Rags & Bones Read online

  “I will not speak of it, nor write of it,” I said. “I hope that one day we might meet again, when you are but a mortal woman and not a fleeing goddess. Should you wish to, my house in Durlal is easily found, it has a roof of yellow tiles, the only such in the street of the Waterbear.”

  There is little more to tell of that first encounter. As we drew up at Halleck’s Cross, she turned once more into that cold jade figurine and, at her instruction, I carried her from the platform and across the street, depositing her in the branches of the ancient harkamon tree that marks some ancient battle. I turned back after I crossed the street, and saw a cloaked and hooded figure swoop upon the tree, take up the figurine, and be gone, a person that though shrouded, I reckoned to be the sister goddess.

  And that, I presumed, was that. A curious encounter, a brief and no less curious tryst, and an odd tale that I had promised not to tell. I had work to do, pages to be corrected, stories to be written. I soon forgot Pikgnil-Yuddra the Radiant and Yuddra-Pikgnil the Darkness, save in some half-remembered dreams, in which the two of them happened to come by … ah … such dreams are sweet, though sadly oft ill-remembered …

  Please! I continue. Yes, I did see the Goddess again, as I am sure you know or you would not be here, taking up time I had allocated to write a denunciation of the guild of parodists’ most recent stupidity. I saw her a few days ago I think … What? It is not easy to be exact when one works as much at night as in the day. Very well, it was last night, but already this one is almost at the dawn, so it is not so far to say two days ago.

  I was working here, in my study, sitting in this very chair. I heard a faint knock at that door, though no visitor had been announced and indeed my goblin had long gone to bed and so would not have answered the front door in any case. Having some respectable number of enemies, I took up the pistol from the drawer, that same pistol you have confiscated, Sir Knight, though I know not the reason, any more than you should take my paper knife, for all it looks like a dagger. I assure you the sharpness is required to swiftly slit a signature of this rough paper I use for notes, that my neighborly printer sells me very cheap as being offcuts and remainders. A blunt knife will tear and rip, and is no use at all.

  “Come in,” I called out, my voice steady, for all that my finger was upon the trigger and my heart beat a little more rapidly than was usual.

  The door opened slowly, and a bent figure entered, to all appearances some aged crone, so covered in shawls and scarves that I could not make out a face at all, until she shuffled closer and straightened, so that the light of my lamp fell upon her face. An aged and withered face, a woman twice my age or more but yet … there was something familiar there. Her eyes were bright, and younger, and I knew her.

  It was Pikgnil-Yuddra, or her sister. No longer radiant, no longer young, rather greatly aged and very clearly mortal.

  “You know me, then?” she croaked. Her voice still retained something of her former self, but her appearance astounded me. It was no more than a year since we had met on the Cartway.

  “Yuddra-Pikgnil the Darkness,” I said quietly, but inside I felt a new excitement, for I suspected there was a story here such as few might ever hear, a story that having heard, I might then remake in writing and call my own.

  “Yes. I was once Yuddra-Pikgnil the Darkness,” said the old woman, and creaking, she sat where you sit now, Sir Puppet, and set her bag, a shabby cloak-bag of boiled leather, upon the seat you occupy, Sir Knight. “And you once expressed a desire to see me again, and so I have come.”

  I was a trifle alarmed by this, sensing some undercurrent of permanent residence being suggested, but that could be dealt with later, I felt. The important matter was the story, the story was the thing!

  “But tell me, how have you come to be as you are now?” I asked. “What of your sister? Where did you go?”

  “After Halleck’s Cross,” said the old woman. She looked past me as she spoke, her old eyes seeing things that were not there, at least not for me to see. “Where did we not go? It was my sister’s plan, she was the one who had thought upon it longest, and it was she who found the way. Not the blood drinking, for that would not answer, not for very long. If we could have drunk blood taken forcefully, that would have been a different road, and we did try that, when we were very young. But it did not work, and we could not discover why it did not work, save that it was a stricture of our making, when first we came.

