The Rat and the Serpent (31 page)

I was first asked if I had any thoughts on the state of Byzann. Taking the opportunity to prepare my ground I said, “I have two streams of thought, one relating to currency, one relating to the shocking lack of attention given to how we eat and drink.” I then outlined the campaign I had run when ascending to the position of counsellord, explaining how it would benefit Byzann if paper currency was used in place of small coins. I said nothing about a Byzann-wide currency, knowing that such a suggestion would militate against the sevenfold split in the conurbation.

To my delight and relief—emotions I was careful not to express—the elitistors took this idea seriously. There was no time to lose; I could ride a wave of acceptance here. I launched into my second idea. “Elitistors,” I began, “we treat food and drink as though they were neutral essentials of life, like air, or water—or dry land. But in fact they are not. Food and drink are cultural items in a way air, water and land are not. We are ignoring a method of reducing the amount of erasure that still exists in Byzann.”

“What is your proposal?” asked Silvögyur. The other elitistors murmured their interest, though Herpetzag offered no encouragement.

I continued, “It is not unusual for food and wine offerings—they are called libations according to some of the tomes in the library—to be made by those who would worship something greater than they are. We should pass down a new law to the counsellords to the effect that one tenth of all food consumed by counsellords and citidenizens—though not by us of course—is to be offered to Byzann.” I shrugged, as if improvising. “Such offerings could be dropped into the gutters, the sewers, the cisterns, or to whatever place seems fit to those making the gesture. They could be strewn to the skies for crows and ravens to devour. The cultural attributes of our sustenance would then be passed on to Byzann in a way that does not presently happen.”

The elitistors glanced at one another. Two, Ince of Petrion and Afyonkara of Phanar, seemed enthralled by the idea, but Herpetzag and Vordis of Psamathia were less keen, while Silvögyur kept a neutral expression and Lithuther of Studion examined his fingernails.

I shrugged. “Do we vote?” I asked them, “or is one of us deemed leader?”

“Our leader is not amongst us,” Silvögyur remarked.

I looked across the table at him. “Is he a man, or what is he?”

“He is a man.”

After a pause I asked, “Will I meet him?”

Silvögyur gave a reply that made me shiver. “Many in Byzann have met the Goth, but none recognise him.”

Silence fell.

“Let us debate my idea,” I said, keen that my preparations not be ruined.

The awkwardness passed. Silvögyur took a sip from his goblet of raki. Afyonkara, an elderly woman with skin like a half-cimmerian said, “I think it is a good idea. We need to consider ideas from elitistors new to House Sable, because they might have seen things we’ve missed.”

Ince agreed. “Erasure must be minimised,” he said.

Then Silvögyur said, “I also think it is a fair idea, though I think one tithe is too much—let us instead consider a half tithe from each meal.”

There was general agreement, before Herpetzag pointed at me and said, “I’m suspicious. This is the plan of a fool.”

They all looked at Herpetzag, but he made no further comment, and I knew the point of his statement had been to declare the enmity between us. Doubtless there were other frictions in this extraordinary cabal.

“Lithuther?” Silvögyur said.

“I think nothing of the idea. Byzann will decide whether we need to repeal it.”

“And Vordis?”

Vordis replied, “We should try it. For myself, I think it has merits, but too few. Also, it is not a noble scheme, rather it is a vulgar one.”

“Citidenizens and counsellords are vulgar by their very nature,” Silvögyur noted, to which there was laughter.

I relaxed. It seemed they had reached agreement. For the next hour we debated the minutiae of the law, until, as dawn approached, Afyonkara wrote down the final version on a fresh scroll. Silvögyur took me aside and said, “That was well done. To offer so notable an idea so early in your tenure is excellent. It will serve you well in the years and decades to come.”

“But Herpetzag and Lithuther?”

“Two against five.” Silvögyur shrugged, then added, “We can always go to repeal if that becomes necessary. It has happened before. We, after all, interpret the actuality of Byzann. We are elitistors, not oracles. We have ideas and visions of our own, but as long as these ideas agree with Byzann all is well.”

I nodded, seeing the logic. “Then you are not averse to change?” I said.

“Providing Byzann is respected.”

