by Jean Lorrah
In the white-hot fire of a funeral pyre, Z’Nelia’s body was consumed.
There was silence. Lenardo slumped to the floor.
Wulfston turned on Zanos. “Why?” he demanded.
“She killed Astra,” the gladiator replied. “She had to die.”
“And now this land will be torn apart-” Wulfston began, when suddenly a scream erupted behind him.
He turned, saw Chulaika on the floor, writhing-
He opened to Reading, and with the Seers observed the unimaginable.
Z’Nelia’s spirit was fighting for possession of her twin sister’s body!
Chapter Eight
Helplessly, the Seers observed as Z’Nelia fought for possession of Chulaika’s body. Equal in determination, neither would give way-until the body, weakened by the long struggle, collapsed.
Chaiku wailed, trying to wake his mother, until Ashuru bent and picked him up, cuddling him with a mother’s instinct while her mind still probed Chulaika’s.
Wulfston Read with them, his own Reading powers barely maintaining the link after he had poured out his Adept energy. He could feel Lenardo, too, only tenuously keeping touch, letting Ashuru and Tadisha search the mind of the woman on the floor, to find out which sister had survived.
Only to discover… both.
Two minds seethed angrily within the one person, but with the body they inhabited unconscious, it appeared that they must wait in frustration for its awakening to continue their contest.
The Seers withdrew, leaving Chulaika unconscious.
Wulfston looked around. The room was small, with a narrow window. No sounds of battle came through it.
A heap of ashes marked Z’Nelia’s physical remains. Telek’s body lay near the door. Wulfston looked for Zanos, wanting to make the man understand what he had done, but the gladiator had gone.
Lenardo sat cross-legged on the floor, struggling not to faint from weakness. Wulfston knelt beside him, lending strength from the last of his reserves. Lenardo looked up gratefully, but as soon as the desire to lapse into unconsciousness passed he put his hand on Wulfston’s arm, shaking his head. “Save your strength. There may be other healing to do.”
Wulfston looked up sharply at Tadisha. Her eyes took on a faraway look. “The battle is over,” she said.
“Z’Nelia’s army was divided. The Savishnon overran the western troops, but were weakened enough that our combined armies defeated them, and have taken the city. Our Healers are already working among the wounded. It appears that we may safely take the time to heal ourselves.”
“Norgu?” Wulfston asked.
“Unharmed except for the weakness after battle.”
“Thank Shangonu for that!’ added Ashuru. “If that boy had the strength left, he would grasp this chance to seize the throne.”
“He will certainly try soon,” agreed Tadisha.
“Z’Nelia will fight him,” said Lenardo, “unless we can drive her from her sister’s body.”
“Will you help us do that, Master Reader?” asked Ashuru.
Lenardo gave a grim smile. “In my present condition I don’t know how much help I can be, but you will certainly have all I can give, Queen Ashuru.”
Wulfston thought belatedly of introductions, and then realizd that none were necessary between Readers and Seers.
They lifted Chulaika’s body onto the narrow bed in this room where Z’Nelia had kept Lenardo, and dragged Telek’s body out onto the landing. Uninjured soldiers were in the castle now, carrying out the dead.
The charnelhouse of the corridor where they had fought Z’Nelia’s guards lay in their path. They had no choice except to go through it, and out into the blood-smeared courtyard, where the bodies had already been removed.
The servants’ wing of the castle, though, had not been touched. Karili had taken over the kitchen, and were sorting through the supplies to put a meal together for those who had exerted Adept powers.
Wulfston’s stomach was giving him conflicting signals: he was “hungry as a Mover,” and yet sick at what he had just been through. Someone handed him a flagon of fresh milk, and he drank it gratefully as their little group proceeded into a room furnished with worn but luxurious carpets and cushions, where Ashuru and Tadisha’s serving-women were waiting to remove their blood-spattered outer garments, providing clean caftans for all.
Finally Wulfston asked Lenardo, “What happened to you? I’ve been worried ever since Z’Nelia took you from Norgu, and you didn’t contact me.”
