Rats and Gargoyles (55 page)

"Not cards, now. Dice."

She strained to fly a few yards further, stalled,
and slid to nestle in a hollow part of the great jaw’s hinge.

Theodoret paused, lifting his head.

"Can birds smell?" he asked softly. "This is the
way it would smell before snow, I remember when I was a child . . ."

"The world is not always saved."

Tendoned, articulated, the machinery of the jaw
rose complicated above her tiny niche. Stone chilled: she fluffed out
breast-feathers. Her heart hammered. Candles dazzled. She cocked her head to one
side, gazing out across the alabaster spaces. Candia and Heurodis at this
distance two spots of color, no more.

The vast curves of the god’s skull rose, ledged
with candles. Infinitely far above she glimpsed rose-light as another suture
crumbled away into dust.

The whisper echoed again along the walls in
fossilized flesh, vibrating in her hollow bones:
"Are you not gone from
here?"

Theodoret lifted his head. The crow, perched at
eye- level, looked across at him. The candle-light shone on his silver-gray
hair, finger-combed clean and curling to frame his lined face. His eyes shone,
his lips parted slightly. The flesh of his shoulders and bony throat shone
yellow against the Decan’s alabaster ruin.

"No, nor likely to, my lord."

He smoothed the doublet under his narrow buttocks
and seated himself, with some effort, on the knotted marble.

"I have succeeded."

The white crow opened her beak and cawed softly,
the manipulation of the bird’s larynx coming too easily.

"Divine One, think. Think. What you do. What you
are. This sickness is–not necessary."

"I know. It is my choice. "

Theodoret’s gaze searched for some source of the
disembodied whisper. Movement rustled. The crow shifted her stabbing beak,
jerking her head around and her other eye to focus.

Whiteness moved.

A feeler vibrated on the air. Carapaces rustled.
Carved as if from milk and ivory, moving blindly across the palate and teeth and
jaw, white cockroaches crawled. Now that they moved, she saw them: marble
scarabs clinging to splintered fangs, burrowing through deep and glittering
alabaster dust. Intricately carved stone blowflies, and ants, swarming across
the ridged floor of the vast skull-pan.

They approached the bare legs of Theodoret, where
he sat calmly. She flicked into flight, curved down to skim the floor, and then
reared up. Lack of her own human size had deceived her. Insects crawled, large
as dogs or small ponies.

Stone feelers and legs rustled. Candle-flames
glimmered on carapaces bright with frost. The rustling modulated, taking on a
chorus-voice:
"I am the Thirty-Six. You cannot compel me. You cannot move me by pleading.
Will you complain that I have done this, who am a god?"

Her wings rose and fell, beating wearily. She
fanned her tailfeathers, gliding on a long curve to take her back to where
Theodoret sat.

"Divine One, you forget—"

"I do not forget. 1 know all that you know. 1 made
the world and you. "

The whiteness of stone blinded her. Aware to each
side of her vision of pinions bending, forcing down cold air, beating
hollow-boned, she cawed: "I could tell you– hrraaa-ak! But I forget. I forget. I
become. What I seem."

Air roiled. From below and all around, the rustling
of stone insects formed a voice:
"Will you require me to play by my rules? I
am not so constrained. You desire your own shape, you bargain for it. But I
perceive you, bone and blood and soul, down to the particles that dance below
sense’s awareness: I know what you know–and it is nothing."

The crow cried out.

Stone fractures, falling to splinters among the
columns of limbs: far off, far off. Like thunder the echo resounds.

"I am above your choices and desires. "

She skimmed the old man’s shoulder, curving in
flight, dazzled by the light of candles on frosted marble.

"For no reason, but my whim. "

Pain slammed through her.

Every vein threaded with glowing wires, every bone
weighed solid and fracturable; she whirled, flinching from the smooth marble
that slammed into her body. Her head jerked up and back, neck cracking.

Gravity slammed her down. Her ribs burst wide, skin
stretching, losing the goosepimple-lodging of quills. Claws uncurled, bones of
feet stretching, stabbing. A sheer weight of body threw her down, wings spread
out: spreading still although she couldn’t move, knocked breathless, skin
pushing out from beneath white feathers, skin and shaped bone—

Heaviness weighed her pelvis, her back. Fire
coursed through her, cramp released from a cellular level; tears burst from her
eyes, and she jerked her arms, moving them from the shoulders, to bury her face
across her callused hands.

