“Break it up,” he instructed. “I fear what might come to pass if you don’t eat all of it.”
“What will you do once I’ve eaten it?”
He raised a hand toward the freshly fledged aurora. “I will pull the great light from the sky, pass it through you, and, once it’s been concentrated, I will shoot it forth and pierce Qilaknakka. There is no greater event in human memory.”
Her eyes ranged forward, scaling that empyrean escarpment, then falling to the talus that sloped to meet the ocean. If she blinked to find herself standing in her igloo at Nunapisu, she would almost content herself with the province of her parents. Almost. The tuuaaq in her hand knew it was stronger, but only half of her cared. The price of the crawl to see behind the wall. Half of her hated that she was willing to pay.
In a haze of self-loathing and determination, she piled the tuuaaq between her teeth and began to grind.
Qummukarpoq watched the queen chew and swallow, gentle anticipation aloft in his chest. Dalliances with jubilations must yet be held back, but the season was nigh. Exultations hovered in the hintermind, awaiting his exaltation. Today, he enfolded the skies into his dominion.
Though he had just taken him a wife, he impregnated something far greater. On this day of days, with his penetration of Qilaknakka, he pierced the mind of every child for millennia to come. This day, he begat legend. That offspring which out-breathed any human; which needed no eternal residence in Nunapisu; which lived in every body, clung to every spirit, and kindled in name on every tongue. Today, he became of an ilk with myth.
By and by the queen slouched into the stupefacient clutches of the tusk. A beatific expression treated with her ersatz beauty, the union more than enough to turn a thousand thanes from their harems entire. Were the moment any other, he may have entertained musings on carnalities and fornications, and they in turn may have entertained him. Were the moment any other, he might not be constrained to relegate desire to a murmur in the esoterica.
Almost in homage to the rescue of the night past, he tapped an extra dash of tuuaaq on his tongue, faced Qilaknakka, and embraced the trance.
Mold of mind he dashed to flinders, sent his spirit skyward racing. Guttling heights and ruckling night, he chased his mind to Arsarneq. At his touch, the holy ripple groaned aloud with scorn of green. Froth with loathing though it was, it could not but bend the knee.
Thin delight defined his lips. Even heaven knew its king.
Then he heaved the emerald mantle, tore it plainly from its sanctum, purged the sky of lymph and lightblood; darkness reigned the plane above. Seaward, seaward, fro the heights, pursing into spear of white; body, name, and spirit rendered to pearlescent furnace splendor.
When the spearhead met the girl, brilliance anchored in her bones. Porous skin bled blinding light. Quick her body jolted up. There she hung in fiery spasm, floating o’er the castle’s roof. Tethered to a tributary longer yet than all the world. Qummukarpoq, with just a moment, nooked himself into repose. Then he drew a thorny breath. Now began the true travail.
In spectral semblance, bereft of guise, spirits limbered and tangilized. Like clouds congealing, clouds of shadow; shedding shadow, clouds of light. Seeping, flowing interstitial, licked the king’s brain crease by crease. Choirs of ghost insinuations sang the worldsong in his ears.
Twixt tremulous girl and towering wall divided his attentions he. Shunned the chittering of the sea and ever-roving demons.
Yon wall, that soaring, olden chronicle, record of man’s impotence. Yon wall, enraptured by its rank, a perfect portrait of hauteur. Yon wall, which beckoned all to come, then daunted them to flee. But Qummukarpoq had come to call. Anon, yon wall his thrall would be.
The queen, becloaked in power to the burning of her flesh. She, from heaven severed ragged, a garment of sidereal weft. She, auroral avatar, rendered limpid by its light. She, the daughter unpolluted, come to chasten Qilaknakka.
He grazed her spirit with his mind and paused before the forceful swell. With unexampled expertise, he pinched and drew him out a thread. Thread of silver like the tongues of merchant lords a thousand strong. Thread of body never moved. Thread of name pronounced by none. Thread of spirit never roused. Thread of every song unsung.
