They sat under a rose and golden dawn in the middle of an immaculately groomed garden. Lin Piao had ordered a golden lacquer table set on the slate flagstones to one side of the meandering pathway, laid with dishes of fruit, cooked grains and more spiced vegetables. Michael was ravenous and ate an amount that surprised even himself. Lin Piao Tai picked at his food, watching his guest with obvious delight.
“There is no finer satisfaction than catering to an appetite, and no greater compliment than eliminating one,” he said. Michael agreed and wiped his mouth with a raw silk napkin. “Today, I would enjoy having you tour my grounds. You should see what a fine place I’ve made of my prison.”
“Prison?”
Lin Piao’s expression tilted slightly toward sadness, then brightened again, as if on cue. “Yes. I have been audacious in my time, and now I pay for it. The Sidhe do not forgive.”
“What did you do to them?”
“I served. Shall we walk?” He led Michael through the gardens, pointing out the various tiers and banks of flowers, all, of course, of assorted golden and yellow hues. A fine mist gently blurred the gardens as they came to the end of the path, blocked by a tall black lava wall. “I was a faithful servant,” Lin Piao continued. “In those days, the Sidhe had long since returned to the Earth. They had dissipated themselves between the stars, you know—you’ve heard most of this before? Good. It tires me to relate Sidhe history. They were not as vigorous as they had once been. They still used Spryggla, and we still did their bidding, though our numbers had diminished even from the few of times past.”
He pulled his golden robes aside and sat on a smooth onyx bench. “There was a conflict. Two factions of the Sidhe—perhaps more—were disputing over how they should conduct themselves on Earth. The Realm had already been opened to Sidhe migration, you see, and many Sidhe had come here, rather than remain in the lands of the new human race. In their squabbles, the factions created various songs of power, hoping to outdo each other. One faction planned to give the humans a song of power. I am confused as to the motives behind this—or even which faction engaged in such foolishness—but I believe it was the Black Order, and that they wished the humans to be just strong enough to force all Sidhe into the Realm, where Tarax could control them in the name of Adonna. Praise O Creator Adonna!” He winked at Michael. “They’ve done their worst, but it doesn’t hurt to follow the forms.
“I was highly regarded in those days, and so I was given the task of designing a palace for the Emperor Kubla, who would have it revealed in a dream. When Kubla Khan built the palace—and it was inevitable he would, given the strength of the dream and the beauty of my designs—in all its forms and measures it would embody an architectural song of power, making the Emperor the strongest human since the wars. I faithfully designed the palace, and others under my command prepared the dream… but a strange thing happened.
“The dream was transmitted improperly. Kubla was tantalized no end by his vision, but he could not remember it clearly enough to construct it properly. And when I was placed in his service on Earth, the workers were plagued with slips of hand and diseases of the eye. The Black Order was foiled. They blamed me. In their court—a most fearsome place, and may you never see it!—they tried me and found me guilty of bungling. For that, I am confined to this valley.” He leaned forward, looking up into Michael’s face. “Spryggla have magic too, you know. Magic over shapes of matter. We can be very powerful, though not as powerful as the Maln. They took away my magic, all of it except that pertaining to things yellow or golden. They imprisoned me, and I have done as best I could. Not done too badly, do you think?”
“Not badly at all,” Michael said.
“I’m glad to hear it. You’re the first company I’ve had in decades. Now and then, some of the Sidhe call on me, give me commissions. It was I who conferred with Christopher Wren, and earlier than that, with Leonardo and Michelangelo… But perhaps I shouldn’t be telling you these things.”
“Why would the Sidhe want you to help them?”
“It all has to do with the factions, the songs of power…No, there’s certainly no need for you to suffer through all my past exploits, past failures. That’s what they were, you know. Never quite as magnificent as first conceived, always interfered with in the final construction. I’m under a kind of curse.” He became emphatic. “But not through any fault of my own! I am most unfortunate, caught between warring Sidhe, dragged this way and that…”
“Who was your last guest?” Michael asked.
