Shadows seemed to have crept in from everywhere along the street, swallowing up the revelers in cloaks of darkness. Shido did not, he realized, have any trouble distinguishing individual details, down to the character of faces, but the cloaking shadows instead seemed to leech the color from the figures. A woman with blonde tresses like spun gold, wearing a rich crimson dress that revealed creamy skin at the throat and shoulders, danced out of the light and became at once a creature of shadow, pale-skinned and dark-robed.
Even stranger, to Shido's mind, was that he was still aware of the lost color, knowing somehow that her black-seeming dress was scarlet while the man who bowed over her hand wore a black cloak that was actually green. Not just any green, either, but a rich forest hue, like leaves through which late-afternoon sunlight filtered.
The very oddity of these tricks of the light at first confused Shido, preventing him from realizing the cause of the encroaching darkness, but he soon noticed that the building walls no longer bore the mountings for flambeaux, and thus the street-lamps were the only remaining sources of illumination. The encroaching night made his spirits fall, though it seemed that the revelers did not notice or care, for their gaiety did not slow, but Shido was glad to see the bright gleam of lights ahead and hurried on.
The street opened into a small, circular plaza where two roads met, and a small wooden stage was set up in the center, backed by a large covered wagon such as gypsies or traveling players might use, though there was no horse between the shafts. Torches and lamps blazed all around the stage, ensuring a good view for the gathering spectators.
The show, it seemed, was a kind of Harlequinade, that venerable tradition of the traveling stage. Gaily costumed actors danced on stage, their fancy dress ornamented by large glass jewels that flashed and sparkled in the light. Shido recognized the actors as representing the sprites Harlequin and Columbine, ethereal creatures of magic well-suited to the woodland depicted on the canvas backdrop.
The music began to change, the bright and unfettered melody of the dancers fading. The sprites drifted to stage left as the backdrop itself changed, the woodland receding to reveal a medieval village. Shido realized that the canvas backdrop was actually hung on two spools and so could be wound or unwound left and right as was needed. A deep, bass-driven theme began to play, speaking of hard work and the drudgery of daily living. Another actor made his entrance, dressed as a common laborer. It was an unusual costume choice for a stock character, and it took Shido a few moments to recognize him as Pierrot, more commonly depicted as a clown. Pierrot wore a yoke with buckets, and trudged to and fro with his heavy load.
Then, he wandered towards the left edge of the town–actually walking in place as the background scrolled–and he noticed in the woodlands Columbine, this time alone. He watched her dance for a time, enraptured, until she caught sight of him.. Pierrot shrank back, obviously afraid of this mystical creature, but her beauty and grace charmed him, drawing him on, and they danced together at the border between forest and village. The music swelled with a romantic violin strain that tugged at the heart. Then–
Harlequin's return! At stage left he appeared as if by magic, not in the accusing stance of the jealous lover, but calling to Columbine, beckoning her away. His theme rose, conflicting with that of the lovers. Irresistibly it pulled at Columbine, for she was not meant to be of the mortal world. Yet she would not surrender her love; she clutched at Pierrot's hand and the violin sang. Come with me, she seemed to plead, pulling him towards the wood.
Pierrot's fears returned, though. The wood seemed to threaten, to hold terrors he could not imagine. The world unfettered by walls or routine was too much for him; he ripped free of her and fled pell-mell to stage right. In anguish Columbine was inexorably carried away into her natural element, and all that was left was the village, and the bass theme rising like prison walls as Pierrot once more shouldered his yoke.
The torchlights plunged into darkness. The Harlequinade was over, and Shido hurried on, shaken.
-X X X-
"What a fantastic house!" Riho marveled, turning left and right as she tried to take in all of the atrium. Rain drumming on the skylight above cast weird and twisting shadows across the floor. "It's a little scary, though."
"It scares me, too," Yayoi admitted. "The whole house is like this, an overdone monument to one man's ego."
"No wonder he ended up possessed by a breed. This guy had a few screws loose to begin with." Neither of the two women could find any reason to disagree with Guni.
"Il Carnival is up there," Yayoi pointed to the landing. They went up the stairs and Yayoi took Riho to the painting.
"Is that...blood?" the vampire girl asked with a shudder.
"It's Abe's. He fell against it when he died, according to Shido."
Riho nodded, and reached out toward the canvas. She brushed her fingertips against the bloodstain, almost as a kind of morbid reflex, but as she touched the painting, an electric tingle shot down Riho's arm and the image in the painting rippled, like it was a reflection in a lake and a pebble had been tossed in where her finger had touched. She jerked her hand back with a yelp of surprise.
"What is it?"
"Didn't you see it, Ms. Yayoi?"
"See what? You touched the painting."
Confused, she reached out and touched it again, with the same effect.
"I know I'm not imagining it! The picture moved when I touched it!"
"I didn't see a thing," Yayoi said. She touched the painting herself, without apparent effect.
"I didn't see anything happen that time, either," Riho said. "Is it only when I touch it?"
