The Duke In His Castle (14 page)

Molly.

“It started a very long time ago,” the Duchess of White tells him, as she stands before him in his study, primly dressed in borrowed clothing and radiating cold closed-in composure. He realizes she is still wary of him and of the world in general (and will be so for quite a long time), and she longs to be gone, and yet she does him the favor of an explanation.

“A long time ago I was a lonely little girl. I had no sister, you must understand. Molly—she is not real. I made her myself, made her from the budding powers in me that I was just discovering. I had a doll—a favorite toy, or maybe my only toy, after my parents died, leaving me to insane solitude. And so my Molly and I ‘played’ pretend games. Until one day I gave her enough of my life force that she came alive. She’s me, you know—
was
me. I fragmented myself in two, unknowingly, so that I would be with someone, and in the process, I think this was the beginning of the corruption of my powers. A living being is a complete self-sustaining entity of very specific balanced elements joined together in cosmic attraction—must always be so in order to retain true cohesion. Life energy is not to be measured in random portions, not to be doled out in casual bits and droplets like some homogenous stuff poured from a jar of milk. Instead it is a complex energy construct with a precise required proportion of elemental particles that together make a greater whole.”

“Yes,” he says. “I realize it now.”

“When Molly grew sufficiently autonomous (but never truly complete, of course; I was so ignorant of the nature of these things then), with time she became stronger, larger—full human size—and I think I continued to ‘feed’ her being with the small constant radiation from my own living self in the form of affection, need, love. Molly was a wonder—she was my companion and my confidante and my joy—the best of myself. We made up names and games and we lost ourselves in the interaction. We grew, both of us. I would forget she was unreal, and in time she forgot that she was not a child of my parents. Though—on some deep level I think she always knew.”

“She knew enough, when she came here, with you. . . .” the Duke says, watching her.

“Yes,” the Duchess says. “I think she wanted more than anything to be alive, to be her own being. And yet—it was the critical foolhardy time when I had the idea of breaking out of the prison of my castle. We stood at the gates, and she passed across somehow (probably the barrier recognized her occult
incompleteness
as a being and allowed her through). I enacted the ritual, and felt my power—my very self!—drain out of me and into her. I stepped across the barrier, free, I thought. And the next instant, she did as I asked, she poured it all back into me. . . . I only remember a fierce instant of pain, and then nothing. Until today, when you brought me back.”

“So you do not remember . . . being alive in the interim, yesterday?”

But the Duchess looks at him blankly, and he does not pursue the line of thought.

“I must thank you with all my heart,” Izelle says, and she puts her hand forth.

The Duke takes it in his own and feels absolutely nothing—neither a surge of power nor recoil nor emotion. He lifts it to his mouth and there is indifferent, lukewarm softness at his lips.

“What will you do now?” he asks in politeness.

A tiny living smile comes to her lips for the first time. Her lips, the Duke notices, they are wide and full and sensual. Completely different. And somehow it makes him remember a different rosebud mouth.

“What will I do? Why, anything and everything,” says the Duchess of White. “I will return to my castle long enough to make arrangements, then travel the world and
live
at last, truly live. So much time to make up, you know, so much fierce joy. And—what of you? I realize that with your considerable arcane ability you now have complete control over the barrier, my Lord. You may simply walk out of these gates and also go wherever you please. It’s such a glorious realm we live in, so much beauty to see and experience—”

“Yes,” he says. “True, so much beauty out there, indeed.” And then he adds, “But, I don’t think I will.”

She frowns, drawing her smooth brow into a crease. “What? Whyever not?”

And the Duke thinks in that moment how, knowing what he knows now, he can rip at the barrier and pull down the universal drapery, and make the whole of creation dissolve just like Molly. . . . And he thinks that the Duchess, without her powers, and now forever locked away from the tree of knowledge with its impossible terrible fruit, will not understand it even if he tries to explain.

And so he smiles a little, a sad nostalgic movement of his face. And he says, to mollify her, “Maybe, someday.”

Mollify her
, he thinks, ponders the double meaning of the word.
It is one thing I cannot do.

“One more matter—I’m in your debt, my Lord,” the Duchess says, as she prepares to leave the room. “If there is anything I can do for you—nothing could ever be sufficient or adequate recompense for the magnitude of your act of course, but, anything—please do let me know.”

