Zaragoz

by Brian Craig

  Not thirty yards away Orfeo saw Veronique diAvila struggling to secure a saddle on one such horse, with Rodrigo Cordova still beside her, pale and injured but alive and conscious. Serafima Quixana was nearby, evidently having followed the other two in their flight.

  Rodrigo cried out when he saw Orfeo, but Orfeo ran instead for a corner which neither the smoke nor the rats had reached as yet. There he found two horses, as quiet as any in whole place, with saddles ready in the stall. When Orfeo made haste to throw one of the saddles on the broad back of the nearer beast it did not try to smash him with its hooves, but responded to his calming call as a well-trained horse should.

  When the saddle was on, Orfeo looked round for the boy, and found Serafima Quixana beside him as well. He lifted the lady in his arms and hurled her into the saddle. Though she probably had not ridden for several years she had been taught in childhood, and knew enough to cling to the rein. He thrust the boy up behind her, and told him to hold tight—then he smacked the animal on the rump, and sped it on its way to run the gauntlet of fire and madness, all the way to the castle's gate. He saw as he sent it forth that Veronique diAvila had succeeded in saddling her own mount, and had paused to pull Rodrigo Cordova up with her, so that they too could ride together into the gathering darkness.

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  Orfeo would have leapt upon the second beast's bare back had he dared, but he had seen too much of the road which led from the top of the mount to the bottom, and he knew that there was no way he could ride around the spiral without the means to guide his mount and cling tightly to its back. He put the other saddle on, and pulled a bridle over the horse's head, then hauled himself up by the side of the stall to set himself astride it. The others were long gone, and the fire burned brighter now. When he urged the horse to run, it did not pause, but galloped forward with all possible haste, scattering a group of men who tried to halt it, intent on fighting for the privilege of using it.

  Orfeo had dropped his sword in order to wrestle with the horse's livery, and both his hands gripped the reins—but once the horse was given its head there was no way to pull it back, for it was stronger by fer than he was.

  The gate was yawning wide, and those who could reach it were already running from the castle as fast as their legs could take them. So fer as Orfeo could see they were mostly servants, and he could only presume that the Duke's men-at-arms were standing their ground as best they could, using their pikes and blades to oppose the creatures which had invaded their realm.

  Orfeo held on as best he could while the beast which he had mounted pleased itself about the course which it took, and when they hurtled on to the perilous road at full gallop he was sure that they must plunge over the edge and tumble down the crag; But the horse, like that ancient animal which he had earlier borrowed from Rodrigo's house, had gone that way a hundred times, and though it had surely never gone as fast, it knew its way. It drew as close as it could to the side of the mountain, and kept its balance at every twist and turn.

  Orfeo wished at first that the horse would slow down once it was free from the tumult in the castle, for he did not believe that the rats or the apes could bother them any more, but when he glanced up at the towers looming above them he saw that the danger was by no means passed.

  There was a darkness growing in the sky which hid the stars, and there was a monstrous sound as if the stony fabric of the walls themselves were being squeezed and rent. He saw a stone from the battlements dislodged, setting loose a sliding mass of little 202

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  stones as it careered down the nearly-vertical slope. Whatever daemons had been unleashed upon Zaragoz were not content, it seemed, to swallow up their former worshippers.

  Yet again he heard the phantom voice of Arcangelo crying in the lonely depths of his mind: "Zaragoz is doomed!" And he knew that behind the mask of the priest of Law there had been a heart and mind as twisted as Semjaza's naked face, which had been willing to sacrifice everything in the cause of vengeance and hatred, and that had unleashed upon Zaragoz a force which would not stop at swallowing up the diAvilas who had worshipped it.

  Orfeo's senses reeled as the horse swerved around another bend and he came terrifyingly close to being tumbled from its back.

  But he no longer prayed that the beast would stop; instead he prayed that it might find pace enough to outdistance whatever it was which gripped the peak of the crag like a huge black spider, and whose dark exhalations were drifting down through the still air, raining destruction upon the fleeing crowds.

  When he looked up again, and could not see the stars, he felt such anguish in his heart that it seemed to him that nothing less than a miracle could save him.

  But then, in that very instant, the miracle was granted, for he saw ahead of him another gate looming above the precipitous road, lit by half a dozen lanterns—and it was a gate which he knew.

  It was the gate of Rodrigo Cordova's house—which, if its long-dormant magic had power enough to oppose the deadly forces Arcangelo's battle with Semjaza had unleashed, might be the one place on the mountain which was safe from the agents of destruction.

  The gate was already wide open, and there were men waiting for him, who had begun calling and waving as soon as he came in sight. Cristoforo was there, and Rodrigo Cordova himself, still standing despite the great bloodstain which soaked his tunic. He was not the only fugitive to whom they were signalling, for some of those who had fled from the castle as soon as the rats had emerged from the depths—those who had not been drawn irresistibly to the spectacle of Marsilio diAvila's duel with Rodrigo Cordova—had already come this fer on foot, seeking sanctuary.

