He had never met a real poet before. And he was never likely to run into another one who had been dead for several centuries.
CHAPTER TEN
Helen walked along the marbled pavement which shone blue and green in the afternoon sun. It was cold beneath her feet; she could feel the iciness even through her shoes. The blues and greens swirled together in all kinds of liquid patterns, and the pavement seemed like a frozen stream.
There was no dust in the Forbidden City. Like Castle Mirasol, Ora Lamae was a dead and haunted place, but in a very different fashion. Castle Mirasol had been condemned to age and decay and rot as it stood, but Ora Lamae seemed to have been simply melted into slag and re-solidified to the texture of petrified wood, crystallized for all eternity.
Once, Ora Lamae had been the pearl of World’s Edge, a city of semi-precious stone. Every brick of every building had been carved with care and decorated. The streets had been covered by exotic metal strips over which magical cars might glide. The people, too, it was said, had been beautiful—clothed in many-coloured silks, with skins that were smooth and eyes as bright as sapphires. But that was long ago, or “once upon a time,” as the stories had it. Now….
Spells of awesome power had long since crashed the mighty buildings with fists of fearsome heat, turned their hard lines soft and left them shapeless lumps. All the patterns of the city were blurred now, smudged and creased, all semblance of order lost.
Ora Lamae now held only the deformed ghosts of all its palaces and domes, arches and spires. Everything that the people had built, war and magic had obliterated, leaving only the mockery of ruins.
Huge black birds with bald heads gathered in the wreckage now—carrion birds which flew by night into the wider world but which hid by day, here, where no one would see them or care. The birds watched Helen as she walked the streets of the city, resentful of her presence. She ignored them.
Helen’s was not the only unwanted presence disturbing the sanctuary of the vultures. She realized as much when she heard the music. At first, she could not make it out, but when she was closer she realized that it was someone playing a guitar. She had not heard music played since Sirion Hilversun’s hands had become so stiff that it was painful for him to pluck the strings of his ancient harp. She herself had only ever learned to play the flute, not very well.
She recognized the tune that was being played as an old song which belonged by tradition to this part of the world—perhaps more to the magic lands than to Caramorn. She tried to recall the words but couldn’t. They were lost in the forsaken memories of her childhood.
Ewan was concentrating hard. He had the feeling of the instrument by now, and he felt that despite Wynkyn’s less-than-complimentary comments he wasn’t doing too badly. He might not know many tunes, but he thought he could pick out a few competently enough, and the instrument seemed to be helping him. Though he hated to admit it, it was a much finer guitar than any his father had ever made.
It took him some time to realize that he was no longer alone. As soon as he noticed the girl, though, he stopped playing and put the instrument down.
“Hello,” he said.
Helen was standing on a crude pedestal of once molten rock, which might have been a fountain or a pillar in days of old. She looked down at Ewan, who was sitting on the pavement resting his back against a blue-white lump that might have been almost anything. She frowned, wondering who on earth this could be, and not answering his greeting.
“Do you come here often?” asked Ewan, not sure whether it was a joke or not.
“No one comes here,” she said. “Not ever.”
Ewan shrugged. “That makes you the lamia,” he said. “But you’re not supposed to come out except at night. What it makes me, I’m not entirely sure.”
Helen felt that this comment was slightly irreverent. But she was suddenly struck by the thought that perhaps it hadn’t been Prince Damian who had disenchanted Methwold forest after all.
“Who are you?” she asked, bluntly.
“My name’s Ewan,” he replied. “Are you the lamia? If you’ll pardon me saying so, you don’t look like someone who lives on other people’s blood.”
“Of course I’m not the lamia,” said Helen, brusquely.
“Ah, well,” said Ewan, with fake sadness. “Never mind.”
“What are you doing here?” asked Helen. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m waiting for the lamia.” “Why?”
“Oh,” said Ewan, airily. “I’ve always thought that I ought to try and make new acquaintances, widen the circle of my friends… that sort of thing. Today seemed just right for making a start. And I don’t know any lamias, so….”
Helen knew that her mouth was hanging open in astonishment, but couldn’t quite muster the energy to shut it. This was too much. She took a couple of minutes to muster her composure, during which time the boy gazed at her steadily.
“Well,” she said, finally. “I’ll wait with you. When the lamia turns up you can introduce me.”
Ewan grinned. “I will,” he promised. “Just as soon as I find out her name.” He was still staring, but now Helen met his stare, and he quickly dropped his gaze, looking down at the guitar. He put out his hand and rippled the strings lightly.
“That’s a beautiful guitar,” said Helen, descending from her pedestal to stand beside him.
‘True,” said Ewan. “A present from a dead poet.”
“A poet?”
“Well,” said Ewan, remembering the verses he had read in the early hours of the morning, “that’s his story.”
“Who are you?” asked Helen, again.
“As I recall,” said Ewan, “it was you who didn’t answer the question. I’m Ewan, son of an instrument-maker in Jessamy, currently on vacation from the University of Heliopolis.
Helen said nothing.
“All right,” said Ewan, “I’ll tell you. You’re Helen Hilversun, and you didn’t believe the first answer, so you came to check up. And now you know that Prince Damian’s sitting at home in the palace while other people run his errands. Right?”
