Rats and Gargoyles

by Mary Gentle

  The footfall’s reverberation shook her flesh. The White Crow stumbled, half-walking and half-running. The shadow of ancient stone fell across her, and she, legs turned rubbery, staggered to walk beside the god- daemon as the Decan slowly paced forward.

  "Come. We will walk out into the world."

  Parquet flooring, hot with impossible sun, burned his palms.

  Lucas slid out from the pit under the last analytical engine in the Long Gallery and stood up. Other students crowded the doors, the high windows, clamoring. Black grease smeared his hands and arms. He reached to grab his discarded doublet with filthy fingers.

  "It’s the sun!" Rafi slapped his bare shoulder, running past. "It’s daylight out there! We did it!"

  Bodies jostled. Lucas floated in their movement, hardly conscious of it; aching with weariness from wrench and gear and rod, eyes stinging with tiredness. He let himself be carried down the grand stairway into the university’s entrance-hall.

  "Outside!" A blonde girl hammered the door-beam out of its socket with the heel of her hand.

  Above his head, the carved apple wood beams shimmered. He raised his head. Summer heat and light flooded in through the opening door. A sharp sweet smell drifted in.

  One pale green spot appeared on the wood. It swelled, bubbled up, unscrolled into the air–a leaf. A veined green leaf. Lucas pushed his head-band further up his brow, shifting the hair from his eyes, gaping.

  All the beams supporting the roof burst into leaf. A tide of green swept through the hall, leaves unfolding, rustling; springing from the wood of beams and paneling and doors, darkening the sunlit hall to a green shadow.

  Lucas pushed into the throng of students and Reverend tutors, finding himself carried towards the door. Pink blossom burst out on the now-knotted beams.

  "The sun—!"

  A silence fell. Lucas stepped out into the courtyard, the other students slowing as they pushed out into that wide paved space. Briars wreathed the great sandstone staircases rising up at cater-corners of the yard. Glass windows shimmered, river-bright. Acolytes clung to the towering chimneys, bristle-tails writhing down among flowering wooden window-frames.

  Pharamond caught his gaze across the heads of other students: the bearded man with his hair disheveled, his face dazed. "We did it. We cheated the laws of nature!"

  Lucas brushed his arms, the faint dew and wind raising the small hairs down his forearms. Black machine-oil glistened. Over the courtyard and the open gates, an early-summer sky clung to roofs and streets and spires. A sky hot and soft and pale with heat.

  A Katayan student clapped his hands rhythmically, broke off, caught a dark-haired woman’s hands and pulled her into a dance-step. Lucas, to his own astonishment, picked up the clapping rhythm. Two girls snatched up soft-thorned briars, weaving them into garlands. Processional, ragged, yelling, the students burst open the university’s iron gates.

  Lucas stifled fear under fatigue, triumph and sheer blinded brilliance. With each step the sun shone more brightly, until he had to turn his face away from the blaze and look down at his black shadow on the paving. He passed under the main gate, and a shower of green leaves flew about him, brushing his shoulders; white and pink apple blossom whirling into the air, petals clinging damply to his skin.

  The heat reflected from alley walls and bright windows, smelling of dust and dirt, of manure, of bird’s feathers and fruit-stalls and drying washing. Fragments of song burst up into the air, one student beginning a catch, someone else drowning it. A shatter of glass made him stumble. He turned to see Regis, the sun bright on her freckled face, standing ankle-deep in an arcade window and passing out bottles of wine.

  The yellow-haired Katayan male knocked against Lucas as he stumbled past, chanting an unrecognizable song:

  "Now we shall walk—

  "Now we shall walk—

  "Now we shall walk amongst you—"

  A flash of white caught Lucas’s eye.

  He staggered into a run, breaking for an alley- entrance, panting, legs spiked with pain as he turned and ran up the hill. The bleached sky burned above.

  Its shadow dark on the cobbles, the silver timber-wolf trotted quickly around corner and corner.

  Heart hammering, lungs burning, Lucas caught up. He ran from the last houses, out on to the abandoned building site surrounding the Fane-in-the-Nineteenth-District. A confused impression of abandoned scaffolding and stone, of black marble and jungles of flowers blurred his vision.

