Creatures of Light and Darkness

Creatures of Light and Darkness
PRELUDE IN THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD

The man walks through his Thousandyear Eve in the House of the Dead. If you could look about the enormous room through which he walks, you couldn’t see a thing. It is far too dark for eyes to be of value.

For this dark time, we’ll simply refer to him as “the man.”

There are two reasons for doing so:

First, he fits the general and generally accepted description of an unmodified, male, human-model being-walking upright, having opposable thumbs and possessing the other typical characteristics of the profession; and second, because his name has been taken from him.

There is no reason to be more specific at this point.

In his right hand, the man bears the staff of his Master, and it guides him through the dark. It tugs him this way, that way. It burns his hand, his fingers, his opposing thumb if his foot strays a step from its ordained path.

When the man reaches a certain place within the darkness, he mounts seven steps to a stone dais and raps three times upon it with the staff.

Then there is light, dim and orange and crowded into corners. It shows the edges of the enormous, unfilled room.

He reverses the staff and screws it into a socket in the stone.

Had you ears in that room, you would hear a sound as of winged insects circling near you, withdrawing, returning.

Only the man hears it, though. There are over two thousand other people present, but they are all of them dead.

They come up out of the transparent rectangles which now appear in the floor, come up unbreathing, unblinking and horizontal, and they rest upon invisible catafalques at a height of two feet, and their garments and their skins are of all colors and their bodies of all ages. Now some have wings and some have tails, and some have horns and some long talons. Some have all of these things, and some have pieces of machinery built into them and some do not. Many others look like the man, unmodified.

The man wears yellow breeches and a sleeveless shirt of the same color. His belt and cloak are black. He stands beside his Master’s gleaming staff, and he regards the dead beneath him.

“Get up!” he calls out. “All of you!”

And his words mix with the humming that is in the air and are repeated over and over and again, not like an echo, fading, but persistent and recurring, with the force of an electric alarm.

The air is filled and stirred. There comes a moaning and a creaking of brittle joints, then movement

Rustling, clicking, chafing, they sit up, they stand up.

Then sound and movement cease, and the dead stand like unlit candles beside their opened graves.

The man climbs down from the dais, stands a moment before it, then says, “Follow me!” and he walks back the way he came, leaving his Master’s staff vibrating in the gray air.

As he walks, he comes to a woman who is tall and golden and a suicide: He stares into her unseeing eyes and says, “Do you know me?” and the orange lips, the dead lips, the dry lips move, and they whisper, “No,” but he stares longer and says, “Did you know me?” and the air hums with his words, until she says, “No,” once again, and he passes her by.

He questions two others: a man who had been ancient of days, with a clock built into his left wrist, and a black dwarf with horns and hooves and the tail of a goat. But both say, “No,” and they fall into step behind him, and they follow him out of that enormous room and into another, where more lie under stone, not really waiting, to be called forth for his Thousandyear Eve in the House of the Dead.

The man leads them. He leads the dead whom he has summoned back to movement, and they follow him. They follow him through corridors and galleries and halls, and up wide, straight stairways and down narrow, winding stairways, and they come at last into the great Hall of the House of the Dead, where his Master holds his court.

He sits on a black throne of polished stone, and there are metal bowls of fire to his right and to his left. On each of the two hundred pillars that line his high Hall, a torch blazes and flickers and its spark-shot smoke coils and puffs upward, becoming at last a gray part of the flowing cloud that covers the ceiling completely.

He does not move, but he regards the man as he advances across the Hall, five thousand of the dead at his back, and his eyes lay red upon him as he comes forward.

The man prostrates himself at his feet, and he does not move until he is addressed:

“You may greet me and rise,” come the words, each of them a sharp, throaty stab in the midst of an audible exhalation.

“Hail, Anubis, Master of the House of the Dead!” says the man, and he stands.

Anubis lowers his black muzzle slightly and his fangs are white within it. Red lightning, his tongue, darts forward, re-enters his mouth. He stands then, and the shadows slide downward upon his bare and man-formed body.

He raises his left hand and the humming sound comes into the Hall, and it carries his words through the flickering light and the smoke:

“You who are dead,” he says, “tonight you will disport yourselves for my pleasure. Food and wine will pass between your dead lips, though you will not taste it. Your dead stomachs will hold it within you, while your dead feet take the measure of a dance. Your dead mouths will speak words that will have no meaning to you, and you will embrace one another without pleasure. You will sing for me if I wish it. You will lie down again when I will it.”

