In Yana, the Touch of Undying

by Michael Shea

  The din of the charnel horrors poured into his ears, drowning out the surrounding tumult. Lightning flared terribly near, but he never heard the thunder. As the drench of rain crashed down he saw come speeding towards him—low to the ground—a chain with snapping manacles. He rolled on his back, thrust up his sword two-handed, and just managed, wrists popping, to shed its onslaught with a spray of sparks. Again he was acrawl down the flinty path. A fleeing guard overleapt him, headed likewise for the Yard’s brink. A Tenderizer’s floating hammer took him, the blow itself too quick to see. Hex, as the hammer lifted from that red ruin of a head, veered right, wormed low as he could through the next gap in machines. Five strides away a low wall marked the Yard’s rim and the steep slope of the bone dump. As he watched, a guard ran to that wall. While he paused to look over it the liberated axe of a Mincer cartwheeled by and clipped through the small of his back, so that only his top half actually made the dive.

  Now Hex felt his mind to be all but blotted by the blood-lusting din of the ghostly legions. Amid engulfing Pain and Fear he stood, feeling like a frail and skinless thing bent on its salvation with a suicidal fervour. Sprinting to the wall, he sprang straight over it and the huddled red half-corpse against it.

  Through a long, giddy drop the vertiginous white earth failed to meet his footsoles—a plunging, stomach-stretching pause—and then he sank thigh-deep in the loose spill of gravel and bone. Broadly, sluggishly, the talus slid, conveyed him down towards the shadows he craved. He wrenched free his legs and plunged with the slide, his impacts speeding and spreading its descent.

  Across the slope another man—a guard—fled just as he did down the rattling slump. Above and behind them both a Fanged Coffin overleapt the Yard’s wall and _ bounding end over end—pursued the guard. Some yards above him still, the box’s lid gaped wide as it launched its greatest leap, spun down, engulfed him and bounded without pause away, the bellowing victim and his death-cry locked inside.

  The agony dwindled in Hex’s skull. He began to hear the rain that still hammered his face, and to feel the flints and bone shards biting his feet deep in his overfilled boots. The shadowed gullies were now not far below him. As far above him, when he looked back, was the Yard—its wall minute, its din all but erased by the rain. Someone else had escaped as well—or at least, was less than a hundred strides above him. In fact—could that be Sarf?

  13

  Transport by Means of an Amorous Ogre

  “What was the name of that fifth town south of Polypolis? That one where the killing-slope was so dark because they seeded the Shlubbups’ beds with purple dye pellets?”

  “You mean where they made ‘Scanlion Purple, the Prince of Peels’ as that sign had it?”

  “Scanlion! Of course!” Hex spat into his inkwell—a dead leaf wedged in the grass he sat on—and sprinkled in more ink powder. He scratched anew on his parchments—spread on his notepouch, which he’d laid on his lap for a desk.

  Sarf stood watching him a moment. His look, though not unmixed with affection, was one of sour, disbelieving humour. He went back to his work. Since the grassy gorge they had been following all day grew cold once the fading sun deserted it—as had the others on both previous days—he was gathering droppings for a fire. These—big, dry skats that littered the gorge just here—he stockpiled under a large outcropping of the gully’s wall. As he picked up each patty, from where he stood he flung it, saucer-like, at the loose pile accumulating under the overhang.

  “You know, Bramt Hex,” he said as he worked. “You sit there snug as a hog in mud. With your notes for a map of someplace we’ve been. And what we need to figure out is where we are exactly, and where we can go.”

  “We’re going south. Till we get somewhere, what more can we know? Meantime I might as well get some work done.”

  Somehow the reasonable answer made Sarf madder. True enough, since they didn’t want to enter either Slimshur or the Satrapies, and the two together bulked uncircumventably to the north—and since, moreover, both had heard that a week south of Hismin was a populous stretch of coast not wholly hostile to strangers, they could only wind south through these hills as they had been doing. But Sarf was very hungry, and this for him sharpened the already keen bite of the cold.

