The Best of Lucius Shepard (3 page)

It was dusk
before Meric realized the eye had closed. His mouth hung open, his eyes ached
from straining to see, and his tongue was glued to his palate. Jarcke sat
motionless, buried in shadow.

“Th…” He had
to swallow to clear his throat of mucus. “This is the reason you live here,
isn’t it?”

“Part of the
reason,” she said. “I can see things comin’ way up here. Things to watch out
for, things to study on.”

She stood
and walked to the lip of the socket and spat off the edge; the valley stretched
out grey and unreal behind her, the folds of the hills barely visible in the
gathering dusk.

“I seen you
comin’,” she said.

A week
later, after much exploration, much talk, they went down into Teocinte. The
town was a shambles - shattered windows, slogans painted on the walls, glass
and torn banners and spoiled food littering the streets - as if there had been
both a celebration and a battle. Which there had. The city fathers met with
Meric in the town hall and informed him that his plan had been approved. They
presented him a chest containing 500 ounces of silver and said that the entire
resources of the community were at his disposal. They offered a wagon and a
team to transport him and the chest to Regensburg and asked if any of the
preliminary work could be begun during his absence.

Meric hefted
one of the silver bars. In its cold gleam he saw the object of his desire; two,
perhaps three years of freedom, of doing the work he wanted and not having to
accept commissions. But all that had been confused. He glanced at Jarcke; she
was staring out the window, leaving it to him. He set the bar back in the chest
and shut the lid.

“You’ll have
to send someone else,” he said. And then, as the city fathers looked at each
other askance, he laughed and laughed at how easily he had discarded all his
dreams and expectations.

It had been
eleven years since I had been to the valley, twelve since work had begun on the
painting, and I was appalled by the changes that had taken place. Many of the
hills were scraped brown and treeless, and there was a general dearth of
wildlife. Griaule, of course, was most changed. Scaffolding hung from his back;
artisans, suspended by webworks of ropes, crawled over his side; and all the
scales to be worked had either been painted or primed. The tower rising to his
eye was swarmed by labourers, and at night the calciners and vats atop his head
belched flame into the sky, making it seem there was a mill town in the
heavens. At his feet was a brawling shantytown populated by prostitutes,
workers, gamblers, ne’er-do-wells of every sort, and soldiers: the burdensome
cost of the project had encouraged the city fathers of Teocinte to form a
regular militia, which regularly plundered the adjoining states and had posted
occupation forces to some areas. Herds of frightened animals milled in the
slaughtering pens, waiting to be rendered into oils and pigments. Wagons filled
with ores and vegetable products rattled in the streets. I myself had brought a
cargo of madder roots from which a rose tint would be derived.

It was not
easy to arrange a meeting with Cattanay. While he did none of the actual painting,
he was always busy in his office consulting with engineers and artisans, or
involved in some other part of the logistical process. When at last I did meet
with him, I found he had changed as drastically as Griaule. His hair had gone
grey, deep lines scored his features, and his right shoulder had a peculiar
bulge at its mid-point - the product of a fall. He was amused by the fact that
I wanted to buy the painting, to collect the scales after Griaule’s death, and
I do not believe he took me at all seriously. But the woman Jarcke, his
constant companion, informed him that I was a responsible businessman, that I
had already bought the bones, the teeth, even the dirt beneath Griaule’s belly
(this I eventually sold as having magical properties).

“Well,” said
Cattanay, “I suppose someone has to own them.”

He led me
outside, and we stood looking at the painting.

“You’ll keep
them together?” he asked.

I said,
“Yes.”

“If you’ll
put that in writing,” he said, “then they’re yours.”

Having
expected to haggle long and hard over the price, I was flabbergasted; but I was
even more flabbergasted by what he said next.

“Do you
think it’s any good?” he asked.

Cattanay did
not consider the painting to be the work of
his
imagination; he felt he
was simply illuminating the shapes that appeared on Griaule’s side and was
convinced that once the paint was applied, new shapes were produced beneath it,
causing him to make constant changes. He saw himself as an artisan more than a
creative artist. But to put his question into perspective, people were
beginning to flock from all over the world and marvel at the painting. Some
claimed they saw intimations of the future in its gleaming surface; others
underwent transfiguring experiences; still others - artists themselves -
attempted to capture something of the work on canvas, hopeful of establishing
reputations merely by being competent copyists of Cattanay’s art. The painting
was nonrepresentational in character, essentially a wash of pale gold spread
across the dragon’s side; but buried beneath the laminated surface were a
myriad tints of iridescent colour that, as the sun passed through the heavens
and the light bloomed and faded, solidified into innumerable forms and figures
that seemed to flow back and forth. I will not try to categorize these forms,
because there was no end to them; they were as varied as the conditions under
which they were viewed. But I will say that on the morning I met with Cattanay,
I - who was the soul of the practical man, without a visionary bone in my body
- felt as though I were being whirled away into the painting, up through
geometries of light, latticeworks of rainbow colour that built the way the
edges of a cloud build, past orbs, spirals, wheels of flame…

