Awake in the Night Land (35 page)

He throws his spear with a lever called an atlatl or woomera. It is about two feet long, with a handgrip at one end and a spur at the other. I have seen him hit a monster square in the eye at 150 yards with a javelin launched from it.

The Blue Man says He-Sings-Death hails from 14,500 BC. Once, when we were encamped in a dark box near an empty stairwell, He-Sings-Death used his remaining woad dye to paint the walls with beautiful pictures of an Irish Elk in flight. With only three colors, chalk-white, indigo and dull red, He-Sings-Death made the majestic antlers, the shining coats, the bunched muscles of the fleet-footed Elk come alive. It was a painting by someone who saw and hunted and admired the beast. The last of them vanished 11,000 years before my time. He-Sings-Death "signed" the painting by leaving a blue handprint.

On the opposite wall, he painted a hulking shape of the kiln giants that had been following us, and he used this for target practice: "so that the tooth of the spear will come to know the taste of him, and yearn to strike true!” he said, and laughed. He laughs the way a child might, tossing his hair and throwing his head back.

He spoke to the flint spear-points of his weapons, praising them when they struck, and chiding them when they did not. Perhaps it was a voodoo he believed in earnest; perhaps it was target-practice; perhaps it was merely his sense of humor.

He laughed now. “Ydmos, he says there is one here. One here who follows the Smothering Man, He-Chokes-Song. But Ydmos, he hears in the night. He knows. He sees hearts. So, then! So, then! Who can he not hear? Who has a hidden heart?”

I knew from previous talks with him, that the devil of his tribal lore was called He-Chokes-Song. This was a spirit of darkness, born of the waste left over after the Creator made the world on the pottery wheel of the rotating heavens. The left-over spirit stuff could find no place in the world for itself, and so bent itself to the task of tormenting and destroying the happy men who did have a place in the world. It was the not unreasonable conclusion of He-Sings-Death that we were in a cave where this devil and his servants, corrupted from once-wholesome creatures, dwelled.

Ydmos did have some sort of telepathy he called "Night-Hearing" that the men of the far future used to sense the shape and nature of the menaces from the Night Lands around their Last Redoubt. He-Sings-Death was asking a rather clever question: which one of us could block the Night-Hearing, the telepathy, of Ydmos?

He-Sings-Death now made a shuffling dance with his doe-skin-clad feet, turning this and that. He held his spear in hand, in its thrower, at his shoulder, so that the long shaft slanted down his back. He chanted in a high, thin, funny-sounding voice "Who can it be? Who can it be?” and bent his head as if to stare in surprise at his own feet in their rapid slithering patter. I do not know if he meant this to work a magic, but he was smiling as he danced, a smile I have seen on him when he makes a joke.

Now he stood in the middle of our rough circle. We were all staring at him. His back was to me. He straightened up.

He-Sings-Death said, “Not Captain Powell. His heart is bright: he has the eye of the hunting-dog when he hunts; he holds the iron thunder. Did you not see the black beasts flee when the thunder spoke?”

Ydmos said, “Do not praise his noisy weapon: the creatures of the Night Lands are drawn to loud reports, and firearms tempt men to slay monsters afar-off, instead of close at hand. Such weapons anger what should be left quiet.”

I thought this a cold thing to say, considering that I had just saved his life with my firearm. But I decided that a polite reply was best. “No matter the temptation, sir, I will only be tempted five more times to slay a monster far off. I have but six shells left, and I am saving the last one for myself. Unless Mr. Threshold can make more?” (Casually, I looked toward Abraxander) “Can you, sir? Or can any of you make us better arms, or restore our supplies? Some of you are warlocks and who-knows-what. Mr. Bliss the Blue Man seems to be able to create tools out of his fluid.” (Casually, I pointed my barrel toward the Blue Man) “Or perhaps master Kitimil the Shaggy Man (if man he be) he could teach us to make clubs from bone.”

I raised my voice (for the shaggy man was squatting on the top of some oblong metal casket, gazing toward the center of the room). “What are you anyway? A Neanderthal? Or something from the end of the world?”

The Blue Man and Abraxander-the-Threshold turned to look at Kitimil, as if expecting a reply.

Kitimil, the Shaggy Man, did not answer. He did not seem overly concerned at the idea of a traitor in our midst. He was a squat fellow, but so thick through the shoulders and chest as to look almost hunch-backed. He sniffed the air with his monkey-nose.

