Waltz
By Alekto
Chapter 5: Night's black agents to their preys do rouse.
The trek through the jungle had turned into a waking nightmare. The combination of the relentless heat and humidity would have sapped the strength of even one who was fit and rested, and I was neither. Every misstep over the uneven jungle floor jarred my arm, which ached miserably. Sometime back I'd found a good-sized piece of bark sloughed from a tree and used it to brace the arm inside the sling, and that had helped - a little. I was painfully aware, though, that if I were forced to fight anything like raptors or apemen, it would be an encounter I most likely wouldn't survive.
But at that moment I just didn't care. The events of recent days had pushed me to this point. Events orchestrated by . . . someone. I was as sure as I could be that almost nothing that had happened since we were ambushed by apemen had been accidental, and being played like that was something that left me more than a little angry.
Unfortunately, when travelling through the jungle, careful was of far more use than angry. I slipped. I was tired and I hurt, and all it had taken was a moment's lapse in concentration to send me sliding down a muddy slope. Desperate instinct made me curl protectively around my sore arm until after a few seconds I was able to dig in my heels and come to a stop. I sat there hunched over for long minutes, retching for breath between the throb of pain and the adrenaline as for a moment the jungle blurred and twisted around me. "Goddamn it," I gasped softly, waiting for the world to settle down again.
Eventually I felt strong and steady enough to get to my feet, retrieved the gear I'd dropped when I fell, and made my way back to where I'd been following Marguerite's trail. I'd not gone another ten feet along it when I saw something that froze me in my tracks. Standing in a small clear area at the base of a towering tree were three women, dressed as if they had walked out of an old painting, clad in rich silks and brocades, with their hair arranged in ornate fashion. Each was swathed in an enveloping cloak as if they might have been on their way to the opera. The eyes of all were fixed on me.
I may lay claim to being a man of breeding, and even under such bizarre circumstances courtesy demanded at least a greeting, but as I met their unwavering gaze all I could manage was a low muttered, confused exclamation. "I *know* you. You were in my dreams. How . . .?"
The tallest of them, a blonde of terrifying beauty stared at me for a long while before slowly shaking her head in regal admonition. "You should not be here."
Her tone was aristocratic but there was something in her accent that was very definitely foreign, too faint for me to even begin to place. "Please, tell me what's happening here?" I started. "What are you doing here and what do you want with me and the others?" And what are you doing in my dreams . . .?
They waited unmoving for some time as if considering whether to even answer my questions. Still, their eyes didn't move from mine. It was as much as I could do to meet so daunting a regard without flinching. I was about to repeat my questions when finally, they deigned to answer.
"We want to rest," the blonde said quietly.
"To sleep," added another.
"To die," the third, a redhead, finished, her voice ringing with fierce determination.
"We need there to be an ending," put in the blonde firmly, as if she were expressing something of overwhelming importance. "Day has passed and now night must fall."
They continued to look at me, the porcelain stillness of their faces not mirroring the naked desperation I was sure I could make out in their voices. "I-- I don't understand," I replied. "What are you trying to tell me?"
The redhead took a step towards me. "I was the first. He found me at daybreak, crimson, fragrant early morning. Mine is now the swelling sunrise. Mine its cool and coloured mantle, mine its gleaming crown of silver, mine the dawn of every new day." Her declaration sounded rehearsed as if it had been learned by rote long ago.
Before I could say anything, the blonde moved to stand beside her. "I was the second. He found me at noon, silent, flaming golden noon. Mine is now every noon hereafter. Mine their heavy burning mantle. Mine their golden crown of glory. Mine the blaze of every midday."
The third, her pale face framed by cascades of chestnut brown hair, joined them. "I was the third. He found me at evening. Mine is now each returning sunset. Mine the grave and umbered mantle. Mine is every solemn sundown."
"A fourth long has he sought. A fourth who he found at midnight."
"Found at starry, ebonmantled midnight," another picked up. "Her pale face was all a-glimmer, splendid was her silken hair."
"The night shall be hers hereafter."
"Hers will be the starry mantle."
"Hers will be a crown of diamonds."
"Hers will be the wealth of all his kingdom."
It sounded almost like they were reciting an oft-repeated prophecy, then I thought about their words: pale face and silken hair? Wealth? Diamonds? I was putting two and two together and getting . . . Oh dear God . . . Marguerite! "What are you saying?" I queried worriedly. "That he wants Marguerite to be midnight, whatever that means? And who is this *he* you keep referring to?"