He raises his right hand.

“Let the revelry begin,” he says, and he claps his hands together.

Then tables slide forward from between the pillars, laden with food and with drink, and there is music upon the air.

The dead move to obey him.

“You may join them,” Anubis says to the man, and he reseats himself upon his throne.

The man crosses to the nearest table and eats lightly and drinks a glass of wine. The dead dance about him, but he does not dance with them. They make noises which are words without meaning, and he does not listen to them. He pours a second glass of wine and the eyes of Anubis are upon him as he drinks it. He pours a third glass and he holds it in his hands and sips at it and stares into it.

How much time has passed he cannot tell, when Anubis says, “Servant!”

He stands, turns.

“Approach!” says Anubis, and he does so.

“You may rise. You know what night tonight is?”

“Yes, Master. It is Thousandyear Eve.”

“It is your Thousandyear Eve. This night we celebrate an anniversary. You have served me for a full thousand years in the House of the Dead. Are you glad?”

“Yes, Master…”

“You recall my promise?”

“Yes. You told me that if I served you faithfully for a thousand years, then you would give me back my name. You would tell me who I had been in the Middle Worlds of Life.”

“I beg your pardon, but I did not.”

“You…?”

“I told you that I would give you a name, which is a different thing altogether.”

“But I thought…”

“I do not care what you thought. Do you want a name?”

“Yes, Master…”

“… But you would prefer your old one? Is that what you are trying to say?”

“Yes.”

“Do you really think that anyone would remember your name after ten centuries? Do you think that you were so important in the Middle Worlds that someone would have noted down your name, that it would have mattered to anyone?”

“I do not know.”

“But you want it back?”

“If I may have it, Master.”

“Why? Why do you want it?”

“Because I remember nothing of the Worlds of Life. I would like to know who I was when I dwelled there.”

“Why? For what purpose?”

“I cannot answer you, because I do not know.”

“Of all the dead,” says Anubis, “you know that I have brought only you back to full consciousness to serve me here. Do you feel this means that perhaps there is something special about you?”

“I have often wondered why you did as you did.”

“Then let me give you ease, man: You are nothing. You were nothing. You are not remembered. Your mortal name does not signify anything.”

The man lowers his eyes.

“Do you doubt me?”

“No, Master…”

“Why not?”

“Because you do not lie.”

“Then let me show it I took away your memories of life only because they would give you pain among the dead. But now let me demonstrate your anonymity. There are over five thousand of the dead in this room, from many ages and places.”

Anubis stands, and his voice carries to every presence in the Hall:

“Attend me, maggots! Turn your eyes toward this man who stands before my throne! -Face them, man!”

The man turns about.

“Man, know that today you do not wear the body you slept in last night. You look now as you did a thousand years ago, when you came into the House of the Dead.”

“My dead ones, are there any of you here present who can look upon this man and say that you know him?”

A golden girl steps forward.

“I know this man,” she says, through orange lips, “because he spoke to me in the other hall.”

“That I know,” says Anubis, “but who is he?”

“He is the one who spoke to me.”

“That is no answer. Go and copulate with yon purple lizard. -And what of you, old man?”

“He spoke to me also.”

“That I know. Can you name him?”

“I cannot.”

“Then go dance on yonder table and pour wine over your head. -What of you, black man?”

“This man also spoke with me.”

“Do you know his name?”

“I did not know it when he asked me-”

“Then burn!” cries Anubis, and fires fall down from the ceiling and leap out from the walls and crisp the black man to ashes, which move then in slow eddies across the floor, passing among the ankles of the stopped dancers, falling finally into final dust.

“You see?” says Anubis. “There is none to name you as once you were known.”

“I see,” says the man, “but the last might have had further words-”

“To waste! You are unknown and unwanted, save by me. This, because you are fairly adept at the various embalming arts and you occasionally compose a clever epitaph.”

“Thank you, Master.”

“What good would a name and memories do you here?”

“None, I suppose.”

“Yet you wish a name, so I shall give you one. Draw your dagger.”

The man draws the blade which hangs at his left side.

“Now cut off your thumb.”

"Which thumb, Master?"

“The left one will do.”

