Chase the Morning

Chapter Ten

I twisted my head away from the old man’s spitting vehemence, like a cobra’s venom. I could have felt ashamed, or angry, I suppose; in fact I felt almost nothing. A little nervousness, a little queasy uncertainty – but at the heart of it all an absence of feeling, a numbness. It was like looking out of a window into a deep black pit. An awareness of failure, maybe; I didn’t know. I wasn’t used to it.

But the poisonous old voice dropped suddenly to a whisper and fell silent. The drums, too, sank to a shuddering mutter, the jabbering commotion of the crowd collapsed into an awed murmur, the sounds merging into a soft, uneasy threnody. Even the flames seemed to bend and dwindle, though the dank air was still and cool. Then the crowd parted suddenly, men and women scuttling hastily aside, clearing a path to the fires and the stone beyond. For a moment it stood empty; then something moved across the flames. Along the barren ground towards us a long shadow fell. What cast it was no more than a shape, a dark silhouette like the outline of a man swathed in hooded robes, like a medieval monk almost; or a leper. Along its own shadow it came gliding towards us, black and impenetrable, as if no more than a deeper shadow itself. It halted smoothly a few feet in front of us – in front of me. And then in one fluid movement it bowed.

Bowed from the waist, with a dancer’s grace, almost to the ground. For a nicely calculated instant it remained poised, steadying itself on a tall slender black cane; then it rose unhurriedly upright, and brushed back the shadowing cowl. Bright dark eyes glittered into mine, with an impact that was almost physical – a shock so sharp I didn’t immediately see there was any face around them. Let alone a face I’d seen before.

Not a Wolf’s face, or a native’s. A European face; but naturally swarthy, deeply tanned, and tinged with an unpleasant yellow, jaundiced and unhealthy, nothing like the golden-skinned Caribs. The high brow was deeply furrowed, the face unlined save for the deep channels that flanked the narrow hooked nose and shaped the black moustachios like fangs around the thin dark lips and jutting, arrogant chin. Black hair only slightly tinged with grey swept back from that frowning forehead to ripple elegantly about the neck. Blacker still were the eyes it hooded, curiously empty despite their glitter, as if some vast void lurked behind their bright lenses; and the whites were yellowed and unhealthy. All in all, a strange, striking face, now I saw it clearly. Proud as a king’s, almost – and yet too marked with concern, cunning, malice to look royal. A statesman’s face, a politician’s – a Talleyrand, not a Napoleon. And with a hint of sickliness that I hadn’t noticed, in that New Orleans street, leading me astray; or behind the wheel of that car nobody but me seemed to see. Or on Katjka’s cards …

Not a king, then – a knave.

For an instant he seemed to hesitate. Then long fingers rippled in an elegant salute, gems flashing in the firelight; and he spoke.

‘¡Muy estimado señores y señoritas!’ Softly, deferentially; and mainly to me. ‘I beg your most gracious forgiveness that I am forced to receive you in such a fashion, without announcement or proper introduction. Such, however, are the circumstances of the hour.’ Sometime around the eighteenth century they must have made a big fuss about his perfect English. To me, with his lisping accent, it was heavy going. ‘May I therefore take the liberty of presenting myself? I have the honour to be the Don Pedro Argote Luis-Maria de Gomez y Zaldivar, Hidalgo of the most Royal Order of … But a mere recitation of honours would no doubt weary folk of your station! To these our poor observances let me bid you a most sincere welcome.’

Nobody said anything. The Knave seemed to be waiting.

‘You know who we are,’ I growled. ‘All of us, if you’re the man behind all this. Are you?’

‘In a sense, señor, you oblige me to admit that I am.’ He bowed again, less deeply. The cloak parted to reveal a costume not unlike Pierce’s but about ten times as florid – an outburst of ruffles at the throat, a long waistcoat embroidered with what looked like pearls and other stones, breeches with a satiny sheen and gilded shoes. It was the sort of costume you see in the Prado, going dusty in portraits of long-forgotten grandees. ‘In another sense, however, the one “behind all this”, as you so amusingly put it, is you, Señor Esteban.’

‘Me?’

He spread his hands wide. ‘Why, of a certainty. For it was you yourself, señor, that we have been seeking. All this so very great effort was expended for the sole purpose of attracting you to this island; or to a lesser place within our reach. But the island was best.’

‘I knew it!’ exploded Jyp. ‘I damn well knew it! I was right to chase you away! Shouldn’t ever have let you come back again –’

A courteous hand was lifted, and Jyp shut up at once. ‘Ah, Señor Pilot, I must ask your forgiveness for having so unfortunately misled you. Of our original intention the Señor Esteban formed no part; how could he, when we were not then aware even of his existence? Only when he began – you will forgive me? – to interfere, and moreover to take an interest in us, using his own most curious magical devices, to a gravely unhealthy extent; only then did he call himself to our attention. Yet the creature you call the dupiah, had it been released successfully from its hiding-place, would have had as its ultimate and most difficult task to ensnare just such a man as he.’

‘And just what the hell d’you mean by that?’ I demanded.

He gave a slightly surprised shrug. ‘Why, a man of some small standing within the Inner World, señor. A young man, no doubt, yet one who had already achieved much success, whose undoubted gifts carried the promise of far greater advancement still. But a man of hollowness, an empty soul.’

It was my turn to explode. ‘You primping little son-of-a-bitch –’

Again the hand lifted. Courteously; but the very gesture hit me like a vicious slap in the open mouth, jarring my teeth, stiffening my tongue. I strangled on my words.

‘But señor, an expression merely – a figure of speech, no more!’ There was no trace of mockery in the level tones. ‘I beg you most earnestly to accept that I intended not the slightest insult.’ The long fingers waved deprecatingly. ‘After all, was I not once just such a man myself?’

I gaped, and then a sort of horrible laughter welled up in me. ‘You? You’re putting me on a level with –’

The snigger was politely deprecating. ‘Oh, hardly, señor, hardly! After all, was I not born a hidalgo, the lord of wide plantations, even some silver mines, and many strong slaves to work them? Whereas yourself … But I was constrained to grow up very much alone, there being no other child within easy reach fit for me to associate with. It was perhaps inevitable that, dwelling alone among mean and lesser men, so far from the civilized company of my peers, I should grow somewhat … apart from them.’

He turned for a moment to survey the silent crowd behind him, and they avoided his look. Wolf and human alike. For the first time I felt an openly sardonic edge to his voice, and something else, something more deeply disturbing.

‘What use had I for them, after all? What could they show me but the mirror of myself, the follies of love and hate alike? Upon reaching manhood I was sent into society for a while – and there they presumed to reject me. They – I! Those strutting popinjays the men! Those lovely women, who should have been flattered to uncover the fires they kindled! They laughed foolishly behind their fans and passed on. Bored – jaded – and have you not felt as much, señor? – I sank myself in my work, my ambition I drove my slaves with fear and pain to labour to their miserable limit, I grew incomparably rich as the world measures riches; yet I valued wealth only as an emblem of success – a banner I could brandish in the face of the world. As, señor, I am sure you understand.’

I’d never been anything like rich – and yet, though part of me revolted violently at the idea, I found myself nodding automatically. I did understand. Somehow that unsettling note in his voice, part pleading, part persuading, and still somehow dominating, compelled me to face up to it, to admit how alike we were. And yet …

I couldn’t help protesting. ‘But I’ve never done anything like … like you! Never wanted to! I had ambitions, yes. A career – politics, maybe, one day … But the feeling of achievement, I didn’t really want more than that. Knowing I was succeeding … showing it –’ Success – the successful man’s image – that’s what it was. A badge, a seal of approval to prove how much I mattered, how important I was. To drive home my status in other people’s eyes. To shield me from their questions, their doubts – and from my own. You can’t argue with success …

He saw my hesitation, and nodded benignly; he forgave me. ‘Ah, I might have been thus content, señor, in my turn. For what else remains to those the world will not give their due? Were it not for a most fortunate turn in my affairs … Though I admit it did not seem so at the time; as your present situation, perhaps, does not to you. There came an outbreak of the vomito negro, that you call the Yellow Jack fever, and I was infected. It took that. It took weeks of fever and delirium and spectral visions, of lying close to death and weeping lest it claim me still young, before I had found out what it was to live. It took so much to lift me out of my narrow sphere to that which my talents truly deserved.’ He smiled.

‘As it has taken all this for you, I doubt not. For in my delirium I walked strange paths, saw visions, understood for the first time that there must be worlds beyond the limits of our own. And I saw myself. It was at the very crisis of that mortal distemper that the truth came to me – that it was death itself that gave life meaning. That one never lives so intensely, or clings so keenly to life, but in death’s presence. Then, señor, then I understood; it was the driving of slaves that truly fulfilled me, and not the result. And never more so than in the dealing out of life and death, the slow or sudden tipping of the scale.’

