by John Maclay
“Gheros the Harper,” he said.
No one applauded as the musician stepped into the hall, though a twitter of laughter greeted the bird atop his head. He bowed, straightened, and turned to gaze toward Ambro, who was sitting in the half-empty double throne at the end of the room.
“Twenty years ago, my father harped here, in this chamber,” he said. “Now I intend to perform for my Lord Ambro, giving him his due.”
His hand swept across the strings. A chime of notes filled the air, and at the cue the bird flew to the edge of the table. It opened its beak and began to sing in tune with the harp.
Such music had never been heard, everyone knew, by any listener before. The intricate pattern of notes enspelled the listeners, as great waters seemed to move inside the music. Waves and tides rushed in from some infinite sea. Storm and calm were there, the cries of gulls meshed with a subtle trill, which died away as if into a great distance. Bird and harper muted the note to silence and waited for a moment.
Shura went to Gheros’s cap again, but there was no sound in the hall. Each listener seemed to hear that music still, to think about it inside his spirit. Gheros turned back through the curtain and went into the room from which he had come. The dancer was standing there, entranced.
He touched her arm. “Come with me, child. Those who went to that other room for their reward will not be seen again, I think. Bring your musicians, before it is too late.”
The musicians refused. “We need no dancer to complete our performance,” they insisted. “We intend to have the gold we were promised.”
The dancer looked up at Gheros, wide-eyed. “I will go.”
Shura swooped into the room. “Hurry!” he said in the tongue of Man. “The others are dead and being dragged away, while servants spread rushes to hide their blood. And the waters....”
“Ah, the waters,” said Gheros. “Come or die,” he said to the musicians. But they would not come, and the man, the dancer, and the bird went out into the courtyard and thence through the musicians’ gate onto the slope. As they went, the sound of running water filled the air. They hurried as they climbed, and behind them they could hear the quiet river flowing through the Vale become a torrent, rising and grumbling in its bed.
They reached a high spot, and there Gheros stopped and looked back toward the Vale. Beside him, the dancer gasped. Where the Vale had been, a lake was settling into new-formed banks. Only a shadow beneath the moonlit waters showed where the Palace had stood. The sound of the river was quieting, and the star-kissed expanse of water lapped peacefully at the trees trapped in its verges.
“Llirras!” chimed the bird.
The harper smiled. “Vengeance, indeed, little Shura. For my father and my mother and all those who have perished unjustly in those walls at the behest of the line of Ambro. And for the poor little mother, dead and unmourned.”
The dancer was trembling beside him, and she caught at his sleeve for comfort. He gently disengaged her grasp and slipped the harp from its strap.
“I must make a gift. Wait here and I will return soon.”
He went down the wooded slope, harp in hand. Unwrapped, it hummed faintly as the breeze touched its strings. When he reached the lake, he bent and laid the instrument on the star-sparked wavelets.
“For you, Father. For those who aided my mother so that I could do this task. Ease of spirit, Gher. Go forth with a bright heart.” The harp bobbed on the water, floating away from the shore.
He climbed again, and with his companions he watched the small shape as it moved away into the darkness. When it was gone, Gheros turned to the dancer.
“Where would you go now?” he asked her.
She looked at him, her eyes wide and shy. Her finger touched his sleeve. “With you,” she said.
As they moved away, Shura dipped and swooped above them. “Laughter will sound in your house,” he trilled. “A new harp, untainted with grief! Perhaps a child to teach to play it!”
“Go and find a mate,” said Gheros, finding the dancer’s hand warm in his. “Old bachelors make dour companions. I would see some of your own young nesting in the thatch.”
With a twitter of glee, the bird dipped its wing and turned toward the forest. Gheros smiled, and the dancer tightened her grasp on his arm and smiled too. Behind them, the lake glittered beneath the stars and the moon, smoothing away all trace of ancient wrongs and vengeful acts.
A PAINTERLY EFFECT
Judith’s Journal: October
This is my twist on the concept M. R. James used in his wonderful horror story, “The Mezzotint.” Art is a sort of magic, and it might well work in many strange ways.
Grief does strange things to you, I have found. For the past month I have been painting frantically, as if by envisioning alien worlds and putting them on canvas I might create some context in which my children would still be alive.
Joshua, on the other hand, grieves by retreating into some distant place, inaccessible to anyone. He has taken guilt to his heart, as if even the most devoted father could prevent spinal meningitis from attacking his young. Nothing I can say reaches him. I would be lonely, if I were not so busy.
Our isolation, formerly treasured by all of us, has become a prison from which neither Joshua nor I expect (or want) to escape. Trapped here with our memories and our separate griefs, we have ignored the approach of winter. No wood is stacked beneath the deck to feed the hungry fireplace.
We will depend upon the oil furnace, this season, to keep from freezing when the deep snows come. I remembered to order the furnace tank filled, even in my state of shock. Joshua would never have done that, even if he began to stiffen in his chair.
