Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 3)

When he did look up, he saw only Remmick pouring chocolate from a small, heavy silver pitcher into a pretty china cup. The steam rose in Remmick's patient and slightly weary face. Gray hair, now that was gray hair, an entire head of it. I do not have so much gray hair.

Indeed, he had only the two streaks flowing back from his temples, and a bit of white in his sideburns, as they were called. And yes, just a tiny touch of white in the dark hair of his chest. Fearfully he looked down at his wrist. There were white hairs there, mingled with the dark hair that had covered his arms now for so many years.

Taltos! Talamasca. The world will crumble ....

"Was it the right thing, sir, the phone call?" asked Remmick, in that wonderful, near-inaudible British murmur that his employer loved. Lots of people would have called it a mumble. And we are going now to England, we are going back among all the agreeable, gentle people.... England, the land of the bitter cold, seen from the coast of the lost land, a mystery of winter forests and snow-capped mountains.

"Yes, indeed, it was the right thing, Remmick. Always come to me directly when it's Samuel. I have to go to London, right now."

"Then I have to hurry, sir. La Guardia's been closed all day. It's going to be very difficult--"

"Hurry, then, please, don't say anything further."

He sipped the chocolate. Nothing tasted richer to him, sweeter, or better, except perhaps unadulterated fresh milk.

"Another Taltos," he whispered aloud. He set down the cup. "Dark time in the Talamasca." This he wasn't sure he believed.

Remmick was gone. The doors had closed, the beautiful bronze gleaming as if it were hot. There was a trail of light across the marble floor from the light embedded in the ceiling, rather like the moon on the sea.

"Another Taltos, and it was male."

There were so many thoughts racing through his head, such a clatter of emotion! For a moment he thought he'd give way to tears. But no. It was anger that he felt, anger that once again he had been teased by this bit of news, that his heart was beating, that he was flying over the sea to learn more about another Taltos, who was already dead--a male.

And the Talamasca--so they had come into a dark time, had they? Well, wasn't it inevitable? And what must he do about it? Must he be drawn into all this once more? Centuries ago, he had knocked on their doors. But who among them knew this now?

Their scholars he knew by face and name, only because he feared them enough to keep track of them. Over the years, they had never stopped coming to the glen.... Someone knew something, but nothing ever really changed.

Why did he feel he owed them some protective intervention now? Because they had once opened their doors, they had listened, they had begged him to remain, they hadn't laughed at his tales, they'd promised to keep his secret. And like him, the Talamasca was old. Old as the trees in the great forests.

How long ago had it been? Before the London house, long before, when the old palazzo in Rome had been lighted still with candles. No records, they had promised. No records, in exchange for all he had told ... which was to remain impersonal, anonymous, a source of legend and fact, of bits and pieces of knowledge from ages past. Exhausted, he had slept beneath that roof; they had comforted him. But in the final analysis they were ordinary men, possessed of an extraordinary interest perhaps, but ordinary, short-lived, awestruck by him, scholars, alchemists, collectors.

Whatever the case, it was no good to have them in a dark time, to use Samuel's words, not with all they knew and kept within their archives. Not good. And for some strange reason his heart went out to this gypsy in the glen. And his curiosity burned as fierce as ever regarding the Taltos, the witches.

Dear God, the very thought of witches.

When Remmick came back, he had the fur-lined coat over his arm.

"Cold enough for this, sir," he said, as he put it over the boss's shoulders. "And you looked chilled, sir, already."

"It's nothing," he replied. "Don't come down with me. There's something you must do. Send money to Claridge's in London. It's for a man named Samuel. The management will have no trouble identifying Samuel. He is a dwarf and he is a hunchback and he has very red hair, and a very wrinkled face. You must arrange everything so that this little man has exactly what he wants. Oh, and there is someone with him. A gypsy. I have no idea what this means."

"Yes, sir. The surname, sir?"

"I don't know what it is, Remmick," he answered, rising to go, and pulling the fur-lined cape closer under his neck. "I've known Samuel for so long."

He was in the elevator before he realized that this last statement was absurd. He said too many things of late that were absurd. The other day Remmick had said how much he loved the marble in all these rooms, and he had answered, "Yes, I loved marble from the first time I ever saw it," and that had sounded absurd.

