The Memory Palace

by Gill Alderman

  The erratic motion of the balloon, as Peder steered her from one uprising draught to the next, made me lightheaded. I breathed deeply to counteract its effect. The frosty wires which held us up became cylinders of light and a black cone floated before me. I tried to catch it between my clumsy gloves. I heard the ocean pounding in my ears. The russet ape which was the Navigator, Peder Drum, stepped away from his fire and stood close.

  ‘Aren’t you well. sir?’ he asked. His voice boomed and faded. ‘Not too comfortable in that cowl?’

  I lifted my hands slowly, labouring to make them obey me. I held the muzzle of the mask and shook it. Peder laughed. It took all my Green Wolf’s will and schooling to kick out and disable him. He fell against the basket’s side and while he struggled to get up, I pulled off my gloves and picked at the buckles of my hood until I was free of it. It did me no good. The airless kingdom of the frost was stifling me. We struggled, Peder and I, on the yielding osier floor. His familiarity with balloons was pitched against my soldier’s skills. He pulled a long-barrelled pistol from his sleeve. It was a primitive weapon, but I despaired. One shot would kill Frostfeather and we would plunge with her into the mountains below. I got a purchase on his arm, and forced the pistol to discharge harmlessly into the withies. I took it from him and threw it over the side. Then, with all my remaining strength (the inhuman strength of one at death’s door) I wrested his cowl from him and held it to my face. I breathed air. It was good. Peder panted hard and his brown eyes begged silently like a dog’s.

  He deserved to die. Without him, I could not fly the balloon.

  ‘Is there another cowl?’ I said.

  ‘No. Yours has no geodes. Give me –’ His voice faded. I took a deep breath and held the mask to his face. When he was sufficiently recovered, I made a bargain with him: he must transfer his allegiance to me, or die as soon as we landed in a safe place. I reminded him of my past career. I told him the truth: that I had killed twenty men.

  ‘We have one cowl between us,’ he said. ‘It will last another forty minutes perhaps. That is not enough time to cross the Altaish.’

  ‘Then we must land in the mountains.’

  ‘No Navigator has risked it.’

  ‘We have no choice.’

  We worked together at the furnace, he instructing me. He was superbly skilled. When he began to damp down the fire to reduce our height, I prayed to the gods of the Altaish.

  ‘That will not help us,’ Peder said. ‘Save your breath.’

  The rocks closed in about us; we followed a canyon which bored into the Altaish. Snowy plateaux and hideous crevasses, the whistling of the wind in high places and the leaden roar of avalanches were our only companions there. The canyon led us on. No man, surely, had ever ventured there before. There were no colours save grey and the white of death. The roaring of some troll or giant of the mountains pursued us. It was a while before we realized that what we heard was no supra-natural phenomenon, but thunder hurling itself at the rocks. The void heaved beneath us, tossing Frostfeather about as if she were a cork in a rough sea.

  ‘But I can breathe,’ Peder shouted, moving the mask aside.

  ‘Yes?’ I did not trust him: he would have to win my regard. I reached for the mask. ‘I trust you breathed deeply?’

  ‘There is real air, sir.’

  I took a lungful, expecting it to choke me. It was sweet and cold, the gift of the Altaish, and I was glad that I had prayed.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said aloud. Frostfeather bucked. We held her landing cords and rode her through the storm. Forked lightning crackled from her wires and made arcs about us. The rocks above were smashed and came tumbling down. We watched them hurtle past; we marvelled at the lightning’s blinding yellow flashes and the audacity of the storm, which had no regard for us. We were toys, mere fleshly automata, to be destroyed. I prayed again and, as I spoke the last word of my last prayer, the rain fell in a great cataract which extinguished both the lightning and the fire at Frostfeather’s heart. The rain swept us downwards, drenching and draggling the silk of the balloon and twisting it into a rope.

  We came to rest in a reed-bed. The enraged waters of a river rushed past us and we sat still amongst the remains of Frostfeather until we felt calm enough to move. The storm passed over and vanished down the canyon; the sun came out. We were close by a shingle beach and crayfish crawled about in the shallows. A rainbow sprang out above us.

