by Hugh Cook
The night through which he rode was empty of all human life except his own, which did not displease him. He remembered the absurdity with which the sea dragon Qa had conjured: the spectre of a thousand million people in Yestron. It was impossible, of course. And yet. . .
What if some nightmare should make it true?
Imagine.
Imagine the people ranked in their tens of millions, their hundreds of millions. Their clattering laughter littering the streets. Their sewage flowing in rivers. Their hair, the growth of it filling warehouses between dusk and dawn. The sheet-sheath growth of their fingernails, a mere fraction of a night’s extension being sufficient to pave a mansion. Sebum and semen, a hundred barrels of each produced each night. The moon’s bloody flux, a stenchtide ravaging through the streets, a periodic disaster itself sufficient to drive the sensitive insane. The very beaches of the Winter Sea bricabraced with goatskin condoms and unwanted abortions, evidence and aftermath of lust.
A thousand million people.
No wolf-haunt wilderness any more, only roads and houses, houses and roads, neighbours forever at squabble over each other’s pigs and chickens, farms pocket-handkerchiefed by the everdivision of inheritance, one man’s water fouled by his neighbour’s leakage, and no act or decision free from scrutiny and interference, the very fact of inevitable observation being a most telling form of such interference.
Nightmaring thus, Alfric shuddered.
It was true that Alfric had his uses for the world of human voices, of beerbreath taverns and vaginal beds, of eyefriendly faces and laughing teeth, of saliva nipples and corrugated ears. Yet, even so, he often resented the existence of other people; and, though he knew Galsh Ebrek to be a small city, and knew Wen Endex to be a land virtually unpopulated, he often felt crushed to a state of claustrophobia by the everpressure of other flesh and other psyches; and, in imagination, conjured with worlds in which he would be the sole inhabitant, graced by the gift of many years of unimpeded meditation and optional exploration.
In many ways, life in the Bank was ideally suited to Alfric’s temperament. Money is a set of abstractions, and he much preferred abstractions to people; he enjoyed scheming with the unreal, the essentially metaphysical, to create power; and it sometimes seemed to him miraculous that such abstract delights could prove so remunerative in practical terms.
True, Alfric’s job involved a certain amount of human (and inhuman) contact, for as a Banker Third Class he was both diplomat and negotiator.
But a banker need not necessarily treat humans (or inhumans) as if they have any authentic existence in their own right. Rather, they can for the most part be treated as abstractions. As production units, consumption units, statistics to be manipulated by the Equations of Leverage.
And when Alfric negotiated with anyone on behalf of the Bank, he never (or, at least, very rarely) became involved with that person on an emotional level. Thus, though he had made several visits to the Qinjoks, and had dealt effectively with King Dimple-Dumpling on such visits, he was not to any extent personally embroiled in the king’s affairs.
An ideal state of affairs!
But. . .
If Alfric were to become Wormlord, charged with the governance of Wen Endex and the welfare of all the people of the nation, then things would change. He would inevitably be inextricably tangled in the mesh-work of loyalties and responsibilities which characterizes kingship.
There are empires in which the emperor is a living god and his people are as living trash in his presence. Nevertheless, the reality of the existence of such human garbage is not denied. There are slave states in which the slaves are seen as animals, and are treated as such; or, in some cases, worse treated. Even so, the slaves are real, inescapably real, unavoidably real, the psychic pressure of their existence amply demonstrated by the very complexity of the polite code of manners which makes their sufferings unmentionable.
But. . .
Maybe it would be possible to develop a kind of politics in which the great mass of the people would no longer be people at all. In which they would not be even animated rubbish or a lower form of animal life. Suppose one were to create a politics in which people became mere abstract symbols to be manipulated as one manipulates money. Thus a stinking beggar, a leprous thing of rags and ulcerated bones, would no longer be an entity to be either cherished or scorned, helped or rebuffed. Rather, the beggar would be reduced to an abstract token, a necessary side-effect of the mathematics of prosperity.
Was it possible?
