Viewpoints critical, p.11
Viewpoints Critical, page 11
"No. Only the ones who have to become human. How can you know what color is until you see it?"
She takes his hand. "Thank you." The darkness behind the china blue eyes is lighter, although it will never totally lift.
"Wait a moment." He sets the black box on the ground beside the stone wall. With a quick motion his booted heel crunches through the plastic and circuitry. Then he replaces the pieces in the pack and seals it, setting it carefully on the wall.
His name is/is not Charley Cable. Her name is/is not Cylvira. There are no cyber-kinesthetic gymnasts, and no former killers/ethically enhanced computers.
A couple walks along the lakeshore, their arms entwined. Neither exists.
When Al Sarrantonio wanted a special story for Flights: Extreme Visions of Fantasy, I already had this one ready. I'd written it without really knowing where it might be published, because it was one of those stories I had to write. . . .
FALLEN ANGEL
Jaweau was sitting in the big white chair behind his desk when I walked in. "You never bother knocking . . .""Stow it. You always know I'm coming."
He nodded in that phony sad manner of his, like he wanted to be the forgiving male counterpart of the Maid. "We know, Lucian."
I took the black oak chair, the one he kept for me. The others were gray or white. All sorts came to see Jaweau. "What's the job?"
"Real estate. They want an attraction spell for the new villas beyond the Illysian Gardens."
"An attraction spell, and you're calling me in?"
"They want something with depth and staying power."
"An appeal to young angels, cherubim, mothers, that sort of thing?" I had to sneer. Even saints and angels retained some cupidity.
"No . . . they want the full spectrum. Draw in the seraphim, too." Jaweau shrugged, as only an angel could shrug, resigned without being cynical.
"Muckin' Maid!" An attraction spell for cherubim and seraphim, and they looked down on me?
"Don't swear. If I have to clean the place, it comes off your fee. I told you—
I was still pissed. A full-spectrum attraction spell, for the dark's due! "They want to pay for that? Do you know what that means? You need a priestess—twice—stable holy water, a virgin singer, and I'll have to be celibate the whole time until I write the song. I can't do crap else if I take the job. That's a thousand golds, minimum."
"Well . . . that would just about take care of what you owe . . ." Jaweau
smiled sweetly, the white creep. "Besides, you're always celibate here, unless you do a resonance spell. What choice do you have?"
He was stating a fact, and I ignored it. "Owe! Maid be damned ..."
He raised his right hand, and the light gathered at his fingertips. "I warned you."
"I'm sorry." The bastard had me. One dose of his goody-goodies, and I'd be worthless for days. I can't afford that much holiness, not and remain sane. How Jaweau does it is beyond me. I mean, how can a guy who looks like an angel, and is one, run a damned ad agency in Piedra Los Santos? Well, someone has to, and it has to be an angel. All they let us do is be consultants. There are some things they just can't do. Like disease-killing . . . they can't even destroy a tiny bacterium ... or deep-attraction spells.
I shifted my weight in the black chair and looked toward him. He was waiting for me to talk. Of course, I couldn't stare him down. That would have set the whole place on fire, and I couldn't afford to pay that off, either. The opposites bit, again. "All right. How good does it have to be?"
"You do this one right, and we'll call it even. You can stay away from here forever, if you want."
"It's not worth that much. You really don't want me around, do you?"
Jaweau shrugged again. He didn't have to admit anything, but I could tell I was getting on his nerves. Maybe I reminded him of the old days too much.
"Give me a couple of days. I didn't plan on two songs."
"You can do the dark side in a couple of hours." Jaweau let a halo circle that golden hair. He always did have an eye for effects.
"That's the easy part. You think it's easy for me to write a virgin song, even for a fallen angel?"
"I always admitted you were an artist, Lucian deNoir—"
"Don't say it."
"You comprehend the fallen. I still don't understand . . ."
"You never will." I stood up. "You'll know when the songs are ready."
He nodded. "The skies will weep . . . again."
Such dragon crap, and he believes it. All the damned angels and saints do.
