The Serpent Mage (5 page)

Chapter Five

Contents
-
Prev
/
Next

Robert invited Michael in and introduced his mother.

Mrs. Dopso was in her mid-sixties, sandy hair frosted with grey, frame small and delicate.

" I'm
so
glad we're finally getting a chance to meet!" she enthused, fluttering one hand as if shooing away moths.

One of her blue eyes canted upward with perpetual concern, and a blissful smile lighted on her face frequently as she spoke.

They sat down to dinner within minutes of six o'clock, shadows lying deep in the old house, which was much smaller than the Waltiri home. Robert explained that his mother's favorite hobby was saving electricity. She lighted candles in brass holders on the table, her expression grave as she applied match to wick, then grateful as the flame grew.

"I'd rather let others have the electricity, those who need it more," she said. "Improve our country's productivity, pump it into big factories."

"She's a bit hazy on how the power net operates," Robert explained.

"Perhaps, perhaps," Mrs. Dopso said lightly. "I'm just so pleased to have Michael as a guest. We have so much to talk about."

"Perhaps not all at once," Robert suggested.

"My son. Have you ever heard such a son?" She hurried into the kitchen, hands twisting slowly back and forth at her sides, and returned with a bowl heaped high with steamed vegetables. Next came a cheese and tuna casserole, followed by a plate heaped high with uniformly sliced bread of virginal whiteness. "It's not a feast," she said. "It's just
food
, but the talk is more important than the dinner."

"Mother knows you're the caretaker for the Waltiri estate." Robert scooped vegetables onto his plate. He handed the casserole to Michael, who took a generous portion. Thanks to his upbringing — and a few months of deprivation — he had nothing against plain food.

"If we start talking now, we won't finish eating until midnight, and it will all be cold," Mrs. Dopso said. "So we will… um… skirt around the main topic and just fill our tummies. Then we'll… yes." She smiled and placed a modest forkful of casserole into her mouth as an example.

They exchanged only light pleasantries until the meal was finished. Michael felt slightly apprehensive. Mrs. Dopso and her son were being politely mysterious, and that bothered him; they behaved as if they were privy to knowledge that he might find useful.

Robert cleared the table and brought out a bottle of wine. Mrs. Dopso bit her lower lip as he held out the bottle for Michael's inspection.

The label was similar to that on the bottle he had found in the newly opened cellar. The double-shadowed sundial, the rose and the red grapes, the fraktur lettering.

"This is our last bottle. We thought we would open it tonight," Robert said. "Mr. Waltiri gave it as a gift to my father almost fifty years ago. You might have heard of the gentleman who provided it to Mr. Waltiri."

Michael raised an eyebrow.

"His name was David Clarkham. He was a friend of Mr. Waltiri's, although I gather they had a falling out before I was born."

"Yes, dear, a year or two before you were born," Mrs. Dopso reiterated.

"My father met Mr. Clarkham several times and was very impressed by him. Mr. Clarkham was a connoisseur of wine. He tended to talk about unusual vintages. German wines mostly. Many of them my father had never heard of, and he was himself quite a connoisseur."

"But all this," said Mrs. Dopso portentously, "is neither here nor there."

"No. Father last drank one of these bottles fifteen years ago, and judged it quite good, if unusual."

"Do you remember what he said?" Mrs. Dopso asked.

"Yes, 'A bit otherworldly, with a most unusual finish.'"

They seemed to expect a reaction from Michael. "I found several bottles like that today," he said.

"Good! Then this isn't the last. Notice there's no clue as to what kind of wine it is. Red, obviously — but what variety of grapes?"

Michael shook his head.

"What we're leading up to is that we're curious about that house. We've lived next to it for a very long time."

"One morning, very early," Mrs. Dopso said, her face almost radiant in the candlelight, "I got out of bed and looked over the cinderblock wall. It was foggy, and I wasn't sure I saw things properly. My husband was on a business trip, so I called out Robert — poor, sleepy child — to
confirm
or
deny
."

"I confirmed," Robert said. "1 was eight."

