The Memory Palace

by Gill Alderman

  ‘Koschei – Koschei, I shall never be your bride,’ she said. ‘You are married already, though there were neither bridesmaids nor groomsmen at your wedding under the green willow.’

  ‘Take my life in return for one night of love. I have hidden my soul –’

  ‘Hush, never tell! And what would I do with your life? Such vanity! How could I give up this, my own dear sovereignty, for the pleasures of a single night with you?’

  ‘I shall never desert you, nor abandon my suit!’ I replied.

  ‘Then be content to spend your life yearning for the impossible. Take what is your due – one of these, your children. The rest are forfeit.’

  I felt the heat increase and spread about me. Flames spurted from Urthamma’s mouth and sucked the new-born in. The god smacked his smiling lips and extended his tongue to lick up every squealing, fleeing creature – all but one, which skipped away and quickly hid itself under the hem of my robe.

  ‘Yes, keep that one Koschei,’ Urthamma said. ‘It will make a better servant than old Ivo. Feed it with your life’s blood and it will obey you well. Remember, I do not obey you: you are wholly mine.’

  His hot breath surged over me and I felt my face and hands smart cruelly; but it was a gentle breath and the god faded as a dying fire fades until he was gone. Nemione also and her Child and her room had vanished; I was alone with her cross and broken chain, and my memories. I did not shed tears (that ability left me when I hid my soul) but moaned aloud and cursed both the beautiful and the hideous, both the blessed and the damned, until a tugging by my knee awoke me from my sorrowful fit. The small creature which I had been bidden to care for was climbing up my robe. It had grown since birth, doubling its size; it was as big as my fist. I remembered Urthamma’s words ‘your life’s blood’ and cast about me, without inspiration and without sense. The creature ran along my arm and answered my dull questioning by sinking teeth of keenest ivory into my thumb and sucking there on my blood. I watched it as it fed, my child, my son – I supposed, for it bore nothing within or without its naked body that resembled the parts of man or woman. It had four limbs which it used as we do arms and legs, but interchangeably, and a spherical body which was all head and gut. As to colour, this was at present indeterminate, but watery and somewhat yellow; later, as it grew to its full size, as tall as my boots, it became as white of skin as its grandmother, Nemione. Now, ceasing to feed and satisfied, it wiped its lips with a cloven hoof and gazed at me from her sapphire eyes until I was discomfited and bade it run away.

  ‘But Father, where am I to sleep?’ it said. ‘And is this calloused thumb of yours to be my dining-room?’

  ‘I was a soldier but recently,’ I answered. ‘Do not expect the luxuries your mother and your granddam enjoy.’

  ‘You are a mage and you have a conjuring-tower and a castle! Make me a castle of my own.’

  ‘I am too weary. Find yourself some corner of the room until I am myself again. Do you think that magic-making is as easy as making wishes?’

  ‘No, Father. I am a good child and I will wait contentedly.’

  My son jumped suddenly from my hand and I saw him scuttle underneath a cushion I had left on the floor – and there he stayed till I had slept. Our next encounter came with the morning. I had woken energetic, full of eagerness for life and in the anticipation of satisfying works, for it was good to have company in the tower. I went outside on to the barren and windy promontory where the snow stayed an hour before it was whirled to perdition. Many weathered boulders rested there. I chose one and sent it before me into Peklo tower. Mine was the delight, I thought, to bring my son up in my ways, and mine the privilege to have a being I could call my own, my dear, my sweet familiar and friend. I determined to give him an honourable name, of the sort I would bestow on any human son of mine, such as Gregory, Godfrey or Cornelius.

  He was waiting for me, perched on the back of one of my mirrors, and he greeted me with a skip and a bow.

  ‘Must you feed again?’ I asked him.

  ‘If you please, Father; but give me enough of your fine scarlet liquor and I shall not ask again till this day week.’ He ran sideways to me; he could run in any direction, like a big cob-spider and therefore, involuntarily, I called him Cob, saying ‘Come now, Cob, down to the floor. Your drinking-glass and dining table shall be the soft inside of my knee: take care you do not waste my blood,’ and he never got a more majestic name. I lifted the skirt of my robe and watched him feed; it was a physical and psychic bonding for, ever after that, he was my slave. Something in his spittle closed my vein off when he had done and in time there grew a little wart or nipple in the place, which he used to suck on as a teat.

