The Lord of the Black Land by John C. Wright
“He who?”
“Your winged monster. The one who found my horoscope.”
“The winged monster is a she. We quarreled. She departed, cautioning me not to call her again before dawn.”
“This tablet — does it say where they put my sword?” I was talking more from nerves than anything else. I kept wondering what would happen if I knew where she was — how was I going to get Penny out of jail and out of this aeon?
“You mean the sword you do not know which sex it is?” Abby said impatiently. “That one?”
“Yes, there are people I want to chop in half while rescuing the buxom maiden, and this flail is just not as deadly as what I am used to. I think I only brained one guy in that last fight, and I did not even cleave his fancy-schmancy helmet.”
She did not draw her eyes down from the inspection of the star-signs inscribed on the upper parts of the shelves, but she kept talking as she walked. “There was a note in your tablet that said a separate horoscope was drawn up for the sword found on you. It did not say more.”
“If your magicians are as cautious about writing every last thing down as you told me before, there must be a record or a tracking number or something in my file!”
“What is the sword’s fate?” she asked.
“Fate?”
“Surely you inquired before you came to it? You are carrying a sword around blind-fated, are you? What is it destined to do?”
“Destined? I don’t know that. How does someone know that?”
“By the name and nativity.”
“The name is Shirabyoshi, which means White Rhythm …”
“I know what it means. I know what all words mean.”
“How supercalifragilisticexpialidocious of you! Shirabyoshi is a type of courtly song of the Heian period performed by courtesans dressed in white samurai robes, so does that make the sword a girl?”
“Not necessarily. What about the nativity, do you know that?”
“1913 A.D.” I said proudly. I mean, how many people know the year their sword was made? How many people even have a sword, these days, much less a way cool Japanese antique?
She said she did not know our calendar, and asked me how many years ago 1913 was. And when I told her, she said, “And what of the month and day and hour?”
“Um.”
“It would be the moment the blade is plunged in the water for the last time to quench and harden the steel, not the hour of its mounting, not the hour of its naming.”
“No, I don’t know the, uh, exact birthdate of my sword to the hour.” (I did not even know my own birthdate to the hour.)
“The custom is to honor your sword with a vigil once a year, on the anniversary of the forging.” Without her mask on, Abby had a very expressive face, and she could purse her lip and raise her eyebrow like nobody’s business. She had the archest of arch looks. Maybe it was the princess in her. “You don’t know the star-sign of your very own sword, but you know it of your mistress? What kind of warrior are you?”
“She is not exactly my —” I sputtered, “Well, for that matter, I am not really a — gah! Never mind.”
“How many years ago was she born?”
“Twenty.”
“Fortunate! We will be in time to save her.”
“Wait. What? How do you know that?” Hope went off in me like a firecracker. There are times when you will grasp at anything, believe in anything.
“Virgo is governed by the thrones Spica and Porima, but Vindemiatrix, Auva and Heze are powerful potentates and principalities: The virginal mysteries protect your mistress, and so does the Moon,” Abby spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, like a twelve-year-old New Yorker answering a question about the subway system. “In September of that year, twenty years past, Jupiter, who controls the sanguine humor, was in ascending node, and Mercury, who is hermaphroditic, was in female aspect and retrograde in sextile. This requires that your mistress is detail-oriented, meticulous, reliable, clean, perhaps a bit of a perfectionist. Mercury governs scholars and magicians, lawyers, actresses, and others who live by quickness of wit and smoothness of tongue.”
I felt a headache coming on. On a planet where astrology actually works, everyone believes in it. You would think the universe itself would have done just about anything to prevent such a truly annoying possibility.
“She is witty without being wise, bookish and alone,” added Abby. “She is in exile when at home and at home when in exile, and does not keep pets.”
“You got that wrong. She owns a hobby. And she sailed around the world. At sixteen!”
“How strange. For what reason?”
“To break a world record,” I said. “For adventure and fame! She is a glory-hound.”
“One of her birth should avoid fame. She seeks no glory.”
