The Place of Stars and Bones Page 8

  The creature’s mouth met the altar with a wet crack. Its teeth caved inwards and a fan of black ichor splashed across the opaline granite. Gurgling, choking on its own blood, the Hermaphrodite’s eyes rolled up into its head and its body went limp. I drew back on its neck and smashed the bridge of its nose into the sharp edge of the altar. Bone and cartilage gave way as more blood spattered the smooth stone. Again I rammed its face against the marble slab, then again and again. When at last the Hermaphrodite’s coun-tenance had been reduced to ragged splinters of bone and flesh I let it slump to the foot of the altar. There it lay in a tangled heap of limbs.

  I looked down upon the Hermaphrodite as more of the dark ichor seeped from its ruined face and puddled on the floor. It lay at an ungainly and awk-ward angle, its arms and legs twisted under it. Upon viewing my handiwork I half expected the nausea to return, but it did not. There was only a sense of indignation, a feeling that everything I saw before me, every inch of the soaring cathedral down to the flagg-ing below my feet, was naught but a lie.

  “Mock the Rider and the Boatman all you like,” I said to the crumpled body before me. “Call them polarized and weak; it does not matter. Whatever perceived faults you think they may possess I found their company far superior to yours.”

  The corpse did not deign to respond.

  The grating of stone on stone was at first so faint that I was not sure I had heard anything at all. As the noise increased, dust began to sift down from the overhanging statuary. It fell about me in fine rivulets, coating my head and shoulders.

  I brushed the particles from my hair and stepped to the side. More movement from the direction of the altar drew my gaze. I watched as the blood and teeth ejected from the Hermaphrodite’s mouth danced up-on its marble surface. My eyes went wide as both teeth and gore first oozed together, then were sucked down into the thrumming stone.

  Abruptly, I took two quick steps back.

  The vibrations increased and the sound of stone grinding on stone grew louder still. With a tremen-dous crash the massive, vaulted chamber in which I stood began to come apart. The statues that extended upwards from the apse broke away from one another, their limbs moving and contorting as though they might be alive. I turned my gaze to the ceiling and watched as the dome above the altar split along hid-den seams and the suspended statues slunk away from the widening gap.

  Mist spilled in through the opening created by this segmentation. It wound its way around my legs and flowed down the steps and over the supine body of the Hermaphrodite. Across the tiled floor and around the plinths of the statues that stood in double rows it swirled, filling the cathedral.

  I turned back towards the opening that now yaw-ned behind the altar and watched as the last of the moving statues reconfigured themselves into a tor-mented halo around the portal. The mist continued to spill through, writhing as it moved along the floor. I waited, hand on sword hilt.

  I was greeted only by a faint blue glow.

  As pale and thin as gossamer, the light illumin-ated the last trailing tendrils of fog. As I watched they began to fade. Moving cautiously I stepped forward into that azure pool.

  I had no doubt that this was what the Hermaph-rodite had spoken of; not just as metaphor, but an actual physical presence. This was something real, something tangible.

  The Pattern.

  It was the center of this world, the nexus that had drawn me across the wastes, over the lifeless sea, and through the necropolis. This place of stars and bones, of swirling mist and twisting avenues, was hung from its spirals.

  As realization dawned a new flood of images swept past my mind’s eye, blowing like leaves in an autumn wind. I watched them swirl about, the exper-iences and their contingent emotions flowing over me, through me. I understood why I had come to this place, what it was I sought.

  ──╥──

  seven

  ──╨──

  Rain pelted the battlements, the trenches below, and the hastily constructed bulwarks that sheltered us from arrow and ballista fire. The trenches ran like muddy rivers; rubbish, filth, and the remains of the dead tumbling through the network of manmade chasms. Water cascaded from drains set along the dis-tant fortress walls, spilling from the mouths of leering gargoyles mortared between the crenellations. The rain fell on besiegers and the besieged alike, meting out suffering in equal measure.

  I looked up towards the men stationed on the wall, the points of their helmets visible above the sca-rred ramparts. They stood with spears in hand, staring down at the maze of trenches below. None moved.

