Taltos Read online

  Surely somewhere, in the deep forest of Scotland or the jungles of Peru, or the snowy wastes of Russia, there lives a family of Taltos, a clan, in its warm and well-defended tower. The woman and the man have their books, their memories to share, their games to play, their bed in which to kiss and play, though the act of coitus must, as always, be approached with reverence.

  My people can't be gone.

  The world is huge. The world is endless. Surely I am not the last. Surely that has not been the meaning of Janet's terrible words, that I should wander through time, mateless forever.

  Now you know my story.

  I could tell many tales. I could tell of my journeys through many lands, my years in various occupations; I could tell of the few male Taltos I met over the years, of the stories I heard of our lost people who had once lived in this or that fabled village.

  The story you tell is the story you choose to tell.

  And this is the story we share, Rowan and Michael.

  You know now how the clan of Donnelaith came into being. You know how the blood of the Taltos came to be in the blood of humans. You know the tale of the first woman ever burnt in the beautiful valley. And the sad account of the place to which the Taltos brought such misery, not once, but again and again, if all our stories are history.

  Janet, Lasher, Suzanne, her descendants, even to Emaleth.

  And you see now that when you raised your gun, when you lifted it, Rowan, and you fired the shots that brought down this child, the girl who had given you her milk, it was no small act of which you need ever be ashamed, but destiny.

  You have saved us both. You have saved us all perhaps. You have saved me from the most terrible dilemma I could ever know, and one which I may be not meant to know.

  Whatever the case, don't weep for Emaleth. Don't weep for a race of strange, soft-eyed people, long ago driven from the earth by a stronger species. This is the way of the earth, and we are both of it.

  What other strange, unnamed creatures live within the cities and jungles of our planet? I have glimpsed many things. I have heard many stories. The rain and wind till the earth, to use Janet's words. What next shall spring from some hidden garden?

  Could we now live together, the Taltos, the human, in the same world? How would such be possible? This is a world where human races battle endlessly, where people of one faith still slaughter people of another. Religious wars rage from Sri Lanka to Bosnia, from Jerusalem to American cities and towns where Christians still, in the name of Jesus Christ, bring death in his name to their enemies, to their own, even to little children.

  Tribe, race, clan, family.

  Deep within us all are the seeds of hate for what is different. We do not have to be taught these things. We have to be taught not to give in to them! They are in our blood; but in our minds is the charity and the love to overcome them.

  And how would my gentle people fare today, if they did come back, as foolish now as they were then, unable to meet the ferocity of men, yet frightening even the most innocent humans with their bold eroticism? Would we choose tropical islands on which to play our sensuous games, to do our dances and fall into our spells of dancing and singing?

  Or would ours be a realm of electronic pastimes, of computers, films, games of virtual reality, or sublime mathematical puzzles--studies suited to our minds, with their love of detail and their inability to sustain irrational states such as wrath or hatred? Would we fall in love with quantum physics the way we once fell in love with weaving? I can see our kind, up night and day, tracing the paths of particles through magnetic fields on computer screens! Who knows what advances we might make, given those toys to preoccupy us?

  My brain is twice the size of the human brain. I do not age by any known clock. My capacity to learn modern science and modern medicine cannot be imagined.

  And what if there rose among us but one ambitious male or female, one Lasher, if you will, who would the supremacy of the race restore, what then might happen? Within the space of one night, a pair of Taltos could breed a battalion of adults, ready to invade the citadels of human power, ready to destroy the weapons which humans know how to use so much better, ready to take the food, the drink, the resources of this brimming world, and deny it to those less gentle, less kind, less patient, in retribution for their eons of bloody dominance.

  Of course, I do not wish to learn these things.

  I have not spent my centuries studying the physical world. Or the uses of power. But when I choose to score some victory for myself--this company you see around you--the world falls back from me as if its obstacles were made of paper. My empire, my world--it is made of toys and money. But how much more easily it could be made of medicines to quiet the human male, to dilute the testosterone in his veins, and silence his battle cries forever.

