What Lies Within (Book 5) (22 page)

   Leth bowed his head, his hand stroking his jaw. 'How long has this malaise been upon you?'

   'Years,' replied Baron Ang, now quite maudlin and staring inconsolably into a middle distance. 'Perhaps four or more.'

   'And is the feeling with you at all times, unchanging?'

   'There are occasions, when my frustrations mount, that it is more intense. At other times it diminishes to become simply a heavy question lying upon my soul. But, aye, it is always there. It holds me. I do not understand it.'

   Leth moved away, his eyes falling upon Galry and Jace who stood watching and listening to one side. He gazed about the chamber, at the dusty floor and furnishings, the fire that blazed without warmth, a large
mirror in an elaborately figured golden frame fixed upon a wall. He frowned to himself in concentration, wondering at the conclusions his mind had conceived. Then he turned back to Baron Ang, who sat slumped and heavy, his head low between his shoulders.

   'It is quite possible that, with a little further questioning, I may be able to reveal to you the root cause of your malaise,' Leth said.

   Baron Ang slowly raised his eyes. 'You can?'

   Leth nodded. 'In regard to a remedy, though, I’m less than certain. And my assessment may not be wholly correct, for I lack expertise or qualification in matters of the troubled spirit. Nor may it be something that you wish to hear. These conditions aside, I must ask you, if I am thus to apply myself to your question and provide an answer, allowing that it may be flawed or incomplete, what then of myself and my children? Will you lift our death sentence and allow us to proceed on our way?'

   Baron Ang raised his head slowly as though it were twice its usual weight. 'You wish to leave?'

   'We wish to live. It is not such a great request, particularly for persons innocent of any crime. Will you allow us to go?'

   'In all truth, I have begun to tire of brigandry and death,' said Baron Ang leadenly. 'At one time it gave me satisfaction and accrued me wealth. I had many skilled and dark-hearted villains working for me; they each brought me a portion of their ill-gotten gains. Those were grand days. Life was an adventure. Now, though, I admit I do it out of habit more than anything else. I arrest the occasional trespasser, bring him or her here, and then wonder why I have done so. There is no joy in it, no sense of reward or accomplishment.'

   'So you will allow us to walk free?'

   'To be truthful, I brought you here solely for the pleasure of speaking with you. I would wish that you might tarry here, but if that is not your choice, then, aye, you may leave. But regrettably, I cannot lift your sentence of death.'

   'Why so? I do not understand.'

   'No, Clun, you do not. You see, it is not I who have placed a death sentence upon you. We are all doomed to die, every single one of us, at our allotted time. That is all life is - a sentence of death and a grand, unanswerable question, is it not?'

   'But you spoke of our dying for having walked upon land you
consider your own.'

   The Baron waved a weary hand. 'I did. And yes, in the past I have visited such a punishment upon those who have displeased me. But as I say, I tire of it. So go, when and how you will, with your lives intact. But please, before you do, apply yourself to the problem I have put before you.'

   Leth scratched the crown of his skull. 'Very good.  Baron, I say once more, you are truly a man of contradictions. And still, I must warn you again that what I am about to propose to you may not be to your liking.'

   'You need not fear for that.'

   'You will exact no punishment if my words displease you?'

   'Others have spoken before you. Sadly, after careful consideration I could only discard their hypotheses as untenable.'

   'But what became of these others?' asked Leth.

   'I allowed them to leave. I have said, my lust for their wealth and lives has dissipated, just as has the lust for my own life.'

   'Very well.' Leth crossed the chamber to stand before the golden-framed mirror on the wall. 'I want to conduct a simple experiment. Will you join me?'

   Baron Ang heaved himself up from his chair and came to stand at his side. Leth, glancing into the glass, nodded to himself. 'Observe the mirror,' he said. 'Tell me what you see.'

   Baron Ang made a puzzled expression, then did as asked. 'I see you standing tall and proud in your unusual armour.'

   'And what else?'

   'I see your children watching behind you. I see the chamber here, as I might expect. Why do you ask this?'

   'Tell me what you do not see?'

   'Such a list would be long in the telling,' Baron Ang replied with a brief, lifeless laugh. 'If one takes into account all objects physically extant within the world, then there are infinitely more things not present than are present.'

  
'But specifically,' said Leth, his own puzzlement increasing as he studied the reflection before him. He turned around and surveyed the chamber, then turned back to the mirror. 'Specifically, what do you not see that you might expect to see?'

   Baron Ang bent forward and peered closely into the glass, squinnying his eyes in concentration. Then quite suddenly he gave a gasp and drew back, straightening.
'By all the pustules on a plague-hag's back! What demonry is this?'

   His eyes were ablaze. He fixed them dangerously upon Leth.

   'Demonry perhaps, though that has yet to be proven,' said Leth carefully. 'But tell me, that there be no doubt in our two minds, what is it that has caused you to react so?'

   Baron Ang stared back into the mirror, shock and outrage contorting his features. 'It is-- It is-- I am not there, dammit! By the sods, I have gone! Gone! What has happened? Where can I be? What have you done with me?'

   He examined his arms, his hands, his legs, then peered into the mirror again, disbelieving and alarmed.

   'I have done nothing,' said Leth. 'And it is not only you. Look, the fire behind us blazes, though it gives off no heat. Yet in the mirror, as I see it, the great hearth gapes black and empty.'

   Baron Ang's eyes, already wide, widened further and he gave a muted shriek. 'You are correct!'

   'And this chamber, all of Castle Ang that I have so far seen, bears evidence of neglect. Dust and grime lie heavy everywhere. Yet the mirror shows a chamber that is finely appointed, and properly cared for.'

   Baron Ang's eyebrows leapt higher than ever upon his forehead.

