Elizabeth Hand - Winterlong

Whoever the searchlights catch, whatever the loudspeakers blare,

We are not to despair …

But surely this must have been my own imagining.

Now even breathing exhausted me. I coughed ceaselessly, my lungs still heavy with corrosive smoke and the painfully frigid air. But at last I must have dozed, despite the jarring of the palanquin, the aardmen’s howls and groans, and the Paphians’ piteous cries.

What woke me was silence. The palanquin had stopped, though its subtle motion told me that my captors still bore it upon their hairy shoulders. I sat up, pulled back a curtained panel to peer outside.

We stood on a barren heath near the top of a tall hill. In the darkness about me Paphians and lazars stood without speaking, without moving. Only an occasional cough floated back to me on the wind. The snow had stopped. Across the starless sky swept heavy clouds, so close it appeared they might settle upon the towers and spars of the great edifice looming above us.

From the Zoological Gardens, the Cathedral had appeared to me as a single column, a dark and broken spar much like the Obelisk. But it was not. A thousand spires and turrets and broken towers stretched across the leaden sky. Light rippled across immense windows of colored glass, their patterns shattered or twisted into horrible forms by the passing centuries. Within the soaring vaults of stone grinned fantastic figures, creatures lovelier than any Paphian or more horrible than the geneslaves who bore me to their master: the eidolons of a dead god, a god resurrected by a deranged Aviator and a kidnapped whore.

I shivered. What sort of men had built such a monstrous edifice, how many had labored to bring those stones to life and lift them’ to unimaginable heights above the black and hungry earth? Did they know that centuries hence it would still stand, that sacrifices would once again be offered within its dismal nave? Even the aardmen cowered at the sight of it, and Oleander stood between them, hugging his thin arms to his chest and shaking his head as though begging to go free.

From within the tallest spire of the Cathedral came a sound. A clang as of a single bell; magnified until the frozen air splintered with its clamor. One of the great windows shone brilliantly, lit by some inner fire. For an instant a dazzling figure glowed from within the labyrinthine patterns of scalloped glass. Young man or boy, one hand raised to grasp a flaming heart, the other clasping the neck of a small white animal. The bells pealed thunderously as it stared out into the night, the Ascendants’ abandoned god trapped within the embrasure.

There was a bellow, a deafening explosion. The glowing window burst apart, white flame and smoke tearing through iron mullions and melting glass. I clapped my hands to my ears. Captives and captors alike cried out, sheltering their heads from raining debris.

More shouting; then the flames subsided to a steady flicker. The palanquin lurched forward to the Cathedral’s South Gate.

He was gone from me now, the Boy in the tree; but I knew where He had fled.

We crossed the charred earth leading to the gate. Petrified trees littered the ground, and among them the bodies of the dead, their eyes still staring upward, hands clasping at the ground. The air was loud with a humming like that of many wasps. My guardians bore me carefully among these corpses, and thence into the Cathedral.

Inside wandered the numbed guests of the Masque Winterlong, their costumes torn and dragging in the half-frozen muck that covered the floor. Many still held masks before their faces; faces that had been burned or scarred in the conflict with the lazars. A few smoky fires burned from makeshift altars of fallen stone or overturned braziers. Figures milled about them, haggard children or their shriveled elders clad in rags. They scarcely acknowledged the newcomers, only glanced as they passed among them. Occasionally a soft cry or shout of recognition would flare up, to fade into sobbing or anguished shrieks. I thought I glimpsed Fabian, a tiny figure across the Cathedral’s vast interior; but before I could cry out the aardmen laid my palanquin to rest. The boy Oleander yanked back the frayed curtains.

“Come with me,” he said. He grabbed my arm, but I struck him and sent him reeling.

“Don’t touch me,” I spat.

I stumbled from the litter. The aardmen shied away. One regarded me with calm yellow eyes, and something like pity. I rubbed my cheek where the blood had stiffened and cracked. My hand brushed my throat; I still wore the necklace of golden vines. “Where are you taking me?” I croaked.

Oleander sucked at his teeth. “The Aviator would see you,” he said, fingering his blade. I glared at it disdainfully. “The Consolation of the Dead; and Lord Baal, the Gaping Lord.”

“He is here? Raphael Miramar?” My disdain withered. I thought of my friends. “What of those I asked about: Justice Saint-Alaban and Miss Scarlet Pan and Jane Alopex? And the others, the Players from the masque—”

Oleander looked across the nave to where a group of new captives huddled about a fire. “I told you, I don’t know. But: we were told to take prisoners, not to kill them. No more than we had to.”

No more than we had to …

How I longed to rend him, taste his blood and trace within it whatever path might lead me to my friends, my beloved leman! I groped at his hand. He pushed me away, fearful, and commanded the aardmen, “Follow me! To the Crypt Church—”

They led me down passages so dark that only the aardmen could tell where to step safely, the only sound our breathing and their loud snuffling as they sought the way. Candles glimmered here and there, throwing into sudden relief the hollow contours of a skull, a sleeping effigy’s calm face. Oleander turned to blow out each one as we passed. When I looked behind us I saw only darkness.

At last the passage ended. We stepped into an open space. It was still dim, but enough pale light glimmered from crevices and narrow windows and even torches that I could see. The ceiling rose above us in a series of vaults, leading north and south and east in an endless progression of archways. Rows of tiny candles lined one wall. As we passed, their smell assaulted me, burning fat or flesh.

Some subterranean furnace must have warmed that place. It was cold, but not so frigid as the nave above us. I recalled someone speaking of engines in the earth, was momentarily grateful if they still ran here. But my guards were not eased by it. I smelled the aardmen’s fear, and Oleander’s blunt terror as he walked beside me.

“What will he do with me?’

The boy jumped at the sound of my voice. I heard his knife slide from its sheath, then slip back again. “I don’t know,” he replied after a moment. He paused at the intersection of two passages, chose the one lit by rows of tapers set upon the floor, two by two. “We’re almost there now.”

The passage twisted. A doorway opened before us, iron grates’ pulled back to show a long room dim with smoke curling from crackling braziers. A raised dais was at one end; before it a sort of tub or basin of stone, stained black along the lip. Many people stood against the walls, children and Paphians and lazars and Curators, gaunt and unmoving. A column reared from the center of the room, pale marble wrapped about with vivid green vines, their leaves shining even in that murky light. Someone sat upon the dais, and something white crouched at his feet.

We hurried through the iron gates into a small alcove, from this into an adjoining alcove that hid us from those watching in the chamber, though we could see them by peering through the narrow doorway. Here Oleander turned and bade the aardmen hold me fast. Then he ripped a panel from my tunic and gagged me with it. He stared at me for a moment, then tugged at the necklace I wore until its clasp gave way and took it.