The Incompleat Nifft

by Michael Shea

  The bearers set the litter before the altar. They were powerful men, of Barnar's type. One grasped the King's wrists and the other his ankles. The Queen spoke again, and there was a tenderness in her voice:

  "Rise to me now, my love, a king,

  And descend from me as a God.

  You will sit in Eternity with your line,

  And rule the ever-after-living hosts.

  You will wield the scepter of the shadow-kind,

  You will be judge and shepherd of the ghosts.

  Rise to me, now, my love, a king,

  And descend from me as a God."

  When she had said this they lifted the King onto the altar. He looked to this side and that as they pressed his legs against the stone legs, his back against the stone chest, his arms and shoulders against the arms and shoulders of stone. And as he looked here and there, I thought for a moment that he looked at me, and smiled, ever so faintly. I don't insist on this—I half think it was a dream myself—the air was so charged, and the silence crawled all over the skin of the multitude like a swarm of ants. But do you suppose he understood what had been done, and took some last small comfort, some revenge in the thought?

  She knelt beside him, and her face was taut, refined by a tension of icy love, made younger before our eyes by her passionate anticipation. She lowered her face—worshipfully, kissing—to the muscled juncture of his neck and shoulder. And then there was a crisp, liquid sound of horrible distinctness, her hands clutched his shoulders, and the King's body rose and convulsed upon the stone with the raw, coiling power of a speared eel.

  The two giants holding him grunted with strain, and the Queen's head rode with the youth's surging body as if it were a part of it. He hammered the rock like a beached dolphin pounds the wet sand, slowing with suffocation, and as he stilled, the Queen clutched and nuzzled with a weasel's self-forgetting lust. Her shoulders worked like pumps as she sucked and her hands kneaded his torso as if it were a great udder of blood. She almost drowned herself in her hunger, and had to tear her face up from its feeding to breathe with all the desperate speed of a diver breaking the surface. She reared her crazed, glass-eyed face before the crowd—her lips smeared, her chin drizzling red. Her breasts were actually fuller now—they jutted youthfully, and I saw a thin thread of blood-red leakage from both her nipples. She leaned and drank again. The King barely moved. His skin tightened over the muscles, while the muscles themselves seemed to be slowly dissolving.

  She grew calmer, methodical. She drank from both his wrists next, and then from inside of both his thighs, to empty him efficiently. She licked her mouth clean, then cupped and lifted her breasts and licked her nipples clean. A priestess ascended the dais with a silver laver in which she washed herself a second time, and then drank off the water. Another priestess brought her a robe of scarlet. She put it on and, flanked by the priestesses, stepped down. It was done.

  When she had exited the littermen laid the King's husk on the litter and bore it from the hall. The Queen would spend the night above, in the King's cell where the priestesses would install for her a large mirror framed in gold. The King would go to the catacombs, where other priestesses waited with the sacred taxidermy tools.

  VIII

  The next morning, on the western quay, we waited for the expected to befall. We had hired a taxiraft, and had it standing by. Then the commotion came boiling out of the palace, born by scores of hurrying folk. The Queen had been heard to waken, rise and, a moment later, scream.

  We boarded at once. An hour later we had reached a certain great mudbar near the fringe of the swamp—one so large it amounted to an island. Here we waited, sending the pilot back well paid and at double speed with a small scroll for the Queen. We'd chosen a shrewd man who would have the savvy to get himself into the Queen's hearing in an uproar like the one you would expect in the pyramid. The scroll's marking would help. We had written on the outside; "Concerning the Year King's Missing Blood." A glance at this added vigor to his plying of the stern oar, and he was soon out of sight.

  This was the most ticklish step of all. Having two thousand prime swamp pearls put into our hands was going to be a simple matter now. But remaining alive for even an instant after the King's blood was back in the Queen's control—this was going to strain both wit and nerve to accomplish.

  Barnar's interview with the swamp witch was made with this difficulty in mind. If you're going to guarantee your safety with sorcerers—and the Vampire Queen was a very great one—you've got to get them to protect you with their own thaumaturgy. The trick is to make them give you magic which they cannot themselves afterward over-pass. You've got to ask for the best thing in their repertory.

