by Jack Conner
He led the group forward. They bustled through orgies and feasts. Avery had to step lively around naked limbs and torsos. Some of the participants wore masks, some dressed as animals. A beautiful woman gasped in pleasure as an unidentifiable (under its disguise as a bear) lover pleasured her with its tongue; she clutched at Avery’s ankle in her orgasm and he had to pull himself loose. A fat man ate a dripping beef rib while pounding into the rear of a naked young man. Avery smelled a riot of smells—savory meat and spices, spilled beer, sweat and body odor, a woman’s state of arousal, another’s yeast infestation, a man’s farts, belches, the reek of split intestines and death drifting over from the altars. Sloppy sounds of rutting, grunts, groans and laughter swirled around him. Glittering jewelry and flushed faces and bare breasts spun before his eyes. It was too much, too much. He couldn’t breathe.
No no no, he thought. This is all wrong. The lords of L’oh should be locked in debate with the Senate, planning against the invasion of Octung, plotting to win back the cities that had declared independence, appealing to the refugees that had become a menace to innocent people wandering the mountains, putting them to better use ...
Jynad led the group to a certain huge, tangled orgy, perhaps the biggest and loudest of the room, though in truth it was hard to judge. Scores of people drank and fornicated in a sweaty sprawl. Hairy buttocks pumped, a bald head gleamed, a long, feminine leg kicked, and a woman’s rolls of fat jounced while a perfect pair of breasts was fondled by a gravy-stained hand.
“Your Eminence,” called the aide. “Your Eminence, you have visitors.”
The grunting and straining continued.
Jynad sighed, turned to Avery and the others. “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait.”
“Our task is urgent,” Avery said.
The aid nodded vaguely. “His Lordship does not know that.”
They waited. And waited. At last there came a series of groans, and a section of the sweaty tangle bulged, throbbed. The moans grew louder, louder, then climaxed with a primal roar. The bulge subsided, and a few moments later it parted. A strange, stumbling form arose from the chaos. It burped, wiped its mouth, and wove over to the group, though it was not clear whether in response to Jynad’s pleas or not.
Instantly, the aide bowed before it.
“My Lord,” he said.
The figure burped.
Avery blinked.
The Emperor was a mutant.
Chapter 18
Emperor Ga’as Haemlys IV was not wholly mutant like the ngvandi. He bore the tainted, infected look of a normal person come into contact with the Atomic Sea. He was a huge, fat, hairy man, naked save for his many rings and the gold chains that hung down over his chest hair, which was thick enough to weave a blanket from. His erection was beginning to fade, but not fast enough for Avery’s liking. The Emperor’s bushy, curly red-brown beard was slicked with either grease or a woman’s secretions. His blood-shot eyes glared drunkenly. But it was his right arm that seized Avery’s attention. It was the segmented, carapace-covered arm of a lobster, complete with a great snapping pincer on the end. Avery could see where the crustacean shoulder joined the man’s body, the carapace folding over the skin. Old scars showed there, where shell rubbed against flesh.
How is this possible? Avery thought. He stared, trying to make sense of it. Hunried had said the gods of the sea had changed Lord Tallis. At the time, Avery had taken that to mean they had converted him to their worship, but, though that may have been part of it, Hunried had spoken much more literally. And Emperor Tallis had passed his change on to the next generation, and the next. No wonder they thought him a god-emperor. Back then there were no mutants. He was the first one, at least the first one Avery knew of. And it was obviously something no one outside the religion spoke of, at least not explicitly, otherwise Avery would have known to expect it.
Jynad cleared his throat, and Avery looked down to see him kneeling. Reluctantly, Avery followed suit, and so did the others.
The Emperor barely glanced at them as he lurched toward one of the feasting tables. Avery got a look at his hairy buttocks, meaty and flexing as he walked. A piece of grease stuck to the right one, tangled and glistening in the hairs, which were black, not the red-brown of his head and beard.
“My Lord,” Jynad said, rising and scrambling after him. Avery and the others followed. “These are the visitors General Rossit asked us to welcome. Remember, he radioed ahead, before—Azzara—?”
The Emperor only half looked back, idly glancing them over. Even their odd, bedraggled state was not enough to win his attention. They reached one of the long tables, and nobles all around hailed their lord drunkenly and with good humor.
