Wagner Karl Edward - Reflections for the Winter of My Soul.pdf - Kane - Karl Wagner - darmonek

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Reflections for the Winter of My Soul

Karl Edward Wagner

Since it was obvious that the man was dying, the crowd of watchers had split apart, leaving only the

curious or those fascinated by the presence of death. Certainly no man could live with so ghastly a

wound; the wonder was that the mangled servant had survived as long as he had.

Outside, the blizzard gathered howling force with each minute--a fury of white crystalline coldness whose

blasts penetrated the thick stone walls, raced through dark hallways and billowed the heavy tapestries. Its

coldness forced entrance deep within the castle, into this crowded room where an attentive circle of eyes

stared down at the thing that gasped futilely in its pool of spreading crimson.

He was one of the baron's servants, a very minor member of the household, whose usual task bad been

to care for the stables. The blizzard had come with the nightfall, storming suddenly out of the west as the

sun was dying. When its first stinging gusts had hit, the court had been filled with scurrying servants,

struggling to secure the animals and material within the outbuildings. One man had stayed behind the rest

to complete some errand--none remembered what. His scream of terror had almost gone unheard by the

last of those stumbling back to the castle gate. But several men had staggered through the near darkness

and blinding winds to the darker figure lying in whirling white. They had borne his mangled body into the

castle with panic-sped steps, for no man had seen that which had attacked the human with such savage

suddenness and vanished again into the blizzard.

The victim lay close to the fire, partially lifted from the stone floor by an improvised pillow of rags. His

eyes gaped blankly in stark horror, and scarlet bubbles broke occasionally from his stack lips. Relentless

fangs had shredded the flesh about his throat and chest, foiled in their attempt to sever the carotids only

by the heavy fur cloak and the intervention of a protecting arm. This much could be determined from

scrutiny of the dying man, whose silence had been unbroken since that one shriek of mortal terror.

Several had pointed out that the servant probably could not speak even should he come out of shock, for

the awful wreckage of his throat would make speech most unlikely.

There seemed to be no end to the flow of blood that streamed through the rough bandages to glisten on

the stones. The one who usually tended only to injury to livestock had been called to help--the baron's

physician and astrologer could not be found, assuming he would have bothered. The horse surgeon knew

it was hopeless of course, but for appearances he made a few half-hearted attempts to forestall imminent

death.

The servant uttered one great, wet cough that merged with a final spasm. The horse surgeon considered

the limp wrist, critically pried up one eyelid, and shrugged. "Well, he's dead," he proclaimed needlessly.

There was disappointment among the watchers, who had hoped to learn from the victim of his assailant's

nature. Over them lay a clammy atmosphere of gnawing fear, and several argued louder than necessary,

asserting that a wolf, or several wolves, possibly a snow cat had been the killer. Some had darker

suspicions as well, for this frozen land of Marsarovj had its legends.

A sudden hideous movement halted their slow withdrawal! The corpse had lurched upward from the

slippery stones! Supporting itself with its arms, it sat half-upright and glared at them with wide and

sightless eyes. Red slobbering lips fought to form words.

"Death! I see him! Out of the storm he comes for us all!" blubbered that thing which should not speak.

"Death comes! A man! A man not man! Death for all!"

The corpse toppled hollowly back upon the stones, now silent.

"He must not have been quite dead," offered the surgeon finally, but not even he believed that.

I. The Rider in the Storm

Kane at last was forced to admit to himself that he was totally lost, that for the past hour he had been

without any sense of direction whatsoever. He kicked his plodding horse onward, cursing the fate that

had set him abroad in this frozen wasteland during what seemed to be the worst blizzard in his long

memory. The shaggy steed was close to floundering with exhaustion, for even its rugged north-bred

endurance had been overtaxed by the days of flight which had left them lost in this fantastic ice storm.

Two impressions filled Kane's weary mind. One was a sensation of unbearable, soul crushing cold--cold

accumulated during the days of travel through the wintered land and now multiplied by this needled wind

of ice. The chill sought for him through the thick folds of heavy fur that surrounded him, and Kane knew

that when he stopped moving, he would quickly freeze to death.

The second impression was one of awful necessity to outdistance his pursuers. They had dogged his trail

relentlessly for the long, cold days, penetrating every trick this master of deception had employed to hide

the signs of his progress. But then with the last powers of the priests of Sataki, his pursuers had little

chance of missing a trail that no human eye could discover.

