Taltos Read online

  Yes, this was the quintessential moment, he thought, and it hit him rather like somebody slamming him with a boxing glove, that a female Taltos lived in this tower, like Rapunzel, and that Ash was going to kill the man he was guiding towards the door.

  Maybe the memory of this moment--these images, this soft chilly night--maybe this was all he would salvage from this experience. It was a very real possibility.

  Ash wrested the key with a firm but slow gesture from Stuart Gordon, and slipped the key into a large iron lock. The door opened with modern efficiency and they entered a lower hall, electrically heated and filled with large, comfortable furnishings, massive Renaissance Revival pieces with bulbous but beautifully carved legs, claws for feet, and tapestried fabrics, worn but still very pretty, and genuinely old.

  Medieval paintings hung on the walls, many with the high imperishable gloss of true egg tempera. A suit of armor stood, covered with dust. And other treasures were heaped here and there in careless luxury. This was the den of a poetic man, a man in love with England's past, and perhaps fatally alienated from the present.

  A staircase came down into the room, on their left, following the curve of the wall as it descended. Light shone down from the room above and, for all Michael knew, from the room above that.

  Ash let go of Stuart Gordon. He went to the foot of the stairs. He laid his right hand on the crude newel post and began to go up.

  Rowan followed him immediately.

  Stuart Gordon seemed not to realize that he was free.

  "Don't hurt her," he cried suddenly, viciously, as though it was the only thing he could think of to say. "Don't touch her without her permission!" he pleaded. The voice, issuing from the skeletal old face, seemed the last reservoir of his masculine power. "You hurt my treasure!" he said.

  Ash stopped, looking at Gordon thoughtfully, and then again he started to climb.

  They all followed, finally even Gordon, who pushed past Michael rudely, and then shoved Yuri out of his way. He caught up with Ash at the head of the stairway and disappeared out of Michael's sight.

  When they finally reached the top, they found themselves in another large room as simple as the one below it, its walls the walls of the tower, except for two small rooms, skillfully built of old wood, and roofed over--bathrooms perhaps, closets, Michael couldn't tell. They seemed to melt back into the stone behind them. The great room had its share of soft couches and sagging old chairs, scattered standup lamps with parchment shades making distinct islands in the darkness, but the center was wonderfully bare. And a single real iron chandelier, a circle of melting candles, revealing a great pool of polished floor beneath it.

  It took a moment for Michael to realize the room held another partially concealed figure. Yuri was already looking at this figure.

  Across the circle from them, at the far end of the diameter, so to speak, sat a very tall woman at a stool, apparently working on a loom. One small gooseneck lamp illuminated her hands, but not her face. A small bit of her tapestry was revealed, and Michael could see that it was very intricate and full of muted color.

  Ash stood stock-still, staring at her. The woman stared back. It was the long-haired woman Michael had seen at the window.

  The others made no move. Gordon rushed towards her. "Tessa," he said, "Tessa, I'm here, my darling." The voice was speaking in a realm of its own, the others forgotten.

  The woman rose, towering over the frail figure of Gordon as he embraced her. She yielded with a sweet, delicate sigh, her hands rising to gently touch Gordon's thin shoulders. In spite of her height, she was so slight of build that she seemed the weaker one. With his arms around her, he brought her forward into the brighter light, into the circle.

  There was something grim in Rowan's expression. Yuri was enthralled. Ash's face was unreadable. He merely watched as the woman came closer and closer and now stood beneath the chandelier, the light gleaming on the top of her head and on her forehead.

  Perhaps on account of her sex, the woman's height seemed truly monstrous.

  Her face was perfectly round, flawless, rather like that of Ash, but not so long or deeply defined. Her mouth was tender and tiny, and her eyes, though big, were timid and without unusual color. Blue eyes, however, kind, and fringed, like those of Ash, with long, luxuriant lashes. A great mane of white hair grew back from her forehead, falling about her almost magically. It seemed motionless and soft, more a cloud than a mane, perhaps, and so fine that the light made the mass of it appear faintly transparent.

