Nil-Pray

By Christian Read

In a Gothic metropolis of the Dead, a necromancer learns that secrets never die.

Nil-Pray is the city of the Dead, where those who cannot rest in the grave come to exist forever. Although even the Dead find reason for strife.

In the wake of a terrible world war, the ancient, solitary nature of Nil-Pray must change.

Edmund Carver, professional sorcerer, fleeing a foolish past, is employed as one of the few living ever allowed to enter the city. He must work closely with the ancient, eerie inhabitants as they seek to engage once again with the breathing world.

As the Carnal and Spectral factions begin to war on each other, Edmund becomes the target of conspiracies, plots, and ancient ambitions of creatures sunk deep down in death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gestalt Publishing
• Release date: Jun 4, 2017
• ISBN: 9781922023827

Christian Read

Christian Read is a professional writer based in Sydney, Australia with credits for Dark Horse, Phosphorescent Comics and Gestalt Comics including Star Wars Tale, The Witch King, The Eldritch Kid and many more. He has written for computer games such as Sacred 3 and Secret World.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Look below brothers. 

In this age of fur and bone and this land of snow, it is strange to see a man here.  The land is a strong one, mountains overpowering the landscape to the north, the great bay laying at their feet. More to see, a family. Wheel around, brothers. Ride cold wind and circle, watching, chill wind slipping over our black feathers. 

The father of this family draws blade against his attacker, his stone sword held low and threatening. His wife and his children watch, hoping that this man who has commanded them so far north, marched them into alien land, can work a miracle of violence. But he is just one man alone and there are a dozen attackers, with spear-throwers and the blessings of a shaman. There is no miracle to be had. 

Turn your eyes away brothers. These are a cruel people. The man, who will call himself Galveston in times to come, is kept alive to watch the fate of his people. This takes a very long time. Galveston himself they leave alive, one of them ambitious in his cruelty. 

We must land and feast upon the dead. He watches us and we make our red ribbons. He does not hate us. He takes lessons in death watching us, not blaming us for our natures. 

He makes oaths then, bubbling from his lips with blood and just as dark. He dies then but some power, perhaps, has heard him. Something within himself that rises up in his body, uncurling like a serpent. 

Galveston is a new thing then, Dead. 

If not the first, a pioneer. He awakens again and takes a predictable revenge. It stains him forever. He longs for peace. His Death is an uneasy fact. 

Then he learns that death is a very different thing for a deadman. He raises up his victims and makes them Dead like him. Some survive and run and spread the word of what they have seen. There are battles. Crusaders who strive to clean the land of this new menace but Galveston is beyond such a petty level of conflict. 

Word spreads and they come. Ramanga from the hot jungles, eaters of nail-clippings. Soul taking Talamaur. Upier, savage and Nelapsi, as well. The Dead do not all rejoice their state and even those who do find themselves longing for other immortal company. Food is provided. Powerful names come. 

Tuesday rides a storm. The Geistenrex. More. 

A coup comes, predictably but Galveston proves worthy of his status as the leader here. There is a war against the Varcolai that long to drink the moon’s blood but Galveston proves his might, it is appalling, so even that challenge is met. 

Slowly, over long, long years, it is built. Galveston is almost surprised at the size of what has been constructed. Somewhere, it acquires a name: Nil-Pray, the thanatos metropolis. The capital city of the Dead. 

Satisfied, Galveston sleeps. 

Fly away, brothers. We have been watching a long while. Fly south and find the newcomer. 

We will return in good time.

PART ONE

A Northern Locomotion

What the moral? Who rides may read.

When the night is thick and the tracks are blind

A friend at a pinch is a friend, indeed,

But a fool to wait for the laggard behind.

Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne,

He travels the fastest who travels alone.

Rudyard Kipling, The Winners, 1895

CHAPTER ONE

Arrivals

I

Edmund is waiting for the train. 

He stamps his feet against the cold, watching the conductors take a break for some of the thick local coffee. They’ll open the doors in due course. There is nothing but to wait. He sits and takes out his legal pad. Edmund is writing a letter and he has been for some time. 

I must admit, I have not liked it here. The men and their thick moustaches and their waistcoats unbuttoned and the widows. There are very few young men here. They look at me, as if wondering why I should be alive when so many men of my age have died. Who can blame them? I have become self-conscious of my age, my face. There are bullet holes in the walls of some public buildings. Some Hex-Science Radiation here. Men and women both have wooden legs or hooks for hands. 

