The Serpent Mage (17 page)
Authors: Greg Bear
Chapter Seventeen
Days and weeks passed, and he ate and slept and worked in the garden in the back yard, keeping the roses trimmed. He patched and rehung the Chinese paper lanterns strung from the trellis to poles in the back yard, and he wiped down the white-enameled wrought-iron table on the brick patio. He disliked the back yard — it gave him the creeps — but he worked there nonetheless, making sure it was tidy, because (it must have been so, though he couldn't remember specifics) he and Kristine had spent time there.
He remembered someone wearing a fancy dress sitting behind the white table at one time. That must have been Kristine. Not her style (certainly not Golda's — his mother's — style), and why was he so aware of having been frightened by her in the dress? Everything was jumbled by his grief.
Days and weeks. He shaved with a French razor and played records on the Victrola, Toscanini and Reiner and Strauss and Stokowski conducting on 78s. Endless hours of music, over and over again.
The grief and numbness refused to fade.
He never saw anyone, and nobody called him on the phone. He read the newspapers and occasionally listened to the radio. None of it seemed right, but what could he do?
Michael felt as if he were in hell.
Chapter Eighteen
He finally gathered up enough energy to take a long walk. He started out at dusk, as the empty sky was a dull and dusty blue, when the twilight seemed willing to last forever, and walked along the empty streets, past the white plaster and stucco Spanish-style homes the neighborhood favored and the ranch-style and the California bungalows. He stopped with a frown and watched an electric streetlight come on with the deepening of dusk and a brown-leafed maple droop its branches over the light as the wind whined. The stars came out and whirled like fireflies on strings and then settled, and the sky became a gelatinous black.
Michael walked to La Cienega and followed its course, seeing people on the other side of the street, or walking some distance ahead or behind him, but never passing them or seeing them up close. All the shops and restaurants and even the bars were closed. The war, he decided. Not enough to go around.
Not even enough people.
The street narrowed as he approached the hills. He looked both ways on the comer of Sunset, at the houses on each side and the shops, all closed and dark, and then at the old theater rising above the roofs to his right. He headed toward the theater.
In round neon letters, the neon turned off, the name of the theater stretched around the marquee and up a tall radio tower mounted on a silver plaster sphere.
P
A
N
D
A
L
L
RANDALL
The doors were boarded over. The wind whispered between the plywood and the locked glass beyond.
The place was dead. Its hold on reality seemed tenuous, as if it were merely a memory. He didn't like it. He walked away, glancing back over his shoulder. Someone dark was following him, and that frightened the wits out of him. He turned onto a side street and tried as casually as possible to shake the pursuer: a tall white-haired figure in a black robe.
Michael came home and shut the door.
He felt as if he had been suspended in a jar, some museum specimen, all life drained, time and blood replaced with formaldehyde.
Chapter Nineteen
At some point he began to write poetry, though he had no memory of having ever written poetry before. He wrote about what was on his mind all the time
:
Kristine.
Who goes in me
The one who pulls my
Lost mind into dawn is
Innocent of guile
From cold dreams to fire at
End of day she crowds a zoo
All my animal thoughts She
Is innocent of guile Does
Not see my labyrinth More
Than flesh in space words on paper
In me she lives Once She lived her own
Now alone in me she goes
And after a day sitting quiet in the dark upstairs bedroom, he took out a pencil and wrote on a paper napkin:
*Watch him developing!*
But where's his knowledge?
*See that bright little pinpoint? That's it.*
And his maturity?
*Coming along slowly.*
I see a dark spot, too. Someone missing?
*He's lost someone.*
Looks like he's trying to replace the dark spot with the bright.
*He thinks he may be able to bring back the lost.*
Can he do it?
And no answer; the pencil stopped at the end of the napkin. The next day, he could not find the napkin, or any of the poems he had written, and there was an odor of something like ammonia and sulfurous gas about the house that drove him outdoors.