  I was the first to wake. The night had passed. We had spent it dry, in a low cave under a rock. We had made a fire and roasted on hot stones the crayfish we had caught. I crept out, bending myself double in the narrow mouth of the cave. Outside, the sun shone in a clear sky. The unforgiving mountains towered all around, the river ran serenely, and a flock of goats grazed the sparse weeds on its far bank. A boy-child, the goatherd, was turning over the wreckage of Frostfeather. He saw me and leaped away over the boulders in the river, pausing only when he was half way across and out of reach.

  ‘Look!’ I said. I held my hands out and, by an effort of intense concentration, made them appear to contain a bunch of grapes. The boy was curious, and greedy. He came quickly to me.

  ‘Now!’ I said. Once more, I applied my mind. The grapes turned silver and flowed away in a molten stream which vanished before it hit the ground. Now I held the attention and the spirit of the boy. He looked up at me as if he expected to be destroyed on the spot or, at the very least, transformed into a brute creature.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ I said.

  ‘Always.’ He spoke a dialect of the Altaish. It was something like Erchon’s native tongue, and I could understand him. I found, and unlocked, our box of iron rations and gave him a disc of dark chocolate. Though he had clearly never seen or tasted the like, he ate it with relish.

  ‘My friend sleeps in the cave,’ I said. ‘We are envoys of the great Archmage of Pargur but the storm caught us and deposited us here.’

  ‘This is Vondar Gorge,’ the boy said, ‘and that is the young Von flowing past us. My village lies upstream and, upstream of that, is Vonta and the road.’

  I cheered and huzzaed, waking Peder who came out of the cave.

  ‘We are close to civilization,’ I told him. ‘Vonta, where they hold the Summer horse fair, is not far away.’

  Frostfeather was not as badly damaged as we first supposed and, with the help of the men of the village, we got her up to Vonta, where a basket maker repaired the holes in her wickerwork and a seamstress the rents in her silk. Peder rigged her carefully and lit the furnace. She began to swell proudly and to tug at her lines. Next day we left the little town, which was pleasant enough, with its painted houses and dwarven silver shops, but dull out of the fair season. We followed the Von to its source and crossed the watershed with the last of our air, again sharing the breathing-cowl. Frostfeather sailed on steadily by day and night. When the stars came out, Peder steered by the seven jewels of Bail’s Sword. We were nearing the Septrential Ocean, which we must cross before we saw the first dun hillocks of the Plain or encountered the first herd of horses.

  It is beyond the wit of man to explain or to elucidate the inconsistencies of Malthassa’s topography. Enough to say: it, like the gods and snows eternal, is. As mutable Pargur is and Espmoss, the nivashi and puvushi, Roszi in her coat of gold, and my metastatic Memory Palace.

  Peder, as we travelled, made himself my faithful servant. He gave me good advice but never again argued with me, nor questioned my decisions or showed with words or facial expression any quality other than profound regard. He spoke of ‘we’ – ‘when we have reached our goal’, ‘when we have overcome’, ‘when we return to Pargur and [here dropping the plural and collective for the singular and remarkable] Koschei rules the city’. Also, he flew the balloon.

  The blue waters of the Septrential Ocean passed beneath us, vast and naked of all human influence. Its fifty-foot waves were ripples to us. I saw from the balloon, or thought I saw, all its encircling shores; but, when we reached the first plains town o
f Ma, I was unsure; it was possible that the ocean, like the one at Pargur, continued beyond man’s ken; it was possible that the two seas met to girdle the land in a gigantic watery zone.

  The citizens of Ma were taciturn, half plainsmen and half townsfolk. They kept their horses corralled in enclosures fenced with brushwood and rode them on tight reins. I longed to see the true horses and riders of the Plain and the great Red Horse himself (he who is bridled with the skin of the last Om Ren) and I asked an elder to take me out of the town. Peder intervened.

  ‘You will see them soon enough,’ he said. ‘The obstacles which lie ahead are not physical. We must leave Frostfeather here and borrow Plains horses to carry us to SanZu.’ He went out of our lodging and I heard his voice in the street outside and another, answering it. Half a day later he returned. A second man followed him into the room, a small fellow whose hair was tied back and smeared with red grease. He was hardly taller than a dwarf but he carried a full-sized naked sword across his equally naked back. Two lengths of striped cloth hanging from a belt made of silver discs were all the clothes he wore, except for a pair of tall, soft boots.

