The New Death and others (5 page)

were faithful to her still.

(back to contents)

++++

The Scholar and the Moon

The evening air smelled of incense and thick,
stupefying plum wine. Masked revelers laughed and staggered through
the cobbled streets of Mayajat, for the night would bring a full
moon.

The moon ruled the people of the city. Each
full moon brought a new temperament, so that everyone would be sly
and calculating one month, and the next month wrathful and
belligerent. None knew the reason why. Some said that the wombs of
the mothers of Mayajat grew many babies at a time, but that before
birth the strongest one absorbed the others, so that everyone in
Mayajat was born a murderer. The ghosts of these dead siblings,
they claimed, fought to control their slayer, and the moon gave
power to one or another as she would.

This evening, as on every full moon, all
Mayajenes stayed awake, eagerly awaiting the passion that would
rule them for the month. All Mayajenes, that is, save one.

The scholar Conwy had always stood apart from
this monthly custom. Of late he found it unbearable. He shut his
window tight, in the hope that the celebration below would reach
neither eye nor ear. Yet light and sound seeped through.

Conwy wondered why he was different. Perhaps,
he thought, there was some truth to the rumor that he had foreign
ancestry to match his foreign name. This would explain why he
longed to be like the outlanders, and have a soul which was still,
like a sea that knows no tides.

He believed his name meant 'Hound of the
Plain'. If this was true he was ill-named. His broad nose and
tightly-coiled white hair gave him the appearance of a sheep.
Indeed some whispered that, like a sheep, he had been
castrated.

Curled in his hammock, cloaked in blankets,
he resembled a caterpillar in a cocoon. The coming hour moved the
rest of the city to frenzy. Conwy felt not as if he was about to be
reborn, but as if he was to be sealed alive in his tomb. Yet, as in
a nightmare, he could not fight or escape. He lacked the energy to
do anything but sleep.

In a fevered dream Conwy saw the streets
beyond his shuttered window. The masks of the citizens of Mayajat
seemed not to conceal, but to reveal their wearers' true aspect.
Their wine-maddened capering seemed the sober gait of creatures
alien to him.

Musicians as drunken and leering as their
audience offered raucous praise to the moon. She filled the sky,
swollen like over-ripe fruit. The fish that dwell amid darkness
eternal in the deepest chasms, like maggots in the wounds of the
earth, were no whiter than the moon. Conwy, groaning and soaked in
sweat, writhed in his hammock. Demon-faced dancers filled the
streets, bright as a flock of tropical birds. Cloaks and feathers
and masks reshaped human forms into those of some inhuman kindred,
primeval and unknown.

And then, like the breaking of a dam, it
happened! In each heart the fluids that control the temperament
suddenly rose or fell in unvaried obedience to their celestial
mistress. In the hearts of men, the hearts of women, those of
infants in their cradles, the delirious and the demented, perhaps
even the rotting hearts of the dead in their graves.

In his room Conwy awoke with a shriek. Even
with his window closed his voice was drowned in the cheers of the
crowd.

He rushed to his desk. Frantically he flipped
through one book after another. Where normally his mind wandered
through books like a butterfly through a garden, he now evinced
indifference to the most interesting trivia. Yet a list hidden in a
drab almanac absorbed his attention for some time. He carefully
copied down sketches of various architectural features common in
the city. A lengthy, if not obsessive, inquiry into the properties
of various ropes caused him to shout with joy.

At last Conwy had found all that he sought.
He opened his window. Then he addressed to the moon a lengthy and
solemn oath. All roads, so the saying goes, lead to Mayajat. This
is true of the roads of the heavens as well as those of the earth.
Thus Conwy had gods from a dozen worlds by whom to swear. He swore
by Isis and Osiris, by the senile and malignant gods who crouch in
the ruins of the Abysmal Plain, by the hyena-mouthed one who eats
the
fruit of the machete
, human hearts. Finally he
declared,

"By all these gods I swear; my vassalage to
thee, O tyrant of the skies, draws close to its end!"

But it was the first hour of dawn, and the
moon had already gone to sleep, and did not hear.

