by Liz Williams
“They can sense the presence of the goddess,” Chen said uneasily. “They’re drawn to her.”
“What, they think she might be able to give them special dispensation? Get them up to Heaven?”
“I have no idea. Maybe they’re just like moths to a flame. Maybe it’s me they’re drawn to. After all, I’m still alive.”
Zhu Irzh shook the reins, flicked the whip and the carriage picked up speed as they approached the outskirts of what passed for a settlement here. Chen leaned into the carriage and spoke to the maiden. Zhu Irzh heard a murmured reply.
“We need to head for the mountain road, apparently.”
“And where might that be? There’s a distinct lack of signs.”
“Look,” Chen said, and as he spoke the demon could see the mountains rising ahead, huge masses of shadow against the darkness. Somewhere high on a peak, he could see a wan light. “Do you think that’s the village?”
“I don’t know. Keep on this road and it’ll take us into the hills.”
As the carriage rolled along, Zhu Irzh saw that they were passing groups of souls, trailing drearily down from the mountains. Some were no more than children, clutching the hands of adult spirits, and many of them were old. Used to the exigencies of Hell as he was, Zhu Irzh repressed a shudder. What an afterlife, he thought. No wonder so many humans tried to make deals with Hell in order to avoid it. You would be much better off going to Hell straightaway: at least it was exciting, not this dull, elusive hinterland.
“Excuse me,” he called down to one of the groups of souls. “Have you come from Bad Dog Village?”
“Yes, yes, a terrible place.” One of the souls, an elderly man with the ravages of illness still plain in his face, was eager to complain. “We hurried through it, but we lost one of our number. The dogs kept him, it is said they eat spirits or hunt them for sport. And now we head for the boat and the peach orchards across the sea.” A kind of peace suffused his worn features, blotting out the anxiety.
“We wish you good fortune and good sailing,” Chen called down, and the demon drove on.
Gradually, he became aware that the sky, or whatever passed for it in the Night Harbor, was beginning to lighten. It became easier to see the fields and copses alongside the road, the remnants of farms and smallholdings.
“Who lives here then?” Zhu Irzh asked, puzzled. “Who would choose to farm such changing terrain?”
“I don’t think they have a choice,” Chen replied. “Some folk just get stuck. And perhaps some people don’t want to face the journey, the razor bridge, dogtown—maybe they do choose to stay here. I don’t know. I thought perhaps you would.”
“I understand Hell and its workings,” Zhu Irzh said. “But this country … I’m not familiar with it, after all, and why should I have taken an interest before now?”
Chen shrugged. Zhu Irzh drove on and at length the fields faded and gave way to rock and ragged outcrops. The air smelled of dust and decay. Zhu Irzh kept glimpsing bones from the corner of his eye, skeletal heaps by the side of the road, but when he looked, there was nothing there. He had not realized it was so quiet when the roar shattered the air. It reverberated from the rocks, making Zhu Irzh’s head ring. The maiden gave a cry, quickly stifled, from within the carriage, and the kylins danced to a standstill and refused to go further.
“What was that?” Chen, his usual composure ruffled, clutched at the demon’s arm.
“I don’t know. What sort of things are you supposed to find in these mountains anyway?”
“I thought it was the home of the dogmen alone.”
“I don’t think that was a dogman. It sounded enormous.”
“Look, let’s just get on,” Chen said.
“If I can get these things to move, we will.”
Eventually he coaxed the kylins forward, but as they rounded the corner, something bounded down to stand in their path. It moved so swiftly that Zhu Irzh saw it only as a flicker against the rocks. The kylins reared, nearly overturning the carriage. Zhu Irzh and Chen both fought for control of the reins and hauled the kylins back.
“What is it?” the maiden cried.
“A thing,” Zhu Irzh called back, with perfect truth.
He had never seen anything like the creature that now stood before them, bouncing slightly on four long legs. It was hairless and white, with a gaunt, tapering body and no sign of genitalia. Its narrow head was eyeless, with a slit for a nose and a gaping hole of a mouth, lined with teeth like a lamprey. Yet despite its unfamiliarity, it felt … known. He had experienced this thing before, and recently.
