Part 45 (2/2)

”Why not?”

”We were from different... backgrounds.” I turned to see her face peering at me, seeming as large as the sun in the sky. ”I think it would be difficult to explain to you, Marissa. It had something to do with religion.”

”Religion.” Again she rolled a word off her tongue as if trying to get the taste of a new and exotic food. ”I am not certain that I understand.”

”We believed in different things-or, more accurately, she believed and I didn't.”

”And there was no room for... compromise?”

”In this, no. But the ironic part of all of it is that now I have begun to believe, if just a little bit; and she, I think, has begun to disbelieve some of what she had always held sacred.”

”How sad,” Marissa said. ”Will you go back to her?”

”Our time has long pa.s.sed.”

Something curious had come into her eyes. ”Then you believe that love has a beginning and an end, always.”

I could no longer bear to have those fantastic eyes riveting me. ”I had thought so.”

”Why do you look away?”

”I-” I watched the sky. The cloud-castle had metamorphosed into a great humpbacked bird. ”I don't know.”

Her eyes were very clear, piercing though the natural light was dusky. ”We are explorers,” she said, ”at the very precipice of time.” Something in her voice drew me. ”Can there really be a love without end?”

Now she began to search my face in detail as if she were committing it to memory, as if she might never see me again. And that wild thought brought me fully out of my peaceful dozing.

”Do you love me?”

”Yes,” I whispered with someone else's voice. Like a dry wind through sere reeds. And pulled her down to me.

At night we seemed even closer. It was as if I had taken a bit of the sun to bed with me: she was as radiant at night as she was during the day, light and supple and so eager to be held, to be caressed. To be loved.

”Feel how I feel,” she whispered, trembling, ”when I am close to you.” She stretched herself over me. ”The mouth can lie with words but the body cannot. This heat is real. All love flows out through the body, do you know that?”

I was beyond being able to respond verbally.

She moved her fingertips on me, then the petal softness of her palms. ”I feel your body. How you respond to me. Its depth. As if I were the moon and you the sea.” Her lips were at my ear, her esses sibilant. ”It is important. More important than you know.”

”Why?” I sighed.

”Because only love can mend my heart.”

I wondered at the scar there. I moved against her, opening her legs.

”Darling!”

I met Morodor on the first day of my second week at Fuego del Aire. And then it seemed quite by chance.

It was just after breakfast and Marissa had gone back to her room to change. I was strolling along the second-floor bal.u.s.trade when I came across a niche in the wall that I had missed before.

I went through it and found myself on a parapet along the jutting north side of the castle. It was like hanging in mid-air and I would have been utterly stunned by the vista had I not almost immediately run into a dark towering shape.

Hastily I backed up against the stone wall of the castle, thinking I had inadvertently run into another outcropping of this odd structure.

Then, quite literally, it seemed as if a shadow had come to life. It detached itself from the edge of the parapet and now I could see that it was the figure of a man.

He must have been nearly seven feet tall and held about him a great ebon cape, thick and swirling, that rushed down his slender form so that it hissed against the stone floor when he moved.

He turned toward me and I gasped. His face was long and narrow, as bony as a corpse's, his skin fully as pale. His eyes, beneath darkly furred brows, were bits of bituminous matter as if put there to plug a pair of holes into his interior. His nose was long and thin to the point of severity but his lips were full and rubicund, providing the only bit of color to his otherwise deathly pallid face.

His lips opened infinitesimally and he spoke my name. Involuntarily, I shuddered and immediately saw something pa.s.s across his eyes: not anger or sorrow but rather a weary kind of resignation.

”How do you do.”

The greeting was so formal that it startled me and I was tongue-tied. After all this time, he had faded from my mind and now I longed only to be with Marissa. I found myself annoyed with him for intruding upon us.

”Morodor,” I said. I had the oddest impulse to tell him that what he needed most was a good dose of suns.h.i.+ne. That almost made me giggle. Almost.

”Pardon me for saying this but I thought... that is, to see you up and around, outside in the daylight-” I stopped, my cheeks burning, unable to go on. I had done it anyway. I cursed myself for the fool that I was.

But Morodor took no offense. He merely smiled-a perfectly ghastly sight-and inclined his head a fraction. ”A rather common misconception,” he said in his disturbing, rumbling voice. ”It is in fact direct sunlight that is injurious to my health. I am like a fine old print.” His dark hair brushed against his high forehead. ”I quite enjoy the daytime, otherwise.”

”But surely you must sleep sometime.”

He shook his great head. ”Sleep is unknown to me. If I slept, I would dream and this is not allowed me.” He took a long hissing stride along the parapet. ”Come,” he said. ”Let us walk.” I looked back the way I had come and he said, ”Marissa knows we are together. Do not fear. She will be waiting for you when we are finished.”

Together we walked along the narrow parapet. Apparently, it girdled the entire castle, for I saw no beginning to it and no end.

”You may wonder,” Morodor said in his booming, vibratory voice, ”why I granted you this interview.” His great cape swept around him like the coils of a midnight sea so that it seemed as if he kept the night around him wherever he went. ”I sensed in your writing a certain desperation.” He turned to me. ”And desperation is an emotion with which I can empathize.”

”It was kind of you to see me.”

”Kind, yes.”

”But I must confess that things have... changed since I wrote that letter.”

”Indeed.” Was that a vibratory warning?

”Yes,” I plunged onward. ”In fact, since I came here, I-” I paused, not knowing how to continue. ”The change has come since I arrived at Fuego del Aire.”

Morodor said nothing and we continued our perambulation around the perimeter of the castle. Now I could accurately judge just how high up we were. Perhaps that mist I had seen the first night had been a cloud pa.s.sing us as if across the face of the moon. And why not? All things seemed possible here. It struck me as ridiculous that just fifty miles from here there were supertankers and express trains, Learjets and paved streets lined with shops dispensing sleekly packaged products manufactured by multinational corporations. Surely all those modern artifacts were part of a fading dream I once had.

The sea was clear of sails for as far as the horizon. It was a flat and glittering pool there solely for the pleasure of this man.

”I'm in love with your sister.” I had blurted it out and now I stood stunned, waiting, I suppose, for the full brunt of his wrath.

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