The man bites his lower lip and tightens his eyes as he drags the blade against the joint of his thumb. His blood falls upon the floor. It runs along the blade of the knife and trickles from its point. He drops to his knees and continues to cut, tears streaming down his cheeks and falling to mingle with the blood. His breath comes in gasps and a single sob escapes him.

Then, “It is done,” he says. “Here!” He drops the blade and offers Anubis his thumb.

“I don’t want the thing! Throw it into the flames!”

With his right hand, the man throws his thumb into a brazier. It sputters, sizzles, flares.

“Now cup your left hand and collect the blood within it.”

The man does this thing.

“Now raise it above your head and let it drip down upon you.”

He raises his hand and the blood falls onto his forehead.

“Now repeat after me: ‘I baptize me…’ ”

“ ‘I baptize me…’ ”

“ ‘Wakim, of the House of the Dead…’ ”

“ ‘Wakim, of the House of the Dead…’ ”

“ ‘In the name of Anubis…’ ”

“ ‘In the name of Anubis…’ ”

“ ‘Wakim…’ ”

“ ‘Wakim…’ ”

“ ‘Emissary of Anubis in the Middle Worlds…’ ”

“ ‘Emissary of Anubis in the Middle Worlds…’ ”

“ ‘… and beyond.’ ”

“ ‘… and beyond.’ ”

“Hear me now, oh you dead ones: I proclaim this man Wakim. Repeat his name!”

“Wakim” comes the word, through dead lips.

“So be it! You are named now, Wakim,” he says. “It is fitting, therefore, that you feel your birth into namehood, that you come away changed by this thing, oh my named one!”

Anubis raises both hands about his head and lowers them to his sides.

“Resume dancing!” he commands the dead.

They move to the music once more.

The body-cutting machine rolls into the hall, and the prosthetic replacement machine follows it.

Wakim looks away from them, but they draw up beside him and stop.

The first machine extrudes restrainers and holds him.

“Human arms are weak,” says Anubis. “Let these be removed.”

The man screams as the saw blades hum. Then he passes out. The dead continue their dance.

When Wakim awakens, two seamless silver arms hang at his sides, cold and insensitive. He flexes the fingers.

“And human legs be slow, and capable of fatigue. Let those he wears be exchanged for tireless metal.”

When Wakim awakens the second time, he stands upon silver pillars. He wiggles his toes. Anubis’ tongue darts forth.

“Place your right hand into the flames,” he says, “and hold it there until it glows white.”

The music falls around him, and the flames caress his hand until it matches their red. The dead talk their dead talk and drink the wine they do not taste. They embrace one another without pleasure. The hand glows white.

“Now,” says Anubis, “seize your manhood in your right hand and burn it away.”

Wakim licks his lips.

“Master…” he says.

“Do it!”

He does this thing, and he falls to unconsciousness before he has finished.

When he awakens again and looks down upon himself, he is all of gleaming silver, sexless and strong. When he touches his forehead, there comes the sound of metal upon metal.

“How do you feel, Wakim?” asks Anubis.

“I do not know,” he answers, and his voice comes strange and harsh.

Anubis gestures, and the nearest side of the cutting machine becomes a reflecting surface.

“Regard yourself.”

Wakim stares at the shining egg that is his head, at the yellow lenses, his eyes, the gleaming barrel, his chest.

“Men may begin and end in many ways,” says Anubis. “Some may start as machines and gain their humanity slowly. Others may end as machines, losing humanity by pieces as they live. That which is lost may always be regained. That which is gained may always be lost. -What are you, Wakim, a man or a machine?”

“I do not know.”

“Then let me confuse you further.”

Anubis gestures, and Wakim’s arms and legs come loose, fall away. His metal torso clangs against stone, rolls, then lies at the foot of the throne.

“Now you lack mobility,” says Anubis.

He reaches forward with his foot and touches a tiny switch at the back of Wakim’s head.

“Now you lack all senses but hearing.”

“Yes,” answers Wakim.

“Now a connection is being attached to you. You feel nothing, but your head is opened and you are about to become a part of the machine which monitors and maintains this entire world. See it all now!”

“I do,” he replies, as he becomes conscious of every room, corridor, hall and chamber in the always dead never alive world that has never been a world, a world made, not begotten of coalesced starstuff and the fires of creation, but hammered and jointed, riveted and fused insulated and decorated, not into seas and land and air and life, but oils and metals and stone and walls of energy, all hung together within the icy void where no sun shines; and he is aware of distances, stresses, weights, materials, pressures and the secret numbers of the dead. He is not aware of his body, mechanical and disconnected. He knows only the waves of maintenance movement that flow through the House of the Dead. He flows with them and he knows the colorless colors of quantity perception.