Since noon Kane had often been able to catch sight of them, so close had they gained on him. Knowing

that they would almost inevitably overtake him by nightfall, he had welcomed the sudden blizzard when it

had come. Although he doubted if even this could cover his tracks from the ken of those grim hunters, he

hoped to gain invaluable time--possibly to recover his lead over them. But the storm had become a

screaming nightmare of white in which Kane had lost his way completely, and now frozen death joined

with those others who sought to bring down the ice-encrusted man who slumped forward in his saddle.

Many days behind him and to the southeast lay the independent principality of Rader, once the northmost

province of the old Serranthonian Empire, but now broken away in the collapse of the Empire which had

followed the extinction of the line of Halbros-Serrantho. Rader had become a frontier backwater after

the dynastic wars had destroyed the strength and wealth of the central states and had created a band of

desolation cutting Rader off from the civilization to the south. Law had been lost in the imperial

disintegration and never restored. In obedience to ancient principle, brute power shaped chaos into a

more orderly framework, and Rader had been ruled for the past century (when it was ruled at all) by a

variety of warlords. It had been a motley succession, for the land was of little value or importance. Thus

its rulers had usually been petty and relatively unambitious men--old nobility, adventurers, robber barons,

and the like.

Until some few days before, Rader had been ruled by the hated exile Orted Ak-Ceddi, onetime bandit

leader turned Prophet of Sataki. Under his fanatical command, the dark cult of Sataki had exploded from

obscurity into a crimson wave of terror that had overwhelmed the forest land of Shapeli far to the south

and had very nearly broken forth to hurl its legions upon the southern kingdoms. But his power had at last

been smashed, and Orted had fled the ruins of his Dark Crusade with only a few of his most loyal

followers. Safe in the obscurity of this northern backwater, Orted had seized control of Rader with the

last remnant of his former strength and had settled down to ponder the tangled riddles of fortune and

power.

To Rader had come Kane in the night. As the mercenary general of the Prophet's cavalry, Kane had both

been creator of the fighting arm of the Dark Crusade as well as the cause of its ultimate failure. Treachery

on Kane's part had first sundered the Sword of Sataki, but Orted's final insane double-cross had brought

on disaster for them both. Orted had escaped the ensuing slaughter of his followers, but Kane was

trapped by the victorious army of Jarvo. To avoid capture by his enemies he had entered that unhallowed

interdimensional corridor cursed by ancients as the Lair of Yslsl. The torments he encountered within

Yslsl's cosmic web of soulless horror were such that it might have been better to have accepted the mere

physical torture and death from those he had thus escaped.

But Kane at length accomplished that which no other man could have done. He emerged at the one other

place on this world where the Lair of Yslsl impinged. It took him over a year to recover from the ordeal

he suffered therein, but when he did recover he set out to kill the man who had driven him within the

crawling passages of that elder world nightmare. The trail to Rader had taken him from one end of the

known world to the other--a trail that twisted, forked, vanished, and reappeared again. But he followed it

with a singleness of purpose unfamiliar even to Kane.

And almost four years after the massacre of the Satakis at Ingoldi, Orted Ak-Ceddi found himself alone

in his chambers confronting Kane. The brief, vicious struggle ended most satisfactorily for Kane, who

was able to present Orted with a curious gem-like crystal derived from the venom of the now extinct

tomb worm of Carsultyal. Embedded in his flesh, the paralyzing venom seeped through Orted's writhing

form and silently commenced an ineluctable disintegration of every nerve in his body, working from the

tiniest to the largest cords. Kane was forced to cut short his enjoyment of the fantastic contortions of

Orted's death throes, when the Prophet's guards finally broke into the chamber.

He had vaulted through the hidden passage by which he had gained entrance to Orted's private

chambers--the Prophet had not been able to learn all the secrets of his sanctuary--and fled the city

before any organized search could be formed. Since that night Kane had been pushing steadily into the

northern wastes. But his pursuers were the last of Orted's fanatics, and Kane knew that only death would

halt their relentless pursuit of the slayer of their Prophet. Their fanaticism coupled with the few sorcerous

devices left to their dying cult had brought them within sight of their quarry after hard days of searching.

And then the blizzard had given Kane respite.

His horse stumbled over some buried obstruction and half-fell to its knees. Kane fought to hold his

saddle, noticing the crackle of ice encrusted on his cloak. Gritting teeth he lurched from his mount and

helped the exhausted beast erect. The agony of forcing his nearly frozen limbs into action racked his

powerful frame, and he swayed on his benumbed feet, clutching the neck of his gasping horse for

support.

