Chapter Ten
Chapter
Ten
Fool’s
Gold
The
city of the dead had well and truly died.
Every
street and building was bathed in an eternal twilight. Not even the shadows
moved. In the semi-darkness, each of the houses leered from their ordered perch
like skeletons peeking from the holes of an ossuary, their architecture always
giving worship to the curve and socket of bone. He saw nostril-shaped doors,
eye socket windows. As he strolled through a commercial boulevard, there was a
market of shoulder blades, femur signposts, spinal column towers, water mills
that once scooped water with the wings of a pelvis. When Isaac studied the
paving beneath his feet, he realized he had been walking on a road made of
knuckles.
It was
all imitation. All of it was stone, given shape through a mason’s hand. Above
their heads, the skull of the colossus had been a brittle, overgrown shell,
constantly aged by the sun and sand. These buildings were too perfect to be
real.
Real
bone, that is.
It was
not real.
Even
still, the impression was grotesque. The architecture gave Isaac such a feeling
of uneasiness that he kept glancing over his shoulder, worried he’d seen one of
the shadows move, one of the collarbones trestling a walkway suddenly detaching
and slithering along the knuckled road, like a stalking serpent.
It was
all imagination, he thought.
Nothing
moved.
The
dirt did not tremble. The air was just as lifeless as the masonry around it.
They had been making their way through the city for at least an hour, and there
had been no sign that anything had walked these streets for centuries.
Everywhere Isaac looked, he received the impression of piles of bone, all
covered in dust or specks of dirt, bathed in the pale yellow light of the
glowing cartilage above. He thought of giants who had perished within sight of
a glimmering golden horde.
To ease
his nerves, Isaac made an effort to study the murals
and reliefs stamped onto the walls of various buildings, all of which depicted
mythologies, gods, gesturing figures, supplicating worship, the clouds parting
in the sky, the creation and destruction of flying vehicles. He was beginning
to discern the story of a creation myth, one that lay
at the heart of necromancer society. He made an effort
to study each of the murals as they continued on, trying to use his ciphers to
decode the language.
It was
fascinating.
It was
exciting.
He
might be the first ever person—
“Sure wish
I’d known my cunt had magic properties,” Zaria said, her voice echoing down the
streets. “Could’ve been a bloody saint by now, if I’d had a notion of its
power.”
Isaac
had to cross out some of his notes.
“Imagine,
squire. I got you rethinkin’ your life. I left you
raptured with a lick and a pound. Clearly, I have the power of gods betwixt my
legs. What other souls could I save, with a clamp of my healing clunge?”
He
attempted, pointedly, to study the symbol of the stripes and stars, noting the
frequency with which it now appeared in the reliefs, especially when the
necromancers depicted their gods. It was obviously a religious symbol. It
signified some degree of authority.
But
what, exactly?
“Imagine
me,” Zaria said, “smashing my way to some king’s bedchambers, aye? Some tyrant
or other that’s actin’ like a spoiled brat, running his fiefdom like a personal
toy. He gets his cockle croaked, like I done to you, and, real sudden-like,
there’s no more persecution. Peace everlasting. I could save the world just by
parting my legs.”
“I
regret sharing my feelings with you,” Isaac said.
“Oh,
you’re right, love. I gotta think smaller. Perhaps I could travel the Nine,
aiding the sickened folk by charging for licks. Maybe, with some industry, I
could bottle my juices as life-saving elixirs.”
He
stopped walking, pausing at a particularly large relief. There seemed to be a
deity figure, its head shadowed within a sphere of glass, resurrecting
different species from oddly shaped coffins. Isaac gathered his tablet and
charcoal.
“Come
one, come all!” Zaria proclaimed, her voice carrying through the empty street.
“Meet the nethers that makes you better! They’ll cure your woes! Absolve your
sins! Oh, good people, I promise—if you supp of my water, you shall never
thirst again!”
Isaac
brushed away some etchings with his sleeve, hefting his sketch pad to a
one-handed position at his waist. The vellum was scratchy. He should have
scraped it better before departing.
Oh,
well.
At
least his uncle hadn’t noticed.
As he
drew a quick sketch, he felt Zaria standing behind him, looming like a statue.
He pointedly ignored her presence. Eventually, the shadow behind him moved, and
he felt her rough, street urchin voice whispering in his ear.
“You
can tell me to stop,” she said.
He
began to draw. “You’ve never needed my permission to blather.”
“I just
want to respect our new boundaries.”
“Our
new—” Isaac once again lost his place, having to scrub an errant stroke of
charcoal with the sleeve of his robe. “Respect? Our new boundaries?”
“Just
so. I’m committed to change.”
