Iron Chamber of Memory

by John C. Wright

  Lorelei from above the two men dropped a mocking laugh, her wings flapping lazily, as she fed a second document into the bars of a second pillar. Loudly over the wind of the first djinn still battering the emerald barrier below her, she cried to the trapped spirit, “Once I release thee, great Shasir, older than Adam, pass quickly over the walls into the Sleepwalking World. You will forget who you are, and think yourself but a thunderstorm, or some other natural disturbance of the air. Slay the Talking Animals protecting this house. Find the Dragon-Prince of the Soul-Eaters, the Impaler, and bear him here on wings of storm. Go!”

  With a deafening noise, the crystal dome was broken from the two remaining pillar tops and flung away into the high blue sky, toppling into a thousand bright shards that fell no man knows where.

  Lanval saw the dove, a white speck against the red light of dawn, flying away from the house.

  Lorelei called down sweetly, her voice loud and shrill over the wind: “My master, the Prince of the Soul-Eaters, is nigh, living in a gutter, drinking whiskey that will never soothe the craving for blood that torments him. His host is gathered here, each one called by a silent voice inside him, called by their true selves, burning!”

  The black whirlwind now broke the circle of green light protecting Mandragora, caught him up in the air and flung him headlong to the far side of the silver chamber.

  Mandragora, on hands and knees, bruised in his face, nose running blood, shouted back, “You shall not prevail, Lorelei.”

  “Watch and see!” she called.

  The black-crowned whirlwind left Lanval and hurled itself upon Mandragora. Again, he opened his book, and three columns of light, green as spring grass, softly arose from the floorstones around him. The windstorm drove him to his knees, but the tongues of forked lighting flew wild, striking the silver walls, leaving him unharmed.

  Lorelei flew toward the next tall column, reaching out with a document toward the iron bars that held one of the two remaining djinn bound in place. But she mistook the wildness of the winds the djinn had let free, and a sudden turn of the wind flung her downward.

  Lanval, despite his pains and wounds, made a prodigious leap then, while she struggled with her wings against the gale, and grabbed her slender ankle. He was twice her weight and more: down the two fell into the lotus pool. She sputtered, and he sighed at the ease of his burns, which vanished away in those magical waters like a dream.

  Lanval, his strength restored, and Lorelei found their feet. He twisted her arm behind her, and placed the tip of his bright sword between her perfect breasts.

  “Call off the djinn afflicting Mandragora! Send it out swiftly to protect the Wolfhound brothers!”

  Lorelei held a handful of dripping papers and parchments. With a furious gesture she cast them into the air, where the whirlwind caught them and spun them to each quarter of the chamber. “I release my power of command over ifrit, djann and djinn! Nasir is now his own master! Whom do you think he will slay?”

  The djinn roared with laughter.

  Mandragora called out to Lanval, “I can hold off the creature until my wand is brought. With that, I can force the spirit back into a brass bottle.”

  Lorelei called out gaily, “And if My Master arrives here first, you both will be consumed by inches, screaming!”

  Lanval shifted his grip on her, pinning both her elbows behind her folded wings. The dark-haired beauty arched her back and smiled alluringly, teasingly, at Lanval, ground her shapely hips against him.

  He held her to him, threatening her with his sword. He shouted to Mandrake to bath this wounds in the pool.

  Mandrake said, “The same contract binding the djinn permits that the pool they are forced to guard may cure what wounds they inflict here. Its waters will sooth no other ills.”

  Lorelei cooed in a mocking, dry tone to Lanval, “Sweet lover, what do you recall of the World of Exile? Were you born there, among the death and suffering and pointless misery afflicted by an uncaring and distant heaven? Or was it all taken from you? All your poor, pathetic memories? Have you never wondered how we came to be here, living like this, disguised as Sons and Daughters of Eve?”

  “I am the son of The Grail Knight. My father showed me the cup when I was a boy, still with heaven’s innocence in me, so that the shining rays were visible to me: and in the Blood of the Grail he anointed me.”

  “And after…?”

  “We moved to New York, and he opened a used bookstore.”

  “Fitting mission for one of the boldest knights of the Table Round!”