“You are so wrong about her. Astrology is bogus.”
“I am only repeating common knowledge. A true magician would know more.”
“Bogus with a capital Bo.”
“In any case,” Abby said, “today Friday falls on the sixth day of the week, and is sacred to Venus, and ravishments by beasts are not auspicious. It would not be done today. But if you doubt me, we can read a detailed horoscope cast by a Magician of the First Dark Knowing. Because here are the records for abominations born under the Ides of Virgo.”
She flung her grapnel-and-chain and scampered like a monkey up the rack of tablets to some twenty or thirty feet above the floor.
“Say, Abby, there are ladders on wheels I could push over here to reach the higher shelf…”
Abby said, “The ladders are made of the Living Metal, and would not obey you. We cannot close the windows nor unlock the tablet racks. But the Cunning Metal gives me power over the Living Metal. Cunning Metal comes from the Taari Aeon in the Tubalite branch, where one-eyed Arimaspians battle the gryphons for living gold.”
Abby stuck the point of her copper sickle into one of the tablets. I still did not see her flip a switch or mutter an incantation or anything. The weapon blade just glowed like a neon tube, copper-red. I reminded myself to ask her how she turned stuff on and off.
The tablet was locked in place, but not only did she scald the living metal clamp holding it in place, she looped the copper wire in a bowline around the silver post opposite, and cranked on the tablet until something shattered inside the rack, and the tablet came tumbling and clattering loose, hitting the floor with a noise like a broken cash register.
I picked the thing up, and looked helplessly at the rows of little boxlike cuneiforms, all made of arrowheads and chicken tracks.
Down she scampered.
By that point, Nakasu and Pastor Ossifrage had resolved whatever macho contest one can resolve with just pantomime gestures. If Ossifrage had been dangling the Blemmyae by one ankle via power of levitation, I had missed the whole scene: the monster’s belly was not covered with blood, so either he was a neat and silent eater, or the corpses had not been desecrated.
I said to her, “Can you read the tablet?”
Abby looked excited and made a little hopping motion, looking, for once, very undignified. “Your mistress is in the East Outlandish Harem above the Fifth Cistern, near the Abscissor of Venus Cloud-Gate.”
I said, “Why is that good news?”
“That Cloud-gate of the Venereal Abscission Furlong is where livestock are unloaded, and my people draw away those who perish in transport. So East Outlandish Harem is for new arrivals: maidens’ quarters.”
“Maiden what?” I said.
“Girls. Only virgins are imprisoned there. Your mistress has not been exposed to her degradation yet.”
Nakasu coughed through his blowhole, and muttered something in Swahili with his chest-mouth, and meanwhile Pastor Ossifrage said something in Hebrew. I caught about every other word: Ossifrage was saying it was time to step out the window and float away.
Abby said to Ossifrage, “Such was my mind not to save Ilya the Abomination of Cain, and yet he is strong and good.??
Abby then took out a needle hanging from a thread. It was a compass needle, not a sewing needle, and it was made of a purple metallic alloy I did not recognize. She said to Nakasu, “This is a January sliver of the Remembering Metal. Have the tablet impress its influence, that we may find her… What?”
I said, “What’s going on?”
Both the other guys were still talking, but Abby turned to me, saying, “The Master wishes not to rescue a sea-witch, as she is accursed; the Freedman does not know where the Venereal Abscission Cistern Furlong is, or how to reach it, nor can he work the Memory metal. The Master insists that our mission is to return to the City of Peace, nowhere else, and unearth the Colossal Zoetic Panoply, where it has been in the chasm between the two halves of the Mountain of Olives.”
She turned to Ossifrage and said, “You cannot so requite the sea-witch, for it was by her arts alone that we discovered who had abducted you and when and why; she smuggled the walking shadow into the Dark Tower by allowing herself to be taken, and without her walking shadow to guide me…”
Ossifrage interrupted and said something in Hebrew to the effect that he could walk out the window onto the cloud or windy air, and that the feet of the holy one should not tarry for witches.
