Ariel (5 page)

* * *

We reached Malachi Lee's house around two-thirty. It was a medium-sized, wooden, two-story house in the middle of a residential block. The yard was small and well-kept—unusual in an age where power mowers wouldn't work. A black iron fence surrounded the yard. The vertical bars ended in sharp pikes. On six of the pikes at the left side of the fence were six human heads.

I tried to smile. "Intimidating."

"People who tried to take the house," said Chaffney.

"Cute," said Ariel. "Makes people think twice about trying the same thing."

"Doesn't that attract buzzards?" I asked.

"Maybe he thinks the deterrent value is worth it." Ariel glanced at me, black eyes soft. "Chin up, Pete."

The first three heads had been there long enough to be nothing more than clean-picked skulls. They reminded me of those statues on Easter Island, maybe because their empty eyes looked toward something I couldn't see. The fourth and fifth skulls were eaten half away, and the sixth had been put up recently. I guessed it had been there three or four days. Most of the features were still recognizable. I swallowed a lump in my throat.

Chaffney struck a bell on a post beside the gate.

"Look, he's probably busy," I said. "We really don't need to see him, anyway. It's not that important."

"Sure it is. He'll want to meet Ariel. You can talk to him about the Change."

"But what if he doesn't want to meet us?" I whispered to Ariel. She looked pointedly at the skulls on the fence. Great.

Chaffney rang the bell again. The front door opened and a man walked out, followed by an enormous black Chow. As they neared I saw the intelligent sparkle in the dog's eyes. It seemed to grin sloppily as its black tongue tolled.

Malachi Lee was tall and had black hair. He wore a black silk kimono. A samurai sword in a black lacquered sheath was thrust into the left side of the wide belt about his middle, blade up. It was a long, curved, two-handed sword with a dark green, twined grip. He dialed the padlock on the gate, opened it, and stepped through. The dog followed.

He stopped when he saw Ariel. I think I know some of what he felt. He was seeing her and nothing else. He walked around her, just looking her over. His face was impassive.

He stopped in front of her. "Well," he said.

I stood straighter, proud to be associated with something that took your breath away to see. And today Ariel was particularly breathtaking. Her coat glowed in the bright afternoon sun with a white almost painful to look at. Her horn shimmered like a fire opal in soft but fiery colors: greens, yellows, blues, reds, and oranges buried deep within the horn, fighting furiously to escape.

"Hello," Ariel said after a while.

Chaffney shifted. Malachi didn't notice. Chaffney cleared his throat. "Malachi, this is—"

"Quiet."

Chaffney shut up. Malachi Lee drew his sword. I jumped and started toward him, but a stern look from Ariel halted me.

"I am Malachi Lee," he said, holding up the sword. It flashed in the sun. He lay it carefully on the ground before Ariel's bright mirror hooves. "And I would consider it an honor to be at your service."

She looked carefully into his eyes. I felt a pang in the pit of my stomach—jealousy?

"I am Ariel," she said after a minute, and she touched the tip of her horn to the sword. "And I thank you."

Malachi Lee nodded. He retrieved the blade and sheathed it. It found its way back into the scabbard as though it had eyes of its own. He just looked at Ariel and she gazed quietly back, tail swishing, sending rainbow dots everywhere.

I coughed into my hand. Malachi Lee seemed to break from a pleasant daydream. "She's yours?" he asked, looking me up and down. Big Man On Campus sizes up wimpy date of prom queen.

"Uh, yes. That is, we're each other's. I'm Pete—"

He bowed a short bow and stepped forward with his hand extended. I shook it. Strong grip. Calluses like leather. The expression on his face was unreadable. "You're a very lucky person.

I felt my face turning red. "Why, thank you." I felt genuinely flattered and wasn't quite sure how to handle it. I looked at Ariel. Her eyes smiled back.

The falcon screeched and spread its wings. Malachi turned to her. "I hear you, Asmodeus." He looked at Chaffney for the first time. Both men had a distant, guarded look in their eyes. "She's living up to her name, I hope?"

Chaffney folded his arms. "She is, yes."

"Name?" I asked tentatively. Why did I feel there was more going on here than I knew?

Malachi turned back to me. "Yes, Asmodeus. Demon in Christian mythology. And Jewish. Had its roots in Persia. Asmodeus was the prince of the Revengers of Evil—for what that's worth—often portrayed as a winged man."

