Very carefully, he placed Billy’s skull among the trophies in the collection.
(Try to remember. Gone.)
He crawled out of the fort. The doorway was too small for him. His bare, broad shoulders brushed it on either side.
In the end he stood there above the stream, naked but for his loincloth, conversing with the Blood Goblin whose entrails dripped down over his shoulders and chest.
In the end, he smeared himself with blood like war paint, and he held up his stone knife and Billy’s stinking hide and shouted a great shout of triumph, of victory. The master of the fort and forest had come home.
(So easy to slide down. Into darkness. He’d always wanted to, ever since he was a child. Now he was just being honest with himself.)
He had to get back to Eileen. To explain. To resolve things once and for all.
He raised his knife and shouted a great shout.
ON THE LAST NIGHT OF THE FESTIVAL OF THE DEAD
“…then all things which have been begun shall be finished.”
—The Litanies of Silence
On the first night of the Festival of the Dead, they were laughing.
All the capital rang with mirth; fantastic banners and kites festooned the towers and roofs of the City of the Delta. The streets swarmed with masked harlequins bearing copper lanterns shaped like grotesque faces which sang through some trickm of flame and metal. That was a kind of laughter too.
On the first night, Death was denied. Children crouched by mthe canals and floated away paper mummies in toy funeral-boats. Black-costumed skeletons ran from house to house, pounding on doors, waving torches, shouting for the living to emerge and mingle with the dead. Revellers swirled in their shrouds, their death-masks revealing their ancestors, not as they had looked at the close of life, but with rotten features hideously, hilariously distorted.
That was the joke of it, that everyone was masked and no one knew who anyone else was. All gossip and insult and roguery might be done with impunity. Nothing mattered. Death itself was a jest.
Surat-Hemad, the crocodile-headed Devourer, god of the Underworld, could be mocked.
But it was nervous laughter. Inevitably, even on the first night of the festival, some of the restless dead actually returned from their abode in Tashe, that shadowy country which lies beyond the reach of the deepest dreams. So the possibility was always there, however remote, that the person behind the mask, either speaking or spoken to, might actually be a corpse.
If not something far stranger.
* * * *
“Is this the house of the great Lord Kuthomes?” the person who had knocked at the door said, holding out a small package wrapped in palm fronds.
That was all the two servants who answered could remember: the soft voice, the diminutive messenger with long, dark hair; probably a child, gender uncertain. The mask like a barking dog, or grinning jackal, or maybe a bat. Plain, scruffy clothing, maybe loose trousers or just a robe; probably barefoot.
They’d merely accepted the package and the messenger ran away.
Their exasperated master took it from them and ordered them beaten.
Lord Kuthomes tore the fronds away and held in his hands a small wooden box, cheaply made of scrap materials, without any attempt at ornamentation.
The box vibrated slightly, as if something inside it were alive, or perhaps clockwork.
Thoughtful, ever on guard against the trick of some enemy—for he was a great lord of the Delta and he had many enemies—he carried it to his chamber. As he entered, living golden hands on his nightstand lifted a two-paneled mirror, holding it open like a book.
Kuthomes sat on a stool, a candle in one hand, the parcel in the other, gazing at the reflections of both in the black glass. The hands shifted the mirror, showing the image in one panel, then the other.
As he had so many times before, Kuthomes searched for some hidden clue which might reveal treachery or useful secrets. He was a magician of sorts, though not a true sorcerer, wholly transformed, reeking of poisonous enchantment. His art sufficed to unravel such lethal puzzles as one Deltan lord might design for another. In this mirror, he had often learned the weakness of some rival. Once he had even reached through the glass and torn out a sleeping man’s heart.
He hefted the box. It weighed perhaps two ounces. But he hadan instinct about such things. He sensed strangeness, and in strangeness, danger.
But when he held the box up to the mirror, even with the candle positioned to shine through the delicate wood, he saw only his hands, the box, and the candle’s flame. The depths remained inscrutable; they did not even reflect Lord Kuthomes’s silver-bearded face.
