The Best of Lucius Shepard (4 page)

At first
Meric thought Pardiel had somehow managed to get ahead of them; but on entering
he saw that the cause of her fright was a man propped in a sitting position
against the far wall. He looked mummified. Wisps of brittle hair poked up from
his scalp, the shapes of his bones were visible through his skin, and his eyes
were empty holes. Between his legs was a scatter of dust where his genitals had
been. Meric pushed Lise towards the next tunnel, but she resisted and pointed
at the man.

“His eyes,”
she said, horror-struck.

Though the
eyes were mostly a negative black, Meric now realized they were shot through by
opalescent flickers. He felt compelled to kneel beside the man; it was a
sudden, motiveless urge that gripped him, bent him to its will, and released
him a second later. As he rested his hand on the scale, he brushed a massive
ring that was lying beneath the shrunken fingers. Its stone was black, shot
through by flickers identical to those within the eyes, and incised with the
letter S. He found his gaze was deflected away from both the stone and the
eyes, as if they contained charges repellent to the senses. He touched the
man’s withered arm; the flesh was rock-hard, petrified. But alive. From that
brief touch he gained an impression of the man’s life, of gazing for centuries
at the same patch of unearthly fire, of a mind gone beyond mere madness into a
perverse rapture, a meditation upon some foul principle. He snatched back his
hand in revulsion.

There was a
noise behind them, and Meric jumped up, pushing Lise into the next tunnel. “Go
right,” he whispered. “We’ll circle back towards the stair.” But Pardiel was
too close to confuse with such tactics, and their flight became a wild chase,
scrambling, falling, catching glimpses of Pardiel’s smoke-stained face, until finally
- as Meric came to a large chamber — he felt the hook bite into his thigh. He
went down, clutching at the wound, pulling the hook loose. The next moment
Pardiel was atop him; Lise appeared over his shoulder, but he knocked her away
and locked his fingers in Meric’s hair and smashed his head against the scale.
Lise screamed, and white lights fired through Meric’s skull. Again his head was
smashed down. And again. Dimly, he saw Lise struggling with Pardiel, saw her
shoved away, saw the hook raised high and the foreman’s mouth distorted by a
grimace. Then the grimace vanished. His jaw dropped open and he reached behind
him as if to scratch his shoulder blade. A line of dark blood eeled from his
mouth and he collapsed, smothering Meric beneath his chest. Meric heard voices.
He tried to dislodge the body, and the effects drained the last of his
strength. He whirled down through a blackness that seemed as negative and
inexhaustible as the petrified man’s eyes.

Someone had
propped his head on their lap and was bathing his brow with a damp cloth. He
assumed it was Lise, but when he asked what had happened, it was Jarcke who
answered, saying, “Had to kill him.” His head throbbed, his leg throbbed even
worse, and his eyes would not focus. The peels of dead skin hanging overhead
appeared to be writhing. He realized they were out near the edge of the wing.

“Where’s
Lise?”

“Don’t
worry,” said Jarcke. “You’ll see her again.” She made it sound like an
indictment.

“Where is
she?”

“Sent her
back to Hangtown. Won’t do you two bein’ seen hand in hand the same day
Pardiel’s missin’.”

“She
wouldn’t have left…” He blinked, trying to see her face; the lines around her
mouth were etched deep and reminded him of the patterns of lichen on the
dragon’s scale. “What did you do?”

“Convinced
her it was best,” said Jarcke. “Don’ you know she’s just foolin’ with you?”

“I’ve got to
talk with her.” He was full of remorse, and it was unthinkable that Lise should
be bearing her grief alone; but when he struggled to rise, pain lanced through
his leg.

“You
wouldn’t get 10 feet,” she said. “Soon as your head’s clear, I’ll help you with
the stairs.”

He closed
his eyes, resolving to find Lise the instant he got back to Hangtown; together
they would decide what to do. The scale beneath him was cool, and that coolness
was transmitted to his skin, his flesh, as if he were merging with it, becoming
one of its ridges.

“What was
the wizard’s name?” he asked after a while, recalling the petrified man, the
ring and its incised letter. “The one who tried to kill Griaule…”

“Don’t know
as I ever heard it,” said Jarcke. “But I reckon it’s him back there.”

“You saw
him?”

“I was
chasin’ a scale hunter once what stole some rope, and I found him instead.
Pretty miserable sort, whoever he is.”

Her fingers
trailed over his shoulder - a gentle, treasuring touch. He did not understand
what it signalled, being too concerned with Lise, with the terrifying potentials
of all that had happened; but years later, after things had passed beyond
remedy, he cursed himself for not having understood.

At length
Jarcke helped him to his feet, and they climbed up to Hangtown, to bitter
realizations and regrets, leaving Pardiel to the birds or the weather or worse.

It seems it
is considered irreligious for a woman in love to hesitate or examine the
situation, to do anything other than blindly follow the impulse of her
emotions. I felt the brunt of such an attitude - people judged it my fault for
not having acted quickly and decisively one way or another. Perhaps I was
overcautious. I do not claim to be free of blame, only innocent of sacrilege. I
believe I might have eventually left Pardiel - there was not enough in the relationship
to sustain happiness for either of us. But I had good reason for cautious
examination. My husband was not an evil man, and there were matters of loyalty
between us.