   'And finally, take note of this.' Leth took several paces across the room and pointed to the floor. 'As I or my children walk we leave footprints in the dust. You can see every step we have taken since arriving here. But observe your own passage. You leave no prints.'

   Baron Ang took four steps, peering back over his shoulder as he went. Seeing the evidence he stopped still in bewilderment. 'What is this? Clun, what is happening here?'

   'You may wish to sit down, Baron Ang.'

   Baron Ang hesitated before making his way back to the table where he lowered himself onto the chair he had previously occupied. His face had a haunted look.

   'I can think of no easy way to deliver this,' said Leth, 'but everything I have witnessed draws me towards one uncomfortable conclusion. This is that the difficulty you have lately come to experience with life is due to the single inordinate fact that you are in actuality no longer living.'

   Baron Ang had descended into a heavy slouch, his arms resting on the table, his expression one of near-stupefaction. But at these latest words he blinked dazedly, then, suddenly galvanized, sat bolt upright. 'What? What do you say? No longer living? What nonsense is this?'

   'We will go into it more thoroughly,' said Leth. 'For plainly this is not death as we commonly understand it. But what other--'

    'I am not dead!' roared Ang, rising. Foam flew from his lips and flecked his moustaches; his cheeks had turned a deep shade of crimson. 'Do you take me for a fool, man? Look!' He grabbed at the roasted fowl lying on its platter on the table, tore off a fistful of white flesh and stuffed it into his mouth. He chewed with fervour, and asserted in a muffled, meaty voice, 'I eat! See! And later, when I've done, I shit! The food is real; the shit also, believe me. Dead men do not eat and shit, and neither do ghosts. So what are you saying? Do you take me for a lackwit?'

   Leth gravely shook his head. 'I admit there
’s much I don’t understand, yet how else am I to explain what we have witnessed here? Where is your reflection? Where are your footprints? Why does cold fire inhabit your hearth? Why does the mirror show a different reality to that which we perceive?'

   'It is magic!' stormed Baron Ang. 'A dire spell has been cast upon me and my house. That’s the only explanation.'

   'Certainly a supernatural element plays a part. I lack aptitude for magic, nor do I comprehend its mysteries, but if magic is at work here then it is a death magic of some kind, I am sure.'

   'I will have none of it!' The Baron made to leave his place,
then changed his mind. He glanced nervously at the big mirror. Leth could see that much of the fight was draining from him, though he continued to bluster. Was he, in the end, being told something he already half-suspected?

   'Recent experience has caused me to reappraise my conception of death,' Leth said. 'I have learned that under certain conditions it can mean different things to different people. I myself was cast out of this world and into another where all was utterly strange and wholly unfathomable. I almost came to believe that I had died and passed into an afterlife of deathdreaming. Even now, returned to my own world, I am mystified by what happened and continue to wonder whether, truly, I died in order to perform some function in that world, and have been brought back to life.'

   Baron Ang squinted at him. 'You are a necromancer?'

   'No.' Leth smiled thinly. 'Believe me when I say I have no aptitude or facility. But I empathize with you and your bewilderment, and standing here observing what I observe and knowing what I know, I can only come to this one conclusion. But let us investigate in more detail. Perhaps I
’ll be proven wrong. Four years approximately, you say, you have suffered bewilderment and unease?'

   Ang, in distraction, nodded.

   'It was at about that time that rumours circulated of your death. A hunting accident was cited as the cause. Nay, they were more than rumours. The Queen, who for years had searched high and low for you, was satisfied enough with what she heard to accept it as truth.'

   'What do you know of the Queen?' growled Baron Ang.

   'On certain occasions I have been privileged to serve in various capacities in the Royal Court.'

   'You are a spy, then? You have come here with the specific aim of seeking me out! Ho-ho! And now you have given yourself away.'

   'Not so, Baron, I assure you. I came only as I told you, wanting to elude the Karai invaders. And the Royal Court has far more on its mind just now than trying to winkle you out of your hidden hole, no matter your reputation.'

   'Still, the rumour of my death is a flimsy basis upon which to assume the fact of it.'

   'As I say, the rumours had corroboration of a kind. I am not familiar with the details, but I recall that efforts to track you down were curtailed as a consequence.' Leth gazed about him, at the chamber, into the dusty beams above his head, at the walls, the strange fire, the mirror, and he shivered. 'There is a presence here. Something invisible that makes my skin crawl and fills my mind with unease. I felt it the moment we entered, almost beneath perception. It lingers about you also.'

   Baron Ang, still standing, was absolutely still. Leth felt a sudden fear. He recalled his experience in Orbelon's world, when he had been at the home of Lakewander and Master Protector - the place they called Orbia. On the evening of his first arrival he had stolen into the corridor, seeking to investigate, and there he had been addressed by the voice of - so he learned - a Protector lodged within Orbia's cold stone walls. The Protector had, like Lakewander and her father, addressed him as a god for whom they had long awaited. And Leth had returned to his chamber in a state of morbid delirium, as though he were drugged. That was when he had first come to wonder whether he might, in fact, have died, and that all he was experiencing, so alien and inexplicable, was the deathdream as he passed from existence into the unknown: the soul not knowing that life had gone, still clinging to the familiar, the embedded memories of its former existence, believing that nothing had changed even as it drifted, deluded, into the unknown, and everything it encountered became stranger, more irrational, more dreamlike.

   Leth felt the fear again now, felt that he was actually not here in Castle Ang, that in fact all that he had experienced, or believed he had experienced, was a continuation of the delirium, a continuation of the deathdream.

   His mind
reeled. He stared hollow-eyed at Galry and Jace who stood before the inexplicable fire, watching him.

  
Do I dream? How can I know what is happening here?

  
'Clun!'