The A'Rak Page 6

  I am here.

  The god's thought was a mere wisp, a fleet coruscation of comprehension. And it was a tidal surge at the same time, a huge impalpability, an immense will entering a single skull's little sanctum.

  "I harken, oh revered A'Rak, and attend your will." What a chattery small noise seemed his speech in Pandagon's own ears! Such was the awe that aura-ed the Presence, that in it the priest found his terror almost suspended.

  Look above thee Priest. Upwards! Behold!

  Pandagon again craned his neck back, and saw nothing but the gates' brazen crest. Then, all along that crest, wispy movement caught the starlight. It seemed that some gauzy tapestry's broad hem—a silken skirt as wide as the gates themselves—had begun edging down, curtain-wise, over the graven bronze panels.

  It came down with a whispery, scratchy sound, and little hitches and haltings gave its descent an almost teasing tempo, evoking a music hall curtain's coy flourishes for the comic turns. The incongruity of that notion augmented, if anything could, the priest's utter bewilderment.

  A moment more and he could see dark figures embedded in the descending fabric, shapes knit in ranked array . . . ? Yes. The thing was a pattered tapestry then. Some woven proclamation? Writ large for the Convocation here of the Three Thousand two nights hence?

  Steadily downward this tapestry scratchily whispered. The fabric was a dense silvery gauze—was thick raw silk. The ranked figures were the scratchy part. They were made of much stiffer stuff. And in fact they weren't woven shapes at all, but rather solid things webbed into the sheeted silk.

  And then Pandagon grasped what he was seeing. His horror melted his knees and froze them solid again in the selfsame instant.

  This descending curtain was a vast diaphanous shroud. The shapes in it, row on row, were spider husks—the mummied residues of the A'Rak's feedings. Here were every creature of any size native to Hagia's hills, riverfloors, and sea bottoms—a score of each kind formed the vast page's text. Their hides, tanned black by the venom, were sucked so tight to the bone that every tooth, joint and rib of them showed stark and sharp in the starlight, as clear as anatomic engravings.

  Do you grasp what is blazoned here, Priest? That I have unscrolled for your eyes alone the tenderness for ye, my congregation, that I have cherished unspoken so long?

  Pandagon then was to be sole human witness of this phantasmagoric whimsey—the whole thing had been wrought for his instruction. To bear alone the dire god's inquisition—such was his high office, his power and his danger! What did this ghastly riddle mean? But even as he despaired, he did grasp the grisly text's tale. The curtain was fully descended now, and he saw that it contained no human mummy.

  "Revered A'Rak," he trumpeted, feeling his words ring now, his voice commensurate with his high office. "I behold here your studious care to disburden us, your partners in the Covenant, of the weight of your divine appetite. How tenderly sparing you are of the sustenance we are plighted to yield you—this is what I see here manifested!"

  His heart hammered, harder and harder as still the prickly whelm of spiderthought failed to flood him. Though the tension was torment, he had ceased to fear death here, tonight. At some point not many moments past, he had realized his present safety. This shroud had been wrought to awe and terrify him. He was needed for something.

  It comforts me, Priest, to find you so wise in my worship. Here was the unearthly thought-flux tuned somehow to a solemn sadness! The silence before had denoted the deity's pain, then. I have felt, Priest—alas, unmistakably—the foretremors of a dire Befalling, of a monster's advent to blameless Hagia's green and pleasant vales. I have kept my Covenant to stand Hagia's bulwark and battlement for her flourishing generations, and I shall keep covenant against this scourge to come, whose malevolence mocks your race's scope to grasp. The tragic consequence, priest, the ineluctable necessity, is that I must feed to battle strength, that I must nourish my might for the coming encounter.

  In the silence that followed, a breeze set the shroud to rippling, and the mummied beasts scritch-scratched against the bronze, their jutting bones softly gonging here and there. The tapestry seemed a naked death-writ now, one specimen page from the epic of Hagia's decimation. And was Pandagon here, the priest, to preside then over the hecatomb? Officiate the feast? He stared, numb and chill to the bone, at the eyeless grins, the crooked-shrunk paws and limbs in their dangling dance.

