Mindripper

by Baron Blackwell

  “Honestly,” Dumuzi began, tugging on an alabaster curl, “I was just about to suggest leaving. This probably isn’t the smartest allocation of our time, especially not with all that’s happening.”

  Myron pouted. “Don’t be silly, we’re already here. We have to go in.”

  “Look,” Dumuzi hissed, motioning at their leering audience.

  The nala smokers watched them, their eyes alight for the presence of repressed violence while behind them the building roiled and danced with the sound of untold hundreds—muted shouts that thumped the air like a disharmonious heart.

  “They don’t want our kind here,” Dumuzi continued. “They tolerated our visits in the past, but with the Scarlet Apron still uncaught. . . . Surely you’ve heard the rumors? They think the killer a nobleman.”

  A distant rumble clanked the darkling sky, a herald of a storm yet to come.

  “Perhaps, Dumuzi is right,” Ilima said, frowning.

  “No,” Enk spat. Then he was striding toward the Pit, a hand resting casually on the pommel of his sword. He would not flee this place—not for the mere possibility of spilled blood—he had already done enough running. Let these miscreants try his wrath if they dared.

  “Wait!” Dumuzi cried, but Enk did not slow, nor glance back.

  Ilima fell in beside Enk, matching him step for step, glowering at any stupid enough to meet his gaze. The drug-addled fools parted before them, wordlessly clearing a path toward the building’s entrance. A hazy mist of pluming blue.

  Enk coughed, halting on the Pit’s threshold. Gambling hubs barnacled the building’s depths, an array of stout tables clustered about large chalk boards, surrounded by yelling men trying to place bets.

  A whistle of laughter. A leering smirk on a girlish face.

  “That a boy, Enk,” Myron said, dashing ahead with Dumuzi in his wake. “That’s the spirit.”

  “I still think we’re making a mis—” Dumuzi began.

  “Oh, shut it, Dumuzi. You lost. Now come on.”

  Myron led them into the howling swaths of humanity, past men on stools, armed with cudgels, across flat tracts of polished stone, down into a gloomy stairwell at the building’s fringe. Their spiraling descent continued on and on, steeped in the unearthly roar of unglimpsed multitudes. A roar that built and built until it spluttered into a fading remnant.

  Enk gasped. The old ache returned, fumbled at his breast with the wild need to breathe deeper. He pushed through the pain, forced himself to match Ilima’s much quicker gait.

  The stairwell ended, depositing them onto the first viewing gallery, thrusting them amongst the chattering mobs that filled the stone platform and raised benches. The reek of men and sour wine tainted the stale air.

  With Ilima at the head, they pushed their way to the stone railing that ringed the first gallery. Enk slumped against it, gasping. A second viewing gallery hung below the first, just above the fighting area—a circular expanse covered in glittering sand. Gold lamps dangled from the vaulted ceiling, illuminating the boys raking the splotches of scarlet from the sand.

  “It’s a lot more crowded than last time,” Dumuzi shouted.

  “What do you expect? Gagan, the Black Lion is fighting tonight!” Myron replied.

  As the pang retreated from Enk’s chest, he surveyed the spectators across from him. They were a grim bunch, pious for the glamor of previous violence, fierce in the anticipation of more, clothes stained by the menial toil that was their lot. The only exception to this sat upon a throne-like chair on the second gallery, flanked by a pair of merciless eyed thugs, a short man clad in garments as fine as any nobleman’s. A purple tattoo scrolled his bald head with strange spirals that pulsed and flickered like the flames of a hellish fire.

  “Who’s that?” Enk asked, nodding at the man.

  “That’s Suni Maalouf, he runs this place,” Dumuzi said.

  Ilima leaned closer. “I’ve heard of him, he’s supposed to be some sort of crime lord with friends in high places. My father’s been trying to arrest him for years now, but—”

  “I don’t care about all that,” Enk said. “Where did he get such an odd tattoo? I’ve never seen anything like it. It . . . makes my skin crawl.”

  “What tattoo?” Ilima asked, frowning.

  “Don’t you see—”

  “Shh,” Myron hissed as a hush fell over the gathering. “It’s about to begin.”

