Twilight of the Wolves Page 6

  Laughing, Elrik leaned over the rail and watched the wake of the ship, All this talk of politics and so on is lost on me. Far as I can tell from listening to you, we brought them money and they gave us everything.

  That’s precisely what I’ve been saying, but you don’t even understand that.

  Nope, Elrik stood and turned to Frederic, Ric, he slapped his arm and held it, you’re a smart man, but you bore the shit out of me.

  Alexander laughed, The disaster’s real, El. These aren’t expeditions for the curious anymore.

  A melon from the forest, they call them Dragonmelons. One could feed a fullgrown man for a day. One piece of fruit for each man and they grow everywhere. Young Elrik, it’s not only curiosities we take back.

  Yeah, yeah, Elrik feigned a yawn, All the same, I miss the bitters of home. It’s not wine if it’s not biting back, right? He slapped Frederic’s arm again.

  Alexander smiled, I’ve memorised every step of this place. I’ve drawn it all in my head this moonturn. If Luca were to disappear tomorrow, I could recreate it. I feel as if my whole life led to this, to watching Luca go. It’s as if I stepped into the dream at the very center of my reality and let it go. Do you know how that feels, El?

  Nope.

  Invigorating. All the world is based on the circle. Life and Death and history and time and space. Everything cycles on. I have been to my dream and I will return but it will be in this life. With me go the many faces of Roca, the sphere and the cycle pulse through me. This is the end of my childhood, finally. It ends here, in Luca and so my manhood, too, will end here. Elrik, I’ve found my life and it is Luca.

  Frederic put a hand on Alexander’s shoulder, Your father would be proud.

  Elrik spit into the water, You know what I see when I look at Luca? He spit again and wiped his mouth, A pisspot full of floating shit.

  He stood before the kneeling Angel. It touched his face, his head fitting in Its palm, and It spoke inside him.

  Many are dying and many more shall die and the blood will wash all life away in a blaze that cannot be contained because it will be men who set the flames to extinguish this exsanguination that will take all from the young and new to the old across sexes and races but it all began in the temple of the ancients where a stranger bought love and spread Death and now a shadow casts over all the light of grand Luca and all shall perish within.

  The tears ran down the Angel’s face and the Arcane wiped them away.

  What can I do? What should I do?

  You who are humans must help your sisters and be with them and give them peace and Death but they must be contained and the disease must be stopped but there is no stopping those who need love and the soldiers will come with their ironballs and firewalls to take every and all away for there is naught to be done for those who rot for their fun.

  Why do You tell me this?

  It is only out of love that I speak at all.

  He threw his arms around the Angel’s slender neck and It took him in Its arms, lifting him off the floor.

  Don’t leave me, please. Don’t ever leave me. I can’t bear this world without You, the Arcane drew back and stared into his ephemeral eyes where galaxies birthed and died and stretched long.

  This place is your home and I must lose you but never shall you be without me as I must be without you.

  Help us.

  The Angel closed Its eyes, Humanity will suffer again and again and your people will die not only today but tomorrow and ever after in the maelstrom of war but it is only for humans to fight and shift the balance as We must maintain the Dream and keep the balance by swimming with the Dream in Its stream of infinite flux that carries all of existence and nonexistence in it. It is not for Us to interfere with eternity but to ride its waves and currents. If only humans would learn.

  I need You. Please.

  Their tears met upon their cheeks and they shared a kiss and breath and their bodies, caught in a vortex of sensations and Light and emotions too strong for humanity.

  He walked amongst the poor and forgotten of Luca. Through the Anthill, the many rotting children begging for life. Those that survived this trial would end at the temple to sell their bodies for a life of pain and coercion, the Arcane muttered as he bent and gave them water. He healed their mutilated faces and their blind eyes. Resetting bones, rebuilding tissue, he reached within himself and withdrew the Light to cure the boys and girls left to die because there was no money to be made from their lives and little more to be gained from their Deaths.

  At the temple, the boys called to him but he ignored them and entered. The stench of Death assaulted and he gasped into his sleeve to steady his steps.

