Weirdbook 31 Read online

  “Chivaine!” they cried from town square and ruined tower, from the decks of riverboats and the slopes of mountain glens. “Chivaine lives!”

  After nine days of ceaseless riding Chivaine returned to the witch on her mountain. Hawkheart’s head was rotten and brimming with deathworms. Still the knight held it dangling by its long black hair. Summer rains had washed the crimson from Chivaine’s mail. He gleamed sun-bright on the mountainside as he presented the witch her prize. She danced about the decaying head of Hawkheart and sang an ancient song. She placed it in a jar full of beetles that would eat away the putrid flesh and preserve the skull.

  “You have done well, Chivaine,” said the witch. “You have earned the pleasure of a fine drink before you embrace death again.” She poured him a goblet of wine, an ancient vintage that had lain hidden in her cave for a lifetime. Except for the river water it was the only thing Chivaine had ingested since his return to the living realm. He savored its heady flavors on his tongue.

  Chivaine took off his helm and admired the green valley. Sunrise gleamed bright on the river. The bodies had all been burned or buried. The blood had been washed away from the land as it had been washed from his armor. The Willow Folk were rebuilding along the riverbanks. Sailing boats brought provisions and laborers into the valley. Where the northern horde had camped there was now only a heap of charred bones, the remains of a communal pyre. The sun was golden with the heat of summer, the sky blue and brilliant.

  “Time to resume your eternal rest,” said the witch. “Return now to the Deadlands.”

  “I no longer wish to return,” said Chivaine. “I want to stay.” His young eyes gleamed.

  “What?” said the witch. “Forsake your well-earned rest?”

  “You’ve reminded me of life’s splendors,” said the knight.

  “Not all of them,” said the witch. She stepped in front of Chivaine and he saw her as a young and lovely maiden. “I know what it is you hunger for. I too remember that hunger.” Her dark eyes glimmered and his heart fluttered beneath the silver curiass. She was very beautiful and the night sky gleamed in the folds of her black hair.

  Chivaine walked close to her. “Are you in truth this comely girl?” he asked. “Or only a hag wearing a glamour?”

  “Are you in truth a living man of flesh and blood?” she asked. “Or a dead spirit called forth to roam the physical world?”

  Chivaine could not answer.

  “It does not matter,” she said. She kissed him. Hey lay with her in the cave where she kept her pots, talismans, and hanging herbs. All the splendor of the flesh that he had forgotten in death’s numb grip, all the deep pleasure of sharing one’s self with another, all of these things she gave him. Later they lay outside the cave and watched the stars winking at them.

  “In nine months I will bear a son from this union,” said the witch. “I will name him Chivaine.”

  The knight looked at her. “How can this be?” he asked. “Can the dead conceive the living?” Already her face seemed older, more worn. The magic of her glamour was fading.

  “Death…life,” she said. “Both are curtains, easily swept aside. Or kept in place to obscure the truth of where we all dwell.”

  “And where is that?” he said.

  “Eternity,” she said. Now she was old and wrinkled again, her hair a tangle of wispy gray.

  “You cannot stay in this world,” she said. “You belong in the Deadlands. By the power of our shared flesh I command you to return. Now.”

  Chivaine dressed himself in the silver mail and mounted his horse. Fog rolled down the mountain and he rode into it with a single backward glance. He glimpsed the maiden one last time. She waved at him as he disappeared from the living world. Then only the mountain witch stood before the cave. She wiped her swelling eyes and went in to sleep. Tomorrow she would begin to prepare the cave for the child to come.

  Chivaine rode through the fog until the gray world of the Deadlands took shape before him. The ruins of toppled citadels and fallen cities lay spread across a dusty flatland. Phantoms danced and shivered in the air. The dead sky was silver and full of gleaming black stars. Ahead rose the Great Gate where dead souls pass into the afterlife.

  A mighty figure stood before the gate. The shade of Barain Hawkheart raised its twin axes, glared at Chivaine from behind its horned visor.

