The Broken Sword Page 26

  Arthur stood up and grabbed Beatrice's hand. "Let's get out of here," he said.

  She began to rise, but her legs wobbled beneath her. "No, Arthur. We can't go back. Not yet."

  "Why not?"

  "I don't know. It's just a... a feeling. You mustn't go near that building, Arthur."

  "But we've got to tell the old man."

  "No. Stay with me. Please..." Then her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped to the floor.

  "Oh no, Bea, not now," Arthur moaned.

  Zack leapt up from his chair and bent over the girl.

  "Want me to call an ambulance?" the counterman asked.

  Arthur shook his head. "She'll be okay in a minute."

  "I think she just fainted," Zack said, listening to her chest. "She's breathing." He slapped her face gently. "Bea..."

  "Get away from her!" Arthur shouted, pushing him aside.

  For five minutes he knelt beside her. Finally Zack went over to the counterman. "Maybe you'd better call an ambulance, at that."

  "I told you, she's all right," Arthur said.

  "Better safe than sorry, son," one of the other patrons said. They had all gathered around Beatrice by now, as if they could make her come to by staring at her.

  Arthur had no idea what to do. Taliesin was in the apartment alone, and he had the cup. On the other hand, Arthur had promised Beatrice that he wouldn't let anything happen to her.

  "Come on, Bea." Arthur spoke into her ear with quiet intensity. "We've got to get back."

  When the ambulance came, she was still unconscious.

  Arthur stayed with her.

  "Did this ever happen before?" the paramedic asked Zack on the way to the hospital.

  "No," Arthur answered. "She's never passed out." He gave Zack a cold stare. The man had been permitted inside the ambulance despite Arthur's complaints that Zack was not a relative and not necessary. Adults, he decided, always sided with other adults.

  "Her blood pressure's okay, but her heart's beating kind of slow," the paramedic said. "Is she on medication?"

  Arthur shook his head.

  "You kids been doing any drugs?"

  "No."

  "You sure?"

  "He told you he wasn't," Zack said.

  Arthur's expression softened for a moment. Zack put his arm around him. "She's going to be all right," he said.

  Whom do you suppose he'll send next time? Taliesin had warned. A room service waiter with a stiletto under his napkin?

  Or some guy who buys kids ice cream?

  The boy shook him off with an almost violent gesture. He moved as far away from Zack as possible in the small space of the ambulance.

  Beatrice was taken immediately for a CAT scan.

  In the waiting room Arthur studied the floor map of the hospital. Somehow he would have to get Beatrice out of there. Since he couldn't very well drag her through the halls while she was unconscious, he would have to wait until she snapped out of whatever kind of trance she was in. But after that, they would need a route of escape.

  The CAT scan, he knew from the admitting nurse, was on the fourth floor, in the neurology wing. There were several elevators, as well as stairways on both the east and west walls. On the lobby floor there was a secondary exit off the Emergency Room, away from the waiting area. If Arthur could only manage to be alone with Beatrice for a minute...

  "Relax," Zack said, startling him. "You're like a coiled spring. Maybe you need a hug, huh?"

  "Get lost." Arthur backed away from him.

  Zack held up his hands. "‘Scuse me, I forgot. Tough guys aren't into hugs. Hey, we have to call your grandfather and tell him we're here."

  "Who?"

  "Mr. Taliesin. Isn't he your grandfather?"

  "No. And there's no phone in the apartment you gave us."

  "I can reach him through Kate."

  Yeah, right. I know who you're calling. The International Artist with the gun.

  While Zack was on the phone, Arthur asked the nurse at the desk about Beatrice's CAT scan.

  "They usually take about thirty minutes," she answered with a smile. "Your sister will be out in no time."

  "She's not—-" he began, then thought better of it. He might not be allowed on the neurology floor if they knew he wasn't related to Beatrice. "Thanks," he said.

  A security cop strolled by, a genial looking man with white hair and a paunch, and tipped his hat to Arthur.