Coil by coil he moiled his moil; he bickered ever quicker with the wicker made of ichor. The blood of all that ever was and all that ever wouldn’t be he spun into a halo for to tame the archon of the sea. Turning thus the helix grew, winding hence to Qilaknakka.
Had the world in throng amassed, gazed upon the deed unmatched, children’s laughter would have ceased, staring taking place of sport. Wit of crones, their proudest crown, would have slid from crests to shatter. Ancient heroes, bold and bearded, would have fluttered from all minds. Youth vows would have been renounced for a newborn fealty.
Qummukarpoq with breath most bated watched the thread snake toward the water. In his gut sparked nerves to spare, an affair so rare the novelty shocked. Here the verge! Yea, here the cusp! Here the work of years’ last thrust. Atoms reeled in giddy glee ’round fiery arrows of fate converging.
Then it burst, that gravid stound, vaulting through his lungs like thunder. Bowled his knees to viscous mush. Harrowed shrieks from air and sea. Snapped the queen to brisk attention, spine like hide stretched wide and dried. Lurid light of all creation, borrowed from the world’s black end, wresting with the mount of water, fountain where the world began; where world began and sky found end.
In the thicks of his travails—teeth a-milling, tusk light drilling—chinks disfigured his composure; king of all began to buckle. Qilaknakka cared not yield, cared not bow to would-be king. Jealous warden that it was, secrets hoarded yond and deep. Palpitations tainted, seized the body of the wizard king, led him to the waters of submission, bade him drink till dregs. Yearning lips cracked in a slender gape to take defeat’s sweet balm; to sing with every swallow prelude for the dark of failure come.
But lo, the incandescent lash, where it touched, the density doubled. Water froze to boiling glass panicked with auroral light, tightened into groaning glass, burst apart in riots of shard. Round it surged, a glutinous eddy, carving deep and chasmic bowels. Up and upward clawing, climbing, scouring secrets never lost.
The queen, the archetype of flow, allowed no slow, a vessel quintessent. With no cajolery from the king, Qilaknakka slurped the light. Long it chewed its crystal way and bored the mountain’s belly through; gouged a great intestine belching guttural cacophony.
He felt it give like fragile snow, rupturing the head and quivering to toe. The thread he’d cast amain and away, become the fiber spanning worlds.
It was finished. It was done.
Qummukarpoq released his tuuaaq flow and dropped to his knees. It had worked. He let out one short breath, not quite a sob, and opened his eyes. Parting the face of Qilaknakka, a hypnotic maelstrom stirred and pulsed with night sky light. A hole rimmed by slowly spinning green, burrowing up into the wall. He didn’t spare the queen a glance. There was more beauty to be gazed elsewhere.
In his minute of composure collection, the queen stirred upright and gawked at the channel. “We did it? We did that?”
“Whatever odds we were against,” said Qummukarpoq, straightening his crown, “yes.”
Her goggling continued a fistful of moments, then she seemed to remember herself. “Wait.” She turned to the king. “There’s no tuuaaq left in me.
He gestured with the mostly melted taper in his hand, the flame a banal orange. “Let us be grateful it needed no more.”
She seemed to vacillate between marveling at the lack of tuuaaq high and the tunnel in Qilaknakka.
He dropped a tusk fragment in his mouth and lit a fresh candle off his old wick. “Let us make haste. It’s impossible to predict how long the bridge will maintain its structure.”
A vigorous rub of the eyes later and the queen was on her feet preparing a candle. That was well. After the breaching, he had no desire to repeat commands.
Once she nodded her preparedness, he walked off the castle and made his way through sky to Qilaknakka. As he passed into the green pulsing tunnel, exultations scrabbled to the forefront of his mind. He smiled so hard he almost showed teeth.
17
Puigor
Decades Long Dead
Puigor chuckled and the wind chuckled back. His originated from that part of his innards—maybe the spleen?—that fostered the hylozoic fear that his mind was being watched. By everything. The wind’s soft laughter derived from the hylozoic knowledge of everything sparking in Puigor’s mind. He was sure of it.
