by James Dorr
And others gathered as well as that night progressed, Barak among them, who understood also. Who shouted to others to make the tent larger that sheltered the lovers, knowing that, if need be, Angar would continue what he did throughout the next day.
But that he would need help.
And so she ordered, she cajoled, she persuaded the newcomers to bring more friends, to donate chadors and hoods and eating cloths to make a shelter that, by the time day came, gave ample protection to her and Centar and others who helped as well. Some of them now wielding rakes and ratpicks to pluck off the vermin that came with morning, others with oils and perfumes to give Angar to anoint their bodies with, his and dead Tashik’s, to keep them both supple. When, during the day, Angar sometimes took brief rests—as any lovers might pause to take breath, but surreptitiously, rubbing the oils in to keep her flesh moist and smooth, turning her over at times to brush off the grubs gathering now in the cleft of her buttocks, in the small of her back. Turning himself, too, to rest his cramped muscles, continuing loving her but she now on the top, arching and bobbing to his thrusts as he mouthed her nipples, tonguing the globes they tipped as day became new night.
Yet the ghouls watched on, crouching within their caves within the crumbled ruins as even more of Angar’s friends gathered. But even more ghouls, too. And other people, some of them wealthy as rumors spread to their parts of the city, now gathered also. Because the rich, as well, knew something of love’s strength, and so, that second night—and more nights after—what once was a tent having since accreted new materials, rubbish and cast-off blocks, sticks and timbers, becoming itself a house just as the homeless wore in lieu of garments, but larger, more permanent, Barak arranged a cloth screen at its entrance, and lanterns behind it. Thus those who gathered now could see projected, in form of a shadow-play, Angar’s and Tashik’s love within the chamber. Angar again on top. And outside, also, Barak set baskets so that the wealthy—especially the wealthy—might offer donations.
Thus, as nights went on, a full week by now or more, as larger crowds gathered—even ghouls joining now, rubbing elbows with New City people as if there were never an ill will between them because even death-eaters had a respect for love—Barak, understanding full well what would come of this lovemaking, crept one more time inside.
There she saw: Still the form of Angar, but he and Tashik now joined completely, flesh melted in flesh as, despite Angar’s love, decay, as it must, had claimed her body. Spreading itself through flesh once lush and pliable to Angar’s own on top, rotting his flesh as well. Even then spreading as, still, he made love to hers.
“Angar?” Barak whispered.
“I still live,” he answered. “But I will soon join her—my soul to Tashik’s. As well as my body.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “But will her soul love you?”
• • •
And that was the question that some still ask, who bore witness to Angar’s love for Tashik: Was his love a true love?
And, just as important, did she, in her soul, in due time respond to it?
It was in the third week, after yet one more day of the sun’s searing heat, one more attending to what was within to drive back the rats and the sharp-clawed grave lizards, that motion finally ceased. By then both corpses were so far liquefied that not even the ghouls had reason left to disturb them, but, rather, scuttled back over the stream to their natural haunts, to await new corpses. For new corpses would come, if not here to the south, then at least to the Tombs, traveling the causeway west on the corpse trains, torch-lit and guarded. Wealthy and poor alike.
While here a new tomb rose out of the piled debris that at first was a tent, now, with the offerings from Barak’s baskets, become an accretion of cast-away marble—some from the Tombs itself!—of slate and granite, shale and sandstone. Such grave-goods as could be bought, if not real jewels, at least glass and trinkets. Flowers that may have been already wilted, but bought in profusion to lay on the lovers, Angar’s flesh still topping Tashik’s beneath it.
And so this tomb was sealed, a tomb for paupers, but more than that also: A monument to love. For, to the first question, was Angar’s love true, who else but a lover would sacrifice so much for so small a part of her? For her flesh only—alive or unliving. And as for the second, did she at last love him, this much at least is known. That Tashik’s corpse in some way responded, holding itself back from total corruption until the body of Angar, as well, was prepared to follow. The animus, that is, the most surface part of the soul that gives motion, that holds flesh together, awaited him that long.
