At the Edge of Waking

by Holly Phillips

  . . . And if even the list of the dead is still not enough to make anyone care—and Graham, I know hundreds of these stories—then consider our history. Consider the holy wars in which the ancient pantheon and its temples were thrown down. Thousands of priests hanged or burned, their congregations killed, persecuted, scattered, an entire faith relegated to a footnote in the history books, because we have no ancient history, no memory, and no way to know what those priests once knew about the world or the magic the Revenant claims to have killed a thousand years ago.

  He isn’t a joke, Graham, he isn’t a scarecrow stuffed with straw. He isn’t even a walking corpse. He is a tombstone, and he has spent the last thousand years keeping magic in its grave.

  My train is leaving, I must fly—

  Lucy

  Perhaps it was the starless night they had traveled through, perhaps it was the chill and the wood-rot smell of age, but Lucy was exquisitely aware of the stony weight of the castle that swallowed her up. She felt as if she had been eaten by a mountain, as if the dark were the perfect and immutable dark of a mine. And there was the silence, too, a deep, conscious, listening silence. Even her escorts seemed reluctant to intrude; they stepped softly, spoke in undertones to the men at the door.

  What must it be like to work for the Undying, to run his bloody errands, to keep his house?

  They ushered her through the great hall, shadowy as a cathedral, and down a back-eddy of a corridor to a chapel. In the corridors there were electric lights strung along the plastered walls, but in the chapel there were only banks of candles burning with a honey smell. Light and warmth hovered in the narrow room, complimenting rather than banishing the cold and dark. The high white walls were decked with brass memorial plaques, mirrors for the ranks of flame burning in their corner stands, and there were more plaques set in the floor. There were no pews, only a plain altar stone and the candles, and the Sacred Flame hanging on the end wall, a tapered silver oval like the point of a spear.

  The room was so quiet Lucy could hear the rustle of the many candleflames, and the footsteps coming down the hall.

  He still wore his overcoat, buttoned to show only his trouser hems and the neat square knot of his tie. His head was bare, his thick dark hair neatly combed, his face expressionless, lifeless . . . dead. Lucy thought his eyes were dark, but she found it impossible to meet them. She did not want to see them or be seen by them. Her heart beat with a trapped flutter, remembering the bird in her dream.

  “Miss Donne,” he said, “do you know why you are here?”

  His voice shocked her: an ordinary baritone, a little rough, but without menace. No sullen echo of the grave.

  “I dreamed . . . ”

  He waited for her to finish, as patient as the walls. The pause was so long it finally seemed that Lucy’s fear had peaked, that she had breasted some steep rise and found herself still standing. She took what felt like her first breath since he entered the room and said, laying her cards on the table or throwing them to the wind,

  “I have been studying you. I have researched you, I have learned . . . I have learned some of what you are . . . ” Lucy tailed off again, this time with a blush. How childish that sounded! And how intimate, with an unwarranted, uninvited intimacy.

  “And you dreamed,” he said, inflectionless.

  “I did not dream you outside my house,” she said. You. That was the intimacy: saying not him, but you. You.

  Lucy, is it only fear that makes your heart race?

  He had stepped further into the chapel without her noticing. She drifted away from his advance.

  “You looked for me. You found me.” He began to unbutton his overcoat, standing before the altar, and Lucy realized there was something lying on the stone as if for consecration. She tore her gaze away, desperate not to have seen what she saw. The Marshal of Kallisfane shrugged his coat from his shoulders and bent to lay it on the floor, and Lucy closed her eyes, trembling in every bone.

  This was beyond fear. This was the end of her life.

  “Me, and some of what I am,” he went on. “Tell me what you think you know.”

  And there it was, still, the magic of intimacy; of talking with him, her whole treasure store of knowledge rising in her mind. Who he was, who she was.

  Lucy opened her eyes and accepted what she saw: the sword on the altar, the Marshal of Kallisfane laying his suit jacket, neatly folded, next to his coat on the floor. He looked smaller in his shirtsleeves, but she could see the muscles in his arms as he began to unknot his tie.

  She was very conscious of her trembling body, her stuttering heart, the dizzying lack of air.

