Bloodstone (24 page)

"I'm in a reckless mood tonight! Pray, shine light through the darkness of my poor ignorance."

He was silent for a long time. Evening gathered over Arellarti, where a dark star shone in the city's heart. Teres scraped her finger along the tower window, struggling with the tormenting dichotomy of anger and love she felt toward Kane.

"How old am I, Teres?" Kane asked suddenly.

The question seemed pointless. "Outwardly you look perhaps ten years my senior. But your manner hints of greater experience, and since you ask so ominously, let me hang another ten years of infamy on your shoulders."

"And if I told you that outwardly my body has remained unchanged for more than ten times the years you acribe to me?"

Teres stared at him in disbelief, wondering what game he played with her. The. Southern Lands stood along the frontier of mankind's emerging civilization; here sorcery was not the familiar force it might be on the greater continents. Teres had heard countless dark tales, but she had little firsthand knowledge of magic, aside from the trivial displays of hedge wizards... and the awesome secrets the priests of Ommem were said to guard.

"You don't look like those gnarled and ancient sorcerers I've heard about, who crouch in their towers for generations, mumbling foul incantations, glutting their depraved minds with secret and damnable knowledge. Though there's madness in your eyes, I find you human enough. Your blood ran red as any man's that day by the Macewen."

Kane's gesture was impatient. He had started to bare something of his soul to her and found her reception indifferent. "Your acquaintance with occult powers is limited, I think you'll agree. A man can be immortal, in that Time's destroying breath cannot wither his physical being. So long as such a man eluded death by violence, he might live to wander through centuries... watch present become history, history pass into legend, legend fade beyond the memory of man. Wounded, his body would heal without a scar, endlessly rejuvenated to the state it held at the instant of an insane god's curse."

"Immortality is not deemed a curse."

"What do mortals know? Flesh can heal, but the soul can be scarred! To be doomed to wander through eternity... branded an outcast, no land to call home, no man to name friend! Whatever he seeks to love--to grasp--slips through his embrace inevitably. Age consumes the bones of his hope. The loneliness! Only memories, cold phantoms to torture his dreams. And the hideous, smothering boredom that creeps more stifling with each decade, as the taste of life's frantic delights and transient interests grows stale and dry upon his spirit! It is a curse that waxes less endurable with each passing year. Imagine, if you can, how infinitely precious any chance to discover new adventure would become to this man!"

"Suicide is not an infrequent surcease to despair," she replied cynically.

"And suicide would be the ultimate surrender to the malevolent will of the god who damned him!" he fiercely proclaimed.

"Why was this man doomed to such an existence?" Teres asked uncertainly, wondering how much credence to give Kane's rambling discourse.

But Kane lapsed into reticence, evidently regretting his outburst of emotion. "Perhaps I share something of this man's spirit," he stated vaguely. "I seek more from Bloodstone than the serpent-fanged majesty of rulership, though I'll not deny the game of empire intrigues me. .

"Bloodstone's power is as limitless as the energy that drives the cosmos, holds the dimensions of alien universes within their separate planes. There are countless channels into which I can direct this power. You've seen its energy transmute crude materials into wondrous substances; its furnaces could pour forth gold or diamonds, as readily as they transform swamp muck into steel-hard bronze. Bloodstone's power could annihilate a nation, or raise new lands from the depths of the sea. You're witness as it rebuilds a dead city. Soon you'll behold the destruction of armies!

"But another facet of Bloodstone's power holds greater. promise and fascination. There are certain flaws and folds in the fabric of the interdimensional planes... points where lines in the cosmic lattice impinge upon one another. The cosmos is a realm that Bloodstone courses through, like a ship on some fantastic sea. Its creators harnessed its energies to give the crystal control over these gateways through the universe. Thus, by the power of this ring, I can direct Bloodstone to project my body through its energy field--through these interdimensional passageways--and into the point of focus where the passages open onto our world. By the same power, I can return to Arellarti when I desire. You've already seen me accomplish this--the night I returned from Selonari to spare your life, the other times I've left here and returned again. There are only eight points within the Southern Lands where this focus occurs, and three are yet too far from here for Bloodstone to transport me. Fortunately one such point is in the cellar of an abandoned palace in Selonari; another is a cave just a few hours' ride from Breimen. It's curious that these points of focus all are in places about which macabre legends have grown up.

