Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm Read online

  Literally, then, the sentence was, “Monster, he being occult, (what is) he?” With the ‘what is’ just sort of implied.

  I was not hearing it literally, you see. It's like this. I have a friend with the strange name of Foster Hidden. It's unusual, but I don’t really think of his last name meaning anything. When I hear it, my brain just interprets it to be his name.

  If you said “Hidden” to me in reference to Foster, I would hear it as his name. But if I heard the word in a different context, my brain would remember the word had other meanings.

  It was not as if I were an amnesiac who spoke French and then someone talked to me in French and I was surprised I could understand him. I could not speak the language. It was not like telepathy. I was understanding what he was saying, but I was also understanding the words and the grammar as if I already understood them. It was not like having a babelfish in your ear or a Star Trek universal translator, or something that gives you comical word-for-word translations.

  I understood both the literal and the figurative meanings of the words: I was getting the connotations and implications of his language, including nuances with no parallel in English.

  He said it again, “Umamu i-idtadum su, Bel Ersu Samavasipur?”

  Turns out, the guy in the tall black hat whom the squad leader addressed actually was a magic user, or, at least an Astrologer. His name, or title, meant Lord Astute Starmage.

  Samava, their word for star, literally meant va, living being, of the sama, celestial or middle heaven. You could translate the word samavasipur as astrologer rather than mage, but that might give a misleading impression. We are not talking about a guy who writes a newspaper column telling you vague things you want to hear.

  Ersu meant Astute, but it was also a proper name, a title. It was not what his mother called him, it was what his masters ordered his slaves to call him during office hours. Now, keep in mind that I was not sitting there analyzing all these little nuances, I simply knew them. The knowledge appeared in my head like little firecrackers going off, the moment I heard the words.

  The Starmage answered in a voice as cold as ice, nodding toward me:

  Again, I heard the words with my ear: “Rabeserti, i-Lalilummutillut”

  And I also heard them in my brain: “Decurion, he is of the Undying.”

  5. Death Flees from Them

  Rabeserti was a title rather than a name: rab meant chief, and eser was ten. I had guessed right. Squad Leader. Hurrah for me: I was Sherlock freaking Holmes.

  The Undying is not a great translation for Lalilummutillut, nor was Immortal or Imperishable or Indestructible. Even if Self-Indestructible were a word, that was still not quite right.

  The name he gave me meant something darker than that.

  The name was made up of three word elements, going back to front, illutu, was a word-ending indicating a host, tribe, nation, clan or band: Undyingling, Undyingite, Undyingishman. Second, the middle word, Mut, meant death. But third, the prefix was a jammed-together phrase: La lil u which meant hopeless yearning or to seek in vain.

  We have a word in English for those who seek glory in vain: Vainglorious. We do not have one for those who seek death in vain.

  So a better way of rendering what I heard the Starmage say would be this: “Captain-of-Ten, he is of that host who seek death but do not find it; and who desire to die, but death flees from them.”

  And I will not tell you how it angered and frightened me that he knew exactly what I was, and had a name for my species or race or club or whatever, but I was a big question mark to myself, just an empty blank.

  It crashed in on me that all my brothers’ cruel jokes about how weird I looked, and that I was adopted, were true. I was not of my family. I was not even from Earth. How could I be? Every living organism on Earth is mortal. So who was I? What was I? What occult monster was I?

  Lord Ersu the Starmage knew more than that. His next words:

  “His blood is not called MacLeod, which means Son of the Ugly One. His blood is called Muromets, which means his fathers dwelt in Murom, which means the city of the land-people. He is called Ilya, which means the Lord is Yahweh.”

  6. Vaunting

  At that moment, the ship we were in shifted in its mooring, or maybe we were on land and this was a small earthquake. The deck swayed only enough to make everyone nervous and seasick for a second, not enough to throw anyone from his feet or do anything useful.

  But they looked as startled as I felt, so I pointed my katana at the Starmage in back. “That was but the smallest sample of my power!”