  The swamp witch was no Vulvula. But it was worthwhile having her professional opinion as to what is the fastest thing that wizardry can call to the aid of man. I would have guessed, all by myself and without paying a pearl, the answer that she gave my friend. Still, it was something to have a confirmation. She told Barnar that the fastest being, in the upper world and the subworlds alike, is a basiliscus. I see you nodding wisely, Taramat. Read on a bit.

  So we demanded, along with the pearls, a ring charmed to command the service of a basiliscus. Then we sat down, had a bit of jerky and wine, and waited.

  The priestess of the Queen came almost impossibly soon. When we saw she had two archers on the raft with her, I quickly waded into the water. The King's blood had dried into a greyish biscuit, full of little holes like lava-rock. I held it up and called out:

  "Throw your bows in the water—double quick! Otherwise the Queen is going to have to drink this whole swamp to save her youth!"

  The bows went overboard. The men kept their spears but this was fair, as we had one, and we couldn't expect them to risk our robbing them. The raft came up to the islet. We gestured the soldiers back. The priestess stepped ashore with two leathern bags, and stood staring at us, rage in her eyes, her mouth impassive. I stayed in the water, as the soldiers were so near. Barnar said:

  "Time is short, woman. Give us the ring. We'll make the exchange when we're on the creature's back." She nodded wordlessly, and tossed him a small silver ring. Barnar put it on his smallest finger and raised his hands. The spell the witch had taught him was brief. He intoned it with great verve and authority. First there was a long silence.

  Then the earth began to wrinkle and crack, like pottery glaze, along a thirty-foot seam that crossed the width of the islet. The cracks darkened and grew, the fragmented clay began to buckle, and even I, standing in the water, felt a giant mass jerking and slithering underfoot. A lizard-foot that could have held me like a doll reached out of the tormented mire. A second followed, as a polished, scaly snout appeared. The seam bulged and gaped and the vast reptile heaved clear, hurling blocks of clay to all sides, and raising waves from which I was barely quick enough to save the blood-cake. With imperial self-absorption the basiliscus hauled itself into the water on the other side of the islet, and unfolded its wings to bathe them. They were no bigger, fanned out, than the raft the soldiers stood on—curiously stunted-looking given the body's bulk. In its own good time it crawled back into the islet and aimed its obsidian eye, big as a target-shield, attentively at Barnar.

  The basiliscus isn't a true demon because it can barely use speech at all, but it falls under the compulsions of the Great Age of Thaumaturgy, and is part of our inheritance of power from our forebears. You tell it where you want to go. It takes you there and you feed it the ring in payment, allowing it to return to the subworlds. And you'd better feed it the ring, and ask for no further trips. Magic compels it just so far, and then its nature asserts itself. Into its ragged pit of an earhole, Barnar whispered the name of our destination, then mounted its back. I jumped from the water and vaulted on behind him, keeping the blood-cake poised for a throw at the lagoon.

  The priestess approached and opened the mouths of both bags for our inspection. I don't know which felt more unreal, to be sitting on the back of that lizard or to be l
ooking at the oily lustre of two thousand perfect swamp pearls. The priestess stepped nearer, the bags in one hand, the other extended for the blood. I made the exchange with pickpocket deftness, hugged the bags to me, and Barnar shouted: "Away!"

  A slow gale of breath entered the cavelike chest under us. For a moment nothing happened, and fleetingly it bothered me that in that time, neither the priestess nor the soldiers stirred. They didn't make a move, and yet had time enough, if they were good, so spear us both from our mount. Then we were fifty yards away.

  The basiliscus's scales were big as flagstones and smooth as wax. Luckily there was room in their interstices for you to sink half your hand in, because its back was far too broad to grip with your legs. It took exactly three running leaps, crossing lakelets like puddles and using big mudbars as stepping-stones. Its wings hammered once, twice, and then suddenly they were winnowing cottony fog, and there was no swamp to be seen.

  We swam thundering up through clouds and mist for several moments, knuckles cracking with the strain of our climbing speed, and then we were in clear sky, with the clouds a level white broth below, hemmed in a bowl-like rim of ragged peaks. Beyond the hills, where we were headed, the salt steppes lay parching under the hot blue emptiness. Then, through the rush of wind and the creaking, leathery toil of the vast wings, we heard a whine far to our rear.

  We looked back, and learned in one glance that there is something faster than a basiliscus. Whatever its name is—for that we never learned—there was one of them bursting from the cloud-broth just where we had exited. It had one human rider. Even at that moment I marveled that any man should venture to sit astride the spiny neck of such a thing.

