The Serpent Mage (30 page)

"And five thousand others."

"Brought back by the concerto and the symphony?"

"In a way. Are you up to it?"

Edgar glanced at the banks of electronic equipment and ran his fingers through his hair again. "I just want one question answered, if you haven't answered it for me already. Is the world coming to an end because of what we did?"

"No," Michael said.

"All right. I'm just wasting my time here anyway. Nobody's going to be making movies for some time. Who needs fantasy now? The world's full of the real thing."

Chapter Thirty-Two

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One thing at at time
. Michael had located Crooke sitting on a bench near the Griffith Park Observatory — simply sitting and staring out over the city. Griffith Park, Michael sensed, was full of hidden Sidhe, and the police and National Guard had unofficially made it off-limits. Michael and Shiafa, working their discipline together, had penetrated makeshift barricades and driven up the winding road to the observatory, where they spoke with Crooke and persuaded him to come with them.

Moffat waited in his car in front of the Perrin house. Moffat and Crooke followed Michael up the steps and through the front door, held open by his father. Michael then introduced them to Mahler and Mozart. Crooke gaped.

"You did not do a bad piece of work," Mahler said to him. Mozart hung back, frowning. His frown changed to consternation when Moffat approached with an almost worshipful look on his face.

"You
are
Mozart," Moffat said. "Jesus. Everybody said the portraits were bad, but I recognize you. I know you through your music."

"Well," Mozart said, still edging away. He shook Moffat's hand quickly. "All this. What is it for?"

"You came back with how many, again?" Crooke asked. Michael had given him a brief explanation in the car.

"Five thousand, approximately."

Crooke took Moffat aside, and they conferred for a few minutes. When they returned, Moffat said, "I think this is a job for Mrs. Pierce-Fennady."

Crooke agreed. "She raises money for the Huntington. She knows lots of people."

"We'll introduce her to Mahler and Mozart."

"
Mein Gott
," Mozart moaned. "Society women!"

"She's much more than that," Crooke said. "She's a real mover and shaker."

"Does she keep her rooms warm?" Mozart asked, but he did not explain what he meant.

One thing at a time.

"I'm leaving now," Michael said. "Shiafa's going with me. We may or may not be back soon."

"What are you going to do?" Ruth asked, her face pale. She kept glancing at Shiafa, with anything but approbation.

"I'm not sure," Michael said.

You are what you dare.

Dusk was a wall of fire above the treetops. The air was cool and sharp, faintly electric. As Michael and Shiafa approached the Clarkham house on foot, he saw little streaks of darkness shoot inches above the black grass of the nearby lawns. Roses in a well-tended garden glowed in unnaturally bright pinks and blood-reds.

The two-story Clarkham house seemed covered by a shadow darker than the evening around it. Michael edged the door open slowly. Behind him, Shiafa kept her eyes on his back, as if willing him to do something. He could feel her attention, but he could not riddle her thoughts. Still, he felt he might need her; his own magic might not be strong enough for what lay ahead.

And if he resorted to using her buried power one more time… What then? What commitment would he feel, and what would she demand in return?

She was getting little formal training from him. /
must be teaching her very bad habits
.

He ignored the stairs and looked through the service porch and kitchen for the doorway he knew must exist. Shiafa seemed to know the unspoken object of his search; she summoned him to the back of a walk-in pantry and pointed to a small door sealed with an ancient brass padlock. Michael drew a small percentage of his strength from his center and melted the hasp, singing the wood behind it. A small, ghostly curl of smoke rose and spread under the low ceiling. Shiafa breathed deeply. He glanced at her and turned away quickly. Her face was the color of the moon in the dark confines of the pantry.

The door opened easily and without noise. He descended the narrow steps after asking Shiafa to remain above. The basement was larger than he had had reason to suspect; it spread under the length and breadth of the house, broken only by dark outlines of vats and racks and large square supporting beams.

In one corner was a large Archimedean screw nestled at the bottom of a metal trough — a grape crusher. Wooden boxes in the opposite corner held the dried and dusty remains of crushed grapes and their stems — looking not unlike Tommy. Michael peered closer at the remains and saw a faint rainbow-hematite-oil sheen hovering about them.

