A Dance in Blood Velvet (59 page)

Rope! A rope ladder, in fact, lashed to a rock and hanging down into the pit.

Ben wiped sweat from his forehead and neck. A choice, obviously.
Do I find another way out - and there must be one, since whoever put the ladder here is unlikely to have crawled through the wormhole - or do I climb down? Taking the easy way seems cowardly but might be wise; the difficult way, possibly courageous, probably stupid. Which of those am I, in Lancelyn’s opinion?

Well, we’ll see.

Gripping the ropes, he swung himself over the drop. The ladder creaked alarmingly. His descent was slow as he tested each rung before trusting his weight to it. He counted them as he went; twenty-nine, thirty - then his foot pawed at nothingness.

He stopped, hanging like a spider on a thread. His nerves threatened a second betrayal, but he shut down the turmoil. The utmost in bravery or misjudgment was required now. A
gamble,
he thought;
if I let go, perhaps I land on my feet and find a tunnel to safety - or perhaps I fall to my death.

His hands were in a spasm on the cold, damp rung and he thought,
I can’t let go. I’ll have to climb up again... No. wait. If I remove my robe and tie it to the bottom rung -

A voice below him almost dealt a fatal blow to his heart. “Benedict!”

Ben stared down and saw, gleaming like the moon floating on midnight water, Karl’s face. His heart jolted, blood galloped through his aching head. The visage shone with its own light, like some deep-sea creature with blood-red eyes.

“Benedict.” Karl’s voice was strangely hollow. “Help me.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Lancelyn’s creatures captured me. They drank me dry and I can’t escape.”

“There’s no way out below?”

“Nothing. Only stone and water.” Two pale hands floated up, disembodied. “If you’d come further down the ladder, I could reach your ankle and haul myself out.”

Karl’s eerie, coaxing tone was far from normal. Ben didn’t move. “What do you mean, Lancelyn’s creatures?”

“Simon, Rasmila and Fyodor. I can’t explain what I saw, but they joined with Lancelyn’s daemons and
became
them, like souls rejoining bodies. They attacked Katerina and the others. None of us had a chance.”

“Are the other vampires dead?”

“I don’t know.”

Ben groaned in bitter dismay. Not merely defeated, but betrayed. “And you, Karl,” he said, “whose side are you on?”

“Yours, Benedict,” came the reply, “but I can’t help you until you help me escape. Reach down to me. It’s not far.”

Ben was uneasy, but couldn’t leave Karl. “Wait,” he said. The ladder shuddered as, with difficulty, he pulled his robe off over his head. With one end wrapped tight around his hand, he leaned out, dangling the garment into the lightless well.

Ben was rigid, breath held. He felt Karl grasp the cloth, his weight less than he’d expected. And then, in a rush like the killing leap of a panther, the vampire surged up towards him, his face pallid as tomb-marble, his eyes red pits of famine.

Ben gave a hoarse scream and loosed the robe. White fingernails scratched his hand, fell away into blackness.

Frozen, Ben clung to the ropes and stared downwards. Horrified, he knew Karl was famished beyond caring who became his prey. He had almost died to find it out.

“Benedict, come down to me,” said the voice, softly compelling. “I need you. Come...”

“No,” said Ben. Tears squeezed from his eyes with the sheer effort of resisting, with the harsh blow of treachery. “I should have known that a vampire’s blood-lust is stronger than loyalty, even yours.”

“I am in agony. You can’t leave me.”

“I’m sorry, Karl. Lancelyn’s used you against me. If I try to help you, I’ll die.”

Silence. Then Karl spoke, his voice parched but controlled. “You’re right, Ben. You’ve seen that I can’t stop myself. Leave me, quickly! If you linger... I will persuade you. I think there’s a way out above. Go, before -”

That was the last Ben heard. He was already climbing out.

As he climbed over the lip of the pit, he saw a patch of pewter light a few yards away. A tunnel, high enough to admit a man! He made his way across the rocks and entered, feeling calmer but very grim. The glow, filtering along the twisting passageway, sculpted sooty masses of shadow more threatening than simple darkness.

Ben shivered in his shirt-sleeves, aware he might be walking into another trap. The tunnel led into a cavern of columns and rounded stumps of dripstone. He sensed watchers in the shadows, waiting, like Karl, to leap out and seize him.

