Taltos

Nineteen

THE TOPMOST ROOM of the tower. Yuri sat at the round table, looking down into the cup of steaming Chinese tea before him.

The condemned man himself had made the tea. Yuri didn’t want to touch it.

All his life in the Talamasca, he had known Stuart Gordon. He had dined countless times with Gordon and Aaron. They had strolled the gardens together, gone to the retreats in Rome together. Aaron had talked so freely with Gordon. The Mayfair witches and the Mayfair witches and the Mayfair witches. And now it was Gordon.

Betrayed him.

Why didn’t Ash kill him now? What could the man give that would not be contaminated, not perverted by his madness? It was almost a certainty that his helpers had been Marklin George and Tommy Monohan. But the Order would discover the truth on that score. Yuri had reached the Motherhouse from the phone booth in the village, and the mere sound of Elvera’s voice had brought him to tears. Elvera was faithful. Elvera was good. Yuri knew that the great chasm that had opened between him and the Talamasca had already begun to close. If Ash was right, that the conspiracy had been small, and indeed that seemed to be the case-that the Elders were not involved-then Yuri must be patient. He must listen to Stuart Gordon. Because Yuri had to take back to the Talamasca whatever he learned tonight.

Patience. Aaron would want it thus. Aaron would want the story known, and recorded for others to know. And Michael and Rowan, were they not entitled to the facts? And then there was Ash, the mysterious Ash. Ash had uncovered Gordon’s treachery. If Ash had not appeared in Spelling Street, Yuri would have accepted Gordon’s pretense of innocence, and the few foolish lies Gordon had told while they sat in the café.

What went on in Ash’s mind? He was overwhelming, just as Yuri had told them. Now they knew. They saw for themselves his remarkable face, the calm, loving eyes. But they mustn’t forget that he was a menace to Mona, to any of the Mayfair family-

Yuri forced himself to stop thinking about this. They needed Ash too much just now. Ash had somehow become the commander of this operation. What would happen if Ash withdrew and left them with Gordon? They couldn’t kill Gordon. They couldn’t even scare him, at least Yuri didn’t think so. It was impossible to gauge how much Rowan and Michael hated Gordon. Unreadable. Witches. He could see that now.

Ash sat on the other side of the circle, his monstrous hands clasped on the edge of the old, unfinished wood, watching Gordon, who sat to his right. He did hate Gordon, and Yuri saw it by the absence of something in Ash’s face, the absence of compassion, perhaps? The absence of the tenderness which Ash showed to everyone, absolutely everyone else.

Rowan Mayfair and Michael Curry sat on either side of Yuri, thank God. He could not have endured to be close to Gordon. Michael was the wrathful one, the suspicious one. Rowan was taken with Ash. Yuri had known she would be. But Michael was taken with no one just yet.

Yuri could not touch this cup. It might as well have been filled with the man’s urine.

“Out of the jungles of India,” said Stuart, sipping his own tea, in which he had poured a large slug of whiskey. “I don’t know where. I don’t know India. I know only that the natives said she’d been there forever, wandering from village to village, and that she’d come to them before the war, and that she spoke English and that she didn’t grow old, and the women of the village had become frightened of her.”

The whiskey bottle stood in the middle of the table. Michael Curry wanted it, but perhaps he could not touch the refreshments offered by Gordon either. Rowan Mayfair sat with her arms folded. Michael Curry had his elbows on the table. He was closer to Stuart, obviously trying to figure him out.

“I think it was a photograph, her undoing. Someone had taken a picture of the entire village, together. Some intrepid soul with a tripod and a wind-up camera. And she had been in that picture. It was one of the young men who uncovered it among his grandmother’s possessions when the grandmother died. An educated man. A man I’d taught at Oxford.”

“And he knew about the Talamasca.”

“Yes, I didn’t talk much to my students about the Order, except for those who seemed as if they might want to …”

“Like those boys,” said Yuri.

He watched the light jump in Stuart’s eye, as if the lamp nearby had jumped, and not Stuart.

“Yes, well, those boys.”

“What boys?” asked Rowan.

“Marklin George and Tommy Monohan,” said Yuri.

Stuart’s face was rigid. He lifted the mug of tea with both hands and drank deeply.

The whiskey smelled medicinal and sickening.

“Were they the ones who helped you with this?” asked Yuri. “The computer genius and the Latin scholar?”

“It was my doing,” said Stuart, without looking at Yuri. He was not looking at any of them. “Do you want to hear what I have to say, or not?”

“They helped you,” said Yuri.

“I have nothing to say on the subject of my accomplices,” Gordon said, looking coldly at Yuri now, and then back again into empty space, or the shadows along the walls.

“It was the two young ones,” said Yuri, though Michael was gesturing to him to hold back. “What about Joan Cross, or Elvera Fleming, or Timothy Hollingshed?”

Stuart made an impatient and disgusted gesture at the mention of these names, hardly realizing how this might be interpreted in relation to the boys.

“Joan Cross doesn’t have a romantic bone in her body,” Stuart said suddenly, “and Timothy Hollingshed has always been overrated due simply to his aristocratic background. Elvera Fleming is an old fool! Don’t ask me these questions anymore. I won’t be made to speak of my accomplices. I won’t be made to betray them. I’ll die with that secret, be assured.”

“So this friend,” said Ash, his expression patient but surprisingly cold, “this young man in India, he wrote to you, Mr. Gordon.”

“Called me, as a matter of fact, told me he had a mystery for me. He said he could get her to England, if I’d take over once she arrived. He said that she couldn’t really fend for herself. She seemed mad, and then not mad. No one could quite analyze her. She spoke of times unknown to the people around her. And when he’d made inquiries, with a view to sending her home, he found she was a legend in that part of India. I have a record of it all. I have our letters. They are all here. There are copies in the Motherhouse as well. But the originals are here. Everything I value is in this tower.”

“You knew what she was when you saw her?”

