Into the thinking kingdoms - Alan Dean Foster [99]
Using a pull cord to summon a servant, he once more returned to his chair and to his malicious scrutiny of the ledger’s contents. Finding several more prospective victims helped to relax him and set his mind at ease. When the servant knocked, he barked an irritable “Enter!” without looking up from his work. The choosing of unwitting innocents to savage never failed to raise his spirits.
Entering silently, the servitor approached with tray in hand—only to signal his entrance with an abrupt metallic crash that caused Bisgrath to look up sharply. “What the blazes do—” He halted in mid-accusation. The servant was not looking at him. An expression of utter terror was imprinted on his face. The silver tray lay forgotten at his feet, the contents of the pitcher it had held having spilled out across the immaculate hardwood floor.
Puzzled, Bisgrath turned to follow the man’s gaze, whereupon he whipped off the reading glasses and flung them aside, unable to believe the evidence of his own eyes.
Peering out at him from the window and occupying most of its height was an outline of the black glass carving, its eyes burning like oil lamps on a particularly dark and chill night.
With a stuttering scream, the servant fled the room. Rising and backing slowly away from the window, Bisgrath fumbled along the wall for the weapons that were mounted there. Arraigned in a decorative semicircle, they included a great number of killing devices more suitable for use by common infantry than a cultivated gentleman like himself. That did not stop him from wrenching a short, heavy war ax from its holding clips.
Uttering a cry of defiance, he charged the window. The inhuman fiery gaze seemed to follow him as he rushed across the room. It went out when he slammed the ax into the glass, bringing more than half of it down in a shower of crystalline fragments.
Panting heavily, the ax clutched convulsively in both hands, he backed away. Birdsong filtered in from outside and a cool Bondresseyean breeze blew unbidden into the library. The tall black image had vanished. Help, he thought fearfully; I need a magician here to tell me what is going on. He knew several names and would send servitors to summon them immediately—yes, immediately. He turned for the doorway. As he did so, out of the corner of an eye he caught sight of a discrepancy.
The carving had reappeared, its eyes burning as fiercely as ever, in another of the tall library windows. And this time it was not a flat, picturelike image, but a mass formed in glistening, solid relief, its thick arms reaching out, outward into the room. Ten feet tall, the dreadful apparition was composed entirely of black volcanic glass, as if it had drawn strength and substance from the leaded glass of the window itself.
Screaming wildly, Cuween Bisgrath hurled the war ax at the glossy, brutish homunculus that was slowly emerging from the thick pane of the window. It shattered noisily, sending shards both transparent and black flying in all directions. Stumbling from the room, the Proctor General tore up the stairs that led to the second floor and to his private quarters. He was going mad, he decided. None of this was actually happening. He didn’t need magicians; he needed a doctor.
He shouted for his servants, but none responded. Having heard from the servitor who had entered the library and subsequently bolted and seen the look on his face, they had one and all fled the mansion. They had found something they were more afraid of than the Proctor’s wrath.
Staggering into his bedroom, Bisgrath slammed the door behind him and threw every one of the heavy bolts. Designed to withstand a full-scale assault by a company of armed soldiers or hopeful assassins, its unrelenting solidity helped to reassure him. Breathing a little easier, he made his way to the splendid bathroom. Spacious enough to accommodate six bathers, the marble tub beckoned. He strode purposefully past, knowing