Land of the Beautiful Dead

by Smith, R. Lee

  “I’m not here to kill you, damn it!”

  “No. Plainly, you have come on a diplomatic mission. One for which you are uniquely unqualified.”

  Lan flushed. “I just want to talk!”

  “You forget I am familiar with the way humans ‘talk’.” The word was a curse in his mouth, even if he smiled as he said it. “I have been a supplicant to Men. I endured without protest every indignity they inflicted as my ‘show of faith’. I allowed them to bare my body, to fondle it and indeed, to enter it. And when they satisfied themselves that I was utterly unarmed, these men of peace brought out their weapons and emptied them into me. I survived it, as I survive all things, and gave them better deaths than they deserved, I dare say. So this was done and so I went in to the audience I had earned, allowing those men, who had surely given the killing order to their slaves, every opportunity to treat with me honestly. I made my demands—You will note I do not say I asked,” he added with an arch sidelong glance. “With the bodies of their minions strewn about the tent still choked with the smoke from their weapons and dewed with my blood, they gave me every agreement even as they made plans to invade the prison they had not yet set me in and butcher the children they had not yet given me. This is how the living ‘talk’…with smiles and lies.”

  Lan shook her head and stared at the wall, clenching her jaws tight together to keep from spitting out something else she knew she’d only regret.

  “Have you nothing else to say?”

  “You’ve already decided not to listen.”

  “One wonders how you could have expected anything else.” He gazed around the empty room, then moved past her and headed for the door. When he opened it, the hall beyond was lined with guardsmen as deep as Lan could see. Azrael gestured toward them. “If your appetite returns in my absence, by all means, stay and eat your fill, child. When you are finished, my men will see you safely to the town of your choosing. I advise you to stay well clear of Norwood.” He turned to the first of his guards. “Food and water for her journey. If she has other requests, inform me.”

  “Wait!” She ran after him, but had to stop at the door, where two guards crossed their pikes before her.

  Azrael did stop, although he did not turn to look at her. “You are proving an unruly guest,” he warned. “Take care lest you become unwelcome.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until we talk!” Lan pushed futilely at a pike, but it was no more yielding than the dead man who held it. In frustration, she slapped at the door itself, making little noise but hurting her hand. “You have to listen!”

  “You command me nothing.”

  “People are dying! The war is over and you’re still killing us!”

  “The war?” Now Azrael turned, head lowered like that of a bull about to charge. “I desired no war. My demands were small. There need never have been any conflict. After my age of solitude, I sought only companionship. Did I demand a tithe of virgins? Did I raid them for their favored firstborn? No! I raised up their unwanted ones, the merest handful, to reside with me in peace. I was content to be imprisoned, content to live with my Children under their watch until the end of Time itself, if that was their pleasure. No one need ever have suffered for it. No one need ever have lain eyes on them or my terrible self again. Yet they defied me. They lured me out for talk and they slaughtered my helpless Children where they stood, too innocent even to know to scream. Now you dare to come before me protesting the war they began, the war they demanded!”

  “When is it going to be enough?” she countered. “How many millions of lives equal the few you lost, the few you stole from their families, stole right out of their graves?”

  “Enough!” Azrael turned to his guards. “Take her to the meditation garden. Perhaps a night in chains will improve our guest’s manners.”

  The guards obeyed at once, each taking one of her arms in a firm grip. Clearly, struggle was expected, but she went with them in spite of their pulling, not because of it. As she passed Azrael, standing in the hall with his arms folded across his scarred chest, she said, “I’m not giving up. I won’t leave. You’ll have to kill me to get rid of me.”

  He tsked behind his expressionless mask. “I don’t doubt your conviction, child, yet a worldly traveler such as yourself ought to have been made aware that killing is not what I am known for.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  As promised, Lan spent the night in chains, affixed to a support in such a manner that she was forced to kneel with her hands behind her back and her head bent. It had hurt for a few hours, but she’d since acclimated some and let the support take her weight, so now she was mostly just stiff. Her legs from the knees down were numb, but although she dreaded having to move and wake them up, she was perfectly aware that her discomforts were petty ones, particularly given her present company.

