White Devil Mountain (41 page)

“This child is more suited to doctoring than I!” Jeanne said proudly, rubbing the top of the boy’s head. “So much so that I’d love to keep him here in the castle to focus on treating the injured. How would you like that?”

When she smiled at him, Lourié backed away. Her fangs frightened him.

“I’m joking. Go with him,” she said, pushing the boy in D’s direction. Jeanne then asked, “What do you intend to do about the castle?”

“I’ve done what I was hired to do,” D said softly. “You can live here or move somewhere else, whichever suits you. But if I’m asked to slay the lot of you, I will be back.”

“It seems it would be best if we went back to sleep, wouldn’t it?”

In response to Jeanne’s remark, Budges said, “It certainly would. If we sleep for a million years, the world will probably change some more. Perhaps the time of the Nobility will have returned.”

“Or maybe no one will even remember ’em.”

Jeanne’s eyes were riveted to the breast of D’s long coat. As if in response to her scrutiny, whistling tinged with poorly feigned nonchalance rang out.

“Good point,” Jeanne said in a weary tone. “No one would remember us. Maybe there wouldn’t even be anyone left at all.”

D turned without saying a word. The boy followed after him. The two of them went down the corridor without a backward glance. It was then that Lourié recalled something and proceeded to tell D all about it.

IV

The snow still swirled in savage confusion, turning the roof of the castle into a white peak. At the top of that mountain a diminutive form climbed through the snow to place a pair of small wooden plaques. Folding his hands together before the modest grave markers, Lourié recited a short and simple prayer before going back down the snowy incline to D. The snowstorm was returning the sparkle to the world. Dawn was near.

“That keeps my promise to Mr. Crey.”

“I’m going down the mountain,” the Hunter told the boy. “I don’t have time to look for your father now, but I’m sure someone else will be coming up here.”

The Nobles who’d returned to life wouldn’t be left to their own devices. Humans were no longer powerless. Perhaps D envisioned the future destruction of the castle.

Lourié nodded. “I know. I’ll come up again on my own. Besides, I get the feeling I know what I should do just from having been up here.”

D gazed quietly at the rosy-cheeked boy. “When I visit the village again someday,” he said, “I’ll probably find a fine doctor here.”

Sobbing a little, Lourié said, “But I’m not all that smart!”

Something that bordered on the miraculous occurred, though the boy probably didn’t realize it. D extended his right hand and rubbed the boy’s head.

“I don’t know how smart you are, but you’re brave,” he said. It was a low and cold tone, yet still gentle. “Braver than anyone.”

Lourié grinned. His little face was filled with pride.
I’ll never forget this
, his expression declared. He’d never forget what he’d coaxed from the Hunter—he’d seen D’s smile.

D turned toward the exit from the roof.

“Shall we go?”

“Sure.”

The two of them walked back across the roof. After they’d advanced five or six paces, the door opened and a figure bounded out. It was Jeanne. Half her body was stained with fresh blood.

Seeing the two of them, she shouted, “The duke!”

Lourié froze.

“He took down Budges—run for it!”

From the crack in the door a stark light coursed out, piercing the warrior woman’s heart from behind before stabbing into the ground at D’s feet. It looked more like a long icicle than a spear. The exit from the roof burst outward. It wasn’t an explosion. It’d been blown apart by internal pressure.

Deflecting the flying shrapnel with a single wave of his long coat, D gazed at the enormous golden figure who sailed down onto the roof. His landing made the roof shudder.

Standing there with an icicle gripped in his right hand and a longsword in his left was none other than Duke Gilzen. But how completely he’d changed! Every human feature of his face was warped, with a great chasm stretching from his right eye to his forehead. On the left side of his face the lips were pulled up higher, and the few teeth that remained in his mouth gave a sense less of idiocy and more of ghastly insanity. A twisted hand reached out toward D, and as the figure, badly stooped at the waist, pressed forward on similarly misshapen legs, he was more reminiscent of a spider than a human being.

Where had the galactic drive led Gilzen, and why had it brought him home?

“Back again, Gilzen?” D said, pushing Lourié toward a mound of snow and drawing his sword.

But wait, D! Right now, you lack the left hand that bolsters your regeneration. If you were to fall now, critically wounded, and that limb were carried off, God would be calling a certain gorgeous Hunter back to his reward.

Gilzen extended his icicle spear. Though it looked like ice, it was a collection of free-floating molecules from the air, coalesced into a long spear that was harder than iron. D knocked it away. His blade shattered.

Gilzen also had a sword. When the Nobleman made a diagonal swipe at D, the Hunter parried the sword with his right fist. Catching the blade between his index and middle fingers, he stopped it. As Gilzen was no ordinary Noble, but rather had become a fiend of the universe, it was truly an ungodly display of skill by the Hunter. However, look at how the sword blade split the area between the fingers, slicing through D’s hand almost to the wrist!

Gilzen hauled back with the icicle spear. D had no left hand with which to block it. Letting out a cry that might’ve been a curse on those who were cast out into the Milky Way, and that also seemed likely to drive all who heard it insane, Gilzen tried to thrust his spear forward.