  We grieve alike now, priest. We both stand mutely mourning—how not? But scant time remains, and now we must set to work. You must make altered provision for the Choosing. The grim gist of the matter is, five times the number we are wont to choose must be chosen on Shortest Night next.

  When he'd taken it in, Pandagon swayed on his feet slightly, such was his relief. Perhaps a hundred, a hundred and twenty chosen! Grievous, to be sure, but compared to the abyss of slaughter he had just contemplated. . . .

  The god now commenced an exact numeration of supplementary security measures. The ceremonial sequence of the Choosing was designed to contain and muffle any riotous impulse among the doomed. The Three Thousand convoked to the Choosing all drew their runes from the urn, and the priest then began bidding now the holders of this rune, and now the holders of that, to retire to the tiers and resume their lives. When the identity of the one or two death runes became clear, the damned stood alone on the sand, environed by the saved—all of them motivated to enforce the rite's result. In this situation, some dozen-score Bailiffs and Reeves sufficed to maintain order.

  But now, clearly the traditional cohort of bailiffs must be augmented, for with five times the number of doomed, there would be five times the number of their kin or friends among the saved, and the situation could grow volatile. The god murmured numbers of actives, numbers of auxiliaries, the means of their mustering discreetly, the details of posting them handy while yet unobserved by the Three Thousand as they entered the arena.

  These calibrations and reckonings trickled up Pandagon's spine, the god counting his congregation like coin: thus much slaughter, thus much panic, equalled thus many surplus of knout-and-net men for containment. And the priest, as he harkened to this unearthly murmur, became conscious of the degree to which the god had calibrated his own emotions, seeing that the mummy shroud was precisely intended to remind him of what the god could do, and make him embrace this epic homicide with the sense of relief that he had, in fact, felt. Pandagon had been informed of a hecatomb about to take place, and had been manipulated into accepting it gratefully, thankfully eager to serve.

  The priest felt the kindling of anger, deep in his core. The anger gave birth to a perilous inspiration, and an heroic resolve.

  "Great A'Rak," he said when his master had done, "My grateful knowledge of our debt to you emboldens me to dare your august displeasure and take issue with your provisions. But I do not think they are sufficient to ensure orderly, decent, and devout delivery of your just tribute."

  Thus launched, Paanja Pandagon found an effortless eloquence. Compelled, he said, by his loyal abhorrence of the impiety that panic might precipitate, he begged that the A'Rak's monastia be directed to provide the wherewithal to recruit a small precautionary cohort under the humble Ecclesiarch's personal command. It was only because the A'Rak's devoted priest had received in the Academy—as all of his class did—a first-rate military education, and that as a professional in the arts of force he was alarmed at the potential for mutiny here, that he dared the impertinence of correcting his deity's calculation.

  What was the A'Rak a-weighing in the following silence—that long following silence—that led him, at last, led him to utter his gracious assent to the priest's proposition? Paanja Pandagon was to learn two days thence, to his woe.

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  LAGADEME III

  A basket-work arch proclaimed the place in big wicker letters:

  BOZZM OF BUTTERCROCK BYRE

  CHEESERY & CHURNERY OF RENOWN

  The farmstead thus announced, by its appearance, only half remembe
red the sign's prosperous optimism. The house and barn were of ample scale and proudly gabled; the milking and shearing pens' posts and railings were all marblewood notched and mitered. But all this was now badly weathered, the flowerplots were weedy, and the barn's sheddings of shingles added to the barnyard's litter of bent pails and broken carding paddles.

  The widow Bozzm was milking a momile in that yard, absorbed in the work and oblivious of us. She was an opulent woman, hugely breasted and haunched, and the poise of her bigness on the tiny milking stool seemed a minor miracle. She was not grotesque. A charm auraed her lavishness, and she was as innocently, wholly female as the beast whose udder she eased. Indeed, the pair of them in their tranquil absorption, sitting long-shadowed in the dying day, made a charming tableau of feminine harmony and peaceful mutuality.

  Then she saw us, and surged up, crying, "Dulcetty! Sleekey! She's here! Cousin Pompidor!"