  She wore a violet dress, beautifully smocked just beneath her breasts. The sleeves were gorgeously old-fashioned, gathered around the small of her upper arms and then ballooning to the cuffs that fitted tightly at the wrists.

  Dim thoughts of Rapunzel came to Michael--or more truly of every speck of romance that he had ever read--a realm of fairy queens and princes of unambiguous power. As the woman drew near to Ash, Michael couldn't help but see that her skin was so pale it was almost white. A swan of a princess she seemed, her cheeks firm and her mouth glistening slightly, and her lashes very vivid around her glowing blue eyes.

  She frowned, which made a single pucker in her forehead, and seemed like a baby about to bawl.

  "Taltos," she whispered. But this was said without the slightest alarm. Indeed, she looked almost sad.

  Yuri let out a tiny, faint gasp.

  Gordon was transformed with astonishment, as if nothing had actually prepared him for this meeting to take place. He seemed for a moment almost young, eyes fired with love and with rapture.

  "This is your female?" asked Ash softly. He was gazing at her, even smiling slightly, but he had not moved to greet her or touch her outstretched hand. He spoke slowly.

  "This is the female for whom you murdered Aaron Lightner, for whom you tried to kill Yuri, the female to whom you would have brought the male Taltos at any cost?"

  "What are you saying!" said Gordon in a timorous voice. "You dare to hurt her, either with words or actions, I'll kill you."

  "I don't think so," said Ash. "My dearest," he said to the woman, "can you understand me?"

  "Yes," she said softly, in a tiny bell of a voice. She shrugged and threw up her hands, almost in the manner of an ecstatic saint. "Taltos," she said, and gave a small sad shake of her head, and frowned again with almost dreamy distress.

  Had the doomed Emaleth been so fair and feminine?

  With a shock, Michael saw Emaleth's face collapse as the bullets struck it, saw the body fall over backwards! Was this why Rowan was crying, or was she merely tired and wondering, eyes watering slightly as she watched Ash looking down at the woman and the woman looking up. What must this be for her?

  "Beautiful Tessa," Ash said with a slight rise of his eyebrows.

  "What's wrong?" asked Gordon. "Something is wrong--for both of you. Tell me what's wrong." He moved closer, but stopped, obviously not willing to step between them. His voice was rich and sorrowful now. It had the quality of an orator, or of someone who knew how to affect his listeners. "Oh, God in heaven, this is not what I imagined--to meet here in this place, surrounded by those who can't truly grasp the meaning."

  But he was too full of emotion for there to be any artifice in what he was saying or doing at all. His gestures were no longer hysterical. They were tragic.

  Ash stood as still as ever, smiling at Tessa very deliberately, and then nodding with pleasure as her little mouth opened and expanded, and her cheeks grew small and plump with her own smile.

  "You're very beautiful," Ash whispered, and then he raised his hand to his lips, and kissed his fingers and gently placed this kiss on her cheek.

  She sighed, stretching her long neck and letting her hair tumble down her back, and then she reached out for him, and he took her in his arms. He kissed her, but there was no passion in it. Michael could see it.

  Gordon came between them, circling Tessa's waist with his left hand and gently drawing her back.

  "Not here, I beg you. Oh, please, not as
if it were in a common brothel."

  He let go of Tessa and approached Ash, hands clasped as if praying, peering up without fear now, caught in something more crucial to him even than his own survival.

  "What is the place for the wedding of the Taltos?" he said reverently, voice rich and imploring. "What is the holiest place in England, where St. Michael's line runs over the crest of the hill, and the ruined tower of the ancient Church of St. Michael is a sentinel still?"

  Ash regarded him almost sadly, composed, merely listening, as the impassioned voice continued.

  "Let me take you there, both of you, let me see the wedding of the Taltos on Glastonbury Tor!" His voice dropped low and the words came evenly, almost slowly. "If I see this, if I see the miracle of the birth there on the sacred mountain, in the place where Christ himself came to England--where old gods have fallen and new gods risen, where blood was shed in the defense of the sacred--if I see this, the birth of the offspring, full-grown and reaching out to embrace its parents, the very symbol of life itself, then it doesn't matter whether I go on living, or whether I die."

