Iduna

Chapter Nine

The wind was from the south, blowing from Katanga over the Juntinian Sea, a breeze loaded with fragrance which stirred the leaves of blooming trees and caused their multicolored fruits to swing and turn in random motions. Blooms and fruits on the same tree and all the blooms fully open, all the fruits at a perfection of ripeness.

When you owned a universe all things were possible.

Dumarest halted, breathing deeply, looking over a conception of paradise. Ground which felt like a soft mattress covered with thickly piled carpet. Air scented with a dozen perfumes. Trees and bushes covered with blooms and fruits, nuts and berries of all imaginable hues, shapes and flavors. The moat with its fish. The castle which dominated all.

Iduna's universe.

It had to be hers. No one but a child or someone with a childish mind would want such a profusion of gaudy colors and sweetness and fairy-tale appurtenances. A refuge she had made for herself against the alien terrors which had greeted her when entering the Tau. He remembered the way she had clung to him, her tears, the abject fear of remembered horrors. Remembered too his own experiences and wondered how the sanity of a child could have prevailed.

"Earl!" Iduna waved to him from the battlements, streamers of fluttering silk adding to the luster of her hair. "Earl, come and join me!"

A command?

If he ignored it would she send guards to make him prisoner? Could they hold him against his will? Would she change the environment to send him wandering in a maze? But here in the Tau he had an equal power and no matter what move she made he could counter. A game-was everything here a game?

"Earl! Hurry!"

A thought and he could be standing at her side but habit made him turn toward the castle, to enter it, to find a flight of sweeping stairs and run up to the first balcony, the second, to halt on the third and open a door.

And stared into a swirling chaos.

Mist which held barely discerned form, which writhed, which screamed in a thin, droning cacophony, which chilled with numbing terror.

A thing trapped, suffering, locked in a living hell.

A moment and it was gone, the door now giving on to a chamber soft with hanging tapestries, bright with sunlight streaming through narrow windows fitted with stained glass so that the beams made bright patterns on the tessellated floor. An empty room which held nothing but the furnishings and the light.

"Earl!" Iduna, impatient, calling to him from the balcony above. "Quickly, Earl!"

A new game she wanted to play and play it immediately with the arrogance of one unaccustomed to waiting. Or perhaps she wanted to show him something as a child would demand attention before displaying a scrawled painting or other adults to watch as a trick was performed. And it seemed, always, she hated to be alone.

The battlement was thronged with soldiers, attendants, Shamarre watching silently from her station, the beast at her side. Colors and brightness and figures which moved and faces with eyes and mouths which talked and yet all was nothing more than an extension of the castle, the battlement, the curtain walls, the triple arch and the turrets. Props to bolster a play.

And the thing screaming in the mist?

It had been real and he had seen it; of that Dumarest was certain. A glimpse into something ugly behind the glittering facade. A part of the castle, perhaps, for castles contained dungeons and not all prisons were below the ground. Yet it had changed in a flash into something else. A room harmless enough and one to be expected behind the door he had opened.

A glimpse of hell in paradise.

"Iduna!" She turned as he called and he saw her face illuminate with pleasure. "What is it? What are you going to show me?"

"You guessed!"

"No, but am I right? Is there something you want me to see?"

For answer she lifted her arm, pointing and, in the distance he could see wheeling shapes against the sky. Birds or things shaped like birds then as they came closer he could see things of nightmare, shapes elongated, distorted, set with tormented faces and disjointed limbs. Objects which keened as they wheeled.

"I made them," Iduna said proudly. "Shamarre!"

The beast at the woman's side sprang to the battlements and stood for a moment on a crenellation, its body sharply etched against the sky. A moment only then it sprang into empty air, to hang as if suspended for a moment, then to fall as wings sprouted from his shoulders. Wide, curved, fretted pinions which caught the air and gave the beast mastery over the element as it swept to the attack, paws extended, claws gleaming like sickles. Talons which ripped and tore as the beast closed with the flying horrors and sent their blood flying in a carmine rain.

A brief and savage conflict which sent the nightmare shapes to litter the ground as the beast, jaws, muzzle and paws smeared with gore, came to rejoin Shamarre. She patted it as it crouched at her feet, busy washing itself, the wings vanished from the smooth, tawny hide.

"Earl?" Iduna was looking at him, the smooth, round face smiling, changing even as he watched, to betray something feral. "You like that, Earl?"

"Why?"

"Why?" A frown ruined the smoothness of her forehead. "Why what? What do you mean?"

"Why the display? The butchery?"

"The combat, you mean." Dignity stiffened her voice, the offended pride of one who has never been questioned as to her motives. "It was sport. The chase." Then, as he made no comment, added, "Don't you like to hunt?"

