The Sheri S. Tepper eBook Collection

  The guests drank champagne, ate hors d’oeuvres, chatted. Dinner was announced. The guests were seated. Tabiti was down the table from Makr Avehl and Marianne, separated from Ellat by only one guest. Marianne could not take her eyes from Madame’s dramatically high-necked gown. At the throat was a spider done in jet-black beads, and the web extended across the bosom of the dress and down the long sleeves. Butterflies in bright sequins lay upon this web, seeming to struggle as Madame moved and laughed and turned to throw long, significant glances up the table.

  ‘What is she going to do?’ Marianne demanded.

  ‘Shhh, my love,’ said Makr Avehl. ‘Smile. Finish your consommé.’

  A whole fish on a vast silver tray was carried to the buffet to be carved and served with many flourishes while the footmen poured wine.

  The guests tasted, approved, ate hungrily.

  ‘What kind of fish is this?’ Marianne asked Makr Avehl. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen the kind before.’

  He shook his head at her. ‘Something the cook found,’ he said rather loudly. ‘She’s a marvel, that woman. I ought to give her a raise.’

  For all his admiration, he didn’t seem to be eating much of it. Then the fish was gone. The plates and one set of wine glasses were cleared away…

  And the world slowed down.

  Voices fell lower and lower, like a record played at slow speed, lower until they stopped.

  Faces moved less and less until they did not move at all.

  Hands with glasses in them remained halfway to lips, which remained half parted.

  ‘You should have paid more attention to where your cook got her fish, Prime Minister,’ said Madame, the words ringing down the long table like a struck anvil, hard and metallic. ‘A vengeance fish, that one, from a certain world of mine, a world perhaps you remember? I named that fish with the names of everyone at this table. Cold, that fish, and now cold all of those here. Unmoving, that fish, and now unmoving all those here. Except myself and my escort, of course. And now, if you and Marianne don’t mind coming with me?’ She stood, smiling. Marianne found herself getting up and walking, though she was not conscious of any volition to do so. She was beside Makr Avehl. They were walking out of the Residence, getting into Madame’s car. ‘At the border,’ Madame instructed, ‘you will tell your people you are going to Lubovosk with me for a nightcap. It’s only fifteen miles. Tell them you’ll be back by midnight. And you will be back. You and your little love, here. Both of you will be back.’

  ‘He said it was too easy,’ thought Marianne. ‘We weren’t waiting for her. She was waiting for us.’ Then she couldn’t think any more for it took too much effort.

  The car drove away. Marianne wondered, vaguely, what the servants at the Residence would think when they came to clear for the next course and found all the guests sitting there, frozen. Perhaps the servants wouldn’t come in at all. Perhaps Madame had named a fish for them, as well.

  ‘Do you know, dear girl, I have had dreams about you,’ said Madame in the car as it sped through the darkness toward the high, guarded border. ‘I dreamed once that your dear brother, my nephew, Haurvatat – named for your father by my dear dead sister who was his first wife – I dreamed that Harvey had not had his unfortunate accident and that he and I were able to entertain you as we had once planned. I dreamed once that your dear parents had succumbed to some misfortune and died. Then I woke, and it was all a dream. Was it a dream, little Marianne?’

  Marianne felt a compulsion to answer, to tell the entire story of what had happened to Harvey and her own part in it. Her lips opened, her tongue vibrated…

  And Marianne said calmly, ‘It must have been a dream. Poor Harvey had an accident.’

  ‘How did I do that?’ Marianne asked from deep within herself. ‘How?’

  ‘She forgot to name the fish for me,’ said Marianne, silently. ‘She named it for only one of us, and that one was you.’

  Madame looked dissatisfied, as though the answer she had received was not the one she had expected. ‘Only a dream, Marianne? Are you quite sure?’

  ‘Harvey had an accident,’ said Marianne in a child’s voice. ‘It was very sad. Papa cried.’

  ‘That’s too bad,’ said Madame, petulantly. ‘When I dream, I remember it otherwise.’

  The car stopped at the border. In an emotionless voice, Makr Avehl gave the message he had been directed to give. The car sped on.

