“You will find the truth disappointing. The sinking of Ys was a public works project. The secret masters of the three worlds came here to choose a city whose buildings and populace would be transported to the very deepest waters of the Bay of Dreams, there to serve as an anchor point for a system of ley lines connecting Faerie, Aerth, and the Empyrean. Knowing what city they had in mind, my father was determined to prevent—”
“Wait,” Cat said. “Before your lies grow too elaborate, you should know. In Carcassonne I found a bundle of letters from you to your lover and read them all. The last was from the day before Ys disappeared beneath the waves. So I know something about its doom, and it was nothing like what you say.”
“My letters? In Carcassonne?” Dahut grasped Cat’s hands so tightly they stung. With great intensity she said, “You lie! But why would you? It makes no sense. Tell me. I sent a token in one of them. What was it? What color was it?”
“A lock of hair. It was black like yours.”
“Then Prince Benthos is dead.” Dahut released Cat, who drew back out of her reach. “Dead or, worse, unfaithful.”
“Enough.” Fingolfinrhod came up behind Dahut and massaged her shoulders. “You are scaring my little sister, you terrible creature.”
Dahut looked like a wild animal. “I must kill myself—but I can’t! Not in this cursed place. What am I to do?”
“You are to calm down. A bundle of letters, no matter how compromising, means nothing. Things get stolen, you know.”
“Or misfiled,” Cat added. “I was in clerical for a while, and it happens all the time.”
Fingolfinrhod threw himself back on a divan, pulling Dahut after him. “Here. Lie beside me. Place your head on my lap and finish the story you were telling us.”
Dahut shuddered and closed her eyes. Then, her cheek on Fingolfinrhod’s knee, she stared ahead of herself at nothing and said, “Where the ley lines of the air converged, Glass Mountain was already an anchor, as was the House of Glass where the ley lines of the land met. The fire lines were anchored in the Empyrean by Mount Obsidian, of course. That left only the ley lines of the ocean unanchored and since the Court of Lyr refused to sacrifice any of its own cities, Ys was the obvious choice. To everyone but those of us living there, I mean.”
“Strange that three of the locales had similar names,” Fingolfinrhod murmured, “but not the fourth.”
“Ys means ‘glass’ in the Dawn Tongue.”
“Ah.”
“Perhaps with my help my father could have prevailed, for I was well-versed in the law and devious where he was straightforward. But while he contended over obscure clauses in treaties dating back to the partition of the land and sea, I slipped away. Then I ran with all my will to the seawall. You read my letters—you know why. The western sky was black with storm and lightning lashed the waters. At the driving edge of the squall was a small speck that could only be Prince Benthos, my lover, racing straight toward the city. In fast pursuit were three more specks which I later learned were the Sons of Lyr, his brothers. The seas were high and the air cold with salt spray as I descended the stairs on the seaward side of the wall.
“My skiff had been moored to a bronze ring there and was being bounced high and low by the waves. It was a desperate deed to judge its ascent and leap into it at the high point. When I crashed down onto the planking, I almost overturned it. But I managed to keep the skiff upright. I slipped the hawser, seized the oars, and rowed out into the open waters.
“No woman is a master of such seas. The ocean took the oars from me with arrogant ease and flung them away. So I had no choice but to raise the sail. It was madness, but at that moment I was not exactly sane.
“Do you sail? A pity. Then I must skip over feats of seamanship that would have left you in awe of me. In brief: I didn’t drown. In fact, I had almost reached the four Sons of Lyr when the foremost of them abandoned his sea-form and bestrode the waters on two legs, godlike, raising the Horn of Holmdel to his lips.
“On the first note, flames danced upon the water. On the second, they raced to either side and up onto the land, forming a great encroaching circle with Ys at its center. But I had no eyes for the flames but only for he that blew upon the Horn, for it was Prince Benthos, all unclad and as beautiful as ever a man has been.
“Then the three other Sons of Lyr reached my love and, grappling with him, tried to wrest the Horn from his grip even as he played the final notes of the spell.
“My skiff turned over then.
“It would have been impossible for me to both sail the boat and bail, so it had been filling with water all the time. A blast of wind from an unexpected quarter and I was flung into the sea to die before my beloved’s eyes.
“But I managed to claw my way back to the surface and when I did, I saw Prince Benthos with a mighty surge break free from the arms of his brothers. Seeing my plight, he threw—”
“Oh, please do stop,” Fingolfinrhod said. “You have stretched my sister’s gullibility so far that I just heard it snap, and as for me … Well, I never believed in Prince Benthos in the first place. He’s too perfect, too conveniently inaccessible, too obviously somebody you made up to instill jealousy in me so I can be more easily manipulated.”
Ashen-faced, Dahut snapped to her feet and strode to a cabinet. With three quick gestures, she commanded it to unlock. The doors opened to reveal a conch shell resting on a small stand. Reverently, she lifted it.
Cat could not take her eyes away from the shell. It was so very real as to make everything and everyone around it, herself included, seem but shadows.
