Marianne, the Magus, and the Manticore

by Sheri S. Tepper

  ‘What sort of things? Kavi can do many very wonderful things, certainly.’

  ‘Could he – oh, could he deliver a letter into a locked room? Could he make a phone hook itself up so that he could call someone?’

  Aghrehond laughed. ‘Oh, these are only little things. Of course. Any Kavi could do simple things like these. What is it, after all, but moving something very small?’ He went on chuckling to himself, and she could not tell if he were teasing her or not. He drove for a few miles in silence, then pointed away to the right. ‘There is the house we have rented for this season. Not so beautiful as the Residence in Alphenlicht, but very nice.’

  It glowed gently in the morning sun, white-columned over its rose brick, gentled with ivy, stretching along the curve of the hill in wide, welcoming wings. Makr Avehl had not yet returned from his business in New York, she was told, but she felt no lack of welcome as Aghrehond introduced her to Ellat Zahmani, Makr Avehl’s sister, a stout middle-aged woman with a charming smile who offered her a second breakfast, a sun-drenched library, a brief expedition on horseback, or a walk around the gardens. Laughing, Marianne accepted the second breakfast and a walk in the gardens. It was there that Makr Avehl found them.

  He kissed Ellat on the cheek, then Marianne, in precisely the same way, so quickly that she could not take alarm. ‘Aghrehond has gone to the train to meet your brother,’ he said. ‘Tabiti will arrive later this afternoon. I think we will not call her Tabiti, however. We will be very dignified, very political, very correct. We will all say Madame Delubovoska.’

  ‘I will keep very quiet,’ Marianne said. ‘Your cribbage partner suggested it.’

  ‘You see!’ Ellat’s voice was serious. She shook her head. ‘Makr Avehl, I’m not alone in thinking this is a mistake. Bad enough to invite her, but to have the child here – forgive me, Marianne, I know you’re not a child, but anyone younger than I am gets called a child when I am feeling motherly – to have the child here may stir her up. She’s not likely to enjoy the idea of reinforcements. An American Kavi? She’ll hate the idea.’

  ‘What is a Kavi?’ demanded Marianne. ‘Green used that word. Am I one? How did I get to be one?’

  ‘Ah, well,’ Makr Avehl drew them together. ‘Your father, dear Marianne, was a Kavi. Almost certainly. I’m not absolutely sure, can’t be until I check the library at home, but I think he was a cousin whose family left Alphenlicht some fifty years ago. They came to America with a few relatives. There may have been some intermarriage. Now, I am sure who your mother was. She was the daughter of an official in the Alphenlicht embassy in Washington. All of these people were – or could have been – Kavi, which is simply our name for the hereditary family which governs Alphenlicht. Some consider it a kind of dynasty, others a kind of priesthood, but it means no more than you wish it to in your case. It was what I had in mind when I called you a kinswoman. Do you mind?’

  ‘Is Harvey one?’

  Makr Avehl shook his head. ‘We generally think of lineage as coming through the mother. When we use the word Kavi, we don’t only mean bloodlines, we mean other things, too – matters of belief and behavior. No; I much doubt your half brother could be Kavi.’

  Ellat obviously thought this might have upset Marianne, and she started to explain. ‘In Lubovosk, after the separation, there was a good deal of racial mixing with another line.’

  ‘Shamans?’ nodded Marianne.

  ‘There,’ exclaimed Ellat. ‘Aghrehond talks too much, Makr Avehl. He can’t learn to keep his mouth shut.’

  ‘I think I’m the culprit, Ellat. Marianne and I had occasion to discuss shamans in another context. Yes. Black shamans, devil worshipers. We don’t use the word “Kavi” for any of that line. I suppose Aghrehond told you to be prudently quiet about all this with Tabiti here?’

  ‘Yes, he told me. The problem is, I don’t know how you’re going to avoid the subject. Devil worship, shamanism and similar things happen to be Harvey’s favorite professional topic, and he’ll be after it like a cat after a mouse.’

  ‘Is that so? I hadn’t considered that. I knew, of course, that he has written on the subject of Alphenlicht – I’ve read some of it. But I hadn’t thought that his interest extended to Lubovoskan cultural attributes… Well, of course it would. His kinfolk are there! I wonder how old he was when he first met them? When he first learned of them? How old was he when his mother died?’

