by Sean Wallace
“The demon; turns out she’s somebody what’s called the White Witch. She spared Nabuz, for they said they’d serve her, and give her their babies.”
“We will follow her afterwards,” said Kadath-Naan.
“She’s ahead of us as it is! We leave now on horseback, we might have a chance. There be a whole lot more bodies with her unburied or buried wrong, less I mistake.”
Kadath-Naan leaned on his spear. “Marish of Ilmak Dale,” he said, “here we must part ways. I cannot steel myself to follow such logic as you declare, abandoning these three bur ials before me now for the chance of others elsewhere, if we can catch and defeat a witch. My duty does not lie that way.” He searched Marish’s face. “You do not have the words for it, but if these men are left unburied, they are tanzadi. If I bury them with what little honor I can provide, they are tazrash. They spent only a little while alive, but they will be tanzadi or tazrash forever.”
“And if more slaves of the White Witch come along to pay you back for killing these?”
But try as he might, Marish could not dissuade him, and at last he mounted one of the chargers and rode onwards, towards the cold white moon, away from the whispering city.
The flowers were gone, the fields were gone. The ashy light of the horizon framed the ferns and stunted trees of a black fen full of buzzing flies. The trail was wider: thirty horses could have passed side by side over the blasted ground. But the marshy ground was treacherous, and Marish’s mount sank to its fetlocks with each careful step.
A siege of cranes launched themselves from the marsh into the moon-abandoned sky. Marish had never seen so many. Bone-white, fragile, soundless, they ascended like snowflakes seeking the cold womb of heaven. Or a river of souls. None looked back at him. The voice of doubt told him: you will never know what became of Asza and Temur.
The apples were long gone, and Marish was growing light-headed from hunger. He reined the horse in and dismounted; he would have to hunt off the trail. In the bracken, he tied the charger to a great black fern as tall as a house. In a drier spot near its base was the footprint of a rabbit. He felt the indentation: it was fresh. He followed the rabbit deeper into the fen.
He was thinking of Temur and her caresses. The nights she’d turn away from him, back straight as a spear, and the space of rushes between them would be like a frozen desert, and he’d huddle unsleeping beneath skins and woolen blankets, stiff from cold, arguing silently with her in his spirit; and the nights when she’d turn to him, her soft skin hot and alive against his, seeking him silently, almost vengefully, as if showing him – see? This is what you can have. This is what I am.
And then the image of those rushes charred and brown with blood and covered with chips of broken stone and mortar came to him, and he forced himself to think of nothing: breathing his thoughts out to the west wind, forcing his mind clear as a spring stream. And he stepped forward in the marsh.
And stood in a street of blue and purple tile, in a fantastic city.
He stood for a moment wondering, and then he carefully took a step back.
And he was in a black swamp with croaking toads and nothing to eat.
The voice of doubt told him he was mad from hunger; the voice of hope told him he would find the White Witch here and kill her; and thinking a thousand things, he stepped forward again and found himself still in the swamp.
Marish thought for a while, and then he stepped back, and, thinking of nothing, stepped forward.
The tiles of the street were a wild mosaic – some had glittering jewels; some had writing in a strange flowing script; some seemed to have tiny windows into tiny rooms. Houses, tiled with the same profusion, towered like columns, bulged like mushrooms, melted like wax. Some danced. He heard soft murmurs of conversation, footfalls, and the rush of a river.
In the street, dressed in feathers or gold plates or swirls of shadow, blue-skinned people passed. One such creature, dressed in fine silk, was just passing Marish.
“Your pardon,” said Marish, “what place be this here?”
The man looked at Marish slowly. He had a red jewel in the center of his forehead, and it flickered as he talked. “That depends on how you enter it,” he said, “and who you are, but for you, catarrhine, its name is Zimzarkanthitrugeniafenstok, not least because that is easy for you to pronounce. And now I have given you one thing free, as you are a guest of the city.”
“How many free things do I get?” said Marish.
“Three. And now I have given you two.”
Marish thought about this for a moment. “I’d favor something to eat,” he said.