  His hands had risen as if he held the sacred concept in them, and his voice had lost all its hysteria, and his eyes even were clear and almost soft.

  Yuri watched with obvious suspicion.

  Ash was the picture of patience, but for the first time Michael saw a deeper and darker emotion behind Ash's eyes and even his smile.

  "Then," said Gordon, "I will have seen the thing that I was born to see. I will have witnessed the miracle of which poets sing and old men dream. A miracle as great as any ever made known to me from the time my eyes could see to read, and my ears could hear the tales told to me, and my tongue could form words that would express the strongest inclinations of my heart.

  "Grant me these last precious moments, the time to travel there. It's not far. Scarcely a quarter of an hour from here--a mere few minutes for us all. And on Glastonbury Tor, I will give her over to you, as a father would a daughter, my treasure, my beloved Tessa, to do what you both desire."

  He stopped, looking to Ash desperately still, and deeply saddened, as if behind these words were some complete acceptance of his own death.

  He took no notice of Yuri's plain though silent contempt.

  Michael was marveling at the transformation in the old man, the sheer conviction.

  "Glastonbury," Stuart whispered. "I beg you. Not here." And finally, he shook his head. "Not here," he whispered, and then fell silent.

  Ash's face did not change. And then, very gently, as if breaking a terrible secret to a tender heart, one for which he had compassion, he said:

  "There can be no union, there can be no offspring." He took his time with the words. "She is old, your beautiful treasure. She is barren. Her fount is dried."

  "Old!" Stuart was baffled, disbelieving. "Old!" he whispered. "Why, you're mad, how can you say this?" He turned helplessly to Tessa, who watched him without pain or disappointment.

  "You're mad," said Stuart again, his voice rising. "Look at her!" he cried out. "Look at her face, her form. She's magnificent. I've brought you together with a spouse of such beauty that you should fall to your knees and give me your thanks!" Suddenly he was stricken, disbelieving and yet slowly being crushed.

  "Her face will be that way, perhaps, the day she dies," Ash said with his characteristic mildness. "I have never seen the face of a Taltos that was different. But her hair is white, completely white, not a single live strand remains in it. No scent comes from her. Ask her. Humans have used her again and again. Or perhaps she has wandered longer even than I. Her womb is dead within her. Her fount is dried."

  Gordon gave no further protest. He had clapped his hands over his lips, the little steeple of his fingers collapsed to shut in his pain.

  The woman looked a little puzzled, but only vaguely disturbed. She stepped forward and put her long, slender arm lightly around the shivering Gordon, and addressed her words very distinctly to Ash.

  "You judge me for what men have done to me, that they used me in every village and every town I entered, that over the years they made the blood flow again and again, until there was no more?"

  "No, I don't judge you," Ash said earnestly and with great concern. "I don't judge you, Tessa. Truly I do not."

  "Ah!" Once again she smiled, brightly, almost brilliantly, as if this was a reason to be supremely happy.

  She looked at Michael suddenly, and then at the shadowy figure of Rowan near the stairway. Her expression was eager and loving.

  "I'm saved from these horrors here," she said. "I'm loved in chastity by Stuart. This is my refuge." She stretched out her hands to Ash. "Won't you stay with me, talk to me?" She tugged him towards the center of the room. "Won't you dance with me? I hear music when I look into your eyes."

  She drew Ash closer. She said with deep, true feeling, "I'm so glad you've come."

  Only now did she look at Gordon, who had slipped away, forehead furrowed, fingers still pressed to his lips, stepping backwards and finding a heavy old wooden chair. He sank down on it, and rested his head against the hard planks that made up the back of it, and turned wearily to the side. The spirit had gone out of him. It seemed his very life was leaving him.

  "Dance with me," said Tessa. "All of you, don't you want to dance?" She flung out her arms and threw back her head and shook out her hair, which did indeed look like the lifeless white hair of the very very old.

