THE DARK MUSE

Prologue

Lightning colors, whining, whirling dirge of sonic pain, coalesced to ecstasy. More dimly now, the tones muted, submerged. Form returned, images of imprisoned light. Scintillant shapes that shimmered with the siren melody, colors of piercing brilliance, sparkles of sound shivering through his senses. Lancinations of unendurable ecstasy ravened through his consciousness, starbursts of warring sensory impulses that slipped once more to coherent phenomena, an instant before his mind shattered to follow into final chaos.

Lustrous figures of nude beauty formed pirouetting patterns of dazzling perfection. For a timeless space he marveled upon their kaleidoscopic resplendency, his consciousness merged within the coruscant mosaic of their dance. Their dance, the beauty of their dance... soulwrenching wonder that staved off the shrill voices of pain, of terror that yammered upon the fringes of his awareness. An infinity of goddesses—or numberless images of a goddess—weaving through the glacial mists of throbbing color.

Now he understood that they were but infinite reflections of the one goddess—the goddess of beauty, shimmering upon all the mirrors of the cosmos. He desired to behold the true image of this beauty, and his spirit soared through the swirling patterns, in search of the one true image. Time elapsed. Like a mote of interstellar debris drawn by the compellent attraction of a dark star, he fell unerringly toward the central focus of the ceaseless shifting labyrinth.

At the heart of the vortex of pulsing color his quest was ended. Over the true image of beauty his awareness descended. He gazed upon the glowing porcelain of the goddess’s perfect flesh, creamy majesty of unblemished form that radiated a warm luster of indescribable color. Her breasts were cones of floral delicacy, her hips dark with mystery, her limbs soft witchery as she pirouetted through the whirling dance. She saw him. The fierce welcome of her scarlet smile, the burning summons of her violet eyes invited him to share her dance.

The chords of needle-pain color roiled about them as they spun, wove shards of light into feather-mounds of song. She fell back upon the waving softness of fern patterns, opened to him her arms and red lips. As he drifted to her embrace, he marveled endlessly over the radiant perfection of line, the living fire of her flesh, sorcerous porcelain of warmth and velvet.

Her smile changed, shadowed in pain... or cruelty. Her breasts heaved with the pulse of her heart, her chest shuddered from the exertion of her breath. Her creamy torso split apart along midline; the ribs sprang outward, like spreading carpels of a blossom, beckoned in the breeze of sound. Explosive color washed over her altered form; her slender, unjointed arms waved for him like filaments of some obscenely tempting orchid. The smile broadened, and an impossible length of curling scarlet tongue licked toward his throat. Vibrations of perfumed anguish engulfed him. In sudden terror he struggled against her embrace, buffeted the enfolding, smothering petals. Her claws tore at his face, the needle tongue stabbed for his throat as he seized her boneless neck in a stranglehold, fought desperately to keep from merging with the vampirish ecstasy of death...

The dream abruptly dissolved.

Blood trickling from the gouges of her nails, Opyros stared numbly at the limp form whose throat he gripped. Dully he released his fingers, one by one. Ceteol’s mottled face flushed as breath whistled past her bruised lips. Her heart was strong beneath Opyros’s palm, although she showed no sign yet of recovering consciousness. Vaguely relieved that he had not killed the girl, Opyros carelessly draped the bed robes over her still form and rose to find his clothing. The room shimmered through drug-mists of ghost image—from each whorl of the dark oak paneling leered a face—so that he rested a moment on the edge of the bed until his head cleared and his long legs felt stronger.

The temper of his present mistress was difficult to foresee. Best to leave before she awoke, the young nobleman reflected. The touch of his garments was strange to his fingers; after drawing pants and loose shirt over his bony frame, he despaired of his sandals and left the chamber barefoot. The evening was warm, though he was uncertain which evening it was. This new drug had left his mouth dry and foul, his mind a burned-over forest of half-consumed and heat-corroded shapes. For this, ale and diversion...

The rambling townhouse lay silent and empty as he padded through it. His servants—had he given them the night off? Too many gaps in his memory—perhaps he would remember later. Retrieving a folder of unbound parchment from the litter of his study, Opyros the poet stumbled from his manor and drifted through the shadows of Enseljos in search of Kane.

I

Poet in the Night

Greasy light oozed onto the damp pavement from the doorway of Stanchek’s Tavern and cast puddles of smoky yellow through the tattered leather curtain. The colors still danced before his eyes, as Opyros stepped over dark pockmarks in the broken paving, uncertain about the faces which peered back at him from the pools of black water. It had rained sometime not long before, though the night above Enseljos’s sprawling skyline was clear, as had been the autumn morning when he and Ceteol had dissolved a few grains of the new drug in a flagon of wine. Presumably this was the same day, since there was only a vague hint of hunger.

A snarl of challenge came from the black alley adjoining the tavern, and he heard the rasp of unseen steel. Swinging the folio up like a shield, Opyros groped for the knife at his belt. But a second shape stirred in the darkness and growled, “Forget him, Hef! Don’t you recognize the mad poet?” I

Opyros sidled past the alleyway, wondering whether he had been accosted by thieves or guards. Evidently this Hef was a stranger, since the poet made frequent visits to Stanchek’s Tavern. No sign marked the murky doorway, nor had the place any name other than Stanchek’s, after the limping ex-mercenary who owned it. But the tavern was well known to the sort who gathered there, for Stanchek’s was a dive of evil reputation even in the brawling turmoil of Enseljos. The city guard did not patrol this, the oldest section of Enseljos; a monthly donation to its commander convinced him that it was a unwarranted risk of his men to send them into the iniquitous slum where truly no man of honest intentions would venture. Law-abiding folk had their inns an taverns, and the growing ranks of Halbros-Serrantho’s soldiery—even his hot-tempered mercenaries—tended frequent the less forbidding places of amusement: the Red Bear, the Hanging Bandit, the Hound and Leopard, the Bad Dog, or even the Yardarm. To Stanchek gathered the night creatures of Enseljos’s underworld and others whose role in life was less evident but similarly dubious achievement.

The folio snared a tattered fold as Opyros pushed through the grimy curtain, and he maintained his ho clumsily. Threescore pairs of eyes looked toward h rattling entry, considered him briefly, and returned to other matters. The poet padded down the low flight worn stone steps that lapped like waves of poured honey in a crescent past the doorway to the room below. Once the townhouse of a wealthy merchant, Stanchek’s displayed the sunken central room with high vaulted ceiling and horseshoe gallery of another age’s architecture. Only in places across the floor could the original tiles glimpsed, effaced and filthy, and ungainly pillars of mismatched construction shored up the sagging galleries. Doorways opened onto rooms from off the gallery, or led into cellars that ran like interconnected burrows beneath the tavern and surrounding buildings, blocked (supposedly) by rubble in back, where the main living quarters lay in toppled ruin. Business of a less open nature was conducted in these dim chambers, and although he believed he had visited them all, Opyros was now sorry to know that his search would not lead him in these warrens tonight.

Seated at a corner table opposite the entrance—close by the gaping darkness of the downward-leading stairs—Opyros caught sight of Kane. Even to his mazed vision and in the uncertain light, there was no mistake the massive, square-torsoed figure, or the coppery glimpse of Kane’s hair and short beard. He was not alone. Beside him at the table lounged a thuggish trio of a determinate origins. Two of them, whose hulking statue and dark features bore the similarity of kinship, were coaxing a private show from a tavern dancer; the third, whose thin frame seemed to carry only gristle and tight-stretched muscle, was intent upon the fifth man at the table. This latter, a sharp-faced outlander whose clothes bore the dust of long miles, was arguing earnestly with Kane.

Some sort of agreement was concluded as Opyros threaded his way to the back corner. Kane nodded to his lean companion, who produced a heavy purse and pushed it toward the traveller. The other loosened its drawstrings, released the furtive gleam of gold; then Kane’s broad hand closed over the almoner, and with a cold smile he drew it back across the table. The outlander appeared satisfied and rose to his feet. Kane remained seated, gave terse instructions to his three companions. The lean man retrieved the purse and, flanked by the brawny pair, followed the outlander from the room.

Opyros exchanged nodded greetings as they passed, then dropped into the chair beside Kane. Abandoned by her patrons, the dancing girl glanced at the poet uneasily, seemed relieved that the newcomer returned her stare without interest, and departed in a brassy rustle of bell-hung silks. At Kane’s wave, a husky serving girl trotted over. Thudding her crockery pitcher upon the table, she began to reach for the empty mugs. Kane shook his head as she stretched for those beside him and pointed to the mug used by the outlander. Leaving the others, she recovered this one, wiped the mouth of the stein on her greasy leather apron, filled it with dark ale from her pitcher, and pushed it toward the poet. Opyros gulped down the mug’s bitter contents in the time it took for her to fill Kane’s stein and had the girl pour another before she left them.

Kane’s cold blue eyes studied the poet’s scratched face, a sardonic grin breaking over his brutal features. “I rather expected you last night,” he commented.

What happened to last night? “I’ve been trying the new drug,” Opyros answered.

“And returned to tell the tale,” observed Kane. “No mean feat, if Damatjyst blended the powder faithful to the formula I gave you.” He lifted the folio onto the table; Opyros had carelessly leaned it against Kane’s unbuckled sword. “Did you find the experience worthwhile?”

“I think so,” concluded Opyros. The ale seemed to bush the whining yammer at the threshold of his consciousness. “There was a great deal of powerful visual imagery to it; some flashes of inspiration that I jotted down. Some of it I think I can use, though I still find myself blocked on Night Winds.” He fumbled through the loose sheets of the folio. “Have you... are you going to be too busy tonight?”

Kane absently scraped his nail across a flaking smear of brown which clung to the carven silver death’s head of his sword pommel. “Nothing that my men can’t attend to. It promises to be a dull night, unless you’re interested in watching Eberhos gamble away ten lifetimes’ earnings at dice. Damatjyst will find he has a pauper for First Assistant come morning.”

“Then I’ll read you some of this,” invited Opyros. He frowned over a loose page, turning the parchment sheet to the best exposure in the murky Light. “Oh, here’s some more work on that Gods in Darkness fragment you tossed me:

In their castle beyond the night,

In their dungeon’s evil light,

Gather the Gods while even fades,

And Darkness weaves with many shades...”

“I never wrote that,” protested Kane.

“Ceteol did that,” Opyros explained. “She has a keen mind for rhyme and meter.”