  Pretty good speech, I think. Reading all those comic books in my youth was not wasted. The guys in the front looked nervous.

  I flourished the katana and struck a pose. “Get back, you Mortals! Everyone here who can get stabbed through the chest and live, raise your hands!”

  But Lord Starmage must have read comic books too, because what he said sounded pretty impressive. “I have read the constellations and worked the calculations, and destined things both large and small. I know and foreknow, see and foresee.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I shouted back, “Did you foresee that I was going to chop up Fido and gut your thugboy like a fish?”

  The Starmage smiled thinly, and the men all laughed that fearless kind of laughter that makes you feel like a fool. They had known. The fact that I would ask the question at all made them roll their eyes.

  The Starmage Ersu called out, “Fate is fated! Barbaran-izbu and Akalshir-redu were told this day held their hour, and they met doom with proper resignation. None of mine more will find their hour this day.”

  Like I said, I understood not just the literal meaning, but what the turns of phrase and euphemisms meant. He meant he had cast horoscopes of his men: and none of them were going to die. The two names were of the two I had killed. Izbu meant a deformed beast or abomination. Redu meant private soldier. These were placed after their names the way we put “Mister” or “Miss” or “Doctor” or “Captain” in front of ours. Barbaran-izbu and Akalshir-redu were the names of the wolf-thing and the spearman I’d killed.

  I now understood why no one had lifted a hand to help them. Because of Lord Starmage. These people were entirely superstitious, controlled by this Astrologer.

  His eyes were dark slits, and his voice was like venom. “No power is left you, Ilya of Murom. I know the rising and the setting of the stars, and when their power wanes. And yours! No more triumphs are for you this day. Fate is fated!”

  All the men answered that phrase together like a slogan or a warcry: Tupsimatu Simtu! It was a stock response, like you say And Also with You at Mass. Or at a Star Wars convention.

  The two wolf-creatures snarled and coughed, first one, then the other. The language of snarls and ugly coughs was not automatically translated inside my head for me. It was almost a relief that alien beings sounded alien.

  The Lord Starmage understood the wolf-ape language, for he answered them in his cold voice, “Be at peace, Tahazu-izbu and Rimanis-izbu! The Undying are not the Undefeatable. I only need his head. He was born but once, born mortal, born under his stars, and I know his nativity. He will be captured within the day, after he rests. A blacksmith’s bellows up his neck stump will allow him to answer interrogation.”

  Mutt, the bowman in the front I was eyeing as the best candidate to kill first, seemed to sense that I meant his death. He spoke nervously over his shoulder, “But—but he spoke the name of the One! He said there can be only One! Does he not serve the Oneness?”

  “There is only one speech,” said the Starmage in a voice that resonated with anger, “Does he speak it? There is only one folk. Is he ours? There is only one tower, one heaven, one power! Whoso serves not the Oneness shall serve unwilling. The Dark Tower tells and foretells: the Dark Tower decrees! The utter shadow of the Dark Tower falls upon all worlds!”

  “The Dark Tower decrees!” All the men shouted in reply. Duhumnamar Nabu!

  7. The Utter Dark Tower
r />   Hearing the name of the enemy ringing from the lips of his minions was weird, because there were extra meanings hidden there. Namaru meant watchtower, but it also meant a looking glass of the sort a mage would use in divining the future. And Duhumu did not mean Dark. It meant a Great Darkness, and an Utmost Darkness. It meant a shadow of a tower so high that it fell across everything under heaven.

  The All-Seeing Tower of the Greatest of Shadows, in other words.

  The Darkest Tower.

  In that moment, my hate for this guy and his stupid hat was unendurable. My fingers scrabbled madly in the pockets and nooks of my father’s jacket, and were rewarded with a nice, sharp four-pointed throwing star, which I immediately flicked at the head of the Lord Starmage.

  I am not the world’s best shot. I managed to chuck the glittering thing in a whistling line right past the ears of the guys in the way. The throwing star clattered off the golden wall behind Lord Starmage, but he no longer looked bored. His tall black hat fell off as he instinctively ducked his head.

