Shadowbridge

Shadowbridge - By Gregory Frost

ONE



The first time Leodora spoke to a god, she had climbed to the top of the bridge tower and she was masked.

It was late in her third day on the span called Vijnagar, a broad segment on one of the infinite bridges that uncoil across the oceans of Shadowbridge. She went there to withdraw before her performance as the mysterious puppeteer known as Jax, to be herself awhile, and to answer to no one.

The towers—there were three supporting Vijnagar—were like great flat-topped and frieze-covered behemoths looming above the buildings and creatures on the surface that threaded the distances between them. Leodora climbed up the outside of the western pylon, going up the rungs hand over hand. To either side of her, statues of avatars and demons, monsters and heroes hung out from the corners to stare at one another, so that the climber between them could not help sensing the painted eyes that seemed to watch her hooded figure as it ascended. Most of their identities, along with their stories, were unknown to her. Like any span of Shadowbridge, Vijnagar had its own gods and tales, and she hadn’t been here long enough to collect many of the stories, but she did recognize some of the elements: the talaria that sprouted from one figure’s ankles, the gnarled knobkerrie brandished by another. These things described and adorned gods and heroes she’d heard of, whose tales she knew from elsewhere—some from the three spans she’d traveled before this. Other objects confounded her, and she hung awhile between sky and sea, trying to guess what purpose they served. One of the figures, in a long coat, leaned around from the back edge and held up a disk as if about to hand it to her. It looked like a shell strung on a necklace that, instead of circling his throat, plugged into his ears. What could that possibly be? And what legend could it be from? The next figure above him didn’t help her, either. Painted black, with spiked blue hair, sharp-tipped ears, and red eyes like flames, the figure’s identity eluded her, too.

She climbed on.

At the top she reached up and, finding gouged handholds, curled her fingers into them and pulled herself over the edge. Her blue shadow stretched before her. She lay against the cool stone to catch her breath, staring down the length of the walkway that ran to the far side of the tower. Finally she gathered herself up and knelt on one knee.

On both sides of the walkway stood more statues, figures larger than life, two rows of them hedging it all the way to the far side of the span, where presumably there were other rungs down the opposite pylon. The statues were positioned, as gods should be, overlooking the buildings and beings of Vijnagar. She wondered if the gods of enigmatic Edgeworld had cast the statues when they made this span or if it was the inhabitants of Vijnagar who had chiseled them. The nearest ones looked to have been brightly painted once upon a time, long ago. The colors had all but faded away.

Leodora got to her feet. The walkway was deserted. Unlike on the span of Phosphoros, where other people frequented the tops of the supporting towers, she was alone here. She pushed back the hood of her tunic and, reaching behind her, undid the ribbons of the domino mask that covered her head to the nose, then drew the mask away. She sighed as if all of her tension had been bound up in the disguise, as perhaps it had. The thick braid of her red hair unfurled from inside her hood.

Turning about, she beheld the world.

The sun hung like a spectacular gong behind thin clouds on the horizon, not quite ready to relinquish the sky to the two deformed moons of Saphon and Gyjio. They were creeping up into the eastern sky behind her like two furtive eyes while the sun’s dusking light spread molten gold across the sea and painted every spire and minaret with its fire.

This was the hour when sacrifices were performed and spells cast and oracles consulted; the time when light and darkness split the world down below, and one could seek for glimpses of each in the other.

The dying evening wind plucked at her loose clothes, the breeze sliding up her sleeves and dancing around her torso, billowing her tunic like a sail. It reminded her of a moment in the story of how Death came into the world.

She leaned over and looked down the way she had climbed.

In the ocean below, the shadowy shapes of large fish clustered around the immense pier at the base of the pylon, there to breed in the warm, buoyant water. On many spans fishing off a pierside was a popular pastime, but not on Vijnagar, where the people held many fish to be sacred, some by decree. No one’s line dangled in among the fish she saw.

The notion of fishing drew forth an unpleasant memory. For most of her life Leodora had viewed Shadowbridge only from below one straight and decrepit span, called Ningle; it was somewhere off to the east, over the horizon, part of another bridge. Almost as an act of defiance now, she climbed the tower heights of spans to look upon the world as though it might be something she could possess. As if she reigned with the lined-up avatars in a sky palace somewhere even higher.

In the sun fire she glowed like a burnished goddess—a goddess of Edgeworld, surveying the whole of Shadowbridge from beyond the moons. She would have climbed through the clouds themselves if there had been a ladder so tall.