  It was a cold night, but the meditation garden in Azrael’s palace had high walls all around that cut most of the wind and there was a fire burning not far from Lan that kept her fairly warm even during the worst hours. The fire was a man. He had been soaked in some kind of oil before his impalement, so that he burned through the night with low greenish flames that put out columns of greasy smoke. Now, the man was little more than a charred lump with the suggestion of legs, one arm, a node of a head. Lan could hear crackling as he shifted, struggling either to free himself or come after her, but she did not watch him. The stink of burnt flesh blew into her face all night; she thought of her mother and, much as she fought not to, sometimes she cried.

  The burning man was only one of three that shared the garden with her. As the sun came up in the bruised sky, she could see them better. One was a scrawny teenager with short hair and a flat chest, most likely a boy. The hands were bound behind his (for the sake of argument) back, frozen into claws. It had been a simple impalement; the spike itself was little more than an accent to the scene—hidden behind the man’s bound legs with no more than a few inches protruding through his broken teeth. It hadn’t been a quick death and it was an even worse way to come back. As an Eater, he wasn’t even aware of the spike that pinned him in place. He only knew that Lan was there, living meat bafflingly out of reach, but a hungry stare and slow writhing was all he could manage and it was easy enough to ignore him.

  The third man was the worst. He had been a guard and was still wearing most of his uniform, stripped of his rank and insignia. He had been denied an impalement, but this was not mercy: thick wires pierced him at two or three dozen points, but only to support and bind him; his eyelids had been cut away so that his eyes could be lubricated by the viscous liquid that dripped from the pipework frame to which he was wired. Although he himself was not decayed, his belly had been opened and the pale daylight showed signs of predation. He had made no effort to speak, but now and then, his eyes shifted in their lidless sockets to look at Lan.

  The morning lengthened. Lan listened to the burning man crackle and watched the newborn Eater drool around his impaling spike as he stared at her. As the air warmed, enterprising birds fluttered down to perch on the former guard’s belt and peck breakfast out of his entrails. Muted voices drifted down through open windows as the halls of Azrael’s palace began to fill with servants going about their daily routine. As the sky lightened, Lan couldn’t help but think of Norwood and what she would be doing right now, if nothing had changed. Her day would have started with sweeping out the hearth of the women’s lodge for Mother Muggs and filling the woodbin. Then she would have to hurry over to Mayor Fairchild’s house and in through the back door to do the same for them before heading out to the pens to tend their pigs, goats and geese. If Missus was feeling Lady-of-the-Manor, Lan might be given a box-lunch of whatever was left over from the family’s breakfast to eat later, but even if not, Lan could usually steal a bit of cheese or crust of bread in the chaos that was the Fairchilds’ kitchen. Either way, she would be fed by now and hard at work in her own rows in the greenhouse.

  She needed to stop thinking about food, becau
se it only made her hungrier. For that matter, she needed to stop thinking about work, because not being able to move around made even those back-breaking chores seem desirable. And she especially needed to stop thinking about home, because she didn’t have one.

  So Lan was kneeling there, not thinking, when the garden gates opened. Two Revenants came for her, unlocking the chains from her supporting frame but leaving them attached to her shackles. She couldn’t help screaming a little when they lifted her; her joints, like rusty hinges, screamed along with her.

  The Revenants did not wait for her to find her feet, but simply dragged her between them out of the garden. The burning man writhed, reaching the stump of his last arm toward them, hissing out steam that might have been words if he had lips to shape them. The Revenants ignored him. They had come for Lan. They had no other interest.

  Through the fine rooms and grand corridors of the palace, they walked and Lan was carried. Eventually, she was able to stop moaning, although she had no strength to walk and was shivering too violently to even try. Her world was pain and crystals and cramps and golden light and tears and the occasional glimpse of beautiful, dead faces.