"No. Neither do I like to see others kill for pleasure. There was no need. Those things didn't threaten you in any way. They-" He broke off, remembering. The things had been created with a thought and had no greater reality than the castle, the beast which had killed them, the attendants and guards standing now on all sides listening to the argument. He must not display his condemnation. It would serve no useful purpose and would alienate the girl. He said mildly, "I am sorry. You tried to please me."

"In my castle," she said stiffly, "all guests are entertained. And within my walls you are safe from the dangers which wait outside. You were foolish to have wandered away from the protection I offer. Those things I made and had destroyed, they were modeled on things which live in the outer marches. It is fatal to be caught by them at night."

Night?

Dumarest glanced at the sky seeing the same, flame-shot expanse he had seen before. But it had changed more than once and was changing again, growing darker and seeming to hold menace as it did so.

"Come," Iduna ordered. "It grows chill."

A thin wind gave truth to the statement. Dumarest saw others shiver, a servant draping a cloak around Iduna's shoulders, felt a sudden bite in the air. Things which made the castle seem a greater haven. As the gloom thickened flambeaux cast a warm and flickering light from cressets set on walls and turrets.

"Come," said the girl again. "Earl, you will have time to bathe before dinner."

A servant guided him to his room, a soft-eyed woman with a crest of fine, blonde hair and round eyes of vivid blue. Her thin garment was of silk and lace and did little to hide the smooth curves of what it covered. Her arm when Dumarest touched it was warm, the creamy skin gilded with a fine fuzz of hair.

"My lord?"

"What is your name?"

"Irenne, my lord."

"How long have you been here?"

"Here, my lord? Why, all my life. It is an honor to serve Her Majesty." Her eyes met his, unswerving. "And any who are the guests of the Queen."

"Do you have many? Guests, I mean. Can you remember names? Nerva? Charles? Fhrel?" Names Gustav had given him. Those belonging to the volunteers who had gone before.

"Muhi?" He thought he saw the flicker of her eyes. "Muhi? Do you remember him?"

"No, my lord. Your bath is beyond that door. Is it your wish that I attend you?"

"No."

Alone Dumarest examined the bathroom. It was what he had expected. A sunken tub fashioned of marble, the taps and appointments of gold. Fluffy towels hanging on a warming rack. Soap and lotions dispensed by crystal containers. The light was a soft amber and the air reeked of perfume. Walls, floor and ceiling were unbroken mirrors.

Lying in the water Dumarest looked at his reflection. His face seemed younger than it had, small lines vanishing and marks of old stresses gone to reveal a smoother visage. The scar tissue was gone beneath the line of his hair and the scars of other, older wounds were no longer to be seen.

His doing?

Iduna's?

Was he as she saw him or as he wanted to be? A question he pondered while lying in the steaming water enjoying its liquid caress. She had created the castle and everything in it and he was now in the castle. He thought of the servant, Irenne. She had seemed real and warmly human. Her body had radiated a feminine warmth and had certainly been made of flesh and blood. A real woman with a life of her own and memories which were wholly hers and loves and hopes and ambitions too, perhaps. As Shamarre was a real woman copied from memories of her mother's guard, one who could have acted as a nurse at times. A figure of known and trusted strength.

Did the others also model those she had known years ago? Guards and attendants and servants all duplicated here in the Tau to continue familiar duties?

Riddles which could wait. Solving them would solve nothing for the real problem remained. How to restore Iduna to the real world where her mother waited to take her into her arms. Where his own body now lay helpless among those who had no cause to concern themselves over his welfare.

How long had it been!

Time had lost all meaning, lost in an eternal day now, for the first time, broken by night. A darkness induced by Iduna's whim or a natural part of her universe. A time of potential danger when it would be comforting to be behind thick walls patroled by trusted guards. Not all pleasures were things of silken comfort.

And yet could danger, real danger, exist here?

Dumarest stretched and watched the run of water over his arms and chest, little rivulets which traced individual paths as they broke from the main flood. Water which felt and tasted and acted as if real. Which was real-and if real then a man could drown in it.

But what was reality?

If a thought could make a thing then was that thing more than thought? In the world of the Tau nothing was tangible and how could intangibility affect the same?

And what of the screaming thing he had seen?

An enemy trapped and tortured and left forgotten in the mist as Iduna concerned herself with the novelty of a new playmate? Leaning back Dumarest closed his eyes and tried to remember each minor detail. The door had opened and he had looked into hell. A chaos of mind-wrenching horror which had vanished even as seen but the impact had remained. The face-where had he seen that face before?

