by Brian Daley
“Go on” Bint hollered without looking aside. “I am a Knight of Onn! Go save her!”
Crassmor hesitated no longer. As he sprinted by, he took a cut at Fox-face. The man ducked without appearing to look aside, after which he bore in hard on Bint.
Noise of the battle fell behind as Crassmor raced along corridors he knew well. He was certain that House Comullo’s minor defensive magics would not have deterred the mage for long, since he had Racklee’s findings to work from.
Crassmor got to the flambeau-lit door of the Jade Dome, only to find it closed, with no indication that anyone had passed through. It was in his mind to enter; he eyed the eagle talons at either side of the door.
Then it occurred to him that even if di Cagliostro had developed some sorcerous method of divining the secret of the door, it would have demanded time and invocation to bring that spell to bear. The mage hadn’t had that much head start on the knight. There was another, more certain way of discovering the correct latch handle: by waiting until Crassmor, Willow, or someone else used it.
The knight stopped well short of the door, peering suspiciously into every shadow, bringing Shhing up to the ready. Di Cagliostro stepped from behind the concealment of a decorative pillar.
“I’d thought you would be along soon, young Tarrant,” the count said with no rancor. “I have seen that this door might resist my spells, putting me at considerable hazard. It was my hope that you would reveal to me which talon gives entrance, and which death.” He moved closer.
Crassmor gazed at him over Shhing’s bright length, but di Cagliostro’s rapier was sheathed. The count waved at the knight’s weapon. “No need; I am more than convinced of your aptitude by now. There is always time to fight, and all too little to talk. Moreover, I am no swordsman.”
“Reassuring words on any other occasion,” Crassmor scoffed.
“The issue has come to a certain pass,” the count continued. “I find it preferable to reason with you. You have much to gain by helping me, as much as I have by succeeding.”
“After you and those eye-in-pyramid monks control the Tapestry? After the Klybesians are in charge?”
Di Cagliostro shook his head indulgently. “I have allowed the monks to think that. They’ve coveted the treasure of House Comullo since they first learned of its powers.” The thick lips shaped a smile of surprising appeal; the dark eyes windowed that luminous personality.
“The eye-in-pyramid isn’t served by the Klybesians alone, Crassmor. Its influence and power reach through space and time. I was once hierophant to it, but that is behind me. The monks do not know that, or they would never have helped me. My intent is not to control the Tapestry; I mean to destroy it.”
Crassmor was astonished. “Destr—surely you knew before I—the Pattern controls the Singularity, at least to some extent. What can be served by destroying it?”
“Its loss would seal off the Beyonds from all Realities,” the count answered calmly. Crassmor saw that the man relished the scene, loved the drama for itself, arguing there by the Jade Dome. “And my motive? This area is unique. Sealed off from outside influences, it would be the perfect place in which to achieve true communion with the Eternal. Complete, sublime, and permanent. That has always eluded me.”
Crassmor was caught up by the captivating voice, the seductive words, the riveting eyes. Unnoticed, Shhing’s point lowered. “I cannot underst—”
“A woman,” di Cagliostro interrupted. “A situation not altogether unlike your own. My Lorenza!” That beautiful voice truly soared now. “My beloved, my betrayer; still I search for her, still I yearn for her. She is dead. There is no rejoining her save in the Eternal, in perfect union. Simple death would not do; too much of essence is lost.”
He was amused at Crassmor’s incredulity. “I have escaped spells in my travails, Sir Knight, yes, and graves as well.” He rubbed a finger over the letters INRI on his heavy ring. “It is of no use to me to be reborn from death, intact and pure, without Lorenza, although I could be. I could be! I am an Unknown Superior, Crassmor, a Noble Voyager. The idea of altering a cosmos is not so much.”
Crassmor’s brain was aswim in the idea. “But can the Singularity remain with no Beyonds and no Realities to stabilize it? Can the center of a spiderweb remain when its strands are cut? Willow said—”
“Willow is nothing but a country witch!” di Cagliostro snapped, his irritation showing for the first time. He reasserted control. “You could be with her, take up the Tarrant heritage.”
Crassmor tossed his head, throwing back a strand of dyed hair. “I’ll take Willow’s counsel first.”
