by Rob Scott
‘And we’ll find Gilmour?’ Brexan felt reborn; she could have kissed them both.
‘We will.’
‘Oh, whoring rutters,’ Brexan stopped. ‘What if Ford and his crew won’t take us?’
‘We’ll offer them all we have to get us to Averil,’ Garec said.
‘Averil?’ Brexan stopped. ‘It’ll take you until spring to get to Pellia from there – and that’s if you’re allowed through. Prince Malagon didn’t encourage unannounced guests.’
‘We’ll hire your captain to take us to Averil, and once we’re at sea, we’ll… well, you know-’
‘We’ll renegotiate our destination,’ Kellin finished for him.
Garec smiled. ‘There you have it.’
Brexan’s stomach knotted at the unsettling feeling that she had allowed her enthusiasm to cloud her judgment. Captain Ford didn’t strike her as one who would do well with liars or scheming partisans. She’d have to tell him the truth – but surely he’d understand the importance of their journey and take them all the way to Pellia. It wouldn’t be a problem. She hoped.
Kellin read her hesitation. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing – it’s just that this captain isn’t a fool. He’s been working the Ravenian Sea for a long time, and I’m not sure how many trips he’s made north of the archipelago.’
‘We’ll worry about that when we get there,’ Garec said. ‘If it’s too bad, we’ll put in to shore and make our way into Pellia on foot.’
‘That might work,’ Brexan murmured. ‘I just worry that it may not be a very pleasant journey after we find Gilmour and encourage Captain Ford to take us through the Northeast Channel.’
‘Pleasant?’ Garec said. ‘Brexan, when we get there I will personally explain to Captain Ford how little I care whether our journey is pleasant.’ The boyish look on Garec’s face had faded. The Bringer of Death was back.
KNOWLEDGE AND MAGIC
Mark shifted in his chair. Old Grunbaum had the worst chairs, the kind that connected to the desk with a curved bar of what was, at one time, polished silvery metal. Now, forty years later, those desk-chair connectors were corroded rust barely holding the shape, with exposed bolts on each end. Mark scraped his arm on a jagged corner and wondered if the school board knew about the condition of Herr Grunbaum’s classroom furniture. I’ll have to ask Mom if my tetanus vaccination is up to date. Even Gerry O’Donnell, Mark’s curmudgeon of a calculus teacher, had new desks; the whole county had them, all except for Grunbaum, the venerable Kraut, here forty-one years and still teaching German I through V, the advanced placement class for the bright kids or the kids from Bakersfield, who had German or Jewish grandparents. Many of them knew a good bit of the guttural language long before coming to lessons in ninth grade. But the desks had to be some kind of retribution on the part of the Massapequa Public Schools Division, for four decades of Herr Gerrold Grunbaum’s Teutonic dictation: horen und sagen. Jetzt, fanger wir an… eins, zwei, drei, vier… and all the time his sparklingly clean wingtips clicked in perfect rhythm on the scuffed tile floor.
This was German II, non-honours, a general education class for college-bound tenth graders, exceptional ninth graders and those who needed a spare foreign language credit. Save for a pair of Hungarian kids who spoke some German at home, the class was not a hotbed of talent. Mark was amongst the brightest in the room, and he periodically had to pinch himself – or slice my goddamned arm open on the desk – to stay awake.
Today, there was a snake on the floor, one of the colourful ones he and Steven had seen on the Discovery Channel, a coral snake: a nasty little bastard with plenty of the Crayola ringlets the tiresome narrator with his now-you-hear-it-now-you-don’t British accent had called ‘nature’s way of saying danger’.
Steven had paraphrased: Stay back, meathead, or I’ll sting you where it hurts.
That wasn’t right; Mark wouldn’t meet Steven Taylor for seven years.
The snake was coiled up and motionless, watching and waiting; Mark tried not to step on it – that would piss it off – while he shifted uncomfortably and tried to follow Herr Grunbaum’s lesson.
Heute mu?en wir… blah, blah, blah.
Somebody knock me senseless for the next twenty-two minutes.
