Jay Lake - Green

Old machines loomed, something else I had not encountered before. Rust and corrosion and the faint whiff of stale oil hung heavy in the air. My nose also found stone, of course, and standing water. Wood long gone to rot. Stray breezes. Flesh, but not nearby. My ears echoed with footfalls and odd clatters, but they were directionless phantoms. Threat was everywhere and nowhere.

I thought I had seen the Factor. Was he present in his persona as the Duke as well? The dead ruler had been more like an actor with two roles than a man with two homes. I was not even sure who knew of their commonality.

What of his agents? There had been other undying beneath the Duke’s spell. I’d met two the day I slew him. Not to mention all the guards and functionaries.

We continued to move slowly. My sense of threat was almost overwhelming now. More than generalized dread-I was under attack. I let my pace fade and risked a whisper. “What is it?”

“I do not know,” the Dancing Mistress answered quietly. The edge of fear in her voice chilled my blood.

“Not a ghost…” My words were cut off as something immediately before me shrieked with all the pain of a demon-culled soul.

I swung my blade wide even as my ears flooded with something hot and viscous. The edge caught on nothing. My hearing was blocked, which frightened me immensely. I opened my left hand with its small scoop of coldfire and nearly screamed.

The Dancing Mistress was sliding past me on my off side, away from my blade. She faced even farther left, as if she expected something to burst out of the dark there. Directly before me was a very tall imperfectly shaped man who had no skin. I saw bone and glistening fat and the strange marbled stripes of muscles. His eye sockets were empty, but even so his face was pointed directly at me.

Worst of all, my knife should have touched him.

I swung again. The knife passed through without intersecting his body. A bony muscle-wrapped hand caught me hard in the left temple.

Spinning back on my right heel, I had a moment to think how unfair this was, that he could hit me but I could not hit him, when the Dancing Mistress let fly a screeching cry of her own. All I saw between the shifting shadows and the tears of pain clouding my eyes was a leaping shape. Then I heard a horrid, tearing thump.

She’d attacked him bare-handed, I realized. This one could not be touched with weapons.

My hands lacked claws, but I could still use them well enough. I dropped my knife and charged head-down into the fight. When I hit, the feeling was like striking an open wound. Just grease and thick, slow blood, and nothing to grab on to.

My eyes were not filled with tears, I realized. I was being blinded by a flow of blood from my eyelids and nostrils. No sight, no smell, no hearing, except through a bubbling distance that did nothing to disguise the Dancing Mistress’ shriek of enraged pain.

I head-butted again. This time something cracked. We had finally met one of the “worse things” the Dancing Mistress had promised me so long ago.

Strength, I prayed in a single syllable, then lunged once more. Blinded by darkness and blood, I clawed at the cold mess of this creature until my fingers snagged on bone. I threw my weight backwards and yanked hard as I could.

The piece I gripped stretched away, then snapped back. Our attacker gave another great shriek. I heard the Dancing Mistress’ muffled shout of my name, then utter silence.

I stood with legs spread for a balanced stance, my hands high and ready for a strike.

Nothing.

Spitting blood, I listened with my mouth open. An old trick.

Nothing.

Carefully I lowered my left hand and touched my face. No blood. My hearing cleared with a faint popping noise. No blood there, either. Only my hands were sticky with the ichor of that shambling horror.

I listened until I ached.

Nothing.

The thing was gone, and the Dancing Mistress gone with it. Or dead .

My coldfire had been wiped out of my left hand with the fight, all but the faintest smear. I lowered myself to the ground and carefully felt across mossy stone until I found my blade. I then turned around and scraped back and forth in the dark until I found walls on both sides of me. Open space stretched in front of me.

There was nothing here.

Frustration boiled into anger. I opened my mouth to shriek, and nearly passed out. Lying on the stones gasping, I realized this was the feeling that came after a wound had bled too much. Yet I was whole.

The thing has forced my blood from me, then fed on it.

That realization made me retch. I’d prefer an honest slash to this rape.

Light flickered ahead. The pale gleam of coldfire in someone’s hand. Staggering to my feet, I held my blade behind me so it would not shine. I half closed my eyes for the same reason.

Whoever came moved slowly and breathed loudly. I waited patient as stone. They approached with care, until I could see they were human, or at least human shaped. My breathing was so shallow, it had virtually paused.

The stranger stopped two paces away. Summoning what little strength I had, I stepped so close, we could have kissed-and set my blade at his throat.

“Who are you?” I growled, ready to slit at a moment.

“H-have you seen a god here?”

By all the demons of far Avedega, I knew that voice. “Septio?” I whispered.

“Yes.”

I could hear him getting angry. I could smell it. “That skinless freak was yours?”

He pushed the blade away. I did not fight. “What happened?” he demanded. “Who are you?”

“I am Green. And your… thing… has stolen away my Dancing Mistress.” Just saying the words made me want to plunge my knife into his gut. I withheld my hand.

He must have heard my desire in my tone, for the bluff was gone from his voice when he answered. “Then she will be lucky if she dies quickly. An avatar of Blackblood has slipped our nooses and gone hunting.”

That sounded horrifying. “What happens when it finds its prey?”

“Eventually it returns to the god.”

“Break the Wheel!” I cursed. “How do we rescue her?”

His answer was chillingly simple. “We don’t.” Then: “Green. You do not sound well. Let us find a quiet place and talk about what it is that may be done.”

“Qu-quiet, yes.” I managed to put my knife away without stabbing my thigh. I very badly wanted to sit down, in safety.

She was gone. My greatest teacher was gone. A sick emptiness took everything good and right within me as I followed close behind this priest who might once have been my friend.

I kept enough sense of direction, even in my upset, to know that we were heading for the Temple Quarter. Goddess, protect me from Your sisters and brothers here.

Septio led me slowly to a colony of coldfire, for I could not walk fast. This time we both took plentiful swaths in hand. Somewhere in the darkness, we’d left behind the mine gallery with its corroded, bulking machines. Now the gleaming silver light showed a wealth of carvings. Faces and forms crowded the stone from the floor all the way up to and across the ceiling. The details of their features were wrapped in soft shadow, melting and flowing as we walked. Gnomons, for the dark-bound sundial of the underworld.

I let them distract me from the cracked well of my grief.

The Blood Fountain had originally been built much the same way. Kalimpura had entire temples in a similar style, buildings where every exposed face had been carved in a frenzied riot of detail.

I could not see why such a great effort would be made to line a tunnel few knew the existence of.

Eventually we found a tall, cold room lit by spitting gas lamps. Though it was at the level of the tunnel, the gas told me we were in the undercellar of some building of the Temple Quarter. How deep did the clever architecture go?