"He is our prince."
"Our lord."
"Our master."
"Okay, fine, whatever. What's his name?" I asked them firmly. They were silent for a few moments, and despite their utter stillness I couldn't escape the feeling that they were afraid. "His name!" I prompted again with increasing urgency.
"Prince!"
"Lord!"
"Master!"
Their replies came so close, their voices overlapped, as if they were giving answers long ingrained. "TELL ME HIS NAME!" I yelled as the fragile grip I had on my temper began to fray.
They glanced uncertainly at each other - the only glimpse of humanity that I'd seen any of them show. Then the youngest of them, the brown haired 'sunset' or 'evening' or however she'd described herself answered. "Kekszakallu," she whispered, as if fearing the sound of the word itself. "His name is Kekszakallu."
I thought for a while. I'd thought with a name I might have some kind of answer or explanation as to what was going on. But the name meant absolutely nothing to me at all.
I went back and considered the little that they'd told me, trying to make some sense of it. Then I had a sudden thought. "If it's Marguerite he wants, what about all the other odd things that have been going on? What's his interest in the rest of us, and for that matter, what's happened to Challenger, Malone and Veronica?"
"You still do not understand," the blonde murmured sadly.
"Damn right I don't understand!" I snapped back, feeling only a twinge of guilt for using such language in front of a lady. "How can I be expected to understand if you insist on being so damned cryptic about things? I'm just a--"
"A lord, John Roxton," she interrupted harshly. "An aristocrat, as is he, and that is what he sees when he looks at you: a gentleman, a man of quality, an adventurer who may have the wit and courage to offer him a spark of interest after centuries of ennui." Her voice had taken on a sneering bitterness that I was at a loss to explain. She leaned towards me and reached out to grasp my chin with her slender bone-white hand. Her touch burned colder than ice. "How does it feel *my lord* to know that she is the prize, and that to him, you are nothing more than an amusing diversion? How does it feel to be another's plaything?"
I ignored her barbs. I was concerned with something far more important. "Tell me how to find Marguerite!" I demanded.
"He will twist you and break you," she went on as if I hadn't even spoken, acid dripping from every word. "And when at last you no longer interest him, he will seek to dispose of you and you will pray for the oblivion of death."
"Don't you understand? I don't care!" I threw back at her. "The only thing that matters is finding Marguerite." And if I had to die to save her from this-- this Kekszakallu, then so be it. I'd risked my life for far worse reasons.
She grasped my chin more firmly and tilted my face from side to side as if truly seeing it for the first time. It was as much as I could do not to pull back from the chill that was stabbing into my jaw. "You mean that, don't you?" she murmured in mystified, almost awed surprise before finally releasing her grip. The depth of her reaction caught me unawares, and I found myself wondering if it had been this Kekszakallu who had so poisoned her perceptions.
"So *help* me! Please!" I urged her. She stepped back, a flicker of shock on her face, though shock at what I wasn't sure.
"You do not know what you ask of us," interposed 'Evening' with gentle despair.
"I'm asking you to help me save Marguerite," I replied.
"That is what you ask, but the true meaning of your request goes so much deeper than that, so much more than you comprehend." I looked at the blonde 'Noon' as she spoke. Her voice was clear and sonorous, the kind of voice that compelled attention. She exchanged glances with the others, glances laden with a meaning I couldn't divine before she turned back to me. "Nevertheless we will tell you what you need to know. What you do with the information thereafter is your concern.
"Kekszakallu is lord and master to all of us. Each of us he met and wooed and finally wed, and each of us is now as cursed as he. Each of us is trapped, bound by an ancient magic that he called up, and yet which overcame him in its turn. Kekszakallu studied and conspired and killed in his quest for immortality, and in the end immortality is what he achieved. At least, in kind.
"Once, he wished to live forever, but could not. Now since his wish was granted, his ambition realised, he has found it to be curse, not blessing, and he seeks only to die, but death is ever denied him."
I listened to what only a few days previous I would have dismissed out of hand as a fairy tale, but now, after so many things had happened, things I could not explain, I was perhaps a little more credulous. "But how does Marguerite fit into all this?" I wondered aloud.
"Magic gave him the immortality he sought, and only magic can take it from him, but such dark magic as he called upon always carried a price." She paused and watched as my horrified comprehension must have shown on my face. "Yes, Marguerite. The deaths of four willing brides will bring him to the death he so eagerly seeks - his own."
