The Memory Palace

by Gill Alderman

  I came to Pargur. It appeared suddenly before me when I stepped out between the last of the trees. There is no road to it; each one must find his own way through the forest. True, I once heard that there was a road, a broad highway paved with mottled skarn, but it must have been another rumour or some tale begun in an inn; and if once there was a road, it disappeared under the forest long ago. One leaves the forest, and the city is there, immediate. Its towers of crystal and its quartz revetments dazzle the eye: the multiple refraction makes it hard to see exactly where they stand, sisters to the prismatic mists which cloak the city’s southern flank.

  I came to Pargur. It was winter and fifty yards of virgin snow lay between me and the city walls. Behind me, the eternal forest spread its green without a trace of snow. I had been a long time on my journey and was still more travel-stained, as tattered as a beggar or one of those travelling mountebanks who carry a whole world of enchantment in their packs. I came exhausted to Pargur, the Mutable City, and struck out gladly across the carpet of snow. As I reached its narrow gates, which shone like a sea-breach in an iceberg, I looked up and saw above me the most amazing sight of my journey. Moving imperceptibly, as if it hung aloft in perpetual stasis, drifted a giant balloon of purest white. Ice-crystals glittered on its curving sides and red fire roared at its base, a little above a frail basket which hung down on ropes. There were people in the basket. I could see a tall head-dress of some kind and, more, folds of silver fox fur from which a hand reached out, and waved. A wan face appeared above it, glacial as the moon’s, and the lovely, lilting voice which had called Erchon floated down to me.

  ‘Hiy, Koschei, hiy-yi! Koschei!’

  The guard, who had turned to me to ask my business in the city, straightened stiffly. He clicked his heels together and grounded his pike with a mighty thud.

  ‘Archmage Valdine,’ he said, ‘and the Lady Nemione.’ He looked me up and down. ‘She called you,’ he muttered.

  ‘Yes.’ I looked him in the eye. His eyes were a muddy, peasant colour: I felt as though I held my face in dung, willingly. I saw his gaze waver and his pike did also.

  ‘I have business with the lady,’ I said.

  He stood aside and I walked into Pargur.

  The first thing I saw when I had passed the city gates was a palace standing upon a lake of ice. People, slipping, sliding, walking, gliding upon steel blades, riding in sleighs, thronged about it and I heard music, which seemed to come from within the palace. A juggler tossed coloured sticks into the air. A fire eater blew tongues of flames from his throat; I wondered, was he the warmer for it? The cold had a hold on my very bones. I pulled my jacket closer about me and wiped away the frost crystals which were forming on my eyelashes. A woman who was passing looked at me and touched her head, which was covered with a huge fur hat. At first I thought she meant to insult me but then I understood that I should cover my own head. I untied the sash from Tanter and wrapped it round my ears and face; now, I did look like a beggar. I stepped out on to the ice.

  As I went, slowly and carefully and not at all at a pace befitting a soldier, I blinked hard to keep the crystals from re-forming about my eyes. I could see a second palace, identical to the first, a little to the left, a short distance behind it. I looked about me and saw a third palace and a fourth; a fifth. Eventually I came to a halt, bemused. The people who surrounded me did not seem at all discomfited by this plague of palaces, but continued with their merrymaking and conversations. I spun on my heels.

  Now a man came up to me, a seller of hot chestnuts which he carried on a sort of portable gridiron over a tray of glowing coals. He offered a bag of them to me and, when he heard I was a stranger in Pargur, laughed and said,

  ‘What do you think of our capital city?’

  ‘I have seen very little of it,’ I cautiously answered, ‘but it seems to be a fine place, though suffering perhaps from an excess of palaces.’

  ‘Take no notice,’ the chestnut seller said, ‘or, if you will visit one, take that one, there.’ He pointed. ‘They are made of ice, you see. We build one every year.’

  He walked off, leaving me more mystified than before. I resolved to see the inside of at least one palace and hurried, as fast as I was able, to the one he had indicated.

