Procession of the Dead

by Darren Shan

  “With Leonora’s patronage, I wasn’t long slicing through the fabric of the city’s underbelly. Soon I was lord of my patch. I expanded swiftly, surely, cruelly. I bought the best men in every field, bribed, bullied or blackmailed them. Leonora told me we didn’t need to know everything about our business, but we needed people who did, who we could control, who’d do the hard graft and leave us free to dream and plan.

  “Within two years I was a major force, buying up every policeman, killing competitors, bargaining with those more powerful than me. It was difficult at the time to see a day like this, when I could sit here and lord it over all. But I had my dreams and Leonora and, in time, my other Ayuamarcans. Within a decade I was king of the city. Five years later I was The Cardinal, feared by all, central to all, lord of all I surveyed.”

  “But what about me ? ” I demanded impatiently. “Conchita, Adrian, Y Tse and the Ayuamarca list? Where do we fit in? How?”

  “Peace, Mr. Raimi,” he said. “We’re getting there. I’m rushing the story as fast as I can but there is much we have to cover. Now, as to where Leonora came from, I didn’t know. At the time I didn’t even pose the question. I thought she was connected with the mysterious store owners, my vision of her a mere coincidence. I didn’t think about it for the first year, not until I created my second human.

  “I’ve gone through many competitors during my time. They rise and fall like waves, and I’m the beach on which they break. One of my foes back then was Elmer Chag. He operated a large sector of the city adjacent to my own. We fought regularly along a dividing strip of land. He was older than I, more powerful. He should have seen me off, and would have if he’d realized what a force I was growing into. Unfortunately for him, he found it hard to see past my dirty, manic exterior. Like so many others, he thought I’d burn out. So instead of throwing all he had at me, he held back and waited for me to crumple.

  “My tactics were crude in the beginning. I resorted to bullying and torture wherever possible. It was the only way I knew—find an opponent’s weak spot and hit him hard. No room for finesse. But Chag had hardly any weak points. No family, no friends, no pets. There was nothing to hit. One night—lying in bed again—I cursed the fact that he had no relatives I could kidnap and use against him. A brother would have been perfect, one who’d grown up with him and battled by his side through the years, so close that he’d do anything he could to protect him. As I thought about it, the ghost faces came to me again. I scanned them with half an interested eye, found an appropriate, big brother sort of face, and put a name to it—Victor Chag. On that image I fell asleep.

  “The next day, obeying a deep-rooted urge, I returned to the shop of puppets. I’d been there a couple of times since but it had always been closed and nobody knew anything of the owners. This time it was open and, as before, I was led to the back where a puppet resembling the fictional Victor Chag was chanted over and daubed with blood. Again I returned home, fearful, confused. The next morning, Elmer Chag had a brother.”

  “You’re crazy,” I said softly.

  He smiled. “Maybe. But if so, what are you , Mr. Raimi? A product of my madness?” I didn’t reply. I didn’t dare. “As far as everyone was concerned, Victor Chag was real. I knew Elmer was an orphan but everybody else thought Victor had always been there, that the brothers were a unit. Their knowledge of him was hazy. Nobody could describe Victor clearly, they didn’t know how he spoke, what he wore, if he was vicious or polite. But they knew that Elmer Chag had always had a brother. Victor was real. I was able to create people.”

  He paused, hands clasped, eyes bright with magic or madness—I wasn’t sure which. “Leonora and Victor Chag had never been born. I made them. I conjured them out of nowhere, gave them limbs, tongues, personalities, roles. I didn’t know how. The uncertainty ate away at me, drove me to distraction and the point of true madness. I went back to the store but it was shut and I found no clues when I broke in. I asked Leonora but she knew nothing of the shop, puppets or blind men in robes. So, putting my doubts to one side, I kidnapped Victor Chag and used him to bring his brother down.”

  “Elmer believed Victor was his brother?” I asked incredulously.

