Chapter Twenty-Eight

A woman sat at the head of the table when they reached the dining hall.
Krysty saw instantly that she was from the same genetic stock as Elric and Thomas, looking as though she might lie between them in terms of age. Possibly in her middle to late thirties, was Krysty's guess.
Her hair was as fine as spun silk, so white it glittered like polished silver. She was close to six feet, wearing a black dress of embroidered satin, with a high collar. Her skin was like Elric's and Thomas's, tight and white, like parchment, stretched over sharp cheekbones like straight razors.
Like Jak's, her eyes were a deep smoldering crimson, set in deep sockets. The heavy silver ring on the third finger of her left hand was shaped like a human skull, with a blood opal in its forehead.
"My name is Mary Cornelius. I was so sorry to hear of the tragic, untimely death of your companion." Her voice was soft and warm.
"Most death is untimely," Ryan replied. "But we thank you for your thoughts."
"Sit next to me, Ryan Cawdor. I can help you with your food and you can tell me something of yourself."
"I help him with the food," Krysty stated, not bothering to conceal the coldness in her voice.
"Can you help him to see again, Krysty Wroth?"
"What?"
"I think that you heard me. You don't suffer from deafness, Krysty. Or poor sight. Indeed, we believe that you can see, if that's the proper word for your unusual skill, better and further than most norms can."
"Are you implying that you can help Ryan to see again? That it?"
The woman gestured for Krysty to help Ryan to the seat at her side. "I do not imply. You and Dr. Wyeth have admitted defeat over the problem of seeing. I believe that we might be able to do a little better."
"Impossible," Mildred snapped. "Right now Ryan is blind. The damage to his eye could heal itself in the next three or four days. Or it might not heal at all."
"You have your beliefs, Dr. Wyeth. We believe in other powers."
"You can make me see again?" Ryan said, hating that he stood there like a spare prick at a gaudy wedding while others talked about and around him.
Mary Cornelius looked at him. Despite his lack of sight, he could almost feel her eyes burning into him, seeming to penetrate through the core of his brain.
"I think so. After we have finished eating, you must come to my room and we shall see." A new note of sudden anger entered her voice. "Norman, there is light piercing through a gap between the draperies and the shutters. Close it."
"Dark as a dungeon down here in the mine," Doc said. "Get any darker and I'll bump into myself coming back. See mice elf in a glass very damned darkly indeed. Why not throw back the draperies? It's a lovely morning. Bit of bright sunlight never hurt anybody, did it?"
The woman leaned forward in her seat, staring intently at the old-timer. "There are things about many of you that puzzle us. The white hair and ruby eyes of Jak. The medical skills of the black woman. The seeing of the redhead. And you, Dr. Tanner, you puzzle us a great deal. If you stay here long enough, I think we would all be eager to ask you some searching questions. You interest us."
Doc took a half step back, as though a whip had been raised to his face. "You don't" he began. "But I disremember what you don't do."
Ryan found himself sitting down next to Mary Cornelius. She had doused herself in a light but potent perfume. His guess was lily of the valley. But beneath it there was an unpleasant smell, the same dank, subterranean odor that seemed to fill every room of the mansion.
"What do you want to eat, Ryan? Trout or chicken or veal or prawns? Soup or croissants? Eggs Benedict or a plate of huevos rancheros ? When you came to us, the skills of the kitchen had beenhow shall we say?had been mislaid. Now they have been found again."
"Plain omelet would do just fine," he replied, knowing that it was something that he could eat without making himself look stupid.
"We have some cuts of beef that might prove a tad underdone for your palate."
"No. Just omelet."


AS HE ATE, picking at the cool, leathery omelet, Ryan struggled to get events into some kind of perspective, trying to make sense from what had happened.
What was happening.
But he was bewildered. They had entered an isolated ville, not far from a well-preserved redoubt that seemed to have been used for high-tech, top-secret military research, research that was somehow linked to the strange members of the Cornelius Family.
The people in Bramton were, so he'd been told, more like zombies than norms.
The Family had pressed them to visit their mansion on the cliff top, but they hardly ever saw their hosts. Either late in the evening or early in the morning, with all of the draperies tugged tight shut.
Now there was the hideous slaughter of Johannes Forde, shortly after he had boasted of taking secret films of the Family, films that had been destroyed along with the man himself.
Last of all, this woman, Mary Cornelius, had delivered unveiled hints that she could heal his damaged sight, could make him see again.
He felt around the plate with the tines of his fork, checking that there was no more food left on it. He set down the cutlery and picked up his coffee mug.
Krysty's words were quiet in his ear. "You feeling all right, lover?"
Before he could reply he heard the paper-thin voice of Mary Cornelius, showing once again the uncanny hearing that the Family seemed to have. "He's as well as can be expected, Krysty. But with my help he can be so much better."
"If you can make him see again, then you've got my support, every step of the way."
The albino woman's voice was dismissive and patronizing. "Thank you, my dear, but I believe that we can manage perfectly well without your support."
Krysty instantly pushed back her chair, the legs grating on the floor. "Why don't you go take a flying fuck at a rolling pretzel, lady?" she said, storming away from the refectory table, the sound of her heels diminishing until they ceased altogether.
"Dad?" Dean's voice sounded worried.
"It's all right, son."
"What a sadly disappointing reaction," Mary said. "I had thought better of her. Still" Ryan could hear her crumpling a napkin and dropping it by her plate. "Let me lead you to my room, Ryan. There is so much that we can do for each other. Unless"
"Unless what?"
"Unless you are frightened of me."
"Course not." He turned to J.B. and the others. "Get together for a talk in our room, around noon."
"Sure," the Armorer replied. "Take care now."
Mary's hand was on his right arm, her grip surprisingly powerful for a woman, as she led him across the galleried room, up the main stairs.
They walked along a carpeted corridor, stopping in front of what Ryan guessed was the entrance to the topmost story of the mansion. He heard a jingle of keys and a door swinging open, releasing another wave of the stinking air.
"Up here," she said, helping him through, then locking the door behind them. "Nearly there."