  ‘This is our guide, The Rider Who Bestrides the Bay Horse from the Marches of SanZu, Nandje the son of Nandje.’

  I stood up and bowed to the little man. The Ima, in my imagination, were a race of tall and graceful men, whose nobility showed in both their faces and their deeds. I was not prepared for greasy savages. This one did not return my greeting; nor did he smile or speak.

  ‘He is listening to your soul,’ said Peder.

  The man, when several more silent minutes had passed, stepped up to me and laid his hands on my stomach.

  ‘That is their greeting. Now he will speak.’

  (I have not yet explained that all languages in Malthassa have a common root and that communication between the races is therefore comparatively easy. The exceptions – there must be at least one, must there not? – are the dwarven language of the Altaish and its dialects.)

  ‘You are Koschei; I am Nandje,’ said the Ima and continued with great fluency to address me: ‘I have listened and I have heard. You are an ambitious man, Koschei Corbillion, and your soul, though it is always restless, has the strength and tenacity of a hunting lioness. Welcome to the Plains.

  ‘I know SanZu Province well. It is close by the place of my birth. I have brought you the horse you will ride there. If you come to the door you will see him standing next to mine. His name is Winter and he is one of the lesser stallions. To ride a master of mares like my Bay or the noble Red is the privilege of kings and the Ima.’

  Nandje’s measured speech was his only noble quality.

  We looked out. A group of horses stood quietly in the centre of the street and it was easy to identify the Bay, Nandje’s horse, amongst them, a stallion clearly and the most richly decorated with pendant tassels of dyed horsehair and with strings of silver discs like those his master wore. My horse, Winter, was iron grey and the mount selected for Peder was a stolid brown. Other horses waited to be loaded with packs.

  ‘Speak to your horse,’ Nandje said.

  I had always considered horses to be beasts of burden and of small intelligence. What one said to them might be defined as ‘speech’ only because words were used but, like the butcher’s loud ‘Waahorhorhor!’, these words degenerated in the utterance into sounds as bestial as a neigh. I did not want to offend Nandje, the Plains horseman, at this early stage so ‘Winter!’ I called, ‘is your name given for your dusky and speckled coat, as harsh as the frozen ground, or for the time of your birth?’

  The horse turned his head and looked, over his shoulder as it were, at me. His large dark eyes were rimmed with sweeping black lashes. They reminded me of the eyes of a gypsy witch and disquiet grew in me as the horse continued to survey me, behaving in this exactly like Nandje when he listened to my soul. Soon, I thought (and trembled), he will speak. Winter walked slowly up to me and pushed his bony nose against me. His nostrils widened and he sniffed at my coat. In its left hand pocket was a piece of hard biscuit and I took it out and fed it to him. Thanks be, he did not speak; but Nandje did, answering my question.

  ‘He is named Winter in anticipation of your destiny,’ he said.

  ‘It is an ominous name.’

  ‘Winter has its delights, does it not? Come, Koschei: let us go into the inn and drink to our departure while your servant loads the horses.’

  I fell sick when we had ridden two days of long and hard hours’ traverse on the sunlit Plain where nothing but hillock succeeding brown hillock showed that we made progress toward our goal in SanZu. For another two days I lay on the ground, weak and in a melancholic humour, while Peder tended me and Nandje silently smoked his clay pipe at my side. On the third day I rose, well enough; but Peder fell ill. So, we lost five days in all.

  ‘Something pursues you out of Pargur,’ Nandje said, puffing on his pipe. ‘Some ill will.’

  ‘It is a weakening ambition,’ I told him. ‘It does not have sufficient strength to do us permanent harm.’

  Valdine, with his magic map and his mirrors, could have followed my progress all the way to SanZu; but wracked by the poison, his vitals consumed and gnawed at by the vitriolic worm out of the nut, had insufficient strength to pursue or wound us. Incapable of working up the passion and perverted carnality from which he drew his genius, he had thrown the worst hex of which he was still capable over us and visited us with a plague so destitute of vigour that these lost days of fever and discomfort were all the damage he could wreak. I prayed again, to my old God of the Cloister and to the Lady herself, that he was too great a heretic to call on the Duschma and her fatal infections.