I departed for my rooms, considering my question and Silvögyur’s reply. The change I envisaged would be an affront to the Mavrosopolis the like of which had never been seen before...

But I was already tired. The effort of holding back both my passions and my shamanic potential was beginning to affect me. The right side of my body, where the joy and vitality of my rat powers were held tight, was becoming sore, as if it was infected. I would not be able to last for long. Weeks—no more. Yet I could not afford even a single outburst like the one in the house of Katurguter, for that would be a heresy with immediate consequences. Herpetzag was indeed watching me. Probably they all were; Silvögyur, who seemed decent, most intently. I laughed. This was madness!

There was one last thing that I had to do. I crept out of the house and walked through the shadows of Siyah Street to the eastern junction, where it met Hamidiye Street. I looked out, but I saw nobody. I walked out, then ran all the way down to Ancara Street and the border with Seraglio. It was as if my eyes were becoming accustomed to an alternative light, for I saw translucent faces and hands, blurred hints of bodies dressed in cloaks, breeches and boots. They could sense me, those few citidenizens who were abroad, and they knew what I was. But as for nogoths, there were none. I realised that the elitistors took no heed of nogoths; they did not rank even as vermin in their thoughts, not even as dust. They were absent from the streets—unless an elitistor made a great effort, as once Herpetzag had in Blackguards’ Passage.

This moment of realisation was the final argument in favour of following the path that I was on. I would never turn back now. A cult that perceived thousands of fellow human beings as though they were mere wisps of air could not be allowed to continue.

29.3.614

There is no point in being dishonest on this page of grey paper. I do not know how or why I was inducted into the cult that is the dark, dark, dark heart of this cursed conurbation. Is light an illusion, I ask myself? Is darkness all the reality there is, with light the fancy of witless human beings?

Anybody who has been inside House Sable would be forgiven for thinking so.

But one thing I do know. Sorcery is that heart. Sorcery underlies the fear of forgetting. Sorcery hates change. Sorcery will not abide change. And yet, and yet... there can be no change without sorcery. Mere human beings, unaugmented by spells, cannot hope to change anything.

I am no sorcerer. What I am is a caged animal.

I cannot escape the knowledge that the Mavrosopolis itself has accepted me. I am a reasonable actor—all orators are actors—but not so good as to fool something so old, wise and cunning as the Mavrosopolis. There must be something in me that it likes... yet I know in my heart that I am the revolutionary so feared by elitistor and counsellord alike. This can only mean one thing. It is possible to keep thoughts hidden in the mind, where even the suspicious Mavrosopolis will not find them. I have spent my whole life storing up thoughts and plans. Now I want to release them. I am in the right place, but very far from seeing a method. The dilemma is unanswerable: only a sorcerer has great power, yet it is precisely that category of man who is most susceptible to the will of the Mavrosopolis. (No sorcerer could hide even the idlest of his thoughts.)

What then to do? A naked human being is powerless in this gloom. A sorcerer has less hope than a mouse set before a cat.

What is needed is a class of benign elitistors, and a larger set of benign counsellords, with lightness in their minds and freshness in their thoughts. I know pleasant people—why are they not counsellords? Why is it that only those people (apart from me) who like to talk about themselves and place themselves in superior positions become counsellords? Why is it that only gloomy characters with hate and fear in their hearts pace the silent ebon-framed chambers of House Sable?

Why could it not have been some other way?

Or, more pertinently, why should it not be some other way? What makes the Mavrosopolis the way it is? Mere soot? Surely something more.

There is a man who rules this place, who—though I have not asked to check my guess—must be the ruler, the source of all that I would change. Where is he, this Goth, this man in black, this hatted shadow, this cloaked silhouette?

I must know what is going on! I will not be left to fumble in shadows.

Thankfully I still have my independence; the pain I feel is evidence of this. The Mavrosopolis has not yet numbed me with its sootfalls and its strictures and its tenebrous presence. I feel pain: I am driven to action. So long as I am driven, I am alive. If I fall into nepenthic bliss I am lost forever and my life in this conurbation is over. I do not deny that I have been tempted by the luxuries that have been set before me, set like so many idle women asking me to consort with them. But I have strength. It is the kind of strength that cannot be described, only felt.