The Knave smiled faintly. ‘I had of course already become acquainted with the many and curious varieties of religious practice my purchased creatures had brought with them from their African homelands. Many, naturally, benign and insipid, or mere crude raucous release. But others were more promising. And among the Maun-dangues, from that region you call by the barbarous name Cangau, I now discovered beliefs and techniques which though unrefined were quite peculiarly to my taste. So the elect few who knew of them I spared and studied – oh, in a spirit of simple amusement, at first, I assure you! Until I began to perceive that within these bloody barbarian games there were real forces at work, and greater gains to be had than mere diversion. Then I set myself to learn. I sat at the feet of those who bore my fetters, even embraced them as brothers in blood – I, a grandee of Spain!’ He tapped the ground with his cane, twice; and the chill of it seemed to flow up into me, numbing my heart. ‘But only by such abasements is enlightenment attained. Regard, if you please, these inconveniences you now suffer in that light; for from them, believe me, I intend that you shall gain! Every bit as much as I did. And that was great.’

His voice had dropped, yet I hung upon his every word. ‘For I became a houngan priest, in touch with the Invisibles. But that was only a first step, a shallow one. The true depths are dark, and to darkness I turned, to the most wicked and corrupt among that servile race. I learned from them the arts of malice and compulsion, of sorcery and necromancy; I became a bocor, an adept of the dark. And within a short time, my inborn mastery asserting itself, I became the greatest among those who had taught me, and cast them down to tremble and suffer with the rest of their kind.’

A sudden image swirled before me, like paint in water. Myself, in the white robes of the men around us, plastered with painted markings … ‘And that’s what you mean for me?’ I couldn’t stifle another manic attack of giggles. ‘You want to make me into a bloody witch-doctor?’

He seemed more amused than offended. ‘Oh, no indeed, señor! You misjudge me. That dreary and wasteful time I would spare you. So many false turnings, so many foolish seekings after fulfilment – so many terrible regrets! I did not then realize they were but one step on a quest longer than I could have dreamt – save perhaps in my fevers. Such squalor, such mere savagery – these were mere beginnings I have long surpassed.’ He gazed down at me with a look of delight and wonder, almost childish, the way a single-minded scientist might contemplate his rarest and most precious specimen. ‘As you will, señor, in your turn.’

I stared. That was about all I could do. ‘I don’t understand,’ I stammered. ‘What’re you talking about? What are you offering me?’

He laughed. ‘Things you cannot yet imagine! Power beyond your dreams! But for now, only to begin with – power as you would understand it, dominion in your world. Men will follow you, men, aye, and women – a few at first, then a party – a city – a region – a nation! You will deal with them at your whim, the more so, the more they will flock to you! And you will draw sustenance from them as I did, and live on as they die, untouched by years! What do I offer you? That, señor! That but for a beginning!’

I stared. The tirade had left me literally speechless, my thoughts whirling like a sputtering firework. I’d seen the soul of a man laid bare – or more than a man, or less. And why? Because this Don Pedro thought I was another of his kind. That I’d hardly be anything less than eager to leap at what he offered, if only I could be made to understand. Not a scientist, or a child; a lonely monster, maybe hoping he’d found a friend?

And how wrong was he? He’d gone looking for – call it love; human warmth, at least. Denied it, he’d channelled his frustration into ambition, sadism, god knows what. But me – I’d had love, hadn’t I? And I’d thrown it away. I’d taken that same ambition and stuck it up on an altar, deliberately sacrificed love to it. If anything, that sounded worse. God above, maybe he was right! Maybe I would like what he offered. Maybe he was what I’d come to, anyway, in the end.

There was the image again. Myself as – what was the name? A bocor, mumbo-jumboing over the embers of a dying fire, drawing vevers with my fingers …

No! It was too damn ridiculous. I was about to burst out laughing again when I felt the gritty maize flour turn to computer keys beneath my fingertips. That brought back, sharp as a tang of spices, the familiar thrill of calling up information, juggling it, manipulating it. The way I felt getting to grips with a really difficult deal, tying up a knotty contract in a watertight package of agreements, provisos, penalties …

Only here, somehow, I knew I was dealing a whole order of magnitude higher. The flows of world trade, the checks and balances of high commerce, the economies of nations – all the forces that dictate the life of every man, from the Amazon Indian in his grass hut to the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet. And they would become one man’s to command. They would obey these flowing fingers, the face reflected in the borders of the screen. A handsome face in its way, hard but magnetic, strongly lined, white-haired but crackling with youthful vigour – and still unarguably mine.

I fought to blink away the vision. There was a fierce directness to it that shot right past consciousness and common sense, as wholesale a grab at my instincts as a Pirelli calendar – or a religious experience. My words slurred over my tongue. ‘Why …’

‘Why?’ Again that possessive, gloating smile. ‘Because, señor, I have need of you! Because to gain my end I had to sacrifice all that I had amassed. In my quest I was forced to leave the Inner World behind me, to slough off all that was worldly about me. So now I must have an agent within it – clever instrument of my designs, trusted sharer in their rich rewards! And in you I find the fabric, the fallow soil fit for the plough, the fine clay for the turning – and the firing!’ He wrung his hands in sheer pleasure. ‘And soon, swiftly! Without the long years I cast away on gratifying childish fancies – on trifling, tentative essays of my will. All that I have, I shall share with you! All that I am, I shall make you! And all you can reach out and grasp shall be yours!’

I was spellbound; I couldn’t protest, I didn’t want to. Through my hands, through my commanding mind the world’s commerce poured like a shining river, to be diverted this way and that, settling its gold-dust sediments wheresoever I chose. But still something didn’t quite belong there, some factor that kept bobbing up in the torrents of my mind and wouldn’t sink …

The others!’ I choked. ‘Okay, I’m here! What d’you need them for, now? Clare – you don’t have any use for her any more! Let her go! Let them all go!’

I don’t know what reaction I expected. Anything, perhaps, except the ghastly flicker of fury that crossed the sallow face, clear as lightning in a sulphurous sky. The nostrils pinched tight, the dark eyes narrowed to slits, the livid lips crumpled; blood rose beneath the high cheekbones, then drained as swiftly from the papery skin. It fell inward as if sucked, flat against the bone, leathery and wrinkled; the teeth bared in a horrible grin, the muscles shrank, the tendons stood out like rope. Only the eyes remained full beneath their parchment lids, but their lustre dulled like drying ink.

Sweep a torch around a dry crypt or catacomb and a face like that might leap out at you; or as I’d done, in one of those Neapolitan mausoleums with glass-panelled coffins, I’d seen hands, too, with nails that had gone on growing, yellowed and ridged and curling; and though his never touched me, I felt the bite of them as my face was slapped sharply, from side to side. Still fuming, he bowed again, very stiffly.

‘Desolated as I am to contradict the señor, not for anything in the world would I have these your friends miss the occasion! Indeed, their absence would severely hinder the whole proceedings!’

Stryge let out a horrible sneering caw of laughter, and his breath rolled over me like sewer gas. ‘Call yourself one who binds Immortals, do you? And you can’t even spell this empty thing’s mind off his friends! You – bah! I’ve met the like of you before – spiders in your ceiling! What man dares hold Their kind in thrall?’

Don Pedro bowed deeply once again, and when he rose the face was clear and composed as before. ‘I defer to a colleague of rare distinction; a pity he must share the fate of his inferiors. True, no man could humble Them so. But I have long since ceased to be only a man.’

Stryge gargled and spat. ‘That error’s common enough – the cure swift and final! What are you but a petty Caligula who’s learned a bit of hedge-wizardry? Enjoy your delusions while you may, man; they only mock you, biding Their time to strip them from you! Yes, and all else besides!’

‘Caligula?’ The dark man seemed amused. ‘Hardly; for he was but a mortal who dreamed himself a god. Whereas I –’ He looked at me again. ‘At first, I assure you, I had no such thoughts. I sought only to enhance an existence grown burdensome, to find … satisfactions beyond the conventional.’ He chuckled slightly, as a man might at some naïve childhood memory. ‘With the wealth my creatures made me I bought ever more, and devised me ingenious amusements. Some I sent to deaths swift and painful. Others I spared to tread a narrow line, loosening little by little their holds on life, watching them cling all the faster to the dwindling, deluding shreds left them. From that death in life I gave them, fast or slow, I learned to draw new life to refresh me, and that was much; yet even that paled. For once I held the race of slaves in the palm of my hand, once I as both master and bocor could lash not only their cringing bodies but their thoughts, their dreams, their hearts – then the strength I could draw from their torments grew thin. Even then I had come to depend on it, to sustain my very being. Even then blood was the wine I drank, anguish the air I breathed. I must needs cast around for some new source. But as yet I lacked the courage and the vision to seek the Absolute. So, limited as I still was, I turned – as a man must, must he not? – to my own people.’