“It rolls across the tongue well enough, but the rhyme has made it inaccurate to the substance of the poem. I thought we were agreed to strive for coherent imagery, without the interference of rhyme. Meter will be intrusive enough, if you translate...”

“Just thought you’d be interested to hear how it could be done,” Opyros broke in defensively. “I still maintain that a poem well sung is far more effective than a poem well read—and infinitely superior to merely reading the words to yourself. Poetry is an expression of beauty, and beauty is an emotional awareness which for total appreciation demands a total sensual participation and response from its audience. You’re asocial, Kane; you treat imagery on an individual intellectual level—perhaps because your personal autism believes intellectual and emotional stimulation are inseparable...”

“Vaul! You’re in a profound mood tonight,” Kane cut in sarcastically. “Are you certain of your insight, though? Drugs and ate will foster more prophecies and philosophies than a sober mind can hold together.”

“That may be,” Opyros countered, “but they sometimes open doorways to truths obscured by the clutter of ordered thought.” He started to replace the parchment sheet, his expression injured.

Kane made an apologetic grimace. “Let’s hear the rest of what you’ve done,” he requested, and signed to a passing serving girl. His long fingers plucked the heavy pitcher from her cradling hip and placed it before the poet,

Opyros carefully refilled his stein before returning to the closely written lines. His voice calmer now, he began to read, moistening his throat now and again. Occasionally Kane interrupted to quarrel upon a point of syntax or such—until Opyros, wondering at the other’s command of a language not his own, made marginal notations with a metal pen, which he dipped in slopped ale and rubbed against a chunk of ink.

The poet had long ago given up any effort to penetrate the shroud of mystery that enswathed Kane. Even so simple a matter as Kane’s age defied certainty—physically he appeared not far past Opyros’s thirty years, but this was deceptive, since Kane’s experience ranged somewhat beyond this. The stranger was an enigma, and Opyros valued his friendship too highly to make indiscreet inquiries. He accepted the mystery, musing only privately over certain dark hints that whispered from the shadow of Kane’s past.

Well over a year had passed since Opyros had first met him, wandering pensively through the forest-buried ruins of the Old City at dusk. Sensing a kindred spirit despite the other’s forbidding appearance, Opyros had called out to him from his favorite perch alongside a crumbling fountain. The stranger returned his greeting in cultured tones of indefinable accent, and for the first time Opyros felt the murderous chill of Kane’s blue eyes. Casual remarks had revealed as astonishing knowledge of the Old City on the stranger’s part, and Opyros was surprised when this man nonchalantly spoke upon various points of mystery and arcane lore surrounding the ruins of which the poet was only vaguely aware, although his study of such things was an avid one. Opyros made some speculative observations on the reasons for the abandonment of the Old City over two centuries ago, and Kane had laughed strangely. Less piqued than curious, the poet sought to draw the other out, but Kane had made only evasive replies to his questions until Opyros introduced himself,

Kane immediately expressed interest in the poet’s work and, losing some of his brooding reserve, invited him to further their acquaintance across a tavern table. Chance meeting developed into friendship, and Opyros soon became even more familiar with the dark alleys and hidden ways of Enseljos as he regularly sought out Kane’s company. The exact nature of Kane’s business in the northern city Opyros cared not to discover, although he sensed it was a more subtle game than the various underworld activities he knew Kane to have assumed control over. It was only another mystery surrounding the stranger—like his unexpected depth of learning, his easy familiarity with the writings of poets and sages of strange lands and other ages, Kane’s critical abilities Opyros found to be sound and perceptive, so that he frequently brought fragments of his own work to read to the other, finding worthwhile the arguments and tangled, far-reaching discussions that usually lasted from darkness to light.

It was a rare friendship for Opyros, and he guessed such was the case with Kane as well. The poet was an outcast among the aristocracy of Enseljos to which he was born, nor did he care for their shallow company. Although his work was becoming widely known across the Northern Continent, and the genius of his verses was unquestioned, the macabre direction of his interests had earned Opyros a shadowed reputation among the intellectuals and dilettantes of his audience. Thus literary acclaim escaped him—although notoriety did not—and Opyros was loved no better by those with pretensions of culture than by those whose pride was their lineage and wealth. He knew no kinship with the lower classes of society, and they in turn believed him mad. Society’s rejection of the poet and his work, while it left him bitter, did not raise a barrier to his writing. As final heir to his family’s estates and fortune, he was able to ignore this alienation and to pursue the untraveled paths along which his genius led him. It often occurred to Opyros that he was as much an outlaw as Kane and the hard-eyed creatures who passed about them.

“Anything new on Night Winds?” asked Kane, once Opyros had finished reading from the parchment.

His companion frowned. “Oh, I’ve written a few more lines—written and rewritten a dozen times. Still can’t bring it around to what I want.”

Kane grunted sympathetically. Opyros had been struggling with Night Winds for months now, overtaxing himself to create what he intended to be his masterpiece, a perfect statement of his conception of art. As usually happens with any attempt toward a consciously conceived masterwork, the zeal for perfection overwhelmed the artist’s ability to create. Opyros had made countless false starts, had worked himself into nervous exhaustion, spent days obsessed with the preciseness, the imagery of a single line of verse, and Night Winds had advanced little beyond the initial torrent of inspiration which had burst from a fevered dream. Thinking some diversion might relax the poet after this intense concentration, Kane suggested some fragments of another poem for him to develop. Opyros dutifully worked on Gods in Darkness for Kane, along with a number of his own projects, but Night Winds continued to loom over his imagination.

“Well, let’s hear some of it,” Kane prompted.

Opyros ran a nervous hand through his sandy hair and down his face, absently noted the stubble starting from his jaw where the goatee did not extend. What day was this? Again he filled his stein; the ale was soothing the shrieking afterimages in his mind. Without preamble—somewhat defiantly—he seized another smudged and scribbled sheet and read:

At night when sleep will not come—

And darkness hangs in thick, smothering folds,

To throttle my breath, crush the heart in my breast,

And squats on my belly like a hot, bloated succubus;

When I lie burning in restless, sick pain,

Listening to the rush of my pulse, the hammer of my heart,

And sense without caring that this is the last hour—

Night winds come.

Then let the night winds come to me—

Pass through a clear window, blow out the sick flame,

Touch cold breath to this fever-burnt flesh,

Caress with chill kisses this fever-seared mind,

Take up my poisoned soul in your restoring embrace,

Bear me off to strange lands, show me those unseen sights

Along untrod paths—you and the stars know their secrets—

Though death be your destination, I’ll not beg to linger—

When night winds come.

Then let the night winds take me—

Lift my crippled spirit on your vast black wings,

And I’ll soar with you through the shadow;

Whisper softly in my desolate thoughts,

And I’ll learn the wisdom of the dark;

Brush your fingers across my blinded eyes,

And I’ll see the secret world of night;

And with you I’ll explore those lost and hidden places—

Where only night winds come.

(Opyros read on haltingly, as the poem became more fragmented—little more than disjointed passages of deg description. His half-formed verses told of sand drifting over a desert tomb and why it lay empty, of wind in a forest where a goddess lay dying, of broken battlements and the pale beauty who walked them, of black surf on fanged cliffs and the shadows that lurked there, of mountains of eternal ice where an elder race dreamed...)

He finished with a pained grimace. Angrily he slapped the folio together, swept up his mug and drained it in a huge gulp that shuddered down his long throat. “Well.”

Kane’s expression was noncommittal. “I think you’re getting it together—what there is of it, I like. The images you propose are more compelling this time—the atmosphere is beginning to project, almost without awareness of the mounting tension. Structually it seems rough yet, though the mood begins to impress me as...”

“Forced!” Opyros snorted. “Artificial and forced! It’s still a first draft, though I’ve lain sleepless over it for months now. My imagery is either overpowering or too vague. I can’t seem to project the vitality, the reality, of the mood!”

“It’s starting to come across,” Kane protested. “The atmosphere will improve as the work progresses, I think. Hell, put some of these fragments together for once, and give it some sort of conclusion, however indecisive it sounds at first. Work off the rough edges, and then judge what needs to be done with it—at least you’ll have something concrete to grapple with. I think you’re already close to writing as brilliant a work as any you’ve completed.”

Opyros made a scornful noise in his mug. “Yeah, as brilliant as anything I’ve done—as imperfect, you mean! Damn it, Kane, for once I’d like to feel I’d written something that was perfect! No, don’t start on one of those creaky philosophical discussions upon the nonexistence of true perfection. I mean, I’d hope at least once to be able to create a poem that I myself could call perfect—to hell with any other point of reference! There isn’t a single thing I’ve done that I’m totally satisfied with. All of it represents a compromise between what I’m able to create and what I want to create. I know when a verse isn’t exactly right, but, damn it, I can’t understand how to improve it beyond a certain point!”

“And what is perfection to your mind?” queried Kane sardonically, thinking that this conversation in one form or another had dried their throats on more nights than this.

“A perfect poem,” declared the other without faltering, “is one which completely involves its audience in the totality of the poem. It should be a total sensory and emotional projection of the artist’s mind into the mind of the listener. He should identify fully with the perspective, the reality of the poem—share the thoughts, sense the atmosphere, see the visions, unite with the mood. Any foot clever with words can create a poem that any fool can listen to; a good poet can create a poem so that a sensitive mind can share and be stirred by his thoughts... But to create a poem that can totally draw any dull imagination into its spell—that, Kane, is perfect art, and that is the creation of true genius!”

“An intriguing theory of art,” Kane commented after a slight pause. “But I think you’ll destroy yourself emotionally if you keep up this quest for an unobtainable perfection. I have a high regard for your talents, Opyros, but it seems to me the genius you’ve proposed transcends human limitations.”

“Don’t tell me Kane is suddenly preaching that pious doctrine of man’s inevitable failure whenever he dares challenge those heights to which only gods may aspire!” sneered Opyros—and immediately regretted his words.

Kane’s baleful eyes held him in cold speculation for a moment, wondering how much of this was a chance taunt. “That wasn’t what I said, or what I meant, as you must know,” he returned with icy calm. “More bluntly, can you realistically consider your own ’genius’ equal to this goal?”

Opyros stared at his clenched hands. “I don’t know,” he confessed, wishing to escape Kane’s gaze. “That’s what tortures me! Technically I know how to do it—rhyme, meter, the words, the notes. I understand how the material should be woven... only I still can’t grasp the substance! I need inspiration—a flash of insight—something that will lift my imagination from where it’s mired down in commonplace ideas. What use to waste my creativity in turning out another poem like all the rest—the same tired images, the same dull emotions. There has to be some new vitality to my poem—I must create it from ideas and images that are unique, not simply the rewritten thoughts of past artists.”

