But I’d already swung up onto my mare and started her on the road to Balbec. There’s nothing bitterer than revulsion toward one I’d hoped to love as a brother. Nothing more dispiriting than being the pawn of cynical calculation.
I was shadowed. Dalca’s henchmen followed my horse as we climbed, the soldiers flitting from tree to rock on either side. His minions are short and swarthy men, goat-quick, with spears and bows but no firearms. They reinforced my suspicion that I was ascending into the past. The dim history into which I rode was not Egypt’s time of august pharaohs and animal-headed deities. Dalca’s gods are far older, the cruel pagan idols that were once placated by Dacian blood sacrifice and druid incantation. Their god Perun controlled thunder, and Chernobog the underworld.
Would their darkness swallow us now?
The road ended at the lip of a sheer ravine, so deep that I couldn’t see its bottom. A decrepit drawbridge led to a gatehouse and portcullis on the other side. Helmeted sentries watched from a broken rampart, and the entire castle looked gnawed by a dragon. No one challenged, no one beckoned. My horse snorted and shied, as if sensing something wicked in the castle beyond. When I dismounted, she bolted.
I hesitated, my heart beating. But beyond the gate was the higher keep, and two figures peered from there as well. One of them waved. Horus! My heart soared and then settled into resolve. Now I was a lioness, come to recover her cub. I had a mother’s power.
I strode across the drawbridge, boots thumping. At mid-span a board broke from my weight and fell away like a broken bird, hitting the ravine side and dislodging pebbles. I listened to them rattle into the crevasse, making tiny echoes. Then I gathered breath and went on.
The bars of the castle gate had been lifted into the portcullis, bottom spikes pointing downward like daggers. In the gatehouse passageway beyond were dark chutes through which boiling oil could be poured onto invaders. I felt eyes up there, watching me.
The castle courtyard was small, enclosed by walls on three sides and by the castle keep on the fourth. Balbec is not big, and formidable chiefly because it perches on an impregnable pinnacle of rock. Thousand-foot cliffs fell away from its stonework on all sides, gusts buffeting the spire. I wondered if any army had ever successfully stormed it.
Now the Gage family would try.
“Mama!” Harry’s faint cry floated away on the wind to join the mournful howling. I looked up. His head suddenly jerked back as if yanked.
“Horus!” A murder of crows burst from crevices, the birds shrieking abuse before wheeling away. Gargoyles leered from the lip of the battlements.
The keep’s massive wooden door, bound with iron, was firmly shut. No escort had appeared, and no challenge was made. I’d no idea how to enter. I stood for a moment, looking upward for another sign of my son. He’d disappeared. There was a ponderous squeal from the portcullis behind me and I turned to watch the iron grill of the main gate descend until its points ground onto the paving stones, locking me in. So I turned back. Carved over the archway, I noted, was the bas-relief of a swollen spider.
Dalca’s web had trapped me.
It was only when I was safely sealed that there was a clank of machinery behind the keep door. With a slow grind, the entrance cracked open. Then the machinery stopped. There was just room enough to squeeze through, and beyond was dark silence.
I reminded myself of lioness courage and pushed inside.
Two bars of gray light fell from arrow-slit windows to faintly illuminate the reception room. The stone heads of demons peered down, as well as the stuffed heads of bear, wolf, and stag. I seemed alone with this menagerie and wondered who’d opened the door until a voice came out of the shadows.
“He’s waiting.”
A servant materialized, so tall and thin as to be cadaverous. The room was barren of furniture. “Cezar Dalca’s quarters are below. You’re a sorceress of Egypt?”
“Scholar. Priestess.”
“Magician.”
“Where’s Horus?”
“Come and see.”
A spiral stair was hewn into stone. Torches gave undulating light. We descended into bedrock and I surmised that the castle’s foundation was a hive of excavated tunnels where the dark duke could lead a troglodyte existence away from the sun. The rock gleamed where it sweated. At the base of the stairs, two stone dragons stood guard like the two lions at the Temple of Sibyl.