---

Conwy set forth that very morning. The sun,
though he welcomed his return, revealed a scene best left hidden.
He smelled stale wine, urine and vomit. A blanket of detritus
covered all, as if some maleficent sea had flooded the streets and
then departed. The combination of hangover and adjusting to a new
temperament drove most to their hammocks for the morning, if not
the day. The few people on the streets shuffled without speed or
direction, and with queasy and bewildered expressions, their entire
attention taken with avoiding broken glass and pools of liquid.

For many hours Conwy studied various
buildings, paying particular attention to their roofs. When the
shopkeepers arose at last, Conwy spent the few cowrie shells he
possessed on rope, a lantern, and other supplies not suited to
scholars. This took most of the day. The custom of Mayajat is for
buyer and seller to spend hours sipping strawberry tea and
haggling. Conwy returned home near sunset. The garbage-strewn
streets played host to a new revel, this time of gulls, roaches,
and rats. He wished for the cleansing monsoon. Alas, that was many
months away.

He slept. When he arose again the sky was
dark. The moon was once more sovereign of the sky. But as she was
no longer full, Conwy held no fear of her. Indeed he hoped she was
watching. He went into the streets bearing a pack filled with his
purchases of the day. He held a machete, and kept his lantern
unlit, but no one challenged him, until he stopped in the shadows
of a nondescript building. He drew from his pack a rope, which
ended in a grappling hook. Once the claw of a dragon, the hook
retained the fierce grip it had in life. Conwy threw it upwards and
it gripped fast.

---

As the Mayajenes said (and still say), not
all who are bearded are wise. Few on the ground had even heard of
the Owls of Yib. Yet only the wise mediation of these sages
prevents outright war between one roof-dwelling kindred and
another. For the talking sparrow has little love for the
swan of
blood
, as talking ravens are called, and the proud and violent
gargoyles loathe those roof-dwelling imps who make their way into
houses at night, stealing socks for unknown purposes.

Conwy, rich in books but a beggar in
friendship, was probably better informed about the roofs than
anyone in the city. He knew where and when the Owls of Yib would be
holding court. And he knew that they were experts on the moon.

Again he threw the grappling hook upwards and
into the darkness.

---

Conwy was, by now, in the temple district:
the highest and oldest part of the city, rarely seen even by
burglars. His vision was obscured by thick mists, the rising smoke
of incense. Conwy smelled jasmine, honey, and vanilla. An
acquaintance of his youth had worn a similar scent. Conwy thought
for a moment of sky-coloured eyes.

Remembering his beloved was like biting into
fruit which has a sweet skin, but is sour inside. There can be
little hope of success in love when one spends weeks writing a
poem, only to find that a new moon has come and one's beloved and
rivals alike disdain reading and live only for the outdoors. Conwy
felt as if courtship was a dance, the steps of which were known to
all but he. His waking dream was interrupted as a new fragrance
wafted by. It was burnt flesh, perhaps from a funeral, perhaps the
sacrifice of an animal.

Centuries ago, the worshipers of the goddess
of travelers built a huge bird-house on the roof of their temple.
The house was styled to resemble the mansion of a wealthy family,
shrunk to bird-size. Migratory birds, sacred to the goddess,
sheltered there during the monsoon. Talking birds also visited,
especially when they wished to hide among their mute fellows. And,
on this particular night, the Owls of Yib would be there to hear
the various factions of the roofs.

Without warning Conwy found himself
face-to-face with a gargoyle. The gargoyle wore a splendid cloak of
marble, decorated with stripes of rust. It bowed, and spoke.

"O dweller upon the ground, you are far from
your natural home. Do you not feel that the wingless things of
earth should be bound to earth? Would this not maintain both the
dignity of the air, and the safety of the ground? For all matter
has a desire to be reunited with the earth, even though the reunion
be fatal, and only wings"--and here the gargoyle gestured towards
its own wings--"may dictate otherwise."

