“I too have a hard time remembering who I am sometimes,” said Kuthomes. “We are alike.”
“You are the loving father of this child.” The boy Sekenre reached into Lady Kamachina’s dead womb and lifted an infant girl out in his hands. Kuthomes thought his daughter looked more like a delicate carving than a child: skin translucently white, eyes open and unblinking, the expression severe.
Sekenre passed the baby to Kuthomes, who rested it in his lap.
“The world shall fear this one,” Sekenre said, “but not for any evil in her. She is a mirror of the evil in others. In a hundred years’ time I shall need her as my ally, against an enemy yet unborn.”
“Therefore you have directed all these things, my entire life, to your own purposes.”
“Yes, I have,” said Sekenre.
Kuthomes shrugged. “I suppose one has to do such things.” He felt, vaguely, that he should be angry, but there was no passion left in him.
Kamachina smiled and took the child from him.
Ghosts gathered around them, whispering like a faint wind.
* * * *
On the last night of the Festival of the Dead, Lord Kuthomes emerged from the vaults beneath the temple of Surat-Hemad in the City of the Delta. He had grown very old. His once tall, vigorous figure was bent, his silver beard now purest white. No one knew him, or the bone-pale girl he led into the world.
His daughter clung to his arm, her eyes dazzled even by the gloom of the inside of the temple; amazed at everything she saw, whispering to him, for comfort, then out of excitement, chattering softly in the language of the dead. The grave-wrappings she wore had partially fallen away, revealing almost transparent skin. She seemed more to float on the air than to walk.
Outside, she had to cover her face from the starlight. Kuthomes found a discarded mask for her.
They walked through streets he remembered now only from his dreams. She had so many questions he could not answer. He took her tiny hand in his and led her to a place he had dreamed, where a certain magician was waiting. This man would nurture her for five years before an enemy killed him, bore her off, and came to regret the prize.
But these things were Sekenre’s business.
Kuthomes departed without even bidding his daughter farewell, then hurried back to the temple of Surat-Hemad, and descended into the vaults, so that what had been begun on the last night of the Festival of the Dead could at last be finished.
VANDIBAR NASHA IN THE COLLEGE OF SHADOWS
I
When his enemy’s servant gave him the bronze coffer shaped like a human hand, Vandibar Nasha accepted the gift politely. He did not have to open it to know that it contained the severed hand of one of his own servants, who had died hideously in a cellar beneath the enemy’s house.
The other had taken Vandibar’s piece, but the game would continue. That a little blood seeped through the hinge and stained his sleeve was the only cause for true offense. It was inelegant and unworthy, and Vandibar was, if nothing else, a fastidious man, who maintained about his person and his house a sense of unadorned, even austere, but undeniable elegance.
He gazed across the glittering sea of his guests, as they surged over the roof-garden in the twilight, beneath swaying paper lanterns. He spied his enemy, Radaces, by the punchbowl, dressed like a peacock in heat, a jumble of jewelry and multi-colored silks and, indeed, billowing feathers, his face painted and slightly streaked with intricate black and silver spirals. Radaces leaned away from the crowd, conversing with a man in a tarnished sun-mask.
Vandibar pressed gently toward them, pausing to greet guests, to laugh at their witticisms, to sample delicacies, even once stooping as a child prattled something in his ear. But still he made his way, and by the time he reached Radaces, the man in the tarnished mask was gone, something Vandibar noted with concern. He knew, though he was not supposed to, who that person was: a prince up from the Delta on an intrigue.
He confronted Radaces, still holding the hand-shaped coffer. Their eyes met. Radaces leaned forward, that none might overhear, and said, “It is death between us now.”
“I know that. I’ve found you out.”
Radaces laughed softly, and waved his hand to indicate the crowd in attendance, “But we must maintain appearances.”
“Yes, of course.”
