Tears of the Salamander

by Peter Dickinson

  Alfredo pushed on the door and it swung open. There was a pool of molten iron on the step below the lock.

  Toni seemed dazed by this second encounter with the Angel. Alfredo had to take him by the elbow and lead him into the furnace chamber, where he stood, slowly gazing round with unseeing eyes while Alfredo fetched the things they would need from the stack in the corner: the two buckets with their carrying pole, the ladle and the tongs. He fetched both pairs of dark glasses from the shelf and fitted Uncle Giorgio’s onto Toni for him. He didn’t bother with the lead screen—they would be moving around too much. They would have to take their chance with the emanations.

  Now, at last, he raised the lid of the furnace.

  There was no sign of the salamander, so he took the lid off the smaller bucket and began to ladle the molten liquid into it. With its bowl barely half full the ladle became almost too heavy for him to control. He stopped when he could no longer lift the bucket by himself.

  He closed the furnace, put the lid on the bucket and fastened its clasp. The metal of the bucket itself was already too hot to touch. This was something he hadn’t thought of, but for the moment it didn’t matter. He went over to Toni and removed his dark glasses. Toni seemed to have woken at the change from the glare of the furnace to the dim light of the lantern and was now looking round the chamber in an interested way, as though seeing it for the first time. Alfredo led him to where he wanted him, fetched the carrying pole and slid the hook in under the handle of the bucket.

  “Ready?” he said. “You take that end.”

  He grasped his end of the pole and lifted it a few inches, waited till Toni had copied him, stood upright and led the way out into the passage. The load was heavy but manageable. They took the stairs slowly, with the bucket swinging uncomfortably to and fro as they climbed. Already Alfredo could feel the heat beaming out from it. Once up they could hurry along the corridors and out through the kitchen into the yard. He settled the bucket down by the stable wall, close to the mounting block, unhooked the pole and went back with Toni to the furnace chamber.

  This time, the moment he opened the lid the salamander rose from beneath the surface. Alfredo was expecting it to look at him and he would then sing Levavi oculos—I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills—while he told it through the music what was happening. Instead it stared for a moment at Toni, opened its small round mouth and, unprompted, started to sing. Toni took out his recorder and joined it. The salamander’s song was a strange mixture of wild joy and deep grief, joy at the coming of a new and kindly Master, grief for him, for what he was. The salamander wept.

  On an impulse Alfredo picked up Uncle Giorgio’s little ladle and leaned forward to harvest the salamander’s tears. He remembered something that one of the priests in the cathedral had told them, explaining some miracle of healing: “The mind is spirit, but the brain is flesh. A madman has an ailment of the mind, and therefore of spirit. An idiot has one of the brain, and therefore of the flesh.”

  Sovereign against all ills of the flesh, he thought.

  The song finished and the salamander disappeared beneath the surface. Alfredo tipped the contents of the ladle into the phial, but had to wake Toni from his half-trance before he could give it to him.

  “Drink it,” said Alfredo, miming the action. Toni obeyed and gave the phial back. Alfredo hadn’t expected anything much to happen. When Uncle Giorgio, on the verge of death, had drunk the tears it had been some while before they had had any effect. And time was pressing. He picked up the ladle and filled the remaining bucket with as much as he thought they could lift, then picked up the tongs, held them over the furnace and softly began Levavi oculos at last.

  The salamander rose and at once reached for the tongs, scrambled up and let Alfredo close them gently on it. It peeped pitifully as he lifted it out and across, and huddled down into the molten heat in the bucket, though it could barely get its whole body beneath the surface. In that brief transfer Alfredo had seen that the salamander was exactly like the pendant he wore round his neck, right down to the hooked barb at the end of its tail.

  He was about to close the lid of the bucket when Toni stopped him with a grunt, and then, to Alfredo’s astonishment, picked up the ladle and added another bowlful of the liquid to the bucket. He tested the weight, and only then allowed Alfredo to close and fasten the lid.

