Djinn City, page 25
Certainly, as a political unit, they were weak. They served in a largely menial capacity in the djinn world, as crew in ships, as builders, porters, and artisans, a cross between guildsmen and indentured servants, often working for food and a pittance. Gangaridai was built on Ghul labor, and they had received scant reward for all of that. Individual Ghuls did not seem to have dignatas, or at least so little that it was hardly worth acknowledging. Rather, the dignatas accrued to each Ghul tribe, of which there were many, the largest being centered in Lhasa. Their inner workings were secretive, and it was unclear to outsiders the exact hierarchy.
Over the past months, Ghuls had been leaving the city, more and more disappearing every night. This had been dismissed as the normal attrition of war: trade drying up, workers leaving for safer pastures. But now news came that Horus, named Givaras the Broken by the Ghul, had been spotted in Lhasa, that he had offered an enormous contract to the tribes of Ghul, so large that it tripled the collective dignatas of the entire race. It was unprecedented. He offered something amazing, a gesture that beggared him and at the same time enriched him beyond measure.
It was one more ally gone, a dire psychological blow for the city. The High Lords of Gangaridai, in their arrogance, had never considered that the Ghuls would take sides, that a race of servants had to be appeased and cosseted. Those few Ghuls who remained in the city were now viewed suspiciously, shunned and abused, further exacerbating the problem.
The High King was engaged in sorcery with the watchmakers. He had not yet come out of his tower, had barely left it since the first attack, not even during the last assault, when Elkran had beheaded the captain of the infantry outside the eastern gate, his rippled black sword so thin that it disappeared when viewed sideways. Elkran, undefeated in duels, equal perhaps to Kuriken himself, was lithe, his blade a whispering death. The two were destined to meet, although for now, Kuriken’s challenges went unanswered, and even he could not be in many places at once. It was the nature of Horus to direct his attacks in multiple fronts, always harrying, harassing, whittling down the far-flung outposts of the First Empire. Day by day, Kaikobad watched as the caravans and trade ships shrank, the noose tightening around the city, and the little luxuries dried up, like ice in the summertime, lemons from the north, the emeralds and rubies from Lanka that the djinns loved to etch with spells.
But the Horologists had not been idle. Perhaps it was apparent only to Kaikobad, for the citizens already lived in a kind of dream state, a fugue of semi-timelessness, but parts of the city had been disappearing, buildings winking out of sight overnight, entire streets turning to mist, then returning again, subtly altered, eerily empty. He noticed when Barkan’s tower disappeared, which had been a favorite haunt of his. It was not so much gone as inaccessible, a peculiar state of half-life, as if something could exist and still be completely removed at the same time. Then an entire corner of shops went—fruit and incense sellers, a milliner, a florist, all gone—and a kind of suspended grayness remained there, a smudge the eye flitted over, and people walked on past as if nothing had been there ever, or perhaps they saw it still, and it was Kaikobad’s eyes that were deficient.
As he followed this phenomenon, he noticed people disappearing too, ordinary folk vanishing, and it was assumed by their friends that they had just left in the night, perhaps fled to some safer place. Kaikobad, who could not sleep, saw them fade in front of his eyes, dissipating into a kind of alternate existence, or some purgatory. It was more worrying to him than the war. The magic wafting from the King’s Tower stank of something unearthly, something very old and beyond the ken of mortals. He wanted to warn them all that their lords were making deadly waves, were fundamentally betraying the world somehow, but he could find no one to listen, no djinn or man who could even see him.
Even incorporeal, he could not approach the King’s Tower. The wards there were strong enough to warp space itself, the ways to it locked by some combination he could not turn. So he watched and wandered the city as it slowly slipped away, the visions now crowding his mind with such pressure that it was impossible to differentiate one from the next, nor even to find respite in Thoth, for he could not find him or his quiet words. If the djinn was still speaking, those words were lost in the ether; Kaikobad had become the city, his mind melded together with its brick and mortar, and he was certain that he would now share in its doom.
