«Ask her anything,» I told Yasmin in a low voice. «If you don't have an important question, ask something trivial. What she had for breakfast the day she died.»
But Yasmin wasn't listening. She simply stared at the floating woman, an unreadable expression on her face. Yasmin had never spoken to me of her mother, nor revealed a word about her childhood… but then, we'd had so little time to talk. Anyway, a child may have a hundred hard questions to ask her mother, and be afraid of every answer.
Yasmin licked her lips. «Who…» She cleared her throat. «Who was my father?»
The corpse sighed. I could almost see the air thicken with the bilious smell of corruption from her guts. «Your father was a man, a human man,» the woman said. «For the week we were together, he called himself Rudy Liagar. But later, much later, I saw him from a distance in the streets of Sigil; and every tongue chanted admiration for the hero, Niles Cavendish.»
Without hesitation, the corpse disappeared once more beneath the clear moonlit water. I would have sold my soul for her to leave ten seconds earlier.
* * *
«It could be a lie, couldn't it?» Hezekiah said, when no one else spoke. «Some kind of demonic trick…»
His voice trailed away. Even a Clueless boy knew when he was grasping at straws.
Still, Yasmin turned to me with a fierce look in her eyes. «Tell me it is a lie, Britlin.»
I couldn't meet her gaze. All I could say was, «My father was a hero, not a saint. I know he had other women: mostly short-lived romances during his adventures, but a few dalliances in Sigil too. It always made me so sick at heart, but… never mind. I usually didn't know the women. One of them might have been your mother; but by all the gods, Yasmin, I never suspected… if I ever suspected…»
Could I say it would have made a difference? It made a difference now, yes, with Yasmin staring at me in horror; but still, the sight of her, the brown skin of her shoulders, the flow of her body… could I have resisted her on mere suspicion?
«It's possible,» I sighed. «It's very possible. What else can I say?»
Miriam made a spitting sound. «How about saying, 'Who the hell cares?' I've been watching you two; I have eyes. And the way I see it, people should play things for themselves, and pike the rest of the world. Why should fathers and mothers matter? The past is past, and bloody good riddance. Seize the present, make it yours, however you want. It's your own hearts that matter, and sod all else.»
None of us said anything in reply. Garou laughed and continue to pole past the silent floating bodies.
* * *
The skiff was moving swiftly at last. Our marraenoloth boatman had no more reason to dawdle; he had hurt us and was happy. Soon we entered another spume of fog, leaving behind the haunted moonlight and coming out under a swollen red sun. A wash of heat struck our faces, like stepping into the Great Foundry when the furnaces blazed their brightest. In seconds, sweat was dribbling profusely down my forehead.
The banks of the Styx rose high on either side of us, twenty feet tall and made of dusty red clay. Much of the bank was covered with bramble, a thick brush reminiscent of Sigil's omnipresent razor-vine; but in spots, recent earthslides had left patches of bare dirt, now squirming with ants and beetles. Fossilized bones poked out from the soil, all of them blood-red, of no recognizable species. A skull with three fat horns protruded some distance over the water… and each horn ended in a screaming skeletal face.
«The uppermost level of the Abyss,» Garou announced, «called the Plain of Infinite Portals. We're not far from a portal that can take you to Plague-Mort.»
«And you'll show us which that is, right?» Hezekiah said.
«All part of the service.» The boatman bowed mockingly.
The river soon widened and the banks fell away, to reveal a desert of rusty gravel and stone. Here and there, pools of molten metal dotted the landscape, sizzling with bright orange heat; their shores were scattered with lumps of glowing lava, spat out by the pools as subterranean gases belched up to the surface. I could see no lifeforms larger than insects moving amidst this desolation, but I was sure bigger game lurked out of sight – creatures that could eat our party and wash it down with a slurp of liquid iron.
«Just your typical homey hell,» I said aloud; and I huddled myself sullenly on my chosen thwart of the boat, refusing to gawk at the infernal scenery. As a Sensate, maybe I should have tried seeking out ever more sulphurous fumes to sniff, or strained my ears to hear the wailing of the damned… but frankly, I wasn't in the mood for such melodramatic fizz-fazz. I'd seen lava before. I'd tasted iron-contaminated dust. For a while, let the world rot on without my active participation.
