I stepped back, the warm contact between the little Arukh’s body and my own broke.
She hovered for a second.
“Mothers’ love upon you,” the little Arukh said.
Vhoroktik looked up, her expression strange. Whatever strange communion they shared, it was still there between them. She almost said something, and seemed to bite it back. She was silent for a second.
“Mothers’ love upon you,” Vhoroktik replied quickly, her face darkening with embarrassment. She looked down and away.
As we returned to the lodge, I couldn’t stop staring at the little Arukh.
It seemed to make her nervous.
It was a simple inspiration. If the Brave Tohkzahli had almost slain the Prince, how much easier might it be for the Vampires? After all, they were already at war.
As we ate in Iron Pants’ Lodge, the notion seemed to make more and more sense. Something was off with Iron Pants. He’d seemed to stare at us as he fed us. His gaze shifting from Arukh to Arukh, searching, coming to light upon me, again and again.
His companion, the younger Troll, had shifted on his feet as I came near, almost as if he was going to come and speak to us. But he didn’t. I was satisfied. It is not always good to speak to Trolls.
Why kill the Prince myself, if I could have others do it for me? So long as it was done, I would be content.
Beyond the war, the Vampires had suffered at his hands. Had lost their own people to him. All I needed to do was show them.
I would have to speak to high Vampires.
That was a problem. They didn’t speak to creatures like me, and their Inner City was forbidden to the Arukh. We were unclean to them.
The Cull was the answer, I decided. The Cull could see me into the Inner City, could show me a high Vampire, could make it listen, and possibly, could get me out alive again.
Screwing up my courage, I’d dragged the little one off with me, found the Cull and begged an audience. She’d listened to me with the absent-minded distraction of the Traditionals, as if not listening at all, but merely hearing my words.
In the end, she took my gold.
She’d taken us north again. We walked, this time around the outer kingdom, where tanners, gluers, bonecarvers and butchers plied their trade.
“This is the Inner City,” she told me finally.
I looked around. It didn’t seem different. It had the look of much of the rest of the Vampire city. Low slung wooden buildings, wide winding streets and alleys, all arranged haphazardly.
“Smell,” she said.
I inhaled.
“It’s different,” I said. There wasn’t the close, suffocating, smell of the tanneries and slaughterhouses. It was there, yes, but not immediate or overwhelming.
And if the wind changed direction? No, the ground here was higher, as it was in all the inner Kingdoms.
“Death is forbidden in the Inner City,” she told me, explaining. “That is the law of Dreamers: nothing may die here.”
I grunted.
“That is why your kind are forbidden here,” she said. “You are creatures of unlife, born dead and defiled. You reek of it. You are... wrong. You do not belong in this world, and not in this place.”
She didn’t say anything else after that.
I watched fascinated as naked Traditionals and robed city dwellers moved among sacred cattle, going on errands I could not fathom. A few glanced at me and my companion, and then shrugged and moved on. I saw a few Dead Men, half Human-half Vampire not quite either, among them.
I stopped and stared at a group of Vampire children playing on a cow laying on a patch of grass. Its tail flicked at them with bored irritation as they leaped and danced around its limbs, and climbed over its body.
One of the children seemed heavier, than the others, its body somehow more massive, its movements slower and clumsier. Was this an Arukh? I wondered. I tried to see my own reflection in its blunt features.
“Come,” the Cull said, pulling me away.
A passing dung minder glanced at us curiously, and then returned to pulling his sleigh loaded with excrement.
The buildings became more massive. Full lodges and halls, temples and ziggurats and walls, now all made of baked brick. They grew closer together, though the boulevards remained wide.
I examined the buildings carefully, as we walked. They seemed shabby, even in comparison with the ramshackle woodwork of the outer Vampire Kingdom.
The big lodges didn’t even have roofs, just eaves running along the walls. Nowhere was the massive stonework of giants or cunning towers of dwarves.
“Here in the sacred place, the lesser races have nothing to teach the fair people,” the Cull said. She grinned at me, and I suspected impenetrable layers of meaning in that obvious statement.
Sacred cattle grew fewer. I realized suddenly, that every sacred beast in the Inner City was accompanied by a Vampire, who groomed and guided, who tended to its needs. Other Vampires treated the tenders with exaggerated respect.
“Holy are these who lay with beasts,” the Cull said, startling me. She seemed amused.
She pulled me from the street and took me down an alley. It opened up into a great corral surrounded by wooden stands. Vampires thronged the stands, the low buzz of their conversation, the smell of their bodies, filled the air.
“Sit,” the Cull said, gesturing to the stands.
Inside the coral, there was a bull and a dozen young naked Vampires. They were mixture of Traditional and city types, the Traditionals’ hair being darker and wilder, their skins tending to be leathery from years exposed to the elements.
As we watched, the bull lowered its head and charged one of them, a city female by the look of her. She held still until it was almost upon her, and then grabbed its horns at the last minute.