  She turned round and round until her long, full, violet skirts swung out around her, making a bell, and she was dancing on tiptoe with small slippered feet.

  Michael couldn't take his eyes off her, off the subtle swaying movements with which she made a great circle, leading with her right foot, and then bringing the other closer to it, as though it were a ritual dance.

  As for Gordon, it was too painful even to look at him, and this disappointment seemed far more important to him than his life. Indeed, it was as if the fatal blow had already been struck.

  Ash, too, stared rapt at Tessa--touched perhaps, worried certainly, and maybe even miserable.

  "You lie," Stuart said. But it was a desperate, broken murmur. "You're telling a terrible and abominable lie."

  Ash didn't bother to answer him. He smiled and nodded at Tessa.

  "Stuart, my music. Please play my music. Play my music for ... for Ash!" She gave Ash a great bow and another smile, and he too bowed and reached out to take her hands.

  The figure in the chair was incapable of movement, and, once again in a murmur, he said, "It's not true," but he didn't believe his own denial.

  Tessa had begun to hum a song, turning again in a circle.

  "Play the music, Stuart, play it."

  "I'll play it for you," said Michael in a low voice. He turned, looking for some possible source, hoping against hope it wasn't an instrument, a harp, a fiddle, something that required a player, because if it was, then he could not rise to the moment.

  He felt heartbroken himself, impossibly sad, unable to enjoy the great relief he ought to have been feeling. And for one moment his eyes moved over Rowan, and she too seemed lost in sadness, veiled in it, her hands clasped, her body very upright against the stair railing, her eyes following the dancing figure who had begun to hum a distinct melody, something that Michael knew and loved.

  Michael discovered the machines--modern stereo components, designed to look almost mystically technical, with hundreds of tiny digital screens, and buttons, and wires snaking in all directions to speakers hung at random intervals along the wall.

  He bent down, tried to read the name of the tape inside the player.

  "It's what she wants," said Stuart, staring still at the woman. "Just start it. She plays it all the time. It is her music."

  "Dance with us," said Tessa. "Don't you want to dance with us?" She moved towards Ash, and this time he could not resist. He caught her hands, and then embraced her as a man might embrace a woman for a waltz, in the modern intimate position.

  Michael pr
essed the button.

  The music began low, the throb of bass strings plucked slowly--flowing out of the many speakers; then came trumpets, smooth and lustrous, over the shimmering tones of a harpsichord, descending in the same melodic line of notes and now taking the lead, so that the strings followed.

  At once Ash guided his partner into wide graceful steps, and a gentle circle.

  This was Pachelbel's Canon, Michael knew it at once, played as he'd never heard it, in a masterly rendition, with the full brass perhaps intended by the composer.

  Had there ever been a more plaintive piece of music, anything more frankly abandoned to romance? The music swelled, transcending the constraints of the baroque, trumpets, strings, harpsichord now singing their overlapping melodies with a heartrending richness so that the music seemed both timeless and utterly from the heart.

  It swept the couple along, their heads bending gently, their wide steps graceful and slow and in perfect time with the instruments. Ash was smiling now, as fully and completely as Tessa. And as the pace quickened, as the trumpets began to delicately trill the notes, with perfect control, as all voices blended magnificently in the most jubilant moments of the composition, faster and faster they danced, Ash swinging Tessa along almost playfully, into bolder and bolder circles. Her skirts flared freely, her small feet turned with perfect grace, heels clicking faintly on the wood, her smile ever more radiant.

  Another sound was not blended into the dance--for the canon, when played like this, was surely a dance--and slowly Michael realized it was the sound of Ash singing. There were no words, only a lovely openmouthed humming, to which Tessa quickly added her own, and their faultless voices rose above the dark lustrous trumpets, effortlessly traveling the crescendos, and now, as they turned faster, their backs very straight, they almost laughed in what seemed pure bliss.

  Rowan's eyes had filled with tears as she watched them--the tall, regal man and the lithesome, graceful fairyqueen, and so had the eyes of the old man, who clung to the arm of his chair as if he were very close to the limit of his resources.