51.
I visited Polynices not long after Creon had been exulted to the post of Castellan by the unanimous accord of the Pyrtaneum, or at least, the accord of those not bound under house-arrest. I recall how the Proctors, wearing halsberges and morions, stood at every cross-corridor and stair landing, blinking in the light, since the lanterns had only been restored that hour, after so many hours of dark.
A gaunt archivist named Triptolemus, who was no friend of Creon, invited me to walk with him. Triptolemus is lame, and leans upon a long white staff, and his eyes have grown dim over the years peering at twisted and uncertain shapes capering near smokeholes in the Night Lands. Around his neck he wears the silver chain of a Foreteller, for his dreams have been rated in the Acme or Elite grade by the Fate House.
He wore, for once, the dun long coat of the Monstruwacans. It is his right, for the Archivists are a collateral branch of that order, but I had never seen him dressed formally before. He had a squad of the Watch with him, which is also his right, for the Watch are vowed to protect the Monstruwacans as they travel to their tower. Triptolemus smiled and told me that his route to the tower, in this case, would be circuitous, and would happen to parallel my path.
These escorts were enormous in solid gray armor and dark unadorned helm, and in each gauntlet, trembling with unseen Earth-Current, was a huge Diskos weapon, whose terrible blade, when it spins, when it falls, cannot be parried. Their heated gray-black cloaks are like the dark wings of birds from some children’s book, and make them seem even more broad of shoulder than their shoulder-plates.
The corridors were empty of sound and motion. All others kept to their cabins.
The Proctors, who seemed slight as children compared to the Watchmen in their heavy armor, were polite enough when we came to the valves leading to my sister Ismene’s quarters. The Proctors kept their pikes in hand, and the blades were live, but they spoke softly, and they let us pass without challenge.
52.
I found my brother in the Renunciation chamber, a wide space paneled in brown and gold of soothing hues, and barren, except for a wall screen luminous with a mandala of figures, standing before emotion-absorbing curtains of deep maroon. The mandala screen was rich with images from the elder days of the world: suns, moons, bearded stars, rivers of milk, birds, white clouds and other mythical and imaginary figures.
The meditation mat is supposed to recline on the floor, so the Penitent can lie prone, with the energy centers of his nervous system aligned with the nodes of subtle Earth-Current woven into the mat-fibers. Polynices had the mat propped on the wall. It was folded and expanded slightly, so that the pattern of nodes looked like the hulking silhouette of an abhuman. The surface was streaked and scarred, as if long straight stokes of forceful blows had been delivered against the mat. I noticed these wounds were clustered around the shoulders, neck, chest and groin of the silhouette: killing blows, expertly delivered.
Here was Polynices, leaning languidly on the floor. He had torn the emotion-absorbing curtains down from their rings, and balled them up under his armpit to use as a pillow. In one hand a crystal cup for wine, which he drank neat, without water. A half-empty carafe was near his foot. He had taken the junction rod out from the mandala screen, so the images were dull both to eye and to spirit, and he held it lightly in one hand. I could see where his fingerprints had darkened it. He had been gripping it two-handed, as the haft of Diskos would be grasped by a man of the Watch; or by that rare hero who, of all his generation, survived a venture abroad in the Night Lands.
I said carefully, “So…. You have not renounced?”
He made a noise of contempt in his nose, and flicked his finger against the rim of his wine cup. The cup was made of that type of crystal that can play simple songs when disturbed. This one was a child’s lullaby, filled with old and charming nonsense words whose meaning even paleo-philologists cannot recall:
Springtime is green, little baby; Summer is gold; Autumn is gray, little baby, Winter is cold….
He said, “Ismene says I must find some other task for my life, some work with which the Lectors will find no fault. She recommends I study in the local Infirmary, don the Robe, and become a Rasophore.”
I said, “She said the same to me: Ismene allowed me to see you only on the condition that I urge you to take up the burden of your life again.”
