Kingdoms of the Wall (20 page)

"We wouldn't have a chance against this many," I told him.

"Poilar's right," said Kath. "We've got to bluff them. Walk straight forward as though we own this land, and make them give way before us."

That sounded best to me. Retreating would be pointless. The Wall lay before us; we had to move ahead. I started to give the signal to advance.

Naxa, just then, turned to me and said, "I think I've made some sense out of what they're yelling now. The Nine Great Ones are waiting for us, is what they say."

"And who might they be?"

"How would I know? But they're telling us that the Nine Great Ones are waiting for us somewhere on the other side of the river. The rulers of this Kingdom, is my guess. Or its gods, maybe. We're supposed to go across to them. We have to ask their permission to cross their territory—that's what I think they're telling us."

"And how are we going to know which ones they are? What do these Nine Great Ones look like? Are they giving you any clue?"

Naxa shrugged. "I don't really know. They aren't being very clear, and now they're all shouting at once. I can barely pick out individual words, let alone figure out very much of what they might mean."

"All right," I said. I stared into the chaos on the far side of the river. "Let's go across and look for the Nine Great Ones, then. And try to find out what they want with us."

Once more I gave the signal, and we went forward. The Melted Ones grew even more agitated as the distance between their front rank and ours dwindled. It seemed as if they meant to hold their ground, or even to move in around us. But when we were nearly close enough to be touching them with the tips of our cudgels they began to back away, keeping just out of reach but maintaining their massed formation and effectively restraining us from any rapid march through their number.

In that way we approached the river. As we strode forward they continued grudgingly to retreat. The water swirled up around our thighs and hips, but went no higher; and though we staggered and stumbled on the rocky bed as the force of the swift flow struck us, we made it across to the far side without serious accident.

They seemed taken aback that we had crossed. Now that we had, they gave ground more rapidly, allowing us a foothold on the riverbank and watching us uneasily from a distance, where they drew together in a tight, dense phalanx. They muttered and glowered at us. I had a sense that any attempt on our part to proceed further into their domain without the blessing of the Nine Great Ones, whoever or whatever they might be, would be met by fierce resistance. But of them I saw no apparent sign: only these multitudes of deformed and bizarre creatures, none seemingly having any more authority than any of the others.

Since twilight was now coming on, I gave the order to make camp. We would decide in the morning what to do next.

12

In the gathering darkness we watched the Melted Ones roaming about, foraging over the dusty ground for their dinner. They appeared to eat whatever struck their fancy—twigs, dirt, even their own excrement—and we stared at them in revulsion, scarcely able to believe that they were anything other than brute beasts. But greater horror came with nightfall. The sky-demons returned, swooping up out of the blackness at the base of the Wall, and circled swiftly overhead, their powerful wings beating in steady unhurried pulses, their green eyes blazing like angry disks of strange fire above us.

They had come to feed, but not on us.

It was a dreadful sight. The Melted Ones stood smiling vacantly as if lost in dreams, heads upturned, arms—those which had such things as arms—spread wide. And the demons, shrieking ferociously as they came, flew down upon them to drink their blood. Frozen, we watched the flying creatures fasten upon their victims, descending on the Melted Ones and grasping them with their talons, enfolding them in their great shaggy wings, sinking their curving yellow teeth into their throats. The ones that they chose made no attempt to flee or to defend themselves. They gave themselves to their devourers unhesitatingly, almost ecstatically.

The monstrous meal went on and on. For minutes at a time the feeding demons would cling to their prey, busy at their work. Then the wings would open and throb, the winged creatures would spring into the air, and the Melted Ones—emptied and pale, red trickles of blood running from their ravaged throats down onto their chests—would stand statue-like, still upright for a moment or two, before toppling to the ground. When one fell it lay without moving. But the demon who had drunk its life, after circling the sky in a burst of wild energy, came quickly enough down to feed again, and again and again.

Though we were numb with shock and disgust we remained on guard, ready with our cudgels. But the demons never ventured into our little camp. They had enough ready provender waiting for them just across the way.

I turned to Traiben after a time and saw him looking upward, more fascinated, so it seemed, than appalled. His lips were moving. I heard him counting under his breath: "Seven... eight...nine. One... two... three...."

"What are you doing, Traiben?"

"How many demons do you make it out to be, Poilar?"

"About a dozen, I suppose. But why should that matter in the slight—"

"Count them."

"Why?"

"Count them, Poilar."

I humored him. But it was difficult to get a good count; the demons were in constant motion, alighting, feeding, leaping aloft again. At any time there might be four or five of them sucking blood and four or five more wheeling through the night sky, but one would descend and another would arise while I was making my tally, and I had a hard timekeeping them sorted out. Irritably I said, "Something like nine or ten, is what I get."

"Nine, I would say."

"Nine, then. How many there are hardly seems of any importance."

"What if these are the Nine Great Ones, Poilar?" said Traiben quietly.

"What?" I blinked at him uncomprehendingly. Traiben's notion had taken me utterly by surprise.

"Suppose that these are the kings of the Melted Ones," he went on. "Perhaps created by whatever force it is that has brought the Melted Ones themselves into being. And reigning over them by strength of will, or perhaps by some kind of magic. Breeding them, even, to serve as sources of food."

I fought back a shudder. More carefully, this time, I counted again, following the wheeling winged forms as they moved in the darkness. Nine, so it seemed. Nine. Yes. Who moved as they pleased among these miserable creatures, feeding on them at will. The Nine Great Ones? These repellent blood-drinkers? Yes. Yes. Surely Traiben was right. These demon-birds, or whatever they were, were the masters of this Kingdom.

