I screamed, but only once, for my speed halved, then quartered, and so by increments decreased until I stood safe, and still unbuttoned, on Peklo tower. Quickly, I fastened the buttons. The door of the little bartizan on the roof stood ajar. I pushed it open and ran down the spiral stair into the Archmage’s sanctum. The magic map hung on the wall, just as I had seen it in the fire I conjured for the Om Ren. Alembics, glass retorts and bottles of poison lined the shelves and a painted globe stood in the centre of the room. I breathed deeply, a great lungful of the chymic air. It excited me, far more than anything I had ever experienced; this excitation was a thing of the mind, an intense cerebral frisson. I looked at the map. It was not the one I had seen before. This showed the web of narrow streets I had left behind me – there was Mistress Innocent’s house of pleasure. I stared at the globe, puzzled: Malthassa – the letters were clear – was not a country nor a continent but the whole world. The globe began slowly to revolve. Pargur passed me, and Vonta, Ma and Flaxberry. Great areas of the forest were marked ‘terra incognita’. I saw Myrah, Tanter and Espmoss and I thought: I can use this device to bring the Memory Palace from Espmoss to Pargur – where shall I site it? The gardens of Castle Sehol would be a fine place, already planted with box hedges and laid out in perfect symmetry, or upon a lake permanently frozen – but where to begin? The room was full of objects which demanded my investigation; there were the floors below. I went to view them.
Immediately below, the library, a small room full of choice volumes bound in many-coloured leathers and silks. I could see Valdine’s Book lying on a table, unmistakable in its binding of human skin, but I dare not touch or read it; I did not even dare to enter the library at this stage. Below this floor I found luxurious living quarters, one room also it is true but so richly appointed that I made sums of their worth as I examined each item. One of Valdine’s golden robes hung in a closet, and displayed upon an ebony bracket shaped like a heart I found an ivory statuette. Black and white, I mused, darkness and light: Manderel Valdine and Nemione Sophronia Baldwin, for it was her image. I took it up to examine, while I wondered, did she sit for the sculptor? Was it a work of the imagination? I, who in my remembered fancy had seen her naked, compared my dreams with those of the artist. They were the same. I held Nemione in my hands, touched her and turned her about, remembering her false kisses and her empty promises. My experiences with the whores and my studies in the library of the nunnery had shown me what women enjoy and I vowed that I would have her, whatever it cost me and, in token, kissed the cold breasts of the statuette.
A storeroom occupied the lowest floor. There was very little in it beside some cases of wine and a ladder. The door into the tower opened out of this room; but who could use it? I turned the key and opened the door. The rock below was bare and inhospitable. I could hear the roar of an angry sea.
The final secret to be discovered was underneath all this, accessible by a grating in the storeroom floor: a deep, dank oubliette, a cellar so strong and dark the liveliest demon might be shackled and confined inside it. I saw Nemione there, her fine clothes sodden and soiled, her lovely body pinioned. The intensity of my vision shocked me but I recognized it as the truth. My huge ambition brooked no failure.
I returned to the bedroom and drank a glass of water there; next unbuckled my weapons and cuirass and removed them; I undressed, knelt down, and made my first prayer to Urthamma. Then, rising determinedly up, I put on Valdine’s robe; which my murdering of him made mine.
Will you learn my Art and painful Craft? Then I must fill a hundred pages with descriptions of occult style and technique and a hundred more with the fruits of a thousand years’ study and yet more hundreds with summaries of libraries full of almanacs, demonologies, herbals, horoscopes, geometries, grimoires, pharmacopoeiae &c. I must make primers in the ancient languages, list quodlibets, rebuses, zodiacs, words of virtue such as Origo, Sol, Floy, Ischyros and so forth, and words of bane which cannot be written. I shall be obliged to become a teacher of necromancy, cartomancy, rhabdomancy, geomancy, zoomancy and the rest. After these, it will be necessary to teach the proper passes, the meditations and the incantations; the names of the demons, lesser and greater; the names of the gods and the angels; the ways of calling a familiar, a sooterkin, an imp, a sprite; the manner by which it is best to seduce a nivasha; the nine names of Zernebock – and there are those who say that magicians are born, not made, and those who prove the truth of the saying such as myself, the Archmage Koschei.
