Awake in the Night Land (15 page)

To open the gate without the procedures is the stuff of nightmares. It is how the Lesser Redoubt was destroyed. No one will speak of what happened.

I do know that Polynices walked unarmored across the Night Land soil, protected by nothing but his savage monsters. A million people watched him from the embrasures. He went not far: to the White Circle; and he came back without the Hounds.

But he had not been Prepared, and the Watch should have not permitted him to depart.

Had he been a man of common birth, they would have recalled their oaths, and stopped him. It was only a matter of a few minutes, a quarter hour at most, but when I heard the news, I knew that our age was as corrupt and degenerate as the Foretellers warn; and I secretly wondered, even I, when the Messenger of Time would be born to correct us.

Once inside again, Polynices surrendered to the Officer of the Watch, who bound him to the magistrate. The penalty was attainder: he was rendered sterile, unable even to adopt. The magistrate’s written opinion was circulated. His reasoning was that any child of Polynices would be honor-bound to esteem his ancestor’s name, and hence would defy, in his heart at first, but surely later openly, our strictest law and prohibition, the rule of quarantine. The idea that any son of Polynices, any child of the House of Andros, would be so callous as to disregard his father’s name and fame, of course, was not contemplated.

Creon issued penalties more severe, including degradation of the family shield, and namelessness, and every humiliation our laws allow, but he suspended them upon Polynices’ sworn parole to live simply, without bringing further shame to family or phylum.

Polynices swore to have no further traffic with the Night-Hounds, and no further dreams of a day when men domesticated hounds or rode the backs of monsters with the bodies of Centaurs and the heads of Gandharvas.

I visited Polynices not long after Creon had been exulted to the post of Castellan by the unanimous accord of the Pyrtaneum, or at least, the accord of those not bound under house-arrest. I recall how the Proctors, wearing halsberges and morions, stood at every cross-corridor and stair landing, blinking in the light, since the lanterns had only been restored that hour, after so many hours of dark.

A gaunt archivist named Triptolemus, who was no friend of Creon, invited me to walk with him. Triptolemus is lame, and leans upon a long white staff, and his eyes have grown dim over the years peering at twisted and uncertain shapes capering near smokeholes in the Night Lands. Around his neck he wears the silver chain of a Foreteller, for his dreams have been rated in the Acme or Elite grade by the Fate House.

He wore, for once, the dun long coat of the Monstruwacans. It is his right, for the Archivists are a collateral branch of that order, but I had never seen him dressed formally before. He had a squad of the Watch with him, which is also his right, for the Watch are vowed to protect the Monstruwacans as they travel to their tower. Triptolemus smiled and told me that his route to the tower, in this case, would be circuitous, and would happen to parallel my path.

These escorts were enormous in solid gray armor and dark unadorned helm, and in each gauntlet, trembling with unseen Earth-Current, was a huge Diskos weapon, whose terrible blade, when it spins, when it falls, cannot be parried. Their heated gray-black cloaks are like the dark wings of birds from some children’s book, and make them seem even more broad of shoulder than their shoulder-plates.

The corridors were empty of sound and motion. All others kept to their cabins.

The Proctors, who seemed slight as children compared to the Watchmen in their heavy armor, were polite enough when we came to the valves leading to my sister Ismene’s quarters. The Proctors kept their pikes in hand, and the blades were live, but they spoke softly, and they let us pass without challenge.

I found my brother in the Renunciation chamber, a wide space paneled in brown and gold of soothing hues, and barren, except for a wall screen luminous with a mandala of figures, standing before emotion-absorbing curtains of deep maroon. The mandala screen was rich with images from the elder days of the world: suns, moons, bearded stars, rivers of milk, birds, white clouds and other mythical and imaginary figures.

The meditation mat is supposed to recline on the floor, so the Penitent can lie prone, with the energy centers of his nervous system aligned with the nodes of subtle Earth-Current woven into the mat-fibers. Polynices had the mat propped on the wall. It was folded and expanded slightly, so that the pattern of nodes looked like the hulking silhouette of an abhuman. The surface was streaked and scarred, as if long straight stokes of forceful blows had been delivered against the mat. I noticed these wounds were clustered around the shoulders, neck, chest and groin of the silhouette: killing blows, expertly delivered.