"Oh, wait just a minute," I protested. "There's no way Marguerite's going to fall for something like that. She's not the sort just to toss it all in and give up. Unless he's controlling her somehow - hypnosis or some weird sort of possession or something." The more I thought about it, I decided that that would make a sort of sense considering what had happened when she spoke to us in the deserted Kothoga village.
"He can control her just as you say," 'Noon' agreed. "But in the end she must come to him willingly for the sacrifice to work and for him to be released into death."
"And that's where it all falls apart," I explained feeling the first faint glimmerings of hope. "Marguerite really is not the suicidal type."
"You do not know Kekszakallu as we have come to know him," 'Evening' murmured sadly. "You can have no comprehension of the things, the horrors of which he is capable. Remember: it is through his machinations that you are here, that you are being drawn to him."
"I spoke truly, if not completely, when I said he considers you of interest," the blonde 'Noon' said resignedly. "He will make sport with you, with your life, against the tedium of an eternity that weighs heavy indeed, but in truth your greatest relevance to him is as a lever against your Marguerite should his seductions and offers of wealth and power fail. Of we who stand before you, know that none of us looked for or welcomed death. We found out too late the true cost of our wedding vows."
The meaning of what she said finally registered. "Wait a minute. You're saying you're dead? You're saying you're all dead? You're ghosts?" It was a sobering reflection of my state of mind at the time that I felt more horror than disbelief at her words.
Then with a more considering gaze I looked at them anew, and saw what I should have seen the first time around. I saw the pallor of their skin, the cold, dead eyes, the lack of mud on their floor sweeping dresses, and the fact that none of them appeared to breathe or even sweat in the jungle's oppressive heat, and then, however unwillingly, I began to believe.
I tried to reach out towards them but even as I did my head began to swim, whether from heat, exhaustion, confusion or all three I wasn't sure. The jungle rippled around me and I slumped awkwardly to the ground. "Rest here John Roxton," a voice whispered, "at least for a little while, and regain your strength. You will have need of it soon enough."
"Are you real," I asked blearily, feeling my concentration drift. "Or am I dreaming?"
"Yes," came the answer, as ephemeral as dust on the wind.
And for a while, that was all I remembered.
To be continued . . .
A/N The declarations of the three women are drawn almost verbatim from the English translation of "A Kekszakallu herceg vara" by Bela Belazs.
By Alekto
Chapter 5: Night's black agents to their preys do rouse.
The trek through the jungle had turned into a waking nightmare. The combination of the relentless heat and humidity would have sapped the strength of even one who was fit and rested, and I was neither. Every misstep over the uneven jungle floor jarred my arm, which ached miserably. Sometime back I'd found a good-sized piece of bark sloughed from a tree and used it to brace the arm inside the sling, and that had helped - a little. I was painfully aware, though, that if I were forced to fight anything like raptors or apemen, it would be an encounter I most likely wouldn't survive.
But at that moment I just didn't care. The events of recent days had pushed me to this point. Events orchestrated by . . . someone. I was as sure as I could be that almost nothing that had happened since we were ambushed by apemen had been accidental, and being played like that was something that left me more than a little angry.
Unfortunately, when travelling through the jungle, careful was of far more use than angry. I slipped. I was tired and I hurt, and all it had taken was a moment's lapse in concentration to send me sliding down a muddy slope. Desperate instinct made me curl protectively around my sore arm until after a few seconds I was able to dig in my heels and come to a stop. I sat there hunched over for long minutes, retching for breath between the throb of pain and the adrenaline as for a moment the jungle blurred and twisted around me. "Goddamn it," I gasped softly, waiting for the world to settle down again.
Eventually I felt strong and steady enough to get to my feet, retrieved the gear I'd dropped when I fell, and made my way back to where I'd been following Marguerite's trail. I'd not gone another ten feet along it when I saw something that froze me in my tracks. Standing in a small clear area at the base of a towering tree were three women, dressed as if they had walked out of an old painting, clad in rich silks and brocades, with their hair arranged in ornate fashion. Each was swathed in an enveloping cloak as if they might have been on their way to the opera. The eyes of all were fixed on me.
I may lay claim to being a man of breeding, and even under such bizarre circumstances courtesy demanded at least a greeting, but as I met their unwavering gaze all I could manage was a low muttered, confused exclamation. "I *know* you. You were in my dreams. How . . .?"
The tallest of them, a blonde of terrifying beauty stared at me for a long while before slowly shaking her head in regal admonition. "You should not be here."
