Beasts of the Walking City Read online

  BEASTS

  OF THE

  WALKING CITY

  By Del Law

  Contents

  I: Tilhtinora

  1. | 2. | 3. | 4. | 5. | 6. | 7. | 8. | 9. | 10. | 11. | 12. | 13. | 14. | 15.

  II: Nadrune’s Mercy

  16. | 17. | 18. | 19. | 20. | 21. | 22. | 23. | 24. | 25. | 26. | 27.

  III: Tamaranth

  28. | 29. | 30. | 31. | 32. | 33. | 34. | 35. | 36. | 37. | 38. | 39. | 40. | 41. | 42. | 43. | 44. | 45. | 46.

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Copyright

  I: Tilhtinora

  1: Blackwell

  “I see you like my books?”

  I remember the old voice made me jump. All the hair on my neck ridges blushed red and stood on end. The voice had a sound like dry, brittle paper, but there was an edge to it, too.

  I spun around, with a guilty look on my face. “I, sorry. I…” The Human language wasn’t coming. The sounds felt too soft and slithery on my tongue. “I did not mean…”

  “No harm done, man.” The human strode briskly through the doorway and took the book I was looking at in his hand. “The Gloaming Day,” the man said, looking at the spine of the book, and I knew he must be reading the glyphs printed there on the cover, gold print on black leather. I wanted to learn how to do that. He handed it back to me. “A totally rare book, and an interesting choice. Do you read?”

  I shook my head. “Picturesth,” I said awkwardly. “I like picturesth.” The sounds were so hard to get your mouth around. My teeth got in the way. How did humans do it?

  “Ahh.” The human nodded. “Yes, the illustrations in this are really quite remarkable.”

  I studied him. He was quite a bit smaller than I’d expected, much smaller than any of my fathers had been. He was dressed in tight fitting pants that billowed out toward his feet, which were wrapped in old sandals. His shirt was loose and airy, dyed in bright colors, and open down his chest, which was surprisingly hairless. He wore small circular glasses with a purple tint over his small, bright eyes, and even though he had long hair that grew on the top of his head down to about his waist, held back from his face with a rainbow-colored headband, in general he was so hairless that I wondered if he was seriously ill. His neck was thin, so thin that I didn’t think it would hold up even his small, round head, and the Bakarh tattoo below his jaw, on the left side, stood out starkly against his pale white skin. His arms and hands were thin too. There were tiny white claws on the tips of his fingers, but they were so short and flimsy that they must have been entirely useless.

  He was the first human I had ever seen. And as my eyes came to rest on the elegant knife that sat in a simple sheath on the man’s belt, I realized that this was also the man who had taken my tribe in.

  Then I realized the danger I was facing. Humans were tricky. Humans had hunted us, once. Some of them still did.

  My eyes must have gone wide, or my hair white. The human was watched my face. “It’s all right,” he said quietly, with what I guessed was a smile even though his teeth weren’t showing. “What are you called, kid?”

  I told him, standing straight and proud and using the true name my mother had given me.

  But the man shook his head. “You honor me, kid,” he said. “But that name is for you and your people alone to know. Do you have a common name?”

  I could feel all the hair across my face and neck flush with embarrassment. I was truly as stupid as my aunt said. “Blackwell,” I said, frowning. My thirdfather had given me my common name. I liked it about as much as I liked my thirdfather.

  The man nodded and extended his knife hand, palm open, to me. “Welcome to my home, young Blackwell. I am Sartosh. Would you like me to tell you the story that goes with these pictures?”

  I hesitated. “I shouldn’t be here?” My aunt was cleaning somewhere in the house, and had told my not to move from the large entry hall. If she found me here there was no telling what she’d do.

  Sartosh laughed. “You shouldn’t be here, and yet here you are. A story won’t change that.” He sat on the floor and crossed his legs. “Join me,” he said, patting his hand on the thick carpet. And after a moment I did, and Sartosh set the book out before us.

