The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2014 Edition

by Paula Guran [editor]

  It was unclear whether this priestess was the same one. Her voice was identical, or nearly so. But she seemed taller and she walked with a limp. Of course, it would be easy to twist an ankle in that trailing raiment, and the click of wooden pattens as she descended the stair said the truth of her height was a subject for conjecture.

  She came to them through shafts of sunlight angled from high windows, stray gleams catching on her featureless visage.

  “Forgive me.” The Dead Man inclined his head and dropped one knee before her. “I spoke in haste. I meant no disrespect, Child of the Moon.”

  “Rise,” said the priestess. “If Kaalha of the Ruins wants you humbled, she will lay you low. The Merciful One has no need of playacted obeisance.”

  She offered a hand. It was gloved, silk pulled unevenly over long fingers. She lifted the Dead Man to his feet. She was strong. She squeezed his fingers briefly, like a mother reassuring a child, and let her grip fall. She withdrew a few steps. “Explain to me your problem, masterless ones.”

  “Are you the Eidolon?” the Gage asked.

  “She will hear what you speak to me.”

  The Gage nodded—a movement as calculated and intentional as if he had spoken aloud. He said, “We seek justice for the poet Anah, mutilated and murdered nine—now ten—days past at the Blue Stone. We seek justice also for the wood-sculptor Abbas, similarly mutilated and murdered in his village of Bajishe, and for uncounted other victims of this same murderer.”

  The priestess stood motionless, her hands hanging beside her and spread slightly as if to receive a gift. “For vengeance, you wish the blessing of Rakasha,” she said. “For justice, seek Vajhir the warrior. Not the Queen of Cold Moon.”

  “I do not seek vengeance,” said the Gage.

  “Really?”

  “No.” It was an open question which of them was more immovable. More unmoving. “I seek mercy for all those this murderer, this ghost maker, may yet torture and kill. I seek Kaalha’s benediction on those who will come to her eventually, one way or another, if their ghosts are freed. As you say: the Goddess of Death does not need to hurry.”

  The priestess’s oval mask tilted. On her pattens, she was taller than both supplicants.

  The Gage inclined his head.

  “A ghost maker, you say.”

  “A soulless killer. A Wizard. One who murders for the joy of it. Young men, men in their prime. Men with great gifts and great . . . beauty.”

  Surely that could not have been a catch of breath, a concealed sob. What has no eyes cannot cry.

  The Gage continued, “We cannot face a Wizard without help. Your help. Please tell us, Child of the Moon: what do you do against a killer with no soul?”

  Her laughter broke the stillness that followed—but it was sweet laughter, glass bells, not sardonic cruelty. She stepped down from her pattens and now both men topped her by a head. She left them lying on the flagstones, one tipped on its side, and came close. She still limped, though.

  “Let me tell you a secret, one mask to another.” She leaned close and whispered. Their mirrored visages reflected one another into infinity, bronze and silver echoing. When she drew back, the Gage’s head swiveled in place and tilted to acknowledge her.

  She extended a hand to the Dead Man, something folded in her fist. He offered his palm. She laid an amethyst globe, cloudy with flaws and fracture, in the hollow. “Do you know what that is?”

  “I’ve seen it done,” said the Gage. “My mistress used one to create me.”

  The priestess nodded. “Go with Kaalha’s blessing. Yours is a mission of mercy, masterless ones.”

  She turned to go. Her slippered feet padded on stone. She left the pattens lying. She was nearly to the dais again when the Dead Man called out after her—

  “Wait!”

  She paused and turned.

  “Why would you help us?” the Dead Man asked.

  “Masterless ones?” She touched her mask with both hands, fingertips flat to mirrored cheeks. The Dead Man shuddered at the prospect of her face revealed, but she lifted them empty again. She touched two fingers to her mask and brushed away as if blowing a kiss, then let her arms fall. Her sleeves covered her gloved hands.

  The priestess said, “She is also the Goddess of Orphans. Masterless Man.”

  The Dead Man started to slip the amethyst sphere into his sash opposite the sword as he and the Gage threaded through the crowd back to the street of Temples. Before he had quite secured it, though, he paused and drew it forth again, holding it up to catch the sunlight along its smoky, icy flaws and planes.

