by Стив Хиллард
She stood still for maybe three seconds to confirm the gut-raw certainty that this was real. It was a man, but what she really saw was the unwavering focus of a wolf looking out from the eyeholes of a man-mask.
The look was exacting, the binocular stare of the predator that detects distance by the centimeter, that reads bearing, alertness, and fear like beloved poetry.
This particular rendition of a derelict human was different from the wild taxicab driver of her fist night in the city. This … thing was inexplicably fat, almost corpulent. He had hair that looked like moldy hay. He was dressed in a filthy blanket, billowy and bearing witness to hygienic breakdown. But the eyes revealed that it was all a costume. They said here lies a true monster, a thing sent, a creature capable of surprising quickness that was unstoppably coming for her.
She turned and clambered aboard a waiting bus. Anything to get away, anywhere. The door whooshed shut, and the bus rumbled into traffic. She watched the large man dwindle on the street corner, turning to study the colored route map of the city bus system.
Cadence dug in her purse for Bossier Thornton’s card.
His phone rolled to voice mail. She paused then said, “… Uh, Bossier, this is Cadence Grande. From yesterday. Could you please give me a call? It’s … urgent.” She left her number and hung up.
After exiting the bus a dozen blocks from where she saw the strange man, Cadence walked directionless as a disturbed ant. She finally stopped looking over her shoulder and bumping into people. She sat, exhausted, in a space amidst a long row of lunch-eaters perched on the edge of a fountain. Through a high cleft in skyscrapers, sunshine shot down, creating a narrow hall of bright light. The light and the crowd made her feel safer.
She regulated her breathing and tried to assemble the jigsaw puzzle. The careful reasoning of a few moments ago was out the window now.
Her cell phone rang: 213 area code. L.A. Absolutely the last person she wanted to talk to. She listened until the last ring and took the call.
As usual, no hello.
“Cadence, Mel. Listen. Great news. I’ve received an offer for the manuscripts. Through another agent. Anonymous client. It’s a sale. A hundred grand for all the documents. As is, just the way they are. That’s a hell of a deal! Especially when you have nothing, really. They could take all this away with a court order.”
“Who said anything was for sale?” Her anger momentarily pushed back the tide of fear.
“Cadence, that’s my job. I’m not a potted plant here. What did you expect me to do?”
“I guess be like you are, like everyone else. Bois-Gilbert put a lot of money on the table just for spilling my guts on French TV. Even more for letting them have all the documents.”
“And?”
“I knew you’d say that. Just that way. It would help pay off my grandfather’s debts. But it would sell out what he left. I said no. I don’t trust them.”
“You’re right. Bois-Gilbert is an idiot. I was just playing there. Here’s a real deal. Maybe we should counter. Keep some rights, sure. But how am I gonna help you if—”
“Tell them no.”
“Look, if we don’t act now, there could be no residuals for anyone.”
“Jesus, Mel.”
“Come on kid. This—”
Click. Man, that felt good.
The phone rang again. She thought it would be Mel, but it wasn’t. She answered.
“Cadence? Bossier Thornton.”
“Oh yes, thank you! It’s been … very hectic … since I saw you.”
“You sound nervous. You all right?”
“Well, to be honest I’ve been worried that someone is following me, a stalker type. He’s gone now. I just thought I’d call you.”
“You did the right thing. Are you in danger now?”
“Oh no, I’m in a public place, corner of Sixth Avenue and Fifty-second Street.”
“OK, good. Just be careful and stay with the crowd in public places. Are you sure you’re safe?”
“Yes. I’m all right. Thank you for calling back.”
“I can be there if you want …”
“No, I’m all right for now.”
“Call me if he shows up again. It was nice meeting you the other day. Did you find out anything else about your documents?”
“More that I would have imagined. These seem to be very interesting to a lot of people. I appreciate your help. The library just told me to come on over. I hope I didn’t intrude.”
