Marianne, the Magus & the Manticore (21 page)

She did not relish reading the story a dozen times, as she had had to do before, but she began without a murmur while Grass! brought her bread and cheese and tea. It did not take as long this time as she had expected.

"Here," she said to him. "I think this may be it: "That evening there was a tap on the window, and she looked out half fearfully to see a black, hunched form against the glass and knew it for that persistent follower who had come after her from the library. The watcher tapped on the window....

Almost fearfully she went to the window to see a message thrust against the glass.
Not all who are here are Manticore
meat! Will you join us?
She wrote upon a napkin the word
perhaps
and held it to the pane. This seemed to satisfy him, for he scribbled,
I'll come back another time....'"

"What do you think?" he asked. "A kind of underground, perhaps?"

"Something like that."

"Against what? Who?"

She shrugged. "Against whoever runs things, manages the library, keeps the books. If someone escaped—that's the word you used—then it means people are being kept here, impris-oned here. And someone is opposed to it, some resistance movement."

"How effective, I wonder?"

"Who knows? It is at least something. I'll put a note in the window of the restaurant when I get back. Helen won't mind as long as it isn't conspicuous."

"And I," he said, doing a little dance step on the carpet, twirling and bowing to himself, "I must continue the minuet, the slow dance of finding out. Bow, advance, bow, retreat.

Slow and easy, so they don't catch me."

"Whoever they are." She laughed, a weary laugh echoed from the street where the Manticore raged past as evening fell.

"Find out who that woman is who came to the library, Mr.

Grassi. If we find out who she is, it may tell me who I am."

He shook his head at her, tongue protruding between his teeth. "I won't spend time doing that, pretty lady. No. I will do what Macravail told me to do—send him a message. He will come like the wind, like a storm, if only we can figure out how to tell him where we are...."

"I hope you will be able to do that soon," she comforted him, privately thinking that it sounded no less mad than anything else in the place. "But just in case no one can save us from outside, we must try to figure out how to save ourselves."

When he reached to pat her shoulder, she patted his in return.

"It's all right. I'll be careful."

They watched together until the Manticore returned to its window and people appeared on the streets once more, few and furtive, but moving about nonetheless. Then she left him to return to her work, wondering as the wind blew sharp bits of cinder into her eyes whether it was truly enchantment or dream or a horrible reality from which there would never be any escape.

Makr Avehl had been on the phone for half an hour, speaking first to someone calling via satellite, an enigmatic conversation which involved much note-taking and short, monosyllabic questions. The later calls were to the people he had sent to Boston, and when he had finished them all he merely sat where he was, staring at the carpet between his feet. After twenty minutes of this, Ellat cleared her throat to attract his attention.

They had spent two days in this sitting about. He had not left Marianne's apartment even for a moment.

"What word?" she asked.

"Harvey Zahmani is not in Boston. No one knows where he is. He did not announce his departure, which he usually does if he is going on some expedition. Besides, he's supposed to be teaching, and he hasn't shown up since last week."

"So you think—"

"I think he went after her, after Marianne. Or, probably, she drew him into the world to which she has gone. Actually, that's much more likely. He would be no more able than I to find her, so she must have drawn him in."

"Why? Fearful of him as she was?"

"Because when we are in our own dream worlds, we people them with others who are important to us, whether we love or hate them. Her world would have Harvey in it, because he tied himself to her in some way so that she could not or would not simply dismiss him."

"But you are not tied to her? Not with her?"

"Oh, Ellat. I know it. I wasn't important enough to her, though I much longed to be."

"She liked you."

"She liked most people. She liked Mrs. Winesap, downstairs, and Mr. Larkin, and the people in the library. But they weren't important to her. No. Likely they are not in her world either. But I have to find a way to get there, wherever she is."

"If you go into her world, Makr Avehl, won't it have to be in the form which she assigns you? As she sees you or thinks of you? Are you prepared for that?"

The face he turned to her was blank with surprise. He had obviously not thought of it, or had thought of it and refused to consider it further. He started to shake his head impatiently, but she stopped him with a gesture. "No. Makr Avehl. Think.

I twitted you down at Wanderly, twitted you with lecturing at the girl rather than talking with her. If you had talked with her, you would not have risked her life as it has been risked. I told her that such pontificating was your way, and she said she didn't mind, that she found you interesting. So she is good-natured. We both know that. But you know nothing about her.

Suppose—oh, take an impossible example—suppose she sees you as some monster? If you follow her into her world, it will be as that monster. I know that's not possible, b u t . . . . " Her voice trailed away at seeing the expression on his face.

Makr Avehl was remembering Marianne's hand recoiling from his own, her face knitted up in that expression of unwilling revulsion. Ellat, seeing him stricken, took his limp hands in her own. "Tell me. Did I hit upon an unwelcome truth? Makr Avehl, tell me! You need my help."

"You hit upon something, Sister. Something. I—I offered to stay with her Sunday night. I was afraid of her being alone.

I meant nothing at all improper, nothing lubricious. I thought, after all, that she is an American girl, in her twenties, not some adolescent daughter of Third World aristocrats who has had virginity developed into an art form. I offered to stay with her, meaning nothing dishonorable, and she recoiled from me as though I had been a serpent. She said something—what was it? Something about not being like that, and then she muttered under her breath 'begone, burned, buried'—an invocation or curse. I was so surprised I could say nothing. I apologized. I left her. Zurvan knows how she sees me. If you had not reminded me of that instance, I would have thought she regarded me well enough."

"It might not have been you at all," said Ellat comfortingly.