“No. It was extraordinary. I found myself enchanted by her. Some selfish instinct dominated my actions. I brought her here. I didn’t want to take her to the Motherhouse. It was most peculiar. I couldn’t have told anyone what I was doing or why, except for the obvious fact that I was so charmed by her. I had only lately inherited this tower from my mother’s brother, an antiquarian who had been my family mentor. It seemed the perfect place.

“The first week, I scarcely left at all. I had never been in the company of such a person as Tessa. There was a gaiety and simplicity in her which gave me inexpressible happiness.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” said Ash softly, with a trace of a smile. “Please go on with your story.”

“I fell in love with her.” He paused, eyebrows raised, as if amazed by his own words. He seemed excited by the revelation. “I fell completely in love with her.”

“And you kept her here?” asked Yuri.

“Yes, she’s been here ever since. She never goes out. She’s afraid of people. It’s only when I’ve been here a long while that she’ll talk, and then she tells her amazing tales.

“She’s seldom coherent, or I should say chronological. The little stories always make sense. I have hundreds of recordings of her talking, lists of Old English words and Latin words which she has used.

“You see, what became clear to me almost immediately was that she was speaking of two different lives, a very long one which she was living now, and a life she’d lived before.”

“Two lives? Then you mean, simply, reincarnation.”

“After a long while, she explained,” said Gordon. He was now so passionately involved in his tale, he seemed to have forgotten the danger to him. “She said that all her kind had two lives, sometimes more,” he went on. “That you were born knowing all you needed to know to survive, but then gradually an earlier life came back to you, and bits and pieces of others. And it was the memory of this earlier life that kept you from going mad among human beings.”

“You had realized,” asked Rowan, “by this time, that she wasn’t human. She would have fooled me.”

“No. Not at all. I thought she was human. Of course, there were strange characteristics to her-her translucent skin, her tremendous height, and her unusual hands. But I didn’t think, ‘No, this being isn’t human.’

“It was she who said that she wasn’t human. She said it more than once. Her people lived before humans. They had lived thousands of years in peace on islands in the northern seas. These islands were warmed by volcanic springs from the depths, by geysers of steam, and pleasant lakes.

“And this she knew, not because she herself had lived at that time, but because others she had known in her first lifetime could remember a former life in this paradise, and that was how her people knew their history, through the inevitable and always singular remembrance of earlier lives.

“Don’t you see? It was incredible, the idea that everyone would come into this world with some distinct and valuable historical memories! It meant that the race knew more of itself than humans could possibly know. It knew of earlier ages from, so to speak, firsthand experience!”

“And if you bred Tessa to another of her race,” said Rowan, “you would have a child who could remember an earlier life-and then perhaps another child and another life remembered.”

“Exactly! The chain of memory would be established, and who knows how far back it would go, for each one, remembering some earlier existence, remembering the tales of those he had known and loved in that time who remembered having lived before!”

Ash listened to all this without comment, or any perceptible change of emotion. None of it seemed to surprise him or offend him. Yuri almost smiled. It was the same simplicity he’d observed in Ash at Claridge’s, when they had first spoken.

“Someone else might have dismissed Tessa’s claims,” said Gordon, “but I recognized the Gaelic words she used, the bits of Old English, the Latin, and when she wrote down the runic script, I could read it! I knew she told the truth.”

“And this you kept to yourself,” said Rowan, neutrally, as if merely trying to quell Gordon’s annoying emotion and get back on track.

“Yes! I did. I almost told Aaron about it. The more Tessa talked, the more she spoke of the Highlands, of early Celtic rituals and customs, of Celtic saints even, and the Celtic church.

“You do know that our church in England then was Celtic or Briton or whatever you want to call it, founded by the Apostles themselves, who had come from Jerusalem to Glastonbury. We had no connection with Rome. It was Pope Gregory and his henchman, St. Augustine, who thrust the Roman church on Britain.”

“Yes, but then you did not tell Aaron Lightner?” asked Ash, raising his voice just slightly. “You were saying …?”

“Aaron had already gone to America. He had gone there to make contact once more with the Mayfair witches, and to pursue other paths in psychic investigation. It was no time to question Aaron about his early research. And then, of course, I had done something wrong. I had taken a woman entrusted to me as a member of the Order, and I had kept her for myself, almost a prisoner. Of course, there has never been anything stopping Tessa from leaving, nothing but her own fear. But I had closeted this woman away. I had told the Order nothing about it.”

“But how did you make the connection?” asked Ash. “Between Tessa and the Mayfair witches?”

“Oh, it wasn’t that difficult at all. One thing followed upon another. As I said, Tessa’s speech was full of references to archaic Highland customs. She spoke over and over of the circles of stones built by her people and later used by the Christians for bizarre rituals to which their priests could never put a stop.

“You know our mythology, surely all of you, some of you. The ancient myths of Britain are full of mythic giants. Our stories say the giants built the circles, and so did Tessa. Our giants lingered long after their time in the dark and remote places, in the caves by the sea, in the caves of the Highlands. Well, Tessa’s giants, hunted from the earth, almost annihilated, also survived in secret places! And when they did dare to appear among human beings, they incited both worship and fear. It was the same, she said, with the Little Folk, whose origins had been forgotten. They were revered on the one hand, and feared on the other. And often the early Christians of Scotland would dance and sing within the circle of stones, knowing that the giants had once done this-indeed, had built the circles for that purpose-and they would, by their music, lure the giants from hiding, so that the giants came down to join the dance, at which point these Christians would slaughter them to satisfy the priests, but not before using them to satisfy old gods.”

“How do you mean, ‘using them’?” asked Rowan.

Gordon’s eyes glazed slightly, and his voice dropped to a soft, nearly pleasant tone, as if the mere mention of these things could not but evoke a sense of wonder.

