by Jan Siegel
“Which way is the temple?” she asked.
“Are you set on this?”
“You know I am.” Now that it came to the point, she wished she wasn’t. But even if her heart failed her, she could not change her mind.
“Left outside, second right . . . Forget it. I’ll take you there.” And, as they emerged onto the street: “Draw your veil over your hair.”
They walked along in silence, that silence just before parting where everything has been left unsaid and it is too late now to say it. Fern felt as if her stomach was full of words, words burning to be spoken, but her lips refused to un-close and the words remained inside her, seething, like a bad case of indigestion. Much too soon, Rafarl said: “Here we are.” And here they were. Soldiers paraded up and down on the circular roadway. The steps were bare of onlookers. The damage to the dome was invisible from where they stood yet Fern sensed the intrinsic weakness like a flaw at the epicenter of the city. It recalled to her something she had seen somewhere else, another temple maybe, a far smaller dome gaping open like a mouth, more sky than roof; a valley of rock; a garden of illusions. But the memory, like so many others, belonged to that part of her mind which was shut off, and she could not pursue it to its origin. She only knew that it was evil.
She looked round at her companion and found that he was looking at her, and as look met look there was an instant when their eyes locked, and would not be released. His brows were drawn together in a line of brooding; his smile was the wrong way up. “Well?” he said. “Are you really going through with this stupidity?”
“I have to.”
He shrugged painfully, wrenching his gaze from her face. “You’re on your own.”
She did not watch him walk away. Now the moment was here she didn’t want him to know how afraid she was. Her heart was thumping so hard with fear she felt actually sick. But she knew what she had to do.
She stepped out from the shelter of the side street onto the exposed promenade. There was a guard captain nearby, identifiable by the horsehair crest on his helmet. She went straight up to him.
“I’ve come to see Ixavo,” she said, surprised to find her voice quite steady. “I think he’s been looking for me.”
They took her beneath the temple, down into the dark. She knew where they were going, although she did not recognize the twists and turns of the passageway. Underground, she lost her sense of direction. But it didn’t matter. She knew. There was a guard outside the metal door in a different uniform from his fellows, a black tunic with the sun-star emblazoned in scarlet on his chest. The captain conferred with him at length. Fern did not listen. She was thinking: I need more time. Time to work out what to do, to feel her way, to respond to the intuition which had driven her thus far. She tried to come up with a plan, but she had never had a plan. The guard seemed unwilling to interrupt the proceedings beyond the door. Thought ebbed with her courage, leaving her empty. Her legs felt weak. She was almost thankful for the strong arms of the soldiers supporting her.
Rafarl had been right. Why, why had she come here?
Futile. Futile.
And: I’m such a coward. Such an awful coward . . .
The guard turned and pushed the door a short way open. A bright light filled the gap. After the gloom of the subterranean corridors, it appeared almost as bright as day. (She remembered the lamps around the table.) There were no groans, no screams. Only the sounds of small movements, and a dreadful patient quiet. The guard had gone inside. They waited. The quiet reached out into the passage: her captors stood like statues, the officer ceased to fidget. And then came the noise. Not the kind of noise they had been expecting but a thin, fluttering thread of sound, magnified and distorted by the unseen chamber. On the other side of the door, someone was whispering. The words were inaudible, there was just the soft, persistent, probing trickle of a voice that seemed to have no vocal cords and no lips, only breath and tongue. Meaning emanated from it like a smell. They listened, both soldiers and prisoner, riveted by an obscene fascination.
The screaming came later.
Fern tried to cry out but her throat clenched. No! Please no! and Don’t let it be me!, hating herself for her selfishness, her cowardice, her fear . . .
