The Choir Boats (35 page)

Sally stepped into the scene she had dreamed so many times. For
a second she stopped breathing. Here was the grassy lawn, with small
blue flowers in it. There was frost on the lawn and on the flowers.
She pointed at the flowers and mouthed, “Bixwort.” Fraulein Reimer
nodded.

They passed under the five gargantuan trees, live oaks whose
leaves did not fall. Acorns carpeted the ground all around the great,
twisted, runicled trees. Now and then another acorn fell, bouncing a
little before coming to rest. Sally looked up and, yes, caught glimpses
of little fox-red monkeys with prehensile tails and antlered heads.
“Chip, chip,” they mewed as the troops marched beneath the trees.

Sally walked more slowly. The Temple, which had seemed small
in her dreams, loomed overhead.
As big as St. Paul’s, almost as tall as
Sankt Jakobi
, she thought. Its roof was cracked, its portico ruined,
with bits of column and metope missing or lying in the grass. An
enormous fissure ran up the façade.

“This is it,” Nexius said. “In we go with the Arch-Dean and his
colleagues. With two dozen soldiers. The rest of the soldiers have
surrounded the temple.”

Up the worn and crumbling steps they went and through one of
the five doors into the five-sided temple. The temple seemed even
larger inside than outside. Their steps echoed within it, and from
outside came the sound of the wind and the throb of the waves
smashing into the rocks of the promontory.

Light came from windows in the dome and from the clerestory,
and especially from the rent in the roof. It fell on intarsia inlay that
ran around the doorways, scrolling geometrical designs that Sally
remembered from the
Gallinule
. A dado ran along the entire circuit
of the wall, at a height of about five feet, with friezes of leaping
dolphins, spouting whales and soaring albatrosses below it. The
friezes were chipped and cracked: here a dolphin had no head, there
an albatross lacked a wing. Rubble lay on the floor.

At each of the five angles, where the walls came together, was
a mounting high in the wall holding a large clock. Each clock had
a moon face, in a different phase of lunar progress, made of silver,
white marble, and ebony. Every clock was stopped at a different
time.

Bell horses, bell horses, what time of day?
thought Barnabas.
In the middle of the temple were five pillars in a pentagram that
soared to the plane from which the dome began. Each of the pillars
was topped with the moon in one of its phases. Nexius, Reglum, and
the McDoons passed through the pillars, followed by the Learned
Doctors, and came to the centre of the temple. Here was a massive
marble pedestal, ten feet tall at least, upon which was a single squat
pillar, which held one huge round orb, a great white marble moon.
Steps were cut into the pedestal and into the pillar leading to a small
platform attached to the moon. At that spot on the surface of the
moon was a doorway, perhaps eight feet tall, with three locks and
knobs in a triangle in its middle.

Nexius halted. Sally looked up, seeking a scissor-tailed shape
that might swoop upon them. Sanford looked behind them, past the
Learned Doctors, and saw the shadowy figures of Yountish soldiers
beyond the pillars. Barnabas gripped the key in his pocket. It felt
warm but he could not tell if this was only the heat from his sweaty
hand or if it was heat that emanated from the key itself. All was
silent except for the wind and the surf outside. The huge moon sat
above them, as unmoved and unmoving as it had sat for centuries.

Barnabas stamped his foot and said, “
Quatsch
.”

His voice echoed. Nothing moved. Nothing could be seen.

Barnabas clapped his hands and yelled, “Cretched Man,
Pausanias, or whatever you call yourself! Here we are again! We have
chased across all time and space to collect Tom.”

No one answered.

“Show yourself, Cretched Man!” shouted Barnabas. He held his
pistol steady in his left hand. He wore his oldest hat and his oldest
vest. He could not even say what colour his stockings were.

At that, figures suddenly appeared, walking from behind the
moon on top of the pedestal. (When asked later, soldiers who had a
view of that side of the moon said that they saw no persons there.)
First in view was —

“Tom!” yelled the McDoons.

“Sally! Uncle Barnabas!” Tom called. “Oh, thank you, Sally! Dear
Sally! Good old Sanford! Fraulein, it’s really you!”

Behind him came the Cretched Man, his coat a ruddy streak
against the dully gleaming white marble. Five men filed behind
them, each carrying a rifle loosely at his side.