“And who will quench their Lord’s thirst?” bellowed the Emperor.
Several grabbed flagons and shoved them at him. He burped once, grabbed the nearest one with his pincer and drank. As he drank, he broke wind loudly. Nobles around him laughed, and one listed sideways on his seat and farted, to join his lord in rude behavior. More laughter followed, the loudest of all by Haemlys when he lowered his flagon and wiped his mouth.
“Give that man a castle!” he thundered.
Whether he was serious or not Avery couldn’t tell, but after that there followed a series of farts and burps, and the men and their lord laughed so heartily the Emperor had to sit down or fall over from mirth. Avery was less amused.
Gasping, his laughter subsiding, the Emperor turned his gaze back on Jynad, seeking another source of humor. “What’d you want again?” he said. “Sum’ing to do w’ a radio?” There was laughter all around at the absurdity of this.
Avery felt nails dig into the flesh of his palm.
Jynad colored. “No, my lord. These are guests. Visitors from the Front. You recall, General Rossit—”
“Ah, now there’s a man that knows his boots! He polishes ‘em night and day, he does, but give him a whore and he don’t know which end is up!” More laughter.
Jynad persisted with the patience of long suffering. “General Rossit said they were very important, you remember. Said they were great enemies of Octung and wanted to confer with you privately about some favor they wish to ask of you, something that could harm Octung.”
“Favor!” The Emperor roared, laughing, his face red. “I’ll give them a favor!”
He stood up drunkenly, with some help from his mates, then reached down with his human hand, grabbed hold of his member, which had more or less gone flaccid, and, after some fits and starts, began pissing at the ground at Jynad’s feet. When Jynad jumped back—droplets splattering—the Emperor urinated wider, sprinkling the marble floor. Avery felt drops bounce off the marble and strike his legs. He and the rest leapt back, while the Emperor and his friends roared with drunken hilarity.
“How d’you like that favor?” the Emperor said.
Jynad sighed and turned to the others. In a half-whisper, he said, “I am most sorry.”
Avery could find no words to say. He no longer felt angry, he felt numbed. I need a drink.
Janx looked ready to rip the Emperor apart with his bare hands. Hildra laid a restraining hand on his arm.
A man in the robes of a priest approached the Emperor and whispered in his ear. Haemlys nodded sagely. He finished pissing, wiggled his member to get out the last drops, then flung a wave to his mates as he lurched away from the table, the priest at his side. They wound their way through the revelry toward the dais that held the throne.
“Where are they going?” asked Hildra.
Janx smashed a fist into his palm. “To find someone to shit on next, I reckon.”
“Let’s try again,” Avery told Jynad.
The aide, resigned, straightened himself and said, “Follow me.”
He led the way through the orgies and feasting toward the throne. In the distance, animals bleated in fear and mewled in pain, competing with the sounds of orgasms, grunts, clattering silverware and laughter. Ahead, the God-Emperor reached the throne, passed around it,
and vanished into a small, ornate entrance behind the royal seat, slipping through a curtain of coral-colored beads. Jynad led Avery and the others in the God-Emperor’s tracks, and in moments they rounded the throne and, with only a brief hesitation, passed through the coral curtain.
“Be quiet as you enter,” Jynad cautioned. “It’s a holy place.”
Lips sealed, Avery followed the aide through the rattling beads and into the chamber beyond. Janx and the others did likewise.
It was not a large chamber. It was rounded, domed, made of bricks that appeared to be a mottled blue-violet color. An altar stood in the center of the chamber, but the altar did not resemble the ones in the Throne Room. Instead, it appeared to be a tiered fountain. Crystal water tinkled from the top level, where the statue of a fish-man not unlike Muirblaag stood in a kingly pose, cape draped from broad shoulders, trident thrust high into the air.
“Lord Tallis,” Jynad explained. “The first God-Emperor.”
Water trickled from Tallis’s mouth, down over his scaly hide, to fill the first basin, the highest, which took the shape of a seashell, as did they all. A waterfall splashed from this tier to the next, and the next after that. Every basin spread wider and deeper than the one before.
