Concealed within her hood and shimagh, Frost pitched her voice low. "Do you want a clever answer or a direct one?"
The officer sneered as he wiped a corner of his mouth with a raw knuckle. "Tonight, all children belong to Dagoth!"
"You must be as blind as this child," Frost answered. "Dagoth doesn't want this one. Now step aside."
The officer's sneer turned into a cold, broken-toothed grin. He locked a peculiar gaze upon Mirella. "Some of us have uses tonight even for imperfect children. Consider it a toll."
Frost glanced down at her little dark-haired charge as Mirella, anticipating trouble, slipped her hand free and moved a little apart. The officer reached out to grab her. "A smart decision. Now come with me, you little brat."
In one smooth, swift motion, like a powerful cat unsheathing claws, Frost threw open her cloak and drew her swords. The officer's reaching arm spun into the air in a shower of blood, and before he could scream, his head followed it. "Perhaps you didn't hear me over the music," she said as she kicked his still-standing corpse to the ground.
The watching musicians beat their instruments harder, and their faces seemed to shine with sweaty anticipation. A troupe of dancers laughed and called shrill zaghareets as a mangy dog dashed out from an alley, locked its jaws on the bleeding head and ran off with it.
"Behind you," Mirella warned.
Frost felt the remaining guards as much as saw them. Whirling about, she snapped her cloak at the eyes of the nearest and gutted him with a pair of swift strokes. The third soldier lunged at her, impaling himself clumsily upon her right-handed blade while she sliced with her left through his soft belly.
The drums turned manic; the dancers surged closer, staining themselves in the carnage. Citizens watching in the streets and doorways bayed like crazed hounds. Frost turned slowly with a sword in each hand, daring any other challenger to come near. When none did, she bent and wiped her blades clean on the officer's corpse. As she sheathed her weapons, she glanced upward.
Three stars. Three dead men.
The crowd pressed around her—ordinary street people, as well as dancers and clowns, mimes and acrobats. She reached for Mirella's hand, but the child was gone. Pushing free, Frost called out for Mirella. She grabbed a drummer by the throat. "Did you see her?" she demanded. The glaze-eyed drummer shook his turbaned head.
Frost's heart pounded, and she clenched her jaw. The streets were becoming more crowded, the music louder, the celebration crazier. On every corner, vice and depravity. She pushed through the celebrants, searching faces, scouring the dark alleys and narrow doorways that lined each street.
From the far side of the city, a bell began to ring. Its deep-toned vibration rose over the din in the streets. The musicians set down their instruments; the dancers stopped; the crowd fell silent. Nervous faces turned toward Dagoth's shining minaret. For a moment the entire city seemed to hold its breath. The bell rang twelve times to mark the midnight hour, and on the twelfth stroke, the celebrants let out a collective sigh and resumed their revels.
Beneath Frost's cloak, the dagger on her belt gave a hungry shiver. "Demonfang," Frost murmured, "be patient." Near the moon, the bright stars Rothul, Hackrit and blue Pyrt drew closer and closer toward a once-in-a-lifetime alignment. She could almost feel their inexorable movement through the night like an itching behind her eyes. She directed her gaze away from the stars, over the rooftops of the City of Sins and to Dagoth's minaret.
The mad revels continued right up to the palace gates. Noble or peasant, neither rank or status seemed to matter. Men poured wine down the throats of half-naked women and drank it back from laughing, wanton lips. Bright torches burned, pouring a smoky stench into the air, exuding a yellow light that shimmered on the sides of silken carnival tents where distorted silhouettes of the tumblers and jugglers inside cavorted like demons. The music was loudest here, a teeth-grinding sensory assault.
A drunken woman clawed at Frost's arm, offering herself. Frost pushed her away and strode up to the gates. A dozen guards nearly as drunk as the crowd stood on duty, several with women under their arms. Most of them paid her no attention, but two were sober enough to cross lances and block her path. "Get back!" one of them ordered in a rough voice. "Only invited guests get into the palace!"
Frost spoke from within her hood, her lower face still concealed behind the shimagh scarf. "I am an invited guest."