He flicked his finger against the cup.
Day follows Night, little baby; Night follows Day; Everything fine, little baby, passes away….
I said, “Father is dead. You should be the Castellan.”
“All say I slew him. My dogs.”
“You mean your Night-Hounds.”
Flick. Everything foul, little baby, will fail in time too; Bright Day will come, little baby, when Dark Night is through…
“Did you?” I said.
He said, “Draego and Dracaina were startled by something. She threw herself between Father and Draego, trying to protect him. Creon and his men assumed ranks and brandished, but they did nothing. Nothing. So Creon did not precisely slaughter Father, but he … allowed … it to happen. I have never seen my dogs so enraged against each other. She was trying to rip out his throat. If they did not love me, they would not have stopped at my word. I have a special word I use to hold them in check. I call it my Master Word.” He made a throaty call, like a word without consonants:aeaeae!
I let that little blasphemy pass by in silence. I said: “Why didn’t you tell the magistrates what happened?”
“Creon’s magistrates?”
He flicked his finger against the cup again, harder this time, and the cup chimed as if it would break.
Hush and be still, little baby; Night Haunts will hear; Die we all will, little baby, when Night Haunts come near….
Annoying. I was beginning to realize why our sister Ismene was so frayed and nervous these days.
He heaved a deep sigh. “I do not know what provoked Draego. I suspect one of Creon’s men stung him with a dagger point. And everything was going so well up until then! They were talking, Father and Creon, about letting me free from that room, restoring me in the eyes of the people; they spoke of how the hour-slips could be made to carry the tale as we wished it told. Like the old times.”
I said, “If not the magistrate, someone could be told of Creon’s treachery. The Pyrtaneum. The Orders. The Contemplatives. The Guilds. Surely I am not the only one suspicious that all the men were sent from the room save Creon’s partisans. Do you recall how I was arrested after you were saved from the Night Lands? Creon blamed the riot on me, and told father I stirred up the common people to bludgeon the Watch and break open the Gate for you. But I think Creon set his men to do the work, to bring the monsters in, telling them to claim my words inspired the deed. He breached the walls, not us, that father might die and we two be blamed. Creon is behind this all. He needed only get father alone in the room with your beasts!”
He grimaced. “An intricate theory; but it does not fit the facts.”
“It explains all!”
“Father, not Uncle Creon, sent everyone from the room. They wanted to talk to me about secret matters. Things lesser men would call treason. Creon said it was the only way to restore our family to honor, and to preserve our memory for later ages. The pneumaticists aver we are reborn again and again. Father does not wish, in his next incarnation some million years hence, to be reading historians who write nothing but denunciations of these times.”
He paused to laugh a bitter laugh.
Flick. When the Wheel turns, little baby, we cannot flee; the dagger for you, little baby, the capsule for me….
He said: “Have you ever thought how hopeless the Returns will be? All father’s critics will be reborn as well, you see, perhaps reborn as the very lecturers teaching him of the profanity and madness for which our period will be remembered. Thanks to me.”
“What profanity? What madness?”
“That is what Father called it. My plan. The thing we
were discussing, which made father send the Watch away. He said that our family would be lost from fame and power if we did not support my plan, even though he hated it. I was going to go Out once more, and use Draego and Dracaina to capture a third Night-Hound whelp; and then four and five and more. Enough to make a breeding stock. Enough to make, in one generation or two, a hound pack equal to an army. They breed quickly. So quickly! Human life seems so weak and pale compared to what stalks the night!”
He flicked his finger: Hush and be still, little baby; no need for tears; Love binds us still, little baby, no matter the years….
