Roger Zelazny - Donnerjack

“Let them use my others as a pattern. I have work to do.”

Moving toward the bar, Kelsey poured another quick shot, downed it, and walked over to pat Kwinan on the shoulder.

“I’ll see what I can do, Ben.”

“Prepare ye the way of the Lord!” Kwinan half chanted, half sung.

Kelsey frowned at the aion’s levity.

“And let’s hope that when it’s all done we’re not left with voices crying out in the wilderness.”

“Amen to that, my friend. Amen to that.”

He dwelt in Deep Fields and wondered for how long he would continue to do so.

The assaults had begun soon after he had felt the ending of the aion Markon. At the time the void left by the genius loci imploded within the silence of Death’s realm, the Lord of the Lost, assisted by the phant, Tranto, had been at work raising a gate house just across the moat from the palace.

As this involved razing a number of existing attempts—Death was eager to improve upon John D’Arcy Donnerjack’s design, but he had not the gift of creation—the raising of the gatehouse had also involved a good many puns. Tranto, glowing with the energy of the strange attractors he had consumed, was enthusiastic about shoving the piles of broken building materials from side to side, heaping marble on cinder block, plaster on preformed plastics.

Only with great difficulty did the Lord of the Lost convince the inebriated phant to join him within the relative safety of the palace’s walls. Phecda coiled around her master’s head. Mizar, who had fought his way through the earliest assaults at the expense of another tail and some handfuls of the tapestry print on his left haunch, sat on Death’s feet.

“Would it surprise you, Tranto, to learn that I have made some foolish decisions in my time?”

Until the disruption caused by a dragon of moire (its texture subtly greener than that more usually seen) disintegrating the gatehouse to ash had ended, the phant waited to reply.

“You exist, after your fashion. You move through time and through space. Not even those on Highest Meru claim infallibility—that is left for lesser deities and pontiffs. No, lord, I would not be surprised.”

“Kindness, Tranto. Very well, let me tell you of my foolishness. My strength is in destruction, decay, entropy, discordance. Occasionally, I manage to summon something into existence, but either it is like Mizar, a dismal mocker)- of the living creature it mimics…”

Death’s dog thumped his remaining tails on the floor to indicate that he felt no insult in these words. Mizar had seen other dogs and thought them poor, weak creatures. He preferred himself as he was, but he could see his maker’s point.

“…Or it is like Dubhe or Phecda, a creature salvaged just before entropy has completed its work and given an opportunity to make a pact with me—a strange new life in return for service. Once, not so long ago as we count these things, I was tempted with the possibility of becoming a creator.”

Tranto grunted. Out on the field of rubble and debris a legion of department store mannequins had arisen and was opposing an acid cloud that crumpled them with a caress.

“Earthma machinated a meeting with me by taking on the guise of a failing proge. She asked me what I desired more than anything else in Virtu. Many beings—proges and aions alike—attempt to barter with me when they see the moire. I thought nothing of the question. Perhaps she had woven an imperative of some sort into her entreaty, but I answered her honestly.”

Tranto grunted again, picked up a strange attractor in the delicate fingers at the tip of his trunk and paused before he popped it into his mouth.

“You told her of your desire to create.”

“And then she revealed herself to me as a goddess Most High. We made a deal. She would give me three seeds of creation if I would give her one of destruction. I thought I was well ahead on the deal, believed she had some game in mind with an opponent among the dwellers on Meru—perhaps Seaga or Skyga.

“I used one of Earthma’s seeds to give John D’Arcy Donnerjack back his bride. Another was used so that the Palace of Bones he designed for me would maintain its shape and form. I believe that Earthma used the seed I gave her to give the power of death to the thing that now ravages my fields and seeks to dethrone me.”

Phecda looked down into Death’s dark eye socket.

“Yet it is not merely a clone of you, is it, lord? I analyze the presence of other forces.”

“No, it is not just mine. It is hers; perhaps one or both of the other Great Ones made an unwitting contribution as well. That would explain its power and why neither of the others has moved against it.”

The acid cloud had dissolved the last of the mannequins and was eddying toward the moat. Tranto moved to a cannon set in the battlements, adjusted the aim slightly, placed a match against the touch hole. It fired a ball made of compacted pliant feces—which at this point was largely reprocessed strange attractors.

The acid cloud took the cannon ball in the center and retreated slightly.

“Well shot,” the Lord of Deep Fields commented.

“And well shat,” Phecda added.

“How long can we hold out?” Tranto asked.

“Long enough, I hope. I have not exhausted my resources, but if Earthma’s bastard can draw for power upon its mother and perhaps one of its other fathers, then I fear I am in danger of being replaced. However, this palace may resist better than other elements of Deep Fields, since at its foundation lies Earthma’s own power. Whatever the case, surrender is not an option.”

“No.”

Mizar raised his head from his paws.

“Jay will come.”

Death patted him. “I do not doubt that he will try. In his own way, he is as stubborn as his father. However, I do not know how he can turn the tide.”

“Jay will,” Mizar said.

Across the field, seen but faintly in the gloom, the green moire was taking on the form of a battering ram. Death reached for the recorder John D’Arcy Donnerjack had brought to him.

“ Einekleine Nacht Musik while we wait. It seems appropriate while we wait to see if our own little night is about to fall.”

Jay D’Arcy Donnerjack howled for the banshee and hoped that she heard.

“Mom!” he called as he wandered the upper reaches of Castle Donnerjack. “Ayradyss! Cao-whatsis! Mom!”

He was getting hoarse and Dack, hearing his cries from the castle’s kitchen, was growing concerned for his continuing sanity when the caoineag appeared. As usual she wore a gown pale and flowing, but this time her veil was drawn back and fell in loose folds on her shoulders.

“Yes, Jay?”

“Mom, I need the ghosts.”

“Need the ghosts? Whatever for, son?”

“To go with me to Deep Fields and defend its lord.”

“You cannot be serious!”

“But I am, Mom, as serious as the grave.”

Kneeling, he poured the contents of the whisky bottle into a series of shallow dishes and set them around the long corridor. Then, with far more composure than he felt, he explained the situation in Virtu to his ghostly mother.

Sometimes Ayradyss interrupted to forestall an explanation she did not need—as with the nature of the Threefold One who was also Warren Bansa. Sometimes she interrupted to ask for clarification—as when he mentioned Virginia Tallent. Mostly she listened, and as she listened, Jay glimpsed in his peripheral vision that the ghosts of Castle Donnerjack were joining them.

There were old friends like the crusader and the blindfolded cleric; others, such as Shorty or the Lady of the Gallery, he knew mostly for their more spectacular effects. There were strangers as well—some kilted, bearing claymores and raggedly bearded, others gowned in the fashions of several ages, still others clad in tatters. Mutilated or whole, they drifted into the gallery. Some stirred restlessly, as if even this much materialization was a terrible effort; all gave grave attendance to his words.