  I have seen its kind in little—stiltlegged bugs with long bodies and two forelegs it uses as arms, barbed along their insides for piercing what they snatch. Their flat, triangular heads have two globelike eyes and dainty greedy mouths, whose hunger the barbed arms must constantly serve. This one's head was big enough for a man to dance on, and it was dead white all over. Only the furious power of its wings—two shining blurs at its sides—set off its form against the white background of clouds. The thing was big enough to kill our basiliscus, though it probably wouldn't be able to eat more than two thirds of him. Of course it would start with us.

  There was no hurrying our mount, which sped its maximum as a matter of course. Meanwhile, the Queen's rider guided the huge, pale insect into a long, sloping climb which would intersect our course, for we had leveled off. I remembered seeing the lightning deftness of the little cousins of this thing—they can snatch a spider out of its web without leaving a tremor among the silk threads. This thing would have a fifteen-foot reach if an inch, and to cap the mess, I could only defend our rear with one hand; it was imperative for both of us to keep one hand dug into the lizard's scales, or the wind or our passage would sweep us off.

  We were over the steppes now. Hopelessly I chose a stabbing-grip on our spear with my free hand. The look of the hell-bug as it rose behind us was all fragility and grace. Its two lower pairs of legs hung trailing in dainty curves under its long body, which looked as smooth and balanced as the war-canoes of the southeastern savages. It was getting so near you could make out the faceting of its eyeglobes, a taunting reminder of the pearls in our bags. I could even see the face of the soldier guiding the thing.

  It's strange to see a man's face through the screaming wind of that speed, with the whole sky around you and the whole world beneath, a barren floor, and still to get as clear a feel for his past and his character as if the two of you were sitting at mugs in a cozy tavern. But I did feel I knew the man in that glance—plain sense said that it would be a tough and tried soldier, for an important mission like this. The face said that and more—the scars above and below the steady bright eyes, squinted against the wind, the mouth shut and thoughtful. It added up to a sturdy, cool professional who thinks ahead and then kills you without slip-ups when it's his job to do so and he has the edge.

  Good soldiers stay alive by being unsentimental and having a quick eye for the main chance. There was no time to chew it over. That quirky peek into the man's nature showed me our only longshot hope, and without a pause for thought I did the hardest thing I've ever done. I grabbed a bag by the bottom, and with a snap of the arm that forced open its drawstrings, I flung its whole contents into the air behind us. I groaned as I did it, looking back. The pearls sped earthward in a glistering black clot, scattering slowly, seeming to swarm as they fell like bees do before hive-making. Our speed and theirs made the jewels flee the faster from sight, and I still see them sometimes in memory, a thousand black stars, tumbling down through the wide blaze of noon.

  If betrayal of his Queen was on the soldier's mind before, I do not know. Perhaps if he'd caught us and had the whole two thousand, the habit of loyalty would have stayed firm and he would have smoothly completed his mission. But seeing the pearls there, stark and dazzling in the sky, and knowing that they could be his or they could be who knew whose—it shocked him into realizing the wealth he was pursuing. If he did not follow them down, and finished the chase, they would be leagues behind, and he might never find them. Almost without hesitation, he reined his mount into a dive.

  It had to be a whole thousand, you see, for some would be lost, and there must be enough even so to purchase swift escape and a new life. The Queen would eventually work a spell of recall on the mount he rode, and in the meantime he could use it to his advantage. Luck go with the man, I bear him no grudge! Still, as I say I see them tumbling, tumbling, those thousand dazzling, jetblack pearls, sometimes in memory.

  Ah well! Having a share of a full thousand would simply have meant more squandering to do. The soldier was a career man, a maker of plans and investments, and is probably cherishing his coffers right now, and dreading thieves. For me, it was work enough to rid myself of the five hundred I came away with. Think—I did it in two years! Surely, that's a feat as great as any involved in the winning of those black beauties!

  Part 3

  SHAG MARGOLD'S Preface to

  The Fishing of the Demon-Sea

  KAIRNHEIM, WHENCE NIFFT'S and Barnar's ill luck led them down to the primary subworld, is as remarkable for its ethnic homogeneity as the other two continents are for their diversity. It does not lack all racial variety. The perimeter of Shormuth—the huge bay in its eastern coast—is host to a miscellany of folk. But the bulk of the continent is inhabited by Kairns, a cattle-raising people originating from the southern limb of Lúlumë, across the Sea of Catástor.

