Serpent Mage Page 3

  Michael turned his head quickly. A bearded, sunburned man with thick greasy hair and dirt-green, street-varnished clothes standing on the sidewalk a dozen yards away.

  “Yes,” he answered softly.

  “It’s older than it looks. Seems kind of modern, don’t it?”

  “I guess,” Michael said.

  “Used to live there,” the man said. “Don’t live there now. Want to go in?” The man walked slowly toward him, face conveying intense interest and almost equal caution.

  “No,” Michael said.

  “You know the place?”

  “I’m just out hiking.”

  “Care to know about it?”

  Michael didn’t answer.

  “Care to know about the two women found dead in there?”

  “Women?”

  “One big, a real whale, one a mummy. In the newspapers. You read the newspapers?”

  Michael paused to reflect, then nodded.

  “Thought you might have.”

  “Did you find them?”

  “Heavens,” the man said, coughing into his fist. “Not me. Someone who didn’t know much. An acquaintance. Dumb to stay in the hotel for a night.” He wrinkled his face, expecting skepticism, and added, “It’s full.”

  “Why do you hang around?” Michael asked.

  “Because,” the man said. He stood about two yards from Michael. Even at that distance he smelled rankly of urine and sedimented sweat. “You know their names?”

  “Whose names?” Michael asked.

  “The whale and the mummy.”

  “No,” Michael said.

  “I do. My acquaintance found it on a piece of rock next to them. Gave it to the police, but they didn’t care. Didn’t mean anything to them. Do you know French?”

  “A little.”

  “Then you’d know what one of the names means. Sadness. In French. And the other...”

  Michael decided to try for an effect. “Lamia,” he said.

  The man’s face became a mask caught between surprise and laughter. “Gawd,” he said. “Gawd, gawd. You’re a reporter. I knew it. Odd time of night to be out looking for facts.”

  Michael shook his head, never taking his eyes off the man. He had not yet tried to read someone’s aura on Earth. Now seemed as good a time as any. He found a festival of murmurs, a bright little coal of intelligence, a marketplace full of rotted vegetables. He backed out with only one fact: Tristesse. The second name. It suited the guardian of Clarkham’s gate. Bringer of sadness.

  Lamia and Tristesse. Sisters...

  Victims of the Sidhe, sacrificed by Clarkham to guard and wait... But how could they have found their way to Earth? And who had killed them—or inactivated them, since what life they had was dubious at best?

  Abruptly and unexpectedly, Michael began to cry. Wiping his eyes, he glanced up at the Tippett building.

  “Something wrong? I’m the one should be crying,” the man said. “You’re not a reporter. Relative, maybe? Jesus, no. None of them would have had relatives.”

  “What do you care?” Michael asked sharply. “Go away.”

  “Care?” the man shrilled, backing off a step. “I used to own the place. Own it, goddamn it! I used to be worth something! I’m not that goddamn old, and I’m not so far gone I don’t remember what it was like, having money and being a—” he lifted a hand with pinky extended, raised his eyebrows and waggled his head— “a big goddamn citizen!”

  Michael probed the man again and felt the sorrow and anger directly.

  “Now everybody comes around here. Goddamn bank never does anything with it, never tears it down, never sells it. Can’t sell it. Now there’s people died here. Not surprising. I’m going, all right. I’ve had my fill.”

  “Wait,” Michael said. “When was it built?”

  “Nineteen and forty-seven,” the man answered, his back to Michael, departing with exaggerated dignity. “Used to be a theater here. A concert hall. Tore it down and put this up.”

  “Thank you,” Michael said.

  The man shrugged and waved away the thanks.

  Michael put his hands in his coat pockets and leaned his head back to look at the building again. High up near the top, one floor beneath a terrace, a faint red light played over a dusty pane of glass. It burned only for a moment.

  Then, on the fourth floor, the red light gleamed briefly again in a broken and soot-stained window. All was still after that and quiet.

