Dreams of the Eaten

by Arianne Thompson

The coffin jolted again, this time with a muffled interior BANG: Dulei might have frozen overnight, but hours of being carried on Vuchak’s steaming back had apparently limbered him up enough to answer his mother’s call.

  With a burst of initiative he wouldn’t have guessed he had left, Vuchak seized the sling and ripped it out of Ismat’s hand, hurling it away with a hard fling of his arm. “Confess what?” he coughed, rolling up to a crouch in spite of the blaring pain in his leg, tracking her as she circled him. “That Dulei’s death wasn’t my fault? That I’ve been through unholy hell bringing him back? That I carried him here, myself, alone, after his own atodak abandoned him?”

  Ismat was lean and trim and lithe in spite of her age, as graceful as a dancer and as deadly as a thirty-year veteran – which she was. Beaten and exhausted, Vuchak had no hope of besting her in a fair fight.

  So he would not fight fair. He ducked sideways as she lunged for a kick, reaching to whip out his boot-knife and drive it into her calf –

  – except that the knife wasn’t there.

  It was lying at the bottom of a cliff somewhere, or buried in a frog-monster’s eye. And his split-second confusion was all the time she needed to stop, spin, and kick him in the back of the head.

  “Confess that you failed your promise to keep him safe,” she hissed as he hit the ground chin-first. “Confess that you brought an earth-prince here to destroy us – that you tried to kill Echep when he intervened – that you abandoned your own marka, traitorous wretch that you are!”

  No. Absolutely not. Echep must have gotten here already – must have filled their heads with lies – but Vuchak’s own head was spinning as he curled up and covered it, his poor brain desperate to keep from taking even one more hit.

  And the coffin was cracking. Winshin’s grief-song carried on without pause or punctuation, underscored by every answering BANG from the reanimating ruin striving to answer its mother’s call. Even as Vuchak glanced up, the bottom of the box broke open, evicting a black gout of flies, a stomach-withering stench, and the first mottled, weeping glimpse of something that might have once been a foot.

  Vuchak couldn’t bear it. He couldn’t bear to witness the breaking of that poor battered grave egg, or to see the hatchling horror inside. “Please, markaya,” he tried again, cringing in anticipation of Ismat’s next inevitable hit. “Let him rest! Let him be!”

  There was no reply – which wasn’t to say there was no answer.

  “Winshin, STOP!”

  And she did. Everyone did. Ismat paused in mid-kick, and even Vuchak couldn’t help but look up to see if he was mistaken in recognizing that voice.

  The rising sun reduced the figure on the terrace above to a bright-edged silhouette of a man – tall and splendid, fine and fearless, his cloak and hair flaring with the force of his great resonant command.

  Then he jumped down, and was Weisei again. “I mean it, big sister!” he said as he strode forward. “You leave my Vichi alone right this minute or I am TELLING.”

  Winshin stood tentpole-straight, her whole body stiff and quivering – as if she couldn’t decide whether to laugh, cry, or kill someone.

  In the end, she just covered her face and let out a hair-raising, heartbroken moan.

  “Wait,” Ismat said, forgetting everything as she hurried to comfort her mistress. “Wait for me, markaya – come, let me grieve with you...”

  Vuchak didn’t wait to see how long that peace would hold. He staggered up to his feet, dizzy, head spinning, his whole body screaming. Then he retreated to leave the two women far behind – to drown every pain in Weisei’s waiting arms.

  As a rule, men of the a’Krah did not embrace. That was a thing for children.

  Fortunately, Weisei was no man of the a’Krah. He had never made his declaration of adulthood, never plaited his hair. It spilled loose and free down his back, smelling of yucca soap and happiness as he enfolded his atodak like a willow tree winding over an oak.

  “I’m sorry,” Vuchak said into his prince’s feathered shoulder. Sorry to have left him, and sorry for disappointing him, and sorriest of all that he couldn’t return Weisei’s ebullient embrace – that even now, years of honor and practice and shame-fearing tradition kept Vuchak standing there in some sad, battered attempt at stoicism, pretending that he had neither heart nor arms.