  It was a marvel, clear and cold, its inner walls covered with a layer of misty frost through which the crowds outside could faintly be discerned. There were no rooms in it, apart from the one great cavern and this was filled to bursting with dancers who whirled deliriously to the music of an organ. Its pipes were made of ice and they towered against the wall in a gamut of gleaming stalagmites and stalactites. I tried to get closer, curious about its workings, but this was impossible. Instead, I was dragged into the dance. The women, in their wraps and furs, smelled like stoats and they had small, even teeth which glistened between parted lips. Their upper lips all had the shape of tiny bows and their lower lips were thin. The men were tall, bearded like myself and muscular, but they tolerated me and I was flung from hand to outstretched hand until I reached the door again. The music never ceased and the dancers whirled on. I was afraid. I suspected that if I entered one of the other palaces I would find the same dancers, the same music and the same organ; that I might even encounter myself.

  I crossed the ice. It was darker now, the sun gone and the first deep blues of evening paraded one after another across the sky. Back on solid earth, albeit frozen and coated with snow, I turned into the first street I came to and found myself upon a wide avenue which led towards a hill. All at once, the bells of the city rang out from every tower and campanile and their echoes stayed a long time in the frosty air and in my head as I stood looking at the hill. A great white castle stood there, overspreading the slopes of the hill and littering its rocky escarpments with crenellated towers and bastions. I frowned. I should have been able to see the castle from the city gate. When I looked behind me, I could see that gate and the sentry who guarded it; this, despite the fact that I had turned a corner. There was no trace of the lake nor its array of pleasure-palaces. I stopped a passing boy. He looked real enough.

  ‘What is that place on the hill?’ I asked him.

  ‘That?’ He looked at me as if I were a cretin. ‘That is Castle Sehol.’

  I gave him a sixpenny piece. ‘And who lives there?’

  ‘The Archmage, sir. The Lady Nemione is there as well, his guest. She holds court, Queen of Winter and Love. It’s the Winter Fest, sir. That’s why everyone makes holiday.’

  ‘Can I get up there?’

  ‘No sir, oh no – not unless you are the devil himself, or a winged angel.’

  ‘But this road leads to the castle gate?’

  ‘Sometimes, sir; sometimes it does.’

  I turned away from him. My jacket, I realized, had fallen open. The boy must have seen the wolf’s head on my cuirass, the insignia of the Brotherhood. The sight of it and not the sixpence was the reason for his deference. So. Maybe I carried my passport on my chest.

  ‘Koschei! Koschei Corbillion!’ The voice was mellifluous, seductive; it was Nemione’s voice, teasing me as she used at school and afterwards, in the cloister. ‘Koschei, you are getting warmer!’ It rang in the street and in my head; the stones echoed it, the towers threw its chiming back at me, but only I could hear Nemione’s magical tongue.

  I continued on my way, if a way it was, following the unearthly voice and the kerbstones which bordered the road until I found myself near the castle. Here I paused, unwound the cloth from my head, shook out my hair and combed my beard with my fingers. My comb was lost long ago, left behind at one of my camp sites in the forest. I found the lock of hair Nemione had given me in the summer and twisted it between my fingers as a talisman. The wolf’s head visible and my face stern, I advanced and shouted for the guard.

  I was at once shown every courtesy. The battered wolf’s head, though I had deserted it, did not fail me, and admitted me unquestioned and unsearched to Castle Sehol. Two men-at-arms escorted me through th
e gate. Unlike the old wooden gates of Tanter or Actinidion; not like the narrow gate of Pargur and very different from the new bronze doors of my memory palace back in Espmoss, the entrance to Castle Sehol was no solid barrier but a flood of light so dense and tangible it seemed almost to be water. The passages through were mere wormholes in the prism and I guessed that there was only one correct way. The first man told me to grasp his belt and the second held the skirt of my jacket.

  ‘Your pardon, sir,’ they courteously said.

  I believe I could have passed the gate without their aid for, all the while, Nemione instructed me, her voice much clearer than those of the two men walking with me. They had learned the way by rote, that was obvious, for they walked along it chanting ‘Left and left and right and straight and up –’ and so on. I interrupted them:

  ‘Can you hear another voice?’

  ‘Quiet, sir; excuse me, but you’ll lose us.’

  We emerged from the elaborate defences and I saw a perfectly normal castle yard with a disused quintain pushed into a corner, a well, a couple of cannon, a dog kennel and a chained mastiff which barked loudly at me. Towers dominated each corner.

