“No,” Lanyard whispered. He contorted his hand into the witch ward and spat out the first words Bauer taught him, swift glottals of banishment and undoing. As he did this, he dashed forward and thrust the spear into the first witch’s chest where a heart should be—though it often wasn’t.
The sharp glass tip punched through the chest as if piercing butter, but the witch pulled Lanyard into its runny embrace. It smiled as it patted him on the back like he were a babe.
The witches dragged Lanyard into the Greygulf, and he screamed the whole way.
The Greygulf sat between Before and Now, and other worlds and times. It was a thin world, cast in murk and silver; the only light a faint leaden glimmer that ran through everything. Shadow roads ran in and out of this mirrorland, and the fluid landscape shifted often, an exaggerated reflection of the realms it pressed up against.
From this side, the world veil looked like smoky glass, easy enough to push through if you knew the trick. You could go anywhere if you didn’t mind the cost.
Few other than the Jesusmen knew of this place or could survive a passage through it without being struck mindless and dumb. Lanyard had been here twice: once with his master, once as the prisoner of a witch he’d hunted to its nest.
This time, he was not sure he would ever leave. He screamed until a band of waxy flesh ran across his mouth sealing off the sound. The three witches melted and ran together into a new shape, a collective of arms and legs that thundered along at a great pace.
Although Lanyard could still feel the presence of Turtwurdigan nearby, Tilly’s glass could not feed from this grey light. The insistent chatter was gone and replaced by a morose grumbling.
Part captor and part litter, the witches hustled him along the shadow road. The path wound like a silver ribbon up into the grey sky, weaving through countless others, stretching from the entry point into the Waste to parts unknown.
Terrified, Lanyard tried to see where they were taking him. Slow shapes travelled across the distant road, reaching out through the world veil with impossibly long arms. Feeding. Most witches kept their nests in here, too, the better to world-hop through that smoky glass. Others found a place like the Now and made their homes near a food source.
Supposedly, the Jesus was still in here somewhere, bound and suffering. Guardian of the Crossing, master of a doomed order. His disciples were dead or missing, or had taken one too many trips to this place and tasted the pleasures of the other side. Jesusmen, turned to witching.
They’ll keep me in here forever, Lanyard thought, nostrils flaring as he drew in short, panicked breaths. The last damn fool to ride with mark and word.
This won’t end well.
The shadow road entered a rickety spire, a structure that was half shadow and half brick. Rusted Before-Time antennae bristled along its flanks that were peppered with satellite dishes and other growths that Lanyard did not know the names for. A fat tangle of shadow roads entered through archways and modified windows, dozens of roads converging at impossible angles.
“A terminus, Jesusman,” a greasy pair of lips whispered into his ear. “My way, we’d leave you here.”
“Yes, yes,” said another voice, a broad grin rising from the white bulk in front of his little boy eyes. “We’d pass you around, Jesusfool, let the whole place have a lick of you.”
“But the master says fetch, so we fetch,” the waxy dog snout declared. The witches bickered then dissolved into their singular selves. One formed itself into an upright sarcophagus on legs and swallowed Lanyard completely save for his face. The dog witch trotted ahead with its ears swivelling and head erect, while the other appeared as a two-headed Leicester, the heads arguing comically over the ownership of Lanyard’s slouch hat.
The inside of the terminus resembled a great cathedral, a hall of stone and ancient beams. Flickering TVs covered the walls, while stock market tickers fought with neon signs for remaining space.
“He likes to be up to date,” one of the witches said. They stepped from one road to another, a grey ribbon sloping towards a downward angled window.
Below them, a fortune of junk gathered and stacked high: cars and boats, banks of electrical equipment, museums’ worth of artworks and statuary.
Under the converging paths, the interior of a faux house was kept in the midst of this mess, a display from a Before-Time store. Settees, a bedroom setting, and a kitchen with an electric stove. Pots bubbled away on the red-hot cooktop, tended to by a trio of waxy arms.