Nevertheless, I think I would not have enjoyed it here regardless. The food is strong broths of onion and liver, the local drink is something brewed from aniseed and not at all to my taste.

I saw the old gun emplacements in the Church tower. 

The station is a long, low building, grey and white walled with a brown roof. Behind it, the train occasionally screams, vapour whistling like something being hurt. The whole town is in those colours. Relentlessly mundane and functional. Grey and white and brown. He is weary of the broths and cabbages and old, dry goat-meat. He is weary of so much these days. This whole journey should have excited him.

He has travelled here from the great cities of the world in luxury. A journey of weeks in which he has seen elegance, played cards with gentlemen and beautiful women in hotels and casinos and drunk fine wines and eaten good meat. It wearied him too, but there were at least comforts. There’s nothing his travelling per diem can buy him here. 

‘Five minutes, Aingel! Then train!’ 

One of the conductors, the only one who speak Aingel, claps his hands, as if excited. Edmund fakes a grin and nods his thanks. 

‘Where do you go?’ 

It is an impertinent question but Edmund is too far away from everything to concern himself with dignity and the manners of the working man. 

‘North.’ 

The man reaches into his heavy jacket to pull a half-smoked cigarillo out of his breast pocket. It smells of old ash and spit.

With an exaggerated frown, the conductor asks ‘No Skin Land.’ 

Which is a poor translation of Nil-Pray. 

‘No,’ lies Edmund. ‘I shall go to Vashti. To ski.’

It is his cover legend and he has been using it for weeks, parroting his uncle’s story. A bad one as it turns out. 

‘I see you at last stop. No skis!’ 

‘Stolen, alas. I shall rent some. At Vashti.’ 

The conductor looks at him. ‘Skiing. Good.’ Apparently, this has quelled his interest. 

‘Four minutes.’ 

Later, in his letter, Edmund comments on this conversation. 

I’m travelling to a land of dead things, of spirits and corpses that walk. I have work there. When I return to Aingel I shall be fabulously wealthy. I shall be well thought of and in a position to move into whatever kind of work takes my fancy. 

Head up a laboratory. Consultancy work. Possibly even teach. 

Nil-Pray, the dead man’s land. It sounds ghastly I know. I mean, we’ve all heard of it, the towers of bone, the charnel-gardens, the endless canopies of skin and sinew. Still, I rather find myself looking forward to travelling to this country where so few have gone before me.

These are lies again, of course. Edmund is trying to affect enthusiasm. He is simply reporting how he imagines he once would have felt. In truth, he has suffers neither anticipation nor dread. 

The train doors are opening. Lines are forming. Edmund joins the First Class carriage, clutching his own bags. The batman service wired ahead that the man they’d sent for him would join at the next stop. Down the platform an old man argues about his right to take caged chickens aboard.  

As they shuffle onto the locomotive, Edmund thinks of a line. 

I thought I saw you in Lazris, at my hotel. I nearly called your name. I didn’t. It wasn’t you. 

But Edmund is weary of his own need most of all and never writes this. 

II

Edmund usually takes his meals in his compartment but not today. He tells himself he has grown bored with the stuffy confines but in reality, he is sick of his own company. He is in the dining room, bravely. A chandelier, vulgar and ornate, swings in harmony with the motions of the train. An unshaved waiter is pouring him bitter wine while he waits for his poor roast pork to arrive.  Stretching his legs out he lights a cigarillo and stares out the window at the darkness beyond. 

Cloudy night like they’re all cloudy nights. No moon, no stars. Just hills he can barely see. A dame corrects her child’s table manners in Lazrish, the common tongue of the region. He contemplates wine but stays with tea. 

He is done with heavy drinking. It never appeased him like it did in the popular songs. 

‘Do you mind?’ asks a man’s voice in Aingelish and he turns his attention to a heavy fellow  in a rumpled suit standing at his table, clearly awaiting an invitation to sit. It is Edmund’s inclination to demur but manners and boredom compel him. ‘Please do.’

‘Please.’ The fat man squeezes uncomfortably into the bolted seat, adjusts his belly, waistcoat straining against the gaudy gold buttons and extends a hand like an oily bone. 

They shake. 

‘Are you enjoying your journey?

‘It’s been tolerable.’ 

‘My own journey is terrible. Ai! How these Moijhis make terrible servants. My bags rattled this way and that. The terrible chewing of tobacco. A gentleman,’ the fat man nods at Edmund, ‘smokes his tobacco. The food is terrible, their women manly and even the scenery bores. Ah, how I long for this to be done.’ 

He sighs theatrically. 