The man looked surprised. He led Marish into a building that looked like a blur of spinning triangles, through a dark room lit by candles, to a table piled with capon and custard and razor-thin slices of ham and lamb’s foot jelly and candied apricots and goatsmilk yogurt and hard cheese and yams and turnips and olives and fish cured in strange spices; and those were just the things Marish recognized.
“I don’t reckon I ought to eat fairy food,” said Marish, though he could hardly speak from all the spit that was suddenly in his mouth.
“That is true, but from the food of the djinn you have nothing to fear. And now I have given you three things,” said the djinn, and he bowed and made as if to leave.
“Hold on,” said Marish (as he followed some candied apricots down his gullet with a fistful of cured fish). “That be all the free things, but say I got something to sell?”
The djinn was silent.
“I need to kill the White Witch,” Marish said, eating an olive. The voice of doubt asked him why he was telling the truth, if this city might also serve her; but he told it to hush up. “Have you got aught to help me?”
The djinn still said nothing, but he cocked an eyebrow.
“I’ve got a horse, a real fighting horse,” Marish said, around a piece of cheese.
“What is its name?” said the djinn. “You cannot sell anything to a djinn unless you know its name.”
Marish wanted to lie about the name, but he found he could not. He swallowed. “I don’t know its name,” he admitted.
“Well then,” said the djinn.
“I killed the fellow what was on it,” Marish said, by way of explanation.
“Who,” said the djinn.
“Who what?” said Marish.
“Who was on it,” said the djinn.
“I don’t know his name either,” said Marish, picking up a yam.
“No, I am not asking that,” said the djinn crossly. “I am telling you to say, ‘I killed the fellow who was on it.’”
Marish set the yam back on the table. “Now that’s enough,” Marish said. “I thank you for the fine food and I thank you for the three free things, but I do not thank you for telling me how to talk. How I talk is how we talk in Ilmak Dale, or how we did talk when there were an Ilmak Dale, and just because the White Witch blasted Ilmak Dale to splinters don’t mean I am going to talk like folk do in some magic city.”
“I will buy that from you,” said the djinn.
“What?” said Marish, and wondered so much at this that he forgot to pick up another thing to eat.
“The way you talked in Ilmak Dale,” the djinn said.
“All right,” Marish said, “and for it, I crave to know the thing what will help me mostways, for killing the White Witch.”
“I have a carpet that flies faster than the wind,” said the djinn. “I think it is the only way you can catch the Witch, and unless you catch her, you cannot kill her.”
“Wonderful,” Marish cried with glee. “And you’ll trade me that carpet for how we talk in Ilmak Dale?”
“No,” said the djinn, “I told you which thing would help you most, and in return for that, I took the way you talked in Ilmak Dale and put it in the Great Library.”
Marish frowned. “All right, what do you want for the carpet?”
The djinn was silent.
“I’ll give you the White Witch for it,” Mari
sh said.
“You must possess the thing you sell,” the djinn said.
“Oh, I’ll get her,” Marish said. “You can be sure of that.” His hand had found a boiled egg, and the shell crunched in his palm as he said it.
The djinn looked at Marish carefully, and then he said, “The use of the carpet, for three days, in return for the White Witch, if you can conquer her.”
“Agreed,” said Marish.
They had to bind the horse’s eyes; otherwise it would rear and kick when the carpet rose into the air. Horse, man, djinn: all perched on a span of cloth. As they sped back to Nabuz like a mad wind, Marish tried not to watch the solid fields flying beneath, and regretted the candied apricots.
The voice of doubt told him that his companion must be slain by now, but his heart wanted to see Kadath-Naan again: but for the jackal-man, Marish was friendless.
Among the barley stalks, three man-high plinths of black stone, painted with white glyphs, marked three graves. Kadath-Naan had only traveled a little ways beyond them before the ambush. How long the emissary of the Empty City had been fighting, Marish could not tell; but he staggered and weaved like a man drunk with wine or exhaustion. His gray fur was matted with blood and sweat.
