“You may be right. It is so strange. I feel nothing. Nothing whatever. I am weak. I have used all the power I had within me.”
“And it was considerable. But you will not get your wish. The world will not die, neither will you. Neither shall the beast be loosed.”
“How will all this be prevented?”
“By magic, of course. I will use the same spell that trapped the beast three thousand years ago.”
She shook her head. “You cannot do it. The stars are not right. The beast is now forewarned. You will not be able to lure it down again from its home in the skies. It will descend only to destroy.”
“The missing aspect will offset those unfavorable conditions. The beast cannot exist in its incomplete state. It will return of its own accord and will bargain with me. It will see that there is only one course open to it.”
“So you hope.”
“I know, Melydia. One thing — I will need your help. I will need protection.” He pointed to the still form of the scribe at his feet. “So will your servant.”
“I will do this thing. Methinks you have bespelled me.”
“I have. Your madness is gone. Forgive me, it was a precaution.”
“I only wish you could have done it earlier.”
“That was not possible, as you well know.”
“Of course,” she said. “Only now am I vulnerable … so to speak.”
“Enough. May we begin?”
“You need no accouterments? No paraphernalia?”
“None. The spell is purely mental in execution.”
She pointed to the sky. “Behold, the beast rises.”
“It will return soon, if all goes according to plan.”
The tunnel had been dark, lit only by the strange glow that had stayed with him through the underworld. The aura of his sainthood? But he saw light ahead, daylight. He smelled the outdoors. It was strange, because he hadn’t smelled it for so long. A cool breeze came to him.
He rounded a bend and saw the mouth of the cave a short distance ahead. He hurried, wondering what would be waiting for him out there.
He came out into bright day. He walked out from the base of the cliff and looked up. He was at the foot of the castle’s citadel. He could not see the castle, which he found strange. Perhaps if he got out a little farther.
The plain was bare, empty, nothing but dried grass and rock.
Wait! Wasn’t the camp of the besiegers out here somewhere? Perhaps on the other side of the promontory. No, he was sure it was this side.
He lifted his eyes heavenward. “Speak, O Great Holy Voice! Speak to thy servant!”
He searched the skies. There was something up there, circling, some great black shape. A bird? No. It was descending, growing bigger.
Presently he saw what it was. He did not completely understand what it was, but he knew the thing sought him, and he knew he had been betrayed.
His heart gave out before he reached the cave.
The beast spoke.
You, again.
“Yes.”
Like your fathers before you, you seek to enslave me.
“You have no choice. Only I can make you whole again.”
Free me now from your thrall, and I shall heal myself.
“You know you can’t. The fragment is only a metaphor. You are nothing but metaphor.”
Yet I am real.
“I wonder. Or are you merely our reflection?”
I AM NO ONE’S REFLECTION! I AM RAMTHONODOX! I WILL EAT THE INTESTINES OF MY ENEMIES!
“Enough of that nonsense. I offer you a proposition. You have no choice. Perhaps one day you will gain your freedom again. It is not impossible. You are immortal, are you not? One day Man, your enemy, will be gone, and the world will be yours once more.”
No, I fear the world will never again be mine. I will fade to nothingness. The earth will belong to the small, the insignificant.
“Perhaps. But time will tell. And time you have aplenty.”
It was good to cleanse the world once again.
“I’m glad you had fun. Now you must rest.”
I feel weak.
“Of course. You will feel weaker.”
Help me.
“I shall. Come closer.”
The sky darkened as the huge form bore down. Parts of the beast became indistinct. Multicolored flashes broke out along its vast bulk. A strong wind suddenly rose, whipping dust about the citadel.
I do not do this willingly.
“Doubtless not. Be quiet.”
Whirling clouds appeared, at their center a growing vortex of blackness.
I could crush you.A gargantuan foot hovered above.
“You would not last long in your present incomplete state. And you know it.”
There was a sound not unlike a sigh, and very like a fierce gale.
I suppose you are right.
The clouds rotated faster, and the vortex grew.
I feel myself becoming something other than myself.
“This won’t hurt a bit.”
The world imploded into blackness.
He couldn’t find a sign. Coming to the mouth of the ramp he had driven down, he looked up, saw it was a long way to walk, dangerous, too, and decided there must be a stairwell, better yet, an elevator around somewhere.
He searched in vain. He did find a featureless corridor which met another at a T. To his right the way was dark, so he turned left, turned again at an L, and found himself back in the sepulchral silence of the garage again. Sighing, he retraced his steps, passed the intersection of the first corridor and continued on into the darkness. Feeling his way, he went about thirty paces until he bumped into a wall. The passageway turned to the right, still unlighted, and continued interminably.
Another turn, and there was light up ahead.
He saw the dark stone masonry, the jewel-torch, and wondered where the hell he was. He stopped. Suddenly he couldn’t bear the thought of facing another useless interview for a job he really didn’t want. Why not face it? He was unemployable, at least as far as white-collar jobs went. So what was wrong with blue-collar occupations? This sudden impulse to drop back in, to “get a job and settle down,” was just a response to pressure from his parents. Wasn’t it? Knee-jerk bourgeois security-seeking.
Well, to hell with USX, and to hell with getting a “good job.” He’d tend bar, open a bookstore, go to Europe … something. To hell with everything.
He looked down the hall at the strange discontinuity. He took a step forward …
It was an ordinary California day, bright sun, blue sky, haze, smog, and Linda was tired of it.
She was tired of everything. She didn’t think she could get through another day.
She had tried calling her sister, but Sharon was at a rehabilitation nurses’ convention in Denver. Linda didn’t feel like bothering her. She had always been able to talk to Sharon, but what exactly was the point now?
Still, she couldn’t think of suicide. It would kill Mother, and she couldn’t stomach the thought of lying there in the casket with all the old biddies in the family talking in whispers about her. And the gossip.Did you hear about the Barclay girl? No, the younger one. Did you know what they’re saying about how she died?
Ugh.
Maybe she was just afraid of dying. She was afraid of everything else. Afraid of living. But she did have a death wish — wasn’t that what the pills were all about? Maybe she should go back to popping pills. That way, death would come and she wouldn’t have to act, to make a decision …
She was disgusted with herself.
She got up from the bed and went to the closet. She really should get out of this filthy T-shirt. Look at all this laundry lying here. She should get up off her butt and get down to the Laundromat —