Land of the Beautiful Dead

by Smith, R. Lee

  The flames of his eyes flickered. He turned them out on the hall where his Children lay. His eyes rested longest on Batuuli.

  “I’m not saying you had anything to apologize for,” she said uncomfortably. “Just that, from her view—”

  “Thirty-one.”

  Lan blinked.

  He stared at the bodies for maybe half a minute more, then leaned back in his throne and picked up his cup again. He didn’t drink, just held it. “She asked how long it was before I saw the love die in her eyes. Thirty-one days. Even before the massacre, she had already begun to turn, but I thought…she would grow out of it.” He glanced over at Batuuli’s body. Blood had made a small pool around her head, like a dark halo. “I could have made her love me.”

  “You can’t make someone—”

  “Of course I can. My Revenants are made without the capacity to betray me, their loyalty and obedience assured without the inconvenience of earning it. My steward, my chamberlain, my cooks—all were raised to serve me with the most abject devotion, incapable of treachery. I could have brought her into this life with no other thoughts but mine. I could have put every word she ever spoke into her mouth. What are the dead to me but dolls? I can fill them with whatever stuffing I desire.”

  Lan picked at the arm of her chair. The gold color was only paint and peeling. Beneath was just wood, greyish with age and a bit dry, as if it had spent too much time in storage. “Why didn’t you?”

  “I could tell you I had heard enough of my own thoughts in the ages of my solitude and I suspect you would believe me, but the truth is, I knew no better. They were the first I had ever raised not to rot. All my concentration was taken in that endeavor, to stay corruption and ensure immortality equal to my own so that I would always…always have them. I did not realize until she was raised what I had done. Once made, my dead cannot be altered, only unmade, so I let her be. And I made them all in her image, so hers would not be the only mind among them. I knew it was a mistake.” He looked into his cup and gave it a brooding swirl. “But it was pleasant, for a time.”

  “A mistake? Is that really how you thought of them?”

  “I mean no offense. Many cherished children begin so.”

  “Then why should they love you? Why should they even try? You gave up on them a long time ago.”

  He grew perfectly, ominously still.

  “How readily you speak those words,” he said after a while. The light in his eyes sparked brighter, but he did not look at her. “Long time. What is that to you? A year? Ten years?”

  Too late, Lan bit her tongue. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “I did not give up my Children’s love a long time ago,” he said, stabbing the words in like knives and twisting. “I gave that up almost in the same instant that I dared the attempt, but I did not have a long time to live with my mistake. No, child, that wound is still bleeding. A long time? A long time is what I spent in darkness, alone, convincing myself that if I had but one companion, I could endure the deathless hell of my existence! To see a face not my own! To hear another voice!”

  “I’m sorry,” Lan said again. As bad a taste as it left in her mouth, she said it all: “For…your loss.”

  “My loss? Mine?” He threw a laugh at her and banged his cup down. “I’ll not end my hungering dead for your empty platitudes. There is such a thing as being too diplomatic.”

  Lan opened her mouth to argue and shut it again with a grimace. It was a stupid thing to say, even to the living. To him, it was obscene. But she couldn’t take it back, even in her own mind. She was sorry. She really was.

  She picked at the arm of her chair, prying up flakes of gold paint and reminding herself with each splinter flicked away of the things he’d done—to her, to Norwood, to the whole world. “At least you can grieve for them.”

  There was no answer, not one she could hear anyway, and she refused to look up. She watched her fingers chip away at the arm of the chair, exposing more and more of the ugly wood beneath. “You realize, don’t you, that you’re probably the only one in the world who can? You can be alone with them, say all those things you forgot to tell them and not have other people listening or laughing at how corny it sounds or just sighing because you’re taking so long. You can clean them up instead of chop them up. You can hold their hands because they’ll never grab you. You can kiss them one last time and never think even once how close that brings you to their teeth. You can grieve…and you don’t.”

  “I gave them all they wanted from me. I gave them death.” He rubbed once more at his lidless eyes, then took up his mask and stood, calling for his steward.