  As he did so Alfredo noticed that heat was now radiating from its surface in a way it hadn’t done before, and there was a slight roiling motion as if the liquid were slowly coming to a boil. He guessed that this must be something to do with the salamander’s having left it. When he turned he found that Toni had already hooked the carrying pole into the handle of the bucket and was standing ready, but holding the pole some way in from its end, so that he would be taking a larger share of the weight. They left the door of the chamber open and the lantern still burning.

  Out in the yard they heaved the bucket up onto the mounting block, fetched the mules, tethered them to rings on either side of the block, slid the poles of the cradle into their harness, and then stationed them so that the central ring of the cradle was close beside the block. Now…

  But it wasn’t going to work. In Alfredo’s plan he was simply going to heave the bucket across into its place in the cradle while Toni held the mules steady, but now, faced with the task, he realized it was beyond his strength.

  “It’s more than I can manage,” he said, and scrambled off the block, but before he could start back across the yard for the spare bucket and the ladle Toni grunted and stopped him, laying his hand on Alfredo’s arm and tapping himself on the chest. He seemed utterly confident.

  “All right,” said Alfredo, taking the bridle. “But watch out. The bucket’s going to be hot. You’ll need a bit of sacking or something.”

  Gingerly Toni tested the bucket, frowned slightly and climbed the block. He tested the handle again, this time more firmly, positioned himself, grasped the handle and with a single flowing movement swung it across into the cradle ring. He rose, blowing on his palms, and grinned at Alfredo. Yes, the bucket was hot, but nothing like as hot as Alfredo, or Toni himself, apparently, had expected.

  Nothing like as hot as the other one either, it turned out. That was now beaming out heat like the open door of an oven. They used the carrying pole to take it across to the block.

  “We can’t pour it in,” said Alfredo. “It would be far too dangerous. I’ll go and get the ladle. You see if you can find a way of getting the lid off. Don’t burn yourself. It must be something the salamander’s doing, keeping the other one cool. It did it in the furnace too.”

  He raced off, checking on his way through the kitchen how much time had gone. More than he’d thought. In twenty minutes Mass would be over. As soon as Uncle Giorgio stepped out of the church he’d know that something was happening up on the mountain, and the closer he came to home the more he would feel it and the faster he’d hurry.

  It was warm now in the furnace room. More than warm. The furnace was beaming out heat, much like the bucket in the yard. Alfredo snatched up the ladle and raced back. He found Toni crouched over the bucket, his face streaming with sweat while he levered at the clasp with a hoof pick and a screwdriver. Alfredo took the lead mule’s bridle again and watched Toni anxiously, getting his breath back. If Toni didn’t succeed in the next few minutes they’d have to give up, and the salamander must take its chance with what was already in the bucket. …

  There was a sudden click. Toni rose and backed away, gasping. He unfastened the clasps on the bucket in the cradle with his bare hands and then used a leather apron he’d found to lift the lid of the other bucket clear. The salamander was again making its peeping complaint, but stopped as Toni ladled the hot liquid in for it, then tipped in what was left in the other bucket and closed and clasped the lid of the one in the cradle. He then calmly began to fold the apron, as if they had all the time in the world.

  “We’re in a hurry now,” said Alfredo. “He’ll be coming out of
the church in ten minutes. We’ve got to get as far up the mountain as we can before he reaches the top of the wood.”

  Alfredo nodded, but finished folding the apron and tucked it into the harness. With the same assurance he gestured to Alfredo to switch to the rear mule. The change in him was astonishing. He now seemed to understand everything that was said to him, and all that was happening, and why, and to be fully aware of the urgency, but at the same time to be completely untroubled, without any of Alfredo’s twanging tensions and anxieties. Nor was there any doubt who was in command. Now, for a while, the mountain had two real Masters, Toni and Uncle Giorgio, and the coming contest would be between them, with Alfredo merely helping Toni as best he could. He accepted the change with relief.

