Swarm and Steel, page 16
Jateko would love to ask the Etsaiaren what they feared so much that building an army of dead totems seemed sane, but they had a reputation for murdering members of the Hasiera tribe and wearing their flayed skins as condoms. Then again, his mother told him that too.
Zerfall needs me. He kicked the dead horse and the beast increased its pace.
She needs me.
BOUND IN A TIGHT cocoon of coarse rope and dragged behind a young warrior, Zerfall stared out across the eternal and unchanging sands.
When did I lose the ability to blink? She wasn’t sure. Her eyes had long rotted to nothing. Had they shrunk like dried grapes and fled the empty pit of her skull, or been plucked free and devoured by carrion insects? Come to think of it, how was it she could see? I see because I expect to see, because I believe I can see. The thought felt right, but she couldn’t explain her certainty. Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to believe she could blink. She had no way of shutting out the world, no means of escaping the battery of visual sensations; even when there wasn’t much to look at. She missed the illusion of escape achieved by closing one’s eyes. An illusion slain by a delusion.
She thought back to her last day in Geld. She remembered the stain on the fingertips of her right hand, the way they felt numb and distant. Had that been the first sign of her encroaching Cotardism? “This is rotten,” she’d said, meaning the garbage-strewn church, the foul religion they built, the fact she just stabbed her sister, and maybe even herself.
In one of Halber Tod’s poems he asked: “What kind of god does this?”
That question stuck with her, haunted her thoughts.
A book of Cotardist poems.
Rotting fingers.
Seeing the rot of her religion for the first time.
What kind of god does this?
Had reading this book of poems somehow triggered a mental collapse?
The poems were certainly bad enough.
Maybe all this is a nightmare and I’m still lying in that alley. Dying.
Sand. Monotonous endless sand.
She slid past the shrivelled corpse of a snake, baked black and twisted in agony. Its skin had collapsed and clung to protruding ribs. Even rotted and sunken it was twice as wide around as her torso and looked to be at least twenty strides long. She watched it fade into the distance. There was nothing else to look at and she had no choice but to look.
I wish I could close my eyes.
And yet in other ways she was dead to the world.
Here she was, dragged mile after mile, across hot sand. The heat and abrasion should be agony—god knows how much skin I’ve lost—and she barely felt the friction. A clump of dark hair pulled free from her disintegrating scalp and followed along behind her in a tangled knot of dried blood and corrupt flesh until coming free to be left behind. Watching it disappear from sight, she thought about the abuse she recently suffered. She’d pulled an arrow from her guts and even now her lungs and belly were no doubt coated with sand. Her heart had been pierced by no less than three barbed arrows and yet the damage to her lung was of greater concern. When they retrieved the arrows, causing further damage, she felt nothing. Each time she forced her unresponsive body to draw breath she heard air gush from the left side. If she took much more damage to her upper torso, communicating might become problematic.
The thought of spending an eternity, mute and unable to communicate, pushed her to the edge of panic and she retreated into dark sarcasm as if it would shield her from the terror of reality. Yeah, how about spending a few thousand years stuck in the desert waiting for some tribal myth to show up?
At first she’d been stalling, giving Jateko time to get away. No doubt pointless as the youth would in all likelihood die within a day anyway. And yet Jateko’s life—no matter how short that might be—had to be worth more to her than her unlife.
Didn’t it?
Why can’t I answer that?
Now that he was away and free, she’d bide her time, make her move when the Etsaiaren stopped to make camp. Hopefully the hours she spent as an unresisting lump would lull them into a false sense of security.
What exactly will be false about their sense of security?
Zerfall thought about how easily Abiega disarmed her and shattered her knee. That would have gone differently had she her sword. And not been dead.
