Marianne, the Magus & the Manticore (12 page)

Ellat was running a brush across her shining head, patting the full knot which she wore low upon her neck. "Remember to think
reflection.
Visualize lightning striking a mirror and being reflected back. Remember."

Marianne shut her eyes, fastening her sparkling necklace with its shining pendants. She glittered all over, a gemmy wand,'

bending and swaying, the necklace flashing. "I remember, Ellat. I'm trying to remember everything you've said."

"I'll be right beside you. There's the dinner gong. Shall we go down?"

Marianne took a deep breath, nodded, began to breathe slowly, calmly, focusing her thought upon strength and will.

They went into the library as though for a stroll in the gardens, setting themselves like adamant against the will of Madame, against the hot curiosity in Harvey's avid eyes. Was it only her imagination, thought Marianne, or did he seem disappointed?

What did that questioning look to Madame mean? Perhaps they had not expected her to be able to come down to dinner at all.

She gritted mental teeth and smiled, visualizing lightning with every fiber in her brain.
I am a tower of iron.

Madame came toward her at once, Harvey trailing behind, making Marianne think irreverently of a mother goose with one gosling, Madame's expression being very much a looking-down-the-beak one. She laid a hand on Marianne's shoulder and Marianne stepped back, out of her reach. Madame's eyes glittered at this and she said, "Harvey and I were just discussing what you might enjoy seeing when you come to Lubovosk with your brother."

I am afire which cannot be put out,
she thought. "Really?"

she said aloud. "I have not contemplated such a trip, and it's unlikely I could travel so far any time soon."

"Oh, Bitsy, anything is possible," said Harvey, smiling, sipping at his cocktail, lips wet and avid in the soft light of the room, sucking lips, vampire lips.

"Not for me, I'm afraid," she said, smiling in return. /
am
a tower of iron.
"Besides," she turned a spiteful reposte, "if I traveled to that part of the world, it would be to my mother's people—to Alphenlicht." Had she put that slight emphasis on my, my mother's people? Yes. The air boiled around her and she felt Madame's fury like a blow.

"There is really very little there to interest you, my child,"

the woman said. "Very little of interest to anyone. It is a country of peasants and priests."

"Do I hear my name being taken in vain?" asked Makr Avehl, offering Marianne a glass and taking her elbow in his hand to turn her away toward other guests. "What is this about peasants and priests? Are you talking shop again, Tahiti?" Marianne felt his fingers tremble on her arm, knew that he was almost as sunk in rage as Madame herself, felt herself adrift in these vicious currents which spun around her. /
am a fortress
of strength,
she told herself, moving away to be introduced to other guests, Ellat close beside her.

At dinner, she was at the far end of a long table from Harvey and Madame, and she was able to ignore them for moments at a time. After dinner, they came close to her again, the thrust of their intention as clear as though they had struck at her with a blade. Makr Avehl spoke to her only casually, as to any other guest. Ellat stayed close.

/
am a fortress of diamond,
Marianne told herself, concentrating upon reflecting their intentions back upon themselves.

She moved her hand into the configurations Ellat had shown her, then thought about them, internalized them.
A mountain
of stone.
Making a hard fist with her right hand. /
cannot be
moved or changed. I am the fire which cannot be put out.

Flicker of first and second finger of the right hand, a trill of movement, secretive.

"Hey, Bitsy," Harvey called. "How are you getting back to town tomorrow?"

/
am diamond,
Marianne told herself. "I hadn't thought about it, Harvey." Quietly asserting the while, /
am iron.
Left forefinger raised, pressed against cheek.

"Then you must let me drive you back." Madame, gaily importunate. "Your brother has already consented to accompany me, and your home is on our way."

"Marianne." Makr Avehl, laughing. "I am crushed! Had you forgotten so soon that you promised I could drive you back? I have those papers to pick up which your librarian so kindly offered to lend to me."

/
am iron. I an adamant.
Smiling, turning to him with a little moue of forgetfulness. "I did promise. Of course. I'm sorry, Madame. Another time, perhaps." /
am the fire which
cannot be put out.

"Oh, I am disappointed. Yes, we will certainly make another occasion. I have not had opportunity to get to know you nearly as well as I should like." Gentle, caressing, infinitely threatening.

