Marianne, the Madame, and the Momentary Gods (14 page)

‘Of course I don’t, Ellat. No more than I did last time. But I have at least as good a clue this time as I had then. She has the bracelet, and I can follow that. Also, this time there are momentary gods. They will certainly have trailed after her, and they will have left a track. Surely someone as skilled as I am reputed to be can sniff them out.’ He shrugged in self deprecation, giving her a boyish smile.

‘What makes you think…’ she began in a maternal voice, then made a fretful motion and said, ‘oh, never mind. It’s just all so… uncertain.’

‘You want to know what makes me think the woman washing clothes is the operative symbol? A hunch, Ellat. And your favorite at the Cave, the one with the scary eyes.’

‘Therat?’

‘Yes. That one. She agrees that the symbol is very potent. So, for all intents and purposes, I’m looking for a laundress. I shall put myself into the proper frame of mind. I shall burn the right incense,’ he gestured at the ceremonial brazier beside the bed, already wreathed in smoke. ‘I shall recite the correct words and send my spirit self looking for a laundress. A laundress, mind you, with five dogs of five colors. I’ll grant you there may be more than one set of beings meeting that description, but not many more than one.’

‘You’re not taking Aghrehond?’

‘I would if he were here, Ellat, but he’s either on his way home or still in New York. He may be here by morning. Perhaps he’ll come after me as he did last time. I’ll leave it to him. He certainly carried the brunt of the battle during our last foray against Madame. And he had all the best of it. He appeared more or less as himself while I – well, I was undoubtedly a monster.’

‘Good-hearted, however,’ Ellat interjected. ‘You must have been good-hearted.’

‘Some part of me may have been,’ he agreed somberly. ’She gave me that role last time, an equivocal one, because she did not know how she felt about me. This time I will choose what role to take. I shall go this time as something every maiden dreams of.’ He laughed, sardonically.

‘What’s that?’

‘Why, Ellat. You were a maiden once. Can’t you guess?’

‘You don’t mean…’

He waved to her, a small wave, dismissive as well as affectionate, as he lay down on the cot. ‘I do mean, love. Wish me luck.’

In the dungeon, Marianne huddled on the hard cot, her eyes shut, trying to dream of that other place, trying desperately to pretend she was somewhere else.

‘Hsss,’ a low whisper at her ear. ‘Hsss.’

She turned her head toward the wall, feeling the faintest breath against her cheek. Mortar had fallen from between two of the cyclopean stones of the dungeon wall, leaving a narrow slot through which the breath came, a fervent little wind, hot and smelling of grease and garlic.

‘Hsss, can you hear me?’

She put her lips within an inch of the wall. ‘Yes, I can hear you.’

‘What are you in for?’

‘Receiving stolen goods. Palace goods.’

‘Ah. They’ll probably hang you, then. Or feed you to the plants in the botanical garden. Queen Luby likes to do that. I’m in for sedition.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘Haven’t any idea. Don’t even remember coming here. Just woke up here one day. Isn’t it that way with everyone?’

A chill began just above Marianne’s eyes, moving swiftly down her body to her toes, tingling along her arms. Within her mind something turned sluggishly, as though in drugged slumber, deeply somnolent and yet restless. The combination of cold and the vertiginous shifting within herself made her nauseated, and she gagged. What the voice said was true. She couldn’t remember where she had been before. She couldn’t remember coming to… to whatever town this was. Surely she couldn’t always have worked for the laundry. ‘What did you do before?’ she begged of the wall, seeking a clue to her own past. Surely she had a past!

‘Advertising,’ it answered promptly, perhaps with a touch of pride. ‘Something to do with advertising. Insurance, I think. Or perhaps toothpaste.’

‘They don’t seem similar.’

‘Identical,’ the voice hissed as though from some great distance. ‘Actually, they’re identical.’

She felt the source of the voice had withdrawn, though only temporarily, and this assumption was verified in a moment when it resumed. ‘Had to check the corridor. They spy, you know. They sneak the gratings open and stand there, listening. Always check the grating before you say anything.’

