by Steve Aylett
Fain awoke in pain, standing chained in some sort of royal court. What he at first thought a gong nearby was in fact a massive coin bearing the form of a coiled lizard. Groggily he regarded the reptile which sat in the chunky golden throne before him. A web-throated official was reading from a scrolled decree. ‘And for the heinous crime of harnessing and riding upon our Royal Sovereign as He strolled the Royal Garden, Fain the Sorcerer shall hereby be beheaded in the public square.’
Fain tried to jump several days back, but nothing happened. ‘They put a special band around your neck,’ a small voice quailed into his left ear. It was Hex, the gecko. ‘You bragged of your gifts immediately, just before twenty-nine of these reptiles knocked you down and started breaking your bones. The band binds your powers. But they can’t see me—tee hee!’
But when the guards roughly turned Fain to lead him away for execution, Hex sprang alarmed from his shoulder and landed on the arm of the King’s throne, flushing through with the gold of his background. The King and his court gasped.
‘Wait!’ called the King, halting the guards. ‘Remember Draak’s prophecy!’ He gestured with a paddle-like claw to the huge disc portraying a gold lizard whorled about itself. ‘The Golden Salamander will bring transformation to our city!’
Fain immediately urged Hex to stay where he was.
For the next few days, Hex and Fain were treated like gods. Fain confirmed that Hex was the golden salamander, thankful that nobody could see he had not capitalised the remark. So long as Hex stayed on the throne he was safe. Freed from the binding ring, Fain had become friendly with the Lizard King and, accepting a grape from a scaly maiden, asked him the significance of the obelisk in the town square, the plinth beneath it bearing beneath the legend WHEN THE COWARD HAS CAUSE. ‘We were once regularly besieged by the swarm-race of insects which dwell in the hive dunes to the east,’ the King told him. ‘But a sorcerer called Draak captured their King and suspended him in that obelisk. The blue glass is magicked in such a way that a cowardly scream of sufficient pitch would shatter it and release the Insect King. Look close at the city wall and you will see an insect lookout always observing the square. Through Draak’s manoeuvre all is held in suspension. The insects are held in abeyance while we hold their king and might harm him. And we are held strong by the threat of the Insect King’s release were we to fail in courage. There are still huge insects to the east that grow to resemble our children crucified, specifically to draw us close enough to snare and digest. They are creatures who know so little about their own motivations we have to fill it all in ourselves—but how does that help anything, if none of the thought processes we used to work it out, are happening in their minds when they do it? If it derives from incoherence?’
As a lizard maiden offered purple sugar on a hand like a lilypad, Fain expressed surprise that a race of giant lizards had any trouble defeating insects. ‘We used to eat them en masse,’ said the King, ‘but gorged so much we couldn’t stand those crunchy bastards any more. Our tongues, which were once whiplike and prehensile, have atrophied, look.’ And he let his tongue dangle out like a rope.
‘Still,’ said Fain, ‘you could squash them with those paddle-hands of yours—like that!’
And by way of demonstration he slapped his hand down on the throne’s arm-rest, forgetting that the golden Hex crouched there. The lizard saved himself by springing away and landed on the ground, becoming instantly grey. Before he knew what was happening, Fain felt the magic-binding ring clamp around his neck again.
Five minutes later Fain was walking up some wooden steps to a platform in the city square. The executioner had an axe but didn’t seem unhappy to see him. ‘You’d better start killing me, headsman,’ Fain squeaked, ‘or I’ll be asnore on the block. Credit the next neck?’
The green axeman ignored his bluff, roping Hex to the back of Fain’s neck. He pushed Fain’s face sideways against the rough, gravelly block so that Fain could see the lizard crowd and the King on a bier nearby.
‘Imposter, even if we do not execute you,’ the King called, ‘uniformity and procedures will kill you, in a way.’
Hearing the axe-head zing as the executioner picked it up, Fain released the most cowardly scream to have been heard in centuries. The glass obelisk shattered, releasing the form trapped inside. Unblurred and unsupported, the insectile body collapsed and was something else. Its bug-eyed head was a washbasin, a couple of sieves and some bulrushes. Its many legs were branches. Its abdomen was a barrel tipped with a spike helmet and its wings were large fans stolen from the imperial palace. A sibilant cry of cheated rage thrilled from the insect lookout on the city wall.