  And imagine, if you will, a Taltos with true zeal. Not a dreamer who has spent his brief years in misted lands nourished on pagan poetry, but a visionary who, true to the very principles of Christ, decided that violence should be annihilated, that peace on earth was worth any sacrifice.

  Imagine the legions of newborns who could be committed to this cause, the armies bred to preach love in every hamlet and vale and stamp out those, quite literally, who spoke against it.

  What am I finally? A repository for genes that could make the world crumble? And what are you, my Mayfair witches--have you carried those same genes down through the centuries so that we may finally end the Kingdom of Christ with our sons and our daughters?

  The Bible names this one, does it not? The beast, the demon, the Antichrist.

  Who has the courage for such glory? Foolish old poets who live in towers still, and dream of rituals on Glastonbury Tor to make the world new again.

  And even for that mad old man, that doddering fool, was murder not the first requisite of his vision?

  I have shed blood. It is on my hands now for vengeance's sake, a pathetic way to heal a wound, but one to which we turn again and again in our wretchedness. The Talamasca is whole again. Not worth the price, but done. And our secrets are safe for the present.

  We are friends, you and I, I pray, and we will never hurt each other. I can reach for your hands in the dark. You can call out to me, and I'll answer.

  But what if something new could happen? Something wholly new? I think I see it, I think I imagine.... But then it escapes me.

  I don't have the answer.

  I know I shall never trouble your red-haired witch, Mona. I shall never trouble any of your powerful women. Many centuries have passed since lust or hope has tricked me into that adventure.

  I am alone, and if I am cursed, I've forgotten it.

  I like my empire of small, beautiful things. I like the playthings that I offer to the world. The dolls of a thousand faces are my children.

  In a small way they are my dance, my circle, my song. Emblems of eternal play, the work perhaps of heaven.

  Thirty-one

  AND THE DREAM repeats itself. She climbs out of bed, runs down the stairs. "Emaleth!" The shovel is under the tree. Who would ever bother to move it?

  She digs and digs, and there is her girl, with the long slack hair and the big blue eyes. "Mother!"

  "Come on, my darling."

  They're down in the hole together. Rowan holds her, rocking her. "Oh, I'm so sorry I killed you."

  "It's all right, Mother dear," she says.

  "It was a war," Michael says. "And in a war, people are killed, and then afterwards ..."

  She woke, gasping.

  The room was quiet beneath a faint drone of heat from the small vents along the floor. Michael slept beside her, his knuckles touching her hip as she sat there, hands clasped to her mouth, looking down at him.

  No, don't wake him. Don't put him through the misery again. But she knew.

  When all the talk was over and done with, when they'd had their dinner and their long walk through the snowy streets, when they'd talked till dawn and breakfasted and talked some more and vowed thei
r eternal friendship, she knew. She should never never have killed her girl. There was no reason for it.

  How could that doe-eyed creature, who had comforted her so, in that kindly voice, milk spilling from her breasts, hhhmmm, the taste of the milk, how could that trembling creature have hurt anyone?

  What logic had made her lift the gun, what logic had made her pull the trigger? Child of rape, child of aberration, child of nightmare. But child still....

  She climbed out of the bed, finding her slippers in the dark, and reaching for a long white negligee on the chair, another one of these strange garments which filled her suitcase, full of the perfume of another woman.

  Killed her, killed her, killed her, this tender and trusting thing, full of knowledge of long-ago lands, of valley and glen and plains and who knew what mysteries? Her comfort in the dark, when she'd been tied to the bed. My Emaleth.

  A pale white window was hung in the darkness at the far end of the hallway, a great rectangle of glowing night sky, light spilling on the long path of colored marble.

  To that light she moved, the negligee ballooning out, her feet making a soft skittering tap on the floor, her hand out for the button of the elevator.

  Take me down, down, down to the dolls. Take me out of here. If I look from that window, I'll jump. I'll open the glass, and I'll look out over the endless lights of the largest city in the world, and I'll climb up and put my arms out, and then I'll drop down into the ice-cold darkness.

