The Weird Fiction Megapack Read online

  “Stop! You are not of the brotherhood of the evatim!”

  I whirled around again. A pallid, black-bearded face hovered before me, its red eyes unblinking. It rose on the body of a snake, only stiff as a tree trunk and covered with glistening silver scales the size of my outstretched hand. As I watched, another face rose from the ground on such a glittering stalk, and another, bursting out of the sand, out of the stone of the cliff face until a forest of them blocked my way. The evatim drew aside.

  “You may not pass!” one of them said.

  “Blasphemer, you may not enter our master’s domain.”

  I got out my leather bag and struggled desperately with the drawstring, then poured the two grave coins into my hand.

  “Wait,” I said. “Here. These are for you.”

  The foremost of the man-headed serpent-things leaned forward and took the coins into its mouth. Its lips, like the Sybil’s, like my mother’s, were searingly cold.

  But the coins burst into flame in the creature’s mouth and it spat them out at my feet.

  “You are still alive!”

  Then all of them shouted in unison, “This one is still alive!”

  And the evatim came writhingthrough the scaled, shrieking forest, free of their burdens, on all fours now, their great jaws gaping. I drew my father’s sword and struck one of them, and another, and another, but one caught me on the right leg and yanked me to my knees. I slashed at the thing again and again. One of the glowing eyes burst, hissed, and went out.

  Another reared up, closed its jaws on my back and chest, and pulled me over backwards. That was the end of the struggle. The great mass of them swarmed over me, while still the serpent-things shouted and screamed and babbled, and their voices were like thunder.

  Teeth like knives raked me all over, tearing, and I still held the sword, but it seemed very far away and I couldn’t move it—

  A crocodilian mouth closed over my head, over my shoulders and I called out, my voice muffled, shouting down the very throat of the monster, “Sybil! Come to me again—!”

  I cannot say what actually happened after that. I saw her face again, glowing like a distant lantern in the darkness below me, but rising, racing upward, while the evatim tore at me and crushed me slowly in their jaws.

  Then I distinctly felt myself splash into water, and the viscous blackness closed around me and the evatim were gone. I sank slowly in the cold and the dark, while the Sybil’s face floated before me and grew brighter until the darkness was dispelled and my eyes were dazzled.

  “This time, you did well to call on me,” she said.

  * * * *

  I awoke on a bed. As soon as I realized that it was a bed, I lay still with my eyes closed, deliberately dismissing from my mind any thought that this was my familiar bed back home, that my adventures had been no more than a prolonged, horrible dream.

  I knew it was not so, and my body knew it, from the many wounds where the evatim had held me. And I was nearly naked, my clothing in tatters.

  But I still held my father’s sword. I moved my right arm stiffly, and scraped the blade along hard wood.

  This bed was not my bed. It was made of rough boards and covered not with sheets but with sand.

  I started to sit up, eyes still closed, and gentle hands took my by the bare shoulders. The hands were soft and warm.

  I was dizzy then. The sword slipped from my grasp. I opened my eyes, but couldn’t focus. There was only a blur.

  Warm water was being poured over my back. My wounds stung. I let out a cry and fell forward and found myself awkwardly embracing some unknown person, my chin on his shoulder.

  I could see, then, that I was in a room stranger than any I had ever imagined, a place once richly furnished but now a wreck, turned on its side like a huge box rolled over, its contents spilled everywhere. Stained glass windows hung open above me, dangling, ornately worked with designs of glowing fishes. Books and bottles lay in heaps amid fallen beams, plaster, and bricks. There was a splintered staircase that coiled out and ended in midair. An image of Surat-Kemad had been fixed to the floor and remained fixed, but now it stuck out horizontally into space. A lantern dangled sideways from the grey-green snout.

  My host pushed me gently back onto the bed and I was staring into the face of a grey-bearded man. He squinted in the half-light, his face wrinkling. For a moment the look on his face was one of ineffable joy, but it faded into doubt, then bitter disappointment.