  ‘In my dream,’ Madame went on, ‘Harvey inherited a great deal of wealth. I let him enjoy parts of it, though most came to me. With it, I was able to subvert some of the Prime Minister’s key supporters. With it, I planned to gain control of the Cave of Light.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Marianne in an uninflected voice, like a sigh. ‘That is what you planned to do.’

  ‘We had only to remove you, little Marianne, when we had made what use of you we could. It was all planned, how we would do it. In my dream. There would be dogs, and a horse, and an accident. In my dream. But it was Harvey who had the accident.’

  ‘Papa cried,’ said Marianne again.

  Madame was sulkily silent for some miles. When she spoke again, the car was on the high ridge above the city.

  ‘We are going to my villa. Not that it’s really necessary to do so. I could have concluded my business with you anywhere, but I wanted to do it there. So I could remember it, later…

  ‘I have a room there, in my villa, in the tower at the back of the garden. There are windows all around it. I take my tower to all my worlds, did you know that? Wherever I go, there is a tower there. On the embassy. On the palace. On the library. In the center of town. Somewhere, there is always a tower…’

  ‘Always a tower,’ agreed Marianne.

  ‘That’s where I’m taking you and your lover. When you are my servants, you and the Prime Minister, I will sit in my high, lovely tower and remember how it came about. Won’t that be amusing?’

  Again Marianne felt a terrible compulsion to tell the truth, to say, ‘No, it will be horrible.’

  But Marianne answered for her in a low, emotionless voice, ‘Amusing.’

  Madame pouted. She had wanted more sport than this. In the seat across from her, Makr Avehl sat motionless, his eyes fixed before him as though he saw something there from which he could not move his gaze. Silence as the car rushed on. The city fled away to their right. They began to climb the hill on which the villa stood. Before them, gates swung open onto a dark courtyard. As they went through the gates, the headlights disclosed several figures outside the wall, tall, with feathers in their hair and high, scalp-decked staffs.

  ‘Dear Chevooskak,’ murmured Madame. ‘Come to see if you’ve arrived safely.’

  ‘It was too easy,’ thought Marianne.

  ‘Shhh,’ said Marianne. ‘We thought so, too.’

  ‘And here we are.’ Madame alighted from the car, summoning men who came to take each of Makr Avehl’s arms, each of Marianne’s. ‘I thought you might like a tour of the villa. You’ve never been here, Makr Avehl.’ She laughed, a tiny frozen glitter of sound. ‘You know, in my dream, I once thought we would be married, you and I. Oh, I know I’m somewhat older than you, but still – it would have reunified our countries. You would have enjoyed it, Makr Avehl.’

  ‘I would rather have died,’ said Makr Avehl, like an automaton.

  ‘That, too, can be arranged,’ said Madame.

  They went into the villa, through a wide hall and into a long gallery. ‘I call this my gallery of worlds,’ Madame said as she turned on the lights. ‘It will amuse you both. See, here is a favorite world of mine.’

  Marianne stared at the picture, a long avenue ending at the Gates of Darius. There was scaffolding against the Gates, and dwarfs huddled upon it, pecking at the stones with tiny hammers. Far down the Avenue shone the pale stones of the embassy, and it seemed to Marianne that she might see herself drifting aimlessly down that Avenue toward that building…

  ‘Or this one,’ said Madame. ‘Not one of mine, orig
inally, but I rather like it.’

  A peculiar city under a lowering sky, with tattered posters covering almost every wall. Marianne shuddered, without knowing she had done so. Somewhere in that city, something violent and horrible was abroad, hunting. She knew it.

  ‘Or this,’ said Madame.

  A stretch of lawn before the tall, slender pillars of the palace. Twin fountain basins at either side. And at the back of the building, a tower, at one of the windows of which a curtain twitched as though someone were watching.

  ‘But this is one I want you to pay particular attention to, Prime Minister. Marianne. Look.’

  The world was covered with water. In one place, the remains of a mud tower protruded above the surface, crumbling even as they watched. A long avenue of stakes had been driven into the shallow water, and chained to those were a variety of creatures, one of which had multiple eyes and legs and arms and an expression of patient terror.

