Roger Zelazny - Donnerjack

Closing her eyes until she gazed out from between her lashes, she gazed down the length of her nude body. There were no changes that she could see, but as the morning sickness proved, the changes were happening. Protectively, she laced her fingers over her still-flat abdomen.

What would the baby—the boy—be like? She and John were both dark-haired, dark-eyed, so likely he would be also. She hoped he would have his father’s build: tall and powerful without being in the least bit bulky. A small smile played about her lips as she imagined the baby, the boy, the young man, her son.

The bath water gradually chilled. She contemplated twisting the tap with her toes to add a bit more heat, then, looking at her pruning fingertips (something that never happened in Virtu), she decided that perhaps she had soaked long enough. Standing calf-deep in the bath, she let the water run down her, forming little beads against her lightly oiled skin (John had made her a gift of some jasmine-scented bath oil when they were in Jamaica).

When she had adjusted to the cooler air, she stepped out onto the bath rug (this from China, its fat flowers cut out to contrast against the deeper plush). While she combed her hair out from the coil she had twisted it into to keep it out of the water, she meditated on what to do with the rest of her day.

John was busy in his office, patiently working on his design for

Death’s Palace of Bones. She disliked going near when he was working on that particular project—instinctively she felt that Death was watching her, and even if John stubbornly refused to dwell upon it, she knew that the palace was only part of the price agreed upon for her return from Deep Fields. She did not blame John for agreeing to Death’s terms— after all, they had seemed impossible to meet. Death might have as soon asked for the moon, but she feared for her unborn son, dreaded the portent in the banshee’s wail.

Banshee. Was that her cry? Ayradyss stood perfectly still, listening. No, what she had heard was just the winter wind chasing the mists through the castle’s turrets.

Quickly she hurried to her closet, took out a long tartan skirt, an Irish cable-knit sweater, heavy stockings, comfortable shoes. The ghosts liked to haunt the regions of the castle that had been recreated to follow John’s fancy of what a Scottish castle should look like. She would go seeking them, ask them about the portents. Who better to ask about Death and his plans than those who walked the line between life and whatever in Verite passed for Deep Fields?

John must have his plans for defeating Death—she was certain of that. Scientist and poet he might be, but he also bore something of a warrior’s soul. Verite-born, Ayradyss knew a few of the details of the religion practiced by many of her aion kin. John had his place in their pantheon—did he know?—a demigod of sorts. Still, his plans, his abilities, did not mean that she could not investigate on her own.

The unborn child was her son, too; he was being claimed as ransom for her life. It was her place, as much as John’s, to defend him from Death. Face set, she hurried from the bedroom suite, up the stone stairs, out onto the battlements. Her long, full skirts snapped in the wind as her wings had in Virtu, but this time she did not mourn her wings—she had something more precious within her, something she was determined to protect.

“Banshee!” she cried. “Banshee!”

The wind took the words from her lips so quickly she barely heard them. Arms outspread, she spun. Her skirts belled round and full, her hair whipped out massy and dark. A cyclone of tartan and ebony, she danced in the wind.

Rain began to fall, stinging and cold. Turning to hail, it pebbled the slick stone, cobbled the flags with tiny lumps of ice. Still she danced, her head light and swimming now, her feet gliding on the ice. Ayradyss waltzed with the wind and weather.

She felt a firm pressure at her back, a hand clasp her icy fingers, but her streaming eyes could discover nothing of her partner. Crystals were forming both in her hair and along the thick cables of her sweater: jewels from the Winter King’s hoard. An orchestra played, too: ringing hail, the moan of stone, the shriller howl of the gusts that tore through the crenelations.

Almost now, almost, she could see her partner. His face was white, the cheekbones high, so high, the teeth so white, even against the whiteness of his face. All of him was white but the darkness of his eyes, and these were as dark as the pit, dark as night, dark as…

“Dinna ye ken’t’ cum oot of th’ rain?” said a harsh voice, a clatter of iron underlying the words.

Ayradyss felt the Winter King spin her away, handing her off to this new partner. She reached obediently to take the hand she saw before her, but her numbed fingers met with nothing, not even resistance. Letting her hand fall, she slowed her dancing steps—slipping and sliding as she did this thing.

“Lass, yer wet to the bone and half ice,” chided the voice, her mind asserting the program that sorted the strange burred words into something easier to understand. “What are you doing oot here in such weather? I’ll have a word with that husband of yours for not looking out better for you! Laird of the castle or nae, see if I don’t!”

Ayradyss let herself be guided to the heated interior of the castle. As the ice melted from her hair and her fingers pricked at the warmth, she recognized her interrogator.

“Ghost!” she said happily. “I was hoping to find you!”

“Find me!” the crusader ghost groused. “Lass, ye almost joined me! Get yourself into some dry clothes before you kill yourself and your bairn!”

“But it’s about my baby I want to talk to you,” Ayradyss protested, wringing out her streaming hair, shivering as the warmth of the castle forced sensation into hands and toes.

“Do you? Do you now?” The ghost’s expression remained severe, but something in its burred tones softened. “Dry off first, drink some soup to warm your insides, and you might find me in the long gallery.”

As a means of ending discussion, the ghost faded out. His chain lingered behind him a moment longer, then vanished as well. Ayradyss shivered, sneezed, and gathering her wet skirts in both hands, hurried down to the master bedroom.

Some time later, hair completely dry, clad in fresh warm clothing from the skin out, and a pint of thick beef and barley soup inside of her (and a second helping in a heavy pottery mug in her hand) she climbed the stair to the long gallery.

It was a good place to meet with a ghost, she thought. Although she and John had selected a Persian runner to cover the floor, the bare stone was still visible along the sides. The tapestries and portraits (oils that she had purchased in various antique shops, giggling at the expressions on some of the faces—why would anyone wish to be remembered as seeming so severe?) relieved the dark stone but did little to alleviate the corridor’s gloom. Not even discretely arrayed artificial light could do so. It was as if the gallery had decided that it was meant to be a shadowed, haunted place and consciously defied any efforts to make it otherwise.

Sipping from her mug, Ayradyss walked slowly down the corridor, the sound of her footfalls swallowed by the carpet. Coming to a window with a deep stone sill, she set her mug down. She was digging after a piece of beef with her spoon when she heard the clanking of the ghost’s chain.

“Thank you for coming, sir,” she said politely, taking her skirts in hand to give him a deep curtsy.

“I had no choice, now, did I?” the ghost said grouchily. “If I dinna cum, y’would go dancing in the wind and snow again like a daft thing.”

“Not so daft,” Ayradyss said, tossing her head and arching her eyebrows at him. “I did find you now, didn’t I?”