The A'Rak

by Michael Shea

  As with the Rattlespate's, the Ebonflux Valley's upper slopes were nearly all meadows, thicketed here and there with flowering shrubs. Rainy Hagia—we were there in its sole short dry season—is profuse in blossoms: scarlet gleetsbane with pistils like saffron stilettos, the lavender flagons of gnats-nest, the ranked bells of amber carrilion with indigo anthers a-dangle like tongues.

  Midway down into the valley, where the slope gentled, the farmsteads began, looking pretty and prosperous, their furrows straight as comb-strokes. From the gables it was the fashion to hang wind-chimes like clouds of butterflies or flights of birds, and fanciful weather vanes were another custom—sheet-copper in artful silhouettes: a milkmaid in windblown dress by a gleet with windblown fleece, a shepherd chasing a tumbling hat, two children struggling to pitch a tent with a wind-tugged blanket.

  It came to me then that we had been some hours in progress and that actual children had been little in evidence the whole time. As we at length neared the wooded valley floor, I understood it. The Ebonflux, much broader than the Rattlespate, was flanked by a much denser forest, and entering its fringe we grasped how a Hagian valley's floor could be a world away from its slopes or its ridgelines. Widow Pompilla actually fell silent. As the green gloom roofed us, the prisoning trees crowded closer, and the woven vines shackled our eyes and ears in whispery shadow and the restless ambiguity of leaf, blade, and frond. We sensed a stir of stealthy habitation coming awake on every side. But of course. These valley-floor woods would be the very heartland of the Covenant. Here could the a'rakspawn walk above-ground almost invisibly. And children throughout the valleys would, in consequence, be close-kept.

  As we crossed the Ebonflux on the Cobblestone Bridge, from mid-span I glimpsed pathetic confirmation of my inferences down in the Cobblestone Township, which occupied both banks of the river below. There were modest docks, where shallowdraft gondolas offloaded kegged dairy goods at the Cheese Cooperative, or baled fleeces at the high-beamed Weavery echoing with the clatter and twang of the looms. And down on those docks I glimpsed some schoolmistresses guiding a gaggle of nursery aged children, showing them the shopwindows and the folk a-working. Aged three or four summers, the children were precious, as all such wee pups are the world over, with their solemn wee flowerpetal lips and great, grave eyes. It was only at second look I saw it: bright woolen cords bound these tinies wrist to wrist. They scarce perceived these friendly shackles they wore, such being their custom since cradle-days no doubt, like Ma and Da's countless cautionings never to stray from the path to the undergrowth, as pups like themselves had got vanished forever and ever that way. . . .

  We were glad to climb out of the woods, and rise ridgeward again. Our veiled Dame marched in the van quite mute now, and stayed so, till I grew still uneasier about her. Her odd ardors, her sharp alterations! I conceived an irrational anxiety to see her face, as if that by itself could help me decide: was she, quite simply, a plausible madwoman, and her errand with that coffin of hers a lunatic's wild conception?

  As the day was declining we branched to a lesser road just short of the ridgecrest, and only then did she speak again. "Now my friend Widow Bozzm, mark you" (as before she still marched as she spoke, though now she faced forward) "is herself new-widowed, lost her dear Haggardham Bozzm, a cheese-meister, but a year gone, and she and her two girls are hard put running the dairy he left them on Buttercrock Creek. In some work, like milking the momiles and gleets, they're marvels, and the cheesing and churning, but they're all too stout for the shepherding uphill and down. In consequence, their gleets go half-tended, and have now caught the shank-rot. I'll watch the night leeching them, and for my services, my fee shall be the ewes that are gravid with kid. Help me barn them tonight, and drive my ewes home tomorrow, and we shall have the rent of good Clummock's paddleraft to start you aright on your commission. As for tonight, take your ease, and enjoy the Buttercrock dames' incomparable culinary confections."

  |

  NIFFT II

  At the Weskitt and Fobb I was sumptuously entertained. The Ecclesiarch's card, which I presented to the Chief Steward, elicited from that frosty functionary a deferent bow and swift service. I made use of the elegant baths in the basement, though a certain elusive something about them—was it a faintly subterranean quality to the air?—made me unwilling to linger there.

