The City in the Autumn Stars

by Michael Moorcock

  ‘I shall sing of these things no more, Sir.’ It was a descending note. ‘I’ll sing no more the unwelcome songs…’ The note decayed. She was silent.

  I began to pant. The apes moved in single file around the pool which no longer steamed with their waste nor mine. That forest could not be corrupted, even after the death of its queen. The oak prevailed. The leaves breathed their wonderful scent. The apes squatted in little groups beneath the oak. They grunted, they gibbered, they wailed. They were mourners again.

  Tears dazzled my eyes and were bright on the cheeks of the child. The funeral dance of the apes was slow and dignified. They rose on their hind legs, they extended their long arms. The white fur moved with a thousand little shadows. Down on their knuckles again, swaying beneath the tree. The blind girl began to sing again, a wordless agony.

  Then it was done.

  The brands were taken from the wall and thrown on a heap at the oak’s base. Slowly the wood charred. The smell of the sap was stronger than ever as it was driven, hissing, to the outer air. Yet, though flames jumped into its top branches, touched the little corpse, ran along the trunk, the tree was invulnerable. Even as it burned it revived itself. I watched in further wonderment, and I was still weeping.

  The girl’s song changed, then. It became a wail of warning. Her head turned and her blind eyes stared beyond me. Montsorbier was at the door, perhaps attracted by the sounds, or possibly the light. There was a fresh sword in his hand. His face was no longer handsome. It was twisted with some horrid, unnameable greed. Klosterheim came pacing slowly from another arch, von Bresnvorts from a third. I guessed they had been moving in ambush for some minutes. Behind them, brought into relief by the pyre’s flames, were the faces of their followers, their expressions more bestial than any honest beast’s. How strongly those men and women contrasted with the baffled apes, who turned their heads this way and that to look.

  I did not see Libussa and I was grateful. ‘Oh, Klosterheim, why have you descended to cowardly murder?’ I asked him. ‘You wished to be my ally.’

  ‘The opportunity remains.’ He was cold. His teeth were so tight in his head his voice emerged as a tortured whisper. It made me believe he regretted his impulse yet must now pursue its consequences. ‘You can join us, von Bek. We must all be bonded now, as one, if we’re to fulfil the common cause. If we refuse to do so, then we should be cut swiftly down, as a cancer on our body.’

  ‘No room for compromise, von Bek,’ cried Montsorbier. And, sickeningly, he giggled at me.

  ‘We must wrest this globe from He who rules,’ said Klosterheim. ‘We’re all agreed on that now, von Bek. You agreed with us. There’s no need to die.’

  ‘I’ve nought in common with those who kill old women.’ The flames hid her in their glare. The flames absorbed her blood. The flames were all part of the same entity – queen, oak, pool. The presence of those degenerate cut-throats there was a blasphemy. ‘I am your enemy, Klosterheim. I humoured you once, felt pity for you. No longer. You are a creature doomed to commit acts of foolish evil. Doomed to wanton and inevitable self-destruction. And it is, I note, a well-deserved fate!’

  Klosterheim shrugged.

  ‘You have but one chance, Sir,’ said Montsorbier, momentarily recovering from whatever madness possessed him. He was loud and imperious, as of old. Then his voice grew insinuating and sly again. ‘All others you’ve rejected. But we are merciful. Come in with us.’

  ‘Those not within our compact shall inevitably be destroyed.’ Von Bresnvorts parroted as usual. I doubted he even knew the meaning of his words. He had been rehearsed.

  ‘Where’s the inevitability? Where’s any proof?’ My disgust and my fury gave me courage. I had my sabre in my right fist. The other sword was held in reserve. I still had scant taste for magic. ‘You all speak of destiny when you mean “despair”. You’re frightened as donkeys braying in a storm. Not one of you – not even Klosterheim – has the bottom for this. So now you huddle together, calling it a Compact. You’re hypocrites. You’ve lied to yourselves and now pay the price.’ I took three long paces so that my back was to the blazing oak. And I laughed in their wicked faces. My own self-deception at least promised some kind of pleasure. Theirs offered nothing but terror and guilt.

  They had become too hungry to rise immediately to my challenge. Even Montsorbier, who was the best of them, was irresolute. Only Klosterheim was consistent. ‘Forget this false sentiment, von Bek. Lucifer betrays the world. He’ll betray you. He refuses power. Ousting Him will be effortless after the Concordance.’