  ‘I have brought stone for your castle,’ I told him, ‘and shall devote a day to fashioning it as you direct. To recommend whatever you fancy to be raised there shall be your first task for me.’

  I worked with might and main on the boulder, a simple and pleasurable task but tiring to perfect. Cob was an oddity; he should have a princely palace. I imagined what my architects might have built and consulted some of Valdine’s books in the Memory Palace for I still hardly dare venture among the real magic books in the tower’s library. At the end of the day, a toy castle of gilded and hewn aragonite, to whose sheer faces clung a network of the crystals they call iron flowers, stood in the room, all complete with flags and cannon, portcullis and furnished rooms. Cob disappeared inside it and I heard him trying out the beds. Myself, I needed food and wine and for that, it was better to go to Sehol – where I might also have entertainments and music, perhaps also the soft touch of Friendship’s hands and pleasant tales in illustrated books.

  Yet in Peklo library – I went as far as its half-open door and listened there, expecting to hear Valdine shuffling about amongst the shelves. I pushed the door wide on silence and my own wildly-beating heart. The place was exactly like its memory-palace shadow. I walked more confidently. Here were books of puissant power! Though I had seen my name in it, replacing his, I avoided Valdine’s Book of Souls open on its wooden eagle and lifted a grimoire of Simon Magus from its place. I lost my hunger when I opened it, assuaging my weariness and thirst on knowledge; forgot my son, forgot the passage of time, forgot Nemione who, in her room and among her dancing attendants, Stephan, Randal, Strephon, Astrophel and the rest, lived on through the winter, lived their lives elsewhere. Sometimes I felt young Cob feeding in the hollow behind my right knee and then knew nothing but signs, runes and hieroglyphics till I felt him feed again; sometimes the wind whistled in the tower-top or snow was hurled against the window-pane; once, a dragon brought a fearful darkness by sitting on the rocks outside; alien wings beat in the storm or terrible cries rent the night; once, an angel appeared before me, coldly bowed and flew away; many demons came to join me at my books, crouching under leathery wings in every corner of the room and perching, red and argumentative, on the shelves.

  I came to myself in the spring. The light was strong outside and the cries of young sea-birds had replaced the weird calls which accompanied my studies. I had grown thin and hollow-eyed; Cob complained that my blood tasted thin and had lost all virtue.

  ‘We must fly home,’ I said. ‘Climb inside my robe and hold fast to me lest I lose you forever in the Void.’

  How I fed and feasted, glad of Ivo’s tender care and the entertaining visits of Peder Drum, who brought me ice from the summit of Mount Tempest in the Altaish and told me of a winter’s exhilarating and dangerous ballooning! Friendship and her companion, the juggler, were frequent visitors; Cob grew fat and noisy on my fresh, thick blood, claiming he could taste in it the salt of my renewed virility. As soon as I could look at myself in mirror or window-glass without censure, I dressed in a new-made suit of clothes and sent for Nemione, impatient to see how the winter had dealt with her. While I waited for her, I questioned one of her maids for I still believed she would desert, as she had the harsh life of the cloister, the lonely hermitage of magic to marry one of her suitors. The maid gave
me welcome and unwelcome news.

  ‘She has thrown out all her young men, my lord. No one visits her but the Marshall of Pargur, the Lord Lucas Austringer.’

  A second maid came running in, she whom I marked for life with a blow from my unrestrained fist. For she said, all out of breath and tearful as she was,

  ‘She’s gone, Lord Archmage, she isn’t there – the Lady Nemione has fled.’

  Her companion tended her while I paced up and down, Ivo scurrying behind me and poor Cob trembling on my shoulder.

  ‘So, the sorceress has fled away – what else could be expected of a woman who refuses love in favour of arcana, arch-chymicry, familiars, spells, the friendship of monsters?’ said Ivo, his words marking time with his hurried steps.

  ‘Her precept was once “Keep Faith”,’ I said.

  ‘Not with you, Sir; never with you, Archmage.’