  Gradually, the wide halls narrowed and grew darker. The chandeliers and sconces were replaced by plainer fixtures, more widely spaced along windowless walls. They came to a stair, an empty hall, another stair, and another hall, this one occupied by a dozen pairs or more of pikemen, forming a kind of living, or unliving, corridor that ended in a heavy door banded with iron. Lan closed her eyes and did not open them again until she felt herself dropped. Her chains clanked as they were affixed to some new anchor and then her guards left her.

  When she opened her eyes at last, she appeared to be alone. The room was vast, opening into several wide niches, but all were empty and dark under unlit sconces. In fact, although she could see several fixtures, the only light in the room came from a fireplace on the opposite wall. Like the built-in alcoves lining the walls, the fireplace was plainly intended to be decorative, but its ornate mantel was empty and its brass screen had been pushed carelessly aside. No matter, as the flames appeared to be coming from vented pipes and made no sparks; there wasn’t even a fake log to pretend to be burning. The room’s one remarkable feature was a high, glittering fountain that poured water endlessly from several openings into a dark pool partially shielded by joined panels of opaque glass bordered by a wooden lattice. On the other side, tucked away as if to hide them, were Azrael’s many masks, each one on its own featureless wooden block, arranged on a plain slab of a table. As for the rest of the furnishings, there was only an unwieldy wardrobe set in the far corner where it was all but invisible.

  So it was his room. It had to be. Hardly what she imagined for the ruler of the world, at least until she looked behind her to see a bed the size of the drying shed back in Norwood. It had a roof and pillars and curtains of its own, like it was a house. Its bedding shimmered in the firelight, all black and gold. She counted ten cushions, all shapes, no two exactly alike. It was a bed the way Azrael’s palace was a house or Haven was a town.

  It was a bed…and Lan was chained to it.

  Once more, the heavy door opened. It was Azrael. He didn’t look at her as she struggled to rise from her ungainly sprawl, but went to the fountain, peeling away layers of finery as he walked. The flesh beneath caught every shadow and showed every scar. His back had been so torn by ancient whips that the bones of his spine protruded, curiously lustrous against the dull grey color of his skin, more like pearl than ivory. Lan stared, clutching at her forgotten chains, as the true Azrael—Azrael the immortal, Azrael the eternal, Azrael, lord of the beautiful dead—bared himself, but when he turned around to face her, she quickly dropped her eyes.

  “Modesty,” Azrael observed. “Tell me, is it a virgin who has come so fearlessly to this dragon’s lair?”

  “No.”

  “All to the better.” He turned away, unfastening the delicate catches of his mask with a blind deftness that bespoke much practice. As he moved behind the screen, she saw his silhouette take the mask away and set it aside on the table with all the rest of them. He rubbed the face beneath—not a snake’s head or a skull, but not human either—and stepped down into the pool. “I have no use for virgins and no patience for instructing them.”

  Lan stared at the tiles between her bent knees and listened as Azrael bathed. She realized she could smell herself—the stink of the streets and her own sweat, unwashed God alone knew how many days. Weeks, for certain. Maybe months. Water was too precious now for anything as frivolous as bathing, but her mother had told her stories of being a small child in a huge white bathtub with water up to her chest, painting herself with bubbles. They used to make toys, she’d said, toys just for playing with in the water.

  She stank of smoke. Smoke and charred, dead flesh. For a moment, she almost thought she could smell peach blossoms with it, the way she had smelled them that day…when the fire burned.

  “I hear no protest.”

  Roused from her memories, Lan did not immediately understand. “What am I supposed to be protesting?”

  “My rapacious will.”

  “What good would that do?”

  “You might be surprised.” Azrael dunked himself entirely under the water, coming up with a huge splash that sent droplets over the screen to fall as far as Lan. They were warm at first, but swiftly cooled. “I am aware that my appearance suggests a brutal embrace, but I take no pleasure in fear or pain. Screams and struggles annoy me. You might easily delay your fate, if not escape it wholly, with well-executed resistance.”

