Iron Chamber of Memory

  “Will you claim that the mists clouded your vision, forgetfulness fogged your mind, and so you did not know how dire the penalties would be? But you did not forget right and wrong, for these are the same in all worlds. You will never see the Grail your father saw now!”

  He released her wrist and drew his sword, which blazed like thirty torches with his wrath. She saw the death in his eyes and screamed in unfeigned panic. A small, quiet voice in his heart told him not to strike. He seized her by the hair, which was short, but still long enough to take in hand, and cut off a great hank of hair on her left side, from bangs to ear, leaving stubble.

  “Let that be a sign of your shame,” he said, “Even when you depart this place, and the comfort of forgetfulness is around you, you will still be half-shorn. Half-bald, and today is the wedding day. You will need to hurry to find a wig or an opaque wedding veil!”

  “I have no need to leave this chamber, ever!” she said, flying up out of his reach. Then she saw her reflection in the silver walls, and she clutched her marred hair with both hands, and began caterwauling and weeping piteously, in woe for her offended vanity.

  “Marriage is a sacrament,” Lanval answered. “It will give you the right to enter these grounds, not as thief, but as mistress. That is what you creatures are seeking, isn’t it? The dark powers need the sons of light to grant them lawfulness, honor, and praise. To come here again as the bride and mistress, you will not miss your wedding.”

  Her eyes were full of hate. “Then I will host a full house of guests. More and more of us are coming, and more, summoned by the Darkest Master. Once you step away, you both will forget that the two of you are nothing more than a bridegroom and his best man!”

  Lanval gazed levelly at her lovely, malice-filled eyes, forcing himself to acknowledge what his lady love had become, what she had ever been. It was not this creature that he loved, but a pure fabrication, a fiction. He was like a man who had fallen in love with a character played by an actress played in a movie or a television show.

  Their love was nothing. It was pure fantasy. Invention, if not delusion.

  And yet, his memory recalled to him in vivid clarity, the moment when he grabbed her in front of Wrongerwood House, and she had gazed up at him, the unguarded anguish of her heart visible for an instant in her eyes.

  It had been a trick, of course, another fancy of his mist-clouded mind.

  And yet, a small voice whispered very softly to him that in this unguarded moment, he had seen the truth, that only love, true love, could reach so from one soul to another.

  He dismissed the lying voice as the faint remnants of his Rose Crystal self.

  Mandragora called Lanval over, and then, unexpectedly, tossed the unstoppered flask at Lorelei. She caught it more by reflex than design.

  Something small and jangling dropped from between her breasts when that happened. Lanval saw it was the keyring of the seven keys. It was yet another impossible thing, for she had been naked except for her diamond pendant this whole time, and could not have been hiding the keyring in her hand during all these struggles and commotions.

  And yet, the keyring had fallen from her neck. He saw the diamond of her necklace held within it tiny images of the shoes and clothing she had discarded, and a scrap of her dress, including the pocket where perhaps the keys had been held, was sliding back into the surface of the diamond, shrinking and vanishing.

  The little dove flew up and snatched the keyring out of midair, and, laboring mightily, managed to bring it through the air to fall at Lanval’s feet.

  To Lanval, Mandragora said, “Sir Knight, take the wand from my hand, and hold it touching the floor like so. By my Art, I have made it so the winds cannot harm us until they snatch that wand from your hand. Do not let it from your grasp!”

  Lanval snatched up the keys, and then took the wand in hand, and leaned on it. Lorelei above him, seeing this, upended the flask upon him and two dark tornadoes flew out.

  The winds tore at Lanval, and pried at his hands, and bruised his arms, but the wand seemed somehow to be as sturdy as an iron pillar gripping the core of the world, so not only was the wand not snatched from his hands, it did not move an inch. Lightning and black fire fell around him, but, as Mandragora had promised, it did not harm him while he held the wand.