Dalca’s reception hall was a windowless cave with a vaulted ceiling reinforced by stout stone pillars, like the chamber of a mine. It was warmer than the chilly anteroom above, almost uncomfortably so. His refuge had a cellar smell. Thick woolen Turkish carpets covered the floor, their patterns long-faded. Ragged tapestries decorated the walls, eaten by moths or vermin. Between the hangings were the antlers and horns of a dozen species, along with battered shields and antique weapons. There were runes incised near the ceiling, and an un-lidded stone sarcophagus to the left. A bed?
A fireplace and hewn chimney explained the heat. Three lanterns cast pools of illumination. The eye skipped from one light to the next until finally settling on a candelabrum thick with old wax that burned at the far end of the hall. It lit a raised wooden platform that bore my host on a lazy throne. Dalca reclined on a gilded Roman-style settee with Egyptian decoration. Servants squatted in the shadows nearby. Also standing sentry were two human skulls on pedestals, one of each end of the platform.
My host liked theater, I decided. He relied on fear.
“So you’ve come for immortality,” he greeted in a guttural voice.
Dalca was corpulent almost beyond belief, his face bloated, his arms and legs swollen, his belly round as a balloon, and the mass of him compressing the couch like the weight of a planet. He seemed not just fat but swollen, like a tick, head sunken toward his shoulders, neck lost behind jowls, fat and immobile. Was he carried from place to place?
My host’s hands, in contrast, were thin, with long, skeletal fingers, and his feet seemed tiny. A smaller man had once inhabited his bones. Dalca’s bulk was exaggerated even more by his sumptuous costume of rich brocades, velvets, and a collar of wolf fur, a layered ménage of clothes that seemed cobbled together from several centuries. The heavy gold chain of office that hung from his shoulders seemed inspired by portraits of ministers from three centuries before. He had round gold earrings in each ear, pit-like eyes, and a thick beard that meshed with the tangled hair that fell to his shoulders like a mad monk. His chest visibly rose and fell as he sat, as if breathing took conscious effort, and his thick lips were the color of liver. His nose was as rumpled as the country we had ridden through, perhaps broken in old battles. His face was creased and pocked.
In sum he was the most hideous man I’d ever seen, as forbidding as a leper. No wonder he lived a recluse. This beast desired beauties?
“I’ve come for my son.” My voice quavered slightly as I said it, making me furious at my own tremble. Courage! My weapon must be my wits.
“And the whelp has been waiting.” Shadows shifted and one of Dalca’s soldiers dragged something into the light. To my fury I saw it was Horus in an iron slave collar, chained to his captor’s belt like a dog. He was squirming under his keeper’s grip.
“Mama!” He twisted enough to break free. But when he ran toward me he was snapped short by the chain and fell on his rump. Servants laughed.
I, in turn, was blocked from rushing to embrace him. The sallow escort who’d led me downward spread his arms to prevent me from advancing, and I stopped short lest I wind up in his foul embrace.
“Let me hug my son!”
“It’s enough that he’s here,” Dalca replied.
“It’s not enough for a mother, kidnapper. It’s not enough when my heart has been torn from my breast. Horus!”
My son half-choked as his captor leaned back against the throat chain, his sneer casual and cruel.
“If you don
’t let me touch him, I’ll not attend your banquet.”
Dalca frowned. “Then you’ll abandon your boy.”
“Until I come back with an army.” I turned. Squat sentries moved to prevent any retreat. They were not just Tartar in stature but almost dwarfish, as if malformed in some troubled experiment. This was a truly evil place. I whirled to face Dalca again. “Or until I summon my own magic. I warn all of you, I’ve plumbed the ancient texts. I’ve memorized the incantations.”
The imps actually stepped back.
Dalca’s reply was mild. “Such threats from a companion mind! I’m disappointed, sorceress.”
Now I was filled with lioness spirit, and addressed him with fury. “I’m disappointed how a duke of Transylvania treats a pilgrim family and blackmails a mother into accepting his invitation. Disappointed that Dalca’s soldiers show their strength by bullying a little boy. Disappointed that their ruler fears a mother’s love. Disappointed that the great Cezar Dalca hides in the bowels of the earth behind demon carvings and deer antlers.”
