Later, as they lay together in the dark, he waited patiently for her to fall asleep on her own. It didn’t wake her when he rose. It rarely did anymore. Over the years, she’d grown accustomed to sleeping alone. She didn’t know it, but she’d never actually seen him asleep. She’d seen him with his eyes closed, certainly, but the truth was that Ezekiel hadn’t slept in millennia. After age, sleep was the first thing he’d striven to overcome, mostly to keep from wasting the time.
He’d overcome many of what he considered to be the frailties of life. Poised to do so with another, he lit a kerosene lamp with a match and sat down to write.
Eleven hundred and fifty-nine, September thirty-second: One o’clock in the morning
We’ve lived the perfect life. Not too much, not too little, just enough to appreciate what we’ve meant to each other. It has created love, true love, I’m sure of it. If I feel it, she must. Combined with her excitement over coming into a little money and the intrigue of new possibilities, she must be dreaming out of love right now. If only I could know those precious fantasies. If only I could know her mind like I know her body.
I’m afraid of losing her. Everything is exactly as I thought it would be. I’m not ready yet, though. I’ll wait another hour, to prepare myself. That’s not very long, each stroke of my pen being part of a second, each book then a part of a year. What a strange thing time is.
When the hour passed he looked at her without his eyes. A shimmering reflection slept on the bed. Seeing her like that, there was nothing else in the room. He hesitated. Perhaps, one more hour?
No. Resolve. No more accidents, no more uncertainty, no more loss of control. Nothing out of hand. She can live forever, if I’m strong enough to learn. I must be resolved.
He exhaled and then, from where he sat across the room, closed the way in her. Elizabeth’s reflection went out like he’d turned the knob on a lamp. Only the tiniest lives were left smoldering in her body. What if I fail?
“Liz…”
Ezekiel’s heart broke.
That was the feeling he’d spent the last thirty years to achieve, the loss of a lifetime’s devotion. He went to its source in a single stride, a giant in a land of dreams, and tore his grief and love loose until the riin was a hurricane around him. He stood up from his chair in a seizure, eyes rolling back into his head. Now, return to me.
He created a rushing, ethereal wheel out of the release, every strand of it masterfully woven to tear the way open again. But, it skidded through dead flesh without effect. It isn’t working. He gave it time, slipping into apprehension. Then he grabbed at facts from his memory and rammed them together, searching for a desperate combination that would accomplish what his careful planning had not. He couldn’t let her go. When every emotional influence failed, he resorted to raw power.
Ezekiel’s despair led him to channel from paths that yielded chaos and misery in the past, forbidden paths of instinct and fundamental intent. He shocked Elizabeth’s corpse with bursts of that terrible current.
She wrenched and flexed on the bed, but went still when he stopped. He tried over and over, pushing and pulling, rowing those energies through her, until he realized she would not be revived. The way would not open. She would never live again. Her face was blank. She would never look at him again.
He fell into his chair, trembling, questioning why, questioning everything. Then, though it pained him greatly, Ezekiel forced himself back to the desk. He could not allow his grief to change or to fade. His tears dotted and warped the page as he recorded what he felt.
***
The sun peeked into the hotel’s lobby. The gold and brass were dull brown borders around the cream. The elevator bell rang, the gate shrank to one side and Ezekiel hurried out with his manuscript, wanting to leave that place behind forever.
Beauchamp approached dutifully to extend the hotel’s courtesy. Without breaking step, Ezekiel ripped a cord through him that unbound the young man’s body. Beauchamp melted under the velvet into skin and bones, blood and grease - with the speed of gravity.
Ezekiel chastised himself as he waited through the rotating doors. I shouldn’t have done that to him. That was wrong. Then he joined the street’s sporadic, early morning flow. In an hour it would be teeming. He had to reach his children before they heard news of their mother’s death. He had to keep trying until every path of his thirty years’ work was exhausted. The key to resurrection could be within any of those relationships.
He didn’t know what he’d left in room nine-ten.
