Tears of the Salamander

by Peter Dickinson

Wearily Alfredo climbed up the slope and round onto the crag and stood beside him. From here they could see out over the remains of the cloud and all the way down the slope.

  The Master still stood where they had last seen him, unflinching in his monstrous shape, as he fought to exert his power over the mountain. For the moment he seemed to have succeeded. The rent in the hillside ran halfway down from the crag to where he stood, narrower at its lower end than where it had started. There he was holding it, while Toni strove to drive it on. Alfredo waited for the note and joined the contest.

  “Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered. …”

  At the first phrase of the fire psalm, deep below their feet, the host of the salamanders wove their shrill voices into the music. The mountain regathered its strength. Again the hillside heaved. A huge explosion drowned all other sounds. Roasting gases burst out of the gulf, tossing red-hot rocks far into the air, and a great wave of churning lava boiled out and flooded down the slope.

  The Master doubled his size and flung his power against it. The onrush paused. Toni’s music changed and became a rapid pattern of intricate shrill notes. A twisting rope of fire coiled itself out of the gulf, floated down toward the sorcerer, and began to curl around him. At the moment it completed the circle he lost his magical shape and became Uncle Giorgio. Released from his hold, the mountain rent itself open all the way down to the trees. The chasm forked, its two arms passing either side of Uncle Giorgio. The rope tightened and snatched him into the flaming gulf.

  They stood gasping, stunned, staring dazedly at the huge outflow of lava welling from the rent and flooding down the mountain. Alfredo felt utterly empty, spent. Already exhausted from the climb, he’d now poured out inner strengths, strengths he’d never known were there, in the struggle against the Master. Toni, too, was haggard with the effort, stoop-shouldered and trembling. His face was gray and trenched with deep lines. The likeness was very clear. He was Uncle Giorgio’s son. He had just killed his own father.

  Toni recovered first, turning to Alfredo with a worried frown and gesturing at the tide of lava, and then pointing up and over the wood and down to the town below.

  There are people down there. My mother, perhaps.

  With an effort Alfredo pulled himself together. Behind and below him he could feel the rage of the mountain, unappeased by Uncle Giorgio’s death. Masterless now, it was angry of its own nature, filled with the anger of fire, purposeless, pure and huge, and at last allowed to burst out after so long lying in chains. Burn and destroy! it bellowed in its thunders. Burn and destroy! The madness of fire. How easily an evil-minded Master could harness that anger to his own ends.

  Yes, and he had felt it before, that selfsame madness brought across the sea to a northern city and deliberately focussed onto a loving home through the burning glass of Uncle Giorgio’s vengefulness and greed for power. And then again, onto the Bonaventura. And once more, though this time unchannelled, when he and Uncle Giorgio had stood on the rim of the crater, and he had inadvertently woken the wrath of the mountain by singing the fire psalm to it, and it had taken their combined strengths to force it back into its prison.

  There was no hope of doing that now. He had no such strength left, nor did Toni. Somehow, that anger must be appeased. Another memory came to him—waiting with Mother in the square in front of the cathedral while Father argued with a fellow baker and his brother Giorgio larked with his cronies, and quietly, for the mere joy of it, singing to himself the music he had just been listening to in the cathedral. That had been the moment that had changed everything, that had set him on the course to the place where he now stood. The gift of the salamanders.

  It was as if everything that had happened from that moment to this was part of a single purpose. He turned, raised his arms toward the summit of the mountain and sang.

  “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word. …”

  The notes of the descant rose like lark song through the bass thunderings of the mountain. Toni’s recorder joined quietly in, swooping and soaring around the line. And now more music, sweeter and higher than either, as from the unimaginable heat of the gulf below the salamanders raised their voices in exultation at the return of their lost comrade, and the fall of the hated Master, and the new beginning, the different kind of Mastership that his heir would bring.

  The mountain paused as if to listen. It groaned, shuddered, and groaned again, and at last, as Alfredo and the salamanders fell silent and the quiet notes of Toni’s recorder faded into the afternoon air, was still.

