Stezen noticed. 'Yes. I see you have not only the beast's bones and heart and soul, but the citizen's mind in you as well. I see that you cringe.'
'And who would not?' I asked, though a moment later I could think of an easy handful who wouldn't and saw some of them standing beside me. 'It is brutal,' I explained.
'But well rendered,' Stezen replied,' as is childhood.'
This comment brought my mind back on its perpetually curving course, toward the subject of immortality. Sickened as I was by the display before us, I knew I'd best hide this feeling or choose to be ushered out with the rest.
'The artistry of this relief goes without question,' I said in an imitation of distraction. 'But, I must confess, the exact purport of the scene eludes me.'
'As it should. Ours, though still a brutal society, no longer leaves girl children to die of exposure.'
Now I saw it. The depicted mother and her two daughters, each of whom had no doubt narrowly escaped the thong through the heel, now had been forced by some grim pater to work this very crime on their sister and daughter.
'It's not art, it's butchery,' muttered the plump merchantwife a little too loudly to her now-wary husband. Before the fidgeting and mustachioed man could cover his wife's errant comment, I jumped in to win Stezen's favor.
'Not butchery, milady, but childhood. As children we are the hopeless and powerless chattel of our parents, who may nurture or slaughter us, as the shepherd does the sheep. And as adults, we become the chattel of gods, who exercise the same rights.'
Stezen was pleased: that much I could see. The merchant and his wife were not, and neither were the others.
The crowd thinned.
The next room was truly elegant, the flower of our time. It was lit by shimmering chandeliers and bedecked in gold traceries and moldings and bosses. The windows on all four sides of it were festooned with garlands and draped with the richest red-velvet curtains, which hung to the floor into pools of fabric. And the paintings and statuary were of the finest quality, the eyes of the subjects peering out hauntingly to follow all who walked past.
But that was not the only haunting thing about this room. I'd walked to the center of it before I realized that the windows could not possibly be on all four walls, for we had entered through one wall from a room of equal size, and would exit through the opposite to a room no doubt the same.
I wandered with Stezen and our dwindling group of followers to one of the windows that stood beside the door where we had entered. Peering out, I saw not the wall of the other room where it should have been, nor even the estate grounds I had walked through to arrive. Instead, outside lay a strange, moon-washed landscape of trees that roiled up like smoke or curdling milk into a mackerel sky. There were peaks of mountains out there that I knew stood nowhere in these lands, and were, themselves, impossibly tall and pointed. Glancing out another window on an adjacent wall, I saw a morning field dotted with grazing cattle.
With amusement, D'Polarno took in my amazement and trembling shock. He similarly noted the horrified gasps of the others.
One of those was Lynn, who'd finally found an impulse other than errogeny. 'This place is unnatura-'
'Of course it is,' Stezen broke in. 'Didn't a single one of you look at the outside of this estate before you came into it? Didn't any of you notice that these rooms through which we have been walking could not possibly fit into my manor house? '
'Where are we, then?' Lynn returned angrily.
'Why, we are in my famed gallery, don't you know? '
'I'm going back,' she cried. 'I didn't want to come in here anyway. 'She charged back toward the doors.
'Oh,' D'Polarno said innocently,' you can't go back. They've barred the doors behind us.'
'Others went back!' she shouted, pouting as she pushed on the unforgiving wood.
D'Polarno merely shook his head. 'The only way out is forward. You are here. Why not enjoy the rest of the tour? Besides, you should not be so greatly disturbed by these windows that apparently lead to other worlds. Have you never seen magic before? '
'Of course not!' she cried, pounding like a child on the impassive doors.
'I have,' I said, which was true, though I've never been sure why I said it. Perhaps it was because I was not yet sure what I thought of this place, and some part of me thought that if I got to speaking, I would be able to sort out my thoughts. You see, I was fearful like the rest, but these queer examples of Stezen's power only assured me that perhaps, beyond that next door, lay the goal of my quest, the fountain from which I might drink of eternity. So, frightened as I was, I still wanted to believe in him, believe in this all.
'I. . had once made the acquaintance of an actual magician on the Brautslava staff — that was before the purges, of course. He was an illusionist by speciality, and showed me many simple spells that could account for such an illusion.'
'Precisely,' Stezen responded through wicked teeth. 'Lynn, darling, think of these not as preternatural windows, but as paintings of a different sort — magical paintings, if you will.'
But she would not be appeased; she shook the doors violently and shouted indecipherables.
It was then that motion in the corner of my eye drew my attention to the window with the moonlit trees. There! It was the merchant and wife from the other room, the ones who had maligned the relief sculpture. I knew it was they — he fidgety and fearful, she plump and vital — running away from us into the pitching and dissolving trees beyond the magic windowpane.
Despite myself, I let out a small yelp of surprise that, by virtue of its pitch or its fear, stopped the struggles of Lynn and drew her attention to the window.
'They did escape!' she shouted in desperate triumph. 'See! They did escape!'
Next moment, she was running toward us — not actually us, but the great window. En route, she snagged a small granite statue from a wobbling pediment and brandished it in her tight fist as she ran toward the glass. The helmeted head of the warrior statue struck the window first, and the glass shattered like a thunderstroke. I backed away due to the sheer loudness of the event, and Stezen, too, retreated as though to avoid being struck by flying particles. Lynn turned a fevered, leering, hopeful face toward me, by way of invitation to join her, then ran the statue through the splinters and chips and triangles of glass that remained. Without another word, she jumped through the frame.
This window, clearly, was no illusion. I saw the girl scramble away across the grass-that-was-not-grass, looking back occasionally and squinting, as though she could no longer see the estate.
'Extraordinary,' I commented unnecessarily.
'Exactly.'
The subject broached, I felt I had nothing to lose. 'Where, precisely is she now? '
'Why, in the painting,' Stezen replied with mock incredulity. 'Don't you remember my explanation? '
'Yes, that it was a magical painting, an illusion. But how could she break the glass if it were an illusion? '
'Are you saying illusory glass would be harder to break than real glass?' Stezen asked. 'Come now. I'm beginning to lose faith in your deductions.'
He was right. Clearly, if the magical window were easily conjured, a magical broken window with a girl running through it would just as easily be produced. Besides, I knew that I must not jar his faith now, so near to the goal.
D'Polarno had turned to address the remaining guests, some scant ten or so who'd not been weeded out earlier. Even so, these looked anything but the pick of the litter. They were uniformly wide-eyed and cringing, their faces a ghastly green that belied the bounteous meal they had eaten.
'And what shall it be for all of you?' he asked them. 'Continue the tour, or bring it to a close here and now?'
As I had done throughout the evening, I rushed then to nail my coffin shut. 'I, for one, am utterly fascinated and wish to carry this all to its conclusion. 'Stezen answered me with a wave of the hand that indicated that he had expected nothing else. Flustered to have been read so easily, I glanced away toward the window again, where servants of D'Polarno were already nailing boards into place.
