Rats and Gargoyles

by Mary Gentle

  "Divine One." Elish-hakku-zekigal bowed her head, not losing her grip on the tiller.

  Tor-weathered, the shaggy granite flanks shed sea- foam and beating water. The mountain-range of shoulder and spine and haunch stretched away into darkness to where, far off, his scale-crusted tail lashed black waters to storm.

  A rich smell dizzied Zar-bettu-zekigal. Rich enough to drown out the oil, fish, ooze and excrement that composed it; rich with the energies of generation and corruption and growth. She sneezed and wiped the back of her wrist across her face, leaning out over the hull of the Boat to stare up at the god-daemon.

  "Oh, hey . . ." Utter contentment in her voice. "Elish, I’ve seen one!"

  The older Katayan spluttered into brief laughter.

  "Say you, you have. And if it’s not the last thing we ever see, then doubtless I’ll never hear the end of it!"

  Between the coiled sky-reaching horns a white disc burned, burning with the blotched stains of lunar seas. Light fell across the deck of the Boat, shining on her, and on the older Katayan’s face, turning it stark black and silver.

  Stone flaked: the eyes of the god-daemon among the waters opened.

  Zari kicked a heel against the deck of the Boat, tilting her head to judge their speed as they rushed up to where the hill of water crested: to where, head lowered, the Decan of the Waters Below the Earth watched seas pour away into infinity. The roar of the waters falling all but drowned her shout: "If he doesn’t do something, El, we’re finished!"

  Great slanting eyes opened, liquid darkness staring down from under stone lids. The moon’s light sent hard shadows across the horns and ears and muzzle, across the vast lips curving in an ancient slow smile. Far, far above her head, the coiled horns shone red with strings of roses: minute as blood-drops against the disc of the moon.

  The dark of the Decan’s eyes glimmered on foam and sea-fret. She felt her mouth go dry. As if it swung into dock between pilot and tugs, the Boat curved across the rising hills of water and slowed, slowed and stopped before the web-fingered hands of the god-daemon.

  Her neck hurt, craning to look up. Raw throat, drenched and dripping coat, chilled to the bone: all became, for that instant, unimportant. Zar-bettu-zekigal gazed up at the long caprine face, the stone goat’s muzzle whose beard jutted forked bone and forked wood; sea- serpents and crustaceans infesting the crevices.

  Crumbled to bone at elbow and shoulder, none the less, green leaves sprouted to cover the great mountain- range spine. Moss spidered across the stone, fresh green. Seaweed sprouted bright yellows and ochres between the vast webs of fingers.

  Nightmares swarmed about the distant flanks, small as pismires, that were large enough to swallow the Boat complete.

  "Lord Decan!"

  With a peculiar pride in courtesy, she looked into the stone-lidded eyes and bowed her head. She couldn’t keep from grinning widely, excited.

  "Zar’." The older woman stood and stepped away from the tiller, her black-furred tail whipping around Zar-bettu-zekigal’s wrist and tugging her aside.

  "Oh, what!" She pulled herself free.

  A cluster of red roses sprouted on the Boat’s black- tarred thwart. A green runner coiled the length of the tiller. Barbed green thorns shot out of it, serrated leaves unfolded; a whole hedge-tangle of pink dog-roses weighed the tiller into stillness.

  Serrated fins scraped the hull. Water slopped. She wiped her wet hair off her forehead and licked her lips; tasted the faint sweetness of ordure and gagged.

  Moon-crested, lying between the Pillars of the Waters Under the Earth, the Decan bent its horned goat-head. The great-fingered hands shifted.

  The waters boiled.

  A heavy weight dipped down one side of the Boat. Zari stepped back, bumping her shoulder against Elish- hakku-zekigal where the shaman woman stood quietly at the prow. The Boat rocked again.

  "Oh, hey . . ."

  Only a breath, almost silence. She squatted on her haunches, leaning to stare at the wet footprints tracking the empty deck. She smiled in wonder. Shifting and shifting again, the Boat rocked and settled deeper into the waters. She stared up at the stone upon which the Decan lay, seeking for footprints wet among the carved flagstones of the plinth, but it towered above her head.

  Crowding, overlapping: sourceless shadows of men and Rats stained the deck.