  After a noticeable pause, the dining hall doors opened and a dead man entered. There was no sign of apprehension on his pretty face, but he bowed quite a bit lower and longer than usual. “My lord.”

  “Have this—” Azrael walked to the edge of the dais and gestured vaguely at the tables. “—packed and call in Deimos.”

  “Yes, my lord.” The dead man gestured to someone out of the sight in the hall. “And…your Children?”

  Azrael had already turned away. Only Lan saw the shadow of pain that tightened his muscles and dimmed his eyes. And he knew it had been seen. She could actually see him considering killing her for it, as clearly as if he were painting pictures in the air, but then his gaze fell to Solveig, lying at the foot of the dais steps. His voice, when he spoke, was no louder than a breath. “What do I do for them?”

  “Why…” Lan shifted uncomfortably closer and lowered her own voice to a whisper. “Why are you asking me?”

  “I don’t know what to tell him.” He raised his eyes, with effort, to search hers. “I don’t know how…How do you tend the dead? How do you honor them?”

  Lan could feel that same stupid flutter of sympathy crawling up her throat. This time, she swallowed it. “Ours turn into Eaters,” she reminded him. “We break their backs and burn them.”

  He turned his head and stayed that way, motionless, long after any sense of victory at seeing it had died. “Make whatever arrangements you deem appropriate,” he said finally.

  “Yes, my lord.” The steward glanced behind him into the hall. “Deimos, my lord.”

  Azrael beckoned, but did not turn, staring instead at Lan while the Revenant captain marched toward them. It was quiet enough, empty enough, that his boots made echoes and when those echoes stopped, Azrael said, “I require you to take a delivery of food to Norwood.”

  The Revenant showed no surprise. “At once, my lord.”

  “I trust it is more than Norwood requires or, indeed, can easily store,” Azrael went on, still staring down at Lan, “but whether they send the excess to other villages or sell it for profit or let it rot in the mud, I leave to their own judgment. I suspect they would rather waste what they cannot themselves consume. Humans, by their nature, do not readily extend sympathy to the suffering of others.”

  “That’s funny, coming from you.”

  “Is it? I don’t seem to understand humor well. I do, however, understand suffering. And sympathize. So if it is accepted,” Azrael continued, “such a delivery shall be made following the nightly feast, say, on each full moon.”

  Lan had only been waiting for him to stop talking so she could answer his use of the words ‘suffering’ and ‘sympathy’, but this unexpected offer killed her argument unborn. She stepped back, uncertain.

  He stepped forward, taking up that distance and more. “If it is accepted,” he repeated, with a distinct emphasis on the first word. He waited until he saw that Lan had heard it, then swung around to face his Revenant captain. “If it is not, if they choose instead to refuse my generous gift, if they fire upon the hands that extend it—”

  “Wait,” said Lan.

  “You are to break the walls of Norwood.”

  “You can’t do that! The Eaters—”

  “Shatter their greenhouses. Burn every building. Let nothing stand but the stones of their foundations.”

  Deimos no
dded once. “And the people, my lord?”

  “No!” Lan leapt up, darting around the table to catch at his arm. “I’m sorry! Please! Kill me if you have to, but leave them alone!”

  “Shall I show compassion?” he asked, staring coldly down at her as she clung to him.

  “Yes! Please!”

  “Whose? Mine or yours?”

  Lan could only look at him, knowing she was powerless, knowing he knew it too.

  He waited.

  “Mine,” she whispered. “Mine, but—”

  “So be it. Captain.”

  “Yes, lord?”

  “When you kill them, you will break their backs and burn them. You see? I can be merciful. And I expect you to be grateful for it when next we meet.” Azrael shook her off and seized her by the neck of her gown in the same motion, hurling her off the dais into the Revenant’s ready hands. “Get her out of my sight.”

  “Yes, lord.” Deimos turned, dragging Lan with him as he marched swiftly away.

