The Dragon Griaule (14 page)

THE FATHER OF STONES

For Jack, Jeanne, and Jody Dann

One

How The Father of Stones came into the possession of the gemcutter William Lemos continues to be a subject for debate among the citizens of Port Chantay. That Lemos purchased the stone from the importer Henry Sichi is not in question, nor is it in doubt that Sichi had traded several bolts of raw silk for the stone to a tailor in Teocinte, and although the tailor has not admitted it, witnesses have clearly established that he took the stone by force from his niece, who had seen it glinting amid a clump of ferns growing beneath the lip of the dragon Griaule. But how the stone came to be in that spot at that exact moment, therein lies the cause of the debate. Some hold that the stone is a natural artifact of Griaule, a slow production of his flesh, perhaps a kind of tumor, and that it served to embody his wishes, to move Lemos – who lived beyond the natural range of his domination – to do the dragon’s bidding in the affair of the priest Mardo Zemaille and the Temple of the Dragon. Others will say that, yes, Griaule is indeed a marvel, a creature the size of a mountain, immobilized millennia before in a magical duel, who controls the population of the Carbonales Valley through the subtle exercise of his will and is capable of manipulating the most delicate and discreet of effects, the most complex of events; but to think that his tumors or kidney stones have
the aspect of fabulous gems . . . well, that is stretching things a bit. Lemos, they claim, is merely attempting to use the fact of Griaule’s mastery to justify his crime, and doubtless The Father of Stones is a relic of the dragon’s hoard, probably dropped beneath the lip by one of the pitiful half-wits who inhabit his innards. Of course that’s how it got there, their opponents will say; do you believe Griaule incapable of such a simple machination as that of directing one of his minions to leave a stone in a certain place at a certain time? And as for the origin of the stone, here we have a vast, mysterious, and nearly immortal intelligence, one whose body supports forests and villages and parasites large enough to destroy a city – given all that, is the possibility that he might have fabricated The Father of Stones in some dark tuck of his interior really so far removed?

These arguments aside, the facts are as follows. One misty night in February some years ago, a young boy burst into the headquarters of the constabulary in Port Chantay, bursting with the news that Mardo Zemaille, the priest of the Temple of the Dragon, had been murdered, and that his assassin, William Lemos, was awaiting the pleasure of the constabulary at the temple gates. When the constables arrived at the temple, which was located a few hundred yards from the landward end of Ayler Point, they found Lemos, a pale sandy-haired man of forty-three with a pleasant yet unremarkable face and gray eyes and a distracted professorial air, pacing back and forth in front of the temple; after placing him in restraints, the constables proceeded onto the grounds, which were uncharacteristically deserted. In a corner building of the compound they discovered Zemaille lying crumpled beside an altar of black marble, his skull fractured, the fatal blow having been struck with a fist-sized gem of an inferior milky water, one side left rough, affording an excellent grip for someone wishing to hurl it, and the other side cut into a pattern of sharply edged facets. They also discovered Mirielle, Lemos’ daughter, stretched naked on the altar, drugged into a state of torpor. Port Chantay, while a fairly large city, was not so large that the constabulary had been unaware of the conflict between Lemos and Zemaille. Lemos’ wife Patricia, drowned in the waters off Ayler Point three years before (she had, it was
rumored, been visiting her lover, a wealthy gentleman with a home at the seaward end of the point), had willed her portion of the gem-cutting business to Mirielle, and Mirielle, who had been deeply involved with the dragon cult and with Zemaille himself, had donated the half-share to the temple. Zemaille was accustomed to using rare gems in certain of his rituals, and he soon began to drain the resources of the shop; the imminent failure of the gemcutter’s business, along with his daughter’s rejection, her wantonness and sluttish obeisance to the priest, had driven him to the depths of despair and thence, it seemed, to murder. And so, with a confession in hand, one backed by clear motive and a wealth of physical evidence, the constables felt confident that justice would be swift and sure. But they had not reckoned on the nature of Lemos’ defense. Nor, it appeared from his initial reaction, had Lemos’ attorney, Adam Korrogly.

‘You must be mad,’ he told Lemos after the gemcutter had related his version of the events. ‘Or else you’re damned clever.’

‘It’s the truth,’ Lemos said glumly. He was slumped in a chair in a windowless interrogation room lit by a glass bowl depended from the ceiling that held clumps of luminous moss; he gazed at his hands, which were spread upon a wooden table, as if unable to accept that they had betrayed him.