‘I don’t have anything bad to say,’ she objected.

‘Oh, they don’t care. Bad. Good. It doesn’t matter. They’ll use it against you anyhow. Where were we?’

‘They say I have to have a trial by combat,’ she blurted. ’With the Duke of Eyes. I don’t know what it means.’

A long silence. A sound as of lips smacking, or it could be a tsking; malice or sympathy, impossible to tell which. ’Well, they won’t hang you or feed you to the plants, then, which is too bad.’

‘Bad? Not to be fed to the plants?’ she demanded.

‘Ever seen him?’ the voice asked. ‘The Duke?’

‘No.’

‘He’s sort of a machine, you know. Only a tiny part human. Like his body doesn’t… function. So he’s in this machine. And they keep changing it. One time he’ll have hooks for hands and the next time, kind of grabbers. Or clubs. And one time he’ll have legs, but the next time tracks, like some kind of big earth mover. He doesn’t talk. Just looks at you with his eyes. Wherever his eyes look, that’s where the machine goes. Whatever his mind thinks, that’s what the machine does. And it’s big, you know. About twelve feet high.’

‘What kind of a champion could fight that?’ she asked, holding her terror at arm’s length. ‘How could I fight that?’

‘Well, you can’t, of course. Best thing to do is lie down, put your head on your arms and let him kill you. Not many people can do that, of course. He plays. Whips. Pincers. Things like that. It hurts, and it’s hard not to run and leap and try to escape. That’s what people come for, of course. To see the opponent try to escape.’

‘In other words,’ she whispered, ‘a trial by combat with the Duke of Eyes is really just another way of saying someone is to be publicly tortured to death?’

‘Well…’ the voice faded away. There was a distant clanging, a sound of several voices raised, a long silence. Then the hissing once more, close, very close, ‘That’s what it amounts to, Marianne.’

She had not told the voice her name. She rolled away from the aperture, fighting her welling nausea, knowing it wasn’t a prisoner who spoke to her through that rent in the masonry. Or, if a prisoner, then one who had been put up to it by someone else. By the nameless voice that spoke through the grating. By the dark woman on the magistrate’s bench. By the Queen. By someone who wanted to be sure she knew what would happen. Someone who wanted to savor her terror.

A soft nose pushed into her palm. A moist tongue licked at it, a puppy voice whined.

‘They’re going to kill me,’ she said, hopelessly. That’s what this has all been about. They’re going to kill me. And I don’t even know why.’

In Alphenlicht, Makr Avehl lay silently on the narrow cot, eyes closed, his breathing so shallow he appeared hardly to breathe at all. Around him extended a gray vacancy that was brushed intermittently with hints of color, echoing occasionally with a distant sound, a melody, perhaps a voice. It smelled of mossy woods, then of cinnamon, then of something namelessly disgusting. He had the sensation of walking, or swimming, or perhaps flying through this nameless void, reaching out with his senses toward a potent symbol. It was a familiar quest. He had floated here before, very recently. It was only a few weeks ago that he had followed the other
Marianne
into the false worlds that opened upon this nothingness, the dream worlds, the fantasy worlds that clustered within and beside and through the worlds of reality.

What would it be this time? One of Madame’s worlds, certainly, and yet not wholly hers. Each time she drew a victim into one of her worlds, whether purposely or unwittingly, that victim would change the world, little or much. Marianne’s presence would have modified the world in which she found herself, would have changed it and put a mark upon it that the follower might seek as a trailfinder seeks a cairn.

A woman washing clothes. The slap of sodden fabric. The slosh of water. The soggy enervation of steam. The fatty stink of soap. He turned his head on the pillow, evoking and following that fragrance. The smell of soap. He seemed to scent it, far off, coming closer. And a sound, as of some great tumble of waters. Thrashing. Gushing. A whirling sound.

He drifted. Drifted uncomfortably. Wet. Very wet. His whole body was soaked. He choked, drowning, forgetting, screaming at the dark thundering waters around him.

