A Book Of Tongues Read Online Free PDF

Jezebel.”
    Songbird shrugged. “Gods or ghosts, energy begets energy —
prayer, worship, sacrifice, revenge. Like the ch’i , which you and I
both carry inside us; a stream the whole universe drinks from, for
good or ill. Nothing really dies.”
    “I do hope there’s some point here beyond the merely philosophical
you’re eventually aimin’ to make, for both our sakes.”
    “Certainly. This woman of yours — who watches over all hanged
men, and claims you for her own — is both god and ghost. Doubly
powerful, and thus doubly dangerous. She demands something
from you . . . and until you render it to her, she will never let you go.”
    “Well, that ain’t actually too helpful, since Goddamn if I know
what that might be.”
    “You must ask her.”
    “She don’t really speak my language.”
    “No — or you hers, I gather. Few probably live who do. This is why
you must speak to her directly.” Pinning Morrow with a red-tinged
glance: “If you would be so good as to reach behind you, Mister
Morrow . . . yes, there, exactly. Thank you.”
    The item in question proved to be a long slab of black stuff
like congealed tar, four inches by six, inscribed all over one side
of it with queer figuring. Peering closer, Morrow thought he could
make out the remains of a prehistoric murder, some creature left
in dismembered wreckage — but no, it was a woman, her cheeks
picked out with spiral patterns, black breasts pendulous and stiff
coif balanced by a massive pair of dagger-sharp earrings, fit to carve
someone else the same way she herself had already been unstrung.
    Rook shook his head. “That ain’t her.”
    “Not completely,” Songbird agreed. “And yet . . . I was given this
in tribute, by a man from Tlaquepacque. He called it a ‘smoking
mirror.’ Your Rainbow Lady will respond to it favourably, if given
the right sort of impetus.”
    “Which would be?”
    She beckoned him back down again, and whispered in his ear.
Slowly, Morrow saw a cold understanding wash across Rook’s face.
    “Uh huh, all right. How much?”
    “It depends. How much are you prepared to pay, Reverend?”
    “Enough.”
    “And by . . . ?”
    “. . . the usual method.”
    Songbird breathed in, hungrily. “Aaah,” she said. “I had hoped
you would honour the traditions.”
    “I’m a man what keeps his bargains.”
    “Oh, not always, I think.” Songbird’s eyes flicked back to Morrow.
“Perhaps you should send your friend away now,” she suggested.
    Rook nodded. “Go find Chess for me, Ed, would you? You may’ve
noticed how he tends to make himself some trouble to get into,
whenever he’s riled.”
    “What about you?”
    “I’ll be back out in a minute.”
    Morrow nodded as well, but found himself lingering — so
obviously, even Songbird couldn’t fail to notice. She smiled, in a way
that made Morrow’s hair rise like quills.
    “He will be quite safe with me, Mister Morrow. After all, I am
only a young maiden . . . no fit threat at all to the Reverend. What he
does here, he chooses to. Yes, Asher Rook?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then . . . it is decided.”
    She grabbed hold of the back of Rook’s head with both hands, so
fierce and fast it made Morrow take yet another step back, rattling
the screens’ slick-painted forest. This sly little thing with her
sugar-stick bones, digging her golden claws deep in the Reverend’s
hair, kissing him like she meant to suck out his very soul. Which
she maybe might’ve, since he could see something pass between
them, blurred and subtle, a sort of heat-shimmer that tugged at the
corners where their two mouths met and puffed both their throats
out like frogs’.
    They prey on each other, Asbury had said.
    Songbird gulped hard, and Morrow heard the Rev’s usual rumble
become a species of moan that scared him more than anything
else he’d seen thus far. He knew that Chess would’ve tried to do
something about it and screw the consequences, had he only been
in range. Perhaps that was why