The Mammoth Book of Sorceror's Tales

by Mike Ashley

  “Mother!”

  She kissed both my hands very gently, and her lips, like the Sybil’s, were so cold they burned.

  “But you are a hero, my son, and you may take the next step, and the next. That is what is is to be brave, you know, merely to take the next step. I have always known that you were brave.”

  “Mother, I—”

  Then she sank down into the water. I clung to her. I tried to hold her up, but she sank like a thing of stone, and I lost my grip. At the very last I found myself crawling absurdly about on the cold surface of the river, sliding my hands from side to side like a blind child who has lost marbles on a smooth floor.

  I stood up, suddenly shivering, rubbing my arms with my hands.

  She was wrong, I told myself. I wasn’t a hero. I wasn’t brave. I merely had no choice. The Sybil had seen that much.

  Yet I never once thought of turning back. The road behind me was impassable, in more ways than one.

  I wanted to call on the Sybil again, to tell her I had once more lost my way. In the darkness, without any point of reference except the sensation in my feet to tell me which way was down, I couldn’t even tell if I was facing the way I was supposed to be going, or the way I had come.

  In the end, it did not matter. I don’t think direction is a physical thing in the belly of a god. Instead, it is a matter of degree.

  Things began to happen swiftly once more. Lights rose around me, like lanterns drifting up from the surface of the water, then above me like stars. The water itself rippled, frigid, oily waves washing over my feet.

  I started to run, afraid that whatever magic had held me up was leaving me, now that Mother had. Nothing, it seemed, could be more horrible than to be immersed in that river, there, in the belly of Surat-Kemad.

  I ran, and the points of light moved with me, turning as I turned, swirling about me like burning motes on the wind. There was a sound. I thought it was indeed the wind, but then I realized that it was breathing, spittle hissing through teeth, and the lights were eyes, not reflecting light as a dog’s will by a campfire, but actually glowing, like living coals.

  The darkness lessened and I saw that I had indeed emerged from a tunnel. Jagged, fissured cliffs loomed on either side of the river, towering to unknowable heights. Far above, the grey stars of the deadlands shone once more.

  And the evatim stood around me by the thousands, on the river, scrambling up the cliffs, some of them just standing at the water’s edge, staring. By the light of their eyes and by the pale stars, I could see that I had come at last to the place where the Great River ended and truly began, a vast lake where the white-bodied, crocodile-headed ones paced back and forth, ankle-deep in thick grey mist, their long jaws bobbing up and down.

  The evatim bore long hooks on poles, like boathooks, and as I watched one of them would occasionally pause, then reach down with his hook and draw up a human corpse, heave it onto his shoulder and depart, or just stand there, holding the dead in a lover’s embrace.

  I realized to my horror that I was standing on a vast sea of corpses. I looked down and I could make them out dimly beneath the water’s surface, inches below my feet: faces, arms, bobbing chests and backs and buttocks jostling slowly in the black water like numberless fish in a net. I jumped back in revulsion, but there was nowhere to jump to.

  I started to run again. Somehow, miraculously, the evatim seemed too busy with their tasks to notice me.

  For the first time my footfalls made a sound, a heavy splashing and sucking, as if I were running through mud.

  Truly this was the place I had read of in the Books of the Dead that Velachronos and I had copied, where the bodies and souls of the dead and the unborn are sorted out by the evatim, who are the thoughts and servants of the terrible god, and each person is judged, and carried to his rightful place, or cast out, or devoured.

  I despaired then, for I knew that if Hamakina were here, I would surely never find her.

  Yet I took the next step, and the next, and the next, slowing to a fast walk. If that is what it is to be brave, then I was. I continued. The mist swirled around my shins.

  I seemed to be nearing the shallows. Reeds rose around me like bare iron rods. I passed one sunken funeral boat, then another, then a long stretch of boards and debris but no corpses or evatim.

  A beach spread before me like a pale band on the horizon, like a white sunrise. The evatim struggled across it in an endless procession, dragging their burdens from the water.