The Knave smiled. ‘Not that it was altogether without satisfaction. Poor fools! Their cruelties had been almost as great as mine, but idly practised, without purpose. The island seethed beneath them, yet still they drifted fecklessly through their masques and levees and futile festivals. Upon them I unleashed plagues and poxes and contentions unnumbered, and filled their graveyards. And then out of them I awoke some of them, those who had most offended me, and the loveliest. Them I led through many a rout of my own devising.’ He shook his head with nostalgic indulgence. ‘It is said memories of some still linger among the walls of my old home – you saw, perhaps? Even so. That was satisfying, of course; yet some artistic touch seemed called for, to cap the jest. So I took my hold over the slaves, and turned it into a stronger whip than their masters’. A cult of blood and revenge – with rites of such enormities that they left those who took part stripped of restraint or fear; for they had already done the worst. I became as a god among them, almost one of the Invisibles myself; and I lashed them into savage and merciless revolt. Triple irony!’ He tittered faintly. ‘That I, their tormentor, should win them their freedom! Though of course I saw to it that the aftermath was suitably bloody, that little peace has come to them down the years. A greater irony still, then, that they by their worship should set my faltering feet on the path to power.’

All this time nobody had spoken; it wasn’t hard to guess why. But at that, abruptly, a head lifted, and a voice croaked ‘Thou? Their most bestial of tormentors they’ve worshipped as their liberator? The Petro rites, the living spirit of the slave-folk’s vengeance – the cult of anger, the bloody offerings – all thine?’

To my astonishment – and by the look of the man, to his – it was Mall who had managed to speak. Bedraggled, blood-streaked, wan – but alive and awake. My heart almost literally leapt at the sight of her. The man whom she had called Don Pedro seemed to feel very differently. His dark glance flicked over her like a snake’s tongue, and he bowed, stiffly this time, almost guardedly.

‘The señorita is correct,’ he said. ‘Mine, all of them. The mob embrace him who will pour out blood before them, and fail to see it is their own. Was it not ever so, with liberators?’

She said nothing more, only struggled to hold her wavering gaze on him. He turned away from her in a billow of cloak, and to me once again. ‘I am Don Pedro, whom they name Petro; and as one of the Invisibles themselves have I become, and into my hand their powers are given.’ He clenched it, solemnly, slowly. ‘I had lived many centuries, when at last I took the great step. I had brought my inner purpose to blossom, come into my true strength. And yet next to the Invisibles I was still as nothing. To be feared, to be obeyed is much; yet those who obeyed were but the poor folk of a wretched island, easily cowed and driven. And god though they thought me, still I was no more than an intermediary, able in subtle ways to call upon the powers of the Invisibles, but wielding little that was mine. The powers of the Invisibles! They did but remind me more fully of my emptiness. The want of them burned within me, reduced my most refined joys to ashes. The agonies of a very race seemed too cheap a gift to console me for what I did not have! So I probed constantly, I summoned, questioned, bargained – till at last I understood that to gain my greater end I must first lose all I had. So I took the last step, the greatest. I loosed my bonds. I set the Inner World behind me, and cast myself adrift upon the currents of Time, in constant quest of some still closer, deeper, more fulfilling union with Death. I sought – and I found! Among the Invisibles themselves I found One forever hungry for dominion over the rest, and over a wider world – over all the worlds that might be, in the end. Yet even He could not assert it, not alone. Infinitely beyond mine was His strength; but my driving intelligence – that He lacked! Till He came to me and joined with me, poured himself into my hollow heart! I found – and for the first time in all my long life I tasted fulfilment! From the heights to the depths I was filled, I was complete and more than complete!’

He pressed his hand to his chest. ‘Thus blended, we became a greater One – greater than His fellows, and master among them. Able to bend their strengths to my will, to torment not merely mortal men but higher forces, and draw out their strength for my own. To put blood in Erzulie’s eye, searing fire in her thighs! To drive Agwe to a storming frenzy, to have Damballah shake the Earth within his coils! All must obey me when my drums beat, when my rite is chanted – when over my stone the lifeblood streams!’

The fires crackled and flared suddenly, and though he stood with his back almost squarely to them an answering gleam seemed to leap and flicker in his eyes. ‘I attained the highest power I sought – and in that timeless hour I first tasted true joy. And that, señor Esteban – all that is what I offer you – and you dare to hesitate?’

‘What –’ I was croaking. ‘What are you going to do?’

The long fingers rippled like descending rain. ‘Tonight our rites shall call down the loas – and they will come. Come to you! But not in their bland natural forms, no, to make bestial festival with fools. They shall come as I will them, in the power and the terror that we shall unleash upon that unsuspecting Inner World, you and I! And through it, all the infinite universes, all the time and times which spiral out from it! They will be our winepress, in which we tread the hearts of men and higher forces alike, tread them out to the bitter lees! From the agonies of a single child to worlds that go down in slow fire!’

He must have caught the look on my face. He made a deprecating gesture. ‘Of course, these are but mysteries to you now. You do not yet appreciate them – how could you? But I expected more – ambition, shall we say? Less mired in the passing fates of others. Still, I assure you, all will be clear to you, soon, soon. When you in turn are fulfilled. When the loa takes his place within you, when you are no longer the shell you have left yourself – then you will understand. Reach out, Señor Esteban, accept with joy the cup that is offered you! It is a great honour; but one which, if you are wise, you will not refuse.’ His voice faded to a soft crooning whisper. ‘Indeed, in all conscience I could not allow you to.’

The courtesies were an open mockery now. To begin with he’d been weaving a web around me, a net of meanings behind his words, charged with some power to persuade me, snare me into eager submission. Now it blew in the wind like ragged cobwebs. He would not take me by subtlety now; which meant, I guessed, he was going to rely on force. What kind, I couldn’t guess; but I was horribly afraid. The idea of not being me – I was shaking, and my bruises hurt. Idiotically, knowing how useless it was, I strained and kicked against my bonds; but the iron neckring clattered. It had held the strongest slaves once; and what had he done to them? I fought to stifle a whimper, and was deadly ashamed when I couldn’t.

Slowly the Knave shook his head. Again the cane tapped the ground. The numbing chill was spreading through all my limbs now; a leaden, languorous feeling that was not entirely unpleasant, as soft and relentless as that quiet voice. ‘Struggle, if you will; you but pain yourself to no purpose. In such as you, señor, there is no power to resist what comes. The door stands open, there is none within to bar it. And as for your friends, let me reassure you. Only be patient, and you will see their worries also come to an end! And now, I trust you will excuse me. Our solemn rite must not be delayed!’

Once, twice, he bobbed deep bows to me, then whirled around in a billow of cloak and strode away –

Or did he? He seemed to be walking; but he passed over the rough ground too smoothly and too fast, gliding like a wind-spun leaf. A deadly shiver shook me, a chill deeper than the ground. I’d thwarted him, somehow; and in anger and disappointment, as one does, he was letting appearances slip. ‘What the hell is he?’ I breathed.

Le Stryge let out a great spraying wheeze of a chuckle. ‘But of course, yes, you were pleading with him! So touching; but a trace too late – a century or two, maybe! How did you not see at once? From the eyes, boy, the eyes! A creature gnawed away from within, like a grub with a parasite, a walking shell. Nothing left of him but habits and memories, the real man eaten up long since. From such as that let a man keep his distance, if he wants to stay a man! Small use pleading with it!’

‘What else can I do?’ I demanded, feeling the blood sink out of my face. Don Pedro had been trying to persuade me I could go the way he went – and still stay human. What would it really be like? Being worked like a puppet from within?

Or would I even know about it? Would thoughts come to me just the way my own did? Ideas to act on, that seemed like my own most of the time – and yet, just now and again, there might be this creeping, helpless doubt. And all the time there’d be less and less that was really mine, until …

I saw only too clearly what Le Stryge had meant. In school biology class I’d kept caterpillars. Some died suddenly; and I’d found that the growing wasp larva within had eaten them away to a mere bag of skin, a living mask of flesh. And all the while they’d kept moving, kept on feeding just the same as ever, so I’d never noticed the difference.

‘I don’t want to become like him!’

‘You won’t be able to help it,’ Stryge told me evenly. ‘It is as he says. You also are empty, though you are not so aware. Less empty than he, maybe, since you show some concern for others; but the spirit within you is small and shrivelled. You know neither great love nor great hate, great good or great evil. You have starved your life of what life is, and there is too much space within. Such people are most easily possessed; and often, despite what they think, they welcome it.’

