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La Citadelle, Haiti: A black revolutionary known as "the Tiger"-who earned his reputation by sawing people in half-dreauard Hispaniola against a return of the white slaveholders The work of two hundred thousand laborers, of whoend, had their blood used as mortar to cement the stones, reshaped the top of the iant ship This gri reclaimed by the lush forests of the days when Christopher Coluh and fully thirty feet thick at their base, gunports like shaded black eyes look out on the north coast of Haiti and the steep track leading to La Citadelle It is exactly the kind of cyclopean e as they order the affairs of men Behind walls of cannonballs piled like banks of skulls, there are storerooh to feed an army for a year, space for troops, and catacombs beneath ready for untold horrors The Kurian Lord has perches aplenty to stand, brooding at an altitude of three thousand feet while the stars whirl overhead He could conte that even a United States infantry division of the twentieth century would have a tough ti his er exist on Vampire Earth

Were the Citadelle&039;s lord looking out fro, he would have seen a strange colu the switchback trail to his door A blackhelped up the hillside by his sniffing dogs Behind hi their arotiate the slope, followed by a taller, fawn-colored relative carrying a gun with a six-foot barrel Behind hiht liet help up the worst parts of the trail Ragged black soldiers, all wary eyes and ready weapons, follow in single file The Kurian e the stronghold atop the Pic La Fer-riere, let alone the entire Kurian Order

David Valentine&039;s second thoughts collided with third- and fourth-thoughts on the long cli on the table on amble as this Were it not for Ahn-Kha&039;s steady presence beside hi toes around tree roots and rocks as he helped him over washouts on the trail up the o and quitted his task Despair had never struck hi all around, but waited to infiltrate once he had a full belly and a decent night&039;s sleep

He had rejoined the Thunderbolt after athe Limbe River to the coast, and froe off Labadee Following a freshwater shower and a change of clothes, he held an open-airhis story to the Ja ould happen over the next few days

As sunset fell, the officers and men decided that Carrasca and Post would stay with the ship, and a few uerrillas on the next step:contact with the "Kurian ally" in his moun-taintop fortress This stirred the interest of the crew; they

had more questions than he had answers The Thunderbolt would be safe enough Her main armament had been repaired, and she was as ready to face a seaborn challenge as the day she sailed into Cape Haitian

With that finished, the Grogs and men took their arms from the locker, and such provision as the NCOs could force them to carry A beach party of sorts welcoe and a babble of English, French, and Spanish along with island patois the s later, Valentine found hi up La Ferriere&039;s escarpuided by Victo

Two silent sentries in tiger-striped uniforate to the fortress A rusting wall of aged jeeps and trucks was the first, and least i the last few feet of as left of the road up the slope

A circle of Haitians Valentine took to be porters lounged in the shade of the high point looking out over the path like the prow of a massive ship Some slept, some talked, one or two eyed the visitors with interest when a pair of sailors lit cigarettes Valentine thought of the thousands of their forefathers itthe clouds

The guards and Victo exchanged ht "Papa Legba," and "oui" but little else A ate and led them to an inner courtyard There did not seem to be many inhabitants in evidence, just a handful of sentries keeping watch on the approaches to the fortress The faint cry of a baby cah, narro Below it the sound of the visitors echoed between the courtyard&039;s stone walls

"Papa Legba awaits," Victo translated He looked eager, like a child about to be taken to Santa Claus himself on Christmas Eve

The majordomo in the white uniform had the rest wait, then led Valentine and Victo deeper into the fortress The air inside the thick walls was cool and still They went up stone staircases, past salleys which once held cannon, and into sos in the roof to splash yellow on the high walls A sizable fireplace doany, roughly finished as if the resident eschewed for but dead ashes filled the hearth He stood, his back still to them, and took a crutch from the wall

"So they sent a Valentine to see me My cousins to the north do have a sense of irony"

Victo fell to his knees, hands clasped under chin, and began to weave back and forth

"I really am old It&039;s safe to say I&039;m the oldest sentient you shall ever converse with, unless you touch one of the minds encased in what you call a touchstone But I hardly think they&039;d count,"

Father Max used to talk about the touchstones, cryptically carven rocks containing a world&039;s worth of infor one caused what the old priest called a "revelation of sorts"-if it didn&039;t drive youencased in theba turned around He was a hunched-over, wizened figure, reseums Weariness colored his every ame, Kurian?" Valentine asked

"Show some respect," Victo interjected, his prayers over "Papa&039;s been protecting you since you came to this island If you don&039;t see that, you&039;re a fool"

"You have no reason to love us, Valentine the younger And I have even less reason to love you: I was once a Great One in the north My mind-mates-what you would call a &039;family&039;-are dead at your father&039;s hand From the perspective of my years, it hardly happened yesterday"

Valentine kept his face awithin

"But that is war, and I hardly blaet Out ofcame wisdoht, and you&039;re being consuhthe paraod? I&039;m supposed to kneel before you and thank you for your divine intervention?"

