Dragonfly: A Tale of the Counter-Earth at the Cosmic Antipodes (6 page)

10 The Handmaiden

All at once I was a champion. Granny even tweaked my cheek when she saw me. Talan was all but forgotten.

They led me back to my cell, and I stretched out on my cot, lost in thought. A guard appeared in the passage with a slim figure, unlocked the gate, and let her in. I rose to receive her.

She was large-eyed and hazel-eyed, with auburn hair gathered loosely about her head and fastened in back. Her lips were soft and pink and gently cusped. She wore a gown of byssum streaked with green and blue and purple. Long earrings dangled from her ears. She was a little taller than me, as were all the Enochites, and had a womanly, wasp-waisted figure. She was no helot, that much was certain. I judged her about ten years my senior.

“My name is Seila,” she said. She began slipping the straps off her shoulders.

I stopped her. “Am I an animal?”

She colored. “I’m no animal myself. A woman has to live as she can. I don’t ask questions about the work I receive.”

“I meant no offense. I’m a stranger here. Where I come from, we don’t lay by those we don’t intend to take into our household. And, as you see, I have no household.”

“So it once was where I was born. But we’re in Enoch now, the great world-city, where there are arts to free women from nature’s burdens, so that they’re free to live for the pleasure of others.”

“Is life a burden, then?”

“It can be,” she said. “And burdens shouldn’t be laid on the unwilling.”

“Who wills himself to be?” I asked. “My life is a burden, but it’s one I wouldn’t gladly lay down.”

“Ah! You must be happy, then. What is your name?”

“Keftu.”

“Listen, Keftu. You’re like none of the slayers I’ve met here. If you don’t rut like the rest, they’re going to think something’s wrong with you.”

“I’m not concerned with that,” I said.

“Perhaps not. But they’ll take me away if they think you’re wasting their resources. It would be good to have a rest for one day at least. Do you mind if we lie down together?”

“N-no, I suppose not,” I said. I stretched out along the wall, and she got in beside me. The cot was very narrow; her breasts were pressed against my chest, and her hand rested on my back.

“I have an ulterior motive,” she whispered. “You remind me of home, and of my half-brother.”

“Where is your home?”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t guessed. How long is it since you last saw the Deserits?”

“But I’ve never heard of the Deserits.”

“Then—where are you from?”

“There’s no use telling you,” I said. “No one here has heard of it, and anyway, I’m the only one left alive of it.”

Her face was pale. “Tell me.”

“I come from Arras.”

I felt a tremor pass over her. “Arras!” she whispered. “Can it be true? You! What are you doing here? Why have you come to this place?”

“I seek admittance to the Hanging Gardens of Narva.”

“Who do you seek there?”

“Why—no one. My people are all dead. I’m the last of them. It’s a thing I seek, not a person. I seek the medicine of immortality.”

“No one has been to Narva and returned. But they’re said to enjoy endless days of bliss.”

“Then that’s where I must go,” I swore.

“Why, you baby!”

“What? I’ll not be here forever.”

“No? How do you propose to escape? If you’re victorious, the old woman will keep you and profit from you. If you fail, you’ll either die in the pit, or spend the rest of your days as her delver.”

“The seraphim of my fathers will not let me rot here.”

“Even if you do escape, how will you reach Narva?”

“I don’t know. I’m a stranger here, as I said.”

“Yes, I’d forgotten that. It would be incomprehensible to an Enochite, you know. They can’t explain anything to aliens. But I’m half a stranger myself. So listen.

“The city lies in a strip along the coast, thousands of miles from end to end, surrounding the sea on three sides like a broken wheel. The Tower of Bel rises from sea to sky at the center. Elevator cars suspended from heaven link the crown with the Hanging Gardens, which are said to be one chthon over Tethys.

“The Belnites highest in the Tower spend their lives trying to become worthy of joining the ranks of the happy Narvenes. The people just below them strive to take their places. And so on, all the way down to the base. Bel itself tugs at Enoch like a magnet, pulling it against the coast. Every phylite you see in the streets pours her life out trying to get across the viaducts. No one lives more than a block or two away from the rail system now.

“And yet here you are, trying to go right past them all.”

“So you’re a stranger,” I said.

“I’m half Druin. I thought you were, too, because of your looks. But they say there’s Arrasene blood in the Deserits, so perhaps I wasn’t all wrong.”

“What are the Deserits?”

“Mountains far away in the northeast, in the badlands north of the desert. Enoch has mineral interests there. They mine nephridium, the food of the gods, sown by spirits of flame at time’s dawning. My father was an engineer. My mother, his concubine, was a Druin. So I’m a half-breed.”