In my studio, the extra oil heater fuming as it warms the place, I will be safe from self-indulgent agony. I will continue to hold death away by the power of my brush. For I find myself able to put into those fantastic landscapes the shapes of my children, distant as yet, but recognizable. As long as I envision them so clearly they are not dead.
I tried to explain this to Joshua, but he stared at me as if he thought I might be mad. Perhaps I am, but at least I am not living as a mummy, immovable, inscrutable, shut away from everything and everyone. Even his mother, wracked with her own grief, could not stir him from his apathy.
I was glad when she left. Not that I do not admire and respect my mother-in-law, but as long as her pain was added to our own, in this house where our children lived, the burden was more than I could bear. My own loss is all I can deal with. She knew, I think, for when she found she could not wake her son from his withdrawal, she returned home to her invalid daughter.
Now only Joshua and I live on the mountain, each of us encapsulated in a different shell of suffering. He does nothing except sit in his study, only leaving it to prepare a bit of food when he is hungry. I do the same; when I tried cooking for him he ignored the meals until they were ruined. So we move, most separately, quite silently, through the increasingly chilly days.
November
Although my work was always realistic before—landscapes, portraits, mental visions that I managed to convey to a painted surface—it is growing stranger. I have created gardens filled with flowers so alien that I doubt any could exist on earth. Landscapes have grown beneath my brush that might be found on some world with a sun of a different color, soil of very different qualities, and two shadowy moons that are visible by day.
Always, in the background, two children lurk, distant but coming closer with each painting. I knew from the beginning they were Julie and Eric, but now I can recognize their faces, peering through huge purple ferns or peeping from behind scarlet and ocher-streaked boulders. Both are solemn, but I believe I can see a hint of familiar mischief in both sets of gray eyes.
This should be incredibly painful, and yet it is not. Each morning when I rise from my tumbled bed, where sleep was interrupted by continuing nightmares, I am
not weary but refreshed. The smell of linseed oil and turpentine, the feel of each brush between my fingers, welcomes me into a universe where all is well and no pain lingers.
As long as I paint, I am happy. Only when I clean the brushes, cover the palette, back away to examine my day’s work do I begin to feel that terrible emptiness.
My agent, by the way, loves the new style, the new subjects, everything about my completely uncharacteristic work. The paintings are selling as quickly as I can complete them.
How can I bear to sell them? I wonder. Yet when I have done with each, I do not turn back to it, even for a glimpse. It is in the past, and every new beginning is a future that I cannot guess, a discovery I must make.
The snow has come, great drifts of it very early in the season. Our road has to be plowed regularly for the mail man to make his rounds. Soon the snow will be too deep, and we will not have mail until the next thaw.
I have no regrets. Enclosed here, with Julie and Eric emerging from those alien backgrounds, I can hardly wait for morning and the beginning of a new experience. Something strange and marvelous is going to happen!
December
We have been cut off for a week now. The thaw in late November was followed by a blizzard worse than any I can recall since we moved to the mountain. Now the snow is piled to the eaves, only my shoveled path from the back door allowing me to see out over the cliff. Below, the valley is blindingly white, the drooping firs so heavily laden that you can hardly see hints of dark green needles beneath their hoods of snow.
The painting on my easel is also filled with snow. This is pale blue, and the strangely shaped monoliths pushing up through its layers are dark red, bruised gold, and purple-gray against that background. Two wool-capped and jacketed shapes in the middle ground seem to be building a snowman.
I am watching my hand closely, for it seems to be moving independently of my mind. Will this snowman have a wide, goofy grin made of black buttons? Julie and Eric invented their own “trademark” in the snowman field. In a drawer of my desk those very buttons wait for a snowman that will never be formed again in this world.
Will they find black buttons in this new place? Or am I truly mad, as poor Joshua believes?
* * * *
I completed the painting at noon. Outside, the wind has picked up again, hiding the valley in a swirl of blowing snow. The light is thin and grayish, but the painting seems to glow with a blue-white incandescence. The figures on either side of the snowman now face each other, their small profiles acutely sharp. Julie’s stubby nose is red with the cold, and Eric’s blond cowlick has escaped from his woolly cap and hangs, as usual, over his left eye.
The snowman grins at me with a curving row of black buttons, his expression incredibly smug and knowing.
If I am mad, then so be it. They are there, well and happy and still alive in some unknown time and place. I never believed in the rigid heaven that my mother tried to teach me, but I can believe in a world with two pale shadow-moons low in the sky, blue snow, red rocks, and black buttons for snowman noses.
I must go and tell Joshua.
* * * *
I have just locked the door behind me, shutting away the still house, the low mutter of the furnace, and the memory of Joshua, sitting in his study beside the open window, frozen blue and stiff. He did it purposely, of course, unable to deal with our loss. I can sympathize, for if I were the kind to stop dead in my tracks and die of grief, I would have done something like it.
There is nothing to do until the roads open again, though I have used the ham radio to get in touch with the sheriff’s department. They say to leave him where he is, window open to preserve his body. They are most concerned, but with the blizzard raging outside not even a helicopter can get to me. I would not risk a man’s life on a snowmobile in such a storm, for I am in no danger.
