by Sarah Ash
It was not at all what he had expected.
The Priest appeared on the rim of the lustral bath. He extended his hand until it gently touched Acir’s head. Acir understood; complete immersion was required. He took a breath and dived beneath the surface of the water.
For a moment he floated there, a moment out of time. Water green as verdigris embalmed him, lulled him into a sense of immense and timeless calm.
And then the need to breathe forced him upwards. Shaking the water from his hair, he burst the surface, blinking in the daylight. The old Priest nodded at him and mumbled a few words of benediction.
It was over. Acir climbed out, shivering in the cold, and dried himself with a coarse towel. He felt light, cleansed, shriven. He pressed coins into the venerable Priest’s hands and re-entered the Temple.
It was no longer empty. A trail of black-clad people was winding between the pillars, with movements solemn and slow. The women were veiled, the men bare-headed; all were carrying lotos candles in their cupped palms.
Curious to observe this unfamiliar religious rite, Acir drew nearer. The Priestess, also veiled, stood with a lighted taper beside the prayer-bells, making each candle blossom into flame.
A bier, borne by six men, was at the heart of the procession. The body lay on a curtained palanquin. The air filled with the milky smoke of perfumed wax.
Now he understood; a funeral procession. The Sulien way of death.
The mourners set the prayer-bells gently vibrating until the Temple filled with their bronze drone. He felt drawn to understand what the observance of the cult of Elesstar had come to mean to the people of Sulien.
The Priestess nodded to him as he approached.
‘Where are they going?’ he whispered.
To the Under Temple.’
‘Is it permitted for a stranger to observe?’
‘Anyone may accompany the dead on their last journey. Here. Take one of these with you.’
She placed a waxen lotos candle in Acir’s hand. The wax felt smooth and cold. It gave off a faint drowsy scent.
‘What should I do with this?’
‘You will see.’
The funeral cortège was winding its way below ground. Acir followed at a respectful distance. He had read of the underground reservoirs and cisterns beneath Sulien… but he had not until now realised the extent of the Undercity.
The tunnel opened out suddenly into a vast, dark hall. By the soft light of the lotos candles borne by the mourners, Acir saw that they stood on the rim of a great, dark reservoir, its waters as smooth and black as a polished mirror. The high-vaulted roof of the hall was supported by painted pillars, each carved with a pattern of lotos leaves and sinuous, twisting snake-creatures.
One by one, the mourners passed by the bier, respectfully touching it and murmuring words Acir could not catch. Then they knelt at the water’s edge and gently placed their candles on the smooth black surface. Soon the cavernous hall gleamed with a myriad floating candle-stars, their white flames pale and insubstantial as will-o’-the-wisps.
Now they will seal the body in some subterranean tomb, Acir thought as the last mourner rose from the water’s edge. One of the presiding Priests moved forward.
One voice began to sing… and the others joined it.
The bier-bearers lifted the bier on its poles and moved forward too. The two foremost bearers dropped to their knees on the edge of the reservoir and the bier tilted towards the waters. As the singing swelled, the shrouded body began to slowly slide into the water.
Acir stared, frozen in the shadowed archway. They buried their dead in the reservoirs? The singing echoed and re-echoed around the vaults as the body disappeared, sinking beneath the black waters. They must have weighted it with lead, he thought numbly.
The black water stirred; the lotos lights shivered and some went out, extinguished by the sudden violent turbulence. It was as if, Acir thought, horrified, some water creature – or creatures – lurked deep beneath… and the singing had brought them to the surface.
The singing had ceased. In the silence, all the mourners watched the writhing of the black waters, watched as one by one the lotus candles went out. And then the waters stilled as suddenly as they had erupted.
The Priestess with the torch stood on the rim of the reservoir, gazing calmly out over the waters.
Shaken, Acir waited until the last of the mourners had left the hall and only the Priestess remained. Only then did he venture to approach her, still holding his unlit lotos candle, the wax now warm and soft in his sweating fingers.