Taken aback by her response, the guard hesitated. His doubtful gaze narrowed as he studied her more closely. "A guest?" he questioned. "Let's have a better look at you!"
Frost moved a hand beneath her cloak, but before she touched her swords, the small dagger, Demonfang, shivered against her side. A shape moved in the shadows behind the guards, a violet-eyed woman who moved with the sinuousness of a snake. She seemed to attract the torches' smoke, which wafted and swirled around her, even as she repelled the light. The woman came forward one slow, deliberate step at a time and stopped on the very threshold of the gates.
"This guest is expected and welcome."
The guards moved aside, and the woman stared boldly at Frost, unafraid, used to command, clearly a person of importance. Her coppery hair shimmered in the wavering light and sparkled as if dusted with diamonds. Her pale face and bare pierced nipples were rouged, her arms banded and ringed with ornaments of gold. A ruby flashed in her navel above layered skirts of black silk. Over one shoulder, she carried a slim, coiled whip. Yet she lowered her gaze and inclined her head in a barely perceptible gesture of respect as she waited for Frost to speak or make the next move.
Frost merely stared from the dark concealment of her hood and scarf until the other woman's hands betrayed the slightest nervous tremor, and the first hint of fear clouded the violet eyes.
"Lady Scernica," Frost said, her voice muffled by the shimagh as she stepped between the guards and over the threshold. The woman, Scernica, looked surprised to hear her name, and she retreated a pace to give way. "Thank you for your welcome."
Disconcerted, Scernica hesitated, then averted her gaze and bowed. "I have waited and watched for you," she said straightening, "but we didn't know the exact moment of your arrival. Lord Dagoth has prepared a feast in your honor." Turning away, she made an ostentatious gesture. A muted energy crackled through the air, and the dagger at Frost's side purred as a hundred torches throughout the palace's dark courtyard flared to life. The startled gate guards shrank away; excited citizens, thinking it some new entertainment, stopped what they were doing and clustered around.
Scernica gave Frost a look, as if expecting approval. But Frost was unimpressed and only stared out from the dark recess of her hood
Scernica frowned, and her shoulders dropped a little. Yet, finding a measure of courage, she stared directly at Frost. "You have green eyes," she observed. "Perhaps, like a cat, you don't need this light."
"My business is with Dagoth," Frost answered in a curt tone.
The torches flickered and dimmed as if an unfelt wind had swept across the courtyard. "Of course," Scernica said. She cast a glance upward toward the moon and stars, which were now almost directly above the palace. "The hour is approaching. We should not keep my lord waiting." At a wave of her hand, the guards closed and barred the great gate doors. At the same time on the far side of the courtyard the doors to Dagoth's palace swung open. Scernica led the way inside.
A vast hall crowded with Dagoth's friends and followers, his knights and ladies and servants, waited within. Torches, candles and lamps filled the room with an ostentatious shimmering light that reflected and played upon works of art, upon the many fittings of gold and silver, on the jewelry that dripped from the hands and throats of the nobles, on the decanters and bottles and wine glasses of crystal.
Here, as in the city, musicians played manic tempos while dancers and acrobats hurled themselves through the air and through the room. Here, as in the city, mad celebration and revelry were the orders of the moment.
Yet, as Frost entered into their ranks, t
he musicians abruptly paused, and the dancers ceased their revolutions. The hall fell silent; a wave of unease passed over the whole gay company. Shining faces turned pale, and more than a few held up their hands to shield their eyes or turned away entirely in shivering and fear. The echoes of music and merriment fell like stones until Dagoth's hall became as quiet as a tomb.
Then, a light laughter dared to break the mood. Scernica, turning a contemptuous gaze upon the assembly, lifted her head and mocked the crowd. The musicians looked nervously at each other. With forced smiles, they resumed their playing, but with a softer, more sedate rhythm. The dancers, following the new mood, began to drift with dream-like grace among the guests. A servant dared to pour wine and refill a glass, and momentarily the room came alive again, not with laughter, but with uncertain whispering.
"They're such fearful sheep," Scernica said as she fingered the coiled whip on her shoulder.