An army of children in white armor surrounded Kadath-Naan. As the carpet swung closer, Marish could see their gray faces and blank eyes. Some crawled, some tottered: none seemed to have lived more than six years of mortal life. They held daggers. One clung to the jackal-man’s back, digging canals of blood.
Two of the babies were impaled on the point of the great black spear. Hand over hand, daggers held in their mouths, they dragged themselves down the shaft towards Kadath-Naan’s hands. Hundreds more surrounded him, closing in.
Kadath-Naan swung his spear, knocking the slack-eyed creatures back. He struck with enough force to shatter human skulls, but the horrors only rolled, and scampered giggling back to stab his legs. With each swing, the spear was slower. Kadath-Naan’s eyes rolled back into their sockets. His great frame shuddered from weariness and pain.
The carpet swung low over the battle, and Marish lay on his belly, dangling his arms down to the jackal-headed warrior. He shouted: “Jump! Kadath-Naan, jump!”
Kadath-Naan looked up and, gripping his spear in both hands, he tensed his legs to jump. But the pause gave the tiny servitors of the White Witch their chance; they swarmed over his body, stabbing with their daggers, and he collapsed under the writhing mass of his enemies.
“Down further! We can haul him aboard!” yelled Marish.
“I sold you the use of my carpet, not the destruction of it,” said the djinn.
With a snarl of rage, and before the voice of his good sense could speak, Marish leapt from the carpet. He landed amidst the fray, and began tearing the small bodies from Kadath-Naan and flinging them into the fields. Then daggers found his calves, and small bodies crashed into his sides, and he tumbled, covered with the white-armored hell-children. The carpet sailed up lazily into the summer sky.
Marish thrashed, but soon he was pinned under a mass of small bodies. Their daggers probed his sides, drawing blood, and he gritted his teeth against a scream; they pulled at his hair and ears and pulled open his mouth to look inside. As if they were playing. One gray-skinned suckling child, its scalp peeled half away to reveal the white bone of its skull, nuzzled at his neck, seeking the nipple it would never find again.
So had Asza nuzzled against him. So had been her heft, then, light and snug as five apples in a bag. But her live eyes saw the world, took it in and made it better than it was. In those eyes he was a hero, a giant to lift her, honest and gentle and brave. When Temur looked into those otter-brown, mischievous eyes, her mouth softened from its hard line, and she sang fairy songs.
A dagger split the skin of his forehead, bathing him in blood. Another dug between his ribs, another popped the skin of his thigh. Another pushed against his gut, but hadn’t broken through. He closed his eyes. They weighed heavier on him now; his throat tensed to scream, but he could not catch his breath.
Marish’s arms ached for Asza and Temur – ached that he would die here, without them. Wasn’t it right, though, that they be taken from him? The little girl who ran to him across the fields of an evening, a funny hopping run, her arms flung wide, waving that rag doll; no trace of doubt in her. And the beautiful wife who stiffened when she saw him, but smiled one-edged, despite herself, as he lifted apple-smelling Asza in his arms. He had not deserved them.
His face, his skin, were hot and slick with salty blood. He saw, not felt, the daggers digging deeper – arcs of light across a great darkness. He wished he could comfort Asza one last time, across that darkness. As when she would awaken in the night, afraid of witches: now a witch had come.
He found breath, he forced his mouth open, and he sang through sobs to Asza, his song to lull her back to sleep:
Now sleep, my love, now sleep –
The moon is in the sky –
The clouds have fled like sheep –
You’re in your papa’s eye.
Sleep now, my love, sleep now –
The bitter wind is gone –
The calf sleeps with the cow –
Now sleep my love ’til dawn.
He freed his left hand from the press of bodies. He wiped blood and tears from his eyes. He pushed his head up, dizzy, flowers of light still exploding across his vision. The small bodies were still. Carefully, he eased them to the ground.
The carpet descended, and Marish hauled Kadath-Naan on to it. Then he forced himself to turn, swaying, and look at each of the gray-skinned babies sleeping peacefully on the ground. None of them was Asza.
