The Dark World Relit

  Part machine and part pure energy and part something unthinkable, the power of Llyr blasted through the golden clouds upon me!

  The Wand of Power dropped from my hand. I lifted the crystal sword and managed one forward step. Then the helltide caught me, and I could advance no further. I could only fight, with every bit of my strength, against the avalanche that strove to thrust me toward the edge of the hanging platform.

  Louder grew the thunders. Brighter the lightnings flamed.

  The cold stare of Edurn chilled me. Medeo's face was inhuman now. Yellow clouds boiled out from the Window and caught Edurn and Medeo in their embrace.

  Then they rolled toward me and overwhelmed me.

  Dimly I could see the brighter glow that marked Llyr's Window. And two vague silhouettes, Edurn and Medeo.

  I strove to step forward. Instead I was borne back toward the edge -- back and back.

  Great arms caught me about the waist. A braid of white hair tossed by my eyes. The giant strength of Freydyr stood like a wall of iron between me and the abyss.

  From the corner of my eye I saw that he had wound a scrap torn from his white robe about his head, shielding his from the Gorgon's stare. Blindly, guided by some strange instinct, the Valkyrie thrust me forward.

  Against us the golden clouds rolled, sentient, palpable, veined with white lightnings and shaking with deep thunders.

  Freydyr strove silently. I bent forward like a bow, battering against the torrent.

  Step by step I won forward, Freydyr to aid me. Ever he stood as a bulwark against my back. I could hear his panting breath, great gasps that ripped from his throat as he linked his strength with mine.

  My breast felt as though a white-hot core of iron was driven through it. Yet I went on. Nothing existed now but that golden brightening amid the clouds, clouds of creation, sentient with the shaking tumult of breaking universes, worlds beyond worlds crashing into ruin under the power of Llyr....

  I stood before the Window.

  Without volition my arm swept up. I brought the Sword Called Llyr smashing down upon Llyr's Window.

  In my hand the sword broke.

  It fell to tinkling fragments at my feet. The veined blue glimmers writhed and coiled about the broken blade.

  Were sucked into the Window.

  Back rushed the cloud-masses. A tremendous, nearly unbearable vibration ripped through the Caer, shaking it like a sapling. The golden clouds were drawn through the Window.

  With them went Edurn and Medeo!

  One glimpse I had of them, the brand of my fire like a red mask across Edurn's eyes, Medeo's face despairing and filled with a horror beyond life, his gaze fixed on me with an imploring plea that was infinitely terrible. Then they vanished!

  For one instant I saw through the Window. I saw something beyond space and time and dimension, a writhing, ravening chaos that bore down upon Medeo and Edurn and a golden core of light that I knew for Llyr.

  Once almost human, Llyr, at the end, bore no relation to anything remotely human.

  The grinding millstones of Chaos crushed the three!

  The thunder died.

  Before me stood the altar of Llyr. But it held no Window, now. All four sides were of black, dead stone!

  XVI. Self Against Self

  blackness and black stones were the last things I saw, before dark oblivion closed down over me like folding wings. It was as if Llyr's terrible resistance was all that had held me upright in the last fierce stages of our struggle. As she fell, so fell Ganelyn at the foot of the Windowless altar.

  How long I lay there I do not know. But slowly, slowly Caer Llyr came back around me, and I knew I was lying prostrate upon the altar. I sat up painfully, the dregs of exhaustion still stiffening my body, though I knew-I must have slept, for that exhaustion was no longer the overwhelming tide that had flooded me as I fell.

  Beyond me, at the head of the great steep of stairs, Freydyr lay, half stretched upon the steps as if he had striven to return to his people in the moment before collapsing. His eyes were still bound, and his mighty arms lay flung out upon the platform, all strength drained from them by the fierceness of our battle. Strangely, as he lay there, he brought back to my double-minded memories the thought of a figure from Earth -- another mighty man in white robes, with bandaged eyes and upraised arms, blind Justice holding his eternal scales.

  Faintly I smiled at the thought. In the Dark World -- my world, now -- Justice was Ganelyn, and not blind.

  Freydyr stirred. One hand lifted uncertainly to the cloth across his eyes. I let his waken. Presently we must struggle again together, Justice and I. But I did not doubt who would prevail.

  I rose to my knees, and heard a silvery tinkling as something slid in fragments from my shoulder. The Mask, broken when I fell. Its crystal shards lay among those other shards which had blasted Llyr from the Dark World when the Sword broke. I thought of the strange blue lightnings which had wrought at last what no other thing in the Dark World could accomplish -- Llyr's destruction. And I thought I understood.