I left as quickly as I could, and I sure as Hel didn't look in his eyes. Once I trusted him, but you know where trusting an angel leads. I'm sure the bastard used his web of light to remove any traces of skepticism I'd left behind.
The villa was the same as always, the same low hill, the same as when—I try not to think about it, but I'm sure Jaweau leaves it that way just to remind
me. The painting of the Maid still hangs over the couch in the workroom. The harps are gone, but I don't need them anyway. I poured a goblet of water—that's one thing I can have in Piedra Los Santos. Then I sat down, the Maid looking over my shoulder.
Writing the song for the dark side of the resonance spell took a couple of hours. That was after it took me three days to write the piece for the singer, and white song had to come first. With all the crap about grace, they have to turn to me to write a true white song. The Maid has a sense of irony, all right.
I have to finish on the dark side, or I'd start believing in all that crap about grace and forgiveness, and I don't ever want to believe that again.
It was cloudy when I finished. Jaweau can be a real bastard. At least it was done. I sealed both folios, one with white wax, the other with black, and made my way back to Jaweau's. I walked.
He met me outside the big chamber, and I suppose his eyes were sad, but I didn't look.
"Who's the singer?" Not that I really cared, though I'd have to before the spell was set and twisted.
"Name's Kyrilann. The blonde by the pentagram."
"All right." I didn't look at her or at the three angels who carried the harps. The singer carried her own. She had to, of course, since the strings were different.
The dark drummer was Khango. I'd worked with him before. Solid, but really didn't care much so long as he could work. He was naturally dark. Some are.
"Are you going to check her out?" Jaweau held the web between his hands, and the light cascaded along the strings. I lifted a hand, and he stepped back. "Keep your black hands off my webs, Lucian."
"Then don't tell me when to check out the singers." I grinned, but he didn't grin back. I took a deep breath and looked at the singer, really looked.
She stared back with eyes as blue and as deep as Eden, blue over the tears of a fallen angel. I almost wanted to turn away, but, what the Hel, it was her choice. No one had made her do what she had, and, if she wanted to sing the spell, that was her choice, too.
Except it wasn't, and we both knew it.
One of the angels smiled sadly over a golden harp, and I wanted to paste him, not that it would have done any good.
People think working a resonance spell is like similarity or contagion. That's dragon crap, not that there've ever been dragons, but dark mages— that's what I think of myself as, anyway, no matter what the holies call me— are supposed to believe in the unbelievable. More crap. A resonance spell is a lot trickier, because you've got to have a virgin song, sung by a virgin singer—not pure, but virgin—and then you've got to twist it so that it resonates. The twist's the thing, almost a betrayal of the first two.
"Let's get on with it."
"As you wish." Jaweau moved the web, and a line of fire flared around the pentagram.
I stepped into the pentagram, and Jaweau closed the gap with the light web. Kyrilann stood at the focal point of the pentagram and opened the folio. White wax crumbled to the floor. No one else had seen the song, and she couldn't even open the folder until I was held inside the pentagram, not if the spell were to resonate properly.
Khango sat on a black stool between the two base points of the pentagram. After Kyrilann broke the seal on her folder, he opened his. The black wax melted in dark flames. His black sticks hovered above the drums, waiting for Kyrilann to begin.
She studied at the notes, and time froze. Finally, her fingers touched the silver harp strings. Gold would have been better, theoretically, but Kyrilann was still a fallen angel and only a virgin technically, thanks to Jaweau. He'll bend the rules when he wants to, the sanctimonious bastard.
I waited behind the white lines of the pentagram.
Hel, could she sing! I might have heard better in the time since . . . but I didn't recall when. She was so good that the faint cloak of darkness that had surrounded her, the one that probably only Jaweau and I could see, seemed to lighten as she sang, almost vanishing. As she shimmered toward the white, Khango continued weaving the counterpoint, and the darkness gathered around the base of the pentagram. Even before she finished, the chamber was resonating.
