Marianne, the Magus & the Manticore (24 page)

The woman nodded over her pot of broth, trying to straighten the kitcheny clutter with one hand even as she reached for her coat with the other.

"Oh, leave it," said Grassi, impatiently. "Leave it. Who knows. We may never see it again."

They went out into the silent streets, still wet from the dusk rain, lit by an occasional lamp into uncertain pools of visibility which they swam between in the wet light, working their way back toward the church from which their evening's peregri-nations had begun.

"I hear feet behind us," said Helen, almost whispering.

"Following us."

"Probably David," said Marianne in a definite tone. "Or one of the others. Pay no attention, Helen. Of course they will follow us. Let them. Anyone who helps us helps them, though they may not know it."

"I hear cars moving."

"They always move at night," said Marianne. "When I was in the library, I used to listen to them at night, wondering where they came from, where they were going. I have never seen them in the daytime at all, but at night they come out after the rain, to make that wet, swishing sound throughout the night.

Perhaps the rain brings them, like frogs. Perhaps they bring the rain and cannot move when the streets are dry. Pay no attention."

"There are bells ringing."

"They are ringing the bells in the church. Sometimes they do that at night. Whoever does it makes a very soft sound, though, not clamorous as in the day. Pay no attention, Helen.

It will help guide us where we are going."

And, indeed, the soft ringing of the bells did guide them through the wet streets while behind them in the city the sounds of cars and footsteps increased as though a skulking assembly gathered elsewhere and increased with each moment. They came at last to the church, passed before its bulbous pillars, and stood at the foot of the signal tower. In the church there was singing, sad as tears; the sound lapped them in anguished waves where they stood.

"I know," said Helen. "I will pay no attention to it."

Marianne smiled. Had she seen it, Helen would have been surprised at the cold efficiency of that smile.

The stairs wound up the outside of the tower for at least half its height then entered through an arched opening into a lightless interior. From where they stood the heavy tower roof lowered down at them like brows over the shadowed eye holes of the high arcade. Marianne set her foot upon the step and the singing behind her grew in intensity even as the bells began ringing more loudly. Resolutely, she ignored this and went on, Helen and Mr. Grassi behind her, the sound growing moment by moment into a cacophony, a tumult, the swishing of the cars and the tread of many feet underlaying other sounds with a constant susurrus as they climbed. Far away she thought she heard the crash of breaking glass and she turned to see the expression of surprise and fear on both faces behind her. "We would probably not be able to hear the Manticore's window breaking from here," she said. "Pay no attention."

They were not long in doubt, for the next sound they heard was the unmistakable roar of the Manticore, far off yet infinitely ominous. They hurried up the steps, curling around the squatty tower once, twice, three times widdershins. Before them the arched opening into darkness gaped like a mouth, and they stopped as if by common consent before entering it. Below them 011 the street, things gathered, vision swam, and a file of Greasy Girls began to assemble at the corner. There were bulky shadows at the base of the tower, and Marianne saw one or two of them start up the tower stair. "David is there," she told Helen. "With others. It seems we are together in this, whether or no."

They hesitated at the dark opening. There was no door, no sign that there had ever been a door, and yet the impression of a definite barrier within that opening was clear to each of them. "Shall we risk what waits within?" asked Marianne. "Or do you think we only imagine it?"

"Something there," said Helen.

Grassi nodded, put out a hand to feel of the darkness as though he measured velvet for a robe. "Yes," he said, "something there, and yet I do not think it menaces us."

"Then we gain nothing by standing," said Marianne, pushing her way through the opening and into the tower. There was no light inside, and they fumbled their way around the stone walls until they encountered the stairs once more and could fumble their way up that twisting, railless flight. Gradually their eyes became used to the darkness, became accustomed to the velvet shadow, and they saw draperies as of mist against the dark. Faces of smoke. Hands which reached foggy fingers toward them. Voices of vapor. Marianne stopped climbing, sat down with her back against the wall and her hands held before her to warn away whatever it was which shifted and swam at the edges of her sight.

"Ghosts...." whispered Helen.

"Peeled ones," corrected Grassi in an awed tone. "Those whom the Manticore has chased to the edges of oblivion."

A sigh ran among the shifting shapes. Marianne could see them more clearly now, forms of virtual transparency through which one might see the ghostly hearts beating slowly, the pulsing blood coursing through pale veins, translucent orbs of eyes staring at them through the darkness. Even as she watched, one of the figures threw up its gray arms and opened its mouth in a long, silent scream which echoed down the tower in a single pulse of agony, then came apart into shreds before her eyes, fading into the gloom, into nothingness. Around this disappeared one was an agitation of ghosts, a turmoil of spirits and a soundless wailing which bit at them like the shriek of unoiled hinges on old vaults.

The anger within Marianne deepened, began to sing. "There is nothing we can do for them," she said to the others, beginning to climb once more. "We save them if we save ourselves.

Otherwise, there is nothing for them or for us. Come, quickly.

The Manticore is hunting through the streets."

Though the tower had not looked very tall from the street, from within it seemed to extend endlessly upward, and they turned around and around as they climbed, still widdershins, the world beginning to spin beneath them. At last they reached a flat platform and felt a ladder upon the wall. At the top of the ladder was a trapdoor, and it opened at their combined strength to let them out into the room at the top of the tower.

The room was strewn with rubbish, with broken picture frames and trash and blown leaves from trees which had never existed in this place. In the center of the room was a fireplace without a chimney, simply a raised platform made up of large stones cemented together. Marianne did not wait. She began scav-enging immediately among the broken frames, stripping a can-vas away from its frame and piling the broken sticks upon the hearth. The picture had been of a naked girl carrying a light in a dark, frightening street.

