Mulgara Page 3

  “You’re going to help me find him!” I shouted. “Fire has seemed to have forgotten you the craft, Belot! This,” I flapped my hand at his hilarious state, “this is just the beginning. This living mind of yours, being used to mock and riddle as wasteful as done in life, it just came from me. Me!” I took a hard step forward. “We both know I can just as easily extract from it, as you were about to do to that fat lump of shit over there.”

  As best a skull with sporadic rigging can, Belot quivered. I opened my coat and withdrew a vial. Belot’s bony hands made for my neck as I opened up the vial and drank down its contents. The bitter syrup was exactly what Belot had drunk to own the mind of Toadly. I felt my will wrap around Belot’s like a chain. The effect would not last forever, but maybe long enough.

  Whether to pose a less startling silhouette, or maybe the damage of flame had made open night air feel like dancing razors, or maybe the vanity of Belot in life somehow held in his state of chattel-undead—for whatever reason, he draped himself in one of his black silken cloaks and followed his master out the door.

  At the base of the open window I discovered a baby’s footprints. They had scampered into the wet lawn of City Cemetery.

  —

  We’d stalked clear across City Cemetery. The footprints cut through those of Belot’s thugs, darted for Toadly’s tower straight through the Maedraderium, but then surprised me by veering a sharp left. It led us through an embankment of streets and buildings that met a corner of the graveyard. We now lurked inside a large nursery, having found the final footprint at its lanterned door. Toadly, the clever little rat.

  Toadly, the clever little rat, Belot ideated, reconfirming that I now owned his mind.

  Absorbing ourselves into the darkest corners of a nursery bay was easy enough. In the moonlit middle, a row of cribs cooed stirs and kicked up blankets. The moon came through the bay’s elongated windows, stretching shadows of the cribs long against a back wall.

  Start at the far end, I thought at Belot.

  Start at the far end, Belot ideated.

  Belot moved off, drifting through the moonbeams and then out of my sight. I commenced searching the nearer cribs with a drawn dagger. Toadly needed to be “alive,” but I’d certainly sever a fat little leg. Possessed bodies are impelled by stamina and dexterity far greater than the living. I knew it, as did Toadly.

  I peered into cradle after cradle, looking to see if the miserable trickster had occupied an empty one. After scanning the spaces underneath, I stood to keep an eye on Belot, slowly sailing through the rows and columns.

  What is that? Belot and I thought at the same time. Lamp-light approached, flat-footed plods coming right behind it. A narrow passageway that until then had remained hidden now bore an attendant.

  I had Belot coil under his nearest crib. Then I pressed my back against my nearest wall.

  A nursemaid, lamp cast out in front of her houndish nose, hobbled in.

  Legs. Walking. Words I felt Belot think freely, almost whispering right over his teeth. From my obscure angle, it appeared the woman was passing the crib he hid under. I’m on the ground, Belot thought, making my heart leap, for my dominion over him was already beginning to wane. Making matters more perilous, he must have said it aloud. The woman had stopped. The lantern shook.

  If Belot was discovered under a crib like some hideous snake, the woman’s shrieks would startle every babe and armed guard within a mile. Dagger honed, using each passing crib to conceal me, I made my way to them.

  “Smoked pork?” the woman said. A lone crib now from her back, I saw her shrug her shoulders then resume her rounds. I sheathed my dagger.

  We continued searching, and we may have done so all night if it weren’t for the imp flashing me a sudden vision. Yes, the imp. I at first elated, for this meant it knew it belonged to the House of Ordrid. The greatest of familiars, when one is joined with such a little fiend, the imp allows its master its cunning, to hear through its ears, and, I now gaped, the horrid sights seen through its eyes.

  It showed me an entire scene unfold all in one instant:

  Toadly was climbing through the open window back at Belot’s. His new hands he must have loathed, but they grasped the window superbly, as did his new legs, having bursting up from the ground below. His laughter while in his obese true form had sounded to me once like a creature being boiled alive. But now, as a bluish infant mottled in decay, they were little giggles. I had been tricked! He must have double backed as I made a fool of myself in the damn nursery. The giggles made their way into Belot’s parlor as Toadly scaled down the stool and apron and jumped nimbly to the floor.

