Part 5 (2/2)

Sometime in the night while he had slept a fire had been lit in the hearth. It was gone to white, sweet-smelling cedar ash now behind the iron guard. About a dozen years ago he and Book had installed working electricity and central heating in the old mansion. Still, the Father's habits died hard--if, that was, they ever died at all.

Alek settled back and lazily half-closed his eyes, trying hard to recall the peace of this place, his childhood home, this gentle abeyance away from his human life. He frowned as it escaped him. He didn't feel well, not at all. His stomach roiled emptily and there was a sour, singed taste in the back of his throat. He was forced to swallow hard against a returning wave of nausea.

An overuse of psi could do that.

Or else it was just Sean making him violently ill.

Sean. If there was any justice in all the world he would be busy hurling his brains out in the nauseous throes of an overextended psi for the next three days. Yes, that would be perfect. That would be justice.

The night before, when Alek had carried his burden into the house, the whelp had been unconscious and his body had felt like a slack ma.s.s of rubber in Alek's arms. His loony, Machiavellian eyes had been closed then, making him seem absurdly angelic. Deceptively innocent.

So sad that he could not feel tenderness for such a face, he'd thought at the time. Such a tragedy that such beauty must be trapped inside with such an ugly soul. But Alek had dropped the tragedy down onto his bed without ceremony, then turned away and vomited in a corner of Sean's room while the arms of the Father magically appeared and held his head.

”Ah no, what is it he has done to you, beloved?” Amadeus whispered as he wiped the sweat from Alek's brow. When the sickness pa.s.sed and he was able to stand, Amadeus put his palm to Alek's hot cheek for many moments and they spoke in images as only artists can. Then Alek instinctively sought his old cell across the hall and burrowed under the coverlet as if he were still a child afraid of the night.

Amadeus had been there with him, in his mind, speaking the most powerful words. Alek remembered that.

And he'd dreamt. He remembered that too. And in the dream he was trapped in the center of a giant silver web. Unseen spiders tugged the s.h.i.+mmering threads of his web, and with each movement his limbs jerked compulsively like the wooden arms and legs of a marionette. His web had broken finally, the war too great for it, but he'd awakened before he could discover where his fall had taken him.

Alek pulled himself up, weaving still a little, his arms steadying himself against the bedpost as the room slowed, then settled itself down properly. After a while he made himself walk off the nausea like a seasoned drunk might a hangover.

The morning light cast itself in unbroken, dusty banners on the booked western wall and picked out a volume here, there. Alek fingered the volumes as he went along, read the names. Calvin. Paracelsus. Chaucer. Pliny the Elder. Cornelias Agrippa. He pulled down a volume at random and felt its ancient weight in his hands.

Volney's Ruins of Empires. He carried it with him under his chin like a schoolboy and circled the room twice before he stopped in front of the Colonial armoire. He took the armoire's little bra.s.s latch in his thumb and forefinger and gently pulled open the antique double doors. Gabardine habits were folded into dark uniform stacks on the shelves, the skins of a younger Alek Knight still here, as if he'd never grown up and went away from Amadeus House at all. As if a younger Alek Knight would walk in at any moment with his stack of study tomes and put on his gla.s.ses and one of the gowns before tackling the Father's lesson plan for the day.

Some fragile understanding, tenuous as a silk thread, fell in. And all at once he realized what being chosen of Amadeus truly meant. His was the only cell in the vast old house left unchanged, undisturbed, after all this time. Unused. Enshrined. As if Amadeus hadn't a doubt in his ancient mind that Alek would one day return forever.

Covenmaster, he thought.

Covenmaster Alek Knight.

He frowned, shook his head. Absently, he touched the mark on his throat. The wound had healed, yet it stung still.

He looked at the musty stack of habits and wondered if it was possible to slide into those skins of the past, now, almost thirty years later. And looking, his breath hitched softly, then died in a little sigh. His fingers came away from Amadeus's mark and inched into the armoire. Alek put Volney on the table behind him so that he was free to take the impish thing at the back of the armoire in both hands.

