Night Winds (15 page)

A laugh answered him from beyond the altar. "Will you burn stone, then?" asked a mocking voice. "Your fire already flames less brightly. Soon you'll have to venture out into the damp forest--and what if your torch goes out? Will you find some rotten branch to light your way? And the stars say it will rain again before dawn!"

Eberhos's burly figure slunk through a rift in the temple's far wall. He carried a burden. Ceteol. The girl hung limp in his arms; her hands were tied, and a gag was fixed between her jaws.

Kane's eyes blazed. He took a step toward the alchemist.

A dagger flashed in Eberhos's hand. "Stay where you are!" he ordered. "Or I'll slit her pretty throat and be gone before you get halfway here! Want to chase me into the night?"

Seeing that Kane subsided, he sneered, "So you know what demon stalks you, Kane. You're most erudite, aren't you? Did you guess who summoned it, who commanded it to pursue, to stay? Surely not uncouth Eberhos, Damatjyst's flunky and errand boy!"

His voice grew shrill. "Did you think I had kissed ass for that miserly tyrant all these years and never learned to count past my fingers? Well, my days of taking that piss-blooded bastard's orders are just about over! I've planned my move for years, waited patiently while I did apprentice's chores for the fool! I'll not let the theft of that carving destroy his trust in his loyal First Assistant just when all I've planned for is in reach!"

He chuckled and shifted the girl's dropping form. Kane saw the smear of crimson dark against her hair. Ceteol began to regain consciousness, moaned through her gag.

"Followed you here," Eberhos grinned. "Followed my little pet. While you were out playing with it in the dark, I slipped inside to get my carving. Your man didn't seem to be on guard any more, did he? But when I didn't find the figurine, I thought the little lady might want to tell me where you hid it--I know you and that crazy poet were going to try something with it here tonight.

"Tell you what, Kane. Give me the carving--if you aren't carrying it, tell me where it's hidden--and I'll take it and go. Once I'm clear, I'll send the demon back to the realm of chaos from which I summoned it."

"What chance is there you'll keep your part of the bargain?" growled Kane, weighing the chances of a knife throw. The distance was great, and Eberhos held the girl like a shield. And the fire was dropping low already.

"Well, now, I guess you'll just have to trust my word of honor," the alchemist chuckled. "Is that rain I hear off in the trees?"

The wind was starting up in listless gusts. Kane answered Eberhos with a curse and edged a step closer.

Eberhos touched his dagger to Ceteol's straining throat. "One more step, and she gets a new mouth! Give me the carving, Kane. Maybe you and Opyros want to watch the girl die?"

Kane realized that in the poor light Eberhos had mistaken Levardos for the poet. Crouched beyond the flickering fire, his lieutenant could only be glimpsed as a gaunt figure with blond hair--like Opyros. "Why should I care what you do with the girl?" scoffed Kane. "She means nothing to either of us."

Eberhos's beefy face grew crafty. "No? Well, maybe your verse-singing friend will change his mind when he sees I don't bluff. It won't be a quick death..."

The fire was dying down. Levardos shoved in the last of the fuel they had gathered. The damp, pulpy wood all but smothered the flames.

"Take the girl as hostage, go back and call off your demon," offered Kane. "I'll return the carving to you tomorrow--and give you my word not to take vengeance for this."

Laughter taunted him. "Getting edgy, Kane? And you didn't even see what happened to your friends--but I did! No, you aren't the one who makes the bargain tonight, Kane. You'll take my offer, or die!"

"I see no reason to trust you," Kane snarled. The fire was not igniting the rotted fragments of timber.

"Then I'll show you that you can trust me to carry out a threat! The carving, quick now, or the girl gets the knife! Slow. I'll let you watch to see how she likes it."

Eberhos shoved the still dazed girl into a shaft of moonlight that lanced through one of the high, narrow windows. The window was not much wider than a balistraria, but the ray of light clearly showed Ceteol's white face. Should they rush him, the alchemist could easily slash her throat and dart through the broken wall, a few steps away.

"Watch!" he jeered. Pinning her against his chest, he hooked his arm around and drew the dagger point through the fabric of her beaded blouse. The cloth parted to expose her straining breasts. Grinning, Eberhos carved a thin crescent below each pale cone of flesh. Blood traced patterns down her ribs and belly.