He muttered fitfully under his breath and reached again for the pitcher. Surprisingly, someone had emptied it already.

II

The Muse of Dream

Thoughtfully Kane considered the slouched figure of his friend. Unbidden, a serving girl replaced the pitcher with a brimming one. Deciding to leave Opyros with his mood for the moment, Kane was reaching to refill his half-emptied mug when he noticed someone moving toward them.

The thickset figure of Eberhos, First Assistant to Damatjyst the alchemist, drew to a nervous halt across the table from him. His sweaty face showed lines of strain, and his deep-set eyes darted about uneasily, sensing that others across the crowded room were watching his course with interest. Though the other was not a frequent visitor to Stanchek’s, Kane knew Eberhos through his dealings with Damatjyst. Leaning back in his chair, Kane waited for the man to speak.

“I’ve come to ask a favor of you, Kane,” Eberhos began, licking his pale lips. “A favor that will be repaid in double this same night!”

“I think you want to borrow money,” Kane returned dryly.

The alchemist’s assistant wiped his hands across his beefy thighs. The wool of his trousers was adorned with bits of strange powders and stains from his work at his master’s forges. “I do,” he admitted, “but you might think of it more as an investment. The dice go against me for a moment, and I’ve temporarily lost all my holdings. A few more tosses, and my luck will change. However, these bastards will give me no credit.”

“Nor do I blame them. You’ve lost ten times the year’s earnings of a merchant prince. Why accept a note from a pauper—an unlucky one, at that? Instead of throwing away more good coin, why not consider how to explain matters to the rightful owner of this gold you’ve gambled away—since I doubt it came from your savings.”

Eberhos blanched. “I’m no thief,” he growled.

“Well, you’re certainly no gambler.”

Ignoring Kane’s obvious dismissal, Eberhos dropped into the seat opposite him and leaned forward confidentially. “Listen, Kane! I’m only telling you this because there’s no one else I can look to to back me in a game at these stakes. I’ve planned for tonight—this isn’t a sudden spree. I’ve read the stars carefully for weeks, ever since I foresaw this conjunction—yes, and I’ve made augury by all the signs Damatjyst has taught me. The answer is always the same—tonight is the night that fortune obeys me! In any game of chance, I cannot lose!”

“And now we know you’re no astrologer,” Kane commented cruelly. He had never cared for Damatjyst’s assistant. The man was obsequious and fawning with his master, a sullen bully toward his inferiors; Kane discerned the grasping, malignant spirit that lay beneath his ingratiating facade.

Desperation squeezed the anger from the other’s face. “Scoff all you want—I admit fortune hasn’t seemed to favor me since coming into Stanchek’s. But this isn’t my first stop tonight. You think I begged or stole the money I lost here? Well, that’s only one of your mistakes. I entered the Hound and Leopard this evening with ten gold sarmkes and some silver, hoarded from the pittance Damatjyst pays me. Once I was down to just the silver, but I stayed with it, and when I left, the others were broke and I had Dearly a hundred sarmkes in gold. At the Yardarm it was the same; they thought to clean me out at one point, but soon no one would play against me, and I had over half a thousand in gold and silver. So I came to where I might play for higher stakes, and once more I seem to be finished. But lend me what I need now, Kane, and I’ll need two slaves to carry away my winnings. Let me have fifty sarmkes now, and I’ll return a hundred this same night.”

Kane laughed scornfully in reply.

Desperately Eberhos looked toward Opyros, who stared hypnotically at something in his stein. The poet had wealth, but he never carried more than a few coins on his person. Seeing only dismissal, the alchemist’s assistant made a final play, “What if I offer collateral?”

“What do you have against fifty sarmkes?” asked Kane without interest.

With unsteady fingers Eberhos removed a packet from a scrip at his belt. Wordlessly he passed it to Kane.

His manner one of skeptical curiosity, Kane unwrapped the soft leather. A gleaming flash of light rolled darkly upon his broad palm. Kane’s eyes narrowed for an instant, then widened.

“The dark muse,” he breathed in surprise.

“What?” asked Opyros, coming awake. He craned his neck.

Held in Kane’s hand lay the figurine of a nude girl, carven of black onyx and in length about five inches. The stone was flawless, the artistry exquisite. She lay supine, in an attitude of repose, though awake. Her head rested upon her left hand and a mass of flowing tresses; the other arm was lifted in a beckoning gesture; the legs were flexed and slightly apart. The eyes were compelling, and her lips were open in a secret smile—a suggestion of mystery to the obvious invitation. For there was a note of cruelty about the face that underlay the smiling promise, so that another might wonder to what pleasures she summoned him. The shifting fight licked soft caresses upon the aristocratic features, rounded breasts, slim hips, and long limbs. She looked to be a goddess, frozen in ebon miniature.

“You know it, then,” grinned Eberhos nervously.

“It’s Klinure, the muse of dream, whom some call the dark muse,” Kane stated. “More specifically, the simulacrum of Klinure, from a set of the sixteen muses sculpted centuries ago by the mage Amderin. His workmanship is unmistakable, and the carvings are legendary, although most of them are believed lost. I had heard rumor that one or more were held by Damatjyst... but then you’re no thief.”

Eberhos bit his lip. “Its absence won’t be noticed at once. I only slipped it from its case because I thought this situation might arise. The figurine is priceless, you know that. Will you lend me one hundred sarmkes against it? I’ll return you twice that in an hour.”

Kane shrugged his heavy shoulders. “I have no reason to cross the threshold of dream, nor do I care to pile up stolen objets d’art at the moment.”

“Advance him the money, Kane,” interceded Opyros with sudden interest. “I’ll cover it if he loses.”

“Make it fifty, then,” said Kane, after a surprised glance at the poet. “That way you’ll feel only half the regret when you come to your senses.”

Eberhos squirmed in protest, but kept silent fearing that his patron would change his mind. Ten heavy gold coins slid across the table, streaking through the spilled ale. The alchemist scooped them up and hastened back to his game.

“Tell me about her, Kane,” demanded Opyros. “When you said, ’cross the threshold of dream,’ I seemed to remember something. What is the figurine’s history?”

Kane passed the onyx carving to the poet and adjusted the fastenings of his almoner. “Well, Amderin was one of the more brilliant sorcerers of Carsultyal’s declining years, and a sculptor of tremendous talent as well. He wished to excel in every aspect of human potentiality, so he created simulacra of the sixteen muses. With them he could evoke the muse, appropriate to any endeavor his interests might direct. He might well have become the first truly universal genius.”

“Why didn’t he?”

“Be died not long after the project was completed.”

“Suicide?”

Kane glanced at him sharply. “Strange guess. No, though his death was an inexplicable one. His body was found across his bed—crushed and broken as if he had fallen from a very great height. Afterward the set of carvings passed through many hands, became scattered, so that today only a few are known to exist.”

“And this is Klinure,” murmured Opyros, turning the statuette all about with reverent touch. “The muse of dream.”

“The dark muse,” Kane went on. “Carved from onyx, black as the starless night of sleep, the night she dwells within, the night from which she calls. She lives in the shadow of unfinished dreams—the dreams from which we awaken and never return to. Their ghosts wait forever in limbo, incomplete visions that man will never realize.”

“Her attitude is one of beckoning.”

“She invites you to cross the portals of dream.”

“Her face has a strange smile.”

“She suggests the secret wisdom that lies hidden within the veil of dream.”

“I see mockery, too.”

“For the false wisdom and inchoate images that delude the dreamer as truth.”

“There is cruelty in her eyes.”

Kane laughed bitterly. “Cruelty? Yes—for much of dream is nightmare. Join her in her embrace, and instead of the wonders she seems to promise, the dark muse may draw you into some fathomless vortex of black terror.”

He glanced toward the doorway. Slipping past the smoky entrance came the three men who had been with him earlier. Of the outlander there was no sign. Casually they crossed the crowded floor to the corner table, where they dropped into chairs and became busy with the ale pitcher. Opyros, who had met them often before, exchanged mumbled greetings.

“Any problems, Levardos?” asked Kane.

His cadaverous lieutenant shook his head. “No trouble. Want to see it?”

“Not right now. Stanchek know it’s here?”

“Yeah. Brought it through the back. He looked it over. Seems satisfied with the deal.”

Kane nodded and left the subject.

His face pensive, Opyros continued to examine the onyx figurine. Webbre and Haigan, half-brothers from some anonymous mountain settlement, leaned forward curiously to see the object. It struck a chord in their memories, and Webbre, the younger of the two, wandered off down the stairs to reclaim the dancing girl.

Presently he reappeared with the girl in tow, her face flushed and costume disarrayed. The knuckles of his right hand were raw, and when he displayed his fist to Haigan, they broke into laughter. Uneasily the girl protested she could not dance without music, at which the grinning brothers produced panpipes and began to blow a discordant melody. Sighing helplessly, the dark-haired girl danced to the near tuneless notes.

Opyros tried to speak through the discord, and Kane gestured for the two to move away. Without pausing in their tune, Webbre and Haigan arose and stomped into the corner, where they stood about the entrapped dancing girl and continued their fierce piping. Levardos shook his head and remained seated, his expression as usual one of aloof watchfulness.

Opyros hunched forward. “I said, did Amderin’s secret die with him?”

“Secret?”

“The evocation of the muses through their simulacra.”

“Oh, that. No, it didn’t. Actually the evocation is a simple enough spell. Amderin’s genius lay in the creation of the simulacra; with them any competent student of the occult can perform the evocation.”

“Do you know the spell?” asked the poet in a strained voice.

Pressing his lips together thoughtfully, Kane stared at his friend, wondering how much he had guessed. “I do,” he stated.

Opyros remained silent for a long pause. The cacophonic piping waited on, punctuated by chattering bells and the girl’s hoarse breathing. The noise of the tavern seemed driven back by an unseen wall; the sharp exclamations from the dice table were drowned and distant.

“If I could cross the threshold of dream,” intoned Opyros in a low voice, “if I could witness the birth of a dream, follow the ghosts of dreams from whose spell the awakened mind of the dreamer was torn... By the Seven Eyes of Lord Thro’ellet, Kane! Can you imagine the torrent of inspiration that would engulf my soul!”