  We rode on. Occasionally we saw herds of horses grazing the dry and withered grasses or parties of Ima horseman riding by. They did not greet us nor attempt to come near. Nandje carried a kind of standard, a long pole topped with a bunch of grass which, he said, told them we were intent upon a pilgrimage and would not welcome distractions. On the fifteenth day we saw the curves of greater hills before us, still a long way off Nandje gestured at them with his staff.

  ‘SanZu,’ he said.

  As I rode, I had ample time for reflection. Sometimes I thought of my home in Espmoss and of my quiet, cloistered youth – which Nemione took from me. I had run from the Religion and turned soldier that I might return one day and impress her. Then I had turned in dissatisfaction from that false destiny to magic, Pargur and ambition. I was that rare thing: priest, soldier and mage. The Om Ren had shown me myself; what Nandje told me had confirmed I was the man I desired most to be.

  I thought of Nemione: of her beauty and her coldness; of her desire to use me. Because of this, I rode to SanZu; I rode in response to a few kisses. She had come to me after I had poisoned the Archmage, flaunting her chaste presence in my bachelor chambers. This time she wore a gown fastened as high as her chin and long, hanging sleeves. It was white, symbolic like the other of her virginity, but buttoned from chin to toe with coral cupids and these, I knew, were all sewn on to tempt me to unfasten them and also to forbid me any such familiarity. Nemione gave me nothing for my journey, no gift and no advice, but paced about my rooms admiring the new furnishings and poked her lovely nose into all my books and drawers. Then, as she turned to go, ‘Come here Koschei,’ she said imperiously and, when I was close enough, put her veiled arms about my neck and kissed me three times, teasingly, fleetingly, on the lips. ‘You have done well, for a cloister mouse,’ she said, and ran away down the stairs.

  At least, I thought mournfully, I have saved her from Valdine. The worst he could summon now was a mild fever, a bout of vomiting and a headache. His agony made him impotent.

  ‘“In a bed, in a house, in a street, in a town, in a green province, in a wide country, lies my love.” Think on it,’ Manderel Valdine had instructed me. In this jingle, this commonplace peasant triviality, the key to his soul’s hiding place was concealed. I tried to construe it, but my pictures of Nemione made consta
nt interruption and I imagined her lying in her tapestried bed amongst her female gewgaws, conversing with golden Roszi, her watchdog. I imagined her nakedness and warmth in the night and, my lust awoken by these phantoms, moved uncomfortably in the saddle and fixed my gaze upon the hills and the unknown. A green shadow crept beside and about us, the new grass growing. Spring had come.

  ‘Look, Winter,’ I said. ‘See what was concealed in the cold ground.’ We paused, to let the horses taste the fresh shoots.

  At long-desired and hoped-for last, we rode into SanZu, halting at the border so that Nandje could bid us good-bye. This he refused to do, saying it would bring us bad luck. ‘Only trust in yourselves,’ he said, wheeled the Bay suddenly about on its haunches, and galloped off in a cloud of dust and good will. Peder and I rode on, following a high road for we were, once again, in civilized country. We saw the low buildings of farmsteads crowding around their stackyards and, in the fields which stretched to the roadside, the young flax plants were poking tender heads out of the fertile ground, while the mulberry trees which grew in groves around each house were in fresh and tender leaf. Small birds sang and old men sat outside the wayside inns, enjoying the warmth and the promise of the land and, in the foothills beyond the farmlands, a great brown rock breasted the sky. There was my sign: the rock whose steep contours had been marked on the Archmage’s magic map and on the map I had seen in Pargur! The sun shone on it with as much fervour as on the cultivated valley but the rock, I thought, was a barren and unkind thing to find overshadowing such fecundity. On the far side of a shallow river, which we forded gladly, we saw the town of Flaxberry and, riding along its cool streets, found ourselves pressed on all sides by curious citizens who asked us where we were going. It was expedient to conceal the reason for our arrival.

  ‘We need sleep,’ I said, feigning weariness. ‘Good beds, hot water and food.’

  Thinking we must be pilgrims, they led us to the nunnery.