Let my Art remain Enigma and my appearance be at least as mutable as divine Pargur. The heart of the matter at present under consideration is the conveying of my Memory Palace entire from the Garden of the Virtues at Espmoss to the gardens of Castle Sehol. Though the exercise and effort brought me within sight of hell, I used my wits, the globe and the map.
When I had put off the robe, I slept in Valdine’s bed until I was recovered and then, resuming my ordinary clothing and my arms and armour, spoke his formula in reverse and was whirled aloft.
The key to the Memory Palace was in my wallet. While I extracted it I stood before the little marble building marvelling at the symmetry of this folly built upon my sweat and grime. It stood in one of the beds of the knot garden, a low box hedge ringing it. In its old place the half-finished cruciform garden would remain. Without a reason for its existence it would be utterly debased, the void circle at the centre its only quiddity. It pleased me to imagine this cenotaph to the memory of my memories. I determined, after leaving space for the expansion of the Palace, to have a replica of the Virtue Garden (alike unfinished) constructed about its present site.
Admiring the pattern as I progressed, I walked up the steps of saurian porphyry and unlocked the bronze doors. Inside, all was quiet; indeed, the place had that air of melancholy mustiness which soon grows in an unused building. I crossed the first dark room and threw open the shutters. The warm light of Pargur fell into the room, illuminating the table on which I had set out the counting-shells I took from Nemione’s desk in school, and the closed door. I stood a moment at the table, caressing one of the smooth shells, before going to the door, opening it and climbing the stair which led out of the cupboard. By a precipitous route about the galleries and vaulting, I climbed into a small room. From its window high above the crossing of the cathedral one can look down and see the cloister roof and Nemione’s window. She is always there, a fleeting memory dressed in green and white, in her hands the flowers she has picked a-Maying. I looked, and sighed. The room was full of my past and future sighs. I heard the latest one echoing round the room – and I heard a heavy footstep on the stair. Quickly, I concealed myself: the shadow behind the door was the only hiding place. I rested my eager right hand on the hilt of my sword and gripped its scabbard.
There entered a shambling creature which blocked out the light. It sniffed deep and, scenting me, turned about. I saw that it carried a long rope which had a noose at one end.
‘My friend,’ I said urgently, ‘It is I, Koschei the Magician. Do not strike!’
The Om Ren, the Wild Man, roared. His terrifying laugh smothered my redundant sighs.
‘I see Koschei the Coward!’ he said. ‘Is that a spell in your hand?’
‘How did you enter without a key?’
‘Memories are not always bidden. I am an unexpected visitor, but no doubt this pleasant little palace is full of entertainments. I should like to see your library.’
‘There is no library.’
‘Are you certain? Let us pass through that door there, and see what we can find.’
A new door appeared in the wall as he spoke. I recognized it: the door to Manderel Valdine’s library at Peklo, standing ajar as I had seen it not half an hour before.
‘It is yours now,’ said the Om Ren. ‘As I am sure you must remember.’
I stepped into my library. Valdine’s Book lay on the table, unmistakable in its binding of human skin, and I touched it. I opened the Book, no longer afraid that a shadowy force w
ould strike me because I was looking at a memory.
Inside the cover I found an inscription hand-written in angular and outlandish script, but I read it easily:
The Book of Baal which contains the comes of all my subjects
Babylon, Asmodeus, Urthamma, Cyllene, Lucifer, Moloch, Bel, Sinistrus and Abrahel, or the City of Evil, the Angel of Darkness, the Daemon of Fire, the Crooked Queen, the Fallen Angel, the Golden Idol, the Leaden Idol, the Left Hand and the Incubus. These are the nine common names and identities of Zernebock and my name is Koschei Corbillion. I am Prince of Pargur and Archmage of Malthassa.
I was filled with joy. It rose up and brimmed out of me; I wanted to shout my name from the towertops. I turned the first page, which was black as sin and blank and, after that, the pages were alternately red and white. The list of names filled them, to the end of the book. I saw some I recognized: Baptist Olburn, Gaster Valdine, Ninian Baldwin, Brother Fox, Elzevir Tate, the name of my mother and that of the man she claimed to be my father (these upon the white pages) and others I did not: Alice Naylor, Alice Tyler, Lèni la Soie and Helen Lacey (these upon the red).
