by Bill McCurry
Lutigan watched her. “That was odd.”
“It sure was.” Fingit nodded.
“She started skipping on her left foot. Normally, she starts on her right. And she’s skipping either five steps or six steps between trees, never seven, which would make much more sense. I wonder what this means?”
Fingit closed his eyes and counted imaginary dead Lutigans. “So, about the chariot. Will you ride it?”
Lutigan roared, “Ride it? I already rode it. It crashed onto the battlefield and almost elevated me!”
“No, not that chariot. And I’m sorry about that, as I’ve said every time we’ve spoken for the past twenty thousand years. I mean the new chariot that will gloriously save us all.”
Lutigan lifted his chin at that, and Fingit saw the God of War’s nostrils flare. At the same time, he spotted a figure a hundred paces off behind Lutigan. The intruder was running through the trees toward them.
The Void suck it! I almost have this idiot hooked. Who is that?
Lutigan ended his moment of thought. “No. You fly in your stupid chariot. I want to see you vomit up an organ for a change.”
Fingit executed a rapid search for a good lie. “I can’t fly it. I have to stay here to guide the chariot back to the Home of the Gods. It won’t help us otherwise.” Looking beyond Lutigan, he saw that the approaching figure was Sakaj. Her Gown of Shimmering Thought now hung stained and shredded on her wasted form. Her hair, once black as a cruel thought and as soft as a lover’s breath, now flew tangled in every direction. Fingit saw two beetles crawling in it. Every feature of her once-radiant face was now thrown into such extreme relief that it appeared scratched out in chalk by an angry child.
Fingit ignored Sakaj. “Lutigan, whoever rides the chariot will secure glory everlasting. He’ll be the greatest hero in history!” He whispered, “Maybe greater than Krak!”
Lutigan paused with a distant look in his eyes. He opened his mouth to respond, but at that moment, a piercing cry sounded from behind him and both gods looked. Several paces away, Sakaj sat on the withered grass with her sandals off. She had just torn the little toe off her right foot and was in the process of tearing off the toe next to it.
Neither god considered for a moment trying to stop Sakaj. During her Year of Self-Annihilation, some gods had tried to prevent her from harming herself, but she had managed to elevate herself every day no matter what anyone did. They at last stopped trying and learned to accept a shattered, dismembered, or dying Sakaj as part of the landscape.
This current self-mutilation annoyed Fingit, because he couldn’t continue hoodwinking Lutigan until Sakaj’s howls and shrieks abated. He and the God of War watched Sakaj tear off the second smallest toe on her right foot. Then she went to work on her left foot, tearing off the two smallest toes there as well. She began working on her hands next.
This is unbelievable. Oh, what am I saying? Of course it’s believable. She once drank molten lead. This is definitely believable.
Sakaj had torn off the two smallest fingers from her right hand, and as Fingit watched, she used the thumb and two remaining fingers on her gory right hand to rip off the two smallest fingers on her left. She then rose to her feet, grunting and staggering, and glared at Lutigan with incandescent hatred.
“Dumber than dog shit,” Lutigan mumbled as Sakaj staggered toward him. Fingit didn’t believe she could do more than stagger, but she proved him wrong. She launched herself at Lutigan’s crotch, seized his testicles in her claw of a right hand, pulled, and twisted with all her godlike might.
Fingit felt sure that the feral imps in the distant valley heard Lutigan’s curse with perfect clarity. Lutigan jumped back, gasping. However, he was the God of War for some excellent reasons. One was that a little unimaginable agony didn’t stop him or even make him hesitate. He drew forth one of his fourteen swords that were all fourteen palms long. Inspiration appeared on his face, and striking with the superlative precision of the God of War, he sliced off Sakaj’s right thumb. He followed that with the rest of the fingers on her right hand, taking one off with each stroke. He took the three left fingers with lightning cuts, and then he pushed the goddess to the ground so he could deliver three toe-severing strikes to her right foot. As Lutigan began on the left foot, Fingit heard the God of War counting under his breath. “Ten… eleven… twelve…” He counted with each swing of his sword until all twelve of Sakaj’s remaining digits dotted the wan grass. Lutigan stood over the squirming Goddess of the Unknowable, chortled, and severed her head as he yelled, “Thirteen…”
Lutigan appeared confused for a moment, and then he looked at Fingit.
