An Empire Unacquainted With Defeat

by Glen Cook

  "Billow. Three-Fingers. Walleye. Clabber. Stay here. Don't let nothing near the ship. The rest of you, form up. Tor. Toke. Take the flanks. Spread out. Mica. Kid. Stay with me." I tested the flex of my bow. She was as smooth and powerful as ever.

  Toke and Tor spread the men. A sorrier, nastier bunch I couldn't imagine. They did not properly belong in this scene, but rather in a mad painter's portrait of a city being raped.

  Fish just stood there. I gestured for him to go. He didn't move. He seemed frightened. But that was judging by human standards. Kid and Mica urged Fish along with the tips of their blades. He walked with difficulty.

  I gave Toke and Tor the signal.

  We reached the nearest ruins. They were extremely ancient. Up close, you could hardly tell that the stones once formed buildings. There was no evidence of occupation, present or past. Time had devoured everything but the stones themselves.

  The bell sounded louder as we advanced. I had the men fashion earplugs. That helped only a little. We could feel the sound.

  The slits in the clouds became more numerous. A dozen fingers of light played across the city. From the peak of a rubble pile I saw that it sprawled for miles. It had been vast in its time.

  Kid grabbed my elbow, indicated a particular column of light. For a moment I saw nothing. Then light flashed, reflected. There were more flashes when the beam drifted. The ruins sparkled briefly.

  I checked the other columns of light. Each trailed sparkles across the ruins. Curious.

  Mica and the Kid yelped. There had been a brilliant flash directly ahead. A moment later a sailor called, "Skipper! Look here." He was on one knee. I knelt myself. A soft gleam shone between the stones, something in there giving off light.

  "Dig it out." I glanced at Fish. He remained indifferent. He stared toward the source of the ringing.

  The men dug out a triangle of glass an inch in its long direction. Its reverse was a grayish black. Its edges were the green of a deep tropical sea. It looked like a mirror shard, yet it reflected nothing. I moved it around, glimpsed something momentarily but could not catch it again.

  We discovered scores of similar fragments, none bigger than the first. Occasionally, we found handfuls crushed to gravel. Mica chirruped, "That stuff would be worth a fortune back home. For making jewelry."

  Typical Mica thinking. He always went for the treasure. Dragon used it for ballast. "Thought you were cured of that."

  "Sure. Only . . . ."

  "On our way back. We'll fill a sack."

  Kid found a fragment an inch across and round. He sailed it toward the apparent source of the ringing. "Gonna hammer that bastard when I get hold of him," he yelled.

  "Keep moving," I said. "And be careful. We're getting close."

  IX

  I whirled, arrow drawn.

  "What?" Mica demanded.

  "Saw something. I thought."

  "Know what you mean. I keep getting that myself. But there's never anything there."

  A shadow moved in the corner of my eye. I looked. Nothing. The men were all uneasy. "Tor! Hold up." Time to call on his remarkable eyes. "You see anything? Like from the corner of your eye?"

  "Shadows. Like they was from this thing." He indicated Fish with his cutlass. "Tell us about it."

  Fish ignored him.

  "Can I kill him, Captain?"

  "Not yet. He might be useful. He don't make an effort, though, you can chop him into bait."

  "Give me a go, too, Captain," Kid pleaded.

  "Easy. We need to find out where we're at, why we're here, and how we get out."

  We went on, the ringing engulfing us. I shivered in the chill. The grays grew grayer, though blades of light continued to scribble trails of sparkle. An occasional bright flash kept me on course.

  The Kid scampered up every rubble heap. Atop one he froze, pointed. His mouth worked but no words came out. Cursing my tired old bones, I clambered up there.

  Ahead stood a panel of bright light. Clouds of shadows boiled through the rocks around it. No corner of the eye stuff here. As Tor had said, they were shadows of Fish, racing over and under and around one another like maggots in an old carcass. The light was their focus.

  At first glimpse it was blinding. In moments, though, it was bright only by contrast. I could look at it without discomfort.

  It was a window. Things moved on the other side.

