The Memory Palace

by Gill Alderman

  Yet his need to know the whole truth was paramount. It directed his hand. Roughly, he pulled apart the knot in Koschei’s loincloth and exposed his inmost secret to the light. It was true, this rumour which was sweeping the land. Koschei was no man because every essential part of him which had been male was gone, sliced off long ago by Peder’s jealous and intemperate blade. Enough remained for fulfilment of the lower bodily functions; but that was all. Neither the anticipation, pleasures, or satisfaction of desire could be got from what remained. The Prince and Archmage of Malthassa had a grievous wound.

  Parados dropped the fold of cloth to cover Koschei. The end had come, had passed and been endured; the uncharted future lay ahead. He stepped over the magician’s corpse and went on down the stairs. In the storeroom he found boxes and barrels of biscuit, raisins and flour and casks and bottles of wine and, set in the floor, the grating which was the sole entrance to and exit from that close and fearful dungeon, the deep oubliette beneath Peklo tower. He knelt, as Koschei had, and peered in. The dreadful place was empty though a set of chains, some straw and a clay beaker half full of water showed that a prisoner had recently languished there. So, Koschei and Nemione having in their different ways departed, he must climb the stairs again. He pushed past the body on the stairs and, safe above it, paused to make the sign he knew from childhood, a cross. Here, in Malthassa, it had a different meaning of choice and the best path through life, but to him it was still the sign of those who would be charitable and blessed.

  Koschei’s study kept its power to terrify. In a corner by the miniature castle and its still and wasted tenant was a work-bench on which were several china flasks and a brass alembic on a tripod. Beside this stood a lead tank full of bubbling blood. Something seethed in it and a pale, fleshy thing like the leg of a foetus in a devil’s stew rose up, broke the excited surface and sank out of sight. Parados looked away along the shelves, glanced at the titles of the books on the revolving stand: alchemy, arch-chymistry, mages, magi, magic, mechanics – A glassy object glinted underneath the bookstand and he bent and picked it up. It was a small prism which reflected the yellow beam of the lantern and sent it forth in seven rainbow colours. The blood boiled audibly in the tank and, without warning, the big globe in the centre of the room began to turn, creaking upon its spindle; and as abruptly ceased. Malthassa, the world he thought he knew, was displayed there, the forest tilted toward him. Nothing distinguished one part of it from another, all vast and green except the hollow squares which marked towns, the blue threads of the rivers and some red lettering. He read it: ‘terra incognita’. The ‘o’ was a well or vortex. He felt it draw him in and looked away. The same dark green covered the map on the tower wall; but the ‘o’ was larger and, looking closer, he saw that the painted surface was composed of individual trees, oak distinguished from ash, elm from pine and pine in all its thousand varieties from spruce. He did not look further: to do so made him feel the forest’s unknowable extent. Instead, he turned the pretty prism over in his hand. The rainbow colours had left it, all but one. A single ray of green lay across his palm and, fascinated, he held the prism to his eye. He saw the forest captured there and, a shadow between the evergreens, a white deer – a hind, for she had no antlers and was neatly-made and graceful as a sapling. A second deer stalked her, lingering in concealment beneath the trees, his wide show of antlers brushing the lowest branches. Parados thought the hind was oblivious of the other’s presence, grazing quietly on the little tufts of weed which grew where the trees were thinnest; but then, for she delicately turned her head and stood alert, ready to run, he saw that she was most aware. The hart came from his hiding-place and the hind, instead of fleeing, opened her long and slender jaw and spoke, her voice a soft and drawn-out bleat which nevertheless shaped itself to the words she used,

  ‘You know the rules, Koschei. They are ancient and hallowed. You are required to show yourself in your proper form before you shift your shape again.’

  ‘I no longer have my body, Lady. It was a worthless thing and I think the frame of an animal will better serve my turn. For the present, I enjoy the fleet limbs and taut senses of this hart.’

  ‘Then you are handicapped indeed!’