The box stirred, humming like one of those metal lanterns the harlequins carried. For an instant, Kuthomes was furious. A festival night joke? He would have crushed the thing in his hand and hurled it away. But that same caution which had made him a great lord of the Delta again prevailed.
He placed the object down on the night stand, took a delicate calligrapher’s knife, and, by candlelight, began to chip away at the thin wood. There were no envenomed needles, no springs, no magic seals waiting to be broken. The fragments fell away easily.
Inside was a sculpture about two inches high, of a laughing corpse-face, its head thrown back, gap-toothed mouth stretched wide. Inside the mouth, a tiny silver bell rang of its own accord. Kuthomes touched the bell with the tip of his knife and the ringing stopped.
Outside, the mob laughed and roared. Drums beat faintly, muffled, far away.
He laid the knife down on the table top, and the ringing resumed. It wasn’t a matter of a breeze or a draught. He placed the whole object under a glass bowl and the bell still shivered.
He knew, then, that this was no thing of the living world, but a death-bell, manufactured in Tashe itself by dead hands, then borne up, like a bubble rising from a deep, muddy pool, through the dreamlands of Leshe, until it was present, very substantially, at the doorstep of Lord Kuthomes of the Delta. It was a token, a summons from the dead.
“Whoever has sent this,” he said aloud, “know that I shall find you out and wrest your secrets from you, though you be already dead. You shall learn why Kuthomes is feared.”
He rose and prepared himself, performing the four consecrations, forehead, eyelids, ears, and mouth touched with the Sorcerer’s Balm, to shield him from illusion. His midnight-black sorcerer’s robe came to life as it closed around him, its delicately glowing embroideries depicting a night sky never seen over the City of the Delta; the stars of Death, the sky of Tashé.
He regarded his reflection in the mirrors, only the robe visible in the darkness, like some headless specter.
The original owner of that robe, he recalled, had been headless toward the end, but well before he died, before others carried the remains away and finished the unpleasant, perilous business. He knew that to kill a sorcerer is to become one. The contagion flows from the slain to the slayer. Therefore a sorcerer must be disposed of carefully, by experts, not such dilettantes as he, who might occasionally require that the serpentine motif on a jade carving come to life on cue, or a sip of wine paralyze the will, or the face of a one man be temporarily transformed into that of the other. These were stock-in-trade for any lord of the Delta, to be applied as deftly as a surgeon’s knife.
But no, he was not a sorcerer.
Therefore he also carried a curious sword in a scabbard underneath his robe, its strong steel blade inlaid with intricate, ultimately mystifying silver designs. It was the weapon of a Knight Inquisitor, one of those fanatic warriors from the barbarian lands across the sea, a sworn enemy of all gods but the Righteous Nine and especially of the Shadow Titans, who breathe sorcery like a miasma into the world. The sword was proof against all the magical darkness.
But Kuthomes, merely a man, had strangled the Knight Inquisitor with a cord, years ago, when he was younger and had the strength for such things.
He put on the jeweled, brimless cap of his rank and took up the d
eath-bell in his hand, then passed silently through the halls of his own house in vigorous, graceful strides. He crossed the central courtyard. Up above, someone hastily closed a shutter. Even on such a merry night, it was ill luck to look on Lord Kuthomes in his sorcerer’s aspect.
A single lamp flickered in the atrium. There were still palm fronds on the floor, and a stain where the servants had been beaten. That would be cleaned up on his return, or made larger.
He slipped out into the street.
* * * *
By now the night was almost over. Stars still shone overhead, but the sky was purpling in the East. He found himself in an utterly dark street, without a single lantern hanging from a doorway, a channel of featureless exterior walls. Higher up, the balconies were empty, the shutters invariably locked.
He stretched out his palm and held the death-bell up level with his face. It laughed at him, but slowly now, the faint tinkling interspersed with silence.
Several streets away, someone shouted. A horn blew a long, trailing blast that began as music and ended in flatulence. Something fell and broke, probably crockery. Then silence again.