The Spryggla’s face darkened. “Someone I’d rather blot from memory. Most unpleasant. Besides, I am honored by a far more welcome guest now, and I must make the most of his company before he leaves!”
They walked back to the black stone house. “My powers are strictly confined to the valley. While I am limited to yellow and gold, I can work moderately well with the neutrals, blacks and whites and combinations thereof. Reds and browns do not interfere with my abilities, but of course I prefer yellows. And I can never leave the valley. So, as you can see, I lavish my creativity here.” He sighed. “I fear I change my surroundings frequently, otherwise I would end up in a tangle of baroque embellishment. I would go quite mad.”
“May I look in on my horse?” Michael asked.
“Of course, of course! How fortunate that I designed quite wonderful stables just before you arrived. Your horse is there now, very comfortable, I trust.”
One wing of the house opened to the stables, which were made of gleaming black wood with natural oak stalls. Michael followed Lin Piao along a row of empty stalls, trying to remember something he had forgotten, something important…
With an effort, it came to him. Lin Piao swung wide the door to his horse’s stall. Michael entered and patted the horse on the rump, checking it over to make sure it was being properly cared for. (Why would he suspect otherwise?)
“I have to leave soon,” he said. Lin Piao nodded, his permanent smile somehow out of place. “I have a responsibility.”
“Indeed.”
“I have to find the Isomage. So I can help my people.”
Lin Piao nodded. “An honorable journey.”
“I appreciate your hospitality.”
“Yours to command as long as you wish.”
“Everything seems fine,” Michael said, closing the stall door. “Thank you.”
Lin Piao bowed. “If I am too zealous of your company, please inform me. I am used to being alone, and perhaps haven’t retained all the social graces.”
“I don’t mind,” Michael said. Indeed, he didn’t. He was starting to wonder what it would be like to be on his own again, without these marvelous surroundings, and this wonderful source of information.
“At any rate, I have work to do,” Lin Piao said. “If you will excuse me, make yourself at home. The servants will respond to your needs.”
They separated and Michael returned to the garden to sit and appreciate the flowers, the peace. He was becoming used to the limited colors. He had always liked yellow—liked it more and more now—and felt quite at home.
With nightfall, they supped in the main chamber. Lin Piao told him of the vicissitudes of working with the human Kubla, of the Khan’s quiet melancholies and towering rages. “He was so nostalgic for his people’s beginnings, for the steppes. We had tailored the design of the palace to impress him all the more. It was like a Mongol tent, one that might be found in the highest of the seventeen heavens—much larger than the grubby yurts his forebears slept in. All its walls were made of silk. It was a beautiful thing… in conception. But when I saw it built on Earth… the finished thing…” He laid a bitter emphasis on thing. “I was dismayed. Heartsick. All my work, my conferences with the Sidhe… for naught. It was a travesty. It didn’t float, it loomed. It was encrusted with Mongol ornament. It was gaudy. Yet I could not make it otherwise. I was only an advisor, an architect. I could not overrule the Khan. He was desperate to capture what he had seen in the dream. Politics, my dear Michae
l, is a plague found wherever groups of beings gather. I imagine even termites must deal with politics.” He smiled. “But you grow sleepy.”
Michael’s eyes were so heavy he could hardly keep them open. Lin Piao led him to his chamber, and as he pulled the covers over himself, he heard the Spryggla say, “It’s very simple, why there are no dreams here. It is to keep the ways clear…
“You… or I. We are the ones.”
Then, oblivion. And in the oblivion, almost immediately, Michael struggled. Death’s Radio was on him strongly now. He was not dreaming; he was struggling to stay on the ground. There was a great city seen from high in the air; he was almost as high as he had been when Eleuth tried to return him to Earth, but all his seeing focused on the great city, and to one side of the city, black and spiked like the nasty seed-ball of some evil tree, the temple…The Irall. Michael recognized it immediately. The temple of Adonna, and he was being drawn toward it…
He twisted under the blankets and came awake. He was groggy at first, and almost immediately forgot what had aroused him. There was a noise in the dark room. Michael’s eyes seemed glued shut by the secretions of sleep. He took his fingers and pried them open, then rubbed them.
