The Middle Kingdom (32 page)

Lagasek.
It
was the name they had given him. Starer.

Kim stood, then
raised the knife high over his head. There was a gasp from the other
members of the hunting party as they saw the weapon, then an excited
chattering. Kim saw Baxi crouch, his muscles tensing, as if he
suspected treachery.

Slowly, careful
not to alarm Baxi, Kim lowered the blade and placed it on the ground
between them. Then he crouched, making himself smaller than he was,
and made a gesture with his hands, the palms open, denoting a gift.

Baxi stared at
him a moment longer, the hairs bristling on his arms and at the back
of his neck. Then he, too, crouched, a broad, toothless grin settling
on his face. The chief was pleased. He reached out, taking Kim's gift
gingerly by the handle, respecting the obvious sharpness of the
blade.

Baxi lifted the
weapon and held it high above his head. He glanced briefly at Kim,
smiling broadly, generous now, then turned, looking back at his
hunters, thrusting the knife time and again into the air, tilting his
head back with each thrust and baying at the ceiling high above.

All about him in
the almost-dark the hunters bayed and yelled. And from the hillsides
and the valley below other groups took up the unearthly sound and
echoed it back.

KIM SQUATTED at
Ebor's side in the inner circle of the hunters, chewing a long,
pale-fleshed lugworm and listening to the grunts, the moist, slopping
sounds the men made as they ate, realizing he had never really
noticed them before. He glanced about him, his eyes moving swiftly
from face to face around the circle, looking for some outward sign of
the change that had come to him, but there was nothing. Rotfoot had
lost his woman in the raid, but now he sat there, on the low stone
wall, contentedly chewing part of her thighbone, stripping it bare
with his sharply pointed teeth. Others, too, were gnawing at the meat
that Baxi had provided. A small heap of it lay there in the center of
the circle, hacked into manageable pieces. Hands and feet were
recognizable in the pile, but little else. The sharp knife had worked
its magic of disguise. Besides, meat was meat, what-evet the source.

Kim finished the
worm. He leaned forward, looking about him timidly. Then, seeing the
smiles on the hunters' faces, he reached out and grasped a small hunk
of the meat. A hand. He was tearing at the hard, tough flesh when
Baxi settled by his side and placed an arm about his narrow
shoulders. Reflex made him tense and look up into the chief's face,
fear blazing in his eyes, but the warrior merely grunted and told him
to come.

He followed Baxi
through, aware that the circle of heads turned to follow him. Afraid,
he clutched the severed hand to him, finding a strange comfort in its
touch. His fingers sought its rough, bony knuckles, recognized the
chipped, spoonlike nails. It was Rotfoot's woman's hand.

At the entrance
to Baxi's house they stopped. The chief turned, facing the boy, and
pointed down to a small parcel of cloth that lay on the ground beside
the sill.

Kim froze in
fear, thinking he'd been discovered. He closed his eyes, petrified,
expecting the knife's sharp blow. Where would it strike? In his back?
His side? Against his neck? He made a small sound of fear, then
opened his eyes again and looked up at Baxi.

Baxi was looking
strangely at him. Then he shrugged and pointed at the parcel again.
Kim swallowed and set down the hand, then picked up the cloth bundle,
and, at Baxi's encouragement, began to unwrap it.

He saw what it
was at once and looked up, surprised, only to find Baxi smiling down
at him. "Ro," said the chief. "Ro." A
gift.

The tarnished
mirror was just as he remembered it, the crack running down the
silvered glass from top to bottom. There was no need to feign
surprise or delight. He grinned up at Baxi, giving a silent whoop of
joy, almost forgetting that they thought him dumb. Baxi, too, seemed
pleased. He reached out to touch Kim, caressing his upper arms and
nodding his head vigorously. "Ro," he said again, then
laughed manically. And from the watching circle came an answering
roar of savage laughter.

Kim stared down
at the mirror in his hand and saw his face reflected in the darkness.
How strange and alien, that face. Not like his hands. He knew his
hands. But his face ... He shivered, then smiled, taken by the
strangeness of his reflected features. Lagasek, he thought, seeing
how the stranger smiled back at him. Such eyes you have. Such big,
wide staring eyes.

