Heraclix and Pomp: A Novel of the Fabricated and the Fey Page 8

  He was taken aback by the fact that while the tower sounded full of substance from the outside, it was remarkably empty on the inside. His eyes adjusted to the dark. To say that things came into clearer focus would not be entirely accurate. The crumbling stone walls and spiral stairway resolved themselves to his view. But the air was in flux—writhing, almost, with something other than dust, many things other than dust.

  Pomp immediately flew under Heraclix’s cloak, trembling.

  Around, above, and through—yes, even through them—flowed a gathering of spectral beings, close to a hundred strong, their ectoplasmic strands in tatters behind them as they floated up and down the stone stairway and the great, empty, circular shaft around which it spiraled. The specters were loathsome, every one of them crippled in some way. Many were missing limbs, several sported gunshot wounds, a few were altogether decapitated. But the mere sight of the apparitions, strangely, did little to affect Heraclix who was himself, after all, caught in some kind of state between life and death. Rather, it was the soft crying and plaintive weeping (of those who still had mouths, tongues, and heads with which to weep), the faintly echoed pleas that caused him to shiver: “Heal me, please,” “take away my wounds, I beg of you!” and “make me whole again! Just make me whole again!”

  Upward and down the ghosts rose, sank, ascending and descending the stairs and air, unable to stop moving, yet equally unable to leave the tower, trapped forever by the stone walls of their own misery, like ethereal birds in a cage.

  Heraclix looked up and noted that the congregation of the wounded dead was greater, more concentrated, near the ceiling, some fifty feet up. The dead passed harmlessly through him, he noticed, so he ventured to climb the stairs, himself one of the wounded, if not dead at this time. The ghosts made no effort to move out of his way. Most were too caught up in their own lamentations to notice, though a few looked at him with plaintive sadness in their eyes.

  Most of those in the circular procession were men of soldiering age (or would be, if they were alive). Many of them, in fact, were uniformed as mountain irregulars. Scattered throughout this contingent of troops was a smattering of peasant women and even a few small children, all of them shuffling, floating, limping along as their injuries dictated, all of them pleading for help from some unseen source.

  Heraclix made his way through the thickening crowd, higher and higher up the stairs, until he came to what must be the bottom of a trapdoor set in the ceiling. He pushed up against it, careful not to look down from this height and lose his balance.

  The trapdoor opened upward, and Heraclix climbed through. The dead tried to follow but couldn’t. They felt, pushed, hit the invisible barrier—all to no avail. Their efforts were as silent as the grave to Heraclix, who now sat on the floor above them. No sound reached his malformed ears, not even the sounds of their begging and wailing.

  He closed the door, stood up, and looked around. The sun shone through high, arched windows, draping the inside of the tower with long rays of light shimmering with dust motes. A number of large burning candles ensconced in the walls lit the room. A trio of coal braziers lent a red glow to the room, giving it a dazzling aspect that contrasted sharply with the gloom beneath.

  This upper section of the tower was larger in diameter than the lower section, though not as tall. The story on which he stood was surmounted by a demilune loft atop the juncture of a pair of semicircular staircases, which crept up along the walls, like a beetle’s mandibles. Pomp, emboldened a bit now that she knew the ghosts couldn’t reach them, flew up to peek over the chest-high wood banister that blocked the view of the loft from the lower floor. Heraclix investigated the lower level.

  A few small tables, two large bookshelves carved into the walls, an armed chair of elegant workmanship and embroidery, and dozens of silk pillows lay atop a mishmash of skillfully woven Oriental rugs. Judging by the furnishings, Heraclix thought it might be a crusader’s castle. He was not entirely sure where the Serb’s loyalties lay. It was obvious that the castle’s sole living inhabitant had had some contact with the Ottomans, given the Persian rugs, the Turkish motifs on the pillows, and the smattering of books with Arabic titles on their bindings. He swore to himself to avoid the subject of politics. He couldn’t allow such potential divisions to get in the way of his quest to know about himself.

