This window, clearly, was no illusion. I saw the girl scramble away across the grass-that-was-not-grass, looking back occasionally and squinting, as though she could no longer see the estate.
"Extraordinary," I commented unnecessarily.
"Exactly."
The subject broached, I felt I had nothing to lose. "Where, precisely is she now? "
"Why, in the painting," Stezen replied with mock incredulity. "Don't you remember my explanation? "
"Yes, that it was a magical painting, an illusion. But how could she break the glass if it were an illusion? "
"Are you saying illusory glass would be harder to break than real glass?" Stezen asked. "Come now. I'm beginning to lose faith in your deductions."
He was right. Clearly, if the magical window were easily conjured, a magical broken window with a girl running through it would just as easily be produced. Besides, I knew that I must not jar his faith now, so near to the goal.
D'Polarno had turned to address the remaining guests, some scant ten or so who'd not been weeded out earlier. Even so, these looked anything but the pick of the litter. They were uniformly wide-eyed and cringing, their faces a ghastly green that belied the bounteous meal they had eaten.
"And what shall it be for all of you?" he asked them. "Continue the tour, or bring it to a close here and now?"
As I had done throughout the evening, I rushed then to nail my coffin shut. "I, for one, am utterly fascinated and wish to carry this all to its conclusion. "Stezen answered me with a wave of the hand that indicated that he had expected nothing else. Flustered to have been read so easily, I glanced away toward the window again, where servants of D'Polarno were already nailing boards into place.
"What of the rest of you?" D'Polarno asked in the silence that followed. "Continue, or quit?"
The man who answered for the host was a tall, hatchet-faced fellow who held his hat clutched tightly in his hands and blinked his large fish eyes often as he spoke. "Of course, we're enjoying the tour — to the utmost, sir, Marquis D'Polarno. But it's getting late and, well. . I bet it would take a good few months to really apprec-"
"A few years," Stezen interrupted dryly.
"Yes, years, to really appreciate all that's here. So if we could call it a night and, perhaps, see the rest of the gallery next week some time?" Those standing around him nodded their appeasing agreement.
"Sorry," Stezen said, running his thumbnail beneath the nail of his little finger," this is your one and only tour. "He gestured to the crowd. "Come. The final room."
My heart leapt. If he harbored his fountain anywhere, it would be in this place. I needed only to step across the threshold to find out, and perhaps this would be my literal doorway to eternity. Inwardly upbraiding myself for standing still so long, I started forward, and reached the back of the anxious group.
The great black doors creaked open. Stezen, at the head of the procession, backed slowly through them. The cold that poured out of the chamber beyond reached me even at the party's rear, and I gasped slightly. My eyes stared through the portal to see a cavernous room all in black. Indeed, the floor and wall and ceiling were so lightless that they seemed to recede forever. No paintings here, only thousands of pieces of white granite statuary, only rows upon rows of poised figures, like the gravestones of a battlefield's dead.
In their center stood a magnificent and enormous fountain — the magnificent and enormous fountain. Its sprays and jets of water arced up higher than any ceiling I had ever seen. The base of the fountain was wide and white, and its waters a kind of pale blue, the only true color in the cavernous chamber. In the center of the fountain, a vast marble mountain rose, composed of columns and acanthus and countless statues in relief or fulclass="underline" griffins, snakes, cockatrices, scarabs, phoenixes, lambs. Most importantly, though, was the water, cascading through thousands of falls and chutes, rising again through piping and tubes only to spray out and fill the black firmament.
So mesmerized was I by this, so moved and affected, that I felt drawn forward across that threshold into the cold and windy and infinite place. I stood on the black floor, knowing it to be there by the pressure of its pushing back, but having the queer sensation that I stood on nothing. To relieve this distressing confusion of the senses, I let my eyes rise up the form of D'Polarno, standing on the floor before me.
He smiled his feline smile, gestured at the room about us, and said," Welcome, Dr. Ferewood, to the Hall of the Eternities."
Only then did I notice that we two stood alone. The nervous flock of ten, who had gone through the gate before me, had dissipated into air. Well, not precisely air. By the path where I stood, I saw the tall, hatchetfaced, fish-eyed supplicant from the other room. He stood splendid in white marble, his hat still clutched tightly in those fists that would clutch nothing else, forever.
"Where are the rest of them?" I asked through a constricting throat. "What have you done?"
"They're around here somewhere," Stezen said with a laugh and a casual wave of the hand. That simple gesture took in a number of the guests: a woman in her flushed thirties, whose belly had just begun to show the child, now stone, within; a gap-toothed falconer whose staring eyes of granite had that wide and fierce and unblinking aspect of birds; a lady all done in furs whose heretofore and hereafter silent grace was augmented by sables, now elegantly spiked in stone. All statues. All dead.
Though Stezen paused for only a breath, his voice broke like a cannon blast on my musings. "I'd really begun to think I'd not find any of you worthy to drink from the fountain tonight — I thought everybody'd end up in one sordid scene or another in one of my paintings. But here you are."
"The rest aren't free?" I gasped. "The rest are in these sculptures? The paintings?"
"It is as I told you — as I showed you," replied D'Polarno easily. "You saw the merchant and his wife, and the duke in the magical painting back there. You see this one standing here like some granite rube, staring forever at you. ."
"You've turned them into — "
"Immortals," Stezen interrupted. He coughed into his hand. "Well, immortals of a sort. They're still very much alive, I assure you. But they've all been freed of their flesh and embodied now in stone. That's the best immortality I can offer to the common cut of man."
"All of them? Every last one of them? From Krimean, the oaf in the first room, to. . to this one standing here now?"
Stezen just shook his head. His face wore a look of feigned surprise in mockery of me, and he said," Of course, all of them. In the room of classic sculptures, didn't you notice those women clustered about in mourning? Remember them from the table, clinging to each others'arms? You yourself studied the monolith in the first room, studied it in great depth — commented on it even. Didn't you recognize that the statue you studied was Krimean? "
"You've killed them!"
"No. "The response was curt. "No, I did not. I've told you, they are alive, only in bodies of stone, which will last them millennia, if not forever. " "But why, why did you do it? "
"They asked me to," Stezen replied simply. "You think you were the only one to come here seeking the fountain of life? Of course not. I sent the word out myself — carefully, restrictedly — to just the sort of people who would covet it and would have the stuff to make it this far and drink. But only you made it."