Marianne, the Matchbox, and the Malachite Mouse (18 page)

She studied it for the briefest moment. ‘It looks like the game my brother’s got. I think it’s the same. His has little animals to play with. He showed it to me, but I haven’t had a chance to play it with him yet …’

Makr Avehl showed her the rhinoceros, and she nodded. ‘Well, his were that size, but his was a kangaroo, I think, and a bird of some kind and some other things I’d never seen before.’

‘How many game pieces?’

‘Four, I think.’ She furrowed her brow. ‘Yes, four.’

‘Where did he get the game, do you know?’

‘There’s a shop that sells them. In the mall. All the kids hang out at the mall. It’s a store where they sell records and tapes and posters and games, and there are video games there for them to play, you know.’

‘And the name of this place?’

She furrowed her forehead in concentration. ‘I’ve never been in there, but I’ve passed it. On the upper level, beside the shoe store … Cat something. Catfields?’

‘Cattermune’s,’ suggested Makr Avehl, who had noticed the name blazoned on several shopping centers on his way from the airport.

‘That’s it,’ said Briggs, leaning forward to inspect the parchment. ‘You know, the one my brother has is on a board, not just paper like this.’

‘A more recent issue, likely,’ agreed Makr Avehl. ‘This may have been the original. I should not be surprised to learn that old Madame Dagma has had it for many years.’

‘Oh, she has,’ Briggs confirmed. ‘I’ve been here eleven years, and all that time she’s kept her handkerchiefs in the top drawer of her bedside table, and whenever she asked me to give her a hanky, I’ve seen this folded paper under it. It’s kind of splotchy, you know. Not exactly all white.’

‘That’s because it isn’t paper.’ Makr Avehl smiled at her, thanking her for her observation. ‘It’s parchment. Skin.’

‘Sheepskin, maybe?’ asked the maid.

‘Something like that,’ he agreed, thinking that it was probably something quite unlike that. ‘Did you by any chance see the game pieces that went with this?’

The maid shook her head. ‘I never did. She had an envelope in that drawer, but I never looked inside it.’

‘Well, it’s still confirmation of a kind. Thank you, Briggs. You’ve been very helpful.’ He smiled, and the maid went out, shaking her head over it all. ‘Now, Arti, forgive me for refusing your kind invitation, but I must tell Ellat and Therat what has happened and then go here and there for the next several hours.’

After a few more tears and protestations, he was allowed to go.

At the hotel where Makr Avehl had decided they should stay – believing they would have more freedom of action there than at the Zahmanis – he cleared the phone, a lamp, and assorted cardboard advertisements from the top of the table and spread the parchment game upon it. Ellat sat in one chair with Therat across from her, each of them leaning forward, chin in hand, to examine the twisting lines and labeled squares. Makr Avehl placed the dice upon the parchment and the rhinoceros beside it.

‘Notice the dice,’ he said.

Ellat stared at them. ‘I notice them, Makr Avehl, but I don’t know what it is I’m noticing.’

He rolled them over with a finger. ‘Dice are usually made so that opposite sides add to seven. The one dot is opposite the six. The five is opposite the two, and the three opposite the four.’

Therat picked them up. ‘These add to three, seven, and eleven.’

‘Does it mean anything to you?’

‘They are numbers used in conjury. Here, let me hold them.’ She picked them up, closed her fist, her face knotted in concentration. Suddenly she exclaimed, dropped them shaking her hand. ‘By Zurban, Makr Avehl! These are evil things!’

‘And the animal?’

She touched the little rhinoceros with a tentative forefinger, shivering at the touch. ‘This, too. It is not that the things themselves are evil, rather that the intent for which they were made is evil.’

‘They lend themselves?’

‘I would say, yes. It would be hard to bend them to a good purpose.’

‘Let me tell you what I think happened,’ said Makr Avehl. ‘Dagma asked Marianne to do something which involved this game. I believe there were originally four game pieces. Animals, probably, or birds. Living things, at any rate. My guess is that they were alliterative, the substance and the shape starting with the same sound …’

‘To lend force to the enchantment.’

