The Drawing of the Dark

He sighed heavily, and turned right at the corner of the inn instead of pressing on toward the Rotenturmstrasse. Soon he had come round into the inn's stableyard, and he leaned on a clothesline pole for a few moments and looked reminiscently about.

I see Werner hasn't re-roofed the stalls that were blown up by that petard, he noted. I wonder if he still thinks I was responsible for that. Probably he does. At least somebody patched the fence where Zapolya's damned forty-pound iron ball passed through it. And over there's where the northmen were quartered.

He crossed the yard to the stables and saw that there were still several straw-filled bunks against the back wall. Almost without conscious thought he rolled into the lowest, closed his eyes and was soon asleep.

With the lucidity typical of afternoon dreams, he was sitting across a table from Epiphany. Her hair was still more dark than gray, and her expressions and gestures hadn't yet lost the careless spontaneity of youth.

Though he couldn't hear his own words - in fact could apparently only speak as long as he didn't try to listen to himself - he knew he was talking earnestly to her, trying to make her understand something. What was it he had been trying to make her understand, that long-ago morning? Oh, of course! That she'd be mad to go through with her planned marriage to Max Hallstadt - that she ought instead to marry Duffy. He paused in his speech for a sip of beer, and had a moment of difficulty in regaining the thread of his faultlessly logical argument.

'Oh, Brian,' she said, rolling her eyes in half-feigned exasperation, 'why do you only bring these things up when you're sick, drunk or tired?'

'Epiphany!' he protested. 'I'm always sick, drunk 'or tired!'

The scene flickered away, and he found himself shoving his way into the vestibule of St Peter's Church. Several of Hallstadt's friends were there, evidently posted for the specific purpose of keeping the Irishman out if he should attempt to get in and disrupt the wedding.

'Come on, now, Brian,' spoke one - what had his name been? Klaus somebody. 'You're not a part of this picture anymore.

'Out of my way, you poxy toad,' Duffy said, in a voice loud enough to turn heads in the nearer pews. 'Hallstadt! Damn your eyes, you won't -'A fist in his stomach doubled him up and, silenced him for a moment, but then he had lashed out with a punch of his own, and Klaus was jigging backward at an impossible-to-maintain angle, and colliding with the baptismal font...

The yard-tall pillar with its marble bowl tottered, leaned

- as Klaus rolled off to one side - and then went to the

floor-tiles with a terrible echoing crash. Holy water splashed up into the faces of appalled ushers, and shards of marble were spinning across the floor. Another of Hallstadt's friends seized Duffy by the arm, but the Irishman shook him off.

He took a step up the aisle. 'Hallstadt, you son-of-a-whore, draw your sword and face me if you're not the eunuch everyone takes you for!'

People were leaping to their feet, and he caught one glimpse of Epiphany's veiled, horrified face before a hardy altar boy felled him unconscious with a tall iron crucifix.

Then he was simply falling through a vortex of old scenes and faces, over the muted babble of which he could hear an older man's voice raised in strong, delighted laughter.

Chapter Eighteen

When he opened his eyes he was in deep shadow, and the wall of the inn, which he could just see from where he lay, showed dark gray around the yellow of the windows. God, he thought blurrily. Just a dream this time, was it? It was bad enough to go through those unhappy days in early 'twenty-six, without having to re-live them in my dreams. Ah, but at least they're my memories; better a dozen such than one of those damned dreams of that moonlit lake -which you were risking, drinking all that cursed beer. Stick to wine, lad. He rolled to his feet, slapped straw from his doublet and combed his hair with his fingers, then took a deep breath, let it out, and started toward the building.

From habit he walked in through the kitchen's back door, and caught the red-booted Marko snitching a sweet-roll from a cupboard. 'Marko,' Duffy said, stopping. There was something he'd meant to ask this boy about. What had it been?

'Werner said .1 could have it,' the boy said quickly. I don't care about your damned pastry. Uh. . .oh yes, you've been bringing food to Gustav Vogel. I understand?'

'I was for a while. Werner said I didn't have to anymore.

'Well who is?'

Marko blinked. 'Is what?'

