Fire and Dust

by James Gardner

  «My paint job,» I replied, «and I'll fix it if I have to.» Looking around, I saw Hezekiah and Miriam at the far end of the boat, arranging the unconscious Kiripao into a safe position. «Get us out of here,» I said to Garou, as I struggled to keep Wheezle from clawing his face.

  «One last thing,» Garou replied. «You may think of the Lower Planes as a crude and vicious place, but manners are manners.» He held up his head and shouted to the dancing umbrals, «Thanks for your hospitality. We're going now.»

  «You berk!» Miriam exploded. She lifted her fist but Hezekiah caught her arm. «You sodding, sodding berk!» she cried at the marraenoloth. «They'll come after us now… and we're sitting ducks out here on the water.»

  «That's what we get for making deals with evil,» Yasmin muttered. She snatched up her sword and thrust the point a hair's breadth away from the boatman's face. «Get us out of here, Garou, or I swear you'll die before we do.»

  «You have your hands full already,» he sneered, and nodded back toward the flame-pit.

  Shadows were speeding toward us; shadows racing on scaled bat wings, vanishing into every pocket of shade beneath the trees as if they were winking out of existence. Their wings rustled like leaves on the clammy air – a hundred umbrals, stripped of their outward flesh, angry to be cheated by our escape.

  I shouted to Hezekiah, «Take Wheezle,» and heaved the gnome toward the far end of the skiff. There was no time to see if the boy managed to keep the Dustman from harming himself; I grabbed one of our packs from the floor of the boat and threw open the flap. «Garou,» I snapped, «it may seem like fun to betray us, but remember I haven't finished the painting. You think you can find a painter like me anywhere else in the Lower Planes? One who won't try to pike you the way you're piking us?»

  «Don't be so melodramatic,» the boatman replied. «I'll get you out of here.»

  Languidly, he pushed off the bank with his pole. «Faster!» Miriam cried.

  «And ruin my paint job? I think not.» He planted the pole with extravagant slowness and gave a soft nudge. The boat moved inches forward, drifting into the river's sluggish current.

  «Ten seconds before the fiends get here,» Yasmin murmured to me. «Are you the sort of man who likes to hear mushy things before he dies?»

  «I'll let you know if I come close to dying,» I told her. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw the fiends were almost upon us: pure darkness, with teeth. «Chew on this!» I yelled, as I plucked a soul-gem from my pack and hurled it into their midst.

  The rushing horde hissed like hot iron thrust into ice water. The three frontrunners all fell back to catch the prize, colliding with the fiends racing up from behind. I heard a dull crunch, the sound of delicate wing-bones breaking in the tangle of bodies. A moment later, two fiends fell screeching out of the scrum, their wings trailing uselessly behind; they both caromed off the bank and into the water, where their caterwauling stopped abruptly.

  Several more seconds passed as the mob of flying fiends fought over possession of the gem. At last, a victor shot away from the group, clutching the gem to its chest – the gem's purple light throbbing against the umbral's blackness. A few fiends broke off to pursue the one with the gem, but the rest turned back toward us and howled with fury.

  «Yeah, yeah,» Miriam growled back. Following my lead, she had fished out another gem from our packs; now she hurled it full-force at the screaming fiends.

  «Please don't rock the boat, madam,» Garou chided.

  «Please get the lead out of your sodding arse,» Miriam snapped back.

  «Language, language,» Garou sighed. He gave another half-hearted push with his pole, sending us out a few more inches into the stream. The current angled the prow around and drew us forward, aiming us toward one of the pillars of mist hovering above the Styx. My guess was that each such cloud acted as a portal, opening to another part of the river on a different plane; even spurred by greed, umbrals would fear to follow us through… I hoped.

  The struggle to claim Miriam's gem ended after only a few seconds. No one's wings broke; indeed, a few of the fiends ignored the gem entirely, circling around the other umbrals and continuing to pursue us. Did that mean they wanted to attack us more than they wanted to claim a gem? Or had they remembered we possessed many such gems, free for the picking if they managed to dump us in the Styx?