A moment then he opened his eyes and shook his head. The glimpse had been too short, the impact too shocking and details now were added items won from personal memory. But he could try again.

Rising he reached for a towel then dropped his hand. A thought should dry him so what need of a towel? But the thought wasn't enough and, still wet, he tried again. Losing patience he rubbed himself dry and moved back into the other, larger room. It held a wide bed, small tables heavy with crusted objects of enticing shape and color, a lamp which threw circling patterns of variegated hues. The air held a delicate scent he hadn't noticed before and a window, sealed, held a pattern of stars.

The door opened at his touch to show a corridor lit with flaring torches, the floor decorated with a profusion of inlaid leaves so that he seemed to be walking on a forest path, the walls to either side carved to resemble massive boles from which tiny faces seemed to peer and wink and grin. A path which curved to a balcony from which stairs ran up and down. To where a guard stood in frozen immobility, her face rigid and hands set on the shaft of a pennoned lance. As Dumarest passed her eyes remained fixed; scraps of broken glass gleaming in the shadow of her helm; a casque painted red and orange in the dancing flames of flambeaux.

The silence was absolute.

Dumarest paused at the balcony looking up one flight of stairs then the other to where torches danced and guards stood like statues at their stations. He turned, suddenly, eyes probing the corridor, conscious of someone watching but seeing nothing. The passage was deserted and only the shadows moved from the dancing interplay of light. like the corridor the stairways were barren of life other than the guards and they could have been made of stone. The air changed to hold the stench of corruption.

A stench which grew as Dumarest hesitated on the balcony trying to orient himself. To determine how to find the door which had given on horror.

The third balcony up-that he remembered, but on which floor was his room? Down a flight? Up in a turret? Was even the stairway the same? The interior of the castle was a maze in which it would be easy to get lost. Which way? Which?

Dumarest began to climb, guessing that his room was on the second floor, using the basis of the guess as the node of a frame of reference. Up a flight then and turn left and the door facing him should be the one he wanted.

But there was no door, only a blank wall of stone before which a guard stood in rigid immobility.

The guard and the stench was now sickening.

Another flight and this time there was a door but it opened on a chamber dark but for the illumination cast by a single candle, unfurnished but for a single chair. Higher there was a salon flanked with windows which showed the night, stars like gems which glowed with indifferent interest and formed patterns he did not know. The air was cleaner now and he used it as a scent, tracing it back and down until it filled his nostrils and mouth with the stink and taste of vileness.

To the blank wall and the immobile guard.

Back in his room Dumarest crossed to the window and studied the panes. They were false; the entire window was one sheet of glass crossed with leaden strips so as to emulate individual segments, the glass itself firmly set in a rigid frame. To open it would require partially demolishing the surrounding wall.

Would a child know of the intricacies of glazing, masonry, joinery? Was there need?

And astronomy?

Dumarest reached toward the stars depicted on the window. His fingers seemed to touch them, a common illusion, but the perspective was wrong, the stars seeming more like discs scratched at random on a sheet of heavily smoked glass than true suns burning in the void. And space held more than stars. There should be the blur of distant nebulae, the shimmer of fluorescence from electronically activated curtains of gas, the somber loom of clouds of dust-all the awesome splendor of the universe.

"What are you doing, Earl? Looking for Earth?"

Turning, he looked at Iduna. She was no longer a child.

The door creaked a little as she closed it behind her to step into the chamber. Tall, smiling, hair a glinting mass of liquid ebon, the midnight tresses shot with sparkling white fire from trapped diamonds. Fire matched by the stones around her throat and wrists and narrow waist. Cold brilliance which sparkled from the brooch on the simple black gown which hugged prominent breasts as it fell to be caught at the narrow waist, to swell over the hips and thighs, to trail the floor. A gown slit down the side so as to reveal the alabaster whiteness of calf and knee and thigh, the delicate, high-arched feet nursed in sandals of diamond-studded ebon.

"My lady!"

Her regal stance earned the title but there was more. Her face, whiter than he remembered, was a vision of loveliness, the lips full, the cheeks shadowed with slight concavities, the bone prominent, the eyes wide and enigmatic beneath thin and slanting brows. Gone were the irresolution, the petulance, the immaturity. Standing before him was a woman.

"Earl!"

"My lady?" He had forgotten what she had said. A question?

"I asked if you were looking for Earth." Her voice was the music of the wind, the pulse of an organ. Bells chimed in distant cadences and her very breath scented the air. "Earth," she repeated. "Your home world or so you said. Don't you remember? Earl!"

He was standing staring like a stunned and bewildered boy.