  “You have nothingto apologize for, Vichi,” came the warm, earnest reply. Then Weisei stiffened just a little, and the back of Vuchak’s neck started to tingle where his marka’s hand clasped it, and his pains began to leave him, drained away by a gentle thief.

  Vuchak meant to protest. He shouldn’t allow such things – not when his wounds weren’t serious, and especially not when he had trained his whole life to soak up the world’s punishments on Weisei’s behalf.

  But by the time he found the thought, and then a voice to speak it with, the work was done, and there was nothing left in him but gratitude and endless, soul-sucking weariness. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  “I’m not,” Weisei said, and withdrew to take him by the hand. “Come on, Vichi. We just have to do one more right thing, and then you can rest.”

  Yes, of course. He’d promised himself one of those, hadn’t he?

  Vuchak asked no questions. He did not look back at Dulei or his mourning mother. That work was finished. Now he had only to let himself be led through the broken streets of Atali’Krah, trusting his marka to tell him the secret that would let them mend the world.

  IT PROBABLY HAD been a beautiful city, before Hakai got to it. Shea could believe that much.

  Now it was just a terrific pain in the ass. All those lovely terraces were a beast to climb, especially when she was helping to hold up half Hakai’s weight, because apparently Great All-Seeing Grandfather Marhuk insisted on having the poor bastard dragged all the way to his lair for his own personal inspection.

  So Shea and U’ru carried the wretched man between them, up the terraces and through the entrance of a little stone temple. Inside, an impossibly old woman sat atop a high dais like an moldering peach, asleep or dead or maybe both, given whose door she guarded.

  U’ru led the way around and behind her, Shea struggling to hold up her end of the dead-weight bargain between them, to another, smaller doorway at the far back of the room. The diamond eye carved over the top might have been an icon or an irony or just a’Krah for ‘watch your step’. Everything inside was pitch black.

  But that was apparently where they were meant to deliver this hopeless human heap, and it would only take longer if Shea balked. She hefted his right arm over her shoulder again as the three of them were swallowed up into the darkness.

  Shea had been blind before. River-bottoms tended to do that to a person, especially at night. But at least then she had her water-sense to warn her before she crashed into something. Now there was nothing but cold stone underfoot, and the soft, padding rhythm of two sets of bare footsteps... and as they went deeper into the mountain’s core, a steadily growing sinister smell.

  And heat. And light, distant but nearing. And a peculiar buzzing, almost like a strange organic hum. By the time Shea got close enough to make out the shaft of sunlight beaming in through the huge, fresh hole in the ceiling, and to understand what it illuminated, there was no turning back.

  The whole cavern was seething with crows. Every near-vertical surface in that vast, ageless chamber was a black curtain of preening, feeding, shitting, bickering birds. The floor was a reeking midden of droppings and feathers and the remains of old meals and older relatives – thankfully less so here on the grand boulevard, where surely some loyal acolyte came regularly to harvest all that fresh fertilizer.

  And the heat was incredible. Tens of thousands of energy-burning little bodies all crammed in here together, every twitch and flutter stoking the fetid furnace. After the brutal dry chill of the outside world, Shea would have luxuriated in it – if only she didn’t have to think about how quickly this mass of scavengers could skeletonize a foul-mouthed m
ereau.

  Her foot kicked a stone shard, its skittering retreat instantly swallowed up by the endless avian clamor. Go around, U’ru said of the fallen-in ceiling pieces blocking their path. Lay him in the sun.

  At another time, Shea might asked whether U’ru intended Hakai to sprout. Now, she picked her way around the rubble in awed silence, and did as she was told.

  And when at last they had dragged the man into the fat shaft of light there in the middle of the chamber, U’ru turned, gathering her furry brown robe, to kneel before the thickest part of the great black mass. Shea hastily followed suit, her knees bitching about the imposition.

  But she must have looked respectful enough, because when the voice of the collective spoke, it deigned to resonate in her mind too.

  Well, child. The words prickled up through Shea’s nerves like a march of primeval spiders, sending a frisson of dread through her old bones. Better late than never.

  SIL COULDN’T HAVE said how it started, except as a succession of modest yet miraculous urges.

