Prospero's Children (39 page)

“I lost it when I dived in the sea. I threw it away. I gave it away. You’ll never have it!”

He thrust his face closer: the lightning showed his skin green with death, his eyes red without iris or pupil, blind with blood. “You’re my creature—” the words were spoken through his voice, not with it, in a whisper deeper than the storm “—you
cannot
betray me. Ten thousand years in the future I put my thumb-mark in your mind. Your strength is too new: you could never erase it.” His blind gaze was groping in her brain like a ray of dark, probing, stabbing—recoiling at last unrewarded. “
He
did this, didn’t he? Caracandal the charlatan—Caracandal the dispossessed—he touched the key and the Stone paid him in power. But I’ll take it yet and see him damned. Where is it? Tell me, or I’ll split your mind open like a ripe fruit, I’ll spill out your thoughts like seed. You
gave
it away—is that it? To the vagabond—the vagabond sailing that flimsy
carrarc
ahead. The vagabond!” He flung her aside and turned, crying to the ship in the many tongues of the sea, the scream of birds long extinct, the booming groan of the kraken stirring, the howl of tempests that raged in the ages before Man. A great wind bellied the sail, straining at the halyards: the waves gaped into a trough before them, the clouds arched into a tunnel above. Fern was sprawled half stunned against the boards but she pulled herself onto hands and knees and crawled to the ship’s side. The deck no longer swayed: drawing on all his power, Ixavo held the ship suspended, every plank, every rope shuddering with the force that drove it onward. Closer and closer to the wave-tossed, storm-beleaguered shape of the
Norne
. But Fern had gone beyond all feelings now save one: the urge to win. Against fate, against Ixavo, against whatever demon inhabited him. The impetus that had carried her through the past few days—something often little more than a reflex, instinctive as programming—had hardened, knuckling itself into a resolve. Her head spun and her physical strength was almost gone but another strength rose in her that was more than physical, clearing her brain, tensing her sinews. A strength that was neither the Stone nor the Gift, but only
her
. She tugged Ipthor’s knife from her waistband and hacked at one of the halyards anchoring the sail.

The knife was sharp, the rope taut: it snapped almost at once. The sail whipped free and was rent between stormwind and werewind, one useless shred flying like a banner while the other wrapped itself around the rigging. Ixavo’s cry of fury was the raptor’s screech, the clamor of primordial sea-beasts —but it did no good. Without the sail, the power had nothing to take hold of, no instrument to control. Will alone could not propel a vessel of that size through such a sea. The walls of the trough collapsed, reassembling into rocking heights on which the ship bucked like a wild horse. Ixavo, his power flagging, clutched at the mast, trying to bind himself to it with his sash. Something must have struck his head: the wound had opened wider and a section of his scalp was hanging loose, like a piece of ripped cloth. Fern held on to severed rope and sodden timber, eyes narrowed against the splashback of incessant waves, peering ahead through a blackness of spray, wondering in which direction ahead lay. And then they were lifted up, and there was a second, less than a second, when the lightning showed her the
Norne
, far away now, careening from wave-peak to wave-peak, running with the true wind. They’ll make it, she thought, they’ll ride out the storm, I’ve won—but the ship dived down and the
Norne
was lost to view, and even the lightning was blotted out. High above, the arching clouds had bowed into a vault, the darkness had turned from black to a somber red. She saw the spire of a tornado reaching down from the rim of the cloud-vault, but its outline was oddly fixed, unwavering, and there was another away to her left, like gigantic fangs scything toward the sea, and the storm-tunnel had become a throat, half as big as the sky, and they were being sucked into it in a vast mouthful of ocean. Ixavo screamed, a human scream—
The Nenheedra!
The Nenheedra has woken!
—and his hands tore at the knots he had made, but the flesh was slipping from his skull and his fingers would no longer coordinate. Fern saw an enormous globe of moisture, darker than rain, dropping toward her: it struck the deck inches from her foot, shearing through the planks, leaving a hole whose charred edges seemed to smoke even in the wet. And then—as in an occult room beyond the reach of memory—she was soaring up and up, the sea was rising through the sky, the tempest fell away beneath. The great Snake reared its head above cloud and lightning, slowly closing its yawning mouth, and the ocean streamed in waterfalls from its jaw. The ship listed and Fern half tumbled, half plunged over the side, and was swept away—away and away—eluding the descending fangs, borne over the lipless jaw, falling endlessly through the turmoil of the sky. Her last gleam of thought was a fleeting exultation, because she had evaded both demon and serpent, and she would die in the Sea.

