He found himself on a battlefield.
The battle—somewhat to Michael’s relief—was over, but he was thankful nevertheless that he was a ghost, incapable of any olfactory sensation, for he knew that the stink of death must have been appalling. Corpses lay strewn around, and the warriors still standing all had blood on their blades and bludgeons. Not that any of them was actually standing, in the sense of standing still; they were all moving, no longer purposefully, in the sense of striking out with murderous intent, but restlessly, possessed by an agitation that would not let them be still. They must have been exhausted, Michael knew—just as he had been exhausted himself what had recently seemed a little while ago—but there was something in them that would not let them pause. It was not, in their case, the music of the Maze, but something incarnate in their flesh: the residue of a killing frenzy.
There had been a battle of sorts—there was not the slightest doubt about that—but, as Michael scanned the arena with his insubstantial gaze, he was left in no doubt that it had been a direly one-sided affair. It had, in essence, been a massacre, although the fallen men had made what efforts they could to defend themselves. Their “weapons” still lay beside them: sticks and stones, Michael could not help thinking, although those that had metal components were actually crude agricultural implements of various sorts: spades, pitchforks and hoes, he presumed. Most were just improvised clubs.
The weapons carried by the victors were little more sophisticated, in terms of workmanship, but at least they had been specifically designed for use as weapons: bronze swords and metal-headed maces. The victors had shields too, and armor of a patchy sort, including crude metal helmets to protect their skulls. They did not resemble the pictures of Vikings that Michael had seen in the books he had been given as a child, but he guessed readily enough that that was what they were. They were raiders who had crossed the North Sea to England in search of plunder. Settlers would doubtless come in their wake, but these were just killers hunting in a pack, intent on pillage.
They had already done the first part of their work, but they had not yet passed on to hunt down the women and children who had fled the hopeless conflict, because they had not yet been rallied by their chief. They were moving about randomly, aimlessly, because they could not help but move, in spite of their weariness. The dire excitement of the slaughter had not yet let them go. Some were mounting a pretense of looking for men among the fallen who had only been stunned or crippled, in order to finish them off, but it was only a pretense. If anything moved, they would doubtless react, but they were moving themselves simply because they could not rest.
It was not until Michael moved again himself that anyone saw him—and then the automatic reaction came into play: the impulse to charge and kill, with brutal determination…but as soon as that first response had been formed into an intention, it was betrayed by another.
The slayers could not only see Michael—they could see that he could not and did not belong to their world. They could see that he was a ghost, armed with a bizarre light. They were in no doubt about that, even though it seemed highly probable that any of them had ever seen a ghost before. They saw him with their second sight rather than their eyes, and that special kind of sensation already carried the knowledge of what he was. These were men who believed implicitly in ghosts, and dreaded their appearance. These were men saturated since early infancy with the conviction that the sight of ghosts boded ill.
Michael was surprised to find that his first reaction to that awareness, as he saw the terror in the expressions of the men who beheld him, was sheer exultation. He delighted in his unprecedented ability to serve as a figure of alarm, to strike terror into the hearts of individuals who were—in spite of their filthiness and obvious brutality—his fellow men. When they began to flee, he was ecstatic. He could have danced with joy—but that would not have been appropriate to his new role, so he stood his ground instead and raised his free arm, pointing his pale forefinger first at one warrior, and then another, as if he were Death personified, selecting those he intended to take and calculating the order and the means by which he would proceed.
The victors fled in disarray—but they were not so stupid to drop their weapons as they did so. They still intended to fight another day, if they were allowed the opportunity to do so.
Only one man stood his ground. He was evidently the leader—the one man forbidden by his status to flee. He was no less terrified than the others, but he had no license to run away. He was the chief, and had to take the responsibility of confronting Death.
Michael walked toward the man who had not fled. The other was standing in front of a yew-tree. It was not the same yew-tree as the one in which unknown hands had set a magic block of obsidian, but it must have been growing in the same general area, no more than five yards from the other. The ridge of Bancroft Scar still provided a stable background to the unsteady arena.
The Viking did not even back up against the trunk of the tree. He simply raised his sword-arm, and pointed his bloodstained blade at Michael, much as Michael was pointing his fateful finger at him, as if instructing him to return to the dread Underworld from which he had presumably emerged.
At least, Michael assumed that was what the barbarian’s words were intended to mean—but all he “heard” was meaningless jabber. The spoken words were the only “sounds” he could hear, but their employment of an alternative kind of sensation could not make them meaningful.
Unlike Edward Kelley, Emund Snurlson was not English; even by supernatural means, he could not speak English. His thoughts were as incomprehensible as the futile vibrations his vocal cords were imparting to the dead air.
Michael stopped, not because he was intimidated by a sword that could not possibly hurt him, but because he did not know what to do next, since nothing he could say would be understood by the angry warrior.
Snurlson made as if to lunge forward with his weapon, but thought better of it. He looked at Michael curiously, as if he were suddenly uncertain as to exactly what it was the spirit might want with him. The Viking’s eyes were blue, and his hair was blond. His face was dirty and pockmarked, his clothes were filthy and ragged, and the bronze of his armor was stained with verdigris, but the color of his eyes and hair, wanly revealed by the equivocal light of the three-quarter moon, were suddenly reminiscent of the color of Cecilia Langstrade’s eyes and hair.