Then Anubis speaks again:

“You know every shadow in the House of the Dead. You have looked through all the hidden eyes.”

“Yes.”

“Now see what lies beyond.”

There are stars, stars, scattered stars, blackness all between. They ripple and fold and bend, and they rush toward him, rush by him. Their colors are blazing and pure as angels’ eyes, and they pass near, pass far, in the eternity through which he seems to move. There is no sense of real time or real movement, only a changing of the field. A great blue Tophet Box of a sun seems to soar beside him for a moment, and then again comes black, all about him, and more small lights that pass, distantly.

And he comes at last to a world that is not a world, citrine and azure and green, green, green. A green corona hangs about it, at thrice its own diameter, and it seems to pulsate with a pleasant rhythm.

“Behold the House of Life,” says Anubis, from somewhere.

And he does. It is warm and glowing and alive. He has a feeling of aliveness. “Osiris rules the House of Life,” says Anubis. And he beholds a great bird-head atop human shoulders, bright yellow eyes within it, alive, alive-oh; and the creature stands before him on an endless plain of living green which is superimposed upon his view of the world, and he holds the Staff of Life in his one hand and the Book of Life in his other. He seems to be the source of the radiant warmth.

Wakim then hears the voice of Anubis again:

“The House of Life and the House of the Dead contain the Middle Worlds.”

And there is a falling, swirling sensation, and Wakim looks upon stars once more, but stars separated and held from other stars by bonds of force that are visible, then invisible, then visible again, fading, coming, going, white, glowing lines, fluctuating.

“You now perceive the Middle Worlds of Life,” says Anubis.

And dozens of worlds roll before him like balls of exotic marble, stippled, gauged, polished, incadescent.

“… Contained,” says Anubis. “They are contained within the field which arcs between the only two poles that matter.”

“Poles?” says the metal head that is Wakim.

“The House of Life and the House of the Dead. The Middle Worlds about their suns do move, and all together go on the paths of Life and Death.”

“I do not understand,” says Wakim.

“Of course you do not understand. What is at the same time the greatest blessing and the greatest curse in the universe?”

“I do not know.”

“Life,” says Anubis, “or death.”

“I do not understand,” says Wakim. “You used the superlative. You called for one answer. You named two things, however.”

“Did I?” asks Anubis. “Really? Just because I used two words, does it mean that I have named two separate and distinct things? May a thing not have more than one name? Take yourself for an example. What are you?”

“I do not know.”

“That may be the beginning of wisdom, then. You could as easily be a machine which I chose to incarnate as a man for a time and have now returned to a metal casing, as you could be a man whom I have chosen to incarnate as a machine.”

“Then what difference does it make?”

“None. None whatsoever. But you cannot make the distinction. You cannot remember. Tell me, are you alive?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I think. I hear your voice. I have memories. I can speak.”

“Which of these qualities is life? Remember that you do not breathe, your nervous system is a mass of metallic strands and I have burnt your heart. Remember, too, that I have machines that can outreason you, outremember you, outtalk you. What does that leave you with as an excuse for saying you are alive? You say that you hear my voice, and ‘hearing’ is a subjective phenomenon? Very well. I shall disconnect your hearing also. Watch closely to see whether you cease to exist”

… One snowflake drifting down a well, a well without waters, without walls, without bottom, without top. Now take away the snowflake and consider the drifting…

After a timeless time, Anubis’ voice comes once again: “Do you know the difference between life and death?”

“ ‘I’ am life,” says Wakim. “Whatever you give or take away, if ‘I’ remain it is life.”

“Sleep,” says Anubis, and there is nothing to hear him, there in the House of the Dead.

When Wakim awakens, he finds that he has been set upon a table near to the throne, and he can see once more, and he regards the dance of the dead and he hears the music to which they move.

“Were you dead?” asks Anubis.

“No,” says Wakim. “I was sleeping.”

“What is the difference?”

“ ‘I’ was still there, although I did not know it.”

Anubis laughs.

“Suppose I had never awakened you?”

“That, I suppose, would be death.”

“Death? If I did not choose to exercise my power to awaken you? Even though the power was ever present, and ‘you’ potential and available for that same ever?”

