Death Angel's Shadow (24 page)

Kane called after him: "And how about you, steward? Do you have a name?"

"Now I haven't asked yours," was the reply.

Kane bit his lip in annoyance and swung his feet to the floor. III. Altbur Keep

If you looked just so, Kane decided, you could almost see where the summer heat faded out against the chill of Altbur Keep. Maybe just a trick of the fading sunlight, but there was almost a perceptible aura formed where shimmer was blotted into haze. He shivered on his perch atop the battlements and drew his cloak more closely about him. His own clothes had vanished along with his weapons, he had discovered on regaining consciousness, but his still unseen hostess had given him far better apparel in their place.

No, he had no complaints in regard to his treatment. Superb apartments, excellent food and drink, and a staff of servants who gave him utmost attention. But still, his weapons had not been left him. And although he was free to roam the fortress at will, the gates of Altbur Keep were politely, emphatically locked to him. Well, if you were a prisoner, this was the way to do it.

Kane leaned out recklessly from the battlement and considered the castle walls. A sheer drop and easily killing height. Still there were several promising spots which should offer enough concealment. A matter of securing sufficient rope then. And no one actually guarded him, although Kane was aware that there were few times when someone was not unobtrusively going about his own business from a spot where an eye could be kept on the guest's movements. At the moment, in the shadow of a nearby watchtower a kitchen maid was in close embrace with a disturbingly grubby stable hand.

All in all a not overly difficult place to slip out of, if need arose; Kane had considerable confidence in his ability here. And maybe he was too uneasy--"paranoid" in the language of an obscure treatise he had read through long ago. His life had been saved quite likely, his treatment here was first rate, and it was essential that he have a safe place to hide until he was ready to escape Chrosanthe. Some caution in taking in a strange mercenary was altogether natural. And there had been no difficult questions to answer.

Yet Kane continued to be uneasy, and he had lived far too long to discount the forebodings of his inner mind. Of course he had little way of knowing just how much of what he had seen in his delirium had been real. From the castle the village looked forlorn, deserted--but not the sinister tangle of ruins seen that night. Altbur Keep seemed a bit empty and forgotten by the world--again it certainly was not the ruined fortress Kane had envisioned it to be. Should it be here at all though--in a region ill famed and by common knowledge laid waste for two centuries? Kane knew it was not extraordinary to find the dying embers of a once proud and glorious family that continued to dwell amidst the ruins of their ancient power and grandeur.

Other things lived in ruins too.

Silence. Chill. Events within the castle somehow frozen moments of time, disremembered fragments of a dream strangely caught up again, And somewhere just beyond the power of recognition a hint of mustiness--flawing the representation as a mirror image tarnished with antiquity. Vague hints that in some manner the world of Altbur Keep was but a mirage.

Kane sensed it as he walked through its hallways. To be sure it was nothing concrete. Perhaps only for a moment a shadow would seem out of place, or a detail of a tapestry subtly altered. In the servants Kane thought it was most apparent. Almost as if they were actors in a grotesque play. To perfection did each one perform his role; no detail, no minor touch had been neglected in the characterization. Kane scowled at the impassioned couple in the shadows and wondered how often the scene had been rehearsed. Perfect servants, yet it seemed a perfection born of repetition. Polished as the hundredth performance of a popular drama--equally as brittle and unreal. Still there was nothing Kane could pin down to precision.

He wondered if the performance continued as he passed from one particular area to another, or whether the players called a break without their audience.

And his hostess. The mistress of Altbur Keep. Naichoryss. Where was she then? His questions received only politely noncommittal answers from her servants. Naichoryss. Fabrication? A character held in reserve for later in the drama? Or was she the author of the masquerade, who remained behind the curtains to watch the audience response? Naichoryss. Mistress of Altbur Keep, or Mistress of the Mirage?

Kane slid from the parapet. It was time he found out.

"This way, sir, if you please."

Kane turned to discover his acquaintance, the steward, had slipped up behind him unnoticed. That was a nice touch: seen and not heard. Withered creep was lurking behind a tapestry doubtless. Bastard could probably slide under a fresco. "This way?"