Helen laughed. “Right,” she agreed.
“How’s Castle Mirasol?” asked Ewan.
“Clean as a new pin,” replied Helen. She felt more comfortable, now. It seemed rather obvious now that she thought about it. Of course it hadn’t been Damian who had disenchanted Methwold. “You’re cheats,” she added. “You and Damian both. This isn’t fair.”
‘True,” admitted Ewan. “I suppose you could say that all was not fair and above board. I guess you could call the whole thing off if you wanted to. Do you want to?”
“Are you talking about the marriage or the spell?”
“Both.”
“I don’t want to marry Damian, and I won’t. But the spell…. I suppose you know that we can’t stop now.”
Ewan nodded. “I did have an inkling,” he admitted.
“Why did you get involved?” asked Helen.
“The prime minister. He appealed to my sense of loyalty. He also applied a little gentle blackmail. I could have refused, but it would have been difficult… and I was a little bit fascinated by the whole thing. Why does anyone get involved with anything?”
“You were manipulated. By Jeahawn the Judge.”
Ewan shrugged. “Maybe just a little bit,” he said. “What difference does it make? He pushed us, we let him. We’re in now. The question is: how do we get out?”
“You’re either very brave,” said Helen, “or you’re an idiot.”
“Actually,” replied Ewan, “those are pretty much the same alternative conclusions I reached myself. Why don’t
you sit down. Dusk will fall soon. Then we’ll see action.”
Helen sat down beside him. The pavement felt very cold, even through the thickness of her jeans.
“We’ll have to see it through,” she said.
“I guessed so,” said Ewan.
“We could get ourselves killed,” she added.
“Maybe,” h
e replied. “But this thing is intended go through. There are forces working for us as well as against us. I got the guitar last night, special delivery; It’s the thing that’s supposed to enable me to get the lamia to reveal her secret name. If I had to bet I’d say that you’ll get a little something to help with this Zemmoul character. I presume you’re acquainted with Fiora?”
“It’s a waterfall,” said Helen, glumly. “It falls into a bottomless pool. And in the pool…”
“… lives something pretty horrible. I see.”
“It’s a very big monster,” said Helen.
“We can take him,” Ewan assured her. “With a lit help from Wynkyn.”
“We?” queried Helen.
“Certainly,” said Ewan. “It’s not a competition any more. Or if it is, we’re on the same side. Two of us together must stand a better chance at all stages of the pattern. Right?”
Helen looked at him, uneasily.
“Or were you thinking of going back to Moonmansion now?” he asked. “Now that you’ve checked up and found out the truth?”
She shook her head. “I’m staying,” she said.
“Bravery?” he asked. “Or idiocy?”
“Who knows?”
Silence fell. Ewan picked up the guitar, laid it across his knee, and stroked the strings, just enough to bring
forth a long, sweet note.
“What are Hamur and Sheal?” he asked.
“Gates,” she replied. “Gates to nowhere. They stand above the limitless abyss. Sometimes, in the old days, things used to come through them. Terrible things. But not for many, many years.”
“What about people going through from this side?”
“No one ever does,” she told him. “And if they do…”
“… they don’t come back. This is a very predictable business, once you get into it. Isn’t it?”
She didn’t answer. After a pause, she said: “Do you think the will was intended just for us? Or might it have been anyone?”
“Anyone, I should think,” said Ewan. “I’m no one special. Or perhaps it was intended for you and Prince Damian, and I’m just an unexpected substitute. I wonder if Damian can play the guitar?”
“Maybe,” she said, “it selected us because we just happen to be the right people. The people who can do it.”
There was a good deal of wishful thinking in this suggestion. But Ewan thought that they were both entitled to a little wishful thinking. He nodded optimistic agreement. Then he extended his hand towards her. She took it, and clasped it firmly. Then, with that agreement very much in mind, they waited quietly for dusk to fall.
Sirion Hilversun never usually worried overmuch about losing things. It often happened that he’d put something away and then forget where he’d find it. Usually, though, he’d remember as soon as it was time for him to stumble across it again. In addition, he could normally be sure that he would, when the time came, remember.
These days, however, he was perpetually lost in a welter of confusion. He sat in his room while evening fell, lost in an endless maze of reminiscence which suddenly seemed so empty, realizing that he had virtually no consciousness of the future left at all.
“Everything,” he thought, “is so dim and so dark. If only I’d kept a diary! Just a few minutes each night, before bed, writing down the principle events of the day to come. I’d have got into the habit…. I’d have been
able to keep my memories disciplined. But no, I always had to muddle along, letting yesterday get mixed up with tomorrow, never knowing when I was up to, trusting to luck that I’d know when I was when I got then. If I had a diary to look back on I’d be able to sort out the shape of my life, find some sense and sequence. But as it is I’m just lost. Too old. Dying. I don’t even know whether it’s just that I can’t remember the future or whether there isn’t any future to remember. Perhaps the world’s coming to an end, and I don’t even know it. I don’t remember dying… but I don’t suppose people ever do. It’s one of those things that always creeps up on you, is death. You never see it hiding nearby. I used to think that I might be young forever… even immortal. I suppose the day I began to remember growing old was the day I started growing old. What strange things memories are! How can you trust them, when they play such tricks… ?
