Night Winds (10 page)

Seated at a corner table opposite the entrance--close by the gaping darkness of the downward-leading stairs--Opyros caught sight of Kane. Even to his mazed vision and in the uncertain light, there was no mistake the massive, square-torsoed figure, or the coppery glimpse of Kane's hair and short beard. He was not alone. Beside him at the table lounged a thuggish trio of a determinate origins. Two of them, whose hulking statue and dark features bore the similarity of kinship, were coaxing a private show from a tavern dancer; the third, whose thin frame seemed to carry only gristle and tight-stretched muscle, was intent upon the fifth man at the table. This latter, a sharp-faced outlander whose clothes bore the dust of long miles, was arguing earnestly with Kane.

Some sort of agreement was concluded as Opyros threaded his way to the back corner. Kane nodded to his lean companion, who produced a heavy purse and pushed it toward the traveller. The other loosened its drawstrings, released the furtive gleam of gold; then Kane's broad hand closed over the almoner, and with a cold smile he drew it back across the table. The outlander appeared satisfied and rose to his feet. Kane remained seated, gave terse instructions to his three companions. The lean man retrieved the purse and, flanked by the brawny pair, followed the outlander from the room.

Opyros exchanged nodded greetings as they passed, then dropped into the chair beside Kane. Abandoned by her patrons, the dancing girl glanced at the poet uneasily, seemed relieved that the newcomer returned her stare without interest, and departed in a brassy rustle of bell-hung silks. At Kane's wave, a husky serving girl trotted over. Thudding her crockery pitcher upon the table, she began to reach for the empty mugs. Kane shook his head as she stretched for those beside him and pointed to the mug used by the outlander. Leaving the others, she recovered this one, wiped the mouth of the stein on her greasy leather apron, filled it with dark ale from her pitcher, and pushed it toward the poet. Opyros gulped down the mug's bitter contents in the time it took for her to fill Kane's stein and had the girl pour another before she left them.

Kane's cold blue eyes studied the poet's scratched face, a sardonic grin breaking over his brutal features. "I rather expected you last night," he commented.

What happened to last night? "I've been trying the new drug," Opyros answered. "And returned to tell the tale," observed Kane. "No mean feat, if Damatjyst blended the powder faithful to the formula I gave you." He lifted the folio onto the table; Opyros had carelessly leaned it against Kane's unbuckled sword. "Did you find the experience worthwhile?"

"I think so," concluded Opyros. The ale seemed to bush the whining yammer at the threshold of his consciousness. "There was a great deal of powerful visual imagery to it; some flashes of inspiration that I jotted down. Some of it I think I can use, though I still find myself blocked on Night Winds." He fumbled through the loose sheets of the folio. "Have you... are you going to be too busy tonight?"

Kane absently scraped his nail across a flaking smear of brown which clung to the carven silver death's head of his sword pommel. "Nothing that my men can't attend to. It promises to be a dull night, unless you're interested in watching Eberhos gamble away ten lifetimes' earnings at dice. Damatjyst will find he has a pauper for First Assistant come morning."

"Then I'll read you some of this," invited Opyros. He frowned over a loose page, turning the parchment sheet to the best exposure in the murky Light. "Oh, here's some more work on that Gods in Darkness fragment you tossed me:

In their castle beyond the night,

In their dungeon's evil light,

Gather the Gods while even fades,

And Darkness weaves with many shades..."

"I never wrote that," protested Kane.

"Ceteol did that," Opyros explained. "She has a keen mind for rhyme and meter."

"It rolls across the tongue well enough, but the rhyme has made it inaccurate to the substance of the poem. I thought we were agreed to strive for coherent imagery, without the interference of rhyme. Meter will be intrusive enough, if you translate..."

"Just thought you'd be interested to hear how it could be done," Opyros broke in defensively. "I still maintain that a poem well sung is far more effective than a poem well read--and infinitely superior to merely reading the words to yourself. Poetry is an expression of beauty, and beauty is an emotional awareness which for total appreciation demands a total sensual participation and response from its audience. You're asocial, Kane; you treat imagery on an individual intellectual level--perhaps because your personal autism believes intellectual and emotional stimulation are inseparable..."