The woman lay face down on ridged marble.

"I do not need reasons."

Loose feathers surrounded her hands.

She knelt back on her heels, staring at the white
pinions and down that scattered the stone. Frost chilled her. She reached out
hands palm-forward to the heat of candles on the ledge above her, and stared at
short nails and skin. Not young: sallow skin with a minuscule incised
diamond-pattern, healing from a cut here, marked (she turned the palms to her)
with the calluses of pen and sword.

"Thank . . . you . . ." She spoke blindly, to the
air. "Thank you!"

A hot tear chilled down her cheek. She wiped it
with the heel of her hand, wrapped her arms around her naked body and staggered
to her feet. Her foot curled, clawing for purchase. She slipped, automatically
throwing her arms out to the sides, not forward to break her fall; and other
hands gripped her and pulled her to kneel by the stone on which he sat.

"Rest."

"I don’t have time—"

She raised her head and focused her single gaze on
the old man. The Bishop of the Trees smiled. Her voice in her ears sounded like
song. A smile moved her mouth.

"–but I don’t suppose this matters now. Except to
me." She shivered, arms tight across her body. "Except to me!"

Theodoret reached down, took one of her hands and
unfolded it, and placed her fingertips against her temple.

Unfamiliar softness brushed her fingers. She leaned
forward, staring into the smooth reflecting surface of the nearest marble, the
skin about her eyes creasing as she squinted. Dark-red hair fell about her face
and shoulders, curling finely, streaked with white.

In the hollow of each temple, just where the white
hair began to grow out, a patch no larger than her thumbprint grew. White down,
the feathers soft as fur.

"He doesn’t need reasons."

Before she could become fascinated, staring at her
face in the shine of marble, she leaned her hands against the stone and pushed
herself to her feet. Unsteady, she gazed down at Theodoret.

"I’m sorry, my lord. Scholar-Soldiers . . . I don’t
have
magia
now for this; all
magia
derives from the Thirty-Six
powers of the universe, and they so weakened now—"

A grin stretched her face. Drunk on speech, she
stretched up her arms: body stretching, shoulders, breasts, stomach, legs.
Feeling the cold of ice upon her skin and the fretful warmth of candles, and she
shook her hair back and laughed.

"–
Won
derful!"

The Bishop of the Trees burst into laughter, rich
and resonant. A wistfulness chilled the air. The rustling bodies of insects
swarmed over the nearer stone.

With a crack that split air and sound together, the
cathedral-skull split from tooth to eye. Intolerably bright, the rose-light
glared in.

Stone poured down. Shards of marble rumbled down
the slope of the inner mouth, bounding as boulders do in avalanches, resistless.
The White Crow tilted her head and stared up at the falling rock, shafting
through the air towards her. Breath made a hard knot in her gut.

"My lord Bishop, you are laughing at me, I think. "

She put both hands up to her head, fingers brushing
the down at her temples. One knuckle nudged a gold bee-pin. All muscles tensed
to take wing–pain threaded her human shape. She rose on the balls of her feet to
run. Stone ripped down out of the air.

Unconsciously her hand tightened around the gold
bee, loosened at a sensation of fur and whirring wings. She touched her fist to
her mouth, breathing a name; threw out her hand. As the bee flew she stared up
into hollow whiteness. Into mortal and divine substance fast decaying.

Taking his hand away from placing a piece of
plaster, his fingers shook. Cold bit into his skin, blotching it white and blue.
Casaubon stood awkwardly and tucked his fat hands up into his coat-armpits,
squinting at the sky.

"Is it finished?"

Evelian grabbed his arm. Her hands didn’t close
about the width of his wrist. She jerked furiously at his satin sleeve.

"Is this finished? What’s happening? What can we
do?"

He took his arm away without noticing her grip. He
felt in his left-hand pocket, then his right, one inside pocket and then the
other; and finally from a pocket in the tail of the frock-coat unearthed a large
brown handkerchief. He blew his nose.

"It . . ."