  “Please, don’t do this!” Lan cried, stumbling as she fought against the Revenant’s grip, to no avail. “Azrael! Damn it, I said I was sorry!”

  He did not answer. He kept his broad back to her and stood, motionless and unfeeling as a statue. She thought he might have turned his head slightly when the first of her noisy sobs shook out of her, but if so, it was only slightly. Then she was out, being passed into the hands of Azrael’s steward with all the care and consideration that might be shown to a bag of potatoes.

  “What am I supposed to do with this?” the steward asked, pinching Lan’s sleeves between the extreme tips of his fingers so as to touch her as little as possible.

  Deimos glanced back at the doors to the dining hall, his brows slightly furrowed. “He spoke of wanting her grateful at their next meeting. You would know better than I what to do with her until then.”

  “I never want to see him again!” Lan wept.

  They ignored her.

  “All right.” The steward passed her off to a pikeman. “To our lord’s chambers.”

  “I won’t go!”

  The steward signaled a second pikeman. Between them, they picked her up as she struggled and simply carried her away.

  * * *

  They had changed the bedding in Azrael’s room from black and gold to grey and silver, which, with the cushions covered over and the room mostly in shadows, gave the whole thing the appearance of stone. Not a bed at all, but an altar. A place of sacrifice. How fitting that the chains she’d last worn should still be here.

  Lan locked herself angrily into them and sat down to wait.

  Hours passed without any way to count them. The fire had no fuel, but burned no lower. The only sound was the fountain spilling endlessly into Azrael’s bath. Her only companions were his sightless, staring masks.

  Gradually, her thoughts shifted from Have they left yet? to Where are they now? Just how far was it from Haven to Norwood? She’d never spent more than an hour or so in any one ferry, in part because the ferrymen tended to keep regular rounds from which they were unwilling to deviate for one fare, but also because the ferries themselves just couldn’t hold that much of a charge. If the batteries went dry outside the walls, even one mile might as well be a thousand. But the Revenants had better vehicles and no reason to fear the Eaters. They had done in one day and one night the same distance that had taken Lan two months. Could they be there again already? How were they met?

  Was everyone she knew dead?

  The more she tried not to think of that, the more those thoughts ate their way in. Anger distracted her for a while, but couldn’t last. Fear followed, erosive, opening up a wider, blacker emptiness inside her that filled slowly up with guilt. Eventually, even that was gone and she was left not thinking, not even really feeling anymore, but only waiting.

  Finally, he came.

  She heard the door open, heard him say, “What—?” and then there was nothing for some time, only the weight of his stare. At last, the heavy door closed. His footsteps approached, aimed nowhere but at her. Lan tensed, her eyes fixed on the floor in front of her.

  He sat on the foot of the bed right behind her. She could feel the chill from his body, see the grey blur of him at the edge of her perceptions. When he took his mask off and set it on the bed beside him, one of its horns caught in her hair. He unhooked it, stroked her hair once, then clasped his hands and leaned forward over his thighs. He did not speak.

  All the time he’d been gone, she had imagined this moment, when she could be defiant in chains at his feet. Now he was here. She had no strength, no courage, only Norwood.

  “I am sorry,” Lan said. “If that makes any difference. I’m…so sorry. Please, I’ll do anything—”

  “I have no way to call them back.”

  “Then they’re all dead.”

  They sat together, silent.

  “They may choose not to provoke my Revenants,” he said at last. “They know they are unmatched.”

  “I know we’re unmatched. I still provoked you.” Lan rubbed her dry eyes. Her chains rattled. “Haven’t you learned by now how stupidly self-destructive human nature really is?”

  Azrael’s hand gripped her shoulder and gently squeezed. “I have learned it is unpredictable.”

  “That’s not very comforting.”

  There was a short, yet profound pause and then he said, “Are you…Do you want me to comfort you?”

  Did she? She had never felt less like laughing in her life, but she did, and it truly felt funny. The tears that immediately followed were just as unstoppable and just as honest.

