Rats and Gargoyles (60 page)

Lucas stifled fear under fatigue, triumph and sheer
blinded brilliance. With each step the sun shone more brightly, until he had to
turn his face away from the blaze and look down at his black shadow on the
paving. He passed under the main gate, and a shower of green leaves flew about
him, brushing his shoulders; white and pink apple blossom whirling into the air,
petals clinging damply to his skin.

The heat reflected from alley walls and bright
windows, smelling of dust and dirt, of manure, of bird’s feathers and
fruit-stalls and drying washing. Fragments of song burst up into the air, one
student beginning a catch, someone else drowning it. A shatter of glass made him
stumble. He turned to see Regis, the sun bright on her freckled face, standing
ankle-deep in an arcade window and passing out bottles of wine.

The yellow-haired Katayan male knocked against
Lucas as he stumbled past, chanting an unrecognizable song:

"Now we shall walk—

"Now we shall walk—

"Now we shall walk amongst you—"

A flash of white caught Lucas’s eye.

He staggered into a run, breaking for an alley-
entrance, panting, legs spiked with pain as he turned and ran up the hill. The
bleached sky burned above.

Its shadow dark on the cobbles, the silver
timber-wolf trotted quickly around corner and corner.

Heart hammering, lungs burning, Lucas caught up. He
ran from the last houses, out on to the abandoned building site surrounding the
Fane-in-the-Nineteenth-District. A confused impression of abandoned scaffolding
and stone, of black marble and jungles of flowers blurred his vision.

Like lava it ran down the hill into the city, a
resistless tide. Daisies sprouted from guttering, ivy from doorposts; wild roses
threshed up into great banks of scent and color. Sparkling mosses thrust up from
roof-tiles. The wind filled his mouth with the scent of cherry and roses and
stocks, slowing his steps until he paced, resting his oil-grimed fingers on the
ruff at the wolfs neck.

Exposed under the pitiless noon sky, he momentarily
shut his eyes. His palms sweated. Anticipation pulsed under his ribs, in his
guts. His hand closed hard over the wolfs rough pelt. Lazarus whined.

"Lazarus! Hey, boy!"

Lucas’s eyes flew open.

She trod the chalky ground of the site, dust
whitening her bare feet and ankles, her face tilted up to the summer sky. A warm
wind tugged the masses of dark red hair that fell about her shoulders, hair
whitened at the temples, and wound with white roses that shed petals as she
walked. Brown smears of dried blood marked her left hand.

She walked naked in the summer’s heat.

He mouthed her name. He heard the skitter of gravel
as she kicked it, walking across the site; saw her head come down, eyes sky- and
sun-dazzled, and a wide smile spread across her face. Now, closer, the young man
saw how dirt creased in the folds of skin at her elbows and jaw; how sweat shone
on her forehead and breasts. Dust paled her dark aureoles, glimmered in the
dark-red curls of her pubic hair.

"Lucas."

He reached out with both hands, cupping her bare
shoulders. Oil smudged her skin. She smiled, the skin crinkling around her tawny
eyes; tilted her head a little to the side. Flowers spiraled across the chalky
earth, coiling up about her ankles. He smelt her warm sweat, tasted salt as he
kissed her mouth and licked her cheek. Energy sang in her skin, pulsed in her
blood; the backwash of some tide not yet gone from her consciousness.

"Lucas . . ."

Her arms came up under his, tightening around his
ribs and across his back. Her breasts pressed against his skin. He grabbed her
to him, probing her mouth with his tongue, suddenly and appallingly inexpert.
Some tremor shook the body he held: laughter or disgust? He gripped her more
tightly.

He felt her hands slide down and unhook his belt,
smoothing his breeches down his hips, guiding him to sheath his aching and
too-ready flesh in her transformed body.

The sparrow soars down from the heights.

This is the same midday heat that would drive it to
shelter under eaves, or seek out a dust-bath to flutter feathers cool. Now,
dropping to earth, the bird’s unblinking eyes take in the heart of the world.

White stone wings extend, hissing in the clear air.
The sparrow stalls, flicks to perch on a vast extended finger. It cocks its
head, taking in the naked and narrow-hipped body that lounges upon the wind. An
eagle-head dips, golden eyes blinking. A dream of feathers blows about the
god-daemon’s stone skin.

