Serpent Mage

  “I think so,” Mrs. Cunningham said, as brightly as she could manage, or dared.

  “Do you grieve?”

  “No.” Mrs. Cunningham’s expression turned quizzical, with a touch of pain. “Yes.”

  “For a loved one?” the woman asked.

  “For my husband,” she replied, her throat very dry.

  “Silly grief, then,” the woman said. “You do not know the meaning of grief.”

  “Perhaps not,” Mrs. Cunningham conceded, feeling this was more than impertinence or rudeness, “but it feels to me as if I do.”

  “You should not sit on that rock much longer.”

  “Oh?” She tightened her face, resolute.

  The woman pointed back up the path. “More of my kind coming,” she said.

  “Oh.” Mrs. Cunningham stared at the path, head nodding slightly, eyes wide.

  The tall woman’s pale face glowed against the dark trees and misty sky. “I say that your grief is a silly grief, for he is not lost forever, as we are, and you have paid mortality for infinity, and that we cannot.”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Cunningham said again, as if engaged in conversation with a neighbor. The woman’s eyes were extraordinary, like holes into a silver-blue arctic landscape, with hints of opalescent fire. Her red hair hung in thick strands around her shoulders, and her black gown seemed alive with moving leaves in lighter shades of gray. A golden tassel dangling from her midriff had a snaky life of its own.

  “We are back now,” she said to Mrs. Cunningham. “Please do not cross the trod hereafter.”

  “I certainly won’t,” Mrs. Cunningham vowed.

  The woman pointed a long-fingered hand at the rock. Mrs. Cunningham removed herself several yards, slipping once on the patch of leaves and mud. The woman drifted down the path, not walking on quite the same level, and was surrounded by trees away from Mrs. Cunningham’s view.

  She stood, her lips working in prayer, and then returned her attention to the direction from which the woman had come. “The Lord is my shepherd,” she murmured. “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want—“

  There were more, indeed. Three abreast and of all descriptions, from deepest shadows without feature to mere pale wisps like true spirits, some dripping water, some seeming to be made of water, some as green as the leaves in the canopy above, and following them, a number of beautiful and sinewy horses with shining silver coats...and all, despite their magnificence, with an air of weary refugee desperation.

  Mrs. Cunningham, after a few minutes, decided discretion would be best, and retreated farther from the path—the trod—with her eyes full of tears for the beauty she had seen that day, and for the message of the woman with red hair in the living black gown.

  Paying mortality for infinity...

  Yes, she could understand that.

  “William, oh William,” she breathed, fairly running through the woods. “You wouldn’t believe...what has...just happened...here...” She came to the boundary and crossed into new forest, and the sensation dulled but did not leave her entirely.

  “But whom will I tell?” she asked. “They’re back, all—or some—of the Faerie folk, and who will believe me now?”

  Michael opened his eyes slowly and stared at the dawn as it cast dim blue squares on the closed curtains.

  Behind the vision of Mrs. Cunningham had been another and darker one. He had seen something long and sinuous swimming with ageless grace through murky night waters, watching him from a quarter of the way around the world. In that watching there was appraisal.

  On the morning of his move, Ruth offered one last time to help him get settled in the Waltiri house. Michael politely refused. “All right, then,” she said, dishing up one last homecooked breakfast of fried eggs and toast—consciously leaving out the bacon. “Promise me you won’t take things so seriously.”

  He regarded her solemnly.

  “At least try to loosen up. Sometimes you are positively gloomy.”

  “Don’t nag the fellow,” John said, holding one thumb high to signal friendly banter and not domestic disagreement.

  Michael grinned, and Ruth stared at him with wistfulness and then something like awe. He could almost read her thoughts. This was her son, with the strong features so like his father’s and the hair so like her own—but there was something not at all comforting in his face, something lean and...

  Fierce. Where had he been for five years?

  Michael walked, suitcases in hand, in the pale rich light of morning. Dew beaded the lawns of the old homes and dripped from the waxy green leaves of camellia and gardenia bushes. The sidewalks steamed in the sun, mottled olive and gray with moisture from last night’s rain.

