"That, at least, is a feeling I share with you."
Odil said nothing. Galt and Vane, holding hands, brought up the rear. The walls shimmered, growing transparent in places, and ghostly shapes danced within their depths. Clouds of green smoke puffed past them, leaving them gagging. A huge furry face regarded them solemnly through a hole in the ceiling, vanishing moments later with a flash of fire and a peal of laughter.
At the first window they passed, they viewed the changing land without, where skeletal horsemen raced their skeletal horses through the swirling smoke in the sky.
"We draw nearer!" Lorman croaked, in a voice the others considered overloud.
They came at last to a gallery whose long row of windows afforded numerous views of the altering prospect. The gallery itself was an empty, quiet place, free of the unnatural disturbances they had witnessed during their long walk. Immediately they entered it, all of them were stricken by a sense of the presence Derkon had felt earlier.
"This is the place, isn't it?" he asked.
"No," Lorman replied. "The place is up ahead. There mad Tualua dreams, sending his nightmares to ravage the world. There are two other connecting galleries, it seems. The northernmost may actually be best for purposes of our operation. It will mean passing through his chamber to reach it. But once we have done that, the way should be clear before us."
"If we succeed and live," Odil inquired, "are we going to try to kill him during the disturbance that follows?"
"I would hate to waste all of that power…" said Vane.
"… when we've been through so much for it already," said Galt.
"We've the oath to keep us honest," said Lorman, giggling.
"Of course," said Derkon.
Hodgson nodded.
"So long as I have a say in it," said he, "some of it will be used properly."
"All right," said Odil, his voice wavering.
They moved through the gallery, slowing as they passed the windows to view the fire-shot disorder. Coming at last to the Chamber of the Pit, they stayed near the wall as they moved through. An occasional splashing sound occurred within its depths.
They glanced at one another, backs to the wall, as they sidled along. No one spoke. It was not until they had passed beyond the Chamber and reached the entrance to the far gallery that some of them realized that they had all been holding their breath.
They retreated quickly along the farther gallery, turning the first corner they came to, to put the Chamber out of sight. They found themselves in a large, dim alcove across from another bank of windows which let upon a lower, more lava-filled aspect of the changing land.
"Good," Lorman announced, pacing about the area. "The emanations are strong here. We must form ourselves into a circle. It will be a fairly simple matter of focusing, and I will take care of its direction. No. You—Hodgson—over here. You will speak the final words of Undoing. It will be best to have a white magician for that. Derkon, over there! We will each have our parts in this thing. I will assign them in a moment. We will become a lens. Over there, Odil."
One by one, the six magicians took their places in the glare of the burning land. A headless wraith, followed by portions of five other portents, drifted past the windows, the final one beating upon a drum in time with the eruptions below.
"Is that a good omen or a bad one?" Galt asked Vane.
"As with most omens," the other replied, "it is difficult to be certain until it is too late."
"I was afraid you'd say that."
"Attend me now," Lorman stated. "Here are your parts…"
Dilvish was propped on one elbow. Semirama smiled up at him.
"Son of Selar," she said, "it was worth whatever may come, to meet you and know you, who are so like that other." She adjusted the bedclothes and continued. "I do not like believing what I now believe about Jelerak, who has always been a friend. But I had come to suspect as much before your arrival. Yes, cruelties were common in my day, too, and I had long grown used to them. And I had no other loyalties in this time and place…
"Now—" She sat up. "Now I feel that the time has come to depart and leave him to his own devices. Before long, even the Old One will turn upon him. He will be too occupied then to pursue us. The transport mirror has been cleared. Come flee with me through it. With your sword and certain forces I command, we will soon win us a kingdom."
Dilvish shook his head slowly.
"I've a quarrel with Jelerak which must be settled before I depart this place," he said. "And speaking of blades, I could use one."
She leaned forward and put her arms about him.
"Why must you be so like your ancestor?" she said. "I warned Selar not to go to Shoredan. I knew what would happen. Now to find you, then to have you rush off to your doom in the same fashion… Is your entire line cursed, or is it only me?"
He held her and said, "I must."
"That is what he said also, under very similar circumstances. I feel as if I am suddenly rereading an old book."
"Then I hope the current edition has a slightly improved ending. Do not make my part any harder than it is already."
"That I can always handle," she said, smiling, "if we are together. If you attempt this thing and succeed, will you take me away with you?"
He regarded her in the strange light which was now entering through the windows at his back, and as had his ancestor an age before him, he answered, "Yes."
Later, when they had risen and repaired their costumes and Semirama had sent Lisha to locate a weapon, they drank a glass of wine and her thoughts turned again to Jelerak.
"He has fallen," she said, "from a high place. I do not ask you to forgive where you cannot, but remember that he was not always as he is now. For a time, he and Selar were even friends."
"For a time?"
"They quarreled later. Over what, I never knew. But yet, it was so, in those days."
Dilvish, leaning against a bedpost, stared into his glass.
"This gives rise to a strange thought," he said.
"What is it?"
