“Who else will be there?”
“Everyone. The militia, M.P.s, whatever navy ships aren’t in harbour. We’re not going to take this lying down.”
“Damn right. What do they think . . .”
His voice became inaudible as the two walked away down the corridor. Nathaway’s main reaction to what he had just learned was that Corbin was going to have his hands full tonight, and that left Nathaway with time and some freedom to act. He rounded the corner and slipped into the room the soldier had just left unguarded.
He found himself in a long gallery with a wall of windows at the other end, now covered in ash. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he saw framed against the window two figures. One he recognized instantly; she moved like a dancer as she circled the old man before her, graceful, taunting, deadly. She stopped as the man held out his arms toward her, then they came together in an embrace. Nathaway’s heart lurched as he saw the shape of the black knife in her hand, poised to plunge into his back.
“Spaeth! No!” he shouted.
She whipped around to face him, half crouching. “You!” she hissed.
He crossed the room swiftly, reaching out to take her knife. She lunged at him with murder in her eyes. The knife sliced like a razor through his sleeve, and he pulled back, feeling its bite.
“You should have died,” she said. Her eyes looked like an animal’s.
“Put the knife down,” he said, trying to sound reasonable.
She lunged again. This time he managed to catch her wrist, twist it around, and pin her against him. She fought him, snarling in rage, with such ferocity that he could barely keep her in control.
All this while the old man stood, watching as they struggled. “Do something, damn it!” Nathaway shouted.
“Spaeth,” the old man said quietly.
Nathaway felt her stiffen against him. She became deathly still. In the silence he heard a drip, drip, and looked down, surprised to see it was his own blood.
“You must let me go,” she said in an eerily quiet voice. “I have to kill him.”
Nathaway tightened his hold. He could feel her shoulder blades against his chest, the tight muscles of her back. It was distractingly erotic.
The old man began to approach them slowly, his eyes on Spaeth. Nathaway stared, fascinated, at the grief and resolve in his face.
Spaeth stiffened as the old man drew near, step by ritual step. “Let me go,” she said urgently. “He is going to kill me.”
Something in her voice made Nathaway say, “Stop. Don’t come any closer.”
The old man stopped scarcely more than an arm’s length away. He had no weapon, and there was no anger in his eyes. Before Nathaway could react, he reached out and touched her on the forehead. A shock passed through her body, knocking Nathaway a step back with its strength. Then she went limp.
Nathaway gave a strangled protest. Spaeth was a dead weight in his arms. He lowered her to the floor and felt for a pulse.
“I should have killed her.” The old man was standing above them, looking drained.
“If you had, I’d have had the law on you,” Nathaway snapped. He had found her pulse, sluggish and uncertain. He wanted to go fetch help, but didn’t dare. He took off his coat to cover her. She was still clutching the knife. He pried it from her grip and was about to put it in his belt when the old man stepped forward. “I will take it,” he said.
Nathaway held it away, suspicious. “Who are you? What have you done to her?”
For a moment the old man seemed at a loss to answer. “I am her creator,” he said at last. “I gave her life.”
“Goth?” Nathaway said. He could hardly have been more astonished.
“Yes,” the old man said, startled. “Who are you? How do you know my name?”
“I’m Nathaway Talley. I was on Yora. That’s how—” He stopped. It was too complicated to explain.
“Talley?” Goth said sharply. A look of suspicion, then of dawning understanding, was in his face.
There was a low rumble, and the floor shifted under them like jelly. Goth looked to the window, alert with fear. “We cannot stay here,” he said. “The Mundua are hunting tonight. Spaeth gave them substance. She was their messenger, and we have stopped her—for now. They are not happy.” He turned to Nathaway. “Do me one more service, and then go back to your own world. Can you carry her?”
“Yes.”
“Then follow me.”
He led the way into a bedroom that adjoined the gallery. A fire smouldered in the grate, and the air was stifling warm. “Lay her there, by the hearth,” Goth instructed, while he lit the lamps. As Nathaway laid her on the carpet, he noticed that his shirtsleeve was soaked in blood. Clumsily, he started to unbutton his cuff.
