Shadowbridge (2 page)

Then one day the span was invaded by a demon army. Of all the citizens, Shumyzin alone didn’t panic. Nor did he try to flee.

All those who did try to escape were cut down or rounded up to be slain later. The king who’d once made fun of Frog tried to bargain with the demons. They stripped and paraded him before his people to destroy the will of Mankandikha. His money and property were taken from him. The leader of the demonic army rode around in the king’s fine palanquin, forcing eight naked women to carry it. They were whipped if the carriage went too slowly; sometimes they were whipped anyway.

While all this was happening, the avatar of Gopurbh appeared to Shumyzin in his mother’s house, cloaking them both in mist, so that not even Yemin knew he’d appeared. The avatar said, “This is your day, and I am your father. Here are the means to defeat the fiends.” The clever god gave his son a fine scimitar and shield, and golden armor.

Once Shumyzin had put the armor on, his father told him, “You can’t be harmed today, nor seen in that armor by your enemies.”

When the demon soldiers reached the street where Shumyzin and his mother lived, the smell of her bread enticed them. They entered the shop, intending to steal its goods. They saw only Yemin at her oven, unarmed and helpless. They drew their swords to kill her.

Not one of them left the bakery alive.

Like a wave of heat Shumyzin slipped unseen through the enemy’s midst, slaughtering them one after the other. With each he killed, his tusks grew larger.

Demons on the streets suddenly clutched at themselves and doubled over, spilling their life into the dust. Their limbs dropped off; their legs were slashed out from under them. The survivors fled in terror from the lethal phantom. They knocked over their leader’s stolen palanquin, smashing it as they clambered over the sides, kicking their king in their haste to get away. The whipped maidens scattered before them, shrieking.

When the demon king pushed himself out the window, Shumyzin glided invisibly over and cut off his head. Then he ran through the streets, shaking the gory trophy at the enemy. All they saw was the gaping, dripping head itself floating upon the air. Some of them jumped to their deaths in the sea. Others raced to put a thousand spans between them and that phantom. They heard a raw voice shout after them: “Tell everyone that Shumyzin, son of Gopurbh and Yemin, guards this place and will take all your heads if you come back again.”

After that Shumyzin’s heroic deeds fell upon the span like drops of monsoon rain. He became a legend, the defender of his city, the slayer of a thousand foes. Grateful for his protection, the citizens rejected their king—the same one who had belittled Shumyzin years earlier—when he tried to take back his office. They placed Shumyzin on the throne in his place. The hero proved to be a generous ruler. He married the maiden Kyai, daughter of the sun. Although they’d humiliated him for so long, he exacted no penalty from the people…save for one episode.

One afternoon he was alerted that Cabor the Drunk was causing trouble. He found Cabor in a narrow side street. The new king’s self-proclaimed father was whipping a dwarf with a bamboo rod. Beside him lay a maiden whom he’d beaten unconscious. Shumyzin flung Cabor against a wall hard enough to knock him senseless. He had his soldiers arrest the villain, and for a week Shumyzin exhibited him in a cage hanging outside his own house. He confiscated all of Cabor’s property and wealth and gave it to the two people who’d been harmed. When the week was up, Shumyzin cut off Cabor’s nose and ears, and threw him out of the city, off the span.

Thus did the hero save Mankandikha and exact retribution on the cruel Cabor.

“And that is the tale of how Shumyzin the Sufferer, once called Frog, gained renown, but not how he and Kyai found bliss, which is another tale altogether.” Leodora concluded with the traditional ending, the promise of the next story, spontaneously. She had become so caught up by it that she’d forgotten herself. Her hands were extended, fingers pressing together, as if she’d been maneuvering her puppets. She supposed that she had. Self-consciously she glanced at the demigod. He had tears on his cheeks.

He said, “I haven’t heard my beautiful Kyai mentioned in a very long time.”

“It’s better with puppets,” she responded, and when he growled she thought she’d angered him, but realized after a moment that the gravelly rumble was laughter.

He said, “Ah, Leodora. You tell the world of your genius but you doubt it to yourself.”

“You know my name.”

“I’m a god, girl. I have to do something to warrant it besides killing a few mouth-breathing Jatos. Add that to your tale when you speak of those demons: Jatos is what they were, straight out of a sewer.”

She took note of the name but was more curious about something else. “You haven’t heard your wife’s name in a long time? Isn’t she with you?” Even as she spoke she sought among the eikons for the figure of Kyai. The goddess was not represented in the statues nearby.

Shumyzin replied, “Death doesn’t work like that. You tell the stories—I know you know about Death, Jax.” When she looked surprised, he added, “Just as I know the identity you travel under.” He made to shake his head, and a look of alarm strained his features. He glanced down at his torso. The shadow of night had reached his collarbone. “Quick now, Leodora, come here. I must tell you something.”

She got to her feet and took a reluctant step toward the frightening god.

“Closer!” he snapped.

She edged nearer.

“Listen,” said Shumyzin. “I know the one you travel with. We’re old acquaintances, he and I.”

“Soter?” she asked.

“Pah! Not the lush. The other one. The deathless one. The one who visits you in your sleep.”

She stared at him in awe.

