survey of the collected accumulation of current knowledge; in a wall niche, the tiny figures carven of wood, which drew his eye repeatedly; and the broken chains, the heavy manacles he had failed to notice on his first visit to the cave with Tralayn, covered with clothing in a clumsy effort at disguising the embarrassment of an accursed life.
Gonji watched Simon as the latter moved about with animal grace despite his six-and-a-half-foot stature. Watched the rippling of the sinew under his skin at every slight movement. The bristling of his coarse two-toned hair. The flash of his swept-back silvery eyes, eyes that reminded one of tales of the little people who dwelt in forest fastnesses no man could delve. The menacing dagger-point his hair formed above and between those eyes. The occasional twitch of a gently pointed, lobeless ear in response to sounds Gonji couldn’t hear. The hands, long and wiry, the nails blackened at their centers. Now and again when they were opened, Gonji could discern the white cross that blazoned, scar-like, in the palm of the left. His upper body was covered with burns inflicted by the foul blood of the wyvern, scars of assorted shapes and sizes, and Gonji winced to scan the two most recent: one on the upper left arm, the other—dealt him by Gonji—slashing the right shoulder. Both were sewn raggedly shut with ugly catgut sutures.
Gonji felt a pang of sympathy when struck by the forlorn image of a warrior extracting missiles from his own body, excruciatingly closing his own wounds.
Simon Sardonis spoke, cleaving the spell of Gonji’s thoughts.
“So Rorka and his knights are dead,” he said. “What will you do now that this traitor has undermined your planning?”
“As I said,” Gonji replied calmly, “we believe Mord works behind Klann’s back. Probably against him as well as the city. He seems moon-maddened with a lust for power and a hatred for Vedun. If he resists reporting what he’s learned to Klann, then we may yet attack them with a measure of surprise.”
Simon snorted, tearing off a chunk of bread and dipping it into his broth. “Utter folly,” he scoffed, “to plan an attack against a force of superior power that may well know all your plans—”
“We would seem to have little choice,” Gonji countered. “Mord is determined to destroy the city. Tralayn has assured us of that all along.”
“You ought to be wary of what she tells you,” Simon observed with a trace of bitterness.
Gonji ignored it. “Anyway, whatever his ultimate intent, Klann has allowed enough outrages that our casus belli are sundry and sound. The city must fight back.” Gonji pounded a fist on his knee for emphasis but at once changed his tack when he realized that he was allowing emotion to interfere with clear-headed thinking again. “Of course,” he continued sedately, “there are also sound reasons for favoring an avoidance of fighting. Garth will try to speak with Klann about Mord’s treachery, if he can gain an audience.”
“Difficult words to frame,” Simon reminded, “without telling the king of your own planning against him.”
Gonji nodded. “Quite true,” he said glumly.
“Garth...,” Simon began pensively. “Who would have thought he’d have ridden with this mongrel army?”
“Hai,” Gonji agreed, “and I think there’s more he can tell us. If I can, I’ll learn from him what else he hides.”
Simon grunted. “Tell me what happened the night you rode out with the thirty—the madness in the city—the martial law that night.”
“Ah,” Gonji said, smiling. And he proceeded to relate the Zarnesti raid; and the tale of Klann’s seven lives, the legend told by Garth’s ancient parchment; and of the king’s murder and apparent resurrection as a new personage on that night. Simon absorbed the tale eagerly, with a more consuming interest than he had shown in anything Gonji had had to say before. At the story’s conclusion the mysterious warrior’s brow furrowed, a faraway glimmer drawing his eyes beyond the simple reality of the cave.
“So...that is why I couldn’t—An enchanted king, a being who cannot die, whose sibling kin reside within him....” Simon chuckled harshly, less a laugh than a gurgle of ironic triumph. “Oui,” he continued in French, “that is why—if this is true, then he’ll be a different man now from the one I saw—”
“So sorry,” Gonji cut in, frowning, “but you’re losing me. Speak German, dozo—did you say you saw Klann? When?”
Simon smiled, the first time Gonji had seen him do so, the angles of his face taking on a feral set.
“I’ve been inside the castle.”
“Ah, so desu ka?” Gonji intoned in surprise. “You’ve been in there and gotten out again? Why in hell didn’t you kill Klann or Mord, if you’re so foolish—”
“That was my objective,” Simon interrupted impatiently, “after I’d seen what they did at the monastery. Only I—I couldn’t go through with it. I found Klann’s chamber, killed his guards, and then I had him. I had him—there—as close to me as you are. But I couldn’t finish it. I didn’t know why then, but now it’s clear. The reason I felt that strange empathy with him...and the other feeling...that precognition that killing him would be futile, that my anger would be misdirected. By then Mord must have sensed my presence. He began calling out to the—the thing—the beast in me. And it to him. And then the whole castle was awake, and even by moving in shadow I couldn’t escape all of them. So I was forced to flee, leaving my good wishes with the bailey guards. I took this, though—”
He absently stroked the savage wound stitched together on his arm like the map of a jagged red mountain range. Gonji stared at him, spellbound at the man’s valor and capabilities. And Simon went on in a maundering fashion, his voice lapping the stillness like wind-swept waves.
“So that’s the reason for the purpure circles on the Klann crest...one for each dead brother. And the reason I felt the empathy. Misdirected anger...Mord...so it’s Mord, then....” His eyes abruptly became sharp silver lances, meeting Gonji’s squarely. “There is a thing of evil here...like few I’ve felt anywhere. There be signs of ill omen. That’s the reason I’ve stayed in the territory. Holy Word Monastery....”
He gently touched the burns he’d taken in the fight with the wyvern. The ointment he’d spread on them gleamed dully in the firelight. Gonji could smell its pungent tang. The samurai’s abdomen ached in reminder of the other’s tackling blow that had saved him from the searing strafe of the wyvern. Neither man spoke for a moment. Then Simon rose and took the jar of ointment from a carven niche in the rock.
“When were you at the monastery?” Simon asked suddenly. “And what exactly did Father Dobret tell you?”
Gonji was stung. He sat in the lotus position with arms folded at his chest. Sweat coursed in chilly traces down his ribs, but he met Simon’s gaze levelly.
“After the wyvern had done its...abomination. I spoke with your priest friend. He told me to tell you to help, not to seek personal vengeance.”
Simon swallowed hard, nodded with resignation, kept applying the clear ointment. “Even I dare not ignore the signs of the evil epoch that is upon us. Perhaps even Grimmolech is about—my nemesis.” His voice ground at the name as if a millwheel churned at it in his throat. “I’ve felt no such power of evil since—Could it be that Mord knows where I might find the Monster?” His eyes became argent wings that lofted him back through the past moon. “Do you recall the silence—that awful, total moment of lifeless silence that seized the world on that first night of the city’s occupation?”
Gonji remembered the palpable fear of the experience, the fleeting vision of the terrified, ghostly faces of the refugees in Garth Gundersen’s home that night. He nodded reverently.
“I knew then,” Simon went, “that a thing of evil had descended.... I’ll give you this: I’ll stay and help you kill Mord, once I’ve had the chance to wring some answers from him. That much I’ll do against this onslaught of evil.”
Gonji’s face, his