Serpent Mage

  “I was hoping you could make recommendations. We have a good orchestra, but—”

  “You need seasoned folks. You know, a lot of pros would give their perfect pitch for a chance to perform a legend like this.”

  “You have the contacts,” Kristine said. “If you could put out the word...”

  “Have you tried to reach David Clarkham?” Moffat asked.

  “He disappeared in the forties,” Michael said.

  “Why should we talk to him?” Kristine asked, tensing.

  “If he’s still alive, he might have something to say about this. He’s almost as legendary as 45. The dark man of Los Angeles music. I could tell you stories...secondhand, of course...the man was certifiable. Why Arno worked with him I’ll never understand, and of course he never told me, except to shake his head once or twice and wave away my questions.”

  “What kind of stories?” Kristine asked, forcing herself to relax with a small shiver.

  “Steiner told me once, before he died, that he met Clarkham. Clarkham confessed to Steiner that he was the figure in gray who commissioned Mozart to write his requiem. Hounded Mozart.”

  Michael’s eyes widened. “He might have been,” he said simply. Moffat narrowed his eyes and cocked his head to one side.

  “Don’t mind Michael,” Kristine said. “He’s full of mystery, too.”

  “At any rate, combining both of their talents in one work...” Moffat returned the concerto score with some reluctance to Kristine. “It’ll need reorchestration. I can already pick out passages that simply can’t be played.”

  “Arno would want it exact,” Michael said.

  “I’m sure he would,” Moffat replied, lifting his eyebrows. “He could be as bitten by the serial bug as any of us. But he knew as well as I that a score has to be looked at realistically. Some things inevitably have to be changed. And I think we can do it better than it was done in 1939. The notation here...” He reclaimed the manuscript and opened it to the middle, pointing out long black jagged lines, half circles and Maltese crosses. “I may be the only person who can decipher some of this now. Arno’s special symbols. I decoded from his four-staff scores when I orchestrated for him.”

  “I knew we’d need you,” Kristine said.

  “Okay, but where’s the funding?”

  “I’m working on that. When will you have time to rehearse?”

  “Starting on the thirty-sixth of June,” Moffat said ruefully. “Depends on whether or not Lean and I see eye to eye on this. He insists on waltz beats in the strangest places. I love David dearly, but he and Maurice have worked together entirely too long.” He reached his hand out and gripped Michael’s shoulder. “You know music, young man?”

  “Not very well,” Michael said. “I’ve been teaching myself for a few months now.”

  “Not the way to go about it, believe me. You seem concerned about...what? Duplicating the effect of the original performance?”

  Michael nodded.

  “You want to get us all sued?” Moffat smiled wolfishly, knitting his gray brows. “I’ll take the risk. There’s not much adventure in this business. I’ll need all the notes and journal entries you can find on this...and correspondence, anything where Arno might have revealed his intentions. He was never the most precise composer. It’ll be doubly difficult not having him here to make final decisions.”

  “There’s a special study crew from the UCLA music library going through all his papers now.”

  Moffat released Michael’s shoulder and patted it gently. “I will await further instructions, then. Honestly, I should have the recording wrapped up in three weeks. I can start rehearsal after I get back from Pinewood. Shall we aim for something in a month and a half?”

  “Not unreasonable,” Kristine said.

  “Good. Now go away and let me harass my sessions people. Michael.” He held out his hand, and Michael shook it firmly. “Far be it from me to nudge, but this woman...” He indicated Kristine with a nod and a wink. “She’s special. You could do much, much worse.”

  “Edgar...” Kristine warned, lifting a fist.

  “Out! Work to do.” Moffat opened the door and showed them back through the recording room to the hallway, then shut the door abruptly. The red light came on.

  Kristine and Michael regarded each other in the hallway for a moment. “All right,” Kristine said. “Now you’ve met him. I think he’s essential. Don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Michael said. “Especially since Arno didn’t leave many instructions or clues. I’ve looked through a lot of papers and letters in the past few weeks. The manuscript is all I’ve found.”

