Viriconium

by Michael John Harrison

  They reached a place called on some of the prince’s maps Cobaltmere and on others Sour Pent Lay or Pent Lay. “In this case we should read lay as lake,” he told them. There they lit a fire and camped uncomfortably. “My guts have felt bad since we got in here,” Dissolution Kahn admitted. “It’s lucky there isn’t much to eat.” He and the dwarf were staring out across the lay. On its shallow waters could be seen mats of a kind of tuberous, buoyant vegetation which in the horizontal light of sunset had come alive briefly with mile-long stains of mazarine and cochineal; bits of it were drifting ashore all the time, rubbery and dull-looking. Along the far banks were lines of shadowy knots and hummocks covered with a damp growth, like heaps of spoil on an abandoned quarry terrace. It was easy to see that they fascinated the dwarf, who said several times wonderingly:

  “Those were buildings. This marsh was once a city.”

  “I know of one map that marks it as such,” the prince told him, “though I have never been shown it. Some authorities agree, but we regard them as speculative. The majority have it as a natural formation, and on the bank there record ‘blocks of stone.’ ”

  The dwarf could not accept this.

  “It was a city once,” he said with quiet emphasis.

  Suddenly he jumped to his feet and pinched the bridge of his nose in imitation of the clairvoyants of Margery Fry Court.

  “I see it clearly in its heyday,” he exclaimed. “It was the Uriconium of the North! I call it antiVriko, and reclaim it in the name of Mammy Morgante, Queen of every empire of the earth!” He made a grand gesture with his arms and a fanfaring, farting sound with his mouth. “I encompass it on behalf of all my subjects—even this one.”

  “You can take the first watch, then.”

  An even, curious light came up from Cobaltmere once the sun had set. It had a veiling effect. The fire seemed orange and remote. Everything else had a soapy look, a colouration which made the prince imagine that if he touched the dwarf or his companion they would have the texture of grey soap. Yet it was bright enough to write by: his pen’s shadow preceded it across the page. “The wren,” he quoted, “ may then be hung by its leg in the centre of two hoops crossing each other at right angles.” If he died it was hoped one of the others would take his notes back to the city to be added to the library of his House; there they would be catalogued.

  “I’ll take all the watches,” said Rotgob. “Only some peasant would sleep, here in the Jewel of the Northern Marsh!”

  He insisted on this and thereafter they would see him at intervals as they talked, moving slowly round the clearing in and out of their field of vision, humming and murmuring to himself or stopping to listen to the sound of water draining through the reedbeds. “We can only cast about for sign.” “I think we are halfway down the southern shore.” They could decide nothing. Dissolution Kahn fell asleep abruptly, to grunt and belch in his dreams. In the end tegeus-Cromis slept too: only to be woken sometime before dawn by the cold. He moved nearer the embers of the fire and lay there uneasily with his fingers laced beneath his head. The dwarf was still happy at that time. You could hear him yawn, rub his hands together, reassure the horses. Once he said softly but clearly, “It was a city,” and gave a deep sigh.

  In the morning they found him curled up with his knees thrust hard into his chest and his arms clasped round them. He had already sunk slightly into the mud. There was an expression of misery and loneliness on his face. He was shivering helplessly: for some reason he had felt compelled to tear off his clothes and throw them about. All they could get him to say was something that sounded like “Filth, filth.” All at once he ran off and tried to jump into the mere; though he only managed to land with his face in it he was dead before they could pull him out.

  “Be steady,” said Dissolution Kahn. “There are still two of us.”

  Later he picked up the dwarf’s short sword. “People were always offering him money for the sheath of this,” he said. He studied it. “It’s made of a horse’s tosser, I think. They do that down in the South.”

  He dug a deep hole in the mud and put the dwarf in it.

  “This little chap was one of the best fighters you ever saw. He was so quick.”

  He swallowed and stared away across the mere.

  “Morgante!” he said. “Morgante!” And: “He must have been poisoned. He must have drunk the water or eaten something, to kill himself like that.”

