The Narrator (49 page)

Thrushchurl and Silichieh have been gathering brush. I numbly rise and help him build the pile. If anyone else has anything to say to me, I don’t hear it. I’m going to burn his body. We build the pile together, and burn Jil Punkinflake on it. I kiss him, right through the fire. There are shouts as they yank me back thumping my uniform where it smoulders.

Makemin’s faceless face appears above me, black eyes through the smoke from Jil Punkinflake’s burning body.

I tell him the road is clear ahead. We can make our way back to it now we’re above the road block. The cemetery is two miles away. My voice is frail and orphaned and shaken. Stumbling blindly, weak in body my sinews are as limp as old rags, and every sensation jabs at my nerves. Makemin’s fist jerks my uniform—

“Which way?” he barks.

I barely notice him.

I’m shaken nearly off my feet, only a doll on wire, “Which way damn you?! We’ve been going in circles again!”

They’re counting.

Now there’s one more, every time.

*

Did I point the way?

We are marching again.

I see feet matching pace with mine, just to my right.

Marching alongside me and in step, but his head is turned toward me, his eyes stare right into mine as the trees and white land flash by behind his head, his lower jaw swaying gently against the dangling tongue.

*

The cemetery appears like a buckle in a belt of trees, all buried hoops of walls with a staggered series of gaps leading through them into the place, big as a city. From it sprouts an hourglass-shaped tower all glistening with pearly mosaic walls, hanging a hundred feet over us, its head brushed by the clouds, its foundation still nowhere near us. Another tower stands further back on the other side, and another further back, still vague in the black mist.

Drawing closer to the outer wall, and this is where the road leads us, a sound rises out of the boom of the wind. The clattering of some cold fire like a halo around us, as if the flames were solid and hard, knocking together. Now it’s also a trickling of dry gravel, each piece scraping another. The outermost ring wall is low and broad, made of what seems to be a single solid piece of pale grey metal, not much higher than a man, but yards thick. At the gap in the ring, the walls are sheared back at an angle, scored over with hairlike lines. The gap is not a complete break—the two ends are linked together with a single, slender, shining silver band that marks the line of the curved threshold of the cemetery. Makemin is the first to cross it.

It’s only in looking back that I realize I stepped over the threshold as well. The rustling sound receded the moment I did it, but it’s still there, more metallic, more focussed. The second wall is tall and lean, made of enamelled metal without a chip or crack. The third wall is like a hedge of woven brass. The spacious expanses between the walls are lined with evenly-spread white pebbles.

The fourth, innermost wall, is made of thin, dark grey metal with a low arch set into it. A boulevard runs into the cemetery, plumb to the mound at the center. We look ahead to the mound, which is topped by an isolated building, and on sight I know that is where we are going. The fire sound is joined by a regular choughing sound, like thick metal pier cables knocking together.

We’re coming up the avenue now. It’s lined with tombs the size of houses, made of metal time has turned to charcoal. They are solid, all cast in one piece without any seam. Filled domes stand on four legs with curved groins over stone platforms all carved with a regular serration pattern like choppy waves. Slots open into what must be shafts set down into the earth, the metal sarcophagi, featureless as eggs, are attached to spindles that rise from the slots, all in the shade of the filled domes. No decorations.

Streets open alternately to the right and left, breaking onto views of undulating ground stretching off into the distance, and narrowing streets of increasingly crowded, boxlike tombs. Very far away I dimly can see where they appear to be piled up on top of each other in heaps.

Thrushchurl walks beside me. While the others look warily for signs of the enemy, he is gazing about himself in awestruck abandon, almost sobbing with emotion. I wish I could feel it. Instead, a fear, like a robe of ice, is cinching and recinching itself around me, dragging the carbine in my hands.