  I soon presented myself to be shown to a seat in the dining chamber. The house did a lively business, and amid elegant diners, who filled the refectory with a genteel tumult of crockery and conversation, I made an exquisite repast.

  As I sat viewing the gathering dusk outside the window, a tapster appeared at my elbow and presented me with a spice-sprigged potation of aquavit, indicating that it was sent me with the compliments of an angular, exotic dame of a certain age who, at my bow, beckoned me to her table with a smile of ironic charm.

  "Amiable lady!" I saluted her, "Thank you for this cordial gesture! I am Nifft, an Ephesionite traveller." Her hand was very cold, and steely strong. She was lean and languid in a silvery sheathe of some reptile's skin, her eyes rimmed with kohl.

  "I am Dame Eelritter, a Stregan, travelling too, though not from such a distance as yourself. You looked a bit at loose ends, Nifft. You struck me as a curious foreigner, hungry for discoveries, for local lore—an observant, enterprising fellow trying to get a feel for a new locale. Do I err?"

  "You are clairvoyance itself!" I did not shrink from displaying an affability that bordered on fulsomeness. Any fool could see she was dangerous. Her spareness was as densely strong as a python's, and her being from Strega, one of the two Greater Sisters of the Astrygal Islands, gave her good odds of being a witch. "You have quite hit the mark! Of course as an outlander one fears to seem rude, to poke and probe with queries, but one craves the doings, the details of a new land. Why else does one travel?"

  "Why else indeed? Well well. There is so much I could tell you, for I know Hagia intimately. What about popular culture? What about ballads and other such artless rhymes. The anonymous popular verses of a folk—do such things interest you?"

  I could not help displaying a brief hesitation. Unless this were a wild coincidence, a reference to what I'd just sold the Ecclesiarch seemed intended. Was her glittery, gleeful eye taunting me now? She could be grinning at her own thoughts, the apparent allusion pure accident, but I didn't really believe it for a moment.

  "I relish such things! Ballads and roundelays and the like. Am I so transparent, Dame Eelritter, or are you indeed a reader of thoughts?"

  "Neither, honest Nifft. It is, rather, that I am myself keen on folkloric verse. Let me share a particular favorite of mine with you. It is a local ditty, and a perfect gem of rural Hagia's unique ethnic whimsy. It is called `Something Unspeakable.' Listen:

  Clawtip by clawtip, so gingerly-daintly!

  Advancing now two steps, now one step, now three . . .

  Hark there! Can'st hear it? Though ever so faintly?

  Hear it tiptoe from thicket to gully to tree?

  Something unspeakable followeth me!

  What stayeth when I stay, and when I go, goeth?

  It hasteth when I haste, and when I slow, sloweth.

  To advance I'm afeard, yet to linger am loath,

  Such tickle-foot terror attendeth on both.

  Doth the boskage there stir? I search, but naught showeth!

  Crickle and crackle old Crooked-Legs speedeth

  And under my footfall concealeth his own.

  Hast ever happ'd past some copse where Crook feedeth?

  Heard his paralyzed prey—as he's drained—feebly moan?

  Ye zephyrs that fluster the foliage, stand fast!

  What was it, just yonder, that just whispered past?

  What pursuer so leisurely-sly giveth chase?

  Ye gods, let me not feel that thorny embrace!

  Ye breezes harassing the high grass, desist!

  By little and little, degree by degree

  Thy rustle and bustle the monster assist�
�

  Lest I be seized let me harken! Oh list!

  That delicate stealthing—what else could it be?

  From a footfall so multiple, what hope to flee?

  For scuttling from thicket to gully to tree

  Something unspeakable followeth me!