"The time we met, he might simply have brushed me aside—slain me on the spot, cast me into a sleep, turned my mind away from him as if he were not there. I wonder… Might it have been my resemblance to Selar that caused him to be particularly cruel?"
She shook her head.
"Who can say? I wonder whether even he knows the full reasons for everything he does."
She took a sip of wine, rolled it about her mouth.
"Do you?" she added, swallowing.
Dilvish smiled.
"Does anyone? I know enough to satisfy my judgment in the matter. Perfect knowledge I leave to the gods."
"Generous of you," she said.
There came a soft knock upon the door.
"Yes?" she called out.
"It is I. Lisha."
"Come in."
The woman entered, bearing something wrapped in a green shawl.
"You found one?"
"Several. From an upstairs chamber one of the others had shown me."
She unwound the shawl, revealing three blades.
Dilvish finished his drink and put the glass down. He moved forward and took up each of the weapons in turn.
"This one's for show."
He set it aside.
"This one has a good guard, but the other is a bit heavier and has a better point. Though this one's sharper…"
He swung both of them, tried them both in his sheath, decided upon the second. Then he turned and embraced Semirama.
"Wait," he said. "Have some things ready for a quick journey. Who knows how this will all fall out?"
He kissed her and strode to the door.
"Goodbye," she said.
As he moved along the hallway, a peculiar feeling possessed him. None of the creaks or scratchings which had been present earlier were now to be heard. An unnatural stillness lay upon the place—a tense, vibrant thing, like the silence between the peals of a great-throated bell. Imminence and
impendency rode like electric beings past him; in their wake came panic, which he fought without understanding, his new blade half drawn, knuckles white as he gripped it.
Baran uttered an oath for the seventh time and seated himself upon the floor in the midst of his paraphernalia. Tears of frustration rose in his eyes and ran down on either side of his nose, losing themselves in his mustache.
Couldn't he do anything right today? Seven times he had summoned elementals, charged them and sent them into Jelerak's mirror. Almost immediately, each had vanished. Something was keeping the mirror open now. Could it be Jelerak himself, getting ready to return? Might not Jelerak appear within it and step out of the frame at any moment, his ancient eyes staring unblinking into his own, reading every secret of his soul as if they were all branded upon his brow?
Baran sobbed. It was so unfair, to be caught in one's treachery before it was brought to a successful conclusion. Any moment now…
Yet Jelerak did not appear behind the glass. The world had not yet ended. It might even be that some other force was responsible for the destruction of his elementals.
What, then?
He shook his mind free of the feelings, forcing himself to think. If it was not Jelerak, it had to be someone else. Who?
Another sorcerer, of course. A powerful one. One who had decided that the time had come to enter here and take charge…
Yet no other face than his own regarded him from the glass. What was that other one waiting for?
Puzzling. Irritating. If it were a stranger, could he make a deal? he wondered. He knew a lot about this place. He was an accomplished sorcerer himself… Why didn't something happen?
He rubbed his eyes. He hauled himself to his feet. This had been a very dissatisfying day.
Crossing to a small window, he looked out. It was several moments before he realized that something was not right, and several more before it struck him as to what it was.
The changing land had again stopped changing. The land lay smoking but still beneath the racing moon. When had this occurred? It could not have been very long ago…
This stoppage signified another lull in Tualua's consciousness. Now might well be the time to move in, to take control. He had to get downstairs, get hold of that bitch queen, drag her to the Pit—before someone came through the mirror and beat him to it. As he hurried across the room, he reviewed the binding spell he had outlined.
As he reached toward the door, a strange tension came into him, and with it a return of his vertigo in a key at which he had never experienced it before.
No! Not now! No!
But even as he flung the door wide and rushed toward the stair, he knew that this time it was different. There was something more to it than a recurrence of all his old fears, something— premonitory, which even his earlier spells were now seen as leading up to. It was as if the entire castle were, in some sense, holding its breath against a monumental occurrence the moment for which was almost at hand. It was as if this—foreboding—had in some measure communicated itself even to mighty Tualua, shocking him into momentary quiescence. It was—
He came to the top of the stair, looked down, and shuddered. His entire nature seemed, at the moment, riven.
He ground his teeth, put out his hand, and took the first step…
Monstrously ancient structures of an imposing nature are not in the habit of having been constructed by men. Nor was the Castle Timeless an exception, as most venerable cities trace their origins to the architectural enterprise of gods and demigods, so the heavy structure in the Kannais which predated them all, and which had over the ages served every conceivable function from royal palace to prison, brothel to university, monastery to abandoned haunt of ghouls —changing even its shape, it was said, to accommodate its users' needs —so it informed with the echoes of all the ages, was muttered by some (with averted eyes and evil-forfending gesture) to be a relic of the days when the Elder Gods walked the earth, a point of their contact with it, a toy, a machine, or perhaps even a strangely living entity, fashioned by those higher powers whose vision transcended that of mankind— whom they had blessed or cursed with the spark of self-consciousness and the ache of curiosity that was the beginning of soul—as mankind's surpassed that of the hairy tree-dwellers counted by some as his kin, for purposes best known only to those shining folk whom it at least served somewhere, somehow as an inter- dimensional clubhouse before those beings absented themselves to felicity of a higher order, leaving behind the unripened fruits of their meddling in the affairs of otherwise satisfied simians; fashioned, in the opinion of some metaphysicians, on a timeless plane out of spiritual substances and, hence, not truly a part of this grosser world to which it had been transported, consisting as it did of equal measures of good and evil and their more interesting counterparts, love and hate, compounded with a beauty, therefore, that was both sinister and beatific, possessed of an aura as absorbent as a psychic sponge and as discriminating, alive in the sense that a man with only a functioning portion of his right hemisphere might be said to live, and anchored in space and time by an act of will imperfect because divided, yet superior to normal earthly vicissitudes for all the unearthly reasons the metaphysician would not care to recite a second time.
