Darkness surrounded them. Only their breathing could be heard in the quiet. Outside the sun would be rising, spreading its rays upon the world, letting them fall upon the mountaintop to be reflected from millions of dancing leaves, from the liquid eyes of deer, from the barrels of a hunter’s gun, from pools of dew and a half hundred leaping streams, down a hundred thousand tortuous tunnels and holes into the body of the mountain, some to be lost forever in that great pile, other rays to be reflected once, and again, and again, until they fell into the cavern where they could be seen, upon carvings put there when Rome was an empire, when Picts roamed in forests not yet ruled by Saxons, when Charlemagne ruled… Ellat heard Makr Avehl sigh, sigh with a hopeless sound as he turned to see where the light fell.
‘A child,’ said Therat firmly. ‘The light falls on a child.’ Indeed, above their heads the light fell on a tiny carving of a child, a young girl, standing in a garden.
‘A mother,’ said Nalavi. ‘The light falls on a mother.’ This carving was larger, older, partly obliterated by the slow drip of water over the centuries, but unmistakably a mother nursing a child.
‘A knife,’ said Cyram. ‘The light falls upon a knife.’ And that symbol, too, was clearly etched in the gray stone beneath the golden ray of light which leaked down on it through all the massive weight of the mountain above.
They waited, waited, but these rays held firm and no others broke the dark. At last Therat murmured the appropriate prayers, the lamps were lit, and they left the place.
At the portal, they stopped for a time to look upon Alphenlicht, bright in the dawn. It was the girl, Therat, who said, ‘Archmage, may a Kavi offer you assistance?’
‘One might, Therat, except that I have found the signs easy to read. She has gone back into childhood, and I cannot go to her there. She has gone into her own time. I cannot go. No Kavi has ever gone.’
‘This is true, Archmage. And yet, if I were you, I would consider that time moves, and that her childhood was, but is not now.’ And Therat favored him with a sharp, challenging glance from her eagle’s eyes before bowing deeply before him, as did Nalavi and Cyram, though ordinarily they would have been full of banter and nonsense. They took themselves away, leaving Ellat and Aghrehond with him on that high place.
‘Childhood was, but is not now,’ mused Ellat. ‘Now what did she mean by that, Makr Avehl?’
‘It means, dear Mistress,’ said Aghrehond, for Makr Avehl gave no evidence of having heard her, ‘that if the pretty lady, Marianne, went back to being a girl-child, she has had to grow up again.’
‘Exactly,’ said Makr Avehl, slapping his hands against his shoulders as though to wake himself from some bad dream or malevolent spell. ‘She has had to grow up again.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
They sat at a table on the terrace overlooking acres of lawn on which a large machine surmounted by a small man with a gay umbrella over his head made undulating stripes and a smell of cut hay. The small man had a brown, round belly, an ancient straw hat, and a pipe. Makr Avehl thought he looked supremely contented atop the clattering machine and wished that he himself could share that contentment. Though his outer self gave the appearance of calm, inside he was a tempest of hope and desire and longing and half a dozen other emotions he had not taken trouble to identify. It had taken several days of concentrated effort to find this place and another week to obtain an invitation. The woman across the table from him knew nothing of this. She sipped from her tall glass, following his gaze out across the lawns.
‘You are admiring Mr Tanaka’s stomach,’ she said. ‘I have thought of suggesting to him that he might wear a shirt while running the mower – it is his newest and most glorious toy – but he enjoys the sun so. When he gets bored with the thing, he’ll let one of his grandchildren run it. None of Robert’s or Richard’s children will care whether they wear shirts, either, though their fathers are very dignified.’ She laughed pleasantly, sipping from the tinkling glass once more. He examined her covertly, a slender, beautiful woman of almost fifty, hair escaping its loose bun to make a cloud around her face. ‘Haurvatat Zahmani, my husband, will be here momentarily. He will be so glad to meet you. He was so excited and pleased when you called.’
Makr Avehl cocked his head curiously. ‘Haurvatat? Surely that is a very old name among our people.’
‘According to my husband it is. Haurvatat and Ameretat, among the Medes the twin gods of health and immortality. I don’t know what possessed his parents to give him and his sister such names except that it reminded them of Alphenlicht. I simply call him Harve. It’s much easier. Of course, he insisted on passing the names on to his own children. I call his son Harve, too, and my daughter is Marianne. It isn’t that far from Ameretat but it falls easier on American ears.’
‘Marianne,’ said Makr Avehl. ‘Yes. Oh, yes.’
‘You say you met my daughter at the university?’
‘No. I did not meet her. I did see her, and was fascinated by the family likeness. She so resembled our family that I made inquiries – which led me to you and your charming husband. He was very kind on the phone, very hospitable to invite me down for the weekend.’ Actually, the process by which he had located them had been the reverse of this, from them to Marianne, but he had no intention of saying so.
‘My husband speaks often of Alphenlicht, though he has not seen it since he was a child.’
