Cloud Castles Read online

  The turn, at last, and we were rounding it, out of direct sight of the stones. We were back where we’d been shot at, but it felt safe by comparison. The horse remembered, that was obvious. He went like the wind, that noble beast, and the dust flew up behind us like a shield. I glanced anxiously over at the cloud roof, but nothing stirred; and ahead of us loomed the crest of the pass. We had to slow here, and I risked a long look back. Far behind, surprisingly far, a small dark figure stood in the midst of the scarred roadway, as if watching us; rising cloud coiled and writhed behind him in a dragonish corona, but he made no move. I shuddered again, and the horse whinnied, as if to reassure me. With surefooted grace he picked his way over the lip of the path and onto the stony slope below, skipping and sliding down that steep stretch, around and out on the broader mountain path. There he picked up the pace again; I glanced back, wondering if I’d see that short silhouette against the sky, ready to drop an avalanche on our heads, but nothing stirred.

  The sun was sinking now, the sky darkening. The heights were becoming less distinct in the reddening light, inchoate swathes of shadow spreading across the summit. The cloud pool below grew greyer and dimmer, and as we came down towards it, cantering again, it washed up around us. Sight dimmed in the mirk; I barely made out a shadow-wall ahead. But before I could rein in we were onto it, and tree branches stung my cheeks. Only for an instant; then there was a hard harsh sound beneath those hooves, and we came out into shadow. The acrid air caught at my throat and stung my eyes. The horse shied slightly at the sound of a nearby sports car revving up, and so did I. Shaken, I slid out of the saddle, and the tarmac heaved beneath me at first. I hung onto the pommel for support, and fumbled in my pocket for more sugar.

  ‘I wish I knew your name,’ I told him. ‘Ought to be – what? Bucephalus, Aster, Grane, maybe …’ I made the best fuss of him I could, loosening girth and bit, wishing I could give him the rub-down and proper stabling he deserved. But though he lingered willingly enough, he began to look away, back beyond the trees; and I guessed he was uncomfortable here. Maybe he was being summoned, somehow. I gave him one last lump, and watched him sniff the air, turn and trot back under the branches. I turned too, and strode away back across the car park – or tried to. It was too long since I’d ridden much; my legs and backside were one glowing hoop of agony. I prayed devoutly that the terrace was still empty and nobody watching as I hobbled up the steps, limped to my table and slumped down – carefully, minding my blisters. In the sky now the sun had hardly shifted, yet the difference was vast. The light had changed, reddened slightly, and the clouds were only clouds and nothing more, as immense and insubstantial as the imaginings of men. Only in my mind it lingered, in the pain I’d earned, and the nagging worry. It had happened; there was no arguing with pain. I had ridden up over that path, as I’d wished to, and what had I found? A deep cauldron of cloud, and an even deeper enigma. And to go with it? Danger, deadly danger maybe. Just think, only an hour or two ago I’d been feeling bored – or was it hours?

  Unconsciously, answering my thirst, my hand had sunk to that untouched gin glass; and it was still chill in my fingers. I raised it – and stopped, staring. It was the same glass, unquestionably, but in all this warmth the ice cubes hadn’t even had time to melt.

  Chapter Two

  So I’d wanted to be alone, had I?

  Not now. I was too badly jarred, and not just in the seat. Already that weird ride was becoming remote and dreamlike, as Spiral memories tend to; yet I couldn’t stop turning it over and over in my head. I lingered on in the bar, though it was filling up with trade-fair types doing roaring business – literally – with the local tarts. When the gin had blunted the physical aches a bit, I hobbled off to the crowded grill room to pick at an unmemorable dinner, and sat brooding over my cardboard coffee. I needed advice, that was obvious; but the Spiral was the only place I’d find it.