  Dawn had hardly warmed the air. Now brittle flakes of snow came down, reluctantly at first and then with more vigour until Cobaltmere was obscured and the marsh around it began to look like the ornamental gardens of Harden Bosch seen through a net curtain in Montrouge. If you concentrated for a moment on the flakes that made up any part of the curtain they would seem to fall slowly, or even to be suspended: then, with the movement of flies in an empty room in summer, whirl round one another in a sudden intricate spiral before they shot apart as if a string connecting them had been cut. In this way they whirled down on the shore of the lake; they whirled down on the face of the dwarf. The prince, huddled in his cloak, touched the turned earth with his foot. He pushed some of it into the hole.

  “It was the animal,” he said. “I recognise the signs.”

  “He killed himself,” repeated Dissolution Kahn stubbornly. “How could an animal kill him when he killed himself?”

  “I recognise the signs.”

  They went on pushing earth into the hole until they could tread it down.

  “Well, there are still two of us.”

  “I first learned about the Lamia when I was six years old,” said tegeus-Cromis. “There was a musical noise in the night. They explained it to me and then I knew. . . . History’s against us,” he said, “and I should have come alone.”

  “We’re here now.”

  The prince was easily able to identify fresh sign. They followed it and, not far from the lay, near the northern edge of the marsh, discovered an old tower. Around it the vegetation was returning to normal. Filaments of ordinary ivy crawled over the fawn stone; from cracks near the summit grew a withered bullace, its rattling branches occupied by small stealthy birds; hawthorn and elder lapped up against its base. “Books hint at the existence of a sinking tower, though they place it in the East.” The prince urged his horse forward. Birds flew out of the hawthorn. He drew his sword. “I am afraid to approach too openly.”

  The tower, it quickly became clear, had embedded itself so far in the ground that its lower windows were rectangular slits twelve or eighteen inches high. “You won’t get in there,” said Dissolution Kahn. From one of them issued a smell that made him retch. He went a little nearer and sized it up, breathing heavily through his mouth, while snow eddied round his heavy, motionless figure. Eventually he shook his head and repeated,

  “You won’t get through there. Neither of us will. It’s too small.”

  The prince thought he could crawl through. “I am thinner than you, and perhaps if I take my cloak off that will make things easier.”

  “You’re mad if you go in there alone.”

  “What choice have I?”

  “You know I would go in if I could!”

  “That isn’t what I meant.”

  The prince threw his cloak over the hindquarters of his horse, then turned and walked as fast as he could to the sunken window. “No one has been here for a hundred years,” he whispered to himself. When he looked back through the plaiting snow he could see Dissolution Kahn gazing after him in a hurt way. He wanted to say something else, but sensing the Lamia so close to him now, and perhaps finding himself glad to take the responsibility for it after all, only managed to shout,

  “Go home! I should never have brought you!”

  To keep the Kahn from replying, he got down on his hands and knees and put his face into the queer mixture of smells bellying from the slot. He coughed; his eyes watered; against his will he hung back. He heard the Kahn call out from a long way off—but ashamed, and anyway unable to make sense of the words,
thrust his head suddenly into the hole. Trying to keep his sword pointed in front of him, he wriggled desperately through. It was dark. When he stood up he hit his head on something; he didn’t think it was the ceiling. Crouching awkwardly he began to stumble about in the dark, swinging out with his sword in all directions. This was how he had always expected to meet the animal. Something cold dripped into his hair and down his cheek. His feet slid on a soft and rotten surface; he fell; the sword flew out of his hand and struck blue sparks from a wall.

  He got up slowly and stood there in the dark. “Kill me, then,” he said. “I won’t stop you now.” His own voice sounded dull and artificial to him. After a minute, perhaps two, when nothing had happened, he took out the piece of candle he had been taught to use for diagnosis and lit it. He stared in horror at its flame for a few seconds, then flung it down with a sob. The lair, if it was one at all, was empty.

  “I didn’t ask for this,” tegeus-Cromis said. It was something he had often repeated to himself when he was a child. He saw himself reading books, learning these ways to recognise the Beast.

