The White Wolf's Son (35 page)

“He’ll be here, my dear. He’ll be here. But whether he arrives in time to find you fully alive, I very much doubt. You see,
the sword needs special food if it is to be useful to us. Special food …” He looked up at me, and now there was an indefinable
lust in his eyes. “Young and fresh.”

And as his cackle rose and his shoulders shook, I understood how thoroughly my friends and family had been defeated by his
and Klosterheim’s cunning.

I flung my plate and cup at him. Again I was close to tears, but I turned my fear into anger. “You nasty, dirty old man!”

The liquid from the beaker stained his beard, so that it looked as if blood ran down his chin and chest. His eyes
hardened for a second, and then he burst into laughter again.

“I must admit,” he said as he dabbed at himself with a napkin, “that this is certainly one of the most complex and successful
traps I have laid in all my many, satisfying centuries. We have you. We have the sword. Now all we need is young Jack. And
I am certain he will join us again soon.”

He cast a calculating eye over me and once more was all avuncular twinkles and chuckles. “You’re a spirited child, my dear,
and will take some keeping, I can see. We have allowed for that. You will be put in the custody of Flana Mikosevaar, Countess
of Kanberry. She is of the blood royal, a possible heir to the throne, and the widow of Asrovak Mikosevaar, the hero who died
by Dorian Hawkmoon’s hand at the first Battle of Kamarg. She has had twelve -husbands, several of whom met bloody ends, not
always in war, and one of whom was Baron Meliadus, the King’s Chancellor. She has no love for mainlanders, though she keeps
the name of that infamous Muskovian renegade, her most recent spouse. Best you curb that tongue with her, since she has been
given permission to begin punishing you in certain ways not permitted to the rest of us. Do not expect her to be lenient because
you are of the same gender. Countess Flana is famous for the pleasure she takes in inflicting pain on others.”

Baron Bous-Junge’s features now beamed in a fat smirk as he replaced his mask and summoned the slaves. A sigh like escaping
steam came out of his mask, as if he was already tasting the revenge he would have on me.

The old-fashioned hand bell summoned his slaves as
he turned his back and pored over some old books. He had forgotten me entirely. That might have been my chance to try to get
away, but I left it till too late. The slaves surrounded me. They escorted me back to the same carriage, and I had no choice
but to climb in again.

After another incredibly long journey through passageways, halls and tunnels, arcades and covered streets, we finally arrived
at the Heron Palace, home of Flana Mikosevaar, Countess of Kanberry, who was to become my jailer. The Heron Palace was built
around a beautiful courtyard. Unusually for the Dark Empire’s taste, it was open to the roiling sky. Its water garden fed
green lawns and richly scented flower beds full of blossoms I had never seen before, as well as roses, hydrangeas and lupines,
familiar from home. The garden was comforting in spite of the bizarre blooms. I had the impression that given the complete
absence of insects and birds, the plants were flesh eaters.

I was left alone in the small antechamber looking out over the garden and, since I had no other way of calming myself, took
an intense interest in the flowers. Although the windows were wide open, they were covered by screens so that it was impossible
to go out.

After what seemed hours, Countess Flana and her entourage entered the room. She was tall and slender. She covered her head
with a magnificently wrought heron mask, with a long, sharp beak and a half-raised crest, all in silver and ebony. From it
two large golden, cool and unreadable eyes regarded me.

“I hear you have strong opinions of your own, Mademoiselle von Bek.” The voice was humorous, vibrant. If I hadn’t been warned
by Baron Bous-Junge what she was really like, I might have thought I would find sympathy
there. I kept my own counsel. I was still planning to escape. I felt it was almost my duty to try, since I seemed so crucial
to whatever Dark Empire plan was in place to conquer the multiverse.

Of course, I hadn’t taken them and their plans seriously, but even their reconquering of the Continent would be bad enough.
I might manage to stop something if I escaped.

I decided to pretend to be deceived by Countess Flana, who sent her slaves from the room and came to stand over me where I
sat on an uncomfortable, asymmetrical couch facing the garden.

“You like my little private garden, child?”

“I love it,” I said as innocently as I could. “Do you work in it yourself?”

This brought a soft laugh. “As it happens, I do, when I am alone. Which is all too rare.”

