The Skrayling Tree toa-2 Read online

  The gaunt figure who raised his bowler hat to me was dressed in a neat black overcoat, with black polished shoes and a copy of the local newspaper under his arm. His hard black eyes shifted in the depths of their sockets. His thin, peculiar smile chilled the surrounding air. "Forgive me for coming so early, Countess. I have a message for your husband. Could I, do you think, see him for a moment?"

  "Captain Klosterheim!" I was shocked. How had he known where to find me?

  He bowed a modest head. "Merely Herr Klosterheim, these days, dear lady. I have returned to my civilian calling. I am with the church again, though in a lay capacity. It has taken some time to locate you. My business with your husband is urgent and in his interest, I think."

  "You know nothing of the men who were here in the night?"

  "I do not understand you, my lady."

  I loathed the idea of being further involved with this villainous ex-Nazi who had allied himself with Ulric's cousin Gaynor. Was he the supernatural medium Ulric had sensed? I doubted it. His psychic presence was powerful, and I would have detected it before now. On the other hand he might be the only means I had of discovering where they had taken Ulric, so I drew on my professional courtesy and invited him in.

  Entering the big main room he immediately went towards the huge artifact the Indians had left behind. "The Kakatanawa were here?"

  "Last night. What do you know?"

  Scarcely thinking, I took a double-barreled Purdy's from the cabinet and dropped in two shells. Then I leveled the gun at Klosterheim. He looked around at me in surprise.

  "Oh, madam, I mean you no ill!" He clearly believed I was going to blow him apart on the spot.

  "You recognize that thing?"

  "It's a Kakatanawa medicine shield," he said. "Some of them think it helps protect them when they go into the spirit lands."

  "The spirit lands? That's where they have gone?"

  "Gone, madam? No, indeed. They mean here. These are their spirit lands. They hold us in considerable awe."

  I motioned with the gun for him to sit in one of the deep leather armchairs. He seemed to spill across it. In certain lights he became almost two-dimensional, a black-and'white shadow against the dark hide. "Then where have they gone?"

  He looked at the chair as if he had not known such comfort were possible. "Back to their own world, I would guess."

  "Why have they taken him?"

  "I am not sure. I knew you were in some kind of danger, and I hoped we could exchange information."

  "Why should I help you, Herr Klosterheim? Or you help us? You are our enemy. You were Gaynor's creature. I understood you to be dead."

  "Only a little, my lady. It is my fate. I have my loyalties, too."

  "To whom?"

  "To my master."

  "Your master was torn apart by the Lords of the Higher Worlds on Morn. I watched it happen."

  "Gaynor von Minct was not my master, lady. We were allies, but he was not my superior. That was mere convenience to explain our presence together." He might even have been a little offended by my presumption. "My master is the essence. Gaynor is merely the vapor. My master is the Prince of Darkness, Lord Lucifer."

  I would have laughed if I were not in such bizarre circumstances. "So do you come here from Hell? Is that where my husband is to be found-the Underworld?"

  "I do come from Hell, my lady, though not directly, and if your husband were already there, I would not be here."

  "I am only interested in my husband's whereabouts, sir."

  He shrugged and pointed at the Kakatanawa artifact. "That would no doubt help, but they would probably kill you, too."

  "They mean to kill my husband?"

  "Quite possibly. I was, however, referring to myself. The Kakatanawa have no liking for me or for Gaynor, but Gaynor's interests are no longer mine. Our paths parted. I went forward. He went back. Now I am something of a watcher on the sidelines." His cadaverous features showed a certain humor.

  "I am certain you are not here through the promptings of a Christian heart, Herr Klosterheim."

  "No, madam. I came to propose an alliance. Have you heard of a hero called Ayanawatta? Longfellow wrote about him. In English 'Hiawatha'? His name was used for a local poem, I believe."

  I had, of course, read Longfellow's rather unfashionable but hypnotic work. However, I was scarcely in the mood to discuss creaking classics of American literature. I think I might have gestured with the gun. Klosterheim put up a bony hand.

