Night Winds (13 page)

Enseljos was not laid out according to any orderly pattern, but its winding avenues did intersect with equally haphazard cross streets, and islands of property lay between. This particular segment was given over to shops and small dwellings--often combined--with a center courtyard. The alley where the attackers lurked gave access to this courtyard--a squalid wilderness of refuse heaps, small vegetable plots, and animal pens.

Rapidly Kane picked his way around the block of buildings. His course seemed reckless, but his senses were keenly alert for any sign of danger. He kept to the obscurity of the outward-projecting walls, where not even the dim luminance of the stars could reach, moving swiftly with no more sound than a shadow. His was the greatest risk, but Kane cared not to trust this job to any of his men. The silent snarl of a stalking predator touched Kane's lips, and anger stirred a blue flame in his killer's eyes.

Abruptly he halted before a locked door. This building, he recalled, had stood vacant for some months. A heavy padlock secured the door, placed there more to keep out squatters than thieves, since the building contained little of value. For one of Kane's massive strength, it would take little effort to force the door--tear the lock from its brackets--but there would be noise, and the city lay in silence. From his boot Kane produced a thin metal pick; in a moment the lock fell open. Cautiously he pushed open the door and let himself into the empty shop. Silence and dust and soft scurryings were all that greeted turn.

With stealthy stride, Kane passed through the empty rooms and into the storeroom at the rear. Another door opened onto the courtyard. A heavy wooden bar was jammed in place, so that he had to twist it free before drawing it clear. Its creaking complaint sounded like an explosion in the predawn stillness, but Kane doubted if it carried to those in the alley. Thinking about the crossbows, he wiped spit over the hinges, then inched the door open--soundlessly--far enough to glide through.

No unseen shafts streaked toward him. Thankful for the jumbled litter of the courtyard, Kane stole past the doorway and dropped low against the ground. So far as he could discern, no enemy lurked within the square. Taking advantage of the spotty cover, he crossed the intervening ground, moving with unerring speed despite the darkness and the obstacle-strewn yard.

At the mouth of the alley his caution doubled. Dimly he could see the figures crouched at the far end, not more than sixty feet from him. At least a couple were turned in his direction, but they had not observed his stealthy approach. Kane's unnatural night vision enabled him to make out the two men who waited with crossbows cocked. Their attention was fixed on the approach of his men, whose voices came through the night--else they might have sensed the death that stole upon them from behind.

Kane stepped into the alley. From either boot he drew a knife--two flat blades, balanced for throwing. His left arm moved with the blurring speed of a striking cobra; in almost the same instant his right arm uncoiled with the same lethal precision.

To the lurking assailants, it was as if a murderous phantom had risen in their midst. Dull impacts and frightened death howls marked the flight of the knives as the two crossbowmen staggered under the agony that pierced their backs, stumbled into the street to die. Released by the spasm of their fingers, the iron-fanged bolts skittered a trail of sparks across the darkened pavement.

With a feral yell, Kane tore out his sword with his left hand and leaped into the alley. His opponents had waited in darkness; only dimly could they glimpse the looming death that burst upon them. Steel flashed and clangoured. Another of the lurkers was hurled aside with a mangled chest, never knowing his killer's face.

Then someone flung open a dark lantern, hidden behind some rubble. In the thick darkness, its glare was dazzling. In that instant the five startled assassins saw that only one man stood against them--and in the heartbeat it took for them to realize who their enemy was, Kane's blade snaked toward the throat of another opponent, and then there were only four.

Bringing up their blades, the four rushed upon him. The first to meet him lost his sword and his arm with it; he fled screaming into the night, a spattered trail marking his flight. Then Kane's blade was engaged by a more skillful swordsman than his fellows, so that Kane fought with furious speed to keep the other two from striking past his guard. Only the long knife he wielded with his right arm turned back their desperate thrusts.

But in a matter of seconds, his men had gained the alley. A lethal tide of steel, they surged into the melee. Levardos quickly dispatched one of the would-be ambushers as Kane beat aside the swordsman's stubborn guard to thrust his heavy blade through the man's heart. The remaining assailant fled into the courtyard, Webbre and Haigan close behind. A clamour of overturned litter, howl of agony, and the brothers returned looking satisfied.

"I don't suppose you took him alive so I could question him," panted Kane.

