Curious, he dipped his hand into it. He felt the wet, the fresh coolness. And as he let it pour from his cupped hand, he saw that the water falling from his palm wasnt clear, but that same deep blue.
It was, he thought, almost more than the senses could bear. The sheer beauty was too intense, too vivid for the mind to translate. And once seen, once experienced, how did anyone survive without it, in the pale, dim reality?
Fascination had him reaching toward the water again when he caught sight of the deer drinking on the opposite side of the pool.
The buck was enormous, its coat sleek and golden, its rack a shining silver. When it lifted its great head, it stared at Jordan with eyes as green and deep as the forest around them.
Around its neck it wore a jeweled collar with the stones catching the streams of sunlight and tossing them back in colored prisms.
He thought it spoke, though there was no movement, and no sound other than the words that formed in his head.
Will you stand for them?
“Who?” Go, and see.
The deer turned, and walked, silver hooves silent on the ground, into the woods.
This is no dream, Jorda
n thought. He straightened, started to circle the pond and follow the deer.
But no, it hadnt said come and see, but go . Trusting instinct, Jordan took the opposite path.
He stepped out of the trees to a sea of flowers so saturated with color they shocked the senses. Scarlet, sapphire, amethyst, amber glinted in that streaming sun as if every petal were an individual facet cut perfectly from each gem. And in the center of that sea, like the most precious of blooms, were the Daughters of Glass, trapped in their crystal coffins.
“No, Im not dreaming.” He spoke aloud, to prove that he could, to hear the sound of his voice. To center himself before he walked across the sea of flowers to stare down at the faces he already knew.
They seemed to be sleeping. Their beauty was undiminished, but it was cold. He saw that, the cold beauty, that could never change but was forever trapped in one instant of time.
He felt pity and outrage, and as he stared into the face so like Danas, a tearing grief he hadnt experienced since his mothers death.
“This is hell,” he said aloud. “To be trapped between life and death, to be unable to take either.”
“Yes. You have it precisely.” Kane stood on the other side of the glass coffin. Elegant in black robes with a jeweled crown atop his dark mane of hair, he smiled at Jordan. “You have a keenness of mind sadly lacking in much of your kind. Hell, as you call it, is merely the absence of all without an end.”
“Hell should be earned.”
“Ah. Philosophy.” His voice held a touch of amusement, and a canny calculation. “Occasionally, you will agree, hell is merely inherited. Their sire and his mortal bitch damned them.” He swept a hand toward the coffins. “I was merely an instrument, so to speak, who…” He lifted the hand, twisted his wrist. “Turned the key.”
“For glory?”
“For that. For power. For all of this.” He spread his arms wide, as if to encompass his world: “All of this, which can never, will never, be theirs. Soft hearts and mortal frailties have no place in the realm of gods.”
“Yet gods love, hate, covet, scheme, war, laugh, weep. Mortal frailties?”
Kane cocked his head. “You interest me. You would debate, knowing who and what I am? Knowing I brought you here, behind the Curtain of Power, where you are no more than an ant to be flicked off a crumb? I could kill you with a thought.”
“Could you?” Deliberately, Jordan walked around the crystal coffin. He wouldnt have even the reflection of Dana between them. “Why havent you? Maybe its because you prefer bullying and abusing women. Its a different matter, isnt it, when you face a man?”
The blow knocked him back ten feet. He tasted blood in his mouth, and spat it out onto the crushed flowers before he got to his feet. There was more than power on Kanes face, he noted. There was fury. And where there was anger, there was weakness.
“Smoke and mirrors. But you havent got the guts to fight like a man. With fists. One round, you son of a bitch. One round, my way.”
“Your way? You have no terms here. And you will know pain.”
It gripped his chest, icy claws with razor tips. The unspeakable agony dropped him to his knees and ripped a cry from his throat that he couldnt suppress.
“Beg.” Pleasure purred into Kanes voice. “Beg for mercy. Crawl for it.”