“I couldn’t, ” Lenardo replied, taking a piece of fruit from a tray servants had already brought in. Wulfston noticed for the first time how thin and gaunt Lenardo looked. “Every minute I’ve been awake, I’ve had to fight Z’Nelia. Whenever her attention was called elsewhere, she put me into Adept sleep.”
“And didn’t bother to feed you,” Wulfston noted.
“Not often,” Lenardo agreed. “She wanted me weak; she kept probing my mind, sifting through my memories. I don’t know what she wanted, Wulfston, but I gave her as little as possible. I assume she wasn’t satisfied, because she never gave up-even today, when she knew you were approaching from one direction, the Savishnon from another.” He shook his head with a smile. “Thank the gods you finally got here! I’ve never been so glad to see you in my life!”
Lenardo reached out to squeeze Wulfston’s hand, an unusual gesture from a Reader. Wulfston gripped the thin hand in return, reassured that Lenardo really was well and needed only rest and food to be his old self.
“You’ll want this,” he said, removing Lenardos ring from his finger and handing it to his sister’s husband.
Lenardo smiled. “Thank you for keeping it safe for me. Aradia would never forgive me if I lost it.” He slipped it onto his finger, and turned it, studying the entwined emblems of wolf and dragon. “Did you send another message to Aradia?” he asked.
“Yes, with one of Ashuru’s people. Now you can write her a letter.”
“We should be home before any letter,” said Lenardo.
“Doesn’t that depend on how long it takes to drive Z’Nelia out of Chulaika’s body?”
The Master Reader nodded. “However, if we cannot do it soon, I fear it will be Chulaika who is driven out by Z’Nelia.”
Wulfston shuddered. “I hope not. But if that should happen… I made a promise to Ashuru in return for the help of the Karili in rescuing you: that you would help her to restore Z’Nelia to sanity.”
“All I want to do is go home,” said Lenardo, “but I will honor the promise you made in my name… if it should prove necessary.”
From across the room, Tadisha was watching Wulfston and Lenardo. Servants brought cooked food, placing it on clean woven mats on the floor. She turned to aid Kamas, whose broken arm still pained him.
Lenardo ate meat without protest, although he always claimed it blurred his Reading powers. Right now he needed to restore his physical strength.
Norgu joined them, warily accepting their congratulations on the victory against the Savishnon. The boy was closed tightly against Reading. Wulfston feared that he thought they had tricked him into remaining behind the main army, hoping he would be killed. By silent consent they told him only that Z’Nelia was dead. Perhaps tomorrow they would be able to drive her from Chulaika’s body, and have only Norgu to worry about.
There was little conversation, as everyone was bone-weary. Reports came in all through the meal of areas secured. More troops from other members of the Karili Assembly were approaching; by morning they would drive another wedge between Djahat and the Savishnon, forcing them even farther back and leaving the Seers and Lenardo free to work with Chulaika.
It was almost noon before Wulfston woke the next day, much restored. The smell of food guided him downstairs, to find Lenardo, Tadisha, and Ashuru being served in the same room where they had gathered yesterday.
“Norgu has gone to join his army to the others,” Ashuru reported. “This is a good time to attempt to drive Z’Nelia out.”
&nb
sp; Wulfston nodded. “Shall I stand guard?”
“No,” relied Lenardo. “I want your strength in the rapport, Wulfston.”
“In the-? Lenardo, I’m no Master Reader!”
“And I’m no Lord Adept. You understand the way a Mover’s mind works as neither Ashuru nor I can.
And you can provide an anchor for us. Ashuru and I will be out of body. You will Read with us, and guide us back should Z’Nelia attempt to lose us on the planes of existence.”
“Is that what happened to the Seers who tried to See into the Dead Lands?” he asked.
“Apparently,” said Ashuru. “This is something our Seers could learn from your Master Readers. We have little experience wiht these ‘planes of existence,’ for many who have attempted to explore them have either been lost, or returned as mad as Z’Nelia.”
Lenardo nodded. “So did many Readers who first attempted to reach them, but eventually we developed safeguards, and now we can often cure minds which have been influenced by communication with those planes which we do not understand.” He shook his head. “I do not know what we will encounter in driving Z’Nelia out of Chulaika, but I have relied on Wulfston’s strength many times before. I trust him.”
