The Emperor of All Things - By Paul Witcover Page 0,204

first hint of a madness that would engulf him whether he resisted it or not. And why should he resist? Better to surrender. Perhaps that was the only escape possible.

A ragged giggle issued from out of the dark. Or, no, it was the darkness itself that laughed. A terrible sound, like sanity ripping. Then it spoke, which was far, far worse.

‘Well, well. Look what the cats dragged in.’

The words came from everywhere at once – including, it seemed, from inside him … to the extent he still had an inside. Was this his own voice that addressed him, a voice spun out of the threads of his unravelled reason? Quare was losing his sense of separateness, of self.

‘You wound me, Mr Quare. Do you not recognize my voice?’

And with that, he did. It was not precisely the voice he remembered but instead a close facsimile, as if whatever addressed him now lacked the equipment for human speech and had been forced to make do with materials unsuited to the task. Even so, there was no mistaking the voice of his late master, Theophilus Magnus.

18

What the Cats Dragged In

THE VOICE OF Quare’s dead master giggled again. ‘Behold.’

Tendrils of darkness coalesced into the shape of a man, a living shadow cast by no light that Quare could see. Here he saw by some other means, as if with his mind’s eye. The figure thus revealed stood tall and unbowed, not the hunched, twisted shape of Master Theophilus Magnus but a paragon of male perfection, a David carved from ebony rather than marble, sleek-muscled as a god …yet sexless, its groin smooth. Around this statuesque figure, familiar details swam into focus: a desk, chairs, bookcases and stacks of books, even burning candles … all bereft of colour: only black and white and shades of grey. Yet it was unquestionably Master Magnus’s study – or, rather, a close facsimile of it … just as the voice was a close facsimile of the master’s. Quare perceived that he, too, now possessed a shape, a kind of inverse silhouette, a white space that felt less like the outline of his own body than what was left after the dark had drained away.

‘You may speak,’ said the shadow of the man.

‘Is it really you, Master?’ Quare asked, and the voice that issued from out of the white space that defined him was both familiar and strange, like his own voice echoing from a great distance.

‘It is I,’ came the reply. ‘And yet not I. That is to say, the man I was is only part of what I am becoming.’

‘And what is that?’ Quare asked, not at all sure he wanted to know.

The darkness opposite him unravelled, then re-formed. In an instant, the shadow of the man was gone, along with the furnishings on that side of the room and, indeed, the room itself: all blown away like so much smoke in a gust of wind. In their place hovered a wingless dragon so black it glowed. Quare’s first thought was that Tiamat had found him, that merely thinking of the dragon had been enough to summon it, though he had not called for it to come. But of course this was not Tiamat.

‘Is it not wonderful?’ demanded the dragon in the voice of Master Magnus. ‘Do you not see? The hunter is not a device for telling time. Nor is it a weapon, precisely. It is, rather, a chamber of sorts, an alembic in which the essences of various creatures may be combined to a new and higher purpose. In short, it is an egg. A dragon’s egg.’

Quare was speechless. Longinus had told him that dragons had been born from the stuff of the Otherwhere, and Tiamat had indirectly confirmed that. Neither of them had said anything about an egg, however.

In the next instant, the dragon was gone, its dark substance shredding then coalescing again into the shape of Master Magnus’s study. Of the master himself, there was no sign. Yet his voice continued to issue from all around. ‘The egg draws sustenance from the outer world. It feeds upon our blood, our very lives. My blood and yours, Mr Quare. My life, and the lives of my cats. All mingled to quicken what lay quiescent until wakened by our presence.’

‘So I am dead, then. The hunter has killed me.’ He felt numb.

The disquieting giggle came again. ‘Rather, it has saved your life.’

‘I don’t understand …’

‘How could you? Even I succumbed to madness when I awakened