The New Weird - Ann VanderMeer [183]
Once, in the days before he had dedicated his inner self to Chuzdt, Majin Panaranja had been a young man of infinite possibility and great promise. It was a burden he had been relieved, at the time, to set down.
Walking now through the close streets of the Tsongtrik banlieue, his mind was filled with the constant, wordless mantra that was the true name of Chuzdt and his mouth and eyes were set in a constant, beatific smile. He wore a grey robe large enough to cover the blisters where the locusts that made up his god had been inserted into his opened flesh. He did not wish to be recognized.
Unease touched him; it was a human concern, and a falling away from Chuzdt. He paused for a moment, closing his eyes, and practiced devouring the thought until he was once again pure. A woman cursed at him mildly for blocking her way. Majin smiled without feeling either bliss or dismay and returned to his path.
The door at Number 50 Djudrum Lane showed that some former inhabitant of the building had been dedicated to Yeshe. Six hundred and fifty-four spider-black eyes considered him as he stood before it. With Yeshe, always six hundred and fifty-four. He knew no reason for the number's significance. He waited until, with a sigh of resignation, the door swung open.
Within, the house smelled sour with neglect. The low rumble of its plumbing suggested some stray infection afflicted its works and had never been tended to. The light that flickered from the heavy iron lanterns was as blue and cold as the moon. Irshad stumbled into the room, his hands taking the broken-wrist pose of prayer. Majin imagined what it would be like to eat the man; skin lifting from flesh, flesh from bone. In his mind, he took the small, frail body apart, lifting each organ to his own mouth with the joy of a toddler exploring taste for the first time. Majin returned the prayerful pose.
"Septon," Irshad said. "Something has gone wrong. The Dardarbji tool never came. I didn't know what to do."
Majin accepted the information, letting it fall into the constant clicking maelstrom of his consciousness, letting it be torn apart by the aspect of Chuzdt. Slowly it occurred to him that this eventuality would require a human mind with all of its faults and peculiar abilities. He looked
down and, with a sense of profound nausea, forced himself to think.
"Did he discover that we were in collusion with his masters in Dardarbji?" Majin asked.
"I don't know, Septon. He never came to accept his assignment."
Majin nodded. The plans for the Factors' Dance would have to be adjusted. He found himself annoyed that years of planning against his rival, the Septon Anjai Mace, could be derailed by so small a thing as a missing Dardarbji. His sense of clarity grew as he considered, a bubble rising through water.
Septon Mace might have discovered the plot and had the tool from Dardarbji disposed of or imprisoned. The Dardarbji might have discovered that he was a pawn sacrificed by his own masters in the exchange Majin had engineered. Or perhaps the poor, foreign fool had fallen prey to one of the thousand, thousand dangers of Riarnanth. He might even now be smoking mint poppy in the dens of the Salvationists or suffering vivisection at the hands of whatever band of black artists had most recently adopted this unsavory form of political protest. His mind traced the possibilities, weighed them, and made a decision.
"We will move ahead without him," Majin said. "It will be more difficult, but not impossible. I believe I have sufficiently mastered the techniques he would have taught us, all on my own, thanks to sharing the god-mind.