Baltazar turned those relentless eyes on Alfred, who felt their sharp blade enter and drain him dry.
“I am glad for this opportunity to talk with you alone,” said Baltazar.
Alfred wasn’t, not in the least, but he had lived much of his life in court and a polite rejoinder came automatically to his lips. “Is .. . is there going to be trouble?” he added, squirming beneath the gaze of the black eyes.
The necromancer smiled and informed Alfred—politely—that, if there was trouble, it was no concern of his.
This was a point Alfred might have argued, because he was among these people, but the Sartan wasn’t very good at arguing and so he meekly kept quiet. The dog yawned and lay blinking at them sleepily.
Baltazar was silent. The living in the cave were silent, watching and waiting. The dead were silent, standing around at the back of the cavern, not waiting, because they had nothing for which to wait. They simply stood and would apparently keep standing until one of the living told them otherwise. The king’s cadaver didn’t seem to know what to do with itself. None of the living spoke .to it, and it eventually drifted forlornly to the back of the cave to join its dead subjects in doing nothing.
“You don’t approve of necromancy, do you?” Baltazar asked suddenly.
Alfred felt as if the magma flow had diverted course and gone up his legs and body directly to his face. “N—no, I don’t.”
“Then why didn’t you come back for us? Why did you leave us stranded?”
“I—I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do.” The fury in the necromancer’s voice was all the more appalling because the anger was contained, the words spoken softly, for Alfred’s ears alone.
Not quite alone. The dog was listening, too.
“Yes, you do. You are Sartan. You are one of us. And you did not come from this world.”
Alfred was completely nonplussed, he had no idea what to say. He couldn’t lie. Yet how he could tell the truth when, as far as he knew, he didn’t know it?
Baltazar smiled, but it was a frightening smile, tight-lipped, and filled with a strange and sudden exultation. “I see the world from which you come, I see it in your words. A fat world, a world of light and pure air. And so the ancient legends are true! Our long search must be nearing an end!”
“Search for what?” Alfred asked desperately, hoping to change the subject. He did.
“The way back to those other worlds! The way out of this one!” Baltazar leaned near, his voice pitched low, tense and eager, “Death’s Gate!”
Alfred couldn’t breathe, he felt as if he were strangling.
“If—if you will excuse me,” he stammered, trying to stand, trying to escape. “I... I’m not feeling well—”
Baltazar laid a restraining hand on Alfred’s arm. “I can arrange for you to feel worse,” He cast a glance at one of the cadavers.
Alfred gulped, gasped, and seemed to shrivel. The dog raised its head, growled, asking if the Sartan needed help.
Baltazar appeared startled at Alfred’s reaction, the necromancer looked somewhat ashamed.
“I apologize. I shouldn’t have threatened you. I am not an evil man. But,” he added in a low, passionate voice, “I am a desperate one.”
Alfred, trembling, sank back down onto the cavern floor. Reaching out an unsteady hand, he gave the dog a hesitant, reassuring pat. The animal lowered its head, resumed its quiet watch.
“That other man, the one with you, the one with the runes tattooed on his skin. What is he? He is not Sartan, not like you, not like me. But he is more like us than the others—the Little People.” Baltazar picked up a small, sharp-edged stone, held it to the softly glowing light that filled the cavern. “This stone has two faces, each different, but both part of the same rock. You and I are one side, it seems. He is another. Yet all the same.”
Baltazar’s black eyes pinned the struggling Alfred to the wall. “Tell me! Tell me about him! Tell me the truth about yourself! Did you come through Death’s Gate? Where is it?”
“I can’t tell you about Haplo,” Alfred answered faintly. “Another man’s story is his to tell or to keep hidden, as he chooses.” The Sartan was beginning to panic, decided that he could find refuge in the truth, even if it was only partial truth. “As to how I came here, it... was an accident! I didn’t mean to.”
The necromancer’s black eyes bored into him, turned their sharp blade this way and that, probing and piercing. Finally, grunting, he withdrew his gaze. Brooding, Baltazar sat staring at the location on the rock floor where the dead had lately rested.
“You are not lying,” he said finally. “You cannot lie, you are not capable of deceit. But you’re not telling the truth, either. How can such a dichotomy exist within you?”
“Because I don’t know the truth. I don’t fully understand it and, therefore, in speaking of the small portion I see only very imperfectly, I might do irreparable harm. It is better if I keep what I know to myself.”
Baltazar’s black eyes blazed with anger, reflected the yellow firelight. Alfred faced him, steadfast and calm, blanching only slightly. It was the necromancer who broke off the attack, his frustrated rage dwindling to a heavy sorrow.
“It is said that such virtue was once ours. It is said that the very notion of one of our own kind shedding the blood of another was so impossible to conceive that no words existed in our language to speak of it. Well, we have those words now: murder, war, deceit, treachery, trickery, death. Yes, death.”
Baltazar rose to his feet. His voice cracked, its hot rage cooled and hardened, like molten rock that has flowed into a pool of chill water. “You will tell me what you know about Death’s Gate. And if you won’t tell me with your living voice, then you’ll tell me with the voice of the dead!” Halfturning, he pointed at the cadavers. “They never forget where they have been, what they have done. They forget only the reasons why they did them! And thus they are quite willing to do them again . . . and again . . . and again.”
The necromancer glided away, striding down the tunnel after his prince. Alfred, stricken dumb, gazed after him, too horrified to be able to say a word.
17
“I knew I should never have left that weakling on his own!”
Haplo fumed to himself when Alfred’s stammering and confused denials came to his ears through those of the dog. The Patryn almost turned around, returned to try to salvage the situation. He realized, however, that by the time he made his way back through the cavern, the worst of the damage would already be done and so he kept going, following the prince and his army of cadavers to the cavern’s end.
By the conclusion of the conversation between Baltazar and Alfred, Haplo’d been glad he’d kept out of it. Now he knew exactly what the necromancer planned. And if Baltazar wanted to take a little trip back through Death’s Gate, Haplo would be more than pleased to arrange it. Of course, Alfred would never permit it, but—at this point—Alfred had become expendable. A Sartan necromancer was worth far more than a sniveling Sartan moralist.
There were problems. Baltazar was a Sartan and, as such, inherently good. He could threaten murder, but that was because he was desperate, intensely loyal to his people, to his prince. It was unlikely that he would leave his people, abandon his prince, go off on his own. Haplo’s lord would most certainly take a dim view of an army of Sartan marching through Death’s Gate and into the Nexus! Still, the Patryn reflected, these snarls in the skein could be worked out.