The Dragons of Babel (12 page)

Camp Oberon stank of overflowing latrines and pitchpenny magicks. The latter were necessary to compensate for the former. Glamours as fragile as tissue paper were tacked up on almost every tent flap, so that walking down the dirt lanes between canvas dwellings Will caught sudden whiffs of eglantine, beeswax, cinnamon, and wet oak leaves, felt the cold mist of a waterfall, heard the faint strains of faraway elfin music. None of it was real, or even convincing, but each was a momentary distraction from his surroundings. Whitewashed rocks picked out borders to the meager flowerbeds planted about the older tents.

The camp was situated on a windswept ground high above the Aelfwine. Its perimeters were patrolled but it had no f ences—where could anybody go? Thrice daily a contingent of yellow-jackets herded the refugees into mess tents for meals. Between times, the old folks coped with boredom by endlessly reminiscing about lives and villages they would never see again. The younger ones, however, talked politics. “They'll be shipping us East,” a kobold said knowingly at one such impromptu discussion, “to the belly of the beast, the very heart of that dire and kingless empire, the Tower of Whores itself. Where we'll each be given a temporary ID card, fifty dollars, a voucher for a month's housing, and the
point of their boots in our backsides for putting them to such expense.”

“They could of saved themselves a shitload of expense by not destroying our fucking homes in the first place,” a dwarf growled. “What's the fucking point?”

“It's their policy. Rather than leaving enemies at their borders, they absorb us into themselves. By the time we've found our feet through pluck and hard work, our loyalties have shifted and we become good, obedient citizens.”

“Does this work?” Will asked dubiously.

“Not so far.” The kobold got up, unbuttoned the corner flaps of the tent, and took a long piss into the weeds out back. “So far, all it's done is made them into the most contentious and least governable society in existence. Which surely has something to do with their sending their armies here to solve all our problems for us, but fuck if I know what.” He turned back, zipping his fly.

“This is just venting,” somebody said. “The question is, what should we
do?”

From the depths of the tent, where it was a darkness floating in darkness, an uneasy shimmer that the eye could perceive but not resolve into an image, a ghast said, “A trip wire, a bundle of matches, and some sandpaper can set off a coffee can filled with black powder and carpet tacks. A pinch of chopped tiger's whiskers sprinkled into food will cause internal bleeding. A lock of hair tied to an albino toad and buried in a crossroads at midnight with the correct incantation will curse somebody with a slow and lingering death. These skills and more I might be convinced to teach to any interested patriots.”

There was an awkward silence, and then several of those present got up and left.

Will joined them.

Outside, the dwarf pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He offered one to Will and stuck a second in the corner of his mouth. “I guess you ain't no fucking patriot, either.”

Will shrugged. “It's just… I asked myself, if I was running this camp, wouldn't I be sure to have an informer in a group like that?”

The dwarf snorted. He was a red dwarf, with the ginger hair and swarthy complexion of his kind. “You suspect our beloved Commandant of unethical methods? The Legless One would cry in his fucking beer if he could hear you say that.”

“I just think he'd have somebody there.”

“Ha! There were ten in the tent. In my experience, that means at least two snitches. One for money and the other because he's a shit.”

“You're a cynic.”

“I've done time. Now that I'm out, I'm gonna keep my asshole clenched and my hand to the axe. Knawmean?” He turned away. “See ya, kid.”

Will ditched the cigarette—it was his first, and he was certain it was going to be his last as well—and went off in search of Esme.

E
sme had adapted to the Displaced Persons Camp with an intense joy that was a marvel to behold. She was the leader of whatever gang of children she fell in with, every adult's pet, and every crone's plaything. She sang songs for the bedridden patients in the infirmary and took part in the amateur theatricals. Strangers gave her old kimonos, bell-bottoms, and farthingales so she could play at dress-up and shooed her back whenever she started down the road that led to the cliffs overlooking the Gorge. She could feed herself, a sweetmeat and a morsel at a time, just by hopping from tent to tent and poking her head in to see how everyone was doing. It made things easier for Will, knowing that she was being lovingly watched over by the entire camp. Now he followed the broken half-shilling he carried always in his pocket straight to its mate, which he'd hung on a cord about Esme's neck.

