Taltos Read Online Free

memorable. “I hope to see you again very soon. I hope you’ll be happy.”
    Remmick had come to spirit the young woman away. She said something else hastily, thanks, avowals of inspiration and determination to please the whole world. Words to that sweet effect. He gave her one final sober smile as she went out and the bronze doors were shut behind her.
    When she got home, of course, she would drag out her magazines. She would do addition on her fingers, maybe even with a calculator. She would realize he couldn’t be young, not by anyone’s count. She’d conclude he was past forty, and carefully fighting fifty. That was safe enough.
    But how must he deal with this in the long run, for thelong run was always his problem? Here was a life he loved, but he would have to make adjustments. Oh, he couldn’t think of something so awful just now. What if the white hair really began to flourish? That would help, wouldn’t it? But what did it really mean, the white hair? What did it reveal? He was too content to think of it. Too content to court cold fear.
    Once again he turned to the windows, and to the falling snow. He could see Central Park as clearly from this office as from the others. He put his hand on the glass. Very cold.
    The skating lake was deserted now. The snow had covered the park, and the roof just below him; and he noticed another curious sight which always made him give a little laugh.
    It was the swimming pool on top of the Parker Meridien Hotel. Snow fell steadily on the transparent glass roof while, beneath it, a man was swimming back and forth in the brightly illuminated green water, and this was some fifty floors perhaps above the street.
    “Now that is wealth and that is power,” he mused quietly to himself. “To swim in the sky in a storm.” Build swimming pools in the sky, another worthy project.
    “Mr. Ash,” said Remmick.
    “Yes, my dear boy,” he said absently, watching the long strokes of the swimmer, seeing clearly now that it was an elderly and very thin man. Such a figure would have been the victim of starvation in times past. But this was a physically fit individual—he could see it—a businessman, perhaps, snared by economic circumstances in the bitter winter of New York, swimming back and forth in deliciously heated and safely sanitized water.
    “Phone call for you, sir.”
    “I don’t think so, Remmick. I’m tired. It’s the snow. It makes me want to curl up in bed and go to sleep. I want to go to bed now, Remmick. I want some hot chocolate and then to sleep and sleep.”
    “Mr. Ash, the man said you would want to speak to him, that I was to tell you …”
    “They all say that, Remmick,” he answered.
    “Samuel, sir. He said to tell you that name.”
    “Samuel!”
    He turned from the window, and looked at the manservant, at his placid face. There was no judgment or opinion in his expression. Only devotion and quiet acceptance.
    “He said to come to you directly, Mr. Ash, that it was the custom when he called. I took the chance that he—”
    “You did right. You can leave me alone for a little while now.”
    He took his chair at the desk.
    As the doors closed, he picked up the receiver, and pressed the tiny red button. “Samuel!” he whispered.
    “Ashlar,” came the answer, clear as if his friend were truly at his ear. “You’ve kept me waiting fifteen minutes. How important you’ve become.”
    “Samuel, where are you? Are you in New York?”
    “Certainly not,” came the reply. “I’m in Donnelaith, Ash. I’m at the Inn.”
    “Phones in the glen.” It was a low murmur. The voice was coming all the way from Scotland … from the glen.
    “Yes, old friend, phones in the glen, and other things as well. A Taltos came here, Ash. I saw him. A full Taltos.”
    “Wait a minute. It sounded as if you said—”
    “I did say this. Don’t get too excited about it, Ash. He’s dead. He was an infant, blundering. It’s a long story. There’s a gypsy involved in