Beneath an Opal Moon (35 page)

He was back in the sitting room.

“I told you to wait here.”

“What is that place?”

“A room. It is a room, only.”

“A room to conjure images.”

“Dreams, perhaps.” She shrugged.

“He's not alive, then.”

“Hellsturm?” She laughed. “My God, I hope not. Not after what you did to him. No, he's quite dead.” She smiled. “I thank you for that.”

He looked at her skeptically. “Pardon me if I am wrong, madam, but that devil was in your own employ, I believe.”

“Was, I think, is the operative word,” she said evenly. “He had served his purpose. His effectiveness was being destroyed by his growing attachment to that bitch in Corruña and he was becoming more trouble than he was worth. No, he had quite outlived his usefulness and would have died the moment he crossed the threshold at Mistral. Fortuitously, he never got that far.”

“I'll take Aufeya now, as my reward.”

She laughed and the golden goddess was gone. He saw instead a woman with a flat face and high cheekbones. She had night-black hair down to the small of her back and eyes like chips of cobalt. Her skin was soft and dusky like the women of Iskael and Aden. She wore a mirrored corselet over which was drawn an old leather waist jacket. Below that she was clad in butter-soft black fawnskin pants tucked into hunting boots reaching up over her knees. A narrow black leather belt was slung low on her hips, from which hung a long scabbarded hunting knife. She was surprisingly small.

“Is this the real Sardonyx at last?”

“If you wish it so.”

“You are so full of surprises.”

“No more than any other woman.”

“Can we end this now?” he said somewhat harshly. He stepped closer to her and her eyes turned wary.

“End what?”

“Impressing the country bumpkin.”

Her face darkened for a moment as if he had hit a nerve, but when she spoke her voice was very soft. “That was certainly not what I intended.”

“It's the impression you gave.”

“I'm sorry about that. Really I am.”

He said nothing, though he suspected she wanted some kind of confirmation from him, needed it even. But perhaps that was mere fancy on his part. Why on earth should she care what he thought? “I want Aufeya.”

“And me?” she inquired. “Do you not desire me?”

“That would be far too easy. Is this you?”

“It doesn't matter,” she said softly, touching his arm. “I can be anyone you wish.”

“Sanda?”

She became Sanda. “Yes.”

“Elena?”

She became Elena. “Yes.”

“Tsuki?”

There was a moment's hesitation, then Tsuki stood before him. “Even she.”

“It's too much,” he said. “Or too little.”

She returned to the woman with the night-black hair. “I was afraid you would say something like that.” She looked disappointed. “Too rich for your blood.”

“Perhaps another time—”

“Another place.”

“Who can say?”

She smiled. “Go out through the way you came. There is only one staircase to the floor above this one. Aufeya is there. The Bujun woman also.”

“Then we are finished here,” he said, his hand upon his sword-hilt. “You will not prevent us from leaving?”

The night-black hair shivered as she shook her head. “No. Not now. You may leave any time you wish.” She had been standing near the windows and now she moved back into the darkness beyond, fading. “Farewell, Moichi Annai-Nin of Iskael.”

He went out almost immediately. There was no point, he knew, in going after her. Only she had the key to controlling what lay in the blackness. It was a waste of time for him.

Upstairs, he saw Chiisai first. She was bending over a supine figure but she straightened up when she saw him.

“Moichi!” Relief flooded her face. “Thank the gods you're safe. I had no idea what happened to you. As I crossed the threshold I—well, I found myself stumbling around in utter darkness. Then, just as suddenly, I found myself here. Where—?”

“I've been with Sardonyx,” he said, anticipating her query.

“Then you've defeated her,” she said delightedly. “Then we have no worries about the Firemask.”

“The Firemask?” Moichi frowned. “I had forgotten all about that.” How could he have forgotten something so important?

Chiisai grabbed at him. “Moichi, where is she? What happened to Sardonyx?”

He brushed past her, kneeling. “Right now I'm more concerned with Aufeya's condition.” Her face looked pale and drawn and dark blue circles under her eyes looked like massive bruises. He put one hand under her head, lifting it up somewhat.