  “Hey! Uri Geller! Did you foresee that?!”

  The men were so amazed that I would mock their witch-doctor that they did not move, but stood staring at me. The wolfmen did not react the same way: my guess is that they could not understand English. They attacked.

  8. Light Show and Lights Out

  The two wolf-headed monsters jumped to the ceiling and clung flat against it like they were lizards or spiders or something. They scuttled forward at high speed, faster than leopards.

  I was quicker, because all I did was twitch my thumb. My flashlight turned on, and was pointed down at the spreading pile of dark, wormy stuff all over the deck. Immediately a lightshow like peacocks hopped up on steroids with roman candles stuffed up their noses exploded in to a silent cacophony of colored light. Sparks flew everywhere, a bomb in a nest of lightning bugs. Dazzle filled the corridor from side to side, top to bottom.

  I focused my mind on the anger and rage and pain and nightmarish sense of unreality which was boiling like darkness in me. “Arise, Oobleck! Be blackness for me!”

  The lights went out. The burning substance of Uncreation became a vapor, filled the volume of the environment, went opaque.

  Not for me: I had the night vision goggles up, and I could see just fine. Everyone else was groping.

  Maybe the wolves could have hunted me by scent alone, but the Oobleck had a pretty awful and a pretty potent smell. I saw them clutch their noses and cower.

  I was already sprinting in the other direction, around the corner and up the ramp, running on my moccasins like my friend Foster once showed me: the way the Tillamook Braves ran through the woods at full speed, and never stirred a leaf and never made a noise.

  I was moving fast, but not so fast that I didn't see the shield still wedged in place across the path. I took it in one smooth leap like a steeplechaser.

  9. One Guy Who Ran

  I ran with the katana held straight back behind me, as I was taught, but this was stupid in such an enclosed space because there was not enough room for a good swing.

  There was one guy waiting for me on the up ramp. He was the guy whose shield I had just jumped over. He was a green ghost to me. To him, I must have been a ghostly ghost; he never saw me or heard me coming.

  Now he had neither shield nor spear, and he must have had his bow and arrow in hand when the darkness of Uncreation spread, because he was in the act of trying to slide his bow back over his shoulder into the quiver, and to draw his meat-cleaver-sized curved blade, and to listen for me coming, and not to make any noise. And so consequently neither hand was in the way when I hit him in the face as hard as I could with my two-foot long flashlight.

  I might have broken his nose or his jaw, or just driven his lower jaw up against his upper teeth so sharply that the shock of it stunned him. Or maybe he fainted. In any case he fell over without any more fuss. His helmet went rolling and clattering away on the metal floor making the brightest, loudest sound and the most echoes ever. Clang! Clang! Clang!

  I assume he did not die from one blow to the face, because Lord Astute the Starmage said no one else had his hour of death coming this day. His minute of getting his nose smashed so crooked that his face looked like it was painted by Picasso? Well, I guess Mr. Horoscope didn’t check for that.

  I touched my chest again, and was gratified to find the open wound in my chest had sort of healed over. Now it was blocked from within by some of the black Oobleck I had swallowed, and a scab was grown over it. I should have been surprised or grossed out, but I wasn’t. Does it hurt? Under my fingers, I felt the Oobleck turning from a wet clay substance into flesh. Like in a dream, like in a nightmare, things in this world had their own bizarre logic. I was just glad I wasn’t leaving a blood-trail.

  I went up, and turned, and went up again, and turned again.

  Chapter Eight: A Dark World Beneath

  1. Dead End

  I kept running in the darkness, expecting any moment to leave the cloud. But it was still dark.

  I turned the next corner, and the next. Each corner was a 60 degree angle, and the ramp was steep. How far had this zone of darkness I’d created spread? I don’t know. Maybe it was moving with me, keeping me in the center.

