Beneath Ceaseless Skies #62

by Dikeman, Kris

  We are the cold.

  Copyright © 2011 Kris Dikeman

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  Kris Dikeman lives and works in New York City. Her stories have appeared in Sybil’s Garage, All Hallows, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Strange Horizons, and Year’s Best Fantasy 9. She is currently at work on a novel about life, love, and zombie hordes in Manhattan. You can read more of her work at her website: www.krisdikeman.com.

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  THE ADVENTURES OF ERNST, WHO BEGAN A MAN, BECAME A CYCLOPS, AND FINISHED A HERO

  by Jesse Bullington

  In the castles and caves of the FarForest there exist strange guardians, which some call creature and others construct, and these sentinels stand vigil over the lost treasures of the last age before the Cataclysm.

  It is a matter of much conjecture as to what these treasures are, as is the nature of the Cataclysm itself, but that is what the Holbrookian priests called it before they hanged themselves to a man. When a band of intrepid heroes broke into the church-keep, curious as to why the order had stopped delivering their sour marsh-wine to the nearby villages, they found the cloister filled with hundreds of brothers swaying like overripe monkberries and fled without further investigation.

  Yet even in that benighted age there were brave souls who thought the undertaking of quests little more dangerous than the salt mines or other such honest employment, and as it was widely believed that the brotherhood kept not only a chronicle of what came before the Cataclysm but also an inventory of the priceless artifacts of the Far Forest, the so-called Forbidden Abbey became a popular destination for local adventurers. However, when they crept over the high walls and violated the ancient building’s low windows, they always came to the black vestry where the priests still swayed from the rafters. Those who did not flee back through the belladonna-choked courtyard would advance slowly, their boots squelching in the layer of nightsoil the mass hanging had brought forth, and push themselves between the dangling corpses like a city butcher going to the back of a kine-filled coldroom.

  Perhaps a dozen valiant souls in as many long years had gotten that far. Ernst himself had watched his sister Corrine enter, waiting in the doorway with a torch and a quaking quiver rebounding up and down his bowels, and then came a scream from somewhere within the upside-down orchard of cassock-trees. Ernst, following the example his cousins had recently set, fled wailing into the swamp.

  His sister never returned, and while their mother blithely supposed that her daughter had simply found some sort of booty that enabled her to put a large distance between herself and her family, Ernst had no such optimism, and so traded his virginity and his right eye to the local chapter of the Battle Conservatory in exchange for an education.

  Upon his graduation some years later, when the proud headmaster singled him out for praise Ernst was not as flattered as he might have been, having only recently learned that his was the only branch with such strict enrollment prerequisites, and if he had but trekked across the fens to the next chapter over he would have been spared both the painful removal of his eye and his uncomfortable deflowering at the giggle-trembling hands of the headmaster who, Ernst should have noticed from the beginning, had not only both of his own eyes but also a third growing from the end of his tongue. No matter—Ernst could fight as well as any champion lacking depth perception, and his mother was proud; the local medium assured him of this when he went to the official necromancy hut at the graveyard upon discovering that she had died sometime before while he was learning swordplay and how to properly navigate dimly lit staircases.

  “Mother,” he told her, “I’m going now, but I’ll be back to visit whenever I’ve avenged Corrine and won honor for our family.”

  “And how will you do that?” his mother asked, via the hunchbacked medium who stood with Ernst beside the gravestone that inexplicably bore the rosy cameo image of a lightly mustachioed man instead of a heavily bearded woman.

  “By discovering the secrets of the Forbidden Abbey, and the treasures of the FarForest. Remember?”

  “The Forbidden Abbey?” In his excitement the medium had dropped the high voice he had been using. “And the FarForest, you say? Come along, boy, there isn’t a moment to waste!”

  Back in the necromancy hut, the medium rummaged through a long, rectangular box and pulled out a handful of charms, their chains all bunched together. Giving them to Ernst to sort out, he went back to digging, occasionally setting this bejeweled sword or that scalloped helm on the table, which was another one of the long boxes turned on its side. At last a significant pile of loot was set out, the armor and weapons glittering in the glow of the bottled marshlights that dangled from the ceiling like hanged priests.

