Winterlong (20 page)

He who is also named by them the Lord of Dogs.

“What do you want of me?” I repeated, but I lowered my stick. “I am not of your people.” My voice cracked like a boy’s, and I felt foolish.

The animal remained poised, its muzzle pointed star-ward. I looked up to see what it watched there. Through the break in the leaves I saw the new moon. Many stars: the Polar Star; the hunting stars Cerberus and Sirius; uncounted others, nameless and no doubt dead to any eyes but mine. As I stared, a faint point of white tracked slowly across the sky, one of the Ascendants’ sad lights doomed to count the clouds forever. I watched until it disappeared behind the leaves. Still the beast watched the sky. I sighed, turned to go. With a low growl the jackal warned me, and I glanced up.

From the center of the sky welled a brightness, a silver rent in the firmament. It grew so large that I gasped, thinking the heavens would be torn apart to show the blinding void that hides behind the vastnesses of space. But no. It swelled until a second moon burned there, tear-shaped, sliding through the darkness and leaving a trail of fire in its wake as it streaked across the sky. Then it disappeared in a molten glare, tail glowing like a dull ember.

“Sweet Magdalene,” I breathed.

For thus had each Ascension been heralded, by new moons appearing in the heavens to flame and burst like mafic-lights. And suddenly I heard from every point of the City distant cries and clamor. From very far off came the screams of sirens, the thrumming of fougas, and faintest of all the boom of congreves being launched across the river.

I turned, stumbling against the jackal. It grabbed my trouser leg with its teeth and tugged insistently. By now I had no doubts but that I had somehow fallen into an adventure such as Doctor Foster had so often recited to us. As easily as a serpent shedding its skin I sloughed off any reservations I might have had a day earlier about following a ghostly animal through a forest where gods walked and the flowers thirsted for the blood of men.

“Where you will, Anku!” I said. That had been the name of Miramar’s tame dog. This one fairly danced upon hearing it, tossing its head back and letting forth once again that weird wailing song. Then it darted into the woods, its white flanks gleaming through the tangled brush. I followed, steeling my heart against the echo of distant sirens and airships. I ran with wild delight, daring them to hunt me who ran with Death’s dog.

T
HROUGH THE WOODS WE
plunged. It seemed to me that days had fled since first I entered that place, but the moon had scarcely crept across the sky. It was still early evening. With Anku racing ahead of me I ran, head held low to keep him in my sight. The trees seemed to shrink from our passage. Beneath my feet mandragons puled as I crushed them in spurts of white froth. Neither these nor the cries of the betulamia, slender trees like birches that reached to embrace me, could frighten or impede me now. Somewhere ahead of us the river slumbered and the Houses of Eros guttered with golden light. Somewhere Roland embraced another pathic and coursed the first slow steps of the pavane that began each Paphian masque.

At the thought I clenched my teeth. A new kind of lust stirred me: a sudden fierce need for pain and harrowing, a raging desire to wrench the veil of flesh and tendon from Roland’s face and slake this fever with his blood. About my wrist the sagittal burned with a pulsing violet light. I laughed and raised my fist so that it lit the path before me. Anku turned, his white teeth glittering.

The trees thinned to a copse pricked with flashing fireflies. Anku bounded through the tall grass. I hesitated, blinking in the brighter moonlight that spilled onto the coppice. A few yards ahead the shallow reflections of stars glimmered across the Tiger Creek. I whooped in delight and raced across the field to splash in the shallow water. Already Anku waded there, drinking and shaking his muzzle. I sloshed to where the water flowed knee-high, gazing upstream to see if I could locate the Hill Magdalena Ardent hidden behind the dense foliage. And yes, if I squinted I could just make out the more refined silhouettes of ruins and even a pale glimmering that was surely the lights of High Brazil.

At that sight my heart leaped with an overwhelming desire to see my people: Miramar and Ketura, Small Thomas and Benedick, even old Doctor Foster.