  “We should be planning, Hex! Grant we reach some town—how are we to find our feet in it? What are they going to make of me with this iron belt on me? And don’t look so smug. You’re still lardy enough that it’s easy for you to be casual, but I’m starving, and these damned wild onions are worse than nothing at all!”

  Hex looked up, stung. Last night, on the end of their second day in the hills, he’d been able to wiggle out of the eyeleted waistband by which he’d been linked to Forb’s master chain. Sarf’s, fit to a middle lacking excess, stayed in place. Hex, having begun to dream of an heroic transfiguration, now heard truth in his friend’s sneer.

  “You followed this lardy frame fast enough when it led you to your life, Sarf Immlé, And if you think I’m not famished—”

  “I’m not trying to insult you! But just look at your state of mind! You’re feverish maybe—who knows? But your mind just isn’t in the grim here-and-now, it’s off in cloud palaces. Like when I told you about Kara—I still can’t believe you actually clicked your heels in the air!”

  Early in their progress through these hills Sarf had told Hex what he’d boasted of knowing about Yana that Oberg hadn’t known.

  “This Kurl he talked of. In Sakka Thorss where I grew up there was a child’s song—a game of handclaps and dance steps went with it. Part of it went:

  ‘If you through Kurl’s Museums would stray,

  You’ll stop in Kara on the way.’ ”

  “Kurl’s museums—not mines?”

  “Museums. But ‘Kurl’ conforms. And if it’s right, then at least you know which coast Yana’s on.”

  “But how? I’ve never heard of Kara!”

  “And you the antiquary, and would-be map-maker! Kara’s an old name for Kray! So it’s Kray Major or Kray Minor that’s meant. Now. Isn’t that a wonderful revelation?”

  Saying this, Sarf fairly smacked his lips over the ironic contrast: this clue to the Ultimate Prize set beside their actual nomadic misery, roofless and routeless. Hex’s glee at the news had kindled in Sarf the anger he vented now. It made Hex shrug.

  “I started with a name. Since then every turn of chance has added something, and now from you, who were never more than smilingly sceptical, I now know very nearly where to go. At least I know it’s back on the West Shore, and a thousand leagues or so to the north. I mean, aren’t you amazed too, knowing what I’ve told you? Right—it won’t help us survive now, but if we do…?”

  Even at his most sarcastic there had been in Sarf, Hex felt, a sneaking ardour for this idea of Yana, and Hex probed for it now. Surely Oberg’s fear-racked, moonlit confidences had fanned the latent flame. It made Hex realize he craved an ally.

  “I’ll make the fire now. I’m numb to the bone. And what skin I have on the bone feels thinner than one of your parchments there. Give me your sword for the steel.”

  Well in under the overhang, with a flint from the Deputarium Yard, he coaxed some heaped dead grass alight and propped some big skats over it. They were easily brought—with more grass and some blowing—to a low, smokeless flame. Hex joined him under the low rock roof with an armful of the wild onions he had gathered as they walked. They made a hot, gritty meal, but it blocked the jaws while it lasted and muted the growl of hunger. Neither attempted talk and Sarf—lying knees-to-chin to fit under his half-cape—quickly fell asleep. They were warm at least. Hex curled himself around the fire, and thought perhaps he was in a kind of hunger-trance, for he marvelled how swiftly, weightlessly he was dropping—zigzag like a falling leaf—into sleep.

  Icy cold woke him—the dawn’s chill. Out beyond the overhang he saw the grass—from star-silvered black—had turned ashen. Groaning, he stacked droppings on the fire, whose inmost core still glowed. H
e nursed the new blaze with his breath, then dozed and woke beside it, dozed and woke, weaving in and out of sleep with the fire’s company as with a bedmate’s. When at length he rose and crept out to piss in the dew-charged grass, the river of sky visible between the gorge’s walls was slate-blue, with a blush of light grey stealing into it.