Slender-fingered hands reached to remove the elegant mask, revealing one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen, on or
off the screen. She had a fair, glowing skin, platinum hair and dark red lips. There was a kind of wondering, dreaming quality
to her as she turned those eyes, the shade of sunflowers, upon me. Her color was higher than I would have expected, and the
flush took time to leave her cheeks. It was very hard not to trust and like someone who looked so beautiful, even vulnerable.
I wondered how she had handled twelve husbands. Twelve. She seemed to belong to the wrong order. Was there an Order of the
Spider? She contradicted everything I knew about her. I wondered about her kind’s potential longevity. She looked twenty-five,
but she must be more than one hundred.

For all her reputation, I found myself warming to her
as she drew back the screens from the French doors and led me into the tranquility of the water garden. The sky above was
awash with speeding dark clouds, which flung their shadows over black towers, domes and turrets. Once a big, black ornithopter
flew over the city, its engine pounding, throwing out the usual trail of smoke and sparks.

“So you are Jack D’Acre’s sister?” We walked among the flower beds and the streams of water. “There is little family resemblance.”

“I agree,” I said. “You’d never know we were related.”

She frowned at this. “Oh, no, I think the prophecy was accurate. I miss little Jack. He lived with me, you know. An odd experience,
no doubt, for us both.” She stared into the fountain. A tribe of stylized bronze merpeople rose onto rocks, water spewing
from their metallic mouths. They rode dolphins and carried tridents and nets, yet, for all their classical origins, they were
distinctly Granbretanian: faintly grotesque, faintly aggressive and possibly alive. Her voice became distant as she remembered
something. She raised her head and watched the disappearing ornithopter as it flew between the towers. “Then he ran away.”

If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought she recollected a lover who had left her.

“But now I have you,” she said. She reached to stroke my hair. “Poor Jack. Poor Jack.”

“Were you the one who blinded him?”

“He sang so beautifully. And he knew the future. He was a seer, as you know, my dear. And you are aware, I’m sure, of the
fate of such folk.”

I couldn’t stop myself from repeating, “How was he blinded?”

“By the light. They needed him to listen for the demons in the steel, you see.” Her voice faded and became almost inaudible.
“They didn’t know his true value. They took him off to Mirenburg. My informants tell me they were trying to make a particular
kind of sword.” Perhaps she was thinking back to when it had happened. I couldn’t be sure. I had never been with anyone as
mysterious, as impossible to read. “Taragorm, you see, had these machines … But originally I bought him for his voice.”

“Bought
him?”

She frowned, puzzled. “Taragorm had other purposes for him, and no sense of his talents. He cost me the fortune of one of
my husbands.” She laughed softly. “But he was worth it. Until he went away.” She sighed. “The king’s orders, of course. Now
this … I’m sure he’ll be discovered eventually. But this time they will tear out his tongue. If he is lucky. They’ll ruin
him.”

I knew a second or two of hope. “I didn’t think anyone could escape from Londra.”

“Oh, he hasn’t escaped the city,” she said. “He is still here, somewhere. He must be. I can almost smell him. After all, he
can’t go back to Mirenburg now, can he? I’m told your presence will make him reveal himself, once he knows his sister is in
our power. What do you think?”

“I think he’d be an idiot to risk it,” I said.

She found this amusing. She smiled and reached for me again. I let her stroke my neck and shoulder, but she could tell I was
tense. She withdrew her hand. “I miss him. I suppose you do, too.”

“Not as much as you, I think.”

Her expression became strangely grateful. I found it
very difficult to believe her a husband-killer, but I could have been seeing only one side of her. Or maybe all these Granbretanner
aristocrats were like that. I had the impression that half these people only barely repressed hysteria. Something about their
taste for masks and enclosed spaces was associated in my mind with that kind of madness. I had read the expression “my blood
ran cold” and had never really thought what it meant. Now I knew. In spite of the warmth, I found myself shivering in her
water garden as she led me down crazy-paving paths, staring thoughtfully into vivid, fleshy blooms and pretending, I supposed,
to frame her thoughts.

“You didn’t know him as I knew him,” she said. And she sighed deeply, then laughed. “Who could?”