  Crouching beside a body excreting from both ends, he searched within the boy for a source, for the center of the disease. He dug through the disintegrating cells and molecules and found only Death and blood. The body eliminating all at once, all together, and the Light he carried did nothing to heal or save.

  The coughs tore through the aura surrounding him, the Light growing dim beneath the thick shade of Death. Every cough burrowed in and he saw his breath twisting, his own atoms becoming unclean, and he ran, screaming, bumping and thrashing against the dying until he found the exit and dashed through the market, screaming for them to be clean, to never go near the temple again, to come to the shrine if they want to live.

  Gasping, sweating, he stood in the Angel’s Sanctuary, Return to me! I need you now! Now more than ever before!

  The apprentice knelt and watched his master destroy his voice against the echoes of the dome.

  The other Arcanes watched, shaking their heads.

  The coughing rang in the air as Malik approached the steps. The boys, spasmodic from their bronchial infections, the look on their faces, the blood on their lips, on their hands became visible. Stopping, Malik coughed and walked away, coughing, spitting a brown globule into the dirt.

  The Deathwalker was there when Rej and Raj returned.

  Get off ov im, crow! Not dead like, only—he broke off in a fit of coughing.

  The Deathwalker turned to them and smelt the air.

  Rej grabbed Raj’s hand, See wha he done? See wha the bastard done to me? He coughed, the fear pulsing from deep beneath his skin. A tear fell, Bastard smelling me, Raj. Raj, Raj, Z. Wha’s to happen like?

  Raj held him while he coughed and wiped the blood from his lip, You’ll be okay.

  The coughing swelled beneath the bridge and Raj looked past Rej to the many who would not make it through that night.

  The crumbling temple festered, crawling with Deathwalkers and the boys with nowhere to go, still selling themselves while they emptied their hearts through their mouths into the pool.

  Azura shouted at Malik, Get the midwife, you bastard!

  Malik ran through the empty streets, his feet carrying him through the night, past the coughs echoing, as his head swam but he found himself at the steps of the temple, coughing with the boys.

  Hey daddy, the voice reached him, glistening, shaking him loose, and he straightened and ran for the midwife.

  Within his home he accepted the rebukes and shouts of Azura. She squeezed his hand through her labor, his bones crumbling within her strong grip, her screams no longer for him but for every god or human or demon walking the planet, ripping the night from the sky and shoving it through her womb.

  The midwife kept her breathing steady and her thoughts focused.

  When morning came, so did the child: a girl. The midwife washed her and gave her to Malik who smiled through his tears and handed the girl to her mother, Azura, who clung to her for days.

  I hear the soldiers are here.

  Whose soldiers?

  Vulpen.

  Vulpen don’t have soldiers.

  I heard they was Gasaru.

  Did you see them?

  No. You?

  Aye, no, no soldiers have I seen.

  They’re at war, you know.

  Who?

  Vulpe and Glass?<
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  Aye, Vulpe and Glass, and us stuck between.

  Time to leave, I suspect.

  Go where?

  Soare?

  If you believe such places exist you deserve to go there.

  Then into the forest.

  The world is a forest. You’ll die in there with the wolves. I hear the southerners are killing the wolves. All the villages been working together to eradicate the beasts.

  We’ve lost respect for the gods. No wonder the war’s coming.

  Wars come, gods or no.

  Vulpe’s been peaceful for centuries. Why would they fight a war?

  Might be someone else started it, maybe Drache.

  That I’ll believe.

  Aye, everyone knows the blackhearts carry dragonblood. Fiery and furious.

  Gullible, your man here. Believe in Ariel, too, aye?

  Now, don’t tease him so much. He’s old, a walking relic his own self.

  I’ve seen the wolves and the demons. I’ve seen Angels and Arcanes. Real Arcanes, not like the ones who come here. Charlatans who wouldn’t know a word of Soarean if they were choking on it. I once even hunted a dragon with a team and we met an old dragonlord deep in the mountains. He was sitting there talking with a great dragon, must have been as long as ten horses, but it was cold. And we all know Ariel are real.

  You touched it, did you? Look at your man here, touching dragons. Slay one, too, maybe?

  No, didn’t touch, but you could feel the cold like a breeze pushing out of it.

