Generously, Rafarl did not push it.
He negotiated the winding paths among the fields till they came to the coast road, then urged the horse to a trot as they headed south. At the crossroads they swung west toward the city. “Get into the back,” Rafarl ordered. “If we meet anyone, you’re much too conspicuous. The official description of me would probably fit several thousand Atlanteans, but foreigners are few and far between and your fairness is distinctive. Cover yourself in straw and sacking and if I say so, get your head down.” Fern obeyed without complaint. It was not a comfortable way to travel but she could appreciate the necessity. As they reached the first houses it became essential for her to lie down and remain concealed all the time, so she could see nothing of the metropolis, assimilating their progress only by the growing volume of noise—the vibration of wheels on the flagstones, the clacking of hooves and the cracking of whips, the background rumor of feet hurrying and voices chattering, murmuring, bawling . . . Even without the view, she discovered it felt like coming home. Rafarl stopped at last at a livery stable where he stalled the horse, theoretically for collection later. This time, Fern did not trouble herself unduly about the bill. She sensed it was no longer relevant.
“Which way is the temple?” she asked.
“Are you set on this?”
“You know I am.” Now that it came to the point, she wished she wasn’t. But even if her heart failed her, she could not change her mind.
“Left outside, second right . . . Forget it. I’ll take you there.” And, as they emerged onto the street: “Draw your veil over your hair.”
They walked along in silence, that silence just before parting where everything has been left unsaid and it is too late now to say it. Fern felt as if her stomach was full of words, words burning to be spoken, but her lips refused to un-close and the words remained inside her, seething, like a bad case of indigestion. Much too soon, Rafarl said: “Here we are.” And here they were. Soldiers paraded up and down on the circular roadway. The steps were bare of onlookers. The damage to the dome was invisible from where they stood yet Fern sensed the intrinsic weakness like a flaw at the epicenter of the city. It recalled to her something she had seen somewhere else, another temple maybe, a far smaller dome gaping open like a mouth, more sky than roof; a valley of rock; a garden of illusions. But the memory, like so many others, belonged to that part of her mind which was shut off, and she could not pursue it to its origin. She only knew that it was evil.
She looked round at her companion and found that he was looking at her, and as look met look there was an instant when their eyes locked, and would not be released. His brows were drawn together in a line of brooding; his smile was the wrong way up. “Well?” he said. “Are you really going through with this stupidity?”
“I have to.”
He shrugged painfully, wrenching his gaze from her face. “You’re on your own.”
She did not watch him walk away. Now the moment was here she didn’t want him to know how afraid she was. Her heart was thumping so hard with fear she felt actually sick. But she knew what she had to do.
She stepped out from the shelter of the side street onto the exposed promenade. There was a guard captain nearby, identifiable by the horsehair crest on his helmet. She went straight up to him.
“I’ve come to see Ixavo,” she said, surprised to find her voice quite steady. “I think he’s been looking for me.”
They took her beneath the temple, down into the dark. She knew where they were going, although she did not recognize the twists and turns of the passageway. Underground, she lost her sense of direction. But it didn’t matter. She knew. There was a guard outside the metal door in a different uniform from his fellows, a black tunic with the sun-star emblazoned in scarlet on his chest. The captain conferred with him at length. Fern did not listen. She was thinking: I need more time. Time to work out what to do, to feel her way, to respond to the intuition which had driven her thus far. She tried to come up with a plan, but she had never had a plan. The guard seemed unwilling to interrupt the proceedings beyond the door. Thought ebbed with her courage, leaving her empty. Her legs felt weak. She was almost thankful for the strong arms of the soldiers supporting her.
Rafarl had been right. Why, why had she come here?
Futile.
Futile.
And: I’m such a coward. Such an awful coward . . .