Epilogue

The Unicorn

There was something pressing against her cheek, a hard smooth surface, faintly textured. She thought about it for a while and realized she was lying on her side, and the hard smoothness was beneath her; when she opened her eyes she could see it stretching away, shining dimly silver in the darkness. She had the impression of more light above, and the shadows of unseen mountains, and low waves breaking over her, though she did not seem to be wet. And then she knew where she was. She sat up, and the endless beaches at the margin of being extended on either hand, curving into infinity, and every star in the universe crowded the midnight sky. She inhaled the glittering air, listening to the breathing of the sea and the hissing of the stars. Looking down, she saw she was dressed in rags; between them her bare legs shone like pearl. How she came to be there, or why, was not so much unknown as unimportant. She was there, and in being there she was herself, nameless and eternal. A cool peace filled her. When he came, she knew she had been waiting for him. He nuzzled her with his nose; his horn gleamed more brightly than her starlustered limbs. Then suddenly he tossed his head, and his dark eyes were wild with hurt. Unicorns love jealously: they will not share. He would have run from her but she sprang to her feet and wound her arms around his neck. “Stay for me,” she said, “once more, just once more. Then I will let you go.” She mounted: he bucked and reared, but her hands were meshed in his mane, and she held on. Then he leaped away, streaking along the sand, and the night streamed around them. “Take me home,” she said. The stars frayed into long tassels of light, and the world glimmered into nothingness, and when the nothingness had faded the sun was shining, and the grass was green beneath his hooves.

She slid from his back and turned, but he was gone without thanks, vanishing into a thinning mist: he would not come again. The moor was under her feet, the heather and the wildflowers and the butterflies, and the sunlight was warm on her face. She was Fernani, Fernani and Fernanda, she was whole again, and all that she had forgotten came flooding back, stirring her dormant memory, knocking at her heart. And far below was the gray house of her dream, but close by were three figures sitting on the slope, a man, a boy, and a dog. “I am Fern Capel,” she said aloud, and began to cry, and so they found her, and she hugged Will, and clasped the Watcher’s coat, weeping as she had not wept since she was a child, not since her mother died when she thought the tears were frozen inside her forever. As the story poured out of her so the two halves of her knowledge fitted together, and at last, with a horror that stopped her tears, she understood. “You did well,” said Ragginbone, “better than my best hope—if hope it could be called, since I dared not indulge it. The key is caught in a time-trap: none will ever retrieve it again. And with the loss of so powerful an ambulant, the Oldest Spirit may be crippled in strength for many years.”

“But what about the rest of the Lodestone—the other pieces?” Will asked. “What became of them?”

“That is another story,” the Watcher replied, “and still unfinished. Our story is over—for a while. Yes, you have done well. Few have ventured so far, or ever returned. Do not regret the price. It all happened a long, long time ago. Atlantis crumbled into sand ere Rome was built or Troy burned. Its people are less than a memory.”

“I
loved
them!” Fern cried, and Will saw her eyes were fierce and her face desperate, and he recognized with an odd pang that she would never be a child again. “Ezramé, and Uuinarde, and Ipthor who was my friend—and Raf. I wanted to save him, I gave my life for him—but I lived, and he died. I sent him to his death. How can I go on living—living here and now—when I was in Atlantis with him?” And as she spoke she clutched unseeing at the strip of gossamer still bound around the rags of her unfamiliar clothes.

“We all go on,” said Ragginbone, and the lines were deep in his brow. “Don’t despair. You are young, and despair comes easily to the young, but it is ultimately . . . unprofitable. Who knows? If you loved him—if he loved you—you and no other—he may come again. The Gate opens both ways, or so they say. Remember, where there is no hope, you can still have faith. You may meet again—someday. Eternity is a long time to say never.” He got to his feet: Lougarry was at his side. “You should go home now. Your father is waiting.”