The Langstrades are not Celts at all, Michael thought, wanting to laugh but suppressing the impulse. They’re Vikings. In terms of blood and bone, if not ideas, they’re descended from the victors, not the vanquished. But what does that matter, in the hard currency of legend? They are, in the ultimate analysis, what they believe themselves to be, and what they aspire to be, not what the long-forgotten play of circumstance dictated that their fleshy heritage should be. We are human, not yew-trees, and we can choose our past as well as our future.
Emund Snurlson took a step toward the ghost that doubtless seemed to him to be heralding his doom, and raised his sword in protest against the threat of destiny. Again he spoke—or, rather, shouted—but again the meaninglessness of the words made them a mere discordant accompaniment to the music of the maze: something that no longer belonged to the pattern, and required to be excised.
That was when the second Earl of Langstrade stepped out from behind the bole of the yew-tree, and shouted a challenge of his own to Emund Snurlson. Langstrade was a ghost, of course, and Emund Snurlson could not possibly have understood the words he used, but the Viking knew and understood a challenge when he heard one, even when it emerged from the World Beyond.
To Michael, Langstrade looked utterly absurd, with a felt hat perched on his head and clad in a dinner-jacket, wielding his polished walking-stick, but he knew that the strange costume would probably make the ghostly newcomer seem all the more imposing, and all the more threatening, to the ill-clad Viking.
S
nurlson moved sideways, so that he could keep both ghosts in view, unwilling to turn his back on either of the emissaries of the dead, but he was careful to move to his left, in order that his right hand—the one in which he held his sword—was directed toward the newcomer rather than Michael. The Viking had realized instantly that the newcomer was the one he had to fear more: the one who was actively seeking to do him physical harm.
Langstrade put down his lantern, and took his walking-stick in both hands.
Then, with a wonderfully theatrical gesture, Lord Langstrade drew his hands apart, and the walking-stick divided into two parts. The lower part revealed itself to be a sheath, and the upper part as a long dagger, which gleamed so strangely in the light of the lowered lantern that it resembled a shaft of golden light.
Michael chided himself for not having guessed before that Langstrade’s favorite stick was a swordstick.
Langstrade paused momentarily, for effect, and then assumed the stance that his fencing-master must have taught him when he was a child, with his legs braced, his left arm on his hip, and his right arm extended horizontally. The dinner-jacket cramped his style slightly, but the hat more than made up for that, giving him just a hint of the casual dash of a Royalist cavalier. The poniard previously concealed in the sword-stick was not nearly as long as an épée, so the gesture had a hint of incongruity about it—but Emund Snurlson did not know that. Emund Snurlson knew nothing of the sport of fencing, and the ghost’s pantomime must have seemed terribly ominous to him.
Michael knew that the phantom blade could not actually cut through the Viking’s flesh, and he knew that Snurlson must, on some level, know that too—but there was no mistaking the naked terror in Snurlson’s eyes.
The barbarian did not attempt to imitate Langstrade’s stance, or this theatricality. He simply charged, probably understanding how absurd it was to charge a ghost, but acting under the compulsion to do something, and incapable of formulating any more rational action.
It was all over in a flash. The wild, ungainly sweep of Emund Snurlson’s blade might have taken Langstrade’s head off, if it had been sharp enough and if Langstrade had been made of flesh and blood, but it went straight through the phantom form. Langstrade’s phantom blade also went clean through the Viking’s torso, as he thrust with practiced ease, scrupulously maintaining the horizontal attitude of his blade. It could not do any more physical damage than Snurlson’s blade. Snurlson, however, was not a ghost but a ghost-seer. Snurlson knew just enough of the supposed ways of ghosts to be terrified of them, even though his own notions of propriety commanded him not to flee from them, and he knew just enough of the ways of fate to be utterly convinced of his doom.
When the phantom blade went through Emund Snurlson’s heart, therefore, that heart stopped. Emund Snurlson fell down dead, slain by the second Earl of Langstrade, reaching insubstantially across an interval of a thousand years.
Langstrade looked at Michael, and said: “Father would be so proud.”
“Indeed he would,” Michael told him, feeling that this was a perfect opportunity to curry favor, and make a good impression.
Langstrade glanced behind him. “I wonder how Father knew about the tree, though,” he said.
“I expect that he dreamed it,” Michael said. “Just as you must have dreamed this moment, perhaps a hundred times before.”
Langstrade frowned, and returned the blade of his swordstick to its sheath. “Do you think so?” he said. “I can never remember my dreams for more than a few moments after waking.”
“You’ll remember this one, I suspect,” Michael said. “So will I—at least, I hope so.”
“Can you still hear that music?” Langstrade asked. “Monticarlo’s damned violin has put it into my head, and I can’t get it out, even though it can’t really be playing.”
