Judge snatched it from his hand and threw it into the darkness. His arm swung forward and a gnarled fist caught the explorer on the point of the jaw. Burton’s knees buckled and he fell back across the windowsill into the bedchamber.
With his senses swimming, he fought and failed to regain his feet. He was vaguely aware that Isabel was sitting up in bed again; that Sadhvi Raghavendra appeared to be paralysed in her chair; that the hulking body of John Judge was squeezing in through the window.
Burton pushed himself upright, pulled the second pistol from his waistband, held it like a club, and faced his enemy. The mesmeric force continued to assault him, more compelling even than that demonstrated by the Brahmins and Sufi masters who’d trained him.
The fingers of Judge’s left hand closed over the front of Burton’s jacket and shirt. The king’s agent was hauled off his feet and into the air. He lashed out with the pistol. His foe swatted it out of his grip. Burton punched at the Irishman’s face. Judge weathered the storm for a moment then slapped him hard. Burton went limp.
In a familiar oily tone comprised of innumerable synchronous voices, Judge said, “The stench of garlic, Burton? The extent of your knowledge impresses me. But I’m afraid it won’t work. John Judge was a good man and the reek stirs him enough to remind him of it, but he is already half-nosferatu and has lost the spirit to resist me. In the absence of willpower, even the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless.”
“Perdurabo,” Burton mumbled. “‘I will endure to the end.’”
“As indeed I shall.”
The massive figure lowered Burton to the ground and released him. The explorer bunched his fists but knew it would be useless to fight. John Judge was simply too powerful to take on. Better to get as much information out of him as possible while he waited for Swinburne and the others to discover Steinhaueser. Then, perhaps together they could find a way to overpower the intruder.
“You really don’t remember me?” Perdurabo asked. “It is such a pity. That, however, is the nature of existence; all the diverse versions of ourselves, the slowly fragmenting mechanisms of Time, the breakdown of natural laws.” He smiled nastily. “It is glorious!”
Judge looked to his left, at Sadhvi Raghavendra sitting entranced; to his right, at Isabel, who’d fallen back onto her pillow, her glazed eyes fixed on him; then back at Burton.
“I intend to take these women from you, Burton; to wound you so deeply, you’ll be immobilised by your suffering. And while you wallow in self-pity, I shall make my move and defeat the power that has blocked my path in so many different histories. When that is achieved, I shall come for you. I will take you into the future with me, into the new world I shall build, a world in which the only law is: Do what thou wilt.”
He likes the sound of his own voice. Keep him talking.
“Why?” Burton asked. “Why am I of any significance?”
“Because I regard you as my predecessor, and because you, of all people, possess insight enough to understand my motives. Nevertheless, if I allowed it, you would try to stop me. Therefore, I shall not allow it. But once I am done, only you will properly appreciate the results. I am a narcissist, Burton. I confess to it. And I want your approval—that is the depth of my respect for you.”
“You’ll not get it.”
Perdurabo shrugged. “Then let us not waste further time in discussion. Sleep.”
A crushing weariness descended upon the explorer. He fought it—tried to use his Sufi training to again break the mesmeric spell—but this time it was too strong.
He collapsed to his knees, toppled forward, and was unconscious before he hit the floor.
An immeasurable period of nothingness.
A hammering on the door.
Trounce. Why does he never ring the blessed bell?
He opened his eyes and saw the rug beside his face, and beyond it, the floorboards and the gap at the bottom of the door. There were feet on the other side of it. Fists pounding on wood. Voices shouting his name.
With his mind muddled and the room spinning around him, he crawled to the portal, fumbled the key from his pocket, clumsily slid it into the lock, and twisted it until he heard the latch click. He fell back, struggling to get to his feet as Henry Arundell, Doctor Bird, Swinburne, Monckton Milnes, and Levi burst in.
Swinburne helped him to stand. “I saw him!” the poet panted. “But he ran into the darkness and I lost sight of the blighter.”
“Are you all right?” Monckton Milnes asked.
Burton grunted an affirmation. He saw Eliphas Levi bent over Sadhvi Raghavendra. She was collapsed across the side of her chair, the ends of her long hair touching the floor.
An anguished moan came from Arundell. Burton looked to the bed and felt the blood drain from his face. Isabel’s father was kneeling, his face buried in the sheets, his hands clutching his daughter’s.
“I don’t understand,” Doctor Bird said. “How can it be? There’s no reason for it. No cause.”
Burton sagged against Monckton Milnes. “No reason for what?” he asked, an awful presentiment making his voice thin and hoarse.
Bird’s eyes met his. They were steeped in sorrow.
“I’m sorry, Sir Richard. I am so sorry. Isabel is dead.”
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Sir Richard Francis Burton stood at a window in the smoking room, facing the black night. Clouds had concealed the moon, and the darkness made the glass reflective. In it, he saw Sir Richard Francis Burton glaring back at him, vague and ghostlike but for the eyes, which burned with an accusatory fire.
He’d left the family upstairs, gathered around Isabel. The screams and wails of her mother, heard throughout the house for the past two hours, had finally dwindled to an occasional cry of despair, but they still echoed loudly in the explorer’s mind. Probably, they always would.
He stared at his translucent other.
A different me in a different world, where Isabel might still be alive.
But you are in this one, where she is not.
And it is my fault.
His fault.
Perdurabo had been unequivocaclass="underline" I intend to break your spirit and drive you to your knees. The statement, made via a medium, had felt as intangible to Burton as every other aspect of the affair—mysterious abductions; his supposed presence at The Assassination; the Mad Marquess’s vision; the bifurcation of Time; Abdu El Yezdi. All of it was fantastical, and he’d approached it just as he’d approached Africa, as an observer of the unfathomable, a man willing to explore and investigate but who employed a shield of sullenness and cynicism to create an emotional distance, for exploration and anthropology demand a surveyor and the surveyed, and never the twain shall meet, else scientific credibility is lost. Burton felt comfortable with such a conceptual separation. Too comfortable. He had applied it to every aspect of his life.