by Carol Berg
The prow bumped the islet. I detached my hand, took up my staff, and felt my way onto the rock.
Her gown whispered against the rock as she came to meet me. I towered over her. Astonishing, as she had loomed so large in the dream. A small, soft hand brushed my cheek, enveloping me in the scent of roses. “Maker’s grace! I’ve offered prayers…vows. I thought none would ever answer. Bless thee and all thy kin.”
Where was the venal laughter, the mocking, the murderous intent?
“The travelers feared your dream sendings.” My voice grated like rusted iron beside her softness. “Though not at first…” What had de Cuvier
told me?
She touched my lips with smooth fingers, sending ripples of heat through my flesh. The scent of roses…the enveloping fog…of a sudden I could not get a breath or shape a thought. The darkness closed in.
I backed away a step and tried to begin again.
“Have you a jailer? Someone who feeds you?” Perhaps one of these priests could reshape a dream. Or perhaps a renegade adept who knew of Portier’s strange history and mine had learned enough to manipulate the girl.
“Nay. My body has no wants save a human touch. Stonekeepers drift in dream and sleep, waking when a living person crosses the boundaries of the temple. The priests know well how to manage such. Oh, please, great sir, may we leave this terrible place?”
Such longing. She could be no more than a girl in her teens. Her floating hair teased at my face. “Dost thou take me across the lake, this great treasure is thine. Please, I cannot bear its burden longer.”
“Oraste,” I whispered. Unable to resist, I risked the seeing spell again.
Against a world of charcoal and gray, the Stone rested like a green-plumed bird in the smooth nest of the lady’s hand. A scarlet radiance beamed from its core.
“Rhymus the Red-Hearted,” I said. “The Stone of Passion.”
Her fingers closed, mottling the brilliance. “Once free, I am not permitted to keep it. Take me across and it is yours.” With a sudden jerk, she twisted away for a moment, and then backed into my arms. “We must hurry before the other comes. Please. Amiatro.”
The pale water lapped at the islet. Smeared stars in the blackness beyond the broken roof touched the night with silver. The fog and Nessia’s hair and gown took on the luster of pearls. I could not think, could not breathe for the swelling in chest and loins.
The girl gave me her arm and waited for me to help her into the boat. She settled at my back, adjusting her position, slopping the milky water over the side as I bound my hand to the oar, hearing splashes behind us.
“Hurry,” she said. “Please, before anyone follows us!”
My shoulders strained as I rowed toward the marble shore. The boat wallowed, heavy with the two of us as if I rowed the world’s burdens across that lake. What was I doing? Who could follow?
Struggling to stop my arms, I shipped the oars. “What is this, lady?”
Nessia leaned forward. Her warm breath tickled my neck; her breasts pressed on my back. “You must keep rowing! Hurry!”
“Stop this!” But I could neither turn nor stop. My shout croaked back to me as the echo sought its resting place through the great cavern. As of themselves, my shoulders dipped forward and pulled at the oars.
“Too clever you are, blind man.” This breathless whisper came inside my head. “You’ll not believe what you cannot see, and, of course, you cannot see anything. Always thinking. Always probing. Too much thinking when one lives in the shadows.”
No longer could I sense boat or oars or Nessia’s excited breaths. I drifted in a yellow fog, the familiar voice teasing my ears. Surely a new dream vision had tangled my perceptions. “Who are you?”
“Did I not tell you? Nessia, Keeper of Rhymus. She who lures dreamers to free her from her cruel abandonment. Rhymus and I have waited a long time for someone to set us free. I cannot let you lag.”
“You murdered my father. Why?”
“You are here, are you not? You defied me, and I was out of patience long ago.”
“Where is the captive, the one you took—or lured—from Abidaijar?”
“The librarian? You must look into Rhymus to see your desires!” she said, and laughed the wicked laugh of the dream. “Soon the Stone of Passion will be free.”
As abruptly as I had been caught up in the dream, I was once again in the boat, hand chained to the oar, immersed in a world of black and charcoal and gray. I should turn the boat around. This was a terrible mistake.…
Before I could dip the oars, the prow bumped the marble shore of the cavern, and before I could stop her, Nessia bounded past me onto the shore with a joyful cry. She spun and extended her hand, the Stone’s emerald light penetrating my shadowed sight. “Take it.”
Even after I was free of the boat and standing beside her, I refused to touch the thing. I dared not possess so dangerous an implement. But I looked. Though all instinct said no, the hunger was in me, and I was ruled by my desire and lost in my confusion.
The glass seemed to grow as I stared, until it encompassed the entire field of my vision. Its color deepened to the purest, richest emerald as I gazed on the vision—oh, glorious! What beauty lay there in its crimson heart: moonlight over the ocean, a shining path of rose-touched silver across the luminous waves. Crimson dawn on snow-covered peaks…
Behind me, the lake sloshed as if a storm was rising, splattering the shore, but I would not look away.
“See, blind man! Is it not a marvel?” The triumphant cry filled me with fear.
“How did you get here?” cried Nessia. “Go away. My freedom first!”