“Witchcraft, that is what we are talking about-early, blood-drenched witchcraft, in which superstition, under the yoke of Christianity, reached back into a pagan past for magic, to do maleficia, or to gain power, or only to witness a dark secret rite which thrilled them as criminal acts have always thrilled humankind. I longed to corroborate Tessa’s stories.

“Without confiding in anyone, I went to the very cellars of the Motherhouse, the places where the oldest unexamined material on British folklore had been stored. These were manuscripts that had been deemed ‘fanciful’ and ‘irrelevant’ by the scholars, like Aaron, who had spent years translating old documents. This material did not exist in our modern inventory or our modern computer banks. One had to touch the crumbling pages with one’s own hand.

“Oh, what I found! Crumbling quartos and books of beautifully illustrated parchment, the works of Irish monks and the Benedictines and the Cistercians, complaining of the mad superstition of the common people, and filled with tales of these giants and these Little Folk, and how the common people persisted in believing in them, in luring them out, in using them in various ways.

“And right there, mixed in with these ranting condemnations, were tales of giant saints! Giant knights and kings!

“Here, at Glastonbury, only a little way from where we sit now, a giant of seven feet was unearthed in former times, and declared to be King Arthur. What was this but one of Tessa’s giants, I ask you? Such creatures have been found all over Britain.

“Oh, a thousand times I was tempted to call Aaron. How Aaron would have loved these stories, especially those which had come directly from the Highlands and its haunted lochs and glens.

“But there was only one person in this world in whom I could confide. And that was Tessa.

“And as I brought home my carefully excavated stories, Tessa recognized these rituals, these patterns-indeed, the names of saints and kings. Of course, Tessa didn’t speak with sophisticated words. It came in fragments from her, how her people had become a sacred quarry, and could save themselves from torture and death only by rising to power and gaining sway over the Christians, or by fleeing deeper and deeper into the great forests which still covered the mountains in those years, and into the caves and the secret valleys where they struggled to live in peace.”

“And this you never told Aaron,” said Yuri.

Gordon ignored the words. He continued:

“Then, in a painful voice, Tessa confessed to me that she had once suffered horribly at the hands of Christian peasants, who had imprisoned her and forced her to receive man after man from all the villages round. The hope was that she would give birth to another giant like herself, a giant who would spring from the womb, speaking, knowing, and growing to maturity within hours-a creature which the villagers might then have killed before her eyes!

“It had become a religion to them, don’t you see? Catch the Taltos, breed it, sacrifice the offspring. And Christmas, that time of ancient pagan rituals, had become their favorite period for the sacred game. From this hideous captivity Tessa had finally escaped, having never given birth to the sacrificial creature, and only suffering a flow of blood from the seed of each human man.”

He stopped, his brows knit. His face became sad, and he looked at Ash.

“This is what hurt my Tessa? This is what dried the fount?” It wasn’t so much a question as a confirmation of what had been revealed earlier, only Ash, feeling no need, apparently, to confirm it, did not speak.

Gordon shuddered.

“She spoke of horrible things!” he said. “She talked of the males lured down into the circles, and of the village maidens offered to them; but if the giant was not born to such a maiden, death would surely result. And when enough maidens had died that the people doubted the power of this male giant, he was then burnt as the sacrifice. Indeed, he was always burnt, whatever the outcome, or whether or not he had fathered a sacrificial offspring, because the males were so greatly feared.”

“So they didn’t fear the women,” said Rowan. “Because the women didn’t bring death to the human men who lay with them.”

“Exactly,” said Gordon. “However!” He held up his finger with a little delighted smile. “However! It did now and then happen, yes! That the male giant or the female giant did parent, as it were, the magical child of its own race. And there would be this newborn giant for all to behold.

“No time was more propitious for such a union than Christmas, December Twenty-fifth, the feast of the old solar god! And it was said then-when a giant was born-that the heavens had once again copulated with the earth, and out of the union had come a great magic, as had happened at the First Creation; and only after great feasting, and singing of the Christmas songs, was the sacrifice carried out in Christ’s name. Now and then a giant fathered or mothered many such offspring, and Taltos mated with Taltos, and the fires of sacrifice filled the glens, the smoke rising to heaven, bringing an early spring and warm winds and good rains, and making the crops grow.”

Gordon broke off, turning enthusiastically to Ash. “You must know all of this. You yourself could give us links in the chain of memory. Surely you too have lived an earlier life. You could tell us things which no human can ever discover in any other way. You can tell them with clarity and power, for you’re strong, and not addled, like my poor Tessa! You can give us this gift.”

Ash said nothing. But his face had darkened, and Gordon seemed not at all aware of it.

He’s a fool, thought Yuri. Perhaps that is what great schemes of violence always require-a romantic fool.

Gordon turned to the others, even to Yuri, to whom he appealed now. “Don’t you understand? Surely you understand now what such possibilities meant to me?”

“What I know,” said Yuri, “is that you didn’t tell Aaron. And you didn’t tell the Elders, either, did you? The Elders never knew. Your brothers and sisters never knew!”

“I told you. I could trust no one with my discoveries, and frankly, I would not. They were mine. Besides, what would our beloved Elders have said, if ‘said’ is even appropriate for their endless silent communications! A fax would have come through directing me to bring Tessa to the Motherhouse at once, and to-No, this discovery was mine by right. I had found Tessa.”

“No, you lie to yourself and everyone else,” said Yuri. “Everything that you are is because of the Talamasca.”

“That’s a contemptible thought! Have I given the Talamasca nothing? Besides, it was never my idea to hurt our own members! The doctors involved, yes, I agreed to this, though again I would never have proposed it.”

“You did kill Dr. Samuel Larkin?” asked Rowan in her low, expressionless voice, probing but not meaning to alarm him.

“Larkin, Larkin … Oh, I don’t know. I get confused. You see, my helpers had some very different notions from mine, about what was required to keep the whole thing secret. You might say I went along with the more daring aspects of the plan. In truth, I can’t imagine simply killing another human being.”

