City of Corpses by John C. Wright
“Ah, my child,” she said most gently. “He feared that if you lived with me in this place, you would take my duties and become the next Grail Maid after me.”
“You did not come take me?”
“And disobey my husband? He is lord over me.”
“But you did not obey him! He ordered you to come down to earth, to live on the haunted peaks of Shinzan and Honzan, with us, to send him out to hunt the namahage with bow and spear by night, and to welcome him home!”
“I also am sworn to obey a Lord greater far than your father, who bids me stay and watch this cup and revere it. Do not blame your father. How could he know that I was to be the last?”
There came a noise like an earthquake from without. It was the sound of a tower falling, if a tower were as tall as a mountain.
Dandrenor said “The stones of the rubble will burn up in the atmosphere before they strike ground, or so I pray. I do not want the death of this city to slay the unsaved before their time.”
The floor beneath their sandals shook, and the flagstones cracked.
2. A Stiffnecked Child
Dandrenor said, “I am sorry that your father’s death was what brought you back to me. I am the Widow of the Grail once again as I was when he won me. Our months here together were too short. You are still too heavy with the sins of earth for the wings you wove to bear you upward. But consider the flying squirrel, the cobego, the Chinese gliding frog, the Paradise tree snake. None of these fly, but none die by falling.”
Yumiko said, “I will stay and guard the cup of life.”
Dandrenor shook her head sadly. “I am given to know that my task is to stand fast at my post, and watch, and wait. Heaven ordains this.”
“Why did Heaven overlook to post a warlord here with ten thousand men?”
“Ten thousand are nothing against Ysbadden, for he is the greatest of all giants, their chief and champion. His life is charmed. Only Dyrnwen might slay him.”
“Where is this Dyrnwen? Why is he not here if he is so mighty a hero?”
“Dyrnwen many years ago was lost.”
“And were no other heroes available for Heaven to put here?”
“It pleases Heaven to guard its treasures with meek and gentle hands, lest any man boast. But I have no hope in swords.”
“Then you will be saved? By a miracle?”
Dandrenor spoke softly. “It is not given to me to know whether I shall live or die this hour. All I know is that the Grail cannot suffer desecration while it is watched faithfully. Nor can its power be perverted to unholy use unless the watching is betrayed. To be slain at my post is no breach of my faith. I can fall, but I cannot flee.”
“They will kill you and then pollute the cup!”
“This is not like your father’s eight million little gods and the fastidious purity rules they hold.”
“You mock the gods of Japan?”
“I married one of them. Another is my mother-in-law, whose sire and dam are brother and sister. Should I worship such in-laws? That would not be seemly. In any case, their purity rules and pagan rites are turned downside-up by Christ. The blood of martyrs does not pollute holy things, but sanctifies.”
Yumiko said, “Then let me stay and die with you! Let my blood be spilled!”
“That is your father’s pride speaking. You are unbaptized. The life in you is human life, not the higher life we are given, and so your blood has no power to bless.”
“Let me stay and die for honor’s sake!” In her memory, Yumiko saw that her younger self was dressed in a tunic of white fox fur, cut like a man’s tunic, and when she spoke, she held up the longbow in her hand. It was hamayumi, the ghost-slaying bow. Arrows in an ivory quiver rattled at her shoulder.
Dandrenor said, “There is an honor higher than the honor of the warrior’s code and a mercy deeper than justice.”
Yumiko said stiffly, “It is the duty of the strong to avenge the weak!”
“And justice is a fine thing,” said her mother. “But it is not the final thing.”
“I will stay!”
“You shall not. My sister Ygraine of the Wise Reeds, Ygraine of the many counsels, was shown your fate by a night vision from Heaven. She spoke to me in riddles, but I have unwound them. All this shall accomplish the purposes of Heaven.”
“What purposes?”
“In the time of Pellinore, darkness rose, and the Grail was removed from the circles of the earthly world and brought here. Now mayhap the violent hands of the Prince of the Giants will tear this cup from its resting place and return it down below.”
“Why?”
“This cup alone restores the lost memory of Eden, which all the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve carry like a whisper in their hearts. Whose life overfills the maw of death? Whose light enters the darkness, but the darkness cannot encompass it? What memorial is not to be forgotten, even beyond the end of days? Those were the riddles my sister asked of me.”
“I don’t care about Aunt Ygraine and her riddles! Everyone says she slept with a hairy monster, killed her misbegotten boy, and fled for shame into hiding!”
“Many often repeat lies unaware, dealing wounds of words no power can gather back up again. Therefore it is better not to gossip. Ygraine has never done a shameful thing, nor ever will. Her wisdom says…”
“I care nothing for her wisdom!”
