Coldheart Canyon (45 page)

“Whoever the hell you are,” she said, “this is none of your business.”

She pushed Tammy aside and reached out to catch hold of Zeffer. He had dutifully approached at her summons, but now avoided her grasp.

She came after him anyway, striking his chest with the back of her hand, a solid blow; and another; and another. As she struck him she said: “I told you to stay outside, didn’t I?”

The blows were relatively light, but they carried strength out of all proportion to their size. They knocked the breath out of him, for one thing, and she’d come back with a second blow before he’d drawn breath from the first, which quickly weakened him. Tammy was horrified, but she didn’t want to interfere, in case she simply made the matter worse. Nor was her attention entirely devoted to the sight of Todd, or to the assault upon Zeffer. Her gaze was increasingly claimed by the sight visible through the open door. It was
astonishing
. Despite the fact that Zeffer had told her the place was an illusion, her eyes and her mind were wholly enamored by what she saw: the rolling forest, the rocks with their thickets of thorn bushes, the delta and the distant sea. It all looked so real.

And what was that?

Some creature that looked like a feathered lizard, its coxcomb yellow and black, scuttled into view, and out again.

It halted, seeming to look back through the door at her: a beast that belonged in some book of medieval monsters rather than in such proximity to her.

She glanced back at Zeffer, who was still being lectured by Katya.

With the door open, and the visions beyond presented to her, she saw no reason not to step over the threshold, just for a moment, and see the place more plainly. After all, she was protected against its beguilements.

She knew it was a beautiful lie, and as long as she remembered that, then it couldn’t do her any harm, could it?

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The only thing in the landscape that was real was Todd, and it was to him that she now went, crossing the dirt and the windblown grass to reach him. The feathered reptile lowered its coxcomb as she crossed the ground, and slunk away, disappearing into a crack between two boulders.

But Todd wasn’t watching animal-life. He had his eyes on several horsemen who were approaching along a road that wound through a dense stand of trees. They were moving at speed, kicking up clods of earth as they came. Were they real, Tammy wondered, or just part of the landscape? She wasn’t sure, nor was she particularly eager to put the question to the test.

Yet with every passing second she was standing in this world, the more she felt the power of the room to unknit her doubts. She felt its influence seeping through her sight and her skin into her mind and marrow. Her head grew giddy, as though she’d downed two or three glasses of wine in quick succession.

It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation by any means, especially given the extreme discomfort of the last few hours. She felt almost comforted by the room; as though it understood how she’d suffered of late, and was ready to soothe her hurts and humiliations away. It would distract her with its beauty and its strangeness; if she would only trust it for a while.

“Tammy . . .” she heard Zeffer say behind her. His voice was weak, and the effect his summons had on her was inconsequential. She didn’t even acknowledge it. She just let her eyes graze contentedly on the scene before her; the trees, the horsemen, the road, the rocks.

Soon, she knew, the riders would make a turn in that road, and it would be interesting to see how their image changed when they were no longer moving in profile, but were coming toward her.

She glanced back over her shoulder. It wasn’t far to the door: just a few yards. Her eyes didn’t even focus on whatever was going on in the passageway. It seemed very remote from her at that moment.

She looked back toward the horsemen. They had turned the corner in the road, and were now coming directly toward the spot where Todd and she stood. It was the oddest visual spectacle she’d ever witnessed, to see CC[001-347] 9/10/01 2:26 PM Page 336

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them growing larger as they approached, like illustrations emerging from a book. The landscape around them seemed to both recede and advance at the same moment as they approached, its motion throwing them forward as the ground beneath their horses drew back like a retreating wave.

It was an utterly bewildering spectacle, but its paradoxical beauty enthralled her. All thought of Zeffer’s summons, or indeed his safety, were forgotten: it was as though she were watching a piece of film for the first time, not knowing how the mechanism worked upon her.

She felt Todd throw her a sideways glance.

“Time to go,” he said.

The earth beneath their feet reverberated as the horsemen approached.

