The Lord of the Black Land Read online

  The last barb was out. I threw it from me in the sudden silence, and it rang, clattering, on the marble floor. They were all staring at me while I slurped the puddles of my blood off the table and floor like a horror scene filmed in reverse and had it run up my legs and shoulders into my mouth. I swallowed it. At the same time all my wounds closed like so many little doors in a clock once the hour is rung and the cuckoos vanish back inside.

  One of the staring, shocked Panotii uttered a single fearful word:

  “Lalilummutillut”

  I raised my sword and shouted.

  And gravity turned off and I was soaring like a superman, sword-first, an avenging angel, and this time I did slice the ropes, the ones holding Nakasu, or most of them, at one blow, and the others parted beneath his weight, or he took the ropes in a giant hand and yanked to him four or five of the pygmy men.

  They were dead before they could disentangle themselves, because his melee tactic was just to scoop them into his mouth with both arms and bite. Imagine a bearhug if the bear had a beartrap where its bellybutton should be. I saw a whole body vanish headfirst into the maw of that mouth, but I did not have time to puzzle out where the monster’s digestive tract was hidden, or where or how a hundred pounds of meat could simply vanish. I am sure there is a logical explanation, such as that all Blemmyae had a small black hole lodged in the back of the throat.

  I handed Nakasu the flail. He twisted the base of the shaft in his huge hands, and the world started to get that underwater look, the heat-shimmer above a hot desert, and twilight started spreading. Just a bit. I assume he could stand a certain amount of exposure without getting sick: but I noticed he did not turn it anywhere near as smoky-dark as I had turned it.

  I whistled and screamed at Pastor Ossifrage. He had a big grin on his face, which shocked me, because he had looked as stern as a fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel before now. Because of how he dressed, I sort of assumed he was a holy man of some sort, but I suddenly realized that he might be a barroom bouncer, or come from a world where they pick their holy men by nine rounds of mortal combat in the gladiatorial circus.

  Whatever the case, he wanted to see me slay four-foot-tall men with elephant ears, because he made the chamber flip end over end (or that is what my inner ear told me was happening when he shut off my gravity) and suddenly I was up in the rafters with the flying pygmies high up near the chamber roof.

  “Hiya, boys!” I grinned at them. With my feet dangling in midair, I could not fence at all, and Ossifrage was trying to bump me into targets like a boy trying to control a kite from the ground. It did not matter. These guys were the size of children, they did not wear armor, and their weapons could not dismember me, which meant they could not stop me.

  I chopped without grace or art, not caring which part of their bodies I cut, and the wounded who fell or fluttered to the floor were grabbed by Nakasu and stuffed into his maw feet-first. Little rivers of blood and viscera were running down his belly and legs like a red apron.

  Suddenly, all the lights overhead went out. The Panotii had pulled the lampwood sticks away from the marble plate that fed the chandeliers. There was some moonlight coming in through the windows, but not enough for me to see what was what. The glowing belts looked like distant flocks of fireflies.

  Out of the dark, four or five poisoned blowdarts hit me at once, all right in the chest. At a shooting range, they would have earned a good score for target control. They were aiming by ear. From the placement of the shots, I knew they were hearing my heartbeat. I assume Izi thought they could hear us better than we could see them, belts or no belts.

  I could not see what was happening on the floor below me, but there was an uproar of noise. I wobbled in midair: Ossifrage, wherever he was, had almost dropped me. Suddenly I realized Izi’s tactic.

  Izi was concentrating his men on Ossifrage, because without Ossifrage to hold me in the air, I could not attack the flying pygmies on the ceiling. Nakasu was quicker on the uptake than I was (monster or not, he was still a grownup and had more experience), and must have moved quickly to Ossifrage’s position to protect the gray-bearded man.

  I kicked off a nearby wall, and sailed in zero-gee over toward one of the windows, and managed to grab the sill before I floated out into the abyss of air.

  Just in time: my weight returned with a slump of sudden heaviness. My feet found the narrow ledge, so I did not fall to my doom. A trio of Panotii dived at me from outside, dirks seeking my eyes and throat, trying to blind or hamstring an abomination they could not kill.