  “The Gloaming Day is just before dawn of the seventh morning when all the moons are full,” he said, turning pages slowly as he spoke. “On the seventh month after Moonfall, when all the moons align and the khytelwash sweeps through the canyons of the Lihve te Dirh-vei in a killing torrent, and all the pak-boats of the Krihtyn compete to see who will be the next seer, on a year just like this one, Blackwell, when the Twin Sisters have remained silent. On that morning, the deep, gelatinous cuttlefish, known as kittiber fluvare for its tremendous size and great luminescence, rises to the surface somewhere near the southern archipelagos.”

  I was utterly fascinated. The pictures came to life in my mind—great glowing lengths of the sea creatures, shimmering on the surface of the sea. I had never seen the sea, except from a distance. I imagined it would be great fun to float in it; like an endless, cool dirtnest.

  “According to legend, they are as large as the great pines in the Akarii reserves, and as tall as the high city towers in the sky-city of Tilhtinon.” Sartosh said, studying me over the purple lenses. “They rise to the surface of the sea, glowing of their own inner light, and with the setting of the sun they stretch their membranous, webbed tentacles wide across leagues of open water. There they float, for one hour for each of the greater moons, and for one quarter hour for each of the lesser, before gathering under themselves great volumes of warm air and lifting themselves into the skies. They join their brethren, the zeppel fluvare, the broad and brilliantly-colored expanses of undulating light that migrate only in the most northern and most southern reaches of the known world.

  “This is the Gloaming Day, kid. It is regarded as a day of portents, though whether those portents are for good or ill is hardly ever clear. It is a day prized by alchemists, as the blood of the fluvare is believed to cure multiple ailments—landsickness, drybirth, the gout. It is said to prolong life and to stimulate virility, to light the insides of shelters of fishermen throughout the long storms that accompany the eclipse of any of the greater moons there in the South. When kept in sealed glass goblets, the blood is thought to remain luminescent for many months.”

  Sartosh turned the page, and there was a picture of a human queen and long rows of other marines in bright battle armor. They stood before a tall, shimmering tower of stone, and the fluvare rose beyond them, at the horizon. Kneeling before the queen, I was amazed to see a Hulgliev, like my fathers, dressed in the same white armor as the rest of the mages and his head streaked with the traditional marks of a warrior. The queen was presenting the Hulgliev with an elegant flower, a stem forged of silver and a brilliant jeweled bloom carved from a single stone.

  I looked at Sartosh with a question on my face, and Sartosh nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “It was a very different time, wasn’t it. You weren’t always a hunted people, Blackwell. Once, before the worlds collided, you stood with kings. Always remember that. That’s Dekheret Akarii herself, presenting Te’loria, the flower there, to her first friend and greatest ally Farsoth, before the founding of the Lunar Council. A tremendous symbol, that flower. Men called it ‘peacemaker’ or ‘truthteller,” and they rallied around it like a banner. It’s a shame it was lost many centuries ago. That flower could change the world today.”

  He turned the page, and there was a picture of another human there, running, with a fiery knife held out before him to light his way. “Another great person, my own great-grandfather, Calvert Akarii IV, a sage and life mage, and a teacher of botany. On this same day he ran f
rom the island of Mardiket to the city of Tamaranth in one night on the very backs of the fluvare to bring the news of the Grohmn-Elite Invasion of 773.”

  I leaned in close, studying the drawing. The mage in the picture held the knife before him with his thumb and forefinger only, and the elegant hilt looked similar to the one in Sartosh’s sheath. I didn’t have the words for it, then, so I simply pointed at the knife in the book and then at the knife at Sartosh’s belt.

  “Yeah, you’re an observant one, aren’t you,” Sartosh said. “It is the very same knife, passed down from Calvert himself. Fascinating, eh? A knife is the heart of a mage, Blackwell. With it we draw on the power of the aether and shape it to our will. Would you like to see it?”

  I nodded eagerly. There was nothing I wanted more. Sartosh handed it to me, hilt first. I took it, careful to keep my claws retracted. There were small blue gems embedded in the hilt that sparkled in the light, and writing there that I didn’t understand. It was really heavy for such a small thing.

