Iron Chamber of Memory

by John C. Wright

  “No, I mean I am about to betray you yet again! You are still alive. Am I to go back, deliberately, knowing that I am to fall in love with the long-haired Laureline! Is she not yours?”

  Manfred scoffed. “Don’t talk nonsense. In no sense was she mine. I never touched her, I never truly loved her. She lied about that, as she did about most things. In the Red Chamber, she was someone I was suspicious about; in the Lotus Chamber, she was my mortal enemy. Be at peace, my friend. You will love her and she will love you.”

  “But no more did she truly love me,” he protested. “That was simple lust, and seduction so that a lamia could get close to me.”

  “Ah, but the Grail is in this House! Lust is a dangerous thing to play around with, especially for a young woman. How easy for that base desire to transform into golden love!”

  “What happens now to you?”

  “Holidays and sport! As for me, my whole family is waiting, all the way back to my most remote ancestors, and we are going hunting in the place humans only see as a dark forest beyond the house. Our game? We hunt lost souls, we huntsmen of the light and our wolfhounds run before us! We are looking for our next Lorelei to turn into a Laurel.”

  “But when I go out there again, I will think you are dead. Won’t I be sad?”

  “Not if you listen to the small, still, quiet voice deep inside you.”

  Epilogue: The Dark Boneyard

  By one of those queer and ancient laws with which some corners of the British Isles are still afflicted, the burial of the Seigneurs of Sark must be held after sunset. In the light of the many torches and lanterns held by the villagers, the thing was done. The Bishop of Winchester, Father Ælfsige, recited the words from memory, without opening the great black book in his hands.

  Hal could not help but wonder how differently things had been done in times gone by, or in old places where the old ways had not been forgotten. All the stones and monuments of the Hathaway family, and the Collings family before them, the Allaires, and the De Carterets, stood within eyesight of the great house, south and west of the chapel, almost at the low stone wall separating the lawns from the ancient wood. With the dead buried by each family in its own yard, or at the church at the center of the village, none would forget them, nor would they seem departed by so great a distance.

  Hal stood there, sunk in utter misery. His best friend had died in a freak carriage accident. It was almost beyond imagining. The incident had taken place at speeds even the slowest lane on a modern highway would have found a snail’s pace. The horse, startled by some sickly and thin drunk whom no one knew, had stumbled down a green slope, smashing the carriage to bits along rocky outcroppings. Hal’s pangs of inner pain started not when he saw Laurel crawl unharmed from the upset carriage, for then his heart leaped for joy; but when Manfred did not follow her, and Hal knew his heart had not plunged down in grief as far as it should have done. Manfred had thrown his arms over the girl when the carriage flipped, and one jagged metal spar had disemboweled him, while another splinter pierced his back as he shielded her, penetrating his heart and ending his life as suddenly as a sword blow. That her mother had died in the same accident was merely one grief piled upon another.

  As the days passed, Hal’s misery grew. He was still tormented by his love and longing for the green-eyed girl. Her hair had been half-torn from her head in the accident, and now she sheared the rest of it off in grief. Years and years of growth had been clipped away and she almost seemed a different woman. The outpouring of love and support for her from the islanders, especially Mrs. Levrier and Mrs. Columbine, the housekeeper and the cook, affected Laurel in a way Hal had not known she could be affected.

  Hal returned to Oxford and turned in his dissertation. When Dr. Vodonoy had leveled, merely for reasons of personal spite, accusations that Hal had plagiarized the work, the Dean of Graduates ordered the Ethics Committee to look into the matter. As it turned out, Hal had been so worried about the lapses of memory his loss of sleep and overwork had brought on, he had asked Mr. Drake, his landlord, to make photocopies of every single scrap of paper on his desk every day, in the stationary shop next door. But Mr. Drake never returned for his copies, and the clerk there, in a very tidy fashion, had filed them away chronologically, clipped to the receipts, which showed the dates. Hence his landlord could show the Dean a stack of papers as high as his chin showing the exact daily progress of the paper. Hal had seemed so lax only because nine-tenths of the dissertation had been done in the first month.

  When the accusations turned out to be false, Vodonoy was shamed, and forced to resign.

