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PART V
Symmetries of
the Firmament.


Chapter Thirty

Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate
And the Warder is Despair

Oscar Wilde
“The Ballad of Reading Gaol”


Gil MacDonald passed some intangible landmark that told him he was leaving behind something too sinister to be called unconsciousness. He felt excruciating pain in his eyes.

He tried to move, but couldn’t, and so tried some more. In the end he did, but his fumbling hands were slapped away brutally. The pain returned. He tugged, tossing his head, fighting blindly. There were immovably strong hands clamping his head steady, thumbs pressing in at his eyeballs. He thrashed, moaned, and the hands retreated at last. Much of the pain remained. He rubbed his tortured eyes, and finally blinked them open.

Light blinded him. Peering through the narrowest slits he could manage, he saw a room in darkness, but he lay in a cone of light. Beneath him, he felt rough stone. He heard a raspy voice he didn’t like at all. “You see, my Lord? Enough pressure on the eyes would awaken a man even from the Dreamdrowse.”

A second voice spoke. “Adequate, Flaycraft.” The tone was placid, fear-provoking, as the cold malice of a snake. Shapes wobbled into definition. The first person Gil saw was the closest. He shook his head, disbelieving. This one was of the tribe of man, maybe, but a simian extreme. Squat, with long, shaggy brown hair that was almost a pelt, he slouched, bandy-legged. He was heavy with muscle, beady-eyed beneath ridges of thick bone. His fingers were long, hirsute and black-nailed. From him came the odors of instinct, of life at animal level. It came as no surprise than he was unclothed.

Gil tracked his gaze to the other, making himself confront him. Yardiff Bey was calm, secure in his own environment. The cold ocular shone in the dark room; Bey’s face held an icy pleasure.

Gil’s stomach contorted in fear, and his bowels threatened rebellion. He doubled over for a moment, but the spasm passed. He couldn’t imagine how long he’d been out. He sat up and swung his legs around. He was sitting on a stone slab that managed to combine the clinical with the sacrificial. His head spun, and he could see nothing outside the cone of light.

Yardiff Bey watched the play of the outlander’s thoughts, each predicted, in sequence. The last of them, renewed fear, pleased the sorcerer. The creature, whom Gil took to be Flaycraft, was toying with something on his chest, a necklace. Gil saw it was the Ace of Swords, on its chain. Flaycraft grinned, displaying long yellow canines.

Gil lurched, grabbing for his tarot. “Okay, ape-guts; give it here.” Weak, he lost balance. Flaycraft, shorter than the American but broader, eluded him easily and kicked him as he went down. He curled up and groaned. The beast-man seized him by his hair, yanked him to his feet, flung him back on the slab. Gil filed the information that Flaycraft was one strong animal.

“So, that is your tarot now?” Bey asked. “The Ace of Swords? Reversed, I should think.”

Gil rubbed his aching head. “Where’s Dunstan?” he managed.

“Near.” Something like a smile crossed Bey’s face. At his side hung Dirge, recovered, apparently, from the wounded Acre-Fin. Those events all came back in a jumble.

The sorcerer purred. “You do Dunstan and yourself ill service by being difficult. The regimen here is strictest compliance; punishment is Flaycraft’s trade. You erred in going against me and the convections of destiny. Your friend’s well-being as much as your own rests in your submission.”

The dark-robed Hand of Shardishku-Salamá glided away, silent and stately as a manta-ray in deep water. Gil wanted to answer, but was preoccupied with the twin assertions that his friend was alive and that he, Gil, must behave. It begged the question, why was he still alive? The sorcerer would only tolerate him for some well-defined purpose, and was obviously using the Horseblooded for leverage. Goddam Bey, always knows just which button to push!

Flaycraft watched him now, a cat with a new mouse. Got a crazy one here, Gil reminded himself. The beast-man caught his arm in an excruciating grip, shaking him like a doll. “Disobey once, I entreat you. Then, I can school you in lessons of torment. Already, I have taught your friend Dunstan!”

