‘Well,’ he said, ‘if we’re to believe Voltaire – “A taste for Marvels engenders Systems; but Nature seems to take pleasure in Uniformity and Constancy, just as our own Imagination likes great changes!”.’ This seemed mockery of Libussa’s heartcry. ‘So Renyard’s an aberration. Yet Diderot celebrates Change and Difference. Perhaps that’s why I love him. Do you love him too, Madam?’ He grinned, drank, again wiped the muzzle on fresh linen. ‘I’ll need no more of M’sieu Voltaire. But if you could see I’m sent Maupertuis I’d perhaps enjoy him better.’
‘Sir,’ said the Duchess of Crete, ‘if it’s within my power you shall have the entire Bibliotheca!’
‘You’re extravagant, Madam. You shall have all I can tell you of any substance. Everything else you must discover for yourself. I recall a meeting some time past, when I learned the story of von Bek, Klosterheim and the Grail. This is slim reward for having been bored by an under-educated, not to say vulpine, Jackthief, and at such length, but here it is.’ He considered what he had to say, lifting his red snout towards the shadowy beams and staring at flickering tallow. His words were measured, significant, yet almost whispered: ‘You must find the Red O’Dowd.’
He slumped a little in his chair. Evidently this statement cost him something of value and moreover had exhausted him. Kitchen fires danced and crackled. Lord Renyard looked sadly across the table at Tom Rakehell, already protecting himself from despair should Tom fail him. His followers guzzled obliviously, and he grew tender as he regarded them. He was a humane monster ruling bestial men.
I could almost smell the Minotaur’s foetid breath pouring from his flaring nostrils and hear that angry stamping of hoofs upon hard earth. A massive club beat against strong walls. The ground shook. The Bull screamed his challenge. Theseus advanced through the Labyrinth and reason took up sword against brute ignorance.
Libussa dropped her eyes and spread her wide hands on the table, as if in shame.
Chapter Thirteen
In which begins the search for the Red O’Dowd. We leave the second most dangerous quarter of the city and enter the first. Several conjunctions and a hint of the reasons. A sword, a lamb & a Prince of Hell.
IN TRUTH WE had rather more than ‘the Red O’Dowd’ from Lord Renyard: we had a map and intelligence of the map’s terrain. We moved amongst narrow walls, beneath the slow, unsettled light of those senescent stars. The alleys were at the city’s very centre which was the Oldest district of all, enclosed by its own walls and called Amalorm, perhaps after those Amarian tribes existing there before the Svitavians came to kill and enslave them. We descended.
Our route took us steadily downhill, by sloping streets and flights of dark, winding steps. Sometimes a gap in the buildings showed fires and lanterns twinkling below. It seemed the centre had grown around an enormous spiralling crevasse, a valley whose floor could not be seen. In Amalorm the Rätt ran underground. Building had been placed on building, some ten or fifteen ramshackle storeys high, all leaning at unstable angles. I was half afraid some great pile of bricks, stones and timbers would fall on us at any moment. I refused to raise my voice, remembering the landslide I’d caused.
Typically the natives of Amalorm were squat, taciturn and dark, counting their social position (they set, we were informed, strong score by such things) according to the height they lived above ground. Thus, because we moved at the lowest level, we encountered only the miserable poor, most of them sleeping on some form of opium. This drug, Lord Renyard had told us, was the real currency of the Deeper City.
Somewhere here, we were assured, we’d find the Red O’Dowd, if he still lived. Lord Renyard had not been able to speak for that, nor could his men, in spite of all their conscientious head-scratchings, tell us much. Lord Renyard and the Red O’Dowd were rivals. The Lesser City enclosed the Deeper City; and the Deeper’s existence meant all Renyard’s vagabonds had to circumnavigate walls, so could not directly cross their domain at any quarter of the compass. There had been attempts to reach compromise, but all had failed. They said the Red O’Dowd was not, like the fox, ruled by reason. Moreover the territory of Amalorm was coveted, for it was the greatest stronghold in the Mittelmarch and not difficult to rule since the richer inhabitants did not care what happened in the gullies and valley floors of the lowest streets; they had no loyalty to their own kind.
