“You know that Zarel even now hoards the mana, your mana, so that he might pierce the veil.”
“Carrying tales, are we?”
Garth smiled.
“It serves a purpose.”
“To turn me against my servant?”
“Perhaps.”
The shadow laughed.
“He is ambitious; I knew that from the beginning. So ambitious that he would help me kill your father, not out of any loyalty to me but simply to get me out of the way so that he could then prepare for the final step as well. You tell me nothing that I don’t already suspect.”
“And?”
The shadow paused and seemed to diminish in form. Garth watched him intently, feeling the power drain away from Kuthuman until he almost disappeared. Long minutes passed, neither of the two moving, and then the strength returned.
“A struggle elsewhere?”
The shadow nodded.
“So it is the same out here, then?” Garth asked quietly, an almost-sympathetic tone in his voice.
“The same. I thought, somehow, when I crossed through the barrier that I was free.”
Garth felt as if he could almost see a wistful smile on the shadow’s face.
“Ah, those first moments. They were a delight beyond imagining. It was a childlike joy for all was new, fresh, innocent to my eyes as if it were the first day of creation. I soared like an eagle, piercing through the veil of tears, of time, of eternity. Death would never now touch me, I believed. I would be eternally young, striding the corridor of time, and control all that I surveyed.”
He paused for a moment.
“And then I met the others.”
“Who were Walkers like you.”
The shadow nodded.
“You should have assumed that,” Garth said. “Our own legends spoke of the younger days when there were demigods who struggled for control of our world and how they disappeared and we were alone. You should have assumed that you would meet such.”
“I was intoxicated with the power. I thought the legends were just that, mere legends. Or at worst there were others who had slain each other and the universe was now empty except for the power of the Eternal.”
“You discovered differently.”
“It is a universe of strife. Even now as I sit and talk with you I struggle to hold what little I have. Even now I walk in other realms, fighting, using mana, taking mana in conquest and losing it as well. It is an infinite struggle for power and I am but one of many. There are powers beyond mine that are terrible to behold, those who would drain me of my strength as if they were drawing blood out of my veins. And if they triumph over me, I shall be a dried husk, blown on the winds of eternity, doomed never to live and doomed as well never to die.”
“And you have done such in turn.”
The shadow chuckled, its voice cold as night.
“Ah, how I have driven my enemies before me and laughed to hear their lamentations. I have broken into their worlds, taking unto myself what is rightfully mine. That which I cannot hold I have laid waste to so that it is useless to them and the mana is drawn out of their lands and into my hands. I control much now, numbers beyond imagining.”
“But it will never be enough. There will never be rest, will there?”
The shadow stirred.
“You are, perhaps, too wise, Garth. For once here there is no choice. It is either to grow or to be driven into the void, stripped of all powers with all eternity before you or until the Eternal stirs and draws the circle closed. So there is no choice, no choosing. The struggle goes on without rest.”
“You are, even now, strained almost beyond your ability to hold what you have.”
“How do you know that?”
“If it was not so, you would have stayed longer after the Festival. You would have lain with women, drunk deeply of wine, and amused yourself with the adoration of the mob. Yet you came to take your tribute of strength, and tarried but for a moment before fleeing back here”-and Garth waved his hand toward the timeless dark plains-“this dead world of darkness.”
The shadow nodded.
“Why here? This is hell itself. I would have thought you leaping through the infinite or tarrying in palaces of gold in worlds of unsurpassing delight. Why this nightmare world?”
“This is the heart of my realm. It is from here I can reach out to all other places, to erect the walls that keep the others out. When I walk within a realm and assume mortal form I am blind and know not what my enemies plot. Even in the brief instant I was away, returning to the place I had been born to take my tribute, a plane of existence was blocked to me and now I must war to win it back as I do now, even as we talk.”
The shadow’s voice was dark and filled with weariness, so that Garth almost felt a moment of pity, if one could pity the being that had taken all that he had once loved.
Garth started to laugh, the sound of it strange upon the dark and barren plains. He stood up and, turning, looked around.
“I have hated you my entire life,” Garth said. “You were once Grand Master, and had been for well nigh unto a millennium. And then you came to fear death and you desired the power of the infinite. You perverted all that the Houses had once been and the purpose of the mana. You used its strength to pierce the curtain between worlds so that you could walk as a demigod and thus be immortal. And now this is your realm!”
Laughing, he pointed out at the murky darkness.
The shadow stood up.
“I found it amusing to spare you for a moment. Your father was once my friend and thus I granted a boon to you. I am no longer amused.”
“Think on that. There was once a time when my father, a mere mortal, thought so much of you that he nearly died to save you from an assassin. He carried the marks of that poisoned dagger until the day he died. You know, there was once a time when such as my father loved you and called you friend. When a woman loved you with such aching intensity that her heart was shattered, and now she is nothing but bitterness and hate. You gave all that up, all of it. For this.” And he pointed out across the dark plain.
Garth’s voice tightened with emotion.
“My father trusted and believed in you until he burned to death, the last of his power stripped by your groveling servant, Zarel, to be used in your unholy quest. You betrayed him and now this is your reward. You are so terrified of losing what you now control that you exile yourself to this dark world, unable to enjoy even the pleasures of a beggar-the sun in one’s face, the laughter of children, the taste of wine or even of simple bread.”
“You know nothing,” the shadow hissed. “Your father could have been the Grand Master after I was gone and after him it could have been you. It was his arrogance that destroyed him and cursed you to half blindness.”
“He chose death in preference to slavery.”
“Enough of this,” the shadow whispered. “Your value as a diversion is at an end. I was half thinking of actually sparing you. A sentimental gesture for a universe that is pitiless. I don’t think that will happen now.”
“Then go ahead,” Garth said quietly.
The shadow started to rear up and extended its arms.
Garth smiled and slowly raised his arms as well.
The shadow hesitated and then laughed.
“You never did answer what I first wanted to know. You undoubtedly had figured it out that I killed the winners of the Festival so that they would not one day be a threat. So why did you come forward and win?”
“Because,” Garth said evenly, “I think I can beat you as well.”
The shadow laughed.
“So you will be like me. You certainly had good training. You left your servant to die, and you murdered a woman who loved you for the chance.”
“You would have killed her in turn,” Garth said coldly. “I would like to think that I saved her.”