Steven Erikson - The healthy dead

“It would seem,” Bauchelain said as he led the others through the gateway, “that much of the present fabric of comportment has frayed in your city, King Necrotus, nay, torn asunder, and none of it through my doing. I am pleased to discover said evidence of my own cherished beliefs.”

“What?” Storkul Purge demanded drunkenly, “are you talking ’bout?”

“Why, to transform the metaphor, that piety is but the thinnest patina, fashioned sufficiently opaque to disguise the true nature of our kind, yet brittle thin nonetheless.”

“Who cares about all that?” Necrotus demanded. “I just want my throne back!”

“Ah, but will the citizens of your city accept the rule of an undead king?”

“They accept inbred brain-dead ones easily enough, sorceror,” Necrotus said in a rasping growl, “so why not?”

“Well,” Bauchelain said, “it is true enough that the common people delight in scandal when it comes to royalty. I suppose this could well qualify.”

They paused in the street just inside the gate. The citizens were out tonight, both breathing and breathless, trim and vigorous and decrepit and disintegrating. Hoarse shouts and ragged, pealing screams, wild laughter and the shattering of empty bottles. Fires raging against the night sky, smoke tumbling and billowing. And, Ineb Cough saw, all manner of dramas being played out before their eyes.

A dead artist pursued a gallery owner, demanding money in a voice so whining and piteous that the demon felt compelled to kill the man a second time, not that it would do any good, but might well prove satisfying anyway. Even as Ineb considered setting off in pursuit, the two passed out of sight down a side street. Whilst from another a mob of mossy children-who’d clearly climbed out from some secret cemetery in someone’s backyard-had found their murderer some time earlier and now marched into view, singing badly and waving about like trophies dismembered limbs. An odd detail that Ineb noted-the now torn apart murderer appeared to have been singular in having three arms, unless the children had grown careless, as children are wont to do, or perhaps did not know how to count very well. In any case, the urchins were happy and happy was good, wasn’t it?

“This is sick,” Storkul Purge said after a time. “I’m off to find my broth’l, where the sane people are.”

Bauchelain bowed slightly in her direction. “Dear Well Knight, I thank you for your contribution to this night. I trust the wine has restored you?”

She blinked at him. “Restored? Oh yes. Restored, enlivened, invigoratedly enstored, lively, even.” She then looked wildly about, meeting each set of eyes regarding her, fixing at last on the dead set. “Oh, you’re not well, are you?”

The desiccated face twisted. “You just noticed?” Then Necrotus smiled. “Actually, I like that. You’re my kind of woman… I think… now.”

Storkul drew herself up. “Just so you don’t make any wrong assumptions,” she said haughtily, “I don’t come cheap.”

“Disgusting,” Ineb Cough murmured, “but lovely.”

“Shall we proceed?” Bauchelain asked Necrotus, who twitched in answer, then nodded.

Storkul Purge staggered off, presumably towards her old brothel.

King Necrotus made a brief, spasmodic effort to comb down his overlong, snarled and bird-dropping-gummed hair, then set out in a lilting half-step, feet kicking out. “Oh, I’m going to dance! All the way to the palace! Oh! How mortifying!”

The necromancer glanced over at Ineb Cough, brows lifting.

The demon nodded. “Absolutely. I’m with you two. Wouldn’t miss it, no sir, not a chance.”

“Actually,” Bauchelain said, “I would you do something else for me.”

“Is it sordid?”

“Why, yes, I suppose it is.”

“All right, I’ll do it.”

Imid Factallo, the baby and Elas Sil came to within sight of the Grand Temple of the Lady’s sprawling front entrance, and all three stared owlishly at the scores of bodies lying on the broad steps leading up to the dais and its altar.

“There’s been a slaughter,” Imid said in a quavering voice.

Elas grunted, then shook her head. “Not necessarily. See any blood? I don’t see any blood.”

“Well, it is rather dark-”

“No, even beneath those torch-stands.”

“No one’s moving.”

“I’ll grant you that-it’s damned odd, is what it is. Come on, Imid, let’s get closer.”

The two set out across the concourse. A tenement building two streets behind the temple was burning, showering sparks into the sky, making the Temple of the Lady a backlit silhouette that seemed sealed tight as a tomb, since no light was visible.

Snorting, Elas Sil said, “Typical. Drawn up as if under siege, which, I suppose, they are. Guess we won’t be hearing any eerie proclamations from the altar any time in the near future, eh? The goddess is likely cowering in some hole.”

“Shhh! By the Abyss, Elas, are you mad?”

“Mad? Yes, I am. Exceedingly mad.”

They approached the steps and the scatter of bodies, bodies that then began to stir at the sound of their voices. Heads lifting, bleary eyes fixing upon them. Imid and Elas halted, fell silent.

“She won’t save us!” one woman gasped. “Unhealthy people… everywhere! Drink… and smoke-everywhere! Ah, I feel sick. Just seeing them! Sick, nauseated, ill, unwell!”

“Sick, nauseated, ill, unwell!” a few others chanted.

Then they were all moaning the refrain. “Sick, nauseated, ill, unwell!”

“Lady below,” Imid whispered, “Do-gooders! And look, they’re withering before our eyes!”

“Remember our schooling as saints,” Elas said. “Licentiousness, when all about, is a plague. A deathly, devouring host of demons, corrupting minds, bodies, souls. Licentiousness is the lurid escape from natural misery, when natural misery is the proper path to walk. Why? Because it is the only honest path.”

Imid stared at her. “You didn’t believe all that rubbish, did you?”

“Of course not, but these people do.”

“And their convictions are killing them?”

“Precisely.”

“But that’s insane!” Baby mewling in his arms, Imid Factallo stepped forward. “Hear me! I am a Saint! Listen to me, all of you!”

The moaners fell silent, hopeful eyes gleaming in the firelight.

“Can’t you see?” Imid demanded. “Sobriety means clear-eyed, and clear-eyed means you see the truth! You see just how unjust, cruel, indifferent and ugly your life really is! You see how other people are controlling you, every aspect of your miserable existence, and not just controlling you-they’re screwing you over!”

Gasps and a single muted shriek answered Imid’s careless curse.

“You can’t say that!” “Foul, foul!” “No no no, I don’t want to listen, no!”

The baby wailed.

“It’s all lip-service!” Imid shouted. “Nobody in charge really gives a flying-”

“Silence!”

This last command was stentorian, ringing clear and loud from the temple’s entrance. The do-gooders on the steps twisted round with cries of relief. Imid and Elas stared, as a grey-swathed nun marched up to stand to the right of the altar.

“It’s the Stentorian Nun!” someone shouted.

The baby wailed again.

Imid’s knees quivered as the grey woman stabbed an accusing finger at him. “You!” she hissed.

“Me!” Imid answered instinctively.

“Decrier of false truths!”

Elas Sil said, “What?”

“Blasphemer! Proclaimer of all that is Not to Be Known!”

“Well!” Imid shouted, suddenly, inexplicably emboldened, “Too late for that, isn’t it?”

More gasps. Worse, a crowd was gathering in the concourse behind them. Dead and living both.