And, if through such love their bodies were so conjoined, is it not likely that, within their true depths, both souls must have loved too?
THE FEMALE DEAD
The power of love is myriad strange; and takes many bizarre paths.
• • •
HE WAS AN EMBALMER.
His name is unknown, or, more likely, forgotten—some say, in the Tombs, that such forgetting has been deliberate—but this much is known. That her name was Chandra.
It is known too that she died young and beautiful, and with a wealth and an independence beyond that of even many men within the glimmering New City’s confines across the great river to east of the Tombs, and for this was hated, both there and elsewhere. But this he did not know yet.
Rather, all that he knew that first night were the sounds of commotion on the old North Causeway, even then in disuse as the New City had spread to southward, encroaching more and more on the ghoul-haunted ruins of the Old City, until a century, two centuries or more past the Main Bridge had been built for bringing the dead across.
Then even he could see, high in his tower above the Tombs’ walls overlooking the river, its sides arched open for gathering such breezes as might cool his charges during the searing days when even he retreated earthward into the tomb-tunnels under the marbled ground, sharing such quarters with those that lay there by right, all to escape the sun’s actinic poisons—even he could see, dazzled as he might be by the New City’s lights reflecting upward against the dark water, the starting parade of torches to the north. Even he could hear as it drew closer the murmuring of troops who guarded the corpse train, the grunting of others who pulled the huge tumbrel, one tumbrel only and surely for that reason that of some great person recently deceased, nevertheless brought across from the north as if to enter the Tombs with some secrecy, though why he knew not yet. He was not needed—he was an embalmer—yet, still young and able notwithstanding the many years’ learning required for his, the most skilled of all tomb-trades, he rushed down the winding stone steps from his eyrie to join the gate-guards of his own volition. For he had seen something else.
He took the cry with him: “Ghouls!” he shouted. “Ghouls at the North Gate! I have seen the pinpricks of their blue corpse-lights, low, at the wall’s base, huddled in hiding where others cannot see.” Even as he spoke, all now heard the whistling cries as the ghouls rose up, streaming in vast numbers onto the causeway, attacking the tumbrel and those who conducted it.
He grasped his metal-ringed staff with the others at the Tombs’ entrance and helped push the ghouls back, clubbing frenziedly at the heads and limbs of the death-eaters, trapping them thus between the gate guardians and those of the corpse train. Grasping them bodily when, at the last, his own staff was shattered, heaving them over the causeway’s raised sides to the swirling, night-black river below. Until, finally, stillness was once more restored, disturbed only by the creaking, wooden wheels of the tumbrel, its New City corpse-train guards flanking on either side—almost an army still of bruised and wounded men for just one corpse cart!—the shriek of metal on stone as the gate was raised.
And, on the cart, one corpse.
He watched as it passed by. He asked the corpse-train master: “Who is this one you bring, secretly as it seems, or at least so you tried except the ghouls somehow found you out anyway? And why so many guards for just a single one, that you might even have foug
ht them off by yourselves had we not intervened? Is this deceased one of your politicians … ?”
The train master shook his head. “It is a female dead. That is all I know. As to whom, we have our instructions, given to us by some who may have loved it—the names of whom I do not know either—despite the wishes of those that govern us. Simply to bring it here with its tomb-offering. To see it buried in comfort—yet quietly. And with no marker.”
Yet quietly, indeed! The corpse, still in its winding cloth, had by then been taken down from the hard, wooden bed it had traveled on. Then came the baskets, removed from the corpse cart, the gifts for its burial. When they were opened, the straining wicker containers spilled contents of pearls and cut emeralds; of diamond-set jewelry and rare, northern flowers; of polished brass coins—the grave-gifts of a princess!