"When Bloodstone attains its full power, I can travel through any of these gateways... wherever they emerge upon the Earth. In the first days of its rebirth, Bloodstone could not have projected my body beyond these walls. But the time is not distant when I can journey beyond the Western Sea to any of the fabled continents of our world, lands where man has only begun to cast his shadow! And unless I misread the hints which flicker through Bloodstone's secret thoughts, its power can transport me to the stars and beyond! Bloodstone is a key to the limitless cosmos from which it draws energy; when the key is forged completely, it shall unlock the doors of the infinite... and I will be master of its secrets! What hold will the specter of boredom have upon me when the mysteries of the cosmos open to my touch!

"The full range of Bloodstone's power is incalculable. Even an imagination as jaded as mine falters incredulously at the images which flash like dying stars across the blackness of its mind! And I can only grasp the implications of its thought that have meaning to the human mind! What further mysteries pulse within its crystal depths defies all comprehension!

"Think well on this, Teres! Am I madman or traitor, because I hold the key to such unimaginable power... and dare to use it? Could any man ever offer to share with you a vision such as mine?"

Her sinister forebodings seemed less substantial to her as the force of Kane's zeal washed over her thoughts. His arguments were insidious; instinctively she knew them to be the logic of soulless evil, but reason could not always deny the rationality with which they were structured.

"I don't know, Kane," she replied uncertainly. "Somehow I know that your thoughts are subtle poison, hateful to all I believe in."

"And by what sanctity do your cherished values stand pristine from the tide of challenging ideas?" he asked sardonically.

"Let me think, Kane. Let me think for myself."

When it came, it was there. Perhaps it had been there already, held back by denial. Maybe it had come upon her gradually. Teres only knew that it was there, irrepressible the instant of realization.

Kane had returned at night. He evidently stole away whenever he could do so, although his absence could be disastrous if noticed. And Teres knew that. the cursory attention he gave to affairs of Arellarti could not justify the risks he took in returning so often.

He had brought some wine, some few provisions to spice the unpalatable fare the Rillyti served them. They were sitting close, feeling the rush of the heady wine. Kane made some chance remark that brought laughter to Teres.

How long since last I laughed? mused Teres dizzily, wondering that so human a sound could ring in this alien city. Their eyes met, held in the silence after her laugh.

Kane leaned forward, cupped her head in his hand. Automatically Teres thought to pull away, but feeling a stirring in her breast, she held her ground. Their lips met softly, and her eyes closed as they kissed. As she sensed his presence enfolding her, her thoughts swirled in a vortex of conflicting emotions.

One half of her won out, and Teres returned the kiss insistently. In that instant she knew she would not draw away from his touch, nor hold back the feelings that coursed through her being. Her arms reached to take his shoulders, anchor against their strength as the long-denied storm of emotion engulfed them both.

They made love with a wild awkwardness that first night--exploring--as if amazed at the newness they found, in one another and in themselves. The surging power that overwhelmed them was almost brutal in its intensity, and their bodies tossed upon the fur robes as if in combat. Afterwards, the passion they had shared left both of them shaken--purged, and at once fulfilled.

An odd languor of contentment warmed Teres as she lay across Kane's chest, head under his chin. Her unbound hair spilled over their flesh like stolen sunlight, rippling through Kane's fingers as he stroked smooth their tangled tresses. Forgotten in their frenzy, Kane's dagger lay atop a pile of crumpled clothing. It would be so easy to snatch it up, to drive its point through this sated brute's unsuspecting heart.

But Teres knew she would not. Whatever villainy Kane might be plotting for tomorrow, tonight they were together as two people in love. Love? she mused. A sickly word, synonym for weakness--so she had thought. This could not be love they shared, for this was strength, not flutter-hearted mooning.