They’d be at the door in thirty or forty seconds.

“Come on,” he said.

“Yes . . .” she murmured. “I’m coming.”

She didn’t move. It wasn’t until Todd caught hold of her arm and pulled her back toward the door that she eventually obeyed the instruction and went. Even then she kept looking back over her shoulder, astonished.

“I don’t believe what I’m seeing,” she said.

“It’s all real. Trust me on that,” he said. “They can do you harm.”

They had reached the threshold now, and she reluctantly allowed herself to be coaxed back over it and into the passageway. She was amazed at the speed with which the room had caught her attention; made itself the center of her thoughts.

Even now, it was still difficult to focus her attention on anything but the scene beyond the door, but finally she dragged her eyes away from the approaching horsemen and sought out Zeffer.

He had fallen to his knees three or four yards from the door, putting up no defense against Katya’s assault.

“I told you, didn’t I?” she said, slapping his head. “I never wanted to see you in this house ever again. You understand me?
Ever again
.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, his head bowed. “I just brought—”

“I don’t care who you brought. This house is forbidden to you.”

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“Yes . . . I know.”

His acquiescence did nothing to placate her. The reverse, in fact: it seemed to inflame her. She kicked him.

“You revolt me,” she said.

He bent over, as though to present a smaller target to her. She pushed him, hard, and he fell. She moved in to kick him again, aiming for his face, but at that moment Tammy saw what she was about to do, and let out a cry of protest.

“Leave him alone!” she said.

Katya turned. “
What
?”

“You heard me.
Leave him alone!
”

Katya’s beauty was disfigured by the naked contempt on her face. She was breathing heavily, and her face was flushed.

“I’ll do what it suits me to do in my own house,” she said, her lip curling. “And no fat, ugly bitch like you is going to tell me otherwise.”

Tammy knew plenty about Katya Lupi by now, of course; her intimidating reputation went before her. But at that moment, seeing Zeffer lying on the floor, and hearing what the woman had just said, any trace of intimidation was burned away by a blaze of anger. Even the glories of the Devil’s Country were forgotten at that moment.

She walked straight toward Katya and pushed her hard, laying her hands against the bitch’s little breasts to do so. Katya was clearly not used to being manhandled. She came back at Tammy in an instant.

“
Don’t you dare touch me!
” she shrieked. Then she back-handed Tammy; a clean, wide strike.

Tammy fell back, the metallic tang of blood in her mouth. There were three sickening heartbeats when she feared the force of Katya’s blow was going to knock her unconscious. Darkness pulsed at the corners of her vision. But she was determined not to be floored by one blow, even if it did have something more than ordinary human force behind it, as she suspected it did.

She reached out for something to steady her, and her hand found the doorjamb. As she caught hold of it, she glanced back over her shoulder, CC[001-347] 9/10/01 2:26 PM Page 338

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remembering her proximity to the strange beauty of the Devil’s Country.

But the power of the room’s illusion had been momentarily knocked from her head. The walls were simply covered in tiles now. There were trees and rocks and a painted river on those tiles, but none of it was so finely rendered that it could have been mistaken for reality. The only part of the scene before her that was real was Todd, who was still lingering at the threshold. Apparently he could see what Tammy could not because at that moment he threw himself over the threshold like a man in fear of something coming close on his heels. He caught hold of the doorhandle, and started to pull the door closed, but as he did so Katya came back into view and blocked the door with her foot.

“Don’t close it!” she told Todd.

Todd obeyed her. He let go of the handle. The door struck Katya’s leg and bounced open again.

Now the machinations of the room began to work on Tammy afresh.

The gloomy air seethed, and the shapes of four horsemen appeared out of the murk, still riding toward the door.

