An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors--A Novel

by Curtis Craddock

  “Is it always this frigid in here?” she asked. “I cannot raise a child in a glacier.”

  Kantelvar said, “The interior is more comfortable.” He gestured toward a short, barrel-vaulted corridor that terminated at a massive stone slab. The slab rested in a groove in the floor and was abraded with great curved striations. She deduced that the stone itself was circular, a great wheel that could be rolled back into the wall.

  Before she could turn her mind to the mechanism by which this might be accomplished, Kantelvar raised his staff and spoke ancient words in the Saintstongue. “And there will be a haven secure against ignorance and depravity.”

  There was a hiss and a clank like steam boiling under the lid of a kettle, and the door rolled away. A breath of warmer air from inside caressed her face and melted the frost that had started to form on her eyelashes. Kantelvar bowed her into an antechamber with rolling stone doors at either end and a partially reconstructed omnimaton stationed in an alcove between them.

  The machine was little more than a metal torso, a clamshell head, and a single arm that connected to a gear train that operated the doors. How did Kantelvar control the machines? This one seemed to want a passphrase, but would it take such a phrase from anyone, or was there some other element required? Was it the staff? This omni-doorman could not have seen the staff when Kantelvar first brandished it.

  Kantelvar said, “From this fortress at the end of all things, the Savior shall appear.”

  The inner door opened and Kantelvar gestured Isabelle through.

  The doors rolled shut behind her with a scraping noise like the sealing of a tomb … her tomb, for this was where he meant to bury her, to impregnate her and plant her like a bulb from which the flower of some wicked salvation would spring.

  A thick, frigid darkness enveloped Isabelle until Kantelvar rapped his staff on the ground and the head of it crackled to life, filling the room with a pale green glow. It was a foyer of smooth-fitting, polished stone with marble benches for seating, rather like a courtyard nook but without any access to the sky. If Kantelvar had his way, she would never see daylight again. The idea made her cold to the core.

  Isabelle started as the room’s interior door creaked open and a slim woman entered. She had soulful eyes and skin so pale that it might never have seen the sun. She wore a gray livery and a coif that did nothing to enliven her aspect. Kantelvar said not a word but made a quick, complex gesture. The woman turned, smiled brightly to Isabelle, and offered her a deep curtsy.

  Kantelvar said, “This is Gretl, my thrall. She will serve as your handmaid until a permanent one can be obtained. She’s a deaf-mute. I’ll teach you the signs you need to command her, but for now, to let her stand up, you should lift your left toe.”

  Isabelle pulled the hem of her skirt back and flicked her toe up. Gretl stood up at once and watched her attentively.

  Isabelle asked, “How many servants do you have?” Slaves of a cruel master could be potential allies. Indeed, the mere fact that people lived here meant certain logistical necessities had to be met. The icy rock outside was no place to grow food. Were there regular shipments of provender from the outside?

  “Six infelix patrueles, all unhallowed,” Kantelvar said with the proprietary enthusiasm of a man describing his flock of prize sheep.

  Isabelle translated the Saintstongue, “‘Unfortunate cousins’?” Then she grimaced, because she wasn’t supposed to know that language.

  But Kantelvar was too caught up in his narrative to notice. “Yes, your cousins in fact, by some remove, the last withered branches of failed hybrid lines.”

  Isabelle felt she’d been slapped, but of course Kantelvar would not have trusted all his breeding efforts to just one bloodline. Isabelle must have had dozens of cousins she didn’t know about … mustn’t she? “Why ‘unfortunate’?” Even asking the question filled her with dread, as if by knowing the answer, she might somehow be responsible for it.

  “Culls,” he said. “Hybrid sorcery tends to be messy. Only a few from each generation manage to pass multiple lineages down intact, and the more lineages are combined in one body, the smaller the chance for success. Unless they are unhallowed, killing the failures is the most merciful thing to do. They can’t control their sorcery, you see, and the Temple would hunt them down as abominations and subject them to Absolute Confession.”

  Isabelle sickened as though she’d swallowed clotted blood. How many had he slaughtered that way? He would have murdered her, too, if she’d failed his test. “What made me any more of a success than Gretl?”