CHAPTER 31
The Boy Who Would Be Dragon
When Indelbed woke up the pain was gone. Or rather, the dentist’s-drill-on-exposed-nerve torture was over. What was left behind was a dull, pervasive ache and bone-deep exhaustion, and the weird feeling that his insides had been rearranged. There were no compensatory powers. He felt pitiful, scarred.
“Don’t worry,” said Givaras. “You’re a dragon on the inside.”
Indelbed couldn’t speak because he had no tongue. His eyes were gone too, vision dialed to black, optic nerves rearranged by a bone scalpel. He had dreamed that maybe: Givaras bent over his face, playing tic-tac-toe on his retinas. He saw stars rushing through the abyss, his eyeballs scratched by ancient light, and he saw the ghostly lines of the distortion field: the trails of the wyrms, simple and brutal; the bizarre complexity of Givaras, all etched in shapes that had no geometry. The light hung behind the djinn’s shoulder, no dirty blue smudge but an orbit of whizzing lines, as fascinating as an anthill. Is this what dragons saw? he wondered.
“You’ve done so well,” Givaras said, pleased. “I didn’t expect you to survive. Now we will try to grow back your tongue.”
And so Indelbed did, molecule by molecule, patiently stitching together the tissue using minute touches of the field; paralyzed from the neck down, he had nothing better to do. He could never have done this before, even with Givaras’s guidance, but his blind eyes could now see a grid, faint contrails of vibrating energy, and with all the time in the world he lay down the pieces. He had not believed the tales of regrowing limbs or changing shape, but now he saw it could be done, and it was a balm to his scarred mind.
Days passed, and he grew some misshapen thing in his mouth, an alien piece of elastic flesh, horribly odd, but it worked, and he could utter sounds and then words.
“Thank god,” Givaras said, when intelligible words finally came out. “I was going mad for conversation.”
“You’re insane,” Indelbed said. “That was worse than I had thought. I’m blind and paralyzed. And I remember the pain. Every bit. You broke my spine. I can’t walk.”
“I will repair that,” Givaras said. “And you can see the field, can’t you?”
“I have no idea what I’m seeing. Ghosts, it looks like.”
“I’ve made you better,” Givaras said. “You can see what no one else can. I believe you can see the actual particles themselves.”
“There is nothing better about this!” Indelbed hissed. “Nothing! You promised me power. Where is it?”
“You’re alive, that’s the main thing,” Givaras said. “I’ve done this sort of thing to grown djinns, and they never made it. It must be hybrid vigor or something.”
“I was better off before.”
“Perhaps. Things might look dark now—”
“Haha.”
“—but I assure you, significant changes have occurred. If you could just see…”
“This is going to get really old.”
“Your feet have turned into flippers!”
“What? Oh god!”
“Ha! Got you!” Givaras cackled.
“Put me back in the coma. Please.”
“I will, briefly, to repair your spine. I hope after that you regain full functionality.”
“Oh god, another operation.”
“My operations have kept you alive, young man,” Givaras said. “While you should be congratulated on surviving what has killed three grown djinns, I assure you, it is my skill that—”
“Three grown djinns?”
“Ah, yes, you recall Risal of course. There were two inhabitants in this prison before her.”
“You said the wyrms ate them!”
“They ate them afterward.”
“So what happened to these djinns?” Did they go under the knife voluntarily? They must have been fools, all of them, if they did.