Avery could not repress a shudder as he beheld the fourth and lowest tier. The widest and deepest, perhaps thirty feet in diameter and four feet deep, it was completely choked in dead bodies. They were not human bodies, but ngvandi. The reek of old ngvandi corpses filled the tight chamber, redolent of rotting fish and seaweed. Some of the corpses were bloated, some had split, some were mainly bones with ragged streamers of flesh trailing from them. A few crabs and fish had been placed in the basin, and they pinched and nibbled at the corpses, but not fast enough to prevent the foul odor that plagued the room. Avery tasted bile in the back of his throat.
“What the hell?” said Hildra.
Hastily Jynad motioned her to silence, and she glared but obeyed.
Oblivious, Lord Haemlys knelt before the seashell basin of the lowest tier, praying silently. The priest knelt beside him, and they prayed together, in some language Avery did not know. It seemed to be eerily similar to that the ngvandi spoke, and the unnatural, susurrus noises complimented the tinkling of the water as it sloughed over the corpses, stirring their ink-like blood.
Avery had not noticed the small opening to the rear of the room, but now four soldiers stepped out of it bearing a thrashing ngvandi between them. He howled and screeched, but his tongue had been torn out, as had his eyes. He could not protest or even see what fate held in store for him. Just as well.
Haemlys and his priest rose while the soldiers manhandled the thrashing ngvandi into position over the basin right where the two had knelt.
“Is he going to do what I think he is?” Hildra asked.
Jynad glowered at her. Hildebrand huddled low on her back, making scared little mewling noises.
“Yeah,” Janx said. “I think so, darlin’. Y’ may wanna close those pretty eyes.”
“Fuck you.”
Avery wished there was some way to prevent what was about to happen, but he knew there was not.
The priest produced a curved dagger from his robes. After some more chanting, he jerked the ngvandi’s head back with one hand and slit his throat with the other. Blue-black blood sprayed into the basin, and strong, fishy limbs twitched and jerked. The ngvandi made pathetic gagging noises, and Avery looked away. At last the creature died, and Avery breathed a sigh of relief that his pain was over. Without ceremony, the soldiers heaved the corpse into the waters, and the bodies already in it bobbed at the movement. A bit of bloody water splashed over the lip and spattered the floor.
“You may go,” the priest told the soldiers.
They bowed and left. The priest eyed Avery and his group next, seemed to consider asking them to leave, but then noticed Jynad. Apparently the presence of the royal aide was enough to legitimize their presence, and the priest ignored them after that.
Haemlys approached the basin, bowed his head and allowed the priest to cup water in his hands and drizzle it over his forehead and face, baptizing him in the fetid, foul water. That done, the God-Emperor looked up, smiling drunkenly, serenely, as if blessed. Beaming, he stared up at the drooling statue of Lord Tallis.
“I feel you, Father of my Fathers,” said Haemlys, slurring the words. “I feel you ‘oursing through me. Teach me, Father. Show me the way.” He waited, staring up at the statue, clearly expecting—hoping—for something. Nothing happened. Water tinkled. Corpses bobbed. The God-Emperor broke wind.
“Fuck!” Haemlys said at last. In anger, he rose to his feet, made a fist, and crashed it down onto the ngvandi he’d just had sacrificed. Bodies bobbed more violently, and more water splashed over. Crabs scuttled out of the way. “Fuck fuck fuck!” Furious, he turned red-rimmed eyes on the priest. “Fuck you too, you fucking char’atan! How man’ of these mis’rable shits do we ha’ to go through t’ get a fuckin’ res’onse? Huh? A hun’red? A thousan’? Why won’t he answer me?” He stabbed a meaty finger at the statue.
The priest cowed before the wrath of his lord. “I-I don’t know, Your Majesty. W-we’re doing everything in our power. Following the ancient scriptures. Making sacrifices of those with otherworldly flesh, just like the slaves the Great Ones gave your Father of Fathers. I-I don’t know why it’s not working!”
Haemlys struck him in the face, sending him flying back to the floor. Chest heaving, lobster claw clacking, the naked God-Emperor stood over his priest and glared down at him. “You’d be’er figure it out, old man! Al’eady I’ve had to beg the other gods for advice! An’ even they won’t answer!” He snorted in bitter amusement. “I’m the laugh’in’stock of the country! I pray and sacrifice to every god, e’en those that aren’t my own—and nothing!” He threw back his head and let loose an animal roar. In a rage, he kicked the priest, again and again.