"Certainly. My mistress," he prompted. "Naichoryss has had prepared a small dinner in her chambers. She asks that you join her now."

That simple then. "So she's at last decided to have a look at her discovery."

The steward shrugged and quoted:

A woman's mind, friend Eistenallis,

Is a mystery;

Whose unfathomable depths,

Rival the uncharted currents of a god's whimsey. "Curious that your quotation is that of Halmonis as he led Eistenallis to a rendezvous from which the courtier failed to return," remarked Kane, as he followed his guide.

"Ah! You know the work of Ganbromi then? A literate mercenary!"

"I knew Ganbromi," Kane muttered, hoping he would not provoke a further outburst of erudition from the supercilious prig.

"Here we are then," the steward concluded and rapped against a brassbound door. Seeming to hear acknowledgment from within, he swung it open and stepped aside, his expression correctly impassive.

Stepping within, Kane was received by two smiling maids dressed in identical garments of soft leather and interlocking brass rings. Silently they opened a second door and invited him to enter.

She rose from her couch to greet him as he pushed through the curtained entrance; her red lips parted, secretly smiling upon tiny white teeth. "I am Naichoryss." Her voice came clear and cold--distant as in a dream. "I welcome you to Altbur Keep." A long white arm stirred from the black folds of her gown and curved towards a couch across the low table from her own. "Please be seated now, and tell me of yourself. It is so seldom that I receive visitors anymore." A slight gesture to her maids, then she returned to her couch with the quiet grace of a shadow.

Kane easily stretched his massive frame upon the indicated couch, watching as the serving maid filled his chalice with wine as clear and red as the rubies of the vessel's rim.

"My name is Kane," he began. There seemed no point in subterfuge under the circumstances, and he was too proud to be taken as a common mercenary amidst such splendour.

Naichoryss smiled. Thin lips poised over the red wine dark eyes reflected its crimson, wave on wave of long black tresses wreathed a pale, delicate face, features finely chiseled. A study of eerie beauty, cold and aloof as an exquisitely carven masterpiece of gemset ivory and jet.

"Kane." Her lips caressed the sound. "A cruel name, I think. Not a common one." The light in her eyes was a mocking glitter. And Kane knew that Naichoryss had been aware all along of his identity.

Kane was not a man easily mistaken for another. His red hair and fair complexion, his powerful bearlike frame set him apart from the native Chrosanthians in a region where racial features leaned to dark hair and lean wiriness. And his rather coarse features and huge sinewed hands did not make him too exceptional from the mercenaries displaced from the cold lands far to the south. It was his eyes that branded him as an outsider. No man looked into Kane's eyes and forgot them. Cold blue eyes in which lurked the wild gleam of insanity, hellish fires of crazed destruction and bloodshed. The look of death. Eyes of a born killer. The Mark of Kane.

Kane returned his hostess's amused scrutiny with assumed indifference. "Since it's obvious that even here in Altbur Keep the details are commonly known regarding Jasseartion's quarrel with his lamented half-brother Talyvion, I won't bore you with stale news. As you can understand, it was urgent that I should outdistance Jasseartion's malice as rapidly as feasible. However, I was a little slow. Perhaps an underestimation of the flit's thoroughness, but it is startling to discover steel inside a violet. At any rate, his soldiers didn't recognize me, left me for dead, and I blundered about the forest out of my head until you chanced to find me." He went on to express gratitude for her protection and hospitality. Her laughter was a symphony of silver flutes and bells; its sound light and merry, but underneath lay a shivery note. "So Kane is the gifted courtier that ladies praise him to be! To turn your own comment, how unusual to find polished graces disguised behind such brutal strength! But then I discover paradoxes at every turn with you, Kane! Arid what vitality! In a matter of days you appear altogether recovered from wounds that should have left you dead or disabled for weeks! I'm delighted now that I had you spared that night in my village!"

"My mind is a blank for that time, I'm afraid," Kane broke in. "Your excellent steward mentioned that there were bandits..."

Naichoryss's slender band waved dismissal. "Bandits? Hardly! A few miserable sneakthieves and poachers who would have slit your throat for your boots. They fled like rats when my hunters and I rode by.