  “Your blood was the final proof, but I knew it the moment I saw you grown up. Céleste lives in you, and of course your sorcery only confirms it. The first l’Étincelle in nearly two thousand years.”

  The ardor in his voice made Isabelle shudder, and she pulled her cloak more tightly about her shoulders.

  “Are you still cold?” Kantelvar asked.

  “We should confront Príncipe Julio,” she said. She had to keep moving, had to keep alert for that instant she could throw him off balance.

  “As you desire.” He gestured her toward the open doorway and the long, dimly lit tunnel beyond.

  Isabelle dreaded pressing deeper into this spider’s trap, but there was nothing to be gained by going back, even if she could. She forced herself to stride through the door as if this cave were her castle. With Gretl padding silently behind, Kantelvar escorted her by storerooms, a library, a kitchen, a mess hall, and a few dozen closed doors concealing who knew what. A spiral stair twisted down into the black heart of the rock and emerged into a long, slightly curving corridor that bent out of sight to the left. Several doors adorned the right-hand wall.

  Kantelvar stopped at the first door and peered through a grate in the door before unlocking it. “These are Príncipe Julio’s chambers, or were before he proved himself untrustworthy.” He admitted her into a lavishly appointed suite, with a large bed draped with embroidered covers, and an elaborately carved desk with paper and pen laid out as if to compose a letter. A padded chair with an ottoman, a chest of drawers, an armoire, and tapestries depicting hunting scenes completed the fit-for-a-príncipe main room. To the left was a bathing chamber and to the right a locked door. Before it stood another omnimaton, man shaped but squatter and more cylindrical than the one that piloted the ship. It was missing one of its arms below the elbow. Its green gemstone eye flickered erratically as if reflecting distant lightning. Kantelvar displayed his staff and said in Saintstongue, “Warder at Oblivion’s gates, stand aside.”

  For half a heartbeat nothing happened, then the omnimaton darted aside. It moved so swiftly that it blurred and caused wind to swirl in behind it, then stopped so still and rigid that it was all but impossible to imagine it could move at all.

  Isabelle skipped backward with a startled gasp that had hardly begun by the time the warder’s movement was complete.

  If ever the omnimaton had been shaped by mortal hands, surely they had been driven by a mind with a wicked and unnerving sense of humor, for who could look upon such a juxtaposition of suddenness and stillness without great trepidation?

  Kantelvar ignored her startlement and put his hand on a locked window flap in the door. “This is the príncipe’s reduced cell. I warn you, he can be quite vulgar and he tends to spit.”

  And who wouldn’t, if they were treated like an animal?

  Isabelle said, “I understand.”

  Kantelvar unlatched the window and looked in. “Príncipe—huh?”

  Suspended across the window was a scrap of dirty white cloth on which had been scrawled, in a brownish pigment, “No me tendrá.”

  You will not have me, Isabelle translated.

  “Julio, what is this?” Kantelvar ripped the cloth from its frame.

  There came no answer from within and the room was dark. A whiff of stale and breathless air coiled out around Isabelle’s face.

  “Julio, show yourself,” Kantelvar said, his voice grinding like poorly me
shed gears. “This gains you nothing.”

  From the darkness came a soft creak, almost like a rope under tension. Isabelle tried in vain to peer through the blackness, to draw some form from the shadows. What if he had been desperate enough to choose the last resort?

  “If I must drag you out of there, I will, but it will go badly for you,” Kantelvar said, the whine of his gears growing louder with rising alarm. He ignited the spiny tip of his staff. The heat of it made Isabelle recoil and its brightness nearly blinded her. She blinked away tears and squinted through the view slot.

  A pair of feet dangled half a meter off the floor. She lifted her gaze. Julio’s hands were bound behind his back, and his scarred face was bent forward around the leather belt that hung him from the lamp hook in the ceiling. His swollen tongue bulged from his mouth, and foam dripped from his lips.

  Isabelle gasped in horror.

  Julio twitched.

  “He’s still alive!” Isabelle cried. Or at least there was still some reflex left in him.

  Kantelvar cursed, fumbled at his belt for a key, and jammed the toothed metal wand into the keyhole. He yanked the door open and rushed in, Isabelle close on his heels.