'Bringing the old man food, you idiot.'

'I don't know. Why can't he go out and scavenge it, like everybody else?' h

The boy dashed out the back door, leaving the Irishman wearing a scowl of annoyance and worry. C

The new girl who'd served him earlier was staring at him U from the other side of the fireplace, where she was ladling out bowls of apparently the same stew. 'Where's Epiphany?' Duffy asked her.

'She went to bed early,' the girl answered. She didn't feel well. What are you doing in the kitchen? Guests are supposed to -'Where's Anna, then?'

'Around at the taproom end of the dinning room, I believe. If you want supper you'll have to -'

'You can have mine,' Duffy told her with a smile as he strode past her into the hall. The dining room was full, and alive with the gaiety that comes to people who know they might well be dead in twenty-four hours. Beer was being drunk at a prodigious rate, and Duffy found Anna' crouched beside one of the decorated casks, holding a pitcher under the golden stream from the tap.

She looked up and saw him. 'I thought you left.'

'No, just fell asleep out back. Epiphany's gone to bed?'

'That's - Shrub! This is for Alexis and Casey's table, hurry up - that's right. Why?' She glanced at him suspiciously.

'Oh, give it a rest, Anna, I'm not planning to go up and force any attentions on her. Listen, she had Shrub bringing food to her father, and -'

Shrub scampered up again. 'Hello, Mr Duffy! Anna, two more pitchers for Franz Albertzart and that old lady.'

'Coming up. What were you saying, Brian?'

'Well, Shrub here got Marko to do it, but I ran into Marko just now and he says he stopped.'

'There you go, Shrub.' The boy took the pitchers and' hurried guiltily away. 'Stopped what?'

'Damn it, listen to me. Nobody's been bringing food to old Vogel. Now I'm not going to be too upset if he turns up dead, but I think his daughter might be.'

'Oh, hell,' Anna said quietly. 'You're right. I'll tell her first thing in the morning.' She stood up and brushed a lock of hair out of her face, then looked at him with a little sympathy. 'Brian, what did go wrong, anyway, between you and her?'

As Duffy paused to frame a credible and more or less accurate answer, the door banged open and five young men stamped in. 'Anna!' one of them bawled across the room. 'Five pitchers, pronto!'

The Irishman grinned with one side of his mouth and punched her very softly on the shoulder. 'I'll tell you sometime,' he said, and walked away toward the stairs. He turned and saw that she was watching him. He mouthed the name, Aurelianus, pointing upward.

There was a man asleep on the stairs, and Duffy stepped carefully around him, reflecting that besieged towns probably tended to surrender sooner if there was no wine or beer inside to divert the defenders, now and then; from the bleakness of their position. He got to the top landing and found Aurelianus' door, but just as he was about to knock remembered that the old sorcerer had told him nine 'clock.

Damn, he thought. It's probably not even eight yet. I should have slept a bit longer, maybe carried the dream on to when I left town to go fight at Mohacs. He started tip-toe away, then snorted impatiently, strode back and rapped sharply on the door.

There was a squeal from inside, and overlapping it came Aurelianus' flustered but authoritative, 'Who is it?'

'Finn Mac Cool.'

After a moment the door opened and one of the maids,

with face averted, ducked around the Irishman and hurried away. 'Come in, Brian,' said Aurelianus with weary patience.

The room might have been completely rearranged since Duffy's last visit, but it hadn't changed; it was still a heaped, candlelit collection of tapestries, jewelled weapons, beakers a-bubble with no source of heat, books big enough to serve as walls for a small man's house, and obscure animals stuffed in unlikely postures. The old wizard sat cross-legged on an upholstered stool.

Duffy jerked a thumb after the retreating maid when he'd shut the door. 'I thought that kind of thing wasn't good for you half-breeds.'

After closing his eyes for ten seconds, Aurelianus stared at him and shook his head. 'Your years as a mercenary soldier have coarsened you, Brian, to the point where you're unfit for gracious company. I was merely asking her if any of the maids had tried to come into my room recently; a new girl might not have been told that this room isn't to be entered. And didn't I say nine o'clock?'