‘You, ma’am – you remember it?’
‘Well, not really. My father came here to the embassy when I was only seven. He returned home several times, but I never went with him. Then, just at the time I would have gone, I met Haurvatat.’ She laughed again. ‘He was a young girl’s dream, a bit older, and so good looking. I have never regretted marrying young.’
‘He had been married before?’ Makr Avehl kept his voice casual. ‘You mentioned his son, but your daughter.’
She nodded, a bit sadly he thought, and shook her glass so that it rang like little bells. ‘Yes. He had been married before. She died when young Harve was born, young Haurvatat. Health. That’s what the word “haurvatat” means, you know. So sad.’ She seemed about to go on, but at the moment they heard a voice inside the nearest room and a booming laugh. The laugh preceded the man, and Makr Avehl rose to shake the hand of the tall, splendid form with patriarchal beard and flowing locks. Makr Avehl thought of carved frescoes at Persepolis, magnificent and ancient forms going back through the centuries. Haurvatat Zahmani might well have been the sculptor’s model for any of them.
‘Well, here you are, my boy. And looking exactly as I had pictured you. We do run to family likeness, don’t we, we Zahmanis. Did you notice, Arti? Of course you did. He looks just as young Harve would have… Well,’ heartily changing the subject, ‘we are delighted to have you as our guest this weekend. Are you here for some diplomatic reason? Or should I ask?’
Makr Avehl shook his head modestly. ‘You may ask, of course. I am here for no sensitive reason. I am here to buy agricultural machinery.’ Such was the reason he had invented out of whole cloth the week before when he had found that Marianne was studying livestock management at an agricultural college. ‘I was interested in some demonstration projects at the university your daughter attends. Something to do with orchard production.’ What Makr Avehl did not know about orchard production would have filled a library, but he smiled calmly, visualizing apples.
‘Ah!’ Marianne’s mother smiled enlightenment. ‘So that is where you met – not met? Merely saw? Ah, well, it is truly a family likeness. You saw her at the agricultural school. Such a profession for a woman! Her father was dead set against it…’
‘Oh, now, now, Arti. Not dead set. Doubtful. Put it that way. Just a little doubtful.’
‘Doubtful.’ The woman made a sour mouth. ‘Full of fury and swearing and carrying on. Saw no reason for a woman to go to university at all. Well. He married me just out of high school. Possibly he thought someone would come along and carry Marianne off to the altar in the same way.’
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‘Marianne disabused me of that notion.’ The man plopped himself down comfortably, stroking his wife’s hair as he went past her. ‘Said she’d marry when she was ready and not before. I didn’t believe it, thought it was all just youthful exuberance, thought she’d be tired of the work in a month. But she carried the day, convinced me. Very convincing young woman, my daughter. She did take a break in the middle of her education – traveled through your country, kinsman. Said she had always wanted to see it, know what it was like.’ He smiled hugely, very proud for all his protestations. ‘What do we call you, my boy, “Your Excellency”? Just occurred to me that “my boy” probably isn’t de rigeur.’
‘My name is Makr Avehl. Macra vail. It has a meaning as old and esoteric as your own, but I ignore that. If you say it properly, it sounds vaguely Scottish and acceptable.’ He was hardly following the conversation. So Marianne had traveled in Alphenlicht. In what world, what time had that been? Her father, all unaware, boomed on.
‘Ha. I like that. Scottish and acceptable, is it? Well, and what’s unacceptable about Alphenlicht? Nothing I know of. Sorry I left the place, sometimes. Though, back then, the family thought there’d be conflict of some kind. You’ve done well, Prime Minister. Kept the villains at bay.’
‘We’ve had help,’ smiled Makr Avehl, not surprised that they both interpreted this to mean help from the US. Neither of them had known anything of the Cave of Light, or of the real power of the Magi. Well, he hadn’t expected that they would.
Both of them looked up, across the meadows, and he followed their eyes across the granite balustrade where a horse emerged from the wood and galloped toward them over the pastures, the rider so well seated that she seemed almost to be part of the animal. Mrs Zahmani followed his glance, nodded.
‘Marianne. I knew she’d be coming in soon. First thing when she gets here for the weekend is a ride, then next is a ride, then after that, a little ride…’ She laughed. ‘That love of horses. I outgrew it myself, when I was about sixteen. Not so Marianne. Her love of horses has continued – despite everything.’ She shook her head, sad for some reason Makr Avehl was not privy to. ‘Well, she’ll be surprised when I introduce you and tell her how you found us.’
Makr Avehl was not sure of that. He was not sure of much at the moment, least of all what it was that Marianne would know, or be surprised at. He himself had not really been surprised to find her father and mother still alive, healthy, still living the life of grace and elegance which had been mourned by the Marianne he had known. He had started his search very near this place, for Ellat had remembered what Marianne had said about her childhood home though he, Makr Avehl, had not. Having found the parents, it had not been difficult to find the daughter. After his lengthy conversations with Ellat and Aghrehond, he had not been really surprised by anything.
