Taltos (74 page)

“How so?” Michael asked.

“If she doesn’t do everything we say, you’ll never tell her about the male. It’s simple.”

“Yes, it’s a means of control,” said Rowan.

“There are other means. She suffers so.”

“You’re tired, honey,” said Michael. “You should rest.”

“Oh, we will, in each other’s arms. It’s only when you wake and you see her sniffing at the clothes, don’t be frightened. It can look kind of terrible.”

“Yes,” said Rowan. “We will all be prepared.”

“But who is he?” Mona asked.

Rowan turned, as if to make sure she had heard this question right.

Dolly Jean, her head bowed, gave a sudden startling snore.

“Who is the male?” asked Mona, insistent, her eyes suddenly half-mast with exhaustion and slightly haunted.

“And if I tell you,” said Rowan, “then you must keep it from her. Let us be the strong ones on that score. Trust us.”

“Mother!” Morrigan called. A waltz had begun, Richard Strauss, strings, one of those lovely bland records that you can listen to for the rest of your life. He wanted to see them dancing, but in a way he didn’t.

“Do the guards know she’s not to go out?” Michael asked.

“Well, not really,” Mona said. “You know, it would be easier if you told them to go away. She … she upsets them. I can control her more easily if they’re gone. She won’t run away, not from her mother.”

“Yes,” Rowan said. “We’ll dismiss them.”

Michael was unsure.

But then he nodded. “We are in this … together.” The voice of Morrigan called out again. The music surged. Mona slowly turned and left them.

*   *   *

Late in the night, he could hear them laughing still, and the music now and then, or was it a dream of Stuart Gordon’s tower? Then the keys of the computer tapping away, and that laughter, and the soft rumble of their running feet on the stairs. And the sound of mingled voices, young and high and very sweet, singing that song.

Why try to sleep, but then he was gone, too tired, too needy of rest and of escape, too hungry for the simplicity of cotton sheets, and Rowan’s warm body against his. Pray, pray for her. Pray for Mona. Pray for them….

“Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come—”

His eyes opened wide. “Thy kingdom come. No.” The feeling of sudden distress was too vast, yet elusive. He was too tired. “Thy kingdom come.” He couldn’t think it out. He turned over and buried his face in the crook of Rowan’s warm neck and shoulder.

“Love you,” she whispered, a murmured prayer out of the depths of sleep, perhaps, more comforting than his prayer had been.

T
HE CLEAN MONOTONY
of snow, of meetings without end, of phone calls, of the sheets of faxes full of statistics, summaries, of the business of life which he himself had made, reaching for the gold and dreams.

At midday he put his head down on the desk. It had been a full five days since Michael and Rowan had gone home, and they had not called him, or written even a note. And now he wondered if his gifts had somehow made them sad or been the wrong thing, or if they were blotting him out the way he tried to blot out the memory of Tessa, of Gordon dead on the floor, of Yuri stammering and wringing his hands, of cold winter in the glen, and the jeers of Aiken Drumm.

What do we seek? What do we need? How can we know what will make us happy? It was a simple thing to pick up the phone, to call Rowan or Michael, to ask if they were all right, if they had recovered from their journey.

And what if their voices were brittle and indifferent, and he was left with the instrument in his hand, and the wire gone dead after careless farewells? No, that would have been worse than nothing.

Or more truly, it was not what he wanted.

Just go there. Just see them. Without lifting his head, he pressed the button. Prepare the plane. Fly away from the city of bitter cold, to the lost land of love. Just look at them, see their house with its warm lights, see through the windows they so lovingly described, and go away without
a sound, without begging for their eyes to meet yours. Just look at them. There will be a comfort in that.

Once all dwellings were small and shut up, windowless, fortified. And you couldn’t see the beings within. But now it was different. One could gaze upon a perfect life as if peering at a painting. Sheer glass was enough to shut one out, and demarcate the secret turf of each one’s love. But the gods were kind, and you could peep inside. You could see those you missed.

It will be enough. Do it. And they’d never know. He wouldn’t frighten them.

The car was ready. Remmick had sent the bags down. “Must be good to be going south, sir,” he said.