“Are
you? Are you respecting my boundaries? Are you sure that’s what you’re
doing?”
“Well,”
she said, “I’m givin’ you the option, at least. Wouldn’t want my squire to blush too fiercely. As his
knight, I have to care for him.”
Isaac
shook his head.
“So?”
she asked. “You’re not offended?”
“On the
contrary,” he said, “I find your utter barbarity amusing, in much the same way
that a king will laugh at a jester.”
She
snorted, loudly. It made him flinch again. A streak of charcoal went skittering
across the parchment. As he furiously attempted to save the sketch, he felt her
muzzle drawing so close to his ear that her whiskers tickled the lobe.
“In
that case,” she whispered, “what did you like about me fucking you?”
He did
not answer.
“Huh?”
Zaria said, insisting. “Come on, now. Which part blew your mind out through
your cock? Was it my teeth on your throat? Was it me pounding you down to a moanin’ puddle of meat?” She blew some hot breath in his
ear. “Do you like knowing everyone’s gonna smell my scent on you, like you’re
my favored bouncing rod?”
“You
realize,” Isaac said, “that we’re in a long-lost city of necromancers?”
She
straightened. “Oh, sure. Bone houses and such.”
“No
one’s been down here for centuries.”
“Looks
that way.”
“There’s
an untold amount of history here. Rich architecture. Magical technology lost to
the ages.”
“Surely
so.”
“And
you just want to talk about your genitals.”
Her
laugh echoed through the plaza. “‘Genitals?’ That the book term for a twat?”
Isaac
glanced up from his sketchbook, aghast. “Have you really never heard the word
‘genitals’? I mean, gods. The propriety.”
“Squire,
listen,” Zaria said. “I’m attempting to break you from your shell. Free your
mind from study. Stop you being so squeamish whenever
someone mentions their leaky bits. Talk of my nethers is for your own good,
really.”
“Oh. Of
course. You’re trying to help me. Why did I think otherwise?”
“Isaac,
I command you to start cussin’ like a proper lad. None of this ‘genitals’
nonsense, you hear? It’s a cunt. Say it.”
“Absolutely
not.”
She
leaned down to his ear. “Cunt. Twat. Minge. Clunge. Snatch. Cock trap. Tinder
box. Axe wound. Winking—”
“Listen
to me,” he said. “I’m taking notes that will spur millions of gold in
expedition funds. Hundreds of people will be combing this city because of my
scribblings. They’ll write treatises about this discovery for centuries to
come. So, if you’d be so kind, would you please—please—just let me
concentrate, for a moment.”
“Fine,
fine.”
Isaac
began to redraw the relief on his tablet. Zaria glanced around the desolate
intersection, taking note of the knuckled plaza, the skull-shaped houses, the
courtyard fences that jutted and curved like ribs. The cartilage light was
coloring her fur the same gold as the rest of the stones, and the lights
themselves hung in the sky like a dozen dimming suns.
“Probably
shouldn’t stand in the open like this,” she said, after a minute. “Best stick
to the alleys.”
“It
really doesn’t matter.”
“Isaac,
I won’t question your book learning so long as you don’t question me on
thievin’ craft. Heed my advice.”
He
continued to stencil the figure of a glass-domed man. “We’re in the sorceress’s
domain now, which is the same domain that sucked the wind from the desert, as
well as the life from all these bones. She can sense our breath like a torch in
the dark. She’ll always know where we are, no matter what. She might even hear
our conversation.”
“Oh,”
Zaria said. “Fuck me, then.”
It was
hard to draw. The cartilage light was dim, and it was tinged just the right
color for his stencil markings to fade into the parchment. He kept trying. His
uncle had insisted on acquiring as many samples as possible, both for the sake
of history and his own posterity. Isaac couldn’t disagree.
“So,”
Zaria said, after another short minute, “what’s all these carvings supposed to
mean, anyway?”
“I’m
trying to figure that out,” Isaac said.
“Well,
let’s talk it through, maybe. Share ideas.”
“I’d
rather you just be quiet.”
The
hyena blew a raspberry, kicking her foot at a broken knuckle in the road.
“Fine,”
Isaac said, irritated. He took a moment to calm himself, because he knew she
only wanted to talk. “I’m reasonably certain this is a creation myth. How the
society was founded, its origins and heritage, that sort of thing. This one is
about livestock.”
“Livestock?”
“Sure.
You’re aware of the Human Paradox?”
He did
not see her reaction, but he felt the confusion behind him. “Human pair of ox?
Like, someone shaggin’ their plow steed?”
Isaac
restrained a sigh. “No.”
“A
little bit?”
“No!”
He gestured in the air, trying to fan out the words. “It’s the term that refers