Lord of the Hollow Dark (41 page)

Arcane turned from her. She heard the clink of glass: Arcane must be fumbling in that hamper. How trivia force their way into your mind, when you’re overwhelmed by deep mysteries!

“The cup that cheers, Sweeney,” Arcane was saying. “Not too much, now: we’ve a climb of that wall ahead of us, and then puzzling exploration, and hard labor at the end.

“We must creep through the upper labyrinth-difficult enough, even with Balgrummo’s indispensable calculations-and then we’ll get into early forgotten entries, the passages made by the first colliers here. Balgrummo found himself unable to clear the blocked portion of the upper labyrinth, the part that had been sealed, like the Pilgrims’ Stair, in the year 1500. So, using the old diagrams of the sixteenth-century miners, Balgrummo constructed a detour around the collapsed portion of the labyrinth. He broke into the ancient ‘entries’ or workings of the old mines just up the brae beyond the Den-mines to which the entrances were sealed long ago-and made his way through those entries, and then constructed another tunnel leading back toward what was left of the upper portion of the labyrinth, near the secret exit from the maze. He never completed his second passage toward the back door of the labyrinth, but we may complete it for him.

“You don’t follow me, figuratively speaking? Then you must follow me literally through the tortuous route made by Balgrummo-supposing that the path itself hasn’t collapsed during the past six years.

“The Third Laird may have hoped, four hundred years ago, to save himself and his people by doing what Balgrummo was almost to accomplish long later: that is, to break through to the back door of the labyrinth. But the Third Laird had only hours for the work, and the last Balgrummo had decades to swing a pick in the darkness.

“What an enormous task for one man—or for two, in later years, if old Jock the keeper helped him, as I suspect he did! Balgrummo had to prop the ruinous sixteenth-century entries—access to them had been stopped up in the Fourth Laird’s time-as best he could, working in foul air. And then, do you know, Balgrummo must have cut his way through coal, one or two picks only to do the work, back into the uppermost portion of the maze! His detour in the hollow dark succeeded, though not the whole of his design.”

There was a rattling of tools; Arcane must be groping about the bundle that Phlebas had been carrying. He went on: “Balgrummo came close, nevertheless-we’ll know just how close when we’re at the spot-to his intended victory. Given one day more, he thought, he might have emerged from the Purgatory into open air. He was not granted that one day: he caught pneumonia, and lay three years bedridden, being so old, and then died. Jock the keeper might have finished the work for him? Possibly; but that would have been pointless, for it must be Balgrummo’s personal triumph, physical and spiritual, or it could be no victory at all.”

The old audacious adventurer seemed to be fitting something to Sweeney’s head-yes, the old lady’s torch gave them a glimpse of one of those helmets with a carbide lamp. “Balgrummo wore one of these,” Arcane was saying, “and you’ll swing a pick where he swung one, Sweeney.

“Balgrummo had discovered the secret exit, closed since 1500, from Saint Nectan’s Weem-the way out known only to a secret few, perhaps the Templars first of all, long before 1500. I know where it is, from Balgrummo’s jottings. Now it’s a question of whether we’re strong enough to finish his work, the lot of us. We’ll find water to drink along the way: there’s always water in old mines. But finish what food is in the hamper, friends, and we’ll go up those handholds and footholds in that wall before us. The worst is behind us, I think, but one can’t be certain.

“Yes, I dreamed that I destroyed Apollinax. What, Melchiora, don’t you think I’m fit for the climb? Why, I have to be, unless Apollinax is to destroy
us.
Would you leave me here for his tender attentions? Up we go!”

They had to get her baby up that wall, passing him hand to hand or perhaps pulling Michael up in the hamper! That thought drove much else out of Marina’s head, for the time being. A torch illuminated the wall face; Brasidas clambered up the footholds, the coil of rope slung over his shoulder; got through the gap at the top; flung down the end of the rope.

They would push tortuously on, hoping, praying, the hardy pilgrims’ way. Some saint had said-was it Bernard of Clairvaux?—that the difference between the damned and the saved is this: everyone except the damned gets up and stumbles on.

