The Trojan Icon (Ethan Gage Adventures Book 8) (17 page)

CHAPTER 21

Astiza

I
was invited to a women’s banquet in what, from a distance, appeared to be a ruin. Balbec Castle is a fossil that must date from medieval times, since the centuries have pitted its walls and its windows are dark arrow slits. Some of the parapets have collapsed into rubble from age and neglect. The fortress overlooks a narrow shepherd’s pass in the Carpathians once used by barbarian raiders, but this threat is as anachronistic as the castle itself. Yet while the aerie is too high and remote for ordinary life or commerce, it is useful as a remote hideaway.

A sinuous ridge wound ten miles upward from village to castle, the world brown and gray as I rode my horse up the rocky path. Lingering snow patches were old and dirty. In the last mile the vegetation disappeared entirely except for lichens on wind-scoured stone. Taller peaks cast Balbec into gloom, and swirling cloud gave it a malevolent air. Thunder rumbled constantly, as if lightning was curiously attracted to its towers. A mournful keening rose and fell with the wind and, as I drew nearer, I saw that the cry’s source was a curious flag. It was a tubular wolf’s-head standard that inflated like a Chinese banner and howled with every breeze.

I trembled with anger that our ‘fellowship’ had gambled my son’s life in this foul place. Yes, I will lead my family out of Balbec Castle. But not necessarily Caleb and Dolgoruki.

My journey began with an invitation. In the deepest dark of the previous night, a leather binder had been slipped under our crude door in the village of Szejmal. Inside was a parchment invitation inked in red from a careful hand.

If you seek unity, come to my castle before sundown tomorrow
. Instead of a signature, there was the outline of a wolf.

And under that,
Alone, to my Banquet of Immortality.

Or he dies.

I left while my husband was still unconscious, reluctantly admitting to Caleb that yes, Ethan might not let me go if awakened. Our resulting plan is quite mad, but Caleb and Dolgoruki have essentially burned our ships and bet all on desperation. Somehow I must distract and bargain with Cezar Dalca. Somehow I must employ my son.

Caleb promised the men will follow but he wasn’t brave enough to even face my gaze. I’d thought his odd glances had been from male desire, but now I know better. He’d planned my sacrifice from the beginning. “Soon, all debts will be balanced,” he promised.

“The woman in Philadelphia? Is that was this is about?”

“It’s about putting things right.”

“You preached reconciliation.”

“I strive for it, but also for justice.”

“Only forgiveness frees the heart. So I forgive you, Caleb.”

He winced as if I’d slapped him.

“But I can never respect you. All you’ve accomplished is to prove you’re a small man, much smaller than my husband or son.”

“Astiza—”

“No antique icon is worth eternal damnation.”

“Can’t you see? This is for all of us.”

But I’d already swung up onto my mare and started her on the road to Balbec. There’s nothing bitterer than revulsion toward one I’d hoped to love as a brother. Nothing more dispiriting than being the pawn of cynical calculation.

I was shadowed. Dalca’s henchmen followed my horse as we climbed, the soldiers flitting from tree to rock on either side. His minions are short and swarthy men, goat-quick, with spears and bows but no firearms. They reinforced my suspicion that I was ascending into the past. The dim history into which I rode was not Egypt’s time of august pharaohs and animal-headed deities. Dalca’s gods are far older, the cruel pagan idols that were once placated by Dacian blood sacrifice and druid incantation. Their god Perun controlled thunder, and Chernobog the underworld.

Would their darkness swallow us now?

The road ended at the lip of a sheer ravine, so deep that I couldn’t see its bottom. A decrepit drawbridge led to a gatehouse and portcullis on the other side. Helmeted sentries watched from a broken rampart, and the entire castle looked gnawed by a dragon. No one challenged, no one beckoned. My horse snorted and shied, as if sensing something wicked in the castle beyond. When I dismounted, she bolted.

I hesitated, my heart beating. But beyond the gate was the higher keep, and two figures peered from there as well. One of them waved. Horus! My heart soared and then settled into resolve. Now I was a lioness, come to recover her cub. I had a mother’s power.

I strode across the drawbridge, boots thumping. At mid-span a board broke from my weight and fell away like a broken bird, hitting the ravine side and dislodging pebbles. I listened to them rattle into the crevasse, making tiny echoes. Then I gathered breath and went on.