He walked confidently along that dark street until he stumbled, cursing, over what looked like an enormous, long-legged bird left broken and sprawling.
But Kuthomes did not fall. He regained his footing, crushing the death-bell in his hand. The thing felt like a live wasp, scraping to get free. Hastily, he opened his hand, then stood still, gasping.
Gradually he made out an inert reveler in some absurd costume: trailing cloth wings, tatters and streamers, a crushed and shapeless mask. There must have been stilts somewhere, or else a crowd had carried the fool aloft.
In his younger days, Kuthomes might have given the fellow a kick to the ribs, but now he merely spat, then continued on his way.
He tried to follow the delicate voice of the bell, turning where it seemed to ring louder or more frequently. But his ear could not actually tell. He wandered through the maze of streets, once or twice passing others, who hurried to get out of his way.
In a market square, he faced the East. Dawn’s first light sufficed to reveal the solitary figure standing there: very short, clad in shapeless white, arms akimbo, bare feet spread apart, face hidden behind some cheap animal mask.
“You there!” Kuthomes dropped the insistent bell into his pocket and stepped forward, but the other turned and ran. For an instant he thought it was a dwarf, but the motion was too agile. A child then. He couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl.
He pursued until his breath came in painful gasps and it seemed his chest would burst. Again and again he saw his quarry, near at hand but out of reach, vanishing around a corner at the end of an alley, on the other side of a courtyard, or gazing down on him from a balcony or from a bridge over a canal.
“Do not dare to trifle with me!”
Bare feet padded on cobblestones. Hard boots clattered after.
But in the morning twilight Kuthomes could go no further. He had to sit down on a stone bench and lean back against a wall, gazing out over the central forum of the city. All around him the temples of the major gods faced one another. The rising sun made the rooftops and the many statues gleam. Divinities, kings, and heroes lining those rooftops and perched on pillars and ledges seemed momentarily alive, gazing down benevolently or wrathfully, each according to their nature. Yawning peddlers opened their stalls. A flock of pigeons stirred, murmuring on the steps of the temple of Bel-Hemad, the god of new life, of springtime, and forgiveness. But the house of Surat-Hemad, the lord of Death, was still a mass of shadows and black stone, the eyes of the carven crocodile head over the doorway aglow like faint coals with some mysterious light of their own.
Kuthomes half-dozed, exhausted, enraged that he had been the object of a joke on the first night of the Festival of the Dead. He set the death-bell in his lap, and still it rang, a far more serious matter than anybody’s joke. He laid the sword of the mKnight Inquisitor across his knees, and the ringing stopped. When he put the sword away, it resumed.
He couldn’t think clearly just then, weary and angry as he was, but he was certain that he was proof against illusion, and that there was an answer here somewhere, in the haze and dust and fading shadows. If he concentrated hard enough, he would have it, and his revenge, later.
Was he not Lord Kuthomes, feared and respected by all?
Eventually he fell asleep on the bench and dreamed, strangely, that he, the feared and respected Lord Kuthomes, had ventured alone into the city at night, and that the city was empty. All the revellers, soldiers, courtiers, even the Great King himself had fled before him, and Lord Kuthomes’s heavy footsteps echoed in the empty palace, even in the vast Presence Hall where he mounted the throne with the double crown of the Delta and Riverland on his head.
He sat still and silent in his dream, the crown on his head, crocodile-headed scepter in his hand, gazing into the empty darkness, until he heard the sound of the tiny death-bell approaching.
Someone shuffled and emerged from behind a column. Kuthomes stiffened and beheld a tall, cloaked figure approach the throne slowly, tottering like a very old man; no, swaying side-to-side like a crocodile reared up, imitating a human walk.
The thing opened clawed hands when it stood at the foot of the throne. The face beneath the hood was indeed that of acrocodile. In the open hands, nothing at all.
Here was one of the evatim, the messengers of Surat-Hemad, whose summons may never be resisted or denied. Kuthomes shrank back in his stolen throne, knowing that all his magic and even the silver sword were useless.
