‘I’m going out!’ shouted Jocundra.
The Baron shook his head and tried to grab her. But she eluded him and ran out the door and down the steps.
The night thrashed with tormented shadows, the air was filled with debris. Branches and shingles sailed across the ridiculously calm and unclouded moon. Shielding her head, she made for the cover of the underbrush, stumbling, being blown off course. She crouched behind a leafless bush that offered no protection and pricked her with its thorns, but there was no greater protection elsewhere. The fury of the wind blew through her, choking off her thoughts, even her fears, absorbing her into its chaos. The Baron threw himself down beside her. Blood trickled along his jaw, and he was gasping. Then, behind them, a tortured groan split the roar of the wind. She looked back. Slowly, a hinged flap of the roof lifted like a great prehistoric bird hovering over its nest, beat its black wing once and exploded, disintegrating into fragments that showered the bushes around them. In the sharp moonlight, she saw boxes, bundles, and furniture go spiraling up from the attic, and she had the giddy idea that they were being transported to new apartments in the spirit world. The Baron pulled her head down, covering her as a sofa crashed nearby and split in two.
It took forever to reach the veve.
A forever of scuttling, crouching, of vines flying out of the night and coiling around them. Once a rotten oak toppled across their path, and as she crawled through its upturned roots, the wind knocked her sideways into its hollow bottom. The moon looked in on her, shining up the filaments of the root hairs. She was groped by claustrophobia, an old man with oaken fingers who wanted to swallow her whole. By the time the Baron hauled her out, she was sobbing with terror, beating at the invisible things crawling beneath her clothes. They went on all fours, cutting their hands on pieces of glass, ducking at shadows. But at last they wriggled up the hill overlooking the veve.
Valcours and Donnell stood about a dozen feet apart, and from their fingers flowed streams of the same numinous glow that had destroyed the cypress; the streams twisted and intertwined, joining into a complex design around them, one which constantly changed as they moved their hands in slow, evocative gestures, like Kabuki dancers interpreting a ritual battle. Suddenly Valcours broke off the engagement and limped away along one of the copper paths. The weave of energy dissolved; the pale light bursting from Donnell’s hands merged into a single beam and torched a bush below the hill. Maybe, she thought, maybe she could sneak through the wind, get beneath the veve and pull Valcours down. She wriggled forward but the Baron dragged her back.
‘Look, goddamn it!’ he shouted in her ear, pointing to a part of the veve far from Valcours and Donnell.
Two bodies lay athwart the struts. One, her dress torn, was Clea, and the other - Jocundra recognized him by the radio clutched in his hand - was Captain Tomorrow. Even at this distance, the deformity of their limbs was apparent. She turned back to see Donnell racing after Valcours. With incredible grace - she could hardly believe he was capable of such - he turned a forward flip, came out of a shoulder roll, and landed on the junction behind Valcours. The bush he had set afire whirled up in a tornado of sparks into the darkness and was gone.
Weakened beyond the possibility of further battle, cornered, the candidate appealed for mercy. He dissolved his mask; his puffy features were strained and anxious. The Aspect was surprised by his age. Usually they sent the youngest, the angriest, but no doubt this man’s exceptional strength had qualified him.
‘Brother,’ said the candidate. ‘My soul is not ripe. Grant me two years of meditation, and I will present myself at Ghazes.’
‘Your soul will ripen in my fires.’ said the Aspect.
‘Should it not, then it would never have borne with ripeness.’
‘How will it be, brother? I would prepare.’
‘Slowly,’ said the Aspect. ‘Two of my children have died this night.’
He savored the moment of victory. The clarity accessible at these times merited contemplation. He noticed that the glitter of the stars had grown agitated, eager for the death, and in the distance the river chuckled approvingly against the pilings of the wharf. The shadows of the roof demons stretched long across the sand, centering upon the spot where the candidate stood. Everything was stretching toward the moment, adding its strength to his.
‘Ogoun will judge me,’ said the candidate.
‘I am his judgment here in Badagris,’ said the Aspect, irked by the man’s gross impiety, his needless disruption of the silence. ‘And like his mercies, his judgments hold no comfort for the weak.’
He drew his left hand back behind his ear, extended his right, and set an iridescent halo glowing about the candidate. The man began to quiver, and with a series of cracks like a roll of castanets, his fingers fused into crooked knots. A foam of blood fringed his nostrils; the web of capillaries - his new mask of death - faded into view. Another crack, much louder, and the pyramid of a fracture rose at the midpoint of his shoulder. Oh, how he wanted to scream, to retreat into meditation, but tie endured. The Aspect silently applauded his endurance and tested it more severely, causing his eyes to pop millimetre by millimetre until the irises were bull’s eyes in the midst of veined white globes rimmed with blood. Loud as tree trunks snapping, his thighbones shattered and he fell, his suit changed shape with every subsequent crack. His chest breeched, and something the size of a grapefruit was pushed forward; it dimpled and bulged against the coating of black energy; before long, before the candidate’s skull caved inward, it had become still.
After victory, diminution-.
The old cadre wisdom was right. He derived no real pleasure from the aftermath of battle. It simply meant he must now live until the next one, and despite his poetry, his meditation, that was never easy. Soon the townspeople would pour out the doors, throw open the shutters and debase the purity of night with their outcries and orange lanterns. Full of praise, they would gather around and ogle the corpse who, having met his death with courage, deserved better. Perhaps he would go to Pointcario’s Inn, touch the waist of the ebony girl lost forever in the doorway, pretend some other woman was she. But first there was something to do. The business of the aberrant High Aspect of Mounanchou. He reached up for the circuits of his ourdha, concentrated his thoughts into a point of sapphire light, and spun round and round until he arrived at Maravillosa.
The inside of his head was warm, unpleasantly so, as he jumped down, but his muscles were supple, his strength undiminished. He started toward the house, but was brought up short by the sight of the two corpses lying apart from the candidate. From Valcours. Disoriented, he looked around at the moonlit devastation, the gaping roof of the house, and a part of him which had been dormant raised an inner voice to remind him of certain verities. He understood now the meaning of the warmth, the nature of his newfound strength, and as another voice - a more familiar one of late - whispered to him, he also understood how that strength must be put to use.
Chapter 19
September 19, 1987
Donnell was standing beside the veve when Jocundra and the Baron came down from the hill. Hearing their footsteps, he glanced up. His skin was pale and his eyes were terminal, the pupils gone inside radiant green flares. She ran toward him, but he thrust out his hand and boomed her with such force that she held up a dozen feet away.