The brothers each one pointed to the other, claiming he had struck the death blow, then fell into a fit of laughter.

"Never mind, Kane," announced Levardos, holding the torch over an upturned face. It was the last man Kane had killed. "This was that Waldann bodyguard Eberhos had with him at Stanchek's."

Kane grunted. "The puke-blooded whoreson used some of his gold to hire these sewer rats to waylay us. Must have guessed Opyros wouldn't go back alone. By Thoem, this won't be the last of our quarrel!"

Dusk was overtaking them as they neared the Old City.

Next to Opyros rode Ceteol; a high collar masked her bruised throat. Why she came, Opyros was at a loss to decide. She had leaped at him with harsh curses on his return to the manor, clawed and fought until he pinned her in a drunken embrace and unfolded the night's story, after which he could not dissuade her from accompanying them to the Old City. He suggested--at least hoped--that her professed desire to see him destroyed by his unnatural delvings was not her true motive.

Kane was in a black mood; he had driven his men in search of Eberhos since before dawn, but no trace of the alchemist had been found. In addition to Levardos, Webbre, and Haigan, Kane had brought with him the new man, Hef, and a hawk-nosed thug named Boulus. Whether Eberhos would make another attempt to recover the carving--and it seemed likely he had fled the city--Kane could not guess. He rather hoped the alchemist would be so rash.

Fired with the spirit of the venture, Opyros was in a voluble mood, and eventually he succeeded in stirring Kane from his choler. Kane declined from further argument over the poet's design, and as the other spoke of his hopes for the evocation, of his eagerness to explore the unknown wonders of dream, he found himself sharing Opyros's enthusiasm. To unlock the gates of dream... Kane, too, sensed deep fascination for such an exploration. True, there were risks, unknown risks--but what great adventure had ever been free of danger? In fact, by definition, how could there be adventure without danger? Security equals boredom equals stagnation equals death. Kane listened and nodded, added thoughts of his own, so that by the time they entered the forest-buried walls of the Old City, Kane was contemplating the onyx figurine with a thoughtful brow.

"There's that damn shadow again," remarked Ceteol suddenly.

"Shadow?" asked Opyros.

"It's gone again," she said with a frown. The girl pointed. "See how our shadows are all strung out in a line?" The declining sun cast light enough yet to throw the riders' spindly, misshapen shadows against the trees which crowded the unfrequented road wherever there was sufficient clearing to let them pass from under the shadow of the trees opposite.

"I've seen it a couple of times," Ceteol continued, "just out of the corner of my eye. When we come to a sunny spot, I've noticed how all our shadows writhe alongside us. But a couple of times I thought it was strange, because I can tell my shadow, and there's two men riding behind me--except I saw three shadows following my own."

"What sort of shadow?" Kane wanted to know. "Like another horse and rider?"

"No, not like that." She jammed the heels of her palms together and wriggled her fingers. "It was sort of... crawly."

Opyros laughed and looked at her eyes. "Your eyes are still bedazzled from the drug, love. It'll clear away before long."

Tossing back her brown hair, Ceteol made a tight face. "I may see shadows, but I don't half kill a girl and then go off and get drunk with thieves and killers. So don't laugh at me, damn it."

"Tell me next time you see it," suggested Kane. Then to Opyros: "You did say nothing untoward took place after I left you."

The poet shook his head, trying to tell how much of Ceteol's sullenness was only affected. "No, nothing happened. After I... ah... told Ceteol of our plans, I slept until not long before you called. I remember that damned pack of dogs started yelling--woke me up."

"Didn't see them when we rode up," mused Kane.

"Somebody else chased them off, I gathered. But where in all this ruin is the temple of Shenan?"

"Not far, though it's a little past the main body of the ruins."

The Old City had a certain ghostly beauty in the twilight, the melancholic serenity of ancient walls returning to dust with their secret memories of another age. Compared to its sprawling offspring Enseljos, the Old City had been but a town. Most of its buildings had been of timber, and these were long since weed-shrouded mounds of earth--forgotten graves in the forest. Here and there a low stone wall or heap of broken masonry indicated the site of some antique structure, but more often there was only an overgrown depression along the fading streets to mark the foundation of a long-toppled dwelling. Still, there were places where the walls of one of the Old City's more impressive buildings yet rose in tired defiance of time. As the dusk deepened, the darkness within these mouldering skulls seemed to flow from staring windows and yawning doorways and mingle with the gathering shadows of the forest.