  “Implicitly. When he was paying the ransom, I tried convincing him he was an only child.” The Cardinal chuckled drily. “He looked at me as if I was crazy. I experimented after that. I tried summoning the faces and found that I could, anytime I liked as long as I was on the verge of sleep. I’d make my choice, give the ghost a name and the next day the shop would be open and the blind men waiting. I stayed away a couple of times, having summoned a face, to see if anything would happen. It didn’t. I needed the puppets and the blind men to make the ghosts come alive.

  “I explored further and found there were limitations. This drew my attention to the first.” He waved his bent little finger and smiled. “Nobody ever asks me about this. I bet you thought it was a natural defect or the result of an injury. Not so. It bends whenever I create somebody and stays bent as long as I keep them alive. With every person I create, it bends a little more.

  “That was the first sign of my constraints. When I had eight people walking around, it was stretched virtually to the breaking point. I made a couple more and was in agony. I can comfortably keep seven Ayuamarcans on the go. Eight hurts. Nine is the endurable limit. It’s not just the pain—I could live with that. But they come apart if I make too many. They lose their minds, my control slips, people start to forget them. The reality unravels. I learned that quickly and have kept to the limits ever since, never giving in to the temptation to push myself to the extreme, to try for fifteen or twenty.

  “Paperwork is a nuisance. The Ayuamarcans exist in human minds but not in print. They don’t come with birth certificates, credit cards or backgrounds. At first that didn’t matter. The people I was working with were beneath such legitimacies—crooks, thieves, rapists and murderers. I could get away with such discrepancies. Later, when Ibranched into less shadowy fields, it was trickier. But by that time Ihad the resources to forge the necessary documents. It’s a hard business. Creating an Ayuamarcan is the work of a lone night, but I have to spend months beforehand working on the papers. Public figures are the hardest. Mayors are a bitch. The lengths I have to go to in order to create solid backgrounds capable of standing up to the most rigid investigation…” He sighed with exasperation.

  “Erasing Ayuamarcans requires a little pin and a lot of fog. You’ve seen the blind priests when our famous green fog is up?” I nodded numbly. “Many think they worship the fog but they don’t. They summon it. My puppets have heartbeats. When I want one to end, I prick theheart with a pin. That wipes the Ayuamarcan out of existence. The priests—who always seem to know my actions in advance—take to the streets and create the fog, which sweeps through the city and wipes every mind it touches, eliminating people’s memories of the dream beings. That’s why nobody remembers Adrian or Y Tse. They were real for as long as I sustained them, but once erased, they returned to the land of nothingness. Sonja wasn’t lying about Adrian. She simply forgot. To her and the others, he never existed.

  “Ayuamarcans are not real. They’re elaborate illusions, walking, talking, living, eating, breathing images of humans. But once I switch them off, they flicker out of existence. When the fog subsides, it takes the city’s memories with it.”

  “What about people outside the city?” I asked. “If you’re telling the truth and the fog can do what you say, what about people in the rest of the world?”

  “They pay no notice. Most of my creations keep a low profile. Those in the public eye—my mayors for instance—stick to the city. National interest in them is at a minimum. There are occasional inquiries about eliminated Ayuamarcans, but those are simply dealt with. If you don’t believe it’s possible for a public official to disappear without creating a nationwide fuss, set yourself this riddle—think of five major cities and try naming their mayors.”

  I thought about it and came up blank. “OK, I can
’t name any. But I’m sure there are lots of people who can.”

  “Of course,” he agreed. “But keeping those small pockets of know-it-alls in check is an easy task. As long as I don’t do anything stupid—creating a national president, for example—I can go on juggling Ayuamarcans from here to kingdom come.”

  “What if you just kill them?” I asked. “If you’d simply shot Adrian or Y Tse, that would have ended them, right?”

  “No. The Ayuamarcans don’t cease to exist until I and my blind friends usher them back to their own plane. They still count when dead.”

