Pol did a quick calculation.
“He was perfect insurance, too—when you broke with my father—wasn’t he? You had a hostage then, against the wrath of your former friend.”
“I am not ashamed to admit it,” Ryle replied. “You never knew your father. The man was a devil. And he was one of the best sorcerers around. I had to have some protection.”
A sudden flash of inspiration possessed him and Pol asked, “Could it be that Spier, who was still on good terms with my father, did what he did to your daughter in order to assure Larick’s safety?”
The color returned heavily to Ryle’s face.
“You think just like them, don’t you?” he said. “Yes. Even your father hadn’t pierced my defenses, but that bastard got through and did that thing to her. Larick has felt guilty about it all his life.”
“With no small help from you, I’d guess. That’s how you keep him in line, huh? The old guilt trip?”
“Something you’ve never felt, I’m sure. You’re ready to cut a helpless girl’s throat. You’d have done it by now if I hadn’t heard Larick’s cry.”
“I’d rather cut yours,” Pol said, moving forward. “You’re a damned hypocrite. You’re no better than my father or Spier. Maybe you’re worse. You were ready to go along with their plan when you thought there was something in it for you. When you saw you had something to lose you became a white magician and a defender of righteousness. It’s a lot of bullshit! You haven’t changed. Now you make my brother do your dirty work, to keep your own hands clean. But they’re not. You’re not a big enough fool to believe they are, are you?”
Ryle moved his hands into the beginning of a warding gesture, and Pol slipped immediately into the second seeing, dragonmark still pounding with his pulsebeat.
“You talk to me of morality when you hold the Keys to the Gate and my daughter lies ready for your blade? Who is the hypocrite, Detson?”
An arc of fire passed between the man’s fingertips, and Pol looked about for strands or bands, in vain.
But then, suddenly, it seemed as if great clouds of colored fog were drifting into the chamber.
Pol extended his hand and a blue mist was there when he needed it. He felt the condensing moisture upon his fingers. A moment later, he passed a globe of water the size of a basketball, dripping, from hand to hand. Fire. Water. It seemed he had the logical remedy ready for whatever Ryle had in mind.
As he waited for the older sorcerer to make the first move, he thought back over his battles with Keth and with Larick, wondering again why his perception of the magical world had altered in each instance. Then it occurred to him that on each occasion his vision could have been colored by the other’s magical world-view. Perhaps, now, Ryle’s world was somewhat more cloudy than most.
“We change each other’s way of seeing, don’t we?” he said, half-aloud.
“I am here to kill you, not to instruct you,” Ryle replied, and the fires he held became a curved dagger which he cast toward Pol’s breast.
Pol willed coldness and felt it flow through his fingertips. The watery sphere clouded and grew solid, covered with frost. The blade gouged ice chips from it when it struck, and then fell to the floor. Pol hurled the ice ball at Ryle, but the sorcerer stepped aside and it shattered against the wall behind him.
Ryle raised both arms and lowered them suddenly. The room vanished. They inhabited a region composed entirely of themselves and the colored clouds. Pol took another step forward. As before, he reasoned that if he could get within striking distance with his fists he could become a sufficient distraction to dispense with the magic and then, of course, with Ryle.
He moved to take another step forward and his way was blocked by the abrupt appearance of a low wall. He began to step over it and its top was suddenly studded with tall shards of glass. He withdrew and bumped against something. Glancing quickly to the rear, he beheld another wall. And then there was one to his right, and his left. Almost simultaneous with his awareness of their existence, they began to move nearer. Ryle was staring intently toward him, the palms of his hands facing one another and moving slowly together.
But there was no up, no down here. He willed the fogs to boil beneath him, to levitate him as the bands had done earlier.
He rose out of his prison then and passed over its forward wall. It seemed almost too easy . . .
Studying Ryle then, he saw traces of concern about those probing eyes. The man did not know his strengths or his weaknesses yet, knew only what he had accomplished thus for. And so there was fear. So he was fighting a very conservative duel at this point, testing him, watching him, keeping his distance. Such seeming the case, Pol was suddenly apprehensive himself. Ryle was doubtless very good at this sort of thing. In a little while he would realize the limits of Pol’s experience and would likely unleash a devastating attack. Pol was not at all certain that he could survive it. Therefore, he ought to act quickly and decisively. But how? He could not think of an appropriate offense in this silent, dreamlike place of deadly cotton candy. Unless . . .
Perhaps he might change the rules, change the milieu. Perhaps he had, in some fashion, been guilty of letting the other man choose his own battleground. There was so much that he still did not know . . .
He felt that he had to finish with Ryle as quickly as possible. Beyond the possibility of Larick’s recovering at any time and coming to the aid of his adversary, Pol feared a recurrence of the effect he had already experienced several times—that unpredictable, intermittent foiling of his powers.