He found her playing with a dead rat.

From somewhere, Esme had scrounged up a paramedic's rowan wand that still held a fractional charge of vivifying energy and was trying to bring the rat back to life. Pointing the rod imperiously at the wee corpse, she cried, “Rise! Live!” Its legs twitched and scrabbled spasmodically at the ground.

The apple imp kneeling on the other side of the rat from her gasped. “How did you do that?” His eyes were like saucers.

“What I've done,” Esme said, “is to enliven its archipallium or reptilian brain. This is the oldest and most primitive part of the central nervous system and controls muscles, balance, and autonomic functions.” She traced a circuit in the air above the rat's head. Jerkily, like a badly handled marionette, it lurched to its feet. “Now the warmth has spread to its paleopallium, which is concerned with emotions and instincts, fighting, fleeing, and sexual behavior. Note that the rat is physically aroused. Next I will access the amygdala, its fear center. This will—”

“Put that
down
, Esme.” It was not Will who spoke. “You don't know where it's been. It might have germs.”

The little girl blossomed into a smile and the rat collapsed in the dirt by her knee. “Mom-Mom!”

Mother Griet scowled down from her tent.

There were neighborhoods within the camp, each corresponding roughly to the locale of origin of its inhabitants, the camp officials having long ago given up on their rationalized plans for synthetic social organization. Will and Esme lived in Block G, wherein dwelt all those who belonged nowhere else—misfits and outcasts, loners and those who, like them, had been separated from their own kind. For them, Mother Griet served as a self-appointed mayor, scolding the indolent, praising those who did more than their share, a perpetual font of new projects to improve the common lot. Every third day she held a pie-powders court, where the “dusty-footed” could seek justice in such petty
grievances as the Commandant deemed beneath his attention.

Now she gestured imperiously with her walking stick. “Get in here. We have things to discuss.” Then, addressing Will, “You, too, grandchild.”

“Me?”

“Not very quick on the uptake, are ye? Yes, you.”

He followed her within.

Mother Griet's tent was larger on the inside than it was on the outside, as Will discovered when he stepped through the flap and into its green shadows. At first, there seemed to be impossibly many tent poles. But as his eyes adjusted, the slim shapes revealed themselves to be not poles but the trunks of trees. A bird flew by. Others twittered in the underbrush. High above floated something that could not possibly be the moon.

A trail led them to a clearing.

“Sit,” Mother Griet said. She took Esme in her lap. “When was the last time you brushed your hair, child? It's nothing but snarls and snail shells.”

“I don't remember.”

To Will, Mother Griet said, “So you're Esme's father. A bit younger than might be expected.”

“I'm her brother, actually. Esme's easily confused.”

“No kidding. I can't get a straight answer out of the brat.” She pulled a hairbrush from her purse and applied it vigorously to Esme's hair. “Don't wriggle.” Mother Griet turned to Will, her pale blue eyes astonishingly intense. “How old is she?” Then, when he hesitated, “Is she older than you are?”

“She… might be.”

“Ah. Then I was right.” Mother Griet bowed low over the child's head. The trees around them wavered and the air filled with the smell of hot canvas. Briefly it seemed they were sitting in a tent like any other with a wooden platform floor and six cots with a footlocker resting by each one.

Then the forest restored itself. She looked up, tears running down her cheeks. “You're not her brother. Tell me how you met her.”

As Will told his tale, Mother Griet dabbed away her tears with a tissue. “Let me tell you a story,” she said when he was done. In her lap, Esme flopped over on her back and grinned up at her. The old crone gently stroked her cheek.

