The Reign of the Departed

by Greg Keyes

  “Errol, you almost seem to have an expression on your face,” Dusk remarked. “I wonder if that’s possible.”

  Aster shrugged. “Something is certainly going on with him I can’t explain.”

  “You’ve no idea?” Errol asked.

  “Well,” she said, patting her napkin to her lips, “the soul is a strange thing. I put yours in a body of wood, wire, bone, and ivory, and with a little magic, I made it believe it was in a real body, that the wires were tendons connected to muscles, that those spheres are eyes, and so on. And because your soul believed that, you can see, and move, and feel. I thought that was about as good as I could do. But maybe here, where magic isn’t a faint memory but a part of everything, maybe here what your soul believes can do more. Maybe it is actually making your body human.”

  “Maybe,” Errol said.

  “Maybe,” Aster agreed. “I do not want to give you false hope. But the further we travel in the Kingdoms, the stronger magic feels to me, and the more I remember of what I’ve

  studied.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s like I can’t remember a spell until enough magic is present to use it,” she said. “Or I can, but not perfectly enough to pronounce it.”

  “That is the nature of things,” Dusk said. She leaned back in her chair. “So many revelations in so few days.”

  “Yes,” Veronica said. “And I have another one.”

  “Geez, I almost forgot,” Errol said. “What with all the running and getting shot.”

  “Makes you forgetful,” Veronica said, patting his arm. “So easily distracted.”

  “What is it?” Aster asked.

  “Your teacher,” Veronica said. “Mr. Watkins. He’s the man who killed me.”

  For a very long moment, the table was absolutely quiet. Then Aster found her voice.

  “Veronica,” she said, “that’s impossible. You died before he was even born.”

  “Sure,” she said. “I know that. But it’s also still a fact. I wasn’t absolutely sure until he kissed me, but now there’s no question. He doesn’t look the same. Back then he was older, and taller, and his face was sort of longer. His name was Mr. Robertson and he lived about a half a mile from us. I always thought he was nice.”

  She looked away, out the porthole at the sky.

  “I don’t want to go into details, okay? But it was him.”

  “You mean to say he’s reincarnated or something?” Aster asked.

  Veronica met her gaze. “I believe,” she said, “that in his case it’s ‘or something’.”

  David found Jobe half-asleep and nudged him awake with his foot. He snarled and bounced up, his strange, wiry frame taut and his eyes flashing with anger.

  “What do you want?” he snapped.

  David met his gaze levelly, looking past his eyes and into the light that burned in him. These people here had so much of the quick—not as much as Aster, but more than most in the dim world where he’d languished for so long.

  “Listen,” David said, quietly, “things were different when we met. I’ve learned some important truths about myself since then. It seems laughable to me that I was ever afraid of you, but you need to understand that time is over.”

  “Whatever you say, preacher,” Jobe said.

  “And stop calling me that,” David said. “Now come along, the Sheriff wants you.”

  “The sheriff,” Jobe muttered. “I reckon we’re about quit of him. There’s no following them where they’ve gone.”

  “You’re giving up?”

  “Just doesn’t seem like there’s anything in it for us anymore,” he said.

  “It’s not like you can go home,” David pointed out.

  “Why not?” Jobe said. “Sure, the folks will be sore. But even if they don’t take us back in, I reckon we could manage on our own, me and the boys.”

  “Well, but you’ve changed,” David.

  “Some, I reckon,” Jobe admitted. “I reckon I’ve done some things I might not have done before. You know, if the folks were around like they’re supposed to be.”

  “No,” David said. “Literally. Your bodies have changed.”

  Jobe looked down at his pelt. “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Look at me,” David said. “Can’t you see the difference?”

  “You’re older,” Jobe said. “Your hair is lighter.”

  “Okay,” David said. “What about the others? Do they look the same as when I first met you?”

  Jobe looked around. “They look tired and half-starved, that’s all.”

