Biri shook his head with irritation. "That doesn't concern me."

 

 

They stood in starlight bright enough to cast shadows.

 

 

"No swords, no baubles. Those are all human misunderstandings of magic, human preoccupation with technology. Magic lies purely in the mind. The Sidhe are among the most dishonorable, unreliable creatures on all the faces of Creation, but they have one thing - concentration. What they want, they focus on completely."

 

 

Biri sat down in the grass and gestured for Michael to do likewise. "You are alone," Biri said. "You are the only thing in existence. You will never truly know there are others. Because humans have souls is no reason to believe they differ from the Sidhe in this, that they are eternally alone."

 

 

Michael shook his head. "What about friendship, love?"

 

 

"Love does not occur to the Sidhe male," Biri said. "But I can demolish love even so. Did you love the real person, or your image of the person? Did you love an external, or what the person was to you?"

 

 

"But there has to be someone, something, to love or to be disappointed with."

 

 

"Only yourself. Alone. Life is alone, love is alone."

 

 

"But then you don't exist. Nobody else exists."

 

 

"Together, we are alone. That is the peculiarity of our being. We never know true community. Not even Sidhe, who can reach inside each other's aura of memory, out-see and in-see; not even Sidhe can avoid being alone. You can never rely on another, not to the core of your being. You can never ultimately trust in another. for how is that possible, when you are alone?"

 

 

Biri seemed to vanish, leaving Michael on the grass. Alone.

 

 

He pulled up a sprig and contemplated it, feeling dead inside. If he was unique, solitary, without any support in all of reality - including his own internal reality - if even his mind was alone, with just one voice, and all else illusory -

 

 

The deadness was replaced once again by enormous calm. How often could he have devastating realizations, and then have them smoothed away like a waveless ocean?

 

 

How many more revelations would there be, ending in the same assurance of mastery, all illusory?

 

 

The blade of grass was alone. Together, they were alone. They were alone together.

 

 

The ground of the Realm was alone. The blade of grass was alone with the ground.

 

 

Words flowed within him, arguments, changing shape and meaning, having no meaning. He gave them up only after a tremendous, jerking pain swept him. ,

 

 

"I am in love with words," Michael said. "They are my horse. I ride them, use them. But I can never kill them. Even if I cannot use words to get where I am going." The realization of his dependence was enough.

 

 

His aloneness suddenly became apparent, without words, truth, meaning or thought.

 

 

The only way one can truly be alone is to be at one with everything, everybody.

 

 

The entire universe, having only one voice.

 

 

All the faces of creation, alone.

 

 

Michael became aware of what he had been doing when he performed the small tricks the Crane Women had taught him. 'To be alone is to be difficult to spot."

 

 

He could improve on that. "Aloneness means isolation from needs." He could last indefinitely without food or water.

 

 

"I only fight shadows. If I am alone, there is no enemy to fight." And ultimately, no need to fight. "It is crazy to fight when you are alone."

 

 

He put down the blade of grass and looked up at the multitude of stars. Biri had helped him build this structure piece by piece, carefully. Now it began to collapse. The whole thing was ridiculous. How could he ever believe such nonsense? Yet as it collapsed, it did not take the calm or sense of mastery with it; they remained.

 

 

They had built a boat, crossed a river, and the boat had crumbled just as he stood on the opposite shore.

 

 

Biri came up behind him.

 

 

"It's all wrong," Michael said. "It doesn't make sense."

 

 

"That is the sign over the gate of your acceptance," Biri told him in Cascar. "For a Sidhe, being alone is exaltation, being alone is ridiculous. You must never trust us. or our philosophies."

 

 

"Then I shouldn't trust you at all?"

 

 

"Never trust a teacher."

 

 

He didn't seem to be joking. Michael was far from convinced he knew what this final discipline was all about, undeniable though its effects were. And if it was such a discipline that made the Sidhe behave as they did - that segregated males and females, and led to such odd behavior in the males - then he would just as soon be rid of it, effects or no.

 

 

But there was nothing he could do now. He felt stronger, better able to cope. They returned to the canyon, Biri following Michael down the path.

 

 

The eastern horizon was brightening. The long night was finally over. Nikolai and Bek still slept as they approached the camp. The fire had died down to smoking ashes. Biri stayed away from the sleeping figures, staring off down the river.

 

 

"What do you plan to do now?" Michael asked him.

 

 

Nikolai woke up, rolled over and stared in groggy surprise at the Sidhe. "Who's that?" he asked, scrambling to his feet. Bek sat up on the ground. Biri ignored them.

 

 

"I think I will go to the Isomage," Bin said.

 

 

"That's where we're heading," Nikolai said, glancing at Michael.

 

 

"Not necessarily," Michael said. "Why go there?"

 

 

Bin smiled his feral smile. Nikolai shivered and backed away from the camp. "He wears the cloak of the Maln's initiates!"

 

 

"Perhaps because he has some answers," Bin said. "And if you do not go there, somebody has to. Besides, he isn't far from here." He gestured downriver. "The river flows into the sea. The Isomage's lands are on the delta." He turned to walk away.

 

 

"Where have you been all night?" Nikolai asked, staring at Michael curiously.

 

 

"I'm not sure," Michael said. The Sidhe merged with shadows near the canyon wall. When the day brightened, he was nowhere to be seen.

 

 

"I've always been interested in the Isomage," Nikolai said. "A tragic, perhaps fearful person." They gathered fruit from the low scrub trees near the river. "Would it be dangerous to go there just to satisfy curiosity?"

 

 

"Probably," Bek said. Nikolai frowned and bit into a tiny pear.

 

 

"Then we just stay here, or we go back to the Pact Lands - except you say they aren't there any more, and we can't go back. I'm confused."

 

 

"At least the Sidhe knows where his answers are to be found," Bek said.

 

 

"They may not be the answers I'm looking for," Michael said. "If I'm looking for answers. And I don't know why he's going to Clarkham."

 

 

"Perhaps Clarkham can tell him about the Council. Or tell us."

 

 

"I take it both of you want to go on, find Clarkham?"

 

 

Bek considered a moment, then nodded. Nikolai shrugged. "I'm contented wherever I happen to be, so long as none of the Maln are aware of me."

 

 

"Then you should go to Clarkham. I'll make up my own mind, in my own time." Michael stalked back toward the camp, pockets filled with the tiny fruit. Nikolai jogged after him.

 

 

"Michael, Michael, what is wrong? What did the Sidhe say to you? You have changed."

 

 

Indeed, he no longer felt a need for anyone's presence or advice. He felt an ugliness growing inside, replacing the initial calm Bin's discipline had given him.

 

 

He stopped, staring beyond a fire much larger than the one they had left. "Brothers," came a muffled voice from behind the fire. Wrapped in white from head to toe, Shahpur walked around the flames, arms folded at chest-level. "We've been told you need an escort." Harka, Tik and Dour emerged from behind a nearby boulder. Michael looked over his shoulder and saw Bek approaching, his pace measured and confident.

 

 

"They're all together," Nikolai told Michael, eyes wide with concern.

 

 

"The Isomage welcomes you to the vicinity of Xanadu," Shahpur said. Nikolai groaned.

 

 

"Grand, grand!" he cried, swinging his hands out. "Now you do not have any choice. Nor do I."

 

 

Chapter Forty-One

 

 

Harka greeted Michael wearily and sat on the sandy river-bank with Tik and Dour standing beside him. The two younger Sidhe seemed nervous; only Bek and Harka remained at ease, Harka perhaps being incapable of anything more. Shahpur could not be read.

 

 

"We have been watching over you, of course," Harka said. He did not fend off Michael's probe; he was, if anything, even emptier than when Michael had last peered into him. His emptiness was as disturbing as Shahpur's horrible fullness.

 

 

"I don't need protecting," Michael said.

 

 

"The Isomage thinks otherwise. There wasn't much he could do while you traveled between the Pact Lands and here, in Sidhe territories. But he had us meet you in the mountains, and even dared to send Bek into Inyas Trai with you. Now that you approach his domain, we are much freer. We can help when necessary."

 

 

"By help," Shahpur said, "Harka means we must insure you come to Xanadu. It is the Isomage's wish."

 

 

The Sidhe, however low their status, still retained certain skills. Michael could tell that just by lightly skimming their auras. He could not escape. He still felt strong, but it was not any sort of strength he could immediately apply; Biri's discipline had somehow confused even his rudimentary skills. If Biri had been with them, the match would have been at least equal; there was nothing he could do to resist now, however.

 

 

"It's what I've been planning all along," Michael said. "No coercion necessary."

 

 

"Excellent," Harka said. "The Isomage will be very pleased.

 

 

He doesn't have many visitors, as you can imagine."

 

 

"What about me?" Nikolai asked.

 

 

"All who have helped the man-child are welcome in Xanadu. Shall we begin now, or must you rest after your. strenuous night?"

 

 

"I'm rested," Michael said. Nikolai squared his shoulders and nodded agreement.

 

 

"Fine. It's a pleasant journey. We can be there by late evening. Of course, if we could all ride." He looked enviously at the horse. "But we can't. Bek will tend the epon."

 

 

For the next ten miles, the walls of the canyon grew higher until they walked through a deep chasm in perpetual shadow. Mosses and ferns crowded the river bank, some towering high overhead to form a dense canopy, casting everything in verdant gloom. The river became a deep, swift-running torrent no more than thirty feet across.

