Creatures of Light and Darkness

MARACHEK

Regard now the Citadel of Marachek at Midworlds' Center…

Dead. Dead. Dead. Color it dust. This is where the Prince Who Was Once A God comes often, to contemplate many things.

There are no oceans on Marachek. There are still a few bubbly springs, these smelling like wet dogs and being warm and brackish. Its sun is a very tired and tiny reddish star, too respectable or too lazy ever to have become a nova and passed out in a burst of glory, shedding a rather anemic light which makes for deep, bluish shadows cast by grotesque stands of stone upon the enormous beach of dun and orange that is Marachek beneath its winds; and the stars above Marachek may be seen even at midday, faintly, though in the evening they acquire the intensity of neon, acetylene and flash bulb above the windswept plains; and most of Marachek is flat, though the plains rearrange themselves twice daily, when the winds achieve a kind of sterile climax, heaping and unheaping the sands and grinding their grains finer and finer-so that the dust of morning and dusk hangs throughout the day in a yellowish haze, which further detracts from Marachek's eye in the sky-all, ultimately, levelling and settling: the mountains having been ground down, the rocks sculpted and rescuplted, and all buried and resurrected perpetually: this is the surface of Marachek, which of course was once a scene of glory, power, pomp and pageantry, its very triteness crying out for this conclusion; but further, there is one building upon Marachek at Midworlds’ Center which testifies to the saw’s authenticity, this being the Citadel, which doubtless shall exist as long as the world itself though mayhap the sands shall cover and discover it many times before that day of final dissolution or total frigidity: the Citadel-which is so old that none can say for certain that it was ever built-the Citadel, which may be the oldest city in the universe, broken and repaired (who knows how often?) upon the same foundation, over and over, perhaps since the imaginary beginning of the illusion called Time; the Citadel, which in its very standing testifies that some things do endure, no matter how poorly, all vicissitudes-of which Vramin wrote in The Proud Fossil: “… The sweetness of decay ne’er touched thy portals, for destiny is amber and sufficient”-the Citadel of Marachek-Karnak, the archetypal city, which is now mainly inhabited by little skittering things, generally insects and reptiles, that feed upon one another, one of which (a toad) exists at this moment of Time beneath an overturned goblet upon an ancient table in Marachek’s highest tower (the northeastern) as the sickly sun raises itself from the dust and dusk and the starlight comes down less strongly. This is Marachek.

When Vramin and Madrak enter here, fresh through the gateway from Blis, they deposit their charges upon that ancient table, made all of one piece out of a substance pink and unnatural which Time itself cannot corrupt.

This is the place where the ghosts of Set and the monsters he fights rage through the marble memory that is wrecked and rebuilt Marachek, the oldest city, forever.

Vramin replaces the General’s left arm and right foot; he turns his head so that it faces forward once more, then he makes adjustment upon his neck to hold the head in place.

“How fares the other?” he inquires.

Madrak lowers Wakim’s right eyelid and releases his wrist.

“Shock, I’d suppose. Has anyone ever been torn from the center of a fugue battle before?”

“To my knowledge, no. We’ve doubtless discovered a new syndrome-‘fugue fatigue’ or ‘temporal shock’ I’d call it. We may get our names into textbooks yet.”

“What do you propose to do with them? Are you able to revive them?”

“Most likely. But then, they’d start in again-and probably keep going till they’d wrecked this world also.”

“Not much here to wreck. Perhaps we could sell tickets and turn them loose. Might net a handsome penny.”

“Oh, cynical monger of indulgences! ‘Twould take a man of the cloth to work a scheme like that!”

“Not so! I learned it on Blis, if you recall.”

“True-where life’s greatest drawing card had become the fact that it sometimes ends. Nevertheless, in this case, I feel it might be wiser to cast these two upon separate worlds and leave them to their own devices.”

“Then why did you bring them here to Marachek?”

“I didn’t! They were sucked through the gateway, when I opened it. I aimed for this place myself because the Center is always easiest to reach.”

“Then suggestions are own in order as to our immediate course of action.”

“Let us rest here awhile, and I will keep these two entranced. We might just open us another gateway and leave them.”

“’Twould be against my ethics, brother.”

“Speak not to me of ethics, thou inhuman humanist!-Caterer to whatever life-lie man chooses! Th'art an holy ambulance-chaser!”

“Nevertheless, I cannot leave a man to die.”

“Very well… Hello! Someone has been here before us, to suffocate a toad!”

Madrak turns his eye upon the goblet.

“I’ve heard tales that they might endure the ages in tiny, airless crypts. How long, I wonder, has this one sat thus? If only it lives and could speak! Think of the glories to which it might bear witness.”

“Do not forget, Madrak, that I am the poet, and kindly reserve such conjectures to those better able to say them with a straight face. I-“

Vramin moves to the window, and “Company,” says he. “Now might we leave these fellows in good conscience.”

Upon the battlements, mounted like a statue, Bronze whinnies like a steam whistle and raises three legs and lets them fall. Now he exhales laser beams into the breaking day and his rows of eyes wink on and off.

Something is coming, though still unclear, through the dust and the night.

“Shall we, then?”

“No.”

“I share thy sentiment.”

Sharing, they wait.