Ezekiel usually ignored the reflections of the smaller lives, those tiny things passing through moments of existence allowing bigger things to function, those voracious little beasts that eat their host from the inside when it dies, mold from the ceiling of the apartment he’d shared with his wife for the last eleven years - those sorts of lives.
He didn’t know he’d created a new kind of life, on a cellular level, by smashing the ones left in Elizabeth together. It wasn’t the first such offshoot he was responsible for, not by far, nor was it the first to happen by accident. But, this one was different from all of the others. It was awake. Ezekiel had awakened it by channeling through instinct.
While the relatively reserved and graceful influences of emotion would have been imperceptible to it, instinct was fundamentally understood. Through instinct it could draw power directly from the source and each of its pieces would inherently know the way. It was a being without curiosity, its abilities and purpose defined by coincidental design. It could consume and reproduce but only in a bed of human flesh. It could spore and take root and it could use its dead hosts like machines to carry it to the living.
The morning desk clerk sent for every emergency service in the city when he discovered Beauchamp’s horrifying remains. Management wished he hadn’t. They didn’t want La fleur du Sud to become one of those cheap tourist attractions, one of those haunted hotels. Yes, there had been a tragedy, but you don’t just throw everything away because of it. Even as the coroner’s office, the police, emergency physicians, guests, journalists and the simply curious gathered downstairs, housekeeping was expected upstairs to carry out their duties.
And, Gélise had a family to care for. She knocked on the door to room nine-ten and said, “Housekeeping. Do you need service?” Her voice told that her heart wasn’t in it that day - poor Beauchamp.
Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, WHAM!
It sounded like someone had charged across the room headlong into the door. Gélise stepped back, already on edge because of what was going on downstairs, and then made the connection; whoever - or whatever - was inside room nine-ten could be the one who’d done Beauchamp that way in the lobby. Her hand went to her mouth.
The door handle rattled like an animal was learning how to turn it - chiclick, clack, chick, clickack.
Gélise left her cart right where it was and went apron flapping in a half-walk-half-run scuffle for the elevator. Zut! Zut et zut, that’s the killer in there I just know it! What am I doing up here? Who stays at work on the day of a murder? Stupid, stupid, stupid…
The door opened in the hall behind her, followed by footsteps - thump, thump, thump, thump… and the dull resonance from the carpet of an empty, upper story hallway.
Gélise turned around, bolt-upright, fearing it was a man with a long knife. Elizabeth’s black-eyed, smoking corpse was much worse. Gélise’ face peeled back in a scream and she staggered into the elevator alcove, swatting at the gate. “Open up! Oh, God, help me! Please! Help meee!”
The shadow was screaming. Elizabeth reached out for its shining heart. The wall behind it slid away and they fell together to the floor. She caught it! It was right in front of her, so close, but the shadow was in the way. The shadow kept her from touching the light. She smashed it, bit into it and tore at it, trying to get through. The screaming stopped. The light went out.
The elevator bell rang in the lobby.
Hundreds of lights, so bright,
They swept away like the tide.
She ran to them.
While everyone else retreated, brave policemen stepped forward to capture Elizabeth, who was quite obviously a homicidal maniac. They overpowered her, handcuffed her and dragged her struggling out of the hotel. The coroner stayed, wiping his burning face, baffled by the two deaths that were left; what seemed to have caused one didn’t seem likely to have caused the other.
The hotel would have to be evacuated. Those passing through the lobby carried the smoke away in their bodies and on their clothes. Gélise rose later in the morgue. So began the Fall.
27 One Thirty Fivers
Antioch’s stone masons completed the wall at the end of summer, less than a year after they started. Before the wall’s ends met, the city hadn’t seen a bauran in months. Everyone felt it was the calm before the storm, that an army of smoking devils was out there roaming the countryside, gathering in number, and that it was only a matter of time before the siege. Michael had rung the church bell for months without an answer. It wasn’t until the wall was finished that he was finally able to relax.