  ‘It seems to me he was ten or eleven. Old enough to resent Papa Zahmani marrying again so soon, only a year later. I know Harvey went to Lubovosk or somewhere over there when he was twenty-one or -two.’ He had been back only briefly when Mama had died. She would not forget that. ‘The trip was a graduation present from Papa. Then, I know he went again, that same year, just before Papa died.’

  ‘Well then, he will be well up on the subject, and we may expect him to raise issues which we would prefer not to discuss in the company we will have. I’ll take him in hand at lunch. Ellat, you’ll have to manage him tonight. Divert him.’

  ‘If you have any very pretty guests,’ suggested Marianne, ‘that might do it.’

  Ellat shook her head, frowning. ‘The Winston-Forbeses are coming to dinner tonight. Their daughter is very attractive, but very young.’

  ‘He’ll like that,’ said Marianne, without thinking and without seeing the odd, distracted look which Makr Avehl fixed on her. ‘The younger, the better.’

  It seemed for a time that she might have been concerned about nothing. Harvey arrived in the big car, chatting with Aghrehond as though they were old friends. He greeted Makr Avehl with courtesy, Ellat with gallantry, Marianne with a proper peck on the cheek and a smile which only she could have recognized as ominous.

  Marianne took a deep breath and put herself out to be pleasant. ‘How was the trip down, Harvey? Is there a station near?’

  ‘About half an hour away. It was a very pleasant trip. Very kind of you to have asked me and my little sister down, sir. As a sometime student, Marianne does not often get this kind of treat.’ Charming smile. Guileless voice. Sometime student. Marianne fumed impotently.

  ‘You’re most welcome, Professor Zahmani.’ Ellat being equally charming. ‘Your sister honors our home, and you we welcome because of your interest in our part of the world. Do come in. You have just time to erase the stains of travel before lunch.’

  ‘I’ll show him in, Ellat. Professor, I wanted to talk with you about that paper you did in the Journal of Archaeology – last June was it? – comparing the Cave of Light with the barsom prophecies of the Medes…’ And Makr Avehl led Harvey away into the upper reaches of the house, still talking.

  Ellat squeezed her arm. ‘Don’t worry. We have two other couples as luncheon guests.’

  ‘Tabiti?’

  ‘Not until much later this afternoon. She is driving down. Now we will enjoy our lunch. Makr Avehl has told me his impulsive invitation to your brother – no, it is a half brother, only, isn’t it? – well, that this invitation brings us a guest who turns out to be unwelcome. I am glad you overcame your dislike of him enough to come. We will stay well apart from him, and Makr Avehl will keep him occupied.’

  And he did keep him occupied all during lunch, Harvey so far forgetting himself at times as to let his voice rise in temperamental disagreement. Makr Avehl received these expostulations gravely, nodding, commenting, smiling. Harvey was certainly not getting the better of the argument, but the sound of his sharp-edged voice made Marianne shift uncomfortably in her chair.

  Ellat nudged her knee. ‘Don’t worry about it. So far they haven’t gotten past the fifth century AD. They’re still talking about King Khosrow’s persecution of the heretics.’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘It’s what Makr Avehl always talks about when he doesn’t want to talk about something else,’ she smiled. ‘Even Prime Ministers and High Priests are men, and men are somewhat predictable, you know. Besides, he lectures. He has this dreadful habit of pontificating at great length about things
others don’t care about. Hadn’t you noticed?’

  ‘He does a little,’ Marianne admitted, ‘but I don’t really mind. The things he has to say are interesting.’

  ‘Even if you were not interested, he would still wave his finger at you and tell you all about it. I tell him, “Makr Avehl, try to listen sometimes. When you cease talking and there is only silence, it is because you have ended all conversation.” He only laughs at me. Sometimes, I think, he tries to do better, but he forgets. I tell myself it is because he is shy.’

  ‘Shy? The Prime Minister? Shy?’

  Ellat gave her a conspiratorial look. ‘Yes. Shy. He talks at such great length about impersonal things to avoid worrying about people. Oh, I have seen him spend great hours thinking up tortuous reasons why people behave as they do, all because he will not admit they are simply ignorant, or silly, or tired. He is a great one for explanations, Makr Avehl, but only when he must. Most times he would rather not think about people. They confuse him.’

