The Wheel of Darkness (39 page)

The knot had been given to her by Tsering on her departure from the Gsalrig Chongg monastery. It had been tied in the eighteenth century by a revered lama, to be used in a particular kind of meditative exercise to expunge attachment, to rid oneself of evil thoughts or influences, or to aid in the joining of two minds. In Constance’s case, the knot was to be used for cleansing herself of the stain of murder; now, she hoped it would expunge the stain of the Agozyen from Pendergast. The knot was never to be untied in the real world: to do so would be to release its power and transform it back into a mere silken cord. It was an exercise of mind and spirit only.

The stateroom was dark, the curtains drawn tightly closed over the balcony windows. Marya—who had been unable to find a doctor—stood by the salon door, anxiety and uncertainty flickering in her eyes.

Constance turned to her. “Marya, please stand guard outside. Don’t let anyone interrupt us.”

The woman nodded, then turned and quickly left the salon.

When she heard the door close, Constance placed the knot on a small silken pillow that lay on the floor, illuminated within a circle of candles. Then she glanced over at Pendergast. With a dry smile, the agent took his place on one side of the knot, while she sat down on the other. The knot lay between them, one loose end pointing at her, the other at Pendergast. It was a symbol, both spiritual and physical, of the interconnectedness of all life and—in particular—of the two entities that sat on either side of the knot.

Constance arranged herself in a modified lotus position, as did Pendergast. She sat for a moment, doing nothing, letting her limbs relax. Then, keeping her eyes open and contemplating the knot, she slowed her breathing and decelerated her heartbeat, as she had been taught by the monks. She allowed her mind to settle into the moment, the now, discarding past and future and closing down the endless flow of thoughts that normally afflict the human mind. Liberated from the mental chatter, her senses became acutely aware of her surroundings: the boom and shudder of the waves on the hull, the splatter of rain on the glass of the balcony door, the new-room smell, the faint scent of wax from the candles and sandalwood from the knot. She became acutely aware of the presence opposite her, a dark shape at the periphery of her vision.

Her eyes remained on the knot.

Slowly, she released each external sensation, one after the other. The trappings of the outside world vanished into darkness, like the closing of shutters in a dark house. First the room around her; then the great ship, and then the vast ocean on which they crawled. Gone were the sounds of the room, its scents, the slow roll of the ship, her own corporeal awareness. The earth itself vanished, the sun, the stars, the universe . . . gone, all gone, falling away into nonexistence. Only she remained, and the knot, and the being on the far side of the knot.

Time ceased to exist. She had reached the state of
th’an shin gha
, the Doorstep to Perfect Emptiness.

In a strange meditative state of utter awareness and yet complete absence of effort or desire, she focused on the knot. For a moment, it remained unchanged. Then—slowly, evenly, like a snake uncoiling—the knot began untying itself. The fantastically complex loops and curves, the plunging bends and rising swerves of cord, began to loosen; the bitter ends of the rope withdrew into the knot, tracing in reverse the original convoluted tying, three centuries earlier. It was a process of immense mathematical complexity, symbolizing the unraveling of the ego that must take place before a being can reach
stong pa nyid
—the State of Pure Emptiness—and merge with the universal mind.

She was there; Pendergast was there; and in the middle, the knot, in the act of untying itself. That was all.

After an indefinite period—it could have been a second, it could have been a thousand years—the gray silken cord lay in a smooth heap, untied and loosely coiled. In its center a small, crumpled piece of silk was revealed, on which had been written the secret prayer the ancient monk had bound up in it.

She read it over carefully. Then slowly, chantlike, she began to recite the prayer, over and over again . . .

As she chanted, she extended her consciousness toward the loose end of the rope closest to her. At the same time, she was aware of the glow of the being opposite her, extending itself in the same manner toward the untied cord.

She chanted, the low, soothing tones unraveling her ego, gently parting all ties to the physical world. She felt the current as her mind touched the cord and moved along it, drawn toward the entity on the other side as he was drawn toward her. She moved along the convoluted strands, barely breathing, her heart beating with funereal slowness, coming closer, ever closer . . . Then her thought met and merged with the glow of the other, and the final stage was reached.

Abruptly, she found herself in a place both strange and familiar. She stood on a cobbled street between elegant gas lamps, staring up at a dark and shuttered mansion. It was a construct of extraordinary concentration, of pure thought alone, more real and solid than any dream she had ever experienced. She could feel the cool clamminess of the night mist on her skin; hear the creaking and rustling of insects; smell coal smoke and soot. She gazed up at the mansion through the wrought-iron fence, her eye traveling over its mansard roof, oriel windows, and widow’s walk.

After a moment’s hesitation, she stepped through the gate into a dark, humid garden, heavy with dead flowers and the smell of loam. She continued on up the walk, onto the portico. Beyond, the double doors were ajar, and she stepped through the entryway, passing into a grand foyer. A crystal chandelier hung overhead, dark and threatening, tinkling faintly as if disturbed by wind despite the dead air of the house. One massive doorway led into a tall library, its wing chairs and couches empty, its fireplace dark and cold. Another passage led toward a kind of refectory or perhaps exhibition hall, silent, watchful.

She crossed the foyer, her heels clicking on the marble floor, and climbed the wide stairs to the second-floor hallway. Tapestries and indistinct oil paintings lined the walls, stretching back into the dark heart of the house, interrupted by oaken doors darkened by time.

She glanced along the left wall as she moved forward. Ahead, not quite halfway down the long hall, one door was open—battered open, the doorframe smashed, splinters of wood and twisted pieces of lead scattered about the floor. The yawning black opening exhaled a cold, cellar-like stench of mold and dead, greasy centipedes.

She quickly passed by with a shudder. The door beyond drew her toward it. She was almost there.