  Heraclix yelped, then laughed as Pomp, invisible, unexpectedly flew under his cloak.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Him!” she became visible for a split-second, long enough for Heraclix to follow her pointing finger up to the head of one of the stairways.

  “Good day!” said the man as he haltingly descended the stairs. He was once, Heraclix thought, very tall, the tallest man he had seen in his current sojourn. But he was now bent with age. His long black hair was peppered with white, though it must have been jet black well into middle age. His face was carved by experience, though whether it was sad or happy experience, Heraclix couldn’t tell. His eyes seemed simultaneously laughing and crying, as did his mouth, a perpetual metamorphosis was taking place in the man’s face. He couldn’t seem to decide between his desires for Heaven and Hell.

  He was dressed in a blue-gray frock and long trousers, a combination of a military uniform, prison clothes, and a priest’s vestments. Around his neck hung a large necklace with a circular medallion wrought out of iron. Inside the circle was a pentacle, and inside the central pentagon of the star, a crucifix. Beads, perhaps rosaries, studded the rest of the necklace itself.

  The man raised his right hand in salutation.

  “I know why you are here,” he said in a thick Serbian accent. “You are here to be healed.”

  He smiled, showing a set of remarkably well-kept teeth, then motioned for Heraclix to sit on the floor, which he did.

  The old man took the last slow steps to the lower level, then approached.

  “And your little friend. I’ve seen her. She can show herself.”

  Pomp became visible and peeked out, from under Heraclix’s cloak.

  “It’s okay,” the Serb said. “I have no intention of hurting you.”

  Pomp mumbled something unintelligible to Heraclix.

  “I’m very sorry, sir,” Heraclix said to him, “but I’m afraid you are mistaken. I am not here to be healed, I—”

  “Oh, but you are here to be healed,” the Serb said. “You are indeed. You couldn’t have come in here otherwise.”

  “But I am here to speak with you,” he held his left hand up, “about this.”

  The Serb turned his face away at an angle but kept his eyes locked on the hand, as if he was keeping the option to flee open, though he couldn’t help but stare at the blue thing attached to Heraclix’s arm. His face became momentarily vacant, as if he was mesmerized by the ghoulish appendage. All cheerfulness had left his face.

  “We can talk about that soon enough,” the Serb said. “But first, you do need to be healed.”

  He slowly walked over to Heraclix and knelt down. His knees creaked and his back popped as he situated himself. He reached out and touched the wounded leg with his right hand.

  Heraclix watched as the Serb reached up with his left arm, toward the necklace that hung over his chest. A shock passed through Heraclix as it became clear that the Serb had no left hand, that it had been severed at precisely the point where Heraclix’s own left hand had begun. An even greater shock overtook him as he watched the medallion move, as if it was being manipulated by a hand of flesh.

  “This is yours!” Heraclix said, holding the hand up. “You didn’t just send it, you severed it!”

  “Patience, my friend,” the Serb said. “Look, the leg begins to heal.”

  Heraclix had been so enamored of his own self-righteous indignation that he had failed to notice that the pain in his leg had subsided from something rather acute to merely bothersome. The Serb walked his fingers along the line of the wound that Von Helmutter had ripped up Heraclix’s leg. As he did so, the seam came togeth
er, sinew and skin mending behind the Serb’s fingers. Pomp gasped in surprise.

  “Where else have you been wounded?” the Serb asked.

  Heraclix silently pointed to the other wounds he had received from Von Helmutter’s silver dagger. These the Serb also healed. Not only did the pain subside, then disappear, Heraclix also felt enervated, more optimistic, even enlightened, as if his soul had, to some extent, been healed along with his body.

  “Try that,” Heraclix pointed to the stitched scar tissue connecting his neck to his body.

  The Serb touched the scar, and others, in exactly the same way he had caressed Heraclix’s dagger wounds. He concentrated, seeming to grasp the necklace more firmly with his phantom hand, the effort showing in his gritted teeth and curled-back lips. After straining for some time, he sighed.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said.

  “Neither have I,” Heraclix said.

