Free The Golden by Lucius Shepard

stalked along at her side, a leaner, sharper self, as if the
huntress within her had been put on the alert.
    “Oh?”
she said, and laughed nervously. “And how am I?”
    “Fascinating.
Troubling.” He tried to catch her eye. “Beautiful.”
    “And how
exactly am I troubling?” Another laugh. “You see, I
accept without complaint the unconditional virtues.”
    “Perhaps
it’s not you that troubles me,” he said. “Perhaps
it’s a lack of faith in my own discrimination.”
    “That’s
only a kind way of saying you’re not sure of me.”
    “I
suppose.”
    They came to an
arch that opened onto a large unfurnished chamber, where three men
and a woman—Family members by their rich clothing—were
standing a hundred feet away or more in an oblong island of light
cast by two lanterns. The woman was half-naked, the bodice of her
gown down about her waist, and the men were all partially disrobed.
There was an air of ominous stasis to the tableau, Beheim thought, as
if it had been contrived for their benefit and was not a sexual
incident that they had interrupted. It made him very uneasy. The
woman beckoned to them, but he was not in the least tempted to accept
the invitation.
    “Do you
recognize anyone?” he asked Alexandra.
    She studied them
a moment longer. “Not at this distance. The man in the red
tunic, though. That might be—” She broke off, peered at
them again. “I can’t tell.”
    Once again the
woman beckoned.
    “Come on.
Let’s leave them to it,” said Beheim.
    “Don’t
you want to interview them?” Alexandra asked.
    “A group
this large, they’d only support one another’s lies.”
    His sense of
uneasiness grew stronger. He took Alexandra’s hand and began
trotting along the corridor, half-dragging her along, glancing back
over his shoulder.
    Alexandra looked
startled, but she did not try to pull free, nor did she object when
Beheim began to run, leading them on a crooked course through a maze
of corridors; but once they had stopped running, she asked him what
was wrong.
    “I had a
premonition,” he told her. “A feeling that they might
be . . . I don’t know. That they posed a trap of
some sort.”
    They had emerged
from a corridor into a cavern, a place carved from marble to resemble
a cave, whose nether end was submerged beneath a smallish lake, with
roughly hewn blocks of marble scattered about its shoreline; a
bleached, bluish white light was provided by the cavern walls, or
more particularly, by the luminescent moss that embroidered almost
every square inch of stone and floated in crusts upon the black water
like miniature glowing islands. One of the walls was pierced by a
sizable round hole, large enough to permit a man to walk through
without stooping; it offered a view of some complex iron machinery,
enormous gears and driving rods and other unfamiliar parts; through
gaps in the machinery could be seen sections of a marble plain that
sloped steeply upward, thus giving the appearance of an intricate
puzzle laid out on a white backdrop with several pieces missing.
Overall, the place had a look of fey enchantment, and when Alexandra
perched on a marble block, drawing up her knees, resting her chin
thereon, she seemed to acquire an aura of unreality, to become a
creature of that place, a nymph or one of the Lorelei.
    “A
premonition,” she said thoughtfully. “In other words, a
feeling in which you placed your trust.”
    “I would
have been a fool not to trust it.”
    “Yet you
apparently don’t trust certain other of your feelings. Or have
you had a premonition concerning me?”
    “Hardly.
It’s just I don’t feel on solid ground with you.”
He sat next to her; deeper in the cavern, where the ceiling came down
low and the walls narrowed, something big and quick was swimming just
beneath the surface, making a rippling bulge in the shining black
water, but showing no portion of itself. “In any case, it
doesn’t matter.”
    “What
doesn’t?”
    She tried to
conceal