Apollinax sat on a chair in the chapel, surveying the enormous “Fuseli” cartoon in a pleasant delectating way, and reflecting on the night’s events. It was three o’clock in the morning, as humankind measures time. He was Master here, solitary master, and nothing that he had imprisoned down there below would rise from the Weem again. Thirty-two lives had been snuffed out, or were in process of expiring; thirty-two essences had been condemned to grope and shriek in the Weem’s darkness forever and a day.

It was regrettable that not the whole of the experiment had been fulfilled. The Mother and the Child had escaped the physical torment, although they would die of hunger and despair in the labyrinth. The Ceremony of Innocence had not been wholly consummated; yet the immolating of Grishkin the Raven, and the joy of the disciples and the acolytes in that torment, sufficed to ensure the imprisonment of his dupes’ essences in one moment of eternity, one endless agonized moment of total depravity. Certain delights had been omitted, necessarily-among them the general sexual congress on which he had counted, the culmination of the ecstasy of the animals.

Nor had he succeeded in raising Lord Balgrummo for the marriage of Death and Life. That was Gerontion’s fault, but Gerontion would pay a pretty price for his negligence, wandering forever in the Weem, after the fashion of the Third Laird, hopelessly knocking. Nevertheless, a spirit had been raised who was strange to him, the essence called Coriolan; and he had destroyed Coriolan’s form, if not his essence. One never could be quite certain what creatures lurking between the cracks of time, so to speak, might emerge when one opened the gates of Dis. Surely he had
raised
that Coriolan, through Gerontion; that essence had not been
sent,
for who could send it?

Yet perfect success could not be expected for the first grand experiment of this sort. He had accomplished much; on the second undertaking, he would wipe out all imperfections. Already there awaited his next “retreat,” to be held in California, twice as many disciples and acolytes as he had gathered here at Balgrummo Lodging.

To extirpate organic life, especially human life, which never should have been created; to condemn human essences to perpetual torment of their own making in a tiny capsule of Time; to assure the triumph of the Lord of This World, Time the Devourer, Conquering Death-this was the assigned labor of Apollinax, and what had been done at Balgrummo Lodging he would accomplish at many other auspicious spots, for the greater glory of the Lord of This World. He would invert all symbols of truth, annihilate all resistance, entomb all souls-all in the cause of pure spirit, for the flesh is corruption, all flesh being grass. Apollinax knew himself for a high priest of the Lord of This World, deserving well of his master. Strip the garment from the flesh, strip the flesh from the bone, strip the bone from the soul, strip the soul from the spirit; then the freed spirit is wedded to the Lord of This World, for all eternity.

It remained only to tidy up, effacing evidence of his “retreat” here. Already the Weem was sealed, and his human scraps interred within. Those disciples and acolytes had gone like lambs to their slaughter; he had washed himself in the blood of the lamb.

With that sudden inexplicable dissolving of Coriolan’s corpse, it had been necessary to conclude the night’s ritual: lingering might have been dangerous for himself, and of course the disciples and the acolytes had been shaken. That Coriolan episode had nearly unnerved him—he bore a cut on his cheek from Coriolan’s knife-and after that violent disturbance, not even the intended sexual congress could be accomplished.

So he had dismissed the disciples and the acolytes into the labyrinth. “My brothers and my sisters, go seek the victims who fled!” he had told his twenty-four silly sheep. Chanting, they had reeled off into the depths. Some would fall into pits; some would die within the hour from their heavy doses of
kalanzi;
the rest would sink into coma, never to wake in this world. For all eternity, their essences would straggle about the Weem-the true Weem of Spirit, the real counterpart of this unreal earthly Weem. They would experience forever the crucifixion of Grishkin, sick of their own atrocities, sick of themselves, suffering the final ineluctable disease of spirit.

Off they had gone to their Timeless Moment of Hell, naked, masked with the image-faces of their own vices: Volupine, de Bailhache, Equitone, Hakagawa, von Kulp, all the rest. Already he was forgetting their pseudonyms and their real names, for they had been extinguished. Theirs was no mere evanescent physical death. By five o’clock in the morning, every one of them should be going round the prickly pear in cactus land, round and round and round, world without end. He had liberated them from the flesh, to enjoy “desiccation of the world of sense, evacuation of the world of fancy, inoperancy of the world of spirit.”