When I spoke, a long moment passed before he cocked his head at me.

I think Kitimil is one of the three members of the group who reads minds, but I cannot decipher his expressions. His eyes are as green as jade, and they shine from between the hairs of his unkept brow like the eyes of a tiger crouched in the tall grass of Rhodesia.

His brow is heavy and cragged like the brow of an ape, so that his eyes are always in shadow, wolf-green staring out from dark pits. His face is wide at the cheekbones, and through the tangled black beard, ribs of muscle surrounded a wide, dog-fanged mouth. His jaw was like a blunt anvil. His weapon was the thighbone of an antelope: he dressed in shaggy wolf hide. I would swear he was homonid of some other species than our own, save that I have seen sailors on packet boats out of Istanbul or Macao as thick-featured, hard-faced, wild and dark as he.

He spoke in his language of coughs and clicks. Once again, the spiritualistic or animal-magnetic process of whatever it was that Ydmos and Nergal had done before translated the words for us.

The shaggy man was saying: “What is that light? What is that light?”

He came up onto his hind legs, and raised his bone truncheon and pointed, he said, “It is the light of the last sun. All-of-all now dies. Night-of-night now falls. There will be no dawn. In the hunting band, the virgins carry a coal from fire to fire, that when one fire dies, another will be born. Where is the coal for the new dawn? Who will make the new all-of-all?”

He coughed (a laugh? Or a sound of sorrow?) and concluded: “Why these people? Why this place? The path, it leads through dark brush, dark and tangled, but there is sun in the glade beyond. My mate, Magigi, waits. We dance then. Then, the light. Not now, the light: the dark is now.

“Who carries the coal to bring back the fire of the world? For the path is full of thorns.”

This was the most he had spoken since he pulled me from my library coffin. I wondered at his words. His mate?

And, when no one answered him, he turned his face from us with a snort of disgust, and stared back toward the shimmering light. He muttered, as if to himself, “You are forgetting people, after-people, wrong-head-looking people. The coal is here with us. Do not look for the serpent among us: he is nothing.”

He-Sings-Death laughed again and stamped his feet on the deck, making a dull drum-boom. We all looked back toward him.

He-Sings-Death was saying, “Kitimil, I name him He-Speaks-Like-Man. He is crooked-hearted, but his heart is plain. His heart is wet with tears. Can He-Chokes-Song cry human tears? Not him! Not him! Why do you look at him?”

I took this to mean that He-Sings-Death was vouching for Kitimil as well. But I wondered who among us would vouch for He-Sings-Death? Of all the company, he was my closest comrade, but he could not truly know that I was not infected by the enemy, possessed, ghost-ridden, no more than I could know it of him.

He-Sings-Death spoke in a deeper voice, harshly. “But here is one whose heart is hidden and dark. He hears voices, and he obeys. Is this not a way of the Smothering Man? Let him show himself to be clean! Speak!”

He was facing Mneseus, the Sorcerer-King from Atlantis.

He-Sings-Death drew back his spear-hand and raised his weapon to smite.

Mneseus of Atlantis had not spoken since the battle. He sat, his unstrung bowstaff in hand, on the edge of a machine housing, but his head was bowed, and his left hand covered his face.

Slowly, he raised his face. His eyes were wet and red.

Mneseus said: “I shall speak. Noble sirs, ghosts of the future, my descendants, hear me: it is seen that there were neither bride nor child among those stirred again to life in the dark coffins. Is it not strange, that men only were brought to life, and no sister, no daughter, no mother of our race, glancing-eyed, dark-haired, with shining limbs?

“Once, I stood beneath the bright sun all-seeing, beside the wine-dark sea. The Sybil of the Serpent-Shrine at Dolphins, she said that there is a land beyond the fields of Asphodel: Father Time, Chronos, would perish, and the Eternal Universe, Ouranos, will halt the turning of the years. The grate of Hades would be stove in, and the shades made flesh again. All lovers would be reunited.”

Mneseus was a very dignified-looking fellow, polite and grim in the way soldiers who have seen too much combat often have. Even jolly little Huc-huc Pounce (back before the dire-worms took him) had not been able to make Mneseus laugh. He dated from somewhere older than 4000 B.C.

Abraxander-the-Threshold had conjured him a voluminous white mantle, which he wore draped over his chest and arms like you might see in classical sculpture.

His shirt was linen and his leather skirt was hemmed with gold pebbles. Shields or plates of bronze and oxhide hung over his chest and back: there were shining greaves on his calves, and he wore a leather sleeve on his right arm to protect it from the bowstring.

