Star Winds

He stirred feebly when Matello and his men burst into the chamber. His face was fully as pale and deathlike as the face of the homunculus that had recently impersonated him. “Who are these strangers who disturb my peace?” he murmured, his voice so faint as to be barely audible. “Vandals, despoilers, desecrators of my pleasure …”

“We are here because you failed to do your duty, Koss!” Baron Matello stormed.

From behind him Flammarion came forward. He reared up over the supine noble like a threatening cobra. “Now is the time to remind you of our contract, Your Grace!” he exclaimed, his voice vibrant with passion.

“What strange beast is this?” the duke queried breathlessly. “Ah yes, the builder of my retreat, of my cosmos.”

“My fee! I am here to collect my fee, unpaid for all these years!”

“But the Aegis was not invulnerable, master builder,” the duke replied in a pained whisper. “No payment is due.”

“Not invulnerable?” Matello demanded incredulously.

“Why, no … as is attested by your presence here …” The duke smiled faintly. Then he uttered a sigh.

His head suddenly lolled.

“He took poison,” the girl told them. “It takes a few minutes to work.”

Matello grabbed the duke’s head by the hair and turned it so as to lift an eyelid with his thumb. Then, with a grunt, he let it drop.

“Well that’s that. Don’t worry, Flammarion, there’s plenty of stuff here. I’ll see you get your reward.”

Flammarion’s response was dolorous and labored. “But the logic of his argument is inescapable,” he droned. “To collect payment, I must first force access to the Aegis; yet once that is done the terms of the contract are broken. How completely the old duke tricked me! I can accept no fee.”

“What are you worried about? Take what you want anyway.”

“No. The ethic of my craft will not permit sharp practice. What an ill day it was when I ventured into Maralia! I have labored in vain!”

“Well, it probably won’t make any difference,” Baron Matello muttered to the others as Flammarion shuffled despondently away. “The way things look, we’ll all have to spend the rest of our lives here.”

Chapter FIFTEEN

As the months passed, the atmosphere within the Aegis sank into gloom. Outside, the Kerek were encamped in force. A constant barrage of ballista missiles, cannon balls and sticky fire was hurled against the sloping walls of the fortress. Galleys sailed overhead and dropped immense stones from great heights. None of this was felt or even heard within the adamant casing, however. Once the original exultation of victory and escape was over, the Aegis’s all-pervading reservoir of silence, of cloying degeneracy, took over.

King Lutheron made some effort to prevent this. He tried to keep his own people apart from the Duke of Koss’s followers as much as possible and forbade most of the pleasures the fortress offered, tearing apart the intricate bordellos, destroying extensive apartments whose weird artistic purpose offended him, and spoiling the dream-slime by mixing acid in it. But nothing, not even the regular military drill he insisted on, seemed able to halt the slow, steady slide into listlessness.

It could not even be said that the whole of the Aegis had fallen into his possession. When Rachad attempted to lead a party through the inner maze, it was to find that he no longer knew the way. Amschel had rearranged the labyrinth, rendering his number code useless and prompting him to retreat hastily, afraid of becoming lost or possibly trapped. He had refused to venture into it again despite Matello’s gibes.

When he could he avoided Matello who, nominally Duke of Koss now, had taken to prowling the Aegis in a fury of pent-up energy, lashing out angrily with his tongue, and sometimes his fists, at anyone he met. Rachad, who himself was utterly appalled by the way events had turned out, did not see how the baron would be able to endure his imprisonment, even in so capacious a refuge as the Aegis. He feared that he would do something foolish, such as open up the Aegis again so as to go down in a blaze of glory.

He had spoken to Zhorga about the dismal prospects for them all. The former merchant airman had stuck out his lower lip glumly.

“We’ve got two choices: either to stay here or take our chances with the Kerek,” he had said. “They’ll be crawling all over Maralia by now—and I reckon it won’t be long either before they get to Earth.”

One night, as Rachad lay in his private room, restlessly trying to sleep, the door opened slowly, and someone entered.

Rachad quit his bed and raised the wick of the night lamp. The intruder closed the door behind him and stared solemnly at Rachad.

“Wolo!” Rachad exclaimed in surprise. It was one of Amschel’s assistants, clad in a plain blue robe. Wolo nodded his head in greeting.

“The master has sent me to take you to him,” he said calmly. “Kindly get dressed, and come with me.”

Rachad felt an acute embarrassment “Why does he want me? He knows? …”