This, of course, was all wrong, according to more practical-minded theorists. Old buildings might acquire a patina of use, even exceptionally well- constructed ones, and their ambience had much to do with any physical or psychic impressions to be gained within their walls—particularly those situated in mountainous areas prone to a wide range of meteorological influences. And yes, when such people inhabited the place, it performed almost completely in accord with their expectations, as did the world at large. Such was its sensitivity.
Filled with sorcerers and demons, home to an Old One, it changed again. Other aspects of its nature were called forth.
A test of its true nature, of course, arose when the imperfect will upon which it resided was challenged, 'just as the proof of the evil or the good lay in the doing.
Chapter 9
Humming softly to himself, Jelerak leaned far forward, pushing the wheelbarrow in a low plane so as not to jar its occupant loose. Still entranced, Arlata of Marinta lay spread-eagled in the conveyance, her legs strapped to the handles, her arms hanging over the sides, drawn downward and secured to the traces near the wheel. A large quantity of sacking had first been stuffed into the barrow beneath her shoulders so as to provide for a proper spreading of the rib cage. Her tunic had been opened and a red dotted line painted to bisect her upper abdomen in the substernal area. A rattling sack of instruments lay across her stomach. He moved along the east-west corridor leading to the Chamber of the Pit, and hordes of vermin trailed behind him with a gleeful cluttering. The air grew warmer and more humid as he advanced, and the odor of the place was already heavy. Smiling, he pushed the wheelbarrow through the last few feet of shadow and passed beyond the low archway into the chamber itself.
He continued on across the dung- streaked floor, to position the barrow carefully near the eastern edge of the pit. Straightening then, he stretched, signed, and yawned in that order, before opening the sack and removing three long spokes and a fastener, which he quickly assembled into a tripod. Setting it on the floor between the barrow's handles, he placed his favorite brass bowl atop it and dumped smoldering charcoal into it from a small, perforated bucket which had hung from the barrow's right handle. He blew upon it until it produced a cheery glow, and then from several small sacks he introduced quantities of powder and herbs which caused a thick, sickly smoke to pour forth, sweet-smelling and slow-coiling, about the area.
Rats came from lurking places to pirouette upon the flagstones as he resumed his humming and withdrew a short, wide, triangular-bladed knife from the sack, tested its point and edges with his thumb, placed its tip for a moment at the top of the line he had drawn beginning between Arlata's pink-tipped breasts, smiled, nodded, and set it down upon her stomach for future use. Next, he removed a b
rush and several small, sealed pots, shook down the sack, placed it upon the floor beside him, opened one of the pots and knelt.
Bats dipped and darted as his hand dipped and darted, beginning with sure, practiced movements the painting of an elaborate design in red.
As he worked, a sudden chill passed over him, and the rats halted their dancing. The squeaking, chirping noises ceased and a moment of profound silence slipped into being, bearing a terrible tension within it. It was almost as if a sound, high above the range of audibility, were slowly descending in pitch toward the point where it would shortly become an unbearable shriek.
He cocked his head as if listening. He looked at the pit. More of the Old One's unnatural rantings, of course. This would soon be set aright, when he tore the heart out of the girl and poured her life force like oil upon the troubled waters of the Old One's mind—at least for a time. At least long enough to obtain the succor he himself would then require of that one's stable and directed energies. Afterward…
He wondered how a creature like that would die. Effecting this state of affairs might take a lot of doing. But soon Tualua would be growing dangerous, not only to the rest of the world but specifically to him, Jelerak, personally. He licked his lips as he foresaw the epic battle which must occur one day soon. He knew that he would not emerge from it unscathed, but he also knew that if he could drain the Old One's life energies, his power would reach a peak he had never before attained—godlike, he would rival Hohorga himself…
His face darkened at the thought of his former enemy and later master. And, fleetingly, he recalled Selar, who had given his life to slay that mighty being. Odd, how that one's features had echoed down the ages, to find a home on the face of the man he had sent to Hell, the man who had somehow returned from that foul place, the man who had saved him from the changing land as Selar had long ago drawn him back from the Nungen Abyss—Selar, who had found favor in the eyes of Semirama… And Dilvish might still be about—somewhere near, even—which was why he needed his full powers again quickly. That one was of godslayer's blood, and for the first time was causing Jelerak to know twinges of fear.
The Complete Dilvish, The Damned Page 36
