by Ginn Hale
Everything went silent. Agony sheared through his body. His mouth opened, releasing a mute scream. His vision seared to an intense white as if he were staring straight into the sun. He couldn’t look away. He couldn’t stop it. He burned and writhed, as though he were being dragged apart in a hundred different directions.
•••
He hardly sensed his impact against solid ground. His mouth was full of snow and blood. It tasted like rusting iron. He lay on his back in a snowbank between rows of brick buildings.
He got to his feet and walked to the mouth of the narrow alley, his body moving almost of its own accord. Pain tore through him, but he didn’t make a sound. He clenched his jaws tight and drew in deep, cold breaths through his nose. His head pounded, and the ground seemed to lurch beneath his feet. He realized that he wasn’t sure what it was that he was looking for and, more worryingly, he couldn’t quite recall who he was.
He stared down the row of brick buildings. A hazy gold glow radiated from above as a gas streetlamp ignited. Another lit up, and then another, all the way down the long, winding street.
Jarring noises from carriages, and street hawkers ringing bells and shouting, came at him. He smelled roasting nuts for a moment. Then the strong scent of blood that clung to his body engulfed it.
His right arm hurt, he realized. It hurt badly. The skin was slashed open and scarlet ribbons of cold, congealing blood dripped down from his shoulder to his fingers.
What a mess.
He was sure that seeing his own damaged arm should have horrified him. But oddly, he felt as if he had almost expected it. That struck him as strange until he noticed the knife in his other hand.
There was something decidedly sinister about all of this.
For an instant, he thought that he knew how he had come to be in such a beaten state. Then the thought simply dissolved, leaving him with the knowledge that at one time he had known how this had happened. He had done something.
Or—no! There was something he had to do. Something important.
He had a pack, he realized. Of course he did. He’d known that.
Gingerly he slipped it off. The leather of the pack was tattered and faded. It smelled like dog. Inside he discovered a heavy coat and a pistol in a shoulder holster. There were also bullets—an absurd profusion of bullets.
What had he been doing?
Something wrong. He was suddenly sure. He had done something wrong, and it had made him sick with himself. He’d missed a letter, and someone else had read it. He’d killed thousands of people. He’d killed a dog.
No, he’d saved a dog.
Yes…. He could picture himself patting a yellow dog. She liked him. He had not killed her; he’d saved her life. She’d been in a fire or something. He felt slightly relieved. He didn’t want to be the kind of man who murdered animals. That told him something, didn’t it? That must make him a decent sort of person, right?
He contemplated the pistol and the bullets again.
Maybe he hadn’t killed a dog, but he was sure that he had committed murder. It wasn’t just the knife and the gun that told him so. He felt the certainty of it suffuse him.
Little slivers of memory flicked through him. The wet heat of another man’s blood running down his hand. The feel of resistance as his black knife pierced flesh and scraped bone. It all came back too easily. If he had been a decent man, he would have been repulsed by these things. But he wasn’t. The only emotion he could summon was resignation: he was obliged to perform a duty that no one could know about. Everything he did and everything about him had to be kept secret.
He had lied about his name, his occupation, where he had been, what he had done, how he came in, how he went out. He had lied in two languages and to every person he met. What he liked, what he hated, what he believed, what he desired, every detail had been a fabrication. He had lied enough to create an entire other man. And that man told lies as well.
Of course there had to be two of him, one for each world: Nayeshi and Basawar.
So, where was he now?
He squinted up at the scratchy, chalky sky and then gazed out at the wooden carriages and dull green tahldi pulling them. These were not the images he would have expected to see in Nayeshi alongside the interstates and strip malls.
Then this had to be Basawar. Probably the city of Nurjima.
A repulsed, nauseated feeling welled up in him. He had come home.
Kahlil remembered Nurjima. Or he thought he remembered it. But once he began walking through the streets, he discovered that the city in his memory and the one surrounding him were not the same. They resembled each other, like twin sisters, seemingly identical but subtly different.
