Into The Dark Flame (Book 4) (6 page)

   'Mmm, he is really rather handsome,' said Hellia, her voice husky and tinged with faint derision. She placed a grape upon the tip of her tongue and crushed it sensually against her palate.

   'Not more handsome than your beloved husband, surely?' enquired Urch-Malmain.

   Hellia whirled around. 'My darling, of course not! I meant, he is rather handsome,
for a hero
!'

   She crossed to Urch-Malmain and caressed the air beside his hollow cheeks with both hands. Her lips formed to make a lingering kiss, but they made no contact with his flesh. She looked coyly back at Leth.
'Oh Swordbearer, your face!'

   Urch-Malmain waved her back. 'A little too
close, my dear. A little
too
close.'

   Hellia backed away a pace. Leth said nothing, his brain still too fogged to make much of what was happening. Hellia giggled. 'I do hope you are not going to menace me with that magic blade of yours!'

   Urch-Malmain gave a little whinny. 'Do not concern yourself on that score, my angel heart. We have his sword securely under harness.'

   'But later we will return it to him, won't we?'

   Urch-Malmain's thin face became set and he studied Leth thoughtfully. 'Perhaps. Later. If all is well. Yes, perhaps.'

   Hellia swanned to the long table and took a sprig of grapes. She turned and held it out towards Leth. Leth declined. Hellia pouted. 'You must eat if you are to regain your heroic strength.'

   'Thank you, but for the present I find I lack appetite.'

   'Oh. What a pity.' She gave another little laugh,
then moved to stand before the open hearth, her legs apart, one knee crooked, her back to Leth. Leth observed the rise and fall of her shoulders as she breathed, the almost luminous pallor of her back, naked to the shoulder-blades, the outline of her shapely thighs through her garment.

   Urch-Malmain's eyes were bright. 'She is a sight to excite even a dead man to ardour, is she not?'

   'She is most comely,' agreed Leth.

  
'Yes, that she is! I am so proud! But now, if you are able to walk, and if you can bear to tear your gaze from Hellia, there is something I wish you to see.' 

   Leth gingerly eased himself from the tabletop.

   'How do you feel?'

  
'A little shaken.'

   'You are very pale.'

   'I will be all right.'

   'Good. But do not strain yourself.'

   Hellia spoke over her shoulder. 'You are far from menacing just now, Swordbearer.'

   'That is how I would prefer it.'

   'Oh, but you are our hero. You must be muscular; you must be resolute and deadly; you must wield your weapon with lusty righteousness, that all will fall down before you and worship the ground you walk upon, and maidens will line up beside your bed at night.'

   'Hellia, that is enough,' scolded Urch-Malmain.

   Hellia turned back to stare into the flames.

   'She means no offence, Swordbearer,' Urch-Malmain said.

   'She appears not to like me,' said Leth as they passed from the chamber, 'or at least to harbour distaste for what she imagines I stand for.'

   'I will enlighten you in due course.'

   From the hallway outside they descended via a flight of curving stairs set against the wall - from its concave form Leth judged it to be the outer wall of Urch-Malmain's tower. Leth breathed deeply, thoughts swimming in a slow fog.

  
Urch-Malmain!
The name came back to him now, out of his inner murk. He stared at the bent back of the man preceding him, the clumsy lurching gait, deformed arm stiffly swinging. 

   'You are the Noeticist, the manipulator of memories.'

   Urch-Malmain spoke back over his shoulder. 'Is that how I am called these days? Ah well, it could be worse. Be patient, Swordbearer. All will be explained.'

   They passed along a short corridor where two of the black-armoured, pallid-skinned warriors played cards at a table. The two turned their faces away as Leth and Urch-Malmain approached, and Leth noticed that Urch-Malmain gave them a wide berth. They continued to descend. At length
Urch-Malmain paused before a stout portal of solid timber plank. From within his gown he withdrew a large iron key on a chain which hung around his neck. With this he opened the portal, took a lamp from a nearby shelf and lit it from a torch set upon a sconce. He beckoned Leth through, locking the portal behind him when he had entered. He gave Leth a quick smile and continued along a short passage to another similar door. A second key opened this, and they passed through into a large chamber filled with nameless apparatus.

   'Now,' he said, a little breathlessly, and indicated a bench, 'the secrets.' He passed around the chamber, lighting torches from his lamp. The chamber was without windows, and Leth suspected that they were in fact underground.

   'I have been long ages here,' said Urch-Malmain presently, lowering himself onto another bench some distance from Leth. 'Long, long ages. It has not been an easy time, for I do not belong in this world. I found myself here as a result of scheming duplicity and, with the exception of my sweet Hellia, have discovered little to comfort me here. It is a hollow place, joyless and miserable. Worse, many of the privileges of my nature I am deprived of here. So I think it can be truthfully said that we share a common goal, you and I.'

   'And what is that?'

   'To return to our own world. That is the end to which I have devoted myself almost exclusively since first finding myself here. That is the primary purpose of this bizarre apparatus that you see arrayed before you.' He gestured towards the machinery. 'It is a most delicate assemblage. I have laboured long in its construction, and in the process have incurred more liabilities and obligations than I care to recall. It is in large part a living artefact, composed of essences and sentient and semi-sentient agents and entities drawn from numerous dimensions, worlds and time-flows beyond this and beyond our own.'

   'Indeed, it’s impressive,' commented Leth drily.