  ‘Where are the Lady Nemione’s quarters?’ I asked, looking up at the great bulk of the inner bailey higher on the hill and the curtain walls enclosing other towers and a monstrous keep.

  ‘In the White Tower there,’ the first man replied. ‘That is the doorway sir, a plain and honest old-fashioned hinged one with a lock and key. Estragon has the key today, on his belt.’

  His comrade found and flourished a large key, unlocked the door and stood back to let me pass. I thanked them both.

  ‘Tell me, before you return to your other duties,’ I said. ‘Is the Lady locked inside this tower – and will you lock the door after me and make me a prisoner?’

  ‘Oh yes, sir; but she is no prisoner, nor are you. There is no keeping the Lady Nemione behind locked doors.’

  I climbed a twisting stair. Nemione called more loudly, nearer: ‘Very warm, Koschei. Hot – hotter. Climb! Faster!’

  I came to the stairhead and stepped into a room. All white inside it was, as chill and icy as the day. A golden head confronted me, the cast head of a woman mounted on a pillar. It looked a little like Nemione, but less charitable, and its mouth had the same chiselled and perfect bow shape as the mouths of the dancers in the ice palace. Even as I stared at them, they parted and the voice of Nemione came forth,

  ‘Koschei! You have arrived – at last and after so much travail. Welcome!’

  I looked beneath and behind the head, to see how it worked.

  ‘Now, Koschei,’ it said. ‘Curiosity killed the cat. Don’t you remember Master Praxis telling us so, after Catechism?’

  I looked about me, round the room. Clearly, it was Nemione’s for the green gown she had worn when I met her by the brook lay across a tapestried bed and jewels, brushes, bottles of scent and other female things were littered about. I touched her gown and unravelled her hair from my fingers, stroking it smooth in the palm of my hand.

  ‘Will you compare that gypsy’s mane with these tresses?’ the head asked and I swung round. Nemione was there, come silently into the room and splendid, indeed the Queen of Love.

  ‘Enough talk, Roszi,’ she said, addressing the head which at once closed its eyes and clamped its lips together in a thin and cruel line.

  My being, soul, heart and body, sighed for Nemione. Her hair was her own again, fair silk floss which hung down her back and covered her shoulders. She wore a white gown cut low, no jewels except her own sapphire eyes and a frost of minute diamonds on her embroidered gloves. She carried a small golden bow and trailed her coat of silver fox behind her.

  I bowed, moved instantly to courtesy.

  ‘A beggar-gallant!’ Nemione cried. ‘The queen and the gaberlunzie-man!’ I struggled vainly for a compliment to pay her, though many lewd associations came to mind. ‘And what do you think of my Head?’ she continued.

  ‘High magic, no illusion?’

  ‘Oh, Koschei. You are a child.’

  I thought of the magical skills the Om Ren had called out of me, and said nothing. Nemione dragged her fur across the floor in my direction.

  ‘Help me then, Green Wolf. Arrange the robe about my shoulders.’

  It was harder for me to comply with this request and still be calm than it had been six months ago, dyeing her hair in the forest.

  ‘My hands – I am stained from my travels,’ I said.

  ‘You are filthy! No matter, you look just as a strong man should after a journey and your beard has grown very well. Now help me.’

  I lifted the heavy coat. A hundred foxes must have died to make it. Draping it to best effect about her was tricky and several times my hands brushed her skin. Asmodée! How I wanted deliberately to touch it, to hold her in my arms, to kiss her! Her bed was less than a yard away.

  At last, Nemione was arrayed. The silver fur stood up in a silky crest about her neck and I compared it in my mind to a column of white marble rising out of mist. I dared not look lower. The fur became her. She picked up a mirror, looked at her face in it and threw it on the bed.

  ‘Come Koschei. I will show you my Court of Love.’

  I followed her willingly, looking down with pleasure as the slippery fur draped its weight around her shoulders and revealed her narrow back; taking care not to tread on the stuff, which swept each stair as she descended. The stair led into a red-painted antechamber: no sign of the door the men-at-arms had locked. She saw my frown.