And Fancy. Most of all, little Fancy, who danced through all my dreams and alone remained a kind of light to me when I was most desperate. Even now, when about me reared the black spires of the Narrow Forest and lazars hooted in the distance, the thought of Fancy, somewhere, (missing me perhaps?) waking from her evening nap to dress for the ball calmed me as nothing else ever could. All the madness that had befallen me could be kept at bay by the knowledge that she sang and slept and danced there upon the Paphian’s hill; as if I was like the princess in the story, who could not be killed by fire or sword or swivel because her heart was hidden safely elsewhere. The bitter longing that had hurried me through the woods melted into a gentler need: for the comfort of those like me; for laughter and lovely things; above all for forgiveness for having valued wisdom above the varieties of love.

When Anku nudged me I started and nearly fell into the shallow water. I kicked him away from me. He growled plaintively, but suddenly I wanted no more of him, no more of this forest or of the Curators and the evils they had awakened in me. I was turning to wade upstream, to where I thought the Tiger ran into the river, when I saw the figures lined upon either shore watching us.

In the moonlight they might almost have been enchanted trees, betulamias or bitter alders: thin figures with spindly arms upraised, silent, their eyes black in haggard faces. Four of them upon one bank, three on the other. Most were smaller than myself. Even in the dim light I could see that they were children; but more than children.

Lazars.

Beside me Anku stood alert. I glanced down at him. The eyes that met mine were so obviously fired by some uncanny intelligence that I shivered, standing in the middle of that warm and languid river. I lifted my head and met the gaze of the lazar who seemed the eldest. A girl, flanked by two boys upon the farther bank. Her long hair burned almost white by the sun, face dark as though stained by some dye. About her shoulders hung the remains of a yellow janissary’s jacket. A carcanet of braided human hair hung around her neck. The boys beside her were very young, seven or eight years perhaps. One of them had flaming red hair, and was making faces at the group on the other bank. When I caught his eyes he giggled and hid behind the tall girl. The others were young as well, so thin and dirty I could not make out if they were boys or girls, with their rags and tattered hanks of hair tied about their waists. None of them bore a weapon, save their eyes—huge and glittering and feverish:
starved.

Still, they were so young and thin, and really they were only children, after all. I smiled, and took a step forward.

In an instant they were on me. I had a sideways glimpse of the two little boys springing from the sward before I fell. One of them clung to my back, kicking and screaming as he dug his fingernails into my neck. The other wrapped his arms around my knees. Then he butted me in the groin with his head. I doubled over in pain.

And panicked. They were lazars, not children: diseased ghouls. I tried to flee, but tripped and fell into the river. I felt the first boy clambering up my back until his weight forced my head beneath the water. I tried to knock him away, but now the air was shrill with their cries. I inhaled water, choking; felt other hands swarming over me. Then another sound, a hollow roar booming through the rush of water in my ears. A shriek, abruptly cut off. The knot of squirming hands withdrew. I rolled a few yards downstream, gagging and trying to wipe the water from my eyes as I staggered to my feet.

In the river six children now stood, the water roiling about their ankles. Anku half-crouched in the shallows among them. At his feet lay the red-haired boy, blood streaming from his torn throat like a tangle of his own bright hair. Coughing, I splashed upstream. Anku lifted his head, dipped his dark muzzle into the river until it was washed clean. Then he bounded to join me.

Three of the remaining lazars grabbed the dead child by his hands and dragged him to shore. The others drew closer to the tall girl. One wept silently, thumb in her mouth. Her eyes met mine beseechingly and I felt a stab of regret, that she looked to me—the oldest one present—for comfort. I turned to face the tall girl.

“Let me go,” I called to her. Anku pressed close against my leg. “I only seek passage to High Brazil. I must attend a Masque there—”

The girl took the hands of the two beside her and for the first time spoke. “They are hungry.” The children began to cry.

I glanced at the near shore. The lazars who had dragged the dead boy there now crouched beside him. A third child fumbled at the sopping rags she wore until she withdrew something that gleamed. I averted my eyes.

“You have him now,” I said. “Let me go.”

“He is too small,” the girl replied. Her tone was surprisingly deep for one so young. She drew the two beside her closer, patting their heads in that absent manner that children have when they are imitating adults.

“Shh,” she said, glancing at the shore. “He sleeps now. Go help Tristin.”