I could not
face Meric after Pardiel’s death, and I moved to another part of the valley. He
tried to see me on many occasions, but I always refused. Though I was greatly
tempted, my guilt was greater. Four years later, after Jarcke died — crushed by
a runaway wagon - one of her associates wrote and told me Jarcke had been in
love with Meric, that it had been she who had informed Pardiel of the affair,
and that she may well have staged the murder. The letter acted somewhat to
expiate my guilt, and I weighed the possibility of seeing Meric again. But too
much time had passed, and we had both assumed other lives. I decided against
it. Six years later, when Griaule’s influence had weakened sufficiently to
allow emigration, I moved to Port Chantay. I did not hear from Meric for almost
twenty years after that, and then one day I received a letter, which I will
reproduce in part.

“My old
friend from Regensburg, Louis Dardano, has been living here for the past few
years, engaged in writing my biography. The narrative has a breezy feel, like a
tale being told in a tavern, which - if you recall my telling you how this all
began - is quite appropriate. But on reading it, I am
amazed
my life has
had such a simple shape. One task, one passion. God, Lise! Seventy years old,
and I still dream of you. And I still think of what happened that morning under
the wing. Strange, that it has taken me all this time to realize it was not
Jarcke, not you or I who were culpable, but Griaule. How obvious it seems now.
I was leaving, and he needed me to complete the expression on his side, his
dream of flying, of escape, to grant him the death of his desire. I am certain
you will think I have leaped to this assumption, but I remind you that it has
been a leap of forty years’ duration. I know Griaule, know his monstrous
subtlety. I can see it at work in every action that has taken place in the
valley since my arrival. I was a fool not to understand that his powers were at
the heart of our sad conclusion.

“The army
now runs everything here, as no doubt you are aware. It is rumoured they are
planning a winter campaign against Regensburg. Can you believe it! Their
fathers were ignorant, but this generation is brutally stupid. Otherwise, the
work goes well and things are as usual with me. My shoulder aches, children
stare at me on the street, and it is whispered I am mad…”

- from
Under
Griaule’s Wing
by Lise Claverie

3

Acne-scarred, lean, arrogant, Major Hauk was a very
young major with a limp. When Meric had entered, the major had been practising
his signature; it was a thing of elegant loops and flourishes, obviously
intended to have a place in posterity. As he strode back and forth during their
conversation, he paused frequently to admire himself in the window glass,
settling the hang of his red jacket or running his fingers along the crease of
his white trousers. It was the new style of uniform, the first Meric had seen
at close range, and he noted with amusement the dragons embossed on the
epaulets. He wondered if Griaule was capable of such an irony, if his influence
was sufficiently discreet to have planted the idea for this comic opera apparel
in the brain of some general’s wife.

“… not a
question of manpower,” the major was saying, “but of —” He broke off, and after
a moment cleared his throat.

Meric, who
had been studying the blotches on the backs of his hands, glanced up; the cane
that had been resting against his knee slipped and clattered to the floor.

“A question
of
materiel”
said the major firmly. “The price of antimony, for example…”

“Hardly use
it any more,” said Meric. “I’m almost done with the mineral reds.”

A look of
impatience crossed the major’s face. “Very well,” he said; he stooped to his
desk and shuffled through some papers. “Ah! Here’s a bill for a shipment of
cuttlefish from which you derive…” He shuffled more papers.

“Syrian
brown,” said Meric gruffly. “I’m done with that, too. Golds and violets are all
I need any more. A little blue and rose.” He wished the man would stop
badgering him; he wanted to be at the eye before sunset.

As the major
continued his accounting, Meric’s gaze wandered out the window. The shantytown
surrounding Griaule had swelled into a city and now sprawled across the hills.
Most of the buildings were permanent, wood and stone, and the cant of the
roofs, the smoke from the factories around the perimeter, put him in mind of
Regensburg. All the natural beauty of the land had been drained into the
painting. Blackish grey rain clouds were muscling up from the east, but the
afternoon sun shone clear and shed a heavy gold radiance on Griaule’s side. It
looked as if the sunlight were an extension of the gleaming resins, as if the
thickness of the paint were becoming infinite. He let the major’s voice recede
to a buzz and followed the scatter and dazzle of the images; and then, with a
start, he realized the major was sounding him out about stopping the work.

The idea
panicked him at first. He tried to interrupt, to raise objections; but the
major talked through him, and as Meric thought it over, he grew less and less
opposed. The painting would never be finished, and he was tired. Perhaps it was
time to have done with it, to accept a university post somewhere and enjoy life
for a while.

“We’ve been
thinking about a temporary stoppage,” said Major Hauk. “Then if the winter
campaign goes well…” He smiled. “If we’re not visited by plague and pestilence,
we’ll assume things are in hand. Of course we’d like your opinion.”

Meric felt a
surge of anger towards this smug little monster. “In my opinion, you people are
idiots,” he said. “You wear Griaule’s image on your shoulders, weave him on
your flags, and yet you don’t have the least comprehension of what that means.
You think it’s just a useful symbol…”

“Excuse me,”
said the major stiffly.

“The hell I
will!” Meric groped for his cane and heaved up to his feet. “You see yourselves
as conquerors. Shapers of destiny. But all your rapes and slaughters are
Griaule’s expressions.
His
will. You’re every bit as much his parasites
as the skizzers.”

The major
sat, picked up a pen, and began to write.

“It astounds
me,” Meric went on, “that you can live next to a miracle, a source of mystery,
and treat him as if he were an oddly shaped rock.”

The major
kept writing.