The Memory Palace

by Gill Alderman

  ‘Mistress Lurania is right to say that I used to mine silver,’ he said, ‘for I have left that far behind me and am bound in the service of a fair lady, once Nemione Baldwin from Espmoss and now the Lady of Castle Lorne.’

  The old woman made the sign of a crescent moon on her breast. ‘I hear she has recovered from her long sleep,’ she said.

  ‘And I!’ said Erchon eagerly. ‘There has been high magic or a miracle, for I heard the great culverin of Castle Lorne and the drums of the Watch beating a tattoo when I was many leagues away to the west with the hermit of the salt marsh.’

  ‘I told his fortune once, but he would not believe it. How does the beadsman? Well, or does he tire of his lonely meditation and the everlasting chorus of the sea-mews?’

  ‘Hale, hearty and full of good jests. He has plenty of practice, telling them to the birds.’

  ‘Perhaps I will pay him a call if we travel that way – but you must take your reward, Sir Silvercoat. Now, my boys: I won and therefore all your money is mine. But I shall not be hard on you. I’ll tax you, no more than two coins from each pile and half of them I’ll give the dwarf – who has come here as an innocent traveller and made you a fine afternoon’s entertainment and a subject for talk for a good twelvemonth.’

  Lurania took her coins and counted half into Erchon’s hat, pocketing her share with the brilliant-cut diamond which, Erchon had seen at once, was a piece of moulded glass.

  ‘Now hold the end of my cane,’ she said, ‘and I’ll take you to my sister who will assist you more than I, a mere white witch, can. My dear sister is a witch of every colour, red, black, green, white, silver, gold. She has all the talents at her command, a true chov-hani.’

  The chov-hani sat in the low doorway of a tent made of bent willow-sticks and red and black checked blankets, old like Lurania but with round and wrinkled cheeks which were brown as a russet apple taken from the loft in the dead of winter. Lurania, when she had presented Erchon, withdrew, tapping the ground with her white cane as she went.

  ‘She is blind,’ said Erchon, ‘yet she knew what was taking place at the chapel.’

  ‘Blind as the day she was born,’ the chov-hani replied. ‘The sun never rose that day and she cried from the moment of her birth until the next day week. That inauspicious beginning, and her blindness, is the reason she can never be more than a homespun witch. For scrying and spells and earth-turning a woman needs her sight and her other five senses besides. And you, little man-cousin, your sight is better than excellent and your hearing too. The Lady Nemione left her stronghold in the summer and nears Pargur with her knight and her company of soldiers and navigators. You who were beyond the forest have covered the greatest part of the ground which lies between this place and her train.’

  ‘That is because I sent my heart before me as a messenger,’ said Erchon. ‘But who brings Nemione to a contest of arms with Koschei – one of the suitors is it, Lord Randal or Lord Astrophel?’

  ‘Do chicks hatch from bad eggs? They are all bought and belong to the Archmage. It is the Paladin from the Lays, Parados of the Ima of the Plains – that is where he first discovered himself, appearing to Nandje out of the heart of the storm and ever after working wonders as he journeyed in SanZu and the Altaish. It is he we must thank for waking the sun and the wind, for calling up the green shoots from the earth, and for Nemione’s return from the halls of the puvushi.’

  ‘Will you help me, chov-hani? I must go quickly to my Lady and help her fortunes forward.’

  ‘Is that enough for you, Silver Dwarf?’

  ‘More than enough!’

  ‘What of Koschei? He drew you to him as the star does the moth.’

  ‘My long and lonely journey has shown me that he is a dark star.’

  ‘Will you be content to let things be whatever they will and to bring me what I ask from Pargur?’

  ‘I am content and I will bring what you ask, even if it is my heart’s desire.’

  ‘Too much, Erchon! Dwarves are over-ready to promise any fool the moon. You will never get your heart’s desire now, but I must have what you will bring me. Fetch me the golden nivasha, Roszi (which he calls Rosalia), from Koschei’s bed. He has joined her lovely head to the body of a fire-demon and both must be destroyed.’

  ‘It will be a sad day when that happens.’