  I had plucked up another gem and Yasmin had found one too; we threw simultaneously, aiming for the closest fiends. One fiend managed to catch a gem, and was immediately set upon by two others. The remaining gem was fumbled by clumsy-clawed hands and fell toward the river. Two fiends dove for it at full speed; they reached the gem simultaneously, clonked heads like a clown act, and plummeted the rest of the way into the water. A moment later they surfaced, sputtering and gasping. Both gripped the gem… and both stared at its purple glow as if they'd never seen such a thing before. There was no way to tell how much the water had affected their memories, but they goggled at the gem with obvious greed, like crows coveting a shiny bauble. Immediately, they began clawing and biting at each other, splashing showers of greasy water into the air.

  «Peel it away,» Wheezle shouted. «Peel away the shell!»

  «Britlin…» Hezekiah gasped, as he struggled to hold the gnome's hands. «We've got more trouble.»

  I glanced in his direction. At first, I couldn't tell what Hezekiah was talking about; then I saw that Wheezle's eyes had turned into hollow pits of blackness, as empty as the night sky. Nightmare eyes. Umbral eyes.

  «He's converting,» Yasmin said. «What do we do?»

  «Keep throwing gems,» I answered. «Keep the fiends off our backs until we get into that mist.»

  I nodded toward the closest bank of cloud, but Garou gave a low chuckle. «You'd be very upset if I took you through that one. There's no air on the other side, and the temperature's cold enough to freeze your eyeballs to ice cubes.»

  «How do you know?» Miriam asked.

  «It's my business to know,» Garou replied. «We're heading for that fog there.»

  He pointed to another patch of mist, some fifty paces away. It seemed like a long distance with a swarm of fiends screaming for our blood; I wondered if Garou was stringing us along, taking pleasure in our fear. «Make it snappy,» I told him, «if you ever want your painting done.»

  «Britlin!» Hezekiah cried again. «Hurry!»

  Wheezle's fingernails had begun to extend into claws, ripping at Hezekiah's hands as the boy tried to hold him still. The gnome hissed and growled, spitting out words like a snake spitting venom. «Peel, peel, peel! Peel away the shell!»

  There was another soul-gem in my hand; perhaps that would pacify him. But when I dropped the gem in Wheezle's lap, it only spurred him to greater exertions, screaming and foaming at the mouth. Bar that then – I grabbed the gem and threw it at an umbral flying less than two yards behind the boat. The fiend caught the gem, squealed in triumph, and sped away, three other fiends chasing him.

  «I can't help but think,» Yasmin said matter-of-factly, «that our visit has had a negative effect on this village's sense of community.»

  «Peel, peel, peel!» screeched Wheezle.

  «I can't hold him,» Hezekiah warned. The gnome's claws had torn the boy's hands bloody.

  «Damn it,» I said. Poisonous umbral thoughts must be filling his mind completely. If only…

  I froze. Desperate times call for desperate measures. My sword lay on the floorboards, ready to be snatched up if I needed to fight the fiends. I grabbed it now, dipped its tip into the Styx, and lifted it out again. Carefully, I moved the blade over Wheezle's screaming face and let a single drop fall on his cheek.

  He stopped shouting immediately. To be precise, he fell completely quiescent, as if he had plunged into a coma. Two seconds later, we passed through a pillar of mist and the rest of the world fell silent too – the hissing of umbrals, the splashes of fiends fighting in the water, all vanished in a trice.

  We emerged into a bleak expanse of gray.


  14. THREE PLANES TO PLAGUE-MORT

  The sky had a mournful lack of color, like a muted winter's day when the snow falls somberly from dawn to dusk. The land was equally bleached of anything to please the eye: nothing but dying willows and poplars, their leaves white, their bark black, all drooping limply along the shores of the Styx. Gray mold fuzzed over the soil, stifling any chance for grass to struggle up into the light… but I wondered if even grass would have the heart to grow in such a cheerless world.

  «The Gray Wastes,» Garou announced… as if any of us needed to be told.

  In the Walk of Worlds at the Sigil Festhall, the Gray Wastes were portrayed in dignified shades of silver, with soft enchanted mists draping demurely over the entire scene. It was a popular room for elderly lovers, dancing with unhurried composure to the slow music that plays continuously.

