by Adam Roberts
They paused in the afternoon and everybody chewed grass. Tighe felt ravenously hungry, but it seemed unlikely that the Manmonger was going to give them any proper food. When he thought of the succulent, tasty-smelling strips of boy-meat that the Manmonger occasionally popped into his mouth, he felt a sick mixture of disgust and desire. He started calculating how long it would be before he starved to thinness, thinking of the itinerants he had seen in the village in his youth. Death could not be much further away. There was even something comforting in that thought.
The Manmonger himself sat cross-legged with his back to them, chanting something to the sun in a strange voice. It occurred to Tighe to rush at him and try to push him off the world, but something stopped him.
They stayed the night and in the morning they started eastward again. They finally reached the spur by eighty in the morning, arriving at an enormous and strangely hooped gateway that led inside the bulge of worldwall.
Beside the gateway was a house and as the Manmonger and his charges approached a middle-aged man emerged from the doorway. The Man-monger greeted him as if he were an old friend, and they embraced and talked for a long time. There were several posts set into the ledge just outside the gateway and the Manmonger tied Tighe and the dark-haired girl to this before going inside the gatekeeper’s house.
Tighe peered along the ledge, through the gate. It was a tunnel through the spur, but so long that he could not see light at the far end. A damp, unpleasant exhalation wafted out of the space. I suppose he will take us through there,’ said Tighe to the girl. She looked at him with unfocused eyes. ‘Do you speak Imperial?’ he asked. ‘Are you not of the Empire?’ Nothing. ‘Perhaps you are Otre?’ Still nothing. Tighe shook his head, speaking aloud in his village tongue, ‘It is difficult for me to understand such a one as you, I’m afraid.’
Eventually the Manmonger returned with the gatekeeper. They both smelt of liquor and the Manmonger’s grin was more intense than it had been before. ‘He wanted you,’ he said as he untied the dark-haired girl. ‘His wife wasn’t happy about it because there could be no confusion as to why he wanted you, let’s be honest. He wanted you as the toll price for going through his tunnel. I told him – toll price for a hundred journeys through his stinking tunnel! But he was insistent. There’s something about your looks, my pretty, that appeal to the people this far east.’ The dark-haired girl was free now and the Manmonger turned his attention to Tighe. He was still talking to the unresponsive girl. ‘He said that if I paid him with you, my pretty, then I’d have free toll for the rest of my life. Imagine! I was tempted, I’ll not pretend, but I haven’t tried you yet myself, have I? I can’t let him have you before myself, can I?’
With both his commodities free, he hauled them up and waved a final goodbye to the surly-looking gatekeeper. ‘I had to placate him with several of the trinkets I earned in the village,’ he said sourly. ‘And I hope that you’re worth it, my pretty. I hope that, at any rate.’
He marched them to the mouth of the tunnel.
‘Now,’ he announced to them both. ‘I don’t like this tunnel. It is hidden from my mistress, the Sun. I cannot pray to her, I cannot feel the heat of her pleasure on my skin. So I do not like to stay in the tunnel. We shall hurry through, you and you and I, and we shall emerge into the sunlight on the other side. Do you understand?’
They stared at him.
‘Do you?’ he barked.
‘Yes,’ said Tighe. ‘I do not like this tunnel either. It smells funny.’
‘It does that,’ said the Manmonger. ‘And worse than that. But there is no other way around this spur of worldwall, so through we must go. Jog all the way – do not let up. There are fleas the size of your fist in here. And rats; did you ever see a rat? I have seen rats as big as a man, and they are nasty, nasty. Come along!’
He turned to the sun one last time, closing his eyes to let the late-morning rays bathe his face. Then, with a shove, he hurried his two objects into the mouth of the tunnel.
The ground underneath was soggy and Tighe with his bad foot found running particularly difficult. The light behind them faded and soon they were in darkness. It smelt of decay, although it was not entirely black. As soon as the pale light from the gateway behind them faded a spot of light appeared before them. They hurried on, Tighe’s stomach clenching with a stitch of hunger and exhaustion; but he had no more desire to stay in this dank place than had the Manmonger.
