I Get No Kick from Champagne

HOME TRUTHS (10)

The next stage of our journey was to another town, about two days’ ride away. We were going to start in the afternoon, when there was still a few hours of light left and Sam was no longer lethargic, and spend the night on the road. Both moons would be up for most of the night, and it would be bright enough to travel without mage-lights. Til explained to us that it might be dangerous – there were bandits, Darkling armies, kribothneia, and wild animals.

“We need weapons,” he said the next day, and dragged us off to a swordsmith, where we all tried out swords and rapiers and daggers. With Til’s memories and knowledge in us, we knew, almost instinctively, what would suit, and we were soon kitted out. Even though we knew thanks to Ken’s magic and Til’s training how to walk while wearing a sword, we still managed to trip over them three times on the way back to the inn, but none of us would dream of taking the scabbards off and carrying them. Ken refused to have anything to do with the weapons, saying that he was opposed to violence, and then, inconsistently, that he would use magic to blast the living hell out of our enemies anyway.

We set off as the afternoon suns were heading towards the horizon. The light was bright, a bit redder than on Earth, as if it was later than it actually was, but in the end not that different.

As we rode, we talked. Without planning it, I was riding next to Til, Jack with Ken, and Sam and Damian were together.

“OK,” I said, broaching something that had bothered me for last day or so, “ you didn’t want an armed escort, because that might draw attention to you and what you were carrying, yet you raised no objection when this bunch of losers turned up. What gives?”

Tiltheus turned to look at me for a long moment. He sighed.

“I wondered how long it would take you to notice that,” he said, with a wry grimace. “Last year, when we were losing the battle against the Darklings, my mother made the pilgrimage to the temple at Gruthion, where she begged the prophetess Ileana to advise us what we should do. The Darklings were gaining everywhere, and we suspected treachery among our allies. We were in despair. But the prophetess said that we still had a chance to prevail, but that we had to do two things. The first was that the heir to the kingdom had to retrieve the stone of time and seeing stolen by the kribothneion king. They are stupid beasts, yet they defended the stone fiercely. All the same, I managed to get it back it.” There was a great deal left unsaid. I decided I would one day get the tale out of him.

“Just like that! How had they got hold of it in the first place?”

“They had stolen it from the queen’s philosopher, and then killed and eaten him.” He took this for granted, but I was struck dumb. Eaten him! “It has been in the possession of my family for a thousand years, and we have always used it to spy out the future so that we could better decide what plans to make and follow. Held by one who is pure of heart, the different pathways of the future can be seen. It is said that there were once many such stones, and an adept could use them to talk to others far away. Bit like a crystal ball telephone.” He flashed me a grin. “But now we use it to enhance the power of magicians and wizards. It allows its user to tap into the nodes of magical power that are found all over this world.”

“May I see it?” I asked.

Wordlessly, he took out a gauze bag, attached to a thong that went round his neck. Inside was an amber jewel, the size of an egg, perhaps a bit larger, which pulsed with its own light, flickering and glowing through the gauze.

“Why have I never seen it before?” I asked, puzzled, thinking of the nights we had spent together, wearing nothing but our boxers.

“I have never let you – or anyone – see it before. It remains hidden at the command of its bearer.”

“But the kribothneia saw it.”

“Only after the Queen’s philosopher was dead. Then his command and control no longer applied.”

I pondered this for a while. “You said there were two things.” I reminded him.

“Yes,” he said. “The prophetess said ‘One will come through the gateway, and save the prince. Five will come through the gateway and save the world. One will be a bard, but three will have music in their blood. One will be a blood-demon, but he will tame his ferocity for the sake of his life-bonded. One will be a sorcerer, old and wise. Two will be warriors, faithful and true’¹. My mother’s advisers debated the meaning of the prophecy endlessly. What and where was the gate? When would it manifest? It was thought by my mother’s counsellors that the gateway was to the otherworld, the spirit realm, and that the beings that came through would be spirits, perhaps of our ancestors, perhaps ghosts of great kings or queens. Also, there was intense debate about the number. Five is a lucky number, as is shown by the five pointed star of sorcery, but with me, there would be six, which is not as propitious.”

