Fallen Angel, the sign said, the letters faded so much that he could hardly read
them, pale grey on the bleached white of the wood. The board hung askew, moving
slightly as a gust of wind struck it.
Fallen Angel, he thought. Where have I
heard that name before?
Wherever this place was, he had no desire
to be here, or to enter it even for a moment. But the road he had been
following across the desert led through here, and he hadn’t seen any other sign
of human habitation in longer than he cared to remember.
He stood by the sign, looking at the sprawl
of the buildings on either side of the dusty desert track. They seemed to be
one with the desert all around, as brown and sere as the drifting sand, and as
liable to fall down and blow away. Nothing except puffs of dust stirred in the
street.
“Demon,” he said, softly, but of course she
wasn’t there. There was no demon and there was no beast, and he had been
walking for longer than he wanted to imagine.
Alone.
He rubbed his eyes, tired from the
unceasing glare of the sun, and wished – once more – that the demon and the
beast had been with him. He had no idea where they were, no idea when he had
last seen them, and no real hope that he would see them ever again.
He only half remembered the quarrel, and no
memory of what had set it off. Maybe he didn’t want to remember. But he had said
things, which, even now, he knew were beyond forgiveness, things he wouldn’t
have forgiven if someone had said them to him. He’d accused the demon of using
him, treating him as a tool or a slave, and then, at the end, he’d said that he
never wanted to see her again.
He had one clear memory, one which was
burned indelibly into the back of his skull; the demon, standing beside the
beast, her hand on its mane, watching him with a very strange expression on her
face as he strode away into the night; and if he hadn’t told himself he’d been
imagining it, he might have thought it was despair.
But that was really too ridiculous, he’d
thought, and kept walking into the darkness. It had been a very dark night, and
he’d soon been lost.
But that was quite all right, because he
had wanted to be lost.
He’d been walking ever since.
Fallen Angel, the board creaked in the
wind, and the town lay like the desiccated bones of some mighty beast in the
desert wind. He looked back over his shoulder, down the way he’d come, but
there was nothing, just the white dusty road through the desert.
There was no way but forward, he thought.
Behind only lay the empty desert.
Then he turned round, loosened the sword in
the scabbard over his back, and walked into the town.
*********************************
Before he
had gone past the first houses, he already knew he’d made a mistake. There was
something very wrong here, something so wrong that his nerves screamed out at
him. He stopped, looking around, trying to feel what was wrong.
The first thing that struck him was the
silence. Apart from the wind, which gusted erratically and sometimes blew sand
against the walls with a rustle, and the sound of his boots on the hard surface
of the road, there was no noise at all.
Nor was there any sign of anything alive.
It wasn’t just that there were no people in the street – in this heat, they
might well have been staying indoors. But there wasn’t even a bird sitting on
the roof, a desert lizard basking in the sun, or even a withered bush still
valiantly clinging on to life. There was nothing.
Yet it was not dead. The whole town
throbbed with a kind of anticipation, as though just waiting for something to
happen, something it had been anticipating for a long time.
And he had a feeling that what it had been
anticipating was his arrival.
He thought about turning back, but he
already knew it was impossible, that there was no way now but onward. Turning
back would only mean that he would have to wander the desert again, endlessly,
in search for something that was no longer there.
Very well then. Whatever it was, he would
face it, and face it alone. He took a deep breath, checked the sword of
nameless metal on his back, and stepped forward once more.
He hadn’t gone far when he heard the
singing. At first he didn’t realise it was
actually singing. It was so soft that had everything not been so silent he
wouldn’t have heard it at all.
It was a thin, high, wordless song, at the
very upper limit of hearing, rising and falling in such complex patterns that
he couldn’t believe that it came from a human voice. And yet the sweetness in
it was so great that it might have brought tears to his eyes if he had still
been capable of tears. And almost without his conscious volition, his feet moved,
taking him closer to the singing.