“Aufeya,” he said softly but urgently. “Aufeya.”

Chiisai was close beside him. “Moichi, where is Sardonyx?”

“Gone,” he said, concentrating on Aufeya. “I know not where. What's the difference, anyway?”

Aufeya opened her eyes. At first they were glazed, but they soon focused and she started when she recognized him.

“Moichi.” It was but a fragile breeze.

“I'm here, Aufeya.”

“She told me you were dead. She said that Hellsturm had—had—” Her eyes welled with tears.

“It's all right,” Moichi comforted her. “I'm here now. Everything's going to be all right.”

But Aufeya continued to weep, saying, “No, you don't understand. It's not all right. When she came to me now and told me—told me you were dead, I gave up all hope.” Her eyes looked at him, pleading forgiveness. “Moichi, I told her—told her my half. She knows—she knows—”

So that's where she went, Moichi thought.

“Now she's got the Firemask,” Chiisai said, her voice like the tolling of heavy bells. “And she means to use it.”

The Opal Moon

He reined in at the foot of the steppes, cursing himself for being taken in by Sardonyx. But, oddly, he felt no anger toward her. She had not deceived him. Her plan was plain enough and he had had ample opportunity to discern it but his brain had been somewhere else.

Beside him, Chiisai looked upward. There was little either of them could do for Aufeya at the moment and, though Moichi had wanted her to stay with the Daluzan woman, he had respected Chiisai's request to accompany him.

“Look,” she said, pointing upward. “I was right.”

Moichi lifted his eyes as they rode on, into the steppes. The moon was riding high and full—impossible, since it had been but a sliver just last night—and it no longer appeared flat. It was round as a ball—fireflashes of silver, pink, emerald and blue winking down at him. He lowered his gaze and stared at Chiisai.

Her face was grim as she nodded. “The legend lives, Moichi. There is little time now.”

Only the bleak stars, dwarfed by the awful opalescent light, to guide them through the hazardous steppes; and ever the great mountains loomed before them, black as onyx in silhouette against the sea of stars ribboning the heavens.

Once they heard a howling, shivering the night, and their luma, normally fearless animals, snorted and reared in terror. But it did not come again and they galloped on, flying through the steppes until, at length, they came to the steep shaled side of the mountains and, gazing upward, saw a spark of light, illuminating for a moment a sharply defined ledge perhaps forty meters up. It came again, then went out.

“Quickly,” Chiisai said, dismounting.

They found the semblance of a path to their left and made all possible speed ascending the rock-strewn face.

Just before they reached the ledge, Moichi stopped them, whispered in Chiisai's ear. “Let me go first. She will be expecting me. If I can distract her—” Chiisai nodded and they crept on.

The moment he reached the ledge, the spark came again and he called out, frightened now that it was already too late. If she had gone through, there was nothing he or anybody else could do.

“Sardonyx!” he called again, his voice echoing off the mountainside hollowly, seeming to mock him. “We have a bargain to complete! I have reconsidered!” He would say anything now to delay her even a moment.

He came along the ledge and, abruptly, the flash of light came again and this time he saw her—a figure blacker than the night—and he came on, crossing her sharp shadow, calling again. And now she heard him.

“Too late, Iskamen. Regrettably, it is too late.”

Something odd in her voice, and as he came closer she turned and he gasped in spite of himself, damping down on the organism's instinctive terror. Felt his mind screaming, Get away from here! Get away now while you still can!

She wore the Firemask.

It was hideous, unholy, the depiction of the ultimate monstrosity. It was beyond the aspect of a gargoyle, beyond any human conception; so alien, in fact, that his brain had a hard time orienting on the information his eyes were relaying back to it. The mask's surface seemed to be composed of some substance with a mirrorlike finish and it was this which sparked now and then in the moonlight. However, here she was, still on the ledge. Beyond her he saw the foreboding blank entrance to a cave, a great gaping maw down which, he felt certain, was the Eye of Time. Why had she hesitated out here? Surely she knew that no mortal could follow her inside the cave once she had donned the Firemask.