“We keep our tryst,” said the Cretched Man.

“You are surrounded by soldiers, inside and out,” said Nexius.

“Send down Tom and I will come up, but not before Tom is safe
below with us,” said Barnabas.

To their surprise, it was not the Cretched Man but Tom who
replied.

“No, Uncle, the Cretched Man is not what you think. Nexius,
listen to me, this is a horrible confusion. You must not do what you
ask Uncle Barnabas to do!”

Nexius had overcome thousands of odd and difficult moments
but Tom’s plea was outside his expectations and experience. He
lowered his pistol, and just stared at the young man from Karket-soom as if he had gone mad.

Barnabas stamped his foot again. “
Quatsch
, boy! What is it you
say?”

Sally watched her brother’s face the way she dreamed: drinking
in every detail and trying to make sense of it while she flew ahead of
some awful pursuer. Tom looked just as intently at her.

Nexius found his voice at last, yelling, “Tom, come down!”

The Cretched Man shook his head, his coat shuddering.

“No, Nexius Dexius of the Fencibles,” Jambres said. “For once,
all of you, listen to the truth when you hear it. Listen to Thomas.
Listen.”

“Come down, Tom lad,” said Barnabas.

Tom shook his head.

“Enough, by the Trees,” said the Arch-Dean and Chief Sacerdote.
“We understand. This Karket-soomi has lost his mind to the Evil
One.”

“No!” said Tom. “You must believe me. If Uncle Barnabas uses the
key to open the final lock, something terrible will happen!”

Sanford half-raised his pistol at the Cretched Man.

On one side is the truth, on the other . . . another form of truth?
he
thought, while lowering his pistol.
Or are both falsehoods? Does it
matter what competing bands of heretics or pagans believe? “Keep that
which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and
oppositions of science falsely so called.
”

Fraulein Reimer had listened to hundreds of his fibs, tall tales
and half-truths as he tried to evade his lessons or duck out to the
theatre.

The truth often tastes bitter
, she thought, lowering her pistol as
well.
But a sweet lie is poisonous.
Dichtung oder Wahrheit? Nein, es
gibt hier um Dichtung und Wahrheit.

Sally felt the truth in Tom’s mind. She did not trust the Cretched
Man, not even so much as to offer him the sympathy she suspected
his plight deserved, if half her guesses about that were even half
correct. But Tom was another matter.

Barnabas had come to the same conclusion: “Alright, my boy.
We’ll listen.”

The Arch-Dean signalled to his colleagues. A woman with rusty
highlights in her jet-black hair stood forth, brought an instrument
from a satchel at her side. Sally looked at the instrument and divined
its purpose without knowing how it worked in detail. Reglum and
Nexius moved to intercept her. Too late. The woman with rusty-red highlights lifted the tube she held, while the Arch-Dean said
something in Yountish.

The Cretched Man stepped in front of Tom and yelled, “No!”

Everyone froze: the McDoons below looking up in hope at Tom;
the Learned Doctors preparing their device; Nexius and Reglum
torn between their allegiance to the Learned Doctors and their
desire to understand what Tom would tell them; most of all the
Cretched Man with his arms outflung in front of Tom. Five rangy
figures with rifles in their hands moved up to protect Tom and the
Cretched Man.

The Arch-Dean held out one hand to still the colleague with the
tube in her hands. “No, what?” the Learned Doctor said.

The Cretched Man, his coat pulsating, said, “No to your use of
that weapon. I can withstand such a thing, but the others here with
me could not, and I will not allow them to be harmed in that way. You
claim to fight evil, though you do not give me a chance to explain
myself. How long have we danced this dance, for years uncounted
through the ages of my perpession? Far too long, let it end now!”

The Arch-Dean had a terrible smile on his face. “Far too long in
truth. If you stand aside, we can end that forever. Let us take the
Key-bearer to the door to perform his duty. Otherwise we use the
weapon that the Mother put into our hands.”

Tom felt something shift deep in Jambres, a small eructation of
grief and anger.

The Cretched Man seemed to shrink. “Come up,” Jambres said to
Barnabas. “Thomas will go down.”

