Star Winds

Suivres pointed to the poniard in Rachad’s belt. “Get rid of that. No weapons are allowed within the Aegis.”

Reluctantly Rachad threw the poignard to the ground, and they stepped into the casemate. Behind them the panel closed up again. Light shone from a square gap in the ceiling, but it was impossible to see what, if anything, lay beyond it.

“This is the main gate?” Rachad whispered anxiously.

“Only a side door. The main entrance hasn’t been opened in fifty years.” Suivres raised his voice, calling out to an unseen guard. “I, Suivres, bring the guest who is expected!”

Rachad touched the wall of the chamber. The adamant of which it was made was smooth and silky—but hard as diamond.

Suddenly the wall facing the main bulk of the Aegis slid upward. Beyond lay the interior of the Duke of Koss’s lifetime retreat.

As he stepped through the portal, a bewildering melange of impressions swamped Rachad’s senses. There was the sound of flute music, drifting on the air as if through countless chambers. And then there was the air itself—so flooded with innumerable intriguing scents that it was like dark wine. The air was heavy, heady, with this meld of scents, which seemed to have been present for so long that it had fermented, producing an indescribably decadent aroma.

Guarding the portal stood a line of pikemen in pied livery of lilac and yellow, the chest blazon consisting of some sort of geometrical figure. They stepped aside, allowing the newcomers to pass between a gathering of people dressed in sumptuous but subdued colors, staring at Rachad curiously but silently.

Behind them lay a sybaritic scene that was hard to reconcile with the harshness of the mountain landscape outside. Indeed it was quite unlike what Rachad would have expected on entering any normal castle. Where were the inner defenses, the keeps, the sloping ramparts? The Aegis needed none, he realized. Its defense relied in toto on its adamant walls.

Instead, the portal opened onto an arcade richly hung with plush drapes of plum red and deep purple. On either side extended cross passages and staircases. At the far end were two broad sets of steps, one ascending, one descending, suggesting that the Aegis was as extensive below ground as it was above (a fact already known to Rachad through his talks with Flammarion). Up from the depths of the lower stair-passage there drifted a sparkling mist, or smoke, which thinned out into streamers and curlicues.

Yet despite the arcade’s size, it lacked spaciousness. The Aegis’s obsessively self-enclosed nature pervaded it, making it almost claustrophobic.

Rachad’s eyes rested on a huge statue that commanded the near end of the arcade. It was of a figure in a flowing robe, tall but with broad shoulders. The hair was cropped short and hung in a fringe over a bulging brow.

The face was extraordinary. It bore a pained, sneering, almost insane look—a look of ultimate rejection. The eyes stared straight ahead, as if fixed on something incomprehensible and horrifying.

This, Rachad thought, must be the Duke of Koss.

Suivres halted. Someone else had entered the arcade and was walking unhurriedly toward them. It was a man dressed in a loose, flowing purple robe, a man who might have been the model of the statue, except that he was slimmer and somewhat younger in appearance. The statue, Rachad realized, was of the old duke. This was the present master of the Aegis, the son and successor.

The resemblance between the two was striking, and yet markedly different. The second duke appeared austere rather than brutal, distracted rather than insane, an aesthete rather than a man of power. His eyes seemed permanently glazed, except when they focused, for long disturbing moments, on some object—as they did on Rachad, making him feel naked and transparent.

Hastily Rachad copied Suivres’s low bow. “Your Grace,” Suivres said humbly, “may I present Rachad Caban, an artifex, owner of the fragment we seek.”

“If all is as it seems, you have indeed done well, Suivres,” the duke murmured, his faint voice sounding to Rachad like the distant piping of the wind. “I shall reward you.”

“To serve Your Grace is reward enough!” Suivres replied ardently. It was evident that the duke inspired enormous respect in those around him, so much so that as he drew closer, with effete movements and giving off a waft of pungent scent, Rachad found himself trembling.

“Give His Grace the tome!” Suivres hissed out of the side of his mouth. With a start Rachad handed over the lead-bound book, noting as he did so that though barely above forty years of age if his appearance was any judge, the duke’s swept-back hair was streaked with gray.

Gracefully accommodating himself to its weight and bulk, the duke opened the volume and for a minute or two seemed deep in thought, his face bent to the beautifully colored pages. Eventually he nodded slowly, and again looked directly at Rachad.

“It has an authentic air. Have you studied the Asch Mezareph?”