by Mary Gentle
Noon is midnight: midnight noon.
The two pivots of the day meet and lock, and in that moment men are enabled to pass over this threshold. There is a tension in the filth-starred stone, receiving their footprints.
There are guides. They do not speak. They climb narrow flights of stairs that wind up and around. The stairways are not lit. Their fingers against the slick stone guide them.
Theodoret and Candia climb, ensnared in that mirrored moment of midnight and midday.
"What are you doing here?" the black Rat demanded.
"My lord." Zar-bettu-zekigal bowed, the dignity of this impaired by her hands being tucked up into her armpits for warmth. "We’re students, passing through to the other side of the Nineteenth’s Aust quarter."
Lucas noted the black Rat’s plain cloak and sword- belt, without distinguishing marks. A plain metal circlet ringed above one ear and under the other; from it depended a black feather plume. The black Rat, despite being unattended, had an air that Lucas associated with rank, if not necessarily military rank.
"You’re out of your lawful quarter."
The Rat swept the last fragments of bone from the niche into the sack, and pulled the drawstrings tight. His muzzle went up: that lean wolfish face regarding Lucas first, and then the young Katayan.
"A trainee Kings’ Memory?" he recalled her last words. "How good are you, child?"
The young woman lifted her chin slightly, screwed up her eyes, and paused with tail hooked onto empty air. "Me: What I like, you haven’t got; Lucas: Really? Me: Really; Lucas: This really is a short-cut? Me: Oh, right. Oh, right. You’re a king’s son. Used to stable-girls and servants—"
The Rat cut her off with a wave of one be-ringed hand. "Either you’re new and excellent, or near the end of your training."
"New this summer." Zar-bettu-zekigal shrugged. "Got three months in the university now, learning practical self-protection."
"I’ll speak further with you. Come with me."
"Messire—"
The Rat cut off Lucas’s belated attempt at servility. "Follow."
They walked on into vaulted cellars, where the loudest noise was the hissing of the gas-lamps. Soft echoes ran back from Lucas’s footsteps; Zar-bettu-zekigal and the Rat walked silently.
A distant thrumming grew to a rumble, which vibrated in the stone walls and floor. Bone-dust sifted down. The Rat carried his ringed tail higher, cleaning it with a fastidious flick. His hand fell to the small sack at his belt.
"Zari." Lucas dropped back a step to whisper. "Do they practice necromancy here?"
"I’m a stranger here myself—!" The young woman’s waspishness faded. "The only good use for bones is fertilizer. Who cares about fringe heresies anyway?"
"But it’s blasphemy!"
The Rat’s almost-transparent ears moved. He stopped abruptly, and swung round. "Necromancy?"
Lucas said: "Not a fit subject for the location, messire, true. Does it disturb you?"
The black Rat’s snout lifted, sniffing the air. Lucas saw it register the sweat of fear, and cursed himself.
"Even were it a fit subject for our discussion, necromancy–using the basest materials, as it does–is the least and most feeble of the disciplines of magia, and so no cause for concern at all." .
The Rat drew himself up, balanced on clawed hind feet, and the tip of his naked tail twitched thoughtfully. Metal clashed: sword-harness and rapier.
"Who sent you here to spy?"
"No one," Zar-bettu-zekigal said.
"And that is, one supposes, possible. However–"
"Plessiez?"
The black Rat’s mouth twitched. He lifted his head and called: "Down here, Charnay."
Lucas and Zar-bettu-zekigal halted with the black Rat, where steps came down from street-level. The bone- packed vaults stretched away into the distance. In far corners there was shadow, where the gas-lighting failed. Dry bone-dust caught in the back of Lucas’s throat; and there was a scent, sweet and subtle, of decay.
Zar-bettu-zekigal huffed on her hands to warm them. The Katayan student appeared sanguine, but her tail coiled limply about her feet.
A heavily built Rat swept down the steps and ducked under the stone archway. Lucas stared. She was a brown Rat, easily six and a half feet tall; and the leather straps of her sword-harness stretched between furred dugs across a broad chest. She carried a rapier and dagger at her belt, both had jewelled hilts; her headband was gold, the feather-plume scarlet, and her cloak was azure.