It was as if we moved through a natural limestone cave system; the walls were wet with pale lichen and semi-luminous grey moss growing upon them. There were echoes, the greatly magnified sound of drops of water striking a deep pool. We had been told that the Red O’Dowd had arrived twenty years ago with a mercenary band. He had fought those who ruled and in the end his control of the centre had no longer been disputed. His purpose in seizing that territory by force of arms (and at hideous loss of life) was unclear. He would only claim that he ‘guarded his property’. The fox had been of the opinion that the Red O’Dowd guarded an idea, for any negotiations over territorial matters had always become enigmatic and fallen down. Lord Renyard had told us that he had no inkling what that idea might be.
The buildings swayed and creaked in the Autumn Starlight. It was as if an earth tremor constantly shook the Deeper City. ‘It is like a ship,’ said Libussa wonderingly. ‘Or the giant in Gulliver. They’ve surely built this place upon the back of a living beast.’ She was now as volatile as ever. She had only temporarily been daunted and was freshly convinced that she had only to meet the Red O’Dowd for him to hand her over the Grail. Lord Renyard had allowed no such reassurance. She laughingly clung to my arm and Klosterheim’s. ‘Or could this settlement, d’ye think, be one single organism?’
Klosterheim was disapproving of her Fancy. ‘It’s merely age,’ he murmured.
‘It is more than that,’ said I soberly. Every lynchpin, brick and slate and bit of guttering cannot already have crashed. Why should what was left retain its peculiar stability?
We entered a steep-dropping lane. From above came a distant booming, a faraway clamour of metal and the sound of masonry tumbling into a street. We received a glimpse of burning points in the valley; the smell of dank smoke. Then there were yellow torches bursting round the corner and dancing up the cobbles towards us; now we saw black, martial figures, their swords already drawn. They were confident bodies, well-armed and steel-cruel. Our own weapons had been left at Lord Renyard’s, thanks to Libussa’s flaring impatience, but it would have made little difference. We looked back, guessing the presence of the half-dozen who crept behind and who now stopped and straightened when they were seen, hands on hips, their faces hidden. Klosterheim (maintaining against all experience a somewhat legalistic turn of mind) cried pompously: ‘What comes?’ and ‘Be warned, we are on important business.’
A tall bicorne hat with a cockade in it, atop a face with a thin, handsome mouth, upon a lean, well-muscled figure, broke from the general crowd. Montsorbier wore a smile of considerable satisfaction, as if the pike had caught the trout at last! Had I dreamed all that time? Was I in actuality upon some Parisian spiral, near Mont Martre? Or had Renyard sent me into this bristle of greedy ferrara cutlery? Did the fox give me up as Montsorbier’s reward for services rendered? No, I thought, some other treachery was afoot, for I had a book in my shirt with the name Philarchus Grosses upon it. Or perhaps there was no treachery at all, save Fate’s. Every adept spoke of concordance and certainly conjunction at any rate was evident at every step, no matter how hard I tried to break the pattern. Then Montsorbier recognised me with genuine astonishment and laughed in sheer joy. ‘Oh, ha, ha, ha! Von Bek, is it thou? This is better than anything!’
I was still not so much alarmed by the danger as mystified by the coincidence. Libussa’s earlier words made unacceptable sense. Too much that happened now suggested a unifying design superior to my ordinary cognisance. This thought greatly unsettled me. I had no liking for the idea I might be a pawn in some game of Olympian chess. I would have fought then, had I my blade upon me, not because I hoped to win, but to free m
yself from the sticky net which gathered us beneath the Autumn Stars. I was a fool, I thought, to have left my Samarkand scimitar and Georgian flintlocks at Raspazian’s, but I supposed I too had been dazzled by the golden prospect of the Grail.