With an effort he looked away, his eyes resting on the lamp, the table, the wide bed-it was impossible not to look at the woman. Closing his left hand he felt the bite of nails against his flesh and clenched the hand tighter.

"My home world, my lady, yes." He drew a deep breath. "It is far from here. I don't know where."

"It can be found." She was casual, the subject was already boring her. "My father could help you if necessary. He is fond of old things and puzzles and mysteries and problems. They help to occupy his time."

"Your father? Gustav-"

"I have only one father, Earl. Is it possible to have more than one?"

"No. I don't think it is."

"Then why ask stupid questions." The movement of a hand put an end to the discussion. "Now tell me how I look. You like the gown? The gems?"

"You are lovely, my lady. More than lovely. You are the most beautiful woman I have ever met. The most beautiful there ever could be. Even to look at you makes me the happiest of men."

"You may be happy, Earl." She was gracious. "And because you have been so kind there is no need of formality. Your Queen permits you to address her as an equal. An honor given to few. Now you may kiss my hand."

Dumarest took it, bowing his head over it as he lifted the fingers to his lips, to touch the satin-soft whiteness, to taste the sweet effulgence, the breath, the exuded perfume. A scent which triggered a sudden, near-overwhelming desire so that he burned to take, to hold, to possess-he tasted blood as his teeth bit at the inner membranes of his cheek.

Was he mad to lust after a child?

Not a child. Never a child. Iduna was all woman and fully mature and her presence filled the chamber and stimulated his every cell with an aching need to take her and use her in the ancient ceremony of procreation. He wanted her more than life itself. To be apart from her was unthinkable. He felt like kneeling before her to kiss her feet, to cringe, to grovel, to beg.

What was happening to him?

"Earl!" Her laughter was sweet and echoed in a fading tintinnabulation. "You look so odd. So startled. And there is blood on your lips. What's the matter? Haven't you ever played this game before?"

Game?

Of course, what else would it be to her but a game? One played many times with figments of her imagination, men created to act a part, to move and talk and act as she directed. To be consumed with a burning passion and an undying love. To worship even as they lusted and the lust itself touched with gentle regard. Emotions which had no place in reality. A lover manufactured from the stuff of girlish dreams.

But he was no puppet and this was a game he had played many times before.

He said, "You're cheating again, Iduna. That perfume has aphrodisiacal qualities. Pheronomes?"

"What?" Her ignorance was genuine. "What are they?"

"Biological cues. Produced and emitted to gain a predicted response. Certain insects use them to attract mates." He watched her face as he spoke, the movements of her eyes. "Have you never heard of them?"

"No. Earl-you mustn't say I cheat. That is unkind and you must never be unkind." She stepped toward him, all darkness and flashing gleams of silver light, her perfume wafting before her like a herald announcing the approach of beauty. And she was beautiful. More than beautiful. "Earl! Earl, my love!"

He felt the touch of fingers on his hair and realized that he was on his knees before her, hands lifted to clasp her thighs, face pressed against the join of her limbs. A warm, soft and endearing merging of curves which radiated a sensual heat and caused his blood to thunder in his ears.

"Iduna!"

"My love. My darling. Earl, I need you." Her fingers burned like a sweet flame. "I want you, my darling. I want you."

Seduction, fined and honed and rendered irresistible, his own yearnings working against him to construct a creature which epitomized all loveliness and all beauty ever dreamed of by lonely men cringing in the cold hostility lurking between the stars. A woman who loved and cared and who wanted to give. And give in the way so dearly wanted and do it without instruction or hesitation or all the numbing preliminary rituals with which all such meetings were cursed. To he everything he had ever dreamed of.

"Earl!"

To fill his life, his universe, his brain and heart and body, to become his every thought, his every cell.

"Earl!"

To dominate him. To rule absolutely. To overwhelm utterly.

Yet to surrender held such sweet temptation.

"No!"

"Earl? What is wrong, my darling?"

"No!" He backed and forced himself to stand away from her. His head spun and he felt dizzy as the swirling hues of the lantern painted a cloud of drifting rainbows over stone and floor and roof and bed. A thought and it would steady-but it did not. A thought and the girl would vanish-but she remained. And that was wrong for in the Tau thoughts were master.

"No, Earl," she said and came toward him, smiling, tints of color against the smooth cascade of her hair. "This is my world. I made it and everything it contains obeys me. Everything, Earl."

He remembered the water which had not dried, the stars which hadn't moved-and suddenly his ears were filled with the thin, horrible screaming of the face he had seen in the mist. His face?

"Darling." Iduna was close now, her breasts touching his chest, her face warm before him, the perfume of her breath strong in his nostrils. "Shall we get on with the game?"