  ‘You lie, Sir. You want sweet reunion with the only creature you’ve ever loved. If He called you back to Hell now, you’d crawl to join Him. He is your master, whether He chooses to use you or not!’

  ‘Not so, foul-mouthed heretic.’

  I had angered him. I had not expected to affect him so readily. He was pulling free his long, slender steel from his belt and he moved forward to kill me, a farmer stalking a chicken, as if he failed to consider my retaliation.

  Montsorbier cried out. ‘Johannes Klosterheim, we agreed a plan. Von Bek must join us, otherwise the scheme will founder. And there’s the woman to convince!’

  My heart lifted. I felt a thrill of pleasure. I would not perish yet, thought I, while she remained opposed to that rabble. Thus my faith was kept glimmering. But where was she? Had she already found the Grail and was that why they were so viciously desperate?

  The apes were restless around the blazing oak. The blind girl crooned as if to soothe them. Firelight made animate the features of that horrid sodality. Perhaps they maintained a semblance of sanity by anticipating early triumph. But Libussa and I, in interrupting their gathering, had thrown them too dramatically out of balance. What with apes swaying behind me and the bloodthirsty officiates lurking before me, many of them still in pointed cowls, I became frozen. I was unwilling to move lest the flicker became a signal for ferocious bloodletting. The blind girl sang on, swaying as the apes swayed. I would not wish her harmed, as the old lady was harmed.

  ‘Von Bek,’ said Montsorbier, ‘will you answer me a question?’ His handsome face was etched in lines which had not been there yesterday. He had grown much older and there was a slackness about his mouth, a fear in his eyes. He had joined the jackals completely. ‘Please, von Bek, as a civilised man, rally to us. Does O’Dowd really guard the Cup? Have you sniffed it out yet?’

  ‘I seek O’Dowd as you do.’

  ‘But you ally with Satan,’ said Klosterheim. ‘It was always likely. You did it before. As I understand, only the pure and perfect can handle the Grail.’

  I laughed again. ‘Then there’s little point to any of us here seeking it!’ The branches crackled. The apes grew more restless. The girl raised her voice, still singing to them.

  ‘The ritual,’ said Klosterheim soberly, ‘will purify us. Those who join the Lion against the Lamb. Montsorbier – tell him. The same as you told me. Tell him how the ritual he interrupted would have made him pure.’

  ‘It is a wiping away of all past sins,’ said Montsorbier. ‘Including the sin of following Christ. There is still time for the ritual to be re-enacted. Christ has to be exiled, do you see, before the Lion can be summoned.’

  It was purest nonsense to my ear. ‘Then why aren’t you at your ritual now, Sir?’

  ‘She –’ Montsorbier hesitated.

  ‘She demands blood, eh? Me and Libussa, eh? Are you fearful that your destiny gets more distant every passing hour? Your cunning is transparent, Montsorbier. As for you, Klosterheim, you made a stupid mistake. You were impatient once and paid your price for it. Now you’ve made a similar error. I must believe you doomed to eternal life, but also to eternal repetition! Your true doom is simple to me. You lack brains, Sir.’

  I had struck deep again, better than any blade. His eyes went wild, his mouth opened to reply. But he could not. He was trawling his memory for proof or denial of my hideous suggestion!

  Montsorbier, fearful that I had m
ade a comrade of the excommunicated Captain of Hell, now called urgently on a note of reconciliation: ‘Von Bek. We plan no treachery against you. We need you for the Grail. The woman must die. All the omens say the same. But you will survive and join us and become one of the Earth’s remakers. We once sought, together with Cloots, Marat and Robespierre, to create Paradise. But too many tried, you see. The Revolution failed. I realised that in Vaud. Whereupon I at once reconciled myself with my old Brotherhood. Now just five or six shall have the ultimate power. We’ll build a world where Order shall prevail. A few more deaths are inconsequential, surely, if they guarantee us eternal life and absolute fulfilment?’

  ‘Perhaps you are also sentenced to the Doom of Repetition,’ I said to him. ‘Your words are over-familiar, Sir. Your ambition’s greater and your hold on sanity’s looser, that’s all. Well, I pray for the sake of good manners at least that I’ll avoid that particular doom.’

  ‘You’re a coward, Sir!’ Von Bresnvorts spoke thickly and he was leering. ‘There are those of us who welcome the responsibility of power. We’re not afraid to take the action demanded of us!’