  As I held it, a soft light began to form around the edges of the blade, and it was as though the world around me came suddenly into sharper focus. The titles of all the books that covered the wall next to me were crisp and legible. I could feel each fiber of the carpet beneath me—it was as if this extraordinary alertness rose up from somewhere below the carpet and flowed through each of my limbs, filling me. I could make sense of the cloud patterns outside the windows. I was aware of every dust mote that hung in the air between myself and Sartosh. I could see each of the muscles in Sartosh’s strange, hairless face stretch themselves into his smile.

  “Rock on, Blackwell!” the mage exclaimed. He sat back and clapped his small pale hands together. “Such talent! I knew you Hulgliev were strong, but this is quite impressive. It took me more than a year of practice to tap the leilines my first time. Your family must truly be proud.”

  I frowned. “My firstfather, they dead now,” I said awkwardly, looking at the book on the floor. I didn’t have the words for these feelings in any language. “My mother, she…”

  “Of course, kid,” Sartosh said softly. “I’m sorry, Blackwell. Try this, though. Try and extend that light you see out beyond the edge of the blade. There is plenty of aether piped up through these walls. Feel the energies flow up through you, feel them reaching out. Just a bit will do.”

  I looked at the knife and the glow there, and imagined it doing what the mage had asked. I exhaled a deep breath, and as the air left my body so too did the light leave the tip of the knife. It reached across the room to the engraved desk at the far end, by the bay windows, and came to rest there. The beam of light hung in the air, glimmering, and making the sunlight seem pale by comparison.

  On the surface of the desk, the varnish crackled and started to smoke. Small flames broke out.

  Mortified, and trying to think of how to form the words of an apology, I looked over at the man, only to see the man’s tight smile break into an open-mouthed laugh. “Excellent, Blackwell! You are a freaking prodigy!” The man’s teeth were very small, and quite yellow. He stood and clapped his small hands together repeatedly, which Blackwell understood to mean he was pleased. “I really am quite impressed! One more test, if you please?”

  Sartosh extended his own hand to me, and I understood I was to take it. I stood and did so, and as Sartosh closed his eyes I felt a flow of energy coming from him, in the same way I had felt it flow up through the floor. Only this energy was sharper somehow, more focused and more intense, and I let it pass through me, mix with the other energy I had from the house, and flow out through the tip of the knife.

  The golden beam sparked even brighter. At the far end of the beam, the desk burst into brilliant red and gold flames, so suddenly that I gasped and dropped the knife.

  Instantly, the golden beam vanished in the air. But the desk continued to burn. Smoke billowed from it, up toward the high ceiling of the room.

  “Awesome,” Sartosh whispered to himself. “Simply freaking awesome.”

  Then, to me, he said, “When a mage takes on the willing power of another mage, with proper training, their energies expand exponentially. Remember that. The mage who stands alone is only as good as himself. One only achieves true greatness by working in concert with others.”

  Sartosh crossed to the windows and slid them open to the street. The hallway door burst open, and servants with red cylinders came running in. The cylinders had black cones attached to them that spit white foam over the desk. “Mind the books!” Sartosh called out. When they extinguished the fire, I was disturbed to see that, aside from four clawed stone feet, there was very little left of the desk, and the wooden floor was badly scarred. The air was filled with smoke.

  I picked up the knife, and with some reluctance handed it back to Sartosh. As I did so he glanced beyond the men to see my aunt step cautiously into the doorway. She sniffed the air and looked about the room, and as she saw me an expression of fury crossed her face. Instantly, all my hair went white. She dropped the cleaning materials she held in her hands, strode across the floor, grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and jerked me roughly to her side.

  “I am sorry, khalee, very sorry,” she said in the human language, bowing formally to Sartosh. “The boy will not trouble you again.”

  She turned and pulled me toward the door. Head down, hair white, I knew better than to resist.

  “Stop,” said Sartosh.

