Iron Chamber of Memory (30 page)

A beast had taken up Galatine, its blade as black as mourning weeds, and thrust it through the breast and heart of Mandragora, until an inch protruded out his back and scraped against the floor.

Then the eyes of Lanval went dark, and his soul was not in his body.

Birds and wolves were tearing strips of flesh from the face and body of Mandragora. Lorelei, next to the still-warm and bloody corpse of her husband, had her hands in her face, her shoulders shaking, and next to her, taller than a man, the Dark Prince loomed, staring down at her. For the first time, his face showed expression, a hatred and jealousy that stretched his mouth and narrowed his eyes, and made all the muscles in his jaws twitch horribly. He was biting his own tongue for spite, and the tongue tip was writhing between his teeth like a dying worm. The small voice in his heart told Lanval that the Dark Prince hated with a bitter hatred the fact that when he died, all his slaves and serving women would cheer. Ran, the mother of the bride, was crouched like a shapeless vast toad at the feet of the Dark Prince, and, like him, was ignoring the celebrations and howls of victory, and watching Lorelei.

As she knelt, weeping, her tears hot on her peerless cheeks, cheeks he had kissed so many times, Lorelei let out a sudden high, sharp cry. Without any other fanfare, her black wings fell from her back, disintegrated into a cloud of feathers, each of which floated gently to the ground.

“Let her be killed, O Master,” the bitter old green-faced hag croaked and pointed at the now-wingless form of her daughter. “Some enchantment in this house has replaced her heart of stone with a heart of pink and girlish flesh.”

Lanval heard over the noise and commotion, for he opened his eyes, and found himself, not chained and maimed with his head in the pool, not with a dozen creatures on his back (he could see his old body across the chamber, motionless) but instead inside a new body, his flesh pink and uncalloused, untouched by sun or time, which had grown on the instant out from the hand no longer severed. On his finger gleamed the Ring of Youth.

He stood, even while the commotion of beasts and warlocks were calling out, “Hurray! Hurray! Our bride is made the mistress of this house this day!” Here was the sword Galatine. He plucked it out of the breast of Mandragora, and shouted as the light of thirty torches exploded from the blade. While the Dark Prince glared and blinked, and the obscene obesity of Ran clutched her blinded eyes and screamed, Lanval plunged the sword first into him, and then into her, killing them both stone-dead in the blink of an eye.

The monsters in the chamber, taken unawares in the middle of their cavorting celebration, screamed and yowled. Yet more than half were shouting still in triumph, unable to hear the warning cries of their fellows. They had not seen their tall Master die.

A white dove landed on the naked shoulder of Lanval. “Do not forget your Lord nor your promise! You are not here to slay, but to unlock the inmost truth.”

“The key! Where is it?”

He knew where it was. He reached down and took the necklace from between the breasts of Lorelei. She did not resist, nor did the chain, for the cunning of the dwarfish craftsmen made the catch come open at his touch, and the keyring dwindled and hidden inside the reflections of the gem popped out into the solid world, and jumped into his hand.

The dove flew up, and to the left. Lanval followed, striking down any pale-face witch or wolf-toothed talking animal who rose to stop him. He threw aside a large and silver looking glass where the dove landed and pecked. Behind was a door as black as night, eight-sided, and midmost was an image of a flower of six petals, painted red. Beneath the flower was a lock and ring. He inserted the key and twisted, and sheathed the sword, pulling on the ring with both hands.

He could see nothing before him. All was black without any sight or sound. But behind him was the smell of blood, the sound of a weeping girl, and the roar of monsters.

“Behold the Black Iron Moly Chamber,” said the dove.

In he leaped.

Harry could see nothing, nothing at all, except the whiteness of a small shape he realized must be the dove, and yet, he could feel the peace that extended from it, shining upon his soul, as one might feel the rays of the noonday sun. The bird was growing larger, glowing. It had become a being of light, larger than a man, larger than an elephant, perhaps larger than the universe, and it flew ahead of him, urging him to follow.

They passed down a colonnade of tall, pointed arches.

