by Mary Gentle
She threw out her arms for balance. The Fane wheeled.
"Whaaack!"
Briefly, far below, she caught sight of human faces turned up to hers in fear and awe. Air pushed up under her arms, sleeked down her body. Pain threaded her arteries with hot wires. Double images blurred her vision.
"Crrr-aaark!"
She swooped at the floor and a black shadow rose to meet her. Wide-winged, the tail fanning to catch the air; no mistaking that blunt beak and body. She skimmed the stone, wheeling to rise again on wide-fingered pinions.
Divine laughter beat against her, abrasive as sand and splinters of glass.
"Search, if you will! If you can!"
The albino carrion crow wheels and flees into the heart of the Fane.
Anger shining in his lidless black eyes, the head of the Night Council spoke.
"I fail to thee what exthactly is tho amuthing."
Zar-bettu-zekigal buried her face in her sister’s lace ruffle, little whimpering noises escaping her. An open palm hit her sharply across the ear.
"Behave! Zar’!"
She swung round, clasping her hands behind her back, kicking her heels in the bone beach. Her black ankle- boots crunched on fragile skulls no larger than walnuts. Fog touched her spine coldly. She gazed up at the thrones of the Serpent-headed, eyes bright.
"I didn’t say anything!"
Dry heat radiated back from the endless cliffs, from the brown bedrock granite and the thrones of the foundation of the world. Twelve of the Serpent-headed seated themselves on their thrones; the last remained standing. Flaring torchlight gleamed on oiled human limbs, on naked hip and breast and muscular shoulders. On necks glittering with scales, serpent heads; blunt muzzles and the black lidless eyes of viper, coral snake, cobra.
"The, ah—" Plessiez coughed into his fist. Zar-bettu-zekigal tried to catch his gaze; he avoided her. "The reason for this summons, messires?"
The head of the Council’s sharp cobra jaw dipped, regarding the small group below. A black-bootlace tongue licked across his lipless mouth.
"We with to regithster a thtrong complaint. Grave thins have been committed againtht uth by the world above."
"Excuth–excuse me." Zar-bettu-zekigal rubbed her bare fog-dampened arms, digging in her short nails. By virtue of that she concentrated enough to call up across the intervening yards: "Who are you, messires?"
The cobra head moved, lidless eyes fixing on her.
"Your thithster the thaman thould be able to tell you that. We are the Night Counthil. The mostht ancient godth of the world."
Zari turned rapidly away, hugging herself; bumped against Plessiez and looked up as the black Rat glanced down. Their eyes met.
" ‘Thithster.’ "
Zar-bettu-zekigal spluttered.
" ‘Thaman?’ "
She caught one glimpse of Charnay’s puzzled face and elbowed the Cardinal-General in the ribs. Plessiez looked, drew himself up, snout quivering, observed, "Messires, I apolo–apologize for my companion," stuttered a few more broken syllables and threw his arm across Zari’s shoulders and guffawed, head down, weak, snorting with laughter.
"I thuppoth . . ." Unable to breathe, half-supporting his weight, she hugged his shaking body, nose pressed into the fur of the black Rat’s chest. "I thuppoth you think that’th funny!"
"Messire!" Charnay protested, outraged.
"Oh, he’s gone." Zar-bettu-zekigal struggled for breath, eyes brimming. She achieved poise long enough to add, " ‘Thithster!’," the black Rat’s body quaked with another fit, and she snuffled and burst into raucous laughter.
"Messire Plessiez!"
The black Rat straightened up, one arm still resting across her shoulders, the other clasped tight to his own ribs; looking at Elish-hakku-zekigal. He shook his head.
"Lady, I don’t care any more. I’ve spent my life being diplomatic under the most trying circumstances and this, this is the end of it. Frankly, it’s ridiculous." He showed his incisors in a sharp grin, staring up at the cobra-headed Lord of the Night Council. "Quite ridiculouth."
"For gods’ sake be careful!"
The black Rat ruffled Zar-bettu-zekigal’s hair. "Oh, I don’t underestimate the danger. You mistake me. This is too much. I no longer care."
Torchlight flared on the mist behind Zar-bettu-zekigal. She gazed up at cold-eyed disapproving serpent heads. The heat of bedrock granite shone warm on her face. Unconsciously she held her hands out, warming them; the breathlessness of laughter tight in her chest.
