By Demons Possessed

by P. C. Hodgell

  Bane slid around their tenebrous forms to the priest who lay, gasping, between them. He held a knife. He used it.

  “Thank you,” gasped Ishtier, and died.

  “You’re welcome,” said Bane, laying him down in the slaughterhouse of his own blood. Only the priest’s ravished shadow still attended him. The chamber seemed, suddenly, far more empty than it had been. The Voices had departed, and with them the speakers.

  “Where did that knife come from,” Jame demanded, hearing her voice shake, “and what did you just do with it?”

  “Ah well.” Half shadow, half man, Bane smiled at her. “Someone left it in my side. I returned it to its . . . er . . . sheath.”

  Titmouse let out his breath, looking at the mess on the floor. “Now what?”

  “Definitely, the pyre,” said Jame. “You don’t want him coming back, do you?”

  “He could?”

  “I have no idea. Let’s not take any chances.”

  As Titmouse departed to summon his fellow priests, Jame turned to Bane.

  “What about you?”

  He smiled at her, crookedly. “D’you mean, would I prefer the flames too?”

  “Something like that. Perhaps Ashe said it best: your state is . . . peculiar. I don’t know what you are. Maybe I never did or will, but I . . . care for you.”

  He touched a strand of her hair that had tumbled down from her cap, wrapping it around his fingers. She wondered if he meant to tear it out by the roots as a keepsake. “Then we have a problem.”

  “I know your true name now,” she said. “That and fire or water would allow you to die. If you want to. This existence must be agony.”

  “Who told you . . . oh.”

  “You remember?”

  “Vaguely. I was very young, but I must have trusted you even then. So. You hold the key to my soul’s destruction or its salvation.”

  “Sweet Trinity. D’you think I want to?”

  “No. It is a serious thing. To kill, to destroy, to annihilate. . . . Something in you draws you that way. It does me too. I don’t know how either of us is supposed to deal with that. Our time, presumably, will come. Meanwhile, let’s wait, shall we? I would rather not waste everything I am, or was, or will be, before I see the purpose behind it.”

  If that exists, thought Jame, but didn’t say so out loud.

  “And then, of course,” he added with a laugh, giving her hair a light tug and letting it go, “there is always the matter of honor.”

  Titmouse re-entered the room. “The keeper of the dead is coming,” he said. “Luckily, one of us knows the pyric rune.”

  Jame turned back to Bane. A glimmer of silver eyes lingered for a moment, then was gone, drawing back into the shadows. Back to dust. Back to rags and cobwebs and scuttling beetles. Back, perhaps, to that verminous cell behind Mount Alban that contained the Book Bound in Pale Leather and the Ivory Knife, whose guardian he had chosen to be until she chose to release him.

  “I don’t think he will bother you again,” she said to Titmouse. “Or at least not on a regular basis. Your novices can sleep safe. And if he does worry them, go into an empty room and whisper, ‘Honor.’”

  Chapter XV

  The Anarchies Again

  Spring 58

  WITH GREAT RELIEF, Jame and Rue emerged among the dried leaves in the subterranean nexus under the Anarchies.

  It was hard to tell how long they had been in the step-forward tunnel from Tai-tastigon. Jame was beginning to feel hungry again, despite the breakfast that Cleppetty had urged on her—a jumbled fare based on whatever food was available and safe, the latter still being a consideration, although presumably not for long. The Archiem had looked bemused, but gracious, especially to Mistress Abernia, who had presided over the feast with a magisterial air in her boots and unevenly buttoned bodice not quite covering a hairy chest. Even Kithra had behaved herself. Perhaps she and Rothan would be invited to stay after all.

  As far as Jame could tell, the greater city was also sorting itself out.

  Ishtier dead was definitely a step in the right direction, likewise Heliot, Kalissan, and Abbotir.

  Titmouse had taken over the Kencyr temple, presumably with Bane as an unwelcome, intermittent guest.

  Canden had seemed to be in control of the Guild, however shakily, with Darinby at his elbow.

  The Five were reviewing their options.