Jody Calloway was sitting next to him. Mark wanted to check her pulse; she hadn’t moved in ten minutes. She might be dead, bored to death. And my mother said that was impossible. He craned his neck to see if she was breathing or if there was a puddle of drool pooling on the desktop. I’d get interviewed by the paper. They’d ask what happened, and I’d tell them she was fine, looking normal, chatting with friends, but then Old Grunbaum started in on the differences between Viennese and Bavarian German, but I wasn’t really listening; I was trying to see if Jody was still alive because I thought it might be entertaining if she would, you know, move around a bit, maybe lean back once or twice before the end of the period. She’s no dairy princess, but at least there’s something there to see.
On the board, Grunbaum had drawn one of his famous sketches. Mark’s Uncle Dave had gone to Massapequa Heights as well, twenty-seven years earlier, and he’d had Grunbaum for German I and II. Even then, back in the sixties, the old bastard had been drawing bad sketches of castles, battlefields, rivers, and all manner of architectural styles: Gothic this and Baroque that; Mark wondered how he didn’t manage to improve over time. He’s been drawing the same shit for four decades; you’d think he’d eventually get better, he thought. How many times do you have to draw the Stephansdom before it begins to look like a cathedral? Jesus, there he goes again.
1742, Maria-Theresa von Hapsburg…
What did he say? How many kids did she have – God Almighty, lady, read a book or take in a movie or something – just get off your back!
She loved this muted yellow colour… used it for many of her architectural projects, including her summer home, the Palais Schonbrunn. Kyle, why don’t you tell the class what that means, auf Englisch…
Good, good, on the hill south of the palace… the Gloriette, which members of the Hapsburg family used, amongst other things, for shade -
‘What was that?’ Mark said aloud, ‘What did you say?’ Without warning, he was back within himself, trapped inside the swamp with the marble-reflecting pool and the neo-classical columns. The lights flickered for a moment, flashing off the pool, then dimming into darkness. Outside the thick canopy of swamp foliage, the sky was blue. That’s where he was going, across the bridge, over the reflecting pool, whatever it was, and then up that hill. Things would be different up there; he’d have more control.
At his feet, the coral snake shifted slightly, as if sensing a change in Mark Jenkins.
The Gloriette, in Vienna. That’s where he had seen these columns and this odd, rectangular structure, like a stone building’s skeleton with the skin peeled off. In tenth grade, he’d gone on the spring break trip to southern Germany with old Gerrold Grunbaum, and they had taken two days to visit Salzburg and Vienna. Jody Calloway had gone too. She and Mark had made out in the hotel that night after Billy Carruthers and Jamie Whatshisname had sneaked all those bottles of beer back inside Billy’s raincoat – though they could have wrapped them in fluorescent paper and tied them with bows; Herr Grlinbaum couldn’t see a thing by that time. He had to have been well over eighty by the time he led that trip.
But this was the place, the Gloriette, Maria-Theresa von Hapsburg’s private shady spot, overlooking her private zoo. Lovely.
Mark remembered Jody sneaking him behind one of these columns and kissing him hard, then leaving him to finish the tour looking like he was smuggling bananas in his jeans. He’d tried to grab a feel, but she’d been too fast, spinning away and rejoining her friends; she had been a track star, too damned fast for a horny, boob-grabbing sophomore.
Nice to see you’ve figured it out.
‘Figured what out?’ Mark took a wary step along the marble coping. If they were talking, he might be permitted to move closer to the
bridge and safe passage across the dangerous water.
The Gloriette. It’s a nice touch; don’t you think? Although I prefer it there on the hill behind Schonbrunn. It’s too humid in here.
‘I don’t get it,’ Mark said. ‘What’s your point?’
Your trip to Vienna, my friend. Think back; think hard. You’re focusing on the wrong things… again. Forget Jody Calloway’s tits; they were never much to speak of, anyway.
Mark slid along the coping side of the nearest column, careful to avoid slipping into the water. It was dark, and he wasn’t supposed to move when it was dark, but as long as they were talking, the snake might leave him alone. ‘A detail? I’m supposed to remember some detail from a spring break trip when I was fifteen – and then what, I get to go free? Or maybe make it across this puddle? Fuck you, chief, I’ll take my chances wi-’
The snake bit him, then bit him again.