  They untied the halters and started up the hill. Uncle Giorgio’s mules were well mannered, as mules go, and used to the mountain, but the cradle was an awkward burden on the steep and twisting track, so they toiled slowly up through the wood, Alfredo with all his inner senses tense for the moment when he would first feel the outburst of Uncle Giorgio’s fury on discovering how he had been betrayed. That would be no merely human rage, he was certain. It would be the rage of the Master, an eruption like that of the mountain. Even here, far up the slope, he was sure to sense it.

  By the time they reached the top of the wood he was almost exhausted. Last evening’s loss of food was taking its toll. What he had eaten since wasn’t enough to replace it. His calves and thighs seemed emptied of muscle, barely able to heave him another step upward. His lungs gasped uselessly at the dry, hot air. In the trees’ last shade they halted briefly to drink from the water bottles and cram food into their pockets.

  “He must be almost at the house by now,” said Alfredo.

  Toni nodded and turned to gaze at the slope above them. He shook his head and beckoned Alfredo forward, then pointed up the slope and offered him the bridle of the lead mule, spreading his hands in a gesture of bafflement. His meaning was obvious. Not enough people climbed the mountain to leave a clear continuous track on the stony surface, and he had never done so.

  Alfredo had, though only once. He studied the slope and spotted a jut of rock a few hundred paces farther up. That was the crag he had noticed when he and Uncle Giorgio had been making their way down from the crater, because it felt like one of the places where some of the powers of the mountain seemed to run close to the surface and might be summoned forth and used. He pulled his hat from behind his back and fitted it onto his head, then led the way on into the full weight of the sun.

  Hardly had they started to climb again when the explosion came. It swept up through the still, hot noon with the onset of a sudden squall. The air seemed to crackle with it. The mountain quivered at its touch. Alfredo staggered. Toni, behind him, cried aloud. Both of them had felt it, and knew what it meant. Uncle Giorgio had reached the furnace chamber and seen the lock melted and the salamander gone. Now it was a question of how fast he could follow. Alfredo attempted to quicken his pace but his legs refused to respond. He huddled into himself, contracted his whole being into the effort to drive himself on, his eyes intent on the next step ahead, only glancing up now and then to check how far it still was to the landmark crag.

  They weren’t going to make it, nothing like. His muscles had nothing left to give. His whole body seemed to be on fire with the effort. The world was on fire, a roaring, red haze. There were voices in the roaring, one voice deeper, almost, than sound itself. The voice of the mountain, calling him. He surrendered himself to the voice, to the fire, to the mountain, letting it flood his body with its power, drive his limbs on and up in paces that were suddenly light and easy, like the dance of flames.

  He looked up. The whole mountainside was pulsing with flame, flame from the spirit world, the world of the Angels of Fire, invisible except to eyes that could see through the sense of fire. Beside him the mule plodded on unnoticing, seeing only the everyday mountainside. Alfredo saw it rippling with the colors of sunset, like a monstrous ember, and the crag he was aiming for not as a darker jut of rock, but as a white-hot focus of the mountain’s power, bright as the sun-stuff in the salamander’s furnace.

  The crag came closer and closer, but all the time, from behind him, he could sense the onrush of the Master’s rage, rapidly gaining on them, sweeping up the hill, faster than any human, any mule or horse, could climb. Just as they reached the crag Toni gave a shout of warning. Alfredo switched hands on the bridle, turned and looked back. The fire vision cleared from his eyes. For a moment there was nothing to be seen, and then the Master burst out from among the trees.

  He came in the form of a compact rolling cloud, denser and darker than the thickest smoke and full of orange lightnings. Alfredo’s stomach shrank inside him. How could he ever have imagined he could face this thing? And he was nowhere near where he had wanted to be, high up the slope, close to the heart of the mountain and its inmost fires, before the struggle began. But his only hope was still to stick to his plan. The crag was at least a place from which some of the powers of the mountain could be drawn. Uncle Giorgio had no such advantage. He let go of the bridle, turned aside, and put his back to the rock. The mountain spoke to him through it.