A thundering vibrated through the hard-caked earth and, within moments, thousands of massive brown insects poured into the city like a river of swords.
Three minutes later Fain escaped into the desert, riding on the Lizard King.
56
CHAPTER 17
In which Fain enters a city of artificial creatures
Five days later they entered a city which seemed like a gigantic machine. Buildings of hammered bronze breathed like kettles and smelt of bonfires, and whale-like boats floated through the sky. A giant living arrowhead lumbered toward Fain on carved lion’s feet. It was festooned with gold quincunxes and quatrefoils like a decorated general. Looking closer at this embroidered heavy ordnance, Fain was startled to see, behind a smoked glass panel in its belly, a spinning dice.
Nearby an old man dressed in an acid green harlequin uniform was busy with playing a trumpet, folding balloons and other street-emptying exploits. He was observing his own actions with apparent bafflement through smashed spectacles. His body bent like a bow, he feebly juggled silver rings and slapped them together without interest, interlinking them. Several metal people were watching his display. ‘A vagabond in a crush hat eh?’ said one of them.
‘Do creatures like you enjoy these displays of buffoonery?’ Fain asked the living wedge.
‘These actions in the road are permitted, though for safety purposes we avoid understanding them.’
At that moment the prancing relic collapsed, dropping his three cups. Seeing that all three were empty, the artificial onlookers rumbled among themselves and wandered off. Fain loaded the old clown onto the Lizard King’s back and they took him to what he whispered was his home, a hovel heated by wasps. Given a sip of wine, the jester roused enough to damn his circumstances. ‘Those creatures outside, they are dicehearts, mechanical people, and this is Diceheart City.’
‘I’ve seen a mechanical man before. Who made these?’
‘Drake the Adept, in an access of power like a sneeze. So here they are, created and abandoned, with no idea of the why of any of it. So different than ourselves? It’s very complicated, how I know this; and to understand it, you would have to become another person. No bad thing.’
‘How did you get here?’ asked the Lizard King, whose bulk filled most of the room.
‘I sought Drake the Adept, but was already in a desperate condition when I arrived—entering the city, I merely tripped and smashed nosefirst on the ground. The incident caused the fastest assemblage of bastards I’ve ever seen. Some chugged, some wheezed, but none attempted an expression never done before. If there was a chance of that, oh I’d gladly damage my muzzle again, try and stop me. But the city controls even such feeble projects. They have their hierarchy. Only the upper echelons have pincers, for instance. However, they did pay. Since then I’ve tried year after year to find what amuses those contraptions, but to little avail. All I have learned are the divers arts of the cornered man: snarling, begging, screaming, sobbing, whispering, fainting, feinting, painting, panting, ranting and, of course, sitting down.’
‘It sounds like being cornered is an education in itself.’
‘And cheap. Remember that. But now, you take the stupid hat and bells of irritation—I am finished.’
‘I don’t want to be a jester!’ Fain protested.
‘You can use it,’ whispered Hex, who h
ad been removed to Fain’s shoulder again.
‘I won’t be advised by a tile.’
‘You need something,’ said the old greybeard, ‘and trick-magic is about misdirection. By concealing your desires, you may trick people into being cruel about the wrong thing.’
And with that, the jester expelled his vitality like a gas.
The Lizard King moved into the old clown’s house, and Fain donned the scarf, cap and bells, setting out to annoy one and all in the street. He started to flourish a bit of velvet around, manipulating it as though about to produce something from thin air. A crowd of dicehearts began to gather. Fain continued to manipulate the velvet, looking increasingly desperate. After an hour of this, Fain was approached by a scuttling carapace constable the size of a horse. Eight spiderlike legs of bone conveyed a skeletal cage fronted by a titanic, yawping set of humanlike jaws. As it capered and tilted along, a song of illness choired from its hollows.
‘The compropede will take you to be judged,’ said an armorite with a head of metal thorns and eyes of cherry-coloured glass. ‘You must be eaten into the cage.’
The jawed conveyance began to nip at Fain, who struggled as he was gathered horribly into the giant mouth and ejected into the cage on its back. Fain felt he was on the jolting cart to the gallows.