  Michael shuddered and began the trek back down Sunset to La Cienega.

  Chapter Three

  Magic like that worked by the Sidhe was more difficult on Earth; humans could not work Sidhe magic. This much Michael had gleaned from his training in the Realm, Sidhedark. But were these facts or merely suppositions? Breeds—part human and part Sidhe—could work magic; the Crane Women and Eleuth had demonstrated that much. Clarkham, a Breed born on Earth, had nearly bested the Sidhe at their own game.

  Michael himself had done things in the Realm that had no other name in his vocabulary but magic. He had channeled the energies of a song of power to destroy Clarkham. And in the year since he had returned to Earth, he had learned that he could still apply Sidhe discipline and invoke hyloka, the calling-of-heat from the center of his body, and in-seeing, the probing of another’s aura to gain information.

  For the time being, he was content not to test the other skills he had learned in the Realm. He had not used evisa, or out-seeing, to throw a shadow; there had been no need.

  Each morning, he went through his exercises in the spacious back yard. He jogged around the neighborhood holding his kima, the running-stick, before him, as the Crane Women had taught him. Several times he jogged with Dopso, who kept up a panting stream of questions and observations. Despite the man’s obvious curiosity about Michael, and nonstop talk, Michael liked him. He seemed decent.

  Each day, Michael investigated another cache of Waltiri’s papers and began to make a catalog of what he found. Within a week, he had worked his way through the garage and knew what lay in each file box—manuscripts, contracts and other legal documents, and correspondence, including an inlaid wooden trunk filled with love letters from Waltiri to Golda, written in German. Even though he had studied German after returning from the Realm, he was hardly fluent, and that handicapped him. He thought about hiring a German-speaking student and acquiring the language more rapidly through in-seeing but decided to put that off for now.

  He concentrated on the manuscripts. What little musical training he had acquired before he was thirteen—when he had put his foot down and refused to continue piano lessons—was of little aid in sorting out the Waltiri papers.

  Michael recorded the names (if any), opus numbers, and known associations of each musical manuscript. Most were scores for motion pictures; scattered throughout the four and a half decades’ worth of work, however, were more personal pieces, even a draft of a ballet based on The Faerie Queene.

  He spent hours in the garage and then began moving the sorted boxes of manuscripts into the dining room, where he stacked them along a bare wall.

  Still no sign of a manuscript for Opus 45, the Infinity Concerto.

  At night, Michael fixed himself supper and ate alone. One night a week he joined his parents for dinner, and the visits were enjoyable; occasionally, John would drop by the Waltiri house on one pretext or another, and they would share a beer in the back yard and talk about inconsequential things. Ruth never visited.

  Michael did not tell his story to John, even with Ruth away. John seemed to sense that the time was not yet right for Ruth and that they should hear together when the time was right.

  All in all, with the exception of the discoveries in the Tippett Hotel, it was still a peaceful time. Michael felt himself growing stronger in more ways than one: stronger inside, less agonized by his mistakes, and stronger in dealing with the ways of the Earth, which were not much like the ways of the Realm.

  What impressed him most of all, now that he had gone out
side and had a basis for comparison, was the Earth’s sense of solidity and thoroughness. Always in the Realm there had been the sensation of things left not quite finished; Adonna’s creation was no doubt masterful, and in places extremely beautiful, but it could not compare with the Earth.

  While the Realm had been built to accommodate Sidhe—and keep them in line—and while it contained some monstrous travesties, it had seemed in many ways a gentler place than Earth. What cruelty existed in the Realm was the fault of its occupants. Given Sidhe discipline, Michael had found survival in the Realm proper (as opposed to the Blasted Plain) comparatively easy. He doubted if survival would be quite so easy in similar situations on Earth.

  The Earth seemed not to have been built for anybody’s convenience; those who had come to it, or developed on it, made their own way and found and fought for specific niches. The Earth never stopped its pressures...nor gave up its treasures easily.

