The Revenants (20 page)

He joined those who were stretching themselves upon the high tables. Others moved around them, speaking quietly, as though in a ritual, a litany of numbers and lights. To one side was a vast tube or jar, bound around with hoops of shining metal and connected to the wiry tangle. The place fell silent. Still. One tiny movement by one of the attending figures, a small lever moving in a slot from one side to the other, and then a hum, as though something living had wakened deep in the earth.

Those who lay upon the tables began to shine, glowing from within. In the great jar darkness gathered, a grey mist, rolling, thickening, curdling upon itself as a storm cloud curdles. On the tables the figures shone brighter, beautiful in their shining, and more beautiful still until it hurt to look at them.

Still the darkness gathered. The jar filled, became black and horrible.

Upon the tables the figures stirred, rose in godlike glory, faces radiant. As one they turned toward the contained darkness, contemplating it for a moment with deep satisfaction. Then into each deific face came a frightened comprehension, and a growing horror.

As they approached Murgin, Jaer’s captors gave her less of whatever drug it had been; she woke from her dreaming to feel the pain of bound limbs, of hunger and thirst, the beginning of apprehension not yet strong enough to be terror.

They came to a place of dead trees, a mile or more of grey trunks set in dun earth with no leaf or green among them and only the vultures and kites circling far overhead to show that anything still lived in this place. Then came the place where the trees had been felled, and they went as if between the horrid knuckles of ancient giants. Finally the hooves of the animals pounded across the black pave, mile on jarring mile, harsh ringing of hoof on stone until the animals arrived at last, blown and shivering, before the gates of Murgin. One of the company made a wordless cawing, as from a tongueless throat, and the gates grated open into broad, bare corridors lit with acid light, floored with stone, roofed with stone, into which no light of the sun ever came nor light of the moon ever peered.

They rode along bare corridors which twisted and branched deep into the mount of the city. Those they passed stood silent and bowed against the walls. The beat of hoof on stone was the beat of hammer on metal, an anvil struck relentlessly. They wound their way upward, the horses labouring, stopping at last outside an iron door set with bloodstones in the great Seal of Separation. These doors opened silently, and Jaer was dragged across an expanse of black floor to be flung down before a high dais with three carved thrones on which red-robed figures crouched beneath the weight of high iron crowns.

The robed one who had carried her threw itself before the thrones, prostrate and trembling. A gasping whisper came from the dais, so freighted with age, agony and exhaustion that it might evoke pity, but it breathed with such obscene gloating that the pity turned upon itself, became an instinctive revulsion. An image formed in Jaer’s mind of a serpent, crippled and maimed, yet with all its venom and malice intact, crawling relentlessly after a tiring prey. The voice was made more terrible by a second voice, as like to the first as an echo, the two whispering together, interrogating the messenger who had brought Jaer and answering that interrogation while the messenger itself trembled and was silent.

‘Did it go to Byssa?’ breathed the first voice, ‘to Byssa to meet the one we had been told would come there? The one the old women saw in the dreaming dark? Had the old women heard it first on the sea? And then near Delmoth? And then by the River Del, coming toward Byssa?’

‘Oh, yes,’ responded the second voice. ‘The old women saw it in the dreaming dark, coming toward Byssa. A strange one. Power all around it. Did our messenger go to Byssa to meet it? To find it? To catch it?’

‘No,’ breathed the first. ‘No. Our messenger was tricked, was delayed, was unwise. Our messenger knew the will of
that
but did not do the will of
that
. Is this not so?’

The prostrate figure trembled, trembled and was silent. A sigh came from the dais. Almost, for a moment, Jaer might have believed that sigh. For a moment.

‘Where was the one we sought? The old women were given drugs, potent drugs, the drugs of dreaming. What did they see? The far places of Anisfale, Far, too far. This was not the one we sought near Byssa. Again the dream. The town of Yenner-po-Tau. Far, too far. Ah, but wait. One old woman speaks. She says, “No, not Yenner-po-Tau. The forests instead. The forests of Ban Morrish!” ‘

‘Where was our messenger? Oh, our messenger had not dared to fail again, our messenger had been wise, so wise. Our messenger had gone with dogs through the canyon of the River Del, had found a trail, had followed it into the forests.’ The voice tittered. Jaer wanted to vomit. Her head swam with the residue of the drug they had given her. The voices reciting to one another what was obviously already known went on, dizzyingly. She could not understand the obscene laughter in the voices, the sense of anticipation. Of what?