 

 

In its translucent volume, Michael saw Riverines flashing by like trout, dodging rocks and reed banners in their plunge toward the sea.

 

 

They approached the canyon's end by late afternoon. The walls declined abruptly and the river broadened, pouring out onto a wide, forested plain. The plain was brushed by swift patches of fog; overhead, the sky melted into a color between butter and polished bronze. The trees on the plain took up the bronzen color and became a pale, umbrous green. Golden-edged clouds cast long shadows over all.

 

 

The plain sloped gradually to an immense flat sea, placid as a mirror in the last light of day, reflecting the sky and adding only a darker hint of its own character.

 

 

In the red glow of sunset, they hiked through the nearest spinney of trees, still following the river. The water sighed and hissed over a broad course covered with small stones. Where the Riverines went when the water was only inches deep, Michael couldn't decide.

 

 

Harka urged them on through the evening shadows. The forest trail was overgrown and difficult to track even in good light, but the cadaverous Sidhe seemed to feel an added urgency. Bek, Tik and Dour followed some distance behind. Shahpur stayed near Michael, his white form making barely a noise as he passed through brush and over dry leaves.

 

 

Harka puzzled Michael. There was a familiarity about his emptiness. but Michael had never encountered a Sidhe with Harka's affliction. If these beings worked for Clarkham, it was possible he had performed some sort of magic on them - subjected them to a geas, perhaps. But how could Sidhe be controlled by someone not a Sidhe?

 

 

Again and again, Michael concocted plans of escape, and discarded them. His deep-seated anger and confusion fermented. Why had Bin subjected him to such a weird, ridiculous philosophy? Perhaps, Michael thought, to create the stymie he was in now.

 

 

Nikolai became more and more apprehensive as they neared the shore of the sea. Finally, the pearly ribbon of light appeared and illuminated their path out of the last stretch of the forest. They walked across sand to the still water's edge.

 

 

"It is dangerous to approach Xanadu in the dark, even for the desired visitor," Harka said. "We stay here for the night."

 

 

Nikolai followed Michael a few yards up the beach. The others made no move to stop them. Michael bent down and dipped his hands in the sea's glassy surface. The ripple caught the ribbon light and carried it yards away from the beach. The water was neither warm nor cold. Michael brought a wet finger to his lips. It was only faintly salty - more of a mineral tang, actually.

 

 

"There's nothing you can do?" Nikolai whispered.

 

 

Michael shook his head. "Why try? This is where you wanted to go - and I, too, at first."

 

 

"You decided against it."

 

 

"If I change my mind, how can I be sure I'm the one, changing it? If my mind is changed for me, does an escort make any difference? Perhaps they're merely making us do what we should be doing, anyway."

 

 

"I have always felt apprehensive about that Harka," Nikolai said. "But to know he works for the Isomage!" The Russian clucked his tongue, then looked at the Breed, Sidhe and cloaked human from the comer of his eye. "Surprises, surprises. What will we do when we see Clarkham?"

 

 

"I'm sure he'll let us know what's expected."

 

 

The night passed quickly. Michael did not sleep. He sensed a growth of the poison within, a combination of hatred, suspicion and strength that was dismaying. Bin's discipline was blossoming and the flower was ugly.

 

 

Dawn disrupted the eastern sky and shattered the arcing ribbon light into fading fragments. The air hummed once again like the beginning chords of a symphony. When the sun was fully above the horizon, the hum subsided. The bronzen sky brightened to pure butter.

 

 

Harka walked past Michael and Nikolai, who lay in the sand, and gestured for them to follow. "We have an appointment and we're already late."

 

 

Their path took them at a tangent away from the still sea. Within a mile the sand acquiesced to grass - a perfectly kept rolling lawn spaced here and there with peaceful ginkgo trees, rustled by leisurely warm breezes. Once the sun reached a certain angle, it blended with the rest of the sky, leaving only an illuminated featureless bowl.

 

 

Harka pointed to a green hill which rose with dignified gradualness to a rounded peak about five hundred feet higher man the sea. Surrounding the hill were walled forests and gardens, and atop squatted a pale ivory dome, its size uncertain from their distance. In one side of the hill was a deep gash bordered by trees; even from miles away, the sound of water plummeting from the gash was audible. The water came in a torrent down the hillside facing away from the sea and began a sinuous river.

 

 

"The Isomage's palace," Harka said solemnly.

 

 

They approached a stone wall about fifteen feet high, made of blocks of dark marble. There was an open bronze gate, the doors chased with dragons. The gate's only guard was a twelve-foot-tall granite warrior, his fierce oriental eyes fixed on the lifeless sea, one hand holding a gatepost like a spear. As they passed through the gate, Nikolai regarded the warrior with unabashed wonder.

 

 

Within the circumference of the first wall, animals of all description played, browsed and hunted, though the hunts seemed never to succeed. Michael spotted a huge tiger, head hanging as it stalked a herd of translucent deer. The deer, legs like rods of glass, pricked up their ears and bounded away, flushing pheasants from a jade-colored bush. The pheasants flapped wings like sections of stained-glass windows as they ascended; then, tiring, they dropped into a nearby ginkgo.

 

 

The second wall was constructed of glazed brick and was only eight feet high. Steps mounted up one side and down the other. There was no guard, real or stony.

 

 

They now climbed the slope of the hill. At one point they halted and stared out over the river and ocean. Michael estimated they had covered three miles from the outermost wall, which meant the whole circuit was about five miles in radius. The walls were circular, broken only by gates placed at the four compass points and by the meandering river, which emptied into the sunless sea without stirring a ripple.

 

 

The third wall was a hedge barely five feet tall but ten thick and studded with long thorns. The gate in this wall was a pedestrian tunnel beneath the hedge. The plaster walls of the tunnel were covered with frescoes of pastoral Chinese life, depicting a long-mustached, round-faced emperor enjoying the peace and fertility of wise rule.

 

 

They now passed around the hill, out of sight of the sea. A stone causeway guided them up one side of the fountaining chasm, through a wide strip of cedars. Bridges crossed over verdant rills filled with flowering trees and thick, fragrant bushes. The ground beneath them seemed to breathe, each breath punctuated by a sudden roar of water and a deep grinding rumble.

 

 

Through the gap of one particularly long rill, Michael saw the torrent flushing thick chunks of ice, jagged and pale green in the dark waters. The ice bounded from side to side and was finally shattered to milky slush at the base of the hill.

 

 

The steps ended in a graceful carved wood pavilion equipped with silk-padded benches. They rested for a few minutes to allow Harka to regain his breath, then crossed the flawless lawn spreading over the hilltop.

 

 

Two hundred yards from the dome, a circle of black minarets lanced up from the lawn. They were spaced at intervals of fifty feet and had external staircases spiraling to bronze crow's nests at the top. The cages were vacant, but Michael had the strong impression he was being watched, if not from the towers, then from the pavilions of glass, stone and wood that decorated the grounds.

 

 

The dome itself was constructed of silks held aloft by curving poles. The poles were set in walls of alabaster. Now he could judge the dome's true size; it was at least three hundred feet high and twice as broad.

 

 

They entered the pleasure dome through a spidery arch carved of green soapstone. Harka bade them stop with his uplifted hand and turned to Michael.

 

 

"The Isomage meets you as an equal," he said. "That is a great privilege. He is at peace, yet eternally occupied with his work. He invites you as a guest, and as a fellow of Earth. Do you harbor him any ill will?"

 

 

"No," Michael said. Clarkham had never done anything to him, had never, in fact, been anything to him but a distant goal.

 

 

"No," Harka said wearily, "You do not. Nor does your companion." Nikolai regarded the Sidhe with patent mystification. "Enter, then, the fulfillment of the dream and the song."

 

 

Chapter Forty-Two

 

 

The interior of the silken dome was effulgent with milky light; the air enveloped Michael with warmth and incense. They walked across a black marble floor veined with ice, a layer of chill air flowing over their feet. Nikolai stuck close to Michael, swiveling his head to see everything at once.

 

 

The poles supporting the silken tent converged high above, where a gap in the fabric showed the sky. At the center of the enclosure, up a flight of wooden steps carved with dragons and horses, beyond a teakwood fence topped with gold rails, stood a full-sized house: white plaster walls and curtained windows, a sloping red tile roof, all surrounded by perfectly trimmed oleander bushes.

 

 

"That's Clarkham's house," Michael said. "That's where I began."

 

 

The front door was open but they didn't enter. Instead, Harka led them up the steps and around the yard to the back. The rear of the house was quite ordinary, with a brick patio and a well-tended garden of tree roses, outdoor redwood furniture with gaily covered pads, an umbrella-shaded round table on curved metal legs. It was extraordinary only in that it was here, a comic discrepancy in an exotic chinoiserie.

 

 

A dark Sidhe female trimmed the tree roses with bronze pruning shears. At each snip, the roses on the tree she pruned glowed and the air filled with a sweet, sharp fragrance. She glanced up and saw the group garnering beyond the lawn's brick border. She smiled, put her shears down on a folding wooden stand and smoothed her gold-trimmed gray gown.

 

 

"Finally!" she exclaimed. "We've been waiting a very long time for your arrival." She walked across the lawn and held out her hand to Michael. He grasped it by the fingers and she beckoned him onto the lawn. The chill of the ice-veined marble was immediately replaced by the warm summer softness of grass. She kissed him decorously on the cheek and led him across the lawn. "Please come," she called back to Nikolai. The others bowed and backed away. Nikolai hesitated, confused, then stepped up onto the grass and followed.

