Apotheosis: Stories of Human Survival After the Rise of the Elder Gods (11 page)

Eliza squealed as the spider twisted her one way and then another so that the Empress could examine her with cool jade eyes. “Is this what I have been given, for my sacrifice? Is this what we must become? Satyrs and dryads?”

The hounds drifted closer, dripping glowing foam on the huddled, watching masses below. “No. No, I’ll not have it. I’ll not trade in my silks and combs for a matted mane and cloven hooves. There is some other way. Some other method. We will begin again. We have the rest of forever to do the deed.”

Eliza’s struggles grew in ferocity. The sky was just there, just out of reach. If she could just –

“We will strip it down. Mine it for the strong links and start again. Perhaps less of the Whateley, and more of the Marsh. Less of the Lurker and more of the Sleeper. We will find the right mix. We will survive.” The Empress’ voice rang out across the rooftops, artificially boosted by the spiders. Below there was scattered cheering.

Above, only silence. Eliza looked up through the haze of black that was collapsing her vision and saw Them looking down through the Curtain, the way the men in the butcher’s smocks had looked down at her in her birthing crèche. Watching. Waiting to see... what?

“Through you,” the Empress continued, “We will survive.”

“Yes,” Eliza said. “We will.” And she struck out with her horns, bashing through the steel of the spider’s skull and smashing its brain-cylinders into flopping shrapnel. It reared in artificial agony and released her. She kicked out, shoving it off. It fell, jerking and thrashing onto the catwalk below, splitting it and hurling screaming people into the maw of the city.

The Empress’ hologram flickered and re-appeared above a second spider, but Eliza was already moving. She ignored the screams and curses behind her and scrambled up the Curtain. Her fingertips popped and bled, and her hoof-pads blistered and curled, but she kept climbing, certain now.

Above, they waited for her. Waiting to see whether she too could burst free of her bonds, whether she too could escape her prison and run loose on the hills of men. Bright, massive star-things bent low over the city, like children over an ant hill. Wilbur and the others whispered in her ear, urging her on. Escape was within her reach.

Behind her, the
Tind’losi
raged on, outpacing the spiders. They bled out of the right angles, trying to cut her off, to her back. But she was too close now, too fast. Eliza scrambled up onto the lip of the Curtain and extended her arms, reaching for the forces that watched. Garbled non-words sprang into her mind and from her lips, words she had been born to say. They flew like arrows into the maelstrom above, driven by the desperation of multitudes and a dozen lifetimes of instinct. The hounds fled, whimpering like whipped dogs as she called out the names of her fathers and her mothers and the sky suddenly roiled and bulged with
attention
. Vast faces, miles across and indescribable, peered at her with alien curiosity.

A gentle wind whipped her crinkly hair about her face and in her head the voices grew still as another voice, deep and sonorous like a giant’s heartbeat overrode them. It spoke no language she recognized, but she exulted nonetheless in its familiarity. The wind picked up and then she was rising, her hooves leaving the uncomfortable solidity of the city.

And as Eliza rose, the last scrapes of her albino flesh melted away into the black between the stars.

by June Violette

“Beyond the Mountains that Rend the Sky, there is a valley where no foot has tread since long before the nightmares walked in our midst. In this valley, there is a silent elfin wood where not even mice and chough break the stillness. Hidden in this wood, there is a temple that has lain quiet and forgotten for as long as our kind have dreamed. And in that temple there is a box – a plain wooden box, lacquered in black. And that box contains the oldest key, which opens the way to the very heart of the world.”

I first saw her at the Morning Market. She sat cross-legged atop an old wooden crate between a blind man enthusiastically selling the Fruit That Brings Dreams of Remorse and the old brick road from the world that used to be, an old rifle in her lap and an intractable smile on her thin lips. She had an audience, though they were mostly children, crows and pigeons that picked the bones of the dead on the periphery of civilization.

She wasn't much older than her rapt disciples. She had the sort of face that might've been twelve years old or might've been less with the grime washed away. But there was so much more to her than her years – more to her than the child's body and gentle voice, more to her than the cut of her ragged clothes or the battered state of the Winchester that rested across her lap, more to her than the story of impossible places she told to the children around her.

She bore the same scars anyone her age might: the scars of violence and sacrifice. Her dark olive skin was caked in mud, filth, and engine grease, and marked with the tolls of the roads few living souls still dared to travel. She might have seemed entirely ordinary, like any other young outlander, but for her eyes, dark and bright and faraway, still shining with the glimmer of
hope
that no child ever keeps into her adulthood.

