The Last Days Of The Edge Of The World (12 page)

The lamia was tall, slender and graceful. She had hair that was long and straight, with a silvery sheen that was as pale as could be. She was dressed in a long silky robe, and that was silver, too. But she was certainly no ghost etched out of shadow. She was solid.

Her eyes had slit pupils like cats’ eyes or snakes’ eyes. The irises were green. Her face was finely shaped and very beautiful. When she saw Ewan looking at her, she smiled, and within her smile Ewan saw tiny pointed teeth and a forked tongue.

Ewan was ready with the guitar and laid his fingers instantly to the strings. Helen, too, had an instrument— Ewan’s panpipes, which weren’t much like a flute, but on which she had already learned to pick out a single simple dance tune. They began, not quite together, but the tunes soon met and merged.

The lamia glided from the pedestal of polished rock to the open space of the paving stones a little to one side. As she moved, the lamplight caught her eyes and made them glow like a tiger cat’s. She was still smiling and hissing slightly. Her arms rose to the rhythm of the music, and her whole body began to sway and ripple. The song they played was an old one, whose notes were plaintive and slow. It had once had words that were replete with magic, but there were no words left now. Only the music. The music caught the lamia, turned her and swung her and swayed her in a gentle pas seul. She was still smiling, as though there was nothing in the world she liked better than to dance.

She was held captive within an area no more than a few strides in diameter, but within that invisible cage she moved with perfect freedom, with all the grace of a snake in water, a bird in slow motion, gliding around and around.

They played and played.

Night drew in—perhaps not as swiftly as they could have wished. Time seemed to be dragging, slowing down, and it seemed that they were set for a long wait. The afterglow vanished from the sky and the stars came out— feeble, twinkling stars that added little to the yellow glow of Ewan’s lamp.

Not until the night was as dark as it ever could be, given that the stars were permitted to shine at all, did the others come.

They came as shadows, clothed in shadow. They were drawn to the music but shunned the light. They could not come forth to show themselves because they had no real forms to show. Like ghosts, they had no substance, but unlike ghosts they had no shape either, no inner glow to cut them out of the darkness. They were vague and amorphous in the very nature of their being—half-creatures that were half there and half not, half alive and half illusion.

They made a ring at the borders of the candlelight’s reach. They gathered to watch the dance, prisoned by it as was the lamia, and they joined the dance—half hopping, half drifting round and around the rim of the circle of light.

“What are they?” whispered Ewan, making his voice so thin and frail that it would not break the rhythm of the dance.

Helen paused in her play to answer, in the same gentle tone: “Gaunts and ghasts and werethings. Her creatures, held in subjection to her. Creatures which haunt without being seen. They have no power… none at all, but are fearful nevertheless. The lamia drinks the blood, the black birds eat the flesh and the bones. These are all that remains.”

It sounded, to Ewan, rather horrible, and almost beyond belief. They were, after all, only shadows—tricks of the light. But they were shadows in the imagination, too—tricks of thought and fear—and had to be dealt with. Courage would be a poor thing if it had only to face such things as are whole and solid.

Ewan’s fingers never faltered now but found the notes with a sureness that came not from any innate talent and only partly from his long familiarity with musical instruments. The guitar itself was collaborating with him, alive in his hands, guiding him. Helen’s accompaniment on the panpipes was not really useful in the business of making the lamia dance. But it was useful to Ewan— there was a great reassurance in knowing that he was not alone, that he was not working alone. There is really no such thing as unnecessary help.

They played for an hour, and two… which seemed like more. After that, they lost track of time altogether, as it slowed down so much that they felt themselves becalmed within a single moment. The stars stood still in the sky, and the city of Ora Lamae was cut out from the fabric of history, abstracted from the current of time and isolated in a momentary cocoon.

Now (and everything more was now, and no other time) the crowd at the edge of the candlelight grew no more. The whole company was assembled in the slow, sweet, sad dance. And the lamia began to croon her wordless song.

Curiously, there was little hissing in the sound. It was not at all the sound of a snake, It was, instead, a mellow, gentle, rounded sound, whose notes flowed liquidly. It blended with the music of the guitar, and seemed to have much in common with it. Perhaps, indeed, it was a song born of the guitar, and was being put into the lamia rather than drawn out.