  ‘What’s morally right about accepting such responsibility?’ I asked. ‘It is precisely what I do not require. Be silent, von Bresnvorts. At least your two comrades retain the vestiges of passable intellects. You began with nothing, save appetite and malice.’

  He snarled. Montsorbier again restrained him. ‘Von Bek, I of all people have reason to wish you dead. You have humiliated me. You have insulted me and attacked my most cherished ambitions. However, it is not a crime to defend one’s interests.’ Now Froggy was a Sophist. ‘We should all be prepared to understand and be tolerant. Are you aware we anticipate the Apocalypse, von Bek?’

  ‘The obsession’s common enough, Montsorbier, amongst ignorant folk.’

  Klosterheim’s sword was coming up again and he resumed his stalking towards me.

  Montsorbier was beside himself, fearing for the destruction of that brittle alliance. ‘Gentlemen!’ Behind me the oak whistled in the wild flame. I glanced back. The little Goat Queen was consumed.

  ‘Liars and cowards!’ I shouted in outrage. ‘All of you are corrupt murderers! I’ll not join you. I would delay my own corruption for as long as possible! Can’t you see what you’ve become? This unsettled ambiance has found each weakness and amplified it in you. Montsorbier, you’re no better now than the creature beside you! You are no better than von Bresnvorts, who killed his aunt for a fragment of a fortune! Look into those waters, Sir!’ I pointed with my blade. ‘Look, Sir, into the pool – and see what you’ve become!’

  Montsorbier’s features twitched and shifted. He snarled. ‘I renounce diplomacy. Alive you’re too great a danger to us!’

  ‘I thank you for that, Sir,’ said I with a sudden lift of spirits. ‘There’s now an incentive for me to survive!’ Then I ran at him with my sabre. He brought up a near-identical blade and parried. He had lost none of his quickness.

  As we fought we turned until I could see his watching followers, the intense, uncertain frown on Klosterheim, and von Bresnvorts’ wet mouth opening and closing like a praying Turk’s arse. They began to stir, all of them, to crowd towards me. Montsorbier no longer cared for his honour.

  But a white tide was moving, a foam of apes, all scampering and leaping at me and Montsorbier until I was knocked off my feet and they were carrying me, struggling and cursing, out of the room and back to the cold little square where they had found me. Was it that they refused to tolerate violence while the oak burned?

  I heard confused shouts from within, the crystal song of the blind child. Then the apes were a pyramid, passing me up furry backs like tumblers. Soon I was high above the square, looking down at Montsorbier, Klosterheim and the others as they burst into the square, shrieking with frustrated rage. They realised I’d escaped them. I was lifted clean out of their grasp. I rose higher and higher still, with apparently an infinity of apes to accomplish my ascent. I was set down upon a balcony. The pyramid tumbled back and dispersed out of the square as those furious enemies of Satan struck savagely about them. And the girl was still singing, but her song was distant, fading. I stared down from my safe perch!

  Suddenly there was silence. I heard Klosterheim panting, almost detected Montsorbier’s grinding teeth. The two men separated themselves from the press and came to stand looking up at me: one gaunt and pale (Death personified in a Holbein print) and the other red with rage and weariness, his cold eyes given life by his hatred.

  ‘That circus trick shan’t save you, Sir,’ said Montsorbier.

  ‘You’ll be cast out,’ said Klosterheim. ‘Ostracised by your peers, eternity shall be lonely for you!’

  ‘If you’re the peers, gentlemen, it’s a devilish petty threat,’ I countered. I watched for a trick. Corrupt they might be, but they were dangerous enemies. I would lose more than life if they succeeded in their ambitions. A world where that triumvirate ruled would be a ghastly, bloody place indeed! Since the prospect was by no means impossible I felt I would need powerful aid if I were to overwhelm them. Who could I trust? Anyone? Libussa, even, could decide to join them, letting some other pawn stand and be sacrificed. It came to me that she had already found the Red O’Dowd. If the Grail was in her keeping, she no longer needed me. Thus she could already have traded me off for some other advantage!

  From the far side of the square the blind girl began to sing again. Klosterheim and Montsorbier glanced this way and that, ready to kill her. The language was the same she had used the previous night. She was calling to me. I strained to catch the words.

  To the tavern, to the tavern, she sang, To the older tavern in Salzkuchengasse. To the tavern called The Friend Indeed, of the son of the ancient king. To the defender of the spring, to the place of the four apostles. To the meeting place of all tales. To the tavern, to the tavern. To the tavern of conjoining realms!

