“Because you need me,” I said bluntly.
“Has anyone told you what you are needed for?”
“By the look of things here, I’d say you want some fresh ingredients for a stew. I haven’t seen past those masks you wear, like cowards, to hide your faces, but I’m beginning to suspect you file your teeth.”
There was a moment’s silence. Maybe Baron BousJunge was collecting himself. Had what I said struck a chord with him?
“Do you know where you are?” he asked, and then answered his own question. “You are in my quarters. This is where we perform some of our most useful experiments. Many are on living captives, from the youngest baby to the oldest man, and very, very few survive, sadly. It is all in the name of science. They gladly contribute to the great sum of human knowledge, without which we should never have risen above the animals.”
I almost laughed at that. “You seem bent on getting lower than the average animal,” I told him. “I mean, you’re dressing up like them and behaving worse than them. Hasn’t anyone ever told you what idiots you look in all that gear?” I sniffed. “I’m not surprised how bad you smell, either.”
Now his hand spasmed, as if he controlled himself from striking me. All this was proving that for the moment, at least, I was safe. Either they needed to keep me in one piece for use in a planned ritual, or something else was stopping them from doing what I guessed they would normally do to someone who gave them that amount of cheek. A reedy, nasty chuckle came out of the mask. “I doubt if we have made a mistake. I have heard of your family’s arrogance. You Germanians have given us a great deal of trouble, one way and another, what with Duke Dorian and the rest. It will be a relief to me to bring this matter to an end at last, though I must say I have not been bored by your escapades. I gather, your grandmother and her father have already been neutralized. Just as well. Just as well. They had become impure, what with one thing and another. Now only you and your brother remain. The blood is strong and clean and will be best suited for our purposes.”
“So you really are a bunch of blood-sucking vampires, are you?” Why on earth did he think I was German? They seemed to have a lot of confused information! Their confusion could get me killed.
“I don’t recognize the word. But the expression is crude. Have you eaten?”
“As much of your rotten food as I can stomach!”
“Go through that door.” He lifted an arm. The ranks of cowled figures parted. I knew they had the power to carry me through if they wanted to, even though I felt that for every door which shut behind me, my chances of escaping became less and less, so I walked through with as much dignity as I could.
The room on the other side was rather surprising, reminding me of some old professor’s study. Pictures of sorts on the walls, a fireplace, a mantelpiece, a big, high wooden desk, wooden bookshelves, all carved with those same grotesque faces and creatures. Every surface was covered in books, notes, scraps of paper, scrolls. There were even some clay tablets covered in hieroglyphics not dissimilar to those on the walls. There were two big, comfortable armchairs and signs of other creature comforts, like a pot of what looked like tobacco, a long-stemmed pipe (presumably for smoking while wearing a mask), several more or less identical cloaks on hooks, what were probably spare masks, a conical hat with a wide brim, which reminded me inevitably of an old-fashioned wizard, and what appeared to be a string of desiccated rats hanging from a central hook in the ceiling and rotating slowly above the flames from the fire, which smoked in the grate and heated the room to an almost intolerable temperature. He indicated that I should sit down and then, to my great surprise, reached up with both hands and removed his mask.
The face I saw was pale, of course, and not very wholesome. He was younger than I might have believed from his hands alone, but still getting on. There were little branches of veins under his eyes, and his lips were an odd blue color, as if he had been chewing blackberries or something. He had a white beard almost to his chest, which appeared to have unrolled from under the mask, and white hair falling almost to his shoulders. Yet the face actually had quite a kind look to it, and his eyes had wrinkles I’d have sworn were laughter lines. When he did smile, his eyes twinkling, I responded almost with a jolt. I was getting used to sinister threats in ordinary gestures.
“Do you have children of your own?” The words came without my really thinking about them.
“Ah,” he said, settling back into his own chair. “Children. Now, there’s a thing. It is a century or two since my last child died, young lady.”
“So you’re older than you look!”