  Michael acquired a videocassette recorder out of the stipend paid by the estate and began renting tapes of the movies Waltiri had scored. Watching the old films and listening to the background music, he came to appreciate the old composer’s true skill.

  Waltiri’s music was never obtrusive in a film. Rather than sweeping richly forth with some outstanding melodic line, it played a subservient role, underscoring or heightening the action on the screen.

  Again and again one day Michael played John Huston’s 1958 film, The Man Who Would Be King, reveling the first time in Bogart’s Peachey Carnehan and Jack Hawkins’s Daniel Dravot, the next in the fine black-and-white photography and the beautifully integrated matte paintings, and finally in Waltiri’s subtle score, not in the least period or archaic but somehow just right for the men and their adventure. Michael enjoyed himself hugely; that one day seemed to put everything in perspective and set his mind right. Suddenly he was ready to take on whatever might come, with the same impractical bravado of Carnehan and Dravot. He spent the next day gardening, whistling Carnehan’s theme, pulling weeds and trimming back the rose bushes according to the instructions in an old gardening book in Golda’s library.

  As he trimmed, he thought of Clarkham’s Sidhe woman, Mora, and how she had trimmed her roses, and of the rose turned to glass that she had given him, which still lay wrapped in cotton in a cardboard box in the guest bedroom.

  His mood darkened the next morning, when again the newspaper proved to be a bearer of disturbing news. An in-depth article began on the left side of the front page and threaded through section A for some two thousand words, describing waves of so-called hauntings in England, Israel and the eastern United States.

  The phrase “intrusions into reality” occurred several times in the piece, but overall the tone was light. The reporter concluded that the incidents had more to do with sociology and psychology than metaphysics. He read it through twice, then folded the paper and stared out the kitchen window at the pink roses outside.

  The phone rang. Michael glanced at his new watch—it was ten o’clock—and picked up the ancient black receiver. “Waltiri residence. Hello.”

  “Could I speak to Michael Perrin?” a woman asked, her voice crisp and resonant.

  “Speaking,” Michael said.

  “Hello. My name is Kristine Pendeers. I’m with the music department at UCLA.”

  “How may I help you, Ms. Pendeers?” Michael said, assuming his best (and unpracticed) professional tone.

  “You’re organizing the Waltiri estate, aren’t you? I’ve been talking with the lawyers, and they say you’re in charge now.”

  “That’s the way it’s worked out.”

  “We have a project here, rediscovering avant-garde music of the thirties and forties. We’re interested in locating specific works by Arno Waltiri. Perhaps you’ve heard of them, or come across them...though I gather you haven’t been working on the papers very long.”

  “Which papers?” Michael asked, though he hardly needed to; events were heading in a clearly defined direction: the dreams, the Tippett Hotel, the bodies of Lamia and Tristesse, the hauntings...and now this.

  “You know, we haven’t been able to find a single recording of the piece we’re really interested in, and our collection is extensive. And no scores, either. Just these fascinating mentions in memoirs and newspapers, and in this book, Devil’s Music. That’s by Charles Fort. Have you heard of it?”

  “You’re looking for Opus 45,” Michael said.

  “Yes! That’s the one.”

  “I haven’t found it.”

  “Is it real? I mean, it exists? We were beginning to think it was some sort of hoax.”

  “I have a concert program for the premiere,” Michael said. “The music existed at one time. Whether it does now or not, I don’t know.”

  “Listen, it’s wonderful just having something about it confirmed. Do you know what a coup it would be to find it again?”

  “If I find the score, what do you plan to do with it?”

  “I hardly know yet,” Pendeers said. “I didn’t expect to get this far. I’m a connoisseur of film music, particularly from the thirties and forties. I must tell you that doesn’t sit well with some of the music faculty here—in Los Angeles, of all places! Can we get together and talk? And if you find anything—you know, the score, a recording, anything—could you let me know...first? Unless someone else has priority, of course... I hope not.”

  “No one else has priority,” Michael said. “Where shall we meet?”