The Decan of Daybreak, Lord of Air and Gathering,
lifts his finger and touches–so delicately–his colossal carved beak to the
bird’s head.

"See
. . ."

All the austerly horizons burst into flame with
flowers.

Air shimmered over the model, over the single
bricks that formed a makeshift wall around its five-meter-square plan. Walled
and gated by bricks, interior gardens sketched with chalk, domes and halls
slapped together from hessian and wet plaster on a wired lath frame. A model
rocking on chalk-marked broken paving.

"Ah." The Lord-Architect Casaubon looked up as a
shadow fell across the scaffolding and bricks and masonry of Fourteenth
District’s square where he sat. "I thought you’d be along, sooner or later."

A vast sphinx-shadow covered the broken paving and
the granite block engraved with the Word of Seshat; darkening the shabby
makeshift model of the New Temple.

The Decan of the Eleventh Hour stands against the
sun, the warm and glowing substance of Her incarnation wreathed with trailing
wild roses. Black bees swarm about Her face, nest in the crevices of brickwork
drapery. The summer breeze blows from behind Her, scented with desert dawn and
arctic night.

"Well done, little lord."

The Lord-Architect climbed ponderously to his feet,
rump momentarily skyward; tugged his blue silk breeches up and brushed with one
ham-hand at the dirt on his shirt and frock-coat.

"I know what you’ve come to do." His china-blue
eyes blinked against the new sunlight. He rubbed his stomach and gently belched.
"Hadn’t you–I beg your pardon, Divine One–hadn’t you better get
on
with
it?"

"Hurry is for mortals. "

One copper eyebrow lifted. The fat man opened his
mouth, hesitated, and shook his head. He began to feel through each of his deep
coat-pockets in turn. At last he unearthed a tiny notebook and pencil.

The Lord-Architect stripped off his voluminous blue
coat, spread it over an expanse of step, and eased himself down to sit on it. He
balanced the notebook on his immense thigh, and licked the pencil thoughtfully.

"There is something yet to do, little lord."

The Lord-Architect Casaubon lifted his head from
his writing. He pushed up his shirt-sleeves with the pencil still folded in his
plump fingers. A line of tiny neat letters marked the notebook’s page.

"I said, there is—"

A grin creased its way across the fat man’s oil-
and plaster-stained face. He spread one open palm. "Divine One.
Do
it. I
always had a taste for a good miracle myself."

Radiant and stinging as the sunlight, divine
amusement beat against his skin. He rested his chins on his hand, and his elbow
on one vast up-raised knee, and held the tiny notebook up.

"I see
. . .
"

Heavy-lidded eyes close, open, with leonine
slowness. Sun gleams on high cheek-bones and nose, shines back from tiny ochre
bricks and the white dots of roses. The salt-pan whiteness of Her gaze fixes
upon him.

"Knowing all, then, you will not need Me to tell
you that she lives. "

A shudder passed through his flesh, shaking his
chins and belly. He wiped a sweat-drenched forehead, smearing plaster-dust in
clumps into his hair, and breathed in sharply. For a moment he sagged in relief.
Then he tapped the notebook against his delicate lips, hiding a broad smile.

"No–but I thank you for the thought."

"If you are not damned, little architect, it will
not be the fault of the Thirty-Six. Very well, then. Your expected miracle. See
now what I conceive it necessary to do!"

Light blazed.

In that second he saw no lath-and-plaster domes, no
brick colonnades or chalk-drawn gardens, only the deep structure of order and
proportion and extravagant flamboyance that lies in particles, cells, souls.

Breath knocked out of him, the Lord-Architect
sprawled on his back. He grunted, getting himself up on to his elbows.

"Madam, I congratulate . . . you . . ."

The stone of Seshat lay embedded now in a wall,
mortared in with a cement that seemed to bear the weathering of many seasons.
Beside it, before the Lord- Architect’s startled gaze, mellow red brick soared
up into a foliate gate. He stared through the opening, too small to admit a
carriage, across lawns flanked by comfortable low colonnades. A fountain shot
thin jets into the sunlight.

"Oh, I do," he said. "I do."

Beyond the fountain, wide steps suitable for
traders’ booths or just for resting rose to a rotunda and tiled dome; its arches
open and without doors to close them.

Somewhere beyond the main body of the temple, a
campanile put delicate brick tracery into the summer sky. He stared at the
ledges, balconies and open belvedere. His gaze fell to gardens, and clear
through the gateway came the sound of river-water.

