Bloodstone (23 page)

When Teres had not appeared by late morning, Kane decided to awaken her. He entered after her hoarse voice answered his tentative knock. A trace of alarm touched his features when he found her prostrate with fever.

"Go back to your toads and sorceries, and let me die in peace!" Teres growled plaintively. Her damp hands pushed him away, but there was no strength in her arms.

"Head's like a boiled egg," commented Kane, withdrawing his hand from her brow. He questioned her solicitously but received only vague reply.

"Damn it, Kane! Leave me alone!" she snarled, and struck at him weakly when he pulled away her furs and pressed his cheek to her bare back.

"Damn it, keep still!" he returned. "I'm trying to get some idea of what's wrong with you!" He began to thump her back carefully with the fingers of both hands.

"You're no physician... though only Thoem the Accursed knows what else you may be!"

"How do you know what I am and what I'm not! My years are greater than you imagine, and a man learns what he needs, if he thinks to defy both death and ennui."

Teres felt too dismal at the moment to berate him further. His touch was gentle, his manner concerned, and though she suspected Kane was only playing for her trust, his attention was not unpleasant: At this point she doubted whether anything could make her more miserable than this febrile torpitude.

"Your lungs sound clear enough," Kane declared. "I don't think there's a pneumonia--at least, not yet. More likely, you've caught the grandfather of colds, from exposure to the damp in your fatigued state. Or maybe you've inhaled some noisome swamp vapors--Kranor-Rill's very breath is poisoned in many places."

He sorted through the chamber's scant possessions, muttering to himself. "I've only transported the barest of provisions to Arellarti, as you can see," he explained. "But I do have some useful drugs on hand." He measured out a grayish-yellow powder and stirred it into a cup of wine.

"If I may choose, I prefer a sword to poison."

"I understand why Malchion looks ten years older than his years," grumbled Kane in vexation. "Your judgment is as hasty as your logic is erratic. I know poisons that would send you to Hell in the throes of insurmountable ecstasy; only the slain know how sharp is the bite of cold steel. However, this drug will break your fever. It's a subtle compound of barks, molds, roots and other medicaments, with which I doubt your backward Wollendan physicians are familiar. Smile and drink it, or wither away with fever. The hours I can spare away from Selonari are rather limited at present, and I dislike leaving a delirious girl alone in Toad Hall."

The potion was bitter and probably contained a soporific, for Teres fell asleep shortly thereafter, musing upon Kane's knowledge of esoteric drugs.

He looked in on her a number of times in the course of the afternoon, the night and the day that followed. The drug was efficacious, for her fever soon broke, and the throbbing in her head left her. She slept for long periods, still haunted by bizarre dreams that merged into her waking thoughts. Kane's touch, cool on her febrile skin, she was aware of hazily-as if she were apart from herself, watching a fever-racked girl, cradled in his great arms while he held a cup to the stranger's pale lips. He talked to her, though she made little response--a rambling monologue her delirium fogged mind did not follow. There remained only an impression of names, lands and cities of distant continents, of lost ages. How many of the fragments of memory that came to her later were from his words or her imagination, Teres never was certain.

The fever left her one morning--at least, for a time. Strength returned to her limbs, driving away the dull lassitude that had held her so long in its vampirish embrace. Her depression chased after her distemperature, although some weakness persisted. The tower room stifled her, and Teres decided to taste the morning air. Kane, despite her confused feelings toward him, afforded intriguing companionship, so she set out to find him.

Her hulking guards evidently guessed her intention, or acted at Kane's command, for when she quitted the chamber, the watchful Rillyti pointed the way. Keeping well away from the grotesque creatures, she followed them to a low structure that fronted on the central courtyard.

Kane was inside, crouched near a deep crack that had rent both wall and floor of the rubble-strewn building. The light was uncertain, so that Teres could not at once discern Kane's action. When she drew closer, she wondered whether fever might not still be twisting her mind.

Rising from the fault in the floor, a vast and misshapen spider web slanted over a mound of curious debris. An enormous spider hung upon the web--larger than any tarantula of Kranor-Rill it was, and its thick black legs outspanned even Kane's outsize hands. The arachnid's bloated body seemed oddly proportioned, bulky as a man's fists held end to end, and the sparsely bristled chitin gleamed like a droplet of black blood.