"You, of course, have no fear," Frost answered. She turned away from Scernica and walked slowly to the center of the hall. The guests stepped out of her way; a few bowed as she passed. A woman touched Frost's cloak and quickly jerked her fingers away. A brave servant appeared beside her with a tray of fruits and when she declined, faded into the crowd again.
On the far side of the hall, a huge window stood open, its elaborate stained glass panes thrown wide like the wings of a colorful bird. The sounds of the city breached the palace walls and drifted in, weakened but no less manic. Frost moved to the sill and looked briefly across the courtyard. Scernica's torches had gone out, but the moon lit the grounds with an icy fire. It was a beautiful sight. Yet when Frost closed her eyes she felt what lurked beneath that beauty, the vile heart of the City of Sins.
"You admire my window?" A man's deep voice spoke from behind her. "Allow me to show you a marvel."
"I already see a marvel," Frost answered from behind her shimagh. "I see the wanton cruelty upon which your city stands and the corruption that forms its cornerstone." Without turning toward the speaker, she added, "I see you, Lord Dagoth."
Dagoth stepped closer and leaned just into her field of vision. Scernica also stepped forward at Frost's other side. The copper-haired witch raised her hands, and the immense windows began slowly to swing closed.
The moonlight struck the colored panes with a startling intensity. The scarlet glass caught the rays and filled the room with strange geometries of blood red. The green panes cast a diseased pallor that crawled fungus-like up the walls and across the floor. As the windows continued to close, the light that fell through the blue and yellow panes lent an arctic rime to everything it touched.
The great windows settled into place, and the moonlight stabbed through the tinted glass to full effect. The colors mingled and shifted, producing a panoply of fantastic shadows and shapes as the guests moved about. Twisted ghost-figures and demonic silhouettes stretched upon the walls, and as the dancers swayed across the floor, so did the figures on the wall, but with an impossible independence.
Yet the most chilling effect was on the faces of the guests. Under such poisoned moonlight all semblance of humanity melted away, and each stood revealed as some animalistic avatar, a spitting imp, or a growling devil.
Frost put a surreptitious hand to the dagger on her belt, but it neither purred nor jangled. There was no magic here, only some trick of architecture, some sleight-of-hand on a grand scale.
A great bell, the same one she had heard before, struck a single tone.
"Here is the true corruption in my city," Dagoth whispered in a scornful voice, indicating the crowded room. With a cold eye he observed the laughter, the teasing and gropings as his guests reveled in the effects and discovered obscene ways to manipulate their shadows. "Without qualm or compunction, they eagerly offer their children as sacrifices. This is all great entertainment to them, but if there is no magic in the windows, still the light reveals them for what they are." He led the way to the side of the hall and to a stone staircase that ascended to another level.
"There is one child who will not be sacrificed," Frost said as she followed him up the stairs. "A blind girl whose eyes were destroyed by her own mother's hand."
Scernica clutched at Dagoth's arm. "Mirella!" she hissed. "I told you the brat had some role to play!"
As they achieved the next level, Frost barely lifted her head. "Bring her to me."
Scernica bristled and her violet eyes flashed in the light of torches. She curled her fingers around the handle of her whip, but Dagoth stayed her hand and delivered a stinging slap that sprawled the witch upon the floor. "Wife, you forget yourself!" he said. "This guest is not to be denied!"
"But the child is a danger to me!" Scernica shouted as she rubbed her cheek. "To us both! She brings us death! I tell you, I've foreseen it!"
Dagoth extended a hand to Scernica and helped her up. With surprising tenderness, he drew her close and kissed the bruise he had made. "Little fool," he said. "That's what this night is all about. Now bring the child."
Biting her lip, Scernica turned and descended into the noise and chaos of the main hall. With a wordless sigh, Dagoth beckoned to Frost and led the way again along a curving brightly lit corridor. They entered another chamber almost as large as the main hall, but here there were no guests, no servants, only strange devices of torture, odd furniture and a pair of moonlit stained glass windows, and another staircase.
"I have made this palace a temple to Lord Death," Dagoth explained as they mounted the second staircase and climbed to a third level.