Edmund stares at the man for a moment, studying his face. Black hair, olive skin, baby soft, fat face touched by a thin, fine moustache and trimmed balboa beard, he is surprisingly young. His colouring and speech hint at a Marian background.  Edmund extends his hand. ‘M. Edmund Carver, at your service.’

‘M. Marius DaBisi, pleased to make your acquaintance. Do you happen to have such a thing as a spare cigarillo upon you?’ 

Allowing that he does, Edmund extends his silver case. 

‘Ah! A handsome thing!’ cries M. DaBisi with pleasure. ‘You Aingelish, you are a clever people for such things. How did you acquire such a lovely item?’

‘My father gave it to me,’ replies Edmund, placing the case back into this breast pocket. 

‘He must be a man of rare taste!’ says the exuberant Marian. 

‘He is dead, sadly.’

Instantly, the fat man’s fat face is mask of tremendous sorrow. 

‘When a man’s sire dies, it is a sad day. You have all my condolences and my sympathies. I grieve with you. The war?’

‘…yes,’ lies Edmund. ‘Would you think less of me if I said I didn’t care to speak of it?’

‘Not at all, my friend! Grief is a private thing! Let us drink and think of happier times, yes?!’

Waving over a waiter, Edmund shares his carafe of wine. The two toast each other, the Marian declaiming ‘To newfound friends!’ Then he gulps down his wine, helping himself to more as Edmund sips. DaBisi inhales that glass as well. 

‘So, M. Carver, would you be so kind as to inform a fellow traveller your business in such a cheerless part of the world?’

‘I consult for the ATC. I’m a land assayer.’ His legend again. So close to the truth it makes no difference. 

‘The Aingel Trading Concern? You work for great men indeed. No doubt some mission or challenge amongst the ruins of this country. There must be great opportunities for a cartel such as yours. Land spoiled, ancient treasures unearthed, new governments amenable to business.’

‘I’m just an assayer, M. DaBisi. I’m here because our senior staff had no interest in travelling three months away.’ 

‘Nonsense.’ the big man waves this away with a grand sweep of his wrist. 

‘You are a very young man, to be so trusted.’ 

‘Hardly. I’m twenty six in just a few weeks.’ 

‘Where are you bound, then, my middle-aged friend?’ 

‘North, M. DaBisi. I’m going north.’ 

‘Hah! A guarded young. Wise in these days.’ 

Edmund sips on his tea. ‘You’ll have to forgive me then, if I ask your own business and destination.’ 

‘I’m glad you ask!’ announces the Marian. ‘I, sir, am an antiquarian. I collect old and rare things. I buy and trade around the Continent, searching for lovely, rich things. Finding them homes amongst those who have the discernment and passion, also wealth, I add with distaste, to purchase the exotic and the rare.’

Edmund once held such ambitions himself. 

‘A fascinating line of work.’ 

‘Indeed, young sir. I could tell you tales of the things I have seen, touched, found and sold. You would laugh, smile. But, sir, but M. Carver, I propose to tell you a tale that will make you weep.’

‘Tell on.’ 

The food arrives and Edmund offers to share his meal. The Marian extravagantly says no, until he says yes. As the new plate arrives, he begins. 

He talks of crossing the nearby Deloyushian border fleeing Communalists, as mad for blood as sharks. He had been about the business of scouting out treasures and antiques. Edmund translates this to mean he has breaking in to the ruins of Revolt-smashed mansions, journeying deep into the strife-torn territory, searching for the private collections of antiques and objet d’art the Aristos had left behind in the haste to flee the Blacks.

‘Such hardships! Sneaking into the ruins of once great houses, avoiding the thaumaturgic traps? Do you know aught of magic, M. Carver?’

‘Only a little,’ says Edmund, who is inwardly wincing at such unScientific language. The man is not educated. 

‘Daemons! Djinn and dybuks! A house infested by the very forces of any hell you might care to name. Keep clear of deviltry, my new friend, it will bring you to ruin to even cast sight upon the merest imp. And there were stronger things than imps loose in that house the night I freed the idol, sir.’ The big man shivers broadly. 

Edmund, who has indeed seen demons, although no one would use that word, is amused at the notion of this fellow facing down those creatures. In laboratory conditions, bound, warded, and with armed guards, watching an Asura was amongst the most terrifying things he has done. 

Although, nowadays, when he reflects on the memory,  fear is hard to find. There’s just... naught.  

‘And you found what, M.?’