The guard turned and pushed the door a short way open. A bright light filled the gap. After the gloom of the subterranean corridors, it appeared almost as bright as day. (She remembered the lamps around the table.) There were no groans, no screams. Only the sounds of small movements, and a dreadful patient quiet. The guard had gone inside. They waited. The quiet reached out into the passage: her captors stood like statues, the officer ceased to fidget. And then came the noise. Not the kind of noise they had been expecting but a thin, fluttering thread of sound, magnified and distorted by the unseen chamber. On the other side of the door, someone was whispering. The words were inaudible, there was just the soft, persistent, probing trickle of a voice that seemed to have no vocal cords and no lips, only breath and tongue. Meaning emanated from it like a smell. They listened, both soldiers and prisoner, riveted by an obscene fascination.
The screaming came later.
Fern tried to cry out but her throat clenched. No! Please no! and
Don’t let it be me!
, hating herself for her selfishness, her cowardice, her fear . . .
The guard emerged and shut the door, cutting the scream to a murmur. She did not register what he said but the captain gave an order and she was propelled down the passage, her legs scissoring into a weightless stride. They passed the cells, many still useless from seismic damage, entered another corridor, opened another door. A door of polished wood, with no bolts. Inside, the soldiers relaxed their grip. To her relief, Fern found her knees did not give way. They were in what was clearly a private apartment. She looked around, scraping herself together, forcing horror and shame out of her mind: she needed the space to think. These must be the living quarters of the Guardian. The room was not merely comfortable but luxurious: the chairs were deeply cushioned, the walls hung with velvet tapestries. There was no natural illumination but a wheel of candles was suspended from the ceiling and lamps burned in every embrasure, making the shadows thin and translucent, faded by overlapping zones of light. Too much light, she thought. Ixavo entered after them, dismissing the guards. He wore the cream-colored robe standard for prelates outside the hours of ceremony with a heavy sundisc, emblem of the Atlantean empire, on a chain about his neck. His disfigurement seemed in some inexplicable fashion to be etiolated by the light, its angry redness dulled, its pitting and puckering irradiated almost out of existence. Instead, she could distinguish only the substructure of his bones, the molding of statuesque features.
He did not look surprised to see her.
“Sit down.”
She sat, too quickly, her limbs still unreliable. He was scrutinizing her face; she hoped it did not betray her.
She said: “There’s a lot of light in here.”
“I like to see what I’m doing.” He must have detected her shudder; the hint of a smile spread his mouth. “Did it disturb you, back there? You need not trouble yourself; it had nothing to do with us. I merely supervise: it is a part of my duties. If interrogation were left exclusively to me, there would be less noise and more talk. Much more talk. The mind is infinitely more vulnerable than the body.” Somehow, she was not particularly reassured. “The methods here are regrettably crude. Unfortunately, that sort of thing is a necessary wheel in the primitive machine. Pointless now, of course, but it has to go on. Zohrâne expects it.”
She underestimates him, Fern thought, returning scrutiny for scrutiny. She sees only the man on the surface, the shallow plotting and commonplace ambition, but all that is as superficial as the blemish on his face. There are layers underneath, deeps beyond the shallows. And looking into his eyes— almond eyes that glittered with their own light—she fancied for a millisecond that she glimpsed something else behind the screen of personality, a capacity for darkness, a void that lived and hungered, so huge that her mind flinched from it—
“Drink this.” The personality was back in place. His voice was all smoothness, with roughness under the smooth. He handed her a goblet of clouded glass filled with wine the color of blood.
She sniffed, but did not drink. An image enveloped her thought, excluding the recent past: a room with many tables, a candleflame thin as a blade, a man with a halo of steel . . .
“It won’t harm you,” he said.
“I’m not thirsty.”
“Wine is not for thirst.” He raised his own goblet in a toast; she set hers down. “I knew you would come,” he said, “in the end. I have been waiting a long, long time.”
Time seemed to change as he spoke its name, bending out of shape, out of rhythm, curving round to encapsulate them in their own miniature cosmos. The past was coiled around the future: the present was an isolated moment, belonging nowhere, trapped at random in a maze of inverse reflections.
“More than fifteen years,” he went on. “The rip was widening. History moved over a little too far to accommodate me.” Fern made no response, sensing his expectation, understanding nothing. “Fifteen years treading softly around the leopardess. She sees only what I permit, uses me—when I give her leave. A disagreeable necessity. She cannot be used. She has gone too far into madness.”