Eight days past he had set sail southward to set the seal on his father’s vengeance. After nearly four years, the prince—now the king—was mere hours from repenting stealing a man’s name. How delectable that would be.
But…
He shuffled his eyes from the sea to the man sitting near the prow, aglow with the light of Arsarneq. Not an archon, but an elder nonetheless hearty enough to endure more than seventy winters. Pilliap had been once to Nunapisu and wished to see Qilaknakka before he was consumed by the ice, so Puigor had taken the man on as his ward. It would be fun to have some company on the trip anyway.
That animistic paranoia greased down his spine again.
“This has been worth every minute of the trip,” said Pilliap, eyes fixed on the coming wall of water. The ponderously shifting wall that made you feel like you were falling backward regardless of your angle of inspection. “Thank you again for your invitation, Nalorsitsaarut.”
Right. He needed to truly transition himself over to the identity of Nalor. Puigor was a weakness in all matters regarding the king. He’d been giving the name Nalor for two years, and he almost believed it when someone said it.
“Just wait till we actually come to the foot.” Nalor rested an easy hand on the tiller. In the idles of his mind, he counted the rhythmic percussion of swells against hull.
Pilliap dabbed around his brow with a wet skin and tried to huddle tighter against nothing. His contrastive efforts at fighting the fevered aches that had stolen into his body two days past did nothing, Nalor was sure. The sorry old thing probably didn’t have long anyway. That Nalor couldn’t be more sure of. Probably.
Once again, he tried not to flinch at the twitch of psychosis, the off-kilter intimation that every spirit in every particle fed on his deep-thoughts.
He spent the next couple hours watching the flickering orange held in his lap and responding with light conversation to Pilliap’s exclamations and inquiries.
“I am glad to see Qilaknakka after so long,” said the old man as they came abreast the wall. “But might we not also visit the castle?” He motioned to the edifice in white leagues west of them.
Nalor feigned consideration. “It is conceivable. Though I don’t know how well the king likes unexpected visitors. He didn’t have an overabundance of hospitality for me when he was prince and I showed up unannounced. Who knows, perhaps he’s changed since becoming king.”
“Indeed, indeed.” Pilliap kept his blood-webbed eyes on that far-off house and its peerless quietude. Was he among the men who longed to take part in the communion of ultimate solitude, or those who desired to bask in the monument’s perceived greatness? Those of the latter were the type to gawk at a woman’s toenail while missing her body and spirit.
While the elder traded glances between the castle and the wall, Nalor pulled his candle stock from a pack and arrayed them upright. All postures straight and sure, he concentrated on the flame in his hand and began rioting Pilliap’s fever.
“Oh,” the old man cried out and clutched at his shivering frame. “This ague is getting worse.” He turned to Nalor. “Can you not use your angakkuq abilities to rid me of it?”
Nalor pulled his lips into a flimsy smile. “I’ve told you before, I was kicked out of my village for being such a poor angakkuq. I can hardly do more than a little warmth and seeking.” He pushed more heat into the man.
Pilliap’s eyes went wide, and he burbled in alarm. “It’s—I’m—help!” He spun his hyperventilating face toward the inky sea.
“Stay in the boat,” Nalor commanded. “I have an idea.” He slipped a chunk of tuuaaq between his teeth. Euphoria bleached his veins.
“Wh-what idea?” The elder had little capacity for anything but shaking.
The flame in Nalor’s hand chilled to a malignant blue.
“T-t-tia-avuluk! What are y-you doing?”
“Getting rid of that fever.” Nalor shut his eyes and wrenched the heat out of the ailing man.
It came in a series of gasps and convulsions devoid of dignity. Pilliap slumped into the crook of the aft, head angled as if he lay in thoughtless sleep. Though regarded as the color of heaven, the green of the sky’s great river imbued the corpse with an infernal aspect.
Nalor pulled his gaze away. His shoulders and spaces behind the eyes frosted hoary with paranoia. The king had sensed that. There was no other possibility. Nalor had spent nearly two years perfecting the act of masking his magical movements from other angakkuit, but his test subjects had been scant, and none could match the prowess of Qummukarpoq.