‘Treasure of the Revolt, say the Communalists,’ sniffs the fat man dismissively, ‘as if those mad zealots appreciate art! No, sir, no. I found an item of precious beauty. They are up for the taking, you understand? The Black Armies smelt down exquisite art for bullets and swords. It is not theft, it is liberation I tell you.’ 

Avoiding many of the varied forces of Evil, the treasure hunter had found what he had sought; an idol holy to the Aristo families. Some saint or ancestor, carved from jet and gold by master craftsmen. Hounded by monstrosity, he claims, DaBisi had fled with his prize, only to be sold out by his assistants, who had informed Revolt police about his actions.

DaBisi had made it across the border, running from the agents of Collectivism, keeping one step ahead of the cruel Revolutionaries who had dogged him at every turn. Crossing the border into Moijh by night, he had taken the first train north that he could find. This one. 

‘It would seem, sir that you are well away from the grasp of the Revolt then. And with the good fortune to have this treasure you risked much for.’ comments Edmund.

‘I have the item, this precious artefact on me, you understand. It is worth a considerable, considerable, amount of money, of cash reward. I am afraid, however, that if the Blacks catch me on this locomotive, I shall be arrested. Stripped of my property. Maybe worse. So it is, M. Carver, that I have a proposition for you.’ 

There was a time, Edmund will write, when I was innocent of such men as M. DaBisi. I find it troubling I cannot locate where or how I became intimate with suspicion. Nevertheless, I find it difficult to credit my foolishness in answering his obvious confidence game.

‘If you hold my property for some time. Say, three days, until we reach Prilvell, the perhaps I can arrange for you a cut of my profit. I know what you think, you think, but DaBisi, Marius, surely there is risk for me! The Blacks are known as butchers to all men of rank and class. This is, however, untrue. They would never search an Aingelishman. All you would have to do is keep a hold of my property until the end of this trip. Then, transfer it back to me when we are done. If they find me, I will claim, truthfully I have no such artefact as they seek out. Safety for me, easy money for you, yes?’

‘It is tempting. But, I have an offer which would reduce risk to both of us and, with luck, bring you a buyer more quickly than you might have supposed.’

A flicker of greed passes behind the fat man’s eyes. Flushed from wine and brandy, he has begun to very slightly perspire, the juice shining at his forehead. 

‘I would be most eager to hear such a thing.’

Edmund has not liked these kinds of people and has only grown more reasons for it in the last year. He is curious to find that he can summon up the strength to still dislike them. 

‘Sir. At Teznesh, the terminal of this line, I shall be greeted by a great Mortis King of Nil-Pray. Shocking, I know, but believe me when I tell you this is true. This King is said to be five thousand years old, a soul-eater, blood-drinker. I am seeing him to arrange the purchase he wishes to make of some land. I know, from our correspondence, that he is quite the collector of antiques and suchlike. I could arrange a meeting with him, should you like. He is a man, if that is a word we can use, of intense scrupulosity. I’m sure a man of your character and bravery would impress him. Should what you carry be of worth, well, he has few limits to his wealth and few uses for it.’

A moment goes by. Another. Then the fat man breaks out in a laugh, slapping the table. ‘Ah, Aingelishman! You make me laugh. For a moment, I think you are telling the truth! Ha! We must drink to such a fine joke!’

Then Marius DaBisi sees his companion is not laughing. Edmund is looking at him over the rims of his spectacles. 

The fat man gets up. 

‘You will excuse me. I’m afraid that too much drinking has unmanned me. I must think on your offer. And carefully. Good night. Thank you for your hospitality.’

The fat man waddles away with an ungainly speed. Edmund takes a cigarillo from his fine case, lights it and stares at the face that stares back at him from the train window, smiling very thinly. 

Curiously, two days later the train will stop. M. DaBisi’s body, given a new red smile from ear to ear will be removed. His baggage will be missing. There will be no sign of a struggle. 

III

Excerpted from ‘My Months in Heaven’, by Shen. Unpublished, circa 1989.

‘Put the spider in your mouth, Shen.’

The first and last and finest bit of advice my grandfather had given me was exactly that. Put the spider in your mouth. Nine at the time, I nodded twice and ate it.

It squirmed and bit at my tongue and cheeks and soft palate. 

It has been many years since the events I will now dictate. I am breaking several contracts which are not amenable to statues or cessation of accordance. I have grown older, a private citizen, a rich man. But I wish to relate the events that took place in Nil-Pray fifty years ago.

For me, it started that afternoon in the paddies with my grandfather. 