He let go. Gil’s arm throbbed from that one brief squeeze. Flaycraft went off behind his patron. Gil wobbled after them a few steps, stopping at the edge of light. He saw Bey framed in orange radiance at the end of a passageway. Flaycraft went to stand by his side. Yardiff Bey waved a hand, and the passageway walls rumbled inward. In seconds, the corridor had contracted shut with a vibration that traveled through the floor.

Gil took a few steps, groping at the blank wall. All he could feel was solid rock, nicked and chipped by ancient tooling. He blinked up owlishly at the light, but it was far overhead; he couldn’t make out just what it was or how it worked.

Then he realized he wasn’t alone. In the silence left by the closure of the passageway, he heard breathing. He edged back to the slab. His pulse pounded behind his ears and beat at his temples.

“There isn’t cause for alarm, Gil MacDonald. This is a sad thing, seeing you here.”

Gil strained to see. The voice had been quiet, familiar. “Dunstan? Hey, Dunstan?”

“Yes, I, my friend.” Gil stumbled into the dark again, tracing the words. “Just ahead of you. Pause a moment, sit, accustom your eyes to the dark.”

Gil felt his way to the wall. A low shelf, like a bench cut from stone, ran along it. He sat. Gradually, he made out his friend’s outline. Dunstan was seated with his back to the wall, vague in the dim wash of the beam focused on the slab. Finding Dunstan lifted some of his anguish and fright, but robbed him of words. He blurted, “Oh man, man, I’m sorry. I was going to spring you, but I screwed it up good.”

He couldn’t see the Horseblooded’s wan smile, but heard it in his tone. “Berating yourself is unfair. Few men ever came alive to Shardishku-Salamá; none ever imposed his will here.”

“Salamá? This is it? Lay it out for me a bit at a time, okay?”

“You broach two long and separate stories.”

“Oh. Look, let’s go back into the light, huh? I’m not much for the dark, personally.” He labored to his feet, but Dunstan stayed seated. “What’s wrong?”

The other was long in answering. “I have been confined here far longer than you, Gil. Bey proved his genius, restraining and punishing me with a single spell.”

Gil groped for him. “What are you, tied or something? Maybe I can—” He snatched his hands away. “Oh, sweet Jesus Christ!” He’d felt down the Horseblooded’s arms for shackles or bonds, but where the wrists should have been, he’d felt only columns of stone. He touched again, gingerly. “Dunstan, your arms; what’ s wrong with your—”

“Not arms alone. It’s as I said. Yardiff Bey fettered me by his arts, as only he would think to do.”

It was true. The flesh of Dunstan’s arms gave way to cold stone, and his legs were the same. The sorcerer had joined him to the perpetual custody of naked rock. Gil backed away and sat, head hung in defeat. “How long have you been like this?”

“I do not know, and do not wish to. My foremost aspiration has been to forget time. I think I was close to success, but perhaps I was only on the rim of madness. I am in no pain, and hunger and thirst do not come to me, nor any agony of the body. But the unknown progress of time, that was a terrible affliction.”

Gil began to tremble. “Does that mean I’m gonna be . . . will he do that to me?” He was ashamed, but it was his overriding thought and stark terror.

“I think not. You were awakened for a different purpose than torment.”

Awakened? The last thing he recalled, and that none too clearly, Bey had plucked him up. He’d thought he’d recognized an astounded Andre deCourteney. Then something had hit him like megavoltage.

“Dunstan, I’ve been down for the long count, haven’t I?”

“Yes. You were brought to Salamá unliving, I understand. I only heard a little besides what passed between Bey and Flaycraft. A mystic bolt and a Dismissal struck you concurrently, and balanced one another.”

I died?

“No, you are no ghost. Magics in contention will eliminate first those elements common to both. When those forces are canceled, the remaining energies compete. But in your case, both the bolt and the Dismissal were Andre’s, and held all forces in common. Thus, all energies, all influences, were neutralized. All activity stopped; you were neither dead nor alive, until Yardiff Bey quickened your life once again. There is one who wishes to speak with you, you see.”

