The Memory Palace

by Gill Alderman

  ‘It is sulphur-water of Hijafoot. The shamans drink it before they leave their bodies to journey with the dead but, in ordinary folk, a tot will keep out the night’s cold.’

  Parados unscrewed the lid and took a sip before passing the flask on. It circled the fire and, when it came back to him, he drank again and again sent the flask round the fire. The liquor, despite its terrible smell, was good and warmed his stomach. They drank a third tot and emptied the flask, talking with loosened tongues. The men exchanged tales of nightlong duels with giant fish, of food, drink and capacious bellies, of tavern fights and brawls, hard work, starvation and the long famine; in return, Parados, who found his storyteller’s tongue fit and wagging, told them the story of the loss and recovery of his hands.

  ‘You told me that you journey in hope,’ said Aurel, when the tale was finished, ‘but what is its purpose: where are we going? – oh, I know “into the Altaish” but to view what towering peak, to stay in what upland settlement, talk with which race of men? The Altaish is a vast and hostile wilderness, all except a few of its nearer valleys unvisited and unknown.’

  ‘I have been told that the Altaish should be my next objective.’

  ‘By the Abbess, by Polnisha herself?’

  ‘By the Om Ren.’

  ‘You have been entranced, day-dreaming. The Om Ren is a creature of fable.’

  ‘I told you – he was there when I found my hands.’

  ‘That was a story!‘

  ‘Then, if I tell you that I hope to rediscover Castle Lorne, you will not believe me?’

  Hadrian spoke before Aurel could frame a reply,

  ‘Forgive Aurel before he speaks again, Parados. He is quiet, even meek, by day, on water. He takes the liberty to over-exercise his tongue: it is the sulphur-water speaking.’

  ‘We have emptied your flask, Hadrian; but let Aurel speak. I would rather no one is uncertain, or kills his fear as the basilisk slays her enemy – by staring it full in the face.’

  ‘I should like to believe you, Parados, for I have often dreamed about Castle Lorne and in my dreams it is a place to wonder at,’ said Aurel, flushed with the liquor and with embarrassment. ‘If we find it, we may discover other wonders which we thought were merely verses in the Lays of the Ima.’

  ‘Do you know Gry, the Imandi’s daughter?’ Parados asked him. ‘She recited one of the Lays to me when I stayed in her house.’

  ‘I once saw her pass by at the Horse Fair in Vonta, a pensive child, eight or nine years old, more like the daughter of a shaman than a lord. I was a child myself.’

  ‘She has grown, Aurel. She is a lovely woman who should be wooed and wed.’ He rolled over and lay down on his back to sleep with his memories of Gry, seeing the starry Swan, Bail’s Sword, the Hoopoe and the Dancing Crane float above him before his eyes closed. Gry kissed him in his sleep, but it was the kiss of a sister and saddened him. I will give her something to remember me by, he thought, and placed a single bright star in the dark emptiness above the head of the Crane. Later in the night, he woke and heard the wind blowing from the Plains far west of them, where Nandje’s village was. The balloon baskets creaked softly and Githon snored while Aurel, taking his turn at the watch, walked about them on silent feet. In the sky, his star burned where he had placed it in his dream, a fiery pentangle of great clarity and beauty. He smiled happily and fell asleep again. Aurel, when he brought hot linseed tea and warm bread in the morning, told him of it, eyes and voice full of wonderment.

  ‘There is a new star in the sky,’ he said. ‘It appeared just before dawn, huge and glowing, directly above the head of the Crane. It has five points – you can count them easily – and I think it is a sign that our journey will be blessed.’

  ‘I pray that it will,’ said Parados. ‘We will reach the foothills tomorrow and begin today to rise up into the mountains, and danger. Enjoy the last of the holidays!’

  All morning, as they sailed, he was possessed with love of his creation, the pentagonal star. When night came and it appeared, they were camped in rough ground where the forest met the bare foothills. Rocky formations had built themselves into towers and crazy buttresses amongst the cypresses and pines, unsure whether they were children of the mountains or older outcrops which preceded them. He asked the men what the star was called.

  ‘It has not found its name,’ Hadrian said. ‘Such a new and glorious star, soaring over the high peaks like a sign from heaven, must not have a common name – perhaps we should give it some name such as Harun, which means portent and also mountaineer.’

