Rags & Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales (6 page)

“So, you are a runaway goddess, to wit, one Pikgnil-Yuddra the Radiant,” I said conversationally as she rearranged her rhuskin, not for modesty, I might add, but rather to show off those beautiful limbs to even greater advantage.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “I am, of course, Yuddra-Pikgnil the Darkness. But you can
call me Yuddra.”

“I am slightly confused,” I replied. “The priest-officer said that it was your, ahem, counterpart—”

“Sister,” corrected Yuddra. “You might say we are twins.”

“Your sister, then, who had become unhoused and traveling. Also, if you are the Darkness, why are you illuminated?”

“There is no difference between us,” replied Yuddra, stretching her arms up toward the padded ceiling—padded
these last twelve years, I might add, since the unfortunate overturning of a carriage that was inhabited by the Prince-Incipient of Enthemo, resulting in his crown being forced down over his ears, the ceiling back then being considerably harder—a stretch that made me catch my breath, I confess. I reached out to her, and to my extreme disappointment, found my hand passing through the waist
I had hoped to encircle, Yuddra proving no more substantial than a wisp of steam.

“There is no difference between us,” repeated Yuddra. “In fact, we have swapped roles many times over the past millennia. Sometimes I stay in the temple, sometimes Pikgnil does.”

“But now you are both wandering,” I said, essaying to lift her hand to plant a courteous kiss, but with the same result as my previous
attempt. “Out of your temple, far from your power, and pursued by your priesthood. What has brought you to this pass?”

She smiled at me and leaned in close, with just as much effect as if she were normal flesh and blood, perhaps even more so, given that the tantalization of not being able to touch is well known as an erotic accentuator, one employed to great effect in the theater of … yes, yes,
you know what I’m talking about, I’m sure, puppet excepted.

“Just such a matter as now concerns us both,” she said. “I am jade and air, and have always been so, save for brief periods of corporeality. My sister, as always, is the same, and both of us … want more.”

“So you are able to assume a fleshly form?” I asked, this being the chief part of her speech that I had taken in. “For some short
time?”

“Yes,” said Yuddra. “But it is difficult. Pikgnil and I want to permanently assume mortal form, so that we may experience in full the experiences we have heretofore only … tasted.”

“What do you require to assume a mortal form?” I asked, being driven by curiosity as always. “For those short periods, I mean.”

“Blood,” said Yuddra, and smiled again, showing her delicate, finely pointed
teeth. “Mortal blood. A few clavelins might grant me an hour, but where to find a willing donor? It must be given freely, you see.”

A clavelin? A small bottle, about so tall, so round, commonly used here for young wine. Not an excessive amount and, though I am no barber-surgeon, I knew that a man could lose more blood than that without fear of faintness.

“I should be happy to oblige Your Divinity,”
I said. Long caution caused me to add, “Two clavelins of blood and no more, I can happily spare, and indeed I would welcome a charming and
touchable
companion to lessen the drear of this journey.”

She smiled again and agreed that such a diversion would be pleasant, that in fact a great part of her desire to assume a permanent mortal form was to engage in just such activities as I suggested, but
on a more regular basis. I must confess that I had expected her to use those sharp teeth to draw my blood in the manner of those creatures some call the vampire, but rather she had me use my penknife to make a cut on my hand, and allow blood to drip into the saucer of one of the teacups provided by the Cartway, along with the samovar that had been bubbling away since Orthaon. As I let the drops
of blood fall, Yuddra licked the liquid from the saucer, very daintily, after the fashion of a cat. As she consumed the blood, I saw her grow more corporeal, the pearly light fading and her skin becoming … real, I suppose, though still extraordinarily beautiful.

I shall draw the shades on the window of this retelling, as I drew the actual shades in the carriage. Suffice to say that time passed
all too quickly, and far too soon I found her growing once again incorporeal, though there was a curious pleasure to be derived when she was neither truly there nor entirely not. I believe she also found the time well spent, Sir Knight, so you can wipe that small smirk from your face. I have studied the works of the great lover Hiristo of Glaucus, and practiced much therein, up to page one hundred
and seventy-seven, and there is a young widow who resides near me who has agreed that we shall together essay the matter of pages one hundred and seventy-eight to eighty-four—

Yes! I am getting on with it. The blinds were drawn up, the Goddess sat opposite, the sun shone in, and we had got another dozen leagues closer to Durlal. I made a cup of tea, the black leaf from the Kaz coast, not the
green from Jinqu, and made further inquiries of Yuddra, if indeed she was that sister.

