Rags & Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales (5 page)

What? Oh no, I was not present as a mechanician, I was there to write an account of the reworking, I thought it might prove to be of some interest, for one of the city gazettes, or perhaps as a selection in a book that I have begun, observations of curious machines, sorceries,
and the like.

You might yourself make an interesting dozen pages, Master Puppet. I have heard of you, of course. Read about you, too, unless I miss my guess. That is to say, I have read about a certain sorcerous puppet who bears a striking similarity, in the works of Rorgulet and in Prysme’s
Annals
—oh, of course, Sir Hereward, you would rate at least as many pages, I should think. But you desire
discretion, and I respect that. No, no, I
will
be discreet, I do not write about
everything
. Yes, I am aware of the likely consequences,
so there is no need for that, good knight … please, allow me to withdraw my throat a little from that … it looks exceedingly sharp. Really? Every morning, without fail, one hundred times each side, and then the strop? I had no idea. I do not treat my razor so
well, though perhaps it gets less shall we say … use … no, no, I am getting on with it. Have patience. You should know that I am not a man who can be spurred by threats.

As I said I was coming back from Orthaon, traveling on the Scheduled Unstoppable Cartway, in the third carriage, as I do not like the smell of the mokleks. Speaking of razors, what a job it must be to shave a moklek, though I
have heard it said it is required only once, and the handlers rub in a grease that inhibits the regrowth. Done at the same time as the unkindest cut of all, though nothing needed there to prevent the regrowth, of course. It is interesting that the wild mammoths treat the occasional escaped moklek well, as if it were a cousin who had fallen on unfortunate circumstances. Better than many of us treat
our cousins, as I can attest.

Yes. I was on the cartway, in the third carriage, through choice, not primarily through lack of funds, though it is true both fare and luxury reduce from the front. We had stopped, as is common, despite the name of the conveyance. My compartment was empty, save for myself, and though the afternoon light was dim, I had been correcting some pages that the dunderheaded
typesetter of the
Regulshim Trumpet-Zwound
had messed up, a piece on the recent trouble with the nephew of the Archimandrite of Fulwek and his attempt to … ouch!

I told you I need no such encouragement, and it would have been a very short digression. You might even have learned something. As I was saying, the light suddenly grew much brighter. I
thought the sun had come out from behind the skulking
clouds that had bedeviled us all day, but in fact it was a lesser and much closer source of illumination, a veritable glow that came from the face of a remarkably beautiful woman who had stepped up to the door of my compartment and was looking in through the window. A very good window; they know how to make a fine glass in Orthaon, no bubbles or obscuration, so I saw her clear.

“Pray stay there,
for a moment!” I called out, because the light was extremely helpful, and the proofs were such a mess and set quite small, and there was this one footnote I couldn’t quite read. But she ignored me, opening the door and entering the compartment. Rather annoyingly, she also dimmed the radiance that emitted not only from her beautiful face, but from her exposed skin. Of which there was quite a lot,
as she was clad only in the silken garment that is called a rhuskin in these regions, but is also known as a coob-jam or attanousse, I am sure you know it, a very long, broad piece of silk wound around the breast and tied at the front and back so that the trailing pieces provide a form of open tabard covering the nethers, save when a wind blows or the wearer attempts a sudden movement, as in entering
the compartment of a carriage on the Scheduled Unstoppable Cartway.

She had very fine legs. I may have admired them for a moment or two, before she interrupted the direction of my thoughts, which I must confess were running along the lines of the two of us being alone in the compartment, and the interior blinds, which could be drawn, and why such a beautiful, shining woman would intrude upon
my compartment in particular, even though of course it is not entirely unusual that beautiful women throw themselves upon … why do you chuckle, Sir Knight? Not
all women favor height and splendid mustaches, and the obvious phallic overcompensation and fascination with swords … and yes, daggers like that one, which I do not want thrust through my hand, thank you. This hand that has written a hundred
… well, ninety books … and has many more to write! Thank you, Master Puppet. I would be grateful if you could keep your … your comrade contained.

So. She was in the compartment, beautiful, illuminated, and semi-naked. Obviously a sorceress of some kind, I presumed, or a priestess, perhaps of Daje-Onkh-Arboth, they tend to be lit up in a similar fashion. I had no idea then what she actually was,
you understand.