The guard emerged and shut the door, cutting the scream to a murmur. She did not register what he said but the captain gave an order and she was propelled down the passage, her legs scissoring into a weightless stride. They passed the cells, many still useless from seismic damage, entered another corridor, opened another door. A door of polished wood, with no bolts. Inside, the soldiers relaxed their grip. To her relief, Fern found her knees did not give way. They were in what was clearly a private apartment. She looked around, scraping herself together, forcing horror and shame out of her mind: she needed the space to think. These must be the living quarters of the Guardian. The room was not merely comfortable but luxurious: the chairs were deeply cushioned, the walls hung with velvet tapestries. There was no natural illumination but a wheel of candles was suspended from the ceiling and lamps burned in every embrasure, making the shadows thin and translucent, faded by overlapping zones of light. Too much light, she thought. Ixavo entered after them, dismissing the guards. He wore the cream-colored robe standard for prelates outside the hours of ceremony with a heavy sundisc, emblem of the Atlantean empire, on a chain about his neck. His disfigurement seemed in some inexplicable fashion to be etiolated by the light, its angry redness dulled, its pitting and puckering irradiated almost out of existence. Instead, she could distinguish only the substructure of his bones, the molding of statuesque features.
He did not look surprised to see her.
“Sit down.”
She sat, too quickly, her limbs still unreliable. He was scrutinizing her face; she hoped it did not betray her.
She said: “There’s a lot of light in here.”
“I like to see what I’m doing.” He must have detected her shudder; the hint of a smile spread his mouth. “Did it disturb you, back there? You need not trouble yourself; it had nothing to do with us. I merely supervise: it is a part of my duties. If interrogation were left exclusively to me, there would be less noise and more talk. Much more talk. The mind is infinitely more vulnerable than the body.” Somehow, she was not particularly reassured. “The methods here are regrettably crude. Unfortunately, that sort of thing is a necessary wheel in the primitive machine. Pointless now, of course, but it has to go on. Zohrâne expects it.”
She underestimates him, Fern thought, returning scrutiny for scrutiny. She sees only the man on the surface, the shallow plotting and commonplace ambition, but all that is as superficial as the blemish on his face. There are layers underneath, deeps beyond the shallows. And looking into his eyes— almond eyes that glittered with their own light—she fancied for a millisecond that she glimpsed something else behind the screen of personality, a capacity for darkness, a void that lived and hungered, so huge that her mind flinched from it—
“Drink this.” The personality was back in place. His voice was all smoothness, with roughness under the smooth. He handed her a goblet of clouded glass filled with wine the color of blood.
She sniffed, but did not drink. An image enveloped her thought, excluding the recent past: a room with many tables, a candleflame thin as a blade, a man with a halo of steel . . .
“It won’t harm you,” he said.
“I’m not thirsty.”
“Wine is not for thirst.” He raised his own goblet in a toast; she set hers down. “I knew you would come,” he said, “in the end. I have been waiting a long, long time.”
Time seemed to change as he spoke its name, bending out of shape, out of rhythm, curving round to encapsulate them in their own miniature cosmos. The past was coiled around the future: the present was an isolated moment, belonging nowhere, trapped at random in a maze of inverse reflections.
“More than fifteen years,” he went on. “The rip was widening. History moved over a little too far to accommodate me.” Fern ma
de no response, sensing his expectation, understanding nothing. “Fifteen years treading softly around the leopardess. She sees only what I permit, uses me—when I give her leave. A disagreeable necessity. She cannot be used. She has gone too far into madness.”
“I noticed,” said Fern.
“Did you?” His tone sharpened. “When?” And again: “Drink your wine.”
“I . . . am not . . . thirsty.”
“How long have you been in the city?”
“Two—no, three days.” She had a feeling the question was not as casual as it sounded. Time still seemed to be on hold, as if it had lost track of the way forward. On the wheel, the candles neither dripped nor shrank. She could not hear any rumor from the city above and suddenly she was afraid it was no longer out there. There was only a barren heath, under cold stars . . .
He said: “You should have come to me before. Why did you run?”
“I ran because I was chased.” She was groping her way through the enigma of their exchange, sensing it was vital to feign comprehension. Whatever she knew of him was hidden, somewhere behind the phantoms in her head, but an awareness beyond memory alerted her to perils she could not see. “Anyway, I didn’t come to Atlantis to find you.”
