Djinn City, page 9
“So you’ve got like djinn turtles?” Indelbed was still sure that turtles came into this somehow.
“And irony of ironies! Matteras himself has proven me right,” Givaras said. “For what do you think these rock wyrms are?”
“They can see the distortion field,” Indelbed said. They had had this conversation before.
“Precisely!” Givaras said. “They are like us! They too exist on different planes. In some distant past, whatever mechanism created the first protein molecules also created molecules of two different types of matter joined together. Binary molecules, I call them. When unitary life formed, so too did binary. Imagine little binary cells manipulating dark energy to protect themselves. Imagine protozoa made of binary cells with tiny distortion fields! Imagine—”
“Is that a rock wyrm over there?”
CHAPTER 11
Kaikobad
Kaikobad stood on a tall tower, at the very lip, looking down until vertigo seized him. He could have fallen unhurt, for he was merely a ghostly observer in this place, but he stepped back. It was unpleasant to fall or burn or be damaged in the hundreds of different ways he had endured since the visions had started. The mind did not easily accept disembodiment.
A crystal city glittered beneath: domes and towers lit up by the setting sun, balconies suspended in air, wide streets paved with marble, delicate bridges arching over running water, merchants floating on carpets, carrying fruits and wine, winding through the branches of a great tree in the very center. Humans and djinns cohabited in plain sight—bargaining in the market square, smoking on street corners—peaceful, unhurried.
In front of him, two of the flying carpets collided, a fender bender of sorts, one of the irate passengers nearly falling off, and a crowd gathered—djinn floating up in their fields, a magician swooping down on the back of a seagull—to watch the threats of lawsuits, attempts at mediation, and testimonies of eye witnesses, all jumbled up in a great Babel of conversation.
It was a mawkish dream of a city, sanitized wishful thinking that made his lip curl. Where was all the shit, the sewers, the beggars; where was the grimy crystal underbelly of gamblers and whores; where were the perverts and drunkards?
“It is the First City,” Thoth said, beside him. “Is it not wondrous?”
“I want to see my son,” Kaikobad said. “Not this shit.”
They were in the field, and the field carried memories, or copies, or perhaps the actual thing itself, the Platonic ideal of the thing that projected onto the real world—it was impossible to tell. Thoth had shown him how to see it, to read the particle script, but the guardian himself knew nothing more, could not choose what they saw.
“Patience,” Thoth said. “The stories carry their own logic.”
Kaikobad blinked, and the scene changed. He was on a field of snow, at the edge of a frozen lake. An armored djinn rode past, close enough to touch. His breastplate was bone white, like enamel, perhaps carved from ivory, invested with rings of power, leveling up with the rising sun. He carried a spear the height of a man, the haft corded with human hair, an oversize crescent blade made of dull metal weighing down the end. The djinn rode across the lake, heedless of the cracking ice, the hooves of his destrier beating divots into the surface. He was chasing something, and Kaikobad followed him unseen, easily keeping pace, a pale ghost for a pale rider. The djinn caught his prey at the far edge of the lake, a ragged woman wearing simple hide clothes stained with dirt, her hair braided with elk bones, and as Kaikobad looked closer, he found a bulge tied to her back, a newborn baby tightly bound with rawhide, the head bobbing between her shoulder blades.
With sickening slowness, the rider caught them, and the great spear casually ran her through, piercing both child and mother in a single thrust. Dark red blood arced across the snow, and Kaikobad could hear the snap of bones breaking, as the warhorse trampled over the bodies. The djinn did not stop.
“Kuriken!” Thoth said, catching up. “He prefers solitude. The Elk tribe strayed into his demesne, so he killed them. This woman was the last.”
“He is a murderer,” Kaikobad said. “He was then, and he is now.”
“He was our best warrior. They used to say that Gangaridai would never fall as long as he held the gate.”
“What happened then?”
“He stopped holding the gate,” Thoth spat.