  “You know what this is for?”

  “Give it here.”

  Reluctantly, the Dead Man did so. The Gage made it vanish into his robe.

  “If you know how to use that, and it’s important, it might be for the best if you demonstrated for me.”

  “You have a point,” the Gage said, and—shielded in the rush of the crowd—he did so. When he had demonstrated to both their satisfaction, he made it vanish again and said, “Well. Lead me to the lair of Attar.”

  “This way.”

  They walked. The Gage dropped his cowl, improving the speed of their passage. The Dead Man lowered his voice. “Tell me what you know about Messaline Wizards. I am more experienced with the Uthman sort. Who are rather different.”

  “Cog used to say that a Wizard was a manifestation of the true desires, the true obsessions of an age. That they were the essence of a time refined, like opium drawn from poppy juice.”

  “That’s pretty. Does it mean anything?”

  The Gage shrugged. “I took service with Cog because she was Attar’s enemy.”

  “Gages have lives before their service. Of course they do.”

  “It’s just that you never think of it.”

  The Dead Man shrugged.

  “And Dead Men don’t have prior lives.”

  “None worth speaking of.” Dead Men were raised to their service, orphans who would otherwise beg, whore, starve, and steal. The Caliph gave them everything—home, family, wives. Educated their children. They were said to be the most loyal guards the world knew. “We have no purpose but to guard our Caliph.”

  “Huh,” said the Gage. “I guess you’d better find one.”

  The Dead Man directed them down a side street in a neighborhood that lined the left bank of the river Dijlè. A narrow paved path separated the facades of houses from the stone-lined canal. In this dry season, the water ran far down in the channel.

  The Gage said, “I told you I chose service with Cog because she was Attar’s enemy. Attar took something that was important to me.”

  “Something? Or someone?”

  The Gage was silent.

  The Dead Man said, “You said Attar kills artists. Young men.”

  The Gage was silent.

  “Your beloved? This Abbas, have I guessed correctly?”

  “Are you shocked?”

  The Dead Man shrugged. “You would burn for it in Asmaracanda.”

  “You can burn for crossing the street incorrectly in Asmaracanda.”

  “This is truth.” The Dead Man drew his sword, inspected the faintly nicked, razor-stropped edge. “Were you an artist too?”

  “I was.”

  “Well,” the Dead Man said. “That’s different, then.”

  Before the house of Attar the Enchanter, the Dead Man paused and tested the door; it was locked and barred so soundly it didn’t rattle. “This is his den.”

  “He owns this?” the Gage said.

  “Rents it,” the Dead Man answered. He reached up with his off hand and lowered his veil. His sword slid from its scabbard almost noiselessly. “How much magic are you expecting?”

  “He’s a ghost maker,” the Gage said. “He travels from murder to murder. He might not have a full workshop here. He’ll have mechanicals.”

  “Mechanicals?”

  “Things like me.”

  “Wonderful.” He glanced up at the windows o
f the second and third stories. “Are we climbing in?”

  “I don’t climb.” The Gage took hold of the doorknob and effortlessly tore it off the door. “Follow me.”

  The Gage’s footsteps were silent, but that couldn’t stop the boards of the joisted floor from creaking under his armored weight. “I hate houses with cellars,” he said. “Always afraid I’m going to fall through.”

  “That will only improve once we achieve the second story,” the Dead Man answered. His head turned ceaselessly, scanning every dark corner of what appeared to be a perfectly ordinary, perfectly pleasant reception room—unlighted brass lamps, inlaid cupboards, embroidered cushions, tapestry chairs, and thick rugs stacked several high over the indigo-patterned interlocking star-and-cross tiles of that creaking floor. Being on the ground floor, it was windowless.

  “We’re alone down here,” said the Gage.

  The staircase ascended at the back of the room, made of palm wood darkened with perfumed oils and dressed with a scarlet runner. The Gage moved toward it like a stalking tiger, weight and fluidity in perfect tension. The Dead Man paced him.

  They ascended side by side. Light from the windows above reflected down. It shone on the sweat on the Dead Man’s bared face, on the length of his bared blade, on the bronze of the Gage’s head and the scratched metal that gleamed through the unpatched rent at his shoulder.

