Chapter Twenty-Five.

Except for a. single chair and several empty buckets, the little room was devoid of furnishings. These few things sat in a rough circle around the room's central feature. In the middle of the smooth stone floor was a deep depression now filled with hot water. In this impromptu tub lounged the naked form of Ethram-Fal. The steaming water was dark and thick as syrup with powdered Emerald Lotus. The sorcerer wallowed on his back in the sunken pool, his slight, wizened body half floating as he breathed the perfumed air through flaring nostrils and stared upward with dilated eyes. He leaned his shaven head back upon the sharp rim of the tub and idly created visions to amuse himself.

Suspended in the air above his p.r.o.ne form, a silver flower bloomed, its shining petals gleaming like polished steel. It rotated a moment and then burst into a compact ball of scarlet fire. The flame blazed brightly, then flew outward into a thousand separate pinpoints that immediately contracted, spinning into a miniature galaxy. The revolving disk of brilliant motes coalesced, gradually outlining the tiny, perfect form of a woman. Once complete, the fiery homunculus began to whirl in a wild dance, slowly shedding its flames until it was a diminutive but perfect image of the Lady Zelandra. Naked, the little figure writhed in erotic abandon before Ethram-Fal's greedy eyes.

The sorcerer settled himself more deeply in the hot, lotus-laden water, feeling its power seeping into his bones. Above him, the homunculus caressed itself and thrust tiny hands out to Ethram-Fal in shameless supplication. Then, as he looked on, the figure began to tear at itself, rending its flesh with its own hands until it burst abruptly into a misty cloud of crimson droplets.

Ethram-Fal laughed, his mirth sounding metallic and inhuman in the closed stone room. The sorcerer rolled over, letting the image wink out, and turned his mind to more serious things.

He slouched low, letting the thickened water creep up to his lower lip, allowing a bit to slip into his mouth and savoring the bitter bite of it.

His continuing study of Cetriss's legendary discovery had taught him much about it, but had left him curious on a number of key points. Most notably, he had no idea how it had been conceived. It had no place in nature. The Emerald Lotus was a unique hybrid of plant and predatory fungi. Ethram-Fal believed that he now understood each distinctive stage in its odd life cycle. Thinking to feed it again before it went dormant, he had his soldiers drive a horse over the balcony railing and into the pit. It had taken six men with spears to do the job, and one of them had received a kick that stove in his ribs. The horse had fallen beside the lotus, which had remained motionless until sensing the blood from the beast's wounds. The lotus could be approached at any time, and its blossoms harvested, provided that it did not smell blood.

Exactly how it sensed blood he had yet to determine, but a few moments after the horse, wounded by prodding spearpoints, had landed at its side, the lotus had become violently animate, leaping on the beast and feeding upon it. After nearly draining the animal, it bloomed once again, the newer, brighter flowers almost obscuring the ones left unharvested from the pony that he and Ath had given it. Disturbingly, the lotus had seemed less than satisfied with its second horse, and continued to move about the chamber after flowering. Ethram-Fal wondered if it was possible to give the Emerald Lotus too much sustenance. Its appet.i.te seemed limitless, and the blood it consumed added to its size and strength no matter how much it had already absorbed. The sorcerer had stared down into the cylindrical chamber and realized it would be as foolhardy to overfeed the lotus as it would be to starve it. The Emerald Lotus had to be kept alive and thriving, yet if overfed it might prove difficult to manage. The sorcerer had watched it continue to move after its feeding for almost an hour. The lotus prowled around the walls in a restless circle, dragging the body of the horse with it.

It never gave up its victims. They became a part of it, woven into its grisly fabric. The lotus was bigger now, a tangled ma.s.s of hardened branches, razor thorns, and lush, emerald blossoms. The nightmare plant now stood at nearly the height of a man, and fairly blanketed the floor of its chamber. Ethram-Fal knew that, in time, the blooms would dry out and fall away, leaving the bristling bulk of the lotus in a dormant state as it waited patiently for nourishment. Left even longer without blood, it would use the bones of its prey to go to seed, driving black spores into the marrow and letting its outer body fall slowly to dust.

It was fascinating, but frustrating as well. Though he now believed that he knew the lotus and how to control it, he had not developed even a tentative theory as to how Cetriss had created it. Even a sorcerer as skilled and knowledgeable in the ways of growing things as himself could not begin to imagine how such an unnatural conglomeration of plant, animal, and fungus could have been formed. To have created such a thing and have it live for mere moments in the laboratory would have been a triumph; that it was nearly immortal and yielded a powerful drug was practically beyond belief.

Ethram-Fal sat up in the tub, the water making green traceries over his bare shoulders. He mopped his brow and blinked in the steamy heat.

Perhaps the legends were right. Perhaps Cetriss had bargained with the Dark G.o.ds for the lotus. If this was so, then the sorcerer had been a man of great courage as well as great skill. If this was so, then all his own efforts to fit the Emerald Lotus into earthly categories were doomed from the start. It might have been conceived in a place where the laws of nature as men knew them did not exist. Under what strange skies had the Emerald Lotus first blossomed? And who had been the first to harvest it?