— from
This
Business of Griaule
by Henry Sichi

2

There had been several women in Meric’s life since he
arrived in the valley; most had been attracted by his growing fame and his
association with the mystery of the dragon, and most had left him for the same
reasons, feeling daunted and unappreciated. But Lise was different in two
respects. First, because she loved Meric truly and well; and second, because
she was married - albeit unhappily - to a man named Pardiel, the foreman of the
calciner crew. She did not love him as she did Meric, yet she respected him and
felt obliged to consider carefully before ending the relationship. Meric had
never known such as introspective soul. She was twelve years younger than he, tall
and lovely, with sun-streaked hair and brown eyes that went dark and seemed to
turn inward whenever she was pensive. She was in the habit of analysing
everything that affected her, drawing back from her emotions and inspecting
them as if they were a clutch of strange insects she had discovered crawling on
her skirt. Though her penchant for self-examination kept her from him, Meric
viewed it as a kind of baffling virtue. He had the classic malady and could
find no fault with her. For almost a year they were as happy as could be
expected; they talked long hours and walked together, and on those occasions
when Pardiel worked double shifts and was forced to bed down by his furnaces,
they spent the nights making love in the cavernous spaces beneath the dragon’s
wing.

It was still
reckoned an evil place. Something far worse than skizzers or flakes was
rumoured to live there, and the ravages of this creature were blamed for every
disappearance, even that of the most malcontented labourer. But Meric did not
give credence to the rumours. He half believed Griaule had chosen him to be his
executioner and that the dragon would never let him be harmed; and besides, it
was the only place where they could be assured of privacy.

A crude
stair led under the wing, handholds and steps hacked from the scales -
doubtless the work of scale hunters. It was a treacherous passage, 600 feet
above the valley floor; but Lise and Meric were secured by ropes, and over the
months, driven by the urgency of passion, they adapted to it. Their favourite
spot lay 50 feet in (Lise would go no further; she was afraid even if he was
not), near a waterfall that trickled over the leathery folds, causing them to
glisten with a mineral brilliance. It was eerily beautiful, a haunted gallery.
Peels of dead skin hung down from the shadows like torn veils of ectoplasm;
ferns sprouted from the vanes, which were thicker than cathedral columns;
swallows curved through the black air. Sometimes, lying with her hidden by a
tuck of the wing, Meric would think the beating of their hearts was what really
animated the place, that the instant they left, the water ceased flowing and
the swallows vanished. He had an unshakable faith in the transforming power of
their affections, and one morning as they dressed, preparing to return to
Hangtown, he asked her to leave with him.

“To another
part of the valley?” She laughed sadly. “What good would that do? Pardiel would
follow us.”

“No,” he
said. “To another country. Anywhere far from here.”

“We can’t,”
she said, kicking at the wing. “Not until Griaule dies. Have you forgotten?”

“We haven’t
tried.”

“Others
have.”

“But we’d be
strong enough. I know it!”

“You’re a
romantic,” she said gloomily, and stared out over the slope of Griaule’s back
at the valley. Sunrise had washed the hills to crimson, and even the tips of
the wings were glowing a dull red.

“Of course
I’m a romantic!” He stood, angry. “What the hell’s wrong with that?”

She sighed
with exasperation. “You wouldn’t leave your work,” she said. “And if we did
leave, what work would you do? Would—”

“Why must
everything be a problem in advance!” he shouted. “I’ll tattoo elephants! I’ll
paint murals on the chests of giants, I’ll illuminate whales! Who else is
better qualified?”

She smiled,
and his anger evaporated.

“I didn’t
mean it that way,” she said. “I just wondered if you could be satisfied with
anything else.”

She reached
out her hand to be pulled up, and he drew her into an embrace. As he held her,
inhaling the scent of vanilla water from her hair, he saw a diminutive figure
silhouetted against the backdrop of the valley. It did not seem real - a black
homunculus - and even when it began to come forward, growing larger and larger,
it looked less a man than a magical keyhole opening in a crimson set hillside.
But Meric knew from the man’s rolling walk and the hulking set of his shoulders
that it was Pardiel; he was carrying a long-handled hook, one of those used by
artisans to manoeuvre along the scales.

Meric
tensed, and Lise looked back to see what had alarmed him. “Oh, my God!” she
said, moving out of the embrace.

Pardiel
stopped a dozen feet away. He said nothing. His face was in shadow, and the
hook swung lazily from his hand. Lise took a step towards him, then stepped
back and stood in front of Meric as if to shield him. Seeing this, Pardiel let
out an inarticulate yell and charged, slashing with the hook. Meric pushed Lise
aside and ducked. He caught a brimstone whiff of the calciners as Pardiel
rushed past and went sprawling, tripped by some irregularity in the scale.
Deathly afraid, knowing he was no match for the foreman, Meric seized Lise’s
hand and ran deeper under the wing. He hoped Pardiel would be too frightened to
follow, leery of the creature that was rumoured to live there; but he was not.
He came after them at a measured pace, tapping the hook against his leg.

Higher on
Griaule’s back, the wing was dimpled downwards by hundreds of bulges, and this
created a maze of small chambers and tunnels so low that they had to crouch to
pass along them. The sound of their breathing and the scrape of their feet were
amplified by the enclosed spaces, and Meric could no longer hear Pardiel. He
had never been this deep before. He had thought it would be pitch-dark; but the
lichen and algae adhering to the wing were luminescent and patterned every
surface, even the scales beneath them, with whorls of blue and green fire that
shed a sickly radiance. It was as if they were giants crawling through a
universe whose starry matter had not yet congealed into galaxies and nebulas.
In the wan light, Lise’s face - turned back to him now and again - was teary
and frantic; and then, as she straightened, passing into still another chamber,
she drew in breath with a shriek.