Disclaimer: the poem I used in this chapter is Alexander Pushkin's "demons".
IV. Ashes' ball
I. Jabari Kane
I never wanted war, but war came nonetheless, thanks to my beloved brother. Until then, gods had been merciful. The Great War that had swept away the European Nomes, stripping them of their pride and scorn, had spared America. This land was a whole new world. No rules, nor laws tied us to the American government. The Per Ankh thrived there, living free and unharmed, hidden away from the horror of Segregation and mass conscription. If not for greed, there would have been enough land for all of us, Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians…
My father had a tough life. He fled Soudan in the midst of a civil war, somehow made it to the first Nome, then the United Kingdom. All he ever wanted for his sons was a quiet place for them to live. That's all I ever wanted for my sons as well. My brother destroyed that hope the day he killed Richard Hogan, for a woman's honour. The vendetta that ensued almost ended us all. I had been married for only five month, and my young wife was pregnant with our first son, when the Hogan family attacked the family mansion. I managed to get my niece and wife out of the burning building. They hid in Long Island for two month, with the help of an old friend of mine, of Greek blood. But the Greeks didn't want to have anything to do with a Per Ankh's quarrel, and soon enough, we were forced to move. We went south, hoping to reach Louisiana, where one of my cousins could give us shelter. Before we ever reached Baton-Rouge, my son Julius was born in the great lonesome sternness of Virginian cotton fields. The stars smiled down at us in the summer air of this warm and dry august night, and I knew then that I shall live to see miracles.
I felt sorry for Alma. She was of royal blood, scion of the greatest family in the Per Ankh. She spent her early years at the Sultan Court of Zanzibar, then was trained as a spell caster at the first Nome. Gods know how I loved this woman. She deserved better than this, chased like a dog, hunted in the night, hiding in the fields from white militia. My dear brother would have to pay for that too. He never got the chance though, he disappeared somewhere in France. I left my son, my wife and my niece at the Louisiana Nome, got in touch with my father and sailed for France. My brother had been missing for weeks, with his buddy, Sam Keane. He had made contact with the Bellini family and had promised them the hand of his only daughter in marriage. After a meeting in Amiens, no one never heard of him again. What worried me most was that Picardy was full of Magicians from the Fourteenth. They were working to disable the spells and traps infesting the region since the war. French Nome's elementalists had been working for three years on restoring Ma'at and cleansing the ground of these wounded land. Rumour had it even demons refused to step on the deserted battlefields' cursed ground.
Arrangements were made with the Bellini. I was to meet them at a party, thrown in some villa in Cap-Ferrat. I didn't like the idea, but then I hated everything about what was going on, and what I had to do, but it was war and alliances were to be made. The place was magnificent: great white walls and swimming pool overlooking the Mediterranean, pines and cypress, just like in a Cézanne painting. Jazz was playing crazy, champagne and wine flowed unabated. French people call those post-war years "les années folles" and were trying to drown the memory of deprivation in as much alcohol as possible. It was at the same party that I saw a ghost.
A slender figure emerged from group of dancers, and I felt a cold shiver down my spine. The boy looked a lot like his ancestor, thin, with some softness in the figure, tanned complexion, black curls, dark and feminine eyes. Like any Champollion I've met, he was beaming with youth and arrogance, a sort of half-mocking smile dangling on his lips. "I didn't expect to see you here. – Neither did I." he answered in Arabic. Desjardins didn't speak English at all.
The first time I'd seen him was at the Fourteenth, bloodied and tied to a chair, after his capture. He'd been accusing of blowing up some buildings in Montmartre. I'd been following Iskandar, who swiftly resolved the crisis. The next time I heard of him, was in mars 1914, when he passed the exams of the Per Ankh. He was the oldest of the applicants, and had scored mediocrely, just enough for him to get accepted in the ranks of the house of life. Though my father and brother were quite reassured by the news, I knew that it meant little, for he had managed to learn in three years what our children start learning at the age of ten. Suddenly, I remembered my brother's declarations.
"You are far from home, lord Kane.
– You're bold. They have a special place down below for people like you, Desjardins. You should know your place, boy.
– You all speak the same way, you Kane, and yet it's me that you call arrogant.
– I don't think you've met a lot of Kane.
