Tears of the Salamander

HE LEFT THE HOUSE BY THE FRONT DOOR. THE shock of the midmorning sun halted him on the steps. He sank down and sat there with his head in his hands, gasping and shuddering, reliving over and over the thing the salamander had shown him, picking at it with his mind, trying to tease out some clue whether it was the truth, or whether perhaps he had misread it, or whether it really was, as Uncle Giorgio had told him, only an echo of some hidden nightmare of his own.

After a while he rose and, as if trying to leave all those horrors behind him, turned north alongside the façade and followed an overgrown driveway into the wood beyond. Yes, of course, he thought vaguely, once there would have been the gentry’s carriages coming and going to and from the house, but none seemed to have used this way for many years. A couple hundred yards into the woods he found out why. The driveway was completely blocked by a mass of soft gray rock twice as high as a man.

Still half in the trance of shock, he stood and stared at it. At first his mind seemed empty, as if the storm of horror that had swept through him had whirled everything away as it went, leaving clear stillness behind, like the morning he had woken from his fever. Thoughts stole back into that emptiness, arranging themselves neatly in their places, making a pattern that when it was finished would tell him what kind of man Uncle Giorgio really was. Everything depended on that, everything.

The rock—it was lava, he guessed—had spewed from the erupting mountain, flowing molten down the slope and solidifying here. Did that tell him anything?

Well, yes, perhaps. It was like the Bonaventura all over again. Had Uncle Giorgio for some reason failed to prevent it from happening, Master of the Mountain though he was? Or had he wanted to be alone in his aloneness, with no more comings and goings of gentry in their carriages, and so caused it to happen?

And something else. Those gentry…the empty stalls in the church…were they afraid to worship alongside him…? The priest was afraid of him. …The people in the square wouldn’t look at him. …Did they hate him as well as fear him? Suppose he was truly the kind of man the salamander had shown Alfredo…Oh, yes, they would have cause!

Mother and Father—certainly they’d been afraid. …

(“You’re not going to let him wear it?”

“Better than not letting him.”)

Had they hated him too? Had they known what he was?

Yes, and that might be why the two brothers had quarreled. Father had seen the kind of Master Uncle Giorgio would become and hadn’t liked it, and (of course) had said so. Anger was in their blood, like the anger of the mountain, ancient, brooding, unappeasable. It was not like the frozen lava that blocked the driveway—it did not cool.

Then why had Alfredo’s parents let him wear such a giver’s gift?

Those snatches of conversation heard through the kitchen door. “The mountain must have its Master. That is the one thing on which we have ever been able to agree.” And Alfredo was the last of the di Salas in whom the blood ran true. …Thousands upon thousands of innocent lives might be lost if there was no one to control the mountain’s rages. To Father that would have been more important than any family quarrel. So, despite everything, he had invited Uncle Giorgio to the christenings of his sons. And allowed Alfredo to accept the gift.

But surely Alfredo’s parents would never have given him up, as a child, to a man they feared and hated, however great the promised destiny. Of course not. “He must make up his own mind when he is old enough to understand.” So…

As the possibility flooded through him the storm came back. The gray lava flow and the silent shadowy wood seemed to sway and heave. He staggered and fell forward onto the rock, and clung there, gasping with the shock of knowledge. He could not face it. He could not face it. Could it truly be as he had imagined? Could it?

Slowly his shudderings eased, but he still lay clutching the rock. There was a kind of comfort in it. Once it had flowed molten in the heart of the mountain, and the salamanders had swum in its currents. Even now, he discovered, it was not truly inert. It was still, as it were, veined with the memories of fire. And along those veins, faintly, from far away, he could hear the salamanders singing. They were singing to him, showing him something. Somehow he forced his inward eyes, so far screwed tight shut, to open and look.

He saw through the eyes of a boy sitting in the vestry of the cathedral, less than a month gone by, full of the kindly heat of Father’s ovens and the glory of the music he was about to sing. He felt as that boy had felt, felt again the appalling eruption into that peace of the full madness of fire. This was no mere memory. He saw and felt it in the same fashion as with the salamander’s help he had just now watched the scene on the mountainside. The cathedral walls were dimly transparent, as were the houses beyond, so that through this cloudy mass he could make out the very street on which the bakery stood, and the inn a little way down on the other side. At an upper window of the inn stood a known shape, a manlike thing, too large for a man, and darkly glowing with inner fire. The Master of the Mountain raised his arms. The fire burst from his fingers and streamed across the street. The bakery exploded into flame.