“We were talking about what level of the pyramid, which abandoned city to use. We thought of Ventral Southwest Nine: you would only need to armor over four gateways to shut the place off. Father seemed to think the architects had detected life-essences, perhaps from some long-forgotten grain-store, still active scattered through the empty houses and barren parklands there, but Creon was sure the place was bare. Father hated my idea of breeding Hounds, you see; but public opinion left him no choice. Only if I turned out to be right, only if my dream of domestication of the monsters was proved true, would our bloodline be heroic, rather than accursed. Only if we had a hundred lads each with his own pack of Hounds, and if they slew a thousand giants. We could take back some of the outer buildings and towers, the Quiet City, the Dark Palace, or the Temple of the Masks.”
We were both silent for a moment, thinking each our gloomy thoughts.
He said, “Humans built them, you know. They were not always the haunt of abominations. I do not care what the Monstruwacans can prove with their science. My dreams say humans built them.”
We were silent another moment.
Eventually I said, “If you found some path leading to the Place of Refuge, surely this will revive our honor. You must have found something!”
“No one told you?”
“I am surrounded by courtiers. I am told only lies.”
“Some things they say are true.”
“They said you found nothing. It must be a lie.”
“Must it be?”
“What did you find?”
He said, “Ice. Ice and darkness.”
He moved his finger. The little cup sang: Nor Death nor Rebirth, my beloved; nor all the Night long, will keep us apart, little baby: for Love is so strong!
“Beyond the encampments of the abhumans, the Road Where the Silent Ones Walk climbs a long, slow slope of dark ice. Beneath the ice is hard igneous rock, showing that volcanoes flowed there perhaps a million years ago, perhaps more. There are no smoke-holes, no firepits, no light at all. Mile upon weary mile it goes. The air grows ever thinner and colder as the slope climbs. Even the strong men in my band were killed by that cold, so bitter was it, and our cloaks and our disciplines were no match for it. We walked for weeks, perhaps two months, breathing with our air-goblets held over our noses. There is nothing there. Not even the Night-Hounds can tolerate it. Whenever we felt that pressure in our souls which told us a Silent One was approaching, we would throw us from the road into the snow to either side, and lay without motion until the dread and potent creature had passed by. Each time, one less man could find his feet again. Eventually we turned back.”
He wiped at his tears, grimacing. Then he said softly:
“Elagabalus, before he bit his capsule, said he saw a Dark Redoubt, as large as our own, but occupied all with Silent Ones rather than human life. At the end of the road, miles and miles ahead of us. But we were in darkness, utter darkness. He whispered to me that he had done something to his eyes to make them able to see despite the dark. Made them better, he said. I touched his face and put my finger in his empty eyesockets. That was when I noticed that two of our men, the ones pressed up against my shoulders to either side (for we huddled together for warmth) were no longer warm. Both had stopped breathing. I jumped back from them, and they were no longer in arm’s reach, and so I lost them. But I heard their footsteps continued forward in the darkness, on that road which leads to nothing. They marched and did not stop.
“I turned the rest of the men back, but not in time to save us.
“By the time we descended to warmer lands, and came within sight of the Great Redoubt in the far distance again, the abhumans had been warned, and were waiting.
“There were only nine of us left by the time we found a place to hide on the shore of a lake of salty poison. When those nine were dead, I used their bloated corpses as a raft, and the bodies were buoyant in that thick, mineral fluid. The abhumans on the shore could not follow. I built my hut of bricks of ice on a small atoll in the middle of that lake of poison.
“There I found my Hounds. They saved my life, you know. I could not have made it back through the leaguer of the abhumans, had they not scouted the terrain for me, killed the guards, slain the giants. And now they sit outside, crying for me. When I sleep, I hear them, you know. In my sleep.”
Flick. We shall live again, my beloved, for such is my song!
That was the last time I saw him alive.
53.
Of course, I suppose I saw him alive several times after this, but seeing a magnified image of someone through the glass floor of the Viewing Chamber is not the same.
There were thousands of us gathered just from this level, and millions watching through similar Viewing Tables in all the cities of mankind on every inhabited deck. My seat was a privileged one, nearest the surface of the glass, and my neighbors were gathered row upon row in seats above and around me.
