The Iron Khan (39 page)

The characters on the page swam up, floating and foaming in air. They made Chang feel sick and queasy — a sensation that was only too familiar. It had been like this at home — and suddenly another memory jolted back. He was sitting up in bed, too tired almost to see. His books were spread out on the table, faintly illuminated by the glow of the computer. He could hear his mother and grandmother speaking in low voices in the next room. Above him, the light fitting was a thin line of shadow, the naked bulb switched off. His vision contracted until there was only the light fitting, that strong twist of wire looped through a hook set in the ceiling — and it was gone. Red light filtered through the window of the schoolroom.

“Chang!” He turned. Jeng was sitting a few rows back: somehow, Chang had not seen him earlier. Jeng’s eyes were wide, and pleading.

“Chang, come with me!”

“But that’s not — ” not possible, he started to say, but Jeng ran forward and grasped him by the arm. “Come on.”

Together they ran out of the schoolroom. Chang risked a look back but the room was as before, with the bowed heads of his classmates bent diligently over their appointed task. With Jeng, he bolted through the corridors, painted a dull institutional green, cobwebs hanging from the rafters. Their feet pattered through dust. Chang vaguely recognized it as the route that they normally took back to the dormitory, but this time Jeng veered away through a set of double doors and to Chang’s amazement, they were out into the street.

He had never been outside before — at least, not here. The red sky smoldered overhead and, like the street outside his original home, the wide road was filled with bicycles. Jeng had to pull him backward to avoid being mowed down. Chang gaped, staring at the passing throng. The people on the bicycles were as indistinct as smoke. Their shadowy faces showed a grim determination: eyes bulging toward some goal ahead, legs pedaling furiously.

“Who are they?” Chang whispered.

Jeng was looking at him strangely. “Don’t you know?”

“No. Why should I?”

Jeng tugged his arm. “We have to go.” He pulled Chang in the direction of the road, but Chang resisted. The throng of cyclists scared him: he was certain that he would be run over and he hated the desperate look on their faces. Above, the sky was boiling and suddenly he longed for the schoolroom, where it was at least quiet.

“I’m not going,” he cried, and bolted back through the doors into the school. He expected Jeng to follow him, but the doors remained closed. He stumbled to the dormitory, crawled into his narrow, hard bed, and pulled the covers over his head.

•

Next morning, he went to the schoolroom as usual, but this time, the schoolmaster was waiting by the door. A clawlike hand snapped out, gripping Chang by the shoulder.

“You are a truant. Truants are punished.”

Chang tried to protest, but the words stuck in his throat. Aware of the ranks of eyes that watched him, he walked up the aisle to the front desk. The walk was almost worse than the punishment: lashes of a cane across the palm of his hand, which left it bleeding. It hurt, but the blood did not drip. Instead, it evaporated into smoke, curling up into the red-lit air. Chang watched it dumbly, not understanding. After this, he was sent back to his seat, and he sat wrestling with the paper once more. The encounter with Jeng was fading from his mind, until by the end of the day, he could barely remember it, as if it had been a dream.

The next days passed in an equal blur. But on the third night after his aborted escape attempt, Chang had another dream. He was back in his bedroom, that place where he remembered once feeling safe. Now, the safety was gone and there was only the oppression. He heard footsteps outside the door, and they were stealthy and filled him with dread.

“Who’s there?”

“Mama.”

And instead of reassuring him, the dread grew, until it was swallowed by a stifling silence, and then, distantly, someone screaming. It was almost a relief to wake up and find himself in the dingy confines of the school dormitory.

As he was walking down the corridor to the schoolroom, amid the shadowy forms of other boys, Jeng stepped out from behind a cabinet.

“Chang!”

“Go away,” Chang said, but he did not mean it.

“Chang…at least come and see what I have to show you.” Jeng’s mouth was tight and his eyes were intent. “We won’t have to go outside.”

After a moment, Chang said, “All right.” The palm of his hand stung in memory of the caning, but after a glance around, he followed Jeng. This time, the other boy led him deeper into the building, through corridors which Chang had never seen before, and up a flight of stairs.

“Where are we going?”

“We have to find something,” Jeng said.

“What is it?”

“I’ll show you.”

“And where is it?” Chang’s nerves were on edge.

“In the principal’s study.”

“What?” Chang stopped and looked at Jeng blankly. It had never occurred to him that this dreadful place had a principal, but of course it made sense. “But — ”

“You want to get out of here, don’t you?”

Chang said, “I don’t know. What’s outside was worse. And — ” he hesitated. He did not want to tell Jeng that he did not want to go home, either.

At last, sheer indecision propelled him forward. As they climbed through the building, the décor became richer, with deep carpets and freshly polished wood. It smelled of wealth and age, intimidating Chang. He looked with admiration at Jeng, who seemed intent only on his goal.

“It’s here, I think.” Jeng paused before a tall door.

“What if he’s in there?” Chang quavered.