  I thought they breathed fire.

  Maybe they do but they’re cold, too. No one knows much about dragons except that they’re real. Ask any farmer of the forest.

  The world is a forest.

  Aye, and many a farmer’s seen a dragon.

  So what do these soldiers want?

  No idea.

  What do soldiers ever want?

  Money and love. And power.

  They’ll have all three by Blueday if they want it. And maybe something extra, if any of their tastes lean that way.

  Best to stay away from the temple these days.

  Just these days? Filthy place.

  Our saint! Here to save us from the pleasures of the flesh. Bringing out your goddess soon.

  Not mine, but it’d do you well not to mock a goddess.

  You ever wonder why only she’s a goddess?

  How you mean?

  Can you think of any other goddesses?

  She’s the oldest. Never needed another one.

  Thousands and thousands and thousands of years, the Deathwalker unbroken.

  Lots of work for them.

  And it’ll get worse here, what with the way the temple is dying and then if these rumors of wars are true. Aye, many a crow round, following every battle.

  How long’s the war been going on?

  Has it started?

  I think we’ll know when it starts.

  You mean when it reaches us. Most of the fighting’s taking place in the south right now. Has been for almost a year. Maybe longer.

  So it is Drache.

  Who knows.

  Rej walked into the market spilling his insides into the dirt, clutching after anyone who passed within arm’s reach. He grabbed a hand and felt the foot break his teeth as he coughed more of his lungs into the dirt. The soldier stared down at him with disgust and then horror, and put a sword through his neck and his comrades cleared a circle around the body. He wiped the blade clean, his lips turned sour, his superior telling everyone to stay away from the bodies of the dead. The Deathwalkers tended the body and breathed it away to the Goddess.

  Then it’s true, the soldier heard the mutterings of what they must have known, words of disease, of the whores, of the bridge, the quick steps out of the square, the darting eyes. The coughing through the tents and pavilions and alleyways of stalls that wound labyrinthine through the square, a syncopated percussion tracing the causal lines of disease.

  The soldiers walked through the square, fingering the oddities said to be from across the world, over oceans and mountains, from Soare or even from the far west, where barbarians ruled, lands untouched by Arcanes or Deathwalkers or even Angels. After an hour, the soldier separated from his comrades and made his way to the temple.

  The temple, pale stone glowing beside the canal, the boys, younger than him, standing, adorned in many cloths or nude or carrying chains, their bodies modified by metallic rings and bars. The coughing and the bodies contorting spasmodically in pain but remaining, watching him watch them.

  A girl stood behind the soldier and spoke in a language he did not understand.

  What?

  She spoke again and pointed. Her lips pouted, her head shaking, she spoke louder and slow.

  He turned from her to the boys on the stone steps, then back to her. He waved her away, Go back to your mother. Stepping onto the stone, he turned back and she still watched him, her hands closed together.

  Alina fingered a stain on her dress and cursed. Looking around the square, the people looked haggard, grey, limp. With every day the crowd grew thinner, the coughs louder, and the soldier population rising.

  Wha make ov it?

  Tsukiko shrugged counting coins subvocally. When finished, she turned to Alina, Sickness spread, her Garasun accent still noticeable.

  They shutdown the temple. The soldiers.

  Aye, but only moved. North under the forest. All manner of boys coughing their innards out.

  Alina cleared her throat, picked at the stain, Too late closing the temple and won’t stop noving, aye. Their perversion wha’s got vem into trouble like.

  Aye, not safe anywhere. Now.

  Alina looked at Tsukiko who looked away, Wha you vink? Why come here today?

  Same as those boys on the steps. Need the coin.

  Aye, wha a world to live in like. No rest, not for nobody or noving.

  Tsukiko nodded, tears in her voice, Me own daughter’s coughing now.

  Alina cleared her throat and shifted in her seat, How long?

  Since Redday.

  I’m sorry, love. Need anyving like?

  She shook her head, Not that one may give.

  Malik did not go home. He wandered the empty market and bridges, coughing. The moons were silent but bright and he watched their reflection in the canal, the air beginning to cool with autumn and the coming north winds. The breeze blew his Garasun robes and he coughed into his sleeve, staining it a red that appeared grey in the moonlight.

