Part 13 (2/2)
She rounded a corner of the hedge and stopped before a spot where the bushes were cut square. Smiling impishly over her shoulder, the witch walked straight at the thick shrubbery-and disappeared as she struck its surface.
Gonji made to follow, seating his swords properly in his sash. Salguero touched his shoulder, a look of concern tugging the crinkles around his eyes.
”We risk G.o.ds judgment, I fear, Gonji, being parties to such sorcery.”
”We bring no harm to anyone, senchoo, in exploring the worlds wonders. Come, lets see what shes about.”
Gonji steeled himself and stepped into the hedge. There was a moment of vertigo and blindness. He sucked in a cold breath. A sensation of weightlessness, then his feet struck solid ground, his knees buckling slightly as though he had missed a stair. He caught himself, felt the sobering wash of icy wind about him, and saw the smiling face of Domingo.
They were on some lofty height in the night sky. He recognized the embrasures almost at once. It was the turret of the drum tower.
”Youd best move aside before your companions run you down.”
He walked to the embrasure and peered down into the garden below. There he saw the small figures of his three companions speaking, and then Salguero inching forward toward the hedge. The captains arms appeared out of thin air over the stone turret floor. They were withdrawn sharply. Then Salguero came through in a rush, sword at the ready. He nearly ran into the witch, backed away and cast about for orientation. He relaxed when he saw Gonji.
Orozco tumbled through next, rolling to a seat, his pistol drawn. Next came Buey, roaring and raising a giant fist.
They could not help sharing a laugh when theyd gathered their senses.
Domingo escorted them down a dark winding stairway that coursed the central shaft of the great tower. She brought them shortly into an amazing room, lit by phosph.o.r.escent glows with no apparent source and bedecked with the arcana of her secret gramaryes, objects of her mystical crafts. The mildewed walls were covered with charts and scrolls and drawings filled with crabbed script in unknown languages. Flasks and retorts bearing murky fluids and unseemly life-forms lined the shelves. An enormous central work table, filled with geometric instruments and writing materials, piled high with parchments and dusty tomes, dominated the chambers center.
”Here is something wonderful that youll appreciate, Red Blade.” Domingo circled her hands in opposing orbits, and immediately there appeared in the air over the table a fragile network of concentric spheres, constructed of a pellucid material interconnected by lines of thin web, rotating slowly at various speeds, the webwork elongating, shortening, and disappearing as necessary.
”The seafarers who sail abroad and chart their findings call their work cartography. But what would they call this? Worlds within...and without. Round, they are, you see, as is our world. Eh, we stand...here.”
She pointed with a finger, and a shaft of white light leapt from the tip to enter the network and set a tiny spark glowing on one of the inner spheres.
”But this shows you little. Watch.”
The witch mumbled in a low voice and performed a series of hand manipulations, working at objects in the air visible only to her. Beside the intricate display, another began to appear, its twin. But now on this new one, each of the delicate spheres began to peel open, to flatten into a plane figure, beginning with the outermost and continuing, each in turn, until the figure became a fanned-out conjunction of transparent maps, all rotating on the same axis. The perpetually moving figure came alive with scintillas, pinpoints of white light, where the turning planes touched one another at various points. The centermost featured the greatest display of lights, and as the guests watched, they noted that some of the lights were not stationary. These flitted from one map to another and still another, leaving traceries of light like shooting stars behind them.
”Corridors and gateways, you see,” she explained, ”from one sphere to another. Ours-there-is not one of the more active, but it is still connected at points to the others. Locating and using the gateways is all the rage in sorcery today. Some things seek to enter, to escape. Others merely to use our sphere as a stepping-stone to other worlds. This is all rather new to me. Ive taken little interest in opening gateways, but Ive been quite enthralled with the possibilities inherent in reshaping s.p.a.ces to suit my needs. My convenience, as youve all seen. But there are other powers, dread powers, that would map the gateways for their own aggrandizement. Oh, yes, captain, the things you would call evil are quite fond of using the gateways.
”In recent years, it seems travel between spheres has been facilitated by activity in regions of great knowledge, great sensitivity involving the gateways. The designer-G.o.d who set the spheres spinning, it would appear, created a world of infinite possibilities, maximum s.p.a.ce efficiency. Room for endless growth. Seemingly, that knowledge was lost for eons, so I have heard. Why, I cannot discern. But we live in an age of epochal change, and I submit that we also occupy an area-a rather large area-of considerable importance to the operating forces. Again, whether the guiding forces are good or evil, I cannot tell. Perhaps theyre simply...amoral, as I, eh, captain? Would that give you comfort or anguish?”
Salguero did not answer, rapt by the mystical phenomenon he observed, as were the others. But Gonji had been sifting through his memories and intuitions all the while, searching for the right words to frame his anxieties.
”Senora Malaga,” the samurai queried with furrowed brow, ”what other areas of...sensitivity, as you say, can you find on the map of our world?”