  This was a new thought for Marianne, and she glanced at Makr Avehl, catching the brilliant three-cornered smile he threw her way and feeling her face flushing as it seemed to do each time she looked at him. Shy. Well. It was an explanation, though not one she was sure she believed. Perhaps Ellat was only teasing her.

  She turned to the guest on her other side and smiled monosyllabic responses to a long, one-sided conversation about politics, turning back to Ellat in relief a little while later. ‘That poor woman on Makr Avehl’s other side isn’t getting into the conversation much.’ She was watching the woman covertly, a quiet woman with a quiet, impressionable face.

  ‘That poor woman is the LaPlante Professor of Archaeology at the University of Ankara. I wouldn’t worry about her. She will probably write some paper in one of the journals taking issue with your half brother on some abstruse academic subject.’

  ‘Good Lord! Does Harvey know who she is?’

  ‘I doubt it. Makr Avehl introduced her as Madame Andami. That’s her husband across the table from you. He’s very deaf and makes no attempt at conversation, but he enjoys food very much. I like them a good deal. She is interesting and he is restful. However, Madame Andami is not the name she uses professionally.’

  ‘So Harvey has been set up to make a fool of himself. Do I get the impression you all do not like my brother much?’

  Ellat looked shocked. ‘What would make you say such a thing? I think Makr Avehl knows that you do not like him very much. He knows this so well that he spent most of an hour on the phone with me yesterday, talking of you, and of your half brother. Very serious talk. So I cannot tell you not to take him seriously, as I might tell some other young thing. A gentle warning, you know the kind of thing? No, to you I say something else again. He may seem to be invulnerable and very strong. Sometimes he is very strong indeed, but he is not invulnerable.’ She gave Marianne a meaningful look which confused her enormously, then giggled, unexpectedly, an almost shocking sound coming from that dignified person. ‘So, even if we are sympathetic to your side of whatever problem brews, we have done nothing Professor Zahmani could complain of. If he is not civil enough to converse across the table and find out what his luncheon partner does – well, what occurs thereafter must be his fault, no?’

  Marianne, being human, found the thought of Harvey’s discomfiture very pleasant indeed.

  After lunch, Makr Avehl suggested that they all go riding. Harvey had not brought riding clothes. He demurred, explaining that he would be happy spending a few quiet hours in the library. The others left him there with Ellat while they went into the afternoon sun and the freshness of spring. Madame Andami cast aside her quiet, listening pose and rode like a centaur, laughing when Marianne complimented her on her seat. ‘I have ridden donkeys, mules, camels, even elephants. You have not a bad seat yourself, young woman.’

  ‘I haven’t really ridden in years. Before my mother died we lived in the country, and I had my own horse. I still miss him.’

  ‘Ah, horses are a very great love to many girls of that age. I have been told it is something very Freudian.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ laughed Marianne. ‘I think it is at that age that boys begin to grow so much bigger and stronger, and we girls feel left out. On the back of a horse, one ignores the fact that one is female.’

  ‘You dislike being female?’

  ‘Not really. It just makes… complications.’

  In midafternoon they were met at the end of a curving lane by Aghrehond, splendid in a plaid waistcoat, who offered them champagne and fruit from the tailgate of a station wagon before they returned by a more direct route, Makr Avehl riding at Marianne’s side.

  ‘I did not wish to appear to monopolize your attentions earlier,’ he said. ‘But now, we have only a little way back to the house, and I can have you all to myself while the others go on ahead in such impatience. You got on very well with Madame Andami.’

  ‘I like her. She was telling me about her work in Iran, before everything there went up in smoke. The places have such wonderful names. Persepolis. Ecbatana. Susa. I read about them in school, of course, though it’s not an area of the world I have done any reading on recently.’

  ‘They have about them something of the fictional, isn’t that so? They were real, nonetheless. To us it does not seem that long ago, possibly because our children hear stories told around the fire of things which happened fifteen centuries back. Such stories carry an immediacy one does not get from books…’

  ‘Which is why some countries carry such old grudges,’ offered Marianne. ‘What children learn at their grandmas’ knees, they act upon as though it happened yesterday.’