‘What – what was that?‘he asked her.
‘They that are born of Elesstar return to Her. She takes back Her own.’ She spoke dreamily, distantly, as if drugged.
‘But-but I saw –’
‘Elesstar’s water-snakes. They strip the flesh from the bodies, the bones sink into the sediment.’
Acir swallowed back a sudden surge of nausea.
‘This is not how we honour our dead in Allegonde. We treat them with respect.’
‘You bury your dead in the earth to be eaten by worms. Is it so very different, Guerrior? Come back on the Day of the Dead. Then you will witness a miracle.’
Acir’s hand automatically touched the sign of the Rose to ward off evil. He could still taste the lingering bitterness of bile at the back of his throat.
‘On that day the sky-shaft is opened to let them fly free. The winged souls.’
She was talking in riddles. He tried to make sense of the skewed religious doctrine.
‘The souls fly from the reservoir?’
‘Dragonflies.’ She pointed to the ancient carven stone and, peering by the light of her torch, he saw carved figures: stick men and women, over whose heads double-winged insectile creatures hovered. ‘It is our belief that when the dragonflies hatch from the waters of the reservoir, they transport the souls of our dead as they fly to the light. It is a moment of supreme transcendence. You will not, cannot, understand until you have witnessed it.’
She was right. He did not, could not, understand. It seemed to contradict the teachings of Mhir on which he had based his life. His hands had become hot and sticky; looking down, he saw that he was still clutching the lotos candle and it had begun to melt.
The Priestess lit the wick and he watched it flower into light between his fingers.
‘Stay a moment.’ She raised her fingers to touch his forehead… and then his breast, lingering just over the place where the Rose was tattooed.
He gazed questioningly into her flame-warmed eyes and saw a frown pass, evanescent as a fast-moving cloud, across her calm gaze. Her lids fluttered, her eyes losing focus – and he was afraid she was going to faint.
‘The Lotos is fading, dying…’ Her voice was low, dream-drowsed. ‘Blood blooms in the heart of the Rose. Listen! Elesstar calls to you, Rose-bearer. Can you not hear her voice?’
‘Elesstar calls to me? What do you mean?’ Acir’s Guerrior training had made him suspicious of any such kind of religious trances or seeings. Yet the Priestess’s words seemed unpremeditated – and spontaneous. ‘What did you see?’
But the moment of Seeing had passed and the Priestess stared at him as if their conversation had never taken place.
‘Go,’ she said, turning away from him. ‘Place your candle on the waters.’
Acir went to follow her – and then remembered where he was; a stranger in a foreign temple. He turned back, his questions unanswered.
Kneeling down on the rim of the reservoir, he let the candle float free; the lapping black water was chillingly cold to the touch.
Nothing stirred. The solitary candle floated out into the darkness, a single crocus-flame on the black waters of oblivion.
Khassian’s fingers moved nimbly across the ebony and yellowed ivory keys as Cramoisy Jordelayne soared into the elaborate arpeggios of the cadenza…
Magelonne had worked his miracle and cured him. His hands were whole again. Healed!
And i
n that one moment of revelation, the illusion shattered.
He looked down at the keyboard.
The flesh had begun to peel from his fingers even as he played, the keys were stickily slippery with leaking blood, he could hear the hollow tap of the protruding bones on ivory –
His hands were disintegrating.
‘No!’ he whispered.
The discordant twang of snapped strings resonated about his head, the harmonic progression unresolved, Cramoisy’s scream left hanging in the air.
He started up, staring at the bloody rags still clothing the skeletal fingers.
And in the candlelit salon, he became aware of a flurry of movement about him, a murmur of revulsion as the audience began to back away.
All so slow, so distant, fading into a blurred jangle of snapped strings –
In the pale brumelight of the Sulien dawn, Khassian slowly, shakily, examined his hands. The scar tissue knitting the fingers together felt lumpily coarse against his cheek, seamed with knots of rough skin. There was no sensation in the finger-tips – only the strange jabs of dull fire that sometimes irradiated the whole hand, making him cringe with pain. ‘Damaged nerve-endings,’ Dr Magelonne had said impassively at the last consultation. ‘It may never improve. You will just have to learn to live with it, to ignore it.’
