The youth moved toward the two.
"Watch out!" the blind dwarf shrieked. "Trap!"
A storm of poisoned darts hurtled from a thousand hidden recesses. Their numbers darkened the chamber.
The Shield came alive. Missiles pattered off it like hail off a tin roof. Gathrid sighed. Its protection enveloped him completely.
Tracka was less fortunate. Gasping, one hand extended eastward as if he meant to yank himself home, he died. He was the last Ventimiglian.
He left a legacy. With his final breath he mounted a final, violent incantation. His body became a standing bolt of lightning. Jade melted beneath his feet. The blinding fire of him dissipated, becoming a foul, oily cloud. Something burst from its deeps.
It was a tentacular clump of nightmare a dozen feet tall. It had legs like a man. There the resemblance to humanity ended.
It leapt on Elgar. A mouth Gathrid could not see ripped bloody gobbets from the Emperor. The youth muttered, "Wrong one, idiot!" He kicked a passage through the darts mounded around him. Nieroda-Mulenex responded uncertainly.
Tracka-monster realized its error. It whipped off Elgar and threw itself at the Red Brother. Nieroda barely evaded it. She seemed puzzled.
Wailing daggers hurtled out of nowhere. They pounded the Shield and Tracka's demon. The latter squealed and leapt at Nieroda again. Gathrid leaned into the storm of blades. He wanted to reach her before she eliminated the distraction.
Slithering like a snake, Rogala removed himself from danger. Though blind, he seemed to know exactly what was happening.
The jade opened between Gathrid and Nieroda. All Faron shifted, shaking like a dog coming out of water. Screams sounded throughout the palace. The hill groaned as whole wings collapsed.
Gathrid looked inside himself, hunting the spells Ahlert had used to bring in fill from afar. He could not find them. The Mindak had become as elusive as his sister and Loida. He sprinted along the abyss in search of a place narrow enough to jump.
Smoke ghosts drifted in through high, vaulted windows. Their frames were taking on an orange tinge.
Nieroda lacked confidence. She was trying to avoid a one-on-one. Gathrid grinned wickedly.
She was not retreating. Why?
At the moment she was preoccupied with the gift Tracka had left her. It froze. A struggle took place within it. It swayed, made a surprisingly kittenish sound. And turned on Gathrid.
The youth seized the Staff from where Tracka had dropped it. He used it as an old man uses a cane to discipline a belligerent dog.
The demon darted hither and thither, trying to get past the youth's guard. Gathrid kept poking till, with a howl, it fled the palace.
"Now you've unleashed a Prince of Darkness on an innocent people."
Startled, Gathrid whirled. This was the first Nieroda had spoken. That sarcasm could not have come from Gerdes Mulenex.
"Better he than Hell's Queen." He prowled the edge of the abyss. It was pointless trying to anger her into doing something stupid. She did not act on emotion. He wondered if she had any feelings at all.
He had none at the moment.
Suddenly, surprising him, the Mindak was with him. "The Staff," whispered the voice from within. The feel was little different from what it had been with Aarant. "Speak the words I give you."
"All right." Gathrid locked gazes with Nieroda. Her Mulenex face settled into permanent bewilderment. Gathrid parroted the words Ahlert gave him, hurled the Staff at the abyss.
Thunder and smoke. For a moment there was a bridge. He danced over before Nieroda reacted. He went wondering if it were too easy. She always had something up her sleeve before.
Could she be running short, growing resigned in the face of repeated failure?
Facing an apparently unarmed enemy across jade stained by the blood of Karkainen, searching for the trap, he demanded, "Why?" A single thread connected all her actions: destruction. In success or failure, she destroyed. "What do you want from the world? Do you have to flog it like a teamster flogs a dying horse?"
A specter of longing tainted her Mulenex face.
She was ancient. She'd had time to brand her immortality upon the face of the world. Yet less was known of her than of Theis Rogala and Tureck Aarant. The records had been destroyed, probably with her connivance. Only names remained: Sommerlath, Spillenkothen, Wistma Povich. And speculations about a forgotten Swordbearer, and Driebrant and Grellner. Elusive, Gathrid thought. He wondered if Rogala remembered.
"Is it death?" he asked. "Will you lash the world till, in a rage, it ends you? Are you trying to escape your immortality?"
While he spoke he moved his head back and forth, trying to capture her gaze with the Diadem. She withdrew toward the alabaster throne, step-pause-step.
Going to her next move?
"What are Bachesta and the others? Why do they toy with our lives?" He could almost hear Rogala growling, Kill when you have to. Don't talk.
Intuition told him she had to be permitted the next move. She would turn any initiative against him.
She seemed as willing to wait as was he.
He suggested, "Suppose we just sit down and let the world get on with it? Let them seal us in and forget us. The Great Old Ones won't start anything new while they're waiting for us to finish."
Talk, talk, talk, he thought. When would she respond? Anything would give him an insight into her thinking. Why that one moment of sarcasm, then nothing?
