Fortress of Lost Worlds (46 page)

Simon’s shadow disturbed the space between the lengthening shades of the trees as night whispered in the distant slumbering hills.

“You’re looking well,” Gonji said when he’d recovered from the abrupt jolting out of his meditation. The lycanthrope had begun to move with his accustomed stealth, and as usual he’d withdrawn again from the others’ company.

“Let’s leave this place,” he said. “I don’t like this drowsiness it induces.”

“I know what you mean,” Gonji replied. “It weakens one’s guard. Too much of this, and—Has this ‘Prober’ also offered
you
a refuge to run to? An escape from the battles of life?”

Simon sighed. “Something—he said something about a lifeless land I might roam on the Night of Chains.”

“Mmm.” Gonji looked toward the distant arch where most of the others reclined, their voices lilting in the twilight. They heard Buey’s uproarious laughter. And Orozco’s.

“It
was
thoughtful of him,” Simon added. “It seems I do offend his fastidious sensibilities.”

“Is he also a heathen?” Gonji probed, igniting an old fuse.

“In his fashion. Not like some I know. When we’re back in France, I’m going to haul your infidel ass off to chapel one day. Just to see whether you really will burst into flames.”

“On the Night of Chains?” Gonji shot back.

“That’s not a fit subject for humor.” Simon turned away.

“Hell, it
is
time to leave this place. Everyone’s getting as touchy as you. And what is this business about France you’ve said, more than once? I hate France, you know that.”

“I said I needed help with something. Remember? You promised yours.”

Gonji watched him lope off into the dell, dimly recalling a promise made on the road.

* * * *

“Your witch was wrong, you see,” Shem declared, strolling beside Gonji with hands behind his back. “Attitudes and policies, not evil armies, are what most commonly bleed through the gateways to enslave the beings who inhabit the spheres. Much too difficult to combat by sword. The powers that vie for control are far too complex to explain to you. I must admit I do not understand it very well myself.”

“That’s a rare admission for you,” Gonji observed with a trace of sarcasm. “I’m glad to hear it. Actually, I believe the sword is a valid weapon with which to begin the fight against universal evil. And one honorably begins where he perceives a single wrong. Or he does nothing, as you do, and the wrong grows into a larger one, feeding on everything around it.”

Shem seemed indignant, but he pondered this for a space, and Gonji went on with a dawning sense of irony. “Actually, I’m my own worst argument for what I’m saying. I seem to have gained nothing here. Stasis. I’ve placed the dead back in their graves. In fact, I’ve lost. I’ve laid good companions beside them.”

“That depends on what you count as gain,” Shem said in a comforting voice. “You have given me much. Rarely can a man from the common spheres enhance a Prober’s existence. You have influenced me to see certain things…differently. Listen to me—I have been speaking with the others. They hold you in the highest esteem. They have helped me understand your aims. And there
are
certain predicted events, expected in this Age…” Shem drifted off, then quickly regained focus. “Perhaps it
does
matter when one being reaches in a hand to pluck a single living truth from a drowning pool of deceit. I cannot help you. You must fight the noisy, dirty battles of your own world. The dark powers in Akryllon may have seen your future, and it may be that that future crosses purposes with their own.

“But out of your insistent arguments, I have framed this decision: I can attempt to influence the governing of the passages through the gateways, the use of the keys. That much I will try. I shall devise a modern codex for the spheres and present it to the other Probers. You have…quite possibly succeeded in making me a renegade like yourself. Albeit, on a larger scale.”

Shem smiled with more sincerity than Gonji had seen before. “And you’ve given me something else.”

“What else?” Gonji’s brow creased.

“The company of Valentina.”

* * * *

“Do you think it would be wonderful if all people were born with wings?” Valentina asked in serene humor as she laid the wrapped infant wygyll on the grass beneath the arch.

“
Hai
,”
Gonji said absently as he stared at the grave of Pablo Cardenas. “This foul business has made orphans of more than one. I must see that Cardenas’ family is cared for. One more duty. Karma.” He snapped out of his morose mindset and turned back to the woman. “Will you make this creature your own?”