  “I could hardly ask to visit the house. I assume it’s not all organized yet.”

  Michael made a quick decision. “Frankly, I’m over my head,” he said. “I could use help. Why don’t I meet you near the campus, and we’ll talk about having UCLA lend a hand?”

  “Wonderful,” she said, and they set a time and place for lunch in Westwood the next day.

  Over my head, indeed, Michael thought as he hung up.

  Kristine Pendeers was twenty-two, tall and slender with a dancer’s build, and fine fair hair. Her eyes were green and eloquent, slightly hooded, one eyelid riding higher than the other as if in query. Her lower lip was full, her lip upper delicate; she seemed to be smiling most of the time. She wore jeans and a mauve silk blouse.

  After less than fifteen minutes in her presence, Michael was already fascinated by her. His infatuations always came fast and died hard—the true sign of an immature romantic, he warned himself silently. But warnings seldom did any good.

  They had chosen the Good Earth restaurant. She sat across from him in a double booth. A broad back-lit plastic transparency of a maple tree canopy hovered over them; since they were below street level, the effect was not convincing. Kristine had crossed her arms on the table, as if protecting the cup of coffee between them.

  “My major problem is that I don’t know much about music,” Michael said. “I enjoy it, but I don’t play any instruments.”

  She seemed surprised. “How did you get the position, then?”

  “I knew him before he died. We became friends.”

  “What did he plan to have you do with the estate?” Her hooded gaze gave her the appearance of being nonchalant and interested at once.

  “To get it organized and take care of things as they came up, I suppose,” Michael said. “It’s not really spelled out. We had a sort of understanding...” Having said that, he wasn’t sure how true it was. But he couldn’t say, I’m being set up for something bigger...

  “Did he ever talk to you about Opus 45?”

  The waitress interrupted with their lunch, and they leaned back to let her serve it.

  “Yes,” Michael said. He gave her a brief outline as they ate, explaining about Waltiri’s collaboration with Clarkham—to a point—and the circumstances after the performance.

  “That’s fascinating,” she said. “Now I see why the music is legendary. Do you think the score still exists? I mean, would he have...burned it, or hidden it away where no one would find it?”

  Michael shook his head, chewing on a b
ite of fish. “I’ll keep looking,” he said.

  “You know, this project I’m working on...it really goes beyond what I told you on the phone.” She hadn’t eaten much of her omelet. She seemed more inclined to talk than lunch. “We’re—actually, it’s mostly me. I’m trying to put film score composers back in their proper place in music. Many of them were as talented as anyone writing music today...more so, I think. But their so-called limitations, working in a popular medium, for mass audiences...” She shook her head slowly. “Music people are snobs. Not musicians—necessarily—but critics. I love movie scores. They don’t seem to think—the critics and some of the academics, I mean—they don’t seem to understand that music for movies, and not just musicals, shares some of the problems of scoring operas. I mean, it’s such an inspired idea, full scoring for a dramatic performance.” She grinned. “I’ll ride that particular railroad any time you let me.”

  Michael nodded. “I love movie scores, too,” he said.

  “Of course you do. Why would Waltiri let you handle his estate if you didn’t? You’re probably a better choice than most of the people in my department.” She held up her hands, exasperated. “Look at this. I’m wasting food again. All talking and no eating.”

  “All singing, all dancing,” Michael said with a smile.

  She stared at him intently. “You have a very odd smile. As if you know something. Do you mind if I ask how old you are?”

  He glanced down at the table. “That depends.”

  “I’m intruding.”

  “No, it’s not that,” he said. “It’s actually complicated...”

  “Your age is complicated?”

  “I’m twenty-two,” he said.

  “You look younger than that. But older, too.”

  A silence hung over the table for several seconds.

  “Have you gone to school?” Kristine asked.

  “Not college, no.”

  She laughed and reached across the table to tap his hand with her finger. “You’re perfect,” she said. “Everyone says Waltiri was an iconoclast. You’re living proof.”