“Son of a bitch!” Fingit screamed as joy bloomed on Lutigan’s face.
The God of War flourished and bellowed, “Fourteen!” in the same instant his sword swept Fingit’s head from his shoulders.
Four
(Fingit)
Since the beginning of his existence, whenever Fingit had been decapitated, crushed, or ripped into bits, he had always returned to consciousness in the Dim Lands. There he’d waited until the sun rose in the Home of the Gods, at which time he’d been restored to his normal, unelevated state.
Certain philosophical questions had arisen from this arrangement. If Fingit returned to consciousness in the Dim Lands, didn’t that mean he’d been unconscious at some point? If so, how long had he been unconscious? Since he had been elevated in one place and awoken in a different one, how could he know where this unconsciousness had taken place? And since he was a god, how did he know that existence continued when he wasn’t aware of it? Even worse, how could he know that he continued to exist during those times when the universe escaped his notice?
Fingit had thought a lot about these self-contradictory questions. There wasn’t much else to do in the Dim Lands while you’re waiting to be reborn, especially if you’re lying there ripped into bits. He hadn’t yet answered the questions to his satisfaction, but while pondering, he had spent many days staring at the Dim Lands themselves. He knew them well.
After being thoroughly elevated by Lutigan, Fingit opened his eyes on a land that was not dim at all. The black sky held a vast, prismatic web of stars. Velvety black grass, edged with reflected starlight, brushed against Fingit’s skin. The dense, motionless shadows were probably trees, but they could easily be monsters, worshippers, or statues of naked girls. The air shushed as some invisible creature glided overhead, and a breeze whiffed against Fingit’s forehead.
These were not the Dim Lands.
“Are you awake yet?” Sakaj’s voice came from beside him.
Since he hadn’t heard Sakaj speak in years, Fingit turned to look at her. Actually, he experienced a complete failure to turn to look at her. He couldn’t turn his head at all.
Ah, yes, I was decapitated by that grunting turnip, Lutigan. I’m trapped in the Void knows where, and I’m just a head! Who the hell knows where my body is around here?
Sakaj said, “I’m sorry about arranging for Lutigan to chop off your head, but I had limited options for getting you here.”
“Where is here?” Fingit asked, his voice breaking.
“I call it the Dark Lands. You know, we live in the Bright Lands, we are elevated in the Dim Lands, and we… do something else in the Dark Lands. I don’t think it has a real name though, so you can call it what you want. Afterworld, Other Realm, Unicorn Town, whatever.”
“How did you find it? How did you get me here? How do we get out?”
Sakaj chuckled. “I found it through an enormous amount of agonizing trial and error. I was able to bring you here because of my deep knowledge of the mysteries, and because we elevated at almost the same time and place. Getting out of here will be, well, immensely complicated, to be honest. By the way, I do wish I could have found a different elevation for us. Being a disembodied head is such a handicap. I prefer to commit suicide by snorting sulfuric acid or by swallowing my tongue or something similar. That way, once I get here, I can still walk around and do things.”
“All right then, why don’t you just drown yourself every day and always have a functional corpse or body or whatever?”
“I have to elevate myself in a different fashion every time.” She sounded as if she were explaining how doors work to a child.
“Holy rolling toads, why?”
“Because on the other side, I’m rat-chewing crazy! Do you think that someone sane figured all this out?”
It almost makes a horrifying kind of sense. Or maybe this makes no sense at all. Maybe Sakaj has sucked me into her fishbowl of insanity. Fingit forced his jaw to stop trembling. “Of course, Sakaj, that makes perfect sense. Let’s make the best of it until you take us home, which I’m sure will be soon. What is there to do around here? You know, if we were capable of doing something.”
Sakaj laughed. “There isn’t a single thing to do here. But there is something to see. At least today there is. Look up.”