  I knelt and shook the unconscious maid till she awoke. ‘Where has she gone? Where is she – answer me that!’ I shouted. The other maid replied, ‘To Castle Lorne, Lord Koschei, that is certainly where. She talked of it lately. She and Lord Lucas were always looking at maps and plans.’ I dropped a coin into her pocket.

  ‘What shall I do, Ivo? Neither soldiers nor the birds will be of any use to find her.’

  ‘You must practise the Art again, Sir. Return to Peklo, do whatever is necessary there. But Sir, they do say that if a man wears silk in this life, he forfeits the right to wear it in the next. You are better off without her. You can enjoy her in the after-life – when your time comes!’

  ‘Why not say “hell”, Ivo? As for my Lady, I have never measured that particular piece of silk, let alone fashioned it into a garment for my use.

  ‘Come now, pack me up a hamper of delicacies. I shall need some solace as I work.’

  You, Sir, may not understand magic though it is no mystery to me. To you, it is force like the imagination, wild and unbiddable, chaos without logic external or internal. To me, its manifestations and workings are as clear and logical as the view of a knot garden on a sunny day. Why, I can see the knots unravel themselves, and how they were first tied!

  In those days, I knew much but, as yet, of little – and I could not find Nemione or her stronghold, Castle Lorne. The map showed familiar territories, the globe was still, the mirrors opaque: Nemione had cast negation about herself and her environs and vanished totally, as if she were with Death, and I sent a messenger into Hell who came back with words for me from the Destiny of All Life: that he longed to welcome her to his dark dwelling but had seen neither her, nor her friends or servants. ‘Nor will I soon greet you, Lord Koschei, for you have tricked me out of my due.’ This sentence I wrote down on parchment and keep beneath a skull in the Memory Palace.

  In Pargur, my soldiers searched for the Lord Marshall, Lucas Austringer. He, too, had gone. My jealous fears grew. Peder and his navigators searched the skies and my huntsmen and woodsmen the forest, in vain. One day, I heard Cob singing a nursery rhyme over to himself, as he sat in his little castle. I’ll sing it to you though my voice is cracked these days, and gruff:

  Hush-a-bye, baby,

  On the high top,

  When the wind blows

  Thy cradle will rock,

  When the rain falls,

  My baby will float

  Past fig tree and grey walls

  In cradle and boat.

  I called out to him:

  ‘Cob, dear son – what is that verse you sing?’

  ‘I heard it in my mother’s womb,’ he said, ‘I heard a sweet voice sing it every time she lay down to sleep.’

  To search for a single fig tree out of thousands, or tens of thousands! I ate well and then sat down before my mirrors. On the third day, I found the tree, a stunted thing with five leaves which grew in a crack on the side of Windring mountain in the Altaish. A painted canoe was tied to the tree by a seven-strand rope of finest Om Ren hair. I laughed. Nemione had kept her style of gallant mockery: a magic rope and a boat which did not sail but flew – no mean devices. As for those who stole the Om Ren’s moulted hair for her, they were surely damned in her service. In combative mood, but laughing more bitterly, I went home to Castle Sehol and, to distract myself, made merry there. Peder Drum, to whom I sent orders next day, prepared Frostfeather for a long flight.

  Love, its beginnings, its course, its consummation: pursuit begins it, the hunt is up and the quarry (oh, Nemione, my white doe) on the run. She enjoys the chase, having the strength to outrun her hunter; she pauses to permit him a glimpse of her beauty through the leaves; she allows him to drive her to the impasse and, casting aside her last defences, welcomes his dagger because she knows that in their first embrace he will also find his quietus.

  Nemione had broken, as before in the Cloister, every rule, and still ran before me, her lawful hunter; worse, she ran with another stag. I could not excuse her. She was not to be compared with a Green Wolf roaming Malthassa in search of a battle nor was she any longer one of the gypsies, but a fair and fashionable beauty, and a Sorceress. From this knowledge, I took comfort. A woman who had given herself to her lover would have lost the power to make the simplest device; she would be incapable of negating matter and of vanishment. I hoped that she had used Lord Lucas’s military skills and then disposed of him, for it would save me the trouble.