  Julio twitched on the end of his line, tongue lolling. Kantelvar tucked the spiny-headed staff in the crook of his arm and drew a long knife from his belt. “I’ll cut him loose. Catch him as he comes down. He’s no good if his brain dies.”

  Isabelle wasn’t sure how she was supposed to catch anyone with just one hand, especially a man who weighed half again as much as she, but she grabbed his shirt to pull him close as he fell.

  Yet before Kantelvar could swing and cut the strap, Julio dropped. The belt around his neck flapped loose, and he landed in a crouch. His hands came free of their bindings. Their fake bindings.

  Isabelle just had time to realize it was all a trick before the príncipe spat out the swollen tongue and lunged at Kantelvar. No scream or snarl betrayed his rage, only a blade-sharp gleam in his silvery eyes as he grabbed for the staff. Trapped in the momentum of her intent, Isabelle heaved on Julio’s shirt. He jerked against her grip, yanking them both off balance. Isabelle stumbled and let go.

  Julio’s grab came up short. Kantelvar staggered back. His wide-eyed surprise gave way to a scowling rage harrowed with grooves of fury. “Breaker’s get!” He drove the spiny tip of his staff into Julio’s shoulder, and webs of lightning twined around the príncipe’s body.

  Julio’s limbs jerked, and the sparks dragged an agonized shriek from his throat. He collapsed in a twitching heap but still managed to curse Kantelvar. “Heretic! You defile the Builder!”

  “I serve the Builder!” Kantelvar roared. His sapphire eye blazed. He smashed the spiked ball down on Julio’s leg and jolted him again. “I gave you a chance to join me. I showed you the destiny He has for you. You would have been the father of the Savior. But you turned your back on Him!” He raised his staff to strike again. Flecks of blood fanned from its tip.

  Aghast, Isabelle lurched between them, spreading her uneven arms. “Don’t! We need him alive.” She was painfully aware she had inadvertently foiled his escape. If not for her clumsiness, Kantelvar might already have been subdued and they might have been discussing how to get off this skyland … if Julio hadn’t killed her. If he hadn’t thought she was Kantelvar’s fellow conspirator before, he surely did now. Damn.

  Kantelvar’s whole body trembled with fury, but the fire behind his monocle dulled to a sullen blue ember. He slowly lowered the staff. She proffered her hand as a balm to his temper. He took it and relaxed ever so slightly. His skin was hot and slimy, like a slug that had been basking on a warm stone.

  “You are correct,” he said, though Isabelle barely heard him over the thundering of her heart. She smiled into the face of madness and prayed his unholy eye could not see her loathing.

  “Won’t,” Julio gasped. “I won’t be your puppet.”

  Kantelvar glowered down at him. “You have abused every privilege I have given you and done everything in your power to thwart the Builder’s plan. You are a foreskin on destiny’s prick and you will be cut away.”

  Julio sneered at him, “So much for your boast that you never take a host unwilling.”

  Kantelvar leaned in more closely and growled, “Believe me. You will serve the purpose for which you were spawned and you will do it willingly. By the time I am done with you, you will cut your own skull open and beg me to spoon your brain out like a custard.”

  Isabelle recoiled from his madness. She felt light in the head, but she held on to her composure. “I have seen enough,” she said. More than enough. For a lifetime.

  Kantelvar bent and picked up the tongue Julio had spit from his mouth. It seemed to be a sheep’s tongue. Kantelvar towed Isabelle out and snapped a command to the warder. The omnimaton slammed the door with such a shuddering force that dust fell from the ceiling.

  Kantelvar stalked toward Gretl, who stood wide-eyed by the outer door.

  Kantelvar brandished the tongue. “And how did he get hold of this? Water and gruel, that was all he was to have, slops for the swine that he is!”

  Gretl backed out the door, her eyes round with terror and bewilderment. She made a series of rapid hand gestures that winged into a gesture of defense as barbs of green lightning danced between the spines of Kantelvar’s urchin-headed staff.