 

 

"David has been very patient," she said. Her voice was as sweet as any Sidhe voice Michael had heard yet, like an inviting smile. Her hair was lustrous, silky black. Her brows were slightly asymmetric, one angling higher than the other, and her lips were more full than the lips of other Sidhe.

 

 

They entered the glass doors and passed into the rear room of the house, where Michael had once watched moonlight spill over the bare wood floor. Here, the room was furnished as a study, with an oak roll-top desk in the corner opposite the doors, full bookcases along two walls and an upright piano placed before the gauze curtains of the bay window.

 

 

"My name is Mora," the Sidhe said. "We don't have long before he comes down to meet you. Before then." She reached beneath the peplum of her gown and produced a rose from an inner pocket, handing it to Michael. 'To decorate your room. You'll be with us for some time, David says."

 

 

Michael accepted the rose. "My name is-"

 

 

"Oh, we know, we know!" Mora said, laughing. "And this is Nikolai, a friend of Emma Livry."

 

 

Nikolai nodded formally and regarded the books and piano with obvious longing.

 

 

"Now, I must return to the garden," Mora said. "This is a special season, rare and brief." She laid a finger on the rose in his hands. "This will keep for some time."

 

 

She left by way of the French doors, shutting them behind. Michael and Nikolai listened to the tick of a pendulum wall clock mounted over the desk.

 

 

Footsteps sounded on the stairs, paused and resumed. The study door opened and a gray-haired man of middle height, appearing perhaps fifty or fifty-five years old, entered. He wore an open-collared shirt and brown slacks and was shod in fawn-colored moccasins. His face was broad and pleasant and there was a faint growth of ruddy beard on his cheeks.

 

 

"Michael?" he asked, extending his hand. "Michael Perrin."

 

 

Michael took hold of the hand and shook it firmly, feeling, as always, awkward over such ritual.

 

 

"Very pleased to meet you. I'm Clarkham. David Clarkham. Welcome to Xanadu - or has Mora welcomed you already? Of course. She's a marvel. I'd have a hell of a time running this place without her. I trust you had an interesting journey?"

 

 

Michael was at a loss for words. He nodded.

 

 

Clarkham offered his hand to Nikolai. "Mr. Kuprin. I've admired your daring for years now. We met briefly once, though you may not remember. When I visited Emma in Inyas Trai. I was quite heavily disguised."

 

 

Nikolai frowned.

 

 

"Yes," Clarkham said, smiling. "Successfully disguised. It's getting toward upper, and I've laid out quite a feed to celebrate your arrival. I'm sure you're hungry. Food in the Realm is such a chancy thing. Come with me and I'll show you your rooms, let you wash up. I have another guest here, someone you know, I believe - a Sidhe. He'll be joining us for supper. There's so much to discuss, yes indeed!"

 

 

Supper was more of a feast. It was served as the muted sunlight filtering through the silken dome began to wane. A table was arranged on the patio, near Mora's glowing roses, and she brought out bowl after covered bowl of baked vegetables, spiced grains, fresh fruit salads and compotes and green salads. Bread came wrapped in linen in wicker baskets, hot and fresh-baked, and was served with spiced vegetable butter, the milk of Sidhe horses not being suitable for regular butter.

 

 

Michael and Nikolai sat on one side of the table, Clarkham at the head next to Michael. When Mora was through serving, she sat opposite Nikolai. It was then that Bin strolled onto the patio from the house. He smiled cryptically at Michael and sat beside Mora.

 

 

"Fine!" Clarkham said, passing the first bowl of food, "We're all here. Mora has done her usual magic"- he winked at Michael-"in the kitchen. What a fine evening this will be."

 

 

Michael was less enthusiastic. He ate - he was very hungry - and listened, but he said little. Most of the talk was from Clarkham; domestic pleasantries, the state of the garden, the quality of the weather around Xanadu, what the coming spring might portend for the grounds.

 

 

Michael tried not to stare at Bin. Above all else, he wanted to ask two simple questions - why the Sidhe was on such familiar terms with Clarkham, and what Bin's purpose had been in meeting Michael in the canyon.

 

 

Biri volunteered nothing, in fact seldom spoke directly to the newly arrived guests. When the meal was done, Clarkham suggested they go inside. Night had fallen and the interior of the pleasure dome had grown somber. Biri stood and passed his hand behind each of a string of paper lanterns hung across the patio just above head level. They began to glow with a guttering yellow light.

 

 

The scent of roses was noticeable even inside the house. Michael glanced curiously at the electric lights - the first he had seen in the Realm. The illumination seemed harsher and more grating on his eyes. With that final touch, the house might as well have been on Earth, for all the sensation of normality and comfort - Earth in the 1940's, perhaps, considering the furnishings. Michael was not comforted, however. He had been lulled by appearances too often before.

 

 

Clarkham brought out brandy in a crystal decanter and poured snifters for himself, Nikolai and Michael. "The Sidhe love human liquor entirely too much," he explained. "Mora never touches it - says it spoils her heritage. Biri, I suspect, has never touched a drop in his life. The Maln wouldn't approve, would they?"

 

 

Biri shook his head half-sadly. "Alas, no."

 

 

"I, however, can drink, and I hope my guests are willing, too." He caught Michael's eye and passed out the glasses. "Master Michael wishes to know what sort of being I am."

 

 

"A sensible question," Mora said. They sat in the living room on comfortably overstuffed chairs and a couch, all upholstered in fabric prints of jungle leaves and exotic birds. A fire had been laid and crackled warmly in the fireplace.

 

 

'"What is he?'" Clarkham mimicked. "A question asked often, young man, for the past few hundred years, at least. Much less time has passed here, of course."

 

 

"You're not a Sidhe," Michael said, deciding to participate in whatever game was being played. "You're not a Spryggla."

 

 

"Heaven's no!" Clarkham exclaimed, laughing.

 

 

"Arno Waltiri thought you were human," Michael went on.

 

 

"No, you have that wrong, young man. I thought Waltiri was human. I doubt very much if Arno was at all deluded by my masque."

 

 

Michael was taken aback. Clarkham noticed his surprise. "My dear fellow, the game is very complex, and everybody has a stake in it. One can't rectify sixty million years of misery and injustice overnight, or without some turns in the maze."

 

 

"Waltiri's dead," Michael ventured, no conviction in his voice.

 

 

"Let's say I have my doubts," Clarkham said. "He is a very capable and crafty individual."

 

 

Michael couldn't bring himself to ask what Clarkham thought Waltiri was, but Clarkham's tone irritated him. Everything seemed to irritate him now - the light, the company, even Nikolai - as if he were filled with hornets.

 

 

"I was born on Earth," Clarkham continued. "In fourteen hundred and ninety-nine. My mother had come over from England some centuries earlier, where she had served as cubicularia to Queen Maeve herself, before the Queen took to an oak in the Old Forest and her retinue scattered to the islands to escape the charcoal burners. They eventually downed the queen's oak, by the way. Perhaps some of Maeve's venerable smoke resides in the glass windows of a fine English cathedral. But she is no more, and my mother is long dead, too, though she was not mortal. My father was mortal, Michael. I am a Breed, if you have not guessed - fifty-fifty. From my mother I learned Sidhe magic, and from my father - well, my father gave me a form which does not unduly reveal my fay ancestry. That is what I am." He waved his hand at Michael. The hornets hummed softly within.

 

 

"And you, sir. Question answered one for one."

 

 

Michael spoke without hesitation. "I believe I am supposed to be a poet."

 

 

"Oh. And are you?"

 

 

"Yes."

 

 

"Just what I've been waiting for," Clarkham said, exhibiting his satisfaction around the room with a contemplative rub of his chin. "We never have enough poetry."

 

 

"To my regret, I have none of my poems with me," Michael said. "And my book was stolen."

 

 

"Which book?"

 

 

"The book Arno gave me."

 

 

"Indeed, indeed," Clarkham mused. "Arno was always quite generous, when he needed something done. Did he give any advice with the book?" Clarkham asked.

 

 

"He suggested I shouldn't be afraid to take risks."

 

 

'To come here, that is."

 

 

"I suppose."

 

 

Mora broke in. "I'd love to hear some of your poetry."

 

 

"I'll have to write some new," Michael said.

 

 

"Splendid," Clarkham said. "Bin's been telling us a little about your journey. Quite remarkable. I'm saddened to hear what happened in the Pact Lands. I understand Alyons paid dearly for his excesses."

 

 

"Your trap killed him," Michael said. Mora gave a tiny, barely noticeable shudder.

 

 

"And he thought you were responsible," Clarkham said. "Poor fool. Never did know which way the wind blew. Not all Sidhe are brilliant, Michael; take that as a lesson."

 

 

"I'd thought you might be disappointed to hear I haven't brought the book."

 

 

Nikolai glanced between them, bewildered and uneasy.

 

 

"Heavens no!" Clarkham said. "What use would I have for it?"

 

 

"I don't have the first part of the Song of Power."

 

 

"Which one? I've dealt with so many in my time."

 

 

"The poem. Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan.' I don't even remember it."

