The Last Days Of The Edge Of The World by Brian Stableford Page B

the strings and play a tune, soft and subtle, sweet and slow; watch her dance and hear her croon, she’ll whisper the name you need to know.”
    The guitar became solid.
    “Well,” said Wynkyn. “It worked. Though I can’t say I think much of the rhyme. Pure doggerel, you know. I can’t think why they call magic an art. No real poet would write silly jingles like that. More suited to th advertising industry, if you ask me.”
    Ewan reached out again to touch the guitar. This time he managed it. It was ordinary wood, slightly cold to the touch.
    “Had to get special powers to do that, you know,’ said the apparition. “Three different forms to fill in.”
    Ewan picked up the guitar and touched the fibrous strings lightly. Then, reassured that it was quite real, he brought it into position and began to pick out the chords of “Baa, baa, black sheep.”
    “Oh, dear,” said the watching apparition. “That’s terrible. Can’t you do better than that?”
    “Can you?” retorted Ewan.
    “That’s not the point,” said Wynkyn, sniffing. “The point is that you’ll have to work extremely hard to keep the lamia dancing to that.”
    Ewan scowled and began to pick out a traditional dance tune. The apparition raised his eyes disdainfully, and his gaze fell upon the serried ranks of books for the first time.
    “I say!” he said. “This is a library!”
    Ewan sat the guitar aside.
    “What did you think it was?” he asked, nastily. “One of your precious filing cabinets?” He was a little hurt by the derisory references to his guitar playing.
    Wynkyn ignored the sarcasm. “You don’t suppose,” he said, with a slight catch in his voice, “that they’ve got any of my books here. I’m a poet, you know… when I was alive.”
    “I’ve got a catalogue here,” said Ewan, moving back into the darkness to take up his pile of parchment. “It’s in alphabetical order. What’s your surname?”
    “Wilkinson,” said the apparition. “Wynkyn Wilkinson. I was one of the esoteric school, you know.”
    Ewan flipped through the pages and found the appropriate one. “Wilkinson, Wynkyn,” he read out. “Synchronous Sonnets, The Esoteric Press, undated. Spine rubbed, slight foxing. No dust wrapper. That’s all.”
    Wynkyn released a long, hollow sigh of ecstasy. “Synchronous Sonnets,” he whispered. “Ah, youth! So long ago, and still remembered! Beloved by posterity!”
    Ewan felt that it might be extremely undiplomatic to point out that none of the books in the library had been read for decades, and many of them had undoubtedly never been read at all.
    “I suppose,” said the apparition, dreamily, “that this in itself is a form of Eternal Reward. My work survives! O joy! O rapture!”
    And so saying, the emissary from the Vaults Beyond faded out.
    Only the candlelight remained… and the guitar.
    Ewan picked up the guitar and tucked it under his arm. He made as if to open the door, and then had an afterthought. Candle in hand he went back into the maze of shelves, and quickly located the book he sought: Synchronous Sonnets, by Wynkyn Wilkinson. He tucked that under his arm, too, and took it away to read in bed.
    He had never met a real poet before. And he was never likely to run into another one who had been dead for several centuries.

CHAPTER TEN
    Helen walked along the marbled pavement which shone blue and green in the afternoon sun. It was cold beneath her feet; she could feel the iciness even through her shoes. The blues and greens swirled together in all kinds of liquid patterns, and the pavement seemed like a frozen stream.
    There was no dust in the Forbidden City. Like Castle Mirasol, Ora Lamae was a dead and haunted place, but in a very different fashion. Castle Mirasol had been condemned to age and decay and rot as it stood, but Ora Lamae seemed to have been simply melted into slag and re-solidified to the texture of petrified wood, crystallized for all eternity.
    Once, Ora Lamae had been the