"It might have been a conditioned thing, her usual response to any thought of intimacy. In which case, since we have met her brother, perhaps we can guess? I can guess. You are perhaps too nice-minded."

"Her half brother? Do you mean that she—"

"I mean that
he
probably tried something with her when she was quite young, and by 'quite young' I mean emotionally, not necessarily in years. She is still 'quite young' in many ways.

It would explain much. It would explain her attitude toward your offer to stay with her. You do look like him."

"What do you mean, 'tried something'? Do you mean to tell me that he tried to force her? Or did force her?"

"Possibly. It would explain many things about her. And, since he is the kind of man he is, he probably followed the failure or success of his attempt with an equally forceful attempt to make her feel responsible for it. She is carrying some burden regarding him, Makr Avehl, and I wish that Zurvan had prompted you to pay attention to her instead of to the impression you were making."

"You're brutal, Ellat."

"Only occasionally," she said with a fond embrace of his shoulders. "Only when I am distressed beyond measure. Now, what did the Kavi say?"

"I asked them to read the Cave for me, as you know. I asked for three readings. Cyram did one, Nalavi did one, and the third was by that young cousin of Cyram's, the one with the scary eyes..."

"Therat. She doesn't have scary eyes. She's a bit intense."

"She has eyes like a hawk protecting its nest, ready to tear out your gizzard. Oh, God, Ellat, what difference what kind of eyes she has? They took the readings. I asked for guidance to Marianne. That's all. Aghrehond will be helping all he can, concentrating, fishing about and stirring up the waters. Well...."

"So. The message?"

"Books
and what Cyram describes as
'a paper person.'

Nalavi saw a
building,
and a
city.
The young one—"

"Therat."

"Therat saw a
manticore.
Nothing else; just a manticore."

"I didn't know there was a manticore in the Cave."

"Neither did anyone else. It's there. Carved in the seventh or eighth century, Cyram thinks, near the floor, half hidden behind a stalagmite. The light fell on it clean and clear, Therat said, but he didn't believe her until he took a lantern in there and looked for it. It wasn't even in the lectionary."

"Without the lectionary..."

"Anybody's guess. No history of lessons. No previous citations. No precedents. Cyram says that the girl—"

"Therat," she said patiently.

"Therat. Cyram says that she feels it means just what it is.

A manticore. Oh, one more thing. Cyram also saw an onion."

He laughed without amusement. "Of course, I have a lectionary with me and I'll start by looking up the references that are in it."

"Makr," she said, eyes half shut as she stared at the street light glow through the hazy curtains. "Makr. It makes me think of something. Paper people, and onions. A thing she said.

What was it? Shhh, now, let me think." And she leaned her head in her hands rocking to and fro while the wind moved the branches on the curtain, changing their shadow pattern with each flicker. "Something she said about peeling away... being peeled away... about Harvey doing that to her—peeling her away..."

"Like a snake shedding its skin?" he whispered. "Papery skin, peeling away? Like that?"

"Think," she said in a vague voice. "Of onions, one layer inside another, inside another, all the way to the heart of it and nothingness. She said Harvey made her feel that way. Flayed.

Skinned. Perhaps an onion is not a bad symbol for that."

"Books?" he asked. "Books. A building. A city."

"Books and a building. She worked in a library, Makr Avehl, you told me that yourself.
Think!
You don't know her well enough, that's all. You should have listened to her. You should have stopped talking and listened to her."

He knelt on the floor before her and bowed his head into her lap. "Beat me, Ellat. Beat me as you did when I was five and tried to drown the white cat. Beat me, but then forgive me and help me. I'm a beast, but forgive me."

She shook her head. "A library, Makr Avehl. People being peeled like onions. A manticore. A manticore is a monster.

That's all. Look in the lectionary, if you like, but it will not tell you more than that. To learn more than that, you must look at this place and listen to it as you did not listen to her."

He began to walk around the room, laying his hands on the walls, on the windowsills, on the satiny surfaces of the refinished furniture, on the shelves, the countertops, the carefully laid tile. He began to breathe in the scent of the place, to inhale it, the mixture of lemon oil and potpourri and the fragile smell of Marianne herself, faintly spicy, faintly musky.

He began to see the colors, each on each and together, until he knew her thought and intention as she had put each thing in its place, each brushstroke on each surface. He felt the texture of the fabric on the chairs, the dry whiskery push of it into his palm, like a cat's face. He turned on the lamp, noticed the way the light lay on the wood, on the paint, on the fabric. "She lay on the bed in there," he whispered. "She saw it just like this, this corner." He went into the bedroom, lay down on the bed, turned until he saw it as he knew she had seen it, the blanket warm and soft beneath his cheek. Under the lamplight the happy frog he had brought her glowed quietly.

What kind of world would one like this carry in her soul?

What would its geography be, its climate and culture? He lay quietly, letting what he knew of her possess him until it became more real than himself. Where? Where? Where?

Ellat came to the door of the room. "Makr Avehl. Remember, in her world you may not have a form or presence which will please you. Remember, it may not be of her own doing.

It may be merely something old and wounding which will not let her see you as you are."

"I know, Ellat," he said. "If anyone can be prepared, I am prepared. Wait here for me."

"Oh, my dear," she said. "Of course I will wait for you."

"WHO AM I when I don't know who I am?" She was leaning across a table, trying to post her inconspicuous notice in the corner of the coffee shop window, speaking partly to herself.

Helen was behind the counter, wiping it with a moist cloth and humming around the toothpick between her teeth. She interrupted the hum to make a short, interrogative snort and put her hands on her hips. Marianne got the notice propped to her satisfaction. It said, "I wish to meet with those who said they would return.""