  “I told you I would meet you here,” said Hawkheart. “Now we fight again. Forever.”

  “No,” said Chivaine. “I am tired of fighting.” He had grown old again. His armor and sword were rusted, his beard long and snowy. There was no strength left in his limbs. He slid down off his horse and rested on a broken column.

  Hawkheart’s ghost stamped through the bone dust to overshadow him.

  “Fight!” said Hawkheart. “You must! Or I will slay you with a single swipe of this axe.”

  Chivaine laughed. “You cannot slay me. I’m already dead. So are you. To fight here would be pointless.”

  “No!” bellowed the Lord of Horses. “We will fight again, and again, throughout eternity. Get up, southern man!” He raised the great axes above Chivaine’s head.

  Chivaine tossed his rusted sword at the conqueror’s feet. “I have sampled more than my fair share of life’s delights,” he said. “But that is all over now. I only wish only to rest.” He yawned and lay his head back against the broken marble.

  “So be it,” said Hawkheart. He swung the great axe in an even arc, lopping the old knight’s head from his shoulders. Rusted chain links and blood spattered across the dust. Hawkheart lifted the head of Chivaine high in mockery of what the hero had done to him in the living world. He climbed upon Chivaine’s steed and rode it through the gates into the Deadlands, shouting his victory.

  Once beyond the gate Chivaine’s head faded to wisps of vapor in Hawkheart’s fist. The Horselord looked back, flexing his empty fingers, but the gate was lost in grey mist. A horde of demons crept about him, drawn by the echoes of his boasting. He slashed at them with both axes, but could not cut their flesh. They laughed and screeched like apes while his blades sang through phantom bodies. They tore the axes away, carried him in their claws kicking and screaming to a great pit, where the cries of damned souls rose on columns of smoke and flame. They chained him to the wall of the burning abyss and began the first of his endless tortures.

  Chivaine’s thoughts blew on the wind like lotus blossoms. He remembered the swipe of the great axe and nothing else. He heard the sighing of celestial currents that flow between worlds. The scattered thoughts gathered like moths about a tiny and insistent flame, a golden pinpoint sun in the barren void. A great calm settled over these tattered shreds of being. They grew warm and dull and mingled with dreamstuff, floating in a brine of absolute serenity. What was left of Chivaine, an infinitesimal spark maybe, settled into its new home. Slept there for nine months.

  On a day of brightness and pain he came back to the world again. A midwife pulled the squawling infant from the witch’s womb. The hag had lost far too much blood during the birthing. She lay dying with the pink newborn in her arms.

  “Chivaine,” she told the midwife. “His name is Chivaine.”

  “A hero’s name,” said the midwife. She stared at the baby’s round and gentle face. His eyes were blue and something of the lion gleamed deep inside them.

  The witch nodded. “Take him, raise him with kindness,” she said. “He will grow tall and strong like his father. And when the raiders again come screaming from the north, as they always do, hungry for our blood and gold, he will be there to greet them. Everyone will know his name.” She kissed her son once on his hairless head and died.

  The midwife took little Chivaine from the cave and carried him into the valley. Her people were planting spring crops in neat rows along the riverside. A warm breeze played in the tops of the willows. She brought the babe into her simple home, telling everyone
his name as she passed

  One evening while the baby slept in its crib, she found a greatsword lying before her fireplace. No one in the village admitted to leaving it there, and none could even afford such a weapon. Its scabbard was ancient leather set with jewels and golden inlays, the blade itself forged of purest silver.

  She laid the sword across her knees and watched the baby dream. So peaceful, so full of blessed innocence. Alas, it was the way of the world: Peace never lasted.

  Outside the cold north wind moaned, swearing vengeance against the Land of Willows.

  She hid the silver blade in a hole beneath her cottage.

  It would be there when Chivaine needed it.

  Dedicated to the memory of

  Tanith Lee,

  Sorceress Supreme

  THE CITY IN THE SANDS, by Ann K. Schwader

  Because they understood no gods but theirs,

  & cut themselves adrift from history,

  A pack of ragged jackals made their lair

  Among half-buried ruins, unaware

  They trespassed in the realm of mysteries.