  At the bidding of the salamanders the mountain had acknowledged its new Master.

  They stared at each other, shaking their heads in disbelief. The lava was still welling out of the chasm below them, but moving more slowly and in less of a flood. In the pauses between its rumblings they could hear the voices of the alarmed rooks as they circled above the trees, and from far below that the clank of a cracked church bell calling the people to evensong.

  Toni pointed over Alfredo’s shoulder. He turned and saw that up the slope, well to their left, the lead mule was wrestling to free itself from something that had trapped it. They trudged and clambered across to it. Somehow a length of chain, trailing from the cradle, had caught under a boulder, and the panicking mule, struggling to wrest it free, had only jammed it faster. Toni grasped the bridle and murmured to the mule and stroked its ears and teased it under its jaws while Alfredo unhitched the chain and released the cradle from the harness. The mule’s panic ebbed away and it stood utterly exhausted, with its head bowed almost to the ground, shuddering, covered with foam, its lungs heaving, while Alfredo removed what remained of its harness.

  One saddlebag was still there, with some of the food left in it. They settled on the slope and ate in silence, looking out over the strait. The steady beat of the church bell floated up from the town.

  “Right at the end,” said Alfredo, “that burning rope—you did that?”

  Toni nodded.

  “How did you know?”

  For answer Toni leaned across and touched Alfredo’s smock, just at the point where the salamander pendant hung against his chest on the chest. As far as Alfredo knew, he had never seen it, but now he knew it was there. Alfredo wasn’t surprised.

  “The salamanders?” he said. “They told you?”

  Toni nodded again, and then raised a warning finger as the tolling changed and became a wild rhythmless clangor, joined now by several other bells, sounding the alarm, telling the townspeople that the mountain had woken.

  “They’ve taken their time,” said Alfredo, and then, “No, I suppose it hasn’t been that long. It just seemed like it. Well, it’s over now. I think we can hold it.”

  But Toni was frowning, and gazing not down toward the town where the sounds came from, but more to the right. Yes, Alfredo could feel it too. Something was happening, something with fire in it, halfway up the hill, about where the Casa di Sala must be…

  …and then, from that point, a burst of light, brilliant even in the bright sunshine. With it one dense ferocious impulse, a blast of pure power, not coming from the mountain but bursting from a single center with huge, astounding force. Light-dazzled, stunned, they saw only dimly the blast-wave traveling up the hill, tossing the treetops about as if in a hurricane. The sound of the explosion reached them first, a long, immense, roaring bellow. Before it ended, the blast, an almost solid wave of roasting air, knocked them flat.

  Alfredo pushed himself groaningly up out of the darkness and stared down the hill. Half the trees in the wood seemed to be down. Several fires had started. Beyond that stood an uprushing column of dark smoke, rising and rising, which at its top widened into a pale, churning cloud like a child’s drawing of a tree. In only one way was it like the fire of the mountain: It was filled with the same rage.

  Toni was already on his feet, staring. He raised both arms high and gave a great wordless shout, a call, a summons.

  At the sound the
air became full of the Angels of Fire, as usual almost invisible in the afternoon sunlight, but still blazingly there. They hovered, waiting for Toni. He called again and swept his arms down and outward. Remove, he told them. They turned and streamed away toward the strange, still rising cloud until they hovered in a ring around its top. Nets of fire fell from each of them, joined themselves, narrowed in a fiery mesh around the column, bright against its blackness all the way down to the ground. The Angels rose again, picking up cloud and column and, at its base, the sun-bright ball of heat from which it sprang, and bore the whole thing up and away toward the sun.

  Alfredo watched the burning mass dwindle to a spark and vanish.

  “Well done!” he whispered, stammering with wonder. “How did you…What…? Oh, I think I know. That was the salamander’s furnace. As long as it had the salamander in it…But it started to change as soon as we took the salamander out, and last time I went it was too hot to get near.”

