White Devil Mountain (22 page)

Jeanne halted before the same great door that a young man of unearthly beauty had entered, then exited, a few hours earlier.

“My good duke, it is I, Jeanne.”

After the span of about two breaths, an enormous, solemn voice rang out beyond the door. “What do you want? I believe I ordered you to serve as D’s personal attendant.”

“A boy and a man have escaped from the special G III level cells.”

“What of it? You come to pester me with this? For those humans, this whole castle is hell itself! The fools. They’ll learn they would’ve been far happier staying in their cells and waiting for their blood to be sucked from them. Such is not worthy of notifying me.”

“They were liberated by someone from the castle.”

“Oh, yes?” Although he must’ve been surprised, his tone was lethargic. Perhaps that was what became of those who’d been cut off from all worldly connections for so long. “By whom?”

“A personage who could free prisoners from the finest-quality cells, without unlocking the doors, and command the security camera and master computer to delete their image.”

Gilzen’s voice fell silent. The fact that Jeanne referred to “a personage” meant she probably had a good idea who it was.

“I see. Return to your duties.”

“What do you intend to do?”

At that instant, her chest plate was rent diagonally and her body enveloped by pale electromagnetic waves that threw her fifteen feet before slamming her into the floor. She slid another fifteen feet across the floor before coming to a halt. Just as she was about to get up, a mass of fresh blood dropped on her from above.

“That blood won’t come off. Not until you’re dead, that is. That’s your punishment for letting a minor incident drive you to such idiocy.”

Jeanne raised her gore-spattered face. Due to the way she’d fallen, only the left half of her face was stained with vermilion.

“As you command,” she said with a bow once she’d gotten to her feet again.

“Next time, I’ll cut off your breast on that same side,” the distressed-sounding voice informed her. “What’s more, I’ll pull out all your teeth, so you’ll look like a five-hundred-year-old hag. Though that would still be far younger than you really are. Do not bother me with your insipid blathering again.”

As soon as Jeanne had left, a voice just in front of the door said, “This is Budges.” It was the formless being.

“Keep an eye on Jeanne,” the grave voice ordered him.

“Yes, milord.”

Perhaps the orders of the being beyond the door were ironclad, because Budges didn’t ask why he should be spying on an ally.

“Brought back to life after ten millennia, and before I even have time to enjoy it the same concerns from ten thousand years ago begin to gnaw at me again. She has orders to see to D’s needs, but if she does anything disquieting—dispose of her.”

“Yes, milord. Women are truly bothersome.”

“True enough.”

“Pardon my abruptness, but may I speak?” This was how questions were usually broached.

“Very well.”

“Before Jeanne or anything else, there’s a man who should be disposed of first.”

“I know.”

“He is more powerful than any foe we fought ten millennia ago.”

“Are you too trying to say that I, Gilzen, might taste defeat?”

“No, it’s just, that man—there’s something fundamentally different about him. Different from humans and from us. I don’t know what it is, but if ignored, he is sure to become a fearsome opponent. Dispose of him as soon as possible.”

Lightning raced through the air, and an earsplitting cry of agony rang out.

“Gilzen needs no instructions from you. All of you need merely do as I say. And refrain from doing what I tell you not to.”

“Yes, milord,” Budges replied, the pain still raw in his voice.

III

Vera and Dust were imprisoned in neighboring cells. Both had lost consciousness for reasons unknown, and the next thing they’d known they were there. Though they didn’t cause a ruckus like Crey, their situation was still just as hopeless. Since they woke up, two hours had passed during which they’d been powerless to do anything. They figured that this was probably Gilzen’s castle, but not even being sure of that, there wasn’t much point in talking.

“I’m sorry,” Vera apologized.

“For what?”

“For causing you nothing but trouble right to the last. First your daughter, and ultimately you.”

“If you’re talking about the present situation, guarding you is my job. This has nothing to do with my daughter. Also, this isn’t the end. You’re a doctor, aren’t you? Don’t go jumping to conclusions.”

Their conversation was taking place through a set of bars.

There was truth to what Dust said.

“You’re right—sorry,” said Vera.

“Don’t be so quick to apologize. It gets to be a habit. You’ll get to thinking if you screw up you can just apologize and that’s the end of it, Doctor. Try pulling that with a man whose daughter you killed and you’ll get yourself murdered.”

Vera didn’t know what to say.

