The New Weird (14 page)

Outdoors it was still cold, but now the chill was welcome. He passed his bike and walked out into Grape Street.

The urchins squatted around the pile they had made, and one of them pressed something pale and blood-stained into the writhing dung. A stiff breeze blew across the street, carrying with it feathers and flecks of down.

Soon enough, the excrement shuddered and bubbled. The urchins drew back. A blackish, segmented thing flapped free of the quivering mass and swooped up into the rectangle of sunshine visible between the houses. It hovered there, taking form, shaping itself around the bones of the salvaged chaffinch skeleton with greater and greater facility. The crude flaps of its wings sheened in the light and blossomed with rainbow colours. It made a tentative, fart-like noise and was gone. The urchins' whoops of delight echoed in his ears as Ashura made his way down the chilly thoroughfare. He grinned and shook his head. Kids!

He sobered when he saw the mourning party, traversing the central square. They wore cheap cloth of traditional green and carried kitch-enware ― pots, ladles and knives ― all burnished to a high sheen. Poor people, making much of the death of one of their number. Now, who would command that kind of attention?

He turned up a side-street, keeping to leeward of the central sluice. Ahead he saw a party of cessbeaters.

"Ashura!"

He cast a cautious eye over the three men. Some of his old comrades had never got over their jealousy at his recently acquired status of warlock's apprentice. He was sure to have a rough time at their hands on Jape Day, if not before.

"Ashura!"

The voice was familiar. Belatedly, he recognized Culpole. He grinned and walked over.

Culpole and his colleagues were covered head to foot in excrement. It writhed over their gloved hands and jerkins, groping blindly for new form. Where it touched skin, though, it withered and fell. Cessbeaters regularly smeared themselves with a charmed ointment made to quell rotten matter's zest for life. They dipped their hazel brushes in a similar ointment and swept the walls of the sluices with it. This retarded the foul matter's growth till it was well past city boundaries.

"Still no patron, Culpole?" Culpole was a would-be poet. When they were children, just past the feral period, Ashura talked spells and enchantments while Culpole murmured softer, more subtle magics. It seemed for a long time that Culpole would be the more successful of the two. It hadn't worked out that way, but their friendship was as strong as ever.

Culpole shook his head sadly. "I had great hopes of Frenklyn the Steward, but he wanted favours other than words from me. They say his sperm is so potent he has made men pregnant."

Ashura sighed. "You were wise to think better of that alliance.

Tell me, who's the funeral party for?"

"Mother Lamprey," another cessbeater replied.

"The oracle?"

"The one," the stranger replied. "Someone threw a pot out a window as she stepped into her alley. Brained her dead."

Culpole shook his head. "I'd have thought it would take more than crockery to dash the brains of Mother Lamprey. She was a wise one."

"Life was hot within her," affirmed the stranger. "When she walked past Blood Park they say flowers bloomed in dead men's groins."

"And Mother Runnell?" Ashura enquired.

"She's in mourning, naturally," Culpole replied. "Last I heard she was silent at the funeral and left the feasts early. She's taken it bad."

Ashura glanced up at the sun. Just enough time left to investigate. "Look, Culpole, I'll catch you later. I must run."

He walked off, somewhat guiltily; he shouldn't have left Culpole like that, so hurriedly. Culpole had been close to Mother Lamprey, and it was ill-luck that his duties as cessbeater had kept him from the hanging and the wake. Ashura well remembered how Culpole used to pass on stories she told him about the Old Time, when the tide of things was still turned to dying and Science held sway.

Ashura thought of the scientists he had seen wandering the city -pathetic creatures full of half-remembered schemata and faked ritual, their ludicrous labcoats torn and crammed with totemic pens, their heads filled with some gibberish called mathematics.

Respect them, Mother Lamprey had said to him and Culpole once, when their post-feral laughter rose too high and cruel at her description of them. "They walk the paths of the dying at a time of bloom; their systems are misplaced. But come the next millennium and their time will have come again. Then our broomsticks and elixirs will be as risible to the good folk of the world as their mechanics are now." Wise old woman. Strong old woman. Dead? Strange.