‘So you say!’ I snarled. ‘So you bloody well keep saying! Who the hell are you to condemn me? You’re damn near as creepy as he is! If you’re a full man I’d sooner be empty.’

Stryge’s smile was suddenly frightening, and in his eyes I seemed to see the orange firelight flickering among the rubbish-strewn scrub-grass of his vacant lot. ‘I am full, I contain multitudes … Most of it you would neither like nor understand. But at least it is all of my own choosing. It serves me, not I it.’

I shivered. ‘And me? What’s he need me for so badly, anyhow?’

The old man snorted. ‘What? Is it not obvious? This Don Pedro, for all his power, left the Core long centuries ago, having dwelt nowhere beyond this isle; and for that we may be thankful. Of this world he wishes to rule he knows little – whereas you, boy that you are, are adept at manipulating it. With you as their instrument they’ll have all your skills at their disposal. They would not need such clumsy plots as the one you and the Pilot foiled; trying to sneak a dupiah and a Wolf-pack past our barriers to seek power by brigandage in the Core. They could smuggle in whatever they liked, by ways we of the Ports cannot touch. And they may aim higher, intending to have you rise to a position of power. What could one such homme d’affaires not achieve with the might of the Invisibles behind him, wielded subtly and ruthlessly? You would unleash their domain throughout all the circles of the World –’

‘Stop it! Stop it!’ It was as if Clare’s voice broke the bonds her limbs couldn’t. ‘Don’t just gloat over him, you smelly old bastard! It’s not his fault!’

A sudden roll and surge of the drums gave weight to her words, a thunderous crash that faded suddenly to silence. The crowd swayed and split, and for a moment I glimpsed the drums themselves, dark cylinders the height of ordinary men, grouped in threes with their tall Wolf drummers poised over them, their elephantine skins gleaming with oil and sweat, their dyed parrot-crests brushing the ceremonial tonnelle roof.

‘There’s truly nothing you may do?’ Mall demanded thickly, over that instant of tense quiet. ‘However desperate – nothing?’

Stryge snuffled scornfully. ‘If there were, I’d not have waited on your word! The ceremony begins. First the mangés mineurs, the lesser sacrifices to lure down the Invisibles among the worshippers. Then the mangés majeurs, the great sacrifices, that will bend them to Don Pedro’s will. Then – it will be too late. They’ll bring their power to bear on our empty-headed friend here, and he must fall. Not that we’ll be there to see it! If any hope remains –’ He jerked his head in my direction; and for the first time I saw fear flicker faintly in that ancient, flinty gaze. ‘Then let it lie with him.’

‘With me?’

I almost screamed aloud at the cruelty of it. Lay all this on me?

Fingers stroked the drumheads and they sang, a low humming note that swelled and grew. Another note blended with it, a soft droning chant that fell oddly off the beat, a lurching, distorted music. There were words in it, but I couldn’t make them out. Then the stretched hides bellowed and roared as bone sticks and open palms fell on them, a roll that rose and fell like surf and stuttered into a kind of march. From behind the drums figures appeared, half-swaying, half-strutting, with the solemn slowness of a ritual procession. Slowly, very slowly, they wove towards the fire, towards the high white stones. A tall Wolf, robed in ragged black, led the way, shaking a huge gourd hung about with what looked like knucklebones, and white ivory beads that gleamed in the red light – or were they teeth? On either side of him, dwarfed, two haughty-looking mulatto women swung tall thin staves topped with red banners, embroidered with complex vever signs. Behind them marched two Carib men, holding up naked cutlasses on their tattooed palms and trailing in their wake men and women of all the motley races there, rattling bone-gourds, shuffling their bare feet on the ground. I saw some tread on sharp-looking stones, on still-glowing fragments spat from sappy logs, but they didn’t seem to notice. Others drifted out from the crowd as they passed, while the rest took up the chant and swayed to it, stretching their arms wide, rolling their heads from side to side. Around the flames they wheeled, still chanting, and shuffled to a halt before the altar-stone.

Abruptly, without any signal that I could see, the toneless chant broke off. The whole procession sank down as one, the crowd sagged like collapsing canvas. Wolf and human alike crouched huddled with arms above their heads. Only one was left standing, at the rear of the gathering, one I knew damn well hadn’t been there a moment ago. With the unhurried movement of a ritual the cowled figure glided forward over the backs of his prostrate followers and stepped delicately up onto the flat fire-scarred rock. The drums stammered and yelped, the arms stretched out and the cowl fell back. Like the moon glinting from behind black cloud the cold sallow face of Don Pedro gazed down upon his followers.

I could see him clearly, still with that faint half-smile. An instant of breathless silence was shattered by a burst of animal noise, a deep rebellious lowing that set off a cacophony of other calls. Chickens squawked, something bleated – sheep or goats, maybe – and at least two dogs were yelping. It didn’t sound one little bit absurd; it was unnerving as hell. If they were what I thought they were …

Don Pedro spread his hands and snapped his fingers once, explosively. In a flurry of robes the leading Wolf scuttled up to join him on the altar, and others behind him, Caribs and whites and blacks, almost all towering over the little figure. It was he, though, outlined in the light, who seemd like the one fixed point, and they as insubstantial as their shadows on the stone, hunched and shivering. He sang out, in that lisping voice of his

Yet it sounded harsher, more powerful than the thunderous, ecstatic whisper of the crowd’s response.

Then slowly at first, in a peculiar throbbing rhythm, they began to clap, growing stronger, faster till they drowned out the drums. ‘The battérie maconnique,’ murmured the Stryge softly. ‘The Knocking on the Door –’

‘Party gettin’ under way, huh?’ said Jyp tautly.

Don Pedro closed his eyes an instant, as if in anticipation. Then he took a tall pitcher from one of his acolytes, and turning to face the front, the fires and finally the rock behind, he lifted it and shook it gently in salutation – to the compass points, it looked like. Then abruptly he yelled something, and dashed a stream of what the pitcher held against the white stone. It looked like blood, flushing red-brown; but then, leaning unconcerned out over the flames, he tipped a stream into the left-hand fire and swung it around into the right. An arc of blue fire hissed up across the front of the altar. He raised the pitcher to us – and hurled it, spraying, through the flames. We ducked aside as it fell and shattered amongst us, leaving a comet’s trail of droplets that blazed and stung. The crowd roared, the drums rolled in celebration, and the cries of the startled animals rang louder than ever. A sickly stink filled the air; it was rum he’d burned, and pretty powerful stuff.

The drumbeat quickened. On the altar the acolytes bobbed and hopped around their god-figure, flinging out libations of rum and flour and what looked like wine. The crowd clustered forward, holding up their hands in the supplication of the starving for the symbolic food, barging and trampling, twisting this way and that like snakes following the charmer’s pipe. Among the crowd a woman screeched, a frightful tearing sound that was something more than protest, and sprang out before the altar, whirling, leaping to the beat, cavorting in the tangle of her robes till she looked no longer human in the firelight, more like some wind-tossed bird. Suddenly a tall black man was dancing, flinging himself against the stone at Don Pedro’s feet. Behind him a shorter white man swayed like a withy, graceless and boneless, lank hair streaming. Wolves bayed in their horrible voices and joined the dance, their heavy boots shaking the ground; and once they were in the whole crowd began to seethe and swirl like a heating pot. Only our Carib guards stayed aloof at the edge of the clearing, shuffling and circling in slower circles of their own, shaking their heads and tapping the ground with their spears. But as the dance swirled past one shrieked aloud, ducked down and came stamping forward, tattooed legs splayed, spear outthrust in a menacing, posturing mime. The drums yammered frenzy at him as he hopped and stabbed, and his fellow Caribs began to quiver and jerk and shudder like the rest. Bottles gleamed in the hands of the dancers, tilted high, passed from hand to hand indiscriminately and, near empty, were flung to crash against the white stone. The acolytes had to dodge them, but Don Pedro only smiled and stood, arms outstretched like a priest’s in blessing – or like a puppet master with many strings.

Then he gestured, a strange circular movement slashed sharply across – once – twice. The crowd fell back, still dancing. An acolyte sprang down and tipped maize flour from a bowl on the ground before the stone, and as he poured his shuffling feet traced the same design, a circle quartered by two lines.