The Kurian sighed "One definition of rateful"

He looked Valentine in the eyes The Cat felt the sao that he&039;d felt in Jahts of Ahn-Kha&039;s rifle He shifted his eyes away, feeling a little like a cowed dog

The Kurian&039;s toothless hts Have a seat Would you care for refreshment? No? Very well To your duty, then"

"My duty is to bring back this weapon you claim to have What is it?"

"A powerful one, a tool that can stop my brethren&039;s avatars"

"What&039;s it do? Shut down the connection between you and your Reapers, ood time You&039;re an impatient race Excuse me, I must sit I tire easily," the Kurian said "Valentine, surely you know that the first Door opened in the Western Heht here on Haiti There was a rich, rich harvesting of auras during the revolts against the colonial powers I, and one or two others, encouraged soates, according to local legend In this case, they were right The door to the &039;other world&039; was in my care It is in my care now The &039;other world&039; just happened to be Kur"

Valentine bit his tongue He envisioned as beneath the ed octopus lurked behind the grandfatherly fakery But to see one of the legendary doors-

"You&039;d like to see the gate, wouldn&039;t you? I will show you It&039;s safe enough This island isn&039;t important anyer and better located Those hungry for their own principalities go through the newer ones on the larger continents Asia is popular at the moment: they&039;re much less troubleso the store&039; as your kind used to say up North"

Valentine pushed at the old ashes in the fireplace with the toe of his boot "You want to aid us against your &039;cousins&039;?"

The Kurian shiht or eh pri on it I don&039;t care to see it become a corpse, like Kur Sad Kur is a husk The surface has been cleaned of all life save lichen The sa on your kind"

"You aren&039;t afraid of discovery?"

"I keep up appearances with the help of h it ood Boul really sides, just as he does not know all my devices"

"I don&039;t believe you," Valentine said in English, to prevent another outraged ejaculation froht you needed to feed to live"

"I do feed, off vital aura, as you call it Though you reat drafts as my cousins do"

"You kill only once a ine I&039;ll write the Vatican and nominate you for sainthood"

"Your letter would be laughed at There is still a powerful figure at Saint Peter&039;s, true, but he comes from Kur, and his cardinals are to be feared I will show you how I feed No one dies No one is hurt I shall give you a tour, starting with the Door to Kur Then you&039;ll see me feed"

Valentine took his hands from his weapons "You have me curious &039;Curiosity killed the cat&039; is another saying we have up North, though I hope it won&039;t prove out today"

A pair of Haitian servants-"Voudou priests," Victo whispered in his ear-eba&039;s hand One had a sht be carried in, on his back The Kurian slid into it and crossed a seat belt across his chest

"I have a litter for going outside, but this works better on some of the stairs, as you will see"

The priests led the way, through narrow corridors and down shoulder-width stairs Valentine&039;s sensitive nose noticed a change in the quality of the air, and he knew hiround The priests lit and took up oil lamps They came to a wider corridor A heavy door stood at the end, and Valentine startled when he sao pinched-looking Reapers sluht over their bony faces, and lips were rolled back from black pointed teeth

"They sleep," the old Kurian said "Have no fear"

Valentine found his heart beating in the vicinity of his Adaures If they came around, they would make a quick end of him and Victo

"I wake theoats and cattle are brought to Baron Sa at Valentine "I&039; that convenient charade I would suspect there are a dozen or so Baron Sah the cereion is useful Don&039;t think it applies just to ignorant Haitians When we took your country in the days of your father and grandfathers, many of my cousins appeared as Jesus, and his supplicants were taken to Rapture in the embrace of the avatars Dressed in white they look like tall, thin angels, and their serene eyes held many a Christian spellbound"

Beyond the doors was a well-room, less finished than the rest of the fortress, built around a pit, perhaps two and a halfthe walls were not cut and shaped, but irregular, larger at the botto The priests lit twoin brackets, and the room quickly filled with an oily reek The Kurian slid off his chair-backpack Thanks to the torchlight, Valentine could see that the wall stones forht and dark rock, rather like tentacles reaching from the dark well

"That leads to what is purportedly a cistern, Valentine Care to cliranite-walled well A series of le row of bricks acted as a warning of the depths beneath Valentine&039;s sharp eyes picked out a bottoed, wide-eyed-and kept clear of the pit

Valentine felt a curious pull from the depths "Why not? I&039;ve alanted to see one of these Doors"

"If you hear anything on the way down, or while you are there, cliba advised

"You can count on it"

Suppressing a shudder, Valentine cla each with a foot before resting his full weight on it As he neared the bottoood deal warave way to handholds carved into the stone, placed closer together than the rungs on a regular ladder Feeling for the holes with his feet, he descended until he stood inside the cistern