  “I know that magic did not die with the Empire.”

  “True.” He slipped his tie from his collar.

  “I know . . . ” Breath failed her. Her chest hurt, a widening pain from her breastbone to her shoulder blade, and for the first time she began to wonder if this was only fear. It felt as though he crowded all the air out of the room, pressed the blood out of her heart. Even the candles seemed to be growing dim. “I know you have been fighting all this time to keep magic out of the world. I know you have lied to us, and killed us, and led us by the nose.”

  “Go on.” The tie went into one trouser pocket, cuff links into another. He began to roll up his sleeves, revealing powerful wrists and forearms shadowed with dark hair.

  Lucy leaned against the wall. The pain pried into her shoulder, her wrist. I’m going to die, she thought, before he gets a chance to kill me.

  “I know the worst lie you’ve ever told,” she said.

  “Tell me.” He unbuttoned his collar and tossed it onto his coat. He looked completely human now, and Lucy could hardly bear to look at him.

  “That you have no magic of your own.”

  He was finally still. “Why is that the worst lie?”

  “Because you betray . . . you betray magic. The world, the gods, the Divine. You betray us. You lie . . . ” She had no air left. The pain grew like a tree through her chest, down her arm.

  “What do you imagine magic is, that you think I’ve done wrong in betraying it?”

  “Life,” she whispered. “You’re the tombstone. You’re the paving over the well.”

  “You know nothing of magic.”

  She looked at him past the sparkling darkness in her eyes and for an instant she was entirely Lucy, as if she had regained the fear-scattered pieces of herself just in time for the end. Her hand described a fluttering moth’s circle in the air and she said faintly, lightly,

  “Dying gives one a certain insight. So does living, I suppose. Perhaps I know something you don’t.”

  “I have always considered the possibility,” he said. He turned to the altar and with a movement devoid of ceremony he picked up the sword. Steel rang gently off the stone; light slid like water off the steel. “Tell me, Miss Donne. What did you hope to accomplish in Palton this afternoon?”

  Palton? This afternoon? A lifetime ago.

  “Breadon How. The Cold Hounds. I thought . . . ”

  “Yes?”

  “I thought I . . . ”

  “You thought you could oppose me. You thought you could raise up some power I have kept buried for nine hundred years.”

  “No.” Lucy’s tears caught the light like the steel. “But I thought I had to try.”

  “Ah.” It sounded oddly like satisfaction. He turned the blade in his hand as if he too wanted to see the candlelight run off its edge. “You aren’t the first to think that.”

  “I know.”

  “The others all failed.”

  She knew.

  He lifted the sword, a man in modern dress playing with an archaic toy—but he did not look ridiculous. He looked like himself. He looked like death.

  “Does your heart pain you?”

  “Yes.” The pain was her heart, condensed into a pulsing star lodged against her spine.

  “You might have succeeded at Breadon How, Miss Donne, although I think you would not have found
the Cold Hounds comfortable allies. But you might well have awakened them. I believed it after dreaming your dream, and I think it even more likely now. But you are wrong about one thing, and your heart, Miss Donne, is wiser than you. Your heart, so full of life, knows that I am not magic. I am the antithesis, Miss Donne. I am exactly what you called me: a tombstone. For I promise you, Miss Donne, if I had one glimmer of magic in me, I would have ended this curse of a life the instant I knew my emperor was dead.”

  “But you killed him?”

  “My emperor, the last emperor. Yes, I killed him, but it was treachery, Miss Donne, not magic. And it was not life that he would have summoned if I had not stopped him, very far from life, that magic he would have raised. Oh, I won’t call it death. Not life, not death: a denial of both. But you do not understand me.”

  “I want to. Tell me . . . ” But the pain clenched, her pulse stumbled, racing at the edge of a fall.

  “Ah, but it is not your understanding that I need. Put out your hand.”

  Lucy was aware of the sword he held as she was aware of her exhausted heart, her stuttering blood, but she had come too far for petty defiance. She held out her shaking hand and he pressed the sword’s hilt against her palm.

  “Take it,” he said. “Hold hard.”