  ‘Roszi was born to sadness. I knew her when she lived under the waterfall: she was a miserable, tearful thing in those days, doting on the men she drowned and sighing over their bones. And when Nemione had befriended her and persuaded Valdine to give her all that was left of the nivasha (I suppose she felt responsible for one of her kith and kin) after his experiments with molten gold, she was a whining ninny whose only use was as a watch-goose, and a goose is what she was and is. Nowadays, she warms the Archmage’s bed and serves his unnatural lusts. It will be easy for you to persuade her of a better future once you are inside Castle Sehol. She will remember you from the old days when, at least, she could complain to her cousin.’

  ‘Inside Castle Sehol?’ said Erchon wonderingly, ‘Inside the castle which is unseizable and unslightable? It would take Koschei himself to perform such a feat.’

  ‘Tilly-vally! I shall convey you into the very heart of Koschei’s stronghold. If you are fearful, say your prayers, then come with me.’

  Erchon muttered a charm of the Mountain Dwarves and followed her. She moved quickly for a woman of advanced years, scurrying along the village street as if she had a gale behind her. Soon, they came to the Lytha between whose steep banks the water flowed swiftly down by purple heathlands known only to the curlew and the windhover and through the uncharted forest to Pargur.

  ‘Lie down here, Dwarf,’ said the witch.

  He obeyed at once: he had spoken all the prayers he knew. She looked at him with her knowing, gypsy eyes and kicked him hard and expertly into the river.

  ‘– Duped!’ was all he had the time to think before he hit the water and sank beneath its swirling tide, swallowing the mud and rubbish which the river carried with it and sending up a broad stream of bubbles as the air rushed from his lungs.

  Esperance flew high and swift, its flight unimpeded by the burden of an extra passenger: Nemione travelled with Parados in the guise of a young knight. A crested helmet hid her face and hair and an engraved breastplate made her trunk as straight and solid as a man’s, cuisscs covered her thighs and greaves her slender lower legs, a tasset removed the curve of her hips from view. The armour was light and shone brightly: it would have served her better at a tournament. On her belt of dragon’s leather she carried a golden-hilted sword. The belt was fastened with a buckle made from the cupid’s arrow Parados had given her and the device on her shield was argent on a chevron vert between three hinds or; but all this only added to the show and dazzlement. Nemione’s weapons and her armoury were in her head where the years of magic had amassed a library of spells and put a steel barrier between her lovers and herself. She had kissed Parados many times in Castle Lorne and they had reclined side by side on her couch to talk or listen to music, and to embrace each other. He had given her the golden arrow on one of these sweet, frustrating occasions and she had told him what she vowed so many years ago, in the cloister at Espmoss.

  ‘I was determined even then to make magic,’ she said, ‘and my vow seemed a small price to pay for a lifetime filled with everything I desired, except union with a man. But I love you, and, when we have prevailed, there will be such a wedding! Till then, Beloved, you must enjoy me in your dreams.’

  Parados kissed her, resolving to be worthy of such untainted love, and filled his days and many of his nights with preparations for Nemione’s assault on Castle Sehol. He drew up plans and maps, made lists and issued orders to his officers and sergeants. The halls and yards of Castle Lorne echoed to the blows of smiths’ and armourers’ hammers; Iron Dwarves forged chains and cast cannon balls; gunsmiths proofed muskets and tested powder while soldiers, navigators, new balloons and supplies were brought u
p through Excelsior Pass from SanZu. He was often lonely, though one or many more of his men accompanied him and his tasks were carried out in fellowship. He no longer heard the Om Ren’s helpful voice and must rely on his own judgement; concluding that the Wild Man had found his bride, he thought enviously of their joyous and mighty coupling somewhere high in the snows and silent peaks of the Altaish. He watched his craftsmen and wondered why Nemione did not employ magic instead of these heavy and time-consuming skills.

  Nemione prepared herself and her arcane weaponry, all, even the Child, Lilith, excluded from her room. So Lilith, with Leo and Halfman always at her heels or riding on her shoulders, ran about from undercroft to battlement with messages for Parados, with food and drink for him or the books and tools of coppersmithing for Githon, who was making bullets for a new gun he had invented. He called it his Shrike, because he hoped it would make many corpses as does the butcher-bird. Sometimes Lilith rode Sirius, the dog-headed canoe, along the corridors and swooped back and forth below the kitchen rafters, her nurse trying vainly to tempt her down with sweets and promises, her governess trailing after them both, and all the chefs and scullions shouting encouragement to the Child.