He stood opposite Harold in the graveyard, each wearing the brown wool pants and white linen shirts of the fellowship. They saluted one another with their weapons, Michael with a two-handed, hardwood practice-sword, Harold with a skinny apple-branch, holding his wolf’s head shield in his other hand. A dead leaf twirled by on the gentle, autumn breeze.
Jacob sat watching them from the stump by the forge. His apprentice, Ditch, sat next to him. Since the sailors’ other responsibilities, the patrol and defense of the city, had basically come to an end with the wall, Ditch was taking the initiative to learn a trade.
Jacob flashed him a quick grin. “Michael’s got him this time.”
Ditch said, “No way. Harold’s too good.”
Harold stalked, almost in a crouch, swaying in and out of the wooden sword’s range. Michael stood upright, poised to strike with power. Harold kept trying to bait out an attack; he’d fake to go in and then he leapt back. Michael wasn’t falling for it. Then, suddenly, Harold swept by and tapped Michael on the inside of the thigh with the branch.
Happily out of range again, he said, “Touch-point!”
So taken by surprise, Michael had barely moved to respond. He groaned and lowered his sword. “What was that?”
Harold tapped his own leg on the same spot. “There’s a blood line through here. Draw an edge across it and the fight’s over.”
“Ah, of course, I know the one.” Michael took position and saluted. “Again.”
Ditch nudged Jacob. “Harold knows what’s up.”
“Fwah. Michael’s just taking it easy on him. He doesn’t want to hurt him, that’s all.”
Ditch laughed. “Whatever, man. Harold’s gonna school him all day. Watch.” Jacob frowned at Ditch and then focused in on the action, shifting and ducking with his fists up, as if he was one of the combatants.
Harold swayed back and forth out of range again and then head-faked Michael into a cautious swing - whoosh. The King’s Man spun aside under his shield and came to a graceful stop with the tip of his apple-branch poked into Michael’s ribs near the armpit.
“Touch-point!”
Michael acknowledged the hit. “Ah, and from there to the heart. You’re a difficult target with this fencing of yours, Harold.”
Harold bowed. “That’s gracious to say! Such is the fencer’s endeavor. Every attack should be coupled with defense. In fact, that’s where the name of the art comes from, the word defence.”
“Is that right?”
“Quite!” Harold whipped and brandished his apple-branch athletically. “A true fencer is the deceiver in a quarrel. He seeks first to avoid the point!”
“Ah...”
Over on the stump, Ditch nudged Jacob again, jutted out his chin and said, “What’s up?”
Jacob laughed. “You’re smug!”
Ditch laughed too. “It’s all that feintin’ Harold does, man. Michael’s used to fightin’ stuff that comes right at him. He doesn’t know what Harold’s gonna do.”
Jacob nodded, recollecting past repairs to the sleeve. “That’s true.”
“Michael’s all about that one big shot too. In the gym we used to call that head-huntin. Like when a guy’s got a good right hand but that’s all he throws, always go’n for the K.O. You’re a lot easier to read if you only got one move.” Ditch sighed. “Man, I miss gettin’ in a good fight.”
Jacob paused at the mention of head-hunting. “You miss fighting?”
“Yeah! It’s fun, you know? When you’re good at it n’ the other guy’s good at it. Watchin’ a good fight’s fun. Trainin’s fun. I miss all a’ that.”
“But you were a slave!”
“Huh?”
“Captain told me you were a pit-slave oversea...” (Captain had been trying to generate a little sympathy for Ditch, in order to help him get the apprenticeship. He’d also inferred that Ditch’s tattoos were a type of branding, like the DB Davies put on cattle.) “What was it he said? …He said you’d been forced into a blood-sport for the amusement of your unscrupulous masters.”
“Man, Pit Slave’s the gym’s name. We got paid to fight.”
“Whatever for?”
“Cause people like watchin’ these.” Ditch made fists, bit his lip and sneered at the awesomeness.
“Who’d pay to see those, hey? Fist-fighting’s for… savages and… naughty children.”
“Pfft! Whatever, man! This is you.” Ditch opened his eyes wide and mocked Jacob’s earlier shifting and ducking with his fists up, as if he was one of the combatants, only goofier.