"Please, though! All these formal expressions of introduction and gratitude are so boring! And existence here in Altbur Keep is dull enough without that. You must tell me now of all the fascinating things going on in the outside world, or I'll spend the whole night yawning. Tell me of those exotic lands your wanderings must have led you through. Dispel my boredom, and you'll remain here until Jasseartion grows old and forgetful!"

The arrangement seemed satisfactory to Kane. The role of dinner partner was one in which he had enjoyed great experience, and an evening of anecdotes would keep his hostess from learning more about her guest than Kane felt she should know. So while Naichoryss's maids bore tray after tray of delicacies across the room, silent but for the jingle of their brass ringlets, Kane entertained the strange mistress of Altbur Keep with curious tales of old battles and intrigue in lands that were almost fabled.

The wine was of ancient vintage; Kane savored its rare and delicate taste with enthusiasm, and watched with high approval as the attentive maid kept his chalice brimming. His mind seemed inflamed with its potency as be talked--so much so that he wondered if the wine contained some subtle drug. Yet his hostess was served from the same vessels, although she both ate and drank only sparingly.

And when the serving girls had taken away the last course and only the wine remained, Naichoryss rose to her feet and beckoned him toward the open balcony. Kane followed her onto the moonlit stones, his movements somewhat heavy from the wine and the magic of her beauty. For a moment they leaned in silence against the parapet, looking out over the valley where cold moonlight etched the ruined village in silver and black. Only a faint wind stirred, lightly rippling her raven hair with its chill breath, so cold, so empty for a summer's night.

Moonlight shone through her smoky gown, making almost luminescent the white skin it half veiled. Kane's throat grew tight with emotion, and his senses grow even more tumultuous. Here was beauty which drew him with a fascination more compelling than any he had yet experienced.

"Aren't you cold?" be began lamely, not trusting himself to an opening less conventional.

Naichoryss turned to him, only just beyond his arm's reach. "Cold? Yes. Yes, I am cold. Not from the night though. It's a far, far deeper cold that I know--one that can be warmed only..."

The moonlight glowed on her sharp white teeth, while the hunger of her eyes matched the invitation of her smile. "I think perhaps you can warm the cold that torments me."

Kane reached then to take her in his arms, but his movements were clumsy and she slipped through his grasp with secret laughter. Dumbly he stared at her, entranced hopelessly as an adolescent bumpkin in the hands of a talented courtesan. Where his fingers had brushed across her flesh they string as if scorched by ice.

"Not so impetuous, my rough warrior!" she laughed. "This is a moment to be savored! With an eternity of nights before us, would you fall on me like a rutting bear?"

With extreme annoyance Kane fought to control himself. What was this woman's witchery, that it left him all the grace of a horny plowhand? But the desire to possess this strange creature overwhelmed every attempt to restore sophistication to his usually polished manner.

Naichoryss gathered into her arms a lyre-like instrument, cradling it to her breast as she swayed mockingly a few paces from him. "A moment to be savored," she intoned huskily. "Fully. To the last glistening droplet. Shall I sing for you, Kane? Can you contain all that vitality for yet a few moments more?"

His hand shook as he raised the chalice to his lips, and though he did not trust himself to speak, Kane's eyes blazed with the desire that racked his soul.

Almost pensively her fingers slipped across the lyre strings, although Kane sensed that her casualness was altogether assumed. He thought of the seeming disinterest exhibited by a cat when it plays with its prey.

A tune caught her whimsy and she hummed to herself there in the moonlight. And from the moon and the cold and the loneliness and the night itself she wove the fabric of her song.

Come to me, my lover, join me here in the night,

In the moon's cold, clear light, stand before me,

And upon my altar of cold stone, offer to me your soul.

Touch my hand, my lover, fuel my flesh like ice-

Rest your head upon my breast; it is a pillow of soft snow.

Caress my lips, my lover, taste my frozen breath-

Look deep into my eyes; they hold the chill of night.

Then let me take you in my cold embrace,

Come with me to my world beyond all pain;