  He passed a group of five school girls, twelve or thirteen years old, dressed in white blouses and green and black plaid skirts with black sweaters. They averted their faces as they passed but not their eyes, and Michael sensed one or two turning, walking backward, to continue staring at him.

  The possibilities offered by his appearance seldom concerned him; he appreciated the attention of women but took little advantage. He still felt guilty about Eleuth, the Breed who had given her life for him, and thought often of Helena, whom he had treated as Eleuth had deserved to be treated.

  For that and other reasons there was a deep uncertainty in him, a feeling that he had somehow twisted his foot at the starting line and entered the race crippled, that he had made bad mistakes that lessened his chances of staying ahead. He was certain about neither his morals nor his competence.

  He set the bags down on the front porch of the Waltiri house. Using the keys given to him by the estate’s attorneys, he opened the heavy mahogany door. The air within was dry and noncommittal. Plastic sheets had been draped over the furniture. Gritty gray dust lay over everything.

  He took the bags into the hall and set them down at the foot of the stairs. “Hello,” he said nervously. Waltiri’s presence still seemed strong enough that a hale answer wouldn’t have surprised him.

  The upstairs guest bedroom became his first project. He searched for a storage closet, found it beneath the stairs and pulled out a vacuum cleaner—an old upright Hoover with a red cloth bag. He cleared the hardwood floors of dust upstairs and down, then removed from the same closet and rolled out the old oriental carpets and stair runners, fixing the brass rods to keep them in place. Removing yellow-edged sheets from the linen closet, he made up the brass bed in the guest room, removed the plastic covers from all chairs and tables and sofas and folded them into neat squares.

  He then went from room to room in the huge old house, standing in each and acquainting himself with their new reality—devoid of Waltiri or Golda. The house was his responsibility now, his place to live for the time being, if not yet his home.

  Michael had spent most of his life in one house. Getting accustomed to a different one, he realized, would take time. There would be new quirks to learn, new layouts to become used to. He would have to re-create the house in his head and cut new templates to determine his day-to-day paths.

  In the kitchen, he plugged in the refrigerator, removed a box of baking soda from the interior, and unchocked the double doors to let them swing shut. The pantry—a walk-in affair, shelved floor-to-ceiling and illuminated by a bare bulb hanging from a thick black cord—had been stocked full of canned and dry goods, all usable except for a bloated can of pineapple that rocked to his touch. He threw it out and made up a list of the few items he would need to buy.

  In the triple garage behind the house, a 1939 black Packard sat up on blocks next to a maze of metal shelves stacked high with file boxes. Michael walked around the beauty, fingering a moon of dust from its fender and observing the shine of the chrome. Enchanting, but not practical. Leaded premium gas (called ethyl in the Packard’s heyday) was becoming difficult to find; besides, it would draw attention—something he wanted to avoid and be incredibly expensive to maintain. He peered through the window and then opened the door and sat behind the wheel. The interi
or smelled new: leather and saddle-soap and that other, citrusy-metallic odor of a new car. The Packard might have been driven out of the showroom the day before. All it needed was air in the tires, and his father would help him remove the blocks, he was sure—just for a chance to touch the fine woodwork.

  Michael saw a speck of ivory peeking from between the seat and seatback on the right—a folded piece of paper. He pulled it loose and read the cover.

  Première Performance

  THE INFINITY CONCERTO

  Opus 45

  by Arno Waltiri

  8:00 P.M. November 23rd

  The Pandall Theater

  8538 Sunset Boulevard

  Within the fold was a listing of all the players in the Greater Los Angeles Symphonia Orchestra. There were no other notes or explanations. After staring at the program for several minutes, Michael lay it back on the seat and took a deep breath.

  Parked outside by the east wall of the garage, in a short cinderblock-walled alley, was a late-1970s-model Saab. Michael unlocked the door on the driver’s side and sat in the gray velour bucket seat, resting his hands on the steering wheel.