“The first one was an Ifrit named… I forget his name now. He was a friend of mine. I gave him the wyrm hormone. Of course, it was not a mature wyrm like God’s Eye. Within minutes of the infusion, he went into deep convulsions, accompanied by horrific pain. This did not stop for days, until he quite simply died of exhaustion. This is the reason I paralyzed you. The second djinn was a Marid like Risal, powerful. He died in the most useless way. Asleep in a coma, his mouth and jaw started to liquefy for some reason, and he drowned in his own blood quicker than I could let it out. To prevent this, I cut out your tongue and inserted a bone breathing tube. Finally, there was Risal. She almost made it. In the final stages, she began to suffer hallucinations as her optic nerves began to change. Essentially she went mad. She released her full distortion field and tried to change her body by force. The swarm, as you can imagine, tore her apart. This is why I have blinded you. Do you understand now how carefully I have nurtured you?”
“You can’t be serious,” Indelbed said. He wondered again how willing those previous djinns had been to Givaras’s administrations. “I expected to be maimed. But this is horrible. You’ve made me into a monster.” I am truly not a little boy anymore. Will anyone recognize me?
“Yes, perhaps,” Givaras said. “You came here a frightened little boy. I have indeed made you into a monster. You said you wanted to survive. This is the price. There are no knights in shining armor in this world, boy. When fighting monsters, what else can you do but become one?”
“You said we would escape!” Indelbed said. “I thought that I would fly! You promised me a dragon.”
“And I shall make you one,” Givaras said. “Come, boy, it’s not over yet. Did you know that in a certain light I can see the most remarkable scales under your skin?”
When he woke up again many days had passed. He remembered flashes of lucidity, discomfort. He remembered hanging upside down, suspended in a niche, splinted with the bones of Risal, encircled by her, a bone cocoon. He remembered looping nightmares. He could feel below his neck: pins and needles on his legs, soreness along his elbows, the stretch and play of tendons. Something had been fixed, something worked again. He staggered to his feet, fell, then got up again, head spinning, arms and legs weaker than a newborn’s, but he couldn’t recall ever feeling happier. The chronic pain was on a low ebb, thrumming away in the background, below anything scream worthy; and the legs worked, arms worked, everything seemed normal. He could see the faint outline of bones, and there were things whizzing around inside.
“Oh, good, you’re up.” Givaras brought some food, the ubiquitous chunk of wyrm meat.
Indelbed ate and realized that his regrown tongue had no taste buds. A blessing, it turned out, although his new body appeared to welcome wyrm meat.
“I rebuilt your spine,” Givaras said. “I took the opportunity to look around a bit. Remarkable things are happening to your bones.”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself,” Indelbed said. “At least I can walk.”
“And your eyes are remarkable,” Givaras said. “I suspect that I have achieved something wondrous.”
“Everything looks weird,” Indelbed said. “I can’t see colors. I can see whorls and lines inside God’s Eye. If I spread the field thin, I can make out solid surfaces.”
“Can you see my face?”
“I can see inside your face,” Indelbed said, squinting. “But if I kind of squeeze my eyes together and make the field really thin, I can sort of see the outside. It’s giving me a headache.”
“Good. Instead of light, you are using the field to see surfaces. You must experiment with it—I cannot teach you how. As you get better, I believe you will be able to see the surface world as well as ever. I think I have improved you. You can’t see them yet, but there are scales under your skin, almost invisible. The evolution in you has become slightly garbled. Final-stage wyrms have the scales, according to legend.”
“Great, I look like a fish.”
“Not at all,” Givaras said. “The scales would give immunities to the great dragons. You have to be annealed in great fire to achieve this.”
“Are you going to set me on fire now?!”
“No, we need a hotter kind of flame,” Givaras said. He looked around speculatively. “It will have to wait.”
“Thank god.”
God’s Eye came sniffing around, circular maw reeking, and coiled himself loosely around Indelbed’s cot.
“He is confused,” Givaras said with great satisfaction. “Because your distortion field is no longer fully djinn.”
“He’s bigger,” Indelbed said. “I can see… inside him.”
“He has begun to grow exponentially since your ascension to dragonhood,” Givaras said. “It is fascinating. I believe brood competition is making his body develop faster.”
