The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves & China Miéville

Author:Keanu Reeves & China Miéville [Reeves, Keanu & Miéville, China]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Worlds
Published: 2024-07-23T00:00:00+00:00

brother

If you counted backward through every step of your relentless life in a number trance, you could tally all the frozen mountains on which you’ve walked.

The first time is easy to recall. You, still a child though with the body of a man, before your first death, with your weapons held high. This, Father? you had said. These people are a long way from our valley—how can they threaten us?

They aren’t close, no, he had said, but they know of us and they want what we have. We won’t be safe until—

So you’d gone in and brought the walls of that frozen palace down, and that’s the point when your memory smooths over, because that was when the spasm, the berserk, had come upon you for a while. When the textures came back, there you were atop another mountain on that mountaintop, this smaller peak all corpses, red and boned and sliding, and nothing breathed anymore in the hidden city but you and your companions. Looking at you in that way they had had.

Now you wrap your furs about yourself in very other icy heights. You are not indifferent to cold. Even your fingers can grow sluggish, your teeth rattle like a snake’s tail. Of course it will not kill you, of course your dying skin will be renewed by waves of blood, but why suffer chilblains if you don’t need to? And there may be travelers, even this high, and you’d as soon avoid the suspicions of witchery and the drawn swords that a man unclothed in frost might provoke.

Look. Are those lights ahead?

Your horse is dead a ways back. Speed up, one foot in front of the other between walls of sheer flint.

I can see you, you shout. I can see your torches. Friend or foe? I’m here to find the child of gods.

The wind swallows your voice. The guttering gets closer.

Friend or foe? you shout. I’m in no mood to fight.

No one answers.

The gorge grows wider, and a vortex of snow limns you, and the moon watches, gibbous and hazed behind the snow but bright enough to sketch out this bowl of black stone. A warmer light from torches. Six men, three with hatchets, three with arrows nocked at bows and aimed at you. Shrouded in fur above the curls and filigrees of armor.

You raise your hands.

I’m not looking for trouble, you shout over the blizzard. I’m looking for the godkin.

No one lowers their weapon.

Is this how you welcome strangers? you shout. In the cities of the plains they told me that the mountain people are honorable and cordial and hospitable. Were they wrong?

We’re not local, the lead man says. We’re here for you. We know who you are.

You sigh. You tilt your head, and, yes, you can hear footsteps behind you, closing the ambush.

Let me pass, you say. You sound as tired as you are. Just let me pass.

We’ve hunted you a long time, the man says.

He gives an order in a language from a long way away, and the bowmen pull back their strings.

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