Part 36 (1/2)
”What?!”
For in truth, only Orozco and Buey remained among those who had experienced it with him.
They kicked on through the sifting sands, grunting out anguished prayers and oaths. The fortress spindled higher in the sky, then began to shorten, to shrink back toward its sand-sunk pilings, losing all its features, a dissolving column of granite, to their perspective.
And now, on either side of them, outcroppings of stone flicked into view, growing, broadening-a graveyard. Huge monuments and headstones flitted past too quickly to be read, though some of them strained to discern what creatures might rest here.
”This is an abomination-”
”Unhallowed ground-Ill not die here!”
”Keep riding!” Gonji fumed, drawing the Sagami in threat. ”Were fighting to live, not to die!”
The frantic refugees scalps bristled to see the headstones grow from needles to wedges to flat, two-dimensional tablets that reversed just as swiftly. It reminded Gonji of the foreshortened doorways in the magic corridor of Domingos castle. The sand turned gray, then black, then became too coa.r.s.e for sand at all, crackling under their horses hooves.
The Moriscos took note first: They were no longer in the Sahara of the only world they all had known.
The fortress compressed, enfolded, shriveled inside itself, somehow, from without-that was the only way their tortured minds could process the visual phenomenon. The graveyard ended. The sky changed to a sharper, deeper black, the stars s.h.i.+fting their patterns, a cold wind arising out of nowhere to buffet them as they plunged into its seethe- ”No-no-no!”
They reined in. Their quest had ended. They dismounted before the solitary granite block that alone broke the surface of the ashen ground. It was perhaps twenty feet wide and three deep. The top of a gatehouse. At the front of its base could be seen the grating of a portcullis, whose greater portion lay buried in the ground. There was no sense to it, even were this the sand-blown ruin of an ancient fortification. For there was no housing into which the portcullis could be raised.
The Fortress of the Dead was a sham, a senseless fragment of a castles unrelated structures.
They were speechless, emotionally benumbed. And then Cardenas, circling the stone with widening eyes and a tremble on his lips, began to laugh. He laughed the laugh of the moon-maddened. Of the victim of fortunes sardonic turnings.
”Here, then,” he cried out, ”is our castle!” Cardenas let himself fall from the saddle he shared with a lancer, landing in the black powder to pound it with his fists and laugh and laugh until his laughter ground into tears.
Gonji dismounted. Simon stole up behind him, speaking softly. ”Theyve gone away.”
”Eh?” The samurai spun and peered back toward the track of their momentarily forgotten pursuers. ”Do they always withdraw when one of thems been killed?” he wondered in a rush.
The form of the wygyll grew suddenly and eerily over their heads, further evincing the spatial distortion they now occupied. It was the female. She cascaded down in a pain-filled descent, streaming blood from the leg where a bolt had split her feathered flesh and flown on. Tears moistened her eyes, angled down her beak. She held her midsection as she landed softly in a crouch, furling her wings about her and repeating the same twittering sound over and over. Valentina and Lola, the only other woman left alive among the fourteen humans, moved to comfort her, though they were uncertain how to approach this strange creature they had only heard of, from Gonji.
”Shes hurt,” Valentina said, motioning for what water remained to cleanse the wound. ”Sounds like-kiri,” she said, imitating the sound of the wygyll-word the female uttered repeatedly.
The wygyll locked eyes with her and cried the word again.
”Her mate?” Lola asked.
”Or her own name,” Luigi Leone advanced, peering at this strange creature in amazement, with his good eye.
”Come now-Kiri,” Valentina said comfortingly. ”Is that your name-Kiri? Can you say Tina? I am Valen-tina. Come, let me have a look at your belly, dear.”
”Valiant creature,” Gonji said. ”She must have killed one of them. One of the cats, neh?”
Cardenas laughed again behind them, without humor, prancing about the granite block, now, and blaring mock-heraldic outcries: ”The Castle of the Wonder Knights-Wunderknechten Keep!” He postured like a conqueror with one foot propped on an edge of the stone. Then he dropped down and peered into the exposed portion of portcullis, speaking idiotic commands that the gate should be thrown open to the returning conquerors.
Valentina cried out. The wygyll had raked her arm with a taloned hand. Now the bird-woman clutched her belly again.
”Kiri!”
”Oh, my G.o.d...” Valentina whispered. ”Shes about to give birth.”
There was a scream behind them, m.u.f.fled to an echo in some lofty chamber in the twinkling velvet sky, far overhead. A dull thump.
And Cardenas was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.
Simon Sardonis shouldered the others aside and crouched at the portcullis fragment where Cardenas had disappeared moments before.
”What sorcery-” someone whispered without finis.h.i.+ng, as the ensorceled man bent his towering frame to the portal to peer in where the blackened earth met the armored framework. He looked like an animal tracking a scent, his ears and nostrils quivering.
He reached a hand inside, found that it astonis.h.i.+ngly pa.s.sed through the iron of the grating itself! A look of surprise crossed Simons angular face.
”Simon?” Gonji probed. But he was ignored.
A moment later, setting his expression with stoic determination, the lycanthrope slid out of sight, headfirst. From his companions perspective, he had magically pa.s.sed through solid matter.
”Dios!” Orozco exclaimed.
Gonji hushed him. They all pivoted their heads toward the sky, toward the point in empty air where Simons voice called out to them as if from a great height.
”I can see you,” he was shouting. ”Can you see me?”
”Iye-where are you?” Gonji answered.
”Its best you see for yourselves. Lean through the grating slowly. Youll fall headfirst. Dont worry. Ill slow your fall.”
With a skeptical glance at the others, Gonji dropped to all fours and felt his way through the insubstantial grating. A cold wind washed over his reaching hands as they began to vanish through the portcullis. He felt a gentle tugging of the air, which increased to a suction. And when he gingerly extended his head and shoulders through, he emitted a strained cry to feel the vertigo and loss of directional orientation: He was sliding uncontrollably into thin air, facing what appeared to be the sky, then plummeting headfirst. He felt his swords slip past, as they quit his sash, and then he struck something that gave way under him as it grabbed him.
It was Simon, clutching at him and lurching backward from the impact. He dropped Gonji on his side.
The samurai cast around on all fours, caught up his swords, and regained his senses. They were on a rampart, the crenellations of a bailey wall extending around them on both sides. A still higher, inner wall towered over them. Cardenas lay groaning, to Gonjis right, having badly sprained and bruised an arm.
”Best let the others down by rope,” Simon was yelling down from the parapet, between cupped hands. Gonji came up beside him and saw that they did indeed enjoy a vantage not shared in reverse by those below. The horizon, dark and starlit, was lost to infinity. A velvet mist seemed to enshroud the surrounding territory. The headstones of the spatially twisted graveyard were the only reference points, leaning back toward the castle in warped perspective, as if drawn by ages of unseen force.
They were prisoners of a wholly alien world.
One at a time, the others began to come through, their expressions betraying their fears. The remaining supplies were brought through, but the horses were lost to them.
”Gott in Himmel,” a mercenary from Augsburg-Herrmann, by name-gasped out, as he surveyed the rampart sentries.
”No need to fear,” Simon a.s.sured. ”Theyre all quite dead.” He walked up to a leaning pikeman guarding a merlon with a rusted harpin. Grabbing the top of its helm, Simon swiveled the skeletons fleshless head to face them. He grinned ghoulishly, to see their discomfiture. ”Then, again-”
”Sacrilege,” one of the Moriscos decided, making a sign against Evil.