The finished painting faces me, and suddenly I realize that it is still incomplete. My fingers are digging for brushes, uncovering the palette, dipping into dark blue before I can catch up with them.
My hand moves quickly, smoothing strokes against the pale stuff of the snow behind the snowman. A big shape, wearing a familiar Navy peacoat and a scarlet scarf, stands between my children, one mittened hand on each small shoulder. The thick blond curls blow in a stiff breeze, and Joshua’s face is ruddy and happy.
All four, including the snowman, grin at me across intervening dimensions of time and space.
Their father is there, caring for his children as always. They are secure in that strange world, never to be harmed again by anything Earth holds.
Perhaps they will be there when I come, however long it may take. When the thaw comes, I shall go down the mountain and find a place in a sheltered valley. There I will paint and paint and paint, looking through oil and canvas into that distant world.
My agent will be gratified. There will be no worry about money, if the paintings continue to sell as they have until now. I will stay busy, despite my losses.
When I die, I hope I, too, will go to a world with twin moons, blue snow, red rocks, and three people whom I love very much.
If not, I will have had this much, and it is more than I ever expected.
THE WEAPON
Years ago, Ed Kramer asked me for a story to consider for his anthology of stories about Excalibur. This one sprang to mind instantly and in detail. All I had to do was write it down.
The buried weapon slept, for nothing had disturbed it for almost a millennium, and its powers had been withdrawn into the depths of time. The earth surrounding it was quiet and damp. Not since a grieving knight flung it into a forgotten lake, there to be hidden away, had the sword tingled with its charge of unlimited potential.
Those hidden potencies had become less-than-memory, unlikely ever to wake again. Perhaps, if greed had not disturbed the thing, it might never have roused.
* * * *
The local people stood about grumbling, watching the clearing of the site with avid interest. Bringing in an American construction company to build this complex was one in the eye for them, with work so slow. Henry Carnes could tell that the thought of the fat wages those strangers earned was slow torture to men whose families were living on the dole.
Jordan Harp’s arrival shifted their attention to a flat space where ancient forest had stood a week ago. “No one but an American would visit a building site in a bloody helicopter,” one leathery fellow muttered. Even though they said nothing, it was obvious that his companions agreed.
But Henry hurried to greet his employer, hoping that he would be satisfied with this beginning. The shopping complex he intended to build here in this picturesque area promised to add even more millions to his astonishing hoard. It was only one of dozens scattered about the globe, every one set in the middle of what had been a remnant of natural beauty and now had become asphalt parking lots.
Harp was staring about, checking the damp, bare-scraped soil that had once been a bog, and the leveled forest, now reduced to sticks and stubble. This was what he loved to see, Henry thought for the thousandth time, nature subjected to his will. That seemed to be the man’s real goal, rather than more useless millions.
Harp absently twirled his raw-gold medallion, twisting it about his forefinger as he examined the site. That, too, was a symbol of his power.
“Here are the plans, sir.” Henry took the roll of blueprints from the foreman. “Would you like for me to show you where everything will be?”
“No.” The voice was high-pitched, rather old-maidish, though the man had the reputation of being a womanizer from his youth. “It is about to begin. That is all I need. You’re employed to design and oversee the building of the damned thing. Get to it!”
He turned his back rudely and moved toward the knot of English laborers. They glared back at him balefully over the fence enclosing the construction area, and Henry felt a sudden qualm.<
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He hurried after Harp and touched his elbow. “It might be best not to get too near those fellows, sir. They’re bent out of shape because they’ve not been hired to do the work. We’ve had some minor vandalism, and I suspect some of those very men may be responsible. We wouldn’t want you to have a problem with them, now would we?”
Harp turned and stared at him, as if unable to understand. “Have a problem? With those....”—he waved a contemptuous hand toward the glowering crew beyond the fence.
“Surely you’re kidding!”
But to Henry’s relief he turned away, walked the perimeter of the first building site, and got into the chopper again. Not until he was safely aloft did Henry relax and return to his duties. Designing a shopping center of this size was hard enough without having to nursemaid that egotistical—but he caught himself. Not for him to criticize the one who paid him so handsomely for his services.
The bulldozers were ready to dig the foundation holes. In such heavy, wet soil you had to do that right, or there would be settling and all kinds of problems down the road.
Even in the wet British climate, surely he could get that done by midsummer, foundation down, maybe even the interior dried in. It was only early May, after all.
The first dozer was going down fast. The driver’s head was disappearing at the bottom of his trench now, and the other machines were busy in their own areas. Henry strolled to the edge of the cut and looked down, watching the peaty soil pile up ahead of the heavy blade.
George gunned the engine and started across the bottom. There was a sudden painful screech of metal on stone, and the bulldozer came to a halt. Henry jumped down into the cut, concerned.
There wasn’t supposed to be any rock at this level. This could be something moved in long ago when the ancient Britons were putting up their stone circles. If this was such a matter, they might be hung up for months, fighting it out with the antiquities people.