  ‘Or Polnisha!’ another soldier offered.

  ‘Or Parados,’ said Aurel quietly. ‘What would you call it, Githon?’

  ‘I would give it a simple name,’ said the dwarf. ‘A plain name which is easy to understand, but meaningful. So I would call the star Guardian, but would dignify the name and give it gravity by saying, in the old scholar’s tongue, Custos.’

  ‘Custos!’ Aurel echoed. ‘Yes – our helpful guardian!’

  Looking up at the star, the men spoke its name aloud and it climbed higher in the sky and waited for them above the first peak of the Altaish.

  ‘That is the way we must go tomorrow,’ said Parados. ‘After Custos. Following the star.’

  They were all asleep, except the soldier Vaurien who kept watch. The cold was intense and the men of SanZu and the dwarf were dreaming of the famine; but Parados dreamt of a fair woman. They made a romantic picture lying there between their folded balloons and the fire, each back covered with the hoar-frost which crept out of the foothills and touched them as they slept.

  I laid down the mirror. One can have too much meat at a banquet and, if I may continue in metaphor, I was tired of being the spider waiting on the wall. I was hungry for so much: to meet Parados, to stand before him and be seen, to look into his face and tell him my name. Also, I hungered in the common sense for, though I had fed Cob his red and white nourishment, I had not myself eaten for twenty-five hours. Accordingly, I bade my son goodnight and conveyed myself to Sehol, where I sat at the head of the long table in the Shield Hall, keeping my feet warm in the lap of the lissom juggler, Concordis, and suffering Friendship’s kisses and caresses for she was glad to see me at home. Rosalia, I had sent to air my bed with her fiery body. My chief councillor sat on my left – Strephon, who had once courted Nemione – and next to him, the Lord Marshall, Elzevir Tate, whom I had promoted to flatter and secure. Others of Nemione’s suitors sat at table, all of them mine and all of them corrupted and corrupt. They were no longer pretty fellows. Stephan and Randal were coarse-faced, sweaty and fat from good living, while Astrophel, who had caught the plague and recovered from it by my will, was left with red pustules on his handsome face and painful and permanent swellings in his joints. He walked with the aid of two sticks. Strephon had the clap and Corinel (the brother of Corydon who, preferring the cold charms of the nivashi to women’s parts, had drowned somewhere – I relate a rumour, for he was not worth the searching) – Corinel, the dolt, was perfect, manly, hard of muscle, mellifluous of voice, a poet, a swordsman, a good dancer, and loved only dogs. His favourite bitch sat by him on a chair, his jewellery round her four legs, shaggy neck and tail, her nose in a gold dish heaped with steak and marrow bones. The bitches belonging to my other councillors (Astrophel had two) leaned on the backs of their master’s chairs, fanning themselves with estridge feathers and gossiping in shrill voices. When I looked at them I wondered how in all creation I had ever come to love a woman. Stephanie and Randelle wore patches on their greasy cheeks, Stella had powdered her face too well and forgotten her neck and the vast ledges of her bosom; Ophelia had black teeth, Corinna the pox to go with Corinel’s affliction, while Strephonita farted continually, filling the room with a stench the finest perfumes could not disguise. My tastes are inventive and unusual but, I think, not gross. The dog, by the by, was called Cora.

  The tastes of Parados were clean and pure. He had reinvented himself, and this creation, of the
gentleman and knight, was as fine as his others, his clever tricks with his hands, with travel and renewal, the River Sigla and the star Githon had named Custos. Though I tried with wine and conversation to banish him, he would not depart and remained like a phantom with me. I was haunted by his valorous spirit. He would float, an innocent mayfly, eventually into my web, despite his powers, in spite of his honourable deeds. I saw his face even before I closed my eyes. He stared at and seemed to acknowledge my presence before, like a ghost again, he drifted away.

  The magician, who seemed to lean forward out of a confused background of candle-light and coloured brocades, was staring fixedly – almost as if he slept with open eyes. Parados met the unwavering gaze. Koschei’s hollow pupils were dark as death and the brown irises which surrounded them as glossy and repellent as the pebble-eyes of the wooden animals on the hill. Once, those eyes had welcomed others, sparkled with glee, with life and the love of it. Parados was sorry, seeing to what-a deep abyss Koschei had been brought, and looked away. Opening his eyelids, he saw the balloons upon their sides, furnaces roaring and canopies inflating slowly like giant, landfast squid. Aurel handed him a mug of tea.

