Atlas of the Archipelago. It contained page after page of maps in muted colours and a gazetteer of place names: a world, but not his; other countries, other islands, strung out across the face of the blue, with vertebrae and ribs of snow-capped mountains. The poetry of unfamiliar shorelines. A great bridge had been built across the sea to join them, thousands of miles long, but it was broken in several places. The orthography of the place names was familiar, but the names themselves… He didn’t recognise them – they were strange and wonderful. Morthern. Foerd. Mier. Gealm. The Warth. Horrow. Sarshalls. It was an atlas of elsewhere.
Teslom had come in quietly while he was reading. When Vishnik noticed him, the Curator made the formal gestures of acknowledgement and permission.
‘Welcome, Prince Vishnik. The princes of Vyra and Turm were always friends of Lezarye in the former days of the long homelands. There is a place for you in our hearts and at our tables. How can I help you?’
Teslom was a small man, neat, spare, kempt, with dark-shadowed eyes behind rimless circular glasses and glossy brown hair flopped across his forehead. He wore a double-breasted suit of dark blue; a soft white shirt with a soft turned-down collar and faint pattern of squares; a dark tie held in place with a pin.
‘I want you to tell me about the Pollandore, Teslom my friend. Every fucking thing you can.’
‘The Pollandore? Why?’
‘I found a story about this thing. It was in a book. An old and rare book. I asked myself, is it real? Is it true?’
‘What story is this? Where did you find it? What book?’
Vishnik opened his satchel and handed it to him. A Child’s Book of Wonders, Legends and Tales of Long Ago. Teslom took it carefully and opened it, his dark eyes shining.
‘I had heard of it, but even we don’t have a copy.’ He held it close to his face, examining the stitch binding and inhaling its paper smell.
‘Tell me about the Pollandore, Teslom, and I will give it to you. My gift to the People.’
Teslom handed the book back to him.
‘A good gift. But why the Pollandore? There are other stories here.’
‘Because of these.’
Vishnik opened his satchel again, took out a sheaf of photographs and spread them across the table. Teslom lit a lamp and studied them for a long time in silence.
‘Where did you get these?’ he said at last.
‘They are mine. I took them. These things happen. I’ve seen them. This is the proof. And now I ask myself, what does Teslom know about this?’
‘But what makes you connect these pictures with the story of the Pollandore?’
‘Why? Always fucking why? Because it is a possibility, Teslom my friend. Because I have a feeling. A hypothesis. Because it would fit the case. So. What do you tell me? What do you say?’
Teslom hesitated.
‘I would say,’ he said at last, ‘that you are not the first to come to this house and speak about the Pollandore. A paluba came here yesterday.’
‘A paluba.’
‘Indeed. From the woods. It talked of the Pollandore and now you come with these questions about the same thing.’
‘The Pollandore is real then. It was actually made.’
‘I don’t know that. There is a record that Lezarye once held such a thing in care, that one of the elder families was appointed warden, but it was seized by the Vlast soon after the Founder came north. Attempts were made to destroy it in the time of the Gruodists, but they failed. That is what is said.’
‘And this paluba spoke of it? That implies it exists.’
‘It implies only that our friends in the woods believe so. Some of the Committee also think it is real. Others do not.’
‘What else did it say, this paluba?’
‘It asked to address the Inner Committee. It spoke of an angel, a living angel that had fallen in the forest and was doing great damage. The woods fear it will poison the world. The paluba wanted us to open the Pollandore. That is the way the legend goes, is it not? The Pollandore, to be opened in the last extremity, when hope is lost.’
‘Exactly. Yes. Fuck yes. Do you see what this means, Teslom? Do you see?’
‘The paluba also said the Pollandore itself was broken, or leaking, or failing, or something. The point was unclear, I think. I was not there myself.’
‘What did the Committee do?’
‘Nothing. They refused to countenance the paluba’s message at all. They wanted nothing to do with it.