The Serpent Mage (2 page)

Michael twitched on the bed, eyes closed tightly now, and then relaxed, falling across continent, sky and sea.

He saw
—
in some sense became
—

Mrs. William Hutchings Cunningham, widowed only a year, addicted to long treks in the new forest beyond her Sussex country home. She walked gingerly, her booted feet sinking into the damp carpet of compacted leaves, moss and loam. The early spring drizzle beaded in the fine hairs of her wool coat and cascaded from ferns disturbed by her passage.

The dividing line between the new forest and the old was not well marked, but she knew it and felt the familiar surge of love and respect as she crossed over. The great oaks, their trunks thick with startling green moss, tiered with moons of fungus, rose high into the whiteness. Her booted feet sank into the loam and moss and piles of leaves.

Mrs. Cunningham felt herself become a part of the deep past whenever she crossed into the old forest. There was so little of it left in England now; patches here and there, converted to housing projects with distressing regularity, watched over by (she felt) corrupt or at the very least incompetent and uncaring government ministries. She swung her goosehead-handled stick up and poked the empty air with it, her face a mask of intense concern.

Then the peace returned to her, and she found the broad flat rock in the middle of the patch of old forest, near an ancient overgrown pathway that arrowed through the trees without a single curve or waver. The trees had adapted themselves to the path, not the other way around, and yet they were centuries old. So how old was the path?

"I love you," she said, with only the trees and the mist and the rock as witness. Carefully maneuvering around a slick patch of wet leaves and mud, she sat on the rock and let her breath out in a whuff.

It was here and not by his grave, which was in a neatly manicured cemetery miles and miles away, that she came to hold communion with her late husband. "I love you, William," she repeated, face downturned but dark brown eyes looking up. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back to feel the mist's minute droplets land on her face.

"Do you remember," she said, "when we were just married, and there was that marvelous inn, the Green Man, and the innkeeper wanted to see identification, wanted to know how old we were?"

For some, such a process, day in and day out, would have signified an unwholesome self-torture. But not for her She could feel the distance growing between herself and the past, and she could feel the wound healing. This was how she kept a bandage on those wounds, protecting them with a bit of ritual against the abrasions of hard reality.

"Do you remember, too—" she began, then stopped abruptly, her eyes turning slowly to the path.

A tall dark figure, walking on the path miles beyond the trees, yet still visible, approached the rock on which she sat. It seemed she waited for hours, but it was only a minute or two, as the figuie grew larger and more distinct, coming at last to the extent of the path that Mrs. Cunningham would have called real.

A tall, pale-skinned woman arrived at the rock and paused, drifting forward as if from ghostly momentum as she turned to look at Mrs. Cunningham. The tall woman had dark red hair and a thin ageless face with deep-set eyes. She was dressed in a gray robe that was really a translucent black. Mrs. Cunningham had not seen her like before.

She felt a feather-touch at the back of her thoughts, and the woman spoke. With each word, the uncertain image became more solid, as if speaking finished the act of becoming part of this reality.

"I am on the Earth of old, am I not?" the woman asked.

Mrs. Cunningham nodded. "I think so," she said, as brightly as she could manage, or dared.

"Do you grieve?"

"Yes." Mrs. Cunningham's expression turned quizzical, with a touch of pain.

"For a loved one?" the woman asked.

"For my husband," she replied, her throat very dry.

"Silly grief, then," the woman said. "You do not know the meaning of grief."

"Perhaps not," Mrs. Cunningham conceded, "but it feels to me as if I do."

"You should not sit on that rock much longer."

"Oh?"

The woman pointed back up the path. "More of my kind coming," she said.

"Oh." She stared at the path, head nodding slightly, eyes wide.

The tall woman's pale face glowed against the dark trees and misty sky. "I say that your grief is a silly grief, for he is not lost forever, as we are, and you have paid mortality for infinity, which we cannot."

