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that made the instructions and the wisdom of Khordas so clear. "The first
thing we have to do, is make a lot of mud."
Duncan felt the cold sea air bite against his face as he sped along what he
had planned as a collision course with the Gratiano. He grimaced into the
mist, seeing no farther ahead than a quarter mile. The sea was dark.
The Spanish Lady hit twenty knots and Duncan ducked under the canopy. He
consulted his maps to confirm that he was on a course to match the Gratiano;
now all he had to do was look for her. Not that he could miss a ship of that
size.
And at about nine in the evening, her vast stacks popped over the horizon,
clearly visible against the clouds.
Duncan went back to choke off the engine a bit. Naturally, the Lady ran on
steam, and like most private yachts she was fairly efficient in her use of
coal, which no gentleman liked to spend much time in shovelling.
The vast hulk of the Gratiano loomed as he drew close to it, and when Duncan
came within a mile he realized that the ship was not moving. The Gratiano had
dropped anchor.
Duncan drew a pair of field glasses from the canopy and peered through them,
and he could make out the shapes of men on the deck, keeping watch.
And now he heard something else, strange, vibrating through the air. Drums.
Duncan pulled his coat closer to him and walked out to the prow of the Lady,
and began to crank the alarm horn.
As he began to crank the horn, Duncan immediately doubted the wisdom of the
warning, and wondered if he should approach in silence. But the Gratiano was
not on fire.
The boat was still, but there; people were wawing along the well-lit deck.
And he would have been completely at ease were it not for the steady drone of
those drums, rhythmic and foreign. He was coming up on a ship built in the
late nineteenth century.
But the drums defied the exterior, a strange, tiny, odd detail that threw the
whole picture off balance. He felt as if he were entering another time.
Duncan's vision went blazing white as a search light turned on him and he
heard the sound of voices shouting orders to one another. When he pulled the
Lady alongside, he looked up the hull and saw that the men were dropping him a
rope ladder, and Duncan scaled it until he reached the rail.
Once on deck, Duncan finished pulling the rope ladder after him, saying,
"Can't leave this down, gentlemen-I should like to speak with your Cast-"
Duncan looked at the sailors who surrounded him and noticed, for the first
time, the curiously dull eyes of the men.
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Duncan stepped to one side and the eyes followed, but the crewmen made no move
to stop him. They stared at him without taking any real interest in him, it
seemed. Then one said, "You will come with us."
"I understand your concern," said Duncan, slowly. My god, have you been
drugged?
"It's not often a chap just hops aboard in mid-cruise, eh?"
"No," came a voice from behind Duncan, "no, it isn't."
Duncan reached into his coat and through the carefully concealed pocket there,
and he felt the handle of his katana slip into his hand as he pivoted on his
right foot to meet the voice.
He was met by a man with a deep-blue face, a stylized, ancient salamander
face, one that Duncan had held in his own hands, once. Khordas' velvet voice
was altered by the mask, it expanded within the funnel and became as a god's.
Duncan eyed the tall, gaunt red-head, wearing a robe like the one he had worn
so long ago, and the katana came forward with his arm, as of its own power,
the coat flying out of the way.
"Khordas. That costume proves what I've known all along."
Khordas stood still, hands serenely beside him. "Proves what, MacLeod?"
"You're out of time," said Duncan.
"Aren't we all?"
"Let's go."
"What is it, Duncan? In search of a Quickening? You just don't understand
the elements, do you?"
"What else is there, Khordas? Money, love, power, and the Game. The Game!"
Duncan said, "On guard, Salamander. I won't give you another chance."
And Khordas only smiled, and when Duncan felt a second presence, coming up
fast, he turned his head. But something that was probably the hilt of a
rapier smashed him in the back of the skull before he got the Companion-for
who else could it be-in sight.
Khordas whispered, in a way that boomed and hissed at the same time from the
mask, "Oh, MacL.eod, I think you will at that."
And as he lost consciousness, Duncan heard something about the brig, and
"making preparations."
When the Gratiano was first built, the Grand Ballroom was the most ambitious
undertaking of its kind, a dream come true for its architects. It was three
hundred feet long, one hundred feet wide, thirty-six feb high, the most space
ever afforded to a room
that would make no profit, save that for the eye. The predominantly white
walls were set off by tapestries brought from the Far East, with
silver-oxidized ornamental ironwork complementing the gilt decor in a way that
the Times had referred to as
"somehow avoiding, if narrowly, the gaudy." And at midnight, February the
ninth, 1897, it looked almost nothing at all like its designers' dream.
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At the far end of the ballroom stood a massive fireplace, an orifice eight
feet tall, and now inside this hellish mouth had been placed a giant cauldron
from the kitchen. In the cauldron, heated by the hot coals, bubbled a bath of
mud.
And in the mud, as at the beginning, curled and waited the god.
Lauren strode through the ballroom and observed the progress of the evening.
The mud they had made from earth brought on the absconded naval scout, bucket
after bucket, had been thrown across the walls, covering them, so that in the
still-burning chandeliers'
light, the ballroom was no longer a ballroom, but a cave. The walls dripped
steadily, and the sludgy mud fell in dollops upon the wood floors and Asian
rugs. Lauren walked along the walls, reaching into her bag, and out of it she
drew a handful of something dust-like,
and this glittered darkly as she threw it onto the walls and it adhered to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]