Tristin. A Paphian name. I bit my tongue to keep from crying out at this awful thing: to think of one of my own cousins meeting such an end! And yet it happened to some of us every time there was a rain of roses. Children and older Paphians (but mostly children, because they could not run as quickly) were caught outside before they had a chance to flee. And I had never admitted to myself that the lazars hunting and dying in the streets were very likely lovers I had been paired with on the Hill Magdalena Ardent.

The oldest girl pushed away the two little ones. They splashed across the river to join the others, looking back fearfully at Anku.

“A star fell tonight,” the girl said after a moment. She scratched her chest, adjusting the torn yellow jacket until it closed about her hips. “In the Cathedral we saw fougas.” She cocked her head, listening to the dying echo of sirens.

“So did I.” I looked over my shoulder to make certain there were no others gathering there. Hugging my arms against my chest, I took a step toward the far bank. The girl regarded me with those piercing black eyes and kicked at the shallows.

“You are a lazar,” she said at last.

“No,” I said. “I am a Paphian. I go to the Hill Magdalena Ardent, to High Brazil for a Masque. Let me pass—”

“You dress like one of us,” she said, indicating my torn clothes. Anku tilted his head to watch us. The girl pointed at him with her thumb.

“That is a dog.” She said this as though expecting me to refute it.

“Of sorts. It’s a jackal.”

“We had a dog,” she said wistfully. “They ate him. I was too small so they took me. From the Zoo.”

“The Zoo,” I repeated. I glanced to the northwest, where on an unseen hill hidden by white oaks the Zoologists lived. A Curator, then. I looked back at her, the dark frets of her ribs shadowed beneath the torn jacket, her gaunt blackened face; the white scars on her arms where the rains had fallen. Thirteen years old, maybe. “What’s your name?”

“Pearl.” She moved closer to me with a slow uneven gait, as though immeasurably fatigued or sedated. I backed away. Behind her I could see the others swarming over the boy’s corpse, some of them heaping sticks and branches on the shingle beside him.

“Your skin is so white,” she said. She stretched a hand to touch my chest.

Anku growled, but the girl only glanced at him. I shrank from her touch. She shrugged and shuffled a few steps off.

“Let me pass,” I said. Anku’s eyes followed Pearl as she drew nearer. “I’ll kill you otherwise—”

She regarded my raised fist with its dimly glowing sagittal and shrugged. “I am pledged to Death already,” she said. Grinning, she bared her teeth at me. Then she tipped her head and stared at me more closely. “I think you too are promised to the Gaping One.”

She made a mocking bow, then coughed. “I will tell the Consolation of the Dead that I have seen the Gaping Lord’s chosen one playing with a white dog in the river.” Anku’s growl grew louder. He crouched as though to spring. Pearl laughed and shambled a few meters off.

“Who is the Consolation of the Dead?” I called after her.

She smiled, flashing those yellow teeth again as she shook her head. “Our master,” she said as she trudged onto the shore. “The Lord of the Engulfed Cathedral.”

She turned and waved. “The little ones are afraid of that dog,” she called. “So they will not kill you. And I am no longer hungry. I go very soon to meet the Gaping One, the Lord of Dogs. I will tell him I saw you here.”

Her laughter was bright and clear as any Paphian child’s, and she raised a hand in imitation of the Paphian’s beck. “I was a Zoologist’s favorite daughter. Now I have the plague that softens the bones until they melt into the skin like butter. Still—”

She made an awkward pirouette, stopping at the river’s edge. “I like the face of your dog.”

Laughing, she kicked water at Anku, who sprang snarling at her. But already she had stumbled back onto the shingle, where the younger children greeted her with mewling cries and pulled her into the circle of their bonfire’s glare.

A
NKU AND I CROSSED
the Tiger to the shore nearest the Hill Magdalena Ardent. Behind us the lazars’ shadows drowned the smaller flare of their bonfire. In a few minutes they were lost to sight.

After a short time the hill we climbed began a downward slope. I recognized in the near distance the first of our Houses, Saint-Alaban’s ornate spires and minarets rising above the black spirals of cypresses that lined its curving drive. I half-ran, half-skidded down the grassy hillside to where the rutted Old Road was still maintained by the Curators for their occasional passage through the City. I paused.