Foxtongue was leaning against the entrance to the Walking Eye tavern. Her shirt was open; her tender breasts and her child-swollen stomach glowed in the sun as if they would melt the cotton around them.

Ashura caught his breath and strode over to her.

"I came as soon as I heard," he announced, hoping she'd take his blushes for signs of exhaustion and effort. By the wry look in her eyes there wasn't much hope of that.

"It's been a long time, Father-to-be." Her voice was like honey in climax.

He forgave her the sardonic remark instantly. "I.I'd like to see Mother Runnell."

She smiled and led him through the tavern. It was nearly empty, Ashura noticed; the regulars must all be at the funeral feast. Round the back of the inn, in a brick yard thick with dust and weeds, sat the shawled bulk of Mother Runnell. She turned rheumed eyes to meet him. She did not smile and, even given the present circumstances, he found that disconcerting.

"Foxtongue, leave us. Go mend your Jape Day dress or something," she commanded, and there was an edge to her voice Ashura hadn't heard before. Foxtongue flounced back into the inn, causing Ashura a final pang.

"And so," the oracle said, observing him through clouded green eyes. The silence stretched. In spite of himself, Ashura found himself surveying her huge bulk.

Mother Runnell had been pregnant with the same child for some twenty-eight years. It was nowhere near adult size ― more the size of a feral. Nonetheless, it made an impressive addition to the woman's natural bulk.

Mother Runnell was that rare phenomenon, an oracle; a permanently pregnant seer. The townsfolk came and told her stories, rumours, gossip, opinions ― and Mother Runnell passed the messages on in her blood to her ever-underdeveloped child. The child in turn would mull over the flavours of the world outside, and dance in Mother Runnell the likely outcome. Mother Runnell and her fleshly charge could not predict major events, but they could predict people's fortunes with shivering accuracy.

"I don't want your condolence, Mite," she said at last.

Mite ― his nickname as a post-feral, dropped in early adolescence and not heard since then. Ashura lowered his head. He'd stumbled upon some hurt, some worry. Quick of temper and of wit he might be. But life on the streets had told him well when to bite his tongue.

"You've chosen a strange course, Mite. I wish you were Mite once more, so you could choose again. You may well hang your head in shame."

"Not shame, Mother, puzzle ― "

"Silence!" She'd meant it, presumably, to be an imperious command, but it came out tinged with hysteria and the weakness of an old woman. "You are a pander, a tool of evil work. We ― " she stroked her belly -"cannot say whether you are aware of this, but we fear the worst."

"I keep my eyes open," said Ashura. "But I cannot see through locked doors, or closed minds."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning Master Urkhan is a wily, mischievous old bastard whose very eyes don't trust each other, hence the squint."

Mother Runnell grinned, very briefly, very warmly. Then the cold, worried mask was back. "So. Have you heard about Mother Lamprey's death?"

"That's why I'm here, to say I'm sorry."

"Aaach," she snapped, "I didn't say, 'that she died,' I said 'about her death.' Of how she died, boy. Do you know how?"

"Brained by a pot."

"Have you any idea how tough old Lamprey was?"

"That...occurred to me, too. It must have been a damn large pot."

"You tell me. Neighbours saw the thing fall, that's all. Can't say after it hit that they gave it much thought."

Some reflex made Ashura glance up into the sky. He did a double-take. The clouds there were pink-edged. He was late. "Mother Runnell, I must go now."

"Your good master requiring more favours of your good will?"

"Well I
am
his apprentice."

"More deliveries?"

Ashura stood up and dusted himself down. "No doubt." The next second he was staring at her. "How, how."

"What was in the pot, Ashura?"
And all of a sudden Mother Runnell's eyes didn't seem bleared at all, but emerald and piercing.

"A dead ancient's brain," Ashura replied in a whisper.

"How do you know?"

Ashura looked at the ground, abashed. "I don't know. I didn't look, if that's what you mean. I can only surmise that's what it was from what I heard behind locked doors."

"Ahh," she said, and started rocking, back and forth, very slowly, "you do keep your eyes and ears open, young Mite, after all. I'm glad to hear it. Your life may depend on it, someday." Ashura shivered at the pronouncement but the oracle's smile was warm. "Now come, tell me, what was the brain for?"

