His mood grew darker with time. Once again his weariness, abetted by fear, tempted him to sleep before the final plunge. He fought free, wanting immediate death or victory. He searched the darkness for a hint of trap, then cursed softly as a rock cut through his ragged boot and scored his heel. He felt little pain, but did sense the moist stickiness of oozing blood.
El Kabar loomed as naked as a newborn babe, as silent as death. It revealed traces of silver as the moon eased from behind it. The wind murmured "doom!" while chasing through knifish rocks, carrying with it scents of land long buried by snow. Urged to ever-increasing caution, he picked a shadow upslope, dashed into it, knelt to catch his breath and wish for thicker air. This was nothing a man should breathe. He hoped there would be no prolonged fighting.
His hair fell across his eyes. Bad, if that happened at a critical moment. He tied it back with a strip torn from his ragged coat, stroked his spotty beard, wished he had time to shave. Nepanthe wouldn't be impressed by his appearance.
The roundness and brownness of his face had remained unchanged by hardship, though it had become a bit more leathery. He seemed a shag-encircled henna moon arising as he peeped over a boulder. Bow ready, he ran to another shadow.
He felt terribly foolish by the time he reached the thousand feet of stairs. All his caution had gone for nothing. There he paused to hyper-ventilate in hopes that he would make the top prepared to fight. In vain. He was still compelled to make frequent stops.
The south wind rose and moaned softly, then died. Its masters had forgotten it hours before, and the Werewind couldn't sustain itself for long. As it faded Mocker first sighted Fangdred, though crenellated ramparts and the turret of the Wind Tower were all he saw. Neither defender nor banner stood limned above the battlements.
Silence. The castle seemed crouched, waiting, a sphinx about to spring.
Of their own accord, it seemed, his feet resumed moving, carrying him toward his fate. Soon he slung his bow, drew his sword. He felt more comfortable with that old friend in hand.
Surely Varthlokkur must be aware of his approach...
His thoughts turned to Nepanthe, to her face, her dark eyes, the way she quivered when he held her. And his anger grew. What cruelties, what indignities had she been forced to endure here?
Collapse seemed inevitable-then he topped the stairs. Sheer willpower took him into the blackness at the foot of the castle wall. There he dropped to his knees, panting, leaning one shoulder against cold stone. Weariness ground his spirit, again tried to tempt him into sleep. He fought it. The fire in his lungs slowly died. He glanced up, southward, across moonlit mountains rolling away like mighty waves... Aptly named, he thought. Fangs hungry for the blood of man. But enough. He was ready. He swatted the string of spittle dangling from his lower lip, reached inside his coat.
Precious as pearl was the brandy flask he brought forth, a treasure he had hoarded since fleeing Itaskia. He spat, teased himself with thought of its fiery taste... Enough! Now. He downed it in a single lengthy draught. A long burning shaft drove toward his stomach. He coughed, gasped, rose.
His heart hammered, his veins burned. He remembered holding a frightened thrush as a child, remembered the light, warm flutter of its heartbeat against his lingers. He had tossed the bird high to its freedom... What a strange thing to remember at an enemy's gate. He crept forward, sword probing the darkness, found the gate open! Trap! cracked across his consciousness. How like the open-doored device that had taken the thrush. At least he knew, he thought, what he was walking into. Gripping his weapon so tightly that his hand hurt, he stepped through...
And nothing happened. He looked around in bafflement. He had expected anything but this. Varthlokkur himself waiting, a blast of fire, a demon, anything. But he had encountered absolutely nothing. Fangdred lay silent, to all appearances deserted. Evil thought. What if the wizard had moved on, taking Nepanthe with him, laughing behind his hand? A possibility, it seemed, but first he must explore.
He found light, and people, almost immediately, but again, anything but what he expected. The lights he spied first. They led him to Fangdred's common hall, where... where he found a baffling tableau. Servants stood as if frozen (whatever had happened, it had occurred recently, because the fires still burned high in the fireplaces), not reacting even when, once he found the nerve, he clapped his hands, pinched, and prodded. He felt no heartbeat when he tested a pulse. He heard no breathing even when only inches from a face. Yet, surely, they weren't dead. Their warmth remained, and their color. Fearful strange.
He carefully backed from the hall, blade ready, expecting a momentary return of life and a resounding alarm. But they did nothing, nor did the several living statues he encountered thereafter. The sorcery completely blanketed the castle.
He had almost convinced himself that this was Ragnarson's and bin Yousifs work when he heard soft laughter down a dark corridor. His imagination invested it with depthless evil. Moving closer, he heard a voice talking to itself in a liquid, unfamiliar tongue. He had seen many lands and learned many languages, and was disturbed by this unknown. But he shrugged it off after a moment. The speaker wasn't Varthlokkur, whom he had met once, briefly, on the day the wizard had hired him. He went on, searching.
Chance brought him to the tower stair. He went up with little thought to his line of retreat. (Throughout his approach to Fangdred he had uncharacteristically ignored his avenues of withdrawal, perhaps because subconsciously he knew he'd get no chance to run.) A tall tower it was, taller than it had seemed from outside the castle. But finally he came to a landing.
Wan light, in changing pastel shades, slipped round the edges of a door standing slightly ajar. There was a quality, a smell about the place, which evoked memories of the Storm Kings' sorcery chamber beneath Ravenkrak. Here, he sensed immediately, he would find his wizard. Ear to stone, he listened, heard little.
Wait! Was that labored breathing?
How should he enter? In a burst, hoping for surprise? Suppose the door was booby-trapped? Yet if he went in carefully the wizard might have time to defend himself. He decided on full speed and prayed that the wizard felt secure in his own den.
The door swung easily inward. He burst through following mighty figure-eight sword strokes, his gaze sweeping the chamber. There were no defenses.
A young man's face, red and damp, rose from furs piled-high beneath a large mirror. His questioning expression quickly changed to one of horror. Pleasure lightninged through Mocker. Though Varthlokkur had changed, he still recognized the man. He altered the direction of his charge, raising his sword fora punishing overhand stroke.
A second face rose from the furs. Dread swept across it.
And the fight deserted Mocker. "Nepanthe!" he screamed. He became a stunned, limp thing moving on impetus alone, his sword arm wilting, his unsteady steps betraying the sudden return of his weariness. He no longer saw, did not want to see, the shame so obvious before him. Wearing the horns already...
Nepanthe and Varthlokkur both babbled explanations, she pleadingly, he in a voice of infuriatingly calm reason. Mocker dropped into a chair, shut them both out. Mad thoughts, and questions... Had he come so far, through so" much, for such a bleak reward? He heard, again from afar, the earlier evil laughter. Taunting him? Truly, Varthlokkur had played wickedly. The clincher, now, would have to be an auto-da-fe, death by his own hand, to make the mockery complete.