Again that double vision. We hung right over Calla, a few inches above her, and saw her still as a small crumpled figure far below us. With an effort, I forced the nearer vision. It was damnably difficult to maintain. I heard Shree's exclamation, felt Chasco's hand on my shoulder.
"Tigrallef?"
"For the moment. I don't know for how long."
I raised Calla in my arms and was flooded with relief. She looked dead, but my acute new senses told me she was still alive, barely, her heart just remembering to beat and her breath hardly stirring the flakes of dried blood that clung to her lips. Certainly she was beyond human help. I breathed an old, old word into her mouth—she stirred and opened her eyes, which was good, but that exercise of power shifted the balance, and suddenly we were confused and immensely tall again, groping for a name to hold on to.
"Tig?" she whispered.
I cradled her in my arms. She sat up and threw her arms around my neck, and just as suddenly pushed me away.
"Vero—where's Vero?"
"He's safe. He's beside you."
Indeed, Verolef crawled into Calla's lap at that moment and nestled between us. I rocked them both, keeping my eyes open—when I closed them, the name was harder to cling to.
"My lord, we can't stay here." Chasco was helping Shree to his feet. I pulled my eyes away from Calla and Verolef and looked around the cavern.
The walls were strange—vibrating, blurred like a hummingbird's wings, so intense were the forces building up beneath the mountain. I knew what Chasco didn't know, that Verolef and I, Naarlings both, were immune to any danger unleashed by the ancient entity who encompassed me. Further, I could protect whomsoever I pleased. All five of us could safely watch the destruction of Vassashinay from this excellent vantage point, watch the people flame like torches and the mountain melt around us and run hissing into the sea. This was our vengeance. We were in command. (The floor began to fall away.) We were the prophesied union of Harashil and the ancient race of the Naar; we could do anything we willed. We—
"Tig?" whispered Calla.
I held her closer. Deep within me, from that kernel of guilt and revulsion that clung to its own name, a small voice spoke. My voice. Remember the Caveat. This was not a threat, nor was it a warning. It was a rope thrown to the drowning.
Remember the Caveat.
Remember Valsoria.
That was all I needed to know.
I, Tigrallef, pushed Calla and Verolef gently off my lap and stood up—to my usual height.
My skull was a battleground; the movement of any muscle, a skirmish; the raising of my hands, a victory after bitter fighting. And that was even before the Harashil answered my challenge.
We faced each other across a narrow strip of ground on the summit of the Gilgard, with the sun baking the sparse grass under our feet and glaring into our eyes off the hard silver wastes of the sea. Then again, the seawrack rose around us on the streets of Iklankish, and the half-built omphaloi of old Vizzath, the grim iron ramparts of Fathan, the domes of Baul, the truncated pyramids of Khamanthana and the glass-lined pits of Myr, broken by ten thousand circular portals. The Great Nameless First was only a shadow, a shadow I did not dare to penetrate.
"We cannot do this," the Harashil said.
"Watch us," I said.
"But the two are one. We are one."
"That could well be true. But I am Tigrallef."
It winced, and I repeated the name like a spell. For a moment the Harashil seemed to be shrinking, and I was suspicious at the ease of my victory—rightly so.
Suddenly, the Harashil drew itself up to twice my height. Command radiated from it and washed over me, an inexorable will that demanded I submerge myself in it again, become one again, this time for ever. It held its hands out to me and I felt myself helplessly mirroring the gesture—but just before our fingertips touched irretrievably, I clenched my fists and slowly, with terrible pain, pulled them back to my side. The Harashil's face darkened with fury and bafflement.
It said: "We shall carry out that which was ordained. We have no choice."
"There must be a choice—or why would the Oldest Ones have written a Caveat? If there was never any chance of defying the prophecy, why set a penalty for doing so? I'm right, aren't I?"
It answered reluctantly. "In part."
"We do have a choice?"
Even more grudgingly, as if it were extracting its own fingernails at my request: "Yes."
"Then tell me. You said when our day came, you would tell me about the Caveat. This feels like our day."
It hesitated. "There is no advantage for you in this. You can delay, yes. You can even dominate. You can bend my power to your will, against my will—for a time. But during that time, you shall suffer."
"That's nothing new. I can live with that."
It moved closer. Our faces were on a level now, and its eyes, ringed by copies of my own rather short eyelashes, were dark and fathomless chasms.
"You shall suffer from me, Scion. I shall not leave you, not ever. I shall goad you and torment you. I shall be the stone in your shoe and the sand in your bread—"
"The lump in my mattress? The bit of gristle between my teeth?"
"—the taste of ashes in your mouth, the black dreams that haunt you in every hour of darkness," it finished sourly, ignoring the interruption. "You shall strive with me, Seed of the Excommunicant, in every moment of every day, waking and sleeping, and in the end you shall go mad—you shall become all things in the world that you most loathe and fear, a cruel god. Vicious. Heartless. Mad. All these things you shall become, and worse."
My mouth became very dry. The sun beat down on my head, the ooze drifted around my feet.
"And then?"
"And then we shall still build the Great Nameless Last, you and I, and someday bring the world to its ordained end; but there shall be no age of glory first, no shining city set for a time in green fields—the Great Nameless Last shall be built out of your madness, and shall be terrible beyond any imagining. Consider that well, Seed of the Excommunicant."
Duly, I considered it well. This was not the kind of threat for which I was prepared. This was far more disturbing.