We are like Siamese fighting fish, thought Marianne. We circle, our fins engorged with blood, ready to die if need be, caught up in our dance. She flinched nervously as Ellat touched her on the arm.

"Would you like to go up? You said you wanted to ride early in the morning."

Taking this lead, Marianne nodded gratefully. "Thank you, Ellat. Yes. I am a little tired. The ride this afternoon was a longer one than I've had in years. Good night, Madame, Harvey.

Madame Andami, I enjoyed your company today. Mr. Williams, Betty. I enjoyed our discussion at dinner. Mrs. Williams.

Mr. Winston-Forbes, Harriet, Stephany. Good night, Your Excellency. It has been a very pleasant day." To walk away, back straight, face calm, up the stairs.
I am a tower of adamant, I
cannot be moved.
Down the hall with Ellat, into the room, to collapse across the bed, bent tight around a stomach which heaved and squirmed within her.

"You did very well," said Ellat, giving her a glass of something sweet and powerful which melted warmth through her and stopped the heaving.

"Nothing happened," Marianne whispered. "If you'd taken a movie of it, you wouldn't have seen
anything.
Nothing happened at all. But I
kept feeling
them."

"Nothing seemed to happen; very much was happening.

Your half brother has made an alliance. He has done it very suddenly it seems. Did he know her before?"

"I never heard him mention her name until a day or so ago.

I didn't know he had relatives in Lubovosk."

"He writes mockingly of the Cave of Light. That is a typical Lubovoskan attitude."

"I only know what I told you earlier. I think he went there twice. Once shortly before Mama died. Once, later, before Papa Zahmani died. When each of them died, Harvey had...

had..."

"Had only recently returned?"

"Had only recently returned," she agreed in a dead voice, remembering Dr. Brown's words, heard through a closed door when she had been only twelve: "I would have said she died of suffocation, Haurvatat." Suffocation. Not being able to breathe. A thing Madame did to people for fun. Had Madame been able to teach that skill to Harvey? Harvey, who had been rejected by Cloud-haired mama and told to go find a nice girl his own age? Or had Madame herself come to confront Cloud-haired mama when no one else was there to see, to remember?

"There may be no connection at all," said Ellat firmly, undoing the tiny buttons at the back of Marianne's gown. "Go in there and have a nice, hot shower and put on your robe.

Makr Avehl will come up here before he goes to bed. After a good night's sleep, nothing will look so ominous."

"I'm afraid I won't sleep," she confessed, the vision of Mama and Madame in intimate confrontation still oppressing her.

"Another glass of what I gave you before, and you will sleep."

Makr Avehl's light tap at the door came late, when the party downstairs had broken up and the sound of voices calling good-night to one another had fallen into silence, when lights had begun to go out in upstairs windows that Marianne could see in the opposite wing. He entered quietly, embraced Ellat, then sat on the edge of Marianne's bed. "Isn't this ridiculous?" he asked. "I invite a lovely young woman for a weekend's visit, all quite properly chaperoned by my sister. I invite her brother, too, because I am curious, and an old antagonist of mine, because I am proud, and suddenly all turns to slime and wickedness. You find it difficult to believe, don't you? Well, so do I, and I have less excuse than you do. Marianne, my dear, will you rise at dawn, please, and go down to the stables where Aghrehond will meet you and take you away from here. Leave your bags. I will bring them when I meet you later in the day to drive you home, as promised. There are too many currents here, too many eddies of greed and passion. Tell me, Marianne, would... would your half brother benefit in any material way if harm came to you?"

Her throat went dry, harsh as sandpaper. She had had those thoughts, had banished them, had put them down, "buried, begone" in her own litany, but they lunged upward now like corpses long drowned and broken free of some weight to rise hideously through slimed water to the surface. She cried out at the horror of it, all at once weeping in a steady flow. Ellat took her into her arms and held her, saying "Shh, shh. He shouldn't have asked it so abruptly like that. But you don't protest, Marianne. You don't protest?"