* * *
Garou put in at the base of a ruined bridge: a construction of pure white marble that seemed to have dropped in from the Upper Planes by some fluke of magic. Local citizens had obviously taken offense at the arrival of such a pristine celestial object, and demolished the central span – fallen chunks of marble congested the river below, raising doubt whether we could sail our way past. However, it appeared we didn't need to; Garou pointed up the bank and said, «There's your portal.»
We all looked. Hezekiah was the first to say, «I don't see anything.»
Garou chuckled, in a tone I had come to dread. «It's up there, my esteemed passengers. Do you recall I said the key was an open wound? Go up there bleeding, and see what happens.»
«How addle-coved do you think we are?» Yasmin demanded.
But Hezekiah had the required addle-coved look in his eye, the kind that was seconds away from volunteering. The boy took a moment to look over at Miriam; and I realized he wanted to show her how brave he was. The truth clicked for Miriam too. Before Hezekiah had a chance to speak, she hopped from the boat and growled, «Wait here, you berks.»
«You'll need this,» I said, holding out my sword. She stared at it a moment, then swiped her finger along one edge of the blade, opening an inch-long cut. Her expression didn't change as she squeezed the edges of the incision to force out a line of blood. Then she slapped the blade out of her way and walked away from the river, with an obvious stiffness to her gait. I suspected Miriam hadn't made many sacrificial gestures in her life, and she was floundering in self-consciousness trying to pull this one off.
Hezekiah hopped out of the boat himself, with every sign of following Miriam into whatever nasty surprise awaited. Yasmin grabbed him by the shirt-tail and held him back; but she stepped out on land too, and unlimbered her sword in case she had to run to the rescue. In short order, we were all poised on the bank, weapons ready for action.
Now that we were on our feet, we had enough height to see a large carcass lying on the sandy red dirt, about forty paces inland from the Styx. The dead thing might have been an elephant before the scavengers got to it, but it was hard to tell now. Dozens of carrion-eaters had already eaten their fill, and now it was the turn of the flies, buzzing all over the corpse as they chewed inroads through its leathery hide. When Miriam approached, the buzzing increased; like sharks, the flies could smell her blood from many paces away. I tightened my grip on the pommel of my sword, and offered up a prayer to any friendly powers who might be listening – if those flies went for her, we'd have a sod of a time getting them off.
No sooner had the thought entered my mind than it came true.
As a single mass, the flies lifted off the carcass and swarmed Miriam, roaring. Flies covered her face like a buzzing hairy-legged veil; they clotted her clothes and tangled themselves blackly in her hair. The densest concentration, however, attached themselves to her hand, to the finger with the bleeding cut. They teemed there by the hundreds, a thickening ball of insects the size of a massive beehive. Their weight dragged Miriam down to her knees… and I could imagine the ones closest to the wound jostling each other to attach their filthy sucker mouths for a sip of human blood.
«We have to save her!» Hezekiah cried, taking a step forward.
Wheezle, lying on the ground at the boy's
feet, grabbed the leg of Hezekiah's pants. «Wait, honored Clueless. If this were a true feeding frenzy, the flies would have flayed her to the bone in the blink of an eye. She is still alive; wait.»
Miriam was so carpeted with flies, I couldn't tell how Wheezle knew she still had flesh on her skeleton… but perhaps Dustmen have an instinct that can sense life and death. I stared at her fly-laden body, trying to discern any sign of a living woman beneath the buzzing mass; and as I watched, a few flies struggled out of the clump on her hand and soared into the air.
The flies were glowing red, like blood-colored sparks.
Moment by moment now, more of the insects were taking their leave, all of them blazing the same color. They flew a short distance, then simply stopped and hovered… until enough of them had taken position to show they were arranging themselves in an arch. A red-glowing arch.
«A gate of flies,» Kiripao murmured. His voice betrayed an unhealthy tone of rapture. Clearly though, he was right. As more flies tasted Miriam's blood, they too joined the arch, filling in a parabolic curve that shimmered with buzzing power. Other flies, still clinging to Miriam's body, flapped their wings in unison, raising enough wind to spin up dust-devils in the surrounding red sand. They didn't have the strength to lift a full-grown woman into the air and fly her through the portal; but they generated sufficient force to propel Miriam forward, still on her knees and blinded by so many insects on her face.
