Prospero's Children (12 page)

“I’m grown-up,” said Fern, forgetting her earlier sensation of ineffectuality. “Anyway, you asked for my help.
Our
help.”

“I asked you to find something,” Ragginbone conceded. “Instead, you found—”

“Trouble,” Will said brightly.

“So be it.” Absentmindedly, the Watcher took a pull at the lemonade bottle. For some time he said nothing, while they waited. Fern thought it was like waiting for a flower to open. “Where to begin?” he muttered at last. “Beginnings are hard to trace. The roots of stories go deep . . .”

“Begin with Atlantis,” said Fern.

“Ah yes. Atlantis. We know so little of it. Oldest of civilizations, fairest of cities, Gifted, doomed. It is beyond Sight now; its ghosts do not stir. Still, the descendants of those who fled live on, though their numbers now are few, exiles for all time: they preserve ancient documents, never shown to any historian. And rumor is stronger than the strongest prohibition. It was an island in a place that is no more, an arrogant metropolis ruling a mainland empire before the dawn of history. Its power was founded on a curious stone, a globe of rock the size of a serpent’s egg. The Lodestone. None knew how it came there, or where its story started. The belief was that it had come from another world—not simply another planet, but another cosmos—although how that belief originated is unknown. Whatever the cause, it responded to none of our physical laws, and the environment was warped around it, and the people who lived there were altered forever. Studying the researches of this century I have wondered if it might have been, not simply
from
another universe, but another universe itself, an entire creation reduced by the final implosion to a sphere of incredibly concentrated matter. That could explain its extraordinary potency.”

“That’s impossible,” Will objected. “For one thing, it would be as small as a pinhead. For another, gravity itself would be distorted around it.”

“Gravity may mean two different things in two different worlds,” Ragginbone pointed out, “and the size of the pinhead depends on the size of the pin. Anyway, that’s just a theory. What we know for certain is that the Atlanteans used their power to learn and to teach, to build and to create, to rule, dominate, eventually oppress. The usual downhill slope. They called themselves the Gifted people, and those in whom the Gift showed most strongly were revered, becoming the royalty and aristocracy of the kingdom. The Lodestone affected their genes, and these they spread in the way of conquerors throughout the conquered lands; thus the abnormal strain has been passed on even to the present day. Since the Fall, however, the Gifted have had other, often less flattering, names: witchkind, the Crooked Ones, Prospero’s Children.”

“What
is
the Gift?” Fern whispered. “What—exactly— is it?”

“Telepathy, telekinesis, telegnosis. The ability to move between Time and Forever, between past and present, between the world and its shadow. A wearisome life and an unwearying body. The Gift can manifest itself in many ways. But you must be aware you have it, you must learn its use. Without understanding and practice it will atrophy, like a superfluous limb. Not for nothing has it been called the sixth finger. It is wise to fear it, folly to indulge it, lethal to abuse it.”

“Lethal for whom?” said Fern.

“It was lethal for Atlantis, in the end. They became obsessed with inbreeding, forbidding lawful marriage with foreigners, seeking to produce ever more puissant offspring. Inevitably this went hand in hand with the usual weaknesses of the inbred, disabilities, diseases, even imbecility. There were idiots with the reach of giants, dictators driven by passion and mania. Zohrâne, the last queen, had power beyond conception, but she hungered for more—” Fern recalled suddenly the inhuman hunger she had detected in Alison’s face “—for the potential to travel outside the world itself, to pass the Gate of Death yet living, and return unchanged. She was mad, of course. Only the dead may pass; whether the human spirit is reborn here or anywhere is a matter for guesswork and faith: knowledge is not possible. The Old Spirits, those we name immortal, are bound to this world until the end of Time, but mortals must die, even the Gifted ones, and journey blindfold into the unknown. Zohrâne wanted to take that road with open eyes, breaking the first law of Being. She believed that she could use the substance of another universe to make herself a key that would unlock the Gate, admitting her into the dimension from whence that substance came. And so she employed her Gift to destroy its source. She smashed the Lodestone.”

“I don’t understand,” said Will, evidently giving the subject serious consideration. “Surely this Gate you mention is just . . . sort of symbolic; you can’t actually
see
it. And even if you could, how did she know the key would fit?”