A whisper of sound drew his attention to the doors behind him, thrust open from inside and held while a wheelchair was pushed from the house onto a ramp and then down to the shaded lawn, a white-clad attendant moving beside it. Makr Avehl frowned. The woman saw his expression.
‘Marianne’s half brother,’ she whispered in explanation. ‘It was a great tragedy. In fact, I sometimes cannot understand Marianne still being so fond of horses.’
‘Paralyzed?’ asked Makr Avehl. The shrouded figure made no movement except that Makr Avehl saw the eyes shift toward him, as though the person there had recognized his voice. Stunned, he looked full into that immobile face. He knew that face, knew it as well as he knew his own. Harvey Zahmani, who had tried so hard to kill Marianne. Who had killed the couple standing beside him – in another world, in another time.
‘Completely paralyzed,’ the woman whispered. ‘He had just returned from a visit to your part of the world – the trip was a graduation gift from his father. He had visited an aunt in your neighboring country, Lubovosk. His mother came from there. He had been home less than a day when he and Marianne went out riding…’
‘Marianne told us it was a pack of wild dogs,’ said Haurvatat Zahmani. ‘No one had ever seen them before. No one ever saw them after. They came out of nowhere. The first we knew was when Marianne came riding in. Her horse was all lathered, but she was steady as a rock even though she was only twelve at the time. Told us what had happened, where to find him. Thrown. His head and back must have hit a stone. He never walked again. Never spoke again.’ The man sighed deeply, reliving an old tragedy.
Makr Avehl did not answer. His eyes were utterly fixed upon the woman riding to the stairs he stood upon, fixed upon Marianne, his Marianne. His hungry, predatory soul reached for her in glad possession, his sagacious, ruminative self eager to learn of her, rejoice in her…
She looked up at him, smiling slightly, welcoming, as though she had expected him, something lightening in her eyes as if a shadow raised, a lusty gladness showing there which brought the blood to his cheeks.
Behind her on the lawn he could see what had been Harvey S. Zahmani in the wheelchair, motionless, powerless, unable to do any harm, to anyone … ever.
Deep inside, Snake whispered an unheeded warning.
MARIANNE, THE MADAME, AND THE MOMENTARY GODS
Sheri S. Tepper
www.sfgateway.com
Contents
Title Page
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
CHAPTER ONE
There were no words in her mind at all. None of the tools of thinking were there, not yet. Nonetheless, she saw faces peering down at her, saw smiles on lips, heard chortling words and knew them. They were people. The words of recognition came swimming through her mind like familiar fish. Mama. Papa. Great-aunt Dagma.
She was three days old.
The room was as familiar as the people. Light came from the right, moving in a recognized way as the wind stirred the curtains at the tall window. She already knew the tree outside that window, already knew the lawn beneath that tree. On her fourth birthday there would be a pony tethered there for her birthday gift.
She knew the house, every closet and attic of it. There were no rooms in it that she was not already aware of, knowing the boundaries and smell and feel of them, tight wall or loose, small window or large, the wonderful magic of familiar-familial spaces. There was porch space, half-open, half-shut in, where tree shadows made walls and the spaces between branches made windows for the wind to reveal and the sun to dart through. There was cavernous attic space, smelling of dust and dead moth bodies, stacked with sealed boxes as mysterious as old people, full of experiences she had not had yet, was not certain she wanted, yet anticipated with a kind of wondering inevitability. There were long, carpeted halls with windows at the ends and dark in the middle, the twining vines and exotic fruits on the rugs making a safe path down the center from light to light. There were bedrooms, each breathing of a special inhabitant with scent and aura peculiar to that one. There was a deep, stone-floored kitchen that begged for a witch’s cauldron and a dragon on the hearth.
She already knew them all.
She was not aware that this knowledge was in any respect abnormal or unusual. This was the way of her world. The place was known. Her place was known.
Her people, too, were known. Cloud-haired mama with her soft skin and smiling mouth; bearded Papa with his hard laugh and huge, swallowing hugs; Great-aunt Dagma
with her jet-black brows and lashes under hair as white as snow, with eyes that twinkled sometimes and bit sometimes like sharp little puppy teeth. Marianne could see into all of them as though they were glass.
Except for half-brother Harvey. He, too, stood at the crib-side, making admiring noises in his suddenly bass, suddenly treble thirteen-year-old voice, but when she looked at him she could not see beyond the surface of his eyes. He was like the pool in the garden when it got muddied after rain, cloudy, hiding everything. One knew there were fish in there, but one could not see them. One could only guess at their cold trajectories, their chilly purposes, and the guessing made one shiver with apprehension. So with Harvey. She did not know him, and awareness of this blighted an otherwise perfect understanding of everything around her. Not that she thought of it in this way. If she acknowledged it at all, it was simply to identify Harvey as different and scary. He, unlike anything else in her environment, was capable of being and doing the utterly unexpected.