  Down, down, down with you, my daughter.

  All the images of his tale went through her mind, the sonorous timbre of his voice, his gentle eyes as he spoke. And she is now debris beneath the roots of the oak, something erased from the world without a jot of ink upon a piece of paper, without a hymn sung.

  The doors closed. The wind sounded in the shaft, that faint whistling, like wind in mountains perhaps, and as the cab descended, a howling as if she were in a giant chimney. She wanted to crumple and fall on the floor, to go limp without will or purpose or fight anymore, just to sink into the darkness.

  No more words to say, no more thoughts. No more to know or to learn. I should have taken her hand, I should have held her. So easy it would have been to keep her, tender, against my breasts, my darling, my Emaleth.

  And all those dreams that sent you out the door with him--of cells within cells the like of which no human had ever seen, of secrets gleaned from every layer and fiber gently plied from willing hands, willing arms, willing lips pressed to sterile glass, and droplets of blood given with the smallest frown, of fluids and maps and schemes and X rays made without a pinch of hurt, all to tell a new tale, a new miracle, a new beginning--all that, with her, would have been possible! A drowsy feminine thing that would not have hurt any mortal being, so easy to control, so easy to care for.

  The doors opened. The dolls have been waiting. The gold light of the city comes through a hundred high windows, caught and suspended in squares and rectangles of gleaming glass, and the dolls, the dolls wait and watch with hands uplifted. Tiny mouths ever on the verge of greeting. Little fingers hovering in the stillness.

  Silently she walked through the dolls, corridor after corridor of dolls, eyes like pitch-black holes in space, or gleaming buttons in a glint of light. Dolls are quiet; dolls are patient; dolls are attentive.

  We've come back to the Bru, the queen of the dolls, the big cold bisque princess with her almond eyes and her cheeks so rosy and round, her eyebrows caught forever in that quizzical look, trying vainly to understand what? The endless parade of all these moving beings who look at her?

  Come to life. Just for a moment come to life. Be mine. Be warm. Be alive.

  Out from under the tree in the dark, walk again as if death were a part of the tale you could have erased, as if those fatal moments could be omitted forever. No stumbling in this wilderness. No false steps.

  Hold you in my arms.

  Her hands were splayed out on the cold glass of the case. Her forehead pressed against it. The light made two crescent moons in her eyes. The long mohair tresses lay flat and heavy against the silk of her dress, as if they were moist with the dampness of the earth, the dampness of the grave perhaps.

  Where was the key? Had he worn it on a chain around his neck? She couldn't remember. She longed to open the door, to take the doll in her arms. To hold it tight for one moment against her breast.

  What happens when grief is this mad, when grief has blotted out all other thoughts, feelings, hopes, dreams, wonder?

  Finally exhaustion comes. The body says return to sleep, lie down now to rest, not torment. Nothing's changed. The dolls stare as the dolls will always stare. And the earth eats at what is buried inside of it as it always has. But a kind weariness overtakes the soul, and it seems possible, just possible, to wait to weep, to wait to suffer, to wait to die and lie down with them, to have it finished, because only then is all guilt gone, washed away, when you are as dead as they are.

  He was there. He was standing before the glass. You couldn't mistake him for anyone else. There is no one else that tall, and even if it weren't for that, she knew his face too well now, the line of his profile.

  He'd heard her in the dark, walking back down the corridor. But he didn't move. He was just leaning there against the window frame and watching the light gather outside, watching the blackness fade and turn to milk and the stars dissolve as though melted in it.

  What did he think? That she'd come to seek him out?

  She felt shattered inside, weak. Unable to reason what to do, needing perhaps to walk across the floor, to stand beside him and look down on the smoky gloom of early roofs and towers, on lights twinkling along hazy streets, and smoke rising and curling from a hundred stacks and chimneys.

  She did this. She stood beside him. "We love each other now," he said. "Don't we?" His face was so sad. It hurt her. It was a fresh hurt, touching her right in the midst of the old pain, something immediate that could bring the tears where before there had only been something as black and empty as horror.