  “Can’t hurt to look again, though,” Kristine said. “Now. If you’ll drop me off at the campus...” She marched down the hall ahead of him, turned and cocked her head. Michael remained by the door smiling at her.

  “Coming?”

  He caught up, and they left the building. “Moffat’s a touch pushy, isn’t he?”

  “More than a touch,” Kristine said. “He only met Tommy once, for just a few minutes, and—Well. Not worth talking about.”

  “We haven’t had lunch in a long time,” Michael said hesitantly.

  “No time, not today,” Kristine answered crisply. He did not persist. Even without a probe, he could sense her uncertainty and pain. She glanced at him as they climbed into her car. “Patience, Michael. Please.”

  He agreed with a nod and put the car in gear.

  Michael watched as a librarian and a team of students hauled the last papers from the garage into a campus van. The attic was empty; the music room had been processed the week before, leaving little more than the furniture. With the removal of the last of the material from the garage, the house seemed less protective and himself more vulnerable, but vulnerable to what he couldn’t say. Clarkham’s inroads, perhaps.

  But Michael couldn’t believe Clarkham was the greatest of his problems.

  I am dark!

  Awaiting sight

  Formless wave

  Guiding light

  Again his poems were short and enigmatic, as they had been in the Realm, but they offered no answers to his questions; there was no Death’s Radio infusing his art.

  He was on his own, whatever he had to face.

  The van drove away, and Michael shut the garage door on the aisles of empty metal shelves and the old Packard. He paused at the latch and lock, frowning.

  Confusion. Carpets of dirty car parts arrayed in dark halls. And over all—a sickening foulness.

  “That’s a beautiful old car.”

  Michael turned and saw Tommy at the end of the drive. “Isn’t it?” he said. “Pity it’s too expensive to drive.”

  Tommy shrugged that off. “Belonged to your friend, didn’t it? Waltari? Martini?”

  Michael nodded. “What can I do for you?”

  Tommy crossed his arms. “Leave her alone.”

  “I haven’t heard from Kristine in two days.” He swallowed. “Besides, you split up weeks ago.”

  “Just two days. Great. You’re right. She left me weeks ago. I’m partly to blame. You’re the main reason, though.”

  There was a repulsive foulness in the man’s aura that Michael found all too familiar. He began walking down the brick drive toward Tommy, acting on instinct again. The situation felt dangerous.

  “You know a fellow named Clarkham?” Tommy asked, backing up a step and then standing his ground as Michael approached.

  “Yes.”

  “He knows you. He’s been watching you and Kristine. He told me all about you. How you badmouth me. A poet.” Tommy laughed as if he had just seen a pratfall on TV. “Jesus, a poet! You look like a goddamn athlete, not a poet.”

  “Looks deceive,” Michael said, sensing that Tommy had a gun, knowing it was behind the jacket, held by the left hand stuck through a hole cut in the fabric of the side pocket. The jacket could open, and he could fire in an instant. Michael stood five yards from the gun.

  “He said you’re as
bad for her as I was. You hit her more than I did. He says you take her to...” His free hand swung back and forth, and he nodded his head deeply, twice. “Parties. Get her in that scene. Do lines of coke. Shit, I would never get her involved in that.” The hand stopped swinging. “Hollywood shit.”

  Whatever native intelligence Tommy had once possessed had been corroded by Clarkham’s discharge of foulness. Michael could feel the Isomage near, if not in space then in influence, watching through this pitiful and extremely dangerous intermediary.

  “He’s a liar,” Michael said. “You can’t believe him.”

  “No, I don’t, really,” Tommy said. “I didn’t know she was like that. I was bad enough for her. I just loved her too much, and I’d get jealous, you know?”

