Year's Best Science Fiction 02 # 1985

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  The city, too, was nameless. It had neither night nor day, and Darvinda sensed that time was of a different order on the earth, miles up over their heads. At last he stayed Agnini’s hand on the board, and said to her, “Why then am I here?”

  “As my guest,” she said, “if thou wilt. But there is another matter, also, a thing of choice which I shall tell thee of, and which thou mayest then accept or decline to undertake.”

  “And if declined?”

  “Then thou shall depart when rested, an honored traveler who has rejoiced my house.”

  “And if accepted?”

  “To accept is to aid me.”

  “Then where is my choice?”

  “Hush, my lord. Promise nothing till you are informed.”

  Then she did tell him, and if not everything, enough.

  It was an edict of their Great King that sometimes some of his people must leave their cities, and wander the world of men above. So with Agnini and the prince who was her husband. And whether in punishment for some fault, or due only to the Inescapable, they were separated, these two, and their quests became different, and of different duration, so that when Agnini’s tasks were done and she might return to her own country, her lord had some while yet to spend in exile. Thus she returned alone to wait for him. And she was content to wait, for she loved him—they had been created for each other—and in the manner of the supernatural beings they were, for hundreds of mortal years they had remained together. This small absence of, perhaps a century, could be borne. But then, another in the city claimed her, by the rights only of lust and vacancy. And since he was a prince, and since the Nagas were as they were, and her lord far off, and no kindred to intervene, she could not deny this unwanted companion. Her only recourse had been to escape once more above, and to wander the alien earth, homeless and desolate.

  She did not have to tell him, Darvinda saw what he had been chosen to do. At once his mind, his senses, laid before him a panorama of skills which he perceived as his own. His surprise was mild, as was his excitement at them. Like the new clothes, his man’s body had come to fit him swiftly and well; the cast skins of his childhood and his weakness were foreign to him now he had outstripped them. So, he understood also that he had courage and confidence and need no longer be afraid of his fear.

  Nevertheless, he considered. To be used by Agnini flattered him, and pleased him. She had given him a great deal, when he was a terrified little boy. The chance to repay her gifts was to be wished for. Yet he was aware of other things, shadows moving inside the substance of what she had said.

  “It seems to me now,” he said then, “that I am strong and versed in combat. In any battle thine enemy may suggest, it appears I may attempt to match him. But it seems to me too, he is mighty. Can I prevail? If I go down before thy foe, what of thee thereafter? Will it go worse for thee?”

  Agnini kneeled by him, smiling up at him, black-eyed as the nights of earth.

  “Yes, thou mayest fall in the battle, dear lord. But if I swear that, even falling, even slain, he cannot triumph over thee, nor then over myself, wilt thou heed my words?”

  “But thou sayest I may die in this.”

  “This I do say. Thou mayest die. Yet shalt thou be the victor, and I through thee.”

  What man of the world of men would not have flung her gifts and her words together back in her face? He said, “Die yet prevail? Well, I trust thee. Through thee I know the soul does not perish, and through thee I know love exists, lessons no other gave me. So then, I will do it. When will he come?”

  Agnini touched his hands with her forehead; then rose.

  “Already, Darvinda, he is here.”

  He felt no alarm even at that. Rather he felt a surge of power and ferocity, the sword edge of the many-faceted Kshatram, the essence of the Warrior caste of which he now, bemusedly, humbly and gladly, reckoned himself an adjunct.

  It was as if he had cried out: Let him come in!

  The doors were pulled wide and the enemy strode through.

  He had come as a demon, maybe to appall, or else it was merely his jest. For though he wore a man’s form, yet he had kept the scales of the snake as his armoring, and in his wide mouth the white serpent’s teeth showed like tusks, gilded by ready venom. His eyes were not a man’s eyes, but blood-red and terrible. Only his hair was truly that of a man, long and black, falling far below his waist. Behind him walked an albino ape with cold pink eyes of its own, simpering with malice, that carried its master’s arms with a showy and martyred struggle.

