Steven Erikson - The healthy dead

The man licked his flabby lips.

Ineb fell silent, mouth suddenly dry.

The tip of the dagger slipped beneath the demon’s jacket just above Ineb’s straining belly. Began slicing upward.

Bauchelain lifted his other hand, offering his companion the bloodied cloth. “The sun has set, Korbal Broach,” he said. A snip, and the jacket parted. The sorceror began working on the sleeves.

Korbal Broach took the cloth and held it to his face. He breathed deep, then, smiling, he turned away and walked off a short distance. He tossed the cloth down at his feet, made a few gestures in the air with his right hand, then faced Bauchelain and nodded.

“And the unclean ones, Korbal Broach?”

The man’s round face pinched in disappointment, almost petulant.

“Ah, of course,” Bauchelain murmured. “Forgive me, friend.”

Three more cuts and the clothes fell from Ineb. The demon clambered upright and drew in a savage, satisfied lungful of air. “Excellent! Much better. I’m a new demon.”

Storkul Purge staggered over. “I’m bleeding,” she said in a high, wavering voice.

Ineb sneered at her. “He pricked your finger, woman!”

“I think I’m going to faint.”

Bauchelain sheathed his knife. “Please, sit, Miss Purge. Ineb, pour the unwell Knight some wine.”

Tunic sodden and foul, Imid Factallo ran down the street, Elas Sil at his side. The baby squirmed in his arms, but its expression was content.

Behind them, a long distance runner, returning from a six league sojourn out of the city and his mind understandably befuddled, ran into a burning building. And did not reemerge. Panicked animals and frenzied citizens scampered in all directions through the smoke, sparks and ashes. The lamp-lighters had not appeared, leaving only the conflagrations in various districts of the city to fight against the encroaching darkness.

Elas clutched at Imid’s arm and tugged. “This way!” Down a narrow, winding alley.

“Don’t hurt us!” A piping, squealing cry from somewhere up ahead.

They halted, looked round in the gloom.

“Leave us be!”

Imid Factallo edged forward, eyeing the two small figures lying in the rubbish two paces in front of him. Absurdly tiny, the both of them. On the left, a man, his skin a mass of wrinkles, like a golden fig. Beside him, a woman, tiny but nonetheless a woman in the adult sense, as if some perverted inventor had fashioned a breastly, slim-legged doll upon which to lavish sick fantasies.

“Bridges of the Abyss,” Elas Sil whispered. “What are these?”

The wrinkled one said, “I am Corpulence, known to my many friends as Nauseo Sloven. And my companion here is Sloth, Senker Later by name. And do I smell something? Something… imminent? Enlivening? Oh yes I do. Can you smell it, Senker?”

“I can’t be bothered to sniff.”

“Ah yes! Ennui returns… belatedly!”

Imid Factallo said, “That smell would be baby turd.”

“Not that. Something else. Something… wonderful.”

Behind them, sudden shrieks sounded from the street.

“What was that?” Nauseo asked.

Elas Sil pulled Imid’s arm again. “Let’s get out of here.”

They edged round the two demons.

“Where to?” Imid asked.

“Grand Temple. To hand the baby over to the nuns.”

“Good idea. They’ll know what to do with it.”

In their wake, Nauseo Sloven crawled closer to the Demoness of Sloth. “I’m feeling better, did you know that? Better. It’s strange. Changes are coming to Quaint, oh yes.”

The screams came closer.

“We should run,” Senker said. “Run? Why?”

“Oh, you’re right. Why bother?”

Emancipor Reese walked out of the throne room. Although, truth be told, it could hardly be called a throne room, unless an iron-framed, geared and pulley-strapped mechanism as large as a room could be called a throne.

Then again, why not? Was not the apparatus of state a repetition of balances, weight and counterweights? Of course it was. Metaphorically. With the king in the middle, burdened by birthright and suspended within a structure founded upon the delusional notion of hierarchical superiority. As if inequality could be justified in the name of tradition and the underlying assumptions were self-evident and therefore unassailable. And was not this zeal for fanatical health an identical delusion of superiority, this time bound to moral tenets? As if vigor was innately virtuous?

Sadly, it was part of the sordid nature of humanity, Emancipor reflected as he walked down the wide, long colonnade, to concoct elaborate belief systems all designed to feed one’s own ego. And to keep those with less obnoxious egos in check. An unending multitude of daggers to hold against someone else’s throat Shattering glass scattered his thoughts. Glinting shards falling inward on either side of the grand corridor. Strange and ghastly shapes clambering free-the healthy dead-climbing out from their upright coffins, hands grasping, clutching at the air. Horrible moaning sounds issued from desiccated, ravaged throats, mouths gaping wide. Staggering free, their cries growing louder, more desperate.

Emancipor Reese stared, then he groaned, and muttered, “Korbal Broach…”

A corpse reeled in front of him, its shriveled eyes seeming to fix on Emancipor. It wasn’t as far gone as many of the others, and strange fluids were weeping down its flaccid cheeks. The jaw worked for a moment, creaking, then it said, “It’s all a lie!”

“What is?”

“We go. All of us. To the same place. The healthy, the sickly, the murderers, the saints! All the same, terrible place! Crowded, so crowded!”

The dead, Emancipor had long since discovered, rarely had anything good to say. But even then, no two ever said the same thing. He admitted to a growing fascination for the details of the innumerable private nightmares death delivered. “What does it look like?” he now asked. “This crowded place?”

“A giant market,” the corpse replied, fingers grasping at nothing. “So much food. Treasures. So many… things!”

“Well, that doesn’t sound so bad.”

“But I have no money!” This, a rasping shriek, and the corpse clawed at its own face, then wheeled away, moaning. “No money. No money. No money. Everybody else has money-even the murderers! Why not me? Oh, why not meeee?”

Emancipor stared after it.

A dead woman staggered past, seeming to reach down and lift up invisible objects. “This one’s not mine!” she wailed. “This one isn’t either! Oh, where is my baby? Whose babies are these? Oh! Oh!” She moved on, picking up and discarding more invisible babies. “They’re all so ugly! Who’s responsible for all these ugly babies?”

The colonnade was filled with wandering corpses now, although there was a general, almost haphazard convergence towards the outer doors. Emancipor suspected they would soon begin seeking out their living loved ones, since that was what the undead usually did, given the chance. Driven to utter last regrets, spiteful accusations or maundering mewling. Mostly pathetic, and only occasionally murderous. Nonetheless, this was to be a night, Emancipor surmised, that few in Quaint would ever forget.

“Abyss below,” Imid Factallo whispered, “That man looks decidedly unhealthy.”

Crouched in the shadows beside him, Elas Sil softly grunted, then hissed, “That’s because he’s dead, you idiot!”

The figure, stump-like feet dragging, was making its irregular way across the plaza that sprawled before the formal entrance to the Grand Temple. The concourse was littered with rubbish and ominous puddles, but, apart from the lone undead, deserted. Somewhere behind the temple’s rearing bulk, some buildings were on fire, and glowing smoke billowed in the night sky. Screams and shrieks of terror reached them from all sides, every street and alley, from tenements and residences.