‘Then the old woman spoke of the forests of Ban Morrish. Then we sent word to our messenger. “Search,” we said. “Seek, find, for the one we seek is near you in the forest of Ban Morrish.” Did our messenger hear? Lo, one is now brought before us. But was this one alone? Where is the one of power, the strange one, the one sought? This does not look like the one we sought. Were there not others? Where are those others? Did our messenger not bring them? This is a sad and dreadful thing.’

‘Sad and dreadful,’ echoed the other voice. ‘Our messenger has failed.’

‘Nooo,’ moaned the figure on the floor. ‘Nooo. I have brought the one you sought. Even when the dreamers could not find it, Lithos found it. Even when the directions failed, Lithos did not fail. Lithos found it. Lithos sent me with it. Lithos says it is the one. It is here!’

‘Oh, no,’ tittered both voices. ‘The messenger has failed. Let the messenger look on the reward. The reward our messenger may not receive.’

At the side of the dais a huge stone moved, pivoted upward to stand like some massive monument at the end of a black pit. From the depths came a low mutter, a kind of growling as of some malign conversation among unthinkable creatures. The messenger had risen to struggle toward this pit, fighting against two other robed figures, lunging nearer and nearer to the opening. It was allowed to approach almost to the edge before one of the red-clad figures upon the dais gestured. The stone fell with a hideous finality to the sound of the messenger’s sobbing.

‘It wanted its reward,’ tittered the voice. ‘It wanted to go into the pit, to fall, to come to the end. But that is the reward for those who do not fail. This messenger failed. This messenger must try again.’

The sobbing figure was dragged away. Jaer stood up, swaying. None of what had happened was at all real, and she brushed it away as she would a foolish dream. The falseness persisted, the red figures on the carved thrones were still there, each weighted by its iron crown. The play was evidently over. From the thrones they bent toward her, eyes intent upon her, the viscid voices winding into another interrogation. They desired to know about Jaer, her birth, life, her companions, destinations, purposes. In her dreaming confusion she said one thing and its opposite. She had been born, she said, in Lak Island, or perhaps in Rhees. She had grown up in Anisfale, except for travel in Xulanuzh to the south. There were lions in the south. Her mouth grew dry and then she said nothing. The guards gave her water with something acrid mixed into it, and the room hardened into clarity.

‘Once again,’ said one of the multiple voices. ‘Tell us where you are going. Who travels with you? Where are they now?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Jaer, honestly. They asked her again, and she told them of learning to play the jangle. They had her stripped and looked at her while the guards turned her around before them.

‘This is not the one,’ they said. ‘This is not power, not danger, not the weapon, not the adversary. This is only a female, young, useless. The messenger has indeed failed.’

‘Lithos does not fail.’ An objection, a hiss.

‘The messenger has failed.’ Firmly. ‘This is not the one. But it may know the one. We will send this one for modification, after which it will tell us everything.’

Jaer looked up, suddenly defiant. ‘I will not tell you anything. Not anything.’

‘Oh, yes.’ The voice returned to its tittering, oily tone. You will tell us what we wish to know. You will look deep inside for little things you have forgotten. You will bring them to us as gifts. You will beg for the reward, but we will not give it to you until you have told us all. No, we will insist that you live for a time, only a time, until you have told us everything.’

The figure beckoned with one hand. Jaer was dragged forward until she faced the crouched creatures in their red gowns. Their left hands lay flat on the stone thrones, and through the hands nails of steel had been driven which held the hands to the stone. On each head the high iron crown was held in place by pins of steel thrust through the living flesh into the skull. Filth ran down the sides of the thrones, and Jaer knew they had been nailed there for an untold time.

‘You will tell us,’ the voices promised.