  “No,” he said. “It is not so. Not yet…”

  I reached up to touch him, to be sure he was real and alive, but he took my hand in his and pressed it down on my chest. Then he gave me my father’s sword, closing my fingers around the grip, and I lay there, the cold blade against my bare skin.

  Then he said something completely astonishing.

  “I thought you were my son.”

  I sat up and this time sat steadily. I saw that I was indeed almost naked, my clothing completely shredded, and I was smeared with blood. Suddenly I felt weak again, but I caught hold of a bedpost with my free hand and remained upright.

  I blurted, “But you are not my father—”

  “Then we are agreed,” he said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Wind roared outside. The room swayed and creaked, the walls visibly shifting. More plaster, wood, and a sudden avalanche of human bones clattered around us, filling the air with dust. Tiles rained over my shoulders and back. The window overhead clacked back and forth.

  I thought of the Sybil’s house. I looked to my companion with growing dread, but he merely shrugged.

  “It’ll pass. Don’t worry.”

  When all was once again still, I said, “I am Sekenre, son of Vashtem the sorcerer.”

  He hissed and drew back.

  “Then I fear you!”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not a sorcerer myself.” I started to explain, but he waved his hand, bidding me to cease.

  “You are a powerful sorcerer indeed. I can tell! I can tell!”

  I concluded that the man was mad. What could be more natural, after all I had been through, than to meet someone who was mad? If he thought I was a sorcerer, there was no sense dissuading him.

  I placed my father’s sword across my legs, then folded my arms across my chest, and directed toward him what I hoped was a stern gaze.

  “Very well. I, a sorcerer, command you to explain yourself.”

  He spread his hands and looked helpless. “Sorcerer, I don’t know where to begin—”

  “Why did you think I was your son?”

  He moved over to the broken statue of a bird and sat on the flat space where the head had once been. He did not answer my question, but sat still for several minutes. I thought he had forgotten me and had fallen into some sort of reverie. I stared up at the dangling window, then toyed with the sword in my lap.

  At last he sighed and said, “What do you know of where you are, sorcerer and son of sorcerer?”

  I told him something of my history, and he only sighed again and said that I was a mighty sorcerer for all I was yet an ignorant one.

  “Then teach me,” I said.

  “When your mother left you,” he said, “that was because she could not pass beyond Leshé, the realm of dreams. Because she had never been prepared for burial, she could not truly enter the land of the dead. There are four realms; you must understand this. Earth is the realm of Eshé, the world of living men. But our dreams arise from the mists of the river, from Leshé, where the country of sleep borders the country of death. We see unquiet ghosts in our dreams because they linger in Leshé, as your mother does. Beyond is Tashé, the true domain of the dead, where all dwell in the places the god has appointed for them.”

  “And the fourth realm?”

  “That is Akimshé—holiness. At the heart of the god, in the mind of the god, among the fiery fountains where even gods and worlds and the stars are born—that is Akimshé, holiness, which may not be described. Not even the greatest of
the prophets, not even the sorcerers, not even the very gods may look on the final mystery of Akimshé.”

  “But it’s still inside Surat-Kemad,” I said. “I don’t see how—”

  “It is well that you do not understand. Not even Surat-Kemad understands. Not even he may look on it.”

  I said very quickly, “I have to continue on my way. I have to find my father.”

  And my companion said one more surprising thing.

  “Yes, of course. I know him. He is a mighty lord here.”

  “You—you—know him—?” I couldn’t say anything more. My thoughts were all a jumble.

  “He dwells here in peculiar honor because he is a sorcerer,” the old man said, “but he must remain here, unique among the servants of Surat-Kemad, but a servant nonetheless.”

  I got to my feet unsteadily. The remains of my trousers dangled. I wrapped them around my belt, trying to make myself at least decent, but there wasn’t much to work with. I slid the sword under the belt.

  I stood there, breathing hard from the exertion, wincing as the effort stretched my lacerated sides.

  “You must take me to my father,” I said.

  “I can only show you the way.” He shook his head sadly.