  The Lady of the castle and her lover spent such time together as was meet in the face of war, an hour each day of companionship to which he looked forward with a mix of hope and impatience and she with calm fortitude. They walked often in the gardens or climbed to the top of Gyronny keep where Nemione’s circular glasshouse gave her tenderest plants shelter. The house, when first they went there, was neglected and full of holes from which the dry tendrils of dead plants hung out and tapped forlornly in the wind. Parados touched a vine which immediately quickened and sent out new leaves and flowerbuds.

  ‘It is like our love, grown out of death,’ he said. ‘Touch this, Nemione, and these. You, who have seen Beelzebub parade before his court and Asmodeus walking in his pride, are the one with best claim, of the two of us, to bring your mandrakes, night-orchids and sleep-cusks back to life.’

  ‘No, my Love, I have only seen the Queen of the Night who danced among her pale vili. There are no colours underneath the ground but black and white,’ said Nemione softly, but she went from pot to pot, touching the dry earth here and whispering to a bare stalk there until the glasshouse had filled up with green leaves and shoots, the broken glass healed itself and the split and warped woodwork grown strong and straight.

  ‘This is the last part of Castle Lorne to be healed,’ she told Parados. ‘Everything that has happened in the castle followed your wish to see my tomb and everything you have ever done, or been, or wished to be has brought you here – from your salad days when you were green in judgement to this, your splendid maturity.’

  ‘I did nothing in my youth to prepare me for it,’ he said. ‘Nothing edifying or noble; and when I had more years than I cared to admit to myself, I was a fool.’

  ‘No, it was all groundwork,’ she insisted. ‘Don’t you see, without the least of them you would not be here beside me?’

  ‘I loved intemperately, randomly.’

  Nemione laughed. ‘I,’ she said, ‘thought I loved Koschei and I did love a gypsy –’

  ‘So did I!’

  ‘Yours was quite as beautiful and fascinating as mine, I am certain,’ she said. ‘He was a forest Rom that I met when I was travelling to Pargur between the pure life and the self-denying. His hair was black as ivy-berries, his white teeth even and stained at the gums with the honeyed tobacco he chewed and his name was Ladislas, after one of their kings. He praised my beauty and called me his rikkeni rawnie – though I had dyed my hair and darkened my skin and wore gaudy garb and brass jewellery to look like a Rom. Ladislas brought me new-laid eggs and a young hare to make a pet of, and the pale flowers of the wood-anemone which the gypsies call blushing maidens: because its name and nature were mine in any language, he said. I left him with the promise that if I returned, I would wed him.

  ‘In those days I was ambitious, Love, and wanted silk and satin, precious jewels and a grand house and to be renowned for my beauty as much as for my Art; nor was Ladislas my true-love. Men have died for want of me, Parados, but you will not.’

  She smiled and kissed him.

  ‘My gypsy was called Helen,’ he said. ‘She was a witch – should I say “is”? – and had the hair of a gypsy-witch, which falls down straight from the head and curls upon the shoulders – and dark, too, black as the coat of a panther.’

  ‘A witch?’ said Nemione, and stiffened, as if she sensed a rival. ‘A witch called Helen – I have read of her, have I not? Something in my mind, ah! – “bitter suffering once came from you, Helen”.’

  ‘What you say is true enough.’ Although that was another Helen, he thought, of Troy. He did not correct Nemione, reflecting that she had her origins in the same vast, abstract world of words. Nemione sighed and laid her head against his chest.

  ‘Let us invent a Malthassan history for you, my love. You are tall and fair (though grizzled as a good soldier should be, who has fought in many wars) and your blue eyes, which are nothing like my sapphires but lucent as a blue-stained goblet of pure water, are those of a kristnik. Your father was Stanko and you have eleven strong brothers, all knights like yourself, and a hatred of witches. Also, as a proper kristnik, you have won the love of a spirit, for I am more than half nivasha through my mother and my father’s mother. Am I not beautiful, dear one, am I not all you desire and all you ever have desired?’ and she ran across the room and into the stair-turret, Parados following swiftly after and catching her for seven sweet kisses halfway down the stair.