He glanced out a window. Dense smoke masked the sun. Fires bloodied the billows. The temblors continued. The Queen City was dying. Contessa Cuneo's patrimony would consist of rubble and ash.
Nieroda changed during his moment of inattention. "It must yield," she declared. "It's stubborn. So stubborn. There's always one more barrier . . . . Someday it has to give in."
"What do you mean?"
Ahlert made a guess. Terrible and powerful as she was, Nieroda was a failure. The short-term tasks she set herself, even when they appeared to work out, invariably culminated in disaster.
She's immortal, Gathrid countered.
That, too, will end, Ahlert replied.
"Death," the youth said aloud. "I bring you death, Dark Lady."
She had won the war of waiting. He would make the first move. Suchara was impatient. He pushed through a dozen defenses the like of the darts and daggers. Nieroda backed away.
When first he spied the smoke he thought it just an especially thick arm drifting in from the burning city. Then it coalesced in his path. One end took the semblance of a cobra's head. More sorcery. He called on Ahlert.
The Mindak could not help him. This was beyond his knowledge.
It was a serpent. It became a smoke creature fifty yards long and as thick as a man's chest. It coiled round Nieroda, shielding her. Gathrid probed with the Sword.
Nothing happened. Daubendiek denied the thing's existence.
Red eyes glared into Gathrid's own. He saw a malevolent humor there. He backed away to consider.
It struck. Neither Sword nor Shield reacted. The youth survived solely on his own quick response.
Immune to the Sword. Able to penetrate the Shield. What was this thing? Nervously, he backed a few more steps away. One foot encountered the Staff, twisted beneath him treacherously. He regained his balance, dodged another strike.
The Staff, too, proved useless. So did the blade he had captured.at Kacalief. He felt a growing uneasiness. He'd had an advantage. It was quicksilver in his fingers. She had gotten round the might of the great weapons.
"Death," said Nieroda. A wicked smile captured her fat Mulenex lips. "I bring you death, Swordbearer."
Gathrid saw it in those wicked red eyes as the serpent rocked to and fro, considering its next strike. He moved Daubendiek in time to the serpent's sway. Its gaze locked on the weapon, watching for his move.
Slowly, slowly, he drew the serpent's gaze upward, into contact with the jewel in the Ordrope Diadem.
Nothing. His mind opened on an emptiness so com
plete it could exist only as some philosopher's fantasy. He nearly fell in.
"Beware!" Ahlert snapped from the back of his mind. "It's another trap."
Gathrid surfaced. Nieroda was charging. Her serpent had vanished. She had acquired a weapon.
Its blade was wholly invisible. Daubendiek turned its first thrust uncertainly. The Shield absorbed a glancing blow. Nieroda danced away, moving lightly despite the gross Mulenex body.
She tossed, or pretended to toss, her weapon from hand to hand till Gathrid was no longer sure which wielded it.
Levels and levels, deceits and deceits, he thought. Was there no limit to her cunning? He maneuvered to where the Staff lay, kicked it at her.
She refused the bait. She dodged instead of blocking with her weapon. The Staff's passage across the jade produced an endless drumroll sound. It toppled into the abyss.
The gap closed instantly.
One point to the Dark Champion, Gathrid thought. He had lost a resource.
He struggled to retain his balance. The floor heaved and rolled like a strong sea. Trying to outwit the woman was going to scramble his brain.
He moved in, Sword and Shield high, ready to block a stroke from either hand. He ignored that part of the Shield's protection not backed by its physical embodiment. He had to push her, to deny her time for tricks. He edged closer, till he was inside her reach.
She could not resist.
He blocked with Daubendiek, locked blades and in the same instant hurled the Shield away. It danced a fiery tarantella across the jade. He seized Nieroda's hair, pulled her closer. He forced Daubendiek toward her throat . . . .
The high sorcery ceased to have meaning. The moment became a contest of strength. He was winning, forcing her to lean backward, dragging her gaze toward the Ordrope Diadem.
She could dispel a thousand mysteries.
Gerdes Mulenex had been a lazy wastrel. There was no strength in him at all.
Darkness.
Gathrid and his antagonist were in another place, another palace. They were locked in one another's arms upon another vast floor. Topless walls resembling human faces surrounded them. Three stirred memories for the youth. That snoring silver one he had seen looming over Anyeck's shoulders. The crimson, which wore an expression resembling that of a disappointed old man just nodding off, had floated behind the Mindak during their confrontation in the tunnel through the Maurath. The black face he had seen many times, supporting Nevenka Nieroda.
The black and an aquamarine face were very much awake. Each projected fear, excitement and hope. Each betrayed a vast displeasure with its Chosen.
Gathrid foresaw a struggle like those with the Toal on the endless plain. And he suspected that, for the vanquished, defeat would be final and forever.
He broke away from Nieroda. He and she, bereft of weapons, material trappings and stolen body, glared at one another.
Gathrid backed away. He now faced a woman, rather attractive and disarmingly unclothed.