 

 

"Then perhaps you'd care to read it again? I have it, right here." He stood and went to a bookshelf, pulling out a book from between two heavy leatherbound volumes. He handed it to Michael with his finger deftly insinuated between the appropriate pages.

 

 

Michael glanced at the poem. It was the same text - including the introduction - as in the book Waltiri had given him.

 

 

"You thought perhaps the Maln was trying to prevent you from bringing this to me?" Clarkham chuckled. "I've had it for decades. I once told a crazy old Spryggla that I needed it, but only after the fool tried to ensorcel me. For all I know, he spread the word, though his range seemed quite limited."

 

 

"He's dead," Michael said. "Or at least, turned to stone."

 

 

"And who was responsible for that?"

 

 

"Indirectly, I was."

 

 

Clarkham took a deep breath. "You are very influential, Michael. You eliminate age-old traditions right and left, break tabus, pioneer new ground. No, it isn't the old material I'm interested in. You have arrived here with potential. The potential is in your poetry. You are in the same position as poor Mr. Coleridge."

 

 

Michael turned to Bin. "You've gone over to him, haven't you? You really did want me to come here."

 

 

Bin nodded. "Adonna has no influence here. I am free of him"

 

 

"Ah, fine old Adonna," Clarkham reflected. "Biri tells me you survived even the Irall. I've never been there, myself. I likely would not have survived. I have been a thorn in Tarax's side for many years. Adonna, I suppose, made you forget the meeting. Typical. He's a very old, very weary mage, and he assumes too much responsibility. Valiant in his way, however."

 

 

Michael suddenly recovered a memory of Adonna - Tonn - in his kilt and tabard, holding a staff.

 

 

"Seeing more clearly now?" Clarkham inquired.

 

 

"Seeing what?" Nikolai asked, sotto voce.

 

 

"I'm remembering some things," Michael explained. Nikolai was obviously not competent to be anything but a spectator in this game. Who else was playing?

 

 

"May I ask who, or what, Adonna really is?" Nikolai looked around the circle. Mora took pity on him.

 

 

"At one time, he was the Mage of the Sidhe. He made the Realm - a masterpiece, nobody denies that - but he was overly ambitious. He has always opposed the Isomage."

 

 

"I never could muster up enough hubris to call myself a true mage," Clarkham said. "Others may have, but not I. The mages have earned their positions, their esteem. I simply hope to accomplish what they set out to do, long ago."

 

 

"Quite humble," Nikolai whispered.

 

 

Michael leaned forward in his chair. "You brought me here for a reason. Your wife - one of them - cleared the way for me. The other allowed me to escape, when perhaps she could have added me to her collection."

 

 

Clarkham kept a perfect poker-face, revealing nothing.

 

 

"Please tell me why I am here."

 

 

"This evening? I was willing to let you rest."

 

 

"Now is as good a time as any."

 

 

Clarkham held up his hand and looked at Mora and Biri. "Very well. You are here to finish the final Song of Power. That much must be obvious to you."

 

 

It was far from obvious, but Michael nodded.

 

 

"I, in turn, will use the Song of Power to gain control of the Realm, and restore liberty to humans and Breeds."

 

 

"You'll use it for nothing else?"

 

 

Clarkham tilted his head to the right and tapped his forefinger on the endtable, then his middle finger. "You've met Tarax. You know what the Maln is capable of."

 

 

"And you've helped me remember Adonna. He doesn't seem such a fiend."

 

 

Clarkham's face reddened. "Tonn appears to you as he wishes. Sidhe of his age and accomplishment are very little less than gods, Michael, and enormously devious. I have worked for centuries to simply be able to resist him, and I have succeeded - but I cannot overcome him. It isn't because he is a nice fellow that I wish to conquer him." The muscles of Clark-ham's cheek worked visibly and his eyes narrowed. Then, with obvious effort, he brought himself again under control. The ingratiating smile returned. "It isn't an issue I can always be calm about. Tonn is not quite the monster Tarax would have him be, no. But Tonn knows his Sidhe. He designed the Realm for them, and he rules them with a severity which he relaxes only for the Ban of Hours. Can you guess why?"

 

 

Michael shook his head.

 

 

"Because she was the daughter who stuck by him when Elme defied him. Even though he turned their mother into an abomination, in a fit of. I'm not sure what you would call it. Horrid anger. When Elme married a human, it was Tonn who orchestrated her banishment, and devised all her fell tortures. When he couldn't break her to his will, and when the Council of Eleu supported her, then and only then did he put all his power into creating the Realm. He hated humans desperately, Michael."

 

 

"Perhaps he's changed his mind."

 

 

Clarkham looked surprised, then laughed shortly and sharply. "Obviously he's exercised some influence over you, and without revealing his true nature. For that reason, I suppose I should be a little wary of you."

 

 

In the ensuing silence, Nikolai regarded the occupants of the room with growing discomfort. "Michael is for the humans and the Breeds," he spoke up finally. "Michael is a good fellow."

 

 

Mora smiled and Bin grinned. Clarkham laughed heartily and without malice. "Of course. He has struggled long and hard to get here, to help his people and mine. We will work together, and all our goals will be achieved. For now, after such a long journey and an excellent dinner, it's best we retire to our rooms and enjoy a comfortable night's sleep. Mora will show you where everything is." He stood and stretched casually. "Good evening, gentlemen."

 

 

She led Nikolai and Michael upstairs and showed them the bathroom, their bedrooms and places where linen could be procured. She left a scent of roses in her wake. Michael was distracted from his jumbled thoughts by her black, shining hair and teak-colored skin.

 

 

There was a fine king-sized bed in his room, the sheets folded back neatly and the white cover pulled down to reveal warm woolen blankets. On the valet near the oak dresser hung a complete change of clothing - slacks, shirt and sweater with new-looking brown shoes made of very supple leather. When he put them on in the morning, he would be better dressed than he had usually been on Earth.

 

 

The bedroom walls were decorated with soothing abstract pastel patterns of brown and gray and blue. In one corner sat a tiny rosebush in a brass pot, and beside that, a writing desk with an inlaid leather pad. A goose-neck reading lamp cast a soft glow over the bedstead. A bookshelf near the door was filled with interesting volumes - Gerald Manley Hopkins, Yeats, Keats and Shelley, as well as novels old and new.

 

 

He shut the door and sat on the bed. With all the comforts of Earth arrayed before him, he should have felt touched, even despite his caution. But there was no room in him for sentiment. He removed his clothes and put on a terrycloth robe. Then he went into the hall, chose a towel from the linen closet, and entered the bathroom.

 

 

Hot water, soap, white enamel basin and tub and marble countertop, fern-leafed wallpaper, tiled shower stall. He showered for a long time, until his exhaustion was unavoidable, and dried himself with his eyes closed.

 

 

When Michael returned to his room, he found Clarkham standing beside his bed. Clarkham held a box of paper in one hand, his thumb clamping down a fine black fountain-pen with gold banding and a clip. "For your convenience," he said, placing the items on the desk. His expression was almost beseeching as he took a step toward Michael. Clearly, he was interested in being friendly, but something came between them, a so-far muted antagonism that might break from its cover at any moment.

 

 

"Sorry," Clarkham said after the moment passed. He walked around Michael and stood in the doorway. "I'm still having difficulty deciding what you are."

 

 

Michael shook his head. "I'm not a sorcerer, if that's what you mean."

 

 

Clarkham smiled grimly. "Unaware sorcerers are the most formidable, sometimes. But take no heed of my prattling." He made an offhand gesture at the desk. "Exercise your talents whenever you feel the urge. We will all be a receptive audience."

 

 

Clarkham left, closing the door behind.

 

 

Michael doffed his robe, put on flannel pajamas laid near the bed and crawled under the covers. He reached up to turn off the light. Every gesture was so alien, so familiar.

 

 

He slept. And this evening, he dreamed.

 

 

Chapter Forty-Three

 

 

The rose had turned to glass. It lay on the dresser, perfect in every detail, and rang softly when Michael touched it. He picked it up by the stem and inserted it into the lapel of his shirt. It poked from the sweater, still sweetly scented.

 

 

As he came down the stairs, three sheets of paper in one hand and the gold-banded fountain pen in the other, he realized that all that had gone before had been trivial.

 

 

In bed, he had written five short poems on one sheet. They were more exercises than finished works; tests of his skill. They showed that his ability had not withered. If anything, even while not in constant use, it had grown.

 

 

He passed through the french doors onto the patio.

 

 

It was an Abyssinian maid,

 

 

And on her dulcimer she played,

 

 

Singing of Mount Abora.

 

 

Mora, however, was not singing of Abora, but of a paradisaical place called Amhara. Michael probed her lightly and she allowed him into her weave of Cascar words with a smile and a willingness that was quite erotic. Clarkham, seated across the umbrella table from her, did not seem to notice or care. She played her lute-like instrument, occasionally pausing to experimentally tune a string.

 

 

Nikolai had already eaten breakfast and sat on a white-painted wrought-iron bench near the low brick wall separating the patio from the garden of tree roses. Bin was not present.

 

 

"I dreamed of you last night," Michael told Mora.

 

 

"Yes?" She stopped playing.

 

 

"You were singing, just like now, with your lute."

 

 

"It is apliktera," she said. "Where was I playing?"

 

 

Michael didn't answer. He turned to Clarkham and handed him a sheet of penciled poems. "Is this what you're after?"

 

 

Clarkham read the poems quickly and laid them on the table. "You know they're not."