In the middle was a vast white shape like a fat candle half-melted and running all over the furniture. The face in the middle was stretched out, broad mouth filthy with juice and grease. Arms and limbs danced around the massive glob, constantly ferrying pots of food into that wide gullet.
“Morning, Neville,” the dog barked cheerfully. The only response was a deep burbling mumble, the twitch of limbs as the bloated witch reached out for them. Fingers as wide as a man brushed the shadow road that they walked along, swaying it slightly.
“Rich man, him,” the false Leicester said to Lanyard. “Rich as you like.”
The witches left the terminus tower and followed the shadow road down towards the ground. Every horror from Lanyard’s dreams walked here. An aeroplane lay twisted and burning on a silver mountain while a team of witches plucked out the terrified passengers and stripped them for the greypot—a church bell with its clapper removed and perched upside-down over a roaring bonfire.
In places, the world veil sagged, broken to the point of instability. Junk tumbled through, and just as often tumbled back out, bleedthroughs in the making. A lawnmower turned rogue, roaring about joyfully until two witches pinned it down and tore it apart with their bare hands.
The worst sign of wear in the world veil was an enormous bulge, a pulsating boil that threatened to burst. Lanyard wondered if this was the bleedthrough that Tilly was searching for. He was frustrated by its nearness.
If I were to slip back into the Now with all those fridgerators and mattresses, wouldn’t that be a nice surprise for Slopkettle? Lanyard thought mournfully.
A big walker followed their path, its impossibly long arms dragging through the world veil as if drift fishing. It pulled a house through and settled around it to grind away the eaves with its peg teeth. Lanyard shivered when he looked at the blunt face, the stretched features that had once been human.
“Well, it’s been fun, but here we are,” the dog witch said, pointing ahead of them as if sighting a duck. “Through you go.”
The shadow road ended in a door, a dark pucker like a sphincter, knotted tight. The two-headed Leicester tapped around its edges, pressing against something that caused it to spiral open.
On the other side of the door was a neat circle of daylight, eye-watering against the silver gloom. Lanyard saw the burnt teeth where buildings had once stood and the maddening tangle where another witch-nest grew, a thing of shadow and scraps.
The broad white of the salt flat that almost killed him.
They were taking him back to face their justice, as if he’d never fled from this place, beaten and broken. He thrashed around in his bonds, bit into the witch’s sour flesh for all the good it did.
He was going to die here, and he was going to die hard.
The sarcophagus witch turned back into a man-shape and ejected the prisoner from its innards. Choking and gagging, Lanyard retched, his gut heaving violently as he fell to his knees. As always, the passage from the Greygulf churned his insides, but his mind was still intact. The mark of a true guardian of the Crossing: the ability to pierce the world veil and still have a thought in his head.
“He was sick inside of me,” the first witch moaned, squeezing the chunks of Lanyard’s vomit out of his pale flesh like pimples. Its companions laughed, and the creature suffered their jibes with a wide smile, from lips that wrapped almost all the way around its head.
“Here mate, can’t have you meeting the bossman completely starkers,” another one said, a wax tentacl
e depositing the slouch hat on his head. More laughter, half of it silent and bouncing around inside his head. The static of their mind-talk gave him a throbbing headache, and the proximity to so many witches made his bones ache.
At their prodding, he walked forward.
The nest rose before him, an alien architecture of spires and jutting bungalows, clad in tin and shadow, wired to power-panels that drank the sunlight like a Taursi glass. A handful of witches climbed around on the structure like white spiders, spitting goopy threads into the gaps, running electrical lines into the innards of the structure.
One wrestled with what looked like a miniature bank of dark cloud, pushing it into a buttress and securing it with spit. It began to spread like a vine, dark fingers holding the disparate pieces together, forming a wall that a cannon would be hard pressed to shatter.
Below the nest, a man crouched by a low fire, poking at the coals with a stick. A writhing mass of white snakes vacated the fireside as the witches came to warm themselves by the banked coals.
Here the witches frogmarched Lanyard and hurled him down into the ash and dust.