The vision faded and the singing of the salamanders dwindled away.

“If asked they will tell you the truth.”

“…the truth that the salamander tells you will be contaminated with apparent meanings, which are in fact no more than echoes of your own hopes and fears.”

Which? Hadn’t he just been thinking of what might have caused the fire, so the vision was only the echo of that thought?

And how could the salamanders know what had happened in the bakehouse, eight days’ journey away to the north?

Oh, for some proof, something outside himself, something the salamanders hadn’t told him, something he could see and touch!

There was a movement close beside him and a hand fell on his shoulder, and at the same moment he heard a soft, bubbling sound, anxious and querying, a voice from a human throat, but meaningless. Whoever it was moved sharply away as he pushed himself over. Toni was standing a few feet from him, clearly worried and puzzled, but still poised to run.

Alfredo pulled himself together and managed to smile, but Toni backed off as he rose.

“Would you like to try the recorder again?” said Alfredo, miming the action of playing.

Toni nodded eagerly, so Alfredo led the way back to the house with Toni following in little hesitant rushes behind. Just before they came out of the wood he gave an anxious mutter, and gestured to his right when Alfredo turned to see what the problem was. Apparently he preferred to use a barely visible track that led off through the trees toward the back of the house.

“All right,” said Alfredo reassuringly. “I’ll get the recorder and meet you in the rose garden. Like yesterday.”

Again he mimed playing, and pointed south beyond the house. Toni nodded even more vigorously and darted off along the track.

The recorder was one of a set of four. Alfredo tried another, whose A was painfully sharp, but the next one was in tune, so he took it with the one he’d played yesterday. Toni was already waiting for him in the rose garden. He put one of the recorders down on the bench and moved away round the fountain. Eagerly Toni rushed in, grabbed the recorder and came and faced him across the empty basin. So they stood and played, each for the other and both for the music.

Alfredo started with the song they had played yesterday. Toni joined him, in unison for the first few bars, but then, and without any apparent effort, harmonizing as though he had known and played the music all his life. It was the same when they moved on to other songs and even suitable bits of cathedral music, some of it difficult enough for Alfredo himself to have trouble with. When that happened Toni stopped him and confidently played the notes as they should have gone. Clearly he had no need of a salamander charm around his neck. He had been born with the gift of music in him, already unlocked.

After a while Alfredo paused to rest, but Toni played happily on, only stopping when he saw Alfredo put his recorder to his lips again. Cautiously, ready to stop at the first flutter of a fiery wing, he started on the music of the Persian chant. Stumbling several times, he played it right through. Toni watched him, frowning. What kind of weird music is this? he was thinking, as obviously as if he’d spoken.

All at once his face cleared, and before the last note faded away he had his recorder to his lips. He played the chant easily, without any mistakes. Under the touch of his fingers the music began to make sense. Before he reached the first repetition the air beside him shimmered, and one of the Angels of Fire was standing at his shoulder, visible in the glare of midafternoon as a kind of solidifying of the strong sunlight, an immense presence, an elemental power.

Alfredo opened his mouth to shout a warning, but stopped himself, afraid to interrupt the music now that the thing was there. Toni must have seen his reaction and, still playing, turned to face the Angel and stared up, seemingly unafraid, into its lightning-loaded eyes. The Angel bowed its head in a gesture of respect, and waited until the chant ended. Then it reached out with a flaming finger and traced what might have been a series of symbols, or fiery letters, in an arching line above Toni’s head. That done, it moved back a pace, bowed and vanished.

Toni stood staring at the place where it had been and began to weep. He didn’t seem to have changed, as far as Alfredo could see. He had the same hesitant stance of an idiot, the same lopsided down-drawing of the jaw. But then he turned, blinking through his tears, saw Alfredo, and with his half-crouching gait came round the basin toward him. When he stopped he didn’t seem poised to run. Instead he held out his recorder to Alfredo and withdrew it, clutching it against his chest.

