The Drawing of the Dark

People were leaping to their feet, and he caught one glimpse of Epiphany's veiled, horrified face before a hardy altar boy felled him unconscious with a tall iron crucifix.

Then he was simply falling through a vortex of old scenes and faces, over the muted babble of which he could hear an older man's voice raised in strong, delighted laughter.

* * *

Chapter Eighteen

When he opened his eyes he was in deep shadow, and the wall of the inn, which he could just see from where he lay, showed dark gray around the yellow of the windows. God, he thought blurrily. Just a dream this time, was it? It was bad enough to go through those unhappy days in early 'twenty-six, without having to re-live them in my dreams. Ah, but at least they're my memories; better a dozen such than one of those damned dreams of that moonlit lake -which you were risking, drinking all that cursed beer. Stick to wine, lad. He rolled to his feet, slapped straw from his doublet and combed his hair with his fingers, then took a deep breath, let it out, and started toward the building.

From habit he walked in through the kitchen's back door, and caught the red-booted Marko snitching a sweet-roll from a cupboard. 'Marko,' Duffy said, stopping. There was something he'd meant to ask this boy about. What had it been?

'Werner said .1 could have it,' the boy said quickly. I don't care about your damned pastry. Uh. . .oh yes, you've been bringing food to Gustav Vogel. I understand?'

'I was for a while. Werner said I didn't have to anymore.

'Well who is?'

Marko blinked. 'Is what?'

'Bringing the old man food, you idiot.'

'I don't know. Why can't he go out and scavenge it, like everybody else?' h

The boy dashed out the back door, leaving the Irishman wearing a scowl of annoyance and worry. C

The new girl who'd served him earlier was staring at him U from the other side of the fireplace, where she was ladling out bowls of apparently the same stew. 'Where's Epiphany?' Duffy asked her.

'She went to bed early,' the girl answered. She didn't feel well. What are you doing in the kitchen? Guests are supposed to -'Where's Anna, then?'

'Around at the taproom end of the dinning room, I believe. If you want supper you'll have to -'

'You can have mine,' Duffy told her with a smile as he strode past her into the hall. The dining room was full, and alive with the gaiety that comes to people who know they might well be dead in twenty-four hours. Beer was being drunk at a prodigious rate, and Duffy found Anna' crouched beside one of the decorated casks, holding a pitcher under the golden stream from the tap.

She looked up and saw him. 'I thought you left.'

'No, just fell asleep out back. Epiphany's gone to bed?'

'That's - Shrub! This is for Alexis and Casey's table, hurry up - that's right. Why?' She glanced at him suspiciously.

'Oh, give it a rest, Anna, I'm not planning to go up and force any attentions on her. Listen, she had Shrub bringing food to her father, and -'

Shrub scampered up again. 'Hello, Mr Duffy! Anna, two more pitchers for Franz Albertzart and that old lady.'

'Coming up. What were you saying, Brian?'

'Well, Shrub here got Marko to do it, but I ran into Marko just now and he says he stopped.'

'There you go, Shrub.' The boy took the pitchers and' hurried guiltily away. 'Stopped what?'

'Damn it, listen to me. Nobody's been bringing food to old Vogel. Now I'm not going to be too upset if he turns up dead, but I think his daughter might be.'

'Oh, hell,' Anna said quietly. 'You're right. I'll tell her first thing in the morning.' She stood up and brushed a lock of hair out of her face, then looked at him with a little sympathy. 'Brian, what did go wrong, anyway, between you and her?'

As Duffy paused to frame a credible and more or less accurate answer, the door banged open and five young men stamped in. 'Anna!' one of them bawled across the room. 'Five pitchers, pronto!'

The Irishman grinned with one side of his mouth and punched her very softly on the shoulder. 'I'll tell you sometime,' he said, and walked away toward the stairs. He turned and saw that she was watching him. He mouthed the name, Aurelianus, pointing upward.

There was a man asleep on the stairs, and Duffy stepped carefully around him, reflecting that besieged towns probably tended to surrender sooner if there was no wine or beer inside to divert the defenders, now and then; from the bleakness of their position. He got to the top landing and found Aurelianus' door, but just as he was about to knock remembered that the old sorcerer had told him nine 'clock.