  “We tried other things, sought wisdom from sorcerers and priests, wizards and wise folk. None of them could help us. In the end it was Pikgnil who found the answer, a decade or more ago, when she was being me, outside the temple, wandering in search of how we might escape our godhood.

  “There is a place far to the northwest, beyond Keriman and the Weary Hills, beyond even Fort Largin and the Rorgrim Fastness, up in the mountains beyond the Valley of the Hargrou, just below the peaks where the Diminished Folk dwell. A place called Verkil-na-Verekil, a ruined city, yet where some mortals still live, eking out their simple lives.

  “Pikgnil had found an ancient text that spoke of Verkil-na-Verekil, of the city before it was ruined, of the king who ruled there, and of his crown. It was his crown that interested us, for the text spoke of its singular property, that it could make a man a god … or … ”

  She smiled, her teeth no longer white and shining, but gray with age, and broken at the edges.

  “Or make a god a man.

  “It was a long way to Verkil-na-Verekil, a difficult way, for our powers were greatly reduced with every league we traveled from Shrivet, the locus of our extension from the otherworld. By the time we passed Rorgrim Fastness and began to climb into the mountains, I could not take the jade shape, and it took both of us together to conjure some little light. Worse than that, we were fading, our energistic presences weakening. It became doubtful that we could even reach Verkil-na-Verekil, it might be simply too far … but we resolved to press on. We did not know what would happen if we did overextend ourselves, whether our existence would be terminated, or the stretched energistic threads that led back to the temple would contract, and we would find ourselves once again imprisoned in Shrivet. By then, we did not fear termination and should we end up back in the temple, we would simply try again. So we pressed on.

  “We did reach Verkil-na-Verekil in the end, albeit as thinly painted caricatures, little more than half-caught reflections in a mirror … which in some ways was helpful, for the people there were still loyal to ancient ideals, and guarded the ruins well, some of them armed with weapons that could slay even such as we were … yet thin as shadows, we slipped past them, and went deep into the ruins and there, in the deep of the mountain, yes, we did find the crown.”

  She fell silent then, her eyes downcast, her ancient hands trembling with the import of what she told.

  “Go on,” I said. “You found the crown … Did you put it on?”

  “Pikgnil put it on,” whispered the old woman. “Even as she raised it to her head, I felt a presentiment of doom and the flash of a long-forgotten memory. I screamed at her to wait, but she would not wait.”

  “It made her mortal?” I asked.

  “Yes. It made her mortal, with the full weight of all our years,” said the woman who had been a god. “I saw her turn to flesh, and smile in triumph, and then the smile twisted, fear shone in her eyes as that flesh sank upon her bones, the smile became a rictus grin, and then she decayed before my eyes, turned to charnel meat and thence to bare, fleshless bones, and I felt the magic flow from the crown, and I too became mortal and my shadowed shape took flesh, and I remembered that long ago, when we first burst out upon this world, we were one, a single thing, and it was called Pikgnilyuddra, that only became two as the centuries passed and the priests wove stories that shaped us, the twins of day and night … and all of those thousands of years we had been upon this earth, all of them came pouring into me from the crown!

  “I lunged forward and slapped the crown from the skull that wore it �
�� saving some scant few years of life, but too late, for I am as you see me now. Mortal but ancient, too old for the simplest pleasures that I hoped to taste, too old even for those who guarded the crown to consider an enemy, so that they let me by, thinking me only a crazed old biddy of their own people. And so I came, in many weary steps and by weary ways, to Durlal. I remembered a scribbler, who I had some fondness for, and so here I am and here I would rest, before I go on to Shrivet and my rightful place.”

  So there you have it. I gave her some supper, a bed, a cloak. In the morning I added some money to her purse, enough for the fifth carriage on the Cartway to Orthaon, and from there she would have an easy way to Shrivet.

  That is all I can tell you. I suppose you would catch her easily if you took the next Cartway, she won’t have gotten far from Orthaon. I presume you do wish to catch her, that she must be … tidied up, the books made correct? Even if she is no longer a rogue goddess, but mortal, still your business, if as I presume your business is indeed the dispatch of such unhoused and irregular godlets?