So they stood together, host and illustrious guest, smiling at the assembled nobility of Elandisphon, the City of the River’s Bend. Above, a brilliant moon shone. It was a Goddess Moon, Shedelvendra’s Lantern, marking the springtime and the river’s rising. Therefore tonight was a time of celebration, of renewals and new unions, and, especially, of maintaining appearances.
Both he and Radaces pretended not to notice a certain young couple seated among the tumbling vines against the far wall. Vashimur, who was Vandibar’s son, furtively held the hand of Tatiane, daughter of Radaces.
Suddenly there came a commotion from the great stair that led up from the inner court of Vandibar’s house. Everyone whirled about, including Radaces.
Then Vandibar touched his enemy on the shoulder with the brazen hand. Radaces turned, startled, and Vandibar whispered, “I think it is death coming.”
Radaces’s face went pale for just an instant. But everyone was laughing as eight slaves, hugely-muscled, sweat-drenched (but perfumed), bore a palanquin up among the guests, set it down, and pulled back the canopy to reveal a cooked and stuffed crocodile bedecked with pearls, crowned with a silver wreath, its claws sheathed in gold. Vandibar’s crier announced the advent of Surat-Hemad, Lord of Death, the Devouring God, whose mouth is the night sky, whose teeth are the stars.
A murmur of amazement rippled through the crowd.
On this night, however, the crier continued, the Devourer was to be himself devoured, for the springtime is a celebration of new life.
Flower-masked page-boys ran through the crowd, handing out forks. One of the slaves produced an enormous knife and began carving.
At the first touch of the blade, flames exploded from the crocodile’s mouth. There were astonished shouts and a couple of screams. But the slave blew the flames out in a single breath, and everyone applauded, if nervously, and began devouring the Devourer.
Radaces smiled weakly. “A brilliant jest.”
“Yes. Isn’t it? But more your style than mine. I designed it with you in mind.”
“That doesn’t change anything.”
“Nothing ever does.”
Much later the dance began, and a priest and priestess whirled in the circle which had been cleared for them, their respective green and yellow streams trailing fantastically as the two of them embraced in imitation of the sacred coupling of Bel-Hemad, who brings the rain, and Shedelvendra his consort; only then could Vandibar Nasha slip away down a marble, spiralling staircase, past a stone trellis covered with night-blooming, almost luminescent flowers, into the empty lower garden.
Only then could sorcery come to him, almost as adistraction.
Even here, in the quiet, familiar place to which he had retreated, as he sat on a marble bench by the edge of a stone pool; even here, alone in the dark, as the sounds of dinner-party faded into a murmur only occasionally punctuated by a voice or a note of music louder than the rest—a squeal of laughter or a cymbal clashing—even here, Vandibar Nasha maintained perfect decorum.
He sat quietly in the perpetual twilight of the garden, among the night-blooming flowers, by the edge of the pool, where the water like polished ebony perfectly mirrored the sky. He did not yield to rage, or to fear, or to laughter. He sat with the bronze hand in his lap, and it seemed that, ever so subtly, something opened within his mind, like a shutter left slightly ajar; and a single dark moth fluttered in out of the night.
There. Like that.
He looked up with a start, as if he’d been pricked. But he was alone. The distant music and voices whispered like a tide. Tree branches creaked gently in the night breeze.
The stars rippled. He gazed, not at the sky, bu
t into the pool, as if that dark thing already lodged inside him gave him this instruction, and reassured him that one day, but not yet, he would be ready to look up and behold this miracle directly.
For now it was as if the earth were no more than the floor of a great hall, and he had opened a portal, and now gazed into the infinity below.
The stars in the pool shone more brilliantly than he had ever seen them before. They drifted back and forth, like gems set in a dark velvet hanging which billows with a sudden breeze.
Faces appeared behind the stars, huge and fierce, wild in their aspect, with terrible eyes. He knew that these were not the gods, but the Shadow Titans, shadows cast by the gods on the first evening of creation, which rose and came to life, which even the gods feared, but which sorcerers adored, for sorcerers are abominations which serve the abominable.