  “Silence, lilim, daughter of Lilith!”

  “Should I be silent? Or should you know why we dwell here in utter unmemory and amnesia? Here is the tale of the Exiles! The triumph of the Father of Dragons was nigh. He is that same worm that tempted Eve with knowledge; eating also of the Tree of Life, the subtlest of creatures could never die, and grew with every passing year, till the land could not hold him, and even the sea was in torment to hold his bulk. He took his tail into his mouth, and his stinger tail piercing his own tongue, wrapped the whole world in his scaly belly. His hunger is such that he must eat, and he gnaws faster than he grows. The world was about to be split like an egg, when the Exile was proclaimed. All of us, friend and foe alike, knight and wise man, elf or scaly drake, was flung into this place of forgetting! It is not the spell of witches that robbed you of your glories, Son of the Grail Knight—it was heaven’s last desperate act! The final burning of all bridges back through the perilous woods and wilds of myth and lore to the gardenlands of paradise! The way is closed, and all of us lost ourselves, as a stop gap to stave off utmost defeat—a defeat for you which is now at hand!”

  The sword grew dimmer in his hand, and Lanval saw with horror that its virtue came from his own heart. As soon as his spirit failed, the sword would again go dark, and then he would be defenseless against both djinn and lamia alike.

  Mandragora called out over the noise of the winds, “Each passing year, their forces dwindle in number. The Sons of Light, even forgetting all their triumphs, do not forget their virtues; but the Children of Darkness, forgetting their black crimes, sometimes turn away from their vices, charmed by the simple humans we here live among.”

  But the emerald columns of light around him had bent and broken, and the dark wind was driving him back, step by step, toward the hexagonal portal, trying to hurl him back into the world where he was a scholar, not a magician.

  She laughed. “It is not our numbers that dwindle each day, but yours! The Silver-White Lotus Chamber was built to spread the narcotic power of the Lotus Pool across all the worlds on the wings of captive genii, so that the dream is not interrupted. Now that we possess the pool, it will only be a short time until we discover how to break it, and wake the world, and show them the serpent that circles the globe! Men can only have the heart to stand against us when their eyes are held, and our true power and true beauty and dark majesty is hidden from them—how do you think they will prevail against the naked forces of the night world in all our terror and glory?”

  And the bright sword Galatine grew dimmer yet, and the girl touched the tip with her tongue, and it did not draw blood. “Your sword is getting dull. Having trouble keeping the blade erect? Are you suffering from cutlery dysfunction, Sir Knight?”

  The White Wand

  There was a flutter of white light in midair, which, at first, Lanval thought was a trick of the many looking glasses. Then he saw the dove, with a slender sliver of straw in her beak, fluttering down from the broken dome to land on Mandragora’s shoulder.

  Mandragora knelt and took up the sliver of straw the dove had dropped. He whispered a word, and immediately the sliver grew into a wand of white wood, a fathom tall and as big around as a man’s thumb.

  Suddenly the whirlwind seemed to have no power over him. The air howled and battered him and threw lotuses and water from the pool, nails and diamonds and shards of silver from the walls in reckless spirals, but not even the hairs of his head
were disturbed. He stepped over to a silver wall, opened a panel as if it were a medicine chest, and took a flask made of metal from it. He raised the staff and spoke. “Et daemones credunt et contremescunt.”

  In a moment the wind had stilled.

  The Dark Prince

  But at the same time, a black and whirling cloud surged down from the sky and filled the space where the dome once sat. There was a roar like thunder, and a flash, and from the cloud a man was dropped down into the lotus pool.

  It was a long fall, and Lanval looked on with alarm, while the green-eyed girl in his arms shrieked in exaltation. The falling man was thin to the point of starving, dressed in rags, his pale skin showing through the many rents in his garment. He struck the water, but somehow, did not sink. Lanval stared in startled recognition at the pale and gaunt face, the bleary eyes, the mouth ringed with cold sores.

  The water drenched him, and it was as if the false memories of the outer world were washed away. He stood, and he rose until he was taller than a man, a Dark Prince, dread and grim and pale of skin, iron-crowned and armored. He reeked of blood, and slowly, ominously, a pair of great, black, leathery wings extended from his shoulders.

