“It will become our plum. With the power at our disposal, we will be gods of the new world.”
Pol’s eyes moved toward the Gate, where some trick of the light made the figure of the nailed bird seem to jerk forward.
“Supposing I said ‘no’?” he asked.
“That could cause us both considerable inconvenience. But what possible reason could you have for not agreeing?”
“I don’t like being pressured into things, whether it’s by you or Ryle or the statuettes themselves. I’ve been manipulated ever since I set foot in this world, and I’m tired of it.”
“Well, as in most major matters there is only a limited number of choices. In this case, you are with me, you are against me or you want to walk away from me. Two of those responses are unacceptable and would require action on my part.”
“I wouldn’t like that,” said Pol. “But then, you might not either.”
“Are you threatening me, lad?” Spier asked.
“Just stating a possible consequence,” Pol replied.
The big man sighed.
“You’re strong, Pol,” he said, “stronger today than you ever were before in your life. You’ve passed your initiation, and your lights are all shining as pretty as can be—for the moment. No telling how long it will last, of course. But be that as it may, I am stronger still. There would be no contest whatsoever between us. You would be as a candle’s flame before the hurricane of my will. Now, I could force you to produce the Keys. But I would far rather you did it willingly, for I want you alive and on my side and wearing no special enchantment.”
“Why?”
“I’ve my reasons. I’ll tell you later, after I’m sure of you.”
“You foresaw a possible conflict between us. Something you’d said . . . ”
“Yes, I did. But it need not be. If you’re squeamish, I’ll even do the sacrificing myself.”
Pol laughed.
“That’s not it. I’d have killed Ryle only a little while ago if I could have. As I said, you’re pressing me, you’re manipulating me.”
“I have no choice.”
“The hell you don’t.”
Spier turned away, staring for a moment at the Gate.
“I wonder . . . ?” he began.
“By the way,” Pol said, “if you were to kill me, how would you get at the Keys?”
“Only with great difficulty, if at all.” Spier said, “since you are carrying them around in what is practically a private universe. If you die, it would be a hell of a problem piercing it.”
“Then your ‘candle in the wind’ metaphor isn’t quite apt, is it? You’d have to pull your punches if it came to throwing any.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. I wouldn’t count on it, though. The Gate could be opened with just one Key—but it might take me a couple of years and an awful lot of trouble. Good thing we’re just speaking hypothetically, isn’t it?”
Pol crossed the chamber and touched the Gate for the first time. It felt cold. The eyes of the nailed serpent seemed to be fixed upon him.
“What would happen if the statuettes were destroyed?” he asked.
“That would be a very difficult thing to accomplish,” Spier replied, “even if one knew how.”
“But we’re being hypothetical, aren’t we?”
“True. The Gate would fade away from this plane, and you would be standing there looking at a raw piece of mountain.”
“But it is open now—or can be opened without the Keys—on another plane?”
“Yes. But only tenuous things can take that route, as you did in your dreams.”
“What brought it here in the first place?”
“Your father, Ryle and myself—with great exertions.”
“How? And how are the statuettes involved?”
“That’s enough for being hypothetical—or anything else of an interrogatory nature,” Spier said. “There were three choices—one good one and two bad ones. Do you recall?”
“Yes.”
Pol turned toward him, leaned back against the door and folded his arms across his breast. Immediately, he felt the coldness along his spine, but he did not move. The power was still there, moving within his right forearm.
Spier’s eyes widened, slightly and but for an instant. He glanced upward and then back down at Pol again.
“I know your answer,” he said, “but I have to hear you say it.”
“You ran out on my father and left him to face an army.”
Spier frowned, looked puzzled.
“He acted against my advice,” he said. “The army was there because of his actions, not mine. There was no sense in my dying with him. But what is all of this to you? You never even knew him.”
“Just curious,” Pol said. “I wanted to hear your side of it.”
“Surely you are not going to use that as a basis for refusing me? You were only a baby.”
Pot nodded. He was thinking of the thing that might have been his father’s ghost walking beside him in the misty chamber.
“You’re right. But humor me with one more question, if you will. Would the two of you have fought one another eventually, for hegemony in this new land?”
Spier’s face reddened.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps . . . ”
“Had it already begun? Were you on the threshold and was this your way—”
“Enough!” Spier cried. “I take it that your answer is ‘no’. Would you care to tell me which is your real reason for denying me?”
Pol shrugged.
“Choose any of the above,” he said. “Maybe I’m not certain myself. But I know there is a sufficiency. “
The coldness had invaded his entire body now, but he made no move to withdraw from the serpent figure of the Gate against which he leaned. It was almost as if it had invited him to position himself just there . . .
“It’s a shame,” Spier said, “because I was beginning to like you . . . ”
Pol hit him. He summoned up every bit of the power he could muster, backed it with all of his will and hurled it at the man.