  Like lava it ran down the hill into the city, a resistless tide. Daisies sprouted from guttering, ivy from doorposts; wild roses threshed up into great banks of scent and color. Sparkling mosses thrust up from roof-tiles. The wind filled his mouth with the scent of cherry and roses and stocks, slowing his steps until he paced, resting his oil-grimed fingers on the ruff at the wolfs neck.

  Exposed under the pitiless noon sky, he momentarily shut his eyes. His palms sweated. Anticipation pulsed under his ribs, in his guts. His hand closed hard over the wolfs rough pelt. Lazarus whined.

  "Lazarus! Hey, boy!"

  Lucas’s eyes flew open.

  She trod the chalky ground of the site, dust whitening her bare feet and ankles, her face tilted up to the summer sky. A warm wind tugged the masses of dark red hair that fell about her shoulders, hair whitened at the temples, and wound with white roses that shed petals as she walked. Brown smears of dried blood marked her left hand.

  She walked naked in the summer’s heat.

  He mouthed her name. He heard the skitter of gravel as she kicked it, walking across the site; saw her head come down, eyes sky- and sun-dazzled, and a wide smile spread across her face. Now, closer, the young man saw how dirt creased in the folds of skin at her elbows and jaw; how sweat shone on her forehead and breasts. Dust paled her dark aureoles, glimmered in the dark-red curls of her pubic hair.

  "Lucas."

  He reached out with both hands, cupping her bare shoulders. Oil smudged her skin. She smiled, the skin crinkling around her tawny eyes; tilted her head a little to the side. Flowers spiraled across the chalky earth, coiling up about her ankles. He smelt her warm sweat, tasted salt as he kissed her mouth and licked her cheek. Energy sang in her skin, pulsed in her blood; the backwash of some tide not yet gone from her consciousness.

  "Lucas . . ."

  Her arms came up under his, tightening around his ribs and across his back. Her breasts pressed against his skin. He grabbed her to him, probing her mouth with his tongue, suddenly and appallingly inexpert. Some tremor shook the body he held: laughter or disgust? He gripped her more tightly.

  He felt her hands slide down and unhook his belt, smoothing his breeches down his hips, guiding him to sheath his aching and too-ready flesh in her transformed body.

  The sparrow soars down from the heights.

  This is the same midday heat that would drive it to shelter under eaves, or seek out a dust-bath to flutter feathers cool. Now, dropping to earth, the bird’s unblinking eyes take in the heart of the world.

  White stone wings extend, hissing in the clear air. The sparrow stalls, flicks to perch on a vast extended finger. It cocks its head, taking in the naked and narrow-hipped body that lounges upon the wind. An eagle-head dips, golden eyes blinking. A dream of feathers blows about the god-daemon’s stone skin.

  The Decan of Daybreak, Lord of Air and Gathering, lifts his finger and touches–so delicately–his colossal carved beak to the bird’s head.

  "See . . ."

  All the austerly horizons burst into flame with flowers.

  Air shimmered over the model, over the single bricks that formed a makeshift wall around its five-meter-square plan. Walled and gated by bricks, interior gardens sketched with chalk, domes and halls slapped together from hessian and wet plaster on a wired lath frame. A model rocking on chalk-marked broken paving.

  "Ah." The Lord-Architect Casaubon looked up as a shadow fell across the scaffolding and bricks and masonry of Fourteenth District’s square where he sat. "I thoug
ht you’d be along, sooner or later."

  A vast sphinx-shadow covered the broken paving and the granite block engraved with the Word of Seshat; darkening the shabby makeshift model of the New Temple.

  The Decan of the Eleventh Hour stands against the sun, the warm and glowing substance of Her incarnation wreathed with trailing wild roses. Black bees swarm about Her face, nest in the crevices of brickwork drapery. The summer breeze blows from behind Her, scented with desert dawn and arctic night.

  "Well done, little lord."

  The Lord-Architect climbed ponderously to his feet, rump momentarily skyward; tugged his blue silk breeches up and brushed with one ham-hand at the dirt on his shirt and frock-coat.

  "I know what you’ve come to do." His china-blue eyes blinked against the new sunlight. He rubbed his stomach and gently belched. "Hadn’t you–I beg your pardon, Divine One–hadn’t you better get on with it?"