“I am sick of this. I can’t take too much more.”
“You are tired,” Thoth said. “We have scryed for days.”
“Days? Who can tell? There is no time here,” Kaikobad said with a laugh. “My son could already be dead.”
“You love him dearly,” Thoth said. “I am envious.”
“You never loved anyone?”
“Djinn do not love like that, I think,” Thoth said. “Or perhaps it is just me. I did my duty. I took pride in that. When it was time to guard the road, I stood up, I swore to stand there forever, and I did, I think.”
“Until you landed up here,” Kaikobad said. “Wherever the hell here is.”
“Perhaps it is hell,” Thoth said. “And we are the only two denizens.”
Kaikobad stared at him. “You have a very strange sense of humor.”
“The gate shows you what you want to see,” Thoth said. “Perhaps it is Gangaridai you truly search for.”
Kaikobad fell silent as the awful truth of this crashed through his mind. He railed at the gate, throwing himself at it, pushing against the waves of feedback come from it, willing himself to swim through it, to reach the core. It was like fighting the tide. He returned to the shore no matter how far he went. NO. No. Indelbed, where are you? I want to see you. I love you, my poor son, I have always loved you. Haven’t I? I didn’t leave you, did I? I can’t remember your face anymore. How old are you now? I can’t remember, you were a baby yesterday, a little silent thing, never crying, never hungry, watching me with djinn eyes. The gate is wrong. I searched for the city, yes, the City of Peace, the City of Death, where else would I find my wife? But not at this price. Never for your life. I would give a hundred Gangaridais for your life, Indelbed, I swear.
“Come, friend,” Thoth said afterward, when his weeping had subsided. “Let us try again. Perhaps this next vision will be peaceful and ease your heart.”
They were now inside the First City again, in one of the glittering chambers high above the ground; windows lined with crystal reflected the sun in wondrous ways, channeling the light into the far depths of the tower. These djinns of old were profligate with their power, for there were signs of magic everywhere in the city. From the windows they could see fountains spewing water into the air, sculpting shapes that held for brief minutes, before crashing back down. Great trees rivaled the towers in each neighborhood, their canopies spreading shade and color across the sky. The city itself was threaded with cool sea air, a breeze that ran perpetually through the streets, chasing its own tail, calming tempers on even the hottest days.
“This is the court of the High King,” Thoth said. “See him there upon the throne.”
The High King wore a scarlet mask, and the rest of him was swathed in so much power that he appeared formless, indistinct, as if he existed in many different states at the same time. This chamber was stark, unfurnished. There was no need for embellishment in the face of the High King’s awful puissance.
“He passes judgment,” Thoth said. “I myself have stood in this chamber many times. I once served as his advisor, before the war came.”
“The djinn in my time hate kings,” Kaikobad said. “They are unruly. They do not accept authority at all.”
“Anarchists!” Thoth said. “I am thankful I am not from your world.”
A gargantuan djinn squeezed through the archway, bending almost double to fit. He was armored in gold plate so bright that it hurt Kaikobad’s eyes to look at him. His beard was ringed in gold, and gold lay upon his brow, a thin circlet. He carried a great sword inked with blood, flecked with the remnants of recent use. He bowed before the king, a slight genuflection that showed more contempt than respect.
“Memmion,” the High King said.
“I have come,” Memmion said. “As you asked.”
“Once again you break the peace. You murder in cold blood. This is not what I wanted,” said the High King, his voice atonal behind the mask.
“I dueled to the death, as is my right.”
“This is the City of Peace. Your barbarity cannot continue.”
“I cannot change my nature,” Memmion said. “And I cannot bend the knee.”
“Cannot or will not, it is all the same,” the High King said. “Why do you continue to defy me? What is it you want, Memmion? They say that you love gold. I will give you minefuls. I will give you a mountain of jewels from Lanka, all the incense in Babylon. Just alter this course of destruction you have put us on.”
