“Any word?” demanded Chance, as Reynolds, his majordomo, met them at the door.
“No word from Miss von Brocken, sir,” the hulking red-haired butler informed him. “Good evening, Mr. Moore. How good to see you here once again.”
Moore nodded. “Evening, Reynolds. Been a few years, hasn’t it.” He glanced around. There were changes — mostly exotic souvenirs of Chance’s travels that had replaced the mansion’s staid Edwardian furnishings.
Reynolds followed them into the huge library that served as Chance’s study. “There have been a number of calls and inquiries, of course, sir. From friends, the press and such. I’ve answered them as best I could with the information you left me, and told them you were unavailable for the present yourself, sir. You’ll find notations of all communications here on your desk.”
“That’s fine, Reynolds,” Chance said distractedly, glancing over the notes. “Damn! De Grandin can’t be reached! Is everything packed?”
“Yes sir. Blankets and camping gear, your clothes and other items. Also as requested the Winchester Model 12 and the.416 Rigby, along with ammunition.”
“Fine. Throw in a few boxes of 9 mm. Parabellum for Compton’s Luger as well. Pack whatever will fit into the SJ, and don’t bother too much with clothing — we’ll buy what we need in Dillon. We’ll be down as soon as I pull together some material here. Oh — and a thermos of coffee.”
“Already prepared, sir.” Reynolds bowed and left the room.
“I see you have Kirsten’s crystal,” observed Moore.
Chance was paging through a yellowed quarto volume. He looked down at the crystal — a translucent globe of emerald-green crystal some six inches across. In its silver tripod mounting, it rested on a small ebony table beside the alcove window. If Kirsten herself knew what manner of crystal the globe was fashioned from, she kept that knowledge to herself.
“Yes,” Chance acknowledged. “Kirsten keeps it with her wherever she travels, of course. She likes to sit along the window there at night and gaze into the crystal.”
Moore reached out to touch its murky green smoothness. The globe flickered with a pulse of light. Moore leapt back as if shocked.
“Good lord! Kirsten!” Chance exploded. “She’s trying to reach us!” He pounced upon the suddenly alive crystal.
“But how…?”
Chance peered into the globe. “You attended her seances in Berlin, man! You know that wasn’t sham — that Kirsten actually has powers of crystalomancy!”
“I knew she wasn’t fake,” Moore protested, recalling numerous frustrated attempts by skeptics to find hidden electric wires. “But I thought it was showmanship. Mass suggestion or hypnosis — coupled with a dash of true clairvoyance.”
“God! And you wonder why Kirsten grew bored with all her friends there!”
Moore colored and clenched his fists — but if Chance was too distracted to be tactful, Moore was too bewildered to take offense. “Good lord, John!” he burst out. “What you’re proposing isn’t paranormal psychic phenomena! It’s frank black magic — sorcery!”
“So they called it when they burned Kirsten’s ancestress for witchcraft,” Chance told him levelly. “Today we live in a so-called enlightened age and use different terms to safely categorize what we cannot explain — and Kirsten is less overt about her powers than was her unfortunate ancestress.”
“Then you’re seriously saying that Kirsten…”
“In terms of another age — is a witch, a sorceress, an enchantress,” Chance finished for him. “But to conform to modern rationality, let’s simply call her a psychic adept who uses objects such as globes, prisms, mirrors, reflecting surfaces, or the like to focus her occult powers into observable phenomena. And while you’re grappling with that, be still and let me concentrate on her crystal.”
Moore bit his lip and subsided. Tomorrow he would perhaps laugh about this night of madness and sorcery. Tonight he had little choice but to accept matters as they presented.
Chance seated himself beside the ebony table, hunched his big shoulders forward over the sphere. Concentration creased his brow and accented the tiny surgical scars that lined his face. He had only minor ability at crystal-gazing himself — only his latent psychic talents trained and molded during his studies, augmented by what Kirsten had taught him. But Kirsten was projecting most of the power here — reaching out to the focus of her crystal globe — and Chance need be little more than the equivalent of a trained technician who adjusts his radio apparatus to receive a distant transmission.
The green sphere waxed to an intense glow, making Moore think of Kirsten’s green eyes as he had so often seen them reflected over her crystal. In a near-trance, Chance stared into its swirling depths.
Images took shape in the globe. Moore watched them appear and understood with a chill that this was indeed sorcery from another age.
The images were confused — dreamlike as they flashed from nebulous blur to sudden clarity, then dissolved again. There were mountains, dark trees, a sense of danger and flight. Kirsten’s face flashed into focus time and again, and Moore could read the terror there. Then a view of a mountain cove, and a two-storey log cabin with barn and outbuildings. The cabin was halfhidden back against the ridge near the head of the cove, and in the level extent where the tiny valley fanned out, he could see vegetable gardens and a grassy stretch of pasture.
New figures appeared. On the cabin porch, peering anxiously into the darkened cove — a blocky man in overalls with a rifle, beside him a black hound that snarled at the darkness. Kirsten stood with them, disheveled but unharmed, her attitude one of fear.
Quickly another image. A tall figure in black, his features hidden behind a sculptured metal mask. Then a sudden swirl of light and a vision of horror. A bloated lizard-shape swam in the crystal — its huge form bathed in flame, its obscene head searching about in hellish hunger. Flame oozed from its gaping maw…
Then the scene dissolved, and the globe became once again a sphere of translucent crystal, though it glowed still with pale emerald fire.
Chance swore and drew his hand over his strained features. He looked like a man awakening from a deep dream.
“What does it mean?” Moore demanded, shaking his shoulder. “What was that… that lizard-thing!”
“A salamander,” Chance told him grimly. “A fire-elemental. I’d suspected this from something I found at the crash site, and from the condition of those bodies — they’d been touched by elemental fire. Somehow Dread has gained control of the creature. He’ll send it for Kirsten once he knows how to find her — and she can’t remain hidden from Dread! We’ve got to get to her — and soon! Lord — it’s an hour of midnight!”
Moore groaned and knotted his fists. “But how!” he shouted. “Do you know where that cabin is where she’s hiding? Damn it, John! It’s over a hundred miles from Knoxville to those mountains! Not even your Duesenberg can travel those mountain roads in less than several hours — assuming we could even find the place!”
“We’ll find it,” Chance assured him, touching the glowing sphere. “Kirsten’s crystal will guide us there.”
“But to get there in time…”
“We’ll have to fly.” Chance’s voice was deadly calm. “I have a plane at the airfield only a few miles from here.”
Moore choked. “John — you’re mad! Land in the mountains at night!”
“We saw a pasture there — and I have parachute flares. A light plane like my Stinson Reliant might make it — if the pilot was good enough. I’ve seen you land your Camel under worse conditions.”
Moore remembered dead engines and shell-torn patches of field. “That was fifteen years ago, and I was damn lucky to walk away from some of those.”