The Book of Kane (24 page)

Klesst—he must get to Klesst. For the child was the key to the doom Ionor intended for him. But the ladder in the shaft was hopelessly damaged; even if Kane could somehow bridge the missing section, he doubted that it would bear his weight. And Pleddis held the inn. There were other secret doors, he knew, but it would be impossible to evade detection if he returned to the inn. His escape from there had taken the limit of his strength and guile—and then it was chance that had saved him. He could not hope for this a second time.

Kane’s head felt light, dizzy. It was death to get to Klesst. But if he could not reach the child, Ionor would seat her pact with the Demonlord. Then Pleddis and his hired killers would show him far greater mercy than the doom which would certainly claim him.

It was hard to concentrate. Kane’s strength ebbed, as pain and fatigue racked his flesh, fever and drug mists swirled through his brain. Raven’s Knob, the old woman had whispered—there Ionor was to seal her unhallowed bargain. Kane had a memory of that jutting, spur of barren rock and lightning-blasted trees. Rising from the bleak crest of a high ridge, it was a landmark in the region and the setting for any number of dark legends. No sane man would approach Raven’s Knob when the Demonlord’s Moon rose behind it. Possibly not even Pleddis could force his men to carry their search to its slopes.

Ionor would take Klesst there. Kane knew he must reach Raven’s Knob first. But he had no idea how much time remained to him. He had heard Ionor’s voice when Mauderas entered the hidden cellar. Very little time had passed. Ionor, however, would take a straight course for Raven’s Knob. Kane, weakened and uncertain of the path, must elude Pleddis’s searchers in order to reach thepoint. And the night held dangers far more sinister than mercenary steel.

There was no other way. Cold anger seethed in Kane’sheart. He had been driven across the land, ensnared inthis deadly web, each step of his course seemingly predetermined.He would not be the blind pawn in somedark game fate played.

The ledge seemed to twist downward at a steep slantfrom the mouth of the passage. Clumps of laurel anchored to cracks and folds in the almost sheer face of the bluff; their roots held crumbling shelves of soil andbroken rock. They were treacherous footholds under thebest conditions; tonight Kane could not imagine worse. Presumably, though, he could work his way to the riverbank along this deadly pretense of a path. If he slipped…

There was no other way.

Fighting the weakness that gnawed at him, the vertigothat already blurred his mind, Kane set his boots against the slippery ledge.

“Stundorn, you know better than to hit an unconscious man,” Pleddis told him. “Wait until he comes to again so he can feel it!” He threw back his head with braying laughter.

The paunch-gutted mercenary spat and unwound the cestus from his fist. “May be a while.”

“He’ll keep,” grinned Pleddis, critically studying Weed’s broken face. It took some of the frustrated pain from his belly to picture Kane hanging there instead.

Weed’s battered body slowly spun about. The bandit’s arms had been tied behind his back. Then a longer rope had been tied to his wrists, its other end wound around the balcony railing. They had hoisted him above the floor in this manner, his toes only inches from support. While he hung there, his shoulders threatening to tear from their sockets, Stundorn had worked him over with the cestus.

“When we come back with Kane, he’ll tell us the truth about this cache of loot,” Pleddis promised. “Because he knows this is just a taste of what will happen if he lies to us just once. Only way to make a man tell the truth when he expects death in return—you got to make him want to die.”

He smiled jovially at Ionor. “Now he
is
going to be alive when I get back, isn’t he?”

“This is better than killing him,” she said flatly, watching Weed’s tortured body as it slowly spun from the force of the last blow.

Pleddis laughed appreciatively. “Don’t think I’d want you for my enemy—no, I don’t! Well, then, we’ll let you and that fat tavern keeper guard him close—and your man Mauderas when he comes back. Of course, I’ve got some of my men posted here inside, in case Kane doubles back, and there’s more guarding the horses. Personally, I expect to find him crawling along the mountainside not even a mile from here, but with Kane you best keep all bets covered. He comes back, there’s a welcome here for him.”

A harried Nattios pounded in from outside. “Captain Pleddis, it’s no use!” he blurted. “I can’t do a damn thing with them hounds. You got to drag them out of their kennel, and then they just scrounch down on their bellies and whimper. Hell, one damn near chewed old Usporris’s arm off trying to drag his tail back inside! They’re too scared to piss, captain. They ain’t good for so much as barking at a thief if he was to step over them—ain’t no way we’re going to use them to trail!”