  ‘I think not. Contrariwise, I have the advantage.’ As he spoke, the hart began to change, his antlers and proud muzzle fading and reforming as a keen-eyed hook-beaked head, his legs dissolving into wings, his tails and body into talons and feathers. The hind, who had begun her own transformation, melted briefly through and into the lissom and unclothed shape of a young and beautiful woman whose fair hair, even as it appeared, was changing into white wings. She flew, a dove, into the fir tree above her while the hawk, hopping awkwardly over the ground, worked his wings hard to gain the air.

  ‘I will fall on you as you fly,’ he called.

  ‘Will you, Koschei?’ The dove lifted her wings and, where there had been only she perched on the tufted branch, appeared a flock of doves all alike and like her. ‘Come, my little hunted sisters,’ she said, ‘Paloma, Barbary, Berthe – let us fear not but fly up and confound the sorcerer.’

  Parados watched her with love in his heart and on his lips. He felt his soul dance deep inside him. ‘Nemione!’ he said. ‘My brave love!’

  As for Koschei who had lain, as he thought, dead a little while before, his shifts of shape were bold and rapacious. Parados lifted a hand and saluted his adversary.

  The hawk dashed out of the sun and struck one of the swiftly-flying doves. Gripping it fiercely he bore it down and they tumbled together into the raft of the tree-tops. A single white feather drifted after them and all was still. The forest held its breath. Then the white wings rose again, but they had grown into angel’s wings and carried a dark and full-grown girl aloft. She wore a long silk dress and an absurd feathered hat, the height of someone’s fashion somewhere long ago. A fur stole dangled from her left arm but she, ascending as smoothly and effortlessly as the sun itself, seemed not to notice these peculiarities for her hands were clasped in prayer and her eyes turned heavenwards. Parados heard one word of her prayer, ‘bliss’. It drifted down and lay like a blessing on the tops of the trees, settled about him; for he was there, flying carelessly without wings, buoyant with exhilaration and joy.

  Paloma rose into the sun. He could not see her and the other doves had flown; the hawk was nowhere to be seen. He smiled happily and floated down amongst the trees until he stood in dappled shadow on the forest floor.

  There seemed no course for the moment but to walk. Which way? There was no path, no track but only endless crooked rows of fir trees and the soft floor, carpeted with old, brown needles, underfoot. He spat on a finger, held it up: he would walk with the cool prevailing wind of Malthassa in his face, westward, the friendliest direction. There was no wind. He tried to see where the sun stood but its face was hidden by the trees. Perhaps he could judge by the intensity of light – or the prism still in his hand! He held it up and looked deep into its heart. There was nothing in it now to aid him. A host of rainbows dazzled him. He blinked and saw them copied in the air. Opening his hand he made to toss the useless thing away, then closed his fingers round and pocketed it. So, he was lost. He walked forward, ducking between the trees, thinking only of the glimpse he had been granted of Nemione. How fast could a dove fly? How soon would she judge it necessary to take another shape?

  He walked far. Once, he saw a cow and calf, two of the wild herd descended from Polnisha’s oxen; he thought he saw the Firebird pecking at the pine cones underneath the trees. He knew that the tall birds which gravely bowed to him were silver pheasants; he recognized the tiny baskets hanging from the boughs as nests. Here, the trees were different, graceful larches whose supple trunks and arched, depending branches made him think more intensely of Nemione. He stopped to admire one, gently touching its short needles and unripe cones, smooth and firm as tiny breasts. He stretched out his arms. The girl he held in them was lissom, very tall. Rags of green and blue stuff which were like fab
ric and yet were part of her hung from her shoulders, wrists and waist; were wound about her legs. Her head was covered in green bristles.

  ‘How fortunate I am,’ she sighed. Her breath ran sweetly, resin-scented, over his face. She stretched her woody neck and leaned forward to be kissed on lips which were studded with golden beads of sap. He felt her branches close about him and her needles dig into his neck, and into his left leg – sharp thorns which scratched. A thick bramble stem was caught about the leg. He shook it, stamped; felt himself pulled from the larch-girl and roughly thrown aside. A terrible scream and a wild crackling filled the air and the larch tree was engulfed in flame. He lay bruised and panting in a bramble thicket.

