Iron Chamber of Memory

by John C. Wright

  The darkness burning in the corners of Henry’s vision receded, and the pains in his limbs were gone. He found himself on his knees, his walking stick in his hand. Mandrake was lying on his back, his right arm deeply cut, bleeding heavily, the little green book still clutched in his left hand.

  Neither man was in a position to stop her when Laureline stooped, snatched up the keyring, and ran in a clatter of heels and a lilt of girlish laughter around the curve of the chamber toward the white hexagonal door at the far end.

  Chamber within Chamber

  Henry rose to his feet, threw the pink rope off from around his neck, and strode angrily after her. He could hear her heels echoing from around the spiral turn. An inner panic told him to run. He increased his pace.

  He came into view just in time to see her stepping into the beams of blinding light issuing from the open portal. The sound of strange music was all about him, lutes and buzzing reeds, the throb of horns and beat of tambours, the skirl of bamboo flutes.

  He blinked and tried to focus his eyes. He could see the chamber beyond the hexagonal portal: Each wall was covered with floor-to-ceiling looking glass of beaten and polished silver, and the panels between the mirrors were covered with mosaics of diamond grit, spelling out words in a language he did not recognize, the cursive script that looked like scimitars, kukri knifes, and pothooks. The walls met at obtuse or acute angles, as there were nooks and bays opening out from a nine-sided rotunda. There was a tall dome or perhaps a chimney midmost into which four tall silver pillars, inscribed with spiral lines of writing in Hebrew and Latin, disappeared, their capitals hidden by the lip of the dome. Directly beneath was a silver-basined pool on which floated lotus blooms. The webwork of reflections from the pool danced across the roof, and were reflected in all the mirrored walls.

  Laureline splashed intro the middle of the pool which was up to her mid-thigh. She turned toward the portal, her expression one of awe and astonishment. She threw back her head and laughed a deep and throaty laugh. Her long hair lifted and spread to either side of her, pushed by some motion of the air Henry, from his position outside the silver-walled chamber, could not feel.

  She rose up off the ground as if pulled by unseen wires, and passed behind the lip of the upper dome.

  That sight was not so strange or shocking that it made Henry forget his friend, lying motionless back around the curve of the wall. Henry ran quickly back to where Mandrake had fallen, and was relieved to see him sitting up. Mandrake was trying awkwardly to staunch the flow of blood from his right arm with his left hand.

  Henry ripped off the hem of his cloak to bind up Mandrake’s arm. “Sorry, fellow, but what did she do to me?”

  Mandrake said, “I’ve never seen anything like it. A shadowy line of smoke came out of the little bottle and reached and touched you. It had fingers. It was an arm. A freakish thin arm made of shadow came out and grabbed you by the heart!”

  “And how did you stop me? With that book? You made the pain go away.”

  Mandrake shook his head as if to clear a fog from his thoughts. As he sat, clutching his bandaged arm, his face began to look more calm, less bewildered. “No, no. In the excitement of the moment, we are forgetting the exact order of events. All that happened was this: When Laureline showed you the bottle, you were overcome by temporary insanity, willing to do anything to get your next fix of heroin. So, when you rushed at me with your sword, naturally I reached into my pocket for the first thing I could find, which was my book. I threw the book and it knocked the bottle of heroin out of her hand. The moment you saw the heroin was gone beyond all recovery, you snapped out of it. That’s all.”

  Henry looked back and forth, and then down at Mandrake. “That could not possibly be what just happened here.”

  Mandrake said, “Certainly it is. Look there.” And he pointed at the broken shards of the bottle on the floorboards. It had struck the stones of the fireplace and shattered.

  Henry pointed silently to the little green book with brass clasps still in Mandrake’s hand.

  Mandrake stared at the book in surprise.

  Henry said, “If you threw the book, why is it still in your hand? And if I struck you with a walking stick, why is your arm lacerated rather than contused? The flash of light I saw also went off the last time I swung this stick. The first time, my mind convinced me I had opened a tin lantern; the second time, that some bulbs in the lighting fixture had broken. And, thinking back, I remember the same light when I stuck open the cellar door downstairs. But that lamp there is an oil lamp, and it is not broken. This time, the deceiver, the curse, whatever it is that makes us explain away what we are not allowed to see, it could not come up with anything convincing. It was caught flatfooted, presented with a strangeness too extraordinary to cover over.”

