Bad Dreams & Broken Hearts 06: “Be gone, little ghost, ere I am driven mad by fear.”

Andora bounded to the top of the building across the street and then leaped to the roof of the next one, covering the block in three strides. Her paws touched down lightly as we raced from rooftop to rooftop. Without feeling the rush of air it was hard to estimate speed, but we must have been doing at least eighty miles an hour when ran out of buildings and the malk's last leap took us sailing over the open water of the harbor, still accelerating.

Her paws came down on the surface of the waves and rebounded again without a splash, bouncing off the ocean as if it had been a trampoline. In another half-dozen great strides we had left Messidor's seas for the dream ocean and were hurtling through the mist.

I had known that malks were among the fastest of Nightmare's spirit creatures. Flip—in his own spirit form, his body safely locked away inside his shop behind wards—had taken me on excursions on Andora's back, to Pluviose and Ventrose when I was a child, and later to Verdemaire and Bascose. I remember whooping with joy as we bounded across the surface of the dreamsea on the great cat.

On this transit I realized that Flip had been keeping Andora to a slow, sedate pace on our earlier voyages. Now she was running flat out, and it was like being shot out of a canon. It seemed as if the red glow of Messidor's sky had scarcely faded away before we were racing beneath the cold pale blue of Nivose. The mist faded away below us revealing the cracked dry mud of the the Empty Sea. Andora crossed the dead sea bottom at a dizzying pace. The shore was a distant line on the horizon, then a wall rushing toward us, then we were bounding up the coastal shelf and the malk came to a breathtaking halt on the outskirts of the Grimm's city.

She wasn't even breathing hard. Purring, she twisted her head up to look at me, her green eyes shining with I could have sworn was amusement. I scratched her between the ears.

“Good kittie,” I murmured, sliding off her back onto the hard-packed ground.

She favored me with a needle-fanged grin. A moment later she had shrunk back down to kitten size. She paused to scratch herself with a back paw, then got to her feet, stretched, and was a tiny black dot in the distance, then gone.

I blinked, getting my bearings. The sky was a uniform pale blue, the light sourceless and harsh. Behind me was the dry, stony beach, sloping down sharply to the dead sea bottom. Ahead of me was the city of the Grimm.

Morauxe are all different, admixtures of beasts and men. Most walked on two legs, hunched and stooped, but upright. Most were coated with fur of some kind, thick and luxurious or sleek. Within those limits was a wild constellation of forms. Some had hands, some paws. Some faces were nearly human under their curtains of hair, others sported long dog-like muzzles or features that defied any classification. They were a riot of flesh from the size of lap dogs walking on their hind legs to bull-like behemoths.

Their city reflected this confusion. The buildings were of all scales, doors and windows seemingly of random shapes and sizes. I could feel their eyes upon me, dark and bestial or human or somewhere in-between.

The morauxe tended to do their harvesting outside the city, luring human spirits into the wastelands and hunting them there. They would assume that my presence in town, in a disciplined human form, implied that I was shopping for the products of their labs.

In theory only hospitals could deal with Nivose to acquire them. In practice smuggling metachemicals was probably the number one occupation of those unlicensed mages that Jake was so worried about.

I didn't use any of that junk myself—I didn't know how it would work on my metabolism and I didn't want to find out—but you can't play jazz clubs without learning about junk and who's doing what, how much, and where you can get it.

The answer to that last question was “a lot of places”. The CPS's much publicized Anti-Drug Initiative was mostly smoke and mirrors. Probably because there were a lot of users in Government House, but it was none of my business.

I wasn't more than half a block into the city when a lean red-furred fox woman fell into step beside me. She was wearing a dress of some thin tanned leather that clung to her disturbingly humanoid curves.

“Hey, magus,” she said softly and licked her long muzzle with a pointed black tongue. “Maybe you're looking for something?”

I sighed. “Yeah. I'm looking for the Bone Fortress. I've got some business with the Grimm.”

A sharp look. “Funny man,” she said, her tone making it clear that she wasn't amused.

“No, I'm serious,” I said. “And I'm no magus. I'm an heir of Messidor.”

Her small eyes grew narrower. “Nice human suit, norn. You knit that yourself?”

“Can you direct me to the Bone Fortress or not?” I asked. “I'm not interested in anything else.”

Clearly disgusted with me she pointed. “Through there is the Way of Waifs. Turn left, and take it to Iron Street. Right on Iron Street, and you can take that all the way to the Grand Bazaar. The Bone Fortress is just on the other side of the Bazaar.”

“Thank you,” I told her warmly and headed off in the direction she indicated.

“I hope he eats you, magus,” she called after me.

She wasn't the last. I was offered tigerberry, blackeye, bloodmilk, and maidenbreath before I reached the end of the Way of the Waifs. I just kept smiling and walking, shaking my head politely at the offers. I wished that I could have taken one of the pedicabs or rickshaws that swarmed the street, or that I could have kept Flip's malk long enough to get the Grimm's citadel, just to get away from the dealers.

Iron Street was better, though. I remembered it as one of Hunger City's major thoroughfares, from long ago lessons. It was wide and while it was crowded the morauxe made space for me. They still no doubt thought that I was a human mage, but even in Nivose you don't make dope deals on main street.