The crowd roared as she lost her balance. The bull tossed its head. She swung left off one horn. The bull turned circles to try and bring her down as she bounced again and again off its flank.
Another city Vampire distracted the bull, allowing the female to slip off and away. He danced this way and that as it pursued him, always never quite where the bull lunged.
They all drew away now, leaving the bull in the centre. It shook its head, lowering its horns again as they danced around in an ever widening circle.
A Traditional stepped forward, her skin shining as if oiled. With high, exaggerated steps, she approached the bull, which seemed to lift its head to stare warily at her. Suddenly, it lowered its horns and charged. From where we were, we could hear the thunder of its hooves over the silenced crowd.
The Traditional went absolutely still as the bull pounded towards her, little clods of meadow flinging into the air behind it. Almost on top of her, it lunged forward to crush and gore.
In an astonishing movement almost too quick to follow, the Traditional seemed to leap upside down over the horns even as it tossed its head. I watched her body swing up in an arc, her feet insolently kicking the bull’s hindquarter, and then up into the air again, as the bull bucked and kicked, galloping in obvious confusion at its vanished prey. Hanging for a second in the air, the bull behind her, the Traditional spun twice more before her feet touched the ground and she walked casually away.
The crowd roared its approval, deafening us.
The other Vampires in the corral harried and distracted it. Keeping it from charging any particular target, while continuing to madden the creature. It lunged at one and then another, but they always danced out of its way and before it could settle on a charge, another would taunt it.
“The glory of youth,” the Traditional said. She started talking to another naked Traditional, relating some dream she’d had about a fawn suckled by a cow. The other responded with a dream about a thighbone that grew leaves.
I listened to them for a while, but it was impenetrable. Full o
f shifting allusions as past dreams were explored and compared, meanings discussed, and symbols debated.
I went back to watching the bull dancers.
“You’re Rughk?” someone asked.
I looked. Sitting a little ways apart from us was a male vampire. City bread by the look of him, he dressed in functional leather leggings and harness. Part of his left hand was missing, the scar old and well healed, and he had a small potbelly. I stared. I seldom saw potbellies on Vampires. Perhaps he had a little bit of Troll in him.
“You’re Rughk, aren’t you?” he asked again.
I nodded.
“We don’t see many in here,” he said.
I grunted. I didn’t think he’d see any in here at all.
Once again the dancers were forming their circle. The bull shook its head. It seemed reluctant to charge.
“I hear Rughk can be pretty fast?”
“Fast enough,” I replied.
The dancers taunted it, leaping close and slapping its sides.
“I hear Rughk can catch birds and arrows out of the air?”
“I’ve heard this too.”
“Do you think a Rughk could do this?”
Abruptly, the bull turned and charged, its head so low that its nostrils seemed to brush the grass. Its victim, a lone female, froze. The bull didn’t so much run, as plough through the air, its smashing hooves digging deep into the soil, flinging clods behind as it rushed forward.
This time I was watching carefully. Just as the bull was upon her, she reached out and firmly grabbed its horns. The bull tossed its head back, and the motion, with her own leap, catapulted her into the air to land on the bull’s back.
That’s what the first female had tried and failed at, I realized. Something hadn’t been right. The bull had tossed its head the wrong way, or her timing had been off.
Here it was perfect, and once again, she sailed over the bull’s back, folding up her body as it came down on the bull’s hindquarters, and then leaping again into the air, propelled by the bull’s own kick at the sudden temporary weight.
The crowd roared in appreciation, and so did I. It was absolutely beautiful.
The dancer spun three times in the air, coming down almost in a ball, before walking away with the slightest stagger.
“I used to do this all the time,” the potbellied vampire told me. “A hundred upon a hundred leaps I made. Wild bulls, too, with sharpened horns. Not like this. Not with tamed animals.”
A few feet away from us, the Cull continued her arcane discussions. I glanced at her. She paid us no attention.
The potbellied Vampire held up his maimed hand.
“No more though.”
I nodded, not sure of what to say.
“So you think you could do that?” he asked. “Are you fast enough?”
The dancers ringed around the bull now, but it seemed tired and reluctant to charge again.
“It looks like more than speed,” I said, equivocally.
“Yes,” he said. “It takes much skill. You have to practically do it from birth.”
I grunted.
As we watched, the dancers seemed to abandon trying to incite the bull. They still leaped around it, but now caressing, as if trying to calm and relax it.
By degrees, the fight went out of it. It stopped responding angrily to their touches and seemed to calm, accepting or ignoring their presence.
“Probably too much for a Rughk,” he decided, ending the one sided conversation.
One by one, the bull dancers began to feed off the becalmed animal. It accepted their attentions dumbly.
The dance was apparently over. I wondered how long it had been going on before we’d come here. How many times had it been incited to charge, how many leaps before it had fallen into exhaustion.
The crowd in the stands showed no inclination to leave. Instead, many simply turned to discussing the bull and each of the dancers, exchanging opinions and assessments.