Please, please may I keep it?

Why not? Why cause the poor man yet more misery? It wouldn’t be missed, surely. The recorder case hadn’t been opened for years.

“Of course,” said Alfredo, nodding and gesturing toward him with outspread palms. He hid his own recorder behind his back, pointed toward the house and put a finger to his lips.

“Don’t let my uncle know you’ve got it,” he said. “Don’t play it near the house. I think we’d better not play any more now. I’ve got to go and sing to my uncle soon.”

Toni nodded and hid the recorder under his shirt. Alfredo started off toward the house, with Toni shambling along only half a pace behind him, but as soon as the buildings came in sight slipping off along one of his private paths. Alfredo guessed he had a cache somewhere for his special treasures. He himself went round by the courtyard and into the kitchen, wondering whether he should tell Annetta what had happened. Not yet, he decided; not until he knew a bit more.

The wind had shifted, altering the draft in the flue. It wasn’t serious, but for something to do he put a small oak log on the fire and fiddled with the damper in the door. Before he’d finished Toni came in and, ignoring Alfredo, settled at the table. Annetta stopped what she was doing to give him some food, and Alfredo took advantage of her absence from the stove to get at the flue damper. He turned back to the room already raising his hand in greeting to Toni, but the gesture stopped, half made. For several thudding heartbeats he stood staring.

Toni was already intent on his food, but this time wasn’t crouched protectively over it. He sat sideways at the table, straddling the bench, tearing a piece off his bread to dip in his bowl. Oh, how well Alfredo knew that pose! That was how Father sat, and Uncle Giorgio, too. Normally, of course, they used chairs, where the oddity wasn’t so obvious, but he’d often seen Father sitting like that in inns and other places where there were only benches.

He realized Annetta was looking at him.

“He sits just the way my father used to sit!” he blurted. “My uncle does it too!”

She nodded calmly.

“My uncle’s son? My cousin?”

She nodded again.

Yes, of course! That was why Toni had been able to summon the Angel! The mind might be damaged, but the blood ran true. …

Another pulse of understanding. Yes again, this woman to live in his house, to bear his children—of course Uncle Giorgio would want her dumb, another barrier round his aloneness, his secrets. Perhaps some of those children would inherit the defect—what of it? One son who could speak, and sing to the salamander, would be enough. Nothing else mattered.

Only there was also a defect in the father’s seed. His own seed. He could sire child after child on whatever woman would let him, and he would finish up with a household of idiots—horrible! A punishment, a judgment, for what he had done and become? No wonder he had spoken of it with such anger and contempt.

Alfredo pulled himself together, walked round the table and put his arm round Toni’s shoulders and hugged him. Toni looked up at him with a surprised smile, hesitated and offered him his piece of bread. Alfredo tore off a morsel, dipped it in the bowl and ate. He looked across at Annetta and saw that she was smiling, though there were tears on her cheeks. At that moment the big clock in the hallway clanked the hour. There wasn’t much time before he’d need to go and sing the chant for Uncle Giorgio, so he gave Toni another hug, then went back round the table and hugged Annetta. She bent and kissed him on the forehead.

Halfway up the stairs he realized that his feelings had changed. He had finally stopped trying to love and trust Uncle Giorgio. It wasn’t because of anything the salamanders had told him, or what Uncle Giorgio might or might not have done to Alfredo’s family, or his friends on the Bonaventura—there was still no way he could be sure about things like that. It was because of the way he had treated Annetta and Toni, and what he had said when Alfredo had asked about them. How could you love someone who spoke like that of his own son, or of the woman who had mothered that son for him?

Perhaps there might have been another Uncle Giorgio—the man Alfredo had glimpsed once, standing troubled at his study window, heard that very morning in a sigh and a few regret-laden words—but he was gone and would not come back. It was, as he himself had said, too late.

And something else. Uncle Giorgio was no longer the only family Alfredo had in the world. He had found a cousin, and an aunt, people who actually felt like family in a way Uncle Giorgio didn’t. People it would be possible to love.