Very slowly, Henry Spier unscrewed the cigarette from its holder, dropped it upon the floor and stepped on it. He replaced the holder in some hidden pocket beneath his cloak. It had to be sheer bravado. Pol knew that the man must be feeling the force of his attack. But the display was effective. Pol felt a tremor of fear at Spier’s power, but he maintained the siege and reached for even more force to back it. He was committed now, and he felt as if he were sliding down a long tunnel which ended in blackness.
Spier raised his eyes and they bored into his own. Pol suddenly felt a resistance rising.
Spier took a step toward him.
It was as if he suddenly faced a heat backlash, as if the target of his exertions stood directly before him rather than some distance away.
Frantically, he switched to the second seeing. His vision focused upon Spier, advancing upon him, fists raised. The image of Spier, still standing in the distance, faded. The man’s face was twisted into a smirk and perspiration dotted his brow. His fist was already moving.
Pol’s concentration was broken. He ducked forward, raising his hands to protect his face. He heard a solid thunk, followed by a brief cry and realized immediately that Spier’s blow had fallen upon the Gate.
He dropped his hands and drove his left fist, followed by his right, into Spier’s abdomen. The blows had surprisingly little effect. The man was solid.
Even as he swung a left uppercut and felt it connect, he realized that the main pain the man seemed to have felt was in the bloodied knuckles of his right hand, which he now held in an awkward position. Pol immediately threw a right toward his face, but this blow was blocked. Then Spier rushed him.
Spier’s bulk crashed into him, driving him back against the Gate. Pol was dazed as his head struck upon it. Then Spier stepped back and their eyes met again.
He called upon the dragonmark to raise a defense as a shock ran through his entire system like a j
olt of electricity. He struck out with the power he had wielded earlier, but it barely seemed to shield him against the forces the other was turning against him. He felt a pressure beginning to build, not unlike that which Ryle had turned upon him. Both he and Spier stood absolutely still now, and though he threw everything he had into the defense, the pressure continued to mount.
A throbbing began in his temples and his breathing became labored. He grew damp with perspiration, though he still felt abnormally cold. A wave of dizziness came and went, came again. He felt that he might only be able to hold Spier off for a few more seconds. His defenses would crumble, the man would place him under control, force him to produce the statuettes and then possibly use him for the sacrifice. Where was the flame which had guided him, protected him?
He seemed to hear faint, mocking laughter. In that instant he realized that this was the end toward which they had guided him. They wanted the Gate opened. If he were not willing, then they would not protect him against the one who would.
His vision began to fade as the vertigo retuned. If this were to be the end, then at least he ought to try inflicting a final hurt upon his enemy.
He placed his right foot flat upon the door behind him and thrust himself forward toward Spier, striking outward and upward with both fists.
He was surprised that his blow actually landed. The last thing that he saw before he fell was the look of astonishment on Spier’s face as the man toppled over backwards.
A wave of darkness rushed through Pol’s head. He felt nothing as he hit the floor.
XIX
Drifting. He was drifting through blackness and silence. His only other sensation was a feeling of intense cold, but after a time this passed.
For how long he drifted, he could not tell—moments, ages . . . The sensation was not unpleasant, now that the coldness had passed. Memory required too much effort. He only knew that it was good to know something of rest, of an end to all exertion.
A gentle rocking motion began. Even so . . . It was hardly disturbing. But then motion commenced in a single direction. He rode with it, still feeling the rocking as he was drawn along.
He perceived a feint light. It seemed to be coming from all directions, but he did not wonder at the variety of sensory apparatus the sensation might require. His consciousness was growing, but portions of his mind were numb.
The light grew and the motion continued. Whatever was below seemed a pale yellow with smoky patches.
Now the prospect grew clearer, but his sense of perspective was warped. The light values were strange, and there was no way of determining his distance from the slowly resolving objects below. It was a broken land, rocky, sandy, shadowed, with wind-borne clouds of dust and low-lying, snaky mists. But there was nothing recognizable for contrast, nothing to provide a scale. Yet the place was familiar. Where? When?
He dropped lower. Were they mountain peaks or low ridges above which he moved?
And where was he going? Was he controlling his own movements, only drifting, or both? Or neither? It almost seemed—
He was moving alongside one of the larger stone prominences. Suddenly, he rounded it and the matter of relative proportions was resolved.
About ten feet below him, high on a stake, a demonic head was impaled. Something which might be classifiable as a grin drew the dark, scaly face tight. The eyes were ftilly opened, very black and appeared to be staring directly at him.
He felt something akin to a shudder as he was swept on past the grisly thing, with the distinct impression that it had winked at him. The wasteland fell farther below him as he soared into a twilit area of pale stars in a pale sky above the level of blowing dust. Here the wind still blew, cold, with a moaning sound, empty of everything.
Far below now, the features of the landscape fled backward. A fountain of sparks rose as if to intercept him, but he veered far wide of it. Shortly afterwards, a crashing metallic note filled the air, as of the striking of a great gong, the reverberations of which seemed to remain with him for many long minutes.
