by D. P. Watt
The Night Pool was a stupid dream told to young children, the feebleminded and the dying.
“Yes, I have heard the rumours,” I said. “The rumours are lies, sadly.”
“Let us discover the truth, then,” she said, taking my hand and leading me into the street.
We travelled through the gangs of thugs and the packs of alley harlots, and crossed the cobbled roads as carriages clattered by with their rich passengers, heading for a banquet, or one of the high-class brothels, or gaming clubs, inside the sanctuary of The Debauch.
Nobody noticed us. We seemed to glide by, like wisps of sewer smoke dissipating on the warm breeze.
We passed through the North Gate, as though invisible, sliding between the last of the wagons heading out to collect the day’s pickings from the Callors slopes.
We scrambled up the slag heaps of the Old Mines and came to the Middle Ground, where the Bucket Boys take their catch of sludgeworms from the morning’s dredging by The River, until the Midnight barges arrive to take the catch back for processing into the addictive pulp that feeds most of the City. They are dangerous—both the Boys and the worms. The latter must be kept cool, and still, or they awaken and can devour their carrier in minutes.
We moved past the Bucket Boys quickly, but not hurriedly. Upon their backs they carry metal barrels that hold the sludgeworms. They were desperate to get to us so that the worms might feed, but aware that with one slip they would be down, the contents of their own barrel feasting on them hungrily.
We continued up the steeper slopes until slowly some yellowish plants and struggling trees began to appear. The smog cleared in patches to show districts of the vast City glinting with the occasional light amidst the filth; nascent seeds flickering with hopeful life in a stinking swamp of dark degeneracy. In the City centre the neon glow of The Debauch was in dull sparkle and I wondered how many bodies would be found upon the shores of the river the following morning, half-consumed by the polluted waters and the malformed creatures that dwelt therein.
I breathed deeply—no longing the choking sulphurous City air, thick with the stench of rotting fish and the sweat of hundreds of thousands of tired, desperate bodies. I could smell a freshness that I was unable to describe; if freedom had a scent I would have said it was this.
“Come,” she said, and led me on.
We passed through thickening trees as the mountainous terrain gave way to a plateau, further North I could occasionally glimpse, through the canopy of branches, a reddish glow to the sky—I thought it must be burning.
I was enthralled to see so many trees together, and the incredible green of their leaves and the rich, mottled browns of their trunks. In the City the few trees that remain are cultivated on the Boulevards of The Debauch and are grey, thin, lifeless things, as though made of plaster or concrete. All the others have long since gone, chopped down for the hungry Foundry furnaces or for the simple stoves of the hovels.
We wandered on for an hour or more. She still led me. I still followed. A cold wind began from the North and soon I was thinking of finding some shelter when we came to a wide expanse of still water, the trees growing right up to the edge so that the whole place seemed to suddenly erupt from the ground. It was a black mirror and within it I saw those Stars I had dreamt of, arrayed as in the book, and sparkling as in my dream.
The woman walked into the water without pausing a moment, her flowing blue cape spreading out, darkening, and then sinking, as her body was slowly covered by the water. As her head went under her black hair floated a moment and was gone.
She did not resurface.
I followed her still.
My body was consumed by the heat of a million suns, my mind fired with a billion ideas and possibilities. My being was exchanged for a mighty illumination that erupted galaxies in an instant and enfolded them in darkness a moment later. All things were immediately visible and known to me; all creatures and plants, all the stones and elements, all the endless emptiness of all the cosmos was apparent and comprehensible; all the mountains and deserts, oceans and wild icy wildernesses were accessible and traversed. I lived a million lives each second and passed through time as a solar wind through galaxies. This was the water of flame and I was its master, thanks to my mysterious mistress.
As I emerged, my heart pounding with fury and my hands ready to begin their work, I heard her voice, sounding through the quivering leaves, “Go now, my first born, become yourself and show the world your gift!”
The City sang that night with a new voice among its ancient, diabolic chorus—and this one a fresh, virile angel of vengeance. New blood flowed in the old gutters as the old wine filled new glasses. New hymns of hate resounded in the streets and above the cloudy reek of smog, in the distant, dark depths of the unseen skies, another star flickered and vanished. I am become that star, of ruin and rage, fire and ferocity. My brother’s body now floats, gutted like useless vermin, in the stinking River—let the fish teach his flesh repentance and the worms unlock the sin from his bones.
I will be as cruel and merciless as the greatest of tyrants. I will show the common man how to fear every minute of a life lived in the shadow of a murderer as creative as the finest of artists—my canvas will be their bodies and my legend will live on in the mouths of the terrified for centuries. I will show this City how I have become them, how their dark souls have nurtured a true star in their rotten firmament. I am invisible now, but as the dawn of my flaming fury breaks they will know the pain of a thousand dying suns upon them and the charred bodies—piled as high as mountains—will not quench my thirst for death; only a world of ruins and dust is enough, and even then I will turn to other worlds, and all the places between them, to extinguish my burning hatred of all that moves, and breathes, and thinks, and fucks, and casts their sad, demented eyes up to the putrid fading heavens, in hope or fear.