  When she and Rue had left, the townfolk had been still busy hunting down those haunts who had not escaped through the north gate to the hills beyond. Even so, pyres would burn for days. Jame didn’t like haunts—who did?—but it made her queasy to think of all the sons and daughters, the mothers and fathers, who would wander the streets when dusk fell, ravenous, hunting, in turn hunted by their families with blazing torches.

  Enough of that.

  Now, Jame told herself, it was time to turn back to what should have been her main concern in the first place, and pray that she wasn’t too late. Surely Brier would have left Tagmeth with her cadets for Gothregor days ago. Jame could only hope that her fallback plan would work. Oh, but what a gamble!

  She had also hoped to find Chirpentundrum waiting for them. However, the little Builder wasn’t there, either below or above in the circle of silently watching imu lithons. Had he gone back to Tagmeth on his own? For him, knowing the way, that would be easy. She and Rue would be in trouble, though, if they tried it without him, even with the recovered diamantine panel to give them light.

  “Look,” said Rue.

  At the center of the imu circle, last season’s leaves were disturbed and the ground beneath them gouged as if from a struggle. Jame picked up a fallen sandal, small enough to fit a child’s foot but with unusually long toes. No need to ask whose. Surrounding it, like an infection, was a ring of freckled toadstools.

  “Heh,” breathed the motionless air. “Heh, heh, heh . . .”

  A gray bird landed on a nearby lithon and fanned its wings. The feathered eyes there seemed to blink. With a whir, it flew away.

  “Now what?” asked Rue, instinctively keeping to a whisper.

  . . . what, what, what . . . breathed the resonate stones.

  “We follow it.”

  The city was as it had been before, still, white, barely touched by the millennia that had passed since its inhabitants had died. One hesitated, even, to breathe. The bird ghosted over them, paused to perch and preen, then ruffled its feathers and flew on. More joined it, wheeling farther up against the misty dome of the sky. The light dimmed, then stealthily returned. Had a day just passed as it had before? Too late, though, to turn back, not with that slight slipper tucked into her belt.

  More narrow streets, more miniature houses with open, lit doorways, more walls laced with cracks. Here and there were also more patches of fungi, almost as if to mark the shuffling passage of . . . what? Here was an archway. Beyond, within a circle of blank windows bracketed by veins of luminous mold, was what once might have been a sunken courtyard garden.

  Had the Builders always liked mushrooms? Here, at least, they ran rampant. To one side were clumps of red-speckled caps, then a spangle of lavender cones, then white buttons strewn like milky stars in tangled nests of rank grass. On the other side, tawny fungoid shelves climbed the skeletons of trees, barely holding together the trunks upon which they fed. The dead leaves above were furry with mildew and seemed, surreptitiously, to crawl. Scaly bracken rustled, stirring the cobwebs that interlaced them. Somewhere, the water of an unseen spring trickled.

  “Chirp,” Jame called, barely raising her voice. What else, after all, might be listening? Birds landed to line the surrounding eaves, murmuring to each other and flexing their wings. Blink, blink, nod, nod.

  Rue made as if to step down into the court’s basin, but Jame stopped her.

  “Stay here.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it. Please.”

  Underfoot, the ground was velvet with spongy moss. It also dipped and swelled like a coverlet pulled ov
er shapeless sleepers. Here and there, fruiting fungi puffed their spores into a low-hanging haze that stirred with her cautious passage. Jame held her sleeve over her face. All too well, she remembered how Torisen had caught the lung-rot that had almost killed him, never mind that that had been in large part due to his exile from the curative powers of his soul image.

  “Chirp?”

  A small, gray-robed figure moved through the mist, seen, then gone, then seen again. It bent over a hillock and appeared to melt into it. When Jame stumbled over to the rise, she found the diminutive Builder sprawled on top of it. His cloak was covered in a dusting of spores. He didn’t appear to have moved in days. When she tried to lift him, something that might have been a bloated hand rose with him, clamped around his wrist.

  “Heh. Heh, heh . . .”

  Spores wheezed up with each exhalation, so many tiny fungoid mouths pouting and puffing. A broader face broke free of the moss, caked with mold. The hollow sockets of its skull were scabrous with lichen. It grinned. Woodlice swarmed between the mottled buds of its teeth.

