The Golden (26 page)

“But,
lord,” said Beheim, “if this is so, why do you use words
such as ‘important’ and ‘significant’ when
referring to it?”

“In the
first place,” said the Patriarch coldly, “it is not at
all certain that I was in our comments referring to the question of a
migration. That has yet to be made clear. However, if I was referring
to it, perhaps it had some significance to me at the moment. Now, I
can assure you, it is of no consequence whatsoever.”

The
irrationality of this statement left Beheim thoroughly bewildered.
Yet then he wondered if this mutability of concern on the Patriarch’s
part was not evidence of insanity, but an important clue to the
nature of a character that had evolved into the alien. And could any
marked difference between the two conditions be detected by someone
who had experienced neither one?

“What of
your welfare, my lord?” he asked. “And what of the
Family? If the world changes as Agenor believes it must, does the
question not become significant to us all?”

“Should
the need arise, there are places beyond this world to which I and my
court will travel. The rest, as I have said, must make their own
decisions. Now, enough!” The Patriarch’s head fell back,
his eyelids drooped; it looked as if he were contemplating some
abstruse philosophical turn. “I have not enjoyed this
conversation, but I intend to reward you nevertheless. I think it
just in this instance, however, if your reward were to take the form
of instruction.”

The moon
brightened, as if a film had been washed away from it. It hung low
above the courtyard, so low that a slim figure standing atop the
battlements was cast in silhouette against it. A boy, Beheim thought,
dressed in a sleeping robe. He could not quite make him out.

“Tonight
you have learned much of Mystery,” said the Patriarch. “More,
I daresay, than you can at this moment encompass. More even than you
are aware. It might be decades before you acquire sufficient
experience so as to order your knowledge. Because I love you—and
I do love you, my child—I will attempt to clarify what you have
learned and thus spare you decades of fruitless effort. I’m
afraid that the first part of this instruction, however, will be
somewhat bitter.”

He made a
graceful gesture, one directed toward the boy on the battlements, and
the boy stepped off the edge into space. Beheim sprang from his
chair, expecting a fall, a terrible impact, but the boy did not fall.
He hovered in midair, his robe taking the wind, belling, then
collapsing, pressing tightly against his body, revealing that it was
no boy at all, but a young woman with full breasts and flaring hips.
She began to drift down toward them, arms at her sides, becoming a
shadow as she passed below the edge of the roof and out of the
moonlight. As she reached the level of the second story, she came
into full view again. Her chestnut hair was done up in an untidy bun;
her eyes were quite large, and her mouth was pouty, the lower lip
exceptionally full.

It was Giselle.

The recognition
bred a chill hollow in Beheim’s chest. He turned to the
Patriarch, seething with anger; but the Patriarch kept his eyes on
Giselle, smiling what seemed to Beheim a doting, approving smile.

She drifted
lower, still lower, until her feet were inches from the stones. There
she floated, no more than fifteen feet away, the fingers of her right
hand touching a sword fern, the hem of her robe twitching in a ground
current. Her eyes were unseeing, fixed on some point far beyond the
world.

Beheim took a
step toward her.

“Hold!”
said the Patriarch. “Let her be.”

Beheim stopped
in midstride as if his strings had been cut. The Patriarch nodded
happily, like someone who had been proved right, against the odds,
but had been confident all along.

“She might
have been the first of your line,” he said. “Perhaps the
lady of a new branch. The Beheims. That potential was clear in both
of you. Now”—he shrugged—“now she will merely
be another of my whores. A privileged position, mind you. But not one
of such historical import.” He heaved a doleful sigh that was
too exaggerated to be genuine. “I trust this will teach you
henceforth to act when action is required, to seize your
opportunities. It should have been evident that she was long past
ready for judgment, and that she had an excellent chance of survival.
But then I imagine Alexandra had captured the bulk of your
attention.”

Still stunned by
Giselle’s reappearance, Beheim turned again to her. His
thoughts of Alexandra were bitter, vengeful.

“She would
have died had I not judged her,” said the Patriarch. “Else
I would not have usurped your right.”

A sudden surge
of anger moved Beheim toward her once again.