  But now I had my feet under me, even if the footing was bad, and even if the sword was not the shape I was used to, it was still longer than their weapons, and they had tiny little arms like children. I concentrated on each blow to try to make it perfect, and snap the blade into the skulls just deep enough to hit brain matter without going too deep, and with enough flexibility in the stroke to let the power flow through my arm to the sword tip without forcing it. I did not like using this scimitar. It was not built right. But I was able to kill two midgets in two neat strokes, but I missed the third one's skull, and cut an ear off his head instead.

  Well, that had a dramatic effect. Half his wingspan suddenly went away. He wobbled in the air like a drunk, but he did not fall.

  So I slashed the sword across his belly, parting the belt of glowing stones.

  He dropped like a rock down and away into the night. Far above, the broken belt fluttered upward, a twisting snake of gems.

  I turned. From this position, I had a clearer view than when I had been among the rafters. I could see the glitter of the flying belts of the Panotii, and the gleam of the giant eyes of Nakasu, eyes as large as softballs, in the dark of the vast chamber. All the glittering lights of the belts near him suddenly went dark.

  Then the lights came back on. High above, Abby was sitting in a chandelier, her chain of cunning metal in a bowline around her, the hook of her weapon like a grapnel lodged in the rafters, and one hand was touching the lampwood, calling forth its power somehow. The twilight spread by the golden flail was neutralizing the flying ability of the Panotii, who simply were not big and strong enough to face Nakasu in his rage. I saw a dozen knives and barbs flung toward Abby, and I shouted in alarm, being too far away to help her. But then they parted and fell to her left and right as if they had struck an unseen wall of air. Only then did I notice Ossifrage walking up through the air, out of the reach of Nakasu’s cloud of twilight, and he put himself between Abby and the main group of Panotii.

  I spoke in a normal voice, without shouting, “Bold captain Izi of Izan! Pull your men back, and I will let you live!”

  I was not sure where he was, whether in the room somewhere, or among the flock still outside, or perched along the windows and ornaments.

  But I was confident he could hear me with those sail-like ears.

  “We can spread twilight along the ground,” I said, “And any man afoot our friend the Blemmyae will eat, and any man in the air, our friend the windwalker will fling me at them, and they will find the death for which my kind seek in vain. We are the enemies, not of the slaves of the Dark Tower, but only of its masters. We would spare you if we could.”

  4. Parley

  Sudden silence came from the chamber. The Panotii had fled from Nakasu, and were clustered along the tops of the bookshelves throughout the chamber, but they were not trying to approach Ossifrage or Abby. She was now standing next to him in midair alongside the wooden chandelier.

  There was a noise behind me. I turned. Izi was perched like a monkey atop an ornamental projection on the outer wall of the tower, his knees near his cheeks, ears spread like a cape to either side.

  He said in Ursprache, “Why do you call them friends?” He pointed. “The one is a Blemmyae of Sabtah, an eater of men, who sees all other races as cattle. The Cloudwalker is a Jeshurun of Arphaxad, who serves the hermit god who hates all other gods. The girl is Pagutu-mar’-Nazar, a Therapeutae of Tharsis, a sect that
will never drink wine, nor touch gold, nor clasp women, because they despise all life. You are an abomination of Cain, whose race neither loves nor is loved.”

  Pagutu-mar’-Nazar meant She-Monkey daughter of the Accursed. It suddenly occurred to me that the one person in all the Dark Tower whose fate could not be foretold must be famous.

  I said, “We are each from those places, yes. What is your point?”

  “All the races hate each other.”

  “We found a way to get along so far,” I said with a shrug.

  “You cannot be One!” he objected. “Only the One are One.”

  (I am not sure how to translate Ur bas’ uru. It might have meant ‘the one people are one’ or it might have meant ‘the city is unified’ or even ‘we are the world.’ Whatever the specific nuance, the general gist was that only the Dark Tower had the right to be unified.)