The sky darkened as the sun, swollen as if bloated with internal decay, sank to the west turning the cloudless sky a monochromatic smear. A giant cactus towering twice the height of a tall man slid past, a collection of sun-bleached bones embedded within. At some point a human skull had been mounted at the top but the cactus had long ago grown over and around it. Only the ridges of the brow, cheek bones, and upper jaw poked through. How slowly did cacti grow? Wouldn’t that take decades, maybe longer? Zerfall picked out more detail. There, a spine hidden from view, the wind-worn spinous process bones jutting like a line of shark fins cutting through water. The bulbous head of a femur, white and smooth, gleamed dull. At the base of the cactus she saw a collection of smaller bones, some recognizable as fragments of fingers and toes. She stared up at the skull, wrapped in the tight embrace of barbed cactus flesh, and felt the weight of its gaze upon her.
It’s alive. Whoever that is, however long they’ve been there, they’re still alive. Watching. Waiting.
They dragged her by another cactus, this one smaller, with a corpse attached. Sun-bleached bones protruded at odd angles, long ago stripped clean. Thin strands of rope remained where they had once bound the bones to the plant. The rope looked strange, twisted and translucent where stretched thin. That’s not rope. Muscle, sinew, and intestines bound the bones to the cactus. She could guess whose. They’d gut her, using her own bowels to lash her to a cactus where she’d await the coming of the All Consuming and the end of the world. That seemed like adding an unreasonable insult to injury.
Might be worse, she told herself.
A lie.
How long could sanity withstand the assault of constant nothing?
What would the All Consuming consume, the dried bones of the undying delusional?
No, our souls.
Even though moments ago she dreamed of escaping the putrescent confinement of her body, the thought of something eating her soul returned her to the screaming edge of panic. Her terror grew as they dragged her past cactus after cactus, each with human remains bound to it. Most were little more than bones, but every now and then she saw something with gristly meat stubbornly clinging. Few showed signs of desert attire, most dressed more like herself if they were clothed at all. For how long had the Etsaiaren been bringing the delusional of the city-states here?
I can’t die here.
Not yet. She had to kill Hölle, bring down the awful church the two of them spent centuries building. She had to end the evil that was Swarm, somehow free the millions of souls imprisoned there. She had to kill Wahrergott, the gaoler god she created.
It can’t end here.
Blutblüte, Zerfall’s sword. Hölle had it and Zerfall wanted it back so bad she had to fight down the urge to try and tear herself free of these ropes. She has my sword and my hand.
In a colourless world of decaying senses Zerfall remembered the hand with startling clarity; that closed eye seemed more real than anything in her ever-collapsing reality. She remembered the way the eye looked like it was about to open.
Damned tattoo never worked right.
The desert faded away.
A petite woman, curved and soft, sat in a bed large enough for six. She hunched forward, one arm held across her stomach as if perhaps she suffered a bellyache, reading a stack of papers piled before her. Chestnut brown hair hung long, thick and glowing with luxuriant health, around her shoulders hiding her face from view.
Hölle. Aas told Zerfall the woman still lived, but seeing her was altogether different. So many memories. They were everything to each other. She was my only companion in the darkest times. They shared so much more than their mad quest to free humanity through their hallucinated hell of suffering. How could I have believed such madness? The words of Wahrergott bound them. Words Zerfall no longer heard or remembered. She’d worry the blow that crushed the back of her skull somehow stole the truth of the One True God, but she’d already lost faith when she stabbed Hölle.
Her sister. Her Fragment.
I’m going to kill you, she told the woman on the bed.
A second woman of slimmer build paced into view, a sword hanging at her right hip. That’s wrong, it shouldn’t—The woman with the sword sat down on the bed beside the first and ran a finger through the other’s hair, pushing it back and hooking it over an ear in a heartbreakingly familiar move. Zerfall studied her profile, the small nose, the soft swell of the lower lip. I know that face. That’s me. Except it wasn’t.
Drowning in memories of how things had once been with Hölle, Zerfall wanted to apologise for hurting her. Even more, she wanted to cut her down, spill her blood across the filthy floor of their chambers.
The two women turned and, for a brief instant, stared at her.