She nodded somberly. ”Si, this is why I have decided to show all this to you, Red Blade. You know something of this...true nature of the cosmos, do you not? By your legend, you seem to have run afoul of the powers that hold sway near several of the most active gateways. See here-” She pointed to spots on the gently revolving planes. ”The gateways open and close for various time spans-all much accelerated by the action of my construct, so that I may see the patterns unfold without waiting hours or even days. The patterns that I call, for descriptions sake, the 'most viable, are those which occur in the tightest and most symmetrical geometric figures. We are here-the western tip of a diamond of high interspheric activity. The giant you met stumbled through here-from one of the larger worlds, but at a point corresponding to the eastern point of the diamond.”
Domingo looked at Gonji tellingly.
”Which is?”
”The Carpathians, on our world. Have I not heard you called Deathwind of Vedun? I know of Vedun, and of its past and present fate. All adepts do. Were you not a partic.i.p.ant in an action in which the ancient city was destroyed, once again?”
The color fled Gonjis cheeks, and he swallowed, though he gave no response. But Domingo continued.
”Once Urso came through, he found he could not return. Hostile powers were in control of the worlds which touched that gateway. The adept who conducted him through was abducted-or worse. I discovered our giant, starving on a barren fragment of an inhospitable world, as I explored the reaches of the gateway here. They touch, you see. The power that controls all points of the geometric figure-our diamond-can strike out at the entire area it encompa.s.ses. On all the worlds the figure touches.
”The north and south tips,” she went on, ”lie in northeastern France and-here-the African desert. At every point there lies a fortress. A castle or stronghold of ancient and nameless construction. I myself, despite an enormous body of family lore and a rich heritage of esoteric knowledge, cannot say who erected this place where we stand. Or why. Have you not given thought to the unstrategic position Castle Malaguer occupies? Have you not seen other fortifications in your journeys, weirdly situated, causing you to wonder what possessed their architects to sink the first pilings?”
In truth, Gonji had given no thought to Castle Malaguers site; the Spanish savannahs afforded little in the way of natural support to a fortress. But he had indeed seen castles standing in the most untenable positions. Had even joined the tragic defenders of more than one.
But now something else broke the surface of his memory.
”What do you know of a place called Akryllon?”
”Akryllon?” Domingo repeated in surprise. ”That sank ages ago, didnt it? It should have. Dont tell me you seek Akryllon. Now there is a place that would fit your definition of evil, Captain Salguero. The Church could have fallen to crusading convulsions over Akryllon. It was an island, perhaps a continent. No one can say for sure. A place that loved power for its own sake above all else, at any rate. The masters of Akryllon would employ any means, however perverse, to set themselves over their fellows. What they could not control, they set about destroying. So the legends tell us.”
”Its spoken of as a...floating island,” Gonji said. ”A mystical land that appears where it wills and defies efforts at locating it. Is it possible that so large a gateway between worlds might exist? Large enough for an entire island to pa.s.s through?”
Domingo tilted her head in consideration of what Gonji proposed. ”Im not sure. Ive never seen so large a disturbance. But then, you must remember that Ive only mapped such worlds as Ive discovered. They are far more numerous. Perhaps even infinite. As I said, this is not a serious study with me, merely a recent avocation. I have my gardens and my art-Ive shown you little of that. But if Akryllon still exists, then it would surely fit your friends definition of evil. And yet I am not interested in mapping the relative moralities of a complex cosmic network. I simply had an intuition that you, Gonji, should be shown this evidence of the myriad wonders about us.”
She peered off into the distance, her vision unfocused, reflective, as she went on. ”Because...somehow...your aura, samurai, does indeed agitate the Powers that rule this strange interspheric universe. And there is no doubt in my mind that evil weaves in and out of the doorways to these many, connected, concentric worlds.”
”With h.e.l.l at the center of it all?” Orozco asked, eyeing the twinkling plane in the middle of the display.
”Perhaps so,” she said flatly.
Gonjis mouth formed into a grim, pensive line. His brow furrowed, and his intense gaze shone, as if he witnessed an epiphany, there in that haunting, mystical map that rotated gently in the air like a spiritual oasis.
Or a mirage.
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
Gonjis party rejoined the anxious troop of lancers early the next morning.
The sorceress provided an escort of mercenaries who accompanied them back through the valley toward Barbaso. They were troubled by no menace, common or astounding, as they made their way over the stamped snow. The gray sky was etched with a bright-seamed promise of the suns appearance later in the day.
”You trust her,” Captain Salguero said, riding beside the samurai.
”Hai. Malicious deceivers rarely reveal so much of their secret selves, and with so much enthusiasm, neh? And you?”
”I suppose she won me over as well. But I dont like it. Weve probably all been bewitched-”
”Something in that wine,” Orozco said, piping in from behind them as he removed his morion and rubbed his aching head.
The captain grunted in a.s.sent. ”But I dont know how Ill manage to convince Barbaso of her honorable intentions, the truce and all. They want blood-”
Orozco snorted. ”And golden granadillas.”
The captains head tossed in amus.e.m.e.nt. ”And I cant say that I approve of her dabbling in sorcery any more than I did before. Somehow I feel its a lost cause. Even if I convince Barbaso, what do I do about Holy Mother Church, and my orders?”
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