  Oddly, he also died shortly thereafter. After visiting the smoke shop of Mr. Drake, and berating and threatening the man whom he blamed for the ruin of his career, Dr. Vodonoy was found burned to death the next day, for he had fallen asleep while smoking in bed a rather fine cigar he had just purchased, and it had caught the mattress on fire.

  The death was so freakish and odd, and Vodonoy so unloved among the students, that when Hal heard two underclassmen making a crude joke about the matter, Hal laughed, and then, a moment later, when his conscience fell on him like a sea wave, he felt truly horrible. Was he a monster, rejoicing in the death of everyone?

  The guilt was unbearable. Manfred had died a hero’s death. And yet that horrible and traitorous spark of hope and love and longing would not be quenched in Hal’s heart. Was he glad his best friend was dead? The idea was so terrible, that he wished he lived in some world where a magic spell could sponge away all memory of his life, and leave him innocent again.

  With such thoughts as these, he went and found an old church, and entered the booth and said his confession, even though it had been so long he had forgotten the formula. The voice from beyond the grille, blessing him with pardon and peace, also asked him a pointed question or two, and offered merely frank advice, but which, in this place, at that time, seemed almost supernatural. “Do not run away from this widow you love until she remembers her feelings, whatever they are, for you. Wait a year and a day.”

  His first impulse was to flee away from Sark and the strange house forever, and never lay eyes on it again. And yet, to Laurel, he was a firm and close friend, and she asked him to the funeral quite naturally, never imagining the storm of passion in his heart he hid from her so skillfully. And the priest’s words convinced him not to obey this first impulse.

  When he saw her by the light of the one candle held below her chin, now with her short pageboy bob of hair beneath her veil of mourning, he saw her face somehow wiser and sadder than he had ever seen it. Her saw her lips move, whispering prayers he had never heard her say before.

  One by one, the mourners dropped their spent candles into the grave, and the diggers threw dirt atop the coffin.

  And, afterward, he saw her blessing the villagers who loved her and whom she loved. Liam Levrier doffed his cap, and knelt, and kissed her hand, and Laurel looked as regal as a princess then, and nothing sly and ironic was in her looks, and there was no bitterness at the edges of her lips.

  When the line of mourners started walking back toward the house, she stepped over to Hal then, and smiled at him, and took his hand. He was ashamed at how his hand seemed to tingle at her touch, trembling with joy.

  Laurel walked slowly, letting the others get ahead, and out of earshot.

  In the starry darkness of that unlit island, her voice seemed clear as music, and he was painfully aware of her nearness, her warmth, her scent. “I have a confession to make,” she said softly. “For a time, I blamed you for his death.”

  Hal started to speak. She laid her silk-gloved fingers on his lips, silencing him. She said, “It is unfair, I know, but I found myself so full of doubts right before the wedding, and my mind was wandering. I think it was beginning to affect my memory. Do you remember the time we went golfing, just to have a day off, just to escape from the stress? I never did find out why you walked off in such a huff. But I so enjoyed that day. It was a time when I could truly be myself,
say what I liked without calculating, just walk along with a friend. It is as if I remembered myself then. Well, I found myself thinking about you … a little too much, maybe. And that all came back in a rush when Manny died. So, unfair as it is, I blamed you. As if you had wished for him to die.”

  “I would hang myself before I would wish him harm,” said Hal.

  “No, don’t do that. It is a sin. And besides, you would look ridiculous.” She squeezed his arm. “But at the graveside now, when I was saying goodbye to Manny, I had this strange feeling. It was as if I were the damsel in some old story, about to be eaten by a vampire or a sea monster or something, and that you saved my life. As if you had helped Manfred win for me something very precious, something I had not known I’d lost.”

  Hal was bewildered. “What does that mean?”

  “I mean, I felt grateful. While you never saved me from a monster, you did save me from my old life. It was just a little thing. A day on the golf course. But I decided to stop being an actress in my own life, to stop putting on airs and putting on acts. I want to be an honest woman. And who convinced me to do it? You did.”

  “I was not trying to.”

  “It is like a dance. If you try too hard, if you look at your feet, you stumble. So you look at your partner. You let him lead.”

  He shook his head, too choked by guilt to speak a word. But then the feeling that Manfred was standing behind him, just behind him, was so strong he stopped walking, and dropped the girl’s hand and turned.