"Malachi named her when be cast the loyalty spell," supplied Chaffney. "He  .  .  . asked a high price for her loyalty." He studied Malachi Lee levelly. "She was worth it. I've never regretted it." He unfolded his arms, and with that the strange tension seemed to melt away. "I thought you'd like to meet them," he said.

"Yes."

"They came into the city yesterday afternoon. Me, Emilio, and Harry were standing overpass watch on the east side. I'm afraid Emilio started getting ideas about her horn."

Malachi frowned. "That's not good." He looked at me. "You don't need any trouble from him. He's no trouble by himself, but he has too many friends. Let me know if he bothers you."

"Thanks, but I think I can take care of my own problems."

"Suit yourself. But the offer still stands."

The big Chow barked. Malachi bent and ruffled its thick fur. "Sorry, boy. Didn't mean to be rude. Pete, this is Faust, faithful companion and partner in hard times."

"Hi," I said, half-indulgently.

Faust barked once.

"Did you cast his loyalty spell?" I asked.

For a moment he looked angry. "No one did," he said. "We're friends." He patted the dog again. "Faust, this is Ariel. She's a unicorn, and as long as you know her I want you to treat her and guard her as you would me."

I thought that was a strange thing to say, but the dog barked once to Malachi and again to Ariel. She woofed once in return. I cast her a sidelong glance—I don't know if she really spoke dog-ese or if she was just humoring our host.

"Ariel's a good name," said Malachi. "Did you pick it?"

"Yes. I liked it."

"Shakespeare would have loved it."

I shot him a puzzled look.

His eyebrows crept up. "I thought that's where you got it. Shakespeare.
The Tempest
. Ariel was a magical character."

"Oh." I felt stupid. "I saw it on a book with a picture of a unicorn on the cover. I thought it fit her."

"Oh, it fits her, all right. Come inside." He shook his head wonderingly. "I'd like to find out what it's like to be the Familiar of a unicorn." He turned and held the gate open for us. Faust, Chaffney and Asmodeus, Ariel, and I—a dog, a leather-jacketed man with a falcon on his shoulder, a unicorn, and a twenty-year-old virgin—walked into the yard. Malachi locked the gate behind us and caught up to Russ. He extended his arm. "Do you mind?"

Russ spread his hands. "Go ahead." He shrugged his right shoulder and Asmodeus flapped onto Malachi's proffered arm. He stroked her head with a finger. "Faust—you two go play."

The bird flapped from Malachi's arm and sped across the yard, flying close to the ground. Barking, Faust ran after her.

I shook my head. What a day.

* * *

The front door was rigged to kill anybody who walked in after it was armed. The door opened outward. Tied to the inside knob was a string that turned a corner round a pulley, went through the trigger of a loaded Wildcat crossbow, and was secured on a nail driven low into the wall. The bolt was aimed belly-level at the door. Once it was opened, the string tautened, the trigger pulled, the bolt flew, and there was a body on the front porch. There was no way you'd be able to slam the door or duck in time.

"What if somebody stays behind the door when they open it?" I asked. "The bolt'll hit it and they'll just come on in."

"Faust is my watchdog at night." He reset the string on the knob after we were inside. "He usually stays in the yard. Anybody in front of that door has to deal with him first. You can see the iron grillwork set in the windows. There's no other way in; all other doors have been bolted shut and reinforced from the inside."

"What if somebody kills Faust and comes in? It could happen, you know."

"Then they'll have me to deal with."

"What if you're asleep?"

"I'm a light sleeper."

"Oh."

Five

It is an astonishing fact that there are laws of nature, rules that summarize conveniently—not just qualitatively but quantitatively—how the world works. We might imagine a universe in which there are no such laws, in which the 10
80
elementary particles that make up a universe like our own behave with utter and uncompromising abandon.

—Carl Sagan
, Broca's Brain

"I'm not sure it had a cause," said Malachi. "I think it may have just  .  .  . happened."

We sat—with the exception of Ariel, who stood—in Malachi Lee's living room. The furniture was shabby: springs broken, linings showing, chair legs wobbly, threads hanging from the upholstery that had pulled loose from the bottom of the couch. The walls were undecorated, except for one that was covered by crammed bookshelves. All kinds of books, from cheap paperbacks to leather-bound, gold-stamped hardcovers. Many had been stolen from the Atlanta Public Library; no wonder I hadn't been able to find some of the ones I'd been looking for.

