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‘Koschei reached out and took her in his arms. He untied her first veil, and her second, and kissed her on the lips. Then, turning his head the better to kiss her tiny, right ear, he saw a shadow tremble and settle itself across the square of moonlight on the floor. The Fox! But wait – it was no man’s shadow, being female and at once sinuous and slender. For a moment he thought it must belong to Ysera but, no, her shadow and his were twined together at the edge of the room. His ardour faded, his desire fell away; he did not kiss the ear of the pretty whore in his embrace but pushed her from him and stared into the night beyond the window, where stood the owner of the intrusive shadow –
‘A woman, leaning casually against the tracery. She was naked and her long hair fell down her back in a great cascade and was as white and pallid as the moon’s light; she had her back to him and her hands were upraised to her head, one holding a brush and the other a comb. All Koschei’s passion and his firm resolve deserted him. He did not want Ysera nor any other woman, kind or cruel, but this one, this enigma who stood so carelessly outside his window, and he concentrated on the splendour of her hair. He wished to kneel down and worship this Unknown and felt his heart and soul dance merrily together in his chest.
‘“You must go,’ he told Ysera and threw her silks back at her. “Go!”
‘“But, lord,” she said entreatingly, “Oh new Beloved, Best of Men – Bright Youth, how can I leave such a one as you before I have seen the manner of your make?”
‘“Go to the Brother who brought you here. His appetite surely exceeds mine now; he will satisfy you lickerishness.”
‘“Very well.” Ysera bowed her head. “Yet – be blessed, young Novice, and enjoy whatever life brings henceforward – even your pain and your longing which, I see, is for the unattainable and not for common women like myself. Farewell.”
‘“Good bye,’ said Koschei, hardly aware of her going.
‘Now the door was shut and he alone again; but with this dream, this vision, at his window. Should he call out to it, approach it – touch it through the unglazed window-arch? He knelt on his mattress and held up his hands in prayer. The Unknown stirred and, as she turned toward him, let down her hair to cover her nakedness. He recognized her, his sister-neophyte, Nemione Sophronia, chaste star and lodestone of the novice-class, daughter of the town’s chief magistrate, Ninian Baldwin.
‘Koschei shivered on trembling knees and felt his whole body shake. For an instant she was there, solid, tangible – but he would never be able to prove that now – and then she was gone. No one was there in the cloister outside the window, nothing but the arabesques of stone and the empty roundels carved by chaste monks long ago; nothing but the moonlight setting the cloister garden ablaze with its consuming, dazzling white light. He looked down and saw that, although Nemione had disappeared, her shadow still lay on the floor of his cell. Marvelling, exhausted, he stretched himself out beside it, laid one hand on the shadow’s empty breast and slept the heavy, sweat-exuding sleep of the damned. But, in her own cell, the false Novice of the Order and true of the magic Arts woke still and –’
Guy faltered and stopped speaking. Opening his eyes, he saw the dimly lit interior of the vardo and the gypsy, Helen Lacey, who touched his lips with a cold forefinger and said,
‘Amen! But softly now; be still.’
His head swam. She, as enigmatic and beautiful as his creation, Nemione, smiled with a dozen curved and lovely sets of lips. The mirrorwork on her bodice reflected his myriad dazed faces.
‘I’ll be all right in a minute,’ he said. ‘It’s nerves.’
‘You are all right now.’
He felt steady, back at the reins. She, he realized, had willed him calm.
‘Shall I go on?’
‘No. I have enough – it is old stuff, that.’
‘Yes, from Koschei’s First Pilgrimage.’
‘Old matter,’ Helen mused, ‘ancient and far-off, full of the magic of your fantasies, Nemione and Koschei compounded of my dreams and yours. Us. We, as we were but are no more. You and I as we might be if – if all the world were paper and every tree had golden leaves and every flower a pearl at its heart. If. But. To no purpose. Besides, Koschei is not in the Cloister. He is in the Forest.’
He did not understand and continued to stare at her, mesmerized by her dark eyes. He used to call them ‘snake’s eyes’. They were still that, bottomless pools in which he saw the tiny twin images of himself.
‘My Love,’ he whispered. ‘My one Truth.’
Helen’s breathing changed: the even gusts became deep snatching breaths.