 

 

"How can I be sure what you need?"

 

 

Clarkham stared at Michael steadily. Nikolai shifted uneasily in his seat. Beyond the rose garden, across the black marble-and-ice floor and near the perimeter of the dome, stood Shah-pur, Harka, Bek, Tik and Dour. Far too many for Michael to take on if they combined their power -

 

 

"I tried to help you last night," Clarkham said.

 

 

"You sent me a dream. Not much help." For a brief moment, Michael felt sorry for the Isomage.

 

 

Clarkham laughed sharply. "I've dealt with far more songs of power than you, young man."

 

 

"I don't need suggestions in my sleep. I've had quite enough from others."

 

 

"From Tonn?"

 

 

Michael nodded.

 

 

"And who else?"

 

 

"Whomever. I'm free of them now. I'm on my own." The image came to him clearly; falling free, living up to his purpose. He was full of strength.

 

 

The strength of a bomb.

 

 

Arno Waltiri had begun the process. The Crane Women and Lamia - Lamia unwittingly, he assumed - had carried k further; Michael had been forged under their hammers. His journey had annealed him and filled him with the necessary images - images which he would transform beyond all recognition. Clarkham himself had set the timer with the dream sent during the night - awkward as it was, so sublimely ignorant of what was necessary.

 

 

"How pompous," Clarkham said. "You're only a boy. You've lived what, sixteen, seventeen Earth years? I'm older than the city in which you were born."

 

 

"Wherever you went, you left disaster and disappointment. Even in the beginning. when you worked for the Maln." It was just a guess, but apparently an accurate one.

 

 

Clarkham's eyes narrowed and his hands clenched into fists on the table top.

 

 

"You were the person from Porlock, weren't you?" Michael continued. "The Maln sent you to interrupt Coleridge. You did your job, but afterward you began to wonder if a Breed could serve Sidhe interests and his own at the same time. And you wondered what Coleridge would have written if you hadn't interrupted."

 

 

Clarkham rose to his feet.

 

 

"Years later, when you had developed your own magic, you tried to get Emma Livry to dance a song for you. You must have come very close then, because you drove Tarax and the Maln to bum her."

 

 

"I loved her," Clarkham said, his voice a menacing purr. Mora looked up quickly and turned away from his glance.

 

 

"Who else did you touch?" Michael asked. "And how much better off would they have been if you had simply left them alone? Besides Arno, of course."

 

 

"Do you know who Waltiri was - is?" Clarkham asked.

 

 

"No," Michael said. He didn't really want to know.

 

 

"His people are birds, Michael. The Cledar. He was the one who seduced me, not the other way around. I had found a way into the Realm centuries before, but it was his music that opened a gateway through my house that I could not close. He was the one who attracted attention to me in the Realm, and brought the Sidhe down on me to destroy my house and enslave my wives. It was his kind that taught the Sidhe how to use music. and he let me believe / was the one controlling things. He was a mage, boy, the last of his people. I'll let you decide how long he has been waiting for this moment, and where he is, now. And how I have turned the tables on him, and on Tonn."

 

 

He stretched his arms, yawning to release his tension. "I suggest we stop this ridiculous talk. Time enough to discuss motivations and peccadillos when the song is completed. And I know you well enough, boy, to have complete faith in the necessity of your finishing the song. It's inside you already, isn't it? Whether my dream last night helped or not."

 

 

"It was a comic opera dream," Michael said. "Do you think that was what Coleridge was trying to say?"

 

 

Biri came through the patio doors with a tray of glasses and a clay pitcher dripping with condensation. Clarkham frowned and waved the pitcher away. "I have it on authority," Clarkham said. "I have always known the shape of this song, but not its fine details."

 

 

"Perhaps the song's secret lies in how its vessels transform it."

 

 

"Now you're becoming obscure," Clarkham said, taking his seat again.

 

 

"What was your dream?" Nikolai asked.

 

 

"I was in the original pleasure dome. I dreamed of Mora playing, singing. I was a poet - a wild, untamed poet, living in die forests around the palace. Mora was in the emperor's service. She was loved by the court astrologer, a magician - and I loved her, too. We would meet in the cedars. The astrologer became jealous. He advised Kubla to send his fleet to invade Japan, the Eight Islands. And he arranged for press gangs to kidnap the wild poet and send him with the fleet as a galley slave."

 

 

Nikolai listened, enthralled. Mora folded her hands on the table top. Biri had set the tray down and was pouring a glass. "And then?" Nikolai asked.

 

 

"Then the astrologer planned his marriage to the Abyssinian maid, knowing the fleet would be sent to the bottom of the sea, and his rival with it. A great wind rose and destroyed the emperor's ships, just as the astrologer had forseen, and all aboard drowned. But the young poet's will was so strong he could not be kept away, even in death. He returned to haunt the palace."

 

 

"That's what Coleridge was going to write?" Nikolai asked.

 

 

"Nobody knows what he was going to write," Michael said. "Why do you need us at all?" he asked Clarkham. "Why not just complete the song yourself?"

 

 

"The Isomage is well aware that form is crucial in a song of power," Biri said. "It takes a poet to give it form."

 

 

"Indeed," Clarkham said.

 

 

"And you think I can equal Coleridge?"

 

 

Clarkham considered, then shook his head, no. "You haven't his lyric ability, boy. But you can still give it form. You can still finish the song."

 

 

"Then I choose not to," Michael said with great difficulty. "You don't deserve the power. You abandoned your wives, and you abandoned Emma Livry. How many others did you hurt? Arno simply gave you what you deserved - some of your own medicine."

 

 

"The poor, sad German," Mora said, eyes downcast.

 

 

"I was not responsible for Mahler," Clarkham said without looking at her. "Or for his child. That was not my work at all." he smiled at Michael, abruptly calm and friendly. "I've been through a great deal, my boy. I must not be stopped now."

 

 

'Then go on without me. You fed me the dream. Give it form. If I can't equal Coleridge, perhaps you can."

 

 

"I'm not a poet."

 

 

"No!" Michael shouted. "You're a parasite. You want power you don't deserve."

 

 

"At the very least, I'm a symbiote," Clarkham said. "I interact, inspire. You've been too influenced by Tonn, I suspect, to fully understand my relationship with artists."

 

 

"Tonn said poets would rule again someday. I will not allow you to rule."

 

 

Clarkham inhaled deeply and let his breath out through his teeth with a faint whistle. "Commendable courage. And stupidity." He pointed to Nikolai. "Look at him."

 

 

The corpse in Nikolai's chair was a mass of finely shredded skin and muscle. Blood pooled under the chair. Clarkham raised his finger and Nikolai was restored. "I wouldn't have to be so immature," Clarkham said, "if I were dealing with a worthy opponent. But I'm not. So we'll get our preliminaries out of the way. Produce the final portion of the song, or Nikolai will become what you just saw. But not now. Our emotions have been engaged. There must be time to reflect, prepare."

 

 

"I don't need time," Michael said. He had given Clarkham his last chance, and the homage had passed it by with a threat. "I can write it down now."

 

 

"I insist," Clarkham said.

 

 

Mora contemplated the tree roses in the garden, her face impassive. Nikolai simply looked as he had the night before, out of his depth and bewildered. He hadn't felt a thing.

 

 

"Let Mora give you and your friend a tour. There's much to see here. The pleasure dome was quite a remarkable pattern, and I've gone to a lot of trouble to recreate it. It would be a pity if the object of my efforts were to plunge ahead without full benefit of such labor." His smile was almost sweet. "We'll conclude our little dance later. It's a lovely day. Off with you." He lightly fanned a hand in Mora's direction and left the table.

 

 

"You must not underestimate him," Mora said as she led Michael and Nikolai across the marble and ice floor. "The Isomage is a very powerful sorcerer."

 

 

"I'm sure he is," Michael said.

 

 

She turned and regarded him with a pained expression.

 

 

"Then why do you anger him?"

 

 

"Because for months now, I thought he was the one who would show me the way home and help the humans in the Realm. Now it's obvious he just wants power. He wants to be another Adonna."

 

 

Mora shook her head slowly, almost pityingly, her large eyes steady on Michael's face. "No one comprehends the whole. That is what the Isomage has said, and he must be correct. There is always mystery and surprise."

 

 

"Besides, he won't harm me until I've given him what he wants. And"- Michael felt the hornets hum within-"I don't care anymore. I'm ready to give it to him. So let's tour and get it over with."

 

 

Mora cocked her head to one side. "You are saying that a poet from Earth, given a chance to tour Xanadu from end to end, is not even interested?"

 

 

This bothered Michael. The opportunity was unparalleled, certainly; but he was not sure he could be enthused by anything now. "I suppose," he said.

 

 

"Then come. We'll start at the top___"

 

 

To one side of the dome, in the middle of a neat circle of cedars, was a black marble staircase leading down into the hill. Mora removed a lantern from a brass plate on the wall and preceded them down the steps. Nikolai followed her closely, and Michael trailed a few steps behind.

 

 

"How do you serve Clarkham?" Michael asked her.

 

 

"As he wishes me to," she answered, barely audible over the whistle of the wind in the shaft.

 

 

"And how is that?" Michael pursued, aware he was touching sensitive areas.

 

 

"When the Isomage came here, there was nothing but sea. The Maln had ceded it to him in the Pact. He was bitter and exhausted. He had nothing. He had lost everyone he loved; there was only Harka and Shahpur, and they were of little use to him then. He had his power, but no."

