Barbara Hambly - 02 TRAVELING WITH THE DEAD

"Beautiful," the Bey said, "and more beautiful still in his heart. He was ardent as fire, my Kahlil. A young warrior, and loyal to me to the bottom of his soul." It was as if he heard Asher's thought, And you repaid him thus? But Asher did not speak it, so there was no anger in the vampire's quiet reply.

"He would have been one of my living servants, here in this house. This was what I had planned." The shouting of the mob was very near, the sky above the tall Turkish roof-usually so dark-smoldering with the flare of torches. Smoke and rage burned the air.

"This was hard for me. I wanted to make him as I am, to keep him by me in his glorious youth forever. But I knew this was no longer possible for me. Fifty, sixty years ago, in the days of Abdul Mezid, when my friend Tinnin was killed, I tried to make a fledgling. Though that youth's mind stayed alive, a burning flame in mine through the death of his body, when I returned that flame to the flesh, there was no change, no alteration in the flesh itself. The fledgling rotted as he lay until in mercy I struck off his head. This had happened... once, maybe twice before to me, long ago. But afterward all was well. This time-after Tinnin- the power did not return."

He laughed soundlessly, bitterly, a tall figure in robes mottled like a tiger's in the shifting light. The jewels he wore threw back fire from the reddish glare of the sky, echoes of it catching in the ice he carried like some monstrous, Sisyphean gem loaded onto him by hilarious gods.

"I tried three, perhaps four times since that time, and I knew there was little chance of bringing Kahlil across to the vampire state. And I knew this was God's mockery of me: that having found the one I could trust, the one who could help me, I had squandered my gift of dark immortality on such as Zardalu and the Baykus Kadine, and that cobweb witch Zenaida who hides in the old harem, only because I needed those I could command to do my bidding.

"And then the interloper came."

The stairs from the old bans court were the worst. Where it had been silent, now the shouting was clearly audible, and drifts of smoke swirled harsh in the air. Asher abandoned the lamp to its niche again, his own injuries stabbing him as he struggled to help the shrouded form up the long flights, the Bey at his heels with the huge, unwieldy burden of dripping ice.

"Golge Kurt," said the Bey's soft voice, almost as if it were in his ear, while beneath the bandages Kahlil made soft, broken noises of pain. "The Shadow Wolf. God knows where he came from, or how he came to be vampire. Some Greek witch, no doubt, whom he later escaped... But he is a Turk of the new Turks, this upland peasantry that they've given guns and delusions of rule. I saw him first just after the coup, when all the city was in confusion. He had made a fledgling already- as easy as spitting-to challenge my power. I killed the fledgling-but I could not kill him. And after that I had no choice."

They reached the long upper chamber. Asher sank, hand pressed to his side, onto the divan, the wrapped and shrouded living corpse beside him. While the Bey unfurled his oilskin to let the ice clatter down, filling the dry tiles of the fish pool, Kahlil, instead of lying on the divan, remained sitting beside Asher, clinging to him, as if frantic for the comfort of a living touch. Stinking, rotting, horrible within the bandages, but Asher could not thrust him away.

The Bey came back, tenderly lifted the boy's body and carried it to the ice. Watching them in the juddering orange flare of the lamps around the walls, Asher wondered bitterly how many men fell back on that phrase, I had no choice, when it came to what they wanted-even when it did that to those they loved.

Ernchester, when he had killed Cramer.

Karolyi, certainly, if he thought at all.

He himself.

Olumsiz Bey knelt on the steps of the basin, holding the putrefying bundle that had been the boy's hand.

"So you tried to make him vampire," Asher said quietly. "Even though you knew."

The Bey nodded, once.

"And when you saw that though his mind survived, his body was beginning to rot, you sent for Ernchester."

"I could rule him," the Bey said simply. "I knew him. I knew he was weak. He could get fledglings but had not the strength to command them. Once away from that woman of his-"

"Who loves him," Asher said. "Who cares for him, as you care for Kahlil."

The Bey did not even look up at that, didn't take his eyes from his friend; only shook his head, a heavy, animal gesture, impatient and puzzled, as if he truly did not understand what Asher said. "Women don't love. Not like men. Not like a man loves one who is the son he would have chosen out of all souls in the Universe. No love is like that."

No, thought Asher. A vampire to the end, even to the nature of his love.

The Bey did not even pause to speculate, to justify. His love was unique, and because it was-and because it was his-that justified all. He went on, "But without the Sultan's power, I had to find what help I could. A savage, Karolyi, for all his civilized manners. A Magyar Hun. I think he had already begun to guess at what I was before I sent for his help. I think he had already wondered what use he-in the name of his country-could make of the Undead."

He leaned over to touch the forehead of the boy who lay now unmoving in his bed of ice. The great uneven blocks were old, dried and cleared and slick; they caught the feeble ember light like monster diamonds, faceting it to a wild rainbow over the walls, as if from a bier of jewels.

"I was able to hold Golge Kurt at bay for a time-I think ail would have been well, had not Karolyi chosen to make what he could of the chance, to try to force Ernchester into the service of his country." His eyes, in their dark hollows, were dying coals of some old rage. "Country. We the Undead at least were human once. Our sins are human sin. Magnified a million times, but human. These countries, these nations-they are not human. They care not what they use, so long as it serves them. They care not what they do, and their sins are far beyond ours, literally of a different nature. You have served them. Karolyi told me that, Karolyi who is hollow inside, nothing inside, because this 'country' requires that he be nothing. You know."

"Yes," Asher said, remembering again. "I know."

He shook his head. "And so Karolyi delayed. And Golge Kurt was able to gain a little more territory, to learn a little more of the city. I fear that when Ernchester tried to come into the city to obey my summons, he was met by Golge Kurt and made a prisoner, and a slave. I thought that if I could trap the woman through you, I could draw Ernchester to me... Or at the worst, use her to make Kahlil whole. But it did not come about. And now it is finished."

Shouts rang in the courtyard, echoing from distant regions of the house. In the windows that ringed each shallow dome, the sky was red, like a cloth used to mop blood. The Bey reached in his robe, threw something to Asher that caught a spangle of the light as it flew. It was a key.

"Go," he said. "First light is not far off. They'll be gone before then, and they will not come here. They will not even realize there is a stairway, though they stand at its foot looking up. Such is still my power." After a moment's thought he took the halberd and slid it across the floor to him, the silver blade flashing.

"You may meet one of them still," he added. "If it is Golge Kurt, kill him. Not for me. He is a man of the new breed who will try to buy power from whatever country he thinks will give it him. And he will buy it with any terms they ask. He is like your Karolyi. I only wanted one fledgling. They will want hundreds, loyal to their service. And what will come of that I do not wish to think."

He shook his heavy head, turned back to the boy in the ice. His voice was so low as to be almost inaudible, like the murmur of a fading ghost. "And-thank you, Scheherazade. Thank you for your help."