"Oh," Mrs. Cunningham said again, as if engaged in conversation with a neighbor. The woman's eyes were extraordinary, silver-blue with hints of opalescent fire. Her red hair hung in thick strands down around her shoulders, and her black gown seemed alive with moving leaves in lighter shades of gray. A golden tassel hanging from her midriff had a snaky life of its own.

"We are back now," she said to Mrs. Cunningham. "Please do not cross the trod hereafter."

"I certainly won't," Mrs. Cunningham vowed.

The woman pointed a long-fingered hand at the rock. Mrs. Cunningham removed herself and backed away several yards, slipping once on the patch of leaves and mud. The woman drifted down the path, not walking on quite the same level, and was surrounded by trees away from Mrs. Cunningham's view.

She stood, her lips working in prayer, and then returned her attention to the direction from which the woman had come. "The Lord is my shepherd," she murmured. "The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want—"

There were more, indeed. Three abreast and of all descriptions, from deepest shadows without feature to mere pale wisps like true spirits, some dripping water, some seeming to be made of water, some as green as the leaves ia the canopy above, and following them, a number of beautiful and sinewy horses with shining silver coats… and all, despite their magnificence, with an air of weary refugee desperation.

Mrs. Cunningham, after a few minutes, decided discretion would be best, and retreated farther from the path — the trod — with her eyes full of tears for the beauty she had seen that day, and for the message of the woman with red hair in the living black gown.

Paying mortality for infinity…

Yes, she could understand that.

"William, oh
William
," she breathed, fairly running through the woods. "You wouldn't
believe
… what has… just happened… here…" She came to the boundary and crossed into new forest, and the sensation dulled but did not leave her entirely.

"But whom will I tell?" she asked. "They're back, all — or some — of the faerie folk, and who will believe me now?"

Michael opened his eyes slowly and stared at the dawn as it cast dim blue squares on the closed curtains.

Behind the vision of Mrs. Cunningham had been another and darker one. He had seen something long and sinuous swimming with ageless grace through murky night waters, watching him from a quarter of the way around the world. In that watching there was appraisal.

On the morning of his move, Ruth offered one last time to help him get settled in the Waltiri house. Michael politely refused. "All right, then," she said, dishing up one last home-cooked breakfast of fried eggs and toast — consciously leaving out the bacon. "Promise me you won't take things so seriously."

He regarded her solemnly.

"At least
try
to loosen up. Sometimes you are positively gloomy."

"Don't nag the fellow," John said, holding one thumb high to signal friendly banter and not domestic disagreement.

Michael grinned, and Ruth stared at him with wistfulness and then something like awe. He could almost read her thoughts. This was her son, with the strong features so like his father's and the hair so like her own — but there was something not at all comforting in his face, something lean and…

Fierce.
Where had he been for five years
?

Michael walked with suitcases in hand in the pale rich light of morning. Dew beaded the lawns of the old homes and dripped from the waxy green leaves of camellia and gardenia bushes. The sidewalks steamed in the sun, mottled olive and gray with moisture from last night's rain.

He passed a group of nine school girls, twelve or thirteen years old, dressed in uniforms of white blouses and green and black plaid skirts with black sweaters. They averted their faces as they passed but not their eyes, and Michael sensed one or two of them turning, walking backward, to continue staring at him.

The possibilities offered by his appearance seldom concerned him; he appreciated the attention of women but took little advantage. He still felt guilty about Eleuth, the Breed who had given her life for him. and thought often of Helena, whom he had treated as Eleuth had deserved to be treated.

For that and other reasons there was a deep uncertainty in him, a feeling that he had somehow twisted his foot at the starting line and entered the race crippled, that he had made bad mistakes that lessened his chances of staying ahead. He was certain about neither his morals nor his competence.

He set the bags down on the front porch of the Waltiri house. Using the keys given to him by the estate's attorneys, he opened the heavy mahogany door. The air within was dry and noncommittal. Plastic sheets had been draped over the furniture. Gritty gray dust lay over everything.

He took the bags into the hall and set them down at the foot of the stairs. "Hello," he said nervously. Waltiri's presence still seemed strong enough that a hale answer wouldn't have surprised him.