  * * *

  I did not need to feign fascination as she recited. Was this a threat? A warning? If the poem's theme had not seemed pointed in itself, her smile would have made it so, this cool, ophidian dame with her eyes kohled as fierce as a carnival demon-mask's. How could I not feel a taunting admonition against my thief's errand in the lines? Or was something else afoot. Had the hostile Fursten Minim, for instance, guessing my mission, sent her after me? The poem seemed to invite me to collude in derogation of the god—to gull me into treason? To undo, or at least expel me? Cautiously, I probed for further disclosure.

  "These are truly vivacious and sprightly lines. Forgive me for asking, but an outlander, if he needs anything, needs to know where he risks giving offense. Would not the verses be locally deemed as, well, disrespectful of the deity and his spawn?"

  "In my great age, honest Nifft—" her kohl-rimmed eyes, though she smiled, looked cold and mirthless now, "—I find myself more and more indifferent to such questions. I indulge my impulses and follow my intuitions. For instance, I sense in yourself a love of other aspects of local culture besides verse—a love of architecture, for example. If I am right, then I suggest you go abroad a bit and view some of Hagia's justly famed monastia. Functionally they are rather awkward hybrids, combination cloisters-cum-banking firms, all of them prodigiously well stocked with specie—but most elegantly and variously architected, I assure you."

  I nodded, my face displaying courteous interest, but my tongue quite unable to fashion a reply. If she were in Minim's employ, this was much too plain to be aimed at entrapping me—and I could not after all think she was a churchman's catspaw. This was a woman of power, and there was inscrutable challenge in her glinting eye.

  She seemed to have been waiting for just this tacit impasse in my calculations, for now, leaning a bit nearer, she told me, "Neither the spidergod's wealth nor his welfare are any concern of mine, honest traveller. I have it in mind to offer you one helpful word, and I'm done with you. If you seek some opportunity to see the local countryside, then there is a place on the northern quayside, near the Maritime Museum, where those congregate who have some skills at arms to hire out. Get you down there in the morning, and see if there be not some employment that affords you the, ah, pretext for tourism you seek—and one with some remuneration withal. And so, I bid you good night."

  I watched her sway lithely away amidst the tables. Would a witch who meant to work me woe make her insight into my business so blatant? Possibly. They can be as whimsical as they are wily, can the Sisters.

  Against that I considered that no witch of any stature—none potent enough to fear—would be likely to deliver me to the spidergod's fangs. The Sisterhood has a long memory. To them the A'Rak is an upstart still. They are the aristocracy of Earth's historians, and are disdainful of all immigrants.

  But what, then, did this Eelritter want of me? Did she really, for some unfathomable personal advantage, wish to promote my reconnaissance and, thence, my thief's errand itself?

  The eleventh hour found me settling gratefully into an opulent bed, and resolving to determine my course of action according to my first impulse on waking. This is a trick of mine that has helped me on many a night to cease fretting, and fall comfortably asleep—which I promptly did.

  * * *

  At the same hour, the Ecclesiarch, Paanja Pandagon, was as far from repose as it is possible for a man to be. He was wrestling, as he walked through the empty streets, with even more urgent ambiguities than those that plagued me. Walking through alternate darkness and puddles of lamplight, his light athlete's tread scarcely echoing on the pavements, his each step taking him nearer the grand flights ascending the crags to the stadium crowning them, he murmured from memory the verses I had sold him. He couldn't really present them to the god at all, of course . . . could he? The fury, the threat in them! To take them even half seriously was . . . impious, wasn't it? To believe they could tell truly some risk to the A'Rak, ancient, colossal, and dire?

  And most frightening of all, at bottom, was the thrill this gave him. The thought of an actual danger to Grandfather A'Rak sent a thrill of exultation along his spine. Such strangers to our own thoughts can we make ourselves when there seems no scope for them! But the cat was irretrievably out of the bag now. At the mere hearing of these lines, the prelate's heart had mutined against the god, and thrilled to the thought that the giant might actually be imperilled.

  He had felt the touch of the god's thought for the first time in his life this morning, and its awful intimacy left him wondering now: How far could the spider's mind see into his own? Would this rebellion in his blood not be detected by the god when he again touched his priest's mind with his own?

