Taltos (11 page)

Yuri walked to the couch and took a stiff place at the very end of it, conscious that the tall one had gone to the mantel and was looking down at the fire. Yuri did not mean to stare rudely at this creature.

“A Taltos,” said Yuri. His voice sounded acceptably calm. “A Taltos. Why do you want to talk to me? Why do you want to help me? Who are you, and why have you come here?”

“You saw the other one?” the tall man asked, turning and looking at Yuri with eyes that were almost shy in their openness, but not quite. This man might have been knock-dead beautiful if it hadn’t been for the hands. The knuckles looked like knots.

“No, I never saw him,” said Yuri.

“But you know for certain he is dead?”

“Yes, I know that for certain,” said Yuri. The giant and the dwarf. He was not going to laugh at this, but it was horribly amusing. This creature’s abnormalities made him pleasing to look at. And the little man’s abnormalities made him seem dangerous and wicked. And it was all an act of nature, was it? It was somewhat beyond the scope of the range of accidents in which Yuri believed.

“Did this Taltos have a mate?” asked the tall one. “I mean another Taltos, a female?”

“No, his mate was a woman named Rowan Mayfair. I told your friend about her. She was his mother, and his lover. She is what we call a witch in the Talamasca.”

“Aye,” said the little man, “and what we would call a witch as well. There are many powerful witches in this tale, Ashlar. There is a brood of witches. You have to let the man tell his story.”

“Ashlar, that’s your full name?” asked Yuri. It had been a jolt.

For hours before he’d left New Orleans, he had listened to Aaron summarize the tale of Lasher, the demon from the
glen. St. Ashlar—that name had been spoken over and over again. St. Ashlar.

“Yes,” said the tall one. “But Ash is the single-syllable version, which I heartily prefer. I don’t mean to be impolite, but I so prefer the simple name Ash that often I don’t answer to the other.” This was said firmly but with courtesy.

The dwarf laughed. “I call him by his full name to make him strong and attentive,” he said.

The tall one ignored this. He warmed his hands over the fire; with fingers splayed apart, they looked diseased.

“You’re in pain, aren’t you?” the man said, turning away from the fire.

“Yes. Excuse me, please, that I show it. The wound’s in my shoulder, in such a place that every little movement pulls it. Will you forgive me that I slouch back on this sofa, and try to remain like this, looking lazy? My mind is racing. Will you tell me who you are?”

“I’ve done that, have I not?” asked the tall one. “You speak. What happened to you?”

“Yuri, I told you,” said the dwarf, with rather good-natured impatience, “that this is my oldest confidant and friend in the world. I told you that he knew the Talamasca. That he knows more about it than any living being. Please trust him. Tell him what he wants to know.”

“I trust you,” said Yuri. “But to what purpose do I tell you my business, or of my adventures? What will you do with this knowledge?”

“Help you, of course,” said the tall one slowly, with a gentle nod of his head. “Samuel says the men in the Talamasca are trying to kill you. This is hard for me to accept. I have always, in my own way, loved the Order of the Talamasca. I protect myself from it, as I do from anything which would constrict me in any way. But the men of the Talamasca have seldom been my enemies … at least not for very long. Who tried to hurt you? Are you sure these evil people came from the Order itself?”

“No, I’m not sure,” said Yuri. “This is what happened, more or less. When I was an orphan boy, the Talamasca took me in. Aaron Lightner was the man who did it. Samuel knows who this man is.”

“So do I,” said the tall one.

“All my adult life I’ve served the Order, in a traveling capacity mostly, often performing tasks which I myself don’t fully understand. Apparently, unbeknownst to me, my vows rested upon a loyalty to Aaron Lightner. When he went to New Orleans to investigate a family of witches, things somehow went wrong. This family was the Mayfair family, this family of witches. I read their history in old records of the Order before these records were closed to me. It was from Rowan Mayfair that the Taltos was born.”

“Who or what was the father?” asked the tall one.

“It was a man.”

“A mortal man. You’re certain of this?”