“So you wish to no longer be a goddess, but to become permanently mortal?”

“I do,” said Yuddra, eyeing my steaming cup of tea with a wolfish, hungry look. “I have not, for example, ever tasted that drink you have. There are so many tastes, so many experiences that are beyond the purely energistic to savor,
as I would do!”

“But tell me, how is it that you will become mortal?” I asked. “Surely not by the imbibing of blood, for if two clavelins amounts to but an hour, then the supply required to maintain corporeality would be … monstrous, and not likely to be freely given.”

She laughed and tossed her head back.

“Pikgnil has found a way, or so she said in her last missive. I am to meet her at Halleck’s
Cross, and then we are to make our way to … but perhaps I should not tell you, for despite our embraces, I fear you are not entirely sympathetic to my cause.”

There she glanced at the ring I wear, which, as you see, shows the sign of the compass, the mark of my order. I was a little surprised that she should be so worldly as to recognize the sign, and beyond that, have some understanding of the
strictures, yet only a little, else she would have understood that I would have no wish to stand in the way of a god who desired mortality, believing as I do that we mortals must be paramount over gods, that it is our works that will endure, when the last godlet is thrust back to whence it came. I believe this is a more extreme view than you share yourselves, for I understand you have fooled yourselves
with definitions, gods deemed beneficial or trivial, and gods malevolent and harmful, to be destroyed or banished. We consider them all a pest, to be gotten rid of at any opportunity. Though use may be made of them first, of course.

“It is true I do not care for gods,” I told her. “But as you wish
to become mortal, I shall consider you a mortal and not my enemy. Provided your aim does not require
the desanguination of many people by trickery, for example.”

“No, it does not involve blood,” said Yuddra. She shifted near the window, and looked out. “I think we near Halleck’s Cross and here I must leave you. Please, do not speak of our tryst, indeed even of our meeting, for we must remain free of the temple, and they have many spies and paid informants.”

“I will not speak of it, nor write
of it,” I said. “I hope that one day we might meet again, when you are but a mortal woman and not a fleeing goddess. Should you wish to, my house in Durlal is easily found, it has a roof of yellow tiles, the only such in the street of the Waterbear.”

There is little more to tell of that first encounter. As we drew up at Halleck’s Cross, she turned once more into that cold jade figurine and, at
her instruction, I carried her from the platform and across the street, depositing her in the branches of the ancient harkamon tree that marks some ancient battle. I turned back after I crossed the street, and saw a cloaked and hooded figure swoop upon the tree, take up the figurine, and be gone, a person that though shrouded, I reckoned to be the sister goddess.

And that, I presumed, was that.
A curious encounter, a brief and no less curious tryst, and an odd tale that I had promised not to tell. I had work to do, pages to be corrected, stories to be written. I soon forgot Pikgnil-Yuddra the Radiant and Yuddra-Pikgnil the Darkness, save in some half-remembered dreams, in which the two of them happened to come by … ah … such dreams are sweet, though sadly oft ill-remembered …

Please!
I continue. Yes, I did see the Goddess again, as I am sure you know or you would not be here, taking up time I had
allocated to write a denunciation of the guild of parodists’ most recent stupidity. I saw her a few days ago I think … What? It is not easy to be exact when one works as much at night as in the day. Very well, it was last night, but already this one is almost at the dawn, so it is
not so far to say two days ago.

I was working here, in my study, sitting in this very chair. I heard a faint knock at that door, though no visitor had been announced and indeed my goblin had long gone to bed and so would not have answered the front door in any case. Having some respectable number of enemies, I took up the pistol from the drawer, that same pistol you have confiscated, Sir Knight,
though I know not the reason, any more than you should take my paper knife, for all it looks like a dagger. I assure you the sharpness is required to swiftly slit a signature of this rough paper I use for notes, that my neighborly printer sells me very cheap as being offcuts and remainders. A blunt knife will tear and rip, and is no use at all.