  ‘Foolish man-child!’ The voice came from the air above him, seven or eight feet up, and an ice-cold hand sprung out of nothing and slapped him hard across the ear, once, twice, hard cuffs which made his head sing. He lay defeated, looking fearfully up at the creature which had rescued him. It was huge, but not as great as the Om Ren, and seemed to have no form or, at least, a form which constantly changed. He saw a foot, large but comely; a strand of hair like the stem of a wild rose and roses of the palest pink flowering on it; the hand again, frosty and cold, vapour rising from it and the bramble loop which had snared and saved him in its fingers; a merry brown eye. He put his hands together, raised them in a reverent salute and said,

  ‘Thank you, Forest God.’

  The invisible creature laughed and showed another piece of herself, dense fur as white as any snow-drift and thick enough to keep out the harshest cold. A furry baby, pale gold, clung there and he heard it sucking.

  ‘Thank you, Lady of the Forest,’ he said.

  ‘Good! That is good,’ she said. ‘I am the Forest Mother, the Weshni Dy. She was one of my samovili, wicked girl – they are difficult things, larch vili, shallow-rooted and keen to take whatever tasty man-morsel comes their way. Had you been a cruel woodcutter I would have let her appetite take its course. Tell truly, Sir Parados – did you not learn wisdom with my husband and the nivasha?’

  ‘The Om Ren?’

  ‘Himself. He has married me and brought me down from my Altaish to rule his realm. This is his son, the Om Ren.’

  The Weshni Dy showed a little more of herself, a long leg draped in oak-leaves. She bent it and sat her child on it and the baby stared at Parados with dark, wise eyes.

  ‘You will be such a great and dreadful beast!’ his mother chirruped. ‘Look at him, all milky warmth and gentleness of spirit.’ She nuzzled her baby and kissed him.

  ‘He is a true son of his father,’ said Parados.

  ‘Oh, Parados; you would not say that if you had seen the Om Ren lately. Death approaches and he is no longer what he was when you journeyed together in the enchanted place beside SanZu. Will you come with me? I must build my sleeping-nest and rest the night. In the morning, I will show you the way you should follow.’

  Parados woke in the night and was conscious of great inner peace which the moon’s light shining in the glade emphasized. Beside him in the nest of leafy and sweet-scented linden-branches, the Weshni Dy slept quietly, her young Wild Man curled on her stomach. He wondered if she dreamed and of what those strange dreams might consist – the snowy Altaish perhaps or her own fluctuating female form which was not quite woman and not exactly ape, sometimes white and icy and sometimes green and fruitful as the forest itself; occasionally as lovely and alluring as one of her samovili and irresistible to man and ape. He closed his eyes and slept soundly in his own nest of dreams.

  The Om Ren’s wife had set him on his way. A wide track divided limes from oak trees on the far side of the glade and there she had bade him walk, facing north.

  ‘When you hear it,’ she had said, ‘you will know what you have been seeking.’

  He walked for many miles and hours until the sun was high in the sky and, hungry, he stopped to eat the fistful of nuts and seeds the Weshni Dy had given him and to drink rainwater from the hollow of an oak. He did not know that such water, suffused as it is with the sap of the oak, confers strength but only that after drinking it he felt courageous and bold. Soon, he heard the steady beat of horses’ hooves behind him on the track and turned to see an old and rickety cart approaching. It was drawn by two horses harnessed one before the other and, as it came near, Parados saw the driver, a heavy red-faced man who was sleeping as he drove. An old garland of willow-boughs and dead flowers swayed above his nodding head.

  The pair of horses stopped abruptly when they reached Parados. He patted the leader on its neck and recoiled, seeing the dead and wasted bay horse which was tied with fraying and dirty bits of rope to the body of the cart. The driver belched and woke.