“With me? Who?”

“His name is Evergray. He is a Lord of Shardishku-Salamá; not one of the Masters, but high in authority.”

“And he’s why Bey brought me around? But what’s it for?”

Dunstan sighed, resting his head on the stone behind him. “After Yardiff Bey captured me, he fled to Death’s Hold in Cloud Ruler. It was the only place that would receive him; a few of his adherents still lurked there in hiding.”

“Yeah, Gabrielle and I thought you were there. She did this thing, this séance-like.”

“I was interrogated by Flaycraft. Under his hand, I told whatever little I could. I was put to great pain, and lost all bearings. I gather that Bey regained his Masters’ favor, and I was moved here, to Salamá, but for long and long I thought myself still to be in Death’s Hold.”

“What about this Evergray?”

“I was placed here by Yardiff Bey, but one day Evergray came, having heard about me from Flaycraft, who is his servant. Prisoners, outsiders of any kind, are almost unknown in Salamá. He wished to question me about the world. Until then I had sat in the dark, for there was no light until Evergray came. I used to sit and sing, sing every saga and ditty and ballad I knew, just to fill the blankness.”

“And Evergray?” Gil encouraged gently.

“Yes. He wanted to know what my songs were, at first. He treated my every word like a report from an undiscovered continent. On one visit he mentioned that there was another outsider here, enemy of Yardiff Bey, in a mystic coma. He asked me if I knew the man, but when he described you, I said I thought not. When last I saw you, Gil, there was no burn-mark on your cheek, nor any scar cut in your brow.”

“Got ’em in Earthfast the night we raided.”

“Ah. I was in the Berserkergang then, and took no notice. Strange to say, the Rage has never come upon me again since that night. There were many moments when I might have welcomed it.”

“It isn’t in you anymore, Dunstan. It passed to me.”

The Horseblooded was silent for a few moments. “Now I must make apologies to you.”

“Not your fault. It saved my life once, I think. Anyway, it doesn’t matter here. But why’d they stick me in with you, if Bey was keeping you shut away in the dark?”

“Because Evergray wanted it, perhaps. Or it may be that the Masters are eavesdropping on us. I don’t know, but your company is welcome, even though I’m sorry to see you here.”

Gil rubbed his hands together, feeling them wet and slippery. “That passageway’s buttoned up tight, huh?”

“I have never been able to inspect it, but I presume so, yes.”

The American found he felt constricted. “I was never locked up before, y’know? I mean, I’ve been confined to barracks and like that, but nobody ever shut me in before. Hard to take.”

He felt stupid, complaining to a man who’d once had the freedom of the High Ranges and then been fastened to the rock in unending night. Dunstan asked, “How fared my kinsman Ferrian?”

“They couldn’t save his arm of course, but they pulled him through. He came south with me and Andre deCourteney and some others. We had to leave him with the Sages of Ladentree, but he didn’t seem too put out about it.”

Dunstan chuckled, a strange sound. “He always loved chinwagging, and old stories. Odd, in a Champion-at-arms, to be so—”

He stopped, interrupted by vibrations in the walls and floor. A vertical crack of orange light materialized where the passageway had been. Gil scrambled to his feet and stumbled toward it, planning to take whomever it was from behind when they entered. But he was stiff and sore. Before he could do it, Flaycraft sprang into the chamber. The torturer moved nimbly, but without grace. He had a long wooden club, studded with spikes, in one hairy fist. He saw Gil, and gave a moist, grunting laugh.

“Yes, try it! Try often; bare your teeth, little mutt!” He waved the club over his head, making the air whistle. The American, still weak, knew Flaycraft would maim or kill him, given the chance.

Another figure came up behind, filling the passageway, blocking most of the light from it. Flaycraft’s club lashed out again, and Gil jerked backward. “Little mutts do not stand,” the torturer snarled, “when Lord Evergray enters a room.”

Gil leaned back against the slab, goggling at Evergray, scion of Shardishku-Salamá.



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