Ceteol whimpered through the gag. The pain had returned her to full consciousness. As the alchemist shifted his blade for another cut, she smashed the heel of her riding boot into his shin.

Her boots were spurred. Fashionable spurs for a lady, but sharp nonetheless. Their towels gored a furrow down to Eberhos's sandaled foot.

Cursing in pain, the alchemist hurled her against the wall. Ceteol's head cracked against the window's edge, and she slumped down. Blood flowed from Eberhos's leg as he leaped upon her and raised his dagger for a killing stroke.

Shadow flickered across the moonlight. A loop of something dark and half-seen snaked through the window; Kane thought of a great black cat darting its paw into a rat hole after catching a glimpse of its prey within. Eberhos shrieked--one terrible shriek--as something that might have been a tentacle lashed about his chest, tore him from the floor and through the window into the night.

Presumably the demon would not have harmed its master. Likely the scent of blood, the proximity of the girl, Eberhos's sudden lunge confused the enraged leviathan that waited in the darkness outside. The creature instantly released the alchemist.

As much of him as had passed through the narrow window.

Ceteol made a choking sound in her throat and stumbled groggily away from the dripping aperture. Kane caught her up, removed her bonds, and the girl huddled next to the fire, cursing dispassionately between shuddering gasps. Blood continued to seep along her ribs, but the gashes were shallow, so that she was barely aware of their pain in the presence of far greater horror.

But the clinging atmosphere of terror which had closed about them had lifted--vanished with the alchemist's death.

"What... happened?" puffed Levardos, daring to pause in his frenzied efforts with the fire. The flames quivered and sputtered, but burned more strongly now.

"I think it's gone," Kane hazarded. "Eberhos summoned the demon, commanded it to stalk us; his death should have released it from its bond--allowed the creature to return to the nameless realm of chaos."

"Gone, do you think?" asked Levardos, eyeing the darkness with suspicion.

"So it would appear. Do you see its crawling shadow? Can you sense that smothering cloud of unearthly fear the demon seemed to exhale?"

His lieutenant shook his head slowly, then glanced toward the steaming fire. The chunks of rotted timber would soon be consumed. "We'll know for sure before long," be commented laconically.

Kane gingerly retrieved the remaining link from the cheerless flames. Pitch still boiled from its tow--fuel which had kept the fire going after Levardos had shoved it into the dying embers. "I'll find out now," he growled, carrying the torch toward the door.

Despite his assurance that the demon had left them, Kane's broad muscles bunched in tight cords as he stepped into the darkness of the ruin-haunted forest. Drops of rain splashed invisibly through the trees, spat at the flaring torch. But no unseen demon reached out for him; no writhing shadow lurked beyond the nimbus of light. Forcing unpleasant thoughts from his mind, Kane cast about for dead limbs and eventually returned through the enveloping drizzle with a small tree scraping behind him.

"The demon," he announced, "is gone," Kane flung down his load of wood, then released the disintegrating torch; he had to use his free hand to pry away his locked fingers from their grip on its shaft.

They kept the fire going. It was a worn, grim trio huddled within the ruined temple. More mist than droplets, the rain wrapped itself about them, plopped from countless crevices in the smoke-hung roof. They waited for daylight, waited for the poet to return to them; the shadow of terror which had fallen over this night made the evocation of the dark muse seem distant, unreal. Touched by the spirit of gloom that haunted the ruins, they waited through the night, each silent in his thoughts.

The grey light of dawn was touching the altar when Kane muttered an exclamation that woke the others from their doze. "Look!" he cried, pointing toward the circle of dawnlight.

Streamers of opalescent mist, not of the rain nor of the morning, gathered upon the bare stone, splashed clean by the raindrops. The swirling mists slowed, hovered closer. Coalesced. Vanished.

On the rain-polished stone lay a man, a man who looked to be asleep. Beside him rested a nude figurine of black onyx, a figurine whose carven face smiled an invitation to unknown wonders, whose eyes shone with mysterious cruelty...

"Opyros!" called Ceteol, running to him. She touched his arm.

The poet's eyes flashed open. He drew away, fear distorting his face. His eyes were unfocused, vacuous.