  I spoke coldly. “The Dark Tower is a mockery of us. Their unity is the unity of slaves, all chained alike under one cruel master, a union of fearful underlings and proud overlords. Ours is the unity of a marriage, where opposites attract, and unlikeness is cherished for itself, complimented, completed. It is the true unity.”

  “On whose behalf do you speak? Who sent you? The Golden City? Or the Lady of the Grail?”

  “I don’t know who sent me,” I admitted.

  “What does that mean?”

  “That means I am not here by accident, but neither can the Astrologers predict my fate. Whoever or whatever sent me, it was a power greater than any this aeon holds.”

  “Who — who are you?”

  “Ilya Muromets, Destroyer of the Dark Tower.”

  He tilted his pug-nosed swine-tusked head to one side, unfolding one ear wider than an umbrella. “Ridiculous! A childish boast.”

  “You underestimate me, ear-flappy man? I am a Life Scout of Troop Two of Tillamook!”

  “I say nothing can destroy the Tower. Its strength reaches to the heavens.”

  “Really? I know a Heaven even higher, and a strength even greater. You doubt me?” I reached out the window where I stood, and struck the metal wall of the outside armor of the Tower with the side of my fist, saying, “Yahweh!”

  There was again a noise as if the deepest string on a bass fiddle the size of a skyscraper had been plucked, and a murmuring swell as the sound rushed up from the earth below. Then the place where I stood shook, and dust fell from above. Then the upper reaches of the Dark Tower trembled, and from where I clung, I could see the crown of the Tower sway against the stars.

  Izi was staring, round-eyed in amazement and astonishment. “You shook the Tower with your hand!”

  I said, “No. Of myself, I can do nothing.”

  I saw in his little pig-eyes that this modesty unnerved him more than if I had claimed the credit.

  Izi of Izan heaved a great sigh, and said, “Very well. I already can hear the host of the cynocephali on their way. Their noses will seek you out whatever your path, wherever you hide. No glory is to be won for the host of the Panotii, the all-hearing, this night. We will remain as we always are, the clowns and mockeries of greater powers, and the scorn of fairer races.”

  With that, he turned and sailed off into the moonlight, and his troop flung themselves like a flock of bats through the windows after him, forming into V-shapes like migrating ducks, and descending to the cloudbanks below.

  If he had not just been trying to kill a little girl, I would have felt sorry for him. Instead I said softly, knowing he could hear me, “There are better jobs you could do, better masters you could work for, little big-eared man.”

  I raised my eyes. In the distance, small as snowflakes, I could see pale wolflike shapes clinging to the side of the Dark Tower, head-downward, loping toward me. More than a score, they came, more than a hundred.

  I jumped inside, landed awkwardly on a table, skidded across the marble floor through one of the many puddles of blood pooled upon it, and ended up by the big doors. “Time to bug out! Big bad wolves on the way! Can anyone get these doors open?”

  Stupid question. Ossifrage made a sweeping gesture with his arm. Weightless as thistledown, a rollercoaster of wind whirled me through the oriel window thirty feet in the air in the wall above that door, leaving perhaps the pit of my stomach behind: and monster and prophet and ninja-girl blew after me, swirling like autumn leaves in a gale.

  Descending the Utter Dark Tower

  1. Out of the Fork

  The Y-shaped corridor outside had two doors that Nakasu and I had barred. Some Astrologer must have sent the soldiers on post outside new scrolls by pneumatic tube with updates to the new fate, because now came the sound of battering rams smashing the metal doors ringing on their massy hinges; or else the soldiers had just heard the noise and decided (showing more initiative than I think it is fair for minions of an omniscient tyranny of magicians to show, let me say) to batter down the doors. Whichever it was, the doors trembled and rang on their massy hinges. The banging was coming from both forks of the corridor.

  Without a word, Abby got out her burnificating sickle-blade, jammed the coppery point into the clamps holding shut the secret panel to the stairway out of here, and heated the sucker up to deep fat fry.