• • •
Thus it was that he, an embalmer, had the corpse taken to his high work-eyrie. But first, he would study it, for was it not an important part of the embalmer’s craft to know all one could know about that which one would preserve? Therefore he left it there, still in its winding cloth, submerged within a large vat of perfumed oil—that in itself the first step of embalming, and easily covered by even a hundredth-part of the death-offerings the corpse had brought with it, supplied by who knew whom? by those who once loved it—for its protection while he asked about it. He bribed the train guards, a few of them anyway, plying them with wine pressed from the berries that grew near the older of the graves in the tomb-yard’s lowest parts, while the train’s master still filled out his papers.
He learned little from this, at least on the surface: “Perhaps,” one said, “she has river blood in her. The ghouls hate river people—maybe it was for that that we were given no name to call her, lest the ghouls find out and take revenge on her corpse. Yet they did find out still … ”
“Perhaps,” he answered. He knew of the superstitious fear the ghouls held for the boat-gypsies, who plied the river even in daytime when others shrank indoors or under the ground, themselves protected in thick, dark chadors beneath their deck-awnings to ward off the sun’s fierce glare. Boat-people who ate the fish of the river, despite these fish feeding on–
He shuddered, thinking of just a few hours before, the North Causeway fight, ghoul-corpses splashing …
But this was no river-person, this female dead sunken in oil in his workplace, for boat-gypsies did not approach the Tombs by land. They did not cross bridges, but sailed beneath them to moor at the River Gate between the Causeways, the North and the Main ones connecting the Tombs to the bustling New City, to there be borne up the carved, granite stairs from the quay to the broad plaza within the tomb-walls near where his own tower rose, catching when it could the river’s moist breezes.
“Perhaps,” he said again, “but is there no other that this corpse might be? A woman of wealth, I would think, from the offerings. Or, one whose father … ?”
“Or one with no father … ” another guard began, but then fell silent.
“He means,” a companion said, “that one does, of course, hear rumors. But we’re working people—what would we know of the rich? Of some women, perhaps, who’re said to be so wealthy they do not even bother to seek husbands, even after their fathers have left them. Who do as they please—can such be imagined? Yet for their great beauty they may still have lovers, or, rather, those who might wish to be lovers, who, if they should die might see to their burials. But anonymously, of course, lest the failure of such loves be found out.”
“So, too, the burial,” another guard added, “to be anonymous as well, however sumptuous, lest other women … well, surely you understand. Lest there be too much honor to such a female dead and others should see in her an example … ”
He bought another round for them all. That he could understand—lest other women should claim to be their own mistresses too, especially in the New City where order ruled foremost. Where wealth and beauty were supremely honored, but wealth—and the power which wealth brought to itself—was best honored in men alone.
Whereas, in women ….
He nodded. So, too, such a woman might thus be hated, despite her great beauty—here, in the Tombs, one heard rumors as well. One heard of diseases that might strike rich people as well as the poor, yet also of poisons that might mimic illness. And of yet more betrayals, of whisperings, possibly, even to ghouls, for would not the ghouls hate such a one as well, they who depended on the New City and its rigid customs for their own sustenance—for the night-in, night-out passing of those poor whose fathers or lovers could not afford corpse-fare to send them to the Tombs? Or, if to send them, with only the slightest of guards to protect them?
“And yet,” he persisted, “this corpse, this female dead does have a name?” For he now had suspicions.
But then the train master had finished his business. Entering the wine-room he called the guards to him, the porters and the corpse-cart attendants. “Hurry!” he shouted. “You know the saying: ‘Time is money.’ There’s time enough still before the dawn to get back to New City and find a fresh cargo!”
Thus the embalmer went back to his charge with suspicions of who she was—of almost knowing. In the Tombs one did hear rumors as well. Of at least who she might be. But, in the embalmers’ art, time is not money. One must do things slowly.