And with them he had dispatched Grishkin, to rejoice them forever with her contortions upon the cross. What a fleshly ornament of torment! How charmingly she had writhed there, perfect as an erotic symbol of ecstasy! Of course he had tired of her long, long ago, useful though sometimes she had been. What he had not been able to endure was her love: woman’s devotion was a chief impediment to the Lord of This World. She had said often that she’d endure anything for Apollinax’s sake: well, he had put her to the test. And now she never could bear witness against him, a risk one ran when one’s fancy flitted. The world was full of Grishkins; already he must choose among five or six candidates he had in mind to replace her in his arrangements.

Yes, he had locked the bronze door of the Weem upon the disciples and the acolytes and what was left of Grishkin, patting the muzzle of the old bronze Kronos on that door as he departed. He had gone above stairs into the Lodging; had bandaged the cut that Coriolan had given him; and then had walked outside, in the darkness, up to the pond.

He had obtained from Gerontion the necessary information about the sluices of the monks’ pond; indeed, he had gone to the trouble of making Gerontion show him on the spot, yesterday morning, just how to operate the sluice that controlled the flow of water into the monks’ drain. So, after a little fumbling, he had been able to open that sluice and send the water rushing through the underground lade into the medieval sewer.

The drain was filling at this moment; it would be quite full by dawn; so all escape from the Weem, or all entrance to it, would be cut off, perhaps for another four centuries. He had found it unnecessary to build up again the wall which had concealed that tunnel out of the drain: he was no mason, and the black water of the sewer was enough to keep people in and out. Even should the bronze door of the Weem be forced from within, which was unlikely, nobody trapped beneath this house would be able to regain the Lodging. Tomorrow he would cement back into place the flagstones in the medieval
necessarium
which hid the drain. Why, the Lodging might be occupied by any tenants the Balgrummo Trust could find for it, and the new occupants never would guess that beneath them lay the husks of the thirty-two essences that he had imprisoned in the Weem, out of light, out of Time.

At his leisure, he could destroy all evidences left behind by the participants in the “retreat”—burn their clothes and luggage and trinkets, or sink them in the Fettinch Moss. His long lease of the Lodging insured him privacy for such little tasks. The gates were locked at the pend, and would remain locked until his final departure, a few days from now. Meanwhile, he could enjoy a profound satisfaction in lingering here while Gerontion and his people expired in the darkness far below. It would have been gratifying to witness their despair; but the fancy would suffice, in this propinquity.

Gerontion puzzled him; it was rather a pity to lose so talented a servant, but the old creature could not have been trusted. Apollinax had secured already the formula for
kalanzi
, and was in touch with another supplier in Kalidu. He never had encountered a more formidable adversary than Gerontion. How delightful it would have been to have crucified him alongside Grishkin!

Long before meeting Gerontion face to face, he had known that the Archvicar was master of some Tantra; but while at the Lodging, until the last day, Gerontion had disappointed him so far as magical talents went, and he nearly had taken the Archvicar for a charlatan. Yet at the final test, how accomplished the Archvicar had proved himself! The cleverness with which he had deceived his Master right until Marina’s escape; the amazing physical vigor which the decrepit Archvicar had summoned suddenly, as if he had drunk of the Fountain of Youth; and, most impressive of all, the conjuring up of that vagrant spirit Coriolan, to be his familiar, his formidable knife-wielding agent! Had he been able to keep Gerontion alive, he might have learned how to evoke such useful dead things, from whatever abyss. But it had been necessary to eliminate the treacherous Archvicar before he could scratch to do more mischief.

Apollinax-now he would bestow a new name upon himself—had covered his track most carefully. He could transfer himself to California without the least peril of detection. The pseudonym “Apollinax” was unknown to his Californian votaries. All the disciples and acolytes here at the Lodging had been induced and commanded to cover their own tracks, for the sake of their own skins; presumably no one would know that they had been at this “retreat” under their assumed names. Some of them, like Marina, were lonely folk with no close connections to seek after them; this had been especially true of the acolytes, recruited principally from strange sects in which their identity already had been submerged.