Perarcha was merely a name, to Tomaso—a man who wrote wonderful books. But Di Tuva grinned. “I’m painting his portrait for the tyrant,” he said. “I know all the great men now. Bah—he’ll have a cow. Let me fetch him.”
Tomaso began to breathe for the first time in two days.
“And some clothes. You will want to be dressed.”
#
The next morning a cavalcade arrived at Tomaso Lupi’s house. Thanks to Di Tuva’s help, the intervening hours had seen the Lupi sword redeemed from a pawnbroker and a set of plain but correct clothes—a tight jupon, a hood with a little tasteful embroidery, fine silk hose—arrive at the door. Tomaso Lupi stood in his small yard to receive his guests, and found himself holding the stirrup of the great man himself—not Petrarcha, who dismounted with Di Tuva’s help, but the Lord of Berona—sometimes called the Tyrant.
“Messire di Lupi!” the Tyrant said in his booming voice. “We have not seen you in attendance!” he laughed. “In some circles that might be taken as disloyalty!”
Tomaso Lupi bowed to the ground. “In my case, my lord, simple poverty.”
The mention of poverty shocked some of the courtiers behind the two great men into silence. But the Tyrant met his eye. “Now that,” he said, “sounds like the cold steel of truth.” He nodded. “Very well, you are forgiven your absence. Take us to our tomb.”
“My tomb, my lord,” Tomaso said carefully. The words gave him a chill. I have been thoughtless to speak so, he thought.
The Lord of Berona looked at him a moment as if sharing his thought, but he nodded sharply. “Yes. Exactly. It is yours. I state it to be so, but within my domains.”
But it was Messire Petrarcha who was the most eager. He was an older man with a tight-buttoned hood that hid most of his hair. His face was small and almost angelic, and the lock of white hair that escaped his hood made him look somehow otherworldly.
Tomaso bowed as low to him as he had bowed to the Tyrant of Berona. “You are most welcome here!” he said. “I have read all your books.”
Petrarcha nodded, his eyes already on the hill. “Good. Now—take me. I can feel him.”
“Who?” the Tyrant asked.
“The dead man,” Petrarcha said. “The Ancient.”
They walked up the hillside in the early light of morning—a dozen men and women from the court, dressed for hunting; Giancarlo and his wife and daughter, who were formally presented to the Tyrant—Giancarlo’s satisfaction of the public betrothal of his daughter to a man who knew the Lord of Berona glowed from him like fire through a grate—and fifty local men and women.
Petrarcha sent his servant for his walking staff—he was easily seventy years old. And when he had climbed the hill to the ancient portico, he turned. To Tomaso, he appeared taller and far more formidable.
“No closer. Indeed—indeed, good people, I would have you stand much farther away.” He motioned them down the hill.
No one moved more than three steps.
“Is it something evil?” Giuglia asked the old man. She dared—beauty has its own courage-and she was standing almost next to him. “Is it black magic?” she asked.
He looked down at her and smiled. “Magic does not have a color,” he said, to the consternation of the priest. “My friend Ali Rashid has proven that, and Harmodius. Magic is merely power. There is immense power here.” He nodded. “And some of it is meant to—” he breathed in, as if inhaling an odor. “Some of it is meant to manipulate the mind, which is never very nice, is it, my dear?”
He leaned on his staff for so long that some of the fairer ladies began to be uncomfortable with the sun.
“Is there a treasure?” asked Giancarlo suddenly.
Petrarcha did not move or answer.
“Do not disturb him,” Di Tuva said. “I beg you.”
The Tyrant began to fidget. “I thought we’d see—” he began.
The world seemed to blink.
Just for the beat of an eyelash—for less than a single heartbeat—the world went. Or turned pale, or turned black, or filled with color—no two people experienced the event the same way, although men and women talked of it as far away as the county of Arelat.
Everyone flinched—relaxed—
There was the sound of thunderclap—so loud that it was greater than noise—and then a great sigh, as if the earth itself expelled air from its lungs.
The priest began to pray.
Petrarcha spread his hands. “Speak, if that is your desire,” he said.