  Big fat help you'd be if a killer got in here, Arthur thought. As for the city police, he knew there was no chance they would even believe him if he told them about Aubrey Katsuleris.

  He turned back to the floor map until Zack returned.

  "There was no answer at Kate's, so I called Mrs. Neumeyer in the room next door to find your… You said Mr. Taliesin's not your grandfather?"

  "Where is he?" Arthur demanded.

  "Don't know. He doesn't answer the door. Maybe he took a walk with Kate."

  Arthur felt himself shaking. And maybe Katsuleris killed him.

  "Hey, lighten up," Zack said. "I asked Mrs. Neumeyer to leave a note. Meanwhile, we can get a soda, if you want."

  Arthur pushed him away, then ran straight into a balding man in a white lab coat. "Are you here with Beatrice Reed?" the man asked Zack.

  "I am," Arthur said, swiping at his nose with his sleeve.

  "I'm Dr. Coles," the man said, still addressing Zack. "Beatrice has been admitted."

  "Is she conscious?" Zack asked.

  "I'm afraid not. She appears to be in a coma, although her tests are very inconclusive on that score."

  "How can you be inconclusive about whether someone's in a coma or not?" Arthur asked.

  The doctor's eyelids fluttered irritably. "Beatrice is very fortunate in that one of the leading neurologists in the world, Dr. Shanipati, is in the hospital and is taking an interest in her case." He smiled proudly as he touched Zack's arm. "He's with her now, but you can wait in the visiting area of the neurology wing. I'll take you up."

  "You can take me up," Arthur said. "I'm her brother."

  "I'm afraid children aren't permitted—"

  "I said I'm going up. Call an administrator if you want, but I'm all Bea has, and I'm going to be with her." Arthur pointed to Zack. "He stays here."

  The doctor stood indecisively for a moment, his eyelids fluttering wildly. Arthur strode past him. "Never mind. I'll find my own way."

  He walked into an open elevator, pushed the fourth floor button, crossed his arms over his chest, and stared defiantly at the two men as the doors closed.

  Then he cried.

  The priests of the Black Mass chanted.

  Inside the circle of blood, the air grew thick, charged with the magic of the dark forces which had been appeased by the sacrifice of the animals and the suffering of the woman. Already the Merlin was weakening; Aubrey could feel the sorcerer's power draining out of the old man.

  Yes, the dark ones would be pleased.

  He thought of the Mass as an offering for the cup. Aubrey's gods were mercenary; they had demanded many souls as its price. But what the cup brought with it was worth everything Aubrey had paid.

  And he had paid a great deal, even more than he had realized. The Merlin had shown him, for the first time, just how much he had sacrificed for the cup.

  With the heightened perceptions brought on by the ritual, Aubrey had followed the old man's thoughts with absolute clarity. He had walked with him through the charred forest on the island of Mona, felt the scorched earth still warm beneath his feet. He had seen the bodies of the druids hanging like ornaments from the burned oaks, dangling by frayed ropes. He had seen the women in the grove, their while bellies exposed for the first time to light.

  But it was not until he beheld the remains of the hag whom the druids called the Innocent that Aubrey realized that the memory he was experiencing was not only the Merlin's, but his own as well.

  He had been Thanatos then, as he was now. With his hands he had cut the pentagra
m into the witch's body during that distant time, in precisely the same proportions that he had just used to mark the American girl. His arms had felt the Innocent's cloying blood as he sank them into her bowels to remove the viscera. His ears had heard her cryptic dying words, Mother, bring us life from death.

  But there had been no life from death for her and her kind. Nothing remained of the old religion. Its servants, killed by magic, had forfeited their souls.

  It had been Thanatos' mission to destroy the gods, and in this he had succeeded.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  He did not at first know why he had been given the mission. He had been raised, in that other life, as one of the holy ones, familiar with the ways of the druids since birth.