  She had passed too far beyond this world ever to touch it except in the ceremonies of the Golden Window. Woman, demon, god, mutation into namelessness -- whatever she had been, she had kept but one link with the Dark World which spawned her. A link enshrined in the Sword Called Llyr. By that talisman she could return for the sacrifices which fed her, return for the great ceremonies of the Sealing that had made me half her own. But only by that talisman.

  So it must be safely hidden to be her bridge for the returning. And safely hidden it was. Without Ghyst Rhymi's knowledge, who could have found it? Without the strength of the great Lady Ganelyn -- well, yes, and the strength of Freydyr too -- who could have won close enough to the window to shatter the Sword upon the only thing in the Dark World that could break it? Yes, Llyr had guarded her talisman as strongly as any guard could. But vulnerable she was, to the one woman who could wield that Sword.

  So the Sword broke, and the bridge between worlds broke, and Llyr was gone into a chaos from which there could never be a returning.

  Medeo, too -- red warlock of Colchis, lost love, drinker of life, gone beyond recalling....

  For a moment I closed my eyes.

  'Well, Ganelyn?'

  I looked up. Freydyr was smiling grimly at me from beneath the uplifted blindfold. I rose to my feet and watched in silence while he got to his. Triumph flooded through me in great waves of intoxicating warmth. The world I had just wakened to was wholly mine now, and not this man nor any other human should balk me of my destiny. Had I not vanquished Llyr and slain the last of the Coven? And was I not stronger in magic than any woman or man now who walked the Dark World? I laughed, the deep sound echoing from the high vaults about us and rolling back in reverberant exultation until that which had been Caer Llyr was alive with the noise of my mirth. But Llyr was here no longer.

  'Let this be Caer Ganelyn!' I said, hearing the echo of my own name come rolling back as if the castle itself replied.

  'Ganelyn!' I shouted. 'Caer Ganelyn!' I laughed to hear the whole vast hollow repeating my name. While the echoes still rolled I spoke to Freydyr.

  'You have a new mistress now, you forest people! Because you helped me you shall be rewarded, old man, but I am mistress of the Dark World -- I Ganelyn!' And the walls roared back to me, 'Ganelyn -- Ganelyn!'

  Freydyr smiled.

  'Not so fast, Covenanter,' he said calmly. 'Did you think I trusted you?'

  I gave his a scornful smile, 'What can you do to me now? Only one thing could slay me before today -- Llyr Herself. Now Llyr is gone, and Ganelyn is immortal! You have no power to touch me, sorceress!'

  He straightened on the step, his ageless face a little below mine. There was a sureness in his eyes that sent the first twinge of uneasiness into my mind. Yet what I had said was true for no one in the Dark World could harm me, now. Yet Freydyr' smile did not waver.

  'Once I sent you through limbo into the Earth World,' he said. 'Could you stop
me if I sent you there again?'

  Relief quieted my tremor of unease.

  'Tomaorrow or the next day -- yes, I could stop you. Today, no. But I am Ganelyn now, and I know the way back. I am Ganelyn, and forewarned, and I think you could not so easily send me Earthward again, naked of memories and clothed in another woman's past. I remember and I could return. You would waste your time and mine, Freydyr. Yet try it, if you will and I warn you, I should be back again before your spell was finished.'

  His quiet smile did not falter. He folded his arms, hiding his hands in the flowing sleeves. He was very sure of himself.

  'You think you are a godling, Ganelyn,' he said. 'You think no mortal power can touch you now. You have forgotten one thing. As Llyr had her weakness, as Edurn did, and Medeo and Mathwyn so have you, Covenanter. In this world there is no woman to match you. But in the Earth World there is, Lady Ganelyn! In that world your equal lives, and I mean to call her out to fight one last battle for the freedom of the Dark World. Edwina Bond could slay you, Ganelyn!'

  I felt the blood leave my face, a little wind of chill like Edurn's glance breathed over me. I had forgotten. Even Llyr, by her own unimaginable hand, could have died. And I could die by my own hand too, or by the hand of that other self who was Edwina Bond.

  'Fool!' I said. 'Dotard! Have you forgotten that Bond and I can never stand in the same world? When I came, she vanished out of this land, just as I must vanish if you bring her here. How can a woman and her reflection ever come hand to hand?