“I said
hold!” cried the Patriarch, bringing him up short. He had risen
from his chair and was standing with his fists clenched at his sides.
“She is no longer yours. She is mine! Touch her and you forfeit
everything.” Then, in a less peremptory tone, he added, “I’ve
left you the blond bitch, the one with the sweet blood. The castle
slut for whom you neglected this beautiful creature. Still, that’s
more than you deserve.”

At this mention
of Paulina, Beheim experienced not even a flicker of emotion; he
could scarcely call her to mind, so consumed was he by guilt and
remorse. “What is happening to her?”

“She is
with Mystery, of course. Striving toward life. Fear not. She will
soon return to us.”

“How can
that be? She is here.”

“Ah, now
that relates to the second part of your instruction.” The
Patriarch reclaimed his chair. “You see, my boy, the Mysteries
do not yield easily to analysis. It’s true enough to say that
they are death, the place to which death admits us, the place where
we may—if we are properly prepared—choose the manner of
our rebirth. For those who seek to enter the Family, the choice is
simple. Either they will find their way to us, a fortunate few, or
else they will fall forever through the dark, enduring torments that
far outstrip those depicted in the popular representations of Hell.”
He snorted in derision. “Hell! What an endearing notion! That
evil could have so simple a geography and population. Red imps with
pitchfork tails and goat’s horns. Or for that matter, that evil
could be so neatly and generally defined as though it were a bottled
black juice you’d find at the local apothecary. These
Christians and their God!” He made another derisive noise.
“I’ve lived in times when gods were six a penny. As a
matter of fact, I’ve spoken with several, and believe me,
they’re no bargain. Take this Jesus, for example. The famous
Messiah. One of my children came just this close”—he held
up thumb and forefinger together—“to giving him a little
kiss. And would have done if chance hadn’t intervened.
Apparently the man—or should I say, the god?—was begging
for it.”

Beheim, still
agonizing over Giselle, nonetheless found time to wonder at the
Patriarch’s moods, how quickly he flowed from menace to whimsy
to senile rambling.

“But to
continue,” the Patriarch said, “Mystery has a more than
passing similarity to the Bardos as described in
The Tibetan Book
of the Dead
. One might assume from this that various Tibetans
have experienced Mystery. If so, however, they have mistranslated the
experience, for Mystery is far more malleable and complex, and less
precise an entity than the Bardos. It would be more accurate to say
that Mystery is a cosmic essence embodying a kind of metaphysical
geography populated by failures of the spirit. Lost souls, if you
will. Yet not even that is entirely accurate. To understand Mystery,
to understand it completely, one must dwell in it as I do. But for
the purposes of our conversation, it is only important for you to
know that immersion in it does not preclude one’s presence
elsewhere.” He waved carelessly at Giselle. “Voilà!”

At his gesture,
the wall at Giselle’s back and a section of the flagstones
adjoining it melted away, replaced by the black, starred field of
Mystery, a sight that was coming to seem commonplace to Beheim. The
darkness bulged toward them, as if restrained by a meniscus. It
appeared that Giselle was partially embedded in the field, her heels
poised on the brink of an abyss.

“Watch
now,” said the Patriarch. “Watch as she flies.”

A second,
translucent Giselle materialized, superimposed on the first figure
and identical in all respects but two: she wore no robe, and she
appeared to be straining, struggling against the darkness, twisting
about, rolling her head, as if the blackness were an oppressive cloth
in which she was wrapped. Gradually this second image took on
solidity and richness of color, while the first became as vague and
ghostly as the second had been. The perfection and vulnerability of
her naked body made Beheim’s heart ache. Then her lips parted
the merest fraction of an inch, and a trickle of blackness seeped
forth, spilling onto her chin, showing as sharply as might a crack
against the pale skin.

“So did
you yourself once fly,” said the Patriarch in a wistful tone.
“So did we all. Steeping in the liquor of death, becoming
permeated with it.”