"See you, I’m a Kings’ Memory. You have an auditor."
A burly male with the head of a python spoke from the fifth throne.
"We know what you are, mortal. We requethted your prethenth."
Plessiez snorted. He stood with his weight on one clawed hind foot, tail coiled out for balance behind him, smiling cynically.
"Charnay, for this you took me away from a battle? Well." He reached up to his neck, pulled the ankh from his collar and threw it on to the beach of skulls. "By the time we make our way back to the world, it will be one which we control. I may have the best of it after all."
Zar-bettu-zekigal swung one-handed on the pole of the lantern where it stood jammed into the beach, scooping up a handful of skulls, the brown bone light in her fingers. She crunched forward, ankle-deep, tossing the tiny bones up into the warm air.
"So what is all this? And what’s it got to do with us?"
The first steps of the throne jutted out of the beach before her, each a yard high. She craned her neck, staring up the cliff walls. Distance or fog hid the summits.
"You are here to witneth our complaint and judgment."
The cobra-headed figure placed his hands on the crudely cut arms of the throne, lowering himself into a sitting position. His human skin shone red as clay. The skin about his head flared, white underscales pulsing rapidly.
"You have polluted uth!"
Charnay guffawed, her eyes brightening with realization. "Oh! Plessiez, man, they all li—"
Plessiez trod down hard on the brown Rat’s foot. She winced, puzzled, and fell silent.
"Mortalth, attend!"
"Whath’th the–I mean, what’s the . . . ?" Plessiez shook his head and gave up.
"What’th the reathon for it? Thplit tongth, I thup-poth." Zar-bettu-zekigal’s eyes danced. "That’s what you get for being one of the Therpent-headed!"
Elish’s hands closed over her shoulder, fingers jabbing hard into the hollow under her clavicle. "Will you be quiet!"
Zar-bettu-zekigal rubbed her hand across her mouth, looked away; saw in peripheral vision the Cardinal- General straighten, his expression gravely sober. She shoved the remainder of a handful of skulls into her dress pocket.
"El, they’re wonderful. You didn’t tell me about this! What are they?"
"What they say they are." Pale, calm, Elish-hakku-zekigal spoke to include Plessiez. "Chthonic idols–not gods, except by virtue of human worship. Exiled beneath the heart of the world when the Thirty-Six took up their incarnations here on our human earth. The most ancient idols never died, only took refuge below."
Plessiez raised an ironic brow. "Their powers?"
"Intact."
Zar-bettu-zekigal moved closer to Elish.
"Hear uth, and lithten well."
Now the heat radiating from the stone became humid, steam sliding in snail-tracks down the granite. Wisps of vapor coiled up. The Lord of the Night Council stood again, pacing the steps before the thrones; turning to fling out one human hand, pointing at the skull beach.
"Thith ith not made by our hand!"
Zar-bettu-zekigal swayed, wiping sweat from her forehead, amazed to be too hot. A thick musky smell crept into the air, unstirred by the wind from the unseen ocean; and the noise of the surf faded, muffled.
"You pollute the world below. Your nightmareth come among us. It ith your doing, Rat-Lord."
The smell of green vegetation rasped in her throat, acrid and strong. She hiccuped, caugh
t between the last paroxysm of a giggle and a sudden chill; reaching out for Elish-hakku-zekigal. Her sister’s hand closed about hers.
Plessiez, not taking his eyes from the Night Council, muttered: "Charnay! What have you told them?"
"Oh, everything." The big brown Rat tugged her sword-belt straight and set the feather in her head-band at a more jaunty angle. "It was make a friend of them or find myself on one of your friend the Hyena’s gibbets. Besides, they’ve been gods. What would you have me do, messire? I thought you probably wouldn’t mind. You said don’t tell anybody human and these people aren’t human."
The black Rat’s face froze. He rested his long-fingered hand across his eyes, his shoulders momentarily heaving. "You thought I probably wouldn’t mind." His eyes opened. "Charnay, you are unbelievably stupid."
Charnay shrugged massively muscled shoulders, brown fur rippling. "Am I? I didn’t plant necromancy under the heart of the world and then come back to admit it before the Night Council."
"The Night Council doesn’t care for the world above. What is there that I should admit to?"
Thirteen pairs of emotionless eyes looked down across the air. The cobra-headed god raised his hand.