  At first the song sounded mere rhetoric. To Salzkuchengasse! That was a street I knew in my own Mirenburg, so doubtless it existed in the Mittelmarch city, too. I shouted in Russian: ‘Is that where she is? Is that where I’ll find my lady?’

  To Salzkuchengasse…

  ‘Where is my Libussa?’

  She is not lost, but a decision is due. To Salzkuchengasse…

  I took her to mean Libussa awaited me at The Friend Indeed. Now I feared Klosterheim or one of that crew knew Slavonic, or had picked out the street from the song. In which case, every rogue in the square would soon be en route for the same tavern. I turned away from the balcony and pushed through doors to find myself in a luxury of furs and silks: a bedroom. A sleepy, naked youth tried to show anger at my intrusion but was too uncertain. I crossed his floor to the next door and, as I unlocked it, thought to ask: ‘Beg pardon, Sir. Is there a hostelry nearby called The Friend Indeed?’

  He yawned and rubbed sticky eyes. ‘That would be…’ He pointed unsurely, changed his mind and pointed again in another direction. ‘East, I think. Salzkuchengasse. It’s a little twisting alley, widening to a cobbled square, eh, Sir? And the tavern’s there. A quarter mile, I’d say. Where Nachtigall’s monument to God’s memory was erected.’ He grew more confident. ‘Aye! It is that way. Off Korkzie – no, off Papensgasse, I think. No. Königstrasse, that’s it. Off Königstrasse, Sir.’ He scratched at tangled black hair. ‘Now, Sir, while I am not an inhospitable person, I must ask you your reason for calling upon a man by means of his balcony.’

  I bowed to him. ‘Much obliged to you, Sir. My regrets, also, Sir. And my apologies for disturbing you. I’m in urgent pursuit of a lady, Sir.’

  He brightened. ‘Then good luck to you, Sir.’ He winked. ‘And bonne chance!’

  ‘Thank you, Sir.’ I was out of the bedroom swiftly, down a long passage, and opening a door onto a wide landing. Stone steps wound down and I took them several at a time. A long gallery was at the end of them, swaying like a ship at anchor, with windows which overlooked the distant street. I had little fear of direct purs
uit. But they could be making their own way to the tavern even now.

  Through a wide, white passage set with little market stalls, not yet open, I made my way, enquiring of a tall, red-headed woman in some sort of Graecian evening gown, strolling her spaniel, if I was right for Salzkuchengasse. She pointed and I darted down more steps, along another passage, to emerge again into the gloomy lanes of the Deeper City. This was Königstrasse, however. Now I had to find Salzkuchengasse.

  The street turned into a bridge, as ornamental as any in Venice, over an exceptionally straight and rather narrow canal. There were two boats upon the black glass of the water. Both were filled with misshapen men and women scarcely different from the ones I had escaped. It seemed all the world’s lunatics and monstrosities were flocking to Mirenburg and I was the only one anxious to leave.

  I looked behind me. I was not followed. I could not hear the baying of Montsorbier’s pack, but that was not to say they were losing the race. So anxious was I to see potential pursuers I almost dashed past the covered stone arch bearing the somewhat faded sign of Salzkuchengasse. The entrance to the street was barely three feet wide. It had old flagstones which were misshapen and broken and lay at peculiar angles, one to the other, so that I tripped several times as I stumbled forward in the dark. Eventually the alley widened and the roof was first higher, then vanished altogether. Once again I was in the Autumn Starlight.

  Salzkuchengasse fell away very steep again and at one point became worn steps with a central banister. I paused on the first step, noting the open space between the buildings, looking up at the hazy, twinkling firmament. It seemed I was equidistant from all points of the horizon. I was at the very middle of the Deeper City. Beneath my feet the Rätt purred underground.

  I became suddenly nervous and was almost on the point of turning back to see Prince Miroslav. I felt a great need to hear St Odhran’s common sense. The reason for my hesitation was the unwelcome suspicion that I was guided by a powerful, invisible force. If that were true, I had received no direct sense of it and could not tell if the force were benign or malevolent. Did I act in my own interest or the interest of others? I put an extra turn on my sash to hold Paracelsus’s sword. The ruby hilt was hidden by my coat. The other blade was back in my hand. I began to tread wearily forward. As I reached the bottom of the steps I saw the narrow street went on only another few yards, then widened into a cobbled square.