"And we're supposed to ask permission of
them
to pass through this place?"

Traiben shrugged. "There are nine of them," he said. "Who else can they be, if not the Nine Great Ones who rule here?"

* * *

I slept very little that night. The sky-demons remained with us far past midnight, feasting insatiably, and I sat up, clutching my cudgel, afraid that they would attack us when they tired of the blood of the Melted Ones. But they went only to their own. At last they disappeared, flapping off to the west, and then the moons themselves vanished from sight, dropping behind the looming bulk of the Wall, so that we were plunged into darkness. It was then that I slept, but briefly and poorly, dreaming that hairy wings were fastened about my body and glistening fangs were reaching toward my throat.

My sleep, such as it was, was broken by a cry of anguish. I came awake at once and heard the sound of Thissa's wailing.

"Thissa? What is it, Thissa?"

"Death!" she called hoarsely. "I smell death!"

I went to her side. "Where? Who?"

"Death, Poilar." She was shivering. Words in an unknown language came tumbling out of her. Unknowable santha-nilla words, I suppose: magic-talk, the voice that rises out of the well of mysteries. I held her and she fell asleep in my arms, murmuring, "Death... Death...."

There was nothing I could do in the darkness. I sat holding her until Ekmelios crossed the horizon and the plateau was lit by brilliant morning light.

Dozens of Melted Ones, drained white, lay motionless across the way, scattered about on the ground like broken boughs after a wind has rampaged through the forest. They appeared to be dead; very likely they were. The rest, the whole immense horde, sat huddled close together, watching us sullenly. No demons were in evidence. I was without any idea of what to do next. The Melted Ones had allowed us to come this far but evidently they would let us go no farther unless we acknowledged them in some unfathomable way, and if we tried to move forward without the blessing of the Nine Great Ones they would surely resist our advance, so I supposed, and throw us back by sheer force of numbers. I saw no way to reach the Wall other than through the Kingdom of the Melted Ones. But how could I parley with those blood-drinking birds? We were stymied. It was the first great test of my leadership and I felt myself faced with failure.

Then, while I hesitated, Grycindil came running to me, crying that Min and Stum were missing.

A group of the women, said Grycindil, had gone down to the river at daybreak to bathe. Min and Stum had not been among them, which Grycindil thought was odd, for of us all Min was the most fastidious about such things; and Stum, who was her friend, always went wherever Min went. When they were done bathing the women filled a flask with cold water and went looking for them, thinking that they were still asleep, and planning to splash them for a prank. But no one could find them, Grycindil said. She and Marsiel and Tenilda and Tull had searched through the entire camp.

"Perhaps they've gone off for a morning walk by themselves," I said, and the foolishness of my words made them die in my throat even as I spoke them.

I called everyone around me and told them of the disappearance. There was great consternation. I went to Thissa, who still sat stunned and trembling, and asked her to cast a searching-spell.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, I will."

She gathered little sticks and said the words and threw the sticks again and again. But each time she shook her head and snatched the sticks up and said it was no good, that there was too much noise and confusion all about her. Even when she drew Witch-lines on the ground and knelt to whisper god-names to them, and dropped the sticks within those lines, she could learn nothing that was of any use to us. The strain on her was terrible: her eyes became very bright and large, her face grew rigid.

"Are they still alive?" I asked her. "Can you tell us that much?"

"Please," she said. "Let me rest. All this is beyond my understanding, Poilar." And she began to weep and shake like one who has been taken ill. I told Kreod the Healer to comfort her.

We divided ourselves into six search parties and went off in different directions, with Kilarion leading one group back across the river to look for them to our rear. Seppil and Dorn and Thuiman and I went forward, toward the masses of Melted Ones, and I stared into the teeming multitude of them, trying to catch some glimpse of Min and Stum among them. But I saw nothing. Nor did any of the other search parties. We didn't learn a thing. There were muddy tracks all over, but who could say what they meant?

Everyone was looking at me. I was supposed to tell them how we were going to deal with this. But I was far from having any solution.

I looked to Traiben, to Jaif, to Naxa, to Kath. They had no help to offer me.

Then I became aware of a stirring behind me in the ranks of the Melted Ones. I saw Talbol gaping and pointing, and Muurmut grunted sharply like one who has been struck. I turned and stared, as amazed as they were by the terrible apparition that was approaching us.

A Melted One who might almost have been Min—whose face and form were oddly like hers, although much deformed and distorted in the manner of their kind—had emerged out of that hideous multitude and was making her way unsteadily toward us. My first thought was that the creatures who had captured Min had made a crude copy of her after their own fashion. But then she came closer, and I recognized Min's familiar lively eyes and the tattered green shawl of her House that she always wore, and I realized that this was no copy of Min, but Min herself, a Min who had undergone a strange transformation: a melted Min, in fact.

She moved in a dazed, tottering way. Tenilda and Tull ran to her, reaching her just as she was about to fall, and carried her into our camp.

"Min?" I said, kneeling over her. She had a deathly pallor and the alterations in her appearance were frightful. It was as if she had been softened and reworked all down the left side of her face and upper body, but not on the right. Her ear, her nose, her lips, her cheekbones, all bore the mark of the change. She had had fine delicate features but now, on one side, they looked blurred, coarse, as though they had flowed and rim. The texture of her skin on the changed side was different too, glossy and unnaturally sleek. I bent close to her. "Can you hear me, Min? Can you tell us what has happened to you?"

She seemed no more than half conscious. Something like a convulsion swept through her for a moment. She rose a little. Her eyes rolled in her head; she grimaced and her lips turned back to bare her teeth in a frightening way. Then she fell back and grew calm again, though her breath was coming in harsh gusts.