The dark hovels that I remembered from my childhood visits were gone, replaced with brick and stone buildings, many of them three or four stories. The shops along the street were full of import goods. These were prosperous days in Nightmare. Although Pluvoise and Thermidore profit most directly from the Midworld's technological revolution, the wealth had spread, and along with the wealth human styles and customs. It was less noticeable in Messidor—norns had an innate mistrust of novelty and change would come slow to my father's people.

Hunger City, on the other hand, embraced the human influence. Nearly all of the morauxe I passed were dressed in some approximation of human clothing, even those who had to force trousers and shirts over coats of lush fur. I passed a pair of street musicians—a bear-like giant on a mandolin that looked tiny in his huge paws and a rabbit-man half his size on tenor sax—working their way inexpertly but enthusiastically through “Never On Sunday”. I gave them a wave and a big smile, and wished I had some local currency to toss into the hat on the pavement in front of them.

A diner on the corner advertised both “hand-burgers” and “strudel pie”. I even saw a Midworld automobile, wending its slow way through the pedestrians and pushcarts. The cost of transporting that must have been staggering—not to mention importing the 'lix to run it from Pluviose.

I heard the Grand Bazaar before I saw it. The air was full of noise, morauxe chattering and barking and howling to each other. As I grew closer I could tell that whatever else had changed, this madhouse was eternal. A massive open air plaza jammed with stalls and tents and ramshackle shacks in no discernible order. It was said that one could buy anything from anywhere in Nightmare at the Grand Bazaar.

Assuming that one could find it, of course. One could also spend half a lifetime wandering the narrow aisles between hucksters, looking for a particular item, or a way out, or just looking.

I stopped where Iron Street ended at the plaza. Four other wide streets ended here. Across the chaos I could see the top of the Bone Fortress looming. Getting there was going to be a problem.

The morauxe wouldn't deliberately block my way, but a spirit couldn't push its way through the crush of bodies. The crowd had spirits of their own, after all, and theirs were backed up by bodies with real mass. I turned and started walking around the edge of the crowd. I would have to detour around the marketplace and find another street that lead to the Bone Fortress. It was the seat of Nivose's government, after all—there had to be more than one way to get there.

I wondered what time it was getting to be back in the Midworld. The unchanging sky made it difficult to gauge the passage of time, but I guessed I had been away for a couple of hours. I hoped that Jake and Marji would be able to get some sleep before I got back. My body was occupying the only bed, though. I should have stretched out on the floor. Jake probably wouldn't move me, although it wouldn't bother me if he did. I'd feel it, in a dim, distant way, if anything happened to my body, but of course I wouldn't be able to do anything until I was back in residence.

The alley I found snaked through what seemed to be a mostly residential neighborhood, past the backsides of small houses, these mostly in the traditional style, rough hewn beams and roofs of slate or tile. Laundry lines hung across the alley, festooned with clothing in a wide variety of sizes and shapes. A feral malk, this one orange and red, paused on its transit of the roofline to examine me with curious green eyes and then was gone.

I came out of the alley across the street from the Grimm's citadel. The street was wide and empty, made from blocks of dark stone, fitted together smoothly. There was no trash on the street, no dirt, not so much as a blade of grass peeking up through the cracks between the stones.

The Bone Fortress itself covered an area equivalent to several city blocks. It was, as the name implied, made from bones, hundreds of thousands of them, maybe millions. They were fitted together to form a mosaic, a wall maybe sixty feet high. Inside, I knew, it was a maze of narrow passageways, many open to the sky, with oddly shaped chambers scattered throughout it.

It wasn't white, this close up. The bones were old, yellowed and weathered. I felt a chill, looking at the ancient structure. This was the true heart of Nivose, the savage domain of the eldest Nightmare. This is where hunger lives. Hunger that is never satisfied, never rests, never stops hunting for the small and the weak.

I had gotten turned around and was approaching the structure from the side. I tried to get my bearings. The sky, of course, was no help. But I could hear the bazaar and headed in the direction of the noise. I kept to the edge of the black stone street. It didn't feel right to walk on that pristine plaza, even on insubstantial feet.

Around the corner the face of the Bone Fortress gazed down on the Grand Bazaar. A broad stairs led up to an archway, two stories tall, twice that wide, fanged with a black iron portcullis, now raised to half height. Two balconies above the archway held massive braziers, the iron glowing with heat so that red mutant eyes gazed down on Hunger city.

A pair of guards flanked the archway. The one to the left of the door was a huge brute with the head of a bull and a humanoid body scaled to match, naked and covered only with a sparse coat of curly hair. At his side was a hammer massive enough to drive in fence-posts like tacks.

The other was thin and slight, wrapped in a threadbare black robe, with the head of a fox and black gloved hands. She wore a long curved sword thrust through her sash.

I stepped forward, slowly mounting the stair. I waited for them to challenge me, and mentally rehearsed my words. I am Samhaim Jackknife, and I wish to speak with the Grimm on a matter of some urgency...