As they struggled on the dot of light swelled and expanded. An ashy light brought the shapes of the tunnel out of the gloom; strange contortions of rock, an enormous bulge of manrock to the right that was freakishly shaped like a giant brick, like a house excavated out from the side of the wall, complete with puckered indentations down its side that even resembled tiny doorways.
They hurried on until the shape of light had grown large enough for them to jog through it and out into the sunlight again. At the far end was a short shelf, on which a number of people were sitting. The Manmonger and his two commodities collapsed on the grass here and lay, panting and gasping, until they had their breath back.
As soon as he was able, the Manmonger settled himself down to perform his religious duties before his goddess, the Sun, now high in the sky. He did not even bother to tie up his two commodities. Tighe, sitting upon the grass as the pain in his chest and stomach receded a little, looked around him. There was no gatekeeper’s house this side of the tunnel; presumably people paid at the far end. Tighe wondered about what happened to those who, entering the tunnel from this side, did not have enough for a full fare; were they sent back along the tunnel?
The other people on the shelf were all dressed in striped dresses that fell from a tight neck collar down to the ankles; their heads were wrapped in scarves and Tighe could not even be sure whether they were male or female. There were perhaps a dozen of them, sitting together with their backs against the wall. They observed the Manmonger and his possessions with impossible-to-read expressions for a while and soon enough they all stood up together and filed into the tunnel.
The Manmonger was left alone with his commodities.
‘This shelf,’ he said, ‘is too close to that terrible tunnel. Come, we shall walk a little way.’
He led them along and up through a series of short interlinked crags, each one less well trodden than the one before, climbing and climbing until they came to a semi-circular platform covered in tall grass. Here he hammered in a peg and settled himself down. The sun had almost settled over the top of the wall and the light was dimming, but there seemed almost no motion of the air around them. Had they reached the place where the dusk gale was no more?
‘Now,’ said the Manmonger, fiddling in his pack. ‘If I don’t give you food you will die – as you, my black-skinned possession, have pointed out several times. So I traded some of my trinkets for grass-bread and ratmeat from the gatekeeper and you two will eat. Only do not eat too much, or your stomachs will rebel. Here,’ he handed out some small portions of bread and two or three knuckle-sized pieces of meat.
Tighe was too ravenous to think of anything else. He gobbled the food down straight away and felt his stomach clench and stab with pain. He felt extremely thirsty. ‘Drink?’ he asked. But the Manmonger only laughed.
‘You’ll have to wait until the dew tomorrow,’ he said.
The sun had gone now and it was getting darker by the minute. The Manmonger’s pale face flashed as he turned from side to side. ‘My pretty,’ he said, shuffling over towards the dark-haired girl. ‘Do you feel better with some food in your belly? With some food inside you?’ He chuckled to himself. ‘Would you like something else inside you?’
She moaned and seemed to be trembling. It was difficult to see in the half-light.
‘You wait a moment’, said the Manmonger, ‘whilst I tie up this boy.’ He came over to Tighe with a thong in his hands. The dark-haired girl was sobbing in a most pitiable manner. ‘We wouldn’t want to be disturbed, now, would we?’
Tighe felt his stomach knot and clench again; although that could have been just the food. His throat was so dry it was painful. He thought he ought to say something, but was not sure what.
The Manmonger tied Tighe’s wrists together tightly and then drew his knife. He turned back to the girl.
‘Now, my pretty!’
As he moved towards her, she gave a little yelp and darted to the side. In the increasingly dense darkness it was hard to see exactly what happened. The Manmonger lurched to the side, his free hand outstretched to grab her, but she ducked and put a burst of speed on, slipping past him. Tighe angled his head to follow, twisting his body to follow. The Manmonger grunted and lurched towards her again, this time holding the knife out.
One moment the dark-haired girl was there, crouched, her pale face just visible in the darkness. Then she was gone. The Manmonger dashed to the edge of the world and crouched down. ‘Are you there?’ he called. ‘Are you there? Where have you fallen to? How far down?’ There followed some words in his own incomprehensible language. He hurried back to Tighe and fixed him to the peg he had driven into the platform earlier, then he left, making his way down and away.