The wind howled in the elevator shaft as the cab descended at astonishing speed. It was a sound heard only in winter, and a sound which frightened Remmick, though he himself rather liked it, or thought it amusing at the very least.

When he reached the underground garage the car was waiting, giving off a great flood of noise and white smoke. His suitcases were being loaded. There stood his night pilot, Jacob, and the nameless copilot, and the pale, straw-colored young driver who was always on duty at this hour, the one who rarely ever spoke.

"You're sure you want to make this trip, tonight, sir?" asked Jacob.

"Is nobody flying?" he asked. He stopped, eyebrows raised, hand on the door. Warm air came from the inside of the car.

"No, sir, there are people flying."

"Then we're going to fly, Jacob. If you're frightened, you don't have to come."

"Where you go, I go, sir."

"Thank you, Jacob. You once assured me that we fly safely above the weather now, and with far greater security than a commercial jet."

"Yes, I did do that, sir, didn't I?"

He sat back on the black leather seat and stretched out his long legs, planting his feet on the seat opposite, which no man of normal height could have done in this long stretch limousine. The driver was comfortably shut away behind glass, and the others followed in the car behind him. His bodyguards were in the car ahead.

The big limousine rushed up the ramp, taking the curbs with perilous but exciting speed, and then out the gaping mouth of the garage into the enchanting white storm. Thank God the beggars had been rescued from the streets. But he had forgotten to ask about the beggars. Surely some of them had been brought into his lobby and given warm drink and cots upon which to sleep.

They crossed Fifth Avenue and sped towards the river. The storm was a soundless torrent of lovely tiny flakes. They melted as they struck the dark windows and the wet sidewalks. They came down through the dark faceless buildings as if into a deep mountain pass.

Taltos.

For a moment the joy went out of his world--the joy of his accomplishments, and his dreams. In his mind's eye he saw the pretty young woman, the dollmaker from California, in her crushed violet silk dress. He saw her in his mind dead on a bed, with blood all around her, making her dress dark.

Of course it wouldn't happen. He never let it happen anymore, hadn't in so long he could scarce remember what it was like to wrap his arms around a soft female body, scarce remember the taste of the milk from a mother's breast.

But he thought of the bed, and the blood, and the girl dead and cold, and her eyelids turning blue, as well as the flesh beneath her fingernails, and finally even her face. He pictured this because if he didn't, he would picture too many other things. The sting of this kept him chastened, kept him within bounds.

"Oh, what does it matter? Male. And dead."

Only now did he realize that he would see Samuel! He and Samuel would be together. Now that was something that flooded him with happiness, or would if he let it. And he had become a master of letting the floods of happiness come when they would.

He hadn't seen Samuel in five years, or was it more? He had

to think. Of course they had talked on the phone. As the wires and phones themselves improved, they had talked often. But he hadn't actually seen Samuel.

In those days there had only been a little white in his hair. God, was it growing so fast? But of course Samuel had seen the few white hairs and remarked on it. And Ash had said, "It will go away."

For one moment the veil lifted, the great protective shield which so often saved him from unendurable pain.

He saw the glen, the smoke rising; he heard the awful ring and clatter of swords, saw the figures rushing towards the forest. Smoke rising from the brochs and from the wheel houses ... Impossible that it could have happened!

The weapons changed; the rules changed. But massacres were otherwise the same. He had lived on this continent now some seventy-five years, returning to it always within a month or two of leaving, for many reasons, and no small part of it was that he did not want to be near the flames, the smoke, the agony and terrible rain of war.

The memory of the glen wasn't leaving him. Other memories were connected--of green fields, wildflowers, hundreds upon hundreds of tiny blue wildflowers. On the river he rode in a small wooden craft, and the soldiers stood on the high battlements; ah, what these creatures did, piling one rock upon another to make great mountains of their own! But what were his own monuments, the great sarsens which hundreds dragged across the plain to make the circle?

The cave, he saw that too again, as if a dozen vivid photographs were shuffled suddenly before him, and one moment he was running down the cliff, slipping, nearly falling, and at another Samuel stood there, saying,

"Let's leave here, Ash. Why do you come here? What is there to see or to learn?"