The Tropic of Eternity

by Tom Toner

  Corphuso was so absorbed in the view that he’d failed to notice the Amaranthine staring at him.

  “What are you?” the man asked harshly. “Some figment of Aaron’s?”

  Corphuso, in his shock, struggled to remember the speech he’d planned, clearing his throat.

  “How can you see me?” the Amaranthine asked.

  “I can see you,” Corphuso said, recovering a little, “because you are nearly dead.”

  “What?”

  Corphuso pointed back into the darkness of the woods. “The insects, did you feel them more as the days wore on?”

  The man paused for thought.

  “You’re becoming clearer, more substantial,” Corphuso went on, “and that can only mean you have faded in the place you left behind.”

  The Amaranthine glared at him. “I’m sleeping, Vulgar—this is my dream.”

  Corphuso shook his head. “Whatever he did to you back there may look like sleep, but it’s the furthest thing from it.”

  The man stared at him a little longer and then gestured out at the world. “This is Aaron’s world, back when he was born. He is showing it to me.”

  “Showing it to you? You’ve been ensnared here, like all the others.”

  “You’re telling me that I’m going to die in here? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Corphuso held his gaze, seeing how the colours had muted in the man’s irises, almost like those of the being that had trapped them here. “Perhaps, perhaps not.”

  The Immortal turned and glanced out at the meadowed landscape, his eyes tracing the flowered slope to where the ground flattened, far below.

  “Let me help you return to the world,” Corphuso said. “I know the way back. We could go together.” He followed the man’s gaze. “There’s nothing for you here.”

  “But my sister—” the Amaranthine whispered, pointing out at the land. His face hardened as he turned a sceptical eye on Corphuso.

  Corphuso put up his hands, trying to smile. “I want to help you—”

  “You’re some agent of Aaron’s, aren’t you? Something sent to test me.”

  “Your sister is not here, Sire—I am merely trying—”

  “I’m no fool,” the Amaranthine said angrily, shaking his head. “Not here. My wits have come back to me now and I won’t be used any longer.”

  “Please—”

  “Get away from me, Vulgar!”

  “Just let’s be calm—”

  The Amaranthine struck out at him, shoving him hard in the chest. Corphuso, being only a little more than half the man’s height, lost his balance, hands grasping at nothing, and felt himself fall.

  He tumbled, rolling faster and faster down the slope, the first pops of breaking bones muffling his cries. It was a fall that seemed to last lifetimes, dropping him so far below the level of the woods that Corphuso forgot everything about his old life, all faces and names lost to him for ever, his rattling mind pounded until it was as blank as it had been at birth.

  REUNION

  They strode out together onto the grey beach, Cunctus’s yellowish hair tousled by the rotten-smelling wind. He’d had a fresh shave, his first since incarceration, and Ghaldezuel found his massive, rumpled face strangely charming. He wore a large ribboned hat, taken from the demoted mayor the previous evening, but was otherwise naked, as usual. He made for a peculiar sight, Ghaldezuel thought, as the giant sauntered up to him.

  “Did you sleep well, Marshal?” Cunctus asked, knotting his hat’s chinstrap with trembling fingers.

  Ghaldezuel touched an open sore on his lip before he spoke. “Was anyone else . . . bitten? During the night?”

  Nazithra tittered. Today she wore a veil, like a Vulgar bride, that hung down to her nipples. “Ah, you’ve met the kissers. Local legend. They suckle on your lips while you sleep.”

  “What are they?” Ghaldezuel asked.

  “Vampiric things,” the witch said. “Easy enough to catch—pour some blood into a bowl, add a drop of shigella poison.”

  Ghaldezuel was still thinking about this as they crested the black dunes. He pulled his cloak around him against the wind, eyes widening at the sight.

  All along the beach, huge stinking mounds of rotten sea life had washed ashore; fish and crustaceans all tangled and piled atop one another in mottled, stinking heaps. As they neared the piles the smell became almost unbearable, reaching down into Ghaldezuel’s throat. He gagged, swallowing the nausea, wrapping his cape as tightly as he could around his nose and mouth. Poor Vulgar folk that could brave the stench competed with the wasps for a rotten fish or two, stuffing the creatures whole into their mouths.