The Diceheart Palace was topped by two massive milk-glass hands raised as if in prayer but slightly apart, and at such a height that Fain could only imagine he saw some fluctuation or effect between them. Fain was disgorged finally within a court of authority. At its head was what Fain took to be the diceheart autarch, a massive mechanical heart which unfolded like a rose to reveal a pearl the size of a cannonball. Flanking this on one side was an armorite with pincers and a head like a sky-blue minaret, and on the other a dull olive-coloured sarcophagus with eight legs, topped with a baby head of red studs. The walls were crowded with onlookers, or perhaps mere regulatory devices.
‘They tell me you are king of this place,’ Fain addressed the rose. ‘Now I see their claim is rather farfetched.’
‘Your dismal antics in the street have bored one and all,’ tolled the rose, ‘with your flourishes, time-wasting, and jewellery made from apricot stones.’
‘Don’t be confused by his accusations,’ whispered Hex, ‘it’s his way of showing he’s curious about you. He thinks he’s asked a question and so expects a reply.’
Unaware of what question had been intended, Fain decided upon simple truth. ‘I am Fain the Sorcerer, and I quite frankly hate it here. Empty metal creatures, your city is a marvel! I suppose its emulation of a lobster halved lengthwise is symbolic? A community of dolls, ministers and tin soldiers the shape of fat moths—what’s the point?’
His audience looked at each other and began chugging strangely, jigging up and down.
‘Indeed you are all so begging for a punch in the nozzle I cannot find it in my heart to disappoint you.’
The dicehearts were laughing, with a light squeak of hinges.
‘I find you empty, and suspect that you are, technically, dead. This rack-and-pinion morality of yours, like yourselves, is large but as weightless as an owl. And it ejects blue smoke!’
There was amiable uproar in the court. What the old jester hadn’t realised was that the dicehearts found truth amusing, their laughter a means to evade it. They were more closely modelled upon humanity than he had suspected.
Fain turned to a nearby observer, a round frame in which pink lace flubbered with every breeze. An eye occasionally opened in the membrane, then clenched away again.
‘You sir—that rather fanciful assemblage which exists where your head should be—need any help getting rid of it? Observe as I juggle this cloud of dust!’
Fain gestured for quiet in the ensuing chatter and, approaching the autarch, announced: ‘My main intention was to perform a very particular illusion for you, the upper echelons of the city. Observe these dozen large metal rings.’ Fain clashed them together. ‘I will perform a disappearance, with the aid of an assistant—you sir!’ He led the pincered, minaret-headed courtier into the performance area, much to the apparent delight of all.
Fain slipped the rings together, linking them, then unlinked them and juggled with them, catching four on each arm and four around his neck.
‘Now sir, use those pincers of yours to snip through the rings on my right arm.’
The diceheart sliced through them, the twanged tangle hitting the floor.
‘And through the rings on my left.’
The diceheart cut through these.
Fain removed his scarf. ‘And—careful now—those around my neck!’
The assistant snipped through the five rings about Fain’s neck.
‘And now I will disappear and steal the royal barge!’
Freed from the binding ring, Fain vanished and walked out of the hilarity-filled court. The airboats were docked beside the milk-glass palace. He reappeared as he walked up the gangplank to one of the ballooned barges. A tall, white-haired man in a black robe was stood at the front tiller, and Fain was about to order him to cast off when the guy ropes writhed loose, the gangplank fell away and the ship pulled into the sky with frightening speed. The old jester turned from the tiller to look at Fain, then seemed to suck in a hard breath, his white beard retreating into his chin. He removed his smashed spectacles and the eyes told Fain that this was Drake the Adept.
61
CHAPTER 18
In which Fain studies with Drake the Adept
Drake’s modest fortress was in the mountains to the north, its entrance concealed behind a waterfall. As he walked into the comfort of this sanctuary, Fain stopped short upon the deep emerald carpet. It reminded him of the sea around the mermaid’s island. Why had he left?
Drake led him through into a wizard’s laboratory hung with triangular clocks, and explained the principles of building a diceheart. ‘Like many human beings, it owns only three opinions and, by alternating these to the right timing, it can reproduce the external appearance of thought.’