His helm was of a design that looked strangely modern to me: it looked like a flat pie-plate of bronze, tied in a complex tangle with two ribbons under and around his chin. Atop the helmet was a coronet of white poplar leaves, tied with purple ribbon. He had insisted Abraxander create for him a flask of oil, with which he anointed his limbs, so that they shone: he seemed to think this more important than his tunic or mantle or skirt.

A small cylindrical quiver of metal hung over one shoulder, and his arrows clashed when he ran. He was the swiftest afoot of all of us, fleeter even than He-Sings-Death.

The bow shot silvery arrows tipped with ampoules of glass and metal. There was some sort of magic or forgotten science to arrowheads, for he had to prepare them or charge them with an amber rod he wore at his belt. When the arrows were charged, there was a smell like summer lightning in the air. When he shot a monster with an arrow, even the smallest wound would make the monster dance and leap, limbs jerking, and drop dead.

Was it an electrical charge of some sort? I kept expecting a flash of lightning or a thunderclap to come from the flying shafts of the wizard from Atlantis, but it never came. When he strung his bow, there was just a silent sense of pressure in the air, like you feel before a thunderstorm.

Mneseus held the bow unstrung now, and he was seated on the edge of a machine casing, but his posture was kingly, and the bowstaff in his hand seemed a scepter.

Mneseus looked up at He-Sings-Death, and stared him eye to eye, and called out in a ringing voice: “Now is the time, is it not? Now is the hour when Ouranos, who created Cosmos from Chaos, returns from exile to claim his kingdom, and end the tyranny of Time, his wicked son. And—? And—?”

He lowered his bow staff and waved it left and right, pointing to one side of the chamber, and the other. I looked. There were tall square shapes, like abandoned machines, things that looked like dull tall mirrors, and, in the center of the room, the very wide sunken amphitheatre of chairs, all facing the floor of glass. There was that mysterious light shining from the sunken glass floor in the center of the chamber.

“I see her not,” He said at last, dropping his hand.

I said, “Pardon me, Your Majesty, but for whom would you be looking?”

He looked at me. His eyes were tilted, like the eyes of a Chinaman, but the pupils were silvery, a color I had never seen in a human before.

He said softly, “My queen, the witch Parthenope. She repented of her crimes, freed the maidens of her tower, and consented to age and die as other women do. She threw her bowl where she mixed poisons into the sea, though the hag-goddess of the dark of the moon was angered at her for her ingratitude. My queen used her wisdom thereafter to heal the sick, and to calm the storms at sea. When she perished, a pine tree grew up upon her grave. The augurs told me this was a sign of everlasting life. A halcyon nested in the branches.

“Where is she?” Mneseus continued. “All lovers are to be reunited at the end of time. Now is the Eschaton. Where is my wife?”

The voice of Mneseus was heavy with grief.

He-Sings-Death still menaced him with his javelin.

I said to He-Sings-Death, “Mr. Singer, you told us the devil cannot weep, but His Majesty clearly has been. Put down the weapon, and let us use our wits to find the traitor here.”

He-Sings-Death hesitated.

Mneseus looked at him with contempt. “Strike, then, barbarian, and rid this iron hell of one more grieving soul. What care I for your suspicions? None are worthy to stand in judgment over me. Strike! And pierce my heart: it is pained with weeping, and no more to be called a man's heart. Where, O Hercules! Where is my virtue gone?”

All at once he stood, put his sandal to his bow, bent and strung it. In one smooth motion he snatched an arrow from his quiver, touched it to the amber at his belt, fit it to the string, and raised the bow and drew the string back to his ear. The room throbbed with an unseen power: I smelled lighting in the air.

He pointed the arrow at He-Sings-Death. “You stood idle while my shining hands strung my death-bestowing bow, which slays men. Why did you allow me? That was folly.”

He-Sings-Death smiled, but his voice shook. He had seen what the arrows of Mneseus could do.

The painted Cave Man said, “Three spirits made the world: He-Knows-All, He-Gives-Gifts, He-Spares-Men. He-Spares-Men has told us that it is wrong to kill a brother. But I do not know what you are! Are you a man who eats flesh cooked with fire, as other men do? Or are you the serpent hidden with us? If you are not the serpent hidden with us, why did you say poison words into my ear about Captain Powell, He-Holds-Iron-Thunder?”