‘Don’t!’ she cried. ‘Is it not enough to have possessed my body a hundred times, and my soul with your words?’
He looked away, at her velvet skirt, her rings, her soft, mirrored breast to which, he noticed, was pinned a small, gold cross. It looked gimcrack and poor amongst the finery; but such, he thought, was once my talisman too. He should ask her why she wore it there, beside the pagan glories, but something else distracted him: a thin sliver of light had pierced the darkness of her bed beside him. It was moonlight, the moonlight he had conjured in his tale and so, since the curtains which covered the window over the bed were only half-drawn, it had crept into and enchanted the small, close room, touching the many crystals there, the looking glasses, the glossy china and Helen’s agonized face.
‘Leave my vardo now,’ she commanded. ‘Before it is too late.’
She folded her hands in her lap and bowed her head. He thought, I cannot bear to go; but I must. The intimacy of mind is over, she has some other task and does not want me here, a distraction – at least I am that. Should I return to Dominic? – and Alice. The remembrance of Alice’s youth flowed into and tantalized him. He had abandoned her in the afternoon; hours had passed.
He stood up, unfolding his body with care.
‘You feel your age,’ said Helen. ‘Never mind: those aches and pains will pass. She helps.’ Though he looked at her when she spoke, she kept her eyes downcast. Perhaps she was able to see him, all the same? And who did she mean by ‘she’? – herself, Nemione, or the bright moon?
‘Dominic will show you your room,’ she said.
She did not speak again nor seem inclined to speak, though he waited. He sighed and left her, descending the three wooden steps of the vardo into an orchard bewitched by night and by the scents of honeysuckle and tobacco flowers. The other perfume, ‘Sortilège’, the distillation of their vanished hours together was in his pocket. He took it out and left it on the top step. The house, too, was quiet and shadow-haunted. He found his way along the hall and opened the door on the left, the one which had first disgorged and brought him Dominic.
The bright light startled him. A nocturnal creature, an old badger caught in headlights, he stood still and blinked rapidly. Alice and Dominic were sitting side by side on a big sofa, cans of beer and Coke on a coffee table in front of them. The television was on. Dominic turned lazily and smiled at him; Alice was also smiling.
‘She kept you ages!’ Alice said. ‘There must have been a lot to talk about.’
‘Seventeen years’ worth,’ he said. He could not begin to tell what had really taken place.
‘And now you are tired?’ his son said. The innocent remark pressed a trigger in him, resentment at their sparkling, hopeful youth.
‘Where did you find her?’ he testily asked Dominic.
‘In the square. She was guarding your mean machine. You should have brought them both with you, up to the house, Dad –’ (Guy winced at the familiarity) ‘–You’d left the keys in her. It was too much: I drove her round for you – she’s on the drive.’ He rolled sideways in his seat and extracted Guy’s keys from his pocket. ‘There you go – Dad.’
‘Thank you.’ Guy took the keys and stowed them deep and safe, in his own pocket. ‘I suppose you can drive – surely you’re not old enough?’
‘Oh, I’m old enough. I’m not old enough to be on the road by myself, that’s all.’
Guy perceived that he was frowning. Alice looked up at him, such a melting look of pure azure tenderness. If she went on with it, he would be embarrassed in front of his own son.
‘I’ll go and see what damage you’ve done,’ he said. ‘I’ll take a walk before I crawl into my bed – you won’t mind amusing Alice for a little longer.’
‘Oui, Papa!’ The boy was still grinning. No one should have such perfect teeth, Guy thought. He could not help grinning back and so retreated, disturbed, abashed. He let himself out by the front door. How stupid to let his exuberance irritate me, he thought, and felt a new surge of annoyance when he saw the Audi, perfectly parked with all its windows closed and its doors locked. He peered through the windscreen. Nothing was damaged. He walked round the car gently kicking its tyres.
At least the absurd confrontation, if that was what it had been, had put his refreshed desire for Alice back to sleep.
– But he had forgotten to ask where he was to sleep. And she?