Men and women burst out of the crowd swinging fluttering bundles – chickens, dangling helpless by their feet. Up towards the stone they held the birds, swinging them in time to the dance; and suddenly a long blade caught the firelight in Don Pedro’s lean yellow hand. Across, back it licked, and with an exultant yell the acolytes flung the headless bodies, still flapping and struggling and spattering blood, high in the air to crash in their death-throes into the quartered circle. Don Pedro flung his arms above his head and sang out

The crowd howled and swung forward, Carib, Wolf, white and all, dancing and reeling from side to side. A young black woman seized one of the headless thrashing things and tearing open her robe sprayed its blood down her naked front; then she pressed it to her breasts, swaying and singing. And in her high clear voice I began to catch words I knew

Carrefour – that was crossroads in French. And Legba – My fists clenched. Not a French word – a name, one I’d heard before. With a shout like breathless laughter the crowd drew back, pointing. In the open space before the blood-spattered design two or three figures limped and hobbled on sticks they plucked from the fire. One, a plump middle-aged mulatto, came lurching past us, leering and blinking with rheumy eyes. But as mine met them I felt a cold thrill of excitement. There was no real resemblance – it was more like an expression that flickered across that wholly different face, and a strange one at that. A grimace, twisted, distorted almost beyond recognition – but all the same it was unmistakable. It was the look of the old musician from the New Orleans street corner – from the crossroads. And Legba was the name Le Stryge had given him …

Desperately I called it after him. The man hesitated, glanced back at me, and I couldn’t be sure whether I still saw that look about him or not. Dry-throated, I raised my tethered hands to him. But then Don Pedro cried out Carrefour! again, and the crowd echoed the name like thunder. The dancers stiffened, straightened, no longer leant on their sticks. Rising to their full height and onto their toes, they spread their arms in great sweeping gestures of blocking and defiance, their faces settling into a mode of grim negation. The crowd crowed in welcome.

The man before me laughed a horrible bubbling laugh that seemed entirely his own, took a vast swig of rum – and spewed it out over the still-glowing stick at me.

Fire showered down on me like a rush of stinging hornets; I thrashed and yelled in my bonds. Stryge caught some, and snarled his anger. The man just laughed again, vindictively. ‘Pou’ faire chauffer les grains, blanc!’ he spat, and shuffled back to the dance. To warm up my –? My balls. Nice of him. But momentarily, as he’d turned away, I could have sworn I’d seen his face twist, as if in the throes of some terrible doubt or agony – and there was that Legba look again! Something more than malice had flashed into that slack malevolent face, something different – as if he were pleading to me?

Me again – always me. What did they want of me? What could I give?

‘Calling on him?’ muttered Stryge darkly. ‘You might have saved your damned fool’s breath.’

‘He helped me in New Orleans!’ I protested.

‘Maybe! Though how or why –’ Stryge wagged his head grimly. His voice rattled like the açon gourds. ‘But here he will not. He cannot. The haut chant was fed with living blood. He could not resist. It called his shadow-self, his distorted form – the Dark Guardian. Carrefour. Not the Opener of the Ways, but the Watcher at the Crossroads. And Carrefour is no man’s friend.’ He hunched his head down into his shoulders. ‘Now the ways stand open. And the Others must follow, when it’s blood that calls …’

Lines of maize flour traced out another, more complex vever pattern. The drums boomed and stuttered, the crowd swayed – and suddenly another hellish libation of rum flared over the fires. Men and women in the crowd dragged a few goats forward, and others some dogs – miserable skinny mongrels, but pitiful in the way they wagged their tails uncertainly and snuffled about. Don Pedro’s reedy howl rose high again.

The crowd flung the name back to him.

‘Voodoo rites,’ muttered Jyp. ‘I’ve seen a few – but nothing like this one, not ever! It takes the goddam cake! The prayers are the same – the words, anyhow – but the whole tone’s wrong! They’re not praying to the loas, they’re damn well ordering ’em!’

‘Ordering indeed!’ Stryge said huskily. ‘Power is abroad here. This is Don Pedro’s own tonnelle, the heart of his cult. This is the rite of which the other Petro rites are shadows, echoes, imitations half understood – the central rite. Blood draws the Invisibles, living blood, and his power ensnares them. Their natures are fluid, he cannot change and his power ensnares them. Their natures are fluid, he cannot change them – but he can bind them in a form governed by their worst aspects. Damballah is a force of sky, of rain and weather, but they make him the Coulevre, the Devouring Serpent – a thing of storm and flood –’

He stopped, or more likely was drowned out by Clare’s scream. With brutal dispatch the goat was flung up to the altar, spreadeagled and bleating desperately. Don Pedro’s sword made one slow lopping slice down the hindquarters. The trussed beast jerked and shrieked and the worshippers yelled; my stomach heaved. It seemed like an eternity before the blade struck again. Blood fountained up, and the yelling crowd leaped to catch it and taste it, sucking at their hands, their robes or those of their neighbours for the least spot more. The headless body, still kicking, was flung down among them, but they trampled it carelessly in their rush to see the next one sacrificed.

The ritual was the same each time – the two cuts, one to castrate, the other, after a savoured moment, to behead. I shrivelled at every thud of the blade. This was how he would work along the pathetic line of victims, driven frantic now by the chanting and the shrieking and the reek of blood. And when they were gone it was how he’d offer up his cabrits sans cornes, his special goats without horns – Clare, and Mall, and Jyp, and Le Stryge, and all the others. But not me, it seemed. For me he had something really special in mind.

All I’d have to do was sit and watch.

I saw horrible things done. When he killed the dogs it seemed worst of all – illogical, maybe, but that’s how it felt. And each time we saw the sacrifice’s legs kicking and fresh blood spurting and steaming down the runnels in the stone, we thought he’d start on us next. At each new round, as each new vever was traced in the paste of maize flour and blood and trampled soil, new libations were poured, new names shrieked to the skies, new rhythms battered from the drums; the dancers, humans and Wolves alike, flung themselves into new frenzies, and the barren earth shivered under their pounding feet.

Against the pulsating firelight their threshing shapes, milling like a shattered anthill, really did look like a vision of hell. So far most of the dancers hadn’t done anything significant, just scream and sing and stamp with the rest. But it came as no surprise when some of them began to run amok altogether, cavorting and gibbering and falling down in fits. Others ran this way and that in transports of ecstasy, or exploded into screaming hysterics so violent that their neighbours were forced to grab them and pin them down. But the fits soon passed; and more and more of the crowd began to change. Just as the first few had mimicked old men, they took on attitudes as they danced; they chanted in hoarse assumed voices, strutted and capered with peculiar gestures, almost ritualized. They looked like actors auditioning for the same roles. It was as if some other identity had settled over them like a veil, hiding their own.

Disturbing enough in itself, the sight unnerved me horribly. This was possession – the possession I dreaded so much, the distorted loas descending to mount their followers. But they seemed to court it, to embrace it. One or two of the acolytes around the stone snatched up a few props laid ready, as if they knew already what other self would seize upon them. Some of the crowd, too, stayed in the same guise, dancing in the same way, even smearing their faces into improvised masks with charcoal, blood or the spilled flour. But most of the dancers let each new name, each new god’s descent, wash over them like breaking waves of emotion. In the blink of an eye they’d shift from one mood to another, wild whooping wrath or serpentine grace, in a kind of shivering exaltation, half hysterical, half sexual, that burst all everyday bounds of behaviour.

One minute, as the chant of Gbedé! went up, they jerked and ground their thighs in crude spasmodic mimicry, ritualistic, robotic – like disjointed skeletons mocking the movements of the flesh. The next, to the cry of Zandor!, they trenched the stony soil with their feet, like ploughs – then, crouching, spilled their guts and trampled it in. When the name Marinette! was called from the altar, the dancers stalked and rolled their eyes in grotesquely seductive attitudes, posturing before the altar, each other, even us where we lay bound. A Wolf woman strutted and cavorted up and down before us in her rags, flinging her straggling purple hair against her long limbs, mocking us with gestures, movements, tearing her robes; others came to join her, women and men, either sex flinging and flaunting themselves carelessly in our faces. The things they did were just crude in themselves – no worse than a whore’s show or a lover’s game, even. But to us they were aggressive, meant to deride us, to humiliate us – and that made them really brutally obscene.

Another minute, another name – and the dancers forgot us and flung themselves at their neighbours, snatching, clawing, mouthing at each other, mounting. But though some of it turned to sex, it took a vicious, nauseating turn, and they shrieked with laughter at the blood that flowed. It was an orgy without passion, without a trace of real lust, even. It turned my stomach. And the moment the little man shrieked out the name Agwé! they forgot, fell apart, rolled and swept their limbs as if swimming over the filthy soil.

