[Cenotaph Road 05] - Fire and Fog

by Robert E. Vardeman - (ebook by Undead)

  “Lan Martak, you are in danger from her.”

  “Shut up, you miserable web-hanger. I have more important things to do. I have to find Claybore. Defeat him. He… he can’t recover his legs. And I know where they are. But using them—how do I use them for my own gain?”

  “There are things worse than being conquered by Claybore,” said Krek. “Loss of your own self-esteem is one.”

  “Get out of here. Let me alone!”

  Krek saw that Lan’s temper rose to a dangerous level. The mage’s fingers twitched and fat blue sparks jumped from one tip to the other. A fiery blast and Krek would be set afire. Krek didn’t know if there was any fate he feared more, unless it was drowning—or losing the friend who had been Lan Martak.

  “When you need help, you can find me with friends Inyx and Ducasien.”

  Krek lumbered out of the chamber, leaving Lan and Kiska to their work poring over the grimoires left by Lirory Tefize. Krek had no doubt that, locked within one of those magical tomes, lay the secret of how to use Claybore’s legs against him. He also knew that the mere act of allowing Kiska k’Adesina to watch the search provided Claybore with inestimable advantage. She still worked for the disembodied sorcerer.

  In the hallway Krek overtook Inyx and Ducasien.

  “Where do you go, friend Inyx?” the spider asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said, close to tears. “He’s never been this way before. I’ve been with him when he’s bone-tired, half-dead, pushed far beyond the limits of human endurance, and never has Lan acted that way toward me.”

  “Forget him, Inyx. Come with me. We can walk the Road together. This isn’t the life for you,” Ducasien said earnestly. “What does it matter if Claybore conquers or not? Will things change so much? We can find a backwater world, peaceful, away from the centers of power. He’d never bother us there.”

  Krek saw Inyx wavering. The offer tempted her greatly. And it appealed to the spider, also. This continual battling across worlds took its toll on him. He wanted nothing more than to return to his web and his mate, even if dear Klawn might try to eat him.

  “I feel friend Ducasien has made a good case for our doing just as he recommends,” said Krek. “Lan Martak is obsessed with victory over Claybore. Is victory such a needful thing?”

  Inyx stared at the spider and slowly shook her head.

  “Lan knows more than we do. He senses the evil Claybore brings more clearly than anyone else can. And we’ve got to support him. I don’t know what’s gotten into him, but we can’t just walk out on him. Not when he needs us more than ever.”

  “We have been through much with him,” agreed Krek. “The war for the iron tongue resting within his mouth was a costly one.” The arachnid stopped speaking for a moment, then added, “Is it possible he is infected by Claybore’s spirit through that tongue?”

  “Who can say? When Lan first used it, he claimed he was more powerful. I think his behavior is sparked by something more than his own abilities. Perhaps it is the tongue’s doing.”

  “He certainly isn’t doing it to protect you,” said Ducasien.

  “Danger has been at our side ever since we’ve been together,” Inyx said. She smiled up at Krek. “He rescued me from the whiteness between worlds. Another would have left me.”

  “I wouldn’t have,” said Ducasien.

  “Friend Ducasien, you would have been unable to reach her,” said Krek. “The magics involved were the most complex Claybore was capable of invoking. Only a mage of Lan Martak’s caliber could have been successful.”

  “I’d have died trying,” Ducasien maintained.

  “Thank you,” said Inyx. “I appreciate that. But Lan did rescue me. And not just that one time. We’ve been through much. Turning away now is difficult, no matter how he acts.”

  “Let us go and ponder this further,” suggested Krek. “Another course of action might suggest itself.” The spider and Inyx started off, Ducasien remaining behind. Krek stopped and twisted in an inhuman fashion to look under and behind his huge body. “Please come with us, friend Ducasien. Your experience will be most valuable.”

  Ducasien hesitated, then joined the pair. This time Inyx did not flinch away when Ducasien put his arm around her shoulders. Her own arm circled his waist and off they went, talking in low, confidential tones of what their best strategy might be.