Kane's eyes met hers. She knew his look had followed hers to the nearby dirk, his thoughts drifting with hers. There was a smile on his lips as he sensed her rejection of the weapon's temptation.

Noting his smile, Teres twisted upon him, threw her knees astride his hips, and leaned forward as if to pin his shoulders. "Are you purring, you great grinning tomcat?" she hissed in his face. "Because I choose to lie with you, don't imagine in your smug contentment that you're my master. I propose to take you at your promise, Kane--to share as equals what fate gives to us each. But the day you expect submission from Teres... for that gloating conceit, I'll kill you with my bare hands!"

"Your warning is one I'll honor!" Kane laughed and sealed her lips with his. Then, as Teres felt their passion blaze afresh, she enfolded him in her velvet-soft embrace and jarred breath from him with the steel that lay within.

The autumn was fading, and night came sooner now than when Teres had ridden with an army from the gates of Breimen. So few weeks, she reflected, lying sleepless against Kane's shoulder. How disordered her existence had become. It should have taken longer to tear loose the pattern that a lifetime had woven.

Tendrils of evil light shone green through the tower window. It watches us here, mused Teres. Kane had laughed when she curtained the opening, but to her the baleful glow profaned their lovemaking. The light from Bloodstone reached into the sky now, like some demented moon that had fallen to earth, still shedding sickly luminance. Along the borders, men spoke uneasily of the uncanny glow that seeped through the nighttime mists of Kranor-Rill, so Kane told her. Their notice worried him little, however, since he confidently foretold the triumph of his plans before winter's advent. The second stage of the ruinous war between Breimen and Selonari was not far distant, nor would many more weeks pass before Arellarti would be completed according to the masterplan of its eons-vanished Krelran founders.

But with each passing day, Teres's spirit troubled her more. Kane's venture could only loose evil upon the Earth, of this she was convinced. And although his vivid dreams of immeasurable power tempted her desperately, it went against her soul to aid him in this effort. There was no escaping the recognition that Kane meant to overturn the world she knew... to make men slaves to this horror from Earth's savage dawn.

She loved Kane--or if this was not love they shared, she cared not to learn what love might be. For a time she had told herself that it was in her power to deter Kane from the evil he meant to do--persuade him to abandon this madness and go somewhere else with her. Even when she tried every wile, every subtlety she could command, Kane's obsession remained unswerving. Bitterly Teres accepted defeat in this battle, and the knowledge of her failure left her tormented with indecision.

Stealthily she slipped from Kane's side to draw closer the vagrant curtains. She glimpsed the gleaming dome through the shifting folds. Its coruscant glow loomed over Arellarti, washed like the tide about their tower.

Kane stirred fitfully in his sleep as she rearranged the furs to nestle against him. With a frown she noticed the sinister ring on his hand. It, too, shed soft luminescence, ominous in the night. Ordinarily her eyes shunned the malevolent ring, whose gem, Kane said, was brother to the giant crystal within the dome. Tonight she looked closely at the ring, noting in growing alarm that the pulsations of light in the scarlet veins of the gem matched the heartbeat she felt in Kane's chest.

He was deep in dreams tonight, so that a thought came to her. Cautiously she touched the ring, wondering if she might wrest it loose without waking him. The fit looked to be a tight one, but perhaps she could slip it free and smash it with a blow, before Kane realized her intention. The gem repelled her touch with unearthly chill. Tentatively she sought to twist the ring loose.

Teres bit her lip to stifle her scream. For the silver-white metal of the ring was fused to the flesh of Kane's finger.

Her face was hot and pale, her eyes reddened, when Kane awoke to kiss her in the morning light. "What is it?" he inquired anxiously, when her lips brushed his with unwonted apathy. "Didn't you sleep?"

"I lay awake though much of the night," she answered. "I think the fever returns."

"Then I wish you had awakened me. My sleep was without rest, for I sank into dreams I like not to recall." His fingers caressed her face tenderly, swept away the trailing blond tendrils that streaked her haggard face. Her flesh recoiled from the cold touch of the ring.