  Frostfeather was my chariot and Peder my charioteer. I rode the wind and hunted the beasts of the firmament, clouds with the heads of lions and packs of sharp-fanged wolves which dissolved and re-formed as I pursued them. Windring was a small boulder on the horizon; grew in size as we approached until Peder and I could clearly see the stone circle on her summit, a natural phenomenon cut by the wind’s keen knife from the living rock. We hung above the circle to admire it, floating in a round-dance in and out the mighty arches of the circle. Peder thought that giants long ago might have fashioned it.

  ‘It is so grand – and the mountain-top within so smooth. Does the wind have a mind to imagine such a structure, and fashion it? That is where they had their feasts, the giants. Can’t you picture them reclining there, with their women and their mighty flagons of wine?’

  ‘You have become a poet, Peder. The wind has made you drunk – Nature does not require human explanation, not even the supreme answers of a poet – or a mage. Tell me, how is your breathing? Are you quite comfortable?’

  ‘Whatever you have devised, Archmage, to bring us air, is far more ingenious than Valdine’s clumsy cowls.’

  ‘That is because I am a better conjurer, Peder. I know how to use Mother Nature and do not waste myself in admiration of her toys. Now, do you see the fig tree? Drive Frostfeather below the summit. We should find it on the sunny side.’

  We sailed downwards in a shaft of light. It brought the colour out of the rock, sparkling clusters of rubies, sapphires as wonderful as Nemione’s eyes, and lit up the five leaves of the fig tree to which my lady had fastened her boat: her bait.

  ‘Put me down beside the tree, Peder Drum, and wait for me in the sky above. Do not let yourself be led away by the zracni – airy spirits are more devious than nivashi and impossible to hold fast. Be vigilant.’

  ‘I will, Archmage – besides, I took my pleasure with my wife, and in Nether Pargur, before I began this journey.’

  ‘Fare well!’

  ‘And you, my Lord.’

  I untied the rope of Om Ren hair which had no power to prevent me, his spiritual ward, and stepped into the canoe. Its prow was fashioned like the nose of a lyme-hound and it seemed to sniff its way through the air, its motion erratic. Twice, it tried to throw me out, but I was ready for it and admonished it with a whipping spell which made it yelp. I thought Nemione’s combination of boat and dog endearingly eccentric. A paddle lay on the bottom-boards, but I left that well alone and, contrary to my advice to Peder, took time to admire the view – with purpose, for Castle Lorne was visible from my seat in the enchanted boat.

  Shall I praise its architecture or its setting? Bot
h call for superlatives. The castle, as castles often are, was grey, but such a soft grey like the wings of doves or the undersides of clouds. It had towers, turrets, battlements, flags, all the necessities, and stood proudly on a rock above a winding river whose banks were water-meadows starred and studded with flowers. The sun’s rays were reflected by the shining wings of a weathercock on the keep and his head pointed south at the fine weather.

  &c. Nemione had built herself a fair and delightful refuge. The morning song of small birds in the meadows floated up to me as the canoe approached Castle Lorne and I, leaning eagerly forward the better to see, wondered when the brazen cock would crow – as crow he did, raucously, mightily, the instant I had formed the thought. A cloud crossed the sun and extinguished all the brightness. Darkness was made visible. The castle and its pleasant meadows disappeared and I, alone in the frail boat, drifted in it without direction, the mocking crow of Nemione’s watch-bird ringing in my ears. I might be crossing Styx or Lethe, might be anywhere – in limbo or in hell. I felt the boat bump against stone and a single point of light pierced the darkness. There, on a narrow quay stood a woman veiled in black, who waited patiently and held up the light.

  ‘Tell your mistress that Koschei is here!’ I called.

  The woman stepped forward, bringing more light and I, When I had quit the boat, reached out and pulled aside her veil. I thought I knew her and thought I did not. She looked away from me, not coy but in embarrassment.

  ‘Come, lady,’ I said. ‘You cannot hope to equal your mistress in beauty, but you look well enough. Is Nemione near? I am certain that I stand inside the walls of Castle Lorne.’

  ‘You entered by the air gate, Koschei,’ she said. ‘Some would call it the most perilous, but you appear unafraid; although you seem to rely on mortal strength and not on magic, for I see your sword still at your side.’

  ‘It is sometimes the quicker way, that is all.’