  I might be able to reach it. Seaports, river junctions, the great historical hubs of travelling humanity, it was around places like these, with their tangled web of shadows, that the misty borderland between the Core and the Spiral was broadest and easiest to penetrate. They didn’t have to be ancient; I’d had one very strange encounter in the half-lit underpasses at Chicago O’Hare. There could easily be ways and byways here too; but I didn’t know my way around, and that was always dangerous. But Stryge might be watching them and, above all else, I didn’t want to run into him again. He was a vindictive old bastard, that I knew, and a determined one; if he really did have a use for me he wasn’t likely to forget it. He could have stopped me, and just thinking how brought me out in a cold sweat: I’d seen him strike the wind from a great ship’s sails once, with an act of sheer cold cruelty. So why had he just let me go like that?

  I swore softly. I’d been over that barren ground too often already; I was driving myself nuts. I needed some distraction, better company than the sweaty row in the bar. There was Lutz’s party, of course. I’d meant to give it a tactful miss, but maybe some thoroughly worldly glitz and glitter would be therapeutic. Best I caught an hour or two’s rest first. I heaved myself up, leaving my coffee, without bitterness, and walked stiffly out to the lifts. I was more or less on automatic pilot; it took me a moment to realize that the soft insistent beeping was coming from my pocket. But when I fished out the little case with the red light flashing, I snapped awake at once. It looked just like a miniature calculator, and so it was; but it was also an incredibly expensive pager, linked to the phone in my briefcase – and the infra-red motion sensors built into the front. I made for the stairs, dithered on the first few steps for an instant, then saw sense and bolted for the lifts. Running up twenty-five storeys might be a little faster, but how much use would I be when I got there?

  I jabbed the big central button and sprang into the first door that slid back, alternately blessing and cursing Dave. Blessing, because he was the one who’d brought in the top-flight industrial espionage consultants and bought us their most expensive gear; cursing, because it was probably just playing silly buggers, detecting the heating or the maid or something. All the leisurely way up I tapped my foot and fumed, swearing at my taste for high-rise rooms. When I reached my floor I more or less exploded out, sure I’d find some moustachioed Turkish Stübenmaderl turning down the bed. But from the glass-fronted landing I could look across the face of the hotel to my windows; and they weren’t lit. Yet the little display showed the alarm was still being triggered. I stormed down the corridor, but quietly now, and sidled up to my door, listening. There wasn’t anything – or was there? If that was a chambermaid she was moving damned quietly.

  I swallowed, wondering whether to go and phone the desk, or just retreat behind one of the pot plants and wait till somebody emerged. Either way I could make a really total prat of myself, if I turned out to be imagining things. But I didn’t like the idea of leaving somebody free to monkey with my stuff. Gingerly I slid the plastic card into its slot, and with infinite, agonizing slowness I turned the handle. I knew the door mechanism was ghostly quiet; but what about the hinges? I leaned on it, gently, fractionally: no light showed. I tensed, leaned a little further: a line of utter darkness seemed to flow down the gap. I was about to open it when two incredibly uncomfortable thoughts occurred to me: firstly, if somebody was in there with the lights off, they could well be lurking behind the door; and secondly, this might be something to do with Le Stryge.

  I should have thought of that sooner; would have, if the world of alarms and lifts and coded locks didn’t seem so remote from his. But as I’d found out before, to my cost, it might not be. Himself, or one of his helpers, his creatures – either way, about the last thing to bump into in the dark. I held my breath, and I did hear something, right enough, a faint creak, a click, a soft hiss …

  My pulse was pounding in my ears; but if I tried to shut that door now I might not make it. My fingers sweated and itched for the weight of the great broadsword that hung over my mantel at home. If the Spiral really was acces
sible here, I might even be able to summon it; but that might involve some interesting explanations if I was wrong. Better to wait. I slid the door a fraction wider – and saw the thread of light beneath the bedroom door.

  No ordinary light, not the mellow glow of the bedside lamps or the frank brightness of the bathroom fluorescents; it was dim and greyish, too dull to be called opalescent. Yet somehow it looked familiar. Against it, dim as it was, I could peer through the hinge crack. Nothing lurked. And nobody anywhere else in the sitting room either. So whatever this was, it was in the bedroom. What else was in there? Then I heard that clicking again, and the soft hiss of impatient breath, and I realized just what that dull light must be. I was across that room in three strides, before the door swung shut behind me, and flung the bedroom door wide.