She placed her hand on the knob, turned it. With a low creaking sound, the door swung inward and a welcome warmth flowed out around her, enveloping her with the pleasant sensation of stepping into a cozy dwelling in wintertime.

Aloysius Pendergast stood before her, dressed in black as usual, his hands clasped in front of him, smiling.

“Welcome,” he said.

The room was large and beautiful, with paneled wainscoting. A fire burned in a marble fireplace, and an old clock on the mantel chimed the hours, beside an antique gasogene and several cut-glass tumblers. A stag’s head mounted on the wall looked out with glassy eyes across a desk piled with leather-bound books and papers. The oak floor was covered with rich, dense carpeting, over which expensive Persian carpets had been laid in turn. Several comfortable wing chairs were scattered about, some with open books lying on their seats. It was an extremely comfortable, well-used, luxurious space.

“Come and warm yourself by the fire,” he said, motioning her forward.

She moved closer to the fire, keeping her eyes on Pendergast. There was something different about him. Something strange. Despite the utter reality of this room and this house, the edges of his form were indistinct, blurry, slightly transparent, as if he wasn’t quite there.

The door shut behind her with a dull thud.

He held out his hand for hers, and she gave it to him. He grasped it, suddenly very hard, and she tried to withdraw, but he pulled her toward him. His head seemed to waver, to bulge and dissolve; the skin cracked, and a glow emerged from within; and then his face peeled away and fluttered down in burning threads, revealing a visage that Constance recognized. It was the indescribable face of the Kalazyga demon.

She stared at it, strangely unafraid, feeling its warmth, drawn to it with a mixture of fear and attraction. It seemed to fill her with fire: the ineffable, all-consuming, triumphant fire she had felt in her mad pursuit of Diogenes Pendergast. There was a purity to it that awed her.

“
I am will
,” it said, with a voice that was not sound, but thought. “
I am pure thought burned clean of any vestige of human sentiment. I am freedom. Join with me
.”

Fascinated, repelled, she again tried to withdraw her hand, but it held fast. The face, terrible and beautiful, drew closer to her. It wasn’t real, she told herself, it was only a product of her mind, the image of one of the thangkas she had contemplated for hours on end, now recreated by this intense meditation.

The Kalazyga demon drew her toward the fire. “
Come. Into the fire. Burn off the dead husk of moral restraint. You will emerge like the butterfly from its chrysalis, free and beautiful
.”

She took a step toward the fire, hesitated, then took another, almost floating over the carpeting toward the warmth.

“Yes,” said another voice. Pendergast’s voice. “This is good. This is right. Go to the fire.”

As she drew closer to the flames, the heavy guilt and mortification of murder that had lain on her shoulders melted away, replaced by a sense of exhilaration, the intense exhilaration and dark joy she felt when she saw Pendergast’s brother tumble off the edge of
La Sciara
into the red-hot depths below. That momentary ecstasy was being offered to her now, forever.

All she had to do was step into the flames.

One more step. The fire radiated its warmth, licking up into her very limbs. She remembered him at the very edge, the two of them locked together in a macabre caricature of sexual union, struggling at the roaring edge of
La Sciara
; her unexpected feint; the expression on his face when he realized they were both going over.
The expression on his face
: it was the most horrifying, most pitiful, and yet most satisfying thing she had ever seen—to revel in the face of a person who realizes, without the shadow of a doubt, that he is going to die. That all hope is gone. And this bitter joy could now be hers forever; she could be free to experience it again and again, at will. And she would not even need overweening vengeance as an excuse: she could simply murder, whoever and wherever, and again and again revel in the hot blood-fury, the ecstatic, orgiastic triumph . . .

All hope is gone . . .

With a scream, she writhed in the grip of the demon, and with a sudden, immense force of will she managed to break free. She threw herself back from the fire, turned and ran through the door, and suddenly she was falling, falling through the house, through the basements, the sub-cellars, falling . . .

T
HE STORM RAGED BEYOND THE OPEN RAILS OF HALF DECK
7,
SPRAY
sweeping across the deck despite their being sixty feet above the waterline. Liu could hardly think over the boom of the sea and the bellow of the wind.

Crowley came up, as soaked as he was. “Are we really going to try this, sir?”

“You got a better idea?” Liu replied irritably. “Give me your radio.”

Crowley handed it over.

Liu tuned it to channel 72 and pressed the transmit button. “Liu here, calling Bruce, over.”

“This is Bruce.”

“How do you read me?”

“Five by five.”

“Good. Buckle yourself into the coxswain’s station at the helm. Welch should take the seat across the aisle.”

“Already done.”

“Need any instructions?”

“They seem to be all right here.”

“The lifeboat’s almost completely automatic,” Liu went on. “The engine starts automatically on impact. It’ll drive the lifeboat away from the ship in a straight line. You should throttle down to steerageway speed only—they’ll find you quicker that way. The master panel should be pretty self-explanatory to a nautical man.”

“Right. Got an EPIRB on this crazy boat?”

“Two, and they’re actually the latest GPIRBs, which transmit your GPS coordinates. On impact, the GPIRB automatically activates at 406 and 121.5 megahertz—no action required on your part. Keep the lifeboat’s VHF tuned to emergency channel 16. Communicate with me through channel 72 on your handheld. You’re going to be on your own until you’re picked up—the
Britannia
isn’t stopping. Both of you stay strapped in at all times—you’re going to take a few barrel rolls in these seas, at the least.”

“Understood.”

“Questions?”

“No.”

“Ready?”

“Ready.” Bruce’s voice crackled over the handheld.

“Okay. There’s a fifteen-second automatic countdown. Lock down the transmit button so we can hear what happens. Talk to me as soon as possible after you hit.”