  ‘Who-aaa!’ he roared and, seeing Parados, ‘Why, Sir, good-morrow! Many years have passed since we met and I see that you have indeed advanced out of your Green Wolf’s calling. Your cuirass now – what splendour, what exquisite metalwork. It is by Sardon of Pargur, am I right?’

  ‘I know not – my Lady gave it me.’

  ‘Gained a lady too! Rich? Beautiful? You have succeeded.’

  ‘Remind me, Master Butcher – where have we met before?’ said Parados uncertainly.

  ‘In that mean village, Sir, how could you forget? Where the heathen corn-growers dwell. You won yourself a scrawny sacramental bride. And afterwards I carried you, on this very cart – I never took the garlands off it, see – into the forest and set you down by a big chestnut tree where you had an appointment with a dwarf. Did he come, Sir? I hope he did. It was a lonely spot. And before we parted you gave me a silver thrupny, there it is. I keep it for a good-luck because I saw what you were beneath your disguise – one of the Brotherhood, a Green Wolf running after blood.’

  ‘My name, then? I must have given it.’

  ‘No Sir, you didn’t. I’ve wondered to this day.’

  ‘The man you carried on your cart was Koschei Corbillion. Do you know the name now?’

  ‘By the Dark Lord and all his devilish crew – you are the Archmage! Don’t harm me, my Lord, I am only a poor horse-butcher.’

  ‘I am not Koschei but, let us say, his brother – that is good enough. I am Parados.’

  ‘The man they worship in SanZu! Get up, Sir, here beside me. I will carry you wherever you want.’

  ‘Once,’ said Parados quietly, ‘you carried me where I most devoutly did not wish to go; but you were kind enough. What is your name, Master Butcher – does it begin with a “G” or a “P”?’ He climbed up and sat beside the butcher on the narrow and slippery seat of the cart. The man hawked and spat into the undergrowth and smiled at him, showing a row of decaying stumps.

  ‘Clever of you, Sir Parados, when you might have picked any letter. Yes, my name is Georg which, as you rightly guess, begins with the seventh letter of the alphabet. And the one that follows after it, the one whose initial you also struck on, canny Sir, is Peacock, though I am a poor crow. It was my grandam’s name. My last, that my wife is proud to bear and my ten children too, is Deaner – which means “shilling”, sir, and those are what I hope to make a mint of.’

  ‘Your wife? Let me guess her name – is it “Helen”?’

  ‘Not nearly, sir! It is Martha; but she has a cousin named Helen who makes all the hats in Espmoss where we live these days. We lived a while in Tanter and before that and expensively in Pargur. The country air is better and the country living cheaper.’ He shook out the bunched reins and clucked to the horses which, after nodding their heads and snorting loudly, moved off. ‘We do well in Espmoss,’ he continued. ‘I have two horses now, had to get new harness, too, and a china dinner service.’

  Parados was content to sit in the warm sun on the jolting cart and doze while the horse-butcher talked as if he had important tales to tell and never a good listener to hear them; but both the world of action and its shadow, the contemplative world of fiction were, he thought, like this stoical butcher, better inclined to tragedy and the dogged acceptance of fate and circumstance than to
comedy. Soon, as they drove, the track grew narrow and the trees which had been in proud summer foliage began to drop brown leaves.

  ‘Have a care, now,’ said Georg. ‘There are puvushi here so keep your eyes on the road ahead – and hold tight!’

  He took his whip from its socket on the dashboard and cracked it loudly in the air.

  ‘Whahaw!’ he cried. ‘Haw! Haw!’ and the horses lumbered into a trot, a canter and at last, as they felt his fear, a headlong gallop.

  ‘There’s one!’ the butcher yelled. ‘Close your eyes!’

  Blind, trusting in the horses, they sped on. The cart shook and rattled, the axles screamed in the wheel-hubs and, beneath the bare trees where the ground was soft and friable, the puvushi rose, rested their elbows on the edges of their holes and gazed hungrily after the two men on their speeding cart.

  Parados opened his eyes. The trees had thinned and, ahead, the forest was turning to scrubland where grass and low bushes grew into each other and the track veered off to the left.