“Once you have the key you can make the lock,” said the Watcher. “Once you have the lock, you can open the door. In a sense you are right, the Gate is a symbol; but every symbol represents a fundamental truth. I will show you the Gate, if you like. It is always near.” He stood away from the rock-face and made a sweeping gesture with both hands. Gradually, like a film coming into focus, they began to see an arch delved deep in the stone, and in that arch a door. It looked ancient beyond the count of years, overhung with membranous growths, while species of fungi long lost in evolution clawed at the crumbling lintel. The door itself appeared flimsy, made of illfitting boards weathered to grayness, the iron ring which should have opened it rusted into immobility. Yet there were no chinks between the makeshift planks; no light leaked around the periphery. It was an unobtrusive sort of door in a wall like a million other walls, marked solely by its age; but a magnetism emanated from it that was both a compulsion and a menace. Fern felt herself drawn irresistibly toward it, yet her knee-joints melted with dread at its proximity. “Do not approach it!” Ragginbone admonished softly, and the image slowly faded until the rock was as before. “When the moment comes for it to open, you will know,” he went on. “Until then, you may see it many times, or never, it may look the same, it may look different, but you will always recognize it. The awe of the Gate does not diminish.”

“What about Zohrâne?” asked Fern, pulling herself together. “
Did
she unlock it?”

“I doubt it,” responded Ragginbone. “You have felt its force even when closed; were it to be left open by so much as a crack the pull of Beyond would eventually destabilize the entire cosmos. But we cannot know what really happened. Because of Zohrâne’s act, Atlantis has been forbidden to spellbinder and soothseeker. Archaeologists know little of it, and the Gifted cannot look back over the millennia to learn its secrets. Some say it was the shattering of the Lodestone that jarred the fault line on which the island lay; others claim it was the breaking of the ultimate law. Whatever the cause, a great tidal wave overwhelmed the island, and on its back came a storm more terrible than any in the memory of the world. The shape of the continents was changed, mountains became islands, the ocean poured over lowland plains. Atlantis sank beneath the waters, and the seabed opened to swallow it. Not a stone remained, and even the creatures of the deep could not tell where it had been. What became of the key we could only conjecture.” He paused, sighed, studied his palm. “Until now.”

“
You
found it,” Fern said, sudden light dawning. “It
was
you, wasn’t it? We saw you on the tape. You were with the alchemist, peering into the smoke.” She gave an involuntary smile. “The sorcerer’s apprentice.”

“Poor Fantodi. He wasn’t much of a sorcerer.” Ragginbone’s eyes had the glazed look of someone gazing far into the past. “And I . . . wasn’t much of an apprentice. Too clever for my own good and much too clever for him. Candido Gobbi . . .” He toyed with the name as if it belonged to someone else. “Candido the not-so-candid. Homeless urchin, aspiring mountebank, unscrupulous, immoral, amoral. He grew to be Caracandal, acquired what he thought was wisdom, gambled with the Gift he did not appreciate and lost. Lost respect, power, identity. It is a hard thing, learning to live without the packaging that made up your Self. The hardest thing. What is a sorcerer, without his sorcery? Only a man without a job. They say it is in such nakedness that the true spirit is revealed—but that’s the kind of thing people
do
say, when they are comfortable with their purpose in life, and have never been stripped of everything.”

“What is Caracandal?” asked Fern. “Is it your real name?”

“It is the name I took in honor of my Gift, as Alison took Alimond. It is the custom.”

“Is she very dangerous?” Will demanded.

“Very. The famine that drives her is beyond satiation. The road on which you travel so often depends on how—and why—you first discover your Gifting. In her girlhood she was wronged, and in retaliation she lashed out with a power she did not understand, wielding her newfound ability in hatred and revenge. Her future took shape in that gesture.” He looked long and darkly at Fern as he spoke, pondering all that he knew of her. The sunlight showed her face unlined, unformed, petal-smooth, only hinting at the character she had yet to develop. He glimpsed doubt, courage, a budding will, but, he was almost sure, little capacity for rancor. The sixth finger, he thought. If you have it, use it.
Use it.
We have need of power.

“Why did she want to trap the horse?” Fern was puzzling over the recollection.

“It was a unicorn.” Ragginbone shrugged. “Presumably she believes in the efficacy of its horn, although the evidence shows it is no more useful than that of the white rhino. But Alimond was born in a superstitious age and she has never really outgrown it, for all her dabbling in modern trends. Unicorns are mutations. The one you saw was probably a windhorse: they are air-spirits, not true animals, and prone to teratogenesis. It has only the transient magic of its kind.” There was a pause while he gazed out over the spreading moor, listening to the hum of insect busyness, soaking up the serenity of the summer’s day.

When he resumed his voice was altered, softer and yet, by its very softness, alarming, edged with warning—or fear. “It is the idol which concerns me most. I was summoned only in spirit, I could not see clearly beyond the summoner, and Will’s perception was affected by the trance in which he was bound, but you saw everything. You were rash, and lucky: Alimond’s concentration would have been focused on the circle, rendering her oblivious to all else. As for the idol . . . the idol is a thing of stone: it cannot turn its head.”

Fern shuddered, suddenly cold even in the sun’s warmth. “Its lips moved,” she said.

