A Book Of Tongues (12 page)

In the Painted Desert, for example — waiting for information on
which trains might be best worth robbing, with what food they’d
brought along running out fast — he turned to the tale of Elijah, who
was fed by ravens. Soon, a plague of black-feathered birds huge as
his namesake descended, dashing themselves to death against the
canyon walls. The gang, starved enough to overcome their disgust
at this haphazard delivery system, handily ate them roasted, only
vaguely plucked and splinter-crunchy with hollow broken bones.

So Rook turned to Moses and his manna instead, bringing
unleavened bread falling from the air (straight into dirt, soft and
sticky, not exactly nourishing). It was blander, but kept better.

“Maybe you should seek for other hexes,” Chess suggested. “Chat
them up, get them to tell you what they do, or don’t, in similar
situations. Couldn’t hurt.”

“Couldn’t it?”

(Minds always touching his, feeling him out, harrying him:
Go
here, do this, do that. Stay clear.
Most he couldn’t put a name to, ’sides
from a Chink gal called Songbird to the west whose thoughts coiled
and spat in a venomous centipede nest. Rook hoped to never come
near enough for her to see what he looked like, let alone lay hands
on him directly.)

“Hell, I don’t know — I ain’t no hex. But I got
my
best advice from
other gunslingers, same’s I got my worst. Take it all, pick through it
at your leisure . . . and
practise
.”

That morning, before dawn, Rook woke first and left Chess
wrapped in both their coats, careful not to wake him. Then sat
down in the dust bare-assed, stretched out a hand, frowned at the
largish, greyish rock set opposite, and ordered it — “Come here, to
me. C’mon, now.”

Nothing happened.

“
Here
, I conjure thee. I . . .
command
.”

Still nothing. Rook felt ridiculous. Even his voice seemed flat, dry,
without a shred of its now-normal rope-rough timbre. As though . . .

You are only talking for yourself,
one of the voices told him —
right in his ear, yet resonating considerably deeper: inside the hills
around, the earth itself. Inside
him
.

A woman’s voice, but not his Rainbow Lady, who hadn’t spoken
directly to him since his escape, for all he glimpsed her face in
dreams. “And who
should
I talk for?” he asked her, out loud — more to
see what would happen, than because he actually wanted an answer.

One man’s voice is only that,
she replied —
one small part of the
whole. We must be larger than that, in order to keep our balance.

Sounds like an Indian,
he thought. And felt, rather than saw, her
smile curve, with the same quality to it his grandmother’s used to
have, back when Rook was still Little Asher.

She is not to be trusted, your Lady of the Snares and Traps,
she told
him.
But then, you know that, in your heart. And as for you, grandson . . .
perhaps you must continue to speak in your blackrobe Lord’s voice, until
you have the time — the inclination — to finally come find me, and learn
better.

Then she was gone, leaving Rook alone in the desert, looking at
a rock. His mind slid, automatically, to whatever Biblical claptrap
might serve best, given the situation:

The lion’s whelps have not trodden it, nor the fierce lion
passed by it.

He putteth forth his hand upon the rock. He overturneth
the mountains by the roots.

He cutteth out rivers among the rocks. And his eye seeth
every precious thing. . . .

Job
, 28:8-10.

And the rock cried out,
he thought, feeling the words come up through
him, scar ’round his throat left raw again, in their wake. The rock,
at the very same time — a seed-pod stuffed with granite dust, cleft
with an invisible axe — split wide open.

Oh, sinner-man. Where you gonna run to?

Behind, Chess slept on, hearing nothing of any of it, ’til Rook
woke him with a kiss.

A week after, they rode down to No Silver Here and waited for the
train to come smoking down its track, laid skeletal atop the new-blasted ground. Intelligence suggested it would be guarded by Pinks,
equipped with at least one Gatling and a brace of pepperboxes;
this Hosteen confirmed, via telescope. So they separated into two
columns, Chess drawing fire on the right, while Hosteen made
sure Rook could pull close alongside and catch the engineer’s eye,
gesturing at him to haul on the brakes — thus giving a man they all
called Big Al time to jump in through the back and clap a pistol to
the man’s temple, making sure he would.