  Soon; it would be very soon. Two and a half strides. He could judge the size of the gun. It was a .45 automatic loaded with hollow-core bullets. It could cut him in two. Clarkham had sent him a missile loaded with death, much as the Sidhe had sent Michael to Clarkham.

  It would be useless trying to stop Tommy. If Michael cast a decoy shadow, to give himself time to find shelter, it was entirely possible that Clarkham would have prepared the man for such an eventuality, even equipped him with a means to see through the deception. Michael’s thoughts became sharp as razors, cutting quickly at this hypothesis, then at that.

  He felt Robert Dopso nearby—a definite complication if Dopso or his mother came out of the house now. Michael’s senses rose to a higher level of acuity.

  “It’s not that I hate you,” Tommy said, smiling, the arm in the jacket pocket twitching. “You’re just like any other son-of-a-bitch. Her body.” Pain crossed Tommy’s face. “That’s all you care about. Me, I really cared. I wanted her to be everything she could be.” His voice grated. He shook.

  “We’re friends, that’s all,” Michael said calmly. “No need to be upset.”

  “My needs and your needs aren’t the point, are they?” Tommy said. “Don’t come any closer. He warned me, but he didn’t need to warn me, did he? I remember.” He touched his nose.

  “Clarkham is a liar,” Michael reiterated. “He filled you full of bad things...didn’t he?”

  A light of recognition appeared in Tommy’s eyes. “He touched me when we were talking.”

  Something built rapidly in Michael, a shadow different from the ones he had cast before, different even from the one he had finally sent spinning to trap Clarkham in Xanadu. This was a variety of shadow he had not been told about, and finding it within him frightened him almost as much as Tommy did. He tried to hold it back but could not; his augmented instinct told him there was no other way.

  But Michael did not want to believe that. He did not want to believe he was capable of defending himself in such a way.

  The part that thinks death is sleep. Lose that part. The part that seeks warm darkness and oblivion. Lose that self. He will embrace it. He desires rest and escape from the pain.

  The voice telling Michael these things was his own.

  Dopso walked down the sidewalk before the driveway, saw Tommy and Michael and smiled at Michael. “Hello,” he said. Then he frowned. “What’s—”

  “No!” Michael said. “Go back!” Whatever choice he had was now taken from him. Tommy would kill Dopso and anybody else who walked by. Clarkham’s missile was not precise, could not control itself, could not discriminate.

  Across the street, a middle-aged woman in a pink dress sauntered by, taking her chain-tugging schnauzer for a walk.

  Tommy jerked the jacket open, revealing the dull gray gun.

  Michael sent. The shadow that went forth was not even visible. It did not mimic Michael’s form. It simply carried another self away, a self he did not need and could use to advantage.

  Dopso and the middle-aged woman saw Tommy lift the gun, turn halfway, twitch and apply the gun to his own head. He had a sleepy look on his face; this would have happened anyway, but nevertheless—

  Michael screamed inside.

  The gun went off.

  Tommy’s hair lifted obscenely on the opposite side of his head, and he dropped as if kicked by a bull. Michael closed his eyes and heard the dog barking and the woman shrieking. He opened his eyes and saw the dog dragging the woman back and forth in a space of a few yards. Dopso had turned away, arms held up against the sound of the shot. Splashes of blood covered the sidewalk and grass by his feet.

  Even knowing there had been no other choice, Michael felt sick. He forced himself to look at the body. Clarkham’s deposited foulness had eaten away the dead Tommy almost instantly. What was left was not recognizable. It was covered with a shining blackness and had slumped inward, wicked-witch style, only the gun unaffected. In seconds, there was little more than a pile of tattered clothing and evil-smelling dust.

  The woman stopped shrieking. The dog sat on the sidewalk, tongue hanging. “Are you all right?” she called out to Michael, her voice hoarse. Michael was too stunned to answer.

  “God,” Dopso said, eyes wide, staring at the dust.

  “What happened to him?” the woman asked sharply, her voice on the edge of a scream again.

  “He’s dead,” Michael said. “I’ll call the police.”