“You really think he’ll come back to you just because I’m here?”

“Oh, no, my dear, he won’t come back to me because of you. In fact, because of you he is even more likely to stay away.”

She looked at me blankly for a moment, then turned away. “That’s absurd. Jack is my adopted son. I intend to make him king-emperor
someday.”

“But King Huon’s immortal, isn’t he?”

She looked at me in surprise, as if I had overheard her speaking to herself. “Of course he is.” She smiled as she stopped
to point out an especially magnificent variety of lily: purple caps, not dissimilar to deadly nightshade.

We wandered back to the French doors, and she again surprised me when she asked, “Have you any preferences for food this evening?
There are certain shortages, because of the war, but I can have almost anything prepared for you.”

I shook my head.

Her voice softened. “You’re not enjoying your stay in Londra. Why is that?”

“I miss my mother and father.”

“They turned you out?”

“No. That Klosterheim and his friend chased me all over the place. Underground. All through the dimensions. Across half of
Europe. And as a result I lost touch with them.”

“Where are they? Still alive?”

“In England,” I said. “In Yorkshire.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, brightening. “What a coincidence. We have provinces here in Granbretan which bear very similar names.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised.” I yawned. It had been a long, long day. The sun was in its final quarter, spreading red, agitated
light across the rooftops and domes. Maybe I liked this woman because she
was
unstable. It suggested a kind of vulnerability. “How long are they going to keep me here?”

“Not long, as I understand it. They have the Sword; they have the Cup; they have the Stone. Now they need the Blood and the
Staff to perform the ritual. And you and Jack, of course, will provide those.”

“Why is that?” I hardly wanted to hear her reply.

“Male and female fluids are needed, and of course, they must come from your veins. For you traditionally guard the Grail.
Keepers of the Stone, as they say. The Blood must come from twins of that old von Bek strain. Taragorm, who is still a good
friend of mine though we were married once, told me all about it. To gain control over the Balance, virgin blood of the twin
Grail children must spill and mingle, while the essence of what is male and female must combine in ritual bloodletting …”

“Ritual bloodletting?” I was beginning to get a clearer picture. Not a very pleasant one. I shivered.

“Yes, of
both.
That is very important. I’m sure you understand, being of that blood. But much of this is new to me. I have never studied
magic, you see, and know few who do. Taragorm has machines which speak to him. They are perfectly clear about what has to
be done. Like to like. Same to same. Shape to shape. Blood to blood. It is the absolute fundamental of their science as well
as their magic and medicine. We follow the principles of similarity. The principle of the Balance itself. Opposites in balance.
The principles upon which all life is based. But Taragorm explained this to me and will no doubt do the same for you.”

“Taragorm?” I wanted to know more about him.

“He is the master of the Palace of Time. He can travel in time, they say. At least he can see into the past and future. The
world’s greatest scholar in the Doctrine of Signatures. What our ancestors called
Signatura Rarum.
Like affects like. The fundamentals of science. He searches the dimensions, back and forth through history, seeking to restore
all the wisdom we lost when the Tragic Millennium descended upon us.”

“And what brought that disaster?”

“Who knows, child? Perhaps a similar sequence of events. What is done in one time and place repeats and repeats, yet with
each repetition comes a subtle change. There is a legend of a sword, a stone, a cup, I understand, which no doubt dates from
the same period. It would be ironic, would it not, if we repeated the same mistakes which brought that long, dark age from
which we so recently emerged.” Her laughter was sweet and light but
with an edge of weariness to it. “How boring if that turned out to be the truth.”

I must admit, a lot of this magic stuff went over my head. Countess Flana didn’t seem to notice.

“When does this ritual take place?” It seemed reasonable for me to ask a question about their plans for my death.

“When all the worlds are in conjunction,” she said. “Smaller conjunctions appear fairly regularly. A hundred spheres. A million
spheres. Over the past two or three centuries there have been a series of such conjunctions. Repeating and repeating. And
at every repetition, Taragorm tells me, an opportunity has been lost. On this occasion they intend to be certain. They will
preserve the Balance, and they will control it.” She smiled almost tenderly at me and reached out her hand to me again. This
time I avoided it. “They intend to gain control over both Law and Chaos.”