Until all existence is consumed in utter conflagration—and even when the universe itself is undone—I will not cease my apocalyptic endeavours; my infernal, ordained calling—written in the wretched and doomed constellations at the dawn of, and end of, all time. Attend, applaud, adore, abhor—I rise, all fall!
Lotska
There is a flight of steps leading to the King’s Court Chamber. There are twenty in total; each one of polished black marble from the Western island kingdoms. Each level of steps on the flight is two hundred hands wide and twenty deep; each slab took one hundred slaves to drag them the forty leagues from the Deep Harbour to The Capital following the Coming Day of The First King. On a busy day, and when our King is in good spirit, their passage may take as little as ten hours. If he is displeased, or arguments break out amongst his courtiers, it may take four, or even five days. Each step is ascended only upon the sounding of a great gong at their summit, struck on each half hour by a knight of his personal guard. Then one must wait, standing still, head raised to the huge iron doors that are the focus of one’s journey, before the next gong. With each step time slows until your limbs are iron and your mind is as empty as a starless night sky. Once the first step is taken there can be no turning back. Those that realise that their question, grievance, or message is without merit will often panic and attempt to flee. They are pursued by the sentinels that stand on plinths beside each step, and are hacked apart with curved blades of the kind favoured here in the capital. This brutality dissuades those with anything other than the most urgent business with the King. His court is always open to any of his subjects, from the bright sunlit lands in the South to the icy Northern wastes, from the wealthiest to the poorest and the lowest caste to the mightiest of Counts. None are refused, if their desire to see him is such that they can endure the trial of the approach to him.
I have not come to see the King with complaints concerning lands or titles. I have not come to beg favours or seek vengeance upon my neighbours. I have come because I have been summoned. I am one of the King’s Messengers and I must do my duty.
My passage took only a day. Winter is ne
arly upon us and petitioners are few. I have my task assigned to me; to deliver a message to the seneschal of a remote Northern outpost. What the message is I have no idea until I arrive there. It is safe within a bright white buckskin bag that I will carry upon my chest—the sign of a King’s Messenger; a silver chain is threaded through the front and sealed with black wax imprinted with the writhing serpent emblem of The King’s House.
I have been assigned a guide, a Northern tribesman of sulky demeanour (they were always the hardest to break). He will lead me through the Edgelands at the point the roads vanish. I do not relish the journey, these places are reluctant to adopt the Codes of Civilisation and the stories of atrocities and cruelty of the barbarian tribes are ever on the tongues of those in The Capital. But I must do my duty. It is what I have lived for. Without duty there is only death.
*
Our journey to the Edgelands does not take too long; sixteen days with comfortable evenings in the many taverns along the way. We hear more tales from returning soldiers of the hardships of the Northern Wastes. They tease me gently; they know my rank is considered greater than theirs and do not want to cause offence; indeed, it is their duty to protect me and, at a simple command, I could commandeer a battalion of them to aid me in my task.
At the last outpost before we must enter the forests we stock up on the provisions we will need for the next week, or maybe two, as we negotiate The Great Forest and the Dry Steppe, before the climb into the Low Mountains and our destination. At all times I keep the white bag upon my chest. With every league further North we have travelled I have seen the faces of the people change upon seeing it; from revered nods of the head and proud bows to suspicion and outright contempt. Perhaps I would have been wise to have taken some soldiers with me. The King’s Laws hold little for these rugged citizens, more schooled in barbarity and dark ignorant rituals than the truth of The Kingdom. I keep my sword well sharpened and its sheath oiled, to prevent the cold from seizing the blade.
The days are cold and the nights colder in The Great Forest; the trees seem to draw the heat from the very air around us, the slightest glint of sunlight that breaks the thick canopy becomes a delight. But not for my companion; he dwells happily in this darkness and with every step further into this leafy oblivion his spirits seem to grow. I have seen him smile for the first time since we met. But he performs his duties without question and attends expertly to keeping us on the almost imperceptible route through the trees. Without him I would be lost.
It takes three days to cross the Dry Steppe in frozen winds that are nothing short of torture. Each night he builds complex wind breaks from branches gathered in the forest, and a low tent in which we huddle together in a close embrace, to fend off the icy death. Our stench mingles beneath the filthy blankets but it is the stink of warmth and life and, as much as we detest each other, we know our lives are dependent on each other’s bodies.
By the time we begin to climb into the rocky beginnings of the Low Mountains our horses are beginning to suffer. They will not last too much longer.
In the early hours of the second night we find two slicks of blood near our camp.
“Mountain hunters,” my companion mutters, his voice proud and happy. “Their children will dine well tonight.”
“And what of us?” I say. “How could this have happened, barely feet from where we slept?”