  Against the dim glow of my computer screen’s backlight a dark figure sprang up from the bed. The computer tipped over, I had a brief impression of something lean and leopard-fast, then I was knocked back against the door frame as it sprang past. But not quite fast enough: I might be stiff and sore but I’d learned how to be fast, too. I grabbed an arm. It felt like a sheaf of silk-wrapped steel cables. Its owner, swung around by his own speed, wasted none of it, and went for me. A fist glanced off my cheekbone; another scrabbled at my throat. I tucked my chin down against my chest, which happened to set my head at a convenient angle. Fighting fair wasn’t on the agenda right now. I butted hard, and the figure went reeling backwards across the bed. I sprang, crashed down as it rolled aside, but still landed on its outflung arm. The hand clutched at my groin and nearly connected, too; then the other fist pounded a dizzying rabbit-punch on the back of my neck. I slid down, gurgling, and the shadowy figure jumped up and ran.

  Who was I to argue? I lashed out with one foot; my long legs make good leverage. My sole connected with the intruder’s buttocks and shot him right the way he wanted to go, only a little faster. The dark figure caromed off the door jamb and fell in a heap. Still giddy, I rolled off the bed on top of him, swung a punch at his nose and caught something silky instead, which ripped. Then a swiping punch caught me on the chin, another fist thumped into my guts and if I’d been the average businessman I’d have been mugger’s meat from there.

  I fell back, the intruder sprang up – and I grabbed him from behind and threw him against the bathroom door. That gave me a minute to get to my knees, struggling not to retch. The intruder swung upright. I saw a gloved hand stiffen and ducked. A really classic neck chop parted my hair and thudded harmlessly into the bed – then the other hand scythed into my left arm and nearly numbed it. Desperately I grabbed the arm with my right as it went past, threw the intruder flat on the carpet and jabbed an elbow into his kidneys. He kicked me on the kneecap, hard enough to break it if I hadn’t pulled back. All the same, I yelped in agony and punched out; and we became an indescribable flurry of tangled limbs and flailing blows – killers, some of them, if only we’d had the space to deliver them properly. I’d been well schooled in the low arts by a number of friends, and a lot more enemies; but this character was a serious opponent. And a very nasty one. Fingers slithered towards eyes or crotch at every chance they got with an unnerving insistence, or tore at mouth, nose, ears or any other soft tissue. It wasn’t a way I could fight, even if I’d had the room. As it was, we were throwing each other around in the space between the bed and the wall, and each time one of us tried to get up the other kicked the heels out from under him, or something of the sort.

  It was dinner time on Saturday, the suites around were empty, or somebody would have heard. It can’t have lasted long, though it felt like a century, and I began to realize something. I’d been put off by that arm: it felt strong, it was pretty strong – but it didn’t have my strength. The more I stopped hitting and tried to tangle, to pinion, the more desperate the intruder got, the more evil the clawing. At last, as fingers jabbed into my nose, I let go, startled – and doubled up with a groan as a knee swung at my groin. The intruder sprang up, went for the door – and collided with the bed as I heaved it bodily into his path. Not something he’d expected, because he couldn’t have done it himself. He staggered – and I was already on my feet behind him. I caught him a tremendous clip at the base of the skull. He fell forward – and I was on him with my full weight, grinding his face down into the stifling embrace of the heavy hotel bedspread.

  My gamble had paid off; it had been worth faking that last fold-up just to con him into making a break for it. He wasn’t going anywhere now. I had one knee in the small of his back, the other on his neck. His arms were tangled in the bedspread, and his legs flailed uselessly; I could feel him heave as he fought desperately for breath, giving great snoring noises. If I didn’t let him up soon, he’d suffocate. My, oh, my.