Zerfall found herself looking up at a mangled corpse bound to a cactus in blue-black ropes of its own viscera. Not more than a few days old. It looks fresher than I do. The terror which moments before her sudden vision threatened to engulf her, returned with thought-shattering force. The corpse’s belly hung gutted and open. Carrion beetles battled over shreds of meat within that gaping wound and writhed throughout the ripe organs spilled at the base of the cactus. The limbs had been crudely hacked off, stripped of muscle, and bound at its sides with sinew stretched to the point of breaking. The head, neck ragged from where it had been torn away from the spine, sat perched atop the cactus. A single milky eyeball hung from a puckered socket, swinging in the breeze. It focussed on her.
“Someone else has been here recently,” said Abiega, examining the corpse with an appraising eye. “Sloppy work.” He pointed out a snapped sinew allowing a chunk of what looked like upper thigh to sag. “This will fall off within the year. Probably Axolagabe. Lazy bastard.” He turned a wry smile on Zerfall. “We’ll do a better job.”
“Please no,” she tried to plead but it came out as little more than a weak cough of dust. Once again she’d forgotten to draw breath to power her words. She sucked in air but let it whistle from her torn lung when Abiega turned away to congratulate Gazte on not leading them to their deaths. The young warrior strutted about with a puffed out chest and Zerfall would have found it endearing were it not for the fact they planned to hack her apart and leave her tied to a god-damned cactus for the rest of eternity.
Keep it together. Wait and watch. You’re going to be fine.
No. She was waiting to be butchered like a cow in a slaughterhouse.
Calm. Calm. Calm.
As the sun set, the Etsaiaren bustled about, erecting their karpan and joking about the shoddy work of whoever mounted the most recent corpse. Zerfall struggled to ignore them, to think about anything else. Her head lolled, trying to look at anything other than the mutilated corpse above her. Horizon to horizon in every direction, broken bodies adorned cacti. Thousands of bodies. Maybe tens of thousands. Fallen cacti, brown and hollowed with rot, littered the landscape, their undead burdens either pinned face-first into the sand or staring forever into endless sky. Didn’t cacti live to be two hundred years old or more? How long had the Etsaiaren been doing this? She shied from the thought.
There couldn’t be this many Cotardists. Maybe hilen deabru meant more than she understood. Maybe each and every one of these corpses wasn’t a lost soul, trapped forever in its rotted husk, awaiting the coming of the All Consuming and the end of the world. Maybe—
Movement caught her eye. Entranced she watched the swaying eyeball with hypnotized intensity. It’s looking at me.
The mouth of the severed head opened in a cavernous yawn spilling the worms and insects feeding on what remained of its tongue and Zerfall lost herself, drowning in an endless ocean of terror.
She screamed without air, mouth wide and silent.
“WHAT’S WRONG?” ASKED PHARISÄER, glancing over her shoulder to see what captured Hölle’s attention.
Hölle, her skin crawling like soft fingers tickled the short hair at the back of her neck, ignored Pharisäer. She stared past her, eyes narrowing. Zerfall’s grey hand lay palm up on her desk. Had she imagined seeing the tattooed eye slip closed? Zerfall, is that you? No, that was impossible.
The world shivered and bled colour. She felt translucent, a water colour painting left in the rain.
The hand hadn’t changed or decayed since the hideous assassin dropped it there. He said Zerfall had become a Cotardist. Did being freed of her decaying mind and body protect the hand from rot? It didn’t make much sense, but in Hölle’s experience, expecting logic from reality usually ended in disappointment. Perhaps she hallucinated the eye closing, a minor slip in control. Considering the stress she was under, she could hardly be blamed for a few petty hallucinations.
What if it isn’t rotting because she’s alive? What if the reason I keep feeling like she’ll show up at any moment is because she might? Aas, the sagging sack of puckered skin. He admitted to leaving Zerfall alive. He promised she’d die out there, poisoned and gut-shot. Had he lied? No, not possible; his ceaseless brain-spew would have betrayed him. But could he have been mistaken? What if she hadn’t died? She might be out there, even now, hunting and haunting Hölle.