– I believe I did.
– Whatever my brother said, it was his right, according to the rules of Ancient Egypt. Though the meaning of pharaoh's blood is nothing that you can understand.
– Well, you see, you are in France here. Our local Pharaoh lost his head a century ago."
Another republican, I thought, they all are. I watched him navigating the room. He stumbled upon Giacomo Bellini, extended his hand, and gave him something that looked like a little piece of paper. This, I didn't like, no more than I liked the idea of dealing with the Bellini gang at all. They were known Setians, unreliable and powerful.
Something was odd, something in here was getting out of hands, but I couldn't figure out what. I felt strange, cold and detached, as I watched the people prancing around me. Fake smiles and expensive dresses. People were gathered here from all Europe. They were all looking down on us, poor American beggars, trying to fit our war in their own game of power and lust. Most of these beings were ancient, now viewing war as a mere entertainment, like magic or sex. And thus our house will go extinct and forgotten. I shivered again.
"I felt a stern judgmental eye. And so I thought 'Well it must be Jabari Kane, mocking our decadent ways'. Wasn't I right?" Standing behind me, magnificent in her snow-white dress and pearls was Alexandra Menchikova. A silver diadem held together her platinum hair.
"Well, the world is burning and here you are, dancing.
– You are wrong sir, not all the world, just my good old country. As for this land, it was already consumed, and all of us here are just enjoying this carnival of ashes.
– My lady", I remembered and kissed the hand that was given to me.
"Apologies for my bad English, I grew up at Catherine's court, when French was still deemed the only civilized language.
– Is it still so? People seem to use it less and less.
– And who said people are civilized nowadays? I was expecting to meet your dear brother my lord. I have some fond memories of him at the Per Ankh, which I would like sharing."
I looked down at the gathering. Champollion was nowhere to be seen, so was the Bellini boy.
"Looking for someone my lord? Have you met the young monsieur Desjardins?
– I had that pleasure.
– Pleasure, really? Yet your father advocated for the extinction of Champollion's blood.
– So did you.
– It was only a matter of principles. I must say I am quite fond of the boy, and so is my brother. He helped us a great deal in Russia. Oh, you should have seen him, little baby lost in the snow. He was the first from the Fourteenth who ever dare set a foot in our country since the days of Napoleon.
– Did you really came up here just to talk about Champollion?
– Peace lord Kane, I thought we could share some piece of understanding about what having an older brother feels like. Of course, yours isn't sadly as open-minded as mine. I'll be at the Bel Air hotel, if you feel like talking."
II. Vladimir Menchikov
The war was a mistake and swept away everything. Anna had begged me: "You have to talk to the emperor, you have to convince him not to give up everything, not to risk everything just for Serbia. What is Serbia after all?" But the Slavic wizards had his ear, and the ruthless train of alliances was set in motion in spite of me. I had to command the special troops. The Eighteenth made no difference between his "magical" subjects and the others, we were all servants of the empire.
"This war will be terrible," whispered Anna, "worse than 1812." I should have been wary, she had the gift of prophecy my beautiful Anna. "What could be worse, I reminded her, than all the Nomes of Europe, than the Roman legions and the Greek phalanxes united under the aegis of a simple mortal, than all the armies of Napoleon sweeping over our country ?" We were at a ball, our country has a problem with balls, they bring us war, read Tolstoy. Well, it was the last ball of our old Russia, the last time I ever wore my white parade uniform, the last time when, under the illuminations of the Nevsky row, the melancholy waltz resounded, and Anna was on my arm, in a scarlet dress, like the flags that destroyed us.
"All of Europe was at your feet, I reminded her, the day we watched them burn under the walls of Moscow. We will rekindle Moscow, I promise you, but we will never lose! " And I do want to believe it, as we turn, turn, and we've been through enough horror and miracles to understand what we are saying, to promise salvation.
"You don't understand," said Anna to me, "it's not only Moscow, it's this empire that will burn with Europe, it's this room, and these people who will go to ashes, and your family to ashes, and my family in ashes, and the Emperor in ashes, and his family in ashes, and the echo of our happy days in the smoke of the chimneys above the factories.
- Anna Egorovna, marry me, I replied.