‘Yes. I think Marianne, probably without any sense of what would happen, placed a game piece on the parchment and then threw the dice. She vanished.’

‘How do you know that?’ Ellat asked.

‘Because Dagma rang and asked for Aghrehond. If Marianne had wanted him, she would have asked for him herself. If she had been present, she would have asked for him. She didn’t. Dagma did. So – what would Aghrehond do?’

‘He would enter the game, going after Marianne,’ said Ellat definitely. ‘You couldn’t have stopped him with a large piece of machinery.’

‘And Dagma?’ asked Therat.

‘I think he took her along. For reasons of his own, which, probably, were very good ones. I wish I knew what the three missing game pieces had looked like, but I don’t.’

‘But you wouldn’t want to …’ mused Ellat.

‘I would not want to use Cattermune’s game pieces. I don’t think.’

‘Cattermune?’

‘Look, there on the parchment. Cattermune’s House. Cattermune’s Pique. Cattermune’s Worm Pits. Then think. How many “Cattermune’s” did we see on our way here.’

‘The London airport,’ said Ellat.

‘The Washington airport,’ said Therat. ‘And there were those two shopping centers we passed.’ The three of them stared at one another, puzzled. ‘A connection, Makr Avehl?’

‘Have you ever heard the name before this week?’

‘No.’

‘And now, everywhere?’

‘It does seem unlikely.’

‘It seems unlikely by accident, yes. It is not at all unlikely as part of a plan. Besides which, the maid, Briggs, says her little brother purchased a similar game at Cattermune’s. I would say a plan. A conspiracy.’

‘A plan to what?’

‘To disappear a great many people. And don’t ask me for what reason, Ellat. I don’t know.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to do what Aghrehond did, go in after them.’

‘I don’t think you can,’ said Therat, running her fingers over the parchment. ‘I don’t think anyone can.’

‘What do you mean?’ Makr Avehl put his own hands on the parchment, trying to feel whatever it was she was feeling. There was nothing.

‘It feels dead,’ she said. ‘Turned off. Not like the dice or the little animal.’

‘Turned off?’ asked Ellat. ‘Therat, what are you talking about.’

Therat flushed. ‘I can feel – connections. I’ve always been able to. If I put my hand on a woman’s shoulder and she is in love with someone, I can feel a kind of current running out of her toward the person she loves. Like a pulse. A vibration. If you hand me a letter someone has written, even though it’s in a sealed envelope, if that person is anywhere near, I can feel the connection. It feels like a circuit, like something flowing. If the person who wrote the letter is dead, the letter feels dead.’

‘And this parchment feels dead?’

‘It feels like its connections have been turned off.’

‘Hmph,’ growled Makr Avehl. ‘Since when? Therat, will you call the papers and the police and ask if anyone has disappeared in this strange fashion since – what is today?’

‘Wednesday.’

‘Since … since Monday afternoon.’

‘When Marianne disappeared?’

‘When Marianne and Dagma and Aghrehond disappeared.’ He got up and stalked about the room, scowling, eyes squinted almost shut. ‘Connections. Maybe that was what it was about. What did the Cave of Light say again, Therat? Roads? Ropes? Something like that?’

‘Exactly like that.’

‘Something had established a connection. And something that Marianne did broke it.’

‘Not at once,’ said Therat. ‘Not if your theory about what happened is true, because Dagma and Aghrehond still went.’

‘Maybe what Marianne did to break it didn’t happen all at once,’ he said. ‘Maybe it happened after she disappeared. Maybe it happened when she moved to a certain … to a certain place in the game.’ He turned, stared at the parchment, and put his right forefinger on the square marked ‘Cattermune’s House.’ ‘When she got there,’ he said. ‘I can feel it.’

‘Which means?’

‘Which means I’ll have to get in there on my own. Using my own dice. And my own game piece, too. Which is fortunate. I really didn’t fancy being a rhinoceros.’

‘They’re quite short-sighted, aren’t they?’ asked Ellat in an annoyingly meaningful voice.

‘Quite,’ he snarled, ‘Not that I’ve been exactly clairvoyant about this whole thing.’