  I considered what he’d told me. Crazy? Sure. Impossible? Of course. Yet part of me knew it was true. I wanted to deny it—if only to prove I wasn’t as mad as he was—but part of me knew .

  “Where do we come from?” I asked. “You must have found out in the time since then. How do you do it? Why call us Ayuamarcans ? ”

  “I don’t have all the answers,” he said. “I’ve discovered pieces down the years. Once I conjured a man with an intact memory, one who knew all about himself. It worked. He told me about his past life, what his name had been, where he’d lived, how he died—all of the faces I see in my dreams are dead people. He remembered dying, then waking—he could not say how much time had passed—in the airport here. I checked his story and it was true. But he couldn’t tell me more than that—he couldn’t explain the nature of the force behind my power. I tried it a couple more times, and each person told the same story—they’d lived, died, come back when summoned, with new personalities. No one mentioned a heaven or a hell, only blackness followed by light, blankness by consciousness.

  “I got the name—Ayuamarca—from the puppet makers. We’ve spent much time together over the decades. They always speak in that strange language of their own. Although I can’t understand them when they speak, I picked up a few words, like Uma Situwa, Atahualpa and Manco Capac. Incan words. I believe they are descendants of those who fled the Spanish conquistadors, but I have no proof of that. It is mere conjecture.”

  “Did they give you my name? Ama’s? Inti Maimi’s?”

  “No. I choose the names myself. At least, I think I do.”

  “The shop,” I said. “Do you still go there?”

  He shook his head. “I grew tired of the traveling. In the end I moved them in here. They dwell in the lower depths. They change every so often. The two I first met have been replaced several times over the years. They look similar and speak the same language, and each is as mysterious and blind as the first two. I have no idea where they come from or where the rest of them live.”

  “They’re here ? ” I snapped. “Now? ”

  “Yes. The pair in the basement never go out.”

  I stood. “I want to see them.”

  “In time,” he said.

  “No. Now.”

  He studied me for a few seconds, then inclined his head. “Very well.” He stood and strode out of the office. Ford Tasso was waiting outside. The Cardinal bent and whispered in his ear. Tasso nodded gravely. Then The Cardinal straightened and beckoned me on. He entered the elevator and cocked a thumb at the operator. “Out.” Once I was inside, he keyed in a code and we dropped smoothly.

  “I have been selfish, Mr. Raimi,” he said as we descended. “I’ve abused this gift for all it was worth. I could have made eight scientific geniuses and sent the world hurtling into the future like a comet with a nuclear missile up its ass. I could have generated prophets to bring peace. It was in my power to create people who could have changed the nature and future of this planet for the good. But instead I used my power to make myself The Cardinal. I don’t apologize—I’m glad I did what I have done—but some nights, when I lean over my balcony and listen to the city and hear the screams drifting up…”

  The elevator came to a halt and we stepped out. We were on the lowest level of the building. The Cardinal crossed to a locked door, keyed in another code and started down the stairs which were revealed when it opened. I hesitated, my stomach tight, but I’d come this far, so there was no backing out now.

  At the bottom was another door. No lock on this one. The Cardinal let me catch up, then edged it ajar and eased through. I wasn’t far behind.

  I saw the two men immediately, sitting on rough stools, their eyes white blanks, faces expressionless. I gazed around the rest of the room. Lots of barrels, boxes and tins. I examined a couple. Paint, metal, paper, wood, string, cloth and so on. I studied the markings on the walls. They meant nothing to me. I approached the two men, stopped and looked to The Cardinal for guidance.

  “Go ahead,” he told me. “I’ve brought others here before. They won’t do anything. They just sit, still and silent, staring ahead. You can poke them in the ribs if you like.”

  I shuffled across until I was between the pair. I looked from one blank face to the other. They weren’t the blind men I’d seen before but they looked similar. I opened my mouth to ask The Cardinal a question, but before I could their arms snaked out and clamped on my shoulders. I was instantly immersed in a vision I could only barely comprehend.