‘It is a Book of Souls,’ I said.
‘It is what you sought,’ said the Om Ren. ‘Your face and body reveal your satisfaction.’
‘Magic, though she is a hard mistress,’ I said, ‘well rewards a bold man.’ I closed the Book. Its empty place was waiting for it, upon the back of a wooden eagle, and I laid it there, open at the first page on which my name was written. My forest friend sat down at the table.
‘I will watch the Book and rest until you call,’ he said. ‘You say yourself that you are full of courage. Are you man enough to walk about the library alone?’
I did not answer him with words but walked away from him around the corner of the first shelf. The library was very small. I lifted volumes down from the shelves, examined and replaced them, one after another, and so wandered bodiless among the shelves, my mind engaged with the matter in the books. When I at last became conscious of a gripe of hunger in my belly and an itch caused by a flea making his dinner on my neck, I was startled to find myself in a different room. It was the library still, no doubt of that, but the colour of the ceiling, the light, the disposition of the shelves all differed. In case I was mistaken, I ran back to the first shelf and looked behind it: there was no table and no Om Ren.
I pressed my hand against my head, to clear it. This library (but who knows the Truth?) was a memory: how could I have remembered the future? Had I interfered so much with the matter of the Memory Palace and Pargur that they had coalesced, making this library as liable to sudden and confusing changes as the city? I thanked my new gods I was not exploring the real one at Peklo tower. I looked this way and that, seeking enlightenment, and saw Manderel Valdine standing by me, not a yard away. His eyes were bright and full of malice. He glared at me.
‘In a bed, in a house, in a street, in a town, in a green province, in a wide country, lies my love,’ he said.
‘Not yours, but mine,’ I angrily replied. ‘I, Koschei, will be her only bridegroom.’
Valdine still glared.
‘In a bed, in a house, in a street, in a town, in a green province, in a wide country, lies my love,’ he said again.
‘It may be true,’ I said, ‘that the dead cannot bleed, but I can still cut the head from your corrupt body!’ I began to draw the sword at my side but he did not move, nor did he seem to notice my rage, only repeated once more, ‘In a bed, in a house –’ as he vanished slowly from my sight. I thrust back the sword into its scabbard. Who can terrify a ghost? Someone coughed behind me and, turning, I saw Valdine. This time, his eyes were afire with pain.
‘Make a secure place in which to hide your own soul. You stand there, brave in your new clothes, strong in body and mind – so young – and ridiculously mortal,’ he said.
‘Begone! Do not torment me or I will have you exorcized!’ I cried and, as the late Archmage again faded from my sight, I realized these spectral figures were tricks of my memory. I was the victim of my own remembrance. I walked on between the countless shelves and un-numberable books. The potent words, my former prince’s admonitions, which my memory had disinterred took on new significance. I was now the prince; I was the mage. It was unthinkable that Nemione should still refuse me. As for my soul, the advice was timely. Once it was hidden, and in a closer place than Valdine’s had been, I would be cousin to the immortals.
I encountered no one else, but the rooms were legion. Many of them had been Valdine’s, but there were countless others, every book I possess, will possess and had possessed, and every one of which I had heard tell, both of Malthassa and of that other world which, my mother used to tell me, lay close beside it. Polus was there and Shakespeare, the Twofold Scripture and the Bible. I saw a title which confounded me: Koschei’s First Pilgrimage. I took it down and read of my adolescent adventures in the Cloister. One room contained a daybed and I lay on it, exhausted yet intending by a final feat of concentration to solve this matter of my soul’s concealment. Perhaps I could hide it here, amongst these octavos and folios begotten by and given birth in my memory?
The music grew and twined about me. I was an oak, the music was ivy; I was the rock beneath the flowering plant; I was the man whom the woman embraced. I was alone. I sat up slowly, careful lest I scare the fragile notes to flight. The music was so melodic and so forlorn that my breast swelled with yearning and I felt an obstruction in my throat. I must open my mouth to let the sob come forth. I put my hand to my mouth and felt the emotion leave me. The Om Ren was singing arioso and my soul, a slim blue creature no bigger than my hand, stood rapt upon my palm.