She smiled at me, winked, and sat down on the cushions opposite.

“Tell them you haven’t seen me, and put me in your pocket,” she said, very sultry and promising. “It shall be to your advantage.”

“Tell who—” I started to ask, but she shrank away before my very eyes, and in a matter of moments there was no longer a shining woman on the cushion, but a small figurine of jade, or
some similar greenstone, no taller than my thumb. Now, as you can plainly see, I am a man of the world who has seen a great deal more than most, but never anything like that. I picked up the figure, and was further surprised to find it very cold, as cold as a scoop of ice from the coolth-vendors you may have seen along the street here, offering their wares to chill a drink or a feversome brow.

I put her in my pocket, the deep inner one of my outer coat, where I keep a selection of pencils, an inkstone, and other odds and ends of the writer’s trade. It was none too soon, for there was a commotion outside only a few seconds later, with a great
clattering of armor and the usual unnecessary shouting of military folk, the roar of battle mounts and the like, all of which I understood immediately
to be the sudden arrival of some force bent on intercepting the conveyance, which meant more stopping and greater delay. I was not pleased, I tell you, and even less so when two rude troopers flung open the compartment door, waved a pistol and a sword in my face, and by means of emphatic gestures and strange, throat-deep grunts, demanded that I alight.

Naturally, I refused, pointing out to them
that there were numerous treaties guaranteeing the inviolate nature of the Unstoppable Cartway, and that by interfering with it they were risking war with no less than three city-states, and the Kingdom of Aruth, admittedly a great distance away at the terminus, and not only these polities but also the parent company of the Cartway, which they might not know was the Exuberant Order of Holy Commerce,
well known for its mercenary company business, in addition to its monopoly on Hrurian nutmeg, the original source of the order’s wealth, which by curious chance—

Your interruptions, sir, delay matters far more than my minor educational digressions. Yet I protest in vain, as in fact occurred with these other soldiers. After they had dragged me out quite forcibly, I ascertained that in fact they
were deaf-mutes, directed solely by a sign language that I did not know, involving numerous finger flicks from their officer. This fellow, from his ill-fitting gun-metal cuirass and the crushed plumes of his helmet, was clearly more priest than soldier, the armor worn over robes of an aquamarine hue flecked with silver bristles, here and there showing silver buttons that were embossed with the heads
of two women, one gazing left, the other right, and apparently sharing the same neck. I did not immediately recognize this outfit, but
then there are many gods in the Tollukheem Valley, some with multiple orders of followers.

“Have you seen Her?” asked the officer, the capital “H” readily apparent in his speech.

“Who?” I asked.

“The Goddess,” said the officer. The capital “G” was also very
evident.

“What goddess?”

“Our Goddess. Pikgnil-Yuddra the Radiant One.”

I must admit that upon hearing this description the jade figurine felt suddenly very much heavier in my pocket, and I felt a similar chill around my heart. But I gave no sign of this, nor of the slight unease that was beginning to spread in the region of my bowels.

“Am I to understand you have lost a goddess?” I said to
the officer, with a yawn. “I am afraid I have never heard of your Pikgnil-Yuddra. Now, I trust you will not be delaying the Cartway for very long?”

“Pikgnil-Yuddra the Radiant,” corrected the officer, with a frown. “You are very ignorant, for our Goddess is the light that does not fail, the illuminatrix of the city of Shrivet, and verily for leagues and leagues about the city!”

“Shrivet … Shrivet
… ” I pondered aloud. “But that is at least a hundred leagues from here. I take it the illumination does not extend that far? I believe here we fall under the aegis of the god of Therelle, the molerat-digger Gnawtish-Gnawtish?”

I made the molerat godlet up, of course, for my own amusement. That part of the world is so infested with little godlets that no one could know them all, and as the soldiers
were from Shrivet, which was indeed a great distance away, they would have no clue.

“Other gods do not concern us,” said the officer. “Only our own. She must be here somewhere, we were only an hour at most behind her chariot.”

“Chariot?” I asked. I looked around, hoping to see it, for I was naturally curious about what style of chariot a luminous goddess might drive, and what manner of locomotion
might propel it, or beasts draw it.

