Castles Made of Sand (51 page)

I don’t know.

I’ll just have to wing it.

Serendip told him it was time to move on, warm bodies approaching. He went through the house, out the front door, and he was in the inner courtyard of Drumbeg, an open space surrounded by handsome stone buildings, either new or much restored; and the tower.

It was half dark. There were armed guards, but they were avoidable. The dogs were more alert. Two Dobermans came trotting up, through the pools of shadow between the security lights: heads low, silent, trained to give no warning before they attacked. He put on the mask. ‘
I don’t like dogs
,’ he said softly, in the back of his throat. They took the advice, and returned to their routine patrol. Sage had noticed, years ago, that animals seemed to
understand
the mask. The results could be unpredictable, it wasn’t something he’d try again in a hurry on a nervy fucking big police horse; but dogs aren’t dangerous.

Now he met a real obstacle, but it was the last. The door at the base of the tower was double-timbered, thickly covered with fanged studs of polished iron, and the lock was a massive, ancient thing, not amenable to high-tech persuasion. But he still didn’t need magic, which was good. He wasn’t sure of the limits of his new-found superpowers, but it seemed to make sense to conserve them. He took out a ring of heavy-duty skeleton keys and Serendip told him what to do.

And here we are, in at the front end.

The ground floor of the tower was surprisingly small. He had seen plans, and a video (an interview that the lord of Drumbeg had done in here, carelessly, years ago), but imagination is stronger. He’d still been expecting an English, baronial-style hall. The room had no furniture except for a mass of ancient weapons, lovingly displayed on the white walls. Fine, silky rugs on the stone-flagged floor; a stone spiral staircase in one corner. Across from the entrance another, modern door, promised different territory beyond. That was the way to the guardrooms; but Rufus’s private army wouldn’t come running unless someone raised the alarm. A brass pitcher full of leaves and hothouse flowers stood in the cold hearth: the glossy magazine touch. On the wall above there was a picture in an Art Deco frame, a soft-porn portrait of a very young girl, displayed on a woodland bank, her little breasts uplifted, her knees open, lips parted and gossamer wings spread wide.

The girl was Fiorinda, of course.

Someone came down the stairs, treading softly. It didn’t sound like Rufus. Who could this be? When, apparently astonished beyond caution, this person had crept out into the middle of the floor, he turned around. A woman of a certain age stood there, dressed in a long green open robe over a slinky catsuit type thing: slim as fashion, long legs, a superb pair of tits, glossy, aubergine-coloured hair. She stared at him, wide-eyed. Ah, I know.

‘Carly Slater,’ he said brightly, bowing a little from his height. ‘I think we met, once. You won’t remember. Some fucking VIP lounge somewhere.’

She bolted for the stairs.

Sage followed, leisurely. He could hear music.

The source of the music was in the room at the top which, Irish-style, was the great hall, and here was the traditional rockstar castle stuff that he’d expected below: a minstrels’ gallery, massive black oak antiques, a grand piano, costly knicknacks, fabulous paintings; and a fabulous view, lost in the evening, through broad windows all around. No sign of Carly. He didn’t see Rufus either, at first. A wallscreen, maybe three metres across, hung opposite the stair. It was showing the Inauguration Concert at Reading, of all things. Aoxomoxoa, skull-masked, in his sweeping black and white kimono, towers predatory over Fiorinda. Give me your hand, he croons, meaning,
I’m going to have you
, and she answers, pure as crystal, raising her starry eyes.

Vorrei e non vorrei—

Intimidated? Not she. She’ll take the Don apart, this one.

‘Can you remember the future, Steve?’ enquired a man’s deep voice, rich and musical, received rockstar with just the trace of an Irish accent.

‘Me?’ said Sage, grinning, strolling forward, hands in his pockets. ‘I can’t remember anything. Too many drugs.’

An armchair under the screen turned (it didn’t scrape on the floor). A big man was sitting there, relaxed and magnificent, shining black curls on his shoulders, a much photographed face, not so young as it once was. ‘Aoxomoxoa,’ said Rufus. ‘How times change. Last time we met you were the fart-sucking faceless king of the lads. Now you’re the sex god that every man, woman and child in Ax Preston’s little manor wants to
fuck
. Or be fucked by. But Aoxomoxoa, they say, loves only that grey-eyed slip of a girl who is the queen of England… I’ve been expecting you. Take a seat, make yourself at home.’

