by Sean Wallace
Temur had softened, when she saw how Asza took to the doll, holding it, and singing to it, and smearing gruel on its rag-mouth with her fingers to feed it. They called her “little life-light”, and heard her saying it to the doll, “il-ife-ight”, rocking it in her arms.
He pressed his nose into the doll, trying to smell Asza’s baby smell on it, like milk and forest soil and some sweet spice. But he only smelled the acrid stench of burnt cloth.
When he forced his wet eyes open, he saw a blurry figure coming toward him. Cursing himself for a fool, he tossed the doll away and pulled out his knife, holding it at his side. He wiped his face on his sleeve, and stood up straight, to show the man coming down the trail that the folk of Ilmak Dale did no obeisance. Then his mouth went dry and his hair stood up, for the man coming down the trail was no man at all.
It was a little taller than a man, and had the body of a man, though covered with a dark-gray fur; but its head was the head of a jackal. It wore armor of bronze and leather, all straps and discs with curious engravings, and carried a great black spear with a vicious point at each end.
Marish had heard that there were all sorts of strange folk in the world, but he had never seen anything like this.
“May you die with great suffering,” the creature said in what seemed to be a calm, friendly tone.
“May you die as soon as may be!” Marish cried, not liking to be threatened.
The creature nodded solemnly. “I am Kadath-Naan of the Empty City,” it announced. “I wonder if I might ask your assistance in a small matter.”
Marish didn’t know what to say to this. The creature waited.
Marish said, “You can ask.”
“I must speak with . . .” It frowned. “I am not sure how to put this. I do not wish to offend.”
“Then why,” Marish asked before he could stop himself, “did you menace me on a painful death?”
“Menace?” the creature said. “I only greeted you.”
“You said, ‘May you die with great suffering.’ That like to be a threat or a curse, and I truly don’t thank you for it.”
The creature frowned. “No, it is a blessing. Or it is from a blessing: ‘May you die with great suffering, and come to know holy dread and divine terror, stripping away your vain thoughts and fancies until you are fit to meet the Bone-White Fathers face to face; and may you be buried in honor and your name sung until it is forgotten.’ That is the whole passage.”
“Oh,” said Marish. “Well, that sounds a bit better, I reckon.”
“We learn that blessing as pups,” said the creature in a wondering tone. “Have you never heard it?”
“No indeed,” said Marish, and put his knife away. “Now what do you need? I can’t think to be much help to you – I don’t know this land here.”
“Excuse my bluntness, but I must speak with an embalmer, or a sepulchrist, or someone of that sort.”
“I’ve no notion what those are,” said Marish.
The creature’s eyes widened. It looked, as much as the face of a jackal could, like someone whose darkest suspicions were in the process of being confirmed.
“What do your people do with the dead?” it said.
“We put them in the ground.”
“With what preparation? With what rites and monuments?” said the thing.
“In a wood box for them as can afford it, and a piece of linen for them as can’t; and we say a prayer to the west wind. We put the stone in with them, what has their soul kept in it.” Marish thought a bit, though he didn’t much like the topic. He rubbed his nose on his sleeve. “Sometime we’ll put a pile of stones on the grave, if it were someone famous.”
The jackal-headed man sat heavily on the ground. It put its head in its hands. After a long moment it said, “Perhaps I should kill you now, that I might bury you properly.”
“Now you just try that,” said Marish, taking out his knife again.
“Would you like me to?” said the creature, looking up.
Its face was serene. Marish found he had to look away, and his eyes fell upon the scorched rags of the doll, twisted up in the stalks.
“Forgive me,” said Kadath-Naan of the Empty City. “I should not be so rude as to tempt you. I see that you have duties to fulfill, just as I do, before you are permitted the descent into emptiness. Tell me which way your village lies, and I will see for myself what is done.”
