The Tropic of Eternity

by Tom Toner

  “She’ll want to do me next,” the Lunatic said, watching them go. “Better make sure I’m fresh.” He lifted a fold of flesh, taking a bottle of something from a table and squirting it into the creases. Ghaldezuel looked away. “I’ve bedded over twenty in my time,” the Vulgar continued, winking at Cunctus. “What’s your number?”

  “Quality over quantity, I always say,” Cunctus rumbled, barely containing his sneer as the Vulgar continued squirting himself with the acrid perfume.

  When the Lunatic was done, he beckoned them both, waddling slowly past until he could reach the trumpet. “The water hoopies will be listening already,” he said, tapping the side of his button nose slyly. He dunked the trumpet’s end into the pool and began to whisper into its mouthpiece.

  They sat and listened to him for a while, unable to escape the sounds of the witch and her new, possibly unwilling lover at the other end of the cavern. They had both begun to itch, as if the place were full of fleas. To take his mind off it all, Ghaldezuel tried to focus on what the Lunatic might be saying, remembering that Nazithra had called the old language, the Dilasaur language, Leperi. Occasionally Euryboas switched to something else, something that sounded almost onomatopoeic, and Ghaldezuel was shocked to discover that he was beginning to understand the Vulgar’s words when Cunctus interrupted his train of thought.

  “She ought to have asked permission,” Cunctus grunted, clearly put out as the witch’s cries rose in pitch.

  Ghaldezuel shrugged, unable to see how it mattered, grimacing at the sounds.

  Cunctus looked at him. “I’d thought perhaps that you two had—”

  “No,” Ghaldezuel snapped, shaking his head furiously and shuddering a laugh. “Absolutely not.”

  Cunctus sat back a little, seemingly relieved, and Ghaldezuel realised with amazement that the Melius was jealous.

  “You’ve been to the First, haven’t you, Ghaldezuel?” Cunctus asked, clearly trying to change the subject as Nazithra began to scream. “You’ve stood beneath my painted ceiling.”

  He remembered it, stretching into the shadows, Corphuso at his side. “It was a beauty, nothing like it.”

  “Hmm. I was going to have it repainted, before I was spirited away. Tell me”—he fixed Ghaldezuel with a glowering stare—“did the new kings put their likenesses up there?”

  Ghaldezuel thought back, remembering the faces. “I think I saw a few, yes.”

  Cunctus squeezed his fists closed, jaw working, but said nothing. He reached and dragged over an old saucepan, scraping his finger around the base and sampling the residue on his tongue. Apparently to his liking, he passed the sauce to Ghaldezuel, who tried some warily. It was too sweet.

  “You must be looking forward to . . . her . . . arrival,” Cunctus said, sucking on his trembling finger.

  Ghaldezuel nodded, taking another fingerful of sauce.

  “The Vulgar will never warm to a Bult in Napp’s keep.”

  He swallowed, putting the pot down.

  Cunctus drummed his fingers on his knees. “Forgive me, I’m quite the jawsmith when I’m anxious.”

  At last, the witch appeared to be done and a wonderful silence settled over the cavern. Ghaldezuel and Cunctus scratched themselves, relieved, and listened to the Lunatic’s mutterings.

  “The Cethegrandes are restless,” he said, taking a break from the trumpet. “But the one you seek has heard my call.”

  Cunctus’s ears pricked. “Scallywag? He comes?”

  Euryboas smiled broadly, looking to the water.

  For a few moments, it was still as a sheet of glass. Then, shyly, the first few tiny bubbles appeared upon its surface.

  The pool rippled, its dark luminosity broken up by larger bubbles as they drifted and burst. Nazithra came shuffling back to observe, patting Ghaldezuel craftily on the rear as he stood.

  A larger swell. Ghaldezuel could just about make out a looming darkness beneath the pool, and then a tuft of gingery fur, dark with dribbling water, broke the surface, holding still a moment before rising. Ghaldezuel’s eyes widened. Ears, fringed at their tips with the same wet hair, rose into view, then an eye, blue as a Lacaille’s and the size of a dinner plate, blinking away the water as it gazed into the gloom of the cavern, the displaced water of its arrival slopping around their feet. Ghaldezuel tensed. The thing could have swallowed a Melius whole.