The spider was a teer-eer, nearly the size of a boy’s fist and renowned for viciousness. They were covered in black and dark gold hair and lived in the rice paddies for the first two years of their lives, hunting larvae of other insects, the parents of those larvae and very occasionally, small birds. More important than mere meat, though, were other teer-eer. If the hairy spiders could capture and consume seven others of their kind, the cannibalism acted as a catalyst. The creature would mutate, growing in arcane directions unknown to the compass, putting on mass and bulk not in this world, but in the halfworlds. 

It would become a predator in different universes simultaneously. Fearful enough in this one. The size of a small dog, strong as a man and clever. Not normally dangerous to humans but neither was it good eating, so the people of my village destroyed the young when they could. Usually, teer-eer left the rice fields after it had gained this instar and took to the bamboo-shrouded mountains. 

The real peril from the teer-eer wasn’t just violence, it was its perceptions. A frogspawn cluster of eyes mounted its head, so that it might peer into the other worlds its bulk inhabited. Whatever it saw there occasionally caused it to flee, or enter a killing rage, against what and where no one could say. Fully-grown teer-eer can bite through a tire with four sets of serrated jaws. 

The lesson I took from Grandfather’s advice, when I was old enough to ponder it, was that actions were best taken early and with commitment. 

Potentiality was a grave a threat as any reality. 

Grandfather viewed the world as a garden that he weeded and carefully landscaped and plotted.  Pruning was a skill he had studied, deconstructed, reconstructed and mastered. As a boy, this perception had come to me in a flash of images and ideas I could not name or reduce to language, a rush of nascent knowledge I have spent the rest of my life examining and improving.  Through the pain and disgust of the spider making ruin of my mouth, I knew that a desirable outcome was made by manipulating today against tomorrow.

I bit down on the spider. It would not devour its seven brothers but I was wrong about grandfather’s meaning. It was rather simpler than all that.  

This attitude has taken me far from the rice farming villages of my childhood. Indeed, by circuitous route it had led the young man I was to Aingel. The meagre, storm-beaten island lay two continents and a bitter sea away from where I was born. During my boyhood, with drugs and silver and gunpowder and symmetrical green magic, Aingel’s armies and policies and ministrations had bought down the Empire. 

My grandfather had been amongst those who thought this warranted retaliation. 

A Headman of his village, he saw to my education. Taken from my family I was placed in a kind of school where, amongst other things, I had learned to read and write. In turn, an elegant chain of consequence, I took residency on Aingel but of that I will speak soon enough. 

It was as an immigrant, not even fully human, I was educated in various disciplines. One of these was the personal arts. I perfected my Aingel, learned basic accountancy and etiquette, the correct way to care for a Gentleman of Quality and suddenly I had become a batman, a personal servant, of rare and admired discretion and ability. 

Another link of the chain, another stitching of the knot and these skills had lead me to Moijh, far to the east, in a town called Dhelli where I waited for a train. 

The chain is long now, the events get confused in my head, but I recall very well meeting the man I was to call my master in Nil-Pray. He was not impressive. He had obviously lost a great deal of weight. 

Edmund Carver, his name. 

We did not shake hands but he was polite and he made some enquiries as to my disposition.

‘Are you sleeping in third class?’ 

I allowed that yes, I was. Agencies do not pay for batmen and other personal servants to enjoy any amount of luxury. 

‘Are there… are there other inmen there?’ 

‘Yes sir, around four from what I can gather. Two Vecquerry and a Corrorant and someone else. I haven’t been able to ascertain their species yet.’ 

Carver stepped out into the corridor. ‘And how many humans are there?’ 

‘Around forty, sir.’

He nodded. He seemed uninterested in the question he had asked. His first task for me was to repack his clothes. He’d been two weeks without assistance of any kind. Then he left. He didn’t ask my name. I was, after all, simply a servant his company had hired for him.

I busied myself arranging his garments, placing them back into heavy leather cases and from there up onto the luggage rack. Then I quickly rifled through one of the bags that contained papers and folders. I quickly located what I needed, lifted the sheaf out of its envelope and with a glance read the entire thing. I had much practice and skill with reading in a very great hurry and my recall was excellent. 

As I glanced over the papers, my mind collated the observable facts concerning M. Edmund Carver. 

His suit was good, unostentatious but not of any particularly fine cut or fabric. The tie, announced he had served at the Klingsor Royal Academy for Young Gentlemen. Carver’s accent was upper class but not pronounced. He had spent time around people of other stations, enough to soften the sharp vowels of his accent. He slept little. His hair was untrimmed but he was shaved. The books he kept were all history, M. Theory and medical textbooks concerning anatomy and thanatology. There were pages and pages of scrawled notes on a legal pad. He was young, perhaps twenty-six or seven, educated and something was harrying at his mind. 