NORMAN HAD WAITED until his mistress had taken Ryan out of the dining hall before he tugged back the heavy velvet draperies, releasing clouds of pale dust, the motes floating in the rectangles of bright sunlight.
"There," he said. "Let there be light and there was light. Makes one feel quite like a little god, doesn't it?"
"The lady somewhat dislikes sunshine, does she not?" Doc asked.
Norman picked his way around the room, stopping in front of the old man. "Did you hear the fable of the heron whose beak was so long that he had it trapped in a jar of gold, and thus he perished? It's a parable of inquisitiveness, Dr. Tanner. A moral for us all."
"The moral being to keep your beak out of other people's affairs," Mildred said.
The butler nodded, the smile vanishing from his face like that of a rich man encountering a beggar. "Precisely. I have lived as long as I have in the employ of the Cornelius Family only by studiously closing my eyes and ears and my mouth, when I felt it proper to do so."
"Proper? That another word for cowardly?" Jak asked sarcastically.
"Cowardly is another word for keeping your head when all about are losing theirs, Master Lauren."


THE ROOM WAS large and cold. That was Ryan's immediate reaction as Mary closed the door. His keen hearing caught the faint click of a key turning in a lock, and he dropped his hand to the reassuring butt of the big SIG-Sauer.
"Here we are, Ryan. Can I help you to a chair? Does the chamber feel at all chill?"
"Yeah. Cold and damp. Like the Banbury Hotel back in the ville."
He felt her shudder, transmitted along his arm. "There is a fire laid. I can light it."
"Be good."
He eased himself into a deep armchair, feeling the worn brocade that covered it, sitting still while she bustled around. He heard the hiss of the material of her dress, the striking of a self-light and then the crackling of tinder and dried twigs. There came the faint smell of green wood smoking.
Mary coughed, waving her hands in front of her face. "Dear me, such a smell."
That was the moment that Ryan realized they weren't alone in the room. Someone else was fighting to control his or her breathing, finding the cloud of billowing smoke intrusive, trying hard not to cough.
Two others.
At least two others.
"There," the woman said finally. "The wood's caught at last. It was hard to see with only one guttering oil lamp to light the room."
"Why not draw the draperies?" Ryan asked. "Seems it's a good bright morning."
She totally ignored his question.
"Once it's warmed up a little, we can get on with our business."


THE SIX FRIENDS FOUND themselves back once more in the warren of high-ceilinged rooms with their jigsaw puzzles and antique rotting books.
"Least can get out," Jak said.
"Remember what happened to poor Johannes when he went outside. It was only yesterday." Mildred stood alone by the windows, looking across the silvery gray rocks, her eyes falling to the shadowed river far below.
"Dad be all right?" Dean asked, standing by Krysty, who was looking up at the rows of moldering volumes. "Can they make him see?"
Krysty shook her head, the fiery sentient hair clinging tightly to her nape, a sure sign of an atmosphere of threat and menace.
Mildred heard the question and turned from the casement. "Ryan's blindness is in God's hands, Dean. I can't pretend otherwise. Back in the predark times, folks expected doctors to have a total and absolute knowledge. Medicine isn't like that. Take a crude example. Put a .38 round through one man's brain and he dies instantly. Second man lives but is a vegetable. Third man recovers, untouched. Same with your father's loss of sight. In the next two or three days we'll know, one way or the other, whether Ryan has good luck, or no luck."


FROM THE WEIGHT of the crystal goblet, Ryan knew that it was old and of top quality. He tapped the edge with his nail, hearing it ring like a fine bell.
Mary was at his side. He could smell her body. There was the odd stateness, overlaid with feral sweat. Despite the strangeness of his position, Ryan found himself reacting to her scent of sexual excitement. And he was still aware of the presence of at least one other person in the room.
Liquid gurgled into the glass, the flavor of peppermint filling the bedroom. Ryan recalled the suggestion that the liqueurs the previous evening had been drugged.
"Drink up, Ryan," Mary said, her hand feather light on his shoulder.