I wondered about the descriptions – they could probably have applied to anyone, but it struck me how apt they were. Me – the bard; Sam – the ‘blood-demon’; Jack – Sam’s lover; Ken – the sorcerer; Damian – a martial arts expert – one of the two ‘warriors’. But who was the other? Then I remembered someone saying that Jack had been studying Shodo-Kan for two years, and had advanced rapidly, so that he was now a third dan, and would probably soon be given further colours.

But one thing still puzzled me. “How did you know I was the bard? I didn’t sing, or carry an instrument.” I asked.

“You were – are – a being of light, a servant of the Goddess. Bards are always beings of light. That’s the source of their power.”

I raised my eyebrows. I was uncomfortable with this being of light stuff. I had seen Tiltheus when he put on his majesty, when wings had sprouted from his back, and light had suffused him, and I had felt an irresistible urge to kneel at his feet and acknowledge, worship him – as what? Lord? Angel? Demi-god? I didn’t think I was anything like that, even though I had no doubt that he was. “How could you tell?” I asked, wondering.

“I just knew.” He gave me an apologetic smile, as if it was his fault that I was a frigging angel. “And the more I saw of you and of the people who became involved, the more I became convinced that you five were the people from the prophecy. At first, I doubted, and I wanted to return, but the gateway was closed. And I think it was closed to force me to meet the rest of you and accept what was happening, because it opened as soon as the team was complete.”

“Damo hadn’t decided to join us yet,” I pointed out. I didn’t add, because I didn’t need to with someone as bright as Tiltheus, that that implied that there was someone or something powerful, powerful enough to open and close gateways between worlds, wise enough to know what was necessary. An ally. Maybe – but maybe not. And I certainly had no idea who he or she or it was.

“Yes, you’re right. He only decided at his house. I heard him.”

“Your hearing! Damn you, Til, I’ll never have anything secret from you.” After I’d said it, I realised what I’d implied, that I’d still be with him into the future. I hadn’t wanted to be so direct.

He smiled, bashfully, his eyes darkening with some emotion, which I could only guess at.

“Why were you so concerned about Sam being a vampire, then?” I asked, clutching at something to say.

“It was when I met him that I realised that the prophecy was going to be fulfilled. But here, a blood-demon is different to what you call a vampire. A blood-demon takes not just blood, but also souls, to feed. We call them necromagoi. Necromancers. And for that reason, they are anathema to us. That was the one part of the prophecy I just couldn’t understand. Now I see that the prophetess didn’t have the right word for vampire. I knew very quickly after I met Sam that he wasn’t a blood-demon like those in our world. Not that he isn’t a predator! I would not like to be his enemy. Have you seen how fast he can move if he wants to?”

I hadn’t noticed, actually. Another piece of information to ponder. “Hmm. And there’s something else, that puzzles me a bit. I know that if I fell into your world, I would be fazed by everything, because it is so different. Yet you seemed unworried by most of the things in our world.”

“This is very strange, but I must tell you. I have been dreaming of your world since I was a child – for twenty or more years. The first time it happened, I was frightened and disturbed. I didn’t know what any of the things I saw were, and it was as if I was there, right in the traffic and crowds of people and . . . .”

He’d been in a deep sleep, alone in his room in the palace, with only his ayah and the guards for company. And they were in the antechamber on the other side of the door. His mother had made Helena sleep outside only a few weeks before, because she said he was becoming too old to have a nurse sleeping in the same room. He missed her. When they slept together in the great cedar bed, she would coil her tail round him, and it was a comfort to him when he woke in the complete velvet dark of the nights when the moon-twins did not show their faces, and he could feel it gently flexing, caressing his legs and back while she slept.

The dream had been utterly real to him. He had watched the strange giant carts moving without horses or even people pulling. He’d seen the lights of a great city, shining and flickering, but the flicker was magical, not the result of fire. In the way of dreams, there was no sound, just the sights, extraordinary sights, that came back to him with vivid clarity when he was awake. There were men on the streets, but no elves, no chauroi, and their clothes and gestures and speech were quite foreign to him. Then he started to rise up, incredibly fast. In a few moments he could see the whole city laid out below him, then the countryside round the city, and then he could see the world, a patchwork like a map. It became harder and harder to breathe, and suddenly he began to panic, his chest heaving and his heart pounding.

He awoke screaming, and Helena rushed in, her tail lashing in alarm, and took him in her arms, and gently tickled his back with her claws, stroking him all the time with her tail. The guards came in too, and they all patted his head, and rubbed his hair until he went back to sleep.