  Groping about in the emptiness for his sword, he clasped its blade and cut the palm of his hand. He squirmed backwards through the foundered window and out into the snow, where he took a few uncertain steps, looking for the horses. They were gone. He stared at the blood running down his sword. He ran three times round the tower, crying out. Three of his fingers hung useless. He bound up the wound so he wouldn’t have to see it. Bent forward against the weather, he picked up in the slush two sets of hoofprints leading back towards Sour Pent Lay. If I hurry, he thought, I can still catch up with him. Or he may come back to look for me.

  At Cobaltmere he had glimpses through the snow of long vacant mudbanks and reefs. His horse he found lying with its neck stretched out and its head in the water. His cloak was still wrapped round its hindquarters. Its body was swollen; blood oozed from its mouth and anus. The veins in its eyes were yellow.

  He was looking down at it puzzledly when he heard a faint cry further along the shore.

  There Dissolution Kahn sat on his great horse. She was slow to settle but full of good points—had a shoulder, he often pointed out, like the half side of a house. She arched her neck and shook her big raw head. Her bridle, which was of soft red leather—would he go heavily on her mouth with a pair of hands like his, delicate as a woman’s?—was inlaid with metal filigree; her breath steamed in the cold air. The Kahn had put on his ring mail, which he had had lacquered deep blue for him some weeks before in the Tinmarket; and over that, with care to keep it spotless, a silk surcoat the same acid yellow as the mare’s caparisons. He loved those colours. His hair blew back in the wind like a pennant. High above his head he brandished a sword with silver hilts. To the prince, who had lived for so long in a world of sign, it seemed for a moment that the marsh could not contain them: they were transformed into their own emblem and thus made invincible. But it was an effect of the light, and passed, and he saw that they looked quite small in front of the Beast of the Sixth House.

  The Lamia!

  It shook its plumage at them irritably. It broke wind. Chitinous scales rattled like dead reeds when it moved. It roared and whistled sardonically, winked a heavy lid over one bulging insectile eye. It did a clumsy sex dance on its hind hooves, and writhed its coils invitingly.

  Though it did not want them, it would have them. It was determined to form words.

  “Snork.”

  It laughed delightedly, lifted a wing, and preened. Lamia the feathered snake: a pleasant musk filled the air. Lamia! With long bent fingers it reached down to pluck the doomed man and his beautiful horse! It said distinctly:

  “I am a liar as well as a dwarf.”

  It sent a hot stream of urine into the sodden earth. “I piss on you.” It increased its size by a factor of two, staggered, giggled, regained its balance, and fell at the Kahn.

  “Run! Run!” warned tegeus-Cromis.

  Blood spattered the mare’s caparisons: she stood bravely up to the bit. Dissolution Kahn retched and vomited: he would not run. He clung instead to his saddle, swaying and groaning, while the snow whirled down and the Lamia overshadowed him. He made himself look up. “I’ll have you first,” he said. He swung his big sword desperately and caught the Beast full on. It began to diminish.

  “No, you see,” it said.

  After that it was plain he didn’t know what to do. He was so tired. The mare still stood quietly up to her bit, careful not to unseat him. He dropped his sword. His mail which he had been so proud of was in shreds; strips of it seemed to be embedded in the flesh of his chest and shoulder. He kept as still as he could, in case he opened some wound, and watched the Sixth Beast shrivel up, shedding wings, scales, everything. Every facet of its eyes went dull. “Please,” it said. “You know.” A smell of burning hair came and went: cinders, dust, vegetable peel. Most of its limbs had withered away, leaving warty stumps which themselves soon disappeared. Iridescent fluids mixed with the water of the marsh. Mouth after mouth clicked feebly and was gone. “Please.” Only when it had repeated all its incarnations would the Kahn look up. His face was pouchy and grey. He slid out of the saddle and stood like someone drunk.

  “She’s got ends like a church buttress, that horse,” he said thickly.

  He cleared his throat, peering at tegeus-Cromis as if he had never seen him before, then nodded to himself.

  “You should have killed it when you had the chance,” he said.