Shame flooded
Beheim. Shame that was only incidentally concerned with Giselle’s
fate, and related chiefly to the fact that what he regretted most was
his failure to judge her, the knowledge that he had forever lost his
chance to control her. That would have always been the character of
their relationship, he realized. Dominant and submissive. Of all the
Family, only with Alexandra had he achieved even the semblance of
equality. Yet none of these recognitions dissolved his feelings of
remorse. “Bring her back,” he said.

The Patriarch
laughed. “I cannot. And even if I could, I would only succeed
in prolonging the inevitable.”

“Bring her
back, damn you!” Beheim shouted.

“Are you
mad?” The Patriarch got to his feet. “Control yourself.
This is not seemly. Not in the least.”

But Beheim was
beyond control; he darted forward, thinking—against reason—that
he might snatch Giselle from the void; before he could reach her,
however, a blow to the back of his head dropped him to all fours and
sent lightning shooting back into his eyes.

“It’s
clear,” the Patriarch said, “that you will profit far
more from this conversation once all distractions are eliminated.”

Beheim lifted
his head in time to see Giselle arrowing off into the void, swiftly
dwindling to a point of white, and as if the blackness had been a
sheet held up behind her and in moving away she was drawing the
material close about her, the way a hand pushed into a black cloth
might gather the cloth about it like a glove, so the void, too,
seemed to dwindle, shrinking to a ragged patch no bigger than a
window, then an irregular circle the size of a drain, then a speck,
and then it was gone, leaving in its stead the flagstones and gray
mortised walls of the courtyard.

The Patriarch
grabbed Beheim by the collar, hauled him up as easily as he might
have a kitten. “The sole reason you want her is because you’ve
been denied a toy, a pet, and you’re sulking.” He lifted
Beheim higher, so that his feet dangled, and forced his head up so
that their eyes met. “You don’t love her. If you did,
you’d be exultant, overjoyed that she is soon to be one of us.
Immortal and vital beyond her wildest dreams. Perhaps had things gone
differently, you might have formed some sort of affectionate bond
once she passed her judgment. But what you think you feel for who she
was, that is pretense pure and simple. Do you believe you are a
mortal? A creature of weak sentiment and puerile morality? Put that
from mind.
This
is what you are.”

That wide, pale,
handsome face began to stretch, its lines to dissolve, and the eyes,
dark and expressive of an intelligent calm, came to be cored with hot
red fires, and the curly black hair looked like a thicket of brambles
that had grown up around but not yet covered a hideous marble head.
Even after the dissolution had ceased and the face had returned to
its Byronic poise, Beheim could still see the decaying thing beneath.
He recalled how he had once thought he would lie to the Patriarch,
coerce him into lending his support. What a fool he had been! So
bedizened with the newness of his own strength and illumination that
he could not for the moment imagine any greater force.

“Unrelieved
black is the color of your nature,” said the Patriarch, letting
Beheim fall to the flagstones. “The color of the death in which
you were reborn. The color of grave soil and nightmare. You know this
is true, you feel its truth, yet you resist it and so fail to
understand what it entails. You think of it as evil, but you have no
comprehension of the word. You perceive the concept as erroneously as
do the Christians. As a terrible, conscienceless process of violence
against the order of all things. And so it is. But you fail to see
the depths underlying that definition, the logic, the good plain
country sense of evil. Therefore listen to me, and I will make you
wise.”

He walked a few
paces away; he struck a theatrical pose with his back to Beheim,
hands clasped behind him, face tilted to the night sky.

“Order, my
child, is an illusion. At least it is in the common meaning of the
word. Both the philosophies of evil and good acknowledge this, though
they do so in disparate fashion. Those devoted to the good perceive
themselves and everyone like them to be intrinsically imperfect; they
seek to impose order on their lives, to delimit the natural urges, to
counterfeit order through restraint and mindless devotions. And what
has been the result of their efforts? War. Famine. Torture. Rape. The
slaughter and incarceration of millions.”

For an instant
the flagstones melted away, blending into a flat gray expanse like
the sea of an overcast morning; the ferns grew skeletal and
colorless, and the walls of the courtyard lost definition. Then it
all returned to normal. It was as if, Beheim thought, the Patriarch,
badly affected by his consideration of the good, had experienced some
fleeting doubt concerning the substantiality of his worldview.