As the train started to slow, the accompanying gear-jerk threw
one Gatling-operator into the other, spinning the gun’s muzzle
in such a way that it laid two of Chess’s posse down. Rook dug in
his spurs, surged maybe thirty yards ahead, reined in and slid off,
stepping directly into the dreadnought’s path. As it bore down on
him — the uppermost Pinkerton already back on his feet, grasping
for the Gatling’s crank — he opened his mouth and preached, from
Corinthians
:

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and
have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling
cymbal.

It was one of the sweetest verses known to man, quoted at
every wedding he’d officiated. But when his lips shaped the words,
something else
came out
through his mouth along with them — a
lashing ghost-tongue spear of silver-gilt which rammed full-speed through the boiler without jumping the train off its tracks,
just pinning it there like a massive iron bug, releasing its entire
compliment of steam in a hissing cloud.

And
that
was the problem, in the end. It was a bit too dense for
Rook to completely calculate what he was doing. So though he’d
meant for whatever effect he produced to stop short, or just slap the
Pink silly, it split the man’s skull and neck alike, spraying everything
around it with gouting red.

The gang met it with a half cheer, half yelp — alternately
disgusted, and pretty damn impressed. ’Course, that all changed
once Rook turned to yell fresh orders at Chess, not realizing the
spell-spear was still trailing along with him. Before he knew what
was happening, it’d sheared off Joe Skopp’s left arm at the shoulder,
and Joe fell, screaming.

Rook clapped both hands over his face immediately, unmindful
of what damage he might do to himself (none, it turned out).
Hosteen tried — and failed, miserably — to tourniquet Joe’s stump.

Meanwhile, Chess sprang up into the breach, yelling: “C’mon,
you bastards! There’s lootin’ to be done!”

The others streamed after him, automatically — all but Petrus
Kavalier, Joe’s best buddy, who stopped in mid-stride and looked
back at Rook, eyes gone blank with shock. “You’re the damn
Devil
,
Rev,” he said, wonderingly, like he’d just worked it out. Raising his
gun, cocking it back —

Maybe I am,
Rook thought, while the LORD is my shield and
the point of my salvation knocked
hard
against his teeth from
the wrong side ’round — so easy to simply let it out, and watch what
happened next. But it was a moot point, because that was when
Chess shot Kavalier through the heart over his own shoulder,
without even turning — an impossible feat, for impossible times.
Almost . . . magical.

You ever notice how Chess hardly ever reloads?
Hosteen had asked
Rook.
Or how he can fire in two separate directions at once, and still
shoot straight? He fans the trigger, just for fun, and he actually
hits his
target
. Ain’t no motherfucker on this earth can do that.

I don’t know that much about firearms,
Rook had found himself
replying, which wasn’t exactly untrue. Yet —

Chess’s hair lifted slightly in the wind, a tight blood-halo, and
Rook could tell from the way he stood that he was grinning.

The train was taken five minutes on, with most of the remaining
Pinks kneeling in surrender, down on their knees so fast they
must’ve bruised the caps. But by the time Rook had coughed enough
times to be sure his killing words were well-dispersed, Chess had
already head-shot three of them, and was taking aim at the fourth.
Rook slapped his gun up, annoyed.

“The fuck you do that for?” Chess snarled.

“We need one of them left upright, at least. To tell what happened.”

“So they’ll be warned, next time? Where’s the fun in — ”

“Not all of us’re quite so fond of murder as yourself, Chess. Or
maybe you hadn’t noticed.” He indicated Hosteen, staring sick-white
down at what was now Joe’s corpse.

Chess just sniffed, disapprovingly. “Well, you don’t have to
coddle them, do ya?”

“Like it fine enough when I indulge
you
, don’t you, darlin’?”

Back to the grin. “But that’s different. Ain’t it?”

Rook couldn’t deny how something in him came ticking up to
meet that wicked smile, even right now — like sticking his dick inside
Chess had turned the key in a door that the whole world would’ve
probably been better off keeping shut. And it would have been
shamefully easy to believe it was Chess’s fault, but Rook knew the
truth: he was changing
himself
to fit
Chess
. To be the mountainous
man Chess dreamt on, fit to finally crush his rebel heart into
submission — a man truly worth kneeling before.