“And likely annihilate your soul!” warned Kane grimly. “Assuming your spirit wasn’t blasted instantly by its plunge into a world of free-form thought and prechaotic images, what if Klinure should lead you into the realm of nightmare? What if instead of some long-dead artist’s never-finished vision of unearthly beauty, you found yourself trapped in an unhallowed nightmare from which some fever-poisoned madman awoke shrieking? The dark muse cares not whether her dreams portray ethereal beauty or mindless horror.”

The poet formed an easy smile. “If I wanted to write poems on sunshine and flowers and love, this might worry me. But you know my thoughts well enough. I’ll weave my verses for the night, sing of the dark things that soar through nameless abysses—unfold the poetry of the macabre, while others prattle about little things. Hell, Kane, we’ve talked many a night away on these matters, and found our minds too close together even to argue, only to second the words of one another. True beauty lies in the dark side of life—in death, in the uncanny—in the grandeur of the unknown. The pure awareness of beauty is as overwhelming an emotion as blind fear; to feel inexpressible love is as soul-wrenching a sensation as to know relentless terror. When fired to the ultimate blaze, the finest emotions become one intolerable flame, and ecstasy and agony are inseparable.

“I’m blocked on Night Winds because I can’t enter this dark world, can’t get close enough to this point of fusion to understand the emotions I’m trying to recreate. I’ve looked everywhere for inspiration—read through dull volumes, chased after tepid vices, haunted the desolate places, dabbled in strange drugs... And I’ve learned nothing. If I can induce Klinure to give me the inspiration of lost dreams, I’ll risk any nightmare—no, I’ll welcome them—if I find the creative energy I need to create a perfect poem!”

Kane frowned, too similar of spirit to the other to dissuade him further, but uneasy nonetheless. “It’s your decision, of course. But make certain you understand the risks which await you beyond the threshold of dream. You’ll not be asleep, but in Klinure’s embrace, so that you’ll not awaken from those nightmares which drove their dreamers into screaming wakefulness. There are many dreams of falling, for example, from which one awakens before ending his plummet...”

Opyros thought for a moment. “Vaul!” he swore in understanding. “Then you think Amderin...?”

“It’s a risk—only one among uncounted others whose nature we can’t begin to conceive.”

A clamour had arisen across the tavern, and the huddle about the dice table suddenly began to break up. Many voices were raised at once—cries of anger, protest, disbelief, congratulations. As the milling figures drifted away, the thickset figure of Eberhos could be seen. He was followed across the floor by a blond Waldann mercenary, whose broad shoulder sagged under the burden of the bulging saddlebags slung across it.

Eberhos’s flushed face made his grin seem all the broader. “I’ve won it all!” he announced. “No man has gold or spirit enough to play against me further!” With an arrogant gesture he poured a handful of gold coins upon the table. “There’s a hundred in payment as I promised. You’d have a hundred more, had you been less quick to judge another man a fool. The carving now, please.”

The piping stopped, Kane’s cold eyes met Eberhos’s gaze, and his jubilant sneer retreated. Not looking at the gold, Kane slid it back to the alchemist’s assistant.

“You owe me no debt,” he explained casually. “I’ve decided to keep the figurine. Its price of fifty sarmkes has been paid.”

A shadow of worry crept over Eberhos’s victory-lit face. “I didn’t sell it, Kane—it was collateral. Now I’ve met my side of the bargain as stated. There’s a hundred sarmkes, and now I need that carving.” He made a motion to reach for the onyx figurine where it Jay before Opyros.

“I wouldn’t,” advised Kane.

Eberhos flexed his fingers in nervous anger. He did not reach out, however. “I have to get it back before Damatjyst notices that it’s been taken,” he explained.

“Well, just tell your master what you would have had to tell him if you’d lost the money I gave you,” Kane offered without sympathy. “Or now that you’re wealthy, why not see if one of the southern cities needs another alchemist.”

“All right, I’ll give you two hundred for it.”

Kane shook his head, a mirthless smile starting on his lips.

“Two hundred fifty—no more!”

“But earlier tonight you admitted the carving was priceless.”

“Name your price, damn you! I don’t dare risk Damatjyst’s anger.”

“You’ll find my anger no better risk,” retorted Kane.

Rage made the veins bulge along his thick neck, and Eberhos moved his hand closer to his sword hilt. Behind him, his Waldann bodyguard shifted the gold-laden saddlebags uneasily.

Webbre and Haigan had nonchalantly strolled over to either side of Kane; their brutal faces sneered at the alchemist. His expression one of detached interest, Levardos had, unnoticed, drawn back his chair. A quick glance around the tavern disclosed others of Kane’s men had laid hands on their weapons and were slowly approaching. The squat figure of Stanchek could be seen muttering instructions to his henchmen, who moved unhurriedly to cover the door.

Kane took the onyx carving from the table and began to roll it on his palm; there was mockery in his smile, and death grinned from his eyes.

And Eberhos knew that death hovered close.

“Hell, what do I care about Damatjyst’s wrath,” he laughed suddenly. It sounded like a death rattle. “I’ve learned all that old miser can teach me, and I’ve gold enough to make my life what I will. Keep the damned carving if it pleases you, Kane—if Damatjyst wants it, he can go look for it. I’m going to find another tavern and some rich fools to play against me.”

With slippery fingers he retrieved the gold coins, smiled servilely, and made for the door. His worried bodyguard clung to his back like a shadow, and the pair disappeared through the tattered curtain.

Webbre and Haigan laughed and hooted, and hugged the frightened dancing girl between them. Opyros took the carving from Kane and gazed upon it with worshipful eyes. Levardos permitted himself a thin smile.

Kane caught Stanchek’s quizzical gestures and shook his head with a frown. “His luck held out,” he remarked at Levardos’s unspoken question. “Several thousand in gold, one man to guard him, and the bastard left here alive—Stanchek thought I was going to take care of it.”

“We can still find him,” offered his lieutenant, starting to rise.

“Don’t count on it,” Kane advised. “Still, I’ve made a deadly enemy, and when I had the chance, I let him live. Levardos, have you ever known me to be that careless?”

“No,” admitted the other, and slipped his dirk back into the sheath hidden beneath a bloused sleeve.

III

In the Hour Before Dawn

Kane continued to stare moodily toward the curtained doorway. It occurred to Opyros that his fascination for the black figurine might have thrown Kane into unforeseen difficulty. After all, Kane did have frequent dealings with the alchemist, and Damatjyst was almost certain to learn into whose hands his carving had fallen.

“Don’t worry about Eberhos,” Kane scoffed, when the poet voiced his concern. “Unless he has even less brains than I give him, he’ll be far from Enseljos before another night. His master will surely blame him for the theft, and Damatjyst is most exacting in the matter of debts.

“More to the point, now that it’s yours, what do you mean to do with the simulacrum?”

But the poet had already made his decision. “As I’ve said, I hope to summon Klinure—to follow her into the secret realm of dream. I’d be grateful if you’ll show me the spell, since your knowledge of these things seems to lie far deeper than you choose to reveal. But if you’re opposed, then I’ll look elsewhere for the spell of evocation.”

“It would take little enough effort to discover,” said Kane. “No, if you’re certain in your mind, I’ll do what you want. But there is an unknown degree of danger, and I think you may want to wait until your thoughts are somewhat clearer than tonight before you get into this too deep.”

“Well, I’m going to try it,” Opyros asserted. He refilled his stein with painstaking attention. “Though I think I will wait for my head to clear; I’ll want my thoughts unclouded for this venture. Shall we try it tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow night, if you wish,” Kane agreed. “Night is the realm of Klinure. I’ll see to the arrangements.”

“Where? Will my study do?”

Kane shook his head. “I think another place would be better. Atmosphere is extremely important, and we need solitude—someplace free of distractions and conflicting aurae. Dreams are influenced by the dreamer’s surroundings, and the genius loci of Enseljos is not conducive to the tone of dream you seek. I think the Old City is evocative of the mood you desire, and one of its abandoned temples should retain sufficient occult magnetism to facilitate communion with the dark muse.”

“The temple of Vaul yet stands,” Opyros suggested.

“A warrior god of somewhat cold and prosaic nature,” argued Kane. “I was thinking of the temple of Shenan. The moon goddess should favor this venture.”

“I didn’t know her cult ever reached this far north. Where is her temple?” How can he say these things so casually!

“I’ll show you,” the other promised, and went on to speak guardedly of Shenan’s worship in the days of the Old City.

They talked on into the night, Levardos leaving them at one point to attend to some errand. When he returned to draw Kane aside for low conversation, Opyros discovered himself yawning. Innumerable mugs of ale had at last dulled his drug-tortured nerves, driven the ghost voices and afterimages from his mind, As a matter of fact, Opyros decided it was quite probable he was drunk.

“Well, I think I’ll wander back and get some rest,” lie announced, smothering a belch. “Or is that backwards—should I concentrate on staying awake maybe, so I can sleep tomorrow night?”

“No, get some rest,” Kane told him. “If we succeed with the evocation, there’ll be no need to lie asleep. Klinure herself will lead you beyond the gates of dream.”

“Well then, till tomorrow evening,” drawled the poet, fumbling to fasten the folio. The onyx figurine he had already restored to its wrappings and secured at his belt.

“Wait. I’ll accompany you,” Kane offered. He signed for his men to follow. “Should by chance you run into Eberhos, you might find the greasy tub of guts ungrateful for the stake you gave him tonight.”

It could not be far from dawn, Kane noted as they left Stanchek’s. The skies had not grayed perceptibly, but the stars were beginning to dim. It was cold, very quiet. Crisp night air was stunning to inhale after the close, smoky atmosphere of the tavern. Few were abroad; it was an hour of the night when even those who disdained sleep went about their business within doors.

Certainly it was not the time of day Kane might expect a beggar to accost him. They heard her sobbing wail through the darkness, and shortly came the shuffling sound of her step. Then through the island of a rare streetlight they saw her approach, drawn by the flame of the torch Haigan carried.

“Please, kind gentlemen, please, can you spare a coin for a poor mother? A coin for a poor mother and her child!” She was not old, though her sordid rags and haggard face made her appear twice her years. A baby, so enswathed in rags as to seem no more than a shapeless bundle, nursed at her breast, his face buried by her shawl.

Haigan moved to shove her away, but not liking the mad glare of her eyes, he turned to let her pass.

“Kane! Is it truly Milord Kane!” she moaned, pressing nearer to him. “Ali, Kane, you’ll spare a coin to help this poor mother and her sickly babe? He has food, but I’ve none, and soon my babe must seek his food elsewhere, unless this poor mother has coin to buy bread and meat.”