  “Offerings?” he asked, skirting one of the piles. “Treats for the Cethegrandes?”

  “Bit late for that,” Cunctus said. “No, this is the work of the Corpse Tide, a month of low water caused by Filgurbirund’s ascension.”

  Ghaldezuel looked at him askance; Cunctus was a source of constant surprise.

  The witch scuttled on before them, her veiled head cocked and swivelling animatedly; something in her mannerisms made Ghaldezuel’s skin crawl, the stink of the fish only adding to the unpleasantness of the scene. She was listening for something. The voices.

  By the time they caught up with her, she’d found a gap in the buzzing heaps and was standing looking out at the lagoon. Ghaldezuel fought his way through the stench and went to stand beside her, the waves lapping at his boots. He listened, hearing her whispered chanting through the stained material of her veil, but heard no reply.

  Over on the far shore hung the spectre of the gigantic Decadence ship they’d all arrived in, hazy in the mists that rose from the lagoon. Cunctus had somehow managed to seal it with a special password, rather like an Amaranthine spell, and commanded it now through his helmet radio, back in the keep. Ghaldezuel didn’t think the Wilhelmina was intelligent—or, if it was, not at all like the machine intelligences he’d had the misfortune of encountering—but it certainly appeared to understand the Melius when he spoke.

  The fat orange sun was just beginning its rise, one edge smoothed flat by the lagoon’s horizon, the ball of Filgurbirund hanging overhead. In an hour or two they would meet, their conjunction casting Drolgins in half-shadow for a few moments before moving on. The sun here was somewhat hyperactive, frequently bathing the Vulgar worlds with startling doses of radiation (to which the Prism as a whole were largely immune, having evolved to survive the searing stellar rays of long-distance Voidfaring) but Ghaldezuel could nevertheless feel the sting of the light on his white skin and knew he would burn soon enough under its glare.

  Cunctus joined them, a massive presence at their backs, his tremulous hand settling on Ghaldezuel’s shoulder. It was oddly comforting. Out across the spit they could see the castle, a brownish crag of bricks.

  “The person there speaks the aeon tongues, you said,” Cunctus muttered to Nazithra, looking out at the castle. “What is he?”

  “He was the saucier,” she said, crouching and splashing her naked body with lagoon water. Ghaldezuel knew she would stink the same as the fish later on.

  “Sorcerer?” Cunctus asked, glaring down at her.

  “Saucier, Cunctus. He devised Count Andolp’s sauces—for his meals.”

  Cunctus turned his flummoxed gaze on Ghaldezuel. “Sauces? I never heard of such a thing, not even when I was king in the First.”

  “Frippery,” Ghaldezuel said, marching off in the direction of the castle. “It always leads to a bad end.”

  Clustered at the base of the castle walls was a small township: the same spun, papery hovels Ghaldezuel had seen in Napp, supplemented with tin shacks and pig-iron enclosures cobbled from the remains of old, washed-up Voidships that must have wrecked themselves in the lagoon. In the shade of mouldy awnings they saw little Vulgar folk watching them, the males drinking, any women hurriedly stowed away inside the shacks. A couple of burlier Vulgar at the gates wore cooking pots on their heads, no doubt stolen from the saucier’s collection
, and watched the visitors through wonky-looking slits cut into the metal.

  Squealing children scampered up to Cunctus, mobbing him, and to Ghaldezuel’s considerable surprise, the giant squatted, chatting animatedly in the local tongue and dishing out sweets and Filgurees from under his hat, like a bad magician. Most people liked Cunctus out here; he had squared up to the Amaranthine and robbed from the rich—the fact that he gave little of it back to the poor didn’t appear to harm his reputation—and there were more than enough influential folk willing to follow his lead.

  A huge brick ramp brought them up to the castle’s rotted wooden gate, which stood massively ajar. Local ne’er-do-wells had clearly ransacked the place when they heard of Andolp’s fall. They passed between the enclosures as they ascended the ramp, spotting featherless Shiklins strutting and scratching in the sandy dirt. Amid their soft crooning Ghaldezuel could hear the bells of a departing fishing boat, noticing as he looked over the ramp’s waterside edge that there was a small makeshift harbour built around the castle’s foundations.