Was it possible for a ruling politics to be so detached from reality?
Was it possible, in other words, for politics to be reduced to the painless manipulation of a web of symbols, an exercise of the intellect totally removed (in an emotional sense) from any realworld consequences?
For a moment, Alfric thought it was possible, and thought too that he might be able to bring about such a state of affairs. But he dismissed the thought as an absurdity.
Then began to reconsider.
It happened that the Partnership Banks had already gone a long way to creating the necessary philosophical underpinning of any such politics; for the manipulating of money already proceeded in a largely abstract arena substantially divorced from all physical realities. Thus one very large and complex confederation of interlocked organizations was conducting its affairs, to a very considerable extent, as if it functioned in a symbolic field rather than a physical universe made of earth and air, fire and water.
As money is today, so the world can be tomorrow.
Thinking thus, Alfric shuddered; and knew then his own true capacity for evil.
Evil?
Yes.
Surely it would be evil in the highest degree to treat the real world as a solipsistic dream to be manipulated for symbolic satisfaction; and, on the level of practical affairs, to deny the existence of the real in favour of the mechanics of daydream. To puppet humans as if they were but shadows. It would be evil, yes.
But it was infinitely appealing.
The result would be - in effect - the abolition of the world. Even if Alfric became king, he would be able to retreat from existence into a world of symbols.
Thus thinking, thus brooding, Alfric went slowly through the forests of night. He was in no hurry; and, besides, apart from the horse he was riding, he had four pack horses, all heavily loaded, and this made haste impossible. Sd he went slowly, fantasizing, abstracting, politic-creating, reminiscing and hopeconjuring.
In the course of such thoughtwandering, it happened that at last Alfric began to meditate upon his relationship with his wife, his darling Viola Vanaleta. This he did with some reluctance, for his seven years of marriage had not been happy. The reason for this was not hard to find. Alfric was selfish, especially with his time. Through the years of his marriage, he had dedicated his efforts to his career and his own aggrandisement. Worse, the very foundations of his marraige were unsound; for Alfric had married simply to appease the needs of the flesh, and (despite his denials) his wife had long suspected as much, and had long resented being used as a convenience of lust.
The subject of marriage was also painful inasmuch as Alfric’s occasional outbursts of anger had left him with much to be ashamed of. He remembered the last time he had hit her. It was so easy! And it happened so quickly. The wrathrage making his fists manic. The terrible, inexplicable, unreasonable anger seizing his flesh. In such a mood, he could quite happily punch glass, splinter wood, or gouge, squeeze, tear and strangle.
In such a mood, he might one day kill someone without thought, giving himself over to his murderous rage for the sheer bloody pleasure of slaughter.
And—
And what if such an anger came upon him when he was king?
It happened that he often hated the rest of the world for simply existing. It happened that the mere presence of other people was often enough to exacerbate the temper-fits which sometimes came upon him.
So—
But enough of t
he future.
Let the future look after itself, for what mattered was the present. The journey, and then the matter of surviving the great dare at journey’s end.
A long journey Alfric had of it; and, before the end, thought deteriorated to mere imagespasm as exhaustion set in. His flesh was equal to the tasks which faced it, but his much-burdened mind was still suffering from the events of the last few days. Suffering from murdershock guilt, from deathfear assault, from the sudden and unexpected complexities which had entered his life. The Bank had long been his refuge against reality and the world; but now the Bank had forced him to enter the arena of active politics, thus exposing him to all manner of danger and uncertainty.
Consequently, towards the end of his journey Alfric was mazed with fatigue, fullblinded by moments of dream in which eldritch figures clumped from the hulkbulk trees, the dark-dwindle ditches. Though the dark yielded to his vision, it was ever an effort to find his way; and, even when the skycurrents stirred the cloud-seas sideways, the moon remained hidden, and all he saw was a scattering of stars, stars bright-burning, orange and green, poisonous confectionary, the heaven-tree’s lethal nightfruit.