- Lord Menshikov, will you never be discouraged? This is the hundredth time I think.
- Oh, marry me before the world burns down.
- Never, never, she sang to me, laughing, I prefer you jealous. "
But at least she was laughing, and the dance was spinning in the same direction as my horse rolling in the mud, mortally wounded, at Borodino's battle, and the world was also spinning with her huge, capricious laughter, and was I ready to leave her laugh for the horse and the mud, and were they alive again all the horrors of Borodino?
I met the war like an old friend. I'd known them all, these wars of empire, especially the Russo-Turkish wars of my first days, then the Patriotic war and the march on Paris, the Crimean war finally, and, much more terrible, the war in Japan, the insane struggles on water as in the air with the spirits of Asia and the salty taste of defeat in a frozen sea. I plunged into war like a childhood memory, one of those old nightmarish stories that we were read as children, those stories of shamans and possessions, and Siberian demons.
But in those dark days of February, when the crowd gathered on the Nevsky Prospekt, and I tirelessly recited to myself "the demons" of Pushkin to ward off bad luck, the chaos' trap was gradually closing around our lives.
« Бесконечны, безобразны,
В мутной месяца игре
Закружились бесы разны,
Будто листья в ноябре…
Сколько их! куда их гонят?
Что так жалобно поют?
Домового ли хоронят,
Ведьму ль замуж выдают? »
Petrograd was red in late October, that crazy color that folllowed my life from dress to dress, from wound to wound. Its flags were red, its speeches were red and the bodies in front of our Nome were red when the Winter Palace fell into Bolshevik hands.
« Мчатся бесы рой за роем
В беспредельной вышине,
Визгом жалобным и воем
Надрывая сердце мне… »
The face of war had changed, the fights invaded the hearts. The world had broken into a thousand pieces. It started with warning messages from Anna's cousins, all linked to the Slavic gods, then requests for allegiance from the new revolutionary government. Everyone here knew. We did not have the latitude of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Nomes of Germany and Austria, facing their own waves of revolutions. No one in the Russian Empire had given up on believing in pagan times, and our magic was as precious as cannons.
I gathered mine at the family palace. My two sisters, Alexandra and Nina, Sergei and his four sons, Mikhail and his wife, and our little brother, Vanya, pure and innocent. We wanted him to be there always, even though he wasn't involved in the decision-making. I saw them all gathered, and thought back of that evening, long ago, under the chandeliers of the old monarchy.
Mikhail was the most ardent, he wanted to make a descent towards Tobolsk, to free the Tsar. I hesitated, I didn't want to sacrifice my men for such a risky business. For the first time, he didn't obey me. When they took him, they didn't kill him right away, they stripped him naked, and for a long, long time, they made him walk on the snow, until his ears fell, then his fingers and nose, until he crawled madly under the mocking smile of the frozen stars.
When the traitors of the Nome sabotaged our communications portals, we found ourselves isolated. Anyway, I had no intention of abandoning Russia and taking refuge in Cairo. We had sworn never to run away again. The war broke up, we fought in towns, villages, countryside, against mortals, demigods, traitors. Anybody. Trotsky put in place the red terror, the partisans of Denikin used white terror. We had our own means of making the traitors and assassins of the empire talk.
Between epidemics and fighting, Sekhmet was expanding his empire. I wasn't sure it was her at first. It is very difficult to know after all if the gods of war feed on our own, or if they cause them. It's a bit like the chicken and egg debate. "Do we create our gods, or do they curse us? Are we fallen creatures, or creators of the divine?
- What are you really thinking when you say that?
- Who starts the wars?
- You have dangerous thoughts Vladimir, answered Alexandra, you think sideways."
But it was Sekhmet, who, fat, monstrous, fed on the Somme and Verdun, had launched her Spanish flu on the continent, on Germany, then took refuge in the heart of our lands.
"Sekhmet escaped in January," my sister told me. A warning was sent to the whole Per Ankh, we just missed it, as we did not have access to the Nome." It was a lie of course, one that Iskandar serves to hide the inextricable.
"So it's true. A wizard from the Western Front was mad enough to free Sekhmet. This is what they were looking for with their trials and interrogations… "After the news came the men. A kid more precisely. Patrols of Slavs had picked him up somewhere.