"Easy, boy," he murmured through his ice-hung beard. "Let you rest just a minute." But only a minute, he

told himself, and stamped his frozen boots, wearily brushing off the crust of ice that enclosed his body. A

bed of snow beckoned him to its softness, but he hurled aside its temptation. He would not accept defeat

this easily. He had cheated death time beyond comprehension, and if he lost here in the storm, his

adversary must take him not gracefully, but struggling blindly onward past the extremes of his power.

That this frozen elemental fury should be his doom infuriated Kane, and he glared defiantly into the

scouring wind. Frustration. His enemy now was utterly intangible--a cosmic entity that heedlessly had

engulfed him--whose massive presence now tore at him, smothered his life fire. In no way could he even

force his destroyer to take notice of his existence.

Yet it was no ordinary storm, of this Kane was certain. It was too sudden, too violent to be natural;

Kane had never encountered anything its equal even on several excursions much farther to the north. It

was a witch storm perhaps, for its abrupt ferocity hinted at sorcery. But why any sorcerous power should

summon such a blizzard in this wasteland, he could not begin to guess. Surely the Satakis had not evoked

it, for it had cheated them of their prey.

The horse whinnied fearfully, and Kane decided he had rested as long as he dared. As he remounted, his

steed started in fright. Kane sought to soothe the beast, thinking at first he had somehow startled it in

mounting. But the horse was genuinely alarmed, he quickly noted--its nostrils flared and eyes widened in

fright. Soon Kane too sensed a presence, an awareness of alien scrutiny. He gave the horse his head, and

the animal bolted forward recklessly through the storm. For a tense interval Kane felt the sensation of

pursuit, of some entity reaching for him with awful hunger; then the feeling slacked off.

As soon as he felt clear he slowed his mount's headlong flight to a safer pace. "What in the name of

Temro was that!" he muttered. At first he had thought his pursuers had blundered upon him, but the

horse's reaction and his own sensations dispelled that impression. He had seen nothing, heard

nothing--for the howling storm had effectively blotted out and muffled both vision and sound. Yet Kane

and his horse had both definitely sensed the presence of something, and Kane knew better than to doubt

such extrasensory evidence. The strange workings of his inner mind were not unfamiliar to him, unnatural

talents utilized and strengthened throughout his amazing career. And Kane was certain that some form of

horrible death had been very close to him in the storm.

Now be strained his senses against the blizzard, while the horse plodded dismally through the rising drifts,

his sudden surge of energy dissipated. For a long time there was nothing, until Kane seemed to hear a

wild howling that was not of the wind. He inhaled carefully, drawing the frozen air deep into his lungs.

Faintly he began to catch the scent of wolf on the stormwind. The horse too caught the scent, and he

snorted fitfully.

Suddenly Kane halted. The howling had become more pronounced and seemed to come from many

throats. To his keen nostrils came the unmistakable sour scent of damp wolf fur. Somewhere ahead of

him--distance was impossible to gauge in the storm--lurked a large pack of wolves. Kane was puzzled

once more. From their cries the pack was full in hunt--but it seemed impossible that a wolfpack would be

foraging in such a raging blizzard. Perhaps the limits of starvation had driven them abroad, he mused. In

that case it was damned lucky that he was downwind.

But this advantage might vanish with a shift of wind and Kane turned his mount away from the invincible

pack, putting the wind to his back. Might as well back-track, he thought grimly. With no more sense of

direction than he now had, any course was as well as another or as pointless. As he forged onward

through the drifts the howling was drowned out in the greater voice of the storm. Just as it was swallowed

up altogether, Kane thought he could also hear mingled in the cries of horses and men. But the sounds

were too faint for any hope of clarity, and Kane was too exhausted to pursue the fantasies of his

tormented senses.

The horse plodded on and on, stumbling more frequently now, but refusing to fall. Kane doubted if the

beast would be able to rise once it slid down again--doubted if he would be able to remount if it could

regain its feet. Time and distance had no meaning. He was utterly adrift from the world of time and space;

there was only himself and the horse caught up in the rushing blizzard. Whether he moved or only the

wind moved, Kane could not tell. Nor could he distinguish whether the bits of white moved through the

darkness, or flecks of blackness through a sea of white. Now his entire body was growing altogether

numb. Soon he would be unable to feel the horse on which he rode, and then there would only be Kane,

bobbing helplessly, hopelessly in this maelstrom of ice.

This was infinity.

Abruptly something clawed at Kane's face. He reeled and lashed out at it drunkenly. His frozen hand

encountered a tree branch. Several more whipped at him, as the horse painfully slipped its way between

several trees.

