“A sad tale, indeed, from both of you,” Targ replied. “But what is such a tale to me?”
“Targ, leave this place,” Merinda replied with passion. “It’s your tale, too. The obsession; the abandonment of values; the wake of destruction. This is your story as surely as it was Lokan’s. You’ve found your father’s fate …”
“No!” Targ said through clenched teeth.
“… Let the dead rest with our memories …”
“No!” Targ said louder, shaking his head back and forth as though the act would keep the truth from falling on his ears.
“… Let go of your past, Targ, and leave us here!”
“NO!” Targ screamed. He reached out for the saber of an officer standing nearby, pulling the sword from the corpse’s shattering hand. He cut downward quickly toward Merinda, with a powerful stroke. Merinda barely had time to counter with her block, the power and ferocity of his attack pressing her back in her stance. Several quick, instinctive blows followed in a blur of motion: arcing swings toward her head and torso. Merinda blocked and deflected each blow with difficulty, backing up the platform steps before the throne.
Griffiths turned about him, frantically looking for something he could use as a weapon. His eye fell upon one of the guards lining the perimeter of the room. He turned toward it, desperately trying to keep the soles of his vac suit boots connecting with the floor on each step. He knew that if they both left the floor at the same time he would be weightless and no good to either Merinda or himself. It made his progress toward the guard agonizingly slow. He moved with nightmare slowness in a nightmare world. At last he reached the corpse, grabbed the hilt of the sword and shook it loose from the disintegrating grip of the ancient guardian. A sword fight in vacuum suits? he thought as he turned back to face Merinda and Targ. Am I crazy?
Suddenly, Merinda countered Targ’s attack with a series of her own. Targ stepped back from the onslaught. Merinda pressed her advantage and thrust the Nightsword toward Targ’s chest. Targ’s own blade spun in a clearing move that deflected the blow, but the point of the sword sliced into the left arm of Targ’s vac suit.
Atmosphere gushed into a crystal cloud from the tear for a moment before the suit sealed itself. Targ staggered backward, his sword hand instinctively reaching for the wound which, Griffiths did not doubt, was bleeding within the suit. Targ looked up in astonishment.
Griffiths began circling the hall, moving from pillar to pillar. He knew he would only have one chance at this. He had no hope of defeating Targ in a stand-up fight. It was murder him or be murdered and he didn’t much like the sound of it either way.
“It must end here, Targ,” Merinda panted. “It must end with us.”
“In my hands the Nightsword would work miracles,” Targ growled.
“In your hands it would destroy you just as it destroyed Lokan,” she replied.
Targ looked suddenly at her, realization dawning in his eyes. “But not in yours?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, taking a step back, preparing, wary.
“You hold the Nightsword, Merinda,” Targ said, his own sword coming to the ready once more. “The greatest and most powerful weapon known in all time, yet you mark my shoulder with it as though you were a beginning fencer!”
Targ swung his own sword in a quick combination. Merinda parried each quickly, backing with each blow, trying to find some room.
“You can’t use it can you?” Targ said, smiling.
“I am using it,” Merinda cried out. “You’ll die by it!” She cleared with a sweeping arc, then pressed her own withering attack. Targ gave no ground, however, meeting her blow for blow.
“Using it? Then why am I not dead already?” Targ sneered. “Why haven’t you used its magnificent and omnipotent powers to rob me of my breath, or turn me into a bird or a fish, or simply vanish the very reality of my existence?”
Targ lunged suddenly. Merinda cleared as she stepped back but her foot caught on the level behind her. The distraction was enough. Targ recovered, advanced, and sliced his own blade into the thigh of her suit.
Griffiths gritted his teeth. Targ’s back was between him and Merinda but he could still see clearly. I’m almost there, Merinda, he told himself. Just hang on for a few more seconds.
Merinda dropped in pain to her knee as the short explosion of gas crystallized before the suit sealed. She screamed savagely, blocking Targ’s attack as she knelt, spun, and regained her footing, though now with less assurance.