“Not at all. I’m only there once a week. Sort of a volunteer thing. NYPD lets me do it so I can practice with their gizmos.”
They said good-bye. She felt better, knowing there was a decent, slightly oddball, sane person to turn to. The Algonquin was only a few blocks away. She decided not to trouble Osley with her latest scare. He needed to concentrate.
Unfortunately, waiting for her when she checked on him in his room, was Osley the Wrecked. He looked like he’d slept, if at all, on a rack of nails.
“Osley, what gives?”
“I haven’t slept so well. Looking at, working with these documents, after so long. At first they seemed like old, interesting friends. But then I felt their spell. A siren song that is turning into a maddening screech in my head.”
She set out the food from Orkney’s and made him stop and eat.
After awhile he recovered to ragged good spirits. He resumed his work. His eye and hand once again became a relentless team as the pile of translations grew. Pieces of a time and a world emerged, some from the middle and some from the beginning, but none telling of Ara. He gave her a report. “Her fate seems lost. A fate of its own kind.” Then he resumed with dogged intensity until, without explanation he just stood up.
She looked up just in time to see him leaving. “Where are you going?”
“Out for a bit. Meet me at two this afternoon at our library table. I found her trail. The name is spelled differently, but the story fits. The pages are on the desk.”
“But …” The door closed.
Cadence thought about Osley’s mercurial tendencies. If he were a playing card, he’d be the One-Eyed Jack. She needed to see the other side of that face. Before she left, she would find the moment to corner him and flip that face card over.
She stacked a foursome of oreos and picked up the scrawled yellow sheets. As she munched and smiled, she felt as if she sat right next to Ara as they blended into the torch-lit Great Room of Prince Thorn’s castle:
“Hwat!” announced the crier, and the banquet began. Threescore gentlemen and ladies, amidst laden tables and bustling servants, spread down the axis of the vaulted room.
Ara, seated at a side table of minor guests — most appearing to be wanderers and emissaries from distant lands — tried to match the nobles with the wild tales and earnest warnings given to her by Lady Bregan. In those few hours since she entered the castle, the Lady had provided a short oral history of the realm. “A place where, by the patronage of my father the king, the arts of verse and tale have grown strong and bold. It is such great irony,” she sat at the main feasting table and looked past Ara, “that we huddle here next to the Great Blackness and yet are allowed to idle and make merry. So long as we muster no army, and pretend to neutrality, we are overlooked.”
“And where is your king?” Ara asked.
“Gone. Perhaps lost to us.” She paused. “We have neither tidings from him nor demand of ransom. In our world, that means ill. Even were he dead by someone’s hand, they would seek our treasury as bounty for the return of his bones.”
She shook her head and looked to her hands, as if they were little dead birds. “We warned and pleaded, but he said that the arts are vital, even as woe and fear spread through the lands. He was asked to come to the north. Our troupe would perform for a great stipend. We last heard that he was en route, entering a domain at the far end of the Northern Road. Then all has been silence. Each visitor we politely interrogate. Have you heard any news that may help?”
A
ra knew a truth here, and decided to reveal it. “My lady, you have been most gracious, and I must tell you that there are no longer any domains north of the few villages that huddle where that road ends to a mere track. I have been there not two months ago, and I know those lands by my own reckoning. If the king journeyed there, he was misled for some ill purpose. But of his specific journey, I know not.”
“This confirms the worst. I fear I have no father and we have no king.”
Ara realized the sadness she had now given in return for kindness and hospitality.
“I am sorry, my lady. Perhaps he journeys here by paths unplanned, as many are forced in these days. But what of the Prince?”
“Prince Thorn,” said the lady, “though he is my brother and is dear to me, has fallen under the influence of a certain dissolute and disreputable knight. They drink and revel and squander the thin coin of safety by which we survive. We are on a precipice, and they jest and pimp the emissaries of the very hand that can destroy us.”
