The Golden Key (118 page)

Sario
left Palasso Grijalva one month after arriving, ostensibly to resume his career as an Itinerarrio. He rode north until midday, stopping at a village coach house where he had been deliberately generous with his money one month ago so as to assure himself a cordial reception when he returned. There he stabled his horse and arranged to get passage on a wagon back into Meya Suerta the next day. There he hired a new horse and rode north until evening to Arguena, a town sitting athwart a crossroads.

At the Inn of the Blue Rose he found the Ghillasian servants he had left behind, a girl who had done sewing for Queen Iriene and her cousins, two brothers who had served in the Ghillasian palace guard. He had won them over with favors and tips and won them free of the general massacre of the palace’s inhabitants. Now they waited for him.

The innkeeper directed him to the stables, where the brothers paid for their keep by working as stablehands.

“You have news?” asked the elder brother eagerly.

“It is possible.” Sario assumed an air of deep gravity. “I must go alone. The agents I spoke with fear for their lives if it is discovered they had anything to do with saving the life of a member of the royal family.”

“Why has it taken so long?” demanded the younger brother. “They have no devotion to our king.” He spit into the straw. “They only waited for a good ransom offer.”

“We shall see. In the meantime, wait for me here. In ten days you will know by the ringing of the bells that the Feast of Imago, the Vision of Life, has come. I shall return after that time. Give these coins to your cousin. Let her purchase good cloth and sew a few gowns. I doubt not that if the lady does live, she has nothing left her. After such an ordeal you must not be surprised to find her much changed in spirit.”

The two soldiers knelt a moment, hands over their hearts, then rose and took the money.

In the morning Sario was content as he rode north. After a few miles he veered south in a loop that took him safely around Arguena and back by midday to the village coach house, where he
returned the horse and took the wagon back to Meya Suerta. He arrived in his atelierro above the wine shop at twilight.

Too restless to sleep, he lit lanterns and set them on the table, hung them from the rafters, and worked long into the night, grinding and mixing paints, making brushes. As he grew tired, his pulse began to pound in his head like the beat of a distant drum. He grew too warm and, taking off his jacket and waistcoat, worked only in his shirtsleeves; after a time he removed his boots as well, and through the soles of his feet his pulse and the slow creak and settling of the old house merged and became one. Under his breath he murmured words untangled from the illuminations that decorated his
Folio
, the pages taken so very long ago from Il-Adib.

His pigments he mixed with poppy oil, blending in a bit of beeswax and amber that had been dissolved in hot oil. To his white paints he added the dust of bones and the powder gleaned from dried skin, to his yellows the gleam of golden hair. Finger- and toenails he ground to powder and blended with his ultramarine and cerulean blue. With the vestiges of a linen shift, worn down until it was as fine as sand, he gave texture to his viridian and green earth. The other parts of body hair he added to his siennas and umbers, the yellow earth and browns. To vermillion, blood; and blood diluted by lavender oil he used to mix his rose madder. Into his lamp black he blended all of the remains, just enough to flavor it.

He prepared the board, a panel of oak as tall as he was, and covered it with a gray ground blended with essence of myrtle, for the Dead, and iris, for Magical Energy.

Perhaps the sun rose outside. Perhaps it set. His shutters remained closed and he could not tell. That time passed at all he noted only because the man who ran the wine shop brought food and ale twice a day to the door of the attic and took away anything that was left there.

By now he was too flushed even for a shirt. He stripped. The warm air of the atelierro woke his skin, like the touch of a lover, although he had not had a lover since he had taken this Sario’s body. To do so would somehow profane his love for Saavedra.

His fingers sought out a lancet. He held it in a candleflame until the metal gained a faint nimbus. Holding it up, away from the candle, he watched lines of heat evaporate from the edged metal. He lowered it to his arm.

The blade lay sharp and hot against his skin. The sensation aroused him. He cut.

As the blood flowed down his skin his whole body tingled. Long ago he had felt this way, touching a woman, caressing her, penetrating
her. Now only the art, only the painting, the exaltation of a spell, the knowledge of what was to follow as he prepared his body, his paints, the very air of the room laden with incense … his breathing tightened, and he only just caught his seed in a glass vial. Losing some of his blood onto the floor, but there was more blood; he took what he needed and clamped a hand down over the cut. The stinging faded, as it always did. The pain was nothing against the promise of power.

He laughed, and laughing brought tears. The fragrance of herbs brought with it memory of taste, and so he prepared himself with blood and seed, tears and saliva. With these essences he blended his own self into the paint.

It was time to begin the spell. On the table he set out candles and an incense burner, a shrine for the Matra ei Filho. On either side he laid the many sketches he had done of his subject. He now took the
Folio
out of the locked chest and positioned it carefully in the center of the table. He opened it to the correct spell slowly, letting each page slide through his fingers, feeling the grain of the vellum and the fine curves of the letters, each one a spark against his skin.

As Arriano he had become lazy, drifting from one foreign court to the next, letting the chatter of rich merchants and the blandishments of pale northern beauties caress him into a soporific lull that had lasted years. Perhaps he had needed a rest after the disaster with Rafeyo. Perhaps he was just getting tired.

No! Never that. It was time to wake up. It had been too long since he had painted a masterpiece. And this was truly to be a masterpiece, a spell he had pondered for years but had not attempted.