"Messire Plessiez." She sketched a bow to the black Rat. "I became worried; you were so long. Who are they?"
She half-drew the long rapier; the black Rat put his hand over hers.
"Students, Charnay; but of a particular talent. The young woman is a Kings’ Memory."
The brown Rat looked Zar-bettu-zekigal up and down, and her blunt snout twitched. "Plessiez, man, if you don’t have all the luck, just when you need it!"
"The young man is also from"–the black Rat looked up from tucking the canvas bag more securely under his sword-belt–"the University of Crime?"
"Yes," Lucas muttered.
The Rat swung back, as he was about to mount the stairs, and looked for a long moment at Zar-bettu-zekigal.
"You’re young," he said, "all but trained, as I take it, and without a patron? My name is Plessiez. In the next few hours I–we–will badly need a trusted record of events. Trusted by both parties. If I put that proposition to you?"
Zari’s face lit up. Impulsive, joyous; cocky as the flirt of her tail-tuft, brushing dust from her sleeves. She nodded. "Oh, say you, yes!"
"Zari . . ." Lucas warned.
The black Rat sleeked down a whisker with one ruby- ringed hand. His left hand did not leave the hilt of his sword; and his black eyes were brightly alert.
"Messire," Plessiez said, "since when was youth cautious?"
Lucas saw the silver collar almost buried under the black Rat’s neck-fur, and at last recognized the ankh dependant from it. A priest, then; not a soldier.
Unconsciously he straightened, looked the Rat in the face; speaking as to an equal. "You have no right to make her do this–yeep!"
His legs clamped together, automatic and undignified, just too late to trap the Katayan’s stinging tail. Zari grinned, flicking her tail back, and slid one hand inside her coat to cup her breast.
"I’ll be your Kings’ Memory. I’ve wanted a genuine chance to practice for months now," she said. "Lucas here could practice his university training for you!"
"Me?" Her humor sparked outrage in him.
"You heard Reverend Master Candia. There are no rules in the University of Crime. Think of it as research. Think of it as a thesis!"
Frustration broke Lucas’s reserve. "Girl, do you know who my father is? All the Candovers have been Masters of the Interior Temple. The Emperor of the East and the Emperor of the West come to meet in his court! I came here to learn, not to get involved in petty intrigues!"
"Thank you, messire." Plessiez hid a smile. He murmured an aside to the brown Rat, and Charnay nodded her head seriously, scarlet plume bobbing against her brown-gray pelt.
"You’ll guest at the palace for two or three days," Plessiez went on. "I regret that it could not be under better circumstances, heir of Candover. Oh–your uncle the Ambassador is an old acquaintance. Present my regards to him, when you see him."
Zar-bettu-zekigal nodded to Lucas, thrust her hands deep in her greatcoat pockets and walked jauntily up the steps at the side of the black Rat.
"When you’re ready, messire."
Charnay’s heavy hand fell on Lucas’s shoulder.
As always, the height of the enclosed space jolted him. Candia reached to grip the brass rail as they were ushered out onto a balcony. The sheer walls curved away and around. Twilight rustled, shifted. The darkness behind his eyelids turned scarlet, gold, black. A stink of hot oil and rotten flesh caught in the back of his throat.
One of the servants clapped his han
ds together twice, slowly. Sharp echoes skittered across the distant walls.
A kind of unlight began to grow, shadowless, peripheral. Candia’s eyes smarted. In a sight that was not sight, he began to see darkness: the midnight tracery of black marble, pillars and arches and domes. Vaulting hung like dark stalactites. A rustling and a movement haunted the interiors of the ceiling-vaults. The gazes of the acolytes that roosted there prickled across his skin.
Pain flushed and faded along nerve-endings as a greater gaze opened and took him in.
Hulking to engage all space between the down-distant floor and the arcing vaults, the god-daemon lay. Black basalt flanks and shoulders embodied darkness. Behind the Decan the halls opened to vaster spaces, themselves only the beginning of the way into the true heart of the Fane, and the basalt-feathered wings of the god-daemon soared up to shade mortal sight from any vision of that interior.
Between the Decan’s outstretched paws, and on platforms and balconies and loggias, servants worked to His orders: sifting, firing, tending liquids in glass bains-marie, alembics and stills; hauling trolleys between the glowing mouths of ovens. Molten metal ran between vats.
