Rats and Gargoyles (46 page)

Carrion-breath stung her eyes. The rose-light
smoldering in the masonry flared: all the debris and pillars and stones white as
skin with blood beating a swift pulse under it.

"I give you that secret, little Valentine. Tell
whom you will. And what can you do, now that you know?"

The White Crow looked down at one whole and one
injured hand.

"If you’re not afraid, Divine One, why stop me?"

"Child of flesh, you speak of fear?"

The White Crow laughed, water running from the
corners of her eyes. She reached up with her right hand as if she would touch
the Decan of Noon and Midnight.

"Give
me my chance, then," she challenged.
"What can it matter to you, you who know all, see all, are all? Give me the
strength to search, and see if I find you out!"

Candia scratched at his overgrown blond beard and
muttered: "Shit!"

"Oh, I know." The White Crow spoke to him without
turning away from the Decan. "The most unwise thing, to challenge God—"

Pain stabbed her fingers.

She brought her hands up in front of her face,
trying to clench them against the fire burning under the skin. Her white nails
shone–shone and lengthened, splitting. Whiteness ran back over her hands and
wrists and forearms.

"Wh- whaa—?"

Faint down feathered the backs of her hands. She
raised them closer to her face, knocking them against some obstruction. Her head
twisting, she seemed to knock her nose against her hands: a nose that
lengthened, darkened, pulled up her teeth into its growth as her mouth shrank .
. .

The Spagyrus’ laughter shook dust from the high
vaulting of the Fane.

Stepping back, stumbling, she fell. As she fell,
her body collapsed into itself, folding impossibly. Her feet still flat on the
stone, she seemed to be crouching only a few inches above the floor.

She threw out her arms for balance. The Fane
wheeled.

"Whaaack!"

Briefly, far below, she caught sight of human faces
turned up to hers in fear and awe. Air pushed up under her arms, sleeked down
her body. Pain threaded her arteries with hot wires. Double images blurred her
vision.

"Crrr-aaark!"

She swooped at the floor and a black shadow rose to
meet her. Wide-winged, the tail fanning to catch the air; no mistaking that
blunt beak and body. She skimmed the stone, wheeling to rise again on
wide-fingered pinions.

Divine laughter beat against her, abrasive as sand
and splinters of glass.

"Search, if you will! If you can!"

The albino carrion crow wheels and flees into the
heart of the Fane.

Anger shining in his lidless black eyes, the head
of the Night Council spoke.

"I fail to thee what
exthactly
is tho
amuthing."

Zar-bettu-zekigal buried her face in her sister’s
lace ruffle, little whimpering noises escaping her. An open palm hit her sharply
across the ear.

"Behave! Zar’!"

She swung round, clasping her hands behind her
back, kicking her heels in the bone beach. Her black ankle- boots crunched on
fragile skulls no larger than walnuts. Fog touched her spine coldly. She gazed
up at the thrones of the Serpent-headed, eyes bright.

"I didn’t say anything!"

Dry heat radiated back from the endless cliffs,
from the brown bedrock granite and the thrones of the foundation of the world.
Twelve of the Serpent-headed seated themselves on their thrones; the last
remained standing. Flaring torchlight gleamed on oiled human limbs, on naked hip
and breast and muscular shoulders. On necks glittering with scales, serpent
heads; blunt muzzles and the black lidless eyes of viper, coral snake, cobra.

"The, ah—" Plessiez coughed into his fist.
Zar-bettu-zekigal tried to catch his gaze; he avoided her. "The reason for this
summons, messires?"

The head of the Council’s sharp cobra jaw dipped,
regarding the small group below. A black-bootlace tongue licked across his
lipless mouth.

"We with to regithster a thtrong complaint. Grave
thins have been committed againtht uth by the world above."

"Excuth
–excuse
me." Zar-bettu-zekigal rubbed
her bare fog-dampened arms, digging in her short nails. By virtue of that she
concentrated enough to call up across the intervening yards: "Who are you,
messires?"

The cobra head moved, lidless eyes fixing on her.

"Your thithster the thaman thould be able to tell
you that. We are the Night Counthil. The mostht ancient godth of the world."

Zari turned rapidly away, hugging herself; bumped
against Plessiez and looked up as the black Rat glanced down. Their eyes met.

" ‘Thithster.’ "

Zar-bettu-zekigal spluttered.