Either way, the lamia sang… and sang… and sang.

Ewan played while his fingers ached and their tips were shot with pain. Helen played while her lips were numb and her throat began to hurt. But they played and played and didn’t mind that the lamia danced so light and free, not tiring at all, and sang without words or any hint of a name escaping into the sound.

They played and played while Ewan wondered just who was trapped and who—if anyone—was free. They played and played while the dawn—the dawn that would change the lamia back into a snake—did not come and could not come. They played and played, in their tiny place outside of time.

Finally, Helen paused again—not resting this time, but stopping because neither her fingers nor her throat had the power to continue.

Ewan faltered.

“Ask her now!” whispered Helen. “Ask her name!” Ewan came to his feet, slurring a note or two but not losing the rhythm of the dance, and recited:

Where the towers of Ora Lamae stood

a lamia waits to drink your blood—

what secret name is in her bred?

What secret name is in her bred?

The words mingled with the tune, and suddenly the forked tongue was writhing from the lamia’s mouth, parting her lips and shaping the stream of liquid sound that spilled from her very being. It was not only the lamia that answered, but the shadowed host entranced at the fringes of the ring of light. A thousand half-voices joined, strained to their utmost, called out—and summoned up the merest whisper. So slight was their hold on half-life, so tenuous their half-being, that all as one they could only just make themselves heard.

Ewan’s fingers lifted from the strings, but the strings continued on their own, not masking the chorus but adding to it, shaping the curling of the lamia’s tongue, forming the syllables.

“Cas… cor… ia…” was the sound that came, as all the voices fused.

The music died, and the silence, so long deferred, seemed suddenly absolute.

The lamia, released, did not pause in her flowing movement, but came straight towards the boy, her arms

held wide to embrace him. The crowd, still and silent, watched.

Ewan knew now what was required. Names are power. In the naming of a night-creature there is the power of command.

“By the name of Cascoria,” he said, his voice no more than slightly tremulous, “I command you to eternal rest. The embrace was never sealed. The candle in the lamp guttered and died. Then the dawn came.

Later, Ewan and Helen managed to find a building which had not quite been rendered into a heap of slag. It still had a doorway and a couple of wrinkled windows. The hallway within was no longer square at any of its corners, and the walls were buckled, but it was shelter nevertheless.

It was raining—not the torrential rain that had scoured Mirasol, but a lazy, mild rain.

Both Ewan and Helen were utterly exhausted. The threw themselves on the polished floor. The grey mare which had brought Ewan to the Forbidden City, was too tall and wide to come through the crumpled doorway but was content to stand outside and get slightly wet.

“Well,” said Ewan. “We did it.”

“We certainly did,” agreed Helen.

They sounded neither joyful nor triumphant, and this was not entirely due to their tiredness. They felt somehow overcome by the whole night’s work. It had left them spiritually as well as physically exhausted.

“Those shadows…” whispered Ewan. “I never dreamed there could be so many.”

“They aren’t just innocent travellers picked off in Ora Lamae,” said Helen. “Not, at any rate, since the city was destroyed. They’re the victims of a thousand years, maybe more. A retinue gathered in all the places she’s ever been.”

Ewan shuddered and touched the wooden body of the guitar, gently—as though for reassurance.

“It’s strange,” he said. “When I turned the signpost round the whole of Methwold forest was transformed. But Ora Lamae didn’t come back to life.”

“Nor did Castle Mirasol,” said Helen. “The rain washed it clean of old enchantments and the foul dirt that old enchantments gather, but it didn’t mend the cracked stone. The ghosts went on to somewhere else—they didn’t return to life. Only the birds came alive. Here, the lamia and her ghosts and gaunts are all gone, but the old palaces won’t grow out of the wreckage, and the people in their coloured silks can’t be recalled. These are ruins, built by men, destroyed by men… and ruins are ruins, whether magic helped to make them so or not. We can disenchant the natural, but the artificial can only be destroyed or remade.”

“I see,” said Ewan. And he did see. He was beginning to understand.

