The Middle Kingdom (33 page)

Slowly his hands
came down from his face. Light lay in the caves of his eyes, a bright
wet point of brilliance at the center of each pupil. He knelt there,
in the darkness at the edge of the pool, watching them come down.
Three kings of glass and silver, passing so close to him he could
hear the soft sigh and moan of their breathing.

He screamed, a
raw, high-pitched sound, the noise dragged up from deep inside him,
then huddled into himself, knowing that death was near. The pendant
fell from his hand, unnoticed, flashing in the air before the water
swallowed it.

One of the giant
figures turned and looked down at the huddled boy, barely recognizing
him as a creature of his own species, seeing only a tiny, malformed
shape. A shuddering, thin-boned thing. Some kind of ill-groomed
beast, long maned and filthy.

"Clay . .
." he said beneath his breath, the word heavy with nuances:
contempt, disgust, the vaguest trace of guilt. Then he turned away,
glad that his face mask filtered out the stench of the place. Through
the infrared of his visor he could see other shapes in movement, some
close, some far away. Splashes of warmth against the cold black
backdrop.

He walked on,
joining the other suited men. Behind him, cowering beside the
man-sized pool of light, the boy turned and followed him with his
eyes, watching him go down into the darkness.

Then they were
gone.

Kim stretched,
pushing his hands against the soft, wet earth, steadying himself. The
trembling passed from him, but still his mouth lay open, his fear
transformed to wonder.

He turned,
looking up at the Gate, a shiver running down his spine.

A
wartha!
The
Above! The words formed in his head, framed in awe, like an
incantation. He cupped water in one hand and wet his lips, then said
the words aloud, whispering them, in an accent as malformed as
himself.

"A
wartha____"

Again he
shivered, awed by what he had seen. And in his head he pictured a
whole world of such creatures; a world of liquid, brilliant light. A
world above the darkness and the Clay.

His mouth formed
a tiny O, round as his eyes.

Above him the
Gate began to close, the pillar of brilliant silver fading into
black, the broad steps swallowed slowly by the dark. And afterward
the blackness seemed more intense, more horrible, than it had ever
been. Like a giant hand it pressed down on him, crushing him, making
him gasp for each breath. Again he screamed, a new, unbearable pain,
born of that moment, gripping his insides, tugging at him.

The Light. . . .

His fingers
groped wildly in the mud, then flailed at the water, looking for
fragments of the pearled light. But he was blind. At first his
fingers found nothing. Then, for the third time, his fingers closed
upon a slender length of chain, sought out the tiny metal pendant,
and drew it up from out the liquid, holding it to his face, pressing
it hard against his lips, not understanding why, yet feeling its
presence soothe him, calm him. Like a promise.

IT WAS A WEB. A
giant web. Alive, quiveringly alive, expanding, filling the darkness
with its pearls of light. Moist beads of brilliance strung on
translucent fibers of light. It grew, at the same time frail and
strong—incredibly strong. The light could not be broken. He
stared up at it, open mouthed, and felt himself lifted, filled with
joy. Incredible, brilliant joy, bom of die growing light.

Kim lifted his
hands to the light, aching to join with it. If only he could reach
it; only lift his head and break the surface membrane of the darkness
in which he was embedded, breathing fresh air. He stretched toward
it, and felt the joy tighten like a metal band about his chest,
crushing him.

And woke, tears
in his eyes, hunger in his belly.

He shuddered,
horrified. It lay all about him like a glue. He rested on it and it
pressed its vast weight down on top of him. Each pore of his was
permeated by its sticky warmth. It was darkness. Darkness, the very
stuff of the Clay.

The dream made
him grit his teeth and sit there, rocking back and forth in pain,
moaning softly to himself. For the last few days it had been as if he
were awake while all about him slept. As if it was their nightmare he
inhabited, not his own. Yet there was no waking from their dream of
darkness. Their dream outweighed his hope.

He straightened
up, shuddering, hearing the movement in the darkness all about him.
It was time, then. The tribe was preparing to move.