Although I wrote the notes and words, when Kyrilann sang them, I forgot them, and that was as it should be. No one else would remember them either, nor the black counterpoint sung by the dark drummer.
As the song and countersong shivered to a close, I wiped my forehead. It was hot in the pentagram, damned hot, as always.
Outside the pentagram, Jaweau and the others squirmed, as if the resonance
were the beat of an unheard dance that picked at them. The whole chamber echoed with the unheard songspell, the resonance lingering, waiting for the next phase, and for the priestess. We all waited. I certainly couldn't do anything else.
The good mothers like to make you wait and squirm, to realize exactly what you've done. That unset resonance even twisted my guts as I watched for the door to open. Finally, the priestess stepped into the chamber. Actually, it was a chapel, since you don't mess with things like resonance spells in any other place, not if you want to keep a whole soul in your body. I might belong to the depths, but even I don't like the thought of spending eternity rent into burning fragments, and the Maid has never been that merciful to us.
The priestess didn't waste any time, either, starting right out with the familiar words. "Dearly beloved . . ." When she got to the part about redemption through love, I looked down. After that she avoided looking at me, and her eyes kept straying to Kyrilann.
I watched Kyrilann's eyes, too. They were a deep open blue, the honest kind you don't associate with fallen angels, and I wondered how exactly she had betrayed herself, not that what I was doing was any better, even if everyone knew it was necessary. I mean, you do have to set the spell, and no one was going to let me out of the pentagram unbound. The ceremony binds the power between us, and the twist locks it back into the rune rods that Jaweau had already placed out beyond the Illysian Gardens.
The good mother did the shortest ceremony possible, ending up with the traditional pronouncement about not putting asunder what the Maid hath joined, and once our hands touched across the pentagram, and the silver rings flared their linked fires, Jaweau opened the pentagram. I shivered; I couldn't help it.
Kyrilann didn't. Those open blue eyes held so much pain that I had to look away. Me ... I had to look away. Figure that, and over a resonance spell.
I swallowed, and stepped across the pentagram. It still hurt, even after Jaweau erased the light.
Kyrilann turned to me. Tears should have been falling from those eyes, but they were as clear as old-time skies. She actually stepped toward me until we were perhaps three paces apart. She licked her lips, but her eyes met mine.
"You're Lucian deNoir—"
"Please don't say it."
"All right." Her speaking voice was a trace husky, unlike the silver tones that had set the spell.
I drew her to me, gently, with both hands. Her hands touched my waist, and my fingers traced the fine line of her chin. In time, I looked her full in the face, and my eyes burned as they met hers. Even if she were just a singer, that made her, after all, a fallen angel, and that's hard.
I took her arm, and we made our way from the chapel toward my villa.
Her eyes widened as we neared the open gate. "I didn't. . . realize . . ."
"He was merciful ..."
"I wouldn't call it that." Her tone was thoughtful, but her steps matched mine as we crossed the line of black marble to the low steps.
Once we reached the room with the balcony, I offered her water. That was all. I didn't want to tempt her, although it would have been technically fair. She could have refused, but I like to play it straight, unlike Jaweau.
She took the water, looked at it, and then slowly sipped it.
In time, she let me undress her, and I was gentle.
For a while, I even forgot.
Later, I told her, "I do love you."
"You can't." Her words were sad, even as her hands drew me closer. "You belong to . . ."
I forced myself to meet her eyes. "I can't lie here. Everything I say in Piedra Los Santos must be true." That is absolutely true, so far as it goes. I cannot lie in any city of the saints or angels. And I did love her, absolutely, as those deep, innocent eyes cut through me. Not that it mattered. Nothing had changed, except for those moments when I held a fallen angel, and they came to an end too soon.
When she finally slept, I eased away from her crumpled form and watched the boreali. Then I went down to my workroom and looked at the Bucelli painting for a long time. Maybe there were other universes where it had turned out differently. Maybe.
Morning came, and eventually Kyrilann walked down the stairs, wearing the white gown. She deserved that, and it looked good on her.
