And thus it was the phoenix lost their secret home. Only the Bazil knew it, and the Bazil was trapped behind the Wall with every wicked thing, and the phoenix hate the merest mention of him, for he was arrogant, and did not believe the Wall could keep him—thus he warned no one and told no one the secret paths. But the Wall did keep him, and all others. We cannot know what passed behind the Gates, why no bird can fly over them—surely, we do not want to know. Some few of the phoenix had business outside Simurgh, and remain living. But one by one, they live their five hundred years and burn, only to waste and die, because they cannot bury themselves in the holy city, they cannot preside over their own funeral, and so their soul escapes the egg, and flees. Now only five are left, and Rastno is their Bazil, though he has the diadem and not the secret. They mourn, and can do nothing to stop it.
Afterward, before he returned to the shore of the Rimal with many calculations that would grant him a relatively safe passage, Alisaunder called the white merules to him. They came, like tall jackrabbits, hopping on their black talons.
He asked them: Will it be a good death? Will it be noble, in battle, victorious, spoken of in song? Will I choke my enemies with my blood?
The crows looked at each other, and at the red splash only they could see above his head.
No, they said. It will be a small death, without reason or sense. You have made enemies of those who wish to destroy meaning and order.
Alisaunder looked out, back toward his home and his life. He could accept that. No war is without casualties.
But will my empire last?
And on the sea of sand the silence of the crows carried long and far.
It will crumble. That will be their revenge on you, they said finally, those you trapped beyond the Wall.
THE WORD IN THE QUINCE
Chapter the Fifth, in Which John Makes a Rather Long Speech About Religion, After Being Frightened Badly and Also Drugged.
Even when I walked among the cranes, it seemed I both understood their speech and did not. To my ear, the inhabitants of this strange land spoke something like a kind of Greek that had had unmentionable relations with both Persian and Turkic, but also with some strange tongue which seemed to me to be less like a backbed cousin of these dialects than their ultimate mother, full of words I recognized, altered and metamorphosed into a kind of mirror of those that I knew. The only language that seemed to have no part of their speech was Latin, though such an absence might seem incredible. Fortunately, as a man of Constantinople, I was accustomed to hearing a dozen languages before noontime, and could make my way with some facility—until they heard me struggle with one word or another, and universally switched to a rather pleasant, if stilted and old-fashioned Greek. When I inquired after this to Fortunatus the gryphon much later, he laughed in his way, half-clucking, half-roaring.
“Don’t all barbarians speak Greek?” he said, and this was the first inkling they gave me that the whole of their nation was quite aware of my world, and simply chose to eschew it. He told me about Alisaunder, and his wonderful method of teaching languages, and how he had taught the giants Holbd and Gufdal, and the giants had taught the rest. I shivered, as any man might. I still, even now, cannot quite believe that the great man could have walked here. And yet I have seen the truth of it with my own eyes.
In my heart I believe that what they speak is the sacred Adamic language, the tongue we all knew before Babel, that perfect language granted to man by God. On the distant day when we came upon the ruins of the monstrous tower I would feel this truth rise in me like love.
But I get ahead of myself, and Hagia is impatient, her breath all dark with figs and her eyes bright and slick in the dim light. We burn our tallow so fiercely—we must finish before my heart or my breath loses the race to fail first.
I chiefly remember the horror of waking on that jeweled pillar. I felt my eyes crack open and thought the light of day might shatter my skull. Sand still seemed to stick in every inch of me. Though some kind soul had scrubbed me clean, I could still feel it scratching at me. Leaning over my poor, wracked body I saw: an eagle’s head with a wide beak, a scarlet lion’s muzzle, a very beautiful woman’s face with long black hair and eyes of a violent coppery shade, with rings of violet chasing each other within them, and a pair of full brown breasts tipped with cool green eyes where the nipples ought to have been. At first I thought I dreamed yet, and St. Thomas stood before me with his mouth in his belly—but my eyes took in the heaviness of her woman’s breasts, and a fiery dread filled me, a panic like the tremors of death.
Forgive me, wife. I was so young, then.
I gulped for air, I tried to ask after Thomas the Saint and to tell them my name all at once, but it came out on t
op of itself, backwards, and they did not seem to mark me well. My weakened body betrayed me and I shrank back on the stone with that monster over me, her lash-fringed eyes huge, interested and amused, and somehow their amusement enraged me. I saw, more clearly, that she had no head, but carried her whole face on her torso, and it was intolerable. I could not look her in the eye without witnessing the shame of her nakedness. She wore wide black silken trousers with a thick band of blue at the waist, but her navel was a red mouth and her breasts, her breasts tortured me already, and I could not look at her, but I could not look away.
The other woman, with a serpent’s many-colored eyes, laughed at my discomfort and moved in, her motion too smooth and easy—I glanced down and groaned, for the lady possessed nothing like legs. From her waist she was a serpent, the copper and pinkish-green patterns of her tail coiling and uncoiling. An awful bustle echoed around me, as of many souls in transit, and after so long alone it assailed my ears, my heart, and I prayed fervently to be delivered from this new hell.
“Does it do anything interesting?” said the snake-woman.
“It said: ‘My name is John,’” mused the eagle—which I saw now had long, feathered ears shaped like a horse’s, the long golden body of a lion, and deep black-violet wings folded neatly onto his back. “That’s interesting enough. I don’t know anyone named John.”
“It wants something called an Ap-oss-el,” piped the red lion, whose voiced seemed unusually high and gentle for such an enormous beast.
“Oooh!” exclaimed the serpent. “Is that a machine or a vegetable?” She moved her massive, heavy hair back from her face. Her torso shone, clad in coins that jangled when she moved.
“I think it is a person,” the horror of horrors said thoughtfully. “It called him Thomas. It mentioned a tomb.”
“I’ll wager it’s a ‘he,’” the snake-creature smirked, and pawed at my clothes. I shrieked a little, and immediately felt ridiculous.
“Don’t make assumptions, Grisalba,” the red lion scolded her. “We know nothing about its people. It could be female, or hermaphrodite, like the tensevetes. If it wants to tell us, it will. Until then, use your manners, and the neuter pronoun.”
“Who will look after it?” said the gryphon—for my sodden brain could at least recall that, swirling with old pictures drawn in delicate detail in margins, wings of gold paint, eyes of red. “Someone has to claim it.”
I tried to slow my breath, but my body pounded and shuddered horribly. I needn’t have worried. No one spoke up for me.
“It will have to be me then,” the gryphon sighed with a pert nod of his great head. “I claim this lost beast as my foster until such time as it can take care of its own damned affairs. Witnessed?”