   Urch-Malmain gave a nod. 'Its function is to forge a portal, opening a way between this world and our own, thus permitting me to escape this damnable existence. In my own land, with my fullest powers intact, the construction of such an artefact requires no especial effort, nor the expenditure of unreasonable amounts of time. Certainly it does not demand the construction of a monstrosity such as this. But here physical and metaphysical laws are not harmoniously aligned with those of our own domain. This has made the work arduous and fraught with disappointments. However, all my experiments and tests are done. The machine is complete and operational. There is just one problem.'  

   'What is that?' enquired Leth.

   'It doesn’t work.'

*

   Leth observed him for a moment, then rose slowly and approached the strange apparatus. It consisted of a complex arrangement of large and small boxes, globes - some containing little drawers or doors - shelves, vials, bowls, bulbs, knobs and handles made from a variety of materials, not all of them familiar. These occupied a considerable area of the chamber. Strange fluids and glowing plasmas rested or bubbled within several of the globes and bulbs. Skeins and tangles of coloured wires, pipes - bulbous, thin, round, squared or flat - and tubes of similar diversity were threaded between the various articles, linking them in a manner too intricate to follow.

   Central to this apparatus was an arch of silvery metallic struts and laths, more than spacious enough to contain a standing man, which supported a system of linked metallic disks and circular or looped troughs. Some of the troughs contained round beads of varying sizes. Little gates and traps within the troughs connected to other tubes and conduits, forming an intricate web of channels and conjunctions. Upon the ground directly beneath the system of troughs and discs was a set of geometric patterns drawn in several colours.

   'Do not approach too closely,' warned Urch-Malmain. 'Although the machine is currently dormant, it is yet most sensitive. Your very presence can cause fluctuations within its internal weft.'

   Leth turned back. 'I would say that it is hardly operational if it doesn’t work.'

   'Ah well, when I say it doesn't work, I mean it doesn't work in the way I had intended. In fact it does something else.'

   'And what is that?'

   'I am not entirely sure. It’s a mystery to me. But I do know now why it does it, and it is not through any inherent fault in the machinery itself.' Urch-Malmain rose and performed some obscure actions around the strange array of apparatus. Something hummed, very low. Something fizzed, almost inaudibly. Leth noticed renewed motion in some of the fluids. Urch-Malmain faced Leth again. 'There, I have recalled the device to consciousness. It will awaken in a few hours; we can return then and interrogate it.'

   'Awaken? Interrogate?'

   'As I have said, the device is, at least in part, a living, sentient artefact. And it has a strange message to impart. Come, we will relax and talk until it’s time to return.' 

iii

    Upstairs in the main chamber again Leth partook of some sweet grapes, feeling that he could not yet stomach anything more substantial. His mind was still not
clear, his memories of how he had come to be at the Tower of Glancing Memory were vague. Urch-Malmain sat opposite him, eating almonds. Hellia had departed. As if to explain her absence Urch-Malmain said, 'My preference is largely for solitude. Hellia is sensitive to this, and rarely attends me unless summoned. In fact, I don’t like your being here, if the truth be told. I would far rather be rid of you; your company vexes me. But your presence is necessary just now; there is something which apparently only you can do. So, for the present . . .'

   Leth was struck by a feeling of foreboding.
'Only I?'

   Urch-Malmain gestured dismissively with his good hand.
'All in good time, when the machine awakens.'

   He chewed another handful of nuts.

   Leth thought suddenly of Lakewander. 'I came here with a companion. What has happened to her?'

   'She went back. The Shore of Nothing was more than she could bear. But she used it well. She took what she needed from you and departed. You will not see her again.'

   'What do you mean?' Leth recalled the bitter sense of betrayal he had experienced within the ecstatic terror on the madness of the coloured beach.

  
'Your essence, Swordbearer. Your seed, that she might bear your child. She and her kind require the child of a god to live among them now that their own god has departed.'

   Leth shook his head, disturbed by the thought. 'They are mistaken. I am no god.'

   'I know.'

   'It seems you know much, Urch-Malmain.'

   'The artefact below has more than one function, and in its mode of Vigilance it performs almost flawlessly, even at distance.'

   Leth's sense of unease deepened. Had Urch-Malmain been monitoring his movements?
For how long? 'It was my companion who told me of you, of your claimed ability to manipulate memory. Is it true, can you do this?'

   'Indeed I can.
At times with remarkable results.'

   'Do you intend to perform such manipulations on me?'

   With a finely-tuned sense of the dramatic, Urch-Malmain paused, then leaned towards Leth with an arch grin, and said in a low voice, 'How do you know that I have not already done so?'

   Leth felt himself stiffen, a chill racing down his spine. Urch-Malmain gave a knowing nod. 'I can give people complete new personalities, and have done so. Whole new trains of memories. Taken everything of them that existed before, and replaced it. How else do you think a woman such as Hellia can abide a wretch as hideous as I? She adores me, Swordbearer! Just in the particular manner in which I wish to be adored. She lives for me, only for me, and is utterly compliant to my wishes!'

   'Do you have no feelings for her?'

   Urch-Malmain shrugged and reached for more almonds. 'A fellow must have his diversions.'

   'Yet you referred to her as your spouse.'

   'She believes it. It appeals to her sense of propriety. I find that touching, if ridiculous.'

   Leth eyed him with distaste, still deeply unsettled by the idea that Urch-Malmain might already have tampered with his memory.
But if so, would he permit my dislike of him? Would he allow me to question him in this manner?
To some degree this thought eased his mind, though a creeping unease lingered.

  'And she dislikes you, Swordbearer,' Urch-Malmain went on, his manner becoming ever more scathing. 'I instilled within her a profound aversion to rugged, heroic types. She deems you a dullard, a fool, vainglorious and quite inadequate. Were you to attempt a seduction she would laugh in your
face. There is but one man for her, and that is I, the cripple, Urch-Malmain!'