  “Well, my boy,” said the medium, rubbing his hands together. “What do you say? Think this will help with your quest?”

  Ernst licked his lips, as he owned only the graduation uniform on his back and a plain but proven sword he had won in a wager years before—everything else, from his boots to his breastplate, he had lost in subsequent wagers. Ernst no longer bet.

  “What do you want for it?” he asked. “I have no money.”

  “How were you going to pay me for channeling your mother then, you—” The medium stopped, his scowl vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. “No matter, no matter. Can’t do enough for you cadets, do so love the Conservatory, yes yes.”

  Ernst was relieved to hear it, as the majority of the non-Conservatory sanctioned activities the students engaged in revolved around raiding the graveyard and throwing empty winejugs at the necromancy hut. “If you don’t expect payment, then—”

  “If you insist, if you insist,” the medium said, smiling too widely for comfort. “Let’s say that sword of yours?”

  Glancing at a gem-studded broadsword buried in the pile of treasure, Ernst said, “Done,” and began unbuckling his old blade.

  “And,” the medium said, making Ernst pause, “hmmm, I don’t know, the sword...and a favor. Yes, you can have all this so long as you agree to carry something for me.”

  “Carry something? What?”

  “It’s nothing, really, you can barely even see it most of the time, and it weighs next to nothing, and doesn’t really smell, usually....”

  “What is it?”

  The medium shook his head sadly and, lifting the lid to his box, made to start putting the gear away, his hump pointing accusatorily at Ernst. “If we can’t trust each other this far, my boy, then what hope have I for this cursed world? No no, all my magics and charms rely on love and faith and trust, and if you cannot give me a little in return than I think I have erred. I thought you might be the one to succeed where all others have failed, but if—”

  “Wait, wait,” Ernst protested, “forgive me, sir, but my time at the Conservatory has perhaps blunted my manners even as it has sharpened my wits. I will take whatever you like wherever you like—you have my word.”

  The medium turned back to Ernst, tears in his rheumy eyes. “Oh, thank you, gallant boy, thank you!”

  “It’s nothing,” Ernst said, but he was looking at the gold and silver helmet emblazoned with sunset-hued opals, the greaves that sparkled like ice-diamonds, the sword and shield and dagger and the pendants, oh the many god-arrayed pendants! He quickly donned the armor, the medium helping him into the pieces that were a bit tight. Finally Ernst stood ready and, offering the medium a generous smile, said, “Alright then, sir, what shall I carry for you?”

  At this the medium began unbuttoning the front of his long brown robe. Ernst sighed. He should have supposed that carry this thing would be some sort of euphemism, and he wondered why the medium had let him get dressed before telling him, and then he supposed that maybe his being dressed in armor was part of the appeal for—

  “Ahhh!” The robe had dropped, the medium naked underneath it. He was not a hunchback. “What in Saint Rouse’s name is that?!”

  It was a spider, obvio
usly, but one of such prodigious size that Ernst could be excused for not recognizing it at first. Its white, wooly legs were wrapped around the medium’s chest and stomach, its terrible face peering over his shoulder, its long fine-haired fangs hanging from its bristly mouth and resting gently on a pillow of chest hair. Its eight eyes were distinctly human, and they were all trained on Ernst. There was a long, strange moment of silence in the hut, and then it dropped lightly off the medium’s back and scuttled toward Ernst.

  Ernst fumbled with the new sword at his side, but it had some ivory-inlaid clasp keeping it in place and he screamed in terror, at which point the medium muttered something and all the lights went out. Ernst freed the sword and swatted in the dark with it, backing against a wall, which was when he felt the itchy spider hairs rub against his throat. He froze, and the lights came back on.

  “Getitoffgetitoffgetitoffgetitoff,” Ernst whispered desperately, closing his eyes from more than the sudden brightness of the hut. The medium was correct that it did not weigh very much, and truly the smell was more dusty than anything else, and so long as kept his eyes shut he couldn’t see it at all, but these were small comforts as he heard the scraping of wiry limbs tightening around his armor.