Kane thought her face familiar, though too pale and drawn to place the memory. “Why do you beg at the most desolate hour of night?” he murmured, digging his fingers into his almoner.

“I cannot mingle with the crowds by day. They drive me from the streets when honest folk see me,” she whirred. “The guard takes no pity on a poor mother and her son.” There was a heavy stench about her, a foulness less squalid than charnel.

Though his fingers touched smaller coins, a whim moved Kane to place a gold sarmkas in the woman’s emaciated hand. It would buy food and shelter for several months.

“May Lord Thro’ellet spread his wings to guard you, Kane!” she blessed him, clutching the coin as if to crush it. She pressed closer; Kane saw the baby’s face and knew the reason for her pallor.

Her voice lowered. “As you pass the corner, there are eight men who wait in an alley. Two have crossbows. They speak of Kane.”

Swiftly she slipped past them, crooning to her babe. She must have shifted him to her other breast, for he gave a brief cry—more a snarl than whimper. Kane heard a troubled fluttering noise suggestive of the flap of leathery wings. Then the only sound was the mother’s crooning, fading into the night.

“Strange,” remarked Opyros. “She blessed you in the name of a demon.”

“She spoke of an ambush!” said Levardos, who had stood close enough to overhear. “Should we get more men, or take another street? Thoem’s horns! It’s that bastard Eberhos—he’d know to waylay us on the street that leads to Opyros’s manor!”

“So I was thinking,” growled Kane. “But if it isn’t Eberhos, I want to know who it is that dares this! No, we won’t waste time returning for more men—if they’ve seen our torch, they’ll grow suspicious and change position. Since we know where they’re waiting, the trap can be reversed.”

“They outnumber us, and they’ve got crossbows,” pointed out Webbre.

“I don’t pay you just to hear you blow on those pipes,” Kane returned.

Haigan threw an arm over his brother’s shoulders.

Now, don’t you worry, little brother. I’ll save a little one for you.”

Webbre grinned and pushed him away. “Careful with that damn torch.”

“Keep your voices down!” Katie snarled. “Let’s not pause any longer , or they might start wondering. I’ll circle around and take care of the crossbows. Meanwhile walk slowly toward the corner with the torch, so they can see the light coming. Stop before you got there—Opyros, give a yell that you dropped the carving, and the rest go back with the light and make a show of looking for it. That should give me time to reach the alley from the far side. Come fast when I yell.”

Seeing they understood, Kane slipped away into the night, loping as fast as he dared without making noise.

“He sees in the dark like a cat,” muttered Levardos as he vanished into the deep shadow.

Enseljos was not laid out according to any orderly pattern, but its winding avenues did intersect with equally haphazard cross streets, and islands of property lay between. This particular segment was given over to shops and small dwellings—often combined—with a center courtyard. The alley where the attackers lurked gave access to this courtyard—a squalid wilderness of refuse heaps, small vegetable plots, and animal pens.

Rapidly Kane picked his way around the block of buildings. His course seemed reckless, but his senses were keenly alert for any sign of danger. He kept to the obscurity of the outward-projecting walls, where not even the dim luminance of the stars could reach, moving swiftly with no more sound than a shadow. His was the greatest risk, but Kane cared not to trust this job to any of his men. The silent snarl of a stalking predator touched Kane’s lips, and anger stirred a blue flame in his killer’s eyes.

Abruptly he halted before a locked door. This building, he recalled, had stood vacant for some months. A heavy padlock secured the door, placed there more to keep out squatters than thieves, since the building contained little of value. For one of Kane’s massive strength, it would take little effort to force the door—tear the lock from its brackets—but there would be noise, and the city lay in silence. From his boot Kane produced a thin metal pick; in a moment the lock fell open. Cautiously he pushed open the door and let himself into the empty shop. Silence and dust and soft scurryings were all that greeted turn.

With stealthy stride, Kane passed through the empty rooms and into the storeroom at the rear. Another door opened onto the courtyard. A heavy wooden bar was jammed in place, so that he had to twist it free before drawing it clear. Its creaking complaint sounded like an explosion in the predawn stillness, but Kane doubted if it carried to those in the alley. Thinking about the crossbows, he wiped spit over the hinges, then inched the door open—soundlessly—far enough to glide through.

No unseen shafts streaked toward him. Thankful for the jumbled litter of the courtyard, Kane stole past the doorway and dropped low against the ground. So far as he could discern, no enemy lurked within the square. Taking advantage of the spotty cover, he crossed the intervening ground, moving with unerring speed despite the darkness and the obstacle-strewn yard.

At the mouth of the alley his caution doubled. Dimly he could see the figures crouched at the far end, not more than sixty feet from him. At least a couple were turned in his direction, but they had not observed his stealthy approach. Kane’s unnatural night vision enabled him to make out the two men who waited with crossbows cocked. Their attention was fixed on the approach of his men, whose voices came through the night—else they might have sensed the death that stole upon them from behind.

Kane stepped into the alley. From either boot he drew a knife—two flat blades, balanced for throwing. His left arm moved with the blurring speed of a striking cobra; in almost the same instant his right arm uncoiled with the same lethal precision.

To the lurking assailants, it was as if a murderous phantom had risen in their midst. Dull impacts and frightened death howls marked the flight of the knives as the two crossbowmen staggered under the agony that pierced their backs, stumbled into the street to die. Released by the spasm of their fingers, the iron-fanged bolts skittered a trail of sparks across the darkened pavement.

With a feral yell, Kane tore out his sword with his left hand and leaped into the alley. His opponents had waited in darkness; only dimly could they glimpse the looming death that burst upon them. Steel flashed and clangoured. Another of the lurkers was hurled aside with a mangled chest, never knowing his killer’s face.

Then someone flung open a dark lantern, hidden behind some rubble. In the thick darkness, its glare was dazzling. In that instant the five startled assassins saw that only one man stood against them—and in the heartbeat it took for them to realize who their enemy was, Kane’s blade snaked toward the throat of another opponent, and then there were only four.

Bringing up their blades, the four rushed upon him. The first to meet him lost his sword and his arm with it; he fled screaming into the night, a spattered trail marking his flight. Then Kane’s blade was engaged by a more skillful swordsman than his fellows, so that Kane fought with furious speed to keep the other two from striking past his guard. Only the long knife he wielded with his right arm turned back their desperate thrusts.

But in a matter of seconds, his men had gained the alley. A lethal tide of steel, they surged into the melee. Levardos quickly dispatched one of the would-be ambushers as Kane beat aside the swordsman’s stubborn guard to thrust his heavy blade through the man’s heart. The remaining assailant fled into the courtyard, Webbre and Haigan close behind. A clamour of overturned litter, howl of agony, and the brothers returned looking satisfied.

“I don’t suppose you took him alive so I could question him,” panted Kane.

The brothers each one pointed to the other, claiming he had struck the death blow, then fell into a fit of laughter.

“Never mind, Kane,” announced Levardos, holding the torch over an upturned face. It was the last man Kane had killed. “This was that Waldann bodyguard Eberhos had with him at Stanchek’s.”

Kane grunted. “The puke-blooded whoreson used some of his gold to hire these sewer rats to waylay us. Must have guessed Opyros wouldn’t go back alone. By Thoem, this won’t be the last of our quarrel!”

IV

Across the Threshold of Dream

Dusk was overtaking them as they neared the Old City.

Next to Opyros rode Ceteol; a high collar masked her bruised throat. Why she came, Opyros was at a loss to decide. She had leaped at him with harsh curses on his return to the manor, clawed and fought until he pinned her in a drunken embrace and unfolded the night’s story, after which he could not dissuade her from accompanying them to the Old City. He suggested—at least hoped—that her professed desire to see him destroyed by his unnatural delvings was not her true motive.

Kane was in a black mood; he had driven his men in search of Eberhos since before dawn, but no trace of the alchemist had been found. In addition to Levardos, Webbre, and Haigan, Kane had brought with him the new man, Hef, and a hawk-nosed thug named Boulus. Whether Eberhos would make another attempt to recover the carving—and it seemed likely he had fled the city—Kane could not guess. He rather hoped the alchemist would be so rash.

Fired with the spirit of the venture, Opyros was in a voluble mood, and eventually he succeeded in stirring Kane from his choler. Kane declined from further argument over the poet’s design, and as the other spoke of his hopes for the evocation, of his eagerness to explore the unknown wonders of dream, he found himself sharing Opyros’s enthusiasm. To unlock the gates of dream... Kane, too, sensed deep fascination for such an exploration. True, there were risks, unknown risks—but what great adventure had ever been free of danger? In fact, by definition, how could there be adventure without danger? Security equals boredom equals stagnation equals death. Kane listened and nodded, added thoughts of his own, so that by the time they entered the forest-buried walls of the Old City, Kane was contemplating the onyx figurine with a thoughtful brow.

“There’s that damn shadow again,” remarked Ceteol suddenly.

“Shadow?” asked Opyros.

“It’s gone again,” she said with a frown. The girl pointed. “See how our shadows are all strung out in a line?” The declining sun cast light enough yet to throw the riders’ spindly, misshapen shadows against the trees which crowded the unfrequented road wherever there was sufficient clearing to let them pass from under the shadow of the trees opposite.

“I’ve seen it a couple of times,” Ceteol continued, “just out of the corner of my eye. When we come to a sunny spot, I’ve noticed how all our shadows writhe alongside us. But a couple of times I thought it was strange, because I can tell my shadow, and there’s two men riding behind me—except I saw three shadows following my own.”

“What sort of shadow?” Kane wanted to know. “Like another horse and rider?”

“No, not like that.” She jammed the heels of her palms together and wriggled her fingers. “It was sort of... crawly.”

Opyros laughed and looked at her eyes. “Your eyes are still bedazzled from the drug, love. It’ll clear away before long.”

Tossing back her brown hair, Ceteol made a tight face. “I may see shadows, but I don’t half kill a girl and then go off and get drunk with thieves and killers. So don’t laugh at me, damn it.”

“Tell me next time you see it,” suggested Kane. Then to Opyros: “You did say nothing untoward took place after I left you.”

The poet shook his head, trying to tell how much of Ceteol’s sullenness was only affected. “No, nothing happened. After I... ah... told Ceteol of our plans, I slept until not long before you called. I remember that damned pack of dogs started yelling—woke me up.”

“Didn’t see them when we rode up,” mused Kane.

