Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth

Thirteen - Mother Love

I was back in the Nightside, in Time Tower Square, and my first thought was how quiet and peaceful everything was. I looked slowly around me, and no-one looked back. The mobs and monsters had all moved on, probably because there was nothing left in the Square to destroy, and no-one left to kill. The buildings were fire-blackened frameworks, collapsed inwards or outwards, cracked stone and broken bricks. There were bodies lying everywhere, men and women and others so damaged or torn apart it was impossible to tell who or what they might have been originally. They looked like so many broken toys someone had got tired of playing with. Nothing moved, anywhere. There weren’t even any rats nosing among the bodies. Maybe they’d all been killed, too. Out beyond the Square, the War was still going on, in the distance. I could hear faint cries and roars and explosions, and now and again there’d be a sudden surge of light, pushing back the darkness. But the Square was still, and silent.

I couldn’t help thinking of the devastated future Nightside I’d seen so many times. The dead lands, the broken world, and all because of me. A future that insisted on edging nearer, no matter how hard I worked to push it away, becoming more real, more imminent, detail by detail. Maybe some futures are inevitable, after all.

I slowly became aware of a soft, repetitive sound, and I looked round to see my mother, Lilith, sitting at her ease on the pile of rubble that was all she’d left of the Time Tower. In her large colourless hands she held a severed human head. Its face had been ripped away, leaving only a bloody mess, but that didn’t seem to bother her. She was pulling out the teeth, one at a time and tossing them aside. And all the time her black mouth was moving silently, saying He loves me, he loves me not… She looked up abruptly and stared right into my eyes. She smiled brightly and rose to her feet, casually throwing the head to one side.

“John, darling! My most treasured son…”

“Don’t move any closer,” I said. “I’m armed. I have the Speaking Gun.”

“Of course you have, sweetie. That’s why I’m here.”

She walked towards me. I held the black box up where she could see it, and she stopped just out of reach. She was calm, collected, utterly at her ease, and a slow anger burned within me. I gestured roughly at the bodies, at the wrecked buildings, at the War still going on in the distance.

“How could you do all this?”

She shrugged easily. “It’s mine. I made it. I’ll do what I want with it.”

“Where are your children?” I said. “All your monstrous offspring? Where are your precious followers, your madmen and murderers?”

“Keeping themselves busy. I don’t need them here. I thought it was time you and I had a nice little chat, in private.”

I frowned, as something else occurred to me. “How did you know to find me here? Even I didn’t know I was going to be here.”

She nodded at the flat black case in my hands. “The Speaking Gun called to me. I always know where it is. It is flesh of my flesh, after all, and as such my child, every bit as much as you. It’s your brother, John, in every way that matters. Thank you for bringing it back to me. I have a use for it. Just as I have a use for you.”

I opened the black box, snatched out the Speaking Gun, and pointed it at Lilith. She didn’t flinch, or back away. I let the box fall to the ground as the Speaking Gun thrust its poisonous presence into my thoughts. It felt hot and sweaty in my hand, and burned like a fever in my mind, vicious and raging, like an attack dog tugging at its leash. It breathed wetly in my hand, wanting to be used. It needed to kill, to destroy, to tear down the whole world and everything that lived in it. The Speaking Gun hated, but it couldn’t operate without someone else to pull its trigger, and it hated that most of all. Its filthy thoughts wormed through my mind, stoking the anger and outrage it found there… but I had felt its corrupting nature before, and I fought it back. I hadn’t come this far to bow down to a spiteful machine.

And yet, even under its madness and its rage, I could feel the Speaking Gun yearning for my mother’s touch. It wanted to go to her and nestle in her hand, and do terrible, awful things for her. I gripped the Gun so tightly my whole hand ached, and never once took my gaze off Lilith. She laughed soundlessly at me, and took a step forward. I aimed the Speaking Gun carefully, and pulled the trigger.

And nothing happened.

I tried again and again, but the long canine tooth that served as the Speaking Gun’s trigger wouldn’t budge. I shook the Gun, and even hit it with my other hand, but it did no good. In my mind, I could hear it laughing.

“The Speaking Gun won’t work on me, John,” Lilith said calmly. “It will never operate against the wishes of its creator. Just a little safeguard I had built into it, back at the Beginning. It loves me, you know. It aches to serve me, and make me happy. Such a good son… Unlike you. Give me the Gun, John. It was never meant for you. And in my hands it will respeak your most secret name and remake you into the respectful, obedient son I always intended you to be.”

She held out her hand, and the Speaking Gun jerked in my grasp, as though desperate to go to the one who would let it do what it had always wanted to do.

