Ashura knocked on the door.
"Come." That cultured, masterful voice. No wonder Trimghoul, for all his eccentricity, was a favourite among the ladies of the region.
Ashura opened the door. Trimghoul's face was beautiful in the way that all frail-boned, high-cheeked men are beautiful ― delicate in feature but strong in poise. He wore a high collar and a sober black suit.
By contrast, his only other exposed flesh ― his hands and wrists -were covered in hair, gnarled and powerful-looking, and his gait was stooped and awkward, as if he found it much more comfortable to bend his knees the opposite way. Ashura had never seen Trimghoul en deshabille, but, from what he had heard, Trimghoul's face was the most human thing about him. The rest of him brought to mind the disturbing eroticism of satyrs.
True to report, a fire burned savagely behind an iron grate. The heat was barely tolerable. Ashura felt his forehead and cheeks prick with moisture.
"Ah, young 'prentice. More requests from my old friend Urkhan?"
"N-no. Actually, I wonder if you can help me." Ashura blushed.
Trimghoul misinterpreted the redness in the boy's cheeks. "Ah," he said, wisely. "Woman trouble, eh? Well, it happens to the best of us. Got a would-be oracle pregnant before her time, I suppose? Well, send her along, no need to act all blushful, we're men of the world old chap, eh?" He chuckled. His teeth were very small, and were all exactly alike. "I'll dump her child on some ape or big cat and send it to a circus. For the usual fee, of course."
Trimghoul specialized in the production of carnival curios and hybrid pets for wealthy ladies of the region. There existed a harmless rivalry between these ladies, which found expression not only in their dress, their jewels, and (at the more permissive venues) their adjudged skill in performance with centaurs, but also in what pets they possessed.
Be it an animal out of legend ― a Square Woolly Pig, say ― or a wild, modern scherzo in dachshund, peacock and halibut, a Trimghoulian pet was the sine qua non of GodGate's polite society.
Such psychokinetic trivia were the source of Trimghoul's considerable social popularity; they were also the hook from which he hung his amatory successes. Trimghoul's dalliance with the womenfolk was due as much to his risque payment methods, as to the more conventional tools of seduction.
"That's not the problem," Ashura admitted. The ear twitched on his forearm.
"Well, come along, out with it, glad to help a young man with ambition." A fly landed on Trimghoul's forehead. It sparked and vanished. A little red place on the psychokine's forehead remained. He stared around him with a fierce expression. "How in hell's name did that get in here? Were you cleaned?"
"Y-yes!" Ashura stepped back, startled by Trimghoul's fierce expression.
A second, and all anger was gone. Trimghoul's face was its even, bronzed hue once more. "Come now, my boy."
Ashura took a deep breath ― and drew up the sleeve of his shirt.
Trimghoul stared at Ashura's forearm. His expression was severe.
"Tell me you were delivering a baby and it scratched you."
"Yes, I."
"Now tell me the truth."
"Please get it off me," Ashura begged.
Trimghoul looked deep into his eyes. The red mark on his forehead was still there. His pupils were black, dilated, huge.
"Please," Ashura whispered.
Trimghoul sniffed, glanced at Ashura's arm. There was a tiny flash, heat burst on his skin. Ashura looked down. The ear was gone as if it had never been.
"Do you want to know where I put it?" Trimghoul's voice was cold and soft.
Ashura said nothing. He stared at his arm and waited for what might follow.
"I placed it on the forehead of a young boy known throughout the city for snooping and prying and getting in people's way."
Instinctively, Ashura brought his hand up to his face, but there was nothing there.
Trimghoul sighed and turned away from him to stare out the window at the city. "Oh dear, young man, you are an open book. Why do young boys get themselves in scrapes like this if they cannot dissemble to their elders? You were playing with corpses in Blood Park last night, yes?"
"Yes," Ashura dropped his gaze to the floor.
"And what did you find?"
Ashura's fists clenched. He tightened what resolve he had and said, "You killed Mother Lamprey."
Trimghoul whirled round. His face was twisted in a red mask of bestial fury. A blast of light seared Ashura's face. "Don't cross me, tyke. I
could rip out your balls and eyes and juggle them in front of your face without even blinking. And who's to say I'd put them back in quite the same places?" He spat and turned away. "Get out of my sight." He scratched at the sore place on his forehead.