  “He shot himself,” Dopso said. “But he’s...”

  Michael nodded and looked at the ridge of the roof on the house directly opposite. A large crow-like bird with a red breast perched there.

  The woman crossed the street, dragging the dog on its leash behind her back, her eyes glazed with anticipation of disgust. She stepped up on the curb, staring fixedly at the pile of debris. “He’s not there,” she said, amazed. “What happened to his body?”

  “Please go home,” Michael said. Gently, he gave her a forgetfulness, hardly even aware that he used an ability for the first time. He extended the forgetfulness to the dog. The woman walked off, silent and calm.

  The bird on the roof had flown away.

  He did not want Dopso to forget. He was close enough to the action to need to remember and understand.

  “Michael...”

  “Do you want to know what happened?” Michael asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Dopso replied, his voice fading. He shook his head.

  “You’ll have to know sooner or later.”

  “But not now... Where did he go?”

  “He was sent here by David Clarkham.”

  “Yes...?”

  Michael could tell now was not the time to reveal all to Dopso.

  “I’m going to call the police,” Michael said.

  He entered the house and walked into the kitchen, slumping into a chair. He picked up the phone receiver and dialed the number Lieutenant Harvey had given him. Harvey’s assistant, a young-sounding man, answered. Michael gave him few details, just saying that the lieutenant should call him immediately.

  “I’ll tell him when he comes in,” the assistant said dubiously.

  Michael hung up and returned to the clothes and the gun. No other people had stepped out of their homes to investigate. Dopso had gone back into his house. Michael could feel him sitting in a chair inside, ignoring his mother’s questions.

  The woman and her dog had walked out of sight. Everything was quiet again.

  The clothes themselves had disintegrated. The gun’s grip had turned rusty brown and ash-gray. Michael held the gun butt between two fingers and carried it into the house.

  The wind was already blowing what was left of Tommy down the sidewalk, onto the grass and the bushes at the edge of the driveway.

  Chapter Twelve

  “I think I’m more upset than you are,” Michael said, sitting across from her in the cramped apartment. Rock-climbing tools hung on the small dining nook wall like pieces of art; knapsacks, tents and metal shelving covered with rocks filled the hall to the bathroom and bedroom. Kristine’s living there seemed to have hardly made an impression. Aside from a three-tier fold-up bookcase beside the couch and a stack of blank ruled composition sheets, the roommate’s
presence dominated even in her absence.

  Kristine looked at him sharply, turned away, and did not speak for a long time. She took deep, even breaths, gazing past the hide-a-bed and through the sliding glass door at the courtyard beyond. “You’re sure he died. He didn’t just disappear.”

  “He died, and then he decayed,” Michael said bluntly.

  “I don’t know why you should be upset,” Kristine said, still not looking at him. “He threatened you, and you lived. You won. Poor bastard.”

  “He was used,” Michael said for the third time.

  “Did he feel what he was doing—did he know?”

  “I think so,” Michael said. “I can’t be sure, though.”

  “This fantasy of yours is really ugly, you know that?”

  Michael didn’t understand.

  “This macho fantasy world. Men do so like to kill each other.” Her soft voice dripped venom. “I do care. I loved him. I said I didn’t, but...I didn’t need you to protect me from him. I don’t care what I said.”

  “No. He didn’t go to you after Clarkham—”

  “Just shut up about Clarkham. About everything. Jesus, Michael, it’s so convenient. He didn’t even leave a body. What did your police lieutenant think about that?”

  “I haven’t talked to him yet. It’s only been two hours. He’s supposed to call me back.”

  “Trying to be legal and above suspicion. Good move.” She had not cried at all, but her eyes appeared puffy. “I’m not excited now about the strangeness. I was. It seemed fantastic, people disappearing, fairies coming back to Earth, old sorcerers battling it out with music. Now it just seems like maybe the Middle East. Terrorists. Murder. No different.”