Fingit strained to look up as high as he could, considering that he didn’t have much of a neck. He whistled at the mass of stars, as thick as the hair on Krak’s chest. “Wow, that’s pretty. Those are some really neat constellations. A lot like all the constellations I’ve seen before over thousands and thousands of years.”
“They’re just a shade different. Look hard.”
Fingit rolled his eyes. At least I can still do that. All right… plain star, boring star, a cluster of boring stars… that are moving awfully fast. Most of them are sort of sitting there, but once in a while, a group moves around. And the colors—
“Krak and all his whores!” Fingit hissed.
“Indeed.”
“Those are men! Those are men, right there!”
“Yes—”
“That rain-down-damnation enormous tree is…” Fingit’s brain flopped like a fish on the riverbank.
“Yes, it is.” Sakaj laughed again, louder.
“Have you called them? Can they hear you? Have you done a deal yet? Dammit, I wasted a day on a useless chariot.” Fingit squinted and stuck out his jaw, trying to get a better look.
“Fingit, hush! I haven’t exactly called them. It’s complicated. Subtler than forging a hammer with which to bash things.”
Fingit swallowed so hard his head almost toppled over. “We have to tell Krak.”
“No!” Sakaj bellowed, and then she paused. “Krak will bring everyone else, and they’ll ruin everything like mice in a soup pot. This requires subtlety.”
“But Krak—”
“Look at these people, dear Fingit. We know one of them.”
Fingit stared so hard his eyes watered. “I think I see… no. They just look like people. Meat that walks around.”
“Look at the skinny one sitting on that barrel.”
Fingit realized the futility of trying to shake his head. “So?”
“That is the Murderer. We own him.”
Fingit squinted. The man sat swinging his legs, listening to five nasty-looking fellows scream abuse at him while their mule watched. The Murderer looked like a rag-picker, not a sorcerer. “Well, great! Call him, trick some power out of the boob, and take us home. I’ll make you a weapon, and you can ram it into one of Cheg-Cheg’s less impervious places.”
Sakaj sighed. “Oh, Fingit. Sadly, it’s more complicated than that.”
“Shit!” Saliva escaped the corner of Fingit’s mouth, and he used his tongue to try to wipe it off. “Why is everything so flipping complicated with you?”
“Well, I am the Goddess of the Unknowable. Don’t hate me for that.” Her voice caught as she said it.
“All right, I’m sorry. What’s so complicated?”
“That was graciously done. I accept your apology. The Murderer owes Harik an undisclosed number of killings. Only Harik knows how many, and no else may deal with the man before the killings are completed. I hate to say anything good about Harik, but that was rather clever. The Murderer was one of those protect-your-fellow-man types, and Harik has bargained him into someone who would hike out of his way to stab cripples in the face. So, do you want to bring Harik into this?”
Fingit grimaced. “No. I wouldn’t trust him to spit if a dead mouse was in his mouth. Are we stuck with this Murderer? Aren’t there any other sorcerers around?”
“Ah, that brings me to the Freak, one of my daughters. She is flitting around within one thousand miles or so. I had almost emptied her before the Veil fell. It was such an artistic endeavor to twist and pound her from a mincing girl into an iron bar. And that is the center of all this. The Freak has one more thing to offer me, something huge, but I need leverage. I need your help, darling fellow, and I will reward you for providing it.”
“No. No, no. I think you’re insane, and I’m going to tell Krak about all of this.”
“How will you find him? I can just leave you here if I wish.” Sakaj purred like a cheetah. “You will be nothing more than a head for the rest of eternity. By the way, has your nose started itching yet?”
Damn, damn, damn it! It’s itching now. “Fine. I’ll listen, but I’m not promising anything.”
“Of course not. Now, wait just a moment.” Sakaj closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. The stars above them smeared, swirled, and whipped into a new pattern. “Please observe that repulsive boy tottering along that wet path. His entire being cries out to become a sorcerer. Even though he and I share little synchrony, a month ago I shooed him like a dim chicken toward the Murderer.”
“Why not toward the Freak?”
“He already wanted to find the Murderer. The idiot has traveled every direction except the correct one. Had I not pointed him the right way, I suspect he would have perished before he ever found the man.”
