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is
not good for mortals to look upon. Conwy cursed the haze for
obscuring his vision, but this may have been a mercy.
    Conwy stopped. For here, his books told him,
was a place of great danger: the roof of a temple whose worshipers
had sealed themselves within and took poison. The roof was the home
of The Ziggurat of Tongues. This huge object, or creature, was
pyramidal in shape. Its hide was the deep green of jade, and
covered in glistening slime like a foul thing new-born. The
Ziggurat had innumerable writhing tongues, each as strong as a
wrestler and as lithe as a concubine. Some esoteric texts claimed
that the temple had been burned to the ground. The roof, they
claimed, maintained existence within the fog purely by the
Ziggurat's will, or by the will of whoever or whatever the Ziggurat
served.
    Conwy peered through the thick smoke. Dimly
he saw the abomination. Dozens of tongues waved lazily in the air,
as the tentacles of an octopus wave in the water. He drew his
machete. The tongues were said to be made of normal matter, and
thus vulnerable to a blade. Yet he knew that, if he used his
weapon, it would most likely be to end his own life, saving himself
from the unspeakable fate of those taken into one of the thing's
many mouths. Conwy lay down flat. The roof was slick with the
discharge from the Ziggurat. Conwy crawled, like a pilgrim in a
place so holy that he feels unworthy of walking. The tongues, he
had read, could snatch a bird out of the sky. Yet they were much
less supple when forced to bend downwards, so that victory over the
monster could be achieved by crawling through its slime.
    A horrible thought suddenly struck him. He
had assumed that the books he had read were speaking literally. But
what if he had taken an allegory on humility for practical advice?
All at once he was certain that this was the case. Such a mistake
seemed itself an allegory, for his own life. Yet, as if his limbs
were controlled by another, he continued to crawl.
    The tongues wriggled as Conwy passed
underneath them. They strained downwards, seeking to wrap around
him. Conwy felt them licking the back of his neck and brushing his
earlobe. He shrank from their caresses like one touched by a
corpse, pressing himself into the shallow lake of excretion as
eagerly as if he lowered himself into a hot bath augmented by
soothing oil, and not into bitter, stinking, bile.
    The Ziggurat gave forth an outraged shriek,
as the straining tongues failed to embrace the scholar. Conwy heard
a droning like a cloud of wasps, and felt sharp pains in his head,
as if crows pecked at his mind. He yearned to rise and run from the
hideous ululation. Yet he stayed steadfast, worming his way along
the roof until he was beyond the tongues' reach. Only then did he
stand. He stepped from one roof to another. At last he found
himself before the Owls of Yib.
     
    ---
     
    Conwy stood among a menagerie (if such a word
may be used for a meeting of free creatures) of all the inhabitants
of the roofs. Through the curling smoke he saw imps and gargoyles
pointedly ignoring each other. A white baboon watched him with
pink, unblinking eyes. Ravens and sparrows proved their
intelligence with animated speech in the tones of men and women.
Creatures who had no human name, since they had never been seen by
humans, nor ever seen one, stared at Conwy as he at them. Talking
magpies, notorious holders of grudges, thieves of any shining
thing, and quick to believe that any passer-by seeks to steal their
stolen hoard, muttered indignantly to themselves. The escaped
familiars of a dozen warlocks, a bogeyman, and a school of
air-sharks, all congregated in peace, if not in friendship, bound
by the custom that there could be no violence, and that all would
be heard. Finally Conwy saw the Owls of Yib themselves. There were
three of them, sitting on a carpet that had been laid outside the
miniature mansion.
    "You may approach," an owl said, adjusting
its spectacles. Conwy did so, and