She did so again, but this time she pushed, and her hand slid right into the painting, as if it were sliding through a viscous substance, penetrating some kind of membrane. Yayoi gasped in shock.
"Okay," Guni said, "this is getting really weird now."
Riho pulled her hand back out and wiggled her fingers experimentally. Everything seemed to be unhurt and in working order.
"It must be because you're a vampire," Yayoi stated the obvious. "That's close enough to a night breed to be able to use this painting to go...wherever it leads. The breed must be able to take its victims back into it as well. That's how the disappearances happened."
"Then the breed...is in the painting?"
"Right. It must live in there, then come out to possess the painting's owners when they're susceptible to it."
"Shido must have figured it out and gone in after the breed," Guni declared, but both Riho and Yayoi shook their heads.
"I don't think so, Guni."
"Mr. Shido wouldn't do that, not without at least letting us know what he was doing. He'd want us to be able to help–or at least to destroy the painting if he...if he didn't..."
"Yeah," Guni spared her from having to finish the thought, "you're right. Shido isn't careless like that when it comes to fighting the night breeds."
"So if he is in there, he didn't go on purpose."
"Mr. Shido has to be in there. It's too big a coincidence for him not to be. Things just don't happen like that," Riho declared.
Guni flitted over and touched the painting experimentally. Like Yayoi, she apparently wasn't able to make it work.
"So what does that mean?"
"It means that somehow, that breed took Mr. Shido into the painting and has kept him there all day."
"Are you planning on going in after him, Riho? You don't know what you'll find–and I do mean what you'll find, since it looks like Guni and I can't do anything to help you."
"You would if you could! You're not abandoning me, Ms. Yayoi!"
"That isn't what I meant, though it's nice of you to think of it. I just wanted you to realize that, whatever is out there, you'll be alone in facing it."
Riho sighed, and even gave a wry little smile that surprised her.
"I'm always alone, Ms. Yayoi, except for Mr. Shido, and even he..." She looked down at her hands, so pale and white. Riho remembered when her complexion had been a rosy pink with youthful health, and now...
"Shido doesn't have any memories of his human life," Yayoi murmured, understanding.
"He's been a vampire for centuries. He understands what it means to be a night walker. I..." She couldn't finish the thought. "Maybe," she said instead, "for once it'll turn out to be a good thing, that I'm a vampire. If it lets me help Mr. Shido..."
Riho reached out and touched the painting again, pressing the flat of her hand against it. Again, the tingling passed down her arm, and the canvas rippled. Gathering her determination, like a swimmer faced with a cold lake, she hurled herself forward, feeling the membrane between here and there part, tugging at her face and body. Then she was through, and the darkness closed in around her.
-X X X-
Ten times the clock tower's bell tolled, ten times it rang for joys and sorrows. Ten times for glory and ten times for passion. These thoughts came unbidden to Shido's mind but were irresistible, unable to be turned away. The bells shouted them forth as boldly and brazenly as if they'd used words.
Shido was getting near, now. The city was huge, but the tower reared up above him now, as tall as if one could stand atop its peak and touch the moon. Only another block or two and he would be there at its foot. He wondered from whence it sprang–a cathedral, a palace?–and what it would mean to him when he reached it. Would he find the object of his search, or indeed, its purpose? Or would it be only what it was, a grand edifice of stone and metal given life by a nameless architect's imagination?
It seemed that he was not alone, Shido noted, in seeking the clock tower, for there was a flow in the crowd, a steady tide that seemed to press in that direction. It was almost a current of sorts, and Shido's own progress was not unlike a boat sailing with the flow of a river, for he moved with the crowd but also strode through them at a fast clip. They, he realized, while they were moving in the same direction were also still caught up in their Carnival revels, while Shido did nothing but advance steadily.
It seemed like no time at all before the street opened up again, this time into a great square which must have been the central plaza of the city. To the left and right were rows of shops, broken up by exiting avenues, but the entire far side was made up of one single building, a massive palace. It was a grand, cathedral-like structure; there was nothing of the fortress about it, what with a profusion of arched windows and ornamented and sculpted walls. This was not a castle meant for war or to imprison, but a showpiece, a monument to the glory of the city's rulers. Shido might have mistaken it for a church, but there was nothing of the sacred about it, no message to be found, but only the brazen grandeur of those who were successful in the here and now and left the hereafter to others more suited for it.
Predictably, the clock tower reared high above the palace, framed by a profusion of lesser spires. Its great face glowed with an inner light, a plume of smoke rising to indicate that this was no trick but a specially designed flame-chamber to illuminate the clock.
The palace's great doors had been thrown open, and a throng passed in and out, men and women caught up in the call of Carnival pleasures. The rich and poor alike were there; clearly the palace-keeper made no distinction between the classes, at least not now, not at the height of Carnival.
Shido did not know if this was what he had been beckoned towards, but nonetheless he unerringly set his course towards the door and let himself be carried within.