  "I assure you I am in no way being facetious. I see I must put it another way." He hesitated. I knew the dilemma of all prescient creatures, or all those who have been into a future and seen the consequence of some action. Even to speak of the future was to create another "brane," another branch of the great multiversal tree. And that creation in turn could confuse any plans one might have made for oneself to negotiate the worlds. So we were inclined to speak somewhat cryptically of what we knew. Most of our omens were as obscure as the Guardian crossword.

  "Do you know where Gaynor is?"

  "I believe I do, in relation to our present circumstances and his own." He spoke with habitual care.

  "Where would that be?"

  "He could be where your husband is." An awkward, significant pause.

  "So those were Gaynor's men?"

  "Far from it, my lady. At least, I assume so." He again fell silent. "I came to propose an alliance. It would be even more valuable to you, I suspect. I can guarantee nothing, of course . . ."

  "You expect me to believe one who, by his own confession, serves the Master of Lies?"

  "Madam, we have interests in common. You seek your husband and I, as always, seek the Grail."

  "We do not own the Holy Grail, Herr Klosterheim. We no longer even own the house it is supposed to reside in. Haven't you

  noticed that the East is now under Stalin's benign protection? Perhaps that ex-

  priest has the magic cup?"

  "I doubt it, madam. I do believe your husband and the Grail have a peculiar relationship and that if I find him I shall find what I seek. Is that not worth a truce between us?"

  "Perhaps. Tell me how I may follow my husband and his abductors."

  Klosterheim was reluctant to give away information. He brooded for a moment, then gestured towards the round frame. "That medicine shield should get you there. You can tell by its size it has no business being here. If you were to give it the opportunity to return to where it came from, it might take you with it."

  "Why do you tell me that? Why do you not use the shield yourself?"

  "Madam, I do not have your skills and talents." His voice was dry, almost mocking. "I am a mere mortal. Not even a demon, madam. Just a creature of the Devil, you know. An indentured soul. I go where I am bid."

  "I seem to remember that you had turned against Satan. I gather you found him a disappointment?"

  Klosterheim's face clouded. He rose from the chair. "My spiritual life is my own." He stared thoughtfully into the barrels of my shotgun and shrugged. "You have the power to go where I need to go."

  "You require a guide? When I have no idea where they have taken Ulric? Less idea than you, apparently."

  "I lack your grace." He spoke quietly, though his jaw tightened as if in anger. "Countess, it was your husband's help I sought." Something struggled in him. "But I think it is time for reconciliation."

  "With Lucifer?"

  "Possibly. I opposed my master as my master opposed his. I scarcely understand this mania for solipsism or how it came about. Once half our lives were spent contemplating God and the nature of evil. Now Satan's domain throughout the multiverse shrinks steadily." He did not sound optimistic.

  I thought him completely mad with his weird, twisted pieties. I had made it my business to read old family histories long before I decided to marry Ulric. Half the von Beks, it seemed, had had dealings with the supernatural and denied it or were disbelieved. A manuscript had only recently been found which claimed to be some sort of ancestral
record, written in an idiosyncratic hand in old German; but the East German authorities, unfortunately, had claimed it as a state archive, and we had not yet been able to read it. There was a suggestion that its contents were too dangerous to publish. We did know, however, that it had something to do with the Holy Grail and the Devil.

  Again he gestured towards the medicine shield. "That will take you to your husband, if he still lives. I don't require a guide. I require a key. I do not travel so easily between the worlds as you. Few do. I have given you all the information I can to help you find Count Ulric. He does not possess what I want, but what I want is in his power to grant me. I hoped he would have the key."

  I was losing interest in the conversation. I had decided to see what the Kakatanawa medicine shield could do for me. Perhaps I should have been more cautious, but I was desperate to follow Ulric, ready to believe almost anything in order to find him.

  "Key?" I asked impatiently.

  "There is another way to reach the world to which he's been taken. A door of some kind. Perhaps on the Isle of Morn."