  I shifted from one foot to the other, the mud sucking at my boots. From off to my left I heard the sound of a harsh, phlegm-filled cough. It came from the cluster of men huddled behind a lattice of split logs and woven bark. A collection of arrows and javelins were lodged in the face of the bulwark, some as long as a man was tall. Unlike stone fortifications the lattice was light enough to be hoisted and moved, providing cover for advancing troops. For now it stood just out of crossbow range, acting as a temp-orary shelter from the rain.

  The man that had coughed dredged mucus from his throat and spat. I averted my eyes and looked back towards the soldiers positioned on the wall above.

  The previous night they had sent their cavalry at as, men and horses spilling from the open gate into the sodden twilight. We set the butts of our spears and halberds into the mud, meeting their charge head on. Animals and riders alike broke upon the upturned blades. As they died their blood mingled with the mud, tinting it the color of rust. With their charge broken and in disarray we set upon the cavalrymen with sword and axe. We drove our blades into armpit, neck, and groin; wherever their armor was weakest. They struggled and thrashed like crabs turned on their backs, their steel plate weighing them down, pulling them into the morass. We slew them to a man.

  That night the rain had washed their blood from the field. In the new light of day the carnage of the night before was indistinguishable from the months of accumulated death and decay that lay ubiquitously on all sides. The bodies of men and horses wallowed half-sunken in the mud; so much forsaken meat, gristle, and bone. Rusted armor and weapons, over turned wagons and broken siege engines protruded from the muck, strewn about like the cast off toys of monstrous children.

  The soldier coughed again and I blinked, pulling my gaze from the sprawled wreckage below.

  “Sir?” asked my lieutenant. He stood behind me, shifting uneasily from foot to foot.

  I peered over my shoulder. “Bring them up,” I said, my voice barely audible over the rain. Now that the moment was upon me I felt weak, my legs barely able to hold me upright.

  “Very good, sir,” said the lieutenant, turning and moving off towards our lines.

  For several interminable minutes I stood and wat-ched the soldiers atop the wall through the curtain of rain. They in turn regarded me, their faces implacable. I wondered if they had begun to hunt rats for food. By this time the dogs and cats must have already been eaten and the last of their horses had died on the field. Soon their only recourse would be to catch the vermin that scurried over the bodies and refuse we had heaved over their walls.

  The sound of shuffling feet accompanied by the clank of chains signaled the return of the lieutenant. With him would be several dozen men and women, nobles from good houses with fine pedigrees. They had been collected months ago, collected and coffled like prized livestock. Now they stood before me in chains, their fine cloths soaked through and awash in filth.

  There was a snicker from one of the men to my left. I could feel his eyes on me.

  “Wait,” I said. My voice was steady though my throat felt as though it might collapse in on itself. I could feel my pulse pounding in my temples.

  The snicker came again, followed by a restless stir-ring of armored men.

  The column of sodden and bedraggled prisoners shambled slowly by. They dragged their feet as they came, leaving long furrows in the mud. At their head strode the lieutenant. As they passed, the
men that sheltered under the lattice rose and followed in their wake. Steadily the column trudged across the last of the rough wooden bridges that spanned the forward-most trenches. They stopped just shy of the pro-truding shafts that littered the no-man’s-land between our lines and the imposing bulk of the wall. At the base of the curtain were heaped scores of men. The wall itself was stained with their blood.

  Time and again we had been pushed from the ramparts, repulsed by men whose haunted eyes shone with the light of desperation. They gored us with spears, filled us with arrows, crushed us with stones. We fell from the battlements to the mud below.

  Several sorties had been sent to recover our dead. Few returned from these excursions, most having been cut down by archers on the wall above. We left the crumpled bodies of our dead to swell and bloat in the rain. After a time the corpses burst, their viscera spilling through gaps in their armor. By the time the first month of fighting had drawn to a close no more sorties were sent to gather our dead.

  Kicked and shoved into place, the nobles and their women were arranged before the wall in a rough line and forced to their knees. As one they splashed into pools of churned muck, the soldiers standing silently over them. The nobles’ heads were bowed, eyes star-ing at nothing.