“If this thing were not done, if I remained forever only potential, then this would be death.”

“A moment ago you said that sleep and death were two different things. Is it that the period of time involved makes a difference?”

“No,” says Wakim, “it is a matter of existence. After sleep there comes wakefulness, and the life is still present. When I exist, I know it. When I do not, I know nothing.”

“Life, then, is nothing?”

“No.”

“Life, then, is existing? Like these dead?”

“No,” says Wakim. “It is knowing you exist, at least some of the time.”

“Of what is this a process?”

“ ‘I’ ” says Wakim.

“And what is ‘I’? Who are you?”

“I am Wakim.”

“I only named you a short while ago! What were you before that?”

“Not Wakim.”

“Dead?”

“No! Alive!” cries Wakim.

“Do not raise you voice within my halls,” says Anubis. “You do not know what you are or who you are, you do not know the difference between existing and not existing, yet you presume to argue with me concerning life and death! Now I shall not ask you, I shall tell you. I shall tell you of life and of death.”

“There is too much life and there is not enough life,” he begins, “and the same goes for death. Now I shall throw away paradoxes.”

“The House of Life lies so far from here that a ray of light which left it on the day you entered this domain would not yet have traveled a significant fraction of the distance which separates us. Between us lie the Middle Worlds. They move within the Life-Death tides that flow between my House and the House of Osiris. When I say ‘flow’ I do not mean that they move like that pitiful ray of light, crawling. Rather, they move like waves on the ocean which has but two shores. We may raise waves anywhere we wish without disrupting the entire sea. What are these waves, and what do they do?”

“Some worlds have too much life,” he says. “Life-crawling, pullulating, fecundating, smothering itself- worlds too clement, too full of the sciences which keep men alive-worlds which would drown themselves in their own semen, worlds which would pack all of their lands with crowds of big-bellied women-and so go down to death beneath the weight of their own fruitfulness. Then there are worlds which are bleak and barren and bitter, worlds which grind life like grain. Even with body modifications and with world-change machines, there are only a few hundred worlds which may be inhabited by the six intelligent races. Life is needed badly in the worst of these. It can be a deadly blessing on the best. When I say that life is needed or not needed in certain places, I am of course also saying that death is needed or not needed. I am not speaking of two different things, but of the same thing. Osiris and I are bookkeepers. We credit and we debit. We raise waves, or we cause waves to sink back again into the ocean. Can life be counted upon to limit itself? No. It is the mindless striving of two to become infinity. Can death be counted upon to limit itself? Never. It is the equally mindless effort of zero to encompass infinity.”

“But there must be life control and death control,” he says, “else the fruitful worlds would rise and fall, rise and fall, cycling between empire and anarchy, then down to final disruption. The bleak worlds would be encompassed by zero. Life cannot contain itself within the bounds statistics have laid down for its guidance. Therefore, it must be contained, and it is. Osiris and I hold the Middle Worlds. They lie within our field of control, and we turn them on and we turn them off as we would. Do you see now, Wakim? Do you begin to understand?”

“You limit life? You cause death?”

“We can lay sterility on any or all of the six races on any world we choose, for as long a period of time as is necessary. This can be done on an absolute or a fractional basis. We may also manipulate life spans, decimate populations.”

“How?”

“Fire. Famine. Plague. War.”

“What of the sterile worlds, the dry worlds? What of those?”

“Multiple births can be insured, and we do not tamper with life spans. The newly dead are sent to the House of Life, not here. There they are repaired, or their parts used in the construction of new individuals, who may or may not host a human mentality.”

“And of the other dead?”

“The House of the Dead is the graveyard of the six races. There are no lawful cemeteries in the Middle Worlds. There have been times when the House of Life has called upon us for hosts and for parts. There have been other occasions when they have shipped us their excess.”

“It is difficult to understand. It seems brutal, it seems harsh…”

“It is life and it is death. It is the greatest blessing and the greatest curse in the universe. You do not have to understand it, Wakim. Your comprehension or your lack of it, your approval or your disapproval, will in no way alter its operation.”

“And whence come you, Anubis-and Osiris-that you control it?”

“There are some things that are not for you to know.”

“And how do the Middle Worlds accept your control?”

“They live with it, and they die with it. It is above their objections, for it is necessary for their continued existence. It is become a natural law, and it is utterly impartial, applying with equal force to all who come beneath it.”

“There are some who do not?”