  It gave me some reprieve to see that Toadly stood over his old body, lying there dead and humiliated. I am sure in some singular way he thanked me too. For I had given to Belot a fate that any captive would dream to see their captor suffer. But more than that, cringing at the thought of the amount of his laughter that had been aimed at me, by killing Belot I had freed Toadly’s mind…and had even given him time to escape.

  Toadly walked around his body, his current head no higher than the plateau of the rack that held his former self.

  Toadly stopped and picked up a chunk of blackened flesh. He then dropped it and sprang from the floor like a cricket, landing on his own bloated corpse.

  Toadly was going to try to not only reanimate his old body, but reassume it! If so, and if he were able to seal himself off and repair his manglings to a semblance of function, Toadly half-alive and enraged could be worse than ten normal men.

  Small arms were cast skyward. His baby mouth began to open. What would have been Toadly’s booming moan was something quite different. The rites, though uttered perfectly, filled the room with that of a sprite’s. The baby’s head whipped down. Dollish eyes gazed. Then he cast his head back. Its eyes glossed over with the purest white.

  The imp flashed me this—its vision, sending me scrambling back toward Belot’s.

  —

  Belot ran behind me as if I were pulling him with a leash. The coming of morning bled into the black surrounding the moon.

  That cauldron of shit couldn’t have, I thought.

  That cauldron couldn’t, Belot ideated.

  My control over Belot was weakening. With a surge, I willed him to stand guard at his open window, while I sweated against his door and caught my breath.

  My worry was then confirmed. When I reentered the parlor, I pressed my back against the door, hung my head, and sighed.

  The dismal worktable at the center of this dismal room was bare. Near my feet lay the baby, now limp and contorted, as if thrown.

  Walking to the table, I stopped at the cage hanging above. The night was far from a loss. I had the imp, one who had already done for me what it only did for those it deemed worthy. Plus, I’d killed the Great—ornate—Denoreyph Belot, and even fulfilled an adolescent fantasy of commanding his corpse around. Toadly would be addressed later, once reorganized and a better plan made.

  It was right then that I saw the imp’s face change.

  —

  When I came to, blasting pain flowed from a gash somewhere on the back of my head. I was face down, on the floor, in a pool of my own blood. Belot stood above me. Disenthralled from my dominion, wielding one of his ornamental canes that had surely felled me, meat and teeth sneered and his sockets flashed.

  Belot widened his stance. Regripping his weapon, “Not the fate for you I desired,” he wailed, “but I haven’t the time!” He rose his cane to, I’m sure, beat me to death in as many strikes as he could before oblivion claimed us both. But before the first one fell, Toadly came barreling out of nowhere. In Toadly’s hands was a colossal iron spoon from one of Belot’s cauldrons.

  Though I had managed to roll over, I was still unable yet to rise. Separated only by me lying at their feet, the two then clashed like pit fighters.

  When I rolled onto my side, my head exploded in such pain I’d thought for a moment that the damned spoon had found me instead. I watched the melee as an emerged worm watching a street performance. The skeleton was dodging the slow, skull-crushing swoops while hissing his curses. The fat man, almost a light green, gargled through the slice under his bottom-most chin, while his engorged stomach jostled with his violent wiggling. With a loping swing of the giant spoon, something fell out from between two of Toadly’s glistening roles.

  Landing upright, as if placed by a servant, the lapis lazuli hand stood before me. Toadly’s feet and Belot’s bones danced as I clasped onto it.

  I had it! It was done! Soon Belot would fade, and if I were lucky, while I waited on the floor unnoticed, maybe he’d use that cane to break Toadly’s fat head.

  From the floor, curiosity and confusion penetrated my euphoria, for right then the imp opened its cage.

