He wore a glove, a gauntlet, that was tipped with three curved metal blades like talons. Needle-sharp they were, for three long cuts opened like mouths across the larger man's bare chest, and blood spouted.
The minstrel's song rose to a thin shrilling in which there was something drunken and almost mad. The music sang and sang. It cried of love and death, and in it was the choking, musty smell of fresh blood.
Turn and dodge and slay.
Metal grated as the two taloned gloves clawed together. The men bounded apart as though on springs instead of muscles of flesh. The giant shook his head, wiping crimson from his eyes. The other paused, with a careless gesture, to glance at Raft. His irises were blazing yellow. He had slit-like pupils.
His blond hair, almost orange, was oddly marked by shadowy patterns of cloudy black. As he smiled, Raft almost expected to see the sharp teeth of a predatory leopard. Red droplets fell from those murderous gauntlets to a brown thigh. He called a question.
Vann answered, and the yellow-haired man lifted one shoulder impatiently. He spoke a few casual syllables, and turned back to the giant, lifting a taloned glove.
For answer his opponent leaped in, and the two agile figures were again lost in that deadly, graceful dance. Vann, his eyes glowing, touched Raft's arm.
'Come. You must sleep now.'
Raft's brief excitement had died. The dull stupor of exhaustion made a protective barrier around Raft. Without another glance at the duel, he went with Vann through a portal, along halls and up spiraling ramps, lost in a foggy dimness of sheer physical tiredness. He felt Vann's hand halt him at last.
'Sleep, now. Darum will see you after you've rested.'
'Darum?' Raft saw cushions at his feet, and dropped heavily upon them. 'Who's Darum?'
'You just saw him fighting. He is the Great Lord. He rules. But now he fights, and after that—'
Vann's voice died away, merging with the faint, drowsy humming of—of what?
A purring, sub-sonic vibration thrilled through Raft. Deep, comforting it throbbed through the very structure of the castle. As though the castle lived. As though the hidden pulse of life stirred in the stone.
That alien whisper lulled Raft to sleep.
CHAPTER VI.
MAD KING
MANY HOURS LATER, Raft awoke, refreshed but stiff and aching. Colored light came through tall windows, pastel patterns that shifted and glowed on the pallor of the thick carpet.
He was in what seemed to be a sleeping-chamber. There were mirrors on the walls, many of them, and the room, he noticed, had no corners. It was a silken, padded nest, strewn carelessly with silks and pillows, and with low, round couches here and there.
There was an oval door in the wall, but no shadow loomed against it. That did not, however, mean that there was no guard. Raft yawned, stretched, and felt his muscles and joints crackle with stiffness. But, aside from various dull aches, he felt alert and ravenously hungry.
The dim humming still vibrated through him. He turned to the window, pushed open a pane, and stepped out onto the balustraded porch beyond. There he paused, staring.
Overhead the sun had moved a fraction—that was all. He saw it vaguely, for a towering pillar of mist dimmed his vision. Looking down, he understood the reason.
Beneath him a gulf opened. The porch overhung a broad platform lower down which jutted out over an abyss clouded with white fog. A silver torrent of ice shot out in an arc and fell away into that incredible depth.
Not ice, no, for it moved slowly. It was the river that flowed beneath the castle, to drop into the gulf that lay directly under Raft. He tried to probe the depths, but the boiling maelstrom of mist baffled him. The cataract fell and was lost.
Fell—slowly. Mist rose slowly too, a gelid ghost towering high above the castle. The deep humming was louder now, and the stone beneath Raft's feet vibrated to its murmuring. Subsonic. The crashing roar of a waterfall, resolved by some physical warp or distortion into that dim throbbing he felt rather than heard.
Frowning, Raft left the balcony. He was beginning to understand a little now. His mind, refreshed by deep sleep, was clearer. Slow water, stones that fell like feathers, a sun that dragged itself wearily across that green sky. Time, it seemed, was different here. Was this lost land actually on Earth? The same Earth that held the Amazon Basin, and Rio, and New York? Perhaps not.
He tried to fathom the mystery of the oval door. He could not, but it slipped upward and vanished suddenly, and Vann stood on the threshold, his scarred face alert.
'So you're awake,' Vann said in the Indio. 'Good. Darum wants to see you, but he's resting now. You'll want a bath.'
'And food,' Raft said. 'Does Darum wear those gloves all the time?'
Vann called a command over his shoulders. Then he stepped forward into the room, smiling.
'Only for tourneys. He's less dangerous when he wears the gloves. I'll show you the bath, Craddock.'
'I'm not Craddock. I told you before I'm not Craddock.'
But Vann paid no attention. He moved levers on the wall, and part of the floor slid aside, revealing a shallow, wide basin filled with a liquid the color of creme de menthe. Gratefully Raft slipped out of his ragged clothes and lowered himself into the bath. Vann watched with a grimace of distaste.
'It'll take several washings to get you clean,' he remarked. 'Here.' He found a jar and sprinkled blue powder into the water. An astringent, tingling sensation ran across Raft's skin.
There were brushes, many of them, instruments like Roman strigils, and other gadgets Raft experimented with under Vann's guidance. The water was awkward to handle because of its sluggishness.
Once Raft dropped a brush. He watched it float gently down till it dug a hole in the water, a hole that gradually refilled, while ripples crept out to the rim.
But a bath was luxury, and the aches began to leave Raft's muscles. Vann watched unblinkingly, commenting once on the coarseness of his prisoner's hair, and providing a gleaming unguent which Raft's skin absorbed leaving him stimulated. Finally a page appeared, pushing a wheeled table laden with unfamiliar food, and stood motionless, struck with amazement as he eyed the figure in the bath.
Vann gestured, and the loose-limbed, dapper youngster, with his daintily malicious triangular face, bowed and fled, without removing his startled gaze from Raft.
'No wonder he's surprised,' Vann remarked. 'Your musculature is so different from ours that you looked deformed to him. But I'd like to fight you some time, if opportunity arises.'
'Thanks,' Raft said. 'You'd have a fine time cutting my throat with one of those gloves.'
'Not at all.' Vann smiled savagely. 'Killing is a different thing entirely. The point in murder is not to be found out. But a fight, a duel—they're very seldom fatal.' He found tight garments like his own and helped Raft don them. 'I'd have too much of an advantage if I wore the gloves. What weapons do you use usually?'
'Rifles,' Raft said. He explained about duels.
'Strange,' the soldier said. 'I should think there'd be little satisfaction in propelling a missile. You wouldn't be able to feel your blade go in. There'd be.no physical pleasure.'
'All right. We'll box, fight with our fists.'
'Depending on impact alone? That doesn't seem interesting. Don't you use swords at all?'
'Some of us do,' Raft said. 'But I'm no swordsman myself. What was that you said about murder? Is homicide legal here?'
'No,' Vann said. 'We're not barbarians. A murderer has to pay restitution, if he's found out. But only the stupid are caught.'
'Oh,' Raft said blankly, tackling a pulpy, acrid fruit like an orange. 'There's a police force, then?'
He had to explain, but finally Vann understood.
'We have specialists in detection. If a murderer can escape their skill, he's safe enough. The trick is—I think —to conceal the motive. Killers are caught because they haven't disguised their motives.' He shook his head deprecatingly.