Kane was intent upon the creature, so that he failed to look up at Teres's entrance. Kneeling beside the web, he appeared to be thrusting something toward the spider. Teres gained the weird sensation that he whispered to the thing, though the echoes of the place clearly played tricks with her mind, since she seemed to hear two faint and chattering noises.

She was almost touching Kane's shoulder before he noticed her presence. The spider uttered an annoyed rasping sound and scurried on its stubby legs into the deep crack in the stone floor, but not before its iridescent eyes had met Teres's with a gaze of iniquitous intelligence. She cried out, clutched at Kane's arm.

"He didn't like you," Kane mumbled, and held open his hand. "He left before he finished eating." Bits of melon lay on his palm.

"Spiders don't eat melon," Teres said shakily, unable to decide if this were not another phantom of delirium, "This one does," laughed Kane at some secret jest. His eyes were dilated, for a moment unfocused. "Especially when it's seasoned to his taste." Blood seeped from a cut along his thumb.

Repelled by the shadow of madness that twisted about her, Teres fled the ruined structure. Outside she wandered aimlessly--she could not say how long--before she felt Kane's presence at her side. Though his face was strangely flushed, Kane had his wonted bland manner. In view of his casual attitude, Teres wondered how much of what she had witnessed had been fever dream, or whether transient insanity lurked behind the cold murderlust of Kane's uncanny eyes. She realized he was asking about her health, a mundane inquiry that seemed in utter contrast to the sinister aura of Arellarti. She made an unthinking reply.

"Then let's hope your recovery is a lasting one," Kane continued. "I'll have to leave you for a time now. My absences from Dribeck's presence are sometimes awkward to account for, and I've stayed overlong already. Still, I didn't care to leave you until you were yourself again. So I'll return to Selonari soon, though I'd far rather lounge around Toad Hall and partake of yellow sunshine."

"Damned considerate of you to endanger your dark schemes, just to wipe my brow," Teresa muttered. "How does your plot progress?"

"Well enough," Kane smiled. "Malchion believes his daughter was secretly murdered, Dribeck thinks you're lurking somewhere within, Selonari's borders yet, and efforts to renew the conflict rumble along frenziedly. By the time Bloodstone has attained the peak of its power, the land will be in such chaos I could take it with a hundred good men."

"I'm overawed."

Kane watched her sharply. "How long will this petulance sour you, Teres? Am I so much more to be despised than any other conqueror?"

"You are blackened by the evil you seek to wield, by the treachery of your tactics," she quickly answered.

He stared at her with impatient lines to his jaw. "A man wields the weapons he can master. The power of an army, the power of Bloodstone... tools of destruction, tools of empire. A man dies from a blade as surely as from... Bloodstone.

"You're an unusual girl, Teres, and I've known many women. You'd think me mad if I told you more, but you're unlike anyone I've encountered in all my years of wandering. To say I find you fascinating is superfluous. You're a strong woman... one who admires strength when she sees it in others. We are similar, perhaps.

"Through Bloodstone I command power to carve an empire across the Earth, limited only by my own interest in the game! My triumph need not be flawed again by loneliness. I would share my power with one strong enough!"

"You're mad if you think I would sell my soul to you!"

"Am I?" Kane sought her eyes. "There's something in your eyes, I can see when you look at me... something you try to force back. Think about it, Teres. To these clods you're a freak--at best you'll maybe rule a few years over your backwater city-state, an outsider to your subjects, a stranger to yourself. What's noble in that? Mine will be power such as no man has ever held--not just the tepid pleasure of ruling over the conquered nations of mankind! I offer to place you at my side, and you say I'm mad to tempt you. What paltry romantic stupidity!"

"Your high opinion of another's ethics bespeaks the obvious absence of your own conscience," Teres coldly commented.

"Ethics! Your moral scruples are a senseless wasteland of contradictions and stupidity!" he exploded. "I serve Kane, and no other gods or obscure values!"

"Obviously."