Thou shalt not, for it is abomination.

So was it written into the
Folio
, blazing letters on a white ground. What did he care about the commandments of a god to whom he did not belong? He was a Master.
The
Master. There was no one else like him, nor would there ever be, ever. For was he not the Chosen One?

He lit candles and incense. In a low voice, he spoke the words taught him so many many years, centuries, ago. “Chieva do’Orro. Open my eyes to your secrets. Blood and hands possess the power of change.” He pitched his voice up a key, sharp, piercing the quiet air swamped in the scent of oil and herbs. “Matra ei Filho, grant this power against death and for life.”

He opened his case of oils and dabbed a finger in his oil of sorcerer’s violet, touching the oil to his tongue, savoring it, touching it to his naked chest, to his belly, to his penis, to his thighs. With a graphite pencil he sketched the figure onto the ground, putting the
most detail into palms, lips, and eyes. With his fingers he rubbed a thin priming into place over the drawing.

He began to chant the words written in the
Folio.
The syllables came readily to his lips. As he spoke them, his awareness stretched and altered so that he slipped away from himself, deeper into his limner’s mind yet out toward the painting beyond, as if he could pour himself out through his hands, through the brush.

He began to paint.

The figure took shape before him, first shaded on over the drawing, then coming to life in layers of color, light tones at first, followed by richer, deeper glazes and coloring. It was to be all one continuous piece. He must not stop for longer than it took to drink a few swallows of ale, to eat a few bites of bread, to sip at coffee or touch one or another oil to his lips to give himself strength, to light new candles. To stop was to condemn the painting to dry into the stillness of death. Yet he must paint with the perfection of a finished piece which would normally have had time to dry after the underpainting was complete.

None of that now. He painted with the words of foreign sorcerers, the Al-Fansihirro, on his lips. He saw her standing before him in his mind’s eye, imagined her youthful body beneath the light, fashionable gowns she wore. This vision passed from his eye to his hands, and she flowered and took form.

Into the shadows and lines of her skin he began the skein of symbols that would bind the painting over into truth. Her hands rested gently against her hips, palms out; her feet stood firmly on oaken floorboards. Her skin took on a rose hue, and her lips shone with caught breath. Her eyes were as fine a blue as he had ever seen—more perfect, perhaps, than her eyes had truly been, but was it not the duty of an artist to recover the heart of his subject, not just the outer seeming?

Far away he heard bells ringing. A crack of light shone through the shutters, sunset or sunrise. Once he had known which direction the window faced, but it was no longer important.

He bound her shadowed places with the tiny script and symbols of the oscurra-. With a brush made of a single coarse hair he painted the oscurra into the lines on her palms, wove them into the delicate puckering of her lips, and with their substance patterned the fine blue flecking of the irises of her eyes.

Echoes of bells rang in his ears. He stepped back, almost staggering. A wave of exhaustion swept through him, as it always did; so much blood he used, so much of his potency, to create. He dabbed a finger in oil of myrtle and traced the sign for
heart
on her
chest, invisible to the eye. His brush dropped from fingers suddenly nerveless. The chamber whirled once around him, but he caught himself. Groping at the table, he found the bowl of cloves. He chewed on one, steadied himself with deep breaths, touched the
Folio
though he did not need to read its final words.

He moved to stand in front of the painting. Though his sight clouded as his trance lifted from him, he could see that she was perfect, a perfect likeness, the fresh, young, innocent girl standing naked in his atelierro, waiting. …

He stepped close, closer still, and breathed the breath of life onto her, his creation.

The painting trembled. It was as if the wet paint stirred of its own accord, pushing out from the panel, expanding, like a flower unfolding at dawn. Startled, he took a step back.

She followed him.

Shadows became solid curves, lines became flesh. Princess Alazais of Ghillas stepped out of the painting onto the cold oak floor. She stood, watching him with a kind of vacant curiosity. She was breathing. Her skin shone, as if sheened with sweat. The light gray ground, outlining her form, and the plain room were all that remained in the portrait.

“You are Princess Alazais,” he said in a soft voice, gentled by astonishment, smoothed by the knowledge of his own genius.

“I am Princess Alazais,” she said. Her tone mimicked his tone, although her voice was a delicate soprano. Her expression did not change.

“Sit,” he said, pointing to the chair.

She sat.

He saw his cot. With what remained of his strength, he staggered over to it. There was much to do. He needed to instruct her. What about food? Did she know to eat? Would she walk blindly out the door? How much did she understand? Of what was she truly made? Poppy and myrtle and iris, his blood and hers, the dust of her other body? There was so much to do.

But he had no strength. The magic had taken it all. He collapsed on the cot and fell into sleep the instant his head touched the pillow.

  SIXTY-SIX  

The
Feast of Imago dawned with clouds hanging heavy over the fields and the vine-swagged hunting lodge. Early in the morning, before anyone except the servants was up, Rohario sat on one of the old trestle tables in the banqueting hall and idly turned the dusty pages of an old book. Outside it rained, a propitious beginning to the day celebrating the Visitation of the Holy Mother and Her Son, who had appeared before a lowly camponesso and his wife while they pruned the vines at dawn in a misting rain. Rohario watched the steady drizzle through the thick windowpanes, the glass throwing waves of distortion onto the steady fall of light rain.