Here was Polynices, leaning languidly on the floor. He had torn the emotion-absorbing curtains down from their rings, and balled them up under his armpit to use as a pillow. In one hand a crystal cup for wine, which he drank neat, without water. A half-empty carafe was near his foot. He had taken the junction rod out from the mandala screen, so the images were dull both to eye and to spirit, and he held it lightly in one hand. I could see where his fingerprints had darkened it. He had been gripping it two-handed, as the haft of Diskos would be grasped by a man of the Watch; or by that rare hero who, of all his generation, survived a venture abroad in the Night Lands.

I said carefully, “So…. You have not renounced?”

He made a noise of contempt in his nose, and flicked his finger against the rim of his wine cup. The cup was made of that type of crystal that can play simple songs when disturbed. This one was a child’s lullaby, filled with old and charming nonsense words whose meaning even paleo-philologists cannot recall:

Springtime is green, little baby; Summer is gold; Autumn is gray, little baby, Winter is cold….

He said, “Ismene says I must find some other task for my life, some work with which the Lectors will find no fault. She recommends I study in the local Infirmary, don the Robe, and become a Rasophore.”

I said, “She said the same to me: Ismene allowed me to see you only on the condition that I urge you to take up the burden of your life again.”

He flicked his finger against the cup.

Day follows Night, little baby; Night follows Day; Everything fine, little baby, passes away….

I said, “Father is dead. You should be the Castellan.”

“All say I slew him. My dogs.”

“You mean your Night-Hounds.”

Flick. Everything foul, little baby, will fail in time too; Bright Day will come, little baby, when Dark Night is through…

“Did you?” I said.

He said, “Draego and Dracaina were startled by something. She threw herself between Father and Draego, trying to protect him. Creon and his men assumed ranks and brandished, but they did nothing. Nothing. So Creon did not precisely slaughter Father, but he … allowed … it to happen. I have never seen my dogs so enraged against each other. She was trying to rip out his throat. If they did not love me, they would not have stopped at my word. I have a special word I use to hold them in check. I call it my Master Word.” He made a throaty call, like a word without consonants:
aeaeae
!

I let that little blasphemy pass by in silence. I said: “Why didn’t you tell the magistrates what happened?”

“Creon’s magistrates?”

He flicked his finger against the cup again, harder this time, and the cup chimed as if it would break.

Hush and be still, little baby; Night Haunts will hear; Die we all will, little baby, when Night Haunts come near….

Annoying. I was beginning to realize why our sister Ismene was so frayed and nervous these days.

He heaved a deep sigh. “I do not know what provoked Draego. I suspect one of Creon’s men stung him with a dagger point. And everything was going so well up until then! They were talking, Father and Creon, about letting me free from that room, restoring me in the eyes of the people; they spoke of how the hour-slips could be made to carry the tale as we wished it told. Like the old times.”

I said, “If not the magistrate, someone could be told of Creon’s treachery. The Pyrtaneum. The Orders. The Contemplatives. The Guilds. Surely I am not the only one suspicious that all the men were sent from the room save Creon’s partisans. Do you recall how I was arrested after you were saved from the Night Lands? Creon blamed the riot on me, and told father I stirred up the common people to bludgeon the Watch and break open the Gate for you. But I think Creon set his men to do the work, to bring the monsters in, telling them to claim my words inspired the deed. He breached the walls, not us, that father might die and we two be blamed. Creon is behind this all. He needed only get father alone in the room with your beasts!”

He grimaced. “An intricate theory; but it does not fit the facts.”

“It explains all!”

“Father, not Uncle Creon, sent everyone from the room. They wanted to talk to me about secret matters. Things lesser men would call treason. Creon said it was the only way to restore our family to honor, and to preserve our memory for later ages. The pneumaticists aver we are reborn again and again. Father does not wish, in his next incarnation some million years hence, to be reading historians who write nothing but denunciations of these times.”