"Very well, then. Behold."
Tendrils of fog crept past Zar-bettu-zekigal and she rubbed her upper arms, feeling the skin damp and chill. A rustling filled the air.
The skull-pebbled slopes of beach shifted in the semicircle of space between the thrones; rolling back from granite curved and hollowed by time and scored with chthonic marks of bone, horn and wood. From the far- end thrones, two of the Night Council paced down to stand in the cleared space. One with the body of an old woman and the head of a krait, one with a young woman’s body and the glittering crest of an iguana.
They met and grasped hands.
A wind began to blow.
Zar-bettu-zekigal trod back, bumping her shoulder against the older Katayan’s breast. Hair tangled in her eyes. The wind blew colder, scoring her skin. Plessiez and Charnay lowered their snouts against the gusts, the brown Rat grabbing for the lantern as it fell.
A hurricane-wrench of air pulled the fog aside; light blazed in her eyes. She clawed hair from her face twohanded, shaded her eyes, opened her mouth to speak, and gaped.
The beach ran down to a black shore. Black water slopped thickly against the skull-pebbles. Debris tangled in the edges of the dark surf.
She put her fist to her mouth, staring. A corrosive vapor drifted, stinging her eyes.
All along the shore, as far as she could see, debris clogged the water-line. Broken wood and glass, the bodies of gigantic wasps; sodden entrails, a hand and arm rolling in the sea-drenched pebbles. . . The writhing bodies of ants, each as long as her forearm; a gouged-out eye; a basket-handled rapier rolling against the pebbles; a doll, and something dark-backed that broke the surface a little way offshore and vanished.
She stared offshore.
Ragged bedrock jutted up from the sea.
Giant tree-roots twisted up through the crags, splintering the ochre and vermilion stone. Glistening wet boles writhed across shattered blocks, stretching in island- ranges to the horizon. Zar-bettu-zekigal shuffled, turning, staring at the weed-covered stones, the masses of razor-edged shells clustering on ridges, the pods hanging down wetly from the giant tangles of roots.
Twenty feet away across the nearest strait, a man’s body hung, head thrown back taut in agony. A thick root grew into his stomach under the navel, impaling him; his feet kicked against barnacle-covered rocks, razoring open his heels.
"Dear . . . gods."
Zar-bettu-zekigal’s hand moved to her mouth. She felt Elish tug at her shoulder; refused to turn away.
A figure hung over the screaming man, clawed feet gripping the wet bark, grinning with lengthened teeth. Its head turned as she watched. Subtly altered, strangely disfigured: the mirror-face of the impaled man stared at her. Pointed teeth smiled. The head continued to lift, to turn. It pivoted full-circle, neck cracking, until it stared down again at the pierced man: coughing quietly, laughing.
She looked just long enough to see how many human figures the root cages trapped, each accompanied by its distorted mirror-image tormentor; how far the islands stretched . . .
"I think I—" She faced about, spat bile on to the beach of tiny skulls.
"The pollution of nightmare. Dream-debris. Solid." Elish-hakku-zekigal turned, embracing her, gazing back up at the semicircle of thrones. "Solid. Real."
The two of the Night Council paced back and climbed the steps to their thrones. Fog began to soften the horizon.
"You infected the world below." The Lord of the Night Council pointed a red-nailed finger at Plessiez. "Necromanthy. Magia of the dead, the truly dead . . . It ith your plague that kilth above, and in the Fane, and allowth the Night Thun to thine. You brought it below. Now you mutht dethtroy it."
The black Rat’s lip twitched, showing a gleam of incisor.
" ‘Kills above’?" Zar-bettu-zekigal asked.
Black serpent eyes turned upon her. Zar-bettu-zekigal shivered, hacked one booted heel into the miniature skulls and looked away. The voice echoed softly from the curving granite cliffs.
"We are not contherned with the above. Do what you will. We do not need you. But we will not have you corrupt uth! Your plague makeths their nightmareth real, here below." The cobra-head dipped, unblinking eyes watching. "Memory, tell what you have heard of pethtilenth."
All laughter gone cold, she lifted her head and stared at Plessiez. "Oh, I’d rather tell what I’ve seen–up there. Now. But you listen."
She began speaking with the concentration of Memory.