Ashura felt a line of blood trickle down his cheek. He turned and ran.
Back in his room, Ashura stared at his reflection in the mirror above the sink. Trimghoul had shaved one side of his head, nicking it in several places. He thought of the fly, of the sore place that was left on Trimghoul's forehead when he made the fly vanish. A hasty or unconscious performance of his art left crude results, obviously.
Ashura ran his hand over the shaved side of his head. It was not the most even cut of his life. Ashura tried to grin at the thought but his reflection sent back a wan death-mask in reply.
There came a knock at his door. It was Culpole. He stood ashen-faced, trembling, cap stretched to tearing between his hands. "Ashura, come quick, there's ― " He noticed Ashura's shaven scalp. "But what happened to your ― no matter, follow me." He made to say more, but thought better of it, turned and strode down the echoing hallway, kicking dust from the bare, warped boards as he went. "Come on!" he called, urgency cracking his voice.
Ashura grabbed his coat and hurried after his friend. "What is it?" The stairs clattered and shook as they hurried down.
"Foxtongue's had her leg taken off by the wheel of a fairground float." Ashura stared aghast at Culpole's harassed profile as they traversed the little square towards the Walking Eye tavern. "She was out buying curried sweets for Jape Day. She had a fainting fit, her foot slipped on a cobble.the ruts on the street are deep; they're sharp too. The wheel, it scissored her bone clean through."
Cold sweat tickled Ashura's back. "She's lost her leg?"
Culpole nodded, and coughed. "Above the knee, my friend."
Ashura let out a moan; his stride faltered and sagged. "Her leg?"
Culpole nodded. He turned to his stricken comrade. "Ashura," he said. "We'll catch it. It can't have gone far. Cess-beaters know the city backwards." He took Ashura's hand and squeezed it. "We'll find your bedmate's limb in time. Trust me."
Foxtongue lay in the dip of Mother Runnell's capacious bed at the Walking Eye. She was only half-conscious ― Culpole had mixed her a sleeping draught ― but the pain was still there. It came in waves, and her face distorted in a rictus of agony as she passed from one moment of slurred somnolence to the next. Ashura sat at the head of the bed and brushed the damp chestnut hair from her face.
"Ashura?" she whispered through dry lips. He wetted them with his mouth. Her breath was shallow and fetid. "Ashura, how long?"
Ashura glanced at Culpole. Culpole held up three fingers straight, and one bent at the knuckle.
"It's been on the hop for under four hours," Ashura told her.
Foxtongue set her jaw. Her eyes bored a challenge into Ashura's own. "How much time do I have?"
Ashura took a deep, ragged breath and pulled back the linen which covered Foxtongue from the waist down. Mother Runnell had wisely prepared a dung dressing. The wound was sealed, and the excrement was parchment-tough where it closed off the stump. Around the edges, the transformed waste matter had adopted the consistency and pallor of untanned skin. Tough black hairs stubbled the line of the join. Lymph and blood had stained the sheets, but a little weeping from the wound was to be expected.
Foxtongue howled with pain when Ashura touched a fingertip to the dressing. He whisp
ered apologies in her ear and kissed it. "What happened to you?" he said.
"I ― I felt ill, faint, as if something had got between me and my eyes, and I just...I just." Pain and fear swelled her eyes with tears.
Ashura put a comforting hand on her swollen belly.
A static shock flung him from the bed. He stumbled and fell back against Culpole, and they went sprawling. Culpole scrambled up, his eyes wide in shock, and helped Ashura up. "It's a ward," Ashura muttered. "There's a ward in my child."
He went back to the bed and laid his hand more carefully upon Foxtongue's belly. He looked at her, wondering what to say, but she had slipped into fitful half-consciousness.
There! In his head, a vicious twitching, a scraping sensation behind the eyeballs.
He felt his jaw tighten in confusion and anger. He forced his mouth to relax, pursed his lips and twittered. Culpole stared at him and, overcome by the tension of the moment, laughed out loud. Ashura motioned impatiently for him to be silent. There! A response from the ward hidden in his lover, a scrabbling under his hand. Claws, the tickle of feathers. The whisper of a little birdy brain. It repeated one message, over and over again, swirling it around and back in an unending, numbing syncopation.