I first saw her at the Morning Market, and that was the moment I first believed.

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*

By sunset, her crowd had gone, and the Morning Market with it. Darkness brought with it blood and terror. Already, I could hear the ululating shrieks of nightmares splitting the chill air, and the cries of the tormented who strayed too far from the roads and too late into the evening. I'd have hurried on to shelter and whatever meager safety it could offer me, but she caught my eye a second time, still sitting cross-legged atop her battered crate.

She sat in silence, polishing the barrel of her rifle with a dirty rag, as though she was oblivious to the danger closing in upon her with every passing moment.

“You are out late,” she said, without looking up from her work.

“And so are you,” I replied.

“I do not fear what waits in the darkness. Nor should any of us. The world was not always like this, rotted with fear and stalked by nightmares. It remains so because we allow it to. What have we to fear from nightmares?”

It was strange and unsettling, how she seemed unmoved by the predatory calls of the night's creatures punctuating her words.

“I've seen what those nightmares do to the ones they catch. It is well that we fear them, lest none of us survive them.”

“They do only as we expect them to. You must not fear. It is fear that they feed upon, and it is fear that gives them power over us. I do not fear them. I mean to end them.”

I couldn't help but smile. She was only a child, and I was growing increasingly certain she was mad. But I admired her earnestness and her courage. Though I'd lived a longer life than most, I'd rarely seen much of either.

“The nightmares are our gods, little one. How is it that one ends the gods?”

“Tehillim,” she said, curtly.

“What?”

“My name is Tehillim. Not
little one
.”

“Tehillim. You have my apologies.”

“I will find the temple in the dead forest in the valley across the mountains. I will claim the key that opens the way to the heart of the world. And I will use it to open the way.”

She believed it – every word she said. I was fascinated by her tale, strange though it seemed; I could not look away. I could not close my ears.

“At the citadel in the heart of the world, I will ask an audience with the Painted Woman Who Sleeps Below, as our ancestors once did, countless generations past. I will ask her to allow hope into the world, as she did once before. And in payment I will offer to her the stories that my mother told me, that her mother told her, and her mother before that. I will not return from the citadel. So I share what I know with all who will listen. And when I've gone, perhaps, you will share
my
story.”

Presently, she glanced up towards the sky, as calm as ever. “Look – it is dark. You should seek shelter.”

The night had crept in quietly while we spoke. I nodded in silent assent and hurried on my way. Tehillim may not have felt cause to fear the darkness, but I had never strayed so far past the setting of the sun before. I knew as well as anyone what fate awaited me if the nightmares caught me before I reached the meager safety of my home.

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*

Morning came, and with it came the somber accounting of the night's losses. The Morning Market was never calm, never subdued, always a jumbled bedlam of survivors and saints, madmen and mourners, the truest vestige of civilization that still breathed in the Hills Beneath the Mountains that Rend the Sky. Sometimes, the Market even saw visitors, caravansers and merchants from the south passing through to the east, or from the east passing through to the south.

Even so, every morning, we paid respect to those who did not return to the rattle and hum of the Market. The fruit-merchant was gone, and with him the bleak dreams that he sold all wrapped up in tart violet flesh. So, too, the ancient, ageless woman who distilled sweet red liquor from the roots of the Thorned Tree That Poisons the Mind. The places they had occupied a day before now held only folded squares of white cloth, a mark to remember where they had once stood: throughout the day, those close to the lost left offerings of pure water, locks of hair, conch shells.

Come tomorrow, their places would be filled again with new faces seeking to carve a life out of the Market.

The Morning Market was never calm, but still, I was surprised by the scene that unfolded before me. I laid out the wares I laid every day, beads of broken glass from before the Nightmares. Some clean, some dirty, some clear, some brilliantly colored. Simple tokens though they might have been, there was always a want for such reminders of
yesterday
. There was always a need for artifacts of the world before.

Across the old brick road, a stranger traded words with the fearless woman who wrested black-scaled fish from the river of gold. He had the look of a salt-trader, and the dark, wavy hair of a man from far to the south. I could not make out what they said, but I could see her refuse whatever it was he requested, and I saw the anger rising from his shoes.

He produced a long knife from somewhere I couldn't see, and was upon the fishmonger in the space of a heartbeat. I like to think I would've intervened, had it not happened so quickly. I like to think I'd have had the wits and the reflexes to save her. I know I never would have.

Tehillim did. Her voice rang out cold and clear in the winter air, and froze the salt-trader a hair's breadth from the fishmonger's heart. Indeed, the whole of the Market froze, the thrum of mercantile silent in the wake of her first word.