  I looked up and saw different emotions crossing my aunt’s face, first fear and then more anger. It was that anger that was all too familiar to me

  Sartosh came across the floor to us. The man’s voice was firm and held a commanding tone now that it hadn’t held before. “The kid has great talent, Clarinda. He’ll be trained, I think.”

  My aunt frowned, and looked down at me with a foul expression. She did not turn around. “You honor us, khalee,” she said, in a tone that implied quite the opposite. “But you should not trouble yourself…”

  “He will be trained,” Sartosh stated flatly. He put his small pale hand on my aunt’s large, furred bicep and turned her around to face him. “As long as you are here in my house, on my lands, Clarinda, you will bring him to me daily.”

  Her face was bitter, impassive. She nodded once to the mage. I understood several things in that moment. First, that my aunt had no choice. Second, that all the fury that was in her about it would soon find its target: me.

  Sartosh tucked the Gloaming Day book into my arms, and patted me on the side of my face with that strange, hairless hand. “His fathers were mages, were they not? His mother as well? It would be a shame if the boy did not continue in the trade. I will see you again soon, young Blackwell.”

  My aunt would not meet his eyes. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had reached out with her claws and cut that poor, fragile man open from throat to groin.

  “As you wish, khalee,” Clarinda said instead, through tightly gritted teeth, sharp as razors.

  We donned the great coats and thick hats, left the house by the back door, and walked quickly down the alley. At the main street, humans hurried by without seeing us. A streetcar passed. A dog lifted its head and sniffed in our direction, but before it could react we were down a side street that humans couldn’t see, the corpse road. Here the city noises faded, and as the fog cleared there were towering trees, sky, a long dirt path through woods that ran down to a series of low stone kivas dug into the ground. The air smelled of pine. We were back in Kiryth, on Sartosh’s land, and my tribe’s home now. I hugged the mage’s book tight to my chest, and tried not to show any expression. I was going to be trained! As a mage!

  I walked in a daze, dreaming and I'm sure I didn’t notice how all of the other Hulgliev of the tribe we passed took one look at my aunt and quickly stepped out of our way.

  It was when I came down the ladder into their small kiva that my aunt finally turned and cuffed me sharp across the face. “You could have killed us all, do you know that?” she said in our High Tongue.
“If you’d done ANYTHING to anger that Bakarh,” she spat the unfamiliar word out between her sharp teeth, “then we would be homeless once again, and sooner or later the hunters will find us. And when they find us, they will surely kill us.”

  She growled, spit at me and kicked me repeatedly where I’d fallen to the floor. I wrapped myself tightly around the book to protect it. “You are a stupid, ugly child,” she said. “You are a worthless little beast. You should have died alongside your fathers and my sister, and my own son should now be standing here in your place. You are lower than a pile of shit. Even that Bakarh heretic is better than you deserve.”

  I stayed where I was, pigmenting all of my hair to something like the color of the floor and trying not to move or cry out, knowing that if I gave her something, anything to react to, it would only make it worse. She cursed me awhile longer, hit me across the sides and back. And then finally she went off and sat by the fire, where she sat and smoked her clay pipe of leaf until the thick smell filled up the kiva.

  When I was sure she wouldn’t notice me, I rose and crept off to my dirtnest in the far corner of the room. I cleaned myself, and there in the dark, with only the flickering light of the fire to light the pages, I opened the book carefully. I stared at the glowing illustrations. The fire’s light made them dance. In particular, I studied the picture of the great armored Hulgliev, and the flower, Te’loria. How thrilling it would be to hold such power, such respect.

  A mage, I thought. A mage!

  And despite the bruises that I felt across my sides and back, I remember that I smiled into that smoky darkness.

  2.

  That was then. This is now.

  There’s a clap of thunder and a flash of white light as the battered podship I’m riding in cuts down through the clouds. I’m strapped in the back, the place they use for cargo. I’m starving and frozen, and if there was anything left in my stomach it’d be all over the rusting metal floors, the walls, the roof by now.