Chapter 17

The nights passed like so many black handkerchiefs linked into a noose. I did not leave House Sable again. For much of the time I read tomes in my room. I met with the other elitistors to discuss and agree new laws, concerning the recording of weather patterns, the repairing of streets and buildings, and the calculation of house distribution. Despite my state of anxiety I found some of the work interesting, and even contributed to the formulae used to decide citidenizen occupation levels. But it was what might be happening in subterranea that engaged my mind.

As for my body, it was changing. Sleep became a state difficult to attain, as the powers contained in my shamanic leg and arm fought for freedom, at first through exhausting my body, then, insidiously, by bringing nightmares whenever I happened to doze off. The mixture of fatigue and sleeplessness was a terrible torture that I had not expected, and I found no method to cope with it. I just had to survive. Each night I would tell myself that I only had to endure the torment a little bit longer.

And there was something else...

Yes, that mysterious door on the ground floor tempted me. One night, as the clock chimed midnight, I found myself walking down the central staircase, half awake and half asleep, as if hypnotised. I heard the sound of a door closing: I returned to consciousness.

“Where am I?” I said.

Nobody answered me. I knew that I must have been sleepwalking. But I continued to descend until I was standing at the bottom of the stairs. A lantern stood to one side of me, a bowl of black fish on a table to the other. Some of the elitistors were in the library and the kitchen; I could see them. Nothing seemed out of place in the hall. It was an ordinary night.

I turned to face the forbidden door, then walked towards it.

“Wait there,” came Herpetzag’s voice from behind me.

I turned around. There stood Herpetzag and Ince, with Lithuther watching from the far end of the library. “What is the matter?” I asked.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Herpetzag demanded.

“Nowhere.”

Herpetzag strode forward. “You’ve been in House Sable for a fortnight, and already you think you can walk through that door?”

I shrugged. “And if I was going to?”

“I would stop you.”

Now all the elitistors were aware of the conversation, and they stood watching from vantage points around the hall. Silvögyur said, “What is going on here?”

Herpetzag answered, “The new elitistor has ideas above himself.”

“And if I do?” I said, bringing some of the irritation I felt to my voice.

Herpetzag mocked me. “You think you know it all because of who shields you.”

“From you?” I retorted. “Well, you are the only one who wants to kill me.” I shrugged. “All your other petty schemes failed.”

Herpetzag pointed a finger at me. “I know what you are.”

As if communicating by telepathy the other elitistors fled, and I was appalled to hear the sound of outside doors slamming. That left me and Herpetzag alone. Suddenly I felt fear. The departure of the elitistors was an unmistakeable response.

I turned to face Herpetzag. “You think you know what I am?” I said.

“A shaman of a non-serpentine animal, a foreigner in this house. The Mavrosopolis was tricked when you passed the initiation rite. I’ll see to it that you get no further. Your place is on the street.”

I tried to marshall my resources. Lightly I replied, “It so happens that I agree with you. But I am not going to return just yet.”

The response was hissed. “Oh, yes you are.”

Then I saw a sight so dreadful I was unable to look away. Herpetzag raised his hand and pulled off the eye patch to reveal a slitted eye: the eye of a snake. It was as cold a thing as I had ever seen, inhuman, calculating, callous. The other eye seemed dull in comparison, as if this one was made of crystal. Then Herpetzag raised his hand again and pulled off his mask, to reveal a jaw covered in scales, and, when it opened, fangs, and a grey tongue with a bifurcated end that flicked as it tasted the air. This was the mouth of a snake, pale inside, puffed up with venom sacs. I stood rooted to the spot.

“You see,” Herpetzag said, “like you I am a shaman. I have asked for two wishes to be fulfilled and I have paid the price—like you. That is how I know what you are, because to get here I followed a similar path. That is why I know how to destroy you. And I will.”

I struggled to control myself. “You won’t,” I replied in a wavering voice. I stood straight. “You too are deceiving the Mavrosopolis—”

“Ah, ah! Not at all. The fight is unfair because it is weighted to my side. You see, Byzann is a serpentine creation, and because I am a shaman of the mambasnake I am camouflaged. I am at one with Byzann. I can do what I like and it will not be noticed. You see now that you have no chance against me? I always win. I always win because I am serpentine, just like the Mavrosopolis.” He opened his mouth and venom leaked from his fangs. “Prepare to die.”

