Eighteen: In the Land of the Breathless

The last thing Aramis remembered was a great walloping blow on his head, the kind of corker that leaves you one full heartbeat in which to think, Well, now, that should just about do it.

He didn't have time to think about the queer boy who had chased him, or his brother Simon. He never even spared a thought for his magicking gear.

Not, that is, until he came awake on a great expanse of dusty earth, with a terrible headache and a foul taste in his mouth.

"Dad's magic hat," he said to himself. "I've lost it. I've lost everything, I bet."

He sat up and looked around. The horizon rose up around him on all sides, like the rim of an old clay bowl.

The sky was the color of the polluted river that ran through Piketon. A sun hung sullenly right overhead.

"That's that, Aramis," he said. "You're dead and there's no two ways about it."

His voice went flat into the world, like a coin tossed down a well. As soon as he stopped talking, the silence slammed down, like a glass jar banged over a buzzing insect.

"What's more," he said, "you've died and gone someplace unpleasant."

He stood and looked around again, but this modest change hardly changed the perspective at all. The world was featureless and vast and empty even of wind.

On a whim, Aramis shouted: "Hey! Anybody home?"

Nothing. Not even an echo. He thought maybe his voice would travel all the way round this empty world and hit him in the back of the head.

After a few minutes, his headache subsided and because there was nothing else to do, he started walking.

Aramis had always liked to walk. He could trek forever through the streets of Piketon, magic kit on his back, never minding the ache in his liegs.

But in the city there were faces and smells and intrigues and infinite changes. To his unworldly eye, its streets were full of wonder.

Here there was only dust, so fine and soft that he could hardly hear his footfalls as he trudged along. The sun fell directly on the top of his head, so there wasn't a shadow.

A certain amount of time passed -- Aramis couldn't say how long. The sun seemed never to move. He began to feel lonely and afraid. What if it went on and on? What if he grew old here, walking and walking?

What if there was nothing to eat or drink?

Twice he stopped and sat down. He closed his eyes, but for some reason that made him feel horribly dizzy.

This queer world seemed so flat and featureless that it seemed he might slide right off.

He went on again, dragging his feet through the dust. He found that he had an old nib piece in his pocket. To pass the time, he practiced flipping it over the backs of his fingers, causing it to disappear from one hand and appear in the other.

At last, his eye caught on a feature far away on the plain. He stopped and squinted. It looked like a bit of ink or a scrap of cloth.

He walked a little farther and the shape got bigger, forming first into a shadow, and then into the form of a man stretched out flat on the ground.

Aramis felt a surge of hope and began to jog forward, but something made him falter and stop. The tickle of fear came again. What if the man were dead?

"Hey there!" he called, from a safe distance. "Hello!"

As if stung or prodded with a sharp knife, the man leaped to his feet, looking around. He had a slouch hat that covered most of his face and dusty old dungarees and shapeless boots.

Spying Aramis, he took two quick steps forward, covering a frightening amount of distance. But when Aramis began backing up, the man stopped and took off his hat.

"Hello, son," he said. He had a sleepy, half-distracted voice -- like he might be drunk. "Don't you recognize me? It's me -- your father."

The fellow looked around and wiped his brow with his hat. "I been waiting here for you. I been waiting so long I can't remember how long."

He turned and for the first time Aramis could see his face full-on. He did look something like his father, but a lot of years had passed.

And there was something wrong about this fellow's face. It looked lumpy or swollen, as if the bones under the skin didn't quite fit.

When he talked Aramis could see his teeth on the top and bottom of his mouth, teeth as flat and square as gravestones.

The man's black eyes glinted like a bug's eyes and as he looked around he forgot to blink.

The tickle of fear in Aramis's stomach began to grow.

"How are you, boy?" the man said. "How's Simon? I don't see him with you. You didn't leave him behind, did you? You didn't quit your own brother -- did you?"

The fellow grinned, showing all those teeth at once.

"You're not my dad," Aramis said. "Not even close."

"Why, sure I am. Sure as anything. Here, I'll show you."

The man turned the slouch hat in his hand and made a little flourish. Reaching in, he pulled out a lit candle.

But unlike a normal candle, this one glowed black, with feathers of green on the edge of the light. It was like an infected sore.

He grinned again his stony grin and said, "See? There's no telling what I might pull out of this hat, if I wanted to."

Aramis blinked once, then spun about and began to run. He ran as fast as he could, his feet making hollow drum sounds on the earth.

The first hundred paces or so, he didn't dare look back. He imagined the man grabbing his collar, dragging him down.

When nothing happened, he glanced over his shoulder and found that the fellow was loping behind, hat flopping on his head.

He could catch me any time, Aramis realized. He's pacing me, for some reason, or playing with me.

"You just keep going, boy!" the man yelled, his voice cheerful as death. "Let's see where your little jaunt takes us!"

There was nothing else for it, so Aramis kept running. He ran as fast and hard as he had ever run in his life. He had outstripped thugs before and blue-bellies and truant officers.