"Well, what is it?" Culpole took Ashura's shoulder.
Ashura shook his head and blinked. He stared about him as if he had just awoken in a strange room. "Passing husks is hell," he said.
"What?"
Ashura caught sight of Foxtongue, and revived. "It's a ward made out of a chaffinch," he said. "What's more I can guess whose chaffinch."
Foxtongue stirred and came awake once more, panting with pain.
A commotion outside the door silenced them.
"Get ― grab it, man!"
"Ach! The bloody thing went and."
"Right behind the. HOLD IT STILL:"
"The door! The door!"
"Ee dee dee, dee ee..."
"Gag the little."
"OPEN THE BLOODY DOOR!"
Culpole sprang to the latch, unfastened it, and went flying again as four burly cessbeaters, covered from head to toe in the stuff of their trade, were pulled through the door by a pole of savage, straining flesh ― Foxtongue's leg.
"Dee,"it sang, "Ee dee dee."It pulled free of its captors and leapt aboard the bed. It pressed its needle-toothed stump to Foxtongue's cheek in a
passionate kiss. "Dee! Ee dee!" It nuzzled her breast.
Foxtongue grinned, but a sudden stab of pain from her stump turned the expression inside out.
A polite cough from the doorway made Ashura turn. It was Master Paragrat, one-time blacksmith, now warlock extraordinary and a fine physician. "I came as soon as I heard," he announced in a rich rural baritone. His firm, dimpled jaw was hidden by a false white beard, which he sported for reasons of tradition. His eyes were a glistening hazelnut. Over his symbol-strewn wizard's gown he wore an old leather apron. "I was setting up the fireworks for Jape Day." Ashura bowed and saw that the wizard's heavy boots were spattered with mud and flecks of grass from trudging the High Meadows.
"Aha! The limb, splendid." Paragrat drew himself up to his full height, stared imperiously at the leg, and uttered something in an outlandish tongue. The leg turned, blinking tiny primitive eyes placed just below the knee joint. It hopped down from the bed and stood before them. Paragrat knelt down and examined it. He raised his head and spoke to Foxtongue. "You're in luck, Missee; you're young, your flesh tends strongly towards life. Your leg'll live for at least another two days. But it's strong-willed, like a feral. It enjoys its independence, anyone can see that."
He studied the limb. "Let's see, it's already got itself a sense of balance, eyes, even a mouth, and a tongue." He sighed and shook his head. A mop of black hair fell across his eyes and he swept it away with a gnarled, full-muscled hand. "It's changed too much. I can't web your leg back on for you. Only Trimghoul the psychokine can do that. Of course," Paragrat's eyes sparkled and he added, chuckling, "you mightn't think that so bad."
Ashura groaned and slumped down on the bed. Paragrat turned to him. "What's up?"
"Touch her belly, sir."
Foxtongue nodded assent and Paragrat pressed his hand to her flesh. His arm tensed. His eyes grew wide. "My arse is sore," he whimpered ― a strange, fluting falsetto ― "passing husks is. Wait!"
He pulled away abruptly and stared at Ashura. "This ― " He coughed, clearing his mouth of strangeness. " ― is the third woman I've seen today with such a thing in her belly. What do you know of this?"
"They're chaffinch wards," Ashura said. "My master made them."
"And who might he be?"
"Urkhan."
Paragrat growled. "That wily old.what else do you know?"
"I know that Trimghoul stole the brain of Mother Lamprey, an oracle round these parts, and gave it to Urkhan."
"What?"
"To eat."
"No!" Paragrat seized his arm and pulled him from the bed. "Come on! We've no time to waste."
Ashura was out in the hall before he knew what was happening. "Take heart, Foxtongue!" he cried, and was then propelled at frightening speed down the steps of the Walking Eye tavern.
As they ran, Ashura panted out his story. Soon enough, the whole sordid chain of events had been recounted. Paragrat bounded up the stairs four at a time. Ashura couldn't match the countryman's speed, and caught up with him just as he struck the door with a blow of his fist. Wood splintered and the door shuddered open with an agonized squeal. Ashura's eyes widened.