  But there was no music in the real Gray Wastes. I doubt if you could find lovers of any age, and unhurried composure would quickly degrade into dejected lassitude. The oppressive gloom of gray trees/gray land could deflate the most confident of spirits.

  «Lovely day,» Garou said, inhaling deeply.

  He had no reason to inhale. Admittedly, the plane offered breathable air, but it was completely devoid of smell. No odor came from the trees, the moss, the oily river water… I sniffed at my own skin, damp with the sweat of exertion and fear; but I couldn't smell the slightest hint of perspiration. In a way, it was worse than going blind.

  «How's Wheezle?» I asked loudly, to force my mind onto other thoughts.

  «Better,» Hezekiah replied. The gnome's hands had reverted to normal, the claws shrinking as quickly as they had grown. His eyes looked like gnome eyes, watery and brown, not empty hollows in his face. The single drop of Styx water had made Wheezle forget all that had happened to him among the umbrals, had purged his mind of their influence; the only question was, how much more of his memory had it stolen?

  «See if you can wake him up,» I told the boy.

  Hezekiah gave the gnome's cheek a few light pats, and said, «Come on, Wheezle. Wake up, come on.»

  Wheezle stirred. His eyelids fluttered and his gaze focussed on Hezekiah. «Who are you?» he asked.

  «You remember me – Hezekiah Virtue.»

  «Ah.» Wheezle's voice sounded polite, but dubious. «Who are all you other people? Why can't I move my legs?»

  Garou laughed. «Think of the positive side: at least he still remembers how to talk.»

  * * *

  As closely as we could figure, Wheezle had lost a year of his life: a year of unreclaimable experience vanished like smoke. To a Sensate, stealing those memories was a hideous crime; I cringed with guilt at the thought. Certainly, splashing him with that drop of water prevented him from turning into an umbral… but I felt as if I should have found some less destructive way to help him.

  My father would have thought of something.

  Garou poled on past the silent gray banks, as the others explained to Wheezle what had happened. He took it calmly, for the most part; he even thanked me for saving him. His voice, however, had nothing in it but formality, good manners without warmth… and his hands were continually straying down to his useless legs, pinching the skin as if he could not accept that he would live paralyzed all the rest of his days.

  Wheezle lapsed into silence soon enough; and the rest of us found we could think of nothing to say to each other. The gray quiet pressed in around us, muffling emotion as well as sound. It was actually a relief when Kiripao woke and grabbed Miriam by the front of her shirt… but his anger evaporated almost immediately into a slump of exhaustion that laid him down on the floorboards.

  «Are you all right?» Hezekiah asked.

  «I'm tired,» Kiripao answered softly.

  «If your mind is full of umbral thoughts,» Hezekiah pressed on, «Britlin has found a cure.»

  «Yes?» Kiripao did not sound hopeful.

  «It's only a last resort,» I said. «Why don't you sleep for a while? Now that we're clear of Carceri, the umbral influence should fade.»

  Kiripao didn't answer. He closed his eyes, but I could tell he was nowhere near sleeping.

  * * *

  Time passed like an old man on weary legs. This stretch of the river had its share of misty patches, but Garou steered around them. Once I came close to asking him how much longer we'd have to travel through this soul-wearying plane; but the effort of opening my mouth seemed too great to bother.

  Yasmin leaned back against me, her head settling against my chest. The feel of her there was a comfort; I wrapped my arms loosely around her, and after a while, the warm solidity of her body eased some of the dissipated melancholy weighing down my heart. Touching me must have had the same bolstering effect on her, because after a while she found the strength to ask Garou, «How much longer here?»

  The boatman's eyes grew a deeper black, just for a second. In that moment, I had a flash of insight: that Garou was toying with us again, just as he had alerted the umbrals to our departure out of sheer malignant whim. Garou wanted us to succumb to the dreary oblivion of this place, the dull ache of its emptiness… not because he planned to rob us, sell us into slavery, or otherwise exploit the erosion of our wills, but simply because he liked to see us miserable. Suffering for suffering's sake: just to know he had the power to get under our skins.

