The next day heralds let it be known throughout the town that they were looking for someone to lay down his or her life for the sake of the little Princess. “The life of the body is transient, but this person’s name will live in grateful memory for ever.”
But in all that city of stone, no one came forward. The fact that Zoë had died, and would never again be seen going to church in her long, trailing dress, did not concern them, and they probably did not even notice that their lives had become even more impoverished and oppressed than before.
The Magus had expected no less. He knew the people. He knew that their drab lives were so limiting they were incapable of giving anything for the sake of a greater cause.
He saw too that there was only one person, someone not caught up in petty concerns, whose life was indeed worthy of such a sacrifice, and that person was himself. It did not seem to him unreasonable or unfair that he should surrender his life for someone else, someone he did not know and whose existence had so far been a matter of perfect indifference to him. It was not as if he were someone who would one day be important. He too would have to die one day, and death was not something he feared. He had lived twice as long as people usually did. He already knew all there was to know, and more than was permitted to man. The world had no unredeemed promises left in store for him.
He communicated his decision to the Emperor, who was so astonished he was quite unable to find words to thank him.
A long-abandoned building in the Palace gardens was fitted out for the Magus. Guards were stationed all around so that no animal or human could come near. There he spent the night in acts of sorcery. The guards were convinced they could hear all sorts of voices inside. According to some of them, just before dawn the building was bathed in a strange blue light.
As soon as he woke the next morning, the Emperor called on the Magus. He found him sitting in a vast armchair in the middle of the empty room, a broken man. In a barely audible voice he announced:
“My lord, the great spell has done its work. Everything on earth and in heaven has assisted its aims. All that remains is for me to die.”
“And what is your last wish, Magus?” the Emperor asked.
“I have no last wish, just as I had no first one. But my final instructions are these: to place the body of the little Princess on a white bier, clad in the full ceremonial robes of a lady of royal birth, and carry it at midday down to the square outside the Cathedral. There you must set down my body too, on a black bier, and that is where the miracle of life and death will take place. Live happily, my lord.”
All routine work in the city came to a halt. Too inflamed with curiosity even to eat, the citizens put on their finest clothes. With trembling hands Zoë’s former attendants dressed her corpse in the formal, pure-gold coronation robes a woman was permitted to don just once in her life. On her head they placed the huge, heavy diadem. In inexpressible excitement, the Emperor knelt before the crucifix.
All this time the Magus had remained sitting in his armchair. When the final moment came, he dispatched his soul to its last and greatest exaltation. One after another, his vital organs failed, and with them faded all the soft sensory impressions, the sounds, scents and images of the transient world. Then even the sense of weariness ceased, and the soul unfurled its wings on a loftier, freer, plane. An irresistible lightness carried it ever upwards, ever higher and higher — the light grew ever brighter, the boundaries of the soul ever wider. It now floated on a sea of light, the one men call the Sea of Forgetting, for when the soul comes there it can no longer remember that it was ever anywhere else, the Eternal Present floods it with a wondrous sense of peace, and the hideous shackles that constitute the sense of ‘I am’ fall away.
And then his soul stood trembling on the final shore. It had come this far before, but always fallen back again, able to proceed no further. Normally this moment of pause would occur in the same instant as the soul’s ascent and be immeasurably brief, since the strength and desire that had propelled it on its way were great enough for it to break through the boundary, taking it on to a second sea, the one men call Death.
Meanwhile the body the Magus had left behind had been washed and laid out, according to his instructions, on a black bier, and the procession set off on its way to the accompaniment of slow dirges.
But his soul continued its upward flight, leaving immensities incomprehensible to human understanding far below. And now it was no longer alone. All round it appeared a multitude of spirits clad in light, and the sun’s coach, with its wheel of golden spokes, stood glittering before it.
The soul of the White Magus stepped up into the coach, in which were gathered before him a host of other sages, magi and masters of the lore of the stars. They thronged around him, rejoicing, holding him in place, and he was able briefly to rest.
Then the soul moved to the very edge of the sun coach and looked back at the way it had come, across immeasurable distances all the way down to the earth. There it lay, a grey, lax, languid, motionless object, far, far below. It was not a comforting sight, and the soul prepared to journey further on.
Then suddenly, from one particular spot on the Earth, a sort of luminosity flared up. It was quite unlike the celestial radiance of heaven, but worldly, opaque, and deeply disturbing. As the soul’s vision slowly adjusted to the distance, it realised that the light was coming from the city of Byzantium.
It saw a great multitude standing before the cathedral, around a white bier, and on the bier lay the miraculous form of a young woman, the source of the strange earthly radiance. Then, very slowly, the girl sat up, then stood fully erect. The ceremonial golden robes that enveloped her, denoting her high birth, glowed like a chalice. Now she was all the Magus’ soul could see. It watched as her arms began slowly to move, like the arms of a person walking in sleep. Never before had it beheld anything like this.
Then suddenly it could see everything, as the earthly light spread out in all directions, enveloping the whole world as it slept in the midday sun, its radiant face adorned with a million triumphantly verdant trees and flowers… and the sea was as blue as the sky, the sky was as deep as the sea, and where they met the breezes softly caressed the fledgling waves.
And the Magus’ soul was filled with sorrow that it had never seen any of these things before. It leant out over the edge of the sun’s coach. The running board was made of gold and very slippery, the distance below was beyond measuring, the soul was overcome with vertigo and fell headlong, plunging ever downwards towards earth. Liberated from the body, it was driven by a single gravitational force — desire.
The soul of the White Magus hurtled down through myriad worlds, back into his abandoned body. In the tower of the great cathedral known as the Hagia Sophia, the bells were tolling twelve.
The crowd standing around the little Princess watched as, very slowly, the royal maiden held up a hand in front of her, as if to fend off the sunlight. She was alive!
Suddenly someone gave a great shout and pointed in horror to the other bier, the black one, on which lay the body of the Magus. And then everyone gazed in awe as the right hand of the dead Magus slowly stroked his brow. In the same instant the little Princess’ right hand fell back, under its own dead weight.
The silence, and the horror, were indescribable. Slowly, very slowly, the White Magus raised his head, with its huge crown of white hair, and at the same time Princess Zoë’s head drooped, like the head of a broken lily. Slowly the Magus sat up, as the maiden sank to her knees. Like a ghost or supernatural apparition, he rose to his feet, while she lay down on the white bier. He gave a great sigh and spread his arms out wide, as the Princess clutched her hands to her breast, like a statue on the lid of a coffin. His eyes opened fully, and his appalled gaze met that of the Princess — in its very last half-second of life. Then her eyes closed for ever.