“This is the Horn of Holmdel. It was shaped before the beginning of time and sounded to mark the onset of Creation. Someday, a different tune will be played upon it and all of Faerie will be undone and its history unmade so that none of this ever happened.” She placed the shell down on a nearby table. “But that day is a long way off. In the meantime, it is quite possibly the most valuable object in the universe. Think how great the love had to be of he who gave me it.”
Cat lowered her eyes. “I apologize for any doubts I may have had.”
“Not me,” Fingolfinrhod said. “I know you too well. I have no idea how you came by that doohickey. But experience has taught me how wily you are and I know better than to believe anything that comes out of your mouth.”
“You should revere my every word, and show me far more honor than you do. Someday, Prince Benthos will come for me, and then I will be the only thing standing between you and his righteous wrath, O second-best beloved.”
“Says you, fish lips.”
“Air-breather.”
“Bottom-feeder.”
“Third-rate cocksman.”
They glared one another into silence. Then Fingolfinrhod said, “Cat, one of the servants can show you to your room. Anything you need—fresh clothes, food, cocktails, whatever—they will provide. Tell them I doubt I’ll be home for dinner.”
Cat took the hint and left Dahut’s apartment, the bridge of shadows unmaking itself behind her.
* * *
When Cat came to breakfast the next morning, Fingolfinrhod was already at table, looking bleary and bedraggled. Smearing herring roe on slices of sea cucumber, he said, “Dahut tells me she has only a fraction of the energy she enjoyed when she was on land.” His mouth twisted wryly. “I’m grateful I didn’t know her then.”
“As long as you’re having fun,” Cat said, amused.
“I’m not.” Fingolfinrhod put down his fork. “I love her. Isn’t that awful? It gets worse. I have no idea whether she loves me or not. She says she does. But she says a lot of things.” He spooned a mound of pickled jellyfish onto his plate, then stared down at it with genteel dismay. Lightly, he said, “Don’t get me wrong, I love the local cuisine. But you can’t imagine what I’d give for a fried hen’s egg and a slice of toast right now.”
Cat ignored this last. “If you’re not happy—” she began.
“How could this have happened? On
e could hardly say we were suited for each other. She is all impulse and I all control. She’s needy, I’m aloof. I’m subtle, she’s direct. Her prejudices are at least a thousand years out of date. I reason things out to the point of tedium, or so my critics tell me, and she is a force of nature.
“I never did care much for nature.
“So why does she obsess me? I’ve had more skilled lovers and more perverse—though I have no complaints about Dahut on either ground. We certainly don’t share a commonality of experience. I cannot exist without books and yet I believe that a day with nothing to do but read would kill her. When we’re apart, I think of nothing but her. When we’re together, we argue. We can’t even live in the same building. I—”
The sweet sighs of a soft summer breeze sounded from the balcony. What joy, Cat thought, Dahut has come to visit.
Fingolfinrhod wiped his mouth as he rose to his feet, tossing aside the napkin just in time to receive a kiss that struck Cat as being far more passionate than was called for so early in the day. “Belovedest,” Dahut said. “Go away. Go shopping or whatever it is that men do when there are no women around. Your sister and I have serious matters to discuss.”
When they were alone, Dahut said, “You know that I love your brother.”
“I know that it’s a possibility.”
“Fingolfinrhod is the only joy I have in this city. You heard about his diagnosis? One year. I want him to enjoy every second of that year. Your presence makes him happy. Therefore you must stay. Say you will.”
“I’ll … give it serious thought.” A year was a long time. But Cat had nothing better to do, now that all her hopes and plans had collapsed. Her brother was the only individual in all the world she honestly believed loved her. Stay? She very well might.
“No one could ask for more.” Dahut hugged Cat and kissed both her cheeks. “Now that that’s settled … I showed you mine yesterday. It’s only fair that you show me yours.”
“I’m not following you. My what?”
“Your amulets of power. Or whatever it is that allowed you to make the perilous transition from land to sea. It surely required a great deal of magic to accomplish that.”
Reluctantly, Cat drew out the key to the ocean and dangled it before her. “This is what enables me to walk and breathe underwater.”
Dahut rubbed the key between her fingers. “It’s a Class Two artifact, but a very early one and extremely well made.” She let it fall and Cat realized she had been holding her breath. Hastily, she stuffed the key back under her blouse. “And for transportation?”
“I left it in my room. Wait here.”
When Cat had fetched the pennywhistle, Dahut took it from her hands and stroked it slowly and lovingly. “The craft that went into this! So lovely.”
Then, with inhuman strength, she snapped the pennywhistle in two. When Cat leaped forward, she stopped her with a hand to the face. With her free hand, she tossed the halves over her shoulder, out the window, and into oblivion.
“There,” Dahut said. “Now you have no choice but to stay.”
Is it death to stay in Egypt?
is it death to stay here,
in a trance, following a dream?