  My eyes were pulled from the fight when it reached out and stuck its scorpion-stinger fingernail into the lock that had been—or so I’d thought—preventing its flight.

  Flew it did, to a shelf to latch its hands around a small black jar. Little bat wings gliding, the imp flew over Belot, Toadly, and myself, and dusted us with its contents.

  The blue hand began to thrum. It began to burn my fingers, but I only held it tighter. A moment later I had been pulled to my feet, but by what I could not say. I was standing between both of my enemies. Belot’s bones flew against me, sticking to my arms and chest as if attached by paste. Belot’s teeth chattered in my ear while Toadly’s head was slung back and a fountain of noise and bile erupted from the gash.

  It was as if the three of us were standing still while the room spun at a terrible speed. Toadly was smaller now—his eyes glaring
up at me while his arms hugged my leg. What looked like maggots squirmed where Belot’s large bones had been just a moment before.

  “No!” I cried as I heard Belot cry the same. “Not this! Not him!” we cried.

  Toadly, now a hideous tadpole, made a slow, close orbit as I felt the putrid itch of Toadly’s fusion. Covered in the powder that started this, there was a sudden crowding in my mind.

  There was the collection of memory and thoughts that I identified as Irion. But there were others too. There was one: a maker of undead slaves and master of his craft. There was another: cruel, cunning, ever-working. Yet there seemed to be a looming fourth being, one who settled on us like a fog. Darker, this insidious force felt much older, and it was this one who I cried out to inexplicably in a dialect from times long ago, “What is thou which touches me?!”

  I, Maecidion, then felt a rebirth that few creatures can know. Without eyes I saw; without body I began to feel. “Worry not, young one,” I said.

  Pathetic whimpers and yelps in the periphery were all that was left of Gormorster Toadly and Denoreyph Belot. “I, I am sorry,” that which was still Irion said. “Forgive me, my Lord. There was no way of knowing. I thought maybe, maybe that you had gone mad in your final moments.”

  Irion was sophomoric, but audacious and physically able. It was why he had been chosen, as both the other two had been chosen for their greatest endowments. Their poor qualities melting away, the synthesis was congealing as that which was still Irion pled, “Your Virulence, please—”

  What was once Irion remained only a moment more, a fluttering of two memories: perusing a scroll under candlelight at the lyceum, and then the midnight garden in our family keep, playing with his cousins under the moon. As excited cries carried on the night wind, he ran from his hiding place. Finding his playmates, what was once Irion faded as if never existing at all.

  I looked at my hands, then my feet. I breathed in the air of the splendid early morning, then extended my arm for my imp to perch.

  —

  The morning was the shade of gray that always brought rain. I, once again, stood at the giant obelisk of Maecidion the Virulent. I was mostly still garbed in Irion’s black, adding only one of Belot’s black cloaks. A satchel was slung over my shoulder; in it, a few coins and choice components to retackle the world, my beautiful coiled imp, and my lapis lazuli hand.

  I smiled at the obelisk. My obelisk. The world could see this testament to my departure. The more, the better. Times were changing; that part of him had been right. Even an ancient must adapt. The man the world had known as Maecidion was just an earlier vessel, and the predecessor before Maecidion the same. I could hardly contain my amusement; simply clearing out the clutter of a closet was enough to mask my plan. I cared nothing for the recipients at what I’m sure was a riotous hearing, and prior to had laughed as I’d laid dying and Morfil penned their insignificant names.

  Morfil had been a diligent and loyal subordinate, but he lacked Irion’s intrepid nature. Besides, he was now obliged to the duties of the highest order, whereas Irion was practically a nomad from the lower. It was time for something new. Through Irion, I was free.

  As the first rains splashed off my hood, I laughed as ghouls do. I was alive again, and the pitter-patter on my tongue was as sweet as bliss itself. It was time to pay my respects to the wondrous House of Rogaire. I marched toward the Thunder Bustle, through the flower-adorned precincts of the wealthier tombs.