“There is one thing . . .” he says softly, watching the auburn glorious flow of her hair as she turns from him. And then, half-turned, she pauses. There is a long instant of tangible silence between them, and just possibly, she understands.

“Oh, I think I know,” she says then; indeed, she does. She reaches to open the infamous box of remains that is concealed by the width of her skirts, and which she takes with her like a lady’s purse.

The lock clicks, and inside, on a bed of velvet, is a child’s toy. An old porcelain doll with matted well-loved hair, a tussled old wig, her stuffed fabric body dressed in bright peacock hand-sewn finery of an archaic jester. Her head is pale and appears to have a rosy-soft veneer even though he knows just underneath it is a hard shell of smooth porcelain, and her glass eyes are dark and huge and somewhat weird, surrounded by a real fringe of eyelashes and skillfully-made lids that open and close.

She has a tiny button nose and a rosebud mouth.

At the sight of her, the Duke’s chest—something deep inside there, a complex machinery—painfully constricts.

“Thank you,” he says, reaching for the doll.

He stands, holding Molly with one stiff hand against his own chest, while the Duchess of White exits the room, and then, he knows, forever leaves his castle.

She will not return. And who could blame her?

There is freedom, out there. But not for him.

The greatest living master of the arcane, the magus of the highest order, the man who can bring the dead to life, stands still, watching the sun set from the familiar hated-and-beloved window of his study.

Later yet, as the night sets in and the stars come out to fill heaven with firefly light, the Duke climbs the wind-funnel stairwell of the Mad Queens Tower and walks up on the roof. He leans between the tall, thick merlons, watching the well of sky overhead—it is almost a full dome, but not quite.

The doll is still clutched against his chest. And once again he believes he hears inside him the heavy tedious sound of ever-slowing clockwork.

He looks out, over into the blind darkness of distance, the unseen expanse that is the whole world—it is at his mercy, subject to his stewardship and ultimate responsibility. And yet, power is in his mind now, a vortex of death and life. He feels, without needing to see, the wind of the world on his face, the distant waters and the firmament held at bay, and imagines the sand road, below, occluded in darkness.

All of it, everything, is permeated with the life force. It is a world of crystalline nodes with infinite facets.

Rossian, the Duke of Violet stands perfectly still and opens his mind, and lets the life force that he now rules so well enter and course through him, no longer resisting its truth. It is infinitely easy then, how the Duke takes a step in his mind and flies, moving along the everlasting plateau of nodes, without ever leaving his castle.


The End 




Author’s Note

I started writing this one in the mid-80s, when in college, and could neither properly finish nor set it aside. Over the years the ideas and characters and storyline haunted me, mutated and grew in complexity, and the compounding of meanings became more layered than an onion.

As with any obsession, you must first understand it before you can let go.

I think I finally can.

Vera Nazarian

Los Angeles, CA

February 21, 2008



Acknowledgements

My heart and my thanks to the many friends who helped me immensely with this work—Paul Barnett, Giles Bignold, Stella Bloom, David Bloom, Anne Bussell, Michael Ehart, Catherine Mintz, Anna Tambour, Brook West, Paul Witcover, and last but not least, the Spinners who were Jim Brunet, Megan Christopher, Steve Ford, Susan Franzblau, Gary Glass, Harry Ingham, Davy Krieger, and Jenn Reese.

About the Author

Vera Nazarian
immigrated to the USA from the former USSR as a kid, sold her first story at the age of 17, and since then has published numerous works in anthologies and magazines, and has seen her fiction translated into eight languages.

She made her novelist debut with the critically acclaimed arabesque “collage” novel
Dreams of the Compass Rose
,
followed by epic fantasy about a world without color,
Lords of Rainbow
. Her novella
The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass
from PS Publishing (UK) with an introduction by
Charles de Lint
made the
Locus
Recommended Reading List for 2005. Her debut short fiction collection
Salt of the Air
,
with an introduction by
Gene Wolfe
, contains the 2007 Nebula Award-nominated “The Story of Love.” Recent work includes the 2008 Nebula Award-nominated, self-illustrated baroque fantasy novella
The Duke in His Castle
,
and the humorous Jane Austen parody
Mansfield Park And Mummies: Monster Mayhem, Matrimony, Ancient Curses, True Love, and Other Dire Delights.