“He isn’t. I’ve been watching him. Every morning at this time he goes downstairs to observe the students.” Jeng reached out and tried the door handle. To Chang’s surprise, it opened.

They went inside. The principal’s study was huge. A bookcase lined one side of the room and on the other was a cabinet containing many different items. Chang and Jeng stared at it in horror. There were knives and bottles of pills. There were jars containing something murky and dark, which writhed. At the far end of the cabinet was a wall unit. Chang could not see the contents properly: they were too blurred. He blinked, but the thing defied investigation. Jeng ran toward it but as he did so, the door started to open.

Chang did not think; blind fear moved him. He dived under the desk and curled up in a ball. A striding figure crossed the study in a swirl of black and red robes. There was a flurry and a squeal that sounded more animal than human. Then the door banged once more and the figure was gone.

It took Chang a long time to come out from under the desk and when he did, he ran, stumbling along the corridors and almost falling down the stairs. He was too frightened to return to either the dormitory or the schoolroom. Blundering into a closet, he pulled the door shut and stayed there.

•

Gradually, Chang became aware that his fear was ebbing. It did not fade entirely, but other emotions began to creep in: shame, and a growing anger. What had he ever done, to find himself in this kind of situation? He had only tried to please his mother and do his homework, and now he was trapped in this nightmare. And he had let down Jeng, who had only tried to help him… What had happened to poor Jeng now? Chang did not like to think about that, and yet the idea of it had an oddly clarifying effect on his mind, like being doused with icy water.

Focusing in his mind on Jeng, he crept from the closet. The corridor was silent. He looked this way and that, but there were only the swirls of dust eddying in the draft from beneath the doors. At the far end of the corridor stood the staircase down which he had fled. Gritting his teeth, Chang forced himself back up the steps. He was by no means sure that he could find the principal’s office again: Had they climbed four flights, or five? He took a chance and headed off down yet another passage.

And here were the doors of the study, looming before him. Chang paused, balling his fists. He put his ear to the door and heard nothing, but this kind of thick-carpeted place was the sort that swallowed sound. He forced out a hand and opened the door.

The room was empty. It looked exactly as before, with the horrible jars in their cabinets. Chang swallowed. The blurred thing was still there, and he could not look at it. Quickly he searched the study for any trace of Jeng, but there was nothing: not even, as he had feared, a spot of blood on the thick carpet. The desk was covered with scrolls which looked like examination certificates. Chang rifled through them, but found nothing of significance, though each scroll had a name.

“Chang!” It was a whisper. He looked up and there was Jeng, no more than a shadow on the air. The other boy’s hand was reaching out to him, beseeching. “Chang, it’s in the cabinet!”

He forced himself to turn and look. The object in the cabinet was still blurred, writhing against the glass. Chang balked, not wanting to go closer, but as he hesitated, he saw Jeng’s gaze flicker in the direction of the door. It was starting to open. Chang stepped forward, the possibility of last chances running through his mind, and punched the glass into pieces, to grasp the thing inside.

He found himself holding a snake, all crimson and blue. It squirmed in his hands and he nearly dropped it, but he hung on and, all of a sudden, it stopped moving and lay limply in his fist. It wasn’t a snake at all: it was a school tie.

And Chang remembered. Using the small kitchen stepladder. Tying the tie to the hook in the bedroom ceiling, tying the other end around his neck. Then the fall and snap, and nothing more.

The door remained ajar. Chang turned to look at Jeng. The spectral boy was changing, his form filling out, growing taller, until Chang’s grandmother stood in his place. She was smiling.

“Well done! I knew you’d do it eventually. But I was worried that the spell to change my appearance wouldn’t last — when the principal caught me, I only just managed to get back here.”

“I couldn’t remember,” Chang said.

“But now you have.”

The walls of the study were melting away. He had a last glimpse of the schoolroom, with heads still bent assiduously over their desks. Then he was standing on stone, the schoolhouse gone. The phantom cyclists hurtled into the distance but the red sky was clearing, becoming blue and calm. A cherry tree stood before him, covered in blossom. Chang turned back.

“Go on,” his grandmother said. “Your exam’s over. Go to where you belong.”

And so he did.

Dr Liz Williams is a British-based novelist who earned her PhD in Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University. Her first novel, The Ghost Sister (2001) was soon followed by Empire of Bones (2002), and both novels were nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award. Her short stories have been published in Asimov's, Interzone, The Third Alternative and Visionary Tongue and she has written thirteen novels to date.

The Following are available from Morrigan Books

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THE EVEN by T.A. MOORE

In the Even — a city built in the intersection between the real and the not — ruled by the iron whim of the demon Yekum where treachery brewed amidst the ever-changing streets. Ancients dwell in the city who have out-lived their purpose and grown jaded with their immortality. They want only to die and they will take the whole world with them if they have to: suicide by Apocalypse.

Only Faceless Lenith, goddess, cynic and gambler, stands in their way. The fate of the world rests on her shoulders and mankind did not conceive her to be wise.