He had wondered several times since he had fought Keth whether all of the symbolic byplay was truly necessary in a magical encounter. Since it was will against will, force manipulation against force manipulation, and perhaps, personal energy against personal energy, it would seem that it might be stripped to its barest essentials and Devil take the hindmost. It occurred to him immediately that this was an untutored, Madwand way of thinking. But he was slowed whenever he tried to imitate the refinements the others had developed in the long courses of their studies, and he knew that he was handicapped when he was forced to play their games. There were obvious advantages in doing things that more subtle way, but he had no time to learn it at the moment. Therefore, he determined to attempt the alternative as he tried to move nearer.
With some trepidation, he blanked the second seeing. The fogs vanished. The room returned to normal, Ryle standing near its entrance, a faraway look in his eyes.
Pol raised his right hand, directing it toward Ryle, and willed that the other fall down, shrivel and die. The dragonmark seemed suddenly icy and he felt the power leap forth. He continued to focus his will and a steady flowing sensation moved, wavelike, down his arm.
Ryle swayed for a moment, then steadied himself. Suddenly, Pol found himself standing on a spit of land, his stance unaltered, a mighty torrent of water rushing past him at either hand. Ryle stood upon a small island downstream. Even as he watched, the nearer edge of Ryle’s islet was being eroded away and the man was forced to draw back upon it.
But Ryle raised both hands, a look of intense concentration upon his face. The movement of the water began to slow. A tremor shook the land upon which Pol stood. The water lashed about for several moments, then grew still. This did not last long, however. Shortly, it began moving again. But this time it was flowing toward Pol. He watched, fascinated, as its velocity increased and the land began to wear away before him.
He shook his head as if to clear it. Ryle had drawn him back into a symbolic situation. He dismissed the waters for a moment and bent his efforts toward reestablishing his presence in the chamber.
The river vanished. They were back in the room again. Nothing had changed. Only now Pol felt a pressure, a pronounced squeezing sensation all over his body. It was increasing by the moment.
He refocused his energies.
“Burn, melt, fall down . . . ”
The pressure vanished and Ryle staggered, as from a sudden blow. Pol maintained his own
pressure now, his entire will behind it. Ryle began to sway, as if caught in a heavy wind.
Then, suddenly, there were flames between them, fanned as if by a great gale blowing in Ryle’s direction. They rose from a wide chasm which divided a rocky landscape between them.
Even as he watched, the winds died down and the flames became vertical. Then he felt the warm touch of a breeze upon his face. The tongues of fire began to bend toward him . . .
“No!” Pol cried, and the vista was swept away.
The breeze and the heat remained until he gained control of his forces once again. Then they fell, and he hurled his energies at the other with renewed vehemence.
. . . He stood upon a mountain peak, Ryle atop another. A storm was raging between them. Bolts of lightning fell upon both slopes—
“No,” he said softly, “not this time,” and he stood again in the chamber and continued the pressure.
. . . Each of them stood upon a floe of ice, tossed by a gray choppy sea—
“No.”
They were in the chamber and Ryle was glaring at him. His arm was beginning to ache, but the wavelike sensation continued to pulse through it.
. . . There was darkness all about them, and the meteor shower began—
“No.”
He maintained the focus of his concentration, ready to dismiss any new distraction. It had to be will against will.
The room began to fade and he restored it immediately.
“No.”
He smiled.
For half-a-minute he maintained his assault, and then he felt the pressure beginning to mount against him. He drew upon his reserves of determination, but it continued to build.
Even this way, he realized then, Ryle had the edge. The man had played a careful game but it had not really been necessary. He knew that he could not hold him back much longer. Ryle really was stronger. Of course, he had no way of knowing that.
Pol took another step forward. If he could just reach him, could just use his fists again . . .
But the pressure grew excruciating with the next step. He knew that he would never make it across the chamber. And now the fat sorcerer was beginning to smile . . .
“Father?”
Ryle turned his head and the pressure was gone. Off to his left, Pol could see that Taisa was sitting up upon the slab of stone.
“Taisa . . . ?”
The man took a step forward.
Pol gathered his forces and struck. Ryle fell like a poled ox.
“Father!”
Taisa slumped back upon the stone. Larick, who had been stirring, grew still.
Gargantuan peals of laughter shook the room.
XVII
The wolf paced and turned in the great cavern, below the Face, before the frozen forms of the other beasts and the men. He slipped out only briefly to find something to eat, unable to go too great a distance from the lair, and a part of his mind always kept watch upon the entrance. He made his kill quickly and took it back with him into the grotto. He lay before the shadowy forms of the other hosts, crunching bones. Beyond this, there was only silence.
When he rose again, his movements were less rapid and they continued to slow, as did his heartbeat and his breathing.
Finally, he was barely stirring, and at last he came to a halt. His eyes grew glazed. He became totally immobile.
Slowly then, a serpent uncoiled itself upon a ledge near the place of the Face. It twisted its way down the rough, rocky wall, tongue darting, eyes bright. It slithered across the floor. It fell upon the remains of the wolf’s meal and consumed them.
It mounted the wall again, exploring ledge after ledge, entering each cranny and crack, eating any insects it came upon. Tongue darting, it tested every stirring of the air.