She ran a hand over the top of her head, caught the leather strip binding her braid, gave it a tug. Her hair fanned out across her neck and shoulders—hair as copper and shining as the sunlight upon the sea. She shook it, luxuriating in the freedom. Here, on this height, she was unrestrained.

Stepping back, she turned and strolled a ways between the stone figures. There to the right was one that might have been Chilingana, one of whose stories she would be performing tonight. Glancing left, she spied a figure of certain identity—the demigod Shumyzin, recognizable by the tusks protruding from his mouth. He faced west and brandished a shield and short sword to hold off a clawing gorgon whose snarling face promised death. The swollen sun gave color to Shumyzin’s terrible pop-eyed and unpainted features. Almost health. She sauntered over to him and ran her hand along the edge of his shield, then crouched on the balls of her feet and peered from beneath it down upon the span itself.

Far below, hundreds of people milled about in the lanes and crooked by-roads. She regarded the onion domes of spires finished in gold filigree, the sloping roofs of simple houses cast in darkness beneath them, and colorful tower cupolas, no two the same shade. In one slender nearby minaret, a servant carried a torch from level to level, lighting candles and oil lamps, kindling globes of fairy light in window after window, creating a steadily rising spiral of candescent jewels.

Open fires lit Kalian Esplanade, one of the two main thoroughfares. The first torchbearers had emerged to look for work—for couples and parties they could escort from place to place. There was good money to be made by a well-spoken and knowledgeable torchbearer. Theirs and other lights coruscated the length of the span, all the way to the northernmost support tower of Vijnagar. The salmon sunlight also bathed the flat-topped heights of that terminus. She espied the edge of the next span beyond it, curving out from behind that tower and dwindling into the darkness of the northern sea.

A goddess’s peace settled upon her as she contemplated her temporary domain. “This is where I belong,” she said. And it was true, and she had always known it. Never again would she live beneath the endless spans of the bridge of life, watching but separate and unwelcome. She was going to be forever of the life, immersed.

The breeze whispered across her face, suddenly cool. She glanced up.

The statue of Shumyzin was staring down at her over the rim of the shield with furious eyes. “Hai,” said the statue as if in agreement.

Leodora skittered back from beneath him.

Shumyzin’s head tracked her over his shoulder. He didn’t look like a statue anymore. His skin was bluish beneath the sun’s glow. His huge eyes glistened white with pinprick pupils. Around his tusks he was smiling. His golden armor gleamed.

“Who are you?” she said, the only question she could think to ask.

“You don’t know? I thought sure you did.” His voice was a growl, as if gravel slid roughly inside his lungs.

“I—” She dared to look away from him. “Statues can’t talk.”

“But gods can.”

“But a statue isn’t—” she began, then gave up. Even she recognized her impertinence.

“—isn’t a god?” he finished. “And I suppose that a traveling storyteller posturing over a city should be? Especially when that city might eject her if it knew she was a woman.” He pointed his bronze sword at her.

She shook her head. Had he somehow read her thoughts? She tried to gauge whether she could get to the end of the tower and reach the rungs before he caught her.

“If you’re so certain of your divinity,” he said, “show me what you do. Tell me my story.”

“Tell?”

“That is what you do, isn’t it?” He looked at himself, at his colorless feet where encroaching night had cut off the sunlight. “And you had better be quick, too, or I’ll be stone again and it won’t count for anything.”

She goggled at him, unable to think.

“So, it was just empty talk, then,” Shumyzin derided her. “A child’s whimsy. A true god would know another god’s story. They know all the stories that are.”

Her jaw set defiantly. She didn’t like being taunted, not by anyone. She knew his tale, all right. Soter had taught it to her five years ago, when she was eleven.

“Well?” challenged the demigod.

Leodora drew a deep breath and recited.

THE TALE OF SHUMYZIN

Shumyzin was the great conquering hero of that ancient span of Mankandikha. But if he hadn’t learned to conquer fear and anger first, no one today would know his name.

As a child Shumyzin bore many insults. He was an object of scorn from adults as well as other children because of the crooked teeth that jutted from the corners of his mouth. He had no tusks then, only two big deformed and protruding molars. With his round eyes and thrust-out jaw, he looked more amphibian than human. One day the king of Mankandikha spotted him in the main street. He halted his palanquin to get a good look at the boy. A crowd gathered around. They heard the king give Shumyzin a cruel nickname: a nickname that followed him everywhere thereafter.

“Frog,” proclaimed the king.

Shumyzin ran home in tears. The name chased him through the narrow streets. It followed him like a tail.