  "Elish." She touched one finger to a swift-drying mark (the print of a small Rat, by the size), feeling no substance by it. She stood. The air across the deck curdled, somehow full. She tugged Elish’s satin sleeve and grinned. "Passengers!"

  "I thought it would never . . . Something’s changed." Elish-hakku-zekigal raised her eyes to the god-daemon. "Again, the Boat carries the dead."

  Stone lips curved in an ancient uncanny smile; pursed very slightly and blew. The Boat rocked. The curve of the falls shot back gold light from black water. The lantern, guttering, tipped to the deck and smashed. She grabbed at the side of the Boat, Elish’s hand catching her shoulder.

  "We’re going to go over!"

  The shaman Elish-hakku-zekigal lifted her head and began to hum in the back of her throat. The chant for finding homecomings sounded, soft and quiet under the roar of waves. The current grabbed the Boat suddenly enough that it jolted Zari off her feet. She scrambled up with skinned knees.

  Elish sang.

  Zar-bettu-zekigal kicked off her black ankle-boots. She ran forward and leaped up, one foot either side of the sharp prow; knelt for a second and then stood, tail coiled out on the air for balance, wind lashing short wet hair back from her face.

  "Hey!"

  She pushed down on the balls of her feet as the prow dipped, rode the push upwards; yelling in unmusical concert the shaman chant, kicking out at a webbed hand grabbing her foot. A filamented mouth gaped, teeth gleaming. The crest of the hill of black water rushed closer.

  "Go, little ones."

  A breath on the waters, warm as spring; a glimmer of fire, sea-green; and the voice of the Decan: "Go back to the world."

  She turned her head, sketched a bow, coat-tails flying. The prow fell away from under her feet; she slipped, banged her knee, and knelt to stare ahead at the beating crest of waters now all white fire and lace about the Boat—

  "Look!" Elish broke her chant for a second, rushing forward beside her and pointing down. "Look, the stars!"

  Monstrous forms clung to thwarts and prow, fish- mouths wide, gaping for water; screeching. A clawed finger raked wood into splinters beside Zari’s foot. She bent and grabbed a boat-hook from its ledge under the rail, scrambled up the prow, stabbed down among masses of green flesh and scale thick enough now to slow the Boat.

  The rising wave crested.

  Below, above, all around: she stared up dazzled at the stars in their Houses, burning in the Three Hundred and Sixty Degrees. Elish’s warm hands gripped her shoulders. Dark and day spun across her sight, wheeling, turning . . .

  Sunlight dazzled.

  Zari heaved herself up to stand on the prow, one arm flung up against the sudden light. So all the later, famous pictures show her: a young black-haired Katayan, coat flying, arm raised as she beats down the swarming night- mare-monsters under the Boat’s prow. She balances there, beneath her the tumbling bodies of nightmares, all framed by the great onyx-and-marble Arch of Days where the canal flows from the grounds of Salomon’s Temple.

  The older Katayan woman stands by a rose-shrouded tiller; her head back, her mouth open, chanting to the sun that shines full on her face.

  Sun dazzles.

  Canal-water boiled in motion, light shafting up and blinding her: the clawed and tendril-mouthed horrors diving for the depths. Zar-bettu-zekigal straightened, shaking out her wet greatcoat.

  "Ei!"

  "Now, Zar’!"

  A tail coiled around her wrist and jerked. She staggered to the deck, avoiding the mast–the mast?–and glared at Elish-hakku-zekigal. A crowd of people jostled them.

  Women, children, Rats, men, Ratlings. The deck shon
e, shadowless.

  "Off, now. Move!"

  Strong hands gripped the shoulders of her coat, pushing her across deck towards the gangplank–the gangplank?–and her heels skidded as she dug them in and staggered, clutching at a splinter.

  "Say you, yes–but we both—"

  "I came this way; I can go this way: I have to guide the Boat: now will you leave?"

  Zar-bettu-zekigal staggered onto the gangplank. She let her shoulders slump in acquiescence. The heavily laden vessel wallowed. She folded her hand back and grabbed the solid vertebrae of the older Katayan’s tail, and let her full weight swing them both to fall across plank and canal-water and tow-path.

  The canal walkway whacked her between the shoulders. Dimly she heard shouting, cheering; sensed the movement of the great vessel on the waters. Pounding footsteps approached; dozens, hundreds.