  “It’s got to be here. It must be!” raged Lan Martak. Anger rose and he clapped hands together to form a thunderbolt that almost deafened Kiska k’Adesina. She kept her hands over ears until it was obvious the mage’s wrath had abated slightly.

  “Lirory kept his diaries in code,” she said. “The code might take months to decipher.”

  “I’ve read his books,” said Lan in disgust. “The code depended on a simple magical combination obvious to even an apprentice. The information is not written down.”

  “Perhaps he carried it within his head,” she said.

  “I can’t dismiss that as a possibility,” Lan said. He stalked back and forth across the room, eyes fixed on the floor in front of him. “The legs are near but I won’t go after them until I have a way of using them. What did Lirory have in mind for them?”

  “If Claybore knows where his legs are, also, why hasn’t he already tried to retrieve them?” The brunette gingerly sat on the single block remaining of Lirory Tefize’s throne. The power that had welled up and bathed both the gnome and Lan Martak did not come to her. She didn’t know whether to be miffed or relieved.

  “Lirory protected them, of that I’m sure. Claybore is cautious. I have already robbed him of his skin and his tongue. To lose his legs would be a blow second to none. He dares not make a mistake now.”

  “He is close to dominance on all the worlds along the Road,” said Kiska.

  “Claybore is far from it,” Lan contradicted. “The last encounter proves that. I am the stumbling block on his path. His grey legions might swarm and physically seize world after world, but without his magic to back them, they are nothing. I can defeat them all with a wave of my hand.”

  To demonstrate Lan lifted his arm and fire flickered from his fingertips. Then alternate fingertips froze solid while the others blazed with wild witchfire. He jerked his hand in a small circle and sent a ball of light burning through the rock vault of Lirory’s chamber and up through the mountain until it ripped apart the sky itself.

  “You are a mighty mage,” said Kiska. Even as she spoke, the loathing for what she did built within her. The woman struggled to keep from puking. In a dim fashion she understood Claybore used her against Martak, but this role did not suit her well. Playing the toady to the man who had killed her husband revolted her. She would be more at home driving a barbed shaft into Martak’s guts, then twisting until the entrails billowed forth.

  How long would they be, she wondered. Long enough to string around the room? Would this appease her intense hatred for the man? Kiska k’Adesina wanted to find out. It might even be possible to rip his intestines from his belly and let him linger.

  Martak had killed her husband with a single sword thrust. His own death would not be so easy.

  Damn Claybore for what he did to her! The geas binding Martak bound her, as well.

  Lan turned and looked at her, his expression softening. She made a small gesture beckoning him to her side. To her disgust he came like a lovesick puppy dog.

  “I need you so,” Lan said. “To think I tried to kill you so many times. That’s all so unreal to me. A nightmare.”

  “You are the greatest man in all the universe,” she whispered. Kiska longed for him to be closer, to take her in his arms, to make love to her. And then, at the precise moment of climax, she would drive a dagger into his back. Then would her revenge be sweet.

  “The others don’t understand the strain I am under. Krek demands attention all the time. He… he’s not human. He can’t understand what it’s like seeing evil such as Claybore’s loose in the world.”

  “And your Inyx?” Kiska almos
t hissed. What she’d do to that bitch made her revenge on Lan Martak seem pale in comparison. There would be mismatings with a dozen ferocious animals on a hundred barbaric worlds before she allowed Inyx to die.

  “I don’t know what’s got into her. She seems so distant now. We had a rapport I can’t explain. Our thoughts were as one—but that was before we came onto this world.”

  “The fog?” suggested Kiska.

  “That might have something to do with it. Or it might be something else.” Bitterness came to Lan Martak.

  “Ducasien,” Kiska said, striking the soft spot in Martak’s heart. She sensed his jealousy of the man from Inyx’s home world and played on it. His anguish thrilled her even if she did not allow it to be mirrored on her face.

  “What does she see in him?” he wondered aloud.

  “There is definite love for him,” goaded Kiska. “The pair of them have been intimate.”