Everywhere there are upright vanes and grills of black charcoal metal that don’t look ornamental. Some are set into blind loops in the walls, others lie on their sides, jutting out like awnings, and others stand upright on rods, like flags. To our left, a low rim of rock slides up out of the earth to form a ramp-shaped caer with grassy sides, and what look like cenotaphs on top of it. A small, circular plaza is set in its lee. The tombs surround the clear space like quaint, well-maintained little houses. The plaza has a metal platter set in its center. There are no tombs set against the base of the caer, and in the corner formed by its straight side and one row of tombs, there stands planted in the grass a whip structure, like a parabolic sheaf of reeds designed to sway and clatter in the wind. They make the cable-knocking sounds. There must be many more of them. That sound comes from everywhere.

Now we are nearer the base of the mound, and the avenue rises very gradually to meet it. Alone at its summit stands a squat tower. The road is taking us directly to it. Looking ahead, I see iron birds perched like statues on the vanes, watching us come. They never seem to move, but their heads are always trained directly on us, motionlessly following us like a portrait’s eyes. The sky is very dark, for daylight, and yet the shadows of the tombs are as deep and broad as if the sun were blazing across the sky at them.

Makemin takes two or three long steps ahead of us, turns stopping in place and raises his hands, calling “Halt!” He stands in one of the shadows of the tombs, and only his outline is visible.

“I will go on with the narrator, Thrushchurl, and Nikhinoch.”

His voice is muffled as though he spoke through a scarf.

Makemin’s silhouette lifts its arm and points off to the left, toward a jutting prominence of rock a few dozen yards away—the only high ground in the vicinity apart from the mound itself.

“Saskia. You take the rest up there and look for the enemy. If you see them near, signal us. If we receive no signal from you, we will go up to the mound.”

“You don’t think we should watch from the mound?” she asks.

“Don’t argue with me!” he snaps. His arm lowered, his form does not move. “On the slopes of the mound you would be too exposed. We four may go up with a better chance of escaping notice if the mound is being watched, and we don’t want to tell them how few we are. We’ve come too far to be sloppy now.”

“Yes, sir,” she says resolutely.

“If you see the enemy, fire on them only if you can get them by surprise. Otherwise, join us on the mound if possible. The wall surrounding the tower should be defensible. You will command these troops. When I return, I will bring back what we need with me.”

Saskia’s face almost glimmers. She salutes Makemin fiercely and turns on the spot.

“Come on—hurry,” she calls, her voice not loud but intense, low and penetrating. We four stand where we are, watching her go. After a few minutes, I can see them appear on the top of the prominence, taking their positions with care. Minutes pass. No signal.

Makemin turns on his heel and strides up toward the mound, which is beginning to loom above us. Its slopes are bare packed earth, and tapering, slender flues of enamelled metal protrude from somewhere deep inside, crowning it about three-quarters of the way up like a ring of spears planted in the ground. Near to me I pass an iron pinecone of skull creches—the dry sockets of the builders don’t stare down on us, the faceless faces of the skulls don’t make expressions for us.

Just at the base of the mound, Makemin leaves the road and moves quickly up its margin, leaning a little forward. We follow him, passing monuments of black glass, formed into bulbs, flat flows and fat rings, looking like bizarre arms with useless articulations. Once inside the crown of flues, I can see the tower is not as large as I believed—what I took for its base is a free-standing round wall closely surrounding it.

The wall glows faintly against black clouds; it looks like polished brass. There is no gate, the wall is simply interrupted. The gap is high and lean. Perhaps a gate had stood here once, and rotted away, but the gleaming wall, the featureless ends, belie that idea.

We enter the enclosure. Though the high walls close out almost all light, there is lush grass growing in the interval of ground around the circular tower. It stirs faintly as we come, though I feel no breeze. The tower is made of something the color of brass and the consistency of marble. It is not quite a cylinder, the circumference at the top, modestly adorned with egg-shaped knobs, seems slightly smaller than it is at the base. There are two narrow windows high above, one facing the gap in the wall, the other looking off toward the city. Otherwise, the tower has no features at all, no joins, only the door, which opens right at ground level. The road’s end is its threshold. There is a lintel of black stone with two thick golden lines across it, and thin raised pilasters, the diameter of a forearm, descending from it down the length of the tall doors. There are two doors, narrow and massive, shining mustard-gold, with heavy diamond-shaped and circular bosses in their panels and upright rail handles.

