“She killed, Vazkor, High Commander. I have told you.”
“Yes. You have indeed told me.”
Cruelly, my eyes were clear now, I saw him well. A tall, large-boned, elegant frame on which his dark masculinity hung vital and animal and sure. He, too, was masked, a golden mask shaped like the head of a wolf, red glass in the narrow eye-pieces. The silver hair of the wolf mane lay sparsely over his own, which reached almost to his waist, and was the intense blue-black of the Dark People. The skin of his hands seemed the gray-olive tan of theirs, yet their shape was very different. Three black rings glowed on the thin, iron strong fingers. He wore a long black velvet tunic that reached to mid-calf, but was slit open at the hip on each side, reminding me of the leather bandit flaps. Black trousers of fine shimmering cloth, and boots of purple leather with countless winking buckles of gold. Around his neck hung the chain—eleven smooth rings of hollowed green jade, with golden links.
He had stood quite still since coming into the room. Now he put one hand on his captain’s shoulder, light, and very deadly.
“Sronn, you know how urgent is the levy of forced troops in the Javhovor’s latest campaign. Can it be you have failed me, and used this poor rat’s tail as an excuse?”
The sickness the use of the Power had left was fading quickly now.
“It is as he tells you,” I said.
The golden wolfs head jerked in my direction. In the gesture there was so much surprised disdain, I almost laughed at it.
“Be silent, desert bitch. You are nothing here.”
I knew his contempt—the contempt of the High One for the mere human. But it was he who was vulnerable. Two lances of pain stabbed behind my eyes. Around his neck the jade chain burst from its links, cracked, and fell in pieces on the marble floor. The soldiers went on their knees at once. But he was not so swift. He came toward me very slowly, and his voice was soft and dry.
“You do not know me, I see, or you wouldn’t try your witch-tricks on me.”
I was not afraid. I felt it would be easy to match him, secure in my newfound hubris.
A look from me, he stopped. Quickly the strong hands reached up to draw off the wolf mask. They believed too, it seemed, in the power of the unshielded eyes. And then, the mask was gone, and I saw his face.
“Darak,” I said.
My knees gave way at once, as if my body had been chopped in half. Ridiculously, I, to whom the soldiers kneeled, now kneeled involuntarily before this man I had meant to silence forever. But I could not touch him; he, as I, was already dead, already reborn. I had seen the Warden’s men at Ankurum carry him from the feast hall, had seen his body hoisted on the gallows, swinging and empty. Yet here, as at the first, stood Darak, defying others’ belief in my divinity, yet Darak, a little older, finer drawn, a prince sprung from the crysalis of the bandit. Yet, now that I kneeled before him, I saw this was not quite Darak. And there was no recognition in his face, no knowledge, fascination, fear, scorn, love, or hate.
And suddenly my sense of strength left me. I began to weep. The soldiers looked up, startled, horrified.
He they called Vazkor, who was Darak. turned from me in disgust.
“Could you do no better than that, Sronn?”
I leaned forward over myself, uncaring, my misery endless and unfathomable. I knew no longer what I must do. My hand found a piece of the broken jade, and I clutched it to me.
I heard an order called out, and was slightly aware of other men running in to seize the skull-soldiers I had ridden with. Then silence.
I sensed, at last, that he was sitting, half watching me, in one of the great ebony chairs. I could not understand why he had not already had me taken out; he did not believe in my immortality. Perhaps he had some crueler and more exquisite sport in store for me.
Finally he said, “They will be killed, the men who brought you. A pity. We shall need every man we possess for our war. Still, in a skirmish with the uncivilized Shlevakin from beyond Aluthmis, who can tell what will happen. The steaders’ hovels will be burned down, naturally. Not a trace of your coming will remain. And now, Uastis, get up. This room is architecturally designed to please the eye, and your present position mars it for me.”
I seemed to have no choice. I rose slowly and stood, but could not look at him.
“I recall some human man to you, do I?” he asked me. “You must forget that, Uastis Reincarnate. You and I are not of that breed. Under the earth to grow, then from the sleep to the life. To rule. It is the heritage of the children of The Lost. Come here.”
Again I seemed to have no choice. I went to him. From inside the hem of the long tunic he drew a fine-bladed dagger. With it he scratched the surface of his right hand. A trickle of blood welled out, then stood like a red jewel on the instantly closing skin. A second more and the faint scar vanished, seeming to dissolve back into him.
“It is not hard, Uastis,” he said to me, “to recognize a sister.”
Life, circling endlessly on itself like a dark bird, carried me back to my core, without mercy.
It seems it should have been joy I felt to have found this “brother” in the world of humans. But I felt no joy. I felt nothing, only an overbearing sorrow and bewilderment I could not analyze or explain to myself.
That I had found Darak again seemed least strange of all. I could not tell if it frightened or pleased me.
Each time I thought of how he, Vazkor, High Commander of Ezlann, the Dark City, had drawn the golden wolf mask from his face, I could only cry, as I had not cried at Barak’s death.
I was ill when I came to Ezlann, and half mad. My escort had been too awed to see it. But he saw, and he sent me away to a suite of apartments which at the time meant nothing to me, only a black quiet place in which to weep. Ten days, perhaps. I remember there was a woman like a dark moth. She wore black and a black silk mask, not like the shireen. The mouth was covered over without an opening. I recollect I could not think how she would be able to eat, and being human, I thought she would starve. It became an obsession. I dreamed of her wasted body, hands clutching at food, holding it whimpering to the shuttered mouth, feebly, and without hope. Only later did I learn the customs of the Great Cities of the south.
A twilight era began, in which I rose and walked about the several oval rooms. I was not sure how many rooms there were, sometimes three, sometimes seven. Sometimes it seemed they were endless and without number. I bathed many times each day in the sunken bath of black marble, which seemed like a sleepy tomb, and was oddly pleasant to me. I looked often from the two long windows with which each of the rooms was graced. I could not understand the view—pale glow, soft white mists, dim golden columns, very thin and tall, and clusters of green foliage that shed a constant and unchanging veridian light into the rooms. There were no sunsets and no dawns. There was no time at all.
It was a long while later that I began to see my apartments for what they were.
There were four rooms in all, each oval, and each similar to the one preceding and the one following.
They were built in a circular chain about an inner space onto which the tall windows looked, and one could therefore pass from the first room to the second, from the second to the third, from the third to the fourth, and from the fourth back into the original and first. Each was hung and ornamented in costly black materials. Black smooth onyx things stood ready to be caressed, carvings of animals and swans. A black and muted silver mosaic on the floor, black gauze draperies. On the ebony tables, the sudden white luminance of huge alabaster lamps, which the woman lit sometimes, randomly, from tapers. Beyond my windows, a petrified garden of carved green jade, glowing and misty from unimaginable sources. How the rooms were ventilated, I do not know. There was no access to the open except the single door through which the woman came. I examined it in her absence and found it to be locked. There were two small grooves on the surface; I touched them but there was no response. I was shut, like a rare insect, into a beautiful prison, and left there to be observed, perhaps passionlessly dissected at my keeper’s will.