"I'm looking for Sekhmet.
- Is that all the Per Ankh has found? "
Desjardins could not speak a single word of Russian. He looked hungry and haggard of an early enlisted man who would have fought the entire war. I couldn't even understand how he had survived until then.
"It's Marshal Ney's return," Anna laughed. "My cousins love him. They were able to bring out their old drinking songs for him, like "Vive Henri IV", why are you making this face?
- We are doomed. Why is Iskandar sending us this one?
- Maybe he's the one who let go of Sekhmet? Hey, French? Who is it that freed Sekhmet?
- A magician of the Sixteenth, he said.
- Pff, typical French response. It was either the Sixteenth, or the Ninth.
- Stop Anna, he doesn't even know how to summon a god. How do you want him to stop Sekhmet anyway?
- Iskandar is a sadist. He is probably following the events in the Hall of Ages and taking tiny notes. He always takes notes on everything. "
Our situation was critical. We had to rally Evenk magicians in the Far East. After a long debate, we abandoned Western Russia. "I'm going home," I thought as I passed the Urals. When we passed by the Ipatiev house, someone had carved on the walls of the Tsar's sepulcher "in the same night, Balthazar was killed by his slaves. "
Ungern-Sternberg was rampant along the Trans-Siberian, stretching his empire of terror. We passed through desolate villages, where bodies were piling up, kept in frost, until spring. In one of them they had piled the corpses of children in the square. " Who ? Nina asked me. "The Bloody Baron," I replied, a lump in my throat. It hadn't happened to me in so many years, so I blinked and tried to push the funny feeling away.
"It's winter," I remembered. "It's far too cold to cry," our nurse told us, "tears freeze in winter, and we don't feel anything, maybe we never knew. "Volodya" whispered Nina. She nodded at me at Desjardins, entering one of the houses. I ran after him, cursing the stupidity of Westerners who don't sit still for a minute. Does he really have no survival instinct at all or is he looking for my downfall? I froze when I heard crying. In front of the large open stove, Desjardins held a screaming baby. "A licky one" he told me. I took the child from her hands, I started laughing I think. "Today, you bring us luck, French. "
The next day we parted ways, where Sekhmet's tracks were heading for the far north. "Tell Iskandar if you come back alive. Tell him what we're going through here. Tell him that white or red are the same, that they will come after us regardless of the winner.
- I'll tell him, he whispered. Thanks, he added.
- If this kid catches Sekhmet, my hand in the fire that he will be the Chief Lector one day, Anna said to me, as we watched him go away, struggling with his horse.
- Do not talk nonsense. He's not even of noble blood.
- He's a Champollion. He's going to do the cleaning. We desperately awaited this one.
- Oh the clean slates… Have you seen how the French revolution ended? Have you seen our revolution?
- They had Napoleon after their civil war. Simple mortals before demigods. It is there, our regeneration to come.
- It's not France here… "And, I felt a heavy weight, which always weighed down my entrails, the foreboding of a catastrophe. And what catastrophe could there still be? I made a pact with the Communists to end the rule of the bloody baron along the Trans-Siberian. I destroyed his inclinations for a Mongolian empire, made sure that the ghost of Genghis Khan would remain a prisoner of his steppe desert.
In 1924, after our peace treaty with the authorities, Anna came to me in her red Cossack uniform and knelt in front of me on one knee. "Vladimir Alexandrovich, will you marry me?
- Anna, you ...
- I want other children, I want to forget. We've loved each other for centuries, that won't change much, right?" We made love in this field, between the tufts of sagebrush and the reflections of the sun upon the water.
I returned to Cairo for the first time in ten years. We started to repair the portals damaged by the civil war. I begged my sister to return to Petrograd. She sent me a letter back: "You spat on your country. You joined forces with the reds. I would never, ever bend my back. I'll go piss on the grave of your USSR. "
Translation of Pushkin's poem :
Numberless ugly demons
In the muddy game of the moonlight
Are turning round
Like leaves in November.
What a lot of them! Where are they forced to go?
Why is their singing so sad?
Are they burying a goblin,
Or holding a witch's wedding?...
Demons are rushing, swarm after swarm
In boundless sky;
And with their plaintive howling and screaming
They are tearing my heart apart.