  For one awful moment, Orfeo thought that the horse would not be turned from is headlong flight, and would take him helplessly 203

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  down the mountain, all the way to the streets of the town at its foot. But the horse, too, could recognize safety, and it galloped gladly through the gate, already pulling up as it clattered into the narrow court within. As grooms ran to intercept him Orfeo saw that there were armed men swarming about—Cordova's men rallied to the cause by earlier arrivals.

  Orfeo jumped down from his saddle and raised his voice as high as he could, trying to shout above all the other shouts, telling everyone who could hear to go inside the house. He pointed desperately at the sky, trying to show them what it was that they must hide from, and when he looked up to follow with his eyes the direction of his own pointing finger he saw that matters were worse than he had thought. The blackness was no longer spread across the whole sky—instead, it was gathering itself to form a thick and grotesque cloud, which was descending steeply upon this house and no other, pursuing those who ran to its protection.

  He stumbled then, knocked over by a running man, but hands went out to him instantly, to pull him back to his feet. As he was brought upright again he heard a wild cry, and thought for a moment that the monstrous dark had come about them with its foul minions in train, but the cry had only been a cry of joy, when Rodrigo Cordova found his mother safe, brought here by his trusted men before the panic had even begun. She was standing in the open doorway of the ballroom where Orfeo had played, and the crowd was rushing past her now, carrying Rodrigo with it, and Veronique diAvila. Orfeo was glad to see that Serafima Quixana and the kitchen-boy were with them too, clinging together as though they were brother and sister.

  Orfeo struggled to Rodrigo's side as they passed through the doorway, and when all those who had been in the yard were inside they tried together to take hold of one of the two doors, intent on closing it. But more running figures were coming through the gate, racing into the very heart of the awful black shadow which was descending there, and they hesitated to close the newcomers out.

  As they stood there among the crowding figures, it seemed inevitable that the foul black void would sweep past them into the hall, there to work its will with those who had fled from it—but as the crowd of awful shadows came to
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  some invisible barrier which held it back, and though the darkness sealed off all light from without, it could not reach the candles which burned within the room.

  It was as if the empty space between the fer-flung doors became a wall of solid black, mere inches away from Orfeo's face, and though all those who were crowded about him—save for o n e -

  fell back in alarm, he did not. Although he knew full well that he did a very dangerous thing, he actually reached out a hand to touch that wall, to see how solid it was—and when he touched it, it was as though it seized his hand, not to pull him away from where he stood and consume him, but rather as though it was welcoming him with a fond and seductive caress.

  He looked into the darkness, and once again he saw the faces which had crowded about Morella dArlette in the ballroom: feces as beautiful as they were bizarre, whose glamour made an urgent appeal to his senses and his desires. He remembered that Morella had warned him that there was something of Chaos already in his being—and also that she had aspired to show him an ecstasy so intense that he could never again be content with a merely human lover.

  But there were other things in that convoluted host of shadows, whose forms were incompletely hidden by the darkness—things with horned heads and huge bovine features, and insectile creatures with glaring compound eyes. When he looked into those eyes, he seemed to be staring into an infinity of horrors where the mere and meagre desires of the flesh counted for nothing at all.

  The vision lasted but a fraction of a second; then the blackness became and remained absolute; but still there was a strange thrill which surged through his body, and though he jaw nothing, it was as though some inner part of himself still looked through that wall of shadow into an awesome lighted world beyond: a world of fire and blazing light, a world without form or landscape, a world unimaginably greater than his own.

  When he took his hand back, it came easily, without resistance.

  Then he turned to look at the other person who had stood her ground, who had likewise reached out to touch that frightful shadow while it was held at bay by the armour in which the house was clad.

  It was Veronique diAvila, her red hair declaring her identity 205

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  even though she wore a decorated mask.

  The mask, at least, was smiling.

  "Midnight is past," she said, in a voice hoarse with excitement.

  "It is time to lay our masks aside." And she reached out to lift Orteo's false face away, and looked at him, as though relieved to find that what was underneath was only what her reason told her would be there.

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  EPILOGUE

  "And is that the end of your story?" asked Alkadi Nasreen, sourly, as Orfeo's voice lapsed into silence.

  Orfeo could not tell whether the sourness was simply the result of lack of sleep, or whether the tale which he had told had annoyed the man severely.

  "It was the story's climax," he replied. "Were it an invented tale, climax and end would be one and the same, but this was a phase in the unfolding tapestry of life itself, and there are parts of it which extend beyond its climax. I know a little more of what became of the survivors of that night, but I went on my way within a week, in search of a happier place."

  "Then tell me what remains to be told," said the Caliph. "Were all those who did not escape to Rodrigo Cordova's house killed by the things unleashed upon the castle? Did the castle walls crumble away entirely?"