Now it seemed Montsorbier also hesitated. Maybe he was equally uneasy. His thirst for vengeance surely dominated him. I could see him trembling with anticipated satisfaction, like a stork in courtship. And I, weaponless, was reduced to putting arms akimbo, legs wide, stomach out, and smiling at him like a forward village maid. He stood and licked his lips, looking from face to face, still twitching – a terrier to my impudent rat – still forcing himself to control his admirably capacious passion. ‘You were called here also, then?’ he suggested. It was as if he longed for a printed questionnaire to flourish and thus contain his terrible emotions by means of bureaucratic formality. There was no Public Safety to be protected here. It was his lust for my life that was naked now, more than when we had stood in the inn and arranged to acknowledge his honour. I prayed he would recall the appointment was unkept through accident and that he would offer me a sword and thus a chance at least at life. But it was his holding off that puzzled me. He plainly did not know if he should kill me or shake my hand. Someone had instructed him, but not on every eventuality. I decided therefore to play direct with my instinct and went forward at an easy pace. ‘Fool,’ said I easily, ‘we’re no longer enemies. Where go you now?’
‘The Lamb,’ he said. ‘And you?’
There was nothing for it but to nod. ‘The same,’ I said, believing he described a tavern.
Libussa and Klosterheim, who had also been anticipating their imminent slaughter, greeted Montsorbier with uneasy smiles. Our elegant duke-catcher, sliding his sabre back into its heavy leather scabbard, took a breath or two and regained control of himself. He scratched his neck. ‘By Lucifer, von Bek, this is a paradox indeed! If we’re all comrades now, what’s to become of our individual ambition?’
I had grown so light-headed I clapped him on the back. I was devilish jovial. ‘D’ye really believe there’s no point to struggle if all it achieves is reconciliation and equality?’
‘Compromise, you mean,’ he said, teeth gritted. ‘I was promised leadership.’
‘By whom?’
‘Don’t jest, von Bek. All adepts know we journey to the Centre of Time, to the Concordance, there to receive supernatural intelligence and consequently ultimate power.’ He bowed to Klosterheim. ‘We expected you sooner, Sir. When you failed the rendezvous, we continued on our own initiative.’
Klosterheim was discomforted, believing himself privileged to a better kept secret. Now, it seemed, he was merely one of a score or more. I guessed he experienced the terrible confusion of a true solipsist when the outer world impinges. ‘Who made this bargain with you?’ Of course, he suspected Satan, the arch-betrayer.
‘’Tis implicit to our search.’ Montsorbier looked askance at Klosterheim. ‘You know that, Sir.’ Then, to me: ‘How were you called here?’
‘I followed impulse,’ said I, taking advantage of the family reputation.
‘You von Beks are lucky.’ He was clearly envious, and gave me a further clue to his hatred of me. ‘Could we be brought together in order to settle all scores at once? A final fight?’
‘Any fight shall follow the Concordance, not precede it,’ said Libussa. But she was not sure of herself. She, too, had believed herself destiny’s only candidate for command and considered this man a mere follower. Now she found too many rivals. I, it appeared, was the only one present not believing himself an alchemical adept!
‘Well,’ Montsorbier was surly, as if for the first time aware of her true ambition, ‘we had best continue.’
We had no choice but to fall in with his party. Quarter of an hour later he was knocking his pistol butt upon a blackened door which was swiftly opened by a young girl with white-gold hair and a pale but healthy complexion: innocence personified (save for a suggestion of lewdness about the eyes) in blue-and-yellow gown, its sleeves flowing and medieval.
‘Welcome, my nobles,’ said she, curtseying as we entered.
Filing in, the men removing their hats like Sunday parishioners, we eventually found ourselves in a stone chamber which, in its severity, greatly resembled a Low Church chapel, with narrow pews and a plain altar. There was no crude Satanism in evidence, no inverted cross, merely a triangle of gold hanging above the altar. By movements of her hands the girl showed we were expected to kneel, so down we went. Libussa, aware as I of danger in any unconscious disobedience, looked right and left for potential escape. Klosterheim simply folded his hands under his long nose in gloomy surrender. Here was something neither of my companions had planned for!
The chapel was entirely lit by massive yellow candles, their melted wax making strange traceries, their restless smoke writhing like damned souls. Montsorbier, one stall forward of me, settled his sword at his back for comfort, pushing long hair away from his pale face, glancing at a man in a wine-red, high-collared coat, already deep in his devotions in the opposite pew. When the man turned his head I saw it was the coward, von Bresnvorts, offering us all a shifty, conspiratorial grin. I was half out of my seat, ready to kill, when Libussa’s firm hand stayed me. My heart pounded, but I obeyed.
