Turquoiselle, Tanith Lee [100 best novels of all time .TXT] 📗

had it all. There could be and were nodoubts. As, however reluctantly, one recognised oneself in a mirror.

Born in that other country far east of the Med, the trouble inthe city or the town, the bomb-blast that negated the diplomatic building,Croft’s living quarters with it. Croft must have been elsewhere. He had notseen. His wife, the English woman, detonated into fragments like broken glass,and the child– the unwieldy impaired child Croft had begun byloathing and fearing, until those states altered into amazed love – shatteredso small, as only a child’s body could be, not anything could be found. Not enough left of him to bury.Except they had lied. The British employers of Peter, or Petre Croft, Mantik Corp.The child had survived the blast. No one could figure out how. They had beentogether in that room, the mother and her son she had called Heaven out of thepassionate belief she had in him. But where she and the room and all else hadperished, the child, two, three years of age, he was untouched. Just as, thoseother years later, he would be untouched by the racing traffic on that suburbanroad, and with him the black puppy he had snatched, and known by then how toshield by his ungainly miraculous curled-up body.

And Carver could see – the three-year-old child wandering throughthe bombed rubble, and how he floundered to the hurt and howling, thescreaming, the dying, and floppily touched them with his small ugly ungainlydisgusting beautiful hands. And they grew serene and lay waiting, for death orrescue. And maybe some of them slept, or even laughed. Not minding, unafraid.

So Mantik, when they entered the scene, took the child with theobscenely perfect name. They carried him off as evil wizards do in some TVseries for the fantasy-minded under-twelves. And they told Petre Croft thatboth his wife, and hisson, had been killed. But Croft, though he believed it, on some other level, insome obscure way, sensed – smelled – the stench of treachery.And that was why he had, eventually, turned to other work, anything that mightbring Mantik crashing down.

Carver knew, almost in words, always in pictures, how Heaven, bythen known as Heavy, was allowed to grow up, supervised and guarded – yet leftexperimentally to the non-mercies of the mundane world. And while he was,Mantik, like all the cruellest and most cold-blooded guardian gods, noted everynuance of his development, and his – skills. His powers.

Subsidiary to which, they had seen him connect himself, unwanted,then welcomed, to another boy, this one the dark and sullen and uneducatedlittle thief, Andreas Cava. And by that straightforward means, they learned bitby bit, that Carver too was worth taking up and manipulating, for future andrelentless use. Heavy, Silvia, Carver. One, Two, Three. Scar, Scar, Scar.

He’sinformed me of this, shown me, Heavy. That’s how I can see it, and know forcertain.

Carver stared into Heavy’s eyes. Does he know? Does he knowwhatMantik are – doeshe understand? – The men were standing rather as they had, when boys, in thepark, the very last occasion of their meeting. Not far off, nor close. May allthe good be happy. And all the bad be good. Oh Christ, Christ.

“Your father’s dead. He’s wrapped up in a grade A body bag,”Carver jaggedly said to Heavy. “Did they bother to tell you?”

“Yes,” Heavy answered. “‘S all right. He’s fined now. And I’ll beable to be talking with him, like I do with moth–ah.”

Carver could feel the unexcitable warmth from Heavy. It was likethe sunlight. And he could feel Silvia’s presence, now at his back, hot andcold like heating or freezing, fire and Arctic waters.

“She can change shape,” he said to Heavy. “And you can change –anything. But I – ruin and drive insane. And we are all Mantik’s slaves. Their whores.”

Heavy put out one of his awful, fat and misshapen hands, andtouched Carver on the shoulder. Only an instant. There was no feeling at all fromthis, less than a leaf falling –

“Leafs do fall,” Heavy said, in a low unheard murmur.

– Andafter the fall – something...

Something.

What?

“I must go now,” said Heavy. “Lots man need helpful up there. Itwill be fined, Andy. Will be fined. Belief it. We are not too many. See younext soon.”

Above, so high, so far, a shape, and a shadow falling like a leaf,and then another, and another. And then the wild amused screeching of a gull.

Heavy raised his heavy head. He grinned into the sky with joy. “Gullybirds,” approved Heavy. “They pull the sun.”

Upfrom the flat roof the second lesser helicopter lifted. The fair-skinned skywas open wide, and any gulls, sensibly, had veered to the west. The shrill-singingracket of the aircraft filled Carver’s ears like glue. Under and about him the rear seatvibrated and jarred. He was on the left, Silvia to the middle. Avondaleoccupied the right-hand place. He seemed, mollified by his drink and thegeneral success, to be nodding off. No conversation started. There were noquestions. Heavy was gone. In front, by the pilot, Latham sat. He was closeenough you could pull his hair. It was the school bus.

Swiftly sky-borne, astoundingly high. The colossal blueness and thetransparent gleam. And below, the building, some original wieldy house boughtup and soullessly extended, erratically decorated, recently very blackened,here, there, by arson.

Carver could see now, the multiple extension of carefully plantedand nurtured ‘grounds’, woods, rises, valleys. And then, a reduced yet shakingswing of the chopper revealed hillsides northerly, and behind, huge barrenchunky crags collapsing statically downward to moorlands, grey-green andpurple, miles beneath.

Where wasthis place? Scotland – some outpost of Avondale’s folly –No. Unless he had passed it over to the LLE – the true Life Long Enemies, toCroft’s organisation, some deliberate ploy – but it made no sense. What did?

As if it knew it had suggested too much, the chopper manoeuvredagain, and the forward and side-view were solely of the south margin of thecliff. One last glimpse of the building and the lawns, the south terrace (sotiny now, toyland.) Then all the earth dropped away into an incredible abyss.At the bottom of which was not red wine, or eternal