It came from one of the smaller houses in a
side street, a building so much the same bleached colour as the desert that it
seemed as though the sands had been gathered up and somehow made into walls and
a roof. He paused, then, unsure if he should enter, something in the back of
his mind urging him to turn away and leave as quickly as he could, to continue
on to the end of the town – if there was
an end to the town.
But he might wander among these streets
forever, and there was nowhere to go if something happened. He took a deep
breath, settled his helmet more securely on his chain mail coif, and walked up
to the door.
It opened slowly to his touch, reluctantly,
as though it had not moved in a long, long time and hadn’t thought it would
ever have to move again. The room inside was dark and thick with shadow, and he
paused to let his eyes adjust. The singing came from somewhere in the shadow,
and had not paused for a moment, not even at the opening of the door.
Blinking away the darkness, and stooping to
avoid the sagging lintel of the door, he entered.
She was sitting on the other side of the
room, bent over something on a frame, her fingers flickering to and fro, while
she sang, sang, the wordless tune. He could see little of her for the shapeless
gown she wore, grey as the dust. Only her long, pale arms and fingers, and the
side of her face, moved back and forth as she worked the frame.
“Lady?” he asked. “Lady?”
Slowly, she turned. She must have once been
a great beauty, but her face was drawn and thin, with her eyes huge and staring
in the gloom. She stopped her singing and stared at him.
“Are you all right, Lady?” he repeated,
feeling inadequate.
Her lips moved, trembling. Her voice was a
whisper. “Are you real?”
“Well, yes,” he said. “As real as anything
is. What are you doing here, Lady?” In order not to have to stare at her, he
peered around the gloom. The thing she had been working on was a loom of some
kind, and she was spinning a mass of the grey material. It looked as though she
was making thread out of the dust.
She didn’t answer his question. Getting to
her feet, she came across the room to him, obviously agitated. “Why have you
come here? Leave while you still can. Oh...” she peered into his face, her huge
black eyes seeking. “You can’t leave,
can you? It’s already too late.”
He looked at her. “Already too late? Could
you explain?”
“Explain...I wish I knew everything, so I
could explain. All I can tell you is
that anyone who enters this town can’t leave again.”
“And where is everyone else?”
“They’re there.” She waved a hand.
“Everywhere. All over the town. Only they don’t want to come out, and who can
blame them?”
“They don’t?” He turned to look out of the
door. The street lay quiet in the sun. “Why don’t they want to come out?”
“Would you,
if all you could do was wander around and never be able to get out again, just
hurt yourself with the memories and the yearning?” She touched her mouth with
her long pale fingers. “I’m sorry, you’ve just arrived. I shouldn’t have spoken
so shortly. But you’ll find out for yourself.”
“Well,” he said, “I intend to leave if I
can.”
She smiled slightly. “That’s what we all
said when we came here. But we never left, any of us.”
“So,” he said, going to the door and
looking out, at the unchanging street, “it’s always been like this ever since
you first came?”
“Ever since I first came?” She considered
the question, her head tilted to one side. “You know, I’m not sure if I even
know how long it’s been since I came here. Sometimes it seems as though I’ve
been here forever. Why don’t you sit down?”
He sat on one of the stools in the room,
and she took her place before the loom. Her fingers began to flicker.
“What is this place, Fallen Angel?” he
asked her. “It seems to me that I’ve heard something of it, in whispers and
rumour, but I cannot bring it to mind.”
“It’s a long story. But it used to be a
good town once.” She paused a moment, adjusting her loom. “Back then, there
were many people here, and no surprise, because it was on the main route
through the desert.
“Back then, the town was at peace. Perhaps
it was at too much peace. Because when the bad things began to happen, people
did not know what to do.”
“What bad things happened?”
“It started with the coming of the criminal
gangs. Now, a town of this size, it always has some crime. I suppose you would
know that. There are gamblers and prostitutes, thieves and cheats, and the kind
of person who can supply things that you wouldn’t be able to get otherwise.
Every town has them. But these were different.
“They were the worst of the lot, the
dredging of the big towns on the edge of the desert, the scum who could find no
other refuge. They came in dribs and drabs, and when they found this town, like
starving wolves they threw themselves on it, eager to devour.
