The Great Game (19 page)

  The activities of this Coyote seemed to centre around Roanoke island. It had remained uninhabited once the colony had disappeared. But sometimes, at night, Harry was told, strange sounds came from the island, and strange lights could be seen, at all hours, moving and shifting. "The place is cursed–"

  "It is sacred–"

  "It is both."

  They would not object to his going there. But they would not accompany him, nor take responsibility in the event he never returned.

 

In the event, of course, Harry
didn't
return.

  Or, rather unfortunately, he did.

  Both of which proved the Roanoke right.

• • • •

He sailed to the island one day, by canoe. He had rather enjoyed the ride. The island, from a distance, appeared deserted. He beached the canoe and set out to explore.

  He wasn't armed. "Spies," Winnetou once told him, "should kill only as a last resort. Spies
watch
, Erich. Spies are eyes, not hands."

  Still, they had trained him for both, but the thought of killing made Harry ill. Serving your country was one thing. Killing in its name was another. He knew he was not cut out to be a great hero in the big game of life, or in the secret Great Game of the shadow world. He was not a killer. He was an entertainer, a magician. He liked people. And he liked people to like him. There were names – Milady de Winter of the Quiet Council, the man known only as Smith, who was a legend in that most secretive of branches of British Intelligence, the organisation they called the Bureau – who were famed as ruthless assassins, cold-blooded killers, second only in stature, maybe, to the shadowy Bookman.

  He, Harry, was not like them. Could not
be
like them, and didn't want to.

  And yet here he was, on this island, alone, looking for–

  For what?

  He didn't know.

  And, somehow, that was worse.

 

He didn't know what he would find. He went to the village. It had been built by that vanished colony of refugees, long ago. It was still there – empty houses falling down, empty windows reflecting nothing, rusting plates and cups still laid out on tables where no one sat. A sense of age permeated the village; a sense of abandonment, of disuse. It was not scary, to Harry. Rather there was a feeling of sadness there, of incompleteness, and he wandered through the houses like a ghost. Until he came to a ring of ash on the ground outside.

  He stopped, and stood stock still.

  Nothing. No sound. The call of a single bird in the distance.

  The sun, growing low on the horizon…

  He knelt down. A ring of stones, blackened by fire, with ash inside. Just an open-air fire, the way he had seen them, and built them, and sat by hundreds of times.

  He touched the ash, gently, with two fingers.

  It was still warm.

  The day was still – too still. He felt as if the sun froze, dying, in the sky. No breeze, no birds – he rose to flee–

  Felt something hard and unmistakable against his back–

  The barrel of a gun.

 
 

 
 
 

Harry had rebuilt the fire. It was burning now, and the sun had set, and the night was very dark, there in the abandoned old village, there on the island of Roanoke.

  There were two of them sitting by the fire. Harry – and the man with the gun.

  "Call me Carter," he had told Harry. He had kept the gun trained on him, at a distance. There was little chance of escape, as yet. Harry may have been a magician, an escapologist even, but even a consummate performer cannot outrun a .45.

  He didn't try to.

  "What do you want? What are you doing on the island? Who sent you?"

  But the man seemed unfazed by the questions.

  He had a brown, deeply lined face, strong hands that seemed to have spent a long time outdoors, in manual labour. He smiled, but even when he did Harry could sense a sadness in him, and his eyes belied his face, and made him seem far older than he appeared. There was age there, and stillness, and regret… "I'll answer all your questions," the man, Carter, told him. "What I want is peace. What am I doing here? I was waiting for you. As for who sent me… that, too, will become clear to you."

  So Harry, with ill grace, acquiesced.

  There was nothing else he could do.

  And the man Carter, he thought, looked far too comfortable with the gun.

  And so they sat across the fire from one another. Carter had a flask of whiskey. They shared it. It was old whiskey, smoky and smooth. The fire threw sparks into the night. There were many stars overhead. Harry, with a strange sense of acceptance, waited.

  It was as if he had been waiting for this moment, it occurred to him, ever since that strange night in Shikaakwa. The night he had dreamed that he died. As if he had been waiting for answers, had come all this way somehow knowing – almost as if the knowledge had been implanted in him, unconsciously, some time back – that he would find them here.

  On Roanoke.

  And so a sense of calm had settled on Harry that night. And yet, within it, there was also anxiety, an anticipation as of a man fearing attack, who knows it is coming but doesn't know when, or from which direction – only that he couldn't stop it when it came.

  Carter, meanwhile, roasted a couple of fish on the fire, and they ate them, Carter one-handed; he would not relinquish the gun. They also ate yams that had been dug into the earth below the coals, so that they came out steaming-hot when opened, and their flesh was sweet. They drank the whiskey, not talking, until they were done and so was the drink.

  Then: "Let me tell you a story," Carter said.

  
I was born
(Carter said)
on this island, the child of English ad
venturers fleeing the rule of the Lizardine dynasty. Carter is not my real name. What my parents were called no longer matters…

  
Life on the island was hard, but happy. Our small colony existed by permission of the local tribes (this was before the establishment of the Council of Chiefs and the federal arrangement currently in place). My sister, Virginia, was born two years before me and we often played together. Our colony was small, beginning with just over one hundred people, and growing by two dozen children after some years. As I grew up I began to travel more and more on the mainland, learning hunting and trapping, fishing in the streams, and learning the languages and customs of the nearby tribes. I was very happy for a time.

  
Then disaster struck.

  
I had returned from a long journey. I must have been away a year or longer. When I reached the island, they were gone.

  
Men, women, children. My own parents, my sister, my friends. The houses remained, empty. Food was left rotting on untouched plates. Clothes left hanging in closets. It was as if they had all simply got up at the same moment and… disappeared.