 

 

She held her hand up in the air and Michael felt her probe him for the right word.

 

 

"Inspiration?" he suggested.

 

 

"Yes. I also was lost, cast out because I had loved a human. I wandered by the sea, and the Isomage took me in. He was no longer alone, and his strength to imagine returned. That was when he started on the pleasure dome."

 

 

"How did the Isomage create all this?" Nikolai asked as they descended into darkness and cold.

 

 

"He did not," Mora answered, her voice echoing. "The song already has a variety of forms. He simply took the song as it existed and let it shape the Realm within his territories."

 

 

Michael felt the walls with one spread hand; they were ice veined with rock now, and very small veins of rock at that. Ahead was a roaring grumble. The steps vibrated in rhythm with the rise and fall of the grumble.

 

 

"The Realm is built on ice," Mora said, "but that ice does not begin for miles yet. This is ice required by the song, cold in the midst of dark. It melts to form the river. And the river-"

 

 

They turned a comer and cold blue-green light fell on them. Moisture dripped from smooth slick walls of ice. Rivulets gathered in gutters to each side of the stairway. "The river empties into the sea," Mora said. "It waters the grounds first, so that ice leads to life - cold to warmth. That, too, is part of the song. Some things are not mentioned in any manifestation of the song." She stopped and pointed. Deep in the ice were twisted, elongated fish with the heads of cats and deer. Michael looked closer and saw they were not real, but illusions created by fine cracks; looking again, he saw not fish but frozen reeds capped with eyes. "The song must always be more than its singer can convey."

 

 

The steps ended as the floor leveled and they walked directly on ice. Nikolai stumbled in a narrow crack and Michael grabbed his arm. "Not safe for tourists!" the Russian commented wryly.

 

 

The ice around them brightened to a pale blue-green, more alive than the dead green of thick glass. Mora led them on to an expansion in the tunnel. "Come," she said, beckoning toward a broad ice bridge.

 

 

Above, vaults of ice and marble formed curious traceries, vegetal fans of mineral mixed with the translucent water. Below, the accumulated melt careened from the right and cascaded to the left. The cavern bearing the melt was easily five hundred yards across. The chunks of ice seen from afar now took on more meaningful proportion; they were the size of houses, even mansions. And not all the chunks were ice. As Coleridge had described, pieces of rock were mixed in the tumult. The ice bridge - twisted and doubled-back, obviously natural yet too convenient - took the blows of the rushing bergs and boulders without a shudder.

 

 

They walked along the span, Nikolai reluctantly, afraid of slipping off the rounded surface. The air smelled of cold and mist and was filled with noise: high-pitched grinds and squeals, pounding spray, a deep and momentous impression of motion.

 

 

They crossed the bridge and passed into a narrow, low-roofed tunnel, once more as much rock as ice.

 

 

Near the exit, rock predominated. They emerged into the dim overgrown light of a deep wedge in the hill - Coleridge's "romantic chasm." Deeper still, a hundred yards below, where they stood on an unfenced ledge, the melt fountained, carrying its ice and rocks in a frothing torrent. Trees formed a canopy over the ledge, glistening with drops of spray. Nikolai shivered.

 

 

The ledge took them to the rim of the chasm, overlooking the gardens. The sinuous river flowed like sluggish bronze beneath the warm sky. On the opposite side of the chasm were the steps they had climbed to reach the dome on their arrival. Michael stared down at the base of the falls and the bobbing ice in the deep blue pool there.

 

 

"Now we descend to the gardens," Mora said. Michael resisted her hand on his arm.

 

 

"We're just wasting time," he said.

 

 

"Please," she said.

 

 

"Either I do what I was brought here to do, or I leave - now," Michael said sternly. Mora backed away and folded her arms across her breasts. Nikolai stood awkwardly to one side, thumbs hooked in his belt.

 

 

"Why do you wish to hurry things?" Mora asked. "There is always time."

 

 

Michael looked down the slanting path and saw Harka and Shahpur seated on flanking boulders. There was obviously no chance of escape. "Lead on, then," he said.

 

 

The empty Sidhe and the white-wrapped human accompanied them without comment on the rest of the tour. Michael paid little attention to the gorgeous landscaping, the mazes of perfect and ever-blooming flower gardens, die delicate, jewel-like Sidhe animals. In the early afternoon, Nikolai professed to being tired and hungry, and they made their way up the opposite side of the chasm and returned to the soapstone gate. Harka, Michael and Shahpur hung back a bit before entering the silken tent. At Harka's signal, Michael stopped. Shahpur approached and nodded his shrouded head at the Sidhe.

 

 

"We think it wise to warn you," Shahpur said to Michael. "The Isomage will not accept much more defiance."

 

 

Harka sighed. "He has been here a long time, with little to do, and not all of his thinking is clear. He still has great bitterness."

 

 

"He is powerful," Shahpur said. "He will do you great harm."

 

 

"You know that we are different," Harka said. "I have not always served the Isomage in ways that pleased him. He punished me."

 

 

"And you still serve him?"

 

 

"We have no choice. Now, we warn you only because he thinks you could learn from us. We tell you only because he wills it. I fled from the Maln with Clarkham; I was his partner. We quarreled, and he gained the upper hand. He poured my self from me like wine from a jug. I have only the hollowness. Shahpur."

 

 

"Once, the Isomage was filled with hatred and it bred a disease in his brain like worms in rotten meat," Shahpur said. "It made him weaker, so he cast a shadow. But the shadow was too strong to simply fade away. He had to cast the shadow onto someone. The Isomage chose me. I carry his past foulness."

 

 

"He has treated us this way," Harka said, "and yet we have never done him great wrong. If you defy him, refuse him what he most desires, he will consider that a very great wrong indeed. Even empty, I shudder to think what he will do to you, to your companion."

 

 

"Then I won't defy him," Michael said. "I'll give him just what he wants."

 

 

"What did the humans and the Sidhe lose when they separated?" Clarkham asked after they had finished the early dinner. Bek and Tik cleared away the plates as Mora brought out a tray of brandy snifters. "One lost magic, and the other lost a sense of direction. Bring them together again - that's inevitable - and both will benefit. Ah, but how to bring them together smoothly? Who understands both Sidhe and humans?" Clarkham lifted his snifter and urged Michael to do the same. "Not Tonn. Not an old, decrepit mage losing control of a universe he himself made. Not Waltiri. Not Tarax, a hard and resolute Sidhe with no sympathy for the old enemies. Only a Breed."

 

 

The brandy was obviously one of Clarkham's evening rituals. Michael sipped the smooth but potent fluid. "How?" he asked.

 

 

"How would I unite them?"

 

 

Michael nodded.

 

 

"Very carefully. Which do I add first, the water or the acid? An old alchemical problem-"

 

 

"Always add acid to water," Michael said, recalling Mrs. Perry's chemistry classes.

 

 

"Yes. Now I would say the Sidhe are acid, and the humans are water. Adding humans here hasn't done any good. The Sidhe have simply spit them out, isolated them. But take a few Sidhe and return them to the Earth. perhaps the results will be better."

 

 

"We're doing well enough on our own," Michael said, disputing his own words before they were out. "We don't need Sidhe."

 

 

"The Earth is a mess, Michael. No one can see into the minds of others, and that makes for a nasty and selfish people. What wonders you make are hard and dangerous wonders, without intrinsic poetry. You fight battles a Sidhe would not even have to acknowledge - against disease, natural disaster, your own confusion."

 

 

"And you want to be in control of the mixing?"

 

 

Clarkham nodded. "Yes. Can you think of another Breed so qualified, with so many. experiences under his belt?"

 

 

Michael shook his head. "You would be the wise one, the benevolent master."

 

 

Mora stood behind Clarkham, her hands on his shoulders. Clarkham covered one hand with his own. "As selfish as any."

 

 

Michael's eyes went to Harka, lingering at the edge of the patio.

 

 

"It wouldn't be an easy job. Frustrating. Infuriating," Michael suggested.

 

 

The early evening light and the glow from the paper lanterns reflected gaily in the snifters and cast a mellow subdued air across the patio.

 

 

Clarkham leaned forward and spread his hands on the cleared table. Between his hands appeared an image - the Earth, as immediate and real as ever Michael had seen it, minutely detailed. "All that would be required is to lay a song over it. with the cooperation of humans and Sidhe, guided by the appropriate leader - myself - and the misery would vanish. The world would return to the paradise it had once been - - -"

 

 

"Amhara," Mora whispered, her face warming to cherry-wood brown.

 

 

The globe between his hands rushed at Michael. Michael did not flinch. The image expanded to fill his vision, and he seemed to pass through clouds, over wine-colored seas, over broad white beaches and jungles and sharp, jagged mountains. He could smell the air, clean and somehow exuberant, filled with pleasure and challenge. The image vanished like a bubble but the impression lingered.

 

 

"Youth," Clarkham said. "A young world again, rid of the guilt, wiped of the sin and the hatred."

 

 

"With you in command," Michael reiterated. At that moment, he launched his heretofore withheld probe. Clarkham expertly blocked all but the foremost barb. That portion returned to Michael a brief and horrifying impression of the inner Clarkham - and a realization.

 

 

Use.