I was swimming, too, fighting to stay afloat. Struggling to keep thinking, to work out what Stryge could possibly expect of me – something I could still do and he, with his strange powers, couldn’t. But the drums pounded my thoughts to pulp, my head ached and my concentration shredded. The flickering of dance and flame became hypnotic. I couldn’t force my eyes away from twisted rituals acted out before me. Hours and minutes had no meaning; there was only an endless bloody blur of night, alive with the roar and reek of the seething, manic crowd, doing mad things at a madman’s command. I tried to prove Le Stryge was wrong; I tried to pray. But what could I say? And who to? So much else was out here I’d never believed in, maybe gods were, too – some, any, all, maybe. But what had I to say to any of them?

My mind wandered. Again and again I caught myself swaying in time to the fearful music of drums and voices. I sank my teeth into my lip in a frantic attempt to keep awake, to keep thinking – at least to resist, somehow. But it kept on happening, and I couldn’t find the energy. Sitting on the cold ground like this was numbing me, slowing my circulation. A low voice kept distracting me, mumbling words I half understood. I tried to yell at whoever it was – and only then realized it was me. I thought I was cracking up, at first; then I knew the truth, and that was worse.

I flailed in panic. It was happening already. The thing I dreaded – it was coming over me, softly, insidiously, even as I sat there. Trying to resist that? I hadn’t a dog’s chance.

Frantically I bit down on my disobedient tongue, chomped hard to restrain it. That gave me a better point of pain to concentrate on – and then I knew that the Stryge had been right. There was one thing I could still do. One way I could thwart this Don Pedro, one way of escaping the destiny the little bastard was planning for me. But I also knew why he hadn’t told me what it was.

I could bite through my tongue, choke on the blood, and die.

Easy to think about; not so easy to do. I’d heard of people managing it, prisoners under torture, madmen in straitjackets. And I told myself I ought to have at least as much of a motive as they did, surely. Not that dying would save my friends – but it might save a lot of others. And it would save me from something worse; from being a puppet and a prisoner in my own body, the hollow shell of some predatory horror I could hardly imagine. So I tried. Oh yes, I tried, all right, clamped my teeth down on the thick heart of the muscle till the pain was appalling and the veins stood out – and no further. I couldn’t; I was ready, I had the strength … and I just couldn’t.

Call it cowardice, call it subconscious resistance – but I could no more do it than fly out of the chains that held me. I kept on trying, I bit sharply, I shook my head about; but nothing I could think of would force my jaws to close.

So much for playing hero; and all this time I could feel my control slipping. I knew something was affecting me – the drums, the cold, the chanting, the foul air, the twisted little parade of cruelties at the altar. That was what I thought at first. Soon I knew better. They helped, yes; they trampled around in my thoughts and muddied them. But it was something else, something behind them, that was at work; something greater than their ghastly sum. With every new waft of presence it grew stronger, like hands tugging at me, light but implacable. They pressured my thoughts this way and that, like loosening a tooth in its socket.

It was no illusion; I was beginning to see things. Figures, many times manheight, that leaped and wheeled and capered behind the dancers, mimicking them like giant shadows cast upon the sky. Every minute I saw them more clearly, whirling over me, and what was around me grew hazier. Voices spoke in my brain, little tickling whispers, deep thunderous tones. I felt flashes of thoughts and memories that weren’t mine, that couldn’t be any man’s, that left only confusion in their wake, so far were they from any experience I could identify.

If I could have been any more terrified than I was, I should have been. It wasn’t like that at all. Every minute now I felt easier, more wondering. A distant door ajar, and coming from behind it warm light, the smell of wholesome cooking, the sound of familiar voices – that, to a child lost and hungry on an icy night, might be some shadow of what I felt. All the trappings of an absolute security, of a happiness I’d never known, of a richness I’d been longing for all my life yet never knew I lacked – the remotest taste of these things came to me, the promise that they lay ahead and were getting nearer. It didn’t bother me at all that my body seemed to be growing light, numb – until suddenly I felt my limbs twitch sharply, once, twice, without my having tried to move them. As if they were coming under the control of some other will –

I jolted awake, shivering and sweating. My head had nodded, my chin sunk down on my chest. It was like struggling to stay awake when I was working late. Except that in the warm blackness behind my eyelids Something was waiting …

I fought desperately to regain control. Somewhere, somewhere far away, there was a new clangour in the drumming, a sharp metallic dinging like the incarnation of a headache. And there were voices – Stryge’s, as harsh and desolate as ever I’d heard it. ‘– beating the ogan iron – can’t you hear? That’s it – that’s the end. The last – the greatest. If they can command Him –’

Something he’d said caught my attention – some memory. Some shreds of my will began to reassert themselves. I concentrated feverishly on whatever still bound me to earth – the pain in my tongue, the dull sting of the burns, the ache in my buttocks from the cold ground, and colder still the iron of the collar and chains. Ogan – that was the word I’d caught; now where had I heard something like that before? I smiled; Frederick, of course. It was good to think of him now. Old Frederick with his muttonchop whiskers, puffing with honest outrage, as belligerent as his picture of St James – ‘Think, man! What will you tell the Invisibles? You can’t argue with Ogoun!’

Courage came late to us both, he and I; well, better late than never. This had to stop here, now. Death, extinction – I had to hold onto something. Better them than fall for that sickly-sweet seduction, that happiness that wouldn’t let me be myself. Stryge had accused me of worshipping nothing; but he’d been wrong. Once before I’d thrown my happiness away – and that was because I worshipped success. Not its trappings – not what it could bring me. Just the satisfaction of achievement, the accomplishment, the abstract thing Itself. And by whatever god it represented, if I could sacrifice myself to it then, I should damn well be able to do the same now. Anything less –

Its opposite. Its ultimate negation, its Antichrist. Failure. The ultimate Failure of all …

You can’t argue with success …

You can’t argue with …

You can’t argue with …

Ogoun …

I drew a breath so deep it howled in my ears, threw my head back and slamming my chin down hard on my chest I bit –

And just for one instant the shadows flew back from me, and left me gasping on the ground, pouring blood from my mouth. My tongue hurt horribly, but all I’d done was bite the side of it. I was in no danger of choking. I saw Jyp staring at me, and Mall’s glazed eyes, and at the line’s end Clare, wide-eyed with horror; that I couldn’t bear.

‘S’okay!’ I mumbled thickly, trying fuzzily to find a reassuring reason for threshing about like that. ‘S’nothing. Just like the bastard said – my balls are freezing! I could …’

I was stunned at the way they reacted. Even Le Stryge pulled away from me in sheer fright, jerking me half off the ground by my collar, which was not the nicest way; and the others shrank back with expressions I couldn’t read.

‘Hey!’ I said, struggling to speak more clearly as I spat out the gore. ‘S’okay! I was just saying I could use some of that bloody rum now, because my –’

‘Yeah!’ croaked Jyp. I’d only once seen his face that pale, and that was after the dupiah. ‘But how come you said it in Creole?’

‘In Creole?’ My turn to be astonished. ‘I don’t speak Creole! A bit of French, but –’ I tried to say it again. And I actually heard my own voice change, felt the muscles in my throat slacken and change, and the sound they formed go impossibly deep and gravelly, felt the tongue that shaped it form new sounds, new shades of tone – another word, another language, another voice altogether.

‘Graine moaine ’fret! Don’moa d’rhum!’

And by damn, it was Creole all right.

The shadows swayed before me, and just as suddenly my throat tightened and I knew my voice would be my own again.

But before I could force out a word Le Stryge, staring at me, suddenly hissed ‘Go on! Go on! Don’t fight it!’ And with his bound legs he began to thrash about in the spilled meal-flour that by now covered the whole ground before us, grunting with his efforts, struggling to form a shape. A complex one – no wonder he struggled; like a fantastic piece of wrought ironwork, a hatched portcullis or gate …

Without warning the beating of the iron rose in a crescendo, the drums thundered madly to keep up – and broke off on the off-beat. The sudden lack of sound was worse than just silence. More like a pistol hanging fire, a match poised above a fuse. I looked up – and across the space I met the distant eyes of Don Pedro, unreadable as the gaze of Night itself. With the dripping sword he gestured, and two of his bokor acolytes sprang down off the altar and strode towards us. In their hands were rope halters, that must have come from the animals. The drumbeat began again, a slow solemn roll. As they walked they began to chant in time with it, intoning the words with businesslike, confident urgency.

I was startled to find I understood them – only too well.

I just bet they could. The crowd parted before them, then fell in behind. One or two began to jeer and howl, waving their bottles, but most joined the chant. Their twisted faces showed a strange inhuman mix of greed and awe.

This was it, at last. The minor sacrifices – the animals, those were done. The loas were here in the persons of their riders. And I hadn’t given in the easy way. Now, as Le Stryge had predicted, Don Pedro would have to bend them to his will, make them take me by force. That would need more blood, stronger blood – mangés majeurs. Human blood. Ours.