  From a low dome of timbers between house and barn—one of those thick-roofed, half-sunk structures in which the Hagish cellar their dairy and fruit for the coolth—a slant-laid door banged open and two red-cheeked young women as lavish as their mother burst out and charged towards us, arms flung wide, pouring out questions and greetings and laughter, seizing our hands, petting our shoulders, begging the tale of our journey and swearing we were all welcomer than fly swatters at a honey-pie bake-off.

  They seemed more easy hugging us than embracing Pompilla, with whom they seemed awkward, exclaiming simultaneously, "Sweet Auntie!" "Dear Granny!"—the titles mere affectionate honorifics, apparently. What we already knew of Dame Pompilla's volatility made their hesitance towards her easy to understand.

  Widow Bozzm smilingly scolded them, "Girls! Leave dear Cousin Plumpbelow be to talk business with me, and take our dear Nuncio and her friends to the buttery for some refreshment!"

  The two widows walked barn-ward in close conversation, and we were led down into the coolth of the cellar, a bath of appetizing aromas. Plainly they passed much time here. Central in the circular chamber were couches and settles and big lounging cushions, though the perimeter of the room was all business: larders, storage crocks, the churns and cheesing tables, racked cutlery, wash basins, egg-shelves and flour-sacks, even a pastry oven. The amiable girls insisted we sit—nay, sprawl with feet indolently propped.

  Once we were settled, the sisters set up a great buxom bustle, their breasts jostling like pink shoats in their burdened bodices as they ground ginger for tea, ladled jam on current crumbkins, decanted bumpers of buttermilk—and, through it all, poured forth conversation as abundant as their provender.

  Dulcetty: "Such a slyboots is Auntie in leeching that she'll soon set our poor little fleecies aright! How she can physic 'em, costive and purge, they've got teat-rash you know, our precious wee woolies, and trotter-gall grieves 'em sorely!"

  Sleeky: "No Dulcy! Kooters! It's kooters they have, and Granny's a prime leech for Kooters—and the grunties too, which tortures the dear little bleaters as well!"

  Dulcetty: "Kooters, yes, kooters too, a whole muck of ills they have but we don't want to weary you with 'em, dear nuncials."

  "Not at all," I said. "Our client, Dame Pompilla, mentioned shank-rot as well. What makes your gleets so sick-prone do you think, my dears?"

  "'Twas Daddum did all the pasturing," Sleeky mourned. "All the up-pasture down-pasture, the dipping and shearing . . ."

  "Dadum," smiled Dulcetty sadly, "was right lean and tight o' shape like yourself, Dame Nuncio."

  "Yes, `You female folk for the milking,' he'd say," (Sleeky too was tenderly sad here) " `and me for the stumping and shepherding up-dale and down!' That was our dear Dadum's saying."

  Now we had done some up-hill-and-down-dale-ing, it occurred to them. We'd done some stepping about, they squealed, brightening. Had we been to Kolodria? Lulume? The Great Shallows? What did the Sea of Agon look like in those tempests one heard of? Had we ever viewed the Glacial Maelstroms?

  We were fed and rapturously inquisitioned. Their sheer sociability was irresistible. Even laconic Shinn and Bantril, men as a rule only slightly more communicative than cobblestones, uttered entire half-sentences. But then the door thrust wide, and in burst our truncated, intrepid apparition of animated black gauze. "To work! Night draws near!" our Dame trumpeted.

  The sun was now two spans from its setting, and the smallest barnyard debris cast long bands of shadow. Whatever the two widows had been about—I only noted a vague heap of small implements just inside the barn door—all was haste and clamor now to beat the dark. The sisters, with Shinn and Bantril loping by them like hounds—toiled upslope where the gleets were scattered (and a hungry, scruffy, skittish lot of gleets they looked). The four of them began herding and driving the beasts down towards the barn, though it was really my pullers doing the actual running and rounding up, while the sisters provided helpful shouts of encouragement and the Widow Bozzm, too stout to attempt the climb, helped from down in the barnyard with even more vigorous arm signals, and encouragements and counsel bellowed at earsplitting volume.

  Meanwhile our own widow—looking in her billowing flurry of veils like a small boil of smoke—thrust at Olombo and me mallets and spikes, and set us to work in the barn: "Board the windows and gaps in the barn wall, and the hayloft bays, and find wood to dog the main doors shut on me as you leave!" She was tacking up potshards and trashed scraps of pails and pans in nooks all over the barn's interior, and sprinkling in them a crumbly stuff which she lighted from a taper. Olombo and I planked and hammered in a fever we must have caught from hers, while vile, sweetish, slightly dizzying fumes coiled everywhere off the punk she'd lit.

