The War in the Waste

by Felicity Savage

  She paused for breath.

  “Thus, anything which affects the Queen affects us to a lesser degree, just as a tug on a knot makes all the threads leading out of it vibrate. This is evidenced by the way in which in the last century, as the monarchy declined, society has also declined, giving rise to decadent customs, widespread fear of the future, and, simultaneously, the rapid development of new and hideous twists on daemon technology, which in their turn cause the war to escalate further. All this can have but one result: the death of the Queen.”

  Crispin started. Her singsong voice had almost hypnotized him, but that jerked him out of his trance. “That’s the most unpatriotic, traitorous thing—”

  “But death—death has no lesser degree. Death is simply death.” Her voice quivered. “And so when the Queen dies—as must inevitably happen—and she has no direct descendant who can inherit her responsibilities at the center of the knot of humanity—why, then, we must all die with her. No one knows what shape the apocalypse will come in. All that has been revealed to us is that it will come.”

  “But—” Crispin spluttered. “Why is the Queen the knot? Why not the Lizard Significant? You said they were related—it makes no sense—”

  “Because the Queen is directly descended from Thraziaow, the first King ever! Because—because that’s the way it is, do you hear! The way it is!”

  Crispin could not take his eyes off her.

  “The war has already rendered the Queen unable to bear a child. It will kill her soon. Maybe we have twenty years; maybe ten; maybe two.” Rae’s evident belief in what she was saying made each of her words ring with conviction, like Millsy’s when he spoke of daemons. And why shouldn’t they? She, too, was speaking of what she knew. Only in her voice there was an element of despair. “Maybe she’ll die tomorrow. I’m not privy to the secrets of the court. And that’s why I can’t—anymore. I just can’t. I had to tell you.”

  To Crispin it seemed impossible, absurd, that she should start to cry now. He almost laughed. He caught her in his arms and held her close. “Oh, Rae. Oh, Rae, Rae. Is that all. Is that all it ever was? It’s not true. Culties are crazy. It sounds slick, but it isn’t based on anything, anything at all. And to think you’ve been plagued by lies like that ever since you were a kid!”

  “But it isn’t lies.” She was crying in his arms, but not holding onto him. “I can’t make anyone understand, not even you. I don’t know the right words!”

  He lifted her up, looked into her tear-stained face. He wanted to kiss her and comfort her; but that would be unforgivably irresponsible. Any sympathy at all would be an implicit agreement with her crazy cultie theory. It would be a validation of her baseless despair. He pushed her upright and said roughly, “Stop it. It’s your nerves. And if you know it’s your nerves, you’re all right, see what I mean?” He mopped off her face with the edge of his sleeve. She did not resist. “Used to happen to me all the time. Waiting in the performers’ entrance, when I was just beginning on the flying trapezes. I’d think about how easy it would be to fuck up and break my neck, and all of a sudden I couldn’t go on. I’d just start bawling. Well, I was only a kid. It was lucky for me I had Herve, that was my old man, to knock me into shape. First he’d slap me on both cheeks—pow, pow—and it’d be such a shock I’d stop. The audience couldn’t hear anything because of the band out front. Then he’d say ‘Hold still, child,’ and put some powder on my nose. If I only had some powder, I’d fix your face, too.” He looked at her, narrowing his eyes. “See what I mean? See what I mean? Circus and music hall aren’t that different, are they?”

  Her whole body shook with a sigh. “No, they’re not.”

  “There, see? You’re all right now.” He stood up and pulled her to her feet. She would not look at him. “We have a long way to go. Come on.”

  “But to where?” she murmured as she buttoned up her coat. “To where?”

  “Rae—”

  “No. I’m sorry. Sorry about that. I think you’re right, this place is getting to me!”

  “Could happen to anyone.”

  She unbuttoned her coat all the way down again. “But it doesn’t happen to you! I wish I was like you! You’re so steady! You’re so confident!” She bit her nails. Crispin felt flabbergasted. Finally, he slapped her gently on the back.

  “We really do have to get going.”

  She was silent, her head bowed, as they started to walk.