"Vintage," he murmured. Their smell was sweeter than any grapes he remembered, as sweet as the perfume he had exuded in the Realm whenever he had come in contact with water, or the fragrance of the manuscript of opus 45.

The racks were empty of bottles. He searched the corners of the cellar meticulously and found no evidence of hidden caches. The cellar had not been used for some time — perhaps fifty years.

There was no choice but to return to the Waltiri house and disturb the birds — the Cledar — again.

Shiafa blocked him at the top of the stairs. Her face was a cool, mellow beacon, lovely in the darkness. Her lips were parted expectantly, and the teeth behind them were a beautiful shade of gray mother-of-pearl. Her red hair spread like feathers around her head, loose and fragrant. "Nothing?" she asked.

He shook his head, regarding her steadily.

"We can join to search out what you're looking for," she suggested.

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"You've taken my power from me once already," she said. "It's not as if we'll be doing anything unfamiliar. Isn't that why you brought me with you?"

He nodded. "It is. But I don't need help just now."

"Perhaps I need yours," she said.

Kristine suddenly seemed far away and not very well-suited to be the partner of a mage. How could he live with a purely human woman, who had no idea of his problems and abilities?

Michael took another step up, and Shiafa backed out of his way reluctantly. "I know where we — I need to go," he said. She followed him out of the house.

In the darkness, the leaves of the trees around the neighborhood sparkled like crystals. The stars overhead wobbled almost imperceptibly. The cold had intensified and chilled him even with his
hyloka
in effect. Reality was becoming most inhospitable — why? Because of the weight of the Realm's demise? Or by plan… Tarax's plan, or Clarkham's?

Even from a distance of half a block, Waltiri's house radiated an aura of life and energy. It seemed filled with anticipation and joy. Michael's spirits took an abrupt upswing as he approached, and Shiafa seemed less enchanting and menacing. He removed the key from his pocket on the front step and opened the door.

"Life for you is opening doors," said the mage of the Cle-dar, who stood nestled among pigeons and sparrows in the hallway. His white-rimmed eyes flashed at Michael with an inhuman but not unwelcome (and not unfamiliar) humor. Michael could feel the connection quite clearly now. This creature had once been part of Arno Waltiri, a buried but considerable part.

Shiafa chose to remain outside, standing in the razor chill at the end of the front walk. Michael did not think about her now. He walked through the birds, who parted without complaint, to the service porch.

The birds had not occupied the basement. The armoire had not been disturbed since it had been emptied of its papers, months before. All that remained were a few odds and ends — stone paperweights, an andiron in one corner, and at the bottom of the armoire, the little rack of three wine bottles, each bearing the label, "Doppelsonnenuhr, Feinste Geistenbeeren-auslese, 1921."

Drink me, Alice.

He sensed the Cledar mage's presence above him, waiting patiently for his decision, tendering neither judgment nor advice. Full of life, full of joy.
They feel something beyond the edge of harsh, sickened reality, beyond the razor cold and the night
.

They feel me.

They trust me.

If this wine did indeed take him to Clarkham's hidden experimental reality, his embryonic attempt to replace this world with another, then it was likely Kristine would be there, or accessible once he was there.

Then his agreement with Tarax would be unnecessary. Michael had never been comfortable with Shiafa; now he felt a kind of dread at the thought of her.

She could demand so much of him, and he did not know if he could resist. Easy paths to —

What? Damnation?

Away from Kristine, at the very least.

Away from honor and self-trust. Michael could feel the tiny Sidhe part of him struggling to go to Shiafa and unite with her. The compulsion was barely controllable now.

The easy path, finally offered — similar to the path Clark-ham might have taken. And Clarkham was filled with ever-regenerating evil. There were so many things Michael did not know, so many things he had to puzzle out for himself…

And still, he had made it this far.

He removed a bottle of wine from the rack and examined it in the cellar's dim light. The cork had disintegrated beneath the lead cap, and the wine inside had long since dried to black paste. Putting the first bottle aside, he lifted the second; liquid still shimmered within.

His father had taught him something about wines; he did not shake it nor in any other way disturb the sediment cast off to the side of the reclining bottle. Sediment could take years to settle out again. Spoil the purity.

