Part 7 (1/2)
”You could have gotten it from Fern! No-I mean, that wasn't what I . . . Look, if you'd wanted to talk to me, you would have called. You always do what you want; I know that. So when you didn't call, or-or anything, I a.s.sumed you didn't . . . want to.”
”You seem to have worked out my motives very easily,” Will said, masking uncertainty with sarcasm.
Gaynor fidgeted with her hair, a lifelong nervous habit, but did not attempt to reply.
”Time's up,” Fern said, glancing pointedly at her watch. ”If that was apology and reconciliation, I didn't think much of it, but it will have to do. We have serious matters to discuss. All the evidence indicates Morgus is back-”
”Back?” Will repeated. ”But she's dead dead. Are we talking some kind of ghost, or a tannasgeal tannasgeal-or has someone been fruit picking on the Eternal Tree?”
”You're behind,” said Fern. ”Take your mind off your personal problems, and I'll fill you in.”
In the end, she brought them both up to date, concluding with a brief account of her discussions with Ragginbone. In asking questions and debating possibilities, Will and Gaynor forgot their mutual embarra.s.sment and inevitably began to talk to each other as well as Fern.
”What I don't understand,” Will said finally, ”is where Azmordis-sorry, the Old Spirit-fits into all this. And don't say he's out of it this time, because I won't believe you. He's never out of the game for long. He's like G.o.d or the devil: where Man goes, he goes.”
”He's played both G.o.d and devil down the ages,” Fern said. ”And we were credulous: we fell for it. We wors.h.i.+ped him and feared him. He's grown strong on that. All the same . . .”
”He wants you on his side,” Will persisted, ”and you've turned him down twice. Could he be sending you this recurring dream to try to mesmerize you somehow? Third time-”
”Third time lucky?” Fern finished for him. ”Perhaps. But I'm not a child now; he would find it very hard to get inside my head. My Gift is more developed: it guards me. Besides, if the dream is meant to mesmerize, it isn't working. It just fills me with horror. Worse each time . . . Let's leave it for the moment. Right now, Morgus is the problem.”
”She can't be as dangerous as the Old Spirit,” said Gaynor. ”Can she?”
”In some ways she's more dangerous. He's been in the real world since the beginning; he knows how it works. He's become a part of what Ragginbone calls the greater pattern, an evil part maybe, but still only a part. His goals of corruption and despair are woven into the fate of the world, an underlying theme to our goals of happiness and decency and universal sharing. Morgus is different. She's lived too long outside. Her att.i.tudes are those of the Dark Age. If she's heard of nuclear weapons, you can bet she thinks radioactive fallout is a kind of diabolical magic, something you could stop with a spell of Command. I suspect-I fear-that to her modern society is a toy shop full of entertaining new gadgets. Heaven knows what she may do with them.”
”What you are saying,” Will summarized, ”is that the Old Spirit knows how to play cricket, but cheats, whereas Morgus thinks it's croquet.”
”And plays by witches' rules,” Gaynor added.
”Witches' rules,” Fern echoed. ”One of these days I must find out what they are.”
She spoke to Luc the next day. He sounded distracted and told her at least three times he had found the teddy.
”Good,” said Fern, giving up. ”Hang on to it.”
”Did you find out anything in York?”
”Not York, Yorks.h.i.+re. I didn't go there to find out anything. I went to consult someone, and I consulted. Finding out comes next. Excuse me, but . . . are you quite all right?”
”Not really,” he admitted. ”A two-day hangover. The headache doesn't want to go.”
”What were were you drinking?” you drinking?”
”Absinthe.”
”Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder,” Fern quipped. ”Sorry, that must be as old as the hills. It's poisonous, isn't it? I should have warned you, be very careful with alcohol at the moment. It lays your mind wide open. Anything could get in.”
”I know,” said Luc. ”I think it did. I kept seeing people with animal heads. I looked in the mirror and even I had one. You were the only person who was normal.”
”I wasn't there,” Fern said, disconcerted.
”No, but . . . I imagined you.”
”What sort of head did you have?”