“Crashed half a league back,” said the officer. “But near the track of this … this … ”

He gestured at the carriages of the Cartway, and the ten mokleks harnessed in line, with their mahouts standing by their heads and the guards in the howdahs watching the temple soldiers search with surprising equanimity or possibly cowardice—certainly they had made no attempt
to intervene. There were more guards by the rear carriage, and the conductor-major herself, but they were even more relaxed, offering wine to another priestly officer.

“It is called the Unstoppable Cartway,” I said. “Though clearly it is neither unstoppable nor do the mokleks draw carts, but luxurious carriages. I believe in its infancy, carts were drawn, carrying a regular cargo of foodstuffs
from Durlal to Orthaon, and manufactured goods on the return—”

The officer was, as might have been expected, uninterested in learning more. He interrupted me most rudely.

“Have you seen the Goddess?”

“I don’t know,” I countered. “I am traveling alone in my compartment, a blessed luxury, but I confess I have looked out the window from time to time, and upon several occasions have seen women.”

“You would not mistake her for a mortal woman,” snapped
the officer. “She is bright with virtue, her light constant, a shining star to guide correct behavior.”

“No, I can’t say I’ve seen anyone like that,” I said. By this point I had noticed that while everyone had been rousted from their compartments, there were no individual searches taking place and the general ambience had become more relaxed
as the Goddess was not found within the carriages. There seemed only a small chance that the jade figurine would be found upon my person, and I must confess that I was intrigued by this search for a goddess, even more than I was interested in her physical charm.

“Does your Goddess regularly take … ah … unscheduled journeys?”

“Pikgnil-Yuddra the Radiant does not leave the city ever,” said the
officer firmly. “Only Yuddra-Pikgnil the Darkness may leave the city.”

I confess that a slight frown may have moved across my brow at this point. Discussing godlets with their priests is often fraught with difficulty, and this search for a goddess who had not left, or who possibly had, but under a different name, was very much in keeping with the tradition of godlets who did not at all correspond
to their priesthood’s teachings or texts.

“I’m not sure I follow,” I said. “You are searching a hundred leagues from Shrivet for a goddess who does not leave the city ever, and there is another goddess who does leave the city but you are not searching for her?”

“They are the twin Goddesses of Day and Night,” said the officer. “Pikgnil-Yuddra the Radiant may not leave the city, and Yuddra-Pikgnil
the Darkness may not enter, save at certain festivals. A week ago, the temple was discovered to be empty, the
warders slain, the bounds broken, and Pikgnil-Yuddra the Radiant was no longer housed there.”

“So it is Pikgnil-Yuddra the Radiant you are looking for?”

“We seek the Goddess in both aspects,” said the officer. “For it may be the doing of Yuddra-Pikgnil the Darkness that has unhoused
Pikgnil-Yuddra the Radiant, in their eternal struggle for the souls of the people of our city.”

“I see,” I said, though to be accurate, the only thing I saw was yet another idiotic priest, a member of a hierarchy that was preserving their authority by drawing upon the power of an imprisoned extra-dimensional intrusion that had become anthropomorphized by long association with mortals. Yes, unlike
the great majority of the deluded people who populate this world, I do not think of them as gods or godlets. Indeed, it has been theorized that should a mortal here be somehow introduced to some other plane of existence, there they too would have the powers and attributes seen here as godlike. But I speak to those who know far more than I, if indeed you are as I believe you to be, agents of that
ancient treaty—ah, you are a barbarian, Sir Knight, to so interrupt civilized discourse in the interest of what you like to call the bare facts. I will continue.

Suffice to say that after some show of searching and questioning, the priestly soldiers departed and the Cartway continued. Shortly after the cries of the mahouts had ceased and the mokleks had stretched out to their full shamble, our
conveyance traveling at a remarkable speed only slightly slower than a battlemount’s lope, I felt a stirring in my coat pocket. Reaching in, I withdrew the jade figurine and set it upon the seat at my side, whereupon a few moments later it once again became an alluring woman, or rather goddess, though this time she kept her radiance dimmed to
the extent that she merely glowed with the luster one
finds inside the better kind of oyster shell, one likely to provide a pearl.