"Vaul! You're in a profound mood tonight," Kane cut in sarcastically. "Are you certain of your insight, though? Drugs and ate will foster more prophecies and philosophies than a sober mind can hold together."

"That may be," Opyros countered, "but they sometimes open doorways to truths obscured by the clutter of ordered thought." He started to replace the parchment sheet, his expression injured.

Kane made an apologetic grimace. "Let's hear the rest of what you've done," he requested, and signed to a passing serving girl. His long fingers plucked the heavy pitcher from her cradling hip and placed it before the poet,

Opyros carefully refilled his stein before returning to the closely written lines. His voice calmer now, he began to read, moistening his throat now and again. Occasionally Kane interrupted to quarrel upon a point of syntax or such--until Opyros, wondering at the other's command of a language not his own, made marginal notations with a metal pen, which he dipped in slopped ale and rubbed against a chunk of ink.

The poet had long ago given up any effort to penetrate the shroud of mystery that enswathed Kane. Even so simple a matter as Kane's age defied certainty--physically he appeared not far past Opyros's thirty years, but this was deceptive, since Kane's experience ranged somewhat beyond this. The stranger was an enigma, and Opyros valued his friendship too highly to make indiscreet inquiries. He accepted the mystery, musing only privately over certain dark hints that whispered from the shadow of Kane's past.

Well over a year had passed since Opyros had first met him, wandering pensively through the forest-buried ruins of the Old City at dusk. Sensing a kindred spirit despite the other's forbidding appearance, Opyros had called out to him from his favorite perch alongside a crumbling fountain. The stranger returned his greeting in cultured tones of indefinable accent, and for the first time Opyros felt the murderous chill of Kane's blue eyes. Casual remarks had revealed as astonishing knowledge of the Old City on the stranger's part, and Opyros was surprised when this man nonchalantly spoke upon various points of mystery and arcane lore surrounding the ruins of which the poet was only vaguely aware, although his study of such things was an avid one. Opyros made some speculative observations on the reasons for the abandonment of the Old City over two centuries ago, and Kane had laughed strangely. Less piqued than curious, the poet sought to draw the other out, but Kane had made only evasive replies to his questions until Opyros introduced himself,

Kane immediately expressed interest in the poet's work and, losing some of his brooding reserve, invited him to further their acquaintance across a tavern table. Chance meeting developed into friendship, and Opyros soon became even more familiar with the dark alleys and hidden ways of Enseljos as he regularly sought out Kane's company. The exact nature of Kane's business in the northern city Opyros cared not to discover, although he sensed it was a more subtle game than the various underworld activities he knew Kane to have assumed control over. It was only another mystery surrounding the stranger--like his unexpected depth of learning, his easy familiarity with the writings of poets and sages of strange lands and other ages, Kane's critical abilities Opyros found to be sound and perceptive, so that he frequently brought fragments of his own work to read to the other, finding worthwhile the arguments and tangled, far-reaching discussions that usually lasted from darkness to light.

It was a rare friendship for Opyros, and he guessed such was the case with Kane as well. The poet was an outcast among the aristocracy of Enseljos to which he was born, nor did he care for their shallow company. Although his work was becoming widely known across the Northern Continent, and the genius of his verses was unquestioned, the macabre direction of his interests had earned Opyros a shadowed reputation among the intellectuals and dilettantes of his audience. Thus literary acclaim escaped him--although notoriety did not--and Opyros was loved no better by those with pretensions of culture than by those whose pride was their lineage and wealth. He knew no kinship with the lower classes of society, and they in turn believed him mad. Society's rejection of the poet and his work, while it left him bitter, did not raise a barrier to his writing. As final heir to his family's estates and fortune, he was able to ignore this alienation and to pursue the untraveled paths along which his genius led him. It often occurred to Opyros that he was as much an outlaw as Kane and the hard-eyed creatures who passed about them.

"Anything new on Night Winds?" asked Kane, once Opyros had finished reading from the parchment.

His companion frowned. "Oh, I've written a few more lines--written and rewritten a dozen times. Still can't bring it around to what I want."

