Steven Erikson - The healthy dead

There was a loud slam and the scene in front of Necrotus dissolved, revealing the slightly more familiar street of Quaint he had been stumbling down earlier. He stared about, bewildered. “He… he didn’t want me!” Well, that was good, wasn’t it? Then why did he feel so… offended?

King Necrotus the Nihile resumed walking. He still needed to find out precisely where he was.

A double thump at his feet. He halted and stared down. Two arms were lying on the cobbles. “Shit.”

Then his head rolled off, left temple crunching hard on the stones, his vision tumbling wildly.

Oh, this was not going well at all.

Bauchelain had climbed into the apparatus, deftly ducking rocking levers and edging round ratcheting gears until he was next to King Macrotus.

Standing near the spilled supper left on the floor by the servant, Emancipor Reese watched with reluctant admiration. The necromancer was not one for exercise, yet remained lean and lithe, ever in fighting form on those rare occasions when sorcery, guile, deceit and back-stabbing failed. Physically, he looked to be about sixty, albeit a fit sixty, yet he moved with a dancer’s grace. The result of good living? Possibly. More likely alchemy.

“Well, Master?” the manservant called. “How many days, do you think?”

Bauchelain leaned forward for a closer examination. “At least two weeks,” he said. “I believe his heart burst. Sudden and indeed catastrophic.” The necromancer glanced back. “How did you know?”

Emancipor shrugged. “He wasn’t eating.”

Bauchelain made his way back. “Proponents of vigorous exercise are mostly unaware,” the sorceror said, “that exercise as a notion, discrete from labour, is a gift of civilisation, derived from tiered social status and the leisure time thus afforded. True laborers care nothing for exercise, naturally.” He stepped cleared of the clanking, wheezing apparatus, paused to brush dust from his cloak. “Accordingly, one salient fact that laborers well know, but appears to be lost on those who fanatically exercise, is that the body, its organs, its muscles and its bones, will inevitably wear out. I believe, Mister Reese, that, for example, there are a set number of beats of which a heart is capable. In similar manner all muscles and bones and other organs are allotted a specific limit to their functioning.” He gestured grandly back at the laboring corpse of King Macrotus the Overwhelmingly Considerate. “To hasten one’s own body to those limits is, to my mind, the highest folly.”

Emancipor grunted. “Master, I really need to get out of this city.”

“Ah, that would be withdrawal.”

They stared at each for a moment.

Then Bauchelain cleared his throat. “One last task awaits me. Given the unexpected turn of events this night, Mister Reese, I believe your tasks within Quaint are done. Thus, I grant you leave to, uh, leave.”

“I can’t thank you enough, Master.”

“No matter. One final thing. Can you give me directions to the Grand Temple of the Lady of Beneficence?”

“Of course, Master.”

Arm in arm with revelers and in the midst of a bawdy, drunken crowd, the Demon of Vice staggered into the vast, seething mob filling the concourse fronting the Grand Temple. He was singing, at the top of his voice, a song he had never heard before. Life was wonderful, again, and this was a night Ineb Cough would not forget in a long while. Or not remember at all. It didn’t matter which.

They stumbled over pieces of corpses, many of them still eager to party, if the twitching and writhing of dismembered limbs was any indication. A number of tenement fires had leapt closer to the temple, bathing it in lurid light. Near the steps was the mass of putrescent but doggedly throbbing flesh that was the Demon of Corpulence. He was surrounded by impromptu feasting, huge slabs of undercooked, dripping meat making the rounds, greasy smeared faces splashed with the light of rapture, and people were being sick everywhere, unaccustomed as they-well, no, Ineb corrected himself-they were sick with excess, glorious excess.

He saw Sloth being carried in atop a score of hands. Seeing Ineb Cough, she managed a faint white-gloved wave.

So, all were gathered, and need only await their brilliant saviour, Bauchelain, on his way to pronounce upon the city its fate. Ineb was delirious with anticipation.

“Sweeties, I’m here!” Storkul Purge spread her arms out to her sides and held the gesture. Before her, in the Orgy Room on the top floor of Hurla’s Brothel, shapes moved about in the gloom. Lots of shapes, she realised, all seemingly on their hands and knees. A good sign. In fact, judging from the grunting and squeaking, lots of good signs.

Except, of course, for the smell.

One figure rose up hesitantly before her.

Tragically, her eyes had begun to adjust to the darkness. “What is all that smeared on you?” she demanded.

A wavering voice, “Keeps them happy, you see.”

“Who?”

“Why,” the little man gestured behind him, “my pigs, of course.”

Pigs? By the Abyss, they were pigs! “But this is a brothel! Worst, this is the third floor! What are all these disgusting animals doing here when I wanted the normal disgusting animals!”

“I’m hiding them, of course! Everyone has gone mad! They want to slaughter all my beauties, but I won’t let them! Who’d look on the top floor of a brothel? Why, no one! No one but you, and you’re not here to lead my pigs to slaughter… are you?”

She considered for a long moment, then slowly lowered her arms, and sighed. “Fine, I’ll just hold my breath. Get undressed, old man, this one’s on the house.”

“I–I can’t do that! They’ll get jealous!”

Too much pent-up frustration by far. Storkul Purge screamed.

Wandering bemused in the subterranean chambers and corridors beneath the temple, Imid Factallo, his baby and Elas Sil could all hear the roaring from somewhere overhead. Ominous, as if a terrible slaughter was taking place in the city’s streets. Or so they believed, since their last sight of the above world had been the horrid death of the Stentorian Nun.

Yet here, below, there was naught but silence. Where were the nuns? The confiscated children? They had found no one, no one at all.

“Shh!” Elas Sil’s hand clutched his arm.

“I didn’t say anything!”

“Shhh!”

Now, close by, a gentle murmuring of voices. They were standing in a corridor. Before them was a T-intersection, with a door directly opposite them. Faint lantern light leaked from its seams, musty with scented oils.

Elas pulled him along, up to the door.

“This is it,” Imid whispered.

She looked across at him.

“Where they prepare the babies,” Imid explained, his heart thudding hard in his chest. He licked his lips, his mouth suddenly terribly dry. “They lead them in by the hand, the smiling nuns. Then whack! Down comes the cleaver! Chop chop, bones into the cauldron, some old hag stirring with a huge iron ladle, spittle hanging from her toothless mouth. All those tiny voices, silenced forever!” He stared down at the slumbering child in his arms. “We’ve come to the wrong place, Elas!”

“You’ve gone mad! You sound like… like a parent!”

And she flung open the door.

Light spilled over them.

A sea of faces. Cherubic faces, countless children of all ages.

All of whom cried out, “Inside, quick! Oh, shut the door!” More of a cacophony of voices, truth be told, but both Imid and Elas comprehended those two commands at the very least.

They stumbled into the domed chamber.

And the door was slammed shut behind them.

Children rushed forward upon seeing the swaddled baby. “Ooh! Another one! He? She? Is it well? Not sick yet, oh blessed Lady, not yet sick!”