  With a shriek of anger, the living metal clasps released the panel, and when I shouted that the cylinder seal needed to unlock it was missing, Nakasu kicked the panel in two, and the dark stair lay opened before us. I was thinking of going up, since it was the way we came, but Nakasu took the lefthand path and went down the spiral stairs.

  I said, “If we all jump, can Ossifrage catch us?”

  Abby said, “I think it is too narrow. We will be battered against the sides.”

  The wooden ornaments on Abby’s cloak lit up with flickering yellow light, and we pounded down the stairs, our shadows like giants swaying dizzily behind us along the curving walls and slanting roof-vaults overhead.

  As we fled, we heard the noise of wolf claws behind us.

  2. Down the Haunted Stair

  Down we fled. In a short time, Nakasu and I had pulled a landing or two ahead of Abby and Ossifrage, who called breathlessly for us to wait up. When they caught up, I slung Abby across my back in a fireman’s carry and Nakasu pulled Ossifrage atop his — what do you call the upper part of a headless monster, anyway? — his shoulderline.

  The noise of the wolves hesitated at the threshold above and behind us—I don’t know why, but maybe they were afraid the stairs were cursed—and this gave us a few precious minutes to descend, while they gathered their nerve, or confirmed their orders, or something.

  I had been in this cursed stairwell half an hour ago, further up than my present location. This time I could see it. There was a waist-high line of graffiti of ugly, angular blood-red glyphs running all along the righthand wall as the stairs turned and turned again, and I could not shake the feeling that these were magic runes of some sort, meant to hold back whatever curse was afflicting this forbidden stairway.

  There were baskets held shut with chains that we jogged past every now and again on a landing, and once when I looked back up behind me, I saw a disembodied head of a dark-skinned long-haired face hanging quite silently above the basket behind us, and tears ran down the cheeks. It was a freaky sight, but we were kind of in a hurry, so I did not stop to inquire.

  To the left was a spiral brass rail overlooking an endless well.

  Then the whining of the wolves turned to howls, and a sudden glare of lights above, the shout of men’s voices, startled me. I was staring upward when Nakasu grabbed me from behind and tossed me headfirst over the railing. Abby was gone. Nakasu had plucked her neatly off my back and was holding her in one hand.

  I fell. I had been falling a lot lately. Since I was getting less and ever less afraid of pain and wounds, to me it was like a ride at the fair. I looked around slowly. Looking down, I saw tiny lights moving slowly.

  Looking up, silhouetted against the lamps and energy gun-flares of the soldiers high above, I saw N
akasu, with Abby’s little feet sticking out of the side of his mouth. I was horrified only a moment, until I realized what he was doing. He had understood what she had said about being battered against the sides.

  When his body caromed off the side of the metal railing, or struck a projection in that narrow well down which we dropped, he curled into a ball, and his thick, tough rhino-hide absorbed the blow. She was covered in spit, and how she was breathing I did not know, but she was not being battered to death. On second thought, I know how she was breathing, because she had a porcelain monkey mask.

  Ossifrage, head downward, was hanging behind and above us, waving his hands in small, delicate gestures, his wide hems of his camel-hair coat flapping like wings around him.

  Behind and above him, I saw men in bronze helmets, looking downward. I saw the lights of lamps and then the brighter lights of their energy weapons.

  I put out my hands, slapping the walls of the stairwell sliding by. This slowed my motion and made me tumble, but Ossifrage must have seen, despite the darkness and gloom, what I was trying to do, because air swirled around me, and then I was behind and above the whole group.

  My white mantle was a big hunk of fabric, and I am sure it messed up the aim of the soldiers.

  Shockingly hot lances of fire struck my back, but none of them, at that range, passed all the way through me, and the mortals underneath me were not hit. I was a little surprised that the pain made me black out.

  I thought I was tougher than that.

  3. Above the Cistern Lake

  I woke groaning. “What the heck is the point of being unable to die, if a little bit of pain can make you faint anyway? What a stupid, stupid superpower. Why can’t I have flight, or super-eating, or a talking bird?” I groped around for the shortsword I had been carrying, but it was gone.