“She has no say in this! Nor would you have, if it weren’t more expedient. If I must, I’ll resort to spellcraft. Now, which talon?”
Crassmor evaded. “There is still the cyclops; Pysthesis may be within.”
Di Cagliostro was more composed. “I know all about the big fellow; he poses no problem to me.” The contours of the fleshy face hardened again. “I shan’t ask you another time.”
Several times in the moments during which they glared at each other then, Crassmor was close to agreeing. An end to his wanderings and perils; Willow and a home; those were nearly more powerful enticements than he could resist.
But the count spoke first, breaking the deadlock. “Very well.”
His hand came up, not in the subtle passes of minor magic, but with the stark pointing of a forefinger. The incandescent eyes held Crassmor’s and transmitted their owner’s will.
“You are numb,” the count intoned. “You are leaden.”
Crassmor found himself powerless. Arms and legs were suddenly weighted; Shhing fell to the stone with a clang.
“Your limbs are becoming stiff,” the magus told him in a voice that was at once drone and revelation. The world began to go dark; Crassmor knew that in another moment he would fall. He puzzled briefly over why di Cagliostro didn’t simply command him to point out the correct talon. Perhaps the count’s arts, here in the Singularity, didn’t permit him such precise ordination, or perhaps he didn’t trust—
The plan came to Crassmor just that quickly. The knight drew on all his reserves in a simple effort, with no regard for what it might cost. He threw himself at the right-hand talon.
Di Cagliostro yelled with the sudden comprehension that came to him, shocked and horrified. But Crassmor missed it by fingers’ widths as the paralysis took complete hold. The floor rose up to smack him.
Di Cagliostro stood over the fallen knight. “And they call you coward? You would have opened the door the wrong way to save her!” He stooped and, with unaccustomed effort, dragged Crassmor’s body to one side. Between grunts of exertion, he added, “I will not hurt her. I hope that we may still be friends, Crassmor; you understand love.”
Still puffing, di Cagliostro was within Crassmor’s line of vision as he stepped to the left hand talon and turned it, pulling. The door had no sooner opened a crack than it threw itself wide, of its own accord. A gale blew into the corridor, sulfurous and hot and evil. Crassmor heard di Cagliostro’s scream quite clearly.
The Guardian sat in the dark, incomprehensible zone beyond the door, lit as if by searchlights set a half-mile behind it. It sat in a perfect lotus position, fat, naked, slack of lip and empty of eye. It would have looked for all the world like an idiotic baby, but for the giant blood vessels that thrummed across its skull.
It made a foolish, calculated smile. The count squealed like a throat-slit pig. He moved sideways, but an enormous, fat hand blocked him there. Di Cagliostro saw that it was no use to go the other way; the floor of House Comullo had resounded to the descent of another hand. The thing boxed di Cagliostro between its hands; numb as he was and still hating the count, Crassmor felt sorry for him.
Simple as an infant, malign as a psychopath the Guardian reached out for di Cagliostro with its blubbery fists. The count couldn’t avoid it; he was pulled toward the yawning doorway as Crassmor lay, stunned, on the floor.
Di Cagl
iostro’s hands caught at the side of the doorframe, holding for a moment against the strength of the Guardian, a ridiculous, doomed contest. The count looked around as smoke tongued all about him as if in anger. Those marvelous eyes met Crassmor’s and held them. Crassmor could only stare, knowing that he would never forget the pleading and anguish he saw. Di Cagliostro was yanked into the awful universe where the Guardian resided. His howl echoed and echoed back through infinite space: “Lorenzo!”
The door then slammed closed, shutting up the winds of space and time. Its lock sounded a muted click.
Di Cagliostro’s spell had already begun to wane; now it dissipated completely. Crassmor rose, quivering, and sheathed Shhing. He turned to the other talon, the correct one, twisted and pulled it, and looked into the Jade Dome.
It was all silence inthere, with the brilliance of the Pattern in the flutter of air from the doorway. Pysthesis sat cross-legged off to the side, his one eye unfocused. Of Willow there was no sign. Radiance crisscrossed the Tapestry.
