Infinity Concerto

  "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 hi
gh 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 -