“You shall learn more of this when I am ready to tell you, which is not now. I have made you a machine Wakim. Now I shall make you a man. Who is to say how you started, where you started? Were I to wipe out your memories up to this moment and then re-embody you, you would recollect that you had begun as metal.”

“Will you do this thing?”

“No. I want you equipped with the memories which you now possess, when and if I assign you to your new duties.”

Then Anubis raises his hands and strikes them together.

A machine removes Wakim from the shelf and switches off his senses as it lowers him. The music pulses and falls about the dancers, the two hundred torches blaze upon the pillars like immortal thoughts, Anubis stares at a blackened place upon the floor of the great Hall, and overhead the canopy of smoke moves to its own rhythms.

Wakim opens his eyes and looks upon grayness. He lies on his back, staring upward. The tiles are cold beneath him, and there is a flickering of light off to his right. Suddenly, he clenches his left hand, feels for his thumb, finds it, sighs.

“Yes,” says Anubis.

He sits up before the throne, looks down upon himself, looks up at Anubis.

“You have been baptized, you have been born again into the flesh.”

“Thank you.”

“No trouble. Plenty of raw materials around here. Stand up! Do you remember your lessons?”

Wakim stands.

“Which ones?”

“Temporal fugue. To make time follow the mind, not the body.”

“Yes.”

“And killing?”

“Yes.”

“And combining the two?”

“Yes.”

Anubis stands, a full head taller than Wakim, whose new body is well over two yards in length.

“Then show me!”

“Let the music cease!” he cries. “Let the one who in life was called Dargoth come before me!”

The dead stop dancing. They stand without moving and their eyes never blink. There is silence for several seconds, unbroken by word, footfall, breathing.

Then Dargoth moves among the standing dead, advancing through shadow, through torchlight. Wakim stands straighter when he sees him, for the muscles of his back, his shoulders, his stomach tighten.

A metal band the color of copper crosses Dargoth’s head, covers his cheekbones, vanishes beneath his gray-grizzled chin. A latitudinal band passes above his brows, over his temples, meets at the back of his skull. His eyes are wide, the sclera yellow and the irises red. His lower jaw makes a constant chewing motion as he rolls forward, and his teeth are long shadows. His head sways from side to side upon its twenty inches of neck. His shoulders are three feet in width, giving him the appearance of an inverted triangle, for his sides taper sharply to meet with his segmented chassis, which begins where the flesh stops. His wheels turn slowly, the left rear one squeaking with each revolution. His arms hang a full four and a half feet, so that his fingertips barely brush the floor. Four short, sharp metal legs are folded upward along his flat sides. The razors come erect on his back, fall again, as he moves. The eight-foot whip that is his tail uncoils behind him as he comes to a halt before the throne.

“For this night, this Thousandyear Night,” says Anubis, “I give you back your name-Dargoth. Once were you numbered among the mightiest warriors in the Middle Worlds, Dargoth, until you pitted your strength against that of an immortal and went down to your death before him. Your broken body has been repaired, and this night you must use it to do battle once more. Destroy this man Wakim in single combat and you may take his place as my first servant here in the House of the Dead.”

Dargoth crosses his great hands upon his brow and bows until they touch the floor.

“You may have ten seconds,” says Anubis to Wakim, “to prepare your mind for battle, -Stand ready, Dargoth!”

“Lord,” says Wakim, “how may I kill one who already dead?”

“That is your problem,” says Anubis. “You have now wasted all ten of your seconds with foolish questions. Begin!”

There comes a snapping sound and a series of metallic clicks.

Dargoth’s metal legs snap downward, straighten, raise him three feet higher above the floor. He prances. He raises his arms and flexes them.

Wakim watches, waiting.

Dargoth rises onto his hind legs, so that now his head is ten feet above the floor.

Then he leaps forward, his arms outstretched, his tail curled, his head extended, fangs bared. The blades rise upon his back like gleaming fins, his hooves fall like hammers.

At the last possible moment, Wakim sidesteps and throws a punch which is blocked by the other’s forearm. Wakim leaps high into the air then, and the whip cracks harmlessly beneath him.

For all his bulk, Dargoth halts and turns rapidly. He rears once more and strikes forward with his front hooves. Wakim avoids them, but Dargoth’s hands fall upon Wakim’s shoulders as Dargoth descends.

