Serpent Mage

  “It’s not a fantasy,” Michael said. “It’s deadly serious. Nobody escapes for long.” His last four words sounded ominous even to himself. Kristine looked at him directly and squinted, as if about to cringe away.

  “Are lots more people going to die?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re talking about a war, aren’t you?”

  Michael shook his head.

  “But you didn’t really kill...Tommy.”

  “I made him kill himself. That’s close enough.”

  “You didn’t murder him because he would have killed you. Self-defense isn’t murder. Clarkham filled Tommy with lies. That means he killed Tommy. What do you think about that? Don’t you hate Clarkham now?”

  Michael considered for a moment, then shook his head. “Does me no good to hate him, or anyone.”

  “But you’ll kill him if you get the chance?”

  Michael considered some more, then said, “Yes.”

  Suddenly, everything about Kristine seemed to soften and relax. She closed her eyes and drew in a shuddering breath, letting it out with a moan. “I cut him out of my life weeks ago. Isn’t that strange? When you build up a dependence on people, knowing you can’t possibly ever see them again—because they’re dead—that’s like having it shoved in your face. It means you’ll die too. Am I making any sense?”

  Michael nodded. Alyons, Eleuth, Lin Piao Tai, and now Tommy. Directly or indirectly, four deaths. That wasn’t what Kristine meant, but the sensation was the same—he felt his own mortality acutely.

  “I’m supposed to be on campus at two,” Kristine said. “I’ll wash my face.” She stood.

  “Kristine, if I could have done it any other way, I would have.”

  “I don’t blame you, Michael,” she said, two steps from the table. “I’m glad you’re alive. I don’t... I just don’t believe some of it. Tommy with a gun. He’s gone. And you.”

  A manic voice inside Michael: Tommy gun gone, Tommy’s gone with his gun.

  Kristine shuddered. “I don’t know what to feel or think now.”

  Michael felt his insides knot. What he had suspected, when he thought about telling her. It was finished. He had killed or caused to die or something fatal her ex-boyfriend. How could she accept him now, in any way? “There should be something more between us. Don’t you feel it?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s just not working out.”

  “That’s putting it mildly.”

  “I’ll go, then.” He walked toward the door.

  “Not that I don’t want it to work out,” Kristine said, her voice stopping him. “We’re partners in something else, aren’t we?” She primmed her lips in a defiant, hard line.

  “Yes?”

  “We’re partners in the concerto. Clarkham doesn’t want it performed. If you don’t hate him, I do. He’s the one who killed Tommy. That’s enough to convince me to keep on. And you?”

  “Yes,” Michael said. “That’s enough.”

  “Let’s do anything that displeases Clarkham. Let’s move on and let the other stuff work itself out in due course.”

  “Okay.”

  She walked with him and they parted outside the apartment’s main gate.

  Michael returned to the Saab. He sat in the car with his hands on the wheel, certain about nothing and guilty because he was hurting, not for being a murderer, but simply because he was no longer in Kristine’s presence.

  In truth, everything had been so much easier in the Realm, so much more clear-cut.

  Harvey led Michael down the hallway, his scuffed brown Florsheims clacking, echoing from the ranks of stainless steel doors. An assistant coroner in a pristine white lab smock followed a few steps behind.

  The unofficially-named Noguchi Wing of the Los Angeles County Morgue had been added three years before, after years of overcrowding, and was seldom filled to capacity. The last tagged stainless-steel door was on a corner with an as-yet unfinished corridor stretching to the left for another dozen yards.

  Harvey pointed at the door. The assistant coroner placed an electronic key against the code box. The door popped open with a slight hiss, and the chamber bed slid smoothly out. On the bed, within a translucent bag, lay a blue-green body at least six and a half feet long. The assistant unzipped the head of the bag and pulled the material wide for Michael to see.

  “Do you know what she—it—is?” Harvey asked.

  “It’s an Arboral female, I think,” Michael said.

  “And what is an Arboral?”

