Peter Dickinson - Tears of the Salamander

“Eat well,” said Uncle Giorgio as they sat down to supper. “There will be no breakfast tomorrow. We fast until the rite is over. Come to my office as soon as you are dressed.”

He seemed even edgier than he had that morning, and said nothing else throughout the meal. Nor did he read, but simply ate, silent and preoccupied, and left without another word. Alfredo had felt too nervous to eat much, but he dutifully filled his plate and then found he was hungry after his day on the mountain and polished it off without noticing. When he’d finished he went up to his room and sat in his window trying to read until it became too dark for that, then went to bed, but lay awake far into the night turning his problems uselessly over and over.

HE WOKE FEELING HAGGARD AND EXHAUSTED, dressed and went downstairs. Uncle Giorgio was in his study, and rose as Alfredo entered the room.

“One! Two! Three! Four!” shrieked the starling. It was answered by an angry chatter, and Alfredo saw that the brazier beneath its cage was gone and the other starling had now been brought down from upstairs and its cage was standing on the floor where the brazier had been. Uncle Giorgio ignored them both.

“Good,” he said. “First we must robe.”

He handed Alfredo a yellow garment stitched with red and green symbols. Alfredo put it on over his head and found that it reached almost to the floor. The sleeves were long too, with a tassel at the end. Uncle Giorgio’s robe was an even more elaborate version of Alfredo’s, and he wore a tall golden hat rising to a point and with a stiff upturned brim. Alfredo was bare-headed.

Uncle Giorgio picked up a crystal decanter and poured a little pale yellow liquid into two silver goblets. He spread his fingers over them, muttered briefly and handed one to Alfredo.

“Do as I do,” he said. “What we are about to attempt is only a test, but involves mighty powers and must be performed with due solemnity. Now, first, three sips, and then three sips, and then three sips to finish the cup. Say the words after me. This is the First Purification. We begin.”

He intoned a few syllables and waited for Alfredo to repeat them. The words were strange but sounded Persian, like those of the chant. A longer pause and he raised his goblet to his lips. Alfredo did the same. The liquid was intensely sweet in the mouth but fiery in the throat. Alfredo managed to judge his sips right and finished his goblet on the last one.

“Excellent,” said Uncle Giorgio. “Bring the other bird and follow me.”

Holding the cage high in front of him and moving as solemnly as a priest at Mass, he led the way along the corridor, round and down to the furnace room. He unlocked the door and locked it again behind him. The room had changed. The table beside the furnace where Uncle Giorgio kept his implements had been moved back to the wall, and some other objects had been shifted aside, leaving a clear space at whose center stood the brazier from upstairs. It was empty. Beneath it was a large tray spread with an even layer of fine sand, in which a single continuous groove had been scooped, making a five-pointed star enclosing the brazier. There was a lit lantern on a shelf beside the door.

Uncle Giorgio placed his cage on the lid of the furnace and took the other one from Alfredo. He opened its door, reached in, caught the shrieking bird, withdrew it and handed the cage back to Alfredo, pointing to show him he was to put it down against the wall. By the time Alfredo turned back Uncle Giorgio was holding the bird in a grip that caused it to gape upward. He picked up a small dropper, dipped it into a bowl and squeezed a single drop of liquid into the bird’s throat. He then put it into the cage on the furnace, caught and took out the first bird and did the same, and put it back in the cage with the other one. The two birds, which had screeched at each other almost continuously till this moment, fell silent. Uncle Giorgio picked up the cage and balanced it on the brazier, then took Alfredo by the shoulder, led him across to a point about three paces from the brazier and turned him to face it.

“Do not move from that spot and you will be quite safe,” he said. “Watch me. When I raise my right hand, sing the chant. Here are your dark glasses. You will need them later.”

Alfredo waited, his heart beating heavily with a mixture of wonder and terror, and the fierce excitement of being on the edge of strange knowledge. He watched Uncle Giorgio unstopper a large flask and very carefully, gripping the brazier for support and leaning out over the sand so as not to mark its surface in any other way, fill the star-shaped groove with glistening dark red granules. Finished, he restoppered the flask and stood back opposite Alfredo with the brazier exactly between them. He spread his arms wide, raised his head and began to speak.

Persian again, in a deep, strong voice, every syllable clear and exact. The room rang with the sound. It went on for a long while, but still the tension grew and grew. At last Uncle Giorgio fell silent. He drew his hands together before his mouth in a gesture of prayer. His lips were moving but the words were silent. He glanced at Alfredo, briefly raised his right hand and returned to his praying. Alfredo filled his lungs and sang.

He’d expected he might be too nervous to hit the first few notes, to have to steady himself into the chant, but the sound came strong and true. The air in the chamber prickled, and filled with a snowstorm of glowing flecks that swirled themselves into two tall fiery shapes, two Angels of Fire standing opposite each other one either side of the brazier, so that the four of them, two Angels and two humans, stood at the corner-points of a square. None of them stirred until the chant ended.

Then Uncle Giorgio spoke, two grating syllables. The Angels half-raised their arms. Fire streamed from their fingertips down toward the feet of the brazier. The pattern in the sand became a fiery star. Its flames were not red but an intense violet. They wavered as flames do, but did not spread and thicken. Instead they retained the precise outline of the star they sprang from, growing and growing until their tops bent inward and poured themselves into the bowl of the brazier beneath the cage and filled it.

The starlings showed no sign of being perturbed, but stood side by side on the single perch. One raised a foot and scratched under its chin. Then the flames shot up and enveloped the cage. There was no squawk from the birds, no sudden stench of burning feathers, only a faint odor, peppery but sweet, filling the chamber. The flames held the shape of the cage, increasing in intensity until Alfredo was forced to use his dark glasses. He could hear Uncle Giorgio’s voice now, a steady mutter, the same dozen words over and over but becoming louder and louder as the light intensified. Despite the protection of his spectacles Alfredo could scarcely see Uncle Giorgio through the glare, but he made out a movement of some kind and at the same moment the Angels stretched out their arms toward the brazier, so Alfredo followed suit. At once he could feel the power being drawn from him, down his arms and out through his fingers. The light blazed stronger than the sun. He had to screw his eyes shut, despite the spectacles. Uncle Giorgio’s voice was a harsh cry of triumph that suddenly snapped short. The light faded away and Alfredo could open his eyes.

Even without the spectacles he was blind. All he knew was that the Angels were gone.

“Stay where you are,” said Uncle Giorgio. “It is not yet safe to move.”