The New Weird (15 page)

In the evening, trouveres played the lute, jesters juggled flaming brands, grinning crones sold nosegays for tuppence and witches and warlocks demonstrated their arts in night-long shows of tricks, fireworks, curiosities and miracles..

But not Urkhan.

Not Urkhan, not this year, and Ashura feared to know why.

The gate and fence of Blood Park were guarded night and day to prevent errant wizards from practising restricted arts. He, a wizard's apprentice, had no choice but to enter Blood Park surreptitiously by the section of fence furthest from the gallows and least carefully patrolled.

They had given Mother Lamprey the funeral rites of an ancient as a mark of respect. He could see from a distance feral children swinging on the fresh rope.

He climbed up the high barbed fence walling in the bodies of the city's dead.

Nothing died in the city, not without a struggle. Mother Lamprey had explained it to him once.

GodGate was the nub, the centre, the very place where the world's change from death to bloom had begun. God himself, who had grown feeble during the Age of Science, had been reborn in this city, bringing in the new Age of Wizardry. According to Mother Lamprey, God was a woman now, Earth Mother, fecund and savage. Her influence was manifold ― in the way the very leavings and excrement of the city would sprout and run riot if left untended, in the way a man's sperm could breed new forms not just in women, but in other men, even in animals (centaurs had terrorized the city's womenfolk that spring); and in the way the children of the city were born feral and self-sufficient, leaving their mothers' milk for lovers to suck away while they fought other children in hideous, bloody battles of selection.

For safety's sake the townsfolk threw their savage and bloodthirsty newborns into the park and let them feast and grow on the richly flavoured corpses of ancients, securely contained behind high fences.

It took intelligence, teamwork and patience to scale from the inside the ugly, curving spears of the Blood Park fence. You couldn't climb it until you were tall, patient and could collaborate with others.

One night Culpole and Ashura had resisted the temptation to attack each other, had instead helped each other escape to the outside. They had joined the adult world together.

Ashura dropped down, felt his boots squish and slide on loose flesh. He heard the patter of tiny, lethal feet. He would use his blade if he had to, certain that he wouldn't kill anything. Nothing short of dismemberment could kill a feral for good. A slashed face or stomach, however, would give him time to escape an attacker. His eyes had adjusted to the light. He could see faint objects stir in the chaos of limb, torso and skull. He walked carefully towards the gallows.

There was the slightest hint of corruption to the air. In past times, Mother Lamprey had said, the scent of such places was so strong as to be unbearable, and dread plagues brought death to anyone who ventured near. Even the fresh aroma of excrement was tainted and vile in those times, and carried sickness. The thought threatened to turn his stomach.

He was brought up short by twin green sparks near his feet. He was by the corpse of an old woman. Her breasts had creamed and had melted through the lattice of her chest. Her head was missing. Again the flash. A baby peered through the bars of her ribs. Teeth gleamed. Then it flung itself back, scrambled away across the carnage. Claws flung shreds of flesh skywards as it fled.

Ashura reached the funeral gallows without further incident. The area was clear and tended. He looked with yearning at the tidy gravel path leading to the main gate.

It had taken him twenty minutes to get this far. By the main gate it would have taken a mere two, and it would have been a lot safer.

The feral children who had played on the rope were nowhere to be seen. He approached the gallows and caught on the night air the metallic tang of fresh blood. She lay in a pool of intestine and fluid on the far side of the platform. Her stomach was laid open. Her half-consumed foetus glistened in the light. Ashura bent his head in funerary meditation, and did his best to ignore the saliva that was filling his mouth. The smell was delicious. He closed his eyes.

Something scrabbled towards him, was on him, was tearing at the too-thin sleeve of his jerkin, and he was pivoting, taking the child off its feet, reaching for his razor. The child dug its claws in. With sickening slowness, Ashura felt a single barb of chitin penetrate the flesh of his arm. Then the blade was out and buried in his attacker's mouth.

The girl gurgled and chewed on the tempered steel, released her grip. He could feel new tissue encircle and entrap the blade. He yanked it free only with difficulty. Blood fountained from her mouth as she scampered away.

By the time she calmed down enough to feel pain, her mouth would have healed. Ashura had left that happy time behind. His arm would take weeks to heal. And it hurt like hell.