His mother was a mortal. Her name was Yemin. She said to him, “Don’t listen to them, little one. They know nothing about you.” She stroked his cheek. “Your father, the great god Gopurbh, weathered many insults, too, before he was given charge of all the winds. We have balmy days most of the time because he’s so hard to anger. You also are made for greatness if only you can learn to withstand their insults. I know this, because I’m your mother.” He let her voice and her promises soothe his troubled soul, and soon he fell asleep in her arms.

Now, everyone else claimed that Shumyzin’s father had been a local rich man’s son, Cabor the Drunk, who’d climbed into the wrong house one night and cruelly forced himself upon Yemin; afterward—the story went—Cabor’s father paid her a tidy sum to keep quiet about his idiot son’s indiscretion. Both she and the elder Cabor strenuously denied that such an incident had ever occurred. It was the drunken lout, Cabor himself, who spread the tale. One time when the ugly child passed by, Cabor abruptly proclaimed, “That’s my bastard there. Look how he turned out!” The story spread quickly. People called Frog’s mother a whore. The boy seethed with the desire to kill them for it. But she wouldn’t let him. “I can bear their lies,” she said, “and so must you.”

He didn’t look like Cabor. He didn’t look like his mother. Or like anyone else in the entire city. Yet people often prefer scandals and gossip to rational thinking, and so the story became fact.

Frog grew up strong and steady. Unflappable. He weathered the worst taunts he could ever hear. The cruel jibes at his mother were the most awful, the hardest to bear. He worked daily for her, pushing a great grinding wheel that crushed grain into flour for bread. Yemin baked and sold the bread. Over time her son’s shoulders became striped with muscles, and his back grew wide. As he grew older his grotesque visage changed, too. His eyes bulged more than ever and his twisted teeth straightened, forming two small vicious spikes, as if all his suppressed anger had taken form in the corners of his mouth. He became terrifying to see, and although he did nothing to suggest hostility, the taunting of him stopped.

Then one day the span was invaded by a demon army. Of all the citizens, Shumyzin alone didn’t panic. Nor did he try to flee.

All those who did try to escape were cut down or rounded up to be slain later. The king who’d once made fun of Frog tried to bargain with the demons. They stripped and paraded him before his people to destroy the will of Mankandikha. His money and property were taken from him. The leader of the demonic army rode around in the king’s fine palanquin, forcing eight naked women to carry it. They were whipped if the carriage went too slowly; sometimes they were whipped anyway.

While all this was happening, the avatar of Gopurbh appeared to Shumyzin in his mother’s house, cloaking them both in mist, so that not even Yemin knew he’d appeared. The avatar said, “This is your day, and I am your father. Here are the means to defeat the fiends.” The clever god gave his son a fine scimitar and shield, and golden armor.

Once Shumyzin had put the armor on, his father told him, “You can’t be harmed today, nor seen in that armor by your enemies.”

When the demon soldiers reached the street where Shumyzin and his mother lived, the smell of her bread enticed them. They entered the shop, intending to steal its goods. They saw only Yemin at her oven, unarmed and helpless. They drew their swords to kill her.

Not one of them left the bakery alive.

Like a wave of heat Shumyzin slipped unseen through the enemy’s midst, slaughtering them one after the other. With each he killed, his tusks grew larger.

Demons on the streets suddenly clutched at themselves and doubled over, spilling their life into the dust. Their limbs dropped off; their legs were slashed out from under them. The survivors fled in terror from the lethal phantom. They knocked over their leader’s stolen palanquin, smashing it as they clambered over the sides, kicking their king in their haste to get away. The whipped maidens scattered before them, shrieking.

When the demon king pushed himself out the window, Shumyzin glided invisibly over and cut off his head. Then he ran through the streets, shaking the gory trophy at the enemy. All they saw was the gaping, dripping head itself floating upon the air. Some of them jumped to their deaths in the sea. Others raced to put a thousand spans between them and that phantom. They heard a raw voice shout after them: “Tell everyone that Shumyzin, son of Gopurbh and Yemin, guards this place and will take all your heads if you come back again.”

After that Shumyzin’s heroic deeds fell upon the span like drops of monsoon rain. He became a legend, the defender of his city, the slayer of a thousand foes. Grateful for his protection, the citizens rejected their king—the same one who had belittled Shumyzin years earlier—when he tried to take back his office. They placed Shumyzin on the throne in his place. The hero proved to be a generous ruler. He married the maiden Kyai, daughter of the sun. Although they’d humiliated him for so long, he exacted no penalty from the people…save for one episode.