Tadisha asked, “What do you want me to do, Lord Lenardo?”
The Master Reader looked toward Ashuru. “I do not know what experience your daughter has had, Queen Ashuru. By our standards at home, she would probably qualify as a Magister Reader. If I were her teacher at Gaeta, if she had already had experience in healing sick minds I would want her to have this opportunity despite the danger. But this should be no one’s first experience of mental healing.”
Ashuru nodded. “As a mother, I would protect her. As a teacher, though, I believe she is ready to participate.”
“Very well, then. We can begin.”
Barak had gone out to observe the battle, and Kamas was still in healing sleep. So it was Lenardo, Ashuru, Tadisha, and Wulfston who went to the tower room where Chulaika slept, her body containing Z’Nelia’s presence as well as her own.
Not allowing the woman’s body to waken, they reached out to the two minds.
“Chaiku!” Chulaika demanded. “Where is my son?”
“Well cared for,” Ashuru told her. “Do not worry; you will soon hold him in your arms again.”
“Never again!” Z’Nelia raged. Ill will hold him! I will raise him, teach him my ways. Leave me, Chulaika.
You have lost this battle.”
“No, Z’Nelia,” Lenardo told her, “this time you have lost. You have no right to Chulaika’s body. Accept your death, and go in peace to the plane of the dead.”
“You think you can kill me again?” Z’Nelia demanded. “I will kill you all!”
Without warning, they were no longer in the tower room of the castle in Djahat, but on the lip of the crater on Mount Manjuro!
Heat pulled the sweat through their pores. The ground beneath their feet trembled as the lava heaved.
The sky was black with ash and smoke. The only light was the lurid red-orange glare of the lava, reflecting off two figures locked in mortal struggle: Z’Nelia and Chulaika, each trying to thrust the other into the bubbling lava.
But as they fought, glancing down into the heaving pit, inside the crater was no longer lava, but a seething maelstrom of malice, anger, rage, lust, jealousy, guilt-
Wulfston slowly regained self-awareness, and realized that it was Lenardo interpreting the imagery, letting them all understand what the magma represented to Z’Nelia and Chulaika. And something else. He could sense the Master Reader trying to identify some sensation that remained frustratingly just out of reach.
The moment Wulfston found himself, the other Seers were “there,” standing on the brink of the lake of chaos, watching the twin forms struggling on the opposite side.
Lenardo staggered, and Wulfston grasped his arm to keep him from falling. “What-?”
But there was no need to speak. The moment he thought of the question, he knew the answer: Z’Nelia had created this mind-world, and so it operated by the rules she had laid down for it. She had decided that the physical strength of each person within this world would depend on the strength of that person’s talents at the moment he entered it. And Lenardo’s talents had been weakened by her mistreatment.
“She fears you,” Wulfston told Lenardo, willingly supporting the Master Reader.
“And from her fear of me,” Lenardo observed, “she has created her own destruction.”
For, it seemed, her death trauma had weakened Z’Nelia’s own talents so that she had no more power than Chulaika. It was an evenly matched battle!
Tadisha, though, was fully recovered. Young and strong, she began to run lightly along the rim of the volcano.
“Tadisha, no!” Wulfston called.
“Go with her!” said Lenardo, sinking cross-legged to the ground. “I am safe here.”
“Go with Tadisha,” agreed Ashuru, starting around the lip of the volcano in the opposite direction.
Not quite sure what they would do when they reached the battling twins-tear them apart? throw Z’Nelia into the volcano? — Wulfston and Tadisha nonetheless fought their way across the treacherous ground, against a rising wind. On the other side, Ashuru’s figure grew dim as the crater spewed up drifts of chaos, threatening to overflow and engulf them all.
The forms of Z’Nelia and Chulaika became clearer as they approached. What should they do?
Suddenly, behind the battling women a new figure appeared!
It was a man, young and strong, slender and muscular, brandishing a diamond-tipped spear.
Norgu!