He glared at Ash, accusingly.

“And your helpers, their names?” asked Michael. His tone was not unlike Rowan’s, low-key, entirely pragmatic. “The men in New Orleans, Norgan and Stolov, you invited those men to share these secrets?”

“No, of course not,” declared Gordon. “They weren’t really members, any more than Yuri here was a member. They were merely investigators for us, couriers, that kind of thing. But by that time it had … it had gotten out of hand, perhaps. I can’t say. I only know my friends, my confidants, they felt they could control those men with secrets and money. That’s what it’s always about, corruption-secrets and money. But let’s get away from all that. What matters here is the discovery itself. That is what is pure and what redeems everything.”

“It redeems nothing!” said Yuri. “For gain you took your knowledge! A common traitor, looting the archives for personal gain.”

“Nothing could be farther from the truth,” declared Gordon.

“Yuri, let him go on,” said Michael quietly. Gordon calmed himself with remarkable will, appealing to Yuri again in a manner that infuriated Yuri.

“How can you think that my goals were other than spiritual?” asked Gordon. “I, who have grown up in the shadow of Glastonbury Tor, who all his life has been devoted to esoteric knowledge, only for the light it brings into our souls?”

“It was spiritual gain, perhaps,” said Yuri, “but it was gain, personal gain. And that is your crime.”

“You try my patience,” said Gordon. “Perhaps you should be sent from this room. Perhaps I should say nothing more….”

“Tell your story,” said Ash calmly. “I’m growing impatient.”

Gordon stopped, gazed at the table, one eyebrow raised, as if to say he need not settle for this ultimatum. He looked at Ash coldly.

“How did you make the connection?” asked Rowan. “Between all of this and the Mayfair witches?”

“I saw a connection at once. It had to do with the circle of stones. I had always known the original tale of Suzanne, the first Mayfair, the witch of the Highlands who had called up a devil in the circle of stones. And I had read Peter van Abel’s description of that ghost and how it pursued him, and taunted him, and evinced a will far stronger than any human haunt.

“The account of Peter van Abel was the first record of the Mayfair witches which Aaron translated, and it was to me, naturally, that he came with many questions about the old Latin. Aaron was always coming to me in those days for assistance.”

“How unfortunate for him,” said Yuri.

“Naturally it occurred to me, what if this Lasher were the soul of another species of being seeking to reincarnate? How well it fitted the whole mystery! And Aaron had only lately written from America that the Mayfair family faced its darkest hour when the ghost who would be made flesh was threatening to come through.

“Was this the soul of a giant wanting its second life? At last my discoveries had become too momentous. I had to share them. I had to bring into this those I trusted.”

“But not Stolov and Norgan.”

“No! My friends … my friends were of an entirely different ilk. But you’re confusing me. Stolov and Norgan weren’t involved then. No. Let me continue.”

“But they were in the Talamasca, these friends,” said Rowan.

“I will tell you nothing of them except that they were … they were young men in whom I believed.”

“You brought these friends here, to the tower?”

“Indeed not,” said Stuart. “I’m not that much of a fool. Tessa I revealed to them, but in a spot chosen by me for the purpose, in the ruin of Glastonbury Abbey, on the very spot where the skeleton of the seven-foot giant had been unearthed, only to be later reinterred.

“It was a sentimental thing, my taking her there, to stand over the grave of one of her own. And there I allowed her to be worshiped by those whom I trusted to help with my work. They had no idea that her permanent abode was less than a mile away. They were never to know.

“But they were dedicated and enterprising. They suggested the very first scientific tests. They helped me obtain with a syringe the first blood from Tessa, which was sent to various laboratories for anonymous analysis. And then we had the first firm proof that Tessa was not human! Enzymes, chromosomes, it was all quite beyond me. But they understood it.”

“They were doctors?” Rowan asked.

“No. Only very brilliant young men.” A shadow passed over his face, and he glanced viciously at Yuri.

Yes, your acolytes, Yuri thought. But he said nothing. If he interrupted again, it would be to kill Gordon.

“Everything was so different at that point! There were no plots to have people killed. But then, so much more was to happen.”

“Go on,” said Michael.

“My next step was obvious! To return to the cellars, to all the abandoned folklore, and research only those saints of exceedingly great size. And what should I come upon but a pile of hagiography-manuscripts saved from destruction at the time of Henry VIII’s ghastly suppression of the monasteries, and dumped in our archives along with thousands of other such texts.

“And … And among these treasures was a carton marked by some long-dead secretary or clerk: ‘Lives of the Scottish Saints.’ And the hastily scribbled subtitle: ‘Giants’!

“At once I happened upon a later copy of an early work by a monk at Lindisfarne, writing in the 700s, who told the tale of St. Ashlar, a saint of such magic and power that he had appeared among the Highlanders in two different and separate eras, having been returned by God to earth, as was the Prophet Isaiah, and who was destined, according to legend, to return again and again.”

Yuri looked at Ash, but Ash said nothing. Yuri couldn’t even remember whether Gordon had ever understood Ash’s name. But Gordon was already staring at Ash, and then said quickly:

“Could this be the very personage for whom you were named? Could it be that you know of this saint yourself, through your remembrances or those you heard from others, assuming you have known others like yourself?” Gordon’s eyes blazed.

Ash didn’t answer. The silence this time was stony. Something changed again in Ash’s face. Was it pure hatred that he felt for Gordon?

Gordon at once resumed his account, his shoulders hunched and his hands working now in his excitement.

“I was overcome with enthusiasm when I read that St. Ashlar had been a giant of a being, standing perhaps seven feet tall, that St. Ashlar had come from a pagan race whom he himself had helped to exterminate-”

“Get on with it,” said Ash softly. “How did you connect this with the Mayfair witches? How did men come to die as the result?”

“All right,” said Gordon patiently, “but you will perhaps grant this dying man one request.”

“Perhaps not,” said Ash. “But what is it?”