  No hand of man raised up the nameless stones

  That formed this place. No human thought conceived

  Its guardians—for we are not alone,

  & never have been through the eons flown

  Since void-spawned terrors taught our world to grieve.

  The jackals with their ropes & hammers broke

  Each image of those guardians to shards

  & shattered shadows. “Heresy”, they spoke

  In undertones, unwilling to provoke

  The twilight creeping softly. Falling hard.

  They kindled watch-fires in the city streets,

  Sustaining them on scavenged texts whose tongues

  Were old before Irem… & yet no heat

  Arose from so much burning to defeat

  A depth of desert chill that bit & stung.

  At last a bitter gust of wind arose

  That sent a thousand shadows clawing high

  In spectral vengeance as their victims froze,

  Acknowledging in vain the shapes of those

  Lost guardians now blotting out the sky.

  Bereft of men & gods alike, these walls

  Lie silent in the selfsame dawn that shone

  On Sarnath & Mnar. Here too the call

  Of history rang clearly over all

  This shifting sand that whispers over bones.

  GIVE ME THE DAGGERS, by Adrian Cole

  From the files of Nick Nightmare

  I’ve never been one for carnivals, or circuses or any of that kind of stuff. I don’t like those insane rides or the grasping carnie one-armed bandits, and you can keep the Human Crocodile and the Bearded Lady with a zillion tattoos. My world is stuffed with enough freaks and I’d rather spend my hard-earned filthy lucre on something educational, like a bunch of comics. So when I took the call on my mobile, I wasn’t thinking about carnivals.

  There was no mistaking the thundering tones of Rizzie Carter, the local Police Chief. I knew from his voice that he was even more agitated than normal. I could almost smell the sweat of deep unease down the phone.

  “Nick,” he bawled. “We got big problems. Weird. As weird as it gets, even for you.” He always talked to me like I was on the NYPD payroll. Sure, I helped him out with the bizarre and twisted stuff—which is how I earned my Nick Nightmare sobriquet—but I wasn’t under contract. However, there was no point telling him that. He gave me an address—the last place on earth any sane guy would want to visit—and told me he’d see me as soon as I could get over there.

  * * * *

  I took a cab through New York’s canyons to the very edge of civilization, to a beat-up area that looked about due for flattening and redeveloping. It was more like a war zone, as if I’d somehow skipped across half the world into Beirut, or Iraq. Those buildings that hadn’t collapsed looked like they’d be next and I half expected to hear gunfire. The cab pulled up short of the address Rizzie had given me and I saw a number of cops approaching us from a cordon. I paid the driver and he was glad to swing the cab round and hightail it out of there. For two cents I’d have gone with him.

  I unzipped a wad of gum and chewed it. Looking around into the oncoming dusk, I felt like something dark and unsympathetic was eyeballing me, intent on unspeakably unpleasant things. This was a part of the city that I wouldn’t normally have gotten within a mile of. It made most dumps look salubrious.

  When I got to the appointed place—a wide area where a large store had been bulldozed to make a flat expanse of land some quarter of a mile square—Rizzie Carter was waiting for me. His face was drawn, his eyes bleary and he looked a mess. Not just his usual mess, but a shook-up mess. Something real bad had squeezed his balls, that was obvious. The big man heaved himself upright, his vast bulk quivering.

  “It’s a bad one,” he said.

  “When are they not?” I grunted, studying the place. I could see there had been some recent activity here, the ground churned up by what must have been a whole lot of vehicles. Now there was nothing other than a bunch of cops and medics running around, sifting the soil and occasional bricks for whatever they could unearth.

  Rizzie led me across the space to its far end, where several sections of concrete block wall reared up from the obscuring shadows. Graffiti had been daubed on every available space, typically vivid and imaginative, and there were the usual slogans, railing at one religious or political honcho or another. Rizzie waved aside a couple of his men and two guys in white tunics so that we could see what was beyond. I’d seen about as much nastiness in my world as any dozen morticians, but I’ll admit what we had here came close to taking the big prize.