  He’d wanted to blink, and then he’d blinked. He’d wanted to breathe, and so he’d breathed. He’d wanted to scratch his cheek, and was actually amazed less by the sight of his own immaculate hand than the sheer ordinary joy of having an itch to scratch. Everything after that had been a discovery of himself, a phenomenal sequence of granted bodily wishes. He’d just been learning the joy of running – and it had never, ever been any such thing previously – when Día all but collided with him. Things had spiraled out from there.

  Now, though... now he was here, among the a’Krah, preparing to do what he’d told himself was his new, exclusive reason for being. Now he wanted to save Elim – but that was a power yet to be tested.

  Which meant that at the moment, his best asset was Weisei – standing beside him, hands knotted, feet tight together, eyes roving up and down the length of Sil’s body, as if he still couldn’t believe he was real.

  Sil wasn’t sure he believed it either.

  “And that is the Last Word,” Weisei said, nodding up to the apparently mummified old woman sitting atop the dais. “Her name died long ago. Now she lives as Marhuk’s human voice.”

  That was putting it poetically. To Sil’s crude eye, she was nothing but a mass of feathers and wrinkles, a crone so old and withered and shriveled and frail that Sil couldn’t believe that she’d set herself there by her own power – much less that she’d ever been human. Sparse, brittle yellow feathers draped over her stick-thin bones and sprouted from hands wizened into arthritic talons. Her eyes were gone, her toothless jaw had collapsed to make a gaping beak of her nose and chin, and through the mottled rash of pinfeathers and broken white hairs on the left side of her scalp, Sil could just make out an earless, wax-crusted hole.

  Was that where he should direct his appeal? Did she understand Marín? Could she hear at all?

  Sil was about to ask when a shadow darkened the doorway. At first he expected Elim, who had volunteered to stay outside until he was needed. Sil hadn’t asked whether that was to avoid the claustrophobic confines of this strange, sinister little edifice or simply to enjoy what might be his last breath of fresh air. Día was out there with him, certainly doing a better job of consoling him than Sil ever could have.

  But this wasn’t either of them. This was one of the biggest a’Krah Sil had seen yet. He was easily as tall as Huitsak, but with none of his fat: older, perhaps in his fifties, with broad shoulders and white streaks in his long black plaits, and a keen-eyed stare leveled on Weisei, whom Sil could all but feel shrinking beside him. Vuchak, still standing guard at the door, made the peculiar wrist-offering bow that Weisei had shown Sil earlier, and did not straighten until the newcomer had taken a seat at the foot of the Last Word.

  “That’s To’taka Marhuk,” Weisei whispered, without looking at him. “He is the – the honor-father for the children of Marhuk, our duty-parent.” Sil could hear him fumbling for a translation, and guessed at the meaning behind it. “And since the grievance concerns two of us – my sister and her son – he will be the one to decide.”

  Sil inwardly winced. So the magistrate was the godfather of both the plaintiff and the victim. Hardly an impartial judge. “What is my best chance of persuading him?”

  Weisei glanced up, confused. “What is there to persuade him of?”

  Sil began to feel as if he’d missed a step on his way downstairs. “That Elim is deserving of mercy, of course... or have I misunderstood something?”

  “Of course you have,” Vuchak snapped from behind them. Sil turned in surprise. The man had looked absolutely dead on his feet since they got here, but now apparently found the strength to come forward and castigate him – albeit at a church whisper. “You people always do. What arrogance you have to presume –”

  “Vichi!” Weisei scolded.

  “– that you will even be asked to speak! What do you have to do with anything? Did you seal his fate with the Azahi? Did you bring him here? By the Starving God, Halfwick, you have been absent or inconsequential to everything from first to last, and you have the nerve to invite yourself here now, as if you have anything of even trivial importance to add –”

  “Veh’ne eihei.” To’taka’s resonant command echoed in the temple – the first words spoken at full volume since Sil had arrived.

  Vuchak shut his mouth, offered his wrists again, and retreated back to the doorway.

