, bringing in the new Age of Wizardry. According to Mother Lamprey, God was a woman now, Earth Mother, fecund and savage. Her influence was manifold ― in the way the very leavings and excrement of the city would sprout and run riot if left untended, in the way a man's sperm could breed new forms not just in women, but in other men, even in animals (centaurs had terrorized the city's womenfolk that spring); and in the way the children of the city were born feral and self-sufficient, leaving their mothers' milk for lovers to suck away while they fought other children in hideous, bloody battles of selection.
For safety's sake the townsfolk threw their savage and bloodthirsty newborns into the park and let them feast and grow on the richly flavoured corpses of ancients, securely contained behind high fences.
It took intelligence, teamwork and patience to scale from the inside the ugly, curving spears of the Blood Park fence. You couldn't climb it until you were tall, patient and could collaborate with others.
One night Culpole and Ashura had resisted the temptation to attack each other, had instead helped each other escape to the outside. They had joined the adult world together.
Ashura dropped down, felt his boots squish and slide on loose flesh. He heard the patter of tiny, lethal feet. He would use his blade if he had to, certain that he wouldn't kill anything. Nothing short of dismemberment could kill a feral for good. A slashed face or stomach, however, would give him time to escape an attacker. His eyes had adjusted to the light. He could see faint objects stir in the chaos of limb, torso and skull. He walked carefully towards the gallows.
There was the slightest hint of corruption to the air. In past times, Mother Lamprey had said, the scent of such places was so strong as to be unbearable, and dread plagues brought death to anyone who ventured near. Even the fresh aroma of excrement was tainted and vile in those times, and carried sickness. The thought threatened to turn his stomach.
He was brought up short by twin green sparks near his feet. He was by the corpse of an old woman. Her breasts had creamed and had melted through the lattice of her chest. Her head was missing. Again the flash. A baby peered through the bars of her ribs. Teeth gleamed. Then it flung itself back, scrambled away across the carnage. Claws flung shreds of flesh skywards as it fled.
Ashura reached the funeral gallows without further incident. The area was clear and tended. He looked with yearning at the tidy gravel path leading to the main gate.
It had taken him twenty minutes to get this far. By the main gate it would have taken a mere two, and it would have been a lot safer.
The feral children who had played on the rope were nowhere to be seen. He approached the gallows and caught on the night air the metallic tang of fresh blood. She lay in a pool of intestine and fluid on the far side of the platform. Her stomach was laid open. Her half-consumed foetus glistened in the light. Ashura bent his head in funerary meditation, and did his best to ignore the saliva that was filling his mouth. The smell was delicious. He closed his eyes.
Something scrabbled towards him, was on him, was tearing at the too-thin sleeve of his jerkin, and he was pivoting, taking the child off its feet, reaching for his razor. The child dug its claws in. With sickening slowness, Ashura felt a single barb of chitin penetrate the flesh of his arm. Then the blade was out and buried in his attacker's mouth.
The girl gurgled and chewed on the tempered steel, released her grip. He could feel new tissue encircle and entrap the blade. He yanked it free only with difficulty. Blood fountained from her mouth as she scampered away.
By the time she calmed down enough to feel pain, her mouth would have healed. Ashura had left that happy time behind. His arm would take weeks to heal. And it hurt like hell.
He dropped the knife. It rang against Mother Lamprey's skull.
His stomach jolted up into his mouth. It rang?
He knelt down, rapped at the old woman's bald head, lifted it up to test its weight, then turned it and used a finger to probe behind the eyeball.
Mother Lamprey's skull was empty.
He was woken the next morning by a stinging sensation in his arm. He undid the crude dressing he had strapped to the wound the night before and gazed dumbfounded at the curl of gristle that was a baby's ear, sprouting smoothly from the surface of his skin. Blood rushed through his head; he felt his face suffused with heat. This could spread. Cancer. Malformation. His whole arm taken up with a child's face, eyes, a ― a mouth.
Ashura reached the sink ba
rely in time to save the polished floor from his vomit. It blossomed and quivered with identity and he had to beat it down the plughole with a flannel, then boil a kettle and chase it with the water through the crude copper pipe. Its screams were terrible.
He leaned up against the basin, shivering. The ear on his arm twitched.
Ashura staggered back to his bed and laid his head in his hands. "This isn't happening," he told himself, and wished he could believe his words.
It wasn't as if such things were unheard of. They were. They were easily dealt with, too. All you had to do was have it removed by a psycho-kine. Who was GodGate's psychokine? Trimghoul. Who stole Mother Lamprey's brain? Trimghoul. Who would know precisely what Ashura had been up to if he revealed the ear on his forearm?
Trimghoul.
Trimghoul the psychokine lived on the outskirts of the city, in an expensive villa tended by many burly servants. He was a recluse, and a hypochondriac. He rarely ventured abroad, and when he did so, he wore a beekeeper's hat with a long, black veil, long gloves of grey cotton and a sable topcoat with silver edging, which he never removed, no matter the fineness of the weather. Folk who had visited him spoke of elaborate and intimate searches of their belongings and their person prior to the audience, and of the unbearable closeness of his apartments, of windows nailed shut and waxed to keep out draughts, or glassless and screened by tight muslin cloths.
Ashura walked up the gravel drive, nodding soberly to the men whose task it was to pour gallon after gallon of expensive, bewitched insecticide onto the garden shrubs. Ashura shivered. Trimghoul's wealth had always disturbed him. Now it scared him, for he had begun to wonder whence that wealth had originated.
He stepped into the shade of an ornate iron-worked portico and reached for the heavy brass knocker, fashioned in the shape of a human jawbone.
A balding man with bright, blue eyes, lips too full for such a jowl-ridden jaw and hands that knew no manners, searched him, stripped him of his coat and outer shoes and trussed him up in a clean white apron. Trimghoul was in his study. There were no porters or butlers beyond the portico, and the house was never locked. It was a sign of Trimghoul's power. Who could harm a man who could control objects at a distance? It would take the brute force of a dozen or more to overcome him, if it came to it.
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