Prospero's Children Read online

  Apart from the spilled brazier, the chamber was intact. As if there was something here that resisted destruction, a terrible negative force. “They say,” said Rafarl, “this room is directly below the altar. It must have been at the epicenter of the spellshock.”

  And: “It’s empty. Anyway.”

  “Is it?” said Fern.

  When they left, he stopped to re-lock the door. Keeping people out. Shutting something in.

  It was a few minutes before they spoke again.

  “Your friend didn’t die there,” Fern said at last. “Sacrifice is quick.” (She hoped it was.)

  “I have lost many friends,” said Rafarl.

  The stair to the upper level was unmanned: the guard at its foot lay in an ungainly sprawl, as still as a gargoyle. “Perhaps Zohrâne is dead too,” Rafarl said, hesitating.

  “No, she isn’t,” Fern said, suddenly sure, although she could not have explained why. “Let’s take a look.”

  “But if she isn’t dead—”

  Fern, however, had already slipped past him and was cautiously pushing the door open. When the gap was wide enough she slid through; Rafarl, reluctant and slightly surprised, followed her.

  The first thing Fern saw was the crack in the dome. It ran from the far wall almost to the apex, a jagged line fraying here and there into hair-thin fractures, gaping abruptly at one point to show an eye blink of sky. Splinters of masonry were scattered across the immaculate floor, curling flakes of gold leaf, a drift of dust that glittered faintly even in shadow. A thin ray of sunshine had negotiated the crack and slanted across the chamber, falling just short of the vacant altar. The fragile rune that it drew on the marble outshone the mandala and turned all the gilding to dross. She did not know why it took her so long to register the bodies. They were sprawled in a broken circle around the tabernacle: most had retreated to the cloister or been flung against the pillars, but a couple lay closer to the center. Near at hand, someone was groaning. They have the Gift, Fern remembered. They won’t all be dead. “That’s my uncle,” said Rafarl without audible regret, indicating one who made neither motion nor sound. She glanced quickly at her companion, absorbing brief details of his profile, the bump in the straightness of his nose, the concave line of his cheek. There was a fresh bruise along the bone, relict maybe of his arrest; she couldn’t see his eyes. This was the beggar who had looked at her so slyly, the man she had come to know in the dark. The traces of her vomit smeared his clothes. She shivered at the touch of something at once unknown and inexplicably familiar.

  A noise from the heart of the chamber drew them from their separate reflections. Beside the altar one of the bodies was pulling itself upright, clutching at the stone. The bright vein of sunlight dimmed anything just beyond its reach even more than objects at a distance and the figure was consequently unclear, though a darkness fell about it like loosened hair and yellow cobwebs clung to its limbs. Its movements were clumsy from weakness or pain and they could hear the rasp of its breathing echoing round the vault. It had not noticed the newcomers: its whole attention was centered on something gripped in its right hand. Stiff-legged and unsteady, it hobbled toward the sunlight. The head was bent forward, the fingers slowly uncurled. The beam of radiance fell on an open palm and an odd-shaped fragment cupped within it. At that range Fern could not hope to see what it was but still she knew. She thought she had always known.

  The key.

  X

  “We have to go,” Rafarl said. “Now.” Fern nodded, allowing him to draw her back into the shelter of the cloister. As she retreated she noticed something embedded in the nearest pillar, a wedge-shaped chip of black stone the length of her thumb. The marble was cracking around it, tiny fault lines spreading visibly outward. The Lodestone, she thought. There must be pieces of it all over the place. But the key—the key is the core . . .

  “We must get it,” she muttered, pulling away from him.

  “Get what?”

  “The key. I don’t know exactly how she did it—some form of telekinesis—but when she smashed the Lodestone one piece of it took the shape of a key. Probably the piece at the heart. She will use it to unlock the Gate of Death.”

