Soldiers of Paradise

by Paul Park

  “Old fool,” breathed the princess. “Prince Thanakar is dying. He will die in his own bed, and I will never see him anymore. As to where he dies, it makes no difference. Old fool, there is no life but this one: the one that Chrism stole from him and me. But I will be avenged.”

  “I don’t care who says it, but that’s atheism, ma’am,” retorted the housekeeper. “Now I know you’ve been to hell and back. I don’t blame you. But it’s colored your way of thinking, ma’am, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  The princess gave her a contemptuous look and leapt from the pier into the boat as it drew up, almost upsetting it. The boatman jammed his pole into the wall and looked at her from under heavy eyebrows. She was an impressive sight, standing taut against the bowstem in a rich black robe, her long black hair, her lips painted black, an onyx ring in her left nostril standing out against the bloodless pallor of her cheek. Yellow lamplight soured her white skin, polluted the brilliance of her changing eyes, but even so she was impressive.

  Thanakar stepped into the belly of the boat. Mrs. Cassimer handed in the girl and then got in herself, losing her balance and sitting down abruptly in the bilge. Thanakar sat also, but his mother stood upright in the bow, grasping the lantern pole. The boatman pushed off. He gave no word, no signal of greeting, or gesture of recognition, even though his race had been serving Thanakar’s for all of history, ever since Angkhdt gave the world to certain families.

  The princess watched the lights diminish along the key and the darkness resolve around the circles of their lanterns. “I’m not sorry to leave,” she whispered.

  “Nor I,” said Thanakar.

  They passed into the tunnel’s stony throat, and the last lights disappeared. “Your father had great plans for you,” whispered the princess. “He was a strong man. At one time he almost forced a truce on Argon Starbridge. The Inner Ear rejected it. War has always served their purpose. Continual bloodshed keeps us weak. Otherwise we could not tolerate a man like Demiurge. Your father hated him. Your father had great plans. He could have made you bishop. The army loved him. At that time the parsons were still working on your tattoos, and the central panel of your right hand was still blank. Your father had written to the emperor for permission to have you consecrated, and Demiurge was afraid. He decided to destroy you, to make you an example.”

  “Mother—I believe it was an accident.”

  “It was not. I saw him throw you down. Chrism Demiurge has a ring with a poisoned barb. Once he cuts you with it, you never heal. Your bones rebel against your flesh. I didn’t find it until later—the tiniest puncture under your kneecap.”

  “That doesn’t sound possible.”

  “Quiet! What do you know about it? It broke your father’s heart. He had great ambitions.”

  Thanakar laughed. “It’s just as well the way it is,” he said. “Lord Chrism had the bishop burned last night.”

  “Yes. He burns them when they get too old. For a long time he has ruled through children.”

  For a while they glided in silence through the still water, surrounded by hints of stonework in the dark and, from time to time, the carved entrances to other tunnels. Or at times the tunnel they were in would widen out, though the canal always maintained its width. Stone platforms would appear on either side, and small bridges arched overhead, barely clearing the tops of their lantern poles. They passed through underground temples, long disused, and Starbridge family shrines. Occasionally they would pass a kerosene taper still alight, burning among rows of tombs.

  “He drank a lot,” whispered the princess. “And when they offered him the choice of dying young, he took it. The weather was so dreadful, you remember. It was a great honor. I urged him to do it. In those days I was very devout. A married woman’s life is so constrained.

  “Do you remember, Thanakar? You were just home from school. It was the seventh of November, in the third phase of spring. Two young parsons came to the house, to put the needles in our arms and pump the ichor through our veins. Right away I knew it was a lie, as soon as I lay back. They had told us what to expect. Dreams within dreams, they said. But I could feel the cold in every part of me. It was a lie. Paradise! For fifty mortal months it was like lying at the bottom of this stream, watching the lights passing back and forth along the surface—perfectly conscious, Thanakar. Submerged in the icy dark with nothing but distorted memories to keep me sane. Is it any wonder that I’ve changed?”