He chanted softly to himself, channelling his mind towards Raqia. Hardly breathing, he waited for the silhouettes to pounce... He could hear a stream or spring, and over its soft bubbling music, an eerier sound like the silvery chime of bells.

A hundred shadows leapt and froze. Ben stopped in alarm. Yellow light spilled suddenly from above, sending fingers of flat darkness towards him. Squinting, he saw a doorway cut high in the cave wall, with light glaring through iron bars. Steps cut in the wall led to the aperture. He spun round to see what lay behind him; no watchers in the darkness after all. But seeing the cavern through which he’d walked, he gasped.

The whole cave glittered. It was a grotto embellished by human hands; every surface encrusted with crystal, amethyst, amber and seashells in swirling patterns. The shallow stream threw back reflections to dance on the ceiling. Cherubs stood on boulders, gazing into the water. Ben was amazed. To think this folly had been under the house, undiscovered, all through his boyhood!

He ran to the carved steps and ascended towards the light. Through the iron bars he saw a long, cream-washed gallery bathed in golden light. The unlocked gate swung inwards at his touch, and he entered.

The walls were painted with arcane symbols. Eleven bronze tripods stood along the length of the gallery, a bright-burning path to an altar at the far end. The peppery smoke of incense wafted to him.

The chime of bells grew louder. Life-sized automata acted out the tiny loops of their existence as he passed; a swan turned its head from side to side, a ballerina pirouetted, an angler played for a metal salmon, a revolutionary lost his head, and a black-clad executioner waited for a struggling wax queen to place her head on the block... and each one had its own music box, producing a weirdly celestial dissonance.

Benedict was transfixed, until the last model - a magus pouring chalices of wine at the altar - threw back its hood and revealed itself. Not an automaton, but Lancelyn.

Ben was so shocked that he could not react. He walked to his brother, speechless.

“Welcome, Benedict,” said Lancelyn. “You look cold and you appear to have mislaid your robe - but never mind, you survived.”

Lancelyn wore a black robe under a white cloak, a ten-pointed star on his chest. Otherwise, he looked as plainly familiar as ever. Ben’s heart twisted in rage and regret.

“You bastard, what the bloody hell is the meaning of all this?”

“Such language.” Lancelyn tutted, and smiled broadly. “I’m sure postulants in ancient times never swore at their examiners.”

Ben leaned on the altar before he fell. The surface was inlaid with white, black and red marble in a pattern of stars within circles. An inch from his fingertips lay the Book, like a block of slate. Ben groaned.
After all this, he flaunts the Book at me.

“I’m sure they were never so sorely tried,” he said. “I’m disgusted that you would defile a sacred ritual for the sole purpose of mocking me. On second thoughts, I’m not surprised at all. It’s just about on your level.”

Lancelyn blinked, raising his unruly eyebrows. “No, Ben, you don’t understand. I am not mocking you. This is a genuine initiation.”

“Into what?”

“You’ll find out. But you’ve endured a lot; won’t you have a drink?”

Lancelyn indicated two glass goblets, one silver and one gold. Both brimmed with red wine. Ben looked at them with suspicion. “Is this part of the initiation?”

“The final part. And I do mean final. One of these goblets contains wine, the other a lethal poison. Choose one and drink it.”

“All right,” Ben said, holding the omniscient gaze. “I will, if you’ll drink the other.”

“What?”

“Well, it’s not much of a choice, is it, if I’m to be killed for refusing?”

Lancelyn paled a little, but he said, “Very well. It’s fair. You choose.”

When Ben took the silver goblet, Lancelyn expelled a little breath of approval. Ben’s apprehension surged and his stomach churned. “Cheers,” he said flatly. Eyeing each other, they raised the goblets and drank.

The wine tasted bitter. Ben waited for pain or some ghastly symptom to start; all he felt was warmth. He glared at Lancelyn, hating him, but his brother only looked back with an arch, sly expression.

Suddenly he grinned and clapped Ben on the shoulder. “Neither was poisoned. Just as well; you got the one with a drop of myrrh in it.”

“I know.” Ben adopted the same steel-edged, cheerful tone. “After all, you’d never set up a situation that put your own life at such obvious risk, would you?”

Lancelyn laughed. “A nice guess; still, I’m proud of the way you passed the tests of endurance. I know it was unfair, but that was part of the trial.”

“But Karl would have killed me. I could have died!”

“Of course. It would not have been a true test otherwise. Still, you came through. I trained you well.”