Hours passed, its movements slowed. At length, it stopped within a night-dark crevice.
The big cat awakened and stretched. She went to regard the still and expressionless Face high upon the wall. She patrolled the cavern. She left briefly to feed, as the wolf had done, returned and grew stiff as she licked her rectum, one leg high overhead.
A man awakened. He cursed, drew his blade and inspected it, sheathed it. He began to pace. After a time, he spoke to the Face. It never replied, but he was not misled. He could feel the intelligence, the power within it. The sightless eyes seemed to follow him wherever he went.
At last his words trailed off and he became a part of the scenery.
The Harpy awakened and uttered a cry and a curse. She flapped in quick patrol about the cavern, defecating profusely, imaginatively.
Then she considered the Face and grew silent. She went to feed at the remains of the cat’s meal.
All were as one before the Face.
XVIII
Pol turned toward the doorway. An unnaturally-cast shadow covered the large figure of the man who stood there. As soon as Pol’s gaze fell upon him, that one moved forward and entered the chamber. The shadow went away.
Pol stared. The man wore a yellow cloak, darker garments beneath it. He was blue-eyed, with sandy hair white at the temples. His features were rugged, his expression almost open, almost honest. He smiled. He had a shiny, capped tooth.
“There is a lesson there for you, lad,” he said, and Pol recognized the voice. “He had you, but he allowed himself to be distracted. I lifted an old spell, to give you an opening, to see what you would do.” He shook his head. “You shouldn’t have allowed yourself to be distracted, also. You should have struck instantly, not stood gawking. A better man could have killed you in that interval—would have.”
“But the distraction itself might have represented a threat,” Pol replied.
“If a building is falling on you, you don’t concern yourself with the horn of an approaching car. You deal with the most immediate peril first. That’s survival. You were good, but you hesitated. That can be fatal.”
“Car? Who the hell are you, anyway?”
“You know my name.”
“Henry Spier?”
The man smiled again.
“So much for introductions.”
From somewhere, he produced a black cigarette holder, screwed a cigarette into it and raised it to his lips. Smoke drifted upward from it before it reached his mouth. He puffed upon it and looked about the chamber.
“Things seem to have worked themselves out just about as I’d calculated them,” he observed.
He reached beneath his cloak and produced the statuette Pol had hidden in the tunnel.
“You found it. . . . ”
“Of course.”
Henry Spier walked past him and placed the figure at the second point from the right in the diagram upon the floor.
“Six to go,” he commented as he straightened and turned.
“That is the first cigarette I’ve seen in this world,” Pol said.
“A man of perception may choose his pleasures from many places,” Spier replied. “I’ll be happy to teach you all about them later. But now we have some important business to conclude.”
“My dreams,” Pol said. “You released me from what I might call the first series, that night on the trail . . . ”
Spier nodded.
“ . . . But then there were more—set in the same world, but very different.”
Again Spier nodded, and the smoke curled above his head.
“Since you were being propagandized in the first instance,” he stated, “I felt it only fair that you should be granted a somewhat fuller picture when the opposition had its opportunity.”
“I must confess that the fuller picture was not entirely comprehensible to me.”
“It would be surprising if it were,” said Spier, “since it was an alien and vastly older civilization that you viewed. What is far more important, though, is whether or not you found it attractive.”
Spier’s eyes suddenly met with his own and Pol looked away.
“I found it—fascinating,” he said, and when he looked back he saw that Spier was smiling ag
ain.
“Excellent,” the man replied. “I believe that finds us in basic agreement as to values. What say you produce the other six Keys now and we be about our business?”
Pol looked about the chamber. He gestured.
“You cautioned me against inattention and distraction. What of these?”
“My power would have to be broken for these three to awaken,” he said. “It would require a faltering of my will, and I doubt the sufficiency of anything I propose doing now to work that end.”
Pol shook his head and turned away. He regarded the still form of Taisa upon the block of dark stone.
“Your gaze follows the direction of your thoughts, I see.”
“Does this thing really require a human sacrifice?”
“Yes. So be of good cheer that you now have a choice. We can save the girl for your later pleasure and use Ryle, who would be most happy to kill you if it would serve his ends.”
“What of—my brother?”
“He would not go along with our plans. Ryle has warped his thinking. I suggest you permit me to banish him, perhaps to the world where you yourself grew up.”
“He is a sorcerer. He may find his way back.”
“It will be a simple enough matter to inflict a loss of memory.”
“That could be kind of rough.”
“His treatment of you was somewhat less than exemplary.”
“But as you said, Ryle influenced him.”
“Who cares what the reason may be? I am only willing to spare him at all because he is your brother.”
“Say that I give you what you want. What assurance have I that I will be of any use to you afterwards?”
“There will be massive changes, and I cannot control an entire world by myself. There are not that many Madwands about. I would not dispense with any of them unnecessarily. And you, of course, will always hold a special place, because of this assistance.”
“I see,” Pol said.
“Do you really? Are you aware what will come to pass in this world when the Gate is opened?”
“I think so. Or at least I have my suspicions.”
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