She was taken away, given into the care of a jailer who put her in a cage. Around her were other cages, full of old women who slept, their chests moving slightly with laboured breaths. Soon the jailer returned to her cell and took all her clothing, feeling her body with hands that were like paws, leering from a face that looked like lumps of brown-purple fungus, speaking from a mouth like an unhealed wound. Oh, so much to cut away. This, and this, and they must go up inside to get it all. This is good. It pays best, your kind. I must stay here until it is all paid for me. Someone else must pay for me. Then I can go. Soon, I think. Soon. I have been here so long. No, maybe not long. I forget.’ The creature gave her a wrapping in exchange for her clothing, gave her food and water, and then took her from the cell to show her the laboratories and surgeries where the modifications were done. Jaer saw them all. There was an endless screaming in those places, for it was all done with the victims quite conscious. Then, when what was done had partly healed, it was often done again. The jailer explained carefully what it was they would do with Jaer.

She was returned to the cage to fall weeping upon the floor, choking with terror and crying endlessly to herself, ‘Oh, Ephraim, Nathan – someone, don’t let them do that to me….’

But, of course, they did it anyway.

CHAPTER TWENTY

OUTSIDE OF MURGIN

Year 116’ – Midwinter Day

The gryphon buried the Keeper as a cat buries its own excrement, scratching dirt over the body with heavy lion paws. Then it spent long moments staring at Terascouros while the old woman muttered and maundered and shook like a sapling.

‘She talks to me in my head, like a beetle crawling on my brain,’ she gasped. ‘Oh, I’m hungry and tired, and there is still so much she demands us to do—

Jasmine hugged the old woman. ‘You’re cold, grandmother. What are we going to do now? Do you want some tea? To eat something?’

Terascouros nodded, babbling, ‘Yes. Tea. Oh, that would be good. Something to eat. What are we going to do? Oh, child, Leona says that there are others, others like her. I don’t know if she means really like her. Unseen, she says. Around us, or near us, within hearing. Forgotten and unseen, able to move at our summoning, full of terrible power. She says she can feel them, knows they are there. Perhaps I misunderstand her. It’s hard to know. But we will try. Oh, yes, we will try.’

They fed the old woman tea and broth. Across the fire the gryphon glared at them, a wicked glint striking at them from the huge eyes as it waited while they ate. They were caught and held by that glare, seeming to themselves to be moving as in a dream in which sight and hearing were intensified but feeling dimmed. They considered the idea of fear, but calmly, as though it were a strangely shaped stone kicked up in their path, a thing of only momentary interest, not really an obstacle.

Impatiently the gryphon rose to its feet and cried out in its voice of imperious brass. Terascouros lurched upright, stumbling a bit.

‘Thewson, you’ll have to walk beside me to hold me up. These old legs don’t want to work, not at all. Medlo, help Jasmine, she’s as tired as I am. Oh, well, so are you. You won’t have to do much. Just come along and gather together what strength you have. If we catch the city by surprise, it may be enough. Bring our things, and come.’

At the edge of the pave they could look up into the sky where a slender moon and the stars shone dimly upon the city. The fringe of dead forest gleamed grey-silver, a softly luminous ring which swept from behind them away on either side, far out around the circle of the pave to vanish behind the ebon bulk of Murgin. Nothing moved upon the vast blot. The light from the sky fell upon it and was swallowed up. It was only blackness, with greater blackness as its centre.

‘All the trees cleared away,’ mumbled Terascouros. ‘So that from that tower they can see anything that moves. Well, let them see, eh?’ and she dug a sharp old elbow into the gryphon’s ribs. Jasmine shuddered, sure the beast would eat the old woman in one bite. Instead there was a sound of shallow thunder, the gryphon’s laughter.

‘Once again, we will make a circle,’ said Terascouros. ‘As I had you do once before. I with you, this time. Yes. We will call to those powers the gryphon senses, creatures of the dark, the forests, the seas, the lonely mountains, the chasms and abysses of earth. Jaer had seen strangeness, had she not? And you, Medlo? Strangeness which we have learned not to see. Well.

‘We will do what we can, and the gryphon will go to Murgin, break down the doors, search out that place the black robe spoke of, the place where Jaer should be. If those in Murgin are as I was, they will not be able to see her. She will come like a great, invisible scythe, a vengeful blade. Still, she is only one. We need more. A multitude, a horde….’