  Lanval wished he could flourish his crucifix, but it was under his hauberk, and there was no squire at hand to unlace the mail shirt and allow him to reach it.

  The Dark Prince held up a mace like a scepter, and from the ball of the mace, almost too thin to be seen, came dozens, hundreds, or thousands of fine wires, red with human blood, issuing like strands of hair. The strands reached up through the broken dome to the cloud and spread in all directions out of Lanval’s sight.

  The Dark Prince spoke, and his voice echoed from the hollow places in his chest like the voice of a man buried prematurely echoing from his coffin. “All my slaves into whose hearts my little thorns I put, I hold up this my truncheon, and make the threads of little thoughts grow tight. Come to me, in this place. Come all the worlds of the night.” He lowered his gaze onto Mandragora. “Wonder-Worker! How long do you think to hold that power of heaven at bay? You wrestle with a thunderstorm! You cannot prevail, any more than you can bring the dead to life.”

  Mandragora threw the wand clattering to the silver floor. Immediately it burst into bloom, flower and leaf. It was a dogwood wand, for the flowers were small and white with dark eyes. “There is a heaven above the middle airs of the world, where no air stirs, and the shadow of this grim spot called Earth never brings the night.”

  The Dark Prince did not bother to reply, but the scorn on his pale face was plain. He turned his face toward Lorelei. She was still struggling in the single-handed grip of Lanval, kicking at his shins, and snapping at his face. And still the Dark Prince made no attempt to aid her.

  Instead he said only: “Daughter of Lilith, child of tears, you have done well this day, and brought victory within my grasp. But your task is not yet complete. See that you set about it! As for me, I go now to find the sources of this well and poison them with the poisons from my mouth.”

  And, even as he spoke, his armor turned to crocodile scales, and his jaw elongated, his skull narrowed and flattened, and his crown became the horns of a dragon. Arms and legs shriveled to nothing, and from his spine a new body nine yards in length sprouted, finned like the body of an eel, but with a tail like a scorpion. His body was like that of a great snake, his beard like that of a goat, his teeth were those of a lion. Only his eyes were the same, terrible and cold as the eyes of no innocent beast of prey nor carrion eater ever could be.

  He dove into the water of the pool, and somehow, in pure defiance of the laws of earthly geometry, even though the pool was no deeper than two feet or three at the most, the dragon sank down and down, seeming to grow larger as he did, and was lost to sight in the murky distance.

  Lorelei laughed and laughed. She ignored the sword at her heart as she cried out in maddened glee, “This is the best day of my life!”

  The Seal of Solomon

  Mandragora whistled to his dove, who flew up to another panel, one which Lanval had seen opened before, filled with parchments, books and scrolls. The dove poked around the papers, cooing and billing, and turned her pale head toward Mandragora with a motion of the wings that seemed just like a shrug.

  Lanval was still holding the dripping, wet girl. He saw the problem. Mandragora had taken up his staff again, and with it charmed the second djinn who had brought the Dark Prince hither on his wings. Mandragora had managed to stuff both of the freed and immense djinn into the absurdly small brass flask. Now he stood with the staff touching the mouth of the brass flask, but there was no stopper, no way to seal it.

  “Looking for this?” Lorelei still had her elbows pinned behind her back, but she twisted lithely to one side, and was able to bring her left hand snaking over the curve of her hip. On her ring finger was a golden ring inscribed with four Hebrew letters, and set with a dark stone bearing the Star of David. “I took it from your papers when I found the covenants your djinn were forced to sign!”

  “Is that what you need to stopper the brass bottle? A moment and I will have it from her,” said Lanval. He sheathed his sword, released her elbows and grabbed her left wrist. But now her wings unfurled, and she was half in the air, and he was being battered by her pinions, and she was offering him kicks and curses and ineffectual blows with her small and delicate fist.

  But Mandragora said, “The ring of the Seal of Solomon cannot be removed by force. Like all rings of power, it can only be freely granted.”

  “And if I kill her?” asked Lanval.

  Mandragora said, “An unarmed girl? It is not in your nature. And no, even then the ring will not serve.”