  ‘Gojam,’ said Marianne. ‘She caught him.’

  ‘The silly creatures who live there called in the tide,’ yawned Madame. ‘Now I use it to keep things in. Things—and people.’ She sighed. ‘Enough. It’s time we went up to my tower, Marianne, to my lovely room, Makr Avehl. The little elevator is just over here. You may release my guests now, gentlemen. They will be quite safe with me…’

  The guards went away. They were in a tiny box which purred its way upward, quite alone except for Madame. She let them out into a high room surrounded by arched windows. Curtains closed these arches against the dark sky, but Madame made a slow circuit of the room, opening them to let the stars look in.

  ‘We need only a little light to do what we will do. Starlight is enough, don’t you think?’

  They did not answer.

  She fished in the neck of her gown and drew out a little sack. From the sack she took something, a small something, the size of a walnut, and set it upon a table at the center of the room.

  It shone, a twisting of light. It glimmered with lines and points of shining white. As their eyes fastened upon it, it grew. Where there had been only a few points of light, there were now many. Where there had been only two or three spiraling lines, now there were hundreds…

  ‘The time bender,’ gloated Madame. ‘What people do you suppose created it, Prime Minister? What starship do you suppose it was on? What unimaginable accident caused it to crash on our world? And what luck, for me, that old Chevooskak Anuk found it. And what luck, for me, that he found me irresistible.’ She laughed, a quiver of sound so cold that even in her ice-bound lethargy, Marianne shivered.

  ‘You shouldn’t have sought out his son, Prime Minister. I listen in on all Chevooskak’s thoughts, all his conversations. He does what I tell him. When he told you about the time bender, I heard it all. He did only what I told him to do, said only what I told him to say. Even his fury at me, I told him to let you see that. It’s true enough. He hates me, but he obeys me. Old Chevooskak Anuk might have been able to protect himself against me—though he never would have – but his son, no.’

  She began to dance around the twist of light, a slow, bending waltz, humming to herself as she did so. ‘What shall we do with it tonight? Eh? I had thought to send you and Makr Avehl away for a time, to that wet world you traveled before. You would not escape from it now. I would leave you there, chained to a stake, for a time. Only a hundred years or so. And then bring you back when only an hour had passed. Would you love one another then, I wonder? After a hundred years up to your hips in water, with only the mud creatures to talk to? You are their law giver, Prime Minister. I have no doubt they would feed you the very best of their scum…

  ‘Or shall we simply set the chains upon you both now and forget the amusement?’ She whirled, her skirts swirling around her, her arms raised, a dervish of evil intent. ‘Yes. I think we will set the chains of servitude upon you. Bind you in time. Forever.’

  ‘Now,’ called Marianne in her mind. ‘Now, Dingo Dog. Now, momegs! Do it now, do it now!’

  From somewhere beneath Madame’s feet, a howling broke loose, a hideous caterwauling so clamorous that Madame clapped her hands to her ears, eyes slitted. ‘What?’ she grated. ‘What?’

  Marianne and Makr Avehl were unmoving, seeming not to hear. The sound renewed itself, even louder. There were screams and shouts of people mixed in with a kind of barking yodel, the sound of a pack on the hunt.

  Madame twitched, snarled. ‘Do wait for me, children,’ she instructed, pointing her long, bony fingers at each of them. ‘Don’t run away.’ Then she was back in the little elevator, the door closing behind her.

  As soon as they were alone, Marianne walked calmly to the table where the time bender stood and took it into her hand. ‘She didn’t name me at all, did she? Just as you thought, Makr Avehl, she didn’t know I was there.’ Marianne leaned forward and snapped her fingers beneath his nose, seeing him twitch into sudden life. ‘Come on, love. We’re going away from here just as we planned. But first, there are a few things I need to do.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  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.

  ‘Third time is the charm,’ said Marianne.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  ‘The wedding was very, very beautiful,’ said Cloud-haired mama. ‘I was so afraid we’d miss it. When we got held up in Paris that way, I thought for sure you’d have to get married without us!’