  Wrapped like their weapons, but in fur beneath leather, the balloonists ascended from cold into greater cold. The foothills mounted up, height upon steep rise, until they became mountains. They passed over the peak the star had guarded for them and saw the highest lands, inaccessible to man but not to beast (for the Om Ren’s mate, whatever she was, lived there and there he must climb) and coated all over in deep drifts and tottering overhangs of crusted snow.

  ‘Soon we must land,’ said Aurel, ‘to bring ourselves below the height at which we should cease to breathe. There is no air for we mortals-even so, it may be that the mountain-tops are also without the blest stuff which fills our lungs so effortlessly. Do you think there is a village, Parados, where we can get pack-animals to carry our kit over the crest?’

  ‘There is Excelsior Pass,’ said Parados diffidently. ‘If we keep Esperance ahead and low, we should cross it safely.’

  ‘Is that where the star leads?’

  ‘Yes. Custos has gone this way – we shall see him watching over Castle Lorne tonight. We must use all the advantage we have been given while Koschei sleeps off his excesses of body and mind.’

  The sun, which had been tardy, rose to accompany them and touch the summit snows with rose and gold. Its glow rebounded from the walls of the pass and dazzled them as they crossed, one balloon after another, grey-blue, copper, bronze and green, until they all hung on the far side, between the light and the darkness which covered Castle Lorne. Its turrets only were visible, conical white caps rising out of the night, each one topped with snow. On the furthest, the brazen cockerel, Vifnir, lifted his enamelled wings towards the sun.

  ‘What food is left in the hamper?’ Parados asked urgently. ‘Quickly, find some small and tasty morsels.’

  Aurel, wondering who would choose to eat at such a sublime moment, obeyed and found a handful of sweet raisins, which he offered Parados.

  ‘No, hold them up in your outstretched hand. If we do not act speedily, the cockerel will crow and warn whatever waits in the darkness below; or it will wake Koschei in Pargur – it is a noisy bird.’

  Aurel, though he shook his head from side to side, held up the raisins. Minutes passed and the cock shook out his wings and smoothed them in his beak. He winked a golden eye and suddenly was aloft, flying fast and direct on his multi-coloured wings. As he landed on the rim of Esperance’s basket and stretched out his neck to take the bait, Parados seized him and muffled his head in a scarf.

  ‘We will have him for dinner! He is fleshy and heavy and he can’t turn back to brass while we have him,’

  Aurel, who felt sorry for the magnificent bird, stroked its green back and pulled out one of its golden breast-feathers.

  ‘Now you have a powerful charm,’ said Parados. ‘Keep it safe and it will guard you from ambush. I will tie Vifnir’s beak and his legs so that he can neither move nor crow. Back to the furnace and the sandbags, Aurel. We must find the magic canoe which is the entry into Castle Lorne.’

  ‘Is there a river down there beneath the dark?’

  ‘Yes, but the boat we must find is not a craft for sailing on water. It travels, like this balloon, through the air. Nemione kept it moored to a fig-tree close under Windring.’

  All day, they flew on the edge of darkness in search of the fig tree and the canoe. Once, Parados attempted to fly across the gloom but it was so cold that his balloon dropped suddenly, plummeting into the dark, and only Aurel’s skill saved them. Githon wanted to try, but Parados forbade him. They shone the light of their lanterns and of brands lit from the balloon furnaces below them and the light was swallowed up. Not until the sky, which had covered them throughout the daylight hours like a grey shroud, also grew dark and the stars came out, did they find a way. Custos rose and hung below Windring, illuminating the rocky arches on its summit and the fig tree, frost-covered and alone, clinging to the cliff. The canoe was missing but the Om Rem’s rope was tied fast to the tree and depended into the invisible valley.

  ‘I shall climb down it,’ said Parados.

  ‘And I! You will need a torch-bearer,’ said Githon.