Mark winced, wanting to run, but knowing it would be worse if he did. He shouted and swore, rooting around in the muck, waiting for his fingers to pass over the snake’s slippery body.
It bit his wrist. Mark howled in shock more than pain, but at least now he had it. It tried to strike him and slither free at the same time, but Mark would have none of it. He slid his free hand along the wriggling body until he reached the tail, which he clenched it in his fist, then he spun the creature like a bolo, faster and faster, until he snapped the snake like a bullwhip against the column, breaking its bones and paralysing it. He repeated the action until he felt it go entirely limp. It splattered against the stone with a wet splashing sound.
Finally sure it was dead, Mark tossed it away. It landed with a rustle in a patch of ferns.
Mark couldn’t feel the poison working, but he’d been bitten three times, and he was worried that he might die, if he could die in here. While the mutant tadpoles with their bulbous tumours and the monster serpents that had pursued them all seemed benign, he understood that the coral snake had been real – it was real enough to die, and therefore real enough for its venom to be deadly.
Happier now? The voice was amused. It laughed and said, I’m not doing this to you, Mark.
‘Yes, right, I know, it’s all me. I put the bridge there, I conjured up the snake, and I went back to high school for the Hapsburg family Gloriette.’
Exactly. And you’re so worried about me, all the time, me, me, me and what’s happening with me. You’re focusing on the wrong things, Mark; you need to think back – it’s your favourite way of solving problems, isn’t it? I know it’s how you figured out that worthless bastard Lessek was trying to tell you something about your family and Jones Beach and all that rubbish about your father and his beer. And I know it’s how you alleviate stress. Well, Mark, here’s a dilemma for you: I’ve been honest. I’ve told you that you’re doing this to yourself, and I’ve said, at least once, that I preferred you in the dark, in the first room. You recall that room, don’t you?
‘Yes,’ Mark said, feeling for the twin puncture marks on his wrist and trying to squeeze as much blood from them as possible, hoping he might also squeeze out a bit of the venom.
And you don’t want to go back in there.
‘No,’ Mark said, ‘it was worse in there.’ He pulled up his jeans and tried to squeeze the bites on his leg as well. It was difficult to assess how well it was working so he decided to try tightening his belt around his calf as a sort of tourniquet; it might stem the flow of venom around his body, buying him a few valuable minutes in which to reach the top of the rise and the blue sky. Everything would be fine if he could just reach that clearing.
So I will be honest with you again. I cannot keep you in there if you choose to be out here. How do you like them mangos, my boy?
‘It’s apples, dickhead.’
You eat what you like, and leave me alone.
‘So, what now?’
You deal with your new dilemma.
‘And what’s that? Vienna?’ Mark tugged his belt a bit tighter; his wrist and lower leg throbbed. ‘What am I supposed to remember?’
Not remember; infer.
‘Oh, grand,’ Mark said. ‘And what happens in the interim, while I’m here in the dark, inside a four-hundred-year-old Austrian gazebo, inferring something from a trip I took fourteen years ago when all the German I could manage was “How is the soup today?” – are you going to send more snakes, or are you content to watch while the venom already in my blood kills me or drives me mad or makes me piss mango juice?’
That would be a neat trick.
‘Again-’
Enough insults. It was irritated now. You’re forgetting again, Mark – great lords, but you didn’t strike me as this stupid. I expected more from you, truly. You’re as stupid as Nerak.
‘Well, I can be disappointing.’
Everything is coming from you. The only snakes, homicidal killers, venereal diseases, whatever, are those you bring in here. I have nothing to do with that.
Mark didn’t know why, but he wanted to believe that was true. ‘I won’t invite any more snakes in here to bite me, and I won’t give myself crabs, but if I do get bit again, I’m blaming you, sh-’ Now back to work.
The lights flickered again, just long enough for Mark to see the coral snake, its head torn open and its body twisted into knots, slithering out from beneath the ferns to resume its post between Mark’s feet. When the lights faded again, Mark screamed.
‘So what is this place?’ Steven tethered Gilmour’s horse to the sturdiest post left upright on the porch. He walked along the warped boards, looking uninterestedly through the broken windows. The packed earth of the road was now a strip of frozen mud and snow. ‘It must have been someplace important to have a three-storey building. Although I don’t suppose anyone has been here in a long time.’ They were alone and hadn’t encountered anyone riding down from the grassy meadow south of the village.