  Enk glanced down in time to see a bare-chested Clansman stroll out onto the sands, his dark skin and bald head smeared with glossy oils. A swell of boos marked his arrival, but the Clansman raised his dagger, as if the throngs were serenading him in cheers instead.

  “The fighters are from the Ancient East?” Enk asked.

  Dumuzi laughed. Myron said, “They all are! Who but those savages would contest wills on the sands?” His voice was all highborn contempt, trilled by a hint of secret longing.

  Booted feet stomped the floors of the viewing galleries in tandem. Dust plumed upward. Voices rose as one, shouted, “Gagan! Gagan!”

  A warrior appeared directly below Enk, a red cape flapping from his dark shoulders. He lifted large arms into the air, revealing skin inked with the same hellish tattoos that marked Suni’s skull, if of a more elaborate design. The crowd’s adoration surged to its pinnacle: “The Black Lion! The Black Lion!” The underground chamber trembled.

  Enk shuddered, panted, suddenly short of breath once again. He could not look away from the strange pattern of periwinkle twinkling across Gagan’s arms and shoulders. And in a breathless instant, he became yoked to some dark entity, wed to upending insanity locked within folded slots in space and human flesh.

  An upwelling of sensations, too quick and too capricious to be fully grasped. An impression of emptiness slashed by streaks of crimson. Hunger without bottom—an endless pit dominated by the incessant need to be filled. Lust, a burning stream of it, thickening with every world throbbing beat. A buzzing quiver, then. . . .

  The Black Lion jerked to a stop across from his snarling opponent, wheeled to face the second gallery, glared up at Enk with carnivorous eyes.

  Terror hammered Enk’s breast.

  A glimpse of sudden motion.

  Cries of joy and horror rifled the air, then a billowing gust of sand rose to engulf Gagan. Enk stumbled back from the railing, watched the Black Lion whirl amid a sea of shimmering granules as his opponent reached for him with a jagged blade.

  Enk swayed on his feet, felt a fingertip press into his spine. He spun, saw excited faces clamoring for blood, heard whispers made by no mouth—the dark mutterings of hundreds of rioting minds. His skull ached, hammered by ethereal nails.

  He retreated, heart pounding, warred against the tide of bodies pressing forward. Every touch of flesh on flesh added to the mental flogging, increased the volume of the external thoughts. . . .

  The chamber swam in his vision, but he kept running.

  Chapter Eight

  Leave-taking

  A gasp from spasming lungs.

  Head and chest roiling, Enk bumbled out of the Pit, lurched past the line of nala smokers. An image of the Black Lion’s rioting eyes—smoky, gray orbs—flashed before him, dissipated into a curtain of blue vapor. The reek of charred cinnamon. The faint echo of thunder. Dark, broiling clouds clashing above, glimpsed through squinted eyes.

  He collapsed onto his knees, weak for air’s absence.

  His chest rattled, wheezed for reed-thin pathways.

  The slap of running feet. A cry from a panicked friend, drawing nearer, “Enk!” The sky rumbled louder, as if in mock horror, and suddenly it was all too much. He needed to be free of all these earthly tethers, and Ilima’s concern seemed another chain holding him captive.

  I’m not here.

  A thought entwined with a hint of luminous omnipotence.

  Ilima, Myron, and Dumuzi exploded out of the building, streamed around Enk’s prone form, alabaster and scarlet wigs swaying along with swiveling heads, searching for one that
could no longer be seen.

  I’m fine. Go back inside and enjoy your night.

  Another mental command, this one expelling worry as well as horror.

  Smiling, Ilima ushered Dumuzi and Myron back inside, joy brightening what dismay had once darkened. . . .

  The young scion jerked upright on a rearing realization, clutched his face for shame. He had promised Ilima he would never use his power on him again, had given his word. He reeled for regret, staggered for treachery’s sting.

  Betrayer!

  The sky spat droplets that turned into hissing rain.

  No!

  He fled the site of his crime, raced across the very anus of the city, panting and gasping throughout. There was no wind or space to fully comprehend all of what had happened, breathing was his only capability.

  Lightning guttered the night, pricked bright as twisting streams across stygian heights, bathed the incommodious streets of the Shade in knifing white.