In dim golden candlelight, Lin Piao stood by the sleeping mat, clutching something. There was a look of exulting on his face, and exaltation.
“You have brought it to me,” he said. “As it was ordained. To me. Across the worlds. The Song. My Song.”
For a moment Michael didn’t realize what the Spryggla was holding. It was the black book of poetry Waltiri had given him on Earth.
“That’s mine,” he said groggily.
“Yes, yes. You have kept it well. I thank you.”
“My book,” Michael reiterated, struggling to his feet. He reached out for it, but was restrained by two of the golden servants, who stepped from the shadows and held his arms in firm, warm-metal grips.
“You don’t even know what it is,” Lin Piao said contemptuously. The change in his tone was abrupt and it shattered whatever remained of Michael’s lethargy. “Didn’t I tell you, I worked to transmit the dream? And now I see they’ve tried again, but this time not in architecture… in poetry! And again, somebody interfered. I had heard rumors that your Isomage had part of the Song of Power. Now I know what he has been waiting for. For you, for this!”
He held up the open book so that Michael could see the page he was referring to. “A human poet is sent the Song in a dream. He remembers it, begins to write it down line for line… and is interrupted! Practical business, a person from Porlock, sent no doubt by the meddling opposing faction of the Sidhe. And when the poet returns to his paper, the dream is obliterated, only a part of it written down But Clarkham must have the part never recorded on Earth! And now you have brought the segment not allowed in the Realm, the poem Coleridge recorded, forever a fragment.” Lin Piao’s eyes flashed as he swung the book up and began to read.
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree Where
Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.”
He turned the page.
“So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round—”
The Spryggla suddenly broke off with a choke and batted at the book with one hand as if a wasp alighted on it. He began to dance, holding the book out at arm’s length and squealing like a wounded rabbit. “Traitor!” he cried. “Human!”
From between the pages fell the blue flower Michael had plucked at the edge of the golden valley. It landed on the floor, flat and lifeless but startlingly brilliant. Amid all the gold and yellow it stood out like a jewel.
Lin Piao danced away from it, still squealing. He dropped the book as if fearing it contained more. One of the servants released Michael’s arm and darted for the flower but at its touch the blossom leaped and seemed to take a breath, expanding and contracting.
“No!” Lin Piao wailed. “Not this, not now!”
The servant tried again to pick up the flower, lifting it from the floor and sweeping it as high as it could reach, rushing for the door. But the flower left behind a trail of blue with every motion. The trail seemed to drip color like a swath of paint and then diffused and broadened, pulsing, alive. Lin Piao shrieked as if he were being murdered and followed the servant, staying well away from the trail of blue.
The second servant released Michael’s arm and backed away. Its face rearranged itself in blocks. Michael quickly dressed and picked up the book. The trails of blue had faded. For a moment everything was quiet and seemed perfectly normal.
Then a smile confronted him in the doorway as he tried to leave. Merely a smile, nothing else; bright blue lips with electric blue teeth. It zipped away. Michael peered around the doorframe, looking from one end of the corridor to the other. Empty and quiet.
He was on his way to the stables, walking through the main chamber, when he saw brilliant veins of blue creeping under the walls, linking to form a cobalt carpet which spread over the floor. Liquid blueness dripped from all the closets and drawers and doorways, splashing across the floor, each drop trailing a thread. Michael could not avoid the invasion. It passed under his feet, tingling but painless, and crawled up the opposite wall. Faintly, from which direction he couldn’t tell, he heard Lin Piao cursing.