“If you wish. How old do I look?”
“About sixty,” I said.
He huffed at this, the way a cat does. “Sixty? That must seem very old to you.”
It didn’t, particularly given my grandma’s age, but I wasn’t going to tell him. “What did your children die of?” I asked him.
“Oh,” he said vaguely, “old age, mostly. They lacked the genes, you see.”
“Why was that?”
“Because I needed them. We maintain ourselves as best we can. That is why so many of us have children. They keep you young. They have kept me young for several hundred years. But sadly, the time is coming when not even the genes of my own progeny will help. I suppose I must reconcile myself to death.”
“That would probably be a good idea,” I said, “since my friends aren’t likely to want you alive for any reason.”
He chuckled. “Oh, I doubt that. I doubt that. I have so much wisdom they could use. Not, of course, that I am offering it. My loyalties are to my king and country.”
I wasn’t sure if I believed him, but I let it go. Baron Bous-Junge picked up a hand bell from the table beside him and rang it twice. Immediately one of those poor, naked slaves stepped smoothly in. She was a pretty woman, but she wouldn’t look at either of our faces, as if she had been trained to avoid direct eye contact. He murmured something to her, and soon two more slaves, who might have been related to the first one, brought in trays. They placed them on a table erected for the purpose and began pouring something into two beakers, while placing what looked like cakes and big, fat crumpets on irregular-shaped plates. Everything smelled good, just as if we were having tea at home. My mouth watered, and then, to my own astonishment, my eyes began to water, too. I wasn’t going to let him see, but I think I was crying. Again I was suddenly missing my mum and dad, and I wished I weren’t, because it made me too vulnerable. I did what I could to stop the tears.
Almost sympathetically he handed me a plate with some pastries on it and a beaker full of what I’d swear was ordinary tea. But I found it hard to eat or drink at that moment.
“They are not poisoned,” he said.
“I can’t see why they would be,” I replied. “You or one of your soldiers could kill me easily.”
He seemed to like this answer. “You have all the spirit I expected. You are your mother’s daughter. And you’re intelligent, too. Your people must be proud of you.”
Alfy was the smartest in our family. “You should meet my brother,” I said. I began to eat, partly to disguise how I was feeling.
“I hope to, quite soon. Our allies have gone to seek him now. We’re sure he’s in the building.” This really did startle me. Then I remembered enough to keep my own counsel. Was this the “brother” Huon had already mentioned? Jack D’Acre. A funny name. I hadn’t seen it spelled out then. Huon might have been saying “Jacques Dacra” as far as I knew. It sounded vaguely French. But then, everything they said sounded vaguely French. I really wanted to find out what they thought they knew. I had already given away too much in the throne hall. I couldn’t resist one chance to misdirect them.
“So they haven’t found my brother yet?”
“Perhaps you know where he is hiding. He would need someone like you to help him. Those barefaced incompetents tracked him down in Mirenburg, I hear. More than once. Now he’s gone again. He can’t be far. We need to move more swi
ftly, given the state of affairs elsewhere in the multiverse.”
Alfy had never been to Mirenburg and wasn’t likely to be going in the near future. Bous-Junge had to be talking about the mysterious Jack D’Acre. But how could all of them have got that so thoroughly wrong? Was this whole thing a horrendous mistake on everyone’s part? Were they hoping to find this Jack in Ingleton? Did they plan to trade him for me?
“He won’t cooperate with you any more than I will,” I said.
Baron Bous-Junge chuckled. “Oh, that’s not the problem at all. Everyone cooperates with us when we persuade them. The problem is that he is elusive. Given what a peculiar little chap he is, I suspect your twin has help from more than just you.”
It was beginning to dawn on me that they really did think this Jack fellow was my twin brother. Realizing how far off the mark they were and that this perhaps gave me a certain power, I started to smile, then checked myself. “Who, for instance?” I asked.