The figures of three women rose from the doorway and seemed to float—fully realized, magnificently real, swathed in flowing garments lighter than the air around them but otherwise naked, standing on air.
One, by one, each spoke for as long as an orator would speak in any assembly. They spoke with joy—with vehemence. With magnificent gestures.
None of the mortals—not even Petrarcha—understood a word they said.
When they were done, the thinnest one, with black, curling hair that framed her face and long, elegant arms, stepped up on his toes and twirled, waved an arm, and all three–smiling—vanished.
And the door opened.
#
“Back!” Petrarcha insisted, and his voice cracked like a whip. The curl of raw 1essier1l emerging from the top of his staff was probably more impressive than the voice, and the men and women—low born and high—froze.
Tomaso stepped forward. “I should enter first,” he said.
Messire Petrarcha looked at him. “You have no response to the ops, do you?” he asked.
“A magister once told me he had never known someone so dead to the occult,” Tomaso Lupi confessed.
Petrarcha fingered his beard and then reached out like a priest pronouncing a benison and touched his head. “Ahhh,” he sighed. “It was an unkind thing to say to a child. But in your case—so very true.” He smiled.
“And it is my property,” Tomaso said, a little insistently.
Petrarcha nodded again. “Most men rush to their dooms,” he said. “Do you know that there are malign things who listen for statements like “this is my tomb?”
Tomaso paused. Petrarcha put a hand on his shoulder. The hand was as heavy as lead—as cold as ice. “I’m here,” he said. “Go in. Let us see what the first men—and women–have left us.”
Tomaso climbed down into the pit they had made where the ancient portico must have stood, and then he had—rather anticlimactically—to clear away some rocks that had fallen in the night, so that he could pull the door far enough open to enter.
Porto handed him a pair of torches, and a few brave souls pressed forward—Guiglia, Giancarlo, and Di Tuva. But the hermeticist trenched out his arms, and a narrow white line sprang up in a circle around the door—and filled in as if drawn by an invisible hand writing a pentagram and then annotating it.
The crowd sighed.
Tomaso took a torch. His hands were shaking, but everyone was watching and he knew that he had to be the first in—whatever followed. He used his shoulder to force the door back, and stepped down onto the narrow steps.
Nothing happened.
He took three more steps without a thought in his head, and then the smell hit him. It wasn’t a malevolent smell, but merely the smell of earth after a rain. And something else—some wisp of memory that floated into his brain through his nose. Cedar? Pine? A resin of some sort.
The entryway sloped down, away from the door but not steeply so. The sun penetrated only about the length of a horse and after that he was blind. He paused, and in his pause realized that the walls on either hand were painted in frescoes.
“Messire Lupi!” someone called.
“Tomaso!” called Giuglia.
“Send Di Tuva!” he replied. “I’m fine.”
His eyes had adjusted a bit. The frescoes were—incredible. Were he an artist, he’d have had words to say about what was right—but the proportions, the color of the flesh, the bunch of grapes—
The corridor had
a procession carrying food on both sides. The food was beautiful—the trays gleamed.
He had never seen such paintings.
The nearest servant to him was turning to look over her shoulder, balancing a tray of sweetmeats with her tongue caught between her teeth, and the next servant had hesitated, causing the whole line consternation—all that, with a brush and pigments.
‘Oh, my god, my god,’ said Di Tuva’s voice from behind him. ‘Oh my god.’
Tomaso took another step and had to lower his torch to see a door set into the hill.
“Let me forward,” said the magister from closer than Tomaso had imagined. The little man with the wisp of white hair was at his shoulder, and Tomaso leaned against the wall to let him pass.
“Look at them!” said Di Tuva, his voice expressing wonder and despair at once. “How did they paint them?”
Petrarcha stood in the narrow vault and his staff suddenly threw a strong light. In the light, all the figures almost seemed to leap to life—but the bright light also revealed minute flakes where plaster had failed, and discoloration of pigment.
Tomaso found that he could breathe.
Petrarcha tapped the door once with his staff, and there was music. It was played on strings—somewhere in the air above them. The music was marvelous—familiar in tempo, alien in tone.
