Kage Baker - The Anvil of the World

“There’s old Strangel,” he said, nodding with satisfaction. “Now for Crish.”

He marked out another figure of the same size and general appearance.

“So he can really … re-body them?” Smith asked Willowspear in a low voice. Willowspear nodded. “How’s he do that?”

“It is his lord father’s skill,” said Willowspear, in an equally low voice, though Cutt and Stabb heard him and genuflected. “His lord father can speak with the spirits in the air. He binds them into his service, and in return he gives them physical bodies, that they may experience life as we do.”

Smith poked the fire, thinking about that.

“Did his father, er, create Balnshik?” he asked.

“Long ago,” said Willowspear. “Which is to say, he sculpted the flesh she wears.”

“He’s quite an artist, then, you’re right,” said Smith.

“My lord is still young, and learning his craft,” said Willowspear, a little apologetically, glancing over his shoulder at Cutt and Stabb. “But he has the power from his father, and he is his Mother’s son.”

“So’s Lord Eyrdway,” said Smith. “How d’you reconcile somebody like him being the offspring of Goodness Incarnate?”

Willowspear looked pained. “My Lord Eyrdway was, hm, engendered under circumstances that… affected his development.”

“Too much magic, eh?"—"Perhaps. He is a tragaba, a… moral idiot. Like a beast, he cannot help what he does. Whereas my Lord Ermenwyr knows well when he is being an insufferable little—”

“I ought to make a couple of others, don’t you think?” Lord Ermenwyr’s voice came floating out of the darkness.

“Good idea,” Smith called back, but Willowspear turned sharply.

“Is that wise, my lord?”

“It is if we want to get any farther upriver,” was the reply.

“What’s the matter?” asked Smith.

“It is no easy process,” said Willowspear, “giving life.”

They sat in silence for a while, and Smith let the fire die back a little so they could see farther into the darkness. They watched as the pale figure moved along the edge of the Pool, crouching in the starlight beside each of the figures he had drawn. One after another he excavated, digging with his hands along each outline, scooping away enough mud to turn a drawing into a bas-relief, and then into a statue lying in a shallow pit. Finally, they saw him wandering back. He was wet and muddy, and no longer looked sleek; his eyes were sunk back into his head with exhaustion.

“Wine, please,” he said. Smith passed him the bottle from which he had been drinking, but he shook his head.

“I need a cup of wine,” Lord Ermenwyr said. “And an athalme. A boot knife would do, I suppose.”

Smith fished one of his throwing knives out of his boot top and handed it over hilt first, as Willowspear poured wine into a tea mug they’d brought out of the galley.

“Thank you,” Lord Ermenwyr said, and trudged away into the night again. They heard him muttering for a while in the darkness, and could just glimpse him pacing from one muddy hole to the next. Willowspear averted his eyes and added more wood to the fire.

“He’ll need warmth, when this is over,” he said. “I wish, in all that indigestible clutter of pickles and sweets he brought, that there was anything suitable for making a simple broth.”

The night drew on. They heard him chanting a long while in the darkness, and then as the late moon rose above the forest canopy they glimpsed him. He was standing motionless, his arms upraised, staring skyward. As the white light flowed down onto the bank and lit the Pool of Reth, his voice rose: smooth, imperative, somehow wheedling and desperate too. He was speaking no language Smith knew. He was making odd gestures with his hands, as though to coax the stars down…

The air crackled blue over the first pit. It became a mass of brilliant sparks that settled down slowly about the figure there. Smith held his hand up before his eyes, for the whole clearing was lit brighter than day, and hollow black shadows leaned away from the tree trunks clear across the Pool as another mass of light formed above the second pit, and then the third, and then the fourth. Flaring, they drifted down, and the four recumbent forms caught fire.

Whoosh. The fire went out. There was blackness, and complete silence. Even the sounds of the night forest had halted, even the relentless thunder of the falling water. Had the river stopped flowing? Then a shadow rose against the stars beside Smith, and he heard Willowspear call out in Yendri. Sound began to flow back, as though it were timid.

“It’s all right,” was the reply, sounding faint but relieved.

Willowspear sat down again but Cutt and Stabb rose, staring forward through the dark.

“Seems to have worked, anyway.” Lord Ermenwyr’s voice was nearer. “Come along, boys. One-two-one-two. That’s it.”

By the returning moonlight Smith saw the lordling, staggering rather as he led four immense figures along the edge of the pool.

“See, boys? Here’s our Crish and Strangel again,” he said, laughing somewhat breathlessly. “Just as I promised you.”

“Now we are a set of six!” said Cutt, in quiet pride.

“Master, what is our name?” said one of the giants.

“Yes, you must have names, mustn’t you, you two newlings?” Lord Ermenwyr reached the Kingfisher’s Nest and looked down sadly at the ashes of the fire. “Oh, bugger. No! No! Let’s not name anybody that!”

Giggling, he turned back to his servants and raised a shaking hand to point at them in turn.

“Your name is, ah, Clubb! And your name is … Smosh, how about that?” His whole body was trembling now, as he whooped with laughter. “Isn’t that great?”

Then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he pitched forward into the mud.

Nothing would rekindle the fire, so they made a bed for him in one of the tilted staterooms, stacking mattresses against what was for the moment a floor, and on Willowspear’s advice swaddling him tight in blankets.

“He’s taken a chill,” said Willowspear, looking at him unhappily.

“He should have kept his clothes on,” grumbled Smith, crawling along the bulkhead to fetch more blankets and another bottle of wine.

They bundled up on either side of the lordling, cramped and close but warm, and lay there in the dark listening to the night sounds.

“So … if something happens to him, what do we do?” said Smith at last. “Turn around and go home?”

He heard Willowspear sigh.

“If the Lady Svnae is truly in danger, it’s my duty to come to her aid.”

“But you’re a married man,” said Smith. “You’ve got a baby on the way. Don’t you miss your wife?”

“More than you can imagine,” Willowspear replied.

“Though I suppose it’s a little cramped in that attic room with the two of you…” Smith did not add, And the sound of Burnbright’s voice would have me shipping out after a month.

“No.” Willowspear stretched out in the darkness, folding his arms behind his head. “It’s a paradise in our room. In summer it’s so hot… one night, we … there was a box of children’s paints in the storeroom. A guest had left it behind, I think. We took it and painted each other’s bodies. Orchids and vines twining our flesh. Unexpected beasts. Wings. Flames. Rivers. The stars shone down through the holes in the slates, and we pretended we were seeing them through the jungle canopy. The whole house slept silent in the heat, but we two were awake, exploring … the night insects sang and our sweat ran down and the paint melted on her little body, and she plundered me, she was a hummingbird after nectar … and afterward we ran downstairs hand in hand, naked as ghosts, and bathed in the fountain in the garden. We pretended it was a jungle pool. Oh, she said, wouldn’t it be awful if anybody saw us like this? And her eyes sparkled so…”