"Surely it is better," the Harashil added, more kindly, "to give the world a few centuries in the light before we bring the great darkness down. Build with me now."
It moved closer. It smiled at me, a shape that sat strangely on those copies of my own lips, since I never smiled in that way myself.
I smiled back. Remember the Caveat. Remember Valsoria. The end did not have to happen as the Harashil said. The game was not over. I still had a stick tucked up my sleeve, ready to throw on the pile.
"You know," I said casually, "it occurs to me that Valsoria nearly succeeded in banishing us."
The Harashil recoiled.
"I can delay, you say. That's good, that's very good—if I can stay sane long enough, I can still defeat you and the prophecy, not to mention the tupping Oldest Ones."
Even as I spoke, the Harashil began to swell. The golden mist welled out from the pores of its skin, and it reached for me again, urging me with grim desperation to lift my hands to meet its hands. The pull was strong and terrible. Its eyes expanded into great golden wells . . .
And I wanted to fold myself into it again, to lose myself in the grandeur and rightness of being prophesied and powerful, the ripener and the builder and the destroyer, the trunk of the great tree. I wanted to build my empire. Why risk madness and horror if the outcome would be the same in the end—except worse? Better to yield now, to merge and to build, to rule in the light for a time and then accept the descent into darkness as the specified way of things . . .
"No."
Biting my lip, righting, remembering Sher, using guilt and revulsion and sheer stupid obstinacy as the only strengths left to me, I managed to keep my fists at my sides. The Harashil roared and I willed it to be silent, and somewhat to my surprise, it did. Then it lunged at me and I willed it to pull back,
and it did that too. Then it tilted its great shining head on one side and waited for me to speak. I had the words all ready.
"Listen to me," I said. "I will find the spell of banishment. I know it exists, because Valsoria had a corrupt version of it. I know it can work, because I felt your fear. And I will find it. Even if the road leads me through every pit you ever dug in the last ten thousand years, and takes a hundred lifetimes to follow to its end, I will find that spell. And when I find it, I will finish you."
It loomed over me. "At the risk of destroying yourself?"
"Yes, if that's how it happens. Someday we'll see."
The Harashil nodded. "Then you have made our choice—for now. So be it—for now."
It bowed its head, waiting. The battle was over—for now. The war was another matter. I lifted my hands and stretched them out. With an air of resignation, the Harashil mirrored my action. Its hands fell to meet mine. Our fingers touched.
I awoke to screams and thunder and searing heat. A hideous tiredness dragged at every muscle. It was as much as I could do to lift my head and instruct the mountain, in whispers, to behave itself; to order the magma to freeze in the fumaroles and the fiery rivers to cease flowing and the ground to be still. As an afterthought, I suppose to make amends, I banished the plague from Vassashinay. After that I swore to myself, on the head of Verolef my son, that I would never use the power of the Harashil again; and then I fell asleep on my feet for a while, or I think I did, because the screams and thunder grew instead of diminishing, and revolting shadows stalked me just beyond the edges of my eyes.
I have no memory of the dark backway that linked the platform with secret chambers of the Sacellum, nor the maze of corridors that brought us to the open air, nor the treacherous overgrown path that led us down to the cove where Chasco had moored the lorsk. Calla told me later that I carried her most of the way, but I don't recall that either. When I opened my eyes again, we were already sprawled on warm deck-boards under real sunshine, and the only visible remnants of the doom that almost befell Vassashinay were a few tatters of black cloud drifting above the mountaintop and dispersing in the wind off the sea. I groaned and sat up, holding my head.
Calla was curled up beside me. Shree was lying against the deckhouse nearby with his eyes closed, pale and bloody but breathing well, and beside him Verolef was apparently attempting to fall over the gunwale headfirst. I reached over and grabbed the seat of Vero's robe and hauled him back to safety.
"I saw some fishes," he announced. "I'm going to catch some."
"Good," I said, "but I think you'd better do it from inside the boat."
He considered this and nodded. Then he was up and off like a small dust-devil to midships to help, or hamper, Chasco in hauling the foresail up the mast. A few moments later I heard the clatter of little feet down the companionway to the cabin below.
"It's all new to him," Calla said weakly. She struggled to sit up. I helped her over to the gunwale and propped her against it, and sat down beside her with my arm around her shoulders. Something crashed below deck. "He'll settle down," Calla added.
"I hope so," I said dubiously. "I think I can manage the Harashil, but I'm not so sure about Verolef."
"Don't worry. Just be grateful he seems to have forgotten already—what happened to him in the Sacellum." She pivoted her head on my shoulder, to frown up at me. "What did happen in the Sacellum? What's the Harashil? And what about the Lady? How did you—?"
I put my hand over her mouth. "I'll tell you everything, but not just yet. I have to think of the right words first."
I found myself staring at my hand. It was still made of flesh and bone, but it was numinous with power now, and I thought with foreboding of the years of labour ahead of me: labour to keep that hand its proper shape and size, to limit its actions to fleshly ones, to keep the Harashil subdued while I sought out the means to banish it for ever. I could feel the Harashil now, patiently inside my skin, as much a part of me as my heart and lungs and that hand of flesh and bone.
"Calla? I need something from you."
"Anything."
"I need you," I said, "to keep me sane."
She nodded soberly. In that instant, she guessed everything there was to know.
We sat there quietly together for a few moments longer, hand in hand; and then I left her tending to Shree while I helped Chasco to raise the heavy mainsail and headed the lorsk out to sea.
Gil Trilogy 2: Scion's Lady Page 33