Kane forced himself out of stupor, gathering together the final dregs of his remarkable strength. If the

horse had blundered into a forest there was hope yet. It seemed unlikely, for there had been no body of

trees in sight before the storm had hit--but how could he know how far the horse had carried him. The

wind's roar became muted, and its force was broken by the trees, causing the snow to fall slowly, sifting

through the branches. The blackness of night became settled, and in this darkness Kane's eyes could

penetrate--although another man would still be relatively blind.

It was indeed a forest--or at least the grove of trees extended as far as Kane could discover. From the

shelter it provided from the stormblast, it seemed likely that this was at any rate a considerable wooded

area. Kane urged his faltering mount deeper into the woods. If he could reach a place far enough within

to break most of the storm's force, he might build a sort of shelter and possibly get a fire going.

He caught the smell of wood smoke on the wind and pulled up. Had his hunters also found the trees, he

wondered--or perhaps he had come upon someone else in this wilderness. He followed the smoke

hopefully. Should it be the fire of strangers, he would share it one way or another. If he found the

Satakis... Well, he had been hunted long enough. Kane loosened his sword from its ice bound scabbard.

At least the cold iron would then find warmth. They would not expect an attack, and maybe with

surprise, and if his strength had not been fatally drained by the storm...

Visions of carnage passed through his mind, as Kane followed the scent of smoke through the sentinel

trees. The ground seemed to rise now, he thought. Revitalized with the tangible before him, hope for

shelter and lust to kill, Kane encouraged his horse. The rugged steed was due to collapse at any step, but

it too sensed salvation and forced itself beyond endurance.

The trees thinned and then broke into a clearing. As he came through the last of their number, Kane

caught sight of several small outbuildings clustered about a walled stone manor house or small castle. The

structures loomed darkly against the snow-filled night skies, their silhouette perforated with specks of

light from curtained windows. Desperately Kane forced his mount to this unknown castle here in the

frozen wastes. Let it be inhabited by demons and he cared not--so long as be found warmth. He shouted

hoarsely as he reached the gate. In sudden despair he realized that no gatekeeper would be at his post on

such a night, and that no one within the castle manor could hear him above the storm--should they be

awake. In his condition he could never climb over the wall. In white fury Kane pounded on the gate with

his great sword. To his amazement the gate swung ajar--it had been left unlocked!

Not bothering to puzzle over this good fortune, Kane pushed aside the gate enough to pass through. The

horses hooves clattered hollowly across the courtyard, as Kane shouted wildly, striving to awaken

someone within. Just as he reached the manor's main doorway, the animal stumbled and fell, pitching the

rider upon the stones. Kane twisted clumsily, too benumbed for his usual lightning reflexes to serve him.

He fell heavily before the door, rolling against it.

With his last strength he battered the iron studded oak with his swordhilt. He looked back weakly to the

gate through which he had entered. Just before blackness overcame him, he seemed to see something

white creeping through that open doorway.

II. Things Found in the Storm

Something white stood blurred in Kane's recovering consciousness. With an effort he forced awareness

into his mind, his eyes to focus.

Her eyes widened in startled fright as Kane's baleful gaze suddenly gripped her, but she recovered

quickly and said to cover her embarrassment, "Here--try to drink this."

Kane accepted the cup she held to his lips in silent appreciation, even in his condition savoring the

excellent brandy. Warmth flowed from the cognac as fully as from the crackling fire they had laid him by.

So the people of the manor had heard his call after all, he mused, and quickly he took note of his

surroundings.

He was in a small, stone room, furnished by a few benches, some chairs and a heavy table drawn near

the large fire that blazed against one wall. An antechamber, he surmised, from its plainness--probably

where the porter and stewards kept attendance on the main door. Kane's ice-crusted cloak had been

removed, and a heavy fur rug was thrown about him. Two servants supported him in a half supine

position before the fire; several others and a very sleepy maid milled about the room and doorway.

Holding the cup to his lips was a tousled girl of elfish beauty. From her magnificent robe of white snowcat

and the emerald set ring on her delicate hand, Kane knew her to be a lady of high estate. A mane of pate

blond tresses framed a perfect face from which a pair of wide, grey eyes shone. Together with a pointed

chin and straight, finely chiseled nose, she presented the picture of a somewhat whimsical pixie--a mouth

made for quick smiles now set in concern. Her age might be from late teens to early twenties.

"Well, Breenanin, what have you found!" A bear of a man swept into the room, a huge fur robe hastily

gathered about him. "Who is it that comes calling on a night fit only for ice phantoms and destroys the

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