  Mica grabbed a rock and cocked his arm. I yelled. Fish knocked the stone out of his hand, then hurled himself at the sheet of light.

  Several men threw knives and javelins. I bent my bow, thought better of it. A javelin hit him an instant before he reached the light.

  Shadows swirled. The great anvil rang angrily. Fish staggered, kept on. I nearly caught him. He did not move well on legs Tor had brutalized.

  He hit the bright plane. And kept on going. Twisting. Foaming and twirling and twisting, inside and out, and around again . . . . Then he was over there. He staggered, fell, bleeding on a cobbled street. Others like him surrounded him immediately. They seemed horrified and frightened by his materialization.

  I kept after him. And mashed my nose.

  Men roared up, ready to break the glass. Or whatever it was.

  "Hold it a damned minute!" I shouted. "Let's figure out what we've got here."

  Shadows rolled around us, over us, assailing the window. Fish's passage through stirred them up thoroughly.

  Occasionally a shadow fell on the plane in such a way that the glass acted as a mirror. Each reflection showed us another monster like Fish. And, now that Fish had passed through, the creatures on the other side seemed able to see the reflections from their side as well.

  Which seemed to strike many with panic.

  The hammering became frenzied. The shadows struck listening attitudes, then swarmed away, all headed the same direction.

  The hammering stopped.

  The silence was like the sudden absence of a murderous headache. My thoughts became clearer, more sensible. "Tor, pick six men and watch this thing. The rest of us will follow those shadows."

  "Why watch it?" Tor wanted to know.

  "To see what it does. Toke. Come on."

  X

  A reddish glow illuminated the flank of a huge rubble pile. There was a rent in the earth beside it. The glow came from that. Straggler shadows fluttered in. Each seemed to be carrying something.

  "You going down there?" Mica asked. We could see nothing but red light from our vantage.

  "We might find answers."

  "Or we could head back to the ship."

  "And then what? We've got to do something if we want to get out of here."

  Toke agreed. "Whatever brought us here will be down there. Let's kill it." The fever smoldered in his eyes.

  I went first. The gash narrowed quickly. I stopped thirty feet down, bent over with my hands protecting the back of my head. Stones and dirt pelted down. Toke slammed into me, then the Kid, Mica, Jo-Jo, and Blackie.

  It was warmer down there. Though maybe that was just the absence of the wind. I wriggled out of the pile, slithered through a last narrow crack, stepped out into what must have been a deep basement once upon a time. Forty-five degrees to my left lay what looked like a lake of burning charcoal. Shadows dropped their tiny burdens into that. Beyond the smoldering lake was something resembling Fish, only twenty feet tall, seated, wearing eight arms. Several hands gripped hammers. Each hammer gleamed with fresh wear. The thing had eyes like jewels, in the finest tradition of horrible hidden idols. But these jewels were alive. They looked right through me, into the darkest folds of my soul.

  A normal Fish thing sat in the monster's lap. It beckoned.

  The crack opened higher than the basement floor. I jumped down. Dust puffed up. I slapped an arrow across my bow, made way for the others. "Toke. Send somebody up to tell Tor, then get this mob organized."

  Confrontation time. Evening it up time. Straightening him out time. How dare he waken us?

  This time I could
not be direct. This time I had to find a way home before I could feed the devil to his own flames.

  Shadows swarmed around us, over the walls, across the floor, in tens or hundreds of thousands. They danced upon the coals, dropping something that must have been fuel. There was an eager stink to their frenzy. They had been waiting a long time.

  Why?

  Toke wanted to kill the Fish right away. "Let him talk first," I suggested. "You want out of here, don't you?"

  "Kill him and his spell dies with him."

  True in some cases. "The Itaskians' didn't, though. We could end up trapped till we starve."

  "Dead is dead, Bowman."

  "Some ways dead must be less miserable than others. Stand easy." I moved toward the lake of coals.

  Fish Junior beckoned me.

  "You guys spread out," I said. "Cover me. Poke around. Cut loose if the big guy swings those hammers."