Something happened. It was something to rival even the cosmic terror that lurked in the memory of the Milky Way—a miracle, even. Blood light shot from D’s eyes—and it seared Gilzen’s eyes and brain.

Still sunk in a snowbank, Lourié saw the thing that’d been Gilzen stagger and back away. As if frightened by some tremendously huge power.

D jumped clear, swinging his right hand sharply. Flying from it to pierce Gilzen’s chest was the sword Gilzen had used to split D’s right hand. As the giant grabbed it by the hilt and tried desperately to pull it out, D sprang at his chest. Gilzen instantly vanished. He’d used his ability to teleport. And it put him right behind D. However, D wasn’t there. He, too, had vanished.

Gilzen suddenly stood stock still in astonishment—and D appeared right by his chest. The Hunter’s bloodied hand seized the hilt that jutted from the Nobleman’s chest, and D pushed with all his might. The blade of the sword protruded from the duke’s back.

Gilzen’s body was enveloped by purplish smoke. Within the smoke, a sort of mass began falling away in chunks. Chunks of skin. Of flesh. The disintegration of Duke Gilzen had begun.

“He’s melting?” Lourié said, his eyes riveted—and with good reason. In its death throes, the enormous body let off countless jets of wildly dancing purple smoke, and when they touched the castle walls or floor, the stony material was instantly reduced to sludge.

“D—if the castle melts and the snow melts, the village will be flooded!” the boy wailed mournfully.

“D—D!” called out a voice that could only be Gilzen’s. “Ah, D! I am undone. How did you slay me? The light in your eyes—was that, could it be, a power the Sacred Ancestor gave you? D, I didn’t ultimately triumph over the Sacred Ancestor, did I? Please, tell me that’s not sooo!”

His voice grew thin, and the giant collapsed. Purplish smoke enveloped his golden cape, dissolving it. It, and everything else.

D ran over to Lourié, tucked him under one arm, and raced for the castle wall.

“Shut your eyes—here we go!”

The two of them jumped.

On the same drift of snow where Lilia and Vera had previously landed, D lightly came to rest. He should’ve sunk down past his knees, but the snow didn’t even come up to his ankles. It was a matter of the way D carried himself.

“D—the village!”

It was unclear what the Hunter made of Lourié’s words, as he didn’t so much as move an inch.

Shrouded in purple smoke up to its very zenith, the castle was swiftly vanishing like something out of a nightmare. As it collapsed, it touched the snowy slope where D and the boy stood—and at that instant, a dazzling light colored the world. Even D had to lower the brim of his traveler’s hat, while Lourié was briefly blinded.

When the world finally began to etch itself into the boy’s retinas again, he said, “The castle’s
gone
?”

Gilzen’s castle had vanished without a trace.

“And no avalanche or flood, either,” D remarked.

He was right. The snowfield where the castle had stood had only collapsed a bit around the edges, but otherwise retained its original shape. The disappearance of the castle was like waking from a dream, and it had occurred without the need for any energy at all.

As he stood there dumbfounded, Lourié noticed that D had turned around and was facing the other way. The composed relief that filled the boy’s heart at first allowed him to sense the presence of someone behind him. Could it be—

“Dad?”

Though snow continued to fall, there was no wind. Four figures stood behind a veil of white silk gauze. One of them stepped forward, taking on definite shape and color. It was Lilia. The boy stared at her, and then his gaze focused on the remaining three figures. Expectation, curiosity, and fear whirled in his eyes.

“Is my father there?”

“Could be,” Lilia said, grinning thinly. “Haven’t asked him his name, but I suppose the face bears some resemblance. No, that’s probably just my imagination. D, those two in the back are Vera and Dust.”

Not a word from the Hunter.

“The man the boy thinks is his father seems to have the same condition I do. While he was bitten by Gilzen, he didn’t become a servant, but kept wandering outside the castle. He knew how he’d be treated if he were to go back among people, and more than that, he wasn’t sure he could control his own actions. He says he doesn’t remember when or how he came to be here. He also forgets whether or not he had any kids.”

Lourié looked up at the Hunter. “Goodbye, D,” he said.

D’s hand closed on the boy’s shoulder.

“It’s okay, D,” said a shadowy figure through the snow.

“The doctor . . .” Lourié began before calling out her name.

“Dust and I will guarantee the child’s safety. We’d like Lourié here to—”

The boy swallowed hard.

“We were bitten by a man who came up the mountain with your father. But it’s okay; we stopped at the victim stage. And neither Dust nor I have come under the control of that man.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Please, believe it. I have an idea, D: Come stay with us for three days. After that, we’ll disappear into the mountains. If you think we’re acting strangely—or any time you like—please go ahead and kill us.”

“What’ll you do in those three days?”

“Teach this child what I know,” Vera said, her voice quavering with hope. “I can’t go back to the village any longer. I’ll live in the mountains with Dust. We know Gilzen’s been destroyed, but we just can’t go back to being human. Probably because of his alien blood. But it could be years before the next doctor comes to our village. In the meantime, this child will be their doctor. D, I was bitten by this man here, but he was bitten by Gilzen! Being a doctor, I was able to absorb the alien medical knowledge that Gilzen’s blood carried. In three days, I’ll be able to help the child master medical techniques unknown to mankind.”