  Mandrake fished a tiny key out of his pocket, unlocked, and opened the little book in his hand. “The first half is in Aramaic. The second half is in Koine Greek. Those are not languages I read.”

  Henry said, “And when did I learn how to field-dress wounds? Come along. The answers will be in the next chamber.”

  Mandrake said, “What is in the next chamber?”

  “The same as this, only one step further in.” He blinked in confusion. “What happened to Laureline? Wasn’t she just here? We were talking about… something…” He snapped his fingers. “The inner chamber! She was trying desperately to get into the chamber.”

  Mandrake leaped to his feet. “Dear God! You’re right! Lorelei was just here. The moment she stepped over the threshold, we forgot her.” He began loping around the curve of the chamber, running toward the far wall. “She could be doing anything with the papers in there!”

  “Papers?” Henry ran after.

  “Contracts and covenants. Legal documents. Estate papers, wills, that sort of thing. The Deed to the Wrongerwood House. Mr. Twokes, the other lawyers, and I have been going over the wards and bounds pretty carefully these last few days, setting things in order.”

  The hexagonal portal was open, and silvery light was shining in beams from the mirrored walls of the inner chamber. The music of flutes and zithers poured out. Laureline was not in sight.

  Henry said grimly, “Let us go in. We are not who we think we are.”

  Their ears popped as they crossed the threshold. Each man staggered and blinked as an inner and deeper life poured into his soul.

  The first man said, “My name is not Henry Landfall.”

  The other said, “I am Mandragora.”

  13. The Third Life

  Landfall and Lanval

  Sir Henwas Lanval of Avalon was blinded for a moment. He passed his hand before his eyes.

  Now he hefted the sword of ancient days in his hand. The blade was Galatine, and had been carried before him by Sir Gewain, also called Sir Gwalchmai the Mayhawk of Camelot. Sir Gewain had challenged him that the eyes of Lady Tryamour, Lanval’s beloved from the Elfinlands, were not more fair than the gray eyes of Queen Guinevere. The matter was put to the trial of tourney, but Sir Gewain lost the famed blade to Sir Lanval. The peculiarity of the blade was that it shined like thirty torches when it struck the ill-begotten or accursed. Small wonder that, even in the world of men, Sir Lanval never let the hawk-shaped grip from his hand.

  This very day, this far famed blade had slain two of the talking animals, wolf-warlocks who took the shapes of men, as they contested the narrow way, or sought to force the doors; and the light of the sword had driven away the Dark Prince, greatest of the Soul Eaters, who fled from the brink of Le Coupee on wings of membrane. The Great Lion of Sark had risen from its eternal sleep before the doors of the House when the wolfish men approached, and Lanval with his sword had come to the aid of the noble beast.

  And on previous nights, he had departed this chamber, some charm of the Silver-White Lotus Chamber allowing him to keep his memory for an hour even in the dull airs of the outer world. He and his blade had flown to the aid of Mandragora. They had fought side-by-side, defending th
e house from the Dark Prince’s servants and the talking animals that besieged it in battles that he later remembered only in his dreams.

  Lanval looked down at himself. He was clad in white, with hauberk and winged helm forged by the dwarven craftsman of Brising, slaves of Albrecht who had escaped his dark world. The white surcoat was adorned with the image of an ermine spot beneath three roundels.

  They also had repaired for him the great sword Galatine, that had so unjustly and treacherously been used in his hand to break the wards and shatter the back-gate of Wrongerwood House, and allow the Unpitying Fair Damsel, Lorelei of the Lake, entry into this sacred house. She by her spells had been attempting for two years to enter that house, but had never been able before then to bring her memories. Always before, she had been powerless inside here, forgetting all her arts. The sword had not been broken, but in sorrow its fair light had been quenched when Lanval, or, rather, Hal, had used the sword’s virtue to force the door to the cellar here.