Coughing and his body a litany of abuse, Lanyard got to his hands and knees. He slowly scooped up a handful of ash. I’ll go down the same way I lived—fighting dirty. Raising his head, he stared across the fire in shock, speechless as a familiar figure knocked the coals away from a fresh-cooked roll of damper.
“It’s been a long time, Lanyard,” Bauer said, the old Jesusman smiling as he broke open the steaming loaf. “Hungry?”
— INTERLUDE —
The Boneman drove the skeleton horse onwards, keeping to backroads as he crossed the Overland. Having met the miserable men of this age, he feared they would shoot him on sight, a jelly-fleshed freak with a visible skeleton.
The first person to see him was a young shepherd watering his sheep by the banks of the Niven. The boy wailed in terror, abandoned his crook and his flock, and plunged into the water to swim for safety.
Although the Boneman never said a word, he realised that his steed and his reflection said more than enough. He would not be able to get close to a town, not looking like this.
Another time he was driven off by a travelling tinkerman who had set his birds on the Boneman the moment he showed himself. No one would give directions to a walking monster, and he knew he’d get no help in finding the whereabouts of his brother.
Spending a nervous day lurking around a small logger’s village, the Boneman crept in like a thief by night. A dog set to barking as he passed by a cabin, but its owner merely grumbled at the beast to shut up.
How far I have fallen, the Boneman mused, pilfering clothing from a wash line. An old man slumbered next to his hearth, feet bare and warmed by the fire. The Boneman crept inside and snatched his shoes. He stood up to find the man awake, wide-eyed and gasping.
“Shh,” he said, holding a finger to his clear lips. The old man screamed fit to bring the entire village out. The Boneman ran to his cart and tumbled into it. He shook the reins and urged the dead horse into a swift canter as the villagers came for him with braces of dogs and hefting torch and axe.
He remembered his house in Crosspoint, the fine clothes and servants, and sighed heavily. This was not the reception a god deserved.
Everywhere was the work of his foolish kin. The Overland was a ravaged mess with great swathes of earth blistered and drained of vitality. Most of the old public wells were capped and sealed with crude signs warning that the water had gone bad.
The Boneman remembered setting up the great irrigation scheme. He’d been pleased when this opened up cropland as far as the dust of the Inland. Now, the canals were empty and crumbled. The Niven was less than half the river he remembered. Apart from the narrow strip of farms hugging the river, little grew.
You idiots. You really screwed the pooch while I was away.
There were towns along the tradeway that he didn’t remember, and ruins where he’d expected towns. Halfway to Crosspoint, he came across a small wayhouse, a handful of buildings in a stockade. The taverna held no interest for him, but he soon found what he was searching for.
The hard-eyed young woman looked up from her washpot to see the shadow in her doorway, and with a sigh she reached for her buttons. But when she saw the monstrous hand that gripped her by the wrist, she went pale, and then another hand clasped her over her mouth even as she drew breath to cry out.
“Please, don’t scream,” the Boneman said to the whore. “I need you. No, not for that.”
He took her to the dresser. The mirror showed him as a parody of a man. His stolen clothes did nothing to hide his face and hands. Confronted by his hideous reflection, the Boneman sobbed, tears splashing down onto the girl’s face and cleavage. She stopped fighting and looked at his reflection, more curious than scared now.
“I-I have a problem,” the Boneman said. “Give me your creams and paints, whatever you use to hide the bruises. Please, give me a face.”
She nodded and he let her go and sat down on her foul mattress. With trembling fingers, she applied the makeup, dabbing at his water-clear skin until a face slowly appeared. Filling in the crevices of his nose and eyes, she worked swiftly and evenly.
“Wear these,” she said as she fished a pair of satin gloves from her drawer. He pulled them on and wriggled his fingers. Now that his finger bones were out of sight, he felt almost normal.
She unpacked a box of wigs, fine work from the world of Before. Ah, so there’s still a Crossing, a way to get goods here, he thought. Someone must be around to keep the shadow roads working.
Looks like I’m that much closer to finding you, brother.