“Somebody else chased them off, I gathered. But where in all this ruin is the temple of Shenan?”

“Not far, though it’s a little past the main body of the ruins.”

The Old City had a certain ghostly beauty in the twilight, the melancholic serenity of ancient walls returning to dust with their secret memories of another age. Compared to its sprawling offspring Enseljos, the Old City had been but a town. Most of its buildings had been of timber, and these were long since weed-shrouded mounds of earth—forgotten graves in the forest. Here and there a low stone wall or heap of broken masonry indicated the site of some antique structure, but more often there was only an overgrown depression along the fading streets to mark the foundation of a long-toppled dwelling. Still, there were places where the walls of one of the Old City’s more impressive buildings yet rose in tired defiance of time. As the dusk deepened, the darkness within these mouldering skulls seemed to flow from staring windows and yawning doorways and mingle with the gathering shadows of the forest.

“Here,” announced Kane, and he urged his horse between the closely hemmed brushy barriers. A late morning rain had drenched the forest, so that progress through the brush left their legs sodden against their mounts’ flanks.

The waning light fell upon a grey stone structure standing in gloomy solitude among the shouldering trees. Its walls rose to almost clear of the encroaching branches; buttressed and vaulted after the southern fashion, portions of the temple yet retained an arched ceiling. The deeper shadow within had spared its interior the rank undergrowth which strangled much of the Old City’s ruins, although age had stripped the walls to bare stone and littered the floor with crumbling debris. As twilight closed upon the ruined temple, the velvet-leather curtains which festooned its high-vaulted ceiling spread a thousand wings and flapped chattering through the broken apertures.

Kane dismounted and directed his men to clear away some of the rubble which barricaded the entrance. The poet pressed forward in excitement; Ceteol, aloofly curious followed him, her calf-length pleated skirt slapping against high riding boots. As soon as he had kindled a pair of links, Kane joined them, and while his men shoved away the rotting tangles of anonymous debris, he spoke further on the temple’s history, raising his torch to point out some item of architectural interest. Opyros again sensed an uneasy wonder at Kane’s nonchalant familiarity with the ruins.

Moonlight poured molten silver over the brooding grey stones by the time Kane judged their work sufficient. Showers of silver light fell through the high, narrow windows and jagged rifts in the walls, gathered in a deep pool about the altar, where a vast circular skylight showed the same night skies to which priestesses centuries dead had raised their chants. In a few areas where the litter had been cleared away, the damp stone tiles yet bore traces of strange mosaic patterns.

At Kane’s orders, Levardos saw to posting the men outside. They were well paid, and if their leader chose to waste the night pursuing a mad poet’s unhallowed whim, that was Kane’s affair. Theirs was to watch for Eberhos, in case the alchemist had followed them with another band of hirelings. That he had fled Kane’s anger was their consensus, but if not... their blades were ready.

Kane turned to his friend. “Well,” he said, half in question.

The poet’s eagerness was undiminished. “I’m ready if you are, Kane. This place is perfect—really it is! The atmosphere—it’s... hell, I’ve tried to capture it again and again in my verses! What dreams hover about us here! Kane, if the muse will only come to me tonight... I feel I can... can... I feel I can grasp the inspiration I’ve searched for so long! Night Winds and a hundred more could soar from my soul tonight!”

A bitter smile twisted his face. “As you wish, then,” assented Kane. He extended his hand. “The simulacrum.”

Opyros thrust the carving into Kane’s hand. “No musty tomes? No evil-fumed braziers and elder-glyphed pentacles?” But his levity was more bravado than banter.

“As I’ve said, a simple spell,” returned Kane levelly. “I’ll need a drop of your blood.”

And while Ceteol watched with unfathomable eyes, Kane led the poet into the pool of moonlight; there by the forgotten altar of dark, flawless stone he performed those things which the ritual required.

Now it seemed to the poet that Kane’s rhythmic chant of evocation had become a fading echo, hypnotic ebb and flow of rippling sound. The ruined walls seemed to recede; moonlight and shadow merged into a vortex of formless image. Even the cold hardness of stone pressing against his back, where he lay beside the onyx carving, grew distant—physical sensation drifting apart from his psychic awareness...

And no longer did he lie beside a figurine of carven onyx. The carving blurred, rushed upward in size—or did he diminish? There was a sense of motion, of vertigo... Lying next to him now was a figure of black—not a figure in black, but of black. A shadow in three dimensions of a nude girl. Of the dark muse.

She moved. Minute turned toward him languidly. She saw him; the profile of darkness smiled an invitation... The cruel indifference of her smile... She beckoned. Opyros moved against her; his arms closed about her ebony figure... His arms, too, were fashioned of darkness—as was his entire body. Then their bodies entwined in a lovers’ embrace. There came wrenching ecstasy, intolerable vertigo...

Then no darkness. His body had returned to substance. In his arms was a pale-skinned girl of exquisite beauty, with smiling lips, eyes of ageless wisdom. She broke from his embrace, still holding his hands... raised the poet to his feet (Now he saw on what they had lain)... led him irresistibly, unresistingly forward...

And now he understood the cold cruelty of her face...

Ceteol gasped. The shimmering mists that for a moment had obscured the streamers of moonlight about the altar suddenly broke apart, drifted like phantom shapes into the night. Where Opyros and the black statuette had lain there was now only bare stone.

“What did you—where is be?” she exclaimed.

“He’s crossed the threshold of dream,” murmured Kane, a shadow of wonder touching his face.

“When will he return?” Ceteol persisted. “Hell, how will he return?”

Kane ran a hand over his beard. “That, of course, is the risk we spoke of. He’ll return once the dream into which Klinure thrusts him is ended. When—I don’t know. It depends on how long they wander through her realm before Opyros is caught up in the flow of a single dream, and then on how long that dream takes to reach its end. Only, how closely does time in a dream world follow the span of time as we know it? There time moves in obedience to the dream, not to natural law—may pass like a second, or the reverse. Hell, for that matter, how does a dream actually end? Is the certain terminus to a single dream, or does one merge into another, endlessly, until the dreamer and shatters the stream of image?”

“You don’t know!” Ceteol’s aristocratic face with emotion. “Damn you, Kane! You’ve killed him!”

“Perhaps,” he shrugged. “But it was Opyros’s decision to try this, and I explained that there were unknown risks.”

“Weird,” she murmured, her face again expressionless. “You’re both weird. I don’t know which of stranger.” She fell to watching the moonlit circle of the altar, hunched together with knees drawn up, chin on fists, arms compressed between body and thighs.

“This may take most of the night,” Kane said with a vague gesture. “My men have a small fire going to keep off the damp. Why not wait out there?”

Ceteol shook her head and muttered something indistinct. Her wide eyes seemed to stare without blinking into the moonlight.

Thus she remained when Kane returned from a hurried check of his men, who had nothing to report. The alchemist had to all appearances abandoned his efforts to recover the simulacrum. Since the night was not cold, Kane told Levardos to let the fire burn out. If enemies still sought them in the darkness, it seemed pointless to illuminate their position with a campfire. The moon—just past full—gave light enough for eyes accustomed to the night. A pair of torches inside the temple afforded all the light Kane might need, and in the darkness without, his men could stand guard unseen by an approaching enemy.

Plainly, there was nothing to do but wait. After Ceteol had declined, Kane drank a little wine from the skin they had brought and settled against a slab of rock to keep watch. After a while, the silence of the ruined temple broken only by the girl’s regular breathing, he decided she slept.

But Ceteol was awake. “Kane, there’s that shadow again.”

Kane spun to look where she pointed—too late to see any definite shape. In time to catch a flicker of movement as something passed through the path of moonlight where its beams pierced the darkness. There was no sound.

“A bat,” he told her. “Some night bird.”

“That size?”

Only Kane had sensed the chill presence of fear, the sudden aura of danger that whispered through the brooding melancholy of the ruins. And he knew that death stalked the night.

“Stay here,” he ordered. “Make no sound unless... you need to.” His sword hissed from his scabbard, and Kane vanished into the darkness beyond.

Levardos glanced up from his post near the entrance. “What is it?” he whispered, noting Kane’s expression.

“I don’t know. Did you see, hear anything?”

The lean-faced man shook his head. “What is it?” he repeated.

Without answer, Kane brushed by him, stepping over the dead ashes of their fire. There was danger in the night, of this he felt certain. But what danger lurked among these ebon-shrouded ruins...?

He began a circuit of the temple. Neither Webbre nor Haigan, posted close by, had noticed anything out of the ordinary; they expressed wonder at their leader’s sudden unease. Thinking on the direction from which the shadowy movement had seemed to come, Kane redoubled his caution as he slipped farther away from the walls.

The moon overhead cast thick and misshapen shadows through the tangled trees, shone bright on jutting fragments of stonework that were strewn about like piles of discarded bone. Sodden underbrush clung to the mounds of decayed timber, cloaked the shadowed depressions of rubble-laden cellars. Through this maze of pitfalls and thorny barricades, Kane stalked in silence, sword poised to strike at the nameless menace which he knew to be creeping through the night with him. Yes, there was danger close by—danger that hinted of inhuman evil—for too often had Kane quested along paths of hidden knowledge to doubt this subconscious warning. Perhaps the ghost of unease he had felt earlier this evening had not arisen, as he supposed, from the matter of the dark muse...

He had swung out far enough, he decided, still without finding any reason for his concern. Maybe then it was just nerves; he had started at the shadow of a low-flying owl. Only he could not convince himself of this. Turning toward the silent temple, Kane slipped around to check with his other two men.

A short time later he halted. Unless he had lost his bearing, Boulus should be posted here. There was no sign of the man. Kane bit his lip and looked more closely. No, he was not mistaken. Here was the lightning-spiraled oak in whose shadow Boulus had waited. By the blotches of moonlight, the ground showed no evidence of a struggle. The man should not have left his post... unless he had something to report.

Cursing himself for ignoring the obvious, Kan quickly threaded his way back to the temple. With such stealth did he move that he was standing next to Hef before the other man called a challenge. Hef’s sword wavered for an instant, but he recognized Kane’s hulking figure.

“Nothing,” he whispered, grinning ruefully that his leader had come upon him unseen.

“Boulus hasn’t come by.” As he asked it, it was no longer a question.

Hef made a negative grunt. “Unless he slipped by me as quiet as you just done.”

“Something’s wrong then,” gritted Kane. “He’s not at his post.” The sense of danger tightened. Boulus should have checked with Hef if he had noticed anything in their area. But there was only silence about them.