  Their eyes flared and grew. They filled with color, people, then with sounds. It was like gazing into four movie screens, which quickly merged and became one, at which point I slipped entirely into their world.

  It was long ago, before the conquest by the Europeans. I don’t know where I was, but it was high on a mountain, beneath a burning sun. By a strangely shaped stone, men argued over the future of their people.

  Then I was on a platform, surrounded by mummies. A blind priest stood in the middle of a rain shower—the same as the one I’d seen on my first day in the city—and through him a decision was passed to the others. They were told to leave.

  The scene shifted and the members of the mountain city were on the move. They traveled by caravan, far and long, their families, animals and goods in tow. At the center were six covered tents. They were elephantine and required many men to lift them. I couldn’t see who traveled in these tents but they were obviously people of great importance.

  After a long, testing journey, the group came to a river and settled. They unpacked, laid out their wares and greeted their new neighbors, dark-skinned Indians who were suspicious at first but gradually came to accept the strangers. The tribes learned to live as one, hunting, building and breeding together. Only those in the six tents—still unseen—remained separate, never coming out to dance or laugh, play or work.

  After what must have been many years—I could tell by the growth of the village—a young boy was brought to the largest tent. The flap lifted, he walked in and I moved with him. There were about twenty people inside. They were light-skinned and blind. They sat in curious order, their bodies aligned in shapes that resembled the scrawled symbols I’d seen on the walls in the basement of Party Central.

  “We are villacs , priests, servants of the gods,” one of them said, and though he spoke in an ancient tongue, I understood perfectly. “We are here to protect and guide. You will serve as our Watana , the hitching post of our community. Step forward.”

  The scene shifted again. The next I knew, the boy was a man and leader of the village. He had his own entourage of helpers, men and women who were the same as me—created by magic, designed to perform specific tasks, Ayuamarcans. They were architects, builders, farmers, medics. They taught the villagers, devised new ways to till the land, developed medicines. They governed and helped the people grow, learn and develop. As they prospered, so did the village, and that made the villacs happy. I don’t know how I knew these things—I just did.

  As the Watana moved around the village issuing orders, I noticed that one of his small fingers was bent like The Cardinal’s. Then the picture changed again and I was looking at a different man with the same bent finger. The village was larger now, a town, and many tribes came from miles around to trade. None ever attacked because it was known that these people were protected by powerful forces, and everyone was afraid of the unseen, blind priests, around who
m legends had grown.

  Then came a race who knew no fear, with weapons beyond the power of any in this country. They swept through the town, raping and pillaging, and there was nothing the villacs could do to stop them. There was no gold, no silver, no coal, nothing to interest the invading savages, but they destroyed regardless. Their kings and queens across the great ocean demanded it.

  The new rulers had heard the legends of the blind men and were quick to dispel them. They wanted no opposition. They tore the villacs apart, capturing, torturing and killing many, proving once and for all—as they had so many times already—that they were the strongest force in existence.

  But some villacs survived. A few found hiding places beneath the ground. Those who escaped the slaughter were slow to emerge. They waited for many years, letting the marauders settle. As the homesteaders gradually moved in after the warriors and built their own town over the skeleton of the old, they returned to the surface, though from that time on they clung to the shadows and kept their existence secret.

  They found a new boy to be Watana , host to their magical powers. This one was white, the progeny of the usurpers. That didn’t matter to the villacs. They didn’t care for the murdered members of the old town. Their only loyalty was to the land and the spirits of the future. They built, not for people, but upon them. Color, race and religion meant nothing to the once-Incan priests.

  But they’d been changed by the new regime. They were bitter, less certain of their place in the town, wary. They’d enjoyed being gods but now they stayed secreted away so that they might never again face extinction. Whereas before they’d chosen the wisest of people to invest with their power, the gentlest and purest, now they picked the strongest, the fiercest, the most determined.