Dragonfly: A Tale of the Counter-Earth at the Cosmic Antipodes (2 page)

3 Alone

I had to find new lines to take me back. It was sacrilege to follow certain threads the wrong way. I went northwest along the top of the canyon for a week before cutting back across the desert. I’d been gone more than a moon.

On the first night I set my trophy on a flat rock where the crabs could get it. I watched their spindly forms fleeting about under the stars as I lay on a sun-warmed stone. In the morning the skull gleamed in the sun, picked perfectly clean. I slung it over my shoulder and went on.

When I neared the Wabe I veered a little so as to pass by my godmother’s house. I wasn’t allowed to speak to anyone before presenting myself to my uncle, but I wanted to catch her eye. She would know I was near. That was why I thought it strange when she didn’t appear.

I went up to the dome despite the prohibition and peered inside. A tiny skeleton reclined on my godmother’s pallet, wearing my godmother’s clothes. Its grin was white and serene.

Without thinking I went on to the next commune. I found skeletons in each dome, twisted in various postures of agony, all picked clean like my trophy. The spring in the middle was black and rotten.

Now I was running. Every well had become a pit of death, every one of my people a skeleton. Even the chebothim were skeletonized in their pens, their long necks arched back across the earth so that they almost met their tails. I felt madness at the door of my mind. I began to wonder if my Walking had taken me into Sheol.

I reached the Palace and went inside. There were no doors, but the winding passages had been enough to keep out the crabs. Now I began to find complete bodies, all mummified by the dry air. They must have died only a few days after I’d left.

The throne was empty, as was my uncle’s apartment. My mother I found in her room. She was curled up on the floor. Her hair had started to crumble and gather in a little heap around her skull. One arm was stretched above her head with a finger extended in warning. It pointed to a water pitcher.

I went back outside. The breeze lifted up my hair and set it down again, then went to hiss amongst the reedy branches of the ephathim that dotted the Wabe. I stooped and picked up a stone, questioning it. It answered me mutely, enigmatically, like a misshapen idol. I threw it away.

I was a man now. I was the only man in the world. The future was a blank.

*          *          *          *          *

The first thing I did was lay my mother to rest in the necropolis. It seemed a shame to bury her unclean, but the crabs wouldn’t touch her now. As I lifted her something fell from her withered hand.

I laid her gently down and stooped to pick it up. It was a black pendant, carved in the shape of a ball, with curious markings of pale gold and pearl too small to read, but arranged so that the two hemispheres were exactly identical. It hung from a golden chain. A long-ago day came to my mind, and I saw her telling me with a sad smile that it had been my father’s. I felt sure she had intended for me to find it there, and slipped it into my pouch.

Then I took her up again. Her body was light, and it didn’t take long to pick my way into the hallows beneath the Pillar and leave her in her place. My father’s pendant was warm in my pouch.

That evening I made a holocaust. There were no animals to slaughter, so I used dried provender instead. I fired the offering on the altar before the Palace. The sun was sinking into the west, pink, apocalyptic, a ball of electric glare without heat. I crouched in the sand, watching the black smoke raise its head high in the air.

A ramp fell out of the globe, and a smoking thurible went up and down it three times, passing between the divided portions. I saw a succession of images. A river that flowed with embalmed bodies. A vacant temple buried by buildings. An engine that sailed between the stars. A sleeping goddess ringed by flame. A goblin king in a midnight moss-jungle. A tower that reached to the sky. A city wrapped in darkness. A glimmering tree that spread its boughs over a nighted land.

Then I came to myself, and saw only the dying embers of my offering, and the first stars peering out of the ashy sky.

*          *          *          *          *

I left the remains of the rest of the people where they were—the domes would be their sepulchers—and took up my old place in my godmother’s house. Her bones I left where they were, too.

I awoke at midnight that first night, weak and delirious. I’d set my trophy on the floor near the door, and it was leering at me. “What is it?” I asked.

What are you going to do? You’re Phylarch of Nothing now.

“I’ll wait,” I replied.

Wait? Wait for what? New subjects?

“The seraphim can raise up a new Arras from the stones of the earth.”

Is that what you think? You think they’ll restore Arras just for you?

“The world is the garden of Arras.”

If the world is a garden, why did the seraphim blight its wells? If Arras is so much in their minds, why did they smite its members?

“They must have trespassed while I was gone,” I mused.

Ah, but perhaps it’s you who trespassed. Have you thought of that? Maybe it’s you who died, and they all wonder what’s become of you.

I had no answer for this, and soon drifted off to sleep again.

*          *          *          *          *

The next morning I went out, hopeful for the day’s doings. But I soon found that I had little to do. What end was there for me beyond my own life? So I became restless as the sun rose high in the sky, having nothing to set my hand to.

I went into the Palace and searched every corner of it. My uncle’s body was nowhere to be found. But I came upon the Garnet Crown in the royal apartment, and laid it upon my brow, and slung the Serpent Robe about my shoulders. I erected several dried bodies in the Phylarch’s Court and looked over them from the throne.

After a few minutes I climbed down and put the things away. I went through the Court of Women to my mother’s room. Her wardrobe stood in the corner. It was made from the wood of a tree that had vanished from the earth ages ago. I opened it. All her clothes were there, save what I had buried her in. I ran my hand over them. They still held some of her life.

I put on a gown of gold sea-silk, an heirloom of the House. It smelled like her, and I hugged it close. I laid her gold necklace about my throat and set the Jade Tiara on my head. There was a hematite mirror in her apartment. I caught my eye in it, and hastily disrobed and went out, trying to blank my mind. As I stepped into the sunshine I started at my own shadow. It seemed a demon there waiting for me.

It was the middle of the afternoon. I scanned the dancing distance and descried a solitary figure against the sky. So I sat on a rock and waited. The sun slid down toward the west as the figure drew near. It was Gyges, my uncle.