"Where were your high principles when you so joyously led an invading army to destroy Selonari?" he countered.

Her answer was ready. "Dribeck plotted against us. We fought back as men should--with honest steel and muscle-not alien sorcery!"

"The soldiers who fell doubtless smiled at the rightness of their dying." Kane's sarcasm was scathing. "Death is death. Victory is victory. The difference is strength... of men, of weapons, of strategy, whatever. Bloodstone is my strength; strength greater than any army. And victory always decides the morality of war--after the fact."

Teres made a disgusted sound. But after her indignation left her, in the hours she sat alone in the alien city, Kane's words haunted her, bedeviled her thoughts.

"Bloodstone grows more powerful with each day," remarked Kane one afternoon. He had just returned after an absence of days, and Teres found his company a welcome relief. The Rillyti ignored her, so long as she did not approach the city walls. But the gnawing concern whether they might disregard Kane's commands plagued her, and familiarity had not lessened her revulsion for the batrachians.

"I don't see how this obsessive restoration of Arellarti has any bearing on your crystal demon," Teres prodded. "Granted you want the walls secure against siege, and the causeway must be cleared for you to lead your army from the swamp, but why waste effort, as you do, on reconstruction of trivial ornamentation? For that matter, why do you repair these useless buildings? There are far more here than you and these creatures can occupy, and a number of these structures appear of totally nonfunctional design--not even windows or doors on some!"

"The Krelran were not an extravagant race," Kane said evasively. "Nor is Bloodstone of poetic temperament. Arellarti was engineered as a functional unit; Bloodstone directs its completion according to the original plan. That which is superfluous to man may be significant to Bloodstone."

Teres shivered. "At night when I look from the tower I can see its malignant nimbus hovering over the dome."

"The glow effulges as its energy waxes," Kane commented. "The life pulse of Arellarti beats stronger. Shun that region of the city, Teres, especially on moonless nights."

A caustic retort on his solicitude died in her throat. Instead, she remained silent at his side, looking out over the fire-hued city. "Why do you pursue this insane scheme, Kane?" she asked finally. "Either Malchion or Dribeck would give you wealth and honor, if you would serve them loyally. What more can you gain by unshackling this monstrous power upon mankind? I won't argue that power and riches are worth the struggle to possess. But how many of those men who have plotted and fought to build the empires of history ever found their prize worth the winning? Any Wollendan lord knows greater happiness--he has fortune and power beyond his needs, and the cares of a thankless and rebellious nation are not his concern.

"I'll not deny my attraction to you, Kane. You spoke the truth when you said we are much alike. We are both outsiders among the people we think to rule. I, too, admire strength, and ruthless demon though I know you to be, you are stronger than any man I've known!

"Kane, give up this accursed venture! Destroy Bloodstone, if you really can do that! Return with me to Breimen! If you do this, I swear to you I will never speak of your treachery, your sorcerous schemes, I'll tell Malchion only that you helped me escape from Dribeck, that when your position in Selonari became suspect, you brought me from hiding and fled with me to Breimen. No one will doubt this. If you serve us faithfully, Malchion will give you all that you desire. Nor will my father rule forever, and with a strong man beside me, my control of Breimen will be assured. Come away from this accursed city, Kane! Come away with me! We'll rule together--over Breimen, Selonari, or any other city-state we set our blades against!"

Their hands met on the ledge. Kane's voice was low. "Almost I hear myself assenting to your thoughts, Teres. And if my motivations were as simple and direct as you project them, then I might well destroy this power I've unchained here and go away from Arellarti to carve out a kingdom at your side."

Her face showed anger, but there was bitter pain in her voice. "But you won't, of course! Your greed for power is far closer to your black heart than any love you claim to feel for met"

"Now you begin to speak like a woman. Try to realize that there is more to my seeking than a blind lust for power."

"And you speak like a man--defending your ego by pleading for my lesser intellect to understand!"

"I'm not sure any human can understand my mind! You first considered me an ambitious adventurer; later you saw me as a treacherous demon--Thoem knows what you think of me at this moment! Teres, you grasp but the barest shade of my thoughts, my motives!"