Older, narrow streets still spoked out from ancient plazas, marking the obsolete boundaries of the first tiny villages that had since grown into a huge city. Old roads collided like wrecks of wagon wheels, while newer thoroughfares dissected their arcs into modern grids.
The rolling ground and the course of the frozen river that cut the city in half were exactly as he remembered. Even the lines of the bare, black trees seemed the same until he noticed the pale green buds of leaves. They should have been white.
He thought the mistake could have been his own or a matter of his injured eyes. Maybe he misremembered. Or perhaps the trees had been replaced since he had last been here. It had been ten years. The trees had been young.
He let it go and continued walking. He didn’t have the strength to waste, wondering over trees or tiny, altered details like shop signs and street names. He noted them and ignored them. He didn’t stop. He didn’t dare to. And he didn’t look back. He didn’t want to see the trail his own blood studded across the white snow. He needed to find a temple. The priests there would know how to tend his wounds.
He staggered past people. Most of them seemed to be going home for the evening. An older woman with a child pulled away from him as though he were contagious. Men in dull blue hats and long coats simply checked their pocket watches or straightened their cuffs as he passed by.
No one offered him any assistance, not even answering his requests for the time or for directions to the Black Tower of the Payshmura.
Finally he found Blackbird’s Bridge, one landmark he could remember. But when he looked out from the height of the bridge, he found the hazy, brown skyline disorienting. There appeared to be two yellow-tiled domes of the Gaunsho’im Council. One stood, as Kahlil remembered, in the north of the city, near the Seven Palaces. The other shone far south of the first, where the old Execution Grounds had been.
The Gaunsho’im must have built a second Council Hall. He couldn’t imagine why, but he didn’t understand half of what the Gaunsho’im did. They were the rulers of noble families, and they answered for their wastefulness to only themselves. If they wanted a second Council building, that was their concern. Construction of new buildings could be expected, even in times as bad as these. So long as the Gaunsho’im met their yearly tithes to the church, they could build as many tributes to their own importance as they pleased.
Kahlil stared down over the Seven Palaces and then past them. He saw long, gleaming roofs with tiles that shone like faceted crystal where none had stood before. To the west, clusters of dull, redbrick buildings piled up against each other. When he had last been here, only a scattered shantytown stood close to the riverbank. The additions didn’t bother him so much. It was the one absence that frightened him.
The massive Black Tower should have shot up from the north point of the city like a black blade piercing the heavens. But it was nowhere to be seen. It wasn’t a structure that could be missed. It had dominated the skyline, with huge cords of metal twisting up to a single, gleaming point. Its shadow alone should have sliced across the city in a straight, sharp stroke.
Kahlil stared and squinted and turned in a circle, but still couldn’t find the tower. How could it be gone? He sank down to his knees, suddenly gripped with a sick fear.
He knew.
; He couldn’t remember, but he knew. Somehow he had allowed this to happen. He had failed foolishly and terribly. He supposed it was only fair that now he had nowhere to go, no one to care for him.
His eyes stung and burned, and he closed them. It would do him no good looking for a tower that no longer stood. He struggled to remember what he had done wrong. Without knowing, how could he make it right?
The chill of the snow soaked through his heavy pants. The night grew darker and colder. Now that he had stopped searching, the pain of his injuries began to cut into his awareness. He pulled both arms in close to his body and tucked his bare hands into the pockets of his coat.
He had no idea what to do now. Where could he go?
Then the fingers of his left hand brushed across something soft and rectangular. Frowning, he drew a worn leather wallet from his pocket.
His memory was bad, but he was sure that he didn’t own a wallet. He was pretty certain that wallets like this didn’t even exist in Basawar. He opened it and found only a torn photograph inside. The young man in the picture wore the expression of someone who thought that his picture had already been taken. The camera’s flash had made his blonde hair look too light and his eyes too dark. His eyes were actually sky blue. He was taller than he appeared in the tiny photo, and his voice was soft and low. This man was important to him. He was the reason Kahlil had come here. He was what Kahlil had done wrong.