“Stop.” Tehillim stood a half-dozen paces from the two, the weathered stock of the rifle settled comfortably against her shoulder. For a long moment, only the rustle of wind through the tattered hem of her faded raatuk broke the stillness.

“Your dispute is not worth your life, nor hers, nor mine. We are too few, and our comforts too scarce. The nightmares crave blood and sorrow. We must not give them what they want so easily.”

I worried for her, in the interminably long seconds that followed. She was a child, and the salt-trader a man much larger than her, and he was fast. He might have closed the distance between them before she could even fire a shot. He might have hurled his knife, or wrestled her down, or broken her. He was a stranger, armed and angry, not raised with the laws of the Morning Market. Without a thought and without regret, he might have killed the strange young outlander with hope in her eyes.

Instead, he lowered his knife, then dropped it, then took a few hesitant steps back and away. Tehillim nodded to him, and lowered her rifle. The salt-trader spoke a few words of muted apology to the fishmonger, and as quickly as it had calmed, the Market rumbled to life again.

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*

“I could not have shot him even if I wanted to.” As she had the night before, she sat atop her old wooden crate, polishing the barrel of her rifle with a soiled rag. “I have no shells, and neither shot nor powder to fill them even if I had. It is not a weapon so much as a symbol. It is a reason for men to listen to me.”

Unlike the prior night, I had sought her out as the Market died down for the evening and the sun began its descent. The roads still frightened me in the darkness, as they ever had and as they ever would, but the strange little girl with hope in her eyes intrigued me far more.

“How did you know he would stop?”

“I did not.”

“What if he had attacked you?”

“I would most likely have died.” Her answer caught me off-guard. It was earnest and strangely more grounded than anything I had heard her say before. “But he did stop, and he did not attack me. So why should I be concerned with what might have been?”

“You are very brave. Braver, I think, than anybody I have ever met. But if you are not careful, Tehillim, if you do not live, then who will journey to the Citadel at the Heart of the World, and who will trade your mother's stories for hope with the Painted Woman Who Sleeps Below?”

I realized then, for the first time, that I believed her stories, every word of them. And that I wanted to believe in her. I had not ever believed in something before, save for what I could see with my own eyes, touch with my own hands.

“If I do not live, there will be another – there is always another. Perhaps she will come in days, or years, or lifetimes, but she will come, as I have.” Tehillim smiled at me, then. Her teeth were still a child's teeth, and two were missing, their replacements not yet grown in. “The valley I seek, it was once known as Sambhala. Many thousands of men, wise and foolish, ancient and young, passed into dust in search of this place, and none ever found it. I do not know that I will, either. There are, after all, many valleys hidden away within the Mountains that Rend the Sky. Most are alive, thriving and vibrant. And when darkness falls upon them, they are the domain of nightmares.

“Where I go, no living creature draws breath, and no nightmares have ever set foot. Where I go, there is only peace.”

To hear her describe the valley again, there seemed a magic to it. I had never known a place where the nightmares did not venture. And had I been braver, I might even have asked to go with her. But I did not. Even then, I was old – and I was afraid. Even with the ululating howls of immortal horrors hanging heavy in the cold night air, there was comfort here, and familiarity.

So as I had the night before, I bid the strange girl called Tehillim a safe night, and I hurried home through the darkness. Although the piercing cries of the nightmares sang closer to me than they ever had before, they did not find me. They did not claim me.

When I slept, I dreamed uneasily, visited by an inhuman woman, painted red and gold, holding a painted box that held a painted key.

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*

The morning was nearing its end when I finally arrived at the Market the next day. I had no mementos of the times before to sell, and even if I had, the ritual and rote of trading beauty for sustenance was far from my mind that day. Even had I wished to, I'd not have sold a bead; I arrived to chaos and commotion on the old brick thoroughfare.

The crowd was exuberant, torn between terror and excitement and uncertainty. I sought a better vantage, pushed and shouldered my way through other bodies until I could see what held everyone's attention so raptly, fearing what I might find when I did.

It was not what I had feared, but neither was it something I had ever hoped to see. A great black cat lay dead on the road. At first, I thought it simply a lowland hunter wandered too far into the hills. Too quickly, I realized it was not.

The beast had no fur; instead, it had a tarred, viscous skin that even now seemed to be bubbling away like boiling oil. Neither did it have the fangs of a wild beast – rather, its dead mouth was filled with thin, writhing tendrils that still wriggled like dying worms in a summer flood.