  And dozens of miles of haphazardly crowded pines and winding streams amplified the silence between them. Crispin’s boot crushed through a fox’s scoured skull. The faint sonic whine of an airplane made him look up.

  Ten days later: The end of Marout. The Wraithwaste

  “Oh, the lovelies!” Rae breathed.

  Crispin could not speak. For the first time since entering the Wraithwaste—indeed, for the first time in his life—he was seeing daemons materialize in their natural habitat. The ground fell away suddenly from the place where they stood concealed in the trees. A stream poured down over exposed rocks to form the pool below, then, wider and darker, flowed out of the other side of the dell. Bright sparks of color flittered over the surface of the pool. On the banks there were snowberry bushes and holly, white berries and red mingling so closely they seemed to grow from the same branches. Small pink flowers misted the rocks around the fall. Around the pool grew yellow flags.

  And the daemons!

  Some lounged in the grass, looking like families having their Sunday picnic in the park, except that none of them stood more than two feet high, and all were naked. They yammered in their curious language of odd phrases and advertising slogans, served each other little delicacies on plates made of woven pine needles, finger-combed each other’s hair. These more human daemons fascinated Crispin, yet repelled him, like Millsy’s pets, whom the sentimental old trickster had dressed in children’s clothes. Other, smaller ones sat on the branches of the pines, picking termites out of the bark with long, monkeylike fingers. And those that darted and hummed over the water, aimless as mayflies, but the size of crows—those made him want to echo Rae: “Oh, the lovelies!” They had iridescent wings. They had bodies like adult men and women. Unlike the daemons on the banks, who were mostly dull in color, the fliers came in all the hues of the rainbow. Their voices were like the chimes of tiny bells. He had never seen such daemons in captivity; he supposed they were not strong enough to be used in transformation engines. One could probably use them to feed large daemons, or burn in daemon glares. The economics of it would have to be worked out.

  Smiling, he glanced at Rae. She had clasped her hands between her breasts in that theatrical yet wholly unself-conscious gesture she used.

  “I wonder what draws them here,” he whispered. “They don’t generally materialize like this.”

  “They’re beauties. I think beauty will last. Only humanity has to come to an end. Because people are like a canker in the world. But these—these are natural.”

  “Oh, Rae, not that again!” It was torn from him. Mistakenly, perhaps, he had thought the matter resolved days ago. “I thought you’d—”

  “The Easterners, and the Apocalypists, say the whole world will be destroyed—not just humanity—but I don’t think that can be true. After all, these little creatures haven’t done anyone any harm. It’s people who have done them harm.”

  Below, a daemon shrilled in a voice of alarm: “Twice the range of the F-98! New top-of-the-line model! Ten gallons of oil shipped with each item!”

  Crispin spun back toward the clearing. His skin prickled, and his hair stood on end. “Sssh!”

  Down below, the daemons were exclaiming loudly, grabbing each other’s hands and vanishing. Something larger was coming. Crispin closed his hand on Rae’s arm, ready to drag her away, because it was coming from behind them, but before he could move he felt it pass, sweeping down into the grotto, and there came a noisy bubbling from the pool, as if masses of water had been suddenly displaced. For a moment all was silent, the surface
flat. A small daemon on a branch gibbered with fear. Then the big daemon reared a glistening white head out of the pool and sighed pale flames that hissed on contact with the water.

  On the other side of the pool, a forearm ten feet long snaked out of the water and a hand the size of an umbrella curled around a clump of flags near the bank, crunching them off.

  “Stay back,” Crispin whispered,

  “Will it come after us?”

  “I dunno. Never seen one this big. It’s not a daemon, it’s a demogorgon. This’s the kind of beast they use in municipal waterworks. Factories. Places like that. Thousands of dp.”

  Without warning the daemon shot its other arm up out of the water and grabbed the little brown daemon on the tree branch. There was a flurry of movement too fast to be seen and then the hideous, all-too-human face sank beneath the water. Severed bits of the brown daemon rose to the surface of the water and bobbed on the ripples.

  “Shit, I’d like to have those bits,” Crispin whispered.

  “No.” Rae grabbed his arm. “Don’t go down there. Don’t you dare!”