“I want to rend djinn from bone to sinew!” Memmion said. “I want to crush Nephilim joints between my hind teeth! I want to eat the meat off your ribs. I want to tear the towers down and let the jungle grow over the bricks. Give me this, and I will be happy”—he bowed mockingly—“High King.”
“We are finished then,” the High King said. “You must leave. Exile.”
“You keep your fine city,” Memmion said. “The wilderness is mine. I take the rest of the world. I exile you. You and your effete lords. Come outside at your own peril.”
“Your sword cannot hurt me, Memmion,” the High King said. “Go now.”
“I am not alone,” Memmion spat in parting. “Others rise. Horus is with me.”
The doors closed, and Kaikobad was alone with the High King.
“Horus,” he said from behind his mask. He sounded troubled.
CHAPTER 12
Wyrming Out
Givaras loved theorizing, lecturing, and generally pontificating, but he was oddly reticent about his own life. Indelbed thought the djinn had probably been lonely, without friends or family. He spoke incessantly about politics, however, trying to teach Indelbed the various nuances. Indelbed didn’t have the heart to tell him that he was seventy years out of date and probably all those things had changed. Or perhaps it hadn’t. Djinn seemed to spend a lot of time sleeping or just loafing around.
“You see, very early on we had the imperials versus the republicans, which is to say the argument of empire versus anarchy, order versus chaos,” Givaras said. “Now republicanism started more as a voluntary association, a loose gathering of like-minded djinn who joined forces to achieve some single project and then disbanded. What it means now is very different in human terms, because, as usual, humans have corrupted everything. But in the pure form, we were really arguing about rule versus nonrule, and lucky to say, nonrule won, because otherwise you’d be living in a very different kind of world.”
“Well, we’re both stuck in an underground prison,” Indelbed pointed out. “Can it get much worse?”
Givaras pooh-poohed this suggestion out of hand. “Then over time, we started getting a conservative party who valued the Lore, sometimes to a literal extent, and was very eager to ‘return to the way things were,’ which is funny, because possibly most of them have no idea how things actually were and would not like it at all if they went back to it. In any case, what they really mean is that they are antihuman and wish to limit the growth of our coinhabitants on this planet. Intersecting with them are the Isolationists, who wish to avoid all contact with humans in order to better conserve ‘djinndom.’ These are the people particularly bent out of shape with human currency. They feel dignatas is being diluted. Again, how they intend to avoid humans altogether is beyond me. Then a further subset of the conservative movement are the Creationists, who follow the most rabid doctrines and are my avowed enemies. They believe that djinns were created perfect, that the world was in fact created as a gift for djinndom, and that all other life on it is simply put there for our amusement by God. This is backed up by a bunch of pseudoscience and a lot of ranting.”
“It seems like all djinns like ranting,” Indelbed observed.
“Humph. Instead of being a smart-ass, I’d pay attention if I were you,” Givaras said. “Now that you are djinn, you will need to know all of this. A young djinn your age would be drinking in politics with his mother’s milk. Of course, you never had a mother.”
“Well, you’ve got no legs.”
“I suppose we are a fine pair.”
“I don’t miss learning djinn politics at all,” Indelbed said. “And I didn’t like milk. Not even the chocolate kind, which Butloo got me once. I don’t remember my mother, so I guess I don’t miss her either. I definitely don’t miss my father. I miss the trees. I wish I could sit on my roof and watch it rain. Have you ever seen that? Our street was full of trees. They’d be all dusty during the day, but when it rained, the leaves would get clean, and everything would be shiny, and it would smell great. And rain hitting your skin? It’s like a shower, only a hundred times better. You never worry about trees, you know, until you’re stuck without them.”
“You are a good boy, to be worrying about trees.”