  He sat by the fire, letting Sarf—whose caved-in cheeks he pitied—sleep some more, poking the coals with his sword and mutely, gloatingly sifting through the hoard of his hopes. From marvelling at Yana’s sudden findability, he moved to imagining its finding. Thence it was not far to a whole galaxy of dazzling enterprises—all purchasable from his endless fund of Time.

  Such bounty, indeed, made its prologue—that is, the near future—seem trifling, a foregone conclusion. After all, had they seen any danger so far? And the alleged coastal towns could no longer be far off. Meanwhile, what more protected highway than these gully-systems through the meadowy hills? Even the weather blessed them, cloudless days as golden as new-struck lictors, though chill in the shadow, as now. Now, beyond the overhang, the grass was fully green, and a patch of sun slanted down the farther wall, freckling it with fine-etched shadows.

  He grew impatient to be off—soon he would wake Sarf. His idly prodding sword hit something hard in one of the burning skats. He twisted the blade, splitting the faecal ember. He found—white in the smoking matrix—a row of teeth. With his swordpoint he chiselled the remnant clean: three-quarters of a human jaw.

  He raised the jaw. He studied it, hooked there on his sword-tip like an inverted “J”. Slowly, a great bitterness filled him. Surely he had been lightheaded to have forgotten—these last few days in the empty green hills—what the world was like. Apart from its fearsomeness, there was a humiliating sense of demotion in this harsh reminder of his life’s fragility—its liability to just such brutal interruptions, and undignified disposals, as those suffered by the former owner of this jaw. His interrupted fantasies mocked him now. Sarf’s lazy murmur came so consonantly with his thoughts that it scarcely startled him:

  “So. Good morning, fellow Meatbag. How many leagues more do you reckon it to Yana?” Sarf hadn’t raised his head from the arm that pillowed it. Sleep seemed to have deepened his gauntness.

  “Are you well?” Hex asked with a qualm more of fear than solicitude. He felt one drive only: to get out of the gully. The walls were steep. Could he manage if he had to help Sarf? To his relief, his friend sat up with his characteristic angry energy—leaned over, grasped his shoulder, and said, grinning, near his ear:

  “We must be charmed. Think of our luck! Chatting as we walked! The gullies channelling our voices ahead of us, like dinner bells!”

  “We’ve got to climb—” Hex’s voice, scarcely a murmur, stopped dead. A thud—one grass-muffled drumbeat—sounded somewhere just outside the overhang. They were only eyes then, their bodies vanishing in the perfect freeze of fear. Their eyes, quick as flames, felt at the same time anchored by their dread of seeing what they searched for. Nothing stood on the gulch’s grassy floor. The sun now gilt all the opposing wall, showing the crumbly steepness they would somewhere, as soon as possible, have to climb. They saw a brown blur plummet to the grass, and repeat the drumbeat they had heard.

  A paralysed moment of comprehension passed, then their bodies were theirs again. Sarf dragged on his stiff and dew-cold boots, Hex belted on his pouch and sheathed his sword. Lizard-low they crept downgulch, staying beneath the overhang to its limit. Thirty yards from where it ended the ravine turned, and beyond the jut of its wall, they should be screened from anything on, or clinging to, the wall above their camp. They studied the intervening ground.

  “The wall’s still got some jut to it,” Sarf breathed in Hex’s ear. “Stay belly-flat against it and there’s really only a few yards just before the turn where we’re exposed above.”

  With that he stepped sideways and began edging out along the wall, taking handholds on it where he could for steadiness. Hex blessed his brave momentum, and let it pluck him after before fear re-froze his legs.

  Now he was aware of his persisting thickness—felt sure his backside bulked out into view. The least clink of Sarf’s waistband on the rock, his own foot’s slightest tearing of the grass stopped his heart, though the gully was ninety feet deep. Near the turning he looked back and up; he couldn’t help it. Sarf had done the same, then flickered rat-quick round the turning to be hidden from what he saw. Briefly and indelibly, Hex now saw their near-catastrophe.