He walked past the church and on, beyond the confines of the village. The road led to St Just and the Burgundy Canal. Maybe he would go as far as the water, see what a French cut looked like by night. He was walking roughly north-east, away from the route nationale, away from the autoroute. He passed beneath some evergreens. Their clean scent was unavoidable and he inhaled it pleasurably. The trees hung low over the road and, looking at them against the dark backdrop of the sky, he puzzled at their shape and wondered were they cedars? cypresses? The moon must have set, already. Then what time was it? He consulted his watch, pulling back his sleeve and holding the small dial on his wrist close to his face. Without his glasses he was blind, in this respect. Yet this quiet was what he needed, an interval to stroll in, a period of time alone between Helen and Alice, before bed, before the question of Alice’s bed came up. He was still staring into the additional night of the trees when a soft noise behind him made him turn his head. The noise was scarcely audible, like someone trying to move silently and avoid breathing.
‘Hello!’ he said.
He could make out nothing certain, no animal or passer-by against the darkest shade; but he was sure he was no longer alone. Another man waited – there, where the branches dipped down; more, this man, whom he could barely see, wore a ragged beard. Guy walked toward him, one fist raised; walked through him: indeed, there was no other there beside the dark, the shadows and his imagination. He smiled to himself and shrugged, turning his pensive gaze once more upon the trees, for surely they did not deceive him. They were a pair of arbor vitae, one much taller than the other.
I thought: if I climb the biggest tree I shall be safe from the beasts of the night and can rest, if not sleep, till morning. I had a second thought: in Ayan I had heard one market woman tell another that every ring of earth round every tree has its guardian puvush, and I visualized a legion of them ranged out all over the world. I stood still in my fear and someone spoke,
‘Helloo! Master Corbillion.’
Erchon, the slippery truant, come into the forest on my trail to save me!
It was not Erchon. A creature greater and blacker than any nightmare or sea monster stood beside me. I tried to make it out in the darkness, but all my diminished senses could tell me was that it loomed, huge, and smelled rank as a sewer after a feast day.
‘What are you?’ I cried. ‘Why have you come to pester me in my trouble?’
‘You might strike a light; then, you could see me,’ the creature said.
At once, I began to fumble in my pockets for my tinder-box.
‘Not like that. Try Nemione’s way. I believe in you.’
I think it strange, to this day – a portentous action – that I obeyed this unknown of the forest and the night. I knew then neither incantation nor pass, but I tried (despite my fear of the unseen creature) to empty my mind of all distractions and concentrate on the idea of fire, of heat, of flame, of matter consumed by searing brands. I bent my consciousness inside myself and searched in all the far reaches of my being for the strength to make the first spark. I journeyed in the deep recesses of my mind and, when I had gathered hope, need and momentum and they threatened to burst from me and destroy everything before them, myself also, I enclosed these inchoate forces in the iron channel of my reason and sent them forth with a softly breathed ‘Go!’
A spark sprang out of the darkness at my feet and from it a tall yellow flame arose.
‘Excellent!’ said my companion, laid his hand upon my shoulder and gave it a clumsy pat which felt like the shaking a terrier gives a rat. My new-born light showed me that his hand was a mighty paw and that the rest of him matched the hairy appendage for strength and hideousness. The mouth from which his scholarly voice issued was a red maw, lipped with thick folds of leather, toothed like a tiger.
I cried his name fearfully, ‘Om Ren!’ and, losing all my new-found power, began to mutter a woman’s charm to placate and appease him.
‘Peace, master,’ the wild man said. ‘If you were a mere soldier, albeit a Green Wolf and one of the best – if, as I say, you were a common man, I would have let you continue your hopeless wandering. You would have died.
‘But I have stepped into your path because I wish to speak to you. Look upon my intervention as happy – but also as the beginning.’
Here, he paused to scratch his genitals, outdoing the butcher in lewdity and grossness. He gave me a terrible grin.
‘I am a beast in body,’ he said. ‘Filthy as any hermit, disgusting of habit as a pariah dog; and cursed with a mind as pure as snow-water. Listen to me:
‘You, Koschei Corbillion, have demonstrated your undiscovered powers to me. Will you continue on your way to join battle with the Myran forces and perhaps meet death as certainly as if I let you wander into the wilderness? You have twenty-five years only but you are an adept, of both praying and fighting; in your short life you have already been two men, a priest and a soldier, yet you are the same Koschei. Few are given the ability to pass through successive transformations and remain themselves.
‘Do I speak riddles?’ Here, the Om Ren smiled his ghastly smile again.
‘I follow you,’ I said.