  “Sir?” asked the lieutenant.

  I did not respond.

  “Sir?” he called again.

  I remained motionless, staring at the backs of the men and women who knelt before the wall.

  Shaking his head the lieutenant made his way back across the rickety bridge. The wood clattered beneath his iron-shod boots. Once he stood by my side he said in a low voice, “Sir, the Prince…”

  “The Prince,” I echoed my eyes still fixed on the wall before me.

  For a time we stood unspeaking, the sound of the rain and the water rushing through the trenches filling the empty space around us.

  The lieutenant looked to the battlements. “They’re watching. They know what’s coming.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, then shut it again. I could find no words to voice the maelstrom of emo-tion that churned in my breast.

  “The Prince,” said the lieutenant, “he’s watching as well. He gave us his orders…”

  I clenched my jaw, grinding my teeth. I wanted to scream, to cry out, to denounce the Prince and his orders. Instead I nodded.

  The lieutenant returned the nod, then set off acr-oss the trench. He clapped one of the soldiers that stood over the line of nobles on the shoulder. As he turned to glance at the lieutenant I saw that the man was grinning.

  “The men first,” said the lieutenant over the rain. “The women after.”

  He drew an axe from his belt. The other soldiers followed suit, unsheathing weapons that shone dully in the half-light. I raised my eyes to the clouds over-head.

  • • •

  Stars…I could not remember the last time I had seen the stars. They shone high and bright; jewels scattered across the night sky. Errant wisps of cloud scuttled past, the last remnants of the storms that had lingered for weeks. Or had it been months? I could not recall. It seemed as though the clouds had always been the-re, hanging low overhead, spilling their contents like blood from a wound.

  Around me were the sounds of men talking in low voices and the sputter and crackle of cookfires. The leaping flames mirrored the stars overhead, tiny pin-points of light scattered across a dark empyrean.

  Somewhere water dripped from the canvas of a tent or the scaffolding of a dormant siege engine. I listened to its steady patter, my heart pounding in rhythm.

  A few of the men had begged and pleaded. These had raised their hands as the blades fell, the offending limbs hacked through and shorn away. The women had wailed, throwing themselves at the soldiers. They had been cast aside, ignored until the last of the noblemen was reduced to carrion.

  I wondered what it was the Prince thought he had accomplished with this slaughter. Many of the nobles had been kin or liege-lords to the men that still mann-ed the battlements. They had watched mutely as their patricians were cut down. In response the gates had not been flung open. There had been no answering volley from the wall. The men atop the ramparts re-mained stolid even as the women were stripped, their white flesh shining in stark contrast to the surround-ing landscape of brown and gray.

  A cup clattered to the ground, its owner cursing the loss of his drink. His fellows laughed.

  All through the camp there was an air of antici-pation. The clouds had lifted; the prisoners had been dealt with. The Prince was well pleased. Surly the men who stubbornly manned the walls before us would soon give up their doomed resistance. Surly the city would soon fall.

  I turned from the camp and gazed towards the battlements. On the wall torches had been lit. They were few in number. Their flickering glow shone from the blades of spears and from rain-spattered helmets. Even in the dark of night men guarded the walls. They had not been swayed by the acts of cruelty they had witnessed.

  I rose and began to walk.

  To my left loomed the wall, to my right the myriad twinkling cookfires. Slowly I trudged between tents and barricades, around siege engines, and over tren-ches. I wound my way around racks of spears and flights of arrows, piles of munitions for the catapults and ballista.

  I had given the order and they had died, one after another, butchered like cattle.

  My boots squelched in mud, clattered over shod-dily constructed walkways. In my chest my heart con-tinued to pound. Try as I might I could not quell its thudding.

  I had done what the Prince had ordered.

  I skirted a tent alive with the sounds of a dice game. Men cheered and jostled as they rolled. Money exchanged hands. I could see their silhouetted shapes moving against the sodden canvas. From another tent came the sound of snores, deep and resonant. The men who occupied the tent slept soundly, secure in the knowledge, they had done their duty.