“You haven’t used the powers of the Nightsword because you can’t,” Targ taunted.
Merinda held the sword again at the ready. The throne was directly behind her. Her eye caught Griffiths’s in a single glance. Targ noticed it at once and began to turn.
Now! Griffiths thought and began moving as quickly as he could, heedless of the dead couples disintegrating in his path. He raised his sword, beginning his swing. Merinda was raising her own sword when a sudden look of terror crossed her face as she looked beyond Targ and Griffiths both.
Incredible pain shot through both of Griffiths’s calves and up through his thighs. He felt himself lose control of his legs as they collapsed under him. Both his feet lifted free of the deck plates. He careened weightless, bowling through the corpses in the hall and scattering them into dust. As he rotated around, he saw what had so startled Merinda.
Three of the dead guards had reached for their ornate sidearm weapons and drawn them. Others around the hall were attempting to do the same.
The dead were moving.
Griffiths slammed painfully against the far wall. He twisted around quickly as he rebounded, grasping one of the pillars, and desperately oriented himself to find Merinda.
Targ had taken the advantage. In a deft move he had disarmed Merinda. His previous weapon spun lazily through the space above them. Now he held the Nightsword in his own hand, its blade edge held threateningly across the bottom of Merinda’s head bubble. He held her, pulling her backward up the steps.
“I’ve been blind!” Targ said as Merinda struggled in vain against his grip. His voice was hoarse and bordering on hysterical. “I couldn’t use the Mantle of Kendis-dai because it was bonded to Griffiths. The other artifacts must be bonded to their owners as well. Interesting safety feature, wouldn’t you agree? So long as the owner lives then his own weapon can never be used against him. All this time the voices were calling me! All this time I heard my father reaching out to me and begging me to come and discover his fate and it wasn’t him at all, was it? Was it!”
“Your father is dead!” Merinda cried out.
“Yes, he is dead, isn’t he!” Targ yelled at her. “He died right here with his precious stolen director globe and his Gorgon captors. They killed him right here because he couldn’t give them what they wanted. But we’re going to change all that, Merinda, you and I! We’re going to change all that because we’ve been invited here!”
Targ began dragging Merinda backward toward the throne. The guards around the hall raised their hand weapons. Griffiths watched helplessly from his twisting perch, his legs still without feeling or strength.
“No, damn you, Lokan!” Targ screamed. “Some part of you wants release! You’ll fight me if you can, but some part of you called me here!”
The guards fired, blue bolts ripping from their weapons. The shock of the recoil shattered each of their arms, driving the weapons through their shoulders even as their hands continued to fire bolts into the ceiling.
Two of the bolts blasted into Merinda. She cried out with the impact, her body suddenly going limp as Targ held her as a shield.
The dancers in the hall, some of them only fragments of their former selves, began wheeling across the floor.
Targ released the lifeless Merinda and turned to the throne as more bolts lanced around him. There sat Lokan, his face withered as driftwood, his eye sockets dry and glazed. His head was pulled back and his mouth was drawn open into a gaping maw.
“Let go!” Targ scre
amed as he drew the Nightsword around to strike. “I’ve got to atone! I’ve got to right what I’ve done! Let go, damn you!”
With that, Targ swung, severing the head of Lokan. Black ichor gushed from the wound, drifting in thick globules as the head drifted upward, its flow soon stopping.
The dancers lost all cohesion, their bones, flesh, hair, and cartilage spinning into dust. So, too, did the guards vanish into their elements.
Merinda drifted to the floor, as did Griffiths. Gravity was reestablishing itself in the hall. Griffiths happened to glance at his right arm. By the indicator, it would seem that atmosphere was returning as well.
All by the will of Targ of Gandri—bonded master of the Nightsword.
45
Betrayal
Griffiths began pulling himself across the floor. The feeling was beginning to return to his legs—a fact that he deeply regretted. The pain was excruciating although he sensed that there was not a great deal of actual damage. Rather, it occurred to him, it was as though the circulation had been cut off for some time and the blood was suddenly returning. Every nerve ending seemed to be firing at the same time—an itching, maddening pain that threatened to overwhelm him.