"Master Urkhan's old wards are wearing down. He made them from squirrel and cat and other small animals. He's made new ones from chaffinches, but he hasn't used any of them. I think he's after something a little stronger."

"A ward from the
ka
of a dead man?"

Ashura nodded, blushing.

Mother Runnell tutted. "Oh, Mite, what have you got yourself involved in? You know that's a restricted practice. If the burghers heard. Who provided the brain?"

"Trimghoul."

"The psychokine?"

"The same."

"And where did he get it?"

"From Blood Park, so he said."

"And do you really believe him, Ashura?" Ashura, his correct name. Seriousness. Mother Runnell's questions were in deadly earnest.

Did he believe Trimghoul? He thought of the man, astride his skittish gelding and shrouded in his habitual garb, an unnerving costume of black net that covered him from head to foot. Things started slotting into place inside Ashura's head, forming a pattern he didn't much care for ― not at all.

His tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth. "What must I do?" he stammered.

"Act upon your suspicions," she replied simply. "That's not so hard, is it?" Something cold slithered down Ashura's spine.

Foxtongue was waiting inside. She was sitting on a rough oak table, her feet up on a stool. Ashura gave her a worried smile as he made for the door.

"No time to show me a trick or two, Warlock?"

"'Fraid not," he shrugged.

"Do you fear your master's scolding that much?"

Yes, something screamed at him. Yes. But Ashura sensed that whatever displeasure he might encounter by arriving late this afternoon, it was as nothing to the roasting he might suffer should he follow Mother Runnell's advice, as he knew he must.

So he went back to the table where Foxtongue sat and with an unconvincing attempt at a jaunty smile he stroked up the material of her dress, lifted her leg and kissed her calf. And as if she knew, and maybe she did, how he needed someone then, how afraid he really was, she lifted her skirts for him.

Late that night, with the moon full and lime green through his window, Ashura got out of bed and began to dress. He bound his feet in leather thongs, then pulled on stout boots. He slipped on a jacket made from oiled canvas. It was worn and not as tough as he would have liked, but it was all he had. He tied polished black chaps around his trousers. He had bought them to impress womenfolk. Tonight, they would serve a more practical purpose. Life, new form, it was an infection here, and of course the children carried it. Life was strong in them.

He went to the sink and armed himself with a razor. He padded down the stairs, careful not to wake the other sleepers in the tenement. He did not take his bicycle, but trotted light-footed towards the dark centre of the city, and Blood Park.

Decorations had been hung over the city's main thoroughfare in preparation for the Jape Day festival. Immense jointed papier-mache heads painted in clown's colours rocked in their wire cradles, sending shadows scudding across the moonlit street. They grinned at him, and

Ashura shuddered. They winked and squealed their wire hinges. The red paint around their full lips was black in the moonlight, and gave to the line of each huge mouth a skeletal spareness. Their jaws swung open and closed. A row of bats clung to the lips of one, till a sudden gust swung the gaping, star-filled maw shut with a hollow, wooden concussion. The bats fled and plummeted into a side-alley.

The houses which fronted the flagstoned alley bulged like the buds of unnaturally huge flowers, or the pregnant bellies of giants. Timber balks two storeys up held the walls apart; flags and bright streamers covered the dark timber, only now they were colourless and tatty in the pitiless light. They wove about themselves with undersea slowness, like stranded things.

For comfort, Ashura thought back to former festivals. The memories were childlike, unclouded by the shadow of Urkhan. On Jape Day young girls earned pennies setting trip-wires across the streets. In the hours before dawn they suspended buckets of water and powder dye and paint in ingenious, thoroughly insecure harnesses between the rooftops of this most ancient and fertile of cities ― and this was but the beginning.

Throughout the day townsfolk set trap after trap, large and small, for their fellows. Ashura's street came together to nail the contents of a grandee's mansion to its sun-baked roof. At lunchtime, someone sent an intricate clockwork spider marching up his trousers. Ashura responded by slipping a tight-wound elastic snake beneath a councillor's travelling blanket as he watched the city's navvies dismantle an iron bridge. Ashura followed the workmen when they took the girders away, and watched them rebuild it so it strung together the houses of notorious rivals.