  “Where?”

  He pointed up, to the open window.

  “There?”

  “Yes,” he said. “That way.”

  “But—” I walked across the room to a door now sideways in the wall, and opened it, lowering the door against the wall. I stared through at a dense sideways forest, the forest floor rising vertically to one side, the trees horizontal. There was a glowing mist among the trees, like fog at sunrise before it melts away. Brilliantly-plumed birds cawed and fluttered in the branches. Warm, damp air blew against my face and chest.

  The gray-bearded man put his hand on my shoulder and led me away.

  “No,” he said. “You will never find your father through that door.” He pointed to the ceiling again. “That way.”

  I started to climb, clumsly, my muscles aching. My right palm was numb where the guardian-serpent’s lips had touched me.

  I caught hold of the image of the god, hooking an arm over it. Then pulled myself up and sat there astride Surat-Kemad, my feet dangling.

  “You never answered my question. Why did you think I was your son?”

  “It is a very old sorrow.”

  I didn’t command him. “Can you…tell me?”

  He sat down on the edge of the bed and gazed up at me. “I was called Aukin, son of Nevat. I dwelt far beyond any land you ever knew, beyond the mouth of the Great River and across the sea among the people you would call barbarians. I had a wife. I loved her very much. Is that a surprising thing, even for a barbarian? No, it is not. When she died bearing my first son, and my son too was dead in her womb, my grief was without bounds. The gods of my homeland could not comfort me, for they are harsh spirits of the forest and of the hills, and they do not deal in comfort. Therefore I came into your country, first to the City of the Delta, where I prayed long before the image of Bel-Hemad and gave the priests much gold. But he did not answer me, and when I ran out of money, the priests sent me away. So I wandered all along the Great River, in the forests, on the plains, among the marshes. I tarried with holy men in the high mountains. From them I learned to dream. They thought they were teaching me contentment, but no, I clung to my bold scheme. It was this: I would be the mightiest dreamer of all and travel beyond Leshé to the lake of Tashé and farther, and I would find my son who had tried but failed to enter the world, and I would bring him back with me. The dead have been truly reclaimed by the Devouring God, so there is no hope for my wife, but the unborn, I thought—I still think—perhaps will not be missed. So far I have succeeded only with the first part of my plan. I am here. But I have not found my son. When I saw you, alive, here, I had hope again, just briefly.”

  “This is the Sybil’s doing,” I said.

  “Yes, I can tell that it is, by the mark on you.”

  “The mark on me?”

  He got up, rummaged among the debris, and handed me a broken piece of mirrored glass.

  “Didn’t you know?” he said softly.

  I looked at my reflection. The spot on my forehead where the Sybil had kissed me was glowing as brightly as had the eyes of the evatim.

  I handed the glass back to him, and it was then that I noticed that my hands, too, gave off a faint light where my mother had touched them at the very end. Where the guardian-serpent’s lips had touched me when it took the coins, the skin was seared and healed into a smooth white scar.

  I sat still, staring at my hands.

  “If I really am a sorcerer,” I said, “I’ll try to help you. You don’t have to be afraid of me.”

  He offered me a cup. “Here, drink this.”

  “But I can’t. If I drink anything here, I’ll—”

  The old man sighed. “You are still an ignorant sorcerer. This water is from Leshé, from the river where it is filled with dreams. It will give you many visions. It will truly open your eyes, but it will not bind you to the dead. The waters of Tashé will do that, but not those of Leshé.”

  “Do I need to see visions?”

  “I think you do, to get where you’re going.”

  “This is the Sybil’s doing again,” I said.

  “Yes, it is. Drink.”

  I drank. The water was very cold and, surprisingly, sweet. My whole body trembled with it. Only in the aftertaste was it bitter.

  “Now go,” said Aukin, son of Nevat, who had lost his own son.

  I stood up, balancing myself precariously on the image of the god, and caught hold of the window-ledge, then heaved myself up. For a moment I dangled there, looking down at the old man. He waved me on. I heaved again and felt a blast of hot wind against my face and chest, and sand stung me, as if I had crawled out into a sandstorm.