Korrogly, a tall, thin, intense man with receding black hair and features that looked to have been whittled into sharpness out of smooth white wood, walked to the door and, facing it, said, ‘I see where you’re trying to lead me.’

‘I’m not trying to lead you anywhere,’ Lemos said. ‘I don’t care what you think, it’s the truth.’

‘You should care very much what I think,’ said Korrogly, turning to him. ‘In the first place, I don’t have to accept your case; in the second, my performance will be greatly abetted if I believe you.’

Lemos lifted his head and engaged Korrogly’s eyes with a look of such abject hopelessness that for an instant the attorney imagined it had struck him with a physical force. ‘Proceed as you will,’ Lemos said. ‘The quality of your performance matters little to me.’

Korrogly walked to the table and leaned forward, resting his
hands so that the splayed tips of his fingers were nearly touching Lemos’ fingers. Lemos did not move his hands away, did not appear to notice the closeness of Korrogly’s hands, and this indicated that he was truly overborne by all that had happened, and not putting on an act. Either that, Korrogly thought, or the man’s got the nervous system of a snail.

‘You’re asking me to attempt a defense that’s never been used before,’ he said. ‘Now that I think of it, I’m amazed no one’s ever tried it. Griaule’s influence – over the Carbonales Valley, anyway – is not in doubt. But to claim you were enacting his will, that some essence embodied in the gem inspired you to serve as his agent, to use that as a defense in a criminal case . . . I don’t know.’

Lemos appeared not to have heard: after a moment he said, ‘Mirielle . . . is she all right?’

Irritated, Korrogly said, ‘Yes, yes, she’s fine. Were you listening to what I just said?’

Lemos stared at him uncomprehendingly.

‘Your story,’ Korrogly said, ‘appears to demand a defense that has never been used. Never. Do you know what will attend that?’

‘No,’ said Lemos, and lowered his eyes.

‘Judges are not delighted by the prospect of setting precedent, and whoever presides over your trial is going to be particularly loath to establish this sort of precedent. Because if it is established, God knows how many villains will seek to use it to avoid punishment.’

Lemos was silent for a few seconds and then said, ‘I don’t understand. What do you wish me to say?’

Studying his face, Korrogly had a feeling of uneasiness: Lemos’ despair seemed too uniform, too all-encompassing. He had acted for a number of clients who had been in the grip of terrible despair, but even the most despondent of these had on occasion suddenly realized their plight and exhibited fright or desperation or some variant emotion. He had the idea that Lemos was an intelligent man, one capable of such a subtle deceit as this might be.

‘It’s not necessary that you say anything,’ he told Lemos. ‘I
simply want you to understand the course you’ve set me. If I were to plead for mercy from the court, ask them to recognize the passions involved, to take into account the unscrupulous nature of the deceased, I’m confident that your sentence would be light. Zemaille was not well loved, and there are many who consider what you’ve done an act of conscience.’

‘Not I,’ said Lemos in such an agonized tone that Korrogly was persuaded for the moment to complete belief.

‘However,’ he went on, ‘should I pursue the defense that your story suggests, you may wind up facing a much harsher sentence, perhaps even the ultimate. That you choose to defend in this manner might imply to the judge that the crime was premeditated. Thus he would allow no mediating circumstance in his instructions to the jury. He would dismiss all possibility of it being a crime of passion.’

Lemos gave a dispirited laugh.

‘That amuses you?’ Korrogly asked.

‘I find it simplistic that passion and premeditation are deemed to be mutually exclusive.’

Korrogly moved away from the table, folded his arms, and regarded the luminous globe overhead. ‘Of course that’s not always the case. Not all crimes of passion are considered acts of the moment. There is leeway left for obsession, for irresistible compulsion. But what I’m telling you is that the judge in his desire to avoid setting precedent might block these avenues of mercy in his instructions to the jury.’

Once again Lemos appeared to have slipped into a reverie.

‘Have you decided?’ Korrogly insisted. ‘I can’t decide for you, I can only recommend.’

‘You seem to be recommending that I lie,’ said Lemos.

‘How do you arrive at that?’

‘You tell me the truth is a risk, that the secure course is best.’

‘I’m merely counseling you as to the potential pitfalls.’

‘There’s a fine line, is there not, between recommendation and counsel?’