  “Screams and struggles annoy me too,” said Lan. “They’re pointless. I’ve never seen an Eater turned back by tears.”

  “Yet you’ve turned them with argument, or so I must assume as you bandy words at me.”

  “Haven’t you ever lost someone you loved?”

  His silhouette stopped moving entirely for a second, maybe two. In a low, brooding tone, he said, “That is the first time anyone has ever suggested I could love.” He turned his back on her and resumed bathing. “You ought to take some pride in that. I don’t stumble on many firsts anymore.”

  “I loved my mother,” Lan said. “She was the only thing I had in the whole world that was really mine. And you didn’t just take her away, you turned her into something else. Something that didn’t know me. Something that had to be destroyed.”

  “Is this your plan, child? To appeal to my sympathies?” Azrael climbed out of his bath and selected a new mask, the black one in the shape of a snarling wolf’s head. He fastened it on, then walked out from behind the screen to dry himself by the fire, otherwise naked. Lan watched his feet, only his feet. “I can’t say I think much of your chances.”

  “If you didn’t want to hear what I have to say, why did you have me brought here?”

  “You cannot be so stupid as to think I summoned you to my bed for conversation. Why be coy?” asked Azrael, leaning up against the mantel. “We both know why you came here.”

  “I was carried here in chains.”

  “You,” he said, pointing a claw at her, “came seeking me in my home. You dangle words such as audience and speak of war and peace, but you brought nothing with which to curry favor and sweeten trade. No, your true intent was that I should see you, find you fair, show you mercy…and where should that end but here? Oh, do not pretend surprise at me. Did you imagine you were the first ever to think of enduring my bed and so raise you out of wretchedness?”

  “That isn’t why I came.”

  “Mm. I hear no lie in that. Intriguing. I choose to believe you. So,” he said thoughtfully. His fingers tapped at the mantelpiece. “Shall you?”

  “Shall I what?”

  “Lie down with the Devil.”

  She could not quite understand that. She ought to, and a part of her knew she ought to, but she couldn’t. It was like trying to patch together a broken glass in which some of the pieces were from a clay cup. “You mean…” Even the
word seemed slightly ridiculous in her mouth. “You mean you want me for your dollygirl?”

  “I daresay it’s easier work than farming.”

  “You’re serious.”

  “I am.”

  She could only stare. She had imagined every possible outcome of this encounter, every possible death, but not this.

  “You seem skeptical. Am I not a man, whatever else I may be? Is it so impossible that I might have a man’s desires?” His gaze moved down over her body. “The Great Jester, in His infinite wisdom, has seen fit to deny me a form that invites seduction, but of negotiation—” He held up one claw, smiling. “—I have both aptitude and resources. Consider that I am in a position to provide you with a far better life than that which you left in Norwood. Certainly now,” he added with low twist of a smile.

  “Now that you’ve sent your Revenants, you mean.” She caught that thought and all the grim imaginings that came with it, and used it to anchor her. “Is this how you get all your women? With murder?”

  “One baits a hook for the fish one desires. For some, a sparkle. For others, carrion. But for you…” Tap-tap-scraaatch went his claw on the mantel. “If the luxuries of my palace are not enough to lure you, you might do well to think of the horrors that await you in the world outside, should I choose to release you.”

  Against her will, Lan’s eyes crawled up Azrael’s legs as far as the relaxed club of his cock. It hung like a dark promise, almost but not quite human in form, twisted out of familiarity. She looked back down at the tiles. “I didn’t come here to escape those horrors. I came to end them.”

  “Oh?” Interest sharpened his tone; amusement blunted it. “Is this an assassination after all?”

  “No. I came for an audience,” she said stubbornly. “Please. The war is over. You have got to stop killing us.”

  His face behind the mask hardened. “I don’t kill anyone.”