  David wondered if none of them knew what had happened to them or if it was just Jobe, retreating into fantasy.

  He realized he didn’t care.

  “Come on,” he said. “The Sheriff.” He started to walk.

  “Yeah,” Jobe said, following.

  The Sheriff was waiting for them by the Hollow Sea. The shadows were long now.

  “Sunset,” David said. “As requested.”

  “Come here, Jobe,” the sheriff said.

  “Yes, sir,” the boy replied.

  “Jobe,” the Sheriff said. “I need you to remember something.”

  “What’s that,” Jobe asked.

  “Melzheyas,” he said. “It’s a name.”

  “A funny name,” Jobe said.

  “Say it back to me,” the Sheriff said.

  “Meljeys,” Jobe attempted.

  “Melzheyas,” the Sheriff said again.

  “Melzheyas,” Jobe said, this time getting it right.

  “Good, Jobe,” the Sheriff said. “Good.”

  David didn’t see the Sheriff draw the knife; maybe it had been in his hand all along. He was almost as surprised as Jobe, who suddenly had it buried in his heart.

  Jobe tried to pull away, but the sheriff hung on to him. He said something. David thought it was “Mama.” His light shone through the break, dimming in the air like frosty breath on a winter’s morning.

  Then the Sheriff wrenched the knife out and sent Jobe spinning over the cliff. David had one last look at the boy’s confused face before he was gone.

  The Sheriff wiped his knife clean on a cloth.

  “Why did you do that?” David asked.

  “Should have known you would pick him,” the Sheriff said. “Just as well. If he’d decided to go back, they might have gone with him. As it is, they’ll stay with me.”

  That didn’t answer his question, but David didn’t think he should repeat it. He would find out in time.

  He did, and it didn’t take long.

  The stink came first, an unbelievable hot billow of putrefaction. Then, in the last light of the sun, Melzheyas rose up from the Hollow Sea.

  His huge wings reached over the rim and beat once, twice, before his head—or more appropriately, skull—came into view, followed by seemingly endless coils of serpentine corpus. His wings were tattered, with a few feathers clinging here and there; the head was the size of a car, and the body was bones and clinging rot.

  Clearly, Melzheyas had seen better days.

  David knew it was impossible that such a thing could fly, even if it were alive and its wings intact. But he was long past worrying about such matters.

  “Hello, Melzheyas,” the Sheriff said.

  The monster settled on the cliff in a coil, like a rattlesnake.

  “Hello, Banished,” the dragon said. Its voice was like wind rattling through leafless limbs, but it was comprehensible.

  “Whatever have you called me for? Conversation?”

  The Sheriff snorted. “Kostye Dvesene. The man who killed you.”

  The serpent was silent for a moment.

  “You have my attention,” it said.

  “His daughter is passing over the Hollow Sea as we speak.”

  “She was passing over it when he killed me,” Melzheyas said.

  “She has returned.”

  The monster’s wings twitched and rustled in agitation. Sulfurous light gleamed in his
empty sockets. “Is her father with her?”

  “He is not,” the Sheriff said. “He is where you cannot touch him.”

  “Then we shall kill his whelp, is that it?”

  David started to object, but the sheriff did it for him.

  “Her we need alive,” he said, “to get to Kostye. Her companions you may kill as you please.”

  “How shall I capture her?” Melzheyas asked. “With my teeth?”

  “No,” the sheriff replied. “You’ll take us with you.”

  They sailed through days and nights that were much the same. The skies were clear and at night the moon seemed twice the size it should be. Aster had the odd feeling that the sea was somehow curving up very gradually. It seemed so especially at night.

  Given how things had been since they had entered the Kingdoms, she had expected anything and everything from the Hollow Sea—sea serpents, storms, pirates—but when Errol shouted that land lay ahead, nothing of the sort had imperiled them.