  "How did you think Ulric could help you?"

  "I hoped the door through to that world is on Morn and the key to that door would be in your husband's keeping." He seemed deeply disappointed, as if this was the culmination of a long quest which had proven to be useless.

  "I can assure you we have no mysterious keys."

  "You have the sword," he said, without much hope. "You have the black sword."

  "As far as I know," I told him, "that, too, is in the hands of the East German authorities."

  He looked up in some dismay. "It's in the East?"

  "Unless the Russians now have it."

  He frowned. "Then I have bothered you unnecessarily."

  "In which case ..." I gestured with the shotgun.

  He nodded agreeably and began walking towards the front door. "I'm obliged to you, madam. I wish you well."

  I was still in an appalling daze as I watched him open the door and leave. I followed him and saw that he had come in a taxi. It was the same driver who had brought us from Englishtown. I had a sudden thought, asked him to wait, and went inside. I wrote a hasty note to the children, came out, and asked him to post it for me. As Klosterheim got into his cab, the driver waved cheerfully. He had no sense of the supernatural tensions in the air, nor of the heartbreaking tensions within me, the impossible decision I had to make.

  After watching them drive off, I returned to the house and picked up the medicine shield. I had no interest in Klosterheim's ambitions or any conflict he was engaged in. All I cared about was the information he had given me. I was prepared to risk all to let the shield take me to my husband.

  Almost in a trance, I carried the thing through a blustering wind that tugged and buffeted at it, down to the jetty. Then I stripped off my outer clothes, threw the shield into the water and gasped as I flung myself after it. Feeling it move under me, I climbed onto it, using it like a raft. The wind wailed and bit at my flesh, but now the shield had a life of its own. It felt as if muscles began to form in the skin as it moved rapidly across the water out towards the island we had visited. I expected it to follow its owner into the maelstrom.

  Had the medicine shield come completely alive? Did it have intelligence;1 Or did it intend to fling me against the rocks? For now it seemed to protect me as the cold water heaved and the cold wind blew.

  My fingers dug deep into the edges. Even my toes tried to grip parts of the frame as it bucked and kicked under me.

  Then I felt it lift suddenly and move rapidly out to sea, as if it hoped to escape what threatened us. My fingers were in agony,

  but I would have clung on dead or alive. My will had molded me to that huge woven frame.

  All at once it was diving. I had no time to catch my breath, and I no longer had gills. It was going to drown me!

  I saw the high jagged pillars of rock coming up towards me, saw massive dark shapes moving in the swirling water. I cursed myself for an irresponsible fool as my lungs began to fail. I felt my grip on the shield weakening, my senses dimming, as I was dragged inexorably downward.

  CHAPTER TWO

  On the Snores or Gitche Gumee

  Nine by nine and seven by seven,

  We shall seek me roots of heaven.

  WHELDRAKE,

  'A Border Tragedy"

  Suddenly I had burst back out of the water into blinding light. I could see nothing and could hear only the wild keening of a wind. Something icy had me in its grasp. Frozen air wrapped itself around me and effortlessly ripped my hands from the shield. My willpower was useless in the face of such a force. I did all I could to get my grip back, but the wind was relentless. If I had not known it before, I certainly understood it now. This was a sentient wind, a powerful elemental, which clearly directed its wrath specifically at me. I could sense its hatred, its personality. I could almost see a face glaring into mine. I could not imagine how I had offended it or why it should pursue me, but pursue me it did.

  There was absolutely no resisting that force. It snatched the shield away and threw me in the other direction. I believe it intended to kill me. I felt myself strike water, and then I had lost consciousness.

  I had not expected to awake at all. When I did, I felt a surprising sense of well-being, of safety. I was lying on springy turf, tightly wrapped in some sort of blanket. I could smell the sweet grass and heather. I was warm. I was relaxed. Yet I remained calmly aware of the danger I had escaped and of the urgency of my mission. In contrast to my earlier experience, I now felt completely in control of my body, even though I could barely move a finger! Had I reached the realm where my husband had been taken? Was Ulric near? Was that why I felt safe?