Jacob laughed. “I don’t do that!”
“Yeah you do! Everybody likes a good fight. Look at you out here watchin’ these two.”
Michael and Harold guarded, turned and parried, dodged, spun and thrust.
Jacob said, “Sure, but they’re not trying to hurt each other.”
“We didn’t fight to hurt the other guy, man. It wasn’t just for the money either. It’s about competition, gettin’ better, showin’ everybody what you can do. For a fighter, that’s totally worth a bloody nose or whatever. You know, even if we hated each other, a lot a’ times after a fight we’d get this mad respect for the other guy, cause he stepped up. Some a’ my best friends were guys that smashed my face.”
Jacob thought about it, fighting for the joy of it, not to make war or to kill. It didn’t exactly fit the fellowship’s definition of violence, to which they were religiously opposed, and Jacob thought it brought up some interesting questions. Then he started thinking about how much had changed over that last year. Michael’s in brown-and-whites for God’s sake. That alone was a shocker.
Despite the horrors of the plague, the sailors were causing a cultural revolution. The fellowship devoured art, literature and philosophy from oversea. Stout farmers braved a life outside of the wall to bring in crops to trade for technology. And as far as any of them knew for sure, they were the only people in the world. Not only had the bauran and the infections disappeared months before, there hadn’t been a stranger from any direction in just as long.
Ditch said, “It’s cool to see how styles match up. What’s Michael’s called?”
“What?”
“You know, Harold’s got that fencin, right? What’s the name of Michael’s fightin’ style?”
“Oh, I think it’s called cutting things in half.”
“For real?”
Jacob laughed. “No. I don’t know that it’s got a name. John taught him how to use the way with a sword. He’s terribly strong. Michael can’t really take a swing at Harold, not even with that wood waster. He’d break him through the shield.”
Ditch believed it. “Power’s no joke. Sometimes head-huntin’s fine if you got enough swat. Seen it plenty a’ times. Guy’s losin’ a fight, then - blough - out a’ nowhere, you know, like a bolt out a’ the balloon, it’s all over.” He waved his arms in the tradition
al fashion of an old-world referee stopping a bout.
Jacob didn’t understand any of that. “Hey?”
Ditch went back to watching the sword-play, wistfully missing his old career. Before the Fall, he’d been thirty-six and mostly in retirement, coaching. His injuries had accumulated and prize-fighting was a young man’s sport. But at thirty-eight, with his body carved into its twenties again and his competitive spirit at its peak, it was instead the entire fight-game that had been retired. Whatever, man.
Ditch pointed at Michael and Harold. “That’s what it’s all about, right there. You get in there, get a good sparrin’ partner and just make each other better. That’s the best part.”
Jacob scoffed. “Not if your sparn-partner flits about like a nesting tit with a wee twig, chirping it up. Touch-point! Touch-point! I don’t see how that’s making Michael any better at anything. He’s a devil-slayer, not a dancer.”
Ditch laughed. “What d’you want him to do?”
Jacob held up his meaty, blacksmith’s fist. “Stand strong. Go blow for blow! Then we’d see who’s the better man, hey?”
Ditch rolled his eyes. One minute Jacob was saying fist-fighting’s for savages and naughty children and the next he wanted Harold to stand in the pocket with Michael and get his clock cleaned. There was too much wrong in there to argue with all of it.
“Look, Michael’s your boy, so you don’t like seein’ him lose, but only bums go in to trade punches. Harold fights smart. Take that stuff he’s sayin’ about the blood line or whatever, that’s straight up physiology, man. He’s talkin’ about the femoral artery. You kick a guy there, put some hard shin on it, you can shut down his footwork and get a real advantage. Inside leg-kicks win fights.”
Ditch said the last as a detached aphorism with a shrug. It was something he’d often said when coaching in order to discourage fighters from head-hunting. He smiled, remembering calling it out from the corner. Inside leg-kicks win fights! Inside leg-kicks win fights! He could almost feel the canvas and almost hear the cheering crowd.