"
‘Thaman?’
"

She caught one glimpse of Charnay’s puzzled face
and elbowed the Cardinal-General in the ribs. Plessiez looked, drew himself up,
snout quivering, observed, "Messires, I apolo–apologize for my companion,"
stuttered a few more broken syllables and threw his arm across Zari’s shoulders
and guffawed, head down, weak, snorting with laughter.

"I thuppoth . . ." Unable to breathe, half-supporting
his weight, she hugged his shaking body, nose pressed into the fur of the black
Rat’s chest. "I thuppoth you think that’th funny!"

"Messire!" Charnay protested, outraged.

"Oh, he’s gone." Zar-bettu-zekigal struggled for
breath, eyes brimming. She achieved poise long enough to add, " ‘Thithster!’,"
the black Rat’s body quaked with another fit, and she snuffled and burst into
raucous laughter.

"Messire Plessiez!"

The black Rat straightened up, one arm still
resting across her shoulders, the other clasped tight to his own ribs; looking
at Elish-hakku-zekigal. He shook his head.

"Lady, I don’t
care
any more. I’ve spent my
life being diplomatic under the most trying circumstances and this,
this
is the end of it. Frankly, it’s ridiculous." He showed his incisors in a sharp
grin, staring up at the cobra-headed Lord of the Night Council. "Quite
ridiculouth."

"For gods’ sake be careful!"

The black Rat ruffled Zar-bettu-zekigal’s hair.
"Oh, I don’t underestimate the danger. You mistake me. This is too much. I no
longer care."

Torchlight flared on the mist behind
Zar-bettu-zekigal. She gazed up at cold-eyed disapproving serpent heads. The
heat of bedrock granite shone warm on her face. Unconsciously she held her hands
out, warming them; the breathlessness of laughter tight in her chest.

"See you, I’m a Kings’ Memory. You have an
auditor."

A burly male with the head of a python spoke from
the fifth throne.

"We know what you are, mortal. We requethted your
prethenth."

Plessiez snorted. He stood with his weight on one
clawed hind foot, tail coiled out for balance behind him, smiling cynically.

"Charnay, for
this
you took me away from a
battle? Well." He reached up to his neck, pulled the
ankh
from his collar
and threw it on to the beach of skulls. "By the time we make our way back to the
world, it will be one which we control. I may have the best of it after all."

Zar-bettu-zekigal swung one-handed on the pole of
the lantern where it stood jammed into the beach, scooping up a handful of
skulls, the brown bone light in her fingers. She crunched forward, ankle-deep,
tossing the tiny bones up into the warm air.

"So what is all this? And what’s it got to do with
us?"

The first steps of the throne jutted out of the
beach before her, each a yard high. She craned her neck, staring up the cliff
walls. Distance or fog hid the summits.

"You are here to witneth our complaint and
judgment."

The cobra-headed figure placed his hands on the
crudely cut arms of the throne, lowering himself into a sitting position. His
human skin shone red as clay. The skin about his head flared, white underscales
pulsing rapidly.

"You have polluted uth!"

Charnay guffawed, her eyes brightening with
realization. "Oh! Plessiez, man, they all li—"

Plessiez trod down hard on the brown Rat’s foot.
She winced, puzzled, and fell silent.

"Mortalth, attend!"

"Whath’th the–I mean, what’s the . . . ?" Plessiez
shook his head and gave up.

"What’th the reathon for it? Thplit tongth, I
thup-poth." Zar-bettu-zekigal’s eyes danced. "That’s what you get for being one
of the Therpent-headed!"

Elish’s hands closed over her shoulder, fingers
jabbing hard into the hollow under her clavicle.
"Will
you be quiet!"

Zar-bettu-zekigal rubbed her hand across her mouth,
looked away; saw in peripheral vision the Cardinal- General straighten, his
expression gravely sober. She shoved the remainder of a handful of skulls into
her dress pocket.

"El, they’re
won
derful. You didn’t tell me
about this! What are they?"

"What they say they are." Pale, calm,
Elish-hakku-zekigal spoke to include Plessiez. "Chthonic idols–not gods, except
by virtue of human worship. Exiled beneath the heart of the world when the
Thirty-Six took up their incarnations here on our human earth. The most ancient
idols never died, only took refuge below."