  I realized that the invasion machine was hanging vertically. Imagine putting the engine of a train on a hook, so that all the cars were like sausage links beneath, with the caboose like a tail below. Imagine the ramp I ran up like the ribbon on a barber pole, if a barber had a triangular pole instead of a round one.

  The ramp ended in a dead end. Underfoot was a round hatch, a trapdoor, lid up and open wide. I could hear three pairs of footsteps. Possibly these were the three who fled in fear from me. Either they had not run fast, or less time than I supposed had passed. As I approached, the footsteps fell silent. I crouched and listened at the opening, not exposing my head.

  2. Overheard

  One voice, dim with distance, spoke, “Brethren in arms, what darkness is this?”

  A second spoke, “It is ylem, the primal uncreated stuff, escaped through the twilight gate into the created world.”

  A third said, “Then the Undying is near. No one else can touch this stuff, and live. We saw it spill from him.”

  The first, more softly, “He is a youth. The same age as Irgigi-redu. Let us overcome him: prod out his eyes with arrowheads and dismember him with the sickle sword, it is easy enough.” It was two words in their language: sapara-hukaratu meant to dismember with the sapara, the sickle-sword, xuppud-xutpu meant to put an arrowhead into an eye. Handy shorthand terms no doubt evolved from times before fighting with Undying Ones.

  The second voice, “The danger is great! He is a warlock of the ylem!” This was one word in their language: ylemsippur. It literally meant wise in shadow. Shadowmage.

  The first said, “The danger is greater if we be taken by the Silent Watcher. We will be torn by iron hooks for our desertion. Where can we flee the wrath of the Dark Tower, the looking glass which sees all things? The only amends to make are to bring his head to Lord Ersu.”

  The second said, “He must have known we would flee. Fate is fated.”

  The first: “And known that he would then give us over to those who ply the iron hooks. Fate is fated.” He used a single word for the ironhook experts: Parzil-selusarapu-le’u. Professional torturers skilled with tools other than beds of iron hooks no doubt had different names, the way we have separate names for optometrist and podiatrist.

  The second said back, “I am not fated to die this day. The Astrologer has told me.”

  The first replied, “Those who enjoy the attention of the barbed hooks can linger many days before death is sure, depending on the skill of the tormentor.”

  The second voice said, “What say you, Naragesi-pana?”

  Pana was a military designation, a scout or a patrolman. Naragesi was a name. He spoke with more authority in his voice that the other two. “If this gloom is the sending of Ilya the Undying—”


  I cannot tell you how much it bothered me that they knew my name.

  “— from the nearest energy altar, we ignite the lampwood to bring the ylemaramu to abolish it. As soon as it clears, the lodestone of the altar will point to the nearest source of ylem, which will be Ilya. We come swiftly upon him. If he goes where we cannot, outside the hull or to inside the power-core, we use the other-soul altar to compel Damishikaruyizbu of the Kasugallillut to pursue him. We have three drops of archangel-blood between us to convoke the altar glass of either one, energy or othersoul.”

  Ylemaramu was their term for that blue-light effect which dried up the Oobleck-substance. I had seen it shining from their sticks of ‘lampwood’ not ten minutes ago.

  Their word for blood from an archangel was Rablammasu-damu. Weird that they would have that as a single word. How often would the concept come up in conversation? It sounded like something they used to activate their altars, turn on their controls, summon their magic, whatever. Maybe it was a brand-name.

  There are some nuances here hard to translate, but they came through loud and clear as I crouched there listening. The same way we would not use the word drunkard in English to mean a guy who drinks a lot of water or some other innocent liquid, the word shikaru referred to quaffing whiskey or vodka or some heady intoxicant. Dami meant blood, or life, or soul. The name-ending izbu indicated he was a deformity or monstrosity, not a human. Damishikaruyizbu meant It Quaffs Blood. Kasugall meant the demon of winter, a devil of the freezing cold, or a frost-ghost. I already told you what the word-ending illutu meant. Try to keep up.

  So someone or something named the Lifeblood-Quaffing Abomination of the Winter Devil Creatures was the man or creature they were talking of sending after me.