He dropped the knife. It rang against Mother Lamprey's skull.

His stomach jolted up into his mouth. It
rang?

He knelt down, rapped at the old woman's bald head, lifted it up to test its weight, then turned it and used a finger to probe behind the eyeball.

Mother Lamprey's skull was empty.

He was woken the next morning by a stinging sensation in his arm. He undid the crude dressing he had strapped to the wound the night before and gazed dumbfounded at the curl of gristle that was a baby's ear, sprouting smoothly from the surface of his skin. Blood rushed through his head; he felt his face suffused with heat. This could spread. Cancer. Malformation. His whole arm taken up with a child's face, eyes, a ― a mouth.

Ashura reached the sink barely in time to save the polished floor from his vomit. It blossomed and quivered with identity and he had to beat it down the plughole with a flannel, then boil a kettle and chase it with the water through the crude copper pipe. Its screams were terrible.

He leaned up against the basin, shivering. The ear on his arm twitched.

Ashura staggered back to his bed and laid his head in his hands. "This isn't happening," he told himself, and wished he could believe his words.

It wasn't as if such things were unheard of. They were. They were easily dealt with, too. All you had to do was have it removed by a psychokine. Who was GodGate's psychokine? Trimghoul. Who stole Mother Lamprey's brain? Trimghoul. Who would know precisely what Ashura had been up to if he revealed the ear on his forearm?

Trimghoul.

Trimghoul the psychokine lived on the outskirts of the city, in an expensive villa tended by many burly servants. He was a recluse, and a hypochondriac. He rarely ventured abroad, and when he did so, he wore a beekeeper's hat with a long, black veil, long gloves of grey cotton and a sable topcoat with silver edging, which he never removed, no matter the fineness of the weather. Folk who had visited him spoke of elaborate and intimate searches of their belongings and their person prior to the audience, and of the unbearable closeness of his apartments, of windows nailed shut and waxed to keep out draughts, or glassless and screened by tight muslin cloths.

Ashura walked up the gravel drive, nodding soberly to the men whose task it was to pour gallon after gallon of expensive, bewitched insecticide onto the garden shrubs. Ashura shivered. Trimghoul's wealth had always disturbed him. Now it scared him, for he had begun to wonder whence that wealth had originated.

He stepped into the shade of an ornate iron-worked portico and reached for the heavy brass knocker, fashioned in the shape of a human jawbone.

A balding man with bright, blue eyes, lips too full for such a jowl-ridden jaw and hands that knew no manners, searched him, stripped him of his coat and outer shoes and trussed him up in a clean white apron. Trimghoul was in his study. There were no porters or butlers beyond the portico, and the house was never locked. It was a sign of Trimghoul's power. Who could harm a man who could control objects at a distance? It would take the brute force of a dozen or more to overcome him, if it came to it.

Ashura knocked on the door.

"Come." That cultured, masterful voice. No wonder Trimghoul, for all his eccentricity, was a favourite among the ladies of the region.

Ashura opened the door. Trimghoul's face was beautiful in the way that all frail-boned, high-cheeked men are beautiful ― delicate in feature but strong in poise. He wore a high collar and a sober black suit.

By contrast, his only other exposed flesh ― his hands and wrists -were covered in hair, gnarled and powerful-looking, and his gait was stooped and awkward, as if he found it much more comfortable to bend his knees the opposite way. Ashura had never seen Trimghoul
en deshabille,
but, from what he had heard, Trimghoul's face was the most human thing about him. The rest of him brought to mind the disturbing eroticism of satyrs.

True to report, a fire burned savagely behind an iron grate. The heat was barely tolerable. Ashura felt his forehead and cheeks prick with moisture.

"Ah, young 'prentice. More requests from my old friend Urkhan?"

"N-no. Actually, I wonder if you can help me." Ashura blushed.

Trimghoul misinterpreted the redness in the boy's cheeks. "Ah," he said, wisely. "Woman trouble, eh? Well, it happens to the best of us. Got a would-be oracle pregnant before her time, I suppose? Well, send her along, no need to act all blushful, we're men of the world old chap, eh?" He chuckled. His teeth were very small, and were all exactly alike. "I'll dump her child on some ape or big cat and send it to a circus. For the usual fee, of course."

