by Paula Volsky
“That is not possible.”
She averted her eyes, unwilling to look at his grey uniform. She wished she could stop her ears, but at the same time could not forbear straining for every telltale sound from the kitchen. They wouldn’t hurt Stiesoldt too badly, she told herself. If they really damaged the innkeeper, then he wouldn’t be able to give them what they wanted.
A choking moan issued from the kitchen, and she found herself mentally enjoining the victim, Give in. Just do what you must to end this.
Ending this meant handing new power to the Grewzians; as if they needed it.
It seemed to go on for an eternity, although actually no more than a few minutes elapsed. At the end of that time one of the soldiers emerged from the kitchen to stride purposefully from the common room.
Silence. No conversation among the customers, no sound from the kitchen.
Minutes later the soldier reentered with a plump, pretty, alarmed-looking young woman in tow. She wore nothing but a thin summer nightgown. Her hair was falling down her back, and her eyes were puffed with recent sleep.
“What do you want?” she pleaded, as her captor hurried her along. “What is the matter, where is my husband?”
No answer. The Grewzian dragged Gretti Stiesoldt into the kitchen, and the door closed behind them.
“Karsler—” Luzelle appealed desperately.
He shook his head. His face seemed carved in white marble. She could not read his eyes.
A feminine scream shrilled from the kitchen. A confusion of male voices arose within and there came another scream, louder and more anguished than the first. Then silence.
The kitchen door opened. Soldiers, innkeeper, and innkeeper’s wife emerged. Master Stiesoldt’s face was bruised and bloody. His nose, swollen and misaligned, was probably broken. Gretti cradled an obviously fractured arm. Her nightgown, torn at the neck, gaped suggestively.
The small party halted.
“Our friend Klec Stiesoldt has consented to favor us with a demonstration of his magical prowess,” announced the Grewzian captain. “We anticipate an enlightening display. Master Stiesoldt, if you please.”
Klec Stiesoldt plodded to the center of the room. Once he turned back to glance at his wife, and ocular communication of some kind flashed between the two of them. He halted and lifted his left hand, the small finger of which bore a silver ring of curiously inconstant reflectivity. Bowing his head, he shut his eyes and stood motionless. Almost he seemed to slumber upright, but the movement of his lips implied inaudible speech and the quivering of his eyelids suggested intense internal activity.
Luzelle watched uneasily. At first she thought some parlor trick in the offing, but when nothing happened, concluded that the innkeeper played pathetically for a brief respite; an ill-considered stratagem, for the lame deceit would only stoke Grewzian wrath.
The seconds marched, a faint chill invaded the room, and a thrill shot along her nerves. The shadows expanded, and the ring on the innkeeper’s finger seemed to glow in the midst of the gloom, but perhaps it was simply some trick of the light. Luzelle blinked and rubbed her eyes, but the shadows did not recede. Her hands were icy, and she had to tighten her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering.
Her sense of the uncanny only deepened when Karsler reached across the table to take one of her cold hands in a warm, firm clasp. She glanced at him in surprise and saw that he was not looking at her at all. His eyes were fixed on the innkeeper, specifically on the innkeeper’s ring, which was definitely glowing with its own light. His expression reflected an acute awareness that confirmed the promptings of her own instincts. Some inkling of the alien forces at work stirred at the base of her brain, and, grateful for the simple human contact, she clung to Karsler’s hand with all her strength.
The air darkened impossibly, reducing the candle flames in the iron chandeliers to a scattering of fireflies at dusk. The shadows gathered about the innkeeper, all but hiding him from view, but through them shone that ring of his, the questionable family keepsake that he would have kept hidden from strangers’ eyes, had he possessed a grain of common sense.
The witnesses, both civilian and military, were breathlessly silent. The atmosphere sighed, while the shadows at the center of the room thickened, boiled, and coalesced. A form swirled into sight, blurred and wavering at first, but swiftly acquiring substance and definition, steadily waxing in bulk and apparent solidity. Within seconds it was whole and immediate, a thing sculpted of air and darkness, weightlessly airborne yet overwhelmingly potent.