“Givaras, am I still your apprentice?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And so you wouldn’t kill me, would you?”
“No, child, I would not kill you in any case,” Givaras said. “For you are of noble djinn blood on one side and an emissary on the other. Nephilim. To me, both are valuable and worthy of respect.”
“You’re not just a third-rate scientist.”
“Third rate?!”
“You know what I mean. This place… this prison… it was built for you. The things you know… the things you can do, they’re not normal.”
“You’ve been in a cave with wyrms for the past ten years, boy, what do you know of normal?”
Indelbed snorted. The dragon in him made him brave. To be honest, he was so tired and pain addled that he didn’t really care if he lived or died. This was, he supposed, what old people felt like before they pulled the plug.
“You know, I preferred you as a sweet little boy.”
“What were you, Master, that Matteras took so much trouble over you?”
Givaras smiled. “You are my first and only apprentice for a thousand years.”
“A thousand years?”
“In 1066, there was Matteras.”
CHAPTER 32
Horus Rising
“Well, that was horrible,” Rais said. They were now in the second-floor lobby of the Westin, returned to the real world, and djinn in various levels of disguise were milling about before making their exit, under the gaze of some very puzzled hotel staff.
“Not that bad,” Golgoras said.
“No one else opposed him,” Rais said. He was actually shocked. In the back of his mind, he had been expecting a few allies at least. “None of the emissaries. It’s like everyone is perfectly fine with him drowning millions of people.”
“At least they did not reach a consensus,” Golgoras said. “Now they’re worrying more about the Maker than anything else.”
“How much time does it buy us?”
Golgoras shrugged. “Depends how much dignatas Matteras is willing to risk. The room was bad. If Kuriken goes all in with him, it might still be enough.”
“Tell me about Beltrex,” Rais said.
“Old guard,” Golgoras said. “Saner than most. Known to be a legal expert.”
“How old is he?”
“Really old,” said Golgoras. “Thousands of years. Not polite to ask.”
“Is he antediluvian?”
“He might be.” Golgoras shrugged. “Djinns don’t advertise age. He’s pro-Seclusion.”
“He likes Humes. Fact,” Barabas said. “Owns vineyards over in America. Majorly into wine making. Won some Hume award once. Wouldn’t shut up about it. Why?”
“He was in Risal’s journal.”
“No shit!” Barabas said.
“Yeah. Risal was asking him stuff about the war. She had a partial bibliography for her paper drafted in her journal. She listed him as a primary source,” Rais said.
“That’s interesting.”
“It doesn’t say what exactly he answered. Can you help me corner him?” Rais asked.
“We’ll invite him to lunch,” Golgoras said.
“Is he going to agree to meet us?” Rais asked.
“Oh yes, he’s a miser. Never passes up a free meal,” said Golgoras.
Beltrex, in fact, was hanging around the elevator muttering darkly, and he very quickly agreed to Golgoras’s proposal of lunch at Prego, courtesy of the Royal Aeronautics Society. The Italian restaurant was near the top floor of the Westin, cheerfully lit and almost empty at this time of the day. A life-size poster advertised a Filipino band in fishnet stockings and halfprice drinks during happy hour. An absence of waiters dispersed quickly as they entered, the staff members studiously pretending to work in various remote corners of the restaurant.
“Pretty poor show, for Matteras,” Beltrex huffed as they sat down. He proceeded to order two of everything and several exorbitantly priced cocktails. “In my day we used to open Assemblies with a cocktail party and close with a ten-course banquet.”
“Well, don’t worry, the society has an account with the Westin. Let’s see if we can put together a feast for you, eh?” Golgoras said. Rais had never seen the pilot this amiable.
“Humph, well. And you know that Matteras got us here flying commercial? China Southern. Cheapest airline you can find. I had a six-hour layover…”
“Well, don’t worry, Beltrex, I’m flying out that way. I’m sure I can drop you off,” Golgoras said. “No charge.”