“What choice do you have?” A ripple of submerged irritation disturbed his expression. “You cannot close the Door without my help. Zohrâne has had it made in effigy, up at the Palace, with panels of gold and fungus of agate and a lizard on the lintel studded with emeralds. The first version was in lignum vitae, but she rejected it as too mean. As if Death could be dazzled by her extravagance! It will be brought to the temple tomorrow and erected in the place of the vacant altar. The ceremony will start at noon. Zohrâne will open the Door; it is fated. She is driven by the impatience of mortality, blinded by the arrogance of Man. An Alimond magnified in power, multiplied in obsession. She will destroy everything—for a whim. Forget Caracandal: he cannot aid you here. Only through me can you obtain the key and restore the balance.”
Alimond. Caracandal. The names spun in her brain.
“How?” she demanded warily.
There was an infinitesimal change in his manner, a barely perceptible relaxation. “You admit that you need me?”
She nodded slowly, untrusting, baffled to find the enemy on her side.
“It is a heavy burden,” he said gently, “for one so young. Drink your wine.”
Automatically, she lifted the goblet. But questions intervened, staying her hand, and some element in the aroma deterred her, recalling things forgotten. “What is your plan?”
“It’s unwise to fix on a definite scheme when we can only guess what will happen. When the Door opens the flood will come, we know that much. But the temple is raised above ground level; the foundations were laid with the Gift; it should stand a little while. Anyway, I have power enough to protect both of us for the short time that we need. You will be concealed on the gallery: when Zohrâne has begun her invocation I will join you. No one will notice me then. Once the great wave has passed, the tabernacle will probably remain under water. We may require the services of a nympheline to dive for the key; I will arrange for a suitable arrest. Also a boat, a light carrarc, to be tethered in the walkway which connects the main building to the stables. Records made by the exiles indicate the island was not overwhelmed immediately—” his use of the past tense confused her still further “—so we should have a brief lull in which to reach the mountain. Then we can get to the Rose Palace.”
“The Palace?” Fern was coasting, attempting to assimilate his certainties. The flood—the drowning of Atlantis—the ultimate End . . .
“Didn’t you hear me? There are two Doors. As the Door is duplicated, so the spell will be duplicated. Sympathetic magic. The second Door will be near enough to pick up the vibrations of the spell and focus the excess power. Of course, we cannot be absolutely sure—this is something that has been done once and once only—but our hope depends on it. The Palace should be above the initial flood level. There, you can lock the Door.” And he concluded, as if in reassurance: “Your Task will be completed.”
“And then?” Fern said quietly. It was the first time she had contemplated Then.
“There are secret ways through the mountain to the harbor. I have a sea-going vessel moored there; the ancient crater will shield the port for a while. We can sail clear of the cataclysm and ride out the storm. At the oracle of Hex-té in Qultuum we will find a way back.”
“Back?” said Fern.
She knew at once she had made a deadly error.
“Don’t you wish to go back?” He was staring at her with peculiar intentness, his gaze narrowing. In the midst of each whirling iris the pupil opened onto nothingness.
She struggled to blank out perplexity, desperation, doubt. Whatever happened, he must not see the panic of her ignorance. He had shown her the means to achieve the unachievable, yet her fear was redoubled. She feared the wall in her mind, the dark behind his eyes, the scent of the wine. “Why do you need me?” she asked, fishing for a diversion. “Why not use the key yourself?”
“It is not for me.” His voice grew curt. “You must know that. Its very touch all but destroyed me.”
“What shall I do with it,” she persisted, “when the Door is locked? Shall I cast it into the flood?”
“Do not speak such folly, even in jest. The key is the kernel of the Lodestone, the seed of unearthly power. It can give you your heart’s desire.”
“And you?” said Fern bluntly. “What’s in it for you?”
His control was fraying. “Without my help, you will gain nothing. You fumble your Gift, your courage is tentative, your imagination blunders. Do you want to stay here and rot? Did Caracandal deceive you so easily? There is no returning without me.”