KIM WAS
SCAVENGING; looking for food in a place where nothing grew. The air
all about him was rich with the stink of decay, the ground beneath
him soft and damp and treacherous. Here, at the edge of the great
dump, the dangers multiplied. There were many 'more like him, hidden
shadows scattered across the vastness of the wasteland, wary of each
other as they climbed the huge, rotting mounds, picking at the waste.
All of them looking for something to eat or trade. Anything. Good or
rotten.

The darkness was
almost perfect, but the boy saw clearly. His wide, round eyes flicked
from side to side, his small, ill-formed head moved quickly,
furtively, like the head of some wild creature. When another came too
close he would scuttle away on all fours, then rest there, at a
distance, his teeth bared in challenge, growling at the back of his
throat.

He moved deeper
in, taking risks now, jumping between what looked like firm
footholds. Some sank slowly beneath his weight, others held. He moved
on quickly, not trusting anything too long, until he reached one
certain resting place, the tower of an old church, jutting up above
the vast mound of sewage from the City overhead.

Kim glanced up.
The ceiling was far above him, its nearest supporting pillar only a
stone's throw from where he squatted. From his vantage point he
looked about him, noting where others were, checking which paths were
clear for his escape. Then he settled, reaching deep inside his
ragged, dirty shirt to take out the object he had found. He sniffed
at it and licked it, then grimaced. It smelled like old skins and had
a stale, unappetizing taste. He turned it in his hands, looking for a
way inside the blackened casing, then picked at the metal clasp until
it opened.

He looked up
sharply, suddenly very still, watchful, the hairs rising on the back
of his thin neck, his ropelike muscles stretched as if to spring.
Seeing nothing, he relaxed and looked back down at the open wallet in
his hand.

Deftly he probed
into each slender compartment, removing the contents and studying
them closely before replacing them. There was nothing he recognized.
Nothing edible. There were several long, thin cards of a flexible,
shiny material. From one of them a faded face stared up at him,
coming to vivid life when he pressed his thumb against it. Startled,
he dropped the card, then steeled himself and retrieved it from the
moss-covered slate on which it had fallen, deciding he would keep it.

There was only
one other thing worth keeping. In a zippered compartment of the
wallet was a small circle of shining metal on a chain. A kind of
pendant. He lifted it gently, fascinated by its delicate perfection,
his breath catching in his throat. It was beautiful. He held it up
and touched the dangling circle with one finger, making it spin. It
slowed, then twisted back, spinning backward and forward. Kim sat
back on his haunches and laughed softly, delighted with his find.

The laughter
died in his throat. He turned, hearing how close the others had come
while he had been preoccupied, smelling the tartness of their sweat
as they jumped up onto the tower.

Kim yelped,
closing his fist about the pendant, and edged back away from them.
There were three of them, one no older than himself, the others
taller, better muscled than he. Their round eyes gleamed with greed
and they smiled at one another with their crooked, feral teeth. They
thought they had him.

He snarled and
the hair on his body rose, as if for fight, but all the while he was
thinking, calculating, knowing he had to run. He looked from one to
the other, discounting the smallest of them, concentrating on the two
eldest, seeing who led, who followed. Then, so quick that they had no
chance to stop him, he threw the wallet down, nearest the one who was
quite clearly the follower. For a moment their attention went from
him to the wallet. The leader snarled and made a lunge across the
other, trying to get at the wallet.

Kim saw his
opportunity and took it, flipping backward over the parapet, hoping
that no one had disturbed the mound that lay below. His luck held and
the soft ooze broke his fall wetly, stickily. Pulling himself up, he
saw them leaning over the parapet, looking down. In a second or two
they would be on him. He pulled his arm free and rolled, then
scrambled onto all fours and began to run.

He heard their
cries, the soft squelch of the sticky mound as they jumped down onto
it. Then they were after him, through the nightmare landscape,
hopping between dark, slimy pools. Desperation made him take chances,
choose paths he would normally ignore. And slowly, very slowly, he
drew away from them, until, when he looked back over his shoulder, he
found they were no longer pursuing him.