“Why are you in Enoch now?”

“I came to find someone I lost.”

“Someone you loved?”

She colored. “Who can say? Clearly he didn’t love me, or he wouldn’t have left me. Of course I fell into the cracks and crannies. Granny got hold of me when I couldn’t pay for my lodgings.”

“She told me no one would bother about me because I don’t have the mark of the Cheiropt,” I said.

“She told you the truth.”

“Wh is this Cheiropt?”

“The Cheiropt is a what, not a who. It’s the semi-divine headless social machine that governs all Enoch. Its center is everywhere and nowhere. Every phylite belongs to it and works for it. The helots are its serfs. You can’t live here without having a place in it. It regulates everything: buying and selling, birth and death; even interactions between phylites of different phyles. If you have no phyle, and you’re not a helot, then you’re nothing. Like me.”

“Is there no one who lives apart from it?”

“No one. Once there were Eldenes. It was they who built the tower in the sea and the gardens above. That was myriads ago, when the Synoecism united the city-states. The Eldenes were reduced to slavery. Still they continued to labor. Then came the Cheiropt. The Eldenes refused to adapt, and were destroyed by grinding social machinery. So the Tower of Bel sits unfinished to this day. The Enochites will never complete it; members of different phyles can’t even understand each other.”

“Do all Enochites know this?”

“Haven’t you heard what I’ve said? This is the Age of Peace. Nothing happens here anymore. Enoch has no memory.”

“How did you learn of it?”

“I was once a handmaid of the Last Sybil of At. The story was told in the Moabene sanctuary, the seat of the Image-Not-Made-By-Hands.” She closed her eyes. “And now I’ll go. You’ve tired me with your questions.”

“Will I see you again?”

“If you’re victorious.” She got up and clanged the bars. “If not, I’ll see you in Sheol.” A guard came for her, and she left.

I put my hands behind my head and lay awake for a long time after she was gone. I tried to think of the stars over Arras. I couldn’t. Nothing seemed real but Seila. The world was a lightless labyrinth with no solution.

11 Leviathan

I had turned a corner in my career. At my request Granny let me train on my own. She was a little afraid of me now, or perhaps afraid of having to find a third trainer. She gave me a more secluded cell with four brick walls and a door of solid iron.

The Enochites lived by a six-day cycle: five days fell between each big fight. It was strange to me, for time in Arras had been marked by seven-day cycles. It was the rhythm by which I lived. In Enoch I felt as though I had entered an artificial world, divorced from the life of things, and divided from my own past.

The next few fights were nothing to speak of, mere skirmishes with packs of maugrethim or solitary deinothim. But I was popular among the helots. I enjoyed their acclaim; I enjoyed the joy I brought them. I started to embellish my performances with theatrics. That was when they began calling me Amroth, after the hunter of Enochite legend.

Whenever I wasn’t training or fighting—and usually when I was—I thought of Seila. My body remembered the feeling of her pressed up against me. I anticipated seeing her again, imagined what I would say, and what she would say. None of my fights were big enough to justify that kind of reward, however.

At last one morning I was led to the pit with the promise of something more. My heart beat high as they chained me to the eye-bolt. In one hand I held a trident with a sharply pointed butt, in the other a heavy net. These had been thrust at me at the last moment with no explanation of what I was to face.

“Behold!” the announcer cried. “Amroth! The Hunter returned! Does his mastery end when his feet leave the earth? Is he truly an avatar of the champion? Or only an adventurer wearing a mantle too big for him? Let the truth be revealed!”

There was a low gurgling sound that grew louder as its pitch rose. All at once water burst from the six pipes and crashed to the floor in cascades. It spread out and began to rise. I panicked. In Arras, where standing water was unknown, I had never learned to swim. The helots laughed and jeered.

Now it was at my knees, now at my middle. I tossed the net away, fearing it would get tangled with my legs. The level of the waves rose to my chest. Thick clots of yellow foam scudded over the surface. I began instinctively to paddle as the water lifted me up. It was all I could do to keep hold of the trident while staying afloat. I went whirling around in the eddies, spinning helplessly under a cataract to be pounded into the depths before bobbing to the surface, choking and gasping for air, only to begin the cycle again.

The water reached the bottom of the pipes. I clung to one for support, holding on with all my strength against the torrent that threatened to tear me away. The outpouring lessened gradually, and ceased altogether once the tank was filled to twice as deep as I was tall.