  He stumbled backwards. His mouth fell open in surprise. When he looked down and saw the prince’s sword sticking out of his lower belly, he whimpered. A quick violent shudder went through him. Blood plaited on his thighs. He reached down and put his hands on the sword as if he thought he might try to pull it out, then took them carefully away again.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I was to be killed killing it. Who am I now?”

  Dissolution Kahn sat down gingerly. He coughed and wiped his mouth.

  “I never expected this,” he said. ‘Did you see that thing? I got away with it, and now this happens. If you helped me I could still make it out of this marsh. I could tell you what to do if you didn’t know.”

  He laughed.

  “You and all your ancestors were well fooled. It was easy to kill. Easy. Will you help me out of here?”

  “What will I do now?” whispered the prince, who hadn’t heard him.

  Dissolution Kahn twisted round until he faced the body of the boy from the inn. He saw how thin and white it looked, how apart from being twisted at an odd angle it was unmarked by its own transfiguration, and how at this moment it looked to him like any other body. Then he leant forward, steadied the pommel of the prince’s sword against its ribs, and pushed himself onto it. He grunted.

  tegeus-Cromis sat by the lake until late in the afternoon, when the peculiar light began to come up from the water, his pewter snuffbox on his knee. The snow had stopped; not much had settled. Little Johnny Jack, he noted in the margin of one of his books: Though he is small his family is great. After that he could think of nothing to do. He reviewed everything he had ever done; that was nothing too. Eventually he pulled his sword out of Dissolution Kahn’s belly and threw it into the mere. This did not seem to satisfy him, so he took off his rings and threw them in after it. He swung himself up onto the mare; in her saddlebags he had found a big thick cloak in which to wrap himself. Because he had avoided it all afternoon, he made himself look down at the dead boy.

  “When I think of you catching moths I want to cry,” he said. “You should have killed me at the inn.”

  The prince rode south all night, and when he came out from under the trees he would not look up in case the Name Stars should reflect some immense and unnatural change below.

  VIRICONIUM KNIGHTS

  VIRICONIUM KNIGHTS

  The aristocratic thugs of the High City whistle as they go about their factional games among the derelict observatories and abandoned fortificatio
ns at Lowth. Distant or close at hand, these exchanges—short commanding blasts and protracted responses which often end on what you imagine is an interrogative note—form the basis of a complex language, to the echo of which you wake suddenly in the leaden hour before dawn. Go to the window: the street is empty. You may hear running footsteps, or a sigh. In a minute or two the whistles have moved away in the direction of the Tinmarket or the Margarethestrasse. Next day some minor prince is discovered in the gutter with his throat cut, and all you are left with is the impression of secret wars, lethal patience, an intelligent manoeuvring in the dark.

  The children of the Quarter pretend to understand these signals. They know the histories of all the most desperate men in the city. In the mornings on their way to the Lycee on Simeonstrasse they examine every exhausted face.

  “There goes Antic Horn,” they whisper, “master of the Blue Anemone Philosophical Association,” and, “Last night Osgerby Practal killed two of the Queen’s men right underneath my window; he did it with his knife— like this!—and then whistled the ‘found and killed’ of the Locust Clan. . . .”

  If you had followed the whistles one raw evening in December some years after the War of the Two Queens, they would have led you to an infamous yard behind the inn called the Dryad’s Saddle at the junction of Rue Miromesnil and Salt Lip Lane. The sun had gone down an hour before, under three bars of orange cloud. Wet snow had been falling since. Smoke and steam drifted from the inn in the light of a half-open door; there was a sharp smell in the air, compounded of embrocation, saveloys, and burning anthracite. The yard was crowded on three sides with men whose woollen cloaks were dyed at the hem the colour of dried blood, men who stood with “the braced instep affected only by swordsmen and dancers.” They were quiet and intent, and for the most part ignored the laughter coming from the inn.

  Long ago someone had set four wooden posts into the yard. Blackened and still, capped with snow, they formed a square a few metres on a side. Half a dozen apprentices were at work to clear this, using long-handled brooms to sweep away the slush and blunted trowels to chip at the hardened ridges of ice left by the previous day’s encounters.