Her words signaled danger. But the vision grew with all its magic and mystery, and I could not relinquish it: Illuminated lettering on ancient parchment, revealing secrets of magic…mine for the reading. The soaring arches of a temple housed a mother goddess and her son. A woman lay a newborn infant, red and wrinkled and full of ruddy life, before the goddess. The ground beneath my feet shuddered, and darkness enveloped the temple, as if a great fist had crushed it. A burst of green light, and he was there…the young man with gold and gray hair, worried, beckoning me.…
My soul drank deep of the seeing.
“Oh, look at this!” she said, peering over my shoulder. “You are a kindred soul.”
The young man led me into a darker place. Against a pall of midnight, Portier lay at the bottom of a metal-lined pit, limbs, chest, and neck strapped to the floor. His flesh was filthy, myriad wounds seeping blood. Dirt cascaded into the pit in thin, steady streams. His terror filled me as my own. Beside his grave—I could name it no other—blazed a fire worthy of my father’s forge.
A shadowed figure stood beside the pit and as my guide and I watched, he pulled from the coals a great iron, glowing red at its tip.
“No, no, no!” I whispered, trembling with dread.
But this time the vision did not fade. The figure in black raised the red-hot iron and knelt beside the hole in the floor, saying, “I give what you gave me. It’s time you know my pain. Now you can grovel, powerless, in the everlasting dark.”
“No—oh, god—my friend!” cried Portier. “Dante, no!”
But I raised the iron and pointed the fiery end at my only friend’s bulging eyes, and as I plunged it into the soft tissue, inhaling the odor of scorching flesh, his words melted into animal screams that set my own flesh afire. Flames…devouring…
My own eyes flared into hot coals, and my skin cracked and my flesh shriveled…and the voices of the aether burst free of their barricades. I tore at my hair, at my skin. I bellowed with agony and fury. Through fog and fire and shattering clamor, the woman laughed. What had I done?
In the tumultuous shadow world, the figure of gray gossamer yet stood in front of me, the vile glass resting on her palm. “What’s wrong, sirrah? Take your payment! Your desires—”
In a frenzy to quench pain, to silence screaming, to make her stop, I grabbed her. “What did you make me do? Wh
ere is he?”
“Good sir! No! I’ve done nothing! You cannot—” She gripped the Stone hard.
“Despicable, evil, murderous witch! Throw it down. Your horrors shall not come to pass!” She weighed no more than a feather as I subdued her writhing, wrapped an arm about her neck, and squeezed…tighter…until the green glass clattered to the floor.
Yet as pain and madness drained from me, it came to me that though Nessia’s struggles had ceased, the laughter did not.
“Free at long last!” crowed a woman’s voice in triumph. “And Rhymus is mine!”
CHAPTER 19
CARABANGOR
Broken paving ground into my knees. The exultant woman stood at my shoulder, though Nessia yet lay still on the marble floor an arm’s reach away, her cooling flesh draining warmth from my own. Flashes of memory: of soft pleading and harsh laughter, of sweetness and cruelty, of eyes of ebony and eyes streaked with silver…
“Two.” I could scarce speak. “There were two of you.”
“Indeed so. By bringing us across the barrier of the lake you set us free. And by slaying the poor worthless limpet, you’ve freed Rhymus, this most wondrous bit of glass which I now claim. And don’t imagine I’ll turn it or my own charge Orythmus to you or any other man comes asking! This day shall be writ in the stars forevermore.”
Two blots of green pierced the everlasting sea of gray and black.
“La-la-la-li, those fine painted ladies must envy me! Too bad they’re long dead, while in this new world I’ll wear silk skirts of red!”
A soft rush of the air, clinking metal, quick breaths, punctuated her triumphal song. She was dancing. Her dripping gown sprinkled me with milky droplets. She must have clung to the boat as I rowed across the lake.
I ground a fist into my forehead, splayed my fingers and yanked at my hair. “I am not here. Not here. This is but illusion. Elsewise…” Surely I yet stood in the sand-scoured streets of Carabangor and was not kneeling beside another victim of this corrosive madness.
“Well, certainly you are here, magus.” She knelt beside me, exuding damp, sweet-smelling heat. “ ’Tis true I spread a bit of blandishment about you, but I was told your talents were mostly show, and ’twasn’t till I met you in the dream, I knew that was not so. You near set my plan askew, recognizing that the dream sending was not entire of the limpet’s doing. I dast not allow you to think clearly, or let her tell you sad tales of her wicked sister.”
Blandishment. “Then the man in the pit…Portier?”
“I saw your vision! Lovely and wicked. Are not Rhymus’s pageants marvelous? And now I shall be able to demonstrate them for more than dull-wit soldiers or muddle-headed blind men. I shall build me a great theatrium and require my subjects to attend. They’ll shower me with flowers and jewels and bowls of cream and strawberries!”
“You took the librarian captive.”
