Everfound (Skinjacker 3)

“Right. More is more,” said Mikey.

“No,” said Jix, “as far as His Excellency is concerned, ‘more’ is not nearly enough.”

Nick was so bewildered, he couldn’t speak. While he still remembered nothing of his life, he had a momentary flash to a trip he had taken with his family to Las Vegas. He recalled the dazzling assault of light, color, and sound—sensory overload, everything competing violently for his attention. Well, the City of Souls was so much more intense, it made Las Vegas feel like a lazy Sunday suburb. The sight of it would probably kill the living—or at the very least drive them insane.

It was only as Mikey and Nick looked closer that a darker side of this eternal celebration revealed itself. The dancers, so full of rhythm and grace, needed no voices to perform. So they no longer had mouths. The many street singers, so full of joyous vocal tones, didn’t need to see their audience. So they no longer had eyes. The artisans, who worked only in color and texture, had no need for ears. And the wandering minstrels, who had no need to ever put down their instruments, now had their instruments growing right out of them.

“Eww!” said Mikey, a bit embarrassed that he, master of all imaginable monstrosities, actually said “Eww.”

“Well . . . uh . . . they seem to be . . . happy,” Nick offered, uneasily. “It’s kind of like an extreme version of Mary’s ‘perfect day.’”

“We all find our place in the City of Souls,” said Jix, looking around at the strange living mosaic. “But none of this is for their pleasure. It’s all for the king’s amusement. This entire place is his perfect day.”

They came around a huge temple and before them stood the pyramid of Kukulcan, the feathered serpent god, which was engraved in gold on every side. While the living world saw the pyramid as a crumbling ruin, in Everlost its limestone was smoothly chiseled and shining white.

However, it wasn’t the sight of the pyramid that stopped them in their tracks. It was the object behind it.

“No!” gasped Mikey. “It can’t be!” Mikey felt himself beginning to turn inside out, but swallowed, keeping his innards from switching places with his outards.

“This could be really, really good,” said Nick, “or really, really bad.”

There, moored to the top of the great pyramid of Kukulcan, was the largest gas-filled object ever built by man. The Hindenburg sat in the heart of Chichén Itzá, its sliver skin reflecting the tropical sun, looking like it belonged there.

“Hmm,” said Jix. “I’ve never seen that before. I guess the king found a new way to get around.”

CHAPTER 44

Zero Recall

The Unremembering King had the power to create a barrier of wind in a world that had no wind, in order to keep certain intruders from crossing the Mississippi.

The Unremembering King could speak any language instantly upon hearing it.

The Unremembering King could bring lightning from the sky to make his own afterglow shine brighter than anyone else’s.

Such tall tales were common in Everlost, but when it came to Yax K’uk Mo’, The Supreme King of the Middle Realm, every tale was true. He had been in Everlost for many thousands of years, and his true name and true life were long forgotten . . . until one day, he unremembered the fact that he wasn’t a Mayan king. So suddenly he was. And as a king he felt he should set up court in the halls and temples of Chichén Itzá, and declare dominion over all lands that had once been Mayan. He unremembered that he had no actual claim to those lands—yet by the awesome power of his unmemory, every Afterlight existing in those places instantly believed that he was their king without knowing or meeting him.

And shouldn’t a Mayan king have power over the heavens and glow brighter than all the other Afterlights? So suddenly he did, because he couldn’t remember that he shouldn’t. Naturally it was easy for him to speak all languages when he couldn’t remember a single language he didn’t know. It was the same way with the flying red-winged spirits. Being from Mesoamerica, he had never seen people with red hair, and so when he did, he thought them beautiful, like the red-crowned parrot of the Yucatan jungles. He unremembered that these spirits didn’t have parrot wings, and so all spirits he saw with red hair instantly grew wings the color of their hair, and could fly—which thrilled the spirits, unless they had a fear of heights.

The power of unremembering made King Yax the mighty ruler that he was—and when it came to unremembering, the only limit to the things he couldn’t not do, was his imagination.

Unfortunately, King Yax did not have much of an imagination, so mostly he just spent his time being amused by Mayan sports, loud parties, and admiring his own glow.

Lately, however, his attentions had been elsewhere.

For many years an ironsmith had been laboring to create a statue in his image by melting down the coins of all fresh souls who came to his kingdom. Until recently it hadn’t been much of a statue—a thin, headless, and armless thing on a huge black obsidian base. There simply had never been enough metal to finish it—and in Everlost, nothing else made of metal melted. Things were annoyingly permanent. But the coins, which behaved like nothing else in Everlost, did melt. Where, then, was a king to find more coins? It was useless trying to unremember his lack of coins, because, try as he might, he couldn’t forget he had none left.

And then the giant silver balloon arrived with two foreigners bearing the greatest gift he had ever received. A bucket full of coins! And not just any bucket—this bucket was bottomless! As soon as it was empty, all one need do was look away, and when one looked again, the bucket held however many coins as there were souls present. His latest ironsmith quickly got to work, and whenever the coin supply was depleted, the king threw a party in the Temple of the Jaguar, until the bucket filled itself once again, and then he threw everyone out.

The king’s ironsmith was a large boy who had the misfortune to die while wearing a blue luchador mask—a wrestling disguise that covered his whole head, leaving him looking somewhat like an executioner. No one knew what he looked like under the lucha libre mask, and no one ever would. The blue luchador worked tirelessly melting down the coins, with gloves on his hands to protect him from the coins’ magic. Then, as the metal cooled, he pounded them flat into thin skins that were then applied to the surface of the statue and shaped by hammer into a perfect likeness of the king.

“Add more muscle,” he would tell the luchador, for he had long since unremembered how scrawny he had once been. “The gods will be pleased,” he would often say, for a Mayan king was a reflection of the gods, so the more glory that he heaped upon himself the greater the joy of the gods—or so he reasoned. Overseeing this project was so important, he gave his vizier control over the kingdom—everything but allowing him to sit on the throne—primarily because the throne had been moved in front of the forge to face the statue. The vizier—a sort of mystical spiritual advisor—was more than happy to run the kingdom.

As the statue neared completion, the more obsessed with it the king became. He had unremembered that the statue was a worthless tribute to his own arrogance . . . and by the power of his own unremembrance, he turned something worthless into the single most important object in the world.

Upon arriving, Jix, Mikey, and Nick were brought directly to the forge. Had the vizier been able to intercept them, things might have gone differently, because he had a tendency to make visitors disappear before ever reaching the king—but the vizier was with the king at the time, so couldn’t prevent His Excellency from seeing them.

The vizier, however, behaved very oddly today. The moment the new arrivals were brought into the forge, the vizier hurried behind the statue to hide. The king might have wondered why, if he weren’t so absorbed in watching the metal-molding luchador build his glorious likeness.