“There was little the people could do. They
were not used to violence, did not know how to fight, and the gangs were
utterly ruthless. Soon they had carved up the town among themselves, and it
became impossible to go from one street to another without paying a toll to all
sides. And none of the gangs would let anybody leave; it would mean the end of
their earnings, because nobody would stay.
“Then the gangs began to fight each other
for supremacy. It was inevitable, of course, and the only surprising thing was
that it took so long to begin. But when it did, the fighting was savage, and
might have continued until the gangs had destroyed each other completely.”
“But it didn’t happen?” the knight asked, watching the woman’s hands fly over the loom.
“No. For among the criminals was a couple,
a man and a woman, who went by the names of Stoneface and Firelight. These two
were as fierce and cruel as they had vision and ambition, and those they had in
plenty. They were the leaders of two rival, but small, gangs, both far too
small to be able to stand against the rest. But Stoneface and Firelight decided
that if they got together they could defeat all the rest, and take the city for
their own.
“It must have been a strange sight when
they met for the first time, in an alley between the two gangs’ territories.
Stoneface was short and very muscular, and had a face that matched his name,
while Firelight was tall and beautiful, and so they seemed as mismatched physically
as they were rivals in crime. But there was a spark between them, which both
recognised, and they sealed their deal that night.
“The gang wars that followed were still
long and hard, but the two together proved more than a match for the others,
who were stronger but had neither their planning nor their ruthlessness. Also,
Stoneface and Firelight offered the other gangs good terms to change sides after
killing their leaders. In only a few weeks, the last of the other gangs was
defeated and assimilated, and the two of them ruled over Fallen Angel together,
like king and queen.
“And then the real trials of the town
began. If things had been bad before, they became infinitely worse. With nobody
to check their cruelty, no other gangs to fear, the two visited the full force
of their depravity on the people.”
“They became drunk on power.”
“On power, yes, and on their own capacity
for evil. Evil so great that even they could
not escape it, and it caught them, and changed them.”
“Changed them? How?”
“How can I explain? I don’t know the words.
Things happened that no one should have to see, nobody should have to bear. Even
I...” She broke off, looking down at her pale, twisting hands.
“You?”
“Never mind what I had to go through. The
main thing is, you can’t ever leave, now that you’re in here.”
“Who’s going to stop me? The gangs? I’d
like to see them try.”
“Oh they will, Sir Knight, they will.” She
looked at him wistfully. “Though if you could...”
“I would take you along, and anyone else
who wishes to go,” he told her. “If, that is, you want to come.”
She smiled and got up from her loom. “It
would be nice,” she said, “if only I could believe that you would be able to
leave. But I don’t, for others before you have tried.”
“We shall see.” The sword of the nameless
metal lay heavy in the scabbard across his back, and he grew conscious of it. “Lady?
Where can I find the gang?”
“They’ll find you,” she said. “In fact, it’s
certain that they watched you come.”
He smiled at her. “Well, then, I am leaving
now. If they want to stop me, they’ll have to do so now. Will you come with me?”
She looked at him for a long time, and then
nodded. “I’ll come.”
*********************************
“I came to tell you I’m leaving, Man.” The demon leaned down from the
beast’s back, her horns framing her face. “I did not want to leave without
saying goodbye.”
“No, wait.” He reached up towards her, but
his questing fingers failed to touch her arm. “Don’t go.”
“I can’t stay, Man.” Her face was filled
with sorrow. “I waited as long as I could, but I have to go away now. We have
to face the future, you along your path, the beast and I along mine.”
“Please,” he began. “You can’t go. I want
to be with you. Please don’t leave me.”
“It’s too late, Man.” The beast was already
walking away into the darkness, and the demon’s hand, as she held it out, just
failed to touch his. “Don’t forget me...” she said, her voice trailing away
behind her.
“No,” he said, his voice catching in his
throat in a strangled sob. “No, no...”
“No,” he said, his throat dry. The darkness
was absolute as he opened his eyes. There was a rough surface under his face,
rubbing against his cheek past the edge of his coif. He hurt all over.