The dreams returned from time to time, but he never rose up in the air that high again. It seemed that once was enough – and he knew from what he’d seen that the world he was visiting was curved like a ball, and the sky, though blue at first, grew darker and darker as one rose higher and higher in the air. He told himself that it was like his eyes, cornflower blue at one moment, inky black at another.

He always saw the same city in his dreams, and he grew to know it, though he understood nothing of its language or writing. It seemed extraordinary and magical to him, yet he knew that it wasn’t the underworld or the spirit realm, that it was real. When he was awake, he would think of this world he was allowed to visit only at night, and over the years, he gradually resigned himself to the realisation that he would never go there. Yet the dreams never stopped, as if there was a window that opened while he slept, a window onto a balcony so that he could see all that took place in the street below, but could never take part.

“. . . . . When I walked down the street with you that first night, I felt I had come home, in a way. It all seemed so familiar, yet at the same time, so strange. It was wonderful and exhilarating! And when Ken taught me English, it was like – oh, I don’t know – a perfect name-day gift.”

“No wonder you weren’t worried by all the technology and stuff!”

“I was terrified on Graziella!”

“I know,” I said, with a sly grin. “I could feel how hard you held me!”

He looked at me, and once again, his eyes darkened with some emotion. I had a pretty good idea what was going through his head, and to stop him saying something we might both later regret, I changed the subject.

“I still don’t get why you chose to travel alone with the bracelet and the stone. Surely you should have had one or two faithful friends to help you?”

“A prince has no totally trustworthy friends,” he said bleakly. “We were afraid that the traitor or traitors were someone close to the throne, perhaps even one of the queen’s advisers. If even the tiniest smidgeon of news about my quest were to slip out, we would lose to the dark elves. But in any event, the prophetess made it quite clear. She said that I must go alone, that it was written thus in the paths of time.” She had also said that he might lose, and be killed. He told me this afterwards, and when he told me, I shivered to think of what might have happened if I had ignored the appeals for help, if I hadn’t bought the cupboard, if I had been too drunk or doped up to help or even notice.

“What about all your ex-lovers?” I asked. Til had said that he maintained friendly relationships with all his exes, and suddenly, for his sake, I hoped that he did have them as friends, because I knew only too well what it was like to be lonely.

“They weren’t – aren’t – really prince-companion material. One is a groom in the royal stables. One a woman I met in a tavern in the city. One is a captain in the Queen’s guard. They were my lovers, and we were in love with each other, and were and still are fond of each other. But of the nobility, or my cousins, no-one truly liked me. They sucked up to me, they were civil, they laughed politely at my jokes. But there was always the feeling that I might one day be king, and that they were being courteous and respectful to me because they hoped one day to get advantage from me, or worse, because they were afraid of my revenge if they weren’t.”

“You have friends now,” I said, softly, my heart beating a little faster than usual.

“Yes,” he said with a warm, loving smile. “It feels good.” And it did, to me too. In just a few days, I had found this community of people who cared about me and each other, who were loyal and brave and loving. So what if they were alien elves, wizards, vampires and homos? I’d stopped caring, somewhere along the way.

We halted for an early supper in a green glade of the forest, next to a brook which gurgled and chuckled over rounded boulders. Its water was so cold it made my teeth ache. There were no rusting car hulks, no cans or bottles or cigarette packets, just pristine woods, the leaves still that glorious fresh apple green of spring. On the forest floor, underneath the canopy of the trees, grew a carpet of wild flowers, pink and blue and yellow, with the occasional startling dash of scarlet. The untouched green of the woods stretched away in all directions, perfectly silent except for the calls of birds.

We had bread and cheese and dried fruit provided by the tavern we had stayed at, and we spread ourselves out around the clearing, sitting on logs and boulders, listening to the peaceful rush of the waters cascading down from the mountains.

After we had finished eating, we continued, until the suns had set and first-moon had risen. At this time of the year, there would be two moons later on, making night very bright and easy to travel by, so we stopped only to catch a quick bite to eat. After first-moon (which was the bigger of the two) had set, we would break for the night. Through silvery forests and white glades we went, all of us alert for attacks by bandits and kribothneia, Til watching for the threat of Darkling bands, and Sam using his vampire abilities to listen and watch for any strange noises. But we heard nothing, and we were unmolested.