Plessiez raised an ironic brow. "Their powers?"

"Intact."

Zar-bettu-zekigal moved closer to Elish.

"Hear uth, and lithten well."

Now the heat radiating from the stone became humid,
steam sliding in snail-tracks down the granite. Wisps of vapor coiled up. The
Lord of the Night Council stood again, pacing the steps before the thrones;
turning to fling out one human hand, pointing at the skull beach.

"Thith ith not made by our hand!"

Zar-bettu-zekigal swayed, wiping sweat from her
forehead, amazed to be too hot. A thick musky smell crept into the air,
unstirred by the wind from the unseen ocean; and the noise of the surf faded,
muffled.

"You pollute the world below. Your nightmareth come
among us. It ith
your
doing, Rat-Lord."

The smell of green vegetation rasped in her throat,
acrid and strong. She hiccuped, caught between the last paroxysm of a giggle and
a sudden chill; reaching out for Elish-hakku-zekigal. Her sister’s hand closed
about hers.

Plessiez, not taking his eyes from the Night
Council, muttered: "Charnay! What have you told them?"

"Oh, everything." The big brown Rat tugged her
sword-belt straight and set the feather in her head-band at a more jaunty angle.
"It was make a friend of them or find myself on one of your friend the Hyena’s
gibbets. Besides, they’ve been gods. What would you have me do, messire? I
thought you probably wouldn’t mind. You said don’t tell anybody human and these
people aren’t human."

The black Rat’s face froze. He rested his
long-fingered hand across his eyes, his shoulders momentarily heaving. "You
thought I probably wouldn’t mind." His eyes opened. "Charnay, you are
unbelievably
stupid."

Charnay shrugged massively muscled shoulders, brown
fur rippling. "Am I?
I
didn’t plant necromancy under the heart of the
world and then come back to admit it before the Night Council."

"The Night Council doesn’t care for the world
above. What is there that I should admit to?"

Thirteen pairs of emotionless eyes looked down
across the air. The cobra-headed god raised his hand.

"Very well, then. Behold."

Tendrils of fog crept past Zar-bettu-zekigal and
she rubbed her upper arms, feeling the skin damp and chill. A rustling filled
the air.

The skull-pebbled slopes of beach
shifted
in
the semicircle of space between the thrones; rolling back from granite curved
and hollowed by time and scored with chthonic marks of bone, horn and wood. From
the far- end thrones, two of the Night Council paced down to stand in the
cleared space. One with the body of an old woman and the head of a krait, one
with a young woman’s body and the glittering crest of an iguana.

They met and grasped hands.

A wind began to blow.

Zar-bettu-zekigal trod back, bumping her shoulder
against the older Katayan’s breast. Hair tangled in her eyes. The wind blew
colder, scoring her skin. Plessiez and Charnay lowered their snouts against the
gusts, the brown Rat grabbing for the lantern as it fell.

A hurricane-wrench of air pulled the fog aside;
light blazed in her eyes. She clawed hair from her face twohanded, shaded her
eyes, opened her mouth to speak, and gaped.

The beach ran down to a black shore. Black water
slopped thickly against the skull-pebbles. Debris tangled in the edges of the
dark surf.

She put her fist to her mouth, staring. A corrosive
vapor drifted, stinging her eyes.

All along the shore, as far as she could see,
debris clogged the water-line. Broken wood and glass, the bodies of gigantic
wasps; sodden entrails, a hand and arm rolling in the sea-drenched pebbles. . .
The writhing bodies of ants, each as long as her forearm; a gouged-out eye; a
basket-handled rapier rolling against the pebbles; a doll, and something
dark-backed that broke the surface a little way offshore and vanished.

She stared offshore.

Ragged bedrock jutted up from the sea.

Giant tree-roots twisted up through the crags,
splintering the ochre and vermilion stone. Glistening wet boles writhed across
shattered blocks, stretching in island- ranges to the horizon. Zar-bettu-zekigal
shuffled, turning, staring at the weed-covered stones, the masses of razor-edged
shells clustering on ridges, the pods hanging down wetly from the giant tangles
of roots.

Twenty feet away across the nearest strait, a man’s
body hung, head thrown back taut in agony. A thick root grew into his stomach
under the navel, impaling him; his feet kicked against barnacle-covered rocks,
razoring open his heels.

"Dear . . .
gods."