  The land Errol had spied was the uppermost peak of a jagged mountain range. It took another day to sight the shoreline, a rocky shingle brooded over by a deep, evergreen forest.

  “Well,” Errol observed, “I don’t see an orchard. Or any giants.”

  “No,” Aster said. “I don’t guess it’s going to be that easy.”

  “Maybe you should change into a bird again and have a look,” Veronica said. “I missed that before; I wouldn’t mind seeing it now.”

  The suggestion was both tempting and terrifying. She had nearly lost herself the first time. What was disturbing was that part of her had enjoyed it, reveled in the simplification of thought and memory, the loss of control. She feared the next time she transformed she would be even more inclined to remain an animal.

  “If I have to,” she said. “But let’s have a look first. Dusk, do you have a suggestion for which way to sail? East or west?”

  “Things generally get stranger when one travels west,” she replied.

  “West it is, then,” she said.

  About noon the next day, Errol spotted something on a high hill that looked built rather than natural. The closer they got the more it became clear it was a tower or castle of some sort. Aster brought the ship up to the stony shore, but from there the structure was obscured by the trees.

  “I don’t think we should all go,” Aster said. “Someone should stay with the ship.”

  “That means you, then,” Veronica said. “You’re the only one who can make it go.” She smiled. “Maybe Billy can stay here with you.”

  Aster frowned her little frown and shook her head.

  “Billy is probably best in the woods,” she said.

  “Agreed,” Dusk chimed in. “I can accompany him.”

  “You’re probably second best,” Errol said. “You should stay here in case we need finding.”

  Dusk conceded that with a nod.

  “So it’s just me and the boys,” Veronica said.

  “I’d rather you stayed, too,” Errol said. “It’s just up the hill and we won’t be gone long.”

  Veronica gave him the stink-eye and then took him by the arm.

  “Errol,” she said, “may I have a word with you in private?”

  Errol actually felt his face warm a bit, and wondered if his ‘face’ was actually reddening.

  “Sure,” he said.

  He followed her below.

  “What?” he said.

  She lifted her arms and clasped her hands behind his neck. “You wouldn’t be trying to coddle me, would you?” she asked.

  “I just—you, know, just the other day I pulled you out of a hole in the ground,” he said.

  “Is that a yes?” she said.

  “I guess so,” he said. “I don’t want to see you get hurt again.”

  “I’m dead, Errol.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Still.”

  She sighed, conceding the argument. “This time I’m going to interpret this as you being sweet. Next time I’m going to tell you to jump off a cliff. Okay?”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “You had better kiss me now.”

  So he did.

  “It’s not far,” he said. “We’ll be back soon.”

  It didn’t look that far,” Errol complained, as he followed Billy up yet another steep slope.

  “Not far for birds,” Billy said.

  “Yeah.”

  He looked back. He could see reflected bits of sunlight through the leaves and maybe part of the ship. He wasn’t sure how high they were, but they had been climbing for hours, and it was starting to get dark. A few birds and a chipmunk accounted for all of the wildlife they had seen thus far, but this felt to Errol like the sort of place where nasty things might be met at night.

  By the time they reached the building, he was sure they were going to find out. The sun was no longer visible, and the sky was the color of slate.

  What they found was a ruin. The structure he had seen from the sea was a pair of towers connected by a wall. Now he could tell there had at one time been eight towers, but the other six and their walls had fallen—oddly, all in the same direction. As if they had been pushed down.

  “Looks like no one is home,” Errol said.

  Billy just nodded. Sometimes he wished Billy had a little more to say. It made him nervous to do all of the talking.

  Probably his taciturn nature was what Aster liked about him.

  They searched through the ruins anyway, but there wasn’t really anyplace for someone to hide. The towers were empty columns; only a few wooden struts remained to suggest the stairways that had once led to their summits.

  Now stars were appearing, as the moon, nearly full, brightened in the sky.

  “Can you lead us back down?” he asked Billy.