Kane grunted sympathetically. Opyros had been struggling with Night Winds for months now, overtaxing himself to create what he intended to be his masterpiece, a perfect statement of his conception of art. As usually happens with any attempt toward a consciously conceived masterwork, the zeal for perfection overwhelmed the artist's ability to create. Opyros had made countless false starts, had worked himself into nervous exhaustion, spent days obsessed with the preciseness, the imagery of a single line of verse, and Night Winds had advanced little beyond the initial torrent of inspiration which had burst from a fevered dream. Thinking some diversion might relax the poet after this intense concentration, Kane suggested some fragments of another poem for him to develop. Opyros dutifully worked on Gods in Darkness for Kane, along with a number of his own projects, but Night Winds continued to loom over his imagination.

"Well, let's hear some of it," Kane prompted.

Opyros ran a nervous hand through his sandy hair and down his face, absently noted the stubble starting from his jaw where the goatee did not extend. What day was this? Again he filled his stein; the ale was soothing the shrieking afterimages in his mind. Without preamble--somewhat defiantly--he seized another smudged and scribbled sheet and read:

At night when sleep will not come-

And darkness hangs in thick, smothering folds,

To throttle my breath, crush the heart in my breast,

And squats on my belly like a hot, bloated succubus;

When I lie burning in restless, sick pain,

Listening to the rush of my pulse, the hammer of my heart,

And sense without caring that this is the last hour-

Night winds come.

Then let the night winds come to me-

Pass through a clear window, blow out the sick flame,

Touch cold breath to this fever-burnt flesh, Caress with chill kisses this fever-seared mind,

Take up my poisoned soul in your restoring embrace,

Bear me off to strange lands, show me those unseen sights

Along untrod paths--you and the stars know their secrets-

Though death be your destination, I'll not beg to linger-

When night winds come.

Then let the night winds take me-

Lift my crippled spirit on your vast black wings,

And I'll soar with you through the shadow;

Whisper softly in my desolate thoughts,

And I'll learn the wisdom of the dark;

Brush your fingers across my blinded eyes,

And I'll see the secret world of night;

And with you I'll explore those lost and hidden places-

Where only night winds come.

(Opyros read on haltingly, as the poem became more fragmented--little more than disjointed passages of deg description. His half-formed verses told of sand drifting over a desert tomb and why it lay empty, of wind in a forest where a goddess lay dying, of broken battlements and the pale beauty who walked them, of black surf on fanged cliffs and the shadows that lurked there, of mountains of eternal ice where an elder race dreamed...)

He finished with a pained grimace. Angrily he slapped the folio together, swept up his mug and drained it in a huge gulp that shuddered down his long throat. "Well."

Kane's expression was noncommittal. "I think you're getting it together--what there is of it, I like. The images you propose are more compelling this time--the atmosphere is beginning to project, almost without awareness of the mounting tension. Structually it seems rough yet, though the mood begins to impress me as..."

"Forced!" Opyros snorted. "Artificial and forced! It's still a first draft, though I've lain sleepless over it for months now. My imagery is either overpowering or too vague. I can't seem to project the vitality, the reality, of the mood!"

"It's starting to come across," Kane protested. "The atmosphere will improve as the work progresses, I think. Hell, put some of these fragments together for once, and give it some sort of conclusion, however indecisive it sounds at first. Work off the rough edges, and then judge what needs to be done with it--at least you'll have something concrete to grapple with. I think you're already close to writing as brilliant a work as any you've completed."

Opyros made a scornful noise in his mug. "Yeah, as brilliant as anything I've done--as imperfect, you mean! Damn it, Kane, for once I'd like to feel I'd written something that was perfect! No, don't start on one of those creaky philosophical discussions upon the nonexistence of true perfection. I mean, I'd hope at least once to be able to create a poem that I myself could call perfect--to hell with any other point of reference! There isn't a single thing I've done that I'm totally satisfied with. All of it represents a compromise between what I'm able to create and what I want to create. I know when a verse isn't exactly right, but, damn it, I can't understand how to improve it beyond a certain point!"