  The Serb chuckled, enjoying Heraclix’s glib sense of humor.

  “No,” he said with a smile that quickly faded, “I cannot heal these scars. I should be able to, but cannot.”

  “The others are much more recent,” Heraclix said. “Perhaps that is why you could heal them but not the old scars.”

  “I wish the answers to these mysteries were so obvious,” the Serb said. “One thing is obvious, though: someone doesn’t like you much.”

  “Von Helmutter is his name. Perhaps you have heard of him?”

  “No, I can’t say that I have. Should I have?”

  “Not necessarily,” Heraclix said. He felt that the old Serb was telling the truth. A slight shot of guilt passed through him, but he was here to pursue clues and find answers. He couldn’t afford to have his conscience get in the way of direct questioning.

  “And what of the sorcerer Mowler? Surely you have heard of him?”

  “No, I’m sorry. I’m afraid not.”

  “No? Then to whom did you sell this?” Heraclix held up the left hand again, as if it would magically extract answers when held aloft. It did not.

  “I am not sure of the name.”

  “Not sure? You had dealings with a man whose name was unknown to you?”

  “I don’t even know if it was a man, truth be told. It was an unusual arrangement, I’ll grant you that,” the Serb said.

  “It was, indeed. Did you ever meet the man?”

  “No, never.”

  “And yet you trusted him?”

  “I didn’t know the person’s, for the sake of conversation, we will say ‘the man’s,’ intentions. But I couldn’t assign evil intent to a . . . man who offered what I wanted most.”

  “And how did you know that he could offer you what you wanted?”

  “That, my friend, was a matter of faith.”

  “Faith?”

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong. I was, first and foremost, a man of logic. I was well-studied in the art of war, which is no art at all. It is a calculated equation, but the variables are so many that the outside observer sees war as a chaotic threnody. But I assure you, it is logical, calculable, and cold. Remove variables and you simplify the equations, no?”

  “I wouldn’t know of such things,” Heraclix said. “But the logic seems sound enough.”

  He paused for a moment, growing solemn, then continued.

  “I was good at figuring the equation. So good that I climbed the ranks quickly after graduating from the academy. My birth assured that I would never rise too high in the courts, but my reputation became such that I did gain much responsibility in the field. I commanded irregulars on the periphery, the rabble who knew the terrain and had been raised fighting. The kind of hard, barely disciplined men that fought like wild dogs, vicious, unforgiving. We fought other irregulars in rough country, where borders aren’t so clear and allegiances fluctuated wildly. You can see how such an environment would change the equation quickly.”

  “Yes, I could see that,” Heraclix said.

  “No one could have solved the equation for long out there among such people, in such places. But I was very good at one thing: I was good at systematically eliminating variables by harnessing and directing that wild-man ferocity that simmered within my men. And that is just what I did. I believed that I was doing the right thing, setting aside sentiment for the sake of order, of justice. I was the equalizer—eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand. And again, I simplified the equation, eliminated variables present and future, eliminating the very possibility that variables might crop up again in the next generation. I felt that I could do better than follow the rules and win the game, I could rewrite the rules themselves, change the boundaries of war, and assure my victory.”

  “A very bad man,” Pomp said with a scowl.

  “And yet,” Heraclix turned to the Serb and diplomatically interceded, “here you are with us, admitting that you thought you were doing the right thing.” He paused, then spoke again, this time more slowly. “By inference, your perception must have changed. What happened?”

  “Clarity came to me, unbidden. I didn’t ask for it. That day was like many before it: nothing special. But for reasons unknown to me, as I looked down my bloodied saber blade into the eyes of my next victim, the next variable to be eliminated, I was suddenly sick of the killing. My boots were sticky from walking through gore. I had swung my saber so much that day that I could hardly hold it up. My ears were completely deaf to the cries of the dying.”

  “Then she looked up at me. Ten years old, no more. She had seen so much death in her decade that she had no fear of it. It was common to her, banal. She simply didn’t care. And now, after a career of killing, because of the emptiness I saw in her eyes that day, I did care. I understood that she was . . . another human being. One that might have felt emotion, love, happiness, joy, if war hadn’t cut these things from her heart.”