Tom turned to Jambres. “No,” he said. “I can’t. This isn’t right.”

“I have no choice,” said Jambres, his perfect face a mask. “I cannot
put forth my strength without harming you and many others who
should not be harmed. I have failed again. No, Thomas, you must go
down. Go now. Let your uncle come up.”

Tom looked at Jambres and the Minders. He looked down to his
family. He found Sally’s eyes . . . long she held his gaze.
Come down,
brother
, she murmured in his mind. He had a swift image of the little
blue flowers, the ones he knew were just outside. He longed to see
them, to run across that lawn.
Sela-manri.
He heard her voice.
The
little flower of repentance.
He walked down the stairs, which were
blurred beneath his feet as tears poured out of his eyes.
Come down,
brother.

Halfway down the stairs, he turned and looked back. Jambres
was looking at him with a look that spanned thousands of years.
Tom thought Jambres said, “Little Jannes,” or maybe it was
“Hyndopheres,” but he could not be sure.

Billy Sea-Hen nodded, and said in the most conversational
manner, as if they were strolling on the heath together, “Goodbye
but only for now, Tommy Two-Fingers. Don’t you worry, me and
Tat’head and the others, we’re like that old dumbledore, you’ll see —
we’ll be back again safe as houses.”

Tom raised his hand, the one with only three fingers, then turned
and stumbled down the rest of the stairs.

He hugged his uncle very hard, and then embraced his sister. The
pendant around her neck glowed bright red.

“It is time,” intoned the Arch-Dean. He spoke in Yountish, too
much and too fast for Sally to understand, especially with the echoes.
The green-uniformed soldiers along the walls moved in towards the
row of pillars. The Learned Doctors led by the Arch-Dean came to
Barnabas, and then walked behind Barnabas as the merchant from
Mincing Lane ascended the stairs.

At the top of the stairs, they confronted the Cretched Man and
the Minders.

“I beg you one last time,” said the Cretched Man. “Do not do this
thing. Use the key to close the two locks you have opened without
permission, then return the key to me. I am the rightful possessor.
Go no further with your desire to unlock the third lock. You will not
succeed.”

The Arch-Dean laughed. “Your time is over. We have found a
third and final Key-bearer. You yourself brought him to us. Think of
that — such an irony has not been felt for ages.”

“I brought him to close the first two locks, not to open the third
lock.”

“You claim to have the power to stop us, yet you hesitate.”

“You have grown wise in your captivity, but not so wise as to be
blind in this final step,” answered the Cretched Man. “I can stop the
Key-bearer from opening the final lock but only through persuasion,
at which I have not succeeded. Stopping him by other means would
break him.”

Barnabas stamped his foot, and said in his best clarifying tone,
“
Quatsch
! Look here, the both of you. I don’t like being talked about
while I am standing right in front of you, for one thing. For another,
I hate being made to feel the ingot between the hammer and the
anvil.”

The Cretched Man and the Arch-Dean both pulled up short. They
had, in fact, almost forgotten Barnabas and the key in their mutual
enmity.

“See here,” Barnabas said. “I am a man of business, and reckoned
a good one where I come from, and I don’t think that will be any
different here. So, a deal’s a deal.
Pacta sunt servanda
, as the old
Tully said someplace. I came to be exchanged for Tom, which this
Cretched fellow has done fair and square. My transaction, I might
add, was with him. I don’t recall any third parties to the contract, no
Learned Doctor specifically affixed thereto in any event.”

The Arch-Dean looked nonplussed.

“So,” continued Barnabas. “Much as I dislike the Cretched Man,
frankly I don’t much trust him, but, sir Bishop, I trust you even less.
But in business you only got to do the deal — doesn’t much matter
if you like the fellow or not. The only claim on me is by the man in
the funny coat. I will do what he asks me, since he did what I asked
of him.”

How like his nephew
, thought Jambres.
Surely one day, I will be
allowed to break bread with him
.

“This is not a piece of
business
,” the Arch-Dean spat out the word.
“The fate of our world is in your hands, you fool. If you insist on
using business terms, then consider your acceptance of our first
letter and the key itself as a binding contract between us. And there
we explicitly told you not to deal with the Wurm or any of his agents,
of which the Cretched Man is one.”