After wandering through this jungly environment for nearly half an hour, growing more and more impatient, Korrogly was hailed by a fluting female voice, which asked him to call out so that she might find him among the leaves. Moments later, a tall white-haired woman in a floor-length gown of gray watered silk came up beside him; her face was the color of old ivory, deeply wrinkled and stamped with what struck Korrogly as a stern and suspicious character, and her hands moved ceaselessly, plucking at the nearby leaves as if they were the telling beads of some meditative religion. Despite her age, she radiated energy, and Korrogly thought that if he were to close his eyes, he would have the impression that he was in the presence of a vital young woman. She directed him to a bench in a corner of the room and sat next to him, gazing out into the lushness of her sanctum, continuing to pluck and pick at stem and leaf.
‘I distrust lawyers, Mister Korrogly,’ she said. ‘You should know that from the outset.
‘So do I, Ma’am,’ he said, hoping to elicit a laugh, some softening of her attitude, but she only pursed her lips.
‘Had you represented any other client, I would not have agreed to see you. But the man who has rid the world of Mardo Zemaille deserves any help I can give . . . though I’m not at all certain how I can help.’
‘I was hoping you might provide me with some background on Zemaille, particularly as regards his relationship with Mirielle Lemos.’
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘That.’
‘Mirielle herself has not been forthcoming, and the other members of the cult have gone to ground.’
‘They’re afraid.’
‘Of what?’
She gave an amused hiss. ‘Of everything, Mister Korrogly. Mardo has addicted them to fear. And of course now that he’s gone, now that he’s abandoned them to the fear he instilled in them, they’ve fled. The temple will never thrive again.’ She tore a strip of green off a frond. ‘That was Mardo’s one truth, that in the proper environment, fear can be a form of sustenance. It’s a truth that underlies many religions. Mirielle understands it as well.’
‘Tell me about her.’
The old woman fingered a spray of bamboo leaves. ‘She’s not a bad girl . . . or at least she didn’t used to be. It was Mardo who corrupted her. He corrupted everyone, he broke them and then poured his black juice into their cracks. When I first met her, that was five years ago, I took her for a typical convert. She was an agitated, moody girl when she came to the temple. All dance and no standstill, as the saying goes. I assumed Mardo would have her – he had all the pretty ones and that then he would let her fall from grace, become an ordinary devotee. But I underestimated Mirielle. She had something, some quality, that fascinated Mardo. I originally thought that he might have met his match sexually, for I knew from some of the other members that she was’ – she seemed to be searching for the right word – ‘rapacious. And perhaps that did have something to do with it. But of greater relevance, I believe, was that she was driven in much the same way as he. And thus she is equally untrustworthy.’
‘How do you mean “driven”?’
The old woman looked down at the floor. ‘It’s difficult to explain Mardo to anyone who never knew him, and it’s entirely unnecessary to explain him to anyone who did. When you examine what he said closely, it was all doctrinal persiflage, mumbo jumbo, a welter of half-baked ideas stirred together with high-flown empty language. But despite that, you always had the idea that he knew something, or that he was onto something, some course that would carry him to great achievement. I’m not speaking of charisma . . . not that Mardo was short in that department. What I’m trying to get to is something more substantial. There was about him an air that he was being moved by forces within him that not even he fully comprehended.’
‘And you’re saying Mirielle had this air as well.’
‘Yes, yes, she was driven by something. Again, I don’t know if she understood its nature. But she was driven much like Mardo. He recognized this in her, and that’s why he trusted her so.’
‘And yet it appears that he was going to kill her.’
She sighed. ‘The reason I left the temple . . . no, let me tell you first the reasons I joined it. I fancied myself a seeker, but even at the height of my self-deception, I realized that I was merely bored. Bored and old . . . too old to find better entertainment. The temple was for me a violent dark romance whose characters were constantly changing, and I was completely taken with it. And there was always the sense that Griaule was near. That chill scaly presence . . . that awful cold power.’ She gave a dramatic shudder. ‘At any rate, two years ago I began to have a sense that things were getting serious, that the great work Mardo had talked of for so long was finally getting under way. It frightened me. And being frightened awakened me to the deceits and evils of the temple.’
‘Do you know what it was . . . the great work?’
She hesitated. ‘No.’