There was a distant boom, and the water swelled a little higher. The black gate swung open, groaning on its hinges. A shadow swam out, circled once, and returned to the darkness. The cries of the helots had fear mixed with their bloodlust now.

The fish came out a second time. It swam the perimeter of the tank without seeing me. It had a huge, bullet-shaped head, plated with bone like a living skull with eyes, and a jagged, razor-sharp jaw. It was large enough to swallow me in one gulp.

At the third pass the fish’s mouth caught on my chain. I was yanked out into open water. I thrashed my way back to the pipe, but the fish’s demon eye was fixed on me now. It continued to the other side, then came straight toward me.

Somehow I was able to get my foot on the pipe. I propelled myself through the air over the fish. It snapped at the place where I’d been just as I hit the water behind it. The audience roared. I flailed my way to the opposite pipe.

The fish was nosing around in the water, puzzled by the disappearance of its prey. Slowly it turned and began to swim around again. I remained perfectly still as it passed. The fish didn’t see me. Apparently its eye was sensitive only to motion. It passed me a second time. If I could just remain where I was at…

A guard reached over the parapet and gave my arm a vicious jab with the butt of his spear. The crowd cheered as I slipped into the water. The fish saw it, turned, and came at me a second time. Again I leaped over it, arriving back where I’d started. The fish whipped around. This time it hadn’t been fooled.

I clutched at the pipe with shaking hands. I knew that this would be the last pass. I was exhausted from my leaping and my bad swimming. But the trident was still in my hand.

I readied myself for the final plunge, holding the trident fork-foremost. The fish came at me. Now I timed my dive earlier than before—and shot straight into the fish’s open maw, the baited hook at the end of an iron fishing line. The jaws snapped shut behind me. I was enclosed in a cold, watery tomb. Walls of hard tissue pushed against me from every side.

I wriggled around, set my knee against the floor of its gullet, and drove the point of my weapon upward and outward, in what I guessed was the direction of its brain. The fish gave a mighty convulsion and spewed me out. I broke through the surface, sputtering. There was a dull groaning and sucking noise, and the fish bobbed up beside me in the throes of death.

I laid hold of a fin, hauled myself onto its bony skull, and drove the sharp butt of my trident into a joint between its plates. The flesh parted before it. The fish shuddered, stiffened, and was dead.

There was a tremendous gurgle, and the pit began to drain. The helots were thundering one word now: “Amroth! Amroth!” A hail of rods tinkled into the water and sank glittering to the bottom.

*          *          *          *          *

That day they brought me Seila again. I could tell she was happy to see me, happy I hadn’t been devoured or torn apart yet. We sat side by side on my cot. It was good to feel the warmth of her body; the beat of her life washed over me in waves.

I tried at first to speak of my fights, but the subject made her uncomfortable. There was little else to talk about, so I fell to telling her stories of the small doings of my people in the Wabe of the Pillar, and describing our ways and customs. That seemed to please her. “How wonderful to have grown up in such a place,” she sighed. “But you don’t speak of your father or mother.”

“My father I hardly knew, for he died when I was young,” I said. “He was a cold man. He didn’t like me. I feel quite certain of that. My mother—my mother loved deeply, I think, though she said little. Her place was a difficult one. I never understood.” I shrugged my shoulders. “It was my godmother who raised me.”

“I’m sorry I asked,” she said. “It was none of my business.”

“Don’t be sorry. They’re all gone now, anyway. You told me when I saw you last time that you knew of Arras.”

“Yes.”

“No one else here has heard of it.”

“It’s from a story told at the Sanctuary where I lived,” she said.

“Tell it to me.”

“What a boy you are for finding things out! Do you never weary of asking questions?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t.”

“You ought to make a pilgrimage.”

“A pilgrimage? Where to?”

“I’m only being half-serious,” she said. “To the Sanctuary of At. They would take you before the Image-Not-Made-By-Hands and let you ply the Last Sybil with questions. Would you obtain the answers you wanted, I wonder? At speaks enigmatically, like the desert wind. At is not as free as I am.”

“How could that be? You haven’t answered me anything!”

She gave a strained smile. I was afraid at first that I’d pushed her too much. But she drew a deep breath and began at last.

“Long ago,” she said, “a great ad or so, before the world was so dry, a star fell into the desert near Moabene. A lone—”

“What’s Moabene?”

“A Druin city. It wasn’t Druin then, of course, but Chebite. A lone—”

“What does ‘Chebite’ mean?”