There was a pause—a languid, sleepy pause. It was finally interrupted by Ewan, who said: “What now?”

“Fiora,” said Helen.

“I know that,” answered Ewan. “But when? I don’t like the way that time keeps jumping about. And we’re entitled to some more help, I think. I need some sleep … and I think we ought to wait for Wynkyn, or whoever comes in his place–-“

“I should think so, too!” said a new voice, which Ewan recognized instantly as belonging to the ghostly poet.

He sat up, shaking off his tiredness. “Where are you?” he asked.

“I’m nowhere yet,” complained the voice. “Really, I’m expected to materialize in the most awkward places. It’s daylight you know, and I’ve never been here before, and this shadow is definitely substandard.”

“Move away from the door,” said Helen to Ewan. Then, to Wynkyn: “I think we can get into one of the inner rooms, where there won’t be as much light. This way.”

She beckoned to Ewan, and they went through a doorway to the interior of the building, finding a room whose window had closed right up like a winking eye as the outer wall on that side had sagged terribly. The ceiling of the room slanted dramatically, but there was room to stand on the side that they went in, and some good, deep shadow caught in the mutilated angle of the walls.

The silver glow began to grow immediately, and Wynkyn managed—not without some difficulty—to shape himself and get into focus.

“That’s better,” he said.

“You didn’t waste much time, did you?” asked Ewan.

“There isn’t much time to waste,” replied the apparition. “I’m on overtime, you know. I’m very sorry and all, but there simply isn’t time for you to sleep out the day. The interference with time is strictly regulated, you know. You haven’t actually moved back or forward at all… just stepped outside for a while. The night you saw from the clearing in Methwold was false night—an attribute of the forest itself. Anyhow, the powers-that-be think that Zemmoul has to be taken care of today; so that you can get to the third verse during tonight. It’s something to do with the spell building up momentum, so that it has to move faster all the time, like a falling stone or a snowball rolling down a mountain. It’s no good asking me to explain it—I’m a poet, and have no time for all that nasty mathematical, scientific stuff.”

“We’re very tired,” said Ewan. “Did anyone promise you it was going to be easy?” asked Wynkyn.

“No,” admitted the boy.

“Then you’ve no grounds for complaint, have you?”

“Please,” said Helen, “let’s not bother with the arguments. The spell is building up power, that’s all. You can’t just do these things… you have to do them right. We understand.”

The apparition gave her a tiny bow and a nice smile.

“Excellent,” he said. “So let’s get on. I’m afraid that the guitar has to come back, now.”

Ewan opened his mouth as if to protest, but thought better of it, recognizing the inevitable. He looked back through the doorway, to the spot where he had abandoned the guitar, close to the outer door. It was already gone.

“However,” the spectral poet went on, “there’s a new present for the young lady. On temporary loan only, of course.” So saying, he reached behind him into the thickest part of the shadow and slowly drew forth a sword with an ornate hilt and a long, glittering blade. It was still insubstantial, and glowed with the usual silvery light. Wynkyn laid it down on the floor. “Now what was that verse?” he muttered.

There was a long pause.

“Marvellous,” commented Ewan. “A poet who can’t remember a verse.”

Wynkyn sniffed. “I never have any trouble with my own,” he said. “But I write real poetry, not this stupid spell doggerel. My poetry has life, and wit and elegance and…”

“I read Synchronous Sonnets last night,” said Ewan, coolly.

“Really!” said Wynkyn. “What did you think of it?”

“I think we ought to make a bargain,” said Ewan. “You don’t tell me what you think of my guitar playing, and I won’t tell you what I think of your poetry.”

Wynkyn winced. For a moment, he looked very hurt. Then he gathered himself together, drew himself up to his full (but rather inadequate) height, and said: “Peasant!”

“Thanks,” said Ewan.

Helen kicked him on the ankle.

“I’m sure that it was excellent poetry,” she said, “for those who have sufficient poetry in them to respond to it. But for the moment, we still need a doggerel verse to materialize the sword.”

Wynkyn beamed at her. “It’s a great pleasure,” he said, “to find someone who understands. For you, my dear—it is, after all, your sword—I shall be able to recall the verse…. I have it now!”