From both sides now emerged a group of figures in purple, gold, white, black and yellow robes festooned with tassels. They wore great peaked cowls (like some auto-da-fé) and lace, and embroidered motifs in obscure parody of Christianity’s. Some wretched collection of Masonic officiates with supernatural leanings, I thought, all grunting and hobbling and sweating, their visible flesh so coarse they might have been farmyard creatures. They led a pretty, bleating lamb, bucking in its halter of woven gold. Next came our flaxen-haired maiden to take it in her soft arms, stroking it, murmuring, letting her tresses fall over its shivering body like a curtain. It bleated uncertainly and tried to suckle one of her pink fingers. She smiled and crooned. She was a head taller than her cowled companions, who now swayed in a semicircle before her as she mounted to the altar.
Behind us more men and women filed in to take their places. It was evident that Libussa recognised some of them, though Klosterheim saw nobody, remaining with his eyes downcast.
In sweet, high tones, like crystal ringing, the maiden spoke: ‘The demand has come at last and the price asked. Shall you pay readily?’
‘We shall pay readily,’ was the response.
‘By this means,’ she continued, ‘shall ye ensure the gathering of suns and witness the great moment when all worlds conjoin. Ye shall become free to pass amongst those worlds at will. And each shall possess the power to change whatever they wish changed. A million realms in concordance! A million suns! So shall we determine mankind’s fate for the next great revolution of the Cosmic Wheel. The Balance steadies. The change is inevitable.’
‘The change is inevitable.’
‘Its nature shall be determined.’
‘Its nature shall be determined.’
‘Its nature shall be determined. By the privileged, by the adepts, by those seekers of the Centre who are gathered here now. Decisions will be taken and new debts incurred. But first the old debts must be settled.’
‘The old debts must be settled.’
‘The Time of the Lamb was a time of failure. The Lamb promised hope but brought only despair.’
‘Only despair.’
‘Now we are permitted to create if we can the Time of the Lion!’
‘The Time of the Lion.’
‘The Time of the Lion shall be the triumph of mankind’s ambition. A time of power. A time of fire. A time of destruction.’
‘A time of destruction.’
‘A time of destruction when we shall be the leaders of Man. Our dreams shall become the unquestioned realities of the coming Millennium. None shall dare deny us.’
‘None shall deny us.’
She paused. ‘Who speaks for the Lamb?’ The little animal no longer struggle
d but looked at her with wide eyes. She held it out before her. ‘Who would save the Lamb?’
Her silent congregation merely swayed and stared in silence.
Then the girl lowered her head as if to kiss the cradled beast. She buried her mouth in the little creature’s neck. There came one strangled bleat. She twisted her head and her hair swung in an aura of gold. She lifted her face to the congregation: blood was smeared across her lips while the lamb jerked and pumped more blood over her gown, over the altar, over the officiates who giggled and chanted, who pranced around her, beginning to cry: ‘The Time of the Lamb is gone. The Time of the Lion must come. The Time of the Lamb is gone. The Time of the Lion must come.’
Save for we three, all the rest, including Montsorbier and von Bresnvorts, were up and swaying, like a methody flock at its monotonous hymns. Men and women, looking ordinary enough to me, of all ages, some with children, lifted up their voices in that chant. I could not bring myself to conform. Then, as the glaring eye of their golden-haired priestess fell upon us, I flung myself suddenly over the pews, reaching for Montsorbier’s sabre still tucked at the small of his back, and pulling it clear shouted to Klosterheim and Libussa to find the exit. That bestial ritual in no way accorded with what few beliefs I still professed. By taking action, however doomed, I felt I was damaging a small part of the design drawing us all together.
The bloody-lipped girl became a shrike. ‘THIS THREATENS ALL!’
I struggled backward over the bench, cutting at Montsorbier’s arm as he brought up his pistol which flew high into the air and was wonderfully caught by my Duchess who pressed it against the throat of the man behind her while she slipped his dirk and rapier from his hips, taking the whole belt.
The City in the Autumn Stars Page 28