  "Hurry is for mortals. "

  One copper eyebrow lifted. The fat man opened his mouth, hesitated, and shook his head. He began to feel through each of his deep coat-pockets in turn. At last he unearthed a tiny notebook and pencil.

  The Lord-Architect stripped off his voluminous blue coat, spread it over an expanse of step, and eased himself down to sit on it. He balanced the notebook on his immense thigh, and licked the pencil thoughtfully.

  "There is something yet to do, little lord."

  The Lord-Architect Casaubon lifted his head from his writing. He pushed up his shirt-sleeves with the pencil still folded in his plump fingers. A line of tiny neat letters marked the notebook’s page.

  "I said, there is—"

  A grin creased its way across the fat man’s oil- and plaster-stained face. He spread one open palm. "Divine One. Do it. I always had a taste for a good miracle myself."

  Radiant and stinging as the sunlight, divine amusement beat against his skin. He rested his chins on his hand, and his elbow on one vast up-raised knee, and held the tiny notebook up.

  "I see . . ."

  Heavy-lidded eyes close, open, with leonine slowness. Sun gleams on high cheek-bones and nose, shines back from tiny ochre bricks and the white dots of roses. The salt-pan whiteness of Her gaze fixes upon him.

  "Knowing all, then, you will not need Me to tell you that she lives. "

  A shudder passed through his flesh, shaking his chins and belly. He wiped a sweat-drenched forehead, smearing plaster-dust in clumps into his hair, and breathed in sharply. For a moment he sagged in relief. Then he tapped the notebook against his delicate lips, hiding a broad smile.

  "No–but I thank you for the thought."

  "If you are not damned, little architect, it will not be the fault of the Thirty-Six. Very well, then. Your expected miracle. See now what I conceive it necessary to do!"

  Light blazed.

  In that second he saw no lath-and-plaster domes, no brick colonnades or chalk-drawn gardens, only the deep structure of order and proportion and extravagant flamboyance that lies in particles, cells, souls.

  Breath knocked out of him, the Lord-Architect sprawled on his back. He grunted, getting himself up on to his elbows.

  "Madam, I congratulate . . . you . . ."

  The stone of Seshat lay embedded now in a wall, mortared in with a cement that seemed to bear the weathering of many seasons. Beside it, before the Lord- Architect’s startled gaze, mellow red brick soared up into a foliate gate. He stared through the opening, too small to admit a carriage, across lawns flanked by comfortable low colonnades. A fountain shot thin jets into the sunlight.

  "Oh, I do," he said. "I do."

  Beyond the fountain, wide steps suitable for traders’ booths or just for resting rose to a rotunda and tiled dome; its arches open and without doors to close them.

  Somewhere beyond the main body of the temple, a campanile put delicate brick tracery into the summer sky. He stared at the ledges, balconies and open belvedere. His gaze fell to gardens, and clear through the gateway came the sound of river-water.

  "Look at it . . ." A woman’s husky voice sounded above him. Casaubon pushed himself up to a sitting position beside Mistress Evelian.

  "It was bound to happen." Pride crept into the fat man’s voice. "Such acute construction ought never to be wasted—"

  "Sharlevian!"

  With eyes for nothing else, not even the presence of a god-daemon, the yellow-haired woman ran through the gate, catching up the hem of her dirty blue satin dress. She flung her arms around a figure in pink overalls, swinging her daughter’s feet off the ground.

  Tannakin Spatchet, hovering on the edge of their joy in embarrassment, caught the Lord-Architect’s eye. The Mayor drank from a pottery jar, lifting it in salute.

  Behind him, spreading out through the grounds that now seemed to fill all the site-space lying behind the square, black and brown Rats, and humans still in the remnants of carnival dress, wandered wide-eyed up from the underground tunnels. Talk sounded gradually louder on the air.

  Casaubon stood and walked under the arch of the gateway. He rested one brick-grazed hand against the wall. Flesh curved, creasing his face into a ridiculous and ineradicable smile; he swept his gaze across the Temple grounds–cool passageways, wide steps, seats, fountains; the glimmer of mosaics in the ceiling of the great dome; distant tree-tops, and the explosion of blossom, and the growing crowds–and finally swung back, arms wide.

  "Didn’t I say, the best thing I’d ever done! Oh, not as magnificent as many, not as grand–but for the form of it! That structure all but compels them to rest, to walk slowly, to talk peaceably—"

  "Compelled? Invited, rather. And was it your conception, little lord? I think it was also the woman’s, and the child’s, and the other man’s there."

