dim mingling of countless human voices. Cries, songs, the faintest wisps of music, the muted throb of bells.
I moaned. The breeze seemed to lift my hair and I heard my own voice as I had never heard it before crying.
The city dimmed. I let it go, its swarming millions lost again in the vast and wondrous play of lilac shadow and fading light.
"Oh, what have you done, what is this that you've given to me!" I whispered.
And it seemed my words did not stop one after another, rather they ran together until all of my crying was one immense and coherent sound that perfectly amplified my horror and my joy.
If there was a God, he did not matter now. He was part of some dull and dreary realm whose secrets had long ago been plundered, whose lights had long ago gone out. This was the pulsing center of life itself round which all true complexity revolved. Ah, the allure of that complexity, the sense of being there . . .
Behind me the scratch of the monster's feet came on the stones.
And when I turned I saw him white and bled dry and like a great husk of himself. His eyes were stained with blood-red tears and he reached out to me as if in pain.
I gathered him to my chest. I felt such love for him as I had never known before.
"Ah, don't you see?" came the ghastly voice with its long words, whispers without end, "My heir chosen to take the Dark Gift from me with more fiber and courage than ten mortal men, what a Child of Darkness you are to be."
I kissed his eyelids. I gathered his soft black hair in my hands. He was no ghastly thing to me now but merely that which was strange and white, and full of some deeper lesson perhaps than the sighing trees below or the shimmering city calling me over the miles.
His sunken cheeks, his long throat, the thin legs ... these were but the natural parts of him.
"No, fledgling," he sighed. "Save your kisses for the world. My time has come and you owe me but one obeisance only. Follow me now."
Part II The Legacy of Magnus Chapter 3
3
Down a winding stairs he drew me. And every thing I beheld absorbed me. The rough-cut stones seemed to give forth their own light, and even the rats shooting past in the dark had a curious beauty.
Then he unlocked a thick iron-studded wooden door and, giving over his heavy key ring to me, led me into a large and barren room.
"You are now my heir, as I told you," he said. "You'll take possession of this house and all my treasure. But you'll do as I say first."
The barred windows gave a limitless view of the moonlit clouds, and I saw the soft shimmering city again as if it were spreading its arms:
"Ah, later you may drink your fill of all you see," he said. He turned me towards him as he stood before a huge heap of wood that lay in the center of the floor.
"Listen carefully," he said. "For I'm about to leave you." He gestured to the wood offhandedly. "And there are things you must know. You're immortal now. And your nature shall lead you soon enough to your first human victim. Be swift and show no mercy. But stop your feasting, no matter how delicious, before the victim's heart ceases to beat."
"In years to come, you'll be strong enough to feel that great moment, but for the present pass the cup to time just before it's empty. Or you may pay heavily for your pride."
"But why are you leaving me!" I asked desperately. I clung to him. Victims, mercy, feasting ... I felt myself bombarded by these words as if I were being physically beaten.
He pulled away so easily that my hands were hurt by his movement, and I wound up staring at them, marveling at the strange quality of the pain. It wasn't like mortal pain.
He stopped, however, and pointed to the stones of the wall opposite. I could see that one very large stone had been dislodged and lay a foot from the unbroken surface around it.
"Grasp that stone," he said, "and pull it out of the wall."
"But I can't," I said. "It must weigh -- "
"Pull it out!" He pointed with one of his long bony fingers and grimaced so that I tried to do it as he said.