  “A Sidhe that lives in forests. Controls the wood.” The Sidhe’s face appeared composed, peaceful. Michael intuited a kind of after-death discipline at work.

  “Okay,” Harvey said. “I’ve never seen a human being with skin that color. Even dead. Or with a face that long. Do you know her?”

  “No,” Michael said. “I never knew any Arborals.” He had only seen Arborals twice, the first time when they had delivered the gift of wood to him near the Crane Women’s hut in the Realm. That had been at night, and he had not seen them clearly. The second time had been in Inyas Trai, just a glimpse of them tending the Ban’s library-forest.

  “Now after this, I ask you, should I be surprised by what you’ve told me about this Tommy fellow?”

  Michael could not turn away from the blue-green face. “I suppose not.”

  “Because I believe you.” Harvey nodded to the assistant, and he zipped the bag up and sealed the chamber. “Thank you.” The assistant walked back up the hallway without a single backward glance. “He may not look it, but he’s scared. Twelve years in this office, and he’s really spooked. Everything’s changing now. We found this,” he indicated the body, “in Griffith Park, not far from the observatory. It was backed up against a tree. Somebody had shot it. Her. Just once. This is the third unexplainable body found in Los Angeles in the last month. I’m going to ask you a question.” Harvey stared up at the fluorescent fixtures on the ceiling. “What in hell are we supposed to do to prepare for this? Wetbacks from beyond. Christ.”

  “I don’t think you can prepare,” Michael said.

  “There are going to be more?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many, and where?”

  “I don’t know how many, and I don’t know exactly where they’ll arrive.”

  “The Tippett Hotel?”

  Michael nodded. “That’s going to be a major gateway.”

  “And if I tell my department we have to surround the hotel—if they believe me and don’t let me out on a stress-related discharge—will that do any good?”

  “No,” Michael said.

  “They can be killed, though.”

  “Arborals, maybe even some Faer, but I don’t think you could kill some of the other types that will be coming through. I wouldn’t advise you to try.”

  “‘Wouldn’t advise me to try.’ Maybe I should resign and take up throwing ashes over my head and wearing hair shirts?”

  Michael smiled.

  Harvey looked disgusted. “You’re not doing me any good at all,” he said. “And it wouldn’t do either of us any good to have you arrested. There’s a witness who says Tommy committed suicide. This Dopso fellow. Whatever you say about self-defense, that’s all that matters. I presume there’s going to be a missing persons report. I’ll try to take care of that. But what are you going to do?”

  “Wait. Try to be patient. I’m not in control, Lieutenant.”

  “Is anybody in control?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Anybody human, I mean?”

  Michael hesitated, then shook his head, no.

  Chapter Thirteen

  He walked for miles along the fire trails through the hills, feeling the growth within him and trying to come to grips with what he was, and what he was becoming. This time, the development was internal; it had been triggered by the Crane Women’s training but was not now controlled by anybody. He had no specific assigned task. If anything, Mi
chael Perrin was a rogue, an unexpected product of Sidhe and Breed ingenuity.

  Somehow, he was able to work powerful magic on Earth. Forcing a man to kill himself had to be very powerful magic or the word lacked any meaning.

  The sky was clear and hot and dusty blue. Sparrows and mockingbirds sparred through the scrub bushes. The hillsides had already turned brown and gray after less than two weeks of no rain and only a few hot days; they reverted so easily to their accustomed state, as if uncomfortable in the luxury of a wet spring. Michael wished he could do the same. His last faint hopes of normality and a reasonably peaceful life had fled.

  He would never sit in a fine old house in Laurel Canyon and write poetry and worry about brush fires. That dream had never been particularly well thought out, but he had recently been placing Kristine in the middle of it nevertheless. He was still an adolescent in many respects. His visions had not yet been completely tempered by reality.

  And why should they be? Which reality?

  Such considerations made maturing all the harder.