He got up
quickly and went to the comer of the square of brick and stone in
which he slept and relieved himself. Then he came back and packed up
his few possessions: a blanket, a flint shard, the small bundles
containing his treasures, lastly a square of cloth—a scarf of
sorts—that had been his mother's.

The one he had
known as mother was long dead. He had been taken with her from the
carriage and had watched while they held her down by the roadside,
feeling a vague disquiet at their actions, not understanding the
naked jutting of their buttocks, the squeals from the woman beneath
them. But then they had begun to beat her and he had cried out and
tried to get to her, desperate to save her from them. And that was
all he knew, for one of them had turned and struck him hard with the
back of his hand, sending him crashing into the stone of a low wall.

So he had joined
the tribe.

Most days he did
as they did, thoughtlessly. Yet sometimes a strange, dissociated pain
would grip him—something not of the body, but like his glimpse
of the light: something intangible yet teal. Disturbingly real. And
he would know it had to do with her. With a vague sense of comfort
and safety. The only comfort, the only safety, he had ever known. But
mainly he shut it out. He needed his wits to survive, not to
remember.

Kim stood at the
edge of the group while Baxi spoke. They were going to raid a small
settlement farther down the valley, counting upon surprise to win the
encounter. They would kill all the men and boys. Women, girls, and
babies they would capture and bring back alive.

Kim listened,
then nodded with the rest. It would be his first raid. He clutched
his flint anxiously, excitement and fear alternating in him; hot and
cold currents in his blood. There would be killing. And afterward
there would be meat, meat and women. The hunters laughed and grunted
among themselves. Kim felt his mouth water, thinking of the meat.

They left eight
men behind to guard the settlement. The rest followed Baxi down the
stream in single file, keeping low and moving silently. Four bands of
men, running swiftly, lithely, down the stream path, their bare feet
washed by the greasy,

sluggish flow.
Kim was last of them and smallest. He ran behind them like a monkey,
hands touching the ground for balance as he crouched forward, the
flint shard between his teeth.

There was a
tumble of rocks, a small stretch of flat, exposed land, and then the
other settlement. There was no chance of subtlety, only of surprise.
Baxi sprang from the rocks and sprinted silently across the open
space, the knife raised high. Rotfbot and Ebor were after him at
once, running as fast as their legs could carry them, followed a
moment later by others of the tribe.

It nearly
worked. Baxi was almost on the guard when he turned and called out.
His cry rose, then changed in tone. He went down, the knife buried to
the hilt in his chest, its tip jutting from a point low in his back.

Kim squatted on
the highest of the rocks, watching as the fight developed. He saw
Baxi scream and curse as he tried to free the knife from the dead
man's rib cage, then turn to fend off a defender's blow. Others of
the tribe were struggling with the strangers, some of them rolling on
the ground, some exchanging vicious swinging blows with flints and
cudgels. The air was alive with grunts and screams. Kim could smell
the stink of fear and excitement in the darkness.

He watched,
afraid to go down, repulsion battling with the fascination he felt.
His tribe was winning. Slowly the defenders left off trying to fight
their attackers and, one by one, began to run away. Already his side
were dragging away the unconscious women and girls and squabbling
over the corpses. But still small pockets of the fight went on. Kim
saw and realized where he was, what he had been doing. Quickly he
scrambled across the rocks and dropped down onto the ground, fearing
what Baxi would do if he saw.

He had held
back. Shown fear. He had let down his tribe.

Kim hurried
across the uneven ground, stumbling, then hurled himself onto the
back of one of the escaping defenders. His weight brought the man
down, but the stranger was twice Kim's size and in an instant Kim
found himself on his back, pinned down, the scarred, one-eyed
stranger staring down at him. That single eye held death. The
stranger's right hand clutched a rock. He raised the rock. ...

Kim had only an
instant in which to act. As if he saw someone beyond and above the
stranger, he called out anxiously, looking past the stranger's face.

"Nyns!"
he screamed. No! "Ny mynnes ef yn-few!"
We want
him
olive!

It was enough to
make the stranger hesitate and shift his weight, half turning to see
who it was behind him. It was also enough to allow Kim to turn
sideways and tip the stranger from him.