The woman selected a short wig, a brown mop. She put it on his bald scalp and trimmed the fringe a little, and rubbed sheep fat into the hair to make it look less clean, more like a man’s hair.
When he looked at his reflection, for the first time he smiled. At a distance, he could pass for a man. He would be able to enter Crosspoint and ask questions in the temples.
“Thank you,” he told the whore, digging out an old purse of cracked leather from around his neck, a cache from a ruined river-shrine of Lucy’s. He pressed gold on her, fat coins from his own time. Eyes wide, she quickly secreted the money.
“Don’t mention it,” she said, handing him the pots of makeup, the brushes, a small mirror. “We’re all monsters, love.”
The Boneman walked the streets of Crosspoint for the first time in hundreds of years, and he wanted to weep. The broad plazas and squares were filthy and neglected. The public parks he’d marked out with his own hands were now given over to slum housing.
A quick trip through the marketplaces revealed that Crosspoint was the centre of a scrap-driven economy. The Boneman wondered why everyone made do with junk and scavenged goods. The only working machines he could see were cobbled together affairs kept running by the woefully ignorant tinkermen of this age.
You’ve really dropped the ball on this, Lucy.
The Moot was now the private house of a rich slaver, who had partially demolished the adjoining Petitioner’s Court to fit his menagerie. Only the outer walls of Chorister’s Hall remained, gutted by a fire sometime beyond living memory and rebuilt into an open air market.
The Lodge of the Jesusmen lay in ruins, as the Boneman had expected, and no one had rebuilt on this tainted land. He watched as hobbled goats grazed on the weeds in between fallen stone columns. Pigeons perching on the defaced statuary added to centuries’ worth of shit.
Where did we go wrong, my friend? he thought, sitting on the steps as he munched on a pennyloaf. Centuries of friendship, tossed aside over a misunderstanding.
“You deliberately endangered us all!” Hesus yelled that fateful day. “There were so many better worlds to settle. We found them easily once we learnt your method. And why the Cruik? Why such an interest in the Taursi relics?”
“I do not answer to you!” Papa Lucy thundered.
“You must explain yourself!” He
sus demanded. Then, Sad Plain happened. Well, I warned you, Hesus, but you wouldn’t listen. And now look at us.
Papa Lucy’s temple thronged with worshippers, but the main atrium now doubled as a fighting pit. The worship was some mad amalgam of Cruik rote and a low version of the Family story, often retold and much changed by the centuries. He left there saddened, finding only junk possessions of Lucy’s passed off as relics. There was no sign of his brother’s whereabouts, and even more worrying, there was no sign of the actual Cruik itself.
I hope he destroyed his favourite toy. No one can master the Cruik.
The Boneman’s temple was a crumb of itself. Most of the complex was sold off and knocked down, rebuilt as tenement housing for labourers and unemployed drovers. They’d kept only the priory, which seemed to function as an undertaker. His handful of priests were little more than public embalmers now.
Lucy’s palace was in much the same shape as he remembered it, now the home of the current Overseer. Lingering in a poorly equipped public archive, the Boneman learnt of the revolution: bailiffs had thrown down the Moot some centuries back, replacing reason with a hierarchy of tyrants.
Bertha’s light and airy manse was now a lunatic asylum. This was more than fitting.
The greatest tragedy was his own palace, which was converted into the town barracks. Bailiffs drilled in the courtyard, and he did not get far before crude men with rusted guns turned him away. He saw the gardens converted into a bird-pen, his gorgeous marble stair trampled and muddied by centuries of feet, carpets and tapestries long gone.
Get out of my house! he wanted to scream at them. Look what you’ve done to the place!
But he smiled, holding up his hands diffidently. As he left in a hurry, he hoped the furious runnels of sweat weren’t washing away his makeup.
Unwilling to spend another minute inside those walls, the Boneman made a camp on the hill overlooking the First Town. With a wearied soul, he watched the crude flicker of gas lamps and Taursi glass and heard the howls and laughter as the night scum preyed on each other. He wondered how his noble experiment could have failed so badly.
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