Celebrant (28 page)

Well I wasn’t
born
bald (she says drily)

They walk along together, in a row.
Unnoticed, Adrian shoots glances of nettled frustration at Nardac across deKlend’s bow.
He wants so badly to be a cinematic villain, a minatory figure no one can be around without foreboding feelings.
Nardac’s presence is making it impossible for him to say oblique, sinister inducements to deKlend, fomenting a presentiment of evil, the way he’d like.
And yet she walks along in a trance, maybe oblivious to them both.

What is that beautiful thing you have? (deKlend asks, pointing to Nardac’s hand)

She is holding a long wooden pipe with a knob protruding from the side of the bowl.
The pipe is made of fi
e
ry, almost scarlet wood, richly and closely grained, in places catching the light like a very fine, beaded gold web.

It’s from Votu (she says simply)
One of the natural robots there
...
they call it troglodyte
...
no one evidently has ever seen it.
It never leaves its cavern below its shrine.
Apparently you can hear it moan to itself down there.
Anyway, this machine makes a drug they draw up out of the cave in baskets.
When they process it a certain way, it comes out in a golden loop that’s lighter than air, and a sort of bubble in the loop, like the skin of a black pool
...
you unravel the wires at one point carefully and touch them to your heart
...
they are spun from stellar waves by the natural robot.
You can keep them forever, in musty velvet old jewelry cases.

But this kind (she taps the pipe) is much more affordable and its effects aren’t as drastic.

She shows him a little purse filled with blue shavings.
You put them in here (she points to the bowl) and you put a pellet of aconite salt here (she points to the knob, which has a hole in it) and turn the knob to drop the pellet into the shavings.
Then you suck the powder all in at once.

It sounds tricky (deKlend says)

I’m not finished (she raises a finger, and her jewelry clicks)
Nothing happens until you sit and draw air through the pipe for a while.
Then
...

She opens her hand in a gentle, blossoming gesture beside her head.

A stark, blue
shout
from the core of the brain!
Can you imagine?
It’s actually audible from outside.
A piercing whistle.
And the powder, turned palest blue, jets from the corners of the eyes.

She points to her eyes, and deKlend sees two faint, airbrushed-looking pale spots on either side of her nose.

The sensation (she goes on) before this happens is like the tips of two fingers pressing against the inside of the skull, just behind the bridge of the nose, and being drawn up behind the forehead, spreading apart on their way to
—
the hair line.

She makes a wry face.

Then
out
it shoots, and inside your head beams like a whitewashed courtyard full of cool, mediterranean light.

She smiles blissfully and raises the amber stem to her lips again.
The grapefruit goes tumbling along.

The sun is so long in coming up (deKlend remarks)

Adrian continues with them in silence.
He feels himself drawing closer to deKlend.

Yes (he thinks, quietly even to himself) let me enter within the circle of his defenses
...

It’s a strange thing!
(he says aloud, baring his teeth)

After a moment more, he adds,

You’ve read my work, haven’t you?
It’s been most extraordinarily
un
appreciated in critical circles.

Is
that
east, do you think?
(deKlend asks, pointing)

I haven’t a map (Adrian says)

Wait
—
(deKlend stops)

He turns to Nardac.

You say you’ve been in Votu?

Naturally (she says) We’re in Votu now.

The outer precincts (Adrian says to his back) The outer precincts of the greater metronome.

You see (deKlend says to Nardac) I must get there myself.

But you are in Votu, deKlend.

He wants to bring his sword to the city, isn’t that right?
(Adrian says with mockery in his voice)

deKlend turns to him.

That vile, misshapen sword blade he keeps in his lungs?
(Adrian says, lowering his chin, hooding his eyes in the sockets)

But who told you about that?
(deKlend asks)
Well, it is pretty awful (he adds a moment later, thrusting his hand through his shawls to rub the back of his neck ruefully)
I work out a kink here and warp another part in the process.

It’s a bad job (Adrian says vehemently)

deKlend looks up at him again.

Adrian’s eyes widen, his grin slackens an instant, then spreads, expanding larger than ever, and losing all of its sardonic aspect.
He lifts his arms straight out from where they hang at his sides and holds them high.