—H.D., Helen in Egypt
Having neither purpose nor responsibilities, Cat took to wandering the streets of Ys, as anonymous as a sultan passing among his people in disguise or a flaneuse idly observing the ways of Paris (an occupation and a place Helen assured her really did exist in her origin-world), headed nowhere, talking to everyone, exploring its labyrinthine streets and alleys and cul-de-sacs, opening doors marked NO ENTRY, poking her nose wherever it didn’t belong. She discovered a dreaming metropolis whose citizens sleepwalked through the motions of their daily routines. Cooks prepared meals that were eaten joylessly and did not care. Musicians played on street corners, hats at feet, for passersby who never threw in a coin. Police went through the motions of arresting criminals who couldn’t be bothered to rob a store. Bankers made no loans. Papergirls slept late and drifted to schools where they learned nothing, leaving their newspapers undelivered. Cat picked one off an abandoned stack and saw that it was shopworn and undated.
Talking to individuals restored them to a temporary semblance of life. But it didn’t last.
“I was standing right over there when the ocean drank the city,” a construction worker told Cat. “The sea rose up like a mountain and I thought I was going to die. I wish now I had, instead of being condemned to live this same exhausted life forever and ever.”
“You could leave, surely. It’s not a long walk to the city limits and the merfolk, though fierce and wild, aren’t unfriendly.”
The worker lifted her nail gun and drove a nail into the sea-oak paneling she was installing. “Does the nail decide to leave after being driven into the plank?”
“But you’re not a nail.”
“Then what am I? What are we all? Real? Phantoms? I have no idea. My memories are so very vague. Every day is the same as the one before. All the children grew up long ago. Now there are none. Only unaging, undying adults.”
“Tell me something,” Cat said. “If there are neither deaths nor births in Ys, why is it under constant construction?” The windows hadn’t been installed yet and fish swam in and out of the room without hindrance. “Half these buildings are empty. The rest have only a handful of occupied apartments in them. Surely nobody needs more.”
“I don’t set policy and I don’t ask questions. I’m a builder. I build.”
* * *
In Shipwreck Park, Cat met two day laborers who were stolidly scrubbing away a large white graffito of a coiled serpent that had been stenciled onto the hulk of the Lithos Pandoras. Under the serpent in block letters was the slogan VENIT. “Who did this?” she asked.
“I don’t give a shit,” one of the laborers said. “I just wish they’d fucking stop.”
“This is the first time I’ve seen graffiti in Ys. All the other cities I’ve ever been in were crawling with it.”
“Fifth one this week,” the second laborer said. “Every one in a different style, so it’s not just one tagger. Cleaning it away is a real pain in the butt. Still, it beats scraping barnacles.”
“Any idea what it means?” Cat asked.
“I don’t give a shit. I may have mentioned that before.”
“No idea.” The second laborer put down her brush. “It’s a strange thing, though. I had a dream about a serpent last night. Didn’t give it a thought until just now. It was an ugly bastard. As big as the Demiurge’s dong and as pale as Lady Nyx’s tits. I woke up in a sweat, like it meant something, ya know?”
“Keep scrubbing, jackoff. I had the same dream too, but you don’t see me sitting down on my thumb to reminisce about it.”
* * *
In a brothel with a well-stocked bar where no customers drank and an organ that nobody played, a sex worker said, “I had a lover safely stashed out in the countryside when the Judgment of Dahut fell upon us. She died so long ago that I can’t even remember her name. Meanwhile, my wife goes on and on, century after century after century, never changing in any way and thus becoming every year more detestably predictable.”
“How horrible for you.”
“She gets hers,” the prostitute said with a terrible grimace. “I haven’t said an original word to her for as long as either of us can remember.”
“Have you had any strange dreams lately?”
“Naw. Just the one about the snake. But everyone gets that.”
* * *
It was lunchtime, so Cat went into a restaurant and amused herself by assembling a meal, a plate at a time, from the trays of passing waitresses. She set the food down on a table where a financier (to judge by her HP-12C financial calculator and the spreadsheets she was working on) was eating alone.
“How’s business?” Cat asked, applying wasabi to her sashimi.
“Nonexistent. Ys doesn’t have a capitalist economy or even a mercantile economy—it
has a curse economy. Everything gets done not from rational causes but because it was so ordained. Thus I have no function. But I was a money changer when the Sons of Lyr fell upon the city, so I am doomed to remain in a useless occupation that gives me no pleasure.”
“Why don’t you leave the city?”
“I don’t know. Have you tried doing it yourself?”
“I … Somehow, I haven’t. I can’t imagine why.”
“Well, then.” The financier put her spreadsheets in her briefcase. “It’s time I was back at the office.”
“Did you have a dream recently?” Cat asked. “About a large white serpent?”
“How strange. I’d forgotten all about that. How did you—? Well, no matter.” The financier dropped a business card on the table. “If you ever need financial services, look me up.”
* * *
Such was life in Ys. Its stoops were swept clean daily and the beds of decorative tube worms planted in public spaces were regularly tended to. Plays were performed in its theaters, and operas in the concert halls. Streets were closed for festivals. Sea bulls and hippocamps were sacrificed on all the high feast days. The city was peaceful, productive, and prosperous.
It could have been a good life had anybody cared. But the plays, concerts, street fairs, and sacrifices all went unattended.
The Iron Dragon’s Mother Page 27
