'What of the rest of you?' D'Polarno asked in the silence that followed. 'Continue, or quit?'
The man who answered for the host was a tall, hatchet-faced fellow who held his hat clutched tightly in his hands and blinked his large fish eyes often as he spoke. 'Of course, we're enjoying the tour — to the utmost, sir, Marquis D'Polarno. But it's getting late and, well. . I bet it would take a good few months to really apprec-'
'A few years,' Stezen interrupted dryly.
'Yes, years, to really appreciate all that's here. So if we could call it a night and, perhaps, see the rest of the gallery next week some time?' Those standing around him nodded their appeasing agreement.
'Sorry,' Stezen said, running his thumbnail beneath the nail of his little finger,' this is your one and only tour. 'He gestured to the crowd. 'Come. The final room.'
My heart leapt. If he harbored his fountain anywhere, it would be in this place. I needed only to step across the threshold to find out, and perhaps this would be my literal doorway to eternity. Inwardly upbraiding myself for standing still so long, I started forward, and reached the back of the anxious group.
The great black doors creaked open. Stezen, at the head of the procession, backed slowly through them. The cold that poured out of the chamber beyond reached me even at the party's rear, and I gasped slightly. My eyes stared through the portal to see a cavernous room all in black. Indeed, the floor and wall and ceiling were so lightless that they seemed to recede forever. No paintings here, only thousands of pieces of white granite statuary, only rows upon rows of poised figures, like the gravestones of a battlefield's dead.
In their center stood a magnificent and enormous fountain — the magnificent and enormous fountain. Its sprays and jets of water arced up higher than any ceiling I had ever seen. The base of the fountain was wide and white, and its waters a kind of pale blue, the only true color in the cavernous chamber. In the center of the fountain, a vast marble mountain rose, composed of columns and acanthus and countless statues in relief or full: griffins, snakes, cockatrices, scarabs, phoenixes, lambs. Most importantly, though, was the water, cascading through thousands of falls and chutes, rising again through piping and tubes only to spray out and fill the black firmament.
So mesmerized was I by this, so moved and affected, that I felt drawn forward across that threshold into the cold and windy and infinite place. I stood on the black floor, knowing it to be there by the pressure of its pushing back, but having the queer sensation that I stood on nothing. To relieve this distressing confusion of the senses, I let my eyes rise up the form of D'Polarno, standing on the floor before me.
He smiled his feline smile, gestured at the room about us, and said,' Welcome, Dr. Ferewood, to the Hall of the Eternities.'
Only then did I notice that we two stood alone. The nervous flock of ten, who had gone through the gate before me, had dissipated into air. Well, not precisely air. By the path where I stood, I saw the tall, hatchetfaced, fish-eyed supplicant from the other room. He stood splendid in white marble, his hat still clutched tightly in those fists that would clutch nothing else, forever.
'Where are the rest of them?' I asked through a constricting throat. 'What have you done?'
'They're around here somewhere,' Stezen said with a laugh and a casual wave of the hand. That simple gesture took in a number of the guests: a woman in her flushed thirties, whose belly had just begun to show the child, now stone, within; a gap-toothed falconer whose staring eyes of granite had that wide and fierce and unblinking aspect of birds; a lady all done in furs whose heretofore and hereafter silent grace was augmented by sables, now elegantly spiked in stone. All statues. All dead.
Though Stezen paused for only a breath, his voice broke like a cannon blast on my musings. 'I'd really begun to think I'd not find any of you worthy to drink from the fountain tonight — I thought everybody'd end up in one sordid scene or another in one of my paintings. But here you are.'
'The rest aren't free?' I gasped. 'The rest are in these sculptures? The paintings?'
'It is as I told you — as I showed you,' replied D'Polarno easily. 'You saw the merchant and his wife, and the duke in the magical painting back there. You see this one standing here like some granite rube, staring forever at you. .'
'You've turned them into — '
'Immortals,' Stezen interrupted. He coughed into his hand. 'Well, immortals of a sort. They're still very much alive, I assure you. But they've all been freed of their flesh and embodied now in stone. That's the best immortality I can offer to the common cut of man.'
'All of them? Every last one of them? From Krimean, the oaf in the first room, to. . to this one standing here now?'
Stezen just shook his head. His face wore a look of feigned surprise in mockery of me, and he said,' Of course, all of them. In the room of classic sculptures, didn't you notice those women clustered about in mourning? Remember them from the table, clinging to each others'arms? You yourself studied the monolith in the first room, studied it in great depth — commented on it even. Didn't you recognize that the statue you studied was Krimean? '
'You've killed them!'
'No. 'The response was curt. 'No, I did not. I've told you, they are alive, only in bodies of stone, which will last them millennia, if not forever. ' 'But why, why did you do it? '
'They asked me to,' Stezen replied simply. 'You think you were the only one to come here seeking the fountain of life? Of course not. I sent the word out myself — carefully, restrictedly — to just the sort of people who would covet it and would have the stuff to make it this far and drink. But only you made it.'
'Only me.'
'Only you.'
My avarice — my compulsion and passion for immortality — began again to take me over. At first I'd been shocked to discover the fate of my fellow revelers, then stunned in an attempt to puzzle out just what had happened to them all, then confused. . Now all my qualms fell away, as the hunter's twinge of sadness departs when the pangs of hunger set in.
'Only me,' I muttered again stupidly.
Stezen nodded. 'All the others sought immortality for fear of death. They feared the rending of their flesh, the ending of their minds. But you know immortality is more than that.'
'Yes,' I moaned, though I did not really. 'I know.'
'You know that immortality is about soul and being. You, like me, would sacrifice body and mind for it.'
'Yes.'
'For the others, it was a fashion. For you it is a faith. I gave the others the immortality for which they had asked. I offer another immortality — a higher, better immortality — now to you.'
Already I was walking toward D'Polarno, toward the hissing, thundering fountain. He turned about and led me there, producing a leathern cup from within his vest, unfolding it, rounding it, and seating himself on the fountain's rim. I did the same.
The next words he spoke were almost lost to the roar of the water. 'This libation will give you everlasting life, free you of the ravages to the flesh, free you of the frailties of the mind. It will transform you, fill you, allow you to transcend all that is petty and mortal. Will you drink?'
I nodded in mute reverence.
He dipped the leathern cup into the bubbling water, a strangely crude vessel for so empyreal a drink, and lifted it, dripping, up to me. When a few drops struck my knee, the water felt cold and clear and magnificent.
'Drink,' said he.
I drank. The taste was like nothing I had ever had before. The water was very chill, and when it went down my throat, it caused a sensation that I can only call an ecstatic burning. The feeling spread rapidly through me, reaching the tips of my fingers and toes, making my skin flush with its intense heat. It felt as though sparks were flying through my body, transforming it into a vital, trembling, invincible form.
I laughed out loud, and my voice was carried into the fountain and it merged with the water that had brought this unbelievable joy — merged and circulated and bubbled and danced. I was alive, as though for the first time ever.
'Welcome,' said Stezen,' to the brotherhood of Immortals. 'He leaned toward me and, in the custom of his land, kissed me upon the lips. Then he raised his hand, brushed my jaw for a moment, and jabbed a steelhard forefinger through my cheek.
There was a moment of horrible tearing, and I glimpsed my flesh splitting away like the shirt ripping from a