  They were talking softly now as some of the prone bodies began to struggle to their feet. Others lay very still. One of them, Fern saw, had a fragment of the Stone protruding from his chest like a featherless dart. It had entered him with such force it must have split the breastbone: most of the fragment was buried in the wound, blood welling sluggishly around it.

  “Death comes to us all, even the Gifted,” said Rafarl somberly. “Why rush it?”

  “You don’t understand. When we die we leave this world. We don’t know where we go: another place, another cosmos . . . elsewhere. We aren’t supposed to know. But if Zohrâne can open the Gate while she still lives she believes she can defeat Death, and come and go between worlds as she pleases. That’s forbidden. It would be like—” she tried to remember the Hermit’s words “—a breach in the Wall of Being. Life itself would be sucked into it. It would be the end of everything.”

  “How do you know all this?” Rafarl demanded. “The people here are afraid of the queen, but they wouldn’t help her if they knew they were committing suicide. As for Zohrâne herself, she’s probably mad, certainly evil, but never stupid.”

  “She’s blinkered,” said Fern. “It’s part of her obsession. I’ve come across it before.”

  “That’s a lot of experience for sixteen years.”

  “Look, are you going to help me, or—or just talk about it?”

  But the burgeoning quarrel had no chance to progress. A detachment of guards arrived, fortunately through another entrance. Zohrâne, closing her hand upon the key, summoned her reserves of strength and began to give orders in her customary imperative manner. The surviving representatives of the ruling families leaned on each other for support or crouched over their motionless companions. Fern saw Ixavo sitting propped against the base of a column with his head bowed; she was a little surprised to find him still alive, remembering his aversion to the Stone. When he looked up the light fell on his disfigurement and she thought it must have been aggravated by the release of unnatural forces: the diseased area appeared to have both spread and constricted, giving an ugly twist to his mouth and screwing one eye into a leer. There was something about him that she found especially disquieting, something Zohrâne had missed, something inexplicably wrong. It troubled her more each time she saw him, as if her mind were screaming a warning that her ears could not hear. But whatever it was, she was unable to pin it down, and Rafarl was gripping her arm, drawing her away. She did not resist him now. He peered round a side door and drew back hastily, dropping to the floor, dragging Fern with him. “Play dead,” he hissed. “They won’t notice two more corpses.” The second clutch of guards was on them even as she froze.

  But they were lucky. The newcomers marched straight across the cloister into the center of the tabernacle. Zohrâne was already leaving, delegating to Ixavo, now on his feet, the task of clearing the devastation. He seemed to have recovered very rapidly. Listening to his voice as he issued instructions and cracked out commands, Fern was distracted from their immediate danger. She heard a flaw in its timbre which she felt, irrationally, should not have been there. It was a voice that might once have been smooth and pleasant to the ear were it not for the grating note that made it at once soft and harsh, a crack in the bell that corrupted its whole tone. She wondered if the affliction of his skin had also infected his vocal cords, destroying both beauty and sound.

  “When I give the word, we run,” whispered Rafarl.

  They moved at just the wrong moment. Ixavo turned: across a wide arc of floor his eyes met Fern’s. His face stilled, his lips parted on a word she did not need to hear. A lance of silence reached out toward her, binding them together in an instant of stasis. The word he had only breathed echoed in her mind. You.

  They ran.