“Yes, to summerland,” he replied.

“That’s what Somerset means, sir, in England.”

“Yes, I know,” he said. “I’ll see you soon. Keep my rooms warm. Call me at once if … Well, don’t hesitate if there is anything.”

A speaking twilight, a city so wooded still that the creatures of the air sang the songs of dusk. He slipped out of the car blocks from the house. He knew the way. He had checked his map, and now he walked past the iron picket fences, and vines of florid pink trumpet flower. Windows were already full of light, yet the sky stretched radiant and warm in all directions. Listen to the cicadas’ song, and are those starlings who swoop down as if to plant a kiss, when it is simply to devour?

He walked faster and faster, marveling at the uneven sidewalks, the buckling flags, the moss-covered bricks, so many many beautiful things to touch and to see. And at last he came to their corner.

There stood the house where a Taltos had been born. Grand for these times, with its stucco walls made to look like stone, and chimneys rising high into the clouds.

His heart beat too fast. His witches.

Not to disturb. Not to beg. Merely to see. Forgive me that I walk along the fence, under the bending boughs of these flowered trees, that here suddenly in this deserted
street, I climb the fence and slip down into the moist shrubbery.

No guards around this place. Does that mean you trust me, that I would never come, in stealth, unbidden, unexpected? I don’t come to steal. I come only to take what anyone can have. A look from afar, we take nothing from those who are watched.

Take care. Keep to the hedges and the tall shiny leafed trees swaying in the wind. Ah, the sky is like the moist soft sky of England, so near, so full of color!

And this, was it the crape myrtle tree, beneath which their Lasher had stood, frightening a small boy, beckoning Michael to the gate, Michael a witch child whom a ghost could spot, passing in the real world through zones of enchantment.

He let his fingers touch the waxy bark. The grass was deep beneath his feet. The fragrance of flowers and green things, of living things and breathing soil, was everywhere. A heavenly place.

Slowly he turned and looked at the house. At the iron lace porches stacked one upon the other. And that had been Julien’s room up there, where the vines groped with helpless tendrils in the empty air. And there, beyond that screen, the living room.

Where are you? Dare I come just a little closer? But to be discovered now would be so tragic, when the evening is descending in this raiment of violet, and the flowers glow in their beds, and once again the cicadas sing.

Lights went on in the house. Behind lace curtains. Illuminating paintings on the walls. Was it so simple that, veiled in the dark, he could draw near to those windows?

The murals of Riverbend, wasn’t that what Michael had described, and might they be gathering this soon for their meal? He walked as lightly as he could across the grass. Did he look like a thief? Rosebushes shielded him from those behind the glass.

So many. Women old and young, and men in suits, and voices raised in controversy. This was not my dream. This was not my hope. But, eyes fastened to the portal, he
couldn’t step away. Just give me one glimpse of my witches.

And there Michael was, like the direct answer to his prayer, gesticulating in a little fury it seemed, with others who pointed their fingers and talked, and then all on cue sat down, and the servants glided through the room. He could smell the soup, the meat. Alien food.

Ah, his Rowan, coming into the room, and insisting upon something as she looked at the others, as she argued, as she made the men again take their seats. A white napkin had dropped to the floor. The murals blazed with perfect summer skies. If only he could have moved closer.

But he could see her clearly and him too, and hear the noises of spoons against plates. Scent of meat, of humans, scent of …?

That had to be his error! But the scent was so sharp and old and tyrannical that it took hold and the moment slipped right out of his hands.
Scent of the female!

And just when he was telling himself again, It cannot be, when he was searching for the little red-haired witch, there came into the room the Taltos.

He closed his eyes. He listened to his heart. He breathed her scent as it emanated through brick walls, out of seams and cracks around glass, seeping from God knows where, to stir the organ between his legs, to make him stand back, breathless, wanting to flee, and absolutely immovable.

Female. Taltos. There. And her red hair all aflame beneath the chandelier and the arms out as she spoke, rapid, anxious. He could hear the bare high notes of her voice. And, oh, the look on her face, her newborn face, her arms so delicate in her sheer dress of Point d’Esprit and her sex, deep underneath, pulsing with the scent, a flower opening in darkness and alone, the scent penetrating to his brain.