  The navigators fastened the five balloons to the fig tree. Githon and Hadrian scrambled from their own baskets into Esperance’s, which dipped with the extra weight. They armed themselves, Parados buckling on his new sword for the first time in earnest. He was the first on the rope. As he took hold of it, he remembered how he had touched the Om Ren’s hair with his new-found old and beloved hands. The rope was rough and easy to cling to: tufts at intervals along its length made foot- and hand-holds and, though he was wary of dropping into negation, it did not end but was always there, however far he climbed down it. He thought that, if he opened his mouth, he would drink in the darkness and become part of it. Githon, just above him, had a lantern tied to his leg but it was no more use than water to the dead. Darkness should be comforting, a warm place to sleep, but this was colder than the Poles and threatened his hands; it was too late now to adjust his hold and put on gloves. His left foot touched a solid – the bottom, a projecting stone? – and at the same time, the rope began to shake and twist. He heard Aurel cry out in alarm as he clung to the bucking rope.

  ‘Hold tight,’ said the Om Ren in his mind. ‘This is Koschei’s doing, a small, annoying spell. Trust me: count three and let go.’

  Again, Parados felt stone, then it was gone and he had counted three. There was no time to pray or consider his fate: he dropped from the rope and found stability, the ground beneath his feet. He stepped forward, an inch, a foot: he stood on something larger than an isolated rock. The others called out from the rope; but soon, they were all with him and Githon was unfastening the lamp from his leg and holding it up. Here, the dark was less invincible: they could see the ledge on which they stood and, with the aid of a second lamp which Hadrian lit, the castle wall and a sally port.

  ‘That way!’ said Aurel. ‘It must be the entrance to Castle Lorne – will it be like the castle in the Ima’s tales?’

  Hadrian went first to take what he claimed should be his due, the harm from any snare or trap in the gateway; but all was quiet and inside the arch they found a stone stairway to which, as they began to climb it, their lamps brought a fresh light, as of early morning. Still, the stair was grim and Parados for a moment saw it as the terrible staircase of his recurrent dream before a new light, falling from an arrow-slit, showed him spiralling steps like any in a church or ancient ruin. In front of him, Hadrian paused.

  ‘There are footprints – here, in the thick of the dust!’

  They went before, up the stairs, the footprints of a man for they were large and regular, of someone who knew his way. A curious fan in the dust beside the left print was, Githon said, caused by a tassel or fringe come loose to flop in the dust. So, following in Koschei’s steps (for who else would, or could, come willing
ly to Castle Lorne?) they entered Nemione’s bedchamber where there was nothing but more dust and the trail of footprints leading on. A light seeped reluctantly into the room, around the edge of closed shutters, and Parados ran forward and flung them open.

  ‘We have brought the day!’ he cried. Outside, the snowbound castle walls and towers came slowly into focus as the light increased and the air began to move from its stasis. Nemione’s flag, on which three golden hinds were worked, lifted on its cord. The darkness ran before the breeze and full day was imminent, yet waited to be called as if it had forgotten it should illuminate the works of Man and the Beasts.

  Her cell, or study, lay beyond the bedchamber. Parados went fearlessly into it and crossed to the window. Here, where there were no shutters and the snow had blown into the room were many sets of Koschei’s footprints, overlaying each other and telling a tale of misery and devotion.

  ‘Koschei’s sleep is fathomless,’ whispered the Om Ren’s bodiless voice. ‘He has not been here for a month but, as you see, he made his visits in great agony of mind.’

  A great heap of fallen plaster lay on the floor in front of a cavernous fireplace, some stuffed birds decaying on the top of it beside the rotted body of a great horned owl. Nemione’s desk and bookshelves were in similar disarray, her writing materials and grimoires tumbled and mildewed, her crystals and petrified flowers sullied with cobwebs and grime. Her drinking water had frozen in its glass. A sagging curtain, weighed down with the damp, its woven scenes of Arcadian life a garden now for mosses and ugly growths of toadstools, hung across a corner of the room. While Githon and Hadrian stood by with drawn swords and Aurel held the lamp to augment the slow new-born light, Parados lifted it aside. It crumbled where he touched it and the toadstools covered his hand with slime but, though he involuntarily wiped his hand on his coat, he did not notice the filth: Nemione’s cat-a-mountain couch stood there at bay, a tangled nest of creatures curled up in its long, white hair.