  Toni nodded. That was something he’d already known—not guessed, as Alfredo had—just as he had understood the menace of the cloud and known how to overcome it. That knowledge and that power were part of his inheritance. He was now truly Master of the Mountain, come into his birthright. His whole stance expressed his Mastership as he stood gazing down the slope and out over the strait. But then, with a sudden, urgent movement he turned to Alfredo. His whole face was full of questioning worry. His mouth struggled to shape a word.

  “Annetta? Your mother?” said Alfredo. “I told her not to follow Uncle Giorgio back, to find somewhere safe, in case there’s an eruption. She told me where, and I said we’d go and look for her there.”

  Toni nodded doubtfully, but settled down beside Alfredo to finish their meal. The mule had bolted again, but was too tired to go far and was standing a little way off, braying pitifully for its companion. The town bells still clamored their alarm. Dazedly Alfredo began to wonder what he should do now, how much he dared tell anyone. He glanced up when Toni gave a grunt and rose. The second mule was shambling back across the hillside. The first one staggered to meet it.

  “I suppose we’d better go and tell people it’s all over,” said Alfredo.

  As he scrambled down toward the mules, it struck him that perhaps he now knew why the two brothers had quarrelled. Uncle Giorgio needed two people to manage the mules, and so had tricked Father into helping him, and when Father had realized what was really happening he’d tried to stop it. Those were the two angry voices the salamander had heard. So it was up here, on this mountainside, that the terrible rift between them had opened, loosing the raging fires between them.

  Well, maybe. He would ask the salamanders about it sometime.

  The mules seemed relieved to be caught but it took a while to coax them close enough to the lava flow to make a start down the path, scrambling every so often round or over tangles of fallen branches. The flow had now ceased moving, but there were places where the twists of the path took them too close to stand the heat and they had to pick their way down through the trees. The sun was setting by the time they came out onto the old driveway and made their way home along it.

  But Casa di Sala was gone. The lava had reached it, buried it and then piled itself up on the terrace below and there finally solidified. There was no sign of the explosion in the furnace room, so that must have happened just before the lava covered everything. Nothing was left. The mountain had made it all part of itself.

  They gazed at it for a while and then, without a word, headed on downhill. Alfredo found he was thinking more coherently. What next? Take the mules to the inn. Find Annetta, if possible. Then Signor Pozzarelli. Tell him just enough of the truth to make him understand that the mountain still had a Master. …

  As it turned out, Annetta found them, climbing up toward them through the dusk, leading the third mule. Toni ran to meet her, and she flung her arms round him and hugged him, sobbing with relief. After a while he took her by the shoulders and gently pushed her away from him and stood erect, gazing down into her face. His mouth worked. The syllables when they came were slow and grating, like the hinges of a long-closed door, but the word was unmistakable.

  “Mama.”

  Her face turned white under its tan. Her mouth fell open. She stared at Toni, who simply stood there, smiling and confident. She turned to Alfredo.

  “The tears of the salamander,” he said. “My uncle could have done it long ago. He was a horrible man. He killed my family and my friends on the Bonaventura. He was going to steal my body from me. But what he did to Toni—I think it’s worse than anything. His own son!

  “Casa di Sala is gone, Annetta. All gone. The mountain’s buried it. We’re going on down.”

  It was dusk when they reached the town. It was still in an uproar, windows smashed in by the blast from the furnace, roofs stripped of their tiles, bells stopping and starting, people standing in the streets guarding piles of their precious possessions, ready to flee, others dragging loads toward the harbor in the hope of finding space on some boat, yet others just standing around exchanging rumors. At the inn Annetta made as if to stay with the mules, but Alfredo said, “No. You’ve got to come too.”

  One tower of the church had fallen. The square in front was crowded, groups of people standing waiting for news, others hurrying on errands, others on their knees praying. Alfredo pushed and wriggled his way through and up the steps to Signor Pozzarelli’s door and banged the knocker.

  “You’ll get a flea in your ear, sonny,” somebody called. “Doesn’t know any more than anyone else.”

  And indeed the door was opened by Signor Pozzarelli himself, his face red with anger, his mouth opened to yell.