  Other business? What other business could we possibly have? I have told you everything. Yuddra was here, she left, she is no longer a god. I am a busy man, I have much to write, look at this desk—

  The bag? Her bag? Yes, I did mention a bag, boiled leather, with bronze clasps. I have no idea what was … Why are you putting on those armbands? What does the writing on them mean? It is no text that I recognize. I do not like this, though you are guests in my house I think I shall leave, at once!

  Ah, that hurt, and is quite unnecessary. Yes, I shall sit quietly, though I do not like your mumbling, it smacks of priestly doings and, as you know, I am by reason of principle opposed to priests and gods.

  Mister Fitz, you unnerve me, as a puppet you are alarming enough, but if that is what I think it is, sorcery is forbidden within this precinct, and there is no need for it, none at all.

  What are you doing, Sir Knight? That is a particularly ancient casket, most precious, where I store my old manuscripts, there is no occasion to open it and in any case I have lost the key. Though now I think of it, perhaps the key is in the pocket of my other coat, which I left at the Dawn-Greeter’s Club after some revels the other day. You know of the club, I’m sure, frequented by night workers, particularly printers and the like. I shall just slip over there and fetch my coat, and the key—

  How now! There’s no need, you might have merely asked me to take my seat again. I shall not get the key, then, and so your curiosity about my old parchments and scribblings will not be answered. Why should I shield my eyes? I shall do no—

  I see, or rather, I see with some difficulty. That was a most remarkably bright flash, Master Puppet. As I mentioned, that is … or was … a very ancient casket, and melting the lock off will have damaged its value considerably. I fear I must ask you to pay for it, a matter of at least ten, no a dozen, guilders of this city, none of your sham coin. And I must forbid you to ransack my papers … yes, I have laid an old cloak upon them to keep out the damp. I must suppose that the smell is from some vellum that has grown a noxious mold, or an inadequately scraped calfskin, I write upon various materials. I am in the middle of an important piece now as it happens, and so must require solitude to continue, please …

  A corpse? An old woman’s corpse? I have no conception how that might have gotten there. You are playing some complex joke upon me, perhaps? I shall call for the Watch! Help! Help! Help! Heeeelp!

  I presume from the lack of muffling, smothering, or other restraint that you have already paid off the Watch? Such foresight indicates men … a man and a puppet … attuned to pecuniary advantage. I have some wealth, and would happily pay a suitable sum so that this matter may remain confidential. Shall we say twenty guilders? No? Fifty, then? A hundred guilders! It is all that I have, take it and leave me …

  The bag under her feet? With bronze clasps? As you can see, untouched by me. I didn’t kill her, she just died in her sleep, she was old. I put her in the casket for now, to avoid trouble. Her bag likewise, see, the crown is there. I hid it so that it could not be used by others who might be tempted!

  What? Of course I didn’t wear the crown! How dare you make such a suggestion. I wear the compass, I am on the square. “Men before gods” is my creed. Such a crown is worthless to a true man. Take it, and go, and I shall not swear a complaint against you. It is against my beliefs, but I shall not stop another from becoming a god, clearly I cannot stop you in any case.

  You do not want to become a god, Sir Knight? And you, Master Puppet, with your sorcerous needle, what are you doing? Yes, yes, this time I shall shield my eyes, but that crown is valuable in itself …

  I should not have believed it if I had not seen it myself. To destroy such a beautiful thing, even though it be tainted with … with evil magic. But I presume that completes your business here. Allow me to show you to the door, and I trust that we shall not meet again.

  Another needle, Master Puppet? What can you need with another needle? The crown is destroyed, the old goddess is dead, all is right with the world, or will be once I am finally left alone!

  What? I told you I would never put on the crown. How can you see signs of … I don’t understand … energistic tendrils … unlawful protrusion of entities … it is all Khokidlian to me, pure nonsense, so upsetting in fact that I need a drink. I will fetch a bottle and we might share it as a stirrup cup for your departure … ah … that really did hurt and was quite, quite unnecessary. We are all friends here, are we not?