‘Between guilt and innocence also,’ said Korrogly, thinking he might get a rise out of Lemos with this; but the gemcutter only stared at the table, brushed back his sandy forelock from his eyes.

‘Very well.’ Korrogly picked up his case from the floor. ‘I’ll assume you want me to go forward with the case as you’ve presented it.’

‘Mirielle,’ said Lemos. ‘Will you ask her to come and visit me?’

‘I will.’

‘Today . . . will you ask her today?’

‘I plan to see her this afternoon, and I’ll ask her. But according to the constables, she may not respond favorably to anything I ask on your behalf. She is apparently quite bereft.’

Lemos muttered something, and when Korrogly asked him to repeat it, he said, ‘Nothing.’

‘Is there anything else I can do for you?’

Lemos shook his head.

‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ said Korrogly; he started to tell Lemos to be of good cheer, but partly in recognition of the profundity of Lemos’ despair, partly due to his continuing sense of uneasiness, he thought better of it.

The gemcutter’s shop was in the Almintra quarter of Port Chantay, a section of the city bordering the ocean, touched yet not overwhelmed by decay and poverty. Dozens of shops were situated on the bottom floors of old peeling frame houses with witchy-looking peaked roofs and gables, and between them, Korrogly could see the houses of the wealthy ranging Ayler Point: airy mansions with wide verandahs and gilt roofs nestled among stands of thistle palms. The sea beyond the point was a smooth jade-colored expanse broken by creamy surf, seeming to carry out the theme of elegance stated by the mansions; on the other hand, the breakers that heaped foam upon the beaches of the Almintra quarter were fouled with seaweed and driftwood and offal. It must, he thought, be dismaying to the residents of the quarter, which not so long ago had been considered exclusive, to have this view of success and beauty, and then to turn back to their own lives and watch the rats scurrying in piles of vegetable litter, the ghost crabs scuttling in the sandy streets, the beggars, the increasing dilapidation of their homes. He wondered if this could have played a part
in the murder; he could discern no opportunity for profit in the crime, but there was so much still hidden, and he did not want to blind himself to the existence of such a motive. He did not believe Lemos, yet he could not fully discredit the gemcutter’s story. That was the story’s virtue: its elusiveness, the way it played upon the superstitious nature of the citizenry, how it employed the vast subtlety of Griaule to spread confusion through the mind of whomever sought to judge it. The jury was going to have one hell of a time. And, he thought, so was he. He could not deny the challenge presented him; a case of this sort came along but rarely, and its materials, so aptly suited to the game of the law, to the lawyerly sleights-of-hand that had turned the law into a game, afforded him the opportunity of making a quick reputation. His inability to discredit Lemos’ story might be a product of his hope that the gemcutter was telling the truth, that precedent was indeed involved, for he was beginning to realize that he needed something spectacular, something unique and unsettling, to reawaken his old hopes and enthusiasms, to restore his sense of self-worth. For the nine years since his graduation from law school, he had devoted himself to his practice, achieving a small success, all that could be expected of someone who was the son of poor farmers; he had watched less skilled lawyers achieve greater success, and he had come to understand what he should have understood from the beginning: that the Law was subordinate to the unwritten laws of social status and blood relation. He was at the age of thirty-three an idealist whose ideals were foundering, yet whose fascination with the game remained undimmed, and this had left him open to a dangerous cynicism – dangerous in that it had produced in him a volatile mixture of old virtues and new half-understood compulsions. Lately the bubblings up of that mixture had tended to make him erratic, prone to wild swings of mood and sudden abandonments of hope and principle. He was, he thought, in much the same condition as the Almintra quarter: a working class neighborhood funded by solid values that had once looked forward to an upwardly mobile future, but that now aspired to be a slum.

The gemcutter’s apartment was on the second floor of one
of the frame houses, located directly above his shop, and it was there that Korrogly interviewed the daughter, Mirielle. She was a slim young woman in her early twenties with long black hair and hazel eyes and a heart-shaped face whose prettiness had been hardened by the stamp of dissipation; she wore a black dress with a lace collar, but her pose was hardly in keeping with the demureness of her garment or with her apparent grief. Her cheeks were puffy from weeping, her eyes reddened, and yet she lay asprawl on a sofa, smoking a crooked green cigar, her legs propped on the back and the arm, affording Korrogly a glimpse of the shadowy division between her thighs: it appeared that grief had offered her the chance to experience a new form of dissolution, and she had seized upon it wholeheartedly.