“The Chebites were autochthons of the Deserits. You must listen, or I’ll never finish. Well, a lone herder of chebothim found the star and told the Demarch. The Demarch was troubled, and all Moabene with him. He said: ‘Take us to this star, that we may worship it.’ For the thought of their hearts was that it was a dead god. So the Demarch and his wizards and counselors went out into the desert with the herder as their guide. They found the Image at the bottom of a pit.

“As they knelt down to pay it homage, lo! columns of strange men came up out of the south, the thirsty men of Arras. ‘Surely this is a sign from At,’ they said, and knelt down to worship as well. Under their direction the Image was borne into the city and placed in a high cave, and the Sanctuary rose up around it.

“For myriads the descendants of the Arrasenes ruled over the Deserits, a people apart. But they dwindled over time, mixing with the Chebites, and the two peoples became one, the Druins. The last archon died, and the demes wander now without one hand to guide them.”

“It’s strange,” I said. “I’d never heard of any of my people going to seek a new place. We imagined we were the only men in the world. Then again, Arras is dry now, and I’ve often thought it wasn’t always so. Great cities stand along the dead sea bottoms and canyons.”

“The Sibyl,” said Seila, “tells us that two brothers, twins, split from the same egg at the dawn of time. The Enochites are descended from one, together with the goblins of Nightspore Forest and the wheel-eyed giants of Leng, while the Arrasenes and Eldenes come from the other. The Druins are a mixture.”

“Who is this Sibyl? Why did you call her the Last Sibyl?”

“Each Sibyl is the Last Sibyl until the next Sibyl comes. We’re never guaranteed another. For who can make a Sibyl but At?”

“We have a similar story,” I said. “At the beginning were two brothers made of the same clay. One rose up and slew the other. For this he was doomed to wander the earth, deathless. He took to wife a nephel who had assumed bodily form. She bore him all manner of monstrous progeny, so he murdered her and buried her beneath a mountain. There she lies decomposing. But her body continues to give birth to monsters. It was from the blood of the slain brother that Arras sprang.”

“If you didn’t know there were other men in the world,” said Seila, “what brought you across the desert?”

“My people all died. Our wells were blighted. Only I survived. From a high place I looked out and saw what I now know to be Narva. I set out to find its gates.”

“You came all this way on foot? There are no passes through the Pelus.”

“I flew,” I said.

“You flew! You had airships in Arras?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

Seila sketched with her hands. “Crafts that hang from great envelopes filled with something lighter than air. The Enochites use them.”

“No,” I said. “The idea never occurred to me. I can see now how it would work. Yes, indeed I can. I doubt such crafts would be reliable in the desert, though. Wind storms are too frequent and too violent. No, I built a thing with wings like dragonfly wings.”

“You mean a craft heavier than air?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“And yet the Enochites tell us that’s impossible.” She took my hand. Hers were warm and delicate. “You begin to amaze me, Keftu.”

My body thrilled with pleasure. I met her gaze. “Tell me of the one you came here to find,” I said.

“Why?” She withdrew her hand and looked away. “Don’t get attached to me, Keftu.”

“Please, I—I just want to know everything about you. Was he—is he—a good man?”

Seila shrugged her shoulders. “He was a man. What does it matter what you say about people? He was a little like you, both wise and valiant. I suppose he reminded me of my father, who was also an engineer. He served a mad sun-prophet out there. He escaped here when he fell afoul of him. I don’t think he knew I loved him. I tried to follow him. I threw away everything to do that. Then I got here, and he was nowhere to be found. By that time there was nothing to go back to.”

“If I ever saw him and knew him,” I said, “I…I feel I should kill him. For jealousy.”

“You are a baby, aren’t you? Don’t you know what I do every day?”

“That doesn’t matter to me. You’re forced to do it. Your heart isn’t in it.”

“But what if I don’t mind it, either?” She touched my face. “Baby, baby,” she said, and kissed me. I put my arms around her. But she drew back. “No,” she said. “This isn’t right. I…I don’t want to be the bait that draws you deeper into the maze.”

“Bait? What do you mean?” I took her hand. “What if I made it out of here, and was able to take you with me? Would you come?”

She laughed bitterly. “You’re quite the optimist.”

“They say it’s been done before.”

“You mean the Misfit. His route is not for you. Take care how you fight the Cheiropt, Keftu. You’ll only bury yourself deeper. You’ll escape, only to find that there’s no
you
anymore at all.”

“But would you?” I insisted. “Would you come?”

She kissed me in answer. I knew it was a lying kiss. But my heart soared anyway.