  I could see the grey, unstable sky. It was either dawn or twilight. I could not turn my head enough to see a horizon. I moved my eyes. Above me a man's face looked down at me with an expression of stern amusement.

  He was a complete stranger, but instinctively I knew I had no reason to fear him. I had found my imagined warrior. The smooth-shaven face was well proportioned, even handsome, and decorated with elaborate tattoos etched across his forehead, cheeks, chin and scalp. His head was mostly shaven, the only piece of hair worn in a long, gleaming black lock interwoven with three bright eagle feathers, but his healthy copper skin told me that he was not one of those who had captured my husband. He wore earrings, and his nose and lower lip were pierced with small sapphires. On his temples, cheeks and chin was a deep scarlet smear of paint. Running down either side of his chest were long, white scars. Between these scars a design had been pricked into his skin. On his well-muscled upper arms were intricately worked bracelets of raw gold, and around his throat he wore a wide band of mother-of-pearl which seemed to be a kind of armor. His tattoos were in vivid reds, greens, blues and yellows and reminded me of those I had once seen displayed by powerful shamans in the South Seas. A nobleman of some sort, confident of his own ability to protect the wealth he displayed with such careless challenge.

  He regarded me with equal frankness, his dark eyes full of ironic humor. "Sometimes an angler prays for a catch and gets more than he bargains for." He spoke a language I understood but could not identify. This was a common experience for moonbeam walkers.

  "You caught me?"

  "Apparently. I am rather proud of myself. It was less exhausting than I had expected. I enjoyed the dancing. With the appropriate incantations and trance, I laid out the robe with the head

  facing the moon and the tail facing the water. I did as I had learned. I invoked the spirits of the wind. I called to the water to give up her treasure. Sure enough there was an agitation in the air. A strong wind blew. Being in a trance, I heard it from a distance. When I at last opened my eyes I found you thus and wrapped you in the robe for your health, your modesty and because the incantation demanded it." He spoke with a sardonic, friendly, slightly self-

  mocking air.

  "I was naked?" Now I recognized the special sensation of so
ft animal skin against my own. Whatever one's notions about taking a fellow creature's life, that touch is irresistible. While I'd accepted my adopted culture's ways, I had no special concern about being seen undressed. I had far more urgent questions. "But what of the medicine shield?"

  He frowned. "The Kakatanawa war-shield? That was yours?"

  "What happened to it? I was caught up in a violent wind which seemed to have intelligence. It deliberately separated me from the shield."

  The warrior was apologetic. "I believe-you'll recall I was in a trance-I believe that is what I saw spinning away in that direction. A wind demon, perhaps?" He pointed to a thickly wooded hillside some distance away around the lake. "So it was a medicine shield and has been stolen by a demon. Or escaped you both and gone home to its owner?"

  "Without me," I said bitterly. I was beginning to realize that this man had, through his magic, somehow saved my life. But had he or the elemental diverted me from following Ulric? "That shield was all that linked me with my husband. He could be anywhere in the multiverse."

  "You are of the Kakatanawa? Forgive me; I knew they had adopted one of you in their number, but not two." He was obviously puzzled, but some sort of understanding was dawning, also.

  "I am not a Kakatanawa." I was no longer quite so thoroughly in control of my emotions. A note of desperation must have come into my voice. "But I seek the shield's owner."

  He responded like a gentleman. He seemed to understand the supernatural conditions involved and lowered his head in thought.

  "Where is its owner? Do you know?" I began to struggle in the soft robe. With a word of apology, that elegant woodsman knelt down and untied rawhide knots.

  "No doubt with the other Kakatanawa," he said. "But that is where I am going, so it's reassuring for me. I do not know how they will receive me. It is my destiny to carry my wisdom to them. The fates begin the weaving long before we understand the design. We will go together as our mutual fate demands. We will be stronger together. We will achieve our different goals and thus bring all to resolution."