Her tone was aristocratic but there was something in her accent that was very definitely foreign, too faint for me to even begin to place. "Please, tell me what's happening here?" I started. "What are you doing here and what do you want with me and the others?" And what are you doing in my dreams . . .?
They waited unmoving for some time as if considering whether to even answer my questions. Still, their eyes didn't move from mine. It was as much as I could do to meet so daunting a regard without flinching. I was about to repeat my questions when finally, they deigned to answer.
"We want to rest," the blonde said quietly.
"To sleep," added another.
"To die," the third, a redhead, finished, her voice ringing with fierce determination.
"We need there to be an ending," put in the blonde firmly, as if she were expressing something of overwhelming importance. "Day has passed and now night must fall."
They continued to look at me, the porcelain stillness of their faces not mirroring the naked desperation I was sure I could make out in their voices. "I-- I don't understand," I replied. "What are you trying to tell me?"
The redhead took a step towards me. "I was the first. He found me at daybreak, crimson, fragrant early morning. Mine is now the swelling sunrise. Mine its cool and coloured mantle, mine its gleaming crown of silver, mine the dawn of every new day." Her declaration sounded rehearsed as if it had been learned by rote long ago.
Before I could say anything, the blonde moved to stand beside her. "I was the second. He found me at noon, silent, flaming golden noon. Mine is now every noon hereafter. Mine their heavy burning mantle. Mine their golden crown of glory. Mine the blaze of every midday."
The third, her pale face framed by cascades of chestnut brown hair, joined them. "I was the third. He found me at evening. Mine is now each returning sunset. Mine the grave and umbered mantle. Mine is every solemn sundown."
"A fourth long has he sought. A fourth who he found at midnight."
"Found at starry, ebonmantled midnight," another picked up. "Her pale face was all a-glimmer, splendid was her silken hair."
"The night shall be hers hereafter."
"Hers will be the starry mantle."
"Hers will be a crown of diamonds."
"Hers will be the wealth of all his kingdom."
It sounded almost like they were reciting an oft-repeated prophecy, then I thought about their words: pale face and silken hair? Wealth? Diamonds? I was putting two and two together and getting . . . Oh dear God . . . Marguerite! "What are you saying?" I queried worriedly. "That he wants Marguerite to be midnight, whatever that means? And who is this *he* you keep referring to?"
"He is our prince."
"Our lord."
"Our master."
"Okay, fine, whatever. What's his name?" I asked them firmly. They were silent for a few moments, and despite their utter stillness I couldn't escape the feeling that they were afraid. "His name!" I prompted again with increasing urgency.
"Prince!"
"Lord!"
"Master!"
Their replies came so close, their voices overlapped, as if they were giving answers long ingrained. "TELL ME HIS NAME!" I yelled as the fragile grip I had on my temper began to fray.
They glanced uncertainly at each other - the only glimpse of humanity that I'd seen any of them show. Then the youngest of them, the brown haired 'sunset' or 'evening' or however she'd described herself answered. "Kekszakallu," she whispered, as if fearing the sound of the word itself. "His name is Kekszakallu."
I thought for a while. I'd thought with a name I might have some kind of answer or explanation as to what was going on. But the name meant absolutely nothing to me at all.
I went back and considered the little that they'd told me, trying to make some sense of it. Then I had a sudden thought. "If it's Marguerite he wants, what about all the other odd things that have been going on? What's his interest in the rest of us, and for that matter, what's happened to Challenger, Malone and Veronica?"
"You still do not understand," the blonde murmured sadly.
"Damn right I don't understand!" I snapped back, feeling only a twinge of guilt for using such language in front of a lady. "How can I be expected to understand if you insist on being so damned cryptic about things? I'm just a--"
"A lord, John Roxton," she interrupted harshly. "An aristocrat, as is he, and that is what he sees when he looks at you: a gentleman, a man of quality, an adventurer who may have the wit and courage to offer him a spark of interest after centuries of ennui." Her voice had taken on a sneering bitterness that I was at a loss to explain. She leaned towards me and reached out to grasp my chin with her slender bone-white hand. Her touch burned colder than ice. "How does it feel *my lord* to know that she is the prize, and that to him, you are nothing more than an amusing diversion? How does it feel to be another's plaything?"
I ignored her barbs. I was concerned with something far more important. "Tell me how to find Marguerite!" I demanded.
"He will twist you and break you," she went on as if I hadn't even spoken, acid dripping from every word. "And when at last you no longer interest him, he will seek to dispose of you and you will pray for the oblivion of death."