He heard the sound of rushing waters before him and behind, and the sound was like that of one of the great sea caves hidden below the island, but somehow he knew this was much larger. Once only he turned and looked back, and saw a small round chamber that seemed to be orbs within an orb, the outer layer covered with stars like the robes of Mandragora, and the inner layers each lit with its own small lamp, one glass sphere within another, and a tiny dot of blue at the very center, smaller than a doll’s house.

Ahead in a round place surrounded by a ring of slender pillars, was a table and two chairs, a bottle of wine and a loaf of bread, and tableware of silver and gold. There was a quietude here, a silence, that reminded him of the most solemn halls at Oxford, of the most ancient libraries nestled away in some mountainous retreat, vast and somber. When the being of light stepped next to the table, she blazed more brightly and drew aside a part of the darkness with her hand, so that he could see.

Harry saw his father Henry standing there, hale and whole and alive.

Behind his father stood smiling in silent joy his four grandparents, one of whom he knew only as a child. And behind them, in older clothing, his eight great-grandparents, and in the light he saw a great crowd of people standing, rejoicing silently, in concentric ranks around him, each in costumes older than the previous rank. Only the front two ranks he recollected from photographs in family albums. Those further away came from times before photographs.

And the memory crashed in on him that at his father’s funeral, his father had been standing next to mother in her wheelchair, speaking to her, and she speaking back. Father had taken her hand, and they had danced on the grave, laughing, defying the empty victory of death.

Later, Father took the widow into the Black Iron Moly Chamber in the center of the church where the ceremony was, and spoke to her of many things, sad that she, for a short time, while she lived under the delirium of mortal life, would not remember seeing him. But he came by every day for lunch, and spoke with her, and read to her from the newspapers, and when he touched her hand, she remembered herself and her wits no longer wandered. Because of her love, she left her wits in the rose and silver chambers, to see him and be with him, well aware that her son thought her senile.

And not just his father.

The young man looked deeper into the chamber and deeper into his memory, recalling his own marriage. Adam, the father of the noble race of Man, a man of heroic build, tall and handsome, dressed in nothing but his own glory, had met with Arthur and Lanval after the battle of Badon Hill. Adam brought the marriage gift to the bride, to Tryamour the fair sea-fairy, by welcoming her back into his family and lineage, and Saint Guthlac had blessed the union.

It was Guthlac who, much later, after the supposed death of Lanval’s wife, when duty called Harry to England on the mission—for he was in the armed services, merely not those of America—had introduced Harry to the Drake who ran the smoke shop. This drake had woken from the dragon-dream of greed and avarice after baptism, but he was still cunning and mighty, and schooled Lanval carefully on his struggles with Vodonoy, who delighted in drowning the hopes of students.

And now Harry remembered walking the campus, and seeing all the masters and professors of Oxford back to the cowled monks who been ordered by Alfred the Great to found the school wrestling against the sea monsters who now possessed it.

All the people thought dead were still alive, still walking on earth, building, talking, making, doing, and only from time to time, in special chambers where the mists of forgetfulness were forgotten, did the mortals see the ancestors who lived among them.

His father held the chair and sat him down, and poured the wine for him. Then his father broke the bread and blessed it, and put a morsel before Harry, and before the empty chair.

All at once, the light was gone, and the vast chamber was empty, though the peace and solemnity remained. The only light came from a seven-branched candlestick in the middle of the table. The roar of unseen waters was still about him, but distant.

But now Manfred sat across from him, all his wounds healed, a look of peace and ease such as he had never imagined grim Manfred could wear shining from his smile.

“You seem happy,” Harry said.

Manfred said, “I remembered all my family who I thought dead. They walk among us, and talk to us, and, when we see them, we remember. And we remember we have felt no loss. All the chambers of my mansion are occupied, and if I am not with an aunt or uncle or forefather from the Middle Ages when I step into the study, I will meet Semiramis or Iapetus in the kitchen. As soon as my eyes were turned away, however, I was lost and hopeless again. Such was the curse of forgetfulness.”

“What crime brought that curse on mankind?”