  Mandragora took out a little velvet box from his pocket, and held it up. It was the wedding ring for tomorrow’s ceremony. With no ado, he threw it into the little lotus pool. As had happened with the dragon, the mirrored silver bottom of the pool seemed not to be a bottom, to be much farther away than could be accounted for, and so the ring, too sank out of sight.

  Lorelei drew a pin from her hair, and transformed it into a knife. She swooped toward Mandragora, but now the little white dove flew up and flapped its small and gentle wings in her face. She screamed in horror and panic, and flapped her vast black wings and flew up and away. The dove chased her to the top of one of the broken pillars, where the two female djinn still groaned and cursed.

  Mandragora said to Lanval, “Henry, look in that little mirror you took from my pocket. Gaze into your own eyes until you recognize yourself. “By my Art, I place in your mind the suggestion that we have both been through an uproarious bachelor’s party, during which I lost both of the wedding rings, his and hers, and that I dare not go to my own wedding without having them replaced. My best man and I will go to the Brising Brothers in the middle of the night, where we will pound on the doors until they let us in.”

  Henwas Lanval said, “What does this mean?”

  “It means there are enchantments beneath enchantments and worlds within worlds here, and many things long prepared against this day. Dvalin and Grer will make a fine and fair ring for her hand tempered in the tears of widows, and me for my wedding band will bestow the Ring of Youth to replace what I have lost. And this will cure any poisons spewed by the dragon and keep the living waters of this fountain hale and pure.”

  Lanval gritted his teeth, because the wind still roared and tore at his hands and fingers. Then, of a sudden, the two dark clouds were drawn up out of the chamber into the dome. Lorelei drew the two djinn into the brass flask she held, covered the mouth with a cork of lead, and impressed the seal into the lead with the ring she wore.

  Lanval straightened up, limbs shaking and ears ringing. “And what does that mean?”

  Mandragora said softly, “It means Mistress Lorelei has just realized that if the djinn slay the bridegroom, there will be no wedding this afternoon, and she will not be mistress of this house; and even more to the point, if she does not prevent them from blowing down the house or drowning all of Sark in tidal waves, there will be no house for her to be mistress of.”

  Lanval looked up at where Lorelei cowered atop the pillar, held at bay by the tiny flapping wings of the dove, and its angry little cooing-calls.

  He said, “Now what?”

  Mandragora said, “Now we leave.”

  “We leave!”

  “We have to take the morning ferry to St. Ouen to beg a ring from the Brisings, in order to catch the evening ferry in time to return for the wedding.”

  Lanval said, “You cannot be going through with the wedding?”

  Mandragora said, “Even if I vowed to break the engagement, my vow would be forgotten once I breathed the airs of the outer world, and I would be foresworn. We would not be allowed to leave this chamber alive if the Dark Prince and his thralls were not convinced you and I were needed for the wedding. Do you think the Light is all-powerful in the world of men, or the world of elves?”

  “The Light is omnipotent in all places!”

  “Including the places in your heart?”

  Lanval was silent, and his cheeks were hot with shame.

  Mandragora said, “We who serve the light are weak, and half our service is treason. That is why darkness triumphs, despite how stupid and self-destructive it is. Come! For an hour or two let us walk one last time in the fields the mortals know, in the world where the su
n shines by day. We will forget our hard service, our treasons great and small, and the mocking laughter of our foes. It is the compassion of heaven that allows us this respite.”

  Henry and Mandrake emerged into the Rose Crystal Chamber a moment later, and Hal and Manfred a moment after that emerged from it, laughing over the misunderstanding, already forgotten, that had ended when Manfred fell and cut his arm painfully on the fire irons. Then both men stopped and looked back at the door, wondering what might be keeping Laurel so long.

  At that moment Manfred put his hand in his pocket and a look of shock came over his face. For, as he informed an astonished Hall, he had somehow lost the wedding ring!