The tiny black pupils fixed her. “I know the riddle of your coral friend.” The shadows touched his throat, and his voice shrank to a whisper. “And a warning. Jax rattles the darkness where he travels. A piece of it is sure to come calling.” His neck was now in shadow. His intense goggle-eyes regarded her in a way that imparted both his regard and his great concern for her. She had to look away from such intensity. He wheezed, “One more thing, and the most important.” He fell silent abruptly, and that drew her gaze to him again. Shumyzin’s head had turned back into stone. He faced the gorgon, a statue, as she had found him. She realized that a purple cloud masked the sun.

“The most important thing,” she muttered.

 . . . . . 

For an eternity she stared at the streaks of water on the polished cheeks—the only evidence to convince her that she hadn’t dreamed the conversation with him. She waited, hesitant, hopeful, but when the cloud passed and the dying sunlight touched him again, he did not return to life.

The overhead sky, a crepuscular blue, now twinkled with stars as if it were an inverted sea reflecting the lights of Vijnagar. Before the dusk disappeared altogether she must make the climb back to the ground. She hastily rebraided her hair, curled the braid around her fist, and then tied it up and stuffed it inside the collar of her tunic. She pulled the hood up on the back of her head. Across the horizon only a magenta swath remained, as if the sun had bled out upon the sky.

She turned and knelt, placing her fingers in the handholds. With her left foot she felt for the first of the rungs carved in the side of the bridge, then pushed herself over the edge. At the last moment she gave a final glance up, but Shumyzin remained gray and still.

The way down she took much more slowly and carefully than she had the climb up.

By the time she reached the pier, night owned the sky. All illumination now came from torches and lamps and the crescent of bold Saphon shining over the massive tower. Gyjio still hid behind it.

She easily replaced her mask as she circled the pier and then set off along the street paralleling the tower wall.

People paid her no mind. No one could tell that she among them all had just conversed with a god.

TWO

She was going to be late, but she didn’t care. She picked an outdoor café and sat down, her legs gone weak. The aftershock had caught up with her—the stupefaction of what had happened on the spire. She tried to dismiss its effect upon her, telling herself that because she hadn’t eaten since morning, this was just hunger making her feeble.

She had ample money to pay for a feast but asked only for a single dish of strongly spiced scallops and vegetables stewed over kelp, with some fermented rice wine to steady her nerves. She sat quietly awhile, watching people pass by, sipping her wine. It tingled in her belly, its sizzle reaching to her fingers. Her awe receded, the way the impact of a dream steadily recedes once one awakens.

Shumyzin had been ready to tell her something important. Maybe she could come back tomorrow…although somehow she suspected he would not manifest again, whether the sun fell upon him or not. The rules of things known and unknown were in play, and though she was incognizant of them, she sensed that what he had been about to say fell into the category of things that could not be known until their time.

Her food arrived, and after two mouthfuls she was sniffling merrily from the bite of the spices and washing the fire down with her wine. Though her face flushed with heat from the seasonings, she kept her hood up and her mask on.

On Vijnagar it was not uncommon for people to go about masked. The wealthy in particular did so, sometimes in order to conduct liaisons with lovers who, for one reason or another, might have been inappropriate. As a result, masks had attained fashionability. Many were intricate, sequined, edged in gold, scales, or feathers. A wide variety of them passed by as she ate; jewels and sequins gleamed in the torchlight. Her mask was far simpler—a tight, shiny black cloth with a diamond pattern in the weave; it covered her from the top of her head to the tip of her nose. The idea was not to draw attention to herself. She might easily have been a rich young man disguised to go slumming, and no doubt it was this impression that attracted the tattered procurer who slid onto the bench across from her, crooked his pinkie to his nose, and asked, “Paidika, young master?”

Leodora looked up coldly. He still held his pinkie to his nostril. She set down her spoon, then bit the tip of her thumb and flicked it at him.

The grubby man affected a look of indignation. He bowed a hasty apology and moved off to find a willing client. She watched him glide from table to table, eventually to an elaborately masked couple being led by a hired torchbearer. They discussed his smiling proposition and, to her surprise and disgust, went off with him, dismissing the torchbearer with a coin. It was risky business—the procurer might have been laying a trap to rob and murder them. She noted that both the man and woman wore khanjarli daggers across their bellies. They weren’t fools, whatever else. However, his skimming the area made it likely that the grubby pimp did in truth represent a paidika—a harem of boys. She shuddered at the thought of what such a place, run by so scabrous a creature, must be like.

 . . . . . 

With the meal finished, she stood on stronger legs. The wine and food in her belly gave her a compact, integrated feeling—a feeling that she could do anything. After all, she was a favorite of the gods. She was a great storyteller. And she was now most definitely late. Soter would be wringing his hands in worry that something horrible had befallen her. He always expected disaster. He courted it.

She hailed a girl with a torch, who could not have been more than twelve, and said huskily, “Lotus Hall.” The girl led her down Caritas Avenue. They passed a cluster of other unhired torchbearers, all of them the girl’s seniors, and all of them male. They glowered sullenly. Leodora chuckled.

The girl led her to the open doors, there bowing with proper respect. Leodora smiled and handed her three silver coins, where one was sufficient pay. The child’s eyes grew wide. Leodora leaned down and said, in her own voice, “There, and don’t share any of it with those ruffians we passed.” The girl’s amazement doubled as she realized she’d been leading a woman, who now slipped into the dark interior of Lotus Hall.