“Hush! If you cannot be wise, be obedient. Listen to your mother. All the strength of Heaven is mirrored in this cup, and against it no mists of Everness, no charm of elf, no curse of fallen angel howsoever mighty, can prevail. One day you will forget me…”
“Never!”
“The sight and image of this Grail will perish last of all you forget and will return first of all you call back out of the mists, for it is potent against the Black Spell and will break it. The Black Spell can be broken only by blood, which drives men mad, or by light, which makes them hale. This is the light, hidden under the appearance of blood. By this the Sons of Adam will be saved. And more beside.”
“The Sons of Adam in the village below us mocked and teased me because our strange mansion was so fine and fair but had no running water, no electric light, no radio, no telephone. Why were all these wonderful things, useful things, forbidden to me? The Daughters of Eve teased and mocked me for I was seen dressed in the skins of animals my uncles caught, running up and down the mountainside beneath the moonlight, and they called me a cavegirl! What do I care for them? A curse on them!”
The heat from the Grail now was stronger, hot and scalding on Yumiko’s cheeks, and she stepped back, her hand before her face, frightened and angry.
3. Ill-Said Words
Dandrenor said sadly, “Use no heavy words so lightly, not in this holy place.” She closed the golden lid. “Because you have said this thing, an ordeal will be set before you before you are fit to serve.”
“I will not serve!”
“Those are the very words of the Archangel of Darkness.” Now Dandrenor did looked frightened, and sorrow was mingled with her fear. “Oh! My child! My sweet child! That you should say such words! You will fall far before you rise again, but I will pray that gentle hands will help you aloft once more.”
“We are alone. None hear.”
“Foolish child! You do not see the thousand potentates and powers thronging this place, warrior angels adorned in the panoply of stars! Your lightest word they never forget, save what the confession takes away.” Dandrenor raised her hand and slapped her smartly across the cheek.
Yumiko staggered back, shocked. The anger and insanity within her broke. She had no more wild defiance to say.
Her mother spoke in a calm but terrible voice, “Let that be the beginning of your penance! Do you imagine you can thwart the purposes of Providence? If not through you, the Lord of Hosts will still provide a way to save his people, but you will not be saved. Cease to kick against the goads! Say nothing more, lest a heavier burden fall on your head!”
Yumiko, greatly a
The sound came again like a mountain falling. And in the mighty chamber where they stood, the pillars swayed, the clouds parted, and the planets beyond trembled in their orbits. Cracks were all through the azure dome, marring the faces of the saints.
Through the cracks were visible the heavens beyond the dome, galaxies and clusters of galaxies, small and clear, a scope of heaven so wide even the boldest astronomer would have been dazed to take in so many splendors, so far distant, so ancient, at a glance, undimmed by the deceptive fogs and mists of Earth.
A peculiarity of the air in this place so strengthened the visual ray of the eye that distant astronomical wonders, long walls and superclusters of galaxies, seemed within arm’s reach. Near galaxies were magnified into fans and disks and shields and clouds of diamond dust. Trails of farther superclusters curved across the black heavens like the arms of a writhing kraken, or the spiral shape of narwhal horns.
The floor bucked like the deck of a ship. Dandrenor was unmoved and showed no further sign of fear or anxiety.
Raising her voice above the din, Dandrenor said, “Here is my tear which I wept when you were born, for the travail was long. This tear I bathed in the Grail, and it came to life and keeps its own shape, for now it touches Eternity.”
Dandrenor lifted a fine chain, from which hung a teardrop shape of lambent crystal, and she placed it about her daughter’s neck.
“Keep to yourself this memento of your mother’s love, for the Grail light is in it. Keep it with you, lest the fumes of Earth confuse and confound you. Keep it in memory of me.”
Another shock rocked the chamber. Pillars fell. Planets went careening from their courses, colliding. The comet was snuffed out. The azure light flickered like a candle in a storm. Great slabs of the ethereal dome above now fell, but fell upward, into intergalactic space.
Dandrenor said, “Take your arrows in your hand and grip them tightly.”
Yumiko again did not speak despite not understanding the point of this command. She shrugged her shoulder to put the mouth of her quiver in easy reach, and she put her fist about the gathered shafts, just below the fletching.
It was well that she did so, for at that moment, the floor gave way. Great rocks and boulders of the azure floor substance fell with her, and dust that glittered like diamond powder mixed with pearly starlight. She was weightless, falling. The clouds were far below her, and far below her reeled the earth and the sea like a carpet of blue and white and green and brown, wrinkled with many textures.