The maiden, disregarding Chen’s warning shout, was scrambling down from the carriage to stand in the road.
“Heavenly Emperor,” she said faintly. “Shur?” Her face was aghast, and abruptly Zhu Irzh remembered where he had met this thing before. It looked different, but he knew it. He would have paid good money to bet that this was the spiritual remnant of the immortal that Jhai Tserai had captured and held at the Farm. Next moment, his suspicions were confirmed. The thing’s razor-sharp tongue shot out in the direction of the maiden and the creature charged.
37
Paravang Roche went to the temple at the appropriate time. He bought the goddess a bunch of flowers at the station: chrysanthemums tawny in their roll of paper, smelling of spice. A proper show of obsequiousness should help matters along. As he went through the door of the temple he saw that the priest-broker was there before him, kneeling perfectly still, his forehead touching the ground before the outstretched arms of the smiling deity. Roche knelt beside him and waited until he had completed his prayer. The broker uncoiled from the floor and looked at him.
“You.”
“Indeed,” Paravang said.
“Do you have the money?”
“Of course I don’t have the money. These things take time. But I will have it, make no mistake about that.” Make a good display of confidence, Paravang thought, and maybe he’ll go away without asking too many awkward questions. But the priest-broker’s eyes narrowed.
“And how do you propose to manage that?”
“Family,” Paravang said, with perfect truth.
He could tell that the broker wanted to believe him, and yet could not quite make the leap. He smiled serenely at the old man, trying to give an impression of untroubled unconcern, and eventually, with a last suspicious glance, the broker shuffled off to the duties of the day, leaving Paravang alone in the temple.
Paravang laid the flowers before the statue of the goddess and prayed for success rather perfunctorily. The rites might have to be duly observed, but his confidence in Senditreya’s powers was at an all-time low. He did not spend long in the temple, therefore, but took off down the street to a narrow alley filled with remedy shops and a butcher’s. He had first come here years before to defuse a ch’i war, and the butcher still owed him a few favors. Before the butcher’s door, he paused for a moment and collected himself before going inside.
The butcher was a short, slight man with an unhealthy plumpness. Indeed, it was more than plumpness: Paravang, with a distaste he found difficult to conceal, could see the outlines of breasts beneath the butcher’s bloodstained overall, and yet the butcher was unmistakably male. Rumor had it that this was caused by continual exposure to the illicit hormones found in the meat that this particular establishment specialized in, but it had one singular advantage. The butcher was an accomplished sorcerer, and his shifting gender apparently lent him powers that a normal man would have found difficult to attain. Years ago, Paravang had read an article about Siberian shamans who cross-dressed, and he supposed that this was a similar kind of thing.
The butcher looked at him out of reddened eyes.
“Oh, it’s you. What do you want?”
“I need your services.” Paravang and the butcher regarded one another for a moment with mutual disdain.
“You’d better come in the back, then,” the butcher said at last.
The explanation took less
time than Paravang had feared. The butcher, Wo Ti, did not bother to ask why Paravang needed the money. Perhaps he’d already heard about the issue of the revoked license: news traveled fast in certain quarters. When Paravang told him that it was essential to conjure forth the spirit of his dead mother, Wo Ti merely grunted and informed him that the time was highly auspicious, given the proximity of the Day of the Dead, but the price would be high. Paravang haggled, and beat the butcher down from outrageous to simply extortionate. He spent the rest of the afternoon in the pawn shop, persuading the broker that a vase really was Tang dynasty and not a cheap knockoff (an episode of some frustration as here, for once, Paravang found himself telling the truth), then returned to the butcher’s in the evening with the money.
“I can’t summon her here and now,” the butcher said. A black cockerel, which Paravang had not noticed that morning, sat huddled in a little cage on the chopping block. “The tides between the worlds aren’t right; I’ll have to wait till midnight. Go to your temple and wait. I’ll send her to you then.”