  Lorelei landed, and, ceasing to struggle, she pressed herself against Lanval and ran her hand over his armor, seeking he knew not what. Annoyed, he caught her other wrist, and they stood there stood eye-to-eye, like dancers before the waltz.

  She tilted her head to one side, and pouted and said, “Wonder-Worker, what would sealing away but two djinn do? Once the Dark Prince of the Soul-Eaters finds the root of the fountain of the lotus, he will envenom the waters, and the dreams of the lotus-eaters that you have used to blot out all the ancient glories of the darkness from the minds of men shall end, and mankind awaken to the terrible, unanswerable truth!”

  Lanval said, “The chivalry and wisdom of all the earth are not so easily overthrown!”

  She showed her white and perfect teeth. “As easily as Camelot was cast down, Sir Fool. Your Arthur knew of the fornications of Guinevere, but for the sake of the realm, and to prevent the accusation and trial of the friend of his heart, great Lancelot, he hid the truth, and so the Table Round was shattered, and so bastard son and faithless father slew each other, Mordred and Arthur, and the wound from the spear of Arthur was so great, that Mordred’s shadow was broken on the ground, for the sunlight passed all the way through his body!”

  Lanval said, “Arthur is in Avalon, recovering from the wound that Mordred dealt, and the years and seasons in that land have no power to pass away, save when the three fair queens grant them leave to go. Here in the mortal world, time flies. There, time tarries. Evil prevails but for an hour.”

  “An endless hour, as eternal as the fires of Hell!” she exclaimed. “How have you not discovered it yet? It is not clear? You are in exile here, robbed of thought and memory, because you are one of us. You are evil, a servant of the darkness. The only difference is that you do not know. Heaven does not need your help, and neither will your deeds unmake your crimes. You will be as damned as we, unforgiven, for any goodness that forgives evil condones it, and to condone is to aid, and to aid evil is to be evil, is it not? The only way heaven retains its precious purity is by condemning its knights and defenders to the flame once heaven is done with them.”

  “I am loyal,” said Lanval.

  “To your lusts!” she said. “Each time we met, I stole a little of your force of will from you, so that the days had no meaning, and your duties went
undone. Remember your dissertation paper? Remember how you never worried about finishing it? That was my enchantment, draining away your ambition!”

  “What? A paper?” he scoffed. No force on earth killed love as quickly as the realization that one had been played a fool. He clung to this, struggling to tear his heart back from her uncaring clutches. “Do you think I am vexed with such petty things as this?”

  “You promised your teachers, did you not? So you broke your word. This made my enchantment stronger, for next, I was able to lure you to the island of Sark, you and your lovely bright sword, to meet with Manfred and tour his house, while Manfred was about to be eaten alive by the sea-hag, my mother. Had you been diligent, the lure of seeing me on outings would have passed you by, and the deeper lures I sank into you later.”

  And, when Lanval had no answer to this, she turned her head. “How did you escape her, by the way? My mother, I mean.” This last she called across the chamber, to where Mandragora was standing, holding the wand with both hands, with the open brass flask on the floor beneath the heel of the wand. His expression was weary. She said, “My mother Ran was worshipped as a goddess in times of old, and the blood of children spilled into the sea to feed her, and your King Arthur took that all away from her. How did you survive her?”

  Mandragora said, “I was unafraid, because her grisly hut on chicken legs, filled with the bones of her victims, looked to my eyes like an ill-kept middle-class house. I thought I was a student visiting the home of my prospective inlaws, and so I was polite, even though greatly tempted not to be. And I said my grace before the meal, and so I was not thrown into the soup pot and cooked. What fairy in the history of the world has ever slain a mortal man who was courteous?”

  She sneered, “The djinn have not such niceties to mind. As soon as your wounded arm is wearied, and you drop the wand again, the djinn will tear you limb from limb!” Then to Lanval, she said, “Do you see how he suffers, how he bleeds? All this is your doing. Every night we came together in unholy concupiscence, I drained a little more from you of your manliness and might, a little more of your virtue and purity, until you were my puppet and his betrayer; a wretch who has dealt a grievous wound to his friend.