The bars of the castle gate had been lifted into the portcullis, bottom spikes pointing downward like daggers. In the gatehouse passageway beyond were dark chutes through which boiling oil could be poured onto invaders. I felt eyes up there, watching me.

The castle courtyard was small, enclosed by walls on three sides and by the castle keep on the fourth. Balbec is not big, and formidable chiefly because it perches on an impregnable pinnacle of rock. Thousand-foot cliffs fell away from its stonework on all sides, gusts buffeting the spire. I wondered if any army had ever successfully stormed it.

Now the Gage family would try.

“Mama!” Harry’s faint cry floated away on the wind to join the mournful howling. I looked up. His head suddenly jerked back as if yanked.

“Horus!” A murder of crows burst from crevices, the birds shrieking abuse before wheeling away. Gargoyles leered from the lip of the battlements.

The keep’s massive wooden door, bound with iron, was firmly shut. No escort had appeared, and no challenge was made. I’d no idea how to enter. I stood for a moment, looking upward for another sign of my son. He’d disappeared. There was a ponderous squeal from the portcullis behind me and I turned to watch the iron grill of the main gate descend until its points ground onto the paving stones, locking me in. So I turned back. Carved over the archway, I noted, was the bas-relief of a swollen spider.

Dalca’s web had trapped me.

It was only when I was safely sealed that there was a clank of machinery behind the keep door. With a slow grind, the entrance cracked open. Then the machinery stopped. There was just room enough to squeeze through, and beyond was dark silence.

I reminded myself of lioness courage and pushed inside.

Two bars of gray light fell from arrow-slit windows to faintly illuminate the reception room. The stone heads of demons peered down, as well as the stuffed heads of bear, wolf, and stag. I seemed alone with this menagerie and wondered who’d opened the door until a voice came out of the shadows.

“He’s waiting.”

A servant materialized, so tall and thin as to be cadaverous. The room was barren of furniture. “Cezar Dalca’s quarters are below. You’re a sorceress of Egypt?”

“Scholar. Priestess.”

“Magician.”

“Where’s Horus?”

“Come and see.”

A spiral stair was hewn into stone. Torches gave undulating light. We descended into bedrock and I surmised that the castle’s foundation was a hive of excavated tunnels where the dark duke could lead a troglodyte existence away from the sun. The rock gleamed where it sweated. At the base of the stairs, two stone dragons stood guard like the two lions at the Temple of Sibyl.

Dalca’s reception hall was a windowless cave with a vaulted ceiling reinforced by stout stone pillars, like the chamber of a mine. It was warmer than the chilly anteroom above, almost uncomfortably so. His refuge had a cellar smell. Thick woolen Turkish carpets covered the floor, their patterns long-faded. Ragged tapestries decorated the walls, eaten by moths or vermin. Between the hangings were the antlers and horns of a dozen species, along with battered shields and antique weapons. There were runes incised near the ceiling, and an un-lidded stone sarcophagus to the left. A bed?

A fireplace and hewn chimney explained the heat. Three lanterns cast pools of illumination. The eye skipped from one light to the next until finally settling on a candelabrum thick with old wax that burned at the far end of the hall. It lit a raised wooden platform that bore my host on a lazy throne. Dalca reclined on a gilded Roman-style settee with Egyptian decoration. Servants squatted in the shadows nearby. Also standing sentry were two human skulls on pedestals, one of each end of the platform.

My host liked theater, I decided. He relied on fear.

“So you’ve come for immortality,” he greeted in a guttural voice.

Dalca was corpulent almost beyond belief, his face bloated, his arms and legs swollen, his belly round as a balloon, and the mass of him compressing the couch like the weight of a planet. He seemed not just fat but swollen, like a tick, head sunken toward his shoulders, neck lost behind jowls, fat and immobile. Was he carried from place to place?

My host’s hands, in contrast, were thin, with long, skeletal fingers, and his feet seemed tiny. A smaller man had once inhabited his bones. Dalca’s bulk was exaggerated even more by his sumptuous costume of rich brocades, velvets, and a collar of wolf fur, a layered ménage of clothes that seemed cobbled together from several centuries. The heavy gold chain of office that hung from his shoulders seemed inspired by portraits of ministers from three centuries before. He had round gold earrings in each ear, pit-like eyes, and a thick beard that meshed with the tangled hair that fell to his shoulders like a mad monk. His chest visibly rose and fell as he sat, as if breathing took conscious effort, and his thick lips were the color of liver. His nose was as rumpled as the country we had ridden through, perhaps broken in old battles. His face was creased and pocked.