Ara, sensing that this hole was getting deeper and that the ear was the best instrument of policy, nodded with empathy. Lady Bregan then revealed more, “I must tell you, that there have been questions, raised at our borders, subtle inquiries, as to whether any of your size and appearance has ever entered our realm. Thus far, we have had the luxury of truth and could say ‘None.’ Now that you are here, I know not what our policy will be.”
Ara was totally alert now. “Were the questioners of fell mien? Wraiths on black horses?”
“I saw them not, but their inquiry was relayed to the prince as one more signal of our failing sovereignty. He no doubt will speak to you.”
“When?”
“Perhaps now, as the banquet begins. Do you hear the cry?”
Ara listened as a voice from somewhere on high, echoed through the castle.
“To sup and be merry! To sup!”
The lady whispered, “Be attuned. Much will unfold as the evening grows. We are a nation that lives in theatre and, I fear, at times cannot tell our own lives from the tales we spin. Let us go”
The prince, fair and tall, stood and eyed the room while roasted meats and root vegetables on steaming platters were served. His eyes stopped on Ara, as if he knew much of her already, and then moved on.
As of one great voice on queue, the assemblage of actors roared, “Hail to the Prince!”
“Hail, yes!” answered Thorn. Ara watched his careless swagger.
After a further filling of flagons, he stood.
“Our first toast,” he said in voice loud and clear, “even before we hear a tale, is to our king, Lady Bregan’s and my father, and to his safe return!”
The entire hall duly stood and, to a loud “Here, here!” all drank their flagons to the last drop. Other toasts followed in close order. A noble of dubious lineage but definite girth rose, unsteady as if that were his steady state, and intoned in voice deep, resonant, and intoxicated.
“Now the sun is in her retreat. A fair hot wench, but not of our time. Our mistress is the moon, under whose countenance we do plot. We that live as good neighbors to the Dour Eye should do him a favor. He is too downcast and graceless. ‘Cheer up!’ I tell him, by his minions’ ears. ‘Come and drink with us, and let us conspire together to wind a bawdy tale, and much redeeming will be done. What of passion, and lust, and gentle grace, and the good gift of irony at our fate? Or do you, Red Eye, know only of the hunger to complete your darkness and then blow out the torch?’ There’s no irony there, and perhaps that’s the crux. His minions may yet visit us this eve, and we shall once more give it a try. My prince.”
At this, the servants all grabbed the torches from the walls and with wet skins extinguished them all at once. Only the flickering light from the huge hearth illuminated the hall, now washed in yellow glow. Four players in outlandish minstrel costumes vaulted into the hall, one from each direction, and landed as one, each upright on a separate table. They spoke in turn, back and forth, full and clear across the hall, the crowd turning to each voice:
Cadence stopped reading for a moment. The day had grown to noon. She would have to go to the Library soon. She settled in the overstuffed chair and picked up where she left off:
“A tale to be told at every feast! And of a good tale none can foretell where it may lead. For each is but a setting out on a road that may reveal a hidden gate.”
“Our tale is of our times.”
“A Prospect of This Middling Earth is our humble title.”
“Though its very prospect may deal with its end.”
“An end to be commenced on strands far remote, with furious close of butchery!”
“With great losings and findings. As of our noble King, lost in lands beyond our horizon.”
“And findings of a token precious, that does awake great strategies and cause this very age to shake and convulse with self-inflicted change!”
“As the lantern doth signify that night has fallen, so this token, despite its scale as but a coin pence in the hand, tells us that a night has come from which this age may not awake.”
“A changing, clear as the sudden smell of fall over the northern horizon, now comes to us.”
“And for our age, as certainly as we ask the sky each for ourselves, what will be left, and who shall care?”
“Will any tattered pennant, carried forth today with great bravery and purpose, flutter in the world to follow?”
“Will any word, or name of place, or keep of tumbled stone survive to speak of us to the ages to come?”
“This we ask, as your humble entertainers of this night. We who are but students in this land of word-masters the equals of whom do not strive in Middle-earth. Will even our august tales live on?”