I couldn’t let her take the Gun. So I raised my gift, and forced it to find the one way in which the Speaking Gun could be destroyed. The answer was simple: by making it speak its own secret name backwards, and uncreate itself. My gift fought me, and the Gun fought me, but I had come a long way in the past few years, down a long hard road, perhaps to prepare me for moments like this. I bent all my will and all of my soul against the gift and the Gun, beating them down step by step and inch by inch, until finally the Speaking Gun choked out a single awful sound, then howled in despair as its very existence was reversed and undone. Uncreated.

My hand was suddenly empty, and I staggered and almost fell, wiped out by such a tremendous effort. I felt as though I’d just lifted a mountain with my bare hands, and turned it over on its side. Lilith grunted suddenly with surprise, and clapped one hand to her bare side. I studied her warily, but she just smiled back at me.

“Why thank you, John. For returning my flesh and bone to me. I’d forgotten how much I missed that rib till I had it back again. You always give your mother the best presents.”

“The Speaking Gun is gone,” I said. “You can’t remake me without it, which means you can’t remake the Nightside. So, it’s over. Your precious scheme is dead in the water. Stand down your armies. This isn’t your Nightside any more. You don’t belong here. Just… go away, and leave us alone.”

But she was already smiling and shaking her head. “You always did think too small, John. The Speaking Gun was never that important to me. It was just there to make things easier for you. It would have been a more… merciful method, that’s all. Now I’ll just have to do it the hard way. And don’t you dare cry. You brought this on yourself. The Speaking Gun was never intended to be my main weapon against the Nightside, John. That was, and is, you. That is why I gave birth to you, after all.”

“What?” I said. My mind was numb, from too many reverses. “I don’t understand…”

“Of course you don’t. I arranged for you to inherit one particular gift from me, John, so I could make use of it when the time was right. I will make you do what you were born to do. I will make you use your gift to find for me the perfect form of the Nightside, the original uncontaminated model that I always intended it to be, and when you’ve found that for me I will enforce that version on all the world.”

“I won’t do it,” I said. I tried to look away from her, from her deep dark eyes, and couldn’t. “I won’t do that!”

“You don’t have any choice, sweetie. I decided your fate before you were even born, working on you while you were still forming in my womb. All through the first few years of your childhood, I built a geas deep within your mind, so I’d be able to use it in this place, on this day. A geas to bend your will to mine. That’s why you’ve never been able to remember your early years with me. It became necessary for me to leave the dear bosom of my family before I was quite finished with you, but there’s enough there to do the job. I can see it, squirming deep in your mind, wrapped around your soul.”

“You do love the sound of your own voice, don’t you?” I said. Never let them see they’ve got you rattled… “Why didn’t my gift tell me any of this, when I questioned it earlier?”

“Because it’s not your gift, it’s mine. I gave it to you, to do my will.” She pirouetted slowly, arms outstretched, mistress of all she surveyed, smiling like a cat with a small bird in its jaws. “Time to redecorate, I think. The old place has become terribly infested. I will spread my Nightside across all the Earth, freeing it from the influence of Heaven and Hell. I’ll steal the world away from both those Tyrants, and make the Earth my playground, for all time. And everything that lives on it, including Humanity, that bothersome breed, will be swept aside and replaced with something more to my liking. Including you, my dearest boy. You’ll be so much happier when I’ve remade you in my own true image. You will kneel at my feet and sing my praises through all eternity. Won’t that be nice? A mother and her son, together, forever.”

And I had just destroyed the Speaking Gun, the only weapon that might have stopped her.

Unless… the last time I went face-to-face with Lilith, long and long ago, back at the very creation of the Nightside, I’d found a way to hurt and weaken her. I grinned nastily, inside. I’m John Taylor. I always have one more trick up my sleeve. I fired up my gift, driving it ruthlessly with the last of my will, and used it to find the link between my mother and me. The physical, mental, and magical connections between a mother and her only son. A trick I’d used before, to drain the life energy right out of her.

But when I reached out through the link, she was right there waiting for me. Her will slammed through the link, slapping me aside, monstrously strong and utterly overpowering. I cried out and fell to my knees as she drained the life energy out of me, despite everything I could do to stop her. She smiled down at me.

“You didn’t really expect to catch me with the same trick twice, did you? Not when I’ve had so many years to think about this day, this moment, planning it all down to the very last detail… Poor boy. This isn’t your story, John; it’s mine. Time to start your makeover, I think. And then what fun we’ll have, tearing down everything you ever believed in. Open wide and say aaah!, John. It’ll only hurt for a moment…”