‘Then, to continue: this chameleon quality of yours is one the Archmage himself would give a sight of his soul for. It is searched for and sought after; a man must be born with it, of course: it cannot be bestowed. You possess it. Will you waste it?’
‘Do you mean that I might practise magic?’
‘“Practise magic” indeed! Magic is not Medicine. You are Magic. It surrounds, inhabits and becomes you – you must learn its particular language, that is all.’
It was my turn to mock:
‘All?’ I said. ‘To learn that “language”, as you call it, takes a lifetime.’
‘Best begin!’
‘How do I know you are not a false spirit of the forest, a dissembling will o’the wisp or jack o’lantern sent to lead me astray?’
The great beast laughed, or howled rather.
‘Do I look like the ignis fatuus?’
‘Why should I believe your words?’ I countered.
‘It was you who made the fire.’
We both looked down at the flames, which burned in contained fashion between us.
‘And you also,’ said the Om Ren, ‘who has begun to build the Memory Palace by the cloister at Espmoss.’
‘That is just a small house, a hut, filled with certain objects which hold associations for me.’
‘Is it? When you walk in there, it fills with the ghosts of your past, does it not? – with the presences of your mother and father, the little dog you had when you were a boy. You have made love to Nemione Baldwin there, have you not?’
‘Alas, only to her doppelganger.’
‘But you remember doing so, do you not? Can you distinguish between memory, imagination and clairvoyance?’
‘Yes!’
‘We will make trial of that assertion. Look into your fire! What do you see there?’
I crouched over the fire involuntarily and looked into its red heart. I suppose the Om Ren made me, with his crystal, matchless mind.
For a moment or two, I saw nothing beside the glowing coals; but soon I saw them divide and fall away as if they were the stones of a breached city wall and I looked through the doorway thus made. I saw a tower, absolute in its loneliness. It stood, tall, grey, and topped by a small turret with a conical roof, on a promontory above the ocean. Its sole door was twenty feet up the wall, and there was no ladder or stair. High above that was a slit window. I looked into it. What I saw filled me with disquiet.
I saw Manderel Valdine, Prince of Pargur and Archmage of Malthassa, in all his solitary glory. Cloaked (against the cold) in furs and robed (against any suspicion that he might be an ordinary mortal) in cloth-of-gold studded with brilliants, he was conjuring before a great map stitched together from many parchments. The curve of the wall repeated itself in the curve of the map fixed to it. It seemed leagues across that wall of map.
Valdine made arcane gestures with his staff.
‘Show me!’ he cried. ‘Show me the place of safety!’ Sweat stood in dewdrops on his broad forehead. The bald dome of his scalp glistened. He groaned with the effort of his spell, like a man in torment, like a man in ecstasy.
‘Valdine casts a spell,’ I told the Om Ren. ‘A terrible spell, surely of plague or destruction, his face is so white and red.’
‘Then listen carefully!’
The Archmage in my fire bent down, slowly lowering himself to the floor. He abased himself before his magic map, making desperate plea to Urthamma: he, the blessed, cursed demon, is the god of magicians. A column of light arose from the body of the Archmage, a twisting column composed perhaps of his golden robe or of the very essence of his manhood. I saw Urthamma standing twined within it, great and glorious, glowing like a lighted brand above the crouched figure of Valdine.
‘You try me!’ said the god.
The man on the floor mumbled wordlessly.
‘I tell you, Valdine,’ the god said from a mouth like a broken crossbow. ‘Your desire for immortality is an embarrassment on Mount Cedros. I am a laughing stock.
‘However –’ Here, he yawned and clawed his fiery tresses into some sort of order. ‘Look at your map when I am gone. The fair province of SanZu is as good a place as many.’
The god yawned again and, turning widdershins gracefully, disentangled himself from the oriflamme of silken matter and disappeared. Valdine leapt to his feet and I peered hard through the insubstantial window, disappointed because I was too far away to see any detail of the map other than a wedge of lines which seemed to represent a rocky promontory as cruel and precipitous as that on which the Archmage’s spytower stood. I heard Valdine cry ‘Aah, salvation!!’
The vision faded and the magical fire dimmed as if I had exhausted it. I stood in a murky twilight with the hideous man of the forest, who tapped my chest with a horny forefinger.
‘Well?’ he demanded.
‘Valdine deserves his position as Archmage. A formidable show!’