Makemin seizes the handles and flings the doors back. They swing out toward us in complete silence, onto darkness inside. A billow of tepid air drifts over me, the smell of dust and varnish, and a barely-perceptible sour odor underneath.

We step into palpable silence, dense shadow, and stop. The light from the door barely reaches past our shoulders. We peer together into the dark. After a moment or two, I begin to make out faint reflections high in the air, from some high, curving surfaces. They shine gold. My vision is growing rapidly accustomed to the dark. I begin to see tall, gigantic shapes standing in rows to either side, and a wide openness ahead of us. My vision is not growing rapidly accustomed to the dark—light is very gradually collecting high ahead of us, a shimmer, like a haze of light thrown off by gold coins.

We’re gazing into a chamber of some depth, not especially large, with pillars running along either side of the open space before us, facing a sort of altar or screen opposite us.

A phantom luminosity gathers along the tops of the pillars. Delicate, long-petalled lily-like flowers of milky glass descend in corsage rows and all evenly grow radiant as they come down, filling the upper air with frosty light. The pillars are mineral trees, their branches lunging up into an abyss of darkness overhead, and grey globes dimly floured with pale blue-white light are visible there. A vaster tree stands facing the door, its base surrounded by a low brass wall with panels of white stone. There is a raised apse behind the tree, its rounded surface lined with a rich scarlet tapestry covered with small golden spots. As the light continues to grow, I see the flowers are strung together on weblike golden vines. Thrushchurl gasps and sighs in transports of astonishment moving out into the room, head thrown back. Then he notices something, and I see him tentatively approach an object between the pillars. Between each of the pillars, coffins of gleaming rosewood are standing on simply-carved wooden trestles. The coffins have no lids, and it is plain even from here that human bodies lie naked in them.

The glow intensifies by gentle degrees. Beyond the far end of each coffin there is a rounded opening in the walls, lined from top to bottom with tiny haloed figures, made of some shiny material like colored glass. Each figure is distinct and seems to hover just in front of the wall. The light shines up behind them, and their haloes are angled to catch it and shine gold.

Now the light has reached the floor, and, glancing down, I start and cry out softly, without meaning to. The floor is paved with transparent, tea-yellow hexagonal panels; each panel seals a chamber, like a honeycomb, and in each of them naked corpse lies curled. Thrushchurl immediately drops to his knees and peers down at first one, then another. They are well preserved, only slightly withered, slightly leathery. They have their hair, their nails, noses and ears. The eyes are only slightly sunken, dark eyes like blueberries, visible through the lids. All ages and sexes, all curled naked in their honeycombs.

Makemin suddenly stamps up to Thrushchurl, points in the direction of the large tree, the low brass wall, the white tablets.

“Go, invoke them!”

Thrushchurl looks up at him—I can see his frantic eyes running all over Makemin’s face.

“Hurry!” Makemin orders, his voice sharp.

Thrushchurl goes over to the tree. We all follow, gather near him. I can see him looking at the tree, the white tablets. He has no idea what to do—none of us do. He puts out shaking hands.

“Oh spirits ...” he calls in a trembling voice, the air guttering out of his mouth. I can feel something congealing around Makemin and again the robe of fear that wonder had displaced cinches around me. All the same, I want to laugh. What are we doing here? What are we doing here? My eyes fly here and there looking for any hint or clue I could use, if this place is even the right place, if this is even the right or possible thing to do here, and I see the white panels in the brass wall around the base of the huge tree are covered in Lashlache written in Wiczu characters—immediately I see this I begin to intone them aloud. I have to shove my frail voice out of my mouth through a throat almost sealed with fear and I take Thrushchurl’s shoulders in my hands as I begin—he is half-stooped over—and push him to the side, feeling him go as if I were lightly pushing his floating body across the surface of a pond.