I am here!
(Adrian calls softly, his throat bulging with emotion in his tight collar)

Totally perplexed, deKlend stares at him and realizes he is actually looking past him.
Turning around he sees an enormous black bird spiralling up into the sky.

What is that?
(deKlend asks himself)

He
is holding back the dawn!
(Adrian says rapturously, almost singing the words)

Have I seen
—
?
No, never (deKlend thinks)
I believe I must have read about it somewhere, when I
—
he’s right, the sun should have been up by now, he’s right about that at least
—
read about
Votu?

Is it a condor or something?
(Nardac asks, shading her eyes with her elbow up high)

Oh, Bird of Ill Omen!
(Adrian intones)

Do you know, I’ve seen that bird before, deKlend?
(Nardac asks)
...
deKlend?

Yes, just a minute.

Oh, Master!
(Adrian bellows)
Black herald of catastrophe!

What on earth are you doing, deKlend?
(Nardac asks, squinting to make him out in a glare only she sees)

Animatedly springing up on top of a large rock, deKlend stands in an apelike posture with his back and knees bent, his arms hanging down and a bit out.
All his attention seems concentrated on an object she can’t see
—
not the bird, but something else.
He seems poised to jump.

Ah, magnificent forerunner of destruction!
(Adrian sighs)

What is it, deKlend?

It’s coming
(he says tersely)

He adjusts his angle, quickly takes a step, and flashes away, like a scrap of tissue suddenly whipped aloft by a gust of wind.
There is a black speck far off, legs swinging
—
now it’s gone and the sky is empty.
The sun breaks the horizon.

Oh!
(she says, raising the back of her hand to her lips)

A colorless, icy effulgence
...
the white sun against a white sky.
Something flutters past deKlend in midair, like a pitch-black pigeon, and he could swear

it tells him to
—

Listen.

Dart, flash, race over the earth
—
up mountains
—
over the sea
—
through pathways framed in the sky’s sparkling blue leaves and cloud flowers and zoom over the ground boulders beaches gullies through forests and cities just a ribbon of solid fluid land tremble and ripple beneath his feet down through the earth like chocolate cake shoot the breathless emptiness of outer ocean miles from the bottom and the surface alike then up high above the plain a transparent crease of gravity thin as a thread to run on and though he’s got big feet deKlend can stay on that line knees blinking his hands threshing the air before his chest, leant forward his large liquid eyes wide open and receptive above his moustache
—

Despite his frenetic speed a dreamlike trance all spangled with glittering motes and reflected, starlike gleams from the gossamer icicles of the sky seems to billow from his mind and englobe him in a diamond transparency of calm, condensed and solid as unblemished water.

In complete silence, the Bird of Ill Omen looms before him.
From his plumage comes a pungent, chemical fragrance that is sharp and aromatic like the perfume of savage flowers.
Half-hidden in the long tailfeathers, deKlend can see its feet aren’t talons but hands, in long shiny black rubber gloves.

The Bird of Ill Omen is aware of him, deKlend is certain, though it does not turn its chilling gaze on him.
The rubber hands squeak as the fingers crumple shut and stretch open.

I am the Bird of Ill Omen.

I fly in the dark corridors of the sky.

I spend my days in heaven.

I am the Bird of Ill Omen.

That I live at all is bad news for you.

deKlend can feel the gathering in of the medium of misfortune and bad luck.
The Bird’s funereal domain, throbbing with giddy powers.
The circle of power that ineluctably bears the effect back upon the cause.

This is my nature
...
I love Votu
...
but I long to torment it!

The Bird of Ill Omen flashes into a blot of darkness, emerging miles away on the mountainside in a point of light as the sky goes black.

The Bird of Ill Omen stands by the mountainside, a veil over his head, another over the top of his silk hat, the hems of both seem delicately to examine the ground at his feet with a fastidious movement like snails.
With both his moon eyes fixed on me, deKlend, through the veils, I watch him at the edge of the world stepping over the nightline into darkness.

Soft globules of light roll over the plain, distorting a little in shape, like water balloons, as they roll.
Those are days (deKlend realizes)