"How in the hell could he know about the wolves? And how could you..."
"I told you already, I don't know." I said. I sat thinking and not saying anything, disgusted, maybe, at how ridiculous it all seemed.
And then as we remained silent together, and the fire was the only sound or movement in the room, the name Wolfkiller came to me very distinctly as if someone had spoken it.
But nobody had.
I looked at Nicks, painfully aware that his lips had never moved, and I think all the blood drained from my face. I felt not the dread of death as I had on so many other nights, but an emotion that was really alien to me: fear.
I was still sitting there, too unsure of myself to say anything, when Nicolas kissed me.
"Let's go to bed," he said softly.
Part II The Legacy of Magnus Chapter 1
Part II The Legacy of Magnus
1
It must have been three o'clock in the morning; I'd heard the church bells in my sleep.
And like all sensible men in Paris, we had our door barred and our window locked. Not good for a room with a coal fire, but the roof was a path to our window. And we were locked in.
I was dreaming of the wolves. I was on the mountain and surrounded and I was swinging the old medieval flail. Then the wolves were dead again, and the dream was better, only I had all those miles to walk in the snow. The horse screamed in the snow. My mare turned into a loathsome insect half smashed on the stone floor.
A voice said "Wolfkiller" long and low, a whisper that was like a summons and a tribute at the same time.
I opened my eyes. Or I thought I did. And there was someone standing in the room. A tall, bent figure with its back to the little hearth. Embers still glowed on the hearth. The light moved upwards, etching the edges of the figure clearly, then dying out before it reached the shoulders, the head. But I realized I was looking right at the white face I'd seen in the audience at the theater, and my mind, opening, sharpening, realized the room was locked, that Nicolas lay beside me, that this figure stood over our bed.
I heard Nicolas's breathing. I looked into the white face.
"Wolfkiller," came the voice again. But the lips hadn't moved, and the figure drew nearer and I saw that the face was no mask. Black eyes, quick and calculating black eyes, and white skin, and some appalling smell coming from it, like the smell of moldering clothes in a damp room.
I think I rose up. Or perhaps I was lifted. Because in an instant I was standing on my feet. The sleep was slipping off me like garments. I was backing up into the wall.
The figure had my red cloak in its hands. Desperately I thought of my sword, my muskets. They were under the bed on the floor. And the thing thrust the red cloak towards me and then, through the fur-lined velvet, I felt its hand close on the lapel of my coat.
I was torn forward. I was drawn off my feet across the room. I shouted for Nicolas. I screamed, "Nicki, Nicki!" as loud as I could. I saw the partially opened window, and then suddenly the glass burst into thousands of fragments and the wooden frame was broken out. I was flying over the alleyway, six stories above the ground.
I screamed. I kicked at this thing that was carrying me. Caught up in the red cloak, I twisted, trying to get loose.
But we were flying over the rooftop, and now going up the straight surface of a brick wall! I was dangling in the arm of the creature, and then very suddenly on the surface of a high place, I was thrown down.
I lay for a moment seeing Paris spread out before me in a great circle -- the white snow, and chimney pots and church belfries, and the lowering sky. And then I rose up, stumbling over the fur-lined cloak, and I started to run. I ran to the edge of the roof and looked down. Nothing but a sheer drop of hundreds of feet, and then to another edge and it was exactly the same. I almost fell!
I turned desperate, panting. We were on the top of some square tower, no more than fifty feet across! And I