“Ask Adam. It is for forgetfulness Methuselah prayed at the locked gates of paradise when Adam died. I will not say it is not a curse, but I will say far greater good comes out of it than even the most wild optimist has dreamed. I am not going away to my palace beyond the stars in the heaven above heaven now that I am–”

“Dead?”

“Awake. You are still a sleepwalker. The Earth is wounded and is suffering amnesia until her soul heals. Then the bandages will come off, and the perfection we were meant to dwell inside will be visible to all, remembered and unhidden. No one is dead. No one has ever been dead.”

“And Tryamour? If the mermaid I married in the Middle Ages is still alive, I should have resigned myself to being chaste in my affections, rather than dreaming of marrying Laurel du Lac, so as to avoid unremembered bigamy.”

“Marriage, of course, ends when the dream called mortal life ends. That is the wording of the vow. We who are awake neither marry nor are given in marriage, but the joy we have so far exceeds carnal pleasures that what you have is merely a pleasant dream. We have the reality. She will be far closer than any wife when you return here on Doomsday, and holier than matrimony. Erotic love is singular, because it is precious and sacred, but divine love can be shared, because it is more precious and more sacred.”

“Tryamour is why I volunteered, isn’t it?” For more memories were coming back to him. “It was Tryamour who urged me to go. My sister heard my dead wife’s voice, and that is why I was sent away from my mother, despite how the family needed me!” He shook his head sadly, glad that each time he reviled himself for his heartlessness, he had been innocent as spring rain.

Manfred nodded. “My marrying Lorelei actually acted to grant her a soul. The dwarves gave her the ring of tears, and with it, even a witch in the silver chamber can cry. She will come to love this house, since, once fully out-of-doors, she will recall only that she loved Manfred, and that he died on the wedding day.”

“I suppose she will be angry that I stabbed her mother. Or was that a dream as well?”

Manfred said, “A sleepwalker does take real steps, and sometimes he stumbles. Lorelei will remember that the horse drawing the bridal carriage down the car-less road of Sark was startled by a gaunt, thin bum, who was trampled, and the carriage overturned, killing an old duke, a young count, and Mrs. du Lac. And me.”

“What happens to Laureline, now that she is a widow?”

“Her anger and resentment will be recalled only if she goes into the Red Crystal Chamber. She will there recall that you and she conspired to kill him, and know she had a hand in his death. Perhaps by an overdose of morphine, or perhaps you beat me over the head with your iron-hearted walking stick: the chamber will decide. Her true evil nature will be recalled only if she goes into the White Lotus Chamber. But she will recall one other thing as well.”

“What is that?”

“I will tell you at my funeral. I have already used my spirit to suggest to her that she go find the Old Gardener, who is the only one who knows how this mansion is set up. Living with the Old Gardener, and wearing a soul freshly bestowed, she will come to love this house and this life, and the human world, and will no longer busy herself with destroying it.”

“But in the silver version of reality—whatever reality might be—have not the dark powers won control of the chamber?”

“Do you think she will allow any of them back into her house, now that it is hers? Their victory would never have been possible, in any case. All the terrors and powers of the Night World, we recall here, in the Iron Moly Chamber, that they are no more than thoughts and inclinations, temptations, appetites, suggestions. To harm Man the law does not allow. But they may, by their dark suggestions, by their soft and secret words, they may persuade a man to destroy himself. That, the Law does not forbid.”

The young man sat for a moment. They said grace, ate the bread and drank the wine. Because he was warned the bread was very precious, he held his napkin under his jaw to make sure not a single crumb fell and was lost.

After the meal, he sat with his head in his hand, looking down. The floor here was dark stone, but every flagstone was cut with the image of the moly flower. Manfred neither moved nor fidgeted. He supposed that the imaginary limitations of life within mortal and impatient flesh could not annoy nor tempt his friend, now that Manfred was awake, and the long nightmare of ignorance, pain and loss was over.

Eventually he spoke again. “It still hurts. It was still terrible. We took desperate risks. I was so tempted, so confused, so confounded. I could not tell right from wrong. I tried to kill myself. I hated you. I broke my vows. I never did do that stupid paper.”