Still, lying on the floor as he now was, he reached again over his head, planted his hand, and dragged himself forward a few more feet across the ancient floor.
Merinda lay near the center of the rotunda, facedown and still. Her robe had nearly covered her where she came to rest. He couldn’t see her face.
He had to reach her. He extended his other arm. He pulled. His vac suit scraped the stone tiles under him as it slid.
Griffiths glanced toward the throne. Lokan was dead at last. Targ was raising the Nightsword over his head in triumph, the blade smeared with black ichor. As Griffiths watched, the room about them began to change. The pillars remained but beyond them existed different shapes, places, vistas, and horizons. The place became an auditorium, then suddenly was a mountaintop looking across the tops of clouds at a three-mooned sky. The mountaintop vanished, replaced by a huge office suite. Everything shifted as Targ struggled to gain control of the device he had just won.
Griffiths reached above his head and pulled himself a few feet closer to Merinda.
The rapid pace of their shifting surroundings was beginning to slow. They were not just projections or images of the places. Somehow, Griffiths sensed, they were those places in every sense of the concept. Targ’s control was nearly complete. There was little time left. As soon as Targ was sure of his power, the end would come, he was sure of it.
He touched Merinda and pulled himself up next to her. The feeling in his legs had returned with a vengeance. He could sit, he discovered, with considerable pain. He reached across the woman and turned her over carefully to cradle her in his arms.
Beyond the pressure bubble of her vac suit, Griffiths could see that Merinda’s honey-colored hair had fallen across her eyes.
“Merinda.” He spoke, shaking her slightly.
The dark eyes opened with a start.
Griffiths smiled down at her. “Good morning, this is your wake-up call.”
Pain suddenly filled her eyes.
“Where are you hurt?” Griffiths’s face filled with concern. “What’s wrong?”
Her voice was a whisper through the vac suit bubbles. “Oh, Griffiths,” she said, tears coming to her eyes. “I’m so sorry. I’ve failed.”
“Failed? You? What a stupid thing to say!” Griffiths spoke as comfortingly as he knew how. He still didn’t know if she was badly injured.
“I had to stop him, you understand,” she said earnestly. To Griffiths, it felt like a desperate confession. “Worlds, lives, civilizations … the Nightsword destroyed them all once and would destroy them again. You were the only one who knew the way … the only key who could unlock its location. Had to bury the key … bury the key …”
“You threatened to kill me once,” Griffiths said softly to her. “It might have been a better solution.”
Merinda smiled weakly.
“Why didn’t you kill me, Merinda?”
Merinda looked to her right. Griffiths followed the line of her gaze.
Targ had turned to face them from the throne.
As they watched, the pillared room vanished. In its place appeared the central control chamber of the ancient Settlement Ship from the Narrows. They found themselves lying amid the dust of the dead once more as Targ stepped down from the command platform.
“How very touching,” he said coldly. “ ‘Why didn’t you kill me?’ the young warrior cries. She didn’t kill you for the same reason I didn’t kill you: so long as you lived no other could sit upon the Mantle of Kendis-dai and discover what you discovered. Now, however, I have the Nightsword and your life has just become superfluous. Indeed, killing you now releases the Mantle from your control. My forces have the planet quarantined as it is.”
“Your forces, Targ?” Griffiths replied. “I thought the Centirion were the Omnet’s forces.”
“A technicality which I shall, with the Nightsword’s help, soon rectify,” Targ replied as he gazed admiringly on the device. “The Omnet shall be truly mine. No more troublesome Dictorae requiring each policy to be discussed. No more politics. You are looking at a new dawn of enlightenment: an age of peace and unprecedented prosperity for the galaxy. No more Order of the Future Faith. No more rebellion. No more petty and bloody interstellar war. The galaxy has been tearing itself apart since the Shattering of Suns and things haven’t been improving. I can fix all that. All of the broken past … I can fix it.”