"
Look
at it . . ." A woman’s husky voice
sounded above him. Casaubon pushed himself up to a sitting position beside
Mistress Evelian.

"It was bound to happen." Pride crept into the fat
man’s voice. "Such acute construction ought never to be wasted
—
"

"Sharlevian!"

With eyes for nothing else, not even the presence
of a god-daemon, the yellow-haired woman ran through the gate, catching up the
hem of her dirty blue satin dress. She flung her arms around a figure in pink
overalls, swinging her daughter’s feet off the ground.

Tannakin Spatchet, hovering on the edge of their
joy in embarrassment, caught the Lord-Architect’s eye. The Mayor drank from a
pottery jar, lifting it in salute.

Behind him, spreading out through the grounds that
now seemed to fill all the site-space lying behind the square, black and brown
Rats, and humans still in the remnants of carnival dress, wandered wide-eyed up
from the underground tunnels. Talk sounded gradually louder on the air.

Casaubon stood and walked under the arch of the
gateway. He rested one brick-grazed hand against the wall. Flesh curved,
creasing his face into a ridiculous and ineradicable smile; he swept his gaze
across the Temple grounds–cool passageways, wide steps, seats, fountains; the
glimmer of mosaics in the ceiling of the great dome; distant tree-tops, and the
explosion of blossom, and the growing crowds–and finally swung back, arms wide.

"Didn’t I say, the best thing I’d ever done! Oh,
not as magnificent as many, not as
grand
–but for the
form
of it!
That structure all but compels them to rest, to walk slowly, to talk
peaceably—"

"Compelled? Invited, rather. And was it your
conception, little lord? I think it was also the woman’s, and the child’s, and
the other man’s there."

"Well . . . Yes. I admit it. Baltazar Casaubon
doesn’t need to fear sharing credit, Divine One."

Her head rises against the blue summer sky,
incarnate, ancient and young. Black bees hum around her shoulders and flanks.
The Decan of the Eleventh Hour raises Her head and gazes into the heart of the
sun itself. The full curved lips move.

"So . . . but yes. Yes. Haste is for mortals–but
there is still one thing to be done."

The deck slewed.

The Boat, gripped in a midnight current, raced into
noise and darkness. Clawed hands tore at the hull, wood shrieking as it ripped.
Zar-bettu-zekigal staggered back and forth across the deck, boot-laces flapping,
hacking her heel down on nine-clawed hands, spitting at catfishmouthed human
faces. She swallowed, saliva wetting her sore throat.

"I can keep this up all night if it helps. Isn’t
anything I don’t remember."

Far up, in the vaults of darkness, a line of white
glimmered. Zari narrowed her eyes. In her moment’s inattention, the humming
chant behind her faded into vagueness.

"Elish!"

"I hear you, Zar’. What happened then?"

"Oh, she told me to get out of the tent. I had it
just
where I planned and she–all
she
cared about was that I
shouldn’t talk to the press!"

Zar-bettu-zekigal let the stream of words come. She
balanced on the moving deck, knees aching at the shifts of balance. Water curved
up–
up
–in a great hill: obsidian-black, sharp with rills and knot-hole
eddies. Above and ahead, at the crest of the rising water, whiteness foamed.
Zari’s hand shot out and grabbed a thwart.

"And why
shouldn’t
I talk to Vanringham? I’m
a Kings’ Memory! I can talk to anyone I like!"

A chuckle. "But can you stop?"

A whisk-ended tail whipped about Zari’s ankle. She
glanced back. Elish-hakku-zekigal sat cross-legged at the tiller, one elbow
hooked about the black wood; her free hand tapping a shaman drum-rhythm on the
deck. Her cornflower-blue eyes gleamed in the guttering light of the one lamp.

"Need you, little one. Who else could keep my
memory stirred?"

She began to hum, deep in her throat: a shaman
chant. The hairs rose down Zar-bettu-zekigal’s spine, and the familiarity of it
stirred a reckless joy in her. She jerked her head, hair flying.

"And that? Up ahead?"

"I think, for good or ill, the end of us. Hold on!"

The roar of the impossibly-rising hill of water
deafened her. Zar-bettu-zekigal whiplashed moisture from her tail and tottered
back across the deck.