Best get on with it before the king could intervene directly, then.
He laid himself in his sleeping position, silently grateful that the weather was showing clemency, set his candle in file with the others, then carefully consigned his consciousness to Pilliap’s pliant body.
First came the cold. That recalcitrant familiar who always suggested he make the full transition from life. He sat upright and observed the dull world through dead, blue eyes. For a viscid moment he stared at his own lifeless form, ringed by bright votives of a dark ritual. Such a fragile thing to leave in open ocean. With a forced blink and a push more adroit than he could have teased from his own body, he sprang from the boat and pedaled his feet across the sea’s pitching surface.
Now came the truly tricky part. The first truly tricky part. A mad dash to the castle while skirting beneath detection. He hadn’t an idea’s shred of how deterrent his newly acquired shielding abilities would be against the king’s candles, especially as the distance between him and bluebody increased. Howbeit, he bent his mind to each moiety of the plan, the cloak and the dagger.
He ate the waves as winters eat the echoes of happiness from a sunless mind, yet he felt the footfalls as through a word pinging off the shell of a dream discarded. In short order, he was upon the shores beneath the towers, then hastening through doors and halls. He didn’t see the sense in seeking out the king with magic. Bifurcating his mind was risky enough business. He daren’t trifle with trifurcation.
One empty room after the next streamed by. Given that sound came to him as though filtered through an igloo wall, striking a balance between silent and swift proved arduous. Though perhaps his caution was misplaced, and the king stalked the halls, bearing down on his position at the very moment.
On the third floor, he peeked behind a door flap and saw a lump in the bed. Leagues distant, his heart ticked up its pace. As far as he knew, Qummukarpoq had slowly rid the castle of servants during the last few years of his father’s reign. The body could be none other than the wicked king himself.
Long ago, Nalor had settled to strike the king dead without hesitation when the chance arose. Gloating and observation could come after. He pushed the bluebody into the room, withdrew a knife, and strode over to the king’s bed.
As he plunged the blade toward the man’s throat, Qummukarpoq whipped his head around. The knife sunk into the bedding, narrowly nicking his throat. Nalor yanked at the embedded weapon. Qummukarpoq whisked a candle from his bedside, and it flared to life.
Nalor went for another pass, but the king windwalked to the corner of the room, and the knife bit air.
Tiaavuluk. Nalor drew back to the opposite corner near the door. The king had entered his own domain and cast black on the odds of any positive outcome for the boy angakkuq. He watched Qummukarpoq chip off a piece of tusk, raise it past the
trickle of blood on his neck, and dash it in his mouth. Nalor pressed his brain for a plan.
Drop the body and sail north as fast as angakkuqly possible, or fight the king. The first appealed to the craven that crouched inside every man. But what then of the king? Would he not hunt—
Nalor grit the old man’s teeth as he realized Qummukarpoq’s lack of motion stemmed from an attempt to suss out Nalor’s location. The boy in the boat scrambled to fortify his artificial stronghold. The king’s questings unnerved as though rippling between Nalor’s skin and muscle, but it didn’t get any further than that.
Nalor laughed, likely a disgusting breach of silence coming from the bluebody. He could control the corpse well since he had initiated the connection, but his opponent tirigusuusik couldn’t exploit the connection so long as Nalor held strong his shield. The distance was too great an expanse.
Realizing the same, the king cut off Nalor’s chuckle with a charge. In the fraction of a second that Nalor noticed and processed the change in his mark’s stance, he managed a gauche dodge characterized by more misplaced limbs than his first time with a whore. The king clipped his arm and met the wall thumping. As Nalor stumbled to right himself, the right plan tumbled into his head.
Run.
He shouldered his way out the door and bolted down the hall, this time with significantly less discretion in the slapping of his boots. At the end, he wheeled toward a flight of stairs and caught vision of an angry angakkuq in blurring pursuit. Up he went, mind spinning for want of a bearing. He wouldn't outlive a castle chase, and it was wholly possible the king could divine at least a direction from the corpse once Nalor abandoned it.
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