  "Well . . . Yes. I admit it. Baltazar Casaubon doesn’t need to fear sharing credit, Divine One."

  Her head rises against the blue summer sky, incarnate, ancient and young. Black bees hum around her shoulders and flanks. The Decan of the Eleventh Hour raises Her head and gazes into the heart of the sun itself. The full curved lips move.

  "So . . . but yes. Yes. Haste is for mortals–but there is still one thing to be done."

  The deck slewed.

  The Boat, gripped in a midnight current, raced into noise and darkness. Clawed hands tore at the hull, wood shrieking as it ripped. Zar-bettu-zekigal staggered back and forth across the deck, boot-laces flapping, hacking her heel down on nine-clawed hands, spitting at catfishmouthed human faces. She swallowed, saliva wetting her sore throat.

  "I can keep this up all night if it helps. Isn’t anything I don’t remember."

  Far up, in the vaults of darkness, a line of white glimmered. Zari narrowed her eyes. In her moment’s inattention, the humming chant behind her faded into vagueness.

  "Elish!"

  "I hear you, Zar’. What happened then?"

  "Oh, she told me to get out of the tent. I had it just where I planned and she–all she cared about was that I shouldn’t talk to the press!"

  Zar-bettu-zekigal let the stream of words come. She balanced on the moving deck, knees aching at the shifts of balance. Water curved up–up–in a great hill: obsidian-black, sharp with rills and knot-hole eddies. Above and ahead, at the crest of the rising water, whiteness foamed. Zari’s hand shot out and grabbed a thwart.

  "And why shouldn’t I talk to Vanringham? I’m a Kings’ Memory! I can talk to anyone I like!"

  A chuckle. "But can you stop?"

  A whisk-ended tail whipped about Zari’s ankle. She glanced back. Elish-hakku-zekigal sat cross-legged at the tiller, one elbow hooked about the black wood; her free hand tapping a shaman drum-rhythm on the deck. Her cornflower-blue eyes gleamed in the guttering light of the one lamp.

  "Need you, little one. Who else could keep my memory stirred?"

  She began to hum, deep in her throat: a shaman chant. The hairs rose down Zar-bettu-zekigal’s spine, and the familiarity of it stirred a reckless joy in her. She jerked her head, hair flying.

&
nbsp; "And that? Up ahead?"

  "I think, for good or ill, the end of us. Hold on!"

  The roar of the impossibly-rising hill of water deafened her. Zar-bettu-zekigal whiplashed moisture from her tail and tottered back across the deck.

  "Steer us away from it–across the current!"

  "Trying, little one. Come help."

  Zari set her narrow hip against the wooden tiller. It shook against her hands. The lantern on the stern-pole swung wildly, sending faint light across the water. Filament-mouthed faces shone in the blackness. Crustacean claws lifted. Something with fleer-eyed malice swam froglike at the bows. She braced herself hard against the tiller, turning to stare ahead.

  "Hey!"

  Fish-eyes gleamed in nebula-clusters, burning green and gold in sudden brilliance. A ripple of gold ran through the hill of water, spider-threading infinite depths.

  "El, what is it!"

  "Baby, I’m here; it’s all right—"

  A wave rushed down the hill-slope, battering the prow of the Boat. Spray soaked Zar-bettu-zekigal. She shook wet hair from her eyes, swearing. The Boat dipped, wallowed; she dug heels into the deck and heaved the tiller hard over, looked up into darkness, and her heel skidded. She clung to the wooden spar.

  The darkness curdled, cracked. She rubbed salt water from her streaming eyes, staring up. Overhead the blackness flaked, crumbled . . .

  The god-daemon lay calm among waters.

  Light shone between granite horns.

  He lay between rows of cracked gray pillars, sea- washed, carved over with hieroglyphs; and incised in the flagstones around the plinth she saw, sea-worn, the signs of the Thirty-Six. Black water threshed and foamed against living stone.

  Zar-bettu-zekigal looked up from vast webbed black hands gripping the plinth, to caprined forearms, to shaggy throat and shoulders. The great horned goat’s head towered above into darkness: cracked gray granite, informed with the presence of the Decan.