Raggedy Andy in his pale little face and faded blue sailor's uniform smiled up at Alek. He'd been Debra's once, a long time ago in a time of strife and confusion. Like the carousel and the cheap little gold ring hanging from the rusted chain around the doll's neck. Debra's. Wicked Debra's. He buried his nose in the red yarny hair, and yes, he could smell her still, feel the stickiness that time and handling had put into Andy's hair by childish fingers.

He slid the ring on the chain off the doll and tucked it into his pocket for no reason at all but that it seemed a good thing to do. Holding the doll still, he looked around the room, feeling all the fragile threads falling into him now, an enormous wed spun in years and distance, heavy with time and surely full of power.

”Coelum non animum mutant, que trans mare current.”

The voice was like the gush of wind at his back.

Alek licked his mouth, his teeth. He closed his eyes. ”'Those who cross the sea change the sky, not their spirits.' Horace. Epistles. I remember, Father.”

”You forget nothing. Unlike so many.”

Alek turned slowly, raised his eyes to the Father. ”Why don't you simply kill him?”

Inside the casting of the door stood Amadeus like an ancient warrior prince, his face all chiseled ice, his loosened white hair trapped on the rough grain of the alabaster wall in a frosted web. Over his forearm was a Covenmaster's black silk habit. He stroked the length of fabric lovingly, like the hide of a great conquest.

”Kill him. Kill the prophecy,” he reasoned. ”And would you do this for me, my best child? A single word from me and you would bend the catechism to preserve my life?”

Alek tightened his hold on the doll. ”It is not in my power to destroy the boy, but Father, you've lived so long. You could summon the Vatican Council, reason with them--”

”Do you,” Amadeus said with complete judgment, ”believe I covet my life so that I would try and correct destiny like an Orpheus? Or manipulate my child like a human parent?”

Alek dropped his eyes.

”I would. I should--nein?--for my life is the Coven. But the Coven will live after me. Through you, my son.

You will be the soul of the Coven in my stead. Do you see? My blood lives in you even now. We are wed.

And I will live again after my own death, only it will be another face, another pair of hands and another heart beating, but beating the blood of Amadeus still.”

”Immortality.”

Amadeus nodded. ”Yes, you see. You see best of all. Like a blind man sees.”

Alek's mouth twisted against the tears and he tasted them in the back of his throat like bad liqueur.

Immortality. But it was all only a bad joke. Immortality was for G.o.ds, and music, and legend, not the d.a.m.ned. Not for those whose heads could be removed and whose souls cast off the scales into h.e.l.l.

Amadeus smiled. ”Memento mori.”

Remember that you must die. Ovid? Martialis? Alek couldn't remember. His mind was clotted with grief made all the worse because it could not be roundedly grasped yet for its lack of true presence, of arrival.

”Beloved, we are merely immortal. Not eternal,” said the Father. ”You too must one day die.”

Raggedy Andy fell through Alek's fingers and hit the floor dustily. Of course he would die one day. They would all die. Like Debra had died. Like the thousands they'd slain had died on a thousand other nights and like thousands more still would.

”You doubt,” said Amadeus.

”I fear.”

”The weight of this--”

”--will crush me.”

”Der Unsinn,” said Amadeus. ”Do you remember the night I found you in the park, holding to your sister, afraid even to speak? You were in my visions long before. As a child I saw you standing at the gateway to the stars in your black hair and bloodied steel. The Chosen. I was led that night to you. Drawn to you.

Drowning in love for you. My journey's end.”

Andy smiled up at Alek, demure, a tease who knew all the answers. Alek crossed his arms, almost shuddering. ”It's morning,” he said and his voice sounded curiously empty to himself, as if like the past and the things in it, coming from a long way's away. But here now. Arrived. ”I have to go now, Father. Braxton will be up my a.s.s, my studio's a G.o.dd.a.m.n mess, I--”

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