I interrupted by holding my palm before his nose and shouting, “Halt!” and then I said to Abby, “Tell Ossifrage we need him, since he has to act as our elevator to get us to the right floor. We cannot risk the streampath of Living Metal again. And you—you have to call your winged monster.”
Abby shook her head. “She said not to call her.”
“Well, you have to make up with her, no matter what the argument was.”
At this point, Master Ossifrage interrupted again, and spoke in stern tones to Abby, making huge gestures with his hands, waving, finger-wagging, making fists, like a symphony in sign language.
I tapped Abby on the shoulder. “What is his objection?”
Abby said apologetically, “He wishes to come away from this place, and meet with the Wise. He says his mission is not to save captives, but to find the Colossus, which alone can dispute the power of the Dark Tower. In truth, the Sons of the Prince of the High One have no love of witchcraft. He says my obligation to you, that you called me by the Great Name, is now complete…”
At this point Nakasu learned over my shoulder and pointed at something written on the coppery tablet. His finger did not touch the surface, but the little rows of leaves clattered into a new configuration, as quickly as an electronic signboard, and new cuneiforms appeared.
He grunted at Abby.
She said, “Your mate from the Hamitic world is here. A prisoner also, and so far unharmed.”
“What mate? I am not married.”
“Not marriage-mate. Troop-mate. Your fellow soldier.”
“I am not a soldier.”
“A soldier in your pretend army, then.”
I said, “Boy Scouts? There is no branch of the Boy Scouts in the Dark Tower. I am pretty sure of that.”
Nakasu opened his lower mouth. “Nina Falinn jinake.”
Abby said, “His name is Falinn.”
I said, “There is no one named Falinn in Troop Two.”
But it was Pastor Ossifrage who perked up and said, “Falinn? Eflast á Falinn? Eflast á Örlög-hringur?”
Nakasu said, “Lina yeye!”
Abby said, “The freedman says it is he. It is Eflast of the Falinn family. Perhaps you know him of that name? He is a ringbearer.”
I sighed. “I just don’t know that many ringbearers. You mean like at a wedding? Or do you mean like Sam Gamgee carrying Albrecht’s ring when it got too heavy for Tom Covenant?”
Ossifrage spoke again. I did not need Abby to translate. “We must go to the boy. Make haste!”
She said to him, “His name and finding-essence is on the tablet, but I cannot work the Remembering Metal.”
I said, “Call the Winged Monster. Do you need anything to make the call? Two-way television wrist-watch? The horn of Roland? The commissioner’s Bat-signal?”
“Forgive me, I think it is not wise…”
“Let me point out that time is short and someone is bound to notice all the corpses piled in the hall in a minute. There are guards locked outside who are going to start banging on the doors as soon as they get suspicious, or their shift ends. Ask Pastor Ossifrage what to do. But tell him I will help him rescue this Falinn fellow if he helps me rescue Penny. Oh, my Lord, there is no way we are getting out of here alive, is there? We are in freaking Alcatraz atop freaking Devil’s Island, in a tower ruled by magicians who can see the freaking future, and we keep adding inmates to the list of who to break out!”
There was a short discussion between the three of them, while I sat down on the floor, holding my head in both hands, and suddenly wishing I was back home getting woken up by my Dad at five in the morning for brutal physical training and fencing lessons, like any normal kid.
I could only understand Abby’s side of the conversation, and it was like a game of telephone, or listening to Luke talk to Artoo.
Abby turned to me. “The Freedman and the Master have a difference of spirit and can never agree. We say you are to choose. There is a way to retreat now from the Dark Tower, and be safe, and find the Wise, and perhaps gather allies from the Golden City. Better-armed, with others than we four, some desperate rescue might be ventured the next time one of the foreverborn is laved.”