"Opyros?" Kane's voice was shaken.

The poet's empty eyes looked past Kane. He worked his threat as if to scream, but only a hiss of insurmountable terror escaped his contorted lips. He hissed again and again, then began to sob mindlessly.

When they sought to lift him, Opyros broke away and fled with frightened mewing into a shadowed corner of the ruin. They had difficulty pulling him from under the debris, as he moved with surprising speed for a man wriggling on his belly.

They carried Opyros back to Enseljos.

For weeks he lay in a locked room of his manor, attended only by Ceteol after his howling drove away most of his servants. A sense of fulfillment seemed to settle over Ceteol, who would explain with a soft smile just exactly who was to blame. Only through the drugs Kane left for him could the poet take sleep, and for days he remained huddled in a nest of soiled bedding, shivering and mewling. At times he muttered snatches of speech, guttural syllables in a strange language--if language it was--that no one could recognize, although Kane once listened carefully as if he understood, and left the chamber shuddering.

Almost certainly any other man would have gone to the end of his days in this gibbering state of frightened madness. Perhaps Opyros's was an exceptionally resilient consciousness, or possibly the repeated flights of his imagination into the shadow lands of the macabre had to some extent inured him to those greater horrors which would have utterly shattered another's soul. Some core of ego yet burned beneath the choking mists of insanity.

Little by little he seemed to come to himself. Though the nightmares still haunted his drugged sleep, he became able to sit composedly while awake, to feed and care for himself. After some months he began to prowl quietly about his manor, examining his books and effects as if submerged memories were rising from far depths of his consciousness--like a traveller who returns from a distant journey of many years, to find the vaguely remembered home of his childhood awaiting him untouched by the age which has passed since lost he held his toys. Eventually be began to talk, fumbling with the words as if the language were unfamiliar from disuse, but as the weeks passed, his stammering phrases grew to careful sentences and then to normal conversation. He ventured out on the streets of Enseljos once more and greeted his old acquaintances, who were privately alarmed as to how greatly his recent nervous collapse had aged the poet. And thus, after many months of convalescence, Opyros reassumed management of his affairs much as before.

But long before this time he had begun to write.

Kane greeted Opyros one night as the poet made a surprise visit to his new quarters. Only rarely did he see his friend since Opyros's recovery, for the poet stayed locked in his study for long hours these days, working in secret at his writing. No longer did he come to Kane with fragments of verse and half-formed ideas; all his writing he now did alone. Kane hoped the poet did not feel some unspoken ill will against him for his part in the evocation of the dark muse. On the contrary, Opyros expressed no regret for his experience, though he never told of it. Nonetheless, Kane could read nothing in his eyes of the poet's secret thoughts.

"Night Winds is finished," he declared with a tired smile.

Warmly Kane congratulated his friend. "Are you at last satisfied with it, then?"

Opyros looked introspective as he accepted a crystal chalice of brandy. "I think so. My journey with the dark muse was worth it, Kane, for I found the inspiration I sought--though there was a price for it."

"And is Night Winds the perfect poem you spoke of once to me?"

Opyros savoured the liquor before tasting it. "I think so."

"Then I should very much like to read it. Have you brought it?"

Opyros shook his head. "No, it's locked safely away. Forgive my conceit, Kane, but this is the masterwork I have devoted my life, my soul, to creating. I want its unveiling to be an affair of some... ah... magnitude--do you understand?"

Kane nodded, studying the other's face intently.

"There will be a formal reading in a week or so, as soon as I can circulate invitations to those who should have them, arrange a hall, and the like. I don't want this another uncouth public reading, with slobs tramping in and out through it all, peddlers hawking food and drink. This will be a private affair--closed door, you know--a few hundred guests, literary colleagues and critics, the nobility who attend this sort of social function. There'll be enough trouble with these dilettantes' gossiping and backbiting... but then I've said a perfect poem should hold the minds of its audience."

"I'll took forward to attending."

"I'm tempted to let you see this first, anyway," Opyros grinned nervously. "It's somewhat different from my earlier work--I've done a lot of things that no writer has thought to... Well, it's finished, and I'll wait for the formal reading, to stand acclaimed as genius or be laughed at as pretentious fool, when the world first hears it."