His escape was remarkable: he trod out into the gloom, head held high, making no attempt to hide or slink or crawl from rock to rock. The Dun Giants who are encamped so near our gates could be seen in the Viewing Table, hulking shadows against the shadows of broken rock, glaring in surprise at his boldness, and gesturing hugely with their arms to bring their brothers leaping quickly from rock to rock, gathering around him. How small he was next to them.
They gathered from the left and right, readying an ambuscade. The heaviest of the giants came loping out from the tall rocks to bar my brother’s path, and flourished high his truncheon, grinning with mirth. The man-creature’s tusks wet with drool, no doubt at the thought of feasting on man-flesh, and the piggish face was lit up with a strangely innocent glee, and the grisly mouth was wide and smiling.
Two huge wolflike shapes came lumbering out of the gloom. Draego hamstrung the giant, and Dracaina tore out his throat as he fell, all in one swift and well-practiced move.
When the next of the giants lunged, Draego’s monster teeth closed on an arm as thick as a tree-limb, but now it was Polynices who moved. His lit his weapon and swung the wheel-blade through the soft part of the giant’s neck with an expert stroke, the blade-lightning illuminating the night for just that moment. The coordination as they fought was as strange as the figures of a dance: each knew where the other would be. All three, Polynices, and his two horrific beasts, moved as one.
They slew many giants, and many more ran away.
There was no feat of arms in living memory to equal this, not for three generations of man.
There was utter silence in the auditorium as we watched, thousands of us, and even the hawkers selling beer and smelling salts were voiceless with awe.
In the image in the Viewing Table, we saw the Night-Hounds raise their red mussels toward the smoldering clouds of heaven. A moment later, through some high windows in the northeastern wall of the Pyramid, very dimly, we heard the cry of the Night-Hounds, yowling their victory.
54.
Over the next week, off and on, I watched my brother as he fared across the Night Lands with his two monsters. He had brought out from the Pyramid a pack of food tablets, which he fed them.
The abhumans are the most like us of all the creatures of the Darkness, and, after being abroad seventy hours, Polynices came across a little hut of them, a bull, his mate and three sprats. The hut consisted of hides stretched across a framework of dried worm bones, placed like an upturne
d cup across the mouth of a smokehole, to gather in the heat and light. Polynices slew the creatures with his Diskos, and his Night-Hounds ate their bodies. He lodged himself and his pets in their home.
Ismene says she saw him chewing flesh from the dead abhumans also, which is a sign that he had forgotten part of his human nature, and lost the Master Word. I saw him reach down and examine the bodies with his knife, but he could have been putting his hand to his mouth for any number of other reasons.
55.
Polynices was often missing from the view table, as the operator of the lenses could find no clue of his hiding places, for the gray armor is meant to blend into the dark landscape. But when the Monstruwacans in their tower detected the discharge of Earth-Current, they would send the dial-numbers of their elevation and right track to the Viewers, who would train their arrangements of lenses on the area so identified, and sweep back and forth, seeking.
I was sleeping when the news came that the Slowly Turning Wheel had appeared out of the North, and the black mists parted around it as it advanced.
I ran from my chambers, still in my nightdress, down the many steps of the East-Northeast Stair to find the Viewing Table Chamber. Red light from the windows beat against the stairway as I ran, for the Night Land was stirring: the eerie whistle of the Sundering Worm, the deep strange voice of the Thing That Nods, and the roaring of brutes and the hooting of giants all rose in a nightmare clamor. The wild noise of hammers striking anvils issued from the underground holes to the south, as a sound of rage or celebration, and mocking laughter yammered from the smoke-filled valleys to the south-west.
A shrill, fell cry sounded from one of the windowless mile-high Towers which rise to the West of the Last Redoubt, and my spirit trembled, for I could feel the disturbance in the aether which followed that cry. Through the windows, looking up, I beheld massive splashes of red light beat against those slightly tilted towers of black metal.