In sum he was the most hideous man I’d ever seen, as forbidding as a leper. No wonder he lived a recluse. This beast desired beauties?

“I’ve come for my son.” My voice quavered slightly as I said it, making me furious at my own tremble. Courage! My weapon must be my wits.

“And the whelp has been waiting.” Shadows shifted and one of Dalca’s soldiers dragged something into the light. To my fury I saw it was Horus in an iron slave collar, chained to his captor’s belt like a dog. He was squirming under his keeper’s grip.

“Mama!” He twisted enough to break free. But when he ran toward me he was snapped short by the chain and fell on his rump. Servants laughed.

I, in turn, was blocked from rushing to embrace him. The sallow escort who’d led me downward spread his arms to prevent me from advancing, and I stopped short lest I wind up in his foul embrace.

“Let me hug my son!”

“It’s enough that he’s here,” Dalca replied.

“It’s not enough for a mother, kidnapper. It’s not enough when my heart has been torn from my breast. Horus!”

My son half-choked as his captor leaned back against the throat chain, his sneer casual and cruel.

“If you don’t let me touch him, I’ll not attend your banquet.”

Dalca frowned. “Then you’ll abandon your boy.”

“Until I come back with an army.” I turned. Squat sentries moved to prevent any retreat. They were not just Tartar in stature but almost dwarfish, as if malformed in some troubled experiment. This was a truly evil place. I whirled to face Dalca again. “Or until I summon my own magic. I warn all of you, I’ve plumbed the ancient texts. I’ve memorized the incantations.”

The imps actually stepped back.

Dalca’s reply was mild. “Such threats from a companion mind! I’m disappointed, sorceress.”

Now I was filled with lioness spirit, and addressed him with fury. “I’m disappointed how a duke of Transylvania treats a pilgrim family and blackmails a mother into accepting his invitation. Disappointed that Dalca’s soldiers show their strength by bullying a little boy. Disappointed that their ruler fears a mother’s love. Disappointed that the great Cezar Dalca hides in the bowels of the earth behind demon carvings and deer antlers.”

At last I elicited a scowl. “Your own fellowship sold your boy into my service. You came here of your own free will, as required. Do you always insult your host?”

“Only when he foully kidnaps.”

“Purchased, I said.”

“Enslaved. If you want my attendance at this banquet of yours, you must let me comfort my son.”

The room went quiet, his power and my will gripped like wrestlers. I was outmatched, and yet I also sensed the faintest thread of fear in the chamber. This castle was under Dalca’s spell, but I’d brought in memory of the righteous outside world. Finally the duke gave a dismissive grunt and limply waved his hand, as if it were effort to raise his wrist. “Let them touch.”

The leash-man led my son forward, unnecessarily jerking the collar, but my dour escort stood aside and at last I embraced my weeping boy. I hugged Horus fiercely, my mouth to his ear, whispering courage. My son looked up at me with wide eyes, full of fear and hope at what I murmured. I gave him a solemn nod even though I’d no faith that what I promised was true. Yet it was our only chance. Then I turned to Dalca. “For that small mercy to a devoted mother, I thank you.”

“You have the temper of a she-bear,” he grumbled. Then he looked at his servants and barked a laugh. “My other women are quieter.”

They cackled as if this were the height of wit.

“I’m not your woman. And I am a lioness, not a bear.”

“But you’ve acceded to my banquet?” He nodded to himself. “Come, I tire of the same faces. First we’ll have an exchange of philosophies. Yes, step under that lamp where I can best see you. Your boy is only here to prevent you from being rash. I’ve lived a long time, and learned to take precautions.”

Even from ten feet away I could smell his odor, a stink like bad cheese. Dalca was sick, I guessed, gripped by some corruption that bloated him. “You struggle to breathe?”

“Heavy from a recent meal.” He shrugged, as if his sluggishness was normal, or even necessary. “You think me grotesque. Don’t deny it, all do, so I’ve removed myself like a dutiful outcast so as not to offend precious sensibilities. Oh yes, I make sacrifices. I observe propriety. I leave this place only for the most urgent necessities. But I’m also an intellectual, a scholar of mystery, and a collector of antiquities. I was informed of your coming, and told of your past, and I understand you’re a student as well. We aren’t meant to quarrel, you and I. We’re similar beings.”