"Then you have wasted your talents," Frost answered. "Death has temples aplenty in every graveyard, tomb, and cemetery."
Upward they went, climbing higher into the tower. On every level a new chamber waited. The instruments and devices within each room became increasingly bizarre, and the rooms themselves took on weird qualities as if all the angles and corners had been fashioned out of shape or misaligned.
A giant bell occupied the seventh chamber. Here, the walls themselves seemed made of stained glass with many of the panels opening to the night. A tall candle near the bell burned with a bright flame, protected from any random breeze by a thin crystal globe. The flame counted down the minutes and the hours while a heavily muscled figure whose face was hidden within an executioner's leather mask stood with rope in hand, ready to strike the toll.
But on the next floor there were no stained glass windows at all. Instead, eight braziers ringed the edges of this eighth chamber. The intense light they shed served to illuminate a fantastic device that occupied the room's entirety. Frost caught her breath as she gazed upon a giant orrery, a rotating model of the sun, moon, planets and stars. She had never seen its like, nor had any man, but she knew at once what it was.
She walked around its edges and beneath its sweeping wooden arms. Fantastic lanterns of stained crystal represented the moon and planets, each turning upon a clockwork gear at its own independent rate as it swept around and around the sun, which was the largest globe of all. On thinner wooden arms, glittering diamonds, rubies, and sapphires marked the stars. They, too, moved around the sun at their own far slower pace.
"It is a masterpiece," Dagoth said with quiet pride. "Both in construction and in observation."
Inside Dagoth's observatory, as outside in the true sky, Rothul, Hacrit and Pyrt moved ever closer to alignment. "There is more to you than meets the eye," Frost whispered as she studied the incredible machine. It was the work of a genius, and also an artist. "Why do you waste Lord Death's time?"
Dagoth raised a hand toward blue Pyrt, but he did not touch the jewel. "I am the same stuff the stars are made of," he answered. "I want what they have. I want the same immortality."
Frost slowly shook her head. A genius, an artist, and mad. "Even the stars have life spans and die."
On the level beneath her feet, the great bell struck two.
Dagoth didn't answer, but led the way to the final staircase and ultimately to the roof of the tower. An onion shaped dome supported by
marble columns rose above this ninth and final level, and one needed only to lean outward to see the spectacular desert night beyond or up to study the brilliant sky.
Or to look down into a city gone mad.
The streets seethed with wickedness. Shops and houses burned as careless people ran with whistling torches. Liquor and blood filled the alleys where murderers and rapists did their work without fear of reprisal. The unceasing laughter and music, the wild percussions, rose over it all.
On the far wall across the city where only she knew to look, something else also watched the madness, the thinly elongated shadow of a lurking gray wolf. Unheard over the din, it stretched its powerful body toward the stars and howled once as Rothul, Hacrit and Pyrt at last came into alignment.
"Not just this tower," Dagoth said. "I have made this entire city into your temple to win your favor." He leaned on the parapet and gazed outward. "I wanted you to see and recognize my devotion. On this one night when the Killing Stars draw into rare configuration, I hope to impress Lord Death."
The dagger on Frost's belt began to purr. The air itself tingled with the potential for sorcery. She looked down again at the City of Sins, upon its evil and cruelty, revealed now by the moon and the Killing Stars just as the stained glass windows had revealed the inner natures of Dagoth's guests.
Coldly, she stared toward the shadow of the gray wolf again. There were two wolves on the wall now, and the gates were open.
She turned toward Dagoth, one hand on the dagger's hilt. Its hungry vibration, no longer a mere purr, chilled and excited her as she curled her fingers around it and slid its silver length halfway from its sheath. She feared few things, but this dagger, this Demonfang, she feared.
But Lord Dagoth was no longer at her side. She caught a flash of his robe as he reached the staircase and descended back into the depths of his tower. The giant bell on the seventh level began ring. Sheathing the dagger, she followed, taking the steps at an urgent rate. The rotating arms of the fantastic orrery beckoned and waved and seemed to point the way. The hooded bellman, sweating at his task as he leaned on the rope, grunted and nodded.
Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress XXV Page 18