  His mother told him before her death that he had been born on the sacred island of Mona, and had been sent with her to the ancient grove in Gaul which had been their home ever since. This, she explained, was the practice for children conceived during the rites of Beltane, as he had been, because no one was permitted on Mona who had not made a conscious decision to serve the ancient gods. In the lesser groves, however, these special children were trained from birth to become druids, as they were the only ones who would be considered to replace the Innocent when that time came.

  "It will be you," his mother said, straining to speak in her extremity. "I felt your destiny in your soul as it entered my body at the moment of your conception. The gods have great plans for you, my son."

  And so they had.

  At fifteen, he was expelled from the order for raping a girl several years his junior. He was led before dawn to the field outside the druids' forest and left there with only a short tunic and a pair of rope sandals, to make his way or be eaten by wolves.

  He spent the day weeping and cursing those who had done this thing to him, but by nightfall he had formed a plan. He gathered a great bundle of sticks and twigs together, and two pieces of flint, and waited. Then, at the midnight hour, when the wind howled mournfully over the dry autumn grass, he stole back into the druids' deep wood to their sacred grove.

  It was the time of the new moon, and the first spark of the flint lit the dark sky like a jewel. The twigs caught quickly, blossoming into flames that scurried among the ageless oaks like living beasts.

  He stayed long enough to watch the oaks catch fire, imagining he could hear their screams. Then he heard the sound of running footsteps, and he left the way he had come, silent and triumphant.

  From more than two miles distant he could see the bright blaze. By the time he reached the nearest village, he heard talk of nothing else.

  "They must have angered the gods," an old man said in a tavern where he had gone to ask for work.

  He had laughed aloud. Yes, indeed, he thought. They have angered the only god I worship.

  He killed for the first time a year later, in the tavern where he worked. It was a worthless stewpot whose life he took, a smelly, feebleminded old pederast with no family to mourn him or seek out his murderer. The man had come into some money—he sold carvings of religious figures to the Christians—and was stupid enough to show it to him.

  "Malva," the man whispered, for that was the boy's birth name, "take a look." The old man was grinning lewdly at him as he jingled a pouch heavy with coins.

  Malva had been chopping wood behind the tavern, and was lathered in sweat. He knew his appeal. More than half of the married women in the village, and a fair number of unmarried ones who still called themselves maidens, had squealed in delight under his weight. So, although it was the first time a man had looked at him with that particular sort of longing, he was not surprised.

  He smiled, being sure to display his even, white teeth, then sauntered over to the man, the ax still in his hand. The old man, having drunk enough to sway on his feet, did not even react when Malva picked up the ax near its blade and cut his throat with it.

  Several days later the body was discovered behind the woodpile, after the tavern had become overrun by rats. Meanwhile, the pouch of coins was hidden in a corner of the root cellar, where only Malva went. In time, it was joined by others—one quite large pouch, from a foreign sailor who had actually enjoyed Malva's body before dying, and several smaller ones—before the villagers began to look at him with something like distrust.

  He left in the night, after relieving his employer of his savings, his horse, and his life.

  Gaul was a large country. There were many places for an enterprising young man to establish himself. Malva worked at many trades and learned many skills, but his way of life remained unchanged in the essentials. He robbed men and then killed them, all the while leading an ordinary life in every other respect.

  In time, he no longer even needed the money. His victims' prestige and wealth had grown along with his own, so that every death yielded considerably more than the first bag of coins he had taken from the village sot. On one occasion, he murdered the garrison commander of a Roman fort right under the noses of the man's personal guard, and walked away with a box of Arabian jewels.

  By the time he was twenty, Malva had grown weary of only one aspect of his life—that of masquerading as an honest man. On the southern shore of Gaul, he bought passage on a ship headed for the east, where he no longer had to work, and killed purely for profit.