"I pray," she begged them, "that one of you has a match.

Without it, I fear we're done."

"Always," said Helen, rummaging in her pockets. "One must never be without fire...."

Below them in the nearby street the roar of the Manticore became one with a roar from the crowd. Marianne heard a trumpet bray, somewhere, or a car horn, as she fidgeted while Helen searched. At last the woman found what she had looked for, half a dozen wooden matches, two of them broken. They crouched beside her, cutting off the wind, while she tried to light the broken frame with a kindling of dead leaves and scraps of paper. The first four matches went out, caught by vagrant wind, burned out without igniting anything but themselves.

Marianne gulped, wiped her hands, let frustrated fury take her.

"Burn," she commanded. "You will bum to summon help, because I need help. Burn." Still, there was only one match left when the leaves caught fire to send tentative tendrils of flame up between the bits of broken wood. Then the wood caught with a roar, the paint upon it bubbling and pouring out smoke. They found other trash in the place, heaped it upon the small fire until it became a beacon of leaping red and a column of black, roiling smoke rising upward forever from the tower.

"Now," gasped Marianne, "should we call a name? Invoke a spirit? Call upon God?"

"Call upon Macravail," cried Grassi. "For if he hears you, he will bring God with him."

THE DUSK RAIN wakened Chimera, sogging the rough curls of his mane and running across Lion's closed eyes into the comers of the nostrils, making Lion sneeze. There was no sound to have awakened him, and he swiveled ears, trying to determine what quality of uneasiness it might have been which put an end to dream and brought him into this place. He rather thought it had been the sound of someone calling his name, but he could detect no echo of that summons now. He turned his heavy head, following the absence of sound, ears continuing to prick and twitch. This motion wakened Goat who shared the ears with Lion, centered as they were in the great arc of Goat's horns. Through slitted eyes Goat stared calmly along the shaggy hair of the backbone to the end of his back where the flat, scaled head of Snake rested—still asleep, forked tongue flickering unconsciously—and Snake's body curved away into Chimera's tail. Lion began pawing wetness away, and Goat caught a glimpse of the dark wall which towered just behind them, arcing off into haze in either direction.

"Where are I," he mused in his throaty baah. "We? Where?"

"Outside something," rumbled Lion, washing the last of the dusk rain from the deep wrinkles between his eyes. His head swiveled as he heard an ominous rattle from behind him, and he looked into the eyes of Snake, awake now, tail in sinuous motion with its tip a vibrating blur. "We should be inside it rather than outside it. I don't like being outside."

Goat turned to regard the wall, forcing Lion to look in the opposite direction. Two of the Chimera's faces were back to back, able to turn completely around, as an owl's head does, which allowed Lion to look forward while Goat looked back or vice versa on occasion. Lion contested the movement, turning the neck violently as he coughed with a guttural roar, and Goat stared down his own hairy backbone once more at Snake's head, now thoroughly awake, tongue flicking in and out as it tasted the air.

"Why are we here?" Goat asked, refusing to be annoyed by Lion's forceful behavior. "Why?"

"Sssummoned, no doubt," hissed Snake. "Ssseeking sssome-one. It would be better to ssstop all thisss ssseeking, all this waking in ssstrange locationsss." The rattle at the end of Snake's tail gave a dry, uneasy buzz, a humming paranoia of sound that made Goat blink and Lion extend his claws to scar the ground.

"Who is it we are seeking?" asked Goat, almost as though he knew the answer already but was testing to see whether the other parts of himself were as aware as he.

"Marianne," roared Lion lustfully. "We are seeking Marianne."

"Sssilly girlsss," Snake hissed. "Running away and asssking to be ressscued."

"She didn't run away," Goat reminded him. "She was sent, Snake." The Chimera got to its feet, heavy lion ones in front and hooved goat ones at the back while a scaled serpent tail lashed at the ground. Snake always felt best when he was lying against the ground and belly scales were where belly scales belonged, while Lion preferred to face forward—and move in that direction.

"I, on the other hand," said Goat to himself in a philo-sophical manner, "find as much to comment upon looking back as I ever might looking forward. It is, perhaps, better that Lion usually does the forward looking. Lion is not overburdened with scruple, with metaphysical consideration, with introspec-tion. If it were up to Goat, Chimera might hover forever upon the brink of action without taking it. I, however, am much needed as a kind of balance, for if it were up to Lion or Snake alone, we would be embroiled in continual calamity."

This was more or less true. Lion had few doubts about his actions. As he had said on more than one occasion, "I may be wrong, but I am never in doubt." Goat, on the other hand, was seldom wrong but often in doubt about virtually everything.

Snake did not care. Wrong or right, venom, spite, and suspicion met either condition.

"Have you ever speculated," began Goat, "on what a strange mosaic we are? I am continually amazed by the difference, the distinctions, the—"

"Arragh," roared Lion. "I am outside, Goat. I want to be inside. This is no time for lectures." He began to move them along the wall, pace on pace of lion feet, goat hooves trotting behind, snake tail lashing, rattling, a constant counterpoint to the heavy breath of the Chimera, the hot, fiery breath of the Chimera. "Can I bum this wall?" Lion roared, eager to make the attempt.

Mild-voiced Goat, remonstrating, urging whenever possible a less violent course of action. "That shouldn't be necessary.

We see tracks. A vehicle has come this way, from out there in the haze toward this place." Goat saw two earth colored lines imposed upon the spongy gray-green of the plain, coming out of a nothing haze into the reality of wherever they were, vaguely paralleling the wall, swerving to meet it far ahead.

"Tracksss mean people," Snake whispered. "It isss bessst to ssstay away from people."

"Shhh," said Goat kindly. "We won't let them hurt you."