They were coming to this end of the line, starting with Stryge himself probably. He paid them no attention, just went on scraping with his heels in the mud and soggy flour, gasping to himself with the effort. I realized suddenly that he was chanting too, to the same drumbeat – a stranger, spikier invocation of his own.

The rhythm seemed to drive the words home into my head like so many nails. I felt them, with a force that went beyond understanding. And I felt something more, something that made me forget danger, humiliation and everything else besides. I needed –

I needed a drink – badly. In the worst possible way. I didn’t like bottles, but the thirst had me gulping greedily for the sickly bite of it. The dancers milled around us now, catcalling, spitting; but all I could see were those bloody bottles. Them swigging and spilling it like that when I didn’t have any, that made me suddenly furious. I yelled at them, and when they only howled and jeered all the louder I felt myself boil up like a kettle. In red rage I demanded my share, I pounded on the ground with my bound fists and roared out ‘Rhum, merd’e’chienne! D’rhum –’

I was a bit startled at how it came out, so loudly it drowned out crowd and drums together. I saw the advancing acolytes hesitate, the crowd sway back.

There went the rum!

I snatched out after the nearest bottle, and found that somehow my wrists had come free, though the broken bindings still dangled from them. My feet were still tied – I couldn’t think why, so I kicked them free with a joyous whoop, tried a flying grab for that bottle – and fell sprawling on my face in the mud.

Of course! There was this bloody iron collar and chain round my neck – and the others, too! What were we – spaniels or something?

I tapped the iron indignantly. I heard myself demand in aggrieved tones why my old friend, my faithful old servant was treating me like this. Didn’t it know me? Didn’t it recognize its master? I caressed the worn old surface agreeably – and felt the joy that leaped and shivered in the living iron, like an eager dog greeting its master. I heard the bolt squeal in delight as it squirmed and wormed its way to freedom, and the singing clang of wild liberation as the collar burst from my neck.

The laughter faltered. With one great gasping breath the crowd shrank back. I leapt up into a tense crouch, like a cat ready to spring. Beside me Le Stryge kicked violently at his diagram, then with an exhausted groan he collapsed. One acolyte caught sight of it, and his eyes bulged. He jabbed a finger and shrilled out ‘Li vever! Ogoun! Ogoun Ferraille!’

Something in me leaped to that name, something billowed like a banner of bright scarlet in the wind, something sang like trumpets. I felt a wild whirl of exaltation, a madly singing, strutting, capering joy. I was the Boss, I was the Man in Charge, I gave the orders round here – and don’t You forget it!

These bokor bastards! They’d thought –

They’d had the nerve to think –

They’d dared to believe they could ride the Invisibles as the Invisibles rode men.

They’d dared try to compel me to help them! Me!

Me –

Me –

Me –

Me –

Me –

Me –

Me!

They’d thought they could sacrifice my friends –

My friends –

To shackle them in iron –

My iron!

And they’d dared to deny Me rum!

RUM!

The rum that was My right. My sign. My lifeblood – they DARED –

I roared. This time I really roared. And the sound went crackling out across the darkness, the guttural thunder of a stalking lion. The flames bent before it. The crowd shrieked, the acolytes dropped their halters and scuttled back, one snatching awkwardly at a cutlass in his belt. The drums stuttered, faltered, failed. They didn’t start again.

My heart was pounding so hard I shook with every beat. Like a tidal wave a red haze swept down on the night – and I went for the nearest Wolf. He lashed out at me barehanded. I caught the arm, wrenched it, seized the bottle from his other hand and hurled him aside. He sprang up, spitting blue murder, and caught me by the throat. With my free hand I seized his wrist, but it was huge – my grip slipped. Something else faltered, something inside. Then behind me I heard Le Stryge rasping out

I heard. I heard –

Very right and proper, too. With a great shout I tilted the bottle to my lips and drained it in one glugging draught. The Wolf boggled. The hot spirit seemed to burst straight from my throat into my veins and suffuse them in a flash, threading my body with tiny lines of tingling fire. I clamped my fingers down on that huge wrist, and felt the squeak and crack of bone. The Wolf yelled, gaped – then crossed his green eyes as I brought the empty bottle smashing down on his half-shaven pate. More Wolves raced at me, maybe three. I threw him sprawling at one, punched another’s nose into pulp and kicked the last in the stomach, because he had a bottle. He whooped and folded, I caught it in mid-air and swigged at it – almost full! I laughed for sheer joy, loud and thunderous, a laugh of liberation. The chains laughed with me and leaped in the air. With an answering chatter all the other shackles flew apart. Jyp and the others fell sprawling, but Le Stryge, still bound, shuffled himself to his knees, hair wild, eyes blazing.

The crowd was a churning mess, the ones at the front trying to get back, the ones at the back pressing forward to see what the fuss was. The Carib guards couldn’t get near us. Through the milling figures the acolyte burst, swinging a cutlass at my head. I chirruped a greeting. The steel blade jerked to a stop in the air before it touched me. The man’s jaw dropped, and I caught his outstretched wrist, shook him like a whipcrack and flung him away in a cartwheel of limbs. He hit a stone and crumpled. Jyp shouted to me; the Caribs were circling around, forcing a way through the crush. I reached down, hoisted him to his feet and tore the ropes off his wrist. A Wolf lunged at me, dirk in hand, bottle in his waistband; he met my own empty coming the other way. I swigged at his, vaguely aware of Jyp seizing the dirk and cutting his feet free, then turning to the rest.

There had to be more rum somewhere –

I saw a bottle and went for whoever was holding it; but a gaggle of Wolves ploughed through panicking humans and barged in on me, trying to snatch me, stab me and generally getting in my way. I damned their nerve, and whistled to the discarded chains. Leaping and nuzzling up to my hands they came, and I grabbed them in my fists and swung them in great loops around my head. Up went the chains with a whistle and whirr, whirling about like a circular saw, scattering my attackers left and right as I advanced. A spear arced over my head, touched that spinning curtain and shattered to matchwood. Those bloody Caribs! I lashed out an arm. The chain went humming off like a bolas and whipped around the leaders, scything the legs from them and catching them up into a screaming tangle of limbs. The others tripped over them, and with a shout Jyp and the men he’d freed were on them, snatching their spears and clubs and returning them with interest.

They were obviously managing, so I looked around hopefully for more rum. And something else I didn’t have, something I couldn’t quite remember – but it was preying on my mind, like an itch I couldn’t scratch. Meanwhile I wanted rum. Most of the humans in the crowd were unarmed, or had only light weapons, and after I felled a few who pulled knives they were only too ready to get out of my way. One tugged a long-barreled pistol out of his robe, got the hammer snagged for a second and didn’t live to regret it. But up on the altar a high thin voice was shrieking out orders or invocations or both, calling his real fighters to heel. Against the fires I saw Wolves mustering there in answer, handing round swords and other weapons they must have had laid by in case of trouble.

Swords! That’s what the itch was! My fingers clamped shut where a hilt had been. Of course! Those lousy bastards – they’d taken it! Chained me in iron – rum denied me – stolen my sword – my sword – I’d show them, the scumbags!

I took one howling breath, and smelt on it the special savour of the steel. I blew the breath out in a shivering, blasting whistle, thin and sharp as starlight. The flames blew flat, the air quivered, men threw themselves down and clutched their ears – and up above the altar something leaped high into the blackness, with a bejewelled hand snatching vainly after it, Don Pedro’s. In the night it hung, spinning madly about its axis like some crazy airscrew, growing larger – larger – closer – until there was the stinging smack of the shark-skin grip in my palm, and the sudden glorious weight. I held it up and howled with delight – till I saw the gore that caked it. That little prick! Slaughtering his foul mangés with my sword –

Mine –

Mine –

Mine –

I howled again. Not with delight, this time. The main group of Wolves were beginning to press through the crowd, but it stopped them in their tracks. Behind me I was vaguely aware of Jyp protesting to Stryge as he cut him loose ‘What the hell’s happened to him? What’ve you done? You get him back, you hear, you goddam’ old vulture? Or if Don Pedro don’t settle your hash I swear to God I will!’

‘I did nothing!’ brayed the old man contemptuously. ‘He did it himself! The one thing Don Pedro wouldn’t have bargained for – that the idiot boy had belly enough left to try and kill himself! As I meant him to! Only he tried it at the right time – when they were calling down a loa! Spilling the blood of others – but he was spilling his own! And to help others, not himself! There’s no sacrifice stronger than that – no offering you can make greater than yourself!’