  “Yes,” said the enemy, “look thou long at me, O mortal thing. Look at my skin which thou canst not pierce, and at my fangs which shall rend and poison thee. Stare into my eyes, red as the fire which shall burn thy corpse on the ghats, and my hair black as the River of the City which shall drink thine ashes. I am Rupanag. Or, thou mayest name me only Death, since I am thine.”

  “Greetings,” said Darvinda. “Where wilt thou fight?”

  “Below, on the bank above the water, where all may see. Or art bashful? Shall we set to in some dark place where none may witness thee?”

  “Let me get arms, and we will meet below, where thou desirest, on the bank.”

  “She will arm thee,” said Rupanag. “And arm thee well. Which is good. For soon everything of thine shall be everything of mine. And it is good too that we fight on the bank, the handier for the place where thy dead body shall be burned.”

  “Dost thou fence always thus?” asked Darvinda, “with thy tongue?”

  But Rupanag laughed, and was gone, and on the platforms below, beside the river, there was a noise of gathering and eagerness.

  As Darvinda left the doors of Agnini’s palace, a beggarwoman plucked at his wrist. Her eyes were bright as the lamps and torches that flamed in the river below: This city had no true beggars. “Do not fight,” she said. “Thou shalt be sorely harmed.”

  “Greater harm to another, if I do not.”

  Massed crowds stood on the ghats, their finery ablaze. As he went down between them to the platform Rupanag had selected, a sneering youth caught at Darvinda’s elbow. “Do not fight. Thou shalt be put to shame.”

  “Thou shamest thyself to boast of it.”

  And as he reached the broad platform and stepped out on to it, a little girl child, no older than he had been before, ran to Darvinda holding in both hands garlands of marigolds, and pointed at his heart. And the child said, in a woman’s voice, “Fight not, Darvinda. For thou shalt die.”

  But, “There is no death,” he said, and took one of the garlands and put it on his neck with the collar of gold and precious stones. The child smiled and vanished in the crowd.

  And then Rupanag came and filled the horizon.

  At once the platform of marble was altered. It had grown as wide as a desert, and the crowd was no longer to be seen, nor the palaces or their lights, nor the reflecting river. Even Rupanag was miles off, although his immanence made him perfectly visible still.

  Darvinda beheld Rupanag take from the pale ape with the pale eyes a colossal bow, bend and string it, and set to its lip an arrow large as a spear, which suddenly the bow spat out. The arrow came like a bird of prey, high and sheer, and the air was filled by the sound of its cry. At the last instant Darvinda leapt aside, flinging up his shield to deflect the missile. But the great arrow carried half the shield away with it, plunging on into the platform until only the quivering flight remained above ground. Then Darvinda took up the bow Angini had given him, strung it, set an arrow to the string and let it fly. No sooner was the arrow in the air than it too, swollen with the warrior power of the Kshatram, grew great and terrible. But Rupanag had snatched another arrow and discharged it. Like a falcon on a pigeon this second arrow stooped, and met Darvinda’s arrow at the center of the marble plain. There was a crash like thunder and a flash of fire, and splinters hurtled downward in a rain. Neither arrow had survived the impact.

  As the last smoldering fragments hit the plain, the surface of it shook.
Rupanag was running, his bounds eating up the illusory or actual miles in seconds. He loomed like an angry cloud, blotting out the light. But Darvinda moved to meet him, and either his own state enlarged, or the image of his enemy shrank. They met as two lions meet, springing forward, and the sword that each had drawn rang on the other’s with a searing moan.

  “Why,” said Rupanag, “thou fightest as one crippled, but thy crippling is to come.”

  But for all that, Darvinda’s blows made him skip and spin and keep busy to get out of the way of them. There seemed no hope of penetrating the scaly dermis; Darvinda’s aim, then, was to bruise and stun, and to break if possible. So his sword smote down and down again. And all the while the blade of Rupanag hurtled toward him and away. Sometimes the impact was accepted on the half of Darvinda’s ruined shield, all the arrow had left him. Sometimes the impact was avoided. But now and again, the point of the sword ripped home. Darvinda’s red blood lay on his golden flesh and mingled with the red jewels of Agnini’s gift.

  “Thou hast garnets under thy skin, and rubies,” cried Rupanag. “I find gems for thee brighter than those she gave thee. Yet alas, thou findest none for me.”