The upstairs guest bedroom was his first project. He searched for a storage closet, found it beneath the stairs and pulled out a vacuum cleaner — an old upright Hoover with a red cloth bag. He cleared the hardwood floors of dust upstairs and down and unrolled the old oriental carpets and the stair runners. Removing yellow-edged sheets from the linen closet, he made up the brass bed and folded the plastic covers into neat squares.

He then went from room to room, standing in each and acquainting himself with their new reality — devoid of Waltiri or Golda. The house was his responsibility now, his place to live for the time being, if not yet his home.

Michael had spent most of his life in one house. Getting accustomed to a different one, he realized, would take time. There would be new quirks to learn, new layouts to become used to. He would have to re-create the house in his head and cut new templates to determine his day-to-day paths.

In the kitchen, he plugged in the refrigerator, removed a box of baking soda from the interior and unchecked the double doors to let them swing shut. The pantry — a walk-in affair, shelved floor-to-ceiling and illuminated by a bare bulb hanging from a thick black cord — was full of canned and dry goods, all usable except for a bloated can of pineapples that rocked to his touch. He threw it out and made up a shopping list.

In the triple garage behind the house, a 1939 black Packard was parked next to a maze of metal shelves stacked high with file boxes. Michael walked around die beauty, fingering a moon of dust from its fender and observing the shine of the chrome. Enchanting, but not practical. Leaded premium gas (called ethyl in the Packard's heyday) was becoming difficult to find; besides, it would draw attention — something he wanted to avoid — and be incredibly expensive to maintain. He peered through the window and then opened the door and sat behind the wheel. The interior smelled new: leather and saddle-soap and that other, citrusy-metallic odor of a new car. The Packard might have been driven out of the showroom the day before.

Wedged between the seat and seat back on the right side was a folded piece of ivory paper. He pulled it loose and read the cover.

Premiere Performance

THE INFINITY CONCERTO

Opus 45

by Arno Waltiri

8:00 P.M. November 23rd

The Pandall Theater

8538 Sunset Boulevard

Within the fold was a listing of all the players in the Greater Los Angeles Symphonia Orchestra. There were no other notes or explanations. After staring at the program for several minutes, Michael replaced it on the seat and took a deep breath.

Parked outside by the east wall of the garage, in a short cinderblock-walled alley, was a late 1970's model Saab. Michael unlocked the door on the driver's side and sat in the gray velour bucket seat, resting his hands on the steering wheel.

This was much more practical.

He had ridden Sidhe horses,
aband
from point to point in the Realm, and touched a myriad of ghostly between-worlds, and yet he still felt pride and pleasure at sitting in a car, knowing it would be his to drive whenever and wherever he pleased. He was a child of his times. After a long search for the latch, he popped open the hood and peered at the unfamiliar engine. The battery cables had been unhooked. He reattached them to the posts.

Michael knew enough about fuel injection systems not to depress the gas pedal when starting the engine. The engine turned over with a throaty rumble on the first try. He smiled and twisted the wheel this way and that, then backed it carefully out of the alley, reversed it on the broad expanse of concrete before the garage and drove to the supermarket.

That evening, he inspected the living room fireplace and chimney and brought wood in from where it had been stacked beside the Packard. In a few minutes, a lusty blaze brightened the living room and shone within the black lacquer of the grand piano. Michael sat in Waltiri's armchair and sipped a glass of Golda's Ficklin sherry, his mind almost blank of thoughts.

He was not the same boy he had been when he entered Sidhedark through the house of David Clarkham. He doubted he was a boy at all.

The Crane Women had trained him well; he didn't doubt that. He had survived the worst Sidhedark had to offer — monstrous remnants of Tonn's early creation; the ignorant and frustrated cruelty of the Wickmaster Alyons; Tarax and Clark-ham himself. But what had he been trained for? Merely to act as a bomb delivering destruction to the Isomage, as Clarkham had called himself? Or for some other purpose besides?