  Walking back through the market, he turned north towards the fragmented moon, orange and unstable in the sky. Never cleared of people, even long after the merchants and traders went home, the youth sat about copulating, drinking, laughing. Malik walked past them, his coughs startling the boys and girls who watched.

  Past the empty stalls and over the streets still thick with the haze of particled dust and dirt, around the west edge of the Anthill, which rose grey and muddy to his right, and then he saw the glow of many fires near the forest, lighting the Shrine of the Fox and the Temple of the Wolf, both abandoned, crumbling. Keeping his head down, he walked faster. The soft flickering light of the fires illuminated the flesh poorly and he walked back and forth amongst the boys, some dying on their feet, others on the ground, some shifting and scratching themselves, nervous, starting at every cough, eyes wide.

  Why are you here, boy, Malik stopped before a small Vulpen child with blackhair and blackeyes flecked with red.

  The boy looked at him and blinked, shivering, naked, chewing on his fingertip.

  Can you not speak?

  His mouth opened and his words came but they were the pidgin of the Lucan slums, not ones Malik knew well.

  You’re from the Anthill.

  Aye, the boy’s voice was high and musical with fear.

  Malik touched his cheek, then pulled his hand away to cough in. He coughed until the pressure mounted against his eyes, the world turned glossy. When he recovered, the boy was gone.

  B
eyond the boys he saw the shadows move, flickering back and forth, dancing.

  A young man approached after having a fit of coughing and spitting into the grass, You’re sick.

  We’re all sick or we wouldn’t be here.

  Tsk, tsk, I’m not sick, only greedy. You, though, you’re chasing little brothers like Raol. The rest of us, I mean, no trouble if you’re into children. Things can be arranged easily, maybe easier—he poked Malik’s chest with a finger that traced up to his beard and tugged on the greying hair—but, well, I think maybe you’d like a man, for once.

  Malik snorted then tried to suppress a cough, then was driven to his knees and emptying his lungs into the grass.

  The young man lifted him with gentle hands, Tonight we’ll make you better.

  Malik followed him into the woods, his hand wet from his own blood, the tears still in his eyes. The young man disappeared into the shadows and when Malik reached him he stood, tall and proud and hard. Malik disrobed and took the young man in his hand, This may be the last night in my body.

  The young man kissed his neck, his hand on Malik, teasing, It’ll be your first night in mine.

  Malik emptied himself into the young man and received the young man’s seed in his mouth, then vomited it and blood against a tree. The young man coughed beside him and stroked his back.

  Back in the firelight, Malik watched the shadows shift and dance. They danced until they solidified and the pale bony hands stretched through the edges. He turned in all directions, the shadows alive, the Deathwalkers all around. Hundreds of boys and twenty or fifty Deathwalkers hovering at the perimeter.

  Malik’s limbs heavy, his cough torturing him, wiping away the blood from his mouth, the tears from his eyes. The heat unbearable in his robes, the sweat covering him despite the cold. He lay in the grass staring at the fragmented moon and its sisters arranged around it, all the same pustule shade.

  The air shifted beside him and he turned to see the Deathwalker crouching beside him, watching, the intensity shimmering through the shade of his eyesockets.

  You’re here for me, Malik’s voice was ragged and barely audible. I have lived and now I shall die. We all must die, that’s what you crows are for, aye? To take us to her. The goddess. He coughed and vomited into the grass but the Deathwalker did not move. Take me now, Malik said, I’m tired of waiting. The last night in my body and I use it to rape a boy for coins that mean nothing now. All the sky shifts above me but without me. I have a daughter, just born. I’ve stayed away for her—he grabbed the cloak of the Deathwalker, like the rough feathers of ravens—so she may live. I stayed away for her. Gods know I may have already killed her and her poor mother. All for coins, all for sex. What comes next? Where do you take us? Won’t talk to me, aye? Aye, I wouldn’t either. A poor and miserable—he coughed his lungs through his mouth and spoke no more, and then the singing began, slow and far away but echoing in Malik’s skull.