“That’s what all of this is about, isn’t it, Targ,” Merinda said, her voice shuddering. “For all your words and all your high ideas, all this really is about is fixing your own past.”
“Shut up, Merinda,” Targ said menacingly. “You’re wrong about me.”
“Am I?” Merinda countered, struggling to sit up without success. “I am a Vestis Inquisitas, one of the best in the greater galaxy. As a member of the Inquisition it is my task to go beyond the facts and find the truth. Only those who know the truth may manipulate it—or at least so you told me. Truth is our weapon.”
Griffiths looked suddenly about them. Shadows had passed across one of the chamber’s walls. “Something is coming, Targ!”
“You know nothing of the truth, Neskat.” Targ laughed nervously.
Merinda continued to speak directly at the Prime, “The truth is, Vestis Prime, that you don’t give a damn about the galaxy or its people. This isn’t a quest for noble dominion—it isn’t even a quest for power. The only destiny you’ve come to change is your own.”
Targ stood silent.
Merinda glanced around at their surroundings. “So, tell me, L’Zari Targ, just where are we? When are we? What reality have we come here to change?”
Targ’s jaw muscles worked for a moment as he struggled for control of himself. “You can’t spoil it! You can’t! I won’t let you!”
“It’s my job to ask questions, Targ … You taught me that,” Merinda said evenly, her voice gaining strength. “So just who is it that’s approaching, Targ? Is it the Gorgons, coming once again as they did forty-three years ago? Will Marren-kan, somehow alive and breathing, step through those doors once more? You’re not the brash youth you were back then, are you, L’Zari? Now you’re a grown man—more than that, you are a great and powerful sorcerer.”
“Shut up!” Targ raged, moving toward them threateningly.
“Your father’s very real remains lay not ten feet from where you stand, Targ! He is dead!”
“NO!”
“Dead, Targ! Dead as the past! That’s the end of your story, Targ! That’s where your duty stopped! Your father cannot speak to you—you cannot gain the peace you seek!”
“No, damn you!” Targ screamed, grasping the hilt with both hands and raising the sword above them to strike. “You’re wrong!”
Griffiths raised his arm protectively between the sword and Merinda, some pa
rt of his mind realizing that the gesture was foolishly inadequate.
Targ twisted slightly back to bring power behind his blow.
“L’Zari?” came a deep voice from behind Griffiths.
Targ froze, the sword cocked high behind his shoulders ready to strike.
“L’Zari? Is that you, lad?” the voice spoke once more.
Targ’s head jerked up. He began shaking visibly.
Griffiths turned quickly to get a look at whoever was speaking. There, behind where Griffiths sat, standing amid the dust, was a strong man with a graying beard and long, iron hair. His open shirt was yellowed and ancient but there was a brightness in his eyes.
“Well, lad, I see you’ve grown right well, now!” The man spoke robustly. “What’s troubling you? Don’t you recognize an old shipmate?”
“Sir?” Targ whispered in a quavering voice.
“Sir, is it? I asked you never to call me that, did I not?” the man said good-naturedly. “By the Nine Gods of Kel, can’t you get that through your skull in all this time? And is there some point to raising that weapon on me, boy?”
“Yes, er, no … Kip.” Targ smiled, lowering his sword. “I’ve come for you, to save you.”
The man laughed heartily. “A long way, indeed, boy! Forty-three years is a long course! I’d say I’ve come a good deal further, however, seeing as I’m dead!”
Targ’s smile fell slightly. “No! No … you don’t understand! Here you are alive! Here I can change what happened. You don’t have to die!”
“Now, lad, whoever put such a fool notion into your head,” Kip said. “You were here, Boy-Out-of-Nowhere! They gullied me right before your eyes, they did! Right properly done, too, right after you gave them the map.”
“No … no, you’ve got it wrong, Father,” Targ said, water brimming in his eyes. “I never gave them the map! You said so long as we kept the map everything would be all right!”
Nightsword Page 38