At last I elicited a scowl. “Your own fellowship sold your boy into my service. You came here of your own free will, as required. Do you always insult your host?”
“Only when he foully kidnaps.”
“Purchased, I said.”
“Enslaved. If you want my attendance at this banquet of yours, you must let me comfort my son.”
The room went quiet, his power and my will gripped like wrestlers. I was outmatched, and yet I also sensed the faintest thread of fear in the chamber. This castle was under Dalca’s spell, but I’d brought in memory of the righteous outside world. Finally the duke gave a dismissive grunt and limply waved his hand, as if it were effort to raise his wrist. “Let them touch.”
The leash-man led my son forward, unnecessarily jerking the collar, but my dour escort stood aside and at last I embraced my weeping boy. I hugged Horus fiercely, my mouth to his ear, whispering courage. My son looked up at me with wide eyes, full of fear and hope at what I murmured. I gave him a solemn nod even though I’d no faith that what I promised was true. Yet it was our only chance. Then I turned to Dalca. “For that small mercy to a devoted mother, I thank you.”
“You have the temper of a she-bear,” he grumbled. Then he looked at his servants and barked a laugh. “My other women are quieter.”
They cackled as if this were the height of wit.
“I’m not your woman. And I am a lioness, not a bear.”
“But you’ve acceded to my banquet?” He nodded to himself. “Come, I tire of the same faces. First we’ll have an exchange of philosophies. Yes, step under that lamp where I can best see you. Your boy is only here to prevent you from being rash. I’ve lived a long time, and learned to take precautions.”
Even from ten feet away I could smell his odor, a stink like bad cheese. Dalca was sick, I guessed, gripped by some corruption that bloated him. “You struggle to breathe?”
“Heavy from a recent meal.” He shrugged, as if his sluggishness was normal, or even necessary. “You think me grotesque. Don’t deny it, all do, so I’ve removed myself like a dutiful outcast so as not to offend precious sensibilities. Oh yes, I make sacrifices. I observe propriety. I leave this place only for the most urgent necessities. But I’m also an intellectual, a scholar of mystery, and a collector of antiquities. I was informed of your coming, and told of your past, and I understand you’re a student as well. We aren’t meant to quarrel, you and I. We’re similar beings.”
“I worship the light.”
“Don’t be sure the light is all that different from the dark. All men are dual, good and evil, high and low. Come, sit beside me on the platform here and tell me of your journey. I’m a lonely man, despite my servants. I enjoy hearing about the world.”
With no weapons and nothing to bargain with, I had little choice but to comply. The unspoken assumption was that I was negotiating for the life of my son. Caleb and Dolgoruki had made me their decoy, and made my son a piece of bait. But while buying time for our desperate scheme I’d also try to learn if this precious palladium even existed. So I sat on the edge of the platform with my feet on the carpeted floor, a careful four feet from the reclining ogre.
“I’m a student of the past seeking antiquities of rare power,” I began. “I come from Egypt where knowledge began, and have studied in a dozen great libraries. My goal is to obtain wisdom.”
“You mean power,” Dalca said.
“Wisdom is power.”
“Nonsense, sorceress. A man can be stuffed with knowledge and be both a fool and a weakling. Science is powerful, but no individual can own it. Scientific discoveries are shared, or stolen, or copied. Bah! What use is knowledge that anyone can know? I seek objects of power, and their magic. The ancients knew how to call on the underworld in ways we’ve forgotten. I don’t pretend that I only want to learn. I want to control. To dominate. To rule. Any sensible man is selfish.”
“No parent would say that.”
“Children are the most selfish of all, making their parents into slaves. Look at you, required to come here and submit to me.”
I wouldn’t dignify his absurdity with argument. “Children give us immortality,” I said instead. “They carry on what we give them.”
“I want real immortality, not brats as my surrogate. Sons disappoint. Longevity is a triumph.”
“You’ve defeated death?”
“I’ve lived a very long time. Do you know I was once a great warrior? No, you don’t believe, I can see it in your eyes. No matter. I persist, and my wisdom is that while all people desire, few obtain. Frustration is the fundamental condition of mankind. So I refuse to be human; I strive to be superhuman. I don’t merely yearn. I possess. I feast. I live.”
