Dark Night in Toyland
Page 20
“I forbid it,” he whispered, his fear giving way to resentment and a deep implacable hatred. “I, Dardash, say—NO!”
He ran back to the chest, driven by the knowledge that with each passing second Marcurades was a little closer to safety, and took from it a slim black rod. The wand had no power in itself, but it served to direct and concentrate magical energies. There was an unexpected noise in the next room and, glancing through the partially open door, Dardash saw Nirrineen coming towards him. Her expression was one of childish delight and her hands were at her throat, caressing a gold necklace.
“Look what the king has given me,” she said, “Isn’t it the most…”
“Stay out of here,” Dardash shouted, trying to control his panic as he realised there was almost no time left in which to accomplish his purpose. He wheeled to face the balcony and the bright scene beyond it, pointed the wand and uttered a spell he had hoped never to use, a personal sacrilege, a destructive formula which used mana to combat and neutralise mana.
The flying machine disintegrated.
Its four wings flailed and fluttered off in different directions, and from the centre of the destruction the body of the machine plunged downwards like a mass of lead. There was a sputtering explosion as it struck the water, then it was gone, and Marcurades was lost, and all that remained of the young king and all his ambitions were spreading ripples of water and the four slow-tumbling wings which had borne him to his death. A lone sea bird shrieked in the pervading silence.
Dardash had time for one pang of triumph, then his vision dimmed and blurred. He looked at his hands and saw that they had withered into the semblance of claws, blotched and feeble, and he understood at once that his brief battle with Marcurades had been even more destructive than he had anticipated. In that one instant of conflict every trace of mana in the entire region had been annihilated, and he—Dardash—no longer had access to the magical power which had preserved his body.
“Murderer!” Nirrineen’s voice seemed to reach him from another time, another existence. “You murdered the king!”
Dardash turned to face her. “You overestimate my powers, child,” he soothed, motioning for Urtarra to move around behind her and block the exit. “What makes you think that a humble dabbler in simple magic could ever…?”
He broke off as he saw Nirrineen’s revulsion at his appearance, evidence that more than a century of hard living had taken a dreadful toll of his face and body. Evidence of his guilt.
Nirrineen shook her head, and with near-magical abruptness she was gone. Her fleeing footsteps sounded briefly and were lost in the mournful wailing that had begun to pervade the room from outside as the people of Bhitsala absorbed the realisation that their king was dead.
“You should have stopped her,” Dardash said to Urtarra, too weak and tired to sound more than gently reproachful. “She has gone to fetch the palace guard, and now neither of us will ever…”
He stopped speaking as he saw that Urtarra had sunk down on a couch, hands pressed to his temples, eyes dilated with a strange horror, seeing but not seeing.
“So it has finally happened to you, soothsayer—now you can foresee your own death.” Dardash spoke with intuitive understanding of what was happening in Urtarra’s mind. “But do not waste what little time remains to you. Let me know that my sacrifice has not been in vain, that the whore wasn’t carrying Marcurades’ seed. Give me proof that no other mana-monsters will arise to usurp magicians and wreak their blind and ignorant havoc on the world.”
Urtarra appeared deaf to his words, but he raised one hand and pointed at the opposite wall of the room. The blue tapestries acquired a tremulous depth they had not previously possessed, came alive with images of times yet to be. The images changed rapidly, showing different places and different eras, but they had some elements in common.
Always there was fire, always there was destruction, always there was death on a scale that Dardash had never conceived.
And against these fearful backgrounds there came a procession of charismatic, mana-rich figures. Knowledge, foreknowledge, was again vouchsafed to Dardash in wordless whispers, and unfamiliar names reverberated within his head…
Alexander…Julius Caesar…Tamburlaine…
The sky grew dark with the shadow of thousands of wings, annihilation rained from great airborne ships, creating a lurid backdrop for the strutting figure of Adolf Hitler…
Dardash covered his eyes with his hands and sank to a kneeling position, and remained that way without moving until the sound of heavy footsteps and the clatter of armour told him the palace guards had arrived. And the stroke of the sword, not long delayed, came like a kindly friend, bringing the only reward for which he retained any craving.