" ‘Plagues may exist in flesh, in base matter, and bring bodies to death. And, we discover, there are other pestilences that may be achieved, plagues of the spirit and soul. And there are plagues that can be brought into existence only by acts of magia. They bring their own analogue of death to such as our masters—’ "
"Not alone to such as those," Elish interrupted. Zari saw the brown Rat catch the remark and shrug carelessly.
" ‘–such as our masters, the Thirty-Six Lords of Heaven and Hell, the Decans.’ Is that what you want? See you, there’s more. The Hyena. ‘Memory, witness. Certain articles of corpse-relic necromancy to be placed at septagon points under the heart of the world, for the summoning of a pestilence—’ " She broke off, lifting her chin, staring at the Cardinal-General. "Did you know it would kill humans? Do this to them? Did you?"
Charnay turned a surprised and blandly supercilious face. "What do you care? You’re Katayan."
"Messire!"
The Rat looked down over his shoulder. Fog dried on his black fur, leaving it dull. He reached to place his hands on her shoulders, long fingers warm through the fabric of her dress. She looked up at brilliant black eyes; his whiskers unmoving, the light shining through his ears.
She demanded: "Did you?"
The black Rat removed his hands. He reached down to his haunch, ringed fingers unknotting the green silk sash, brought it up two-handed and looped it over her head. For a moment he still held the two ends of it.
" ‘How now . . .’ " His incisors showed in a grin; his black eyes, feral, shone with a kind of fallen recklessness. Nothing to mark him as cardinal or priest now, all gone; he wore only silver head-band and black plume, sword- belt and harness. " ‘How now, two Rats! Dead, for a ducat, dead!’ "
Charnay scowled. "What!"
"I forget you’re no follower of our great poets." He reached to tug Zar-bettu-zekigal’s short hair sharply, and swung round and strode back up the beach. Without lifting his head he called up to the Council: "Messires, I’ll do what I can. Charnay!"
"What?" The big brown Rat started, looked, and loped up the beach after him. "Messire, I don’t understand."
Zar-bettu-zekigal stared after them, touching the still- warm sash. She slid one trailing end across her shoulder to fall scarf-like down her back. "Messire . . ."
Muffled
screams echoed from the ocean, invisible in the thickening fog. Granular mist rolled across the beach, glimmering. It swept across the departing figures of the brown and black Rats.
"What will you do?" she shouted. "Messire! What will you do?"
Mist blurred distance; she glimpsed his hand perhaps raised in salute.
"Your plathe ith not with them," the viper-headed god said. His slender body seemed a young man’s; his black eyes unblinking and ageless. "We have your tathk, tham-an-woman. You mutht be a guide back to the world above. Take what ith not ours, what we will not keep, and what you mutht."
Zar-bettu-zekigal followed Elish’s gaze.
A few yards from the beach of skulls, resting low in the shifting debris and black water, an unmoored ship floated. Twenty feet long, clinker-built of wood and coated in black tar. No oars. No mast. One curve from prow to stern.
No reflection of that hull in the mirror-black water.
"What . . . ?" Zar-bettu-zekigal took a few crunching steps down the beach. Fog made the inhabited islands invisible.
Behind her, Elish-hakku-zekigal chuckled.
Zari raised her head, seeing the boat still floating just offshore, growing larger as she stepped closer: thirty feet long at least.
A sibilant voice echoed from the amphitheater of thrones: the cobra-headed Lord of the Night Council. "We warn you. Your way will not be unoppothed."
Zar-bettu-zekigal stared. "It’s the Boat. See you, I swear it; I swear it is!"
"Only when the Night Sun shines. Only when all laws cease for that certain hour . . ." Elish-hakku-zekigal’s eyes showed a dazzled appalled wonder.
"Elish, don’t!"
"Oh, you can touch it. Here, you can." The Katayan woman strode past her, down the long skull-pebbled slope, splashing knee-deep into the black waves, ignoring her soaked breeches and the tails of her blue silk coat. Dark objects bobbed away on ripples, antennae feebly twitching. She gripped the edge of the Boat and expertly timed her leap so that it dipped, wallowed, but shipped hardly any water.
"Elish, I don’t understand!"
The older Katayan woman stood up on the deck, gazing back over Zar-bettu-zekigal’s head at the half-circle of thrones and the bedrock foundations of the world. Each of the Serpent-headed now stood, left or right hand up-raised. A smile broke out on her pale features.