  I sat and got my breath back, massaged my bruises, generally let my adrenaline levels subside, and simply luxuriated in being able to breathe freely. I’d had maybe one harder tussle than that, and it wasn’t with a human being. But just sitting got a little boring. I decided to search the body. The struggles redoubled, but I ignored them; he wore some kind of close-fitting shell-suit, radiating a smell of sweat and – that must be some aftershave. Where were the pockets? I found one, spilled a ring of metal instruments and a sheaf of perforated plastic plaques; lock-picking gear, I guessed, and pretty sophisticated if it could handle these doors. Anything else? I rummaged inside a trouser pocket – then my hand closed with sheer shock. The body beneath me convulsed; not half as much, though, as I would have.

  Dislodged, as much by astonishment as anything, I rolled back across the bed. It all went to prove I was a cleaner fighter than I thought. If I’d launched a few more below the belt, I’d surely have found out a lot sooner that I was wasting my time.

  I swung off the bed, retrieving the computer on the way, and snapped on the main light. I stared at the face that lifted from the cover, scarlet and dripping and trickling blood from one nostril, dangling the ragged remains of a ski-mask.

  ‘Don’t even think about it!’ I barked, as I saw the murderous flicker in the one open eye. ‘There’s an alarm on the phone – one move and I press it. I don’t think you’re in any state to cope with me now, anyhow, are you?’

  The woman’s head sagged, and she gave one great gulping sob. It was a lot more emphatic than any curse. I looked down, feeling ridiculously ashamed of myself. It was then I saw the leads running from my computer to the extra phone socket they put in for fax and modem lines. I looked at the screen, and felt a great light dawn: the main window was running my communications software. I tapped the Pause key.

  ‘So just where were you copying my files across to?’ I enquired. The woman said nothing. ‘Ich fragte, wohin Sie meine Feilen copieren wollte? Je viens de vous demander où exactement vous avez voulu copier mes fichiers? Hein? Mei archivi – dovei? Los ficheros—’

  She muttered something which sounded fairly obscene.

  ‘Okay, we’ll stick to English, then. Such as the words industrial espionage – they mean anything to you?’

  Silence. I contemplated her for a moment, not that she was anything much to look at. Tall, probably; nicely enough built – lithe as a panther, in fact, and not entirely flat about the chest; but the whole effect was spoiled by her face. Right now it looked terrible, with one eye swelling and blackening, a split lip bulging and her nose still trickling slime and blood; but even at the best of times I suspected she wouldn’t win any contests. It was a sour, hard face, hard as her fists, from the deep V between the eyebrows down to the discontented furrows either side of the long nose and heavy mouth. The open eye looked deep-set and very dark, slightly slanted, narrowed with lines of tension and temper. Her hair was short and black and slicked to her head with sweat, and that was about all you could say for it. With that look on her she could have been any age, mid-forties maybe; but looking at her neck I took ten years off that, or more. I’d seen faces like that on women athletes, the losers. It wasn’t a yielding face, at all; it was a hating fa
ce, the kind that goes on hating whether it’s right or wrong.

  Still, I tried again. ‘You wouldn’t happen to feel like telling me anything? Like who you are and what you’re doing here? You might need a few Brownie points right now. No?’

  ‘There are people who know where I am.’ Her voice was low and flat. ‘If you do anything to me, they’ll be on to you.’

  I shrugged. She was stonewalling, and she’d go on. I looked at the phone number – 010 33. France, which didn’t have area codes; but that looked remarkably like a Strasbourg number. I tapped in a command to record it, inserted a pretty comprehensive obscenity and broke contact. Then I jumped, just in time to avoid her lunge across the bed. I whipped the computer out of her reach and tore the leads from the socket. ‘Naughty!’

  For a moment I thought she was going to go shrieking for my throat; but instead she swung her feet wearily to the floor, and sank her face in her hands. I put the computer down carefully, without taking my eyes off her. ‘You don’t learn, do you? I think I’d better just ring down right now for a brace of nice hefty porters and have you turned over to the cops.’