  The castle gate was fissured with great cracks, each of them home to a family of small, bat-like Ringums. They squealed as the party arrived, squitting watery turds down the bricks. Ghaldezuel and Cunctus did their best to cover their heads as they went inside, though the witch didn’t seem to care.

  The place was a ruin. The sea-facing wall had fallen in some time ago, and now the interior was a hollow shell of broken bricks, peaks of sand and straggly, rotting weed covering the floor. More pots and pans littered the place, a cracked glaze of old sauces lining their bottoms.

  Ghaldezuel was peering up into the rafters, where water dripped steadily onto their heads through the remains of an upper floor. He turned to Nazithra, who was sniffling around in an unsavoury manner. “So where is he?”

  “Ran away, no doubt,” said Cunctus, watching her scrabbling in the rubble. Only a fool would have tried to stay.

  The sound of the sea exhaling through the castle’s cracks—a phenomenon the Melius called Siehrbarrun, Cunctus had said—was especially lulling in here. Ghaldedezuel, who had hardly slept, had begun to hope the Lunatic had escaped so that they could return to the keep.

  “No,” the witch said, “we’re in luck.” She beckoned them to the remains of a window. “There,” she said, pointing down to a rocky cave in the castle’s southern-pointing foundations, its floor half-submerged in the shallows. “The Corpse Tide has given him away.”

  They waded out to the cave, Ghaldezuel surveying the empty beach for any danger, then remembering the threat of Cethegrandes and looking uneasily out across the lagoon. At a particularly smooth, rounded-looking rock, Cunctus bent and rootled in the sand for a while, grinning at last and pulling out a misshapen lump of pearl. He handed it to Ghaldezuel. “For your pains. Tonsil stone of His Majesty the Megaptera leonina.” He pointed at the worn rock and a row of bright scrapes on its surface measuring almost six feet across. “See the teething marks? Infant.”

  Ghaldezuel turned his gaze on the pearl, holding it up to the light, never having seen an uncut specimen before. It was worth more than the shanty dwellers outside had seen in all their lives. It smelled vaguely cheesy when he held it to his nose, as if it were on the turn.

  “The Lunatic made his fortune from the pearls,” the witch said. “Andolp had them secretly ground into his soups, to give him strength.”

  Cunctus barked a laugh. “Fat lot of good it did him.”

  Nazithra entered the cave first, wading into the shallows and sinking up to her veil, which pooled on the surface before following her down. Ghaldezuel and Cunctus looked at each other, the Melius inhaling a huge lungful of air and going next. It took him much longer to submerge, walking into the depths of the cave before his head disappeared. Ghaldezuel waited a moment, gazing out to sea where a light, opalescent rain shot through with bars of sun the colour of oyster shells glimmered across the water. He removed his boots, stashing them behind some rocks, but kept the rest of his clothes on. The witch had been watching him avidly as they entered the water, no doubt hoping he would remove his tunic, and it gave him great pleasure to disappoint her.

  Under the water, it was suddenly very cold. Ghaldezuel had never been much good at keeping his eyes open when submerged, but did so now as he spotted Cunctus’s feet disappearing around a distant rock. He followed, feet kicking at the sandy bottom of the cave, sluppocks and screamfish and shoals of little Impio sprats changing direction at his approach and darting away. The ground was a nesting site of seamarrows, and everywhere Ghaldezuel kicked milky jets of sperm rose around his ankles. Nazithra was up ahead, waiting for them, the floating veil exposing her horror of a face in the gloomy underlight of the sea. Ghaldezuel paused, thinking she looked like a jilted, drowned bride. They followed her into a submerged cavern, Ghaldezuel’s lungs beginning to protest already, and watched as she motioned at something overhead, pointing expressively at herself then moving slowly forward. Ghaldezuel gazed up at the rocks, blinking as much as he could, trying to see what she was indicating. He spotted a small black node reaching down from the rock and froze, understanding that the Lunatic had bought some expensive Amaranthine technology for himself. The thing probably shot lumens, by the looks of it. Nazithra, some way ahead again already, must have been able to sense its beam. He hurried forward, sticking close behind Cunctus’s massive, gloomy form.