I put down the papers and continued cleaning the room quickly checking each of the bags and found only one locked. From my jacket sleeve I slid a tiny lock pick and inserted it into the mechanism. Nothing. 

Sealed by Science, I would not be capable of breaking in with only a few minutes. 

Rifling through his jacket, I found a letter of commencement. 

Good enough. 

I placed a bag on the racks, lit the oil lamp with a lighter and stood to attention. I had what I needed for now. I knew my work and now I knew his. 

IV

3rd July, 1925

Dear M. Carver.

As regarding our meetings and correspondence of last year, please find enclosed your letter of commencement with the ATC. I think you’ll find the salary and conditions of employment to be most generous and welcome. 

And on a more personal level, might I congratulate you on taking this course and accepting that discretion is indeed the better part of valour. The sooner you are out of the country and working, the better for you, your family and the young lady. A year in Nil-Pray might seem like a considerably long time but you’ll find foreign travel bracing. Also, I’m sure some of your stranger areas of study will find considerable satiation in the city. 

Perhaps you find this course of action unfair but from our perspective, we consider it salvaging the best of a difficult and ungraceful affair best left to quietly fade from the public eye. The sooner the gossip columns realize you are beyond the scope of their tawdry investigations, the better. 

You’ll find Sir Damon Dayglass to be a fair and strict manager. He has been a model liaison to the company and a friendly acquaintance and correspondent for years. Treat him with the respect he is due. 

Until then, do well, enjoy the position and your travels. Your ship and train arrangements are all included in this dossier. 

I look forward to your reports. 

M. David Carver. 

Vice President (Imports)

Job Title

Your job title is Project Director (Nil-Pray). 

This title does not limit the scope of your employment with this Business, which might reasonably require you to perform other duties from time to time, and this shall not be considered a variation of job function or a demotion for the purpose of construed dismissal.

Description of Duties

Your duties will consist of overseeing the discussion of trade between ATC and the Nil-Pray government. You will be consulting with magical theorists as to disposal of physical refuse in the countries of Moijh, Odina and Deloyush. 

The main areas of your activities will be in land reclamation and the removal of bodies from battlefields. This land will be claimed by Nil-Pray, as will the human debris. Remuneration will take the place in a separation of materiel and ordnance, to be divided at the division ATC representatives on the site and Nil-Prayish authorities. 

You will report to Mme. Allison Neville.

You are responsible for containing threats of a magical and physical nature and ensuring the continued satisfaction of both ATC and the Nil-Pray governments. 

CHAPTER TWO

On the tracks

I

Edmund has been asleep only an hour when his batman knocks on his door, informing him about the stoppage. Edmund dresses quickly and walks to the caboose. They’re pulled into a station.  Dawn. But the platform is abandoned. Mists and a light fall of snow. They’re far north now.

Creeping fear. Something Scientific is here. 

People huddle in their cabins. They’ve seen something.

‘With me please, Shen.’ 

The batman nods and accompanies his employer. They retrieve a case from Edmund’s cabin and move to the engineers’. 

Inside the caboose, the train’s engine is hellishly hot, the furnace casting everything into a burnished and hateful red. The brass collection of dials and levers, switches and pulleys is warm to the touch. The water gauge and feedwater valves sweat like fat men and the smokebox radiates like a devil. The room is cramped with Edmund, the engineer and the driver all crammed together.

‘Gentlemen,’ announces Edmund. ‘There is a problem I may be able to assist with.’ He presents his card. 

They barely share a language and after a while, they just give up. A conductor simply gestures to wait. They don’t wait long.

It lurches out of the fog, walking first on two legs, then on all fours. It does not decay, it does not rot, but there is no mistaking it for a man. 

Ghul. It was a human once but evidence for it is sketchy.

Blunted head with jaws too heavy for its skull. Its skin is a map of cankers and worn away stretches of flesh that expose muscle wall, tendon and bone. Worms have gnawed, are gnawing at it still, heads and tails visible in nostril and eye socket. It comes closer, closer now, walking down the tracks to the train. 

‘Shoot it,’ says Edmund, miming with his fingers but they make religious gestures. No. The Ghul lifts its head and sniffs. Edmund, who knows a few things about the Dead, understands. It has caught the scent of prey. Its huge head turns. 