‘Most of my life, anyway.’ Gilmour leaned in through one of the windows, then backed out quickly, peeling invisible cobwebs off his face.
Steven wandered onto the road, knocking off an icicle as he passed. It slid across the mud. ‘This is another university, isn’t it? I get the same sort of feeling as the last one – although I’m pleased that there don’t seem to be any acid-clouds or starving almor here. That definitely gets this place an extra star in the Barron’s Guidebook to Eldarni Colleges.’
‘Good guess.’
Steven continued, ‘And judging by the general disrepair, I’d guess that this was one of the first schools our friend Prince Marek closed after meeting Nerak back in the day.’
Gilmour leaned against a post and blew a smoke ring. ‘Marek Whitward was a pleasant young man, one of the nicest of the Remonds, and it was quite tragic about him and Nerak – but don’t let me interrupt. Please, go on.’
‘If this university is like those back home, I’d wager that stone building over there with the collapsed roof is the library – but I don’t expect we’ll find any books in there today.’ He pointed to an even larger, sprawling structure, standing at the centre of what might once have been the university common.
‘Correct again, Steven,’ Gilmour said. ‘Any surviving manuscripts would have been taken to Welstar Palace, or destroyed, but we haven’t come here for books.’
‘All right, you have my attention. Why then have we come out of our way to visit a derelict, abandoned and obviously off-limits former institution of higher education?’
The old Larion Senator wearing the chubby soldier’s body smiled, the same boyish grin Steven had seen on both of Gilmour’s previous hosts. ‘I need to look for something, something that’s been missing in Eldarn for some time.’ He started towards a set of double wooden doors, one of which hung crookedly by a single hinge.
‘In there?’ Steven was sceptical.
‘Come on,’ Gilmour said, ‘or wait here. This doesn’t really concern you.’
‘Oh, really? You meeting some woman? Because if you are, I can wait in the car. Or giv
e me a couple of bucks, and I’ll take in a movie down the street.’
‘Trust me.’ Gilmour ducked through the broken frame. The empty room was a hall of sorts, with several doors off it leading to unseen rear chambers and, Steven guessed, stairs to the upper floors. There was no furniture; it, along with most of the floorboards and panelling, had been stripped, probably stolen by intrepid builders from nearby farms. A thick layer of dust moved in the air, disturbed by their arrival.
‘Lovely place you’ve got here.’
‘Like it? I call it Minimalist Grime.’
‘If I run into any homicidal maniacs looking for a quiet summer hideaway I’ll send them to you.’
Gilmour reached the rear wall and tried one of the doors. ‘This one’s latched inside.’ He moved to the next; that was blocked as well. ‘Curse it all,’ he said, ‘I hate to do this.’
‘What? Force the door? Stop joking, Gilmour, just blast the thing off its hinges and let’s get going. Just try not to knock down the whole building.’
Gilmour stepped back and whispered a brief spell; the door collapsed into a pile of kindling. A tremendous cloud of choking dust arose, momentarily blinding them both.
Coughing, doubled over, Steven said, ‘Oh yes, great idea – that’s much better!’ He pushed past Gilmour into the darkness beyond the ruined doorway, saying, ‘Better let me go first – who knows what might be waiting for us now that we’ve rung the bell?’ Two steps in and he disappeared into the dark.
‘I’ll get some lights on,’ he said after a bit and reached above his head. A pleasant glow filled the chamber, a room larger than the entryway, with a high ceiling and a polished stone floor. ‘It’s a damned cavern,’ Stephen said. ‘This one room must take up most of the building.’
‘I thought you might find it interesting,’ Gilmour replied.
Without speaking, Steven waved his open hands towards the ceiling, still invisible in the shadows above, and with each gesture, a fireball, glowing with a warm, bright light, leaped from his palm and floated off to brighten another corner of the massive chamber. There were several bulky, irregularly shaped structures arranged in a desultory pattern on the floor. ‘What the hell?’ he whispered, brightening the orbs with a nod. ‘Gilmour, what is it?’