The apparition was humanoid, but larger and broader than any man, its body sheathed in polished scales, its hands and feet armed with smoky talons. The face was long and evil of jaw as a crocodile’s, and the cemetery of teeth belonged to a shark, but the eyes—lightless pits sunk beneath heavy jutting ridges of bone—belonged to no known species. An immense pair of leathern wings fanned from the massive shoulders, and a scaled serpent of a tail writhed at the base of the spine.
A random nightmare? But no, the horrific image was not unfamiliar. She had seen it in a book somewhere, some weighty old illustrated tome. Her memory revolved, and the right recollection clicked into place. The traditions of Upper Hetzia included belief in certain powerful, demonic entities known as “malevolences.” The apparition before her corresponded to the illustration in every appalling particular.
But it was only an illusion, she reminded herself in a vain effort to slow the hammering of her heart. A wisp of smoke, a rag of fog, dreadful to behold, but substanceless and harmless as a mirage.
The visitant turned on the nearest grey uniform. Sinking smoky talons deep into Grewzian flesh, it ripped the soldier’s chest open, reached into the cavity, and tore out the still-beating heart. Perfectly real blood sprayed from the perfectly real wound, and several flying warm droplets spattered Luzelle’s face. Her cry was lost in the midst of overlapping shouts and screams.
Dropping the soldier’s lifeless body, the malevolence paused long enough to devour the dripping heart before turning to its next victim, this time the Grewzian captain. A blur of scaled arms, a twitch of saber claws, a jet of arterial blood, and the crocodile jaws closed on the captain’s heart.
A babble of frantic Grewzian arose, and several shots rang out. The vaporous malevolence never faltered, but two anonymous customers caught in the line of fire dropped from their chairs to the floor, where they twitched briefly and died. Several civilians, including Luzelle’s driver, dashed for the exit. A burst of fire from the guards stationed at the door cut them down. The malevolence seized its next victim, a well-dressed elderly civilian with a wealth of thick silvery hair. That glinting hair must have possessed allure, for the talons stabbed at the silver, there was a jerking blur of motion before the body fell, and then the severed head was momentarily airborne, eyes popping and lips working, perhaps conscious for a last flying moment before the crocodile jaws snapped and the skull cracked open like a great nut.
Apparently aiming to destroy the danger at its root by eliminating the innkeeper, one of the soldiers fired. A revolver shot blasted and Master Stiesoldt fell amid the shrieks of his wife, but the malevolence remained. An instant later the enterprising soldier was dead, rent wide from throat to belly.
Luzelle jumped to her feet. She was not thinking clearly, and recognized only the urgent impulse to escape. The hand still clasping her own tightened.
“Not yet,” Karsler advised.
She stared at him, astonished by his calmness. The face still visible through the magical twilight was composed and unafraid. He did not raise his voice, but she heard him clearly despite the surrounding uproar. Her own voice was thin with fear as she returned, “Get us out of here!”
“Not yet,” he repeated. “Do not move, you will draw the attention of the Receptivity. You must wait until the focus has shifted, and the perceptions that mold it have altered.”
“I don’t understand what you mean!”
“I mean that I know what we confront, a
nd I know how to overcome it. Stay where you are.”
Believing him on instinct, she nodded, and he released her hand.
“Grewzian soldiers.” Karsler’s voice filled the room as he announced, “Your captain is dead, I am assuming command. Hold your fire and stand still.” The surviving soldiers instantly obeyed him, and Karsler switched to the Hetzian language to command, “Everyone present, stay where you are. Silence, and do not move.”
Almost everyone obeyed him, but one of the waiters ran for the kitchen door. The malevolence-shaped thing attacked instantly. Vast leathern wings enfolded the fleeing prey. The talons ripped, blood spurted, the waiter gurgled and died. Releasing its victim, the malevolence hovered, great wings pumping in slow silence, empty gaze sweeping the room.
“Do not look upon it,” Karsler commanded, quiet tone powerfully compelling. “Turn your eyes away, direct your minds elsewhere.”