  The dwarves had used the hoof of the White Ox of Oxford to burnish the blade to gleaming brightness once again. With a tremor of fear, Lanval now recalled his battle of riddles with the water- monster Vodonoy to recover the ox hoof. Lanval blessed the mist which had hidden that true scene from his eyes. The mist had disguised as well the smoky cave no foe dared approach, where Lanval slept, for he slumbered in the coils of a baptized and repentant dragon of monstrous size. To his eyes then, it had seemed nothing more than a tobacco shop.

  The knight turned and looked at Mandragora the Thaumaturge, who was dressed in his robes as a blackfriar, with his scholar’s hood upon his head, and the book of miracles in his hand. Lanval said, “How could I have been so confounded by such small things? Why were my eyes so blind? We were at war, deadly war, the whole while.”

  He looked left and right. The many mirrors and many nooks of the chamber were confusing to the eye, but he saw no sign of the green-eyed girl.

  Mandragora said, “My aunt and cousins were slain by the mermaid’s song, and made to drown themselves. Lorelei forced the old caretaker away from the house, but good hap allowed me to find Gwent mab Nodd, called Nodenson, who was the knight of the black-scarred face still keeping watch over the Badbury Rings. The caretaker’s keys I gave to you.”

  “Ah, that is why she cried out his name when she ran afoul of his protections in the cellar. And the Wolfhound brothers? Are they talking animals as well?”

  “Yes, but baptized, and they rend the other wolfenkin as wolfhounds rend wolves. They are the Hounds of God, the Canes Domini.”

  “Many talking animals escaped! And I did not slay the Dark Prince, who is the chieftain of the blooddrinkers. We must see to the walls!”

  “You forget the day. On Holy Saturday, when the world mourns Our Savior in the tomb, the evil wights are bold to assault the strongholds of ancient memory. But now is Easter Sunday, and the bells of Saint Peter will drive them forth. We must deal only with the Unpitying Fair Damsel found here. And quickly! For I see her mischief!”

  One of the mirrors had been opened like a door. Behind was a cabinet made of dark wood, and piled high with parchment bound with ribbons, scrolls, librums, folios and quartos, grimoires, manuals, and books with iron padlocks.

  Lanval said, “Is anything missing?”

  “Of a certainty,” said Mandragora. “But what?”

  “Wait! Now I recall. I saw her spread wings and fly upward.”

  “Wings? Then she is something worse than a mermaid.”

  Sons of Smokeless Fire

  Mandragora and Lanval stepped to the brink of the lotus pool, and stared upward against the light overhead, which poured in through a crystal dome. The four pillars upholding the dome had hollow capitals in the shape of iron cages. The bars of the cages were wrought in the twisting shapes of runes and sigils, and the four letters of the Tetragrammaton were written on the four sides of each cage.

  Within the cages were djinn, creatures of pure fire. It was from them the light came, along with black clouds and fumes that filled the dome above.

  Mandragora raised the green book in his unwounded hand and spoke words that rang and echoed like golden bells tolling. Qui facis angelos tuos spiritus et ministros tuos ignem urentem! Immediately a wind stirred in the silver white chamber, and the black clouds cloaking the dome grew transparent to their sight. Now they saw Lorelei in her true shape, short-haired but winged like a black swan, laying elegantly atop a cornice that ran around the lip of the dome. She was a foot or two from the bars of one of the pillars. The folded wings which now draped her naked body past her hips, in the outer world, had looked to their spell-caught eyes like hair.

  Lanval hefted his sword and saw how high above them she was, forty feet or more. “I have no bow and arrow. How can she fly? I thought she was a mermaid, a river daughter, or a nix. I thought she hid her fish-tail in shoes enchanted to give her legs a human seeming.”

  Mandragora said, “No, she merely likes shoes, since she had none to wear in the unpitying fair world from which she comes. She dances the elf dance on lakes in the moonlight, craving praise and sorrow of men, their love and their grief. The legs are hers. But what is she doing?”