Someone opened the door of the indigo washer and he spilled onto the floor, wet as a flounder, his princely garb reeking of bleach.

‘Gracious,’ said the old man across the crook of his cane. ’It’s Prince Charming! I thought you might be my trunk, coming back.’

‘I’ve come to rescue the fair damsel,’ The Prince gargled, gasping for air. ‘Where is she?’

‘If you’re talking about Marianne,’ the old man answered, ’She’s imprisoned.’ He nodded, his head tilting to and fro like a rocking chair sent into motion by some constant breeze, moving of itself, unable to stop. ‘Sentenced to trial by combat. The whole town is talking of nothing else.’

The Prince rose with what dignity he could muster. His satin trousers leaked dye even as they shrank into sausage-skin tightness. Rust bloomed on the hilt of his sword all at once, like a flower. His velvet cape was a rag, ripped into fragments by the waters. He cursed.

‘You must be her champion,’ the old man commented, gesturing as he did so at the great machine across the aisle. The indigo dryer,’ he murmured, staring at Prince Charming’s trousers. ‘I’d recommend it.’

In the middle of the night, the voice returned, hissing once more between the impenetrable stones. ‘Marianne. Marianne.’ Insinuating as a serpent. ‘Marianne? Your champion has arrived.’

It was impossible to ignore the voice, even though she told herself it was a ploy, a feint, an attempt to give her hope that would then be dashed. She tried to keep silent and could not. ‘Who?’ she begged. ‘Who is it?’

‘Prince Charming,’ said the voice with a lewd giggle. ‘All got up for the part.’

She turned away from the wall and put her arm across her eyes, willing herself not to cry, not to speak. The little grating opened and someone peered in. She kept her eyes shut, breathed slowly, pretended to be asleep.

‘You’ll meet him next holiday!’ the voice exulted. ‘At the colosseum. In the catacombs where the victims are prepared!’

Marianne didn’t answer. She could not have answered. In this nightmare world, she could only endure for a time, then die. What was the point in argument or expostulation? What was the point of anything?

Slow tears crept down her face, hidden behind her arm. After a time, the grating slammed shut, as though in pique.

Prince Charming was hiding in an alley near the palace, hoping very strongly that the gang of mapless ones he had recently evaded would not find him again. He had had to fight off two such gangs already, and his rusty sword was proving to be of little help. He carried it in his hand, unsheathed, since if it was sheathed when he needed it, there was a strong likelihood it could not be pulled free at all. Once dry, he had assumed he would be able to obtain clothing, directions, perhaps a hot meal or a warm bed, all those things that civilized men take more or less for granted. His first disillusionment had come when he approached a store which purported, by the terms of its window displays and name, to sell clothing.

‘Y’got a coupon?’ the clerk had asked him curiously when Makr Avehl had asked to see something in a cloak and tights, size forty-two long.

‘Coupon?’

‘A coupon entitlin’ you to go around in fancy dress like that there. I mean, I’m not goin’ to say nothin’ to the Map Police, they’ll find you soon enough in that getup, Mack, but it’d be my job if I sold you somethin’ like that without a coupon.’

Prince Charming sighed. He felt it would be unbecoming to succumb to local pressure in the matter of dress, but one could not go about the streets looking like a derelict. ‘How about a regular sports coat and slacks, then. Shirt size sixteen-and-a-half, thirty-two.’

‘Fine. Y’got the money?’

Prince Charming laid gems and gold upon the counter.

‘I didn’t ask did you have no joolry. I asked did you have money. Like coin of the realm, like moolah, like voskies, double-voskies or maybe a ten vosky bill. I can’t do nothing with those.’

Prince Charming asked the way to a pawn shop or exchange bank and encountered the realities of the city.

‘Listen, Mack. You can’t find nothin’ without you got a map. First thing you got to do is lay your hands on tomorrow’s map, got that? Then you can find yourself some pawn shop or whatever.’

A few incisive questions asked of passersby elicited the information that maps were available at kiosks or twenty-four-hour restaurants for one vosky the map.