“Well, I didn’t have too many friends, because of not going to school, I reckon,” Indelbed said. “But I miss Ali, from next door. We used to play marbles. He mostly won, so by the end he would have all of them and I would have none, but then he always gave mine back. I think he felt bad because he had a lot of marbles to begin with. His mother made really good korma. That’s like chicken curry but much better. She’d give me some whenever I went over. I didn’t go over that much, though, because whenever Ali came over we only gave him rice and dal. He didn’t like eating it. If I had money I used to buy biscuits for him. Then Butloo could give tea and biscuits to us. I like the toast biscuits with jam. Or condensed milk. That was pretty good too. You ever had condensed milk? It’s like a thick concentrated milk and it’s so sweet that your teeth hurt.”
“I have not eaten any of these things,” Givaras said. “But your words are making me hungry, and we are low on provisions. On to the hunt!”
The hunt always cheered Indelbed up. It was now a much-anticipated part of their routine, and it was during a hunt that they made their breakthrough. It wasn’t Indelbed who thought of a way to escape, but he claimed a little of the credit, as the idea resulted directly from some of his foolhardiness. In an attempt to enliven the now rather boring mechanisms of the hunt, Indelbed had taken to trying various tricks and embellishments, one of which involved him jumping on the back of a wyrm and trying to ride it like a bronco.
After doing this maneuver several times, they realized that the wyrms, having never encountered this problem before, could not easily get a rider off, nor did they have a clue as to what to do in that situation. Indelbed, tucking his knees behind the flaring ridges of the segmented carapace, could easily avoid the useless gnashing of mouth and general thrashing around.
This was not, of course, particularly useful, although it was quite fun. The wyrms eventually just retreated into their holes, at which point he had to jump off or get scraped off. Givaras in particular was a chief proponent of this sport; while his legless condition made him unable to participate, he was always keen to offer suggestions on form and scoring.
Indelbed was at first surprised by Givaras’s ready acceptance of an obviously reckless and unnecessary pursuit, until he realized from various anecdotes let drop by his mentor that djinns in general were a thrill-seeking and foolhardy race, quick to accept bets and challenges of all sorts, and seemingly given over wholly to pursuing pleasure. They could also regrow most limbs, which took the sting out of possible injuries, not withstanding the massive loss of dignatas that normally ensued.
“You are gaining dignatas, you see,” Givaras said. The djinn having explained this invisible currency to him, Indelbed was happy to pile up the kudos. “If only there were others here to see your skill! It would spark off a new craze! A veritable new fashion in sports, I don’t doubt it.”
“Djinns play a lot of sports?” It seemed rather frivolous of these dread creatures.
“Oh, we love sports,” Givaras said. “Whale surfing, giraffe racing, ostrich baiting—why back in the day they used to ride pterodactyls. Dragons! Some of the old-timers are always going on about riding dragons, although many say that’s pure nonsense…”
A look of such cunning suddenly came over Givaras’s face that Indelbed was taken aback and let his light go off, which momentarily plunged them into darkness and presaged the distant rumble of a predatory wyrm. Restoring order, he found the djinn bent over several discarded carapace shells, touching them thoughtfully.
“How are you enjoying your time here?” he asked absently.
“Er, fine?” Indelbed answered. Aside from the boredom, the murderous wyrms, the constant threat of cave-ins, the gnawing irritation of keeping the distortion field leashed in, the awful food, the stench of rotting meat, the mad conversations…
“I mean how would you feel about going outside?” Givaras asked.
“Escape?”
“Yes!”
“Are you mad? Of course I want to escape! Why haven’t you said anything before?” The awful thought occurred to him that perhaps Givaras liked being here…
“It has just occurred to me,” Givaras said. “A flash of brilliance! A plan of such outrageous dignatas that we will be positively showered with adulation once we are outside. An intellectual coup of such audacity that—”
“Well, what is it?”
“I have noticed, in the midst of your antics, that the rock wyrms possess individual markings along their carapace joints, much like the unique patterns shown by the Derigoz birds, alas extinct—”