"How could the Change have 'just happened'?" I countered. "Change implies cause, and cause implies source. Things don't just
happen
."

"Then I have to ask my question again: what caused the old universe—call it the Newtonian universe. Until you can answer that I'm forced to conclude that things either do happen without cause, or that they have causes we'll never be able to understand or prove. I don't think there's anything supernatural' at all about the world as it is now. It just works under different laws of physics."

"'Different laws of physics,'" said Ariel, "and 'supernatural' seem synonymous to me."

He frowned. "All right, I'll grant you that. But the end result is the same. 'A difference that makes no difference is no difference.' I cast a spell and it works whether you call it supernatural or different operant physics. I conjure a demon and it appears. No matter what the cause, the result is the same. To say it can't be is to say Ariel can't exist—yet there she is."

"Thanks. I was starting to think you guys were about to tell me I couldn't be here. I'm told that's rude."

Chaffney pursed his lips. "But what about when you conjured that demon, Pete? I mean, what were you trying then? Were you trying to do magic, or—"

"I was curious," I interrupted, not wanting to be reminded of the affair. "I just wanted to see what would happen. I don't need proof that magic exists—why should I?" I hooked a thumb at Ariel.

Malachi stood. "You tried a conjuration?"

I nodded.

"Yeah, tell him about it, Pete," Chaffney said. He looked at Malachi. "He told me about it in the library last night. It's a great story. Go on, Pete. This is Malachi's thing."

Malachi rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I would like to hear it."

I sat back in the threadbare chair. "You tell him," I told Ariel sullenly. "I'm tired of telling people about it."

She snorted, but told him the whole mess pretty much as I had related it the previous night. The story gave me the creeps; I didn't want to repeat it. Not that listening to it was much better. The more I relived it the more I realized I must have got off lucky.

There was silence when she finished. Malachi Lee searched my face for some reaction. "That's what happened?" he asked.

"Yeah."

He shook his head. "You're very fortunate, you know that?"

"I'm beginning to appreciate it, yes."

He went back to looking thoughtful and then walked to his bookcase, searching titles with sweeps of his index finger. It stopped in front of a black, leather-bound book. He pulled it out, opened it, and turned pages until his eyes rested on something that seemed to satisfy him. He read for a minute, nodding to himself, then handed the book to me. "Is this the conjuration you used?"

The book was a dead weight. To touch it was to hold something grimy, like the oily dust that collects in garages. The archaic print, the yellowed pages—everything was the same as that other book. Even the leather was as worn and cracking. And the conjuration—no way I would forget that spell. It didn't matter that I hadn't known the meaning of the words; they looked foul and sounded worse. "Yes, this is it."

"You're sure?" He looked as if he hoped I would deny it.

"Positive."

He took the book from me and held it open before Ariel. "Ariel?"

She barely glanced at it. "I think it is. I don't remember very well."

"Sure you do," I said. "You're the one who picked it out. You said you were curious about that one. You remember."

"I don't read Latin," she said.

"But last night you told Russ you knew what it meant." She avoided my gaze. "What's wrong?"

"You knew what this was, didn't you?" Malachi asked her.

The barest dip of her horn.

"You knew what this meant and you let him go ahead? Why?"

She turned away. "I thought I understood the risks."

"Why?"

Her head swiveled back and she looked darkly into his eyes. "I thought I could handle it!"

"You thought you  .  .  .  . You mean you didn't even tell him?"

"Tell me what?" I asked.

"He wouldn't have done it! And I couldn't have. I can't make the motions, or—"

"Do you need to test your power that much?" She was silent, but there was something in the way her eyes flashed at him that I'd never seen before: it was almost  .  .  . resentment. A woman scorned, perhaps. But she said nothing and the question hung thickly in the air.

Malachi turned to me with the book. "Do you know what this means?"

Ariel interrupted. "You don't have to—"

"He deserves to know. Do you, Pete?"

"Judging by the results I got from using it," I said carefully, "I would assume that it's a spell for conjuring a minor demon."

"Oh, it's that, all right." His lips pressed together tightly. "This is the translation of the conjuration you used." He cleared his throat. I glanced questioningly at Ariel but she wouldn't meet my eyes.