false paradise.
'This is part of the story,' he said.
I nodded.
'I named this place Paradise,' he said.
I looked through the jagged remains of the crystal shell and saw beneath barren trees the skeletons of exotic beasts scattered in the dirt. The fresh water that had at one time run through the center of the transplanted territory had dried up.
'Why that?' I asked.
'A strange thing,' he said. 'The first time I discovered this place, I found, lying on the ground out there, the head to one of my father's gladiators. I'd seen them before among the ruins, but this one caught my interest because it had belonged to the man that I, myself, had fought here in the underground. It was the man who had snapped off my horn.
'I picked up the head and considered taking it home for my collection. The moment I lifted it, I could feel a light vibration coming from inside. I looked down to where I had it cradled in my arm, and I saw the lips move. The gear work inside the head began to whine as the eye lids fluttered open. The mouth moved, and it whispered the word
I said nothing.
We continued on through another tunnel that finally opened onto the street across from the entrance to the public baths. I looked toward the dark opening we would have to enter, but halfway up the mound I saw six of our pursuers sitting on the rocks, staring down.
'Not good' said Misrix, and I saw the werewolves turn in our direction. They began to growl and slowly descend.
'Back underground,' I said.
'No,' said the demon. 'Run for the hill and climb as fast as you can, straight at them.'
'What should this accomplish?' I asked.
'I can't explain; go,' he said and pushed me with all his might.
I ran forward and began climbing. The werewolves snarled, and I snarled back at them as we drew closer. Misrix climbed behind me, yelling for me to keep going. When they were within ten yards of me, I felt a breeze begin to blow at my back. I heard the wing thrusts just as I felt Misrix's hands grabbing me beneath the arms. He lifted us up, away from the gathering danger, straight into the sky. We remained there for a moment, treading air, and Misrix said, 'Where are the birds?'
'There,' I said, pointing off to the east.
'That's them,' he said, and stopped beating his wings. We dived headfirst, then glided along an arc that swept us down over the leaping beasts and suddenly up toward the top of the hill. Misrix put me down beside the opening into the baths. The werewolves had reversed direction and were now climbing toward us.
'Let's go,' I said, but the demon waited until he made certain that the metallic birds had fixed on our position. When they dropped in altitude to exactly the height at which we were standing, he called over his shoulder, 'Now.'
I slid through the hole and Misrix followed close behind, his wings snagging for a moment on the top of the entrance. Carefully pushing down on the dark flaps, I was able to free him. As he got to his feet, I crouched down and looked back through the opening. The birds were less than fifty yards away, and I could hear the growling of the werewolves directly below us. Again, he lifted me beneath the arms and leaped off the top of the inside mound. We flew low over the debris and dived into one of the cisterns. The water was freezing, and I had only had a second to hold my breath. I tried to struggle free of the demon's grasp, but he would not let me go.
He placed his hand atop my head, and I instantly felt my thoughts swirling through a storm that spun my consciousness into a globe. I became like a tornado in a paperweight and flew upward through a tunnel whose walls rippled with orange energy. The demon flapped his wings behind my eyes, and suddenly I found myself deep in the Beyond, staring down from a tree branch. I flew off the tree, now a demon myself, out across the inland ocean. When I wheeled around and headed back toward the shore, I saw the outline of a fantastic walled city, the buildings, huge dripping mounds riddled with holes. I knew it was the Palishize, that deserted city that had been described in Aria's recollections of her grandfather's journey through the territory.
Then there was the muffled sound of an explosion, and I came to beneath the water. Bits of rock and debris pelted the surface and fell slowly around us. Misrix pulled his hand off of me and let me float to the top.
The next thing I knew, he was dragging me out of the pool and standing me on my feet. 'I don't know how many of them the birds destroyed, so we have to hurry,' he said.
We made for the door and reached it without a moment to spare. As Misrix turned the key in the lock, one of the creatures leaped the width of a pool and came bounding straight at us. The door opened, I was pulled inside, and it was shut.
'We made it,' I said, leaning back against the wall.
'Yes,' he said, catching his breath, 'but now they know where we are.'
I dried off and was given an old suit of Below's to wear. The fit was unsettling in its perfection. In the room that had served father and son as a kitchen, Misrix made me a salad. I sat down at the table with my bowl of food and bread. The demon sat across from me with a cup of real shudder. I asked him if he could make me a cup, and he pushed his across the table to me. Then I asked him for a cigarette. Again he accommodated me, and together we smoked. The taste of the shudder almost brought tears to my eyes. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the scrap of paper I had taken from the lab. Spreading it out with one hand on the table, I took a quick look at the symbols and handed it to him.
The demon blew smoke and brought the scrap in line with his spectacles. 'This is what I was looking for' he said. 'This is a torn corner from a handwritten book— the only book my father always kept nearby. It was written by his mentor, Scarfinati, and it described the secrets of an ingenious memory system. Now the werewolves have it, and Greta is quite capable of reading'
'Below had mentioned it to me once in the old days, but my recollection is vague,' I said.
'Father would talk to me about it at great length. The idea of it is this,' and as he paused to inhale I could see that he relished the role of teacher. 'The adept creates a palace in his memory. He envisions this palace with a clear mind and total concentration. Once it takes root in his memory, he fills it with objects—a vase of yellow roses, a mirror, a white fruit. Each of the objects he places around the palace stands for something he wants to be able to remember. For instance, the vase of flowers might represent a concept like a mathematical formula. If the adept wishes to regain that formula, he travels through the memory palace, and upon seeing the vase, instantly remembers it.'
'Everything in the palace is symbolic,' I said.
He nodded. 'My father designed the Well-Built City with this method. Once it was rebuilt in coral and steel, every portion of the architecture was, for him, the physical representation of a concept, a theory, an experience, worth remembering. Out there,' he said, pointing behind him, 'those ruins are the devastation of his memory. Every now and then, as we wandered among them he would come across a broken gargoyle or a fallen column, and I could tell he was momentarily recovering a lost fragment of himself. He found a piece of a pressed-tin ceiling that held the likeness of a pelican, and this made him weep.'
'The white fruit exploded that memory palace from his mind, and, through some strange property, also destroyed its representation in the real world.'
'I love to think of that white fruit,' said the demon with a smile.
I stubbed out my cigarette and cut into the salad as if it were a steak.
'He's built another one,' said Misrix.
'Another what?' I asked.
'Another palace. He's built one in his mind. It is magnificent, and in addition to the objects carrying symbolic meaning there are even people in this one who stand for certain ideas.'
'How do you know?'
'I've been there,' he said.
8
We stood next to Below's bed, staring down at him. the candle's glow illuminated his head, and its dance created the illusion that he was about to awaken.
'It's all in there,' said Misrix, pointing.
'In his memory?'
The demon nodded. 'I can put you in there,' he said.
'How does that work?' I asked.
'You felt it in the cistern when we were hiding from the explosion. I put my hand on top of your head.'
'It was like a dreaming wind,' I said.
'I can put a hand upon your head and the other upon Father's, and you can travel through me into him. You will appear in his new memory palace in your present form. It will have all the reality of this world,' said the demon.
'All the reality of this world?' I said, and laughed.
'The antidote is there,' he said.
'I have been trying to forget about the antidote,' I told him.
'It's there in a symbolic form in the memory palace.'
'Maybe I could find it.'
'But how would you be certain you have found it? You don't know the symbolic meanings of the objects. How do you decipher the secret language that is the center of that world?' said Misrix.
'What about you? Why don't you just enter into his memory? It would seem more direct that way,' I said.