At the very last moment the flies scattered away from her, swarming off her skin and clothes, giving her one last push toward the glimmering arch. Miriam toppled forward, head and chest crossing the line. Immediately, they vanished into darkness beyond; a moment later, the rest of her body was sucked through, as if some monster had grabbed her by the arms and was dragging her away.
«Well, that was amusing,» Garou said with a raspy chuckle. Standing beside him, Hezekiah tried to punch the boatman in the jaw; but Garou caught the fist in his own hand and squeezed until the boy grimaced with pain. «You're amusing too,» Garou laughed. He shoved the fist away, and Hezekiah backed off, nursing his knuckles.
«We have to do something,» Hezekiah muttered to the rest of us.
«Wait a second longer, honored Clueless,» Wheezle told him. «The honored thug-lady —»
«Miriam,» Hezekiah interrupted. «Her name is Miriam.»
Wheezle dipped his head, as much of a bow as he could manage in his condition. «Your honored Miriam may well…»
The flies, mostly quiet for the past few seconds, suddenly burst into a thunderous buzz. The hovering archway, still intact, darkened again; and this time I could see that the other side wasn't complete blackness, but simply a normal night sky, scattered with clouds. Miriam emerged from the darkness, her face fly-specked, but definitely in one piece.
A very angry piece, I might add.
«Garou!» she roared, loud enough to be heard over the din of buzzing flies. «You're going for a swim, you berk!»
The boatman curled his fleshless grin at the rest of us. «Cherished friends, if you'd be so good as to prevent your comrade from rash action…»
«Oops,» said Yasmin, «my boots are all dusty.» She bent down and busied herself picking invisible flecks of dirt from the black dragon skin.
«Sorry,» I smiled at Garou, «I have to finish that last painting.» I picked up a brush and made a show of cleaning the bristles.
Garou looked nervously at the approaching Miriam, much closer now and still furious. «I brought you all to a perfectly respectable gate,» he stammered. «It leads to Plague-Mort and you can see this woman is unhurt…»
«You should have warned her about the flies,» Hezekiah said. The boy stepped back to give Miriam a clear path to the boatman.
«A swim should not harm you,» Wheezle added. «Your kind are immune to the Styx, are they not? Unlike the rest of us.»
«Make him suffer,» Kiripao murmured softly to no one in particular. «Make him wriggle with fear. Come from the shadows, come from the night…»
«Hush,» Wheezle told the elf.
«I can defend myself,» Garou told Miriam in a cracked voice. «I have powers beyond your mortal ken.» He lifted his hands in something that might turn into a mystic gesture.
«Naughty, naughty,» I said. In my hands was the salt grinder. A moment later, Garou was covered with white dust. «If you try any magic now,» I told him, «you'll really regret it.»
He tried anyway. He howled in pain as the dust briefly flared with heat. And that was about the time Miriam grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and heaved his flailing body into the river.
The splash was magnificent.
* * *
Garou came up spluttering. The dunking hadn't washed off much of the dust – I doubt if Styx water can make anything clean – so there were patches of white caked wetly all over his head. «You'll regret this,» he coughed. «You have earned the enmity of the marraenoloth race…»
«Why?» Yasmin snapped back. «You set a price for transporting us here. We paid it. And for all the other services you've done us – alerting the umbrals to our escape, showing me my mother, feeding Miriam to the flies without warning her – well, we've paid you for those too. And a damned low price too, considering. You'll dry soon enough. How soon do you think Wheezle will get his memory back?»
Garou dragged himself onto the bank and lay there glowering. A sweep of sand clung to his wet clothes, forming a crusty red layer over the dusty white one. «My anger is not so easily calmed,» he rasped.
«You aren't looking at this the right way,» Hezekiah said. He squatted over the dripping boatman, much closer to the Styx water than I would have dared. «Back in my hometown,» the boy told him, «people were constantly throwing me into the river too. It was just their way of being friendly… you know, smearing your face with swineberries, pulling down your pants in public, pelting you with horse apples… it's all in fun. Like I'm sure when you yelled good-bye to the umbrals, you were just playing a joke, right?»