And the inner door opened.
“You first,” invited Petrarcha, his voice full of wonder.
Inside was a single room. On the walls were frescoes—couches with couples on them. There were two men on one couch, and two women on another, and all the rest of the couches held a man and a woman. Some kissed—one couple went further—some ate. And yet, so masterful was the painting that the viewer could see that every couple listened to something.
In the center of the wall in front of Tomaso stood a gargantuan figure–strong, reptilian, heavily muscled, with short wings and a marvelously inlaid beak and an erect helmet crest of fins, or possibly feathers, sitting on a couch, playing a lyre. And next to him stood the three women—the same three women—who had appeared in the air by the door. One held a harp. One held a scroll. One held aloft a brush, as if delicately painting the very scene in which she stood—the trompe l’oeil was so powerful that Tomaso had to blink.
Along the walls of the tomb stood urns and vases—magnificently figured in red and black and white and gold—with athletes and dancers and women weaving and men talking—and between them lay things of gold—a scabbard, a sword hilt, a woman’s necklace, now a thousand minute golden beads scattered on the floor with the red rubies like candies among them—a fortune in pearls lay as if cast before the proverbial swine, and a suit of Archaic armor stood on a stand of lacquered wood. There were two statues, each with inset eyes of gold and lapis that seemed to follow Tomaso, and a woman’s girdle set with carved stones—all of this he took in as he stepped into the light cast by the magister’s staff.
“Blessed virgin, it’s a daemon!” cried Giuglia from the doorway. She pushed into the room—
There was a crash—a clatter like the sound of an alarm in a military camp. Something moved—the magister’s staff blazed like a standing bolt of lightning—Giuglia threw herself into Tomaso’s arms even as he whirled and drew the sword at his side—
The passing of two thousand years had turned the wood of the stand under the lacquer to something like dust, and the breath of their arrival disturbed it. The armor stand had collapsed, and the clangor of the bronze was the only assault.
Lupi and Di Tuva eyed each other over their swords, and both laughed ruefully. Outside, there were cries.
Petrarcha calmed his staff and laughed. “Even for the old, there can come a few surprises,” he admitted.
Di Tuva stood in front of the left wall and moaned, the sword still in his hand. “Look at them!” he said. “No one alive can paint like that.”
Petrarcha smiled. “What the children of men have done, they can do again,” he said.
Tomaso Lupi stooped and retrieved a ring with a single ruby the size of the smallest nail on Giuglia’s finger and solemnly placed it on her hand. “Your betrothal present,” he said.
#
Of course, everyone had to see it.
The Tyrant entered. He spent a long time, with Messire Petrarcha and Messire Di Tuva explaining things. Giancarlo stood at his shoulder—the two seemed to have some curiosity in common. Both of them inquired about the values of many objects.
The Tyrant declared a tax of ten percent on the whole value of the tomb. And claimed the armor for himself. He put a jocular, richly clad arm on Tomaso’s shoulder. “You must share such wealth,” he said with no apparent irony, and went to where a pair of courtiers held his horse.
Some of the value of the treasure was lost when Tomaso had to hire a dozen lances—mercenaries—from Messire Raoul de Cambrai, a Galle. But the Galles were good knights, and defended the treasure, and only stole a little.
Magister Petrarcha took many of the objects away for study.
‘He’ll never return them,’ Giancarlo hissed. The presence of so much gold had caused a great deal of hissing; the presence of half a company of mercenaries, however disciplined, on the hill had drawn the enmity of the town, and Tomaso had rediscovered the high price that aristocrats paid for wine at the 1essie.
“Pater—the magister will help me sell these things. Without him—what would we do? Wander the roads, hawking the ancient world?” Tomaso laughed, and Giuglia laughed, and finally, her mother and father laughed, too.
Di Tuva drew them a picture and then painted it in grisaille—of Tomaso and Giuglia hauling ancient vases on their backs on a dusty road. They laughed over it many evenings.