Norgu not as he was, but his ideal image of himself as a grown man, which-by Z’Nelia’s own rules-he could maintain here because he was in full possession of his powers!
Norgu strode toward the struggling women, spear at the ready.
Wulfston and Tadisha ran against the wind which tore the words from their mouths and tossed them away as they shouted at him to stop-
— too late!
With the point of his spear, he caught Z’Nelia in the small of the back as she strove to push Chulaika into the pit.
The spear shoved Z’Nelia against Chulaika, and both women tumbled into the maelstrom, locked together, screaming with one voice as Norgu howled with triumphant laughter!
Wulfston leaped toward him. Norgu spun, aiming the spear at him. “You die, too, Beast Lord!”
Ashuru arrived behind him. “Stop, Norgu!”
Norgu turned to her. “Ah, the Queen of the Karili. How convenient. I shall rid myself of all my enemies at once, and rule Africa uncontested!”
Norgu drew back the spear as if to thrust it into Ashuru. Tadisha cried, “Mother!” and tried to grasp Norgu’s arm.
He sidestepped her, swinging the spear toward Tadisha now, its diamond tip about to gut her.
Wulfston dived for the shaft, hauling the tip down short of its mark. He rolled, wrenching the spear from Norgu’s hands, unable to stop as his momentum carried him toward the lip of the crater!
Chaos rushed up at him, delirium and madness reaching out to envelop him-
With every vestige of strength he could command, he flung the spear ahead of him, the momentum shoving him backwards at the very edge so that he stopped with his hands on the lip of the crater, his head hanging over, peering into the pit as it erupted!
The volcano of greed, guilt, jealousy, and power-hunger belched out its core of madness.
Tadisha on one side and Ashuru on the other grasped Wulfston’s arms, hauling him to his feet. As they started back toward where they had left Lenardo, Ashuru shouted, “Norgu! Come with us!”
But as they rounded the rim to where they could see him without having to turn around, they found that Norgu hadn’t followed.
The fountain of chaos tossed the diamond-headed spear tantalizingly out of Norgu’s reach. The boy tried to grasp it.
“Let it go!” shouted Wulfston, but Norgu paid no h
eed.
The fiery plume shifted. The spear fell down into the chasm. Magma erupted; Norgu was engulfed where he stood, his screams drowned in the roar.
The soil beneath them heaved.
They stumbled on toward Lenardo.
Smoke blinded them. Heat blistered their skin.
A wave of chaos washed over them, tearing them apart!
“Lenardo!” Wulfston shouted, lost in a storm of fury. Only the Master Reader could get them home. But where was he? “Lenardo! Lenarrrdddooo!”
He tried to Read, couldn’t, remembered that he was Reading this whole scene-
Wulfston hurt. He was aware of aching in every muscle and bone before he felt the finger pressed firmly to his forehead between the eyes, and heard Lenardo’s voice saying calmly, “Wulfston, wake up. It’s all over. Wake up now.”
He did, with a moan.
He was slumped on his side, cheek against the cold stone floor, legs twisted painfully. He had iallen sideways from the cross-legged position he had assumed to Read with the others. The more awake he became, the more agony assaulted his nerves. Nothing that happened in Adept battle had ever hurt this much!
Light stabbed his eyes when he opened them to find a blurry Lenardo bending over him. “I know it hurts,” the Master Reader said, “but you’ll be all right. You weren’t prepared to go out of body.”
“Is that what I did?” he managed to get out. Even his tongue hurt.
“Yes. Don’t try to move. Can you start healing yourself?”
He found that he could. Relief and warmth spread through his cold, cramped limbs. Lenardo gently straightened his body, massaging the abused muscles. “What happened?” Wulfston asked. “I shouldn’t have fallen.”
“I know; the worst that should have happened from leaving your body in that position is a few cramped muscles. Norgu may have shoved your body over out of spite, when he discovered what we were doing.”
Healing, Wulfston could not Read. “Tadisha? Ashuru?”
“They’re fine. They’ve gone to find Norgu.”
“Or his body,” Wulfston said bitterly.
“Not necessarily,” Lenardo told him. “Chulaika’s still alive.”
