He glanced down at the causeway and saw the miniature figure of Magda bending over her stricken father. The old berserker fury reared up in him, pushing him to run the last four paces with his sword poised for a two-handed decapitating blow.
“Truce!” Rasalom screamed and cowered back, his composure shattered at last.
“No truce!”
“Half a world! I offer you half a world, Glaeken! We’ll divide it evenly and you can keep whoever you wish with you! The other half will be mine.”
Glaeken slowed, then raised the sword again. “No! No half measures this time! Besides, how long before you decided half a world wasn’t enough?”
Rasalom ferreted out Glaeken’s worst fear and flung it at him. “Kill me and you seal your own doom!”
“Where is that written?”
Despite all his prior resolve, Glaeken could not help but hesitate.
“It doesn’t need to be written! It’s obvious! You continue to exist only to oppose me. Eliminate me and you eliminate your reason for being. Kill me and you kill yourself.”
It was obvious. Glaeken had dreaded this moment since that night in Tavira when he had first become aware of Rasalom’s release from the cell. Yet all the while, in the back of his mind, a tiny hope had burned, a hope that killing Rasalom would not be a suicidal act.
But it was a futile hope. He had to face that. The choice was clear: Strike now and end it all or consider a truce.
Why not a truce? Half a world was better than death. At least he would be alive…and he could have Magda at his side.
Rasalom must have guessed his thoughts.
“You seem to like the girl,” Rasalom said, looking down toward the causeway. “You could keep her with you. You wouldn’t have to lose her. She’s a brave little insect, isn’t she?”
“That’s all we are to you? Insects?”
“‘We’? Are you such a romantic that you still count yourself among them? We are above and beyond anything they could ever hope to be, as close to gods as they will ever see! We should unite and act the part instead of warring as we do.”
“I’ve never set myself apart from them. I’ve tried all along to live as a normal man.”
“But you’re not a normal man and you can’t live as one! They die while you go on living! You can’t be one of them. Don’t try! Be what you are—their superior! Join me and we’ll rule them. Kill me and we’ll both die!”
Half a world…
Glaeken wavered. If only he could have a little more time to decide. He wanted to be rid of Rasalom once and for all. But he didn’t want to die. Especially not now after he had just found Magda. He couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her behind. He needed more time with her.
Magda…Glaeken dared not look, but he could feel her eyes on him at this very moment. A great heaviness settled in his chest. Only moments ago she had risked everything to hold Rasalom in the keep and give him time. Could he do any less and still deserve her? He remembered her glowing eyes as she had handed him the hilt: I knew you would come.
He had lowered his sword while battling with himself. Seeing this, Rasalom smiled. And that smile was the final impetus.
For Magda! Glaeken thought and lifted the point.
At that moment the sun topped the eastern ridge and poured into his eyes. Through the glare he saw Rasalom diving toward him.
Glaeken realized in that instant why Rasalom had been so talkative, why he had tried so many seemingly fruitless delaying tactics, and why Rasalom had allowed him to approach within striking range of the sword: He had been waiting for the sun to crest the mountains behind him and momentarily blind Glaeken. And now Rasalom was making his move, a last, desperate attempt to remove Glaeken and the hilt from the keep by pushing them both over the edge of the tower.
He came in low under the point of Glaeken’s sword, his arms outstretched. Glaeken had no room to maneuver—he could not sidestep, nor could he safely retreat. All he could do was brace himself and lift the sword higher, dangerously high until his arms were almost straight up over his head. Glaeken knew it raised his center of gravity to a precarious level, but he was no less desperate than Rasalom.
Here and now, it had to end.
When the impact came—Rasalom’s hands ramming against his lower rib cage with numbing force—Glaeken felt himself driven backward. He concentrated on the sword, driving the point down into Rasalom’s bare back, piercing him through. With a scream of rage and agony, Rasalom tried to straighten, but Glaeken held on to the sword as he continued to fall backward.
Together they toppled over the edge and plummeted earthward.
Glaeken found himself unnaturally calm as they seemed to drift through the air toward the gorge below, locked in combat to the very end.
He had won.
And he had lost.
Rasalom’s scream wavered to a halt. His black, incredulous eyes bulged toward Glaeken, refusing to believe even now that he was dying. And then he began to shrivel—the rune sword was devouring him body and essence as they fell. Rasalom’s skin began to dry, peel, crack, flake off, and fly away. Before Glaeken’s eyes, his ancient enemy crumbled into dust.
As he approached the level of the fog, Glaeken looked away. He caught a glimpse of Magda’s horrified expression as she watched from the causeway. He began to lift his hand in farewell but the fog engulfed him too soon.
All that remained now was the shattering impact with the stones invisible below.
Magda stared at the two figures atop the tower parapet. They were close, almost touching. She saw the red of Glaeken’s hair turn to fire as it caught the light of the rising sun, saw that the other man was naked. A flash of metal and then the two figures grappled. They twisted and teetered on the edge. Then they fell as one.