A bright meteor cut a long, slow trail above and before him; and he heard a sound like thunder though there were no clouds in the sky. His velocity seemed to increase, and the moaning of the wind rose in pitch. Far below him, the dark and light patches of the land moved in a sea of distortions, rendering themselves into momentary faces—elongate, twisted, beautiful, alien, angry, composed, bereft. He passed over a shattered city above which dark forms hovered and turned. Small blue lights darted amid the ruins. Occasionally, the dark things fell upon one and extinguished it. He passed above a black tower from whence a lovely, liquid-voiced singing emerged. A squat, many-legged creature with a juicy, cracked skin, lay like a rotten plum atop it. A brazen chariot passed silently through the middle air, driven by a dead-white being muffled in saffron, drawn by long-tailed creatures whose breath emerged in white clouds to congeal and fall as crystals upon the winds. In a moment, the apparition was gone, and he began to doubt whether he had actually seen it.
A tinkling, as of hundreds of tiny bells, accompanied his passage above a gray plain where armies of humans and demons stood frozen in martial attitudes beneath some ancient enchantment whose fringes he had touched. Ahead of him then, the horizon was broken along its entire length—a thin, irregular edge of the world, rising. He focused his attention upon it.
It grew into a saw-toothed band and then a rampart—mighty, towering and black. For a long while it seemed that at any moment he might be dashed against the great range. And then a shifting of light lay a new perspective across the land, and he realized that it was incredibly distant, incredibly huge. Something tightened within the cloud of his being as he realized intuitively that he must pass over it.
Below, the hidden features of the land were still revealed in fragmentary flashes. He no longer had vision to the rear, but he felt, vaguely, that something was following him. Briefly, he assaulted the frozen part of his own mind, with inquiry as to what he was, where he had come from. Nothing yielded, the brief frenzy passed and forgetfulness of its occurrence ensued. He continued his contemplation of the world before him, realizing that he had come this way before, knowing that this time it was different, knowing that he had a mission to fulfill.
The mountains loomed even larger, and he knew that—no matter what the nature of his form—their traversal would not be easy. He began studying their silhouette, looking for a low area, a gap—anything that might ease his passage. He thought that he detected such a place off to the left, and he made an effort to direct his course toward it.
He was surprised when this actually occurred. It was his first voluntary act that he could recall since coming into consciousness, and it pleased him to see it prove fruitful. Immediately, however, he wondered what had been directing him up until this time.
He became aware then of a kind of tugging, of the sensation of being drawn onward by something beyond the mountains, something which was willing to give him a little leeway, that he come more rapidly and safely into its lands. He exerted himself again, and his velocity increased.
As he drew nearer to the mountains it seemed that he grew more tangible than he had been earlier. For now he began to meet with resistance, to feel the buffeting of the winds.
The mountains towered above him, their peaks vanishing in the darkness overhead. He rose to an even greater altitude as he came nearer, approaching the gap. The winds caught him and cast him back down, screaming now in their passage.
He stabilized himself and mounted again, moving even nearer to the rocky face as he ascended. This time he rose higher before the screaming winds forced him back.
On his third attempt, he moved more rapidly, driving himself upward with great force, the slope of the mountain becoming a dark blur before him. When the winds finally took hold of him, he fought them, almost reaching the level of the bright gap before he was forced downward yet again.
The fourth time he tried a different angle of attack and was beaten back almost immed
iately.
He hovered at a lower altitude, recovering orientation and stability, mustering fortitude. He massed his energies once more. Then he began to rise.
This time he followed the best course he had taken earlier, close to the face of the mountain. He hurled himself upward, attempting to exceed all earlier velocities.
The wind curled about him and played upon him as on the string of some musical instrument. He throbbed to its vibrations as he fought it. He continued to rise against its pressures, but he felt the rapid dissipation of the energies which composed his being. A feeling came over him that if he did not make it up and through this time, he would be swept away to drift for perhaps half of an age before he recovered sufficient strength to try again.
As the battering increased and he felt himself slowing he invested all of his remaining strength in an attempt to continue the upward drive. A momentary lull permitted him a great gain, but the assault began again just as he neared the gap.
“Whoever you are that calls,” he cried wordlessly toward the gap, “if you really want me, then lend a hand!”
Almost immediately, he felt the tugging—and for the first time it seemed a physical sensation rather than a psychical leading-on. He added his own energies to it and felt himself rising at a more rapid rate. He swept past the highest point he had achieved with his earlier efforts. The gap was before him if he could but bend his course and strike a proper passage now.
He exerted himself again, and the steady pull—from ahead now—assisted him. He came into the gap.
He had hoped for some sheltering from the winds once he achieved the cleft in the mountains, but now he faced a gale blowing through it. Fighting his way to the shelter of an opening in the righthand wall, he gathered his forces and considered the way ahead. He had seen prominences before him and other openings in the walls.
Braving the winds, he advanced and took shelter in the lee of a rocky rib to the left. The wind whistled by him and icy crystals sparkled in long streaks within dark grooves amid the stone. He made another effort, advancing a small distance and sheltering again. The tugging had subsided—or, rather, reverted to the mental level, as a summoning.
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