Empire of Unreason (41 page)

He couldn’t fight it in the middle world, the world of Man. He had
to go beneath, to the chaos where his enemy— whatever it was—

lived. He forced his hands to grip the horse’s mane and then left
them there, hoping desperately that they would not forget their
task when he forgot his body.

His spirit tore loose of the clay it lived in and plunged into the
EMPIRE OF UNREASON

underworld. It was cold and dark, like a deep pool. It was the place
that had been before time, and lay behind time. It was the darkness
over which all bright things were but a thin skin of paint.

At the crossing was disjuncture, a moment like a drop of water
forming on the edge of a leaf, not yet swollen enough to fall. It was
oddly peaceful, and in that protracted moment—as if looking
through the curved glass of a sailor’s telescope—he saw the Ancient
Times, when the middle world did not exist, when the water of the
underworld met the sky and the four directions unhindered. The
lords of the deep and air moved like great waves, like tornadoes
and hurricanes, joyful in their freedom, incomprehensible in their
size and power.

And then Hashtali, whose eye is the sun, plunged great hands
beneath the waters, found the mud and clay far below, and pulled it
up, spread it upon the waters, baked it into dry land—sealing the
lords of the waters in the dark and cold, far from the sky. Then,
perhaps to complete the injury, he took children of the newly
formed underworld, clothed them in clay, and brought them above
to live on his new, flat world between.

And below, anger became hatred and festered into venom. The
lords of beneath swore vengeance, prowling up through holes in
the earth, doing harm, always plotting against the upstarts that
Hashtali made to walk upon their heads. Through springs and
caves, deep lakes, they came, and through the darkest, widest holes
of all—those in the minds of men.

The drop fell, the moment passed, and Red Shoes was there before
his enemy, seeing him for the first time.

Nothing one saw in the beneath was true, any more than a word
that described a thing was actually the thing. But what he saw
helped him understand and fight.

And what he saw was terrible.

His foe glittered, a thousand obsidian scales in coils that went into
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nowhere and everywhere. It had wings like those of a bat; but each
long, webbed finger was a snake, and the edges of the great wings
were thus fringed with hissing rattles. The wings opened above
him, a vast canopy of serpents, and rearing above the wings was the
head of the greater body, the deep-ridged eyes of a rattlesnake,
slitted eyes yellow-green as venom, and like a third eye in the
middle of its skull burned a Sabia stone, bright as a small sun. With
it came the sharp scent of musk, the smell of burning hair, and a
scent only a maggot could love.

“I have you, thief,” it said, a thousand cicadas chirping the words in
unison. “You have stolen my servants; you have taunted my kind.

You think to thwart our designs. You are strange and strong, but
we know you. And now we make an end of you.”

It did not await an answer. The light from the actinic Sabia stone
between its eyes increased; and Red Shoes felt the flesh of his face
crawl, then strain, trying to flay itself from his bones.

It was the strongest enemy he had ever known. The
na lusa falaya

had stalked him for months before daring to attack him, waiting for
his weakest moment. This thing did not care. It was older, darker,
more bitter than even the most powerful of the Long Black Beings.

But still he resisted it. “You take liberties,” Red Shoes managed.

“You take the form of Sinti Lapitta, the snake who makes pools and
rivers, the most powerful of all who dwell in the underworld. You
are strong, but I doubt you own
that
strength.”

“You see me as you wish to see me,” it answered. “I have no part in
that. If you see me as the most powerful there is, it is perhaps
because I am the most powerful you have ever faced—that you ever

will
face.”

“I devoured one of your relatives,” Red Shoes said defiantly, “a

kwanakasha.
He warned me of the ‘great ones’ and summoned a
Long Black Being. I devoured him, too, and
he
warned me of worse
to come. You spirits keep coming, and I keep defeating you, and
you keep telling me the one who will finally beat me is coming
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along. I begin to become bored. Are you the one they keep
promising me? Are you a great one, he-in-the-form-of-Sinti-Lapitta? Are you more powerful than your defeated cousins? I
doubt it!” It was a lie, but it sounded good.

The snake spoke with talking wind and raindrops hissing on fire.

“Assume what you wish. I am your doom, that is all. It is good
enough.” The light increased, and coils dropped down around Red
Shoes, tightening. The creature’s nauseating stench filled his lungs
like a liquor made of rotten eggs, and for an instant he began to
unclench. Why fight? Why continue this show of bravado? He was
beaten. Sinti Lapitta would devour his soul and shadow and step
into his skin; and if anything remained it would be a ghost, barking
in the night like a sick fox, lost, stupid, and alone.

But no. He had known this day would come. He had a steel thing,
coiled in his belly. A razor. A bullet. His weapon of last resort—one
he did not, could not, hesitate to use. He did not know if it would
work, of course, but he was a dead man if it didn’t.

Devouring the Long Black Being, he had taken its shadow and made
it a part of his own. But there had been a part—a single, dark thing—

that he had kept from himself out of fear, out of loathing: a thing he
did not believe he could digest at all. But he had kept it, forged it
the way Europeans forged metal. Each year he had added
something to it, some subtle variation on its original power.

He released it now and felt his shadow shatter and reform, felt a
glory and a power more satisfying than any pleasure, more vicious
than anything he had ever conceived.

