The Iron Ship (8 page)

“Give us a story, your divinity!” someone shouted.

“Yes, yes! A story!” someone else joined in. The request was taken up by many. Eliturion raised his mighty hands and smiled a smile, outwardly benevolent, forcefully demanding of calm.

“Really now?” he said indulgently.

“Yes!” the crowd shouted. “A story!”

Eliturion would give them a story, he always did. But even for a god as diminished as he the ritual question had to be asked, and ritual, minor objections raised, before he made a great show of giving in.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Eliturion.

“A story!” they roared.

“Well,” he said, signalling to Ellany for another drink. He scratched under his nose, a merchant’s gesture. “Drama is my second domain, drinking being my first.”

“Hooray!” the crowd shouted.

“Quieten down now,” he said. Ellany wheeled his drink over on a barrow, a more modest one-gallon pot. He nodded gratefully, lifted it, and took a long pull. The crowd waited. And then he began.

“The question you’ve got to ask yourself is,” he said, “where does a story start? I’m sure you have your ideas; with a great event, perhaps. A battle, or a catastrophe; with fiery rains and titanic waves, the gnashing of teeth and the end of an empire. Or if you are of gentler humour, something less dramatic: a conversation, or a conversion. Or a bet! Yes, a wager!” he said, his face lifting as if he had hit upon the very thing. But it fell again. “No, no. That will not do. Maybe you would consider the fundamentals of life. A marriage, a birth... A death, although that is more of an ending.”

“Give us a battle!” shouted something.

“Tell us about Res Iapetus and the driving of the gods!” said another.

“Hush, hush now, I’m telling this, not you, and tales of old Res put me out of sorts. Where was I?” He hunkered down conspiratorially. The crowd’s members drew in closer, many dragged their stools over as close as they could to Eliturion’s table. Conversation tailed off to a murmur, then an attentive quiet, rich with belches and winy breath. “There have been those of my priests, when I still had priests, who maintained stories have a force of their own, that they are separate from what, for wont of a better term, I am forced to call by modern sophists, ‘reality’, although from my perspective it’s all much the same. These priests had it that stories are dangerous things. Far more than a novelty or a moral message, they become something separate, a law to themselves, an artistic rather than objective truth that is as powerful as a stone cold fact. Not a lie, not at all. A subjective actuality, if you will, with a power all its own.” He paused. “It’s all shit, but a pretty idea.”

“You’re drunk!” shouted someone.

“And so are you,” the god retorted, pointing a finger. “But I have wisdom enough to know what I am talking about, whereas you are a nincompoop. And tomorrow I’ll still be drunk.” The crowd laughed. “Stories catch people up in them, yes; in the wildest sense people and stories feed off each other—people push stories onto one another, and so stories inform the fate of nations. A mage pushes his will onto the world by telling himself lies so convincing they become true, and so all stories have their power. The fundamental of it is that without people there would be no stories at all. You people give the world form through stories, and that makes people the more important to me, you understand? The world sometimes looks like it works to the rules of every legend you ever read, but who’s to say it isn’t the other way round? Because it is; I should know.

“It’s just that the ‘world’—not that I like the exclusivity of that term either—is a damn sight more complicated than you people will ever understand. Your appreciation of what this”—he cast his eyes heavenward and gestured to the rafters. Three dozen pairs of eyes rolled up, and saw stars among the smoke there—“this bauble of a universe is, is defined by the stories you tell to explain it. And by that I mean your creeds, you sciences, your philosophies, your faulty, faulty memories and recollections...”

“Eh?” said somebody. Someone else farted. Acclaim and disgust were shouted equally at him.

“What? What do I mean?” he shouted at the man who said “eh?” “Why, you goodman are a collection of stories that you have told yourself, nothing more. On occasion, your stories embrace a greater part of the truth, but never yet has one contained the whole, and never will one do so. That is why you will never understand, no more than the inhabitants of an anthill will understand the world beyond their nest, not matter how mighty tall it may become, or how involuted the motions acted out within.”

“Rubbish!” shouted someone. Such barracking was also part of the ritual of the Nelly Bold, hallowed by time since the inn had been built, when Eliturion, small and broken, had come in, draggled by rain and rejection for his first drink.