My God, and they have kept this from him! Rowan! Michael!

She is there, and they have not told him, and would that he never knew. His friends, you
witches
!

Coldly, shivering, maddened by the scent and drugged, he watched them through the glass. Humankind, not his kind, shutting him out, and the lovely princess standing
there, and was she crying out, was she ranting, were those tears in her eyes? Oh, splendid, beautiful creature.

He moved out from behind the shrubbery, not by will but by simple allowance. Behind the slim wooden post he stood, and now he could hear her plaintive cries.

“It was on the doll, the same scent! You threw away the wrapping, but I smelled it on the doll. I smell it in this house!” Bitterly she wailed.

Oh, newborn baby.

And who was this august council that would not answer her plea? Michael gestured for calm. Rowan bowed her head. One of the other men had risen to his feet.

“I’ll break the doll if you don’t tell me!” she screamed.

“No, you won’t do that,” Rowan cried out, and now it was she who rushed to the girl. “You won’t, you won’t, Michael, get the Bru, stop her!”

“Morrigan, Morrigan …”

And she, crying so softly and the scent gathering and moving on the air.

And I loved you, thought Ash, and I thought for a little while I would be one of you. Anguish. He wept. Samuel had been so right. And there, behind these thin panes … “Do I weep, do I go?” he whispered. “Do I smash the glass? Do I confront you with your own deceptive silence, that you did not tell me this! That you did not! That you did not!

“Oh, we weep like children!”

And he wept as she wept. Didn’t they understand? She had picked up his scent from those gifts, dear God, what agony for her, poor newborn!

She lifted her head. The men gathering around her could not make her sit down. What had caught her eye? What made her look to the window? She couldn’t see him beyond the self-contained glare of the light.

He stepped backwards into the grass. The scent, yes, catch the scent, my dear, my darling newborn woman, and closing his eyes, he staggered backwards.

She had pressed herself to the very glass. Her hands spread out on the panes. She knew he was there! She’d caught it.

What were prophecies, what were plans, what was reason, when for eternity he had seen her ilk only in his dreams, or old and withered and mindless as Tessa had been, when she was hot and young, and searching for him.

He heard the glass break. He heard her cry, and watched in stunned, overwhelmed silence as she ran towards him.

“Ashlar!” she cried in that thin high voice, and then her words came in the rush that only he could hear, singing of the circle, the memories, singing of him.

Rowan had come to the edge of the porch. Michael was there.

But that was gone, and with it all its obligations. Across the wet grass she came.

She flew into his arms, her red hair wrapping round him. Bits and pieces of shining glass fell from her. He held her against him, her breasts, her warm beating breasts, his hand slipping up beneath her skirts to touch the warmth of her sex, the living fold, wet and heated for him, as she moaned and licked at his tears.

“Ashlar, Ashlar!”

“You know my name!” he whispered, kissing her roughly. How could he not tear loose her clothes here and now?

She was no one that he had ever known or remembered. She was not Janet who had died in the flames. She did not need to be. She was herself, his kind, his pleading, begging love.

And look how still they stood, watching him, his witches. Others had come to the porch, witches all! Look at them! Not lifting a finger to come between them, to part him from the precious female that had fled to his arms, Michael’s face wondering, and Rowan’s, what was it, what did he see in the light, was it resignation?

He wanted to say, I am sorry. I must take her. You know this. I am sorry. I did not come to take her away. I did not come to judge and then steal. I did not come to discover and then withhold my love.

She was eating him with her kisses, and her breasts, her tender full breasts. But who had come now, rushing out across the flags, was it the red-haired witch, Mona?

“Morrigan!”

“I am gone now, Mother, I am gone.” She sang the words so fast, how could they understand? But it was enough for him. He lifted her, and just as he began to run, he saw Michael’s hand raised in farewell, the sharp simple gesture which gives permission to go, and all good speed, and he saw his beautiful Rowan nod her head. The little witch Mona only screamed!