  “But you couldn’t repair her heart,” Heraclix said.

  “No, I couldn’t. However, I resigned my commission, took my pension, and began to build this place.”

  “This fortress,” Heraclix said.

  “Yes, this stronghold. A refuge from guilt I constructed using the spoils of conquest. But it wasn’t long after building it that I came to realize that some laws cannot be broken, some rules cannot change. My supposed elimination of variables was merely a shell game. I had hidden a side of the equation from myself. Eventually, the variables themselves crawled back out from under my manipulations and demanded that the rules be obeyed, that the balance be restored.”

  “The ghosts beneath us!” Heraclix said.

  Pomp peeked around Heraclix’s shoulder at the trapdoor behind him, wide eyed.

  “The same,” the Serb said. “I was, am, haunted by my victims. I knew that I wouldn’t be left alone until I could find a way to rectify things. There was no escaping it. But this wasn’t the primary reason for my next course of action. After the epiphany in the girl’s eyes, I wanted to do some good in this world and in the next, to try to undo what I had done, rather than merely drown out the guilt I felt.

  “I studied, night and day, because I was kept awake, for the most part, by the ghosts of the dead. I studied and read the Gnostic texts, volumes of Sufi lore, the Hermetic traditions. I wanted to learn and practice the art of healing—spiritual and physical healing. Never again did I want to see such an abyss as I saw in that little orphan girl’s eyes.

  “My self-teaching, however, could only go so far. Books only show, they cannot mentor. I needed help beyond my own to seize my desires. So I left here, for a time, to seek wisdom and power to set things right.

  “I spent some weeks with a group of monks not far from here, then headed toward Pest. I stopped at every church along the way, but found little in the way of enlightenment. Then, on the outskirts of Pest I stayed, for a time, in a gypsy camp. There I met some fortune-tellers, one of whom suggested that I allow her to take my needs to a man she knew in Prague who might be able to help. I agreed, thinking, after I left to return to my tower, that
I had wasted my time, that I would never hear from her again.

  “I began to despair, thinking that I might never achieve my aims, that I would die under the burden of guilt, haunted by ten thousand souls, then join them, forever to be tormented by their pleadings.”

  “It is just,” Pomp said, clamping her hands over her mouth, surprised that she had said the words aloud. She thought she had spoiled everything. Now Heraclix wouldn’t get the help he needed.

  “It is just, little one. But providence saw fit to bring me to my senses while there was still time left to try to balance the scales of justice. I just wasn’t sure how to proceed.”

  “Then, a few weeks after I returned here, there was a knock at my door. It was the gypsy, with an unsigned letter that said, in substance, ‘I understand your dilemma and your desires. I can help, if the price is agreeable.’”

  “Of course, money was no object. I sent her back with a response asking for terms. The gypsy never returned. Nevertheless, messengers were sent and returned, back and forth, until I had negotiated an agreeable contract with my mysterious business partner.”

  “The exchange was this: my hand, the hand that had shuffled the shells, hidden the variables, done the evil deeds . . . in exchange for the ability to heal—to reconcile the equation.”

  “Your necklace,” Heraclix said.

  “The necklace, yes. This was the agreement. But there were some difficulties, as with any business transaction.”

  “Difficulties?” Heraclix asked.

  “I had thought we were at the conclusion of our business. I was awaiting delivery of the necklace, when the messenger I had sent with the hand arrived back at my tower with the necklace and a note. The note informed me that while the necklace would, as promised, impart to me the gift of healing, there was a certain key-word needed to actuate it. The key-word would be given to me as soon as I provided a piece of information, a lead, as it were, that my benefactor needed in order to finish a certain project.

  “It seemed so strange at the time, his request. Yet, so simple. He wanted to know where the largest soldier on the continent would be found. It so happened that in my travels, I had heard rumors of a family of near giants, goliaths, living in Prague itself. I told my business associate to look close at hand and he would find his soldier.