"O gargoyle," Conwy replied with a bow, "I do
not. Caution would dictate that things should be as you suggest.
Yet even the most cautious die, and are buried no shallower than
the reckless. Therefore Caution, though a wise sister to be
consulted, is not a queen to be obeyed. It is written that moths
were created by the moon, in imitation of the butterflies created
by the sun. They fly into open flames because, with their dim
sight, they believe it to be the moon to whom they long to return.
From this we may draw the following moral: it is not always safe or
wise to seek one's natural element."

"Yet I could push you off this roof," the
gargoyle snapped, "and you would fall just as quickly as one whose
arguments were less elegant."

"There speaks Power," Conwy said, outwardly
calm, "who knows the language of reason, but whose mother-tongue is
force. I say to you that this fog around us is neither a wall nor a
window. These things, if they conceal, will always conceal, and if
they reveal will always reveal. The haze around us, by contrast, is
like the clothing of a courtesan: it may reveal when we have no
expectation of such, yet conceal at the moment of our greatest
desire for revelation. Therefore, if you have seen me, can you be
sure that no one else has seen me, and that no one sees us now? I
deduce from your finery that you are on your way to see the Owls of
Yib. You, no doubt, have concluded that I take the same journey.
Therefore we are bound not to offer violence to one another, lest
we be exiled from this realm forever; a realm which, as you have
pointed out, is your natural home and not mine." The gargoyle gave
a wordless cry of disgust, as of one who has spit some foulness
from their mouth, but still has the taste thereof. It opened its
wings, and flew into the mist.

---

Religious toleration was the law of Mayajat.
Two temples might each profess that the other was full of ignorance
and wickedness, and their so-called god a demon. Behind temple
walls the priests could preach as they liked. Yet harsh punishment
would fall on any worshiper who offered so much as an insulting
remark in the open street.

Above the streets and the laws, even the laws
of nature, the gods were free to do as they would. Two temples
might be a few feet away on the ground, yet the temple roofs might
be miles apart, or in different regions of the universe altogether,
one entirely unreachable from the other. Such twisting of space is
not good for mortals to look upon. Conwy cursed the haze for
obscuring his vision, but this may have been a mercy.

Conwy stopped. For here, his books told him,
was a place of great danger: the roof of a temple whose worshipers
had sealed themselves within and took poison. The roof was the home
of The Ziggurat of Tongues. This huge object, or creature, was
pyramidal in shape. Its hide was the deep green of jade, and
covered in glistening slime like a foul thing new-born. The
Ziggurat had innumerable writhing tongues, each as strong as a
wrestler and as lithe as a concubine. Some esoteric texts claimed
that the temple had been burned to the ground. The roof, they
claimed, maintained existence within the fog purely by the
Ziggurat's will, or by the will of whoever or whatever the Ziggurat
served.

Conwy peered through the thick smoke. Dimly
he saw the abomination. Dozens of tongues waved lazily in the air,
as the tentacles of an octopus wave in the water. He drew his
machete. The tongues were said to be made of normal matter, and
thus vulnerable to a blade. Yet he knew that, if he used his
weapon, it would most likely be to end his own life, saving himself
from the unspeakable fate of those taken into one of the thing's
many mouths. Conwy lay down flat. The roof was slick with the
discharge from the Ziggurat. Conwy crawled, like a pilgrim in a
place so holy that he feels unworthy of walking. The tongues, he
had read, could snatch a bird out of the sky. Yet they were much
less supple when forced to bend downwards, so that victory over the
monster could be achieved by crawling through its slime.

A horrible thought suddenly struck him. He
had assumed that the books he had read were speaking literally. But
what if he had taken an allegory on humility for practical advice?
All at once he was certain that this was the case. Such a mistake
seemed itself an allegory, for his own life. Yet, as if his limbs
were controlled by another, he continued to crawl.

The tongues wriggled as Conwy passed
underneath them. They strained downwards, seeking to wrap around
him. Conwy felt them licking the back of his neck and brushing his
earlobe. He shrank from their caresses like one touched by a
corpse, pressing himself into the shallow lake of excretion as
eagerly as if he lowered himself into a hot bath augmented by
soothing oil, and not into bitter, stinking, bile.