 

 

Foulness, hatred, almost as repugnant and intense as that within Shahpur. How often had Clarkham shed his darkest shadow? How often had his inner foulness regenerated? He carried a malignancy that could not be eradicated, only reduced, to grow anew.

 

 

Shahpur was human; an unprotected soul is flypaper for a cast-off shadow, especially in the Realm.

 

 

When Michael had given Clarkham what he wanted, Clark-ham would give him what he could no longer comfortably contain. A spiritual excretion. How could he counter that?

 

 

And why should I judge him so harshly? Isn't there a darkness and foulness within me?

 

 

Clarkham did not react to the probe. "I will lead. Yes," he said. Only a few seconds had passed. "Who else would you suggest?"

 

 

"No one," Michael said.

 

 

"Then let us put aside our quarrels. You have the key to help bring paradise to Earth, to help me re-unite peoples separated for much too long. Let's cooperate. Our ends are the same." Clarkham gestured for Mora to bring out the pen and paper. She returned to the house and came back with a writing tray, setting it before Michael.

 

 

"And something special to drink," Clarkham ordered.

 

 

Michael reached for the two remaining sheets of paper and began to write. The fountain pen lay its ink in smooth thick lines across the fine linen-grain surface.

 

 

The triple circles round him tighten While from Avernus rise to frighten The ghosts of voyagers dead while wandering From edge to edge his shadow Realm.

 

 

That was just a warmup. He stared at the white paper, turning his mind away from the surroundings. It was like casting a shadow, he thought; the words inside could be drawn out, given shape, sent forth. And they would be deadly.

 

 

Again Bin brought out the clay pitcher and thick heavy glasses. He poured a translucent creamy-colored fluid and passed the portions around.

 

 

Clarkham sipped from the glass Bin gave him and toasted Michael. "The veritable milk of paradise," the Isomage said.

 

 

Weave a circle around him thrice.

 

 

The drink was milky-sweet and biting, with an alcoholic tang. All in all, it was delicious. "Kumis," Biri said. "The drink of Emperor Kubla."

 

 

The kumis began to act in Michael almost immediately. He wrote down the last two lines of Coleridge's fragment:

 

 

For he on honey-dew hath fed And drunk the milk of paradise.

 

 

And then it was upon him. It flashed and sparkled and came so fast he hardly had time to record it all. He knew he would not have another chance. He tried to catch as much as he could, and he exulted. There was no outside source for this; it came from inside, purely from himself, or rather, that self which connected him with Coleridge, with Yeats, with all the fine poets. That moment when there was nothing but the Word, and it came in perfect waves.

 

 

And so the ice, cross ages dripping, Undermines the silken palace, Falls beneath the cedars, ripping As if the years themselves with malice Seek to still great dreams by gripping The gardens, walls and golden towers, Rending from the Khan his powers.

 

 

Perhaps twenty lines passed so quickly he could not write them down. They were not essential.

 

 

As wave to wave, in storm sea floundering,

 

 

His galliots beach, unguided at the helm.

 

 

Thou Khan, who eats the fruit of Faerie,

 

 

Who hastes to leave when bid to tarry,

 

 

Listen to the sweet soft critic,

 

 

That dusk-wrapped maid on sweet strings playing,

 

 

"Palace, towers and gardens," saying,

 

 

"Cannot save your soul from pity

 

 

Nor build from song a timeless city."

 

 

The Caverns roar with rising waters.

 

 

The ground trembled. Clarkham steadied himself against the table.

 

 

Drowning to the highest mountains, Flooding all the Khan's great slaughters Beneath the whirling, vaulted fountains.

 

 

There was more, much more, and it did not simply spin through his head and vanish. The song was created and completed, and Michael knew immediately it was not the Song of Power Clarkham sought. It never had been. From the very beginning, when they had commissioned Lin Piao Tai to build the palace, the element of destruction had been plain.

 

 

Coleridge's poem, and Michael's share in it, were simply decoys, traps meant to snare and destroy those, like Clarkham, who stood in the way of the ultimate combatants. Waltiri, mage of the birds, the Cledar, had sent Michael; the Crane Women and the Ban of Hours had cooperated; Tonn and the Maln had let him pass.

 

 

Clarkham grabbed the sheets as soon as Michael stopped writing. He read them, eyes widening. "Traitor," he said "This is not-"

 

 

"It's finished. It isn't all there, but I've finished it," Michael said, suddenly exhausted. Clarkham crumpled the pages and threw them down on the table. Mora reached for the pliktera beside her chair. Clarkham turned to her, but she would not look at him. The ground shook again as Nikolai backed away from the table. From the chasm, the pulse of ice catapulting to the river bed quickened. Clarkham swiveled to face Biri, who stared at him implacably.

 

 

"You!" Clarkham said. "You're the traitor. You're still loyal to Tarax!"

 

 

"There was no disputing the boy's mission," Bin said. 'Tarax and Adonna willed it, as well as the council of Eleu. All are united against you. Even you willed it. The boy would have turned away, but you brought him here. He would have refused the song, but you forced him to write it. On your own head, Isomage."

 

 

Clarkham's face darkened with rage. His hands trembled, waiting to spill their power.

 

 

"Better leave," Michael whispered to Nikolai. The Russian didn't need any more encouragement. He leaped over the wall, dodged through the rose garden and vaulted the fence to the icy marble floor. Fine cracks shot across the marble surface behind him, throwing chips of stone into the air as the ground shuddered. Michael reached down to retrieve the pages. He flattened them out and held them behind his back.

 

 

"What shall I do with you all?" Clarkham asked. More than ever now, Michael pitied him - and feared him.

 

 

Bin took Mora's hand. They walked away from the Isomage, down the brick steps to the lawn. The light passing through the silken dome was reddening and the fabric rippled under the rough touch of a new wind.

 

 

Clarkham faced Michael alone on the patio. "Get out!" he cried. The black marble screamed and separated along the ice veins. The lawn rippled and showed gashes of soil. The roses shook. Most of the staked trees had turned to glass; the blossoms shattered and cast their fragments on the dirt.

 

 

"GET OUT!"

 

 

Michael turned his back on the Isomage, neckhair prickling. He fully expected to have his flesh riven from his bones, but Clarkham was concentrating all his power on keeping the palace together.

 

 

One of the curved supporting poles snapped with the report of a gunshot. The pole fell and tore out a length of silk. The plaster and brick walls of Clarkham's home split. Chunks slipped away and crumbled on impact. The house's timbers groaned in agony.

 

 

As Michael crossed the lawn, barely able to keep his balance, he heard Clarkham shout his name. He looked back and saw the Isomage standing spread-legged on two separated pieces of the patio. The Breed's hair flew out from his head. His hands and arms crackled with energy.

 

 

He held up a wickedly glowing finger.

 

 

"You may not go!" he shouted over the uproar.

 

 

Coils of viscous light oozed from his fingers and expanded above the rose garden and lawn. They sank around Michael, forming a serpentine net of bright green strands.

 

 

Michael felt his eyes grow warm, then hot. The shadow he cast was a dark, enveloping thing, alone and indescribably nasty. He sprung away from the shadow, passed through the web and leaped to the broken marble, his own hair charged with power.

 

 

And all should cry, beware,beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

 

 

The shadow contained all of Bin's Sidhe discipline, all of the poisonous, virulently inhumane nonsense about aloneness and self-mastery through isolation. It was the philosophy of a discouraged, dying race and it had served its purpose - it had filled Michael with the basic will to destroy. Now he had no use for it - except as a defense.

 

 

Clarkham leaped to a more stable position and drew in the green web. The shadow struggled, made a sound like crushing rock and exploded. Darkness scattered the web and dissipated under the fiery dome light.

 

 

Clarkham shouted in a language Michael had never heard before, then extruded another web, this one intensely blue.

 

 

Michael turned his face away and held up the poem. The lines of ink hissed and crackled. The words shot out in lances of fire over Clarkham's head, setting the house aflame. In seconds, the rear wall and tile roof became a furnace of quicklime, wood and clay. The glass in the french doors exploded and the frames shrunk like blackened matchsticks. Glowing embers wafted up in the rising heat and ignited the silken tent.

 

 

"My work, my work!"

 

 

Michael looked down and saw Clarkham running toward the house. The flames beat him back, but he unrolled a sheet of ice from nothingness and plunged inside. From the corners of the pavilion, Shahpur and Harka ran to help their master. Shahpur's wrappings issued trails of smoke.

 

 

Strains of music rose from the vibrations of the hill and palace. Michael ran to escape the falling shreds of burning tent. Only when he was through the soapstone gate did he realize he must be hearing the original Infinity Concerto, as it had sounded decades before.

 

 

Mora and Bin waited for him on the lawn beyond the dome's foundation. Nikolai struggled to stand upright a few yards behind them. Biri led the way down the side of the chasm, away from the hill and the fire spreading from the dome to the orchards and cedar forests. In their flight, they passed Bek, Tik and Dour, who seemed to melt into the smoking trees.

 

 

They didn't stop until they stood by the granite guard near the gate of the outermost wall. Biri still held Mora's hand. Her face was a mask of grief and remorse.

 

 

Nikolai danced from foot to foot, watching the conflagration. "Jesus, Jesus! Look what you've done! I have never seen anything like that! What in hell are you, Michael?"

 

 

Michael looked at the papers still clutched in his hands. All the writing had been neatly burned out, line by line, leaving brown-edged shreds held together by margins.