  She hitched herself up on to her wet elbows, raising one knee, her own tail twitching. The older woman sprawled, rubbing the base of her wrenched tail.

  "Don’t want you dead. Want you here. With me."

  "You shave-tailed little idiot!"

  Twin masts shone black against a blue summer sky, the rigging bare. The Boat drifted in the canal, between gardens, people running up from far away, joining the growing crowd. Elish-hakku-zekigal stared.

  She began to hum absently in her throat.

  The vessel straightened, swinging to point away from the Arch of Days. It began to glide, weighted down by passengers who cast no shadows; to glide away in the sun . . .

  Elish shot her one broad grin and staggered to her feet, shaking out her coat-tails and lace ruffle. She walked unsteadily down the canal path, lifting her head, singing the guiding chant, her eyes all on the Boat and not on the front runners of the crowd who fell back, cheering, to give her passage.

  Sun blazed.

  Zar-bettu-zekigal felt a hand at her shoulder, at her elbow; and grabbed wildly as they swung her up on to her feet. A man shook her hand, another wrung her other hand; a woman threw her arms around her and kissed her.

  Over the heads of the crowd the shaman chant sounded, high and clear.

  She laughed, shook hands, kissed back; began to walk shoulder-by-shoulder with men and women in rags, recognizing no faces; walking with small red-faced children, and brown Rats in the rags of King’s Guard livery.

  "Oh, hey, I know you."

  She elbowed herself a space as a small man fought through the crowd to her side, falling back a few yards from the people that flocked around Elish as she sang.

  The small man, his white hair standing up like owl’s feathers, grabbed her hand and wrung it. With his other hand he felt in the pockets of his greasy cotton coat and unearthed a broadsheet which he thrust at her. She dropped it.

  "Nineteenth District broadsheet—"

  Cornelius Vanringham dabbed at his sweating forehead. Two men at his heels raised cameras, flashbulbs popping. From another pocket he rummaged out a notepad and a pen, waving them at her in an explanatory manner.

  "We were interrupted before. I wonder if I could talk to you now. Please."

  She shoved her hands deep in her greatcoat-pockets, swirling the hems, which steamed a little now in the drying sun. A great swath of the crowd slowed, staying with her rather than with Elish. Her head came up, and she walked with a kick-heeled strut, feeling the dust of the canal walk hot under her bare feet. She smelt sweat and wine and roses. Heat blazed out of a hazed blue-gray sky.

  "Oh, see you . . ."

  Voices at her shoulder fell silent, others further back hissed for quiet. Attentive silence spread out like ripples in water. The crowd jostled her, human and Rat, as she sauntered in the wake of her sister.

  A grin quirked up the corners of her mouth. Hands in pockets, she shrugged, superbly casual.

  ". . . Just ask me. I can tell you! I’m a Kings’ Memory. What do you want to know?"

  Candia, sprawling down on a stone horse-block, scratched at thick blond stubble and spread out stained pasteboard cards. A dazed child’s wonder blanked his expression.

  Brilliant image succeeds brilliant image, no tarot card what it has been before, all new and strange and altering again even as he turns them: lions coupling in a desert, a river flowing uphill, a steel-and-granite bird circling a star, a throned empress giving her child suck . . .

  Acolytes clung to every projection of stone above him, gripping gutters, facades, strapwork and chimneys; staring down into the overgrown university quadrangle.

  The black gelding grazing loose by the block raised its head and whinnied, sweat creaming its haunches, eyes white and wild. Candia glanced up. He sprang to his feet, the cards scattered.

  "My lord! Theo!"

  He put his arms carefully around Theodoret’s shoulders, embracing him. The Bishop returned the grip, careless of the younger man’s sweat-stained and filthy shirt.

  "My friend, I haven’t thanked you—"

  "Don’t. It took me long enough to come back, and I had to be pig-drunk to do it—"

  A shadow halted him in mid-word. Behind the whitehaired man, bright in the sun, a sandstone-and-gold shape paced between tall university buildings that only shadowed His flanks.

  "Lord Spagyrus." He swallowed, mouth dry. "You live, still?"

  "Yes, little Candia, I live. I live again!"

  The great head lowered, tusks gold against the sky, tiny scaled ears pricked forward. The scales of the Decan’s muzzle glinted. The Bishop of the Trees reached up and laid a veined hand on the tip of one down-jutting fang, just below the vast nostril. Breath stirred Candia’s hair. An almost-mischievous smile creased Theodoret’s face.