  The Kairns came to Kairnheim in two major waves of migration separated by an interval of about four hundred years. It was the southeast half of the continent that received both influxes, for east of the Ikon Mountains luxuriant grasslands stretch practically unbroken for three hundred leagues to the coast. This gently rolling land, thickly braided with rivers, is the realm called Prior Kairnlaw. It is superlative grazing land. The Kairns who held it first were loath to share it with their late-coming cousins, and indeed, did not do so, for their cousins—more numerous and hungrier than they—drove them out of it, and into the northwestern plateaus, the colder, rockier, more arid half of the continent known today as Latter Kairnlaw.

  Kine Gather lies in Latter Kairnlaw not far from the Bone Axe Mountains, a northern branching of the Ikons. Like its sister-cities of this area—White Lick, Crossgulch, Bailey's Yards—it grew from a cattle market on a river, a rough-and-ready sort of place where stock could be auctioned and shipped by enterprising men unwilling to endure tedious inquiries into their herds' provenance or prior ownership. And, again like their neighbors, Kine Gather's citizens retain even in the moderate prosperity they currently enjoy all the predilections of their city's founders: raiding, cattle-rustling, passionate quarrels over boundaries, and blood-feuds.

  Most Latter-Kairns share these traits, and this is understandable. Their sparse-grown, harsh-wintered terrain compels their herdsmen to arduous seasonal pilgrimages to keep their animals in
pasture. Only the hostility of that land to any other economy—combined with what might be called a very stubborn cultural spirit—keeps them at their historic trade. And yet, for all their pains, they can expect to raise only maculate hornbow and dwarf-ox with any success, while in Prior Kairnlaw both these breeds thrive and four others besides: palomino hornbow, crucicorn, plodd and jabóbo (of which last, more presently). If scarcity alone had not made cattle thieves of the Latter-Kairns, their enduringly bitter sense of dispossession would have done it. Inevitably they have robbed one another, but they have always preferred the richer plunder and the prestige among their fellows to be won by raiding their homeland's usurpers.

  One aspect of this historic conflict—the jabóbo question—has proven particularly fateful for both kairnish nations by leading them, indirectly, to a dangerously frequent contact with the demon realms. Wimfort's folly and consequent abduction—which compelled Nifft and Barnar to their dire expedition—are perfectly symptomatic of this trend, and so its cause deserves some amplification.

  Jabóbos flourish in Prior Kairnlaw as they do nowhere else on earth. The beasts are big quasi-bipeds, about twice the size of a man. They are cleanly (they wash themselves in the manner of cats), short-muzzled, small-eared and, except for their thick, stubbish tails and huge thighs, have a rather anthropoid aspect. They are valued for their milk, not their flesh, and no more males than are needed for breeding are ever raised. The females have remarkably pronounced mammary developments which are, if I may so phrase it, directly and immediately exploitable by men. The herdsman's feeling of communion with such a breed is—imaginably—great. Not to put too fine a point on it, jabóbo cults—originating in various fertility-promoting rituals informally practiced by herdsmen—now abound in Prior Kairnlaw. Sacred herds are designated and the rituals centered on them are reported—probably reliably—to have both dionysiac and priapic features. (The herds are often called, by local cynics, "sacred seraglios.") Whether the ancestors of the Latter Kairns, when they possessed that bovine Eden, ran to similar extremes is a moot question. A primitive purity of both rite and tenet is hotly alleged by them today, and it may have been so. Certainly they too in their day had sacred herds, and their doctrine holds the descendants of these beasts to be sacred still, and still their own religious property. Hence Prior Kairnlaw cult activities are felt by Latter Kairns as an intolerably flagrant profanation of their lactescent icons, a heinous sacrilege daily renewed. On this question the Latter Kairns focus all the rage and anguish of their dispossession. And it was during the First Jabóbo Wars that they—athirst for a vengeance beyond the scope of torch and sword—began buying sorcery in the cities of Shormuth. The Prior Kairns armed themselves in haste from the same dubious arsenal, and three centuries of necromantic skirmishing, not yet abated, were begun.