“Oh, you did,” Ben spat. “No doubt of that.”

He flung the goblet away, heard it smash as he swung a hard, accurate punch at Lancelyn’s jaw.

The magus went down, landing with his legs splayed naked, his robes settling like a heap of unwashed laundry. Eyes brimming with water, he stared up at Ben in stunned indignation. It was a sharp reminder that, however bright Lancelyn might be, Ben had the advantage of youth and strength.

“What was that for?” Lancelyn exclaimed, his voice muffled, fingers pressed to his swelling chin.

“For Holly!” Ben shouted. A pathetic retaliation, he knew -but it had felt wonderful. “Can your daemons get here before I kill you?”

Lancelyn looked scared, his smugness gratifyingly knocked out of him. He clung to the edge of the altar and dragged himself to his feet, keeping his distance from Ben. “What about Holly?”

“I know you’ve got your claws into her mind, you pervert! Whatever designs you have on her, you can just -”

“Ben. Ben.” He raised his palms in contrition. “Come with me. I need to sit down, if you don’t.”

Ben had released a lot of anger in the blow. Smouldering quietly, he let his brother lead him up a spiral staircase into the main body of the house. Ben looked back at the doorway, which in his childhood had been a plastered alcove with a bookshelf...
Ah, but this room
, Ben thought, staring around him. Everywhere was light and colour; magnificent windows casting gorgeous hues over the furniture. Ruby-red and green, azure and gold.
God, how I’ve missed this place
, he thought, taken aback.

“Sit down,” said Lancelyn. “You can have a nice hot bath and breakfast, but first let’s talk. Whisky?”

“No, thanks.”

“Oh, come on.” Lancelyn pressed the glass on him anyway, and they sat in armchairs on either side of the fireplace. “We should celebrate our reunion.”

“What the hell have we to celebrate? Holly is ill and out of her mind because of you! You will let her go, because you’re not having her!”

Lancelyn gave him an indulgent look. “My dear chap, I don’t want her. Not in the way you think, at least. Who’s the one with the filthy mind, h’mm? On the contrary, her illness concerns me greatly, but it happened because you forced her to break her oath not to spy on me. So, if you want to help her, look at yourself -not me.”

The words filled Ben with horror and impotent rage. He knew by instinct that Lancelyn was right, but it galled him to accept it. “If I’m to blame, we both are! And what about Father? What the hell have you done with him?”

“Don’t jump to conclusions. The old man is getting on, you know. He couldn’t cope with this place on his own, so I packed him off to a cottage in the village, with a couple of servants. He’s perfectly happy, which is more than he deserves.”

Ben felt relief, even though he’d had little affection left for their father. “But why?”

“Why do I want Grey Crags, you mean? To do it justice. To open up the old passageways, to appreciate the full glory of a nineteenth-century folly. It’ll pass to both of us when the old fellow goes.”

“No,” Ben said impatiently, “why go to all this trouble with me?”

“Haven’t you realised? It was a test.”

“So you said.”

“No, I mean it was all a test. Everything, for a very long time.”

Aghast, Ben sieved his memory. “Since the time James died, followed by Deirdre?”

“No, long before that. The moment I met you in Italy, I knew you’d grow away from me and rebel. So I made preparations to bring you back.”

Ben uttered a humourless laugh. “By running a brothel and drugs den under the guise of the Hidden Temple?”

Lancelyn tutted. “The Hidden Temple, my dear boy, was a shell concealing the Inner Sanctum of the Veiled Goddess. I was exploring the magical energy of sexual union, spiritually through the Neophytes, physically through the Temple - which by its nature attracted the morally dubious. I had to make them pay for their shallow disrespect.”

“Financially?”

“Financially, and in sleepless nights worrying about their jobs, reputations and marriages. But this is irrelevant now. In reality it was another path to the Goddess.”

Benedict didn’t believe him, but strangely, he wanted to. The loss of Lancelyn-as-hero had hit him hard. “Are you suggesting that Deirdre lied?”

“She told you what she believed to be true. I wanted to see what you’d do if you thought me a murderer, a procurer and blackmailer; to see what extremities you’d go to, what inner resources you’d find. And I was richly rewarded. You made instinctive use of the Book, allowing it to amplify your natural power. You summoned dangerous beings and handled them with skill.”

“So you set me up for all this? I did nothing of my own volition?” Ben said sarcastically.