Avery stepped forward to intervene, but Jynad, white with fear, jerked him back and shook his head violently.
“You’d better find out!” Haemlys thundered, giving the frail old man one last kick in the ribs. “Or mebbe the nex’ one I sacri’ice ‘ll be you!”
Sobbing and begging for forgiveness, the priest picked himself up with care and scurried from the room, as fast as his withered legs would take him.
Glaring, fuming, hairy chest heaving, Lord Haemlys turned his attention to Jynad and his visitors. “You!” He marched over. His lobster claw clacked loudly. “What do you want?”
Jynad cowered back. “N-nothing, my lord! I only wanted to i-introduce you to some v-visitors. They’re supposed to be g-great enemies of—”
Haemlys snorted. After screaming at and kicking his priest, his rage seemed to have drained from him, at least for the moment. He’d already lost interest in Jynad. With a burp, he reeled from the chapel. “Fuckin’ gods,” he muttered. “If they won’ answer me, maybe the ‘tunggen will.” Still muttering, he tottered away.
“B-but my lord!” begged Jynad, hurrying after him—with some courage, Avery thought. “What shall we do with our guests?”
“F-find ‘em a room!” laughed the God-Emperor. “Give ‘em some wine and tell ‘em to join th’ par’y. The las’ days’re up’n us. Enjoy as much pussy and grub while y’ can.”
With that, he passed through the bead curtain, leaving Jynad behind.
The aide paused, staring at the curtain, as if wondering if he should try one more time. Then, with a sigh, one of many, he turned back to the guests. “I ... I’m sorry.”
Janx grunted. “I should take that claw and shove it up his ass.”
Jynad’s eyes widened. “Don’t even say such things.”
Hildra laughed. “I’d like to see that.”
Avery cleared his throat. “About those rooms ...”
Jynad swallowed, nodded. “It will be cozy, I’m afraid. Half the nobles in the land have taken refuge in the palace. Their homes have been razed, their people killed or put to fli
ght. They’re the lords of none now. All they can do is revel, leech off His Eminence and wait for the arrival of Octung. So ... it’s crowded. But when I heard that you were coming, I managed to set aside a room.”
“One room?” Avery frowned.
“Whatever,” Hildra said. “Let’s just do it. I’m tired.”
Avery released a breath. “Very well. Jynad, if you would show us the way ...”
The aid bowed and led the band out. Before he left, Avery turned to Layanna, who had been very silent through all of this. She eyed the corpse-filled basin strangely, and for a moment he wondered at the odd expression on her face, but then he realized what it was, and he felt cold.
She was hungry.
* * *
“Well, this is the fuckin’ pit,” said Hildra. Smoking, she leaned back in an expensive chair and stared up at the crystal chandelier. The rooms were large and splendid, the doorways arched and inlaid with gold and turquoise. Jewels glimmered from candelabra, and antique mirrors hung from the walls, their glass warped but strangely beautiful. Priceless oil paintings adorned the spaces between, and pale-looking lords and ladies, some showing undeniable signs of mutation, stared out from eerie, inky landscapes. Alchemical lanterns filled the room with exotic smells, nutmeg and lavender and fresh leather. It was a sumptuous suite, with several handsome bedrooms that spilled out into this common living area. Gold and burgundy rugs rested on the floor.
“At least the booze is good,” Janx said. He tipped back his fancy goblet and slurped some of the aged spicewine. “Hells, I’m tempted to join the fuckin’ orgy.”
“Don’t you dare,” Hildra said.
“Why not? What’s an orgy for if not to orge?”
“I would be wary of contracting disease,” Avery said, perusing the bookshelf, wineglass nearby.
“You gotta learn to live a little, Doc,” Janx said.
Nodding absently, Avery selected a volume and thumbed through it. All in Ungraessotti, of course, but that was fine. He read it better than he spoke it. Unfortunately the volume recounted some lord’s adventures, just the sort of thing he had enjoyed many times in the past, reveling in his fantasy of L’oh, but right now the last thing he wanted was to relive his boyhood dreams, or remember that he had once dreamed them in the first place. I was such a fool. He shoved the volume back and selected another. From time to time he glanced at Layanna, who reclined on one of the handsome divans, eyes closed but not sleeping. He downed frequent sips of his wine.