Pharisäer leaned forward, reaching a hand toward Hölle. “Are you—”
Hölle waved her to silence and leaned away from the hand. She couldn’t afford the distraction, she needed to think.
Why in all bloody Swarm hadn’t Aas killed Zerfall when he had the chance?
Because you told him not to.
Oh, so it was her fault now?
No. Aas should have made sure Zerfall suffered, but stayed with her until the very end. It wasn’t her fault; the man was a moron.
She drew a sharp breath and held it. I knew Zerfall wasn’t dead. I knew it and I ignored my instincts because—
Returning her attention to Pharisäer, Hölle scowled, confused and scared. “Why are you so sure Zerfall is dead?”
“Me?” Pharisäer asked, eyes widening in surprise and maybe a little hurt. “Well, Aas said she was dead. We’d know if he lied.”
True. Pharisäer’s thoughts mirrored Hölle’s own. Not surprising, I suppose. “She was alive when he left. Aas said the Düster poison would kill her.”
“No one survives that. And even if she did, Aas said she’d become a Cotardist. She’d die the moment the rot reached her heart, as do all Cotardists.”
Did they? That’s what everyone said, but she felt wriggling worms of doubt twist in her belly. If everyone believes Cotardists die when the rot reaches their heart, then that must be the truth. Belief defined reality. “What if he was wrong?”
“Aas has many faults. He’s hideous, odious, predictable, smelly, insane, easily manipulated, violent, lacking in anything even approaching a moral compass, and he loves the women who loathe him most, but he knows his poisons. If he said she would die, she is dead.” Again Pharisäer reached for Hölle and again Hölle leaned away. “Come, what’s this about? You can’t really be worried about Zerfall.”
But she was. Zerfall consumed her thoughts. Every night she dreamed her sister getting closer, becoming more and more real, while Hölle faded. She didn’t want Pharisäer to know; she’d see it as weakness. “What do you mean he loves the women who loathe him most?”
Pharisäer blinked and frowned, a small crinkle in her perfect brow. “Zerfall. You. Don’t tell me you hadn’t noticed the way he looks at you.”
“He’s always trying to look down my shirt. That doesn’t mean—”
Pharisäer’s laugh stopped her. “He has the social skills of a fourteen-year-old boy and the class of a rutting pig in heat. But he’d do anything for you. Just as he would for Zerfall. Were she alive.”
Could that be true? Zerfall was the Gefahrgeist, shepossessed guile and charm enough for both. Hölle had always been awkward with people, annoyed when they couldn’t follow simple instructions. Freeing humanity from its prison was too great a task to allow indulgences of flesh and emotion to get in the way. But Pharisäer was smooth and comfortable, like Zerfall. Did she possess some of Zerfall’s Gefahrgeist tendencies? Does Aas now love Pharisäer as he once loved Zerfall? If he does love me, does he love her more? She knew the answer and felt a stab of jealousy. It made no sense, she loathed everything about the man. And Pharisäer seemed too happy, too sure of herself. It was like she knew something Hölle didn’t and a triumphant smirk lurked behind every smile, every expression of love and concern.
Pharisäer leaned closer but made no attempt to touch Hölle. “What’s wrong?”
“What do you know of Cotardists?”
Pharisäer accepted the question as if it were not at all strange. “Same as you. It’s a delusion typically fed by self-loathing. Most decay only in part, until a limb becomes shrivelled. Extreme cases think they’re actually dying and the rot spreads further. If the decay reaches their heart or internal organs they die.”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“What doesn’t?”
“Zerfall, a Cotardist. She loved herself.”
Pharisäer gave her an indecipherable look, quickly masked. “Perhaps your sister hid something from you. Perhaps that illusion of self-love masked some deeper hurt or hatred.” Pharisäer shrugged apologetically, reached a hand toward Hölle, but stopped short of actual contact like she feared rejection. “She did betray you. Something wasn’t right.” She bit her bottom lip and her fingertips brushed feather-light on Hölle’s knee. “You can’t think this is your fault.” Her brow furrowed in concern. “Tell me that isn’t what this is about.”