  Side by side with her in Esperance, while Aurel drove the balloon on high and fast, he knew contentment, happiness and joyous expectation. Nor was he afraid, neither of the coming battle, nor of being wounded; but he thought of Koschei with a secret hope that the Archmage and he would never meet.

  ‘Why do you not use magic against Castle Sehol’ he asked Nemione, ‘instead of transporting the cannon and pot-guns in pieces to be reassembled outside Pargur? And all our folk?’

  ‘Magic is a weapon that turns easily against its user,’ she replied. ‘It is better to keep such fickle strength for desperate situations and do what can be done with engineering and the soldiers’ skills of sapping, mining and bombarding. Also, the men need an occupation: what sorts of creature would they be if everything they asked for came to them on a golden plate?’

  She leaned over the side of the basket and shaded her eyes with a hand. ‘But I miss my Dwarf, Erchon. We have not finished crossing the forest, Parados, and there is nothing to be seen but the tops of the trees. They look soft like a great green bed – I should like to play in it with you! Where is Erchon, do you think? Githon says he went away in despair. I hope he does not still.’

  Erchon, as Nemione spoke, was formless and liquid, a single drop of water rushing towards Pargur in the River Lytha. He retained the consciousness of a dwarf and saw the water he was part of, the broken flotsam, fish, weeds, stones and swimming and reclining nivashi about their deadly underwater business all anyhow about him as the current tumbled him on. He was swept into a mill-leat and thrown up and over a mill-wheel; he lingered in an eddy and travelled on. The river widened and bent itself round rocks, created islands, brought down trees. Reeds and fallen willows slowed its pace; it entered a long tunnel and emerged between banks of cut stone. Pleasure barges ruffled its smooth waters and Erchon was lifted on the blade of an oar and fell, glittering twice as much as did his usual, silver self. He drifted up against the bank and was sucked into a drain. Darkness took him, held him and cast him forth in a spray of shining droplets like himself. He dropped into the tiled bowl of a fountain, floated to its polished rim and climbed out, himself, dry, silver-coloured, clothed, with all his gypsy gold in his purse and his feathered hat clapped jauntily on his head. His rapier rang against the fountain-bowl as he emerged.

  He was in Decimus Toricello’s pleasaunce, the Bower, where columns dressed
with climbing roses and arches smothered in white clematis rose out of a mosaic floor. There was no time to hide, for Roszi and two more of Koschei’s playthings, the dancer, Friendship and the juggler, Concordis, were a yard away. They had been playing with a coloured ball, tossing it from one to another; now, all three had turned and were staring at him while the ball bobbed in the fountain.

  ‘It is Erchon!’ Roszi cried while Friendship laughed delightedly and Concordis stood on her head.

  ‘He was hiding there to catch us out,’ she said, and swung to her feet.

  ‘He missed us,’ said Friendship. ‘It is a long time since he went away with the Lady Nemione and poor Lucas. Isn’t he handsome, and neat?’

  Erchon removed his hat and bowed to her.

  ‘If I had been hiding, Concordis,’ he said, ‘I should have chosen a better place – under your bed, perhaps. I have come from Lythabridge in the forest – no, do not trouble your bonny heads about it. I stand here, inside Castle Sehol. That is enough.’

  ‘Stand?’ said Concordis and knelt in front of him. She rubbed her pretty nose in his beard and kissed him on the lips.

  ‘This seems to be a more perilous place than the battlements,’ Erchon said lightly.

  ‘For goat-footed dwarfs, yes. Have you come to bed us, Silver Dwarf?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘All three?’

  ‘Only three? – I have come to speak with Roszi, no one else. A message from her mistress, Nemione.’

  ‘Not now,’ said Roszi sulkily. ‘I belong to Koschei these days – can’t you see? He gave me a body and calls me Rosalia, so I am not even the same creature.’

  ‘You look like Roszi to me, except that your wonderful head has a gained body every bit its equal in beauty. My lady, Nemione, used to talk to you of your waterfall, of Diccon and the others that you loved. I saw some of your sisters in the Lytha today, singing and playing with their lovers’ bones.’

  ‘Do not make me sad. I am half fire – it is what Koschei made me. Oh, Erchon, I am tormented.’