“So.” Pleddis shrugged his shoulders, affecting nonchalancehe did not feel. “Then we trail without dogs. Didn’t need them before now. I know damn well you can track a man on foot over this short a field.”

He glared at the long-nosed mountaineer. “Unlessyou’re too damn scared to do your job. And you and any others who feel that way know what I think about a man who won’t do his job.”

Nattios nodded unhappily. He knew. They all knew. “Stundorn—you aren’t afraid to chase down a fortune in gold.”

“No, captain,” he lied, face pale beneath stubble beard.

“See, Nattios. Stundorn’s not afraid.”

“You find where Kane’s trail leads off, I’ll take you to him,” Nattios promised sullenly.

“I’ll hold you to your word.” Pleddis’s teeth gleamed brightly. “Now let’s not waste any more time.”

When the sounds of the hunters had been swallowed by the night, Ionor moved from the window and took down her hooded cloak. The dark brown wool would be almost invisible in the night, which was to her liking. An encounter with Pleddis’s soldiers was something she wished to avoid—although it was not for Pleddis to question her coming and going, nor for any man to bold her back from the path she had set foot on seven years before.

Klesst’s wide eyesgreeted her when she opened the door. Perhaps if her eyes had not reminded her of Kane… if her hair had not been red like his…

“You’re awake,” Ionor stated in automatic reproof.

“I couldn’t sleep with everything happening, Mother. And I’ve slept so much of the day.” She wanted to ask if the soldiers had captured Kane, but she dared not show interest. But Kane was magic, for he had vanished from her closet. They couldn’t catch a sorcerer, could they?

“That’s all right. Put your clothes on now, Klesst. We’re going to go for a short walk.”

“Why, Mother? Tonight’s the Demonlord’s Moon.” She felt a thrill of bewildered fright.

“That’s all right. The soldiers will protect us from any bad things. The night air will break your fever. Just get dressed now.”

“I think my fever is gone now.” Could soldiers protect her from the black hound?

“Just get dressed.”

She wondered if Mother had a surprise for her birthday. One of the girls in the village told her how she was taken out to the stable on the night of her birthday, and there was a baby colt just born, and she got to have him because he was born on her birthday. But Mother never gave her surprises on her birthday. Sometimes Greshha did, and pretended that they were gifts from Mother, too, but Klesst knew better, because once she saw Greshha embroidering the birthday skirt with her own hands.

“Did I hear one of the soldiers say that Greshha came back?”

“No, Klesst. Why are you dawdling?”

“Which skirt shall I wear, Mother?” “It doesn’t—Wear the dark blue one.”

That was her best one. “Can I wear my good linen blouse?” Maybe it was a birthday surprise.

“Yes. Hurry, Klesst.” Ionor fidgeted with her fingers, subconsciously seeking to speed her dressing, but not wanting to touch the girl. Her body felt tense as she watched Klesst hurry on her clothes, struggle to push her feet into buskins she had outgrown. She would need a new pair soon…

Ionor pushed the thought from her mind. It was too late to turn back; she knew that when Kane returned to Raven’s Eyrie. Pleddis’s appearance had made her think briefly that the Demonlord could be cheated of his bargain. Yet while this thought might have stirred a phantom of hope, far greater was her anger at the chance that her vengeance would not be fulfilled. But the Demonlord would not be cheated. The game was his, and this was only another cat-and-mouse cruelty of his dark humor. She had struggled seven years to quell any love for the child, knowing the unholy bargain she had sworn to consummate. And yet, if Pleddis had taken Kane, might she have learned in time to…

Then surged stronger the screaming vision of seven years past—the death and horror of Kane’s raid, the shame of her captivity, the tearing agony later in the ruins of her home...

“Mother , I’m ready now. Why is your face so strange?” Wrapped in her woolen shawl, Klesst looked up at her anxiously.

Ionor shook her head and closed hereyes for a moment.“Nothing’s wrong, Klesst. Now come along quickly.”

The mass of laurel roots sagged beneath his weight. Bits of rock and humus crumbled away from where the bush anchored itself to the bluff. He heard the trickling sound of its fall. With painstaking care Kane transferred his weight to another shelf of rock and inched forward against the bluff. No handholds here—just the desperate pressure of his body against the bare rock.