“My village—” Marish felt a heavy pressure behind his eyes, in his throat, wanting to push through into a sob. He held it back. “My village is gone. Something come and crushed it. I were off hunting, and when I come back, it were all burning, and full of the stink of blood. Whatever did it made this trail through the flowers. I think it went quick; I don’t think I’ll likely catch it. But I hope to.” He knew he sounded absurd: a peasant chasing a demon. He gritted his teeth against it.
“I see,” said the monster. “And where did this something come from? Did the trail come from the north?”
“It didn’t come from nowhere. Just the village torn to pieces and this trail leading out.”
“And the bodies of the dead,” said Kadath-Naan carefully. “You buried them in – wooden boxes?”
“There weren’t no bodies,” Marish said. “Not of people. Just blood, and a few pieces of bone and gristle, and pigs’ and horses’ bodies all charred up. That’s why I’m following.” He looked down. “I mean to find them if I can.”
Kadath-Naan frowned. “Does this happen often?”
Despite himself, Marish laughed. “Not that I ever heard before.”
The jackal-headed creature seemed agitated. “Then you do not know if the bodies received . . . even what you would consider proper burial.”
“I have a feeling they ain’t received it,” Marish said.
Kadath-Naan looked off in the distance towards Marish’s village, then in the direction Marish was heading. It seemed to come to a decision. “I wonder if you would accept my company in your travels,” it said. “I was on a different errand, but this matter seems to . . . outweigh it.”
Marish looked at the creature’s spear and said, “You’d be welcome.” He held out the fingers of his hand. “Marish of Ilmak Dale.”
The trail ran through the blackened devastation of another village, drenched with blood but empty of human bodies. The timbers of the houses were crushed to kindling; Marish saw a blacksmith’s anvil twisted like a lock of hair, and plows that had been melted by enormous heat into a pool of iron. They camped beyond the village, in the shade of a twisted hawthorn tree. A wild autumn wind stroked the meadows around them, carrying dandelion seeds and wisps of smoke and the stink of putrefying cattle.
The following evening they reached a hill overlooking a great town curled around a river. Marish had never seen so many houses – almost too many to count. Most were timber and mud like those of his village, but some were great structures of stone, towering three or four stories into the air. House built upon house, with ladders reaching up to the doors of the ones on top. Around the town, fields full of wheat rustled gold in the evening light. Men and women were reaping in the fields, singing work songs as they swung their scythes.
The path of destruction curved around the town, as if avoiding it.
“Perhaps it was too well defended,” said Kadath-Naan.
“Maybe,” said Marish, but he remembered the pool of iron and the crushed timbers, and doubted. “I think that like to be Nabuz. I never come this far south before, but traders heading this way from the fair at Halde were always going to Nabuz to buy.”
“They will know more of our adversary,” said Kadath-Naan.
“I’ll go,” said Marish. “You might cause a stir; I don’t reckon many of your sort visit Nabuz. You keep to the path.”
“Perhaps I might ask of you . . .”
“If they are friendly there, I’ll ask how they bury their dead,” Marish said.
Kadath-Naan nodded somberly. “Go to duty and to death,” he said.
> Marish thought it must be a blessing, but he shivered all the same.
The light was dimming in the sky. The reapers heaped the sheaves high on the wagon, their songs slow and low, and the city gates swung open for them.
The city wall was stone, mud, and timber, twice as tall as a man, and great gates were iron. But the wall was not well kept. Marish crept among the stalks to a place where the wall was lower and trash and rubble were heaped high against it.
He heard the creak of the wagon rolling through the gates, the last work song fading away, the men of Nabuz calling out to each other as they made their way home. Then all was still.
Marish scrambled out of the field into a dead run, scrambled up the rubble, leapt atop the wall and lay on its broad top. He peeked over, hoping he had not been seen.