  Much more practical.

  He had ridden Sidhe horses, abana from point to point in the Realm, and touched a myriad of ghostly between-worlds, and yet he still felt pride and pleasure at sitting in a car, knowing it would be his to drive whenever and wherever he pleased. He was still that much a child of his times. After a long search for the latch, he popped open the hood and peered at the unfamiliar engine. The battery cables had been unhooked. He reattached them to the posts. The tires did not need air. It was ready to drive.

  Michael knew enough about fuel injection systems not to depress the gas pedal when starting the engine. The engine turned over with a throaty rumble on the first try. He smiled and twisted the wheel this way and that, then backed it carefully out of the alley, reversed it on the broad expanse of concrete before the garage and drove to the supermarket.

  That evening, he inspected the living room fireplace and chimney and brought wood in from where it had been stacked beside the Packard. In a few minutes, a lusty blaze brightened the living room and shone within the black lacquer of the grand piano. Michael sat in Waltiri’s armchair and sipped a glass of Golda’s Amontillado, his mind almost blank, almost contented.

  He was not the same boy he had been when he entered Sidhedark through the house of David Clarkham. He doubted he was a boy at all.

  The Crane Women had trained him well; he didn’t doubt that. He had survived the worst Sidhedark had to offer—monstrous remnants of Tonn’s early creation; the ignorant and frustrated cruelty of the Wickmaster Alyons; Tarax and Clarkham himself. But what had he been trained for? Merely to act as a bomb delivering destruction to the Isomage, as Clarkham had called himself? Or for some other purpose besides?

  The flames danced with wicked cheer in the broad fireplace, and the embers glowed like holes opening onto a beautiful and deadly world of pure heat and light.

  He drowsed, grateful that no new visions bothered him.

  At midnight, the rewound grandfather clock in the foyer chimed and awoke him. The fire had died to fitful coals. He climbed up to the guest room, now his bedroom, and sank into the cool, soft mattress.

  Even in deep sleep, part of him seemed aware of everything.

  One, the clock announced in its somber voice.

  Two. (The house creaking.)

  Three. (A light rain began and ended within minutes.)

  Four. (Night birds...)

  Five. (Almost absolute stillness.)

  At six, the clock’s tone coincided with the sound of a newspaper hitting the front door. Michael’s eyes opened slowly. He was not in the least groggy. There had been no dreams.

  In his robe, he went downstairs to retrieve the paper, wrapped in plastic against the wet. A man sang softly and randomly in the side yard of the house on the left. Michael smiled, listening to the lyrics.

  “Don’t cry for me, ArgenTEEEENA...” The man walked around the corner and saw Michael. “Good morning!” he called out, shaking his head sheepishly and waving. He was in his early forties, portly, with abundant light-brown hair and a face indelibly stamped with friendliness. “Didn’t disturb you, I hope.” He wore a navy blue jogging suit with bright red stripes down the sleeves and legs.

  “No,” Michael said. “Getting the paper.”

  “Just going to do some running. You knew Arno and Golda?”

  “I’m taking care of the house for them,” Michael said.

  “You sound like maybe they’re coming back,” the man said, pursing his mouth.

  Michael smiled. “Arno appointed me. I’m going to organize the papers...”

  “Now that’s a job.” The man had walked in Michael’s direction, and they now stood a yard apart. He extended his hand, and Michael shook it. “I’m Robert Dopso. Next door. Arno and Golda were fine neighbors. My mother and I miss them terribly. I was married, but...” He shrugged. “Divorced, and I moved back here. Momma’s boy, I know. But Mom was very lonely. I grew up here; my father bought the house in 1940. Golda and Mom used to talk a lot. My life in a nutshell.” He grinned. “Your name?”

  Michael told him and mentioned he had just moved in the day before.

  “I’m not bad in the fix-it department,” Dopso said. “I helped Golda with odds and ends after Arno died. I might know a few tricks about the place... If you need any help, don’t hesitate to ask. My wife kept me around a year longer because without me, she said, everything stayed broken.”