  The man’s expression told her she traveled unsafe territory. No matter how potent Claybore’s magical workings, the power over Lan Martak was not complete.

  “She loves me.”

  “Who couldn’t?” asked Kiska, stroking Lan’s cheek. The man pulled away, hesitated, turned back to her. Every use of magic on his part strengthened the spell binding the two of them together. Kiska saw that Lan became less and less aware of Claybore’s intrusion in this matter, another manifestation of the spell.

  Even she found it increasingly difficult to remember the few things Claybore had told her before sending her forth. A dagger at the enemy’s back, Claybore had said. A chance for revenge, he’d said. Kiska k’Adesina hadn’t questioned her master; she was too good a soldier for that. She did not care for this form of warfare, but if it gained her ends, so be it.

  Lan Martak would die at her hand. Claybore had promised that. She held on grimly to that single thought.

  “The legs,” Lan said suddenly. “Why can’t I grasp their importance, their use?”

  “Rest, my darling,” Kiska said, sickened by her honeyed words. “Rest and it will all come to you. You overwork yourself. Tired, you can’t hope to win. Rest, sleep, sleep, yes, sleep.”

  She cradled his head and held it close. Muscles in her upper arms twitched spasmodically as she fought down the urge to place one hand on the man’s chin and another on the top of his head and jerk as hard as she could. That might break his neck.

  It might also fail.

  Her time would come. Soon. Claybore promised it. Soon.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The world exploded around Lan Martak, stars orbiting wildly about his head, the very planet tipping and gyrating and sending him to his knees. The walls of the pyramid-shaped stone chamber first cracked and then turned to powder. The floor beneath his feet became transparent and he hung suspended over a bottomless pit.

  And wind—Wind seared his flesh, threatening to strip his bones clean. Squinting, arm up to protect his face, he looked into the gale-force wind and saw an all too familiar figure: Claybore.

  The chalk-white skull showed thin fracture lines—and this gave Lan hope. He had put those cracks in Claybore’s skull. And he could do more, ever so much more.

  “This is silly, Claybore,” he said, fighting to keep his face covered. “You attack with only wind?”

  “Surely a man of your vast ability recognizes an air elemental when you encounter one,” the other mage said with studied politeness. “If you don’t like it, I’ll stop it. Now!”

  The sorcerer’s newly attached arms rose and formed a steeple over the skull.

  Lan dropped into the pit.

  He felt his stomach jerk and the air whistling around him in a new direction. The wind he could tolerate. To allow Claybore to cast him downward meant only death. With a surge of effort, he formed a new floor under his left foot. A solid patch took shape under his right and stopped his insane fall. Slowly, the hardness spread, merged with other spots, rose.

  He again faced Claybore, the floor substantial once again.

  “Very good,” said Claybore. “The illusion is not a common one. You defeated it nicely. Your skill has grown to rival mine.”

  Lan did not reply with words. He sent his own air elemental shrieking mindlessly for Claybore’s body. He hoped to catch the sorcerer off balance and knock him to the floor. With any luck the skull might smash into the stone and crack further.

  Luck was not with him. Claybore easily withstood the writhing, screaming puff of air and dismissed it with the wave of a hand. Lan realized then how important those arms and hands were to Claybore. They not only augmented his power, they gave him command over a new set of spells.

  “Surrender!” Lan said, using the Voice. The vibrancy of the tongue within his mouth caused the onset of a headache unlike any he had felt. He immediately stopped and the shooting pain diminished and finally went away entirely.

  “You cannot use my tongue against me like that, fool,” said Claybore, now turning to his usual manner. All pretense of politeness stopped. “I can give you undreamed of powers. You still learn. I know!” The jaws of the skull clattered together emphasizing the words that were not spoken but were still heard.

  “You can give me nothing, Claybore. You seek too much power. You must be destroyed.”

  “Why try?” asked Claybore, his tone curious. “You oppose me, but why? What is it to you? There isn’t the hard core within you to make power your goal.”