“I can hear it,” Michael confirmed. “It is playing, and it won’t be giving way to Johann Sebastian Bach any time soon. We’re in the Maze, and we’ll be here until the Mistress of the Labyrinth has finished with us.”
A strange expression crossed Langstrade’s face then. “I’m Harold Longstride!” he exclaimed. “I’m Harold Longstride—but how will anyone ever know? There’s no one here to witness my triumph but you, and you’re a ghost from the future, as I am.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Michael told him. “Even if all these fallen men really are dead, the tale will be told. When the men who ran away creep back, and find their leader slain by supernatural means, they’ll be forced to invent an explanation. Even if they haven’t actually seen you—and it’s more than probable that more than one of them is watching us now from the cover of some distant thicket—they’ll be forced to invent you. It doesn’t matter how you acquire your eventual name; you’re a legendary figure now. You are, or will be, the real—the one and only—Harold Longstride.”
“Well,” said Langstrade, picking up his lantern, “I’m proud of myself, too. We’d better get back, don’t you think? I’m afraid you’ll have to show me the way—I’m lost. Can you do that?”
“Yes, I think I can, if I follow the music,” Michael said. “I think the way out is in this direction.”
His intuition was sound. He stepped out of Emund Snurlson’s world as easily as he had stepped into it. Either he had made a false step in the dance of time, though, or the Mistress of the Labyrinth still had work for him to do. The maze into which he had stepped was not made of hawthorn but of stone—and when he stepped back again, automatically, intending to return to the battlefield where Harold Longstride, Second Earl of Langstrade, now stood alone and victorious, he remained in that markedly different arena.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
DEDALUS AND THE BRAZEN HEAD
There was still a yew-tree in the space, although it was definitely not the same one, and it was definitely not growing in the same narrow region. There was still a starry sky, albeit one reduced to a square patch by the high stone walls, but that too was not the same one, in terms of the particular pattern that the stars displayed at the zenith. The lofty moon was now full, and seemed unnaturally large and yellow, although its pock-marked face was quite familiar.
The stone walls of the enclosure seemed uncomfortably close, claustrophobic even to a ghostly consciousness. There was no exit—no horizontal exit, at any rate. There was something set in the flag-stoned floor that might have been a trap-door leading down into a cellar, or a vast subterranean complex. It was difficult to be sure because the trap-door was closed.
I expect that I could descend through it if I wished, closed or not, Michael thought. The solidity of the Earth is not what maintains me on its surface. I expect that I could descend all the way to the Earth’s core, if I wanted to, and could master the trick of it—but why should I, when gravity has no purchase on me, and nothing lies that way to interest a man who has no credence in a literal Hell?
The simple fact was that he had no wish to explore the subterrains of the maze in which he now found himself. What he wanted to do was to hold a conversation with the man who was sitting on a bench under the yew-tree. Had it been daylight, the boughs of the tree—which must have been very ancient, since some of its twisted boughs were dead while others were decked in summer foliage—would have shaded the bench from hot sunlight. Michael did not doubt that the sun would have been hot by day. Because it was the dead of night, however, the man on the bench was not in need of shade; he had probably come up from the depths to sit down there because he could not sleep, and he could not sleep, in all likelihood, because there was something on his mind.
The man under the tree had been sitting with his head balanced on his fists, while his elbows were balanced on his knees, but when he saw Michael, the prisoner lifted his head interestedly. He seemed glad of the company—even the company of a ghost, and perhaps especially the company of a ghost.
Unlike the ill-fated Emund Snu
rlson, Dedalus the Engineer was not in the least frightened by the appearance of a ghost—even a ghost as peculiar as Michael must have seemed. Michael had no doubt that this was a man who could have looked at a ghost clad in a dinner-jacket and armed with a swordstick, with an oversized hat on his head, and felt nothing but welcome curiosity.
For once in his life, Michael bitterly regretted never having been forced to study the Greek of the ancients. Dedalus, as a Cretan of the Minoan Era, belonged to a society that had become legendary before the Greeks learned to write, and surely would not have spoken the Greek of Pericles and Plato, but there would probably have been enough similarity between his language and theirs to permit the exchange of a few meaningful words.
I wish Escott were here, Michael thought, but then changed his mind. He did not wish that Escott were there. He wanted this moment for himself.
Dedalus spoke, his manner and the inflection of his virtual speech suggesting that he was asking a question: who are you? perhaps, or why are you here?”
“My name is Michael Laurel,” Michael said. “I was sent by the Mistress of the Labyrinth. I don’t.…”
He stopped, feeling foolish. He had been about to say that he didn’t know why he had been sent, but he did. He knew exactly why he had been sent, and why it didn’t matter that he couldn’t speak the language of the doomed Minoan Empire. Escott was quite unnecessary.
Michael took a piece of paper from his waistcoat pocket, glad for once in his life that he was too poor to possess a second waistcoat into which to change after dinner. He unfolded the phantom piece of paper, while Dedalus—who had never seen an actual piece of paper—looked on with interest. Then Michael displayed Lady Langstrade’s map of the Langstrade Maze to the interested engineer.
Prelude to Eternity: A Romance of the First Time Machine Page 20