Fain inspected bone bottles full of glass dust, bandaged toys with beaks, rusted autumnal fruit studded with nails, fragments of black honeycomb, an Ace of Hearts fossilized like a trilobite, an oversized sandtimer clotted fast with blood, a black rose on dark green velvet, and a skull of expertly fitted ebony and rosewood. He remembered a treasure the mermaid had shown him, a salmon carved from pink quartz.
Here were cantraps on onion paper furry with age and books with sectioned spines like the spines of fossils. ‘What happened to the Insect King?’ he asked.
‘He wished to escape the nonsense of war and I enabled him, leaving a replica in amber while he quietly absconded to a more pleasing and fruitful life. This is one of his volumes here.’ Fain took the proffered book: A Guide to Beekeeping. ‘What’s this other one about? The Seventy-Eighth Lie.’
‘The wise know of seventy-seven species of lie and can see them all quite clearly. I notice you’re unable to lie at present.’
‘My word is my bond. I have to travel forward in time to undo it.’
‘You were fortunate to blunder upon time travel as your first gift. Do you see how your thin life has changed and grown richer? Time is central to life. Anything which is a process, requires the dimension of time. Flowers require it, for instance. Only something which is fixed and finished does not. Is it coincidental that when a thing is complete and fixed, as in a museum, all life goes out of it? You will know when someone has manipulated time because the day misses a beat.’
‘The time idol Suvramizana told me that decisive moments can tell a lot about a man.’
‘The formula of such a moment is rich and precise, like the deepest joke. Hackler Thorn too had one in particular that might be of interest to you. As a child, he encountered a monster—a werewolf, it seems. It walked in to his very nursery one night. Over the years, Thorn’s defences froze to potency. His arms dream quite separate dreams from his head. Arm dreams. To do with odd structural choices,
ivory, wood, and tipped liquid angles.’
‘How do you know I’m searching for Thorn?’
‘For the same reason I knew you were searching for me. You leave traces throughout time. I met you before we met. Be grateful that Thorn doesn’t have that power.’
‘You’re immortal?’
‘Amortal. We arrive with death in us like a watermark. Since a person can live only a certain number of years, why not travel back and forth through those years, back and forth, eternally? Say, seventy years, plus the entire surface of the world: not bad. But there may come a moment in a person’s life when he finds that he has sampled finally all that is on life’s menu—and upon considering the bill of fare, decides in all reason that it is a shabby, limited affair and not to his taste. I won’t be around much longer.’64
Drake indicated a globe hung with the countries and nations peculiar to it. Touching its surface, it cleared like glass and gutless wonders wraithed upon its surface. ‘These are Vagues—thoughts to do large things, but without real intent. Something more than daydreams but far less than acted plans. Look how beautiful these kinds of cities are. A shame.’
‘I move through life leaving blunders behind me like seeds to hatch a disastrous reputation—one I intend to be luxuriant and intricately interwoven.’
‘Have you forgotten the Princess?’
Fain gasped. ‘Yes, I had. And even now that you remind me, I can only remember her mouth. Whatever became of her?’
‘Perhaps she’s in trouble, perhaps merely bored. Or both.’
‘Next time I meet the old man, I’ll ask that all the gifts and powers I have, she must also have—then I’ll think no more about her.’
‘That’s certainly a plan,’ said Drake, walking away. ‘After all, understanding flows backwards.’
Drake was as tall as the human bloodstream would allow, and taller, having a spare heart stowed in each shoulder. His sanctuary was a place of rose windows, the truth held inside a retort, and silver padlocks on every mirror. Behind the veil of water Fain studied for a year, learning to approach adversaries through their shadows, to read the code on the backs of Capricorn beetles, to transmute solid objects into water vapour, to carry an instantly accessible disguise by looking different from the side than from the front, to breathe backwards, to drink from veins in the earth, to fashion a sharrow - an arrow which can pin someone’s shadow in place - and to banish westwallow, a sour trance-like disease of taking others’ orders and years from your own life. He heard a music made of eight varieties of silence, drank delirium nectar, and read a book of stories which could be browsed forever, its blessing and curse being that the same story was never found twice. A flower like a book, a book like a padlock, a padlock like a metal heart, a heart like a mineral clock. ‘And remember to close your eyes when you sneeze or your eyeballs’ll fly out at a hundred miles an hour,’ Drake added.