  I stood among the reeds and watched them for a time. Then I took a step forward, and cold water splashed around my knees. I gasped involuntarily at the sudden shock of no longer walking on the water, but in it. There was mud and sand beneath my feet.

  I neared the beach, crouched down, trying to conceal myself among the last of the reeds. Gradually I could make out three huge doorways in the cliff-face beyond the end of the white sand. The crocodile-headed ones labored toward them, bearing their burdens through the doorways.

  I didn’t doubt that each doorway led to a different place, and that there the final judgement of the god was made. Yes, I was on Surat-Kemad’s doorstep, in the anteroom of his great hall, forever beginning my quest.

  But I didn’t know which of the three doors to go through. Surely my Father waited beyond . . . one of them.

  I took the next step, and the next, freely mingling with the evatim, who took no notice of me. We crowded toward one of the doors. I was hemmed in by cold, hard bodies. I let the movement of the great mass of them determine my direction.

  The empty face of an old woman bobbed in front of my face, her corpse slung over the shoulder of her bearer, her open mouth black, frozen as if perpetually about to shout or kiss or devour.

  Once more the cliffs rose around me. Once more some of the evatim scrambled up the jagged stones, their glowing eyes seeming to rise into the sky like stars. Those who had climbed, I saw, set their burdens down on ledges and began to feast.

  I turned away quickly and stared at the ground, and at the almost luminously pale feet and legs of the evatim.

  The sides of the great doorway were carven smooth, its iron gates flung wide. The gates resembled, more than anything else, enormous, gaping jaws.

  I tried to peer ahead again, but I could not see over the mass of the evatim. I jumped up. I turned and looked back, but only masses of crocodile-faces stared back at me, like a swirling shifting cloud filled with burning eyes.

  “Stop! You are not of the brotherhood of the evatim!”

  I whirled around again. A pallid, black-bearded face hovered before me, its red eyes unblinking. It rose on the body of a snake, only stiff as a tree trunk and covered with glistening silver scales the size of my outstretched hand. As I watched, another face rose from the ground on such a glittering stalk, and another, bursting out of the sand, out of the stone of the cliff face until a forest of them blocked my way. The evatim drew aside.

  “You may not pass!” one of them said.

  “Blasphemer, you may not enter our master’s domain.”

  I got out my leather bag and struggled desperately with the drawstring, then poured the two grave coins into my hand.

  “Wait,” I said. “Here. These are for you.”

  The foremost of the man-headed serpent-things leaned forward and took the coins into its mouth. Its lips, like the Sybil’s, like my mother’s, were searingly cold.

  But the coins burst into flame in the creature’s mouth and it spat them out at my feet.

  “You are still alive!”

  Then all of them shouted in unison, “This one is still alive!”

  And the evatim came writhing through the scaled, shrieking forest, free of their burdens, on all fours now, their great jaws gaping. I drew my father’s sword and struck one of them, and another, and another, but one caught me on the right leg and yanked me to my knees. I slashed at the thing again and again. One of the glowing eyes burst, hissed, and went out.

  Another reared up, closed its jaws
on my back and chest, and pulled me over backwards. That was the end of the struggle. The great mass of them swarmed over me, while still the serpent-things shouted and screamed and babbled, and their voices were like thunder.

  Teeth like knives raked me all over, tearing, and I still held the sword, but it seemed very far away and I couldn’t move it—

  A crocodilian mouth closed over my head, over my shoulders and I called out, my voice muffled, shouting down the very throat of the monster, “Sybil! Come to me again—!”

  I cannot say what actually happened after that. I saw her face again, glowing like a distant lantern in the darkness below me, but rising, racing upward, while the evatim tore at me and crushed me slowly in their jaws.

  Then I distinctly felt myself splash into water, and the viscous blackness closed around me and the evatim were gone. I sank slowly in the cold and the dark, while the Sybil’s face floated before me and grew brighter until the darkness was dispelled and my eyes were dazzled.

  “This time, you did well to call on me,” she said.