  “Heh, who, oooh, you. Liddle girly . . .”

  Jame dug her claws into what passed for its eyes. It shrieked, a thin, piercing sound, and let go of Chirp to scrabble at its face. She pulled the Builder clear and backed up, supporting his sagging weight.

  “Eeeee . . .”

  The entire hillock was trying to rise, here a swollen elbow, there a bloated arm. The back of a head, straggly with hair, concave. A chest, bulging not with muscles but with spurting puffballs. Spongy bits of it fell off. Others clung by threadlike tendrils, trying to pull it back together. It floundered, grotesque, monstrous. The birds descended on it.

  Rue surged down the steps and scooped the Builder out of Jame’s arms. All three stumbled to the other side of the street, opposite the archway. From within came a high, keening wail.

  “What in Perimal’s name was that?” Rue demanded.

  Jame bent over, gasping. Her reinforced d’hen sleeve hadn’t let much air through or, hopefully, anything else.

  “I think . . . he used to be . . . a brigand named Bortis. This would be the second time . . . that I’ve blinded him, but . . . still alive, here, after five years?”

  Chirpentundrum caught his breath with a whooping gasp. “You call that alive? Still, if he lived on mushrooms and they eventually lived on him . . . Stranger things have happened. I remember, once, a fungoid stag stumbled into the city. Quite a mess, that was, when it fell apart. And there was the case of the orange puffballs . . .”

  Jame looked at him. “You were in there for days. Are you infected?”

  “I don’t think so . . . hic! . . . but I may hallucinate for a while. We did enjoy that aspect of the ’shrooms. It passed the time. Still . . .” and here he looked mildly apprehensive, “. . . it may be some while before my dreams are pleasant again, if ever.”

  To Jame, he seemed even now to be still half within a dream. Emotions flickered across his face—horror, joy, apprehension, wonder . . .

  “Did you find your wife?” she asked him as Rue helped him fumble his recovered sandal back onto his foot.

  His expression brightened, then fell again. “I thought that I did. She walked with me in the garden. I felt her hand in mine, but so cold, and her eyes on mine, but so sad. Still, I was sorry when you woke me.”

  “I may have seen her too,” said Jame. “At least, someone in a gray robe led me to you on that mound. What’s more, it stirred a memory. I’ve been here before. The last time—the first time, really—someone acted as our guide, though the Anarchies, through the city, through the tunnels. I assumed that it was male, but I could have been wrong.”

  Chirp plucked at Jame’s hand as though to drag her forward, but was so unsteady on his feet that he clung more than led. His resemblance to a child had never been more pronounced.

  “Oh, I see her! There, walking ahead of us. Follow, quick, quick! Oh, why doesn’t she look back?”

  Some five years ago, Jame and Marc had retreated through this silent city to the circle of imu lithons. Her training in Tai-tastigon had made her sensitive to the patterns of streets, and these were more regular than most. Besides, she had remembered a trick from that earlier encounter: if one looked directly at that gray-robed guide, it vanished. A side-long glance, though . . .

  “There!” said Chirp.

  It had disappeared into a low doorway.

  “I’ve been here before,” Jame said, bending to peer within. “Rue, keep guard at the door and don’t let anything lure you away, whatever you may or may not hear. We’re going in.”

  Chirp, in fact, already had, at a rapid totter. Jame followed him down a long, low passageway softly lit by diamantine panels. Each step took her an improbable distance ahead over step-forward stones. Here was a familiar room opening off the hall, with a marble table whose legs were apparently affixed sideways to the opposite wall. If she were to enter, however, Jame knew that she would find herself standing next to that table with its litter of small bottles. That was tempting. The last time, she had secured a pocketful of the crystals that had subsequently caused Lord Caineron to float away whenever he got the hiccups. Maybe there was something else here that she could induce him to try, but there wasn’t time. What a pity.

  Outside, the corridor turned and ascended. While the way looked flat, it felt like climbing an unseen hill.