Her own scream rose to join the fading wail from one of the struggling intertwined pair who seemed to dissolve as the other tumbled into the ebbing mist and was lost from sight.
For a long frozen moment, time stood still for Magda. She did not move, did not breathe. Glaeken and Rasalom had fallen together, and had been swallowed up by the fog in the gorge.
Glaeken had fallen!
She had watched helplessly as he plunged to certain death.
Dazed, she stepped to the edge of the causeway and looked down at the spot where this man who had come to mean everything to her had disappeared. Her mind and body were completely numb. Darkness encroached on the periphery of her vision, threatening to overwhelm her. With a start she shook off the awful lethargy, the creeping desire to lean farther and farther over the edge until she too toppled forward and joined Glaeken below.
She turned and began to run along the causeway.
It can’t be! she thought as her feet pounded the timbers. Not both of them! First Papa and now Glaeken—not the two of them at once!
Off the causeway, she ran to the right toward the closed end of the gorge. Glaeken had survived one fall into the gorge—he could survive two! Please, yes!
But this fall was so much farther! She scrambled down the wedge of rocky debris, unmindful of the scrapes and bruises she collected along the way. The sun, although not high enough yet to shine directly into the gorge, was warming the air in the pass and thinning the mist. She made her way swiftly across the floor of the gorge, stumbling, falling, picking herself up and pushing on, as close to a run as the broken, rutted terrain permitted. Passing under the causeway, she blotted out the thought of Papa’s body lying up there alone, unattended. She splashed across the stream to the base of the tower.
Panting, Magda stopped and turned in a slow circle, her frantic eyes searching among the boulders and rocks for some sign of life. She saw no one…nothing.
“Glaeken?” Her voice sounded weak and raspy. She called again, “Glaeken?”
No answer.
He has to be here!
Something glittered not far away. Magda ran over to look. It was the sword…what was left of it. The blade had shattered into countless fragments; and
among the fragments lay the hilt, bereft of its glossy gold and silver hues. An immeasurable sense of loss settled over Magda as she lifted the hilt and ran her hands over its dull gray surface. A reverse alchemy had occurred; it had turned to lead. Magda fought against the conclusion, but deep within her she knew that the hilt had served the purpose for which it had been designed.
Rasalom was dead, so the sword was no longer necessary. Neither was the man who had wielded it.
She could expect no miracle this time.
Magda cried out in anguish, a formless sound that escaped her lips involuntarily and continued for as long and as loud as her lungs and voice could sustain it. A sound full of loss and despair, reverberating off the walls of the keep and the gorge, echoing away into the pass.
And when the last trace of it had died away, she stood with bowed head and slumped shoulders, wanting to cry but all cried out; wanting to strike out at whoever or whatever was to blame for this, but knowing everyone—everyone but her—was dead; wanting to scream and rage at the blind injustice of it all but too dead inside to do anything more than give way to deep, dry, wracking sobs from the very core of her being.
She stood there for what seemed like a long time and tried to find a reason to go on living. There was nothing left. Every single thing she had cherished in life had been torn from her. She could not think of one reason to go on…
And yet there had to be. Glaeken had lived so long and had never run out of reasons to go on living. He had admired her courage. Would it be an act of courage now to give up everything?
No. Glaeken would have wanted her to live. Everything he was, everything he did, had been for life. Even his death had been for life.
She hugged the hilt against her until the sobs stopped, then turned and began walking away, not knowing where she would go or what she would do, but knowing she would somehow find a way and a reason to keep going.
And she would keep the hilt. It was all she had left.
EPILOGUE
I’m alive.
He sat in the darkness, touching his body to reassure himself that he still existed. Rasalom was gone, reduced to a handful of dust flung into the air. At last, after ages, Rasalom was no more.
Yet I live on. Why?
He had plummeted through the fog, landing on the rocks with force enough to shatter every bone in his body. The blade had broken, the hilt had changed.
Yet he lived on.
At the moment of impact he had felt something go out of him and he had lain there waiting to die.
Yet he hadn’t.
His right leg hurt terribly. But he could see, he could feel, breathe, move. And he could hear. When he had picked up the sound of Magda approaching across the floor of the gorge, he had dragged himself to the hinged stone at the base of the tower, opened it, and crawled within. He had waited in silence as she called out his name, covering his ears to shut out the pain and bewilderment in her voice, longing to answer her, yet unable to. Not yet. Not until he was sure.
And now he heard her splashing away through the stream. He swung the stone open all the way and tried to stand. His right leg wouldn’t support him. Was it broken? He had never had a broken bone before. Unable to walk, he crawled down to the water. He had to look. He had to know before he did another thing.
At the edge of the stream he hesitated. He could see the growing blue of the sky in the rippled surface of the water. Would he see anything else when he leaned over it?
Please, he said in his mind to the Power he had served, the Power that might no longer be listening. Please let this be the end of it. Let me live out the rest of my allotted years like a normal man. Let me have this woman to grow old with instead of watching her wither away while I remain young. Let this be the end of it. I have completed the task. Set me free!