I didn't let her say a word. "You can pick up the papers at the priestess's after the Sabbath. I even paid gold for an annulment, not a lousy twenty pieces of silver for a divorce." I had to be the one who paid for the betrayal, of course, or the resonance wouldn't stay set.
Her eyes glistened for a moment, like silver, I'd say ... if I were the poetic
sort. Then she looked at the painting of the Maid, the one by Bucelli that shows Her before the judges, just before they crucified Her. I had Merleno duplicate it. The spell cost a good ten golds, but it's worth it, captures the innocence in Her eyes. Sort of like Kyrilann's, I guess.
"You don't mean it." Kyrilann looked at me again, like the first time after the resonance set in us, and my eyes still burned.
"You were a great lay, Kyrilann, and we did one Hel of a resonance spell. But that's all I can give you." I looked down at the black tabletop—all the furniture got darker when I stayed at the villa for very long. She was already shimmering a bit, and the annulment hadn't even been entered. I knew I'd never do another resonance as good. Too bad the spell doesn't work unless there's betrayal.
"You don't mean it," she repeated. "You don't have to do this."
But I did. Or Jaweau would have everything. "Like I said, you were a great lay." I didn't meet her eyes. Instead, I looked back at the copy of the Bucelli. Damn, Merleno had done a fine job.
The workroom was silent, but I refused to look into those eyes. If I had, I'd have been thinking about. . . never mind.
When I finally looked up, Kyrilann was gone. You've redeemed your soul, Kyrilann. The saints will be pleased.
Business is business, I guess. But I even envied the pain in Kyrilann's eyes.
I sat down in the wooden chair at the oak table and looked at the Maid for a long time. What else could I do? It was time to head back to Hel, until Jaweau or someone else needed me. Jaweau would, again, sooner or later.
Over the years, a number of readers of the Reduce Saga have asked about Cassius, and how he came to Reduce. Well. . . here's the answer. . . .
BLACKORDERMAGE
I
There was the fire, welling up everywhere on the flight deck—and an explosion and a flash of brilliant white. Everything seemed to hang in the balance. Then, blackness flowed around me, and after that so did currents of black and white light. The black felt calming. It was reassuring. The white burned.Both vanished, and I dropped maybe two feet onto something hard. It only took a moment to catch my balance. I was used to pitching decks. But. . . there wasn't any heat, and there weren't any flames. A moment before, I'd been acting as nozzleman on the Big E's deck, and now my hands were empty. Less than three yards away from me a little guy in red-and-yellow rags took what looked to be a curved sabre and slashed a bigger guy in blue and black across the back of his calf. Even before the big guy went down, a silver-haired woman in black slashed the smaller man's throat, then took out another attacker with a neat thrust.
Another crewman in blue went down, and a pole—no, a staff—rolled across the deck toward my feet. I grabbed the staff. It wasn't that much different from the pugil stick I'd used when I'd been an instructor in SEE except it wasn't padded at the ends. They were ironbound.
The odors/feelings of blood and death shook me like I'd been slammed into a steel bulkhead. I looked out. I was still somewhere on an ocean, but the water looked grayer than the Pacific, and the air was colder. The sky was different—a really different greenish blue. I'd never seen anything like it, not even before a tornado and not in bright sunlight. I glanced down. The deck was wood. I could smell something burning. Coal? Then I could see that the ship had funny stacks, sort of belled like the old stove in Papaw's
house in Hebron. But the people were wearing stuff I'd never seen, and there was another ship, lower, and sleeker, with raked sails, grappled to the railing of the higher-decked vessel where I stood on the aft quarter. Someone yelled, and I jumped. Then more of the men in the ragged and dirty red and yellow were climbing over the rail. Two of them looked at me the way Ma-maw might have looked at a plump chicken.
One of the raiders came charging toward me with his sword—a wide-bladed scimitar of some kind. I spread my feet and brought up the staff from below. No one ever thinks that way. He didn't, either—not until the iron-tipped end cracked into his arm just below the elbow, and his blade went flying. The woman in black ran him through with one thrust.