"My honor to you, Divine One." Candia’s voice fell flatly into the air.
"Little Candia . . ." A sound from huge delicate lips: deep enough to vibrate the tiled floor of the balcony, carried on carrion breath.
Lids of living rock slid up. Eyes molten-black with the unlight of the Fane shone, in chthonic humor, upon Candia and the Bishop. The grotesque head lifted slightly.
A bulging pointed muzzle overhung The Spagyrus’ lower jaw. Pointed tusks jutted up, nestling against the muzzle beside nostrils that were crusted yellow and twitched continually. Jagged tusks hung down from the upper jaw, half-hidden by flowing bristles.
"Purification, sublimation, calcination, conjunction . . . and no nearer the prima materia, the First Matter."
Down at cell-level, the voice vibrated in Candia’s head. He stared up into the face of the god-daemon.
The narrow muzzle flared to a wide head. Cheek-bones glinted, scale-covered; and bristle-tendrils swept back, surrounding the eyes, to two small pointed and naked ears.
Theodoret leaned his head back. "Decans practicing the Great Art? Dangerous, my lord, dangerous. What if you should discover the true alchemical Elixir that, being perfect in itself, induces perfection in all it touches? Perhaps, being gods, it would transmute you to a perfect evil. Or perfect virtue."
The great head lowered. Candia saw his image and the Bishop’s as absences of unlight on the obsidian surfaces of those eyes.
"We are such incarnations of perfection already." Amusement in the Decan’s resonant tones. "It is not that alchemical transformation that I seek, but something quite other. Candia, whom have you brought me?"
"Theodoret, my lord, Bishop of the Trees."
‘Purification, sublimation, calcination, conjunction . . . and no nearer the prima materia . . .’ Reconstructed from an illustration in Apocrypha Mundus Subterranus by Miriam Sophia, pub. Maximillian of Prague, 1589 (now lost)
"A Tree-priest?"
The unlight blazed, and imprinted like a magnesium flare on Candia’s eyes the gargoyle-conclave of the Decan’s acolytes: bristle-spined tails lashed around pillars and arches and fine stone tracery; claws gripping, great wings beating. Their scaled and furred bodies crowded together, and their prick-eared and tendriled heads rose to bay in a conclave of sound, and the unlight died to fireglow.
"I will see to you in a moment. This is a most crucial stage . . ."
On the filthy floor below, servants worked ceaselessly.
The platform jutted out fifteen yards, overhanging a section of the floor (man-deep in filth) where abandoned furnaces and shattered glass lay. Here, the heat of the ovens built into the wall was pungent.
"Take that from the furnace," the low voice rumbled.
One of the black-doubleted servants on the balcony called another, and both between them began to lift, with tongs, a glowing-hot metal casing from the furnace. Sweat ran down their faces.
"Set it there."
Chittering echoed in the vaults. A darkness of firelight shaded the great head, limning with black the foothill-immensity of flanks and arching wings. One vast paw flexed.
"We reach the Head of the Crow, but not the Dragon. As for the Phoenix"–unlight-filled eyes dipped to stare into the alembic–"nothing!"
Candia said: "My lord, this business is important—"
"The projection continues," the bass voice rumbled. "Matter refined into spirit, spirit distilled into base matter, and yet . . . nothing. Why are you here?"
Candia planted his fists on his hips and craned his neck, looking through the vast spaces to The Spagyrus. The bruised darkness of his eyes was accentuated by the pallor of fear, but determination held him there, taut, before the god-daemon.
"It happens," he said, "that we’re traitors. The Bishop here, and I. We’ve come to betray our own kind to you."
A shifting of movement, tenuous as the first tremors of earthquake, folded His wings of darkness. The body of the god-daemon moved, elbow-joints above shoulders, until He threatened emergence from unlight-shadows. Lids slid up to narrow His eyes to slits.
"Master Candia, you always amuse me," He rumbled. "I welcome that. It’s a relief from my failures here."
Candia made a gesture of exasperation. He paced back and forth, a few strides each way, as if movement could keep him from seeing where he stood. He directed no more looks at The Spagyrus, his stamina for that exhausted.