‘I find I must speak plainly, Sieur Jordelayne.’ Mistress Permay’s voice rang out from the hallway. ‘I don’t like to have to talk of money – but you are well behind with your rent. I run a respectable establishment here, and some of these disreputable-looking individuals who have been calling upon you, well – it’s giving my apartments a bad name in the city. People have been talking. Remarking upon it.’
Khassian held his breath. He could not be certain whether Cramoisy would react as Cramoisy Jordelayne, Prima Diva, or would use his charm to soothe the landlady. He prayed the Diva would choose charm.
‘My dear Mistress Permay.’ Cramoisy’s voice oozed honey. ‘How perfectly dreadful that our visitors should have occasioned ill comments – and comments that have been directed at you. May I share a confidence with you? A very important confidence? These individuals are musicians of the highest calibre –’
Khassian heard Mistress Permay give one of her disdainful sniffs.
‘Highest calibre at begging on street corners, more like. I want my money, Sieur Jordelayne. And if I don’t get it by midday tomorrow, I shall be obliged to evict you.’
Cramoisy entered Khassian’s room, closing the door, standing with his back pressed against it as if to keep Mistress Permay out.
‘You heard?’
‘What’s happened to our money, Cramoisy?’
The Diva gave a little shrug.
‘We’ve spent it.’
‘All of it? Even your jewel money?’
‘Don’t worry. The Mayor has invited me to give a series of recitals. And if that doesn’t bring in enough, I’ll start to give lessons. You could teach music theory.’
Khassian looked at him in horror.
‘I am not teaching theory to Sulien brats!’
‘Miu caru, you may have to.’
‘We must find cheaper accommodation. We must live within our means.’
There was a shocked silence. Then Cramoisy said, each word clipped and precise, ‘You may, if you wish. Composers are renowned for starving in garrets. But I have my reputation to consider. I shall remain here.’
Orial stood on the borders of an alien country. Clouds scudded overfast across a threatening sky, illuminating the unfamiliar terrain with brief snatches of stormlight. She was a stranger in this mindscape, wandering lost and confused, searching vainly for familiar landmarks.
She had begun to dread the daily mindjourney, the plunge into the darkness along unknown ways.
It was all happening too fast. Her brain could not assimilate Khassian’s musical language.
Yet his influence was growing, shaping her own style. She sometimes experienced the unpleasant sensation that she was beginning to lose her identity, that his music was invading and altering her mind until her individuality was submerged in his.
Today they had been alone together, unchaperoned (Cramoisy was closeted elsewhere for fear his undisciplined thoughts might disturb Orial’s concentration). Khassian had walked close to her, his jacket brushing the corner of the escritoire. She had looked up and noticed the curve of his cheekbones, the shadow on his stubborn chin, the way his eyes softened when lost in the intricacies of his composition…
‘Let me see that passage again.’
He leaned over her shoulder. So close that she wanted to reach out and push the errant strand of hair out of his eyes. So close she could breathe in the scent of his hair, a curiously clean scent, redolent of soap herbs, rosemary and mallow. But who had washed his hair for him, tugged a comb through the tangles –
‘No, no, no, this is all wrong. You must do it again. It’s free time here, senza misura. Recitative. Let’s take it one bar at a time.’
Deflated, she took up the pen and scored lines through the passage.
‘This leads into one of the key moments of the opera. I’m striving for something new here, something that goes far beyond convention…’
He wandered over to the window, still talking.
‘You’ve never heard an opera, have you? The current convention is for the heroine to go mad – usually in Act Three. Her madness involves elaborate virtuoso vocal work – of the kind at which our Diva excels – and it usually brings the house down. Vocal acrobatics! I don’t want such absurdities. My Elesstar is torn between her love for Mhir and her loyalty to the Shultan. When she hears that Mhir has been put to death, she loses her reason. It must be a moment of pathos – of poignancy – but also terror. The audience must become one with Elesstar. It must terrify.’