  Yes, I confess, I am a curious fellow. I collect oddments, ancient jewelry, that sort of thing. Perhaps I did just touch the crown to my forehead, but nothing happened, nothing much, and anyway, how could you know? I tell you I am not a godlet, I am just a man, I will cause no trouble, I am just a—

  AUTHOR’S NOTE …………………………………

  Like a lot of people, I first encountered Rudyard Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King” in its filmic form. I liked the John Huston–directed movie a lot. I suspect I would like anything that teamed Michael Caine and Sean Connery together, but having them in a really good film based on a great story was even better. When Tim and Melissa first suggested the Rags & Bones concept to me, Kipling was one of the authors I immediately thought I might like to pay my respects to with an homage. Possibly because I worked in a bookstore when Kipling’s books first entered the public domain and thus they are inextricably linked in my mind: I still have nightmares about the sudden influx of dozens of new editions of The Jungle Book.

  Once I had the idea of revisiting “The Man Who Would Be King,” I thought about the two central characters. Who would my buddies be, my Peachy Carnehan and Daniel Dravot? It wasn’t a great leap from there to decide I would use my existing duo, Sir Hereward and his puppet companion, Mister Fitz. The other main character is, of course, Kipling himself, who in the original narrates the story in the first person. Possibly because I’d recently been rereading a text from my university days (the story collection Points of View, edited by James Moffett and Kenneth R. McElheny), I decided to twist this somewhat and write the story as a dramatic monologue, with the writer character “overheard” as he tells the story of two wayward goddesses and we, the reader, also apprehend what is happening as he narrates both past and present.

  The Sleeper and the Spindle

  NEIL GAIMAN

  It was the closest kingdom to the queen’s, as the crow flies, but not even the crows flew it. The high mountain range that served as the border between the two kingdoms discouraged crows as much as it discouraged people, and it was considered unpassable.

  More than one enterprising merchant, on each side of the mountains, had commissioned folk to hunt for the mountain pass that would, if it were there, have made a rich man or woman of anyone who controlled it. The silks of Dorimar could have been in Kanselaire in weeks, in months, not years. But there was no such pass to be found and so, although the two kingdoms shared a common border, no travelers cro
ssed from one kingdom to the next.

  Even the dwarfs, who were tough, and hardy, and composed of magic as much as of flesh and blood, could not go over the mountain range.

  This was not a problem for the dwarfs. They did not go over the mountain range. They went under it.

  Three dwarfs were traveling as swiftly as one through the dark paths beneath the mountains.

  “Hurry! Hurry!” said the dwarf in the rear. “We have to buy her the finest silken cloth in Dorimar. If we do not hurry, perhaps it will be sold, and we will be forced to buy her the second-finest cloth.”

  “We know! We know!” said the dwarf in the front. “And we shall buy her a case to carry the cloth back in, so it will remain perfectly clean and untouched by dust.”

  The dwarf in the middle said nothing. He was holding his stone tightly, not dropping it or losing it, and was concentrating on nothing else but this. The stone was a ruby, rough-hewn from the rock and the size of a hen’s egg. It would be worth a kingdom when cut and set, and would be easily exchanged for the finest silks of Dorimar.

  It had not occurred to the dwarfs to give the young queen anything they had dug themselves from beneath the earth. That would have been too easy, too routine. It’s the distance that makes a gift magical, so the dwarfs believed.

  The queen woke early that morning.

  “A week from today,” she said aloud. “A week from today, I shall be married.”

  She wondered how she would feel to be a married woman.

  It seemed both unlikely and extremely final. It would be the end of her life, she decided, if life was a time of choices. In a week from now she would have no choices. She would reign over her people. She would have children. Perhaps she would die in childbirth, perhaps she would die as an old woman, or in battle. But the path to her death, heartbeat by heartbeat, would be inevitable.