The forest thickened and the path narrowed, until at last Alfric had to dismount and lead his horses on foot through an overgrowth wilderness of gnarled and buckling vegetation, of broken limbs and staggering crutches.
At last he stopped, for the way was almost impassable, and he was more than half-minded to turn back. Then he smelt something. The low, slow, muddy smell of sedgeswamp, of mouldrot and vegetative decay, of duckweed and frogweed. It was near, it was near.
Thus guided, Alfric pressed forward. The undergrowth thinned, and he found himself by the shores of the much-dreaded Swamp of Slud. He made out the causeway which stretched from the shore to the distant night-humped mound which could only be the Spiderweb Castle.
Now Alfric was all business, his braindeath fatigue conquered entirely by the quick excitement of action. He unloaded his pack horses. As he hefted the heavy barrels of his baggage into a heap, he did his best to ignore the gnawing cries of anguish coming from a nearby clump of swampgrass. With the horses unloaded, Alfric led the beasts a safe distance into the forest and tethered them carefully. He clothed each with a blanket so it would not get too cold while it waited.
Then he went back to the swamp and waited himself.
But for the crying grass, all was silent.
As Alfric waited, the skyrug clouds drifted apart and the moon appeared, a moon not very far from the full. Alfric was startled by that white-blazing circle of light. How could the moon be so full so soon? He had calculated things otherwise: but one look at the sky told him his calculations were out by a matter of days.
The moonlight gauzed the light mist which lay across the swamps and the far-stretching causeway. Alfric durst not start out along that causeway until he had dealt with the swamp giant Kralch, Eater of Babies; the monster who, by tradition, was welcome to any unwanted flesh which was brought to the swampside.
As Alfric waited, the bawling baby began to get on his nerves. He did his best to ignore it. Maybe it wasn’t a baby at all. It could be some trick of magic, perhaps - the grass itself crying out in anguish. Or a mutant frog. Or -well, a monkey. Or something. As long as he didn’t look, he didn’t know. As long as he didn’t know, he wasn’t guilty of anything.
Still, it did make for a long wait.
At last, the head and shoulders of a huge and slovenly beast came slurching out of the swamp.
‘I am Kralch, Eater of Babies,’ said the giant, clearvoiced across a distance of a hundred paces.
‘Hi,’ said Alfric. ‘I’m Alfric Danbrog.’
He pitched his voice as if for battle, and loud and clear it carried through the night air.
‘Have you brought me a baby?’
‘Yes,’ said Alfric. ‘Can’t you hear it crying?’
‘Faintly,’ said the giant. ‘I’m somewhat deaf.’
‘Oh,’ said Alfric. ‘Sorry to hear that.’
So saying, Alfric took the bung from the first of his barrels and kicked it over. A light and combustible oil (distilled at great expense from the flesh of riverworms) spilt outward and spread across the swamp.
‘What are you doing?’ said the giant.
‘Pouring out a libation to the gods,’ said Alfric. ‘It’s a form of sacrifice.’
With that, he unbunged and overturned a second barrel.
‘Libation or no libation,’ said the giant, ‘I’m coming for the baby. If you’re still there when I get there, I’ll have you too.’
‘Thanks for the warning,’ said Alfric, and unbunged and kicked over a third barrel.
Kralch waded forward. Then the swamp shallowed, and the giant started to crawl. As it did so, it began to pant in a most hideous way. The truth was, the huge and hideous creature was in danger of expiring as soon as it dragged itself from the supporting watermuck of the swamp; and it put its very life in danger every time it came to claim a baby. One thing was certain: though the giant could crawl, it was totally incapable of standing up and supporting its weight on its legs once it was out of the swamp.
As the giant drew near, Alfric kicked over the last of his barrels. Then waited.
‘I did warn you,’ said the Eater of Babies. ‘If you’re going to run, you’d better start now.’
‘Oh,’ said Alfric coolly, ‘I think it’s you who’s going to do the running.’