  Cunctus rose unsteadily to his feet.

  “Waggle?” he asked, stretching out a hand—a hand made almost childlike by the beast’s size.

  The Cethegrande peered at him, its nostrils flaring as it hoovered up his scent, and then something softened in its eyes.

  “Waggle!” Cunctus cried, reaching and burying his face in the creature’s mane of fur. The Cethegrande extended a wide grey tongue and coated Cunctus in saliva. He laughed, eyes squeezed closed, kissing his friend’s ears. “Ghaldezuel!” he said breathlessly, beckoning him over. “Come, meet my Scallywag.”

  Ghaldezuel walked uncertainly into the beast’s view, registering a deep mistrust in its blue eyes as they turned on him.

  “It’s all right,” Cunctus whispered into Scallywag’s ear. “Friends.”

  Ghaldezuel came closer, inhaling the musk of its breath. To show one’s pressed-together teeth in most primate societies, from the lowly Oxel to the Amaranthine themselves, was a gesture of submission; hence the smile as a sign of trust. To this huge creature, evolved from the Old World’s wolves, the opposite was true. Ghaldezuel made sure to keep his mouth shut.

  As if to prove his point, the Cethegrande yawned mightily, spraying them all with spittle. Wedged between its yellow teeth were large splinters of wood, and something that looked very much like a femur.

  “Here,” Cunctus said, pulling gently on one of the pieces, “let me get that out for you.”

  “I’ll say my goodbyes here, then,” Cunctus said, extending his massive arms and wrapping Ghaldezuel in a tight, sweaty grip, lifting him off his feet like an adult grasping a small child. He could barely breathe in the giant’s embrace, returning to the earth gasping and wild-haired.

  “I’m glad you chose to stay with us, Marshal,” Cunctus said, studying him. “I like you. You’ll do good, being here.”

  He looked at Nazithra, offering her his hand for a licking, then turned back to Ghaldezuel. “I’ll be leaving Mumpher with you. See that you get along with each other—I won’t be pleased if there’s trouble when I get back.”

  Ghaldezuel sighed inwardly. He caught the flash of the Threen’s eyes. “Good luck,” he said, a little lamely.

  Cunctus’s eyes widened and he pointed to Scallywag. “Have you seen him? I won’t be needing any more luck.” He roared with booming laughter, slapping Ghaldezuel across the shoulderblades, sending him staggering. “I’ll see you both in twenty-five days, all being well, with the keys to Moso in one hand and the heads of the three dukes in the other.”

  WEIGHT

  Most of the day was gone by the time they sighted the hole: a darker blot of water in the waves. Ghaldezuel found his grip tightening on the oar as they approached, as if the fissure’s depth was pulling them closer, some current dragging them in.

  A few minutes earlier they’d spotted a rusty blue Voidship bearing the markings of the absent Vulgar King Paryam passing over the lagoon, a trail of smoke scudding across the sky behind it. Due to the cutting of the telegraph wires, the king’s remaining forces had been slow to learn of Napp’s conquest and were only now beginning to rearrange themselves, splitting their defences at the equatorial capital of Moso, seventeen hundred miles north. Already Cunctus was on his way; they’d last seen his silhouette riding a huge humped back as it dwindled out by the islands at the lagoon’s mouth. By tonight he’d be canvassing for support at all the ports he came to along the coast, the Wilhelmina bringing up the rear.

  “Here,” Nazithra said.

  Ghaldezuel heaved the barnacled anchor overboard, stepping neatly aside as the chain unravelled, then turned back to the witch.
<
br />   “What now?”

  She was silent. An expectant look hovered in the huge, shadowy eyes he could see through her veil.

  The far end of the boat tipped suddenly down, bouncing Ghaldezuel and the witch into the air. He grasped the bulwark, splinters driving into his palms, arms jarred by the force of it. The witch hung on beside him, one hand gripping his knee. They stared down at the boat’s tipped bow, Ghaldezuel understanding they had been raised some distance out of the water by a massive invisible weight.

  “What is it?” he whispered, shifting so that he could free up one hand. The creaking weight seemed perfectly calibrated not to let any water in over the side of the boat, though it slopped against the sides, threatening to dribble in with every small wave. Ghaldezuel brushed the witch’s fingers from his knee, glaring at her. “What have you summoned?”

  “The Jurors of the moon Maelstrom send their regards,” the witch said, shifting down the boat a little until she had braced herself near the middle.

  Ghaldezuel realised that something was sitting there, at the boat’s prow. He could see its pale shadow pooling on the timbers.

  This is the one?

  The voices that drifted from the shadow were unmistakable. Ghaldezuel felt a cold sweat prickle across his skin.

  “This is he,” the witch said. “Told you I’d bring him, and here he is.”

  Speak if you can hear.

  He swallowed, realising they were talking to him, and he glanced at the witch. “Yes, I can hear you.”

  The witch had opened her mouth to speak again but was neatly cut off. The warlord will only be useful for so long, we think you know that.

  Ghaldezuel glanced at the witch, his palms still smarting with splinters. “I know no such thing.”

  The shadow at the prow seemed to regard him.

  We know things that none living could know. We have seen the time when he will be supplanted.

  “By me?” He sighed. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  Of course. Ghaldezuel thought he detected a note of exasperation. Of course you.

  “Why?” he said. “What’s so special about me?”

  It is seen that it will be you.

  “All right.” Ghaldezuel sighed again. “And what do you want in return?”

  What we want is in that place.

  He leaned back a little. “The Shell city. You want to be reborn, like the Long-Life was?”

  There was a long, perplexed silence, filled only by the creaking of the boat in the water.

  “I must be the first Oracle to have reached you out here,” the witch said to the invisible presence. She’d told Ghaldezuel how news was carried between the voices of the worlds by willing subjects like herself. “There was another, you see.”

  The boat creaked and groaned, protesting as the massive weight crawled closer. Ghaldezuel felt the stern drop slowly back into the water, until they were almost level.

  Another?

  The witch gestured to Ghaldezuel. He glared at her.

  “Tell.”

  He stared forward, sure he was looking straight through it. The boat was so low in the lagoon now that its waters had begun to trickle over the sides. “I worked for a time in the employ of a . . . a being, someone who had lain dormant on the Old World.”

  He told the presence as much as he could, remembering as he related the events of the last few months: Corphuso’s scream as he disappeared, the chuckling laughter from the darkness.

  Ghaldezuel felt a palpable charge in the silence from the other end of the boat as he finished his tale, tensing his shoulders.

  For a long time, whatever was in the boat with them said nothing.

  He survived.

  The witch nodded. “He did.”

  Crazed laughter filled their heads then, ending as suddenly as if a switch had been thrown.

  We wish him luck.

  UPSTREAM

  Twilight on the waterways, the stars glowing in the night-blue sky. Snatches of the idiotic Westerling song “The Sea of Stars” invaded Cunctus’s thoughts, and he began to sing beneath his breath. He didn’t think he’d ever been more excited. He shifted on Scallywag’s chain-draped shoulders to lean back against the baggage, one toe dangling in the black water. Clouds of marsh skits followed them in the warm air, tiny buzzing things that didn’t seem to like Melius blood. Out across the bay, the dark bulge of the Amaranthine ship followed his progress, not a single light prickling its surface, making its stately way to the next port.

  It might have been nice to stay a while in Napp, luxuriating in their first victory, perhaps even meeting Ghaldezuel’s secret Bult squeeze—he found the image of the two of them together lasciviously fascinating—had he not been frightened of losing his momentum, a momentum hatched in the darkness of the Thrasm and brooded over until the great hole of the Sepulchre had opened at his feet. Never in all history, Cunctus thought, had anyone been so very rich and so very poor as he. But those peaks and troughs had guided his course, he believed; the steeper the decline the faster he went, the stronger and more energetic he became. The Lacaille, already pouring into Drolgins’ last defended realms, their gunships trained on the major citadels, would learn of his strength and speed in the days to come and respect him. Let them take too many cities, though, and they’d laugh in his face, Cethegrande or no.

  He bridled at the thought, his good humour vanishing. Nobody had ever laughed at him before. He wasn’t about to let it happen now.

  Cunctus reached down to pat Scallywag’s ridge of hair, stroking along the grain before twining it around his fingers.

  “It’ll be time to try on that suit soon, eh, Waggle?”

  The Cethegrande snorted a quick puff of rank air in response, the halitosis drifting over the water, and Cunctus smiled, taking a drag of the warm, sickly stench. As a boy, he’d been intoxicated by the stink of phosphorettes, those little coated sticks that made a flame, smelling them on the fingers of tall Secondling ambassadors. To him, that caustic smell had represented everything exciting about the freedom of travel and the night-time chill of adventure—something he wasn’t going to be allowed much of until he was king—and it was only in the darkness of the Thrasm that he’d remembered those days. He’d wished so hard to see the world that they’d found him smuggled into saddlebags or wandering lost in the fields around the Sarine Palace, begging messenger birds to take him with every last scrap of pocket money he had. The birds had, wisely, refused. His mother had worried about him; there never was a less kingly child.

  But nothing really changed. Maturity was just another layer, Cunctus understood; the adult mind simply an agglomerated rubbish tip of thoughts and feelings. His dearest wishes from childhood hadn’t disappeared, they’d simply been built upon. He marvelled suddenly that if they’d only let him travel, just to the neighbouring Provinces, he might not be here now.

  Cunctus watched a splash ripple out across the sea, Scallywag’s submerged head turning minutely. Other Cethegrandes were a danger out here and they kept close to the shore. But his mount turned back and looked ahead, apparently calm, and Cunctus’s heart slowed in tandem.

  He sat up a little and watched the stars, peering past the colourful specks of orbital junk to search the constellations for Sol and the Old World. Unbeknownst to most of his fellow prisoners, there had been a crack in the Thrasm’s brickwork, up near the guard tower’s connecting wall, which he used to stare through every night, becoming familiar with all the shapes of the heavens. Cunctus had watched the movements of the worlds as they arced overhead, looking past the massed stars of the Firmament and keeping watch over his old kingdom. There was something poetic in it, he thought, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. To watch an entire world through the sliver of a crack, the ice-dry wind watering his eye like the breeze through a keyhole.

  The light of his old home star sank into his eyes and Cunctus thought back to his old loves, wondering what might have become of the beautiful men he’d cultivated at court. Th
ey would each of them be three hundred years old by now, pensioned off or married to unhappy wives. He exhaled a small laugh, musing on how dangerous those liaisons could have been, had anything got out.

  “I’ll come back for you,” he whispered to the night sky, “when I’ve taken all I can. The Old World will be mine again.”

  Cunctus’s gaze flicked away from the Firmament and off into the deeper reaches of the heavens. To a Melius, the night sky was a riot of colour, their great lenses picking out so much more than the whitish specks the Amaranthine saw.

  A waste, he thought. And he hated waste.

  THE GORGING

  Maril sat up in the dark. His face was sticky with something. Blood. He peered up, blinking the dried little bits of leaves out of his eyes. The treetops were very far away and the sky between their branches had turned a murky purple. Night was setting in.

  Maril shifted with a stab of pain, fearing that he’d broken or badly twisted his ankle. As he moved, he disturbed the material he had landed on—what he’d thought were the crushed remnants of fallen leaves—and realised he was lying in a drift of dead flotsam. The forest floor was covered with them; trillions of fallen, bleached little bodies small enough to have lived unnoticed among his eyelashes. In the gloom, he could make out the pillars of the trees, a silvery mist swirling between them. It was cold down here, in the place where the dead settled. Maril experienced the aching pain in his arm again and massaged his scrawny biceps while he glanced around. Slowly, testing the weight on his ankle, he got to his feet, fighting through the heap of flotsam until he could sprawl onto its surface. As the night descended, he walked atop the drifts like a bird on soft snow, picking his way along, often sinking up to his waist. It was a wonder nothing came down here to take advantage of all this free food. Maril glanced around, the breath pluming from his nostrils; perhaps whatever lived down here didn’t like flotsam. Perhaps it needed more. His hand went to his holster, remembering that he’d drawn his pistol just before he fell. Maril looked back into the gloaming at the snow-like piles of dead creatures. He’d never find it now.