  The Gage was taller than the dead man. His head cleared the landing first. Immediately, he snapped— “Close your eyes!”

  The Dead Man obeyed. He cast his off hand across them as well, for extra protection. Still the light that flared was blinding.

  The Gage might walk like a cat, but when he ran, the whole house shook. The creak of the floorboards was replaced by thuds and cracks, rising to a crescendo of jangling metal and shattering glass. The light died; a male voice called out an incantation. The Dead Man opened his eyes.

  Trying to focus through swimming, rough-bordered blind spots, the Dead Man saw the Gage surrounded by twisted metal and what might be the remains of a series of lenses. Beyond the faceless man and the wreckage, a second man—broad-shouldered, shirtless above the waist of his pantaloons, of middle years by the salt in his beard but still fit—raised a flared tube in his hands and directed it at the Gage.

  Wood splintered as the Gage reared back, struggling to move. The wreckage constrained him, though feebly, and his foot had broken through the floor. He was trapped.

  With his off hand, the Dead Man snatched up the nearest object—a shelf laden with bric-a-brac—and hurled it at the Wizard’s head. The tube—some sort of blunderbuss—exploded with a roar that added flash-deafness to the flash-blindness that already afflicted the Dead Man. Gouts of smoke and sparks erupted from the flare—

  —the wall beside the Gage exploded outward.

  “Well,” he said. “That won’t endear us to the neighbors.”

  The Dead Man heard nothing but the ringing in his ears. He leaped onto the seat of a Song-style ox-yoke chair, felt the edge of the back beneath his toe and rode it down. His sword descended with the force of his controlled fall, a blow that should have split the Wizard’s collarbone.

  His arm stopped in mid-move, as if he had slammed it into the top of a stone wall. He jerked it back, but the pincers of the steam-bubbling crab-creature that grabbed it only tightened, and it was all he could do to hold onto his sword as his fingers numbed.

  Wood shattered and metal rent as the Gage freed his foot and shredded the remains of the contraption that had nearly blinded the Dead Man. He swung a massive fist at the Wizard but the Wizard rolled aside and parried with the blunderbuss. Sparks shimmered. Metal crunched.

  The Wizard barked something incomprehensible, and a shadow moved from the corner of the room. The Gage spun to engage it.

  The Dead Man planted his feet, caught the elbow of his sword hand in his off hand, and lifted hard against the pain. The crab-thing scrabbled at the rug, hooked feet snagging and lifting, but he’d stolen its leverage. Grunting, he twisted from the hips and swung.

  Carpet and all, the crab-thing smashed against the Wizard just as he was regaining his feet. There was a whistle of steam escaping and the Wizard shouted, jerking away. The crab-thing’s pincer ripped free of the Dead Man’s arm, taking cloth and a measure of flesh along with it.

  The thing from the corner was obviously half-completed. Bits of bear and cow-hide had been stitched together patchwork fashion over its armature. Claws as long as the Dead Man’s sword protruded from the shaggy paw on its right side; on the left they gleamed on bare armature. Its head turned, tracking. A hairy foot shuffled forward.

  The Gage went to meet it, and there was a sound like mountains taking a sharp dislike to one another. Dust rattled from the walls. More bric-a-brac tumbled from the shelf-lined walls. In the street or in a neighboring house, someone screamed.

  The Dead Man stepped over the hissing, clicking remains of the crab-thing and leveled his sword at the throat of the Wizard Attar.

  “Stop that thing.”

  The Wizard, his face boiled red along one cheek, one eye closed and weeping, laughed out loud. “Because I fear your sword?”

  He grabbed the blade right-handed, across the top, and pushed it down as he lunged onto the blade, ramming the sword through his chest. Blood and air bubbled around the blade. The Wizard did not stop laughing, though his laughter took on a . . . simmering quality.

  Recoiling, the Dead Man let go of his sword.

  Meanwhile, the wheezing armature lifted the Gage into the air and slammed him against the ceiling. Plaster and stucco-dust reinforced the smoky air.

  “You call yourself a Dead Man!” Attar ripped the sword from his breast and hurled it aside. “This is what a dead man looks like.” He thumped his chest, then reached behind himself to an undestroyed rack and lifted another metal object, long and thin.

