Chapter 179 — A Good Dream
Blade of Dawn · Page 3 of 3
Philip's eyes grew wider and wider, until at last the man was utterly dumbstruck. "There... there could really be such a thing?"
Then he caught himself. "Then Amber really is in danger?!"
"No—by my judgment, at this stage she will not meet danger yet, because the dream-maker has not woken," Gao Yang said rapidly. "Only now we must split up... Philip, I have a task for you."
"Give the order, my lord!"
"Go behind the castle's main building and find an abandoned stable. Use your detect-evil ability to search it..."
Sir Philip departed on his errand, while Gao Yang hurried down the corridor and up the stairs to the door of Victor Kant's study.
The study was still shrouded, as before, in that eerie, dim atmosphere. Viscount Victor Kant sat quietly behind the heavy desk, motionless as a statue.
The old viscount's gaze rested on the papers before him, and only when Gao Yang came to stand in front of him did he raise his head, slow and deliberate, and speak in a tone of bland calm: "You've come, Duke."
Gao Yang studied the viscount's eyes in silence; in them he saw a trace of sorrow, a trace of release, but no fear.
"It seems... you knew I was coming."
"Only a premonition," Viscount Kant said, a stiff smile on his lips. "You may now do as you wish."
"I came here only to tell you a story." Gao Yang fetched a chair from the corner himself and sat down facing Viscount Kant. Looking at the other man's aged face, his tone was even and gentle. "This story begins more than thirty years ago, on a night of torrential rain...
"That night, the young viscount of the Kant Domain—you—was riding in a carriage racing through the rainy darkness, and with you in that carriage sat your wife and your son.
"Because of a patch of slick mud or a stone, the carriage slid into a mountain ravine, and, most unfortunately, you were thrown from the cabin.
"Mr. Victor Kant, you were killed on the spot—you and your son.
"And your wife, more unfortunate still, Lady Lilith Kant, plainly could not bear such a blow and such pressure...
"So she chose to let herself 'die,' and let her husband and son 'survive'—at least, that is how things unfolded in her dream.
"That is all of it, Viscount."
Victor Kant sat quietly in his chair, then suddenly let out a sigh, his voice drifting as if from another world: "A nightmare, isn't it?"
"Yes, nothing short of a nightmare."