Trying to sit up, he found that he could
only raise his head a short distance. He was lying in some kind of confined
space, barely wide enough to accommodate his body. Kicking out with his feet,
he could feel nothing, nor if he held out his hands in the direction of his
head.
“Where am I?” he asked pointlessly. Not
only was there nobody to hear or answer, the mustiness of the air told him
nobody had likely been here in a long time. Except whoever had put him here, of
course.
“How did I get in here?” he amended.
It was difficult to remember. He could
recall stepping out of the old sand-coloured house, the woman in grey close
behind him. Once in the street, he had taken the sword from its scabbard and
held it in his hand, ready. But there was nobody to fight. Not then.
They had almost made it out of the town, to
the other side where he could see the white road stretching through the desert,
the woman and he, and he had begun to wonder why nobody had left before. And he
had just turned to check on the street behind when...
What?
He couldn’t remember. He’d turned to check
on the street behind, and all he remembered after that was his dream with the
demon, and waking in the darkness, with pain all over and unable to see a
thing.
How long had he been here? It was
impossible to tell, but from the dryness of his throat and the stiffness when
he tried to move his limbs, he thought it had been several hours at least,
perhaps as much as a day. What was happening? Had the gang got him? What about
the woman? What had they done to her?
He had to get out of here. Somehow.
There was no way to tell which way he ought
to go. But he couldn’t stay here. No way
but onwards, he thought grimly. Even if onwards merely brought you to even
worse grief than what you’d left behind.
With difficulty, pressing his gloved hands
on the rock over his head, he managed to lever himself forward a little. It
wasn’t much, but it was a beginning. He couldn’t bend his knees enough to put
his feet flat against the floor, so that was no good. But this was better than
nothing.
Slowly, wearily, he began pushing himself along.
He was in a tunnel or passage of some kind, he realised, cut into the stone a
very long time ago. It went on and on, until he had stopped wondering where he
was going, until he had stopped thinking about anything at all, until all he
was aware of was the screaming pain in the muscles of his arms.
The end of the tunnel, when it came, caught
him by surprise. He had just given his body another weary push when the top of
his helmet came into jarring contact with something hard. Exploring with his
fingers, he found the passage blocked.
A long moment of baffled fury and
frustration washed over him. All that effort wasted! Now he would have to go
back the other way, if he could. It wasn’t at all clear that he could.
He might be stuck here forever.
Wait, he thought. Calm down and
get a grip on yourself. The rock blocking the way felt irregular, not like
the rough but flat stone of the tunnel. When he pushed with his hands, he felt
something give. A couple of pebbles bounced off the conical surface of his
helmet. He pushed again, and heard something fell heavily on the other side. And
then, flooding into the passage, was a stream of cool, fresh air.
After that it didn’t take much time to move
away the rest of the stone. A lot of it fell on him, but in the confined space,
it didn‘t fall far, and his armour protected him from injury. With every bit
that fell away, his hands had more freedom to work, and in only a little while
he flung away the last of the pebbles which had fallen on him. A final push,
and he fell head first out of the tunnel.
It wasn’t much of a fall. Just below was a
pile of rubble and drifted desert sand, and he rolled a short distance down it
before reaching a flat stone floor. Dusting himself off as best he could, he
stood up.
The first thing he did was check for his
weapons. They were gone, of course, both the ancient dark sword and the steel
knife he carried in his boot. He’d have been astonished if they hadn’t been.
Then he began to feel around him, to find
out where he was.
He stood at the bottom of a vertical shaft,
like a dry well, which rose up into the darkness. Fresh cold air came down it,
and with only a little exploration he found iron rungs set into the stone. They
felt old and fragile, not really strong enough to bear the weight of him and
his armour, but there was no other way out. Slowly, testing each rung for
strength, he began to climb.
At the top of the shaft was another sloping
tunnel, this one heading upwards. In the darkness, his feet felt iron rails,
and lumber. Now he knew. He was in an old mine of some sort.