The Bishop of the Trees reached to rest a hand on Candia’s shoulder, stilling him. "Even the worst shepherd looks to his flock. Doesn’t the Lord Decan know what’s happening in our part of the city?"
"Do the stock in the farmyard murmur?" A bifurcated tongue licked out and stroked a lower fang. The Spagyrus gazed down at Candia and Theodoret. "What I do here leaves me no time for such petty concerns. The great work must be finished, and I am no nearer to completion. If it comes to rioting in the city, I shall put it down with severity–I, my Kin, or your lesser masters the Rat- Lords. You know this. Why bother me?"
Theodoret walked forward. His lined creased face, under the shock of dusty-white hair, showed sternness.
"Lord Spagyrus!"
"Harrhummm?"
"Our lesser masters are what you should look to." Theodoret’s gray eyes swam with light; mobile, blinking. "The Rat-Lords are meeting now with the Guildmasters–the human Guildmasters, that is. Meeting in secrecy, as I thought." Incredulity sharpened his voice. "And I see we’re right, Lord Spagyrus. You don’t know of it."
The Decan roared.
Candia slid to one knee, head bowed, ragged hair falling forward; and his white-knuckled fist gripped the Bishop’s robe. A thin greengold radiance limned him. He smelt the blossom of hawthorn and meadowsweet. The tiles beneath his knee gave slightly, as if with the texture of moss.
The Bishop of the Trees said softly: "We were here before you ever were, Lord Spagyrus."
The tendriled muzzle rose, gaped, fangs shining in unlight and the furnace’s red darkness, and a great cry echoed down through the chambers, and galleries and crypts of the Fane.
Candia raised his head to see the acolytes already dropping from the ceiling vaults, soaring on black ribbed wings.
In a room that has more books than furniture, the magus stares out at a blinding blue sky.
Her mirror is shrouded with a patchwork cloth.
The day’s air smells sleepy, smells sweet, and she sniffs for the scent of rain or thunder and there is nothing.
Suddenly there is a tickle that runs the length of her forearm. She holds up her hand. The gashed palm, halfhealed by her arts, is aching now; and, as she watches, another bead of blood trickles down her arms. She frowns.
She waits.
Charnay paused on the landing, examining herself in the full-length mirror there. She took a small brush and sleeked down the fur on her jaw; tugged her he
ad-band into place, and tweaked the crimson feather to a more jaunty angle.
"Messire Plessiez has a superlative mind," she said. "I conjecture that, by the time you leave us, in a day or two, he’ll have found some advantage even in you."
Lucas, aware of tension making him petty, needled her. "Big words. Been taking lessons from your priest friend?"
"In!"
She leaned over and pushed open a heavy iron-studded door. Lucas walked into the cell. Afternoon sunlight fell through the bars, striping the walls. Dirt and cobwebs starred the floor, and the remnants of previous occupations–tin dishes, a bucket, two ragged blankets–lay on a horsehair mattress in one comer.
"You have no right to put me here!"
Charnay laughed. "And who are you going to complain to?"
She swung the door to effortlessly. It clanged. Lucas heard locks click, and then her departing footsteps, padding away down the corridor. In the distance men and Rats shouted, hoofs clattered: the palace garrison.
Lucas remained standing quite still. The sky beyond the bars shone brilliantly blue; and light reflected off the white walls and the four stories of windows on the opposite side of the inner courtyard, mirror to his.
He slammed the flat of his hand against the door. "Bitch!"
Four floors below, the brown Rat Charnay had stopped in the courtyard to talk and to preen herself in the company of other Rats. Her ears moved, and she glanced up, grinning, as she left.
The shadows on the wall slid slowly eastwards.
"Rot you!"
Lucas moved decisively. He unbuttoned his shirt, folding it up into a neat pad. Goosepimples starred his chest, feeling the stone cell’s chill. He rubbed his arms. With one eye on the door, he unbuttoned his knee-breeches, slid them down, and turned them so that the gray lining was outermost.
"If you’re going to study at the university, start acting like it!"
His fingers worked at the stitching. A thin metal strip protruded from the knee-seam, and he tugged it free; and then stood up rapidly and hopped about on one foot, thrusting the other into his breeches-leg, listening to check if that had been a noise in the corridor . . . No. Nothing.