Wakim seizes both wrists and kicks Dargoth in the chest. The tail-lash falls across his right cheek as he does so. Then he breaks the grip of those massive hands upon his shoulder, ducks his head and lays the edge of his left hand bard upon the other’s side. The whip falls again, this time across his back. He aims a blow at the other’s head, but the long neck twists it out of the way, and he hears the whip crack once more, missing him by inches.

Dargoth’s fist lands upon his cheekbone, and he stumbles, off balance, sliding upon the floor. He rolls out of the path of the hooves, but a fist knocks him sprawling as he attempts to rise again.

As the next blow descends, however, he catches the wrist with both hands and throws his full weight upon the arm, twisting his head to the side. Dargoth’s fist strikes the floor and Wakim regains his feet, landing a left cross as he does so.

Dargoth’s head rolls with the punch and the lash cracks beside Wakim’s ear. He lays another blow upon the twisting head, and then he is borne over backwards as Dargoth’s rear legs straighten like springs and his shoulder strikes Wakim in the chest.

Dargoth rears once more.

Then, for the first time, he speaks:

“Now, Wakim, now!” he says, “Dargoth becomes first servant of Anubis!”

As the hooves flash downward, Wakim catches those metal legs, one in each hand, halfway up their length. He has braced himself in a crouched position, and now his lips curl back, showing his clenched teeth, as Dargoth is frozen in mid-strike above him.

He laughs as he springs back into a standing position and heaves with both arms, casting his opponent high up upon his hind legs, struggling to keep from falling over backwards.

“Fool!” he says, and his voice is strangely altered. His word, like the stroke of a great iron bell, rings through the Hall. There comes up a soft moaning from among the dead, as when they had been routed from out their graves.

“ ‘Now,’ you say? ‘Wakim,’ you say?” and he laughs as he steps forward beneath the falling hooves. “You know not what you say!” and he locks his arms about the great metal torso and the hooves flail helplessly above his back and the tail-whip swishes and cracks and lays stripes upon his shoulders. His hands rest between the sharpened spines, and he crushes the unyielding segmented body of metal close up against his own.

Dargoth’s great hands find his neck, but the thumbs cannot reach his throat, and the muscles of Wakim’s neck tighten and stand out as he bends his knees and strains.

They stand so, frozen for a timeless instant, and the firelight wrestles with shadows upon their bodies.

Then with a gigantic, heaving motion, Wakim raises Dargoth above the ground, turns, and hurls him from him.

Dargoth’s legs kick wildly as he turns over in the air. His spines rise and fall and his tail reaches out and cracks. He raises his arms up before his face, but he lands with a shattering crash at the foot of the throne of Anubis, and there he lies still, his metal body broken in four places and his head split open upon the first step to the throne.

Wakim turns toward Anubis.

“Sufficient?” he inquires.

“You did not employ temporal fugue,” says Anubis, not even looking downward at the wreck that had been Dargoth.

“It was unnecessary. He was not that mighty an opponent.”

“He was mighty,” says Anubis. “Why did you laugh, and make as if you questioned your name when you fought with him?”

“I do not know. For a moment, when I realized that I could not be beaten, I felt as though I were someone else.”

“Someone without fear, pity, or remorse?”

“Yes.”

“Do you still feel thus?”

“No.”

“Then why have you stopped calling me ‘Master’?”

“The heat of battle raised emotions which overrode my sense of protocol.”

“Then correct the oversight, immediately.”

“Very well, Master.”

“Apologize. Beg my pardon, most humbly.”

Wakim prostrates himself on the floor.

“I beg your pardon, Master. Most humbly.”

“Rise again, and consider yourself pardoned. The contents of your previous stomach have gone the way of all such things. You may go re-refresh yourself now. -Let there be singing and dancing once more! Let there be drinking and laughter in celebration of the name-giving on this, Wakim’s Thousandyear Eve! Let the carcass of Dargoth be gone from my sight!”

And these things are done.

After Wakim finishes his meal, and it seems as if the dancing and the singing of the dead will continue until Time’s well-deserved end, Anubis gestures, first to his left, then to his right, and every other flame folds upon every other pillar, dives within itself, is gone. His mouth opens and the words come down upon Wakim: “Take them back. Fetch me my staff.”

Wakim stands and gives the necessary orders. Then he leads the dead out from the great Hall. As they depart, the tables vanish between the pillars. An impossible breeze tears at the ceiling of smoke. Before that great, gray mat is shredded, however, the other torches have died, and the only illumination within the Hall comes from the two blazing bowls on either side of the throne.