He did not have to follow the tunnel very
far. It emerged into a wooden shed, with the side opposite the main tunnel
open. And when he saw what lay outside, he had a moment when he thought of
retreating back into the tunnel.
It was night, but the night was filled with
light. Fallen Angel seemed to have come alive. The streets were filled with
people coming and going, but they weren’t people he’d care to meet if he could
avoid it. He saw not one who wasn’t heavily armed, and most, men and women
alike wore spiked leather armour or chain mail. A bonfire burned in the middle
distance, its sullen red glow frowning over everything.
Something touched his flesh under his chin,
just above the margin of his coif. It was something hard, and very sharp.
“Don’t move,” a voice said, quite
pleasantly, “or I shall cut your throat.”
Cursing himself for not having been more
alert, he turned his eyes as far as he could without moving his head. The man
beside him was short and very broad, his neck, shoulders and arms bulging with
muscle. His face looked as though it had been hacked out of a slab of granite.
“Stoneface,” he said.
The short man raised his eyebrows. “I see,”
he said, “that you’ve been hearing things. Curious, are you?” He put a tiny
hint of pressure on the knife he was holding to the knight’s neck. As far as
the man in armour could see, it seemed to be his own steel blade. “Well? Would
you like your curiosity satisfied?”
“Do I have a choice?”
The man called Stoneface grinned. “I like
that,” he said. “Of course you don’t. Come along.”
They stepped out on to the street. A small
crowd had already gathered. They looked at him rather like starving desert
jackals would at a piece of meat.
“An enemy spy,” someone said.
“Kill him,” somebody else replied. “Kill
him now.”
“No, no,” Stoneface said. “Our friend
deserves the warmth of our hospitality, don’t you think?” He looked around, his
knife still to the knight’s throat. “Don’t you think?” he repeated.
“Yes,” the person who had called the knight
a spy laughed. “It’s a cold night anyway.” Hands grabbed at the knight’s arms
and pushed him along towards the bonfire.
It had already been used. In the middle of
it was a post, and something that had been lashed to it sagged, still tied by
the arms and legs, its face bent into the flames. He thought he knew who it
might have been.
“So,” Stoneface said, “how do you like Fallen
Angel? Is it to your tastes?”
“He’s to my tastes,” a voice said, soft but
penetrating. “Totally to my tastes, Stoneface.”
The crowd fell silent and parted like water
before the prow of a boat as she came through it. She was tall and exquisitely
dressed, in dark red with a cloak of orange. Her face was covered with a mask
that reflected the light of the fire like a mirror.
“Do you know who I am?” she asked, looking
the knight up and down. Even Stoneface had fallen silent and was watching her
cautiously. “Well?”
“Firelight,” he said.
“Of course.” She stepped up to him, so
close that he could smell her, a perfume that brought to mind an exotic spice.
Her hand rose, one gloved finger running down the knight’s cheek. “Do you like
me, knight?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t exactly got to
know you yet.”
She cocked her head, studying him through
the eye holes in her mask. “And do you like Fallen Angel, knight? You’ve got to
know it a bit better than me, haven’t you?”
“I didn’t come here to like or dislike it.
I was just passing through.”
“I’m afraid nobody just passes through
Fallen Angel, my friend. They stay back, as you will.” Her finger traced the
line of his other cheek. “Won’t you?”
He didn’t reply. The finger ran down to the
line of his throat.
“You have a choice,” Firelight continued. “You
could choose to stay back, of your own accord. I could make it worth your
while. After all,” she put her masked face almost against his, “I could get to
fancy you. And maybe you could like me, too.”
“And if I don’t?”
“That would be sad,” she shrugged, “but I
don’t see that it would be a problem. I could ask Stoneface here put that knife
into your throat. Or...” she pulled aside her cloak, and he saw something long
and midnight-black hanging from her waist, something very familiar. “Or, I
could use this on you. You know, it, don’t you?”
“I know it,” he said.
“And there’s the third possibility.” She motioned
with her head. “You could join our late friend on the fire.”