She saw above her what seemed walls and towers rising above the fog, and around it islands like green hills where houses, windmills, and farms rose on snowy hillsides. The terraced farms were overgrown with hydrangea, iris, orchid, hyacinth, and the orchards and walled gardens planted with some species of fruit tree whose leaves were blue. But these islands were the suburbs surrounding a city in the air, and the fogs on which they rode were clouds.
Her younger self must not have found the sight odd, for Yumiko had no memory of staring at the sight of windmills atop puffy clouds and wondering how the wind which pushed the clouds could turn the windmill arms.
The farms were burning. In the moat and canals of clear air between islands of fog stood vessels like ironclad zeppelins, flying a sable banner without any charge or device. Grappling lines ran from the airship to the cloud bank, and a motley combination of stiffly moving armored figures, loping shaggy shapes, lumbering corpses, and slinking ghouls swarmed across narrow gangplanks from ship to shore.
Yumiko was seeing them from below, like a mermaid staring upward at the peaks of icebergs. The largest was directly above her, and she could see the fog-surrounded blue crystal foundations of the celestial city as a fish might see the planks of a sinking raft.
Her mother’s voice reverberated in her mind. She could hear her thoughts as clearly as if a ghost no larger than a ladybug were sitting on her ear. “With my blessing, and all my love, depart and face your trials. You are as brave as your father taught you to be. Alas that I had not time enough to teach you mercy. You have given me the gift of allowing me to save my daughter’s life alive.”
Through a gaping crack in the blue crystal, Yumiko glimpsed her mother, unhurriedly raising a hand as a last farewell, and unhurriedly turning back to kneel in prayer before the altar holding the Grail.
Yumiko remembered falling like a dustmote in a searchlight beam in the column of light shed by the Grail through the break in the floor. She extended her cloak, which snapped into the form of gliding wings. But the moment she passed outside the beam of light and entered the thicker cloud, all memory stopped.
4. Things to Come
Yumiko stood for a time bent over the railing of Gapstow Bridge in Central Park, watching her tears fall in the water, and replaying the scene again and again in her mind.
What had happened to the teardrop talisman her mother had given her? Yumiko had no notion.
How had the longbow, once made of bamboo, been changed into a strange metal that could alter its length? For it was clearly the same bow, her bow, and it felt right and familiar in her hands.
And the cape was hers; and evidently it was older than the rest of her Foxmaiden suit. And these other things, her weapons and devices… she unsheathed a metallic boomerang and stared at it blankly… whence came these? From whose forge?
Who else? It had been Tom, the inventor’s apprentice. All these things were gifts of love.
Two realizations, like firecrackers that banished startled demons of ignorance, ignited in her mind. The Red Lady, Malen, was her great-grandfather’s grandmother. A squabble over some tract of land had caused the enmity between Malen and the Elfking Erlkoenig, and so Malen had stirred up the Anarchists and brought them hellish powers. All this was done by Yumiko’s ancestor, whom she should honor. But how did one honor an ancestor who murdered her own great-grandchildren’s posterity?
The second realization was that Sir Gilberec, the young knight of Arthur, was her only hope of revenge now. Dyrnwen was not a hero. It was a hero’s sword. Ysbadden the Chief of Giants could not be slain save by that sword.
Sir Gilberec had spoken the sword’s name when he had uttered his threats, and his oath, against the Supreme Anarchist Council, and flung those words into the face of Wilcolac the Magician.
She looked down, “At least I remembered my mother’s name.”
The reflection was smiling at first, and then scowled. “Elfine is in a bottle, remember? Hob suggested you report to your master, remember? Garlot will strike down Gilberec from behind, remember?”
More firecrackers went off in her mind. She did not see yet how it was to be done, but her task was to rescue Elfine, thwart Wilcolac, save Gilberec, and find Tom.
But she still had no memory of Tom’s face, no echo of his voice, no touch of his hand in hers. The sorrow of that held her for a moment. But the moment was brief. The memory of the light to banish the Black Spell was brighter, and it filled her with stern resolve.
The green park she left behind her. The tall and gloomy buildings loomed ahead.
Yumiko Ume Moth showed none of the resolute conviction enflaming her soul on her face. Without expression, without fear, without doubt, the Japanese girl walked the sidewalks of the gray metropolis, her dark eyes hot with hidden hope.
Into an alley walked a slender figure in bright silk. A moment later, overhead, swinging on an unseen wire shot a slender figure in black, her masked fox-face grinning. Out snapped her wings. Rising air caught her. Upward she circled.
Here ends City of Corpses
The Tale of The Dark Avenger’s Sidekick continues in
Tithe to Tartarus
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