The screen had switched to ‘Atlantic Highway’. Four skull-headed idiots bounced over the potholes in a terrible old wreck of a car, convertible as in someone sawed the roof off, chief idiot sporting pink sunglasses and a Goonhilly Earth Station baseball cap. On backwards, of course. In a moment the masks will disappear. They’ll cruise along Newquay seafront, all the tat edited out, and step out into a suave Cornish Riviera.

Sage folded himself into a black-oak baronial chair, facing the lord of Drumbeg, his hands still in his pockets, legs stretched out. ‘Is this what you do with yourself these days, Rufus? Slob around in yer carpet slippers, watching my old videos?’

Rufus took a couple of draws on the cigar he was smoking. Then he decided to offer the box, pushing it across the massive, mediaevaloid coffee table that stood between them. No doubt these were very fine cigars. ‘Please, help yourself.’

‘Wasted on me, thanks. They make me throw up.’

‘Really? But you’re smoking a cigar in this video, a little further on.’

‘It was a prop. I don’t recall if anyone actually smoked it; I cert’nly didn’t. Have you been studying my fucking videos as a
hobby
? Now that is sad.’

Rufus pulled the table closer to him, leaned down and spooned a quantity of white powder from a silver bowl, cut it deftly and offered a silver straw.

‘What about a little blow? It’s Bolivian, certified organic.’

Sage shook his head. ‘Not my drug.’ He noted that he was being offered, in some sense, fire and salt, and wondered if there was a ritual significance. Fucked if he cared. No, in these circumstances, has to be the right answer.

Rufus leaned back. ‘How old are you, Steve? Thirty-one, thirty-two? The perfect age for a rockstar. You’ve made the shitloads of money. You don’t yet realise that no matter what the fuck you do now, you’re on the downward slope. But all those people looking at you, they know. They’ve seen you take the step beyond the top, they’ve seen you topple. You can write your rock symphonies, fill the Superbowl, but you’re
over.
Oh, you don’t mind if I call you Steve?’

This earned a big sunny smile. I mind, if my opponent tells me he’s rattled?

‘Not at all. My grandad still calls me Stephen.’

‘Maybe you’d like to see some pictures I took of her when she was twelve years old. The ones I took for the artist… She was very compliant, a real little professional.’

‘No thanks.’

Rufus looked irritated. He crushed out the cigar in a chunky bronze sheelanagig ashtray. ‘Then what
do
you want, Steve? If you’re not prepared to accept my hospitality?’

‘I’m here to kill you,’ explained Sage, placidly. He took his hands out of his pockets and laid them on the arms of the chair, in full view. The jewel on his right hand caught shards of light from the fake-flambeaux around the walls. ‘I’m gonna break your legs and peg you out and leave you for the tide. Anythen’ else you need to know?’

The big man, in his dark, gold-fringed mantle, majestically filling that chair, drew a long, measured breath.

‘Partly because of what you did to my babe,’ Sage went on, ‘I have to admit that, though I’m fighting the idea: because that would be revenge, an’ I know it would be wrong, an’ only store up trouble. Partly because
you won’t stop
, Rufus. Everybody knows you won’t. You’re beat, you’re not king of the hill anymore, but there’s no way anyone can say to you, be a good lad and retire quietly, and you’ll do it. You’ll keep coming back, fucking everything up. And partly—’

Rufus laughed heartily. ‘What, more? How many excuses do you need?’

Sage was reminded of something he’d had to face. The person he’d
liked
, in Fergal Kearney’s body, though with a different voice, and eyes, and physical presence: the misfit, loser, but also a really clever and knowing guy, had been in some way Rufus O’Niall. God help me, of course I liked him. He is her father.

‘And partly for your sake, Rufus. Because I’ve some faint idea what it might feel like, being where you are. Think of me as the doctor. I’ve come to get you out of the shit you are in. You don’t have to die if you don’t want. We could talk about other ideas.’

The two men looked into each other’s eyes.

There was a silence.

Suddenly the magician surged to his feet, sweeping up the mediaeval coffee table like a mad, huge shield. ‘Damn you to hell!’ he shouted. He flung his shield and charged forward, unstoppable, stormed past Sage and rushed out the room.