“You will tell me whether or not these tales are actually known to you, whether you yourself have remembrances of these early times?”

Ash made a gesture that Gordon should continue.

“Ah, you are cruel, my friend,” said Gordon.

Ash was becoming deeply angry. It was plain to see. His full black hair and smooth, almost innocent mouth rendered his expression all the more menacing. He was like an angel gathering its anger. He did not respond to Gordon’s words.

“You brought home these tales to Tessa?” asked Rowan.

“Yes,” said Gordon, ripping his eyes off Ash finally and looking to her. A little false smile came over his mouth as he continued-as if to say, Now we will answer the question of the pretty lady in the first row.

“I did bring the tale home to Tessa; over supper, as always, I told her of my reading. And the history of this very saint, she knew! Ashlar, one of her own people, and a great leader, a king among them, who had converted to Christianity, betraying his own kind. I was triumphant. Now I had this name to track through history.

“And the following morning I was back at the archives and hard at work. And then, and then … came my momentous discovery, that for which other scholars of the Talamasca would give their eyeteeth, if only they knew.”

He paused, glancing from one face to another, and even to Yuri finally, his smile full of pride.

“This was a book, a codex of vellum, such as I had never seen in my long life of scholarship! And never dreamed that I would see ‘St. Ashlar,’ that was the name carved on the cover of the wood box which contained it. ‘St. Ashlar.’ That was the name of the saint that leapt from the dust and the shadows as I went along the shelves with my electric torch.”

Another pause.

“And beneath that name,” said Gordon, again looking from one to the other to enlarge the drama. “Beneath, in runic script, were the words, ‘History of the Taltos of Britain!’ and in Latin: ‘Giants in the Earth!’ As Tessa was to confirm for me that very night with a simple nod of her head, I had hit upon the crucial word itself.

“Taltos. ‘That is what we are,’ she said.

“At once I left the tower. I drove back to the Motherhouse. I went down into the cellar. Other records I had always examined within the house, in the libraries or wherever I chose. When has such scholarship ever attracted anyone’s notice? But this I had to possess.”

He rose, resting his knuckles on the table. He looked at Ash, as if Ash would move to stop him. Ash’s face was dark, and some imperceptible change had rendered it utterly cold.

Gordon drew back, turned, and then went directly to a big carved cabinet against the wall, and took out of it a large rectangular box.

Ash had watched him calmly, not anticipating an attempt at escape, or confident that he could catch Gordon if Gordon had run for the stairway.

And now Ash stared at the box as Gordon set it down before them. It seemed something was building in Ash, something that might explode.

Good God, the document is genuine, thought Yuri.

“See,” Gordon said, his fingers resting on the oiled wood as if on the sacred. “St. Ashlar,” he said. And again he translated the rest.

“And what do you think is in this box, all of you? What would you guess?”

“Get on with it, please, Gordon,” said Michael, throwing a pointed glance at Ash.

“I shall!” Gordon declared in a whisper, and then, opening the box, he drew out a huge book with stiff leather covers, and laid it down in front of him, as he pushed the box aside.

At once he opened the cover and revealed the title page on the vellum, beautifully illustrated in crimson and gold and royal blue. Tiny miniatures speckled the Latin text. He turned the page carefully. Yuri saw more gorgeous writing and more fine, tiny illustrations whose beauty could only be studied by someone looking through a glass.

“Behold, for you have never in your life seen such a document. For it was written by the saint himself.

“It is the history of the Taltos from their earliest beginnings; the history of a race annihilated; and his own confession that he himself-priest, miracle worker, saint if you will-is not human, but one of the lost giants. It is his plea, to Saint Columba himself, the great missionary to the Picts, abbot and founder of the Celtic monastery on Iona, to believe that the Taltos are not monsters, but beings with immortal souls, creatures made by God, who can share in Christ’s grace-it is too magnificent!”

Suddenly Ash rose to his feet, and snatched the book away from Gordon, tearing it loose from Gordon’s very hands.

Gordon stood frozen by his chair, Ash standing over him.

The others rose slowly to their feet. When a man is this angry, one must respect his anger, or at least acknowledge it, thought Yuri. They stood quietly gazing up at him as he continued to glare at Gordon as if he would kill the man now.

To see the mild face of Ash disfigured with rage was a terrible thing to behold. This is what angels look like, thought Yuri, when they come with their flaming swords.

Gordon was slowly yielding from outrage to plain terror.

When Ash finally began to speak, it was in a soft whisper, the voice of his former gentleness, yet loud enough for all of them to hear:

“How dare you take this into your possession?” The voice rose in its anger. “You are a thief as well as a killer! You dare!”

“And you would take it from me?” demanded Gordon with blazing eyes. He threw his anger in the face of Ash’s anger. “You would take it from me as you will take my life? Who are you to take it? Do you know what I know of your own people?”

“I wrote it!” declared Ashlar, his face now flushed with his rage. “It’s mine, this book!” he whispered, as if he didn’t dare to speak aloud. “I inscribed every word,” he said. “I painted every picture. It was for Columba that I did this, yes! And it is mine!” He stepped back, clutching the book against his chest. He trembled and blinked his eyes for a moment and then spoke again in his soft voice: “And all your talk,” he said, “of your research, of remembered lives, of … chains of memory!”

The silence quivered with his anger.

Gordon shook his head. “You’re an impostor,” he said.

No one spoke.

Gordon remained firm, his face almost comic in its insolence. “Taltos, yes,” he said, “St. Ashlar, never! Your age would be beyond calculation!”

No one spoke. No one moved. Rowan’s eyes were searching Ash’s face. Michael watched all, it seemed, as Yuri did.

Ash gave a deep sigh. He bowed his head slightly, still holding tight to the book. His fingers relaxed ever so slightly around the edges of it.

“And what do you think,” he asked sadly, “is the age of that pathetic creature who sits at her loom below?”