  "Yes, we do, we love each other," she said. "With our whole hearts."

  "And we will have that," he said. "Won't we?"

  "Yes, always. For as long as we live. We are friends and we will always be, and nothing, nothing will ever break the promises between us."

  "And I'll know you're there, it's as simple as that."

  "And when you don't want to be alone anymore, come. Come and be with us."

  He turned for the first time, as if he had not really wanted to look at her. The sky was paling so fast, the room just filling up and opening wide, and his face was weary and only slightly less than perfect.

  One kiss, one chaste and silent kiss, and no more, just a tight clasp of fingers.

  And then she was gone, drowsy, aching, glad of the day spilling down over the soft bed. Now I can sleep, daylight at last, now I can sleep, tumbling under the soft covers, next to Michael again.

  Thirty-two

  IT WAS TOO cold to be out, but winter would not let go its hold upon New York. And if the little man wanted to meet at the Trattoria, so be it.

  Ash didn't mind the walk. He did not want to be alone in his lonely tower rooms, and he was fairly certain that Samuel was on his way, and could not be persuaded to return.

  He enjoyed the crowds on Seventh Avenue rushing in the early dusk, bright shop windows full of lavishly colored Oriental porcelains, ornate clocks, bronze statues, and rugs of wool and silk--all the gift merchandise sold in this part of midtown. Couples were hurrying to dinner so that they might make the curtain at Carnegie Hall for a young violinist who was causing a worldwide sensation. Lines at the ticket office were long. The fancy boutiques had not yet closed; and though the snow fell in tiny little flakes, it could not possibly cover either asphalt or sidewalks due to the continuous thunder of human feet.

  No, this is not a bad time to be walking. This is a bad time for trying to forget that you have just embraced your friends, Michael and Rowan, for the last ti
me until you hear from them.

  Of course they don't know that that is the rule of the game, the gesture his heart and his pride would require, but more than likely, they would not have been surprised. They had spent four days, all told, with him. And he was as unsure of their love now as he had been the very first moment in London when he had laid eyes on them.

  No, he did not want to be alone. Only problem was, he should have dressed for anonymity and the freezing wind, but he had dressed for neither. People stared at a seven-foot-tall man with dark wavy hair who wore a violet silk blazer in such weather. And the scarf was yellow. How mad of him to have thrown on these decidedly private-realm clothes and then rushed out into the street wearing them.

  But he had changed before Remmick gave him the news: Samuel had packed and gone; Samuel would meet him at the Trattoria. Samuel had left behind the bulldog, that it might be his New York dog, if Ash didn't mind. (Why would Ash mind a dog that both drooled and snored, but then Remmick and the young Leslie undoubtedly would be the ones to endure the brunt of this. The young Leslie was now a permanent fixture in the tower offices and rooms, much to her glee.) Samuel would get another dog in and for England.

  The Trattoria was already packed, he could see this through the glass, patrons shoulder to shoulder along its winding bar and at its innumerable little tables.

  But there was Samuel, as promised, puffing on a small damp cigarette (he murdered them the way Michael did), and drinking whiskey from a heavy little glass, and watching for him.

  Ash tapped on the window.

  The little man took him in, head to toe, and shook his head. The little man himself was spruce in his new style, tweed with waistcoat, brand-new shirt, shoes shined like mirrors. There was even a pair of brown leather gloves lying like two ghost hands, all collapsed and mashed, on the table.

  It was impossible to know what feelings were concealed behind the folds and wrinkles of Samuel's flesh, but the neatness and style of the overall figure argued for something other than the bleary, drunken, grumbling melodrama of the last forty-eight hours.

  That Michael had found Samuel so amusing was a blessing. Indeed, one night they had drunk each other under the table, telling jokes, while Rowan and Ash had only smiled indulgently, to be left at last with the awful tension of knowing that if they went to bed more would be lost than gained--unless Ash thought of himself, and only himself entirely.