  He shook her off. The prospect of possessing the remains of an occult beast was too good to miss. Who knew what uses the bones might have! Calling daemons—repelling daemons—

  Quietly, he scrambled down the steep ground beside the waterfall, keeping behind the bushes. Unobtrusiveness was the thing. Luckily the grass on the floor of the dell was tall enough that he could eel through it on his stomach. As he approached the pool he put his hand on a small daemon. It jerked away, and he felt the sting of it throughout his body. For a moment his vision went black. But when he recovered he could see the water before him, and he eased forward another foot or so, sliding his hand down toward a finger that floated within reach. Then a hank of black hair. Stuff them in a pocket. Another—

  There was a smell of burning that he could not identify. It crossed his mind that it might be the smell of burnt water—an occult stink, if ever there was one!—and Rae’s voice pealed out, high and desperate. “Crispin! Behind you!”

  He rolled over, throwing his arms up in front of his face. All he saw was a confusion of brown robes—and faces, faces, faces. Though he realized afterward there could not have been more than two of them, they moved so fast they seemed half a dozen. A girl’s voice. “What are you doing here!” Another: “Sally, look out, the daemon!” And all the water exploded upward out of the pool, drenching Crispin, blinding him, and a whiplash of light cracked across his eyes.

  He woke to feel hard, cold ground under his cheek. This was nothing unusual, and at first he thought it was simply the beginning of another day of walking; then he opened his eyes.

  It was night. Slowly, he got to his feet. The blood rushed to his head and he almost fell over. Staggering, he caught onto a bush, then hummed softly in pain as he extracted the prickles from his palm. The waterfall gushed noisily. All around he felt the dancing urgent presences of daemons. Now he could see a little. So he had not gone blind.

  “Rae!”

  His voice was weak. And his eyes hurt. His fingers found blood crusted in his brows and the creases of his eyelids. The strangers had struck him across the face after the big daemon stunned him, he guessed, but though they had had him at their mercy, they had left him lying. Had he been of so little importance to them? Common sense told him they would probably be coming back.

  “Rae!”

  Slipping and cursing in the dark, he clambered back up beside the waterfall to the spot where they had stood to watch the daemons at play. Astonishingly, the knapsack and blankets were still there, and he seized on them with a grunt of relief. But a haphazard search of the vicinity revealed no signs of Rae, nor of a struggle.

  In his dazed state the emergency was unquestionable. Swearing softly to himself, he recovered his coat, put it on, and slung their belongings across his shoulders, then plowed upstream through the thickets until he could cross the fast-flowing stream easily. “Rae,” he murmured to himself as he pushed on through the forest. “Rae, Rae, Rae.” The sound of his own voice comforted him, as did the fact that his throat appeared not to be as badly damaged as he had thought. “Rae, Rae.”

  He searched for her for what seemed an infinitely long time, as often as not half-asleep on his feet. On the branches overhead, avian virtuosos sang solos. The trills crawled down his spine like drops of ice water. At some point he realized that the footing had got a lot easier, and that he was no longer having to avoid trees. Tiredness dulled the delight which came of the sudden knowledge that he had hit the road again.

  It wound like a river of pine needles through the forest. He followed willingly, stumbling from time to time on the hacked-off tree stumps hidden under the sharp carpet. He was not too far gone to note that none of the curves were too tight for a truck. The branches of the overhanging trees had also been lopped off. Nobody except the driver of a big rig would have had that done. Could it be that he had not left civilization at all? That the Wraithwaste had seemed a wilderness just because he did not have a map?

  Stopping in mid-stride, he put his head back and gazed at a strip of solid, midnight blue sky. Though the clouds obstructed the stars, it had been a long time since he had seen any open sky at all.

  The road forked in two. By this time he had nearly given up hope of finding where the strangers had taken Rae, but in a final bid for lit windows, he chose the narrower road. It ended in an empty clearing where a gigantic, peeling pine thrust out of the bare earth. Nothing moved. There were strange objects hanging from the high branches of the pine, and peering up through the dark, he thought he made out carcasses. The song of night birds pierced his ears as loudly as a crescendo from a trained choir. A light flared behind him and in its brief, hallucinatory glare he saw that the bark of the pine was crawling as if it were covered with ants.