What strange image did he have of his own bag of a body? What triumph did he think he’d achieved in this wormhole? What satisfaction did he live for? But I saw opportunity. “Then we can work together. Find together. Treasure hunt together.” I’d rehearsed this bargain to buy time.
The greed of his grin was ghastly. “Offer me something I don’t have.”
Here I had to invent. “There’s an elixir of eternal youth held by the defiant Maharaja Yashwant Rao Holkar of Indore.” I’d read in the newspapers about this Indian prince who doggedly resisted the British. “A sip makes you a god. That’s what our fellowship is after, my duke, eternal youth. But Yashwant has an army of a hundred thousand men. We can’t take his potion from him. We need something to tempt him to share it, and something to allay his greatest fear.”
“Which is?”
“Defeat and subjugation by the English. All India is falling under their control. Another war is sure to come. But my family heard of an ancient artifact, a wooden statue of Athena, that makes a nation unconquerable. Yashwant would desire such a relic. He’s fascinated by Greek myths. If we could locate this statue we could be partners.” I tried to watch Dalca’s eyes, to see if they’d give away his secret of possession, but I couldn’t even see the orbs. It was as if someone had driven fingers into the dough of his face.
“You want to trade this statue away?”
“For an elixir of youth. The Trojan Palladium is an old icon, all but forgotten, possibly impotent. Men assume it lost. But it’s said that the pagan world lives on in Balbec. Rumor says you may possess it, and together we could tempt this Moghul prince. Antique rubbish from your cellar exchanged for the vigor of a twenty-year-old.”
“You mean the ancient image that protected Troy. Older than the Egyptian pyramids. Fallen from the sky. Wood that never decays.”
“So you do have it. Fate has indeed brought us together.”
“This palladium is what brought you to the Carpathians?”
“We’d make the dangerous journey to India for you.”
Dalca laughed without mirth, and his thick lips parted to reveal pointed teeth, so shar
p that I suspected they’d ben filed. It was a guffaw without joy, and an expression of slyness deteriorating into madness. “How bold you are! I’m to give you a relic of impregnable power and send you thousands of miles away to pursue another rumor? Surrender invulnerability? Give up what has controlled the fate of the world?” He shook his head. “It would be absurd even if it was possible. But it isn’t. You offer what I don’t need in return for what I don’t have.”
“You don’t have the palladium?” My heart sank. All this risk for nothing.
“I know the legend, and I know where the statue might be—in a palace a hundred times as impregnable as this one. And I don’t believe in your elixir, priestess. Eternal youth? Alchemists sought immortality from the philosopher’s stone. Ponce de Leon sought the fountain of youth. Faust bargained with the devil. Cagliostro and the Comte St. Germain boasted they lived for centuries. Religious prophets promise eternity in the afterlife. It’s all a rainbow. What paradise won’t become tedious after a thousand years, let alone a trillion? What hellish torture won’t become boring as it extends to forever? Endings are what makes existence meaningful.”
So he wasn’t tempted. “You accept death.”
Dalca shook his massive, shaggy head. “I fear it with all my heart. I dare not join it, for dread of my soul. So I don’t embrace eternity, sorceress, I endure it, outliving everyone and everything I cherish. Except for my immortal companions.”
“Your female banquet guests.”
“My harem.” His tongue protruded for an instant, brushing his lips. “Are you curious, Astiza of Alexandria? The Egyptians prepared for the eternal journey. Greek heroes sought elevation to the ranks of the gods. Jesus was resurrected. Mohammed ascended into heaven. You can’t have the palladium, and you can’t have Indian elixirs, but you can have my own formula for eternal preservation.”
My task was only to buy time. “You’ve used this secret on yourself?”
“How old do you think I am?”
“Old enough to be rooted to that settee.”
“Old enough to learn what can be done and not done. Old enough for genius the outside world is not yet ready for. Come!” He pointed to the man chained to Horus. “Decebal, bring the boy, too.”
The Trojan Icon (Ethan Gage Adventures Book 8) Page 18