“Maybe he shifted over a ways,” Hef suggested. “Quiet as you move, if you didn’t see him, he wouldn’t of seen you.”

“Maybe. I’ll check again. Watch it.” Kane stole away in the direction he bad just come.

But of Boulus there was still no trace. Softly Kane called his name—alarmed to the point of taking this risk. Not even an echo. Not even the call of a night bird. Had something frightened the forest to silence?

The aura of menace was very near.

Thinking furiously, Kane returned to where he had left Hef. Stronger than ever came the sense of lurking terror. Was there something stalking him?

Again there sounded no challenge. Hef was not at his post.

Feeling the muscles of his neck draw tight, Kane searched about him. There was nothing to be seen; no sign of disturbance here; nothing. He was starting for the temple, when his foot struck something. A boot. Hef’s boot. Bewildered, Kane caught it up.

Something warm and damp ran across his wrist as he lifted it. Hef’s foot remained in the boot. His calf had been sheared off so cleanly as to clip through the top of the leather.

There had been no sound.

Levardos sensed his leader’s alarm as Kane plunged from the nighted forest. He met the urgent question in Kane’s look and shook his head, his parchment-fleshed face alert.

In a harsh whisper Kane called for Webbre and Haigan to pull back instantly. Muffled thrashing in the brush indicated they bad heard. Something evil, something deadly, hovered near, very near.

’Kane! What is it!” hissed Levardos.

’I’m not sure,” he grated. “Boulus is gone. Hef, too. In the space of a few minutes, something took Hef—not a few score yards from me, though I heard nothing! There was just his foot, lying there on the ground like a cast-off boot!”

“Why no sound of attack? You should have heard the rush of steel. A man would scream as a blade sundered his leg!”

Kane’s face was worried. “No blade did that—there was no more blood than from a slopped wine cup. Something snatched him up; something with jaws like a dragon—jaws that could close upon a man in an instant, and never notice if a tiny morsel of flesh dropped away from its scissored fangs!”

“But a beast that huge!” his lieutenant protested, “We’d see it—hear it!”

“But we didn’t.”

The two brothers burst from the undergrowth. “Quick! Inside the temple!” Kane ordered, snapping out a terse explanation. “Whatever’s out there, these walls may give us some defense!”

From their tethers, the horses began to stamp and nicker. For a second Kane debated leaving them to their fate, then decided not to risk being left on foot. “Bring in the mounts!” he ordered Webbre and Haigan.

Then as he dashed through the temple entrance, he knew something was wrong here as well. He had left a torch burning near the altar; it lay dark against the tiles, extinguished. Ceteol had vanished.

Kane snatched up the remaining torch from its crevice within the entrance. The link was nearly burned out; perhaps the other had fallen and gone out. Ceteol?

No time for conjecture. From outside came a shrill scream. A second voice—Webbre’s bass roar—cursed and howled. Then the screams of the horses drowned out everything. With a thunder of panic-spurred hooves, their mounts pounded off into the night.

Kane whipped the torch to flaring life. Their blades wavered yellow as he and Levardos leaped from the deserted temple. Branches shook; the last of the horses could just be glimpsed as darkness engulfed them. The two brothers had disappeared. Kane called only once, for he did not expect an answer.

“That shadow!” breathed Levardos, pointing.

“Ah!” hissed Kane, and thrust out his torch.

No shape. Only a looming shadow that writhed against the trees, swept across the fallen stories. Retreating too quickly for the eye to judge its form.

“What is it? Where is it!” gasped Levardos. For the torchlight disclosed nothing that might cast such a shadow—nor was there any sound or show of movement to mark its passage.

“Something overhead?” guessed Kane, though the angle of the creeping shadows denied this.

The link flickered and smoked. Its pitch was almost exhausted, so that the tow was beginning to smoulder.

As its light failed, the misshapen shadow surged across the moonlight toward them. Terror brushed chill talons toward their throats. With a curse, Kane whirled the torch about; bits of the tow spun loose and dashed like tiny stars across the night. Flame leaped up once more. The onrushing shadow fell back. Still there was no sign of what cast it.

“Back into the temple!” Kane ordered. “I think it hates the light!’’

Breathlessly they stumbled past the rubble of the portal. The thick walls afforded some sense of protection from the unknown horror that lurked beyond the light.

The link snapped and fumed. “The other torches?” asked Kane anxiously.

“They were with the horses and gear!” groaned Levardos.

“Then we’d better find something to burn!” Kane scrambled through the litter of the temple. His boot kicked through the mounds of rotted timber; the material sprayed from his thrusting foot, damp and crumbling loam. Only bare stone and mould-eaten decay. The enclosing roof had held out the undergrowth, fallen branches that cluttered the ground outside.

The sputtering flame threatened to leap and die. “Isn’t there any dry wood in here?” cursed Kane.

“Outside...” began Levardos, glancing toward the doorway. He did not finish. Shadow blocked the entrance.

Kane lunged with the dwindling torch. Moonlight again fell through the opening.

“Here’s something!” Levardos crushed together an armload of dead wood—a few branches that had fallen though the broken roof. With frantic care, Kane thrust the link into the heap of brush. It was damp, rotten. The flame dwindled, refused to catch. Desperate breaths fanned the smouldering tow. From the corner of his eye, Kane saw the shadow spread across the doorway.

Then the branches caught. Painfully, unsteadily, the flickering heat crept through the broken tinder. Ignoring blistered hands, the two men nudged embers together and fed the trembling flames—cursed as the damp wood smoked and steamed without igniting.

Somehow they got the fire burning. Moonlight spilled past the portal once again. But the smothering cloud of deadly fear did not leave them. Beyond the walls, an unseen stalker paced in silent hunger, blotted out the shafts of moonbeam as it crept about the ruin.

“We’ll need more wood than this,” judged Kane. In the dancing firelight he could see other branches and scraps of crumbling timber—pitifully few. When these were gone?

“Maybe with a torch we could bring wood in from outside,” he considered. Levardos nodded uneasily, not wanting to think of the death that waited beyond the light.

With this in mind, Kane left the fire to retrieve the fallen torch by the altar. As he bent, his brow furrowed. The link had not burned out; someone’s foot had crushed it against the tiles. Wondering, Kane picked it up. In the horror of the moment, he had spared little thought for Ceteol. Her disappearance now took on another aspect.

“Kane! Above you!”

Kane hurtled back from the altar. The pool of moonlight no longer poured down. Its circle was broken as a writhing shadow crept across the opening in the roof. Risking a glance upward, Kane saw only darkness, flowing darkness that blotted out the stars. A crawling, obscene shadow wriggled across the altar—slithered too rapidly to suggest more than vaguely its true shape. If indeed it had true shape. The aura of alien evil bore down upon them in crushing waves.

“It makes no sound!” cried Levardos as Kane retreated to the fire. “And its size! How can these mouldering stones bear its weight?”

“It has no weight—no substance as we understand!” Kane snarled, recognizing the creature at last. “It’s a sort of demon—an elemental from the subworld of chaos, ’in elemental fashioned of darkness! Darkness lends it substance, but light strips away its borrowed flesh—shows only the shadow of its malevolent spirit. Moonlight doesn’t affect it, since the moon casts no true light. The demon must have followed us here; waited for nightfall, for our fires to die. If we can keep a fire going until dawn, we can escape it.”

A laugh answered him from beyond the altar. “Will you burn stone, then?” asked a mocking voice. “Your fire already flames less brightly. Soon you’ll have to venture out into the damp forest—and what if your torch goes out? Will you find some rotten branch to light your way? And the stars say it will rain again before dawn!”

Eberhos’s burly figure slunk through a rift in the temple’s far wall. He carried a burden. Ceteol. The girl hung limp in his arms; her hands were tied, and a gag was fixed between her jaws.

Kane’s eyes blazed. He took a step toward the alchemist.

A dagger flashed in Eberhos’s hand. “Stay where you are!” he ordered. “Or I’ll slit her pretty throat and be gone before you get halfway here! Want to chase me into the night?”

Seeing that Kane subsided, he sneered, “So you know what demon stalks you, Kane. You’re most erudite, aren’t you? Did you guess who summoned it, who commanded it to pursue, to stay? Surely not uncouth Eberhos, Damatjyst’s flunky and errand boy!”

His voice grew shrill. “Did you think I had kissed ass for that miserly tyrant all these years and never learned to count past my fingers? Well, my days of taking that piss-blooded bastard’s orders are just about over! I’ve planned my move for years, waited patiently while I did apprentice’s chores for the fool! I’ll not let the theft of that carving destroy his trust in his loyal First Assistant just when all I’ve planned for is in reach!”

He chuckled and shifted the girl’s dropping form. Kane saw the smear of crimson dark against her hair. Ceteol began to regain consciousness, moaned through her gag.

“Followed you here,” Eberhos grinned. “Followed my little pet. While you were out playing with it in the dark, I slipped inside to get my carving. Your man didn’t seem to be on guard any more, did he? But when I didn’t find the figurine, I thought the little lady might want to tell me where you hid it—I know you and that crazy poet were going to try something with it here tonight.

“Tell you what, Kane. Give me the carving—if you aren’t carrying it, tell me where it’s hidden—and I’ll take it and go. Once I’m clear, I’ll send the demon back to the realm of chaos from which I summoned it.”

“What chance is there you’ll keep your part of the bargain?” growled Kane, weighing the chances of a knife throw. The distance was great, and Eberhos held the girl like a shield. And the fire was dropping low already.

“Well, now, I guess you’ll just have to trust my word of honor,” the alchemist chuckled. “Is that rain I hear off in the trees?”

The wind was starting up in listless gusts. Kane answered Eberhos with a curse and edged a step closer.

Eberhos touched his dagger to Ceteol’s straining throat. “One more step, and she gets a new mouth! Give me the carving, Kane. Maybe you and Opyros want to watch the girl die?”

Kane realized that in the poor light Eberhos had mistaken Levardos for the poet. Crouched beyond the flickering fire, his lieutenant could only be glimpsed as a gaunt figure with blond hair—like Opyros. “Why should I care what you do with the girl?” scoffed Kane. “She means nothing to either of us.”

Eberhos’s beefy face grew crafty. “No? Well, maybe your verse-singing friend will change his mind when he sees I don’t bluff. It won’t be a quick death...”

The fire was dying down. Levardos shoved in the last of the fuel they had gathered. The damp, pulpy wood all but smothered the flames.