The contents were a deep, rich green-brown through the green glass, as clear and suggestive as the depths of a gem-stone. All summer and winter caught in a swallow, fogs and soil, earth and sky and sun, distillations of time and reality. A core-sample of a universe, not the cultural universe of books and music and art, but of the world itself as shaped by humans.

Oenology. The one art the Sidhe would almost certainly ignore. The one art the Sidhe had not passed on to the re-evolved humans.

His respect for Clarkham grew.
Never underestimate your enemies
. He took his knife from his pocket and contemplated removing the lead wrapping, but found himself paralyzed with indecision. Drink it here, or elsewhere? Share it with Shiafa? That idea particularly disturbed him.

Swallowing this vintage might do more than transport. It might teach, give clues. He did not want Tarax's daughter to be more powerful than he was.

He pushed the knife blade into the foil around the lip of the bottle. Pulling the lead and impressed wax away, he unfolded the corkscrew from the base of his knife and pushed the tip into the dark cork. The cork seemed brittle. The screw finally found purchase, and he twisted the knife handle. With less dexterity than he might have wished, holding the bottle between his knees and glancing up the stairs to see that nobody was watching, he pulled the cork free of the neck.

The base of the cork was stained with a dark reddish-purple glaze. He sniffed the cork and smiled — his father's ritual — and then smelled the open bottle. The odor was not strong; it reminded him more of dust than flowers or fruit. Should he let it breathe for a while for maximum effect? How fastidious should one be, uncorking a wine between worlds?

He lifted the bottle to his lips. In other circumstances, he might take days to make this decision and follow every little precaution — including his father's wine rituals.

The liquid met his lower lip, cool and slick. It spilled across his tongue in a thin dribble, and he swirled the small amount of wine across his palate and over the full surface of his tongue.

His eyes widened.

With a barely controlled gag, he spit the wine out onto the dusty floor and wiped his lips hastily. Sour and bitter. The wine had turned. He held the cork up to the light; it was brittle and crumbling. Too much oxygen had gotten into the bottle.

But even so —

For a moment, he felt his skin warm and his hair stand on end. The basement's outlines seemed to change. With a blink, the effect vanished. He might have imagined everything.

Michael recorked the bad bottle. The wine the Dopsos had served had been very good but certainly not a wine of power. Perhaps he was on the wrong track after all. Or Clarkham had reserved the finest bottles for his own use, giving the Waltiris only
vin ordinaire
.

He returned the corked bottle to the rack and removed the last. This one seemed dustier, less clear behind the glass. The sediment lay thick within, covering almost a quarter of the bottle's circumference.

He removed the foil and the cork and lifted the bottle to his nose. Eyes closed, he inhaled.

When he opened his eyes again, the light bulb sang like an insect. The walls flexed outward. He smelled the sweetness deep in his nose and all down his throat, into his stomach and down into the center of his being. His eyes felt encrusted with rainbows. Curiously, he examined the cork's bottom and saw that the varnished darkness there was absolute.

He took a swallow from the bottle.

The sweetness was that of a season — late summer.

The tickle in his nose was like a burst of sunlight in his eyes, drawing him closer to a sneeze.

The rounded, almost oily sensation was a distant lake slowly rippling under hazy sun. In the lake, the Serpent wallowed, and in the Serpent's memories, a mix of dangers and opportunities.

The smell of distant raspberries: a vine on a trellis in a garden with no guardian, no Tristesse to menace and frighten. The way is open.

Choose.

From a multitude of possible places to go.

The wine was not a passkey to a distinct world. It was as he had barely suspected a skeleton key

Clarkham being far more powerful than Waltiri or even the mage of the Cledar, and in his own way far more subtle, an instigator of unrest and trouble and a prompter of actions a skeleton key to the dozens of worlds or more that Clark-ham had created; an open invitation, for the wine would not have been left here had Clarkham wished otherwise; a challenge —
find me in the manifold of my creations

Michael saw the Isomage's house as a kind of skeleton on a background the shade of the cork's varnished bottom. He also saw the pleasure dome and the house in Los Angeles. These were the shadows of Clarkham's creations, no longer accessible. The taste of the wine continued to quietly massage his tongue, revealing layer after layer of finish.