"Don't you understand? I don't care!" I threw back at her. "The only thing that matters is finding Marguerite." And if I had to die to save her from this-- this Kekszakallu, then so be it. I'd risked my life for far worse reasons.
She grasped my chin more firmly and tilted my face from side to side as if truly seeing it for the first time. It was as much as I could do not to pull back from the chill that was stabbing into my jaw. "You mean that, don't you?" she murmured in mystified, almost awed surprise before finally releasing her grip. The depth of her reaction caught me unawares, and I found myself wondering if it had been this Kekszakallu who had so poisoned her perceptions.
"So *help* me! Please!" I urged her. She stepped back, a flicker of shock on her face, though shock at what I wasn't sure.
"You do not know what you ask of us," interposed 'Evening' with gentle despair.
"I'm asking you to help me save Marguerite," I replied.
"That is what you ask, but the true meaning of your request goes so much deeper than that, so much more than you comprehend." I looked at the blonde 'Noon' as she spoke. Her voice was clear and sonorous, the kind of voice that compelled attention. She exchanged glances with the others, glances laden with a meaning I couldn't divine before she turned back to me. "Nevertheless we will tell you what you need to know. What you do with the information thereafter is your concern.
"Kekszakallu is lord and master to all of us. Each of us he met and wooed and finally wed, and each of us is now as cursed as he. Each of us is trapped, bound by an ancient magic that he called up, and yet which overcame him in its turn. Kekszakallu studied and conspired and killed in his quest for immortality, and in the end immortality is what he achieved. At least, in kind.
"Once, he wished to live forever, but could not. Now since his wish was granted, his ambition realised, he has found it to be curse, not blessing, and he seeks only to die, but death is ever denied him."
I listened to what only a few days previous I would have dismissed out of hand as a fairy tale, but now, after so many things had happened, things I could not explain, I was perhaps a little more credulous. "But how does Marguerite fit into all this?" I wondered aloud.
"Magic gave him the immortality he sought, and only magic can take it from him, but such dark magic as he called upon always carried a price." She paused and watched as my horrified comprehension must have shown on my face. "Yes, Marguerite. The deaths of four willing brides will bring him to the death he so eagerly seeks - his own."
"Oh, wait just a minute," I protested. "There's no way Marguerite's going to fall for something like that. She's not the sort just to toss it all in and give up. Unless he's controlling her somehow - hypnosis or some weird sort of possession or something." The more I thought about it, I decided that that would make a sort of sense considering what had happened when she spoke to us in the deserted Kothoga village.
"He can control her just as you say," 'Noon' agreed. "But in the end she must come to him willingly for the sacrifice to work and for him to be released into death."
"And that's where it all falls apart," I explained feeling the first faint glimmerings of hope. "Marguerite really is not the suicidal type."
"You do not know Kekszakallu as we have come to know him," 'Evening' murmured sadly. "You can have no comprehension of the things, the horrors of which he is capable. Remember: it is through his machinations that you are here, that you are being drawn to him."
"I spoke truly, if not completely, when I said he considers you of interest," the blonde 'Noon' said resignedly. "He will make sport with you, with your life, against the tedium of an eternity that weighs heavy indeed, but in truth your greatest relevance to him is as a lever against your Marguerite should his seductions and offers of wealth and power fail. Of we who stand before you, know that none of us looked for or welcomed death. We found out too late the true cost of our wedding vows."
The meaning of what she said finally registered. "Wait a minute. You're saying you're dead? You're saying you're all dead? You're ghosts?" It was a sobering reflection of my state of mind at the time that I felt more horror than disbelief at her words.
Then with a more considering gaze I looked at them anew, and saw what I should have seen the first time around. I saw the pallor of their skin, the cold, dead eyes, the lack of mud on their floor sweeping dresses, and the fact that none of them appeared to breathe or even sweat in the jungle's oppressive heat, and then, however unwillingly, I began to believe.
I tried to reach out towards them but even as I did my head began to swim, whether from heat, exhaustion, confusion or all three I wasn't sure. The jungle rippled around me and I slumped awkwardly to the ground. "Rest here John Roxton," a voice whispered, "at least for a little while, and regain your strength. You will have need of it soon enough."
"Are you real," I asked blearily, feeling my concentration drift. "Or am I dreaming?"
"Yes," came the answer, as ephemeral as dust on the wind.
And for a while, that was all I remembered.
To be continued . . .
A/N The declarations of the three women are drawn almost verbatim from the English translation of "A Kekszakallu herceg vara" by Bela Belazs.