  They came up gasping for air, a reeking stench lying heavy on the water. Ghaldezuel winced, trying and failing to breathe more lightly as he floated beside Cunctus. The Melius turned to him and grimaced, making Ghaldezuel smile. Nazithra had already climbed out of the water and was standing rapt beneath the cavern’s stalactites. All around her, shining dimly in the gloom, were mountains of pearls. The Lunatic must have been hoarding them. Beneath their cheesy stink, Ghaldezuel detected a deeper underlying foulness. A nest. Something lived here.

  “Oh fortune, you beauty,” Cunctus gasped. “There must be millions of Ducats’ worth.” He hauled himself out of the water and dug his hands into a pile, causing it to avalanche. Ghaldezuel waded to one side as hundreds of pearls clattered across the floor and into the pool. Some were larger than his head; the big ones smelled particularly awful.

  Ghaldezuel caught the glint of something to his right and spun, observing a Vulgar creeping among the piles, watching them. Within a moment, he was out of the water and had the person in a headlock. A specialised spring gun loaded with what appeared to be pearl bullets fell out of the Vulgar’s grasp and landed on the rock.

  Cunctus, alerted by the scuffle, came and stood over Ghaldezuel and his prisoner. “You are not the saucier, are you?” he asked. The Vulgar appeared to be having difficulty speaking, so Ghaldezuel released him from the headlock and shoved him to the ground, pinning his arms. “Answer,” he commanded.

  Nazithra came slinking over, shaking her head. “Above,” she said, gesturing to the top of the largest pile. Cunctus and Ghaldezuel looked up.

  The fattest Vulgar Ghaldezuel had ever seen sat there, watching them. He was easily the size of three or even four of his kind, a giant rosy-white tumour atop his pile of stinking pearls.

  “So you’re him,” the fat Vulgar said thickly, as if through a mouthful of cake.

  Cunctus performed a mocking bow, then indicated the pearls that made up the Lunatic’s high bed. “How have you collected so many? It’s a dangerous job plucking just one.”

  The Vulgar nodded at the witch, scrabbling his fat legs until he was sliding slowly down the pile. “She knows.”

  When he reached the bottom he could hardly stand, and Ghaldezuel released the youth to tend to him. From their vague resemblance, he guessed them to be father and son. The Lunatic, judging by the size of him, probably couldn’t leave this place at all.

  Cunctus turned to the witch.

  “He calls them,” she said, walking over to another large pool in the cave. Ghaldezuel spotted an iron trumpet-shaped object lying on the rock beside the water’s edge.
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  “Yes,” said the Lunatic, his eyes travelling lasciviously over the witch’s nakedness. He slicked his sparse white hair back like some kind of lothario and, with the help of his son, lumbered up to Cunctus, extending his pudgy hand. “Euryboas. They think me mad out there, for speaking the tongues.”

  Cunctus ignored his hand, instead gesturing expansively at the pearls. “I’ll be requisitioning these.”

  Euryboas shrugged, blinking. “Be my guest.”

  Ghaldezuel watched the fellow, supported by his son, trying to work him out. He didn’t seem at all displeased that his treasure was going to be taken away from him.

  Cunctus wandered to the pool, gazing into it, his large face patterned with rippling light. “Usually they find them on the beach, vomited up”—he looked at Euryboas—“but you call them here and pull them out of their mouths. Very clever.”

  “Why, thank you,” Euryboas replied, waggling his eyebrows, his gaze wandering once more to Nazithra. Ghaldezuel could see, however, that she only had eyes for his scrawny son. The boy had produced a silver spoon and was busily scraping in between his father’s folds, a creamy substance coming away in the bowl of the spoon.

  “And what do you do with all this wealth?” Cunctus asked, wiping a thin runnel of drool that had dribbled from his lips.

  “He provides sanctuary for the Oracles,” Nazithra said from behind him, and Cunctus turned. She sauntered past, running her long fingers across his back, and made for the young Vulgar. “You see before you the wealth of the Drolgins Spirits, collected over the years to serve their needs.” She took the son’s arm and led him forcefully away, behind a mound of pearls.