  14. The Consummation of the Wedding

  A Second Silver Room

  The Silver Lotus Chamber in the back of the jewelry shop of the Brising Brothers was smaller, an eight-sided chamber with a pool in the middle, from which only a single pillar rose, holding a captive ifrit at the apex of a smaller dome in a lantern of iron. There were chairs here and a workbench, and a little ways down a silver corridor, a forge and anvil as well. The chairs were a trifle too small for both men.

  Mandragora had visited the emergency room of the Island Medical Center at St Aubin, and his arm was now stitched, wrapped in antiseptic tape, and benumbed with painkillers. He listened carefully to Lanval tell of the various episodes and incidents which had happened, or apparently so, to Hal and Henry.

  “How could anyone not be insane in such a world?” Lanval asked bitterly. “We are carrying out missions for an unknown master, for reasons we know not, and whatever is gained or lost in each turn of the card is hidden from us. And my mind and soul were being influenced by that Unpitying Fair Damsel! How is any man to know right from wrong?”

  Mandragora said, “Such talk ill becomes a knight of the Table Round. When you besiege a castle, or defy an unknown knight with black and blank shield to combat, what might be gained or lost is not known. No one knows the full consequences of his acts in any world. That is why the laws are unchanged in all realms, the same in all circumstances. Without that, they could not be followed.”

  “I did not follow them in any case,” said Lanval, heavily.

  “In the mortal world there is no way to turn time backward on itself, restore and undo the many trespasses, breaches, and offenses we commit, and so there is no true escape from condemnation. We are fortunate that this is not the only world there is. In a higher world there is a magic water which washes all wrongdoing clean, and no waters of earth have that power.”

  Lanval said, “Why is this water hidden?”

  “It is not. Le Seigneurie in Sark is a great and splendid house, a fortress unvanquishable against the endless hosts of the besieging darkness, and greater far within than it seems without, even as a mortal man is. But there are other houses with memories older than those of English lore, who are bulwarks even greater against the foe, and the demons tremble when their bells ring out, or their standards fly. To us, they are quaint old haunts visited by grandmothers, but to them they are as terrible as an army with trumpets and lances.”

  Lanval said, “Nonetheless, you seem to think the evil will be victorious this day.”

  Mandragora said, “The world of men is dark and ruled by darkness. Who says otherwise is deceived. But we are not without hope of final victory, albeit the cost will be terrible. Who knows? Perhaps even the tears of that loss can be wiped away.”

  “Is there no way to escape your marriage to that witch?”

  Mandragora sighed. “As soon as I step outside, I forget that there is any reason not to marry her, and, ironically, she is no longer a witch.”

  “She seems kinky enough. I bet she has a whip and leather lingerie somewhere in her toys.”

  “Then pity her. People do not turn to such things out of idleness, no matter what some might claim, nor just for sport or seeking to startle jaded nerves. These are the heraldries of despair, born of a desire to demean and unmake the sacred joys of the marriage bed. In order for the tantric magic to gain power over you, it had to be perverse to nature, that is, outside the normal realm of human emotion.”

  Lanval was annoyed. “What does that mean?”

  “In realms where the image of Man is not sacred, and the gift of sexual ecstasy no longer is a source of divine joy, in other words, in any realm where what is hale, and whole, and right and fitting are all trampled and twisted and made abhorrent, in such a realm and there only is where the creatures of the darkness have power.”

  “Be that as it may,” said Lanval, “There is one more realm we have not yet seen.” And now he held up the last key on the ring of seven, the key whose bow was inscribed with the image of a black six-petaled flower. “As with the Rose Chamber, what occurred in the Silver-White Lotus room could not have been real.”

  “Why say you so?” said Mandragora, surprised.

  “I held a little stick no fatter than my thumb against the force of a hurricane. A tiny dove that came out of your sleeve like a magician’s trick held back one of the Unpitying Fair Ones.”