  Finally, here was a familiar door made of ironwood, standing ajar, just as it had before. The room beyond also had not changed. While the rest of the house shone with diamantine light reflected off white walls, here both walls and floor had been hollowed out of dark stone shot with luminous green veins.

  A large oval window opened off the far wall, sealed with rock crystal, barred with iron. Chirp stood before it, staring out. When she came up beside him, Jame saw that he was crying.

  The sky beyond was a sullen purple blotched by blue bruises. Under it, a deep, overgrown valley plunged down to the remains of a white city half-consumed with vegetation but otherwise not unlike the one in which they now stood.

  “That was your homeworld?” she asked him.

  He snuffled, wiped his nose on his sleeve, and nodded.

  “Lost, lost, so many eons ago. We tried to recreate a fragment of it wherever we went, but only the ’shrooms made it seem real, and only for a time. Then we had to move on.”

  “I’m sorry. One needs a home.”

  “No matter,” he said. “We still had each other. We are not immortal, but we rarely die. To lose even one is a disaster. To lose almost an entire city, that was catastrophe. To lose one’s soulmate . . . there are no words left.”

  “Chirp, turn around. There, behind the door—no, only look askance.”

  He stared. “Mohin? Mohie!”

  Before Jame could stop him, he rushed forward, then stopped, appalled, as the dust stirred by his advance swirled about the floor.

  “She was only fragmented bones when I found her,” said Jame, kneeling beside him. “I touched them, and they crumbled into . . . that. Except for a fingertip. As long as I held that, it guided me true, through the city, through the tunnels, home. Then it fell apart.”

  “Yes, yes, I see. How very like her. Well.” He wiped his eyes. “I have found her at last, thanks to you. Now, help me gather her up.”

  He stripped off his robe—underneath was a much-darned tunic, dingy white—and began to scoop the ashes onto it before Jame realized that he meant this quite literally. Well, ashes were clean. It only remained to scatter them in order to set free the soul.

  Chirp carefully wrapped the folds of cloth around them and cradled them in his spindly arms.

  “Now we can go back to the oasis,” he said.

  “And then?” asked Jame, bemused. She was missing something here.

  “Give these to your baker. Have him mix them into the bread dough with the flour, a bit at a time, and return the loaves to me.”

  “Er . . .”

  “I will eat them, o
f course. How else can Mohie and I at last become one again?”

  Jame felt her gorge rise. “I . . . huh . . . what?”

  “Oh yes, you Kencyr have your own primitive beliefs. To destroy the soul forever, though, what an abomination. How can you deny yourself such consolation?”

  Easily, thought Jame. Would I want Ganth and Greshan and Gerraint—father, uncle, grandfather—to be part of me forever?

  But, of course, they were by blood, if through no such loving communion.

  A thought struck her: If souls did indeed hold together the universe, as Loogan believed, did her people’s practice weaken it or, at least, the Kencyrath? Was that desire to be set free only a selfish outburst after a life of servitude to their despised god? Perhaps, instead of devouring souls as the demons did, they simply threw them away.

  “Is there any soul you would refuse to eat?” she asked.

  “Among the Builders? Why should there be?”

  He said that with such condescension that her hackles rose. Were they all blameless innocents? Well, maybe they were. At least, they didn’t seem to ask themselves many questions. She, however, did.

  “I’ll do that if you answer me this: a priest in Tai-tastigon told me that all of the temples before Rathillien were designed to draw power out of their host worlds. Was that deliberate?”

  He regarded her, wide-eyed. “Why, of course it was. The priests explained it to us. Our god needed that power in its battle against the shadows.”

  “It never occurred to you to ask why we kept losing world after world?”

  “We wondered, of course. Ours was supposed to be a limited assignment, but it went on and on and on. What are you saying?”

  “That your temples drained each world in turn of its ability to defend itself. Through you, we became like demons, sucking out souls, preparing the way for that greater predator to come, Perimal Darkling itself. While you slept and played and . . . and whatever, the Chain of Creation collapsed around you.”

  He stared at her. “No one, ever, has said such a thing to us before.”

  “Well, I have. Now.”

  The Builder looked so confused and stricken that Jame felt guilty.