“But it was of the remembered life that she spoke, and other remembered lives related to her in her-”

“Oh, stop it, you miserable old fool!” Ash pleaded softly. His breath came haltingly, and then at last the fire started to drain from his face.

“And this you kept from Aaron Lightner,” he said. “This you kept from the greatest scholars of your Order, for you and your young friends to weave a filthy plot to steal the Taltos! You are no more than the peasants of the Highlands, the ignorant, brutish savages that lured the Taltos into the circle to kill him. It was the Sacred Hunt all over again.”

“No, never to kill!” cried Gordon. “Never to kill. To see the coupling! To bring Lasher and Tessa together on Glastonbury Tor!” He began to weep, choking, gasping, his voice half strangled as he went on. “To see the race rise again on the sacred mountain where Christ himself stood to propagate the religion that changed the whole world! It was not to kill, never to kill, but to bring back to life! It’s these witches who have killed, these here who destroyed the Taltos as if he were nothing but a freak of nature! Destroyed him, coldly and ruthlessly, and without a care for what he was, or might become! They did it, not I!”

Ash shook his head. He clutched the book ever more tightly.

“No, you did it,” said Ash. “If only you had told your tale to Aaron Lightner, if only you had given him your precious knowledge!”

“Aaron would never have cooperated!” Gordon cried. “I could never have made such a plan. We were too old, both of us. But those who had the youth, the courage, the vision-they sought to bring the Taltos safely together!”

Again Ash sighed. He waited, measuring his breaths. Then again he looked at Gordon.

“How did you learn of the Mayfair Taltos?” Ash demanded. “What was the final connection? I want to know. And answer me now or I will rip your head from your shoulders and place it in the lap of your beloved Tessa. Her stricken face will be the very last thing you see before the brain inside sputters and dies.”

“Aaron,” said Gordon. “It was Aaron himself.” He was trembling, perhaps on the verge of blacking out. He backed up, eyes darting from right to left. He stared at the cabinet from which he’d taken the book.

“His reports from America,” said Gordon, moving closer to the cabinet. “The Council was convened. The information was of critical importance. A monstrous child had been born to the Mayfair witch, Rowan. It had happened on Christmas Eve. A child that had grown within hours perhaps to the size of a man. Members throughout the world were given the description of this being. It was a Taltos, I knew it! And only I knew.”

“You evil man,” whispered Michael. “You evil little man.”

“You call me that! You, who destroyed Lasher! Who killed the mystery as if he were a pedestrian criminal to be dispatched by you to hell in a barroom brawl?”

“You and the others,” said Rowan quickly. “You did this on your own.”

“I’ve told you we did.” He took another step towards the cabinet. “Look, I won’t tell you who the others were, I told you.”

“I mean the Elders weren’t any part of it,” said Rowan.

“The excommunications,” said Gordon, “were bogus. We created an intercept. I didn’t do it. I don’t even understand. But it was created, and we let through only those letters to and from the Elders that did not pertain to this case. We substituted our own exchanges for those between Aaron or Yuri and the Elders, and those from the Elders to them. It wasn’t difficult-the Elders, with their penchant for secrecv and simplicity, had left themselves wide open for such a trick.”

“Thank you for telling us this,” said Rowan gravely. “Perhaps Aaron suspected it.”

Yuri could scarcely bear the kindness with which she was speaking to the villain, giving him comfort, when he should have been strangled then and there.

Then she said, “What else can we get out of him?” She looked at Ash. “I think we’re finished with him.”

Gordon understood what was happening. She was giving Ash permission to kill him. Yuri watched as, slowly, Ash set down the precious book again and turned to face Gordon, his hands free now to carry out the sentence which he himself had imposed.

“You know nothing,” Gordon declared suddenly. “Tessa’s words, her history, the tapes I made. Only I know where they are.”

Ash merely stared at him. His eyes had grown narrow, and his eyebrows came together now in a scowl.

Gordon turned, looking to the left and the right.

“Here!” he cried. “I have another important thing which I shall voluntarily show you.”

He dashed to the cabinet again, and when he spun around, he held a gun in both hands, pointing it at Ash, and then at Yuri, and then at Rowan and Michael.

“You can die by this,” said Gordon. “Witches, Taltos, all of you! One bullet from this through your heart, and you are as dead as any man!”

“You can’t shoot all of us,” said Yuri, moving around the edge of the table.

“Don’t you dare, or I will shoot!” Gordon screamed.

It was Ash who made the swift move to close the gap between himself and the man. But Gordon turned to face him again, and cocked the gun. Ash didn’t stop, but the gun didn’t go off, either.

With a grimace, Gordon brought the gun close to his own chest, his shoulders suddenly hunched, the other hand opening and closing. “God in heaven!” he gasped. The gun fell to the floor, clattering on the bare boards.

“You,” he said, glaring at Rowan. “You, witch, Mayfair witch!” he cried. “I knew it would be you. I told them. I knew it-” Bent near double, he shut his eyes, and collapsed against the cabinet. It seemed he would fall forward, but then he slipped to the floor. With his right hand he pushed vainly at the floorboards, as if trying to lift himself. Then his body went entirely limp, and his eyelids slid down halfway over his eyes, giving them the dull look of the dead.

He lay there, with only the most haphazard and tawdry air of finality.

Rowan stood as before, without a single outward sign that she had caused it. But she had, Yuri knew, and he could see that Michael knew. He could see it in the way that Michael looked at her-without condemnation, but with a quiet awe. Then a sigh came out of Michael. He took his handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his face with it.

He turned his back on the dead man, shaking his head, and he moved away, into the shadows, near to the window.

Rowan merely stood there, her arms folded now, her eyes fixed on Gordon’s.

Perhaps, thought Yuri, she sees something that we don’t see. She senses something we can’t sense.

But it really didn’t matter. The bastard was dead. And for the first time, Yuri could breathe. He could express a long sigh of relief, so different from the mournful whisper of sound that had just come from Michael.