I sighed heavily. “You are all out of your stinking heads if you leave this decision up to me. I cannot be killed, and I don’t care about anything much but saving my boss’s daughter out of this madhouse. I am in love with her. Call it infatuation if you want, or puppy love, or lust, or a case of terminal girl-crazy, I don’t care. Every boy who ever lived who had a crush on a girl wants to rescue her, no matter who she is. I am the only one in the history of the world who actually has that chance. Maybe a woman dating a police officer got to see him shoot her mugger in mid-mug, but it sure does not happen that often. My one chance. This is it. I would rather die than leave her here one more second than need be.”
Abby said, “You cannot die.”
“Yeah, well, go ahead and rub it in. Everyone else can commit acts of self-sacrifice but me. You’d think I’d be really happy about being invulnerable, but I kind of miss being human. So? If you are not kidding about it being my decision?”
Abby and Ossifrage and Nakasu had serious expressions on their faces or chest, as the case might be. They were not kidding.
“You’ll regret it. I warned you. Call the monster. Magnetize the needle. Make it point at Penny.”
Pastor Ossifrage said, “Falinn before the witch. He has…” (some word I did not know) “… of the powers.”
I was tired of arguing. “Fine! Whatever. Let’s shake a leg!”
Abby translated that. Both Ossifrage and Nakasu looked down at their legs, and then up at me, puzzled.
I said, “You said you did not use a radio. What is this calling? A magic ritual? Do you draw a circle or something?”
She said, “No. I call by calling.”
Abby put her pinky fingers into her mouth and blew a soft whistle of three notes, low, then high, then low again. It was not very loud, and I doubt you could have heard it if you were standing in the next room.
I blinked. “That’s it?”
Abby said solemnly, “The winged izbim is called.”
“How soon until it gets here? Can we ride on its back?”
“We cannot ride on her back.”
Ossifrage laughed and held his hands up to me, his palms about nine inches apart.
Flying Creatures
1. A Narrow Mask
I looked around. Nothing seemed to be happening. No flaming warp gates opened in midair. Nothing materialized or faded into view or anything like that.
I said to Abby, “So what kind of thing … what kind of thing is this izbim? Is it actually deformed?” The word could mean either monster or deform
“She is a familiar spirit, an ah-napishtim.”
I don’t know how to put this last word into English. It meant externalized life; a shadow disconnected from your feet which flew away and performed tasks, a soul outside the body.
Grandpa Mikhail used to tell us stories about Koschei the Deathless, who dressed in his own rotting skin, and kept his life inside a twig, inside an egg, inside a chicken, inside a fox, inside a wolf on an invisible island in the Arctic oceans surrounded by storms and sea-serpents, such that Koschei could not be killed until the twig was found and broken.
I assume whoever made up the story of Koschei got the idea from the evil wizard in Harry Potter: what Grandpa described was a horcrux.
So I said, “Are you talking about a flying horcrux? Oh, wait, you do not know that word…”
She looked puzzled. “How could I not know a word? Am I not Ur?”
“But how can you know what a horcrux is? It is a made-up word from Harry Potter! Is she selling her books here, too? Wow! That’s some sales record. I mean, I knew they were translated into other languages, but…”
“All the words of your barbarian gabble-gabble are made up words! Only our words are real and unconfused. As for your horror-cross, I have never heard that way of saying it before, but of course I know what that is. It's a shadow that walks away from the body. We do not have such impure things here. Witches and Pharaohs have that craft, and darker aeons.”
“And this winged monster is from another world?”
She sniffed in the imperious way that only twelve year old girls have mastered, or girls raised as princesses, and she was both. “Of course! Whistling for the wind is forbidden here! It is sea-magic. What do the dwellers in the Tower that surmounts heaven, or the dwellers in the shadow of the Tower, have to do with the sea? Nor do we cast our shades out of our bodies. How would the stars see us then? The shade has no nativity.”
At that moment, there came a fluttering of wings, and a small fierce-looking bird of prey with gray wings and white and black breast came up through the tall and narrow windows, flew like a streak down the aisle between the rows of shining tablets, and perched on an ornamented bull's-head topping one looming bookshelf.