  How much magic could he do, and how ambitious could he be? He hardly wanted to test the abilities (not yet skills) he felt within him, but he was impelled to do so. More important than knowing how he had acquired or developed these abilities was deciding how to use them in the coming exodus and the merging of the Realm and Earth.

  He stopped and shaded his eyes against the sun, looking south over the city, the tall skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles faint in the hazy distance. Then he hunkered down and picked up a stick, using it first to break the crusty dry soil of the fire trail into a finer powder, then to write in the powder: “Protect this city from harm.”

  He had no idea whom he was addressing, or what. He scratched out “city” and replaced it with “land,” then scratched that out and replaced it in turn with “world.” He would have to start thinking on a much broader scale.

  Moffat’s studio office resembled an especially broad hallway, about three times deeper than it was wide. Moffat had placed his desk at the end opposite the door. An electronic keyboard and computer on a stand occupied one corner near the door; propped beside it stood a cello in its black leatherette case. On the carpeted floor, under a broad glass window showing the false-front tops of the Western set buildings, Moffat had spread printouts and sheet music and scribbled notes on tiny squares of adhesive-backed yellow paper. More printouts had been pinned to the opposite wall, with copies of storyboard sketches taped beside the appropriate sections. Next to his desk was a small laser audio disk recorder on a rolling cart. Wires trailed from the unit to a jury-rigged stereo system.

  “Welcome to confusion,” Moffat said. “The Lean score’s recorded, and I am free to contemplate this monstrosity”—he pointed at the copy of Opus 45 on the desk—“at some leisure. I’ve already worked some of it through on the Synclavier.”

  Kristine wore a gray silk dress with billowing sleeves and silver-gray nylons. Michael had never seen her so formally attired. Her behavior was also strictly business. He took the second chair at Moffat’s invitation. Moffat sat in his black leather executive seat behind the desk and looked from one to the other.

  “It’s in five movements,” he said. “I’m sure you’re both aware of that. Clarkham’s instructions—they must be his, since they’re in English and are not in Arno’s handwriting—say that the movements should not be rehearsed together, that movement four should be left out until the actual performance. Like assembling the bomb without the explosives.” He smiled, but Kristine and Michael did not. Moffat’s smile faded, and he shook his head. “Bit chilly in here, don’t you think? Maybe we should open our mouths and let out some air, warm the place up?”

  “I’m sorry,” Kristine said. “We’ve got other things on our minds.”

  Moffat swiveled on the chair to look at Michael. “No comments?”

  “No,” Michael said. “But I think you should follow Clarkham’s advice.”

  “Oh, I will, if only for authenticity’s sake. The game is part of the pleasure, don’t you think? Do it just as they did it fifty years ago. Now. I’ve managed to put together a fair string section. I have the two pianos required and a fellow I trust to play one of them. I think I can get another pianist within the week. Two oboes, two bassoons—a celeste. That might be considered overkill, three percussion keyboards, but I’m going to be authentic. In 1939, Clarkham suggested a Theremin. I’ll substitute something that seems to suit Waltiri’s requirements better—my digital synthesizer. That makes four keyboards. Since overkill is what this piece is all about, who will complain? Not I. The other instruments I can get out of the sessions pool in a couple of weeks. No problem. Now, as for paying these people—“

  “The university is going to pay scale for a week of rehearsal and two performances,” Kristine said.

  “Labor of love, is it? Well. It’s not the busiest season now. Everybody needs work. Okay. We’ll manage. My agent will wince, but we’ll manage.”

  “You’re doing it for the challenge, aren’t you?” Kristine asked.

  Moffat looked pained. “Challenge isn’t the word for it. Arno was always the type to ask for sixty-fourth notes out of the French horns. But in the time I worked with him, he was positively restrained, compared to when he wrote Opus 45. Some of it is clearly impractical. Nobody human could play a few of the measures, so to accomplish what the score demands, the synthesizer will be programmed to do some of what he’s asking for. Not exactly live, but then, neither is most music today. I want to go over the movements with you—you, too,” he added, glaring at Michael, “and see if my plans match your expectations. Remember, this is very humble of me.”