He sat before a clump of gladioli, squatting on the sidewalk with nobody to see him — nobody visible, anyway — and held a leaf in his hand, concentrating on it.
Focus. Detail. Clarity. Sharpness.
Detail.
He could not concentrate on the leaf. It seemed to shy away from him, all its innermost details fuzzing and his attention drifting with them. That was not right.
The anger he felt was quickly damped by his dark mood.
Have to get over this. Can't think straight.
He stood up and wiped his hand on his pants for no particular reason. He was always clean; he did not sweat and had not taken a bath since
When?
He looked down the street and saw the white-haired figure in black watching him. It raised its arm, and Michael ran back to the house. Even behind the door, however, he knew he could not escape this time.
Mixed with his horror was an inexplicable spark of hope. If what he saw was his death, coming for him, then it would take away the burden of this dreary life, this grief-bound hell.
He stood two steps from the door, waiting.
A light, almost casual knuckle-rap sounded on the door.
Michael swallowed back a substanceless lump in his throat and reached for the doorknob. Before his hand reached it, the lock clicked, the deadbolt slid aside and the knob turned. He retreated three steps.
The door swung open. He recognized but did not know the man standing on the porch. He was tall, slender but very strong-looking, of indeterminate age, face long and somber, hair white and fine as mineral whiskers from a cave. The collar of the robe was the color of old dried roses, cut from dusty velvet woven with floral details that seemed to blow in a wind quite different from that whining even now outside. The man's eyes were the color of pearls, and his skin was pale as the moon.
"Michael Perrin. Do you know me?"
His voice was like a sword drawn across folds of silk. Michael shook his head, then nodded. He could feel power radiating from the man.
"Do you know where you are?" A stinging pity came to the man's face, mixed with mild contempt.
"No. I'm not at home."
"You are
loghan laburt
, loss-cursed. You cannot see through your pain. You have been wrapped in a large but poorly conceived
almeig epon
. A bad dream."
"Your name is Tarax," Michael said, feeling something rip in the back of his head, a shroud around his thoughts. But the name brought him no comfort. He began to shiver.
"I am indeed. I can bring you out of here, but you must do something for me."
"I don't remember clearly. I can't think straight."
Tarax narrowed his pearl-silver eyes, and Michael felt another parting of the shroud, letting in some memory. "Music," Tarax said. "The songs of worlds breathing in and out."
"Before I was here."
"Yes?"
"Nothing is right here. Where is Kristine?"
"She can be part of our bargain."
"Is she dead?"
"She might as well be," Tarax said, "unless you pull yourself from your self-pity and think clearly."
"She's not dead." The veil lightened and dissolved. The grief withdrew its dark wings and flew up and away from him.
"You were trained by the Crane Women," Tarax said. "They are gone now, and nobody replaces them. I need their function. You can fulfill that function." Tarax's smile was distant and ironic; that he should come to a mere human child with such a proposal…
Michael said nothing, simply reveled in the clarity of his mind and the relief he felt. He listened closely.
"I have a daughter," Tarax said. He stepped inside, and the door swung shut behind him, without making a sound. "My only offspring. She is of age for training in the discipline. She will attend me as a priest of the Irall, so long as it lasts, and on Earth after that."
Mention of the Irall drove away his relief and brought back a new dread.
"You have the heritage of the Crane Women within you. You can — you must — train my daughter in their ways. If you agree to that, I will tell you how to leave this dream and return to your world."
Michael nodded once, signifying not agreement but that he was still listening.
"If you succeed in training her, then I will reveal to you where this female called Kristine is trapped, much as you are trapped here."
"We are enemies," Michael said. "You hate me."
Tarax raised his hand, long fingers pointing, and tossed those words away. "I hate nobody. We have cooperated in the past, and you have been aware of that. And there is the Law of Mages, which must be observed."
Indeed, they might have cooperated; Tarax might have been part of the conspiracy to nullify Clarkham. But what was the Law of Mages? "We failed, then. Clarkham is still alive."