“I noticed,” said Fern.
“Did you?” His tone sharpened. “When?” And again: “Drink your wine.”
“I . . . am not . . . thirsty.”
“How long have you been in the city?”
“Two—no, three days.” She had a feeling the question was not as casual as it sounded. Time still seemed to be on hold, as if it had lost track of the way forward. On the wheel, the candles neither dripped nor shrank. She could not hear any rumor from the city above and suddenly she was afraid it was no longer out there. There was only a barren heath, under cold stars . . .
He said: “You should have come to me before. Why did you run?”
“I ran because I was chased.” She was groping her way through the enigma of their exchange, sensing it was vital to feign comprehension. Whatever she knew of him was hidden, somewhere behind the phantoms in her head, but an awareness beyond memory alerted her to perils she could not see. “Anyway, I didn’t come to Atlantis to find you.”
“What choice do you have?” A ripple of submerged irritation disturbed his expression. “You cannot close the Door without my help. Zohrâne has had it made in effigy, up at the Palace, with panels of gold and fungus of agate and a lizard on the lintel studded with emeralds. The first version was in lignum vitae, but she rejected it as too mean. As if Death could be dazzled by her extravagance! It will be brought to the temple tomorrow and erected in the place of the vacant altar. The ceremony will start at noon. Zohrâne will open the Door; it is fated. She is driven by the impatience of mortality, blinded by the arrogance of Man. An Alimond magnified in power, multiplied in obsession. She will destroy everything—for a whim. Forget Caracandal: he cannot aid you here. Only through me can you obtain the key and restore the balance.”
Alimond. Caracandal. The names spun in her brain.
“How?” she demanded warily.
There was an infinitesimal change in his manner, a barely perceptible relaxation. “You admit that you need me?”
She nodded slowly, untrusting, baffled to find the enemy on her side.
“It is a heavy burden,” he said gently, “for one so young. Drink your wine.”
Automatically, she lifted the goblet. But questions intervened, staying her hand, and some element in the aroma deterred her, recalling things forgotten. “What is your plan?”
“It’s unwise to fix on a definite scheme when we can only guess what will happen. When the Door opens the flood will come, we know that much. But the temple is raised above ground level; the foundations were laid with the Gift; it should stand a little while. Anyway, I have power enough to protect both of us for the short time that we need. You will be concealed on the gallery: when Zohrâne has begun her invocation I will join you. No one will notice me then. Once the great wave has passed, the tabernacle will probably remain under water. We may require the services of a
nympheline
to dive for the key; I will arrange for a suitable arrest. Also a boat, a light
carrarc
, to be tethered in the walkway which connects the main building to the stables. Records made by the exiles indicate the island was not overwhelmed immediately—” his use of the past tense confused her still further “—so we should have a brief lull in which to reach the mountain. Then we can get to the Rose Palace.”
“The Palace?” Fern was coasting, attempting to assimilate his certainties. The flood—the drowning of Atlantis—the ultimate End . . .
“Didn’t you hear me? There are two Doors. As the Door is duplicated, so the spell will be duplicated. Sympathetic magic. The second Door will be near enough to pick up the vibrations of the spell and focus the excess power. Of course, we cannot be absolutely sure—this is something that has been done once and once only—but our hope depends on it. The Palace should be above the initial flood level. There, you can lock the Door.” And he concluded, as if in reassurance: “Your Task will be completed.”
“And then?” Fern said quietly. It was the first time she had contemplated Then.
“There are secret ways through the mountain to the harbor. I have a sea-going vessel moored there; the ancient crater will shield the port for a while. We can sail clear of the cataclysm and ride out the storm. At the oracle of Hex-Âté in Qultuum we will find a way back.”
“Back?” said Fern.
She knew at once she had made a deadly error.
“Don’t you wish to go back?” He was staring at her with peculiar intentness, his gaze narrowing. In the midst of each whirling iris the pupil opened onto nothingness.