  But on and on they strove, and there came at length a blow between the swords that broke them, and they burst in pieces, like a firework, just as the arrows had been burst.

  Rupanag fell back, and flung away his sword hilt with a snarl. Then he jumped straight upward, turned in the air, came down upon his hands and so folded into a reeling living wheel, which rolled itself at Darvinda and caught him fast.

  They fought then only with their bodies’ strength, with hands and limbs and feet. And as they wrestled, all the time Rupanag grinned and gnashed his serpent’s fangs, striving to bring them where they could close and inject a poison richer than that of seventy cobras into his adversary’s veins.

  But Darvinda had not loosed hold of the hilt of his own wrecked sword. Presently, as they struggled, he dashed this hilt with all his might against the beautiful ghastly teeth of Rupanag, and smashed the uppermost of the great biting fangs.

  Rupanag screamed, and in that moment of his anguish, galvanized by enormous agony, he thrust his foot against Darvinda’s breast and seizing the yellow hair in his hands he whirled him high. And as Darvinda fell down again across Rupanag’s shoulders, Rupanag snapped his spine like a reed.

  So the combat ended, and the city came back, and the ghats with the torches burning, and the palaces and crowds beside the river. And all who looked saw Darvinda lying on the marble among the blood and the marigolds, slain in the way that men most often kill snakes.

  The Serpent-People did this much for Darvinda, they wrapped him in a white shroud and left him ready on the platform for Agnini to honor with the death-fire. He had fought well and given them a show, for though they seemed far off, they had stood close and watching all the while. But he was a foreigner, neither of their race nor their kind, and mortal.

  Rupanag went away to be cleansed and tended, to pray and sacrifice, and change his shape. He came back as a bridegroom behind a concourse of chariots and horses and musicians and colored lamps, though the ape-slave did not go with him; it was a female, and jealous, and had run to chatter on the tops of the city, like one mad. The conqueror stalked into Agnini’s palace. After which the doors were closed.

  So he sat down in the room of golden walls and Agnini’s handmaidens served him. He frowned at her, for she too wore white, as if to indicate a widow’s death. As a man, Rupanag was tall and well-made, his eyes and hair black as ebony. But when he smiled now, he kept his mouth shut, for his teeth, in whatever form he took, had been forever spoiled.

  “Well, I will eat, and drink wine,” said Rupanag.

  “Do so, Lord,” said Agnini.

  “Then I will go with thee to some chamber where thou shalt pleasure me.”

  “Perhaps not so.”

  “Why, who is there to prevent me now?”

  “Listen,” said Agnini, “thou shalt hear the doors fly open before him.”

  All this Darvinda saw and heard, in a detached way, as he drifted about in the air. Incorporeal, it seemed, he could see and hear anything he wished, and more than one thing at once. Nor did he see with eyes, nor did he hear with ears. Nor did he, exactly, see or hear.

  There had been a time of quietness after death. Then curiosity had made him voyage through the atmosphere. Now some other thing drew him back to the platform. His death had not been a death, but only one more shedding of a skin. And returning, he was drawn down and in, and was once more clothed in body, thrusting his way from an envelope of torn flesh and severed spine, and lastly from the polite shroud, to stand upright and whole on the ghats above the river.

  This, it seemed, was Agnini’s magic still, but it was true and sure as she had told him. Carelessly he stripped from the flaccid skin and the rattling bones, which had been himself, the garments she had given him, and put them on. If any observed him now they made no sign. And when he turned toward the palace, no one came to warn or mock at him.

  Every door flew open with a bang in front of Darvinda. When he reached the golden room and entered it, Rupanag, who had been sitting upright with a look of horror, started to his feet. On this occasion no words were exchanged. The serpent prince grasped platters from the tables and hurled them, and as they came they seemed altered to knives and lances, but Darvinda stepped from their path, and they passed him by, each with a rushing shriek.

  When he reached Rupanag, Darvinda had only to put out his hands and lay hold on him. Rupanag had by this time drawn a long dagger, but in striking it turned on a jewel at Darvinda’s hip. It was no longer the hour of Rupanag’s triumph. And Darvinda took the dagger from his enemy’s hand as a man takes a leaf from a bush, and drove it through Rupanag’s armorless skin into the furious heart.