And so, with dawn only a few hours away, he lifted the female dead still in its winding sheet, out of its vat in his tower-eyrie and laid it gently onto his work surface. It would take time, and time he might not have—looking without from his tower’s arches he saw the blue lights of ghouls to the west, and to the south also, both sides of the river, as if waiting, biding. Not daring yet, with the losses they’d taken, to attack this night, yet knowing surely, with their necromancy, by now where this corpse would be.
He shouted to the guardsmen below who patrolled the tomb-wall to be their most vigilant, to pass the word on to their compatriots who were the day-watchers, scuttling from shadow to shadow beneath the sun even after the scorch of its rising, chadored as boat-people, to be alert as well. Just in case the ghouls dared by day ….
Then, satisfied, he began to unwrap the corpse: First he must see to the body’s washing. He laid out his implements, working steadily, hurried yet carefully, until, face down, not daring to look at its form too closely, he had it naked.
And then turned it over–
He stopped with a gasp! His suspicions had been true: The corpse was Chandra.
He had never known her, of course, but had not her fame reached even to the Tombs? The Tombs and elsewhere. Her reputation? The fact of her beauty—in portraits and songs, in exquisite miniatures hawked even in the Tombs? Stories and legends? Yes, even in legends, like that of Gombar, the richest of all men that ever were, who, had he not finally found what he sought in the Tombs and died for that love, might have deemed her worthy?
Who, here, before him lay ….
And now he understood why she was hated, and not only for her wealth, not just by men but also by women who, often, were more cruel than even their consorts. But also the obvious: Why she was loved as well–
• • •
Because he loved her too!
• • •
Thus he hurried, though time was not money when art was in question—nor even, especially, when love was a part of it. Except, for the one who lay naked before him—this female dead who would be preyed on by the ghouls, for did not ghouls hate beauty most of all?—time had become a thing even more precious. Embalming took days, even weeks if done properly, and, if the ghouls came before it was finished ….
He shuddered. He would work by day as well as night—despite his need for sleep. Despite the day-sun’s heat. For it was her only hope, hope now for both of them, that if her corpse was to escape desecration—because the ghouls would try despite the Tombs’ massed guard, despite their losses—it must be because his work had been completed. Yet it must be done well too, because if even a trace of unembal
med flesh should remain to it, one drop of uncured blood …
And so he hurried, but could not work too fast. And, as he discovered, another thing slowed him.
He first took its jewelry off, cataloging it, marking on drawings where it must be replaced, for even a naked corpse deserved its jewelry, its anklets, its bracelets, its ear-studs and belly rings, necklaces—that was the first instance where he paused, drinking the beauty of the face above, the silkiness of the female dead’s hair, its weight as he lifted it. Shuddering once more he reached behind the throat, fumbling with golden clasps.
Trembling, his lips brushed red lips below them as, faltering, his hands traced the smooth of the corpse’s back, lifting its shoulders, then, arcing below, sought the clasp of the jeweled chains that circled its lush-curved hips.
The work progressed slowly as, indeed, it had to, but, finally completed, he next dipped soft sponges into a bowl of thrice-purified rainwater, leached of the soot and the poisons the sky disgorged, perfumed with flower-blooms, and, still on its back, he abluted the just-as-soft flesh of its death sweat, the rounds of its perfect breasts, scouring the shallow creases beneath them, the canyon that lay between, wrists brushing nipples as, downward, he cleansed the curve of its belly. The dimple that centered it. Then, beneath that, the gently-mounded vee, progressing downward to sponge between firm, white thighs, upward and outward, bathing the legs as well.
Turning the corpse then, his hands now caressed the swells of its buttocks as, upward once more, again upward and outward, the questing sponges roamed the depth between them, the folds where they kissed its thighs, then around, up, to the sharp inward curve of the back at its spine’s base, again out to touch hips, the in-curve above them, hands brushing off water that dribbled down shoulders, exposing the paleness of skin beneath fragrant hair as, once more lifting it—feeling its fineness of texture against his palms—he tied it up in a loose knot above the head, his lips brushing ears now, his tongue darting, suddenly, moistening the way for his sponges to follow.