“Come in,” I called out, my voice steady, for all
that my finger was upon the trigger and my heart beat a little more rapidly than was usual.

The door opened slowly, and a bent figure entered, to all appearances some aged crone, so covered in shawls and scarves that I could not make out a face at all, until she shuffled closer and straightened, so that the light of my lamp fell upon her face. An aged and withered face, a woman twice my age or
more but yet … there was something familiar there. Her eyes were bright, and younger, and I knew her.

It was Pikgnil-Yuddra, or her sister. No longer radiant, no longer young, rather greatly aged and very clearly mortal.

“You know me, then?” she croaked. Her voice still retained
something of her former self, but her appearance astounded me. It was no more than a year since we had met on the
Cartway.

“Yuddra-Pikgnil the Darkness,” I said quietly, but inside I felt a new excitement, for I suspected there was a story here such as few might ever hear, a story that having heard, I might then remake in writing and call my own.

“Yes. I was once Yuddra-Pikgnil the Darkness,” said the old woman, and creaking, she sat where you sit now, Sir Puppet, and set her bag, a shabby cloak-bag of
boiled leather, upon the seat you occupy, Sir Knight. “And you once expressed a desire to see me again, and so I have come.”

I was a trifle alarmed by this, sensing some undercurrent of permanent residence being suggested, but that could be dealt with later, I felt. The important matter was the story, the story was the thing!

“But tell me, how have you come to be as you are now?” I asked. “What
of your sister? Where did you go?”

“After Halleck’s Cross,” said the old woman. She looked past me as she spoke, her old eyes seeing things that were not there, at least not for me to see. “Where did we not go? It was my sister’s plan, she was the one who had thought upon it longest, and it was she who found the way. Not the blood drinking, for that would not answer, not for very long. If we
could have drunk blood taken forcefully, that would have been a different road, and we did try that, when we were very young. But it did not work, and we could not discover why it did not work, save that it was a stricture of our making, when first we came.

“We tried other things, sought wisdom from sorcerers and priests, wizards and wise folk. None of them could help us. In the end it was Pikgnil
who found the answer, a decade or more ago,
when she was being me, outside the temple, wandering in search of how we might escape our godhood.

“There is a place far to the northwest, beyond Keriman and the Weary Hills, beyond even Fort Largin and the Rorgrim Fastness, up in the mountains beyond the Valley of the Hargrou, just below the peaks where the Diminished Folk dwell. A place called Verkil-na-Verekil,
a ruined city, yet where some mortals still live, eking out their simple lives.

“Pikgnil had found an ancient text that spoke of Verkil-na-Verekil, of the city before it was ruined, of the king who ruled there, and of his crown. It was his crown that interested us, for the text spoke of its singular property, that it could make a man a god … or … ”

She smiled, her teeth no longer white and shining,
but gray with age, and broken at the edges.

“Or make a god a man.

“It was a long way to Verkil-na-Verekil, a difficult way, for our powers were greatly reduced with every league we traveled from Shrivet, the locus of our extension from the otherworld. By the time we passed Rorgrim Fastness and began to climb into the mountains, I could not take the jade shape, and it took both of us together
to conjure some little light. Worse than that, we were fading, our energistic presences weakening. It became doubtful that we could even reach Verkil-na-Verekil, it might be simply too far … but we resolved to press on. We did not know what would happen if we did overextend ourselves, whether our existence would be terminated, or the stretched energistic threads that led back to the temple would
contract, and we would find ourselves once again imprisoned in Shrivet. By then, we did not fear termination and should we end up back in the temple, we would simply try again. So we pressed on.

“We did reach Verkil-na-Verekil in the end, albeit as thinly painted caricatures, little more than half-caught reflections in a mirror … which in some ways was helpful, for the people there were still
loyal to ancient ideals, and guarded the ruins well, some of them armed with weapons that could slay even such as we were … yet thin as shadows, we slipped past them, and went deep into the ruins and there, in the deep of the mountain, yes, we did find the crown.”