  “Come, come, Ernst,” the spider murmured in his ear, some twig-like mandible or comparable mouth-appendage shifting the helmet to the side to be better heard. Its breath was cool and foul as the stink-breeze escaping a bowel-eel’s punctured air bladder. “I think we’ll be fast friends, hmmm?”

  When Ernst later returned to consciousness, unaware until then that he had fainted, he found the spider still on his back. It muttered unintelligibly to itself or the medium; he could not be sure which. Ernst rose slowly, glaring at the medium, and suddenly snatched up his sword, spinning the pommel around in his hand to stab over his shoulder, into the spider’s mouth.

  It was quicker, its fangs punching through Ernst’s breastplate and the skin beneath with equal ease. Ernst fell face-first, simultaneously paralyzed and agonized by the cold fire of the venom injected into his chest—it felt like thousands of ants made of ice squirmed through his blood, biting flesh and excreting acid as they traveled from his torso down through his limbs. Ernst wept.

  “That was just a drop, Ernst,” the spider informed him, and much as Ernst wanted to close his eyes from the horror at his neck, even his eyelids were frozen. “If you ever try that sort of disobedience again I’ll make it much worse, and neither of us wants that, do we?”

  Ernst whimpered. Across the hut, the medium chuckled.

  “Excellent,” said the spider. “Fast friends, as I said. My name is Ardanoi, and I’ll be your companion—I’ve been meaning to visit the Forbidden Abbey and the Far Forest for some time myself, so we’ll just go together if that’s alright with you. Is it?”

  Ernst’s tongue was still numb but beginning to wake up. “Uh.”

  “Excellent,” said Ardanoi, rubbing his finger-long feelers against Ernst’s cheek. The sensation was akin to nettles swatting his face. “Now get up.”

  Ernst found that while he still felt terrible his body again obeyed him, but he dallied just long enough to whisper to the spider, “What about the medium?”

  “Old Laidlaw? What about him?”

  “Honor dictates that I avenge myself,” said Ernst, focusing on that aspect of his predicament and not the giant nightmarish spider he was talking to. “Will you stop me from my satisfaction?”

  “Ernst,” the spider purred like a cat, “I would never stop you from achieving satisfaction, but in my experience such a thing is rarely a confederate of honor.”

  That was good enough for Ernst, and picking himself off the floor, he pointed his finger at the medium. “Laidlaw!”

  “Yes?” said Laidlaw, buttoning his robe back up.

  “You’ll get my honor for tricking me,” Ernst blurted out, his tongue chronically thwarting his intentions to voice the complex proclamations and retorts he routinely concocted in tense situations. “Ass!”

  Ernst had his new broadsword in his right hand and a great silver shield in his left, and he charged Laidlaw—who snatched Ernst’s old sword off the table and proceeded to give him the worst beating of his life. The shield fell in two as if made of parchment, and when Ernst parried his former sword his new one blasted apart, the shiny pieces of glass set in the wooden handle turning to dust from the impact and flying into his only eye.

  A kick to the groin brought Ernst to his knees, the armor’s codpiece having folded inward from the impact, and Laidlaw raised the sword to end his life, but then Ardanoi extended two of his willowy white legs over Ernst’s shoulder and hissed at the medium, arresting the deathblow. Laidlaw put the sword away and helped Ernst to his shaky feet, ushering him out the door of the hut and into the rain.

  “Don’t you ever come back, now, or I’ll kill you,” Laidlaw gently told Ernst, giving him a squeeze on the non-spider dominated shoulder. “Kill you real bad.”

  Ernst wiped the glass powder from his eye and, returning Laidlaw’s stare, wondered how he had failed to notice before that he also was cyclopean. Then Laidlaw slammed the door of the hut, and Ernst glumly limped through the graveyard, picking up the pace when he noticed a ghoul watching him from a barrow. He knew about ghouls, his sister Corrine having terrified him into silence by telling him all about them when he would not stop crying while receiving the crescent moon tattoo that all in Ernst’s family received on their tenth birthday, with the aid of a ringcoon penis-bone quill and a pot of urn-ash ink. At the edge of the cemetery a trail curved away from the foothills and down into the fens, where the Forbidden Abbey waited like an enterprising cannibal lurking at the bottom of an outhouse.