  Yes, here! it said.

  He squared his shoulders, raised his head, filled his lungs and sang.

  “Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered. Let them also that hate him flee before him. Like as the smoke vanisheth, so shalt thou drive them away. And like as wax melteth at the fire, so shall the ungodly perish at the presence of God.”

  Inwardly the mountain stirred. Something inside Alfredo came alive at the words, his own birthright of rage and the desire for vengeance as he had first become aware of them, lying on the old lava flow across the driveway and listening to the far voices of the salamanders telling him what his uncle had done. He gathered that anger into a compact and burning force and drove it down toward the thing on the slope.

  The thing halted. It changed shape, grew a head, arms, legs, human in form, but monstrous. Monstrous in its size, in its horror, in its power. It raised its arms in front of it, and power streamed out of them, visible, implacable, a rolling wave of the same dark smoke-stuff advancing steadily up the slope, its wings moving faster than the center, curving forward into an arc, ready to close round Alfredo, deceiver and betrayer of the Master, and engulf him. Where was Toni? Why wasn’t he helping? Dimly he remembered seeing him climb on past the mules as he had turned to face the Master.

  He called the powers of the mountain back, focussed them through himself and beamed them against the wave. It halted, swirled into a vortex, a whirlpool of smoke-stuff that simply sucked them in and made them part of itself. Then it came on.

  His resolve, his awareness of his own power, wavered. He sensed another power nearby, above him. He glanced up. Toni was there, on the lip of the crag, facing the coming wave, his recorder ready at his lips.

  It wasn’t enough. Nothing was enough. Desperately he sang on.

  “O God, when thou wentest forth before the people, when thou wentest through the wilderness, the earth shook and the heavens dropped. …”

  High and fierce, the notes of the recorder threaded the human voice.

  Now the mountain answered. Below, behind and above him Alfredo felt the surge of its anger. There was a deafening groan. The whole slope heaved like the deck of a ship in a storm. The mules, which had been waiting patiently just below him, apparently oblivious to the struggle, lost their footing. The hind one fell, dragging the other down and its harness free of the cradle, then struggling to its feet and bolting away along the slope. The lead mule rose and reared, squealing. The cauldron was tossed out and came slamming down onto a boulder. The lid flew off and the contents spilled down the slope, with the salamander floundering helplessly in the sun-stuff. It raised its head and gave a piercing scream, a note of pure agony. As if at the sound, the mountain tore itself apart.

  The rent opened almost at Alfredo’s feet, releasing a blast
of sulphurous heat, forcing him back. The salamander shrieked again. He glanced down the slope and saw that the cloud was now barely twenty paces below the crag. He could see nothing beyond. In a few heartbeats it would all be over. But there was still time for one part of his revenge. The leather apron that Toni had used to handle the bucket had fallen out of the harness as the mules had bolted. He ran, snatched it up and darted across to the salamander. Its golden body, exposed to the naked air, was now streaked with black. It was dying like a dying coal as the heat faded from it, while it desperately tried to drag itself toward the fiery crack that had opened in the mountainside. Alfredo wrapped the apron round his hands, snatched the salamander up, darted back as close as he could get for the heat, and tossed it into the chasm. His hair and eyebrows were scorched before he turned away.

  He realized that he had stopped singing. It didn’t matter. In this one thing, at least, he had defeated the man who had murdered his family. Calmly he turned to see how much time was left him before the end. The cloud seemed to have halted, to have lost some of its menace—yes, surely, to be thinning. From the top of the crag, strong and true above the immense rumblings of the mountain, came the sound of Toni’s recorder. It was hard to believe he could draw such sounds, so piercingly fierce and loud, from a simple wooden pipe. What he was playing was no longer the music of the psalm; it was something Alfredo had never heard before, something that seemed to come into Toni’s mouth and fingers in the very moment of playing, but this time not out of the air. He was drawing it forth from the mountain, the music of anger and of fire, and breathing it out through his recorder so that it filled the whole hillside.