Marianne, the Magus & the Manticore (27 page)

"By Zurvan, Makr Avehl, where are you? The Residence?

How? When? Why didn't you..."

To all of which he merely repeated what he had been saying since she answered the phone, "Is Marianne there, Ellat? Have you seen her?" receiving the same answer of incomprehension and at last, verbal confirmation.

"I haven't seen her. Makr Avehl, I haven't seen her. About an hour ago, a man came to the door who said he had just bought the house a week or so ago and was surprised to find anyone in it. The people downstairs, Mrs. Winesap and her friend, have disappeared. It doesn't even look recently lived in down there. A piece of plaster fell off the wall in the front room a while ago. Something—Makr Avehl, something—"

He thought furiously, unable to think and yet forced to consider something, whatever thing it might be. Finally, full of passionate sorrow, he said, "Ellat. Pick up the things I gave her—the pictures, the little carvings, that medicine bag on the window seat. The pot of crocuses, Ellat. If you see anything else there that looks as though she treasured it, bring it. Then get out of there. The car is still there. Drive to a hotel. When you get there, call me. Don't linger, Ellat. I have a feeling about this...."

He let her go, feeling that to hold her longer on the phone might be to hold her in some position of danger. He walked about the Residence, moving here and there like a frustrated animal in a cage, moving, moving, not knowing where he went or what he did. Eventually he was called to the phone once more to hear Ellat's voice.

"There was nothing there, Makr Avehl. Nothing of hers at all. When I left, the walls were turning dingy. The curtains were all tattered. There was nothing in her closet, nothing in the drawers of her dressing table. Nothing in the bathroom medicine cabinet. Only the things you gave her, and I brought them away. When I left, the place was all overgrown, as though no one had lived there for years, decades. It was frightening."

"Ah," he said. "Then she chose another world, somewhere else...."

"A false world, Makr Avehl? One of the false worlds?"

"I don't know. When I have rested, perhaps I will ask the Cave. Perhaps it is not one of the false worlds at all. Perhaps some other... well. Aghrehond says that at the end she was very strong, Ellat, a giantess. Nothing could stand against her.

She was powerful, shattering. Still, she hugged me... I..."

He could say nothing more, and she asked him nothing more.

Later she called Aghrehond and learned that they had given Makr Avehl something to make him sleep, for he had been tearing at himself in his rage and frustration until they feared for him. "When will you be home, Mistress?" he asked. "We need you here."

"As soon as a plane can bring me. I'll have to come in to Van, in Turkey. Lake Urmia is out of the question with Iran behaving as it is. I'll come to Van, Hondi. I will send word when I leave. Send a car to meet me."

She came within the few days it took for Makr Avehl to resume the outward appearance of the calm, loquacious, humorous man he had been before, though there were shadows in his eyes and he occasionally hissed in a powerless fury which only Aghrehond understood. He was, if anything, more in-clined to lecture on any subject whatsoever, and it was obvious to those who knew him well that he was a man hovering at the edge of breakdown. Ellat, seeing him, was not relieved of anxiety.

"He must go to the Cave, Hondi. He must find an answer.

He is eating himself up not having an answer."

"So I have urged him, Mistress. He will not go. He is afraid there is no answer, and he dares not let himself know that."

"No. If there is no answer, he must know that. He cannot begin to heal until he knows." And she set about the business of seeking the Cave on Makr Avehl's behalf.

He was not helpful—not resentful, not overly full of excuse or delay, simply not assisting in the process. He ate the ritual meal without comment and without enjoyment. He was dressed in the ritual robe at dawn, for Ellat had determined that a dawn reading would be most likely to produce results. He suffered himself to be driven to the foot of the mountain where the easy slope of the trail wound upward toward the entrance of the Cave, and to be urged from the car toward the ascent. Once on the path, however, it was only the pressure of Ellat's arm on the one side and Aghrehond's on the other which forced him upward. Birds were twittering their pre-dawn exercises as they crossed one of the small streams which striped the mountain with silver sound. Far away cows were lowing in a meadow, and Aghrehond smiled, glad of the sound in the stillness of morning. They turned to wind their way back, then turned again and again, coming at last to the carven door which stood guard at the east portal of the Cave. There Nalavi and Cyram and the girl waited, the girl Makr Avehl thought had scary eyes.

Therat. They lighted their way into the Cave, down the sandy, narrow cavern which opened into the great, round hall, there to group themselves around the altar, utter the proper words, and put out their lamps.

Darkness surrounded them. Only their breathing could be heard in the quiet. Outside the sun would be rising, spreading its rays upon the world, letting them fall upon the mountaintop to be reflected from millions of dancing leaves, from the liquid eyes of deer, from the barrels of a hunter's gun, from pools of dew and a half hundred leaping streams, down a hundred thousand tortuous tunnels and holes into the body of the mountain, some to be lost forever in that great pile, other rays to be reflected once, and again, and again, until they fell into the cavern where they could be seen, upon carvings put there when Rome was an empire, when Picts roamed in forests not yet ruled by Saxons, when Charlemagne ruled.... Ellat heard Makr Avehl sigh, sigh with a hopeless sound as he turned to see where the light fell.

"A child," said Therat firmly. "The light falls on a child."

Indeed, above their heads the light fell on a tiny carving of a child, a young girl, standing in a garden.

"A mother," said Nalavi. "The light falls on a mother." This carving was larger, older, partly obliterated by the slow drip of water over the centuries, but unmistakably a mother nursing a child.

"A knife," said Cyram. "The light falls upon a knife." And that symbol, too, was clearly etched in the gray stone beneath the golden ray of light which leaked down on it through all the massive weight of the mountain above.

They waited, waited, but these rays held firm and no others broke the dark. At last Therat murmured the appropriate prayers, the lamps were lit, and they left the place.