As first-moon slipped below the horizon, we spread out our sleeping bags in a glade next to a brook which chattered to itself all night as it flowed fast over the stones and pebbles of its bed. We were all lying round the fire, in various attitudes, with Sam and Jack almost on top of each other, when Tiltheus spoke.

“I should tell you what I told Steve, about the prophecy and the stone.” There were murmuring assents from around the fire, and so he related the prophecy to the others.

“So do you think we are the five mentioned by that prophetess?” asked Damian, obviously fascinated by the whole story.

“Yes. Think about it. The right number. A good match with the descriptions the prophetess gave.”

“She said something else, didn’t she?” Ken was very quiet. He was taking this prophecy very seriously. I think, despite Pauline and his ability to hack into computers and networks, he still believed in something – if not the God of his fathers, at least the power of those touched by the Gods. After all, he was one himself.

“Yes.” But Til wouldn’t say any more.

“Go on, Til,” I said. “We have a right to know. We are setting off into unknown dangers, and this woman seems to have seen something very like what has happened so far.”

“She said that one of the five would die. Or rather, she said ‘He would give up his spirit’.” Tiltheus spoke very reluctantly. “And before you ask, she didn’t say which one.”

“There’s more, isn’t there?” I asked, now worried.

“She said one of the band would betray his friends.” He stared up into the sky, ostentatiously not looking at anyone, but I got the strongest feeling he knew who that person was. And it was me. Then he turned and looked directly at me. “But she also said that he would regret the betrayal, and in the end, in the final battle, he would choose the side of the Goddess. And she said that it would be love that saved him.” I don’t know whether the others realised that Til was talking to me, but I felt a wash of immense sadness flow through me. I felt that he spoke truth, a truth of a fate as ineluctable as death, and harder. I turned my face away from him, remembering that I had once felt that he represented some danger to me, without knowing what it was.

There was a silence, fraught with concerns and fears. Then Ken said, “Of course, not all prophecies are fulfilled. If we know of them, we can attempt to avoid the fates forecast for us. We are, after all, rational beings.” It sounded as if he was resolutely looking on the bright side, since, firstly, in Rhistên, it seemed to me that prophecies were always being fulfilled, and secondly, that we are only rational when our emotions are not involved.

I went to sleep, and in the night I dreamt of a beautiful woman, with creamy skin and green eyes like a cat and blue-black hair, who made love to me and then, looking into my eyes, said, “My pet, now you must die,” and plunged a knife straight into my heart. But it was not I who died. Instead, paralysed, I watched in horror as the woman’s face turned into Tiltheus’s, and he gasped in agony, while blood spurted out of his mouth and ears, and the life fled from his beautiful eyes, and they paled until they were almost white, and it was my hand that wielded the dagger. When I awoke, sweating with terror, I did not tell anyone of what I had dreamt.

We reached the next town late in the afternoon. Following the usual pattern, Tiltheus negotiated for the rooms, and we offered to play in the public room as payment. He was a chauros, his scales a glittering, iridescent blue, and inspected us all with a cynical and intelligent eye. “Play a bit for me now.”

Sam and Jack opened their instrument cases, and pulled out the saxophone and clarinet. I started to warm up my voice with some simple exercises. Then we played him one of the songs that Til had taught us, and also a ‘Fluid Exchange’ number. I did my best to make our listeners like us and what we sang. At the end, we were surrounded by servants and patrons, stamping their feet and cheering.

“Done!” said the landlord. Til finished the negotiations, and we got lodgings for three hours’ worth of music. We took our bags and instruments up to our bedroom. This time, there were six beds, which meant I couldn’t sleep with Tiltheus. I was disappointed with part of me, but also relieved. I felt uncomfortable in his presence, in a way I hadn’t before.

We were not to perform until later, so we went exploring. Ken and Til wanted us to stay together for safety, and we went out as a group, just like any other band of friends. We came to the agora in front of the temple and the archon’s offices, and were just going into a tavern to have a drop of the Rhistên beer, when a weak voice called my attention. A very old man, scruffy and mangy, wearing little more than rags which barely concealed his nudity, was sitting cross-legged on a filthy blanket.

“Kind sirs! Kind sirs!” His voice was frail and trembly. For no reason other than I imagined what it would feel like if grandfather had had to beg like this, I squatted down next to him. He stank, of dirt and unwashed body and illness. His eyes were brown, and his hair would have been grey if it wasn’t so filthy.