“Did she do that to you?”
Nathaway looked up. Goth’s eyes were on him, keen and alarmed.
“It’s nothing,” Nathaway said.
“Let me see it.” Kneeling, Goth tore away the blood-soaked sleeve with a few swift tugs, revealing an ugly diagonal slash across Nathaway’s forearm, still oozing blood. The old man stared at it, transfixed; then his eyes rose to Nathaway’s face, searching. That direct, unwavering gaze made Nathaway extraordinarily self-conscious; he suppressed the urge to fidget.
“You are bound up in this more tightly than I understand,” Goth said.
There was another rumble from below. The lamp flames flickered, and a poker clattered over on the hearth. Goth clutched at the mantel to steady himself, and his face showed fear.
“They are close,” he said. His gaze strayed toward a rosewood bureau by the door. On it stood a cobalt blue bottle on a silver tray. “They can smell my weakness,” he whispered. “I am no longer a fit guardian, and they know it. Gods, what a mess I have made!” As he gazed at the bottle, his face lost all expression but inarticulate longing for oblivion.
The landscape of grief in the old man’s face was fascinating to watch; it seemed like more than one life was mapped there. Nathaway had to drag his eyes away. Spaeth still lay insensible before him. There were long black gloves on her hands. He stripped one off and said in shock, “My God!”
Her arm was black to the elbows. Quickly he pushed back her sleeve; dark streaks ran up her arm to the shoulder, marks of the sepsis in her system. He picked up her hand; the fingers were icy cold. “We’ve got to get her to a doctor,” he said. “I don’t know what this is.”
His exclamation had called back Goth’s attention. The old man knelt down at Spaeth’s side, his breath coming hard. “I know what it is,” he said.
“What? I’ve never seen it.”
“You wouldn’t. It is a Lashnura disease. It has gotten very bad with her. No wonder the Mundua could take her.” Gently he peeled back the other glove, handling her blackened hand so tenderly that Nathaway watched, entranced.
“What is the cure?” he said.
“There is none. Or rather, there is, but she is the only one who can administer it. All I can do is to drive the disease back for a short time.”
Spaeth stirred, murmuring. Goth looked up urgently. “Where is the knife?”
Nathaway had stuck it in his belt; he shifted to put it farther from the old man’s reach.
“I’m not going to use it on her!” Goth said.
“What do you want it for, then?” He suspected he already knew.
“It is how we cure, by sacrificing ourselves. Please give me the knife.”
There was something so commanding in the Grey Man’s voice that Nathaway hesitantly drew the knife from his belt, but he didn’t hand it over. “I can’t let you do this,” he said. “She should see a doctor.”
Goth didn’t answer. He was staring at the knife. Nathaway looked to see what had attracted his attention. The blade was stained with blood, and the stone was
milk-white.
“Is that blood yours?” Goth asked, his voice strained.
“Yes, I suppose. It must be.”
Their eyes met across Spaeth’s body. Nathaway felt he could enter those eyes and wander down corridors that never ended, into worlds he couldn’t imagine. He felt disoriented, unsure of who he was or what he wanted to be.
“Tell me what your feelings are toward her,” Goth said. His voice was soft, but demanded truth. “Please, I need to know.”
Nathaway looked down at Spaeth. There were lines of strain around her eyes that hadn’t been there before. He could see it clearly now: she was dangerous, incomprehensible in a way that nothing else in his life had ever been. It gave him a feeling of fearful attraction. “I . . . I wish her well,” he managed to say.
“Then let me show you how to finish what you have started,” Goth said gently.
He took Nathaway’s arm in his hand and squeezed the cut till it bled again; then he dipped his fingers in the fresh blood and dabbed it first on Spaeth’s forehead, then on Nathaway’s, then his own. The spot where his finger had touched, just above the bridge of Nathaway’s nose, felt cool and calming. Uncertainty receded from around it, replaced with a feeling of serene objectivity.
“Now give me the knife,” Goth said.