”Something gray and foxy,” he said. ”Look, I'm not sure if it's important, what happened next, but maybe I ought to tell you. It wasn't a dream, but it felt like one, and you said I should focus on my dreams. Afterward, I went around to my father's house. I was walking home from this club and it's more or less on the way to my place. There was a voice in my head, and I walked and walked, and then I was there. He came out with a woman. He didn't see me; I just watched. He had the head of a dog, maybe a wolfhound, all lean and silvery, but his eyes were stupid. The woman had a cloak and hood. She got in a car and was driven away.”
”What kind of animal was she?” Fern asked.
”Not an animal. I saw her for only a second. She looked-hideous. A skull face with staring eyes, and no nose, and jagged teeth . . . This sounds insane, doesn't it? I was probably hallucinating.”
”Probably,” said Fern. ”Could you ask your father who she was?”
”I rang him this morning. Said I was pa.s.sing in a taxi the other night, and I'd seen him with someone. She's a Mrs. Mordaunt, Melissa Mordaunt. Apparently she's renting Wrokeby from him. His voice was strange when he spoke of her. He said something about grat.i.tude grat.i.tude . . .” . . .”
”He's lending her the house out of grat.i.tude?” Fern hazarded. ”But for what?”
”He never feels grat.i.tude,” Luc said flatly.
”I think,” said Fern, ”you'd better tell me more about your father.”
Ragginbone called around that evening. ”My friend in Soho has agreed,” he said. ”We can use his bas.e.m.e.nt.”
”When?” asked Fern.
”Friday,” said Ragginbone. ”The night of the full moon.”
It is full moon tomorrow. I will make the circle, and call up the spirits, even the oldest and strongest, and put them to the question. I will summon Azmordis himself, if need be, but I will will find her. I will find her in the end. find her. I will find her in the end.
Part Two
Valor
V.
In the city, you cannot see the night sky. Traffic pollution thickens the air, and the reflected glare of a million streetlamps fades out the stars. The constellations are numberless and stretch into infinity, yet a tiny cl.u.s.ter of man-made lights can dim their far flung fires out of existence. And the moon is paled, and hides its concave profile behind the hunched shoulders of buildings and the jagged crests of walls, and in the blur of unclean fogs. For the city is the unreal place, where nature and magic are diminished, set at a distance, and Man reigns supreme in the jungle of his own creation, controlling, manipulating, lost, and alone. Only the full moon is big enough, and bright enough, to impinge on the cityscape. And in the summer when the moon is hugest, the concrete towers cannot hide it, and it rolls into view around every corner. The glow is stronger than the electric lamps, and the creatures of the city gaze up into its golden face and remember who they really are.
On that Friday night the sky was clear and the moon seemed larger than ever, its brow lined and pitted with mountain ranges, its cheeks smooth with oceans of dust. It peered over the rooftops into the alleyway called Selena Place, and touched briefly on a shop window hooded with a shabby canopy, where a few stuffed birds showed their molting plumage in a gla.s.s case against a background of unswept cobwebs and unlit shadows. Soho was busy, but the alley was relatively quiet; people came and went soft-footed from both the social club and the unsocial, mumbling names not necessarily their own into discreet intercoms. A ginger cat that was diligently excavating a garbage can twitched at the moon's touch on its fur and glanced up quickly with a glitter of eyes. It returned to foraging, ignoring a pa.s.serby, looking up again only when a group of four turned the corner. In front strode an old man whose broad-brimmed hat and flapping jacket made him resemble the traditional concept of f.a.gin; a much younger man and two women came on his heels. The cat surveyed them for a moment and then shot up a vertical wall and through a broken pane. No one paid any attention. Beside the hooded window, the door of a shop that never opened trembled under the impact of multiple knocks.
”Maybe he's gone,” said Fern, after a pause.
”Never.” Ragginbone lowered his mouth to the keyhole and began to mutter words they could not hear, words that crept through the crack and into the darkness beyond. The door began to s.h.i.+ver of its own accord; chains rattled inside. They caught the sound of scurrying feet and sc.r.a.ping bolts; the door jerked open to the limit of a safety chain; part of a face appeared in the gap. A pale subterranean face with a single boot-b.u.t.ton eye. A smell of unwashed clothing wafted toward them.