“Yes, goodfather?” I asked. I was embarrassed, in truth, to be shown up as soft-hearted in front of my friends, and I was already regretting the impulse that had made me take any notice of him. He stared at me for a moment. I decided he was probably demented, and was getting ready to rise when he spoke.

“Let me tell your fortune, kind sir, and mayhap you can reward me with a penny.”

“There is no need for the fortune-telling,” I said. “I will give you the penny anyway.”

“I am not a beggar!” He spoke with authority and pride, and though it should have been ludicrous and ridiculous, it wasn’t. Somehow, there was a dignity and formality in his manner that made me think that perhaps he was a temple priest, thrown out of service for some misdemeanour (for after all, surely the priests and priestesses worked for life, comfortable in the service of the Two?), or a high servant or nobleman down on his luck.

“Very well, sir,” I said, and watched as he took out a pack of greasy cards, and shuffled them. Then with great aplomb and ceremony he asked me to cut the pack and choose four cards. The pack was the Rhistên equivalent of tarot cards, but the cards I drew were like none that I had ever seen. He laid them out in a row in front of him on the cobbles. I could feel the eyes of the other guys on my back, and their impatience. “Go into the pub,” I said. “I’ll join you in a minute.” Ken made protesting noises.

“I’ll stay with Steve,” said Til, and the rest entered the pub.

The old man was rocking a little, slowly, backwards and forwards, and his eyes had closed.

“The four swords,” he said, “the red king, the flame, the white prince.” He was silent for so long I wondered whether he’d gone to sleep. The without a word, he grabbed my hand, and held it, crooning over it like a madman. I was profoundly discomfited. Almost at the limit of my tolerance, I was about to get up when he spoke again. This time the voice was that of a young man, and his eyes were open and he was staring at me. Suddenly I saw power there, insight, and disconcertingly, compassion and pity. What had he seen? I was filled with a unexpected terror, a horror of what was to come. Though I wanted to leap up and run away, because I did not want to know what he had foreseen, my limbs seemed frozen.

“You will both reject the other,” he said, looking at me and then Til. “I see a tangle in the paths of time. You will have to choose, both of you, hard choices, painful choices. And if you go down the wrong path, you will condemn both of your worlds to a darkness lasting ten thousand years. You will be the weapons that decide the battle, serving either the Light or the Dark. For the Dark God is on the rampage, and the Queen of the Night is searching. Much is unclear. But this I tell you : do not reject love, true love, when you find it, and remember that love will win, if you let it. You, Steven Witherspoon, if you follow the dark path from the crossroads you will become a powerful mage, but rotted to the very centre of your being, black and hollow, your every moment a living hell as you contemplate the mistakes you made and the losses you have endured. If you follow the other road, and are true to your destiny as a being of light, you will become the greatest wizard of all time. They will cloud your mind. They will tempt you. Hold true to your destiny.”

He began to mutter to himself, and in a moment had reverted to an impoverished old man, an old beggar worn thin by time and age. Yet, while he spoke I had detected authority, knowledge, truth. Shaken, I turned to look at Tiltheus, and raised my eyebrows.

Squatting down, he put a silver coin into the beggar’s hand, and closed his fingers over it. “Thank you reverend father,” he said, his face reflecting the same troubled expression that I’m sure was on mine. Then, to my utter astonishment, he bent and kissed a withered, filthy cheek, and rising, his face grim, strode into the public room of the tavern. The crown prince of Rhistên, kissing a filthy beggar! Damn the man, such greatness was enough to make me love him. Not that I was ready to tell him.

“What was that all about?” I asked, grabbing hold of his arm.

“He was touched by the God. You saw that? How he became young and strong while he was making the prophecy?”

“Yes.” I said no more, going over what he had foretold in my mind. Tiltheus was silent. Eventually I said, “I will never reject you, Til.” I meant it, truly I did.

He looked at me strangely. “No?” His face was non-committal, but all at once I felt a cold hand of dread squeeze my heart. I knew that things were starting to go wrong.

That night the band wasn’t that great. Oh, Sam and Jack were their usual proficient selves, but I felt only a deep gloom filling my soul, and an inexplicable sadness saturating my heart, and my singing was uninspired. I was the bard, the one that filled the crowd with my feelings, that influenced them towards happiness or sadness. Naturally the crowd responded, and it was a gloomy evening.

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