“People!” he declaimed, one fat finger in the air. “People tell stories. People are stories. People come first, and stories later. People are more important, that’s my opinion. I’m the god of fucking stories, and I know best.” He belched. The crowd cheered. “That’s probably why I am still here when my brothers and sisters are not.”

“Give us a story, you old windbag!” shouted someone. Others laughed. The more sober they were, the more nervous their laughter. Most laughed fearlessly.

Eliturion clapped. “You wanted a story, and then you shall have one. We are gods and are not affected in the same way as you mortals are by pernicious narrative. You should be wary what you ask of me, but now it is too late. So be it! Take your piece, and be wary of it.”

He lowered his voice.

“This story is about six people, six siblings. They’re at the heart of all this, so it’s them we’ll name as our principal dramatis personae, to use the Old Maceriyan term.”

“Who? Who? Which brothers?”

“I said siblings, you arse! And if you do me the courtesy and wait, then you shall find out! That is the simplest precept of the story! Listen, and discover!” His eyes flashed, the questioner quailed. “So, where to start? We talked about births. So, do you start with their births? And if so, of which sibling? The first? She’s a woman. Not to be discounted on that fact, although her father already has. Or the oldest son? He’s mad, but not so much as he believes, so perhaps not. Or the fourth? He plays the major role, at least for a while. Or the sixth? Sweet Rel with the world about to smash down on his shoulders, perhaps we should start with
his
birth?”

One of the patrons, ensconced away from the racket in his own high-backed booth, empty but for him despite the press, pricked up his ears. He had five siblings. He regarded himself mad. He had a brother named Rel. Such was Eliturion’s way to snare his listeners, often his stories concerned those who listened, though rarely did those whose lives were detailed dare reveal themselves. There had been suicides over it. The god drew no sanction over this. He was, after all, a god. No prison could hold him.

Very well, tonight was his night. As a teller of tales himself, Guis Kressind grudgingly appreciated the attention. He leaned forward to better hear what slander Eliturion would offer his family. For had the god not already intimated, that all stories are by nature lies? A truth he held fast to. It allowed him to hate his own work and not despair.

“Do you go back, look at their father in his prime, all arrogant and ambitious and dangerous? Do you go back to his father, or his mother, to see what made him that way? Or further, to whenever poor, impoverished so-and-so of so-and-so saved a lord which won a favour which granted a licence which garnered some wealth and set these six up for their privileged lives, five generations later? Don’t you think that would belittle the story of so-and-so, making his story only a backdrop on the stage for a story you happen to be more interested in? Unfair, goodmen and goodwomen! Unfair!” He sniffed thoughtfully. Eliturion never was one to allow a drama go unpaused. Guis thought him quite the worst actor in the Off Parade. “His story is quite a tale, actually. Who are you to weigh one life’s worth against another? Nobody, that’s who.”

“And what’s your qualification?”

“Shut up, idiot, he’s a god!”

“He’s a drunk more like!”

Eliturion smiled. “I am both. And the goodman there is correct. I am not qualified to judge, and that’s also a truth. But you asked for a story, and I choose the story to tell, so be quiet.”

He began again, and his voice boomed. “Do you go back to times when the Old Maceriyans ruled the Earth and there were a damn sight more gods around than there are now? Or back before, to the first men, of before that to the days of the Morfaan, or even before the gods were born, when dark titans subjugated the Earth and wild magic ran as quicksilver across burning skies?

“Yes yes, the gods were born. No, they didn’t create the world. Some of them used to say they did, before old Res Iapetus drove them away, but that’s not true. A god’s as much a part of the world as a man, perhaps less so, because a god doesn’t make stories, he’s just
in
them, a god is
made
by stories. Even me.”

“But you’re telling it,” said a youth at the god’s table, flush with drink and enraptured.

Eliturion dropped his head level with the youth’s own. “Marvellous! A finer level of idiot here this evening. Well done. See lad, I didn’t make this story, I’m only
telling
it.” He frowned and shouted at a man at the back. “Hey, you, yeah you. Are you paying attention?”