One afternoon he was alerted that Cabor the Drunk was causing trouble. He found Cabor in a narrow side street. The new king’s self-proclaimed father was whipping a dwarf with a bamboo rod. Beside him lay a maiden whom he’d beaten unconscious. Shumyzin flung Cabor against a wall hard enough to knock him senseless. He had his soldiers arrest the villain, and for a week Shumyzin exhibited him in a cage hanging outside his own house. He confiscated all of Cabor’s property and wealth and gave it to the two people who’d been harmed. When the week was up, Shumyzin cut off Cabor’s nose and ears, and threw him out of the city, off the span.

Thus did the hero save Mankandikha and exact retribution on the cruel Cabor.

“And that is the tale of how Shumyzin the Sufferer, once called Frog, gained renown, but not how he and Kyai found bliss, which is another tale altogether.” Leodora concluded with the traditional ending, the promise of the next story, spontaneously. She had become so caught up by it that she’d forgotten herself. Her hands were extended, fingers pressing together, as if she’d been maneuvering her puppets. She supposed that she had. Self-consciously she glanced at the demigod. He had tears on his cheeks.

He said, “I haven’t heard my beautiful Kyai mentioned in a very long time.”

“It’s better with puppets,” she responded, and when he growled she thought she’d angered him, but realized after a moment that the gravelly rumble was laughter.

He said, “Ah, Leodora. You tell the world of your genius but you doubt it to yourself.”

“You know my name.”

“I’m a god, girl. I have to do something to warrant it besides killing a few mouth-breathing Jatos. Add that to your tale when you speak of those demons: Jatos is what they were, straight out of a sewer.”

She took note of the name but was more curious about something else. “You haven’t heard your wife’s name in a long time? Isn’t she with you?” Even as she spoke she sought among the eikons for the figure of Kyai. The goddess was not represented in the statues nearby.

Shumyzin replied, “Death doesn’t work like that. You tell the stories—I know you know about Death, Jax.” When she looked surprised, he added, “Just as I know the identity you travel under.” He made to shake his head, and a look of alarm strained his features. He glanced down at his torso. The shadow of night had reached his collarbone. “Quick now, Leodora, come here. I must tell you something.”

She got to her feet and took a reluctant step toward the frightening god.

“Closer!” he snapped.

She edged nearer.

“Listen,” said Shumyzin. “I know the one you travel with. We’re old acquaintances, he and I.”

“Soter?” she asked.

“Pah! Not the lush. The other one. The deathless one. The one who visits you in your sleep.”

She stared at him in awe.

The tiny black pupils fixed her. “I know the riddle of your coral friend.” The shadows touched his throat, and his voice shrank to a whisper. “And a warning. Jax rattles the darkness where he travels. A piece of it is sure to come calling.” His neck was now in shadow. His intense goggle-eyes regarded her in a way that imparted both his regard and his great concern for her. She had to look away from such intensity. He wheezed, “One more thing, and the most important.” He fell silent abruptly, and that drew her gaze to him again. Shumyzin’s head had turned back into stone. He faced the gorgon, a statue, as she had found him. She realized that a purple cloud masked the sun.

“The most important thing,” she muttered.

For an eternity she stared at the streaks of water on the polished cheeks—the only evidence to convince her that she hadn’t dreamed the conversation with him. She waited, hesitant, hopeful, but when the cloud passed and the dying sunlight touched him again, he did not return to life.

The overhead sky, a crepuscular blue, now twinkled with stars as if it were an inverted sea reflecting the lights of Vijnagar. Before the dusk disappeared altogether she must make the climb back to the ground. She hastily rebraided her hair, curled the braid around her fist, and then tied it up and stuffed it inside the collar of her tunic. She pulled the hood up on the back of her head. Across the horizon only a magenta swath remained, as if the sun had bled out upon the sky.

She turned and knelt, placing her fingers in the handholds. With her left foot she felt for the first of the rungs carved in the side of the bridge, then pushed herself over the edge. At the last moment she gave a final glance up, but Shumyzin remained gray and still.

The way down she took much more slowly and carefully than she had the climb up.

By the time she reached the pier, night owned the sky. All illumination now came from torches and lamps and the crescent of bold Saphon shining over the massive tower. Gyjio still hid behind it.

She easily replaced her mask as she circled the pier and then set off along the street paralleling the tower wall.

People paid her no mind. No one could tell that she among them all had just conversed with a god.