The cobbled street was empty. More than that, the town itself was silent. Even in Ilmak Dale, the evenings had been full of dogs barking, swine grunting, men arguing in the streets and women gossiping and calling the children in. Nabuz was supposed to be a great capital of whoring, drinking and fighting; the traders at Halde had always moaned over the delights that awaited them in the south if they could cheat the villagers well enough. But Marish heard no donkey braying, no baby crying, no cough, no whisper: nothing pierced the night silence.
He dropped over, landed on his feet quiet as he could, and crept along the street’s edge. Before he had gone ten steps, he noticed the lights.
The windows of the houses flickered, but not with candlelight or the light of fires. The light was cold and blue.
He dragged a crate under the high window of the nearest house and clambered up to see.
There was a portly man with a rough beard, perhaps a potter after his day’s work; there was his stout young wife, and a skinny boy of nine or ten. They sat on their low wooden bench, their dinner finished and put to the side (Marish could smell the fresh bread and his stomach cursed him). They were breathing, but their faces were slack, their eyes wide and staring, their lips gently moving. They were bathed in blue light. The potter’s wife was rocking her arms gently as if she were cradling a newborn babe – but the swaddling blankets she held were empty.
And now Marish could hear a low inhuman voice, just at the edge of hearing, like a thought of his own. It whispered in time to the flicker of the blue light, and Marish felt himself drawn by its caress. Why not sit with the potter’s family on the bench? They would take him in. He could stay here, the whispering promised: forget his village, forget his grief. Fresh bread on the hearth, a warm bed next to the coals of the fire. Work the clay, mix the slip for the potter, eat a dinner of bread and cheese, then listen to the blue light and do what it told him. Forget the mud roads of Ilmak Dale, the laughing roar of Perdan and Thin Deri and Chibar and the others in its alehouse, the harsh cough and crow of its roosters at dawn. Forget willowy Temur, her hair smooth as a river and bright as a sheaf of wheat, her proud shoulders and her slender waist, Temur turning her satin cheek away when he tried to kiss it. Forget the creak and splash of the mill, and the soft rushes on the floor of Maghd’s hovel. The potter of Nabuz had a young and willing niece who needed a husband, and the blue light held laughter and love enough for all. Forget the heat and clanging of Fat Deri’s smithy; forget the green stone that held Pa’s soul, that he’d laid upon his shroud. Forget Asza, little Asza whose tiny body he’d held to his heart . . .
Marish thought of Asza and he saw the potter’s wife’s empty arms and, with one flex of his legs, he kicked himself away from the wall, knocking over the crate and landing sprawled among rolling apples.
He sprang to his feet. There was no sound around him. He stuffed five apples in his pack, and hurried towards the center of Nabuz.
The sun had set, and the moon washed the streets in silver. From every window streamed the cold blue light.
Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw a shadow dart behind him, and, he turned and took out his knife. But he saw nothing, and though his good sense told him five apples and no answers was as much as he should expect from Nabuz, he kept on.
He came to a great square full of shadows, and at first he thought of trees. But it was tall iron frames, and men and women bolted to them upside down. The bolts went through their bodies, crusty with dried blood.
One man nearby was live enough to moan. Marish poured a little water into the man’s mouth, and held his head up, but the man could not swallow; he coughed and spluttered, and the water ran down his face and over the bloody holes where his eyes had been.
“But the babies,” the man rasped, “how could you let her have the babies?”
“Let who?” said Marish.
“The White Witch!” the man roared in a whisper. “The White Witch, you bastards! If you’d but let us fight her—”
“Why—” Marish began.
“Lie again, say the babies will live forever – lie again, you cowardly blue-blood maggots in the corpse of Nabuz . . .” He coughed and blood ran over his face.
The bolts were fast into the frame. “I’ll get a tool,” Marish said, “you won’t—”
From behind him came an awful scream.
He turned and saw the shadow that had followed him: it was a white cat with fine soft fur and green eyes that blazed in the darkness. It shrieked, its fur standing on end, its tail high, staring at him, and his good sense told him it was raising an alarm.