‘She flies, you fool,’ said Tighe, in a quiet voice, speaking at the Manmonger’s retreating back.
He was gone for only a few minutes, but when he returned he was in a foul mood. He ranted in his own tongue for a while, and then said in twisted Imperial, ‘Idiot, stupid girl, how would she think? How would she think that? She is fallen to the bones that litter the base of the wall and good riddance. Disease, she was; darkness and disease. Her hair was darkness and my Goddess despises darkness, dispels it. Idiot! Idiot!’
Tighe kept himself very quiet, lying still on the platform.
12
In the morning the Manmonger was still in a bad temper, although he no longer ranted. ‘It is the waste,’ he said, as he untethered Tighe. ‘The waste is the most provoking thing of it. I could have given her to the gatekeeper and had free passage through the tunnel for all my life. But now I have nothing! Not even her body! She has angered me. I should have given her to the gatekeeper.’
He ate some more food from his satchel, although he offered Tighe none. Then he smacked Tighe a few times to get him moving, and together they continued their climb along the crags and ledges of this section of worldwall.
‘We are going to a great city?’ Tighe asked, eventually. He felt strangely numb about the loss of the dark-haired girl, perhaps because it had happened in the night-time and so felt unreal. But then again, so much had felt unreal since the death of Ati.
‘What?’
‘Is it your city? Your home?’
The Manmonger snorted. ‘I come from a long way away from here, my black-skinned possession. But, yes, we are going to the City of the East. This trip has been unprofitable, mostly. I must reclaim what little I can from the situation.’
At ninety, as was his habit, the Manmonger settled down on a broad grassy ledge, overhung about a third, to pray to his goddess. He crossed his legs and made his strange bodily movements, and chanted in his strange tongue. Tighe sat, clutching his own knees, watching him.
After he had finished, the Manmonger came over and fished some food from his pack. Tighe looked dolefully at him as he ate, hoping to prick his conscience into giving him a snack. But the Manmonger was in a snappish mood.
‘No food for you today,’ he said. ‘You ate yesterday, it is enough. You could have had that girl’s food, if I’d known she would throw herself off the wall! What a waste of food. Could she not have left the food, at any rate? What difference does it make to her bones, bleaching at the foot of the wall, whether she had a full stomach or an empty one when she died?’
He sat for a while in silence. Tighe said nothing more.
After a little while, he spoke again.
‘Great reaches of bones,’ he said. ‘That’s what is at the bottom of the wall.’
Despite himself, his hatred for the Manmonger, and despite his hunger and discomfort, Tighe felt his interest piqued. ‘Have you seen them?’ he asked. ‘Have you been to the bottom of the wall?’
‘Yes,’ returned the Manmonger. ‘Or, if not, then at least I have spoken to men who have been down that far. There’s nothing there, nothing on the lower portions of the wall, I can tell you. And the bones are scattered as far as the eye can see. It is like a giant ledge, all busy with bleached bones and rubbish. Everything that falls from the wall ends up there; it is death. Every day my mistress, my Goddess,’ he pointed at the sun, ‘leaves such death. That is why the morning is death, it is the death of night. And She leaves death and climbs to life. Life is on top of the wall.’
There was a pause. Tighe said timidly, ‘I never met somebody who worshipped the Sun before.’
‘It is the true religion, my boy,’ said the Manmonger heartily.
Tighe tried looking at the sun, but his eyelids closed automatically at the glare. ‘It hurts my eyes,’ he said.
‘She does,’ said the Manmonger, and laughed to himself. ‘Not all can bear her beauty. But I can!’ He stood up and flung his arms wide, facing directly into the bright midday sun. I can! Her heat! Her light! Shall I tell you what I pray for?’ he said, turning back to Tighe.
‘Pray for,’ echoed Tighe.
‘I pray for the end times. This is how it will be: when the end comes, She will approach the wall more closely. She will come close a flame and burn all the liars. Only the pure will be able to bear Her beauty up close! There is a door in the sun and I shall step through it.’