"No," she cried. "I can't protest, Ellat. I've thought it too many times. I thought I was wicked to think such a thing, only a wicked, angry child. But, oh, if I died, he would get all that Mama left me—it's all tied up in Papa Zahmani's estate, and my share of Papa's estate, too. It's a lot. More than I ever wanted or expected. More than anyone could need."

"Ah," said Makr Avehl. "So
he
has a reason. Now, what is
her
reason?"

Ellat shushed him and gave Marianne something which sent her into sleep, all at once, like falling into velvet darkness.

She was still fuzzy at the edges of her mind when they put her into Aghrehond's care at dawn in the stableyard, among the horses clattering out of the place for exercise and the grooms chattering as they headed for the wooded roads.

"Come, pretty lady," said Aghrehond. "We must be away from here."

"Won't they think I'm terribly rude," she asked, "leaving the party unannounced this way?"

He made a conspiratorial face with much scrunching of eyebrows and mouth. "Ellat will say you have gone for an early ride. This is strictly true. She will not say 'horseback,' though they may think so. Others may also desire to ride. So, that is fine, and Makr Avehl will go with them. It is a large place, is is not? There are many miles of pleasant roads around it. Who is to wonder if you are not seen by anyone until noon? By then, you will be elsewhere. Tsk. Stop frowning. You make your face all frilled, like a cabbage leaf."

She stopped frilling her face and let the day happen. They stopped for breakfast in a small, seaside town. They shopped for antiques along the winding streets. They drove through a national monument. They returned to the small town a little after noon to find Makr Avehl waiting for them with Marianne's bags in his car.

"There is a buffet luncheon going on back at the house,"

he said to Aghrehond. "Some are eating now, others will have luncheon when they return from riding. Some friends of Ellat's will come in to swell the numbers. We will not be missed for some time, which is fortunate." His face was set, grim, and he made a covert sign to Aghrehond which Marianne saw from the corner of one eye. "When someone asks—and not until then—you may say to Ellat in the hearing of the rest that I have driven Marianne back early in order to go on to Washington for an early meeting at the State Department."

"What happened?" she demanded. "Something happened.

What was it?"

He barked a short expletive, chopped off, as a curse half spoken. "A pack of feral dogs," he said, "came out of nowhere, according to the grooms. Madame Andami was bitten on the leg. Superb rider, of course, and she stayed up. We've sent her to a physician up in Charlottesville. One of the horses is cut up a bit. The vet is there now. Someone riding alone—

someone not as fine a rider as Madame Andami, someone out of practice, for example—might have been seriously injured."

They stood for a moment considering this. "The head groom works for the people who own the place, of course, as do all the servants except for Ellat's maids and my secretary. He says he has never known it to happen before. It's horse country. A pack of feral dogs that would attack horses? It wouldn't be tolerated for a day! They would have been hunted down."

Marianne did not ask the questions which tumbled into her mind. Did someone think the dogs were set upon the riders?

Was it an accident? Makr Avehl's face had the look of one who did not wish to talk, to guess, to theorize, the look of a man rigidly but barely under control. He waved Aghrehond back to the big car as he ushered her into the smaller one. Over her shoulder, she saw the large car turn back toward Wanderly and the house. She remained quiet, let time and miles pass, watched Ms face until it began to relax slightly, then asked, "You think they were after me?"

"I'm sorry, Marianne. I do think so. Yes."

"You think that's possible? To stir up dogs that way? Make them attack horses?"

He made an odd, aborted stroking motion toward his chin.

"I could do it. It wouldn't even be difficult. I know that she can do it, because I can, and whatever I may think about Tahiti, she's strong. Lord, she's strong. And I am weakened by being angry at myself. No—don't shush me. I am angry at myself.

Before I invited you here, I never thought to ask about your true relationship with your brother. I knew you didn't like him, I knew things were not good between you, but I never tried to get at the bottom of it. I should have considered it more fully.

Instead I lulled you. I lulled myself.

"Marianne, he means you ill. Not merely in the slightly jealous way one sibling may cordially detest another—which, Lord help me, was what I had considered. No, he means you real destruction as surely as this road leads to your home. He means you ill and he has made some kind of alliance with Madame to that end—if, indeed, she is not a primary mover in this matter. And I, who foolishly exposed you to this, must find a way to protect you."