  It was in Egypt that he first encountered the dark magicians, and in the Black Mass he experienced a state describable only as bliss. Murder, in its ritual form, was not a secret act, like the elimination of one's waste, but an art. One killed with delicacy and refinement, and in a state of ecstasy. In the Black Mass, he discovered for the first time in his life that there was a force greater than his own will, and he bound himself to that force with the devotion of a lover.

  During his initiation, the dark ones spoke his true name. "Thanatos," they whispered to his inmost heart.

  For that gift, he gave the dark ones his soul, and they smiled on him.

  Thanatos was never certain of the precise moment when he knew he had to return to the place of his birth. The idea grew as he embraced the dark way more and more completely. There was the question of payment—he felt his demon gods demanded more from him than merely his devotion and the sacrifices he was able to bring them. They wanted supremacy, not only among the esoteric few like himself, who were drawn to them from birth, but in the hearts of all who walked the earth.

  So, in time, he came to understand his life's true work: He would become a harvester of souls.

  That would be easy enough in a place like Gaul, where the people had long accepted foreign occupation and the loss of their gods. Since the triumph of the Romans, the Gauls had adopted the ways of their conquerors to the point where they looked down on the Britons, who had never willingly changed anything about themselves, as savage barbarians. For their cooperation, the Gauls enjoyed a booming commerce, a settled government, wide, paved roads, vermin-free homes, and luxuries such as the Britons could not even imagine.

  Yes, the Gauls would be an easy harvest.

  But the Britons... that was another matter. They were stubborn, rough people, accustomed to the rain and cold, stoic about the suffering of life, and indifferent to death. They laughed at the Roman deities, deriding their gorgeous flesh-painted statues as harlots. For the Britons, who still walked miles through snow-covered mountain passes to offer bread to the ancient gods while their own bellies growled with hunger, their souls were all they had.

  And their souls were fed by Mona.

  Mona. The last stronghold against the dark ones, led by an old wraith of a woman who, it was said, was more spirit than flesh… perhaps one of the ancient gods herself.

  Yes, it would have to be Mona. Thanatos would appease his greedy demons by giving them the greatest gift possible—the souls of Mona's gods, bound by magic in the dark realms so that they would never rise to live again.

  It took him nearly six years to establish his coven and formulate his plan. Then, on a night the omens had foretold would bring strength to the dark
forces, thirteen magicians, led by Thanatos, sailed from southern Britain to reach the shores of Mona at the hour of midnight.

  They killed in an orgy of passion, chanting the ritual of their mass as they struck down the druids one by one. Each death was an offering to the dark ones; over each body the rite of sacrifice was said so that their souls would be bound forever to the power of the demon gods.

  Only in one instance did he fail. When they reached the Innocent, she was waiting for them, unafraid.

  "So you have come for us at last," she said calmly, even as the corpses of her closest attendants lay still warm around her.

  "You and your gods will die by my hand," Thanatos said.

  "I know. I have lived long in order to fulfill their destiny."

  "Crazy old harridan," he said. "You don't even know enough to be afraid."

  "It is you who should be afraid," she answered. "Do you not know what awaits you in the dark realms?"

  "Nothing awaits me. After my death, I will be free. My gods have promised it."

  "Your gods lie, Thanatos," she said quietly.

  "How do you know my name?"

  "The gods have spoken it to me. Your gods, and mine as well, for they serve the same purpose."

  "To see you dead?" he asked with a smile.

  "Perhaps." She gave him a small bow. "You will know soon enough." Then she walked, lightly as a feather, to the great altar stone and lay down upon it, offering herself to her gods.

  "Mother, bring us life from death," she murmured, and then her breath stilled.

  Thanatos watched the life go out of her. For a moment a white aura, like the thinnest smoke, surrounded her. Then it gathered itself up into a light so bright that Thanatos thought he would be blinded for life by it. He threw his fists over his face, but it was as if his hands were transparent and his eyelids did not exist. He cried out in pain.

  Then, in the hundredth part of a moment, the light was gone. The Innocent lay lifeless on the altar, safe from his magic.

  "Did you see it?" he demanded of his initiates.