  He nodded gravely, even sadly. ‘Perhaps that is true. Those who have an oral tradition full of old wrongs and old revenge do seem to fight the same battles forever. If the Irish were not forever singing of their ancient wrongs – or writing poetry about it… well, we see the result in every morning’s newspapers.’

  ‘Is that the kind of thing between Alphenlicht and Lubovosk? Or would you rather not talk about it?’

  ‘Stories told at my grandma’s knee? Oh, yes, Marianne. For my grandma remembered it happening. The country was always like the two halves of an hourglass, connected with a narrow waist, a high mountain pass which was difficult in the best of times. To separate us, Russia had only to take that pass. Then the northern bit became a “protectorate.” The general’s name was Lubovosk – thus the name of the country. Later, of course, it became a “people’s republic.” Under either name it was high, and remote, and difficult to reach. Grandmother told me that at first we paid no attention. We continued to go back and forth from north and south, but we had to go over the mountain instead of across the pass. Then there began to be changes in Lubovosk. The visitors who came from there came to stay. Visitors from Alphenlicht who went there didn’t return. There were whispers, rumors of evil.’

  ‘Aghrehond said I could ask you about shamans, but not when others were about.’

  The expression on his face was one of embarrassment, almost shame. ‘Yes. I am ashamed to say it. Black shamans, from the land of the Tungus. Dealers in necromancy. People who would trifle with the great arts. Dealers in sorcery. Ah. You don’t believe in any of this, do you?’

  ‘It’s not … it’s not anything I’ve ever thought about except as… as …’

  ‘As a part of the superstitions of primitive peoples? Perhaps as survivals in the modern world? Little unquestioned things we learn as children? Fairy tales? No, you needn’t apologize. Let me explain it to you in a way you will understand.

  ‘Let us say a woman is driving a car. There is an accident, and her child is pinned beneath that car. She is a little woman, but she lifts that car and frees her child. You know of such things happening, yes? Well, let us suppose that before she lifted the car, she danced widdershins around the spare tire and called upon the spirits of the internal combustion engine, then raised up the car to rescue her child. Do you follow what I say?’
>
  ‘You mean the first thing is unusual, but natural. The second thing we would call magic?’

  He beamed at her. ‘Precisely. The same thing happened in both cases, but only in one would we call it magic. There is much of which man is capable, much he is unaware of, all very natural. The worshipers of Zurvan, the Magi, are scholars of this knowledge. The shamans, too, are scholars, but they use the knowledge in a different way. They teach that the power comes through the ritual, through dancing around the spare tire. They teach, when they teach at all – which is not often, for they prefer to be mysterious – that the power comes through demons, godlings, devils. They teach that in order to obtain the power, it is necessary to propitiate these devils. Followers of Zurvan teach that the power is simply there. We may use rituals to help us focus our thoughts, but we know they are simply devices, not necessary functions. Am I making any sense to you at all?’

  ‘You mean that their demons and devils don’t really exist…’

  He shook his head, reached over to touch her hands where they lay loosely gripping the reins, his face dappled with sunlight as he leaned toward her. ‘Would not exist, Marianne, except for them. The act of worship, of invocation, can bring things into being which did not exist of their own volition – temporary demons, momentary gods.’

  His intensity made her uncomfortable. ‘Isn’t it all more or less harmless?’ she said, trying to minimize the whole matter. ‘Mere superstition? Regrettable, but not … not …’

  ‘Not dangerous? When the ritual demands blood, or maiming, or death, or binding forever?’ His voice had become austere, his expression forbidding and remote. ‘The difference between a true religion – and there are many which share aspects of truth – and a dangerous cult is only this: In the one the individual is freed to grow and live and learn; in the other the individual is subordinated to the will of a hierarchy, enslaved to the purposes of that hierarchy, forbidden to learn except what the cult would teach. You have only to look at the rules which govern the servants of a religion to know whether its god is God indeed, or devil!’ He passed his hand across his face, then laughed unsteadily. ‘Listen how I preach. Aghrehond should not have told you to question me about this. My anxiety is too close to my skin. Come, we will ride up to the others and think no more of it.’