The white still-wet plaster model shone. Low
buildings surrounded a courtyard, some entrances reached by cellar-steps, some
by risers; all within a long wire-framed colonnade. Arches opened into the yard,
too small to permit coaches, wide enough for walking. Steps and seats littered
the yard at irregular geometric intervals.

Over it, the dome of the Temple rose, swelling up
from the body of the complex: a dome to stand stunningly white and gold against
summer skies, to be surrounded by doves, to be surrounded also by gardens–
sketched in with chalk and a few uprooted weeds from the building site–growing
with the brightness of roses. Open arches led from temple to gardens, from
gardens to temple . . .

A model rocking on chalk-marked broken paving.
Wired laths. Hessian. Plaster.

All precisely measured: to proportion, in symmetry,
to scale.

"Given what it is, it’s the best thing I’ve ever
done."

Casaubon reached up and scrubbed a hand through his
copper-gold hair, leaving it in greasy spikes.

"Damn the whole lot of you. Your city, the Scholar-
Soldiers, Decans, and me above all."

His arm fell to his side. The black light glinted
on oil and grease-stains on his satin frock-coat and breeches. His cravat hung
unfolded over his open shirt. With no preparation, he sat down heavily on the
top step; the marble vibrating under his bulk. He rested one cushioned elbow on
his thigh, and the heel of that hand ground into his eye-socket.

"You all can rot, for all I care. I sent her into
that place, promised her help I can’t perform. I . . ."

He lumbered back up on to his feet.

"Of all the pox-rotten fools. She’s good with
magia
and better with a sword, and I,
I
had to make her into a
Master-Physician! Of all the stupid,
stupid
—"

Something brushed his cheek.

Startled, he raised a hand, lowered it.

A bee crept across his dirty knuckles, faceted eyes
gleaming. Mica-bright wings quivered; its legs feather- touched his skin.
Casaubon held his breath. The banded furry body pulsed, lifted into flight.

For one second he heard the hum of summer, of clear
days, and the smell (too sweet, too rich) of rose gardens.

Metal clinked.

He knelt down ponderously, sweeping aside one of
the skirts of his frock-coat, and felt on the paving until his fingers contacted
metal. He straightened, opened his palm. Heavy, glinting with the black light, a
golden bee lay in his hand.

"Lord Casaubon?"

The Mayor’s voice.

Black light moved with the viscosity of honey. It
thickened, rolled across the construction site, sliding down from the sky and
the Night Sun. A hard metallic taste invaded his mouth. He spat, wiped his mouth
on his satin sleeve.

"She needs me . . ."

The fading warmth from the stone of Seshat
illuminated their faces. Shadowed eye-sockets, noses; glinting hair and bright
eyes. The straggle-haired girl knelt by her mother, one hand gripping the
woman’s, intent on the model. Evelian leaned forward, yellow hair spilling
across her breasts.

"I forget her for whole minutes at a time." He
smeared one plaster-wet hand down his shirt to clean it; weight resting back on
one massive heel; brushing blindly at the grease-stains on the coat’s
embroidered lapels.

"So many years to find her, and then by
accident
.
. ."

Water brimmed in his eyes and overran. Tears
spilled down his cheeks, acid-hot and then cold in the cold air; running down
cheeks and chins, runneling wet marks down his stained linen shirt.

"I never heard her speak of you." Evelian’s voice
held wonder. "I knew there had to be
somebody
the cause of it."

He covered his face with his hand. As loud as a
child, he snuffled, and wiped his leaking eyes and nose on his sleeve. He sucked
in a breath and looked down at her with the total bewilderment of pain.

"What’s happening to her? I thought"–his voice
wavered, thinned, began to ululate–"that I’d
help
her, gods rot her. Now.
That I’d be able to . . . to
get
there, and . . ."

He rubbed his face with soaking hands. Tears and
snot soaked the cuffs of his coat. He hiccuped, gasping in air; muffling a sob
in the palm of one hand.

"I brought her into this!"

The chill on his wet hands burned in the Night
Sun’s enveloping cold. Arctic, a wind blew grit across the construction site.
Sand tacked against his cheek.

His left hand tightened on the metal bee, and he
opened it and looked down, watching beads of blood ooze out onto the
plaster-stained lines of his palm. Cold numbed the pain. He folded his hand over
the sharp wings and antennae, clenching hard.