“Can’t I wait here?” Paravang said. Goddess knew, he had little interest in witnessing sorcery, but he wanted to make sure that the butcher didn’t rip him off.
“No, I don’t allow clients to watch except under exceptional circumstances. Don’t worry, I won’t cheat you. We do have a professional code of ethics, you know.”
So did the Feng Shui Practitioners’ Guild, but it didn’t stop markups and obfuscation, thought Paravang. With reluctance, he agreed to return to Senditreya’s temple and wait until midnight.
Over the course of the night, Paravang became increasingly certain that the butcher had indeed cheated him. The temple filled briefly for the evening services, then emptied again. The room grew cold and dark. Even the little votive lamps on the altar seemed to cast no real light. Paravang’s chrysanthemums wilted as if touched by frost, even though he had taken care to set them in enough water. Midnight came and went and there was no sign of any approaching spirits. Paravang began to debate whether or not to just go home. The prospect of his own warm bed was exceptionally alluring, and as he started thinking about it, he fell asleep.
Later, he jerked awake as if prodded. Since the temple possessed no windows, he could not see the approaching dawn, but he knew that the sun must be coming up by the sudden activity in the main courtyard. Someone was whistling a jaunty tune, irritating if you have been awake all night, on your knees and frightened. Paravang could hardly move his head from its bowed position. His neck had become painfully stiff in the night, and all his joints ached. Thus he did not look round when he heard footsteps behind him, and a rustle of stiff silk indicating that someone had knelt beside him. It was only when he felt a hand on his shoulder that he turned and found himself staring at a middle-aged woman, dressed in clothes that were fashionable twenty years ago. She was beaming at him, and after a belated moment he recognized his mother.
“God, it’s really you,” he whispered.
His mother’s lips moved, but no sound emerged. She looked about her, gazing up at the shadowy form of the goddess. He remembered now that she had always approved of Senditreya—thought she was a wholesome, next-door kind of deity—and doubtless it was mutual. She was sentimental about religion. She thought it was nice. Paravang gaped at her. His mother had been in her mid-sixties when she had died; the process had evidently knocked a decade or so from her. Her hair was lacquered into a helmet, and she was wearing her familiar dark red jacket. She did not look much like a ghost to her astounded son, until he realized that he was unable to see beyond her eyes: they were flat and without reflection, like the eyes of a mask.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Mrs Roche said, reproachfully. “I’ve been trying to phone your father for days, and he wouldn’t pick it up, but I know he was there. And you haven’t been answering your telephone either, dear.”
“I was—I was working.”
“Well, never mind, because you’re here now. And whoever was that man? I was having ever such a nice read of my magazine and suddenly I found myself in a butcher’s shop.”
“I’m sorry, Mother. It must have been very distressing for you. But I wanted to talk to you, you see, because I have some wonderful news. I want to get married.”
“Oh,” his mother said. There was a short, chilly pause.
“Aren’t you pleased? I thought it was what you always wanted!”
“It is, dear, of course, but it’s just that this has come at a rather awkward time.” She rearranged her skirts more comfortably about her. “I wanted to talk to you, Paravang, because I’ve got someone I want you to meet.”
“Oh?” He could have sworn that his mother and the goddess exchanged a complicit little smile.
“Just listen to me, Paravang, and hear what I’ve got to tell you …”
How can you deny your dead mother? Paravang knelt stiffly on the matting and heard her out, with a growing sense of horror. As one trap began to close, he felt, so another opened beneath his unwary feet. But as she talked on, he began to consider that her idea might have a use, for once. He listened carefully.
38
Chen leaped down from the carriage and pulled the maiden out of the way. The viperous ex-immortal bounded past her on long, thin legs, swerved, and turned back.
“Zhu Irzh!” Chen shouted. “Get the carriage moving!”