But when all was said and done—when they were wed, when Tomaso had paid his father’s debts and his own, when he’d bought back the family house in Berona, striped with brick and marble, and purchased his wife a wardrobe to allow her to attend the Tyrant’s court—when he had returned to fencing and jousting, and the date of his knighting had been set by the Lord—then he went to Petrarcha’s tower, high above the tyrant’s courtyard, climbing a hundred steps, or so men said. The old Magister lived at the top. Men said that he flew.
The old man was alone except for a single servant. The servant bowed and withdrew, and Tomaso was alone with the great man.
“You’ve come for all the beautiful vases,” the magister said.
Tomaso knelt. “No, 1essier. I rather hoped that you’d help me sell them—to collectors who would love them. I wish to keep two—because I love them.”
The magister scratched his beard. In the light of a winter’s day, he looked small and very harmless—his voice was weak and scratchy like any old man’s, and weaker than many. His laugh was very small—almost as if he wanted to keep it secret. “I love them too,” he admitted. “They make me greedy for their beauty.”
Tomaso smiled. “Take one for yourself, then.” He smiled. “In exchange, perhaps you can teach me to write history.”
“You must have been a terrible peasant, 1essier. You have all the chivalric virtues. Which, let me add, were the ancient ones—loyalty, and generosity.” The old man smiled. “Of course, I accept!”
Tomaso shrugged. “I think I was a pretty good peasant, 1essier. I found much to praise in my neighbors—but then, I married one.”
Petrarcha nodded. “She—a peasant? Bah—an angel come to earth.”
Tomaso bowed his head again. “But Master—I didn’t really climb all these steps to arrange for money. I have wanted to ask—since the day we opened the tomb. Who were the women? And what did they say? And why—why did the world blink? What was in the tomb?”
Instead of answering, the magister got to his feet, scattering scrolls, and walked to his window—a great expanse of many panes of glass that looked down over the courtyard. In a corner, by the stables where the Tyrant’s horses were kept, there was a man standing in the sunlight with a tray of grapes. The sun winked off the metal of the tray. A horse
length away, Di Tuva stood at an easel supporting a wooden board, drawing quickly in charcoal while a pair of assistants hovered.
The magister nodded, as if satisfied. “He’s been there every day the light was good, since the day we opened the door,” he said. He shrugged, gathered his robes, and sat. “If I were to ask your wife what was in the tomb—what would she say? Her marriage? And your father-in-law? And the Tyrant? They would say—Gold! And I will tell you that I don’t’ even know what language the lovely ladies spoke—only that they were great magisters speaking to me across twenty centuries. I do not know how to do that—but now I know it can be done!”
The old man leaned forward. His hands shook slightly. “Something very powerful was in the tomb. Now it is free.” He leaned back. “Not all spirits are malign. I will say no more.”
Lupi—soon to be Lupi di Alezzo—climbed back down the steps to the courtyard, and crossed it to where his friend stood staring at his own work.
“Your painting will smell like horse dung,” Lupi called, and Di Tuva laughed and threw a chunk of charcoal at him.
“What did you ask him? Christ risen, you are braver than I.” Di Tuva laughed ruefully. “I only approach him when I want to draw the vases—again.”
“I asked him what was in the tomb.” Lupi shrugged and looked at the charcoal. The servant with the tray relaxed.
“What did the old man say?” Di Tuva asked.
Lupi shrugged again and chuckled. “He spoke in riddles, like a magister.” He looked at Di Tuva, who was now the most sought-after painter and architect in two hundred leagues. “But he indicated that you knew the answer.”
Di Tuva smiled—not his sneer, nor his mocking smile or his defensive courtiers smile, but the pure smile his wife usually received. “I do!” he said.
“Well, then?” asked Tomaso di Lupi.
Di Tuva smiled again, and said nothing.
About the Authors
Tad Williams has held more jobs than any sane person should admit to—singing in a band, selling shoes, managing a financial institution, throwing newspapers, and designing military manuals, to name just a few. He also hosted a syndicated radio show for ten years, worked in theater and television production, taught both grade-school and college classes, and worked in multimedia for a major computer firm. He is co-founder of an interactive television company, and is currently writing comic books and film and television scripts as well as novels.
Neverland's Library: Fantasy Anthology Page 38
