Bitch! He was suddenly suffused with fury. Murdering bitch! He lunged at her. She sidestepped-a slight movement. He was punching at air.
A glimmer of amusement came through from her. And he sup-posed it was ridiculous. He could pick up that sharp-edged trowel from the table and push it into her body and nothing would happen. In this universe created by her mind he was impotent. It was only inside the portal that he'd be able to wreak destruction and turn this palace of the memory to ruin.
That is, if he survived.
A feeling of futility swept over him. Maybe he should simply stay here. Stay with Minnaloushe. He was never going to be able to escape this labyrinth anyway.
Come. Impatient now.
No.
Come.
He shrank back.
Something nudged at his feet. He looked down.
The entire floor was covered by rats. A heaving, seething mass of squealing, shuddering bodies, evil eyes, whiskers, teeth sharp as razors. His shoes were covered with rats; the rodents were jostling against his ankles.
He looked up. Morrighan had disappeared. She had left him alone with his nightmare.
This is not real, he told himself despairingly. This is just a memory image. Just something conjured up by Morrighan's mind. Not real. But the next moment one of the rats fell down on him from one of the trusses in the ceiling space. He could feel the plump weight of the rodent as it slapped onto his shoulder, the claws scrabbling and then hooking into his skin. The next moment the animal had sunk its yellow teeth into his neck. The pain was intense. He tugged the rat off his neck and threw it away from him, shuddering with revulsion. He stumbled toward the door, kicking at the fat bodies crowding his feet. The door. Escape.
He fell out of the room and slammed the door behind him.
She was waiting for him outside. Come.
He followed.
In the bed inside the loft apartment Frankie moved restlessly, her head shifting on the pillow from side to side. Vaguely she realized that her heartbeat had sped up enormously. She was suspended in a twilight world where her mind was interfacing with that of the man who was lying beside her, now oblivious to her presence. The link was tenuous; she was receiving only fragments of images and emotions. And a few moments ago, she had received a burst of emotion so violent that the link had almost severed completely, the turbulent static of his thoughts just about wiping the scan clean.
It was better now. She was picking up the pattern again. A corridor silvered by moonlight. Quick steps. The shadow of a woman sliding sinuously along a curving wall…
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
He was following her shadow. She moved quickly, always staying a few steps ahead of him. Once or twice he had lost sight of her completely as they sped down a long, winding corridor, but each time her shadow had stretched behind her, a dark shape on the moon-stained wall, lengthening and contracting, showing the way.
They were now once more traveling through a populated section of the memory palace, the unfinished building site of Minnaloushe's imagination swallowed up somewhere far behind them.
The rooms through which they traveled at present were all filled with mystical objects. A man with the head of a baboon stared at him dispassionately. A white horse neighed madly and tossed its blood-soaked mane. In one room his astonished eyes saw that he was walking on water. Deep down below him were millions of drowned books, some closed, some twirling slowly with pages spread open in fanlike beauty.
He knew that these were talismanic images-magical images- but he had no comprehension of what information they represented. He was walking through these halls of knowledge without any understanding. It was simply a disturbing, alien world.
And he was lost. He had no idea how many doors she had opened, how many rooms they had traversed. He had lost track of the number of images they had encountered. He didn't care. He would never be able to remember the way back. All he was interested in now was reaching the portal. And he had no doubt that was where she was leading him.
He kept his eyes on her moving form. She had a lovely way of carrying herself, every step graceful but hinting at the power and strength gathered in the fine muscles. Her hair was upswept, allowing him to see the slender stalk of her neck. Her profile was pure. She was a beautiful creature.
And she was a warrior. Strong. Sleek. On guard. Ready to go into battle. Mhor Rioghain. Great Queen of war and death. He was no match for her. Even Minnaloushe had miscalculated her sister's ruthlessness.
Why had Morrighan in the end decided to kill Minnaloushe? An accident, she had said. Not planned. Only Morrighan knew if this were true. Morrighan had needed Minnaloushe to help her build the palace. But maybe jealousy and paranoia had come together in one devastating moment of lethal rage.
Two warriors. Minnaloushe's mind had been the subtler, Morrighan's the more ferocious. Minnaloushe had delighted in practicing mental judo, using her adversary's strength against her. Morrighan's mind cut like a katana. A few well-placed sword strokes demolishing the whole with ruthless precision. No ambiguity.
And in the end ruthlessness had prevailed. Or had it? If he could reach the portal and release Minnaloushe's spell, she might well be the final victor.
He was aware of a hum in the air. He had heard this sound before. He knew what it signaled. A tremor ran through his spine.
In front of him, Morrighan had stopped. She placed her palm against an uneven stone set into the smoothness of the wall.
The wall slid to one side.
The vast room was as he remembered it. As he had dreamt it.
The portal. It had haunted his sleep for so long. Now that he had reached it he felt strangely calm.
Her link with Gabriel was fragile. At times Frankie would see clearly and the emotions she picked up from him would be true, but then the scan would break up and she'd see only fragments, incoherent images. But as he entered the portal, her first impression was as detailed as an etching: a vast space with slowly revolving stone walls densely encrusted with mysterious sigils and fantastic signs. She had never been inside this space before, but she recognized it immediately. Gabriel had talked about it so often.
All these symbols, she knew, could be combined and recombined into infinite patterns of code. This was the heart of the memory palace; the power station driving the entire structure. Above the massive circular walls the domelike ceiling floated insubstantially, bathed in light.
And then there were the thirty doors. They formed a semicircle and looked innocuous. But behind one of those doors lay pain and insanity. Open it and an information overload would burst through your brain like water breaking through the wall of a dam.
For a brief moment she remembered the aneurysm nestling inside the soft tissue of Gabriel's brain, a grenade waiting to explode.
She sensed the awe, the fear now starting to coat Gabriel's thoughts. It seeped into her own consciousness like ink absorbed by blotting paper. But part of her mind was cool, an outsider looking in. And she was concerned: Where was Morrighan? She wanted Gabriel to find Morrighan, but his focus had slipped away from the woman. He was fully absorbed by the idea of the portal itself. And with the horror lurking behind one of those doors.
Gabriel was looking upward at the ceiling high above him. He turned on his heel. The illuminated dome spun with him. It made Frankie dizzy.
The scan was breaking up again. One moment the spinning ceiling, then a distorted glimpse of the phantasmagorical symbols on one of the walls rushing past her uncomprehending eyes like an animated frieze.
Where was Morrighan?
What secrets did this chamber hold? What magic?
Gabriel looked up, and the dome of the ceiling above his head was filled with celestial light.