Urkhan stood by the window, resplendent in a low-cut blue ball gown. Pearls hung about his wrinkled neck. His thin lips were pasted with thick red gloss. His sunken cheeks were rouged. His large, waxy ears were pierced; a diamond-studded ring was clipped through his right nostril. He glanced at them and covered his mouth with his fingers. His liver-spotted hands were adorned with rings and bracelets.
The room was full of old tea chests. There was not a single loose article in the room. Ashura's master was on the move.
He giggled. "Oh, not more presents, surely, oh he is such a generous patron, oh, do thank him, what is it this time?"
"Thank whom?" asked Paragrat, sweetly. Ashura just stared.
"Oh, that dear, dear man ― why does he wear such silly black drapery? He's such a darling. Tell him I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm all ready.
Where's the wagon, come, where's my coach?" Urkhan tottered towards them. His crabbed feet were strapped into ludicrous sequined, high-heeled bootees. A stiletto caught in the gap between two floorboards; he twisted his ankle and with a cry he fell into Ashura's arms.
"Oh, you sweet boy."
Ashura's spine screamed. His eyeballs shivered and exploded. His groin bloomed with a thousand strange erections, and he was inside the ward of Mother Lamprey and he saw a city, and it was GodGate, but not GodGate, and he saw people in the city, strangers, but somehow he recognized them, and he saw their lives, knew theirfriends, their likes and dislikes, their hurts and their fancies, and it was the whole story, and when Paragrat pulled him away, Ashura wept himself to sleep at the loss of it.
When Ashura came to, he found a couple of hours had passed, and it was late afternoon. Urkhan was standing at the window, staring into the mellow, peach light. A beatific smile played upon his ragged, painted features.
Paragrat came and hunkered down beside the apprentice. "Urkhan's not strong enough to handle Mother Lamprey's ward properly," he said.
Ashura nodded, dumbly. Having touched it, he knew well the ward's power.
Paragrat flinched. "Ouch," he said.
A split second later Ashura felt it too, the fleeting passage of a little ward.
Ashura glanced round. "A chaffinch," he said.
"That's right. They come in through that window every minute or two. Guess where they go."
As if Paragrat's words were a cue, Urkhan stiffened and sighed.
Ashura stared and pointed with a shaking hand. "In.into him?"
"And now th
ey're talking to each other," Paragrat finished for him. "The chaffinches are messengers. They talk to Mother Lamprey's ka. They tell her things. When I pulled Urkhan away from you ― I sensed what they were doing, and I felt around for a while." He caught Ashura hurriedly wiping the tear stains from his cheeks. He grinned and hit the boy playfully, and painfully, on the shoulder. "I don't blame you for getting upset, lad. No shame in it. Old Lamprey's powerful. She's putting together a prediction to end all predictions. She's putting the whole city inside Urkhan's head."
Ashura shuddered. "The city, it's.not quite GodGate."
Paragrat nodded. "It's a model. Unfinished. You know I told you I met other pregnant women with wards inside them today? Mother Lamprey's ka is using the chaffinches to talk to every unborn in the city." Paragrat's bony hand took Ashura's shoulder in a vice-like grip. Ashura gasped in pain. "It's like a hundred oracles put together," Paragrat went on. "Think of that computational power! Whoever owns that could be the despot of us all before the month's out!"
"You mean Urkhan?" Ashura queried through clenched teeth. He wondered how his arm would fare, once Paragrat had pulled it off.
Paragrat shook his head impatiently and released the boy's shoulder. "No, lad, Trimghoul! Urkhan went and made himself a ward from Mother Lamprey and told it to model the city. Now it's all too much for him to handle. Look at him! His identity is all in a muddle, and I reckon Trimghoul's taking advantage of him. Maybe he even planned it that way. You heard what Urkhan said before he fell on you? If Urkhan cleaves to that man's side, we'll never hear more of him, and Trimghoul will have his own private key to the city's future! The town's womenfolk will be for ever falling into fainting fits like wasps in October, and that damn pet-maker will have us all in his power!"
There was a clatter of horses' hooves outside the window. Urkhan peered down. He gave a little jump and whooped with delight.
The New Weird Page 12