Much later, with some time, Edmund will look over the histories of this region and write in a letter - Seven years ago, during the war, there was a battle around here. Three different columns of differing armies blundered across each other in the thick fog. To make matters worse, one of the armies had seized a village. Fearing local resistance fighters had summoned aid, the Zhirman captain ordered the  population slaughtered. 

On hearing the executions, the other contingents of soldiers panicked, assuming the gunfire was that of hidden enemies directed at them. That morning, thousands of men died in a battle where none could see the opponent, in an ecstasy of cross-fire. 

Death, hate, betrayal and fear. No wonder many of the dead had risen again. It was from such sad seed the Ghuls had ripened and grown. 

And it is Ghuls. Another leaps from the roof of the ticket office. They move towards the train now and there is no doubt of their intentions.

Edmund is not a brave person. He has never been tasked to show courage. Never been given an opportunity to prove bravery, or even cowardice. Never in his life will he consider this such a time. He’s not afraid, however. 

There’s nothing within him to overcome. 

From the case Shen hands him, he removes a notebook, his pen,  something that looks like a draughtsman’s compass but made of bronze and covered in intricate scrimshaw. He glances through a small notebook and nods. He remembers all the words. He’s recited them and recited them for seven years. 

He leaves the engine to see Shen waiting calmly outside the door. 

‘Shen? Shen. Do you know how to shoot?’ 

There is no sign of surprise in the midnight mien or the crimson eyes. 

‘Yes sir. I do,’ contends Shen.

‘I’m also assuming you have sensibly brought a pistol with you. I’m going to go outside for a few minutes. I’d be very grateful indeed if you’d shoot any of these buggers that try and take a bite out of me.’ 

‘Is this wise, sir?’

Edmund shrugs. 

Stepping carefully from the train’s ladder, Edmund is uncomfortably aware of how loudly his shoes echo into the silence. The Ghul stirs uneasily, not trusting easy prey and lets out an anile low groan, drops down and begins to gait unevenly on all fours towards him. 

Edmund murmurs ‘Shen?’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘If it charges, shoot.’ 

Edmund Carver notes down equations. They map his emotional state to what he knows about Ghuls. He balances the energy in his body to work his Sum, sketches out a mandala to phase his consciousness through and measures out the time the Operation will take. 

Science. 

The cold logic of it falls into him. 

II

Magic, above all, is an act of criticism. It brings the world, the laws of the universe and its target for critique, into crisis. The world has one way of doing things.  These are the phuses, Laws. 

What is dropped, falls. Fire is hot and gives out light, which is the phuses of fire. Magnets draw iron. What is black is black and what is white is white. What the Scientists of Aingel discovered was that these Laws are in fact, rather more open to criticism than had been thought. For thousands of years, it was only the primitive shaman or the witch doctor who had such power, but for the upright men of Aingel such thinking is unacceptable. 

They recognised that the phuses of the universe are  changed the same way the same time by magic. It was predictable. It was replicable. Magic was just Science so why pretend it was aught else?

As in all things, the more difficult the task becomes, the more objectivity a concept or a thing has, the harder it is to critique. The crisis is less meaningful to the world. Change a man’s eyes from green to blue and little has been affected. One man, two eyes. Science. Cause and effect. A balance. Equation. 

Its measurements are in affect and in effort, in what has been done. Not things that are typically thought of as weight or plumb or line. Predication is the simple fact that if a spell works once, it should work again. Spells and theories can be built on, although this is not a certainty. Falsifiable, because, under certain circumstance, within certain ranges of event, magic fails, is ubiquitous and idiosyncratic. 

Magic is physics. The complex laws it transcends and proscribes are studied and amenable to understanding. It is reproducible and cleaves to its own rulings whenever it is able. 

It is within this complex arrangement of prepositions and rulings and chance the True Science happens. 

III

One doesn’t get used to the bodiless sensation of the Forms, the world where Science leads. The body exists, of course. The blood runs, the electricity sparks in the nerves but for the first time, they are irrelevant. At first, the absence of them is the strangeness. Enough times with the Forms and you can focus on what the life of an idea must be. 

Edmund enters the consciousness of the train tracks. 

Three dimensions of metal that are a pure articulation of purpose, pellucid with structure. The tracks are unbroken which is excellent for his purpose. He recalls his mind like a cat on a leash and it re-enters his body, smooth as silk. 

Security, now. Protections and seals and barriers. He shuffles thoughts and recollections like cards. This one, that one, no yes no. Within the void-state, the no-mind, detached from physicality, the architecture of the imagination becomes easily navigable. This sense of structure within body and mind is only partly metaphor. 