  I awoke on a bed. As soon as I realized that it was a bed, I lay still with my eyes closed, deliberately dismissing from my mind any thought that this was my familiar bed back home, that my adventures had been no more than a prolonged, horrible dream.

  I knew it was not so, and my body knew it, from the many wounds where the evatim had held me. And I was nearly naked, my clothing in tatters.

  But I still held my father’s sword. I moved my right arm stiffly, and scraped the blade along hard wood.

  This bed was not my bed. It was made of rough boards and covered not with sheets but with sand.

  I started to sit up, eyes still closed, and gentle hands took my by the bare shoulders. The hands were soft and warm.

  I was dizzy then. The sword slipped from my grasp. I opened my eyes, but couldn’t focus. There was only a blur.

  Warm water was being poured over my back. My wounds stung. I let out a cry and fell forward and found myself awkwardly embracing some unknown person, my chin on his shoulder.

  I could see, then, that I was in a room stranger than any I had ever imagined, a place once richly furnished but now a wreck, turned on its side like a huge box rolled over, its contents spilled everywhere. Stained glass windows hung open above me, dangling, ornately worked with designs of glowing fishes. Books and bottles lay in heaps amid fallen beams, plaster, and bricks. There was a splintered staircase that coiled out and ended in midair. An image of Surat-Kemad had been fixed to the floor and remained fixed, but now it stuck out horizontally into space. A lantern dangled sideways from the grey-green snout.

  My host pushed me gently back onto the bed and I was staring into the face of a gray-bearded man. He squinted in the half-light, his face wrinkling. For a moment the look on his face was one of ineffable joy, but it faded into doubt, then bitter disappointment.

  “No,” he said. “It is not so. Not yet.”

  I reached up to touch him, to be sure he was real and alive, but he took my hand in his and pressed it down on my chest. Then he gave me my father’s sword, closing my fingers around the grip, and I lay there, the cold blade against my bare skin.

  Then he said something completely astonishing.

  “I thought you were my son.”

  I sat up and this time sat steadily. I saw that I was indeed almost naked, my clothing completely shredded, and I was smeared with blood. Suddenly I felt weak again, but I caught hold of a bedpost with my free hand and remained upright.

  I blurted, “But you are not my father—”

  “Then we are agreed,” he said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Wind roared outside. The room swayed and creaked, the walls visibly shifting. More plaster, wood, and a sudden avalanche of human bones clattered around us, filling the air with dust. Tiles rained over my shoulders and back. The window overhead clacked back and forth.

  I thought of the Sybil’s house. I looked to my companion with growing dread, but he merely shrugged.

  “It’ll pass. Don’t worry.”

  When all was once again still, I said, “I am Sekenre, son of Vashtem the sorcerer.”

  He hissed and drew back.

  “Then I fear you!”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not a sorcerer myself.” I started to explain, but he waved his hand, bidding me to cease.

  “You are a powerful sorcerer indeed. I can tell! I can tell!”

  I concluded that the man was mad. What could be more natural, after all I had been through, than to meet someone who was mad? If he thought I was a sorcerer, there was no sense dissuading him.

  I placed my father’s sword across my legs, then folded my arms across my chest, and directed toward him what I hoped was a stern gaze.

  “Very well. I, a sorcerer, command you to explain yourself.”

  He spread his hands and looked helpless. “Sorcerer, I don’t know where to begin—”

  “Why did you think I was your son?”

  He moved over to the broken statue of a bird and sat on the flat space where the head had once been. He did not answer my question, but sat still for several minutes. I thought he had forgotten me and had fallen into some sort of reverie. I stared up at the dangling window, then toyed with the sword in my lap.

  At last he sighed and said, “What do you know of where you are, sorcerer and son of sorcerer?”

  I told him something of my history, and he only sighed again and said that I was a mighty sorcerer for all I was yet an ignorant one.

  “Then teach me,” I said.