Mist rose from the river far below, breathing a damp film upon the slippery rocks. At times the mist completely obscured the tiny ledge Kane followed, so that he became uncertain which fragmentary path led down to the riverbank, or ended instead several yards beyond in a sheer drop. Time and again he had to backtrack over some perilous section of blind trail which moments before bad required all his effort to negotiate. No longer was Kane sure whether he actually followed the path to the river—or even if such a trail existed. The fog held its secrets well, and often he had to rely solely on touch to discover the next foothold.
The mist writhed through his mind as well. Kane lost note of time; it seemed he had been crawling for ages across the treacherous bluff, never coming closer to either summit or base. And in truth he was lost. The rudimentary path he struggled along wormed across the escarpment above the River Cotras for miles beyond the point where Kane had hoped to descend. This path was only a broken ledge along a series of faults in the strata deadly trail no mountain man would attempt even by day. Pleddis, who was scouring the gravel beds betweenriver and cliff, never considered that his wounded quarry would be rash enough to crawl along the escarpment where no path existed. And so Kane passed beyond the line of his pursuers, although the crumbling ledge that had saved him from capture threatened at any instant to cast him headlong into the mist-wreathed darkness.

He seemed to move in a dream. The mist crawled in phantom shapes; spectral hands clawed out to tear him from the ledge. Even the cold, sweating rock seemed unreal, insubstantial. Kane knew this was no dream, but be had to force himself to be aware of his reality. Otherwise he would lose concentration, no longer care whether a tangled clump of laurel would bear his weight or crumble beneath his boot. He ground his bleeding hands against the rock and savagely pressed down on his limping ankle, using the pain to drive back the sense of dream.

But the phantoms waxed more substantial, the lichen-garbed stones less real. And no further could the agony of his body overcome the fever in his mind. Somehow Kane managed to lurch on toward where the ledge seemed to broaden—or was that, too, a trick of his faltering senses? Unable to determine, he sprawled heavily onto thedank shelf of rock.

His limbs were nerveless. His exhausted body ached for air, but his chest seemed too weakened to draw breath fast enough. Kane shuddered; great spasms shookhis sweat-slimed frame.

He lay like one dead, while he fought to hold consciousness. Vertigo shivered through his brain. The ledgehe pressed against tilted, spun away, dissolved…

And then the rocks dissolved.

And the stone became transparent, clearer thanthe finest diamond.

And the mountains opened to Kane.

And Kane looked within the mountains.

He saw the treasures of the hills locked in their crypts

He saw the treasures of the hills locked in their crypts of Primal stone—veins of gold and silver, raw gemstones, buried crowns, and chests of coins—and the grimguardianswho watched over them.

He saw the graves of the hills, where forgotten skeletons moulderedinto dust, and lost tombs whose corpses lay unquiet and imprisoned, and their rotted eyes burnedwith blue flames as they writhed to return his stare.

He saw the graveless dead of River Cotras—who had been claimed by the river’s fury, who bad thrown themselves into its flood in futile search for oblivion, who had been flung into its depths to hide the fruits of murder—white scattered bones, and current-tossed skulls, and moss-crusted lairs for fishes and wriggling things.

He saw the lost mines of the ancients, and that which they mined and that which they buried—that which they sought after and did not find, and that which they feared and could not flee—and the knowledge made him close his eyes and cry out.

He saw caverns that crawled downward and downward, and the blind flapping things that dwelled within them—and the cities that were raised there, where no light would even burn—and the misshapen faces that peered fearfully from slitted windows in towers for which there were no doors.

He saw the black flames of the far abyss, toward which monstrous worms gnawed chaotic tunnels through the rock, seeking the flames of Hell, where as obscene moths they would burst forth to wheel and dart, until their smouldering wings would fail and they would plunge like meteors into the lake of fire.

He saw the hidden creatures of the mountains, risen from their secret dens to hunt by the Demonlord’s Moon. Huge, bloated toads that hopped through the fog, flicking forth searching tongues from reeking jaws of acid- venomedfangs. Lonely abandoned cabins, inviting a traveller to shelter—that were neither cabins nor abandoned, and their invitation was not for refuge. Glowing-eyed creatures shaped somewhat like men, who ran on furred limbs, and showed wolves’ fangs when they howled. Shambling giants like misshapen apes, yellow-toothed and shovel- taloned—some shaggy as bears, some scaled like snakes—bestial descendants of those who first claimed man’s image. Creeping from caverns, naked creatures no longer quite human—filthy, scabrous packs of men, women and mewing children, not half so hideous as the hunger that brought them forth. And that which follows lonely travellers in the dark of the woods, until at last they look behind, and in that moment die (Kane looked upon its face, and terror scarred his soul).