  Mandragora said, “The wise know that the things of the world seen with eyes are less than shadows on a cave wall of puppets and dolls held up against a bonfire’s light. That fire is a fair image of the sun, and those figurines are fair figures, but until we discover an exit to the cave, we will not see the truth. The wise man learns to trust his soul before he trusts his eyes, and such wisdom is not found turning the leaves of the books of scholars. That wand was a branch from the Tree of Life, whose roots run deeper than the world. While you grasped it, you could not be moved.”

  “And the dove?”

  Mandragora merely shook his head and smiled. “You have been told many times about the Comforter, and you have forgotten.”

  “How can I fight, if I see nothing aright?”

  “As all men save Adam before the Fall have fought. Blindly.”

  “Your words do not comfort me.”

  “Then seek for comfort where it is found, not in words of men! And yet you see our mission before us aright!”

  “Howso?”

  “We must enter the Silver White Lotus Chamber before the wedding, so that Lorelei will have no power to command the lion to rest and call the wards and barriers to part. The Ring of Youth has the virtue to unpoison the wellspring of the lotus dreams, and drive the dracoule, the little dragon, to the surface. But even your blade will not then prevail to drive the Dark Prince from the chamber. We must find the final door, and open it. There is no victory for us in the silver world nor the red, and it either must be in that final, most inner chamber, or none at all.”

  “And if there is no victory at all?”

  “Must you ask? Then the Dark Prince poisons the dreaming fountains of the world, and all men see the naked face of evil wrapped around the earth, too vast for earth or sea to hold, and either they go mad, or they bow down and serve and worship it.”

  “Then let us hope we both have deeper and more inward selves who see a way out of this maze of forgetfulness and darkness.”

  Both men knelt and prayed before departing the jewelry shop, and they ate the bread and drank the wine a prince of light had brought down from heaven and left for them there.

  The plan miscarried badly.

  The Well Wishers

  All the common folk of Sark were there, in the Edwardian chapel beneath the octagonal belltower, and many from Guernsey and Jersey as well. The noble families of England, Wales and Scotland sent their parties, and where they went, so came gentlemen of the press; and Laurel’s family from the Hartz Mountain of Germany was more extensive than expected.

  Hal and Manfred kept looking for excuses to break away from the well-wishers before the ceremony, as each was prompted by some unspoken urge, some urgent thought that something vital to the wedding had been left in the Rose Crystal Chamber, which was to be the bridal suite. It was also the room in which the bride and her maids were now making their preparations. So Mrs. du Lac, the Mother of t
he Bride, and Margaret, the Countess of Devon, acting in the place of Manfred’s late mother, stood guard against Hal and Manfred, and would not let any male enter into the newly decorated chamber, nor see the bride in her equipage, lest they see too soon, and bad luck ensue.

  Laurel had braided her long hair and wound it into a kind of lopsided turban before fixing it in place with pins and a coronet of roses, all hidden beneath a veil. It was a strange coiffeur reminding Hal of an old man combing sideburns grown long to cover his bald spot, and he wondered why she did it. But then again, who could explain the eccentricities of women?

  Then the ceremony commenced, and it was too late. Hal, sweating and nervous in his tuxedo, was so distracted by the fact that the Price of Wales himself was present, that he almost missed the nod from the Archbishop of Canterbury when it was time to pass the ring to the bridegroom.

  The urgent desire to enter the Rose Crystal Chamber vexed him, although he could not recall why it was so important. What had he left in there? He had been drinking heavily during the riotous stag party, and his memory was blurred. Something embarrassing no doubt had been left sitting in some obvious spot, some terrible thing he had to remove or hide before the happy couple entered it for their joyful nuptial consummation. He was just glad that when they dressed the bride, no one had noticed it, whatever it was.

  He had been to his sister’s wedding a few years ago, and he knew that, as soon as the wedding mass was over, the photographers would press forward, issuing commands with the barking authority of prison guards, for photographers were no respecters of persons. So he waited until the mass ended for his opportunity.