But the other tore off a crocodile mask, uncovering a laughing corpse face identical to that which held the death-bell, head back in a paroxysm of hilarity or terror, mouth agape. In the unimaginable depths of its throat, a tiny bell rang insistently.
Then the apparition breathed laughter, neither harsh nor exactly gentle, impatient, with a touch of petulance, and at last a voice spoke from those same black depths, soft, definitely feminine, a young woman’s voice, maddeningly familiar.
In his dream, it was too much effort to recall. He almost recognized the voice, but not quite.
“Do you not know me?” the other said.
“No,” he replied.
“Ah, but you did once, long ago.”
“How long ago was that?”
She only laughed for a brief instant. Then the laughter was gone and the bell rang.
Lord Kuthomes shook himself out of his dream and found himself on the bench at the edge of the dusty forum, in the blazing mid-day sun. The bell, in his lap, still rang. No one had dared to disturb him, of course. Those who gaped in wonder suddenly turned their faces away, pretending not to have seen.
He took up the bell again and lurched to his feet, shouting for an old woman to fetch him a litter. When she had done so, she held out her hand for a coin. He patted his pockets, found nothing, then scowled and spat, tumbling into the litter, drawing the curtain behind him. The bearers set off, the litter lurching, swaying. Kuthomes felt sick by the time he reached his house.
Inside the atrium, the palm fronds and the stain on the floor were still there.
Later. There would be time for that later.
* * * *
On the second night of the Festival of the Dead, they were dancing.
This was a more somber time. The streets and rooftops echoed with stately music. Paper masks from the first night floated in the canals or littered the streets. Now people wore beautifully carved and adorned wooden masks, ageless, ideal visages which did not so much hide the identity of the wearer as abstract it, like a name written in intricate, illuminated letters.
Musicians, clad in dark cerements and masked in imitation of the evatim, moved slowly from house to house, to palace and hovel alike, excepting no one, summoning the inhabitants to dance, to mingle in the wide forum before the temples of the gods. On this night the dead would truly return in great numbers, out of the dreams of Leshe and the dar
kness of Tashé, climbing up from the Great River and the city’s many canals to walk among the living. It was a night of portents and revelations, of sorrows and bittersweet joys, reunions, secret dooms, and frequent miracles.
Lord Kuthomes had rested and bathed. He had pored over such books of sorcery as he owned and could read, unable to find any answer to the riddle before him, but still certain some enemy had laid a trap.
He would be ready. Once more he anointed himself four times and put on his sorcerer’s robe. Once more the silver sword pressed against his thigh. This time even he wore a mask, beautifully wrought, set with gems and feathers until the features of Lord Kuthomes had been transformed into some fantastic, predatory bird.
When the revellers reached his door, he gave them such coin as custom required, then stepped out into the throng, moving along the dark and crowded streets, into the forum where moonlight shone on the roofs of the temples and the many bronze and golden statues. The gods seemed to be watching him alone, waiting for something to happen.
Even the Great King, Wenamon the Ninth, was there with all his lords and ladies, all of them masked, to do homage to Death. Kuthomes took his rightful place in the great circle of their dance. Once he held the warm hand of Queen Valshepsut, who nodded to him, and he to her, before he yielded to the King. Around and around dancers turned, as the musicians followed, pipes skirling, drums beating stately, muted time. Acolytes with lanterns or torches pursued their own paths at the periphery, the intricate revolutions imitating the cycles of the universe. In the center, priests of Death stood motionless in their crocodile masks.
Or were those perhaps the true faces of the evatim?
The fancy came to Kuthomes that many of the faces around him, in the royal circle, in the crowd, were not masks at all.
In the midst of them was one who did not dance, who clearly did not belong: some scruffy urchin in a paper mask that was probably supposed to be a fox, in shapeless white trousers and shirt, bare feet spread apart, arms this time folded imperiously. He could see the figure clearly.
The Darrell Schweitzer Megapack: 25 Weird Tales of Fantasy and Horror Page 19