  Her hand clenched in instinctual response as he let go, so she did not drop it, but the point chimed when it struck the floor. The blade was heavy, the leather-wrapped grip warmer than her own chilled flesh.

  The Marshal of Kallisfane knelt on the floor and began to unbutton his shirt.

  “No,” Lucy said.

  He ignored this so completely the word might have been a burning wick, a drop of wax. He took the neck of his undershirt in both hands and tore it to bare his chest. He seemed to diminish at every stage, smaller and smaller, now showing bone as well as muscle beneath the pale skin.

  “Just here,” he said, pointing, as if she might have missed it, to the thick crosshatch of scars between his nipple and his breastbone.

  Lucy used the sword’s weight to drag herself away from the supporting wall, though her heart beat like a bird crushed between icy hands. Pain tasted like a new penny on her tongue.

  “How many times . . . ?”

  “Oh, many.” He spoke as if he still stood over her, as if he were not half-naked on his knees. “Not always in search of death. Men have needed to test me, to be sure of who or what I am.”

  “And you want this?” The point of the sword jittered across a memorial stone, struck a spark from a date of birth.

  “Call this,” he said, “my test of you.”

  She put her free hand to her own breast, as though the pain she felt there was the pain of those terrible scars.

  “Here,” he said, and he lifted the sword, cutting his fingers on the edge as he aimed the point at his heart. “Lean your weight against the hilt, it needs no more than that.”

  The star behind Lucy’s own heart bloomed in sympathy. She let go the hilt, and though he tried to hold the blade, it pulled itself out of his grasp, cutting his palm, ringing like a bell on the floor. Lucy fell to her knees. Her hand traveled the distance between her heart and his. She felt his scars, his warm and living skin.

  “I pass your test,” she whispered on the last of her breath. “I am not you.”

  Then there was no more light, no more air.

  No more pain.

  The envelope containing a left-luggage claim check was collected from the mailbox in the train station not long after the Palton train pulled away from the platform. It was sorted that day and delivered to Graham’s flat the next morning at 10:12. Graham, however, was not there to receive it. He had interviews to conduct, an article to write, and an argument to have with his editor after he handed in his copy. He stopped for a drink and a bite to eat with some of his colleagues, and finally reached his flat around 9—early for him, but after the argument he was in an unsociable mood. So an early night for once, and for once, only the one drink. He unlocked the street door, fished his mail out of its box, and sorted through it as he climbed the stairs.

  Lucy’s handwriting stopped him cold three stairs below the landing.

  Lucy, Lucy. He hadn’t thought about her all day, and yet here she was. A drink of beer, a touch, a kiss. He could feel her mouth against the corner of his mouth, her lips warm and mobile, as if they shaped a thought even as she kissed him.

  Graham shook himself, finished the climb to his flat and let himself inside. With Lucy’s letter in his hand, he saw the place as he would if she were here: dusty, not too untidy, but uncared-for, unloved. Somehow all his things acquired a sepia tone, regardless of their original colors, as if a couch or a lampshade could fade like a plant for lack of attention. He turned on the desk lamp, which at least afforded kinder shadows, leaving the letters on the desk while he shed his coat and tie, pulled on a sweater, poured himself a drink. Only two for the night, so he was still ahead. Finally he sat, his desk chair creaking as he leaned back against the spring, and picked up her letter again. Her handwriting, elegant but hard to decipher, reminded him of her gestures, her hands.

  He realized he was reluctant to open the letter. Love note, brush off, the research notes he was waiting for? He turned the envelope in his hands. Cheap, mass-produced, a far cry from the heavy rag of her usual stationary. He tapped it edge-on against his desk, feeling the shift of several folded sheets inside. Research notes, he decided, and did not know if he was relieved or—Well, but he did know, didn’t he? Because he didn’t believe in the love note, kiss or no kiss. He wasn’t sure he believed in the kiss.

  He took a drink, tore the envelope, shook out the letter and a claim check, a rectangle of red pasteboard that lay on his inky blotter, the only spot of color in the room. He let it lie, unfolded pages.

  My hero, here is the story no one wants to know . . .