  "I am the elixir, I am the prima materia, I am the stone that touches all, the marriage of heaven and hell. I had forgotten," the Decan’s soft voice boomed, echoing in sandstone courtyards where the slim leaves of bamboo sprout from shattered windows, "and I perceive that I have erred, the while that matter clouded me. "

  Candia shoved his straggling hair back under its sweat- band, put his fists on his hips, and glared up at the Decan of Noon and Midnight.

  " ‘Erred.’ " He eyed the Decan with an exasperation long since past the point of caution. "Erred! Would you like me to tell you about it!"

  "The error is not one that concerns you."

  Candia rubbed the back of his wrist across his mouth. The horse whinnied again. His breath came back to him, rich with the scent of the dusty yard: sweet, salt, rose- and dung-odored. Clamor continued to sound outside. Through the archway, across the District to the harbor’s marble piers and aqueducts, to the far south-aust horizon where tides of flowers flowed.

  "Who, then?"

  "These."

  To each roof-ridge, chimney, gable and gutter, the dispossessed Fane’s acolytes clung. They roosted restlessly, membraned wings furling and unfurling in the new sun, obsidian claws gripping stone and metal. Candia tilted his head back, staring up into slit-eyed beaked faces.

  Malice and pain stared back.

  "They suffer."

  Candia grunted. "Good. They made us suffer for centuries."

  Daemon-wings flared open, beating the bright day into duststorms. One beast clung head down on lead guttering, picking with its beak at new vegetation, spitting dumb hatred down at him.

  "They are Our just instruments. They have no minds to recall, else they would remember how you sought to betray fellow-humans to them."

  The Decan’s scented breath skirred dust about Candia’s feet. He sank to one knee in the courtyard, head high; his mouth opening and closing several times.

  "I have always been able to rely on mortals for treachery."

  Stubbornly suppliant, Candia remained kneeling, a ragged blond man squinting against the light. A resonance of his swagger and competence of a Sign ago haunted him, now, much as he haunted this deserted university. The Decan’s shadow fell across his flopping hair, his filthy shirt and breeches.

  "These are only animals. Death is death to them; their generations do not
return. Except in the darkness behind the eye and in the Fane, they have no voice. We must make some end of these servants of Ours, now that We walk out into the world. What would you have Me do? Tell Me what you would do, little Candia."

  The Fane’s acolytes raised restless muzzles to all five points of the compass, sniffing the blossom-scented wind, searching for the Fane.

  His face heating, Candia muttered: "Why ask me? I’ll answer for Masons’ Hall. It was my choice. As for these butchers, they were your instruments!"

  "Tree-priest, you suffered most. What would you?"

  "Lord Decan, it’s you I can’t forgive." Theodoret’s veined hands spread in a Sign of the Branches, faint sparks of green and gold flowing under the skin. "I’m an old man, therefore familiar with discomfort. You and they gave me pain that should have killed—"

  "Forget."

  "You haven’t yet paid for that!"

  "God does not pay. We do not incur debts. Whatever We do is well and right, because it is We who do it. Who can deny that?"

  Candia muttered: "Bollocks!"

  A raw tone echoed back from the courtyard’s walls. Candia only knew it much later for a Decan’s laughter.

  "It is true that much is different now, but that does not change. But give an answer. What shall be done with these?"

  Candia stared up at the misshapen bodies. "Freeze them into stone for all I care, and let them stick there until the city’s demolished!"

  Prescience gave an image of how it would be, clear as a tarot card: each massive building lined with rows of stone guardians, bodies frozen in a rictus, rain streaming from their open beaks . . .

  The Decan’s full lips parted. One gold fang dulled with his summer breath, birthing the beginning of a word.

  "No!" The day’s heat dappled on Theodoret; he seemed to move in shade and the shifting of leaves. "Lord Spagyrus, no."

  "Why not so?"

  "Animals are innocent murderers, Divine One." The Bishop’s ascetic mouth wrinkled, distaste mingling with resignation and a certain sly justice. "You should pay something, Lord Spagyrus. What penalty one asks of the Divine, I don’t know. Perhaps you should pay by taking responsibility. They are yours, these daemons."