The man's struggles ceased. He became as pale as a corpse. "You know?" he croaked. "That's impossible. Nobody knows. He said that nobody would ever find out...."
"He did? Who is he? What is he?" Aside, "Tor. Toke. Surround the house. Be ready to fire it if I call."
"No! Don't burn...."
"Colgrave does whatever he damn well pleases. Answer me. Where is he? Why did he call us back...."
"Colgrave?"
"Colgrave. Yes. That Colgrave."
"My God! What has he done?"
I bowed mockingly. "They call me Bowman. Or the Archer."
He fainted.
The servants scattered. Their screams dwindled into the depths of the house.
"Priest. Barley. Mica. Bowman. Trolledyngjan. Come with me." Colgrave stepped over our host, into the house.
"Catch one of the servants." Mica came up with one in seconds. She was about sixteen. His leer betrayed his thinking.
"Not now," Colgrave growled. Mica, too, was reverting. "Girl," Colgrave said, "show us the way to the cellar."
Whimpering, she led us to the kitchens.
"Barley. You go down first." Barley took a candle. He was back in a minute. "Wine and turnips, Captain."
"Girl, I'll give you to Mica if...." Something screeched. Lamps overturned and pottery broke in a room behind us. I whirled. A black bird waddled into the kitchens.
I said, "She probably doesn't know, Captain. It's probably a hidden doorway."
Hatred flamed from Colgrave's eye when he glanced my way. "Uhm. Probably." He fingered the gold ring he had plundered from Mica's hoard. "Ah. This way."
We surged back into the front rooms. Everyone pounded panels. "Here," said Colgrave. "Trolledyngjan."
The northman swung his ax. Three resounding blows shattered the panel.
A dark, descending stairway lay behind it. 1 seized a lamp.
"Barley goes first," the Old Man said. "I'll carry the lamp, Bowman. I want you behind me with an arrow ready."
It would be tight for drawing, but I had my orders.
XIII
The stair consisted of more than a hundred steps. I lost count around eighty. It was darker than the bottom side of a buried coffin.
Then light began seeping up to meet us. It was a pale, spectral light, like the glow that sometimes formed on our mastheads in spooky weather. Colgrave stopped.
I glanced back up. The servant girl stood limned in the hole through the panel. The waddling silhouette of a black bird squeezed past her legs. Another fluttered clumsily behind her, awaiting its turn.
We went on. The stair ended. An open door faced its foot. The pale light came splashing through, making Barley look like a ghost.
He went on. He was shaking all over. There was nothing in the universe more deadly than a terrified Barley.
Colgrave followed him. I followed Colgrave. Priest, Mica, and the Trolledyngjan crowded us. We spread
out to receive whatever greeting awaited us. Barley was a step or two ahead.
The creature in red reposed on a dark basaltic throne. The floor surrounding, it had been inscribed with a pentagram of live fire. The signs and sigils defining its angles and points wriggled and gleamed. The floor itself seemed darker than a midnight sky.
This was the source of light. The only source. There were torches atop the red thing's throne, but they were not alight.
The creature's eyes were closed. A gentle smile lay upon its delicate lips.
"Kill it?" I whispered to Colgrave. I bent my bow.
"Wait. Move aside a little and be ready."
Barley started forward, blade rising. Colgrave caught his sleeve.
At the same instant one of the black birds flopped past us, positioned itself in Barley's path.
"We're here," Colgrave said softly; to himself. "So what do we do now?"
He had altered again. Once more he was the mellowed Colgrave. The old Colgrave did not know the word we.
"You don't know?" I whispered.
"Bowman, I'm a man of action. Action begets action, till resolution... My goal has been to get here. I haven't thought past that. Now I must. For instance, what happens if we do kill this thing? What happens if we don't? To us, I mean. And to everyone else.
Those aren't the kinds of things Colgrave usually worries about."
I understood. Tomorrow had never mattered aboard Dragon. Life on that devil ship had been a perpetually frozen Now. Looking backward had been a glance at a foggy place where everything quickly became lost. Looking ahead had consisted of waiting for the next battle, the next victim ship, with perhaps hope for a little rape or drunkenness before we fired her and leaned back to enjoy the screams of her crew. Tomorrow had always been beyond our control, entirely in the hands of whimsical gods.
They had taken remarkable care of us for so long, till they slipped us that left-handed one with the Itaskian sorcerer....
Here we stood at a crossroads. We had to decide on a path, and both went down the back side of a hill. We could only guess which was the better.
If we could even glean a hint of what they were. The trails were virtually invisible from this side of the crest.
"Ready your arrows, Bowman," Colgrave told me. "If he needs it, put the first one between his eyes. Or down his throat. Don't give him time to caste a spell."
"What'll your signal be?"
"You make the decision. There won't be time for signals."
We locked gazes. This was a new Colgrave indeed. Technique was my private province, but the decision to shoot had never been mine.
"Think for Dragon," he said. And I realized that that was what he was trying to do, and had been for the past several days. And Colgrave was unaccustomed to thinking for or about anyone but himself.
As was I. As was I.
A tremor passed through my limbs. Colgrave saw it. His eyebrow rose questioningly.
"I'll be all right." I nocked a different arrow. The motion was old and familiar. My hands stopped trembling. "You see?"
He nodded once, jerkily, then spun to face the creature in red.
It remained unchanged. It slept, wearing that insouciant smile. "Wake him up," Colgrave ordered.
Barley started forward.
"Don't enter the pentacle!" the Old Man snapped. "Find another way."
The Trolledyngjan took an amulet from round his neck. "This be having no potency here anyway," he said. He flung it at the sleeper.
It corruscated as it flew. It trailed smoke and droplets of flame. It fell into the sorcerer's lap.
The creature jumped as if stung. Its eyes sprang open. I pulled my arrow to my ear.
Mine were the first eyes it met. It looked down the length of my shaft and slowly settled back to its throne, its hand folded over the amulet in its lap. We had dealt it a stunning surprise, but after that first reaction it hid it well. It turned its gaze from me to Colgrave.
They stared at one another. Neither spoke for several minutes. Time stretched into an eternity. Then the thing in red said, "There is no evading fate, Captain, I see what you mean to do. But you cannot redeem yourself by killing me instead of those whom I desire slain. In fact, unless I misread you, you have slain to reach me. Wherefore, then, can you expect redemption?"
His lips were parted a quarter inch, still smiling. They never moved while he spoke. And I was never sure whether I was hearing with my ears or brain.
I do not know what was on Colgrave's mind. The sorcerer's remarks did not deflate him. So I presume that he had seen the paradox already.
"Nor can you win redemption simply through performing acts. There must be sincerity." There was no inflection in his voice, but I swear he was mocking us.
I remembered an old friend who had disappeared long ago. Whaleboats had never been very sincere. Unless he had hidden it damned well.
"The damned can be no more damned than they already are," Colgrave countered. A grim rictus of a smile crossed his tortured face. "Perhaps the not-yet-damned can be spared the horror of those who are."