Slowly he placed the knife’s hilt in the Grey Man’s hand. Goth took the sharp point and nicked a vein in his wrist. Wetting his finger with his own blood, he repeated his motions, touching first Spaeth, then Nathaway, then himself. Then he laid the knife on Spaeth’s chest, where it rose and fell with her breathing. Her eyes were moving under half-open lids now. Goth leaned over her, saying, “Spaeth? Do you hear me? It is Goth.”
“Goth!” she said, reaching out with a blackened hand. She was barely conscious, but there was a joy in her voice that reminded Nathaway sharply of the child he had at first taken her to be. He took her hand and held it. It was cold as a corpse’s.
Goth clasped her other hand and said, “We are going to help you drive the Black Mask away, Spaeth. Are you ready?”
Dazedly, she nodded. Her eyes seemed to refocus on something far away, or far inside, and her body relaxed. Goth also looked like a man in a trance. A slight smile played across his face. He took Nathaway’s hand and laid it on the knife blade where their blood was mingled, then put his own strong, grey hand over it. With the rhythm of Spaeth’s breathing in his palm, Nathaway could almost feel his own personality dimming and growing indistinct about the edges. He felt a thrill of intimacy that it was his blood on her face.
Goth said, “You can feel the knife, Spaeth. Let the blackness flow into it. Let the disease leave your body until it is time for it to return. We will help you.”
In the long silence that followed, the light in the room seemed to condense in a sphere around the three of them, leaving all darkness outside. Currents flowed through Nathaway’s mind: the disease into the knife, the heat of his hand into hers, and Goth’s strength into both of them, curing, restoring. Slowly, her flesh warmed in his grip.
At last Goth picked up the knife. It was opaque with blackness now. He held it before her eyes. “There it is,” he said. “The disease is in the knife. Now I will take it home, into myself.”
He bared his arm. The knife plunged down. All the blackness seemed to pour from it into the open vein, and Goth doubled over in pain. Nathaway seized the knife away from him, but the blade was so cold it burned his fingers and he dropped it to the carpet, where it lay smoking like dry ice. It was white once more.
Goth’s face was twisted. “Ashes,” he managed to say. Nathaway shook his head, uncomprehending. On hands and knees, Goth groped stiffly to the hearth and gathered a handful of powdery white ash. With shaking hands, he took Nathaway’s wrist and began rubbing the ash into the cut on his forearm.
“What are you doing?” Nathaway protested, horrified. “It will get infected!”
“It will be all right,” Goth said, his teeth clenched.
He then took a linen dresser scarf, handed it to Nathaway, and said, “Rip it into strips.” When this was accomplished, Goth wrapped a strip tightly around Nathaway’s arm, ashes and all. He then held out his own arm. “Help me,” he said.
“I can’t—” Nathaway started to say, but stopped as a spasm of pain wrung Goth’s body like a rag. Now the old man was trembling with cold; his lips looked blue. Alarmed, Nathaway snatched up a handful of ashes and smeared them across the old man’s wounded arm till his hand was a paste of blood and ash. He then bound it tight with the improvised bandage and jerked a blanket from the bed to wrap around the old man. Goth’s body felt frail as a wisp.
“Come to the bed,” he said.
Goth’s eyes were glassy and brilliant with pain. He smiled at Nathaway. “This will pass,” he said through clenched muscles. “Don’t worry; we are easy to hurt, hard to kill.”
Looking into his eyes, Nathaway felt a painful flare of empathy. In that moment, with the blood they had mixed still fresh on the knife, he felt giddy with an exhilaration of purpose. He wanted to participate in the uplifting surrender of the Lashnura, to give himself utterly away.
“I want to help you,” he said, not expecting the old man to understand.
But Goth’s eyes seemed to see everything. Softly, he said, “I accept your offer.”
16
The Crack in the World
Goth’s face was bright with euphoric pain. He began trying to unbutton his collar, but his hands were shaking. Already the tips of his fingers were darkening with the disease he had taken from Spaeth’s body. “Hand me that bottle,” he said.