“They have left us ample for our needs,” he said, sliding away a pink heap of snow, beneath which lay a whole leg and thick cuts of flank, frozen now, but a feast for us over the coming days. “It is their thanks to us. They take as they need and provide for us according to ours.”
“They are thieves,” I say, “barbarous mountain filth.”
“If they are so barbarous why are our necks not hanging open and all the animal flesh gone,” he said, gathering the precious food together and strapping it to strips of branches fashioned into a functional sled he would pull from his shoulders.
I said nothing more but assisted him in the construction of another on which I could carry our bags.
Two days later, as we began to climb steeper paths he turned to me.
“Now I must leave you,” he said. “I will not disturb the people of the place you are going to. They must be left alone. They must rest. Without their rest they will not make it to the Spring. It is the way of winter and you will find only silence and death if you continue.”
“You are tasked with taking me there,” I said, drawing my sword and levelling it at his throat. “And you will take me there. It is the King’s Order!”
“It is your King’s order,” he said, turning from me and making his way back down the rocky path. “You will not slay me. You are a decent man.”
I watched him leave. What good would such justice do now. He might have murdered me a hundred times already on our journey, had he mind to. He too was a decent man.
The Gods must be real, and they must be with me, for how else I managed to survive the following three days is a mystery to me. Only the relentless call of my obligation kept be going through the sleet and the freezing winds. On the morning of the fourth day I came across the little community that I had been sent to. The dwellings were squat stone things that seemed to bubble through the thick drifts of snow surrounding them. Deep, thatched rooves of low pitch were piled with further snowy dunes and the whole thing might easily be passed through without noticing it so little sign of existence was there. There were ten such houses around an open area in the centre of which stood four tall, dark stones. All of the buildings were identical and it was impossible to tell which might house the seneschal. All of them had stout chimneys from which a ripple of heat haze drifted.
I gathered myself and set my garments right, pulling aside my thick cloak and heavy furs to show the white bag of my office and the bright breastplate of my armour. I would need to make an impression upon them immediately and deliver my message.
*
I mounted the few wooden steps of the wide porch of the nearest house and pounded upon the door. There was no answer.
I pounded again and called out, “This is the King’s Messenger. I must see the seneschal.”
The door was opened an inch or so and a man peered through the crack at me, his eyes red and bleary, his white beard thick and unkempt. He was wrapped in layers of blankets and slowly looked me up and down without a flicker of recognition.
“I have a message for the seneschal,” I said, pointing to the bag upon my chest. “I must see him immediately.”
There was the slightest shake of his head.
“Lotska,” he said in a thick drawling voice, as though he had been drinking.
“Are you the seneschal?” I said.
“Lotska,” he said, again.
Lotska! What was that? Their currency?
“I do not need to pay you!” I said. “I am the King’s Messenger and I must deliver a message to the seneschal.”
“Lot… ska…” he said, slowly moving to close the door on me.
I pushed the door open and he staggered back, using a long stick, charred at the end, to steady himself with.
“Where is the Seneschal!” I demanded, grabbing his shoulders and shaking his body violently. He flopped back and forth in my hands like a child’s rag toy. There was no spirit or life to him. But if the rest of his body was as useless as a corpse his hands were not. They gripped the long stick tightly, so tightly that the fingers were white with the force of it. It did not seem he was about to use it to strike me but rather that he feared I might take it from him.
I quickly scanned the room to check for others that might come to his assistance.
There was nothing but a wide open space with a vast fireplace against the far wall, a few thick logs were smouldering there. Above the fireplace great flat stones were laid creating a thin mezzanine upon which were heaped piles of brown blankets. Apart from some crude wooden furniture there was little else to be seen.
Then I noticed amidst the blankets
above the fireplace little dots of light—faces. There were people there. They were sleeping together, maybe eight, or ten of them.
I pointed to them and looked at him, grabbing the hilt of my sword.
“Na, na, Lot… ska…” he said again, becoming a little more enlivened and more irritated. He pointed with the stick at one of the smaller sleeping forms to the centre of the group. “Brabski…” he said, with that slow drawl. He clutched my arm, “Brab… ski…”
I nodded.
“Brabinska…” he said, pointing to another one of the sleeping bodies.
“Brab… in… ska…” he repeated.
“Mat… ska,” he said, pointing to another—plumper, older.
I nodded again.
“Your family,” I said. “Yes?”
“Da, da… ma poloi,” he nodded, making a circling gesture with his arm.
“You—seneschal?” I said, pointing to him.
He scoffed. “Na, na, seneschal broi nevelki, na boloiska.”
I shrugged.
He pointed to the door, “Seneschal boi cradalsya. Ma poloi, lotska!”
I pointed to him, “You will take me to the seneschal. You… take… me!”
He sighed, but seemed to understand and nodded his head with resignation. He stoked the fire a little with his stick and came back with me to the door. There he took from above the beam of the door two sets of snow shoes and offered me a pair. I declined.