  The Dead Man swung an arc before him, probing carefully for footing amid the rubble on the floor. Attar sidled and sidestepped, giving no advantage. And Attar had his back to the wall.

  The Gage and the half-made thing slammed to the floor, rolling in a bear hug. Joists cracked again and the floor settled, canting crazily. Neither the Gage nor the half-made thing made any sound but the thud of metal on metal, like smith’s hammerblows, and the creak of straining gears and springs.

  “I have no soul,” said Attar. “I am a ghost maker. Can your blade hurt me? All the lives I have taken, all the art I have claimed—all reside in me!”

  Already, the burns on his face were smoothing. The bubbles of blood no longer rose from the cut in his smooth chest. The Dead Man let his knees bend, his weight ground. Attar’s groping left hand found and raised a mallet. His right hand aimed the slender rod.

  “ENOUGH!” boomed the Gage. A fist thudded into his face; he caught the half-made thing’s arm and used its own momentum to slam it to the ground.

  The rod detonated; the Dead Man twisted to one side. Razors whisked his face and shaved a nick into his ear. Blood welled hotly as the spear embedded itself in the wall.

  With an almighty crunch, the Gage rose from the remains of the half-made thing, its skull dangling from his hand. He was dented and disheveled, his robe torn away so the round machined joints of knees and elbows, the smooth segmented body, were plainly visible.

  He tossed the wreckage of the half-made thing’s head at Attar, who laughed and knocked it aside with the hammer. He swung it in lazy loops, one-handed, tossed it to the other. “Come on, faceless man. What one Wizard makes, another can take apart.”

  The Gage stopped where he stood. He planted his feet on the sagging floor. He turned his head and looked directly at the Dead Man.

  The Dead Man caught the amethyst sphere when the Gage tossed it to him.

  “A soul catcher? Did you not hear me say I am soulless? That priest’s bauble can do me no harm.”

  “Well,” said the Gage. “Then you won’t object to us trying.”

  He stepped forward, walkin
g up the slope of the broken floor. He swung his fist; Attar parried with the hammer as if the blow had no force behind it at all. The Gage shook his fist and blew across it. There was a dent across his knuckles now.

  “Try harder,” the Wizard said.

  He kept his back to the corner, his hammer dancing between his hands. The Gage reached in, was deflected. Reached again. “It’s not lack of a soul that makes you a monster. That, beast, is your humanity.”

  The Wizard laughed. “Poor thing. Have you been chasing me for Cog’s sake all these months?”

  “Not for Cog’s sake.” The Gage almost sounded as if he smiled. “And I have been hunting you for years. I was a potter; my lover was a sculptor. Do you even remember him? Or are the lives you take, the worlds of brilliance you destroy, so quickly forgotten.”

  The Wizard’s eyes narrowed, his head tipping as if in concentration. “I might recall.”

  Again the Gage struck. Again, the Wizard parried. His lips pursed as if to whistle and a shimmer crossed his face. A different visage appeared in its wake: curly-haired, darker-complected. Young and handsome, in an unexceptional sort of way. “This one? What was the name? Does it make you glad to see his face one last time, before I take you too? Though your art was not much, as I recall—but what can you expect of—”

  The Gage lunged forward, a sharp blow of the Wizard’s hammer snapping his arm into his head. The force knocked his upper body aside. But he took the blow, and the one that followed, and kept coming. He closed the gap.

  He caught Attar’s hammer hand and bent it back until the bones of his arm parted with a wet, wrenching sound.

  “His name was Anah!”

  The Wizard gasped and went to his knees. With a hard sidearm swing, the Dead Man stepped in and smashed the amethyst sphere against his head, and pressed it there.

  It burst in his opening hand, a shower of violet glitter. Particles swirled in the air, ran in the Wizard’s open mouth, his nostrils and ears, swarmed his eyes until they stared blank and lavender.

  When the Dead Man closed his hand again, with a vortex of shimmer the sphere re-coalesced.

  Blank-faced, Attar slumped onto his left side, dangling from his shattered arm. The Gage opened his hand and let the body fall. “He’s not dead. Just really soulless now.”