“How could I? I’ve been prisoned for seven centurias!” Quick as a moth she shifted to my left ear. “He languishes in the Regent’s chains, so I could arrange for you to do the deed in truth. My loyal servants could carry the tale of my cruelty into the land so all would fear me. I shall require your deepest respect and obedience in our new life. Now I’m free, possessing two of the Seeing Stones, even the Regent of Mancibar must bend
to me.…”
As this noisome preening flowed over and around me, I grasped one smat of logic, and though I had not prayed since I was fifteen, I blessed the universe for its favor and begged one more boon. If I had not mutilated Portier, then what of Nessia?
I ripped away my gloves and examined the unmoving form that lay on the pavement before me. Found her soft, cool cheek. Her slender fingers. The scent of roses twined my senses, choking, nauseating, as I laid my ear on her warm breast. Stillness.
In a new frenzy, I groped about the floor to find my staff. Holding the girl’s soft hand in my shaking left hand, the staff in my grotesque right, I reached for power and hunted deep. There was no life in her…nothing.…
“Leave off that! Good riddance to her,” said the other, kicking my hand from the dead woman’s. “I’ll advise you, never spend seven centurias with your whining, perfect sister.”
I maintained my position, despite a hard shove from the foot planted in my back. Bereft of anything truly useful to do for the dead girl, I wrapped her with a small spell locked into my staff, a charm of stasis that preserved gathered specimens from decay. Maybe in another seven hundred years someone would find her and marvel at her beauty, properly cursing the hand that ended it.
As the last of my power drained away, the gray world faded into blackness deeper than the void between the stars.
“You are mine now, magus.” Only the voice remained. Eager, but not harsh. Harsh would have suited better. “You may come with me willing, or we can fight. The fight might be amusing, yet the outcome is assured. Though I’ve much to learn, no magus can match the power of the Seeing Stones. And besides, I know thou’rt curious, consumed with desire to know more of me and my precious baubles.”
“I can provide no more amusement,” I said, dully. My bones were sand; I could not have conjured a spider’s tickle. “Pitiful, I believe you called me, and so I am. A murderer. A madman, as like to slit your throat as to serve you. Bring down the rest of this ruin on top of me and you’ll do the world a service.”
Not even the promise of magic could stir me. What use? The most magnificent gift the universe could grant a human mind, and I did naught but corrupt it. My true nature remained as it had ever been.
The woman touched my head, as if she were a queen and I a dog at her feet. “Pitiful, yes. And dangerous in your way. But I have plans…needs. The Regent schemes to dispose of you, and then seduce me into yielding my pretties to do with as he will. But I’ve seen more of courtly scheming than he’ll ever know. My own magus…Yes, I’m thinking that would be wise. We shall create such mischief!”
My head was a muddle. She possessed Orythmus the Black-Hearted, the Stone of Command, as well as Rhymus. And this Regent of Mancibar, her collaborator, had Portier in chains and had told her about me.
“You must remain here while I send a signal. The Regent maintains an outpost a few hours away and left me a trinket to ensure a proper welcome should this day ever come. Assergio de nom Maldeon! Stay. And I think…I’ve seen blind men use a walking stick, but this one…watching how you used it with Nessia, I’m thinking it’s more than that. You must not touch it lest I tell you.”
My staff fell from my hand. I could not muster strength or will to grasp it or to force myself to standing, much less decipher how she managed it or even how far or in what direction she stepped away from me. But then, she was barefoot—assuming that any image of her I’d seen had actually been her and not the other—her dead sister. Gods.
Erratic jolts of magic shivered the aether. My instinctive reach to disentangle the magic felt akin to eating iron, a certain sign of depleted power.
In moments, she was back again. “You’ve a horse.”
What need to answer a statement made with such certainty?
A tap of her fingers stung my cheek. “You have a horse.”
When my hand refused to break her wrist, I knew I was truly bound. “Aye.”
“Good. We can ride together. And we’ll not wait for escorts. I cannot bear another instant in this dismal place. The Regent will be curious as to how you arrived here alone. He assumed a blind man would require companions.”
The urge to glance up and assess her features was a vestige of sight that had not worn away. To try to hide my interest in her comment would likely be more noticeable. The Regent’s identity was a critical matter, though I’d already guessed it. Of more immediate import: She didn’t know about John Deune.
I’d lost all sense of time in the cavern, but the air didn’t smell like evening yet. I’d told John to wait until dusk. If he had obeyed…Well he wasn’t going to rescue me, but perhaps, in service to Ilario, he would obey and return to
Andero. Every day since Castelivre, I’d told Andero that if aught happened to me, he must send to Anne and tell her everything. I needed to delay our departure long enough for John Deune to get away.
“Spellwork brought me,” I mumbled. “My companions thought I was mad to come. Deserted me. And so I was.”
“I knew it! The Regent says you’re a coward weakling who does only what your superiors bid. But from that first glimpse in the dullard’s dream, I knew better. ’Tis learning speaks to you. You pursue it as other men pursue empires. It gives you power, makes you brave, and sets you apart. You fear the Maldeona, yet still you came, no matter companions or dangers. A blind man alone.”