Dead Run

  The first ancestor-golem hulked into the courtyard and the warrior Arkus found that he could not move. It was not fear, though his skin was both cold and sweaty and his heart had become a wild beast raging against the cage of his ribs. In truth, he had expected to be immobilized by his fear of the thing, but he found now, even though his awareness of it was subconscious, that his terror was dwarfed by the sudden and inexorable knowledge of his own insignificance.
 
  The darkness came not from the blanket of night, but rather from a thin, greyish veil of ash that had been falling on the empty city of Cherog since the beginning of the world. As a boy, Arkus often wondered how such a thing was possible, how the city could avoid the consumption of a thousand years of sooty snow, but now, in his search of the broken arcades and colorless gardens, he had fled many times from strange, worm-like creatures that clearly fed on the choking stuff.
 
  Even with the thick cloth he had pulled across his nose and mouth, Arkus could not breathe well and the failure of this life-giving function panicked him. The city was worse than even the most gifted of the nightmare-tellers had prophesied. Its buildings revealed no secrets concerning its founders or purpose. It existed at the edge of mortal knowledge, both of geography and myth, shrouded in ash, and though stories always spoke of it as some vast, silent bastion guarding the marches of the Desolate Kings, Arkus had learned that it was far from empty, or silent.
 
  Scouring the city, trying to master his rising terror and searching for the purple flower that was his purpose, Arkus had seen creatures that seemed to be the embodiment of decay: gaunt, scabrous things that clung to the stones, as though feasting on the dereliction of the architecture. None of them could ignore a living, breathing man, however, and Arkus had been forced to move like a criminal. He moved slowly, though his shortening breath begged him to hurry, and he began to feel claustrophobic and trapped.
 
  Despite this strain, he had persisted. He had systematically and carefully searched the avenues of Cherog until finally he had found the small garden where, once every twenty years, the purple flower called the kingsblood bloomed. As far as he had seen, nothing else in the city bore true, vibrant life and the existence of the flower was a piece of sacred lore for his people. He had heard a dozen stories explaining this bizarre lifecycle, but looking down on them, fearing for his life, he found that he didn’t care where they came from, or why they never bloomed in the same place twice, or why they slumbered so long. Without pausing, he had knelt quickly and harvested the entire crop. Tradition urged him to take a single stem, but he was far beyond tradition and against the ancestor-golems, he needed any edge he could manufacture.
 
  The golem in the courtyard was close enough to where Arkus stood that it was not obscured: a massive, unnatural likeness of a man formed of clay. It was not made to represent a single man, but rather the strengths and totem-qualities of an entire bloodline, and so its resemblance to its creators—men from Arkus’s own nation—was only suggested. Instead, certain features were heavily emphasized. In this case, it was the head and the legs, each oversized and bulbous, boasting the superior intelligence and speed of the family who had created it.
 
  When it moved, it betrayed its animus. Sewn together by the spirit matter of the ancestors, each of the golem’s movements was preceded by a wafting, immaterial, spirit-movement that foreshadowed the motion of the physical vessel.
 
  The ancestor-golem was the manifestation of a bloodline’s entire heritage, created once every twenty years for the sole purpose of traveling to Cherog, finding the purple blossom, and returning. The bloodline of the first to return earned the right to rule the tribe for the next twenty years, when the golems would be created again.
 
  Arkus stared at the thing that was moving slowly toward him. He had seen the golems before at a distance, but he had never been in the presence of one. It lumbered forward without reacting to the warrior. It was hundreds of years of experience and wisdom. Arkus doubted it even saw him, a young man of less than thirty. Such a creature was less than a child to the ancestor-golem, less than an infant.
 
  The warrior watched, slowly beginning to regain control of himself, curious what the thing would do when it found the garden empty. As warmth returned to is legs, he hurried toward the far end of the courtyard, where a memory of an arch indicated the way to the street.
 
  Stop, he thought something said, but as he lurched to a halt beneath the arch, he realized that no words had been spoken. Instead, his body was simply responding to an unvoiced authority that washed over him and overrode his will.
 
  What have you done? the authority of the ancestors hissed in his marrow. From the corner of his eyes, he saw the abominations of Cherog filling the shadows, greedy for living flesh, but uncertain of the golem.
 