He is dead, Aaron. He is dead. And the Elders were not part of it. And they will find out, they will surely find out, who his helpers were, if they were those proud young novices.

It seemed a foregone conclusion to Yuri that those young men-Marklin George and Tommy Monohan-were guilty. Indeed, the whole scheme seemed the work of the young, rash and ruthless and full of waste-and perhaps it had been truly beyond the old man’s imagining.

No one moved. No one spoke. They all stood there, paying some sort of dark homage to the dead body, perhaps. Yuri wanted to feel relief, but he felt none.

Then Ash went to Rowan, very deliberately and formally, and touching her arms lightly with his long fingers, he bent to kiss her on both cheeks. She looked up, into his eyes, as if she’d been dreaming. Hers was the unhappiest expression Yuri had ever seen.

Ash withdrew and then turned to Yuri. He waited, without speaking. They were all waiting. What was there to say? What must happen now?

Yuri tried to plan, but it was quite impossible.

“Will you go home now, to the Order?” Ash finally asked.

“Yes,” said Yuri with a quick nod. “I’ll go home to the Order!” He whispered, “I’ve already alerted them to everything. I called them from the village.”

“I saw you,” said Ash.

“I spoke with Elvera and with Joan Cross. I have no doubt it was George and Monohan who helped him, but they’ll find out.”

“And Tessa,” said Ash with a little sigh. “Can you take Tessa under your roof?”

“You would let me do it?” Yuri asked. “Of course we would take her. We would shelter her and care for her forever. But you would let this happen?”

“What other place is safe for her?” said Ash, rather frankly sad now, and weary. “She does not have long to live. Her skin is as thin as the vellum pages of my book. She will probably die very soon. But how soon, I have no idea. I don’t know how long any of us have to live. We died so often by violence. In the very early days, we believed that was the only way that people died. Natural death, we didn’t know what it-”

He broke off, scowling, dark eyebrows beautifully curved beneath the scowl and along the ridge over the end of the large eyes.

“But you take her,” he resumed. “You’ll be kind to her.”

“Ash,” said Rowan softly. “You will give them incontrovertible evidence of the Taltos! Why would you do such a thing?”

“That’s the best thing that could happen,” said Michael. His vehemence caught Yuri off guard. “Do it, do it for Aaron’s sake,” said Michael. “Take her there, to the Elders. You’ve done your best to blow the lid off the whole conspiracy. Give them the precious information!”

“And if we’re wrong,” said Rowan, “if it was not a mere handful of men …” She hesitated, looking down at the small, desolate dead body of Gordon. “Then what do they have?”

“Nothing,” said Ash softly. “A creature who will die soon, and become once again legend, no matter how many scientific tests are taken with her gentle forbearance, no matter how many photographs or tapes are made. Take her there, Yuri, I ask you. Make her known to the Council. Make her known to everyone. Destroy the secrecy so cruelly used by Gordon and his friends.”

“And Samuel?” asked Yuri. “Samuel saved my life. What will Samuel do when he discovers they have her in their very possession?”

Ash pondered, eyebrows rising very gracefully, face softened with thought, and very much the way it had been when Yuri first saw it, the countenance of a large, loving man, perhaps more human than humans, he would never know.

Such a lovely thought, suddenly, that he who lives forever becomes ever more compassionate. But it wasn’t true. This being had taken life, and would have killed Gordon if Rowan hadn’t somehow forced Gordon’s heart to come to a fatal stop. This being might move heaven and earth to get to Mona, Mona the witch, who could make another Taltos.

How in God’s name was he to protect Mona?

It was too confusing suddenly, too overwhelming. Of course he would take Tessa with him; he would call them now and beg them to come, and they would, and he would be home again, and he would talk to the Elders once more, and they would be his guardians and his friends. They would help him know what to do. They would take the decisions from his shoulders.

“And I will protect Mona,” said Rowan quietly.

He was startled. The gifted witch had been reading his thoughts. How much could she read in all their hearts and souls? How much could the Taltos beguile her and fool her?

“I am no enemy to Mona Mayfair,” said Ash, apparently catching on easily. “You have been wrong on this from the beginning. I would not endanger the life of a child. I would force myself upon no woman. You have worries enough. Leave Mona Mayfair to these two witches who love her and will take care of her. Leave the family to them. That is what the Elders will tell you, no doubt, when you do reach them. Let the family heal the family. Let the Order cleanse itself.”

Yuri wanted to answer. But he didn’t know what to say. I want this so much to be true?

Suddenly Ash came towards him, and covered Yuri’s face gently in kisses. Yuri looked up, overcome with love, and then, clamping his hand behind Ash’s neck, he put his lips to Ash’s mouth.

The kiss was firm and chaste.

Somewhere in the back of his mind were Samuel’s careless words, that he had fallen in love with Ash. He didn’t care. That was the thing about trust. Trust brought such a relief to one, such a lovely feeling of being connected, and that is how you let down your guard, and you can be destroyed.

“I’ll take the body now,” Ash said. “I’ll put it somewhere where men aren’t likely to find it.”

“No,” said Yuri. He was looking right into Ash’s large, calm eyes. “I’ve already spoken to the Motherhouse, as I said. When you’re a few miles away, call them. Here, I’ll get the number for you. Tell them to come here. We will take care of the body of Stuart Gordon, along with everything else.”

He moved away from Ash and stood at the foot of the crumpled body. How puny in death Gordon looked, Gordon the scholar whom everyone had so admired, the friend of Aaron, and the mentor to the boys. Yuri bent down, and without disturbing anything else about the body, slipped his hand in the inside pocket of Gordon’s jacket, and found there the inevitable stash of small white cards.

“Here, this is the number of the Motherhouse,” he said to Ash as he righted himself, and put a single card in Ash’s hand. He looked back at the body. “There’s nothing to connect anyone to this dead man,” he said. And, realizing it suddenly, the wonderful truth of it, he almost laughed.