  Billy seemed to consider that for a long time.

  “That’s not such a good idea,” he said. “I don’t know these woods. I don’t know what lives here, and the path is steep. Better we camp here and go back down tomorrow.”

  It was obviously the right answer, but Errol was still uneasy. He felt better when Billy had a cheerful little fire going.

  The moon seemed huge here, as it had above the Hollow Sea. As if they were closer to it. The dark blotches seemed somehow more foreboding, and he shivered involuntarily.

  “They tell a story about Him,” Billy said.

  “Him?” Errol asked.

  “The Moon.”

  “I thought the Moon was a ‘her’.”

  “No,” Billy said. “At least not in this story.”

  “How does it go?”

  Billy settled back onto one elbow.

  “There was a woman,” he began. “Some say she was the Sun, or maybe a daughter of the Sun. And this man came into her house every night and fornicated with her. But it was so dark she didn’t know who it was. So one night she put her fingers in the ashes of the fire and when he came to her she touched his face. The next day, she looked around the village for the man with ashes all over his face.”

  Errol thought he would go on, but the silence stretched out.

  “I get it,” he finally said. “The guy was the Moon. That’s why he’s all smudged up.”

  “The guy was her brother,” Billy said. “He was so ashamed when everyone knew what he’d been up to he went up into the sky and stayed there.”

  “Oh. Wow. That’s kind of creepy.”

  Billy didn’t say anything, and an owl or something made a weird sound in the distance. Looking at the moon, Errol had another little shiver. In that moment he remembered Aster’s workshop, the clockwork sun, moon, and star. The moon had been clear and unmarred at first, but then it had flipped around to look as it really did, bruised and battered.

  “The moon, actually, is a satellite,” he said. “They think it used to be part of the Earth. The dark marks are craters and seas of dust.”

  “Yeah?” Billy said.

  “Men have walked on it.”

  “Have they?” he said.
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  “Yes,” Errol replied.

  “Huh.”

  Errol thought maybe Billy would defend his story, but he didn’t.

  “You sleep,” Errol finally said. “I’ll take first watch.”

  “Have you ever done that?” Billy asked, quietly.

  “Done what?” Errol asked. “Sleep with my sister?”

  Billy looked uncomfortable. He sat back up, crossed his legs, and looked into the fire.

  “With anybody,” he said.

  The question froze Errol for a moment, both because it was unexpected and because he didn’t know what to say.

  “Yeah,” he finally admitted.

  “How was it?”

  He looked at Billy. If Phil or Tommy had asked him that, it would have been with a leer—or even a sneer. But Billy’s eyes were as without guile as a child’s.

  “It was—weird,” he said. “I was nervous. I was happy, too, you know, because . . .” he stopped. “Now I wish it had never happened.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it just makes it worse,” Errol said. “That she dumped me.”

  He knew he would be crying now, if he could. Like a girl. But somehow he knew Billy wasn’t judging him.

  “Is this about Aster?” Errol asked. “Did you—”

  “No,” Billy said. “No, we haven’t.”

  He studied Billy for a moment. He felt sort of knotted up inside, and wasn’t really sure why.

  “Look,” he said. “I’m not sure what’s going on with you two. But I’ve known Aster for a while. And maybe I haven’t been the friend to her I should have for most of that time, but I don’t want to see her hurt. So you’d better not be planning on just—you know—and then moving on, right?”

  “No,” Billy said. “I like her. I just want to make her happy. I know fornication makes people happy sometimes.”

  “Yeah,” Errol said. “Sometimes. Why don’t you just start with giving her flowers, or something?”

  “Okay,” Billy said.

  “Now go to sleep.”

  Billy nodded and rolled over.

  “Billy?” Errol said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t tell anyone anything I said just now,” he said. “Especially don’t tell Aster.”

  “Why?”

  “Lisa didn’t want me to tell anyone we did it. So I didn’t. Nobody knows, okay?”