  He paused with his palm against a looming tenement, scrapped rainwater from his face, and peered up at the eldritch sheen of the Cobalt Gate—golden against the brackish storm.

  Alone, he slumped dejected, a spasming shadow beneath sniveling lamentations. His fingers slipped inside his coat, searched for Inanna’s letter, came away empty. His mouth rounded about a soundless shriek, a throat choking howl.

  What? No. No—!

  “Thou art overwrought,” a deep voice grated.

  Enk spun, fumbling for his sword.

  A giant figure stood at the center of the street, unseen gaze locked on the distant edifice of ancient magic. The stranger was draped in a cerulean cloak, with the pommel of a massive sword protruding over his left shoulder. Faint star patterns marked the rim of the hood that obscured his countenance.

  “Who are you?” Enk asked, feeling threatened but not understanding why. Then he realized it was the stranger’s size, twice as large as any male with the Senmonth bloodline.

  The figure shifted. An inhuman face, glabrous in the way of polished obsidian. Eyes as vivid green as any sapphire. Skin hewn from a starless void. A wicked talon pawed at Enk’s insides, a world upturning recognition.

  The sound of rain like boiling sleet.

  “An A-Ahriman, you’re an Ahriman,” Enk stammered in shock. But how? Surely someone would notice if this creature tried to enter the Empire through the Great Gates. Wait. Something did not match the description he had been given of the Ahrimen—the eyes, so impossibly green, when they should be pools of silver.

  “No, Godling,” the stranger said, then returned his eerie gaze to the Cobalt Gate. “Those you name such belong not to my tribe. Mine is a tribe of but two, I and another who lies imprisoned. My bride. The fire of my erstwhile hearth.”

  “I don’t . . . understand.”

  “I am Marduk, the one who watches, the one who records.”

  “Records? Records what? Does this have something to do with the power I was given? It does, doesn’t it? What’s happening to me?”

  “Prepare, Godling. . . .” Marduk fixed him with a watery-eyed stare, a look that pinned Enk to the tenement wall with the dread of approaching doom. “Yours is the hand that inks damnation into the very earth.”

  The air distorted with the creature’s last word, stretched thin by descending lightning and slicing rain. Enk teetered, raised an arm to his face. Earth and sky roiled and quaked.

  He blinked stinging eyes, gulped at the empty street.

  ■■■

  Enk sat at the back of a commandeered carriage, his head throbbing, thinking, sorting through the night’s many crises. Hold—he desperately wanted a hold on the rebus that had shrouded his world. Always before he had had some purchase on the rush of events, no matter how they had outstripped him, but now he felt truly over-matched. Ahrimen who were not Ahrimen? Tattoos that flickered like hellish flames? Minds that submitted to the will of an otherworldly light?

  What does it all mean?

  Nothing good, this was the only conclusion he could draw. Yet as he sat there wet and drowsy, he found it hard to care. Everything had already been taken from him: his father, the love of his life. What else could fate afflict upon him that he had not already suffered?

  He slumped deeper into his seat, listening to the bloom of thunder and the trickle of rain. Enclosed within the carriage’s interior, the sounds of the storm had become something lazy and mundane. His eyelids fluttered, pressed upon by exhaustion.

  The vehicle lurched as it rolled to an abrupt stop. Enk peered past his home’s open gates, pawing sleep from his eyes. Thunderbolts slivered the black expanse above it, illumined what darkness and rain had concealed. Two carriages parked beside the mansion’s doors.

  Visitors. Mother had visitors.

  Fighting back a groan, he stepped out into the rain. The driver glanced back, hooded eyes passing over the young scion, as if he was not there.

  Pinpricks stabbed into Enk’s brain. He shook it off and began the long trek to his doors, giving only perfunctory attention to everything but his next step. Exhales became plunging blades, agony animated by the kiss of torrential rains.

  Near collapse, he paused under his favorite tree, back resting against his and Merka’s nomen—two names encircled by the outline of a faded heart. Gray shapes tended to the horses tethered to the carriages beside the door. Shapes draped in large raincloaks.

  A laceration of ivory light across a seething sky. Gleaming, brass buttons clasped within blue cloth, glimpsed through an open cloak. An organ hammering in the cavity of a son’s chest.

