The Sea Peoples(45)
“It’s not a carving at all,” Deor said. “That was a rose, and it has been changed. So it begins, here, and leads to that day we saw, the day of fire.”
Pip snatched her hand back.
He found a set of wineglasses on a table. “Toa, keep watch. The rest of you, listen with these. We’ll all get something, and we can put what we hear together.”
Pip took up the tulip-shaped glass—rather dirty, with red-wine crystals at the bottom—and set it against a spot where the plaster had fallen off the lath of the wall. A murmur of voices came through as she pressed her ear to the base.
She caught a name. Castaigne, she thought. Might be useful.
CHAPTER NINE
BETWEEN WAKING WORLD AND SHADOW
Alan Thurston dreamed. A cat was singing in human words, but not to him, its voice as sweet as clover honey dripping from a comb of beeswax on a hot August day. Honey of the type his mother had given him, smeared on a hunk of fresh bread as a treat when he’d done his lessons well:
“Hush, child
The darkness will rise from the deep, child
And carry you down into sleep, child
The darkness will rise from the deep, child
And carry you down into sleep.”
Alan stirred, and felt chains clink. He was in a bare room, brick and boards, sitting with his hands above his head and manacled to the wall. The prison around him was dim, the details strangely indefinite—as if it were somehow a generic representation for the concept of prison itself. Alan knew he’d been here for a very long time. Perhaps he’d been there always, though he’d never been aware of it. Or one of him had always been here.
One of me was always here. One of me lives a man’s life elsewhere. They are coming . . . coming together . . . I feel it . . . as if the halves of my soul are becoming one, for the first time. Will be one.
He could see another man in the dimness, hanging in bonds that fastened his wrists to a bar of wood hung from the ceiling at a height that made him stretch his toes to touch the floor. The cat sat at his feet and crooned:
“Guileless son,
I’ll shape your belief
And you’ll always know that your God is a thief
And you won’t understand the cause of your grief
But you’ll always follow the voices beneath—”
The animal swayed, and the hanging man’s eyes followed it, brown-green and haunted, staring into the yellow ones:
“Loyalty loyalty loyalty loyalty
Loyalty loyalty loyalty only to me
Guileless son,
Your spirit will hate her
The flower who married your father the traitor
And you will bring them the only true savior . . .”
Then he was . . . elsewhere.
Ah. I recognize this, the city of New York more than a hundred years ago. No, Hildred Castaigne recognizes this; I dream him again. This is the armorer’s chambers he visits sometimes.
He was looking at a young woman; a very pretty one, with light-brown hair piled in an elaborate halo-like manner framing delicate features.
Constance Hawberk, he thought, not sure if the name came to Alan Thurston or the man he dreamed he was. To—
Hildred Castaigne, Alan reminded himself: that thought at least he knew was his, because you didn’t think of your own name very often so he must be thinking it himself, against the other one.
The man who will be Emperor of America as royal servant to the King in Yellow, who will rule even the unborn thoughts of men.
Probably the girl’s name was in the dream-man’s mind, because the man was looking at her with concentrated dislike and no hint of desire. But it was an oddly abstract hatred, directed at her as an object rather than a person, as a bundle of potential problems. Less like that you felt towards a person who’d done you an injury, and more the way you cursed a landslip that blocked a droving-trail and thought about how many days of sweating work it would mean to get it shored up again. Though Alan hoped he’d never feel that spiteful simply because something or someone was in the way.
I really don’t like Hildred Castaigne much, even if we’re related, Alan thought with the detachment of dream. And there’s something very strange about him.
“Did you see the opening ceremonies at the Government Lethal Chamber, Mr. Castaigne?” Constance asked. “I was out on Broadway this morning and saw the cavalry passing, but I needed to get this banner finished for the Museum’s exhibit.”
“You mean that I imposed on you, dear,” her father said, giving the greave a final buff of the chamois cloth.
He was a thickset man with muscular shoulders, arms and hands but a bit of a belly on him and a brown beard that reached his chest. Every one of the tools his battered callused hands used was familiar, which itself was strange in this dream-place.
“Helping you with your work with my needle is not an imposition, Father!” she said with a chuckle. “It’s not as if we were gentlefolk of leisure, with nothing better to do than stroll about and see the sights.”
“I was there, yes. Rather boring speeches, though the Chamber is a nice piece of architecture,” Castaigne said. “Thank God this city has finally developed a sense of aesthetic decency.”
Then she hesitated and looked at him and quickly away again, flushing: “Did you see your cousin, Lieutenant Castaigne, there?”