He turned and
stood up, looking back across the choked mouth of the river. He could
not make out the tower against the background of the rising land. Nor
were any of the other familiar landmarks evident.

For the second
time that day he felt afraid. He had come a long way. This was a side
of the dump he didn't know. Here he was doubly vulnerable.

He was breathing
deeply, his narrow chest heaving with exertion. If they attacked him
now he was done for. He crouched down, looking all about him, his
face twitching with anxiety. This side seemed deserted, but he knew
he couldn't trust his eyes. He glanced down at the pendant in his
hand, wondering if it had been worth the finding, then dismissed the
question. First he had to get home.

Slowly,
painstakingly, he made his way about the edge of the waste, his eyes
straining for the least sign of movement, his sharp ears registering
the least sound. And again his luck held. There, far to his left, was
the broad pillar that they called the Gate, and beyond it, in the
midst of the waste itself, the church tower. Kim grinned, allowing
himself to savor hope for the first time since they had surprised him
on the tower. He went on, clambering over the uneven surface, making
a beeline for the Gate.

He was only a
few paces from it when the ground gave way beneath his feet and he
fell.

For a time he
lay there, on his back, winded. It had not been much of a fall and he
seemed not to have broken anything, but he could see from the smooth
sides of the pit that it would be difficult to climb out. The earth
was soft but dry beneath him. Tiny insects scuttled away from his
probing hands, and the air seemed warm and strangely close. He sat
up, groaning, feeling a stiffness in his back. His neck ached and his
arms were sore, but he could move.

He looked up.
Above him the opening formed a circle against the greater darkness,
like two shades of the same non-color. The circle had jagged edges,
as if something had once lain across it. Kim's mind pieced things
together nimbly. The pit had had some kind of lid on it. A wooden
lid, maybe. And it had rotted over the years. It had taken only his
own small weight to bring it down.

He felt about
him in the darkness and found confirmation of his thoughts. There
were splinters of soft, rotten wood everywhere about him. Then, with
delight, he found the chain to the pendant with his fingers and drew
it up to his face, pleased to find it unbroken. But then his pleasure
died. He was still trapped. Unless he got out soon someone would come
along and find him. And then he would be dead.

He looked about
him, momentarily at a loss, then went to the side of the pit and
began to poke and prise at it. The curved walls of the pit were made
of a kind of brickwork. Kim worked at the joints, finding the joining
material soft and crumbly to the touch. He dug away at it, loosening
and then freeing one of the bricks. Throwing it down behind him, he
reached up a bit higher and began to free another.

It took him a
long time and at the end of it his fingertips were sore and bleeding,
but he did it. Kneeling on the edge of the pit he looked back down
and shivered, knowing that he could easily have died down there. He
rested awhile, then staggered across to the Gate, close to
exhaustion. There, almost beside the broad, hexagonally sided shaft,
was a pool. He knelt beside it, bathing his fingers and splashing the
tepid water in his face.

And then it
happened.

The darkness of
the pool was split. A shaft of intense brightness formed in the midst
of its dark mirror. Slowly it widened, until the pool was filled with
a light so intense that Kim sat back on his heels, shielding his
eyes. A flight of broad stone steps, inverted by the lens of the
water, led down into the dark heart of the earth.

Kim glanced up,
his mouth wide open. The Gate was open. Light spilt like fire into
the air.

Trembling, he
looked down again. The surface of the pool shimmered, rippled. Then,
suddenly, its brightness was split by bands of darkness. There were
figures in the Gateway! Tall shapes of darkness, straight as spears!

He looked up,
astonished, staring through his latticed hands. Jagged shadows traced
a hard-edged shape upon the steps. Kim knelt there, transfixed,
staring up into the portal.

He gasped. What
were
they? Light flashed from the darkness of their vast,
domed heads—from the winking, glittering, brilliant darkness of
their heads. Heads of glass. And, beneath those heads, bodies of
silver. Flexing, unflexing silver.