  Seasmil’s Tale

  I: We All Arrive at the Morgue Somehow

  I enjoy my work. It’s an occupation I’m not surprised I ended up in, although it was not my original dream. But that’s the case with every man who holds down an honest wage. I work at the Nilghorde Pauper Morgue, where endless droves of vagrants are flopped out of carts and off horse backs to land on my table. With me they all end. It’s a brief inspection really, well that and some paperwork, as per a severely outdated policy that began in the Years of Peace, when the red, scale mail, sabers, and spears of the Conqueror’s soldiers became the blue, chainmail, sabers, and clubs of the Metropolitan Ward.

  After initial duties, the corpses are usually tossed down into the Pauper Vault, the mass grave of our fair city. My work is not limited to the homeless, of course, for there are many orphans and prostitutes. There is even the occasional victim of a crime of passion, one whose aggressor possessed the quick wit to pay off one of my bosses. I can safely say I’ve seen every level of our opulent society on my table at some point or another.

  Now, as I toil among the dead, the statues of Do-Gooder’s Row are finished, polished weekly by working parties sent from the Municipal Dungeon. Never one to forgo the juices of irony, tonight’s assignment was brought to me from the vast confines of this Row. These poor sots killed each other over a damned mule cart. A mule cart! All five of them. Skewered and heads busted over life’s wares and trinkets—though such wares and trinkets feed the desperate gullet, as I used to know all too well. Snier also knew this. I’ll get to him later. He is, or, I’ve grown to worry, was one of the wiliest men ever to be met in Nilghorde—and that is no small feat, considering my home’s rather well-deserved reputation for what I’d once heard coined “pleasant predation.” I reckon that, if he would have slipped into this fiasco, Snier would have picked these dead men clean before the first horse hoof had echoed. But who knows where some end up, especially those prone to the ebb and flow like flotsam.

  Ready for the table, all ten eyes have curiously found a way to look into one another. Flopped off a Ward cart to form a crude ring on my floor, Somyellia would have likely been able to summon some obedient demon straight up from its center.

  And I must say, before embarking on this tale of magic and murder, I think this ring of dead men is fitting. An apt metaphor, if you will. Yes, morticians can be as lettered as they are solitary. The metaphor in that what lies ahead is more than just corpses on floors, but different people—characters on this grand macabre stage—different angles to be presented. Some would say it’s the only way. Even time itself can become angular, for what is time to the dead? For this is the province we now call Rehleia, and most of us are inescapably linked, even if some will never know it.

  I can’t impress that, this linkage, enough. Leading me, if you are one unfamiliar with our ways, to beg for what you may call some pre-tale forgiveness.

  Rehleian tales are often told by a choir of orators. Some in your standard harmony; others, calculated step-overs as if competing for stardom and the license to history. These dead men here, my work tonight: The Ward did say there were others, the stronger ones, the ones with knife-skills and a wolf’s temper, those who lived, and ran off with hands full as law enforcement rained down upon the dead and dying. Based on the tattooing, and choice of rags signifying to us locals what district they scoundrel’d out of, these men here were unacquainted, perhaps happenstance and hunger propelling their feet to the base of those standing tall on Do-Gooder’s Row. Yet they would be so eternally connected. Please remember this, the web and how the spiders tell of it, as it is our way, in the city of Nilghorde, all of Rehleia, and I’d be willing to bet a coin or two throughout all Mulgara.

  It is convenient last night’s bloodbath allows me to mention Do-Gooder’s Row. When its knees or eyes were chiseled free from the towering lines of dull white, these moments have served as time-keeping devices for us Rehleians. The chiseling began the day our Years of Peace were declared. And much like my own life, happenings and fortunes have often been remembered by what stage the statues were in when life gave us our surprises.

  These days, champions like Zaderyn Fover, a citizen who dove into the Black Tongue only to be carried off by its currents while trying to save a drowning child, shine bright and polished. But much of my tale will pull us back, back when the statues were but ugly rectangles crowned with faces and shoulders tortured by marble tumors.