  “I don’t want dominance over others,” said Lan. “I want freedom from that power. You won’t impose your will on me or anyone else.”

  “And you don’t want to impose your will on others?” asked Claybore, as if genuinely surprised at finding a fact he had not ever considered to have existed.

  Lan Martak spun about, his fingers strewing sparks. The powdery ruins of Lirory Tefize’s chamber snapped back into their original form.

  “Your illusions fail you, Claybore.”

  “Do they?” the sorcerer asked softly. “You find the simple ones. The more complex ones might amaze you—had you the wit to see them.”

  Lan shifted uneasily at those words. Something gnawed at the corners of his mind, as if Claybore had given him a crucial clue to unlocking the dismembered mage’s power. He groped for the clue and failed to find it.

  “Lan?” came a hesitant voice. “Are you all right? You look strained.”

  He blinked and lost sight of Claybore, his physical eyes now doing the “seeing” for his mind. Kiska k’Adesina stood before him, the expression on her face a mixture of emotions he couldn’t put into words. Whatever he read there, true caring was not present.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Claybore started an attack. Didn’t you see what he did?”

  The woman shook her head, a brown shimmer of hair circling her face. She pushed a vagrant strand back and simply stared at him.

  He heaved a sigh. The visions Claybore sent were designed strictly for him. The battle they fought was a personal one and need not involve others—unless drawing others into the conflict aided one of them. Lan tried to figure out how best to use Kiska against Claybore and failed. The mage had made no mention whatsoever about her capture; it was as if this was a problem belonging to Lirory and since the gnome had perished, the matter was closed.

  “It won’t be long before we have one last meeting,” said Lan. “The time is drawing close. I sense the powers mounting all around and… and I can’t control them.” The insecurity of his position troubled him strangely. Never before had he worried over this to such an extent. He held more power than any mage except Claybore and now he hesitated, now he doubted himself.

  “You tire so easily,” said Kiska. “You do need to rest. Don’t let Claybore force you into a battle you can’t win.”

  “What’s it to you?” Lan flared. “You are his chief commandant now that Silvain is gone. You should be thinking of his welfare, not mine. Or is that the way it really is? Are you thinking of Claybore’s victory? Is this part of it?”

  “Lan, how can
you say that?” Kiska’s words soothed him enough that the edge of anger left. Only confusion remained. He turned from her to go to the table holding Lirory’s grimoires. Placing both hands on the table, Lan leaned forward, head down and eyes closed tightly.

  It was growing harder to concentrate.

  “Nothing seems right to me anymore. Claybore’s words bother me.”

  “He is your enemy.”

  “He seems more and more like me. Or I’m adopting his philosophy.” That idea made Lan even more uneasy. If Claybore weren’t changing, then he had to be the one becoming more like the disembodied sorcerer. They fought—but were their motives so different now?

  He started to speak and found it impossible. Lan’s eyes flashed open and he saw the room had again turned transparent. The slightest movement caused him pain; all he knew as the gut-twisting agony lodged deep within him was that he had failed. Self-pitying, he had let down his guard and now all was lost.

  He waited for Kiska to say something, to chastise or to praise. The words never came. Lan retraced the course of their conversation and came once more to the point of her being Claybore’s chief architect of destruction on a dozen worlds—Claybore’s pawn.

  Just as he was Claybore’s pawn.

  From deep within boiled the power that had once been his and that Claybore had cunningly buried with his spells. The pain in arms and legs lingered, but Lan forced movement into them. He straightened and found the dancing light mote that had become his constant companion. The light mote appeared indistinct, blurred, far away. He coaxed it closer and set it to blazing like a million stars.

  Pain dissolved from his body like snow melts in the morning sun. The walls of the room became translucent, then opaque. He cast a spell to insure that Claybore would never again be able to confuse his senses with such conjurings again.

  “Claybore,” he said softly. “This is one battle that will be fought to the bitter end. One or the other of us will not survive it. We cannot continue together in the same universe, not like this. One of us will perish.”

  Ghostly, mocking laughter greeted him.