Stealthily, I reached with my left hand for the neckcloth tucked inside my sark, loosed the knot and dropped the cloth over the inattentive creature. It hardly struggled and I spoke to it.
‘I must conceal you in a place of ultimate safety,’ I told it. ‘Will you be content and not try to stay with me?’
I lifted the scarf a little. The soul nodded its head.
‘If you die, so do I,’ it said in my voice.
‘That is very true. Come with me now, and you shall choose your own resting place.’
I carried it uncovered on my hand among the shelves. It looked about, as if it searched for something it had forgotten.
‘That one,’ it said, ‘with the red cover. No, that is not the one. The calfskin binding? No. I have it! The book with the worn cover – was it once green?’
‘This book?’
‘Yes. The letters are faded: can you read the title?’
‘No, but it is a book of poems.’ I took it from the shelf and my soul walked to the edge of my right hand and, jumping to the left, knelt beside the book.
‘Open it – steady!’
I turned the pages until it was satisfied. It read me some lines from the page it had chosen
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self.
Adieu!
and, lying down upon the printed lines, motioned me to close the book upon it. Gently, I did as it bade me. It wriggled itself comfortable between the pages. The last I saw of it was a thin edging of blue, like a forgotten paper, before this too was withdrawn. I turned to the Om Ren who sang on, doubtless like an angel. His voice had changed for me, without a soul to interpret it, and had all the discordant charm of a nocturnal serenade by Pargur’s tomcats. Wondering at it, for I did not then appreciate what losses a soul-less man must sustain, I shook his arm violently. He blinked his hooded ape’s eyes and said,
‘You have woken!’
‘Unless I still dream?’
‘Perhaps every life is dreamed by a sleeper of whom we are unaware. Go now, Koschei. Claim whatever your deeds make your own. Go – it is safe to leave your memory of me in the Memory Palace, is it not?’
I was relieved to shut the door on him and on the rest of the troublesome past; upon my essays into the future too. The castle ga
rden was a place of peace and soft shadows where, although the sun was well past its zenith, flowers and insects enjoyed the warmth. I sat a while in an arbour, emptying my mind. When it, too, was quiet, I rose and walked the gravel paths in the knot garden. Here I saw Nemione, hurrying along a different path. I called to her,
‘My Lady! Do you hurry past me so that you may not forget Valdine?’
‘Koschei!’ She turned, one slender hand lifted to shade her eyes. Then, miracle of miracles, she came to me, stepping over the low intervening hedges until she was in my shadow. She smiled.
‘Unjust! You think I gave my heart away because I lent my womb to Manderel?’
‘What other explanation can there be? You dote upon his brat.’
‘Poor half-breed! I am compassionate, that is all.’
‘Compassionate!’
Nemione blushed – I swear it. The blush began at her fair forehead and spread like a new dawn across her face and neck until it vanished underneath the bosom of her dress. The gold chain and pendant cross she always wore was scarcely less bright. She looked timidly at me.
‘I am afraid, Koschei. What is there in the garden this afternoon to cause this unease?’ Again, she stole a glance. ‘It is you! I feel your will and your resolve – strong as a young lion. You have found the way to Peklo tower!’
‘I have been in Peklo. My right to the principality and to Valdine’s mantle is proven.’
‘Will you kiss me, Koschei? I do not think I will resist.’
Who, offered paradise, refuses? Yet I hesitated, calling on the superior wit I knew was mine to smother the last glimmer of my disgust at her sophistry and its result, the stealthy, dispassionate impregnation and the birth of Valdine’s Child. Nemione placed her hands on mine and tilted up her face; but she did not close her eyes and I saw, though it was almost obscured, a spark of her old spirit. I kissed her long and kissed her again, folding her absolute loveliness in my arms and cloaking her will with mine. Her eyelids fluttered and fell and her body grew lax. At last, after a storm of kisses, she opened her eyes (dull turquoises) and, a sleeper returned to the light, stared at me as I were a stranger.
The Memory Palace Page 20