The leader—
the Duke
, Tammy thought,
this is the Duke
—pulled hard on the reins to slow his mount. The animal made a din, as though its primitive gaze was failing to make sense of what was ahead of it. Rather than advance any further it came to a panicked halt, throwing up clods of dirt as it did so. Goga jumped from the saddle, shouting a number of incomprehensible orders back at his men, who had also brought their animals to a stop. They proceeded to dismount. There were whispers of superstitious doubt between the men: plainly whatever they were witnessing (the door, the passageway), they could make little or no sense of it. That fact didn’t slow their advance, however. They dutifully followed their leader toward the door, swords drawn.

By now Tammy had recovered sufficiently to grab hold of Todd’s arm and pull him back from the threshold.

“Come away,” she urged him.

He looked round at her. She was probably more familiar with his face, and with his limited palette of expressions, than she was with her own.

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But she’d never seen the look of stupefaction he wore right now. The veins at his temples were throbbing, his mouth was slack; his blood-shot eyes seemed to have difficulty focusing on her.

She tugged harder on his arm, in the hope of shaking him out of his stupor. Behind him she could see the horsemen approaching the door, their step more cautious now that they were almost at the threshold.

Having stopped the door from being closed, Katya had stepped away from it, leaving Todd the closest of them all to the horsemen. So close, in fact, that had the Duke so chosen, he could have lunged from where he stood, and killed Todd with a single stroke.

He did not do so, however. He hung back from the door, eyeing it with suspicion and awe. Though none of the light from the hallway seemed to illuminate the world on the other side of the doorway, Tammy could see the man’s face quite clearly: his severely angular features, his long, braided beard, black shot through with streaks of gray; his dark, heavy-lidded eyes. He was by no means as beautiful as Todd had once been, but there was a
gravitas
in his physiognomy which Todd’s corn-fed charm could never have approached. No doubt he was responsible for all manner of crimes—in such a landscape as he’d ridden, who would not lay claim to their share of felonies?—but in that moment, in the midst of a dark journey of her own, Tammy would have instinctively preferred the eloquence of this face for company to Todd’s easy beauty.

Indeed, if she had ever been in love with Todd Pickett—which by many definitions she had—she fell
out
of love with him at that moment, comparing his face with that of Duke Goga, and finding it wanting.

That was not to say that she didn’t want Todd safe from this place; from the house and all its inhabitants, especially Katya. So she hauled on his arm again, yelling for him to get away from the door, and this time her message got through to him.

Todd retreated, and as he did so Katya caught hold of Zeffer by the hair and lifted him up. Tammy was too concerned with reclaiming Todd from the threshold to do anything to save Zeffer. And Zeffer in turn did nothing to save himself. He simply let the woman he had adored pick him up, and CC[001-347] 9/10/01 2:26 PM Page 340

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with the same nearly-supernatural strength Tammy herself had felt just moments before, Katya pitched Zeffer through the open door.

The horsemen were waiting on the other side, swords at the ready.

Only now, as he stumbled across the ground before them, did Zeffer raise his arms to protect himself against the swordsmen. Whether the Duke took this harmless motion as some attempt at aggression, and reacted to protect himself, or whether he simply wanted to do harm, Tammy would never know. The Duke lifted his sword and brought it down in a great swooping arc that cut through the meat of Zeffer’s right hand, taking off all four of his fingers, and the top half of his thumb.

Blood spurted out from the wounds, and Zeffer let out a cry that was one part disbelief to two of agony. He stared at his maimed hand for a moment, then he turned from his mutilator and stumbled back toward the door.

For an instant, he lifted his gaze, and his eyes met Tammy’s. They had a moment only to look at each other. Then Duke Goga came at Zeffer again and drove his sword through the middle of his back.

There was a terrible cracking sound, as the blade shattered Zeffer’s breast-bone and then the point emerged from the middle of his chest.

Zeffer threw back his head, and caught hold of the edge of the door with his unmaimed hand. He had his eyes fixed on Tammy as he did so, as though he were drawing the power to do whatever he was planning to do from her. There was a long moment when in fact he did nothing; only teetered on the threshold, his eyelids growing lazy. Then—summoning one last Herculean effort of will—he gave Tammy a tiny smile and closed the door in her face.