  Weisei swallowed, and presently ventured another whisper. “What my atodak wants you to understand,” he said delicately, “is that there is no case for you to make. Marhuk has already learned the truth from Dulei, and To’taka from – from me.” But his gaze had dropped to the floor again, and his voice trembled, and Sil didn’t dare guess why.

  “Weisei,” he said, forsaking all prudence as he took the thin magician by the shoulders, demanding eye contact even as he enunciated his next words with grave precision. “What did you tell him?”

  Weisei met his gaze, his dark cheeks somehow flushing darker still. “Only what is true, Afvik! I spoke of all the good things Ylem has done for us: how he saved Dulei from the fire, and gave me the last of his water when I was ill, and took such care of our Hakai, and – and returned to us here of his own choosing, when he could have run away a dozen times. I promise: I said only what was good and true.”

  Sil wanted to believe that. Certainly he believed that Elim would have done those things. But truthful people didn’t sweat and stammer and stare at their shoes, and he didn’t have to know what Weisei was leaving unsaid to hear the gaps it left in his speech.

  “What aren’t you saying?” Sil said, stifling the urge to shake the truth out of this fumbling equivocator. “Why are you afraid of me?”

  Strangely enough, Weisei’s gaze went not to his shoes, but to Sil’s hands on his shoulders. Then the space between his words changed their shape. “You... do you like me, Afvik?”

  “Of course I do.” The answer was dumb, automatic. What did that have to do with anything?

  But Weisei fairly beamed with delight. “Oh, I’m so glad. Forgive me, please – I’m sorry I ever doubted you.”

  And before Sil could ask what that was all about, another shadow spilled over the old stone floor, and admitted the oddest fellow yet.

  Judging by the black-feathered cloak at his shoulders, he was another of Marhuk’s children, young and fit and not displeasing to the eye. But that was where his resemblance to other royal men of the a’Krah ended. He wore what Sil could only think of as a deerskin dress, its hem falling to the ankles of his boots, its sleeves spattered with blood and dust – the first reminder Sil had seen of the disaster outside. The man had painted white diamonds over his eyes, which seemed to look kindly on Weisei in spite of his grave face, and every step made his waist-length single braid sway and sweep the air behind him. Following behind him, almost as an afterthought, was an old man who might have been a future-vision of Vuchak: he held fast to a spear and shield that he couldn’t possibly wield with any pur
pose, his twin plaited pigtails snow-white and shaking as he made his way to the dais at a palsied shuffle. Vuchak’s eyes seemed to linger on him long after the old warrior had taken his place behind his master.

  Sil had already put his hands away, eager not to be seen manhandling a son of Marhuk – who didn’t wait to be asked for introductions.

  “That’s Penten Marhuk,” Weisei said, “the youngest of our Eldest. I asked her to join us because she’s good at getting people to be reasonable, and because To’taka doesn’t know much Marín, and because I thought she might... there’s a small chance she might be able to change his mind.”

  Sil didn’t understand how the person he was looking at could be a woman, or why any man OR woman would want a geriatric bodyguard trailing after them. But his curiosity crumbled like cigarette ash in the face of that last dreadful suggestion: that the magistrate’s mind was already made up.

  Sil glanced up at the three of them there on the dais: great masculine To’taka and strangely feminine Penten, both sitting authoritative and serene, with the Last Word perched high and silent between them.

  Sil swallowed. He didn’t know their customs. He couldn’t speak a word of their language. He didn’t even know what justice was to them. How had he ever thought he could handle this?

  “Weisei, what am I going to do?”

  The question came from his mouth only, as his eyes were still fixed on that dire tribunal, and his brain was already bracing itself for the worst – perhaps only – possible outcome.

  But his hand raised no objections as Weisei picked it up and pressed it between his warm, slender fingers. “Do as they tell you,” he said, his face full of a calm, earnest wisdom. “Listen. Speak only when you are invited. Be patient. Assume nothing. Make your manners, as I showed you. Trust in your god’s favor. Have no expectations. Pray. And remember that I am at your service in everything, Afvik, that I –”

  Then the last newcomer announced itself, not with a shadow, but with the foul smell and dragging gait of an unnatural four-footed creature.