Micha was a young widow from Simrl. She’d come to Agartha in the third week of March to do business with an old client of her dead husband called Whistling only to find the city in shutdown. The inns were all closed and the streets were deserted. Finally, she managed to find Whistling’s servant, who took her, begrudgingly, under bribe to his master.
The Parabellum was a huge domed structure the outside of which was decorated with blue mosaic tiles and strange and indeed monstrous symbols.
If Micha was overawed, she was determined not to show it.
Everything, and nothing was about to happen, it seemed. But, as an outsider, who did not and could not believe, she discreetly touched herself and made the sign of the horns.
The Parabellum was a-hush. The audience comprising the nobles of the Council as well as various honoured guests from the outlying territories of Tersia Magnia waited in expectancy and apprehension. Indeed, the whispering and muttering amongst them only subsided when they saw the Seerheart himself.
Micha had never seen the Seerheart but she had seen his likeness on certain gold coins that exchanged hands for a mint in cinnamon and spice. He was dressed in a golden robe with flourishes of black and grey blocks tapering down its generous folds; his resplendent attire reflected in the winged, gilt mirror behind him as he ascended the rostrum.
The Seerheart began to speak, but Micha had trouble following his high Avernian, and she turned to Whistling who now acted as translator and interpreter.
Every prince feared the blood suit, Whistling said. They would go to extraordinary lengths to avoid it, but the truth was none could avoid the blood suit. The blood suit determined the law of succession. Once it was bound and knit to the person of the prince, he was obliged to take up his rule.
“Why do you smile? – You believe a prince should always wish to take up his birth right. It is, you believe, an honour and a privilege to rule his people. But, in our culture, the blood suit, fate itself, comes down like a curse. It imposes terrible conditions, impossible suffering and ultimately damnation.”
Micha was surprised by the vehemence and bitterness in Whistling’s tone, but there was no time to reflect on it.
The winged gilt mirror crackled with lines and streaks over a chiaroscuro of moving images.
“What is happening now?” she asked.
“It is the Faugn!” muttered Whistling. “He who lives in the Zone of Avoidance.”
The hall was aghast as a hideous proboscidean form came into view; each member of the congregation made some private sign to himself.
Micha stared in disbelief, as the hideous form flickered on the mirror.
She was reminded of the story told to her by her dead husband. His eyes are tiny, he had said, and bright like a torch. They sit at the end of his nose. He wheezes from time to time. His lungs are full of dust from an underground vault. Her husband had made her laugh as he said all this one evening long ago – his eyes going wide like an old hag with the most exaggerated beetle brow, when all was right in her world, and all this was no more than his mocking tale.
Whistling scowled as he spoke:
“The Faugn is the keeper of the Codex,” he said. “The Codex contains terrible signs, dreadful omens which only the Faugn can read; only the Faugn knows where their destiny lies. Very minutely he works the fibres of the suit. He knits and knits as if he knows where it is also leading. Thread by thread.”
Micha could scarcely contain her smirk.
“Like a tailor?”
“The Faugn is not sartorial, though one might – if one was to use a human analogy -call him a monster tailor. He is the threader of tales that have yet to be told but will find their way in the retelling here.”
All of sudden the Seerheart appeared to stumble; he clasped the side of the pulpit. As he did, Micha became aware of a low hum. A hum that began to grow and grow into a buzzing – a buzzing that echoed around the hall.
“Behold!” cried the Seerheart, amid gasps from the hall as the mirror flickered again. “It is Lady Lazarus herself!”
Everyone understood, even Micha, who was not Avernian and never could be. There she stood, the Lady Lazarus, the successor to the Throne of Light, one leg bent round behind her ears in glorious exclamation. The Lady Lazarus who had become such a potent symbol in these fretful and sedulous times. Strong, resolute and defiant – it was she who it was believed would restore the Golden Age of Avernians and smash the rebel forces now gathering around the Fortress of Solitude.
And there it was: the Fortress itself – so long hidden from sight – lonely and moon-flooded. Like a cliff dwelling of a forgotten age.
The guards of the Fortress, primed for so many days for this moment, relaxed their spears as the Lady Lazarus appeared before them.
“Now she will climb the thousand and one steps to the uppermost chamber,” Whistling went on. “There she will meet her father for the last time.
Whistling dropped to his knees and held out his hands.
Micha watched as the Avernians began to pray around her. For a moment, feeling damned by her lack of faith, she stopped watching and went into her private, gated thoughts where the memory of her husband lay. She wanted to cry in despair when Whistling crossed himself with the first three fingers of his right hand and muttered:
“Cymbeline shall wake no more.”
Micha forced herself to watch upon the screen of the mirror:
In the chamber Lady Lazarus sits on the bed and holds her father’s still warm hand. His eyes are closed, but he looks at peace – a faint smile curls about his lips, as if the disease that has ravaged his body has now been appeased and becalmed.
The Guardian Law enters the chamber with a vase of flowers which, Whistling asserts, are symbolic for all Avernians; the colour of iris, the blush of lily and the bloom of chrysanthemum.
“The mourners of Notre Dame have been summoned,” she tells in the ritual way. “The ships of Averna are ready to hoist their sails. The merchants of Agartha will send to the spice kings of Tersia Magnia.”
The Guardian Law smiles at Lady Lazarus as slowly, indeed delicately she pulls back the bed clothes.
The Blood Suit is as good as new but the body of her father is withered and old. There is a ghastly paleness to his skin and varicosity to his veins that can be detected through the fine raiment of the suit.
In that moment (Micha thinks) Lady Lazarus must understand the full horror of it. The handing down of genes, their intricate consequences, the impossible contract between life and death therein implied; all which seems to play out in the fibres of the blood suit.
All were aghast.
All waited in silence.
Micha could not but be affected by the intensity of their collective gaze.
Then, from some darkling place, she heard it. The ghastly cry could only mean one thing.
The Faugn began to utter the terrible words of the Codex. To her ears it sounded like curses, blasphemy.
Whistling himself was panting and sweating, and he clung to Micha’s arm. “The prophecy is fulfilled,” he gasped. “As it is written in the blood suit.”
Shortly the light would return. The doors to the palace would open; the people of Averna would cheer and the nobles of the Council would genuflect before Lady Lazarus as she descended from the steps of the Fortress in her new garb.
All this would pass off in great awe and solemnity.
Memory would be erased, and all would begin again. For better or worse, Lady Lazarus would rule in Averna, until one day, the Faugn was summoned again.
Only for Micha there was no hope in the prophecy. She clutched her side and fell down, victim of her own blood suit.