Pay attention. This is the True Science Operation. 

Death. Something hollowed out of life. That’s what a dead man is. A cored apple, a shucked oyster. Creatures whom have not been left to rot and fade but whom rather have been filled up, stuffed full again, with death. 

There are technical terminologies of course. 

Corpus becomes infused with negative information. Animation post mortis defined by an accretion of thanomantic energies. The Dead are polarised towards Death. This is why they feast on life. But at the same time... too much, too soon... life is an allergen. 

(Which is one of the measures of the strengths of the Dead, but we diverge.)

Balance the equation. This is the True Science. 

Edmund assembles a complex grammar and sum, inventing symbols to represent the energy he transfers from the Realm of Forms, into his body. He is meticulous layering each of these invisible, unreal hieroglyphs in relation to each other. Each syllable is part of a greater syntax, a holophrastic symbol that is assembled into a sentence. Rendered phonemes, a Science language that interrogates the Laws of the world and changes things. 

He moves information from the Realm, into his body, using his complex symbolism as a medium, transforms it into life. 

He comes up and sees if it worked. 

IV

It has.

He is blanketed in grey mist, clammy and dry. The powdered, long dead blood-stuff of the Ghuls has misted over him.

‘I presume that these two just ... stopped?’ 

Shen helps him up. ‘Indeed. They just... stopped. Then rotted quite away.’ 

‘It’s never as dramatic as in the cinema.’

‘They dead?’  yells the driver. 

‘Yes,’ he replies. 

There is a cheer from the driver’s cabin and the distinct sound of a bottle opening. 

Edmund walks up to the engine and Shen reaches down a hand. 

‘Well done, sir.’ is all he says. 

‘Come, come’, says the engineer, as slowly, the great train rumbles and shrieks its way back to life. He dismisses Shen to his Third Class cabin. 

Edmund is very tired but he does not sleep. The crew thank him but can offer no reward. Edmund does not need one. 

V

Excerpted from ‘My Months in Heaven’, by Shen. Unpublished, circa 1989

After the incident with the beasts on the tracks, M. Carver was almost melancholic. Although, my access to him was limited by his own choosing. He played games of Solitaire and wrote endlessly in notepads. This was the first time I noticed that it was not tobacco in his cigarillos but I did not yet know what it was he did smoke. 

I spent the two days after the Ghuls playing cards with other servants and playing drinking games. 

Shortly, we arrived at Teznesh. The end of the line. A quiet, calm M. Carver alighted the train to the tiny platform. It was the start of the spring and beyond the station lurked a great green forest. The notion of forests has never sat rightly with me. So much life around yourself cannot all be thinking kind thoughts towards you. 

No. Whatever beauty the forest has is tempered by the possibility of the malevolence of the tree.  Imagine the competition they must feel towards each other. 

M. Carver, checking his watch, chose otherwise and he walked across the tracks and into the white-stemmed copse.

I asked around and located a ride into the town. It was with great sorrow that I discovered the only taxi service was a horse and cart. Some men, especially my fellow Imperials, deplored the growth of technology and industry. I myself applauded travelling in speed and comfort. Placing the bags in the cart, I strode into the forest, quickly locating my employer. The whole greenery smelt of wet rot to me. 

He leaned against one of the trees, peeling a long, wet leaf from the sole of his shoe. It seemed a remarkably futile gesture. His shoes were damp and covered in foliage. He ignored me. 

‘Sir. I have a cab waiting. We should move along now.’

He looked into the forest, idly scratching random marks, zigzag patterns into the moist bark of the tree. 

‘What would you think if I burnt this forest down, Shen?’ 

I replied, slowly, ‘Can you do that, sir?’

‘No. Well, perhaps.’ 

He pushed his too long hair out of his eyes. I remember that gesture quite vividly. 

‘To see if I could, I suppose. To see who would notice.’ 

We were silent a long while after. 

VI

M. Edmund Carver is writing again. 

I have only a little time to write. They have sent a Facer to greet us. He has the pallor and curiously unlined face of one who rarely sees the sun. He comes with a proper automobile. We have only time for Shen to load the carriages, take a quick luncheon, then we are on our way. 

Glad to be out of the cart. 

Later. 

Forgive my handwriting. We are back on the roads. I must admit, when the driver in his shapeless cassock arrived with little else than an avuncular handshake, I was mildly disappointed. I don’t know that I exactly expected a black coach led by a team of six