“Will some quaint word, like a lost artifact lifted from the farmer’s plowed row, give birth to the story from whence it came?”
“Fools, all of us! For with this coming whirlwind there shall survive but tatters.”
“Be silent!” thundered Prince Thorn as he suddenly appeared standing on another table. A hushed silence settled on the crowd. “My troupe has set well the stage, but they do lament the final fall of a blade that may yet be turned to the side.”
The guests were rapt as he continued. “I shall now unclasp a secret book. And with your quick-conceiving discontents I shall share a matter dangerous and deep.”
Unveiling it from a robe, and undoing its brass hinge, he held forth a heavy, leather-bound book, its pages thick and warped, and its writing dark on the yellowed vellum as from a heavy hand.
“Minstrels, you despair too quickly. Yes, we are not of warlike powers. Yes, we are surrounded. But we are armed nonetheless. This is our weapon!”
The book he extended and slowly turned so that all could see.
“Its edge is subtle, yet it cuts. It stays both our enemies — the lesser and the greater. The Dark Lord, and Time.”
He knelt and placed the book solemnly on the table on which he stood. Rising, he spoke again.
“Now, I know well that among us tonight is some disguised ear, bought by the Great Evil that borders our land. Listen then, ears of friend and foe. I shall address the lesser enemy first. We raise no arms, nor hinder his armies crossing our sovereign; indeed, we tithe our share to the coffers that feed his war machine. Granted, rings have been neither offered nor accepted, and thus the unbreakable Vow of Protection does not exist between our realms. Nonetheless we sleep well, for our treaty among men stands intact. The terms of our contract of peace we honor in full to thee.”
There it is again, Cadence thought, this “vow” that was highlighted in the Wraith-poem.
Thorn’s arms were outspread.
“Champion of the Oppressed, Ringmaker, Spell-Holder over Mighty Kings, Adversary, Familiar of Evil, Eye of Menace, Bastard Spawn of all Witches,” He hesitated for a dramatic count. “Master of the Source. Supplicant of … Bind.”
His arms and his voice dropped.
“And for our contract, we e
njoy the security that allows us to mock him and ridicule his many names. But mark this! Our survival is not cowardly groveling. It is not so that we may babble strong language to the wind but not to the face of our enemies. We do not mutter low-breathed in fear.
“Our weapons are the words we speak. Remember this: words are acts. They cut like sand in a windstorm. They break the rocks of untruth like the seepage of water and spread of roots into crevices. Winter and summer they break the rock. Thus did my father, the king, take pilgrimage to spread words of hope against our mighty neighbors. May the king return to us!”
He became silent. The hearth light flickered off wall and ceiling, glowed faces upturned and flashed glints of light in many eyes.
“In a moment, I shall tell you one part of a famous story, a saga crucial to remember in our time. For, of the great kings that fell before the false songs of the rings, this one, this man, this king, defied the overture of the Dark Confuser. A hero he should be, the greatest of men whose glory-song and exploits should be recounted at hearthside a thousand years from now. His should be a tale to rival brigand dragon-slayers and trove-thieves. His name should be honored in the Great Lays.
“But without our voice, and the ear and the memory it serves, his tale will pass. Few of these lays, I fear, will survive the unraveling of this age. Perchance some fragment may survive in some vault to be unearthed and seen with fresh eyes. Our greatest enemy, then, lurks not on our borders, but here. There are no curse-names for it. It is simpler. It is time.
“Against this, the greater foe, we yet have some power. For words and tales may float on its great tide. The very commerce of our kingdom is our tales. These, some of them at least, may live on.
“Now note this well. Should they ever be stilled, with their bridle cut so that none may ride them, then will the world turn to ash. That fate is not of our time, for we bequeath both well-cobbled roads and secret gates to all that may walk in the continuing story. We live here by the tales of forebears and the bonds of our stories. So long as the tale is freely told, it and we may live on.”