 

 

The hill sagged. The conflagration was now a pillar of smoke and fire reaching up to smudge the sky.

 

 

"That dream is ended," Biri said, lifting the ruined pages from Michael's hand and scattering them over the grass. "You are free to go now."

 

 

"Go where?"

 

 

"Home."

 

 

"What happens to everybody else? To the humans?"

 

 

"That is Adonna's concern. You have served your purpose. You are spent." Biri regarded him with contempt. "You threw off Sidhe discipline. In our eyes, you are nothing now."

 

 

Do not reveal yourself. He is merely a wheel, not an engine.

 

 

Michael recognized the voice now; it was Waltiri. He felt the power still residing in his mind, and smiled at Biri. He did not need to dispute the Sidhe.

 

 

The hill was now level with the plain. Water flooded from its perimeter in high-vaulting fountains, spreading to form a lake. Ice bobbed lazily in the water. At the center of the lake, a whirlpool formed, its horrible sucking sound audible even at the outer wall. Michael felt a tug in the center of his stomach.

 

 

"Clarkham made one mistake," Biri said as they watched the lake vanish. "He trusted a Sidhe." The words struck Mora deeply. She backed away from him and threw down his hand.

 

 

"Nikolai," Michael said. "Will you be all right?"

 

 

"I am fine," Nikolai said. "Why?"

 

 

"Something's happening."

 

 

"Your gateway is falling through the Realm," Bin said. "Down to the void. Go home, man-child."

 

 

"Michael! Wait!"

 

 

Nikolai lunged for him, but a thread pulled tight - the long thread of his existence in the Realm. The grass, scraps of paper, walls, Bin and Mora, Nikolai, all took off around him in a violent spin. He arced high above the Realm and was drawn with incomprehensible speed over the river, grasslands and forests -

 

 

Cometing through the Irall, Inyas Trai, across the barren mound of the Crane Women and through the flat, burned village of Euterpe -

 

 

Through Lamia's house, where the huge woman lingered in shadow, discarded by all now that her work was done -

 

 

Across the ruined field to the softly flickering gateway -

 

 

Down the alley, past the slumped figure of the guardian sitting under the trellis -

 

 

And into a warm, dark early fall breeze.

 

 

Filled with the sound of leaves scattering over pavement, the smells of fresh-mowed grass and eucalyptus, the sensation of complex and ever-changing solidity.

 

 

Crickets.

 

 

And in the distance, a motorcycle.

 

 

Chapter Forty-Four

 

 

He stood beneath the moon-colored streetlight, half in the shadow of a tall, brown-leafed maple. Four houses down and on the opposite side of the street was the white plaster home of David Clarkham. It had been deserted for forty years and its lawns were overgrown; its hedges thrust uncontrolled branches in all directions; its walls were cracked and spotted with mud. There were no curtains in the front windows. The FOR SALE sign on the front lawn leaned away from the house, shunning it.

 

 

The house was empty.

 

 

Michael pulled the hair back from his eyes and felt the growth of silky beard on his cheeks. He looked down at the sweater and shirt and slacks that Clarkham had given him to wear.

 

 

In the lapel of the shirt was the glass rose.

 

 

He removed it and smelled it. The scent was gone.

 

 

Chapter Forty-Five

 

 

Michael sat across from his parents in the living room, his discomfort growing with the silence. His mother had stopped weeping momentarily, and his father looked down at the carpet with a face full of pain and relief, the end of grief and the beginning of helpless anger. "Five years is a long time, son," he said. "The least you could have done-"

 

 

"There was no way. It was impossible." How could he tell them what had happened? Not even the glass rose would convince them. And five years! It seemed less than five months.

 

 

"You've changed," his father said. "You've grown a lot. You can't expect us to just.accept. We grieved for you, Michael. We were sure you were dead."

 

 

"Father-"

 

 

His father held up a hand. "It will take time. Wherever you were, whatever you were doing. It will take time. We." Tears were in his eyes now. "We've kept your room. The furniture, the books."

 

 

"I knew if you were alive, you'd come back," his mother said, brushing strands of red hair from her eyes.

 

 

"Did you ever talk to Golda Waltiri?"

 

 

"She died a few months after you. went away," his mother said. "She sent a letter for you, and there's a letter from some lawyers." She looked down at the carpet. "Such a long time, Michael."

 

 

"I know," he said, his own eyes filling now at the thought of their pain. He got up from the chair and sat between them on the couch, putting his arms around them both, and together they hugged and cried and tried to push away the strange time, the long time apart.

 

 

After dinner, after hours of catching up on news and telling his folks repeatedly that there was no way he could describe what had happened - not yet, not without more proof - he took the stairs to his room and stood amid the books and prints and the writing table he had now completely grown out of,

 

 

He opened the letter from Golda and the papers from the lawyers of Waltiri's estate and lay back on the pillow. Golda's handwriting was elegant, old-world, clear, spread with conservative margins across green-lined airmail paper.

 

 

Dear Michael,

 

 

I have not told your parents, because I know so little myself. Arno - mysterious husband! I hardly know how to describe my life with him, wonderful as it has been - Arno requested that our estate be placed in your care, upon my joining him (dare I hope that? Or is something more powerful at work here?),* which I believe will be soon, for I have been under great strain. Do not feel bad, Michael, but much of this strain has come from withholding certain facts from your dear parents, who have been so kind to me. But what can we tell them - that you have followed my husband's suggestions - and, despite his last words, perhaps even his wishes? I do not know where you have gone, and I am not even certain you will return, though Arno, apparently, was. I am not so old that I may be excused the confusion I feel, but excuse me, dear Michael, for I do feel it. That, and the sadness, the sensation of being in circumstances for which I am totally inadequate either in knowledge or mental capacity. Perhaps, on your return, you will know why Arno has made this request, and what you should do with our resources, which are not small. You will also control the rights to Arno's work. There are no other specific requests, and all of these will be detailed in letters from our lawyers. Dear boy. Turn a glass down for us - one glass only, since Arno never drank wine, and told me to drink for him when celebrations were on - when you have safely returned and your loved ones rejoice. As all our people have said for centuries, dear Michael; May there come a time when all shall share their stories, and all will be unveiled, and we may revel in the cleverness and the beauty of the tales thus told. So clumsy, this note, for a young poet to read!

 

 

He folded the letter and put it into its envelope, then removed the legal instructions and skimmed them. He would be financially secure; his duties would be to organize the Waltiri papers and provide for their publication, and oversee the publications currently in progress; he could live in the Waltiri home if he so wished.

 

 

The letters slid down his chest as he sat up and folded his strong brown arms around his blanketed knees. Of all things now, he wished he could speak with Golda, have her help him with his parents, perhaps put all their minds to rest.

 

 

If it would have done Golda any good to know - as much as Michael knew - what Arno Waltiri was, and that he was not dead. Not in any human sense.

 

 

And what about the humans in the Realm? Helena, and the others? Adonna - Tonn - had said all would be well, once Clarkham was removed. Michael simply could not believe that, but there was nothing he could do. Not here, not now.

 

 

He went to the bathroom to wash his face. Steam rose from the basin of hot water, curling around his face. He breathed deeply, drawing the steam into his lungs to clear away the sorrow and stress. He looked up through the steam into the mirror.

 

 

The position - the angle - wasn't quite right. Familiar, but.

 

 

Michael presented a three-quarters view. The realization was like a cold razor sliding along the glass. He stared at the first face of Hebal Mish, the first visage sculpted from clouds of snow. He had changed so much he hadn't even recognized himself.

 

 

At first he was frightened. He stood in the hall outside the bathroom, then went to his room and flung open the window to breathe fresh air.

 

 

It wasn't over. It would never be over; and he was more involved in it than ever.

 

 

In the depths of the night, a bird began to sing.

 

 

Notes and Acknowledgments

 

 

My special thanks to those who helped with this novel: to Terri Windling who revived it; to Poul and Karen Anderson, exacting readers; to Jim Turner, Ray Feist and David Brin for critiques and encouragements; and of course to Astrid, who read it endlessly in its various printouts. My debts of inspiration are many - portions of this book go back thirteen years - but Jorge Luis Borges is at the top of the list, and once again, Poul.

 

 

The book, of course, is not finished. This is the first half. The second half, The Serpent Mage, will conclude the tale.

 

 

The language spoken by the Sidhe is not completely artificial. Many readers may recognize Indo-European roots and borrowings from various extant languages; most will likely not recognize that other words are derived from some very obscure Irish cants. If you're curious to find out more, please refer to a marvelous book by Robert A. Stewart Macalister, The Secret Languages of Ireland, first published in 1937 by the Cambridge University Press. It's still in print from Armorica Book Com-pany/Philo Press. A good university or public library should also have it. Lovers of languages - or dabblers, such as myself - will find it fascinating.

 

 

Appendix

 

 

The Film Scores of Arno Waltiri (Highlights)

 

 

Ashenden

 

 

Queen of the Yellow River

 

 

Dead Sun

 

 

Sea Scorpion

 

 

Warbirds of Mindanao

 

 

Ace Squadron

 

 

Yellowtail

 

 

Northanger Abbey

 

 

Descartes, a.k.a. The King's Genius

 

 

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

 

 

Some Kind of Love

 

 

The Man Who Would Be King

 

 

Call It Sleep

 

 

THE SERPENT MAGE

 

 

The End