she passed he caught her faint perfume: not perfume, but an open, outdoor scent. Rain on cool earth.
‘Well,’ said Vishnik. ‘How can I help?’ He was pacing the room, eager and animated. ‘What is it that I can do for you? There must be something, for you to come so late. Tell me, please. I am eager for gallantry. For me, the chances are few. Ask me, and it is yours.’ His eyes were alive with pleasure. He was more than a little drunk.
Maroussia looked at Lom again.
‘I don’t know that I should…’ she said.
‘Oh for the sake of fuck, Maroussia,’ said Vishnik. ‘Tell us what you need.’
She took a breath. ‘OK. I want you to tell me about the Pollandore, Raku. I want you to tell me anything you know about it. Anything and everything.’
Vishnik stopped pacing and stared at her.
‘The Pollandore?’
‘Yes.’ Maroussia was looking at him earnestly. Determined. ‘The Pollandore. Please. It’s important.’
‘But… fuck, this I was not expecting… of all things, this.’ Vishnik fetched another bottle from the shelf and settled himself in a sprawl on the rug on floor. ‘Why are you asking me this?’
‘You know about it? You can tell me?’
‘I’ve come across the story. It’s an old Lezarye thing. Suppressed by the Vlast long ago. Nobody knows about the Pollandore any more.’
‘I do,’ said Maroussia. ‘My mother used to talk about it. A lot. She still does.’
‘Really?’ said Vishnik. ‘I thought… those stories are forgotten now.’ He turned to Lom. ‘Did you ever hear of the Pollandore, Vissarion?’
Lom shrugged. ‘No. What is it?’
‘Maroussia?’ said Vishnik. ‘Will you tell him?’
‘No,’ said Maroussia. ‘I want to hear it from someone else.’
‘OK,’ said Vishnik. ‘So then.’ He poured himself another glass. ‘Do you ever think about what the world was like before the Vlast, Vissarion?’
‘No,’ said Lom. ‘Not much.’
‘Four hundred years,’ said Vishnik. ‘But it might as well have been four thousand, no? Our civilisation, if we might even call it that, has lived for so long in the shadow of the angels’ war, our history is so steeped in it, we live with its consequences in our very patterns of thought. Who can even fucking measure the damage it has done?’ Vishnik paused. ‘That’s what the Pollandore is about. The time before the war of the angels.’
‘The Lezarye walking the long homeland,’ said Maroussia quietly. ‘The single moon in the sky, not broken yet.’
‘The world had gods of its own, then,’ Vishnik was saying. ‘That’s how the story goes. Small gods. Gentle, subtle, local gods. But those gods are gone now. They withdrew when the angels began. They foresaw destruction and a terrible, unbearable future. They couldn’t co-exist with that. Their time had to end.’
Vishnik emptied his glass and poured another. Lom wondered just how drunk he was. And how long since he’d had an audience like this.
‘But before they went,’ Vishnik continued, ‘one of them, a forest god, made a copy of the world, the whole world, as it was at the moment before the first angel fell to earth. It was a pocket world, a world in stasis. Everything squeezed up into a tiny box. A packet of potential that would exist outside space and time, containing not things themselves but the potential for things. Possibilities. Do you see?’
‘Yes,’ said Lom. ‘I guess so.’
‘The idea was,’ said Vishnik, ‘that this other future, the future that could not now be, in our world, was to be kept safe. Waiting. A reserve. A fall-back. A cupboard. A seed. That’s the Pollandore. That’s the legend, anyway.’
‘But what happened to it, Raku?’ said Maroussia. ‘Where did it go?’
‘The people of Lezarye kept it safe for a while, but in the end the Vlast took it.’
‘Yes,’ said Maroussia. She was leaning forward. Looking at Vishnik intently. ‘But what did they do with it? Where is it now?’
Vishnik shrugged.
‘They tried to destroy it,’ he said, ‘but they could not. It was lost. Why are you asking me this, Maroussia? These are old forgotten things.’
‘I want to find it.’
‘Find it?’ Vishnik looked startled. ‘Fuck.’
‘Yes. And please don’t tell me it doesn’t exist. I don’t want to hear that again.’
‘But… It’s a good story, yes. A symbol. Truth in a picture. But what makes you think this? That it actually exists?’
Maroussia hesitated. Lom tried to read her expression but couldn’t. She was looking at Vishnik with a pale and troubled look.
‘Things have been… happening,’ she said. ‘Things have been coming… to my mother. From the forest. She was there once, long ago,