Clammy sweat coursed down his back, but its source was not the heat He loosened the h and touched the auto Chinese ideograms surrounded him, melted into the rock and lit from within Curious, he probed one with his foot His eyes adjusted, and he peered

at the walls Several tunnels, also circled with the ideogralowed red, like the heating coils on an electric burner He walked over to one and looked ave off no heat, and reminded him of an old present fro as a Cat He walked back to the ladder and looked up

"There are different doors down here Do they all go to Kur?" he whispered up the shaft

"In a way, Valentine You&039;re looking at ate is in the middle of the well"

With two hands and two feet again on the ladder, Valentine looked around "Youwhen I descended It just got warmer"

"The Doors work just like that They are literally doors, joining one world to another When you pass fro save the heat of the stove You haven&039;t crossed thousands of light-years, you&039;ve just gone a few feet I&039;m not a scientist who can explain it, but two pieces of space have been joined like a button joins two pieces of arment"

Valentine sniffed the air, tasted it It see like a blacks A whisper sounded from deep within one of the tunnels, and he heard a dry scrape like a snake shedding its skin on a rock Valentine heard the shuffling gait grow nearer He did not bother with a last look around, and shot up the ladder A sudden, not-so-irrational fear of things reaching for hi him to pull hi fro

"I thought I rand tour for now Just out of curiosity, what does come up that ladder?"

"No one for thirty ormarch of years, much more disappeared

down it than cary minds on Kur for centuries before we seized your planet"

Valentine&039;s ithron the well to blood-s shadows turned to a ic-lantern show of human souls in torment

Valentine&039;s eyes ain, not unpleasant this ti heart

"You&039;re a sensitiveValentine," the Kurian observed "What leaps your h," he said, sniffing at the substance clinging to his clothing It smelled like flour The procession capped the torches and took up lanterns and the aged Kurian and left the well-room From his seat on the bearer&039;s back, the Kurian smiled at Valentine&039;s relief

"We leave the Citadelle to, and I shall take you to my true home, the palace ruins I invite you to share my hospitality under these austere roofs, but soht"

"You read my mind," Valentine said

"What I could Your father hat is the expression-an &039;open book&039; You keep more of yourself under lock and key Afraid of what&039;s in there?"

Valentine backed out of the roobetrecked trucks Valentine and Ahn-Kha bedded down inside a defunct tap-tap, still brightly painted where the encroaching rust had not yet touched Faces, slogans, depictions of food, and aninawed on the leg of so

"My David, you saw a Door?"

"Yes"

"My father told s Just an arch of stone, no different froo into the courtyard"

"This one was in a well It couldn&039;t have been one of the original Doors of the Interworld Tree-those were supposed to be huge They were built by the race that came before the Lifeweavers"

"I did not know this I thought the Kurians built the network betorlds"

"Yes, but it&039;s built on an older one, or they learned how to do it froy The o back hundreds of s that existed on vital aura They left behind their science when they finally died out, and the Lifeweavers found it There was some kind of schism, and a bunch of Lifeweavers on a planet called Kur learned how to live off vital auras, beco vampires, in effect"

"This word, Lifeweavers In ue, they were called the &039;prilish Some of them use you, yes?"

"Help us"

"And the Gray Ones and other creatures who fight you, are they being &039;helped&039; by the Kur?"

"Okay, use us Change us even You&039;ve heard people say they bred the Grogs Maybe they did the same with us Once a Lifeweaver told me that my species &039;exceeded their expectations&039; It ame of chess, but I can&039;t see the rest of the board"

"Paw in chest?"

"A pawn Chess-an old strategy ga Man&039;s office in Oht squares The pieces are figures meant to represent differentpiece&039;s square, and it is reas and queens and knights and things The paell, they&039;re the-"

"Cannon fodder," Ahn-Kha said, ears dancing, as they tended to do when he was pleased with hiet taken off the board by the more powerful pieces"

Ahn-Kha crunched the bone between his teeth, like a ruminant with its cud "Tell ?"

"Yes"

"Then be that pawn"

The next day, Valentine&039;s party grew A throng of voudou priests, porters, guerrillas, Grogs, and Valentine all shared a breakfast of rice porridge, ladled into wooden bowls fro in chunks of sweet potato, ht days he&039;d eaten it in one forrown tired of the endless parade of sweet potatoes and rice

Papa Legba bobbed out the gate in a litter carried by four strong porter-priests It reminded Valentine of pictures he had seen of Orientaltoted around in curtain-draped chairs They left the walls of the massive Citadelle atop its mountain and made the descent northward on the landslide-broken road

Valentine watched the sweating, straining back otiated the trail "You&039;d think a voodoo spirit could find a better way to get around," he muttered to Ahn-Kha

On the way down, he had ti sun To the west, the Chaine de Belance and the Massif du Nord joined at the heart of the guerrilla country To the north, partly hidden inmists, the old plantation plains stretched to Cape Haitian and the Caribbean, with further lower ht to ainst soil weakened by erosion He looked up at the fortress behind and

above and tried to guess where the door to Kur was buried Odd to think that another world can be so close, he thought As if you could cli it at the horizon