  
I was beside myself with grief. I could find no trace of them, no hint as to where they may have gone. One message, only, I found, carved into the trunk of a tree, in my sister's hand.

  
Croatoan.

  
It was the name of a nearby island, but more than that, it was a code between Virginia and me. In our childhood, Croatoan was the place where stories happened, where heroes went in search of maidens to rescue, where dragons guarded treasure… but more than that, it was the place we banished the night frights to. The ghosts and monsters of a child's sleep we banished to Croatoan. Waking up in the night, hearing an unexplained noise, we would shout, "I banish you, devil! I banish you to Croatoan!" – and the ghoul or ghost or demon would depart, and we would sleep secure once again.

  
Only a child's game, a comfort of the imagination… and yet at that moment, when I saw the message carved into the tree, I knew that something I had thought impossible had happened, that the dream world of my childhood had somehow materialised, a door opened, and took my sister, my parents, my friends with it.

  
For a long time I was inconsolable. A shaman I knew confirmed my suspicions. The island had always been unlucky, he said. People had disappeared there before – for centuries if not longer. I grew very angry at that. "Why did you not warn us?" I said.

  
"But we did," he said. "Your elders believed it naught more than a tale, such as to frighten children."

  
I was no longer a child, yet I was afraid. I determined to find the door to Croatoan, if such existed. Yet none could be found. The old shaman suggested the "openings", if such they were, depended on a number of variables, and may not be replicated in my lifetime. For a long time I despaired…

  
Then, one night, alone in the woods, I met a monster.

 

  It was quiet in the night. Harry stared into the flames. It had grown cold, there, and a wind blew in from the sea. He shivered and drew himself closer to the fire. When he looked at Carter the gun was still aiming at him, but the man's eyes were far away.

 

  
I never saw it clearly
(Carter said)
. I had built a small fire and was sitting with my back to a tree, roasting a fish I had caught earlier in a nearby stream – the same as we do now, you and I. Almost I felt peaceful then. All thoughts of my despair had momentarily left me. I was happy with a pipe, waiting for the fish to cook. Then, taking forever what small contentment I may have one day achieved, he appeared to me.

  
He, it – I still do not know what to call it. A thing out of nightmare, a giant centipede-like creature, but not alive. A machine, perhaps. A strange machine, that came seeking me there in the wilderness of the Chesepiooc country. I had not felt its approach, and when I did it was too late. Through shadows he moved, and his arms, if such they were, held me captive. Its feelers moved. "You know this land well," its voice said.

  
"As well as any," I said.

  
He chuckled at that. "Are you not afraid?" he said.

  
I did not reply. "Yes," he said. "I can tell you are. Your heart rate and blood pressure indicators are suggestive of the fact. Yet you remain cool, coherent. That is good. I may be able to use you."

  
"I was not aware I was an appliance," I said, which made him chuckle again. "To be used or discarded by monsters."

  
"Oh, I am not the monster," this strange being said. "I, too, was once a tool and have been discarded. No. I fight the same evil your parents escaped from. Would you help me?"

  
The lizards? I had heard the stories of these strange beings, of course, but they meant nothing to me. I had heard they were no worse, as rulers, than the human family who once controlled the British Isles had been – better, in fact.

  
"I bear those on the British throne no ill will," I said, and he tight
ened his grip on me at that. "You shall be my agent," he said. "Yes… you will fight the good fight alongside me. I am the Bookman."

  
The way he said it – it was chilling. More than a title – a description, an essence of everything he was. "What is a Bookman?" I said.

  
"One who preserves knowledge," he said. "Which is a precious thing."

  
"That sounds harmless," I said, and those were the last words I spoke before he killed me.

 

  "What?"

  Harry's head snapped up. The man, Carter, was smiling at him, but there was no humour in the smile, and his eyes were cold.

  "How could you…" Harry's voice shook. "How could you have died?" he whispered. "You're alive. This is a lie."

  "And yet, here you are," Carter said. "Why did you come here, Harry Houdini? What trail were you following, what doubts were you trying to assuage?"

  Harry opened his mouth, then closed it. No sound came. He did not know what to say.

  Carter nodded. His eyes studied Harry, and told him that he
knew–

 

  Yes. I had died
(Carter resumed).
It was the first, but not the last time… 

  The Bookman… That strange creature could be likened to a monk, perhaps. A copier of illuminated manuscripts. Only, for the Bookman, human beings are the manuscripts. And so he copied me, destroying the original, and in the process improved me, changing me to suit his needs. I was to be his agent, his errand runner, in spying and assassinating, in waging his cover war against those who may have once been his masters: the reptilian race of Caliban's Island, masters of the Lizardine Empire that steadily continued to grow despite the Bookman's efforts.

  
Les Lézards.

  
And what did he offer me? Why did I follow his command?

  
He gave me life. My new body did not decay, did not grow old. I was stronger, faster, a machine in the semblance of a man. He gave me the time I needed. Wait for the door to appear again. Wait, to follow my sister into the other side of nightmare, into Croatoan.

  
Of course, I had asked him about the disappearance. Yes, he said. There were such anomalies. There had been machines designed to open such temporary portals between realms. Semi-sentient Quantum Scanners, he called them. There had been several on the ship, he said.

  
It's strange… Over the decades I had spent considerable time with the Bookman, and we grew to talk. He was a lonely being, I think. Alone and abandoned, like a child forgotten by its parents. Lonely and angry with it, carrying on with his war, building his small army… "Tell me about Croatoan," I said to him once. I was living in the city of the lizards then. We met in the Bookman's secret place under the city.