  He swung to see where the light had come from, and the ground gave way under his boots and he fell, bumping and rolling over sharp corners, into blackness.

  It seemed only an instant later that he woke to find a face hanging over him which he decided must be a dream, or perhaps, because of its clarity, a vision: the face of a child no more than six years old, possessed of dark brown skin on which two ripe black eyes showed purple and yellow. The child’s lips worked soundlessly. Crispin tried to sit up, banged his head on a tree root hanging overhead, and rolled over, moaning.

  “Get up,” the little boy said, pulling at him. “He wants to talk to you. Come on, darky.”

  The word on the child’s lips carried no sting. Crispin twisted himself around in the root-roofed crevice, wincing at the pain of new bruises, and stood up. Even when he stumbled into the middle of the room he had to bend his head. It was a low, brightly lit cavern, the worst pigsty he had seen in a long time.

  “His name is Orphan,” said the old hermit. He pronounced it strangely, as he did everything—Orpaan. Crispin nodded, eating as fast as he could. The stew the little boy had served him was extraordinarily delicious. He was aware that there were far more important things to do than eat, but his body was rebelling: it refused to let him ignore its cries. Maybe the stew was poisoned. He didn’t care. At least he wouldn’t die hungry. “My name is—” The hermit paused, contorting his wrinkled apple of a face. “Call me the old gentleman.” He sniggered.

  Crispin stopped with his spoon halfway to his mouth. “Old Gentleman?”

  The hermit nodded eagerly.

  Crispin’s moniker for Saul Smithrebel, a lifetime ago, had been “Old Gentleman.” It had been born as a childish attempt at sarcasm, but by the end it had become a token of grudging deference to the ringmaster. Calling this strange Wraithwaste hermit by Smithrebel’s title would be like classifying a skunk with a venomous asp. “I used to know someone else called that.”

  Bad move. An expression of wrath grew on the hermit’s face.

  “No offense,” Crispin said hastily, putting down his wooden bowl and readying himself to spring back—though there was practically nowhere to
spring back to in the junk-jammed cave. “No offense, I’m sure.”

  The little boy, who had been silent since he delivered Crispin to the hermit, pushed himself between the old fellow’s knees and, placing a hand on either bony thigh in a curiously adult gesture, turned to face Crispin. Crispin nearly laughed out loud at the sudden resemblance of the composition to pictures he had seen of the young Queen with her father, King Ethrew. “His name is Jacithrew Humdroner,” the little boy announced emphatically.

  “And what about you,” Crispin said with a smile, ignoring the hermit’s frown.

  The child turned his face away and put his thumb in his mouth. “‘M Orpaan,” he mumbled indistinctly. “Mum ‘n da got kilt bee sojers.”

  The impulse which must have been building in the hermit’s brain for a good minute and a half finally reached fruition. He howled and smacked the little boy in the side of the head. Orpaan flew past Crispin, across the cave, and pushed himself under the low-hanging roots as if he were trying to burrow into the earth. That he did not cry out struck Crispin as terrible. Growling, he seized Jacithrew Humdroner’s bony wrists, jerking the old man to his feet. The red beast cavorted inside his head. He gulped, and blinked several times to clear his brain. It was only necessary to make a point, not to do murder. He placed his left hand ostentatiously in his lap and squeezed Jacithrew’s wrists in the other until bones rubbed together. “Don’t ever hit him again,” he said between his teeth. “All right? Hear me?”

  “Let me go!” Jacithrew gibbered. “I’ll tell you lovely things, true things, things you’ll never ever ever know if you hurt me!”

  “Huh!” Crispin considered the old man. Liquid eyes stared up in terror through tangled gray dreadlocks. For the first time, he noticed that though Jacithrew’s face was as wrinkled as a pug dog’s behind the forest of beard, his skin was a good three shades darker than Crispin’s. Like Orpaan’s. How did that come to be? Some daemons were dark-skinned, too. Was the old fellow a weird kind of intelligent daemon, half-human perhaps, neither fish nor fowl? Or was he merely an eccentric hermit? And in any case, what was he doing in the middle of nowhere with a child?