The Book of M (44 page)

DAWN SEEMED TO COME EARLIER THAN USUAL THE NEXT
morning. As the sky slowly brightened, Zhang stood in the guard tower with Ahmadi, Malik, and Gajarajan—both the shadow and its body, which was seated behind them in the corner of the small enclosed platform. Far below, the world was very different than it had been when the sun set. Outside the city, and stretching to cover most of the long bridge over Lake Pontchartrain, the ground was blanketed in white, as if they had woken up to snow. Transcendence had arrived.

“I wonder what they did to the deathkites overnight,” Ahmadi mused quietly.

None of them replied. Whatever they had done, it had been effective. There was no sign of even one of them now. No vast, colorful shapes catching the light, no silent angular shadows drifting over the water and fragrant grass, waiting for prey.

“We should tell The Eight,” Malik said tensely, glancing across the city toward the first great hall, where the shadowless waited inside. “They should know. Every bit of tactical information . . .” He trailed off, as if realizing how far it was. Zhang hadn't thought of phones for a long time, until he realized he'd put his hand into his pocket as if to retrieve one.

Gajarajan glanced at them for a moment, considering. The wall of the tower was suddenly brighter, containing only pale morning light, and then just as suddenly, the familiar gray pattern was cut back into it. The elephant ruffled his ears.

“I've informed them,” he said.

“Thank you,” Malik said, surprised. “That was—I appreciate it.”

Gajarajan shrugged. “To move using light doesn't require a similar effort to walking. It made more sense for me to go than any of you.”

“Or him,” Ahmadi said, indicating the blindfolded body sitting
quietly in the corner. The man made no move to acknowledge he'd heard her. “Why
did
you bring him?” she asked.

“I'm not sure,” Gajarajan said. “It isn't very useful, is it? Better dexterity, as it's a solid form, but that's about it.”

Zhang couldn't help but shake his head. To be talking about a human body in such a way—especially his own. It was hard not to be entertained sometimes at how strangely Gajarajan understood people. More often than not, he seemed to Zhang more like a robot than an elephant, or the shadow of one—a disembodied intelligence that regarded their flesh like cars: interchangeable models. Zhang had always thought of the great gray animals as sort of like humans, really—with families, personalities, identities. Just bigger, and with tusks. But he supposed that was simply his attempt to understand them. Maybe that wasn't how they were at all.

Ahmadi was leaning cautiously over the edge of the tower, staring into the vast white. “What are they . . . doing?” she whispered.

“Praying,” Gajarajan said.

Zhang looked at him sharply. “Praying to what?”

“Their leader.” The shadow edged forward slightly, as if to also get a better look. “A shadowless at their center.”

Madness,
Zhang thought. An army of shadowed people, led by a shadowless who wanted to remove all human shade from the world—against a council of shadowless, led by a living shadow, who wanted to give everyone back their dark twin.

“Well, eight to one is good odds,” Malik said as hopefully as he could. Zhang knew he was wondering the same thing the rest of them were. Why Transcendence needed only one.

“Don't fear,” Gajarajan said, as if answering his thoughts. “The Eight are powerful, too.”

“Why eight?” Ahmadi asked. “Yoshikawa said it's the strongest number. But why?”

“Eight is the number of verses about Surya in the Rigveda,” the shadow answered.

“Surya?”

“The god of the sun,” he replied, as if it meant something to them.

Just then there was a small ripple across the alabaster army below. Something was about to begin.

“The Eight are ready?” Zhang asked, resisting the urge to run, to hide anywhere he could find.

Gajarajan nodded. “Vienna will lead memories related to Transcendence, knowing most what they look like and how they act, and Downtown and Curly will lead any memories related to defending New Orleans. The rest shall harmonize, to help shoulder the burden of forgetting and intensify the strength of each act.”

Downtown and Curly.
Zhang had heard their names from the other New Orleanians from time to time, along with a few others who were no longer there—Marie, Buddy, and a shadowed doctor named Dr. Avanthikar. Of the original Eight, Downtown and Curly were the only two left who still served. The others had entered their endless wait long ago, and now remained in body only. No mind. Everything had been spent, down to the last recollection.