  We finished just after the sun set. The barn, once the main doors were shut, was tightly sealed. And here came the driven gleets, clattering and bleating into the barn. They looked even more hungry and draggle-fleeced near at hand than they had from afar.

  Dame Pompilla came out with us, and with her back held shut the barn doors, behind which the stampede gradually quieted. "I will thank you, my friends, to observe my directives most precisely tonight. When I'm back inside, spike shut these doors securely. My unique blend of leeching employs odorific fumes, vigorous intonations, and other somewhat clamorous procedures. Disattend utterly! Whatever the uproar, I and my little charges are secure. Dine! Repose! Leave me quite undisturbed until sunrise, I beg you. And so, good night!"

  As our hostesses led us back to their opulent cellar, Olombo and I merely agreed in undertones that amateur "barnyard leeches and rural physickers" were common enough since Squanderdabble's Agriculturalist's Index of Salubrious Fumes and Tinctures came into wide circulation, and that our widow's arrogant air of authority was typical of such dilettantes. Olombo confirmed my own odd impression: the widow's little heap of implements had included a number of quirts, riding crops, carriage whips and suchlike goads and stimuli, as well as my impression that there were scarce half a dozen gravid ewes in the whole flock. It seemed improbable that six ewes with kid could raise the sum our employer sought for the raft, but she had seemed unconcerned, and we found it easy to feel likewise.

  That this was the extent of our observations and reflections, we were soon to recall with vivid shame. Privately I concluded—with no greater perspicacity—that if our employer's present scheme, now too plainly that of an addled enthusiast, failed to yield Clummock's rent for a stern-paddle raft, I would make up the deficit from my own pocket so that we could be off on our commission, and have done with this odd, abrasive woman.

  It did not escape me that if she was seriously addled, our mission itself might be a fool's errand, concocted of bereavement and mental imbalance, and one that could well be perceived by the spidergods as impertinence, if not outright blasphemy. But as I could never consider withdrawing from a sealed contract, what was the point of brooding on what could not be helped? So I banished further thought of it.

  Had I not, the Bozzm women would quickly have done so—would have driven off any dark notion, such a sweet, savory c
ommotion of hospitality they set going! Such a flutter of table linen, such a clatter of honeypots, bread trenchers, and cheeseknives, such a warble of chatter and laughter. So recently fed, we were soon sated with supper, and forced to decline further offerings.

  Well, they countered, in that case, then, it was time for the sweet! For the pasty, the pudding, the pie!

  It grew to a game, the rosy Bozzms, mother and daughters, vying to top one another's suggested delights, some of whose mere names watered one's mouth. Then Widow Bozzm gaped as if thunderstruck, the image of inspiration. She breathed her thought, hushed by reverence: "A Lathernog Silk Pie!"

  The way this struck her daughters speechless deeply impressed us. The silk pie was forthwith decided on, and we vowed our help in a culinary accomplishment that proved to be of no small complexity.

  Many elements exquisite in themselves flowed together in the confection of this Lathernog Silk Pie: egg-whirl marbled with momile butter, sugar-shells farced with nut-mince, momile cream and gleets cream lathered separately and then lathered together. "Help us with the churns!" cried the girls. Churns and mixers of several gauges were needed for the varying butters and lathers and froths. "Buntail! Shank! Help me churn gleets lather!" Sleeky sang.

  "Plumbone, the butterchurn's heavy, come help!" trilled Dulcetty.

  "Lackadome!" warbled the widow to me, "come help crank the whisker!"

  Merry multiple dance-tempos—jigs, frisketts and jump-ups—emerged from the chugging and sloshing of churns and beaters, the partners gripping the staffs with alternating hands. "So much more thrust with you men a-plunging it," cooed Sleeky.

  "How silky it gets with you helping slosh it!" Dulcetty tremoloed.

  "What lovely lean thews you've got in your wrists and your forearms, dear Lady Lickadame!" Widow Bozzm vibratoed.