Read Online The Golden by Lucius Shepard - Free Book Online Page A

wrist he tossed the man over
the railing.
    He seemed to
twist at the center of the well for an instant, his mouth agape, eyes
white with fear, as if held aloft by the rays of lantern light that
touched him redly, then—as Beheim made a futile lunge toward
the railing—he tumbled down head over heels into the darkness,
trailing an abandoned, throat-tearing scream. Beheim watched him
fall, watched him vanish, the sight conjuring a queasy chill in his
belly. He whirled about, ready with a violent question, but his
outrage was quelled by the sight of Alexandra and Kostolec standing
face-to-face, tense and furious, the tall, beautiful woman in her
nightdress and the predatory old man—like otherworldly raptors.
He expected them to run at each other, to tear and punch and bite.
But instead they relaxed from their aggressive poses, and Alexandra,
in a calm voice, said, “That was badly done!”
    “Badly
done!” Beheim brought his fist down against the railing,
cracking it. “You might just as well call it a faux pas! What’s
next? Will you call genocide a discourtesy? Infanticide an act of
mischief?”
    She did not look
at him, continuing to address herself to Kostolec. “If you must
teach a lesson,” she said, “there are more effective
ways.”
    “Is that
what it was?” said Beheim. “A lesson? And what should I
have learned from it? Respect for my elders?”
    “Caution,
I should hope,” Kostolec said. “Without it, you will not
be long among us.”
    When Beheim
started to respond, Kostolec shouted, “No more! Try me no
more!”
    He turned away,
facing outward into the well, the lantern light firing his wisps of
white hair, painting a shine along the back panel of his silk shirt.
“I’ve done no murder,” he said in a steely voice.
“Tipsy pleasures of the blood hold no attraction for me. I am
in every way the Patriarch’s man and would never violate his
traditions. But believe as you will.”
    There was a
trilling vibration newly in the air, the sort of disturbance that
might derive from the far-off operation of a mighty engine, and
Beheim could not rid himself of the notion, however irrational, that
Kostolec was the source of this vibration. He thought that if
Kostolec were to turn, he would be much changed, his eyes aflame, his
wrinkled face transformed into a barbarous mask of bronze, his tongue
a black adder. Yet when he spoke, it was in a ruminative and not a
threatening tone.
    “These are
difficult times,” he said. “We each must play our part in
them as best we can. However, you would do well to remember that my
part in all this has nothing to do with the world as you know it. I
bear you no ill will, but I will not permit further distractions.”
He heaved a sigh. “Do not trouble me again.”
    Alexandra put a
hand on Beheim’s shoulder; she nodded toward the entrance
several levels above, and Beheim, his temper cooled by a sudden
anxiety, let himself be drawn away. But as they ascended the stair
leading to the next level, moved by some sense of wrongness, he
paused and stooped and peered back down through the railing.
    The rays of
lantern light had grown sharply defined, blades of radiance that
spread to touch the ranks of books and folios on the opposite wall,
and as they brightened further Kostolec himself began to darken, his
flesh and his clothing losing detail and color as if he had fallen
under a deep shadow, until at last the light dimmed to its normal
brilliance, and what stood by the railing beneath it had itself
become no more than a shadow, a figure of absolute, unfractionated
black. This absence of a man stood without moving, but within a
matter of seconds the figure flew apart into papery-looking scraps of
black vitality, like bats and ashes, and these remnants fluttered off
into the darkness; then, like a seam of gleaming anthracite exposed
in midair, a shiny surface manifested at the center of the well,
seeming to pour both upward and downward, to be measuring in
reflection the