Michael’s numbness wore off rapidly. The Spryggla’s magic was failing. He was frightened and pleasantly excited at the same time. The feeling of power, of overwhelming transformation, was like a tonic. He wanted to dance on the blue floor, slap his hands against the blue walls. “Free!” he shouted. “Free!”
He wasn’t sure what he was free of. Had Lin Piao actually manipulated him, drugged him? He didn’t know, but his thoughts were much clearer and his sense of purpose very strong.
He had to get out. He found the door leading to the outer hallway. The black stone seemed unaffected; even the fountain bowl and luminous pool were as they had been when he first entered. Now, however, he saw waves forming in the pool. The ground vibrated underfoot. As the vibration increased in frequency, the waves in the pool took on a pattern, a tesselation of geometric figures. The water rose up in bas-relief, like gelatin formed in a mold.
Michael watched the process, fascinated, until the tesselations suddenly broke down into blue smiles. The smiles lifted from the pool and flashed past him to do their work.
Michael exited to the courtyard and stood there, trying to remember his way to the stables, when Lin Piao came rushing through a side door. His golden robe was singed at the edges and his black hair had turned white. The Spryggla stopped and fixed Michael with a hate-filled stare.
“You did this! You invaded my home, my valley! Monster! Human! I can find a way to destroy you—”
“I mean you no harm,” Michael said coldly. “If I can do anything to help—”
A servant came through the door Lin Piao had just used, swaying back and forth as if about to fall over. Its once-golder surface was now the color of tarnished gun-metal. Its robes were charred and tattered. They fell away in shreds. Lin Piao backed off in terror. “It’s spreading! Stop it, stop it!”
“How?”
“I admit, you are the one, you are the intended. Now stop it, make it go away! I will stay here forever, I will be content—”
Blue cracks appeared in the black stone walls. The cracks joined and the stone crazed as if struck by a hammer. Indeed, the sounds coming from within the house suggested something pounding to get out.
“I don’t know what to do,” Michael said. “I’m not a magician.”
“And I AM!” Lin Piao screamed. “How could this happen to me?” His eyes widened and the skin of his face paled almost to white as he saw a great chunk of stone fall from the wall. Above, the pagoda-like tower teetered, crumbling, all its serrated edges bathed in blue fire. Bolts of fire spread in fans to all corners of the house and walled grounds
and crackled out to the valley.
Michael knew there was no place where he could flee fast enough. Not even throwing a shadow would help. The ground lifted under his feet and the paving stones separated, leaking a bright blue glow. He closed his eyes and opened them just as he was abruptly tossed high into the air. All around, fountains of electric blue rose to the sky, catching the warm dark ochre of night and transforming it into cold, star-specked black.
Michael’s stomach lurched. He was without weight or substance, wrapped in eternal cold, eternal ice. Lightning played between his fingers and his hair stood on end. All the wool carpets he had ever scuffed across, all the cats he had ever rumpled, came back to haunt him.
He closed his eyes again and lay on the ground, shaken, breathless. The air smelled electric but the ground was still.
There was a long silence. He waited for more but the quiet held. Even before he opened his eyes he felt for the book. It was secure in its pocket.
He looked around. There was little amazement left in him, but all that remained was engaged by what he saw. The house had disappeared, and the gardens with it. In their place was a spreading field of blue flowers. Blue flowers blossomed all over the valley. The trees of the valley were losing their autumn foliage. The new leaves were rich emerald like the forests outside.
He felt for bruises. For once he had come through an experience in the Realm without cuts, scrapes or contusions.
Michael turned to see the other half of the valley. Right behind him, fist raised as if to strike, stood Lin Piao Tai. Michael drew back, then stopped. The Spryggla was motionless.
He was, in fact, solid blue.
He had been transformed into a statue of lapis lazuli, complete with his expression of horrified anger.
Twenty yards away, the Sidhe horse whinnied. They walked toward each other, and Michael greeted it with a pat on the nose and an incredulous smile. He had survived, and the horse had survived. They were none the worse for the experience.