  Azrael heaved a sigh that stirred her hair. Then he slipped his hands beneath her arms and pulled her up to sit on the bed beside him. Her chains weren’t quite long enough to allow that, so she ended up bent double, sobbing hard with her hands stuck out while he fetched the key from its hook on the wall and unlocked her shackles. Freed, she fell back and rolled onto her side, drawing her knees up to her chest, and just let the tears come.

  She saw their faces—Danae and her children, snotty little Abbey and serious Ivy, who slept on the other side of the curtain next to Lan and her mother; Mother Muggs, who kept a hawk’s eye on all the goings-on of the Women’s Lodge and whose pinching fingers traveled freely through everyone’s pockets when no one was there to see; the Goode twins, Pippa and Posey, who had bought Lan’s share of the orchard for a pair of worn-out boots and a patched rucksack; Sheriff Neville and the louts who served under him, keeping order with batons and bare knuckles; Mayor Fairchild and his prune-faced wife and their brood of soft-handed children, Quillan and Henry and Sora and Eithon—oh, Eithon—none of whom ever set foot in a greenhouse unless it was to mock those working there. She was close to none of them, but she knew them all, every man and woman, every elder and every child, and knowing that dawn might find them all in an ash-pile while Eaters wandered through the broken glass and burnt wood of their ruined village made it easy to forget all the bad feelings and remember simply that they were human and how precious and rare life was.

  If it ended tonight in Norwood, it would be her fault.

  She hadn’t been able to stop the tears when they started. She couldn’t call them back when they dried up, even though her misery still sat like a stone in her chest, undiminished. She stared into the wall, her heart breaking into smaller and sharper pieces with every beat, and thought of herself in this very room, saying, ‘There never was an Eater turned back by tears.’

  “I wish I’d never come here,” she said.

  Azrael, waiting out her useless hysterics over by the fire, did not reply.

  “I want to go home.” She curled up tighter, burying her face against her knees. “Let me go.”

  “Why?”

  “I should die with the rest of them.”

  “Why?” he asked again, this time with the faintest hint of irritation. “How would that help?”

  “It doesn’t.” She laughed once, bitterly. “I can’t do anything to help
them. No matter how hard I try.”

  “Self-pity is not attractive.”

  “So? I’ll never be one of the beautiful dead.” Thoughts of Norwood rose like bubbles in mud, slow to surface, bringing with them the stink of deeper decay. She had always known this would end in failure. Now she would have to return to tumbled walls, to the dead staggering restlessly through blood and mud and broken glass. No one would be there to burn her when they took her down. No one would break her back to stop her from getting up again. “Let me go,” she said again. “You said you would. You said you’d send me anywhere I wanted.”

  “You will recall I am a tyrant.”

  She thought of Norwood. Pippa and Posey would have turned the rows as soon as Lan left, planting their own good barley and selling Lan’s marrow plants and next season’s bean seed to those who could afford no better. The trees which had been the source of such grim pride to Lan’s mother would be fruiting, assuming they hadn’t already been picked clean to supply Azrael’s first demand. In the alehouse, they would be making yeast cakes and drying hops in preparation for brewing the beer that would keep the mayor richer than everyone else for another year. The late-season lambs would be weaned and their mothers ready for fresh breeding; the yearlings slaughtered at Yule would soon be coming out of the smokehouse to make room for the hogs that would go under the hammer at Beltane. These were the rhythms of Norwood’s simple song: sow and reap, work and sleep, birth and death. Every day like the day before, building a year that would pass the same as every other.

  Azrael’s rough hand brushed at her shoulder. She hadn’t heard him approach.

  “Please end the Eaters.” Lan rolled over, catching at his arm before he could withdraw. “Just for tonight. Please. If they have to die, let them die, but please don’t make them come back!”

  “Deimos has his orders. He will fulfill them.”

  “Yeah, he’ll break their backs so they can’t move, but they’ll still come back! He’ll burn them, but he’ll burn them alive!”

  “Not alive.”

  “They scream, Azrael! Eaters scream! Don’t tell me they can’t feel it!”