  Kantelvar raised the weapon to strike. Isabelle touched Kantelvar on the shoulder—she could not stand to see one more person put to the spark—and said, “I would thank you not to damage my handmaid. I am sure she was an innocent dupe.” Or maybe, if she was very lucky, Gretl had been Julio’s coconspirator, a rebel in Kantelvar’s house. It was a tempting wish, brilliant and fragile as a soap bubble. “She is only a deaf-mute, after all.”

  Kantelvar trembled with his fist on high, then slowly brought his staff down and extinguished its electrical flickering. He turned to face Isabelle. “You are right, of course. Julio is a silk-tongued beast, an inflamer of desire and a corrupter of hearts. A churl such as Gretl could hardly resist him.”

  Gretl clasped her hands before her breast and gave Isabelle a heartbreaking look of thanks.

  “I, for one, found the príncipe entirely resistible,” Isabelle said. She had to seem Kantelvar’s partisan and keep his attention away from Gretl.

  Kantelvar took her hand in his muculent grip. “Yes. You see him for the beast he is.”

  Isabelle resisted the urge to draw away from his corpselike touch. He wanted inside her, body, mind, and soul. It would be like being eaten alive by maggots.

  “My dear friend,” she said—a calculated honorific, friendly but not too intimate; it gave him something to hang on to and yet left him something to work for—“I’m afraid all this excitement has left me flustered. I would be most grateful for a bit of peaceful quiet.” She needed time to think and to figure out how to communicate with Gretl.

  “Of course, Your Highness,” he said. “I will show you to your chambers.”

  “Not a bare cell, I trust.” She prayed.

  “For the mother of the Savior, never.” His yearning tone made her want to gag.

  Kantelvar sent Gretl off with a brief hand gesture, then led Isabelle through a web of tunnels to a well-fitted door carved with a relief depicting the Annihilation of Rüul and the death of the last of the Firstborn Kings nearly seventeen centuries ago. Astounding to think Kantelvar had been alive at that time. He might have witnessed it, or even caused it. Had his madness been in full bloom back then, or had it taken centuries to distill to this fatal potency?

  What must the world have looked like to him? After only twenty-four years, Isabelle already took so much for granted. Often she did not pause to notice the spring of grass beneath her feet, and more than one full moon cluster had gone by unremarked. How faded and gray must the world have been to one who had already seen more than half a million sunrises? Was anything at all real to him save the light of his burning obsession?

  Kantelvar
opened the door and introduced her to a set of rooms sumptuously albeit eclectically appointed. At the touch of his staff, several bright alchemical lanterns humphed to life, revealing a trove of fine furniture and trappings she guessed he had collected over the long centuries of his life. There were intricately embroidered Skaladin pillows, faded tapestries from the First Empire of Om, spotted rugs made from the hides of long-extinct saber cats, marble candlesticks in the early-period Messigonean style, and a vast bed that might once have belonged to a Nybian god-king but was adorned with a midnight-blue baldachin from an Irisian saint’s chapel. They were not antiques in the usual sense but mementoes of Kantelvar’s vastly extended life. One couldn’t keep this much history in one’s head; there wasn’t room.

  “It’s … stunning,” she said honestly. And he was trying to stuff her into the middle of this museum, as if by surrounding her with things of the past he could blend and brush her onto the canvas of his memory and pretend she had been there all along.

  She turned slowly, opening herself to the room. If there was any way short of spending a thousand years to get to the root of his madness, it might be in this mausoleum of his memory. Her gaze settled on a painting, actually a fragment of a fresco that had been carefully chiseled from a wall and set into a gilt frame.

  In the center of the composition stood the stylized figure of a woman in pale robes and a hood that covered her face down to her nose. The golden icon embroidered on her tippets revealed her to be Saint Céleste. A slight smile graced her lips and her left hand was raised in benediction, a peaceful gesture. Around her were arrayed a half-dozen other figures, all very small by comparison. Two carried jugs, one a newborn colt, one a falcon, one an open book, and one knelt at her feet, clutching at the hem of her skirt. The whole painting was cracked and discolored, yellowed from a coat of old varnish that had prevented its crumbling away altogether.

  Fascinated, Isabelle drifted toward the artwork. Much of the surface was obscured by black smudges. Only Céleste and the kneeling supplicant had been kept meticulously clean. Isabelle raised her hand but did not quite touch the kneeler.