LITMIR.BIZ

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the nightmare go. It slithered out of his grip, hitting the stone floor. It knew exactly where it was going. It wove across the ground, flickering with excitement, the light out of its thin form illuminating its victim: a large, bearded man squatted against the wall.

      “Mercy, my Lord…” he sobbed. “I’m just a Todo miner.”

      “Oh, now be quiet,” Carrion said as though he were speaking to a troublesome child. “Look, you have a visitor.”

      He turned and pointed to the ground where the nightmare slithered. Then, without waiting to see what happened next, he turned and approached Houlihan. “So, now,” he said. “Tell me about the girl.”

      Thoroughly unnerved by the fact that the nightmare was loose and might at any moment turn on him, Houlihan fumbled for words: “Oh yes…yes…the girl. She escaped me in Ninnyhammer. Along with a geshrat called Malingo. Now they’re traveling together. And I got close to them again on Soma Plume. But she slipped away among some pilgrim monks.”

      “So she’s escaped you twice? I expect better.”

      “She has power in her,” Houlihan said by way of self-justification.

      “Does she indeed?” Carrion said. As he spoke he carefully lifted a second nightmare out of his collar. It spat and hissed. Directing it toward the man in the corner, he let the creature go from his hands, and it wove away to be with its companion. “She must at all costs be apprehended, Otto,” Carrion went on. “Do you understand me? At all costs. I want to meet her. More than that. I want to understand her.”

      “How will you do that, Lord?”

      “By finding out what’s ticking away in that human head of hers. By reading her dreams, for one thing. Which reminds me…Lazaru!”

      While he waited for his servant to appear at the door, Carrion brought out yet another nightmare from his collar and loosed it. Houlihan watched as it went to join the others. They had come very close to the man, but had not yet struck. They seemed to be waiting for a word from their master.

      The miner was still begging. Indeed he had not ceased begging throughout the entire conversation between Carrion and Houlihan. “Please, Lord,” he kept saying. “What have I done to deserve this?”

      Carrion finally replied to him. “You’ve done nothing,” he said. “I just picked you out of the crowd today because you were bullying one of your brother miners.” He glanced back at his victim. “There’s always fear in men who are cruel to other men.” Then he looked away again, while the nightmares waited, their tails lashing in anticipation. “Where’s Lazaru?” Carrion said.

      “Here.”

      “Find me the dreaming device. You know the one.”

      “Of course.”

      “Clean it up. I’m going to need it when the Criss-Cross Man has done his work.” His gaze shifted toward Houlihan. “As for you,” he said. “Get the chase over with.”

      “Yes, Lord.”

      “Capture Candy Quackenbush and bring her to me. Alive.”

      “I won’t fail you.”

      “You’d better not. If you do, Houlihan, then the next man sitting in that corner will be you.” He whispered some words in Old Abaratian. “Thakram noosa rah. Haaas!”

      This was the instruction the nightmares had been waiting for. In a heartbeat they attacked. The man struggled to keep them from climbing up his body, but it was a lost cause. Once they reached his neck they proceeded to wrap their flickering lengths around his head, as though to mummify him. They partially muffled his cries a little, but he could still be heard, his appeals for mercy from Carrion deteriorating into shrieks and screams. As his terror mounted the nightmares grew fatter, giving off brighter and brighter flashes of sickly luminescence as they were nourished. The man continued to kick and struggle for a while, but soon his shrieks declined into sobs and finally even the sobs ceased. So, at last, did his struggle.

      “Oh, that’s a disappointment,” Carrion said, kicking the man’s foot to confirm that fear had indeed killed him. “I thought he’d last longer than that.”

      He spoke again in the old language, and—nourished, now, and slothful—the nightmares unknotted themselves from around their victim’s head and began to return to Carrion. Houlihan couldn’t help but retreat a step or two in case the nightmares mistook him for another source of food.

      “Go on, then,” Carrion said to him. “You’ve got work to do. Find me Candy Quackenbush!”

      “It’s as good as done,” Houlihan replied, and without looking back, even a glance, he hurried away from the chamber of terrors and down the stairs of the Twelfth Tower.

       PART ONE FREAKS, FOOLS AND FUGITIVES

      Nothing

      After a battle lasting many ages, The Devil won, And he said to God (who had been his Maker): “Lord, We are about to witness the unmaking of Creation By my hand. I would not wish you to think me cruel, So I beg you, take three things From this world before I destroy it. Three things, and then the rest will be wiped away.”

      God thought for a little time. And at last He said: “No, there is nothing.” The Devil was surprised. “Not even you, Lord?” he said. And God said: “No. Not even me.”

      —From Memories of the World’s End Author unknown

      (Christopher Carrion’s favorite poem)

       1 PORTRAIT OF GIRL AND GESHRAT

      LET’S GET OUR PHOTOGRAPH taken,” Candy said to Malingo. They were walking down a street in Tazmagor, where—this being on the island of Qualm Hah—it was Nine O’clock in the Morning. The Tazmagorian market was in full swing, and in the middle of all this buying and selling a photographer called Guumat had set up a makeshift studio. He’d hung a crudely painted backcloth from a couple of poles and set his camera, a massive device mounted on a polished wood tripod, in front of it. His assistant, a youth who shared his father’s coxcomb hair and lightly striped blue-and-black skin, was parading a board on which examples of Guumat the Elder’s photos were pinned.

      “You like to be pictured by the great Guumat?” the youth said to Malingo. “He make you look real good.”

      Malingo grinned. “How much?”

      “Two paterzem,” said the father, gently pressing his offspring aside so as to close the sale.

      “For both of us?” Candy said.

      “One picture, same price. Two paterzem.”

      “We can afford that,” Candy said to Malingo.

      “Maybe you like costumes. Hats?” Guumat asked them, glancing at them up and down. “No extra cost.”

      “He’s politely telling us we look like vagabonds,” Malingo said.

      “Well, we are vagabonds,” Candy replied.

      Hearing this, Guumat looked suspicious. “You can pay?” he said.

      “Yes, of course,” said Candy, and dug in the pocket of her brightly patterned trousers, held up with a belt of woven biffel-reeds, and pulled out some coins, sorting through them to give Guumat the paterzem.

      “Good! Good!” he said. “Jamjam! Get the young lady a mirror. How old are you?”

      “Almost sixteen, why?”

      “You

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