“You’ve been gone five days,” Will told her. “Dad’s been frantic: he called the police and they were going to search the moor, but then they found out about Javier and they thought you’d run off with him. It’s been awful.”

She was staring after Ragginbone: he was moving with his ageless, tireless stride, receding swiftly into a haze of summer. She called out: “When is Someday?” but his answer, if there was one, blew away on the breeze, and man and dog—wizard and wolf—seemed to dwindle, fading into a memory.

“Come on,” Will said, putting his arm around her, and together they walked down the hill toward their home.

The boat battled on through the towering seas. A curling
cli f of water—had they but known it, the backwash of the
Nenheedra’s rising—bore them up and carried them onward,
until they rode its fall and plunged again into a night-green
chasm where the lightning could not come. Now he knew she
was gone he was not surprised: he felt as if he had always expected to lose her, in the end. There was no mockery left in
him, no anger: he must carry his grief ungrieved, like a stone
in his heart. His friends had waited for him; the boat needed
him. She was brave and sea-crafty, rolling with the waves,
running with the gale; but already her sails were storm-shredded, her timbers leaking, her mast cracked. A shattering
collision of wave on wave took her rudder: the wheel slid in
his grasp. But still he held on, though there was nothing to
hold on to, determined to ride his last tempest until the deck
broke beneath him, to keep faith—if he had faith to keep—
with his companions, his vessel, with her. She who would
never know if he had kept faith at all. And so the hurricane
screamed over him, and the Sea raged around him, and the
dark poured down from above.

The mermaid rose out of deep water into the stormheart.

THE BEGINNING

Glossary

Names

Alimond
The name Alys Giddings took in honor of her Gift, probably from the Latin,
alius
other,
mundus
world, though it would also have been chosen for its similarity to her own name. Since the fall of Atlantis, most of the Gifted have taken a different name for magical purposes, one not used in their everyday lives; only the very arrogant or the very simple may not do so. Sometimes they choose their own name, more often it is given to them by a mentor. Its origins may come from any language but it usually has a meaning of significance to the named.

The reason for this may be partly to do with concealing their Gift from other people. Atlanteans wielded their power without pseudonyms, needing no other identity, but after the fall the Gifted were often called Accursed, and took many names to hide themselves.

Aliph (Al-eef) The servant of Ezramé.

Atlantis
In Atlantean, the pronunciation is similar to the French, but the final consonant is almost always sounded. Thus, At-lon-teess. (The nasal
an
, as in the French, sounds almost like
on
).

Azmordis
One of the many names of the Old Spirit, pronounced as written and probably a variant of Asmodeus, in Christian legend one of the right-hand demons of Satan. Azimuth may come from the same source, or it may be a version of Ashtaroth, a Middle-Eastern goddess with sinister aspects. Azmordis is generally considered a male spirit but will use female ambulants and identities when it suits him. Of the other names he mentions, Jhavé (Zh-ahvay) is obscure, but could have an oblique connection with Jahweh, the ancient Jewish god—masquerading as a god always appealed to him, it gave him more scope than manifestation as a demon, though modern theology has made it far less practicable. Jezreel may be related to Azrael, the Angel of Death, Xicatli to Xiuhtecuhtli, the Aztec fire god, Ingré Manu to Angra Mainya, the principle of evil in Persian mythology. The origin of Babbaloukis is unknown, but it could be the name of another demon derived from Babel or Babylon, both seen by old-fashioned Christianity as symbols of chaos and wickedness.

Azmodel, the valley in the hinterland of reality where the Old Spirit is still worshipped, obviously comes from the same source as Azmordis.

Caracandal
The Gift-name of Ragginbone, Latin or Italian in origin, derived from his true-name of Candido, meaning white or pure—an unlikely meaning presumably intended to apply to something in his spirit rather than his outward character. The addition of
cara
, dear, suggests the name was chosen by someone particularly close to him in affection.

Dévornine
(Day-vor-neen) One of the twelve Ruling Families (i.e. the most Gifted) in Atlantis.