  Then I was falling, not back into the room, but down, away from the window as directions somehow reversed. The window receded above me and was gone as I tumbled head over heels through hot, blinding, blowing sand.

  Visions came to me:

  As I fell, I saw the whole of Tashé spread out before me. I saw that each dead person there dwelt in a little space formed out of some memory from life, either a pleasant one, or, if some guilty memory tormented him, an endless terror. So the domain of Tashé was an incongruous tangle, a jumbled mass like the inside of the Sybil’s house.

  And as I fell, I was in many places at once. I walked on soft moss to the edge of a pool, deep in a forest suffused with golden light. Three young girls sat by the pool, washing their hair. A young man, scarcely older than myself, sat by them, strumming on a lyre. All around them, the forest seemed to go on forever. Pale white fishes drifted through the air among the trees.

  Then I took one step back from the pool, and the forest was gone.

  I ran beneath the pale stars over an endless expanse of bricks so hot that they burned my feet. Bricks stretched glowing to the black horizon. I wept with the pain and began to stagger. It was all I could do not to sit down. Smoke and flame hissed out of fissures. Still I ran on, gasping for breath, streaked with soot and sweat, until I came to a window set horizontally in the ground, in the bricks as if in a wall. The window was open. A curtain blew straight up at me on a searing gust. Still, somehow, I had to look.

  I swayed dangerously, then dropped to my hands and knees, screaming aloud at the new pain. I crept to the edge, peered in, and beheld a king and his courtiers below me, all sitting solemnly at a banquet table. Yet there was no feast before them, and each face was contorted in unimaginable agony. Their bodies and clothing were transparent, and I could see that the hearts of these men and women were white hot, like iron in a forge.

  And again, I saw a girl in a pleasantly lit room, singing and spinning forever. A man sat at her feet, carving a piece of ivory into a form that was somehow infinitely ornate and beautiful but never complete.

  And I lay, naked as
I was, in a frigid stream amid snowbanks. A blizzard made the sky featureless white.

  And crowds babbled in a marketplace; and I was alone in endless, silent halls thick with dust; and I walked on water to a ruined tower where men in white robes and silver masks awaited my coming; and a resplendent pirate paced back and forth endlessly on a single deck suspended in the middle of the air. He looked up, startled, as I plummeted by.

  And I saw into memories, into the lives of all who dwelt in that land of Tashé, and I knew what it meant to be a king, and a slave, and in love, and a murderer, and I knew what it was to be old and remember all these things vaguely, as in a fading dream.

  And I found my sister, Hamakina.

  I fell amid swirling, stinging sand, and suddenly the sand became millions of birds, flapping their soft wings against me to hold me up. All these birds had my sister’s face, and they spoke with my sister’s voice.

  “Sekenre, I am here.”

  “Where?”

  “Brother, you have come for me.”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “Brother, it is too late.”

  I wasn’t falling anymore, but lay choking in a heap of cold, soft ashes. I sat up, spitting out ash, trying to wipe ash from my eyes.

  In time, tears and spittle gave me enough moisture to clean my face, and I could see. I was in a garden of ash. Fading into the distance in all directions, white, bare trees stood in neat rows, leafless, yet heavy with round, white fruit. Ash rained from the sky, the ash, the sky, and the earth all featureless gray, until I could not tell where earth and sky met.

  I stood up amid dead flowers with stalks like winter reeds—huge, yet delicately preserved in every colorless detail.

  The ash fell heavily enough that I could feel it striking my shoulders in clumps. I was coated with it, until I too seemed a part of this place. I held my hands over my face, struggling to breathe and to see, while making my way along a path amid sticks that might have been the remains of hedges, the ash cool and soft and knee-deep.

  The overwelming smell in the air, the odor of the ash, was intensely sweet, unpleasantly so, strong enough that I felt faint. But I knew I could not stop here, could not rest, and I took one step, and the next, and the next…