Destroy it, di Cagliostro had said, promising peace and Willow. In a moment Crassmor had hoisted a flambeau from its socket, reckoning that fire would be quickest. Flames lit the inverted bowl of the Dome with unaccustomed vividness as he crossed the carpet. The cyclops made no move to interfere. Crassmor’s shadow jumped eerily under him.
He looked up at the Pattern that bound together so many threads. Willow would be somewhere nearby; Crassmor could have her hand in his before the Pattern was consumed. Then either we’ll be safe and together or the world will pull apart, I would prefer either one to this. I shall hold her hand and hope.
He tilted the flambeau forward, murmuring, “Your reign is done.” But he hesitated because it was Willow’s treasure. “What good have you done? Not saved Sandur, not softened Combard’s heart. And Willow? You have no intention of giving her up, have you?”
Flames leaped, hungry for the Tapestry. Crassmor swayed, exhausted and drained but lucid with decision. “You moved us all to save yourself. How will you save yourself now?”
Orange-yellow flickers stretched themselves to taste the Tapestry’s edge…
The Tapestry heeded the knight, acting to save itself. Blinding glare burst across the Pattern. Crassmor cried out, blinking like a mole, shielding his eyes with one hand, nearly dropping the flambeau. He spilled fire onto the carpet, but the flames didn’t take; they merely made the carpet smolder.
Crassmor had the meanings and implications of the Pattern opened to him, searing him like a sunburst. He saw the significance of every part of the Pattern. It was more information than his mind could deal with. A part of it said to him: “Nothing Is Precisely Cyclical.” Crassmor saw friends, strangers, influences and effects, strands of the past and inferences of the future. He saw the elements of the Pattern that were himself and Willow.
Combard’s touched theirs often, and Teerse’s, Jaan-Marl’s, and Ironwicca’s. Designs sprang from Sandur’s persona. Crassmor’s mind and eyes were drawn to extrapolation. The Pattern spoke to the knight about danger and hardship and the chaotic influence that was the Beyonds. It told of privation and, worst of all, of separation from Willow. Yet its implications were specific; the element that was Willow and the one that was Crassmor were moving toward a final joining. They would be together, remain together, if they lived; if no new element appeared; if Crassmor weren’t killed in the Beyonds.
He put aside misgivings. It might be madness or ruse, this vision, but he couldn’t bring himself to destroy it. That part of the Pattern that represented himself and Willow suggested a continuance, offspring. That the vision might be false didn’t matter; he couldn’t harm the Tapestry. So much was such a future to be desired…
Crassmor held the flambeau upright, stamping out the smoldering carpet, coughing in the smoke. When he looked up, his new Sight had left him. The Pattern was only a confused running-together of unfathomable lights.
From where she’d stood and watched, Willow came forth, dressed in the costume of a gaucho. A perplexed Crassmor wondered where she’d been; there were no places of concealment in the Jade Dome. More work of the Tapestry? It came to him that she’d have let him burn it if he’d so decided.
Willow smiled, blinking back tears. “I would have relied on something stronger than the Pattern to hold you to me.”
“Willow, I—I saw—”
“Nothing like that has ever happened before,” she told him. “The Pattern is as you saw it, though you’re not of Comullo blood. It carries a hope that we will win ourselves a life together after all.”
He remembered suddenly. “Bint!” He’d left the melee in full session.
Before he could bolt, she pressed Furd’s note into his hand. “Furd came that night to see if you were dead.”
Then he was running for the door, pulling at Shhing. “Stay here! The battle’s not, over yet!”
Chapter 22
RESIGNED
Sir Crassmor was wrong. The battle for House Comullo was over and won. He wondered whether this undeclared war was finished, though.
In the place where he’d left the fight raging, he found its aftermath. Di Cagliostro’s hirelings were all dead or captive, save for the man Teach, who had escaped. Among the Lost Boys there were more than enough wounds to go around and two lost lives: Bosrow Feng, the premiere rider, and Bram Lydis, the two-sworder. Bosrow had been stabbed in the back while extricating Bint from an uneven combat. Crassmor’s cousin, wounded in the duel in which he had slain the fox-faced swordsman, had been pitted against two foemen. A moment too late, Crane had cut down the man who’d killed Bosrow.
