The Kings of Eternity by Eric Brown Read Free Book Online

him, but he would retreat into silence and wait out the journalistic onslaught. Their papers had limited staff - the hack would be needed on other stories when this one drew a blank.
    He showered when he arrived home, and at three rewrote that morning’s work, cutting and tidying up. At six he made himself a simple Spanish omelette, ate it with a beer while gazing out over the calm blue sea, and at seven walked back into the village and hailed one of Sarakina’s three taxis.
    There was no sign of the Englishman at the taverna. Langham wondered when the approach might be made, and from what quarter. A letter, requesting an interview, a brazen demand one morning at the taverna, a visit at his villa one afternoon? Whichever, Langham would be ready.
    As he rode in the back of the taxi from Sarakina, on the old road high over the hills, he put the journalist from his mind and thought about Caroline and the evening ahead.
    The private showing was taking place in the town hall at Xanthos, a quietly impressive building overlooking the main square. As the taxi drew up outside the sweeping steps of the building, Langham made out a parade of the island’s dignitaries making their way across the square.
    He climbed the steps and entered the main exhibition hall, his hand instinctively reaching for the mereth. Activated by the presence of sentient beings, it thrummed reassuringly.
    As Langham stood and stared about him, he realised that the work he had seen in the studio had done nothing to prepare him for the exhibition.
    It was more than just the colour of the paintings, he realised as he joined the widdershins procession around the room, but the effect of the vibrancy she somehow achieved, that tricked the eye into thinking that the shapes portrayed had a pulsing, rhythmic life of their own.
    I’ll have to ask her how she does it, he thought, before realising that it was perhaps a crass question: it was no doubt not so much a conscious technical effect, but something that emanated from the soul of the woman, something inherent in the essence of her personality. Viewing the paintings, he liked Caroline Platt even more.
    One picture in particular took his breath away with its beauty and vitality. He remained standing before it, a rock in the stream of people passing around him.
    The canvas showed three figures in a sunlit landscape; they were in the foreground, but small, reduced by the immensity of the plain or desert before them. The sun was setting, and high above in the sky the first stars were beginning to glimmer. Langham found himself choked by it, near to tears. There was something elemental and yet original in its portrayal of humanity in a landscape. It spoke of optimism and eternity.
    He squinted at the tiny note beside the painting. It said simply: Contemplating the Future , acrylic on canvas, May 1999. Very recent, then.
    “Do you like it?”
    He turned. It was Caroline. She passed him a glass of wine. “I’m delighted you could come, Daniel. I’ve been talking to a few people, and they said they didn’t think you’d make it. Did you know you have a reputation as a recluse?”
    He laughed. “Is that all? Recluse, misanthrope, all round miserable churl.”
    She clapped her hands, delighted at his ironic self-appraisal.
    Despite her animation, she looked drained. Her face was pale, her eyes tired. No doubt all the arrangement, the stress of the exhibition, had taken its toll.
    She took his arm and escorted him around the show. “So, Mr Recluse, having you here is something of a coup.”
    He laughed, again, and he couldn’t recall laughing twice in as many minutes for a long time. “I’m that much of a draw, am I?”
    “Sequestering yourself away has increased public interest.”
    “Something like the last dodo on Mauritius, hmm?”
    “Now, I never said you were a dodo.”
    “Feel like one sometimes,” he said, pausing to admire another vivid landscape.
    “I do hope you like them.”
    He turned to her.