Nathaway fetched the blue bottle from the bureau, and uncorked it. “Give me one sliver,” Goth said.
“What is it?”
“Don’t you know?”
Nathaway shook his head. “It’s medicine,” Goth said. “It will help me.”
The bottle contained a dozen white, waxy slivers. Nathaway chose one and held it out, but Goth’s palsied hands couldn’t grasp it. The Grey Man held out his unbandaged forearm. “Under the skin,” he said. “Just over the vein.”
A little clumsy from fear of hurting him, Nathaway inserted the sharp sliver just under the skin. Goth clasped his hand over it and leaned back against the bed. Slowly, his trembling eased and his face relaxed. His head nodded, and for a moment Nathaway thought he was going to fall asleep; but, with a visible force of will, he dragged himself back. This time when he unbuttoned his collar, his hands were steady. From around his neck he took a stone pendant on a cord. He touched it tenderly, then held it out to Nathaway.
It was a rectangular slab of jade, inscribed with characters in an alphabet Nathaway didn’t recognize. Its edges were worn smooth and round by the years, and its surface was unpolished. It looked ancient.
“Take it,” Goth said. “I want you to have it.”
It was still warm with the heat of Goth’s body when Nathaway took it. “What is it?” he asked.
“It is my soulstone,” Goth said. “As it was my father’s before me, and his mother’s, clear back to the beginning. All their souls are in it.”
Immediately Nathaway assumed that Goth was giving him the family heirloom to hold in trust for Spaeth. He glanced down at her.
As if reading his thoughts, Goth said, “No, I am giving it to you. You must not give it away. Not to her, not to anyone, until your own soul is ready to enter it. Can I trust you?”
“If that is what you want,” Nathaway said, uncertain that the old man’s mind was sufficiently his own to make such a decision.
“It has nothing to do with me,” Goth said. “It is necessary.” He looked down at Spaeth, and his face was full of yearning. “Now you must wake her.”
Kneeling at Spaeth’s side, Nathaway gently shook her. He felt a precious tenderness for her now. They had shared something mor
e intimate than ordinary life allowed. He knew her inside and out, as if he had explored every particle of her, looked out from her eyes, felt his own touch on her skin. He felt a sharp desire to experience that closeness again.
When her eyes flickered open and focused on his face, she looked dreamily entranced at first, as if she were just that moment discovering the most fascinating thing in the universe, and it was him. “Wake up, Spaeth,” he said, wishing she didn’t have to. She sat up, and her expression changed, but only to become a mirror of the sharp desire in his own. Then, on unpremeditated impulse, they were wrapped in each other’s arms, their mouths pressed together. He wanted desperately to be inside her body, to be closer than skin would allow. The clothes they were wearing seemed like walls between them; he wanted to rip them off.
Spaeth’s hands were already inside his shirt and he was fumbling at her belt when the fact that they weren’t alone made him summon an enormous force of will and pull back. He had to swallow twice and bite his lip to get control. Every muscle in him was superheated. He drew a ragged breath, and saw Goth’s face from the corner of his eye, looking at them with a mix of pain and tenderness.
“I had to be sure,” Goth said. “I had to know the bandhota bond was true.” He looked away then, as if the sight of them was more than he could bear.
“Goth,” Spaeth breathed, as if seeing him for the first time. She tore one hand away from Nathaway’s body to reach out to him. For an instant he seemed about to clasp it, then he drew away. A tremor passed through his body.
“No,” he said, “Don’t touch me, Spaeth. I can’t trust myself. You must leave here now, the two of you.”
“Leave?” she cried. “Without you?”
“Yes,” he said. His eyes fixed on Nathaway’s face, as if he couldn’t bear to look at Spaeth’s. “Get her out of here. Don’t let her fall into the hands of her enemies. Especially not the Innings. To them, she would only be one more object to be warped and used.”
“They won’t touch her,” Nathaway promised madly.
“Good. You must go to Lashnish, the two of you,” Goth said. “Do you understand? You must find the Isonstone. Now, do you know this palace?”
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