  So Rupanag ended, and his man’s body sprawled among the feast and the flowers.

  “But even an immortal has a soul which cannot die,” said Agnini. “See.”

  And at his foot Darvinda saw lying a serpent’s egg, and out of the egg at that instant came frantically wriggling a little brown venomless snake, newborn and bewildered, and it crawled away over the floor.

  “So he must remain awhile,” said Agnini. “A little brown snake, dwelling in the lowliest crevices of the Naga city. For he died in lust and rage, and lust and rage were the cause. And they that die so deluded descend to the lowest way. But thou, lord, who died in the action of nobleness for another, aspiring to nothing more, thou art a man again, thy daylight path before thee.”

  Then she murmured softly, “And thou hast freed me.”

  There were other rooms to which her servants conducted him. Here he underwent a second time rituals of bathing and purification, and then, in a silent courtyard before a shrine of the god Indra, the Wielder of the Thunderbolt, Darvinda made his offerings, as was proper. And only in hanging the garland about the throat of the god did Darvinda pause a moment, a little embarrassed that once, long ago, he had thought him only a disreputable idol (his mother’s term) before realizing all gods were one and one many, and that they have a multitude of names. He begged Indra’s pardon, but from courtesy and gratitude, which are not fear.

  And then there was yet one more room, hung with silks like running rivers, perfumed with incenses, with blue collyrium and smoky sandalwood, with oils and flowers. The light there was low and subtle. When Agnini had entered the golden room she had brought a kind of sunrise into it. But here, entering the dark, she was like a moon of darkness, furled in a night of blackest hair.

  He kneeled to her, and placed his hand upon her foot, where the rings glimmered. His body was a man’s, and his desires also were those of a man. He knew quite well that he had won her, and better yet, that she would give herself. For there was love between them.

  But when he drew her to him, her smiling eyes were sad. And he remembered all the rest of what she had told him. Of her husband, the prince for whom she had been created, her
lord who was bound to wander still, and for whose sake—rather than accept another—she had returned to the bitter exile of the human earth.

  So he stepped away from her, though his whole body burned and reviled him. And then the fires passed into a wonderful coolness, a sort of joy, because such a look of happiness had been born in her face. She seemed younger than the youngest child. Her soul was dancing, and took his dancing with it. And there came in those moments, after all, a communion of love, if not of the love of the flesh.

  When the summit of that marveling shared tumult had passed with no words at all, she spoke to him.

  “Because of this final benefit thou has rendered me, I may greet my lord, running to meet him at the first sound of his footstep, without debasement or deception. And for this, I promise thee one further gift. Valor and strength thou shalt have, beauty and favor, fortune and sweetness all thy days, but also a perfect and enduring love shall be thine, a love even as the love of demons and gods. Remember me, lord, but once, when thou hast found her.”

  The darkness moved and flickered. It was so real it could not be possible it should pass. But the lovely moon, the somber moon of the woman’s face, swam on its night of hair. The walls of the room were fading. The towers and the lights beyond had lost their shape and shine.

  Already the dream was ebbing away. It would soon be forgotten. There was a coldness at his back. Throat too dry, and eyes gritty from sleep, and feet sore from walking, raising his head, confused—to see the trees over the distant garden wall—The small boy stumbled down the dusty road, and through the swarming dusk, without music … .

  V

  Evelyn was hysterical, to the point of madness. Chaver Finlay stood and poured himself scotch, waiting until the cries had died, or paused for breath.

  “And that’s why dinner is late, I take it?” he then said.

  “Oh, Chaver!” she wailed, reminiscent of the jackals he had heard on the road. But one threw a stone at them, and Evelyn was not so easy to be rid of. She wilted before him, soiled by hours of tears and squawking in broiling weather, her hair practically on end and her faded eyes starting from her head. “All morning, all afternoon! All day, and not a trace of him. The servants looked everywhere. I had them all out—and then he came wandering in after sunset. I couldn’t get a thing out of him. Just something about falling asleep in the hills. Oh, Chaver, he can’t have got all that way by himself.”