  «Yes,» I said loudly to him, «are we going to hang around this boring place much longer? It's putting me to sleep.»

  Garou let out an angry snort and stabbed his pole into the water. «If you're so impatient,» he replied, «perhaps we'll take a short-cut.»

  With a ferocious shove, he sent the skiff veering into a patch of mist we had almost passed by. The fog thickened around us until I couldn't see Yasmin's head still pressed against my chest; then the clouds wisped away and we were somewhere else.

  * * *

  Open water spread without end beneath a jet black sky. There were no stars, but three moons, all of them full – a white moon, a silver one, and a moon of frosted green, each lunar face pocked and ravaged with craters. The moons cast enough light to provide a clear view around us: the waters of the Styx, as foul and fetid as ever, streaming out like a malodorous black stripe across an otherwise crystal sea. Two paces away the sea water glistened with the dappling of moonlight, as calm as a windless lake. The sight made me yearn for a swim in the soft, beckoning waters; but even as I tried to touch the cleanness beyond the polluted path of the Styx, a body bobbed to the surface.

  The body was naked and female, possibly human… but it was difficult to be sure, given the bloat of the corpse, plus the damage done by fish and eels. The woman's ears were completely eaten away; the fingers were simply bones held together by gristle, and the cheeks were both torn open into ragged holes. As I watched, a delicate silver pilchard darted in through one of the cheek cavities, bit into the dead woman's tongue, and tried to wrestle away a piece of pink meat.

  I had to look away. When I did, I saw other bodies drifting up out of the sea, as if our arrival had loosed them all from some confinement fathoms below. Each corpse was tattered with bite marks; each belly was swollen with the gases of decay.

  «A pocket in the Astral Plane,» Garou said. «The Sea of the Drowned.»

  But Yasmin looked at the woman closest to us and whispered, «Mother.»

  * * *

  The woman's half-eaten eyelids opened. I saw now that her eyes had a tiefling cast: blood-red and feline, with no discernible whites. She did not move a muscle, but her body circled on some undetectable current until her face was focused on Yasmin. «I have been recognized,» she said, in a breathy voice that released the stink of gases from her gut. «What do you ask?»

  «Nothing,» Yasmin answered immediately. «I don't want anything from you. Go away.»

  «What do you ask?» the woman said again. Her breath fouled the air like sewage.

  «I told you, I don't need anything. I don't want to talk to you.» Yasmin snatched up her sword, though t
he body was floating just too far to reach. «Go back wherever you came from.»

  «Impossible,» the dead woman said. «I have been recognized. What do you ask?»

  «I ask you to get out of my sight!» Yasmin's voice was becoming shrill. «Now!»

  «That is not within my power,» the floating corpse replied. «What do you ask?»

  Yasmin balled her hands into fists and covered her eyes. I put an arm around her shoulder and growled at Garou, «What's this all about?»

  For a moment he didn't answer, perhaps debating whether the truth would cause us more pain than ignorance. Then he said, «Nothing truly dies in the multiverse. When a soul is killed in one place, it is merely re-embodied on another plane… but with no memory of its former existence.»

  «Any leatherhead knows that,» Miriam muttered.

  «But if the memories are gone, where do they go?» Garou asked. «They can't just vanish – the multiverse doesn't let anything slip through its fingers so easily. Every dying person's memory drifts like flotsam on unseen tides, until it fetches up in a holding basin like this one. Here lie the remembrances of all those drowned on a million worlds. I could show you other such memory sinks: the Poisoned Jungle, the Plain of Knives —»

  «What do you ask?» interrupted the floating corpse.

  «Why does she keep saying that?» Yasmin whispered.

  «The memories are drawn to those who knew their owners in life,» Garou replied. «If you recognize and name them, they are compelled to reveal a secret to you. Your mother – or rather, the cast-off memory of your mother – will not rest until she has discharged this burden.»

  «What do you ask?» the dead woman said. She spoke in a monotone, devoid of emotion; yet I suspected she would follow us the length of the Styx until we had let her disclose something of her past.