Such directions were not easily followed. It took an intense effort of will for Luzelle to tear her eyes from the floating visitant and fix them on Karsler’s face. The calm assurance she saw there stilled her terror. He had said that he knew how to overcome this sorcerous horror and she believed him. She understood perfectly at that moment why the soldiers under this officer’s command were willing to follow him anywhere.
She looked at his face, not letting herself see anything else.
Karsler himself was watching the apparition and his stance, his stillness, his distant intensity, recalled Master Stiesoldt’s concentration upon that unspeakable ring. She did not know what he was doing. Probably it had something to do with the knowledge of arcane forces he had acquired at that Promontory he had once told her of, but she did not understand; she could only trust.
The visitant must have recognized a summons or stimulus of some kind, for it was reacting, its head turning slowly, its lightless eyes seeking the source. The vacant glance encountered Karsler Stornzof and anchored.
Karsler’s lips moved, but his words were inaudible. The apparition drifted toward him. Luzelle did not see it, would not let herself look, but she felt the noiseless slow approach through every fiber of her body. Direct your mind elsewhere, Karsler had commanded, but that was impossible. Almost impossible. She thought of Girays, his paralyzed limbs and face, and her attention shifted.
Karsler himself seemed unaware of his own surroundings. He was motionless, eyes unfocused, blind gaze aimed nowhere, and for an instant she wondered if his mental exercises had carried him off somewhere beyond the realm of mundane consciousness.
She stiffened as the apparition drifted into her field of vision. The thing was too near to ignore; she could have reached out and touched it. The air fanned by those great wings stirred her hair, and she shivered. Turn your eyes away, direct your mind elsewhere. She could not, she could only freeze into terrified immobility, but that was enough, for the black gaze passed over her without pausing. The scaled form hovered before Karsler, and there it stayed.
It was going to tear his heart out, it was going to rip his head off—
It did neither. The motion of the wings ceased. The apparition floated, still as a weightless corpse.
Karsler’s brow was wet with effort. His breathing was deep and measured, his face tranquil. There was an oddly fixed quality to his stare, and Luzelle realized that the seconds were lengthening and he never once blinked.
The endless minutes passed. His eyelids did not flicker.
The dark air was fading, so slowly at first that the change seemed a trick of imagination. The fireflies overhead gradually expanded into candle flames, the shadows contracted, and the supernatural chill grudgingly relaxed its grip. The apparition itself neither altered nor faded, but hovered there, fathomless eyes chained to Karsler Stornzof.
The room remained silent. Karsler’s voice, although slow and distant, retained full authority as he directed his listeners, “Exit slowly, single file. Then leave the building. Silence, no sudden moves. Eyes and thoughts turned away from this spot.”
Most obeyed without hesitation and without question, stealing quietly from the room one at a time, eyes downcast. Luzelle held her breath in anticipation of bloody mayhem, but nothing happened. One by one they slid through the door, some unable to resist casting frightened glances back over their shoulders as they went, but nobody other than herself lingered.
“Karsler.” Wary of blasting his concentration, she kept her voice low, suppressing a score of questions. “What about you?”
“I remain here.” His eyes did not turn from the malevolence.
“No need. It’s done. Everyone’s out but us. Come away now.”
“Not done. I fix the Receptivity’s attention upon myself. Should that hold fail before alteration in form has occurred, the malevolence goes forth to hunt new victims.”
“I don’t understand what you mean. Karsler, the exit’s clear. Please come.”
“When I have changed it; when I have defeated it. Now go, while you can. Go.”
“How long do you mean to stay?”
He did not answer. She was not certain that he had heard her. He had excluded her, fixing his awareness upon the contest whose nature she scarcely comprehended. He had somehow managed to engage and hold the apparition’s whole attention, that much was clear. Surely he had done enough. She stretched forth a hand, but did not dare touch him.
“Come away,” she pleaded, and this time knew that she went unheard. Her hand fell back to her side. For a moment she stood looking at him, then turned and walked slowly to the door, where she paused, unable to resist a forbidden backward glance.