One-eye rolled
and turned, facing Kim, angry at being tricked, but conscious that
each moment's delay brought his own death closer. He swung wildly
with the rock and misjudged. Kim lunged in with his sharply pointed
flint, aiming for the softest, most vulnerable place, and felt his
whole arm shudder as he connected. There was a moment of sickening
contact, then Kim saw the man's face change into a mask of naked
pain. One-eye had been castrated, his testicles crushed.

One-eye fell at
Kim's side, vomiting, his hands clutching at his ruined manhood. Kim
jerked his hand away, leaving the flint embedded where it was, then
looked about anxiously.

Baxi was
watching him, smiling ferociously.

Kim looked back,
appalled, hearing the wretch heaving up each painful breath. Then, as
he watched, Baxi came close, the knife in his hand, and pushed its
point deep into the base of One-eye's neck.

One-eye spasmed
and then lay still.

"Da,"
said the chief and turned away. Good. Kim watched him strut,
triumphant, self-satisfied, then throw back his head and whoop into
the air.

A web... a web
of sticky darkness. Kim felt a warmth, a kind of numbness, spread
outward from the core of him, a hand of eight fingers closing on him
slowly like a cage, drawing him down beneath the surface of the dark.
Darkness congealed above him like a lid, tar in his open mouth. And
then he fainted.

THEY HAD NEVER
heard him say a word. Baxi thought him dumb or just simple, and
others took their lead from that.

They called him
"Lagasek," or Starer, for his habit of looking so intently
at an object. That, too, they saw as a sign of his simplicity.

For an age, it
seemed, he had been as if asleep among them. Their hideous shapes and
forms had become as familiar as the darkness. He had watched them
without understanding, seeing their scars and deformities as natural
things, not departures from some given norm. But now he was awake. He
stared at them through newly opened eyes, a bright thread of thought
connecting what he saw to the sharp-lit center of awareness at the.
back of his skull.

He looked about
the flickering fire at their missing hands and eyes, their weeping
sores and infected scabs; saw them cough and wheeze for breath, aged
well beyond their years, and wondered what he was doing there among
them.

Sitting there in
the dust, the thick and greasy soup warm in his belly, he felt like
weeping. As he looked about the small circle of men and boys he saw,
for the first time, their gauntness, their strange furtiveness. They
twitched and scratched. They stretched and stood to urinate, their
eyes never still, never settling for long, like the blind white flies
that were everywhere in the Clay.

Yes, he
understood it now. It had begun there with that glimpse of
otherness—that vision of glass and silver, of kings and
brightness. He felt like speaking out—telling them what he had
seen at the Gate, what he had done to scare off the intruders—but
habit stilled his tongue. He looked down at his tiny, narrow hands,
his long thin arms. There were no scars but there were sores at the
elbows and the bone could be seen clear beneath the flesh.

He looked away,
shuddering, his face filled with pain and a strange, hitherto
untasted shame, then looked back again. They were talking among
themselves now, their crude, half-savage speech suddenly foreign to
his ear. It made him feel uneasy, as if he had knowledge of something
better, some long-buried memory of things before the tribe. Across
from him Tek and Rotfoot exchanged halfhearted blows in savage-gentle
play, their broken faces filled with light and shadows. He lifted his
head, sniffing at them in instinct, then settled, realizing what he
was doing, filled with a sudden, intense sense of self-disgust.

For a moment he
closed his eyes, feeling the warmth on his face and arms and chest.
That, too, was strange. It was rare to have a fire. Rare to sit as
they sat now, the circle of the dark behind, the circle of the light
in front. But this was a special time.

Baxi sat in his
place, on a huge, rounded stone above the others. A stack of
wood—itself a kind of treasure—lay at his side. From time
to time he would reach down and throw a piece upon the blaze,
growling with pleasure.

They had found
the sacks of firewood in a storeroom in the conquered settlement;
three of them, hidden beneath a pile of other things scavenged from
the dump. Baxi had brought them back and built the fire himself with
a care that made Kim think he had seen it done before. Then he had
gone down to his cellar, returning moments later with the fire-stick.