As the thoughts slipped away, the silence that surrounded him became ominously obvious. The shadows cast by the evening sunlight that streamed through the window extended themselves slowly across the carpet.
“Helen…” he thought. “I must ask Helen….”
But it was Helen that he had lost. She had gone out, without telling him where. And he couldn’t, for the life of him, remember whether he’d ever see her again….
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ewan didn’t see where the lamia came from. He looked up, and she was there—standing on the same mound where Helen had stood when he first noticed her.
It was dark now, but by no means pitch dark. Ewan had lit his lantern early, as a precaution, and Helen had worked a spell to make the candle burn long and bright, but the afterglow was still in the leaden, grey sky. It was the time of day which always seems still and quiet.
The lamia was tall, slender and graceful. She had hair that was long and straight, with a silvery sheen that was as pale as could be. She was dressed in a long silky robe, and that was silver, too. But she was certainly no ghost etched out of shadow. She was solid.
Her eyes had slit pupils like cats’ eyes or snakes’ eyes. The irises were green. Her face was finely shaped and very beautiful. When she saw Ewan looking at her, she smiled, and within her smile Ewan saw tiny pointed teeth and a forked tongue.
Ewan was ready with the guitar and laid his fingers instantly to the strings. Helen, too, had an instrument— Ewan’s panpipes, which weren’t much like a flute, but on which she had already learned to pick out a single simple dance tune. They began, not quite together, but the tunes soon met and merged.
The lamia glided from the pedestal of polished rock to the open space of the paving stones a little to one side. As she moved, the lamplight caught her eyes and made them glow like a tiger cat’s. She was still smiling and hissing slightly. Her arms rose to the rhythm of the music, and her whole body began to sway and ripple. The song they played was an old one, whose notes were plaintive and slow. It had once had words that were replete with magic, but there were no words left now. Only the music. The music caught the lamia, turned her and swung her and swayed her in a gentle pas seul. She was still smiling, as though there was nothing in the world she liked better than to dance.
She was held captive within an area no more than a few strides in diameter, but within that invisible cage she moved with perfect freedom, with all the grace of a snake in water, a bird in slow motion, gliding around and around.
They played and played.
Night drew in—perhaps not as swiftly as they could have wished. Time seemed to be dragging, slowing down, and it seemed that they were set for a long wait. The afterglow vanished from the sky and the stars came out— feeble, twinkling stars that added little to the yellow glow of Ewan’s lamp.
Not until the night was as dark as it ever could be, given that the stars were permitted to shine at all, did the others come.
They came as shadows, clothed in shadow. They were drawn to the music but shunned the light. They could not come forth to show themselves because they had no real forms to show. Like ghosts, they had no substance, but unlike ghosts they had no shape either, no inner glow to cut them out of the darkness. They were vague and amorphous in the very nature of their being—half-creatures that were half there and half not, half alive and half illusion.
They made a ring at the borders of the candlelight’s reach. They gathered to watch the dance, prisoned by it as was the lamia, and they joined the dance—half hopping, half drifting round and around the rim of the circle of light.
“What are they?” whispered Ewan, making his voice so thin and frail that it would not break the rhythm of
the dance.
Helen paused in her play to answer, in the same gentle tone: “Gaunts and ghasts and werethings. Her creatures, held in subjection to her. Creatures which haunt without being seen. They have no power… none at all, but are fearful nevertheless. The lamia drinks the blood, the black birds eat the flesh and the bones. These are all that remains.”
It sounded, to Ewan, rather horrible, and almost beyond belief. They were, after all, only shadows—tricks of the light. But they were shadows in the imagination, too—tricks of thought and fear—and had to be dealt with. Courage would be a poor thing if it had only to face such things as are whole and solid.
Ewan’s fingers never faltered now but found the notes with a sureness that came not from any innate talent and only partly from his long familiarity with musical instruments. The guitar itself was collaborating with him, alive in his hands, guiding him. Helen’s accompaniment on the panpipes was not really useful in the business of making the lamia dance. But it was useful to Ewan— there was a great reassurance in knowing that he was not alone, that he was not working alone. There is really no such thing as unnecessary help.
They played for an hour, and two… which seemed like more. After that, they lost track of time altogether, as it slowed down so much that they felt themselves becalmed within a single moment. The stars stood still in the sky, and the city of Ora Lamae was cut out from the fabric of history, abstracted from the current of time and isolated in a momentary cocoon.
Now (and everything more was now, and no other time) the crowd at the edge of the candlelight grew no more. The whole company was assembled in the slow, sweet, sad dance. And the lamia began to croon her wordless song.
Curiously, there was little hissing in the sound. It was not at all the sound of a snake, It was, instead, a mellow, gentle, rounded sound, whose notes flowed liquidly. It blended with the music of the guitar, and seemed to have much in common with it. Perhaps, indeed, it was a song born of the guitar, and was being put into the lamia rather than drawn out.
The Last Days Of The Edge Of The World Page 9