  The grand stairs in front of him now majestically switchbacked five hundred feet high up the crag-wall. As he began to climb them he could see more and more of the stadium's balustraded upper rim, all drenched with moonlight. Each angle of the rim's oblate octagon wore sculptured pinnacles of bronze, and as he climbed he strove to still the thrum of terror in his heart by studying those bas reliefs while counting his steps, the game being to pinpoint at just what altitude various details of the sculpture became legible to the climber. It collected and concentrated him, and he was heartened by the poise he was able to command.

  The city fell away behind him as the well known carvings came clear. At the three-hundred-fifty-ninth step, he could even see the exquisitely carven ships, their little masts and sails . . . Those were temples and domed halls chiselled in the panel adjoining. The City's wealth, the potency of their tower-crowned metropolis, were the sculptor's predictable themes for this most majestic and solemn monument to the spidergod's Covenant with Pandagon's countrymen. The stadium was the very altar of that Covenant, where the contract was resworn, where the city re-purchased the mantle of its lucrative vassalage by the annual tendering of a lot-chosen tithing of human lives . . . always few, in fairness. The blood fee was nigh nominal.

  At the crest the stone flights became a smooth-flagged promenade that flowed forth to the mighty pylons of the stadium's City-Gate, and entered between the huge brazen leaves that stood always wide open. The arena's sand floor stretched beyond. Pandagon must now walk out onto that sand, walk straight across the long axis of its vast ellipse, and stand before the Gods Gate, which stood directly opposite the City Gate, but which opened only one night a year, just long enough for the Chosen-by-lot to pass through, out to the god, and the doom that awaited them.

  The prelate looked—partingly? he managed to smile to himself—down across lamp-spangled Big Quay, whose sea of roofs mobbed the knees of the cliffs he'd mounted. All the city's ridges and gables and domes seeming to vie like children urgent for notice and favor. Down along the quayside, watch-lanterns hung from jibs and rigging, freckling like fireflies the forested masts of all the ships undressed of sail and bedded down.

  Would he indeed return alive to his beautiful, proud city? How could he walk into the A'Rak's presence, and keep hidden from the god's eye-jeweled hugeness, that thrill his spine had sung with at the thought of the god endangered? The god's inhuman thought, this morning, had seemed to go directly up his spine to his understanding. How could his own thought, his purposes, be closed to that millennial monster? Here he was even now thinking his treason unguardedly—and indeed how guard it, now he'd discovered it in himself?

  The sacerdotal literature, the breviaries, early annals, constitutional chronicles—all his sources were silent on how deeply the god saw into his priests' minds. Hard and terrible it appeared to him, to walk across that arena's star-bleached sand. Yet he could not choose but do it.

  So he passed through the City Gate, and stepped out onto the arena, h
is pace still deliberate, dignified.

  Unheard of, this summons. Something utterly new. A private summons of the Church's Primate to the most terrible shrine of the faith, theater of the Covenant's most solemn rite. Pandagon's irrepressible intuition . . . or just desperate hope? . . . was that the uniqueness of this did mean unease in the god. The protocols were A'Rak's own. Revision meant . . . at least something unforeseen. To that frail hope of vulnerability in the alien giant, he clung as he crossed the moon-drenched sand.

  The God's Gate, its brazen valves even vaster than the City Gate's, was graven with the City's (and Covenant's) history. A'Rak's Epiphany to the Gleet-Shearers. The stages of the city's explosive growth filled the ascending panels, and the highest depicted the Quay thronged with trade and the Haagsford a-bristle with ships. As he neared the awesome valves, he had to crane his neck back to see them.

  He halted, taking in the doors as a whole now, five stories high. For now, standing close, he sensed power bristling and swelling just outside them, sensed a presence outside them that was a match for their hugeness. Did not the great brazen panels even bulge with it, ever so faintly swelling and groaning with its pressure? Surely they did, just detectably! And he almost believed he detected too—like huge, remote millstones grinding slow—the murmur of that Presence's vital energy, a slow-cycling drone.