Trimghoul specialized in the production of carnival curios and hybrid pets for wealthy ladies of the region. There existed a harmless rivalry between these ladies, which found expression not only in their dress, their jewels, and (at the more permissive venues) their adjudged skill in performance with centaurs, but also in what pets they possessed.

Be it an animal out of legend ― a Square Woolly Pig, say ― or a wild, modern scherzo in dachshund, peacock and halibut, a Trimghoulian pet was the
sine qua non
of GodGate's polite society.

Such psychokinetic trivia were the source of Trimghoul's considerable social popularity; they were also the hook from which he hung his amatory successes. Trimghoul's dalliance with the womenfolk was due as much to his risque payment methods, as to the more conventional tools of seduction.

"That's not the problem," Ashura admitted. The ear twitched on his forearm.

"Well, come along, out with it, glad to help a young man with ambition." A fly landed on Trimghoul's forehead. It sparked and vanished. A little red place on the psychokine's forehead remained. He stared around him with a fierce expression. "How in
hell's
name did that get in here? Were you cleaned?"

"Y-yes!" Ashura stepped back, startled by Trimghoul's fierce expression.

A second, and all anger was gone. Trimghoul's face was its even, bronzed hue once more. "Come now, my boy."

Ashura took a deep breath ― and drew up the sleeve of his shirt.

Trimghoul stared at Ashura's forearm. His expression was severe.

"Tell me you were delivering a baby and it scratched you."

"Yes, I."

"Now tell me the truth."

"Please get it off me," Ashura begged.

Trimghoul looked deep into his eyes. The red mark on his forehead was still there. His pupils were black, dilated, huge.

"Please," Ashura whispered.

Trimghoul sniffed, glanced at Ashura's arm. There was a tiny flash, heat burst on his skin. Ashura looked down. The ear was gone as if it had never been.

"Do you want to know where I put it?" Trimghoul's voice was cold and soft.

Ashura said nothing. He stared at his arm and waited for what might follow.

"I placed it on the forehead of a young boy known throughout the city for snooping and prying and getting in people's way."

Instinctively, Ashura brought his hand up to his face, but there was nothing there.

Trimghoul sighed and turned away from him to stare out the window at the city. "Oh dear, young man, you are an open book. Why do young boys get themselves in scrapes like this if they cannot dissemble to their elders? You were playing with corpses in Blood Park last night, yes?"

"Yes," Ashura dropped his gaze to the floor.

"And what did you find?"

Ashura's fists clenched. He tightened what resolve he had and said, "You killed Mother Lamprey."

Trimghoul whirled round. His face was twisted in a red mask of bestial fury. A blast of light seared Ashura's face. "Don't cross me, tyke. I

could rip out your balls and eyes and juggle them in front of your face without even blinking. And who's to say I'd put them back in quite the same places?" He spat and turned away. "Get out of my sight." He scratched at the sore place on his forehead.

Ashura felt a line of blood trickle down his cheek. He turned and ran.

Back in his room, Ashura stared at his reflection in the mirror above the sink. Trimghoul had shaved one side of his head, nicking it in several places. He thought of the fly, of the sore place that was left on Trimghoul's forehead when he made the fly vanish. A hasty or unconscious performance of his art left crude results, obviously.

Ashura ran his hand over the shaved side of his head. It was not the most even cut of his life. Ashura tried to grin at the thought but his reflection sent back a wan death-mask in reply.

There came a knock at his door. It was Culpole. He stood ashen-faced, trembling, cap stretched to tearing between his hands. "Ashura, come quick, there's ― " He noticed Ashura's shaven scalp. "But what happened to your ― no matter, follow me." He made to say more, but thought better of it, turned and strode down the echoing hallway, kicking dust from the bare, warped boards as he went. "Come on!" he called, urgency cracking his voice.

Ashura grabbed his coat and hurried after his friend. "What is it?" The stairs clattered and shook as they hurried down.

"Foxtongue's had her leg taken off by the wheel of a fairground float." Ashura stared aghast at Culpole's harassed profile as they traversed the little square towards the Walking Eye tavern. "She was out buying curried sweets for Jape Day. She had a fainting fit, her foot slipped on a cobble.the ruts on the street are deep; they're sharp too. The wheel, it scissored her bone clean through."