“Is that...” the knight thought of the
woman in the house and her huge, tragic eyes. “Is that what you did with her?”
“With whom? Does it even matter?” Firelight
tapped her finger on his mailed shoulder. “Well, what is it to be?”
The knight said nothing.
“Burn him,”
Stoneface said.
Firelight nodded. “Burn him.”
The eager hands pushed him forward.
*******************************************
They had
tied him to a post, and piled wood around his feet. Now they stood back in a
circle, but he could still hear them, even those he couldn’t see.
“Think he’ll scream?” one asked. “I’ll bet
he’ll scream.”
“How much are you willing to bet?” someone
answered.
“He won’t live long enough to scream,” a
third person said. “The smoke will do for him first, like the other one.”
He tried to block out the talk of the
crowd, focussing instead on Stoneface and Firelight talking. The short muscular
man handed the woman a lighted torch.
Firelight bent to push the torch into the
piled wood. As the flames rose, she stepped back, and, looking up at the
knight, slowly pulled off her mask.
Then something struck.
It struck from out of the darkness, in a
great rising shriek, drowning out the screams of the crowd. It was red glowing
wings and talons atop slashing hooves, death on the move, smashing down
everything in its way. It reared above the cowering forms of Stoneface and Firelight,
and came down on them like a falling mountain. And then the naked red winged
fury had leaped through the fire and tearing at the ropes tying the knight to
the post.
“Demon,” he murmured, as the smoke rasped
in his throat, “I knew you would come.”
Then his consciousness ebbed, and he knew
nothing more.
*******************************************
She had
put him on the back of the beast, and was holding him in place when he awoke. All
around, the desert lay in the morning light. There was no trace of the town.
“Demon,” he murmured. “You came back for me.”
“Shh.” She sat behind him and cradled his
head between her breasts. “Don’t talk.”
“I must.” He turned his head as far as he
could, to look at her. “Did you follow me all the time? You must have, of
course.” He pressed his tongue against his palate to moisten his mouth. “It
wasn’t real, any of it.”
“It wasn’t?”
“I had my doubts, right from the start.
That name, Fallen Angel. I knew I’d heard of it before, but I couldn’t remember
where. But fallen angels aren’t real, are they? And anything named after them
wouldn’t be real either?”
“It’s just a name.”
“It wasn’t just the name.” He reached down
to his boot and felt the knife, back where it belonged. “There was the story
the woman told, about how nobody could leave. How could the gangs ever make any
money if nobody could leave? Where did they get their food and water? And how
did they stop absolutely everyone from leaving? It didn’t make sense.
“Nor did it make sense that when they had
me in their power, they didn’t just kill me, but instead put me in a place I
could escape from, if only I kept my head. That place was a mine. What was a
mine doing in a desert town in the middle of nowhere?
“And when I did manage to escape, if I’d
kept my head a little longer, they might never have caught me at all. Instead I
allowed myself to be captured through my own stupidity.”
“You aren’t stupid.”
“You think so?” He laughed shortly. “I know
it as surely as the sword is back in the scabbard on my back. If it required
any confirmation, it was when Firelight pulled off her mask, and I saw her
face.” He paused. “Do you know whose face it was?”
“No,” the demon said. “Who was she?”
“She was the woman in the house.” The
knight watched the beast’s nodding head as it trudged forward. “I should never
have left you,” he said. “That was stupid, dangerous and I regretted it almost
at once. And I don’t want to be away from you ever again.”
“Hush,” she said. “There’s no need to talk
about it. You’re with me now.”
“Of course there’s a need to talk about it,”
the knight said. “Did you arrange the whole thing just so I could discover for
myself if I could get along without you? Was it all a game played out in my
mind?”
The demon said nothing.
“Demon,” he said, “was that it?”
“Hush,” she repeated, and hugged him
against her breasts. “Go to sleep, Man. There will be much to do when you wake,
new roads for us to tread. Go to sleep.”
Warm and secure in her embrace, he slept.
Copyright B Purkayastha 2015
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| [Image Source] |
