Абрахам Меррит - Creep, Shadow!

Pausing, I looked him straight in the eyes: "We would collaborate in that letter – you and I."

He leaned back, appraising me with expressionless face, but I had not missed the flicker of astonishment when I had made my proposal. He was nibbling at the bait, although he had not yet swallowed it. He asked:

"Why?"

"Because of you," I said, and walked over to him: "De Keradel, I want to stay here. With you. But not as one held by ancestral memories. Not by an imagination stimulated or guided by you or your daughter. Nor by suggestion nor sorcery. I want to stay here wide-awake and all myself. Nor have the charms of your daughter anything to do with that desire. I care little for women, de Keradel, except for the naked lady they name Truth. It is because of you, solely because of you, that I want to stay."

Again he asked: "Why?"

But he had taken the bait. His guard had dropped. Every symphony has its chord, and every chord its dominant note. So has every man and every woman. Discover that note, and learn just how and when to sound it – and man or woman is yours. De Keradel's dominant was vanity – egotism. I struck it heavily.

"Never, I think, has a de Carnac named a de Keradel – Master. Never asked to sit at a de Keradel's feet and learn. I know enough of the histories of our clans to be sure of that. Well, it has come to pass. All my life I have sought to lift Truth's veil. I think you can do that, de Keradel. Therefore – I would stay."

He asked, curiously: "Which of my two stories do you believe?"

I laughed: "Both and neither. Otherwise would I deserve to be your acolyte?"

He said, almost wistfully: "I wish I could trust you… Alain de Carnac! There is much that we could do together."

I answered: "Whether you trust me or do not, I cannot see how I, being here, can harm you. If I should disappear or, for example, appear to have killed myself or seem to have gone insane… that, of course, might harm you."

He shook his head, absently; with a chillingly convincing indifference: "I could be rid of you very easily, de Carnac and there would be no necessity of explanations, but I wish I could trust you."

I said: "If you have nothing to lose by it – why not?"

He said, slowly: "I will."

He picked up the bowl of sacrifice in his hands, and weighed it. He dropped it on the table. Stretching both hands out toward me but without touching me, he did with them that to which, knowing what was in my heart against him, I could not respond. It was an immemorially ancient gesture, a holy gesture that had been taught to me in Tibet by a lama whose life I had saved… and the way de Keradel made that gesture defiled it, although it still held within it the obligation… an obligation beyond life.

Dahut saved me. A sudden flood of sunshine poured into the room. She came through toward us. If anything could have made me believe without reservation, de Keradel's second and commonsense version it would have been Dahut walking through that sunshine. She had on her riding breeches and boots, and a sea-green silk shirt that just matched the color of her eyes, and a beret on her silver gilt hair that was exactly the same green. Coming through the sunshine toward me like this, she knocked de Keradel and everything else out of my head.

She said: "Hello, Alan. It's cleared. Let's take a canter."

She saw the bowl of sacrifice. Her eyes dilated so that I could see the whites both above and below them… and how the orchid hell sparks danced…

De Keradel's face whitened. Then comprehension came into it… a warning, a message, darted from him to her. The Demoiselle's lids dropped, the long lashes swept her cheeks. All this in a split second. I said, carelessly, as though I had observed nothing:

"Fine. I'll change my clothes."

I had known damned well that de Keradel hadn't put that bowl of sacrifice beside me. Now I knew just as damned well that Dahut hadn't, either.

Then who had?

I stepped into my room… again I seemed to hear the buzzing… Alan, beware of Dahut…

Maybe the shadows were going to be kind to me again.

Whatever the mystery of the bowl, Dahut's invitation was a break I hadn't hoped for. I got into my riding togs with haste. I had the idea that the conversation between her and her father would not be entirely amicable, and I didn't want her to have time to change her mind about that gallop. Probably I would not be able to get to the village, but I ought to be able to make the rock where the patient fishermen waited.

I wrote a note to McCann: "Be at the rock tonight from eleven until four. If I don't show up, be there tomorrow night between the same hours. Same holds for night after tomorrow. If you then haven't heard from me, tell Ricori I say to use his own judgment."

Ricori should have landed by then. And if by then I had not been able to get a message to McCann, it would mean that I was in a tight corner – if, indeed, I was in any shape to be in any corner whatsoever. I banked upon Ricori's resourcefulness and ruthlessness as adequate to meet de Keradel's own. Also, he would act swiftly. I wrote the note in duplicate, since after all I might be able to get to the village. I put one in a two ounce bottle, stoppering it tightly. The other I put it my pocket.

I went downstairs whistling, giving artless warning of my approach. I went into the room as though I had not a care nor a suspicion in the world. Nor was I entirely acting; I did have a heady sense of elation; somewhat like that of a fighter who has lost round after round with an opponent whose style has been devastatingly unfamiliar, but who suddenly gets the key to it and knows he can meet it.

The Demoiselle was standing beside the fireplace, switching at her boots with her quirt. De Keradel was still at the table's head, scrunched down a bit, more stolid than I had seen him. The bowl of sacrifice was nowhere in sight. The Demoiselle was rather like a beautiful wasp; De Keradel a quite small Gibraltar repelling stings. I laughed as that comparison came into my head.

Dahut said: "You are gay."

I said: "Indeed I am. Gayer than – " I looked at de Keradel "-than I have been for years."

She did not miss that look, nor his faint answering smile. She said: "Let us go. You are sure you will not join us, my father?"

De Keradel shook his head: "I have much to do."

We went out to the stables. She took the same leggy bay, and I the roan. For a time she rode a little ahead of me, silent; then dropped back. She said: "You are as gay as though you rode to meet a loved woman."

I said: "I hope to meet her. But not on this ride, Dahut."

She whispered: "Is it – Helen?"

"No, Dahut – although Helen has many of her attributes."

"Who is she?"

"You don't know her very well, Dahut. She wears no clothes, except a veil over her face. Her name is Truth. Your father has promised me to lift her veil."

She reined closer; grasped my wrist: "He promised that – to you?"

I said, casually: "Yes. And he rather more than intimated that he need not call you in to assist."

"Why do you tell me this?" Her fingers tightened on my wrist.

"Because, Dahut, I am exceedingly anxious to meet this naked lady Truth with no veil over her face. And I have a feeling that unless from now on I answer all questions with perfect candor, our meeting will be delayed."

She said, dangerously: "Do not play with me. Why did you tell me that?"

"I am not playing with you at all, Dahut. I am only being bluntly honest. So much so that I will give you my secondary reason."

"And that?"

"Divide – and rule," I answered.

She stared at me, uncomprehendingly.

"They tell a story in India," I said. "It is one of their jatakas or animal fables. Tiger Queen and Lion King could not agree. Their enmity upset the jungle. At last they made a bargain. They were to sit on the pans of a balance suspended just over a pool filled with crocodiles. The heavier one obviously would drop into the water, to the delight of the crocodiles. Tiger Queen and Lion King sat on the scales. Each weighed exactly the same. But an ant had hidden himself mid-beam with a grain of sand in his mandibles. 'Ho!' he cried. 'Who bids? And what is bid?' Thus he cried, this humble ant, to Tiger Queen and Lion King. And a grain of sand in his mandibles was life or death to one of them."