At the portal, they stopped for a time to look upon Alphenlicht, bright in the dawn. It was the girl, Therat, who said,

"Archmage, may a Kavi offer you assistance?"

"One might, Therat, except that I have found the signs easy to read. She has gone back into childhood, and I cannot go to her there. She has gone into her own time. I cannot go. No Kavi has ever gone."

"This is true, Archmage. And yet, if I were you, I would consider that time moves, and that her childhood was, but is not now." And Therat favored him with a sharp, challenging glance from her eagle's eyes before bowing deeply before him, as did Nalavi and Cyram, though ordinarily they would have been full of banter and nonsense. They took themselves away, leaving Ellat and Aghrehond with him on that high place.

"Childhood was, but is not now," mused Ellat. "Now what did she mean by that, Makr Avehl?"

"It means, dear Mistress," said Aghrehond, for Makr Avehl gave no evidence of having heard her, "that if the pretty lady, Marianne, went back to being a girl-child, she has had to grow up again."

"Exactly," said Makr Avehl, slapping his hands against his shoulders as though to wake himself from some bad dream or malevolent spell. "She has had to grow up again."

THEY SAT AT a table on the terrace overlooking acres of lawn on which a large machine surmounted by a small man with a gay umbrella over his head made undulating stripes and a smell of cut hay. The small man had a brown, round belly, an ancient straw hat, and a pipe. Makr Avehl thought he looked supremely contented atop the clattering machine and wished that he himself could share that contentment. Though his outer self gave the appearance of calm, inside he was a tempest of hope and desire and longing and half a dozen other emotions he had not taken trouble to identify. It had taken several days of concentrated effort to find this place and another week to obtain an invitation. The woman across the table from him knew nothing of this. She sipped from her tall glass, following his gaze out across the lawns.

"You are admiring Mr. Tanaka's stomach," she said. "I have thought of suggesting to him that he might wear a shut while running the mower—it is his newest and most glorious toy—

but he enjoys the sun so. When he gets bored with the thing, he'll let one of his grandchildren run it. None of Robert's or Richard's children will care whether they wear shirts, either, though their fathers are very dignified." She laughed pleasantly, sipping from the tinkling glass once more. He examined her covertly, a slender, beautiful woman of almost fifty, hair escaping its loose bun to make a cloud around her face. "Haurvatat Zahmani, my husband, will be here momentarily. He will be so glad to meet you. He was so excited and pleased when you called."

Makr Avehl cocked his head curiously. "Haurvatat? Surely that is a very old name among our people."

"According to my husband it is. Haurvatat and Ameretat, among the Medes the twin gods of health and immortality. I don't know what possessed his parents to give him and his sister such names except that it reminded them of Alphenlicht.

I simply call him Harve. It's much easier. Of course, he insisted on passing the names on to his own children. I call his son Harve, too, and my daughter is Marianne. It isn't that far from Ameretat but it falls easier on American ears."

"Marianne," said Makr Avehl. "Yes. Oh, yes."

"You say you met my daughter at the university?"

"No. I did not meet her. I did see her, and was fascinated by the family likeness. She so resembled our family that I made inquiries—which led me to you and your charming husband.

He was very kind on the phone, very hospitable to invite me down for the weekend." Actually, the process by which he had located them had been the reverse of this, from them to Marianne, but he had no intention of saying so.

"My husband speaks often of Alphenlicht, though he has not seen it since he was a child."

"You, ma'am—you remember it?"

"Well, not really. My father came here to the embassy when I was only seven. He returned home several times, but I never went with him. Then, just at the time I would have gone, I met Haurvatat." She laughed again. "He was a young girl's dream, a bit older, and
so
good looking. I have never regretted marrying young."

"He had been married before?" Makr Avehl kept his voice casual. "You mentioned his son, but your daughter."

She nodded, a bit sadly he thought, and shook her glass so that it rang like little bells. "Yes. He had been married before.

She died when young Harve was bom, young Haurvatat.
Health.

That's what the word 'haurvatat' means, you know. So sad."

She seemed about to go on, but at the moment they heard a voice inside the nearest room and a booming laugh. The laugh preceded the man, and Makr Avehl rose to shake the hand of the tall, splendid form with patriarchal beard and flowing locks.

Makr Avehl thought of carved frescoes at Persepolis, magnif-icent and ancient forms going back through the centuries. Haurvatat Zahmani might well have been the sculptor's model for any of them.

"Well, here you are, my boy. And looking exactly as I had pictured you. We do run to family likeness, don't we, we Zahmanis. Did you notice, Arti? Of course you did. He looks just as young Harve would have.... Well," heartily changing the subject, "we are delighted to have you as our guest mis weekend. Are you here for some diplomatic reason? Or should I ask?"

Makr Avehl shook his head modestly. "You may ask, of course. I am here for no sensitive reason. I am here to buy agricultural machinery." Such was the reason he had invented out of whole cloth the week before when he had found that Marianne was studying livestock management at an agricultural college. "I was interested in some demonstration projects at the university your daughter attends. Something to do with orchard production." What Makr Avehl did not know about orchard production would have filled a library, but he smiled calmly, visualizing apples.

"Ah!" Marianne's mother smiled enlightenment. "So that is where you met—not met? Merely saw? Ah, well, it is truly a family likeness. You saw her at the agricultural school. Such a profession for a woman! Her father was dead set against it...."

"Oh, now, now, Arti. Not dead set. Doubtful. Put it that way. Just a little doubtful."

"Doubtful." The woman made a sour mouth. "Full of fury and swearing and carrying on. Saw no reason for a woman to go to university at all. Well. He married me just out of high school. Possibly he thought someone would come along and carry Marianne off to the altar in the same way."