The whole city lay spread out below them, and the country beyond. “There’s North Gate, where we came in.” The meadow outside was where Killer had fought the Minotaur, but they knew that, and beyond that lay a low range of grassy hills, blocking any further view. The sky to the north was dark and stormy, and that was normal.
He pointed out the Concert Plaza again and a few of the streets, leading them gradually around to the west and a view of wooded hills with sunlight spiking off silver streams. “Do you like fishing?” he asked Ariadne. “Or canoeing? I used to be a good man with a punt at college.” She smiled, squeezed his arm, and said nothing.
They carried on around the balustrade until they were looking south, and the landscape that day was all spring-like: orchards pink with blossom and dark loam fields being plowed by teams of oxen.
“So you have peasants?” Gillis said. “They feed their masters in the city?”
“We have peasants,” Jerry said, “because they want to be peasants. They work or not as they feel like, as does everyone in Mera. They live in the countryside because they prefer it to the town. Most people have a job of some sort because they enjoy doing it and it gives them satisfaction and a sense of identity. Craftsmen like to make things, cooks like to cook, the farmers like to grow things. There’s no nine-to-five in Mera, no serfs, no wage slaves.” Then he pointed out the Dance Floor and the start of Fishermen’s Walk, and they had come round to the east, where the blue sea sparkled away endlessly. They gazed down to the little harbor and its pink granite quay and tiny specks of men unloading their catch from the fishing boats. A bark under full sail was coming in very slowly in the gentle wind, and a dhow was already unloading cargo, its gowned crew indistinguishable from the them.
“So there are four ways out of the city,” Gillis said. “Didn’t you say?” Jerry nodded. “Three gates and the harbor. North to duty and danger, west to fun and adventure, south to the fields. East is the harbor.”
“And where does that lead?” He tightened his hold on Ariadne. “That leads away for ever. If you are going to return to the real world, Graham, you and Maisie, then you will leave by ship— and you can never return. That much I do know.”
“I admit that it is a beautiful place, Mr. Howard,” Maisie said, plucking up courage as she did when she was talking of her faith, “but I do not wish to stay. I fear the Devil’s works.” Jerry leaned on the rail and nodded sadly. “That is what Father Julius says, that you lose your immortal soul if you stay in Mera. He has been here for centuries, busily trying to persuade us all that it is our duty to leave, go back, and repent.” She flushed angrily. “You did not tell me that before. And what of his own soul?” Jerry smiled. “He says his duty is to spread the message— I think he expects to be the last one out. He is a kind and charming old man, and we are very fond of him, but his thinking is as muddled as a creel of eels.”
“We shall not stay, Graham!” Maisie said firmly.
He shook his head. “Never! You are lotus eaters here, Howard. You do not grow or develop, you produce nothing except for your own satisfaction— contribute nothing to humanity, achieve nothing. Is that not so? You are basically the same person you were forty years ago, fossilized forever in a happy stupor of self-gratification.” Jerry thought about that, watching the harbor far below him. “Yes,” he said at last. “What you say is quite true. This is the land of the lotus eaters, but perhaps there are those whose digestion will not stand a harsher diet? And also there are those who owe no debt to the world because of what the world has done to them. You may be different. You will not be forced to remain.” The big man snorted and turned to look at the house of the Oracle. Killer was watching him with some amusement and being astonishingly quiet for Killer.
“This Oracle?” Gillis demanded. “You said it is human, yet you always talk of it as neuter— as ‘It’. Tell me what to expect.”
“Expect the truth,” Jerry said. “And the truth is not often palatable. It is not like other oracles, where you ask questions and they return ambiguous answers. This one asks the questions, and you tell it the answers— and you cannot lie to it.” He heard Ariadne draw in her breath, and her grip on his arm tightened.
“That’s why we have no police— and no lawyers,” he added, and Gillis scowled angrily.
Then Killer straightened suddenly. “I am called,” he muttered, and walked off across the courtyard toward the house of the Oracle, tapping the wand against his leg.
“I heard nothing,” Ariadne whispered. “No, you wouldn’t,” Jerry said.
He must be showing his apprehension plainly now, for the other four were frowning at him.
“I should perhaps have found better clothes,” Gillis said uneasily, “if we are to have an audience with the ruler of the city.” Jerry laughed and got glared at, so he explained. “Clothes are the least of your worries. You will meet the naked truth in there, Gillis— and you will be naked before the truth.” The big man flushed angrily. “What does this Oracle look like, then?”
Fifteen
Jerry glanced at Ariadne, at the wary Carlo, the disapproving Maisie. “Can’t you guess?” he asked. “What you will find in there is a mirror.”
Killer trotted up the steps, walked into the circle of pillars— and vanished. Ariadne gasped with surprise and looked at Jerry, who nodded.
“He will come out soon,” he said. “It takes longer when you are in there than when you are waiting.” He was paler than usual, and his strange nervousness was increasing. “There is one rule— no, not a rule, just a kindness. Do not speak to him afterward until he is ready. The frivolous refer to this area as the recovery room.” As though to emphasize the magic, a pair of white gulls sailed down on the wind and flew through the circle of columns, turned momentarily blue as they crossed the center of faerie and then floated away toward the harbor.
Jerry put his arm around her again and led her away from the others; they leaned together on the rail.
“Ariadne,” he said. “I love you. I never say that lightly— you and maybe two others in my long life. I want you to stay. I want you to marry me. Here we can truly live happily ever after.” She had been afraid of this. She took a long time to find the words. “You have been showing me the kingdoms of the world, haven’t you, Jerry Howard? Maisie would say, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan.’ Oh, Jerry, no woman has ever been offered more, and yes, I could love you dearly… but you know what you are asking me to give up!” He nodded miserably.
“Graham as a father?” she said. “A kid like Maisie for a mother? I am not worthy either, Jerry, but I had licked the drink thing, I really had.” Was that true? She had thought that before. “I could be a better mother than Maisie, but Graham and his lawyer friends had tied me up in knots so I had to make an appointment and then sit there in his living room and drink tea and eat cookies and ask how school was going— like an unpopular aunt, not a mother… I am sorry, Jerry, truly sorry. I love your faerie city and I think I love you and I could even learn to put up with your strange friends, like Killer, but I have a duty…” Killer came slowly down the steps, his walk mechanical, his face wooden. He was pale under his tan, staring fixedly in her direction. Suddenly she saw him for the first time not as an over-sexed, muscle-bound juvenile, but as a man with experience beyond her imagining. She wondered what the Oracle had said to him to upset him so, and what dark shadow of guilt he carried from Thermopylae. Then he seemed to change his mind and headed towards the Gillises and Carlo, hesitated again and abruptly changed his destination once more. He walked to an empty stretch of the rail, leaned on it, and gazed out across the sea in silence.