Rufus ran down the stairs to the bedchamber on the floor below, leaped inside and barred the door. He was very stirred-up, not at all concerned. He called the guardroom and spoke to O’Donoghue, his security chief. In rapid fire he ordered everybody out: men, domestic staff, the lot. They could sleep in the village, or wherever the fuck they liked. He didn’t want them around. For what was going to happen, he wanted a free hand.

O’Donoghue didn’t question or protest. He knew better than that.

Rufus broke the connection, feeling profound relief. He had stopped something that could have been a fuck-up. Now what? He paced up and down, lacerated by memory. The terrible shock, when he had seen her on stage at that fucking Inauguration Concert, for the first time. Oh God,
she’s changed, she’s changed
. Until then he hadn’t cared what happened. He hadn’t been phased when she fought him off, the night when he tried to initiate her. That was just girlish rebellion, very sexual, to be expected. He hadn’t given a shit about the boyfriends. She was still his creature, he knew he could reach out and take her, any time. But when he’d seen her, on the screen, and he had known
she’s changed, she’s changed!
God, the burning outrage. Those two bastards, they took her from me, they changed her. That doesn’t go unpunished! They’re going to be sorry they were born.

And he hadn’t let it go unpunished.

He thought of Aoxomoxoa’s little litany; well here’s mine. I want Fiorinda back. I will make her mine again, and she will bear the child,
my son
, that only she can bear. I want the Celtic future, and I will help to make it happen… He laughed, full and hearty. Right to the last moment, he would have saved her. But he’d been prepared to let Fiorinda die if he had to, for the sake of the larger vision: the more so because he’d felt she was dead already. It had not been his magical child, the broken-spirited thing, cowering in that prison. Now she was alive—and without Rufus having to intervene at all.

Thank you very much, Steve!

Now I’m going to wipe that grin off your face, you insolent bastard.

He went on pacing, from sheer excess of energy, the space that surrounded the great bed. There should be fresh rushes in here, arm’s-length deep. They say they can’t find a supplier who’ll change them daily, it’s maddening. She’s alive. I will take her back. I will make her mine again. The English Celtics had sent him messages, warning him to expect an assault, because Sage had returned from Caer Siddi. They’d advised him to double his security, or get himself out of the way. As if they thought he didn’t know. As if they could tell him what to do.

Like fuck.

The way I deal with this is mine. I take no pissant advice. This is MINE.

What shall I do with him? I can do what I like with him.

It was not a problem that Sage was within the gates. The tower was a mantrap. Oh no, having the enemy inside is no disadvantage; this place is custom-built for that situation. The chieftains who ruled here, five hundred years ago, never dreamed of a life without armed guards at the door. They weren’t fools. They knew you can’t have power without the accessories.

He grinned to think of how he’d wrecked that fantasy, in Brixton.

‘Thank you for saving her life for me, Steve,’ he shouted. ‘And congratulations. You trained her up to be a good fuck. She was a cold little fish when she was a child. It wasn’t the sex that held me, she made all the running there. I loved her for her mind.’

Silence. But he knew the bastard was out there, listening.

‘You can’t kill me. If you had the power, you haven’t got the balls. You can only kill when you’re following orders, and master isn’t here now. You’re Ax Preston’s dog. Everyone knows it. They laugh at you, all your old mates. Hey, how does it feel, bitch? How does it feel, taking it up the arse from a coloured boy, Aoxomoxoa?’

He wondered at himself. How
young
he felt. Like a teenager.

‘You never talked to Ax much, did you?’ came Sage’s voice. Rufus listened carefully, placing him. ‘When you were Fergal. I remember noticin’ that. You knew he’d see through you. You were never afraid of me. I’m stupid. I’m a pussycat.’

Out on the stairs Sage sat crosslegged, whistling under his breath, arraying his weaponry. He’d been carrying his Roman legionary’s shortsword concealed under his suit jacket. He laid it beside Fiorinda’s saltbox. Doesn’t look like much, but he had relied on Drumbeg being well-supplied, and he’d been right. And a handgun, the automatic from his desk in Battersea. Like George always says, it’s a sin to ignore the obvious. So what was the plan? The plan was to come here, bullshit Rufus into accepting single combat, and then…er…win.

He liked this plan. It was simple. It had no moving parts. It was Sage-proof.

The other option, where the evil magician repents, was an offer that must be made, and Rufus knew that the offer was real. However, let’s face it, not a serious contender at this stage. But it does seem to wind him up nicely!