“
Dios mio
,
no!” She chuckled in surprise. “Do I look that maternal to you? I couldn’t see to the care of my own.” There was a trace of bitterness that lent her voice a murmuring timbre. “I’ll find a place for it.”

“
Hai
,
there must be other wygylls about. Your new friend here can probably help.” He at once regretted this expression of unwonted jealousy.

She was looking at him, studying him closely. “You turned out different than I expected.”

“And you,” he replied.

“You still have your enchanting eyes, though,” she said. “I’ll never forget how you first looked at me through that dungeon grill. Thinking God knows what infidel thoughts.”

Gonji raised an eyebrow in mock petulance. “Ah,
so desu ka
? You gave me a lot to think about, as I recall.”

She laughed breathily. “And you still have an arrogance that rivals Shem’s.”

Gonji’s fists clenched imperceptibly to hear his name again. “He’s not your type.”

“Maybe not,” she allowed. “Maybe my type needs changing, who knows? You had your chance. Now, instead of a warrior, I’ll motivate a thinker.” She saw a glimmer of pique in Gonji’s eyes and appended: “A different sort of thinker.”

They shared an uneasy silence.

“Tomorrow I begin the—cleansing,” she spoke softly. “It takes three days at the healing arch. Shem says—I understand the days are long on that sphere. You
could
dally until…then. But I don’t suppose—”

“No. The others are chafing, and I must confess that so am I. There’s a lot to do. We don’t even know whether those ships made it to Genoa. And—” He went on, not hearing his own words as he looked at her with deep yearning.

She knew, as well as he, that his expressed itch to leave was merely the thinnest veneer of rationale. The truth was that he had rejected her before, and his sense of honor would not permit him to avail himself of her love now that fate had seen fit to alter things in its agonizing way.

“It’s odd to think of how things might have worked out,” Valentina said. “We might have been going to the healing arch together—to spend those long days.”

Karma.

EPILOGUE

Shem had delivered them into the hands of the enemy.

That was what they all thought as they cursed and drew cold steel in rasping concert on a windswept Genoese beach under a wintry sky.

The Golden Fleece Knights surrounded them, crossbows leveled for the simple volley that would execute Gonji’s company at a single command, though the wiles of the undead and the dangers of sea and desert and disrupted space could not achieve that end.

And then the burly priest was lumbering forward to embrace the shocked Gonji.

“Kuma-san
?
Sir Bear?” he wondered aloud. “Brother Jan?”

“Father
Jan to you, now, you young heathen!” And the priest was embracing him and shaking him by the shoulders, embarrassing him now even as such familiar public contact had nonplussed a young samurai many years and half a world ago.

The knights relaxed as the band put up their weapons, for it had been their startling appearance, as if out of nothingness, that had caused the hostile reaction. But, of course, they’d merely been taken off guard.

Sebastio began to explain how Father de la Cenza and Archbishop Texeira had taken control of the Church in Toledo since the Grand Inquisitor had gone mad. How Balaerik was still at large, known to be an enemy of the Church; how he’d been linked to certain ghastly crimes, including the murders of ten lancers. The knights wished only to hear from Gonji’s own lips that he had not helped Balaerik engineer any of his crimes. That he was not in fact in
league
with the evil
donado.

And then Sebastio was speaking of
Dai Nihon
. Of a great battle fought on Sekigahara Plain. Of his father’s continued good health, though he’d fought on the side that had lost. Tokugawa had come to power. And many things had changed in the Land of the Gods since Gonji’s departure.

And of Reiko. His once beloved Reiko.

“She will not speak your name, but her eyes are eloquent enough when it is mentioned,”
Kuma-san
noted.

The priest was babbling about Roma. Orozco, Buey, and Leone were reminding him of Austria. And Simon Sardonis was withdrawing again in hostility, seeming out of place. Curling into his self-pitying shell, feeling betrayed, saying his farewells, for the moon would be full in two nights.

Gonji listened. And thought. Until he could listen and think no more.

He bowed to them and begged their leave for the night. Their questions still hanging over the surging tide, the others watched mutely as he strode away along the beach, hand on sword hilt, to be alone for a time beneath the undemanding sky.