‘A door in the sun,’ said Tighe. ‘A door?’
‘Through that door is light, is life.’
‘There is a door in the wall, too,’ said Tighe.
The Manmonger looked at him. ‘A door in the wall,’ he said. ‘I have heard those stories, but I never saw such a thing.’ He laughed, turning back to the sky. ‘I pray,’ he said loudly, ‘I pray that You will come soon, my Goddess!’
Then he gasped in pure astonishment. Tighe, winking and blinking and shielding his eyes with the flat of his hand, looked out at the sky.
A blob of bright light was dropping from the base of the sun; like hot white wax melting and dribbling down.
‘There!’ screeched the Manmonger in an immediate ecstasy of excitement. ‘My mistress! There!’
The blob hung for a moment, like a radiant teardrop, and then detached itself from the circle of the sun. Tighe clenched his eyes, letting his eyelashes act as a crude filter, trying to see what was happening. This second miniature sun, like a particularly bright star, dribbled slowly down the wall of the sky. Tighe felt his own heart struggle rapidly in his chest. There was a tremendous sense of expansion inside his head, as if the epiphany were here. The sun!
‘My mistress!’ howled the delighted Manmonger. He began a peculiar nimble-footed dance, hopping from foot to foot. He gabbled something in his own tongue and then hurried over to Tighe, gripping him by the shoulders. ‘As I said, no? We have travelled through the darkness, we have lost the dark girl, and now we are in the light, and my Goddess rewards us! As I said! The door in the sun has opened and a being of light has come through. Look there – !’ He stretched his arm out with manic energy, his finger trembling with excitement. ‘Look where it comes towards us.’
The blob of light did seem to be growing, as if it were flying through the air towards them.
‘Coming straight for us!’ announced the Manmonger. He let go of Tighe and resumed his odd dancing, chanting in his own tongue as he did so. When balanced on his right foot he twitched his left through a bizarre pattern; then he shifted his weight on to his left foot and waggled his right one in the air. He hopped back and forth with enormous gusto.
Tighe was hypnotised by the growing fragment of light. It wobbled a little, dropped. Then it rose. By the time it had grown to the size of a hand’s span, Tighe could see what it was.
It was a floating calabash of some sort; bright shiny silver, curiously shaped,
an elongated cylinder. It might have been made out of metal; three spindly pincers protruded from its underbelly; but its hourglass-shaped body possessed no marks or windows except for a band around its waist and what seemed to be three small portholes immediately underneath this. It floated, sweeping up through the sky.
Tighe recognised it: it was the same silver calabash he had seen during the battle on the Imperial ledge, the thing out of which the booming noise had issued that he had interpreted as his own name. The memory was sharp as lemon-taste in his mind; he could remember everything about that last encounter – Ati tugging his shirt from below him on the stair, urging him to keep his head low: the crack and volley of rifle fire up above and the stench of burnt mushroom powder.
He had thought this strange apparition had called his name; and now here it was again and this time the Manmonger seemed certain it had come specifically in answer to his prayers. ‘It has come, it has come!’ he cried aloud, singing the words. ‘As I prayed! It has come to me!’
13
The silver calabash came through the air, unerringly, until it was close against the wall at the lip of the ledge on which the Manmonger and Tighe were standing; it hovered, and settled so that most of its shape was below them and they could see the top of it. Up close it was even more startling than it was when seen floating in the middle distance. Unlike calabashes, which displayed the stitching and the leather panels that constituted their skin, this structure was utterly smooth and clear, pure unsullied silver all over. Now that it was nestling against the wall Tighe could see that it was the size of a small house.
The Manmonger was running up and down the ledge in little spurts of excited activity, gabbling something. Tighe stood motionless.
There was a slight popping noise and a swirl of air directly over the smooth crown of the machine, a dilating spot of dark, and a figure emerged, elevated from within until it stood on the top of the device. A man, it seemed, dressed in a black cloak; or perhaps a boy, because it was a small figure.