He knew that if he were to turn his head and look up at them directly, he would die.
But he was already a sorcerer. That was enough.
In that instant of realization, he was exultant. He would swiftly take care of Radaces. No sorcerer would ever have to suffer such a fool.
Besides, with Radaces out of the way, Vashimur could marry Tatiane, and all the wealth of the house of Radaces would be joined to that of the house of Nasha.
Therefore Vandibar became a sorcerer, by unknown means, toward an unknowable end, and he knelt by the pool and prayed to the reflected Titans, and offered to them thanksgiving. He was not afraid.
He heard the Titans whispering. They told him what to do. He opened the bronze coffer eagerly, fumbling with the latch, heedless of any possible venomed edges or similar childish devices. He washed the severed hand of his murdered servant in the starry water. Blood swirled over the faces of the Titans, obscuring them briefly.
With an ornamental pin from his collar, he carved a certain sign and the name of RADACES on the back of the hand.
He placed the thing on the surface of the water. It stood up on pale fingers and scurried like a water-striding insect across the pool and into the garden on the other side. He heard it rustling among the leaves for a few seconds and then it was gone.
Once more he gazed into the reflected stars, and a voice within him spoke through his lips. The Titans replied in the language of corpses, that universal speech of the afterworld in which sorcerers, alone among living men, are conversant. For the moment, Vandibar understood little. He was like a small child eavesdropping on adults. Yet the understanding came, a remembrance, not of a dream, but of an earlier life before the dream which had been his life up to this point, from which he had now suddenly awakened.
Then the water splashed and the Titans disappeared. Someone addressed him in a soft voice, in a stiffly formal manner mimicking the corpse-language, but in Deltan with a bad provincial accent.
“Art thou, then, Vandibar Nasha, who holds the doom of Radaces in his hand?” Here what might have been an impudent snicker, and the tone and accent changed. “If you will pardon the expression.”
Vandibar looked up, furious, then incredulous to see what seemed to be a child seated on the opposite side of the pool, splashing his bare feet in the water; a ragged boy of early teens, with a round face and large, dark eyes.
It wasn’t one of his servants, whom he would have had beaten within an inch of his life for such an outrage. It had to be some starveling beggar, whom he could have killed.
But he realized that he hadn’t heard anyone approach, and now the boy spoke in the true death-speech.
“Thou art indeed that Vandibar Nasha, whose name is known in the land of ghosts, whose deeds are told by the dead around their cold fires.”
Sometimes, Vandibar knew, when the game takes an incomprehensible turn, one must keep on playing, no matter what, merely to survive, and hope for advantage to appear later. Therefore he answered, “I am.”
The boy reverted to Deltan, his accent far worse, his manner casual. “Oh, I thought so.”
“But I don’t understand. What deeds? What stories?”
“All that are and shall be, for among the dead there is no time, as it is for the sorcerer, who swims in eternity like a fish in the sea, rising to the surface only when he chooses.”
A moment of silence followed. Vandibar closed the empty hand-coffer and floated it in the pool, rippling the surface gently.
“I am Sekenre,” said the boy, “not of this place, but of Reedland, also a sorcerer and therefore an abomination as you are; perhaps your ally, perhaps your foe, but unlikely to be your friend, for it is a fantastically rare thing for a sorcerer to have a friend.”
Some part of Vandibar’s mind felt sudden, irretrievable loss, as if he’d just dropped a particularly precious gem into the sea without realizing he’d done so until it was too nlate. He was a man who loved as well as hated. Was this boy saying he was now beyond all that?
He dismissed the thought. “You could be just a lunatic.”
The boy closed his hands, then opened them slowly. Blue flames danced on his palms without apparently burning him.
“I demand to know why thou hast come,” said Vandibar Nasha firmly, startled that he had used the corpse-language.
Sekenre’s voice shifted again. His accent was gone. Someone else seemed to speak through him. “Only to show you what you have already done, Oh dread sorcerer, Vandibar Nasha.”