“Never! We will prevail.”

“So you admit you have a helper.” Herpetzag gestured at the building around us. “Where is the Goth now? Where is he?”

“He is near. He is always near.”

“He is not. He cannot interfere with this battle. You must win with your own skills—and you cannot call upon your rat totem. Remember that when I bite you!”

Herpetzag lunged forward with a scream, but it was not an attack, rather it was a melodramatic attempt to frighten me. In reply I pulled a silver lamp from its pole mount, then broke off the pole and turned it upside down, fitting it under my right armpit so that it was for all intents and purposes a crutch.

And Herpetzag understood the symbolism of this move; and I knew his hesitation was a hint that he might be worried.

I decided to use every resource available to me, including my mind and my mouth. In a voice quavering with anger I said, “You forget that I was born on the street. I have lived on the street almost all my life, fighting for every crumb, drinking disgusting sea water.” I lifted the metal pole with my right arm. “This is the weapon I used for every one of those years. I am no innocent. I was in fights every other day.”

“Fights?” Herpetzag replied. “
Fights?
You face a sorcerer—what use are fists?”

Time to attack! I lunged forward and, though the pole was unbalanced compared to my crutch, I managed in one movement to raise it, stand on my left leg and swing the weapon around, so that it struck Herpetzag on the upper arm. He yelled. He had not expected that. I jumped back.

“Who said I’d be using fists?” I cried.

In reply Herpetzag raised his arms and uttered a few syllables in a voice like thunder. The hall where we stood became storm-dark, as from the crevices of the floor and the skirting boards a horde of dracunculi emerged, to look as one at Herpetzag, then turn their attention to me. I shuddered.

I had no option but to ignore the sorcery and attack its source: the sorcerer himself. With a savage scream, such as I had uttered as a youth on Blackguards’ Passage, I leaped forward and began to batter Herpetzag with the pole, until my opponent was cornered and had to grab the weapon, push it aside, then run off to the other end of the hall. Meanwhile the dracunculi swelled as if they were absorbing water then began to swarm towards me. But my temper was up. I had seen a man flail beneath my attack. If I could distract him for long enough there would be no chance for sorcery.

I had a plan!

Again I leaped forward, but now the dracunculi were on my boots and beginning to bite into my breeches; and where they found skin, they stung. I was forced to hop away, then reach down to pull the leech-like creatures off.

Herpetzag laughed. “Dance, boy, dance!” he said.

There came the briefest glimpse before my mind’s eye: dropping to hands and knees, barging aside pigs, beginning to search the piles of earth, soot and dung for the ring fragment...

So I danced. I pandered to the sorcerer’s whim. “Look at me caper,” I said, imitating anger and humiliation as I skipped first on one leg then on the other, all the time reaching down to pull off and squeeze the life out of the dracunculi. I hopped as often as I could on my stronger rat leg, though occasionally I had to change. But Herpetzag watched every foolish twist and turn as though mesmerised. It was working.

In this way I closed in on him. Most of the dracunculi were a glutinous mess on the floor, and there was a stench of vinegar and offal. But they were almost all gone. I screamed my battle-cry again. Holding the pole in my strong rat arm I leaped forward and began an attack so fierce Herpetzag was forced to shield himself with a tome, then with a metal tray that clattered as blow after blow rained down upon him. And these were not random blows; I knew my attack would exhaust me, so I tried to land as many blows as possible on the arms and chest of my enemy, so that, should sorcery be attempted, injury distorted or even stopped the flow.

Eventually I had to stop and regain my breath. Herpetzag was shocked; he must have imagined an easy victory. He stood still, breathing hard and fast, with his pale and puffy mouth wide open. I wanted to taunt him, to force another mistake, but I knew scorn could induce a frenzy in him such as I had just offered up, so I remained silent. Herpetzag must be controlled, not mocked.

We stood face to face. Herpetzag tried to lift his left arm, but I reached out and knocked it aside. Herpetzag seemed to shrink a little. He raised his other arm, but again I knocked it back.

