Simon Levack - The Demon of the Air

“No! You mustn’t!” the boy protested. “We’ve got to know!”

There was the sound of a blow, a sharp, youthful cry, and one of the shadows over me had gone.

It sounded as if Nimble had lost the argument.

Something massive and blunt bore down on the small of my back, pressing me into the dusty floor: Curling Mist’s knee, pinning me down.

“Now,” he hissed, “I’ve been waiting for this!”

Suddenly I heard Nimble’s voice again. It was choked and tearful and shrill but quite clear: “Look out! Here she comes-Lily!”

“What? Where?” The weight vanished from my back as my assailant leaped to his feet. I got up and ran blindly, before he had time to turn on me again with the knife.

“I can’t see her-you’re lying! You idiot, he’s getting away!”

I heard Curling Mist’s sandaled feet slap the Earth as he gave chase, but I had too long a start on him.

So he gave up the pursuit and thought of something else.

“Stop!” he cried. “Stop, thief!”

I looked up just in time to see two tall, muscle-bound figures emerging into the aisle in front of me. They both halted at once, staring at the scene in front of them while they made up their minds what to do. Then they too started running.

I skidded to a halt so fast I scraped skin off my bare heel. I had a knife-wielding madman at my back, crying “Thief.” Bearing down on me were two of the market police, whose work included arresting thieves. I had no time to think about what I was doing: if I had, I would not have been so stupid.

I tried to leap across a mat full of jewels and feathers into the nextaisle. I thought I could run, then, get clear of the marketplace and keep running until I found a place to hide. All I did was land on my face and scatter precious stones around me like spilled corn.

I scrabbled desperately there while an old woman’s voice screamed into my ears and blows rained down on my back and head. The blows were still falling as I was hauled to my feet, some of them now catching me in the side, under my ribs, and driving the wind out of me as my arms were wrenched out of the way. The old woman screamed some more obscenities and then something as heavy as a wall hit the side of my head, and I passed out.

Awoman’s voice said: “Don’t move.”

I was not about to try. It seemed to me that I had made the effort once, a long time ago, but pain and nausea and a sinister scraping sound from somewhere inside my body had made me stop.

Besides, I knew I was going to die soon. Why bother moving, when it could not help? I considered giving up breathing, because it hurt my ribs and achieved nothing except to prolong the pain, but I kept forgetting. I would be about to pass out when a bright shaft of pain like an obsidian knife stung me awake.

“Take it easy!” It was the woman’s voice again. A weight was laid on my shoulder, pressing it gently but firmly to the ground.

“Can you open your mouth?”

“Mmmph?”

I could not speak because my lips were numb and the tongue behind them was swollen through having had my teeth driven through it.

“Try to drink this.”

I could not see what she was offering me because my eyelids were bruised, pulpy masses that had gummed themselves shut.

“It will help your ribs.”

Liquid trickled onto my mouth. Some ran over my cheeks and down my chin. It was as sour as vomit and burned my throat.

I coughed. The pain of coughing made me gasp.

“Have a little more,” said the deep, seductive voice.

I was too feeble to fend her off or stop her pouring more of her fetid brew into me. I was too feeble even to retch.

“Sleep, now,” she said.

I slept.

I woke up.

I could open my eyes a little. All I could see were vague shapes, shadows and pools of light blurring into one another, and everything tinged with red. It was hard to make any sense of what I was looking at until I thought of closing one eye. Then the world stopped spinning long enough for me to work out that I was indoors somewhere and that from the way the shadows fell it must be either late afternoon or early morning.

Pain sliced through my skull, forcing me to shut both eyes again. I moaned.

Someone moved nearby: my ears, although they were singing, picked up the slightest noise, such as a maize ear being dropped in the street outside, or somebody’s joints creaking as he stood up. A hand at the back of my neck lifted my head, while another laid something warm over my brow, a thick paste that stung when it was pressed into place. I moaned again. As the stinging subsided I felt brisk, efficient fingers tying on a bandage.

“Can you speak?” It was the woman’s voice again.

“Mmmph?”

“It’s all right. Rest. You’re safe here.”

When I woke up again I was alone in a small room with only an evil smell for company.

I lay on my back in the middle of the floor, staring at the ceiling. I could just about unglue my eyes now, although there was little to see but gray plaster. When I turned my head to look at a wall I saw more of the same, apart from a couple of large irregular smudges. I remembered the light drizzle there had been recently and thought of damp. They were going to have to renew the thatch on the roof before the real rains began in the summer, I told myself, while I turned my head the other way.

Opposite the smudged wall was an odd pattern of little lights, like stars but more regularly spaced and less distinct. I frowned as I tried to make them out. I blinked and stared at them, and gradually theybecame two identical sets of lights placed side by side, and in the space between them was a pain like a wooden peg being driven into my skull. My stomach lurched.

My head rolled back of its own accord, leaving me staring at the ceiling again. I shut my eyes and swallowed convulsively, to stop the gorge rising in my throat, and I lay still, in darkness, until the agony and nausea subsided.

I waited until all I was left with were a dull throbbing in my head-a familiar pain that I seemed to have had always, its regular beat almost reassuring, as though I needed it to remind me I was still alive-and aching ribs that protested every time I drew breath.

The smell worried me. Even the poorest houses in Mexico, one-roomed hovels perched on stilts over the marshes on the fringes of the city, were cleaned every day, but this room stank like a dog left for dead in a badly kept latrine.

I decided not to move my head again, but to try looking at my surroundings out of the corners of my eyes, the way a rich man looks at a beggar. That seemed to help. I could see no furniture of any kind, but I now knew what the little lights were. When I was not seeing double, there was just one set of them. They were daylight showing through the gaps in a wicker screen. They were the room’s only illumination, just enough to paint everything around me a washed-out gray color.

The lights were all equally bright. That meant the Sun was not shining straight on the doorway. I wondered how far it had moved round and then realized I did not even know what day it was.

I let out a soft moan as a fresh wave of sickness rolled sluggishly over my stomach.

Where was I and how long had I been here?

The appalling truth began to take shape in my befuddled mind even before I glanced at the wall opposite the doorway and realized that what I had taken for dark smudges were really paintings, their colors turned to shades of gray in the gloom, but still recognizable if you knew them. They were Two Lord and Two Lady. I had last seen them in this room the day I had come looking for news of Shining Light, when the young merchant’s mother had received me as graciously as she could and told me her son had gone into exile.