  He did not even try to avoid the question. He knew he would need his strength for other things.
 
  “I have taken the kingsblood,” he said, without turning around. The ancestor-golem was immediately behind him, he knew. He could feel the inhalation of spirit-breath like gentle wind against his soul.
 
  To what end?
 
  “So that my father can continue to be king.”
 
  The thing inhaled again.
 
  Where are your kindred dead? Why did they not come?
 
  “Because they are ashamed,” Arkus said, gathering himself to run. He said it boldly, but in his heart, he saw his father’s face as he watched Arkus ride away from the tribe, from the bloodline, entangled in the arms and lips of Shera the mercenary. He had doomed his tribe for the pale skin and hot blood of a Malenese woman. In less than a week he had found her around another man, but the members of his family had already killed him in their heads, and so he pressed on. He did not know then that he had sired a child through the woman, had diluted the bloodline, but the ancestors knew.
 
  Hot with the betrayal, he threw himself and his sword at anything he could kill, made no friends, and was returned to his father by the gipsies when he was nearly dead.
 
  The authority of the ancestors sighed with amusement and sympathy, both with such condescension that Arkus could barely keep his feet under the weight of the unconscious shame that bore down on him. He braced himself for another question, when a second ancestor-golem turned into the courtyard.
 
  Briefly, the attention of the first thing rose to meet its equal, and Arkus threw himself through the arch and into the street. He put the face of his father in front of him and ran through the alleys of Cherog on legs that represented nothing but his own fear.
 
  The gloom deepened as evening wooed the empty city, and Arkus was dismayed to find the courage of the city’s denizens bolstered by the darkness. He never clearly saw them with his eyes, but his imagination made shapes of them. His breathing came in short, racking croaks and long before he reached the gate of the city, he was forced to stop.
 
  He collapsed in a raised doorway, trying to breathe. With a cry of defiance, he drew his sword and waved it wildly at the menacing forms that were closing in on him. In the darkness and the screen of ash, he could not tell if these enemies were real, or if they were his eyes abandoning him because of the lack of breath. He knew men who had climbed high into the Frostgate and had seen terrible illusions in the famine of the air.
 
  Still brandishing his weapon, Arkus pulled out the wool pouch has mother had given him to carry the kingsblood. She had not actually given it to him. She had treated him with as much contempt as any other in the bloodline when he had returned and found that he had disgraced his family and that their ancestors had refused to compete in the Ritual of the King’s Blood. But when Arkus had promised to complete the ritual himself, though such a thing was unheard of and almost unspeakable, the wool bag had appeared at the door of his hut one morning.
 
  It was stitched with all the proper symbols and Arkus knew it had been made for him by her. She knew as well as any what was at stake for their bloodline if they did not earn the throne again. Arkus’s father had made many enemies, more than most kings, and few of his bloodline would avoid exile, severe punishment, or death if another blood took power.
 
  Tenderly, Arkus removed a single blossom.
 
  “I should take this and leave the rest,” he said to himself. “I can make it to the gate and the fifty miles to my father on my own if I don’t have to worry about the golems. If I don’t have anything they want, they will not notice me, and if I am left to my own skill, I may have a chance of returning first.”
 
  But he knew that even if he made it from this city alive, his chances of returning to his tribe before any of the ancestor-golems were weak. Cherog was built in the middle of a vast, volcanic waste, and the steppes and forest beyond it were no more hospitable. The only reason he had made it to the city first was that he had raced to the coast and hired a man to sail him within a mile of the shore east of Cherog. Then he had swum to the beach and nearly eliminated all of the overland travel. But even so, he had only beat the golems to the city by a day or two. On land, he knew he had no chance without creating for himself an advantage, as he had before. The sailor had refused to wait for him and Arkus did not blame him. No man with his wits anchored off the Desolate Kings for long.
 
  Arkus looked out again at the street. The creatures of Cherog were slowly retreating, which told him one or more of the ancestor-golems was coming. He returned his attention to the purple flower. If he surrendered the kingsblood to any of the golems, he would fail and his family would be destroyed.
 
  Slowly, he opened his mouth, and in a swift maneuver, he shoved the blossom in, buoyed it in saliva, and swallowed. Then, he dug into the bag and consumed the entire crop as though it was the fast-breaking meal of a gipsy shaman after the twenty-eight days of ichib.
 