"Not precisely alive," Tarax said. "The struggle isn't over."
"I've been warned never to trust a Sidhe," Michael said.
"Do you have any choice? At the very least, you will return to your world."
Michael considered. "What could I possibly teach your daughter?"
Tarax betrayed his only sign of uncertainty at this question. "What the Crane Women have willed, I presume."
"You'll take the risk that I might not be able to pass on the discipline?"
"Yes."
Michael faced the Sidhe and stood erect, saying. "Then I agree."
"You can take yourself back to Earth now. You know how. Simply use what you know. Ask yourself where you are." Tarax turned, and the door swung open. The Sidhe reached out with his long fingers and ripped the door apart, letting it drift in dusty shards to the floor. The wind ceased its whine.
"How?" Michael asked, frightened again.
Tarax faded, and then he was gone.
Michael trembled and stared at his hand. Already he could feel the memory of this experience slipping away and the dreary grief returning. He looked upon the house as a refuge, a place where he could grieve in comfort; it seemed suited to him, since he had lost everything.
He bit his lip and wriggled his fingers. "Where am I?" he asked. He thought of the floorplan and the
There was no piano in the house. This was not Waltiri's house, and Waltiri was not his father.
brick patio and white wrought-iron table, which Kristine had never seen, much less sat behind, and the figure in the flounced dress, Tristesse, that had been somebody
something
else.
It was so simple. He reached his hand through the air — not across but through the intervening space — and tore aside the dream. Then he stepped through the descending ruins of Clarkham's trap.
And stood (shadows slipping away from him)
In the middle
(dust on the floor, a single track of footprints)
Of the upstairs room in Clarkham's house.
Rare summer rain fell on the roof, a sound so simple and soothing that he closed his eyes and listened for almost a minute before walking down the stairs and out the front door.
He had not been trapped in Clarkham's house; that much he knew almost immediately upon returning. Clarkham had created a crude and simple world for him and held him there. The house had not even been an integral part of it; where he had lived had seemed a mix of the Waltiri house, Clarkham's, and even parts of the house next door to Clarkham's.
Michael walked slowly up the walk to the Waltiri home, exhausted but inwardly reveling, each breath he inhaled like an intoxicating liquor.
How long had he been away?
"Finally home!" Robert Dopso stared at him from his own porch.
"How long have I been gone?" Michael asked.
"Long enough, believe me. Just long enough for everything to go to hell. Your folks have been by here several times, talking to Mother and me…"
"Kristine? Have you heard from Kristine Pendeers?"
Dopso frowned. "Nobody else… Your parents mentioned a somebody-or-other Moffat. No women. I've got your newspapers here — those that have been delivered. The city's a shambles. Nothing's on time or reliable now."
"Why?"
"Haunts," Dopso said, shaking his head. "It's been at least a month since we saw you last."
Michael unlocked the door and entered, hoping vaguely that Kristine might be waiting, but the house was empty. Forearmed now, he probed deeply for signs of Clarkham, physical or otherwise, but found no evidence of him.
Dopso came up to the open doorway with .an armful of newspapers. "Where should I put these?" he asked. "And your mail, too. Not much of that."
Michael indicated the couch. Dopso deposited the pile and stood, wiping his hands on his pants. "I've been thinking," he said, "that maybe it's time you give Mother and me the full story. I've had time to sort a few things out — that fellow who shot himself and disappeared. We both decided that if anybody knows what's going on, it must be you. We'd be very grateful if you'd let us know."
"AH right," Michael said. "Let me catch up, and I'll come over this evening. What time is it?"
Dopso checked his watch. "Five-thirty."
"Make it eight."
Dopso nodded, stood for a moment with his hands in his pants pockets, as if waiting to say something more, then shrugged his shoulders.
"Oh." He stopped halfway down the sidewalk, raising his voice so Michael could hear. "You might want to clean out your refrigerator. The electricity isn't on all the time now."