Setting his jaw, he thrust his head over the water. A weary red-haired man with blue eyes and an olive complexion stared back. His image was there! He could see himself! His reflection had been returned to him!
Joy and relief flooded through Glaeken. It’s over! It’s finally over!
He lifted his head and looked across the gorge to the slowly receding figure of the woman he loved like no other woman in all his long life.
“Magda!” He tried to stand but the damn leg still wouldn’t hold him up. He was going to have to let it heal like anybody else. “Magda!”
She turned and stood immobile for an eternity. He waved both his arms over his head. He would have sobbed aloud had he remembered how. Among other things, he would have to learn how to cry again.
“Magda!”
Something fell from her hands, something that looked like the hilt to his sword. Then she was running toward him, running as fast as her long legs would carry her, her expression a mixture of joy and doubt, as if she wanted him to be there more than anything in the world but could not allow herself to believe until she had touched him.
Glaeken was there, waiting to be touched.
And far above, a blue-winged bird with a beak full of straw fluttered to a gentle perch on a window ledge of the keep in search of a place to build a nest.
THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WORLD
The preponderance of my work deals with a history of the world that remains undiscovered, unexplored, and unknown to most of humanity. Some of this secret history has been revealed in the Adversary Cycle, some in the Repairman Jack novels, and bits and pieces in other, seemingly unconnected works. Taken together, even these millions of words barely scratch the surface of what has been going on behind the scenes, hidden from the workaday world. I’ve listed these works below in the chronological order in which the events in them occur.
Note: “Year Zero” is the end of civilization as we know it; “Year Zero Minus One” is the year preceding it, etc.
The Past
“Demonsong” (prehistory)
“Aryans and Absinthe”** (1923–1924)
Black Wind (1926–1945)
The Keep (1941)
Reborn (February–March 1968)
“Dat Tay Vao”*** (March 1968)
Jack: Secret Histories (1983)
Jack: Secret Circles (1983)
Year Zero Minus Three
Sibs (February)
“Faces”* (early summer)
The Tomb (summer)
“The Barrens”* (ends in September)
“The Wringer”
“A Day in the Life”* (October)
“The Long Way Home”
Legacies (December)
Year Zero Minus Two
Conspiracies (April) (includes “Home Repairs”)
“Interlude at Duane’s”** (April)
All the Rage (May) (includes “The Last Rakosh”)
Hosts (June)
The Haunted Air (August)
Gateways (September)
Crisscross (November)
Infernal (December)
Year Zero Minus One
Harbingers (January)
Bloodline (April)
By the Sword (May)
Ground Zero (July)
The Touch (ends in August)
The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling Circus & Oddity Emporium (ends in September)
“Tenants”*
Year Zero
“Pelts”*
Reprisal (ends in February)
Fatal Error (February)
The Dark at the End (March)
Nightworld (starts in May)
Reprisal will be back in print before too long. I’m planning a total of fifteen Repairman Jack novels (not counting the young adult titles), ending the Secret History with the publication of a heavily revised Nightworld.
*available in The Barrens and Others
**available in Aftershock & Others
***available in the 2009 reissue of The Touch
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Rado L. Lencek, professor of Slavic languages at Columbia University, for his prompt and enthusiastic response to a very odd requ
est from a stranger.
The author also wishes to acknowledge an obvious debt to Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Robert Ervin Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith. Thanks too to Blake Dollens for his proofing help.
F. PAUL WILSON
April 1979–January 1981
ALSO BY F. PAUL WILSON
The Adversary Cycle*
The Tomb
The Touch
Reborn
Reprisal
Nightworld
Repairman Jack Novels*
The Tomb
Legacies
Conspiracies
All the Rage
Hosts
The Haunted Air
Gateways
Crisscross
Infernal
Harbingers
Bloodline
By the Sword
Ground Zero
Fatal Error
Young Adult*
Jack: Secret Histories
Jack: Secret Circles
Other Novels
Healer
Wheels Within Wheels
An Enemy of the State
Black Wind*
Dydeetown World
The Tery
Sibs*
The Select
Virgin
Implant
Deep as the Marrow
Mirage (with Matthew J. Costello)
Nightkill (with Steven Spruill)
Masque (with Matthew J. Costello)
The Christmas Thingy
Sims
The Fifth Harmonic
Midnight Mass
Short Fiction
Soft and Others
The Barrens and Others*
Aftershock & Others*
The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling
Circus & Oddity Emporium*
Editor
Freak Show
Diagnosis: Terminal
*See “The Secret History of the World”.
About the Author
F. Paul Wilson is the New York Times bestselling author of horror, adventure, medical thrillers, science fiction, and virtually everything in between. His books include the Repairman Jack novels—including Ground Zero, The Tomb, and Fatal Error—the Adversary cycle—including The Keep—and a young adult series featuring the teenage Jack. Wilson has won the Prometheus Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the Inkpot Award from the San Diego ComiCon, and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers of America, among other honors. He lives in Wall, New Jersey. You can sign up for author updates here.