  At the last flower, Arkus paused. He did not clearly remember the ritual that had made his father king. He had been very young and he was not sure if the power of the ritual required that the flower be present, or if it simply discerned the winner through the supernatural auspice of the ancestors.
 
  He only paused for two breaths, however, before he swallowed the last stem as well. He knew the golems were close and he could not risk one of them compelling him to relinquish the last of the kingsblood.
 
  “It will pass through me anyway,” he said.
 
  Forcing himself to take measured breaths, he used his sword to help him to his feet.
 
  Stop, the authority of the ancestors commanded as the first golem Arkus had encountered rumbled down the street. The second golem was not far behind. Arkus looked for the best route of escape and sobbed a breathless curse when he saw other, heavy forms standing in the haze, suggestions of shadows that slowly materialized into at least a dozen other ancestor-golems.
 
  Arkus lifted his sword, but he had no intention of using it. He hoped by putting up a bold front, he could fool them into thinking he would rush forward. Instead, he began to visualize what the floor plan of the building behind him might be. He had encountered no locks in his exploration of the city and he hoped his experience proved true. If he could just get away from the golems and then avoid them on the way back to the tribe, he could prove that his father deserved to be king and regain the good will of his ancestors.
 
  What have you done with the kingsblood?
 
  It was impossible to discern which of the golems had exerted its authority against him, but it did not matter. Arkus prepared himself to break free from their control and fling himself backward.
 
  Answer.
 
  Arkus staggered at the force of the demand. Again, he realized that he was a single man, pitted against the experience of countless years. He had a sudden vision of himself against the vast tapestry of Cherog, and then of the entire world and all time. The impetus behind these golems was something. It stood for something. He saw the vast river of the world and knew that he was a tiny pebble on the river bottom, while the power of these ancestors combined to create mighty stones that changed the current. He was nothing. They were something.
 
  He shook himself.
 
  “We are not only controlled by the power of our past,” he said, waving his sword.
 
  Answer.
 
  This time, he was sure more than one golem had affected him.
 
  “I have swallowed them,” he said defiantly. “When the ritual is complete, my father will be king once again. You have all failed.”
 
  With a shout, he lunged forward, then quickly changed the focus of his momentum and pushed himself back toward the door. His heart surged with excitement as the latch turned and the door swung open, but then something hard struck his leg and he heard his bone explode from the impact. Crying out, he collapsed to the floor, landing hard on the pommel of his sword. Frantically, he turned to see what had hit him.
 
  An ancestor-golem with enormous arms and legs blocked the entire doorway. Without thinking, Arkus rolled to his back and cringed. Immediately, the golem lashed out and broke the warrior’s other leg as well. Then it stepped back.
 
  Screaming, Arkus looked out at the ancestor-golems that surrounded him. There was something more terrible about them now than before, something menacing. He reached weakly down to touch his ruined legs, unable to think any more of anything but the vast weight of history that was about to bear down on him. It seemed to him that the golems were somehow conversing with each other and he assumed they were discussing the best way to deal with him.
 
  “If you wait,” he said, “I can give the flowers to you.” He choked as he spoke. The ash seemed to be falling more heavily now.
 
  Arkus looked at the shadowy figures skulking behind the golems, waiting for their turn at the injured man, and he wondered what the golems would do if he somehow allowed himself to be consumed by those abominations. If the flowers were destroyed altogether, what would become of the ritual?
 
  Without warning, the ancestor-golems suddenly moved in, clumsily, but deliberately.
 
  “What are you doing?” Arkus shouted, but they ignored him.
 
  He tried to slide back into the building, but the golem who had broken his legs stepped forward and grabbed his left foot. Another golem took his right. One by one, ignoring his thrashing and screaming, the ancestor-golems took hold of his body. Some grasped his arms and legs, others took pieces of skin on his belly. The one from the courtyard, the one with the enormous head, took him by the hair.
 
  “What are you doing?” Arkus wept, but his sobs were abruptly silenced as, with violent force, the ancestor-golems pulled him apart.
 
  One by one, the clay forms picked through the bloody pulp they had revealed and removed a wilted, stained flower. Then, each of them disappeared into the ash-fall and the creatures of Cherog moved in to finally satiate themselves.

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