Kahlil had failed to kill this young man. The knowledge simply opened within him. He’d killed many men, but he had let this one escape. He started to crumple the photo, then stopped himself. He didn’t want to crush it. The photograph didn’t show it, but the young man had a kind smile. The thought startled Kahlil. Then came a flood of confused memories.
He recalled drinking mulled wine with the man, and the two of them smiling like conspirators. He felt the warmth of the man’s living body against a cold winter night, the smell of his skin and hair, the man whispering his name.
Kahlil felt like he might cry. He wasn’t sure why, and it embarrassed him. He closed his eyes again and waited for the feeling to pass. These weren’t things he had done. They couldn’t be. But they felt as strong and powerful as true memories.
This just had to be a matter of confusion. Something was wrong with his head. He wasn’t quite himself yet.
He slipped the photo back into the protection of the leather wallet, tucked it into his pocket, and gazed down over all the roofs of the city. There had to be some place he could go. Not too far to the west, he noticed the blurs and colors of crowds moving through the streets. Many seemed to be filtering into the same buildings. Kahlil squinted and shifted his head slightly to catch a clearer image. At last he made out the shapes of big placards hanging over the doors. Taverns, whorehouses, and public baths. There appeared to be a few cheaply decorated theaters as well. Kahlil guessed from the look of the neighborhood that the actresses probably did little more than remove their costumes for pennies.
He made his way there as quickly and directly as he could. Without any money, he needed to go where other men did—and where he would blend in, even with his bedraggled appearance. Pausing before a tavern that bore the emblem of a fat, white weasel, he picked up a fistful of snow and washed the blood from his hands and cheek. His heavy coat hid his other injuries. As he rinsed his hands, he frowned. The sight of his clean, bare, left hand particularly disturbed him. The black Prayerscar that should have been there had vanished.
Inside, the tavern was crowded and dimly lit. The heavy, warm air hung low, weighed down with the smells of men’s bodies, mutton grease, and lamp smoke. The tables were small and crowded around a tiny, raised stage.
A plump, dark-haired girl, dressed in a few swathes of cheesecloth, stood on the stage singing. She stared out, her face lifted a little higher than any patron’s gaze as if she were not quite aware of their presences. Kahlil didn’t know the song, but it was pleasant. Men made up most of the patrons. Some kept quiet, listening to the singer, but most conversed with each other. Their low voices produced a deep, steady rumble over which the girl’s melody drifted.
Kahlil found an empty table and crumpled onto a seat like a flour sack slipping from a sure grip. The force of will that had kept him moving through snow and cold evaporated with the relief that came with being inside and sitting down. For a few minutes he leaned on his left elbow, eyes closed, balancing on the edge of unconsciousness. The warmth surrounding him soaked through his coat, easing his muscles. The smell of meat and beer washed over him. His stomach felt raw as it gnawed at its own emptiness. He hadn’t been hungry like this in years. He needed food, and for that he would need money.
He slowly surveyed the men surrounding him. He didn’t waste time taking in their faces or figures. All he looked for were their coin purses. He didn’t see any hanging from the men’s belts, but that made sense. Only he and the other monks at Rathal’pesha had worn coin purses like that. In Nurjima, men kept their money in their coat pockets. He remembered noticing that habit the first time he had come here, when he had been sent to bow before the divine Ushso’Shokri, the head of his order. He had received his Prayerscars then.
Again he glanced down at the bare back of his left hand and the noted the absence of a Prayerscar. Kahlil scowled at his own untrustworthy memory. It seemed so perfectly real.
He had been barely twenty, and he had knelt naked in the huge chamber while black-robed priests chanted over him. He had closed his eyes, pride bursting through his chest at being Chosen.