To know that two of the original Eight were with Vienna gave Zhang hope their plan might just work. She didn't really know what she was doing yet, but The Eight did, and they were intensely powerful. After all, they had been part of The Eight that had remembered the very first and still the most massive work of magic: the reimagining of the deadly hurricane that almost destroyed New Orleans into the gigantic water wall beneath them. Zhang watched the crystalline surface shimmer as the sun struck it. He understood it now—if unguided, how hard it would be to resist the urge to want to forget again thereafter. To do things even more incredible.

“Easy,” Gajarajan said to Malik as the white shifted further.

“This is crazy,” he replied, fists clenched. “Look at how many there are.”

“Easy,” the shadow repeated. “This isn't your battle.”

Gajarajan had gathered everyone in New Orleans last night and
reiterated that they were not to fight. That The Eight would do it for them. All the rest of them had to do was run to the center of the city on Vienna's command, and stay there, no matter what. Whether Transcendence was inside or outside the gates, whether they were attacking or not.
Simple enough,
Zhang thought.
Simple and terrifying.
But where were The Eight? They still hadn't arrived, and the army below was beginning to shift in waves, like a great ivory tide.

“They're moving,” Ahmadi warned. Her fingers spasmed, wishing there was a bow to grab for. She was struggling as much as Zhang was to place all their safety in someone else's hands. Zhang turned around again, but the far hill in front of the sanctuary was still empty.
Where were The Eight?

“There she is,” Malik gasped. They all looked to where he was pointing. Across the city, Zhang could see eight small figures moving out from the first great hall into the sun. From this distance, and with no shadows, they almost looked like they were floating.

“Vienna, Downtown, Curly, Fromthelandoflakes, Skinny, Old-Timer, Chef, Survivedthestorm,” Zhang said to himself. He tried to picture each one of them as they headed toward the city gates beneath him, to make himself believe that they could do it. That whatever their plan was, it was going to work.
Vienna, Downtown, Curly, Fromthelandoflakes, Skinny, Old-Timer, Chef, Survivedthestorm . . .

“Gajarajan,” Vienna said when they had reached the ground below the watchtower's ladder. They stood facing the gate in a pyramid formation, Vienna in front, Downtown and Curly behind her, and then the remaining five behind them.

“It's time,” Downtown called up to them. “Something is stirring.”

A chill went through Zhang as he looked backward, at the rest of New Orleans. Everything was empty and still. He knew that all the shadowed and shadowless were hiding just inside doors and windows and behind walls, ready to do what seemingly suicidal thing Vienna was about to ask for—but the sight of the city so utterly dead was frightening.

“His name will be Lucius,” Gajarajan said to Vienna. “Their leader.”

Zhang had no idea how Gajarajan knew it. Vienna nodded gently, as if from far away.

They watched the white waves begin to split from one endless alabaster surface into hundreds, thousands of small fluttering shapes, men and women covered from head to toe in their strange white robes. Maybe they were all hoping they would forget because they couldn't even see who they each were anymore.

“False prophet!” someone finally called from deep within Transcendence's lines. “Show yourself!”

Zhang nearly cried out when their gate trembled in response. Ahmadi clutched his arm with fingernails like razor blades as Malik forced himself to obey Gajarajan's nod to crank the wheel to open the huge doors. “Why are we doing this?” Zhang hissed. “Why open it for them?” But the shadow beside them said nothing. Zhang clutched the railing of the tower's low wall until his knuckles turned white.

Transcendence seemed equally surprised that they were opening the city to them. The first row lowered their weapons uncertainly. From inside, The Eight stared them down.

At last, one white shape pushed through the many to the front. “Transcended ones, we greet you.” The man bowed, and his shadow copied. “If you join us now, we can offer you protection during the battle, and then mercy afterward. You will be accepted into Transcendence as honored guests.”

“We wish to speak to Lucius,” Vienna said.