  "By no means," replied the story-teller. "Many stones were dislodged from the ramparts, and the High Tower was felled, but the castle was not destroyed. Nor were all who were trapped there killed. Some forty or fifty men and women were brought down by the rats and the apes, and bitten to death. A hundred more had only minor wounds, though a few died of fevers in the days which followed. But the dark shadows—the daemons, if that is 209

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  what they were—claimed for themselves less than a hundred men and women, who were swallowed up so completely that they left no trace behind. Included in that number were all but one of those who had sought to steal their power and control them. I have named the exception."

  "Why did the daemons turn on those they had formerly served?"

  asked the Caliph.

  Orfeo sighed, feeling that he had already made adequate explanation of the fact, but he had no choice but to be patient when his freedom hung upon the telling of the tale. "Arcangelo had not the power to win them to his own cause," he said, "but by using his own flesh as an instrument—in such a manner that it cost him his life—he could cast a spell which dissolved the bonds by which Semjaza's followers had held them captive and forced them into servility. Though Arcangelo could not free the lady Serafima in the way he had intended, still he succeeded in breaking the shackles which mattered, and some kindly god took the trouble to number the lady with those who lived."

  "Did you go to the castle again?"

  "Eventually. But there were others braver than ourselves. For many hours that night, and throughout the day which followed, Rodrigo and his mother received in their house die injured servants and nobles who limped down from the peak. They continued to arrive in ones and twos, while others went to their own houses, and the occasional troop of men-at-arms rode down to the town on their well-schooled horses. When we had lent to those who came to us what help we could, we went to the castle. There we found that the fittest and the strongest of those who survived had looted what they could before they fled. The bodies had been stripped of their jewels and silks, and the treasures heaped up by the diAvilas had gone. Much of the gold must have been carried out of the realm by soldiers of fortune, but enough remained within its borders to double the price of bread within five days."

  "But you did not leave without your purse, I'll wager?" said the Caliph.

  Orfeo smiled, but rather mirthlessly. "Rodrigo Cordova was a good and generous man," he said. "His people will love him, now that he is proclaimed Duke of Zaragoz. He will go down in their annals as a man of honour, and if ever he is treacherously 210

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  slain, the act will leave such a legacy of bitterness that some diehard champion of the people will surely appear to demand vengeance in his name, and will threaten the town with doom if justice is not done."

  The Caliph laughed, but there was no more mirth in his laugh than there had been in the player's smile. "At least," he said, "the feud between the diAvilas and the Quixanas is ended. It will take time for the House of Cordova to find an enemy which hates it as fiercely as those two families hated one another."

  Orfeo hesitated before replying, but then said: "No. Nothing is ended. Rodrigo Cordova has Veronique diAvila and Serafima Quixana in his house. I cannot tell whether the love he once had for the one will in time be transferred to the other, but this I believe—that one day he will marry one or other of them, and in the calculations of his people he will then become diAvila or Quixana, while the woman he rejects will carry bitterness and envy into exile.

  "It does not matter which one he chooses—red hair or black—for in a hundred years it will all be the same. There will be harder Dukes, and resentful subjects...and always there will be the word— the word of power which signifies a change of allegiance and a plot to seize the crown. When a man of justice sits upon the crag of Zaragoz, the pain of that country's disease is soothed for a generation.. .but as long as the crag is there, and the castle, and the houses of the nobles arrayed upon its slopes, there can never be a proper healing. Are matters any different upon this crag of Arjilil? Is this impregnable fortress any safer from the corrosions of envy which seethe beneath the surface of its daily affairs like rats in its sewers?"

  The question which he asked of the hearer of his tale was no mere taunt. What Orfeo was really asking the so-called Caliph to consider was whether he had really left Zaragoz behind when he sent himself into his distant exile. Was there any place in all the great wide world wh
ere the sicknesses which were in Zaragoz could not be found?

  He knew that the Caliph was pondering that question when Alkadi Nasreen said: "What of these daemons of darkness which came traitorously from the depths of the crag to turn the tables on those who had sought to use them? Have they been laid to 211

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  rest forever?"

  "I would like to say that they were," Orfeo told him, "but I cannot believe that either. They are still there within the mount, dormant now like the force which which was bound within the walls of Cordova's house.

  "Now that Semjaza is dead, some other magician will come to Zaragoz craving knowledge and craving power. If he cannot become Rodrigo's friend he will become his secret enemy. There is an instrumentality of temporal power which consists of kings and noblemen, and there is an instrumentality of magical power which consists of wizards and priests.. .and in our world their fortunes are inextricably bound up with one another. Just as kings and noblemen generate their own opposites, as diAvilas produce Quixanas, so the magicians who seek power from the Gods of Light and the Gods of Law generate rivals who seek power from the opposing forces of Darkness and Chaos. So it goes on, pausing for a while, then bursting forth in blood and fire, but never ending.. .never truly ending."

  "In Araby," said Alkadi Nasreen, "we acknowledge only One God, and no others. One God who rewards, and One who punishes.