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"It was kind of you to see me."
"Kind, yes."
"But I must confess that things have… changed since I wrote that letter."
"Indeed." Was that a vibratory warning?
"Yes," I plunged onward. "In fact, since I came here, I-" I paused, not knowing how to continue. "The change has come since I arrived at Fuego del Aire."
Morodor said nothing and we continued our perambulation around the perimeter of the castle. Now I could accurately judge just how high up we were. Perhaps that mist I had seen the first night had been a cloud passing us as if across the face of the moon. And why not? All things seemed possible here. It struck me as ridiculous that just fifty miles from here there were supertankers and express trains, Learjets and paved streets lined with shops dispensing sleekly packaged products manufactured by multinational corporations. Surely all those modern artifacts were part of a fading dream I once had.
The sea was clear of sails for as far as the horizon. It was a flat and glittering pool there solely for the pleasure of this man.
"I'm in love with your sister." I had blurted it out and now I stood stu
But instead, he stopped and stared at me. Then he threw his head back and laughed, a deep booming sound like thunder. Far off, a gull screeched, perhaps in alarm.
"My dear sir," he said. "You really are the limit!"
"And she's in love with me."
"Oh oh oh. I have no doubt that she is."
"I don't-"
His brows gathered darkly like stormclouds. "You believe your race to be run." He moved away. "But fear, not love, ends it." Through another niche, he slid back inside the castle. It was as if he had passed through the wall.
"If I had known that today was the day," Marissa said, "I would have prepared you."
"For what?"
We were sitting in a bower on a swing-chaise. Above our heads arched brilliant hyacinth and bougainvillea, wrapped around and around a white wooden trellis. It was near dusk and the garden was filled with a deep sapphire light that was almost luminescent. A westerly wind brought us the rich scent of the sea.
"For him. We are not… very much alike. At least, superficially."
"Marissa," I said, taking her hand, "are you certain that you
are Morodor's sister?"
"Of course I am. What do you mean?"
"Well, it's obvious, isn't it?" But when she looked at me blankly, I was forced to go on. "What I mean is, he's precisely… what he's supposed to be. At least the way the legends describe… what he is."
Her eyes grew dark and she jerked her hand away. She gave me a basilisk stare. "I should have known." Her voice was filled with bitter contempt. "You're just like the rest. And why shouldn't you be?" She stood. "You think he's a monster. Yes, admit it. A monster!"
Her eyes welled up with tears. "And that makes me a monster too, doesn't it. Well, to hell with you!" And she whirled away.
"Marissa!" I cried in anguish. "That's not what I meant at all."
And I ran after her knowing that it was a lie, that it was what I had meant after all. Morodor was all the legends had said he should be. And more. My God but he was hideous. Pallid and cold as the dead. An engine of negative energy, incapable of any real feeling; of crying or true humor. Or love.
Only love can mend my heart.
I had meant it. How could this golden girl of air and sunlight bear any family ties to that great looming figure of darkness? Where was the sense in it? The rationality? She had feelings. She laughed and cried, felt pleasure and pain. And she loved. She loved.
"Marissa!" I called again, ru
Instead, I stormed back to the castle, searching for Morodor. It was already dark and the lights had been lit. As if by magic. In just the same way that the food was prepared, the wine bottles uncorked, my bed turned down in the evening and made in the morning, my soiled clothes washed, pressed and laid out with the professional's precision. And all done without my seeing a soul.
I found Morodor in the library. It was a room as large as a gallery: at least three floors of books, rising upward until the neat rows were lost in the haze of distance. Narrow wooden walkways circled the library at various levels, co
He was crouched on one of these, three or four steps off the floor. It seemed an odd position for a man of his size.
He was studying a book as I came in but he quietly closed it when he heard me approach.
"What," I said, rather nastily, "no leather bindings?"
His hard ebon eyes regarded me without obvious emotion. "Leather," he said softly, "would mean the needless killing of animals."
"Oh, I see." My tone had turned acid. "It's only humans who need fear you."
He stood up and I backed away, abruptly fearful as he unfolded upward and upward until he stood over me in all his monstrous height.
"Humans," he said, "fear me only because they choose to fear me.
"You mean you haven't given them any cause to fear you?"
"Don't be absurd." He was as close to being a
I closed my eyes and shuddered. "But with what a difference!"
"To some I have been a god."
"Such a dark god." My eyes flew open.
"There is a need for that, too." He put the book way. "Yet I am a man for all that."
"A man who can't sleep, who doesn't dream."
"Who ca
"Not even if I drive a stake through your heart?" I did not know whether or not I was serious.
He went across the room to where a strip of the wooden paneling intervened between two bookshelves. His hand merged from the folds of his voluminous cape and for the first time I saw the long talon-like nails exposed. I shivered as I saw them dig into the wood with ferocious strength. But not in any hot animal way. The movement was as precise as a surgeon peeling back a patient's peritoneum.
Morodor returned with a shard of wood perhaps eighteen inches in length. It was slightly tapered at one end, not needle sharp but pointed enough to do its work. He thrust it into my hands. "Here," he said harshly. "Do it now."
For an instant, I intended to do just that. But then something inside me cooled. I threw the stake from me. "I'll do no such thing."
He actually seemed disappointed. "No matter. That part of the legend, as others, is incorrect." He went back to his perch on the ladder, his long legs drawn up tightly beneath the cape, the outline of his bony knees like a violent set of punctuation marks on a blank page.
"Legends," he said, "are like funerals. They both serve the same purpose. They give comfort without which the encroachment of terrifying entropy would snuff out man's desire-his absolute hunger-for life."
He looked from his long nails up into my face. "Legends are created to set up their own kind of terror. But it is a terror very carefully bounded by certain limitations: the werewolf can be killed by a silver bullet, the medusa by seeing her own reflection in a mirror.
"You see? Always there is a way out for the intrepid. It is a necessary safety valve venting the terror that lurks within all mankind-atavistic darkness, the unconscious. And death."
He rested his long arms in his lap. "How secure do you imagine mankind would feel if all of them out there knew the reality of it? That there is no escape for me. No stake through the heart."