  It was no wonder. But Thanakar wasn’t listening. They were entering another section of the catacombs, rising through a sequence of shallow locks kept by uncles and cousins of their boatman—old men, silent and misshapen, peering down at them with lanterns in their hands. The light glinted on the machinery, and once they passed a scaffold and two men working on a wall of brazen cogwheels, replacing the belts. They stopped to peer down at the boat for an instant, and then bent back to their work again.

  There was more light in these upper regions, closer to the street. It seeped down through the ventilator ducts. And the water was more turbid here because it was mixing with flood waters from the street. In some places the walls glowed as the water slid down from the holes in the vault, and the sugar spread out on the surface of the stream like phosphorescent oil. The air smelled of smoke. Other people, too, had found their way down from above, escaping fire or water. They sat shivering among the tombs.

  So far the way was familiar to Thanakar. Eventually they would rise above the surface of the streets into the open air, to where a system of aqueducts would lead them to a Starbridge boathouse built on stilts above the riverbanks, out of reach of the flood. There larger boats—river craft and ocean-going launches—hung from slings below the floor. Most of these would already be gone. But Thanakar’s family still kept a boat there, a sleek narrow racer, useless in any storm.

  But the boatman turned aside, down unfamiliar passages. It grew dark again, and the vaults were so low that they had to unstep the lanterns. “He follows my directions,” whispered the princess. “My way lies through the deepest crypts.” Her voice was swallowed by the sound of water being sucked away, for they had entered an ancient lock that plunged them down into the city’s labyrinthine bowels, deeper than Thanakar had ever been. And when at last the sluice gates opened up to let them through, the air seemed hot and rich and wet, and they were in a maze of tunnels overgrown with vegetation. Curtains of white tendrils hung down from the ceilings and brushed their faces as they passed, while the water was overgrown with algae, and lotus pads, and strange blanched lilies. Sometimes a pale fin would break the water, and far behind they could hear something splash and cry. Mrs. Cassimer sat speechless in the bottom of the boat, while in her lap, wide-eyed Jenny sucked her thumb.

  They left the flowers behind and drifted out into clear water, an underground lake. Along the verges, candles flickered; they marked the circle of a vast chamber and a shore of stonework holding the water in a ring, lined with lumpish shapes. The princess turned the wick up on her lantern and lifted it as high as she could at the end of her pole, and by its light they saw carved images hanging down over their heads from the inside of the vault. The stone was covered with white moss, but even so Thanakar could recognize the signs of the zodiac, and in the center, free from overgrowth, primeval symbols of good and evil, the black snake and the white horse, grappling eternally.

  The boatman pulled up his pole, and they drifted on the still water. “Pagan kings,” whispered the princess. She raised her lantern to give articulation to the shapes along the verge: they were statues of cold kings with pale faces, gesturing to them across the water. Some seemed as if they had been turned to stone in the middle of talking, their poses were so lifelike, their faces so expressive. In the boat, Thanakar felt himself surrounded by a ring of passions, vices, virtues, each one crying out to him in a separate marble voice.

  “This is where I leave you,” whispered the princess. “From here a shaft runs straight up to the bishop’s crypt below the temple. Chrism Demiurge
has a private stair. I know the way.” She stood proudly in the boat’s peaked bow. Her face was as white as stone, and it was as if her passions, too, had been metamorphosed into marble by the pressure of her long confinement. It was cut into every feature, the malice that had become her animating principle now that her blood was gone.

  “Beloved Angkhdt defend us,” said Mrs. Cassimer, and Thanakar turned back to the shore. It was strange there should be lights down here, he thought, strange that the tombs should be so carefully maintained when so much else was overgrown. And as he watched, a man came down and knelt by the lakeside to prime an oil beacon. And when the flare rose up above the lake and their poor lanterns were overwhelmed, Thanakar gasped, because they were floating in the middle of a crowd. Men and women stood silently among the statues. They were naked except for breechcloths over their sex, and their faces and their chests were painted white, their black hair streaked with white. Mrs. Cassimer knew what they were. “Pagans,” she whispered, open-mouthed, and the princess nodded. And then Thanakar also recognized them, from engravings he had seen in books.