  Some guy—a youngster of about twenty years—had been pinned up to a wall, spread-eagled and held in place by at least a score of knives. They were unusual weapons, wide-bladed and with ornate handles that gleamed under the police flashlights. Ceremonial? Whoever had done this had first splashed a large pentagram on the wall, the body forming its heart. Blood ran down from the many wounds, congealing in a wide lake on the brick floor below it. Must have been a slow, painful death.

  “Yeah, well, it’s pretty horrible, Chief,” I said. “Nasty way to die. But, hell, you’ve seen worse. So what’s got you shaking in your boots? Not scared of a little black magic, are you?”

  He grimaced. “Bloody murder I can handle. The Devil and all his works I can handle. But what’s making me nervous as a kitten in a microwave is the fact that sonny boy hanging there is the son of the Mayor of this city.”

  * * * *

  We sat in the Chief’s car while the unfortunate victim was unpinned and duly bagged and zipped up for the morgue. This was one case the Chief had to solve, that or his policing days would be over.

  “There was a carnival here,” he told me, sipping hot coffee. I don’t usually share his coffee, which tastes like heated engine oil, but tonight I needed something warm inside me. “Don’t know if the kid was visiting it. Seems unlikely. Those knives—pretty sure they belong to one of the acts. Europeans. Which makes them the prime suspects.”

  “So where’s the carnival now?”

  “That’s just it. No trace. Vanished into thin air. Like it was never here.”

  One of his men brought us a bag. It contained the set of knives and I examined one of them carefully before letting the forensic experts take them all away.

  “Which act was it?” I asked Rizzie.

  “Knife throwers,” he said, unfurling a small poster. It was the usual gaudy advert for that kind of show. Count Rudolfo’s Hungarian Extravaganza was emblazoned in thick letters across its top. Rizzie tapped one of the featured names—Dokta Dangerous and the Daggermen. It meant nothing to me.

  “I need you to find them, Nick. I need to interview tho
se guys. If they did this, I gotta bring them in and nail their asses to the wall. Whatever it takes. You gonna help me with this?”

  “A carnival? Jeeze, Chief, you sure do pick ’em.”

  * * * *

  I spent the next day trawling all over for information about the carnival. I found enough references to fill a book, but no one knew where the heck it had gone. I was beginning to get the drift. My guess was, no longer in this world, which figured. You don’t pack up a big top, a couple of dozen trailers, rides, animals, you name it, and disappear without someone knowing where you are. Maybe I would have to check out the Pulpworld, the closest world to mine.

  Which brought me to Craggy MacFury’s Diner, it being Friday. I was hoping to see Montifellini’s Magic Bus parked around the corner from the smoking, torpedo-shaped diner, but for once, given it was indeed Friday, there was no sign of it.

  “If you’re looking for a certain crazy opera singer and that bone-jarring inter-dimensional rust-bucket of his, you’re in for a disappointment,” MacFury said with a grin.

  “So where’s Montifellini? Not like him to miss a Friday night special.”

  “He’s all tied up in shenanigans elsewhere. Has been for the last two weeks. Must be important for the likes of him to miss my cooking. You need to see him?”

  “Got to get across to the Pulpworld. Fast. Can’t call on my usual channels.”

  I explained some of it to MacFury, but he knew nothing about any carnival. Instead he spent several long minutes ranting about the disgusting qualities of the food stalls associated with such itinerant communities and I nodded quietly, knowing better than to interrupt. Nothing bugged him more than bad food.

  Eventually, calming down, he gave a shrug. “There’s one possibility you might consider, seeing as how you’re in such an all-fired hurry. Montifellini has a nephew. Henry Maclean. Son of Monti’s sister, Lucrezia. He’s a lively lad. They call him the astral surfer, among other things. Spends more time out of this world than in it, from what I hear.”