Hoowar Roisterer had been wounded a half-dozen times in degrees between a minor pinking and a slash that had opened his side. Griffin knelt by him now, suturing the cut with a needle and some flax thread borrowed from a servitor. He exhibited the skill of a field surgeon. Pony-Keg, seeing Crassmor, told him, “Those few who were left on their feet keeled over all at once, as if life had left them.”
Crassmor absorbed that, willing to wager that it had been the same moment in which di Cagliostro had met his doom at the Jade Dome. Bint was seated by Sir Bosrow Feng’s lifeless body, mourning, reflecting, Crassmor didn’t doubt, on the odd fact that one life often cost another.
As Crassmor went to him, Bint looked up. “He’s—”
“The Lost Boys try not to use that word,” Crassmor cautioned. “Bosrow would undoubtedly prefer you to say that he’s no longer available for errantry. And only blame yourself if you wouldn’t have done the same for him; that is another rule.” Bint nodded and got to his feet.
A commotion of many men and the sounds of weapons and armor came to them. Hoowar sighed and groped for his broadsword even as Griffin tied off the last stitch. “Seems there’s no end to it,” the fat knight grumbled.
“Put aside that sword and hush, you clown,” Griffin chided, “else you ruin my fine needlepoint. This is no attack.”
He was right. Jaan-Marl appeared at the head of the stairs along with Combard and a throng of Knights of Onn. Combard turned to call back over his shoulder, “Here! They are in the fest-hall!” It occurred to Crassmor that there would probably be some problem in rounding up knights who’d become confused by glamours and defensive enchantments.
Combard descended the steps at a labored run, with the others up close behind. Before he’d reached the bottom step, he was demanding, “What losses? Di Cagliostro was seen coming this way with an armed band.” He took in Crassmor’s disreputable clothing, blackened hair, and lack of beard and mustache. “Where is he?”
Crassmor gestured to Bosrow Feng and Bram Lydis. “Here are two of us who’ll never ride forth again, father. The rest survive, if with clips and cuts. The Tapestry is safe; the count met the Guardian of the Dome.”
A scowling Jaan-Marl was at Combard’s elbow. To him, Crassmor said, “We are here without your permission, Master, but all guilt is mine. The Tapestry is undamaged.” The Grand Master’s face showed that he appreciated the import
ance of that. “Had it been a matter of a few more minutes, things would have been otherwise. There was no time to obtain your permission.”
“I shall pass judgment on that when I have heard all. It lies in your favor that, as I see, the Jade Dome was menaced but saved. I am less angry with you now than when the officers reported the departure of this group from Gateshield, less angry than when your father and I set out on your trail.”
“I believe you will find my motive sound, if not my method,” Crassmor declared.
Another man came bustling in, the abbot Furd, edging through the crowding knights. He threw both arms around his shocked nephew.
“Thank the Klybesian Holy you’re safe, m’boy! I come here with word of vile plotting against this House; I see I am too late, but that all is well. Blessing indeed!”
More likely, Crassmor thought, Furd had somehow found out that the Klybesian dead had failed to carry out his will, and had hastened here to House Comullo either to warn di Cagliostro or to claim his own innocence, depend-big on which way things went. Seeing the place swarming with Knights of the Order, the abbot had wisely chosen the latter course.
Crassmor pushed his uncle out to arm’s length with a bleak smile. “I think there will be right punishment meted out for this, Furd.”
Furd smiled back blandly. “There has already been, of a sort. This plot involved some of the members of my own religion, can you imagine? The ringleaders, being found out, confessed all to me, then took their own lives. Most un-Klybesian. Shows how far the wretches—the poor, misguided sinners—had gone astray.”
That some of the eye-in-pyramid monks were already dead, Crassmor didn’t doubt in the least. He wondered if they’d sacrificed their lives for their cause—or had that decision been made for them by the abbot? Crassmor took out the note he’d recovered from Willow, the one he’d taken from Mooncollar’s script, implicating Furd. He saw that the abbot recognized it. As Crassmor was about to reveal its content, Furd drew out a letter of his own.