  Here in the utmost bowels of the city, among her utmost bones, the last of old earth’s pagans had found sanctuary. They stood silent, as if at a vigil, their faces calm and ghostlike, staring at the intruders on the lake.

  The boatman unshipped his pole and made for shore. A stone pier ran out towards them, and at the end of it stood an altar carved in the shape of a horse’s head. Its horns were gilded and garlanded with flowers, and on its broad forehead was set an offering of strawberries, more precious than gold in that starving time. Men gathered here, and several of the oldest wore amber necklaces, the symbol of the ancient cult of loving kindness, relics from a distant blissful time, but whether the men who wore them had actually been members of that noble brotherhood, or whether they had picked them up as talismans from some place of execution, Thanakar couldn’t judge. How could they be old enough? Yet they were very old, their brows placid, their eyes clear and kind. One snow-bearded patriarch came down to the water’s edge and reached his hands out in greeting. Thanakar wished he could have come there on some better errand; there was such a difference between the old man’s noble face and the princess’s carved mask, his smile of welcome and her hardened disdain. “Old fool,” she snarled, and leapt the few remaining feet onto the pier. He bowed low, and she ignored him, turning back to Thanakar to say, “Good-bye. I won’t thank you. We gave each other life, you and I, but I’m not sure we meant it kindly. We meant to settle an old debt.” She blew him a cold kiss, and the boatman pushed away with a flourish of his pole. A gulf of black water stretched between mother and son, but he sat looking backward, and she stood watching on the shore, a lantern in her hand. The old men moved around her, bowing graciously, but she stood motionless. Then, abruptly, she turned and pushed past them down the pier. Thanakar saw her pause at the altar, and take a strawberry and eat it.

  * * *

  Six hundred feet above, the antinomial stood in the burning street. He put on his sunglasses. The buildings were collapsing on either side of him, and the heat was intolerable, but he was unwilling to move. At the top of the street, across a square parade ground, rose the towers of the north gate, and the square was already full of Aspe’s soldiers drawn up in rows, waiting for the colonel. Restive in the smoke and sparks, their horses pawed the cobblestones, and occasionally one would rear up on its hind legs, spooked by an ember or a falling beam.

  Towards four o’clock, Aspe came through on his enormous horse, his head sunken on his breast. Couriers had reached him during the night, bringing news of the bishop’s execution. Since then he had ridden like an old man, the reins limp between his fingers, and from time to time he seemed to doze in the saddle, his head jerking foolishly. As he rode in through the gate he was awake, but only just. His eyes were bloodshot, his face red, as if he had been drinking.

  He raised his head and looked around, seeming not to recognize where he was or the faces of the officers around him. He put his hand to his face, to shield it from the heat. “What are we doing here?” he complained. “This street’s on fire.”

  His adjutant was at his side, immaculate and polished on a prancing mare. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Nevertheless, we believe it is still occupied by Chrism’s troops.”

  “What troops?” grumbled the old man. “I haven’t heard a shot all day.”

  “Yes, sir. Nevertheless, you see that man there. We believe him to be some kind of advance guard.”

  “You’re an idiot,” grumbled Aspe. “So is he. What is he doing there? He must be burning up.”

  “Yes, sir. Why don’t you take a look?” The adjutant held out a pair of field glasses, and Aspe reached for them wearily. But as he stared through them down the burning street, his officers noticed that he sat up straighter. His spine stiffened, and some of the old harshness came back into his voice. “Who is that?” he asked.

  “He’s in range. Shall I ask a sharpshooter to bring him down?”

  “No.” Aspe adjusted the focus until the antinomial stood smiling at him in the glasses’ eye. And as he watched, the man reached into his shirt and pulled out a white handkerchief, and wiped his lips with it.

  “Go down and see what he wants,” said Aspe.

  “Yes, sir.” The adjutant spurred his horse over the cobblestones. At the mouth of the street, the way was blocked with flames. The horse shied, terrified, but he forced her head around and kept onward, the animal resisting him at every step. Behind him in the square, Aspe was staring at the antinomial through the field glasses, his vision suddenly obscured by the officer’s lurching back coming into focus halfway down the burning street. Aspe could see his silver epaulettes.

  He lowered the glasses, and hawked a gob of spit up from his throat, and leaned over to let it dribble on his boot. But he straightened up in time to see his brother jump, and seize the adjutant by his polished foot, and turn him out of the saddle so that he sprawled across the muddy stones. The horse pulled away, but the antinomial ran after her and vaulted up onto her back. And even though she kicked and reared, he kept his seat. He had lost his sunglasses, and Aspe could see his icy eyes.

  He calmed the horse, though through the field glasses Aspe could see she still trembled, and when a roof caved in and filled the air with sparks, she started desperately. The antinomial reached down to stroke her neck, and through the glasses Aspe could see his lips moving. He was singing to her. She lifted up her narrow beak, and he unstrapped her bridle and her cruel bit, and threw them down into the mud. Then from his belt he took his axe, and raising it in both hands above his head, he gave a shout that Aspe could hear even at that distance, and spurred the horse towards him up the flaming street, a bullet in the muzzle of a gun.

  Aspe handed his glasses to the soldier at his side, and as he did so he noticed for the first time that, to his right and to his left, sharpshooters had dismounted, assembling their rifles. For a moment he could feel the temptations of inertia and old age, and he wondered whether he should let the soldiers shoot his brother down. But then he saw the man burst towards him over the parade ground out of the street’s fiery throat, and above the roaring of the fire he could hear sweet music, the sweet song of battle, which he had never hoped to hear again. It touched his biter’s heart, and filled it with singing, and filled his body and made a whirlwind in his head, and swept away all slavish thoughts and considerations. He stood up in his stirrups, and his harsh voice echoed over the parade ground. He shouted to his soldiers: “Barbarian scum! Don’t touch him. Are you deaf? It is my brother.” And he rode out to greet him, his whip in his live hand, his steel hand tightened into a steel claw.

  Aspe’s horse was the largest in the known universe, and the cobblestones cracked under its hooves. And its rider, too, was gigantic; he raised his whip and cut the beast in its tenderest flank, making it scream with rage and flog the air with its vestigial wings. Together, horse and man towered over their attacker, but the antinomial never spo
ke a word to check his gallop, nor allowed any note of doubt to creep into his song. He shot like a projectile, a thing with no will or consciousness of its own, an instrument of some larger vengeance. In the middle of the square they came together in a smash of metal and a flurry of wingbeats, and as the axe descended and the mare rushed past, Aspe caught her beak in the coils of his whip. Standing in his stirrups, he wrenched her neck around, using her own impetus to splinter her beak and snap her neckbone. She lurched and stumbled, throwing wide the stroke of the axe. It fell not on Aspe but on his horse, imbedding at the juncture of its neck and shoulder, and touched the life of the great beast. There was no time for another stroke. As the antinomial tried to wrench his axe out of the horse’s neck, Aspe caught him in his claw, and held him and crushed him, the horses subsiding around them as if deflating in a gush of blood.

  Aspe stepped free and stood among the wreckage of the horses, still holding his brother by the face. And then he raised his head and shouted, and at first the circle of soldiers heard nothing but a furious roar. But again he shouted, screaming from his heart, using all the rage he knew, and this time his cry was so harsh and so articulate that even that circle of barbarians could see an image taking shape above him, high up in the air, indistinct at first. And then it burst out of the clouds as if out of a wave, a great sea monster made of music, and every modulation of the colonel’s voice gave it new color and new form. Fins and a tail it had, but also it seemed part lion and part bird, a mixture of distorted terrors. Aspe raised his steel fist. Shouting aloud, he shook it in the indignant face of day.

  The monster stretched its talons out over the city. And then it vanished, dashed to pieces on the wind, as the colonel’s singing died away. But Chrism Demiurge, standing on his balcony, still caught a glimpse of the illusion. He saw it as a blear of color in the sky. He touched his wristwatch as he left the balustrade, though he knew it wanted hours till sunset. Behind him in the marble courts, a musician stroked the hour.