I listened with half an ear. I needn’t have watched the dancers at all. The conversations would have told me more than eyes ever could.
The Cull began to walk away. I nudged the little Arukh, and we scrambled from our seats to follow her. She halted.
“No,” she said turning back to us.
“You promised,” I insisted, “we have your word that you will see us safely.”
“It is inconsequential,” she said, “I have errands. I must consult with ancestors in waking dreams. Rughk may not attend with me. The wind is not in that direction. I shall return when the wind blows favourably.”
“How long?” I insisted.
She shook her head.
“Time is without meaning in the real world,” she replied. “When time turns again, our paths may cross.”
A cold, sinking sensation opened in the pit of my stomach. No good would come of being abandoned in a place forbidden to us.
“This one,” she said, gesturing to the other Traditional, “will see to you in my absence. For you, for all things, he shall be me.”
The other Traditional glanced in our direction, seeming not even to notice us.
With careful exaggeration, the Cull turned to the other Traditional.
“Mind these as you would a child, or a favoured toy,” she said, pronouncing slowly and carefully for our apparent benefit, “I shall return for them before the sun rises.”
Then she walked off.
I began to follow, but the Traditional appeared in front of me, still casually ignoring us. I tried to step around without touching him, but somehow, the Traditional always seemed to be where I wanted to go.
Irritated, I snarled and swung. The Traditional hardly seemed to move, but my fist slipped through empty air and I stumbled forward.
His calm eyes passed over me, seeing and not seeing. Vaguely amused, but not quite at me.
The little Arukh was right behind me.
“Kill?” she whispered. The Traditional cocked his head, not quite deigning to hear the words, but seeming to listen as to a bird song.
She thought the two of us together could take him. I didn’t think so. And even if we could, then what?
The Cull was gone.
The Traditional’s vague secret smile seemed to increase a little, as if the world had become an incrementally funnier place.
I sighed.
“Honourable Sir,” I said, employing Dwarf honorifics. I didn’t know how to call Traditionals. “What would you have of us?”
For a second, the Traditional’s distracted gaze seemed to pass over us in momentary acknowledgement of our existence. He turned his back on us, took three steps, and stopped, not quite waiting.
We followed. He began moving again.
In a small clearing a dozen Vampires had gathered around two reclining cattle. They were all young, some Traditionals, some southern, some city bloods.
They paused from their discussions to look us over.
“Do not touch the beasts,” a young male warned me. I looked closer. He wasn’t really a full Traditional, though his skin was sunbeaten and he walked naked. Probably a city vampire. His skin had been oiled until it shone. A bull dancer?
I stood, staring at them. There were beast tenders, in their simple tunics. Dung minders in their trousers and aprons. City dwellers, wearing trousers, and southern vampires, bedecked in elaborate robes.
“You are Rughk?” a beast tender said.
I nodded.
“So that’s what they grow up to be,” he said. “I’d wondered what they might turn out like.”
The male who’d spoken to me first stood and walked over, circling me with amused inspection. The little Arukh cowered and cringed, but I stood fast.
“Rughk,” he said, “born small, grow fast. Clumsy children. I am surprised that any live at all.”
“We live,” I replied.
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why do you live?” he asked, leaning his body against mine. He put something between my lips. “Why do you bother? You must know that nothing in the world wants you.”
“Eat,” he commanded.
I swallowed. Mushroom. Light and tasteless.
“Do you live?” he wondered, “Or do you merely seem to live? Rughk have no soul, no dreams, they are like this city. Stones piled together to give the appearance of something, then one day, the stones fall apart and there is nothing.”
One of the city Vampires cleared its throat. It stroked its genitals in its leather trousers.
“We have been discussing the real and the unreal,” he told me. “Our kith hold that all that is real is the spirit and the earth, and all else is of the intercourse between the two.”
“Buildings pass, and flesh and fire pass,” the naked oiled vampire said. He slipped his hand beneath my jacket, feeling my bare skin. “Spirit is real, wind and water are real, the stones are real.”
The fastenings seemed to come loose one after the other, and I felt it slide off my shoulder.
I looked to the Traditional for assistance. He reclined a few feet away, oblivious to my presence, reflecting upon some past dream.
“We are the emanations of real things, and will pass back and forth among them.”
His hands explored me. His voice was soft and seductive.
“You are a made thing. Is there anything of the real in you? Or will you just fall apart one day?”
He bent forward to sniff my neck.
“Don’t,” I said, my heart was pounding. “Don’t touch me.”
The little Arukh was whimpering fearfully.
I felt no threat from them, but they made me feel strange, as if they were too close. As if they took intimacies I had not imagined.
Lacings slipped apart, and things fell away from me. I felt nothing, except in some strange way, I fancied myself like that sea bug the Selk had shown me. Arukh of the sea, I’d called it. I felt like that creature, like its... like my shell was being torn from me.
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