  “When your mother left you,” he said, “that was because she could not pass beyond Leshé, the realm of dreams. Because she had never been prepared for burial, she could not truly enter the land of the dead. There are four realms; you must understand this. Earth is the realm of Eshé, the world of living men. But our dreams arise from the mists of the river, from Leshé, where the country of sleep borders the country of death. We see unquiet ghosts in our dreams because they linger in Leshé, as your mother does. Beyond is Tashé, the true domain of the dead, where all dwell in the places the god has appointed for them.”

  “And the fourth realm?”

  “That is Akimshé – holiness. At the heart of the god, in the mind of the god, among the fiery fountains where even gods and worlds and the stars are born – that is Akimshé, holiness, which may not be described. Not even the greatest of the prophets, not even the sorcerers, not even the very gods may look on the final mystery of Akimshé.”

  “But it’s still inside Surat-Kemad,” I said. “I don’t see how—”

  “It is well that you do not understand. Not even Surat-Kemad understands. Not even he may look on it.”

  I said very quickly, “I have to continue on my way. I have to find my father.”

  And my companion said one more surprising thing.

  “Yes, of course. I know him. He is a mighty lord here.”

  “You – you – know him –?” I couldn’t say anything more. My thoughts were all a jumble.

  “He dwells here in peculiar honor because he is a sorcerer,” the old man said, “but he must remain here, unique among the servants of Surat-Kemad, but a servant nonetheless.”

  I got to my feet unsteadily. The remains of my trousers dangled. I wrapped them around my belt, trying to make myself at least decent, but there wasn’t much to work with. I slid the sword under the belt.

  I stood there, breathing hard from the exertion, wincing as the effort stretched my lacerated sides.

  “You must take me to my father,” I said.

  “I can only show you the way.” He shook his head sadly.

  “Where?”

  He pointed up, to the open window.

  “There?”

  “Yes,” he said. “That way.”

  “But –” I walked across the room to a door now sideways in the wall, and opened it, lowering the door against the wall. I stared through at a dense sideways forest, the forest floor rising
vertically to one side, the trees horizontal. There was a glowing mist among the trees, like fog at sunrise before it melts away. Brilliantly-plumed birds cawed and fluttered in the branches. Warm, damp air blew against my face and chest.

  The gray-bearded man put his hand on my shoulder and led me away.

  “No,” he said. “You will never find your father through that door.” He pointed to the ceiling again. “That way.”

  I started to climb, clumsily, my muscles aching. My right palm was numb where the guardian-serpent’s lips had touched me.

  I caught hold of the image of the god, hooking an arm over it. Then pulled myself up and sat there astride Surat-Kemad, my feet dangling.

  “You never answered my question. Why did you think I was your son?”

  “It is a very old sorrow.”

  I didn’t command him. “Can you . . . tell me?”

  He sat down on the edge of the bed and gazed up at me. “I was called Aukin, son of Nevat. I dwelt far beyond any land you ever knew, beyond the mouth of the Great River and across the sea among the people you would call barbarians. I had a wife. I loved her very much. Is that a surprising thing, even for a barbarian? No, it is not. When she died bearing my first son, and my son too was dead in her womb, my grief was without bounds. The gods of my homeland could not comfort me, for they are harsh spirits of the forest and of the hills, and they do not deal in comfort. Therefore I came into your country, first to the City of the Delta, where I prayed long before the image of Bel-Hemad and gave the priests much gold. But he did not answer me, and when I ran out of money, the priests sent me away. So I wandered all along the Great River, in the forests, on the plains, among the marshes. I tarried with holy men in the high mountains. From them I learned to dream. They thought they were teaching me contentment, but no, I clung to my bold scheme. It was this: I would be the mightiest dreamer of all and travel beyond Leshé to the lake of Tashé and farther, and I would find my son who had tried but failed to enter the world, and I would bring him back with me. The dead have been truly reclaimed by the Devouring God, so there is no hope for my wife, but the unborn, I thought – I still think – perhaps will not be missed. So far I have succeeded only with the first part of my plan. I am here. But I have not found my son. When I saw you, alive, here, I had hope again, just briefly.”