Help will be found, had said the Hermit. This is my help. The way back . . . Caracandal . . . Alimond . . . Not back, but forward. I am unborn, ten thousand years unborn . . . Who am I?
Ixavo bent over her, his hands enclasping hers, raising the goblet. “Drink your wine.”
There was no draft but the candleflames shriveled and the lamps died. All the light in the room was gathered into his eyes, circling and circling the two black holes that seemed to expand even as they snared her gaze, drawing her down, down into the abyss. Zohrâne’s emptiness was famine and greed, bounded by her lost humanity, withered into the dregs of a soul; but this was the real thing, the Pit, enormous, inhuman, implacable as eternity . . .
It’s a dragon: don’t look into its eyes—
For an instant, a splinter of time, fire rushed into her mind, filling her with remembered terror. Then it was gone, and the wall was back in place.
She broke the handclasp with an effort that drained willpower, not strength. The wine-cup fell and shattered, spilling its contents on the floor.
“I will decide,” she said at last, emphasising the pronoun. “I don’t need the wine.”
“Decide then.”
She had a feeling he was puzzled, as if, in the invasion of her consciousness, he had been reaching for something he could not find. He sat down in the chair opposite, disposing his limbs with peculiar deliberation. Fern saw the stony muscles coiled in his arms, meshed across his torso. She thought: He could have coerced me, he might still, yet he refrains. He can only try psychological manipulation. Perhaps the use of force invalidates my choice. She mistrusted his protection, suspected his guidance, feared him as she had never feared Zohrâne. But he had insight where she had only instinct, he knew what she only dreaded. Uuinarde had said: The Sea is coming. Ixavo talked of a giant wave, of certain annihilation. The beautiful city—the temples and palaces, sewers and slums—the people she had come to know there: Ezramé, Ipthor, Rafarl—all doomed. The choice was no choice. She must do what she could.
Help will be found . . .
“All right,” she said. “I agree.”
He held out his hand, but she would not take it.
“This is not a bargain
,” she said. “Just fate.”
“So be it.” He slipped the chain over his head, unhooked the sundisc, and tossed it aside. Then he hung the empty chain around her neck. It felt like a slave collar. “For the key.”
She stood up, encouraged to find she still could. “I have to go. I’ll return in the morning.”
“You go nowhere.” His tone was as heavy as the slamming of a door in a sepulchre.
“I have things to do—”
“Warning the fortunate few? A waste of time and breath. Or perhaps you want to say farewell to your vagabond friend? Let him go. He is dead, little one, many ages dead. They are all dead. Why trouble yourself? We are the only living people here.” His smile ate into her soul. He went to the door, called the guards. “They’ll fetch you food, if you’re hungry. I’ll have you brought here an hour before noon tomorrow. Sleep well. There’s nothing else you can do.”
She thought he would have given her a candle if she had requested one, but she was unwilling to betray so much weakness. In the dark of a solitary cell, despair lay in wait. She summoned what few resources she had to resist it.
That was the worst time. They brought her food which she did not eat, water which tasted of dust. Then they left her alone. By Ixavo’s orders she had been provided with some cushions and a blanket as well as the pot which was standard issue. On entering the cell, she had had a moment to take in a few details before the door was shut and the light extinguished: unlike the dungeon she had occupied with Rafarl, this one was not delved in natural rock but lined with stone blocks, set in mortar, with the additional luxury of a grating in the floor through which the pot could be emptied immediately after use. Fern tugged at the grating but was unable to lift it: the iron fretwork had been drilled deep into the surrounding stone. Defeated, she sank back on her heels, brushing against the cushions. She lay down to rest her head and wrapped herself in the blanket, more for comfort than warmth, though there was no comfort to be had. In the lonely dark the passage of time altered, becoming no longer continuous but a shapeless limbo where she floated in stasis, reaching in vain for minutes and hours to hold on to. She lost track of her own body, feeling it meld with the blackness until only by touch could she maintain contact with her outer self. And as she lay there her grip on her inner self gradually slackened, and she was swamped by the all-pervading night.