“Without question, but there were other considerations. This family had been haunted for many, many generations by a spirit, both evil and good. This spirit took hold of the infant inside Rowan Mayfair, took possession of it and assisted its unusual birth. The Taltos, springing up full-grown from this woman, possessed the soul of the haunting spirit complete and entire. They called this creature Lasher in the family. I’ve never known any other name for him. Now this creature is dead, as I’ve told you.”

The tall man was frankly amazed. He gave a little sympathetic shake of his head. He walked to the nearby armchair and sat down, turning politely towards Yuri, and crossing his long legs and ankles very much as Yuri had done. He sat very straight, as though never ashamed or uneasy about his height.

“From two witches!” said the tall one in a whisper.

“Absolutely,” said Yuri.

“You say absolutely,” said the tall one. “What can this mean?”

“There is genetic evidence, an abundance of it. The Talamasca has this evidence. The witch family carries an extraordinary set of genes within its various lines. Genes of the Taltos, which under the ordinary circumstances are never switched on by nature, but which in this case—either through witchcraft or possession—did indeed do their work to make the Taltos come into the world.”

The tall man smiled. It surprised Yuri, because the smile
so fired the face with expression and affection and simple delight.

“You speak like all the men from the Talamasca,” said the tall one. “You speak like a priest in Rome. You speak as if you weren’t born in these times.”

“Well, I was educated on their documents in Latin,” said Yuri. “Their story of this creature, Lasher, it went back to the sixteen hundreds. I read all of it, along with the story of this family—its rise to great wealth and power, its secret doings with this spirit, Lasher. And I have of course read a hundred such files.”

“Have you?”

“Not stories of the Taltos,” said Yuri, “if that’s what you mean. I never heard the word until I was in New Orleans—until two members of the Order were killed there, trying to free this Taltos, Lasher, from the man who killed him. But I cannot tell that tale.”

“Why? I want to know who killed him.”

“When I know you better, when you’ve matched my confessions with your own.”

“What can I confess? I’m Ashlar. I’m a Taltos. It’s centuries since I’ve seen one single other member of my own species. Oh, there have been others. I’ve heard tell of them, chased after them, and in some instances almost found them. Mark, I say almost. But not in centuries have I touched my own flesh and blood, as humans are so fond of saying. Never in all this time.”

“You’re very old, that’s what you’re telling me. Our lifespan is nothing compared to yours.”

“Well, apparently not,” said the man. “I must be old. I have this white hair now, as you see. But then how am I to know how old I am, and what my decline may be, and how long it will take in human years? When I lived in happiness among my own, I was too young to learn what I would need for this long, lonely voyage. And God did not gift me with a supernatural memory. Like an ordinary man, I remember some things with haunting clarity; others are completely erased.”

“The Talamasca knows about you?” asked Yuri. “It’s crucial that you tell me. The Talamasca was my vocation.”

“Explain how this changed.”

“As I told you, Aaron Lightner went to New Orleans. Aaron is an expert on witches. We study witches.”

“Understood,” said the dwarf. “Get on with it.”

“Hush, Samuel, mind your manners,” said the tall one softly but seriously.

“Don’t be an imbecile, Ash, this gypsy is falling in love with you!”

The Taltos was shocked and outraged. The anger flared in him beautifully and fully, and then be shook his head and folded his arms as if he knew how to deal with such anger.

As for Yuri, he was again stunned. It seemed the way of the world now—outrageous shocks and revelations. He was stunned and hurt because he had in some way warmed to this being far beyond the ways in which he’d warmed to the little man, which were, in the main, more intellectual.

He looked away, humiliated. He had no time now to tell the story of his own life—how he had fallen so totally under the dominance of Aaron Lightner, and the force and power which strong men often exerted over him. He wanted to say this was not erotic. But it was erotic, insofar as anything and everything is.

The Taltos was staring coldly at the little man.

Yuri resumed his story.

“Aaron Lightner went to help the Mayfair witches in their endless battles with the spirit Lasher. Aaron Lightner never knew whence this spirit came, or what it really was. That a witch had called it up in Donnelaith in the year 1665—that was known, but not much else about it.

“After the creature was made flesh, after it had caused the deaths of too many witches for me to count—only after all this did Aaron Lightner see the creature and learn from its own lips that it was the Taltos, and that it had lived in a body before, in the time of King Henry, meeting its death in Donnelaith, the glen which it haunted until the witch called it up.