  ‘You are puzzling over the topography of this place,’ she said. ‘A geography without laws. It should not trouble you long.’

  She opened a door, beckoned me.

  ‘There!’

  The chamber was pentangular. It represented at five-pointed, lucky star and in each of the five angles stood a statue. I had no time, walking swiftly after Nemione, to examine them closely but I could see that they were personifications of the several states of Love. A white throne stood in the exact centre of the room, on a dais. Nemione stepped up and sat on her throne. I stood below.

  ‘Now Koschei,’ she lectured me. ‘This is the room in which I try all the sad cases which are brought before me and judge whether the plaintiffs mean what they say. Love, as you know, is blind. He is foolish as well. If you were a plaintiff, I wonder what you would say?’

  ‘I would say nothing, Madam,’ I said, entering her game. ‘I would be on trial for my life – for daring to love the judge.’

  ‘Very pretty! Yes, you would argue your case well and have no need of a lawyer. But what if you were – a rude country boy who loved a highborn lady?’

  ‘I would rely upon my well-built labourer’s physique to speak for me.’

  ‘Or a thin clerk from a crowded town – in love with a pretty actress?’

  ‘I would study the language of love by night and practise it by day!’

  ‘Or a mage who loved a sorceress?’

  ‘I would forgo my Art and learn another to surprise her – such as the carving of toys, the painting of miniatures, or the writing of poetry: all in honour of my mistress.’

  ‘That is my case, Koschei. Valdine is in love with me and I, as Queen of Love, must judge his verse. Of course he expects it to win, without contest.’

  She handed me a little book of manuscripts bound in ivory and gold.

  ‘Read there.’

  Aflame with love and jealousy equally, I opened the book at hazard and read what I found there:

  My lady is a pure white rose

  Whose sharp and deadly thorn,

  Lodging in my bosom,

  Draws forth drops of scarlet blood

  My lady is a silver knife

  Whose blade of truest steel,

  Cutting deep the tissue,

  Wounds my tender, weeping heart.

  The cure, Madonna –

  Etcetera. ‘It is mannered,’ I offered.

  ‘True – but that does not bar it. It may b
e mannered and still good verse.’ She leaned forward on her throne, her chin resting on her gloved hands; she looked as pensive as she used long ago, when we were children and her great-aunt told us stories by the fire. ‘What would you do, Koschei? Is it possible to oppose the Archmage? How could I rid myself of him? I tell you Koschei, old friend, I am afraid that he will win the contest. Then I shall lose everything.’

  ‘Why not kill him?’ I said.

  ‘You do not know what you say!’

  ‘I am a soldier.’

  ‘You are mad. Go away! Leave me alone before you destroy me.’

  Obedient, even to her anger, I left the Court of Love. I found myself in an empty, vaulted corridor somewhere deep in the castle. Had Nemione called me only to spurn me? A rat scurried by. I did not care where I was and walked blindly, my head in a whirl.

  He did not know where he was, though he thought he might be dead. There was a sensation of movement, others of numbness, dizziness, sickness. He coughed and began to vomit. Someone held a cloth to his mouth. His eyelids fluttered. Yellow daylight deafened him, voices dazzled.

  ‘Le soleil l’aveugle!’

  ‘Oui! D’accordr!’

  The darkness returned.

  When he next woke, he felt warmth at either side of him. He could not grasp it; could not grasp what caused it, what it was; but he could smell. He felt his nose tickle, lifted a hand to it, felt a cool finger gently rub. The smell: soap, soapy smell, clean, young, Alice? This side. Who the other? He opened his eyes. He was in a car. He was in the back seat of a car with Alice on his left and – trousers, hairy hands – a man on his right. Tobacco smell.

  His hands were aching. RSI. Repetitive strain injury. Sandy. His hands ached and he was being driven in his own car. No Sandy. He raised his head a little – driven in his own car by a chauffeur – by Dominic! Alice sat beside him and the man on the other side. Clean-shaven, dark, big; another man sat by him in the car, the Audi, a man he did not know. The butcher? Georges? Georges Dinard!

  ‘Georges?’ he said.

  He heard the man speak: ‘Oui, mon ami. It’s OK. Take your ease. Relax.’