Dust seemed to snap out of it, saying, “That just slipped out. Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Vera smiled wryly. “But don’t be so quick to apologize.”

Coughing once, Dust looked around and said, “Anyway, we’ve got to think of some way to escape.”

Essentially, these cells were the same as those where Lourié and Crey had been held—though the two of them had no way of knowing that.

“What about everybody else? What about the child—Lourié?”

“I don’t know. At any rate, we can’t look for anyone till we get out of here.”

“But it’s no use. All we can do is wait for whoever locked us up to come back.”

Dust fell silent. He had to recognize the soundness of her argument.

“But this prison is really old, inside and out,” the doctor continued. “It really doesn’t seem like a reconstruction of something from ten thousand years ago.”

“Anachronism suits the Nobility’s tastes.”

“Even so, don’t you think they’ve taken it a bit too far?”

“How so?”

“Even the Nobility’s science wasn’t the very best at the beginning, right? It would’ve progressed little by little, eventually reaching the level it’s at now. Yet even for the worst Noble of ten thousand years ago, doesn’t this seem a bit much to do, all of a sudden? I mean, all that time he’s been sleeping deep in the earth!”

“Hmm. Now that you mention it, you’ve got a point there.” Not one to put on airs, Dust tilted his head to one side. Apparently his motto was, “What you see is what you get,” but to accept this theory in their present condition required a fairly broad mind.

“In the village archive of ancient texts there was a priest’s diary that recorded Gilzen’s activities. They ran it through a translation machine they picked up from a traveling merchant, but there was no mention of his technology being this advanced. Of course, the translator was secondhand, so it might be on account of that.”

“In that case, you mean,” Dust furrowed his brow, and after a brief silence continued, “while Gilzen was asleep for ten thousand years, his underlings acquired this superadvanced technology. No, but that doesn’t fit. I’ve never heard about any stragglers causing trouble. Which would mean they also went to sleep, along with their master.”

“Right.” Pressing her face against the bars, Vera looked around the prison. “So quiet, so still. It’s hard to imagine it being anything but ten thousand years old. How did they reconstruct it? Did the Nobles use technology from another dimension?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“It was in the diary. About six months before the day Gilzen’s savagery came to a sudden end, the skies—”

Dust was the first to whip his face around. There were footsteps drawing closer. Forceful ones, and coming at a rather rapid pace. Before Vera could even turn in that direction, a figure shrouded in a purple cape stood before the two of them.

“I am Jeanne. I’m one of the Sacred Protector Knights,” the armored woman said, introducing herself in a clear and resonant tone. The left half of her face was stained red. “You’re the doctor, aren’t you? Your skill is needed.”

As the young woman looked at her, Vera became snared in a veil of suspicion. To treat whom? It was common sense that the home of the ageless and immortal Nobility wouldn’t have a doctor, so if there were someone needing medical attention, would they be a human?

“Can you tell me whom I’m supposed to help?” she asked in spite of herself.

“Don’t ask pointless questions. You need only do as you are told. Open it.”

As she said that, the door to the cell unlocked without the young woman lifting a finger. “Follow me.”

Vera stepped out through the door.

Rattling his bars, Dust shouted, “Let me out, too!”

Ignoring him, Jeanne walked back the way she’d come.

As she followed after the Noblewoman, Vera informed her, “I don’t have any medicine or my medical instruments.”

“Don’t worry. Everything you carried has been safely stored,” Jeanne replied without ever looking at Vera. It was a supremely arrogant way to address her.

“In that case, why not treat them yourself?”

“I don’t know how to use human medicine.”

“Well, isn’t that a kick in the pants?” Vera said, feeling strangely confident. “So, my patient is a human being? Or is it—”

“It’s me.”

“Excuse me?”

Vera finally noticed that ever since she’d first appeared, the Noblewoman had kept her cape closed over the front of her body. However, she didn’t seem to be in any pain, and her complexion had been pale from the start.

Suddenly the floor beneath their feet moved, and Vera let out a cry of surprise. Somehow she managed to keep her balance. The six-foot-wide section of floor moved forward at an impressive speed. It was a form of moving sidewalk that could still be found in the castles of the Nobility, but the fact that it’d been realized ten thousand years earlier was hard to believe. What she and Dust had been discussing a short time earlier skimmed through her mind.

“This is quite a device to be ten thousand years old. I wonder, was your master some sort of scientific genius?”

“Regretfully, the duke is no scholar.”