“These things are not in any Talamasca file known to me. Scarcely three weeks have passed since the creature was slaughtered. But these things may be in secret files known to someone. Once the Talamasca learnt that Lasher
had been reincarnated, or whatever in the name of God we should call it, they moved in on him and sought to remove him for their own purposes. They may have coldly and deliberately taken several lives in the process. I don’t know. I know that Aaron had no part in their schemes, and felt betrayed by them. That is why I’m asking you: Do they know about you? Are you part of the Talamasca knowledge, because if you are, it is highly occult knowledge.”

“Yes and no,” said the tall one. “You don’t tell lies at all, do you?”

“Ash, try not to say strange things,” grumbled the dwarf. He too had sat back, letting his short, stumpy legs stretch out perfectly straight. He had knitted his fingers on his tweed vest, and his shirt was open at the neck. A bit of light flashed in his hooded eyes.

“I was merely remarking on it, Samuel. Have some patience.” The tall man sighed. “Try not to say such strange things yourself.” He looked a little annoyed and then his eyes returned to Yuri.

“Let me answer your question, Yuri,” he said. The way he had spoken the name was warm and casual. “Men in the Talamasca today probably know nothing of me. It would take a genius to unearth what tales of us are told in Talamasca archives, if indeed such documents still exist. I never fully understood the status or the significance of this knowledge—the Order’s files, as they call them now. I read some manuscript once, centuries ago, and laughed and laughed at the words in it. But in those times all written language seemed naive and touching to me. Some of it still does.”

To Yuri, this was a fascinating point. The dwarf had been right, of course; he was falling under the sway of this being, he had lost his healthy reluctance to trust, but that was what this sort of love was about, wasn’t it? Divesting oneself so totally of the customary feelings of alienation and distrust that the subsequent acceptance was intellectually orgasmic.

“What sort of language doesn’t make you laugh?” asked Yuri.

“Modern slang,” said the tall one. “Realism in fiction,
and journalism which is filled with colloquialisms. It often lacks naiveté completely. It has lost all formality, and instead abides by an intense compression. When people write now, it is sometimes like the screech of a whistle compared to the songs they used to sing.”

Yuri laughed. “I think you’re right,” he said. “Not so the documents of the Talamasca, however.”

“No. As I was explaining, they are melodic and amusing.”

“But then there are documents and documents. So you don’t think they know about you now.”

“I’m fairly certain they don’t know about me, and as you tell your tale, it becomes very clear that they cannot possibly know about me. But go on. What happened to this Taltos?”

“They tried to take him away, and they died in the process. The man who killed the Taltos killed these men from the Talamasca. Before they died, however, when these men were seeking to take the Taltos into their custody, you might say, they indicated that they had a female Taltos, that they had for centuries sought to bring the male and the female together. They indicated it was the avowed purpose of the Order. The clandestine and occult purpose, I should say. This was demoralizing to Aaron Lightner.”

“I can see why.”

Yuri went on.

“The Taltos, Lasher, he seemed unsurprised by all this; he seemed to have figured it out. Even in his earlier incarnation, the Talamasca had tried to take him out of Donnelaith, perhaps to mate him with the female. But he didn’t trust them and he didn’t go with them. He was a priest in those days. He was believed to be a saint.”

“St. Ashlar,” said the dwarf more soberly, the voice seeming to rumble not from the wrinkles of his face but from his heavy trunk. “St. Ashlar, who always comes again.”

The tall one bowed his head slightly, his deep hazel eyes moving slowly back and forth across the carpet, almost as if he were reading the rich Oriental design. He looked up
at Yuri, head bowed, so that his dark brows shadowed his eyes.

“St. Ashlar,” he said in a sad voice. “Are you this man?”

“I’m no saint, Yuri. Do you mind that I call you by name? Let’s not speak of saints, if you please….”

“Oh, please do call me Yuri. And I will call you Ash? But the point is, are you this same individual? This one they called the saint? You speak of centuries! And we sit here in this parlor, and the fire crackles, and the waiter taps at the door now with our refreshments. You must tell me. I can’t protect myself from my own brothers in the Talamasca if you don’t tell me and help me to understand what’s going on.”