So saying, Alfric produced a small jar and a pair of tongs. Alfric reached into the jar with the tongs and pulled out a small piece of metal. The metal looked grey by moonlight; and, had a stronger light been available, its hue would have remained unchanged.
As Alfric shook away the last drops of water, the metal burst into flames.
Alfric touched the flaming metal to his oil slick, which ignited. The swamp erupted. The giant screamed, engulfed by fire. It convulsed in agony. Kicked, clawed, howled and thrashed, and fought its way back into the depths of the swamp.
‘So much for that,’ said Alfric briskly.
Then he shivered, and set forth along the causeway.
Endless seemed that causeway, but at last the steps of the Spiderweb Castle were before him. Alfric climbed those steps and entered that place of death, the Castle of the Curse. As legend alleged, this was a place of the dead. Cold they were, their corpses ageless, frozen for centuries in the same positions.
The guards who held the castle gate never blinked as Alfric walked between them. He walked within, passing elders gathered in twos and threes in private conference; young lovers exchanging kisses and blisses in shadowed places; servants locked for ever in the hurry-scurry attitudes of hard-driven servitors.
At last, he entered the Grand Hall.
Again, legend was confirmed, for here candles shone with a ghostly phosphorescence, and the candles were not consumed by their own burning. It was silent, utterly silent. Alfric heard his own breathing, the creak of his own leather boots, the dry friction as a frisson of nervousness agitated his fingers to a spiderkick shuffle. His footsteps stirred the dust which rose, half-swirled then settled.
As legend said, there was the royal family. Alfric recognized them, just as he recognized their friends and retainers; for each was dressed according to rank and attainments. And there was the Princess Gwenarath; and, as legend said, she was passing fair. So fair that Alfric was moved to touch her cheek. He yielded to this impulse, but found the flesh cold, yes, cold, and as hard as marble. And he saw the dust of ages had gritted in the royal eyes, had settled in the folds of the royal cloak.
But she was fair regardless, and Alfric, despite himself, began to weep; for here a great evil had been done, and for this evil he had no remedy.
Alfric squeezed the tears from his eyes, and, angry at himself for thus sentimentalizing, he got down to business. Where was the queen? There. Proffering the mead to her husband. And he, a half-smile on his lips, was making as if he would take the cup from the gold-decked woma
n. A noble pair they made, and—
‘Let legend do the weeping,’ said Alfric, with willed and conscious brutality.
So saying, he went to the empty chair which stood beside the royal couple. And there was the sword, just as legend claimed. Sulamith’s Grief, a silver sword in a silver sheath. Alfric drew the blade, and it burnt brighter than the candles.
And—
Did the Grand Hall change?
Did he hear a faint whisper of the noise of revel? Did people silent for long centuries stir, if only by an eyelash? Did—
‘I imagine it,’ said Alfric loudly.
And knew it was true, yes, he had been imagining it. There was no noise, no life, and no hope of either. These people were long dead, however perfectly preserved their appearance might be.
Then—
Something did move.
Alfric saw it not, but heard it. A wrenching sound as metal tore free from metal.
Alfric nearly leapt out of his skin.
‘Who’s there?’ he said.
He drew Sulamith’s Grief and discarded the scabbard. The silver sword quivered in his hand. His heart quick-kicked. His eyes blazed red, alert for murder.
‘Who?’ he roared. ‘Who’s there?’
Nothing.
Nobody.
But something—
There!
Alfric saw it.
The sword.
The weapon was sheathed at the side of a swarthy warrior of undistinguished appearance, but it was sticking out from the hilt by a good fingerlength. Unless he was sorely mistaken, that blade was the thing which had moved. It was a plain black blade which had leapt (if Alfric was guessing correctly) from a plain black sheath.
Carefully, Alfric recovered the scabbard which he had dropped. He sheathed Sulamith’s Grief. Then he unbuckled the swordbelt belonging to the swarthy warrior. Gingerly, he drew free the plain black sword. Briefly, letters flamed green against the black of the blade. Alfric barely had time to read them, but read them he did, and what he read he would never forget:
