“I do know the first thing they looked for was one of the maintenance containers, something like the ones we had found in every other case: a large easy-to-open case about waist high, shaped like a huge coffin, the top made entirely or partially of glass, with various dials and controls on the outside, a man-sized vacancy inside, and a place on the side of it to insert the tubes that held whatever the monster needed to go on living. There was nothing resembling that at the Old Dark House. The cellar did have several small devices and machines and one large, upright machine that seemed to keep the environment properly warm and ventilated. Little lights and sounds on the smaller devices made our people believe some of them might be still functioning. We found cartons of maintenance tubes there, so we assumed the maintenance container had been moved, as it had been many times before. We thought the creature would return for the books, or some of the maintenance tubes, or some of the other devices; when it did, we didn’t want the creature to know we’d been there, so we left no sign.
“Many of the people who lived in the area claimed to have seen the creature, it, him, in recent years. The same people also told our people they had seen a unicorn, a goblin, and a sleeping giantess. The unicorn turned out to be a goat with one deformed horn; the goblin was a midget; the giantess turned out to be a small hill.
“We left the place undisturbed and kept watch on it, hoping the thing would return. If it did, we would destroy both place and creature. If he did return, which we now think probable, it was by some way we could not trace.”
“Just a minute!” said Xulai. “Some way you could not trace?”
“We were keeping careful watch on the place.”
“But what did you just tell us about that thing mother left me? That it could transport people from place to place in an instant? If it moves that fast, presumably no one can see it happen.”
Precious Wind was shocked into silence. She had not thought of this! No one had thought of this! “Of course,” she said at last. “Of course, it may have had ug ul xaolat, a thing master of its own.” Her face was gray. She felt ill. “We believed that the Old Dark House stood empty until Alicia was named duchess and reopened it.”
“But if the creature had been there, somewhere, and if he had one of those gadgets, he could have gone to Kamfels and brought Alicia back to the Old Dark House, even as a child,” said Xulai. “Perhaps repeatedly.”
Precious Wind only nodded. Oh, yes. He could have.
“Then that would have been how she learned about the machines!”
Justinian, seeing the sickness in Precious Wind’s face, drew their attention away from her. “Falyrion and I spent less time together after he married, but we still rode and hunted together from time to time. He talked about Mirami. She told him she was born at the Old Dark House, so she must have had a mother there, but no one ever spoke of her. Falyrion thought she was very beautiful, very interesting, but he was puzzled by her as well, puzzled by the children she bore him. He was fond of the girl, baffled by the boy. Now that Xulai has told me she killed Falyrion and his son, as well as others, I understand his puzzlement. How my friend would have hated fathering such . . .”
Xulai frowned. “Chances are he didn’t father either one of them. No. But Mirami doesn’t slaughter indiscriminately. One would think . . . but no. She always has a specific reason for killing someone. Unless she has killed people we don’t know about.”
Precious Wind said, “The fact that the creature has suspended general slaughter has been discussed by Clan Do-Lok. They think the creature has gone beyond its original function and has set itself some other goal.”
Justinian asked, “Is this believable in a machine?”
Precious Wind smiled ruefully. “So we wondered, as well. But the creature was made from a human being, and such reasoning might not be beyond its capability so long as the end result is more killing, for killing is what it was designed to do. All its satisfactions, all of what one might think of as its comforts, are supplied during its maintenance, but it can have maintenance only after it has killed.”
“It earns pleasure by killing?” murmured Xulai.
“So we believe. In this case, the Old Dark Man has allowed some of the work to be done by its creations, its Miramis and Alicias and the many others before them that we know nothing about.”
“Just a minute,” said Abasio. “If its satisfactions come from killing, how do killings done by others satisfy it?”
Precious Wind said, “All the ones we found and destroyed were in maintenance cocoons. They had been there for many centuries. It is possible that this last slaughterer, realizing it would be dormant for a long time, created others to kill while he could not kill. Others’ killings were not instead of his own, they were merely supplementary. Perhaps he even intended to create others who would go on killing after he, it, eventually died.”
Xulai remarked, “And, if the women are its creation, they hate Tingawa without needing a reason. If one or both of the women are still alive, will they come after us?”
Precious Wind shook her head. “Their