  A huge old Ironwood tree crowned the rim of the overhang. Three of its most massive branches overjutted the gorge. On two of these a pair of figures perched—ragged heads atop vast, sloping shoulders. One’s shoulder lifted, and proved to be a huge, draggle-plumed wing, fully twenty feet long. A stunted, haggle-clawed arm scratched the monster’s underwing. Also revealed were the dreadful talons that clutched the bough—wrapped it round, in fact, though it was thicker than a man. Hex ducked round the turn.

  They fled—pussy-foot at first, then at an outright trot. From now on they forsook the smoother ground of the ravine’s centre, and stayed near its walls. The silence of wings! As though for the first time they contemplated this terrible commonplace. Often they stumbled, and sometimes fell, with their sudden scannings of the sky. After perhaps two miles, they felt safe enough to slow down. However, at just about that point, the lie of the land began growing ominous. The ravine began to broaden and grow shallower. Within another mile its walls, not thirty feet high, fell back to gentler angles, and got grassy. Ahead, through their widened frame, the pair glimpsed the green swells of rolling terrain that opened out just beyond. While the subsiding wall still provided them with a crease of shadow, Hex stopped his friend.

  “We should wait till night right here.”

  Sarf gave his head a fierce shake. “I’m going on while there’s even the slightest cover. For all we know there’s enough we can keep going. I’m too hungry to wait, Bramt. An extra day in these—”

  “Listen! Hear that?”

  Sarf hearkened, blinked. “A shamadka?”

  As Hex nodded, their eyes trading amazement, the distant chords were succeeded by a rich baritone raised in song, so resonant they could almost make out words. There was a verse, more wisps of the silver strings, a second verse, and some further shamadka as coda. Throughout, they watched the sky, and the song called nothing into it. Its emptiness ended by giving the distant voice an air of immunity.

  “A camp maybe,” Sarf ventured. “If they know about those winged things they must be defended against them.”

  “We’ve got to find out, I guess. I just hate losing this cover.”

  Again they moved at a half-run, crouching, as if cringing from contact with the widening sky. Swiftly the walls collapsed around them as they ran, became flower-freckled hummocks not twelve feet high. Just past their farthest turning, broad, rolling green billowed out to the edge of sight. They paused.

  “Just past there,” Hex said, “it really opens out. You can see where the—”

  His jaw froze, and both fell flat to the ground. A large quadruped ambled into view round the turning. It paused, stretched down its neck, and cropped the grass. Its flaglike earflaps and mournful, top set eyes proclaimed its breed at once.

  “A hill-plod. That was a herder singing!” Something unpleasant nagged Hex’s memory even as he said this. Sarf led off again. He seemed to linger as they passed the plod—perhaps he imagined it roasted. Another turning, and the walls were barely man-high bulges and the smell of a herd-filled meadow reached them from just beyond, when Hex, galvanized, grabbed Sarf’s shoulder.

  “I just remembered. Did you ever hear that on the East shore plods are most often herded by ogres?”

  The shamadka rang again, stunning now in its sweet clarity, though seemingly still some hundreds of yards distant. The voice that followed it was likewise stunning, both for its uncanny resonance, and for the fact that such eerie, echo-textured tones could issue from only one source
: the throatbag of a bull ogre. It was a scolding, sprightly tune, coyly counterfeiting ire:

  Oh cease to dissemble, thou lovest me not!

  Though hotly thou swearest thou carest no jot,

  Wherefore woe is my lot!

  Aye woe, bitter woe, is my lot!

  To deceive me thou need’st more than swearings and sighs!

  To hoodwink me thou must undrape thy pale thighs,

  Add thy breasts to the lie—

  For such breasts can give weight to a lie!

  And if thus thou dissemble I’ll credit deceit!

  So long as thou giv’st it both body and heat

  And those lips make it sweet,