The man in white paused. He was close enough that Zhang could just make out his eyes from the tower as they narrowed suspiciously. “Your own leader doesn't show himself. What makes you think you have the right to demand to speak to ours?”

“The One Who Gathers has a shadow,” Vienna said coldly. She gestured to the towering, shimmering height of the living storm bound to stillness on either side of the gate. Something one still bound to his
dark twin could never make. “Who do you think is really in charge here?”

The man in white finally bowed again. It was impossible to tell, but Zhang thought he might have been smiling beneath all the veils and layers. “Our leader asked to meet you before we even arrived. I am happy to have found you worthy of his audience.”

Zhang braced as their crowd parted around another shifting section of itself. A group emerged, tightly clustered. At least ten disciples surrounded their great shadowless messiah, a tall and almost handsome man of indeterminate age. The front two on either side held on to him as they walked by linking their arms with his at the elbows, like human chains.
Trying to keep him from utterly destroying the city until they're ready,
Zhang thought grimly. He was also draped in the same robes, but more layers of them, and longer, and was the only one with his head completely uncovered.

Lucius.

It was the look on the shadowless's face that caught Zhang: it was nothing like how the ones in Gajarajan's sanctuary seemed. Their gazes were absent, but not angry, not afraid—as if their memories had simply gone off somewhere else for a time and might return. It was even different from what he'd seen on the faces of the Red King and the Reds. That had been greed and rage, twisted out of control without memory. Lucius was something far worse—he was nothing at all. Emptiness that could never be filled. His eyes were not simply dimmed or distant—they were dead.

The escort of disciples came to a stop in front of the first man that had been speaking for them all. Lucius stared at The Eight for several seconds, studying them in silence. From above, Zhang studied him back intensely. There was something almost familiar about him—almost like a face he'd met in another time, another world—but he could not place him. The disciples clung to him, practically melding onto his body. Their shadows twisted behind them into a grotesque mass.

“You lead the people of New Orleans?” Lucius finally asked. The voice was disarmingly quiet and smooth. “A city of shadowed people?”

“We have many shadowless as well,” Vienna said. “New Orleans welcomes all who want to remember instead of forget.”

“Once a man transcends, he cannot return,” Lucius replied.

Vienna grinned. “You're wrong.”

The disciples around Lucius pulled tighter, and Zhang flinched—but nothing happened. Lucius only nodded. “You haven't been shadowless for very long,” he finally said. “You'll see.”

“I
have
seen,” Vienna replied. “When I heard the rumors, I didn't believe most of them either. But then I arrived in New Orleans and—”

“You
came
to New Orleans?” Lucius asked. “You didn't already live here?”

“From Washington, D.C.,” Vienna answered.

Lucius's eyes narrowed as he searched the incomplete archives of his mind for information that was attached to any of those words. “On your way, you didn't see a very large thing to ride in—a large vehicle—did you?”

“A large vehicle?” Vienna frowned. “No. There's no fuel anymore.”

“Oh.” Lucius glanced down for a moment, at the grass that tickled the billowing hems of his robe. Zhang waited for something more, or the reason he'd asked, but Lucius said nothing. He simply waited. But for what?

The longer Zhang watched, the stranger the scene in front of him seemed. Lucius was there, as Gajarajan had said he would be, and he was shadowless, and Transcendence clearly worshipped him—but everything felt as if it was tilted one degree off center. As if Zhang was the one who wasn't remembering something that he should have understood, instead of all the shadowless.

“We came in horse carriages,” Vienna offered, as if that might have been what he meant.

But Lucius only shook his head and waved a hand to dispel the
words. “Never mind,” he said. Then, even more quietly: “I can't remember why I asked.”

“Enough talk,” the first Transcendence disciple, the one who had been appointed to speak, growled to The Eight. He pointed at Vienna. “Join us now, or after we destroy your false prophet and free you.”

From the corner of his eye, Zhang saw the shadow of the elephant shift on the wall beside him. “Remember, don't fight them,” he whispered. “Not a single one.”