THE BELLS OF BEL-HAZIR

THE BELLS OF BEL-HAZIR, by Michelle Muenzler

 

Long and loud are the bells of Bel-hazir. Thunderous mad, their tolling.

At first light’s crack, they ring. Seven times each across the city, every bellow louder than the last. The older towers sway at the might of those monstrous bells. Pale dust and bricks rain onto the streets.

But for the Gray Empress asleep behind her iron doors, they toll not loud enough.

When the tolling stops, the bell ringers’ chests heave from their efforts while the rest of the city stumbles to its feet. Char-footed children creep to the communal ovens, bearing trays laden with the stamped loaves of their family, ready to bake. Accountants tally up whatever can be tallied–the bread, the children, the handful folk weeping at the night’s losses–while the bellfounders and stonemasons bend back over the latest tower’s growing walls, over the monstrous new bell to hang within.

At noon, again toll the bells of Bel-hazir. Only once this time–or twice on rare occasion–for ringing the ponderous bells is a strenuous task for even the heartiest of souls, and the midday heat roasts the flesh of man as easily as bread in the great belltowers surrounding the Gray Empress’ fortress walls.

Yet still she does not seem to hear. Still she does not awaken.

The city looms quiet in the midday heat. Nothing moves. Not the rats shading themselves beneath the cisterns, nor the dogs panting just beside.

It is not until the sun bloats red-faced in the west, leering through the dusty haze that often clings to the city’s settlements, that the city once more begins to move. Hesitantly at first, then more certain. And in the last hours of the city’s waking–so few hours for so many–the people collect their cooled loaves from the communal ovens and rush home to lock their doors before the night presses in.

In the belltowers, the ringers bear down one last frantic time, pulling the ropes until blood stains the hemp. Till palms are shredded and bodies collapsed exhausted to the stones.

But it does not matter. When the Gray Empress emerges, she does not look to the crumbled remains of those she betrayed, the brittle shells of the multitudes who willingly sacrificed themselves to feed the hope of an entire city. Her eyes do not glow with the golden light of the thousand dreams bestowed upon her that she might dream the brightest future for her people.

No. When the doors hinge open at last and the Gray Empress emerges, it is with half-muttered obscenities leaking between her cracked lips and with charcoal lids drowned beneath the weight of the cesspit that has become her dreaming. The fog of collected dreams clings to her hem in a dank miasma.

Like a deep sea worm, she roots through the crevices of the city. Blinded by hunger. By need.

In her wake, those who have decided on other solutions to end her dreaming collapse unrewarded into the filth, stones and axes and bricks clattering from their slack fingers and their eye sockets blackening to charcoal as the miasma overtakes them. Like those who have tried before them, they will not wake for many days, and when they do, they will be nothing more than grayed-out husks, mourned a short time and then set aside and forgotten with all the rest.

Some might call them fools for their desperate rebellion. Others will claim it is the fate they wanted.

Either way, when dawn at last approaches–that sallow-eyed beast hovering in the east–the Gray Empress makes her way back toward the fortress. She passes by the crumbling towers, their bulk swaying at the slightest breeze. She passes beneath those monstrous bells, silent in the dark for fear of her attention.

And when the fortress has swallowed her whole once more, iron doors dragged shut behind with a wailing grate, only then ring out the fabled bells of Bel-hazir. Seven times as the light breaks fast. Seven times as the day before.

Long and loud the bells shake the earth.

And thunderous mad, they toll.

 

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Michelle Muenzler, known at local science fiction and fantasy conventions as “The Cookie Lady”, writes fiction both dark and strange to counterbalance the sweetness of her baking.  Her short fiction and poetry can be read in numerious science fiction and fantasy magazines, and she takes immense joy in crinckling words like little foil puppets.  For more squidgy weirdness, check out her novella, The Hills of Meat, the Forest of Bone, on Amazon, or just go poking about her website at michellemuenzler.com.

Her previous work at Heroic Fantasy Quarterly includes Advice on the Slaying of Wurms–which was chosen to be included in the Best-of Heroic Fantasy Volume 2 Anthology.

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