  Behind her, Fern heard the thud of pu
rsuing feet, Ixavo’s cry: “The girl! I want the girl!” The order caused some valuable confusion: Fern’s short hair and leather breeches meant the foremost guards slowed, looking in vain for a girl to arrest. Rafarl, hearing the chase falter, was quick to capitalize on their doubt. “She went that way!” he said, indicating to the right along the colonnade as the guards issued from the exit. Then he grabbed Fern’s hand and raced down the steps, pulling her with him. They had gained useful seconds, but not many. It would not take their pursuers long to realize their mistake and come pouring after them. Across the encircling roadway Rafarl dived into the market precinct, twisting and dodging through the narrow streets with the lightning certainty of a weasel in a rabbit warren. A couple of guards, ignoring the ruse, were still on their heels, but Rafarl had the knack of hooking his foot around table-legs and the supports of stalls as he passed, precipitating an assortment of wares into their path. Even as they fell back Fern heard the hue and cry of the others rushing to join them. But the civilians showed little enthusiasm for the hunt: storekeepers rounded on the guards over their spilled merchandise, strident voices were raised in argument, irate citizens dammed the torrent of pursuit, apparently without deliberate intent. Rafarl plunged through doorways into the midst of discreet deals whose participants barely gave the fugitives a second look, up stairs, out of windows, over roofs. Fern saw another door ahead of them, an arched door in a stone wall, a door like all the rest. Rafarl, still in the lead, dropped from roof to balcony, from balcony to terrace, seized the handle, thrust his shoulder against the planks. Unvarnished planks, bleached almost white and peeling from the heat. A gecko scurried across the lintel. The chill that brushed Fern’s nape reached beyond the surface of memory, far down into her mind. She shrieked a warning, clutching his arm and yanking him away just as the door gave. They tumbled backward onto the terrace. The door swung out over empty space.

  The building beyond had either collapsed or been partially demolished: there was no floor, only a sheer drop to the sewers below. They picked themselves up slowly; under the city dust, Rafarl’s cheek had paled to khaki. “How did you know?” he said. “You couldn’t have seen anything.” She shook her head. She had seen only the gecko, and the peeling plankwork. But the gecko had gone, and the door was solid wood, roughly carved. She could not explain it.

  They had no time to talk. Rafarl negotiated another window, ducked through entrances and exits, up and down one street or many. Fern followed in trusting confusion. The chase was left behind, bogged down in a morass of indignant citizenry, mazed with alleyways and passageways. After a while, Fern realized they were in another part of the city altogether. The streets grew wider, the crowds more sparse. The flow of carts, chariots, and phaetons that had monopolized the main thoroughfares was here reduced to a trickle. Arches opened onto secluded gardens, spilling over with flower-scents, musical with falling water. They stopped in a small square at the center of which a gaping dolphin vomited into a circular basin. Fern sat down thankfully on the lip but Rafarl jumped into the pool and dipped his head under the cascade, washing the dirt from his face and hair, drenching his whole body in blissful coolness. His ragged clothing clung to him like skin: she saw hard swellings of muscle and brown gaps of flesh, satiny with youth, as yet untouched by rough living. She wished she could follow his example, but she felt too shy and she knew her leather breeches would stiffen in the wet. At last he straightened up, shaking back his locks in a shower of bright droplets that spattered her arms and legs, turning toward her so that she saw him properly for the first time since they met. He was dark as bronze, golden as the city. His hair dripped down his back in a tattered mane, cut unevenly or not at all. Sharp bones drew his cheeks into leanness: above them his eyes were crystal-brown, water-clear. “Well?” he said, possibly reading too much into her examination.

  She averted her gaze, splashing her face and neck. “Join me,” he said.

  “I can’t. These clothes . . .”

  He grimaced at the leather, evidently taking her point. Then he cupped his hands under the fountain, offering her a drink before it spilled. She lapped from his palm like a kitten, managing little more than to moisten her tongue, suddenly laughing, as suddenly serious. When he laughed she noticed there was a tooth missing in his lower jaw, giving him something of the look of an urchin rather than an adult of twenty or so. “Raf,” she said. She had not given him his name before.

  “Fern.” He traded name for name. He was studying her with the same attention she had accorded him, seeing a slight barbarian stranger, boyish yet unlike a boy, curiously poised in her awkward garb. She looked as pale and delicate as a flower, as cool as a northern breeze, yet he sensed in her a resolution as strong or stronger than his own, a core harder than diamond. And behind her green-veined eyes he glimpsed a shining well of thought, a knowledge far beyond her sixteen years, at once alien and incomprehensible. “I’d almost certainly have been killed falling through that door if you hadn’t stopped me,” he said. “And in the temple dungeon . . . we survived. We survived when so many others died. I am enough my mother’s son to know that can be neither luck nor chance. You have the Gift. The Atlantean strain in you must come from far back, yet it’s there. It has to be.” He waited, but she did not respond. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I heard it could get me into trouble here,” she said at length. “Your people are jealous of their inheritance. Am I supposed to trust you?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why—?”