Stalemate—for the moment.

So long as Herpetzag was controlled I felt I might have time to rest. But I would have to concentrate without relapse.

“You can’t stop me speaking,” Herpetzag said.

“Gloat as much as you like,” I replied.

Herpetzag laughed, and there was a note of malice, even joy in the sound. I tensed my body, knowing that above all I must not undertake close combat, for then I could be bitten. But then Herpetzag uttered a stream of nonsense syllables, a spell, and too late I realised what was happening.

His eye began to glow with pure white light; not a strong gleam, but an entrancing one, a radiance that seemed to leak down onto his clothes and skin, and thus make him a better, more trustworthy man. I watched as the transformation continued. Now Herpetzag was revealed in this new light as an ancient, noble and true, the dark and macabre side lost in purity.

He was not an enemy at all.

A fragment of true thought entered my mind then, and I realised that I was being hypnotised. I raised my hands to shield myself from the eye, but its syrupy radiance leaked through my fingers and continued to mesmerise me. I yelled out for help. But there was nobody.

Desperation exaggerated the importance of the true thought that had occurred to me. I remembered that Herpetzag and I were opponents. I remembered that the shaman of the mambasnake had cast a spell. I concentrated on that realisation. Slowly, I pulled back the part of my mind that had been embraced by the mesmeric light, to return, for a moment, to myself; and in that moment I tensed myself then denied everything I knew about Herpetzag.

The illusion was shattered. But almost at once the light returned to the eye and I was mesmerised again, staring in wonder at this remarkable man. Then another effort, a casting off of hypnotism, and a definite, though weaker return to my former self.

“You cannot overcome the Mavrosopolis,” Herpetzag told me, as the marvellous light once again seeped from his eye. “Give in to me.”

I felt my body torn apart. I so wanted to dive into the light and heal myself, but a small and stubborn part of me knew it was a trap, and, for the moment, I was able to oppose it. But my defences were weakening.

I uttered an unearthly cry. Time was short, resources finite. As the sound of my voice faded I raised my pole, then with a sudden thrust of my outstretched arm I jabbed the thing forward. Herpetzag flinched, but too late, and as I had hoped the crystal eye was knocked clean out of his face.

For a few heartbeats we both stared in shock at the sphere of light as it landed, intact, on the floor. Then the moment of horror passed and Herpetzag took a deep breath. He bent down to retrieve his sorcerous orb, but, without even a single, reasoned thought, I balanced myself on my rat leg and threw the pole like a javelin, so that it struck the eye, knocked it forwards, then smashed it against the far wall. There was a single, tinkling crash, musical, yet harsh, as if the very notes of destruction were claimed by Herpetzag’s vile sorcery.

Then silence. We stood in the middle of the hall, looking at the pole and at the crystal shards which lay in their hundreds across the floor. The ceiling lantern dimmed. Coldness entered the room. I stood in shock.

Then Herpetzag turned and stared at me with menace inexpressible. I said nothing. Herpetzag walked towards the pole, picked it up and with a single motion brought it down upon his knee. It bent like straw, and I realised that this was no sorcerous deed, it was due to the will of a man pushed by fury alone into a feat of supernatural strength.

I was very afraid. And I was tired. I had tried everything. I took a few steps back until I struck the wall at the bottom of the stairs: to my left the door to the library, to my right the fish bowl.

Herpetzag said nothing. He just walked with slow, deliberate steps towards the wall where I cowered.

He stopped an arm’s length away. I could smell the venom leaking from his fangs. “Enough of this farce,” he said. He opened his mouth, allowed his pale tongue to flicker a few times, then took a step forwards. Despite the lack of sorcery I was hypnotised, this time by the overwhelming will of my opponent. I pressed myself into the wall.

Something cold at my right hand. I felt water, and as Herpetzag let his mouth open into a serpentine yawn that seemed to fill my field of vision, I realised what it was—the fishbowl. Herpetzag took a second step forward, coming in for the kill, but with a single lithe movement I reached down, grasped the rim of the bowl and brought it upturned over his head. There were a few moments of confusion: water leaking, arms waving. I saw a serpentine jaw magnified by the bowl.