First there had been the soft, stroking sensation as the priests painted black ink over the backs of his hands and across his eyelids. Then the ink had begun to burn into his flesh like acid. He had wanted to scream, but he had remained silent. At last the priests had washed his hands and eyes with blessed waters and balms. The pain had faded, but the burns had only grown darker until they had become jet black. And then he became Kahlil.
Again he observed the back of his hand, rubbing it as though the Prayerscar was somehow hidden. Though chapped and red at the knuckles, his skin showed no trace of black. Just as Nurjima had no Black Tower, he had no Prayerscars.
He couldn’t have just made them up. No, they had been real. He felt certain.
Something had happened to his head when he’d crossed between the worlds. His body had been injured, and so, apparently, had his memories. But he was blessed even if he had no Prayerscars to show it. He carried in his body witches’ blood and Parfir’s own bones, and he could prove it to himself right now.
He picked a man at random, a big fellow with a yellow beard and meaty hands. The man sat at a small table ten feet or so from Kahlil. Other patrons crowded in close at nearby tables, jostling each other as they shifted and gestured. Kahlil guessed that a few tugs might not be noticed. He lowered his gaze to the blonde man’s dark brown coat, focusing his concentration on the man’s bulging pocket. Then, casually, he lifted his left hand up close to his mouth and flicked his first two fingers apart.
A shock of biting pain shot through his fingers and bolted through his arm. The sensation startled Kahlil. It shouldn’t have hurt just to open the Gray Space. It was only traveling through that caused injuries. But then he was already wounded and weak. The force it took to open the space must have been too much strain. His body didn’t want to obey him.
Still, he didn’t allow the rift in the space to close. Setting his teeth, he clenched his jaw against the groan that almost escaped him. Steadily, he tore the space wide, and the contents of the man’s pocket began to fall into his hand.
There were coins and a banknote. Then a fat gold watch spilled out. The watch chain, however, seemed to have caught on something. Kahlil closed his fingers around it and gave a tug. The bearded man suddenly looked down to his coat and then to a slim man sitting at the table next to him.
Kahlil released the watch and let the space snap back closed. At the same moment the bearded man jammed his hand into his own pocket. He felt for the coins and banknote
and found neither. A look of rage came over him.
“You thief! You think you can steal from me?” he shouted at the slim man next to him. “I’ll damn well kill you!”
The other man barely had time to look up before the bearded man hammered a fist into the side of his head. The slim man fell, and the bearded man kicked him hard, knocking over chairs.
The other patrons drew back as the bearded man continued cursing and kicking the slim man. The singer went silent and stepped back from the edge of the stage. The slim man curled up, attempting to protect himself while the much bigger bearded man stomped at him furiously.
“I’ll kill you, you light-fingered fucker!” The bearded man’s face had gone red with anger.
Kahlil pushed himself up to his feet. He knew he was going to regret this, but he couldn’t let the man on the floor take a beating for him. He shoved his way past the other tavern patrons and grabbed the bearded man’s shoulder.
“Stop it,” Kahlil said.
“Go to hell!” the bearded man roared, and Kahlil could smell the sharp tang of wine on the man’s breath. Then he swung his fist up to smack Kahlil aside. Reflexively, Kahlil ducked and drove his own fist into the bearded man’s nose. A hot gush of blood spilled across his left hand.
The bearded man staggered back and then threw himself at Kahlil. Out of the corner of his eye, Kahlil saw the bloodied, slim man being lifted from the floor by two other patrons. That was good.
Then he crumpled to the ground beneath the immense weight of his bearded opponent. The man’s thick hands locked around his throat. Kahlil twisted beneath the man’s bulk, but his left arm was pinned tight. His right arm lay stretched out against the wooden floor, but Kahlil could hardly make it move. The pain was simply too great. And now he couldn’t breathe.
For a moment, out of pure animal reflex, he fought for air, spitting and gasping. The bearded man leaned over him, tightening his grip on Kahlil’s throat.