“I had hoped that we would not meet like this,” she said calmly, her voice somewhat distorted by the thing she wore. “Not like this, Moichi. I have no desire to oppose you. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

“I wonder why I don't find that in the least flattering,” he said, edging closer to her. His sword was already half out of its scabbard. Still, he was reluctant to draw it fully.

“Now you mock me,” she said sadly. “I do not deserve your contempt.”

“Are you not content with wealth? With your—gift?”

She laughed harshly. “What is wealth but the ultimate illusion. I, better than anyone, know that as truth. What has my wealth brought me but sorrow.”

“What could you expect, sealed away in Mistral? There is all the world out there—waiting for you.”

“The world,” she scoffed, “wants nothing to do with me. It was people who drove me to my asylum of Mistral, Moichi, or didn't you know? Didn't your friend, the bitch of Corruña, tell you that about me?”

“I know nothing of this.”

“And now is not the time to tell you.” She took one step along the ledge toward the cave's waiting mouth.

The whisper of metal in the night as he withdrew his sword.

“Do not oppose me, Moichi. Please.”

“I cannot allow you to enter, Sardonyx.” He raised his weapon.

“Ah,” she said softly. “The final solution.”

“You have your way and I have mine.”

“How true,” she said sadly. And raised her arms.

Then he did jump back, his heart pounding mightily in his chest, for before him crouched not Sardonyx but a creature out of the fevered nightmare of man.

It flapped its leathery wings and opened its all-too-human mouth and he saw the rows of jade teeth as sharp as two-edged sword-blades. It called out, giving off a chilling inhuman cry, and he felt cold sweat break out on his face. The short hairs at the back of his neck raised.

He faced the giant man-bat out of Daluzan mythology and religion. From what deep hell had Sardonyx called it?

Diablura, emperor of the underworld.

Now Chiisai was beside him.

Her sword was drawn but she said to him, “This thing is but an illusion, Moichi. Surely it cannot exist.”

He shook his head. “Illusion or no, Chiisai. It is solid enough and—”

“I don't believe it,” she said, and launched herself past him along the shelf of shale, directly at the diablura.

“Wait!” he cried, but she paid him no heed.

The thing screamed and rose a meter into the air, its wings beating carefully so that it would not hit the projections of the mountainside. It was an eerie, slithering sound that the pocked rock face picked up, echoing and magnifying, until it filled the night like a howl of a demon. The beast raised its lower extremities, two horny four-toed feet ending in long curved talons.

It rushed at Chiisai, claws clicking, and the dai-katana slashed into the thinly furred lower body. It screamed again, its jade teeth blanched in the opal moonlight, and the talons raked at her. She swung the daikatana again but the thing was far too powerful and the talons lashed out in a blur, ripped into her left shoulder. She tried to roll away but the thing had hooked her flesh and she was impaled. Still she fought on with one free arm, the edge of her blade biting into the furred flesh again and again.

She saw what she had to do but lacked the position, caught as she was. And now he saw it, too. He ran at the flapping thing and, lifting his sword high over his head, he slashed downward, through the dusty cartilage of its right wing. It tore like a sail and he was hurled backward against the mountain's face as the diablura lost its balance for a moment and, screaming, flew inward and down.

He coughed in the dust and, swinging again, severed the major cartilage along the upper part of the wing-frame. The diablura's body shuddered as it flailed to regain purchase in the air and Chiisai was swung into an outcropping of rock. Her sword fell from her hand and Moichi rushed toward her. He threw the sword point-first at the thing, saw it bounce off the bony chest and clatter to the floor of the ledge. Stupid. But his only concern now was Chiisai. He grasped her in one arm, cradling her while he worked at the embedded talons with the other.

Freeing her, he laid her down on the rocks and turned to face the diablura. The thing was still flapping its loose and useless appendage, trying to fly, dipping and rising.

He timed it well and, as the diablura neared him, he leapt upon its back. Drawing out one of his dirks, he slit the thing's throat. It wailed and rose upward. Up and up and up, ascending toward the stars, a thin stream of dust, glittery and dry, ribboning the air about it. He seemed high enough now to reach up and grab hold of the opal moon, bring it spinning downward to the earth.