But Uncle Giorgio mustn’t believe that anything had changed, so he settled into his window and read the words of the chant over and over, and found as he did so that since Toni had played it in the rose garden, the strange music had somehow become familiar and lodged in his mind. As he mouthed the unintelligible syllables they seemed to fit themselves naturally to the notes and cling there. He put the paper aside and whispered them through, half expecting to see the Angels of Fire floating quietly up across the long shadows toward the sunset, but there was only the breeze and the dry herby odors of the southern hills. When it was time he made his way down to Uncle Giorgio’s study.

Standing at the door, he paused, once again remembering that Uncle Giorgio could feel the comings and goings of the molten currents in the mountain, and wondering how much else? How closely did he watch? Was he already aware of all that Alfredo had done and seen that afternoon, of the singing of the salamanders in the lava flow, and above all, of the great Angel of Fire in the rose garden? No. Surely he would have done something about the Angel, had he known. …

That apart, Alfredo felt both tense and calm. He seemed able to sense that things were moving, moving fast, to whatever place they were going. He had no plan, no idea of what might happen, or what he would then do. The important thing was that when whatever was coming at last did so, it would not be wholly under Uncle Giorgio’s control, though he himself might believe it was. Uncle Giorgio had great power, but there were other powers around that were not his to command. Nor was Alfredo. Uncle Giorgio might believe he was completely under his control, but he wasn’t. Alfredo had knowledge his uncle knew nothing about, and friends where his uncle believed he had none.

He drew a deep, steadying breath and scratched on the door.

“One! Two! Three! Four!” shrieked the starling, drowning his uncle’s answer. He lifted the latch and went in.

Uncle Giorgio seemed unperturbed, indeed, almost eager to see him. He put his book down at once and looked up. “You are rested?” he said. “You have learned what you can?”

“Yes, I think I know it.”

“All of it? Well, let us see. Watch me. Stop if I hold up my hand.”

Alfredo straightened his shoulders, put his hands behind his back, drew breath and began, singing quietly, as if to himself, concentrating on his memory of the words, sure that the notes were there ready and waiting to hold them. Halfway through the first repeat Uncle Giorgio stopped him and he fell instantly silent, holding the next phrase ready in mind and throat, much as if he’d been holding his breath. The air in the study seemed to crackle, or prickle. His skin crawled. He recognized the nearness of the Angels of Fire.

Uncle Giorgio muttered a few words into the silence. The sensations faded. He nodded to Alfredo to sing on. He did so, and reached the end without further interruption.

“Excellent,” said Uncle Giorgio. “You have done very well, Alfredo, better than I could have hoped. This chant is not itself in your blood, only the ability to perform it. None of your ancestors, for many generations, since first we came out of Persia and settled on the mountain, had known it. I myself underwent much labor and danger to search it out. I traveled to the farthest East, to the Island of Fire, and there I found the last of those who speak that ancient tongue, and to gain their trust I underwent the Ordeal of Fire, so that they should teach me the chant, and other long-forgotten secrets, which one day you too will know. …

“Now, listen. Next Monday is the full moon in Leo, which is one of the three Houses of Fire. Furthermore it falls in the season when Sol is at his strongest. I had not expected you to be ready so soon, but now, on that day, we will perform the Second Great Work, you and I. Before we can do that, though, there is a test to make, which we must do as near to the full moon as we may come, and yet give ourselves time to rest, for the task we must undertake requires strength—strength of body, strength of mind, strength of will. So you must look after yourself, Alfredo—eat well, sleep well, rest. In two days we will go to town so that I may make my new will, and Wednesday you will sing again to the salamander. On Friday, we will make the test, and if that goes well, then on Monday, the Great Work!”

He spoke in his usual slow, precise, slightly grating voice, but his excitement throbbed within it like the fires in the mountain.

“And what then?” he whispered.

“I don’t know, Uncle. Is there a Third Great Work?”

“Who knows, Alfredo? Who knows? If a man in our pitiful little lifetime can come to control a mountain, then a man who lives forever might control the innermost fires of the earth!”

He turned away abruptly, snatched a crust from the bowl by the birdcage and fed it through the bars. “One! Two! Three! Four!” screamed the starling, and fell on it.

“Time for us also to go and eat,” said Uncle Giorgio, and opened the door.