His hand felt as if it were on fire. He stifled a scream and dropped to one knee in his agony. His second vision departed. His entire arm ached.
We will not be coerced in such a fashion, came the reply.
"I'll find the right way," he said through clenched teeth.
It would be so much easier and would save so much time if you would let us show you rather than spend the night telling you what is involved.
Pol rose to his feet, holding his aching right hand in the other.
"I suppose that's the best deal I'll get from you tonight."
It is. Turn and follow the other.
Pol turned and beheld another tongue of flame. This one was only the size of his hand, and it hung in the air in the middle of the corridor about eight paces before him. A moment after his gaze fell upon it, it began to drift away from him. He followed.
It led him through a hall filled with grotesque statues, both human and non-human, a low, red brilliance, a soft, almost vibrant glow lying upon the whole setting, cast perhaps by the flame itself, giving the impression that all of the stone forms were beginning to stir. The air there was stale in his lungs, and he found himself holding his breath until he had departed the place. The luster was present in some of the other chambers and hallways, yet somehow it lacked the sinister character it had given to that room and those representations. The dragonmark had begun throbbing when they had entered the place and did not grow still until they were well away.
He moved down a series of stone stairways, each rougher than the preceding one, passing through damp chambers and long passageways, which, judging from the descent he had made, must be well beneath the castle itself and hacked from the living stone of the mountainside. At some point, Pol ventured a look behind him and saw that the other flame was nowhere in sight. He also saw, however, that the shadows seemed to slide in a liquid, almost sentient fashion at his back, in a manner he found more than a little unsettling. He hurried to keep pace with his guide.
The rooms and corridors through which he passed bore the dust of disuse in heavy layers, a thing he found mildly heartening when he moved through a series which could only be torture chambers--equipped as they were with chains, racks, tongs, pincers, weights, flails, whips, mallets and a great variety of oddly shaped blades. All of these bore stains, rust marks or both, along with the comforting coatings of dust. There were bones in odd corners, all of them gnawed long ago by rodents, now dry, brittle, cracked and discolored. Pol brushed a wall with his fingertips and heard the echoes of screams from long ago. When he switched to the second vision, he caught near-subliminal glimpses of atrocities enacted in times gone by, the traumas of which had etched themselves into the setting. Hastily, he reverted to the normal mode of seeing.
"Who ..." he whispered, more to himself, "was responsible for these things?"
The present lord, Ryle Merson, came the reply from ahead.
"He must be a monster!"
Once, such things were routine here. But he ceased all such activities nearly a quarter of a century ago, claiming that he had repented. It is said that he has led a relatively blameless, possibly even virtuous life since.
"Is it true?"
Who can say what lies in a persons heart? Perhaps he cannot even say himself, for certain.
"You are making this all totally enigmatic to me. I confess to being prejudiced, but in no way can I see his treatment of me as virtuous or blameless--and that goes for his lackey, Larick, as well."
People have reasons for things that they do. Motives and objectives are seldom of matching moral color.
"And what of yourself, whatever you are?"
We are neither moral nor immoral now, for our actions contain no element of choice.
"Yet something set you upon the course you follow. There was a decision there."
So it would seem--a touch of irony to these words?
"Still not giving anything away, are you?"
Nothing.
They moved past a fetid-smelling cistern in which something was splashing. The floor of a recess near an adjacent airshaft was heavy with the droppings and fragile, hieroglyphic skeletons of what might have been bats. Indentations in the floor contained small pools of water. The walls were slimy in this area, and Pol felt as if a great weight of earth and rock hovered just above his head, groaning the long, slow notes of timeless stresses.
He wondered at the brief conversation, recalling the allegations of the Seven after the battle at Anvil Mountain, giving the impression then that their actions were determined. At least they were consistent in what little they did say. There was something more about them which he felt that he should remember, something almost dream-like in texture....
His efforts at recollection ended as he turned a corner and halted. Whether it was a corridor or a room which he now faced, he could not tell. The way ahead was misty--almost smoky--though he detected no odors about it. The flame had halted when he did, and it seemed much nearer now; its brightness had increased, and it had acquired something of a greenish cast.
"What the hell," Pol asked, "is that?"
Just a heal etheric disturbance.
"I don't believe in ether."
Then call it something else. Perhaps you will be footnoted by some future lexicographer. We know that things were different where you grew up.
"I'll be damned. That's the closest I've come to getting a rise out of you. So you know my history?"
We were present when you departed this world. We were present when you returned.
"Interesting. Your remarks almost lead me to believe that you do not know what things were like in the place where I was raised."
True, though we are able to conclude a number of things about it from examining your actions and reactions
since your return. For example, the familiarity with technology which you demonstrated--
The light before him was extinguished. Pol stood still in the semi-darkness, staring into the faintly luminous mist. He listened to his heartbeat and considered calling upon the dragonlight.
An instant later a blue leaf of flame appeared in the air before him, near to the place where the other had been.
Come now!
The tone was feminine, imperious.
"What became of my other guide?" he asked.
He talked too much. Come!
Pol wondered at this. Had he finally glimpsed a chink in their armor?
"Getting near something you don't want me to know, eh?"
There was no reply. The blue flame began drifting slowly away from him. Pol did not move to follow it.
"Do you know what I think?" he said. "I think that you've got to use me because I am my father's son and he created you. You have some special connection with Rondoval, and only I can serve your purpose."
The flame halted and hovered.
You are wrong.
"I do not believe that you like this," he went on, ignoring the response, "because, for all your talk of determinism, I was raised on another world about which you know little or nothing, and you cannot account for me as you might someone who'd spent his life in this land. I am more of a random factor than you would like me to be, but you have to deal with me anyway. Tonight you will attempt to impress me in some fashion so that I will be more amenable to your purposes. I tell you now that I have seen things beside which the display at Anvil Mountain was very small beer. I am prepared to be unimpressed by any efforts on your part."
You have finished?
"For now."
Then let us continue this journey.
The flame drifted on, slowly. Pol followed. It seemed to be bearing to the left, but there were no other objects in his field of vision against which he might track its motion. He plodded along, and the palely illuminated mist rolled and boiled about him. Unaccountable shadows began to move within it.
He kept changing direction. Echoes were muffled. Pol could not tell for certain whether he was moving through a long, twisting corridor or whether he was backtracking, turning, wandering within one large room. As he was unable to locate any walls, he suspected the latter. But there seemed no way to tell for certain.