"The house was absolutely
covered
with birds," Mrs. Dopso said breathlessly. "Large dark birds with red breasts and wing-tips. Blackbirds and robins the size of crows."

"She means, with the characteristics of blackbirds and robins, but crow-sized."

"And sparrows. And other birds I recognized. They blanketed the roof, and they lined up along the wall. All silent."

"Hitchcock, you know," Robert said with a grin. "Scared the daylights out of me."

"And when the fog lifted, they were gone. But that's not all. Sometimes we'd see Mr. Waltiri and Golda — dear Golda — leave the house in their car, the predecessor of the one you drive now — funny-looking thing — and after they had gone, when the house must have been empty—"

"We'd hear somebody playing the piano," Robert said breathlessly, leaning forward.

"Playing it
beautifully
, just lovely music."

Robert uncorked the bottle and poured the wine into crystal glasses. Michael sipped the deep reddish-amber liquid. He had never tasted anything like it. It was totally outside his experience of wines, which admittedly was not broad. The aftertaste was mellow and complex and lingered long moments after he had swallowed, succession upon succession of flavors discovering themselves on his tongue. The flavors stopped suddenly, leaving only a clean blankness. He took another sip. Mrs. Dopso closed her eyes and did the same.

"As wonderful as I remember it," she commented. "To my dear husband." They toasted the man whose name Michael did not know.

"I think perhaps the only person who was not aware that something was going on," Mrs. Dopso said, "was Golda. Arno protected her
fiercely
. Nothing would happen to dear Golda while he was around. But you know… after he departed,
died
, things became too much for her. A strain. She must have had some suspicions over the years. How could one not?" Mrs. Dopso sipped again and smiled beatifically. "We did not volunteer to tell her, because while we knew
something
was odd, we couldn't be sure… Other than the birds."

"Now that you're living there," Robert said, "what do you think?"

Michael stared into his glass and twirled the stem reflectively. "It seems pretty quiet now," he said.

"Do you play the piano?" Mrs. Dopso asked.

He shook his head.

"
Somebody
does," she said dramatically. "We've heard it after you've driven away. And the music is not quite so lovely now. It's angry, I would say. Robert?"

"Heavy-handed, skilled but… pounding," Robert said. "I'm not sure I'd call it angry. Powerful perhaps."

Despite himself, Michael shivered, and his arm-hairs stood on end. "I haven't heard music," he said, putting the glass down.

"It's so familiar to us," Mrs. Dopso said, "over all these years. We wondered if Mr. Waltiri — Arno — or perhaps even Golda — had a relative who stayed with them."

"An old hunchbacked cousin," Robert suggested with a hint of a grin.

"No," Michael said, smiling broadly. "I'm the only one living there." That much he could be sure of.

"Bring out the tape recorder, Robert," Mrs. Dopso instructed. Robert left the dining room and returned with an old Ampex reel-to-reel deck, the tape already looped and ready to play. He set it on an unused dining chair near the wall outlet and plugged it in. Then he turned it on and stood back.

Michael heard a piano playing. The sound was fuzzy and distant, but it was indeed powerful, pounding. There was no melody, as such.

"When did you record this?" Michael asked.

"Yesterday," Robert said.

"We're
very
curious," Mrs. Dopso said. "It's something of a mystery, don't you agree?"

Michael nodded, the dinner suddenly heavy in his stomach. "I can't fell you what's happening, though. I just don't know."

"The house is haunted by a spirit that loves music," said Mrs. Dopso, her expression again beatific. "How very appropriate for Arno's house. I do not think you're in danger in that house, young man." She took a deep breath. "But if you should find out more, do let us know?"

She went to bed shortly thereafter. Robert explained, chuckling, that his mother "Rises with the birds. Pardon our intruding."

"No intrusion," Michael said. "Has anybody else complained?"

"We aren't complaining; please don't think that. And no, nobody else has commented."

"If you hear it again, will you record it for me again?"

"Of course," Robert said. They shook hands at the door, but Robert escorted Michael to the sidewalk anyway. Dusk was deep blue above the shuffling black outlines of the neighborhood trees. "Thanks for speaking with my mother."