“What have I done? I haven’t done anything.”
Sekenre in this new voice replied only, “Radaces,” and accented again, said, “Come with me.”
Vandibar rose and followed him. The boy walked noiselessly, lighting the way with blue fire in an outstretched hand. They came to the stone trellis and the stair. Vandibar hesitated. He wasn’t going to appear before his guests in such company.
But Sekenre continued, barefoot on stone, quiet as a ghost, and he could only follow.
He heard no voices, no music, no sound at all, and was astonished to find the roof-garden deserted, the canopies rolled up, the furniture cleared away. Dead leaves rustled across the pavement in a faint breeze. The moon, which had been full tonight, was now well past, and low in the east, though the hour must have been quite late.
His mind wasn’t working right. He couldn’t reason. He merely accepted. Such details were not clues, but portents, part of a vision.
His breath came in white puffs. The air was cold, as in winter.
Sekenre said nothing. In the moonlight, Vandibar Nasha saw that his initial estimation had been wrong. This wasn’t a beggar child: skinny, but not emaciated; his trousers roughly torn off just below the knees and his tunic several sizes too large, but not ragged; his face clean and his hair trimmed. An ordinary forum brat, then; but that was one more falsehood, another mask.
And the voice of sorcery within himself seemed to ask, What mask do you wear, Vandibar Nasha?
Sekenre shivered in the cold, the blue flame flickering as his hand trembled. When they descended the further stairway, which lead to a covered passage bypassing the house, there was ice on the steps.
Yet when they emerged into the street, the moon was gone, and warm rain poured over the pavement in muddy rivulets, swirling around the boy’s bare ankles. The fire in his hand did not go out. Vandibar followed him down steep, cobblestone streets, tier after tier, as the city extended down to the river like a carpet flung over a flight of stairs.
By the time they reached the forum, the rain had stopped. The air was hot and stifling. Mist rose from the pavement like smoke. The temples of the gods all around them silent and empty, the stone colossi on the rooftops gazing down blindly through the thick haze. For just an instant there was a hint of a crescent moon, but then it was gone.
So the two of them reached the house of Radaces in utter darkness, but for the almost lightless flames flickering through the fingers of Sekenre’s half-closed hand.
Here again, Vandibar hesitated, thinking of proprieties, imagining how ridiculous he must look in his sodden, ruined gown, with his fine shoes now muddy and squishing as h
e walked, his hair plastered to his face.
Sekenre, dripping beside him, sneezed loudly. “We must go in,” he said.
“Yes, we must.”
Sekenre touched the door with fire. The door swung silently inward. Vandibar followed, into the darkened house, through what he knew to be a gaily-frescoed atrium, where just a year earlier, it had been Radaces’s turn to greet guests at the Festival of the River’s Rising.
Now there was only gloom and the only sound was of his squishing shoes.
They came upon what seemed to be a naked, hugely muscled, pot-bellied man. He took it for a statue, but then the apparition lurched forward, drawn by Sekenre’s light, and he saw it more clearly: bloated, hideously pale like one long drowned, wearing some kind of animal mask.
The long jaws opened, and Vandibar knew it was no mask at all, but the true face of one of the evatim, the messengers of the death-god Surat-Hemad, which crawl up out of the river to devour corpses. No one ever sees them except when he is about to die, or when someone very close to him as died, or perhaps in the midst of deepest sorcery.
For the first time, Vandibar Nasha was truly afraid. He wished he could go back, that the vision would end, that none of this had ever happened. He was almost ready to apologize to Radaces.
But Sekenre pressed on. Vandibar reached out and took the boy’s free hand, for comfort, fully aware of the absurdity of the gesture. But Sekenre did not pull away.
“Why hast thou come?” said the monster in the death-speech. “This is my master’s house now.”
“This is the house of the lord Radaces,” said Sekenre, in an almost naive tone, Vandibar thought, in that barbarous up-country accent of his.
The Darrell Schweitzer Megapack Page 21