  ‘Even I thought it was lovely,’ Marianne laughed, ‘once you and Papa got here. Though I was afraid you’d think it was terribly sudden.’

  ‘No more sudden than the way Haurvatat married me. He met me on the third of June and by the tenth we were married. They have this way with them, the men of Alphenlicht. And he’s as happy for you as I am, Mist Princess. Though how you got here and married when the last thing we knew you were in Denver, working for the feds – that’s what Papa says – “the feds”…’

  ‘Well, as you said, the men of Alphenlicht have a way with them. Makr Avehl just wouldn’t rest until I came here, and I’d no sooner arrived than he announced the wedding.’

  ‘I do hope he proposed properly in between.’

  ‘You know, I really can’t remember. He must have, don’t you think? Surely I wouldn’t have consented to a wedding if he hadn’t proposed?’

  ‘Of course not, darling. Look, there’s Papa beckoning to me. He has someone he wants me to meet.’ And Cloud-haired mama drifted away across the room looking almost as young and lovely as Marianne herself.

  ‘Happy?’ asked Makr Avehl from behind her. ‘Would you like more champagne?’

  She turned and kissed him, feeling her whole body come alive as she pressed against him, catching her breath in a shaky laugh as she said, ‘Very happy. But I haven’t had any champagne at all, yet. You’ve been hogging it all for yourself.’

  ‘Lovely wedding,’ murmured Ellat, offering her a glass and a curious look, both at once. ‘I was thinking during the ceremony how little you’ve changed, Marianne. When you first arrived here in Alphenlicht, you were a bit of a stranger, but now you’re so much the girl I knew—before.’

  ‘Oh, I finally got myself together,’ laughed Marianne, looking up at Makr Avehl with a twinkle. ‘Or we did. I think personalities tend to integrate as we get a little older, don’t you, Ellat? Most of us are rather schizy when we’re young.’

  ‘There’s certainly nothing the matter with your integration,’ Ellat admitted with a continuing searching look into Marianne’s face. There was a lot of courage there, and determination. A lot of intelligence, too, as well as an almost violent alacrity, given to sudden decisions. Ellat was looking for a kind of untried girlishness that she thought she remembered seeing recently, but it wasn’t ther
e. She tipped her glass in salute and smiled again as she moved away. It had been a beautiful wedding.

  ‘Isn’t it time we were running off somewhere?’ Marianne whispered to Makr Avehl. ‘Isn’t it time you were taking me to bed, love?’

  ‘Forward wench.’ He grinned at her, eating her with his eyes. ‘Just a few more minutes and we’ll escape. I hadn’t told you, but we’re going up to the hunting lodge for a proper honeymoon. We can leave in just a bit, but I think there are just one or two guests who may put in an appearance…’

  There was a momentary hush from across the room as one of the belated guests arrived – a very old woman, leaning on the arms of two attendants. Her hair was white and her expression was mildly vacant.

  ‘Oh, look,’ said Marianne in a voice that anyone who did not know her very well would have thought to be sympathetic. ‘Isn’t that Tabiti Delubovoska? One of Papa’s relatives by his first marriage. I met her once when I was only a child. She’s aged terribly. Heavens, she must be ninety-five if she’s a day.’ She smiled up at Makr Avehl again, seeing his eyes riveted on the old woman.

  ‘Over a hundred,’ he offered. ‘So I’ve been told. Though she looked remarkably young for her age until just—well, recently.’

  ‘Pity,’ said Marianne, drinking her champagne. ‘I don’t think she’ll last much longer. Well, we women can only hold time at bay for so long. It gets all of us in the end.’

  ‘Does it indeed?’ asked Makr Avehl. ‘Does it, Marianne?’

  They stood looking at one another for a long moment, each still holding a celebratory glass in hand. Makr Avehl’s expression was loving, watchful, a little wary, as though something had happened of which he was only partially aware. ‘Does time get all of us in the end?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Marianne, touching her breast where something hung on a chain beneath her high-necked dress. Across the room, a black dog with Gojam on its back poked its head through a door and winked at her.

  Marianne looked up at her lover and smiled.