"Here," announced Kane, and he urged his horse between the closely hemmed brushy barriers. A late morning rain had drenched the forest, so that progress through the brush left their legs sodden against their mounts' flanks.

The waning light fell upon a grey stone structure standing in gloomy solitude among the shouldering trees. Its walls rose to almost clear of the encroaching branches; buttressed and vaulted after the southern fashion, portions of the temple yet retained an arched ceiling. The deeper shadow within had spared its interior the rank undergrowth which strangled much of the Old City's ruins, although age had stripped the walls to bare stone and littered the floor with crumbling debris. As twilight closed upon the ruined temple, the velvet-leather curtains which festooned its high-vaulted ceiling spread a thousand wings and flapped chattering through the broken apertures.

Kane dismounted and directed his men to clear away some of the rubble which barricaded the entrance. The poet pressed forward in excitement; Ceteol, aloofly curious followed him, her calf-length pleated skirt slapping against high riding boots. As soon as he had kindled a pair of links, Kane joined them, and while his men shoved away the rotting tangles of anonymous debris, he spoke further on the temple's history, raising his torch to point out some item of architectural interest. Opyros again sensed an uneasy wonder at Kane's nonchalant familiarity with the ruins.

Moonlight poured molten silver over the brooding grey stones by the time Kane judged their work sufficient. Showers of silver light fell through the high, narrow windows and jagged rifts in the walls, gathered in a deep pool about the altar, where a vast circular skylight showed the same night skies to which priestesses centuries dead had raised their chants. In a few areas where the litter had been cleared away, the damp stone tiles yet bore traces of strange mosaic patterns.

At Kane's orders, Levardos saw to posting the men outside. They were well paid, and if their leader chose to waste the night pursuing a mad poet's unhallowed whim, that was Kane's affair. Theirs was to watch for Eberhos, in case the alchemist had followed them with another band of hirelings. That he had fled Kane's anger was their consensus, but if not... their blades were ready.

Kane turned to his friend. "Well," he said, half in question.

The poet's eagerness was undiminished. "I'm ready if you are, Kane. This place is perfect--really it is! The atmosphere--it's... hell, I've tried to capture it again and again in my verses! What dreams hover about us here! Kane, if the muse will only come to me tonight... I feel I can... can... I feel I can grasp the inspiration I've searched for so long! Night Winds and a hundred more could soar from my soul tonight!"

A bitter smile twisted his face. "As you wish, then," assented Kane. He extended his hand. "The simulacrum."

Opyros thrust the carving into Kane's hand. "No musty tomes? No evil-fumed braziers and elder-glyphed pentacles?" But his levity was more bravado than banter.

"As I've said, a simple spell," returned Kane levelly. "I'll need a drop of your blood."

And while Ceteol watched with unfathomable eyes, Kane led the poet into the pool of moonlight; there by the forgotten altar of dark, flawless stone he performed those things which the ritual required.

Now it seemed to the poet that Kane's rhythmic chant of evocation had become a fading echo, hypnotic ebb and flow of rippling sound. The ruined walls seemed to recede; moonlight and shadow merged into a vortex of formless image. Even the cold hardness of stone pressing against his back, where he lay beside the onyx carving, grew distant--physical sensation drifting apart from his psychic awareness...

And no longer did he lie beside a figurine of carven onyx. The carving blurred, rushed upward in size--or did he diminish? There was a sense of motion, of vertigo... Lying next to him now was a figure of black--not a figure in black, but of black. A shadow in three dimensions of a nude girl. Of the dark muse.

She moved. Minute turned toward him languidly. She saw him; the profile of darkness smiled an invitation... The cruel indifference of her smile... She beckoned. Opyros moved against her; his arms closed about her ebony figure... His arms, too, were fashioned of darkness--as was his entire body. Then their bodies entwined in a lovers' embrace. There came wrenching ecstasy, intolerable vertigo... Then no darkness. His body had returned to substance. In his arms was a pale-skinned girl of exquisite beauty, with smiling lips, eyes of ageless wisdom. She broke from his embrace, still holding his hands... raised the poet to his feet (Now he saw on what they had lain)... led him irresistibly, unresistingly forward...