“That would have been effort enough. It’s a receptor: a statue of a pagan deity which can be used as a transmitter by the immortal it represents. Many of the Old Spirits were once worshipped as gods: they hated Man only one degree less than they craved his subjugation. The religions withered long ago and most of the Spirits now sleep, or have dwindled in power, but a few endure, adapting their methods, battening on mortal weakness, finding the shortcuts to men’s hearts. You saw three of the lesser ones, Fern, when Alimond called them to the circle: the Hag, the Hunter, the Child. The strongest rarely make personal appearances. They prefer to use receptors, slave-sprites, ambulants—”

“What’s an ambulant?” Fern interjected.

“A living being—human or animal—possessed by an external power. Animals are easiest. Humans have higher resistance, but then a human will admit the invader, offered a sufficient incentive, and after that it cannot be excluded.”

“That’s horrible,” said Will. “You mean, someone we
know
—?”

“Possession leaves its mark,” Ragginbone said. “The aging process will be arrested, there can be a corruption of the skin, the eyes betray. In the shock of the initial takeover the hair may turn white or gray. There are dangers, too, for the possessor. A Spirit which immerses itself too deeply in a stolen body can lose much of its force when that body is destroyed. But the strongest of the Spirits could control many ambulants, many receptors, putting only a tithe of his thought and his power into each. Like a businessman with a dozen telephone-lines, holding a dozen different conversations at once, or an eight-armed puppeteer, with a puppet in every hand. I fear Alimond has formed a deadly alliance.”

“This Spirit,” Fern said, “who is he?”

“He is,” said Ragginbone, and the lines of grimness set in his face like scars. “That is enough.”

“But—doesn’t he have a name?”

“He has many names, many faces. Nonetheless, he is one Spirit, one mind. One void that can never be filled. The Lodestone is something for which he has always lusted. I know little of him outside his reputation, I am happy to say, though I once dared to penetrate Azmodel, the Beautiful Valley—the valley in the pit of the world—but once was sufficient: it is not an adventure I wish to repeat. The less you know of him the better. He is oldest of the old, mightiest among mighty: his grip does not slacken, his thought is unsleeping, his hatred is forever. Does that tell you? If Alimond has turned to
him
, her greed has outstripped not only her judgment but her reason.”

“If he’s so powerful,” said Will, “how do we fight him?”

“You don’t,” said the Watcher. “Neither you, nor I, have that kind of strength. We might just as well try to fight the whirlwind.”

It was not an encouraging conversation but just the same, Fern felt encouraged. Back at the house, she looked up the word
telegnosis
in the dictionary. “Knowledge about distant events alleged to have been obtained without the use of any normal sensory mechanism,” ran the definition. That night, she dreamed of pain. It was a pain like nothing she had ever sensed or imagined, and it was inside her, in her belly, in the very core of her self, tearing at her, rending her with invisible teeth, wrenching her apart. Her stomach was swollen hard with pain and her thighs gaped and the blood from her torn innards pulsed out between her legs. She thought she screamed but no one seemed to care. “Alys Giddings!” A sharp-faced woman was leaning over her. “You should be ashamed of yourself, making such a fuss. Seven I had and you were the seventh, and never any fuss out of me.” And then in the background another voice: “It’s too soon. Much too soon.” And then the pain flowed away and there was a white naked thing squirming in the phlegm between her legs like a hairless rat, and she picked it up, and a love filled her which drove out even the memory of suffering, so that she wept with love, but when she held it to her breast it would not suck, and its eyes were squeezed shut, and its tiny limbs hung limp like those of a doll. “It’s dead,” said one of the voices. “Take it away from her”—and then she was standing in a lane somewhere and a man was riding past, and his profile was as fine as porcelain and his long curls shone like gilding in the sun, but he turned his shoulder and would not see her. Her heart was beating hard with the hunger and anger which had come to fill the place where that great love had been. And at the last she was in the field as before, and Fern was Alys and Alys was Fern, and she could feel the mud between her toes, and her heart’s glow irradiating her body, and when she gazed into the palm of her hand she seemed to see the planets whirling beneath her skin. Far away was the gabled house, and the clouds rolled over it, and she called to the lightning and it answered her, and her voice was the voice of the wind. She did not see the dark man reaching out to her, only the fair man in the distant house, with the candlelight golden on his sculpted locks. But the candlefflames grew at her summons until they speared the ceiling, and the storm came down to meet them, and the porcelain profile cracked in the heat of the burning. She tasted fire and she tasted blood, but it was not enough. The love that was gone had left a void that would never be filled. Suddenly Fern was afraid, trapped inside so much hatred and emptiness; she struggled to be free but the dream enmeshed her like a cobweb, binding her thought with cloying gossamer, and when finally she fought her way out of it there was only another dream, another layer of sleep.