  I walked forward. Mica and Kid stuck close, Kid hoping he'd get to do some damage. Fish shadows by the ten thousand boiled in excitement. I skirted the coals, which were warm but not really hot.

  Fish Junior dropped off the idol's lap, came to meet me. The idol's eyes tracked me.

  Some idol. It was alive. Or animate, anyway.

  Anger kept me moving.

  Anger is the fuel that fires us all.

  Junior tried the gobble his predecessor had used. "Better try Itaskian, pal."

  He faced his deity. If deity it was. The big guy rapped him lightly on the noggin with a hammer.

  Mica snickered. Hysterically. Easy to understand. That hammer had to weigh fifty pounds. The anvil where it whacked out its mad music had been disfigured by endless pounding.

  Junior hardly staggered. His face lighted with inner glow. He said, "I am Something Unpronounceable who is Speaker-of-Truth for Great-Master-of-the-Hope-of-Callidor-Beside-the-Sea. You are Bowman and the crew of the eternal voyager."

  "Right first try. That the Great with the hammers?"

  "His worldly avatar. He has no form. He is spirit. He fills all Callidor. And we fill Him." His gesture encompassed the agitated shadows. "We invoked Him in this form. He gave some of us flesh in turn. Including that traitor who abandoned us moments ago. He will forge new hope for all of us."

  "Right." I had no idea what he was blathering about. "He the one that brung us here?"

  Junior nodded. He had the gestures down better than Fish the First.

  "Why? Get to the point. We ain't happy. You don't talk fast and sweet, you'll be sorry you woke us up."

  "The Hope of Callidor is your hope. The Hope of Callidor is your Master. You must carry out His desires."

  "I said get to the point."

  He indicated the frenetic shadows. "We are all exiles." He shut his snake eyes. "Once Callidor was great. Once the Master was great and unchallenged. But cold devoured the world. We could live here no longer. The ancients created windows into other planes and migrated to friendlier climes. But some were not allowed to go. And others were forced to come back. We who were disdained eventually combined our wills into power enough to raise the Master in animate form. The Master searched the planes of existence for a key that would open the way. He found you. It took another age to bring you here. Now you will open the way and end our exile."

  In a pig's eye. Or . . . . Maybe. His story contained suspicious gaps, but what the hell?

  "How do we get out of here?"

  "End our exile and the Master will send you back."

  That simple, eh? Sure. "Yeah? What do we need to do? Get down to cases."

  "It will be much easier now that an unbroken portal has been found. You will pass through that portal and seize control of it from that side. You will compel them to open the way for us."

  "We can get through when you can't?" I had seen Fish the First do the deed.

  "You have flesh. We do not. Excepting me. I was given form and flesh so the Master might communicate."

  Mica touched my elbow lightly. Yeah. The bullshit was getting deep. We needed to consult. "We're going back over there. We're going to talk it over."

  "Do not dally, Bowman."

  He was eager, too.

  XI

  Mica was all set for a brawl. "That story stinks. The guy don't know how to lie."

  "It has holes. He left out whatever he thought we wouldn't like. But that's not the point. We're in a corner, Mica. And I don't see any angles. We need more information."

  Tor appeared in the crack in the basement wall. "Damn!" he whispered. "It's true." He hopped down.

  "What's true?"

  "One of them Fish guys came out of that damned mirror. Walked up on the other side, did him a weird dance and jumped at it. He turned inside out a couple times, then he was here. Couple of them shadows went the other way while he was in the mirror. Would you believe they grew bodies when they got over there? But the Fish guys over there whacked them with clubs and threw them back. Their bodies sort of evaporated till there wasn't nothing but shadows left."

  "All right." I believed Tor. He lacked all imagination. "What about our old Fish?"

  "They threw him back, too. All busted up. He wasn't very happy. He tried to say something but he all of a sudden started to steam. And scream. Then there wasn't nothing left but another one of them shadows."

  "And this new Fish?"

  "He grabbed holt of Buzzard Neck soon as he come through and pushed his forehead against Buzz's. We dragged him off and tied him up. He started yakking. He made enough sense that we listened some instead of just chopping him up. I come to get you."

