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The Houses of the Favored
JAY LAKE lives in Portland, Oregon, where he works on numerous writing and editing projects. His most recent books include the novel Pinion from Tor Books; the novellas The Specific Gravity of Grief from Fairwood Press and The Baby Killers from PS Publishing; and a new collection, The Sky That Wraps, from Subterranean Press.
His short fiction appears regularly in literary and genre markets worldwide. He is a winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and a multiple nominee for the Hugo and World Fantasy awards.
“I first wrote this set of stories as part of a proposed project with Bruce Holland Rogers,” explains the author. “Bruce set me to his concept of a symmetrina, which is to say, writing to a very precise word count. It’s an interesting kind of limitation, which binds the writer to the form in a way that we don’t usually experience.
“I found the experience very focusing—not to mention the fun of finding five different ways to talk about angels gone bad. Just because they’re good doesn’t mean they’re nice.”
I SMELL LAMB’S BLOOD. Walking the dusty streets sword in hand, I hear only silence. High, silver clouds sweep moon’s brightness like the linen wrapping a lover’s face. These clouds are mine, the silence my shroud. There are tasks no one should be forced to, not even by the loving hand of He Is Who He Is.
One of my brothers stands in a grove of olives and pomegranates, waving a flaming sword, occasionally killing snakes. A symbolic post, with little business to execute.
Others were sent to despoil virgins and lay waste to cities. Symbolism and execution, but at the end, they went home with their hands clean and clear consciences. Sinners live for punishment, after all.
But here is a city of a million beating hearts crowded together on the banks of their Father River, now sleeping. In my presence, the dogs are silent, the vultures huddled uneasily on temple roofs. Even the louche crocodiles doze among their muddy reeds.
Who He Is has charged me with vengeance. Not Eden’s dangerous hungers, nor Sodom’s hot sins. Here it is only for me to still the hearts of ten thousand sleeping sons. Most of them innocent of any sin worse than craving the breast or a sweet, or perhaps a pretty girl.
My feet bring me to the stony regard of a jackal-headed god. “You, friend,” I whisper, “are at least honest in your falsehood. I wear Heaven’s gleaming mantle as I set about my murders.”
A thin spray of dust trails from the jackal’s muzzle as his smile cracks open a little wider.
Fang, I tell myself, I am the tooth of God. He Is Who He Is, and it is I who will render flesh.
Honest acknowledgement is needed of the suffering that will arise with the morning sun. Suffering simply to make a point. Though the pain reaches my heart, I tear all my feathers loose to lay them at the jackal’s feet, each great pinion radiant with holy power. The blood from my back I smear upon my face and hands, coat my sword with, echo of the lamb’s blood on the houses of the favored. Many and legion, I step into the darkest shadows to wound the hearts of ten thousand mothers.