Madness lurked in his eyes. He had wandered far from the songlines, listening to false voices. The poison from the wells had caused the flesh of his gums to shrink back from his teeth. He was like a skin-wrapped skeleton, and his face was a living skull.

“Do you disturb the land of the dead?” he demanded.

“Is this the land of the dead, then?”

“So it would seem. All are dead in it save you and me.”

“What happened?” I asked. “I came back, and it was like this. The wells are foul.”

“A storm swept in from the north soon after you left. For three days after it passed the wells ran high. And then they flowed with poison. The people drank and died.”

“And you fled?”

Gyges’ eyes glinted but he smiled his death’s-head smile. “How have you spent your time here, Nephew?”

“I laid my mother to rest. Nothing else.”

“So! You haven’t climbed the Pillar yet? It’s your right, you know. Your Walking is over and done. You are Phylarch now.” A look of cunning stole into his face. “But perhaps you don’t know how to break open the seals. Only I know their secret, as shown me by Astyges my brother.”

“You never broke them, Uncle?”

“Your mother thought it was the starglass that tainted your father.”

I weighed this in my mind. “Be that as it may, we’ll go.”

“Today? Now?”

“Are you fit, Uncle?”

“For this I am fit,” said Gyges. “Let’s go.”

We gathered some supplies into a scrip and set out for the Pillar. I led the way. In and out of weathered folds we mounted the dreadful stair, past deep-carved letters too large to read, past wind caves where crabs hung in clusters from the ceiling. Evening draped itself across the flats.

At a place where a crevice opened beside the path, I felt lightened of my sword. I turned. Gyges held Deinothax in his hands. Madness blazed in his bulging eyes. “The secret is mine, youngling. There are only two of us in the world now. With you gone I shall do as I please. It’s I who was meant to be Phylarch of Arras, steerer of the world’s fate. So your father learned, to his undoing.”

“Would you murder me, Uncle? The seraphim see all that you do.”

“Seraphim, ha! I deal justice, not murder. You lust after the secret of the chamber. I know it was your ambition to put me out of the way as soon as I had served my purpose. But now the sword is in the other hand.”

“Give it to me, Uncle. If there must be bad blood between us, let’s separate. I’ll go out into the desert and find a place where the springs are still sweet. You go up to the house and see what there is to see.”

“And let you fall on me unawares when I come back down? Ha! I know your mind better than you do yourself.”

The sword was glowing brightly now. Gyges looked down. His hands were smoking. “Hot!” he shrieked. His terrified eyes met mine, but there was no recognition in them. I lunged for the blade. He drew back. Then everything went dark.

*          *          *          *          *

I awoke in the crevice where we’d been talking. Night had fallen and the air was cold. My head ached. I felt it gingerly, afraid my skull had been laid open. My hair was matted with dried blood, but the sword had dealt me only a glancing blow. I was thirsty. I felt around for the scrip, but Gyges had taken it. The sword I found on the ledge.

There was nothing to do but wait until it was light. I grew thirstier from moment to moment. I discovered a flask of mescat in the pouch that hung from my harness. It helped a little.

When silver lucidity crept over the plain I began to go up again, moving warily, afraid Gyges would leap out from behind a turning and throw me off. The sun was high in the sky when I gained the summit. I looked all around. Gyges was nowhere to be seen.

The sun-bleached crown was wrinkled and scored like a behemoth’s hide. A ring of standing stones surrounded the domed observatory at the highest point. The seals, I saw, were broken, the door ajar. I cautiously pushed my way inside.

Gyges swung from the ceiling. He had launched himself into space. His face was livid and his hands were black where the sword had scorched them. The rope creaked gently with his swinging. The starglass sat on a table below him. Beside it was a clay tablet.

I took it up and began to read. “The word of Brandobrabdas, Phylarch, Custodian of Sephaura,” it said. “Behold, the curtain is torn. On the seventeenth day of the third moon of the nine hundredth Year of the Crab, I looked into the starglass and saw a thing. We are not alone.”
Not alone.
The tablet went on to explain how to use the instrument and where to look. My mind reeled. Not alone!

I cut my uncle down and dragged the body outside. The desolation sank in slowly. I nursed the mescat while I waited for nightfall. The shadows lengthened. I was sick to my stomach and my eyes felt gritty. At some point I dozed off. It was dark when I woke up.

I positioned the table, opened the shutter, and looked through the glass eye. High over the western horizon was a tiny ellipse of light, with glowing corpuscles moving between it and the earth’s rim. “The palace of some celestial emperor,” I whispered, repeating the words of the tablet, “or an abode of blessed spirits, tethered to the sun’s setting.”

My mind conjured up visions of vast cities teeming with men who had no thought of the dead realm of Arras swept eternally by the Pillar’s black shadow. The irruption into the settled scheme of things was too much to take in at first. I went out and sat on a sun-warmed rock.

The desert floor fell away in every direction. I was pinned to a ball rolled by abstract scarabs. The single-eyed spirits of flame pressed down on me from their black thrones. Low down in the east, Saant burned like a flickering red candle.

Later I went in and looked again. The stars had wheeled, but the oval was there. I watched it for a long time. I didn’t know what it was, empyrean palace or translunary garden. But I swore to myself that I would ascend its ladder, storm its gates, and wrest from it the medicine of immortality. Man’s lot was death, they said, but Sheol would never have me, nor its gates stand against Sephaura.

I kept thinking of the distance. The great dragonfly came to my mind, and the driver that lay in my workyard, and my resins.

I returned to my dome in the morning. Three days later I had my odonatopter.

I went soaring over the desert, suspended from a flexing skeleton, driving the blurred wings with my arms. The leap from the Pillar’s crown had proved it.