Zhu Irzh obligingly cracked the whip over the backs of the kylins as the ex-immortal raced back. The kylins bellowed with fright and charged forward. Zhu Irzh glanced back to see Chen and the Kuan Yin avatar hauling themselves into the moving carriage. Then the ex-immortal was sprinting alongside, the long tongue flickering out, trying to reach into the carriage itself. One of the kylins shot a glance over its shoulder and screamed with fright. Both beasts changed their shape, transforming themselves into lumbering, over-muscled men who dropped out of the harness and raced, snuffling, into the darkness. The coach skidded on the road, striking sparks.
Zhu Irzh took a deep breath, reached down behind him, grabbed hold of the tongue, which resembled a handful of needles, and pulled. Unfortunately, the tongue tugged as well and Zhu Irzh flew off the carriage and landed in the road with the ex-immortal on top of him. Cursing, he lashed out at it but the stabbing tongue was reaching for his eyes. He twisted from side to side, trying to shake it off. The terrible blind head was moving closer.
If it “kills” me, the demon thought, then I shall find myself back in Hell. And what a hassle that would be, not to mention, in all probability, painful. The head flung itself back, the tongue uncoiled—and then the ex-immortal was dragged off Zhu Irzh. He could hear the badger growling. Zhu Irzh lay panting on the ground, and then Chen hauled him to his feet. The maiden, with swift, calm efficiency, was binding the ex-immortal’s hands behind its back with its own tongue. The spines seemed not to inconvenience her at all; her hands glowed with a faint, repelling light.
“Thanks,” Zhu Irzh said to the maiden.
“You’re welcome. I am deeply relieved that we have found him. I did not want to go back without him, though of course the other one, Deveth Sardai, has to take precedence.”
Chen frowned. “Why so?”
“I shall give him a sedative,” the maiden said as though Chen had not spoken, “and I suppose we shall have to leave him here. My primary self will send someone to fetch him, since the kylins have run away. And now we must head on to the village. I am not sure how long the light will last.”
The ex-immortal slumped in her grasp and she arranged him neatly by the roadside. “There we are. Follow me.”
Zhu Irzh could think of nothing to say and it seemed that Chen was in a similar state. In a silence both startled and ruminative, they pursued the marching avatar up the hillside.
It became evident that they were approaching Bad Dog Village by the increased amount of filth along the roadside. Gnawed bones littered the dusty earth, along with piles of shit and scraps of material. Zhu Irzh wrinkled his nose. The badger gave an
earthy, choking cough.
“Why do you think it’s necessary, Chen, for souls to pass through here?” Zhu Irzh asked.
“I think it’s a test,” Chen said. “Like the razor bridge.”
“But why should souls be tested?” the demon asked. These theological speculations were new and disturbing. “Haven’t they already passed through the test of death? And if they’re judged on the events of their lives, then what difference does it make if they pass or fail?”
“Bad Dog Village is a part of that judgement,” the goddess’ avatar said over her shoulder. “Some souls hang in the balance, and cannot go on to either Heaven or Hell. They must remain here, until a judgement is made.”
“What if a judgement isn’t made?”
“Then here they stay.”
“That doesn’t seem very fair,” Zhu Irzh said, blinking.
“A remarkable statement, coming from a demon,” Chen said without rancor.
“Yes, I know, but—someone should do something about it.”
He saw the goddess smile behind her hand, and it annoyed him. What, he wasn’t allowed to point out the obvious simply because of his origins? Perhaps it was time to own up to this conscience of his, Zhu Irzh thought. It gave him enough trouble; maybe he should start acting on it …
“There’s the village,” Chen said, pointing ahead.
It didn’t look like much of a place to the demon, but he was becoming accustomed to the impermanent appearance of the Night Harbor. A sudden howling suggested that the inhabitants had become aware of their presence.
“So what’s the plan?” Zhu Irzh asked. “We just go in and ask for Deveth? What if they refuse to tell us?”
“They will not refuse me,” the maiden said.
The demon took a deep breath. “All right. I’ll take your word for it.”
“You’d best be elsewhere,” Chen said to the badger. “See what you can find.”