  Partway across the marsh Ernst had to stop and strip off his armor—it was melting in the rain. Ardanoi explained he had spun the equipment from his webbing, which was composed of excreted sugar, a revelation that only expedited Ernst’s removal of it from his person. Ardanoi climbed down to facilitate this stripping, and Ernst wondered if he could make a run for it before the thing crawled back onto him, but then Ardanoi suddenly leaped thirty paces away, landing on a marshsow that wallowed in the mire. He drained the thrashing creature the way Ernst’s headmaster had guzzled wineskins, and with a similar slurping sound. He began to glow a faint white as he fed, and then he skittered back over the bog slime to Ernst, his body bloated, his gait swaying.

  “I saved you the bones,” said Ardanoi, clambering back onto Ernst with far less grace than before. “Well, go on. Got to keep your strength up.”

  It took Ernst the better part of an hour to haul the dead pig back through the warm, stinking mud, and by the time he regained the trail the ghoul from the graveyard was waiting for him. She was quite comely, if one were inclined toward the recently deceased, with clumps of ratty greenish hair hanging in front of her gaunt shark-mawed face and her bones shining through her grey translucent skin. Ernst’s hand went to where his sword should have hung, but all he found was a furry spider leg.

  “Hello,” Ernst began nervously. “I don’t mean you any harm.”

  The ghoul barked with laughter, and it seemed to Ernst that Ardanoi was chortling as well. Before he could say any more, Ardanoi addressed the ghoul, “Madam, as you can plainly see, this boy is mine, and I shan’t part with him. If you move to take any liberties I will be forced to inject him with a quart or two of my juice, which will liquefy his insides in short order and render him poisonous to you besides.”

  “And ruin him for yourself in the process?” Her voice sounded like it was echoing out of a deep, dry well. “I don’t think so—and if you did, then we would have to fight, you and I, and I’ve eaten enough spiders in my day to know your tricks.”

  Horrified as Ernst was, a plan began to congeal like old fat in his skull—they both wanted him, so if he could engineer a way for them to fight each other he might slip away and—

  “Capital,” said Ardanoi, recapturing Ernst’s attention. “We’ll share, then. But how
?”

  “I’ll take his arms,” said the ghoul. “You can spit up your webs onto the stumps so he doesn’t bleed to death, and he’ll still have his legs to move around with.”

  Ernst would have protested if he had not been struck dumb with fright.

  “No, no,” said Ardanoi thoughtfully. “He needs to defend himself if something worse than we appears, and it’s a long road to the FarForest. But what if you join us on the road? As we travel, neither you nor I shall lay claim to young Ernst, and when we part paths I will surrender him to you entirely.”

  “Hmmm.” The ghoul’s tongue was red as a beet and long and fat as a parsnip as it slipped over her purple lips. “He’s not so pink, and rather delightfully underfed. What say you to my using him for a, shall we say, mount, on such occasions that you are not doing using him in the more traditional sense of that word?”

  “Madam, I caution you that I am given to a rather jealous disposition,” said Ardanoi. “But provided you allow me to assume a similar position upon your own noble back whilst you engage yourself with my steed, to vouchsafe against any culinary indiscretions on your part due to overexcitement, then we may have a bargain.”

  “Hmmm,” said the ghoul. “I think I shall elect to wait until there is a tree or some such where you can supervise from above without actually touching me. For now, all this talk is making me hungry—the cemetery keeper stopped burying the dead a long time ago, the miser, though I can’t imagine what he does with them in his hut.”

  “Oh, I can,” said Ardanoi with another chuckle.

  “Now wait just a tic!” Ernst finally managed. “I’m not, not some beast of burden, I’m a man! A man!”

  “Or close enough,” said the ghoul, squelching closer.