  And then he cried out in anger and woe, for Lorelei, smiling archly, took one of the papers from the sheaf she held and thrust it in through the bars of the cage. The paper touched the chained foot of the iron-winged djinn, and the cage bars vanished like vapor, and the dome sagged where the pillar’s support was absent. A crack appeared in the crystal. The djinn arose in a clatter of iron wings, fires before him and behind, shouting triumphant blasphemies and defiance against heaven. The being of fire whirled near the top of the dome, a tornado of dark smoke, with branches of further darkness reaching upward from its blazing skull like the tines of a crown.

  Lorelei looked down with mirth and malice in her emerald eyes. “Ah! Is my little poppet come to play? My lover who I, with such labor, enchanted to adore me—what can you do now, now that you have played your part, and opened up this door to me? Here are the writings, oaths and contracts signed in blood, by which the older things trampled by Arthur were made sanctified. And look! I have set one free! It is your doing, lover! If only you have kept your word, kept your purity intact, kept trousers on and let the luscious and forbidden apple linger sweetly without a taste—but that was too much to ask, was it?” She pointed at Mandragora. “Go, son of fire, regent of Iblis! Nasir al Khuddam! Slay the wonder-worker!”

  But the voice from the fire said, “First free my brother Shasir, and my sisters, the jiniri Hassa and Massa!”

  “Burn! Burn and consume, for Mandragora is the scholar by whose grammary you are bound! His tales that penance will return your long-lost unsmoking forms to you, clean and bright, were but lies to deceive you.”

  The tornado of fiery darkness flew down, and the roar was a storm.

  Mandragora held up his book, and around the book when it opened, there came a rainbow which burned like an emerald. And the fires of the rainbow, Lanval saw, were words written in the three languages of Man, the Latin of Europe, and the Aramaic of Asia, and the Hieroglyphs taught to the Pharaohs from long-drowned Atlantis. Thunder and lightning fell from the black cloud all around Mandragora.

  Lanval stepped between the two. His shining sword parried the first bolt of darkness, and then a second, but the force of the Djinn was too great for him. Electric shock threw him from his feet, and a screaming wind flung him against a far wall, and the silver was dented.

  Mandragora flung aside his cloak, and, behold, beneath his robe was full of stars. He stepped over to Lanval’s fallen body, his book of emerald brightness still held high, and stood with one foot to either side of Lanval, crying out, “Statuet turbinem in tranquillitatem et silebunt fluctus eius!”

  The black wind tore at the chamber to the left and right, throwing tiny fragments of silver and diamond here and there, and great wet sopping lotus leaves, but the roaring force did not touch Mandragora nor Lanval.

 
; “Henwas, can you move?”

  Unpitying Fair Damsel

  Lanval groaned, saying, “I don’t know if I can—I cannot feel my hands and feet. I am pretty badly burnt.”

  “Can you reach into the pocket in my sleeve and pull out a little silver mirror?”

  Lanval coughed, and stared at the blood which spilled out over his chin and breast. His white mail coat was blacked and stained, and from his blacked skin of his arms, raw redness oozed. But he managed to force his numb and trembling fingers into the pocket of Mandragora’s strange robe, in which stars and comets burned and turned.

  He withdrew a small eight-sided looking glass smaller than his palm. “I have the glass. Now what?”

  With his wounded arm, Mandragora reached into his billowing sleeve and pulled something out, something alive. Lanval marveled when he saw it. It was a dove.

  “Hold up the glass in front of my familiar’s eyes.”

  The effort pained Lanval greatly, and his charred fingers left red stains on the little mirror, but he held the glass, trembling, before the bright eyes of the little white bird.

  Lanval expected to see some change in the bird, but the little creature merely stared blankly at the mirror, cooing.

  Mandragora said to the bird, “Comforter, great spirit that flies between my tower in Elfland and my place of exile here, fly to my chambers in the Otherworld and return with my wand. You will forget who you are when you go, and will think yourself nothing more than a lost bird, but by my art I will place in your mind the suggestion that you want to carry a bit of bright straw that you find back here, back to the hand that feeds you grain. Now go!”

  Around them, the djinn roared and lashed at them with black wind, but it could not reach through the green emerald rainbow. Mandragora tilted the book in his hand, and the top of the rainbow opened outward, forming a road or chimney up which the little bird quickly passed. The bird flew past the djinn, past the tops of the pillars, and found a small crack in the dome, and pass out beyond.