‘You mean –’

‘I mean the loa came, fool! But to him! Him alone! And free of Don Pedro! And what a loa! All I did was complete the débâtment – hold Him fast! Now get me out of here! Get us all out! Do you want to be caught in what’s coming? Don’t you know who That is?’

All very interesting, but what were those Wolves hanging around for? Don Pedro was shrilling at them, but they didn’t seem too eager to budge.

‘It’s Ogoun, you idiot!’ screamed Stryge, in answer to something I hadn’t heard. ‘The one loa who’d root most gladly in such a mind as his! Ogoun Feraille the Ironmaster, Lord of Smiths – and so of industry, commerce, all that dross! Of politics, even! Ogoun the Giver of Profit! Ogoun the Giver of Success!’

‘Wait a minute!’ breathed Jyp, in tones of awe and horror. ‘Ogoun? That’s not all he is –’

‘No! He’s more!’ Le Stryge crackled. ‘Shall I turn Him loose, invoke His other aspect? Do you want to be caught in range when I do? Forget the boy – get me out of here! Save yourself!’

I turned to look at them. Jyp stepped back a pace, nothing more. Stryge snarled with laughter. ‘So be it, then! At least it’ll be amusing!’ He dug his fingers into the design, and chanted

I looked down, panting. With swift strokes he was adding something to that vever, a flourish, a great crest – what looked like a sword, flanked by two banners, backed with stars …

Something stirred in me – like something vast moving under the earth, or an insect shaping in its chrysalis. But not yet ready to burst out …

I was caught, snared in some inner turmoil, suddenly unsure of myself. I looked around. The Wolves were stirring now, getting ready to charge in earnest. Stryge shook his head wildly, redoubled his chant – until a harsher laugh cut through it. It was Mall, her bonds cut, with Clare trying to support her. But she couldn’t stand, and fell to her knees at the edge of the design. She managed a brief glance of contempt at Stryge. ‘Thou’rt not all-wise, old man!’ she croaked. ‘Hast forgotten aught? But then thou wouldst – the godless sorcerer thou art!’ Dark blood was trickling from her head-wound again, but she stretched out trembling fingers, rubbed raw by her bonds, and with a vast effort began tracing lines that cut the banners across.

‘Let me!’ said Clare quickly. ‘What d’you want? Crosses? Christian crosses?’

‘Aye, so!’ whispered Mall. ‘Crusader crosses! For they’ve lent this One a Christian name, too! A saint’s name!’ Her breath rattled in her throat as she watched Clare complete the design. Something shifted, balanced on a brink – and slid down solidly into place. ‘And let Don Pedro hear it now, and tremble! For ‘tis the battle cry of his own folk, whom he betrayed! Saint-Jaques, Saint James the Great –’

‘Santiago!’ The shout burst unbidden from my lips, in the sheer glory of battle. I was a sword, a flame, a winged horseman, I was the print in Frederick’s window; I was edged iron and all the work that it could do, and I wasn’t disposed to wait. Gleefully I crooked a beckoning finger at the advancing Wolves. ‘Vin’ donc, foutues!’ I screamed. ‘Loup-garous dépouillés, écouillés! Come on, you sons of bitches! Shift ass! Come and lick my sword clean! Come on, you crap-haired cowardly sheep-shaggers!’

That last one did the trick. The Wolves were on me, and as they burst through the crowd I cracked the remaining chain-length like a steel whip over their heads, so close the shameful collars whistled through their rainbow hair. Then I let it snake back around my arm, and flung myself at them. They’d no time to form any kind of line. The first, the leader, I caught with a great slash at midriff height and cut him in two, and while his limbs still tottered my return stroke swept the heads from two behind. One raised a buckler to me and I pounded down on it, once, twice, three times, so fast he couldn’t raise a counterstroke and was hammered down to the ground like a nail. On the fourth stroke the shield split, and so did the Wolf beneath it. I kicked him under the feet of his fellows and growled with delight, then laid right on into the real meat. Swords shattered before they’d touch me, axes broke without daring to bite upon me, and bits of weapon and Wolf flew everywhere.

Behind me Stryge, like a man demented, was shrieking out, over and over.

I laughed louder than ever as I sent the Wolves spilling from my path, left and right and over my shoulder on my sword’s point, kicked one in the belly and vaulted over him as he doubled up, aimed a great slash at another, lunged, hewed, thrust. There was a loud crash, and something whistled near me. One of the worshippers was kneeling, steadying a revolver of some kind on his arm. I wheeled and ran straight at him. He pulled the trigger once more, but the hammer stayed where it was; and then I was on him. Blued steel is still iron at heart.

Noise erupted behind me. Some Wolves had circled round and attacked the crew as the last of them were getting cut loose. As I turned one of them hurled an axe at my head; I reached out, caught it and went for him with it, and they all fell over themselves avoiding me. Pierce rolled at my feet, entangled with a monster of a Wolf who was trying to throttle him. I pressed the axe into Pierce’s flailing hand, sprang over him and went for the rest with great two-handed slashes. Now they fell back at every dart I made, but I was faster. The ones in front fell against the ones behind, and I carved at them like a solid mass, driving them back, back among the terrified crowd, pressing on towards that stinking altar. How long it lasted, I don’t know, the mad music of hewing metal, the shouts, the screams and the hacking, jarring impacts; but suddenly I’d run out of enemies. The Wolf ranks broke. They fled like mad in all directions, and the remaining worshippers bolted with them – back towards the altar, seeking their master’s shadow, or just out into the night. I shouted after them, I don’t know what. The fouled ground before me seethed with shapes that groaned or kicked or twitched their way down into stillness, and I chuckled deep in my throat to see them, mocking the insistent cries that came from the altar. A few more disciplined Wolves were trying to turn the rout by the simple means of felling anyone, Wolf or human, who tried to push past. A terrified free-for-all developed, Wolf against Wolf with the humans caught bloodily in the middle, tearing each other to shreds like rabbits with a ferret loose in their burrows. I drank deep of the reeking air, and was just about to press on after them when a cry turned me in my tracks, as perhaps no other could.

It was Clare’s voice, from where she knelt. Stretched out across the vever Mall lay sprawled, unmoving, limbs outflung, blood from her head seeping along the wide gouged lines. Slowly, very slowly. Two strides took me to Clare’s side. I looked down. Mall’s eyes were half-open, but rolled back so the pupils had disappeared. Clare sobbed. Something within me sang a high steely tone of recognition, of acknowledgement, and without quite knowing what I was doing I knelt slowly down, reached out and touched my middle finger right to the centre of Mall’s forehead.

Her eyes closed. The whole night seemed to tremble with a growing vibration, the clear singing note of an infinite violin string that swelled louder than the silenced drums. It blew through us like a great wind, shaking us. I felt it whip my hair about my face, send hers billowing and streaming out like smoke. Whether it was in her or me, I couldn’t tell – but as her eyes snapped open again a spark flashed between us, and light leaped up within the very heart of her, so bright that the skull blazed out beneath the flesh. Clare gave a high-pitched shriek, then clapped her hands in laughing delight. The gouts of clotted blood about Mall’s head dried, crumbled, blew away. The bruised flesh paled and cleared; the depressed gouge left across her temple by the Carib club swelled and filled. She convulsed with the force of it, then sagged back with a deep breath of infinite relief. ‘My thanks, my lord! But i’the name of all hates ill, stay not! Go settle the viper, and I –’ She swung her legs under her, and rose smoothly, unhurriedly to her feet. ‘By thy grace, I’ll shield those here for now!’ Her eyes flamed with alarm. ‘Go! Go now!’

I turned –

Clambering high on the white rock behind the altar, casting about, I saw Don Pedro. In the same instant he saw me, and across that space our gazes locked. A card turned in the air – a two of spades merged to become an ace, a pool of infinite blackness drawing me on – in – and down. Falling. Falling …

My elbow slipped sideways, my head jerked; I stopped it barely an instant before my nose hit the keyboard of my terminal and scrambled everything on the screen. My coffee-cup, untouched, teetered on the edge of the desk, and I retrieved it hastily; we’d had enough mess and breakages round here lately. Dozing off at my desk! Serve me right for spending half the week-end in discos, and not getting enough sleep. Some daydream! Some damn daydream! It’d left me still ringing with the violence of it. I struggled to pull myself together. I jumped when the intercom buzzed.

‘Steve?’ inquired Clare’s voice.

‘Y … yes?’

‘You sound a bit funny, You’re all right?’

‘Sure. Just … wrapped up in something, that’s all.’

‘You shouldn’t overdo it, really. Your four o’clock appointment, remember? Mr Peters is in Reception.’

I shook my head, swallowed a sip of the cold coffee and straightened my tie. ‘Well, then. Show him in!’