'I decided I might have to be heading back to the barracks at around nine. Why don't you just lock your door?'

'Oh, I do, most of the time, but I forget occasionally, and I often misplace my keys.'

'Isn't that kind of careless?' Duffy found a chair, tipped a cat out of it and sat down. 'After all, I suppose some of this junk must be valuable to somebody...'

'Yes,' the old man snapped. 'Very valuable, quite a lot of it. The thing is, I tend to rely - perhaps too heavily! -on other protections.' He nodded toward the door, above and around the top of which Duffy noticed a structure that combined the features of a parrot-perch and a dollhouse. 'Would you like some brandy?'

'What? Oh, certainly.' He waited until the wizard had

poured two glasses of a golden Spanish brandy and handed him one. 'Thank you. What was it you wanted to see me about?' He took a sip, swallowed it, then took a bigger one.

'Nothing special, Brian, I just wanted to chat. After all, I haven't seen you in months.'

'Ah. Well, there's one thing I wanted to talk to you about. Werner intends to fire Epiphany, and this job is just about all she's got in the world. I'd be grateful if you'd tell him she's a permanent employee, and that he'd better not torment her.'

Aurelianus blinked at him quizzically. 'Very well. I gather you and she are not... seeing each other anymore?'

'That's right. She blames you for it, and I'm not sure I don't agree with her.'

To the Irishman's surprise, Aurelianus did not raise his eyebrows and protest. Instead, the old man took a long sip of his wine and said, 'Maybe that's fair and maybe it's not. If it is, try to imagine what things would have broken it up, if I hadn't. Or do you really think you would have run off and lived happily ever after in Ireland?'

'I don't know. It's not - it wasn't - impossible.' Duffy picked up the bottle and refilled his glass.

'How old are you, Brian? You ought to know by now that something always breaks up love affairs unless both parties are willing to compromise themselves. And that compromising is harder to do the older and less flexible and more independent you are. It just isn't in you, Brian. You could no more get married now than you could become a priest, or a sculptor, or a greengrocer.'

Duffy opened his mouth to voice angry denials, then one corner turned up and he closed it. 'Damn you,' he said wryly. 'Then why do I want to, half the time?'

Aurelianus shrugged, 'It's the nature of the species. There's a part of a manes mind that can only relax and go

to sleep when he's with a woman, and that part gets tired of always being tensely awake. It gives orders in so loud a voice that it often drowns out the other components. But when the loud one is asleep at last, the others regain control and chart a new course.' He grinned. 'No equilibrium is possible. If you don't want to put up with the constant seesawing, you must either starve the logical components or bind, gag and look away in a cellar that one insistent one.'

Duffy grimaced and drank some more brandy. 'I'm used to the rocking, and I was never one to get motion-sick,' he said. 'I'll stay on the seesaw.'

Aurelianus bowed. 'You have that option, sir.'

The Irishman smiled at the sorcerer with something akin to affection. 'Do I gather you've been through one or two of these affairs yourself?'

'Oh, aye.' The old man leaned back against a bureau, reached up over his head and found one of his dried snakes. He rolled it unlit between his fingers, staring at it thoughtfully. 'Not in the last three centuries, thank the heavens, but in my comparative youth - yes, a number of entanglements, artfully baited, but each one eventually ending with its own version of the one standard ending.'

Duffy drained his glass again and set it on the table. 'This is a side of you I never glimpsed,' he said. 'Tell me about these girls - tell me about the last one, three centuries ago, for God's sake.'

The wizard's glass was empty, too, and for a moment he goggled at the snake in his left hand and the glass in his right. Then, coming to a decision, he held the glass out for Duffy to refill. 'She was a Sussex witch named Becky Banham,' he said as the liquor splashed messily into his glass. 'She was a small-time country witch, but definitely the real thing - not one of these horoscoping crystal-gazers.'

'And this.. .Liaison broke up because you were too old to compromise and didn't care to starve your logical -'

'Well, no. Not this one'.

'Oh? It was her decision, then?'

'No. She -' He glared defensively at the Irishman. 'She was burned at the stake.'