  “We’ll remember,” Kristine said with a hint of a smile.

  “That’s it. No gloom. This is a lively piece.”

  He handed copies of the manuscript to both of them and went through the movements one by one. The first movement began in A minor, crossed into C major, then returned to A minor. It was labeled allegro con brio. “A quick intro, with six very odd half notes tacked on just after it should end.” Moffat said. “Beat of eight to the measure. Fast, fast. First piano does most of the hard work here, mezzo forte. That’s good. Mutilated piano comes into its own in the second movement.”

  “We have a campus engineer building the brass piano baffle,” Kristine said.

  “I’m anxious to hear it. I can’t make anything out of the instructions—what is it supposed to do to a piano?”

  “We don’t know,” Michael said.

  Moffat raised an eyebrow. “Oh, good. I like surprises.”

  The second movement in C major-minor was in common time and introduced entirely new themes, which gradually blended into a much slowed and much softened reprise in A minor of the first movement. The third movement was a dialogue between an unspecified but closely described instrument—originally a Theremin, now to be the synthesizer—and the “mutilated” piano. “Not easy,” Moffat commented. “Full of traps. It would take a small army of spiders to play some of the passages.”

  The fourth movement was a torturously slow adagio in F major, again blending at the end into a reprise, transposed to B minor, of the original theme. This was the “explosive,” Moffat reiterated, not to be rehearsed with the other pieces, not to be played together with the other four movements until the actual performance. The fifth movement, in A major-minor, was a sweeping, romantic ländler, a country dance. “Very Mahler. Brisk, not as fast as the first movement, but coming to a cheerful conclusion—and then—” He shook his head. “An abrupt switch to C minor. I cannot ‘hear’ the last hundred measures. I’ve been reading scores for four and a half decades now, but I can’t hear those notes. That’s odd, and maybe it’s magic, too. But I’ve played them on the keyboard and on a piano, and they’re quite interesting.”

  “It sounds confused,” Kristine said. “All those abrupt key changes.”

  “Oh, it’s worse than that,” Moffat said. “It’s downright chaotic. There’s no way
in hell it should work. Psychotropic tone structure or not, it reads like Korngold and Mahler take a vacation with Schönberg and end up on Krakatoa with a gamelan.”

  “You mean, it’s bad?” Michael asked, feeling as if the last firm foundation was about to be pulled from beneath his feet.

  Moffat smiled up at the ceiling and closed his eyes. “Not at all,” he said. “It’s impossible, but it’s wonderful. The few sections I’ve played—masterful. Demonic, but masterful. Liszt with his hair in braids and on LSD.”

  Kristine laughed, the first time Michael had heard her laugh in weeks. She glanced at him and pursed her lips primly, then shook her head. Serious. Subdued.

  “I’m sure you two are keeping things secret from me,” Moffat said. “I wouldn’t want to guess what. Scandal? The Society of Musicians is about to picket us for trying to play this piece again?”

  Kristine leaned forward. “I couldn’t have chosen a better conductor,” she said.

  Moffat sighed. “What makes you think you chose me?” he asked. “Maybe there are forces at work here of which you wot not of, or whatever.” He was puzzled by their silence. “That was a joke.”

  “A stunningly bad one,” Kristine said softly. “There are a few more details to arrange at the university, and then we’ll get the hall scheduled for you—”

  “Which hall?” Moffat asked.

  “Royce Hall.”

  “That fossil?”

  “It meets the requirements perfectly,” Kristine said. “It’s about as close to the old Pandall Theater as we could possibly come.”

  Moffat smirked and then held up his hands. “So be it. We’re still on for a double bill with Mahler’s Tenth?”

  “I’ll be firming that up this afternoon,” Kristine said.

  “What a night,” Moffat said, rubbing his hands. “We’ll knock ‘em dead.”

  Walking to the main gate, Kristine looped her arm through Michael’s and squeezed his hand. “It’s really going to happen,” she said.