“I was born in Corpsecandle Green, a place of no particular distinction, save that it was under a curse. Or so it seemed to me, for nothing there endured. My father died and my mother ran off when I was an infant and so I was raised ‘by the village,' as they say. I flitted from house to house, through an ever-changing pageant of inconstant sisters, brothers, tormentors, protectors, and friends. When I came of age, some of these turned to lovers and husbands, and they were inconstant, too. All was flux: Businesses failed, pipes burst, and creditors repossessed furniture. The only things I dared hope might endure were my children. Oh, such darlings they were! I loved them with every scrap of my being. And how do you imagine they repaid me for it?”

“I don't know.”

“The little bastards grew up. Grew up, married, turned into strangers, and moved away. And because their fathers had all five wandered into the marshes and died—but that's another story, and one I doubt you'll ever hear—I was left alone again, too old to bear another child but wanting one nonetheless.

“So, foolish as I was, I bought a black goat, gilded its horns, and led it deep into the marshlands at midnight. There was a drowning-pool there, and I held it under until it stopped struggling, as a sacrifice to the genius loci, begging that puissant sprite for just one more child. Such a wail I set up then, in my need and desire, as would have scared away a dire wolf.” She stopped. “Pay attention, boy. There might be a test afterward.”

“I
was
paying attention.”

“Yeah, right. Well, exactly at dawn there was a rustling in the reeds and this child emerged, this beautiful child right here.” She tickled Esme, who squirmed and laughed. “She didn't know who she belonged to and she'd forgotten her name—not the first time she'd done so, I warrant—so I named her Iria. Do you remember any of this, little one?”

“I don't remember anything,” Esme said. “Ever. That way I'm always happy.”

“She sold her memory to the—”

“Shush!” Mother Griet said fiercely. “I
said
you weren't bright. Never mention any of the Seven indoors.” She returned to her brushing. “She was like this then, every dawn her first one ever, every evening moon a new delight. She was my everything.”

“Then she's yours,” Will said with an unexpected pang of regret.

“Look at me, boy, I could die tomorrow. You don't get free of her that easy. Where was I? Oh, yes. For ten or twenty years, I was happy. What mother wouldn't be? But the neighbors began to mutter. Their luck was never good. Cows dried up and cellars flooded. Crops failed and mice multiplied. Sons were drafted, unwed daughters got knocked up, gaffers fell down the cellar stairs. Refrigerator pumps died and the parts to fix them went out of stock. Scarecrows spontaneously caught fire.

“Suspicion pointed the good villagers straight at the child. So they burned down my house and drove me from Corpsecandle Green, alone and penniless, with no place to go. Iria, with her usual good fortune, had wandered off into the marshes that morning and missed her own lynching. I never saw her again—until, as it turns out, these last few days.”

“You must have been heartbroken.”

“You're a master of the obvious, aren't ye? But adversity is the forge of wisdom, and through my pain I eventually
came to realize that loss was not a curse laid down upon me or my village, but simply the way of the world. So be it. Had I the power, the only change I'd make would be to restore EsmeIria's memory to her.”

Esme pouted. “I don't want it.”

“Idiot child. If you remember nothing, you learn nothing. How to gut a fish or operate a gas chromatograph, perhaps, but nothing that
matters
. When death comes to you, he will ask you three questions, and they none of them will have anything to do with fish guts or specimen retention times.”

“I'm never going to die.”

“Never is a long time, belovedest. Someday the ancient war between the Ocean and the Land will be over, and the Moon will return to her mother's womb. Think you to survive that?” Mother Griet rummaged in her purse. “No, so long as you never die, this happy forgetfulness is a blessing.” She rummaged some more. “But nobody lives forever. Nor will you.” Her hand emerged triumphant. “You see this ring? Ginarr Gnomesbastard owed me a favor, so I had him make it. Can you read the inscription on the inside?”

Esme brushed the hair out of her eyes. “Yes, but I don't know what it means.”

“Memento mori
. It means ‘remember to die.' It's on your list of things to do and if you haven't done it yet, you haven't led a full life. Put the ring on your finger. I whispered my name into it when the silver was molten. Wear it and after I'm gone, whatever else you forget you'll still remember me.”

“Will it make me grow up?”

“No, little one. Only you can do that.”

“It's not gold,” Esme said critically.