one unbroken Mobius jump directly to the Madonie, without ever having been there physically - then the experiment would provide irrefutable proof that indeed he'd inherited some gradually fading trace of Alec Kyle's metaphysical skill.
And after Le Manse ... there were other, perhaps far more important places.
It was completely irresistible. Placing his breakfast tray outside his door and locking it, Harry forced his mind's Mobius maths to a familiar configuration, conjured a door, stepped across the threshold and -
- Went there, to the mountains of the Madonie! It worked!
There had been two locations, one of them at a lower elevation, well away from the place, and the other close up.
Harry had materialized at the first one, thus keeping a healthy distance between himself and the actual house. But there it was, just as he had seen it in his vision:
He craned his neck to look up and up, at stark yellow and white clifs -yellow in sunlight, as he now saw, - and at the squat, white-walled castle, mansion, or chateau, perched there in the rim of oblivion. A fortress on a mountainside from the Necroscope's viewpoint, where he stood on a winding road halfway between the sea and the sky.
The sea, of course! He remembered how, during that brief, earlier 'visit,' he'd smelled the Tyrrhenian at his back.
And now he could turn and take it in: the great sweep of Sicily's northern coast against the blue dazzle of white-flecked ocean, hazing towards Palermo in the west, and curving over the distant horizon to Messina in the east.
There were cars and a bus groaning their way up the steep road. Harry didn't especially care to be noticed; turning his back to the vehicles, he looked again at Le Manse Madonie:
That somehow foreboding mansion, built on the edge of a sheer drop that must be almost four thousand feet to the sloping scree of a rubble-strewn gorge. And the great clif of the mountainside itself, all sun-bleached rocks, brittle scrub and a few stunted Mediterranean pines ... exactly as he'd seen it before. Deja vu indeed!
But in reverse? More like Vega du! Harry thought, drawing himself back to the present.
The vehicles had disappeared around a bend, been eaten up by a spur of the mountain where the road had been cut through it. The Necroscope was quite alone. He found a flat-topped rock by the side of the road and sat down. Now, with a bit of luck, he should be able to find someone who could help him.
Yet even as his mind slipped into its familiar mode, that weird telepathic talent which allowed him to talk to the dead, something warned him that he should guard his thoughts. It was the place ... or rather, it was that place up there, teetering on the rim of the cliff like that. Oh, yes, it was as well to whisper, in the presence of the unknown. But a place is only a place after all; so why was Harry sweating? It was a hot day, certainly, but it didn't feel like that kind of sweat.
And if it had been other than day -
- The Necroscope scarcely believed he'd want to be here at all. But he would have to be. Indeed he would have to go in there, into that place. Tonight ...
Which made it imperative that he know something about it. And he would also like to know something about the Francezcis - something about their background, their history - something other than Darcy had told him. Though why he couldn't exactly say ... call it for future reference.
Harry's thoughts - even his most recent, guarded, inward-directed thoughts - were 'audible' to the teeming dead.
They always were, except when he shielded them or aimed them at an individual. By now he would normally have expected someone to answer him, inquire as to his presence here. He was the Necroscope, after all. But no, the telepathic 'aether,' his lines of communication, seemed to be down. No one was interested in him. Or if they were, they weren't expressing that interest.
And yet he knew they were there; he sensed them like phantom callers on a telephone; they 'breathed,' however silently, in his weird mind. But it wasn't Harry who was afraid, it was them. And because they were, and after listening to their silence for a while, so was he ...
... Harry?
He jumped a foot! 'What? Who ...?' With all of his experience, still the Necroscope spun around; and