The New Weird - Ann VanderMeer [82]
And still it took all my skill, wit, weaponry and luck to escape with my life, to become a Shadow of the Shadow stirps. I do not believe any single man unaided and unprepared can stand before the Lizard, least of all some bobble-headed wordsmith who got lost on his long, slow way to Kansas.
Nor some little fisheater from Cui-ui in distant Nevada.
I grinned at the thought of seeing the dead man try.
The Gillikin priests lived in a daub-and-wattle temple clinging to the base of one of Ooze's deepest towers, far down in permanent shadow. It was a great messy affair, most resembling a giant agglomeration of bug spit and bird shit, constantly maintained by slaves and limerocks who climb about it unharnessed. If one falls, and damages the wall on the way down, their family is fined the cost of repairs.
Other than the temple itself, the fungal glow of the lower walls of Ooze and the very faint stirrings of sun and moonlight from high above are the only illumination permitted within the temple precincts.
The temple entrance was a triangular gate of bones, thin and graceful, relics of some ice-age teratornis that had once flown proud over the glaciers of Kentucky in the early days of Ooze. Small rivets were set into the rising legs of the gate, each tiny metal head looped back to support silver chains interlinked with black opals and bluish amber, which in turn glittered from the flickering light of oil lamps within, so the Gillikin temple was warded by a curtain of stars.
We passed through the silver-chained curtain, my little dead man and I, and presented ourselves to Brother Porter. He was a wrinkled man, longer in body than I by a head and more, but bent beneath age and long service so we saw eye to eye, his bristly, rheumy-eyed head swinging on the bone-knobbed crane of his neck. His rough linen robe matched the dried-mud interior of the antechamber, which was lit by flickering oil lamps.
"Here there then, little Shadow man," he said to me, his voice raddled as his face and body. "The Lizard's writ runs here more than its blood." One quavering hand poked toward my Blades. "What would you be having of us, Mister Two-Knives? None enters here without price."
I bowed, brushing my hands across the Blades Sinister and Truth before presenting empty palms. "A stranger is come among us, with a message for Its Scaliness. I thought to present him to the priesthood rather than sending the wretch straight down the hole on his own. He is my blood price."
"Kindness in generosity, Shadow," muttered Brother Porter. He swung to face the Cui-ui fisheater, whose face had grown blank with a whole new layer of terror. "And you are wanting to die slow or fast, in glory or in peace?"
"Please, sir," said the little dead man. "I'd prefer not to die at all."
"Coward," said Brother Porter.
"Easily said at your age," I told him. "Please ring up Wall-Eye or Thintail. Not one of the scalebrains."
Scalebrains were Gillikin priests so far descended into contemplation of the Lizard of Ooze that they had achieved permanent communion with the great old reptile, and were not much good anymore for conversation, let alone enlightenment. For one, they often tried to bite people who spoke to them.
"Aye, and before ya I'll place them." Brother Porter shuffled off behind a leather curtain, speaking in some gravelly place deep within his throat that produced no more words, only a sense of pained finality. There followed a muffled echoing of bells, different pitches and tempi, part of the secret language of the Gillikin priests of which I knew only a little.
I understood him to warn someone of visitors, then made a request I could not follow ― sending for one of the priests, I presumed. Bells answered, Brother