“MY PICTURES FIRST. I was always a lover of the art of painting. Even before I was able toto obtain some for myself. Now I have them here in this gallery.”
He had led them out of the dining room, along a broad passage with three flights of stairs opening off it. Ryan noticed the sec men posted at the angles of the corridor, none of them showing the boredom and indifference that he’d seen from guards in other, sloppier villes.
They tracked the stout figure up a wide staircase, each step made from a single block of rose-tinted stone. The banisters were marble, and some sort of heraldic animal stood guarding at top and bottom.
“This way.”
The baron acknowledged the salute of a sec man. “Morning, Brandt. Wife better?”
“Much, thanks, Baron.”
They moved on, Mandeville turning and speaking over his shoulder to his following guests. “One of the best in the ville at hand-to-hand until he dislocated his right knee a year ago. Broke his heart he couldn’t compete anymore. Any of you people much good in that field?”
Eyes darted toward Ryan, who nodded at Michael. There didn’t seem much risk in showing their skills to Baron Mandeville. If he’d wished it, they could all have been sent off to buy the farm at any time since they reached Sun Crest.
“I’ll give it a try,” Michael said.
“You? Tad young for a rough-and-tumble. Still, like your courage, young man. Brother, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t suppose any of you have a way with a knife? Throwing?”
Ryan answered for them. “Used to know a boy. Could put a knife in your eye at fifty paces.”
“Hope that isn’t how you lost your eye, Cawdor.” A bellow of laughter filled the hall. “Course. You said that it was a rabbit, didn’t you? Rabbit! Like that, Cawdor.”
They turned a corner, finding themselves facing an immensely long gallery.
The morning had been cool, and fires burned in six hearths measured along the length of the gallery. A little smoke had drifted out as the wind veered easterly, and the room was so long that it was impossible to make out the far end through the woody haze.
The ceiling was fifteen feet high, and there was not a single window in either of the endless walls. It was lit with strings of hand-cast light bulbs that flooded the walls with a golden glow. Ryan noticed that a significant proportion of the lights had malfunctioned.
But what caught the eye were the pictures.
At that first startling glance, it seemed to Ryan that there wasn’t a single inch of space on the walls, from floor to ceiling, that wasn’t covered by pictures. All had been hung haphazardly, some of them overlapping.
Many were in ornate frames of rococo gilt, while some had plain frames of unvarnished beech or elm. Some had glass over the paintings, but most were uncovered.
“By the Three Kennedys!” Doc stood stock-still, the ferrule of his sword stick rapping very softly on the polished wood-block floor.
“Gaia! You must have all the paintings left in Deathlands, Baron!”
“Far from it, Krysty. I may call you by your first name, may I? Good. No, there are many other barons throughout the world who have collections every bit Well, honesty makes me admit that their collections are not quite up to the quality of my own gallery. Not quite.”
“Quality or quantity?” Mildred whispered to J.B. “He’s sure got the quantity.”
“Perhaps I should take you through, picture by picture,” Mandeville said doubtfully. “Though that would take us all day and most of the night. I want you also to admire my collection of weapons this morning. And there are the games this afternoon. No, we will move along the gallery and I will comment on any that are specially dear to me.”
Ryan found the next hour or so lurched past him in a blur of names and colors, giving the cumulative effect of staggering boredom.
There were more paintings in that single room in Sun Crest than he’d seen in his entire life. But after the first couple of dozen they all started to merge in his mind.