Free Lord of the Hollow Dark by Kirk Russell Page A

woman, in the lower right-hand corner of the canvas, looking as if it had been painted in later. She was standing, and her hand rested upon a book. “Could that be his daughter?” Marina inquired.
    “Her name was Anna. She died with the Third Laird, or before him, in the fight with Morton’s men. The Earl of Morton had denounced her as a succubus, but I’m inclined to think that she was merely a Bohemian. David Inchburn had brought her back with him from his wars in the Continent—and her father, too, a learned alchemist. Whether or not he was married to her in the Germanys is uncertain; he might have been, for he had been a widower for some years. The Fourth Laird was a child of the early marriage. Anna came to a hard land and died a hard death, poor creature.” Marina moved closer to the picture. “I’ve seen someone with a face like his-not long ago, I think.” Then—“Oh!” She wheeled around. “Archvicar, he looks just like you!”
    The Archvicar seemed taken aback. “My dear,” Madame Sesostris put in, “I suppose there are certain types of faces which turn up everywhere. Besides, the man in the picture has red hair and a fair skin, and of course the Archvicar is quite different.”
    “But look at the nose, and the forehead, and the lips, and the cheekbones, and the ears, and everything!” Marina pointed out.
    “Marina, you flatter me,” the Archvicar smiled. “Do tell us about that dream of yours.”
    Why didn’t they see the perfect resemblance? She did wish she might pull off the Archvicar’s spectacles, to find if his eyes were like the Third Laird’s, but she didn’t dare ask that.
    “Do sit down in the sun, my dear,” Madame Sesostris commanded, indicating a window seat. “Was your baby in the dream?”
    Marina related everything: every detail of the vision had stuck with her, something rare in Marina’s dreaming. She shivered a little as she came to the moment in which she had hesitated at the mouth of the subterranean hall, half longing to join those strange horrid dancers. “What did it mean, Madame Sesostris? Can you tell me?”
    The old woman clasped her hands together so that her gnarled knuckles showed white. She glanced at the old man. “It means, Marina dear, that you should cherish the Archvicar-supposing that hell consent to be cherished.”
    “Ah, well,” Archvicar Gerontion sighed, “merely one more hostage... You saw Mrs. Equitone among those dream-figures. Did you seem to recognize anyone else-any man, say?”
    “Mrs. Equitone was the only one who took off her mask.” Marina tried to laugh. “I suppose it’s all so silly! Of course Mrs. Equitone would be the last person to prance about with nothing but a mask on.”
    “Would she?” The Archvicar played with his stick. “I’m happy that it wasn’t my dream-not if Mrs. Equitone was leading the revels. Now if it had been that Grishkin...”
    “Archvicar!” Madame protested.
    “I’m a pig in the sty of Epicurus,” the Archvicar confessed. “Eh, Fresca?” As if summoned, there rose up the Sicilian girl, Marina’s baby huddled asleep in her arms.
    “She scarcely knows English from Mandarin,” Madame Sesostris told Marina, nodding toward Fresca. “Now shall we go into the Den? We oughtn’t to miss this rare sunshine.”
    As they left the parlor, Marina glanced once more at the painting. How like! She offered to carry her baby; but Fresca, with Madame Sesostris for interpreter, declared that she had not held him long enough; so Marina laughed and submitted. At a snail’s pace, the Archvicar led them down stairs and through complex narrow corridors until they emerged from beneath an ogival arch into the policies. There were stables, and beyond them the luxuriance of the Den. What grand trees, what a wilderness of weeds and neglected shrubbery surrounding the pond at the foot of the Den!
    They made their way past the stables. On a whinstone boulder sat one of those shock-headed young men who were Mr.