“How marvelous,” he announced. “He is simply dead, with no mark on him of violence. Yes, call the number and they will come. They’ll take us all home.”

He turned and looked at Rowan and Michael. “I’ll contact you soon.”

Rowan’s face was sad and unreadable. Michael was plainly anxious.

“And if you don’t,” said Michael, “then we’ll know that we were wrong.”

Yuri smiled and shook his head. “I understand now, I understand how it could happen; I see the weaknesses, the charm.” He looked about the tower room. Part of him hated it so much; part of him saw it as a sanctuary to deadly romanticism; part of him could not endure the thought of waiting for rescue. But he was too tired, really, to think of anything else, or to do it in any other way.

“I’ll go talk to Tessa,” said Rowan. “I’ll explain that Stuart is very very ill, and that you’re going to stay with her until help comes.”

“Oh, that would be too good of you,” said Yuri. And then, for the first time, he felt his full exhaustion. He sat down on the chair at the table.

His eyes fell on the book or codex, as Stuart had called it so properly or so pedantically, he wasn’t sure which.

He saw the long fingers of Ash close on either side of it, picking it up. And then Ash held it again to his chest.

“How can I reach you?” Yuri asked him.

“You can’t,” said Ash. “But in the days that follow, I promise, I will contact you.”

“Please don’t forget your promise,” said Yuri wearily.

“I must warn you about something,” said Ash softly, thoughtfully, holding the book as if it were some sort of sacred shield. “In the months and years to come,” he continued, “you may see my likeness here and there, in the normal course of your life, as you happen to pick up a newspaper or a magazine. Don’t ever try to come to me. Don’t ever try to call me. I am well guarded in ways you cannot dream of. You will not succeed in reaching me. Tell the same to your Order. I will never acknowledge, to any one of them, the things I’ve told you. And for the love of God, please warn them not to go to the glen. The Little People are dying out, but until they do, they can be most dangerous. Warn them all: stay away from the glen.”

“Then you are saying that I can tell them what I’ve seen.”

“Yes, you’ll have to do that, you’ll have to be utterly open with them. Otherwise you can’t go home.”

Yuri looked up at Rowan and then at Michael. They drew close, one on either side of him. He felt Rowan’s hand touch his face as she kissed him. He felt Michael’s hand on his arm.

He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. He had no more words. Perhaps he had no more tears.

But the joy in him was so alien to his expectations, it was so wondrous that he longed to tell them, to let them know. The Order would come to get him. The disastrous treachery was finished. They were coming, his brothers and sisters, and he could lay bare the horrors and the mysteries he’d seen.

He didn’t look up as they left him. He heard them descending the winding staircase. He heard the distant sound of the front door. He also heard soft voices just beneath him.

Slowly he climbed to his feet. He went down the steps to the second floor.

Beside the loom, in the shadows, Tessa stood like a great sapling, her hands pressed together, nodding her head as Rowan spoke too softly for Yuri to hear. Then Rowan gave the woman her kisses of parting, and quickly walked towards the stairs.

“Goodbye, Yuri,” she said gently as she passed him, and she turned with her hand on the rail. “Yuri, tell them everything. Make sure the file on the Mayfair witches is finished, just as it should be.”

“Everything?” he asked.

“Why not?” she asked with a strange smile. And then she disappeared. Quickly he looked to Tessa. He’d forgotten about Tessa for those few moments. And Tessa was bound to be miserable when she saw Stuart. Dear God, how would he stop her from going upstairs?

But Tessa was at her loom again, or her tapestry frame, perhaps that’s what it was, and she was sewing and singing a little to herself, or making of her normal respiration a little song.

He drew close to her, afraid of disturbing her.

“I know,” she said now, looking up at him, smiling sweetly and brightly, with a round and radiant face. “Stuart’s died now, and gone, perhaps to heaven.”

“She told you?”

“Yes, she did.”

Yuri looked out the window. He did not know what he actually saw in the darkness. Was it the gleaming water of the lake? He couldn’t tell.

But then, without mistake, he saw the headlights of a car moving away. Through the dark pockets of forest, the lights flashed and then the car disappeared.

For a moment he felt deserted, and horribly exposed. But they would make the call for him, of course they would. They were probably making the call right now. Then there would be no record on the phone here, connecting those who were to come, and those with whom he and the woman would go.

Suddenly he was so tired. Where was the bed in this place? He wanted to ask, but he didn’t. He stood merely watching her at her sewing, listening to her humming, and when finally she looked up, she smiled again.

“Oh, I knew it was coming,” she said. “I knew it every time I looked at him. I’ve never known it to fail with your kind. Sooner or later, you all grow weak and small and you die. It took me years to realize it, to realize that no one escaped it. And Stuart, poor dear, he was so very weak, I knew the death would come for him at any time.”

Yuri said nothing. He felt a powerful aversion to her, so powerful that he struggled with all his being to disguise it, lest she feel some chill, lest she be hurt. Dimly he thought of his Mona; he saw her aflame with human life, fragrant and warm and continuously surprising. He wondered, did the Taltos see humans that way? Rougher? Wilder? Were we coarse animals to them, animals perhaps of volatile and dangerous charm? Rather like lions and tigers are to us?

Mona. In his mind, he caught a handful of Mona’s hair. He saw her turn to look at him, green eyes, lips smiling, words coming rapidly with a lovely American vulgarity and charm.

He felt more certain than ever that he would never see Mona again.

He knew that that was what was meant for her, that her family enfold her, that someone of her own mettle, within her own clan, should be her inevitable love.

“Let’s not go upstairs,” Tessa said now in a confidential whisper. “Let’s let Stuart be dead by himself. It’s all right, don’t you think? After they’re dead, I don’t think they mind what you do.”

Slowly Yuri nodded, and looked back out into the secretive night beyond the glass.