He paused to laugh a bitter laugh.

Flick.
When the Wheel turns, little baby, we cannot flee; the dagger for you, little baby, the capsule for me….

He said: “Have you ever thought how hopeless the Returns will be? All father’s critics will be reborn as well, you see, perhaps reborn as the very lecturers teaching him of the profanity and madness for which our period will be remembered. Thanks to me.”

“What profanity? What madness?”

“That is what Father called it. My plan. The thing we were discussing, which made father send the Watch away. He said that our family would be lost from fame and power if we did not support my plan, even though he hated it. I was going to go Out once more, and use Draego and Dracaina to capture a third Night-Hound whelp; and then four and five and more. Enough to make a breeding stock. Enough to make, in one generation or two, a hound pack equal to an army. They breed quickly. So quickly! Human life seems so weak and pale compared to what stalks the night!”

He flicked his finger: Hush and be still, little baby; no need for tears; Love binds us still, little baby, no matter the years….

“We were talking about what level of the pyramid, which abandoned city to use. We thought of Ventral Southwest Nine: you would only need to armor over four gateways to shut the place off. Father seemed to think the architects had detected life-essences, perhaps from some long-forgotten grain-store, still active scattered through the empty houses and barren parklands there, but Creon was sure the place was bare. Father hated my idea of breeding Hounds, you see; but public opinion left him no choice. Only if I turned out to be right, only if my dream of domestication of the monsters was proved true, would our bloodline be heroic, rather than accursed. Only if we had a hundred lads each with his own pack of Hounds, and if they slew a thousand giants. We could take back some of the outer buildings and towers, the Quiet City, the Dark Palace, or the Temple of the Masks.”

We were both silent for a moment, thinking each our gloomy thoughts.

He said, “Humans built them, you know. They were not always the haunt of abominations. I do not care what the Monstruwacans can prove with their science. My dreams say humans built them.”

We were silent another moment.

Eventually I said, “If you found some path leading to the Place of Refuge, surely this will revive our honor. You must have found something!”

“No one told you?”

“I am surrounded by courtiers. I am told only lies.”

“Some things they say are true.”

“They said you found nothing. It must be a lie.”

“Must it be?”

“What did you find?”

He said, “Ice. Ice and darkness.”

He moved his finger. The little cup sang:
Nor Death nor Rebirth, my beloved; nor all the Night long, will keep us apart, little baby: for Love is so strong!

“Beyond the encampments of the abhumans, the Road Where the Silent Ones Walk climbs a long, slow slope of dark ice. Beneath the ice is hard igneous rock, showing that volcanoes flowed there perhaps a million years ago, perhaps more. There are no smoke-holes, no firepits, no light at all. Mile upon weary mile it goes. The air grows ever thinner and colder as the slope climbs. Even the strong men in my band were killed by that cold, so bitter was it, and our cloaks and our disciplines were no match for it. We walked for weeks, perhaps two months, breathing with our air-goblets held over our noses. There is nothing there. Not even the Night-Hounds can tolerate it. Whenever we felt that pressure in our souls which told us a Silent One was approaching, we would throw us from the road into the snow to either side, and lay without motion until the dread and potent creature had passed by. Each time, one less man could find his feet again. Eventually we turned back.”

He wiped at his tears, grimacing. Then he said softly:

“Elagabalus, before he bit his capsule, said he saw a Dark Redoubt, as large as our own, but occupied all with Silent Ones rather than human life. At the end of the road, miles and miles ahead of us. But we were in darkness, utter darkness. He whispered to me that he had done something to his eyes to make them able to see despite the dark. Made them better, he said. I touched his face and put my finger in his empty eyesockets. That was when I noticed that two of our men, the ones pressed up against my shoulders to either side (for we huddled together for warmth) were no longer warm. Both had stopped breathing. I jumped back from them, and they were no longer in arm’s reach, and so I lost them. But I heard their footsteps continued forward in the darkness, on that road which leads to nothing. They marched and did not stop.