The man nodded quickly, eyes wide as a rabbit’s before the hawk.

“Good.” Eliturion sprawled back. His gut forced the table across the floor with a wooden groan. “We could of course take another path back, to whatever muddy little ball the ancestors of men first dragged themselves up onto two feet, or to when the ancestors of the ancestors of men swapped flippers for feet, gills for lungs. That happened, incredible though it may sound to you. Your lot will figure that our eventually, and I’ll be long gone by the time you do. Go back. Back to the birth of the world. This one, or that one, doesn’t matter. Or that time when the stars the worlds turn about first burst into light. Back, back, back, back, back, all the way to the one and only real beginning there is, when there was nothing. When there was only thought without will and all was formless and then light and fury and then... Oh! There was something. A whole lot of something.” He gazed thoughtfully over the heads of the crowd. A gulp of beer brought him back. “That’s not for the telling. It’d take as long as the universe is old, perhaps longer, what with a few embellishments and all.”

Through the window, people bustled about the square and the narrow alleys of the Off Parade, intent on pleasure. Inside the Nelly Bold, all had fallen quiet. “You have to take a stand! You have to pin them down! Stories! They’re not alive as such, but they have the seeming of it, and that’s as dangerous as alive, if not more. Think on this, how do you kill something with the semblance of life, but which is not alive? Eh? Eh? Got you there, haven’t I? I digress. You have to square up to your story. You have to say, ‘This is where my story begins’—well, it’s not my story, you understand...”

“You already said that!”

“Hush now, so I did. You don’t have the patience for my story because it’s longer to tell than the time you have. Do you have four lifetimes to hear it? No. I’m not sure I do any more either.”

He drained his cup.

“So, not my story, but I do get to decide where it starts.” He leaned forward, his face aglow with divine mischief and beer. “And it starts with a hanging.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Eliturion’s Story

T
HE MAN ON
the gallows was trying to be brave, although he wasn’t, and trying to be noble, which he once thought he was, but found himself, in dismay, to be a coward.

“I am not afraid to die,” he shouted, which was a lie. “I have done nothing wrong,” which was another. Nobody heard him. He had a reedy voice at the best of times, and now was the worst. Fear strangled it into a warble that failed him completely. He was the last to be hanged in a long line of men. The crowd’s bloodlust had run out long before this man’s last seconds ran out. They talked over him, not caring for his testimony, or for him, or his death.

The evening was drawing in. A poet would make some comparison there. The little extra life he had enjoyed during his wait was a concession to his former station. This station had not been exalted, but it was higher than the run of the herd of men, not quite a goodfellow, this man, but more than a goodman. And so he had breathed a few hours more. At the last, as the clocks prepared to chime the sixth bell and twilight approached, his breathing time was finally done. How quick time goes, more quickly even for gods than for men.

“I do not regret what I did,” he said. Another lie, for he would not have been where he was had he not done what he did. He had been found guilty, quite rightly, and had no one to blame for his predicament but himself.

His mendacity mattered as little as his crime. The crowd paid little attention to this quivering man in his fine clothes soiled with the filth of the Drum, that most notorious of gaols. They were speaking over him, laughing at the jests of their friends, eating, arguing, pissing in corners, hawking goods, angrily forcing a path past one another because their errands were more important than anyone else’s. All the bitter ingredients in the stew of human behaviour. A few stared at the condemned man, a couple shouted obscenities or threw dogshit at him, but their energy was low. There was an edge to the air as there often is in the autumn. It was nearly time to go home.

The man had spent the extra hours given him weeping and shaking and composing his last words, chiefly but not exclusively in that order. He started to speak, then stopped, his eyes bulging, his mouth working without sound. His face hardened. “Listen! I—” he shouted. The crowd heard that.

He did not finish.

The executioner deemed his time done, and so he was. With ill grace he yanked the lever. The trapdoor slammed downward with that awful, final noise the gallows make. The man dropped, the rope snapped taught and the man bounced. The gallowsman may have been impatient but he was good at his job. The condemned man’s neck bones parted and severed that path of thought that runs the length of the body.