He tried to cull his stolen memories, nearly panicked when there was no response. They were gone. He was Gathrid of Kacalief once more, with all that boy-child's frailties. His eye drooped. His leg hurt. He had no resources but himself to support him. A bitter year's growth and experience were all that separated him from the terrified boy who had fled Kacalief's ruins.
She, then, would again be Wistma Povich of Spillenkothen in Sommerlath, perhaps as she had been before becoming Sommerlath's Queen.
"Toys!" he spat. "That's all we are."
"That's all we ever were."
"Would that they were vulnerable."
"Yes." Her face looked haunted. "To be able to destroy them, as they've destroyed me by forcing me to destroy . . . . " Her hatred became palpable. It surged around her. The air crackled.
"Can there be games when the gladiators won't fight?" It was a silly thing to say. The wanest of hopes. Too much blood and pain knotted them into this death-dance.
Their eyes locked. She relaxed slowly. He did so himself, carefully, ever watchful for the Nieroda trap. Cautiously, he examined his surroundings more thoroughly.
It was a new subjective reality. It was both like and unlike the plane-plain where the Toal had died.
Could these Great Old Ones die? Could they be slain?
Mead entered his thoughts. It had been she who had put that name into his head. Where was she now? Had she heard from Belfiglio?
Suchara's eyes burned like the flames of Hell. Her face was an ever-changing landscape of emotion. Every expression was evil.
Gathrid was the focus. He had shared soul with Tureck Aarant. Together they had conspired to deny her her will. The ties were under strain. Yet, he suspected, he and she could never sever them entirely. Nor could Nieroda separate herself from Bachesta.
The effort, ultimately, underlay all the frenzy and irrationality of her earthly activities. Not lust for power. Not love of destruction. Not even hunger for death. Just a simple desire for freedom. She was engaged in a secret war, the battles of which she sometimes lost and sometimes won.
Suchara's will beat upon him like storm breakers upon a rocky headland, insisting that he slaughter the woman before him.
The harder Suchara pushed, the more stubbornly defiant Gathrid became.
He stared into the eyes of Wistma-Nevenka. She had left the initiative in his hands. She would follow his lead. She would resume fighting if he yielded to Suchara.
Impulse.
He pulled her toward him, kissed her ancient lips.
Suchara and Bachesta gave vent to furies of deific magnitude.
Nieroda glanced at her mistress. Her eyes were merry. She seized Gathrid and kissed him back. She took his hand, faced the demigod walls.
This weak, scarcely genuine gesture of love between foes was arsenic to those connoisseurs of hatred and evil. Love was the one human attribute they could neither comprehend, nor control, nor often bend to their advantage. They loathed and feared it.
In that context, Gathrid reflected, their Games almost made sense. Human love could take ten thousand forms. These devils shattered every sort when allowed to run their course. In their grinding mills the Chosen of the Great Old Ones destroyed what men loved, leaving them only things to hate.
How much hating had he done himself, as the Instrument of Suchara? Too much. Far too much.
And Nieroda? She was, he suspected, herself the thing she hated most.
He reached down inside for memories of the Mindak. Ahlert had not been directly possessed by hatred. His demon had been a warped, obsessive love that had generated hatred wherever it touched.
Anyeck had been possessed of a towering hatred for things-as-they-are.
And Rogala? What of Theis? The dwarf remained a mystery. The puzzle box of eternity. Gathrid now doubted the dwarf was human. Since Ansorge he had suspected that Theis might be the last of the Night People.
He doubted that Rogala would ever be solved.
He whispered, "I think we've found a way to fight back." He laughed. The sound caught in his throat. He remained unsure. A kiss seemed so little in the face of cruel, implacable powers like these.
"What we've found is damnation," Nieroda replied. "Willingly or unwillingly, we're in their web. They won't let us escape. I've been trying for ages." She despaired, but kept holding his hand. He drew a strange, almost motherly support from her.
"Once more," he whispered. "For their apoplexy."
She did not resist. Strange, he thought as he drew away. Nevenka Nieroda was as old as the hinges of time, yet was as unskilled as he.
As the thunders tramped and darkness marched like iron legions unleashed, he remembered Loida Huthsing. Sometimes it was not hard to hate.
Chapter Nineteen
Endgame
Gathrid reassumed physical reality. The Great Old Ones had spit him out like a sour plum. He found himself back in the remains of the Imperial Palace. The blood of Karkainen surrounded his soles. Daubendiek hung loosely in his right hand.
Gerdes Mulenex sagged against his left arm. He staggered, went down.
Night had engulfed smoke-shrouded Sartain. It had brought no darkness, no relief for the eye. The great fires burned on.
He did not see a sign of Nieroda. She had not returned. Had he erred? Would she rise somewhere else now, and be lashed into another frenzy of destruction? He hoped not. He hoped she had seen the glimmer of hope, too.
But the Game was rigged. Of course. Even in defeat, the Great Old Ones had their way.