He took one of the smallest and swaddled it with rags and bridle leather. His blood made his fingers slick, and the noon sun seemed as gray as a stone. When he was sure the creature could not move, he put it in his pack and slung the pack upon his back. Then he fell on to the carpet. He felt it lift up under him and, like a cradled child, he slept.
He awoke to see clouds sailing above him. The pain was gone. He sat up and looked at his arms: they were whole and unscarred. Even the old scar from Thin Deri’s careless scythe was gone.
“You taught us how to defeat the Children of Despair,” said the djinn. “That required recompense. I have treated your wounds and those of your companion. Is the debt clear?”
“Answer me one question,” Marish said.
“And the debt will be clear?” said the djinn.
“Yes, may the west wind take you, it’ll be clear!”
The djinn blinked in assent.
“Can they be brought back?” Marish asked. “Can they be made into living children again?”
“They cannot,” said the djinn. “They can neither live nor die, nor be harmed at all unless they will it. Their hearts have been replaced with sand.”
They flew in silence, and Marish’s pack seemed heavier.
The land flew by beneath them as fast as a cracking whip; Marish stared as green fields gave way to swamp, swamp to marsh, marsh to rough pastureland. The devastation left by the White Witch seemed gradually newer; the trail here was still smoking, and Marish thought it might be too hot to walk on. They passed many a blasted village, and each time Marish looked away.
At last they began to hear a sound on the wind, a sound that chilled Marish’s heart. It was not a wail, it was not a grinding, it was not a shriek of pain, nor the wet crunch of breaking bones, nor was it an obscene grunting; but it had something of all of these. The jackal-man’s ears were perked, and his gray fur stood on end.
The path was now truly still burning; they flew high above it, and the rolling smoke underneath was like a fog over the land. But there ahead they saw the monstrous thing that was leaving the trail; and Marish could hardly think any thought at all as they approached, but only stare, bile burning his throat.
It was a great chariot, perhaps eight times the height of a man, as wide as the trail, constructed of parts of living human bodi
es welded together in an obscene tangle. A thousand legs and arms pawed the ground; a thousand more beat the trail with whips and scythes, or clawed the air. A thick skein of hearts, livers, and stomachs pulsed through the center of the thing, and a great assemblage of lungs breathed at its core. Heads rolled like wheels at the bottom of the chariot, or were stuck here and there along the surface of the thing as slack-eyed, gibbering ornaments. A thousand spines and torsos built a great chamber at the top of the chariot, shielded with webs of skin and hair; there perhaps hid the White Witch. From the pinnacle of the monstrous thing flew a great flag made of writhing tongues. Before the awful chariot rode a company of ten knights in white armor, with visored helms.
At the very peak sat a great headless hulking beast, larger than a bear, with the skin of a lizard, great yellow globes of eyes set on its shoulders and a wide mouth in its belly. As they watched, it vomited a gout of flame that set the path behind the chariot ablaze. Then it noticed them, and lifted the great plume of flame in their direction. At a swift word from the djinn, the carpet veered, but it was a close enough thing that Marish felt an oven’s blast of heat on his skin. He grabbed the horse by its reins as it made to rear, and whispered soothing sounds in its ear.
“Abomination!” cried Kadath-Naan. “Djinn, will you send word to the Empty City? You will be well rewarded.”
The djinn nodded.
“It is Kadath-Naan, lesser scout of the Endless Inquiry, who speaks. Let Bars-Kardereth, Commander of the Silent Legion, be told to hasten here. Here is an obscenity beyond compass, far more horrible than the innocent errors of savages; here Chaos blocks the descent into the Darkness entirely, and a whole land may fall to corruption.”
The jewel in the djinn’s forehead flashed once. “It is done,” he said.
Kadath-Naan turned to Marish. “From the Empty City to this place is four days’ travel for a Ghomlu Legion; let us find a place in their path where we can wait to join them.”
Marish forced himself to close his eyes. But still he saw it – hands, tongues, guts, skin, woven into a moving mountain. He still heard the squelching, grinding, snapping sounds, the sea-roar of the thousand lungs. What had he imagined? Asza and Temur in a prison somewhere, waiting to be freed? Fool. “All right,” he said.