He walked through the great one. He ate through it. Scales filled his
mind, heavy as iron. He swallowed the glowing Sabia stone. His
blood became iron. His flesh became stone. His shadow became
fire.

He awoke to grayness and confusion. The world had a sharp smell,
as if to compensate for its lack of color. The faint odor of burning
lingered, reminding him in part of what had happened on the other
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side of—nothing. Closer, he smelled sour, centipede earth and leaf
mold, the sweat scent of another person.

His eyes began to focus, and the gray resolved itself into the
interior of a cave. The entrance was not visible, but the pale light
leaking in was.

Grief sat near him, her eyes closed.

He remained motionless for a long moment, wondering what had
happened. They had stolen horses from the Mongols, he
remembered, and then—well, after that he didn’t remember
anything at all. With a sigh, he straightened his sore body.

Grief’s eyes snapped open, and the exhausted
kraftpistole

resting in her lap jerked up to aim at him. Her eyes glittered with
the determination he was coming to expect from her.

“It’s only me,” he murmured.

The weapon didn’t waver.

“Could you tell me where we are?”

“You led here,” she said simply.

“I did?”

She nodded guardedly. “Enemies all around. You bring us here.”

“I don’t remember.”

“You crazy. Like—” She furrowed her brow and said a few words he
didn’t understand. She looked frustrated for a moment. “Not—ah—

soo-veh-nee?”

“Je
ne souvienspas. Soo-vyehn
. No, I don’t remember.”

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“Ne soo-vyehn,” she repeated, more or less correctly this time.

What had happened? He must have battled with some spirit. He
closed his eyes, trying to sense his shadowchildren. He had none.

The last of them was gone.

But that was odd, because he felt none of the sense of loss he
usually did. He was a little sore but otherwise fine. His shadow felt
strong, capable.

“I’m going out for a look around,” he told her. She shrugged as if
she didn’t care what he did. Probably she didn’t.

She was an odd one, Grief. He had helped her because he admired
her bravery and respected her need for revenge—and because she
could fight; and when they fled from the army they needed
anything like a warrior they could get their hands on. But he hadn’t
really expected her to stay with them—after all, she did have some
relatives left alive back at her village. Or did she? Maybe not. Maybe
all her own kin had been killed, and there was no one left in her
village to protect her or for her to protect.

Even now that they had a language in common—well, reasonably
so, anyway—she did not seem to feel the need to explain herself. It
would be rude to question her too closely.

He could tell one thing: she was afraid of him now, as she had not
been before. She covered it well, but he had seen it in the way she
held the useless weapon, in her eyes. She was not a woman who
was easy to frighten. What had she seen?

The cave entrance was narrow—though not too narrow for the two
Mongol ponies that stood tethered within—and opened onto the
familiar small-treed landscape. The light was gray outside, too, not
a morning light but an overcast sky. To his peculiarly heightened
sense of smell, the scent of rain was as rich and powerful as the sea.

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Very faintly he could smell men and horses.

He quietly and cautiously worked his way to the top of the hill. It
wasn’t the highest around, but it was high enough for him to see
that he and Grief were the only human beings within several miles,
at least. The riders he smelled must have passed through long
before.

Where were Tug, Flint Shouting, the tsar? If all had gone well, they
had horses now and would presumably continue on toward the
villages of the Wichita, where they might get help from Flint
Shouting’s people. If all hadn’t gone well…

There was no way to know. He might make shadowchildren and
send them out to search, but they weren’t much good for such
things. Their eyes did not work well in the middle world. They
could see the substance of creation, the beneath, but the
created

remained a mystery to them.

But he would make shadowchildren. It was dangerous and would
almost certainly attract attention, but he had an opportunity to do
it now, and, furthermore, however unlikely it seemed, he had the
strength. As much as he disliked it, the most important thing right
now was not finding his friends. If their days were broken, there
was nothing he could do about it. If they were captured again—well,
there was nothing he could do about that, either. It had been a
dream to think they could outrace an army of men and spirits in
this strange country—it was time to admit that now. That being the
case, his duty was to the Choctaw. He would make a messenger and
send it to speak in the dreams of the chiefs. He would rather be
there himself, so that he could argue whether they should join the
marching iron monster, resist it, or flee it. But, in a way, he was
glad he wasn’t. It was too great a decision.

With a sigh, he started gathering the things he needed, wishing
once again he had tobacco, which made all things easier.

He found Grief as he had left her.

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“I have to do something now,” he told her. “I have to make a magic.

When I have done, I will be too weak to defend us. Do you
understand?”

“Yes. I defend—defend? Defend you.”

“You would be better off leaving. What I do will attract our foes.”

“Then why do?”

“Because I must. My people must know what is coming for them.”

She regarded him for a few moments, and for an instant he saw
beyond the stone she had dressed herself in. To a woman who
might have once laughed, smiled—who might one day have raised a
family, been a grandmother.

“I had kin, and people,” she said. “Now I have only revenge. Having
people is—better. You have. Do, and I will watch.”

He looked into the fire, the eye of the world above. “Thank you,” he
said. He handed her his pistol. “If my soul does not return, you
must kill me. Do you understand?” ,

“I understand.”

“Good.”

And he began to chant.