Garou looked up at Miriam, who happened to be cracking her knuckles meaningfully. «Yes, a joke,» the boatman answered hurriedly.
«And throwing you in the Styx was the same kind of joshing around,» Hezekiah said. «Miriam's way of being friendly. We're all friends now.»
«Absolutely,» Garou nodded. «Just high-spirited monkeyshines.»
«He fears us,» Kiripao whispered to me. «The dust has robbed him of his power, and he grovels before our strength.»
«We aren't so strong ourselves,» I whispered back. «Keep quiet.» In a louder voice, I said, «Now that there are no more bad feelings… Miriam, what's on the other side of that portal?»
«Rich Man's Row in Plague-Mort,» she answered, still glaring at Garou but restraining her fists. «I recognized the street. It's night there now; a bit cold for my tastes, but nothing unnatural. The town looked pretty quiet.»
«You see?» Garou asked. «I kept my part of the bargain.»
«That's why I only threw you in the drink,» Miriam told him, «instead of feeding you your ears.»
«Then let me finish my part of the deal,» I said, «and we can get out of here. I've had enough of the Lower Planes for a while.»
The others fanned out in a watchful circle as Garou beached the skiff and I went to work with the paints. Hezekiah held Wheezle in his arms, ready to dash for safety if the need arose; and Yasmin stayed close beside Kiripao in case Brother Elf broke into more umbral babbling. Kiripao certainly had the twitches, hearing sounds and smelling odors the rest of us couldn't detect… but Yasmin reined him in with a gentle hand on his arm, and nothing unfortunate happened.
From time to time, I glanced in her direction. She wouldn't meet my eye.
* * *
It took me ten minutes to finish the last painting. My nerves were on edge the whole time – this was, after all, the Abyss, filled with some of the most hellish creatures in the multiverse – but apart from a green-fire explosion many miles away, we saw no sign of trouble. I took my time to
get the final face right, did some touch-up on the other faces, then pronounced the work done. Garou wasted another five minutes on close scrutiny of each grieving figure, but that was expected; I had already sized him up as a customer who would love to find fault if it existed, but not the kind who invents last-minute changes just to impose his stamp on the artist's work (like a dog, urinating on a stick to make it smell more like himself). The faces I had painted were exact copies of the ones on the other side of the boat… and eventually, Garou had to admit it.
«Acceptable,» he said grudgingly. The boatman bowed a a fraction of an inch, and in a formal voice recited, «Britlin Cavendish of Sigil, there is no bad will between us.»
I supposed that was a ritual farewell among his people. For a moment I considered giving him my business card, in case he or his fellow marraenoloths had work for me in future. Then my gaze lighted on that picture of the man who reminded me of my father; and I decided I could do without such employment.
«Good-bye, Garou,» I told him. «Safe journeys.»
But he was already putting his skiff back into the Styx. Within seconds, he had disappeared into another pillar of mist.
* * *
Slowly, our group trudged away from the river. The archway of flies was gone; the insects, no longer glowing, had returned to picking apart the elephant carcass. They buzzed lethargically as they sucked at the leathery hide.
Wheezle cleared his throat. «It seems we must open the gate again.»
«Count me out,» Miriam snapped. «I refuse to be smothered by bugs twice in one day.»
«We could draw lots…» Yasmin said, with an obvious lack of enthusiasm.
«Don't you dare,» I told her. «Treats like this should be savored by those who appreciate them.»
And in the next minute, a million flies gave me an experience I shall not easily forget.
15. THREE HOURS OF AUTUMN NIGHT
A fly-spawned wind thrust me onto the cobblestoned streets of Plague-Mort. I landed on my knees, just short of an open sewer that was surprisingly empty of slops; water running at the bottom of the ditch showed that it must have rained here recently. The air had a just-washed cleanness to it, touched with the bittersweet fragrance of woodsmoke. As Miriam had said, the night was cool: an autumnal chill, as if the land had grown tired of life and longed for winter's oblivion.
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