  I glanced behind me. The basement was still. The coals had faded some. The idol's eyes gleamed, fixed on me. "What did he say?"

  "He said don't help them. This place is a prison." He grinned. "I guess for our kind of guys. Guys so black-hearted nothing can help them. The critter with the hammers is their devil."

  "I see." I started pacing. That had helped Colgrave think. I kept one eye on the idol. Nothing happened over there.

  "What do we do?" Mica asked.

  "This news change anything?" I asked. "Are our balls still in a vise?"

  He scowled. "Right."

  "Right. Toke, keep an eye out here. I'm going topside. Mica. Kid. Tor. Come with me."

  The men hoisted me to the crack. After minor physical miracles, I reached the surface. The others followed. For the Kid it was all in a day's fun. We went back to the portal. And there was a Fish, neatly trussed.

  Who told a story identical to what Tor had related.

  I sketched our situation. He didn't seem sympathetic.

  "You expect me to save your asses out of the goodness of my heart? You don't know who we are, do you? Me, I don't have a heart." I glanced at the sky. Daggers of light still roamed the ruins. Hints of faces still marred the bellies of the clouds. "What the hell do you want?"

  The new Fish admitted he had no idea who we were.

  "Fool," I muttered. "Look at Buzzard Neck's memories."

  He folded inside himself. In moments he came back looking bleak.

  "Yeah," I said. "Now. Again. Why should we help? We got a shot at breaking even with the other gang."

  "Let me take you to the other side. I am but a novice. Perhaps the Masters can explain better."

  "Now you're talking. Cut him loose, guys." I flexed my bow. "Kid, you and Mica come with us. Stay in his pocket."

  Kid giggled. Fish had no pockets. He wore doublet and hose.

  A gang of Fishes watched from the other side. Our captive gestured. They gestured back, not happily. The signals got heated. Then the creatures over there relented.

  I glanced at the clouds. They seemed less unfriendly. "How about a hint, then?" I muttered.

  "Come," emissary Fish said.

  "What do we do?"

  "Just follow me." He marched forward.

  The instant he touched the plane an angry clang rolled across the gray ruin. I hit the mirror a second later. Another blow on the anvil shook earth and Heaven.
r />   XII

  The heat over there was oppressive. The air was tropically muggy. The emissary became more spry quickly. On the Callidor side he had been pale and slow.

  "Make this quick," I told him. "I have men back there and the head monster is swinging his hammer."

  "It will take the Masters a few minutes to arrive."

  "What happens if the others come here?" I asked the emissary. "You can't just send them back?"

  "Not if they all come. Callidor has been a prison for ages. Those exiled there do not perish. There are more of them than there are of us. They would seize control. They would bring their dark master across. His rule would be restored. All the warmth would go out of this world, too.

  "He was the Doom of Callidor. When his cult ruled. Their dark rites conjured him into that world. He devoured it. Sucked all the heat out. Our ancestors escaped here. Some of theirs did as well. We succeeded in sending them back to Callidor and banishing their Master to his native hell. Now they have conjured his avatar again. And he lusts after the warmth of the new world."

  "Right." It made no sense. Gods and devils seldom do. I reflected on a lake of unnaturally cool coals. The guy with eight hands was feeding off their heat? Might mean something. Might not. I said, "That critter has got us in a bind. You don't want us to help him, you better make a deal to get us out."

  The emissary's bosses showed up. They were old Fish. Their skins were baggy, colorless, and peeling. Though obviously distressed, they couldn't get hold of the concept of my problem being more important to me than was theirs.

  I saw how they could solve it. Finish what they must have tried an age ago. Send a volunteer through to bust any doorways that remained unbroken. Then round up all the millions of fragments and grind them into shining sand. Take the sand out and dump it in the harbor, if they wanted to take it that far.

  An hour of yammer wafted into the mists of history. Maddening, not to be able to solve things just by killing people. "You guys aren't even trying. We can't help." I told Mica, "We're on our own."

  Mica had a glint in his eye. The Fish were getting to him. He had his eye on salvation and had stopped thinking clearly.