"My pleasure."

Michael returned to the Waltiri house, where he stood by the silent piano, tapping the rich black surface of the lid. "Arno?" he asked softly, the name again raising the hairs on his neck and arms.

No answer.

He hadn't expected one. Not yet.

A shaft of late afternoon sunlight wanned the hardwood floor beneath his feet. He sat in Waltiri's music library, the old black phone in his lap, surrounded by tapes and records and books, and dialed Kristine Pendeers's home number. A man answered on the third ring, his voice deep and indistinct. Michael asked to speak to Kristine. "Who's this?" the man asked.

"My name is Michael. She'll know me."

"She isn't here right now… Wait. She's at the door. Hold on." In the background, Michael heard Kristine and the man talking. There seemed to be a disagreement between them. The man's hand made squelching noises over the mouthpiece. She finally came on the line, breathless.

"I've found what you're looking for," Michael said.

"I was just coming up the steps… to our house. Wait a minute. I'm winded. I heard the phone. You've found what…45?"

"I just opened a sealed basement door and found it among other papers below the house." He realized he didn't sound particularly happy about the discovery. Why was he calling at all? Perhaps to talk with her again, meet with her. Using the discovery as an excuse.

"That's wonderful, it really is. When can I take a look at it?"

He gingerly ran his fingers over the discolored, shimmering manuscript on Waltiri's desk. "It's not in very good shape. We'll need to copy it… maybe a copy machine will work, and maybe not."

"What's wrong with it?"

"You'll have to see it."
Dangerous, dangerous
! Simply staring at the manuscript was enough to bend a person's view of reality.

"Can you bring it here, or do I come over there?" She seemed to catch on that he was playing a game, and she didn't sound comfortable.

"I think you'd better come over here," Michael said. "Not tonight. I'll be busy. Tomorrow. In the morning, perhaps?"

"I'll have to be there early. About seven-thirty."

"Fine. I'll be expecting you."

"You sound strange, Michael."

"I just have a lot to do between now and then. We'll talk tomorrow."

"Okay." There was an awkward moment of termination and then simultaneous good-byes. He replaced the receiver and returned the phone to its niche on a bookcase. Then he held the manuscript up to his nose and smelled it. The sweet fragrance this time was fainter, like dried fruit.

Any world is just a song of addings and takings away… The difference between the Realm and your home, that's just the difference between one song and another
… So Eleuth had informed him in the Realm.

Was it possible, then, to create a song — a piece of music — that actively contradicted the song of a world and subtly altered the world?

He wished he knew how to play the piano and was better at reading music. It was possible he had actually heard some of the music contained in the manuscript, when Clarkham's house and the replica of Kubla Khan's pleasure dome had collapsed in the Realm, but he coi.^Vt remember what it sounded like now. The tune was elusive, and the orchestration had faded completely from memory

He slipped the manuscript into a manila envelope and placed it in Waltiri's safe. After memorizing the safe's combination, written in Golda's hand on a piece of masking tape attached to the door, he removed the tape, burned it in a metal cup on the desk and shut the door. Why the precautions were important, he wasn't sure.

(Perhaps it wasn't Arno — in any form — playing the piano when the house was empty…)

He had a lot to do this evening. He would not be back until early the next morning.

Just at dusk, as the moon-colored streetlights were coming on and a slight breeze sighed through the green leaves on the maples, Michael stood before David Clarkham's house. He had not come to this place since his return from the Realm.

The deserted house was in even worse shape than when he had last seen it. The lawn had gone to seed, a definite contrast to the green, well-kept grounds on both sides. The hedges were unruly, aggressing onto the driveway of parallel concrete strips, reaching out for the cracked white stucco walls. A FOR SALE sign still leaned at an awkward angle on the front lawn; either the realtors handling the property were not pushing it or the buyers were not enthusiastic, or the sign was a sham. There was no phone number attached, and Michael had never heard of the firm before: Hamilton Realty.

He closed his eyes and found the region nestled between his thoughts that controlled
evisa
and casting a shadow. It was not difficult to find, and the act was as easy on Earth as it had been in the Realm.