  The night was darker now, and the pale stones of the graveyard seemed to float in the night. The cross above the grave of Manfred seemed like a somber face with level eyes, and a crease of a frown. It looked like Manfred’s own expression. It seemed to be speaking to him, and offering a blessing. You will love her and she will love you.

  All at once, Hal realized with undeniable clarity that Manfred and Laurel would have eventually come to hate each other, had he lived. Manfred, in a very real sense, had sacrificed his life to save his wife.

  She stepped closer and looked up at his face, to see his expression in the starlight. “What are you thinking?”

  “I just had a strange thought. What if the dead are still among us? What if they watch over how we live, and know what we make of the gifts they give us, and see what we make of the world they left to us?”

  For it seemed to him then that Manfred did not want his young bride to live in friendless solitude all her life. Time would pass and life would continue. For now, Hal could be a friend and a stout support to Laurel in her grief, and help her however he could. Perhaps in a year and a day, perhaps longer, Hal could speak his feelings.

  The girl took his arm in both her hands, and pressed her cheek against his shoulder. He put his arm around her. She walked with the grace of a dancer on a darkened stage, with no need to see her feet, and he marched like a soldier in a night march, who need not know his captain’s hidden plans to love and trust and follow him. All the questions in his heart were calm.

  Together, they walked down a dark path toward a strange house, not knowing what fate held, but, perhaps, beginning to know what was held in each other’s hearts.

  SCIENCE FICTION

  Awake in the Night by John C. Wright

  Awake in the Night Land by John C. Wright

  City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis by John C. Wright

  Somewhither by John C. Wright

  Back From the Dead by Rolf Nelson

  Big Boys Don't Cry by Tom Kratman

  Hyperspace Demons by Jonathan Moeller

  On a Starry Night by Tedd Roberts

  Do Buddhas Dream of Enlightened Sheep by Josh M. Young

  QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

  QUANTUM MORTIS Gravity Kills by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

  QUANTUM MORTIS A Mind Programmed by Jeff Sutton, Jean Sutton, and Vox Day

  Victoria: A Novel of Fourth Generation War by Thomas Hobbes

  FANTASY

  One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright

  The Book of Feasts & Seasons by John C. Wright

  Iron Chamber of Memory by John C. Wright

  A Magic Broken by Vox Day

  A Throne of Bones by Vox Day

  The Wardog's Coin by Vox Day

  The Last Witchking by Vox Day

  Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy by Vox Day

  The Altar of Hate by Vox Day

  The War in Heaven by Theodore Beale

  The World in Shadow by Theodore Beale

  The Wrath of Angels by Theodore Beale

  MILITARY SCIENCE FICTION

  There Will Be War Vol. I ed. Jerry Pournelle

  There Will Be War Vol. II ed. Jerry Pournelle

  There Will Be War Vol. III ed. Jerry Pournelle

  There Will Be War Vol. IV ed. Jerry Pournelle

  There Will Be War Vol. IX ed. Jerry Pournelle

  There Will Be War Vol. X ed. Jerry Pournelle

  Riding the Red Horse Vol. 1 ed. Tom Kratman and Vox Day

  Riding the Red Horse Vol. 2 ed. Tom Kratman and Vox Day

  NON-FICTION

  4th Generation Warfare Handbook by William S. Lind and LtCol Gregory A. Thiele, USMC

  A History of Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind by Martin van Creveld

  Equality: The Impossible Quest by Martin van Creveld

  Four Generations of Modern War by William S. Lind

  On War: The Collected Columns of William S. Lind 2003-2009 by William S. Lind

  Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright

  Astronomy and Astrophysics by Dr. Sarah Salviander

  Compost Everything: The Good Guide to Extreme Composting by David the Good

  Grow or Die: The Good Guide to Survival Gardening by David the Good

  SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police by Vox Day

  Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America by John Red Eagle and Vox Day

  On the Existence of Gods by Dominic Saltarelli and Vox Day

  CASTALIA CLASSICS

  The Programmed Man by Jean and Jeff Sutton

  Apollo at Go by Jeff Sutton

  First on the Moon by Jeff Sutton

  AUDIOBOOKS

  A Magic Broken, narrated by Nick Afka Thomas

  Four Generations of Modern War, narrated by William S. Lind

  A History of Strategy, narrated by Jon Mollison

  Grow or Die, narrated by David the Good

  Extreme Composting, narrated by David the Good

  Cuckservative, narrated by Thomas Landon

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