“Take the girl as hostage, go back and call off your demon,” offered Kane. “I’ll return the carving to you tomorrow—and give you my word not to take vengeance for this.”

Laughter taunted him. “Getting edgy, Kane? And you didn’t even see what happened to your friends—but I did! No, you aren’t the one who makes the bargain tonight, Kane. You’ll take my offer, or die!”

“I see no reason to trust you,” Kane snarled. The fire was not igniting the rotted fragments of timber.

“Then I’ll show you that you can trust me to carry out a threat! The carving, quick now, or the girl gets the knife! Slow. I’ll let you watch to see how she likes it.”

Eberhos shoved the still dazed girl into a shaft of moonlight that lanced through one of the high, narrow windows. The window was not much wider than a balistraria, but the ray of light clearly showed Ceteol’s white face. Should they rush him, the alchemist could easily slash her throat and dart through the broken wall, a few steps away.

“Watch!” he jeered. Pinning her against his chest, he hooked his arm around and drew the dagger point through the fabric of her beaded blouse. The cloth parted to expose her straining breasts. Grinning, Eberhos carved a thin crescent below each pale cone of flesh. Blood traced patterns down her ribs and belly.

Ceteol whimpered through the gag. The pain had returned her to full consciousness. As the alchemist shifted his blade for another cut, she smashed the heel of her riding boot into his shin.

Her boots were spurred. Fashionable spurs for a lady, but sharp nonetheless. Their towels gored a furrow down to Eberhos’s sandaled foot.

Cursing in pain, the alchemist hurled her against the wall. Ceteol’s head cracked against the window’s edge, and she slumped down. Blood flowed from Eberhos’s leg as he leaped upon her and raised his dagger for a killing stroke.

Shadow flickered across the moonlight. A loop of something dark and half-seen snaked through the window; Kane thought of a great black cat darting its paw into a rat hole after catching a glimpse of its prey within. Eberhos shrieked—one terrible shriek—as something that might have been a tentacle lashed about his chest, tore him from the floor and through the window into the night.

Presumably the demon would not have harmed its master. Likely the scent of blood, the proximity of the girl, Eberhos’s sudden lunge confused the enraged leviathan that waited in the darkness outside. The creature instantly released the alchemist.

As much of him as had passed through the narrow window.

Ceteol made a choking sound in her throat and stumbled groggily away from the dripping aperture. Kane caught her up, removed her bonds, and the girl huddled next to the fire, cursing dispassionately between shuddering gasps. Blood continued to seep along her ribs, but the gashes were shallow, so that she was barely aware of their pain in the presence of far greater horror.

But the clinging atmosphere of terror which had closed about them had lifted—vanished with the alchemist’s death.

“What... happened?” puffed Levardos, daring to pause in his frenzied efforts with the fire. The flames quivered and sputtered, but burned more strongly now.

“I think it’s gone,” Kane hazarded. “Eberhos summoned the demon, commanded it to stalk us; his death should have released it from its bond—allowed the creature to return to the nameless realm of chaos.”

“Gone, do you think?” asked Levardos, eyeing the darkness with suspicion.

“So it would appear. Do you see its crawling shadow? Can you sense that smothering cloud of unearthly fear the demon seemed to exhale?”

His lieutenant shook his head slowly, then glanced toward the steaming fire. The chunks of rotted timber would soon be consumed. “We’ll know for sure before long,” be commented laconically.

Kane gingerly retrieved the remaining link from the cheerless flames. Pitch still boiled from its tow—fuel which had kept the fire going after Levardos had shoved it into the dying embers. “I’ll find out now,” he growled, carrying the torch toward the door.

Despite his assurance that the demon had left them, Kane’s broad muscles bunched in tight cords as he stepped into the darkness of the ruin-haunted forest. Drops of rain splashed invisibly through the trees, spat at the flaring torch. But no unseen demon reached out for him; no writhing shadow lurked beyond the nimbus of light. Forcing unpleasant thoughts from his mind, Kane cast about for dead limbs and eventually returned through the enveloping drizzle with a small tree scraping behind him.

“The demon,” he announced, “is gone,” Kane flung down his load of wood, then released the disintegrating torch; he had to use his free hand to pry away his locked fingers from their grip on its shaft.

They kept the fire going. It was a worn, grim trio huddled within the ruined temple. More mist than droplets, the rain wrapped itself about them, plopped from countless crevices in the smoke-hung roof. They waited for daylight, waited for the poet to return to them; the shadow of terror which had fallen over this night made the evocation of the dark muse seem distant, unreal. Touched by the spirit of gloom that haunted the ruins, they waited through the night, each silent in his thoughts.

The grey light of dawn was touching the altar when Kane muttered an exclamation that woke the others from their doze. “Look!” he cried, pointing toward the circle of dawnlight.

Streamers of opalescent mist, not of the rain nor of the morning, gathered upon the bare stone, splashed clean by the raindrops. The swirling mists slowed, hovered closer. Coalesced. Vanished.

On the rain-polished stone lay a man, a man who looked to be asleep. Beside him rested a nude figurine of black onyx, a figurine whose carven face smiled an invitation to unknown wonders, whose eyes shone with mysterious cruelty...

“Opyros!” called Ceteol, running to him. She touched his arm.

The poet’s eyes flashed open. He drew away, fear distorting his face. His eyes were unfocused, vacuous.

“Opyros?” Kane’s voice was shaken.

The poet’s empty eyes looked past Kane. He worked his threat as if to scream, but only a hiss of insurmountable terror escaped his contorted lips. He hissed again and again, then began to sob mindlessly.

When they sought to lift him, Opyros broke away and fled with frightened mewing into a shadowed corner of the ruin. They had difficulty pulling him from under the debris, as he moved with surprising speed for a man wriggling on his belly.

V

Cruel Mystery of Her Smile

They carried Opyros back to Enseljos.

For weeks he lay in a locked room of his manor, attended only by Ceteol after his howling drove away most of his servants. A sense of fulfillment seemed to settle over Ceteol, who would explain with a soft smile just exactly who was to blame. Only through the drugs Kane left for him could the poet take sleep, and for days he remained huddled in a nest of soiled bedding, shivering and mewling. At times he muttered snatches of speech, guttural syllables in a strange language—if language it was—that no one could recognize, although Kane once listened carefully as if he understood, and left the chamber shuddering.

Almost certainly any other man would have gone to the end of his days in this gibbering state of frightened madness. Perhaps Opyros’s was an exceptionally resilient consciousness, or possibly the repeated flights of his imagination into the shadow lands of the macabre had to some extent inured him to those greater horrors which would have utterly shattered another’s soul. Some core of ego yet burned beneath the choking mists of insanity.

Little by little he seemed to come to himself. Though the nightmares still haunted his drugged sleep, he became able to sit composedly while awake, to feed and care for himself. After some months he began to prowl quietly about his manor, examining his books and effects as if submerged memories were rising from far depths of his consciousness—like a traveller who returns from a distant journey of many years, to find the vaguely remembered home of his childhood awaiting him untouched by the age which has passed since lost he held his toys. Eventually be began to talk, fumbling with the words as if the language were unfamiliar from disuse, but as the weeks passed, his stammering phrases grew to careful sentences and then to normal conversation. He ventured out on the streets of Enseljos once more and greeted his old acquaintances, who were privately alarmed as to how greatly his recent nervous collapse had aged the poet. And thus, after many months of convalescence, Opyros reassumed management of his affairs much as before.

But long before this time he had begun to write.

Kane greeted Opyros one night as the poet made a surprise visit to his new quarters. Only rarely did he see his friend since Opyros’s recovery, for the poet stayed locked in his study for long hours these days, working in secret at his writing. No longer did he come to Kane with fragments of verse and half-formed ideas; all his writing he now did alone. Kane hoped the poet did not feel some unspoken ill will against him for his part in the evocation of the dark muse. On the contrary, Opyros expressed no regret for his experience, though he never told of it. Nonetheless, Kane could read nothing in his eyes of the poet’s secret thoughts.

“Night Winds is finished,” he declared with a tired smile.

Warmly Kane congratulated his friend. “Are you at last satisfied with it, then?”

Opyros looked introspective as he accepted a crystal chalice of brandy. “I think so. My journey with the dark muse was worth it, Kane, for I found the inspiration I sought—though there was a price for it.”

“And is Night Winds the perfect poem you spoke of once to me?”

Opyros savoured the liquor before tasting it. “I think so.”

“Then I should very much like to read it. Have you brought it?”

Opyros shook his head. “No, it’s locked safely away. Forgive my conceit, Kane, but this is the masterwork I have devoted my life, my soul, to creating. I want its unveiling to be an affair of some... ah... magnitude—do you understand?”

Kane nodded, studying the other’s face intently.

“There will be a formal reading in a week or so, as soon as I can circulate invitations to those who should have them, arrange a hall, and the like. I don’t want this another uncouth public reading, with slobs tramping in and out through it all, peddlers hawking food and drink. This will be a private affair—closed door, you know—a few hundred guests, literary colleagues and critics, the nobility who attend this sort of social function. There’ll be enough trouble with these dilettantes’ gossiping and backbiting... but then I’ve said a perfect poem should hold the minds of its audience.”

“I’ll took forward to attending.”

“I’m tempted to let you see this first, anyway,” Opyros grinned nervously. “It’s somewhat different from my earlier work—I’ve done a lot of things that no writer has thought to... Well, it’s finished, and I’ll wait for the formal reading, to stand acclaimed as genius or be laughed at as pretentious fool, when the world first hears it.”

“To Night Winds and its author,” toasted Kane, touching goblets.

“To the dark muse,” answered Opyros.

But Kane did not attend the first reading of Night Winds, although the poet’s announced presentation of his first work in over a year had attracted great interest and comment from across the land. Halbros-Serrantho had required Kane’s presence in secret on the night of the reading. Kane could not deny this summons from the ambitious ruler of Enseljos, whose dreams included building an empire from the tiny states of the Northern Continent. Such plans were of no little interest to Kane as well.

So Kane was forced to miss the first reading of Night Winds.

It often moved him to wondering regret. For although he was never to hear the masterwork of Opyros, the mad poet, Kane knew that his friend had in truth found inspiration in the embrace of the dark muse. Opyros had in truth created the perfect poem of his dark genius.

For as he left the palace of Halbros-Serrantho, the first horrified tales were spreading across the city—tales of what had awaited the frightened guards when they at last broke down the locked doors of that now silent audience halt.