Thinking on the accomplishments of Cetriss, Ethram-Fal felt an unaccustomed surge of admiration. No wonder the mage had abandoned all to seek immortality. His greatness had been such that all the brilliant sorcerers of Old Stygia must have seemed little more than insects in comparison. A man like that would have wanted the ages, the G.o.d-like power to rise above the paltry world of men.

Ethram-Fal sighed deeply. He, too, wanted the ages, but he would settle for power over the here and now. The lotus had already enhanced his abilities far beyond his expectations and promised to make him stronger still. To seven scarlet h.e.l.ls with its origins as long as he could continue to harvest its blossoms.

The Stygian slouched back in the tub's warm embrace, eyes slitted and glittering. He could wait a while to feed it now. Next time it shouldn't be a horse. That had proved to be much too difficult.

Ethram-Fal thought of the soldier who had been kicked and had his ribs broken, of how he now lay so uselessly in the Great Chamber. The sorcerer smiled.

Heavy footfalls in the hall outside the room woke him from his pleasant reverie. The blanket hanging over the doorway was thrust roughly aside, and Ath came panting into the room.

"Milord, I beg-" the tall soldier began.

"What is this? Did I not leave explicit orders that I was not to be disturbed?" Ethram-Fal sat up in his bath, a small, shrunken, and naked form that filled the armored warrior with a fear that jellied his guts.

"Milord, please, I would not have come here without reason."

There was a moment's silence while Ethram-Fal thought on this. The yellow-green illumination of the light-globe played along Ath's rangy form, highlighting the nervous tic that leapt beneath his right eye.

"No," said Ethram-Fal finally, "I suppose that you wouldn't. Speak.

What is it?"

A lungful of air escaped from Ath's lips and he realized that he had been holding his breath. A hand went involuntarily to his cheek to quell the tic there.

"There is something that you must see, milord. One of the men has been killed."

"What? How?"

"Please, you must see for yourself, milord. It was one of the guards.

He was found in the room of the great statue."

At that Ethram-Fal was up and out of his bath, scrubbing at his scrawny body with a towel and quickly struggling into his gray robes. He was following Ath down the stone hallway in mere moments, his bare feet leaving damp prints in the dust. They did not speak again until they came into the huge, circular chamber.

A soldier stood at the base of the black statue, thrusting his light-globe feebly at the encroaching darkness. He stared silently at them as they approached. Ethram-Fal hardly noticed the living man at first, his eyes were fixed upon the smooth block of stone between the G.o.d-thing's extended paws.

A man lay spread-eagle there, his head close to the black sphinx's glossy breast. His arms and legs were thrown out to each corner of the smoothly worn block, where black rings of untarnished metal were set in the stone. He was not bound. There was a ragged hole in his chest, piercing the mail. Bright blood spattered the sable stone in loops and strings. It pooled, cooling, beneath the body. The featureless oval of the sphinx's face hung above them like a black moon in the darkness, admitting nothing.

"What in Set's name?" Ethram-Fal's voice was a dry croak.

"It is Dakent, milord." Ath's tones were steady and emotionless. "He was on guard with Phandoros when it happened."

Ethram-Fal's gaze fixed on the man with the light-globe, and the slender Stygian flinched as if stabbed. He did not, however, speak until spoken to.

"What happened? How did your partner come to this?"

Phandoros licked his lips and spoke in a reedy voice. "It grew chill in the courtyard, milord. It was nearly dawn and a wind came up the canyon. I left Dakent alone at the portal to go and fetch my cloak. I found it, took a sip of wine, and returned to find him gone." Phandoros hesitated, swallowing audibly.

"What then?" urged Ethram-Fal impatiently.

"I called for him in the courtyard, then came back in to seek him inside. When I didn't find him, I woke Captain Ath and we searched the palace together. When we came to this room..." The soldier's voice choked off and he seemed unable to go on.

Ethram-Fal turned to his captain, "Ath, continue."

"Outside this room, we heard a voice."

"A voice? Who spoke?" The sorcerer held his hands at his waist, knotting and unknotting his fingers distractedly.

"I don't know, milord. We came in at the far entrance and heard the voice whispering. He spoke no words that I understood. When we lifted our lights and called out, whoever it was fled. We could hear his feet on the stone. We gave chase but hesitated when we saw Dakent. By the time that we started after the intruder again, he had escaped out the portal."

"It's gone? You're sure it left the palace?"

"Positive, milord. I followed outside and heard the sounds of him climbing the canyon wall."

"Climbing that sheer wall?"

"Yes, milord."

"Does anyone else know of this?" demanded Ethram-Fal.

"No, milord. Everyone else sleeps," said Ath.

"Good. No one else shall hear of it. All shall know that Dakent was bitten by an adder while on watch and that his body was given to the lotus. Is that understood?"

"Yes, milord," said Ath.

"Phandoros?"

"Y-yes, milord. It is understood."