  She looked down at her hands, plucking absently at the hem of her shirt. “I don’t know. The Hermit near my village said I had the Gift—you say I have it—but I’m not sure. Sometimes I feel it so strongly . . . and sometimes there’s nothing there. Maybe I’m just afraid. Afraid of having it, using it—afraid of doing harm. I don’t mean I’m afraid of the authorities here. I expect I ought to be, but I’m not; I don’t seem to have time for that. Ever since I arrived, I’ve been so confused . My head seems to be in a muddle, full of thoughts—images—I don’t recognize; I don’t even know how they came there. The strange thing is, when I’m in danger—when I feel the power, when I get too close to Zohrâne—that’s when my mind is clearest. There’s something I have to do . . .”

  “You are a spy,” Rafarl said flippantly.

  “No. I was sent . . .”

  “By whom?”

  “The Hermit . . . I think. I don’t know. I don’t know. But you’re going to help me: I’m sure of that. That’s why we met.”

  “Well, I’m not,” Rafarl said, not mincing his words. “I won’t get mixed up in some mysterious mission when even the emissary knows nothing about it. It all sounds too much like religion to me. I don’t believe in religion—any religion: it’s the stupidest excuse for trouble mankind has ever come up with. Anyway, I’m giving up trying to help anyone: I’m obviously not much good at it. I have enough problems trying to help myself.”

  He expected her to argue but a rare frown puckered her forehead: she was evidently still preoccupied with her own bewilderment.

  “What will you do now?” he asked her.

  “I haven’t decided.”

  He produced a sigh which she did not seem to hear. “You’d better come with me.”

  They left the square and made their way toward the mountain, crossing the peripheral road and climbing the slope via one of the many paved footpaths which scrambled from terrace to terrace, zigzagging between steep flights of steps. The sun was very low now and an isolated cloud, the shape of a pointing hand, extended an endless digit out of the west. Long shadows lay across the city. The softness of evening wrapped the gardens on either side of the path; occasional trills of birdsong rose from cultivated thicket or cloistered tree. Through all the adventures and terrors of the day the wonder of Atlantis had remained with Fern, a constant counterpoint to every incident, every emotion, and still she gazed at her surroundings with wide eyes, as if trying to impress each new det
ail in the shifting files of her memory. Somewhere at the back of her thought there was a lurking certainty that one day she would be gone and Atlantis lost to her forever, but although more desperate concerns preoccupied her attention, whenever they could be set aside she concentrated on the sights and sounds of the most beautiful city in the history of the world, so that its image might endure in her mind long after the reality had vanished. She had a sudden vision of herself at some time in the future, standing in a strange room by a rectangular window, looking out on a landscape that had nothing to do with the Viroc—it was odd how difficult she found it to remember her home—and she knew she was thinking of Atlantis, straining to recapture the scenes that passed too quickly even now. The afternoon had been long but not long enough, the hours had stretched out to encompass a jumble of excitements and fears, and had raced by before she could catch hold of a single moment and appreciate it at leisure. The sky appeared too vast for the sun to make the crossing in only a day, but dusk came swiftly in the tropics, and already its blood-orange disc was sinking into the haze along the horizon, while the purple cloud-hand seemed to thicken and spread above it, unfurling many fingers, pressing it down into oblivion. Looking up ahead in the lastlight, Fern saw marble walls blushing with more than sunset, low round domes peeping over them, the topmost plumes of trees with crimson leaves. “What is that?” she asked Rafarl.