“Krak’s ass, he’s ugly. Like he was cursed by a witch and then hit in the face with a wagon.”
“Well put. The boy always fiddles with things. Not that. Clothing, sticks, mud—just about anything. He might like to meet you.”
This is the first new human we’ve found to hoodwink since the Veil fell, and I’m the one who gets him? This is the luckiest thing that’s happened to me in… ever.
“Here’s my proposition,” Sakaj said. “This little boy is too young to give us much power. Not enough irony and pain in his life yet. But you get him started, and then we’ll orchestrate an opportunity to drain the Freak of her final reservoir. Then you and I will defeat Cheg-Cheg, rip apart the Veil, and enjoy our rewards as the greatest heroes of all time.”
She must think I’m dumber than mud. I’ll just say yes and get home. Then Krak will fix all this. “It’s a deal. Let’s get started tomorrow.”
“I’m so happy you agree!” Sakaj giggled. Fingit wasn’t sure he’d ever heard Sakaj giggle.
The fool sounds as if we’re going to a party together.
Sakaj said, “By the way, if you’re thinking about betraying me, remember that I can arrange to bring you here whenever I wish, and I can choose to leave you here. I might also have you elevated by an avalanche or by Cheg-Cheg’s thunderous foot. Existing as a severed head would seem like a birthday party compared to eternity as a layer of paste.”
Five
(Fingit)
Fingit rubbed his neck and gazed at the stars swirling in the hollow black sky above Unicorn Town. It was as if mankind’s existence were being swallowed up by the gluttonous universe. Currently, the window onto mankind showed nothing but ferocious rain engulfing a trail through a muddy mountain valley. He didn’t know how far the valley extended, but it was monotonous enough to make a sheep drown itself out of boredom.
Now that Fingit met Sakaj every day in this place beyond elevation, he had taken to calling it Unicorn Town. He did it to aggravate her, since she’d had him murdered in a horrible fashion by Lutigan, and since she was threatening to trap him into boredom for all eternity.
Fingit grasped his jaw and adjusted his neck, producing several echoing pops.
Maybe I should find some other way to elevate myself.
Sakaj had sworn to Fingit that elevation was
an integral part of the process to reach the Dark Lands. Also, she needed to be near him when it happened. Yet she had been unable to reliably elevate both Fingit and herself at the same time and place every day. It required more ingenuity than either of them had expected to pull it off consistently. It certainly required more than Sakaj could summon while she ranted and ate bark and danced around in the Gardens of Abstruse Reflection wearing nothing but live turtles.
After the third day of failure, and the third day of being slaughtered by Cheg-Cheg, Sakaj gave Fingit the secret of reaching Unicorn Town. She did not, however, explain how to escape back home.
The fully revealed method of reaching Unicorn Town disappointed Fingit rather a lot. The complete process was holding Unicorn Town in mind as he was elevated, and he had expected something a bit more arcane. Regardless, in order to reach Unicorn Town, Fingit now needed to exterminate himself each morning before Cheg-Cheg arrived to slaughter each and every god he could find and send them to the Dim Lands.
Sakaj was toad-licking mad in the Gods’ Realm, and her demented mind forced her to elevate herself in a different manner every day. Fingit wasn’t insane in the Gods’ Realm, however, so he could commit suicide the same way every day if he wanted. Like a true engineer, he devoted a lot of thought to the suicide problem. Which method of execution would elevate him with the least pain and also leave him a highly functional body once elevated? He first tried the classic wrist-slashing technique. It did the job and got him to Unicorn Town, but it also left a horrific mess in the tub. No imp servants remained to dispose of the body and tidy up, so he had to clear away his corpse and scrub everything clean by himself the next day. He resolved not to try that again.
Poison had ranked high on his list of possibilities, and it sounded like a tidy way to go. For his second suicide, Fingit procured a large quantity of Black Aftershock, the most virulent poison in existence. One good thing about godhood is being hard to elevate by natural means. But that can sometimes be a bad thing, since Fingit required two gallons of Black Aftershock to do himself in. The stuff tasted like dung, smelled worse, and made him belch like nobody’s business. After one suicide by poison, he tossed that method into the waste bin.
