Steel dogs

Aandred pushed past them without speaking, though the dogs snarled and whined. He heard their laughter, like horrid little silver bells, as he carried the woman through heavy doors of burnished metal, into the audience room.

At the midpoint of the tall, narrow hall, a circular pit glowed — Droam's prime logic nexus. At the far end, intricately colored windows flanked a platform. There the King-Under-the-Hill slouched on its throne under a patina of cobwebs and dust. Of all the hulks in Droam, this one alone carried no revenant personality; this was the voice of Droam. Formerly, Droam would take possession of the hulk each night and go down to the banquet hall to dine with its most important guests. There it would press the flesh, sample the cuisine, make witty conversation, ensure that each guest was luxuriously satisfied, and in general promote the smooth functioning of the castle. But now Droam had no reason to use the hulk, and Aandred was surprised when it stood and stepped down from the platform In a moment, repellor fields had cleansed it of the detritus of years.

The hulk was built in the shape of an elfish god; it was the most beautiful object in Droam. Its skin was a lambent silver, washed with a haze of gold sparkled with a million tiny lights, as if covered with minute scales It wore stately garments, gray silk and white linen, trimmed with the glossy crimson fur of the spotted seaweasel. Its eyes were magenta coals, and its perfect features were quirked in slight annoyance. «Must you take your animals everywhere?» The voice was sweet and smooth.

«It does no harm.» Aandred hated the defensive sound in his voice. Droam could at its whim punish its possessions with searing pain, more terrible than anything Aandred had felt as a man.

«Perhaps, Still, they distract me, with their fidgeting, their scratching, their snuffling. Take them out, but first give me the Picker. When you've put them out, come back, and we'll get to our business.»

Aandred held out the woman; the glorious hulk took her in careless arms. Her eyes stared from one to the other, huge. Aandred turned away, whistled to the dogs. Outside, he motioned, and they clanked to the floor. «Stay.» he ordered, and pulled the great doors shut.

As he walked back up the hall, he glanced down into the logic nexus. Hot light boiled there, along the tangled web of macromolecules that held Droam's intellect. He wished briefly for a snail burnbomb; immediately suppressed the thought. It did no good to dream.

Arriving at the throne, he looked at the hulk’s beautiful face, and was thankful that his own coarse features were fixed in a permanent mask of mad enthusiasm. Droam would react vindictively, should it ever detect his murderous inclinations.

«Bring the probe,» Droam instructed. The Picker was struggling feebly; Droam took no notice.

Aandred fetched the probe from behind the screen of silver lace. The machine was dusty, but it sprang to life when he opened its master touch-panel. Myriad telltales glowed on the black surface, the visualizer displayed the ready signal, and the restraint chair opened like a skeletal flower to receive the woman. She whimpered, sobbed, but did not plead. He helped Droam clamp her in securely, then stood back.

While Droam fussed with the machine, establishing baselines for its investigations, Aandred remembered In times past, a guest might attempt to depart the island without settling his bill. If the guest were of no great importance or influence, Droam would order Aandred to bring the guest here, where Droam would use the probe to uncover sufficient of the guest's assets to satisfy his account. Ah, those were the days, when Aandred still maintained the illusion that his revenancy served some meaningful purpose. How foolish of me, he thought blackly. Dead is dead.

The woman's eyes went dreamy; her taut face relaxed. The visualizer bloomed with dark shapes; remembered sensations floated from the empathic emanator, sinking into Aandred's mind.

… a muffled thunder from the edge of the woods, A crashing, then the emergence of a nightmare shape, too terrible to grasp. A monstrous man-shape on a huge black horse… the eyes of the horse: yellow fire. Jebaum fires his crossbow; the monster roars, an ear-hurting sound, and smashes Jebaum to rags. Kill it, kill it, the hateful thing, rage red as blood. An impact, befuddlement, suspension, a sight more terrible yet. Skeletal dog-things, gleaming metal in the night, swarming across the clearing, bounding with a hideous vitality, jaws snapping, eyes burning bright….

Aandred turned away, and Droam made a fretful sound, slapped at the touchboard. «Effective, Huntsman,» Droam said. «But irrelevant, now, to my needs.»

Droam tapped the telltales, and the pattern twinkled, shifted.