  “I’ll ask,” Michael said.

  “Maybe we could walk or run together—whichever. I prefer running, but...”

  Michael nodded, and Dopso headed down the street. “You were supposed to BEEE IMMORTal...”

  Michael carried the paper into the kitchen. There, he ate a bowl of hot oatmeal and leafed through the front section. Most of the news—however important and ominous it might seem to his fellows—barely attracted his attention.

  Then he came to a small third-page story headlined

  CORPSES FOUND IN ABANDONED BUILDING

  and his eyes grew wide as he read:

  The unidentified bodies of two females were found by a transient male in the abandoned Tippett Residential Hotel on Sunset Boulevard near La Cienega Sunday afternoon. Cause of death has not been established by the coroner’s office. Reporters’ questions went largely unanswered during a short press briefing. Early reports indicate that one of the women weighed at least eight hundred pounds and was found nude. The second body was in a mummified condition and was clothed in a party dress of a style long since out of fashion. The Tippett Hotel, abandoned since 1968, once offered a posh Hollywood address for retired and elderly actors, actresses and other film workers.

  He read the piece through several times before folding the paper and putting it aside. His oatmeal cooled in its bowl, half finished.

  The bodies might be a coincidence, he thought. As rare as eight-hundred-pound women were...

  But in conjunction with a mummy, clothed in a party dress?

  He called up the paper’s city desk and asked to speak to the reporter who had written the piece, which had run without a byline. The reporter was out on assignment, he was told, and the operator referred him to a police phone number. Michael paced the kitchen and adjacent hall for several minutes before deciding against phoning the police. How would he explain?

  He had to have a look at that building. Something nagged him about the address. Sunset and La Cienega... Barely five miles from Waltiri’s house.

  He went to the Packard and retrieved the concert program, then checked the glove box in the Saab to find a city map. He took both to Waltiri’s first-floor office, dark and musty and lined with shelves of records and tapes, and tried to locate 8538 Sunset Boulevard, the site of the Pandall Theater according to the concert program.

  The address was less than half a block from the corner of Sunset and La Cienega.

  Chapter Two r />
  Michael walked briskly up La Cienega’s slope as it approached Sunset, breathing steadily and deeply, taking pleasure in the cool night air and the darkness. He could be anonymous, alone without all the handicaps of loneliness; he could be almost anything—a dangerous prowler or a good Samaritan. The night covered all, even motives. To his left, the white wall of a hotel was painted with Mondrian stripes and squares. At the corner, he stood for a moment, looking across the street at the blocky, ugly Hyatt on Sunset, then turned right. His running shoes made almost no sound on the concrete sidewalk.

  He passed the entrance of a restaurant built on the site where Errol Flynn’s guest house had once stood, then spotted the Tippett building. It would have been hard to miss, anywhere.

  It rose more than twelve stories above Sunset, an aging Art Deco concrete edifice with rounded corners. Many of the windows had been knocked out, and black soot ghosted up from several of the gaping frames. A trash tube descended from the roof to a dumpster behind the fence. At ground level, a chain-link fence surrounded the building. The lobby entrance had been blocked by a chain-link and steel-pipe gate.

  The building made Michael uneasy. It had once been lovely. It stood out in this section of the Sunset Strip even now, in its present dilapidated condition. Yet it had been abandoned for over twenty years and, judging by the state of renovations, might continue that way for another twenty.

  He stood before the gate and squinted to see the obscured address, limned in aluminum figures above the plywood-boarded doors: 8538. The 8 had been knocked askew and hung on its side.

  The Tippett building stood on the site of the Pandall Theater. Having confirmed that much, Michael looked around guiltily and glanced over his shoulder at the lighted windows of the Hyatt. Nobody watching.

  A hole in the fencing to the left of the gate had been patched with chicken-wire; with very little effort, he could undo the patch and crawl through.

  “Odd place, isn’t it?”