‘Was that why the Grand Maistre wanted you to withdraw the opera?’
‘What?’
The one word was as loud as the report of a mortar; he had obviously not expected her to interrupt him. But she wanted to know why so she braved another question.
‘I still don’t understand why he accused the opera of being blasphemous.’ Khassian took in a breath.
‘To understand fully you would need to have lived through the last year in Bel’Esstar. To have seen the personal freedoms you take for granted here in Sulien taken away, one by one. Opera is not a chaste entertainment, for a start. It takes passion, incest and intrigue as its subject matters. And the danseuses in the Interludes wear revealing costumes which inflame the lusts of the men in the audience and incite lewd thoughts.’
His moods seemed mercurial, unpredictable, the lowering gloom suddenly pierced by glints of wicked humour. Orial could feel a giggle threatening to burst out; she clapped one hand to her mouth to stifle it. But when she glanced up, she saw from the glint in his eyes that he had intended her to laugh.
*
Late-afternoon in Sulien, twilight slowly drawing a shadowveil over the sunlit hillside terraces… Jerame Magelonne walked slowly, ruminatively, past the Cabinet of Curiosities on his way back to the Sanatorium – and then turned on his heel and went up the steps. A light burned in the depths of the Museum. Orial had mentioned she was spending some of her spare time assisting Jolaine with her work. He was suddenly seized with a pleasant inspiration; he would pay the ladies a surprise visit and take them to the Rooms for tea.
He pulled open the door and entered, gazing around him. The Museum seemed sadly neglected. Display cases were half-arranged, their treasures lacking labels or explanation. Signs had been removed, adding to the confusion. He ran his finger along the top of a display case; the tip left a trail in the grey dust. Had Dame Jolaine grown too old to manage the responsibilities of the position?
‘What are you doing in here? We’re closed!’
Her voice rang out, crisp as an arquebus shot; startled, he swung around to see Jolaine Tradescar framed in the lamplit doorway, glaring at him.
‘Jerame.’ She
wagged her finger at him as if he were a naughty boy caught scrumping apples. ‘I took you for… but no matter.’
‘Who did you take me for?’ he asked, a little disconcerted.
‘One of the Mayor’s minions, snooping around.’
Jerame followed her into the lamplit office; every surface was cluttered with open books and ledgers.
‘To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?’ She swept up an armful of folders from a chair and patted it for him to sit down. ‘I’d offer you some tea…’
He waved a hand in polite refusal; the tea leaves, he suspected, might be coated with the same dust that lay on the books and exhibits.
‘I rather expected to find Orial here.’
‘Orial? Whatever gave you that notion?’
‘I see I was mistaken.’ Jerame was a little perplexed. ‘She gave me to understand she was helping you.’
‘Oh, she’s often in here,’ Jolaine said vaguely. She let the folders drop in a heap.
‘I came to invite you both to the Rooms. Would you care to take a dish of tea with me?’
Jolaine hesitated.
‘Well, maybe for a half-hour – no longer! I have important work to complete.’
Jerame waited as she crammed notebooks into an old canvas bag and drew down the blinds, double-locking the back door. She seemed to be taking very elaborate precautions to protect the contents of the Museum.
‘You wait for me outside. I must extinguish all the lights and it’s easy to miss one’s step in the dark. Go on, go on.’ She shooed Jerame out.
Certes, she had become even more eccentric in her old age.
Jolaine Tradescar, his mother’s bluestocking aunt, had always been a source of pride and exasperation to her family. And yet it was she who had proved the greatest comfort at the time of Iridial’s death, her bluntness of manner a relief after all the polite, anguished whisperings. The disarray in the Museum perplexed him; her mental faculties seemed in no way diminished by age – so why had she neglected her duties as Antiquarian? And if Orial had been helping, why was everything so cluttered, so dusty?