“Oh, I think you know, my dear. Your grandmother, your great-grandfather, no doubt your father. There’s a whole clan of your kind here, who never ventured to Granbretan before. The Austerite, the Frankonian… We have trapped prisoners. They have eagerly told what they know. Baron Meliadus took charge of them and used his special skills to extract that information. No doubt King Huon will persuade him, in turn, to share with us.”
This alerted me, too. So there were rivalries here. Factions. I could tell by his tone.
“Baron Meliadus is still in Europe, eh?”
“Leading our soon-to-be-victorious forces. Hawk-moon took us by surprise. We did not know he had learned the secret of multidimensional travel.”
Was that it? Were they trying to find out how we moved from one “realm” of the multiverse to another? Of course! If they had that power, they could contemplate conquering endlessly, combining forces with their alter egos on all the other worlds, threatening the structure of existence itself. They knew some of us had the power to call upon the powers of Law and Chaos. Presumably they thought my brother could do it. They didn’t seem to know I had absolutely no means of doing it myself, that I needed help from someone else.
“And then there is the other albino, Zodiac. Evidently a relative, also? He could help us. There is some indication, from my own readings of the multidimensional skrying globes, that he might be induced to join forces with us. That would be ideal. And might save your brother’s life, as well as yours.”
“You’ll never get him to help you,” I said.
“I think that’s a little optimistic of you. His interests lie just as much with us as they do with you. We understand how to unite the swords. We have discovered the emerald stone. We know how to divide the cups. Our science has achieved this. All we require now is the agent which will bind them and make them re-form. Then we control everything.”
“I thought only God could do that.”
Again he chuckled, his round, rather jolly face lighting up. “Oh, dear! What makes you think God has any power? Or Lucifer, for that matter? It has been a very long time since those two forces had any means of exerting their will upon the Dark Empire. They died, you see, when so many died, during the Tragic Millennium. Some believe that the Millennium would never have occurred had it not been for those deaths. I think you must accept, young lady, that King Huon is the greatest power in the universe!”
I didn’t understand exactly why this depressed me. I’d never known any sort of formal religion. I thought of God and Lucifer as ideas, representing certain human and spiritual qualities, not real entities. If I’d given them any consideration at all, it had been in response to the self-involved, anxious, miserable evangelicals who turned up from time to time at airports and railway stations to ask if I “knew Jesus.” Those poor, desperate individuals caused so much harm in my world. Those fundamentalists, with their suspicion, their sentimentality, their anxious superstition. They constantly thank God for helping them win gold discs or gold medals (apparently accepting that God favored them over any other contestants). This was the antithesis of the kind of rigorous selflessness I associated with my family. Their motto in Germany had always been “Do you the devil’s work,” which had something to do with protecting family relics, lost, as I understood it, during the Second World War, recovered and sent to America for safekeeping. Granddad kept something at his London flat, but I’d never seen it. Certainly for several generations we hadn’t taken any of that stuff very seriously, except as rather funky stories with a vaguely Wagnerian ring. Yet I had the sudden feeling that I was actually sensing some great revelation, something important about the human condition, about mankind’s relationship with the supernatural, and it seemed to involve not only my family’s honor and survival, but everyone’s—and many of the things I most cared about. If it wasn’t a religious feeling, it was definitely profoundly mystical. Maybe that was what real religious experience felt like.
I was in no doubt, however, that the Dark Empire represented something close to pure evil. I just wasn’t so sure that our side represented anything like pure good! And surely one was needed to combat the other.
“I wouldn’t reckon any of your chances once my family find out where I am,” I said defiantly.
This amused him even more. “My dear child! My dear child! Do you really expect Monsieur Zodiac to come whirling to your rescue with his mighty black blade?”
“It’s a possibility,” I said.
“I scarcely think so!” He chuckled again. “I understand Monsieur Zodiac finds it rather difficult to walk across the room without that sword’s support.”
“Which is hardly the point.” I put down my beaker and finished my cake. I thought I had a sense now of what they feared. “Since he possesses the sword.”