Ezramé
(Ez-ra-may) The title of Cidame (See-dam) was given to all the women of the Ruling Families after coming-of-age at sixteen; Cidé is the masculine equivalent. It is possible that the Spanish
el Cid
may be a latter-day derivative.

Fernani
(Fur-nah-nee) This is northern, not Atlantean, in origin, but from what region or language it is impossible to tell. After the fall the empire disintegrated and many peoples—and their tongues—were lost.

Gogoth
(Goh-goth) Probably a mainlander name, since although Atlantean uses the sound
th
(sounded as in the English
sloth
), it rarely occurs at the end of a word.

Goulabey
(Goo-la-bay) The name of the Thirteenth House, the last of the Ruling Families to rise to prominence in Atlantis. Characterized by their ruthlessness and rapacity, they were considered upstarts by the rest of the aristocracy. The Thirteenth House is invariably mentioned separately from the other twelve. However, Pharouq (Fa-rook), the Wizard-King, was in many ways an efficient and practical ruler who did much to strengthen the empire and increase its prosperity. This wealth improved the lot of citizens, peasants, and slaves, so that Atlantis in its last days was more affluent than any other city of ancient times, even Athens or Rome.

Hexaté
(Heks-ah-tay) Also written Hex-Âté, in the days when she was first worshipped as a goddess. The name was probably the origin of the Greek Hecate, goddess of witches, and the German word
hex
.

Ipthor
(Eep-thor) A common forename in Atlantis.

Lougarry
This almost certainly derives, as Gus Dinsdale suggested, from the French
loup garou
, werewolf. Her true-name of Vashtari has an eastern flavor, which, since Ragginbone speaks of “northern forests” when relating her history, hints at a background in one of the Asian countries bordering on Russia.

Malmorth
Also Malmorff, meaning misshapen. Of mixed Latin and Greek origin, the name is a term of derision applied almost exclusively to goblins.

Mithraïs
(Mith-rae-eess) The oldest of the twelve Ruling Houses.

The Nenheedra
The origins of this word come from the Old Tongue, which pre-dated Atlantean and was said to be the first language ever spoken by man. The name, roughly translated, means Darkserpent, using Dark in the sense of the void, the abyss. The Old Tongue
næân
became the Atlantean
néan
, while
hyadr
, meaning giant snake, recurs as the Greek hydra.

Pegwillen
This was presumably a nickname given to the house-goblin by his child-playmates. It comes from Pig William, a character in a folk tale. The youngest of three brothers, he was exceptionally ugly and apparently stupid, and his smarter and handsomer elders left him to take care of the pigs while they set off to win the hand of the local princess. Inevitably, they failed, while Pig William’s down-to-earth common sense enabled him to outwit an invading giant, and his sincerity gained him the love of an unusually discerning royal.

Rafarl
The pronunciation of this name demonstrates both Atlantean Rs. They use the R as in French, i.e. at the back of the throat, and also as in Italian, rolled off the tip of the tongue. The double R is normally French, the single Italian, except when it is preceded by a vowel. Thus in Rafarl the first R comes off the tip of the tongue while the second is in the back of the throat: Ra-farrrl.

Rahil
(Ra-heel) Both Rahil and Rafarl may be sources for the later name Raphael.

Tamiszandre
(Tam-eess-zondr) The wife of Pharouq and mother of Zohrâne.

Uuinarde
(Oo-ee-narrrd) The French R occurs here, and the double U at the beginning is particularly common among the names of
nymphelines
, as in the case of her brother Uuinoor (Oo-ee-noor). In Atlantean
uu
and
ou
are both generally pronounced oo, but a preceding H—
huu
— can change the sound to hew. A single U is always pronounced ew.

Nymphelines
(neem-feh-lin) were human mutations unique to Atlantis—mutations occurred frequently in the vicinity of the Lodestone—not magical creatures like mermaids. They were natural swimmers who could hold their breath for long periods and seemed unaffected by water pressure even at depths of several fathoms. None remain, although their genes may have been passed on to certain races in the South Seas.

Zohrâne
(Zoh-rahn) Literally Evertime, or eternity, this is a name from the Old Tongue, where
zohr
meant time and
ân
, ever. In Atlantean
zoor
meant time as in an age, or era, also zone.