The malevolent apparition—a Receptivity, he had called it—still hung motionless in midair, talons dark with blood, black eyes empty as eternity, but somehow its appearance had altered, and it took a moment to identify the change. The jaw, that crocodile jaw, was neither as long nor as wicked as she had initially supposed. It was big and the teeth were impressive, but hardly crocodilian. Astonishment and fright must have warped her first impressions.
No they hadn’t. The Receptivity had changed. Karsler had done it with his mind. She did not understand how, but saw that he would do more before he was finished, if he survived. She looked at him standing there, lost to the present world of reality, and almost retraced her steps. But she could do him no good, her distracting presence would only hinder him. She turned and walked away from the horror and the man who was fighting it.
The foyer was empty. The customers had fled, the Grewzians had withdrawn in accordance with their orders, and poor Gretti Stiesoldt, now a widow, had vanished. She went out through the front door into the mild, misty summer night, where the touch of the fresh moist air could not calm the tumult of her thoughts or still the trembling of her limbs.
She wandered away from the Three Beggars aimlessly and almost blindly. Her feet carried her back to the highway, and on along the road through the darkness and fog into the center of sleeping Groeflen. The windows were dark, the street barely lighted, the town silent, and it seemed to her confused vision that she wandered through a dream landscape. She did not know where she was or where to go, but her feet found their way to a building with a lamp above the door, and the emblem of a locomotive above the lamp; the railroad station.
The door was locked. She stumbled her way around the station house to the platform, where she found a bench and let herself collapse onto it. Burying her face in her icy hands, she sat unmoving.
Her thoughts whirled and warped into dreams or memories, she was unsure which. She sank into unquiet sleep or stupor that lasted for minutes or hours, until the whistle of a train roused her.
Luzelle opened her eyes. The skies had paled to ash, and the four forty-eight was pulling into Groeflen Station. She stood up, cast a bewildered glance around her, and realized that she had left her valise back at the inn. It scarcely mattered now. She still had her wallet and passport safe in her pocket.
The train wheezed to a halt and disgorged two passengers. Luzelle boarded, found a
seat, and purchased a ticket from the conductor. The conductor went away. She leaned her head back against the seat and strove without success to empty her mind. The train moved, and Groeflen fell away behind her.
THE MORNING SUN WAS HIGH in the sky when Girays v’Alisante’s hired carriage reached the quaint Three Beggars Inn on the outskirts of the town of Groeflen. His southbound train was not scheduled to depart the station for another ninety minutes. There was time enough to pause for a late breakfast, which he badly needed, having tasted no food since yesterday’s ill-fated lunch.
In one sense there was all the time in the world, for the point and purpose in exerting himself further was gone. There was nothing more he could do to achieve or ensure a Vonahrish victory; he might just as well relax and finish the race in comfort. But he knew he would not relax, for even now, in the full consciousness of futility, he could put forth nothing less than his best efforts.
The carriage halted, but no ostler appeared to see to the horses, no attendants came forth to assist with the luggage. Curious. The inn appeared well tended, with its neat yard and sparkling windows. The present laxity of the staff seemed inconsistent.
Springing lightly from the box, the driver came around to open the door and assist his passenger from the vehicle. Such assistance was not unwelcome. The effects of yesterday’s drug had subsided. Girays could walk and use his hands, but his limbs remained stiff, his hands and fingers clumsy. The Hetzian physician had assured him that full sensation and mobility would return quickly, but the recovery was not yet complete.
He leaned heavily on the driver’s arm as they made their way through the front door into an empty, silent foyer. Nobody at the desk, nobody in sight at all. He rang the bell, and nobody appeared. He frowned, puzzled and mildly annoyed.
“Let us leave, sir,” the driver suggested.
The fellow was plainly uneasy. “What’s the matter?” asked Girays.
“It is not right, sir,” was the only reply.
He did not demand explanation. His own nerves were stretched unaccountably tight. There was some sort of butcher-shop odor weighting the atmosphere and his instincts bade him seek fresh air, but he would not listen to them.