  He read it once distractedly, remembering their conversation in the pub. His scorn, he remembered that, and her face, delicate and tired. He remembered that better than he remembered her words. Proof, she had said, and, I can prove it.

  He threw the letter down, poured himself more whiskey, paced, muttering, around the room.

  Then he read the letter again, forcing his attention onto the points that could be verified: parish records, newspapers, police reports.

  He paced again, glass in hand. “I don’t believe it.” And, “Come on, Lucy! Magic isn’t news.”

  An imagined Lucy said, “The systematic murder of university professors isn’t news? The manipulation of the Crown to the detriment of rural villages isn’t news?”

  “I don’t believe it. Not a word, Lucy. I don’t.”

  But it could be checked. Some of it could be. University records, harbormaster’s logs. He emptied his glass and started for the drinks cabinet, then changed course for the desk.

  “What bloody train? Where the hell did you go?”

  The claim check stared up at him. Left Luggage. Skillyham Station. Hours: 6 a.m.—Midnight.

  He glanced at his watch, snatched up his coat and his keys.

  Whirr, whirr, click.

  “Benbury oh-oh-nine-three.”

  “Could I speak with Miss Lucy Donne?”

  There was a pause, a most definite pause, and a deepening chill. “Who is calling, please?”

  Something was wrong. “A colleague at the national library. We were doing some research together and she has some materials I need. If I could speak with Miss Donne . . . I know it’s early . . . you can assure her I will be brief if she is otherwise engaged . . . ”

  Another pause. Then, ominously, another voice. “Sir, Miss Donne is not available. If you give me your name and a telephone number and address where you can be reached I will be sure to pass the message along.”

  Graham hung the receiver gently on its hook, breaking the connection. Then he set the telephone on the floor, where it kept company with his typewriter, his dictionary, his mug full of pencils. Lucy’s papers covered his desk, sheet a
fter sheet of foolscap, typewriter bond, notepaper and envelopes and scraps, a drifting sea of her handwriting that threatened to drown the desk. She kept meticulous record of her researches, but it was in no sort of order at all. And yet the sheer mass of it was compelling. Whatever one thought of old wives tales, the whispered glories of the magical past—and he had stored up a far-ranging argument on that score—it was difficult to deny that the Marshal of Kallisfane was actively at large in the world, working toward some goal.

  Or did he have a goal? Could all of this be, what? The senile boredom of a very old man? The directed service of an agent of the Crown?

  There were more possibilities the farther away he looked from Lucy’s obsession with magic, but he couldn’t deny the weight of her research. He wanted to argue it out with her. He wanted her to lead him through the chaos, form an argument, defend her conclusions—convince him if that was what was in the cards—but most of all he wanted her to be here. After a night of reading about death, disappearance, suppression, manipulation, he was all too ready to read bad news into that brief conversation with whomever it was that answered the telephone at Lucy’s house. Especially that second voice asking his name, his telephone number, his address. Why his address, when there he was talking on the telephone? Was it because, with the newly automated exchanges, it was more difficult to trace a call? And do upper servants really “pass messages along”?

  My train is leaving, I must fly—

  Fly where, Lucy, damn you? And why?

  Oh, Lucy, Lucy. What the hell am I supposed to do with all this?

  What do you do if you have a story no one will believe?

  The answer did not come so glibly this time. He sat with his elbows holding down a drift of paper and his hands clenched before his mouth. What do you do if you have a story you don’t dare to tell?

  “Because if you’re right, Lucy . . . ” If you’re right about even half of this—forgetting the magic for a minute—don’t you see what you have here? Not just the Revenant, but the police, the army, the church, the very Crown! And even if you ducked the whole boiling lot of them, who the hell else is there left to tell? The common people? The general public who go to church, who believe the police keep good citizens safe, who would be scared pissless if you told them you were bringing magic back into the world? The truth is, Lucy, you could publish a book and give it away on the street corners, and if the king said it was all for the good of the bloody realm, they’d believe him. They would say, thank you, Mister Revenant, sir, and toss the book on the fire, and you could kiss your hand to whatever it is you’re looking for, justice or the cure for moral outrage, because you know what, Lucy? They might be right.