“Ah!” His eyes twinkled. “You have not heard?”
“What?”
“The albino no longer owns the sword. He left it behind when he went looking for you.”
“It won’t be much for him to go back for it!”
“I’m sure he’s a very skilled traveler between the worlds, my dear, but you see, Messrs. Klosterheim and von Minct already have it. That was why they were able to come here and negotiate with us. The sword was their payment for the aid and special skills we gave to them.”
“Klosterheim’s got it?”
“Not at all. The black sword is now in our safekeeping. I think it highly unlikely your great-grandfather will want to risk very much.”
Emotion suddenly flared in me. “He’ll get it back. He’ll show you he’s not so easily tricked! He’ll be here!”
“Oh, my poor child. Of course he’ll be here. He’s bound to try to help you. That is why we have let slip where you are. But without his sustaining hellblade, I fear he will not be of any great advantage to you.”
And suddenly I knew that white-bearded wizard for what he really was: a conniving, cruel, disgusting man.
Our eyes met. He saw what I thought of him. He threw back his head and began to chuckle heartily.
“He’ll be here, my dear. He’ll be here. But whether he arrives in time to find you fully alive, I very much doubt. You see, the sword needs special food if it is to be useful to us. Special food …” He looked up at me, and now there was an indefinable lust in his eyes. “Young and fresh.”
And as his cackle rose and his shoulders shook, I understood how thoroughly my friends and family had been defeated by his and Klosterheim’s cunning.
I flung my plate and cup at him. Again I was close to tears, but I turned my fear into anger. “You nasty, dirty old man!”
The liquid from the beaker stained his beard, so that it looked as if blood ran down his chin and chest. His eyes hardened for a second, and then he burst into laughter again.
“I must admit,” he said as he dabbed at himself with a napkin, “that this is certainly one of the most complex and successful traps I have laid in all my many, satisfying centuries. We have you. We have the sword. Now all we need is young Jack. And I am cert
ain he will join us again soon.”
He cast a calculating eye over me and once more was all avuncular twinkles and chuckles. “You’re a spirited child, my dear, and will take some keeping, I can see. We have allowed for that. You will be put in the custody of Flana Mikosevaar, Countess of Kanberry. She is of the blood royal, a possible heir to the throne, and the widow of Asrovak Mikosevaar, the hero who died by Dorian Hawkmoon’s hand at the first Battle of Kamarg. She has had twelve -husbands, several of whom met bloody ends, not always in war, and one of whom was Baron Meliadus, the King’s Chancellor. She has no love for mainlanders, though she keeps the name of that infamous Muskovian renegade, her most recent spouse. Best you curb that tongue with her, since she has been given permission to begin punishing you in certain ways not permitted to the rest of us. Do not expect her to be lenient because you are of the same gender. Countess Flana is famous for the pleasure she takes in inflicting pain on others.”
Baron Bous-Junge’s features now beamed in a fat smirk as he replaced his mask and summoned the slaves. A sigh like escaping steam came out of his mask, as if he was already tasting the revenge he would have on me.
The old-fashioned hand bell summoned his slaves as he turned his back and pored over some old books. He had forgotten me entirely. That might have been my chance to try to get away, but I left it till too late. The slaves surrounded me. They escorted me back to the same carriage, and I had no choice but to climb in again.
After another incredibly long journey through passageways, halls and tunnels, arcades and covered streets, we finally arrived at the Heron Palace, home of Flana Mikosevaar, Countess of Kanberry, who was to become my jailer. The Heron Palace was built around a beautiful courtyard. Unusually for the Dark Empire’s taste, it was open to the roiling sky. Its water garden fed green lawns and richly scented flower beds full of blossoms I had never seen before, as well as roses, hydrangeas and lupines, familiar from home. The garden was comforting in spite of the bizarre blooms. I had the impression that given the complete absence of insects and birds, the plants were flesh eaters.