Marish ran, and the cat ran after him, shrieking. Nabuz was a vast pile of looming shadows. As he passed through the empty city gates he heard a grinding sound and a whinny. As he raced into the moonlit dusk of open land, down the road to where Kadath-Naan’s shadow crossed the demon’s path, he heard hoofbeats galloping behind him.
Kadath-Naan had just reached a field of tall barley. He turned to look back at the sound of the hoofbeats and the shrieking of the devil cat. “Into the grain!” Marish yelled. “Hide in the grain!” He passed Kadath-Naan and dived into the barley, the cat racing behind him.
Suddenly he spun and dropped and grabbed the white cat, meaning to get one hand on it and get his knife with the other and shut it up by killing it. But the cat fought like a devil and it was all he could do to hold on to it with both hands. And he saw, behind him on the trail, Kadath-Naan standing calmly, his hand on his spear, facing three knights armored every inch in white, galloping towards them on great chargers.
“You damned dog-man,” Marish screamed. “I know you want to die, but get into the grain!”
Kadath-Naan stood perfectly still. The first knight bore down on him, and the moon flashed from the knight’s sword. The blade was no more than a handsbreadth from Kadath-Naan’s neck when he sprang to the side of it, into the path of the second charger.
As the first knight’s charge carried him past, Kadath-Naan knelt, and drove the base of his great spear into the ground. Too late, the second knight made a desperate yank on the horse’s reins, but the great beast’s momentum carried him into the pike. It tore through the neck of the horse and through the armored chest of the knight riding him, and the two of them reared up and thrashed once like a dying centaur, then crashed to the ground.
The first knight wheeled around. The third met Kadath-Naan. The beast-man stood barehanded, the muscles of his shoulders and chest relaxed. He cocked his jackal head to one side, as if wondering: is it here at last? The moment when I am granted release?
But Marish finally had the cat by its tail, and flung that wild white thing, that frenzy of claws and spit and hissing, into the face of the third knight’s steed.
The horse reared and threw its rider; the knight let go of his sword as he crashed to the ground. Quick as a hummingbird, Kadath-Naan leapt and caught it in midair. He spun to face the last rider.
Marish drew his knife and charged through the barley. He was on the fallen knight just as he got to his knees.
The crash against armor took Marish’s wind away. The man was twice as strong as Marish was, and his arm went around Marish’s chest like a crushing b
and of iron. But Marish had both hands free, and with a twist of the knight’s helmet he exposed a bit of neck, and in Marish’s knife went, and then the man’s hot blood was spurting out.
The knight convulsed as he died and grabbed Marish in a desperate embrace, coating him with blood, and sobbing once: and Marish held him, for the voice of his heart told him it was a shame to have to die such a way. Marish was shocked at this, for the man was a murderous slave of the White Witch: but still he held the quaking body in his arms, until it moved no more.
Then Marish, soaked with salty blood, staggered to his feet and remembered the last knight with a start: but of course Kadath-Naan had killed him in the meantime. Three knights’ bodies lay on the ruined ground, and two living horses snorted and pawed the dirt like awkward mourners. Kadath-Naan freed his spear with a great yank from the horse and man it had transfixed. The devil cat was a sodden blur of white fur and blood: a falling horse had crushed it.
Marish caught the reins of the nearest steed, a huge fine creature, and gentled it with a hand behind its ears. When he had his breath again, Marish said, “We got horses now. Can you ride?”
Kadath-Naan nodded.
“Let’s go then; there like to be more coming.”
Kadath-Naan frowned a deep frown. He gestured to the bodies.
“What?” said Marish.
“We have no embalmer or sepulchrist, it is true; yet I am trained in the funereal rites for military expeditions and emergencies. I have the necessary tools; in a matter of a day I can raise small monuments. At least they died aware and with suffering; this must compensate for the rudimentary nature of the rites.”
“You can’t be in earnest,” said Marish. “And what of the White Witch?”
“Who is the White Witch?” Kadath-Naan asked.