Anubis stares into the darkness, and the captured light-rays reform themselves at his bidding and he sees Dargoth fall once more at the foot of his throne and lie still, and he sees the one he has named Wakim standing with a skull’s grin upon his lips, and for an instant-had it been a trick of the firelight? -a mark upon his brow.

Far, in an enormous room where the light is dim and orange and crowded into corners and the dead lay them down once more upon invisible catafalques above their opened graves, faint, rising, then falling, Wakim hears a sound that is not like any sound he has ever heard before. He stays his hand upon the staff and descends the dais.

“Old man,” he says to one with whom he spoke earlier, one whose hair and whose beard are stained with wine and in whose left wrist a clock has stopped, “old man, hear my words and tell me if you know: What is that sound?”

The unblinking eyes stare upward, past his own, and the lips move: “Master…”

“I am not Master here.”

“… Master, it is but the howling of a dog.”

Wakim returns then to the dais and gives them all back to their graves.

Then the light departs and the staff guides him through the dark along the path that has been ordained.

“I have brought your staff, Master.”

“Arise, and approach.”

“The dead are all returned to their proper places.”

“Very good. -Wakim, you are my man?”

“Yes, Master.”

“To do my bidding, and to serve me in all things?”

“Yes, Master.”

“This is why you are emissary to the Middle Worlds, and beyond.”

“I am to depart the House of the Dead?”

“Yes, I am sending you forth from here on a mission.”

“What sort of mission?”

“The story is long, involved. There are many persons in the Middle Worlds who are very old. You know this?”

“Yes.”

“And there are some who are timeless and deathless.”

“Deathless, Lord?”

“By one means or another, certain individuals have achieved a kind of immortality. Perhaps they follow the currents of life and draw upon their force, and they flee from the waves of death. Perhaps they have adjusted their biochemistry, or they keep their bodies in constant repair, or they have many bodies and exchange them, or steal new ones. Perhaps they wear metal bodies, or no bodies at all. Whatever the means involved, you will hear talk of the Three Hundred Immortals when you enter the Middle Worlds. This is only an approximate figure, for few truly know much about them. There are two hundred eighty-three immortals, to be exact. They cheat on life, on death, as you can see, and their very existence upsets the balance, inspires others to strive to emulate their legends, causes others to think them gods. Some are harmless wanderers, others are not. All are powerful and subtle, all adept at continuing their existence. One is especially noxious, and I am sending you to destroy him.”

“Who may he be, Master?”

“He is called the Prince Who Was A Thousand, and he dwells beyond the Middle Worlds. His kingdom lies beyond the realm of life and death, in a place where it is always twilight. He is difficult to locate, however, for he often departs his own region and trespasses into the Middle Worlds and elsewhere. I desire that he come to an end, as he has opposed both the House of the Dead and the House of Life for many days.”

“What does he look like, the Prince Who Was A Thousand?”

“Anything he wishes.”

“Where shall I find him?”

“I do not know. You must seek him.”

“How shall I know him?”

“By his deeds, by his words. He opposes us in all ways.”

“Surely others must oppose you also…”

“Destroy all you come upon who do so. You shall know the Prince Who Was A Thousand, however, because he shall be the most difficult of all to destroy. He will come closest to destroying you.”

“Suppose he succeeds.”

“Then I shall take me a thousand years more to train another emissary to set upon this task. I do not desire his downfall today or tomorrow. It will doubtless take you centuries even to locate him. Time matters little. An age will pass before he becomes a threat, to Osiris or myself. You will learn of him as you travel, seeking after him. When you find him you will know him.”

“Am I mighty enough to work his undoing?”

“I think you are.”

“I am ready.”

“Then I shall set your feet upon the track. I give you the power to summon me, and in times of need to draw force from the fields of Life and of Death while you are among the Middle Worlds. This will make you invincible. You will report back to me when you feel you need to. If I feel this need, I will reach out after you.”

“Thank you, Master.”

“You will obey all my sendings, instantly.”

“Yes.”

“Go now and rest. After you have slept and eaten again, you will depart and begin your mission.”

“Thank you.”

“This will be your second-last sleep within this House, Wakim. Meditate upon the mysteries it contains.”

“I do so constantly.”

“I am one of them.”

“Master…”

“That is part of my name. Never forget it.”

“Master-how could I?”