Eric Van Lustbader - Dragons on the Sea of Night

BENEATH AN OPAL MOON

Eric V. Lustbader

For Ralphine

Contents

PREFIGURE:

On Green DolphinStreet I

ONE: CITY OF WONDERS

Rubylegs 13

Koppo 36

Circus of Souls 66

Snatch 86

TWO: PURSUING THE DEVIL

TheLorcha 101

Mer-Man'sTales 116

Fugue 132

Water'sEdge 164

THREE: THE FIREMASK

Intimations 181

Demoneye 189

TheAnvil 204

Sardonyx 220

The OpalMoon 231

FOUR: LION IN THE DUSK

Idyll 243

The Orphans 250

And All the Stars to GuideMe 256

Thus westruggle so that our historyshall become the salvationof our children.

From the Tablets of the Iskamen

PREFIGURE:

On Green Dolphin Street

THE Scarred Manenters Sha'angh'sei at sunset. He pauses before the towering cinnabar escarpment of the western gate and turnsin his dustysaddle. Above him, a pair of ebon carrion birds spread their grotesquely longwings, hovering,startlingly set off by the flare of the sky. Piled clouds riding like chariotsof crimson fireobscure for long moments the bloated ablate of the sun as it sinks slothfully towardthe heights of thecity already lost within the thickening haze. It is a unique mark of the sunsetsin Sha'angh'seithat the city itself and the land all around it is first engulfed by the purest crimson, sliding, as the sundisappears behind the man-madefacade into the amethyst and violet which heralds the night.

But the scarred man's deep-set eyes, slitted and as opaque as drystones, study only the winding much-traveled highway behind him and the steady lines of jumbled traffic ox-cartspiled high withraw rice and silk, horsemen, soldiers, and traveling merchants, businessmen, farmers on foot moving toward him and the city;the outboundflow is of no import to him.

His horse snorts, shaking its head. Gently, the scarred man strokesits neck below the short mane with a thin red hand. The stallion's coat is lusterless, mattedwith the mingled dust of the highway, the caked mud of narrow back roads and the grease of many a hasty meal.

The scarred man pulls at his hat, a floppy felt affair which,constructed anaesthetically, does little more than conceal his long and haggard face. Satisfied at last, he turns and,slouched in his highand dusty saddle, presses against his mount with his heels, riding through the gate. He raises his eyes as hemoves, watching the perspectivechanging, deriving pleasure from the shifting angles as he studies the endless bas-reliefs carvedinto the cinnabar of the dark western gate, an epic monument to a dichotomy: the triumph and the cruelty of war.

The scarred man shivers even though he is not cold. He does notbelieve in omens yet he thinks it interesting that he enters Sha'angh'sei through the western gate,erected as a sinister reminder of a particularly odious aspect of man's nature. But, he asks himself,would it really make any difference if he had made his entry into the city through thegreen-onyx southern gate, the alabaster eastern gate, or the intricate red-lacquered wood and black ironnorthern gate? Then hethrows his head back and utters a short bitter laugh. No. No. Not at all. For atthis hour of sunsetthey are all stained crimson by the lowering light.

The scarred man breaks into the populous surf of the great city andhis journey is slowed by the milling throngs of people as if he is passing through a moving field of poppies. Hefeels an end to longisolation, far from the companionship of man, a seemingly interminable time with only his stallion, the stars and the moon ashis family. Yet as herides into the explicit riot of the city, his mount walking through the clouds ofjostling men andwomen and children, fat and thin, large and small, young and old, ugly and fair,as he passes thebursting shops, stalls, stands with striped awnings, the tangled buildings with their dense cluster ofswinging signs advertising the tempting wares within, he realizes that never before has he felt such an apartnessfrom the warmthof.the family of man. And this peculiar alienness suffuses him with suchcompleteness that hisbody begins to quake as if he is ill.

He digs his bootheels into the flanks of his mount and shakes thereins, abruptly anxious to reach his destination. Through this vast kinetic sea he jounces, metal jangling, dustyleather creaking,the grime of travel heavy upon him. A torrent of filthy children, their torsos ribbed like corpses, brush againsthis legs like a separate eddy in this fetid surf and he is obliged to press his boots tightlyagainst the stallion's flanks lest, howling, they pull them from his feet. He extracts a copper coin fromhis wide sash and flings it high into the air so that it catches the oblique light. As it disappears into theswirling mass of pedestrianson his left, the children abandon him, rushing to follow the flight of the spinning coin. They plow through thecrowd, tenaciously searchingon hands and knees in the slime and offal of the street.

He moves on, turning a corner at an acute angle, following the street.He inhales the rich musk of coriander and limes, the heavy incense of charring meat, the somewhatlighter scents of fresh fish and vegetables flash-cooked in hot sesame oil. As he passes the opening of a dark alley, thethick sweet smell ofthe poppy resin for which Sha'angh'sei is so famous, hits him with such intensityit takes his breathaway and he is dizzied.

The din of the city, after so long on the road, alone with himself,is claustrophobically overpowering,a constant harsh cacophony consisting of wails, shrieks, cries, shouts, laughter, whispers, chanting, aglorious babble of voices, testament to the indomitability of man.

Within the deep shadows of the felt hat, the scarred man ishollowcheeked. A long bent nose leads inevitably to thick gnarled lips as if, in his wild earlier years,he had fought with his fists within the hempen circle, as is the wont of certain of the folk of thewestern plains of the continent of man. His hair is silver, silken, flowing long down his back, held awayfrom his wide wrinkled foreheadby a thin plaited band of copper. His face, defiantly hairless, exhibits the tracery of livid white scars puckeringthe flesh of his cheeks and throat like rain on the surface of a pond. He wears a long travelingcloak of a dark, indeterminate color, owing to the grit of his journey. Beneath it, a tunic and leggingsof deepest brown. Hanging from his waist from a simple stained leather belt is a scabbarded curvingsword, wide-bladed and single-edged.

He pauses beside a wine stall on Thrice Blessed Road and,dismounting, leads his mount out of the enormous crush of the thoroughfare. Ashe strides into thedimness beneath the pattemed awning, he spies the wineseller, moon-faced andalmond-eyed, arguingwith two young women over the price of a leather flagon of wine. With a sweep ofhis deep-seteyes, the scarred man takes in the curving bodies of the women, their faces tippedhigh in anger. Butthey are restless, his eyes, and while he listens and waits somewhat impatiently,his gaze darts thisway and that, alighting on a face here, the pale flash of a hand there. For amoment, he observes aman with eyes like olives and black curling hair so long that it covers his shoulders, until he is met byanother man and they depart. The scarred man's head cocks at the thumping sounds of running feet, shouts echo anddiminish as a bodyrushes past outside, elbowing through the crowd. He turns away. He asks the wineseller, now free, for a cupof spiced wine, downs it in one swallow. It is not the rice wine of the region, which he finds too thin for his taste,but the heartierburgundy of the northern regions. He purchases a flagon.

The sunset is fading, the sky above Sha'angh'sei turning mauve andviolet as night approaches boldly from the east.

The scarred man leads his stallion left into a narrow alley, crookedand filled with refuse and excrement. There must be bones here, hidden perhaps in the high dark mounds heapedagainst the sidesof the building walls. Human bones stripped of all flesh, all identity. The stench is appalling and hebreathes shallowly as if the air itself might be poisonous. His mount whinnies and he pats its neck reassuringly.