“Think Kavalier was right?” Rook asked him, that night. “
Am
I
the Devil?”

Chess snorted. “I’ve been called that, for a hell of a lot less. What
I think’s that if there even is a Devil in the first place, we’re
all
him — and as for God, him and me ain’t ever met, ’less you count
him puttin’ me in your path.”

He nipped hard at Rook’s lip, the pain of it both increasing
familiar and increasingly pleasant. But the Reverend wasn’t quite
done.

“With Joe, though, or the Gatling-operator — I never meant to do
that. Jesus Lord God of Hosts, that was awful.”

“Yeah, well, Joe knew what he was gettin’ into. We all of us do, or
should. As for the rest, meanwhile — hell, they was just Pinkertons,
and I surely do hate all them fuckers. Stole my first gun from a Pink,
I ever tell you that?”

“Not as I recall, no.”

“Yeah, I lifted his roll while he was busy feelin’ up my Ma, so he
hauled me out into the back alley, beat me somethin’ bad. Didn’t
know I had a razor in my boot, though — more fool him. ’Cause that’s
the first damn thing that junked-out lunatic ever taught me, the
only one I ever found worth remembering: sell yourself high, and
dearly.”

They drifted off at last, soaked and sticky — replete, even in the
face of Rook’s own deepest doubts. And Rook dreamt that old Indian
lady again, sitting so close near a fire he could almost glimpse her
face, nested in shadow beneath the overhanging folds of her shawl.

You
should
come and see me, grandson,
she told him, without
moving her lips.
And soon. Before your Lady finishes the web she weaves,
and sets her snares for
you.

And how would I know where to go?

She shrugged.
Easy enough, to let your feet move where your instincts
point you. There is a mountain which we Dinécall the yellow Abalone-shell. She is a good place to go, if one wishes to make one’s vision quest . . .
which you have not, as yet.

Thought that was just for —
your
people.

The
People, we call ourselves, as all peoples do. But we are both of a
very different tribe than those we were born into, you and I — and your
Lady, too, once upon a time.

Meaning you’re a hex. Like I’m a hex.

We say it differently, of course, but . . . yes. And in my tradition,
grandson, we do not wait for misfortune to push us headlong into power —
nor shun and spurn the powerful, as your blackrobes counsel. What would
be the point of that? But for the gods, we alone see the future, and make
it come to pass. There
must
be balance. If we break it, it breaks us. Should
we not help each other to keep it, then, if we can?

Rook hesitated. On the one hand, it did sound logical — hell, the
idea of seeking out mentorship’d sounded logical even coming from
Chess, and that was really saying something. Yet he also recalled
hearing rumours to the contrary, especially as regards to magicians.

I . . . don’t know,
he said, at last.
What’s happening to me?

This I have told you already, grandson. Until you do come to me — or to
someone — you will always be a danger . . . to yourself, as well as to others.

Got no reason to trust you —

No more than you have to trust anyone, even yourself. Yet there
is
someone else involved, after all — one you would do no hurt, if it might be
avoided. Am I wrong, grandson?

She wasn’t.

Well, then. Come, if you decide —
when
you decide. I will be waiting.
And do it
soon.

But they both knew he wouldn’t.

Another few months flew by. In Solomonville, up near the New
Mexico border, the gang’s object was the land office, where a fat
payroll lay prepared for banking. Chess brought the company fast
and hard — both guns already cross-drawn, guiding the horse with
his knees — while Rook strode in front, hovering a yard above the
ground and leaving no prints behind with a cloud of dust boiling out
beneath him, like he was wearing Ten League Boots.

A dreadful flame lifted from his head, leaking out of every
orifice, and whenever Rook blinked or spoke it guttered and danced,
lighting up their way through the sandstorm-lively murk. By its
baleful glare, Rook saw “good” people — parishioners much the same
as his own, probably, once upon a time — scurrying from him and his
in mortal panic, fast as their little legs would take them.