  Of them all it was the woman who remained at the forefront of my mind. She had dragged herself to the corpse of her man, intestines trailing from her slit belly. As she laid her head upon his chest a wisp of a smile had played at the corners of her mouth.

  Try as I might I could not banish the image.

  Her man was dead, her insides trailing out behind her. What possible reason could she have had for all-owing that wisp of a smile?

  I did not know.

  I continued to walk, passing the inner defenses of the camp. I was challenged once by a sentry. He let me pass, saluting as I trudged by. The soldiers who manned the outer stockade did not speak as I moti-oned that the gate should be opened. They would not question an officer.

  Outside our hastily constructed fortifications the air was damp and cold. In the wan light of the torches set along our stockade I could see my breath as it bill-owed about my head and shoulders.

  Again I raised my eyes to the stars. They glistened, immaculate in their remote heaven. I began to walk, moving north into the wilderness.

  ──╥──

  eight

  ──╨──

  Overhead soared vaulted ceilings held aloft by a latt-ice of Gothic arches. To either side ranks of columns wrought with the same craven images of mutilation and self-debasement leered down at me. At my feet swirled a bizarre motif; a pattern cut directly into the stone floor. It filled the space behind the altar, stret-ching from wall to wall. The image faded into the dis-tance, disappearing into an azure haze that hung just above the floor.

  I took several steps closer, then halted. My hand fell from the hilt of my sword.

  Squinting, I peered more closely at the Pattern. The design had been cut from the living rock, gouged centuries ago into the smooth surface of the floor. Its edges were jagged, its knotted spirals falling over and around one another. Here, a leg of the pattern shot gracefully forward, its arching progress confident and assured, only to end abruptly; there, an undersized and erratic dog-leg suddenly blossomed, growing to dominate the chiseled edifice. This design, this Pat-tern, was harsh and
strange, composed of devices that were as alien as they were irrational. I found it to be at once repugnant and fascinating. It was not lost on me that the motifs scrawled on the Rider, the Boat-man, and the Hermaphrodite bore more than a pass-ing resemblance to the thing that sprawled before me.

  I put one foot forward, then hesitated. I stood still, the toes of my boot nearly touching the jagged spiral. Behind me I could hear more dust sifting down from the now immobile statuary. It whispered across the stone floor and drifted about my ankles. I drew a deep breath and asked myself if I should heed the Hermaphrodite’s words. Should I place my foot along the twisting design and walk the Pattern?

  The creature had claimed that my capitulation was necessary if ever I was to find absolution…that my long trek through the wilderness would not have been in vain. It had said that I must obey. It had said that I must subject myself to whatever miseries this strange mark deigned to inflict upon me. Should I walk the Pattern, it had claimed that I would be inexorably changed and all would be made clear. I would be able to shed the weakness of my flesh. I would be redeem-ed. So the creature had said.

  No.

  I drew the toe of my boot back from the edge.

  I would not walk the Pattern.

  I had not come here to allow that twisted thing to dictate my course of action. Though it was true I had felt drawn to this place, I had not come at the behest of the Rider, the Boatman, or the Hermaphrodite. Perhaps I did seek absolution. Perhaps something deep within me thought the answers might lie here, within the necropolis. What I had found, however, was a lacuna; an empty space where there was no salvation, no clemency, no redress.

  I was but one of many, a horde too numerous to count. Most had fallen on the karstic plain or drown-ed in the lifeless sea. Of the few who had made it far enough to enter the upper city, how many had suc-cumbed to the Hermaphrodite’s poisoned tongue? Of those who had, those who walked the Pattern, how many had partaken of the knife, carving their own flesh to suit the whims of a hollow covenant? Perhaps they had joined with the emptiness behind the altar, losing themselves in the fallacy preached by the crea-ture. Perhaps none had ever made it far enough to walk the Pattern. There was no way of knowing. All that was left to me was to follow my own instincts; to live these next few moments by whatever precepts, whatever covenant I so chose.