‘Don’t blame yourself, Makr Avehl,’ said Therat. ‘If anyone’s to blame, it’s I. I should have …’

‘We all should have. But we didn’t. So let’s remedy the situation now. Ellat, will you go get a taxi and go to that Cattermune’s place we passed on the way here. Buy one of these games and bring it back. I think we already know what we will find, but it won’t hurt to double check. Meantime – I need to find a jeweler.’

Makr Avehl needed go no farther than the lobby of the hotel to find a most prestigious shop, a name he recognized as being identified anywhere in the world with fabulous objects of great value.

The jeweler peered at the tiny rhinoceros through his loupe, making admiring noises. ‘Beautifully done. The detail! Almost miscroscopic.’

‘Is there anyone you know who can …’

‘Duplicate this?’ He put down the loupe and thought, pulling on one earlobe to assist the process of thought. ‘One man, possibly. Actually, he does most of his carving in jade, and the pieces I’ve seen are a good deal larger than this. Some of the details he does on the large carvings – blossoms, or insects on a branch – are no larger than this, though, and they’re equally well done.’

‘Is he local?’

‘Well, yes, in a way. He’s Chinese, but he’s lived here for a decade or more. Won Sin is his name. He has a shop in the fourteen hundred block of Cleveland Street.’ When Makr Avehl left, rather hurriedly, the merchant was still exclaiming about the little rhinoceros.

Makr Avehl found the Precious Stone Tree, a tiny shop in a quiet neighborhood of no particular distinction. He found the owner, the owner’s wife, and the owner’s eleven half-grown and fully grown children occupied in various craftish endeavors concerned with carving stone and gems and what looked suspiciously like illegal ivory but was said, by Mrs Won, to be an artificial substance.

Makr Avehl put the rhinoceros on the counter. Thirteen pairs of eyes fastened upon it.

‘Quite remarkable,’ said Won Sin, with no accent at all.

‘I need …’ began Makr Avehl, then stopped, for the moment uncertain.

‘Yes,’ prompted the carver.

‘I need a carving, of about this size, of the fiercest animal in the universe.’

‘Oh, my,’ said Mrs Won. ‘A tiger, do you think?’

‘Is that the fiercest?’

‘Mythological animals are acceptable?’ asked Won Sin. ‘If so, what about a chimera.’

‘Not, I think, a chimera,’ said Makr Avehl with a reminiscent smile. ‘No. Not nearly fierce enough. Too given to committee decisions and involuntary introspection.’

‘Ah.’ The carver smiled a secret smile. ‘So, you have had experiences with chimerae.’

‘One, at least. A manticore won’t do, either.’ He frowned, remembering a manticore.

‘Griffin? Wyvern? Rok?’

‘A dragon,’ said one of the younger children. ‘A Chinese dragon.’

‘Not fierce enough,’ commented another. ‘You would need a Western dragon, one with wings, who spouts fire out of his nose.’

‘A dragon might do,’ said Makr Avehl in sudden thought. ‘I happen to have something with me that might make a dragon a good choice. A particularly fierce dragon. I like the idea of fire coming out of the nose, too. How long would it take you to make one?’

‘Out of what?’

‘Out of something I have in my pocket that starts with a D. I have here a rhodolite rhinoceros. I imagine elsewhere in these games there are emerald emus and sapphire serpents. I am assuming alliteracy, on the basis of … well, magical requirements.’

‘Diamond is too hard,’ offered Won Sin.

‘I have the stone,’ said Makr Avehl. He reached deep into one pocket and pulled it out, a roughly oval black stone, gleaming as with an internal light.

‘What is it?’ the carver asked. ‘It looks like obsidian. Except that the light in it is red instead of gold.’

‘It is a demon’s gall stone,’ said Makr Avehl. ‘Demons are frequently afflicted with a surfeit of gall, more often with that complaint than with any other. It is why, in many cases, they are so demonic.’

‘How did you get it?’ asked one of the little ones.

‘I had need of a demon, then I had need to send him away. When the demon went, this was left,’ said Makr Avehl. ‘And since I need something starting with a D, a demon’s gall stone will do well enough. How long will it take?’