But the plain just seemed to go on forever and ever. There was no place to hide, nowhere to take shelter. And the man just jogged along, that big satisfied smile never leaving his lumpy face.

Aramis was just about to give up when he saw something: another glimmering shadow. He bent his path towards it, and redoubled his speed.

His lungs felt raw and his legs were like lead, but he refused to let himself flag.

"What do we have here?" said the man. "Looks like somebody wants to meddle in our little family reunion, isn't that right, son?"

Aramis didn't answer, or look back. The shape up ahead had resolved itself into the figure of a man. He wore a linen suit and had oiled black hair and carried a black valise.

"Hello, Aramis," said the second man. He had a posh accent and sounded completely unbothered by the queer situation. "I would like for you to place yourself behind me as quickly as possible. Stand very carefully in my shadow."

"Who are you?"

"There's no time for that now. You must trust me, or all is lost."

Aramis hesitated only a moment, then dashed past the man. A smudge of inky blackness fell behind him over the sand and Aramis stepped onto it the way you might climb onto the last spar of a sinking ship.

The man who had been chasing Aramis said, "You are intefering with a legitimate Taking. I spied that soul first and it is mine."

"There has been a mistake," said the newcomer. "This boy isn't dead and therefore cannot be taken except by murder."

"I've been waiting for him to die," said the man, with a careless shrug. "Any fool can see he'll be dead soon enough."

"In point of fact, he seems suddenly to have found the road to recovery," said the newcomer. "Sorry to disappoint you, but you will have to find another soul for your collectdion."

The man in the slouch hat gave a snarl. He threw the hat down in the dust and stomped on it. Then he did something horrible.

He took off his face -- the face of Aramis's father -- with exactly the same careless gesture. He threw it down in the dust and stomped on that, too.

Underneath the mask, the man's true face was lifeless and yellow, held together with bits of twine. He looked like a scarecrow battered by a storm.

"What is it?" said Aramis, his voice shaking. "What is that thing?"

"It is one of the Breathless," said the man in the linen suit. "A particularly nasty kind of ghoul. Now if you please, be quiet for a moment."

The Breathless man was rolling up his ragged sleeves and rubbing the soles of his boots on the ground, like a bull preparing to charge.

"If you won't let me have him fair and square," the ghoul said, "then I'll just have to take him." He grinned -- his graveyard teeth were still the same and said, "A little murder never hurt anybody, isn't that right, son?

He started jogging forward, picking up speed every step, like thing that was more wolf than human.

The man in the linen suit seemed unperturbed. He placed his blag bag on the ground and opened it. Aramis was startled to see a tiny head stick out. And then another.

A lean, angular cat leapt from the opening and landed with its back arched, fangs bared at the Breathless. Out came a second cat, then a third.

The Breathless caught himself up, a look of terror on its face. "So that's how it's going to be," the thing said, it's voice shaking with indignation.

"Well, two can play at that game."

It reached into the flop hat and pulled out a scabrous bird with black wings and white eyes. It threw the bird in the direction of the cats and drew out another.

In an instant the battle was joined -- crow against cat, claw and beak against claw and fang. A terrible howling and cawing filled the dusty sky.

The man in the linen suit turned to Aramis and said, "My magic can't kill a Breathless, not here. not in this place. This is Despond, one of the thousand-and-one worlds where the Breathless rule. On this ground, I can only slow it for a time."

"What do we do?" Aramis said.

"It would be best for everyone involved," observed the man, "if you would be so kind as to wake up."

He reached a manicured hand and tapped the boy once gently but firmly on the forehead. Aramis blinked, startled, and when his eyes opened the desolate plain had vanished.

The battle between cats and crows was gone and so was the strange man. In their place was a skinny, sharp-faced girl. She was sitting over him, holding a wet cloth against his cheek.

They were in some kind of hostel or bunkhouse. He could hear other people about -- children, from the sound of it.

Seeing he was awake, the girl said, "It's about time. We thought you might quit on us. Don't ask any questions, not yet. If you keep still, I will tell you three things -- three things and then you have to rest. Is it a deal?"

Aramis -- who was quite completely baffled -- could only nod. He couldn't have struggled if he wanted to. He felt incredibly weak and dizzy.

"First thing, my name is Nail," the girl said. "Secondly, you're one of us now, part of the Blue Oriole crew." She turned and showed the tattoo of a bird's wing on her shoulder.

She looked at it for a second, craning her neck, as if trying to decide what she thought about the symbol.

"Third thing you should know, is that it was Dr. Soonoo who brought you back. He's a strange one. Half cat, I think. He looks at you like you're a curious piece of string, and that's when he notices you at all. But he's no quack. You owe him. And that's three things and a deal's a deal, so you must get some rest."

She stood abruptly and went away and for a long time Aramis lay on the cot. He couldn't help thinking of Simon and the Breathless and the man in the linen suit. A part of him wanted very much to cry and sob.

Then he held out his hand, turned it this way and that, and made a nib appear out of thin air. It was a small gesture, but it was enough to give him a little peace. He closed his eyes and fell into a healthy sleep.

Next: Inquiry Into the Whereabouts of A Certain Master B.