  “Signor di Sala is dead,” said Alfredo firmly.

  Signor Pozzarelli bit himself short and stared. He obviously hadn’t recognized Alfredo till he spoke, and no wonder, a filthy boy in torn peasant clothes, Toni just as bad, and equally unrecognizable, and the dumb servant woman.

  “Where…? What…?” he stammered. “The mountain…”

  “Can we come in? I’ll tell you what happened.”

  “The woman? The idiot?”

  “Yes, please. He isn’t an idiot. And he was there.”

  Signor Pozzarelli snorted, shaking his head in bafflement, but let them through and led them into his office. Both windows were smashed in. Glass littered the floor. Without offering any of them a chair he settled himself behind his desk.

  “Well?” he snapped, trying to take control of the situation.

  Alfredo wasn’t put out. He’d thought this all through on his way down the mountain.

  “My uncle was a very bad man,” he said. “You know that, don’t you? But everyone was afraid of him, because he was Master of the Mountain. He was the only one who could control it.”

  “Peasant gossip,” said Signor Pozzarelli.

  “You didn’t think so when we came here to make my uncle’s new will,” said Alfredo. “You knew that if he wanted he could have made the mountain burn this whole town to the ground. He pretty well told you that his heir would be able to do that too, didn’t he? And it’s true. Only I’m not his heir.”

  Confidently he crossed to the fireplace and lifted the screen away. The fire was laid and ready for lighting. He looked at Toni and nodded.

  Toni merely glanced toward the hearth and paper, and kindling and logs were instantly ablaze, and flames roaring up the chimney.

  “Signor Pozzarelli,” said Alfredo formally. “Let me introduce Signor Antonio di Sala, my uncle’s only son, his true heir. You knew that, didn’t you? He was the person my uncle named in his old will, wasn’t he? He is now Master of the Mountain. The mountain destroyed my uncle and chose him instead. He has all my uncle’s powers. He put the mountain back to sleep after it had destroyed my uncle. I saw him do it, I was there. Toni isn’t a fool, Signor Pozzarelli. You understand? Look at him.”

  In fact Signor Pozzarelli was already doing so, and now watched Toni hold up a warning finger and simply
nod. His smile was only half humorous. Signor Pozzarelli understood.

  “You’ve still got the old will, haven’t you?” said Alfredo. “I was right about Signor Antonio being named as heir? And the new one? My uncle had copies, I suppose, but they’re gone—the mountain’s buried them.”

  “In that case I have the only copies, Signor Alfredo.”

  “May I see them, please.”

  Signor Pozzarelli rose and crunched across the splintered glass to rummage among the pile of folders on the shelves behind him. He handed the two wills across. There was a sheet of paper attached to the old one with a note saying that it had been superseded by a new will dated last Tuesday. At the back of the new one was the list of Uncle Giorgio’s properties that Signor Pozzarelli had mentioned that day. Alfredo glanced through it. It looked as if Uncle Giorgio had owned practically half the town, and a lot of farms, too. The inn had belonged to him, and so had Signor Pozzarelli’s own house. He detached the list and put it at the back of the old one.

  “Would this still be valid if the other one disappeared?” he said.

  “Indeed yes. But…”

  Alfredo turned and placed the new will and the note that had been with the old one on the burning logs and stood and watched them burn, thinking about his next move.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, turning back. “You were going to tell me something.”

  “Er, well, yes. It was that the willful destruction of a valid legal document is a serious criminal offense, but perhaps, since you were the named beneficiary…”

  “It didn’t happen,” said Alfredo. “There’s two other witnesses here. But there was something else…Signor Antonio will be twenty-one next year, won’t he? And then he’ll be able to turn a tenant out of his house if he wants?”

  “Not if he thereby breaks the contract of tenancy,” said Signor Pozzarelli anxiously. His own contract had only a couple of years to run, Alfredo had noticed.

  “Yes, of course,” he said. “But suppose somebody’d been a loyal servant to the di Salas for ages, he could give them their house as a reward.”