Neither seemed to notice me, but I knew damned well that they could see me. I moved slowly up the stair, hands held away from my body. I'm not a threat, I'm just here to talk. They continued to ignore me. I paused. Could I just walk right in? It didn't seem right, but if the guards didn't challenge me I wasn't sure what else to do.

“Excuse me,” I tried. Neither of the guards looked in my direction or gave any sign that they had heard me. The bull scratched his massive groin. The fox hid a yawn behind a gloved paw.

I walked right in, expecting a shout of outrage, or a sudden attack. The guards on the Grimm's citadel would have weapons enchanted to harm spirit forms. I moved past the guards feeling a target on my back, waiting to be sliced in half or smashed flat.

Instead I made it to the entry hall, utterly ignored. No one was in sight. The entry hall wall a tall cylinder, open to the sky. A half dozen hallways led away, deeper into the structure, all unlabeled, all seemingly identical. Where now?

I went to the right. I would have to run into somebody, a guard, a servant, a courtier—somebody who would acknowledge my existence and point me in the right direction. Right?

Wrong.

I wandered down hallways made of polished bone, up and down stairs, though chambers where the bone walls were hung with woven tapestries of hunting scenes, moth-eaten and sun-faded, past fine furniture in a dizzying array of sizes, and into courtyards open to the cold blue changeless sky.

Empty, all empty. I could hear morauxe all around me, the sounds of bestial voices raised in conversation, always just ahead or just behind me, but when I reached where the sound had seemed to come from the hallways and chambers were deserted.

I got angry. I wasn't some dreaming human for the Grimm to amuse himself with, I was the heir of Messidor, son of the Fellmonger and worthy of diplomatic courtesy.

I stopped in the middle of a hallway—wide and short, this one with walls that were covered in the skulls of animals—and shouted.

“Lord Grimm, I am Samhaim Jackknife, heir to the throne of Messidor, and I seek an audience with you!”

Silence. Even the distant mocking sounds of morauxe conversation was gone. I stood there and fumed. He couldn't just keep ignoring me...

Well, actually he could. Here in the seat of his kingdom the Grimm was the next best thing to a god. He could do whatever he wanted. The Bone Fortress was an extention of the Grimm's will, just as my father's citadel was. Having entered in of my own free will I was subject to the Grimm's whims.

I sighed and kept walking. “You've made your point,” I said softly, knowing that the Grimm could hear me.

The hallway ended in a small dark stairwell. I entered and headed down. Maybe now that I'd admitted his sovereignty I would get someplace.

The staircase spiraled down into deepening gloom. The walls changed from inlaid bone to rough rock, the stairs under my feet weathered wooden planks. I seemed to be underground now, and still I descended.

Eventually I reached a cavern lit by smoky torches attached to the walls. In the middle of the cavern was an iron cage, and in the center of the cage was a figure, lying small and still. I could see her slim curves, her long hair.

I hurried forward. It was Karin, wrapped in the remains of a shredded robe of dark blue silk. Was sleeping, not dreaming, her spirit quiescent within her body.

I reached to touch the bars of the cage. They felt solid to my insubstantial hands. Witched, somehow, to keep spirits out. I reached between the bars, but couldn't touch the sleeping girl.

“Karin,” I said softly. “Can you hear me?”

“I do my duty to my captain and my king,
Nor can I do else than I am bid,” sang a deep voice from directly behind me.

I spun, heart hammering, and he was before me.

The Grimm, the Eldest Nightmare. Lord of Hunger.

An enormous beast, as big as a horse. His body was not that of any animal of the Midworld, but resembled in some ways a wolf, in others a great predatory cat.

And he was starving. His threadbare fur did nothing to hide the bones that lay beneath his tightly stretched skin. The skin of his muzzle was pulled back from a mouthful of gleaming needle teeth. His eyes were wide and black, glistening like oil.

He continued the refrain, singing idly, as if he sang to himself to past the time, “And yet far from the war's desolation,
“Slumbers my lady so fair
“Slumbers my lady so far
“In her chambers in the court of her Sire.”

I recognized the song, it was from a musical epic of a few seasons ago. I couldn't recall the name of the opera, though.

The Grimm seem to start, then, as if he had suddenly noticed me.

“Little ghost,” he said, his melodic voice strangely at odds with his vicious appearance. He lifted a paw, a gaunt handful of white blades.

“Lord Grimm,” I said, and bowed.

“I do not like ghosts,” the great beast said, with something like a chuckle. “They frighten me.”

I looked up at him. I could feel his breath, and it was painfully cold. “Lord, I must speak to you—”

He lowered his head to mine, his huge black eyes like night falling. “I do not speak to spirits,” he said as if I hadn't said anything. “Be gone, little ghost, ere I am driven mad by fear.”

A moment later I was looking at the ceiling of Karin's loft. I lay there, blinking. Ordinarily the transition back into my flesh was gradual, just as the transition to Nightmare had been, but this time I hadn't returned under my own power, I had been...

What, exactly? Expelled? Banished? Whatever it was, I didn't like it much. I hadn't known Lord Grimm could do that, but it made sense. He was the closest thing to a god, at least in his own domain. He was serious about my not visiting Nivose in the spirit. But how could I get there in the flesh without his help?