  Peacebringers. The shapes belonged to Peacebringers, Enk realized with a sudden choke. Then came the question of why, but he knew only one reason that would bring them here at such an hour. Death. Mayhem. Rape and murder.

  At long last it had happened, at long last one of Mother’s quondam lovers had returned to the source to exact a toll equal in portion to the torments inflicted. He had dreamed about this moment, had fantasized about it while laying sick beneath sweat-slicked sheets.

  He took a lumbering step forward, then another and another. . . .

  The wind lashed flesh and rain-soaked clothes like whips.

  A paroxysm of coughing, of snot-filled wheezing.

  Free. At long last he was free. No longer would he suffer her presence, no longer would . . . he. . . .

  “Momma!” a cry of desperation rendered small and hushed by the lack of air.

  Somehow he ran faster. Horses neighed with his passing. Peacebringers looked, but saw nothing. The front door swung open.

  The young scion smashed into a squat Peacebringer straddling his home’s threshold, toppled the unsuspecting fellow, slipped on the wet stone, skidded chest first across the floor. His lungs ran hot for anguish. His head swam for the pinch of lurching distortions.

  He pushed himself onto his hands and knees, ignoring the groans coming from behind him, slowly regained his feet. He staggered onward, using the wall for support.

  The warble of distant thunder. In his mind’s eye Enk could envision Mother as he would find her, laying motionless, arms and legs askew, while a murky scarlet gushed from her slashed throat to stain the upturned hem of her white nightgown.

  “Momma!”

  Fresh dread washed over him. There it was again that unnerving cry. From whence had it come? Surely not from his mouth? Had he not suffered too much at her hands to lament her passing?

  He ran harder, pushed the questions aside, collapsed into the dining room, gulping little wisps of air. And there she was, Mother, teary-eyed but unscathed, standing opposite Ilima’s father—Lord-Inspector Sargon Turay. They blinked at the ricocheting door, unable to see what lay sprawled before them.

  “I’m here,” words imbued with secret power.

  Darkness swirled, waves of inky pitch devouring light. Eyes closing, the young scion slumped, energy spent, jagged tusks digging into the base of his skull. A sense of drifting. . . .

  “Enk. . . !”

  Th
e muted clang of far-flung thunderbolts.

  “Breathe,” a masculine voice spoke from beneath sheets of black.

  A world in motion.

  Pain like the kiss of a surgeon’s knife.

  Enk jerked open his eyes, found himself sprawled on his bed, staring up at Sargon’s concerned expression. Hints of gray frosted the Lord-Inspector’s elegantly trimmed goatee, and globs of ebony shifted about the surface of his black cloak like pools of ink over an ocean of dark oil. Mother occupied the position at the foot of the bed, toying with a yellow ribbon that hung from the front of her gown. Light winkled across the rose gold wings of her headdress.

  An easing of knotted tensions.

  Mother was safe. Yet why this should please him so, he did not know.

  A ragged exhale

  Sargon patted Enk’s arm. “That’s it . . . just like that.”

  “Tell him,” Mother whispered.

  “Hold your tongue, Phebe,” the Lord-Inspector hissed, his countenance darkening. “Now is not the time for this.”

  A flash of crackling lightning.

  Mother released the yellow ribbon and smiled a sad smile. “Merka is dead. The Scarlet Apron butchered her like he has so many others.” The roar of thunder waxed louder.

  No!

  Something seized and wrenched Enk’s insides; something like the taloned hands’ of fate, as if everything up to now had been just a nasty appetizer. . . .

  Show me!

  He clasped Sargon’s arm, released watery brilliance directly into human flesh, inhaled air as ropes of noxious fumes, weathered an oceanic flood of burning sensations.

  Images became unmoored from the shore of the Lord-Inspector’s mind, danced like flaming debris upon a whirlwind. Merka’s naked body suspended from meat hooks, her beatific face slack in perpetual horror. Intestines unspooled about her scarlet-stained feet. Hints of a finely mattered pubis, glimpsed through the gaps in between dangling gore. . . .

  Pain boiled Enk’s skull, and thoughts became as glowing embers before a mountain gust—dulled then faded.

  Merk—!

  Chapter Nine